I agree. My initial reaction is skepticism. I knew someone who worked on bank ATM that accepts checks and cash and used imaging to auto detect the items. This is similar but like a magnitude more difficult.
The machine has to intake the card, maneuver it into place, take a high resolution front and back image, be able to hold a feed of hundreds or thousands of slab components, place the card on the back of the slab, sonically seal the top, etch the grade in and do this all with 0% tolerance for any damage whatsoever to the card and near 0% tolerance for dust or debris.
How will damage be handled? Will TAG pay out the value of the card? Will the machine have to be shut down for inspection every single time there is a report of a damaged item?
Theoretically, it could be done. But to be useful, the machine would have to be cheap enough to be mass-produced. What’s a realistic cost per machine here? A few hundred thousand to a million? Plus salary and travel costs of specialized technicians needed for maintenance and repair. Plus the cost of shipping boxes and boxes of blank plastic to each unit.
So while I’m happy to be proven wrong, it just feels like one of those overpromised and underdelivered tech solutions (that for some reason always use the word “pod”) that is probably more of a marketing tool than anything. But again, I’m happy to be proven wrong because of course a machine like this would be useful.
Beyond the engineering challenges I think there are also more human-based ones that would arise. People will stick random junk into the machine, or even valid items like metal cards. People will try to trick the machine with fake items, and if you manage to find a blindspot in the authenticity algorithm it’s an infinite money glitch and will cause significant reputational damage. You will have conspiracies that pod-graded cards are worth less or that a certain machine gives higher grades or that certain shop owners have manipulated machines to give higher grades (even if that’s unlikely or impossible, people will believe it). Basically you are giving up full control of the grading process by allowing mostly unsupervised unlimited public access.
I also think the barrier to access is a positive thing for grading companies. For example, PSA slabs were at peak value when PSA effectively stopped grading in 2020. If you just have unlimited bottom-tier items being graded (because people won’t want to put their expensive cards into the machine) then people will associate your brand with low-value slabs. Also, in a world where these pods truly are everywhere then you’ve effectively neutered the secondary market value because why would I buy a card already graded when there is no barrier to grading and I can run the instant gratification slot machine myself?
All that said, if they could pull it off it will be interesting to watch. But needless to say, I’m extremely skeptical about many elements of this. Maybe I’ll change my mind when there’s a working prototype that is publicly accessible.
