PSA Acquires Beckett. What This Means For Card Grading And Values

I met a guy that he comes to our card, so he and his wife, they're from Michigan. They went all in on Patrick Mahomes and they turned basically 30 grand of their savings into like $2 million. It changed their life. Now they just work when they want to work. GSA actually came out and said that they're keeping back at its own entity. That sounds great, but it doesn't mean they're not going to use their graders and their infrastructure to support the demand and business PSA already has, versus necessarily keeping their best on the Beckett brand. Welcome to the Trading Cards and Collectibles Podcast on the Radcast Network. From Chasing Grails to Colin Bluffs, I'm going inside the hobby. Are you ready to collect? Let's get at it. Here is your host, Ryan Alford. What's up guys? Welcome to the new collector. Nation here on and part of the Radcast Network. We are a media company by and from and for Luttex. We are here with Brian Lutten. You might know Luttex. Where does this come in? Brian, what's up brother? What's up buddy? I'm ready to talk. I mean, it was a great week for sports. You know, I really enjoyed all the wins this week. You know, all my guys won, played well. You know, Josh Allen goes into our New England, not so fast, my friend. Yeah, I told everybody I wanted to listen. Yeah, just call me Monday after that game. And that was, oh, it was an awesome game. Yeah. That's it. And I watched that. You're actually at Collector Station. Exciting game. And your Jaguars, I mean, two, Trevor had a career or a day. Yeah. Through for five, ran for one. Are you kidding? 300 yards, five throwing touchdowns, 50 yards rushing and a touchdown on the ground, six TDs. First in a fill history, which is awesome. And then the Bears game was cold as could be, but you pulled out the win. Pull it out. Battery night, we got the Packers. Actually, this might be the first time where I have some kind of confidence that we could beat them with Parsons going down. They lost a couple of interior linemen, but they are the Packers. And the Packers are like that year older brother, who like one day you think you're going to be able to beat him up, but it's not now. And so, but I do think we're growing up. And I think it's, this could be a really good rivalry. And the rivalry is funny, because they're like, oh, the longest rivalry on sports. I'm like, if a team beats you 50 out of 60 times, that's not a rivalry. No, it's not. So we're like clumps in a South Carolina, you know, we beat, you know, there's a state name and we're just the dominant program. And so they get a one, you know, a couple every 10 years. But they had a 10 good at the Tigers. I was like, the Bears Packers. Yeah, I know. But I think the Bears ready for him this year. And something doesn't hurt unfortunately for the Packers, but some of their guys going down, it'll be a good game. Unfortunate, but unfortunate, but it's part of the game. And we'll gladly accept it and hopefully Caleb Williams plays well. But speaking of that, let's talk about our top five. We're going to reverse order here. I'm playing LudEx Tech guy and Brian gets to try to guess, but I've already given some hints here. So it shouldn't be too hard, but we've got player movers both up and down. We've got the top three movers. I'm going to let you start Brian with a guess. Who you think the number one mover is? I mean, I would do Trevor. He's got to be in there. Close. He's number two. He's two. Number two. Close. Scan increased 63% more scans this week than before. He was unranked as a trending player and now moved to 184. His downtown PSA 10 card. That's a Panini downtown. That's by Don Russ. It was $995 last week. It moved up to 1285. Nice solid 30 something percent increase week of the next guy. It's hard when the people's cards are already so are high. And do we see an uptick in those cards? I'm going to say Josh Allen. Bingo. Number one. Josh Allen. I mean, that's what I'm saying. Good week. Josh Allen. One. Maybe I should know that already. Who did I pick as my co-host? And I've attached to the winners, baby. LudEx and Ludden. So yeah. Josh Allen number one. Trevor Lawrence number two. Josh Allen. PSA 10 on just his base optic card went from 500 to 540. He's already high. He was under 20. Number 56 printing player number 56 moved up to number seven. That's a big jump. And 23% scan increase week over week. So yeah. And then number three. It is a quarterback. I'll give you that hand. And continues to win. I'll just I'll give you those two hints. Stafford. No. Be a good guess. He should be on here. He was on here last week. No. Younger. Division. AFC. Ricky last year. That's a good way. Oh. Oh, Nix. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You were overthinking instead of under thing. That was a man. Yeah. My favorite player last week. Hey, man. BoNix PSA 10 silver went from 410 to 550. Solid one week jump. Scan increase is 21%. He went from number 48 training player to number six. Wow. And look, did you just win it? I mean, winning. You know, like it's curious all. And I'm sorry. Him and Caleb Williams are kind of like the same player. It's so funny. Her cowherr talking about this on his show. Colin Cowherr was talking about like they're pretty they put up their stats. They're pretty damn similar. Yeah. And they're but the one thing that's the same is they're both winning this year. Yeah, they're not like they're not young quarterbacks. They're losing games for their team. They're managing a game. I think the coaches are smart of how they're using those two quarterbacks. But yeah, they're very simple. But both of them are winning in fourth quarter though. But like for three quarters, they're game managers. But they don't wilton go away. They turn it on in the fourth quarter. Both of them look better in the fourth than they do the rest of the game. That is true. Yeah. I agree. That's a good signal. So he's up number three on collectibles.show is where you'll find all of the channels and learn more about what we're doing. And ultimately, hey, we want to hear from you. You do case hits at collectibles.show. What you to send in your favorite pulls of the week. And here's the difference. This isn't about just value. Hey, we want to see some $10,000 hits had a couple of those myself a few months back. But it's not just about the values about what you're collecting. What means something to you? Share a story. Share a video of you holding up the card that you hit last week. That was your favorite player. And you nailed it. So case hits at collectibles.show. Send in those videos. I want to know the stories. We're going to bring it to life here on the show. We're going to do a segment each week. Once we get rolling and get some videos in, where we share that on the show with us. We'll feature you on collectibles show. And there's the followers. We'll go quickly for these. You can throw some guesses, but you probably know. Yeah. And there's your number one. And then, yeah, I don't, I mean, you can go a lot of different ways. Joe burrow number two. He dropped. And the three Patrick my homes. No, that was bad injury. Bad injury. I mean, it's weird that the dudes already all a favor. It's interesting that he would drop. Like, okay, his silver prism. PSA 10 went from 5,100 to 4,300. I need to go buy some of those. Like, are you kidding? Like, I understand. Like the second, your quarterbacks, the volatility of their card values, but my homes is a freaking Hall of Famer. That's kind of what I was saying earlier. If the cards are so high, like, what else does he have to do? Yeah. You know, but I don't know. It's weird how it really permeates. I just think if you're, you know, back to like some education here, and I'm just going to speak off the cuff here from a business standpoint. That seems like a good, like, my homes is secured as a Hall of Famer. He's won multiple Super Bulls already. Whether or not he becomes Tom Brady ever, who cares? He's an all-timer. That seems like a good investment. Yeah. You know, like, he's not like, I could understand an argument of whether or not Bo Nick Streg May or Caleb Williams are definitive, you know, they're speculative. Hey, and I got a ton of them. But to go spend, you know, three grand on Caleb or so, okay, I got it. That's, you're risking it. That's a speculative. There's no speculation on homes. He's, you know, there's really no speculation on Josh Allen. He hasn't won the Super Bowl yet. But he's kind of cemented his place as an all-timer in his own right. He needs to win a Super Bowl to really juice it. But I don't think you're going to lose money on Josh Allen cards long term. And you definitely aren't with my homes. So, you know, if you're collecting and you're, you know, banking on some stuff, throw some, throw some homes in there. I met a guy at, I met a guy at the, he comes there a card show. He and his wife, they're from Michigan. Great people. But he was a teacher. She was a teacher. They went all in, I'm Patrick Mahomes. And they turned basically 30 grand of their savings into like two million dollars. They had the RPAs, they had every single thing. And so, they're just, it's fun to... I love that story. With them. And, yeah, it changed their life. You know, now they just, you know, work when they want to work. Yeah. The guy that will cash all is probably invested back in other things, you know, pay them over time. And, dude, that's the story I like to hear. That's... Smart investing in the hobby can... That can be done. You know? But... We're proving. Like, those stats, we're proving that these are like similar to any commodity the trades. I mean, it's the stock. It's similar to crypto is down. But anyways, it moves in kind of predictable ways. And if it moves in predictable ways, you can then wait and be patient to buy something like you said, like in my homes. And be patient. If that thing for 4,300 gets down to 39 and buying it. I would watch that. I would watch my homes. Because he's not going to be playing because he's got out. So, he's probably going to drop a little bit more. I would give it a few more weeks, not playing, not in the headlines. Let that baby get in the threes. I, baby, buy, buy, buy. Could be, could be a national. Could buy it the national. Yeah. Like make like, I'm going to botch this. But hopefully our listeners don't know any better. Make like in sync. And buy, buy, buy. I don't know if that was in sync. It's probably like the backstreet poise or something. But it was a bunch of people. Yeah. I reserve the right to delete that forever if I want to. Just for the record. That's correct. I had it right. I don't know if that's good or bad. That's good. That's awesome. Uh, yes. But, uh, I would be hurt. I'd give it a few more weeks because he's going to go down because people are weird. You know, oh, my home's just hurt. I'm going to sell all of his cards. Okay. I'll buy him. Call me. Declate your nation.com. You can find our, uh, our soul to us button. Don't sound a Brian though. Don't be first. Um, what'd you think? Uh, I mean, who's your, who's one in Superbowl in predictions? A gun to your head right now. Like who's, who's, who's taken it off? I've never seen a year where there's so many 10 win teams and 10 win loss and teams with 10 losses. Yeah. It's polarizing that like, and then you have some, a couple of divisions, obviously like NFC South, which like someone's going to get the playoffs. Um, but there's so many 10 win teams that I think this playoffs, these playoffs are going to be awesome. Cause I don't see a dominant team out there that even your button, the bills, right? Like, the fence got holes. It's, I need it. This is the year they should do it. And you know what? And if they're, I'm not saying fire the coach. I don't hate him, but I don't, uh, this is, you need to win it this year, buddy. You're a defensive coordinator at heart. You need, this is your year. My homes is out of your way. Uh, Baltimore's down. Baltimore's down. Yeah, Baltimore's down. Burrows hurt. Burrows hurt. This is your year. McDermott. Now you have two young teams. No, you have two young teams that like, who knows how dangerous they could be, but they could be very dangerous. Maybe. This, and those, now it's like, shit, you got to worry about the frickin' Patriots again. Exactly. And say, I don't know. Bronco's defense is salty. I'm going to say bears. Bills. Bears and bills in the Super Bowl will be awesome. We got, are we going to go? Are we going if it's those two? I'm going. Yeah. Yep. No, are we going? Yes, we're going. Yeah. We're up for, we, this content, this would be content, heaven, after Super Bowl. We got to get press passes. We got to get a radio row. Exactly. Uh, if the, I mean, and all that alliteration too, bears, you know, like, are you kidding? Well, yeah, that would be, uh, that would be fun. Bears, bills, oh my, I would love it. Um, Highsman came and went for Nanda Mendoza, that was kind of predicted with Indiana, but great story. I mean, Yeah, what, what do you think of him at the next level? I'm going to go against the grain here. I, I think he is a solid prospect. I don't think he's a camp miss though. I'm not, and I haven't watched enough of his film. I think he's incredible for this year. But I think we're still dealing with a little bit of a NFL QB drought. And I think he is the best of the least. And I do think he's a pro, I mean, he could be, he's got the makeup of an all pro. But I, my jury's still out on him. I, I need to see him in the playoffs. I mean, ask me this question in a couple of weeks. He's going to play, he's going to have to play like the three best teams. You know, he's the road, the road for them is difficult. If, and I need to, I'm going to watch them very intently, because I haven't got to study him as much. But when I watch him, I'm kind of like, yeah, I see it, but we'll see. Yeah, I get to see him a lot in big 10 country. Um, you, what do you think? Camp miss. Prospect. I mean, camp miss is probably too strong, but the guy wins. Right. And the guy, you put him up there with a Caleb and a Jaden Daniels. Level. No, I'd go a terrible low. Yeah. But he feels like a, he feels like a, a better bonus. And other than not, they're different players. I'm not, I just mean, it's probably like, I'm not using him as a comp as much as, like, I think he's a tier above bonus, but he's not Caleb. He's not the prospect that I thought and still kind of feel about Jaden and Caleb. Um, and now I put Drake in that. I, I, I put him between like, May and Nix. Yeah. And Nix is winning a lot of games. So he, you know, like, I don't know. But something, I need to see some. We'll see. Yeah. That's me in three weeks. Yeah. I mean, you know, Ohio speech defense is insane. Right. Yeah. Um, you know, he had a tough first half, but the second half, I mean, yeah. Yeah. And he's tough. And he's a leader. And he's humble. And he's smart. You know, at the Kelly School of Business. Like, he's, that's all of those intangibles. He is great. Yeah. I just want to see a little bit more on the field again. It's a quarterback class. I mean, it really is. Yeah. Um, we'll see. I, um, I saw a post, you know, back to like, you know, uh, values of cards and stuff. It was like 1989. And it was a Mickey Mantle rookie. And I was talking about it. It was worth seven grand. And it was like a PSA seven or eight or something. It was like eight grand seven. I mean, something in like five million now or something. I don't know. Like, what year? It like, it was a rookie card. It was a rookie card. It was like a PSA seven. And this was like 1989. It was like eight or nine grand. I know that was a long time ago. But I'm just saying, and now it's in the millions. Yeah. Yeah. And only going higher. Yeah. Exactly. He's got, he's, Mickey Mantle has a really weird place in this hobby. Because like, if you look at the numbers between maze and mantle, they're almost identical. Yeah. And make, actually, he's probably better. But I mean, he's a rookie card goes for one one hundred of what mantle does. It's just, it's the collectibility of, of mantle. But gosh, there's some of the other players that that he wasn't, I mean, he was a good player, but he wasn't like, yeah, he wasn't the goat. Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Harmon Kilberg right there. I don't know if you can see that. Well, the girl here. But, uh, yeah, Willie Mays, my dude, that's, I'm going to start collecting vintage. That's who I want to collect. Willie Mantle. That's pretty much all I collect now. I mean, I'm getting a, you know, I had bonkers cards. Gordy bonkers was our guest on Tuesday. He released next week. He's got me jazzed about vintage. I'm ready to give vintage. I mean, I love vintage. Like, no one's blowing out their ACL. No one's getting arrested. No one's beating their wife. Like, yeah. Mickey Mantle, they're not going to do anything. They're good. They're good. They're good. It's like, like a bond, right? They just kind of go up 5% every year. Um, but I'm a big vintage guy. Yeah. I'm done with some vintage posters around here. I created a cool Mickey Mantle poster. I designed. I'm just like reimagining shit. But, but I don't, it's a classic stuff that you read. Imagine what else I got over here. Awesome stuff. Who's this? Who's this? Ernie Banks. Oh, you know, that is to come. Oh, yeah. That's awesome. That's your cub right there, baby. You know, this week, Brian, uh, PSA remain on their buying spree. Uh, buying back it. Uh, and, uh, they, it's so funny. The news headlines always use the, you know, the collector brand. You know, uh, you know, the, collects or what it, what is their, uh, what is their, what is their, their parent company? Yes. Collectors. Collectors. And, uh, they never say PSA buys back it. Even though that's, that's what happened. You know, it's, and we joke, look, I like that. I don't care. Like, I have no, like, pony in this show. You know, like, I don't care. I just want whatever is good for the market in the game. But it's just funny. Like, if this was any other industry, the, I don't know if you'd be allowed. It's called monopolies. Right. You have one, you got like one standings is whatever, CCG or whatever. And that's it. So, they, and that one, CCGs, owned by Blackstone. Yeah. So, there's, they're bigger than, well, Steve Cohen, I don't know whose fund is bigger. Yeah. But they're both, yeah, they're both okay. And it would be, of good head to head. And they don't need to sell to someone. No. Yeah. So, we'll, we'll see. I don't, like, honestly, like, it's probably, they're probably going to do it, like, SGC and have a standalone and, and just improve, um, production, um, I mean, back, it's a mess, dude. It's a mess. I saw it, and I said this to you, um, I know everybody's all up in a lot about it. And, I'm a little more level-headed, like, again, I don't, I like those, let things play out. And I, I'm a business standpoint. Look, PSA has a lot of demand right now. And, they're scaling. And they need graders, and they need infrastructure. And, Beckett's got it. Plus, they got some brand assets that I think could be pretty cool to play with, if they did it right. I don't, I don't have a lot of faith. In Hollywood brands, to do that right. Uh, just, to be honest, because they don't call me. But, um, but, uh, uh, it's a shameless plug. But in all seriousness, that's a joke. But the, the truth is, what I do see from just being a business guy is just, this feels like an infrastructure skill play, as much as anything. Yeah. I actually came out and said that they're keeping, Beckett, its own entity. So, yeah. I'm sure they are. I mean, yeah. So, they did SGC too. So, and that sounds great. But, it doesn't mean they're not going to use their graders and their infrastructure and, to support the, the demand and business PSA already has, versus, necessarily, keeping their best on the Beckett brand. I got a question for you. Do Beckett's labs increase and close the gap with PSA because they're on by collectors? Well, SGC didn't. And, but a Beckett's, you know, higher tier traditionally, you know, in that Beckett Black, with the 10, I mean, that's always going to, I think that's, you can always have a lure to it and a brand cachet. And so, is it Black Label? I might be, might be entering that, and that's what it is, Beckett Black Label. And, so I think, I would lean into that, if I was PSA as some kind of premium tier, maybe. But, I don't think, in the short term, older, graded Beckett cards, you know, nines are now worth, you know, what PSA nines are. I, what I'm excited, I just hope to keep the Beckett magazine because that's how I cop on my cards. Oh. I'm glad you went there. But, you know what, the stout of that growing up, I would do something with that, like, with the general, you know, and I had a guy on, wax poetic, the guy that, the collectors, he, they do, and sell an auction off, really unique music collectibles. Like, they just auction off Mariah Carey's demo tape, like, cassette tape, 54 grand, 54. And, we were having this, they do really great with editorializing auction content. So, it feels like a story, but then it's an auction. And, if I'm, you know, put my brand on hat, it's just a free here, Nat. The next one's not. This one's free. Find a way to editor, you know, like editor, you know, that publication, could you bring that back in some nostalgic way that makes sense financially? You know, I'm not saying printed every week, I'm not saying printed every month, I know that's expensive, but like, something, to use that brand and, but not the values. Yeah. And, you know, it's funny, it's like, a lot of, a lot of its members, I would say majority, are either boomerings back, coming back in, like, our generation, or they're new. The people who come back in, will ask the same questions. Is pop still around? Is back it? Yep. Is flare? Yeah. And, where do you buy cards? Yep. And so, so the Beckett, it has brand, value and cash, A. So they need to find a way. SGC, it, it had developed brand, I know it, it had it with older cards, like, I get that, but it wasn't, it's not Beckett brand. Like, Beckett has a, has a, has a brand play here if they were, if they use it, and they might, I mean, they're smart guys, they're not smart, they'll figure it out. But I think, I would use that play, but I think the grading, yeah, I just think they're going to have a bigger PSA, you know, like, there will be one, but there's like, there's a movie or a video game something that can only be one. I think it's a sci-fi movie. In the end, hopefully it just gets, helps with turnaround times. You know, that's what we care about. I don't know who it was. Probably a friend, I want to say it, who it was, but I think, you like, it's going to make it cheaper or something. I get cheaper. You don't buy another company, even if the, the price ain't going down. No, I mean, it's the exact opposite. Well, you buy a company for seven X, EBITDA, and then you get rid of, you know, at least two X expenses, and then you raise prices now you have a 12 X. Yeah, Brian's a CEO of Tech Company, and he's a big time business guy, so listen, with that guy said, like, just saying, yeah, I mean, come on, man, they didn't go in there. But, I mean, congratulations to PSA. I mean, I'm just, you know, you couldn't pull that shit off on any other industry, but I love it, man. And that's got some balls. I mean, that's just called what it is. And, I mean, and money, and congratulations on both. I like, you know, there's part of me for the industry that's like, yeah, man, I know that's, that's not good. I mean, the audacity of it all, I fucking love it. Like, I don't know. So I respect both ends of it. And, I'm here to watch it. I got my popcorn ready. Hey, man, I think that's all we got for this week's episode, any final thoughts? It just, you know, we talk about everything all the time. And, we really hit on a lot of things today. And I'm, I'm excited to see this, New Year come in and see what you guys are going on over there and what you're building and what we're building. And, um, a lot of hope, a lot of excitement. Yeah, man. Couldn't be more excited or proud to partner with you and all of it. And, hey, it just so you know you're listening. I mean, you know, Brian and I do this because we love it. But, I wouldn't rather do it with anyone else. And what you hear is what you get. And you know what kind of company is being built by the man that you get to hear every week in this show. He is exactly what you see in here. And I couldn't be prouder to enter into 2026 with you and him. Go to the App Store. L-U-D-E-X. Download that app. It's getting better every day. Manage your collection, scan your cards and the fastest slickest integration with the eBay. Plus, lots of exciting things come and just come along. Hey, come for the scan, stay for the commerce. Plus, collectibles.show. Soon to be the collector nation.com. A L-U-D-X media company brought to you by from always Brian Ludden and the great team at L-U-D-X. We appreciate you for listening. Love you, Brian. We'll see you next week on collector nation. Thanks for tuning into the show. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast platform and don't miss our new version on YouTube. You can find us at www.collectibles.show or follow Brian on Instagram at RyanAlford. Now get out there and collect yours. Hey!