Latest / Sports Card Clubhouse / On the Beckett Acquisition By Collectors, FTC Referral, and Wilt Chamberlain Rookie Downgrade!

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On the Beckett Acquisition By Collectors, FTC Referral, and Wilt Chamberlain Rookie Downgrade! · Sports Card Clubhouse

0:01
Happy Saturday everybody. I am Mike.
0:03
I'm joined by Neo of Neo Cards and comics.
0:07
Neo. We had another crazy week in in
0:11
sports cards. How have you been?
0:13
I've been good burning the candles at both ends between
0:16
working the day job and then coming home to sports card chaos
0:19
every single day. Yeah, this must be really good
0:22
for your views when you have big news every single day.
0:26
Yeah, December. I was, it was funny.
0:27
I was just glancing at that the other day because I got like,
0:29
you know how YouTube back end will kind of throw you like
0:33
views are higher than normal the last X amount of days keep going
0:36
on whatever content you're making and it's like I've gotten
0:38
like three of those in the past week.
0:42
I think generally speaking I average about like 100 ish 1000
0:48
views a month. Like overall like 100 to 110.
0:52
It's almost like clockwork the same.
0:54
I think this month I hit 100K views like earlier this week.
1:00
We still have, you know, almost a full, not quite a full 2
1:05
weeks, 10 days to go in the month.
1:07
Yeah, I I've slowed down a bit. I was certainly on track in the
1:11
first half first, Yeah, I guess first half of December I was at
1:14
like 70,000. And then I just didn't do much
1:18
this past week and it slows down.
1:22
But the big news, the first big news, we have two big, really
1:25
big things to cover. And then there's a kind of a, a
1:28
third one. The first big news this week
1:31
would happen Monday night when I was at a Celtics game.
1:34
I was, I don't know if you saw me talk about this, but I was
1:37
taking a selfie with these two crazy Celtics fans outside the
1:41
VIP entrance for the Celtics game.
1:43
And I so I've got my phone up. I'm holding my phone up taking a
1:46
selfie and up pops the notification from you on YouTube
1:50
that said whatever PSA parent company has purchased Beckett,
1:56
whatever that that was. And I remember as I'm taking the
2:00
selfie thinking I must have misread that and I put and I had
2:03
to read it like 3 times to make sure I read it correctly.
2:06
What? What was your thought?
2:07
You must have heard early because it sounded like you were
2:10
embargoed, or I assume. So all I heard was something is
2:17
coming at a certain time, but I didn't know what it was.
2:25
I just, I got word like something's brewing.
2:27
It's going to be coming in the next 20 to 30 minutes.
2:31
You're probably going to want to be ready.
2:33
So that's that's how I got that up so quick.
2:37
I did not know exactly what it was.
2:39
I didn't even know that was grading related.
2:41
I just knew that there was a story breaking in the next 20 to
2:44
30 minutes. You're probably going to be
2:46
wanting to record immediately and then you know that came out.
2:51
So that that's kind of how that went down.
2:53
So I did not know ahead of time on that one.
2:56
I don't think very many people did just based off after the
3:00
fact. Like you kind of like start
3:01
talking to people and like people that you would expect to
3:04
know early didn't know early. So I do think they kept that one
3:07
under wraps pretty well. I remember when they bought SGC,
3:11
that one leaked, I shouldn't say leaked, but that one got around
3:15
prior to that coming out a little bit.
3:18
Even Doctor Beckett said he didn't find out until lunchtime
3:21
that day. Yeah, I listened to that podcast
3:24
that he put up. I forget when that was middle of
3:26
the week. I think that he he tossed that
3:28
up. But I'm like, I was when it
3:30
first came out. I was, I think I laughed.
3:35
I was like, it's one of those things where you're surprised,
3:39
yet you're not surprised. Yeah, Yeah, that's exactly
3:43
right. So we've had five plus days to
3:46
digest this now. What are your thoughts on the
3:51
acquisition of Beckett for Collectors, Collectors Universe?
3:55
And do you think they're going to take Beckett in the same
3:59
direction they've taken SGC? I'll answer the second one
4:02
first. I, I've been of the opinion and
4:07
I've said this in all the content I've made about this,
4:09
it's going to be show don't tell when it comes to this
4:11
acquisition because they told us once already with SGC and we, we
4:16
all saw how that went for. I was actually just thinking
4:19
about this this morning because of the, the second big story
4:21
that we're going to talk about. When they acquired SCC, they
4:24
basically ran as normal for almost a year and a half.
4:27
I think people forget which I almost did myself.
4:30
That acquisition was in February of 2024.
4:33
It. Was.
4:33
Basically two years ago leap. Day.
4:36
Yeah. And I think people think that it
4:38
happened like 6 months ago. Like I think people associate it
4:41
more with when I had Ryan Hogan and he was like, they're going
4:44
boutique, but it they were actually part of collector's
4:47
universe for almost a full year and a half prior to that.
4:51
So they actually had a pretty good run with them just kind of
4:54
letting them sit over there and they were still doing, you can
4:57
look at the generate numbers. They were doing solid volume
4:59
that entire time. It never dipped.
5:02
And then in the summer they cut off group submissions.
5:05
And then right after that Peter left and those back and I forget
5:08
which one happened first. They were pretty close together,
5:11
but that was really what nose dope like sent their numbers
5:14
diving down. So you know, and an early on you
5:18
could I did the thing on the live where you compare the two
5:21
statements back and forth, the press releases that they had and
5:23
they're very similar. It's very similar language.
5:27
So, you know, they showed us once or they told us once what
5:30
they were going to do. And I don't want to say they
5:32
lied to us. Maybe, you know, we don't know.
5:34
Maybe because they ran normally for a year and a half.
5:36
Maybe that was always the intention.
5:38
Then something changed later on because of they got behind on
5:42
capacity and they're like, this is an easy way for us to open
5:45
that up. I don't think that's the case,
5:46
but that could be their argument.
5:49
So this time around they're going to need to show us stuff
5:53
that they're doing things with Beckett and you know, it's
5:58
probably going to take them a few months to get in there and
6:00
figure things out. The the timeline I've been
6:03
putting on them is by the National.
6:06
So that's a good, you know, seven months, give them a few
6:09
months to get in there and then a few months to roll some things
6:11
out. But if we don't see any changes
6:15
by the national, then I think, you know, it's going to be more
6:19
towards the SGC path. You know, if we see in, I don't
6:24
know, March, April that they have a new submission form,
6:28
online form and they have a new back end pizza tracker, like
6:31
just little things like that, you know, are they part, do they
6:35
open group Subs back up again? I think will be a big telling
6:38
one because those are shut down right now for Beckett.
6:41
Those little like candles being lit like are going to show us
6:45
that they are serious about keeping them around.
6:50
Do they do that? That's the tricky part.
6:53
They they showed us once and that they didn't the why, you
6:58
know, I think that kind of depends on what they do that you
7:00
did. They just want like another, you
7:02
could almost argue Beckett, they turned SGC into a boutique
7:05
grader. Beckett is already a boutique
7:07
grader. You know, there's there's a very
7:10
niche based market for Beckett. So they kind of already are a
7:13
scaled down boutique grading company to a degree, maybe not
7:17
quite that extreme, but pretty close.
7:21
My best guess on the why is probably got a decent deal.
7:26
They probably wanted to play keep away a little bit whether
7:28
from somebody else that could be fanatics, that could just be
7:31
another private equity because the Beckett brand name still has
7:34
a lot of value and just controlling that is probably
7:37
very interesting for them. And then it's probably a lot of
7:40
the same reasons they got SGC. They needed a bigger footprint.
7:43
They needed more capacity. They already have a ticket
7:45
grading office in like I guess someone told me it was like 10
7:48
miles down the road from the Beckett office.
7:51
So now you have a new potential grading office.
7:55
You know, we start, start to see them expand out the Beckett
7:58
building, but it's the PSA flavour basically like what they
8:01
do with SGC, you know, where they add on or maybe they move
8:05
the Beckett office to a new location and it's a combined
8:07
Beckett PSA office. So you could leverage like
8:11
shipping and receiving departments without having to
8:14
duplicate them like they're they're in, but Beckett still
8:17
lives over here is the the boutique version basically
8:19
exactly like they did with SGC. Like I wouldn't be surprised if
8:23
there's some combined PSA Beckett office regardless of
8:26
whether they plan on keeping them around or not.
8:30
Yeah, I thought Teapot said it really well when Jeff on Cards
8:36
on the Table, Jeff was saying they they're saying that they're
8:39
going to keep Beckett around and that it's going to be an
8:41
independent brand. And Teapot said they said that
8:44
about SGC. Fool me once, shame on you.
8:47
Fool me twice, shame on me. Which I thought was pretty.
8:52
It was interesting that he said that.
8:54
And Jeff still felt like Beckett was going to stay as an
8:58
independent brand. In Doctor Beckett's podcast,
9:03
though, this I felt had had more credibility.
9:07
He said that Nat Turner went to his house, I think they got
9:11
lunch, and that assured him that it would be, that he would be
9:16
doing some really cool things with Beckett.
9:18
And I don't think Doctor Beckett really mentioned what it was,
9:21
but I'm I'm intrigued by that more than anything, I think.
9:25
Do you think he had the same conversation with Peter
9:27
Steinberg? I don't, I on on Leap Day, the
9:36
day that was announced, I have a contact, I had a contact who was
9:42
heavily in with SGC who told me that the plan from the beginning
9:46
was to move to keep SGC independent for two years and
9:51
then they were going to Peter was going to leave.
9:54
And basically what we're seeing now and the number I was given
9:58
was 2 years. I mentioned it on that video
10:01
then. And then collectors was going to
10:04
go public and we're only 2 1/2 months away from that two year
10:08
mark. And so are they going to go
10:10
public in Q1Q2 first half of 2026?
10:14
Do you think that's on the horizon and that's part of this
10:16
plan? I think Publix always been what
10:21
their end goal was. I mean they bought.
10:22
They were a public traded company.
10:23
They bought them and took them off.
10:26
So you have to imagine that that was always the end goal.
10:29
I mean, things could have changed in that maybe they
10:32
decided to keep them private. I'm sure that they are printing
10:36
money over there. And I do think Nat likes owning
10:42
it, running it like the day-to-day and, you know, having
10:45
that kind of full control that you probably lose when they go
10:48
public. So now you make arguments both
10:50
ways, but I would probably be like 7030.
10:52
They're going public most likely at some point now.
10:54
I don't know if that's in, in three months or not or, you
10:58
know, sometime in, in 2026. And you know, like I said, the,
11:02
the, the second part of the story that we're going to talk
11:04
about may have, it may impact that now as well.
11:09
I do think that like the conversation with Doctor Beckett
11:12
that he could have his cake and eat it too, because technically
11:15
SGC is still around. You know what I mean?
11:18
Like they are still there. It's not like they're gone.
11:21
I mean, yes, they're not what they used to be, but he could
11:26
have the same conversation with Doctor Beckett.
11:28
Maybe they are going to do some cool things over at Beckett, but
11:31
maybe they're also going to be grading 30,000 cards a month
11:36
instead of, you know, texted 80,000 I think is kind of where
11:42
they sit depending on any individual month.
11:45
Right now. They and you can you can see
11:48
like Beckett, like I said, that they're already kind of a niche
11:50
grading company and you can kind of see how you can kind of niche
11:53
them down a little bit more. Like you basically just lean
11:55
into people wanting to chase black labels.
11:58
You lean into. They do have and I have to re
12:02
update the have generate rerun the numbers for me.
12:05
But we did a while back ATCG deep dive on their pop report
12:11
because numbers wise, it's not comparable to PSA because PSA
12:14
just create so many cards. But when you look at the
12:16
percentage of what their TCG numbers are, it's completely
12:20
different than every other grading company.
12:23
Like where their buckets are like obviously Pokémon dominates
12:26
everything, but like they have a very high percentage of one
12:29
piece, which is a very popular up and coming TCG.
12:32
They have a very high population.
12:34
And like I think it was like Dragon Ball Z, they are still
12:37
one of the go to's for Magic the Gathering grading.
12:41
Like when you look once again, if you're looking at
12:42
percentages, they rank way higher than all the other
12:46
grading companies across the board.
12:47
SGC does. I'm sorry, I'm talking about
12:50
Beckett. Oh, OK.
12:51
Sorry. Yeah, sorry.
12:52
I don't know if I said SGC or not, but talking about Beckett,
12:58
so you could kind of see the path on how they go from 60 to
13:02
80,000 cards per month down to 30,000 like where SGC is now.
13:08
You know, people love to chase them for tops now black labels
13:12
and like the instant card black labels.
13:15
I think people still like them for like they use SGC for
13:18
vintage. A lot of people like back at for
13:21
the nineties, 2000s inserts like the Griffey, Jeter, Jordan stuff
13:27
like that era, you know, PM GS essential credentials.
13:32
So like they could lead into that stuff, lean in the TCG
13:35
black labels and lean into tops now slash instant black labels.
13:41
And that's kind of like the grading company and they just
13:44
kind of scale them down to accommodate like those 3 core
13:47
pillars. And then you have SGC over here
13:50
kind of doing the same thing with like Vintage.
13:52
And then you have PSA doing everything else.
13:55
So you know, maybe they do do some cool things.
13:58
Maybe he's absolutely right and what he told Doctor Beckett, but
14:01
maybe they're also grading 30,000 cards a month instead of
14:03
60 to 70. Yeah, Jeff wants them to remove
14:08
the 9 point fives from Beckett. Do you think that's a terrible
14:10
idea? No, I think that's a if now.
14:13
Well, it depends if they just want to niche them down and keep
14:16
them streamlined and do whatever, then I don't think
14:19
that they end up doing that. If they actually want to grow
14:22
them or like make them a real competitor, the 9.5 a 1000%
14:27
needs to go away. I mean there's, it's we've seen
14:29
it now like the, the nine points, the markets, the modern
14:35
markets does not respect the 9.5 grade.
14:40
As a gem mint, yes, right? But don't you think that 9.5
14:46
grade is great if it's not gem mint?
14:48
If it's just like Mint plus. As a grading company wanting to
14:53
get business, I think the Mint 9.5 like SGC and CGC has is a
14:59
mistake. I think if you want the most
15:02
accurate grading scale possible as a collector it's amazing.
15:05
So it depends on what master you want to serve.
15:08
Yeah, interesting. That's a really interesting
15:10
perspective. I I love 9.5 as a mint plus mint
15:16
9.5, but you have all the other half grades.
15:21
Why not have a 9.5? Doesn't it?
15:23
It just makes sense to me. I don't know.
15:25
I don't know why PSA never went to that when they did half
15:27
grades. I mean, it makes perfect sense
15:29
why it it allows you to, if a card's borderline, it allows you
15:32
to dictate does it go to a nine or does it go to a 10?
15:35
And to go back to why did Beckett struggle having a 9.5 as
15:39
a Jim Mcgrade? People don't like 9 point fives.
15:42
They want strength. That's the other.
15:44
You know, people talk about AI grading and all this and people,
15:47
people do not want fair and accurate grades.
15:50
They want 10s. When I say people, they're
15:52
listen, there are collectors out there that do want fair and
15:55
accurate grades. And praying with a very broad
15:57
brush here. So the comment section doesn't
15:59
kill me, but a majority of people submitting they don't
16:01
want fair and accurate. They just want to see a 10 on
16:04
the label when it comes back. Vintage collectors want fair and
16:07
accurate. They also want higher rates.
16:09
But most people who are submitting ultra modern and
16:12
modern cards want 10s. Yeah, if if you're ripping tops
16:15
Chrome basketball this week and you're sending in Cooper flag
16:18
parallels, you're sending those in expecting to get a 10 because
16:22
getting a nine doesn't do anything for you.
16:25
And to be quite frank, you know, we talked about the the Mint
16:27
plus the SGC and CGC 9.5. Getting that on a card in most
16:32
cases doesn't really help you that much.
16:34
Like if you look at sold listings values of ultra modern
16:37
gem mint plus grades, they'll sell a little bit more than a
16:41
nine but not much. Like that's I always call that
16:44
that's the grade that nobody knows what to do with.
16:47
Like when SGC first kind of broke out in ultra modern, no
16:50
one had any idea what to do with a 9.5 grade.
16:53
They're like is it a Basically they ended up selling close to
16:56
PSA 9 value, maybe slightly over unless it was something super
16:59
condition sensitive or super expensive.
17:02
Yeah, that's fair. So the other big thing that
17:05
happened this week was, congressman, without getting
17:07
political, we're going to try to do this without getting
17:09
political. A congressman.
17:10
I don't even remember what state New Jersey was it.
17:12
New York, NY, I believe. New York named Patrick Ryan,
17:16
ironically not the same Patrick Ryan as the shill bidding
17:19
scandal from earlier this this year referred collectors to the
17:26
FTC Federal Trade Commission for being a monopoly.
17:30
Effectively, can you? Can you agree that there's no
17:34
chance that anything happens with this?
17:36
Yes, I think this is a fantastic story for content creators.
17:41
Yes, we will love this, as I already have.
17:46
There'll be tons of content made about this, tons of talking
17:49
about it, but ultimately I don't think it has any impact.
17:55
I did some like we all do, you know, some back and forth with
18:00
AI this morning or last night. I also have a couple of viewers
18:06
of the channel that I've talked to before in DMS that actually
18:09
work in various stages of government.
18:15
And all of the ones that I've talked to have said the probably
18:19
the most like best case scenario for would be maybe it slows
18:26
things down slightly. And that was basically about it.
18:31
Like the the general sentiment seems to be that this is a
18:34
relatively younger congressman. I think he may just be brand new
18:38
that I don't know. So don't hold me to that.
18:40
But something like this to get traction, you need like
18:44
co-authors and backing. And also, you know, the current
18:50
political state is, shall we say, a little weird right now.
18:56
So I don't think the expectation is that there's a lot of, you
18:59
know, there's going to be a lot of stepping from the FTC and
19:04
we're about to see maybe Netflix potentially purchase.
19:07
What is it, Warner? Brothers, Warner Brothers.
19:09
Yeah. And that's probably going to go
19:11
through and that's like a $50 billion deal and has way bigger
19:13
impacts than trading cards. So if that's going to slide
19:17
through, I, I don't know why this one wouldn't.
19:21
Yeah. But I think the once again, as
19:24
always, in most of these cases, the biggest winner here is going
19:27
to be content creators. Yeah.
19:30
So it it is interesting. And I do wonder if if this is
19:35
just the first, the first brick in the wall, like, is it
19:40
possible? I know it's very, very unlikely,
19:42
but is it possible that in five years we're saying, wow, that
19:47
that Congressman who referred this to the FTC was the start of
19:50
something and maybe more Congress people sign on with it.
19:56
Maybe it's just the first brick to fall.
19:59
I doubt it. Again, I seriously heavily doubt
20:02
it because it's such a small acquisition in the grand scheme
20:05
of things. But it'll be interesting to see.
20:07
Do you think fanatics had anything to do with that?
20:12
No, I don't think so. I, I don't, I don't know what
20:16
the angle on that would be because I don't know, I think
20:20
what I'm sorry, jealousy. I don't know.
20:24
Fanatics has had the opportunity essentially twice now to get in
20:27
the grading. Like if they really wanted SGC,
20:29
they could have just outbid collectors if they really wanted
20:32
Beckett and we don't know if if that's what it was coming down
20:35
to or not. Like they could have just bought
20:37
Beckett. They could have just wrote a
20:39
bigger check essentially, if they really wanted to get into
20:42
the grading game. I don't, you know, Ruben said a
20:46
long time ago, I don't remember where, but basically like they
20:51
really didn't want to get into grading.
20:53
And I know you know, people will will choose to believe that or
20:56
not, but I think he's kind of shown us to this point that he
20:59
doesn't want to. Maybe that doesn't always hold.
21:02
Maybe five years from now that's not the case.
21:05
But I think they probably read the room and be like, OK, we buy
21:09
XGC, we buy back it. We, we partner with whoever.
21:13
They would have to dump a ton of money in it to compete with PSA
21:17
and like, is it worth it? Or are we just better off to
21:19
just partner with these people, make our percentage points here
21:22
and not try to have the whole thing and the whole, you know,
21:26
I, I ran AII did a little YouTube poll the other day
21:29
because the, the, the talking points around people lose their
21:33
mind that everything PSA does is a conflict of interest.
21:37
But then they want to manufacture to own a grading
21:39
company which is like to me, yes PSA definitely has some
21:46
conflicts of interest. A manufacturer owning a grading
21:49
company I think is a way bigger conflict of interest than
21:53
anything that PSA has. Like if you're ranking the
21:55
conflict of interest scale, OP slash fanatics owning 1 I think
22:00
is way higher than whatever PSA has going on over there.
22:04
Not to diminish what the conflicts of interest at PSA,
22:08
but that maybe that maybe I'm wrong in that opinion, I don't
22:10
know. Do you agree with that or?
22:11
No, I agree. It's for sure.
22:13
But one thing, I think it was in your video about this, you
22:16
talked about the possibility of eBay purchasing Beckett and
22:20
having Beckett become their authenticator, which was
22:23
intriguing to me. Is that something that had been
22:27
bandied about? Have you heard this before?
22:29
I. Don't think that was in my
22:30
video. I've seen that in comments
22:33
because I would not. I don't think that that's I
22:35
don't know why eBay would want to get into the grading space.
22:38
Like they already have deep relationships with PSA so why
22:42
would they want to reverse all that now?
22:45
That seems to be working well for both parties.
22:47
Yeah, Yeah, I think same situation I was, I don't
22:51
remember who mentioned that. It might have been Greg of
22:53
midlife cards because I haven't watched much content this week
22:56
and it's been like you and Greg and a couple of other people.
23:01
Maybe it was. Maybe he was reading a comment
23:03
from somebody. I've definitely seen the
23:06
comment. I don't believe I ever said that
23:08
because that's not something I agree with.
23:09
I don't I don't know why eBay would want to buy a grading
23:13
company when they already have strong ties with PSA because
23:16
from ebay's perspective, they want to get the most money for a
23:20
card and have easy liquidity and get the most cards possible on
23:25
their platform. And no other grading company
23:27
would come close to that. So it's kind of the same thing
23:30
to go back to the fanatics conversation, like it's sure,
23:33
I'm sure these companies would love to just control it all.
23:36
But at some point, it's like, is it worth it when we could just
23:39
sit here and basically do nothing and collect our
23:41
percentage points versus taking the risk of spending tons of
23:46
money to make a run at a very dominant force in the industry,
23:51
Which kind of plays into the congressman's letter to begin
23:54
with of, of why he even wrote that because they do, they do
23:59
control everything. Part of that is by them buying
24:01
things out. And part of that by is like, we
24:03
empowered them like the royal we as the hobby like has put PSA in
24:07
this position, like PS as made some smart business decisions.
24:11
They made some questionable ones, but ultimately, like the
24:14
hobby put them there. We're the ones that pay X amount
24:18
of percentage over an APSA card versus other grading companies.
24:23
We're the ones that put a huge premium on APSA 10 over APSA 9
24:27
and an SGC 10 and a back at 95 and ACG C10, you know, and part
24:32
of that is things that they've done too, like, you know,
24:34
there's the grading guarantee. People do like that.
24:36
Yeah, there's some quirks with it.
24:37
Doesn't cover everybody, but that matters to folks.
24:40
To set registry I think matters less than what people talking
24:42
up, but it definitely has an impact on stuff.
24:46
So initially when when this first came out, everybody was
24:49
screaming monopoly, monopoly, monopoly.
24:51
And then somebody put out the gem rate numbers and it was
24:54
surprising to me that PSA was only at 79% of recent graded
24:59
rated recently graded cards. And Jeff came out, Jeff Wilson
25:04
came out and said this is not a monopoly.
25:06
CGC owns 20% of the market, TAG owns 2%, whatever it is.
25:11
Do you think it's monopoly? I think it's no because of CGC.
25:20
And then there are also like you know, we throw A tag in there at
25:22
2%. And then there are also the just
25:24
because they don't make the gem rate chart, there is probably
25:28
another, I don't know what the percentage is Ryan AKA gem rate
25:32
might know better. But there probably is at least
25:35
another like handful of percentage points if you
25:38
combined up like all the really small ones like the FC, GS, the
25:42
arena clubs, the AG, S, S, the KS as the I forget the one in
25:47
Europe, the grades quite a bit of cards.
25:52
I think CGC existing is their number one reason why.
25:55
It's not because you still have them as a relatively major
26:00
player in the space, but. So is collectors almost rooting
26:08
for CGC to maintain some sort of semblance semblance of market
26:13
share here? Yeah, and they have gained and
26:15
they're probably going to gain more just off of PS as recent,
26:19
you know, nonsense. Like I don't think they're going
26:21
to jump 20% or anything crazy like that, but I bet their
26:25
submissions are up over the last five to 10 days for sure.
26:28
I mean they 10% off special. I see their CEO put out some
26:33
boilerplate statement, which just seems to be like what all
26:35
the grading companies are doing this week is running to their PR
26:38
person and say type us up something that makes us look
26:40
like we're, you know, good and exciting and for the hobby or
26:43
whatever. But I'm I'm of the same opinion
26:46
of CGC, like CG CS in the show don't tell right now.
26:50
Like the ball is in their court. If they want to grab this and
26:52
run, then grab it and run. And I don't know that just a 10%
26:55
special is them kind of like really boosting my confidence in
27:00
how bad they really want this. You know, president's statements
27:04
aside, like they really wanted this.
27:07
It's it's on the platter for them to really, you know, not
27:10
like top PSA down or anything crazy like that, but like really
27:13
get like a strong foothold specifically in the sports card
27:17
space. I mean, if I was them, I would
27:18
have put out the most aggressive special on tops Chrome
27:21
basketball this week, like not just some blanket 10% because I
27:26
talked about it in one of the videos.
27:28
Peter Steinberg literally wrote the playbook on how to do this.
27:31
$9. Specials on whatever the most
27:35
current set is, you get a fast turn around time on it and you
27:38
get cards that matter in your holders.
27:41
That me in sports specifically TC GS.
27:44
A little bit of a different story with CGC but in sports
27:47
specifically CG CS. Biggest problem is is that they
27:50
don't have a lot of cards that matter in their holder.
27:53
If you just go on eBay and do a sold listing search of CGC 10
27:57
tops or Panini, just a very generic search and just scroll
28:02
through the cards that sold, it's like a lot of nonsense.
28:06
It's not cards that people are genuinely like searching for on
28:10
a regular basis, and that's a problem.
28:13
That's their biggest problem in my opinion, and there's an easy
28:16
way to fix that. Yep, agreed.
28:20
Yeah, Peter, I interviewed him coming up on three years ago now
28:25
and I said what's your margin on these $9 specials?
28:28
And he said there is no margin. This is a customer acquisition
28:32
strategy basically, which made perfect sense.
28:36
Yeah, he literally wrote the playbook for a what?
28:40
Let's call it like a an established grading company to
28:43
gain more market share because CGC has the name.
28:46
It's not like they're a nobody. Like people know who they are.
28:48
People genuinely like their slab.
28:50
I think people are looking for reasons to grade with them.
28:53
They just have to give them to us.
28:55
Yeah, I, I'm sending out, I don't know, 3 cards off
28:58
autographs though, because I think that PCGCJSA is very good
29:02
with autographs. So I'm going to start sending a
29:05
few a month, you know, whatever I can afford just to get them
29:09
slapped up. I don't think I'm going to sell
29:11
any of them. I have a ton that I want to get
29:12
slabbed that are PC cards. My favorite thing because I I'm
29:18
the same way. I if there's something PC
29:20
oriented that I want graded, I usually hold it for them.
29:25
I rarely send them stuff. I like the grade with them at
29:27
the National. Their on site grading at the
29:31
National was dirt cheap. Like I was grading cards for I
29:36
think it might have been like I don't remember the exact number,
29:38
but like $20 and getting them back in a day.
29:42
So yeah, I'm paying a little bit more than what you could by
29:45
sending them in, but when you factor in that I'm not paying
29:47
shipping to and from and I'm in no hurry to get this stuff
29:51
graded because it's just, it's PC stuff.
29:53
So it doesn't really matter when I get it slabbed.
29:55
Like, but I dropped off I think like 5 cards at the National and
29:59
for around 20 bucks a card, maybe even slightly under
30:02
because you get your, if you're ACGC member, you get the
30:04
discount on on site grading too. So you get like another 10 or
30:08
20% off depending on what membership level you have.
30:11
And I was dropping them off on Thursday and the next morning
30:14
they were ready for me to pick up.
30:15
Like, I mean, how do you beat that for even $20 a card when
30:20
you don't have to worry about shipping and you're not paying
30:22
for shipping and worrying about like does the car to get lost or
30:24
being home to sign for it and all that stuff.
30:26
That's worth a couple bucks to me.
30:28
So I love on site grading at the National with CGC is like my
30:32
favorite thing to do. I've done it.
30:33
I think 3 nationals in a row now I'm going.
30:36
To have to give that a shot this year.
30:38
Do they? Do they?
30:39
I literally keep a little pile in a box and I'm just like, OK,
30:42
this is the CGC pile for later this year.
30:45
Like now I have some stuff, some vintage MTG and PSA slabs that I
30:49
want to crossover because I did that at the National this year
30:52
too. I crossed some stuff over
30:54
because I just like the way they look in our holder better.
30:56
Do you know if they authenticate autographs at the National?
30:59
I think so. I'm almost positive.
31:01
OK, I'll have to check that out. Yeah, double check on that one,
31:04
but I'm pretty sure they did that last year.
31:07
Yeah, so the the next big thing that happened this week is a
31:10
little bit smaller than the others, but the it's the 1961
31:13
Fleer Wilt Chamberlain. That was a 10 and it was
31:16
downgraded to a nine and PSA came with a statement.
31:19
Actually this was released by TJS online, Tony TJS online,
31:23
great social media, great on Instagram and Twitter also has a
31:28
YouTube channel that he posts to infrequently.
31:31
He released this saying, hey, I noticed that this came down from
31:35
4 tens to three. And then he looked up the known
31:38
pop number, sorry, the known cert numbers, and discovered
31:42
that the one that was off center that was discovered last summer,
31:46
I think about a year ago, I guess, was downgraded to a nine.
31:50
And this ended up blowing up and it forced PSA to release a
31:53
statement saying that the customer who bought the 10 for
31:58
$1,000,000 almost brought it to them for their guaranteed grade
32:02
review and they downgraded it to a nine.
32:06
Have you been following the story?
32:10
Tan gently. I, I saw some stuff on it
32:12
earlier this week and then I saw the, I was going back and forth
32:16
in a, in a Twitter thread about it yesterday afternoon.
32:22
Then I saw, you know, Jeff entered the chat and you know
32:25
that and then it turned into a hole.
32:26
Any time he gets involved, it turns in the hole thing.
32:30
So yeah, I'm like, I'm aware of it enough, yes.
32:33
So in that statement they said that the interesting part is
32:37
that the the customer brought it to PSA and then they said that
32:42
as part of our guarantee program, we paid out to cover
32:47
the difference or something like that and which the difference is
32:50
$800,000. But they did not say they
32:52
covered the full $800,000. And we know that based on their
32:55
terms and conditions, 250 is the Max they'll pay out per card.
32:59
Do you think they bridge the gap between that 250 and the
33:03
$800,000? Yes, I do too.
33:06
Yeah, because they they've, they've, yes, that's in their
33:09
terms and conditions. But it's one, it's their rules.
33:14
They could break them any time that they so choose.
33:16
And two, we know that they've offered higher because they
33:19
offered I think it was might have been in Jeff's video maybe
33:23
like we know they offered the guy that has the Wagner like
33:26
million. Yeah, like we know that they
33:29
offered him millions to get. 2.8 million.
33:31
Yeah. And he said no.
33:32
So that's that's way over there 250,000.
33:35
So if they want to go over to get a card back and out of a
33:38
particular holder, they absolutely will.
33:41
Yeah, you know, I don't think it.
33:43
To be fair, I don't think it happens often, but I think that
33:47
there are special circumstances where they're like, all right,
33:49
we got to do what we want. If we really want this card out
33:51
of this holder, we have to pay the piper.
33:54
To be fair, Auburn 35 pointed out that the Ken Kendrick
33:56
situation was about 10 years ago and the $250,000 Max was
34:01
implemented since Nat Turner took over in the last five years
34:04
or so. So, but I do agree with you.
34:05
I, I think I would be shocked if they didn't cover the full of
34:10
roughly $800,000. And you know, it's not exactly
34:14
800, but that's OK. It's still a wild situation that
34:19
they graded at 10. It was over 25 years ago.
34:23
That card was so off center I can't imagine that it was ever
34:27
within the 6040 guidelines that they used to have, which is now
34:30
5545. Yeah, and I'm not, listen, I, I,
34:35
I know people want to bash PSA for everything humanly possible
34:38
and people had to call me Apsa Homer, but it's really hard for
34:40
me to hold that against them from a card graded 25 years ago.
34:44
Yeah. That's God knows how many
34:46
graders management teams like. Yeah.
34:50
But I I don't disagree with you on why the hell did this card
34:52
get a 10 in the 1st place, but who the hell knows what was
34:55
going on 25 years ago over there.
34:58
Yeah, we want to, we want to slam Nat Turner and and the
35:01
current executive team, but they had nothing to do with that
35:03
grade and fixing it is a good thing. 100 percent, 100%.
35:09
It is a little bit surprising that it wasn't downgraded more
35:11
than that because of the condition of the car, but maybe
35:14
the condition. It's possible that the the
35:17
conditions that Auburn 35 discovered are just part of the
35:20
car somehow and they just said, you know what, this is still a
35:23
nine. Yeah.
35:24
And I'm out of my scope when it comes to vintage so.
35:27
And I know that like certain things can kind of be, I don't
35:31
want to say overlooked, but like not as scrutinized as heavily on
35:36
vintage cards because of the nature of just the way cards
35:39
were printed back then. And that's not my realm of
35:42
expertise at all. Is, is, is vintage, let alone
35:45
vintage grading? So I, I don't know the
35:47
particulars when it comes to vintage grading.
35:50
When you just quick glance the card, does it look like a 10?
35:52
Absolutely not. Like is a nine the worst thing
35:55
ever without picking it apart? No.
35:57
Is it most likely an 8? Probably like maybe a borderline
36:01
9, but like I said, I'm a little out of my depth on that so.
36:04
Yeah. And then Nick Andrews of Boston
36:07
Card Hunter said that something big is going to happen soon.
36:10
I don't want to take him out of context.
36:12
I don't want to say it exactly wrong, but he implied or I
36:15
inferred that something big is happening with that Carter soon.
36:20
Do you think there's a lawsuit that's brewing about that card?
36:22
Have you seen his post about that?
36:24
I haven't seen his post about that in particular.
36:27
No, he was specifically mentioning that.
36:30
Card or yeah, it was a 20 to 32nd reel about it and at the
36:34
end he said something big is about to happen or something
36:37
like that that I I read into maybe there's a lawsuit coming.
36:40
I don't know. Yeah, that I don't know because
36:43
I didn't even see his post about that.
36:46
OK. Any final thoughts on the week?
36:49
What do you think's going to happen this coming week,
36:51
Christmas week? Is is collector's going to buy
36:54
CGC? I thought things were finally
36:59
like, OK, we're like a couple days before Christmas, like
37:01
things are just going to go chill.
37:03
And then it was funny. I was literally on the phone
37:06
with someone else in the hobby yesterday just having a just a
37:11
casual conversation. And I like glanced over at
37:16
Twitter and I saw and I want to make sure I give credit.
37:20
Hold on one second. Let me pull the name up.
37:22
I forget. Oh, I don't have it handy.
37:25
And I'm going to blank the person that first first first
37:28
tweeted out about, well, Greg Bates, who is?
37:32
That's right. Yeah, so he was he, he, I don't
37:36
know if Lesko retweeted it or not, but he basically tweeted
37:41
out something like, oh, this is interesting in regards to.
37:44
Oh, OK. According to a press release
37:46
just received, Rep Patrick Ryan demands the FTC investigate
37:50
collectors. And I, I just like happened to
37:52
glance over at my monitor that I have over here, which is my
37:55
Twitter monitor. And I was like to the person I
38:00
was talking about, I'm like, hold on a second.
38:01
And I was just like, what? And then I went, oh boy.
38:05
They're like, what? I like, read them the tweet and
38:07
they're like oh Lord. And then you had to go so you
38:11
could record a video. Yeah, yes, yeah.
38:13
We're both like, OK, we have to go and then to go do our
38:17
respective things that we needed to go do.
38:19
Must have been Dustin. What's that?
38:21
Must have been Dustin. It was not Dustin.
38:24
It was another content creator, but it was not not dusted and
38:29
then it was a scramble for the full press release and all that.
38:32
But I think, I think I got that video up with it.
38:34
I like timing myself from when whatever it is first pops up.
38:38
I think that one was up within about 35 minutes when it went.
38:42
When the press release came, it took part of that actually might
38:45
have been closer to 45 minutes because it took about 10 minutes
38:48
to actually get like the link to the full press release versus
38:52
just screenshots of it. And eventually it like I was on
38:55
his like Patrick Ryan's website looking for it and then
38:57
eventually it popped up on there.
39:00
Nice, but that's cool. Get these curve balls out of
39:03
nowhere on a freaking Friday afternoon five days before
39:06
Christmas or whatever it is. Yeah, I again have a busy week
39:10
coming up and I didn't, I wasn't able to cover a lot of the stuff
39:13
just because of life. And I'm hoping that we have a
39:17
quiet week this week and then when I'm on vacation the week
39:20
after Christmas next week, maybe then I'll have time and
39:23
something big will happen and I'll be able to put out a video
39:25
about it. I think the last big I I forget
39:29
the exact date on it but fanatics buying tops was right
39:32
after Christmas I think. OK.
39:36
I'm almost positive because and the only reason I know that is
39:40
because a lot of people, I think that was a couple days before
39:42
the end of the year, a lot of folks were all posting like
39:46
their predictions for 2020, like whatever year that was,
39:49
predictions for the upcoming year.
39:51
And it missed most of those. Like it kind of happened like as
39:55
everyone was in the middle of like that content schedule of
39:58
let me do my like big stories from the previous year and look
40:00
aheads to the the following year type videos.
40:04
And it happened right in the middle of all that and caused
40:06
like chaos basically for the content creators.
40:09
But yeah, I don't remember the exact date on that, but it was
40:11
right before the end of the year that one.
40:13
That was another one that just completely came out of nowhere
40:16
at a time of year when you really wouldn't expect it per
40:18
SE, because it's like. Guys, chill out.
40:24
Well, that about wraps it up. I appreciate you coming on
40:26
again. Anytime.
40:28
Yeah. Thanks.
40:31
And Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays.
40:33
Yeah, you too. Thank you and everybody else.
40:36
Thanks for watching. By the way, Jeff Wilson alluded
40:40
yesterday to coming on this podcast here coming up soon.
40:43
It is the second time. So fool me once the shame on
40:46
you. Fool me twice, the shame on me.
40:48
Make sure you're subscribed if you're not already.
40:50
So you make sure you see that if it does happen, I'll see y'all
40:53
soon.