Friendships Ending Over Sonic-Welded Plastic

Move that stack of longboxes out of the way and sit down. Grab a drink. Just watch your elbow—I’ve got raw Marvel inserts spread across the desk and I’m not in the mood to replace a corner because someone bumped a table.

I’ve been sitting here sorting for a while and honestly, the grading side of the hobby feels like it’s in a very different place than it was even a couple years ago.

Not better or worse in a simple way. Just… congested.

PSA is still PSA, but the volume situation is hard to ignore. The backlog isn’t just a talking point anymore—it’s basically part of how you have to plan if you’re submitting anything. Lower tiers getting restricted or priced out entirely changes the entry point in a way that affects casual grading more than anything else. It doesn’t feel like “send it in and see what happens” anymore. It feels scheduled.

And that changes behavior downstream.

People hold more. People cherry-pick more. A lot of cards just never enter the system at all because the friction is too high unless you’re already submitting at scale.

CGC has been in a different position—more flexible in some periods, more aggressive in others—but even there, the timing feels like a big part of the strategy now. When grading windows open up or pricing shifts, you can almost feel the wave of submissions coming in behind it. It’s not just demand for grading anymore, it’s timing the system.

TAG is interesting in a different way. Even there, the entry-level tiers tightening up or disappearing shifts what kind of collector can actually use the service. It moves it away from “everyday grading decision” and more toward selective submissions, which changes the original appeal a bit—especially for modern sets where people were experimenting more freely.

So what you end up with is this weird middle state.

A ton of cards exist that people would have graded in a previous era, but now they’re sitting raw, or getting held in personal collections, or waiting for the “right moment” in the system that may or may not come.

And I don’t even think there’s a single takeaway there yet. Well, aside from Pokemon people: STOP GRADING YOUR BASE CARDS please. 

It just feels like the infrastructure around grading is no longer invisible. It’s part of the decision-making process now, whether you want it to be or not.

Anyway.

I’ve still got this pile to sort.

Pass me the top loaders.

Let’s see what actually even makes sense to send anymore.