Ron Churches

If they gave you the car for no dollars, but told you 'we still own this car and you have to use it like we say' and you agreed to that, then yes, your analogy makes sense.

Who are those equal rep grading companies, out of curiosity?

billing has shifted toward the later days of that stage, or even the stage just beyond it, from what I've seen.

I called today over a billing issue and the lady was very helpful and everything resolved immediately. I think they do a decent job in general, though certainly not perfect.

My man, just because you do something all the time doesn't make it 'legal'. The person above you is right, though I imagine the effort it would take to police every box being used against the terms you accept when you get that 'free' box from the USPS would be too high to make sense. Still, the box is explicitly the property of the USPS, so hope you aren't the 1 out of however many who run afoul of this at some point. https://www.thebalancesmb.com/usps-supply-misuse-fines-4037892

Probably means they caught something in QC and are fixing it for you.

The lack of a pop report is absolutely a strategic decision CGC has made at this point. I think the above reasons are feasible. I think one factor could also be that we'd have easier access to data on their grading capacity. Folks watch the PSA pop reports to easily quantify how many cards are being graded. CGC may want this figure to be obscured, for strategic reasons. I wonder if anyone has taken a crack at figuring out how many cards are being graded by collecting data from the imaging URLs? I'm sure those URLs could be scraped and tallied.

Did you look before you sent them in to see if they grade those Chinese cards?

yeah, the CSG case (I think) is slightly better.

I like this change.

Are they mostly charging at the QC stage now, is that how I take it?

I have a bulk received 3/17 in the system that just moved to Grading/Imagine/Encapsulation

I'm not scared to say gapless is fine. I also understand what 4th print means. Just post data, lol.

Good change.

From my experience, it won't bill/charge until it's in 'grading/QA'. At that point they you'll be able to click the link and see what cards are being graded; scheduled for grading is a status that's happening earlier in the process, as I think they are getting that part of their workflow sorted faster. I think we'll all see our bulk move into scheduled status sooner, but should anticipate that it won't go to 'grading' status for a good while. I have also heard, anecdotally, that there is a bit of slab rationing going on due to supply constraints. Might be impacting the Sports Card guys more, but it's worth noting that the bottleneck in the CGC process has likely moved over the last couple of months, and likely will move again as they get to the big pile of mail that came in during their price hike lead up.

If you don't pay for hi-res, the images are not great quality. I assume we're subsidizing their hosting costs.

I had a 1 card w/subgrades express (part of a standard shipment) received 5/19. It's shipping today. That's 14 Biz days, taking out Memorial day.

I don't think we'll truly have a sense of how hard it is to get a CGC 10 until we have a population report. I suspect it's going to be dramatic, like proportionally about 1/5th or 1/3rd of PSA's 10 rate or something crazy. 9.5's are underrated and 10s are seriously underrated; you score a 10 and it should be special, especially on a non-Japanese card.

Indeed. The boot up time to make use of new space is long, too. I know they expanded, but I heard anecdotally that they are using the new space primarily for card storage. I suspect that's a major reason PSA shut down incoming; they were running out of safe space to store (and insure) millions of dollars worth of cards.

At some point logistics beyond throwing labor at it are an issue. Like, if I need one specific hole dug, hiring 2 people to dig it is basically just as efficient as hiring 100 people to dig it. I think it's systems constraints. Could also be a bottleneck at the sonic welder stations, as those are expensive and probably the last thing they want to buy a bunch of. Also, touch points around validation, bar code scanning, moving cards from station to station. Prepping for research, fixing people's submissions that were sent in poorly, etc. I would also assume they try to take all legwork out of the equation so that the grader can just grade. Quite possible there's a ton of cards that have been assigned a grade/QCd, but are piling up trying to get through the welding station and then through outbound logistics.

I also think they are getting things into 'grading/quality control' a little faster, which means they are triggering the billing activity. I spoke with a nice lady in accounting about a payment and she had zero visibility into where the card was in the process. It's a standard submission that is already in 'grading' even though it's only been there for about 15 biz days. I expect it'll take a few more weeks to grade and ship, but I've already paid for it. Not all parts of their process are moving at the same pace and it's causing queuing issues that move around.

Makes me wonder if they've done a good job of solving the logistics once the cards are 'received' in the system, but aren't able to handle the outbound process efficiently yet. I know they have trimmed their packaging down, a LOT. Either because of lack of materials or needing to make things move faster (or both?)...could just be that they are bottlenecked really bad at that final step for some reason.

This is what that extra five dollars processing fee is for; managing your order in two piles because it goes to two different spots in their process.

If everyone does it it would result in the same amount of time to wait for your box to be opened. The fact that this isn't happening is an indication that this doesn't happen enough to make a huge difference in the wait times related to folks working the system.

PSA has put out what I'd interpret as 'good news' in their public statements. I would think easing in, from higher tiers down, would be a likely move by PSA. Nobody I know uses Beckett for bulk Pokemon (I'm sure this person exists). Idk, I just see PSA and Beckett as substitutes, PSA and CGC as substitutes, but CGC and Beckett as less substitutes for each other.