Psa is opening an office in Japan!
blog.psacard.com/2018/11/06/psa-announces-new-office-opening-in-tokyo/
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Interesting, they’ll still be grading cards in the US and the Japan office is an official middleman.
I wonder when/if they’ll ever open to mutli country grading services.
Edit: Just noticed it works out to be $12 aud per card if done for bulk, probably cheaper for aussie to do it this way.
There has been a location there for awhile. It will be interesting to see if this increases the amount of PSA cards from japan. There has already been an increase since its subtle presence.
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I wonder if the labels will be any different.
no, the cards are being sent to be graded in the US, they’re not being graded in Japan
Dang, I was hoping for uber perfect graders.
So what you’re saying is… the turnaround time isn’t going to get shorter?
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They have a big baseball fan base as well as non sports. Hopefully PSA will get some play there.
Also, as Scott said, they’ve had an office there for awhile. I’ve read two letters from that office.
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Hah, from the sounds of it they’re giving 127 million more people the option to grade their cards, they better be hiring more staff
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There has been an older post about this. I met with the acting ceo of psa and some of the managers as they wanted my advice on coming to Japan last year.
It was really nice, and fun, we had sushi together. I remember at the meeting I showed them questions from e4 members here, we did a small thread. They laughed hardest when swolepoke’s question / comment was, “get better”.
Its been in the works a while, but it’s going to be a tough road ahead for them. Very difficult to change the mentality of the Japanese. Some places are already selling psa graded Pokemon cards locally, but they are more expensive than ebay prices sometimes. It’s a little hard to fathom the premium against the time, wait, import charges Japanese have to deal with. And the fact most Pokemon card stores run off the tcg aspect of the game.
The baseball market and some other non sports has some potential. But it’s going to take a long time to get the ball rolling.
Currently their local grading cost is very high, I think it was close to $22 USD per card here, but it includes all translation, and inbound / outbound mail charges.
I heard that some stores in Japan rejected them, and didn’t want to deal or listen to them at all when they visited. And other stores are already selling via a grading scale, so those were a little more open.
At the moment retailers and collectors are testing it out.
It will probably grow slowly later on, if they play their cards right. 
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This type of insider information is awesome! Thanks for the clarification on the PSA market in Japan. At 22$ USD per card though, that’s going to be a tough entry barrier to start off with 
It’s around that ballpark of $22, I don’t know if it’s been adjusted since about 2-3 months ago. May of changed pricing now.
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I’m a little more optimistic. After many years the Japanese finally caught on to the value side of grading their cards. It really was inevitable though it took longer than it should have. Just like us, they like money and PSA is where the moneys at. It’s no secret now. I expect it to catch on en masse sooner than you think and having been a stockholder since it’s initial offering…I hope it will;)
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Yeah, it will be interesting to see how things pan out.
I think psa is really needed in Europe as well, but will be difficult to place it there as well, and I guess many Europeans already know and use psa more than Japanese.
Attached is one of the fliers given out.
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And here’s the website. Note Ohtani and Ichiro cards featured on the page.
It’s 1,000 yen per card for the bulk, which is roughly $8.80usd.
That’s more expensive than going direct to PSA…
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Yeah more expensive and from what I can gather they only ship out orders once a month to USA
$8.80 isn’t much more than my cost actually. If they do translation and it takes on board all import charges, back and forth postage. Then it’s pretty good actually.
It might work for you mate, especially if you can just drop the cards off physically.
But for people overseas, there’s still international postage, just now there’s double the amount 
That’s very true. For some reason I had bulk rates of over 100 cards at 10usd a card.
There really would be no reason to go through Japan unless exchange rates become more favourable.
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