Steve Taft: Counterfeits, Grading + The Truth About Star Basketball Cards | Sports Cards Live

Michael Jordan. Sports cards is a lifestyle Sports cards and we live now. Jeremy Lee in the building and every guest that you ever needed. Sports cards after hours. Keep the hobby heated updates Hobby talk like you never seen it. Sports cards live and I could ever beat it Sports cards is a lifestyle Sports cards and we live now. Welcome to another episode of Sports Cards Live with your host, Jeremy Lee. All right, everybody. Welcome to an episode of Sports Cards Live recorded because we are not live. We are recording. My name is Jeremy Lee and I am happy and very excited to have with us here for the first time on the channel. Long, long overdue. We've only been talking about this for a couple of years, but Steve Taft, welcome to the welcome to Sports Cards Live. It's great to have you. How are you today? I'm doing well, Jeremy. And Yu-Gi-Oh it has been quite a while that we've been talking about doing this. So thanks to our mutual friend Ari for forcing us to get our schedules together, huh? Yu-Gi-Oh exactly. And so, you know, it's, it's nice to have a guy like you here on the show and having a, what should be a nice conversation should be very Yu-Gi-Oh opening, educational, informative for people who are, whether you're new to the hobby or you've been in the hobby a long time, Steve brings a ton of hobby experience. Why don't we sort of just set the context, Steve, as to what that really means. Your, your hobby history, your, your experience in it. You're like, tell us a bit about your hobby journey. What, what first got you into collecting? Well, I was born into a sports family. My dad was a high school and college football and track and field coach. So I literally, you know, had a football in my crib when I was a week old. And sports was just something from the first day I could remember that I was always interested in. And I think I was maybe 7, maybe 8 years old when I bought my first pack of cards. I think, I think it was 65 pack of football cards. And then in 66, I was buying packs of baseball cards. And within a couple years of that, you know, I found those ads in the back of the Sporting News from Larry Fritch and card Collectors company. And I think I was at my first card show in probably 1971. It was in the Anaheim area around Disneyland. And it just continued from there. A little break during part of high school and part of college. But, but even then I was attending shows and, and doing classified ads and the Trader Speaks and then Sports Collectors Digest. By what, the late 70s, I think it was. So I got started at a young age and just kept doing it and took a little break as a golf pro and, and then it. Well, I guess it was this, the late 80s when I, I started doing this full time. But late 70s, early mid-80s, I was doing it part time, you know, kind of around my golf schedule and everything. So that's how I got started. And so what really happened there in that mid-80s that took it from being just collecting and opening packs like you mentioned, to being more of a business for you or when you, did you become a dealer, did you get into research? How did you really develop the expertise that you went on to, to have and use it as you move forward? Yu-Gi-Oh the, I think the first shows that I set up as a dealer was probably 77, maybe 78. And you know, I had to work around my college schedule and my golf schedule at that, at that time. So it wasn't like I was doing a show every week or an ad every week, but I was still running ads in SCD and baseball Hobby News, probably a couple others I can't think of at this time. And I got a little burned out on the golf business and I Goldin play competitive golf anymore because of the golf wrist injury. And ultimately what happened though was there was a point in time when the value of cards skyrocketed in the late 70s. And a lot of the stuff that I had bought as a kid through the mail at the local stores and then even at some of those early card shows, that stuff was, you know, triple, quadruple the value of what I paid for it. And that's when I started, you know, doing some selling along with the buying. And it was when Star Company came out in 83, that's when I, I started, I don't want to say getting out of selling baseball and football cards, but I started specializing in basketball. At that point in time I just, I felt like the Bird Magic, Lakers, Celtics thing had really turned basketball around. And I just thought that that was a big opportunity in terms of future demand. And I didn't think it was going to take very long. And you know, by the end of the 80s, basketball was, was pretty crazy as, as far as my research work that I did, that started in, oh, 91, 92 when the type 2 star company cards came out. And you know, I had a, a decent inventory of Star Company cards and there were a few cards that, that didn't look quite right. And, and I got pretty involved with that to a point of even talking to some of the NBA's attorneys at the time and just trying to figure things out. I shouldn't say dealing with psa, but contacting PSA at that time, talking to Mike Baker about some of the type 2 counterfeits and everything. So that ended up kind of being about a, oh, about a 15 year project of doing a lot of research, talking to some of the NBA attorneys and their private investigator. And I Beckett up a few tidbits along the way doing all that work. So, you know, at this point, you know, that kind of led to training some of the grading companies over the years on, on Star Co. Authenticity and everything. Okay, I want to come back to the Star thing. I want, but I want to touch on something you said. You mentioned that, you know, in the late 70s, your cards had gone from being what they were worth to, you know, two, three, four times the value. You know, I remember when we had the first real nationally distributed price guides, which in my perspective, in my world was the, the Beckett price guides in the mid-80s, mid to late 80s. It was then that I realized that these things were worth more. How was, how were values back in the late 70s? How were they communicated in the community? This is before the time of cell phones or the Internet or even, you know, a monthly, national, nationally accepted publication. How did you even know that your cards were worth so much? Well, actually there, there was a publication that was the, the Trader Speaks. And about all you could do at that time was see what the cards were listed for in the Trader Speaks and see what dealers were asking at shows. Now there weren't very many shows back then, but they're in Southern California. There's probably more shows in that area than just about anywhere else. You know, I think Philly had a, a show way back then and a few other places in the Detroit, Michigan area. But, you know, there just weren't a lot of shows. But that was about all you could do, especially in the 70s. And then, you know, coming into the 80s, Jim Beckett started his price guides. And you know, that was a revolutionary thing at that point. There were a couple other price guides that came out. But, you know, the, the Beckett guide was, that was the it guide that pretty much everybody looked at. And, but even back then, you know, there'd be. When a card got really hot, you know, maybe a Beckett price was 10 bucks on a card, but it was really hot. You'd still see it advertised for 12 or 15 or something. So, you know, I, I don't know if we'll ever have the you know, the perfect pricing system. But back then you kind of, you went with what you could find and sometimes you just made it up of what you thought it should be. Yu-Gi-Oh okay. No, good. Good to know. I mean, there's a lot has changed over the years, especially, you know, since the pre1990 to post and the advent of the, the Internet and, and the global economy and all those things. I, I want to keep tapping into that history, though, and, you know, I'm gonna sort of just ask you a fun little question like what, what was something that, that the hobby was like back then that today's collectors, savvy collectors today and investors and flippers really just might not appreciate? You know, I want to hearken back to the old days here, the, the roots of the hobby. Does anything come to mind? Oh, you know, to me, it's still kind of, kind of the same because, you know, if I set up at a show in 1982 and I brought some really good stuff and some stuff that's, you know, the equivalent of the junk wax era when you go to a show, people back then were looking for the quality stuff just like they are now. So, you know, in certain ways, to me, it really hasn't changed that much. You know, it's like you bring good stuff to a show and there's a good chance that that's what is going to sell and you're going to come home with the, the other stuff. So, you know what, I guess what's changed is, you know, everybody walking around with their phone set up to one of these apps for prices, whether it's card ladder or some other app, you know, so I see a lot of that now, but I really think there's a lot of similarities. The technology has changed, but for the most part, when people come up to my table, they, they're looking to, to take home my good stuff, not my leftover stuff. I have to wonder, you know, you said really hasn't changed like you said, in terms of people still, people are still wanting the good stuff. You know, I wonder back in those earlier days in the hobby, what the motivations were. Did they want them because they just wanted it for their collection, or did they want it because they wanted to, you know, flip it and make a profit? I guess the question I'm asking Steve is how much has investing overtaken the hobby, even from what you're seeing at card shows? Yu-Gi-Oh now, now that's definitely where there's a change, because back in the old days, I don't Think as many people were looking at a. A purchase as how long am I going to have to sit on this before I can make a nice profit? There was, I think, a lot more. We'll call it pure collecting as opposed to collecting until it becomes an investment piece. So, Yu-Gi-Oh that. I think you brought up a good point, and that is probably the biggest difference that, that I've seen. And I think everybody's seen that at, at this point, when you look back 30 or 40 years. What about. Let's talk about condition of cards for a moment. Obviously now can. The world of condition is governed by the grading companies, predominantly. PSA has the, the final say on what condition your card is in, which is a little bit dis. Disenchanting, disheartening because of the inconsistency and the, you know, the experience of some of these graders. But, but what was it like back in the early days in terms of condition without. Without a. Without there being a set standard. And even when Dr. Beckett put out his first magazines, I think there was an explanation or description of the various condition levels. But again, before there was a national publication to share this information, what was it like dealing with. With condition back in the day? How did collectors really care? When did they start caring? Well, I can tell you, you know, when I was opening packs of 66, 67, 68, baseball, and that when I had duplicates, I would pick the best centered one and the best corners to put into my set that I was building, the other ones went in the duplicate file. But at the same time, there was not as much concern about condition. And I think there was certainly more variance in what was acceptable to be a. A near mint card. Probably it's the old story, if I'm selling it, it's mint, and if I'm buying it, it's X mint. You know, that situation, that's never gone away either. But Yu-Gi-Oh I don't think there was quite as much concern about condition. But at the same time, you know, if you had a choice and back then it was more likely that, know, if there were duplicates of something, they might have both been the same price. So you, you know, you'd pick the best one. Occasionally you'd also see some people that would have two and, and there'd be different prices based on condition. I think the, the strictness of the grading, though, that's certainly gotten a lot tougher, you know, as. As time has moved on. When did you first hear the term gem mint? You know, I, I don't even know. I I probably in the mid late 80s. Okay. But I, I could be wrong on that. When, Yu-Gi-Oh when third party grading first became a thing and you know, I've heard the stories of PSA being at the, the national or even one of the predecessor grading companies being there and representatives walking around talking to dealers and it was, it was, it was, there seemed to be a lot of pushback and resistance to it. What do you, how, how was it first received in your, in your perspective and when did it kind of turn? How, what was that evolution like? Yu-Gi-Oh I think for the most part there, there was a lot of resistance to it. I certainly had some early resistance to it, mostly because I didn't want to pay $5 for somebody to tell me what condition my card was in. But, and I think there, there really was quite a bit of resistance and I've even heard, you know, that, well, PCGS coin grading took off literally the second David hall opened that. But the, the card grading wing of that company struggled the first couple years from what I understand. And I think it, it essentially changed when the financial part of it changed. You know, if I had a, a whatever a Jordan or a Bird or a Magic or a Kofax, whoever it happened to be, and I could get a premium because it was integrated holder. That's what, that's what turned it. I don't think it's any more complicated than that. You know, if, if you're gonna sell a card for 20 bucks, whether it's graded or not, what's the point? But you know, if that $20 card becomes a $50 card because you spent five bucks grading it, there you go. I, I wouldn't analyze it any more difficult than that. So it really comes down to money as. I think a lot of purists would be sad to hear, but I think, I think everybody else just would accept to be the reality. What are your, what are your thoughts? Is grading been good for the hobby, bad for the hobby, neutral or inevitable? I look at it for many years now as a necessary evil. It, you know, no grading company is perfect. As good as, as good as they are, they're also, they're not perfect. And you know, if you've been around the hobby a while, you know that I just, to me the, the good part is that there's a lot of dealers that'll tell you their cards near mint to mint when it's X mint. And for the collector or the investor that's buying cards, you know, they've got that third party opinion that's probably right. You know, once again, we know they're not perfect, but anytime you're buying a card with a PSA or Beckett or SGC holder, dga, now with Star Bags, a couple of those other companies, you know, it increases your chances that you're getting the right grade and that it's an authentic unaltered card. You know, I, I would say there's a lot of trimmed cards and graded holders from all those companies and every once in a while they'll make a mistake on authenticity also. But to me, the idea of, of a card grade or, or an autograph grade is that you've increased your chances of having the real thing in the proper grade by a lot. Might not be 100%, but 95 to 99% probably. And I think that's a valid reason for the grading and authentic authentication companies to exist and do what they do. What do you think they are better at grading or authenticating? And if you want to split that between general cards and your expertise, Star Cards, please feel free to do so. That's a trick question, Jeremy. Well, I don't mean it to be, I don't mean it to be a trick question, but I guess, you know, I, I, I, Yu-Gi-Oh they're, Yu-Gi-Oh they're probably better probably at the authentication part of it, as long as we're not including catching trim jobs and, and people rebuilding corners and you know, whatever the hell else they're doing these days. Because authenticity wise, very few counterfeits get graded by the major companies is, you know, way less than 1% I would think, you know, 0.1 maybe if that, you know, one out of a thousand, one out of ten thousand. I, I don't even know what that number would be, but I think I would dispute, you know, grades that I get on some of my cards a lot more than I worry about them grading a counterfeit. Yu-Gi-Oh I, I think where the problem lies is the ability to catch up with these guys that are doing the trimming and the alterations. And you know, because I've done a lot of consulting with multiple companies on the authenticity part of, of Star Co. And a couple other things along the way, you know, I, I hear a little bit about, you know, authenticity and you know, both Beckett and PSA have people that, that's their main job is just to try to keep track with, with the counterfeits that are coming out and trying to keep up with how to detect trimming and, and various alterations. And it's literally a full time job at these major grading companies. So you know, they're, they're working on it and I give them credit for the fact that they're always trying to, you know, keep up with that stuff and stop it. It's just that, you know, most of us that have been around the block a while in this business, you know, we know that sometimes something gets through that wasn't supposed to get through. But. So, you know, like I said though, you know, I'm, I'm well aware of some of the people at PSA and Beckett specifically that, you know, their job is just trying to keep up with that stuff and figure out how to patch auto and stop it. And I'm glad those companies have those people trying to do that. So you, you mentioned you had consulted with, I think you said PSA or you might have just had the grading companies, but I heard PSA as far as the Star cards go, and I think you mentioned reaching out to them in the early 90s. So with that sort of insight and experience in working with PSA on grading or authenticating a certain type of card being Star cards, you must have some insights into some of the processes that they go through to, you know, decide, first of all, can they properly authenticate a card? Do they have those skills and resources in house? And number two, will they then go ahead and grade them? And I think it's. Maybe not everybody's aware, but it is kind of well known in, in hob. In, in hobby history that psa and we just, we just use PSA because they have 90 of the market with their subsidiaries now or their, their sister companies that they didn't. They, they graded Star cards, Star basketball cards for a little bit. Then they stopped for an extended period and then they started again. Can you sort of help shed some light onto why those decisions were each made by them along the way and what you were able to do or not do to help them kind of, you know, get over the, the hump of grading them or not. Yu-Gi-Oh that essentially was my fault. They, I had a dealing with a couple guys that they were involved at the print shop at Star Company. Star didn't print their own cards. They contracted with print shops. And I bought a couple of cards off these guys and didn't feel real comfortable with it, so I sent one into PSA. This was, I'm going to say it was 93. It might have been 92 or 94. It's been a long time. So if I'm wrong about the exact date, sorry. But one-of-one I sent the card in and then I just that's when I started my research. And I knew before I got the card back that it was what we would start terming a type 2 counterfeit, meaning that the owner of Star Company, best I can tell, and I spent a lot of time, you know, working on this. I don't think the owner of Star Company ever took possession of the Type twos. I'm. My opinion, my best guess is that the print shop people were involved in this and not the owner of Star Company. But one-of-one so I. I'm doing my research and I realized that. That what I sent in was not a original Star Company card, and yet it came back as a Mint 9. So I got in touch with Mike Baker, who at the time I think was the head grader at psa. And we sat down at the old Long beach show way back when, and I showed it to him and we talked about it, showed him what to look for, and he felt really comfortable that they knew what to do now. And I think the owner or the upper management shot it down and said, just, we're not grading those anymore. And I believe it's because they probably graded 20 or 30 or 40 of them and maybe didn't want to have to deal with their buyback policy. So it got swept under the rug and that's. That's why they stopped grading Star. I went to Steve Rocke a couple of times when he was the president of PSA and talked about it. Said I'd be more than willing to do some training sessions, etc. Nothing happened. And at this point, it was clear to me that as long as David hall owned PSA and PCGs that they weren't going to grade Star. Did you ever approach Joe Orlando during his tenure as president? Yu-Gi-Oh I did. Yu-Gi-Oh I talked. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh In fact, I'm sorry I said Steve, Rocky, Joe Orlando a couple times, because Steve, Rocky, you know, I. They called. Steve called me, or it might have been Mike, but Gai called me right after Sports Collectors Digest, who was the first company that I trained to do some star grading. When they shut down their operation a couple months later, I got the call from Global and worked with them on some training also. And then it was Beckett after that. But once Nat Turner and his group bought PSA or Collectors Universe, whatever we want to officially call that, everything changed. And it wasn't too long after Nat Turner's team took over that I got a call from them, you know, asking if I would do some training and consulting with them. And at the time, I was undiagnosed with sleep apnea and the fatigue level was just kicking my rear end pretty good. So I, I put it on hold for a while and after about a year of waiting for me, they just, they had somebody in house that started to, to do the program. So I talked to him quite a bit about it, literally for hours on the phone with a couple of their people, and a couple people flew out here to the Reno area to talk to me about some various things. But I was never under contract with psa. That was just me talking to them. Probably should have got under contract. So you said it all changed when Nat Turner and his crew acquired Collectors Universe. Yu-Gi-Oh And why do you think that was? What was the. Why were, why the sudden interest? Well, I think there's a lot of things, but, you know, I, I've been pretty vocal in, in the hobby talking about Star for many years, you know, in interviews, articles, etc, and I, I made it pretty clear that it's not that difficult to figure out. And you know, Nat being a, an avid collector, and I think, I think he collected some Star company along the way also, you know, I think they just saw it as, gee, how come we're not grading this stuff? You know, when you get right down to it, there's a hell of a lot more Jordan Fleer counterfeits than there are Jordan Star counterfeits. So. And most of the Star counterfeits are pretty lousy quality. They're pretty easy to tell. There's only, there's only a couple that, that I kind of do a double take at and take a second look. And you know, I got to be careful when I say that in case somebody's making up a real good one right now and it's going to come out next week or something. But I just, you know, I just think that Nat and decided that we need to grade this stuff because it's, it's licensed and it's legitimate product. And quite frankly, it's not that difficult with a little bit of knowledge. Granted, you do have to have some basic knowledge, but it's not that difficult. Well, I want to talk about that a little bit. I agree. I think, I think it only makes sense that, that psa, being the leader in the space, figures out how to do that. So they've gone ahead and done that, or at least purported to do so, and now do, authenticate and grade the Star basketball card. So I think it made a lot. Makes a lot of sense for them to do that as well. Now I'm really curious about this type 1 versus type 2 and the fact that both were produced by the same printing company or companies. You said that, you know, the, that Star outsourced the printing like most card companies do, or at least do nowadays, and that the type ones, the, the original cards were, were sent to the owner of the Star company who then distributed them. I, you might not have said exactly that, but I think that's what you were getting at. And then the, and then the printing company, some employees or, or owners of the printing company decided, hey, we have an opportunity here to print more of these for our own profit and cut out the Star company and maybe sell those. And you, you dub those as counterfeits, which I think is a, is an interesting word for them because they're kind of made from the same printing plates, let's say, or however they were. They were, they were made. So, so my, my, my real. I guess I'm open to any comments you have on this, but the real question here, Steve, is if they were made at the same place and you even said that they used different printing companies, how can we be so sure? How are you so sure? How is PSA now so sure that a type, a supposed type 2 didn't just come from a different printing company? And also if they came from even the same printing company, what changed to make a type 2 different from a type 1? Well, first of all, the, within the definition of a counterfeit, when, when the owner of that product doesn't take possession of it, that makes it stolen. Fair. Yu-Gi-Oh Okay. And I wish I had my dictionary here and, and I've always called them counterfeit because of, of how the word is described in a dictionary and I stand by it. Yu-Gi-Oh I think that's just semantic. So I, I hear what you're saying. I just think it's a, it's an interesting word because when I think of a counterfeit I just, I think of like people in the, in the dingy basement or wherever, you know, taking images and create and figure out ways to print it. Well, let's, let's look at it a second way. Because it was not given back to the Star company and the Star company owner. It's unauthorized. Yu-Gi-Oh That makes it a counterfeit also. Sure. So, and then you know the term type 2 now there's also just flat out counterfeits of, of some of the same cards that are in the type 2 group, like the, the 117 Jordan. There's just a flat out counterfeit of that card. Actually there's a couple but there's one main counterfeit and then the, the guys that, I don't know if you remember, in the early 2000s, there were some counterfeits of some of the key minor league baseball cards of Ripken and I think Griffey, some of those other guys that became big stars and the sportscasters, the Magic Bird and Gretzky got counterfeited, the bond bread and some bazooka baseball. That group, I think, was somewhere in western Pennsylvania or the eastern part of Ohio. And they were the ones that were doing almost all of the just flat out counterfeits where they were taking the picture from the card and rebuilding the frames and the font, and they did bazooka baseball, bond bread, sportscasters, minor league baseball. And then they started doing Star company and that's when I took notice and, and tried reporting them to the NBA and also to Dan Fitzpatrick, the FBI guy that did a couple of the big investigations a few years prior and didn't, didn't get very far with my efforts with that. However, one of the guys that was one of the main sellers, distributors of that stuff, he ended up getting arrested and indicted over fake autographs and resealed packs. And I, I think that was about 2008 or nine, maybe. Once again, you know, I might be off by a year. But he, he, he did get convicted. And when I saw his name in the arrest, I, I called the DA's office and ended up getting to talk to the DA for about almost an hour, filling him in on all the stuff that I knew about this guy. And ultimately, though, they didn't even get started on what I told them because they already, they had them on the autograph forgeries and the resealed packs. And the Finest part of that story is I was talking to the detective that was involved and he told me that they found a 55 gallon trash can filled with empty glue bottles. So imagine how many resealed packs there they did, you know, with a 55 gallon barrel full of empty glue bottles. Yu-Gi-Oh But the one thing that occurred from that is it looked like that arrest scared the crap out of everybody else that was involved in that, from the guy printing them to the guys that were selling them. And I don't know if the guy that got arrested was involved in printing. You know, I know he was involved in selling the stuff because he even had an ebay handle for a while. And, and so I'm not sure how many other people were involved, but his single arrest seemed to put an end to that Entire counterfeiting group. Interesting. Great. So ultimately, you know, a lot of people talk about the type twos and they include these other counterfeits, but it's two separate situations. You know, just like, once again, go Back to the Fleer Jordan. There's, I don't know, three or four years ago, I heard there were 35 different counterfeits of the FLIR Jordan. And, you know, is that, is there more than that now? I. I don't know, but, you know, there's only a couple to a few different Star company counterfeits. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, all these, all these versions you're referring to, these are simply the known versions, right? Yu-Gi-Oh 35 MJ's, a couple stars. There could be well more than that that are sitting in slabs we just don't. We just don't know about. But that's speculation, of course. I want to go back to the type 1, type 2 thing for a moment, though, because they were printed by the same printer. What changed between the type ones and type twos that you're most familiar with? Well, there's two speculations on that. One is that the border framing lines were laid off register onto the printing sheets. So the black lines that, that are in between the picture and the frame, they're usually black lines, but sometimes they used red or some other color, depending on the border color. Those were off register on a lot of them, and sometimes they were way off register. So the first thought is, okay, they just stopped because they realized they screwed up and had to realign, you know, one of the layers of the film negatives. And that's what I kind of think happened. The other thought is that those were printed after the fact. And I can't name names for a multitude of reasons, first one being, you know, slander and libel. Since I can't prove any of this, I can only, you know, provide some best guess. But one of the guys that was involved just, I don't know, a couple, three, four years ago, changed the story about it and said that they made him afterwards. And I don't know that's possible. Afterwards, after, after 86. In other words, they made the batch. Star Company took possession, sold them, and these guys still had on their computer or, or whatever the ability to, to run some more. That. Yu-Gi-Oh I'm. I kind of don't think that's what happened. But, you know, we're talking about guys that are selling cards that they're not supposed to be selling. So, you know, how do you believe them? I think there's Lots of plausible explanations there, Steve. And I would also, I would also just ask this as well, like, okay, this, this off register Blue Ice to whether or not these are unauthorized counterfeits. Like if, if they, you know, if you're the, if you put your criminal hat on or your, your unsavory hat on and, and you're going to print off some unauthorized copies for your own profit as a printing company and you do your first batch or two and you realize that the black lines are off register. Instead of just throwing in the towel, aren't you going to line those back up and then print them again better and put those out into the market as unauthorized counterfeits? Why, why stop there if you're doing this for profit? Yu-Gi-Oh of course, you know, when they, assuming that they did do these in 80, 86 or December or whatever of 85, you know, at that point in time, you know, it was a, the bulls bag, was a $3 bag. So, you know, you're not, you're not looking at it as, oh, this card's going to be worth a couple thousand bucks in a few, you know, in five years. And so there's that aspect of it. And one other little part of that story is the guy there was a, this was covered in Sports Collectors Digest in once again a 9091, something like that. The guy that was selling the type twos, he claimed that he met the Star company owner in Hawaii at Kit Young's trade show and paid, I don't know, I, I think he said 40 or 50,000 bucks for all this stuff. Well, the attorneys for the NBA told me after the fact that we were talking about the situation at a national a few years later. And when I mentioned that person's name, the one attorney turns to the other and says, why do I remember that name? And the other one said he worked for the printer. So there's, there's just another little piece of the puzzle, you know, that I don't know that we're ever going to know the answer because, you know, you can ask these people, but can you believe them? And like I said, ultimately all this stuff that I was doing at that time, trying to figure out what the heck's going on. Robert Levin, the owner of Star, he never sold Type twos in an original bag. He never sold any to Bill and Todd in the private auction and the couple more times they bought from him after that. So there just isn't any evidence that the owner of Star company had any involvement in that. In fact, I guess you could say since these guys were selling some of these cards, you know, to me it's stolen material or at least that's what it looks like. I wonder really, I wonder really how that would, would, would kind of flesh out in, in, in court or wherever. Because you know the materials used to print the first run that the Star company ordered from the printing company or printing companies that that material, whether it's printing plates or however these things were made, we seem to think it's used with printing plates. Production transparencies. Okay, production transparencies. I think the question becomes who's, whose property were they? And if the Star company abandoned them and never went to pick them up from the printing, the printing company could then use them again. Or maybe they, they were the contract said to destroy them and the printing company didn't destroy them. You know, all these, there's all these different factors at play that would make me think, you know, even as a collector just because the Star company didn't take ownership of them just because they were unauthorized. But if they look the same, if they were printed in the same by the same companies using those same production transparencies, the same, you know, whatever, just from the same source, does the public even really care? And I'm not saying they, they shouldn't care. I think we do care about these things. But you know, if there's no real difference, especially if they fix that alignment, that registration issue that you mentioned, how do we ever know? How does the hobby ever know? There's a. I think the hobby, I think the lore is that there's 2000 of these cards made like the Jordan, the 84 Jordan 101 that that year. I feel like that's what people say and think. But there could be thousands more based on this. And yes, they were only three dollar bags but back then, you know, through three dollars meant a lot more back then than it, than it does today. So I still think it's easy money for these guys. Michael Jordan's popularity only increased after 1984 and 1986. So there could have easily been the motivation there. So I wonder, let's talk about these production transparencies. I, and I know that. Well you, you, you will, we'll get to that in a moment. But can you, to your knowledge, can you take us through the history of these production transparencies? Where, where were they like I was mentioning, after the first run of the authorized run occurred at the printing companies, what happened to these transparencies from there? Where were they? Well, in Let me say one other thing about the, the type twos. Okay. Besides the, the framing lines, the cropping was sometimes a little different and there were some glossiness issues and some bleed color bleed onto the back of the card. So there's multiple differences. They're not the same. They. They are different. Sorry, I just want to, I just want to interrupt before I forget. Steve in if the Star company used different printing companies for their product, could all of these different differences that you just mentioned be a product of being from different printing companies? We. We're not. We don't know for sure. But I, I think that each year was one company. I don't think two companies made half of each of, of say, the 856. I think they may have just changed companies from one year to the next, maybe. Once again, this is all speculation, so. Yu-Gi-Oh very important to mention that. Yu-Gi-Oh no, I appreciate, I appreciate that information. It, you know, a lot of this is just combining a whole bunch of circumstantial evidence that, that I've come into. You know, especially the conversations with some of the attorneys that back then the NBA farmed out to Lewin and Layton. They were a law firm in, in New York. And I don't believe that they're, they're in business anymore. And now I think a lot of the NBA stuff is legal stuff is in house. So one-of-one so the production transparencies, there's in theory, you know, a transparency for each card. And in 1996, the owner of Star Co. Contacted Bill Shonshack, also known as Sean Co Sports in the early 90s as one of the, the biggest star company dealers of that time period. And Robert Levin said to Bill, you know, I, I need some money. And I think he was work trying to finish a house or something. And, you know, Bill's response was, okay, well, what do you have to sell? And he basically didn't have any cards left. So Bill suggested, you know, do you have the printing plates or the chromes? You know, back then they typically called them chromes or slides. But production transparency seems to be what the, the film people tell me is the right thing to call them. So because he didn't have cards to sell, Bill, Bill said, well, will you sell me your printing plates or your, your chromes and your office records all related to Star basketball. So that was the deal that they made. And there were somewhere between 500 and 600 of these production transparencies as part of the deal, including the Jordan 101 and 117 and the Barkley and the Olajuwon and the Stockton Rookie and some of the other keys, a lot of commons. So Bill took possession of those in 1996. There's a contract on Bill's attorney's letterhead, you know, outlining the deal. And Bill just put him away because he, he was involved in some corporate management at the time with a bunch of restaurants and seven or eight, nine years ago he got back in touch with me and told me about him. And he had actually told me about him the day he got them, but he just put them away and finally decided to bring them out of the closet recently. And we've done a little bit of marketing on them, but we just put together a LLC and brought in some investors and we're about ready to launch. So you'll be the first social media site to see a picture maybe of the, of the 101 with the new launch and everything. Let me see if I can, if you can see it in the screen here. I don't know because that show it. Okay, that's okay. Actually I, because you did send me a, a copy of that. I'm going to be able to share that here with, with the audience. So I'm going to just bring that up on my, on my screen and we'll, we'll share that so people can, can see them for themselves. So let's just do that really quick. Here we go everybody. Thank you for your patience. Here we go. Should be in a moment. And there we go. Okay, so I'm showing, I've, I'm seeing this image you sent me which is. Yu-Gi-Oh says the Star Legacy Advancement Membership LLC presents the 8045 star company number 101 Michael Jordan production Transparency. We're looking at a nice picture of Mount Rushmore with one with one of the presidents, the Yu-Gi-Oh generated president. That's George Washington wearing it on a necklace on a gold chain. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh And then we have this image here as well which shows the, the transparency, a Picture of the Star 101 Michael Jordan and a bunch of, of explanations. So I'll let people read that for themselves. But Yu-Gi-Oh tell us about this project, Steve. Well, you know, we, we've marketed on a limited basis before, but Bill and I talked about it quite a bit and we decided that might be better to bring in some investors that were kind of interested in this item, you know, one-of-one but not ready to pull the trigger to buy it on their own. So we put together a pretty strong group and we feel like the strength of the group is stronger than just Bill and I marketing this item. And, you know, what we're gonna offer a potential buyer is to put it in a, a gold necklace and frame with a little diamond action along the, the frame area. So, you know, to kind of go along with one of the new trends on some of these big cards. And the, the Mount Rushmore thing was just, you know, it was an idea that we came up with just because we thought, you know, this Jordan collectible, it's the Mount Rushmore of all Jordan collectibles. In terms of card related, you know, there's. There's 4101s, give or take a little. The, the star company owner put out information that there were 4,000. So I said 2,000 earlier. So. 4,000. Well, you know, Beckett just did a update on their pop report and they started including the ones that they tagged as authentic, altered and, you know, so between Beckett and PSA, there's more than 2,000 of them graded. Now granted, there's probably a whole bunch of, you know, resubmits along the way, but there's more than 2,000. And I'm certainly in the camp that there's 4,000. And I could be convinced, you know, there might be a little bit more than 4000 even. Hard to know for sure. So tell us about the transparency and obviously setting, getting investors and setting up an LLC all for the sale of one item. Is that what this is? Yu-Gi-Oh we are, we're not completely set up. We're. We're waiting for some of the legal paperwork to come through, which we hope is any day now. And I hope to be able to launch, you know, officially at the national and if not, shortly thereafter. What does that mean? What. What does it mean? I mean, it's, it's. It's really the sale of one item. So. Yes. Are you going to sell it through one of the big auction companies? What's the plan to actually get market? No, we. We will probably talk to some PR people and it might just be me working on it. You know, it's. A lot of things are still up in the air. How much do you want for it? How much do you want? Well, we're going to probably ask 25 million. We'll certainly listen to offers. You know, the way I look at it is, you know, there's 4101s and this is the image that that was used to make those 4101s. It's a one of a kind. And to me, it's. It's the single most important Jordan collectible in the card card side of the collectibles business. You know, you can argue about a jersey, you know, from the game winning NBA championship or something having similar value, but from a card standpoint, not obviously this isn't a card, but it's card related and, and we think it's a pretty neat item. Yu-Gi-Oh I think it is too. And I certainly understand your perspective where you're coming from on the, the valuation and the importance. I wonder, I Wonder if the Fleer printing plates or transparencies would be worth more than, than this one. But this Star One one has so much lore and history and intrigue and mystery that go along with it that I, you know, I understand where, where, where you're, where you're coming from. But I want to go back to the. Jeremy, Jeremy, can I let me interject one thing about the potential 86 flirtations transparency or printing plates or whatever. You know, when, when FLIR had their auction Bill attended that and they were able to look through files for a while, they Goldin find any Fleer transparencies or printing plates or anything related to it. So you know, if it exists, it's some unknown place, some, somebody you know may have it, but it certainly hasn't been offered for sale in a public way. Likely, likely destroyed. But I'm just saying, you know, Yu-Gi-Oh it's fun to, it's fun to think about, but back to this particular transparency and, and time trying to just connect the dots with the, the Type one Type two stories. You know, you said, you just said that this transparency was used to, to create those 4,000. Would it not have also been used to make the Type Twos that were. That were produced after the deal with the printing company happened? And then at what point did the owner of Star, as far as you can, as far as you your understanding goes, at what point did they physically take possession of this transparency back from the printing company such that the printing company could no longer make Type twos? Or did the printing company make a second copy of the transparency themselves? Are there counterfeit transparencies out there or maybe one even. Oh boy, there's a whole bunch of questions there. I know the first of all, the type, the type twos do not refer to all star cards. Of the 11 or 1200 different star cards, there's only 100 cards that are in the type two category and that's the 85. 6 NBA set. From cards 95 to 172. The best of the new set and the Jordan 10 card set. So that's the only cards that type two can refer to. Does that include the star 101? No. No. Oh, so there's, so there's no, there's, there's no type two on a star 101. There's only type twos from the 85, 86 star NBA set. The second series. Not even the first series of that, only the second series. So any fake or counterfeit Jordan star 101s are not type twos. They are, they are produced by groups, individuals, people out there who did not have access to the original printing facilities. That would be correct, except for that white border and black border that seemed to be just before the shop at home situation hit. But those, those are much higher quality in terms of the technology used. So as a consumer, as a collector or an investor, I can, I can have a lot more confidence when it comes to purchasing Star cards. I can have a lot more confidence purchasing a star 101 Michael Jordan than I can any of the cards that you just mentioned were subject to the type 2 treatment. Yu-Gi-Oh I think that's a valid point. You know, until, until somebody gets the knowledge, you know, to, to know to look at the bleed or the lack of bleed on the type twos. The originals will have some, some of the border color of the front will bleed onto the back just a tiny bit. Just enough that you might be able to see it with the naked Yu-Gi-Oh Good chance you'll need a magnifying glass to pick up some slivers of that bleed. And, and then, you know, looking at those border framing lines that we talked about earlier, how, how confident are you in the current grading company's ability now to truly identify an authentic Star card? And I'm, I mean, listen, I know there's more than just the star 101 Jordan, but that is the headliner. That is the gem of the whole Stars Star company's existence. And I mean, there are other very valuable cards as well, but. Yu-Gi-Oh How confident are you in their ability to identify counterfeit star 101s? I'll just stop there. I have some follow ups, but I'll stop. I am extremely confident. I'll tell you this. I never saw Sports Collectors Digest make a mistake on a 101. I never saw Global make a mistake now when I say that there was some, somebody, I don't know who did this, but somebody took a generic holder and made a fake global cert label and put some counterfeit 101s. This was after Global was out of business. So putting that aside, I never saw Global do a slab of counterfeit 101. I've never seen a counterfeit 101 in a Beckett holder, and I've never seen one in a PSA holder. Now that doesn't necessarily prove because maybe there is one somewhere that I didn't see. But usually when there's a mistake, somehow people find me and ask me, is this a mistake? You know, just because of my reputation, I get a lot of those calls and emails. So I've never seen any of these companies make a mistake on a 101. Now I have, I have seen a lim a very limited number of mistakes on the potential type twos. Not very many, but a few. And you know, I, I know Beckett had to buy a couple back a few years ago and I think what happened in that case is, you know, they get a submission for a hundred cards and they're all baseball or they're all tops or Upper Deck or something. And then there's one Star company card and they, they used to have specific graders and they probably still do. But if there was a Star company submission, it would specifically go to certain graders that, that were well versed. And I think every once in a while a submission got to somebody that wasn't the Star company specialist. Sure. But it's, you know, way less than 1%. You know, it's, it's possible. But you know, Back to the 101. Sure. So far. And once again, you know, who knows what somebody's trying to do in their basement or print shop right this moment. But so far the 101 counterfeits just haven't been good enough to fool people with some knowledge. Yu-Gi-Oh the only thing you know, I always, I always snicker at that comment. And not, not because it's not good, but because we only know what we know. We only know about counterfeits that have been identified as counterfeits. With technology today and the crudeness of, I mean, the Star cards, they feel, they feel cheap, in my opinion. And don't I, I don't know why you take this personally. You didn't own them or invent them. Star cards feel cheap and junky to me. They feel like a substandard sports card. Just how they were produced with that, with that rudimentary production and technology today, how do we not know or how do we know that there are no other counterfeits that we just don't even know are counterfeits? How are we Are we that confident that there are no counterfeits that are so good that we have, we, you, me, psa, Beckett, have not been able to identify and recognize. Well, you know, if you're going to say that about potentially Star, it comes into play with every card ever made. Sure. And you know, maybe at some point, you know, 20 or 50 years from now, maybe the hobby blows up because somebody can match everything. But you know, the, the effort involved at this point to match the paper stock, the, the ink, the font, and then ultimately with Star Company cards, one of the reasons that it would be extremely difficult to make counterfeits that would pass is because of the cutting characteristics. You know, I dare you to be able to match the imperfect cutting characteristics of Star Company cards. Yu-Gi-Oh You know, because the problem is they didn't cut them correctly. You know, they're tilt cuts and, and off center and good luck matching that. You know, if they were all 50, 50 borders and no tilt cuts, that'd be pretty easy in today's technology to match that part of the card. But good luck. Yu-Gi-Oh And I, I, I, I, I appreciate your comment that, you know, it could be, if it's, if that's the case for this could be the case for other cards as well. I just think that we as the hobby are so quick to determine or, or conclude on, you know, well, we know the count, we know what counterfeits there are, but we only know the known counterfeits. We don't know the unknown ones. Unfortunately. And I'm not trying to, this is not a scare tactic or anything. It's just a, a pragmatic thought that I have about the, just the, the, the way the world works these days. And listen, you mentioned that the, the effort and difficulty that there would be to replicate that. Star 101. Now's the, now's the now is the most rewarding time for somebody to put forth those efforts with the prices that they go for. Obviously, I'm not encouraging that I, but it's, you know, now, now is the time for those people, I suppose. Let me add one more part of this. I don't really want to talk about the shop at home scandal, but I'll bring it up in this manner. If Star Co. Had the ability to reproduce the 101 exactly as the original batch, that would fool me and Todd and Bill and Jarrett and Dave and you know, the guys that have been doing this for a while, he could have done that if he had the ability to make duplicates. But instead they printed up new Cards with different border colors and different pictures and tried to sell those as, you know, original 1985, 86 cards. And, you know, if Star Company could have in 1992, 93, 94, made exact copies of the 101, that would fool people. Why not do it? And I maintain that it Goldin be done. And there's a multitude of reasons. One, the NBA attorneys told me that the print shops were out of business by then, so the equipment that was used was, was gone, or, you know, we don't know where it went. And, you know, at that time, the wholesale on a 101 was probably 2,000 bucks. So if you were running Star Company and you needed money, you could sell four or five 101s a month, which would never really harm the total pop report. And, you know, you could live pretty well off 8 or 10 or 12 grand a month back in the 90s. Yu-Gi-Oh for sure. So, you know, when you talk about, could somebody, you know, make these up again? It was obvious that even the owner of Star Co. Goldin do it, because if he could have, why not do it instead of the shop at home thing? Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh you know what? Great, great points. And I, this is very valuable information for the hobby moving forward. And I, you know, I just, I just come back, I just don't put, put it past people to find a way with technology today, even without the original transparencies or plates or what have you. But I one-of-one I one-of-one ask you, as we wrap up, Steve, I want to ask you a very, I want to get your opinion on a very, you know, polarizing question when it comes to the star 101 Michael Jordan. And that question is, is it his rookie card? Is the star one? Is the 84 star 101 Michael Jordan's rookie card? Or is his 86 flirt his rookie card? Now, before you, before you answer. Well, Jeremy, that's, that's, that's been the big question the last few years especially. And, you know, I, I did a podcast with Dr. Beckett. Actually, I think we did a couple where this came up. And, and I've told people in other con podcasts and interviews, you know, to me, Jim Beckett the single most important person in the history of this hobby. And, you know, maybe in a few more years, Nat Turner's gonna, gonna reach that level also. But it's, it's the one thing. And I, and Jim, if you're listening, I love you, but you're wrong. Just make sure, make sure the I love you one-of-one part stays In, I promise. Yu-Gi-Oh he's snickering right now after. He is. What, what about his or. Or the definitions that. That his group came up with? You know, I, I was around when. Right when that happened. And in fact, a couple weeks after that, I was doing a show and Jim was there and so we talked about it and I, you know, I gave him a whole bunch of reasons why he shouldn't do that and he should change it back. But obviously, you know, they, they stayed with it. But first, I have no problem. If you want to call the Fleer a Jordan rookie card, that's fine. I got no problem with that. But the rookie card I think should be the first NBA licensed card, which is the 84. 5 101. And I'll stick with that. I, you know, I don't buy the stuff about the distribution method because, you know, the. Technically, that bag is a pack. Yu-Gi-Oh it's a team bag and this team set per se, but it was offered to the hobby and hobby dealers and essentially distributed straight to the hobby. And I think that's legit. But there's, there's just a bottom line. It's a legitimately licensed item. And in fact, when, when Bill bought the transparencies, the other thing that was included were some of the sales invoices and a whole bunch of canceled checks. And amongst the checks are two checks that were used to pay for the 8485 NBA license. You know, in the little note part of the check, it says, you know, NBA license, as opposed to some of the other canceled checks that were made out to the NBA or NBA properties were royalty payments. But we actually have the checks canceled by, you know, deposit from the NBA for that license for 84. 5. So don't ever tell me that they're not licensed because we've got the canceled checks. I think Dr. Beckett comments are that it wasn't a full license. And I don't recall the details of that, of that conversation, but there was a partial license or a limited license, something like that he's mentioned in the past. Yu-Gi-Oh you know, I remember hearing that also. And I, I can't say I remember the exact specifics of that, but let's just say, okay, Dr. Jim, it is a partial license, but within that partial was the ability to make the NBA base set of cards. So, you know, for me, once again, it's like, game, set, match, we're done. Yu-Gi-Oh well, you know, Steve, you know, one thing I'll say, like, I'm with You, I agree with you. I do think the 84 star has a, a more substantial claim to the title of rookie card than the Fleer does. And, and like you, the method of distribution, while I, I do really like and value that criteria, I think as, as the decades have gone by and cards are distributed in many different fashions now, direct to consumer, all sorts of different ways and the global economy, the, the fact that a regional, a regionally distributed product is, is no longer limited to that region. It can very quickly be offered worldwide to me and the cards are freed from these packs now. I just don't think as time goes by that the method of distribution criteria will maintain its level of importance that it had back then. Not to dispute what happened back then and not to disrespect the rules of the day, but I don't think that they're nearly as meaningful today as they were then. And that goes not only for the cards that are being made today, but even the cards that were made then. Just my personal approach and thought. Yu-Gi-Oh well, you know, there's also public opinion at this point and you know, four years ago, five years ago, you would have got a majority of people saying that they think the Fleer is the number one card. But if you ask that question today, I'm pretty sure the Star is going to get a majority and maybe by a pretty fair amount. So, you know, public opinion may have settled the debate. And you know, I've seen where a couple people did some informal surveys in the Star one handily and got to be careful with those though, Steve, because it really depends who their audience is when they're. Yu-Gi-Oh well, exactly, exactly. And hey, I've got an Fleer set that came in on consignment recently with a PSA 7 Jordan. And I'm advertising it as, you know, Michael Jordan, RC PSA 7 near mint. Because like, like I said before, I have no problem calling the, the FLIR a rookie card. But if you're asking me which is the rookie card, it's a star company. That's, that's really, that's really hard for me to reconcile, Steve, because, you know, and I hear what you're saying, I think you're just, I think you're saying that because, listen, I don't want to be bothered with this anymore. AD 6 Rookie people, people almost expect you to call it a rookie card. Whether it is or isn't is kind of like, who cares? These are two great, these are both iconic cards. They're both Great, very important legendary cards in our hobby. But for me, one came out two years before, had somewhat of a license is recognized today is very important. I don't, I can't think of any situation in the hobby where I can take two cards that, that came out two years apart and I can, I can in, in good conscience call them both rookie cards. I can't think of any situation like that. Yu-Gi-Oh well, you know, maybe the mat, the 51 Bowman mantle and the Topps. But, but you know, like I said, I, I'm to the point now where I don't really care what people think. Like I said, when I have a Fleer rookie. See, I just said it. I'm gonna advertise it as a rookie and I advertise. I do not advertise the star as an xrc. I never, I don't think I ever did that unless it was in a database that I Goldin change the designation. Yu-Gi-Oh but I've, I've always referred to the star as, as a rookie card. You know, if you want to get technical, you know what pisses me off is these guys on ebay that every Jordan card from the 80s is a rookie card. You know, Fleer, rookie, Fleer. I, I see so much of that and you know, then you got to ask yourself, well, what about the, the Nike postcard and then the Nike counter display cards? Those, those were out in 84. I remember seeing the 5 by 7 counter display air Jordan, you know, at stores. I think it was late summer of 84. And when I was in the golf business, the fall 84 Nike promotional catalog is where you could order the little postcard set that had Jordan and Dwight Gooden and. Right. McEnroe and Lofton. You know, you had to. Based on your, your volume of shoe sales, you could, you earned points to, to order those sets. So. Whoops, I just knocked my phone over. Sorry about that, Jeremy. That's okay. Steve, we gotta wrap this up because I gotta go. I gotta go meet my family at the bicycle shop here in 20 minutes and get my kids new bikes for the summer here and hopefully, hopefully they last a couple years. But. Yu-Gi-Oh but no, I mean, listen, I appreciate your time. This has been very informational. We didn't get through everything I had on my list, but that's okay. I'm glad that we did talk about what we did talk about and to hear your thoughts on all of these aspects of. First of all, the hobby, the evolution and of course where you're an expert being with these this Star company cards. So. Yu-Gi-Oh Any sort of final thoughts though, Steve, before we, we do wrap this up? Nah, not really. Let's just maybe, well, maybe we'll do it again a little after the national or something. Yu-Gi-Oh sounds good. I know. Personal plug booth 911 at the national at the Rosemont Convention center in about a month from now. Yu-Gi-Oh you'll be able to find Steve where I've seen him set up at the national for several years. Always a lot of interesting things on the table and this year I'm guessing you're going to see the Star 101 Michael Jordan production transparency be D with diamonds and gold and $25 million price tag. Yu-Gi-Oh we're not gonna, that's gonna stay in the safe. We're just going to have pictures. We don't, we don't want to risk traveling and, and all that stuff with it. Well, to the audit everybody. Stay tuned. Watch your social media feeds for when this item is offered for sale. And once it sells, it'll be really interesting to see who the buyer is and what they plan to do with it. Whether they're going to wear it around their neck on a red carpet or add it to their treasure hunting arsenal, we will see. But Steve, again, long time coming. I'm glad we got to do this. I look forward to seeing you in a month at the national and thank you for your time today. All right, Jeremy, thanks for having me on and we'll see you in a few weeks. Thanks for tuning in and being a part of the sports cards live community. Don't forget to like subscribe and most of all, keep collecting more great content to come. Sports cars is a lifestyle.