[s]PSA are not doing anything that resembles anti-competitive behavior. They're buying out a competitor, which is totally allowed.
Honestly, their price hikes probably were pro-competitive, as it made a not-insignificant amount of people shift from subbing to PSA to subbing to SGC.

Regardless, this is a letdown. SGC had really been taking the boom in stride and seemed to be getting ahead of their growing pains. Will be interesting to see what happens next. :([/s]
WOOPS, just finished reading the thread. Glad to see no merger. Excited to see how both companies evolve as we come out of the boom!

It's moot because Nat has said there's no deal, but you obviously are not familiar with the Clayton Act, the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, etc. People should not make pronouncements about the law when they don't know it. Many mergers and acquisitions have been challenged successfully by the government because they substantially lessened competition. So no, buying out a competitor is not "totally allowed," it depends.

Would the heavy hand of government really come down to prevent a card grading service from eating up another one? Beckett is still out there, plus the new one (SCG or whatever), and entry into the market by a new entity is not prohibited by licenses or contracts that would stop them (for instance, a company can't automatically produce baseball cards without first obtaining licensing rights from MLB, the Players Association, and so on...)

I would rather be on the defense side of this (now not happening) transaction for a variety of reasons including the low entry barriers you reference. I doubt it even meets the notification thresholds and I also doubt that even if the government looked at it, it would be challenged. My point was only to correct the egregious misstatement of the law, not to opine about this specific ((not happening) transaction.

I'm familiar with HSR and Clayton! Been doing lots of reading on anti-trust over the past few years. Very interesting field right now.
I don't see how this proposed merger would have been blocked by the FTC. An HSR filing would definitely be needed, given the size of PSA, but I doubt there's a denial of the proposal. The vast majority of mergers are approved, and this particular acquisition doesn't strike me one which would be flagged. There are several other legitimate competitors (BGS, CGC/CSG, HGA). PSA's pricing has not been manipulative (again, if anything, their pricing – often what the FTC has chosen to focus on in the past, though the Khan-led Commission may change that focus – has increased their competitor's business). This is a field which does not concern public welfare or essential services – another area where the FTC has been laissez-faire in the past decades. Additionally, recent upstarts have been able to grow, which can be construed as a lack of anti-competitive behavior (see: many of the contentions about the defensive acquisition of nascent firms by established technology giants as of late).

They would likely have just paid the filling fee, waited, and gotten approval. FTC/DOJ is still hands off for the most part, and they are looking to focus their efforts in a specific field.

So why on earth, given that you have some understanding of this area, would you make a clearly wrong general statement like buying out a competitor is totally allowed? I am confused.

Not sure about HSR applying. There's a size of the transaction requirement that has to be satisfied before you get to size of the parties. I think it's 90 million or close to that.

Don't disagree, as I already wrote, that even if reviewed government not likely to take action.

I've been saying for a couple of years now that Apple Inc. should write AI software to grade cards. They would give PSA and SGC a run for their money. Their "Customer Service" would be #1 and there wouldn't be a backlog!

Yeah but it would only work with an iphone app and an $800 piece of hardware that needs to be upgraded every two years.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

Neither of them do that.

Perhaps I wasn't clear but we have certainly seen PSA reaffirm its grade on cards outed by BODA.

I go back to my original post that started this thread.

Why would PWCC tell a consignor that PSA was buying SGC and that PWCC's contract with SGC was being cancelled?

Is there an ulterior motive PWCC would have to tell a consignor this story that Nat is denying?

BGS has done it a couple of times last year as well.

Probably Spoke Out of Place When he Shouldn’t have. A story usually always changes a little from each person it’s passed down to.

Maybe PWCC is not having s good time with PSA lately and is looking to shake the tree a bit???

Maybe the actual info was lost in translation between the 5+ people it went through before being posted here.

FWIW I spoke again to my friend who is the one who spoke to PWCC. So first of all not 5 + people did this go through, just once removed from the conversation.

He was getting ready to send cards to PWCC to be graded and listed on ebay when a PWCC employee named Aaron Hanan (Maybe some here know him) informed him that PWCC lost it's contract with SGC to have cards graded by them. The reason given was that PSA was buying SGC as I first reported.

Thus my friend did not send his cards to PWCC.

I don't think there can be much if anything "lost in translation" here. I don't mean to put out false information, rather I am just repeating information I received from my friend that I just reconfirmed today.

Maybe PWCC has some reason for telling my friend this, but I have no idea what that could be.

Will be interested to see the outcome of all of this.

A more believable reason would be due to their history of submitting altered cards in my opinion.

Boom I didn’t wanna say it but you said it perfectly.

As I’ve said before the guy spoke out of place not the gentleman’s friend the guy he spoke to at pwcc.

Hope so.

So after years of knowing what PWCC is and does, Dave suddenly cuts them off? That doesn't make sense to me.

I'm curious to see if the tin foil hat crowd has some substance here.

It’s Not Happening I commend SGC for standing strong and keeping their company!

Peter, I’ve been through three corporate mergers and in all three my managers emphatically denied there were any type of transaction in process. Of course, after the mergers ( I had still had jobs with two of three, at least for a “while”,), the word was these managers knew about the acquisitions but were sworn to secrecy under threat of litigation and were instructed to say the rumors were not true. Much of this, I am sure, was due to federal secrecy and non disclosure requirements...

Just my two cents from my past of misdirection and big money. Denials mean not a wholehelluva lot to me, no offense intended to anyone responding in this thread.

Duly noted. It's unfortunate but in this world you have to just take a lot with a grain of salt.

Was thinking the exact same thing.

I meant that neither company backs up any sort of guarantee. Even if they're completely wrong.

SGC no longer even has one.