Vendor ROBBED Outside of Card Show

About this episode

<p>Tpot and the gang talk about:</p><p>-Vendor robbed outside New Jersey card show</p><p>-Is the Shohei Superfractor sale a disappointment?</p><p>-What happens to LeBron’s collectibles legacy?</p><p>-PSA trims backlog by 2 million cards</p><p></p><p>Shop CardsHQ Inventory Online ►: https://bit.ly/cardshq</p><p>Track card prices &amp; your collection with Market Movers ►: https://bit.ly/marketmoversapp</p><p></p><p>Join CardsHQ Breaks on Whatnot ►: https://bit.ly/cardshqbreaks</p><p>Join CardsHQ Shop on Whatnot ►: https://bit.ly/cardshqshop</p><p>Join CardsHQ Blitz on Whatnot ►: https://bit.ly/cardshqblitz</p><p>Join CardsHQ Hoops on Whatnot ►: https://bit.ly/cardshqhoops</p><p>Join CardsHQ Poke on Whatnot ►: https://bit.ly/cardshqpoke</p><p>Discounted PSA/SGC Card Grading ►: https://bit.ly/gradingservice</p><p></p><p>Download our Apps!</p><p>SCI App (Apple) ►: https://apple.co/3riGbb5</p><p>SCI App (Google) ►: https://bit.ly/SCIAPPGooglePlay</p><p></p><p>Follow Us:</p><p>SCI Instagram ►: https://bit.ly/SCIIG</p><p>SCI Twitter ►: https://bit.ly/scitweets</p><p>SCI Facebook ►: https://bit.ly/FBSCIPage</p><p>Geoff’s IG ►: https://bit.ly/itsgeoffwilson</p><p>Geoff’s YouTube ►: https://bit.ly/ytgeoff</p><p>Card Crew YouTube ►: https://bit.ly/cardcrew</p><p>Market Movers YouTube ►: https://bit.ly/marketmoversyt</p>

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Transcript

Machine transcript — exact wording may vary.

Two card show dealers were robbed at gunpoint and had $150,000 worth of cards stolen. It's time we started taking security at card shows a little more seriously. We're going to talk about it today on Cards on the Table. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Cards on the Table. My name is Tyler Nethercott, better known as Tpot, here inside the Arena Club Studio in Cards HQ with arguably the greatest lineup in history. This is the lineup. You got me in this seat. Big upgrade. You got Scott in my seat. Comparable. And we got the legend Mr. Ben burrows back. He used to be on this show many times with us back when we originally kicked it off in our old studio, which I sometimes miss. But we're back here in the Arena Club Studio in Cards hq with our main topic here being one that's not so much fun, which is robbery. But before we get into that, I've got to mention Cards HQ breaks over on whatnot. Cards HQ breaks is the channel. Friday at 5:30pm is going to have an epic show opening tops. Dynasty Baseball. That's going to be with Ethan and Haley at 5:30pm Eastern Time on Friday. You're gonna want to tune in just to see what they get in general, even if you're not into the breaks. But hey, there's gonna be some really sick cards coming out of that. I know you like Dynasty. I know I like Dynasty. I'm assuming you like Dynasty.

I'm a man of taste and culture. Okay, I see. I knew. But speaking of Dynasty, not really. That's a terrible segue. We had some dealers outside the Woodbridge card show, and that's in New Jersey, and they got robbed. They got held at gunpoint. One of them punched and then held at gunpoint and had $150,000 in Pokemon cards in particular stolen and about $12,000 in cash. This is no joke. Again, they, I guess they approached them, pulled out the guns, hit them, said, give us everything you've got. Wham, bam. They apparently had their license plates, like, with fake license plates covered. This was not a, like a rash rush job. Somebody premeditated this. I don't know how they were targeted in particular. It's always tough to know that if there was something specific about them. But terrible situation overall. The showrunner announced on Instagram he's doing an investigation with the police, but he did note that he plans to hire additional private security for the show going forward and exhorted and encouraged his fellow show coordinators, show organizers, to do the same. This is not the first time we have heard stories like this. It's really unfortunate. I'm honestly surprised it's not happening more often. I hate it. We had somebody else that was like, beaten up pretty badly outside of a show. Other people have been held at gunpoint. A lot of different issues. It makes you wonder whether you're a dealer or even just a card show attendee trying to go back out to the parking garage or to your car, what kind of steps you can take. Scott, what do you make of this? What can we start doing to take security more seriously as shows? Because as we know, there are literally hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars in inventory and cash being carried around.

Honestly, every time I go to the National, I wonder how this is not a bigger issue. There's millions, tens of millions of dollars. I don't know if hundreds of millions, hundreds, hundreds of millions of dollars of cars just sitting in these cases, all these cases, if someone looks the wrong way, you can open it, grab a card and go. On top of that, when you're walking to your car, it's not like Chicago is like super, super safe. That area is pretty good. But when you're carrying your little pelican case, it's like screaming, steal me, Steal me. I have valuables inside. And so I think we need to be more careful and more discreet with this instead of flowing, flaunting that. And on top of that, I've always felt there should be more security. I can't speak for the national in particular. I don't want to harp on that too much, but it feels like the security is pretty good. There's security guards and things, but these smaller shows, it feels like there definitely could be more. It's never really something people have really had to worry about, but now that the cards, even average Ohtani rookie cards, are $1,000 and they used to be $10. Now that we have the situation, this is what's going to happen more often. So. So it's one of those things also, and I'm not saying these individuals did this, but pay attention to your surroundings. Like when you're getting out of your car with your expensive cards, look around, see if there's people. People don't have your best interest in mind, and there's some bad apples out there. And so just make sure you're being careful in that respect as well. But I do think we need to start hiding our cards better. Bring a backpack that's less suspicious than a giant pelican case with cards inside of it, put them in your Pockets. Things along those lines where it's not as easy to target, in my opinion, is the first step in that direction.

I mean, that seems a little idealistic to me. Just the sense of, like, you're at a card show. Like, people know this was a dealer. So, like, it's a little different than if you're there attending the card show. And I've had. They have backpacks and other things, but, like, if you're coming and going out of the show, people are going to know you probably have something. I think what you're alluding to that is important is just, like, how do you avoid putting a target on your back? And how do you avoid exposing yourself unnecessarily to that level of risk? I haven't driven to the national and parked in the parking at the national, but I believe you have in Chicago. There's cops outside the main entrance at the. At the Stevens Center. That's what it's called. Right. I don't know about the parking and, like, what that's like to get back there and loaded and everything is. Does that seem like. Like, are there cops all the way around it when you go to parking at the entrances? There are, but it's kind of a lonely walk from the back of the parking garage to the front.

That's what I was wondering. So there is a lot of dead space there, but I think it's relatively secure. I'm sure they have cameras and things, but I actually worry about that myself, because you're in there a solid 10 minutes walking in. Yeah. Well, Ben, what do you think should be expected of, like, smaller regional shows, local shows? Is it realistic for them to have to pay for security? What do you make of that? I think it's not just realistic, it's a requirement at this point. You know, we look at shows like the national that has plenty of security, I think, but it's going to be these local shows. And the reality now is that this is no longer a secret. Pretty much everybody knows, if my own mom knows at this point, that card shows have tons of money. These pieces of cardboard, whether it's sports cards, whether it's Pokemon, they can be very valuable. They can be moved for cash relatively quickly. They are ripe for fraud and theft. And if you're a showrunner at a small show and you say, I don't know that I can afford to bring in private security or local law enforcement to help, you know, during working hours or off hours, you shouldn't be running the show. This is. This is, I think, in my opinion, the barometer that we have to work with, and I think it especially has to get better during load in and load out. I think most places have security at the show, like in the actual show itself, but I think the most prone. The areas that are most prone to something like this are load in and load out and. And I won't put this show specifically on blast. I know Woodridge is getting beat up pretty hard here, but there's a relatively local show to us here in Atlanta that I go to on a semi regular basis. And I see virtually no security. And that's insane to me especially, I think I've seen maybe one or two security guards in the actual venue and then virtually nothing for load in, loadout outside the venue. If you can't provide that, you shouldn't be a showrunner. The show shouldn't exist. There's basic necessities that we have for these things now, and if you can't meet that, you shouldn't be running a show.

Yeah, I remember when the national was in Atlantic City a few years ago. I've never been more uncomfortable in my life without getting too graphic about the city. There were a lot of unsavory things happening on corners and all kinds of stuff. And just like the walk literally from the show back to the hotel, I'm watching all these people with their Zion cases, with their pelican cases, carrying them, wheeling them down the street, big suitcases. And like, I myself, I didn't have a ton. I probably had a few thousand dollars in a. In a case, and it was in my backpack. Like you said, I still felt vulnerable. And if I compare that to my experience last year in New York City at Fanatics Fest, which was a blast, aside from the fact that I got chased by a crazy guy on the corner and spit on. Like, I'm thinking about that whole experience, going, find my cards. And like, what is this? Like, it's. It's very tough. I think the controllable parts have to be what you described, Ben, which is the load in and load out experience. We have security, we have police, local police outside of this shop. Like, all day long. They're out here all day long. They patrol the complex. And then there's other, like, actual security that's paid. We take it very seriously. The whole complex does here. There's a lot of valuables, a lot of different things going on. And I think, to your point, Scott, like, dealers need to really protect themselves. They need to be vigilant. Everybody. It's a two Way street. You can't just be like, oh, there's. There's cops here. I'm good. You definitely shouldn't just trust your. You know that the situation's okay. It's sort of. Ben, at the end of the day, it's a long day. You're on your feet. You're doing a lot of negotiations and exchanges. You're probably feeling like, wow, how can. Where can I go Eat a slice and a beer, and next thing you know, somebody's there just going, give me everything. It's a terrible situation. Feel bad for the victims. I don't like to blame them, but it is. It is really difficult. You got to be really careful.

Yeah. And one thing I will note is make sure you have private insurance for your cards. Your cards aren't, like, worth losing your life over. Like, I know some of them are rare. They're 101s. But realistically, cards can be hard to sell if they're rare. They have serial numbering, all these things. Pokemon is its own thing where it's a lot easier to rip off, where sports cards is different. But have private insurance. So if you do get robbed of $100,000, you. It's not the end of the world, because you have that covered. And there are private dealers, not channels, not partners of the channel yet. I'd love to work with them, but, like, I use collectibles insurance services for my own collection, and I'd recommend it to everybody else. You have that peace of mind.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, hopefully we start to see it taken more seriously at the smaller shows and just be vigilant out there. On a lighter note, Arena Club in the Arena Club studio. We did it this week. We got the competition going. And so I'm up 2 to 1. I got my first point last year. You got your first point, and Jeff got a point. So that's four weeks in. We're counting. We're doing a tally every week. And with Jeff out this week, got a little treat and rewarding our studio producer, Rob with a slap pack. It's gonna count toward Jeff's total, but we'll reveal those. Let's. I guess we'll see what we start with here. Let's see if we'll let Rob decide who we're starting with. But let's see. Rob's. I guess I don't know which one this will be. I did. What'd you do?

I did baseball. You did baseball? All right, we'll see which one's first. Rob did Pokemon. Oh, this was mine. Okay. So I did soccer. Sick card. Diego Maradona, white knight. An insert that I highlighted in my market movers video earlier this week. That looks like a valuable card. I don't like that. Cool card. I don't. I don't think that's going to get me back. I don't know that's going to do it. But let's see what the value is on that one. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I've got a chance. You've got a chance. I love that. What is it? 290. 290. Yeah. That's not the. It's not gonna get me the value of the pack back.

Okay, let's see. Am I up next? All right, let's see. This is nice. There we go. Those three guys. Good to see an Otani Forever Link. Triple. Okay. Nice grade, too. What is it worth? All right, so Tanya's probably worth a billion dollars. There we go. Puts me in the lead for this week so far. All right, well, now I've got a root for you. I hope Rob got something good, but. Because if Rob wins, Jeff wins. You can't let Jeff win, not while he's here. Rob, show us what you got. Rob did Pokemon. Okay. A mew. Any mew is a good mew. Is it good enough to get him over the hump and get Jeff a point? It is not nice.

Still a great card. 2 to 2 to 1. Scott and I are building quite the rivalry here. We are good friends, but also Nemesis when it comes to contests at sci. And if you want to get your hands on Arena Club slab packs, we did hit some bangers. You know, it's always, you know, there's. You can get some of the stuff. Full transparency on the website of the odds of the exact cards that you can get and all the rates. And we had some big ones in the past few weeks. So you're going to go to arena club.com and use promo code SCI, and you will save 20% off your first slab pack at any price point, which can add up to a pretty nice discount on any of those. All right. Speaking of Ohtani, you just hit an Ohtani slab pack.

Oh, yeah. Big sale. Perhaps not as big as people may have suspected. To get your opinions on this, some people are calling it a disappointment, maybe a surprise. Tough to see a $2.6 million card sale be called a disappointment, but sometime. So this is his 2018 tops Chrome Super Fractor BGS 9.5 that sold for $2.6 million at Golden. This is the second most of all time for an Ohtani card at public auction and the most for any Ohtani rookie card. This is obviously one of his best cards ever created, but it didn't set the new record, which is where people are kind of saying it may have fallen a little bit flat. So, Scott, you're an Ohtani expert. I feel comfortable calling you that. You made the definitive guide to Shohei Ohtani rookie cards on your Scotty B Cards channel. I point people to it often. Is this card. Is this sale a disappointment? Did this. Did you have an idea of where this would land? I never know where this stuff's going to go. I'm going to be honest. But you're more dialed in with the high end. What do you make of this sale on Golden?

First thing? Thanks for gassing me up. I needed that today. You needed it. There we go here for you. But I'll tell you down a minute. I'm sure you will, but I will say this isn't a disappointment to me. Ohtani had his highest sale at $3 million. But when people were like, this is one of his best cards, I'm not even sure it's top 10. I have 10 cards. I have nine cards here that I think are superior. This reminds me of those videos on YouTube where I can name five players better than Matthew Stafford.

So we have the Topps Chrome Super Fracture autograph that probably go for more. The Topps Chrome Sapphire Super Fractor autograph, the Bowman Chrome Super Fractor rookie card, the Bowman Chrome hitting autograph, Super Fractor, the Bowman Pitching autograph, Super Fractor, the Bowman Chrome Image Variation Super Fractor autograph, the Topsy Dynasty Logo man autograph, the Bowman Chrome Red Rookie hitting autograph and the Bowman Chrome Blue Pitching Kanji autograph, where there's just one of them, are all superior cards to this card. So to have his. Not even his 10th card go for two point, was it $2.5 million, that's pretty solid. So it's one of those things where this is kind of like testing the upper limit. We have not seen any of these monster cards hit the market at all. At Ohtani's peak, we did see some big cards come out and we actually did see someone posted the Super Fractor hitting autograph. His very best card in existence, in my opinion. That was posted on a Facebook group and the guy was taking offers. He did not get very many high offers. Someone should have pounced at that opportunity because who knows if that'll ever come up again or at least for a while before it goes to public auction. And I genuinely think that Card's like a $30 million card. And so this might feel disappointing, but that Topps Chrome Rookie card has so much competition from that top 10 I mentioned. But there's also the Topps Chrome Rookie that we had auctioned. There's the Topps Chrome Sapphire Super Fractor. There's the Topps Chrome Update Super Fractor. There's a Topps Chrome Update Debut Super Fractor. There's the Silver Pack Super Fracture. There's two of those. So it's not like this card is the definitive card. Whenever you watch like the Golden Announcements, whatever it's going to be, they always hype their cards up because it's the marketing. That's what you do for cards. But I think it's a great sale for a great card. But I wouldn't say it's a top card of Otani.

And I should have mentioned the $3 million sale was his 2025 Topps Chrome Award winners Gold Logoman Auto, which was obviously the $3 million sale in Fanatics collection. So Ben Scott doesn't think this card's a good card. No, no, no. Great card. Great card. Roughly two. What do you think of this card? He just told us all the reasons why it's not really a one of one based on everything else. But yeah, what do you think? So with the context that it's a bad card, so I don't think the result is necessarily bad, but I will say I was a little surprised that it didn't top the $3 million sale. I agree with that and I think some of the conversation and I've tried to lead some of this is, it's interesting the dynamic at the ultra, ultra high end where some of these people, you know, some of the ultra high end collectors are putting a bigger premium on the game. Use patches that are specifically tied to exact moments. You know, there's a much more powerful provenance with those patches because $2.6 million is hard to look at and say it's a disappointment. But you know, you rattled off 100 cards that are better than this one. But none of them were the one that sold for $3 million. Yeah, right. So it is interesting to me. I don't, I don't think like the BGS holder impacted this at all. I don't think that really plays. I think some people might say that BGS isn't psa. It's not. But I think at the ultra high end it plays a little bit less of a factor.

It's One on one. Yeah. You know, I don't think it really played that big of a factor there. But it is interesting that I expected it to set a record and it didn't. It missed it by, you know, a not insignificant amount. And then you know it's not one of the 75 cards that you listed but where should it have fallen? Yeah, right. You know, it didn't, it didn't. I think there's another, there was another sale that was like 2.5 or 2.4. That is also another non rookie card. So it's just, it's not disappointing but it's an interesting dynamic. Right. That we're seeing at the ultra high end right now. And you know, for Ohtani there's, he has a ton of really great cards. I thought this one was going to perform just a little bit better than it did.

Well, what it needed to be was in a PSA slab with an NBA sticker and three independent eye appeal ratings and then it would have sold for a billion. That's kind of how that market's been going lately. But no, I appeal sticker. I don't want it. What's, what's really interesting to me about this season. Well, first, first of all let me say there is a shift. It's not a shift away from rookie cards, it's not a shift away from Bowman first but there's a shift toward, with money, big money toward those game dated game use game moment, you know, type cards. I made a chart, I've showed it in a lot of videos on Spitball and as well as on market movers channel called the tears of relics. T I E R S Tears of Relics and it's the relic quality and at the top now we have these award winners relics and the MLB debut patch autos which we haven't seen any legendary player rise yet. Like an Otani doesn't have one of those or it would be insane. Those are becoming much, much bigger even in spite of not being rookie cards. I know a lot of people are like fixated on Ohtani first year Dodgers cards. I'm not. Maybe that's a thing. It was a thing for a minute with LeBron, with the Lakers and then it stopped. I don't know that it becomes a thing long term but the award moments and those types of things, those are, I think those are definitely a thing. What's strange about Ohtani's market this year to me is he's having his best season ever. Combined pitching and hitting, he's come absolutely on fire over the last month with his bat cooled down a little bit on the pitching side, but it's his best year ever. Statistically. Incredible war. He's. He's, you know, toying with having one of the best total wars in NBA in MLB history, but because he's not like on pace to do some weird combined important stat like a 50 50, it's like people aren't. It's like they don't. There's actually people saying, well, he's having a down season. Like people have said. Not more than one person has said that to me. He's having a down season. And I'm like, it's weird how the media and lack of hype can surround a guy who's having his best season and how milestones and metrics and catchy things like 5050 can sort of take over. Yeah, he's only got six stolen bases, but he's got a 164 OPS plus and a.296 batting average and 18 home runs and his ERA is still like what, 2.3 or something like that. So this guy's unbelievable. Otherworldly. Yeah. There are a lot of cool cards of him and it'll be interesting to see what more cool ones come in the years to come and how those stack up.

I do want to say Tears of Relics is probably the coolest band name I've ever. I think it needs to be a band name. We've always wanted a jingle to start this show and I feel like that needs to be the Tears of Relics. One thing I was saying. What was that? Can you do that again? Yeah, one more time. I will. Many times, if you ask me. So I would not have been surprised if that card would have gone for 5 million. I think it ended in a good place. This is a good place for someone of these other nine cards I mentioned to say now's the time to let one of these go. But the fact that none of these have hit the market shows how bullish everybody is. We're not. People aren't offloading right now. People are still proactively buying and paying all time highs, which is exciting. It's exciting baseball's in this situation.

I'm worried more about the $50 million in market cap out there of his just Bowman chrome base rookie card than I am his high end market. But all right, that's a lot about Ohtani. So moving from one goat to one bum. What happens to LeBron's legacy? I had to, especially sitting in this seat. Y' all love the banter it's always gets the comments going. So LeBron announced ceremonially, ceremoniously that he is leaving the Lakers. I think this is as an aside, probably good for Luka Doncic's card market if he can actually really take over that team now and have it be his team squarely. He's expected to explore a return to Cleveland, which is kind of a no brainer, possibly a move to Golden State. Return to Cleveland will obviously end his career in theory where it started, although who knows when he's actually going to hang it up. And he's obviously been longtime friends with Steph, Team usa, you know, theatrics and everything. And this many people think will be his last season. What I suspect is if it is his last season, he will announce it. He will not retire without having done his full dude, his full, his full off boarding retirement tour where every game has to like stop in the middle of the game to make sure they all pay their respects. I'm sorry, I'll stop giving my heart. He's incredible. He's a legend. He was a rival to my Pistons for years. But Ben, you're dialed into basketball. I know you follow the market. What do you think? Where is he going to go? And then does where he goes and where he finishes career have any impact on his like legacy for his card market or is that not really an impact?

I think his market is probably pretty well established at this point. I don't, I don't really see where he plays for his final season really moving the needle a ton. Maybe there could be some negative sentiment if he goes to the warriors because people are going to complain about, you know, oh, it's like a fourth team or whatever. I think that, I personally think that's a little silly. I don't value that, you know, a ton of if he would have stayed on the Cavs maybe his entire career, maybe there's a premium there, but it might be a little discouraging to see him go to the warriors and add a fourth team. I think there's a very clear path, however, that if he does go back to Cleveland because of what we've seen Fnatics and Topps willing to do with these league collaborations. I think there could be some interesting patches and collaborations and autographs that come out of him going back to Cleveland for a final season. Maybe that's interesting. People are always, you know, we just talked about it with Ohtani. People are always trying to find patches and autographs that are connected to very specific moments that could potentially Be interesting.

That's what I think. You know, if he, you know, we're not going to see him with the Lakers anymore. I don't, I probably don't think he's going to go back to the Heat. There could be a cool send off tour in some way, but overall I don't think it moves his market a ton. It is what it is. You know, at this point it's kind of semantics to a certain extent. Unless something really cool or exceptional comes out of it. You know, his, his 2003 Exquisite Collection RPA's are, are the pinnacle for him for the most part. Unless top surf fanatics comes out with something crazy to, to celebrate that, I don't see the high, his high end market moving a ton. I think kind of is what it is.

You think Bronny's going with him? I think the Lakers, I think the Lakers picked up his option the day before, if I remember correctly. I think the Lakers picked up his option the day before LeBron announced he was leaving. So honestly, great dad. Well, two pronged. Got Bronny paid but also abandoned his kid. So I mean, it depends on how you want to look at it. I don't know. No, just kidding. Scott, what do you make of LeBron's legacy and where he might wind up? I was gonna say LeBron's a father first. I like that. But one of those things, while you were talking, I was thinking we have the rookie debut patches. What if we had LeBron announcers retirement tour. We had his retirement patch the very last game he ever played. And that's like the chase. That's gonna be worth a ton of money. This is from LeBron's last game. It wasn't it Kobe who had like 60 something points against the Jazz his last game? Imagine if there was a Kobe retirement patch. Like that situation could happen. Plus if he goes to Cleveland, they're pretty good. No offense to James Harden, but he's not very good and I'd love to see him gone and LeBron added and that team's not bad. So it's one of the situations where I think it'd be nice. I did not realize this. Maybe you didn't realize this either, but I looked at his basketball reference page. He has spent more times like in back to back seasons with the Lakers than he has with any team in his entire career.

Isn't that crazy? He's been there for seven years. His longest stint was with Cleveland for six years. He went back like four or five more years afterwards. But he Needs to go home. I mean, playing with Steph would be fun, but if he doesn't win and he plays with Steph, that's just a stain. Looks like. Like Jordan on the Wizards cards. Like, nobody wants him. But if he goes back to Cleveland, has that retirement patch, I think there's some value there. For what it's worth, he is better at basketball now than Jordan was.

Absolutely. Yeah. It feels absolutely. It feels like that bubble championship just happened. It's so weird. Like, what you just said is. It's true. I realized that recently, too. But yeah, it'll be interesting. I don't know if Cleveland wants him back. We'll see. I mean, maybe they do. Maybe that would be great. If he goes back to Cleveland. That is literally the equivalent of money. Printer goes for fanatics. Like, and there will be so many moments, especially if he announces it. This is my last season. I'm going back home. Does another one of his little narrations that we can then get Frank Caliendo doing in Morgan Freeman's voice. Epically. It would be epic. And there would be unlimited tops now card moments captured as he has his final regular season battle against KD or against whomever. It would be really crazy. What would be even crazier is if he goes and wins a championship in the final season with Cleveland. He's still playing at an elite level. That would be completely nuts. And at that point, even though I'm squarely like, no matter what happens, Team MJ as the goat, the conversation gets real, real crazy and interesting. If he were to somehow go pull that off, we know the league would love it. The league would love it. Now, he also said, this is about going and having fun. That's what his. His quote was. I want to go have fun. And then yesterday he was like, maybe messing with people, like tweeting out and howling with like a. Like a wolf whiskey bottle in his hand or something. I guess the brand he invested in her owns and people are like, oh, he's going to play with Lamelo and Ant man. I'm like, I don't see that. That seems.

That doesn't seem funny. Maybe if he was like, I'm going to try to go to Miami and play with Giannis. That still seems odd. I don't. They couldn't pay him enough. They don't need money. But yeah, we'll see what happens. Can I just say One thing about LeBron? I started collecting basketball cards when I was 8 years old. I went from Pokemon to Yu Gi. Oh. To basketball. And that was in 2003. And my very first blaster box was a Topps blaster. I pulled a Carmelo Anthony rookie card, not a LeBron. But LeBron has been a fixture of my collecting life as long as I can remember. So it's really impressive that he's still going and still playing so well. So I know there's a lot of LeBron hate. Maybe I'm going to get hate comments for this, but I hope he wins a championship. I've always enjoyed LeBron and he's incredibly. He's just good. He's really good. Even though he has some of the weirdest Twitter posts ever from the 2010s early 2010.

He also, according to Wild, predicted Kobe's final game. I know he never finished a book he never finished. He was going to drop 60. He lies a lot. Say one more thing, Ben. The one thing that I'll say is I think this is going to be a really interesting litmus test for the market because LeBron is sort of part of the inner, inner circle of the most collectible athletes ever. And he's going to be, I think, the first major guy, unless I'm forgetting somebody, the first guy to retire in the current market, not just for cards, but we've seen game war memorabilia explode just within like the last two years. And I think the relics that we're going to see from this final season are going to be really interesting. I can't even imagine if it ever were to go to auction at like Sotheby's. You know, his final game worn jersey I think could top like $10 million or more. You know, I think the market has really exploded, not just for cards, but game worn memorabilia, other types of relics. We saw like the, you know, the, the hand of OG basketball from game four, the NBA Finals, potentially, you know, get pulled to stay with the Knicks. We're in a completely different world for collectibles and we haven't seen somebody like LeBron retire during sort of this new era. And, and it's going to be really interesting to see what his market does during this period. Yep.

All right, that's enough about LeBron. Let's talk about PSA's backlog. They've shrunk it, shrank it, shrunk it down. The quote I had here was trimmed, I don't like to say trimmed around fair, around PSA. So we'll say shrinkage by 2 million cards and PSA. They made their first update to the backlog tracker. We know they're going to be Chipping away. So it's been trimmed down from 14 million to 12 million according to GEM rate. PSA has been grading more than 500,000 cards per week recently and we should have the full numbers available for June by Wednesday afternoon. Is that yesterday?

Yes. Okay. Yeah. So anyway, by the time this airs, we'll have the full numbers. Yes, got it. Okay. So yeah, previous updates at orders for value and value bulk were taking six to eight weeks. We also just lost the lights in the card shop, which is a bit ominous. Hey, we got our lights though. We got security and we've got our lights. So we're good. Let's see. Are we seeing anything from other graders in your opinions that are gonna capture market share? Like what's going on here, Scott? Actually, I'll start with you, Ben. You're kind of plugged in on this topic.

Yeah. So I think basically shrinking the backlog, I won't say trim. Shrinking the backlog by 2 million cards over the course of a few weeks I think is crazy. I don't think people understand the, the velocity that PSA is carving through this right now. Now, to answer your question, I really haven't seen a lot from anybody else. You know, CGC sort of stealth updated turnaround times and pricing. Beckett and Colin Hudson over there are doing a really good job, but it's really hard to scale. I think they're going to hop hire something like 90 new people in 2026 to help scale over there. SGC is kind of in limbo to a certain extent. And then TAG really isn't grading cards. I know they've sort of been the dark horse for a lot of people. They're struggling to scale. They're really not grading a ton of cards. And I think nobody in my opinion has stepped up to challenge PSA yet. And frankly, I don't know how realistic it is just from an infrastructure standpoint, the volume that PSA does, the way that I have heard it is that PSA was struggling to find places to put the submissions to physically store them, not just open them. It's taken six to eight weeks to open value boxes. They've had trouble actually storing them places. So I think the volume and the scale are just in completely different realms really. And I really haven't seen anybody step up, you know, especially cgc I think is the one that would probably have to do it as like a non collector's own brand, but I really haven't seen it. Yeah, yeah. I think competition is, is really, really good. But I haven't seen it.

This would be like if ebay had some kind of service outage of some kind and people just expected Mercari to take them over. Like, sure, Mercari needs to step up their game. And like, it's not going to happen. Like, once you're. Once you've cemented your spot there, as long as you keep making improvements, it's just very, very tough. No matter what your attitude is toward psa. Yeah, they dominate right now and then they own the other two of the other ones. So, Scott, what do you make of the backlog shrinkage? Good.

That's why they closed. I'm glad they're doing it. Yeah, that's kind of all my thoughts. That's all your thoughts. Good job, good progress. Get it done. Love to see it. Ben will be monitoring the tracker as always. Follow him on Instagram for live tweets and updates and things of that nature. And appreciate you stopping by watching this video with us. If you love this panel and want to see more of it, let us know and show us some love down in the comments below. Be nice to Jeff, please. He's my boss and he's great to me. And keep rooting for one of Scott and I to win the Arena Club Challenge. Other than that, until next time, happy investing. Keep on collecting and make sure to have fun.

Sa.