[MattyC]

Great article. I love how it calls out legacy media for breathlessly and recklessly reporting all these record sales— when these institutions should be digging into the self-dealing and corruption rampant in collecting.

Goldin says, “firewall” between the AH and PSA — both owned by the Turner cadre. But then sells full synergistic integration to a group of insiders.

We now have an AH and TPGs owned by the same group, with the AH selling collections graded by the in house TPG — and in some cases the collections are owned by directors of the TPG. It’s the Wild West.

Anyone who thinks the rising prices are due solely to natural collector demand is beyond naive. Favorite quote from article:

“…A picture is emerging of a relatively small cadre of men who sought to produce a new alternative asset class out of thin air and become even richer than they already are. In establishing this new asset class, these men benefited from the ongoing and stunning lack of collectibles regulation from the FTC—indeed, one of the men, James Halperin, had cause to know that even grave misconduct in the collectibles market is often met with an easily survivable, slap-on-the-wrist FTC fine—as well as new tax regulations involving luxury collectibles that were written by one of the men in question.

These men were aided, too, by fawning, uncritical coverage of their activities by the legacy media, with embarrassingly credulous headlines that did little to question the conspicuously inorganic nature of the nation’s newest market bubble. And in one case, a History Channel “reality” show knowingly or negligently let two men from this cadre pretend not to know one another on-air—a historically galling television segment that played a critical role in moving the video game market from a tiny, niche market to the eight- or even nine-figure one it has become just thirty months later.”