On November 30, 2020 it was announced that PSA, the leading provider of authentication and grading services of sports cards, was purchased by a group led by card collector Nat Turner.
Turner was billed as a savior to the grading industry. It's almost impossible to find a negative word about the acquisition. But in the one year since, what has he really done?
Nat Turner
The company still has suspended it's most popular, and cheapest grading service, effectively pricing out many of their potential customers.
New Fanatics Trading Card CEO Josh Luber partially blamed the PSA shut down for the decline in value of cards over 2021.
A backlog of over a million cards still hasn't been fully cleared, as collectors are still waiting on orders from January 2021.
PSA has acquired two companies recently, Goldin Auctions and Card Ladder, neither of which help aide in the speed or capacity growth at PSA.
The saving grace for PSA is the incompetence of other grading companies.
Many hobby newbies and former sneaker heads can't believe that a few short years ago, Beckett's grading company, BGS, was the place to send your modern cards to get graded. PSA was the old man's company, used mainly for vintage.
Beckett is primarily a faceless company that has handled their backlog of orders even worse than PSA.
Despite the ineptness of grading companies, popularity of sports cards started to explode in 2020 and lesser grading companies started to emerge. There is now a backlog of orders at grading companies SGC and HGA.
Card collectors have become so stupid, they'll trust just about anyone to slab a card for them.
PSA is still 11 months behind on many of their orders even after shutting down their most popular service level.
Turner clearly hasn't been able to execute on ideas very quickly.
But collectors and dealers will wait and give more time to PSA because they have to. Cards in PSA holders still carry a premium over BGS, SGC, CSG, HGA and every other acronym.
If cards continue to decline in value heading into 2022, we'll see if collectors still give Turner a passing grade.
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Their vault service is also one of the worst around. Bare minimum features, poor app integration, and – worst of all – can’t get cards out for weeks if you try to have an item returned to you. It’s so bad. PWCC destroys them with their vault and customer service. Time for a new CEO.
Nat Turner hasn’t done jack. He sucks.