6 ms·

Largest card grading service halts submissions

35 points by maxwell 6y ago

jnwatson 6y ago
If this isn't a sign of a super-frothy market top, I don't know what is. There's too much capital chasing too few investment opportunities.
- fnord77 6y ago
  it's weird - collectible markets in everything are getting bubbly. some things even mass produced pocket knives that got discontinued a few years ago are going for exorbitant prices. it's like the internet/social media is creating some mass hysteria FOMO in everything.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dawnerd 6y ago
    People were flipping cotton candy grapes. It's insane.
    - kenjackson 6y ago
      Man, I’ve been trying to get these for a couple of years!
      - renewiltord 6y ago
        Is this a joke I'm not getting? They're available at Safeways.
        kenjackson 6y ago
        Not here in Seattle.
        dawnerd 6y ago
        No legit, unless you live near the farms, these things sell out first thing in the morning when the stores open. I was seeing them show up on FB marketplace later that day.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
    Well, with cards in particular there was a big fad that went through the largest streamers a couple months ago. They discovered that opening $40k Pokemon boxes hoping for holos was an easy way to get massive views. Then that morphed into edge lord / troll style content of destroying super rare cards. That second part leaves a dirty taste in my mouth as these are insanely wealthy 20 something kids essentially bragging about how they can flippantly destroy something other enthusiasts would be thrilled to even just see at a convention, let alone own.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    I wonder if anyone saved their Beanie Baby collection from the last crash.
    - dQw4w9WgXcQ 6y ago
      A good point, I should really dig those out with their clear tag protectors and everything. Are eBay sales on fire again?
- anm89 6y ago
  Markets are obviously insane right now but that doesn't mean that the people in the market are irrational. This bubble is going to pop with a devaluation of the dollar or a devaluation of everything else. But just because we are in a speculative mania does not mean that the price of assets is going to go down moving forward denominated in dollars. It is very possible the people shoving their money into baseball cards look like geniuses 5 years from now if the alternative was holding cash or having zero diversification.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    > This bubble is going to pop with a devaluation of the dollar or a devaluation of everything else. I'm not sure where you get the idea that the dollar is suddenly going to lose a ton of value. People have been calling for this since the beginning of time, just like the people who keep trying to short the S&P 500. It's not gonna happen, certainly not any time soon. If it did, however, assets would moon as literally anything other than cash is inflation-proof. Moon in units, but remain likely quite constant in value.
    - Workaccount2 6y ago
      You might find this interesting https://inflationchart.com/spx-in-m1 https://inflationchart.com/spx-in-m1 It basically shows the value of the S&P 500 as a function of total cash in the system.
    - anm89 6y ago
      If you look at a graph of either our money supply or spending it is pretty clear that we are in uncharted territory in terms of money supply expansion. They are basically hockey sticking. So don't make it out to be some kind of fringe hypothesis to expect inflation. It's the base case at this point. For the record I'm specifically not arguing we will have hyperinflation. I don't think we will. We don't even need to get within 1/10th of hyperinflation to inflate away our current stock market bubble or even the crypto bubble.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
- hristov 6y ago
  It may also be a sign of people stuck at home going through their stuff and trying to find things to do with their time. It may be a sign of baseball fans not being able to go to games (or being scared of it, if they are able) spending their game ticket money on other fun baseball related activities.
- Animats 6y ago
  Yes. So much money going into this crap, while actually making real stuff is in decline in the US. Someone mentioned "The Days of Perky Pat", by Phillip K. Dick, mostly known for "Blade Runner". I found and read that. It's relevant.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
adamfeldman 6y ago
There are business niches everywhere – I should stop being surprised when one becomes visible. > But the [sports/trading/collectible] card boom had made the current growth unsustainable. PSA was receiving 500,000 cards every five days, which was more than the company took in every three months before the COVID-19 pandemic started. The number of packages received per month rose from under 18,000 this past November to nearly 30,000 in February, and it eventually caused the system to buckle. In its statement, PSA said the company had grown from 421 employees in January 2020 to 783 this March, still not nearly enough for the surge that has happened over the past 12 months.
chmod600 6y ago
I've wondered about the asymmetry of information someone finding a bunch of cards in the garage. Maybe worth a lot, but would cost a lot just to find out. A collector could just bid on bulk cards, but how would they know it's not picked clean of the good ones? So is the value essentially zero?
- dawnerd 6y ago
  > A collector could just bid on bulk cards, but how would they know it's not picked clean of the good ones? Lots of trust. A good collector will glance through it and determine if it's something they want to take on. Those bulk sets are usually sold cheap enough that it's worth the risk. I've sold a few sets and made clear each time that I'd an eBay seller and glanced through them but didn't have time to really dig in. If you're just blinding buying lots online though you're gonna get screwed.
- DivisionSol 6y ago
  To describe a microcosm of this line of thinking, let’s take Pokémon cards. Packs containing a (foil/holo) card weigh more. A sealed box of packs is theoretically a gold mine. But how do you establish that the presealed box wasn’t raided and resealed? A whole system of trusty discoverers and buyers play hand in hand. Individual packs will always be looked at with doubt, since they’ve probably been weighed and sorted.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
someonehere 6y ago
I submitted two unopened packs of Garbage Pail Kids from a special set for Universal Monsters (by Super7) to PSA several months ago. I was starting to wonder what happened to them after I started doing GPK inventory in the last couple of weeks. This explains why.
neaden 6y ago
This whole collector mania is hurting one of my hobbies. Namely the Legacy format in Magic: The Gathering. So the idea for this format is that all the different sets of MTG cards are legal, though some specific cards are banned. Well back in the 90s Wizards made a promise to early collectors they would not reprint certain cards, creating what is now known as the Reserved List. Unfortunately for Legacy, pretty much every Legacy deck requires at least some of these Reserved List cards. For most of the formats history, this was expensive, but manageable. However now the value of many of these format staples has shot through the roof, putting it out of the financial reach of a huge selection of the player base when it was already considered to be expensive.
- blacktriangle 6y ago
  Have you looked into Pioneer? It's my new favorite formate by far. It avoids much of the degenerate combos that exist in legacy and even modern, yet has some crazy amount of depth. But most importantly, NO FETCHLANDS! You don't realize how much time and energy every deck constantly fetching takes up until you play without them.
  - neaden 6y ago
    Unfortunately I enjoy the degenerate combos and brainstorm shenanigans to much to let them go.
- coldpie 6y ago
  Since you're interested in playing, not collecting, is there a reason you can't just use proxies?
  - neaden 6y ago
    Stores can choose to allow proxies, but they are incentivized by Wizards to run a certain number of sanctioned events and report attendance, and events that allow proxies can't be sanctioned. People will play with proxies for testing purposes, but for Friday Night Magic you are expected to have legitimate cards.
runnr_az 6y ago
Not into the card world at all, but I recently watched a baseball card investor / dealer’s explanation on YouTube... pretty interesting: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLroSNu2WrMA9eUAXrbWIhyAQ7OpaDsfC5 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLroSNu2WrMA9eUAXrbWIhyAQ7...
analog31 6y ago
It occurs to me that the big thing here is not collecting or collectibles, but the ability to place a largely risk free side bet on an inventory that is otherwise just sitting idle in peoples attics. They've created no more cards, but have figured out how to regularize grading -- and hence pricing -- for a fee. They may also have a massive first mover advantage. Ironically they are making tokens fungible.
bruiseralmighty 6y ago
Prices have been steadily rising on MTG cards for several years. It was hard to find a loser in the past 2-4 years if all you did was buy boxes and sell them a year or two later. People are looking for anything that holds value to put their fiat in.
badhabit 6y ago
how hard is it to make fake cards that pass psa grading ?

35 points by maxwell 6y ago

If this isn't a sign of a super-frothy market top, I don't know what is. There's too much capital chasing too few investment opportunities.

fnord77 6y ago
it's weird - collectible markets in everything are getting bubbly. some things even mass produced pocket knives that got discontinued a few years ago are going for exorbitant prices. it's like the internet/social media is creating some mass hysteria FOMO in everything.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dawnerd 6y ago
  People were flipping cotton candy grapes. It's insane.
  - kenjackson 6y ago
    Man, I’ve been trying to get these for a couple of years!
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      Is this a joke I'm not getting? They're available at Safeways.
      - kenjackson 6y ago
        Not here in Seattle.
      - dawnerd 6y ago
        No legit, unless you live near the farms, these things sell out first thing in the morning when the stores open. I was seeing them show up on FB marketplace later that day.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
  Well, with cards in particular there was a big fad that went through the largest streamers a couple months ago. They discovered that opening $40k Pokemon boxes hoping for holos was an easy way to get massive views. Then that morphed into edge lord / troll style content of destroying super rare cards. That second part leaves a dirty taste in my mouth as these are insanely wealthy 20 something kids essentially bragging about how they can flippantly destroy something other enthusiasts would be thrilled to even just see at a convention, let alone own.
- pjc50 6y ago
  I wonder if anyone saved their Beanie Baby collection from the last crash.
  - dQw4w9WgXcQ 6y ago
    A good point, I should really dig those out with their clear tag protectors and everything. Are eBay sales on fire again?
anm89 6y ago
Markets are obviously insane right now but that doesn't mean that the people in the market are irrational. This bubble is going to pop with a devaluation of the dollar or a devaluation of everything else. But just because we are in a speculative mania does not mean that the price of assets is going to go down moving forward denominated in dollars. It is very possible the people shoving their money into baseball cards look like geniuses 5 years from now if the alternative was holding cash or having zero diversification.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  > This bubble is going to pop with a devaluation of the dollar or a devaluation of everything else. I'm not sure where you get the idea that the dollar is suddenly going to lose a ton of value. People have been calling for this since the beginning of time, just like the people who keep trying to short the S&P 500. It's not gonna happen, certainly not any time soon. If it did, however, assets would moon as literally anything other than cash is inflation-proof. Moon in units, but remain likely quite constant in value.
  - Workaccount2 6y ago
    You might find this interesting https://inflationchart.com/spx-in-m1 https://inflationchart.com/spx-in-m1 It basically shows the value of the S&P 500 as a function of total cash in the system.
  - anm89 6y ago
    If you look at a graph of either our money supply or spending it is pretty clear that we are in uncharted territory in terms of money supply expansion. They are basically hockey sticking. So don't make it out to be some kind of fringe hypothesis to expect inflation. It's the base case at this point. For the record I'm specifically not arguing we will have hyperinflation. I don't think we will. We don't even need to get within 1/10th of hyperinflation to inflate away our current stock market bubble or even the crypto bubble.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
hristov 6y ago
It may also be a sign of people stuck at home going through their stuff and trying to find things to do with their time. It may be a sign of baseball fans not being able to go to games (or being scared of it, if they are able) spending their game ticket money on other fun baseball related activities.
Animats 6y ago
Yes. So much money going into this crap, while actually making real stuff is in decline in the US. Someone mentioned "The Days of Perky Pat", by Phillip K. Dick, mostly known for "Blade Runner". I found and read that. It's relevant.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

adamfeldman 6y ago

There are business niches everywhere – I should stop being surprised when one becomes visible. > But the [sports/trading/collectible] card boom had made the current growth unsustainable. PSA was receiving 500,000 cards every five days, which was more than the company took in every three months before the COVID-19 pandemic started. The number of packages received per month rose from under 18,000 this past November to nearly 30,000 in February, and it eventually caused the system to buckle. In its statement, PSA said the company had grown from 421 employees in January 2020 to 783 this March, still not nearly enough for the surge that has happened over the past 12 months.

chmod600 6y ago

I've wondered about the asymmetry of information someone finding a bunch of cards in the garage. Maybe worth a lot, but would cost a lot just to find out. A collector could just bid on bulk cards, but how would they know it's not picked clean of the good ones? So is the value essentially zero?

dawnerd 6y ago
> A collector could just bid on bulk cards, but how would they know it's not picked clean of the good ones? Lots of trust. A good collector will glance through it and determine if it's something they want to take on. Those bulk sets are usually sold cheap enough that it's worth the risk. I've sold a few sets and made clear each time that I'd an eBay seller and glanced through them but didn't have time to really dig in. If you're just blinding buying lots online though you're gonna get screwed.
DivisionSol 6y ago
To describe a microcosm of this line of thinking, let’s take Pokémon cards. Packs containing a (foil/holo) card weigh more. A sealed box of packs is theoretically a gold mine. But how do you establish that the presealed box wasn’t raided and resealed? A whole system of trusty discoverers and buyers play hand in hand. Individual packs will always be looked at with doubt, since they’ve probably been weighed and sorted.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

someonehere 6y ago

I submitted two unopened packs of Garbage Pail Kids from a special set for Universal Monsters (by Super7) to PSA several months ago. I was starting to wonder what happened to them after I started doing GPK inventory in the last couple of weeks. This explains why.

neaden 6y ago

This whole collector mania is hurting one of my hobbies. Namely the Legacy format in Magic: The Gathering. So the idea for this format is that all the different sets of MTG cards are legal, though some specific cards are banned. Well back in the 90s Wizards made a promise to early collectors they would not reprint certain cards, creating what is now known as the Reserved List. Unfortunately for Legacy, pretty much every Legacy deck requires at least some of these Reserved List cards. For most of the formats history, this was expensive, but manageable. However now the value of many of these format staples has shot through the roof, putting it out of the financial reach of a huge selection of the player base when it was already considered to be expensive.

blacktriangle 6y ago
Have you looked into Pioneer? It's my new favorite formate by far. It avoids much of the degenerate combos that exist in legacy and even modern, yet has some crazy amount of depth. But most importantly, NO FETCHLANDS! You don't realize how much time and energy every deck constantly fetching takes up until you play without them.
- neaden 6y ago
  Unfortunately I enjoy the degenerate combos and brainstorm shenanigans to much to let them go.
coldpie 6y ago
Since you're interested in playing, not collecting, is there a reason you can't just use proxies?
- neaden 6y ago
  Stores can choose to allow proxies, but they are incentivized by Wizards to run a certain number of sanctioned events and report attendance, and events that allow proxies can't be sanctioned. People will play with proxies for testing purposes, but for Friday Night Magic you are expected to have legitimate cards.

runnr_az 6y ago

Not into the card world at all, but I recently watched a baseball card investor / dealer’s explanation on YouTube... pretty interesting: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLroSNu2WrMA9eUAXrbWIhyAQ7OpaDsfC5 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLroSNu2WrMA9eUAXrbWIhyAQ7...

analog31 6y ago

It occurs to me that the big thing here is not collecting or collectibles, but the ability to place a largely risk free side bet on an inventory that is otherwise just sitting idle in peoples attics. They've created no more cards, but have figured out how to regularize grading -- and hence pricing -- for a fee. They may also have a massive first mover advantage. Ironically they are making tokens fungible.

bruiseralmighty 6y ago

Prices have been steadily rising on MTG cards for several years. It was hard to find a loser in the past 2-4 years if all you did was buy boxes and sell them a year or two later. People are looking for anything that holds value to put their fiat in.

badhabit 6y ago

how hard is it to make fake cards that pass psa grading ?