HURRY UP & WAIT
Like clockwork, every couple weeks Tait Hoodenpyl would submit bulk orders to Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) for grading.
That became the norm in 2020 for Hoody’s Collectibles. Around 200 to 300 trading cards would go out in the mail for the shop’s customers. Sending in bulk orders were the most cost-effective means for collectors, especially with a time frame of around a 90-day turnaround.
But then PSA — the leading grading company in the industry since its inception in 1991 — was hit with what Nat Turner, executive chairman of Collectors Universe, PSA’s parent company, called an avalanche. Millions upon millions of cards came into PSA, and the company couldn’t keep up. On March 30, the hobby giant announced it was suspending incoming submissions.
Turner told Sports Collectors Digest on April 21 that PSA is backlogged by 10 million cards and is working on grading cards that came in as far back as seven months ago.
“What happened is we received an actual avalanche of cards around mid-March,” Turner said. “It was like a power surge to the system, and we couldn’t even tell people if their box was in the building. That’s just not acceptable. … We needed to get through that power surge of demand.”
That spells
