#9: The Great Divide Between PSA and BGS

👋 Hello, I’m Brett from the Stacking Slabs Podcast and welcome you each week to my newsletter the Weekly Rip. The goal of this newsletter is to elevate the people who make the Hobby better.

How’s it going? 

I get excited about drafting the Weekly Rip because it gives me an opportunity to slow down and smell the Hobby roses.

It’s important that we take a step back from the day to day of the Hobby and reflect on what makes you excited and also areas that you wish were improved.

I get feedback all the time about my optimism. I chose to be optimistic because I evaluate markets professionally and what I’m seeing every week is unlike anything that I’ve ever seen before.

There is tremendous growth happening in all avenues of the Hobby. There will always be volatility in any market and it’s undeniable that your PCs will be impacted. I'm curious about big sales that happen that might impact cards in my PC, but I try not to get caught up in the day-to-day fluctuation of card prices. We all need to find opportunities to zoom out and analyze the Hobby as a whole and not through our personal lens.

The easiest way for me to do this on a regular basis is to hit Card Ladder and view the daily sales volume report. The platform tracks 9,927 cards (and counting) and their sales performance on a daily basis. On April 7 the platform recorded $18M in sales...in 1 day!

This is NOT normal!

Tremendous growth from a sales opens the door for so many opportunities that it’s almost impossible to count. 

Are you thinking about starting a company in the Hobby? Now is the time.

We need more technology, infrastructure, ideas, people, process, and more to help support this growth. This is the most exciting time in the history of sports cards!

I’m optimistic because this is an escape with massive upside. It’s like going on vacation and getting paid for it. These types of opportunities don’t come often.

It’s cool to be skeptical. I’m skeptical on many accounts.

Find your area to give back and join me in the optimism when you can.

It’s more fun that way.

On with the damn newsletter!

💪🏻Say Your Prayers and Eat Your Vitamins Brother 

It might seem like I hit you over the head with a steel chair of passion when it comes to all things wrestling related. It’s part of me. It’s something that I am extremely passionate about.

The stories. The characters. Good v. Evil. Surprises.

I’ve been hooked for 30+ years. It’s not a guilty pleasure for me. I wear it on my damn sleeve like a badge of honor.

I love professional wrestling.

I’ve been through struggles in my life just like anyone reading this newsletter.

Life has not always been perfect or as planned, but I’ve always had wrestling as an escape.

When I jumped back in the Hobby wrestling cards were the first attraction. My first purchase was a 1991 Merlin Italian Undertaker Rookie Card with Paul Bearer in a BGS 8.5

I bought this card for a fraction of what any graded NBA prospect was doing at the time and it made me so much more happy than anything else I had bought previously.

I love wrestling cards because they identify moments in time and a ton of nostalgia for me. There’s no flip game in wrestling cards. Of course people want the prices of their cards to go up, but it’s a collector driven segment of the Hobby.

Wrestling card collectors are full of passion and always willing to help each other out. 

I’ve interviewed some of my favorite collectors like David Peck and Zhan Mourning and it’s nothing, but passion for this niche segment. 

This week a 2013 Upper Deck Employee Hulk Hogan Purple Precious Metal Gems /125 sold for $1,775 ungraded. This is remarkable and shattered any previous sale of this card.

Wrestling cards are here to stay. The growth within this niche segment has been unprecedented over the last 12 months.

This is what happens when passion and nostalgia align, brother. 

👨‍💻Supporting the Infrastructure with Technology 

Cards are the primary Hobby for most of us. We escape to our PC, Instagram, eBay, or maybe even card shows in real life (Hey, I’m going to Dallas HMU). Typically, when we enjoy the escape, the last thing we are doing is thinking about our work.

The professional lives that we all live are demanding, time consuming, and the primary means for paying our bills. For most of us, our jobs are the primary means for funding our card collections, too. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy what I do for a living, but at the end of the day it’s a grind.

When I jumped back in the Hobby I tried to separate church and state, but couldn’t restrain myself from looking at the Hobby from a technology perspective. If you listen to my podcast you know this, but I am a career B2B marketing who works in the SaaS (software as a service) industry. 

I’ve worked in companies big and small. I am currently helping build a company called The Juice. We are in pre-launch mode and I am really excited about the problem that we are solving. I am so excited about the work that I am doing it’s nearly impossible for me to not view the Hobby as the lens of my professional experiences.

Can you relate? 

I’ve met finance pros, operations, sales, teachers, and even entrepreneurs in other ventures in my time back in the Hobby. Each and every individual takes their skills and points it back to the Hobby. Most of the time it’s not just for self interest, but to try to improve the way the Hobby operates as a whole.

I’m extremely passionate about the topic of technology in the Hobby. We need more technology to help support the growing infrastructure. 

I am interested in focusing any spare time I have exploring ways where I can share my decade+ of professional experience to help support technology initiatives in the Hobby that will make a difference.

Scott Brinker creates a MarTech (industry I work in) Supergraphic every year to show the categories and software companies that exist to support marketing teams. It has grown tremendously over the last decade. 

Darren Herman (@midlifecrisiscards) published a Sports Card Market Map in September of last year (someone tell him to add Stacking Slabs). 

This is a start, but there is a TON of room to grow. There’s room to create more categories. There will always be room to add new technology. 

I know separating work and Hobby life might be intentional, but I challenge you to consider ways that you can start sprinkling in your professional skills to make the Hobby a better place.

There are going to be plenty of opportunities for smart and passionate people to contribute.

Start thinking about it. 

😟The Grading Gap: A Lesson on Brand

I watch the close of every round of Goldin Auctions. I’m a fan. I love spectating and I love having my finger on the pulse of the Hobby. 

After doing a quick scan of some of the heavy hitters I went into the search box and typed, “Peyton Manning”.

I do this every time because #18 is my primary PC and I want to see how his cards are performing on a platform as big as Goldin. A click and a couple scrolls later and my jaw dropped. 

I took a screenshot, posted in my story, shook my head, and went to bed. 

When I woke up the next morning I could tell that people had taken note of the post. I got reposted from some of the biggest accounts in the Hobby and even heard it mentioned on a couple podcasts this week.

We are several days removed from this auction and have finally had some time to put some thoughts together regarding the price gap between a PSA 10 and BGS 9.5. It’s not just a 98 SP Peyton Manning thing. It’s been a conversation that has been going on for the last several months. It seems like the gap is widening more and more by the day. 

In full transparency I own a lot of PSA and BGS slabs. Like many collectors I like certain cards in PSA slabs and prefer other cards in BGS slabs. I do think PSA 10’s should command more than a BGS 9.5, but the question is how much more? 

I am going to work on a way to better crystalize the data between the two and hopefully present the information on SSP in the coming weeks, but for now I want to try to put some justification on the current disparity. 

For what it’s worth I would never spend the % difference on the PSA 10 of the Manning. I’d rather pay less and have the BGS 9.5. I think most readers of this newsletter would agree, but don’t want to speak for you. 

This comes down to brand. A PSA 10 has quickly become the Louis Vuitton of the Hobby. 

The incredible things about it they haven’t done anything outside the news of Nat Turner buying the company to justify the gap. It’s been outside forces causing the hoopla. 

“Influencers” will not be individually named here, but they are ALL pumping PSA.

When is the last time you’ve seen a person with a big following pump BGS? Never.

Of course, Beckett has not done themselves any favors. They are a recluse. They’ve had a myriad of controversies about fake slabs over the past year and do a terrible job of communicating with their audience.  

Brand matters and should play a critical role in the demand for any product within our industry. My problem with the current price gap is hype. I’m bullish on Nat and his team’s ability to innovate and develop PSA brand’s authentically. The problem is that the market's reaction to PSA 10 slabs is if that has already happened.

We’ve all been told to buy the cards and not the slab. That couldn’t be more evident than today.

Be careful you're not spending thousands of dollars more for a half of a decimal point.

I ask you two things in closing:

1. Do whatever you can to use your skills to give back to the Hobby - we need it more than ever

2. Please share this newsletter with whoever you think can benefit

Happy collecting,

Brett (@stackingslabs)