SGC Grading

[khauser86]

RIP SGC


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[Kstar27]

Im almost wondering if the new pricing “tiers” are simply to slow down submissions. I mean what a bizarre way to price...$10/card and they come back who knows when, or $100/card and they are back in a week....clearly no one is doing the $100 a card to SGC, as those would be super high end you would probably send to psa anyway. I bet this changes back to normal if and when they get caught up

[panamamyers]

The way it should work is that the price changes daily based off whatever algorithm they come up with to ensure they get the appropriate amount of submissions that they can return in the service levels provided.
It's not really rocket science.
If they can grade 2500 cards per day and they get 5,000 raise the price to $12. If they get 3,000 the next day raise the price to $15. Raise and lower based off the number of cards you receive to keep the seven day rolling number of submissions where you need the6n to be to meet the deadlines.

These grading companies are acting like it's just in God's hands and completely out of their control when one simple change could be implemented tomorrow to get them out of this mess.


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[Gary]

Originally Posted by Kstar27

Im almost wondering if the new pricing “tiers” are simply to slow down submissions. I mean what a bizarre way to price...$10/card and they come back who knows when, or $100/card and they are back in a week....clearly no one is doing the $100 a card to SGC, as those would be super high end you would probably send to psa anyway. I bet this changes back to normal if and when they get caught up

They had to do something.imo this wasn't it but they are getting hammered with pissed off customers.I think they completely understand very few are going to pay $100 a card.I cant believe they think this gives them some sort of pass on turnaround going forward.....if they do its a bad strategy.


All they needed to do was once they knew they were swap was take it on the chin a send partial refunds out to everyone caught up in the mess and post a new turnaround time so we knew what we were getting into.........But that ship sailed in early may.They screwed up,it will probably cost them going forward.

On the positive side once they clean up the current mess they may be able to keep up with the increased staff.Not sure anyone is going to care by then.

I have a June 11th order already in the 30's somewhere,i don't for see getting that back until at least late Oct maybe early November.

[rifleman69]

Originally Posted by Gary

They had to do something.imo this wasn't it but they are getting hammered with pissed off customers.I think they completely understand very few are going to pay $100 a card.I cant believe they think this gives them some sort of pass on turnaround going forward.....if they do its a bad strategy.


All they needed to do was once they knew they were swap was take it on the chin a send partial refunds out to everyone caught up in the mess and post a new turnaround time so we knew what we were getting into.........But that ship sailed in early may.They screwed up,it will probably cost them going forward.

On the positive side once they clean up the current mess they may be able to keep up with the increased staff.Not sure anyone is going to care by then.

I have a June 11th order already in the 30's somewhere,i don't for see getting that back until at least late Oct maybe early November.

On the positive side, they didn't upcharge any cards that increased in value (some quite a bit) from when they had it vs today when they sent it back to me. Case in point, 2018-19 select Luka Courtside....should have been at least $35-50 in grading fees....they left it at $10, which is also what it graded as.

[Stepy]

Originally Posted by Kuch86

You won't be getting those in August unless they significantly increase their pace.

I'm still waiting on a 15 Day from May 13.

Yeah so I'll probably just request a refund and for my cards to be sent back. SGC fumbled this so bad.

[TSonn]

I kinda feel for all those new hires. Probably just gonna be temp jobs because once they get out of this mess they'll have to downsize again because they'll lose most of their new customers.

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[growdoe]

Wish I saw this thread sooner. I had no idea SGC was backed up and sent in many orders all through late June and July. They went 2-3 months promoting a service they knew they could not honor. I based my choice solely upon the turnaround time. They must have got excited about their ship finally coming in with exponential revenue growth, and failed to back that up with actually doing the hard work to communicate to everyone about their growing business problem. Management needs to take more responsibility then what they have done thus far. As a management team, they failed each other by not communicating. They should proactively give out those coupons to everyone impacted

[Vagrant]

many people are missing the point, which is fine, because those that know what they're trying to do understand this entirely. it works in a few ways, they're throttling down orders until they clear up all the back orders and when they do, they're going to adjust their prices and tiers back to where they should be normally. they're buying time to train, hire, and work out any logistical snares. SGC is targeting a hole in the market that PSA vacated when they changed their pricing tiers to make it improbably expensive to submit bulk to other graders. it no longer makes sense to send quantity of junk wax era stuff to PSA to try to make a profitable flip and SGC wants that business. not just junk wax, but things like newer flagship where the price of the card raw and the grading price are roughly the same. PSA isn't going to offer you a great return on those submissions anymore until the price of the card is at least equal or double the value of the grading cost and the premium for a ten makes financial sense. SGC can start offering $6.50, $7 per card on huge bulk subs and take that quantity of business away from PSA.

PSA is basically saying we're going to be the grader of choice for premium cards. SGC is saying, send everything to us that you can't justify sending to PSA for the margin of error they lost with their price tiers. PSA likely just doesn't want to headache of using their graders to thumb through 500 card submissions at $9-11 per card when they have an abundance of orders coming through at their higher tier services that they could be turning out on time if they didn't have to allocate so much time to these massive orders. if you think about the price of the grader's time, you're making the absolute least money on bulk submissions. they just don't want that business right now because they're even more backed up than SGC and BGS.

SGC is going to temporarily offer to push you to the front of the line with their VERY expensive "need it now" service for the diehards that just want their SGC orders back quickly, but they're moving into bulk grading now as their sweet spot in the grading wars because it's business that PSA and BGS just don't have time for right now and they're doing all in their power to make it fiscally irresponsible to use them for that service tier.

with this new pricing schedule in effect, SGC is going to start burning through orders again on the basis of when they came in and their submission timeframes are going to approach pre-explosion rates again now that their sole priority in grading is going from the oldest submission they have and working their way to the front without any preference for what tier of service because basically all the orders will have been submitted under the "no rush" tier.

it makes sense when you start to look at their business model realistically that they would decide to make this change. their advantage has to be speed and cost efficiency to grade cards that you'd be on the fence about sending to other major graders for risk of being upside down in a card you spent $5 to acquire, $14 to grade at PSA, and you can get $13-15 for it on the secondary market if it 9's. that risk equation doesn't make sense. but if you have the same card for $5 that you grade for $7.50 and it hits 9.5, which seems to be towards the range of an average to above average PSA 9, perhaps you can move it for $15-18 and your risk reward makes more sense.

[Kstar27]

All of this^^^^^ basically this is SGCs kinda sorta way of just shutting it down (what we have all been asking them to do) and finally start making a dent in the backlog. Now they wont be bombarded with 2 and 5 day subs that probably were just slowing things down even more. Although it took them about a month too long to male this move, kudos to them for finally doing something to get caught back up!

[growdoe]

That's a whole lot of saying without saying. We need to stop the talking without talking and start acting, like start passing out the coupons for those that got hoodwinked in June/July, also sounds like problem starting in May.

Allies of SGC got to come on these boards and "do something" to help SGC. In other industries with more competition, this would be tough to overcome. If I took money (in the boat loads) while knowing that I could not fulfill the service, I would be cancelled!!

[khauser86]

A coupon does nothing for me. I gave them a shot right after that first video and I won’t be giving them a 2nd chance. Literally no reason to give them one. The value isn’t there.


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[cavsfan70]

If I get my PSA order back before my SGC order (both 15 cards) sent at the same time.... I'm just going to laugh. I got GOT like many of us by submitting to SGC nearly 3 months ago. Pathetic. Nothing they can say at this point will make me want to return as a customer.

[growdoe]

SGC President admitted in his website notice that they got hit all at once, so their problem was instantly recognized early on. Wasn't like this evolved slowly over time. They instantly knew they had a problem back in May, and suckers like me who believed their false website and checkout process in June/July are left holding the bag.

[panamamyers]

It took them three months too long to do this.
They know exactly how many cards they can grade in a given week. They know exactly how many cards are received daily. It shouldn't take more than one 48 hour period for them to know things are about to start being late.

The change in pricing is not going to do anything to the backlog. They just basically changed the turnaround times. The bulk orders are what affects the turnaround times. Not the small 5 day orders. The 1,500 card 20 day turnaround orders. Those are staying the same price and will stick take the same amount of time.

All they did was make the turnaround times more realistic on their website, but if they were truly being upfront they would not have split the difference between what the site used to say and the reality of the situation.
They would have changed it to 65-70 business days for the bulk orders instead of 40-45. They sort of got it closer while at the same time leaving it low enough to entice more people to continue sending.

At least when they had not changed it, one could say they just had not had the time or it wasn't part of the plan to change the turnaround time expectations on the site. But to change it and still be off by a month is more shady than leaving it unchanged

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[Beavers98]

Yeah nice to see something, but still un-realistic. I would have loved to have my cards back in 40-45 days at this point. I'll hit 60 Days mid-week.

[growdoe]

Originally Posted by Vagrant

many people are missing the point, which is fine,

The point your statement misses is that they promoted a service for a couple months they knew they could not fulfill. They knew they had a problem in May when the whole "hobby sent them their cards." But their ship arrived and they feared missing it, so they said nothing until two days ago. Fear + Greed. It was irresponsible for them to accept my orders under false pretenses. Only takes a couple days to write, approve and update a website with new information. Not 60+ days.

[Gary]

Originally Posted by growdoe

The point your statement misses is that they promoted a service for a couple months they knew they could not fulfill. They knew they had a problem in May when the whole "hobby sent them their cards." But their ship arrived and they feared missing it, so they said nothing until two days ago. Fear + Greed. It was irresponsible for them to accept my orders under false pretenses. Only takes a couple days to write, approve and update a website with new information. Not 60+ days.

Completely agree on the motives you stated,i would though disagree on the time frame,they knew in mid April they were in trouble with turnaround.otherwise my May 6th sub wouldn't be going on 60 days.

Also agree with another poster that said what they have done was shady.I'm guessing they stopped giving partial refunds to everyone as i was offered none last when i outright asked for it.

Has anyone received a partial refund or grading coupons or a discount code in the last week or so?Maybe im a outlier case and they are still giving them out?They were given a shot for the most part due to the covid shut down with PSA and BGS,plus a few you tube guys kind of pumping them up on their channels,Combined with the hobby just begging for a good grading service to treat us right.If SGC was smart they would eat this current problem and do the right thing and give out grading vouchers to all affected,learn from their mistake and hope the hobby rewards them going forward.

That statement on the web site is just some weak...........its out of our control so were changing the service to an unspecified amount of days so you cant hold us responsible no matter how long we take.They would be better off just being honest and say yup we suck we blew it.but were going to make right.easy to fix imo.

All they need to do is stop taking subs until they catch up,put system in place were they already know how many cards they can grade per day.take in only as many as you can grade and hit your turn around.Make it part of the software sub where the system keeps a running tally of where there at.You type up a sub the system tells you when to mail it.Dont charge the customer until the order is complete.Might not be perfect but it is a lot better than what they currently do.

[Inferno]

Haven't watched it yet but Cardboard Chronicles dropped another interview with the SGC guy last night. A ''part two'' about how they plan to get back on track.

[growdoe]

Reasonable folks are going to expect that if a company grows 10x overnight, and the wheels come off, that they immediately communicate to their customers. I still have not heard anyone accept responsibility for watching their PayPal account grow everyday and allow those orders to still come in when they could not meet expectations. Sounds like they had smoke, fire and sparks coming out of their engine. This speaks to deeper character.

Everyone that got roped up in this non-communication is owed coupons. Everyone, not just the ones that cry the most. Anything less is shady as heck.

This is not the most exciting time of my life.

[OlDirtyBaztid]

Originally Posted by Inferno

Haven't watched it yet but Cardboard Chronicles dropped another interview with the SGC guy last night. A ''part two'' about how they plan to get back on track.

Everyone wants one answer and one answer only. When will they get their cards. Of course, this is not answered

[discodanman45]

Originally Posted by OlDirtyBaztid

Everyone wants one answer and one answer only. When will they get their cards. Of course, this is not answered

He just rambled on and on... There was not one mention of time in the entire 45 minutes he talked. I still might use SGC because PSA might take a year to grade a bulk lot.

[PLB9eight]

Has anyone asked for their cards back and had them returned? More and more I’m debating on asking if they can return them.


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[PLB9eight]

Also does anyone remember when they made this”big” announcement about being able to get grader’s notes on your card? Something I think a lot of us would like. I emailed them about this back in April and the reply was that is something they are “potentially developing for future use.” Huh? They announce it in this big release and then act like I’m crazy for bringing it up when I email about it. Should’ve known then to just walk away and not pay up front for 10 month turnaround.


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[Inferno]

Originally Posted by PLB9eight

Also does anyone remember when they made this”big” announcement about being able to get grader’s notes on your card? Something I think a lot of us would like. I emailed them about this back in April and the reply was that is something they are “potentially developing for future use.” Huh? They announce it in this big release and then act like I’m crazy for bringing it up when I email about it. Should’ve known then to just walk away and not pay up front for 10 month turnaround.


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There's no way they're going to do that now with a backlog like this. Graders probably have like 45 seconds to grade the card and move on there's zero chance they'll sit there typing notes half the day. Might have made sense pre-boom but nobody crazy enough to add even more bottlenecks now.