Better head to whatnot. Buyers are very… Generous over there 
“Non-economic components” 
Doesn’t matter how many strike articles you read, this phrase is always a little stomach-churning.
I read the article and think this is actually legitimate. Collectibles have some of the highest margins so it’s surprising to see $16.25 an hour for an Authenticator. Then again I remember grading companies didn’t want to pay for an expert, which is why autograph authentication is doing so well right now. 
It’s easy to be cynical about this and say “get a better job” or “all you do is look at cards all day, how hard could it be?” But it does sound like a pretty shitty job and as @smpratte says, $16.25/hr is poverty for a lot of places. If you think this should be the pay for an authentication job, just think back to the largest ebay purchase you made and remember that someone paid $16.25/hr was the one to handle it and determine if it was real.
Same thing stuck out to me. I love that they credited the photo to the Pokemon Company 
Hot take, but if people are doing minimum skill jobs with no required education, and need to be trained to do these jobs, how much more than minimum wage do they deserve?
If they weren’t so easily replaceable with the next person in line, maybe the employers would be paying them more to keep them.
If they feel they are so valuable, why don’t they go off and start their own grading / certification company… because more than 87% of them don’t have that ability.
If these guys want to be more valuable, they should quit and put their own capital on the line buying raw cards and sending them off for grading. They likely won’t because they appreciate a steady paycheck.
This is why while I get frustrated with PSA graders, I’m sure they aren’t paid well and are just folks working a shitty job to meet ends meet in the brutal system we live in. Can’t hate on them too hard as individuals.
Bad take, Everyone deserves a liveable wage, regardless of skill or qualifications.
why don’t they go off and start their own grading / certification company
Probably, because the people working in minimum wage jobs have neither the funds nor the time to start a company?
I’d be just fine if eBay didn’t “authenticate” everything. I did just fine without it. Granted I probably spend more time than most staring at cards so if this service is helpful to newbs then I guess it’s fine. Maybe make it an optional add on for them for a small fee. But I can confidently say I’ve never ever needed eBay to authenticate a card for me
Yes but then you see how blatantly fake cards sell for hundreds to thousands every single day…
Define livable, because when I was a part time lifeguard in university in my early 20s, I lived in a student house with 4 other people, and I was able to survive.
But eBay still has their standard buyer protection. eBay invented this service to save them headaches. I don’t remember people saying they want their stuff sent to be reviewed
A liveable wage is how much someone needs to be paid when working full time to afford all necessary expenses. Here is a great website that goes into more detail on how its calculated:
https://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/methodology
Being paid enough to survive is not the same as being paid a liveable wage, nor is it what we should strive for as a society.
Interesting concept where they define what a livable housing cost should be as the 40th percentile. It’s almost like they want you to think that a livable wage is living better than the bottom 40%, which scales depending on the value of rents.
Data on the cost of housing comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Fair Market Rents (FMR)dataset, developed from responses from recent movers in the American Community Survey. For metropolitan areas and nonmetropolitan counties, the FMR dataset provides estimates of the 40th percentile gross rents – which include the cost of shelter, contract rent, and utilities sans telephone, cable, and broadband – for standard quality units ranging from zero to four bedrooms.
Maybe we should pool all of our money as a society, and give everyone free housing and pay all their bills. And if you earn anymore money, it goes back into the societal pot, to be spread across everyone else?
the strawman comes out…
This is a lot of words to just to say that you’d rather have ebay collect an extra $4/hr than the person handling your multiple-thousand dollar cards
I also didn’t realize that striving for the 40th percentile was tantamount to communism
Unpopular opinions thread has expanded here.
Even if they are replaceable with proper training their impact on the business is enormous. It’s not always going to be a linear graph but if making burgers at ChikFilA is a similar wage to grading 10 $5000 cards/day, something is not right in terms of input and output.
Businesses need good culture and that starts with people being paid enough to not despise their employer for being unable to meet decent needs.
Look up Dan Price 70k/year salary company. Have a good day!