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.

[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!

I don't collect graded cards but it sounds like a whole bunch of blah, blah, blah.
Doesn't happen that often? They obviously don't visit the blowout forum. LOL.

[Johnny630]

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

[D. Bergin]

Does anybody actually think PSA is going to remove cards from the system that they've already F'd up on?

Also, I'm reading this as the program takes a finger print of a card when it first goes through the PSA system, so as to catch any alterations, the 2nd time it goes through the system in crack and resubmits.

Not a lot of mention of alterations done to raw cards or coming from other graders.

We'll see how it goes, but for some reason the word "synergy", keeps on blaring in my head, over and over and over again.

Gotta start somewhere I guess.

[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...

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

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

Yup. Proprietary software become theirs to do whatever they want with it. Often to just make it disappear. Ebay was doing this every other week back in the late 1990's, early 2000's with various start-ups.

I think they even tried to claim ownership of the "Buy It Now" button at one point, because they bought out the guy who said he "invented" it. LOL!

I might have made that last part up...........but I'm not entirely sure about that.

[samosa4u]

What's going to happen if somebody sends back a PSA 10 for reholdering and PSA sees something wrong with it while using this newly-acquired technology? And what if this happens 7,000 times?

[hcv123]

I would say no reholdering of old grades. If you want a new grade - it has to be earned through the new system.

I pray that this will be "used for good". Based on past threads, I suspect Kevin created this from a really great space - PSA has a real opportunity here - I truly hope it is capitalized on with integrity!

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by hcv123

I would say no reholdering of old grades. If you want a new grade - it has to be earned through the new system.

I pray that this will be "used for good". Based on past threads, I suspect Kevin created this from a really great space - PSA has a real opportunity here - I truly hope it is capitalized on with integrity!

I agree with the part I made bold. It should be like the new holder and really promote it as the greatest thing in grading ever. Then 6 months in change the holder or at the very least completely redesign the flip again. New is always better.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by hcv123

I would say no reholdering of old grades. If you want a new grade - it has to be earned through the new system.

I pray that this will be "used for good". Based on past threads, I suspect Kevin created this from a really great space - PSA has a real opportunity here - I truly hope it is capitalized on with integrity!

Not questioning Kevin's motives AT ALL. Not even questioning PSA, just hoping...

[JollyElm]

Don't be fooled. The card doctors already have their teams of techies working 24 hours a day trying to discover how to 'beat' this new technology and keep the money presses rolling...

[GasHouseGang]

Originally Posted by samosa4u

What's going to happen if somebody sends back a PSA 10 for reholdering and PSA sees something wrong with it while using this newly-acquired technology? And what if this happens 7,000 times?

I think you're probably missing some zeroes on that.

[Pat R]

I don't know how they are grading 20,000 - 25,000 cards a day when none
of the completed to date times have changed in over 2 weeks except the
walk - through and super express services.

[GasHouseGang]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

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

Yeah, I'm reminded of the companies buying up the streetcars.

"Between 1938 and 1950, National City Lines and its subsidiaries, American City Lines and Pacific City Lines—with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California (through a subsidiary), Federal Engineering, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Trucks—gained control of transit systems in about 25 cities"

Then they dismantled them.

[Case12]

I worked as a contractor for an AI start up company before COVID. The scope was image language translation. We were granted 8 patents so far. What is proposed here should be super easy once enough reference data is collected. It won't take much for these applications. What will intrigue me more is autograph authentication. With AI they could then set the system on autopilot for authentication and multi factor grading. AI is not robots taking over the world, but is certainly mind blowing.

[Mike D.]

Originally Posted by Pat R

I don't know how they are grading 20,000 - 25,000 cards a day when none
of the completed to date times have changed in over 2 weeks except the
walk - through and super express services.

They are moving...but not very quickly. The "Value Modern" Complete Through rate changed from Aug 2nd to Aug 5th.

[Jcosta19]

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

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

[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

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

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.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

[chriskim]

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

[drcy]

PSA:

[kevinlenane]

Hey all thanks for the kind words! FTR - it's definitely going exist as a combined human/machine solution - so we are still hiring in all lanes in every way. FTR if you have product management experience and have a desire to work on next gen CollectTech products - please reach out.... General questions also welcome...