Alright, y'all, here we go with the first PSA submission group. I'll lay out as much detail as possible here in this thread and y'all can go ahead and start pulling the cards you want to submit for grading.
Important note: This is something I didn't realize until I was looking at the control panel yesterday. Cards produced in 1979 or prior (we'll call this the vintage group), and cards produced in 1980 or later (modern group), cannot be submitted together. That means in order to do both submissions, we have to have 20+ of each group. So, when you're verbally committing to what you're going to send in, please let me know how many you have from each group.
How it'll work
Members who would like to have their cards graded, at a discounted rate, will send their cards to me. I've already paid for the PSA Collector membership, which is how we get this discounted pricing. Once I've received all the cards, I'll create a new submission on the PSA site, and get a final cost. This will include $19.99 per card, plus shipping back to me from PSA. Once I have the total, I'll divide the total amongst the number of cards that have been submitted, and each member will pay me that amount per card. For example, if the total cost of the order is $500 and there were 20 cards submitted, each person would pay $25 per card.
I'll cover shipping to PSA for the entire order so y'all aren't having to pay shipping to me, then also to PSA, and back to you. Also, depending on the number of people in the group, I'll cover a portion of the final shipping back to you after I receive the cards back from PSA.
Once I do receive the cards back from PSA, I'll do a live reveal video where I'll open the box from PSA and pull out all the cards and show them on the video so everyone will be able to see what they've gotten, and also to make sure there are no issues with the cases upon arrival to me, before I ship them back to you. Then I'll contact each member of the group to determine how they'd like their cards returned to them (bubble mailer, flat rate priority, overnight, etc). You'll then cover the shipping cost back to you and I'll get your cards headed back to you.
Please note that if you're just sending in a single card, you're probably not going to save much (if any at all) versus just sending the card in to PSA yourself. The $5 you save on a single card will probably be eaten up by the shipping back to you from me, so it'll pretty much be a wash. The more cards you do at a time, though, the bigger savings you will see overall. That said, it's totally up to you how many you send in. The turnaround time from PSA is currently 65 days so, assuming we can get all of our stuff done in a month, we should be able to do one of these once per quarter.
I will create transactions with each member upon receiving your cards for inclusion in the current group to keep up with who each card belongs to. In case a member, or multiple members, send in the exact same card, I'll try to get photos of the cards differences. If there are no obvious differences in the cards (centering, corners, etc), by looking at them, then it'll be handled on a first-come first-serve basis, meaning the second card I receive will have to be sent back to the owner. I don't want to get into a situation where both cards look the same to the naked eye, then we get them back and one is a PSA 9 and one is a PSA 10 and we don't really have a way of knowing which one belongs to who.
Deadlines
In order to try to get this going without having to wait on folks, I wanted to set up some strict deadlines for when things should happen by.
So, the deadline to commit will be May 5. That gives everyone a little over a week to get together the cards they want to grade.
The deadline for getting the cards to me will be May 16. That means everyone will have almost two weeks from the commit deadline to get me their cards.
I'll spend the weekend getting the package together and have it on the way to PSA on May 19.
The hope would be that they'd receive the package by May 23 and start the clock on our 65 days. Please note that the 65 days isn't a guarantee so it could be more or less (I wouldn't bet less). That would put us getting the package back from PSA around the end of July or first of August.
Shipping / packaging to me
Please note that cards are required to be in a penny sleeve and a semi-rigid card holder. PSA does not accept standard cards sent in toploaders. That said, I'll buy a box of semi-rigid card holders. For those of you who don't have any semi-rigids, if you want to send your cards to me in a toploader, you can do that and I can transfer the card to a semi-rigid. If this is the case, though, I won't be responsible for any damages to the card(s) by me having to transfer them from a toploader to a semi-rigid holder. Of course I'll treat the cards as if they were my own, and be as careful as I possibly can, but I just wanted to throw that disclaimer out there.
Here's a video from PSA on how they recommend you prepare your cards:
Final thoughts
So, there you have it. Sorry for the long read but I didn't want to leave out any info, especially considering this is our first time doing this. If any of you have any questions that didn't get answered here, please let me know and I'll do my best to get them answered.
In the meantime, if you're wanting to be in, please hit me with the number of cards you're going to commit to sending from each group (modern and vintage). I also have another member interested in autograph authentication without a grade, so if you're interested in that we can do a submission for that too. Once we have at least 20 cards committed from any specific group/category, y'all can start sending them my way.
Participants
Modern (1980 or later)
Mike - 4
Eliatack - 2
who765 - 10
redwing40 - 10
darkman - 6
AndyDrummond - ?
Vintage (1979 or earlier)
