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Does starting out with bulk submitters make sense?
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15 posts in this topic

It seems to me that the massive amount of cards sent in to grading companies by bulk submitters has led to the current state of the hobby where long turn around times, poor customer experience, and large price increases have become the norm. Does it make since for CSG as a new grading company to start down the same path of other companies that led to this current situation? What do you think?

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Well, they know the business is there, and they know there is demand. Why not take as much revenue in will the iron is hot? I am sure they will be backed up soon too... but until then, make the money. 

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On 4/3/2021 at 12:20 PM, KBost33 said:

Well, they know the business is there, and they know there is demand. Why not take as much revenue in will the iron is hot? I am sure they will be backed up soon too... but until then, make the money. 

From what I've been reading here in the chat boards alone, they are already backed up. That didn't stop me from sending my second order with them on the 1st. Hopefully they have some good strategies in place. 

Edited by ItismeHerb
typo
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I am sure they are super backed up. I have more ready to send in, but want to see what return on investment is with CSG graded cards.. plus I like to stagger my orders, this kinda throws off my schedule. Don't want them all to hit at same time. 

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I thought it was time to respond to some of the comments here. My concern about professional bulk submitters has come true. We have already seen a 25 percent increase on bulk submissions and turn around time expand to 80 days. The most challenging part is there was very little notice on the price change. I found myself scrambling to submit a bunch of cards because some just don't make sense to grade at $12 a card. The really frustrating part was once my submission was over 100 cards the website provided 504 errors and didn't respond properly. It is nice that more time is provided to send cards submitted in but would have been better to keep pricing at $8 for a longer period of time. I think it was pretty interesting for csg to raise prices so quickly since no one knows what kind of pricing they will bring in the marketplace.

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Obviously they have to start with the higher priced categories because that’s where they make their best profit, but I think that since the vast majority of their business must come from bulk submissions, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to examine their prioritization of grading categories.

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2 hours ago, MDBLAW said:

Obviously they have to start with the higher priced categories because that’s where they make their best profit, but I think that since the vast majority of their business must come from bulk submissions, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to examine their prioritization of grading categories.

Actually since they never wanted to halt submissions, I believe the price hike and the extensions in estimated turnaround times were necessary to slow submissions and make consumers really think twice about what they would submit.

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5 hours ago, ItismeH said:

Actually since they never wanted to halt submissions, I believe the price hike and the extensions in estimated turnaround times were necessary to slow submissions and make consumers really think twice about what they would submit.

I'm not sure that the prices were high enough. There's a sweet spot in terms of card prices that once you get above $20 cards are fewer and father between. If the minimum was $20-25 a card I could see where it would cut a lot of the bulk out. A lot of sub $20 cards get graded with a resell of $40-50. If they could eliminate those with a price point where the return was the near the same as the raw value + grading fee I think it would go a long way towards really cutting back on some of the stuff that's sent in. Could be wishful thinking but that's just what I've noticed from prices in terms of selling, from the cards I deal with and a lot of the listings I see from other sellers.

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34 minutes ago, Yeahiwasder4dat said:

I'm not sure that the prices were high enough. There's a sweet spot in terms of card prices that once you get above $20 cards are fewer and father between. If the minimum was $20-25 a card I could see where it would cut a lot of the bulk out. A lot of sub $20 cards get graded with a resell of $40-50. If they could eliminate those with a price point where the return was the near the same as the raw value + grading fee I think it would go a long way towards really cutting back on some of the stuff that's sent in. Could be wishful thinking but that's just what I've noticed from prices in terms of selling, from the cards I deal with and a lot of the listings I see from other sellers.

I think you're onto something with the price points. I think CSG was very generous with their initial pricing. Now that they are starting to get more of a feel of the market and how much of a demand they are getting, they definitely had to adjust accordingly. 

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21 hours ago, ItismeH said:

I think you're onto something with the price points. I think CSG was very generous with their initial pricing. Now that they are starting to get more of a feel of the market and how much of a demand they are getting, they definitely had to adjust accordingly. 

To be honest, I've subbed some sub $20 cards so I'm not helping the situation(maybe like 30 of a 100 card sub). I think my last order consisted of a bunch of 1960-63s Topps MLB, Lamelos, Edwards, Burrows, autos around the $20-30 range, and #'d cards.

I wouldn't have any ill will towards the company if they started pricing that stuff out though. It would suck for some of the other cards I'm betting on to pop off but if that's what they have to do to control subs I would understand. I'd rather be able to grade the stuff I really NEED to grade in a reasonable time than to be able to grade a lot of stuff at a reasonable price.

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On 5/14/2021 at 1:44 AM, Yeahiwasder4dat said:

To be honest, I've subbed some sub $20 cards so I'm not helping the situation(maybe like 30 of a 100 card sub). I think my last order consisted of a bunch of 1960-63s Topps MLB, Lamelos, Edwards, Burrows, autos around the $20-30 range, and #'d cards.

I wouldn't have any ill will towards the company if they started pricing that stuff out though. It would suck for some of the other cards I'm betting on to pop off but if that's what they have to do to control subs I would understand. I'd rather be able to grade the stuff I really NEED to grade in a reasonable time than to be able to grade a lot of stuff at a reasonable price.

Exactly this. I completely agree. I'd much rather see them pay the graders a real wage (they're currently paying them $15/hr from what I read) and hike grading fees up to price out the $20 flippers. But if they offer people the chance to turn their $20 Tyler Herro cards into $100 cards for $8 bulk grading fees, then they're going to get slammed with millions of cards just like they have already. They're driving this market for modern slabbed low-end gem-mint cards. If they stop grading them, or at least make it not worth doing, then the market will adjust.

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I am amazed at how comfortable everyone is with large price increases to keep submission levels down and poor turn around times. Grading companies could just as easily limit submissions and keep prices at reasonable levels. I believe we are in the middle of a bubble in sports cards driven by covid-19 and large greedy investor types that really don't care about the hobby. I remember seeing a similar environment in the 1989 to 1990 time period where people were buying hundreds of cards of players as "investors" and opening tons of junk wax thinking it was the same as investing in a stock. When the recession hit they lost a large chunk of their investment. Right now as we are starting to see things open up I believe many of the new collectors to the hobby will be frustrated by the high prices of cards and poor levels of service and begin to leave. What do you think?

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On 5/28/2021 at 12:57 AM, Vintage collector said:

I am amazed at how comfortable everyone is with large price increases to keep submission levels down and poor turn around times. Grading companies could just as easily limit submissions and keep prices at reasonable levels. I believe we are in the middle of a bubble in sports cards driven by covid-19 and large greedy investor types that really don't care about the hobby. I remember seeing a similar environment in the 1989 to 1990 time period where people were buying hundreds of cards of players as "investors" and opening tons of junk wax thinking it was the same as investing in a stock. When the recession hit they lost a large chunk of their investment. Right now as we are starting to see things open up I believe many of the new collectors to the hobby will be frustrated by the high prices of cards and poor levels of service and begin to leave. What do you think?

I think the new collectors who really want to collect will stay. But the ones who came just purely for profit will leave.

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