Just recently, I was able to rejoin the PSA Collectors Club. Membership in the club allows individuals to submit trading cards and other collectibles to be professionally graded and authenticated. It has been years since I was last a member. Life happens, and you are too busy for or get distracted from doing the things you enjoy. One of those things for me has always been collecting sports cards and trading cards. So, to put it mildly, I was excited about my membership and getting back into the hobby that I have missed. The only subscription level available at the time I joined the Collectors Club was the Silver Membership. This made deciding which membership tier to select extremely simple. After reviewing the official step-by-step submission guide and doing a little research of my own, I got right to work on my first submission.
For anyone reading who may not be familiar with what a PSA Card Grading Submission form looks like, I will keep it simple. The form usually has eight columns total, but in the table below I kept it to just three. Line number, spec. number, min. grade, no qualifiers, and declared value total are the remaining five columns that I left out for simplicity. The line number states what number line of the form each card submission is on. The spec. number is automatically generated following your completion of the submission. The min. grade column is for you to assign the minimum grade value you would like your card submission to receive, for it to still be encapsulated in a PSA graded card holder. Otherwise, any card that receives a grade below its assigned min. grade value will not be encapsulated and returned to you the same way it was sent. Also, keep in mind that you are still responsible for paying the service fee whether it is below the min. grade value or not.
Similarly, the no qualifiers column allows you to decide which cards not be encapsulated if they were to receive any of the following qualifiers: staining (ST), print defects (PD), marks (MK), miscuts (MC), being off center (OC) and lastly, out of focus (OF). I chose not to assign any minimum grade values or use the no qualifiers option. Quantity, sport and card description are the forms remaining three columns, examples of how to fill them out can be seen in my submission below.
| Qty | Sport | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Football Cards | 1989 Topps Traded 30T Deion Sanders |
| 1 | Football Cards | 1989 Topps Traded 83T Barry Sanders |
| 1 | Baseball Cards | 2012 Topps Chrome 144 Mike Trout |
| 1 | Baseball Cards | 2012 Topps Chrome 196 Bryce Harper Hitting-Refractor |
| 1 | Baseball Cards | 1990 Donruss 365 Ken Griffey Jr. |
| 1 | Baseball Cards | 1989 Fleer 548 Ken Griffey Jr. |
| 1 | Baseball Cards | 1987 Donruss 36 Greg Maddux |
| 1 | Baseball Cards | 1987 Leaf 219 Barry Bonds |
| 1 | Hockey Cards | 1990 O-Pee-Chee Premier 50 Jaromir Jagr |
| 1 | Basketball Cards | 1996 Score Board Basketball Rookies 1 Allen Iverson |
| 1 | Basketball Cards | 1992 Fleer 273 Michael Jordan |
| 1 | Basketball Cards | 1992 Fleer 298 Shaquille O’Neal |
| 1 | Basketball Cards | 1992 Fleer Drake’s 37 Shaquille O’Neal |
| 1 | Basketball Cards | 1992 Ultra All-NBA 4 Michael Jordan |
| 1 | Basketball Cards | 1990 Hoops 65 Michael Jordan |
| 1 | Basketball Cards | 1990 Fleer 26 Michael Jordan |
| 1 | Basketball Cards | 1987 Fleer 30 Clyde Drexler |
| 1 | Basketball Cards | 1987 Fleer 80 Akeem Olajuwon |
| 1 | Basketball Cards | 1987 Fleer 9 Charles Barkley |
I included cards from different sports and from a range of different decades. After reading several articles online, the three things I found most important in filling out the form were to group cards of the same sport together, be consistent with whether the years are organized in ascending or descending order, and lastly, make sure that both the order of the cards on the form and the physical order of your cards in the submission are the same. Doing this will prevent your submission from being delayed.
As a result of the pandemic, PSA has been receiving a record number of submissions. The turnaround time for the PSA Collectors Club Value services is quite lengthy. Orders are at an all-time high and the current backlog for the Clubs Value Modern service level is more than 8 months. So unfortunately, it may be some time before this submission comes back. As soon as it has, the results will be posted to our site. In the meantime, check out our shop page to see what we have for sale; new products are always being added to our inventory. Comments can be left below and keep an eye out for my next grading submission!
