Episode 115 PSA Updates BGS and More

Welcome back to Sports Cards and a Cup of Joe. This is your host, Joe Davis, and it is so great to finally be back with you, to be back in the studio talking about our hobby again. And you might still hear it in my voice. I'm still worn out from an exhausting few weeks between Fanatics Fest and the National. I literally lost my voice during Fanatics Fest. I had talked so loud, so hard for so many days and then I tried to recover during the week in between and I never really fully got it all back and I gave it the old college try, as they say every day and talking as loud as I could and as long as I could at the National. And it was so great to see so many of you and I'm so appreciative to all of you who came by to give me encouragement for this show, whether you patch auto on our YouTube channel or whether you listen to the podcast. And I am back and I'm going to try to be more consistent again because I know these last few weeks have been really hard. You know, I was just a couple weeks ago I was teaching a life group class at my church out of 2 Corinthians on humility, and it's an incredible passage and it was great timing for me because I was truly humbled during these shows from the sheer exhaustion I felt and the reminder that I'm not a kid anymore and that I have to actually get some sleep at night as much as I like hanging out and seeing friends on these Topps of trips. But it was definitely an incredible three weeks between the two shows and I learned so much as I do every time I do these major shows. And I'm going to try to hopefully impart a little bit of knowledge in this episode. But let's open with some grading updates. I have recently been talking with some friends at PSA trying to see what their plans are, and these are all subject to change. Of course, they have their backlog tracker out there now to try to keep us all informed on how many cards they still have to go to catch up, and they're still countless millions behind. But the encouraging news I got is that they're truly seeking to open some lower levels sooner rather than later. The hope is at this time, the last thing I've been told is that they hope by late September to be able to open at least some price point at least slightly below where they're currently at right now. The Regular service at $80 a card is the most affordable service and at least some initial planning is I'M hearing they're going to try to open something by late September somewhere below the $80 level. I don't know at what price point. I'm guessing maybe somewhere in the 60s and then continue to work down the ladder with maybe other new levels until they get back down to like a value bulk service. But at the pace I'm seeing, and at the pace I should say at the level of demand, the pent up demand for their grading now and how much I expect them to receive, even when they just drop the price slightly, I just don't think we're going to see value bulk grading until next year. And I don't know when it will even be next year. And even when that does open, I don't project any price points in the 20s again. And if they're even in the 30s, I think it's going to be in the high 30s when they get to a value bulk price tier again. And if you were at the national and you saw the lines for PSA at $229 a card, you would understand. You know, from what I was told, they took in more cards on Wednesday this year than they had taken in the entire national last year, which is insane when you think about that, to take in more in a day than you did in five days just one year later. So the demand for PSA grading has not slowed down at all. The demand for PSA graded cards has certainly not slowed down. And we'll talk a little bit more about some movement we're seeing on certain players. But let me update you on BGS as well because as I've, as you've heard me say, if you've listened or watched the show, when these type of things happen in the grading industry, it's also, I should say it's often a domino effect because once PSA had to shut down, I started sharing. Hey, if you want to get some cards graded, you better get them in to one of your other companies you want to use while their services are still available and while they're still available at their current pricing. Because August 5th, just a few days right after the national BGS shut down their bulk and standard services and they currently are stating on their website that they plan to reopen September 15th. So we are hopeful that they will be able to reopen lower level services by September 15th because right now both PSA and BGS, there's, you know, they're both at the regular service for PSA and the express level for BGs and those are not affordable for a lot of sports cards that collectors would like to have done. Now I have to applaud CGC because they have kept their entry level price point out there as low as $17 a card that's through us or on their website and they continue to take submissions and they haven't shut down, they haven't announced anything about shutting down their entry level services. Of course their turnaround times have slowed down and SGC as well is continuing to offer their entry level pricing. But again, they also have been slower. I mean every service is getting bombarded right now and the demand for graded cards, you know, I know I'm like a broken record because every time I talk about this topic I say the demand has grown even more. But it's the truth. I saw it firsthand at Fanatics Fest, I saw it firsthand at the national and when it's going to slow down, if it's going to slow down, remains to be seen. I just know right now we are continuing to receive a large number of submissions, even from submitters who want to submit with PSA in the future who are just sending us cards and saying please hold these until PSA reopens. And we don't even know what price point we're going to be able to offer them yet. But that's how eager submitters are to to get their cards done. So I'm going to talk a little bit about grading strategies with you real quickly because I'm having to apply these strategies right now. I have submitted thousands of cards this year between these different grading companies and right now there are extreme limitations on where I can grade because PSA is only taking regular BGS is only taking express and higher services. So here's what I'm currently doing. Doesn't mean you need to follow my model, but I'm often asked, Joe, what are you doing now that these certain options are not available? So what I'm doing right now is I'm focused heavily on SGC and CGC and what cards I think work well in their holders. I've recently submitted a large amount of large quantity of vintage non sports cards to sgc. I've been creating invoice after invoice for them and I've also sent a large number of a little bit more modern non sports cards to CGC because they seem to do well there. And I'm gonna touch on what's going on in the non sports market in just a minute. But as far as BGS and PSA go, when they were hitting their shutdown, BGS we basically had a day, a day's notice to overnight a bunch of orders to them. So that was a very late night for me, I can tell you. And with psa of course, we had a few days notice. So I sent in thousands of cards to PSA before they're shut down. So right now I'm also accumulating cards for psa. I'm accumulating cards for BGS when their services become available at lower levels. I'm still submitting to both of them at higher levels right now for cards that make sense at those price points. So right now if you're accumulating cards, if you're still ripping new product and you don't know where to grade, there are options out there. What we typically recommend in our store for the available options is that if you're into Pokemon or One Piece or other Topps of tcg, then CGC is a great option that is available right now at the entry level price point. Sgc, which is available at their entry level price point, is a great option on vintage cards right now. I send a lot of vintage baseball there, I send a lot of vintage non sports there. And there's other cards that don't, in our opinion, don't fit into a niche with one of them right now. Many are grading modern sports cards with both of them right now and we are grading some modern sports cards with both of them. But I'm also holding a lot of them for when BGS reopens and PSA reopens at lower levels. So you've got two really good viable options if you work through our services, through our company. I've got baseball cards that you can still grade with. And again, hopefully September 15th is the target date for BGS that they've said they plan to reopen some lower level services by then. And again, from what I'm hearing though, none of this is set in stone yet. PSA is hoping and has a goal to reopen some service at least slightly below regular by the end of September. Again, that's what I'm hearing. Nothing definite, no actual date, no actual pricing yet. But I know internally talking with with friends there, they really want to be able to get more options out there for collectors. They know the importance of being able to offer lower level services and you see all these conspiracy theories online that they're just going to stick with regular and never offer a lower service. I don't believe that at all. I believe they want to be able to offer some cheaper price services, but they're also trying to manage the backlog and they took in a boatload at the national and they are taking in far more regular service submissions probably than they ever have. I know I'm personally sending more at the regular level than I ever have because a lot of cards still make sense at that price point. And whereas in the past I would only send in cards on the regular service that were valued at $500 and above because you would have to send them at that one-of-one now I'm shifting down a little bit and I was just going through a collection of some Jordan and LeBron cards and I was like, well, even in a nine, this is like a $400 card. So I think I'll go ahead and send it at regular service because PSA still has the best resale on those particular cards and I would rather get them in the system and get them back again. This was only a handful of cards. Most of what I'm accumulating for PSA are things I'm going to hold until there are cheaper options available. All right, I told you I wanted to touch on some other things in the industry and I specifically mentioned non sports. If you're not into non sports, you still need to be aware of what's going on. Over a year ago we launched our other website, cartooncards.com that's cartoon cards with a Z. And I did some episodes talking about why I thought key non sports cards were so undervalued, why I thought Mickey Mouse rookies and Charlie Brown and Bugs Bunny and all these great iconic characters, why I thought they were such a good buy. Well, it took a year, but at this year's national, our non sports sales obliterated any national we'd ever done. One of our team members had one showcase in our booth of some of his personal stuff. He sold every single card he brought. I had been gone from the booth and I came back and I asked him because he had to fly out before our other team members and I said, oh, did you already pack your stuff up? And he was like, no, I sold everything and his was all non sports stuff. And I personally, for our own store inventory, we sold more non sports this year than ever before. Probably ballpark four times as much as we did. At last year's National, I sold a huge amount of Peanuts cards, mainly the 1971 set. I sold lots of Mickey Mouse cards, lots of Scooby Doo cards, Mary Zebra Mario, you name it. Iconic non sports characters are on fire. The demand is unlike anything I've ever seen. Just this week alone, I Could show you the texts on my phone from friends in the industry. And many of them know I'm a strong buyer on these things. And I have texts literally from last night with a gentleman who offered me some 1935 gum ink mickey Mouse cards. Which are beautiful cards. They're iconic. They're some of the most treasured early Mickey Mouse cards. And I said, well, what are you asking for them? He said, well, the last few of these in this condition have sold for about $750 apiece. I'll do six and a quarter. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. I was buying these for like a hundred dollars just, I don't know, three, four months ago and everything. Mickey Mouse seems to be in demand right now. The modern Topps Chrome. I sold a PSA 10 Topps Chrome Mickey Mouse for $1,950 for the base card. It's just insane. Whether it be vintage, whether it be modern, the hunt for classic characters like Mickey Mouse and Fred Flintstone and Charlie Brown and Snoopy and Bugs Bunny and all those classics sold Sesame street cards. I had somebody come up and say, oh, I want that Grover card. You know, I sold a stack, large stack of old Snow White cards. And it wasn't just me. Gary Vee was there at the show. He was actually set up right across from us. So we had a few conversations about the non sport industry. He was there promoting, you know, they had a huge V friends booth promoting their products. But some of his team members also had another booth with vintage non sports cartoon type character cards like we sell. And they did very well. I know I spent a lot with them myself, but often when I'd go by their booth, they would have new things out which meant they had sold through what had been out. So there's not a lot of us out there that had a huge selection, but those of us that had that selection did very well in those cards. But what I'm talking about, this explosive growth has been even since the national, I have seen cards grow exponentially in the completed sales just in the last three weeks or so. So keep an Yu-Gi-Oh on that market. Other big industry news, NBA, NBA Legends. That market is also growing exponentially. I was speaking with an industry leader at Fanatics Fest and he was telling me at that time, he's like, joe, the Jordan market is up 20% in the last two weeks. And we are continuing to see that, you know, cards that we bought up quantities of years ago on Jordan that we're selling a little bit At a time we are hitting record sales on those cards. And I saw it at the National. We sold through a lot of Jordan inventory, a lot of LeBron inventory, a lot of Kobe inventory. And the other ones that are creeping up for sure is Shaq, Shaq, Tim, Duncan, Iverson, other 90s stars. We're starting to see a lot of movement on those. If you remember, just, just a few weeks ago, I did an episode on who's Next? And I wish I had listened to my own advice in that episode because we have seen such growth in sales, not just quantity of sales, but the pricing is continuing to grow on old Griffey inserts, Barry Bonds inserts, even Maguire, Frank Thomas, those beloved 90s superstars, even the steroid guys who often don't get the love and the hobby, we're seeing movement on their cards as well. So I'm having to change my whole buying philosophy here because whenever potential sellers would call in, we'd often say, hey, we're good on 80s and 90s stuff. You know, unless it's Jordan rookies, we're good. But now we want to see almost all of those collections because we're still pretty good on 80s baseball. But if it's 80s football, 80s basketball, and especially now if it's 90s superstars, we want the base cards, we want the inserts, we want the parallels, especially anything numbered or rare, those old Fleer and Ultra inserts. You know, I never thought I would see myself grading hundreds and hundreds of Michael Jordan base cards and Griffey base cards, but that's what I'm doing nowadays. I'm literally going through old collections we bought over the years. And I'm scouring for five dollar base cards because some of them are $100, $210s now. And even with other grading companies besides PSA, we are seeing demand for them. So I've been in this hobby so long, full time since 1991. That stuff is very commonplace to me because I've seen it so many times. So it's, it's shocking to me and it will be shocking to you if you're not caught up on this. If you go on ebay and you just search completed sales, just type in pick any year in the 90s. Pick 1995 Michael Jordan PSA 10 and look at completed sales or Ken Griffey Jr. Completed sales, PSA 10, often even in nines, often even BGS 95s or SGC 10s or CGC 10s. There is so much demand for these iconic players and it's like there's been this huge shift in the industry, whereas a couple of years ago we were always talking about the hot prospects, the hot rookies. Who are you buying up now? Who do you think? Remember the days of Zion and Ja Morant and no one could get enough of them. And then it was Anthony Edwards and each year who was the next big basketball stud that you could buy up because he was going to be the next superstar. And now in general, we're seeing this huge shift towards the Legends, the safer plays because the players are already established and the big four, we're seeing no real shock other than the addition of Shaquille is Jordan, Kobe, LeBron, and now Shaquille O' Neal and other 90s superstars are catching up as well. And we're seeing growth in their cards. Speaking of growth in the industry, I can't fail to mention the big news that came out recently from Tom Brady, Tom Brady's Card Vault franchise. As many A list celebrities, athletes, superstars have now poured money, are putting money into that brand. We're talking Aaron Judge, Connor McDavid, Dana White, the CEO of UFC, the Kraft Group, talking about Robert Kraft and other huge names. So you may say, well, Joe, isn't that intimidating to you as a relatively small business owner in this industry compared to these behemoths who have hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to pour into the growth of their stores? You know, what am I going to do? I'm going to continue to offer the best services we can, to offer the best products we can, and I'll continue to ride this wave and celebrate that so many others love our industry. And I think it's exciting because as more and more A list celebrities and athletes get involved in our industry, that's more and more exposure that comes to our industry and that trickles down to all of us. And so more and more who may not be collectors right now are getting involved in the industry and others, they're becoming aware of these big names who are getting involved in the industry. Therefore they're like, oh, it must be cool to collect sports cards. I think I'll get into it now. And just in talking with so many collectors at the national, it was so great seeing so many first time visitors and Fanatics. Fest was a totally different vibe, but yet what I love seeing there too was so many young collectors coming to the show. And our industry has shifted so much in the past 10 years from who was attending a national in 2016 to who's attending a national now. Not Only is it exponentially more people, but there's been such diversification of people. Groups of more and more women are coming to the shows now, and more and more kids are coming to the shows and everything from, you know, five and six year olds are coming and senior citizens are still coming and everyone in between. So it is so exciting for this industry that I passionately love to get to be an observer and seeing all this happening and seeing how it has grown. And to me, it doesn't upset me that all these multimillionaires are pouring massive amounts of money into Tom Brady's card vault brand because again, that brings more exposure to the industry. That makes, you know, that makes CNBC notice and makes Fox News notice and makes CNN notice and major news groups, espn. It makes all these news agencies notice. Things are going on in our industry, in the industry that I love. And so as more people pour into the industry, there is more demand, there's upwards growth of the value of sports cards, of the things we're already sitting on. So if you have a great collection that you've put back over the years, you've done very well to sit on it. Because I could discuss Griffey or Frank Thomas or Michael Jordan or countless other iconic names, legends from the past to STEPH CURRY Guys, LeBron guys who are still playing. And we are seeing tremendous growth in the value of their cards. And I was asked at the national, it was interesting. I was interviewed by research groups who. And I finally asked one lady who was doing this extensive interview with me. I said, so is this your first national? Are you a collector? What do you collect? And she's like, oh no, I'm paid to be here to ask questions and learn about this industry. I'm like, okay, that's fine. And so it's amazing to me that researchers are sending individuals to these major shows just to learn. And so where it goes from here, I don't know. But I'm excited. I again was worn out at these shows. I gave everything I could every day to try to talk to as many of you as I could and assist as many and buy as many cards from you as I could and sell as many as we brought. And I just am so thankful for the best team in the sports card industry because they just did a fantastic job at both of these events. And it was just so rewarding to me. And I know it's old news now because I haven't got to record anything in a while, but those events will live on in my memories. And the Things I learned. I will continue to apply. I have spent so much money in the last few weeks rebuying and you know, some go to a national like I'm going to sell a bunch off and cash in and that's their prerogative. But as a full time member of this industry who believes in the future of this industry, what did I do? We made a lot of great sales and I'm taking those dollars and pouring them right back into the industry to buy other things, other products and other non sports cards. Some of you know I've bought a lot from you lately and there'll be other cool things you'll see coming from us in the future in that area. But today I just wanted to give you a brief update on what's going on with PSA or what might be going on with bgs. Again we are here to help you with any of the leading grading services as well as our pre grade service which I'm so thankful to so many of you who talked to us about those at the national and it was funny to me. We took a lot of sample cards to show that service to educate collectors on the service and we ended up selling off a lot of the cards. You know they were cards that we had pre graded that they're in our database@gotpregrade.com but instead of using them as advertising pieces we ended up selling the cards. So that was encouraging that so many wanted to buy them in our semi rigid tamper evident holders. And so we are continuing to see submissions on those coming in along with all of submissions for all of these other grading companies. So whoever you want to use Visit our website gotbaseballcards.com if you specifically want to use the pre grade service you can go to gotpregrade.com and if you need help with a collection come see us at the shop or shoot us an email and we are always here to serve you. And remember most importantly today, I haven't got to share this in so long. Remember today that Jesus loves you, he wants a relationship with you and when I gave my life to him that was the greatest decision I ever made in my life and I hope you will do the same. Thanks for visiting everyone. I hope you have a fantastic week and I promise I'll be back sooner rather than later next time. Thanks so much and your child in me but I need you.