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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
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Board Games
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The service of grading and protecting a card is not inherently a scam, but yeah PSA specifically spent a few decades cornering that market so they could operate the business as a scam. Remember the main goal of business in a free market system is to stop making the market free.
It is as much a scam as the cards themselves. Artificial scarcity designed to addict our brains to gambling.
The grading feeds on/into the main scam of the cards themselves. The whole cycle requires that we place "value" on their slabs of paper and grading helps make that value more concrete in your brain. The more value you see in the cards the more of them that you want to buy. More cards sold means more grading, so the cycle goes round.
Have fun playing the game, just be aware the whole thing is no different than going to the casino. They just hope the psychological effect of not gambling with money addicts extra people who wouldn't normally gamble with money (i.e. children or those morally opposed to gambling)... and the house always wins.
Playing a card game is not the same as going to a casino lmfao. Just because the only card games you chose to play were setup like gatcha doesn't mean every card game is a scam. Why are you choosing to participate in a scam if you know it's a scam? Just print proxies if you're that butthurt about a particular company's business strategy, or play a different card game that isn't actively hostile to the player.