Taking A Stand Against Grading Up-charges

I think we probably need to start the newsletter off by talking about Shohei Ohtani. On the precipice of the collapse of civilization at the hands of our AI overlords, there’s only one certainty in this world: Shohei Ohtani cards will always hold value. 

It really doesn’t matter if we’re talking “base” rookie cards or non-rookie, non-numbered cards or if we’re talking about a super-fractor 1/1 rookie autos. His cards are always liquid. 

Topps knows we hunger for more Ohtani cardboard because they keep giving us these one-in-a-million shots at 1/1 patch auto cards, and while I appreciate them playing into that hunger, at some point we need to stop printing these Topps Now cards for every time he smiles. 

Still, in a world in which you can endlessly doom-scroll TikTok and watch dudes run through their collection of cards that two years ago they paid 10-times what the card is worth today, it’s nice to know that at least we have Shohei Ohtani keeping up his end of the bargain. I mean, we’re all supposed to retire off our baseball card collection, right?

Also, look, I wasn’t alive when Babe Ruth was playing and never saw either Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays; but I will certainly vouch for the transcendence nature of Ken Griffey, Jr’s game and I would love to see Barry Bonds in the Hall of Fame one day - he absolutely deserves it.

I think we need to put any and all debates to rest: Shohei Ohtani is the greatest to over play the game of baseball. 

Full stop. He’s absolutely unworldly.   

I got my Disney Wonder boxes in the mail last week and you have to wonder at what point will the Disney cards evolve? Maybe you’re all several steps ahead of me but heres the thing; unlike with sports cards you are basically looking at, what, 90 minutes total of “game film” for someone like Elsa (of the great classic film Frozen)? You can release all these sets of Disney cards, year over year, and you’re basically looking at each set having the same old, same old look and feel. 

I don’t know what the answer is, but at some point you have to do something different with these Disney cards. I can only lie to myself so many times thinking “oh, I should get these for my daughter.” 

OK, so, I love these cards from Leaf. These are very cool and exactly what I was talking about when it comes to Disney - we need some innovation, Walt! For all the crap I give Leaf for their gaudy designs (see: Halloween set), it’s really cool to see them taking this fun design approach. 

Leaf still hasn’t released all the details, at least not to my knowledge, but I would gladly pay up for these if the ‘checklist’ (which Leaf notoriously doesn’t release) was right. 

Another shout out this week belongs to Jonathan Taylor of the Indianapolis Colts. Through the first seven games of the season, Taylor has 11 total touchdowns on the season. I’m no good at math but I believe that puts him on pace to score, like, 92 touchdowns this season. 

Over the last 30 days his market is up 12.47%, according to ALT, but if you pull in a little closer he doesn’t even show up in the Top 10 when you look at risers over the last seven days. Of course after his 3-touchdown game this past Sunday it’s likely he’s going to get  another quick bump, but it’s been pretty cool to see the Colts rise this season. (Ed’s Note: Look out for this week’s Hobby Waiver Wire to see where Taylor ranks).

Has anyone been following the whole Geoff Wilson saga where he went public about “PSA up-charging” him $4,000 to grade a single card? According to Geoff, the up-charge is due to the card landing a higher-than-anticipated grade/comp, which may have added as much as $50,000 in value to the asset.

And while Geoff shared that around 99% of comments were “hate” lobbed at PSA (and Geoff), grading up-charges are a wild wrinkle in the industry that we just accept. And I’m not fully sure why. 

As you might know I’m a huge fan of analogies and I honestly can’t remember where I saw this one – my sincere apologies to whoever wrote it on whatever post I was doomscrolling past – but it’s like taking your $25,000 car to a carwash and paying $20 and then a $100,000 car pulls into the same exact carwash to get the same exact service using the same exact soap that you did and they have to pay $500. 

We just…let it happen. Why? Anyone? 

Tiny auto alert! Tiny auto alert! 

Finally, you always gotta celebrate when you find a banger out in the wild. Nice hit!