Upcharges from a Bulk Subber and Collector's View. Hobby Quick Hits E214

Robby quick hits, delivering that breaking hobby news direct your ear loads. You want to know those hot Josh's card shaft Shafter you've got your cover, your host John. New name name. Hello, everyone, Welcome to episode two fourteen of Sports Cardination.

Today we are going to talk about something that's not new but has really come up again into the hobby public eye, if you will. That's up charges and I know PSA is sort of the poster boy for them, and rightfully so, but they're not the only one that does it. So we're gonna talk about I'm going to weigh in. If you've listened to me before, you sort of know my stance or what I think of them.

I've had Peter Steinberg Nat Turner on the show, asked them about it. You know, kind of got the company line if you will on that, But I really haven't done a standalone episode out and I know it's sort of kind of the big topic on hobby content, but wanted the weigh in for those that listen, kind of my stance and having a different angle being a folk suburb for SGC, subbing the both PSA and SGC as a collector and dealer as well. So we're going to take a quick commercial break and then we will be back with the release schedule, some news, and today's topic. Okay, now a quick word from our great sponsor, followed by the new product release schedule.

Then we'll go around the hobby verse to tell you all the latest hobby happenings and news. Then we'll tackle today's topic of discussion. Hi, this is Pat Hughes, Cubs announcer, coming to you from the Sports Card Shop in beautiful New Buffalo, Michigan. The Gocher family has built an incredible place here for collectors to buy, sell, and trade cards and memorabilia.

Be sure to stop buy and let them show you around the Sportscardshop dot com, connecting sports athletes, the hobby and collectors around the world. Hi, this is Alan Pinkett and I'm here to tell you the Gocher family has done it again. They've just opened up the Sport Card Shop in downtown Valparaiso, Indiana, and it is awesome. If you're a collector, you need to check this place out.

Tell them Alan sent you and get a free gift on your first visit. Let's check out this week's hobby Wax release It Take It Away, Max, Hey guys. It's Max and Sports Card Shop bringing you guys the weekly releases for these upcoming few weeks here. Starting off on the twenty second of October, we have twenty twenty five Panninium Peckable Football, twenty twenty five Panini and Peckable Live Golf, twenty twenty five Tops Diamond Icon Baseball, twenty twenty five Tops Holiday Baseball, three Tin Box as well as the Mega, and on the twenty third we have twenty twenty five Tops Basketball, Blaster, Hobby and Jumbo, twenty twenty five Panini Down Res WNBA Basketball in twenty twenty four Panini Eminence Football.

On the twenty fourth we have twenty twenty five Tops you have seen Knockout. On the twenty seventh, we have twenty twenty five Tops Holiday Baseball Advent Calendar, as well as as twenty twenty five Pennie Phoenix Football, twenty twenty four to twenty five Upper Deck Premieer Hockey as well as On the thirtieth we have twenty twenty five Tops Holiday Basketball Mega in the Basketball Countdown, and on the thirty first we have twenty twenty five Bowman Coombe University Football Blaster and the Breakers, The Light, The Hobby, the Jumbo and the Mega, as well as twenty twenty five Absolute Thank you guys for tuning into the podcast and enjoy the rest of the show. Let's go round the hobby Verse and catch up on this week's hobby news. And find out all right like it or not.

Tops just taking over the basketball license team. This year they released the first TOPS with logos Cooper Flag Rookie and speaking of rookies, if you like the Major League debut pad that is randomly scattered throughout fanatics and Tops Baseball products, that trend will carry over to the basketball side, So the rookies in the NBA will have a NBA Rookie Debut patch which will be future one on ones in future TOPS basketball products. On the autograph front, riddle the manufacturers of pro helmets. You know, they do the full size helmet you see in gameplay and then they do the mini helmets for autographs.

You know, the full size ones cost four hundred, the mini size ones cost between thirty five and forty five. Well, Riddell has right, ol I should know that as a former football coach has announced a new mid size version called the MIDI, which will be the exact in between between the mini helmets and the full size helmets all up to spec, just different size, and those will retail for one point twenty on. They're making pro and your favorite NFL colleges, so it's a little bigger you can get more autographs on. It still will fit on a shelf for those who do NFL autographs.

Leaf and Rival Scouting Service have announced the collaboration where Leaf will be able to use Rival Scouting reports and ranking system and there's a future products in the work that will trend and track high school players all up through their college days. Very early stages of that, so I'm not sure what that really looks like or entail, so we'll have to stay tuned for a future Leaf's Rivals collaboration. We all heard about the strike in Canada on the postal services. There's been announced that they are going to rotate rotate their strike, so there will be some movement of letters and packages, not at the speed you normally like or accustomed to, but things will start get moving against so things will get delivered, just not at the pace you'd probably like it too, But that's good news, so stuff isn't stuck in limbo.

And Fanatics has announced their Fanatics Fest is expanding from three to four days next year. And also they're going to get twenty five more percent of the Javits Center to use, so the show is going to be bigger. They're adding a Thursday, and the dates are now July sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth, and the light bulb goes on. That's literally two weeks before the National in Chicago, so July.

If you are one that attends all these events, you're not going to be home much in the month of July, so let the family know they'll see you maybe in August, depending on what your schedule looks like. But so almost two weeks of show between National and the Fanatics Vest. And yes, I know they are different events, but they pertain to the hobby both, so you're looking at half the month of July accounted for which show. So there you go.

There's the news, all right. Up chargers are not a new hobby phenomenon, if you will, They've been around a while. PSA is again the post the boy for them and for those that may not know exactly what an up charge is. It's when a grading company grades a card that goes over a certain value that's sort of a design more desirable card, and they will charge an up charge.

Generally, if it's thirty five hundred dollars and or more, it's going to start at an eighty five dollars up charge and go up. Obviously the more significant the card, those up charges will go up from eighty five dollars. And I've had it happen to me one time years ago. But you know, I box up for SGC even though they've gotten rid of their bulk suber rates, and I've had about five to seven cards up charged for my customers in the last couple of years.

Three or four of them were Michael Jordan rookies. Another one was a Mickey Manno rookie, the fifty one bowman, and another one is a Joe Namath rookie, and maybe one other one. And you know, I, I'm you know, speaking for myself here. I don't like them, right, I don't like them personally.

To me, the grading card company sort of should be honored that you trust them to grade that significant card and you pay that, you know, that grading fee, and that should cover it. I use an analogy. I might have said this before I wanted my content episodes. You know, it's like if you go to a restaurant and you order a steak, and you know, you tell them how you want to cook, what you want when it and you know, let's say the steak's fifty bucks or whatever, we'll use fifty bucks, and all of a sudden, you know, twenty five minutes later, the chef comes out with this beautiful looking steak on the skillet, comes to the table and says, you know, I know this steak was fifty dollars, but I just made the the greatest steak I've ever made in my chef career.

And it's it's it's going to cost you eighty five dollars. You wouldn't be happy with that, right, you bought a steak for fifty You want the chef to do the best job he or she can in preparing your food and your meal and your steak. Right, why do you have to pay extra if they feel like, you know, it came out really well. And so I always feel like up charges is a money grab, right, It's it's, hey, we can make some extra money on certain cards.

Here off a certain and I would rather they say, hey, man, this is awesome that you know John Doe here is trusting PSA, SGC, whatever grading company they picked us to put this man old rookie, This Jordan rookie, This Ted Williams rookie, you know, just Joe name of rookie in our in our slab, not when they could have went with somebody else rather than kind of beat them over the head. Now, the powers that be folks will tell you that there's a reason for the up charge, right, They have to ensure the package, maybe for more because of now the value of the card is significantly more. I really can't argue that per se, but that was a significant card to begin with, and so the insurance is sort of baked in there. The other thing they will tell you is those are the kind of cards that not one grader is looking at.

That is that is going through maybe two, three, even potentially four graders to get the grade right and the significance of the card right. And again I'm not saying that doesn't happen, but you know, we don't know that that happens. And you know where we're you know, when you sell a card, right, you're paying for one grader to you know, you're paying for that grading company to grade it. If they choose to have two, three, four different graders look at it to get that final grade, why do we necessarily have to foot that bill? You know, I get the insurance stuff, and maybe they could be an up charge.

I guess that could be a debate too, is to the price level of up charges. So I won't throw up charges completely out of the realm of possibility, but maybe make that price a little less stinging. Now, I will tell you from personal experience that, like I mentioned those five to seven cards that were up charged through my Folk Submission service with SGC, you know that's automatically charged out of my bank account. So I'm paying those up charges for my customers up front, and I have to call them and let them know that, Hey, good and bad news, depending on or both right both of your You know your card has been graded high enough where it's over the up charge value, and now you know an additional eighty five bus.

I have had a car. I haven't had a card. I take it back, I had one card, go I have one hundred and seventy dollars. That was the Mantle up charge, but all the other ones were at the eighty five level through SGC.

And I will say this full disclosure, and those five or seven calls that I made to those five or seven different people, they were actually not upset about it. I was waiting for, you know, maybe a little disgruddledness if you will, or really or you know, but I guess enough, I guess people the five or seven instances, those folks were glad it got that grade to you know, warrant an up charge. And I so, I guess it's a bitter sweet like no one wants to pay more money. But I guess when people are you know, getting you know, maybe a higher grade than they thought or signific get bumping value on a card that they sub that it hurts a little bit less, you know, I've heard and this is a great point.

Someone else made this on social media. You know, some people sub cards who have a limited budget. Maybe they send two or three cards. Maybe it's a loved one's cards that they left them and they want to get it graded.

They have no intention to resell. It's a sentimental card, even though it's significant, it's sentimental card. Now they're getting you know, if they're on a tight budget. Now they're paying eighty five one hundred and seventy a few hundred bucks more and even potentially more if it's a huge card, and that can be a tough pill to swallow, and you're not going to get your card till you pay for you know, that up charge.

And even with me, they you know, with the the c ones, they take that right out of my account and I have to let the person who sub with me know that they owe and an additional amount of funds. I haven't had that issue, thankfully, but you know, I thought we would. I you know, what could I do if someone says, hey, I don't want to pay it, Well, obviously I can't give them their card bag until it's paid. You know, maybe work out a payment plan if you know that's not in their budget.

I haven't had that problem, so I can't speak to sort of any kind of plan b's and that sort of thing. But but you know, not everyone everyone has different budget and discretionary incomes. And I've heard I've seen people report like, hey, I just wanted to have this card graded for me. It was my dad's stay in on my desk or in my safe, I have no intention of ever selling it, and now it's going to cost me in addition to what I already paid for the grating.

Now I got to pay an addition of four hundred bucks or whatever the up charges? What I So? What are solutions? Right? We can complain and talk about like I hate up charges, and I do if I make no bones abomb as someone who's had to tell people that you're being up charged, as someone who's had a card up charged, I don't like them, right, No, who does? So? Really? I mean, if you can say you can have the same card and not pay the up charge, everyone is gonna obviously take that option. So what are some solutions? Well? I was thinking this, what about and I don't love this idea, but I'll throw it out there. Right, when you get something certified an autographed through JSA, right, they'll charge you based on the player. So like to authenticate to Lou Garrigatto, it's gonna cost three hundred bucks to do a Mickey Mano.

I think it's one hundred or one hundred and twenty five. To do a Bob Feller. It's gonna be ten or fifteen dollars. What about these grading card companies sort of having that already built in.

You know, when you go online and put in that fifty one Bowman Manno, you know, instead of it being twenty five dollars to grade, it's going to be one hundred bucks to grade. Based on the card. When you put that Jordan rookie on that itemized line, right, it automatically detects that and says, hey, that Jordan rookie instead of being twenty five bucks, is going to be seventy five dollars to grade, just kind of a flat fee, kind of a known and if it gets a nine to ten, it gets a nine to ten. If it gets a two, they're still getting their seventy five hundred bucks whatever they deem a Jordan Rookie should cost to grade.

I'd rather be on the up front at least then, you know, going in, you know, if PSA says every Jordan Rookie that gets subbed to us is going to be one hundred dollars to grade through us, whether it's a one, whether it's a fake, you know, you go to subit and it turns out to be a fake, it's still one hundred bucks. If it gets a nine or ten, it's still a hundred bucks right then, you know, kind of going in like everyone knows that Jordan Rookie is going to be a hundred buck and they can do that. I mean, yeah, it's gonna be a little work on their on their end, on their IT end as well. But I rather that than the up charges after the fat and I mean that's just how I feel about it.

And again PSA is not the only one that up charges. I just talked about the SGC. Other companies do it as well, you know. And I've had stuff I'll kind of as we're coming down the stretch here, I've had cards come through my SGC bulk subs that I even warned the suburb, right like, I gotta give you a heads up, this card has potential to be up charged.

They you know, you might be looking at eighty five bucks potentially more probably eighty five bunds the person okay, you know, let me know. And some of those cards I've sort of self flagged. I gotta be honest with you, went through, got a grade never up to I had a Paul Skeins one of one gold, I don't know tops Chrome, it wasn't my card, probably at the time. I don't know what it is now, but at the time pretty close to five figures, if not five figures, kind of figured to be up charge.

Warned the warned the guy and never got up charged, thankfully. I mean, no one wants them, right, but that they could up charged that that was that was more than the three or four It was worth more, at least on paper than the three or four Jordan rookies that got five sixes and sevens uh through my folks up so, so yeah, I mean sometimes I think they look for certain ones, you know, they think they're certain significant cards that they flagged Jordan rookie, man O rookie, a name of rookie, and the list probably goes on you know, T two O six is the significant obviously a Cob Wagner. Those are bigger names, right, So they could if they wanted to bake in the charges on the upfront side, with a little work in diligence, they could do it. And if they're gonna up charge, I'd rather people know going in what it's gonna cost them, whether that's a hundred bucks, two hundred bucks, you know, like I said, JSA will charge you three hundred bucks to authenticate.

Uh uh, you know, Lou Garrigatto, that's on the high end and it goes from there. So maybe have sort of a grating scale based on the card sort of ahead of time that way. You know, Hey, you know every time I sub with Jordan Rookie, it's one hundred bucks no matter what, whether it gets you know, not authenticated as a fake, or it gets a nine or higher or whatever, like, it's just gonna it's gonna cost that amount of money. So love to see love to see that a little more like transparency and stuff up front than you know, hey, you gotta pay more we have and sort of holding your car card hostage right when those up charges happen, they have your card, you don't pay them, you're not getting it, you know, as a folksover for SGC, they take it right out of my direct debit account.

That's the other thing I always have to make sure, right I have enough money in that account for you know, if an up charge occurs, usually that's no issue, but you never know, right, so you always got to be prepared. So I'd love to see them go away. I think we all know that's not going to be the case. So you know what other solutions right? Mine is upfront, right, uh, and just have some sort of grading, you know, card sort of assessment to two individual cards.

This card degrade is always going to be one hundred. You know, you got a T two O six tay Cob, It's going to be one hundred and fifty bucks regardless of grade. And you know that's that's what I'd vote for that. Well, first i'd vote for no up to but if we can't get rid of them, I would vote let's see them on the front end rather than the back end.

But what say you do you have an alternative solution even besides the one I gave with the upfront? Do you like what it currently is at where it's just based on value and it could be any card that falls onto that value post grading value level. You know, what are your solutions or thoughts? I'd love to hear them and maybe we can share them on a future episode. All right, thank you for listening to another episode of hobby Wickets. Want to give out our social media, starting with our website which is www dot sportscardnationpodcast dot com.

Facebook. You can follow us at www dot facebook dot com, forward slash Sportscardination Podcast, Forward Slash, Twitter. We are at Sport's card Natty one, so it's sportscard n at i one, Instagram at Sportscardination Podcast, or you can email the show Hobby quick Hits at gmail dot com. Again, thanks for listening.

We'll see you next week.