I couldn't give you an exact amount. I'm just guessing. My guess is that the card in the SGC holder would sell for a lower percentage of its PSA equivalent than it does now.

Inevitable, IMO.
Lots of potential revenue for PSA from crossovers here.

PSA has bailed on grading so much stuff because they just can't tell what's good or not. And they don't have a good track record of finding alterations.

Tech can be good, but if it's info is bad as I expect it is, it's results will be bad.

An unlikely but potential angle I haven't seen mentioned is a sort of fix and flip.

SGC has a lot of things going for it. And a lot of things that don't. The things they don't do well, PSA does. (mostly)
Even if SGCs market share doubled, PSA probably wouldn't see them as a threat.
So
Buy them, leave the people in place. Fix whatever problems they had using databases for a decent pop report and registry. Maybe add the scanning and QR code, no that I think as much of that as some others do.

How much value does that add?
Flip SGC for a substantial profit.

Why would they put a strengthened competitor back out there? I think not.

The more I think about this, the more I believe that Collectors is in fact planning to build up and invest in both brands. It puts the most money into their pockets at the end of the day. Run a joint PSA/SGC office out of Florida, share technical resources, continue to operate SGC with reduced overhead, cast a wider net over the hobby without alienating your customers, keep both your grading teams happy. It all makes sense financially.

I don't see how you can possibly know enough about the finances and operations of either company to be able to say this.

Well he knew with 100% certainty that eBay booted PWCC from the site because PWCC had their own webpage they were developing and had nothing to do with the rampant shill bidding.

I am gonna go out on a limb and say that Nat likely has no idea what the exact future is of SGC.

That's a strange response. Why would someone need any knowledge at all regarding the finances or inner operations of either company to be able to make such a prediction?

You keep bringing this up. If you want to talk about why eBay booted PWCC off their platform, there are other threads devoted to that topic that have been thoroughly fleshed out. If you think this is some sort of wacky conspiracy theory, you've got a lot of reading to do. It's a widely accepted view throughout the hobby that eBay did not boot PWCC off their platform because of shill bidding. If you honestly believe that eBay gives two shits about shill bidding then you're delusional. Actions speak louder than words and eBay has made it abundantly clear that they have zero intentions of thwarting shill bidding on their platform. They've even taken steps to make it much more difficult to even identify over the years.

Not that anyone here concerns themselves with KSA Grading in Canada, but they just made an upgrade from their super crappy slabs to what looks like a merging of a PSA and SGC slab.

I don’t give a fudge about any slabs, but these look pretty good…for a slab. SGC could have done something similar a long time ago, maybe PSA will move SGC slabs in this direction.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...3ff445e32.jpeg



https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...4e7345f81.jpeg

No. This is the first time I have brought it up. It is you who keeps bringing up this topic and I merely comment on it.

It is a widely accepted view that Santa and the Easter Bunny exist...by very young children.

eBay does not care about shill bidding because they ignored it for years with PWCC but they damn well might care if the FBI gently reminded them that it had been happening, don't you think?

You have a tendency to post your opinions or your theories as fact when you are not privy to details of the situation. You are no more an insider on the eBay-PWCC situation than you are on the Collectors-SGC situation. This was my point.

It is fun to speculate but we are all outsiders.

If we are making predictions without seeing financials, then M&A common sense says they keep the top talent, any IP that makes sense, kill the brand, devalue the existing inventory, and encourage millions of crossovers, or whatever the addressable base is.

If they shutter SGC and win their existing market share (80%) of current SGC volume, that is an additional 1M+ subs per year. Why run an extra location, and additional staff, to slab these at lower costs when you can bring them into the mother ship at better spreads and reduced expense?

I just don't see any valid business reason to keep a like for like lower cost competitor, with sub 10% market share, alive.

Predict whatever you like. You purported to offer a financial analysis of which option made the most sense.

I just wonder how many collectors, sick of the TPG machinations, say the hell with it and proceed to break out all their graded cards and "go raw". Once they put them in a secure holder for protection, then they can pleasantly view them without the interference of a flip to get in the way and $ signs interfere.
I know this approach is for the hard core collector but then they won't have to worry about the fate of SGC.

I like the look of this slab. And I do expect changes soon in the SGC world.

This is how KSA slabs have always looked though. Or at least for as long as I can remember. They've had the SGC-style apron inside this holder for a long time. I think the only change here is the flip.

PSA has been working on a new slab for several months now. They're coming out with inserts that are custom-cut to the card itself so that it's a perfect fit every time. They scan the card and then print the inner liner.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Collectors upgrading the SGC slabs at some point. I believe the PSA team views the SGC slabs as inferior and less secure. If that belief is shared high enough up the chain, they might want to do something about that.

Collectors (PSA) Acquired SGC
 

No, the apron didn’t previously extend all they way up to and surround the flip. Plus less boxy slab now.

ETA: Previous gen KSA slab image.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...14b3173401.jpg

Wow, just saw this. I'm sad because SGC grades a lot of cards like real photo postcards that PSA does not. And it's cheaper also. So I'm definitely going to try to get a submission out quickly to SGC before they start standardizing on what PSA grades, just to be safe.

I wonder if any of this has to do with ebay authentication. Right now, ebay authentication for graded cards goes to PSA in California. With SGC on the east coast, ebay can send the graded cards to be authenticated to the closer location rather than sending cards to be delivered on the east coast all the way to California if the seller is also on the east coast.

A sign of things to come will be when you reholder a SGC card with SGC, will they issue a new cert number (like they do now) or change practices and keep the current cert number. If they continue the current practice and issue a new number, I think that shows Collectors is not looking to enhance SGC.

IMO they went to random certs and a new numbering system to try to avoid the tracing BODA was doing by PSA consecutive cert numbers. Same time they took down the guarantee which was the G in SGC. Funny, Peter Steinberg told me on the phone they were just reviewing the language and it would be back up in a matter of days. That was years ago.

Agree it’s a way to protect the base....sneaky dealers and resellers

Here in the "enclave," though, nobody seems to care.

The FBI didn't find anything sooooo...

I will stick my head back in the sand. (As soon as I get it away from pwcc's behiind)

7% to 78%, I don't know if that would rate as competition.
Even if they doubled SGCs numbers, the hit probably wouldn't be to their percentage, but to CSG and Beckett.

The tiny business I ran got tons of stuff referred to us by bigger shops. Stuff they were either unequipped to handle, or didn't have the expertise. At least one we had a good almost friendly relationship, they needed weird tires that I stocked, and I just had them replace them when their order came in.
I'd get stuff from them that was odd to me on pretty much the same basis.
The "competition".... I sent the nuisance customers to them. :D

They found plenty. They had all the evidence anyone could ever ask for to determine that cards had indeed been doctored and resold. They simply decided not to charge anyone for it (as I loudly predicted would be the case).

If a crime is committed but not charged, did it really happen?

EXACTLY! Why would they even be looking if everything was on the up and up.

There is a huge difference between evidence and admissible evidence. Particularly when the critical cooperating witness apparently decided not to cooperate.

This cuts both ways though. If, as Peter proposes, all this evidence that they were gathering wouldn't be admissible, then why would they even bother to gather it in the first place?

I think what happened is that like many of the lawyers on this board and over at Blowout, there are people at the FBI (likely collectors themselves), who see this activity in the same light as Peter (not to pick on him, but he's been vocal about his views on the matter, so I'm just using him as an example). Clearly, there is no shortage of people who see doctoring cards as fraudulent behavior. I think the lead investigator likely did (and still does) as well. I just think he and many others were blindsided by the fact that the rest of the world doesn't see it that way. I think it got to a place where a judge gave him a serious reality check after he/she began asking questions like, "so these cards, they're not counterfeit?", and "so you're saying that someone bought baseball cards, improved their appearance, then sent them off to a professional grading company to get their opinion on the cards' current conditions, and then resold those cards?"

I think the case was laughed out of court. I think the investigators got a serious reality check. And I also think it may have had something to do with why he seemingly out of the blue took an early retirement. He wasted a LOT of money trying a case that never had a chance to begin with.

Travis you're a bright and insightful guy but stick to what you know. This never got to a judge. Whatever prosecutor was involved would be the one who decided not to bring the case. And Brian never would have been allowed to pursue it if no potential crime was involved.

Sgc
 

There's an "enclave" meeting of SGC fanatics at the summer solstice. After
we conduct a midnight sacrifice of a PSA "enclave" member to the Elder Gods
of cardboard evaluation, I'll conduct a vote of the coven to see how they will
handle the news of the sale. Please don't tell other members of the "enclave"
I'm revealing this information, their punishment is severe (they crack your
SGC cards out and re-slab them in counterfeit GAI holders!)

Trent King

My guess is that whatever AUSA was working on this case never even asked for an indictment. As Peter said, they just decided not to pursue it further, and a judge had nothing to do with it. When this whole fiasco was the hot topic on Blowout (when the investigation would have been most active), US District Court GJs were almost completely shut down due to COVID, and even much more serious investigations came to a grinding halt because there were no available GJs to hear testimony. If this major (years long) delay had anything to do with the decision to not seek an indictment, or if they just decided that they didn't feel they would win at trial, I guess we will never know...

I would also guess that without cooperating witnesses, the AUSA may have felt that given a reasonable doubt standard, and strict evidentiary requirements, it may have been too difficult a case to feel pretty certain about which is what a prosecutor wants. People seem to be under the misconception a prosecutor could have just introduced the BODA threads. Doesn't work that way. It's also possible that a judgment was made that in the scheme of things it wasn't a priority.

Fair criticism. I'm obviously talking out my ass on all things legal matters. What is a fair spread of reasons as to why a prosecutor might choose not to bring a case for this? You've mentioned before that the evidence might just not be admissible, but would assume they'd have known that from the outset, yet they still chose to pursue it, at least initially. Without having a crystal ball, what other reasons could you see for them cutting bait?

Are prosecutors in cases like this concerned about their "win rates" in court? Could that possibly come into play? Could he have perhaps felt that despite having ample evidence of sports card hanky panky having occurred, he was afraid he was likely to still lose the case because a jury just wasn't likely to see it the same way and he didn't want to risk taking a "Loss"?

A few points.

Yes, generally, prosecutors want to bring cases they think have a very strong chance of winning or forcing a guilty plea. It's certainly possible that here, the judgment in the end was that the case might not play well to a jury, although just speculating I think it's more likely that evidentiary issues were more of a factor particularly after the star witness went south. But of course I don't know.

As to whether this could have been all foretold in advance, not necessarily. Brian would have known all along he couldn't make a case from BODA threads under the rules of evidence, but especially after Brent initially cooperated, he may have thought he could build a case based principally on testimony, especially if other witnesses chose to cooperate rather than face the prospect of Brent testifying against them. Or it could have been worth going forward just to get the then-expected guilty plea from Brent. And it's possible other things did not go as expected that would not have been known from the outset.

Or it's possible that due to the pandemic, etc. the case just moved down and out in terms of importance and resource allocation.

But I highly doubt any prosecutor made a judgment that doctoring cards and selling them without disclosure by the mails or wires could not be a crime in the first place.

Speaking of Brent, where is he these days? With another company? I haven't heard his name in a hot minute.

Nor have I. But I suspect, like the Terminator, he'll be back.

Who are you referring to when you say the "star witness went south"? And by "went south" do you mean they just told the FBI to pound sand and refused to cooperate, or did a key witness die from covid or something, greatly complicating the case?

Travis, as I understand it, Brent through his former counsel originally was cooperating with the feds (something clearly guilty parties frequently do in the hope of getting a lighter sentence at the end of the day, meaning they will furnish evidence and eventually testify against other defendants should a trial ensue); but subsequently switched counsel and apparently decided no longer to cooperate. This was all discussed on Blowout and to an extent here as well if I recall.

Oh stop with the facts already! ZZZZZZ Besides they mess up all of Snowman's posts. :eek:

And it was shortly after Brent stopped cooperating that eBay removed PWCC for shill bidding. That was interesting timing.

Ah, OK. That was my guess, but wasn't sure. Lichtman spoke a little bit about his time defending Brent/PWCC on the Hobby News Daily podcast yesterday. The full interview was pretty good/interesting, so it's worth a listen if you're into that sort of thing. Here's a link to it. The PWCC conversation starts at 11:44 into it.

https://youtu.be/RqE-UT8ShH0?si=sV-kEZQ1363drv9c&t=704

Here's a transcript of what he says during this segment:

It would be interesting to hear Brent's take on what happened and why he decided to switch counsel.

My guess is he was likely convinced that he hadn't actually done anything wrong but that Lichtman believed he had and that he was just doing what he was advised to do because he feared he was going to be in trouble if he didn't follow Lichtman's advice. Then after discussing his situation with someone else, a different attorney, perhaps one that doesn't collect cards, he believed he was getting some bad/biased advice and decided to cut ties with Lichtman.

That or I'm dead wrong and just completely speculating.

I am only speculating as well, and I would not frame it in quite the same terms, but I do believe he made the decision to change direction probably based on what another lawyer or lawyers said to him. I don't believe for a minute Brent actually thought he hadn't done anything wrong. His degree of fear, risk tolerance, whatever, likely changed from the early days of the scandal and FBI involvement.

Slightly OT - Does anyone know what happened to all the cards that were 'taken in' and money refunded? Surely they weren't destroyed, and I have not seen a Scarlet Letter applied to them as was much of the merch in Operation Bullpen. Unless they were destroyed, they've got to be somewhere.

Back on topic - Any chance going forward that PSA would incorporate SGC graded cards into its registry?

You don't, thankfully. I look for the red logo ones.

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...k%20Jordan.jpg

Ya, hard to know what his mindset is. I do remember watching a video from a few years back though where he was being interviewed and asked about all the doctored cards selling through PWCC. He seemed to respond as though he thought there was nothing wrong with improving cards and that he thought as long as it passed grading, then it didn't matter. I suspect if he believed it was wrong, deep down, that his answers would have been different. Perhaps more dodgy or just outright denying any allegations. I also remember listening to the interview and finding myself in agreement with much of what he said (though not everything, of course).

My understanding is that the serial numbers are still valid. None of them have been decertified. I suspect they're either in PWCC's hands still or perhaps in law enforcement's hands? Who knows. Maybe they're all in Brent's personal vault at this point. But they're still valid, at least that's my understanding.

The Federal Trade Commission would or could study to see if there's a potential impact on consumers through a formula they use to determine monopolization. Personally, I think the data is there to warrant an investigation by the FTC. According to the Gemerate numbers, PSA\Collector's Universe has 78% of the grading market while SGC has 10%. You can file an inquiry with the FTC at ant time but the problem the hobby may run into is getting the FTC to understand how this affects consumers. I don't think Lina Khan is a collector of Sports cards but the FTC has investigated the hobby's inner-workings on 3 seperate occasions.