Does Collectors Have Potential Conflicts?

[BobC]

I've mentioned concerns with how the industry proceeds on various occasions. Spoken out about how there is NO outside or successful independent oversight of the TPGs, no centralized, non-profit hobby-led group that is calling the shots and setting unified and consistent standards for the grading and industry as a whole. Why are TPGs able to each individually set their own standards for grading, and apparently change them at will over time? Who actually decides what a grader has to learn and know, and exactly what is the curriculum and standards they have to learn, and who exactly is even qualified to even teach them? We, the collectors who actually created and make up the hobby, should be the ones deciding and controlling such questions and issues. Sadly, we've let the businesses in our industry take over and run things, and have no one to blame but ourselves for letting them.

There should be ABSOLUTELY NO REAL OR PERCEIVED bias or conflicts in the hobby when it comes to grading. And that means owners/investors/employees of TPGs should not ever be allowed to have cards they own graded by any TPG they are currently involved or invested with, or working in or for. But there is no law against that or other provisions in place to stop such potential abuses, are there? And there should also be no grading fees that are contingently based on a card's value, as this is most definitely fuel for perceived, if not actual, grading bias and conflict of interest. There should also be a single and unchanging grading scale and set of standards put forth by those in hobby, that ALL TPGs should be required to adhere to and follow, and they should all be subject to licensing, oversight, and periodic peer review to determine that they are adhering to and complying with those independent standards. Same goes with training and education of graders. That shouldn't be decided and left up the individual TPGs to each do what they want.

Instead of staying as a hobby, this is definitely turning into an even bigger investment/asset based industry. The OP mentioned PSA and Nat Turner, and their alliances/acquisition of Goldin. They also acquired Genamint and likely other strategic additions I'm not even aware of. But they aren't alone. Look at the changes, alliances, and acquisitions Fanatics has made, and how their ownership includes professional sports leagues and the related player's unions/organizations for those sports, as part of them. They are doing the same thing PSA and Nat Turner's group are doing, acquiring bigger and bigger chunks of the card/memorabilia collecting (and related) hobby/industry, to control and make money off of it. They are creating vertical business conglomerates to take over and control large parts of this rising industry, and make the most money they can off of it.

The problem is that it is probably too damn late for those actual collectors and hobbyists to really do anything about it now. The proverbial horses have long been out of the barn. There are too many different and uncoordinated factions among collectors and participants in the card/memorabilia hobby and industry today to ever be able to get enough agreement among all involved parties to ever put the TPGs, AHs and other major commercial participants in this "industry" in their place, subject to what "we" the actual collectors want and need, not what the businesses out to make money off of us keep telling us to do. And absent reaching a point where the government would somehow see fit to step in and impose regulations and independent oversight on these commercial ventures now controlling our card/memorabilia hobby and industry in regards to things such as grading standards, independence, or the like, there most likely isn't ever going to be anything to change these business concerns calling the shots in our hobby now, or from continuing to be controlling and directing us and our beloved hobby in the future.