Did PSA Bungle the GameStop Rollout?

Plus: Beckett thought grading cards was dumb

Author

Mike Junk Wax Hero
January 17, 2025

In mid-October, PSA announced that GameStop would be taking PSA orders as a new submission center. At last count, there were almost 3,000 GameStop locations in the US alone, so surely PSA was ready for an increase in submissions, right?

Wrong.

TL;DR: PSA has been experiencing significant delays due to an influx of submissions since the partnership was announced.

When the huge pandemic delays happened, it was exacerbated by PSA’s silence. They just kept taking cards in until they had a massive problem.

Did they do the same this time, but on a smaller scale? How many orders did they receive from mid-October through mid-January before they announced this? How long will people wait for their cards this time?

Why are they offering more specials right now if they can’t handle the orders they received two-plus months ago?

Meanwhile, GameStop stock is up pretty big since the announcement:

Potentially a different problem: there are numerous reports of submissions being dropped off at GameStop and then not being received by PSA for months.

Jim, a subscriber here and on my YouTube channel, wrote to me about his vintage baseball submission, including a couple of Mickey Mantles:

I submitted 5 sports cards to GameStop for PSA grading on Oct 28, 2024. The service promised 45 business day turnaround and visibility to see the stage the cards were at in the grading process.

All cards were lower grade and I didn't spend a lot on them, so this was mostly an experiment to see how the process worked. 

Around mid-November at the 30-day mark, my cards were still in the Order Created status. So I went into the store and all they could tell me was that the cards were sent to PSA. I emailed their online Customer Service and they told me I would have to go into the store for help. Extremely frustrated, I decided that I would follow up with them in-store mid-January around the 90-day mark.

Flash forward to Jan 12 - PSA writes on Twitter that they "experienced a high volume on incoming submissions."

Flash forward to today, Jan 15 - I receive an email from PSA that my cards have arrived.

Coincidence?!?

Still frustrated & probably won't use the service again, but grateful the cards weren't lost.

There are a lot of similar reports in response to PSA’s announcement.

Here’s an order that “arrived” December 17th and hadn’t been opened as of the 12th of January:

I tweeted at Nat Turner, head of Collectors, the company that owns PSA. He’s pretty responsive randomly, but usually ignores me. This time he didn’t.

On a side note, it’s funny how many people kiss up to Nat on Twitter, like he’s going to notice them and hire them or send them 1990s basketball refractors or something. I upset the Nat stans here.

But I sent Nat an order number and it was not, in fact, BS:

So Nat confirmed that more than 2.5 months passed between drop-off at GameStop and PSA receiving it. And there are other examples like that in response to my tweet.

(To be fair, there are also examples of people who have already received their graded cards back.)

So what’s happening here? Often, the simplest explanation is the best one:

Coincidentally, my PSA order moved into Grading this morning:

Meanwhile, PSA has increased their prices as of today:

One last note from my buddy Ryan:

PRESENTED BY THE PENNYSLEEVER

Here are the products that I use from The Pennysleever:

Would You Rip?

I’m not familiar enough with the ultramodern sealed market when they’re showing big cards. I have to think it’s nothing like the sealed vintage market. It seems to me that this would be worth more with the card out of the pack.

First of all, you can’t see the front of the card. Secondly, most people who want that card would want it graded.

But I don’t know! Let me know if I’m way off.

Proof That Beckett Thinks Grading Cards Is Stupid

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