Professional Sports Authenticator, LLC

And that really has driven the international market expansion for trading cards.

So they kind of just go on and talk about PSA grading and all these other things.

I

want to go back to the original statement and bring up the fact that what was just said here in no way backs the claim that Pokemon cards would have value after an apocalypse.

I don't know.

Whatever GameStop does.

PSA grading.

Something.

All right.

According to PSA, which is the company that grades baseball cards, which of these players has the most valuable rookie card? Is it Fernando Valenzuela, Oral Hershiser, or Ron Say?

It has to be Fernando.

He won MVP and Rookie of the Year.

I think you add in the fact that that was peak COVID pricing.

And this was in an era where, well, before PSA shut down during COVID, which was in large part due to Luis Robert and all people sending their like base tops, chromes, Luis Robert rookies to PSA, base cards like and unnumbered parallels, refractors, pink refractors, X fractors, things like that were doing huge numbers, way more than they do in the recent years.

And Luis Robert was like, I think about him on the rookie side, and I think about Jason Dominguez on the prospect side.

But those two guys, you saw so many cards graded to those guys.

2019.

2019 Bowman Chrome X, it was a StockX partnership with Topps.

And they actually, and PSA was involved because instead of just like the regular encased cards that you'd see in 2022 Bowman Chrome X, they were actually PSA graded cards.

It was kind of like a repack.

We're in the same boat.

We are thrilled to have our old pal, uh, Kevin Keating, uh, PSA DNA, but Kevin is more than just a guy that works at PSA.

I got it right out of the gate.

I'm going to say that Kevin, uh, uh, First of all, Kev, I haven't seen you in quite a while.

Things are great.

I mean, things have never been better.

You know, I'm actually going to come up on my 10-year anniversary on October 1st working in this capacity for PSA.

It's been quite a ride, I got to tell you.

different than it was five years ago, but I've gotta talk, I, I don't talk about grading on my channel.

I don't, you know, bitch and moan about PSA or SGC or Beckett or whoever it is.

But I will say in, in sitting back and watching the grading landscape change so much so fast, it's...

To me, I've got a stack of cards over here that I wanna send in to grade, and I'm either cost prohibited from doing that, 'cause they're not typically high dollar cards that would warrant spending 50, $80 per card to grade, but I still like graded cards, uh, for some key cards, or just cards I wanna have graded, period.

And so that's kind of how I handle the higher end cards.

The middle of the road cards, it's a little bit more of a challenge.

Um, for example, PSA just opened up a $60 service, and although, uh, at, I guess, the first glance you're like, "Oh, I save $20 a card over their $80 per card service," you then read the fine print and you look to see how long they're gonna have your cards for.

Now, if you're a collector and you don't mind them having it for potentially four or five months, give or take, and you can afford the $60 per card, great.

Steve Grad came on the show.

He was our featured guest on Saturday from, you know, originally from PSA DNA.

He kind of led the launch of PSA DNA back in the day at PSA.

He then moved over to Beckett Authentication Services and was kind of the guy who started that division over at Beckett several years ago after he left PSA.

He's been on Pawn Stars over 200 times.

as the lead autograph authenticator for the Pawn Stars show on the History Channel.

Like that'd be a very smart move.

transition in my opinion so I think that's a great point um I just think that these authenticate these autograph authenticators have a lot of power and uh they have a lot of power to make a card go from five thousand dollars to five hundred thousand dollars