Ep.204 w/ Nat Turner of Collectors(PSA)

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What is up? Welcome to episode two coordination. Hope you are enjoying the baseball postseason World Series, seeing some guys sort of make a Season name for themselves, Bryce Harper, Reese, Haskins cow Tucker, some of the pictures as well and you know, unfortunate my Mets aren't there but it is what it is, maybe maybe next year, right? Gonna going to make another run forward to, and it's nice to have a guy who owns the Mets who like, the will ponds willing to take out the checkbook and try to get it done. And that's that's a different Elin and thankful for that. Thankful for my guest on today's show he's a collector like most of us who are probably listening to this podcast, or at least I hope so, or, and or thinking about getting a beat, and he's also the CEO of collectors, PSA universe, and that's none. Other than Nat, Turner, nice, you know, going to answer, you know, I have some questions, comments, concerns, And nothing was off the table and I'll just a great conversation and was really nice having them on and getting to know them and kind of seeing what he's about. And like I said, we're going to talk about his collection. We're going to talk about obviously PSA. How they caught up, where the rat, what might be coming in? The future is going to be a new label. You might be seeing very, very soon. He's going to talk about Out, you know, Fanatics and where we're at, what he kind of hopes, you know, comes down the turnpike. So was a great conversation and I think you love you, appreciate them more in here, they know I can, you know, speak for myself and say that for sure. So, without further Ado, let's get this show underway. 

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He's a collector. Most of us that are probably listening to the show, and he's also the CEO of collectors and real happy to have them on the show. Mr. Nat Turner welcome. Thanks. That was an intense video. I know that like I always say two, then it's all downhill but what I kid I guess the first question, you know, I have a sort of, you know, you're one of the gentlemen and charge it psap kind of your thoughts pre-acquisition. You are collector. I like you didn't, you're not a new collector, so sort of your thoughts on the company before, you know, the acquisition. What did you, you know, think of them? What did you did you have PSA cards to sort of pre pre acquisition? You know what your feelings were? Yeah, I was a big collector of vintage baseball cards before that position and vintage baseball. I mean post-war like, like, 48 through like 75 and PSA is 

Sleep. You know I would think obviously the preferred Grading Company for that type of collector and collects that kind of stuff. And so I had you know good number of TSA slabs and and thought I think thought very highly of them in that genre the huge collector 90s basketball you know for years I actually still probably have more bgs cards like Jordan and Kobe and like those guys from the 90s than I do PSA. That's changed a lot as I've bought more cards and And and tried to cross things over often unsuccessfully. But you know, I probably have more PSA cards. Now, for the 90s, we've really invested a lot post acquisition in kind of experts at the company who are kind of like, you know, the world's foremost expert on things like, you know, serial number stamping. Correct versus fake. And that kind of thing, which is pretty recent, in the last like year, but 

You know, we've made a lot of Headway with it, so, yeah, that's I'm not a personal expert on, you know, identifying those fakes, but like I said, we've hired a lot of folks, but so pre-acquisition. Yeah, it was a big collector of PSA slabs, you know, I wanted them to be faster turnaround times and have more technology like set registry and imaging of the cards that you get graded, and that kind of stuff. But yeah. So lets, you know, let's go in the DeLorean and go back. Back to February 21, you know, the group led by you a choirs Pasa big hobby news as you well know, you know, my my inbox kind of blew up and, you know, in the general consensus, your order General thought, you know, was Nats, one of us, he's a collector, he's going to, you know, he's going to make everything sort of pro collector and I was, I was on this show, you know, full, you know, full transparency. I said listen. 

Is a clique I've seen, you know, on post stuff but he's also, you know, this is also a business and a business, a business move. So we got to keep that in mind. I thought people were just sort of like, put me on like a white horse and you're going to ride in and save the Hobby, and I wasn't saying that you don't care about the hobby. I just was trying to remind people. There are a lot of different gears in motion here. It's tough doesn't even happen overnight. If you You heard some people, you thought like you know it was whatever it was the next day all problems would be solved and so I just kind of said you know take a step back and you know let's see what happens kinda you know I'm sure you heard all that stuff yourself. Kind of your your thoughts in those moments when you know this acquisition sort of first took place. Yeah, I mean, look, I told a lot of you like I didn't buy it, I couldn't 

Or the company all myself. So we have investors shareholders, we have a number of employees now who are shareholders. You know it is a business that them they just like every other company in card land. So that that part I would like to think is pretty obvious, you know, in other words, like sometimes we have to make decisions that, you know, we'd like to invest, you know, for example, we'd like to hire 100 more customer support reps. But, you know, at some point, you know, we can't afford it and actually, that's example. If one area where we just said screw it, we're gonna hire as many as we can, but You know what I mean? Like we, you know, at the end of the day, we have a business to run that said it is a, it is my number one passion as a as a person outside of, you know, family a guess. And you know, I purposely you know, personally look at decisions in that way, you know, at the company meaning. So number one value be obsessed with the collector which means you know we make long-term decisions we're not a public company more so we don't have to worry about quarterly earnings. We have to worry about 10 years from now or five years from now what our earnings look like. But You know, we can make decisions that there are the right thing for the collector on a longer term basis, which means we can invest more. And that's why we went private actually. I appreciate everyone's like, you know, belief and sentiment. I told a lot of folks to, you know, it's going to take time. Nothing happens overnight. This is a 35 year old 36 year old now company. That is who it is. For a reason, is what it is for a reason it's never changed, you know, rapidly it evolved with the hobby, it took its time. 

Was very patient with its standards stuck to its grounds on certain things. And that's, you know, not something, we're going to rip apart, right. We're going to we're going to apply our own little, you know, take on it higher certain people, build more technology but that stuff takes a lot of time. So I like to think we've done a lot of good things in the last 18 months, we can talk about that but yeah, that's how I do it. Yeah and and you know, we all know that the backlog that was and over now No. Yeah, and I was part of it, you know, I had an order in for 18 months and now I submitted another order in at the national and and we got I got that back in less than 60 days. So yeah just a vast difference from where you were to German form talk about how that happened you know for people who are behind closed doors and you know they just truthfully they just wanted cards. 

Back is fast as they can, but there's people who probably should get credit for that. You know, how did that change occur? Talk about some of the, the wheels in motion there? Yeah. And the, honestly, our team, you know, it's easy to, it's easy to cast, blame on us, and we deserved a lot of it right? Like, 18 months, waiting for your cards. It's not acceptable in any way, shape, or form, right? But go one level deeper, you know, there's a lot of very hardworking people at the company who we don't like, you know, trust me like Those angry emails and phone calls and direct messages is not fun. And you know, we were not willing to compromise our standards to speed up and just great things faster or looser just to get them out the door, that that would have been the wrong thing to do. So our team really stepped up and over the last 18 months. When we bought the company in February of last year, we were grading, roughly twenty two, twenty three thousand cars a day, just to give you some numbers and we were receiving at the time, you know, 52. 

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Yeah, that was pretty normal, actually, for during covid, those first few months, it was no big deal, but unfortunately, it started to accelerate and it actually just got out of control, and it was our fault for not raising prices sooner. Shutting down sooner those cars, just kept piling up and we created, you know, this backlog. But what happens since that February is we've actually tripled close to Triple that grading capacity. And what a lot of you don't, realize is not just the grading capacity. You have to have the capacity of people to open boxes to receive the cards count them. Sticker them, image them, seal them, assemble them, ship them, back to the customers. There's all these steps research, then there's all these steps that go into it. Grading is, we'll probably, you know, the hardest to quickly scale like it's the hardest to scale in general because you have to train and not, everyone can be a greater as far as skill set. So, you know, that was where the bottleneck really was, and we again, we fix that but we also have to fix all those other areas. So it took a while, you know, we've we've definitely were on the other side of it, we actually celebrate. At that moment, a couple weeks ago, internally with a with email and everyone's getting some swag soon, you know, commemorating it. We never want that to happen. Again, first and foremost, for our customers sake, but like I said, it was a very frustrating period of time for the company because we couldn't accept a lot of new submissions. And we were failing our customers for that period of time. So I'm to hear from one of our great sponsors, but sports card Nation will be right back after that. Okay, everybody have you heard about collectible it's the one stop shop, where any collector can buy entry at affordable shears, in some of the most rare and valuable sports cards and memorabilia in the world. Starting from just five dollars from 1952 Mickey Mantle, PSA, tens and Wilt Chamberlain's iconic rookie uniform to one of one, Patrick homes, rpas rare LeBron, James Global bands and everything in between Collectibles, creating never-before-seen access Canada. Please note, this is not a recommendation or solicitation to buy any security. All investment decisions should be undertaken after doing your own research. Let's go. You are listening to the sports card Nation Podcast. But yeah, we're on the other side of it right now, we're averaging less than 90 days for every service level for PSA, including the bulk special that we launched in July, which is now for TCG and as of yesterday for, for modern cards. So yeah, other side of it and I'm glad you, you know, you talked about that because I think, you know, I know just been in the subway just a long long time. So you just did you learn as you go but I think, you know, if you know the 

They always here. We'll just how your more craters, right? That's, that's the simple man's like hire more craters and and, you know, I always say like like I think he's you touched on it. Like I think that's the hardest position to hire for so I'm not that they're all key in their old roles but I think if we're ranking as far as the toughest to train and get ready to do the job on your own as you know, a solo with by yourself. I would you know you can correct me if I'm wrong. I would say great. Being the greatest, probably at the top. But at that list, it's yeah, I mean, it's one of the hardest jobs in our company for shirts. It's a coveted job to. We have a lot of both internal and external candidates who, you know, that's kind of their career goal is to get in that room. Certainly, you know, takes a certain personality and skill set card knowledge as well. You know, just to be the at the frankly, the minimum level to qualify just to be trained and go. 

University program we have internally. We have all these tasks you can take to, you know, see if you can qualify into that program. And you know, it's a big deal. And, you know, we have a full-time team literally. All they do is, you know, identify candidates and train, those candidates, just for grading, all sorts of content, you know, around it. So yeah, I mean, it's the hardest thing to scale, but for good reason, you know, that's frankly, the secret sauce or the intellectual property of the company to some degree. Not the only thing, but it's probably one of the biggest things. 

Will trust us to have the right opinion. And right answer on, you know, is this card real? What card is it and what grade is it in? And you know that's a not everyone can answer that question or answer it as accurately as we can as frequently. So you know that's why we put a lot of resources behind it and potentially for those maybe someone out there is listening and Sunday, I'd love to be a greater whip, PSA. I mean, how long protection can process take for someone to go. Go from, you know, ground level to death. Day when they can trying to say they they are one potentially. Yeah, I mean a lot of our greater started in a different job at the company and as I mentioned, kind of Applied internally for took the test and then enter the training program, you know, it's a multi mud process. Honestly, it's, you have a mentor in the grading room, a senior greater your grades. Don't count for a while, where your grading cards and someone else is training them as well. And we're comparing how what you thought versus what they thought. Thought it's kind of like a co-pilot, like when you're training, it's a flying airplane. You can fly the plane alone for a while, right? It's the same concept, you know, we track everything. So, you know, multiple graders, look at every card. So you know, we do fail percentages or grade change percentages by greater, you know, which is important. You know, if someone's grades are being overruled, 20% of the time, 10% the time. Like, that's unacceptable, you know, we dig into that. So it's a multi-month process for sure. 

Depends on the person. Honestly, if you're a you know, very used to handling cards and understanding defects and you know, very precise at measuring centering, all that kind of stuff. It can be faster and also depends on what you're great. And we have specific teams, great Pokemon grating ultra-modern grading vintage, creating 90s cards, like we have experts in those regions and those categories that focus and some of those are harder to grade than others as well. I should mention. So yeah, no doubt, I think it's sometimes. As a fact that flaw, some people like if you sub your card, I want someone who knows what they're looking at. Looking at the look at it right now, is not someone that says, they, what is this? Joe come here. Tell me what. You know. There's there's there's an art to it and I do it. Sometimes, people forget that. I'm glad you mentioned that, you know, we've seen some upstarts, try to get into the space, you know, a I sort of 

Mobile. Try to hang their hat on, you know, I'm not necessarily against AI net but I'm sort of old school, right? I think sometimes we try to face people out with robots and computers and, and that sort of thing. I, you know, sort of, it depends on the day one day. I'm like, you know, if it works I'm open to another days. I'm like, I really want that human element. Just now as the CEO of a company that It creates kind of your thoughts on a, i potentially, you know, in the future is a good, is it bad? Is it? Yeah, I don't think it's bad. I think I just I don't believe that you can do card grading completely automated. I think if you say that you're either, it's either sales material or you haven't, you know, done the full, you know, like been in the room to see how all these different cards. All the things that could happen, you know, it's the same thing as 

In healthcare. Like, you think you can automate, you know, reading unstructured data, like medical charts and structuring that data exists, not possible. That I mean, I spent 10 years doing that and it's, you know, but the combination is where it's powerful. And so I believe AI is super valuable to card grading. But in places and with a human guiding it, you know we talk about tech enabled, human grading a lot here and that's what we're doing. So you know, we're doing things like forgetting grading for a second, you know. Automatically identifying cards based on prior images, we take images of every Rock card front and back fifty thousand times a day. You know, that's a database that we've accumulated for, you know, about a year-and-a-half now that, you know, once we see a card, once we shouldn't have to ever identify it again, right when we see that same card, a second, third, fourth, fifth time, however, there are many, many edge cases. Two cards is is, you know, variations and parallels, and all sorts of stuff that you'll never replace humans there and there. And that's not our intention and that's in research because 

Have to be accurate and, hey, I won't get you 100% the way they're grading. It won't even get you closer on a percent because two-dimensional images can only go so far. There's a reason graders tilt cards and all different directions under certain lighting to detect creases. People think were very harsh on grading. The truth is were very Discerning on Surface defects, which is usually what people Miss 90s, especially late 80s, you know, hairline pieces scratches on cards. Those are defects. The you know, that really Heard carts grade and taking a two-dimensional image by the way. In the original case, the person sends it in Which you're not going to take a card out of the case, just to take a picture of your damage. We risk damaging the card. There's no way you can detect those surface images using AI, I just don't believe it and so that's where you know, we'll always have humans. Look at my opinion, look at to serve to Cipher you know, surface defects. Can you measure centering of a the core of a card with borders using computers of course? And you know, we're going to do that as well. We already are in places, can you use computers to automatically identify counterfeits. 

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We? Have a known Exemplar image of a fake Mickey Mantle rookie card shirt, right? The a lot of counterfeits you've never seen before and it really takes a human to say, Hey, you know, this looks a little offered smells different or the papers different for the Sheen's different like that kind of stuff. You know, you always you don't want to rely on computers entirely. So in our case it's going to be Tech enabled. Human grading. Yeah and I like I like the human element. I don't ever really want to like sort of like not have that. I like you said it's just I don't know, it just maybe I'm old school to a fight you know. Hey I could what yeah I think I think you touched on it but the combination of the two can just make the whole process just better overall but I think to phase one out or say one we're not doing one at all over the other. I don't necessarily agree with that. I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm glad to hear you say like we're going. 

Use it Forward. We're not going to like not use that human aspect either to step aside for a real quick break but we'll be right back with more. Wouldn't that Turner introducing the only Auction House dedicated exclusively to the cards of the 1990s? Josh Adams and John Linden of created an auction company? So only for the rare scarce and hard to find in certain parallels of the 1990s, Weatherby basketball, baseball, football, or hockey. 90s options will have the drops, and will consist of smaller, Lots between 100 and 120 watts. So you cards won't get lost in the shuffle. Founded on the principles of fairness, honesty, and integrity 90s option was created by collectors for collection, registering consigned today at 90s oxygen.com. That's 90 little s auctions.com. 

Voice Carnation is back with collectors. Nat Turner, we've seen a lot of people are cheering, right? We're seeing sort of the grading the prices of come down from from prior levels, which it, which is great. Talk about, you know, you know, we know about where the backlog was. Are you, are you? Is there any trepidation, that, that could happen again as prices again? Or no. Well, it's always a risk. You know, we're managing it were terrified of that happy and again so we're right now as you probably notice that we're doing these monthly specials to kind of gauge where things are and and there's an end you know we got absolutely slammed. We in July with that special We got slammed this past month with our TCG special as well. Thankfully it ended yesterday so we're not, you know, there's no chance of that backlog. Continuing to accumulate. We're experimenting with price were experimenting with specials, just to figure out, you know, what, that sweet spot is where the incoming cards is roughly similar to our capacity. You know, that's that's the closely managing it. Basically this time around to make sure we don't get over our skis will either raise price or shut service levels down before we let the backlog happen again. All right, I'm sure there's a lot of people clapping in their cars or wherever there are listening to this. 

All right, one, I've said it on my show. I'm going to, you know, having you on. I got to talk. It's now the thing is, it's only happened to me. Once I know it's happened to other people all the time. I'm not full disclosure. I'm not a big fan of up charging. You know, I want hand. You know? It's saying, hey, you got a great card here. That's now, you know, valued probably higher than initially thought but you know, my take is always been like it's still, you know, it's still one car, maybe It is worth more, it's a and great shape. And but why, you know, I understand it's going to cost more insurance-wise now, to ship it back. I get, I get that aspect about it, but, you know, that this is probably my biggest bone to pick with PSAs is just and I'm sure a few others feel the same way. Just want to hear your, you know, your take would up charges. Yeah, I actually got mad at PSA about this myself about eight years ago. 

You don't like being on the other side, I have come to appreciate. The reasoning. You know, the two big reasons. One is, we guarantee every card in definitely in the future that future market value is actually a huge risk for us. You know, we pay out well over a million dollars a year. Every year buying back, carts happens every week things that we said were real and turns out. They aren't things we over graded. So our fee that we charge you know you're not paying an annual fee. Te pasa to have your card graded, right? We have a one-time chance to basically ensure collect a premium if If you will on that future guarantee. So, that's the biggest reason. And I've seen it trust me. Like, I'm the one writing the checks like, it sucks. You know, we bought back multiple cards this year over 100,000 dollars eat that. By the way, when I looked back, you know, we look back at what we charge to grade them, you know, ten bucks, 12 bucks, you know, people under declared the cards and we unfortunately didn't catch it at the time and paid the price later. So that's reason one reason to is the handling, you know, we take these 

It's out of cases to grade them. Unfortunately damage sometimes does happen it's rare but you know we need the proper fees applied so that we can handle these more valuable cards takes longer to grade them more risk. That's, you know, the second reason I totally get, you know, people don't like being charged more, but at the end of the day, it's it's pretty reasonable. All right, fair enough. I made that went, whoop. Whoop. I agree to disagree. I guess, you know, I just don't like not anymore but I want Hand. It's nice too because it's telling you that your cards more valuable than even, and then you might have thought. So, I get it. But, you know, it's a question. I had to ask, that's fun. Yeah, we're seeing, you know, one of the things that PSA could always had, hang their head. I was, you know, is the PSA registry to be able to look and get that population report. Its Elite you lead that in the space, you know, I 

Kudos to you, you weren't there, but I went to the Hall of Fame party at the national dress. Very well done. I spoke about that on my show because very well organized. Yeah, you got a gentleman, I know real Wells as part of your company now Bailey and and Chris Carlin who you know, I think one of the you know, the good guys that we have in the Hobby and that's going to be probably already is obviously an asset to collectors and he came to our table. When he sat down and got his notepad out to hey guys, you know what can we do? Better and I don't need a couple days with the one thing you know. Is there that registry right for the set registry? I'd like the. So I told this to Chris and I said, you know, cause I love to see like almost a separate price for like four especially with some of the sizes of these sets, right? They could be said you know because it's 700 cards now you know you can 

Policies in place of someone doesn't take advantage of a system. So in other words, if someone wanted to grade a whole 1958 top set, I'm just throwing stuff off the top my head and they have the whole set and they just want to get them all graded. You know, whenever it at that price point is where, where you guys can still be profitable, but to be kind of consumer friendly to that person, that owns that set six, seven bucks, a card, whatever. And they, you know, In a case like that and he liked the idea. I know he wrote it down, I joke with him. That if he gave it goes in place, he has called the new mineral with just, that's it. That's my humor. And I've known him long enough, you know, anything along those lines. Now, you know, I also know you don't want someone and I wouldn't want that to happen. Try someone kind of say to doing something. You that we have charged you on those just kidding. Well, in a situation where you know like hey this is this is heavy towards the set. You know, you're getting you know, Del Ennis along with Mickey Mantle. You know this isn't someone necessarily just sending in all the Superstar any any, you know, maybe not tomorrow. But any thought to maybe? Yeah, they can nap where it's a little more cost feasible for that person. Yeah. We We actually this is what honor less. I'm glad you brought it up. We have this on the like probably near the top of the list for things, we like to set registry. We have an issue right now. So technical one where the online submission center. It's not the only submission sister doesn't talk to set registry, it's our problem, not your problem. But where, you know, if you if you load up the online submission center, it's unaware of what sets you have and which cards you're missing. So, in a perfect world, you pull up the OS online submission Center and it would say hey John, you've got, you know, 25 sets, You're Building, you're missing these thousand cards, any of those thousand cards that list, It is right there and it's a cheaper price. That's where we want to get. We just have to have the in the software engineering team, connect those two systems of ours, so we could actually offer discounted rates to set registry members. That's the reason. So, I mean, we're it's something we'd love to do, getting back to our values. I mean, being obsessed with collectors cetera. Set registry members, truly are the lifeblood of PSA, you know, that's top of the list of people, we think about customers, we think about, and want to build. 

Features for so yeah glad you brought it up. Yeah and they really came from attending that event that was my first time. Yeah. Attending that event. And you do you did a great job of, you know, recognizing those folks that are ranked on on, you know, great meal. You allow enough time for everyone to eat and just a slide presentation. Yeah, we just well-organized like start to finish. It didn't feel like rush like Like some of the other events that I attended at the national, it was just well done. And I just thought made the registry is that you are recognizing these folks that are on it, that are participating at. And I just think they would be probably so many more people that could get onto that registry. But even myself is, you know, I have some smaller 6080 card sets let's say like some of the Oddball stuff that I would love to send in as like a hope that that's the other thing. 

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Really sort of trying to take advantage of the system. Getting, that's existed some time to talk to each other. So that when, when you're creating a submission at nose and limits, your, your discount to the cards that are set, registry eligible, that's the vision, for sure. Yeah, well, I'm glad to say, you know, hear you say that it's it's on that on the list, not only on the list but you mentioned even on, on the top list, time for a quick break, let's will be It's Flag for nearly 50 years, sports. Collectors digest has been the voice of the hobby. Bringing you comprehensive coverage of the sports, collectible industry from industry news auction results, market analysis, and in-depth, stories, about collectors, and their collections. Sports collectors digest, has everything you need to know about the hobby. SCD is also your leading source for listings of sports collectible dealers, card shops part. It shows and the latest of the industry's top companies to check out all the latest news or to subscribe to the Hobbies. Oldest magazine, visit sports collectors digest.com or call one eight hundred eight to nine 5561 schools. Card nation has returns. Coming into this role was, was there one thing at the top of your mind? Like I said that, you know, 11, obviously it's you have more than one thing that you want to do, but was there one? That was really at the top of list, when you first came in, was it as simple as? Hey, let's try to get caught up or was it something else? Grow the grading team as much as possible growth overall, you know, as I mentioned, all those steps, you know, get capacity to 50,000 plus cards day, which at the time and Today seems like the right number for us, you know, knock on wood, that was number one, you know. So I as a collector, I had simple things like, you know, a good example is like I want the date a cards granted in the cert. Lookups, like when you type in assert, you can see when the card was graded, psa's never done that. We still haven't done. It's harder to do than I thought it would be. There's a lot of that. We don't go back data, goes back, 30 years. A lot of it's missing like we don't generally when I was great, but we couldn't say like on May 25th, you know, For example, so yeah, I would say those things. What's another good example? Well, new holders. So you know we've worked on have any right near me but like we, you know, we've worked on new pack holders which are awesome. We've got a, we've got some Innovation. I don't want to be too specific, but we were actually innovating on are all the acronyms will mean anything. But internally we have a holder here, you know, like our standard holder 

When I got there, you know, this with this card, you know, back in the day like there's a lot of movement and, you know, it just seemed didn't seem as secure as some other other companies but I preferred PSA. I just wish the case is better more secure especially for since condition since the 90s cards. So we've got, we've got a pretty big. We've been working on it for like a year and a half new holder. It's not going to look to the outward. I it's not going to look that different and there will be some differences, but It's a lot of upgrades as far as card Protection security, reducing potential damage, during the sealing process, which unfortunately can happen harder to tamper with in counterfeit externally and higher quality UV protection, all sorts of stuff. So that's coming in December. I'd say when I got there, I was like, hey, I'm I would love to see you a new holder. Be like top of the list. So yeah, I think in like that month, we're going to have some stuff out in the wild on that polka. Cool. I got to ask you the obvious 

You were collector before your role at PSA. How has your collecting habits, or what you collect, or how you do it changed since you've gotten there or has it? Yeah. I mean, it's good question. I mean, I still obsessed over 90s basketball. I'm doing probably more sets than I ever was before like I'm doing all these random. Like this is a good example. Like 2008 top scrum gold, refractors and basketball. Like you can buy comments for like $5, right? Like 

90s, that's not, you know, most common cities where 90 sets are hundreds of dollars. So, I'm doing these kind of like, you know, more modern sets like 2002. Finest gold refractors again, Commons or one, two, three dollars, you know, I love that. I don't. The values never really mattered to me and I found myself doing more sass lately. You know, I probably have like 100 plus sets active right now. Maybe maybe more according to set registers 160. But I've kind of stopped caring probably about 60 of them because they're either too hard to accomplish or whatever I've got. More into wax. The io always been into wax, an unopened box collecting, but I've gotten a lie. You can't really see. But if I tilt my screen maybe but like, you know, I've got yeah, tons of boxes like thousands probably, but it's all, you know, basically, recreated my office to look like the card shop that I would go to, as a kid. So, that's cool. Yeah, that's probably, you know, accelerated in the last year or two, but nothing to do with PSA. It's just, I don't know, just, that's as I've kind of gotten a lot of the cards, I always wanted, you know, that's my next. Oh, and then I started. 

The photos never did that before. So, that's cool. I think I've seen you postpone. My like, you're whacked Acquisitions, have not not, not on par with you. Don't get I'm not comparing apples to oranges. I have some Co wax as well and I get I always get asked if I post a picture of it like how do you not open that stuff? Yeah, then I just like willpower, I guess I'll pose the same question I get to you. That is how do you not like get tempted? Just to say, hey I'm going to, you know, it's a rainy day, I'm just going to rip through these. And I just, I just got this, this n 2000 football as pathetic. I mean, honestly, I had someone come in and install glass with locks and like the keys, like it's to takes energy to like, unlock it. And like, yeah, I'm not very tall, and like, most of them are free, not have some. Like, you know, I that's kind of the way. And then all my packs are graded, a PSA and like, I don't want to, it's really hard to. Yeah, you can do it. I was like, 

Knocking them out of those folders is. Yeah, I know I just try not to I mean I used to. I mean, honestly I've done so much wax, breaking whatever you call it that like to know better. Like I'm glad I haven't told anyone. I mean, I pulled some stuff. McLeod, I'm glad you said that. Cause I've always said this show, when I give pose that question with Maya my sealed product, I always hate to say like this, but it's true, right? It's it's were almost worth more, will shield than once, I open it. Yeah, I've opened Opened and like you just said I've opened enough Through The Years kind of the you know it's like Pavlov's experiment. Yeah you learned the hard way until you finally you keep walking down the alley. Get whacked over the head. You'll stop walking down the alley. Can let me show you some photos. I do your listener and like, that's an original Bobby Jones, you know, the golfer. Yeah. That's cool. Like, that's pretty cool. And then this is super cool. This is I clicked LeBron. I'm a lot of people right around us but that's the original photograph that was used on his 

X Ricky card 2003. So like that's cool just to have like you know images that were used on cards. I think that's a really unfortunate ly. There's just not that many of like things like that you know like it's not super. That one's more accessible. But like you know, you go back to the vintage baseball, you know, there's two or three version copies that's it. Like it's not like cards but there's thousands of different grades. But anyway, that's yeah. Some of the stuff I'm collecting you were listening to the sports card Nation. Podcast will Be right back after this break iron sports card is your number one source for all your PSA and other grading submissions, their Elite status improves, turnaround times. Heck they even provide the card Savers, their chat rooms provide updates on all your submissions. They also offer wax options and single cards to cover, all the bases. Check them out on Facebook, at iron sports cards group, or on the web at iron sports cards.com or even give them a call at. 1-877-560-4440 sa Rob's got 

Covered. Thanks for sticking with us. Let's return to the show. 

We see we've seen sort of the explosion or the rise of tickets. And upgrading of tickets is that something of interest to you or something you've dabbled in or not necessarily and talk about, you know, psa's, you know, not not all the graders will great tickets. But you guys do kind of speak at any personal interest, on your personal collecting side and as you know, CEO PS, 

It would take it. Yeah, I don't have any baseball, tickets or basketball. I've tried to