Episode 107 Joe's BIG Announcement

Welcome back to Sports Cards and a Cup of Joe. This is your host, Joe Davis. And it is so great to be with you today. You know, I have some really, really big news to share with you, but first of all, I'm going to talk to you collector to collector. And the reason I say that is I am a passionate, passionate collector of trading cards. I have been since I was 7 years old when I ripped my first pack of Tops. I still remember pulling a Ray Fosse card. For some reason, it just sticks with me in my first pack of Tops as a kid. And I love trading cards. I love sports cards. I love non sports cards. There are so many things that I'm passionate about in this hobby when it comes to the products. But, you know, I'm also passionate about serving others. I mean, our mission statement here at Got Baseball Cards is to honor God as we serve collectors both locally and globally. And that goes far beyond just trading cards. I mean, yes, we've been working with PSA and SGC since 1998 to assist clients with grading. And then BGS when they formed, and CGC when they formed as a grading company. We work with all of them, but we also handle comic book grading and magazine grading and autograph authentication and coin grading, you name it. If it's a service that helps a collector, we probably offer it here at our company. And there have been a lot of changes in the industry over the last year. Like a lot of grading companies have slowed down. The volume has been unbearable. So in the background, we've been working on some things here that we didn't even plan to roll out yet. And we're going to get to that. But first, I want to tell you one of the foundational moments for me when I knew this is something I needed to do, something I needed to offer. I remember it was the summer of 1998, and I was at a card show up in Atlantic City, and I went up to a vendor who had this beautiful 71 tops. Hank Aaron. You know, as a lifelong Braves fan, I love buying Hank Aaron cards. And this one was stunning, at least at first appearance. And I said, hey, can I see that 71 tops Aaron? It looks pretty clean. And he was like, oh, yeah, man, this is a nice one. And I was like, well, what are you asking for? He goes, oh, I need double book, referring to Beckett. At the time, I think Beckett was $50. And so I look at it, he wanted $100 for it. And I was still interested because it was so clean. And those of you who know, 71 tops. You know how tough they can be. And I looked at it closely and I said, hey buddy, this has been recolored with Sharpie. And said, there's black ink all over the border. And he was like, okay, half book. And so obviously I didn't want the card. I gave it back to him. But as I turned away, I thought to myself, wow. Just another example of why grading and authentication is so important. That was the year we started working with PSA and sgc and we are proud to represent both of them as well as CGC as well as bgs. They all have great attributes. There are reasons to work with each of them. As a business owner, I have been offered the opportunity to work with countless other grading companies that I have turned down. Those are the four that we have worked with and will continue to work with. And we're proud to represent each one of them. Sadly, because of the demand for graded cards in our industry right now, all of them have fallen very far behind and PSA has fallen so behind that they've had to shut down entry level grading, as I have shared on previous episodes. So our team has been working on something for quite a while that we're very happy to finally roll out. Any of you who have ever worked with us over the last several years are well aware of the pre screening or pre grading services that we offer. And what we do with that is when you send your cards in, we examine them, we give you a great estimate if you pay for our detailed screening and we let you know what we believe the condition issues are with the card. We do a thorough examination, we'll point out. Are there issues with the corners, the edges, the surface, the centering, print marks, you know, moisture into the surface of the card, all kind of things, Print lines from the factory, scratches, you name it. And that service has been huge in terms of assisting collectors with evaluating the condition of their cards. And we have thousands of clients who have taken advantage of that who send their cards to us for evaluation. Now one thing we've been asked over the years of doing that and offering that service is, hey, why can't you put that on a label? Well, the time has come where we're actually going to do that. Today I'm proud to announce the launch of GoT pre grade services here and the website gotpregrade.com I have with me here a sample of one of the cards that we have pre graded. This is a 1996 FLIR Decade of Excellence Michael Jordan, which we got a Pre grade of 9. Now, for those of you who have used these services for years, you already know what to expect. You know what we do, how we examine the card, why we give the grade estimates that we do. But we have decided to take this up another notch, actually multiple notches. Because what we're going to do with this service is we will not only do all of the same examination that we've been doing, we're actually putting the card in a semi rigid with a tamper evident seal. You can't pull this seal off without voiding the label. Trust me. We worked with about 30 different manufacturers to choose the exact label we wanted that met all of our specifications that were needed. Every card has a serial number. You can take that serial number and look up the card on gotpregrade.com and actually see what the condition issues are. And the reason we've done all this is there were three things, three really important things that we wanted to be able to offer with this service. First of all is affordability. And I'm going to get to that. Second of all though is timeliness. We know in the industry right now it takes a long time to get your cards back unless you're paying a steep premium to get them back quickly. And we know that is one of the biggest pain points in the industry right now. You can't get your cards graded or evaluated even for many, many months in most cases. So timeliness was very critical to what we wanted to build into this product. The final thing is not only the affordability and the timeliness, but the transparency. And the transparency comes from us giving you details about every card and what the condition issues are if you decide to use the service. You may not agree with us, you may not agree with the pre grade estimates that we give the cards, but you're going to know why we give you those estimates. Now let me be clear before I go any further. We are not launching a grading service. That is not what this is. I highly value our relationships with psa, bgs, SGC and cgc. And I am proud as our business owner to represent all four of those companies. And they all offer many benefits of using their services and we're going to continue to do that. As soon as PSA reopens their bulk services, we will be offering that again. And we continue to offer their regular service and higher levels right now. And we continue to offer services with all of the other grading companies that I've mentioned. We at Got Baseball Cards are not launching a grading service. I want to be very clear about that. This is a pre grade service. This is for raw cards. What you choose to do with the cards. Once you get the pre grade estimates, that's up to you. You might decide you might send some of these in, get them back and say I'm going to use. Maybe you send in 20 cards and you really like the pre grade estimates on seven of them. And you say, you know what, I'm just going to hold on to these until PSA reopens their bulk services and then I'm going to cut them out and send them in. You're welcome to do that. They're your cards. You might take the others and say, hey, now that I know what the grade estimates are, I can take these in these holders, I can go to a local show and I can sell these cards and I can explain to any potential buyer they can look up the condition issues right online@gotpregrade.com what you choose to do with them, that's your choice. But we are here to provide this service. We believe it will be the best raw card examination service in the industry because it will be affordable, it will be timely, it will be transparent. Let's get to the affordability. Our entry level pricing is $15 a card. $15 a card for two week turnaround, 10 business days. I think that's a phenomenal service. Whether you choose to take advantage of it. We believe it's a good service and we've created it to serve collectors in the industry. You can send your cards in, they will get screened, they will get examined, they will get databased, they will get labeled, they will get assigned a grade and a serial number and then anyone can look that card up. They will know what day it was pre graded by our team. They will know what the condition issues are and that's $15 a card. Now for higher dollar cards, $500 and more, it's $20 a card. However, that is going to be a two business day turnaround. Two business days for 20 bucks. You can have two business day on any card you choose at that level. But any card $500 and up market value will be built at that. We have put a lot of time and effort into this because we believe it is another way we can serve this industry. And now more than ever there is a need for a product like this because it is designed to help collectors. Especially when you're waiting and waiting and waiting. Many of you, I know you're going to be attending the big shows like we will be. We'll be at Fanatics Fest. We'll be at the national. We'll be at other major shows this year. And like you, we're going to be waiting to get a lot of our cards back that have been sent in to all four of the companies I've mentioned. This is a way we can help you. You can send your cards in, you can get them shipped back out in two weeks or two business days. We're here to serve you. I believe in this product, I believe in this service, and I know the reasons behind it. Why? Because I'm a passionate collector and I'm passionate about serving this industry. One thing I will not do, no matter how much volume we get, we. We will not compromise the integrity of the screening that we do here. What I mean by that is we have all of two individuals here who might screen your cards. Primarily, that will be Doug Giles, our head of grading here for years. Doug has been a collector since the mid-70s. Like myself, he was one of my very first customers back in 1991. And years ago, after leading a different company in a different industry, he came and joined our team. And he's been overseeing our grading division for years. Many of you have probably interacted directly with him at shows or via email. And Doug has personally prescreened hundreds of thousands of cards for clients. I have personally screened hundreds of thousands of cards over the years. I actually just did several thousand in the last couple of weeks during the period leading up to PSA shutting down their bulk services. So we have decades and decades of experience under our belt. I'm not going to add five more screeners. If this service takes off, we will slow down our turnaround time. We may have to make adjustments in pricing. We're committed to honoring this pricing through the end of June. Until we see what happens, until we see what we can handle, we don't want to have to shut the service down after one month. We don't want to have to tell you, oh, sorry. The turnaround time is four months now. We honestly don't know what's going to happen. We don't know how many of you are going to participate. And it's totally fine if you choose not to. We're here to offer a service just like our screening services. Just like each of the other grading services we work with, we are here to meet needs in the industry. We are here to serve you if you choose to take advantage of it. We look forward to working with you on this. If you choose not to, then we will continue to be here to serve you in every other capacity that we can whether that's grading submissions, whether that's consignment, whether it's shopping with us, whether it's selling to us, whatever it might be, we will continue to be here to serve you. We've been serving this hobby for 35 years and hope to be here for many, many more. So I hope this has given you a quick insight into this new service. Remember, affordability, transparency and timeliness. Those are our benchmarks. We like to say got pre grade, know what you've got and that's what we're here to help you do. To know what you've got with your cards to get them back into your hands quickly. So we look forward to serving many of you with this service. I look forward to hearing your comments. I look forward to hearing what you think, positive or negative. I know our motivation in rolling this out. We weren't even planning to unveil this until later this summer. But with the pressing needs in the industry now to help collectors get cards back in their hands and know what they've got, we're here. We've sped up our timeline for this service so that we can start assisting clients with it right away. So thanks for joining us for this episode today. Remember, most importantly, my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, he loves you. He wants a relationship with you. Remember that. I think you are awesome too and I appreciate each and every one of you. Thanks so much. Me lord, I need you. Fill my house up with hope Fill my plans up with pur, up with healing. Sa.