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One of the issues with the USPS is consistency.
When I lived in an urban area, the only way to be sure your pre-labeled package was scanned, was to get in line and have them scan it and give you the receipt. Of course more people in line to get scans leads to longer lines and delays. In my new rural area, I just leave the pre-labeled package on the counter and it gets scanned in each and every time.
This guy obviously paid attention and worked the system.
Great Post Sharyn..
For the artists, creators, early adopters and auction houses, it looks like a homerun.
The NFTs have been getting a lot of attention in the financial world, which is where I first heard about them. It sounds like a bunch of hooey to me too, but then again, so does Bitcoin and look what’s going on there.
It all reminds me of the fable “The Emperor’s new clothes”. Is the world going to wake up one day and decide Crypto has no value? It’s all based on faith and could end up being the king of Ponzi schemes….
Or could I be missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime… who knows.
A digital sports card (top shot) is a form of a non fungible token. They are also selling these in other areas, such as digital art and music.
https://www.investopedia.com/non-fungible-tokens-nft-5115211
Each specific top shot is basically a short sports clip, like a player making a dunk in a particular game. It’s the kind of stuff you see on ESPN. For each clip they sell a limited quantity, which can be resold on the open market.
Recently an artist made a digital sports card of himself and sold the shares for about 3 million dollars.
None of it makes any sense to me, there is big money in them right now.
On certain packages, (I imagine over 1 LB) the guy would print two labels, one first class and one Priority mail.
He would then attach the First class bar code to the Priority label. The package , upon visual inspection, appeared to be Priority mail.
Later, he would request a refund for the Priority label, since it was never scanned.
If the Post Office modernized their systems, this would easily be detected.
These sure are interesting times and a typical Supply/Demand issue, especially for the more expensive cards.
The supply is primarily the amount of scarce graded cards on the market, and future supply, the same cards in the grading pipeline. If the number of a scarce card available goes up 5X or 10x, who knows where the price will go.
The demand has a lot to do with our current economic condition, which has helped to drive up the prices of many assets classes, including Real Estate, Stocks, Commodities and Bitcoin.
I don’t know what the economic future holds, but I imagine taking the steps to sell some inventory, sooner, than later would makes the most sense from a business standpoint.
I’m curious to see where this market stands in a year and look forward to hearing actual selling prices on the cards you guys are dealing with.
The scarcity issue is also enhanced with graded cards A PSA 10 is generally worth more than a 9 and, depending on the number available, can be worth exponentially more. The grading services keep track of the numbers they’ve graded in each condition and make these statistics public.
Also, when a card is graded, it’s also authenticated. This all makes the hobby more accessible to newer collectors and gives buyers a higher level of confidence when making a purchase.
PSA grading recently announced an increase is prices and will be doubling many of the prices.
Life sure is interesting.
These sure are interesting times. The Bird/Magic rookie (PSA 9) highest sold on Ebay is now $90,000. Of course there is a range and a fairly recent (PSA 9) sold for $30,000 so who knows.
I’m curious to knw what you end up doing with your cards Mark.
It seems to me that charging an evaluation fee, based on value seems to be a conflict of interest. It’s a bit like a home appraiser charging you a fee based on the value he comes up with. What incentive does he have to not put in a higher value. Right now PSA grading seems to be the standard, but they are also setting the market to an extent.
I have some older cards I bought in the 1990’s that I’m considering getting graded. They range from the 1960’s to 1980’s and are mostly Baseball with a few Basketball/Hockey and Football. I’m thinking of sending some of them to Becket (BVG/BGS) to get graded. Their pricing system seems a bit more reasonable.
There are free scanner apps you can download to your smartphone. I occasionally used them to check the labels, when the printer ink is running low and the labels are a bit faded.
I agree on the bubble and on the variety of cards selling for crazy prices, as in $50,000 plus.
Seller PWCC, who has most of the high end sales including the $555,000 Tom Brady card, has a lot more high end cards in the pipeline for this week, including a number of 1986 Fleer Jordan and 1980 Majic/Bird Rookie cards.
It’s fun to watch, but may a little hot to handle at this point.
They are also smaller.
Here’s another Post about them from some months ago.
In another post, there is a discussion regarding the difference in size. It’s subtle, but the new ones are clearly smaller. I have some old ones saved for times the difference in size matters. I used one this week to ship some golf balls.
My Ebay manage active listing.
On the right side top you should be able to click “Start time” and you can get them oldest to newest or vice versa.
I hope this helps.
If shippers continue to misuse the Media Mail option, eventually it will go away and everybody loses.
I’m Ok with the negative.
Here is a link to one of the articles.
Retailers give customers refunds and tell them to keep items
I guess they are relying on AI to prevent abuse by customers.
