Hello and welcome to the Talking Cards Podcast with Grant Salami and the Juice. I am your host, The Juice, and it is gonna be just me today because I just wanted to talk about some big hobby news that came up today. I will be recording with Bert and a special guest tomorrow. So you have that to look forward to. That episode will be released next week. And before we get into this, I do also want to mention that we are now partnered with CarPurchaser. Make sure to follow him on X Twitter if you aren't already at CarPurchaser. He always says the latest info on product drops and releases. But if you want the quickest updates in real time across all different cards of card products, especially retail, he gives you real time in stock updates. Uh join his Discord there. Find more than just drop info as well. You can get notifications set to your phone directly and just check out the episode notes and you can see the you can see a link to get there. So today, what I want to talk about, the big news that came out today that has a lot of hobbyists talking. If you are someone that likes graded cards or you want to grade your card, this is for you. PSA has made a big, big announcement. If you have missed it, it is that they are going to be suspending all value subs. So what that means is they are pausing value bulk, value, value plus, value max, and the cheapest available one will now be just regular at $79.99. So if you want to sub with PSA, you are stuck if you want your cheapest option at $79.99. That is for a single card, that is per card. And this goes into effect June 2nd. So I'm gonna read off what comes from PSA directly, and then we'll go into how you should feel, how I feel, how this can impact you, the hobby as a whole, if people are overreacting, underreacting. So what they said specifically temporarily pause tiers as of June 2nd. Yes, that will be Tuesday, June 2nd. Value bulk, value, value plus, and value max. That will be close to new submissions. All active submissions will continue to be processed under the submitted turnaround times. So if you already have something with PSA, don't worry, it is not affected. If it's already on its way, don't worry, unaffected. The next up they mentioned the remaining open tiers, regular, express, super express, super express, walkthrough, and all the above will remain fully active. So those are not affected. If you have something with that or planning to send something off with that, you do not need to worry. This isn't this announcement, does not affect those tiers. And they said their next bullet point, regular service adjustment. Because we are approaching a 10 million card backlog that impacts our entire operational pipeline from receiving two shipping. The estimated turnaround times for regular service will be temporarily extended to 40 to 50 days and 50 to 60 days for dual service authentication. And then their last piece of that, as these higher tiers represent a smaller fraction of our total volume, keeping them open will not slow down our progress as we authenticate and grade the 10 million cards in our queue. So lots to take in. And then they have one other thing that they went over. Actually, there's a few things. When will value tiers be reinstated? They said this temporary pause is tied strictly to operational milestones, not arbitrary dates. And their target is to bring the backlog down to 5 million units with current projections, anticipating it will take up to four months to achieve this goal. And they are going to have a backlog tracker monthly on the page that I'm reading this from. You can go to psacard.com in order to find this article. And yes, so you can find this information that I'm saying, plus more. I'm trying to give you the bullet points of the most effective, the most important things. The next thing of note collectors club membership extensions as a key feature of the collector's club membership, we understand how setting it is to temporarily lose access to the value bulk rating tier. So what they're saying is they are going to extend your membership for free for the duration of the service pause. So if it's paused for four months, you get four months for free additional. They pause for six months and you get six months. And then they talk about the $200, $200 million investment that they made and how they're using that to try to get themselves to you know a better place and everything. Uh that that stuff's not as important. So lots of different things here, lots of things that can impact you, impact your fellow collectors and the hobby. So quite a few things to talk about here. The biggest thing to know about this is if you are someone that's been sitting on a submission and you have not taken the time to complete it and send it in, you actually still do have time. You can still submit up until June 2nd, as long as you have the form completed. So make sure that before June 2nd, if there is something that you want to do, you have until Tuesday, use the weekend, get your cards together, get them in your card savers, get it ready to submit. Otherwise, you don't know how long you're gonna be waiting to get those cards in. But remember, so this is gonna be from when your form is completed, and then the form has an expiration date. PSA's website says it expires after 30 days. I just did a form before just to see and test that to see what they were saying on their site. My form has a submission date of as of this episode, so you can't really see that, May 28th. And my form expires July 12th. So that seems as like it's more like 45 days, but you have plenty of time to complete that form and then get your cards in and make sure they're received by that date. So yeah, you even though it is a crunch, there's gonna be a lot of people getting their stuff in. You actually do have quite a bit of time in order to be able to get this done. So just think about this, and they are going to have a huge influx of last minute subs. So everyone is talking about the submission times already before this news came out and how it was crazy. Expect an even greater completion time because everyone's gonna be trying to get in those huge value bulk subs, trying to get everything in before this deadline passes. Be aware of that. This is not something that you should be expecting to get back this baseball season, or honestly, probably not even expect to get back this year. I would not hold my breath on that, depending on which submission level you go with. As far as how long this will last, this pause, I also heard from a PSA dealer that they expect us to last for four months. That's what PSA said. Who knows? I'd assume for PR purposes that if I was in, I would kind of overshoot it, you know, under promise, over deliver. So let's hope it's less than four months, but they pretty much had to get rid of half of their backlog that they have already, not to mention the huge influx of orders that's going to be coming in. The next piece that they talked about, the collector's cup members getting a free extension. For this, you had to be active already. So you can't just join now to get to get free time later. The only benefit that would have is you do have Card Ladder Pro with it. So you're kind of getting an you're getting the benefit of getting all that extra time with Card Ladder Pro if you're someone that likes that. I use Card Ladder Pro. If you're someone that goes to shows especially, it can be really helpful for pricing out cards in real time. It's not the end all be all, so don't use it as the only thing. That's something we talking about another time. But yes, it comes with Card Ladder Pro along with PSA magazine, which is neat to get every once in a while. And yeah, so you can't just suddenly join that and expect to be able to just get the bonus of free time and take advantage of the situation. As far as what else does this mean, what kind of hunt, what kind of hobby impact are we expecting? I think we're going to see eventually a lull and then a surge in low-end graded cards. I expected more of like a speed bump. I wouldn't expect like a spike or anything. This this is just my first immediate reaction because PSA, they saw 10 million cards there, and they're just trying to get 5 million out, and they're still gonna be operating at full capacity. So these cards are still gonna be churning around, churning out at the same rate that they were. They're just not getting any more cards in where, you know, we're gonna start to see that year processing time like we saw, you know, around COVID when everything just took forever. So these cards are still gonna be coming out at an incredible rate. I wouldn't, you know, expect a rarity among Leaps PSA cards. The only thing like that you can really see PSA being, I wouldn't even say rare, but maybe uncommon, is for the cards that release in the next few months throughout the summer months. You know, those aren't really gonna be graded by PSA a lot unless it's something that's worthy of paying $80 for a regular sub or hire. So those higher tier cards, of course, shouldn't really be affected. But those people that do like to do those value bulk submissions, um, people that like to try to find like things that, you know, not really like super low number, lower-tiered autos, maybe like rookie refractors. A lot of people like to do bulk of tops now, try to get a bunch of PSA 10s and flip them for a quick buck. So those things that come out this summer, we're not really gonna see a lot of PSA for. And by the time that it comes back, they might have already tried to make their money back elsewhere. People that like to do that, which brings us into the other grading services. So I think the biggest impact potentially could be other grading services have a chance to really carve out a piece of this market from PSA, CGC, Beckett, Tag. So while this is going on, people are gonna get antsy. They're going to want to make a move. They don't like to sit a lot of people on their cards. They like to have their cards moving either by being sold, traded, graded. A lot of people don't like to sit in their cars for too long. They want to make the money while they can. So tech has made an announcement on their Twitter today. Due to incredible demand, Express is now closed, market capacity until further notice. Following basic and standard earlier this month, our core tiers are full. Limited priority and walkthrough slots remain for those who want to send now. We're scaling and expanding as quickly and diligently as possible. Tag for continuing trust and to core time for notifications. So yeah, tag that they already know that they were already behind because they were already pausing other things, and now they're even further behind. But yeah, those companies really have a chance and the opportunity to take advantage of a lot of people have been asking and wondering hey, how do we get PSA away from King? A lot of people have problems with PSA. They it could be something as simple as visually they don't like it as much. They don't think their grading is as good. Uh, they they think that their grades don't represent the card as well. They don't like the subgrades, they don't like the transparency of why this was graded or that was graded, they don't like the upcharges. There is a million things that people have issues with with PSA, but that they have been king for a while. And I'll get into a little more in a moment. I believe they'll continue to be king. But if there is an opportunity for someone to try to carve out a piece of that market, then this would be it. You know, maybe there is a, you know, when Topps Chrome comes out, that's gonna be a big piece of the market that PSA is missing out on. So all of a sudden, all of the, let's just say, for example, I don't think he's gonna be in topp's chrome, but Connor Griffin has his rookie card out of topp's chrome and people can't agree with PSA. So all of a sudden, his rookie cards become synonymous with Beckett. Then all of a sudden, Beckett carved out that piece of the market, and maybe all of a sudden their cards, so their grading services become synonymous with such like a standout card. You know, if it becomes synonymous with something that is like that old trout or the bat down acunia or something, then all of a sudden, you know, they carve themselves out that piece of the market, and then people want to use them for other cards. Uh, try to keep it for whatever reason, they just see the benefits of these other companies and are really wondering why they're using PSA in the first place. I don't think that's gonna happen, but there is the opportunity. But then just remember PSA still has 10 million cards to be graded. They're not pausing operations, they're pausing submissions. So they're still churning out those 10 million cards, 5 million until they get back. They're saying in four months they want to get back. That's five million cards that are entering the market from PSA in four months. That's still a ton of cards. It's still gonna be way more than these other guys are putting out. So I don't think PSA is going anywhere. But then how does this affect you? The big thing is people are wondering should you wait for PSA or go with the other guys if you want to submit? My opinion is wait for PSA if it's for reselling for max value. Stick with that part of the market. With the card hobby, there are not a lot of things that you can predict as far as is this player gonna end up being an all-time grade? Is this player a sleeper right now? Should I sell, you know, while they're going on this crazy postseason run, you know, before maybe they get injured or they're injured or they need Tommy John, or maybe there's a crazy hot streak. So if there's something that is predictable on the market, you gotta go with it. And one thing that you can predict is PSA really most likely not going anywhere. People are still gonna pay a premium for their cards. So if you can predict that, then stick with it. PSA will remain king for a long time, and this is going to continue because they are so popular, not because they aren't getting product to fulfill. They have tons of product, everything will be getting fulfilled eventually. All these cards will be coming through them. We'll just see, like I said, that one speed bump, this one summer of cards not going through. Maybe things get a little worse with a lockout next year, but who knows about that? We're not seeing a bunch of crazy cards. And then remember, for the higher end cards, you still have regular and higher services available. So you can still easily use PSA for those, you know, bigger rookie cards or any bigger cards that you want. So PSA is still available. It's for these really lower tier cards where it's gonna make sense to spend less than $80 to get it graded. So for the lower end, you'll just have to be patient and write it out. You weren't getting the cards back anytime soon, anyway. So even without the four months, you probably weren't getting it back within that four-month period anyway. So you're gonna be waiting a while. You were gonna be waiting. If you submit a card today, if everything was still the same with PSA, you were getting it back by the end of the baseball season. You weren't getting it back in time for the playoffs if you were going with like this value bulk. I think that the last thing they said was 100 days or so. And that was probably on the optimistic side from what I've seen from others. The other side of it is if you're not caring about reselling or max value, if it's just for PC, grade however you want. A lot of people love tag, they think it's the next big thing. So if it's something that you want as part of your collection, you really like those tag slides, go for it. If you like CGC, you know, people think that they're still the best one for vintage. And I don't collect vintage, but it seems like it's you know still the way to go. But I'd personally rather have PSA in in my collection. I've never sent I've never sent anything that wasn't PSA in terms of being graded, but I always, even for things that I PC, I know that one day anything's on the table, I want the cards ready to be sold. So that's one of the reasons why I continue to grade with PSA. You just never know what's gonna happen. I like to make sure that the cards are as liquid as possible. And PSA allows that, I believe, over the other grading companies. But again, if it's just for PC, something that you don't care if it's gonna get the max value by being a slab or you like that, this slab looks better. Great, great how you want. And that that's about everything I wanted to say about this news. Um the big takeaway points is remember you have until June 2nd to get that form completed, and then you have it says 30 days on the site. I would not expect 45 days, like I saw, just assume 30, like it says on their FAQs, to actually get that card to them. But there is gonna be a huge influx of cards, so try to get that sooner than possible. I would try to make sure that gets in the mail no later than Monday. That's gonna be your your best bet for trying, and I would probably even overdite depending on how big the the sub is. So that was the first big one. Next, I don't think that this disrupts the market. I really don't. There is the opportunity there, but I don't see any of these other places taking advantage because even though they aren't taking new submissions for those over levels, they still have 10 million cards to get through. So we're still gonna see PSA all over the market. The biggest thing is gonna be the summer cards. I don't know how that's gonna affect things in the future. It's really interesting that we have these big releases coming out, but PSA is more than baseball, obviously. You know, you got NBA, NFL, and then don't forget the trading card market. I don't know how their season looks as far as Pokemon cards and you know, like when their most popular releases come out, if it's just year-round or if there's some sort of like Christmas, like boom. But either way, I really just see this as a speed bump in terms of grading. And I think that things will level out a lot quicker than than people realize. I think that the biggest impact that this will have is on the not the average collector, but on someone that does those really large bulk submissions if they have like a business or they do car shows where they try to make that big turnaround or they sell a ton on eBay of those like PSA 10 cheap cars and try to do the flips like that. Those are the people that I think are gonna impact it them are gonna be impacted the most. But yeah, I would try to get those in and then you know, those regular ones, you just sit on them until PSA is ready to go again. Four months will go by pretty quick. Um, and then hopefully it'll mean quicker turnaround topper cards in the future. Well, that's about it for this episode of Talking Cards with Grand Salami and the Juice. It is once again juice solo today. Tomorrow I am recording with Bert. That episode will be released next week, and also we have a very special guest. Thank you so much for listening. Have a good day, everyone.