Fanatics to acquire Topps.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by ASF123

But a big (huge?) factor in the tsunami of demand for PSA 10s is that not every, or anywhere near every, uncirculated card gets a 10. PSA goes to great (ridiculous, arbitrary) lengths to create artificial scarcity of 10s by "finding" undetectable flaws that result in a 9 or an 8.

Shipping out pre-slabbed "uncirculated" cards in any robust number would kill the (arbitrary, perceived) scarcity, which is the real source of the demand, not the condition itself. On the other hand, if they ship out few enough pre-slabbed for them to be scarce, it probably wouldn't be very profitable. If they tried to charge too much, people would just buy the regular version and hope to get the blessing of the PSA wizard. Or I guess they could do a very limited-edition release of a pre-slabbed card that isn't replicated in a non-slabbed version, but there the slabbing would be only a minor selling point above and beyond the scarcity of the card itself.

That would/could probably still be done to such factory "uncirculated" cards. Weren't/aren't some people/groups putting stickers and other markings on previously TPG graded cards to further separate them from similar graded ones already? So why not just do the same with these. And how long is PSA's registry going to keep driving their inherent price advantage over other TPG's graded cards? It seems that more and more of the young people jumping into the"hobby" with their new money are of the investor/flipper ilk, and don't really care that much about having their cards listed on the PSA registry. If that turns out to be true, I can see down the road where that could start to turn some collectors off on PSA, and maybe have them start embracing the factory "uncirculated" concept. You only need a few people/collectors to start it off, and then maybe have it snowball from there. And who's to say people from Fanatics couldn't be going into the secondary markets online to light that spark themselves. Past market manipulation has been discussed on here and other sites numerous times already, so what's one more?

Or what about this idea? What if Fanatics came along and set up their own registry, but incorporated all the major TPGs in it? Everyone on here's been complaining about SGCs lack of a registry for quite some time now. I don't believe Beckett has ever had a registry, am I right? And of course, PSA's registry is king! It wouldn't necessarily be easy to convince everyone to join in, nor have the info fully loaded overnight. But over time, maybe as more and more people accepted the idea and would send graded collection info in, the fact that collectors could used graded cards from different TPGs to get their collection rankings, without having to cross everything over to, or sent in for grading by, PSA, could end up proving to be attractive to an awful lot of collectors. Not to mention maybe taking down PSA a notch or so. And Fanatics could include their factory "uncirculated" cards somewhere in their registry as well.

Before anyone says it is too far-fetched, and will never will occur, just consider of everyone else out there already in this industry, who has a greater economic drive, motivation, and wherewithal to maybe make something like any, or all, of this happen, besides Fanatics? And again, before you just flat out say no way, think and look back over the last few decades at all the things you swore or never dreamed would eventually happen.....................but did!