To Submit or Not to Submit – That is the Question

As this is my first blog post here, I should probably provide a little background into my situation and must first admit that this is WAY behind the times – like 5-6 months late. Anyways….

I don’t have disposable income. While my wife and I have good jobs and earn a decent living, our student loans are out of control. When I got back into #TheHobby back in 2015, I started with a few bucks. I bought some cheap autograph cards because I thought they were cool and I couldn’t believe how cheap I got them. Decided to sell my original purchases when I found other ones I wanted. This began a vicious cycle into the flip life. Before I realized it, my collection that started with just a few bucks had grown a couple hundred times over. I still don’t have disposable income, so everything I buy in cards, is based off of my original $75 purchase and the subsequent flips since then.

In 2017, I decided to try my hand at getting cards graded. I did pretty well for my first submission to BGS. I was able to flip 6 of my original 25 submission cards to pay for the entire submission. I came to a realization that this method would help me grow exponentially.

So I scratched, clawed, and saved until in 2018 I could afford a 100 card submission to PSA, which at the time gave me bulk pricing of $7/card (currently $8/card). Since then, I’ve sold 75% of that submission. A few of the cards I’m holding as investments and a few were for my PC. About 10 remain unsold. I saved the first half of money sold to pay for my next submission. The rest has gone towards new purchases and supplies.

Then, news of the grading scandals of 2019 started popping up. BGS had been found to be giving employees preferential grades. PSA was found to have been providing ‘good’ customers preferential grades and grading trimmed/altered cards for those same customers and working hand-in-hand with top eBay seller PWCC to grade altered cards. SCG had also been found to have graded some trimmed/altered cards.

I understand there’s going to be fraud in just about every industry. But vendors and the companies seen as leaders in the industry should be combating these problems, not encouraging them. I’ll admit, I’ve had a few cards turned back in my submissions for not meeting the minimal standard size. I never took a ruler to anything I submitted in the past, so when I got these sent back, it gave me a false sense that these ‘authenticators’ were doing their jobs.

So, PSA, who was my favorite grader before these scandals – primarily because of reputation and pricing – came out with a statement from their parent company, Collector’s Universe’s, CEO Joe Orlando:

For a company who’s acronym PSA stands for “Professional Sports Authenticators” this does not breed confidence in the SOLE PURPOSE of their company/brand. PSA should be ashamed.

So, again – I’m small-time, all things considered. But what used to be a way to build my collection, is now a moral dilemma. Do I continue to send PSA and BGS my cards and money, knowing that I’m not an insider with them, so I’ll never get any preferential treatment like other customers. Do I hold out until a new digital grading company comes along (more on that in the future)? Do I stop collecting altogether?

While I try to sort out my moral dilemma, I’ve put my grading money into an interest-bearing account for the time being. Hopefully, this gets figured out soon. In the meantime, I’ve started selling LEGO-type minifigures on eBay and RageFace Toys.