tmoore_25

You said you were in Grading/QC after thick case delay. Did they tell you that they got thicker cases in? I'm being told that is what is holding mine up and they continue to say every week they haven't gotten the cases yet. This past Friday is the 60 day mark for my original order. If the turnaround time was 60 days back then (now that I think about it, I think it was actually 40 back then), how can anything submitted after that have an affect on our timeline? They are supposed to work on a first in/first out system. I understand that currently with PSA shutdown and all that they will be getting many, many more submissions. That SHOULD affect their turnaround time for those cards. Ours on the other hand should not be affected. My Economy order that was submitted in the same box, was received on Feb 26 and shipped back to me with all cards graded on Mar 11.

There are some who have received cards back in thicker holders. They are giving those holders to the higher level services while making bulk wait even though some have been waiting since february and were charged more than two weeks ago. #stoplyingtoyourcustomers Check out this Kobe with the inner sleeve and bumpers situated further out away from the card edge. Kobe Bryant 1999-00 Donruss Flair Showcase Elevators #4 of 10 CSG 9 MINT | eBay Here is a side by side comparison of thicker slab next to regular slab. These might be the same cards but I have not verified that yet.

They were marked as received on Feb 26. I've actually gotten my economy order submitted at the same time back already at the end of March, beginning of April. This was prior to the PSA shutdown. My issue is that I submitted when there was a 60 day turnaround. Now its 133 days and somehow I'm sure CSG is going to put my order in the same category as those being submitted today. Even though they claim a FIFO system, any card submitted at a higher level is going to get put in front of bulk. So the onslaught of cards they have been receiving since the shutdown is stopping mine from being returned.

This is starting to get ridiculous. I have a bulk order that was entered as received on Feb 26. I have been told everything under the sun about it. I've already been invoiced and paid for the grades. I was told 2 or 3 weeks ago it was in encapsulation. Then it went back to scheduled for grading. Then it went to we are waiting for larger cases that should be in next week (that was two weeks ago). Why is it so difficult for these companies to be honest with their customers? I'm sitting at 50 business days for this order. I believe the turnaround time at the time of submission was 60 business days. You have 10 days left to meet your original stated turn around time. The clock is ticking.

Since it takes forever for a moderator to approve anything in the "Ask CSG" thread, I figured I would post this here. As many of us know, our orders are being held back because you are waiting on larger holders because one or more cards in our orders are too large for your regular cases. The problem is that every week, you continuously tell us they will be in next week. You said that this week. You said that three weeks ago. You tell all of us the same thing. How is it that a company that's clearly spending a significant amount of money with its primary supplier of the one item they need in order to conduct business can't pick up the phone and find out when the cases will be here? I think you might already have the answer but simply don't want to anger your customers by telling them that it is going to be a month or longer before you will actually get them. Give me the number. I'll call them and ask since you clearly won't. You're starting to cross into the lack of transparency lane and that is going to drive a lot of your customers to your competitors. Kobe Bryant 1999-00 Donruss Flair Showcase Elevators #4 of 10 CSG 9 MINT | eBay Check out this Kobe in a mysteriously larger case. How about this photo posted on Blowout of the larger case comparison.

It's weird. Mine had the same thing happen today. Status disappeared but subgrades were loaded. Now the status says "Scheduled for grading", subgrades are still there, but no overall grades.

I think you either need to resubmit before shipping or send it in and once they enter it into the system, call customer service and request to add subgrades. Their customer service is pretty good and I think I have read or heard of others doing similar. i know there was an issue earlier where we could not select the grade the auto and had to call and request it.

Have any of the six grading companies out there (PSA, BGS, SGC, CSG, HGA, or GMA) ever lowered their fees/prices? I've only been grading for two or three years, so I've only been doing this while the prices and demand have risen, but am genuinely curious (while most likely already knowing the answer) if they have ever lowered their prices. If you find the answer to that, I think you will have the answer to the question you are asking.

I think this is an interesting topic. I will start by saying that I have opted to add subgrades to all my submissions. I think it looks better. I feel that if not adding more value, it at least adds more information that could help a potential buyer make a more informed decision on whether he wants to purchase the card or not. I do think that the $10 charge for adding them is a little much but I'm just not a fan of the slabs without subgrades. I believe $5-$7 would be a much better price. There is too much open space without them. If they found a way to fill that space better on cards without subgrades, then I might change my mind. I think PSA does a very good job at balancing their labels. CSG could do the same.

I may be incorrect but I believe when you signed up for the membership, did you not have to input your credit card info? I believe that is how they charge you for their service. On my first order, my credit card info was incorrect because I had to get a new card. They attempted to charge me and it would not go through. They emailed me to let me know and I was able to call them and give them the correct info. You can call their customer service to verify though. They are fairly responsive and you should not have long to wait.

I don't personally have an issue with people grading whatever they want and profiting from it. If I did, I would stop grading. But knowing that there are more collectors now and knowing that people who collected a long time ago are hearing about the grading card explosion and going back through their closets and sending what they collected when they were younger in, that is how you explain the longer turnaround times. Grading card services are currently a very inelastic service, meaning that demand is still high and climbing even with the price increase. That is a signal to the grading companies that their services are currently underpriced and they can continue to raise prices until the demand for that service decreases. At some point there has to be a price balance because currently there are really no substitutes for generating profit in the card community. The OP complained about the current pricing offered in the grading sector overall. Until the demand goes down, the prices are going to continue to climb.

Slow your role there "guy." You sought out the CSG forum to post complaints about a company that you are not even using and don't expect people to comment. Maybe you should have just kept your mouth shut and your comments to yourself. I was trying to help and the intent was not to rub you the wrong way but apparently you got butthurt when someone provided an actual justification that went against what you believe. You are clearly either picking and choosing what you read or purposely avoiding the positives about CSG. I'm willing to bet those same "various websites" have positive reviews about the company also. I suggest you stick to your plan and send your cards to GMA instead. Had they not raised their prices would you have still graded with them? I suspect yes. But yet you state "those bright green labels" and talk about how everything is negative about them. Yet you wanted to give them your money. Hypocrite.... Just so you know, SGC did have a 4-5 month wait. My order #56124 was shipped on 24 June 2020 and it was shipped back to me on 2 November 2020, so just over 4 months. Maybe you skipped that timeframe in your attempts to grade your 1973 Topps set. No, you do not pay before the cards are graded and obviously you have to be a member to grade with them. I currently have a 55 card bulk submission with CSG that has all subgrades posted and I have not yet been charged. That means someone has processed my cards but not yet charged me. As in you pay for services rendered, not services due. I also was not trying to be the arbitrator for who should grade and what they should grade. You made an accusation and I offered my opinion on why there was an issue. Too many people submitting low end base rookie type cards that don't sell for more than $20 raw. Plain and simple. How do you counter that? You raise prices to price some of that out and slowly hire more employees to handle the increased demand. If you don't like that, there are other forums that you can go complain on. OR you can sit here in this thread like your currently doing just waiting for me to respond so you can be the keyboard warrior that you are and pounce...... Why don't you take a minute and go to ebay and search for 1991 Fleer PSA or 1990 Donruss PSA and see how many cards from a set have been graded. But they need to be protected right...

The other half of my order has popped and I didn't get any 10's with that one. So I now have submitted 74 cards and only gotten 3 CSG 10's. I've got another 41 card order with them so maybe I will get 1 or 2 in that order. But at least they are consistent. You don't hear of anyone out there getting a disproportionate amount of 10's versus the rest of the CSG community.

I'm not sure if you are genuinely asking a question or just ranting about the price increase. I will try to help explain why CSG did what it did, although I'm also in the dark like yourself and am just trying to decide what I would have done if I were in their shoes. First of all, CSG is not new. They've been around for years and many people who participate in their comic, coin, or gaming card sector also collect sports cards. Those are the people they were really trying to draw in. The ones who are already using their services and know their reputation. The bonus is any new people in the sports card community that they can peel off of some of the other grading companies. Remember what happened to SGC when they said "Send us your cards. We're still open." They got flooded and couldn't handle the influx of cards and went from 20 days to 4-5 months to return cards. All the while they scrambled to hire more people and find a larger facility. CSG is dong the same thing but without bragging about themselves. They have stayed open and tried to keep prices at a reasonable level. They are still the cheapest grader out there, I think, but I could be wrong. SGC is forcing people to go with Group Submitters while at the same time raising their prices by about $10. I do not think they will change their business model from this point on. If they did in fact hire all these extra people then they should be equipped to handle the extra business. I think maybe they didn't do as much hiring as we thought. Remember, they eventually halted all Group Submissions around the holiday time frame. Now they've just done the opposite. Halted all personal submissions by raising the price to an astronomical level while making their job easier. Ship all cards to one person and let them do the work for you instead of shipping those same cards to 25 different people. CSG is clearly trying to hire more. Heck they are even offering a $2500 sign on bonus for pretty much any position in the company. There is a delicate balance that they must maintain. Just because they have been flooded with cards doesn't mean they have the funds to hire more people. If you have 10 people who can grade 10 cards per day, your throughput is only 100 cards per day. If you have a backlog of 10,000 cards, that doesn't mean you have made any more money. You don't get paid until the cards get graded. The only way you make more money is by increasing your throughput. To do that, you either need more people or you will need to either compromise on the grading process so that those 10 people can now grade 15 cards per day instead of 10 or improve the process. I don't think they are compromising the grading process. I think they are taking a slow methodical approach to recruiting, vetting, hiring, and training people so that they ARE able to increase throughput. Also remember, once you are hired it's not like you get a desk and go to work grading on your own. There is most likely an extensive program that you have to go through to become some sort of interim or probationary grader and you stay that way for a period of time. After that time is up, they probably reevaluate you and decide whether you stay or go. So just because they have received more cards and raised their prices, doesn't mean they can just go out and buy more graders. Also, you have to realize that at some point PSA will open back up. That means that submissions might go down at CSG. What do they do with all those graders they hired then? They don't want to come out and terminate people because they don't have the business, they try to keep their head count at what they believe they will reasonably need in the future. Also, part of the idea behind raising prices is to stop people from submitting those $30 mid-level cards. That was never the reason behind getting your cards graded. It was to authenticate and certify valuable cards in order to give a potential buyer a sort of warm and fuzzy that he was getting what he thought if he spent a ton of money on a card. We collectors are the ones who have ruined grading by sending in 2020 Topps Series 1 Sean Murphy cards for grading. So you should go back and look at your cards. If you are sending in cards that sell for $20 or less raw then you are part of the problem. I'm not just picking on you either because I definitely have some low end cards there too but that is essentially what has caused the problems the grading community is currently in.

I've had the same issue before and it all ended well. Looking at my submission, a lot of cards were listed as autographed or something else when they weren't. I was concerned about this and called customer service and she told me it would be taken care of during the grading process. Once I got my first 19 card order back, I didn't see any of the previously noted issues. Not that CSG won't make a mistake or two, but they are pretty good at making the corrections prior to shipping back to you.

I do not believe they will reach out to you prior to grading the card to let you know about the upcharge. I believe your first notification will be when you receive your invoice for services rendered. In order to avoid the surprise bill it is imperative that you be honest with yourself when declaring your card value. The good thing with CSG is that they go by raw card value, not graded card value like PSA. I've always hated that. I have to send my card in at the level of a PSA 10 but if it doesn't grade a PSA 10, they don't refund you.

I know it doesn't make you fell any better about your cards whereabouts but remember, CSG is pretty much the only option for grading right now. We've essentially gone from 4 companies down to 1. PSA closed, SGC raised prices beyond logical, and BGS takes a year to return your cards. I wish they could throw out a number because based off of previous comments from PSA on what their daily total package count looks like, I'd be interested to see what CSG is currently getting on an average day. I suspect there is no way their "Receiving" department is able to keep up with demand. But, I do believe that your cards will be returned to you in a somewhat reasonable amount of time. I consider 3 to 4 months reasonable with the current situation and hopefully that timeframe will go down once PSA opens back up. I suspect SGC will not lower their prices as they are trying to force you to go through Group Submitters. I've got an bulk order that was received on 2/26 that has the subgrades posted and I suspect should be on the way back to me within about 2 weeks. I have an economy order received around 4/5 according to tracking that hopefully I will receive back by mid July. All will probably be back before my 3 PSA submissions that were received in October last year.

Unfortunately it seems CSG is a little behind on updating submission statuses which I guess can be expected somewhat with the influx of cards. I just called about my order "Received" by them on 2/26 and it has been sitting in "Scheduled For Grading" since that time. Well, apparently my cards are actually in Encapsulation and I should be charged and see an invoice in the near future. I don't understand their invoicing/charging either. Some people are charged early on and some like myself are charged later on.

I don't understand CardGrader's comment. If it is a requirement for all pack pulled manufacturer autos to be graded then why do you offer the check box for auto grading on your submission form? Cards with other autographs are not eligible for CSG certification. That means you only grade pack pulled autos. There should be a blanket statement that says "All cards with manufacturer certified autos will be graded regardless whether you (the owner) wants them to or not and we are going to charge you $2 to do so." That way people know what they are getting into when they submit. Very misleading on your website and I can see someone making a big issue of it if they didn't want the auto grade and you force them to pay for it. It is my option whether I want you to just grade the card or if I want you to grade the card and the auto. In that case, you owe kled2000 either some auto grades or, since you charge them anyway, you owe him $2 per card that did not receive an auto grade.

I've been seeing this in other posts also. From what I understand, and can verify from looking at my own CSG slabs is that they have very tight tolerances inside from edge to edge. If you notice, a bunch of 89 UD Griffey Jr RC's were getting returned as "Service Unavailable". Those cards that were sent back as Service Unavailable were too large for their current holders. I believe they have ordered some larger holders to accommodate cards that are very slightly oversized. I have heard different delivery dates for those newer slabs, from 2 weeks to 2 months. A lot of those vintage cards are cut at slightly different sizes and tolerances.

That is the day that they entered it into the system as Received. I had an Economy order entered the same day and I got that back on March 11. So my Bulk is taking over a month longer and that was before PSA and SGC made their changes.

Hopefully I can help. I'm not positive, but I think they may be delaying bulk orders at the moment. I've got an order that they received early on (Feb 26) that is still scheduled for grading and I have not been charged yet. At least you've been charged so there is some progress with your order. I assume that they have graded your cards or else how do they know what to charge you. There are probably delays with PSA being shut down and the SGC price rise, but those cards that have came in at Standard and higher levels have probably jumped ahead of us Bulk submitters so that they can ensure they meet those shorter turnaround times. they are probably flooded with those orders and have delayed Bulk and will sprinkle them in periodically. Hopefully I am wrong but I suspect that we will see another increase in turnaround times shortly.

Yeah that tracking link doesn't work. My package says the same. It was delivered on the 5th but their link says they don't have it. I'm assuming either they added that function early on and decided not to use it or just recently added it and don't have it fully functioning. Either way, it should be taken down until they get it up and running. Kind of makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up when they say they don't have it. Maybe Johnny down the road got my cards delivered to his house by mistake and he thinks he won the lottery.

I would suspect that they do. I just submitted a bowman chrome fire die-cut refractor not too long ago. It was available through their form system so I would hope they grade it.

CSG's PO Box is located inside their own building. So if your tracking says it is available for pick-up, that means it has been delivered, most likely. Considering they are getting backed up, you can expect anywhere from 2 to 3 weeks before they mark it as received and enter it into their system. It shouldn't normally be this slow but since PSA shut down temporarily and SGC tripled their prices, CSG is getting a lot of submissions and they are behind in checking in orders.