PSA Acquires Beckett. What This Means For Card Grading And Values

I met a guy, he comes to our card show. He and his wife, they're from Michigan. They went all in on Patrick Mahomes, and they turned basically 30 grand of their savings into like $2 million. It changed their life. Now they just work when they want to work. PSA actually came out and said that they're keeping Beckett its own entity. That sounds great, but it doesn't mean they're not going to use their graders and their infrastructure to support the demand in business. PSA already has, versus necessarily keeping their best on the Beckett ring. Welcome to the trading cards and collectibles podcast on the Radcast Network. From chasing grails to calling bluffs and going inside the hobby, are you ready to collect? Let's get at it. Here is your host, Ryan Alford. What's up, guys? Welcome to the new Collector Nation. Here on and part of the Radcast Network. We are a media company by and from and for Ludx. We are here with Brian Ludden. You might know Ludden. Lud X. Where did those come in? Brian, what's up, brother? What's up, buddy? I'm ready to talk. I mean, it was a great week for sports. You know, I. I really enjoyed all the wins this week. You know, all my guys won, played well. You know, Josh Allen goes into our New England. Not so fast, my friend. Yeah, I told everybody. I want to listen. Yeah, just call me. Call me Monday after that game. And that was an awesome game. Yeah, Hudson and I watched that here, actually, at Collector Station. Exciting game. Jaguars. I mean, dude, Trevor had a career day. Yeah. Threw for five, ran for one. Are you kidding? 300 yards, five throwing touchdowns, 50 yards rushing and a touchdown on the ground. Six TDs. First NFL history, which is awesome. And then the Bears game was cold as could be, but we pulled out the win. Pulled it out. Saturday night, we got the Packers. I actually think this might be the first time where I have some kind of confidence that we could beat them. With Parsons going down, they lost a couple interior linemen, but they are the packers, and the packers are like that. Your older brother who, like, one day you think you're going to be able to beat them up, but it's not now. And so. But I do think we're growing up, and I think it's. This could be a really good rivalry. And the rivalry is funny because they're like, oh, long is rivalry on sports. I'm like, if a team beats you 50 out of 60 times, that's not a rivalry. No, it's not so kind of like Clemson in South Carolina. You know, we, we be, you know, they're the state name and we're just. When you're running a business day to day, it's not the big ideas that slow you down. It's all the little things. Inventory, customer messages, shipping orders, keeping your site updated. It adds up fast. At Collector Station, we use Shopify for all of it literally every day. It runs our inventory, helps us manage customers, handles our online store, and even makes shipping way easier. Instead of bouncing between different platforms, everything's just in one place, which honestly saves us a ton of time. And that's the part people don't always see. It's not just about building a website. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses and 10% of all E commerce in the United States. And it's built to handle everything as you grow. We've used it to keep things organized in store and online, run email campaigns and stay on top of business without things slipping through the cracks, it just makes operating smoother. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com collector nation. Go to shopify.com collectornation. That's shopify.com collector nation, the dominant program though. And so they get a one, you know, a couple every 10, 10 years. But eight out of 10 go to the Tigers. I was like the Bears, Packers. Yeah, I know, but I think the Bears ready for him this year and something doesn't hurt, unfortunately for the packers, but some of their guys going down. Yeah, it'll be a good game. Unfortunate, but unfortunate. But it's part of the game and we'll gladly accept it. And. And hopeful Caleb Williams plays well. Speaking of that, let's talk about our top five. We're going to reverse order here. I'm playing Ludx tech guy and Brian gets to try to guess. But I've already given some hints here so it shouldn't be too hard. But we've got player movers both up and down. We've got the top three movers. I'm gonna let you start Brian with a guess who you think the number one mover is. I mean, I would do. Trevor has got to be in there. Close. He's number two. He's Trevor. Number two. Close. The scan increased 63% more scans this week than before. He was unranked as a trending player and now moved to 184. His his downtown PSA 10 card that's a panini downtown that's by Don Russ. It was $995 last week it moved up to 1285. Nice solid 30 something percent increase week over week. The next guy I don't. It's hard when the people's cards are already so are high. Right. And do we see an uptick in those cards? I'm going to say Josh Allen. Bingo. Number one Josh Allen. I mean that's what I'm saying. Good week Josh Allen 1 Trevor Lawrence 2 I don't run with losers baby. Y' all should know that already. Who did I pick as my co host? And I'm attached to the winners baby. Lud X and Ludden. So yeah Josh Allen number one Trevor Lawrence number two Josh Allen PSA 10 on just his base optic card went from 500 to 540. He had a. He's already high. He was number 20, number 56 trending player number 56 moved up to number seven so that's a big jump and 23% scan increase week over week so yeah and then number three it is a quarterback. I'll give you that hint. And continues to win. I'll just, I'll give you those two hints. Stafford be a good guess. He should be on here. He was on here last week. No younger division AFC rookie last year. Let's give it away. Ah Bonix. Oh yeah you were overthinking instead of underthinking that was. Yeah yeah my favorite player last week. Hey man. Bo Nicks PSA 10 silver went from 410 to 550 solid one week jump scan increases 21% he went from number 48 trending player to number 6. Wow. And look they're just winning. I mean winning you know like it cures all and I, I'm sorry him and Caleb Williams are kind of like the same players so funny. Heard Cow Herd talking about this on his show Colin Cowherd was talking about like they're pretty, they put up their stats they're pretty damn similar and they're the one thing that's the same is they're both winning this year, you know. Yeah they're not like they're, they're not young quarterbacks that are losing games for their team. They're managing a game. I think the coaches are smart how they're using those two quarterbacks but yeah they're very smart. Both of them are winning in fourth quarter though like for three quarters they're game managers but they don't wilt and go away. They Turn it on in the fourth quarter. Both of them look better in the fourth than they do the rest of the game. That is true. Yeah, I agree. A good signal. So he's up. Number three on Collectibles show is where you'll find all of the channels and learn more about what we're doing. And ultimately, hey, we want to hear from you. You do case hits at Collectibles Show. I want you to send in your favorite pulls of the week. And here's the difference. This isn't about just value. Hey, we want to see some ten thousand dollar hits. Had a couple of those myself a few months back. But it's not just about the value. It's about what you're collecting, what means something to you. Share a story, share a video of you holding up the card that you hit last week that was your favorite player and you nailed it. So case hits, collectibles show, send in those videos. I want to know the stories. We're going to bring them to life here on the show. We're going to do a segment each week once we get rolling and get some videos in where we share. Share that on the show with us. We want to feature you on collectibles Show. And there's the fallers. We'll go quickly through these. Not you to throw some guesses, but you probably know number one and then. Yeah, I don't. I mean you could go a lot of different ways. Joe Burrow, number two, he dropped. And then three, Patrick Mahomes. Oh, that was bad injury. Bad injury. I mean, and it's weird that the dude's already a hall of famer. It's interesting that he would drop like, okay, his silver prism PSA10 went from 5100 to 4300. I need to go buy some of those. Like, are you kidding? Like, I understand like the second year quarterbacks, the volatility of their card values, but Mahomes is a freaking hall of Famer already. Like, that's kind of what I was saying earlier. If the cards are so high, like what else does he have to do? Yeah. You know, but I don't. Yeah, I don't know. It does. It's weird how it really permeates. I just think if you, you know, back to like some education here, I'm. And I'm just going to think speak off the cuff here. From a business standpoint, that seems like a good, like, Mahomes is secured as a Hall of Famer. He's won multiple Super Bowls already. Whether or not he becomes Tom Brady ever again. Who cares? He's an all timer. That seems like a good investment. You know, like he's not. Like I could understand an argument of whether or not Bo, Nick Drake May or Caleb Williams are definitive. You know, they're speculative. Hey. And I got a ton of them. But to go spend you know, three grand on Caleb or something. Okay, I gotta. That's. You're risking it. That's a speculative. There's no speculation on Mahomes. He's. You know, there's really no speculation on Josh Allen. He hasn't won the super bowl yet, but he's kind of cemented his place as an all timer in his own right. He needs to win a Super bowl to really juice it. But I don't think you're going to lose money on Josh Allen cards long term. And you definitely aren't with my homes. So you know, if you're collecting and you're, you know, banking on some stuff, throw some, throw some homes in there. I met a guy at. I met a guy at the. He comes to our card show. He and his wife, they're from Michigan, great people. But he was a teacher, she was a teacher. They went all in on Patrick Mahomes and they turned basically 30 grand of their savings into like $2 million. They had the RPAs at every single thing. And so they're just. It's fun to. I love that story with them. And yeah, it changed their life. You know, now, now they just, you know, work when they want to work. Yeah, they got a little cash flow. They probably invested back into other things, you know, know pay them over time. And dude, that's the stories I like to hear. That's smart investing in the hobby can. That can be done. You know, but rip those stats that we're proving that these are like similar to any, any commodity that trades. I mean it's a stock, it's similar to what crypto is down. But anyways, it moves in kind of predictable ways. And if it moves in predictable ways, you can then wait and be patient to buy something. Like you said, like a, like a Mahomes and be patient. If that thing for 4300 gets down to 39, I'm buying it. I would watch that. I would watch Mahomes because he's not gonna be playing. He's got out. So he's probably going to drop a little bit more. I would give it a few more weeks. Not playing. Not in the headlines. Let that baby get in the threes and bye baby. Bye bye. Bye. Could be. Could be a national goodbye at the National. Yeah. Like make like I'm gonna botch this, but hopefully our listeners don't know any better. Make like in sync and bye. Bye. Bye. I don't know if that was in sync. It's probably like the Backstreet Boys or something. But there's a bunch. Yeah. I reserve the right to delete that forever if I want to. Fellow. Just for the record. That was correct. I had it right. I don't know if that's good or bad. That's. That's awesome. Yes. But I would be purchased. I'd give it a few more weeks because he's gonna go down because people are weird. You know. Oh, my homes is hurt. I'm gonna sell all of his cards. Okay. I'll buy them. Call me TheClaternation.com you can find our. Our sell to us button. Don't sell them to Brian, though. To me first. What you think. I mean, who's your. Who's your Super Bowl? Who's winning super bowl in predictions a gun to your head right now. Like who's. Who's. Who's taking it all? I. I've never seen a year where there's so many 10 win teams and 10 win loss and teams with 10 losses. Yeah. And it's polarizing that like. And then you have some. A couple divisions obviously, like the NFC south, which, like someone's going to get the playoffs. But there's so many 10 win teams that I think this playoffs. These playoffs are going to be awesome because I don't see a dominant team out there that even your. The Bills. Right. Like defense got holes. It's. This is the year they should do it. And you know what? And if they're. I'm not saying fire the coach. I don't hate them, but I don't. I. This is. You need to win it this year, buddy. You're a defensive coordinator at heart. You need. This is your year. Mahomes is out of your way. Baltimore's down now. Baltimore's down. Burrows hurt. Burrows hurt. This is your year, McDermott. Now you have two young teams. You have two young teams that like, who. Who knows how dangerous they could be, but they could be very dangerous. And those. That. Now it's like you got to worry about the freaking Patriots again. Exactly. And say, I don't know. Broncos defense is salty. I'm going to say Bears, Bills, Bears and Bills in the Super Bowl. Be awesome. We got. Are we going to go. Are we going. If it's Those two. I'm going. Yeah. Yep. No. Are we going? Yes, we're going. Yeah, we're. This is content. This would be content heaven at the Super Bowl. We got to get press passes, radio row. Exactly. If. The. If. I mean. And all that alliteration, too. Bears, Bills, you know, like. Are you kidding? Well, yeah, that would be. That'd be fun. Bears, Bills. Oh, my. I would love it. Heisman came and went. Fernando Mendoza, that was kind of predicted with Indiana, but great story. I mean. Yeah. What. What do you think of him at the next level? I'm going to go against the grain here. I'm. I think he is a solid prospect. I don't think he's a can't miss, though. I'm not. And I haven't watched enough of his film. I think he's incredible for this year, but I think we're still dealing with a little bit of a NFL QB drought and I think he is the best of the least. And I do think he's a prospect. I mean, he could be. He's got the makeup of an all pro. But I. My jury's still out on him. I need to see him in the playoffs. Right. Ask me this question in a couple of weeks. Going to play. He's going to have to play like the three best teams. You know, he's. The road. The road for them is difficult. If. And I need to. I'm going to watch them very intently because they. I haven't got to study him as much, but when I watch him, I'm kind of like, yeah, I see it. But we'll see. Yeah. I get to see him a lot in Big Ten country. What do you think? Can't miss prospect. I mean, can't miss is. Is probably too strong, but the guy wins. Right. And the guy. You put him up there with a Caleb and a Jaden Daniels level. No, I'd go terror below. Yeah. But he feels like a. He feels like a. A better Bo Nix. And I know they're not. They're different players. I'm not. I just mean it's probably like I'm not using him as a comp as much as, like, I think he's a tier above Bo Nicks, but he's not Caleb. He's not the prospect that I thought and still kind of feel about Jaden and Caleb. And now I'll put Drake in that. I. I put him between like May and Nick's. Yeah. And Nick's is winning a lot of games, so he, you know, like, I don't know, but something I need to see something. We'll see. Yeah, that's me in three weeks. Yeah. I mean, you know, Ohio State's defense was insane, right? Yeah. You know, he had a tough first half, but the second half, I mean, he's the best player on the field in the second half. Yeah. And he's tough, and he's a leader and he's humble and he's smart. You know, at the Kelly School of Business, like, he's. That's all of those intangibles. He is. Grade A. Yeah. A little bit more on the field. Again, it's a quarterback class. I mean, it really is. Yeah, we'll see. I saw a post, you know, back to, like, you know, values of cards and stuff. It was like 1989, and it was a Mickey Mantle rookie, and guy was talking about it was worth seven grand, and it was like a PSA seven or eight or something. It was like eight grand, seven. I mean, something. And like five million now or something. I don't know, like, what year it. Like, it was his rookie card. It was this rookie card. It was like a PSA 7, and this was like 1989, and it was like 8 or 9 grand. I know that was a long time ago, but I'm just saying. And now it's in the millions. Yeah. Yeah. And only going higher. Yeah, exactly. He's got. He's. Mickey Mantle has a really weird place in this hobby because, like, if you look at the numbers between Maze and Mantle, they're almost identical. And Mick actually is probably better, but, I mean, Maze's rookie card goes for 1/100th of what mantle does. It's just. It's the collectibility of Mantle. But, gosh, there's so many other players that he wasn't. I mean, he was a good player, but he wasn't like, you know, he wasn't the goat. Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Harmon Killebrew right there. I don't know if you can see that, but, yeah, Willie Mays, my dude. That's. I'm gonna start collecting vintage. That's who I want to collect. Willie May pretty much all I collect now. I mean, I'm getting on. You know, I had bonkers cards. Gord. Gordy Bonkers was our guest on Tuesday. He releases next week. He's got me jazzed about vintage. I'm ready to go vintage. I mean, I love vintage. Like, no one's blowing out their acl. No one's getting arrested. No one's beating their wife. Like, Mickey Mantle. They're not going to do anything. They're good. They're good, they're good. It's like a bond, right? They just kind of go up 5% every year. But I'm a big vintage guy. Yeah. I'm putting some vintage posters around here. I created a cool Mickey Mantle poster. Putting up. I design. I'm just like reimagining. But. But I don't. The classics. That didn't read magic. What else I got over here? We got all kinds of awesome stuff. Who's this? Who's this? Ernie Banks. Oh, you know who that is? Oh yeah. That's awesome. That's your cub right there, baby. You know, this week, Brian PSA remain on their buying spree. Buying Beckett. And they. It's so funny. The news headlines always use the, you know, the collector brand. You know, their. Their upper brand, you know, that collects or what. What is their. What is like their. Their parent company. Yeah, Collectors. Collectors. And they never say PSA buys Beckett. Even though that's. That's what happened. You know, it's. And we joke. Look, I got. I like that. I got. I don't care. Like, I have no like pony in this show. You know? Like, I don't care. I just want whatever's good for the market and for collectors and for everyone in. In the game. But it's just funny. Like, if this was any other industry, I don't know if you'd be allowed. It's called monopolies. You got one. You got like one Standings is whatever. CCG or whatever. And that's it. So. Yeah, they. And that one. Ccgs owned by Blackstone. Yeah. So there's. They're bigger than. Well, Steve Cohen at 0.72 is probably. I don't know whose fund is bigger. Yeah. But they're both. Yeah, they're both okay. And it would be a good head to head and they don't need to sell to someone. No. Yeah. So we'll. We'll see. I don't like, honestly, like, it's probably. They're probably gonna do it like SGC and have a standalone and. And just improve production. I mean, Beckett's a mess, dude. It's a mess. I saw it and I said this to you. I know everybody's all up in a wad about it and I'm a little more level headed. Like, again, I don't. I like to let things play out and I. From a business standpoint, look, PSA has a lot of demand right now and they're scaling and they need graders, need infrastructure and Becca's got it. Plus they got some brand assets that I think would be pretty cool to play with if they did it right. I don't, I don't have a lot of faith as a brand and market guy. I don't have a lot of faith in hobby brands to do that Right. Just to be honest because they don't call me but but shameless plug. But in all seriousness, that's a joke. But that the truth is what I do see from just being a business guy is just this feels like an infrastructure skill play as much as anything. Yeah. Yes. Came out and said they're keeping Beckett its own entity. So interesting. I'm sure they I mean yeah, so they did SGC too. So I mean that sounds great but it doesn't mean they're not going to use their graders and their infrastructure and to support the the demand in business PSA already has versus necessarily keeping their best on the Becket brand. I got a question for you. Do Beckett slabs increase and close the gap with PSA because they're owned by collectors? Well, SGC didn't and but a Beckett's, you know higher tier traditionally, you know and that Beckett black with the 10, I mean that's always gonna, I think that's gonna always have a lure to it and a brand cachet and so is it Black label? I might be my bitching that and that what it is Beckett black label. And so I think I would lean into that if I was PSA as some kind of premium tier maybe. But I don't think in the short term older graded Beckett cards get, you know, nines are now worth, you know what PSA nines are? I, I what? I'm excited. I just hope they keep the Beckett magazine because that's how I cop all my cards. Oh, I'm glad you went there. But you know what the nostalgia of that growing up, I would do something with that like with the Journal, you know. And I had a guy on Wax Poetic. The guy that the collectors he they do and sell an auction off really unique music collectibles. Like they just auction off Mariah Carey's demo tape like cassette tape, 54 grand for and we were having this discuss. They do really great with editorializing auction content. So it feels like a story but then it's an auction. And if I'm, you know, put my brand on hat. This is free here, Nat. The next one's not. This one's free. Find a way to edit, you know like editorize, you know that, that publication. Could you bring that back in some nostalgic way that makes sense financially? You know, I'm not saying printed every week. I'm not saying printed every month. I know that's expensive but like something to use that brand and. But not the values. We use Lottox for that. Yeah. And you know what's funny is like lot of Luddite's members, I would say majority are either boomerangs back, coming back in like our generation. Yep. Or they're new. The people who come back in will ask the same questions. Is top still around Is Beckett. Yep. Is flair. Yeah. And where do you buy cards? Yep. And so. So the Beckett it has brand value and cachet. So they need to find a way sgc, it had developed brand. I know it's. It had it with older cards. Like I get that. But it wasn't. It's not Beckett brand. Like Beckett has a. Is. Has a. Has a brand play here. If they were. If they use it and they might. I mean there's smart guys over there. Not smart. He'll figure it out. But I think I would use that play. But I think the grading. Yeah. I just think they're gonna infrastructure psa, you know, like there will be one. Well there's like there's a movie or video game or something. There can only be one. I think it's like some sci fi movie in the end. Hopefully it just gets helps with turnaround times. You know, that's. That's all we care about. I saw. I don't know who it was. It's probably a friend. I want to say who it was but I think you know, it's going to make it cheaper or something. Not getting cheaper. You don't buy another company even if they get the price ain't going down. No, I mean it's the exact opposite. What yeah is you buy a company for 7x EBITDA and then you get rid of, you know, at least 2x expenses and then you raise prices. Now you have a 12X. Yeah. Brian's a CEO of a tech company and he's a big time business guy. So listen, what that guy said, like just saying. Yeah. I mean come on man, it ain't going down. But I mean congratulations to psa. I mean I'm just, you know you couldn't pull that shit off on any other industry. But I love it. Man. That's got some balls. I mean let's just call it what it is. And I mean and money and congratulations on both. Like I like you know, there's part of me for the industry that's like, yeah, man, I know that's. That's not good. And then there's part of it, just the audacity of it all. I fucking love it. Like, I don't know. So I respect both ends of it, and I'm here to watch it. I got my popcorn ready. Hey, man, I think that's all we got for this week's episode. Any final thoughts? It just, you know, we talk about everything all the time, and we really hit on a lot of things today. And I'm, I'm. I'm excited to see this new year come in and, and see what you guys got going on over there and what you're building and what we're building and a lot of hope, a lot of excitement. Yeah, man. Couldn't be more excited or proud to partner with you and all of it. And, hey, just so you know you're listening, I mean it. You know, Brian and I do this because we love it, but I wouldn't rather do it with anyone else. And what you hear is what you get. And you know what kind of company's being built by the man that you get to hear every week with me on this show. He is exactly what you see in here. And I couldn't be prouder to enter into 2026 with you and him. Go to the App Store. L U D E X Download that app. It's getting better every day. Manage your collection, scan your cards. And the fastest, slickest integration with ebay. Plus lots of exciting things coming. Just come along. Hey, come for the scan, stay for the commerce. You know where to find us. Collectibles show soon to be the Collectornation.com a Ludx Media company brought to you by from always, Ryan Ludden and the great team at Ludx. We appreciate you for listening. Love you, Brian. We'll see you next week on Collector Nation. Thanks for tuning in to the show. The don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast platform and don't miss the full video version on YouTube. You can find us at www.collectibles.show or follow Ryan on Instagram ryanolford. Now get out there and collect yours.