Latest / Sports Card Clubhouse / T-Pott Talks About His WILD Card Grading Adventure!

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T-Pott Talks About His WILD Card Grading Adventure! · Sports Card Clubhouse

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Hey everybody. It's Mike and I'm joined by
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Teapot. Teapot, how are you today?
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Doing great. Happy Saturday.
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Yes, happy Saturday. We'll release this on Monday
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morning, but you released a video through the Market Movers
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channel on Wednesday, Thursday, Monday.
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Wow, it would have been a week ago from when this goes out, I
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guess, Yeah. Yeah, and it has about 150,000
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views on it, which is bonkers for five or six days.
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But I, I kept seeing everybody. I didn't have time to watch it
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all week until Friday afternoon. And I kept seeing people talking
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about it on social media, linking to it.
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And it, I, I got to watching it and it, I knew what it was about
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and I kind of had a sense of where it was going to go.
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But you know, I'm a big horror movie guy and it felt like
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watching a horror movie where I know something really bad is
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going to happen or something shocking.
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And for the first like 25 minutes, there's a lot of terror
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you're building. It's this kind of slow build and
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you're doing a great, great job with it.
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And then all of a sudden, like 25 or 30 minutes in, boom, there
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it is. There's the first jump scare and
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it's like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe this happened.
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Talk a little bit about the video, how it came about and
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what the end. I don't want to get into the
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your thoughts about it yet, but just tell a little bit about the
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video. I was going to ask you what was
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more terrifying, the screen movie you saw last week or, or
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this video that I did. But so you went right where
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where my mind did in that regard.
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So the video, yeah, basically what I did was I actually, I, I
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made a first video last year and that video performed pretty well
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too. Not as well as this follow up
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round, but it's. Well, actually, I don't know
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which one has more views now, but the other one came out last
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year at some point and I had this idea and you know, I
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thought it was a new idea to the Internet.
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Some people have told me, other people have done videos, but
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either way, you know, it's not like a rocket science idea.
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It was just what would happen if you put the grading companies to
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the test vis A vis one another was like the initial thing.
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So we know that PSA commands this massive premium for their
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pricing and all of us philosophize and speculate
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about, well, why is that? And some people will rationalize
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it by saying, well, they're the best, they're the most
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consistent. They're they're the most
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professional. They're what they got the word
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professional in their name. I think those people are kind of
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deceiving themselves personally like, and that's that's not,
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it's not to throw shade at PSAI, just I think all of them have
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reputable people. So I took back at 95 Griffey
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star rookie and it was an older slab and it was, it was 39 fives
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and a nine centering. And we all know that PSA is a
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little more lenient on centering typically.
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So I thought, well, I don't know, we'll see.
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Maybe this gets squeaked through as APSA 10.
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I I cracked it out of the back at 95 along with a vintage BBG 5
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Paylee card. And I sent them to, I sent them
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first to SGC and the Griffey came back authentic altered
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evidence of trimming. I was like, oh boy.
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So that was the first. That was the first one was from
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BGS 95, which at the time I think I bought for $850.
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And now it's authentic trimmed. And then the, the Pele, I think
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got like an SGC 3, cracked them out, sent them to CGC and CGC
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graded the Griffia 9 and they graded the Pele.
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I think also a three, if I'm not mistaken, might have been a 3
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1/2 or something. And then finally I cracked them
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and sent them to PSA. The payload got a 2.
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So it went from BBG 5 to APSA 2 and PSA gave it a six.
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And at that point I was legitimately concerned that I
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had maybe damaged the Griffey like tracking it out of the CGC
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slab. And so I was like looking it
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over. So we, we decided to run it back
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and that, that video sat for several months and I was like,
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let's, let's keep this experiment going.
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So I this time around, people had said, well, we'll send it to
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tag, send it to tag. You know, we want to see what
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tag we'll give it. So I did that.
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I cracked I, I, I retired the, the Pele and this time brought
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in a, a Pokémon card, which, which I can just recap at the
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end. But the Griffey I I basically
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took from PSA 6 to Arena Club to tag and tag sent it back to me
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as too large cannot holder right, which was very
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interesting to go from an SGC trimmed to a too large cannot
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holder. And I'm all the other companies
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holdered it like what like. But you made a great point
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there, which is maybe SGC. Was it SGC?
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Yeah, maybe SGC doesn't have a too big designation and they
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just called it evidence of trimming.
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And I I thought that was a fantastic point that I hadn't
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considered. So I have AI have a theory on
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what happened. So it went, it went tag too big.
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Then I sent it to Arena club and a lot of people may not know but
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Arena club does have a grading service, their own grading and
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they do similar machine vision type.
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It's like automated and scans and looks at the centering
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through a scanner and everything and surface.
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It got an 85. Then I sent it back to SGC and
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SGC this time slabbed it holder didn't gave it a nine.
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So they said it was trimmed and altered at first time this is.
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This is, I think that was the first big, yeah, the big jump
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scare initially was how did they call it trimmed one time and
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then give it a nine. I can understand if they give it
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a nine and then a trimmed because maybe something happened
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to it in the interim, but you can't go from evidence of
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trimming to A9. Yeah.
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Well, and, and thankfully for me, it did go in that order
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because if it had gone the other way, people would have then like
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accused me of having trimmed it or something like, oh, you
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tampered with it, which so far only, I think one person that I
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saw of any reputability has has done, but I didn't, I did not, I
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have no incentive to mess with the card.
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I just wanted to run the experiment.
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This wasn't for click. It was just to see.
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So SGC 9 back to PSA where it originally got a six.
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This time it came back in 8. So it bumped up two full number
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grades. Now the price difference between
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APSA 6 and 8 isn't inconsequential on a card like a
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Griffey, But if you think about it in the context of an ultra
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modern card, like an 8 and a six are both just trash.
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Like no, like that you did. The price actually wouldn't be
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very different, I don't think on the two of them.
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But the difference between an 8 and a 10 is insane.
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So you're if you think like in orders of magnitude, like
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incrementality of of a number grade, that's a pretty big
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swing. PSA 8 and then the final like
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you know, at the end was that the MU 2 that I had sent as APSA
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8:00 and had basically gone like some combination of 87878
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between the companies came back from Beckett as Beckett
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authentic altered evidence of tampering and they said there
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was some like indication of something along the bottom edge
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didn't specify. So I don't know if they thought
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it was recolored or pushed down or folded.
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But you know, I didn't do Jack diddly with the with the MU 2.
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And then they said that the Griffey was authentic altered
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evidence of trimming. And so back at 9-5 maybe 10
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years ago, maybe more than that graded all the way down to the
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more recent post PSA acquisition expedited service. 5 day turn
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around $150.00 to get it back and have it devalued from what
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would now be in a back at 95, about a $1700 card with a 99%
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price loss down to $17.00 as an authentic altered trim for the
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same freaking card. So.
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And just to be clear, did you tamper with any of these cards
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or or trim them or anything like that?
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No, hell no. I didn't mess with any of them.
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I took them out and literally on camera, I cracked them and
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sleeved them and put them right into the semi rigids and then
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did the, the grading submission paperwork.
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And in some cases so, so with, with SGCI had one of our other
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employees who's not like a public facing employee at all,
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do the submission just in case, like just to send it back.
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And then the first time around I had done APSA bulk submission.
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And this time around I did send it in myself.
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But yeah, I I wanted to try to kind of be careful of whatever
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internal trip mechanism there might be.
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Yeah. And I, I don't know about market
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movers, but I know Cards HQ has some sponsorships, some some
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business arrangements with some of these companies and the only
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company that came out of it looking good was probably Tag,
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right? It's what a lot of people said,
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yeah. And I, you know, I wanted to
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kind of shine a spotlight on what tag is doing, like just
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just to show a lot of people maybe aren't as familiar with
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them. So I kind of walked through and
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showed people here's their dig report, which is like their
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grading analysis and how they do it.
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And I was honest about my experience with them.
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I, I have graded things in the past.
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In fact, I've, I've got a few of my just like drum and PC cards
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that I graded right when they first came out at the I think at
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the national one year I dropped them off or might have been
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Burbank, I don't remember. But Tag like directionally, I
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like what tag has tried to do. Like first of all, I find the
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aesthetic of their slab to be really nice.
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I like it personally. I like that they laser etch the,
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the grade and information on it so that the label can't be
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removed and then reinserted into something.
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And I, I just think their holders feel nice, look nice,
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crystal clear. And I I like that they're trying
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to bring some objectivity. At the same time, the tag is not
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perfect. And in fact, like yesterday, I
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found a video of a of a Pokémon content creator where tag has
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kind of taken more of the lead with Pokémon than in sports now.
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And he, he cracked and sent a bunch of tag cards back to tag
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and like the grades were all over the place and like he, but
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what was really the most like, I think important was he compared
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the dig reports, which are like very granular and you had like
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big differences in centering measurement or one of them was
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just clearly very off, like at their reports that it was 7525
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bottom top. And it was like the second time
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it came back, it was like 5248. So something like sat in the
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scanner wrong, like there's issues, right.
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And so I'm, I'm big on intention.
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I think what they're trying to do, their intention is actually
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a good thing. Like overall, do I think that
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grading can ever or should ever move to be exclusively
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automated? Not really, but I think you
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should be using tools like that more than just like a person in
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a room, just like, you know, looking at something quickly and
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moving it on. So last thing I'll say my my
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theory on to kind of put a bow on the Griffey thing.
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Somebody brought this to my attention.
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They said, well, there's a problem where uncut sheets of
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Griffey's have been cut and then sent in for grading.
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And so if that Griffey was a a cut from an uncut sheet and then
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submitted to Becca and got slabbed and holdered years ago,
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it is possible that it's both too large and also trimmed.
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So like if it was cut too large to scale, and I think that maybe
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makes the most sense. And so maybe it is fake, not
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fake, but maybe it is like a trimmed card and and they kind
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of got it right in a few of the instances.
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PSA didn't think so in either case, which is pretty
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interesting, but. Yeah.
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You would think if it is trimmed or if it's oversized, depending
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on the the variance or the tolerance, each of those
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companies as as we deem them reputable here in the industry
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should be able to figure that out, should be able to detect
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the trimming of a the most famous card of the last 50
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years. I would hope so, yeah.
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And I, I'll be honest, like a blind spot for me is, I don't
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know, like I would think if you were going to try to like
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systematically cut a bunch of uncut sheets of Griffey's, if
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you somehow backdoor them or something that you would do it
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in such a way that would be using the same type of cutter
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that they use in a mass produced scenario, right.
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So like, I don't know, I don't know what that looks like.
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I don't have any real insight into how you would detect, well,
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this was cut in 1989 and this one was cut in 2002 or you know,
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like the age or the fraying or whatever things they are
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supposed to get, dude, from a granularity perspective.
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And I don't imagine that's something they want to like
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publish the grading companies because they've got to try to
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like prevent from people getting around it.
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I don't know. So I felt a lot of people were
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commenting about this. PSA feels like they were the
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least transparent of all these companies.
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Does that feel accurate to you? In what regard?
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Well, SGC, it's tough to say because PSA was giving number
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grades, but you have sub grades on some, you have the the TAG
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report and the Arena club reports, which are pretty
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transparent. Even though one of them you had
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some issues with the, it appeared to be saying that there
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were scuffs and you thought that it was just part of the the
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design of the card. PSA is only providing a grade.
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There's no greater notes unless you pay up for them.
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There's no sub grades. There's nothing else.
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And TAG posted a comment very publicly about their process.
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Did PSA or or any of the other companies respond either
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privately or publicly? No, nobody said anything to my
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knowledge, like Nat or Ryan haven't texted Jeff and said
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like, what do you do? Like nothing like that.
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I, I mean, look, no, I, I don't know.
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Yeah, PSAI try to, I try to, you know, I've talked about this in
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the past. I tried to think about like, OK,
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how would I handle this from like APR perspective, right.
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Like there's kind of like the, the noble thing and the thing
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that people would cheer for, but they're, they're under so much
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scrutiny that if you go back to when like Peter was running SGC,
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they were the underdog. And so when they screwed up and
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Peter would come out and go like guys like, you know, mea culpa,
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this is like really a problem. Like we're going to get this
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right. We just love all of you.
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We love our community. We love the support we're going
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to, we're going to take down the big guy.
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Like they're like, yeah, who cares?
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Screwed up, like whatever. But people are watching and
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waiting with bated breath for PSA to screw up on anything.
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And you think about the scale and the magnitude of 2,000,000
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cards a month, like it's happening far more often than
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what we would think. So like, I don't know if I, I'm
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not, I don't have a background in PR, but I'm sure PSA has PR
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people on the payroll saying like, what do we do here?
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And it's probably just nothing. What's the benefit of saying
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anything like, ah, you got us. We're not consistent.
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Like I don't, I don't know. But I, I personally think it,
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there should be something like some kind of an acknowledgement
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to I'm sure Nat or Ryan or anybody could spin it in such a
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way that is like a soft acknowledgement.
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Yet we have, we have who we believe are the best, most
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highly trained, you know, people in the industry.
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Yes, there was grade variance and we're going to keep working
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to tighten our, you know, our, our procedures up and whatever.
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But like we're also going to be, you know, give scrutiny, which
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is why it got a lower number grade with us than other
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companies And, you know, bought like just we trust our
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processes. Like you, you could have some
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kind of and maybe they will, maybe one of them is going to
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wind up on an interview with you or with Neo or with somebody
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else and actually say, you know, hey, this is what happened.
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Yeah, I don't think they'll be coming on with me.
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So I read through there were about 2000 comments on there and
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I read through a lot of them. One of the funniest or most
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accurate ones was Dan's Vintage Baseball PC where he said it
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feels like PSA is grading like they're playing Pin the tail on
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the donkey. Feels pretty accurate.
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It doesn't really, I mean legitimately, but when when you
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see comments or when you see videos where the same exact card
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can get grades that vary so much.
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I've seen sixes go to 10s before.
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And if A10 goes to a six, you can easily say, well, they must
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have damaged it or it's possible that it was damaged, but you
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can't make a card better unless you've cleaned it.
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All that stuff. But.
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Use that Kurtz juice as Neo says going from.
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Sixes to 10s, which we see, that's way more often than you
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should. It feels like there's and you
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see the comments all the time. I know you see them because I
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see them too. I got a guy who had a bad day
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and now he's grading cards because he had a bad day or his
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his girlfriend broke up with him or something like that.
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And now he's grading cards in that because of that or in that
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way. And that's the huge knock on
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PSA. What do you think about that?
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My, my suspicion is that the most typical variable in the
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grading and consistency is like if you're submitting, let's say
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I, let's say I took this, this gold minted Wan Soto, which
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happens to be a BSP SA-10, which I rarely buy.
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But I like the card and I wanted the card and they're hard to
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come by. And if I find a nine, I might
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sell this one and buy the, you know, but like, if I took this
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card and I sent it back 25 times to PSAI, don't actually know how
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many of those 25 times it's going to go to the same grader,
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like even to the same person. So there's variance from one
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person to the next. We've heard them use the term
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junior grader, senior grader, like there's different tiers.
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You know, we've also heard they're supposed to be like a 2
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step quality check, but I don't really know what that actually
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means. So I think the, the, the number
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one variance is you don't know who you're getting.
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And then the second variance is what level of training did they
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go through or how did they actually understand the
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variances that the, that the allowances for different
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factors, the different things that are evaluated and how to,
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you know, put those into place? And then even if you were to put
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this in front of the same grader 100 times in a day or 25 times
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in a day, they're, they're going to like not know, like if you
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just gave somebody what, what you told them was a bucket of
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Griffey rookies, but really it was the same card over and over
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again. There's going to be some
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variance because they're just human.
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They're good. They're they're not, they're not
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going to be consistent. I bet I could go like if I just
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to pull like a weird example out of the hat, if I were to go take
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Jeremy Lee's hobby spectrum assessment right now all over
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again, it's going to be different than what my first
18:53
score was, at least to the number.
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And I could probably take it right again right after that.
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And it's going to wind up being different.
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Like our brains just kind of make snap decisions about
19:02
things. So the mood piece certainly can
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be a factor, but I imagine it's sort of like the final boss
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factor, not like the overarching one of like, you know, the guys,
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the guys angry or whatever got stuck in traffic or was hungover
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or whatever. You know, different things might
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come into play though. It certainly can be.
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I think, I think people just, I don't know, there's probably
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just like an inherent, you know, liberality or strictness with
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like the grading scales based on the greater to though.
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And that just goes back to that top level of like, who did you
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get not just like what day or what's their mood, but more
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like, did you get, you know, Mike or Ty?
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So at the I think it was right at the end you said something
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that I fully, fully agreed with. Grading should be about.
19:52
I appeal. Do you think that they should be
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zooming in using microscopes to find tiny little flaws that
20:01
nobody could ever see and have that included as part of the
20:04
grade? Yeah, I, I think grading, I, I
20:08
think grading firstly and I'd, I'd probably didn't say this at
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the end, but I actually would would revise that to say the
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most important piece should be the authentication.
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Is this a real card that is not altered?
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That's what I think all of us you you universally care about.
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And then secondarily about I appeal and even if you take our
20:29
10 point scale today, with the way that the hobby paradigm
20:34
currently deifies the Gemmen 10 in APSA slab and makes the card,
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as I said on cards on the table this week magically worth 2 to 3
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to 5 to 100 times what the card is otherwise worth.
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Clearly paints a story that people think that the condition
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of the card is the most heavily weighted factor of what the card
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should be worth and then everything else is secondary
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like the actual rarity or the design aesthetic or, you know,
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whether or not it has XYZ attributes or from what set.
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So you get down to that granularity.
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The best example I can think of is actually like Abgs 10 Black
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Label versus Abgs 10 pristine versus, you know, a gem min 95
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within the Beckett scale. And you've got like Aaron Judge.
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I looked at this card the other day, Aaron Judge's BGS 10, Black
21:29
Label Babel, Black Label, bass tops, Chrome, Babel, Bauer.
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Just a base card in a black label is $1700 for a base card
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of which there are like hundreds of thousands in circulation.
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And if you drop that down to a BG S10 pristine, I don't know, I
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could look it up right now. That's probably like $400.00.
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And then you go down to like a back at 95 and it's like $180
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probably, right. And you're what are so you're
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like, what are we talking about right now?
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We're talking about one of the subgrades being different
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because you can have a true gem plus with 10109595 and then you
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can have 10101095. And if you just some guy on a, a
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freaking borderless card goes Nah, that centering is
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definitely A10, not a 95 whammy. It's worth $1700.
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It's the ultimate magic trick. It's the ultimate deception.
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You know, don't watch this hand while this hand, you know, like
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what it's, it's it's crazy. So my answer would be no, like
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on all fronts. I think it's, I think it's
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putting way too much emphasis on something where who looks at
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their cards that way? Nobody looks at their cards
22:49
under a microscopic lens. We, we don't do that.
22:52
We, we just, we look at them. I've got them on my shelf around
22:55
me like, and I enjoy them and some of them have scratches and
22:59
scuffs and corners bent and edge wear on the back.
23:03
I'm not looking at it. Why do I, why do I give a crap?
23:05
I just think it's a cool looking card, you know?
23:07
Yeah, yeah. So there's a big eye appeal
23:10
movement, especially in the vintage space because it makes a
23:12
lot more sense than in a 2026 card where we are looking for
23:17
PSA one point fives and twos and threes that look like sixes
23:23
because for a long time you can get those at 1 1/2 two prices.
23:29
Now, of course you're seeing these cards that are are going
23:32
even a 1.5 or I don't remember what the Jackie 49 leaf was like
23:38
a one or something. It went for $27,000, which is
23:43
like AI don't know what grade that would be, but it's way,
23:46
way, way over even a three or four because it looked
23:51
Immaculate. And that's what people care
23:53
about now far more. The card is authentic and it
23:57
looks great. It looks like you're looking it
24:00
up, which is great. Yeah.
24:03
So then you also have the Mike Baker authenticated, which I I
24:07
don't know much about Mike Baker Oregon, his program, but it's
24:11
it's about it's about I appeal. You have iappeal.com.
24:15
Is this turning the tide for grading?
24:19
Will it turn the tide for grading?
24:21
I don't think it is right now but but will it?
24:26
I have a, there's a couple things there, right.
24:29
I think I appeal is incredibly important like that.
24:31
That to me is what matters. And, and then if you get into
24:35
vintage versus ultra modern, like it's almost like it's like
24:39
2 different hobbies. Like it's the same thing as
24:41
cards, but it's two different hobbies.
24:43
And I don't even just mean the people like who participate.
24:45
It's just two different hobbies. All the eras kind of present
24:49
their own unique things about them.
24:51
And that's what's beautiful about it.
24:53
But getting into the vintage space, like, you know, we
24:58
there's a general consensus that on these bordered cards,
25:01
centering matters a lot to at least to a point, right?
25:04
Does somebody care if it's 4060? No, maybe then they're going to
25:08
prioritize the fact like it could be perfectly centered
25:10
50505050 all the way around. But the big, you know, crinkle
25:14
down the face of Jackie is going to like deter it and bring the
25:16
value down. You have other ones where
25:19
there's just paper loss on the back.
25:21
I had a beautiful dark cab Christy Mathewson T2O6 for a few
25:24
years that I wound up selling, but it it the only thing it was
25:27
an SGC 1 and the only thing it had was like really bad paper
25:31
loss on the back. It was actually pretty well
25:33
centered. It was a beautiful card.
25:35
It had great registration. All those factors come into
25:38
play. And I think within the vintage
25:41
community, a lot of those people really are.
25:44
I guess what you know, my boss branded like Capital C
25:46
collectors like they just, they just love the cards.
25:49
They love the history they love. They want really beautiful
25:51
copies of these cards and so they don't care.
25:54
They're like, you know, it's, it's not for me, it's not about
25:56
like the value of it. I just want to have a piece of
25:58
this history and, and keep adding and growing my collection
26:00
or my set registry or whatever the thing might be.
26:04
So that I appeal piece is really important.
26:06
And that kind of calls into question the whole grading scale
26:10
about like how it's done. Like should should the grading
26:13
actually be done? Maybe on the one hand, I'm
26:15
advocating for something like tag technology within the
26:17
current paradigm of like, well, at least it should in theory be
26:20
able to evaluate these things with more objectivity.
26:23
But is that system of those 4 subgrades even the way that we
26:27
should be treating grades? If you would look at a card
26:29
beautifully and it's in the front of it is pristine and the
26:32
backs got damaged, did that bring it all the way down to A1?
26:36
Or should there be like a bit of a difference in that scoring if
26:39
you tie that into the Mike Baker thing?
26:42
I have a lot of cynicism about the NBA program, mostly because
26:46
I just start seeing it as this like ridiculous grade inception
26:50
where you're grading the grade, the graders grade.
26:53
And not only that, but Mike, like used to be the lead grader
26:56
at PSA and like was like, Oh, I can make a boatload more just
27:00
going and starting my own like secondary grading program
27:03
basically with a lot less risk, a lot less liability.
27:08
And yet still apparently charge people $100 for a sticker at
27:11
like the West Coast card show. And I just kind of laugh at it.
27:17
I'm like, at what point do you not just trust your own
27:19
judgement of the I appeal? And and so I saw the video that
27:24
that Greg did and was reviewing where he was showing that clip
27:28
of the guy just going like, this is ridiculous.
27:30
This is ridiculous. Like this is a beautiful car.
27:32
This is, this is supreme. I appeal and you're just so why
27:36
like, why do it? Why like even participate in the
27:39
in the paradigm instead of just going, wait a minute, you could
27:44
have, you could have been in the hobby a week and like be able to
27:46
look at a card and go, oh, this looks really beautiful.
27:48
And the longer you're in, the more your eye becomes trained to
27:51
the point where you're like, I heard somebody say, and I don't
27:54
know if this is true, but a supposed, you know, former PSA
27:58
employee said, or Beckett employee said that Beckett used
28:03
to at least try to hire people who weren't card people to do
28:07
grading to like train them because they like didn't want
28:10
bias or like conflict of interest.
28:12
So they would take people who were card agnostic and not
28:15
intelligent. I'm sure there must have had to
28:17
be some knowledge for actual like authentication purposes,
28:20
but they just wanted the person like looking at the card through
28:22
a different lens. Allegedly.
28:26
I don't want that. I like, but everybody's got
28:28
their own opinion. You can you can take your two
28:30
vintage cards. You could take whatever Jackie
28:32
Robinson and show it to your buddy and he'll be like, Oh my
28:34
gosh, that's the most beautiful copy I've ever seen.
28:36
And you're like, I don't know, it looks a little whatever it
28:39
looks a little like he's like, you know, whitewashed or
28:42
whatever, you know type of thing.
28:44
And so that the eye appeal stickers kind of, I get, I kind
28:49
of roll my eye at them. Like if that's somebody else's
28:52
jam, whatever. I just think it's creating
28:54
another layer of this like artificial scarcity just to make
28:58
for a lot of people to actually turn PSA into a Beckett Black
29:02
label. Like that's what they're doing.
29:03
Oh, I got the platinum sticker or the gold sticker or whatever
29:06
on top of the PSA 10 and there's only one pop 1 pop one with the
29:10
NBA sticker on it. So I roll my eyes at that.
29:14
If you were to sort of like zoom out and go, OK, like what would
29:16
I do or how how should we be looking at this from an industry
29:18
perspective? You know, PWCC has had, you
29:22
know, had enough phonetics collect that like I appeal
29:24
rating. That's more like numerical and
29:28
not numerical. Letter Oracle.
29:30
I don't know what the what the word is for for letters
29:33
alphabetical. Jeez, thank you.
29:34
Wow, Saturday morning and you go top my cold brew off before I
29:38
come back. Letter Oracle.
29:41
This is the guy we trusted with grades.
29:44
So, you know, I think like I'm a big tier maker guy, like tier
29:49
rankings. And so maybe it should just be
29:52
as simple as like let's just rely more on I appeal and go,
29:56
OK, the card is real, it's not altered and it's S tier.
29:59
I appeal, you know, or it's A or it's B and whatever.
30:03
And you need you kind of click down from there and forget the
30:07
numerical grade system. Like maybe we only need like 5,
30:09
you know, 5 or 6, not 10. And plus all the half grades and
30:13
everything else where there's just tons of subjectivity.
30:16
Yeah, in terms of the graders, the knock against card
30:21
collectors being graders as I I see in my comments occasionally
30:25
is what if a grader has APSA 10 of a Ricky Henderson?
30:31
Of course, a grader doesn't have a Ricky Henderson rookie PSA 10,
30:33
but let's just stick with this example.
30:36
And that card is worth $200,000 and A10 and they want to keep it
30:40
at that value so they won't grade another 10 ever.
30:44
And of course, there's a lot of people believe that Nat Turner
30:48
goes down into the grading room and says, I own the PSA 10 of
30:51
this, don't grade that a 10, you have to knock it down.
30:55
But there's a lot of conspiracy theories about this stuff.
30:58
But that, I think, is the biggest knock on card collectors
31:04
actually grading cards and giving numeric values.
31:07
I agree with you that you should have card people authenticating
31:10
cards. You should have people who know
31:12
about cards. But yeah, that's just the the
31:15
thing I see in my comments section sometimes are a lot of
31:17
conspiracy theories about graders.
31:19
People call it like pop control and my suspicion, I don't think
31:24
there's like an intentional pop control with the Jordan Fleer or
31:27
the Griffey or the Ricky Henderson or anything like that.
31:30
Jerry Rice, all the stuff we know is like tough to gem as
31:34
much as I I think there has to be additional scrutiny though,
31:39
like you have to look at because you know, if PSA grades, if a if
31:45
APSA 10, you know, whatever card were to come out and oh, there's
31:52
a 52 mental that just surfaced as APSA 10.
31:55
You know, you're people. I mean, everybody's going to be
31:58
zooming in on that high res scan going like ha, ha, ha, ha.
32:01
How could this be APSA 10? That couldn't be and they're
32:06
going to scrutinize it like like crazy.
32:08
So what was the what was the big vintage card that just happened
32:11
with like one of them got? Down O61.
32:14
Fleer, Wilt Chamberlain. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
32:17
So you, you know that you again it's like cross company or
32:20
whatever and they get downgraded and you know, you're looking at
32:23
those things. So I think they have to be
32:27
really careful and they're not going to be as generous with
32:30
giving out the top grade for fear of like backlash and people
32:33
saying like that's clearly not the case.
32:35
And you know it, it comes with like a press release anytime it
32:39
goes from pop 0 to one or one to two or two to three or whatever.
32:42
So I think they probably scrutinize that stuff.
32:46
I don't tend to subscribe to the belief that somebody at like
32:50
Nats level would be doing that because of the because of the
32:55
risk associated with it. Like what it just?
32:58
Takes one person to come out and say this happened.
33:01
Yeah, yeah, All of a sudden it's like, hey, this, I'm James
33:04
O'Keefe, and I'm blowing the whistle on Nat Turner, you know,
33:07
and you're like, you know, that's just somebody's going to
33:09
be out there doing that. So.
33:12
But at the greater level, at the person's level who's making 50
33:17
or $60,000 a year, I mean, I think you just zoom out and say
33:22
like, how are these grading companies even supposed to keep
33:26
talent retained at the salaries that they're paying or the wage
33:31
when they can go out and make more money on their own?
33:33
Just getting a little bit of a cash flow bankroll built up and
33:35
then sending cards in for grading themselves.
33:38
If you've got a trained eye and you've been trained, I mean, you
33:41
could argue that would be an incentive.
33:42
Like I knew a lot of guys growing up who would go work at
33:45
Best Buy or like, you know, their favorite clothing apparel
33:48
store for, you know, on the weekends just to get the
33:50
discount, basically to get the cash flow on the discount to do
33:54
to pay for those things. Well, APSA, yes, I'd love to
33:57
come work for you. Please put me through your three
33:59
month, you know, training and then your three month onboarding
34:01
as a junior grader. And six months in, I will know
34:04
all of your processes and procedures and maybe even how to
34:07
get things won over on you and, and how to, you know, skate
34:09
things by and on the side. Either I'm going to keep working
34:13
for you and then just still be probably violating, you know, a
34:16
non computer, some kind of NDA with my friends.
34:19
Like that's got to be a real concern because the money for
34:22
the value proposition is massive, massive, massive,
34:25
massive for. People never even consider that
34:27
scrape work. So you also talked about, or
34:31
maybe I maybe I kind of thought this through, but with all these
34:38
companies that you had grade these cards, they all had
34:41
different standards. Do you think every company
34:44
should have the same standards? Because I have people tell me
34:46
that in my comments and I disagree with it, but I'm
34:48
curious for your thoughts. You have people tell you that
34:51
they should have the same. Standards.
34:52
There should be universal card grading standards.
34:56
No, I wouldn't think there should be.
34:58
I wouldn't think there should be at all because then what's your
35:01
differentiation? If you're a company, I think you
35:04
should divine define what you think is most important and then
35:06
let people buy into that or not. And so I mean, we've kind of
35:10
seen grading evolve to where we know they all look at
35:13
effectively the same like, you know, different attributes or
35:17
sub subgrade type things. But but we also know that all
35:20
the different companies treat those things differently, which
35:23
is why I think you should expect variance from one company to the
35:30
next between the grades. I don't know that it should go
35:33
from a 95 BGS to APSA 6, but you should expect some variance
35:38
across the board depending on how how much they do or don't
35:41
scrutinize different things. What you shouldn't expect is big
35:45
swings within the same grading company when you send them over
35:48
or like you said, you know, from authentic, trimmed and altered
35:51
to not, those are the things you'd expect to be consistent.
35:54
But no, I'd love to see a grading company come out and be
35:57
like, hey, you know what? We're going to, we're going to
36:01
try to be as transparent as possible with our scale.
36:03
But we believe that on borderless cards, centering is
36:06
not a big factor. What centering, you know, OK,
36:09
maybe if on this card, if that Stadium Club logo is like
36:12
bleeding off the edge of the card.
36:14
Seriously. That's you.
36:19
Click the little person like logo over the top of my name.
36:22
I think should pop me up there full size see a little if you
36:27
hover. I don't know either way.
36:28
I was just pointing out there's the stadium club logo right and
36:33
you know the the the set label and if that were like chopped
36:37
half half the page. OK, but like I've always
36:39
wondered that why why does my is it is centering factored as much
36:44
on my full bleed, you know, borderless card or not, and if
36:48
it's bordered, OK, we're going to put more emphasis on that.
36:51
And you know, you think about something like from the 90s
36:56
where I don't I don't know how much how the companies view it
36:59
now, I guess, but the way the market pays for like tops finest
37:03
and and tops Chrome cards from the 90s that are hulked out like
37:06
they're still PSA 10s. You know, Jeff, my boss just
37:10
bought a Bowman's Best Atomic refractor, Kobe Bryant rookie in
37:14
APSA 10 recently and it's a really beautiful copy.
37:17
And, and he, it's true color. You know, Kobe's not green.
37:21
And so you look at that and then we were looking at comps of
37:24
recent sales and there was one that sold where he's just
37:26
completely Hulked out and it's APSA 10, but it's still sold for
37:29
more than APSA 9 where it looks really clean.
37:32
So there's like those. So I don't, you know, the
37:34
market's still like just too fixated on the number and
37:37
they're not, they're not actually looking at that eye
37:39
appeal piece. So if I were the grading
37:40
companies, I'd be like, we're going to, we're going to Orient
37:43
this around the eye appeal of the card.
37:45
And then we'll have to obviously Ding it if there's a slice
37:48
through the back or a piece chipped out of it or a big dent
37:50
or whatever those types of factors might be.
37:52
Yeah, so it's a great video. You did repeatedly say that the
37:56
new PSA slabs are gummy and chewy, and so now I have to ask,
38:01
how many have you eaten? You don't swallow, you just, you
38:06
know, you just jaws your size and I'm trying to get that, you
38:10
know that Henry Cavill like, you know, look going.
38:14
But it was actually really weird.
38:17
The one the one the two that I got backward.
38:21
But I've also seen and had newer ones that I've cracked that
38:24
don't have it. So it seems like I don't know
38:26
what they're doing. They're like using different
38:28
acrylic or different slabs for different cards and it doesn't
38:31
seem to be consistent. Like I'm, I've cracked quite a
38:34
few PSA slabs now that have like come back this recently and
38:37
they're not all the same. I don't know what the deal is
38:39
with that, but some of them definitely like they just bend,
38:44
you know, they don't, they don't, they don't snap.
38:47
So with that bottle opener method that I used at the end
38:51
for the PSA slabs, it works. It's, it's kind of disturbing,
38:55
like how well it works. It just, it just pops up right
38:59
open, you know, a little bit elbow grease, but I didn't have
39:02
to go crazy or anything. I don't think I've ever cracked
39:05
APSA card slab. I've cracked APSA pack slab,
39:08
which those things are really, really thick and on heavy duty,
39:12
much thicker than a card slab. But I have two, they're coming
39:15
in the mail this, this week that I'm going to crack and I'll,
39:18
I'll do a video about why I'm cracking them.
39:20
And so I, I watched your bottle bottle opener method and I, I, I
39:24
don't drink. My wife and I don't drink.
39:26
So we don't, I don't know that we have any bottle openers, but
39:29
I've got to get one now. You can get one for your Jones
39:31
soda or whatever else you know you.
39:33
True, true. Yeah.
39:35
So 'cause I I've been thinking, how do I crack these slabs?
39:39
Do I people say tile nipper is the best way to go?
39:43
I I have not had good luck with the tile nipper.
39:47
Other people have the best. The best way I've found is with
39:51
the is with the bottle opener. Now I do know that people who
39:55
happen to have a bandsaw say that's the best way.
39:59
I don't have one of those and I definitely can't drag 1 into the
40:01
studio at our office. Another guy commented on my
40:06
video and said to take a drill and put drill two holes into the
40:11
top each corner because he said it like relieves the the seal on
40:15
it or something and then makes it easier.
40:17
So. I know I've watched Kurt from
40:20
Kurt's card care, you know, do surgery on slabs and other
40:23
things and he like, he like tapes around the corner in an
40:27
angle and then like hacksaws off the pieces.
40:29
I'm not sure what the benefit is, but he's obviously done it a
40:33
lot. So there's there's a lot of
40:35
methods out there. I've seen people just pop them
40:37
open with their hands. I don't know what kind of
40:38
gorilla strength they have to do that.
40:41
There's a guy on Twitter, He's probably on Instagram too.
40:45
I can't. Is it Sergey boy?
40:47
I'm not. Sergey Boy.
40:48
Yeah. Yeah, that's who it is, yeah.
40:50
Just goes just manhandles the slabs and cracks them open
40:54
really easily and. Yeah, I don't know.
40:57
He's he's got one of those little squeezy hand things at
41:01
his desk or something, but I've got office worker strength.
41:05
Like I'm not. I don't have whatever that is.
41:07
Me too. All right, Teapot, thank you for
41:11
coming on. Any last thoughts before I we
41:13
wrap this up? Yeah, my biggest thing is, and I
41:16
said this at the end of my video, which is that, you know,
41:19
a lot of people throw that word scam around and I don't, I don't
41:23
think this can be classified in the true definition of the scam
41:26
as a scam. If it the only way it's a scam
41:30
is if that's your perception because you don't know what
41:32
you're getting into. Like you don't understand that
41:34
this process is inconsistent, that it is subjective, that the,
41:37
each of the grading companies are doing that.
41:39
And I, I, I try to be fair, I do think they're all doing their
41:43
best and, and some regard, I don't think they're trying to
41:46
scam anybody. If anything, they're overselling
41:48
their own consistency. And I do believe that that
41:51
happens because they're trying to stay reputable and stay, you
41:54
know, trusted and everything. I don't treat it as a scam.
41:58
I The great scam to me is the fact that the hobby has
42:02
collectively, maybe not at an individual level, but the
42:05
collectively decided to place to place these insane price
42:08
premiums on the highest graded versions of ultra modern cards.
42:12
In particular. Go back to vintage where there
42:14
are no parallels and no inserts and no true rarity and all you
42:17
really have is the condition to assess.
42:21
That's where I think the I appeal comes into play a lot
42:23
more, as you alluded to or reference.
42:25
But in the new stuff, I think people should really be trying
42:28
to define what they appreciate about cards.
42:31
What's most important to you? Do you like the photography?
42:33
Do you like the prismatic effect or the color or the color match
42:36
or the on card auto or the game used memorabilia or all these
42:39
different factors? Just the card design and
42:43
aesthetic overall, All of those things should trump to me should
42:47
be weighted more heavily into the value of a card then an
42:50
invisible .5 subgrade defect that may or may not actually be
42:54
there depending on the greater at the company and the day and
42:56
the week and the mental acuity and everything else that's you
43:00
know can all those other factors that we talked about.
43:02
So that was sort of my big take away and my big call to call to
43:06
action or to sort of a paradigm revision is like, I'm not anti
43:11
grading at all. I think it has a place.
43:13
I think we need to trust the authenticity and I'd like to see
43:16
them keep leaning into trying to make that better overtime and
43:18
give us more confidence. But I'm fine with having PSA
43:22
eights or a whole wall full of 1 touches for cards that I love.
43:26
Yeah, me too. Well said.
43:28
Great. Well, thank you for coming on.
43:30
I appreciate it. This is a really good
43:31
conversation. Yeah, happy to do it anytime.
43:34
All right. Thanks everybody for watching.
43:36
See you.