EDITORIAL NOTE: Quick one this week but I have excellent news to report. Beginning next week, we will have a new look and additional content in the newsletter. We are really excited about some of the new stuff and you will be too. Quick one this week.
If you listen to the podcast, you’ll know about the embattled Whatnot platform and their most recent scandal with Backyard Breaks. There was also the Logan Paul thing, the Dallas Card Show thing, and the submission guys thing. All of this was covered on the podcast but the hobby needs some help. There has to be a better way of doing business. More on this in the coming weeks….
YouTube Show
Episode 1 was pretty good, Episode 2 not as good despite the big match which is gold, Episode the is a banger!!! the boys are really coming into their own and they’re very proud of this episode. The show will continue to get better and I am pumped to share this.
BGS vs. PSA vs. SGC- Ultra-Modern Baseball Revisited
by John Dudley
Figuring out which grading company to use is one of the hardest things for newer collectors to approach. Over the past few months, this space has been used to chart the difference between SGC and PSA prices. The basic premise being that resale value is the number one factor in choosing a grading company. BGS got the short end of the stick the first go around and we aim to fix that. This article revisits the first article done on grading and card process in the newsletter, ultramodern baseball. In addition to adding in BGS to the analysis, this also gives the opportunity to increase the data used and to change the methodology up a bit to be more consistent with recent articles.
For this article, sales from 2018 Ronald Acuna Topps Update 250, 2018 Juan Soto Topps Update 300, 2019 Vladimir Guerrero Topps Chrome 201, 2019 Fernando Tatis Topps Chrome 203, 2020 Topps Chrome Bo Bichette 150 and 2020 Luis Robert Topps Chrome 60 were recorded if they had SGC 10, BGS 9.5, and a PSA 10 sales within a week of each other. In this way, we can get a better comparison of how the three grading companies relate to one another and not just capture random market fluctuations.
BGS is different from PSA and SGC in that they offer an extremely rare 10 grade and also subgrades that detail the grading breakdown. Previously, we’ve seen that BGS 9.5s with all 4 subgrades at 9.5 or higher sell better than their regular 9.5 counterparts. While the BGS 10s command big dollars, it should be noted that not only 20 such sales across ALL CARDs and not just the ones looked at here were logged in the time frame looked at. Consequently, the data for this project was divided into groups of sales where a BGS quad or higher 9.5 was involved or groups where a regular BGS 9.5 was involved. The findings are presented below in Table 1.
Table 1: SGC and BGS Sales as a % of PSA Sales
Overall SGC slabbed 10s sold at roughly 70% of PSA 10s values compared to only 63% for BGS 9.5s. This is consistent with the data and findings from the first article dealing with SGC vs. PSA, but the added data makes me more comfortable in presenting the 70% figure as opposed to the range offered in the first article. If BGS 9.5s are broken down into those with grades of 9.5 or higher on each subgrade and those that have at least one 9 subgrade, the differences between SGC and BGS become more accurate. Compared to BGS 9.5s with a quad gem grade SGC trails BGS by 5%. For non-quad BGS 9.5s the story is not great. They sell for 58% of PSA pricing compared to 71% for their paired SGC transactions. Non-quad BGS 9.5s make up the bulk of cards with that grade, but quad 9.5s are by no means as illusive as Black Label cards. This is all meshes nicely with the data from the last revisit to ultramodern football. The SGC numbers are a bit higher here than there but that is to be expected as the narrative is that SGC performs best in the baseball market.
It’s always important to frame the data as it might be used for decision making. At approximately 70% of PSA value, one comes out ahead financially by choosing SGC when one expects grading to increase the value of a card by approximately $250.00 or less. This is assuming $25.00 costs at SGC and $100.00 at PSA ($50.00 is rumored to open under extreme allocation soon at the time this is being written). For cards that grading can increase the value of more than $250.00, PSA will have the most return for one’s investment. Since BGS currently only has the $125.00 level open, they cannot be recommended currently due to their high costs and low sales. Even when quad 9.5s are accounted for, BGS values barely trump that of SGCs and trail well behind PSA. For regular 9.5s, SGC is clearly outperforming them while costing 1/5th of the grading fees. It is certainly fun to look at a few BGS Black Label sales and dream, but the odds against getting one are rare enough that that likely shouldn’t impact grading decisions at all.
Next week should be a dive back into the realm of fact or fiction followed up by the final revisit to grading prices to include BGS.
Nonsense-Scam Week Edition
On Monday’s Podcast, Mike and Jesse cover last week’s NFL Playoffs and associated card values