1544 - Hobby Dinner Convo: Clickbait Negativity

Foreign. Welcome Dr. James Beckett, sports Card Insights. Thanks. Sponsors Topps, Panini, Upper Deck Heritage Auctions, Huggins, the Scott Auctions, Mike Stadium Sports Cards, burbank sports cars, comc.com and Beckett Media. Beckett Grading, Beckett Authentication. This is the not so great audio from my hobby dinner conversation at the Waters Creek show. Hopefully you will enjoy this and suffer through the bad audio for some great content with some great guests. So here it is. Let's pivot to Dave's question about, like Griffey, how many of them are still out there potentially to be graded or are, like I said, in the landfill? I think for vintage cards, we just threw it out there that 50% are graded and 50% of the over under there. I think more than 50% have not been graded. Totally agree. But it might be a third have been graded, a third have not been graded and could be graded and a third are mia Missing match. There's a lot of ungraded drop cards. International. You go around the show here, tons of slaps, but you go to Toronto Fall Expo, Big Show. Dr. Jim, are you going? Oh, you went. Yes, we did. Oh, yeah. So what'd you think? It was fabulous, actually. It was better than this show. Yeah, it's great. Bigger and better. Tons and tons of var. A lot of hockey, of course, but a lot more corporate. Yeah. And then like I was talking about earlier, Asia, there's so many huge cards not in slabs, like twice as many raw versus slab or even more than that. 3 times 4 times 10. You have to break it into the eras modern, ultra modern. This year we're saying you had 16 of the 25 or something like that. So by the pop reports, and there may be some multiple resubmissions and things like that, but there's more graded than exist for a few colors. Oh, yeah. Because they practice on it. But if you go back to the 50s, I think it's a lot more have not been graded. A lot of the old collectors and they're dying off because they've just never graded anything before and they don't think about the expensive. I have and I'm 90 years old, they be degraded in order to extract the value, but they don't care about the value. But their heirs, They're smart. They're going to say, don't worry about it. We're going to give you the net. You will net more. You don't get anything up front. Absolutely. Take care of it. Last time I was here, there was a family of four brothers whose dad died, left him this incredible Collection. I was like, guys, you don't have to greet it with us and then sell it. We talked to Heritage. They did all the legwork for them, and they were thrilled with it. That's a good point, though. If you have those cards and you're planning on holding on to them or you don't know what you're going to do with them, do you need to grade it versus if you're going to go ahead and sell those cards. The very first thing that a lot of places. And actually there's of industry cards you won't take while. Unless they're great. We won't take them unless they're great. Desert Storm. Right? You don't take that anymore. Desert Shield top. Isn't that. Isn't that the ebay list? With a few exceptions, We started it before our relationship with. So it could be similar. Yeah, but then the other ones make sense. Wayne Gretzky, 1979-80 LPG. LPG. Cut it with a band saw, Rookie. Obviously, if you see one of those cards that is absolutely perfect and square, there's a good chance that somebody might have done something interesting. So, 1984 star Jordan PSA, authentic. That's got me thinking about this. I feel like anyone who had one would grade it right, because in any condition, it's worth at least 25,000. There's about 1800 total that have ever been graded combined between Beckett and psa. And of those, I'm guessing half of them probably been cracked out and crossed back and forth. So I'm guessing about a thousand unique copies have ever been slabbed. Would you guess there's more than a thousand still out there? Raw, 100%. Three to 4,000 to be a year. Yeah, but the rumor is they went back and printed whenever they needed them. I don't know frequently what's called overrun when you're making a product. If you make a cake, you're gonna have extra ingredients after making the cake. Right. And what companies do with that overrun product is really important to me as a collector. With Upper Deck, we would frequently destroy it or repurpose it. Someone got a damaged car, something like that. So it's still getting out in the market. But it's not unheard of for a smaller manufacturer to just put it away. I was talking to Dwayne Vice, one of the founders of Upper Deck. There's two promo cards that Upper Deck did. One of Wally Joyner and one of Dwayne Vice. And Dwayne Bice was negotiating on behalf of Upper Deck to Get the players association license. But he still got a huge thing of all his promo cards. I think it's not just what they produced and sold, but also the overrun is often a missed factor in some of this. There are lots of stories up in our area about what happens to the overrun from tops. Why are there still full sheets coming out or people that have entire sets and strips or sheets and different things like that. It's not uncommon from Pennsylvania and New Jersey every couple of years to hear about some of these larger 50. Yes. It's like, well, where it come from. And a lot of times it's my so and so with Det or Mike Kramer. Yeah. Used to buy it. All right. And I don't think it's all like back door stuff. There's times when it is remainder. Yeah. Back in the olden days they might say, hey, great job here. Have a bunch of our cars. That's what we have. 24 years ago the show when I was setting up for Baseball Hobby News, I was the middle person in a bunch of 50 Bowman large strips, including one that had the 144 Lance grid on it. And that is one card I can actually say I owned even though it was for 30 minutes. But in those days we got a lot of Bowman strips. And my old friend Mike Delilah comes to one of the Willow Grove shows with the 263 baseball sheets. One with number 46 being Adcock. Adcock is doing. And on that place is the checklist, which is why those cards are card's still tough. And I think there's more ad cots to checklist because it took me forever in a day to get the checklist card when I was collecting those parts. So in the Philly area in Pennsylvania, there's more sheets probably than anywhere else. Mike Kramer got some sheets, but he also got cut cases back in the gum days. The only thing that lends credence to the tops 52 barge story is that if that was a cut card case, you can just put it on the shelf. But if it's got gum in it, it's a food product. Why would you get in trouble if you release it the next year? So maybe it did need to be disposed of in some way. And to find cards that Drosen had were never withdrawn. That was a cut card case that was produced for a third party promotional. So that's why they're such good shape. If you've ever opened up a really old pack. The car that had the gun, but it was on the wax pack in the 80s there was more knowledge of the organized hobby. But the Star company sets, you just got your set and you put it away and then you had to come back. Brady didn't really get that big until the mid-90s. Have you tried to track down any former employees or anything like that? Stars I have, yeah. So I live in the Philadelphia area, which is where Star was manufactured. Going on LinkedIn and Facebook and reached out to everyone that worked the printing company they used as well as the bagging company they used. That's always like a fun adventure. Diving into that. Yeah. I met a woman who worked in the factory where they actually put the cards in the baggies and then crimped the seals. It was fascinating to talk to her. She said they got a box of 3 or 4000 of each player and they had to collate all the cards and put them in order and put them in these baggies. And it sounds terrible, but now I realize why. Sometimes they'd be missing a player, sometimes they had a two of a certain player and sometimes the card would be backwards. I found a sealed Bulls bag recently. Where the Jordan card. Jordan card is always on top of the bag and you can see them through the bag. But this one particular bag. So I'm going to put the Jordan in upside down so you can see his stats on the back, but you can't see the front of the card. And you know that could be the first PSA 10 if it had perfect centering. Probably not because they almost always have a thin left edge. But it's possible. One of those Larry Burton cards. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. That one wasn't in great shape. You gotta think too that much handling if they're bagging them and sorting them. Oh, yeah. Then the car being on the front. Right. Yeah. I mean it's not playing good for you. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure a lot of them, they were hand collated. Yeah. It wasn't like an offer. Yeah. Yeah. I'm building out the set registry sets now. Yeah. So if you. Still undervalued. I think so. Half the Dream team had their first card in this. I think the Barkley's seen some love lately. But Patrick Ewing still just. Yeah, Ewing is super cheap. I love the Elijah on the dip. I love the Elijah and I love how it says. So you collect Jordan as well as all the other key. Which cards in the hall of Famers. That's how I started. Ron Reagan has a star card. Is that Ronald Reagan? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Lakers, the Championships and there's a couple signed copies out there. Really? Yeah. The founder of the star company actually got to go to the White House at some point for whatever reason and he got Reagan to sign a couple of them. And they're going around out there. So I'm talking to you guys. It sounds like there is still a chance I can find a PSA 10. They very rarely have and less than 1% of them have PSA 10 centering. That's usually the biggest issue with them back. But every once in a while I see one that does. But usually it has other issues. If you think there's still more than a thousand out there ungraded, that gives me hope. I don't believe in population control, which I think you would deny that too. Without trying to restrain. I thought there was, but no, no conspiracy. Ricky Henderson. Okay, so I'll just say this. I think it's more likely that you could find another PSA 1052 tops, man, than a PSA 10 Michael Jordan star based on availability. Yeah, availability and. And centering and double print. And they found his cards and they were all in really great shape for the next couple of years after the rose income because I went to a lot of shows. You could tell anytime you saw the showcase what cards of the 52 high numbers came from that car. It was very easy to thought, that's a fine card. That's a fine card. Most of those. I will say that probably 80 to 90% of those cards are now. Oh yeah. And in collections, registry collections. How many Nugget 9 fives are there? There's three 9 5s. Probably your best bet would be crossing it. Dangerous game. I don't think there's enough sympathy or understanding of collectors about the larger companies in our space. There's a distrust. Absolutely. They're huge. They're big. They don't care. I've been involved with several comc would be one Collectors would be one Panini Upper Deck. All this. They really care. But why is public sentiment that they don't care and they're just cash grabs and it's every company that's big enough to have a brand presence that people can take hot shots at. And with Com C it's whatever your weakest link is, they're going to attack you for that. We live in a world where people are fighting for clicks and TSA fanatics. The great clickbait, unfortunately. And people don't get stories about the good things they do. But it was very interesting for me to see Upper deck in the 90s and 2000s, when we had every license and the customer perception was so negative back then, as we started to lose licenses and focus in different areas, it changed. It became the underdog. And people are like. And even still today, they're like, give up an up basketball license so we can get Jordan. So, yeah, I think success breeds negativity from a customer standpoint. But, Chris, you helped transform what everybody else calls customer service to customer care. Therefore, the people who had issues had their issues dealt with, and it makes a difference. No company makes it as easy as it should be. A lot of people don't want to send in their damage cards because they think it's a pain. You need a receipt, and I'm shredding stuff so quick so it shouldn't be damaged in the first place. That's right. You're dealing Chris with a guy, and he talked on one of his last webcasts. His goal is whatever, 40,000 people by the end of the year and 100,000 by the end of next year. And there's one incident of PSA he's hyper focused on somebody else. Pointed out that if PSA was that bad, you'd hear all these complaints every single day. The fact that with the millions of cards you all gray, there are so few complaints should tell you just how good it is. I'll be very frank. I wouldn't work there if I felt there was things like that going on. I just wouldn't do it. The hardest thing I ever had to deal with was, and, Chris, you nailed it. And Dr. Beckett, you said, when you're an underdog and the clickbait thing is 100%. I love basketball now that Oklahoma City has a team last year, right? Everybody loved the Thunder because it was the Cinderella story. And now everybody Negative Shay flops too much. He uses elbow to clear free throw merchant. But you're right. 100, because the guy on ESPN says it, he gets a million clicks. Everybody else follows in line. We live in a negative world now. It's hard to try to stay positive. You're right. Those guys that open that tin and they get that smile on their face, that's what it's about. Yeah. Not the guy that opens and wants to know why every one of his nines is not a tie. The people saying negative things are sending their cards to you. I know. I see it all the time, sending in their cards. You know how dangerous it is for a company that had a bad reputation to set up in a hobby shop? We've set up four PSA submission centers. And some of my reps have said, chris, I saw this and I'm really worried about it. And I explained to him, it's fine. Focus on the people in front of you every day. And overwhelmingly, it's a positive sentiment. It's because people are using you. It's amazing how easy it is to gripe online if I'm not talking to you. Yeah, it's real easy for me to be on the phone or behind a keyboard typing. We live in that negative world where it's so easy to be negative and to be, I don't want to say a keyboard warrior, but that's behind the scenes. I can. Ooh, somebody's paying attention to me. So in the early 2000s, I got a death threat from a guy named Kevin Savage. Sounds great. There's a couple Kevin Savages in the hobby. Not the one you're thinking of. Found out about it. He said he was gonna shoot me at the national because of Redemption reception issue, the ad. I went over the moon for this guy. But some people you just can't please. So upper deck assigns a security guard to me to the national. And I go, first day and no issues. Second day, no problem. Sunday, Kevin Savage walks up to the booth with a walker. It's 90, 90 years old. When he was in front of me, it was a much different conversation than we had over an email. And I think that's why conventions like this are so important. Putting submission centers and hobby shops are important because if you can demystify a lot of this stuff that people have questions about, conspiracy theories about, it just makes the hobby better, More educated consumers better. A consumer for everyone. Some people are really funny, like Lamine James. There's content creators out there that are really smart. Yeah, they appreciate that type of commentary. Let's say the economy goes down 10%, and at some point in the next 10 years, we're not going to be smart. Is that a downer for our industry or is it an opportunity? If you think of your hobby as a cost, then you're going to cut back on the cost. But if you think of your hobby as a side gig, you're going to increase your involvement in that hobby. It has the potential to reap, you know, what you sell. If you could sell cards that you could buy and sell, you could go into this money making hobby. It makes it more of a side gig when the economy goes down or I lost my job, or there's a cutback here. I'm going to dig into the hobby that I love. And I'm going to sell some cards. I'm going to start a count on Tom City because I want to get some additional money to make up for what I'm losing. And I'm hoping that's the case because in the next 10 years, when you're smiling, there'll be some ups and downs in the economy. We've had ups and downs in the economy since COVID and people are still. What I think could be a worse situation is a labor dispute with baseball next year. And it seems like it's all but certain for us. I talked to a member of the PA at the TOPS conference and said for sure there will be. But it's do they miss spring training? Do they miss real games? And if they miss real games, that's going to be a killer. Because the manufacturers are about as nimble as an oil tank. They can see the problem. But they agreed to make all this product for their league agreements and the league's first super sympathetic to those types of issues. I'm hoping that Michael Ruben is the peacemaker. He absolutely could be. We're all in this together. The leagues, the play. But now they're all drinking from the same drop. Yeah, you probably know what percentage is baseball versus football, Because I collect primarily baseball, so I don't really care about. I do a little bit of basketball. Well, I think that's the dangerous thing. I think football collectors primarily collect football. I think basketball players primarily collect basketball. Baseball collectors tend to dip their toes in a lot of different ponds and if they are turned off and walk away for a while, it's a big problem. But a strike before took McGuire and Sosa to bring it back. Baseball strike hurt the whole. That's right. Yep. And I did baseball with was way in the lead in those days. Now it's not so much. Baseball still may be number one. Well, primarily because of show happen. Do any of you guys have fears about labor dispute or economy experience? And you've kind of got your feet in the hobby and you're hustling, you're doing things, you're going to see prices come down, you're going to start making moves on cars. The new people that are at Walmart that are about to get in and buy their first blaster, their second blaster, and mom goes, no, I can't afford that. That's no. But the savvy sense is we can't afford not to. That's right. I can parlay that. It's 35 today. It's gonna be 50. I've got to go to the store with that. Play your mom against your dad. I think it comes down to that leverage between collectors, investors, because there's a difference. And what's it called? The Spectrum. Is that right? It's Jeremy. Where do you land on that? It's going to depend a lot on. If the market takes a downturn, I'm buying every card I never could afford as long as I can still afford it. Right. But at the same time, if it's just constant on the upward, when I can't go buy a Gary Sheffield refractor number to five because it's $500, then I don't know, does that drop it back down? It's always there. How many ups and downs has there been? There's been a lot. Lots. During the strike of 94 and then the hockey lockout. I know a couple people. Rob Vieris is one. My friend Teddy Straka, New Jersey is another. They invested heavily in the hobby during the downtown. Rob was doing well, but that really took for another watch. Having the backing to do it and having the idea that the strength's going to end someday and I'll be in a position to do it. And Teddy said, I'm getting into this. And he's built a great business, too. And second, yes, we lose collectors, but on the other hand, prices come down and it becomes more affordable to those that left. Yet other people might say this doesn't work for them. But I think there's something during an economic downturn that enables a smart buyer to buy even better and wait for the next upturn. I watched in 81, 82 mantles. 52 mantles go from $3,000 to $500. And that should have bought everyone at $500. Yeah, it happened in 07 to 09. I wasn't in the hobby at that time, but I know the s and P dropped 57. What happened to hard values to that point? I bought a lot of exquisite and ultimate basketball in 2006 and 2007. In 2008 and 2009, I got out of a lot of those. I got out of a lot of those cards. Yes. And when I went past a Jordan Patch Auto at the Atlantic City national and it sold for 3.5 mil, and I realized that I sold the exact car for $35,000. Yeah, a bit of meat died. But to your point, that smart buyer who came in at 35 grand when there was a drop in the S and P and the housing market was crashing, he got in on it, sat on it, and then it was, what, 13, 14 years later? He bought it for 1% of what he sold it for. And a bit of me died it. What'd you do with that 35,000 you sold it for? Move back to Pennsylvania. There you go. The man in the house of God is doing $.