Nat Turner new CEO at CLCT
 

Any surprise?

Just saw it. Will he be the one I contact about our missing package?

text
 

Without a doubt, this message was the most difficult to write in my nearly 22 years at the company. The title, "Thank You," is about as vague as a title can get, but I wanted to keep it simple for those who chose to read it. After more than two decades at Collectors Universe, with most of that time dedicated to PSA in one form or another, I have decided to move on from something that has become such a huge part of my life. It was time for a change. In addition to spending more time with my family, I am looking forward to staying active in the hobby, my personal passion.

Long before I came to work for the company in 1999, I became a customer – one of PSA’s first – shortly after learning about the service in the early 1990s. Even though I wasn’t here at the very beginning, nor did I invent the concept, I feel like I have been with the company from the start when it wasn’t en vogue. Third party authentication and grading wasn’t perfect then, and it isn’t now, but it has been a critical component to our hobby’s growth. It will continue to be as the market moves forward, along with all the other things PSA offers, from essential content to collection management tools.

I came to PSA because I believed in the concept and what it could do for the industry, but I stayed in large part because of the people ... the people I worked with on a daily basis and those whom I worked for – our customers. The relationships are the reason. I have made lifelong friendships along the way, those I will always cherish. This includes so many current, and former, coworkers. It also includes countless hobbyists and dealers, those who continue to bleed PSA’s colors and those who have sadly passed on.

While there are those who drift in and out of our hobby, so many of you have been incredibly loyal to the brand and personally supportive during my entire career. I could never thank you enough. In many respects, I have been spoiled with a dream job since finishing school. I want everyone to know that I never forgot that. I was given an opportunity to work in an industry I love and for a company I believed in. I fully understood how rare that was and appreciated it every second of the way.

It doesn’t mean every experience was pleasant. Sometimes, I was turned into a human piñata at The National or became the target of submitter frustration by default being on the front lines. It was, however, all part of the gig. Being the referee, umpire or judge isn’t always an envious position to be in. Furthermore, playing the role of messenger can be challenging when the message isn’t always pretty, but the job was so rewarding, in every way imaginable.

I loved helping people, developing new services, providing structure to the market, building the Set Registry, writing, educating, researching, innovating, constantly learning and being immersed in the endeavor I would choose aside from the paycheck. It doesn’t feel like work if you have a real passion for what you do. That passion is what keeps you motivated each day. It could be a grind at times like any other job, but I ended up loving the grind.

In the early days, I can remember going to countless conventions. From Redding, PA, to Hollywood Park, CA, there was a time when I walked table-to-table, aisle-to-aisle, in an attempt to convince others how our services could help their business or improve their collecting experience. Some of you were at these shows too. The circuit could be grueling as you well know, but I enjoyed engaging with fellow hobbyists because we spoke the same language, shared similar experiences and could relate to one another ... even when we disagreed.

Effective immediately, Collectors Universe Executive Chairman and fellow collector Nat Turner will be stepping into the CEO role. Since our company was purchased several months ago, Nat has been extremely involved in decision making, especially as it relates to building our infrastructure. This will enable the company to scale and bring Collectors Universe closer to its ultimate vision. For years, Nat has been a consumer and supporter of PSA-certified products, so he is very familiar with our brands and the services we offer.

I am a collector, through and through. It’s how I’m wired and that’s not going to change. I can’t wait to see what the next two or three decades has in store for all of us. The hobby is continually expanding, maturing and improving. It’s a great time to be a collector, and more people that share our "gene" are being introduced to our way of life each day.

No matter what I decide to do from this point forward with my work life, I will be a collector for life.

Forever grateful,


Joe Orlando
President & CEO, Collectors Universe, Inc.

Thank You for your service Joe Orlando.

Joe got forced out and anything Nat touched will become 10s.

Customer service was not Joe's strong point. At least on Twitter and Instagram Nat has been quite responsive about the needs and concerns of customers.

Reading, PA though...

I don't get it?? Is Reading a hot spot for cards?

The Philly Show made a detour though Reading between Fort Washington and Valley Forge.

FWIW, I randomly messaged Nat on Instagram to ask about using Genamint as a potential additional step to track forged autos/resubbed cards. Responded to me, and even directed me to one of the team leads on the Genamint integration.
Dude walks the walk. Very interested to see how PSA changes during his tenure as CEO.

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...well_bye_2.jpg
https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/500/...quare.w700.jpg

Maybe I should try contacting Nat Turner. I really want my missing package.

By the way....what's a Twitter?

His last line he should have said: "That stuff about 'never get cheated'. Yeah, I was just kidding!"

Agreed, Nat has been fantastic and responsive every time I've connected with him.

I'm sure Joe got a nice golden parachute when he was given his walking papers.

He probably already had a fat 401k account.

How does one get ahold of this Nat Turner?? Maybe he can help us with our missing Net54 group sub?

He's a member on this board. His handle is natsturner

I believe he's a member here.
natsturner

1. A guy buys a company, he has every right to run it.
2. After 20 years, shake-up at the top at PSA is a breath of fresh air.

Orlando must have heard about your submission and threw in the towel.

LOL....this is actually a small submission in the grand scheme of things. 123 cards. Definitely not a 4SC submission. Still some very cool vintage that it sickens me to think that they are lost.

Agreed and hopefully he is as good and responsive as some here are saying he is

i think Turner will force out Ken.... Welcome to Turner Auction!!!

It's a group of tweets...:p

With a million or two million card backlog the place is probably a logistical nightmare. My guess is it is there and will turn up.

He's been slabbed as a 10 and will be auctioned by PWCC next month. Should be set for life.

Strangely though, he was listed at 6'1", but he only looks about 5'10" in the slab...

He has no money worries, as you know......in addition to probably some form of very lucrative exit compensation...just look at how many shares of stock he has in CLCT.

After the dust settles, he will likely re-surface in a high level job at some other company within the hobby.

He was likely forced out.....happens everywhere in both the private and public sectors. This was either in the cards from the get go with the new ownership. He maybe was not on board with some of the major changes such as robotics. Or, he felt slighted when others did not involve him in some of the decisions being made. Who knows? Could be a combination of the above and other contributing factors, too. He also is probably suffering some burnout which contributed to him leaving.

You need to wonder whether others, who were hired by Joe or were very loyal, may be next and part of a house cleaning.

Well...seeing as how the company is private now, if you never tendered your stock when they were buying it, it is worthless now.

He didn't keep his stock he got cashed out in the buyout with everyone else.

Yawn . . . :rolleyes:

Unless they kept him around with an earnout

Don’t know how to feel about this yet.

The devil you know…

Joe Orlando was the face of the brand for a long time. It's hard to picture a PSA without him. He received a lot of criticism during the Slabgate scandal, and people had the right to be upset, however, the way he behaved was the way any CEO would have behaved. He had to protect the brand, and he sure did a damn good job. How many people are talking about the scandal now?

Nat has many qualities most men only dream of having. I'm pretty sure he is going to do a fantastic job. He is getting praised a lot for responding quickly to others, but he just started, guys! Joe had to do this for twenty years! For twenty years he got angry phone calls, threatening emails, confronted by muscular American dudes who were angry because their buddies got good grades and they didn't. That's some pretty rough shit.

"That's some pretty rough shit" Really? Sounds like you were hired to do his Biography. Let's not pretend this guy isn't stained with all the bullshit PSA pulled over the years. Yeah, he did a good job spinning damage control. Not a quality I admire. Complicit in alot of garbage. Never get cheated!

How about acknowledging the problem and doing something to fix it, instead of pretending it didn't exist.

Fix it? How? There are guys out there who are trimming over-sized cards down to the correct size. Small wrinkles are being pressed and stains are being soaked out. By the way, I know that soaking is totally acceptable on this forum and has been discussed very openly, although it's a big no-no on Blowout. Anyhow, some of this work is nearly impossible to catch. Sure, Joe could have discussed this issue instead of just saying "we aren't perfect," but otherwise I don't think he could have done much. What was he going to say to the big shareholders? Umm, guys, let's do a major recall and issue five billion in refunds, cool? They would have thrown him out of the window! :D

Once you get decades deep into this, it really is impossible to fix in any systematic way. This is why I think all these guys saying oh give Nat Turner a chance are just engaging in wishful thinking. I mean what's he going to do, pull a disco inferno and "burn that mother down"?

A lot of things that people thought he might fix probably won't get addressed. He's on record as hating the resubmit game. Of course at some point he will have to realize what a huge portion of PSA's revenue comes from that game, then we'll see if he puts PSA's money where his mouth is.

Yeah, some of the work is near-impossible to catch. But if you spent any time at all going over the many BO threads exposing this garbage, you'd see that most of these alterations could have been caught with a simple blacklight and/or ruler. Many could've been spotted by a complete novice.

Then there's the issue of PSA continually accepting submissions from known card doctors (for years).

Then there's the favorable treatment for "preferred" submitters.

Then there's that pesky so-called guarantee that PSA seemed to have an aversion to honoring.

Then there's the PSA Chat Forum, who bans and/or censors you for having a dissenting opinion or simply for trying to raise an honest discussion.

All of this happened under Joe's watch. I could go on, but I'm sure the PSA Apologists would find a way to dispute all of these matters, as would a good chunk of the Flippers who are consumed with protecting their investments.

That said.... I hope Nat is successful, and able to clean things up at PSA. He seems like a good guy, and (judging by his first big move) it appears he's off to a good start! :rolleyes:

His objective, I can only presume given the BIG money guys like Steve Cohen who are in this with him, is to make PSA even more profitable and sell it or go public again, not scale it back into a collector-friendly company with integrity that would earn substantially less money. I think people are dreaming. Hope I'm wrong. Do people REALLY think he's going to cut off all the card doctors, and buy back the millions of dollars of altered cards, and put the brakes on all the hugely profitable 10s?

I agree, that was kinda my point.

Yeah I think this is right.

Nat does not strike me as a person who bought PSA to fix it. He saw opportunity to take the brand to another level but I am sure it did not include cleaning up decades of alleged grading scandals. He bought it to make it better by some other standard that may or may not be great for the hobby.

Hmm...Let's see how this adds up.

1. PSA's business model is based in large measure on the volume of cards graded.

2. For PSA to grade a large volume of cards, they need both enough graders and a high rate of cards graded per hour.

3. The value of a card increases significantly with each bump up in grade, which at the higher end of the grading spectrum amounts to huge dollar increases.

4. For a card worked on by a skilled card doctor, there is little chance the alteration will be detected unless the grader is knowledgeable about the manufacturing process associated with that particular issue and has sufficient time to examine the card.

Question:

Do 1, 2, 3, and 4 add up to:

5. So therefore it is likely the card will be accurately graded and any alteration detected, or 10. There is little possibility the grader will detect the alteration.


I do not profess to be an expert in securities law, but it seems to me that now that graded cards routinely sell in 7 figures and are being marketed in ways that cross into public oversight with attendant fiduciary obligation on the part of people promoting these investments, these people are taking a significant legal risk if the economic consequences of what IMO is the fraud of PSA's business model ever comes to fruition.

Nat Turner new CEO at CLCT
 

The only way to solve the problems right now are through computer grading. Grading is the perfect use case for machine learning and artificial intelligence.
The more graders PSA hires, the more errors slip through the cracks because you aren’t getting highly skilled people. It’s going to become an assembly line of low prices workers. Grading isn’t an assembly line skill level job, it’s very precise and you can’t just train every Tom, Dick and Harry off the street to do it.
Artificial Intelligence and machine learning software is the way of the future in grading.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I was thinking that Tweets came in "Flocks"?

I disagree.....PSA is only rendering an opinion.

In essence so are stockbrokers making recommendations, and they're pretty heavily regulated.

AI might be great for modern and automating that aspect of grading but using it, in its present state, leaves much to be desired for assessing vintage. I do not believe the technology is there for accurately identifying and disregarding nuances or anomalies in the vast array of vintage paper.

I've seen some astonishingly low grades recently that made zero sense to me or the guys getting the cards back. Maybe this is the explanation.