Latest / Sports Card Clubhouse / This Week In Sports Cards With NEO Cards & Comics! Snype, Beckett, PSA, and Much More!

Transcript

This Week In Sports Cards With NEO Cards & Comics! Snype, Beckett, PSA, and Much More! · Sports Card Clubhouse

0:00
Hey everybody, it is Mike and I'm joined by Neo of Neo cards
0:05
and comics. Neo Rob, right?
0:08
Yeah. Great to have you on.
0:10
First time we've ever talked in person.
0:12
We've had a little DM back and forth occasionally, but good to
0:15
have you on. Yeah, thanks for being here.
0:17
Yeah, we, we were talking pre stream.
0:19
I was like, wait, we've never actually met in person or talked
0:21
in person, right. We've just only like exchanged
0:23
comments and back and forth on Twitter on stuff.
0:26
Yeah, I've been a long time watcher of your channel and
0:30
probably 3 plus years. Well, I've been doing this for 4
0:33
1/2 years. So probably around 4 years ago I
0:36
started watching your channel. I don't watch everything, of
0:38
course. I don't think anybody does watch
0:40
everything of everybody, but you do a really nice, balanced job
0:44
of covering the news, the big stuff that's happening in the
0:48
hobby. Yeah, I've, I've kind of pivoted
0:53
to that niche over the years and I don't remember when I started
0:57
watching your stuff. It's been years as well.
0:59
I don't remember exactly what or how I fell into your vortex, but
1:04
I've been for sure watching you for at least a handful of years.
1:08
I mean, we've, we've had it on Twitter for the last couple of
1:10
years at minimum. Yeah, I've kind of pivoted out
1:14
of the news. I'd now do it on just on my
1:15
Sunday. I'll just cover stuff quickly,
1:17
but I don't have the time to to put out a video every single
1:21
day. Like, I don't know if you do
1:22
every day, but I know Dustin does.
1:24
And it felt like it was almost like a stressor for me to try to
1:29
beat you and Dustin to the punch on certain things.
1:32
And then there were a lot of things that I just didn't care
1:34
to cover and it, it became too much for me.
1:39
And I was like, you know what, I'm just not going to do this.
1:40
If there's something that is of interest to me, I will cover.
1:44
I'll put out a video. It might even be two or three
1:46
days later. But if people are interested in
1:47
hearing what I think, then I'll do that.
1:49
But otherwise I I don't chase the news anymore.
1:52
Yeah, the news thing, it is definitely a blessing and a
1:55
curse because if you could be quick and timely on stuff, it
2:01
gives you a massive edge in regards to like the YouTube game
2:06
of it all. It absolutely does.
2:09
But the the curse part of that is, is when you're not or when
2:12
you can't be, it's like, hey, where's your video at?
2:16
You know, you start getting DMS like hey, have you seen this?
2:18
How come you don't have a video up on it yet?
2:20
And it's like, guys, I'm like, you know, I'm in the middle of
2:23
like 14 things like give me, give me 10 minutes to get
2:26
something, you know, thrown together.
2:28
But luckily my process on recording and getting stuff up
2:33
like it's, I can get a video up extremely fast because I'm doing
2:38
mostly screen records. I'm not even on camera for 95%
2:41
of the stuff that I post other than lives and, and interviews.
2:46
And that allows me to be quick. So I I sacrifice production
2:49
value for the speed and the ease of getting something up and I
2:55
let the the words essentially stand on their own without
2:58
having a bunch of glitz and glamour.
3:00
And that has honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that I have
3:03
a very quick back end process, I don't know that I would have.
3:07
I probably would have burned out a long time ago.
3:10
Yeah, yeah, I can totally see that.
3:12
And I I can't stand to not edit my videos.
3:17
I don't edit the podcasts at all, but my videos I just, I
3:22
can't, I have to edit certain things out.
3:24
Silence is like if I'm looking at my notes, things like that or
3:27
clearing my throat, I just, I edited out.
3:30
And so it creates a longer form of of, you know, from beginning
3:36
to end for me. Yeah, I mean, my, my videos are
3:41
not 1000% edit free. Like there's definitely times
3:44
where I have to stop and take a breath or grab a drink or cough
3:47
or sneeze or my phone beeps. So like I'm making maybe two to
3:51
three cuts of video at most. If I have something like that
3:54
pop up, I do like a 10 count. And then I could see it in the
3:57
timeline on the editor really easy.
3:59
And then I know I need to go in and like listen to the last 10
4:01
seconds in the 1st 10 seconds and see what I need to marry
4:04
together. But that that only takes me, you
4:06
know, very little time to put that together.
4:09
But I've always, when I started doing this, I always said I
4:12
didn't want to script anything and I'm just going to fire from
4:15
the hip. And for the most part, that's
4:17
worked out pretty well over the years.
4:20
Yeah, yeah, I don't script anything.
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I take notes and I just try to hit on the bullet points that I,
4:24
I have. But yeah, I I I once I scripted
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one video and I hated it. The only thing, the thing that
4:31
takes me the longest, which yours is probably the same way
4:33
as the Sunday video because I'm usual and even my process for
4:38
that now is fairly clean. But usually the back half of my
4:42
Sunday video, I'll look at card prices.
4:43
So I have to put some research into like what I want to look at
4:46
and that takes some time. But for most, I'd probably say
4:51
90% of the videos that I post, I don't even have notes.
4:53
It's just I'll have the tabs pulled up or whatever it is that
4:56
I need. Excuse me.
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And in some cases it might just be 1 tab and then I just let it
5:01
RIP. Yeah, my Sunday video takes me
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up to two hours. I don't think it ever takes more
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than two hours unless I have some weird technical issues, but
5:09
I think I've eliminated those. But yeah, total of about two
5:12
hours every Sunday morning, 90 minutes if I'm really good.
5:16
Yeah, mine's probably similar these just because it's a longer
5:19
video typically like it takes me like 30 to 35 minutes just to
5:22
record it because they usually run about 1/2 an hour.
5:24
But I'm sure you're probably like me, like I, I have a
5:27
dedicated monitor when a browser tab or browser on a, on a window
5:32
that literally as the week goes on, I'm just throwing things in
5:36
an open tab on, on that browser and it just sits there all week.
5:40
And then at the end of the week, I pull it over on Saturday.
5:42
And then I like click through and like, OK, these are the
5:45
things as the week went on that I wanted to make sure that I
5:47
touch on that I find anything else that I need to throw in
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there. That's how I handle it.
5:51
So then on today, later today when I record the Sunday video,
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I'll just slide that whole browser window over.
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And then I already have all the tabs pulled up from throughout
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the week, like something will pop up on Twitter and I'll just
6:02
like open new tab and then just let it sit there like, oh, I
6:05
want to make sure I hit on this later.
6:07
Yeah, that's pretty similar. I do bookmarks.
6:10
So bookmarks on Twitter, you know, the little bookmark button
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and Instagram and all over the place, really.
6:16
And then I just go through them all on Sunday morning and pick
6:18
out which ones I want to cover and in what order, just to
6:22
oversimplify it. But let's talk about the news,
6:24
because this week was bonkers and I think you did a really
6:28
nice job of covering a lot of it.
6:32
Yeah, there's some things that I was thinking this morning when I
6:35
was getting up. I was like, man, this Sunday
6:36
video tomorrow is going to be a long one.
6:40
Yeah, the snipe thing is the craziest thing to me.
6:42
And it feels like everyday something new comes out, some
6:45
new allegation against Probstein and nothing is very clear.
6:49
And I thought, I haven't watched your video yet, so because I I
6:53
wanted to get your perspective live, but I thought Dan the Card
6:55
Man did a good one a couple days ago where he was very fair to
6:59
Probstein where he said, I don't believe this was him.
7:03
I think that this was somebody who hacked in and is trying to
7:06
make him look bad. But it's feels like since then
7:09
more has come out. What's your take on the the
7:13
Probstein snipe situation? Maybe actually before you say
7:16
that, can you explain what has happened it briefly?
7:20
Yeah. So I mean, essentially Probe's
7:22
seen the biggest eBay seller that there was up until this
7:25
year. Then PSA passed them up for
7:28
singles at least said, hey, I'm going out on my own launch
7:32
Snipe. And I think he's been working on
7:33
it for a year plus, at least publicly, a year that it's been
7:36
out there and probably longer before that.
7:39
It launched on Monday. It did not go well.
7:41
There was site crashes, people complaining about getting double
7:43
charged, auctions ending early, auctions ending late, basically
7:48
like everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong.
7:51
So that was kind of the initial like, oh God, what the hell has
7:54
happened here? And it, you know, it says right
7:57
on it. It's a beta.
7:58
So you kind of expect some things to go a little wonky.
8:01
I don't know that people expected it to be like as big as
8:03
a fire that it was. So that was Monday and the
8:06
Tuesday and then I don't remember when the E4 Elite forum
8:10
thing got posted was it might have been Tuesday late or like
8:14
Wednesday during the day where some Pokémon users found out
8:17
that the site potentially was hacked and the user information
8:20
was potentially leaked. And then as part of that, they
8:23
were able to get in there and see like, users and bid
8:26
histories. And then it's kind of spiraled
8:29
in that general direction. And if even part of the stuff in
8:32
there is true. And once again, no one's
8:34
confirmed any of this, so who knows?
8:37
It definitely doesn't look good. And at some point, the narrative
8:43
is almost just writing itself. Like, I don't even know, even if
8:47
it's all fake and it's like you said, you know, maybe he was
8:51
completely targeted. And that actually that was
8:53
mentioned in the very before any of this even came out of on the
8:56
elite forums collected an article.
8:59
And in the, in that on, I think that was posted on Monday, it
9:02
mentioned at the bottom that Rick's like, I think we were
9:04
like cyberattacks basically. And that was prior to the Elite
9:08
forum even getting posted. And we knew all this other
9:10
stuff. So at least gives a little bit
9:11
of credence to that. It's messy to say the least.
9:16
It is very messy. Yeah, and I saw on Dustin's
9:20
video that Probstein is blaming the cloud flare, cloud flare
9:24
outage. I think that was Tuesday
9:25
morning, but that was 12 hours after the the snipe issue
9:30
happened. So I didn't, I didn't quite buy
9:32
into that. But I can definitely see a cyber
9:36
attack. It's just what we we have a
9:39
problem here where Probstein has long been accused of shield
9:42
bidding and allowing shield bidding and now he on the back
9:47
end, people have found some potential evidence where appears
9:52
appears. I'm not saying he was that there
9:55
were accounts that are tied to him that were in fact bidding up
10:01
on items that in an ideal world the owner of an auction house
10:06
would not be bidding on. There's no evidence yet that it
10:08
was him. It does appear that it was
10:10
because if somebody were to create a some sort of back end
10:14
cyberattack, they would want it to look like him if that's their
10:18
goal. But I don't know that we're
10:20
there yet, right? Can we?
10:21
We can't definitively say who this was.
10:25
I agree with you. Like there, there is way too
10:27
many unknowns at this point. And at at some point we're going
10:31
to find out something because if there was a legit cyber attack
10:33
and things were leaked, like there's certain legal
10:37
ramifications to that in regards to you.
10:39
Like you have to notify people like there's certain time frames
10:42
there. And I think a lot of it depends
10:44
on what country you're in and where you're at.
10:46
And I don't necessarily understand the in and outs of
10:48
it, but I was poking around on the requirements for that
10:51
because, you know, I don't know if we're probably going to talk
10:53
about Beckett as well. They potentially had one too.
10:56
So at some point in time, some formal notification is going to
10:59
have to happen. And at some point in time, if he
11:01
hasn't really said anything since Monday, at some point in
11:05
time, he's going to have to say something that went went on.
11:07
I mean, if you had, let's take all the nonsense out of it.
11:09
Let's just simply say you had a $10,000 card that you were
11:12
selling through him. Like you're sitting there today
11:15
going like, like, what's going on with my cards, buddy?
11:17
Like, are they just getting sold?
11:20
Like people may have timed certain things to sell before
11:24
certain parts of the NFL season or the NBA season.
11:27
And now, like, he has a lot like remove all the nonsense to the
11:30
side. At minimum, he has left his
11:32
customers in like big time limbo.
11:36
Right. I think no matter what we can,
11:39
everybody can agree that this is a very, very bad situation for
11:42
Rick Probstein where the auction didn't go well, which fine, but
11:48
then to have all this happen afterwards is really bad.
11:52
And now there's rumors that he is emailing consignors saying
11:56
that he's trying to move to to eBay for at least that one
11:59
auction, if not more, which is very strange that he left eBay
12:03
and now he's trying to go back. What do you make of that?
12:09
Part of that could be if you want to play devil's advocate
12:12
and give him the benefit of the doubt, let's say he has all
12:15
these customer cards that he needs to sell.
12:18
He knows his websites. Like whatever is going on with
12:21
his website is going to take a long time to fix, and he just
12:25
wants to get these cards to market for his customers as
12:27
quickly as possible. Like it could be literally as
12:30
simple as that, that he just wants to get these cards out of
12:33
his hands and sold and the quickest and easiest way to do
12:36
it is just to get them on eBay. Because whatever happened on
12:40
Snipe is just going to take weeks, months or whatever to
12:44
unravel. And he just wants to get this
12:47
current consignment batch out to take care of his customers and
12:50
that. And that honestly just could be
12:52
a decent chunk of it of hey, I need to get these sold, maybe he
12:55
needs the money, maybe it's just I need to take care of the
12:57
customers that trusted these cards with me and this is the
13:00
quickest and most efficient way to do it is to get him on eBay.
13:04
Let's play the yes or no game. Will Snipe still exist 2 years
13:09
from now? Two years from now, I'm going to
13:12
say no, I don't know that it exists next month.
13:16
Yeah. So that's The thing is I I
13:18
wonder if he even tries to get it back up and running.
13:21
And if he does, maybe he he tries for a year or so and then
13:25
has to shut it down because this has been a massive, massive hit
13:29
to the reputation of Probstein. And maybe he goes back to eBay,
13:34
I'm not sure. But you know, a billion dollars
13:36
in sales, right? Right.
13:38
That's that's the other wild card here.
13:40
If he is actually going back to eBay, is eBay going to accept
13:47
him? Ebay's probably going to want to
13:49
have a really interesting conversation about.
13:51
So these forum posts, Sir, can you explain some things to us?
13:56
Yeah. And you know, maybe they charge
13:59
him higher fees. I'm sure that his fees were very
14:01
low on there before, but now they've got some leverage on
14:04
him. Oh for sure, they have all the
14:07
power in this situation. Like he's probably not going to
14:10
get as aggressive of consignments as he did or
14:13
selling rates as he did before. Right.
14:16
What do you think those selling rates were?
14:18
I don't know but I have to imagine they were pretty
14:20
aggressive given the amount of volume that he was doing right?
14:23
Like 3. I had that and I don't remember
14:25
the numbers off top of my head. Generate ran some custom data
14:28
for me that I did a video on about a month ago where it
14:31
actually you could see how much each person was selling and I
14:35
forget what his was per month. It was like in the maybe 10 to
14:39
15,000,000 range. I don't have it handy, but
14:44
that's a, that's monthly sales just in sports card singles.
14:47
That's not counting like wax and other stuff that he sold.
14:51
So when you're talking, let's just call it 10 million a month
14:54
and it was probably more than that.
14:56
Like that's a lot. I mean, he was the second this
14:59
year. He was the second biggest sports
15:01
card seller. PSA passed him up early in the
15:03
year, but he was still it was them too, like way above
15:06
everybody else. Yeah.
15:09
So let's move on to the PSA. Since you just mentioned them.
15:11
Their turn around times have gone from reportedly 3 months,
15:15
65 business days to now five months, 95 business days.
15:19
What do you make of this? Well, the devil's in the details
15:23
on this one because if you believe them and you're kind of
15:27
you could kind of backwards into the math on the blowout forms
15:30
and on on social. The turn around times actually
15:33
didn't change. They're just changing the way
15:34
that they were reporting them now.
15:37
Maybe they snuck a few business days in there, but essentially
15:40
before the key part about PSA turn around times as they didn't
15:44
start until your order was checked in and a lot of people
15:47
didn't understand that. So right now it takes a month to
15:50
check an order in. So you would send the order, say
15:54
it got delivered December 1st, your clock wouldn't actually
15:56
start till January 1st. Now they're just building that
16:00
time in right from the get. So yes, on paper it went from 65
16:03
to 90 days or whatever it went to, but in reality, it's just
16:07
the more accurate representation of the time that it takes from
16:10
when the card, when your cards are actually delivered and
16:12
received at the office. Like I said, I I think they
16:15
probably gave themselves a little extra days in there as
16:18
well. So maybe they slightly extended
16:21
out, but generally speaking, I don't know that they really
16:24
changed that much. It's just a a different way that
16:28
they're reporting them. Yeah, I largely agree.
16:32
But if they're taking a month now, that's 20 business days.
16:35
They increased it by 30. So they've still increased it by
16:39
10, two weeks. But I also think that they were
16:42
already taking that anyway and they were just saying it would
16:45
take 65 business days. So I think that they're and and
16:50
it makes me wonder if they were already taking that before and
16:52
now they're saying this is our new turn around time, will they
16:55
now take longer? Will it actually take 125
16:57
business days? That part, I don't know.
17:01
I'm going to speculate and say probably no.
17:06
A, a couple reasons for that. They tend to overestimate that
17:12
stuff to give themselves a little wiggle room.
17:14
Now that has not been the case recently they because they've
17:16
been so busy. But the other thing that's
17:18
changed is that they have Florida online now and that's
17:20
new. That's only been up and running
17:22
for a month. And we saw their capacity jump
17:24
massively with Florida coming online.
17:27
Like they had their first month where they basically did
17:29
2,000,000 cards. They felt just shy of that.
17:32
And it seems like they're trending even higher this month.
17:36
Pokémon seems to be slowing down ever so slightly, but that might
17:40
get replaced with Tops basketball, who knows.
17:44
And as the turn around times get longer, I think less people are
17:47
going to be willing to send in as well.
17:51
So I could see them maybe kind of catching up just a little bit
17:56
and start wiggling that down over the next quarter.
18:00
But we'll find out. I mean, we, we will find out.
18:02
There's not a new, I think what I will honestly help them is
18:05
there is not a new Pokémon release until the end of
18:07
January. Now the the new set came out
18:09
about a week ago and they just announced this week that there
18:13
is not a new release until mid to end January.
18:15
And that's been driving a ton of their business.
18:17
Like that's why they're backed up is from Pokémon, not sports
18:20
cards. One thing I did beat you to this
18:24
week was the com C rumor that they are shutting down or on the
18:27
verge of shutting down and you still got more views than I did.
18:31
Yes, I checked this morning when I was looking com C.
18:36
So this all started with those back pages.
18:38
Eric very popular Twitter account.
18:42
He's also a a YouTube posted that he has on good authority
18:47
that COMC is in a lot of financial trouble.
18:49
They had just done a layoff that day apparently or the day before
18:53
and that they might not make it to or past Q2 of 2026.
18:58
What do you make of this? I need to preface because people
19:02
will kill me in the comments if I don't.
19:03
They do sponsor my channel, so let me let me put that.
19:07
I love COMC. I would I would take COMC as a
19:10
sponsor as well and I don't take very many sponsors.
19:12
If I had an opening, I would take them.
19:14
Yeah, they are fantastic. I love the platform.
19:16
I, I absolutely, I, I sell a lot of low end stuff, like the stuff
19:21
I don't want to deal with on that platform.
19:25
Yes, they had layoffs and I think you could kind of put the
19:29
math together there of, oh, some people got laid off this morning
19:33
and then a few hours later some bad news about Comm C comes out
19:37
that maybe some disgruntled employees weren't real happy.
19:40
And we're, we're kind of ranting and raving about it.
19:43
I'll repeat what I said in my video, you know, are things
19:46
sunshine and kittens over there? I don't know, but probably not.
19:50
I'm sure that it's not like perfect, but what business is
19:53
are the padlocks going on the doors next week?
19:56
No, I don't like I I don't believe that at all.
20:01
There's too many fanatics or eBay would swoop in if it ever
20:07
got that bad. Like let's just be honest here.
20:09
If it ever got to the point where I'm C on its own couldn't
20:12
sustain they someone would swoop in and and.
20:16
And grab that in a heartbeat. It's too valuable.
20:19
With both those entities so. Yeah, it's too valuable of a
20:22
property. It hasn't really been updated
20:24
much in the past few years and probably needs to be.
20:28
But there are millions of cards on there and and a lot of people
20:33
love it and use it every single day.
20:35
So it would surprise me greatly if they actually just flat out
20:39
went out of business. Yeah, and I'm sure, you know,
20:42
I'm not an accountant. I don't know their books it like
20:46
what they're doing is super manual like it's a lot of Labor
20:50
intensive stuff. So I'm sure that their costs are
20:53
high. I think they just moved into a
20:54
new building as well. But at the same time, like you
20:59
said, they have a ton of transactions that happened.
21:04
I believe they've over the last few months had like some of
21:08
their best months ever in regards to sales numbers.
21:12
But I just think that there's a heavy human cost as well.
21:14
So I think some of the layoffs are them just kind of cleaning
21:17
things up and helping clean up the books.
21:18
And I don't, this is just me speculating.
21:19
They have not told me anything. And some of it might be that,
21:24
hey, you know, we, we need to cut costs a little bit here,
21:27
like most business. I mean, how many businesses
21:30
haven't had layoffs in the last three months, right?
21:34
But like I said to, you know, you got to make your own
21:37
decisions where there's smoke, maybe there's a little bit of
21:40
fire if you have a ton of stuff tied up on there, sit back, you
21:43
know, evaluate how bad certain things would hurt you as an
21:46
individual user. Everyone's different and, and
21:48
make a decision that works best for you.
21:50
I, I can say I'm not changing my patterns at all.
21:53
I, I'm actually getting ready to send them more stuff probably in
21:56
the next week or so. So.
21:59
They just received almost 200 cards of mine in the mail
22:01
yesterday. So I'll probably be shipping
22:03
them 100 within the next week. I just I'm I keep getting behind
22:07
on put the box together to send out.
22:10
Yeah. So the former biggest competitor
22:15
to to PSA was Beckett. And this week, help me
22:18
understand what this announcement was, because it
22:20
looked like Beckett was announcing that they're not
22:23
taking submissions initially when when we first saw it on
22:26
Twitter, it said Beckett, we are no longer taking Beckett
22:29
submissions. But it it turned out to just be
22:32
a group submitter. Has Beckett shut off all group
22:35
submissions or just that one? No, it's all group submitters,
22:40
which to be fair, I don't know that how many they have that are
22:42
huge. It's not like PSA where you know
22:45
PSA gets massive amounts of group submissions.
22:47
I mean I think Becca gets a good chunk of their percentage from
22:50
group submitters, but I the amount of like super large ones
22:53
I don't think compared to the PSA ones.
22:55
But yes, it is all Becca group submitters.
22:58
Why? So from what I can piece
23:02
together, it does sound like the reasoning that PC Sports Cards
23:07
was commenting on, in the, because people were asking them
23:10
on that on that Twitter post or Instagram post, like what the
23:14
Hell's going on over there? And their PC Sports Cards
23:17
response was Becca is telling us they are too busy and they're
23:19
trying to get ahead of things. And from everything that I could
23:22
piece together talking to folks that actually seems to be fairly
23:26
legitimate that they are getting a lot of sufficient volume,
23:31
mostly TCG, and they're trying to kind of keep their head above
23:38
water and not have a repeat of COVID where they got completely
23:43
buried. So go ahead, I was.
23:46
Just going to say, I don't think people realize, and I don't know
23:49
the exact numbers, but Beckett's grading team is not that big.
23:53
So you could kind of piece together, all right, you know,
23:57
we're getting a lot of submissions.
23:58
We're starting to get behind. We're coming into the holidays.
24:02
You know, people are going to be off more, you know, all these
24:05
little things, all these little paper cuts kind of start to
24:08
build up. You could kind of piece together
24:12
the scenario where they're like, all right, we need to, like,
24:13
slow things down before we get completely buried.
24:16
And we're an absolute mess like we were before because they
24:19
caught a ton of hell, like a lot of the grading companies did
24:22
during COVID for doing nothing. Yeah.
24:25
So I don't understand how Beckett can go from where they
24:28
were say 90 days ago where submissions were declining.
24:32
They were flat for a long, long time and there doesn't appear to
24:37
be much promotion of them outside of the one thing that
24:41
got a fair amount of publicity, which was same value or no
24:46
matter the value, no up charges, right.
24:48
That one ad that kind of, I think even Jeff Wilson pointed
24:51
it out. So how did they go from where
24:54
they were a few months ago to now being unable to handle group
24:57
submissions? Well, to be fair, we don't
24:59
actually know their submission volume.
25:01
We see what they grade every month.
25:03
Right. So their numbers of basically
25:05
stayed relatively the same ish give or take.
25:09
I don't know, maybe 10%. So we're not seeing how much is
25:12
building up on the back end. I know if you dig around on
25:16
social, you could see people complaining more about turn
25:19
around times getting longer and things taking longer to move
25:23
through the system and like orders getting dropped off and
25:25
it taking longer to get them back like over the last couple
25:27
of months. So if you kind of piece things
25:30
together through the weeds, you can kind of see it.
25:32
And part of it could be, hey, you know, they had that and just
25:36
some natural like people getting annoyed with PSA for how long
25:39
they're taking and saying, all right, you know, screw it, I
25:42
want to get this graded. I'm not waiting 95 business days
25:46
for PSA. I'll send it over to Beckett and
25:50
they could have picked up some extra volume from that.
25:53
But once again, I think it TCG seems to be the driver of
25:55
everything right now in the grading world.
25:59
So if what is Beckett's turn around time?
26:02
Do you know their standard turn around time?
26:04
I don't. Off the top of my head, it's
26:06
because the way that they structure their stuff is a
26:08
little bit different. Yeah.
26:11
So I guess if they have been seeing increased turn around
26:16
times for months, it sounds like based on Twitter and and other
26:19
things and they're still grading the same number of cards.
26:22
Are they just not increasing their capacity?
26:26
I think it's very difficult for them to do that.
26:28
I mean, I, I think Beckett's hands are tied in a lot of
26:30
different ways, both financially and just finding graders.
26:34
I think, I mean, we've, I think the one thing that we could take
26:38
away from the last couple of years is how hard it is actually
26:40
to find graders to the point where PSA bought STC to get the
26:44
grading team basically like they went that far to get graders.
26:49
So I don't think finding graders is as easy as people think.
26:51
I know there's this narrative of we'll just get these guys off
26:53
the street from McDonald's and have them start grading cards.
26:56
Like that doesn't actually happen.
26:59
There is a pretty in depth process for most of these
27:01
places. All right, so you mentioned PSA
27:04
or collectors buying SGC. Let's play the yes or no game.
27:07
Does the SGC brand still exist 2 years from now?
27:11
No. I said that the night that it
27:13
happened, I actually, I, I recently went back and looked
27:16
because I was curious to see, I did a live stream the night that
27:20
that news broke. I I'll tell you a funny story
27:23
about that. The and on the basically like in
27:28
the opening monologue in the live stream or at some point, I
27:31
basically was like, they're they're done like right, right
27:34
from the get they're done like they're at some point in time
27:37
in, in the yeah, I wasn't saying like next month or anything, but
27:40
like the long term prospects of SGC is, you know, they're going
27:43
to be toast. So you don't even think
27:45
collectors will keep the brand even though we have they've
27:48
already changed it drastically. The turn around time is up,
27:50
customer service is nearly non existent.
27:52
The two things that come that SGC was best known for the brand
27:57
still exists now and you can still submit to this boutique
28:01
grader, as they call it. And I was that on your channel,
28:04
by the way? Yes, yeah, that, that was a good
28:07
get. Yeah, I had that video up.
28:12
I think the Peter announcement came out at, I don't know, let's
28:15
say 10 AM and my video was live at 10 O one.
28:18
Yeah, nice. So why?
28:22
Why do you think they're going to just shut it off?
28:25
Kill it? All together I don't think they
28:27
need it. Like why?
28:27
Why do they? Why do they need the brand?
28:30
They make more money grading a card in APSA slab than they do
28:33
in SGC slab. Right, but don't you think
28:35
they'll entirely lose a large portion of the vintage sports
28:39
card hobby? Where else are they going to
28:42
grade with? CGCCG.
28:45
C has though they have Andy who's one of the better vintage
28:47
graders out there. CGC gets not a ton of respect in
28:51
sports and they get even less respect in vintage.
28:57
I just think that if they kill off SGC, that really upsets a
29:02
lot of long time big time vintage collectors.
29:08
I just don't. I might be a mistaker.
29:09
I. Mean, I just don't know that
29:10
they care. I, I, I think it's what, you
29:12
know, when I interviewed Ryan when the boutique grading thing
29:14
came out, I, I think it's honestly what they said in that
29:18
video, what, what he said in that video was basically the
29:23
customers are going to determine what happens with SGC.
29:25
Like PSA has put them to where collectors has put them to where
29:30
they're going to put them, smaller team, smaller everything
29:35
boutique. If submission volume continues
29:39
and people still want to use them under those circumstances,
29:41
then as long as they stay in the green, the vibe but I got is
29:45
that they will exist, but they're not going to get
29:48
specials anymore. You're not going to see them at
29:50
shows anymore. You know, they're not going to
29:54
get a ton of support or love from Papa Collector's universe.
29:58
So if they can sit there and exist and be profitable, then
30:02
they might still continue to chug along.
30:04
But I've seen stuff recently where their turn around times
30:07
are getting longer. Like you said, their customer
30:09
service isn't as great as it used to be.
30:11
I've seen more people complaining about their grading
30:13
returns from them in regards to the the, the, the grades that
30:16
they're getting back being a little bit more inaccurate or
30:19
not, you know, as good as they used to be.
30:21
And we don't know. We know that they pulled a bunch
30:23
of graders, but we don't know which ones that they pulled.
30:25
Did they pull the best ones? Did they pull the newest ones?
30:28
You know, are the guys that were there their vintage ace graders
30:33
still grading over there or are they grading in red, white and
30:36
blue labels instead of tuxes? Right, yeah, it's it's super
30:41
interesting topic and one that I'm following closely.
30:46
The another thing you did a video on this week that I
30:48
haven't watched and I actually know nothing about the tops
30:50
Chrome NBA release. What happened?
30:53
Your your your video made it seem like it's been a disaster,
30:56
or at least the title and the thumbnail which I again, I have
30:59
not watched. Walk me through what happened
31:01
with that. Tops is not good at distribution
31:06
and direct to consumer sales on hot releases.
31:10
Like it's just their website is kind of very bot prone.
31:17
I think so the bots could eat on these super hot releases and
31:22
it's just not a it's not a customer friendly experience at
31:25
all. Like you, you log on the boxes
31:27
went on sale at noon. I was on right at noon.
31:31
Clicked add to cart and it's like, oh, OK, cool, it's in
31:34
stock. We're we're putting you in a
31:35
virtual line and it said, you know, you'll check out in 4
31:38
minutes. You're like, oh, OK, cool.
31:40
You know, you sit there and it does it's thing and then you get
31:43
out of line and it goes, oh, it's sold out.
31:48
It's just not like, and they control the supply so they can
31:52
choose to sell more on release if they want to direct to
31:56
consumer and they could put some safeguards in place in regards
31:59
to cutting back on lots, just getting in there and feasting on
32:03
everything. So it, it's just not, it's not a
32:07
good consumer experience. Like and I'm, I'm setting the
32:09
price aside. The price is what it is.
32:11
People are real pissed off about the price and I get it, but it
32:16
immediately is selling for $300 more than what it was selling
32:18
for on release. So clearly the price was not
32:21
right. It was too low based off
32:23
secondary market movements after the fact.
32:25
Now part of that is as Tops plays games and there's the
32:28
whole breaker aspect of it all, but it was clearly not priced
32:32
correctly. They could have priced it a
32:34
little bit higher. So it's sold out instantly.
32:36
And that I think that's part of their game is they put out a
32:40
little bit of supply into the market, get the FOMO running, it
32:46
sells out in a couple of minutes and then the secondary market
32:49
price jumps. But they could be like, look,
32:51
guys, see, we offered it for this and now it's selling for
32:53
this. And then they use secondary
32:57
market pricing on their re UPS to stores, you know, later on
33:00
down the line. So shops get their first wave at
33:04
allocated price, the way that I understand it, which is usually
33:07
pretty close to the pre-order price.
33:09
And then on their re up when they want to re order more like
33:13
a couple of weeks later, they get charged way closer to market
33:16
price. So the whole thing is just a
33:20
mess in my opinion. Yeah, and I love Topps Chrome.
33:25
When the Topps flagship came out was that September, maybe
33:29
October, I don't remember. I considered buying a hobby box.
33:33
I was going, I thought $110 was too high, but I was also like,
33:37
well, it's the first release in 16 years, maybe I'll just buy
33:40
one hobby box and get that itch out of the way.
33:44
And I was online. I was sitting there waiting,
33:45
added one to cart and then boom, sold out in under a minute,
33:49
which is crazy. But I also know back in the
33:52
pandemic, 20, late 2020, early 2021, I was watching YouTube of
33:57
a young guy, he's a teenager who had built a bot or multiple bots
34:04
that would go out to various retail sites like Target and
34:06
Walmart, etcetera, and just look for active wax listings for
34:13
retail at normal retail prices. And then it would just buy them
34:16
up. And so he would get hundreds of
34:17
boxes every week because he had bots that were searching for it
34:21
and buying them all up. And I wonder how much of that is
34:25
actually out there. Have you heard of that?
34:28
Yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely.
34:30
I have. I, I don't know the botting game
34:32
of it all, but it the way I understand that it's crazy the
34:35
way that those things work, but I've never looked into it.
34:38
Like I know people use them for Pokémon releases all the time
34:42
so. Last topic, Doctor Beckett.
34:49
The never and I. Don't want to get too, too in
34:53
depth here, but he went on Jeff Wilson this week and I don't
34:57
feel like he's doing himself any favors because.
34:59
And I'm going to interview him in, I don't know, an hour and a
35:01
half or so and ask him some questions.
35:03
But I feel like every time he says the right thing, which is
35:06
shill bidding is always bad. Never bid on your items or your
35:09
your friends or associates items.
35:11
He always adds a but and then add some qualifiers to that
35:15
which is creating some problems for him.
35:18
What is your take on the whole thing?
35:21
There's a playbook for this stuff.
35:23
If you screw up in the hobby, apologize and then don't say
35:26
anything for a week and everyone will forget about it.
35:29
And in this case, around this whole situation, it just keeps
35:33
going. It just keeps going.
35:35
It will not die. And then it's so funny that that
35:38
story kind of ran into the snipe thing.
35:42
So now it's kind of all resurrected again because the
35:47
first story never really went away.
35:49
Like the playbook is right there, guys.
35:53
If you mess up, just come out and say, hey guys, I screwed up,
35:57
my bad. Don't say anything for like 72
36:00
hours and wait for one of the other companies to do something
36:03
stupid and then you're, you're off the hook.
36:06
Like we've seen this play out 1000 times before.
36:09
And and of all things this week alone, no one would remember
36:13
anything that happened the previous week because as we've
36:16
just ran through, there's been four or five big things and
36:19
there's like another half a dozen Any other week, things
36:22
that would be pretty big news that aren't even getting talked
36:26
about because of everything else that's gone on in the last 7
36:29
days. Yeah, you had to do a little
36:32
damage control because of the whole Beckett and Patrick Ryan
36:35
podcast too. You deleted a video and I talked
36:38
about this on my channel and you you kind of mentioned it very
36:42
briefly on your Sunday morning video.
36:43
Was that two weeks ago now? I think so, yeah.
36:49
So talk a little bit about deleting a video and under what
36:52
circumstances you would do that. And and I'll I'll give my
36:57
opinion, which I already shared in my Sunday video a couple
36:59
weeks ago too. Yeah, so I, I talked about it
37:03
again then later in the week because I, I felt like I needed
37:05
to give a little bit more clarity on it.
37:08
Essentially a legal representative for Patrick Ryan
37:10
reached out to me and was like, hey, you know, we have some
37:13
issues with the video. And to quote Star Wars, I wanted
37:19
to avoid some any imperial entanglements.
37:23
So I decided to pull the video. That's the first video I've ever
37:25
pulled from the channel. And as I talked about later in
37:28
that week in in in another video, the this is not this is
37:33
not my day job. This is supposed to be fun and
37:36
entertaining and dealing with legal headaches, whether
37:40
justified or not, I don't qualify as fun and entertaining.
37:45
So when presented with the choices, I was like, I'm just
37:49
going to pull the video and I knew.
37:51
I knew the 2nd that I did it, I was going to catch a ton of
37:53
Flack for it. Like I was, I was prepared for
37:57
that. That didn't make it any more
37:59
fun, but I knew what was going to happen.
38:01
I knew I was going to catch a ton of blowback for it.
38:03
And I've also gotten a lot of support for it.
38:04
A lot of people were like, listen, I get it.
38:06
Like I don't blame you. I 100% would have done the same
38:09
thing. Both from commenters and other
38:11
content creators have said the same.
38:13
So I don't regret the decision at all.
38:15
I would do it again if presented with the same type of situation.
38:19
It is what it is like this. I'm not a media company.
38:22
I'm, as I say and as I say in videos, I'm just a guy in a
38:25
basement talking into a microphone that might be
38:27
slightly better than the one that you have is.
38:28
That's the only difference between me and most people that
38:31
watch my channel. Yeah, and you're not, I don't
38:34
know how much you make from YouTube, but it's not very much
38:36
money. And trying to defend yourself
38:38
against somebody like Patrick Ryan who would would be happy to
38:43
spend 1/4 of $1,000,000 to take down a little YouTube, I would
38:48
do the same thing. And I made that clear in my
38:50
Sunday video. It, it's easy for me to say
38:53
you're crazy. I can't believe you did that,
38:56
you're weak. But ultimately that's not true.
39:00
I would have done the very same thing if I got a call from from
39:02
a wealthy person's representative saying whatever
39:06
they said, I would be fearful that I'm it's all of a sudden
39:09
going to cost me 10s of thousands of dollars to defend a
39:12
video that I made $40 from maybe and.
39:17
I think the YouTube revenue on that video was like 45 bucks
39:19
right? So it's just not worth it.
39:24
And so anybody who's saying, I can't believe you did that, you
39:27
just don't understand what we do.
39:29
We're here for for fun. We're here to this is an
39:32
extension of our hobby. And I would be happy to ask you
39:37
difficult questions about it if I felt like you had done
39:39
something wrong or you shouldn't have done it.
39:42
But in this case I'm like Nope, I totally get it.
39:47
Yeah, and listen, YouTube has ended up turning into a pretty
39:50
decent side hustle for me. So I'm not going to sit here and
39:52
be like, I make no money off of this.
39:54
I've bought a lot of the things in my collection with money that
39:56
I've made off of content. You know, I've never been shy
39:59
about that. But it's also not how I pay my
40:01
electric bill by any means. So, you know, the second, like I
40:05
said, in the second that this stops becoming fun, is the 2nd
40:08
that I start re evaluating. Why am I doing this?
40:11
Because this is not. You know, this is not how I put
40:14
food on the table. This is not how I keep my lights
40:16
on. I have a day job like I that's
40:18
that's a blessing and a curse. You know it it sure what I love
40:21
to say that I'm a full time YouTube and not have like a real
40:25
job and just make content like that would be awesome.
40:27
But at the same time, I don't know that I would want to deal
40:30
with the stress of being a full time content creator.
40:33
Like I could be very choosy on who I take with sponsors because
40:37
it's just kind of extra money that I'm going to use to blow on
40:39
cards. I, I don't have to worry about,
40:42
oh, if I don't want to post a video tomorrow, I mean, usually
40:44
I do, but if I don't, I just like, all right, you know, no,
40:47
I'm just not doing one for tomorrow.
40:48
And there's been some days where I've just been like, I'm not
40:50
feeling it or there's not. I'm not going to Force One to
40:53
Force One. I mean, usually, as you're well
40:56
aware, the hobby is very giving when it comes to news topics and
40:59
things to discuss. It's not hard in some days to
41:03
make one, but. You.
41:05
Need to force it. I'm not going to just record
41:07
something just to talk into a microphone that day.
41:09
I have no obligation to do so because it's not how I pay, you
41:13
know, my general day-to-day, it's not how I'm putting gas in
41:15
my car. Right.
41:17
Yeah, I recorded a video yesterday.
41:18
It was like 6 minute video and I just never got around to editing
41:22
it because I was busy and just didn't feel like it.
41:24
And if it were my day job, that would be a problem and that
41:29
would create stresses that wouldn't make this fun for me.
41:31
And so I've very intentionally kept it.
41:35
If I feel if I don't feel like doing a video, I'm not going to
41:37
do a video. I'm not going to push myself to
41:39
do something that that doesn't doesn't add joy to what I'm
41:43
doing. Yeah, and I do take, I mean, I
41:46
take it extremely seriously, you know what I'm talking about
41:48
stuff like I do try to double source things as much as I
41:52
possibly can, especially if it's something crazy like I am, you
41:56
know, at the point where I am, I'm lucky enough now where I
41:59
have contacts at some of the companies that I can reach out
42:02
to directly and be like, hey, what is going on with this or
42:05
what can you give me background on this?
42:07
Can you confirm this? Like, and that's great.
42:10
And listen, some days, does it feel like work?
42:13
Yeah, absolutely. But not not to the point where
42:16
I'm, you know, pounding my head against the desk.
42:18
Right. I think you and I both had that
42:21
eBay was buying Golden before the news went out, but neither
42:25
of us released the info. I think you alluded to it on
42:28
Twitter. I believe it was you and I
42:30
alluded to it on Twitter that there was something happening
42:34
with with Collectors and Golden and I knew.
42:38
So I had a very, very reliable source who had also told me that
42:42
Collectors was buying SGC before that February 29th purchase
42:47
date. But I couldn't get that second
42:49
source to confirm it. And so even though I knew it was
42:52
right, I just didn't release it. I didn't need eBay suing me,
42:56
quite frankly, for something that I wasn't 100% sure on.
42:59
I was 95% sure and that just wasn't good enough.
43:03
Yeah, and I don't think people realize some of that stuff like
43:05
there is, you know, and I'll and I'll get like to your point,
43:09
like I'll drop little hints on things here and there when you
43:12
like you. There's been plenty of things
43:15
that I have known that I could have made a video on.
43:19
But to your point, you don't know it 100% and all it takes is
43:24
that one where you throw it out there and you're like, guys,
43:27
this is happening. It's going to be crazy.
43:29
And then it doesn't actually happen.
43:31
And then you look like the idiot, like remove the legal
43:33
ramifications to the side, even if they're and there might not
43:35
be any, but just the credibility hit that you would take.
43:39
If you're like, oh, this company is buying this company or this
43:42
is happening and then it doesn't kills your credibility.
43:45
And the credibility is, you know that that's your currency.
43:48
Like that's your lifeblood. Yeah, so the the person who told
43:53
me about golden being purchased by eBay asked me a couple days
43:59
later, why haven't you run with this?
44:00
Why haven't you done a video? And I said, I have to confirm it
44:03
with somebody else. And he said, but you know, I'm
44:04
right. And I said yes.
44:05
But I always run the risk of just being a useful idiot to
44:08
somebody who wants to they have an axe to grind with golden.
44:12
And so they want to put out this, have somebody put out a
44:15
video saying that collectors is buying golden and reduce the
44:19
value of golden. For some reason I can't do that.
44:24
And he, I think he was pretty upset about it, but he, I think
44:27
he understood too. Yeah, I I was the same way and I
44:31
don't, I don't even remember back then how I found out about
44:33
that, but I had it. I was like you, I was 95% sure.
44:38
I was so sure to the point where I actually reached out to Ken
44:41
and talked to Ken. Me too, and was.
44:43
Like, no, it's not happening. And I'm like, Ken, I'm pretty
44:47
sure it's happening, but I'm going to take your word for it
44:50
that it's not so. Yeah, I, I had a 40 minute
44:54
conversation with Ken while I was in my kitchen one day.
44:59
He called me and denied the the and I think that at the time he
45:04
was, he was very cautious with his words.
45:06
He wasn't saying we are not being sold, he was saying it.
45:10
Was the same thing with me too. It was very like if you read
45:14
between the lines you could see what was going on.
45:16
But once again, I didn't have it and it's not my I would rather
45:20
be. Listen, it's fun to actually
45:22
break a story. I've done it before and it it,
45:25
it does feel good. But I have positioned myself
45:28
more as I am going to be the first one to react to the story
45:32
than the one making the story. Like I'll let Ben Burrows break
45:35
the story and then I'll have the video up 10 minutes later
45:38
talking about it. Yeah, yeah.
45:41
And I don't even know. I don't even know how Ken got my
45:44
phone number because I just tweeted about it that day.
45:47
Like there's a, there's something, there's smoke
45:49
happening with Golden. And he called me and he, he knew
45:55
somebody who knew my phone number somehow.
45:57
And that was the only time we've ever talked.
46:00
Yeah, we exchanged the Amazon. I I reached out to him and and
46:03
we, we've actually talked before and DMS I've never talked to him
46:06
on the phone, but we we've DM back and forth about some other
46:09
stuff. And that's how that went down.
46:11
The the funny SGC story. I knew we were about to go live
46:18
on off Centered that night, like literally in 2 minutes, and I
46:23
got 1000% confirmation that that was happening, that PSA was
46:29
going to purchase SGC, but I was told basically I was embargoed
46:33
essentially on it like like this.
46:37
That's how a lot of this stuff works too, is that you'll find
46:40
information out from various people, but they'll say like,
46:43
I'll tell you, but you can't do anything with it.
46:45
So you're at least you're ready for the story.
46:48
And I'd had it from a bunch of different places at that point.
46:50
And then I'd I'd finally gotten it from from somewhere else.
46:53
And that was like, this is 100% happening.
46:56
And I literally find out as Dustin's like, all right, we're
46:58
live on off centered. So I had to sit through the
47:01
entire off centered show with that knowledge in the back of my
47:04
head that this is probably going to be one of the biggest hobby
47:06
stories of the year is happening tomorrow morning.
47:10
And then we literally end off centered and Ravel tweets the
47:16
news that SGC is being sold to Collectors Universe.
47:21
And I was like, ah, so then I ended up I that was one of those
47:25
cases where I was trying to record a video and the news kept
47:27
changing so quickly. Like during like I'm literally
47:31
recording the video and more information is coming out.
47:33
And I was just like, screw it. And I just was like, well, I'm
47:36
just going live. Actually, I think that's one of
47:38
my most viewed live streams ever on the channel.
47:41
Well, I woke up the next morning, 5530, and the news had
47:46
broken because I was asleep before it broke and the news
47:48
had. Broken like 10 or 11:00 PM that
47:51
night because we just, we literally just ended off
47:53
centered and three minutes later, Ravel tweets.
47:57
And I immediately came downstairs to where I used to
48:00
have my desk and read as much as I could about it and then put up
48:03
a video. And that video I think had
48:05
30,000 views in a couple days, which that's a lot for me.
48:10
I put out a second video that same day.
48:12
It's the only time I've ever put out two videos in the same day.
48:15
And that one got 10s of thousands of views too.
48:17
And that was just a crazy. I think it was leap day of 2024.
48:23
Big, big day. Yeah, Leap day.
48:26
Yeah. Well, probably the.
48:29
Biggest hobby story outside of annex buying tops in my opinion.
48:33
Like from an act of mergers and acquisitions standpoint?
48:37
Yeah, I agree. I appreciate you coming on.
48:40
This was really good. I'm going to put you in my
48:42
little rolodex of people to bring on every every once in a
48:46
while in a rotation to talk about the weekend news and and
48:49
what it all means. Yeah, anytime.
48:52
Great time. I appreciate it.
48:55
Anybody have any comments or questions, drop them down below.
48:59
Thanks again for watching and for coming on.