Is Grading Sports Cards A Scam?

Go to any sports card grading reveal, and you’re bound to see comments declaring that “grading is a scam!” Reply to those comments and ask them to explain the scam, though, and you’re likely to be left on read, as the kids say.

From what I’ve gathered, though, the argument that grading is a scam consists of the following:

• It’s expensive

• The grading companies make a lot of money

• The grading companies make a lot of mistakes

• The grading companies often are not as transparent as we would like

• Not every card is profitable to grade

• Some grading companies have been outed as scams and have since folded

• Major grading companies do things that seem shady

All of these things are true! But does that make it a scam?

The dictionary definition of “scam” is: “a dishonest scheme; a fraud.”

I ask again: where is the dishonest scheme? Where is the fraud? All of the bulleted items above can be true and it can also be true that grading isn’t a scam.

People are submitting millions of cards to the grading companies every month, and many cards become far more valuable after being graded. Do all of them? No, of course not. People often make poor choices — or just knowingly risky choices — when sending certain cards in. Is it a scam if everyone who wants to participate in it benefits from it?

A lot of people grade their cards to protect them or display them in a more appealing manner, and they’re happy with the results. Is that a scam?

Should people be more judicious in the cards they send in for grading? Maybe! But that’s their decision. If they know the risk that the card may be worth less graded than raw, then so be it.

PSA has certainly done some things that make me scratch my head. Being paid to attend a private signing for immediate grading? Sure. But as far as I’m aware, there’s no evidence that they have done anything that indicates “scam.”

Additionally, why would you go on someone’s video and trash their decision to grade their cards? If you don’t agree with their decision, just keep your don’t need to point it out. I thought HGA’s slabs were ridiculous, but a lot of people liked them. I wasn’t commenting on HGA reveals telling those collectors they were ridiculous. Let people be happy.

(It should be noted that the comments in the collage above were not all on grading reveals. Some were just on videos about grading.)

Do you think grading is a scam?

The YouTube Algorithm Gets Me

I watch three things on YouTube, and three things only: sports videos, sports card videos, and comedy clips. So when the YouTube feeds me something outside of that zone, it’s unusual. This weekend, it was a video gaming channel called Retro Rick, who has 279,000 subscribers. I had never heard of Retro Rick, but I loved the content immediately.

Vintage video game content is actually quite similar to vintage sports card content, which I am declaring after watching one video and scrolling through Rick’s last five or six thumbnails. He goes to a game show and buys vintage games, he buys a vintage game collection, he goes to a retro gaming store, and he does a game room tour.

Sound familiar?

Anyway, I subscribed. YouTube gets me.

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YouTube Mistake Of The Week

In Friday’s video about the PSA 9 Stahl-Meyer Mickey Mantle, I listed the three New York-based baseball teams from the 1950s: the Yankees, the Dodgers, and the Mets.

record scratch

… the Mets?

I created a clean edit for it:

Yeah, I didn’t even catch it during edit. Just a dumb mistake that I shouldn’t make but that makes me laugh now. The perils of not being scripted.

Brief Horror Movie Reviews of the Week

My wife and kids were gone for the weekend, leaving me home to eat junk food and watch horror movies all weekend.

First up was Haunt, a delightful haunted house slasher film. It felt like the thrills would never end. At one point I felt like the end had to be near, so I paused it to see and I was only 38 minutes into it.

Amazing haunted house imagery and ideas. It felt real.

The downside was not knowing who the bad guys were or what their motives were. The filmmakers say that was intentional, but I would’ve preferred knowing more. They were really interesting, and a little backstory could’ve gone a long way.

Up next was Terrifier. A bunch of people have recommended Terrifier 2 to me, so I decided to start with the first.

Similar to Haunt, this one seemed to have death and blood for days. Extremely gruesome, which explains its lack of a rating.

The bad guy was, actually, terrifying. And he never utters a sound throughout the movie. Nightmare fuel, through and through. My friend Oliver, who is terrified of clowns, somehow got through this.

And then Terrifier 2 took the gore from the first movie and decided to do what Fanatics wants to do with the hobby: they 10x’d it. Whew, the second movie was gruesome. It is not for the faint of heart.

I watched it while eating pizza and ice cream and enjoyed it quite thoroughly.

There’s actually a fair amount of humor, with the faces Art the Clown makes. I’m looking forward to the third installment in the franchise, out in October.

Upcoming Videos

I’m really struggling with this section lately. I’m not going to promise anything for now.

Channel Highlights From the Past Week

This video about a subscriber’s Jesse Owens collection is criminally under-watched. It’s only five minutes long!

This video about an auction house selling a likely-fake 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle was quite popular:

My Pickup Of The Week

The only pickup this week was new binder pages so I can start my 1993 Finest binder:

Giveaway Winner #2!

The next giveaway winner is [email protected]! Please reply back with your mailing address and which card from the below you would like (excluding the Bo Jackson, which was taken):

Links:

Mike Sommer writes for Hobby News Daily about how great it is to pare down your subscriptions. Hopefully not excluding me.

Corbin Carroll talks about his baseball card collection.

Lately all the rage in trading cards is how a company is providing CT scanning of boxes and packs. And I mean rage. Nintendo Life gives some ways for companies like Fanatics to prevent this from happening in the future. I’m not sure about the technology, so I present it without comment.

AOL, which somehow still exists, posted an article about how Derek Jeter still hates his first baseball card. In the article, they make a strange decision to not show the card. So I will post the one I believe he means, based on him saying he’s in his high school uniform and he didn’t like the photo. There are a few cards to choose from, but I’m going with this one: