Collectors Universe releases fourth quarter and fiscal year end earnings today
 

4:30 pm EST today

Dial 800-347-6311 a few minutes before 4:30 pm EST today or view a webcast on their site www.collectorsuniverse.com under Investor Relations: Earnings Conference Calls or for a replay dial 888-203-1112 with access code 9390521# Should be very interesting.

I haven't heard people clamoring to short CLCT recently. I am guessing their earnings will be in line, but who knows. Or if it underperforms it will be due to coins.

I'd like to know how their guarantee fund stands.

It's probably fine, considering it is meaningless, they direct all refunds to the seller, and have no intent on paying out a penny.

Still not a single post here (or on BO) from one single person who was made right by PSA's "guarantee". It's just PWCC and a few various Dealers who are providing refunds.

If anyone reading this thread was provided a refund directly from PSA, please post it here, along with pertinent details.

I believe there have been a post or two on BO about PSA making good. Also Jesse, on this Board.

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=272630

There were a few posts about people receiving refunds.

Edit, Peter beat me to it :)

Aha.... I missed that one. Good to see they made Jesse whole.

Thanks for clarifying Peter and Jason... I stand corrected!

I'd imagine revenue is up significantly, the card business continues to grow and the coin business continues to slow.

I'm sure there will be an increase in warranty expense for the quarter. They had $728k reserved at the end of March. The only real surprise IMHO would be if the auditors decide they need to change up their warranty reserve methodology. Right now they seem to be reserving for around .02% of the total declared value of collectibles (adding $402k of warranty reserve on ~$2B of collectibles processed). For two consecutive years payments on the warranty have outpaced additions to the reserve (albeit not by much).

Right now, I doubt the warranty cost for the quarter is material. If it were, it would be interesting to see how the auditors react. Suggesting that PSA updates their methodology going forward (say .05% of declared value) would result in no meaningful impact on PSA financials, but suggesting that PSA updates their methodology and retroactively applies the change would potentially result in a significant hit. I doubt that would happen though - the declared value of trading cards is less than 10% of the declared value of coins.

Honestly, I think PSA will be fine.

To me there are two things that could significantly hurt PSA: a criminal prosecution or unambiguous revelations of corruption at a high level, possibly in a civil suit. I don't, though, think either of these is at all a likely scenario. Otherwise, with no real competition and a large part of the market entrenched in slabs and registry sets, I think they skate on.

Curious if they will be asked about the scandal by any of the analysts on the call that cover them. I imagine coverage is light.

You are very likely correct in your analysis. Unless an insider steps forth, NDA be damned, and blows the whistle on deliberate corruption, then I could see serious problems for CLCT. But that's not likely for a variety of reasons. A possible third scenario would be widespread media attention on a major scale that discredits the legitimacy of their service and in turn causes panic and/or alienation among collectors and auction sites. That too is unlikely, but still possible.

In the realms of possible possibility, eBay banning PWCC would be a big and hobby rattling deal. If there is a criminal investigation into fraud, that's a possibility and would be a huge deal and have an immediate huge effect.

In the scheme of things, that's what I'd be pressing for to happen.

There were several questions asked about PWCC, trimming etc... one fella was cut off... he hit a nerve... PSA feels that the "scandals" will not affect them... and apparently lowered the guarantee reserve for 2019/2020...

No plans on eliminating humans from the grading process...

They LOWERED the reserve? LOL that is beautiful.

I strongly suggest anyone who has any concerns about the current investigation listen to the replay of this call. Orlando claims any issues regarding the current investigation are no different than any they have faced at any point in the past. When questions were asked about the current scandal they were deflected and in at least one case the questioner was shut down. Record revenues, record profits, record backlog of cards submitted in the pipeline to be graded, no need for any warranty increases. To me, their complete nonchalance and dismissiveness of any concerns they may have about the scandal are so unrealistic in light of the information that has been released thus far that it’s almost hard to believe. Barely a flesh wound right Joe? I guess in time we shall see.

Poof!! Even on an analyst call. Just swat it away like it was a post on CU. LOL I love it.

Is the problem still limited to "hundreds" of cards?:eek::D

Seriously spoke like it was a minor, minor inconvenience like a spot on your tie..

If this comes down to litigation, or a criminal prosecution, Joe won't be able to control the narrative so easily as he is used to doing.

Agree....

Problem is it won’t....Zero Criminal Prosecution will happen to PSA....Civil Suits they could care less

No one can Claim ignorance all the information is here. It’s up to the buyer....

I harken back to a Fleetwoodmac Song....Go Your Own Way

It would depend on the civil suit. If one or more heavy hitting registry guys actually care about their whacked cards and don't get satisfaction under the guarantee, they could cause some trouble for PSA. Especially if a judge were to refuse to grant a broad protective order with respect to disclosing discovery materials.

Let’s just speculate for a second....

During the FBI investigation certain submitters are found to be regularly altering cards and the lists of cards submitted for grading by these card doctors are released.

The boys on BO carefully spend hours going through the list and find many with irrefutable proof of how they looked “before.” This proof is presented to PSA. For now let’s not say by whom.

PSA is then forced to either publicly deny they are the same cards or to acknowledge they are. Simultaneously wouldn’t they be forced to remove these cards from their registry sets whether they wanted to or not? If a card was removed from a registry set wouldn’t the card owner then have no use for the card and insist on having his money returned by PSA’s warranty?

I’m just sketching out a very simple narrative but can you see how easy this can be?

The list of cards affected in the WiWAG scandal was never released by the government as I recall. I am not sure any comparable list would be released to the public here.

Don’t be so sure.

I said I was not sure. I would welcome such lists. Imagine what they would do to some Registry sets like 1948 Leafs.

Exactly. So you see how easy this all can be. Everyone should take a deep breath and let the process play out. If presented with irrefutable proof of five and six figure cards definitively altered and resting in PSA slabs in registry sets, I wonder how Joe is going to spin that one?

They will never admit any cards are bad in their holders....

I’m still waiting for that Mastro Wagner...if that isn’t irrefutable proof that a six figure plus card is definitely altered In their holder what is??

Nothing to see here move along

Johnny Boy, I know you seem to feel you have all the answers and I know how desperately you want that $10M Wagner to become worthless, but unless the owner of the card has a problem with it nothing will happen. And it certainly appears as if he has no problem.

Much of the value of the Wagner, IMO, now lies in its notoriety. The usual rules that would apply to discounting a card to an AUTH have no application in this unique case.

Of course you are correct.

I was being Facetious....of course he wouldn’t come forward he doesn’t want his card to be worthless. Why battle PSA when he knows he could get millions if he was to sell the card as is in auction.

PSA always slivers away just as the card doctors.....nothing is going to change.

How do you know nothing is going to change Johnny?

SHATTERED earnings

If the Wagner "8" is re holdered as an "A", which is what it is, it would sell for a small fraction of an "8" value, precisely as was the case with the Plank "A" cut from the same sheet. No offense intended, but IMHO notoriety in that instance would mean *@#%.

That's what I've been pushing for with Steve Sloan that likely got me blocked from sending him or PSA emails. I contacted one of the guys collecting 1948 Leaf that had 13 exposed cards through the PSA website and informed him of the fraud he was experiencing.

If the crowd source community wanted to, they could use the PSA Auction Prices Realized site to report to PSA all of the before and after picture posts to try and guilt PSA into removing both the BEFORE and AFTER cert numbers from their registry. Because some of those registry collectors are so slimy they steal Cert numbers from the internet of cards they don't own to improve their set GPA for the awards. PSA should be doing it anyways by registering those certs in their own "Inventory" so that if someone is still claiming the card, their site prompts them to send scans of their cards to confirm ownership. If someone still owns the "BEFORE" image, they can prove that the card considered AFTER is a different card.

As he said in the article about Gary Moser in the NY Times, Ken Kedrick was offered $10M+ for the card even after the book outlining its trimming was published. It seems like the perfect time for PSA to call his bluff and have it reholdered as AUTH ALTERED.

That will happen on the 13th of Never, the day after PSA admits any responsibility for the colossal damage their ineptitude or worse has done.

Oh, how I hope this will happen. Perhaps Jeff’s representation of PWCC could help.. if they know anything, disclosure by PWCC against PSA to mitigate could be impactful.

I doubt he was really offered that much.

Agreed. That Wagner is worth a fortune, not because of the grade, but because it’s “that” Wagner. It’s poetic that PSA’s first graded card was altered, but that’s not the hook we should hang our hats on here. And, if I had $10mm I needed to invest, I think the Gretzky Wagner would be a phenomenal investment; but I admit I would not want it in any holder other than what it’s in (not for the grade but for the controversy, which is part of the allure).

Lolol.

That quote would probably be more impactful if the unidentified analyst was not using an unidentified language.

More likely a transcription error. Do you think nobody really told Joe about the allegations against Souza and Maxwell?

As a legal matter, is Orlando required to be 100% truthful on a call like this? In other words, if this thing ends up in some sort of litigation, and if there is testimony involving who knew what, and when... IF Joe was being less than truthful when stating he had no knowledge of the allegations mentioned, could he have possibly put himself in legal jeopardy?

I know that managers of simple LLCs are required to reveal any inside information they are aware of, that could negatively impact the value of the LLC.

Securities fraud suits very frequently feature statements by executives/answers to questions on analyst calls among the alleged false and misleading statements. That said, the statement/answer would have to be material, and I doubt that this particular answer could be deemed material.

Nonetheless, it's hard for me to believe PSA is not monitoring developments and that nobody told Joe that two former graders have been accused of trimming cards. Or maybe they are so arrogant they don't even monitor?

All these boobs shorting CLCT stock just got their pockets ripped out

Now is the time to sell it...sell it quickly

Indeed. The train keeps on a rollin'.

Why?

52 week high.....right now I believe that the hobby is largely ignoring the scandal...the us economy is doing very very well.....this might have 5%10% more on the upside. My belief is when this comes to full scale, the crippling amount of altered cards in their holders, along with the upcoming presidential political environment I see no reason to hold on to this at these levels. That’s just me...

Thank you for your pointed answer - refreshing. Personally, I don't believe the scandal will affect CLCT price significantly if at all. Demand continues to soar and revenues are increasing. The fact that the economy is robust and the political climate uncertain would lend itself to a potential pullback - kinda like "What goes up must come down" effect. However, that wouldn't single out a particular stock. CLCT's historical high was back in 2017, so the growth would not be unprecedented.

All that being said, if I would go out and buy some shares, I can pretty much guarantee the demise of the company. My track record is that good!!!

I've said this before and I will repeat: just because nothing is being done now, doesn't mean there won't be a day of reckoning in the future.

For how many years was the Sackler family touting that opioids were safe, effective, and non-addictive? I don't know, but I don't believe they are saying that any more.

The truth will come out in the end. We just don't know the end date.

Wow! This is chutzpah on steroids! LOL! Great news for investors (no money wasted on research, process improvement, quality control and warranty obligations - we're strictly no frills!) and the nightmare continues for collectors - or at least for the collectors who are passionate about the accuracy and true value of their collection. Utterly amazing!

Bingo!

When the emperor is walking around with no clothes on, eventually people notice.

They're noticing now, they just still think the emperor is hot with no clothes. The question is how well will the emperor age?

The people who will need to notice are not the current holders of registry cards, but the future buyers. Once a viable new TPG company using current technology comes into being, which will be able to reliably expose the high percentage of altered slabbed cards, at that point IMO it will all come crashing down for PSA. But until that point, I don't disagree that absent some major civil litigation or high profile involvement by law enforcement, not much will change.

duplicate post

It sounds to me like waiting for Godot, Corey. I haven't seen any information on the state of such technology, other than that a patent or two is held by a former grader alleged to be a trimmer.

A hurricane is headed toward Orlando.

Oops, wrong Orlando.

Peter,

I can confirm capital is being raised and knowledgeable people are looking into this in a serious way. More important, assuming the technology exists (and I'm told by knowledgeable people that it does), the business model makes so much sense that conceptually I don't see how it cannot come into being. When that date will be I can't say, but it will come. If I had the spare change around to put up the capital, I would.

Keep us posted. I am very skeptical a machine can tell a factory edge from a well-disguised trimmed one but would be glad to be proven wrong.

In 2017 and 2018 I worked with an brilliant signal processing engineer to explore the option of light diffusion (surface), computer vision (edges, corners, centering), and a neural network built around the concept for grading sports cards.

It is very possible; however, was too time and resource consuming for me to bring the concept to reality while I worked on IIB and other endeavors. I still have the prototype including the server to run it sitting in a closet. The sample size of data needed to curate real and proper grades was immense and the system is only as good as the engineer and the grader educating the engineer to work on it. Needless to say, a proper education process would take one person years or a team of industry experts many months (and a far more complex system to mesh their grading opinions into the database). Even then, if something were done so well a human couldn't detect it, how could a human built system detect it? There are impossible to identify restoration jobs.

The barrier of entry into the market is the denial of the collectors holding billions of dollars in inventory that do not want to hear that what they have has been altered, even if that is the reality. It is, without a doubt, immense.

That being said... there are restoration jobs so perfect that they would fool any professional including a well trained system. If fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls sold for $500,000,000 can be faked so well that they fool experts who spent months inspecting them for authenticity, are displayed in a museum exhibit, and was only found out after more than a dozen industry scholars inspected them and committed to, out of their own pocket, expensive tests to prove their opinion-- what makes you think some nefarious individual(s) with a mid to high level set of skills can't alter, or even create from scratch, a sports card? Don't fool yourself.

Sean as you seem knowledgeable in this area, how concerned are you that we are close to the point where people can create counterfeits that at least current review techniques won't be able to distinguish?

You make fair points. The most obvious response is that what is currently needed is not a method to expose tomorrow's alterations, but instead to expose yesterday's that were done with older methods and that I bet would light up under current detection methods.

The numbers of such slabbed altered cards IMO number in the tens of thousands and have a staggering collective market value. Yes, undoubtedly card doctors/counterfeiters will then be fast at work to come up with the latest method to elude detection, much the same way, say, manufacturers of radar detectors constantly update their devices to keep up with the latest radar guns. But presumably a TPG run the right way will too be constantly advancing and improving its methods.

Will altered/fake cards still get through? Undoubtedly, which just means it will not be perfect. But what is perfect? It won't take much for it to be a HUGE improvement over what currently exists. And for a person thinking about shelling out a five, six or seven figure sum for a card, which company do you think such a person would turn to for an opinion as to whether the card is altered/fake?

Who is going to crack out a card that expensive to have it reviewed and take the chance it isn't legit?

Not Ken Kendrick :rolleyes:

The buyer. Assuming such a TPG company is up and running and has properly marketed its product (which will include well publicized random statistically significant crack outs of high grade vintage registry cards and showing them to have been altered), such a buyer will make his/her purchase contingent on the card being regraded under this new method. And if the seller is not willing to allow that, then the card will not hold its value relative to a card that is crossed over.

That seems very high risk to me unless the seller is absolutely certain of the provenance.

In my opinion that point was met in maybe 1981-2.
The local dealer I hung out at showed me an extremely nice 51B Mantle. After holding it for a couple minutes I handed it back saying "It's really nice, and fake. But I can't explain why"
They said that was the opinion of 5-6 other dealers, who had also passed on buying it. (Yes, at the time occasionally a card like that would get shopped around by mail!) Everyone thought it was fake but couldn't explain why it was fake. Somehow it just "felt " wrong.

I 100% believe that card would pass TPG today and would grade very high, at least an 8. For all I know it is in a holder today. The guys I knew passed on buying it, and I never heard about it again.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/428...int-grade?dr=1

Collectors Universe Will Escape Latest 'Scandal' With Near Mint Grade

I respect the fact collectors are concerned about the trimmed/altered cards, and several investors called into Collectors Universe’s Q4 conference call to ask about the impact it has on the business.

But after examining the company’s Q4 numbers - talking about trimmed cards is akin to asking a batter why he struck out in the 4th after hitting home runs in every other at bat!

THIS.

Additionally, given there are few alternatives for collectors to turn to for grading trading cards - it’s not like collectors can change grading company’s like consumers can do in more competitive industries.

Heh.

From the analyst call. Re Mark's question, this is how you (potentially, if it later turns out the warranty reserve was inadequate) commit securities fraud.

"In terms of our warranty, we take a very conservative view in terms of warranty and what our expectation is, in terms of our balance sheet. So I think this whole trimming issue that we spent a lot of time talking about today is really something that we don't consider material to our business."

If I were on the CU Board I would be cringing at unqualified statements like that, just saying.

Good point about older altered cards that got past. I assume they would easily be identified under close inspection.

I don't know the grading process, but, from what I hear, many cards are examined in seconds by graders. So, even if they have the abilities and capabilities, they go too fast to apply them properly. As noted often times, many of the BO altered cards clearly don't make size specifications.

Or the seller can instead choose to take the risk, and if the card is no good, try to invoke PSA's grading guarantee. The alternative for the seller will the unenvious position of seeing the value of his registry cards steadily fall in value due to their failure to be graded by this new superior grading company.

No guarantee if the card is removed from the holder, as you know.

Yep. Not a great choice of options for the seller.

The CFO's statement that we don't consider the trimming issue material to our business is right up there with Sloan's initial statement and Orlando's blog post. The arrogance and tone deafness coming from this company is mind boggling.

BTW, on this point, as we've discussed before, I believe it is just a matter of time before there is some massive civil litigation on this proscription of removing the card from the holder without voiding the guarantee. How else can a person prove the card is altered to pass the threshold PSA will undoubtedly impose to be entitled to receive pay out under the guarantee? For the high fees (up to $5K) PSA charges to grade cards, I don't think a court is going to so quickly dismiss such a suit.

If what I portend comes to pass if such a new TPG comes into being -- the loss of literally hundreds of millions of dollars of market value to registry cards -- the owners of those cards are not likely to accept that without a fight. And then there will be that test case of whether taking the card out of the slab under tightly controlled/supervised conditions for the sole purpose of having it regraded under more modern methods will void the guaranty.

Market Summary > Collectors Universe, Inc.


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