Quote Originally Posted by doniceage View Post
I disagree that everything is down. I see so many stores getting retail bought out leaving shelves empty. Will take a picture showing you how bare the shelves are.

You mention grading is down where do you get that info?

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...-card-grading/

A record month sounds contrary to what you’re stating here. Sorry to say it not happening like you saying. If submissions are up that means more folks are pouring dollars again to grade cards. Which means ripping boxes like crazy for Victor, Bedard, Clarke, and other hot rookies to grade. It will stop sometime but it not happening to the degree your stating.



Don

I honestly don't do any grading nor will I ever. I get a lot of information about a lot of things from people who I sometimes have to trust are legit. Maybe they are maybe the aren't. I don't really know who is a card expert source that is legit in 2024 because even Beckett is sketchy sometimes. People play with numbers when money is involved.

I get numbers passed to me and like I said they could be legit or they could not be. I honestly don't know and if they are wrong I'll stop listening to them and tell my sources so I don't get info from them again. But here's what I saw. May was a massive month for grading but week by week it started to slide down then it hit a wall and starting in June it continued to fall off a cliff. That trend continued and June was pretty bad no? Like I said maybe my source just had bad numbers or they were never legit but they seemed legit to me as EVERYTHING in the country and basically the world hit at wall at the same time in sales so I had no reason to doubt them. I figured the downward grading submission occurred because:

https://cardlines.com/sports-card-gr...ds-this-month/

]May was a massive month for grading, especially for sports cards. We saw a rise of 10% in grading activity.

The number of items graded was a reasonably incredible 1.78 million cards. But in June, it was a very different story. There was a dip even more significant than the rise in May.

We weren’t expecting anything like the 14% drop we saw that month. So what happened? Where was the weakness? We have the answer in our overview of sports card grading trends for June 2024.

Type of Submission Numbers Submitted In June Movement in Comparison To May
TCG 376,000 -14%
Baseball 228,500 -16%
Basketball 217,300 -9%
Football 178,200 -22%
Non-Sport 49,000 -23%
Hockey 41,000 -18%
Soccer 32,000 -2%
Fighting Sports 12,000 -15%

I’ve been doing the grading beat for quite a while, but I have never seen such uniform collapse on all fronts. That includes the sport that you would most expect to rise now, football, which is approaching the season.

However, NFL cards took a significant beating in June, which was particularly unexpected. The biggest collapse happens to be in non-sports.

So like I said maybe those are legit or maybe they aren't legit. I don't even know who the top 5 grading companies are anymore so I am out of my element here. So if they are wrong I'll admit I was wrong but since the US economy as a whole has been tanking and the world economy is even worse it doesn't really matter if the tiny sliver of the grading market is a gem in an otherwise swimming pool of poop.

I honestly haven't looked at the card market since so maybe that recovered but everything else in the US economy went into a total standstill and you are finally getting some large companies to admit their numbers have been garbage for the past couple of months. Maybe it was too hot they will say as that kept people away from the stores those months but that trend has continued into fall and will continue. More bad numbers will come out and if they don't take down the card sales or the even smaller card grading numbers it will eventually.