PSA purchases AI company Genamint

[Scott L.]

There’s a pretty funny line about half way through....

As a 10 million card backup hit card grader PSA, which led to a price increase and then a shutdown of submissions, collectors mused that a machine-graded company would come and compete with the industry giant.

Then came Wednesday’s twist.

Collectors Universe, parent company of PSA, announced it has purchased Genamint, an artificial intelligence company that built a system to fingerprint a card to its unique marks, detect if it was tampered with and grade it.

Terms weren’t disclosed.

Genamint, the pandemic era brainchild of Kevin Lenane, had a fundraising round from investors including Nat Turner, noted card collector and executive chairman of Collectors Universe.

Lenane said Turner, who along with other investors bought Collectors Universe for $853 million in January, gave him a bona fide offer before the company firmly got off the ground.

Turner told The Action Network that PSA would still be graded by humans, but the technology from Genamint will provide a huge assist to the process.

Turner was first turned on to computer assistance when he was building his company Flatiron Health. There, computers helped nurses sort clinical trial data faster and more accurately. Turner sold that company for $1.9 billion in 2018.

When a card comes into PSA, it is scanned. Using Genamint’s technology, the computer will put up print marks and surface defects so that every card will be unique.

“Each card has different combinations of 70 major anomalies that we’ve identified,” Lenane said. “From major ones like creases and scratches and stains to single pixels that are compromised.”

Based on learnings made from every card, the machine will be able to pick up if a card is trimmed or if a person has cracked out a card that was previously graded in hopes of getting a better grade.

Both aren’t common occurrences but mean a lot to uphold PSA’s integrity.

In early March, PSA, having trouble keeping up with the card boom, doubled prices, thinking it was going to allow the company to slow submissions down enough. The timing of the announcement seemed to have been leaked, as two days before, a record 660,000 cards were submitted where the old price had to be honored.

By the end of the month, PSA made the hard call of shutting down card submissions — except the high end Super Express option — to enable the company to catch up.

“The team came to me and it was apparent that it was necessary to do what was right,” Turner said. “The funny thing is I got so much hate mail with the price increases and pretty much nothing when we shut things down.”

Turner said PSA was getting so many card submissions that it essentially shut down the U.S. Postal Service in Southern California.

“We literally broke the postal service,” Turner said. “We couldn’t tell our customers where their packages were and that’s just not acceptable.”

Turner said he hopes to get all service levels restored by July 1.

More graders are being added every two weeks and the company is currently working through the backlog by grading 20,000 to 25,000 cards a day, Turner said.

With their latest acquisition, PSA executives are hoping it will greatly aid speed and accuracy.

https://www.actionnetwork.com/news/p...ading-april-21

[darwinbulldog]

Ha. Found it.

[T206.org]

"As a 10 million card backup hit card grader PSA..."

...


"More graders are being added every two weeks and the company is currently working through the backlog by grading 20,000 to 25,000 cards a day, Turner said."

...

"Turner said he hopes to get all service levels restored by July 1."


The math on that goal certainly does not check out.

[D. Bergin]

I'm guessing this is the line.

Both aren’t common occurrences but mean a lot to uphold PSA’s integrity.

[Arazi4442]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

I'm guessing this is the line.

Yep, pretty sure that's the line....

This could be interesting though. If this AI does what is claimed (I know it's a huge IF), this could be yet another boom for PSA. If the AI can legitimately spot altered cards, I would think there would be a huge premium for cards in "Post AI" slabs. PSA would get to (charge to) re-slab every card currently in a PSA holder with no cost to them except the cost of the new holder.

Maybe that's the plan to financially cover the PSA Guarantee on already slabbed, altered cards?

[Peter_Spaeth]

If this can REALLY detect trimming a whole lot of folks are not going to be happy. Kiss those gem rates goodbye.

[Scott L.]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

I'm guessing this is the line.

Bingo!

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Remember also that huge companies by up small companies that they feel are a threat and then just bury them...

[conor912]

Originally Posted by T206.org

"As a 10 million card backup hit card grader PSA..."

...


"More graders are being added every two weeks and the company is currently working through the backlog by grading 20,000 to 25,000 cards a day, Turner said."

...

"Turner said he hopes to get all service levels restored by July 1."


The math on that goal certainly does not check out.

Hahaha. Yup. 10 million cards at 25k/day is over a year. I know they don’t need to get the queue down to zero to start taking subs again, but I would think they would need to get it to at least half, which puts you into October!

[Johnny630]

It would not surprised if Bulk/Economy does not come back.

[Jcosta19]

Express moved 1 day from Feb 15 to 16th today also FWIW

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[tonyo]

Kevin is the board member that was asking for scans of 33 goudeys not that long ago..... to test his technology, right?

Great for him!

[bobbyw8469]

Originally Posted by Jcosta19

Express moved 1 day from Feb 15 to 16th today also FWIW

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Nice....that doesn't help my order that they have been sitting on since June.

[Jcosta19]

Originally Posted by bobbyw8469

Nice....that doesn't help my order that they have been sitting on since June.

Doesn't help anyone really except people who submitted express on Feb 16th.
I was just pointing out that it did move slightly since someone else stated that there was zero movement in over 2 weeks.

Hope they start catching up much faster on the bulk and quarterly specials.

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[chriskim]

They just hired hundreds of graders and will out of jobs in a few wks. Ding!

[drcy]

PSA: