1547 - Steak Grilling and Grading

Foreign. Doctor James Beckett Sports Card Insights episode about grilling. Who doesn't like to grill food? As we get into summer here, it's June, Father's Day coming up, and I like to grill. I like to cook. My specialty is salmon, but I do a lot of steaks, too. I realize there's some commonality between grilling steaks and sports card industry, specifically grading. Stakes are graded too, in case you didn't know it. So thanks. Sponsors Tops Panini Upper Deck Heritage Auctions, Hogan Scott Auctions, Mike Stadium Sports Cards, Burbank sports cards, compsed.com and Beckett Media, Beckett Grading, Beckett Authentications. I'm a foodie, unashamed foodie. I love food. I live to eat, not just eat to live. So food is important. It can become a project. If you're the chef, if you're the cook, if you're the griller. One of the secrets for the sushi chefs or any great che steak is picking out the ingredients on your own. The sushi chefs go to the wharf or whatever early in the morning and pick out the best fish. And I think the great steak restaurants do the same thing. Can see by looking at it, they're basically grading with their eyes. On the other hand, steaks are already graded in most cases in terms of prime or choice, and they have other attributes that you can look at. So when I'm looking at a steak, I'm looking at the color, the thickness, the marbling, the size, the freshness, and probably looking at where I am, am I in a restaurant or in an excellent or not so excellent grocery store? So they've got a label on there that indicates the condition of the steak. I can see the eye appeal. And like in the sports card industry, sometimes the item does not live up to the grade. You could have a steak that's supposed to be prime and it doesn't taste that good. Only problem is it's hard to complain when you've eaten the evidence. If you're at a restaurant and all of a sudden they say, hey, here's your steak. You ordered rare or medium, and you look at it and it's well done or it's extra rare or something that you don't like, once you start eating it, it's hard to say, hey, take it back. I guess you could do that. But once you get going, you're in. Same thing with cards. There is an opportunity when you get a card back from a grading company, especially if it's like at the national, which is coming up, and you say, you know What? I. I don't think I agree with this grade. Can you take it back and give it another look? And I swear I've sent steaks back that weren't cooked enough. And I think they brought it back to me. The same stake or it was overdone. They just flipped it over on the other side or something. I think it's a game. I don't like that game. Like all of y', all, I would like to see when things are graded, that they are accurately graded and without a bias. And so, yeah, I think that's what's going on with cards sometimes, too. So the other night, Diane was away at something with her friends. Every once in a while, she'll do that. So I get to. I get to figure out what I want to do because we're empty nesters. She's mainly chicken and fish person when she cooks, and she doesn't bread meat as much. So that's my opportunity once a month or whatever it is to go get a steak. I usually go to Central Market, which is very convenient. Excellent selection. I know exactly where to go. They have butchers there. It's not super expensive, but it's not a discount store either. On the other hand, what happened this last time is I went to. I was already at the Tom Thumb, which is still a very nice grocery store. And this was a signature or a flagship store from the Tom Thumb chain, which is very popular down here. I thought, this is usda. They grade them. It's a prime New York strip steak, Tom Thumb, Central Market. The same graders are grading them, and I noticed it was about 30% cheaper. I thought, wow, this is great. Kind of like when you have different graders giving it the same grade and you wonder if it's really the same. So I got this steak that was a little bit cheaper. Looked like a bargain, looked good. I cooked it the exact same way I normally cook, and it was not as good. It was not great. And I thought, I am disappointed. As I said, I'd eaten the evidence. I couldn't go back to the store and say, hey, that prime beef you sold me was really, I think, choice. I ate it all, but I didn't really like it as much as I wanted to like it. And it's just my opinion, and frankly, not my expert opinion. Although, just like with card grading, I think I'm an expert. I am expert in what I like in steak. So was the steak at the Tom Thumb misgraded? Did the USDA have a different standard for that slaughterhouse or that Factory where they were grading. Those are the meat graters just creating an assembly line and they're just coming through and it's just a batch all from the same cow. And they. This one looks prime. Maybe they're all prime. Are they shortcutting this? I don't think they are because again, it's the usda. They are obviously regulated, but you can get in some rhythm. And technically it probably was a prime steak based on the marbling and all that. But either it was very low end for the grade or something's going on. On the other hand, if you had a card that is maybe overgraded or undergraded, the price may be lower or higher based on that. And so I'm just wondering, I basically paid a lower grade price for the stake that was supposed to be the higher grade. Now I think I got what I paid for because I made a technically prime stake, but it was not as good. But it's like I appeal. I appeal should not include the place where you're buying it or the company that's creating the item. It ought to be letting your eye determine, determine what's going on. And when I looked, I was not able to see the difference from the eye appeal of the steak inside the package. I maybe poked down on it with your thumb, like you could do sometimes. It looked plenty juicy and it wasn't terrible. It just was not up to the standard. Like I said, I did the exact same cooking technique. I'm not talking about the steak. You get in a restaurant where even a not so great steak, they put in these special ovens that have extra high heat and they might sous vide them or they might marinate them or they might do some kind of a flipping technique, technique that makes it come out terrific or basted in butter. I don't know what they do, but again, looking at the steak, I couldn't look at centering, cornering edges and surface. It's not as articulated as that. But I still thought it looked like a good steak. Apparently I. I can judge a lot by looking, but I can't judge everything. It looked good, but it wasn't that great. Was it worth the money? Maybe it was worth the money. There's two kinds of people out there, and it's the same thing. When you go to a card show, there's people, they're intrigued if something is more expensive. And some just really want to look for the lower price. So some people think it's a lower price. I want to get a bargain. And some people Think same thing with clothes. This is more expensive. It must be better. The same thing can happen with stakes. Same thing can happen with cards. Apparently, stake is about as subjective in grading as sports cards are. I'm not with the naysayers that say it's so subjective you can't trust it. No, I think it's very trustworthy. Within limits. Mistakes can be made and there can be some slight differences. But on the whole, if a grader or graders look at a card, they're going to get a similar grade within a half a point, I think, in a vast majority of the places. And if they don't, maybe there's something tricky going on. Again, I'll stack up the consistency of two graders anytime compared to two laypersons, two amateurs who maybe can't agree now that they probably can agree the I appeal looks better than the grade. But again, that's a very simplistic judgment in some cases based only on the front of the card or the centering. There's nothing wrong with that. But again, I made a quick judgment looking at this cheaper steak. Now, it wasn't side by side. I couldn't drive over to Central Market. They're less than two miles apart. Not going to go over there and do a comparison or shoot a photo. I just thought, I'll try it. Okay. My trial did not work. Again, I think steaks can taste very different based on how you cook them and all that stuff. Tough, rare to medium well to well done. When you go to a nice restaurant, they'll try to tell you in words what that means so that you know what you're asking for, whether it's a warm pink center or red blood dripping out or well done and no juice. Words I think are important, but numbers are important too, or the label. So did I just get a week for the grade steak or is it a brand that has looser standards and prices accordingly? I'm really not sure and I don't know that I can resolve that. Like I said, since I ate the evidence, I don't think I'm going to do the experiment again. I'm just going to go back to Central Market and get the stakes that are trusted in it. That is what collectors do. They go to their typical standard grading company. For some people, especially in the old days, a lot of that was going to BGS. Now it's 80% of people just go to PSA and frankly, they're rewarded by higher resale values. So I have no problem with that. Yeah, the way they're grading These stakes has to be similar to the way they're grading cards. In other words, if a submitter submits a batch of cards, my sense is, and certainly at bgs, there'd be a sequence and a rhythm of here are the cards. And we'd separate out the vintage from the modern. But somebody submitted a bunch of modern cards and there may be some of the same player and you just would do them all in a row. They're coming from the same submitter. Probably pretty similar. You can go faster that way, but you shouldn't go faster if it means missing something. But again, if you're used to what the centering is and the potential problems and occurring things that happen with certain or players, you get used to it. Maybe that way with steaks too. You could say cards are slabbed and steaks are slabbed. They've just chopped up into a slab of meat that you throw on the grill and flip over. They've got two sides. Thickness is a big deal. If it's too thin, it cooks too fast. If it's too thick, it's hard to get it to cook through. I remember when we were doing bgs, it was a big deal for us to be, I think, the first to do the thicker slab, to be able to grade thicker cards. And it meant going back to our tooling and getting a new, I think, patented or copyrighted slab that would offer a thicker card. Some people didn't like that and some people did any rates. My prime stake I thought was going to be mint, and I think it really was more like choice, which is probably near mint. It's a cut below. Now. What is Gem Mint? Gem Mint probably is Kobe beef or wagyu. And what's a Black Label steak? A Black Label steak. To me, if it's quad tens, that means it's unimprovable. I've never had a better steak. I may still be waiting for that, but I'm still waiting for a black label 10 from BGS2. But not everybody wants the highest rated or even can afford or think it's a good value proposition. Some people like grass fed, some people like corn fed. Here's a tricky thing. Some people like altered steaks. The cow as opposed the card can be cleaned and pressed and trimmed and recolored or otherwise improved. They can be organically fed, massaged, as in wagyu and Kobe, with special treatments. So the history, how it's dealt with along the way matters. Just like with cards in the beef case. Again, you're not allowed to say it's organic. Unless it is, again, it's regulated. All I've ever asked for with cards is that there'd be truth in packaging. If something has been enhanced, then it needs to be labeled as such. And in our industry that means it's altered. It's authentic, but altered. It came from a cow, but it's been treated in a way that needs to be noted. But the beef industry has figured out that makes the beef taste better. Just like the enhancement of cards. You're playing a dangerous game because if the enhancement recognized in Detective, you get an A for altered authentic. But if you you don't, you're going to get a higher grade. I don't encourage deception. I hope if you're enhancing a card in order to get a higher price for it, then I hope you get caught. And I'm saying that BGs and CGC and SGC and PSA, all of them need to be able to recognize that. So like I said, the price is different according to where you buy it, where you eat it, how nice the restaurant is, and give me the exact same beef. And I think sometimes the same card in the same grade can sell for a different price, whether you're auctioning it off or it's a buy it now fixed price. But the card is still a card no matter where I would have bought the steak. I'm buying that steak. I'm cooking that steak. I'm eating that steak. That's my steak. What I pay is going to depend on that other circumstance. Grading of steaks matters, but it's not perfect. Grading of cards matters, but it's not perfect. Grading of steaks has its own language and level of confidence. It doesn't fully eliminate the variation or the subjectivity or the need to look with your own eyes. But yes, you do need to look at the steak and see, do I want to buy that steak? And Frequently there are 6 or 8 stakes in the cabinet where you say, I want that one and why do you want that one? Maybe it's whatever your eye appeal is or maybe the size. Obviously, if it's a lot thicker or bigger, it's going to be more expensive and it might taste better, but it might not. Anyway, that's a lot of talk about a steak that was disappointingly still a good steak, but not a great steak. Again, when you turn a card in, it comes back mint. That sounds terrible because you want a gem mint. But a mint card is still a really good card. I wasn't expecting a pristine. I wasn't expecting a Black Label 10 on my steak, like the Kobe stakes or the Wagyu stakes, they charge by the ounce, so they're quite a bit more expensive. I'm not going for that and I can tell a little bit the difference. But my oven is not sophisticated enough to get the best out. And frankly, I think that applies to cards. My eye is not fine enough, my taste buds or my sensitivity is not enough to really appreciate the differences between a 9 and a 9.5 and a 10 or quad 9 fives or a pristine 10. They're all great looking cards. I guess my point was I thought my Tom Thumb steak was down about a grade and if it was a half a point, that's different. Half a point, I could live with a full point. That's what I thought. So that's the tie in. So thanks everybody. Have a great time this summer grilling. My next state might be at the national where I go out to a steakhouse with some of the old guard, one of the knights. So I'm looking forward to that, looking forward to seeing everybody there. And just as we get started in the summer, have a great time and enjoy the hobby and enjoy the warmer weather.