PSA’s bulk grading service appears to be the leading cause of weak grades.
It becomes much more noticeable when you look at a large scale operation.
I decided to use Cardrush for most of the examples here. (The pictures.)
They appear to send in a massive, and constant amount of cards through bulk.
I obviously don’t know their exact business model but you can get a good idea of how they operate looking at pop reports and their listings.
They send in what seems to be around 50+ of the same card after opening a massive amount of product.
They don’t seem to care either what it will grade, they get grades between 6-10 it looks like. (No real inspection out of the packs?)
This thread isn’t to call out cardrush by any means, but they are a great example because they send in so much bulk.
It seems to me that most of these “weak” 10’s or more accurately overgraded 10’s come out of bulk.
I made this because I wanted to hear other people’s opinions on the matter.
I can’t imagine the same people that grade bulk also grade their high end cards.
I also wonder if they are really training employees that do low value/bulk submissions as long as they claim.
Maybe the employees at that level dont care?
Here are some examples of “PSA 10’s”:
These are just a few examples from the last month. There are many more of just weak 10s from them in the last month also.
Goes both ways, too. I shouldn’t have to split up my fifty gem mint modern japanese promos into other lots to get the 10s they all deserve. Because when I submit a chunk of fifty, they’ll pick a few random ones to get 9s. And I’ll crack them, resubmit, and they’ll get 10s.
I’ve done this four times now in the last five months. Every single resubmission got a 10. Every one.
I submitted tens of thousands of cards for grading before seeing this distinct rise in issues. For sub-$10 cards, I am meticulous about what I send because I can’t afford to get stuck with 9s. If I were occasionally missing a card, that would make sense. But I can specifically track this pattern. It does not have an obvious answer.
I shouldn’t have to pay a PSA 9 tax because of my method of submission to the service. Period.
Alternatively, my clients shouldn’t be nervous about the quality of my grades because I’m PSA’s highest volume Pokemon submitter in a given month.
But I’ve said too much already. Definitely not in my best interest to harp on them too much. Just validating that people submitting on the macro scale can see the patterns, too. Perhaps even better. And I’ll continue to bring it up in every sit-down meeting I have the chance to participate in until it is resolved.
Wholeheartedly. My personal best guess is inexperience, which is actively corrected with ongoing training amd experience. They didn’t triple their output in a few months time with their existing workforce. New people were hired. At the same time this happened, there was also an increase in the number of machine damage to cards, for example. It jumped from 1 in 5000 cards to 8 in 5000 by my stats. That’s huge. And it clearly signifies inexperience.
I have also seen first hand what PSA offers in compensation for the role. They were not bagging career-driven industry professionals. Lol. So the eyes will take some training.
But I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom. And I still think PSA is a godsend for accuracy relative to other buying options. When we buy a PSA 10, some of our more anal collectors feel personally victimized by a hairline surface scratch on the back border. But this is a luxury. Buying a “mint” card online before PSA was the standard was like playing blind lawn darts in a nursery. Total carnage. Now, PSA literally pays you if they were egregiously in the wrong.
There’s room for improvement and I’m of the belief it is happening all the time. But I don’t ever want to go back to the market of 2006. And having experienced that market seems to be one of the largest predictors of opinion on this issue. Older collectors will acknowledge that there is room for improvement, but are less likely to feel PSA is 100% dropping the ball. Those born into a more robust condition-forward collecting scene have the luxury of scrutinizing the cards in a way that only exists BECAUSE PSA has already lumped all the 8s, 9s, and 10s together. And I readily take part in wishing for the best possible product. But that starts with supporting PSA and acknowledging how far it has already gotten us.
I honestly believe that if I was so inclined, I could crack a couple thousand PSA 9s that I graded from 1999 thru 2002 and get a minimum of 20% back in 10s. You would find a higher % if you cracked BGS 9s from back then, I mean they were brutal (another trick of the trade;)
I always get a kick out of buyers who have a choice between an old label and new label they always want the new (I’m not talking about recases). Give me the old label EVERY time cause I can always recase.
Something brought up on discord: PSA should raise their grading fees.
Charlie hit it on the head (as usual). The influx of quantity required new graders. Graders are not paid well, especially for that Newport Beach cost of living. Therefore the only real way to increase quality is to increase the bulk rates. However this would also increase the PSA 9 tax that Charlie mentioned.
i dont know how some of you guys can spend so much on 10s when things like this is so common. i flipped my shit when i got a dark charizard back as an 8 that i still cant find anything wrong with, then watched trainertonys vid a few hours later of a return and he had a dark charizard come back a higher grade with a massive indent line going from one side to the other.
I suggested higher grading fees at around the time the backups were starting to get crazy last year. I don’t think it was a popular suggestion.
It only makes sense to do so though when PSA can’t keep up with the demand and it was irresponsible of PSA to have this recent Pokemon grading special which will certainly create another influx of cards to be graded. They should do away with specials all together for the time being and rework their entire pricing structure to get demand down somewhat.
They opted instead to focus on capturing the volume alone and letting the quality suffer when I would argue they should have let the quality remain high while charging more for the service and therefore lowering the demand for the service. The fee has always been laughably low given the premiums that cards in their cases can achieve. As long as grading remains under $10 you will get 1 and 2 cent common cards being graded at 9’s and sold for $10-$12 at a slight profit or break even which enables further grading of garbage cards. It should not be profitable or desirable to grade PSA 9 mass produced in print cards nor most older very low grade cards.
The card grading division of Collectors Universe is doing quite well, outperforming expectations. The base prices actually lend to very high margins and should not be increased.
The monthly special strategy is a system that was put in place to control submissions. The specials are honestly the correct prices and offer the appropriate margin.
Keep in mind, by not being included in the monthly special IS the rate increase.
I’m going to say that again
By not being included in the monthly special IS the rate increase.
I respectfully disagree with your opinion. I would like to see bulk submission tiers increased by one dollar and specials implemented only when outstanding orders are at 100% completion by contracted estimate.
I echo above from Charlie and further think that the extending out of estimated turnaround times was very shortsighted. It does little to limit demand and nothing to increase throughput. Being that BGS is even further behind and not at the same tier as PSA in our market they aren’t even a valid substitute so PSA should know people have nowhere else to go. So PSA is literally offering an unmatched service that cannot be bought elsewhere yet they are trying to be high volume when I think it’d be much more prudent to retain higher quality.
When you offer a service such as this and only have the capacity to product X units per Y timeframe (or grade X amount of cards per day) you face a decision making time when the orders become much higher than your throughput rate. You can increase the price to limit demand knowing there is no substitute or you can expand your capacity. PSA recently faced that decision and I think went down the wrong path. Sure if you are a company who makes widgets that anyone else can make you may as well buy another widget making machine, hire and train more widget makers and run with it. Satisfy the supply. However when you offer a service that requires a very high learning curve and very extensive and advanced training like a grader would require I think it is a poor decision to rush that and clearly allow the product to suffer as it certainly has according to some metrics Charlie mentioned.
I personally would like to see no option for grading of less than $12-$15. I would still grade most of what I grade today at that price. To have multiple employees handle a card and two experts inspect a card long enough to give their experts opinion on its condition should cost more than 6 or 7 bucks IMO. Especially when I can pay $7 to turn a raw ~$200 charizard into a $1,500 charizard.
I think a price increase would be beneficial on bulk across the board.
However, I think to be implemented correctly they should be firm on it.
No negotiating better rates for massive submissions, etc.
I would only have to imagine that would cause someone like cardrush, for example, to take the time to look over their cards.
That’s fine. Due to your normally astute thoughts and opinions nobody should dare fault you for being a little bit off this one time…lol.
I’m sure you can see that by not offering a special can be viewed as a rate increase?
I can certainly see that a slight increase in the bulk tiers could be affective also.
Just validating that people submitting on the macro scale can see the patterns, too. Perhaps even better. And I’ll continue to bring it up in every sit-down meeting I have the chance to participate in until it is resolved.