Pre-War Cards

The parent company of PSA saw its stock price drop dramatically on Monday

With all of the recent allegations in the Blowout forums of altered baseball and sports cards receiving numerical grades by PSA, most investors figured the stock for the parent company, Collectors Universe, would take a hit.

That proved to be correct.

Stock for Collectors Universe today tumbled, closing down 9.13%. Shares that were worth $21.04 this weekend closed at $19.12 today.

If you haven’t been following the Blowout threads, the tl;dr is that many cards that have been reported to be doctored or altered to improve their appearance were graded by PSA, widely regarded as the top third party authenticator of cards. Many of these altered cards were given numerical grades (they would typically only receive an Authentic grade) and in the case of some previously-graded cards, many have been given even higher grades. A bunch of these cards were then subsequently sold by PWCC, a major eBay seller of sports cards.

The stock of the company had a nice rise last month, climbing to just over $22 a share. But it dropped last week and then dropped sharply again today.

I won’t speculate too much here on the ups and downs of the market. But one thing that likely did not help is that the work on the Blowout forums is becoming more public. Famed sports business guru Darren Rovell mentioned the scandal in a few tweets yesterday and word is starting to spread beyond the collecting community.

What happens to Collectors Universe stock from here is anybody’s guess. But card grading is only one portion of their business, which is important to remember here. If PSA was a standalone entity with no parent specializing in other things, my very uneducated guess on the topic is that the stock could have fallen even more dramatically.

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