PSA/Collectors Uni acquires Beckett

[rnocards]

Originally Posted by newcokeandtaco

What is next for PSA...stamps/coins?

Originally Posted by Fenian95

Collectors Universe already does coins. They own PCGS, one of the biggest coin grading companies.

And they also do stamps. They own Professional Stamp Experts (PSE).

[MavsRChamps]

What does this mean exactly? More of a rhetorical question but I'm not sure if this will help BGS become more mainstream grading wise or just kill BGS all together ... guess we'll see.

I do find it comical PSA can't figure out their logistics to handle vault shipment/processing, get competent graders, provide service in timely manner - yet this company is thriving, is a multi billion $ company, and buying off all their competitors. Lol.

Pay customer service staff. Pay people to process shipping / vault orders / non grading tasks so processing speeds up. Pay graders well so they are more competent in their job & stay.

[rnocards]

Originally Posted by SLGSports

If it wasn't already before, CGC is the anti-PSA option. Will be interesting to see how much CGC grows from this.

A healthy competition is good for the market, but Collectors is just too strong. They've effectively and practically became a monopoly... or at least, they are trying to be. CGC is now going to become the #2 by default, and will take the place of what Beckett used to be.... until one day, Collectors will eat them up too. Honestly, I really do not see a viable and strong #2 that can compete with Collectors right now.

[newcokeandtaco]

Originally Posted by rnocards

And they also do stamps. They own Professional Stamp Experts (PSE).

Thanks for the correction.
Guess I need to study up on the CU acronyms. How about sneakers and casino chips...

[GuacamoleCards]

So a completely unregulated gambling industry gets its second monopoly in the supply chain. What could possibly go wrong?

[Bob Ross]

Originally Posted by I only pull for

When will they start the buyback program at BGS to give themselves black labels?

This is why Nat Turner, the PSA owner, has recently purchased 348 cards from his own company’s PSA EBAY account. Among a lot from MC Sportscards eBay account as well.

All makes sense now.

[rnocards]

Originally Posted by newcokeandtaco

Thanks for the correction.
Guess I need to study up on the CU acronyms. How about sneakers and casino chips...

Not yet, they don't grade sneakers and casino chips, but give them time... haha

[discodanman45]

Originally Posted by Bob Ross

This is why Nat Turner, the PSA owner, has recently purchased 348 cards from his own company’s PSA EBAY account. Among a lot from MC Sportscards eBay account as well.

All makes sense now.

I hope someone can get information what Nat has recently bought. If he is taking advantage of his insider information, he needs to feel the wrath of the hobby. Poor Nat was bitching about upcharges years ago and now he is turning into Shillstein.

[Bob Ross]

Originally Posted by discodanman45

I hope someone can get information what Nat has recently bought. If he is taking advantage of his insider information, he needs to feel the wrath of the hobby. Poor Nat was bitching about upcharges years ago and now he is turning into Shillstein.

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showpo...1&postcount=62

[RKH916]

What the actual #@#@#@#@? Thinking about just dropping out of the hobby now. Beckett was my jam.

Fanatics & PSA monopoly over the industry now. No thank you, sir. I'll come back in 20 years if there's anything left.

[rfgilles]

Originally Posted by majestik101

And all of a sudden my Beckett slab values just increased 1,000%

Hopefully, there is a program to transfer existing Beckett Graded Slabs to PSA Slabs and vise versa

Another great thing from this is the well-deserved DEATH of TAG


.
.

How so?

[fabiani12333]

Originally Posted by Bob Ross

This is why Nat Turner, the PSA owner, has recently purchased 348 cards from his own company’s PSA EBAY account. Among a lot from MC Sportscards eBay account as well.

All makes sense now.

But what does buying PSA-slabbed cards from PSA's eBay account have to do with Collectors buying Beckett?

[inaka]

Originally Posted by newcokeandtaco

Thanks for the correction.
Guess I need to study up on the CU acronyms. How about sneakers and casino chips...

Since Collector's Universe (CU) now owns (BGS) and (SGC), all they need to do is acquire the sneaker company Adidas (A) and a casino Mirage (M) and if you combine all of their acronyms it spells an all-new acronym: (SCUMBAGS)!

[Bob Ross]

Originally Posted by fabiani12333

But what does buying PSA-slabbed cards from PSA's eBay account have to do with Collectors buying Beckett?

You know what, who the hell knows, because you know why? We aren't a part of the club. The people running these monopolies are the ones gouging out everyone else and taking advantage at every single step of the way. His motivations? I'm certain it's taking advantage of the situation in his favor somehow.

[ReggieBush22]

What a shame. Just a shame both BGS and SGC sold out. They must've been offered way above perceived market value to give in. Would love to see some comp with some experienced vets starting a new, better grading company. Monopolies are bad.

[EscapePlan]

Originally Posted by majestik101

Another great thing from this is the well-deserved DEATH of TAG


.
.

Why are you rooting for the death of competition in the grading space? We need competitors now more than ever unless you enjoy getting bent over a barrel by PSA? I don’t understand the irrational fanboy mindset I guess

[rfgilles]

Originally Posted by Bob Ross

You know what, who the hell knows, because you know why? We aren't a part of the club. The people running these monopolies are the ones gouging out everyone else and taking advantage at every single step of the way. His motivations? I'm certain it's taking advantage of the situation in his favor somehow.

So what you said makes no sense. Got it.

[rhineland]

It’s difficult to avoid responding emotionally to this news. I love BGS and a good deal of what it offers. Upon further reflection, though, I do think that this could produce a really, really positive outcome for everyone.

We can all agree that change is needed and that the change that's needed isn't all that complicated. The capabilities, features, and propositions all already exist. The problem is that they exist across several companies rather than in one place.

I’m going to write this post (it’s a fairly long post) in the hopes that Nat actually reads this forum and might take some ideas into consideration in terms of what the path forward can look like.

To do that, I’ve considered potential scenarios that could come from this. These are possible outcomes based on CU now owning 3 of the largest grading companies, all of which have their own unique propositions, back-end operations, and market-facing brands. From there, I’d like to advance some thinking on one potential scenario as what I believe to be the obvious right path forward that would benefit everyone.

At the end of the day, this acquisition does nothing more than set CU and PSA up for something bigger that should come next. To this end, Nat’s next job is to execute properly. This is the case for any leader who acquires and builds out a complex brand and business portfolio.

Part 1 | The Scenarios

There are really four potential scenarios that mark out how CU could manage its portfolio of businesses in the card grading industry based on this acquisition. Here they are:

Scenario 1: Let It Be

In this scenario, CU does nothing with the 3 brands. They stay as is, perhaps with some operational integration for efficiency and to optimize capacity to manage higher grading volumes, lower turnaround times, and lower operating costs that may or may not show up in market in the form of lower prices for graders (unlikely).

Everything would largely stay as is from the point of view of the customer.

Scenario 2: Specialty Brands

Within the CU portfolio, each one of the grading companies could take on a specialty role that builds independent distinction while also elevating the entire portfolio overall.

PSA can be your mass market offering, as it stands today, that is the most used grading company by collectors. Its specialty within the portfolio is that it’s a mass audience brand.

SGC can specialize in one of two ways: 1) cost, and/or 2) vintage expertise. It could become a low-cost, discount option to PSA while also having a specialty offering in vintage based on its history (though because this clashes with PSA’s mass appeal, it’s likely the wrong thing to pursue). But primarily this would be a discount, lower-bar-to-entry offering that carries legacy and therefore does not lack credibility and isn’t perceived as “cheap.”

BGS can specialize as a higher end offering with sub-grade transparency, a black label Pristine 10 grade, and more robust and better-looking cases that offer a luxury presentation and preservation for cards. It might require a slight update to the BGS case, but that’s about it. As with any expanded portfolio, this is CU’s luxury offering.

Scenario 3: Evil Villain

In this scenario, CU has purchased both SGC and BGS solely to eliminate them as competition. CU has no desire to adopt any of their positive qualities and wants to keep things as is within PSA. There will be total integration of back-end operations to increase capacity and drive efficiencies with little-to-no changes to the customer experience outside of small, incremental updates. In this scenario, BGS and SGC are eventually folded as market-facing brands with the only benefit being operational.

Scenario 4: PSA 2.0

In this scenario, CU integrates its portfolio and takes the best parts of each brand to transform PSA into the industry’s true standard for card authentication, assessment and grading.

Today, we have multiple scales and grading systems with fiefdoms popping up for each discussing their relative pros and cons. Registries are fragmented and there is no single source of truth about who has the best collections. Trust and transparency are hindered by a lack of sub-grades for PSA which is the industry’s largest supplier of graded cards. Additionally, BGS’s black label sells for more than a PSA 10 and is regarded as the pinnacle of all grading systems. As the market leader, PSA simply cannot let a competitor offer a superior grade alongside prevailing issues around transparency and trust that are so easy to overcome.

These are all problems that get in the way of something that we should all want: A single standard that delivers the best all-around proposition that we can trust.

Based on this, and in this scenario, CU has purchased BGS to harmonize systems, take the best-of-breed elements of each company’s propositions and use them to build out PSA’s 2.0 offering. That offering might include: a new, single grading standard and scale that focuses first on language (e.g. Gem Mint) and then numbers (e.g. 9.5 vs. 10), updated cases that are all-around better at preserving and presenting cards, and sub-grades so that you know why you got the grade that you did.

Part 2 | Building the Best Proposition

I hope that we can all agree that the first 3 scenarios aren’t great. Nothing really changes and the incentives behind the decisions made to acquire companies are unclear or, worse, based on incompetence or malice.

The simple truth is that the industry is consolidating around a leading provider and that leading provider needs to get better. To do that, it needs to solve its prevailing issues while adopting and integrating the best of what its competition has to offer. Based on this acquisition, CU now has an opportunity to significantly improve PSA and make it work for everyone.

I want to return to the statement I made earlier that attempts to articulate what we should all want: A single standard that delivers the best all-around proposition that we can trust.

A single standard means consistency and coherency in the hobby/industry. It means harmonizing grading systems so that when one person says that a card is “gem mint” it’s immediately understood what that means. BGS’s system introduces all sorts of problems based on min gem, true gem, gem+ options that are possible within its system. PSA has issues because it provides grades without any clear way to measure why or how a card received it.

The best all-around proposition means taking features that are obviously superior from each brand and integrating them into a single market offering. To me, that would mean sub-grades first and foremost. Secondly might be improvements to the case to elevate overall presentation and preservation. These would be two things that, if I were leading CU, I’d look to borrow from BGS as inspiration for what PSA 2.0 could deliver.

Trust comes down to the above successfully coming together. I can trust that when I look at a card that is assessed as Gem Mint, or Mint, that it is that. And I can assess the degree to which that’s right and wrong by 1) consulting the scale and standard as it’s articulated and defined by the grading company, and 2) reviewing the sub-grades for the card to determine if the grade is fair. I can’t do that today because there is too much variance in competing standards and scales and because the leading provider does not offer transparency via sub-grades.

Part 3 | Getting There

Achieving a single standard means harmonizing grading scales and standards. To do that, we need to put aside numerical denominations for grades for a moment because the numbers don’t always match up and are creating unnecessary problems. This is particularly true at the level of Gem Mint and beyond.
We can instead turn to language, because that’s at least consistent. Each grading company uses identical language to describe a particular grade awarded. A harmonized scale should look like:

• Poor
• Fair
• Good
• Very Good
• Very Good – Excellent
• Excellent
• Excellent – Mint
• Near-Mint
• Near-Mint – Mint
• Mint
• Gem Mint
• Pristine

This is simple, and as the scale proceeds the words used to describe condition continuously elevates towards the ultimate, which is Pristine.

How do we get there? To do this, PSA 2.0 will need to get rid of 9.5 as a number. It should adopt Pristine as the highest level of its scale. It will then need to collapse BGS and SGC and offer conversion services over to the new system.

If this were to happen, we again need to use language as the guide to integrate and harmonize systems. A BGS Gem Mint would become a PSA 10 Gem Mint. A BGS Pristine (gold or black label) would become a PSA 10 Pristine. A BGS Mint would become a PSA 9 Mint. As for SGC, everything is simple except for SGC 9.5 cards. To this end, those cards would simply need to be reevaluated instead of directly converted. Or we can simply classify them as Mint. That’s a relatively small decision in the grand scheme of things, though.

This would require a lot of work, but every major change for the betterment of a company or industry does. Ultimately, PSA will need to do this to realize the benefits of its acquisitions and transfer those benefits on to the collector and the industry more broadly.

Part 4 | The Benefits

So, what are the benefits? I’ve outlined a few of them already, but I’ll do it more concretely and simply here.

1. A single standard. We will all share a single way of assessing the condition of a card. No alternative interpretations are necessary or helpful. Something either is or is not a particular grade.

2. A better grading scale. Today, BGS’s top end of its scale is superior to PSA’s. There was no way for PSA to address that without admitting that its competitor was superior to it. Because CU has now bought BGS, the story of integration and building out a new best-in-class offering is possible without any need for managing the PR around it.

3. Transparency and trust. With sub-grades, we’ll know why a grade was awarded and can better determine if it’s fair or not. We can’t do that today with any company other than BGS.

4. Unified registry. We’ll now have a unified registry so that set collectors can truly know which cards exist in what grade, in what collections and then compare these collections accurately.

These are obvious benefits if CU were to take its acquisitions and apply them towards building the best grading company. There are likely more benefits that I can’t account for.

There are also potential flaws to this. With so much consolidation, PSA could feel as though it has the right to mistreat customers because those customers can’t turn elsewhere (except for CGC which I’ll come to in a moment). There are two things that I’d say about this:

1. Nat simply needs to lead firmly with a vision for what PSA 2.0 needs to be and can never be. And part of that vision means delivering to a single standard that is the standard for collectors and collecting in card grading. To this end, integrity means everything and anything that does not have integrity should be rid of. This becomes a cornerstone of the organization’s culture and operations.


2. Having a clearly defined standard and scale alongside sub-grades makes it a lot harder for a company to mislead and mistreat customers. Unlike today, there is something that you can turn to, reference, and use as an objective piece of evidence to assess whether something is fair or unfair, right or wrong. It allows for better “bottoms up” resistance from customers, which is completely lacking right now.

In terms of there being no competition to turn to, there is the elephant in the room which is CGC. Collectors can turn to CGC if they want to, and it’s likely that collector behaviour to build fandom for an alternative grading company and argue its virtues over another company’s will remain in place. I think CGC’s position and capacity are enough to warrant PSA advancing its proposition through a 2.0 change. And I think that CGC’s position also warrant PSA delivering on that proposition in a way that creates a consistent, valuable and therefore valued experience for people.

I personally hope that all of this can happen because it’s sorely needed and this acquisition starts to make it possible. It will help to build something much better than exists today and should help the hobby and industry grow. It will require a lot of hard work to integrate everything, but that integration is at least in service of a set of benefits and outcomes that are rewards to collectors, past, present, and future.

[BoSoxFan1999]

What does everyone think CU's acquisition of Beckett does to BGS slab prices in the short term? Increase in demand/prices, decrease, or nothing happens?

[rohara99]

Originally Posted by rhineland

Scenario 3: Evil Villain

In this scenario, CU has purchased both SGC and BGS solely to eliminate them as competition. CU has no desire to adopt any of their positive qualities and wants to keep things as is within PSA. There will be total integration of back-end operations to increase capacity and drive efficiencies with little-to-no changes to the customer experience outside of small, incremental updates. In this scenario, BGS and SGC are eventually folded as market-facing brands with the only benefit being operational.

There is virtually 0% chance its anything other then this.

This purchase is all about the $$$$$$. No chance PSA changes anything internally (grading scale, slabs, etc).

[Bob Ross]

Originally Posted by rfgilles

So what you said makes no sense. Got it.

[majestik101]

Originally Posted by BoSoxFan1999

What does everyone think CU's acquisition of Beckett does to BGS slab prices in the short term? Increase in demand/prices, decrease, or nothing happens?

Increase in demand/prices, I think.

There’s a chance, however small, that CU could launch a program offering cross-grades from existing BGS slabs to PSA slabs. What good would it do for CU to alienate existing Beckett slab owners? CU might try to bring everyone together under the same IPO.

It may sound far-fetched to some, but it’s something I can imagine happening.

[discodanman45]

Conspiracy theory time!

Nat Turner has been buying a lot of cards recently with his feedback. Could he have been buying BGS slabs that would crossover to 10's if BGS changes their 9.5 scale? Was he buying cards that could get BGS black labels with a little Xmas bonus to a BGS grader?

Nat Turner is the biggest hypocrite in the industry. I thought it was Jimbo Beckett with his BF's PeeRyan, Shillstein, and Mastro, but I was wrong. BTW, no one in academia uses Dr. in front of their name unless they have an ego issue. I guess all of us poor collectors should bow down to the rich hobby elites!

I hope you read this Nat. YOU SUCK!

[SLGSports]

One problem with the proposal is that it's very "customer-centric" -- and I just don't see PSA doing a 180 and pivoting to that. Pleasing customers is simply not a priority at the moment and with every acquisition, there's even less reason to fight for our business. The only way I see these changes occurring is if CGC becomes a solid #2 option and PSA needs to fight to retain customers. Otherwise, they can optimize for revenue and profit.

[BoSoxFan1999]

Originally Posted by majestik101

Increase in demand/prices, I think.

There’s a chance, however small, that CU could launch a program offering cross-grades from existing BGS slabs to PSA slabs. What good would it do for CU to alienate existing Beckett slab owners? CU might try to bring everyone together under the same IPO.

It may sound far-fetched to some, but it’s something I can imagine happening.

Maybe something like offering an option to convert all existing BGS 9.5s to PSA 10s? Something like that? I feel like hunting down some BGS 9.5's might be a good move right now just in case. Lol