PSA has a new president
 

Anyone else read the news yet? Kevin Lenane, the founder of Genamint, will be taking over as the new president at PSA. He will bring his entire 7 months worth of experience with him into his new role. This should go well...

Just get my final 2 subs back! Grading prices like they are, I will be avoiding that trap for a while. He is the czar of hobby AI, so maybe he can make the process more efficient and accurate. And cheaper? Wishful thinking.

Who knows maybe just maybe an outsider with very little experience and help turn things around with real world ideas and processes......Or Not

Going off of his academic background and work history, this guy has zero experience actually writing AI code. I wish I could sit down and interview him, but that's not happening. If Nat Turner put him in charge because of his leadership skills and business acumen, that's one thing (although it would be odd for someone with a mere 7 month tenure), but if this decision was made because people with no actual coding experience believe AI is the future of grading at PSA, then this isn't going to end well. I've seen this movie many times before.

Could it get any worse really?

Just give it some time, my guess is yes, yes it can.:D

Where did you hear this news from?? I am looking and can't find anything. What happened to Steve Sloan??

Dear Collectors,

The past few years at PSA have flown by at breakneck speed. We’ve seen more changes than any of us could have ever imagined: record numbers of daily submissions; the temporary suspension of service levels; the hiring of hundreds of new employees; capacity growth to over 40,000 cards processed per day; and a change in company ownership resulting in a shift from a public company to being privately held. And of course, all this taking place during a global pandemic, just to keep us on our toes.

More change is occurring this week. I have accepted a new position with PSA’s parent company, Collectors Universe, to become its first-ever Chief Marketing Officer, which means I will no longer be serving as PSA President. Personally, and professionally, I welcome the opportunity to further advance PSA’s ever-growing brand and strengthen its No. 1 ranking in the authentication and grading industry. My background before being named PSA President in 2018 was in marketing and product innovation, and I’m eager to apply that experience to PSA and Collectors Universe’s family of brands.

Kevin Lenane, who has been working as our Vice President of Product for the past seven months, will now take over as PSA President. Kevin is an experienced business leader whose company, Genamint, we acquired earlier this year to help PSA implement technology in our grading practices to improve efficiency, quality assurance and turnaround times. Kevin will continue our commitment to improving and advancing the quality of all we do. I pass the baton to Kevin and look forward to working alongside him in the years to come.
Thank you,


Steve Sloan
Collectors Universe Chief Marketing Officer

I like it!!!

Did you read Kevin's various posts on Blowout a couple weeks back?

Peter:

Copy those links and send them over please to this side of the highways

Rich

No. Could you please send a link?

On a number of posts, he went back the next day and significantly edited what he had said. Start with 129 which is Kevin.

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showth...1457205&page=6

Thanks Peter I'm going to read now.

PSA appears to be a company in regression right in the middle of a maelstrom as it pertains to their grading practices.

This does not look good for their supposed iron grip on the grading race.

Thanks for the link Peter. I can already tell this will be a shitshow - the poor judgement it took to go on blowout and take on BODA is likely a harbinger of things to come. That dude was dead meat the minute he posted.

I wasn't impressed with his answers to my questions, to the extent he even answered. Oh well.

It was probably only a matter of time before another shoe dropped after Joe Orlando departed. Wouldn't be surprised if there are more personnel changes in key positions. Didn't they hire several other VP level folks under the Orlando regime. Some of those folks may be next to be moved to other positions that are not part of any sort of inner circle, or they might become become frustrated and leave because their input is not valued or solicited.

Third party grading, led by PSA, has been a shitshow from the get-go. The emperor is seen without clothes the second one considers how you send in a card, it gets grade X. Crack and send it back in, it gets grade Y. Review it, it gets grade Z. A grade from them is just one opinion on one day. A snapshot in time. On another day, with another grader, get another opinion. End of the day, it's just strikes and balls being called by different umps on different days. Heck, sometimes the same ump can't even be consistent within the same game. That's grading.

Which makes the only thing crazier the guys who put that sticker and slab on such a pedestal instead of using their own two God-given eyes to determine what looks best to them. Every time some PSA 9 with, let's call it sub-optimal eye appeal, sets some price record at an AH, it boggles my mind.

I hear they are now photographing every card and running at least high value submissions through some kind of recognition software so that cards cannot be cracked and resubbed to get a better grade. That will certainly help curtail doctoring, which is a good thing at least. But for those undergraded cards out there, it also freezes them in undeserving grades.

I always found it a silly and wrong case of over correction, that in some misguided attempt to compensate for overgraded cards in past eras, PSA decided to be overly harsh now and put 8s in 7 holders, etc. I used to think it was to foster regrades and reviews as a revenue stream, as well as control population (an aspect covered in some informative videos online). Whatever the motivation, the result is a tremendous degree of inconsistency in slabbed cards out there. You so often see two cards in the same PSA grade, and one just blows away the other. Again, just reveals how chaotic and silly it all is— the serious amounts of money thrown at PSA slabs notwithstanding.

I disagree. His going on Blowout would be considered "poor judgement" only from the perspective of an executive putting himself on the spot and having challenging questions thrown at him. Since he's been a member at Blowout since 2015, he's seen all the evidence of card doctoring they have amassed. He knew that by posting there, he'd get the really tough questions.

But he chose to, anyway. I would call that sincere, as opposed to calculated.

I wouldn't write him off instantly - give him some time and see what he does or doesn't do to address issues raised. Overall I was impressed he was willing to walk into that hornets' nest in the first place, and I think it unreasonable to expect instantaneous action from a guy who just took over his new role at PSA.

I generally agree with your post, except that I feel like he is in a no-win situation posting and can only make things worse. The intent is no doubt good, but it’s a lynch mob over there (deservingly so), and nothing he says, and most things he does not say (see Peter’s post), will be construed negatively. Trying to appease a lynch mob gets you hung. I value my neck.

Agree.

I think my questions were fair, if pointed. HE chose to come on as the company spokesman, and if you do that people have a right to ask questions.

I think all of the questions were fair, and once he opened the discourse, were all very natural questions - especially AJ’s Jax (and the Gretzky Wagner). My only point is that no executive with sense would put themselves out there in that situation. It’s a no win. In fact, it’s a guaranteed loss.

Again, if he is just another obfuscating executive then yes, I agree, bad PR move. No-win situation.

But suppose, just suppose, he is actually sincere about making substantive changes at PSA. Yes, I know, the cynics will pile on, but with new ownership and new leadership, all I'm saying is, just maybe these new guys really will improve things in a meaningful way.

Jumping on a guy immediately after he is put in a new role, dumping years of historical mistakes in his lap and expecting immediate resolution, just isn't realistic. Revisit this in 6 months and then criticize him, if it's warranted.

Dude, I am only criticizing the fact that he engaged in a public discourse on blowout. No win. Bad move. Instead, I would have spent the next 6 months improving things and then come out when I had some successes to promote. Do good acts, then speak. Talk is so cheap at this point. I promise you nobody at PSA applauded his going on blowout.

I hope he does good and psa gets straight. All I am saying is that going on blowout was a bad move and not something, I think, a sensible executive would have done. And if that’s where his judgement lies, then I am taking the “under” on this guy

I don’t think you and I are far off - I just don’t think good intentions, as sincere as they may be = good business judgement. In this case, I think it was the opposite. Dead horse beaten!! Peace

Don't disagree with anything you said, but in regards to your above quote, to those collectors simply concerned about their ranking on the Registry, the only thing they really do care about is the flip and the grade on the card. So since only PSA graded cards get added to the PSA Registry, the grade that PSA puts on a card is all important to them. I'd bet anything that if you had someone working on a Registry set, and two examples of a particular card they still needed came up for sale in an auction where one was in a much older PSA flip and very generously graded as a 5, while the other card was in a much, much newer flip, and while centered and visibly presented as much nicer than the card graded as a 5, only got graded as a 4, that Registry collector will pick the higher graded card every time. Even if the lower graded 4 card actually looks and presents significantly better than the card graded as a 5. In the case of the Registry, the grade will always override the actual condition and presentation of the card. And they'll pay more for that higher grade as well.

He probably expected a warmer reception.:D:p
And I assume his major edits reflect that PSA indeed was not happy with him.

I haven't read the Blowhard thread yet, but I do think his initial hiring and the acquisition of Genamint in the first place was mostly about PSA wanting to respond to all of the card doctoring issues that had surfaced. I believe it was their recognition of the fact that they simply weren't capable of fighting this beast head on without the aid of software. I believe they probably saw Genamint primarily as a tool for preventing future fraud and less of a tool for grading cards. It might be almost the entire reason they brought him on board.

If you are right that his edits were from at management's request, why promote him to Sloan's position? I think Kevin is a member here too. His showing on BO was pretty pathetic and I was not impressed with his posts here regarding his own company, Genamint. Much as Snowman annoys me, the posts he has made about AI, Genamint and their place in the hobby were far more informative and comprehensive.

BODA surfaced an existential threat to PSA's business model when they proved cards graded by PSA were being broken out, trimmed, re-submitted, and provided a higher grade. If all Kevin does is implement a "fingerprinting" (to use his word) system and data base that prevents this activity, he will "save" PSA and the conspiracy-theory afficianados here and at BODA will go back to work complaining about things they can't prove.

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If he can somehow improve the workflow to unjam their still massive backlog of cards in grading, he will become a hero. I know he is marketing not operations, but if marketing encompasses customer satisfaction, which it should, then he should be involved. I speak as someone who has close to 50 cards with PSA since May 2020.