Latest / Sports Card Clubhouse / Talking w/NEO About PSA Price Increase & Beckett's New GM!

Transcript

Talking w/NEO About PSA Price Increase & Beckett's New GM! · Sports Card Clubhouse

0:00
Hey everybody, it is Mike and I'm joined by Rob Neo Cards and
0:04
comics. How are you doing today?
0:07
I'm doing pretty Good Friday afternoon, getting ready to roll
0:09
on the weekend so can't complain.
0:12
Yeah, and nothing much happened in the sports card world this
0:15
week. Nope.
0:16
Another quiet week, No drama, no nonsense, no companies doing
0:21
anything crazy. And it kind of all, I don't want
0:24
to say revolved around you, but it went through you.
0:28
All the news from this week kind of went through you, right?
0:31
So PSA jacked up their prices and their turn around times and
0:36
you got the exclusive interview with Ryan Hogue, president of
0:40
PSA. And head grade and head of
0:41
grading. Not head of grader, head of
0:44
grading. Yeah, he did end up going on
0:46
sports card nonsense as well later in the week.
0:48
So. But like I, I was first I guess,
0:51
but not exclusive. OK.
0:54
And I heard you on professor sports cards.
0:57
I think it was professor and you were talking about he he was
1:01
asking you how that came to be and how long in advance you
1:04
knew. And you don't want to say, which
1:06
I totally get, but I was thinking about this because I've
1:08
been in one of these situations before where they reach out and
1:12
they say, hey, we would like you to be part of the group that
1:16
breaks this news. And they want an embargo, right?
1:20
Where you don't say anything ahead of time and you don't even
1:23
know what it is until you agree to that embargo.
1:26
Is that basically what happened here?
1:29
Pretty similar to that and that stuff for those that don't make
1:32
content or you know, do this newsy kind of stuff, those
1:36
that's pretty commonplace. Like that's very normal thing
1:39
where you will hear and sometimes it'll be multiple
1:43
people and sometimes different people will have different
1:46
embargoes. You know, I've seen that before
1:48
where it's like, oh, FYI, this place is running their story at
1:54
this time because of whatever we would ask that you just don't
1:58
post before them or something like that.
2:00
That wasn't the case in this. But just in general, over the
2:02
years, I've run into embargoes plenty of time.
2:06
And this was, you know, kind of similar to that.
2:08
It was basically like, hey, Ryan would like to come on and talk
2:11
about something. Are you cool with that?
2:13
And they were kind of vague on exactly what it was he wanted to
2:17
talk about until closer to, I think they reached out to me a
2:21
few days before to schedule. And then closer to the actual
2:26
when we were recording, I got more details on what it was so I
2:29
can put questions and stuff together.
2:32
And then they didn't even do a formal announcement on that
2:34
until the next morning. But the pricing actually went
2:37
live at like sometime in the middle of the night, like the
2:40
European, I think Japan, PSA Japan was the first one to post
2:45
about it and some group submitters and stuff over there
2:48
were the first people to post about it because it kind of
2:50
happened like 2-3 in the morning on East Coast time or something
2:54
crazy. So then when I woke up that
2:56
morning, I put the tweet out about the pricing and then I had
3:00
the video scheduled to go live. I think I moved it up like an
3:02
hour from my normal time, which which that tweet went very
3:05
viral. Currently sits at 1.2 million
3:08
views which is kind of crazy for me because I only have 2600
3:13
followers on Twitter. I don't think I've ever hit
3:18
200,000. So you've got me up beat by
3:21
1,000,000 views I've had. I had a mega celebrity, somebody
3:28
at the time like 15 years ago who had, I don't know, 20 or 30
3:32
million followers retweet something of mine and it ended
3:37
up with, I don't know, 10s of 1,000,000.
3:39
But that that was not on my junk wax hero account.
3:42
It was an old personal account many years before I started
3:45
this. But yeah, I mean, 1.2 million, a
3:48
million views on a tweet an hour Niche is massive. 20,000 is a is
3:55
a good tweet. Yeah, I think my previous record
3:58
was like 50K maybe. I don't even.
4:01
Oh, I think it was about the Dallas card show theft when that
4:04
story broke and it was just like sharing the information and I
4:08
was just I don't know if I was like the first one to post like
4:11
this stuff stolen. Look out for it type thing.
4:13
And you know how everyone retweets that stuff.
4:15
So that one went a little wild. But I think it also just goes to
4:19
show you, you know, people talk about and not that like Twitter
4:22
views are a direct correlation, but I don't, I don't think
4:25
people realize how big hard collecting is.
4:32
But when you're getting 1.2 million views on PSA pricing,
4:35
like like I said, not every one of those 1.2 million care about
4:38
what PSA did, but even a 50% of them do, that's still a ton of
4:42
people. Probably a lot of Pokémon people
4:45
in there. Yeah, yeah.
4:47
So I think it was smart of them to choose you instead of
4:50
somebody like Jeff who is seen and he's talked about this a lot
4:53
in the last couple weeks. He's seen as APSA shell and
4:57
you're not. And so they knew you asked them
4:59
some really smart, really good questions, and they knew you
5:04
would ask good questions that people would want to hear.
5:07
And I think it was very smart of them.
5:10
But you're also not the tinfoil type.
5:12
You're not going to go after Ryan.
5:14
You're going to give him a balanced, good interview.
5:19
And so I think it was very smart of them.
5:20
I think you did a very good job of it.
5:22
And your commenters were extremely mad, but but a lot of
5:28
them I read through, I don't know, hundreds of comments.
5:31
There's going to be 600 some odd.
5:33
Also my most commented video ever after six years of content.
5:37
I read hundreds of comments and a lot of them said this was a
5:40
great interview by you. Yeah.
5:44
And to go to your point, I, I, I think there is also a trust
5:47
factor because I've had Ryan on before, I've had Nat on before,
5:50
I've had Elizabeth on a couple of times who does the pop
5:52
culture side of stuff. So they knew that they, I assume
5:55
anyways, that they knew that they could trust me by saying,
5:58
Hey, we're giving you this information before anybody else,
6:01
that you're not going to leak it.
6:02
And also to your point that I'll ask balanced questions, some
6:05
people in the comment section might not necessarily agree with
6:09
you, but you always have a little bit of that when you,
6:11
when you interview someone, they always want you to, everyone
6:13
wants you to go super hard. And I get it.
6:16
But like, that's not, I don't want to say that's not the way
6:18
the game is played, but that might be the best way to sum it
6:21
up. But sure, there's questions I
6:23
would have loved asked in that, but couldn't or or didn't
6:27
necessarily feel like it would have been best practice to do
6:29
that. Because maybe you get away with
6:32
that once that you get someone on and you hold their feet to
6:35
the fire and you ask them every tough question you could
6:38
possibly think of, you're never getting another interview again
6:42
with that company or anybody else, most likely because
6:44
they're going to see how you handled your business there.
6:46
And they're going to be like, all right, we'll just go to
6:48
someone else. And that's, you know, you, you,
6:52
you might not be able to get all the questions that you want to
6:54
ask, but you get the ones that you can.
6:56
And then, you know, you listen to what they say and sometimes
6:58
you squeak some things in, like sometimes they open doors for
7:01
you to ask follow up questions about stuff.
7:04
Yeah. So you've had some time to think
7:06
about it. It's been was it 2 days ago that
7:09
they 2 1/2 days. Tuesday morning.
7:11
Tuesday 3 1/2 days ago, are they?
7:15
Is their intent as they claim to raise PSA prices to stem demand
7:24
as they say, and then they'll eventually reduce their prices
7:27
again? Or is this just the 4th price
7:30
increase of the last 12 months and this is where prices will be
7:35
in a year or two years from now? I think it could be a little bit
7:38
of both. If demand stays high, they're
7:43
not going to lower prices back down again.
7:46
If they need to get cards in the door, that's how they get paid.
7:49
And they clearly have margin at at lower grading prices to still
7:53
be profitable because they graded that way for year, years
7:57
in some cases. So I think absolutely, if demand
8:01
lightens and they need to get cards in the door, they'll run a
8:03
special and all the people that are not all a good majority of
8:07
people that were mad at them on Tuesday will probably send in
8:10
packages with cards for them to grade.
8:12
Even without the special, a lot of the people, most of the
8:15
people who are mad at them are still going to send in cards.
8:18
Yeah, Ryan did say on the SCN podcast, he recorded that.
8:23
I think that was yesterday. I don't want you recorded it,
8:27
but it went live yesterday and he did mention on there that you
8:30
know and very small sample size alert, but the two days in they
8:34
had they were seeing numbers trend in the correct direction
8:37
like it was it had the intended effect.
8:41
Yeah, that's surprisingly quick. So they, I made the point.
8:47
Well, I've been making the point for a couple months that adding
8:50
capacity is extremely expensive and there's no way they're going
8:53
to just build up, have enough people to take on 150,000 cards
8:58
a day because adding that capacity is millions and
9:01
millions of dollars to add people.
9:04
And they've increased prices. It feels to me like they've
9:08
decided increasing prices is a much more effective way at
9:12
stemming demand than, well, I guess decreasing demand by
9:19
increasing prices is a more palliative, palatable way to
9:24
manage this than spending millions of dollars on people.
9:29
Yeah, I would agree because it's it's it's not just spending the
9:33
money, it's also time. And and I think that's how they
9:35
got themselves in that position. Like this wasn't anything said
9:38
in the interview. This was just me kind of
9:39
thinking about it of when you kind of start laying out the
9:42
timeline of how this happened, you know, the beginning of 2025,
9:46
they see ramp up in demand and they're like, huh, you know, is
9:50
this real? Is this fake?
9:51
Like how much time needs to go by until you like, start
9:55
sounding alarm bells? And then I asked Ryan, like, how
9:57
long does it take to train a grader?
9:59
And he said three months. So, you know, if you get a month
10:02
into, oh, boy, demand's really picking up, you're like, OK,
10:05
this is real, Let's act on it. Then you're like, OK, we need to
10:08
go higher graders. So now you're three months
10:11
later, now you're in the almost April or May.
10:14
And meanwhile demand has still been building this entire time.
10:17
So you're constantly falling behind and it's just kind of
10:20
like a snowball rolling down a hill.
10:21
And then you're kind of chasing your tail, but you get those,
10:24
that new batch of people in and then it's like, oh crap, that
10:28
wasn't enough. We need more.
10:29
And then you're kind of repeating that cycle over again.
10:32
Meanwhile, demand is still continuing to build because
10:35
they, they share that graph And it just kept going up and up and
10:38
up for the, the amount of submissions coming through the
10:41
door. And, and the other graph was
10:43
going up too, just not as aggressively.
10:45
The one of output. We've seen the output.
10:47
I looked at it because someone in the comment section had asked
10:50
something. They're like, oh, they haven't
10:52
expanded at all. And I'm like, well, I mean, no,
10:55
in January of 2025, I think they were grading like 1.3 million
10:59
cards a month and now they're grading 2,000,000 cards a month.
11:02
So that's 700,000 cards per month output in a year Seems
11:07
pretty good to me. Like I get that people are
11:09
pissed and I'm not trying to make excuses for PSA by any
11:12
means, but I think sometimes we need to look at the numbers and
11:15
be like they almost doubled their capacity in a year.
11:19
Like just based off generate data.
11:22
Yeah, yeah, 50% at least because they were at 1.4°.
11:27
You know, it's huge. One thing I missed but I was
11:31
watching Cards on the Table with Teapot and Jeff today and Teapot
11:37
mentioned that in the interview with you.
11:41
Ryan said that he they like to have a 2 month backlog of carts
11:46
which I somehow missed him saying that to you.
11:48
Do you remember him saying that? Yeah, he did.
11:52
What what do you think that means?
11:54
Do you think that they anticipate turn around time
11:57
being 40 business days steadily for?
12:01
Forever. Or because at times they've also
12:04
said they want to get back to like 20 day turn around time,
12:07
but if they like having a 2 month backlog, it feels like
12:10
they intend to be at least 40 business days.
12:13
Does that feel accurate to you? I think that's where they want
12:15
their bulk level to sit around. I'm sure there's some
12:17
fluctuation in there. And I also think that that's
12:20
giving them a little bit of leeway both directions of, OK,
12:24
if we have two months of cards in the house, if the market
12:28
softens, that gives us a little bit of time to react and maybe
12:32
do pricing specials or do whatever they need to do to get
12:36
more cards in the building. So the wells not running dry
12:39
because of like I said earlier, if cards aren't coming in the
12:41
door, they're not getting paid so that they need to feed the
12:44
beast. They have to have cards coming
12:45
in the front door. So they probably want a little
12:48
bit of wiggle room there to be able to pivot One Direction or
12:51
the other of oh Lord, our, our, you know, our, our sixty day
12:55
backlog all of a sudden is down to a month.
12:57
We need more cards in the door. Let's run a, you know, $15 tops,
13:02
Chrome special or whatever, you know, they need to do to get the
13:04
drum up demand. Depending on what they're
13:06
looking at, maybe they want more TCG in the building.
13:08
So it's a, it's a one piece special or a Pokémon special or
13:11
whatever. So I think they just want that
13:14
little bit of area to work around.
13:15
And he kind of talked to to some of that stuff in the discussion
13:18
with me and he brought it up again on SCN as well.
13:23
Yeah, I feel like running PSA would be a blast, but what a fun
13:26
puzzle to just constantly being figuring out where to shift
13:31
capacity, what to what specials to run with.
13:34
It just seems like it'd be fun to me.
13:36
I would love to just have a sneak peek at their dashboards.
13:41
Yes. We talked about it in the
13:43
interview on how and they're very tech focused.
13:47
Like I just, I'm sure it's not like this, but I just imagine
13:49
that they have like a war room or something or like the bridge
13:51
of the enterprise and it's just like screen after screen after
13:53
screen filling all these different, you know, varying
13:57
levels. I thought it was interesting
13:58
when he discussed like each different kind of Ave. has its
14:04
own individual tracking mechanism of like here's bulk,
14:08
here's bulk TCG, here's this, here's that, here's, you know,
14:11
vintage. And they could see exactly like
14:14
where the orders are breaking down at, what the time is when
14:18
they were supposed to be done, depending on all those various
14:21
different categories and lanes, depending on the type of order
14:25
that it is. Yeah.
14:27
So for almost 20 years, I've spent my career either building
14:32
dashboards or leading groups that build dashboards.
14:35
So I'm constantly thinking about what what types of metrics does
14:40
PSA use? What do they rely upon to drive
14:43
their business? It would be a blast.
14:46
Yeah, I would love to just have like one monitor where I could
14:49
just be like, you know. Yeah, you also.
14:54
Well, actually so SGC they increased SG CS turn around time
14:59
from whatever it was 15 to 20 days up to 40 to 50 I think.
15:05
Yeah. And I and I don't know that that
15:07
was really a quote UN quote increase.
15:09
If you pay attention to the blowout forms, they've been
15:11
running at 40 days for like a month.
15:13
Maybe that? Was just more them like publicly
15:17
communicating like we're running at 40 day turn around time.
15:20
Anyone actually submitting to them for the last few weeks knew
15:23
that already. I've been talking about it in
15:25
videos for a month now. In fact, I think when Beckett
15:29
raised their turn around times I did a video it would have been
15:32
about 10 days ago now and I ran through the various grading
15:35
companies things. When I got the SGCI was like
15:38
this says 20 business days. I was like this is not accurate.
15:41
Based off everything that I said this needs updated.
15:43
I was like this is not correct. Yeah, I was thinking about, I
15:47
was actually thinking about I had a video planned where I was
15:50
going to do like the hobby has a turn around time problem and I
15:54
was going to go through all the turn around times including Com
15:56
C and then you did the video and I was like, I guess I don't need
15:59
to anymore. Thanks Neo.
16:02
But then Com C significantly speed up.
16:06
They were on a 90 day track. So I ordered my cards on
16:11
December 28th and initially I got a 30 day turn around time
16:16
alert. So it was like January 28th.
16:18
I would get my cards or they would ship maybe.
16:21
But then as we got close to the 28th of January, it updated to
16:26
March 28th. So it was 90 days from the time
16:29
I requested them to ship. It was 48 card shipment.
16:33
And so it felt like that was about right, 90 days based on
16:37
they were doing about 10,000 cards a day and there were
16:41
almost 900,000 before me. And so I was like, OK, I'll just
16:46
wait till March 28th. But then last week, earlier this
16:49
week, I got the alert that it shipped just very, very
16:52
suddenly. They went through 400,000 cards
16:54
before mine and I wonder if they staffed up or if they shifted
16:58
some capacity. I was pretty surprised by it.
17:03
Yeah, they're shipping times seem to be all over the place
17:06
because I've seen screenshots shared to me and on social of
17:10
like I have 600,000 orders in front of me or whatever.
17:14
The last thing I had shipped home was early December.
17:16
I had a couple graded cards that I had purchased but I usually
17:21
I'm only shipping home like 2 to 5 cards at most at a time so I
17:26
just always pay out for the expedited service and even that
17:29
took a little bit longer. I think I got my stuff in like 3
17:32
weeks ever take but I haven't had anything shipped home in a
17:36
while. I did send them a batch of
17:38
cards. I sent them about 150 cards
17:41
after Christmas. It was early January and those
17:45
actually got processed fairly quickly.
17:47
Like they beat their time to get added to my account to sell.
17:52
So that side seems to be running relatively OK, at least based
17:55
off my past experience. I don't know if that's switched
17:58
over the last, you know, three weeks or so.
18:01
Nice. So then you had on Colin, the
18:05
new head of the GM of Beckett, who said that he and I didn't
18:10
listen to the whole thing. I listened to about half of it
18:11
before I had to hop off. But he, like anybody named
18:16
Colin, you would expect him to be young.
18:17
He looks like he's about 35 or 40 maybe.
18:21
Yeah, I give or take. It's hard for me to judge
18:22
because I didn't meet him in person so.
18:24
Yeah, and he said he's a big Reddit guy, which, I don't know,
18:32
it's a weird thing to admit that you're a big Reddit guy.
18:35
That's the first thing he said, basically.
18:39
So, OK, what did you take, what did you take away from your
18:44
conversation with Colin? I think and you know, I I go
18:49
with the Brian Winhurst actions over words type thing like he
18:53
gave us the words. Now I kind of want to see the
18:54
actions I do like where his, what direction was that in
19:01
regards to like you could tell by listening like he was very
19:05
focused on customer service and communication basically seemed
19:10
to be the two big things that he wanted to, to drill down on and
19:13
end grading turn around times as well.
19:15
But that's, you know, staffing upgrading is kind of like where
19:17
every grading company wants to do right now.
19:19
You know, I saw CGC put out a big thing the other day about
19:21
like their hiring or they want to staff up.
19:24
So I, I think that's across the board.
19:26
SGC they want to hire more graders, but I think that's been
19:30
Beckett's biggest flaw the last few years has been their
19:35
customer service has just been God awful.
19:37
Their submission tech stuff and tracking of orders is terrible
19:42
and they're just general communication to the community
19:44
is terrible or has been terrible.
19:46
Like it's been bad. Like they've essentially he's
19:49
you know, we commented on it both in the interview.
19:51
Like they have basically wear a black box for two years.
19:54
You know, I had Scott Raskin on who around when the label even
19:59
actually this was before even like that label stuff was going
20:04
on. So that would have been, I don't
20:06
know, maybe 2023. Was this the guy?
20:09
Did an interview after that or not?
20:11
To be quite honest, I really don't know.
20:13
Is this the guy with the clearly a Texas guy?
20:16
Like you can tell who very briefly felt like for two weeks
20:22
was putting out videos about Beckett?
20:24
Does that sound familiar? Was this that guy?
20:28
That I had on or Yeah, no, he was there basically like second
20:33
in command. OK, I was trying to trying to
20:37
remember who that was, but for a couple of weeks this one guy
20:40
from Beckett was putting on videos about Beckett and.
20:44
He did do some stuff. I don't know if that's the same
20:46
person, but I don't believe that he's from Texas.
20:47
That's where you threw me on that one.
20:50
OK, so he's the GM. He's been at collectors for
20:54
three years or so he said. And now he's the GM of Beckett.
20:58
And he said that he wants to three to 5X the grading room.
21:02
And I've got to think that he's been given a budget and he's
21:06
confident in saying that, but it's just so hard to see them
21:11
three to 5X in their their grading room.
21:13
And what do you, what do you think?
21:15
Do you think that's actually going to happen?
21:18
That's where I go with the action, the words, you know, the
21:20
actions and words thing like he gave us the words I want to see
21:23
the action I and I, I'll have to listen back to it.
21:26
I don't know if it was grading specifically or grading and
21:30
like. Authentication.
21:33
Like the like the Beckett team in general that he wanted a
21:36
three to five acts or if it was specifically the grading team
21:40
that he mentions so and I don't remember his specific verbiage
21:43
on that and I feel like that's important.
21:45
I just don't remember what it is off the top of my head. 3 to 5X
21:49
in the grading team seems aggressive. 3 to 5X in the
21:53
Beckett team maybe not so much because they could probably 3X
21:57
their customer service team alone just based off of various
22:01
social posts that I've been tagged in in regards to people's
22:04
frustrations with them. So I think honestly, if, if they
22:10
didn't even really staff up the grading team that much and just
22:14
fixed how they communicate with customers, their order tracking
22:19
software, like like we talked about in the interview, they're
22:23
not great about just like telling you when a package
22:25
arrived, like they're just not good about that stuff.
22:28
And, and like their, their pizza tracker, which is the term that
22:31
I always use for is not great and it does not update
22:34
frequently. And it's very vague.
22:36
Like they are very much a black box sums them up well.
22:40
And I just think cleaning up some of that stuff would do them
22:42
a lot of good. And like we build some consumer
22:45
confidence in them because that's really what they need.
22:47
Like people like the brand. You don't have to get brand
22:50
loyalty. If people like Beckett, people
22:52
people are looking for a reason to send cards to them and
22:56
they're basically putting roadblocks up of reasons not to
22:59
send cards to them, whether extended turn around times,
23:02
which is which is a huge problem right now.
23:04
I mean, they do need more graders.
23:06
I saw people comment on that video today, but they're like,
23:08
what about my express order that I dropped off at the Dallas card
23:11
show that's still not done 30 days later.
23:14
And that was supposed to be like a five day order, you know, so
23:16
there's, they definitely have issues on that side.
23:20
But I think, I think fixing the front end and the software and
23:25
the tracking is probably easier than staffing up graders because
23:29
I, I think Beckett also is a little bit more difficult to
23:31
train graders And they're great. We, I mean, we did talk about
23:34
this. They're grading is takes more
23:38
time. Like it just takes them longer
23:40
to grade a card because of the sub grades.
23:42
That really does slow them down. And did he commit to keeping sub
23:45
grades? Yes.
23:47
OK, good. He said that was basically a
23:49
core identity of Beckett. They may I I think he didn't
23:54
explicitly say this. I like, I think they wouldn't
23:56
mind offering other things that don't have sub grades.
23:59
Was the vibe that I got. But sub grades were always going
24:02
to be an option if you wanted them.
24:05
A simple way to fix the the current problem, not to fix it,
24:08
but to fix the customer service issue with the current turn
24:12
around delays would be to just insert a little note with every
24:17
order that's going back out to customers 30 days later than it
24:20
was supposed to. With AI don't know, $10 off your
24:23
next rating order coupon and say we're really sorry this took
24:28
longer than we expected. Here's $10 off your next order
24:32
and that should reduce the people who were going to defect
24:37
to CGC or we're just not going to grade with you again, period.
24:41
Yeah, I think it's just more about the communication piece of
24:44
upfront. I, I just see so much
24:46
frustration about people send orders and they don't know if
24:49
they arrive or it takes it weeks to find out if an order arrived.
24:53
And people are just genuinely nervous about that stuff.
24:55
Like if you're not used to sending cards in the grading, or
24:58
even if you are, you send like $5000 worth of cards off or
25:02
whatever is a big number for you and USPS tells you it was
25:06
delivered and two weeks later, Beckett hasn't acknowledged that
25:09
the delivery ever happened. You're going to start sweating a
25:11
little bit and want to know like what the hell is going on?
25:14
Like meanwhile it's just sitting there somewhere and someone
25:17
hasn't pressed the right button. So I think just just fixing that
25:20
stuff alone, I think people are, I think people have a little bit
25:23
more leeway on turn around times than they want to admit
25:25
sometimes. But I think the frustrations
25:28
over knowing like where their order is and at least kind of
25:30
seeing it move through the track just makes people feel better.
25:35
Yeah, well, Colin seems really likable both on your video and
25:40
on Twitter when he's out there answering questions.
25:43
And he just seems eager and he seems like, I think they've
25:47
chosen well in terms of, you know, your, your visibility,
25:51
the, the outward view of, of the Beckett brand seems to be in
25:56
good hands. I'm very interested to see what
26:00
happens. I don't grade with Beckett.
26:01
I never have other than a couple of magazines.
26:03
But you know, I'm very interested in the business, in
26:06
the industry, and I hope he can clean it up.
26:09
I really do. I wish that they had the same
26:13
thing with SGC. Nobody's Pete, of course, that
26:17
Colin is no Pete Steinberg. Very, very few people have that
26:20
kind of. He's a he's a one O 1 to steal
26:23
hobbies. Yeah, he's a he's a Unicorn, but
26:27
you don't need a Peter Steinberg to just instill trust in people.
26:31
And I wish they would do that with SGC.
26:33
And I guess Ryan is kind of the guy for PSA, although I don't
26:37
they should have APSA dedicate like APSAGMI.
26:41
Assume they have somebody. I mean, I think that would be
26:43
Ryan because he's head of all grading across all brands,
26:47
including PSA and he has some other duties at PSA as well.
26:50
But he, I mean, he's, you know, he's on their podcast all the
26:53
time. I think he is the de facto face
26:55
guy other than that, obviously. But yeah, but I think Ryan is
27:00
that guy for them because he's the one that makes those like he
27:03
made the media rounds for this. He made the media rounds when
27:07
Peter went away, when when that went down, when they, you know,
27:10
I mean, he was the one that uttered like, you know, we're
27:11
going to take them into a boutique phase when I had him on
27:15
for that. So he seems to be the face guy
27:17
for them, I think for sure. And it, it makes sense because
27:23
the way that PSA works, the way that I understand it is, is
27:26
there's different versions essentially like of Ryan over
27:29
each category. Like Ryan's over grading.
27:32
Elizabeth is over pop culture. So she has comic books and, and
27:36
some other categories and kind of focuses on the TCG side of
27:39
things. They, I don't remember the
27:41
person, but they have someone else that's over like the offers
27:45
program in like the marketplace and the vault, I believe.
27:49
Like they have different figureheads but I think Ryan
27:51
makes the most sense because most people care about the
27:53
grading. Yeah, So what news are you
27:56
breaking next week? I don't know yet, let me let me
28:00
check my DMS. I'm, I'm always rooting for a
28:06
big Newsweek just because it's fun and I know there's a,
28:10
there's a big subsection of YouTube, especially in the
28:13
vintage community that makes fun of the drama.
28:15
And I, it's, it's interesting to me.
28:19
I'm, I'm, I'm admittedly a business guy.
28:22
Like as a, as a kid and as a teenager, I was always reading
28:24
the business section of newspapers and of websites and
28:29
the, what's happening behind the scenes has always been of great
28:32
interest to me. And so just a natural extension
28:35
for me to talk about some of these things, even though I may
28:38
not have the greatest knowledge of them, I'm, I'm interested in
28:41
them. And so that's why I've always
28:44
been drawn to your channel and some other similar channels that
28:48
talk about what's happening right now.
28:49
Even though some people call it drama, I think it's just
28:52
happening in the industry. Yeah, we've been on a little bit
28:56
of a heater lately because we had this stuff and then we had
28:58
the fanatics link document. There was the Pac-Man drama,
29:01
like in general, like the beginning of 2026 has been
29:04
really since PSA purchased Beckett.
29:09
I mean you can even go back to, you know, the Doctor Beckett
29:12
podcast. Basically since like
29:13
Thanksgiving, we've essentially been on like maybe you take like
29:17
a week. I think we have like a week.
29:18
There was like, oh, this is actually, I remember saying in a
29:20
recent Sunday video that, oh, it's actually kind of a quiet
29:23
week this week. Like nothing super crazy has
29:24
happened. But outside of that, I feel like
29:26
the last 6 to 8 weeks has been like some tentpole thing every
29:31
week. And it's some of the bases,
29:32
their content around news, like, you know, more power to it
29:35
because it just, it feels like a cheat code sometimes.
29:39
It really does. Yeah, in I think 10 days, the
29:43
23rd, you and I are both on Professor sports cards, right?
29:46
For the yes. For the hobby collision, I think
29:49
he's calling it. Yeah, he picked two of the least
29:54
outwardly exciting guys imaginable.
29:57
You you need the you need the level headed people in there to
30:00
offset the the the other side of it.
30:03
Yeah, maybe that's why we're there.
30:05
It's you mean Gio Trike? Troy Reich.
30:09
Yeah, run. Good life.
30:11
OK. So he'll he'll have like trike
30:13
is similar to us. He's very level headed too.
30:16
She is not. No, no he's not.
30:19
But he's entertaining. Yes, yes.
30:21
And I, you know, I've watched run goods breaks, but I don't
30:24
know that I've seen him like in that kind of setting.
30:26
But I feel like I know that he's feisty in general, like on
30:29
Twitter and he can be in videos sometimes.
30:32
So I think Crystal was moderating who is literally the
30:34
most like middle of the road calm person in the world.
30:38
Yeah, I've never seen anything run good life except tweets, so
30:43
I'm I'm hoping he brings it. He does get spicy in the tweets,
30:47
that's for sure. Yeah.
30:49
Well, I should we have beef, don't we?
30:51
Because I I you know you shared a comment with me that I stole
30:56
your Sunday video format. That's right.
30:58
You did. Yeah, so I've been doing my
31:02
Sunday video for coming up on four years, 3 1/2 years, I think
31:10
it was 3 1/2 years. And I think you started yours
31:14
the week after brand new. You just stole my idea straight
31:17
up. That was no, you already texted
31:19
that to me earlier. I think it was that earlier this
31:21
week or last week, I don't even remember.
31:22
It was, it was earlier this week.
31:23
Yeah. Yours started before mine for
31:26
but I was surprised because I texted it to you and you were
31:28
like yeah I started mine 5 or 6 years ago and I was surprised it
31:30
was that far in advance of mine. Yeah.
31:33
And then it sent me down the rabbit while I was curious
31:35
actually when I did start it. And it kind of it evolved over
31:37
time in the what it is today, but it was basically like late
31:42
2020. So yeah, it's been going on
31:45
almost. It was shortly afterwards, a few
31:47
months after the channel started.
31:48
Yeah, I. Got that format.
31:51
And this is not my way of avoiding accountability of
31:55
stealing your idea. But in all truth, I had never
31:58
watched one of your Sunday videos before because the
32:01
thumbnails, well, I should be back years ago.
32:03
The thumbnails were always sports card market update and
32:08
that just wasn't of interest to me.
32:10
And so I never ever watched one. And then you started in the
32:13
last, I don't know, year or two, maybe longer, but it feels like
32:16
fairly recent putting in the actual topics instead of just
32:22
saying sports carp market update.
32:24
And that dragged me in. The video format was always the
32:28
same. I would always open with news
32:30
and then charts and graphs at the end.
32:33
And you're right, I was just lazy and just kept the same
32:37
title for five straight years, basically.
32:41
And I was like, ah, let me shake this up a little bit.
32:43
And then I they like, started the video always performed well,
32:46
but it started performing better.
32:47
And I was like, oh, OK, I need. Yeah.
32:49
Excuse me, I. Need to lean into this a little
32:51
bit more. I like that video because it's a
32:55
good way for me to catch up on smaller stories so that I don't
32:58
get. I mean I put out daily content
32:59
for the most part so I usually get the most stuff in a
33:01
full-fledged video. But there's some topics that
33:03
just don't make sense for a full.
33:04
Like it's like a 3 minute take. So I'm not going to record a
33:07
whole video for just a 3 minute thing.
33:09
Sometimes I purposely just set stuff aside.
33:11
I'm like, I'll just hit that on Sunday.
33:13
Right. That's exactly what I do.
33:14
And I started doing this four years ago where I was like, I
33:18
have all these things that people would send me.
33:20
I can't do a video on everything.
33:22
So why don't I just bookmark things And then on Sunday
33:25
morning I'll go in and bring up all these bookmarks and hit on
33:29
all of them just really quick. And initially I was doing it and
33:34
I remember saying on one of my early videos, not going to
33:37
provide my opinion here. It doesn't matter.
33:41
I'm just going to do quick hits. And I got a bunch of comments
33:43
saying we, we want to hear your opinion.
33:46
And so I started adding in opinions too.
33:48
But I've been thinking lately about changing up my my
33:51
thumbnail because it's kind of a boring thumbnail.
33:54
I wanted it to be about the cards initially, but it's time.
33:58
Probably time for a thumbnail. I went into that drama a little
34:00
bit. Yeah, but I also hate, I think
34:04
feel like 5000 views on those videos is the sweet spot for me.
34:09
Once I go beyond 5000 I start getting weirdos and sickos and I
34:15
hate that. Yeah.
34:17
The the other thing that I like about that video for me, because
34:21
a lot of the bigger topics I am, you only put out a handful of
34:23
videos a week, whereas I'm putting out five to six.
34:26
The other thing that I like to have in my back pocket is it
34:29
gives me a chance to go back and like revisit a topic.
34:33
I guess sometimes I'll post a video on the information changes
34:35
or something has happened or there's been like developments
34:38
in it or more information has come out that once again, might
34:41
not be worth necessarily like a stand alone video.
34:44
But it gives me like a second crack at it, essentially like a
34:47
second time through the line up to be like, oh, by the way, like
34:50
if you didn't see this video, I cover it in detail here.
34:52
But like XY and Z thing has happened since Tuesday when I
34:55
posted that or whatever. So it's been useful for me for
34:58
that too, as an outlet to basically like retouch on things
35:01
or clarify because sometimes I'll see things in the comments
35:04
and I'm like, people just didn't like understand what I was
35:06
getting at here. I could I could use it as like,
35:09
hey, like, you know, this is what I was going for here.
35:11
I don't not sure like all you guys got it.
35:14
Yep, Yep, exactly. You know who we can blame?
35:18
Victor stole it from both of us. Well, Victor, you Victor.
35:24
I love Victor. What a great guy he is.
35:27
He texted me before and I hadn't talked to Victor in a long time
35:30
up to that point. Not for any reason, we just
35:33
didn't. We don't talk all that often.
35:35
And he texted me and said, hey, Mike, I'm thinking about
35:38
starting this Sunday video series.
35:42
Do you have any issues with this?
35:43
And do you care? I'll make sure I start it after
35:46
yours. So, and I was like, Victor,
35:49
where all of us are stealing ideas, whether it's intentional
35:53
or not. There's no, there's nothing
35:54
original about anything I'm doing.
35:57
Do your thing and he does it and he does a great job with it.
36:00
Yeah. He did the same thing with me
36:01
too. I'm like, I don't own the day,
36:02
Victor, do whatever you want. I was like, I normally post it.
36:05
This time I don't care what time you post.
36:07
I was like you post before me, after me, at the same time,
36:09
whatever. Yeah, yeah, he's a great guy.
36:12
Big Victor. I finally got a chance to meet
36:14
him at this past National and it was like, it seems like you meet
36:17
everyone at the National and there's like always that one
36:19
person that eludes you. And he was the one person that
36:21
eluded me like multiple years in a row.
36:24
I sat next when we did a a thing for Hobby Hotline on the
36:29
mainstage of the National three years ago, I think 2, two years
36:32
ago maybe. And I sat next to him and we
36:34
talked. I talked to him more than
36:36
anybody else and he's just a very rational, down to earth,
36:41
easy to talk to a guy. Yeah, 100%.
36:43
We we, we randomly ran into each other on the show floor last
36:46
year and talked for, I don't know, 1520 minutes off on a
36:49
corner. Yeah, Victor, for anybody who's
36:53
wondering who we're talking about, is Victor the rookie card
36:55
specialist? He has a channel.
36:57
Go check him out. All right, thanks for coming on.
37:01
Any final thoughts? No, I don't think so.
37:04
We'll see what you know. We'll see what next week brings.
37:07
Awesome. Thanks everybody for watching.
37:10
We will see you all in a week.