Everyone keeps asking me if the sports card hobby is in a bubble. Is a correction coming?

Wrong question. There is no bubble. Bubbles pop.

This is worse. This is feudal England.

Fair warning: this is a comedy bit. But the math is real.

Monty Python wrote "Look at the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I'm being repressed!" as a joke in 1975. They accidentally filmed a documentary about the 2026 trading card hobby.

The Wrong Question

Here's the thing about bubbles. Bubbles are democratic. Everybody floats up together, everybody crashes together. Very egalitarian. Very French Revolution.

What we have is the opposite. Nobody is floating. Everybody knows exactly which rung of the ladder they're standing on.

That's not a bubble. That's a class system. And class systems don't pop. They persist.

So let me walk you through the ladder, with receipts, because you are on it whether you like it or not.

The Serfs:

At the bottom: the serfs. That's most of us, ripping a $25 blaster of 2026 Topps Series 2 from Best Buy, tithing at the altar of retail and praying the pack gods smile today.

Your odds of pulling something life-changing out of that blaster are roughly the same as a medieval peasant's odds of marrying into the royal family.

Technically nonzero. Practically, serf's up.

The Merchants:

One rung up: the merchant class. $128 for a hobby box of Series 2 on release day.

You've got a trade, a little capital. You buy direct and skip the retail line. You're not nobility, but you eat meat more than once a year.

The Knights: Breakers

Then the knights. The breakers. The Knights Who Say "Rip!"

Hired swords jousting for spots while the rest of us watch from the stands. And like the Knights Who Say Ni, they have but one demand: a shrubbery. Only their shrubbery is your wallet.

Every joust ends the same way: let's run it back.

And when the joust goes badly? "Tis but a scratch!" Have at you!

The Clergy: Graders

Never forget the clergy. In feudal England, the church decided what was holy. In this hobby, that's the graders. PSA, SGC, Beckett. They alone can anoint your cardboard or declare it heresy.

And the church is expanding: Collectors, the parent company of PSA and Beckett, is building a brand new grading operation in Tigard, Oregon, training the new priests at Beckett's headquarters in Plano, Texas.

New cathedrals going up as we speak.

The Lords:

Then the lords. The sealed-case buyers. $899.95 for a single hobby box of 2026 Panini Prizm World Cup soccer. $1,499.99 for a Choice box.

They don't rip packs. They own the land the packs are printed on.

And from atop the castle walls, the lords have a message for the serfs below: "I fart in your general direction!"

The Royalty:

At the very top: the royalty. The crown jewels.

Cooper Flagg's NBA Debut Patch Auto: $8.04 million at Fanatics Collect. Dylan Harper: $2.88 million. Kon Knueppel: $2.34 million. Shohei Ohtani's one-of-one logoman: $2.85 million at Goldin. Pete Crow-Armstrong's one-of-one debut patch closed at Goldin on September 29.

The king doesn't open packs. The king commissions portraits.

Why the System Works

Now here's the part nobody wants to hear. The system isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed. The violence isn't a bug. It's inherent in the system.

The lords NEED the serfs. Without a million kids ripping $25 blasters, there is no $8 million debut patch.

Your tithes fund the crown. Every blaster ripped is another brick in the castle wall.

The Caution

So here's the cautionary tale, the same one I always give you. You do not become nobility by buying more wax. Ripping your way up the ladder is fool's gold.

The checklists are enormous, the hit odds are miserable, and the price falls off a cliff three weeks after release. Every month the dead cart rolls through: bring out yer dead.

And don't pull a Lancelot, storming the castle and buying ten cases hunting the one-of-one, massacring your bank account for a grail that was never inside.

When the retail rabbit lunges for your wallet, reach for the Holy Hand Grenade: buy the single.

You don't storm the castle. You buy a deed.

They may take our wax, but they'll never take our grails.

Before the comments section declares a holy war, this is all in jest. I love this hobby. I love the rippers, the breakers, the graders, the lords, all of you. Nobody's actually a serf.

The system's real. The crowns are just cardboard.

This kind of breakdown is exactly what Hobbycomp is being built to provide: the money, the math, and the honest take on what actually matters.
Know more. Collect smarter. Stay ahead.

Card grading has become a major part of today’s hobby, but with so many companies, grading scales, slab styles, turnaround times, and pricing structures, how do you decide which option actually makes sense for your collection?

In the first episode of The Collector’s Corner, host Collector Charles breaks down some of today’s most recognizable grading options and looks at what collectors should consider before sending cards in. Charles discusses PSA, Beckett, CGC, SGC, and C3 Grading, exploring everything from resale value and liquidity to turnaround times, slab design, grading transparency, and overall collector experience. Each company brings something different to the table, and the right choice often depends on what matters most to you as a collector.

The conversation also looks at why grading has become such an important part of the modern hobby. Beyond potentially increasing a card’s value, grading can help authenticate, protect, preserve, and document the condition of a card - but that doesn’t mean every card needs to be graded.

Intentional collecting means understanding why you’re grading a card in the first place. Is it for resale value? Long-term preservation? A personal collection? Authentication? Presentation? Or simply because it’s a card that means something to you?

Charles also gives a hands-on review of a C3 Grading slab featuring a Matt Shaw rookie card, breaking down the look, feel, presentation, subgrades, and overall quality of the slab. C3 uses five grading categories - corners, surface, edges, centering, and fading - providing collectors with additional detail around how a final grade was determined.

As the presenting sponsor of The Collector’s Corner, C3 Grading offers another option for collectors looking for affordable grading, transparent grading criteria, and accessible turnaround times. Through the Collectors MD partnership with C3 Grading, collectors can use code CMD to grade cards for $8 per card.

Most importantly, this episode isn’t about telling collectors there is one “right” grading company. Different collectors have different goals. One person may prioritize resale value. Another may care more about aesthetics, turnaround time, transparency, affordability, or simply protecting a card they love.

The goal is to understand your options and make the decision that makes the most sense for your collection, your priorities, and your budget. Grading should support your collection - not complicate it.

Subscribe, comment, and join the movement. And remember: collect with intention, not compulsion. #RipResponsibly.

Watch The Episode On YouTube

Learn More & Join The Movement:

Website: collectorsmd.com

Nonprofit: lohas.org/client/the-cmd-foundation

Socials: bio.collectorsmd.com

Weekly Meetings: collectorsmd.com/peer-support-meetings

Contact: info@collectorsmd.com

YT: ‪@collectorsmd

IG: @collectorsmd

Follow Charles:

YT: ‪@CollectorCharles‬

IG: @collectcharles

X: @collectcharlesx

Get Help Now: collectorsmd.com/helpnow

Help for Problem Gambling: Call or Text 800-GAMBLER

This Episode of The Collector's Corner is sponsored by C3 Grading. Built by collectors for collectors, C3 focuses on accurate grading, a collector-first mentality, competitive flat pricing, and hands-on customer service. Use code CMD to grade for just $8 per card at c3grading.com.

#CollectorsMD | #TheCMDFoundation | #CollectorCharles | #C3Grading | #RipResponsibly | #CollectResponsibly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfi6Vw8yNWY

July 24th. 38 bids. A 2025 One Piece OP11-119 3rd Anniversary Gold Luffy, PSA 10, listed "In the PSA Vault" on PSA's own eBay account. Supposed to be the safest purchase in the hobby. The buyer asks for it to be shipped, PSA reroutes it, Brand Protection investigates, and over a month later Collectors confirms it: counterfeit slab, fake label, unauthorized reprint inside. PSA says it never graded it, never encapsulated it, never vaulted it.

And here's the part that should bother every single one of us: the cert number on that fake label (118457608) doesn't exist in PSA's system. The most basic check in the hobby would have flagged this before a dollar changed hands. Nobody ran it. Not before the listing, not before 38 bids, not before $18,500.

Now the context, because this didn't happen in a vacuum. PSA's backlog went from a late-July peak near 12.4 million cards to 9.9 million on September 8th to 9 million on September 22nd. 3.4 million cards in under two months. New $59.99 Standard tier launched September 14th, Express jumped $149 to $199, the Value tiers stay paused until 5 million. Beckett reopened cheap tiers September 15th and re-paused them September 26th. Eleven days. At the National, PSA suspended on-site Express on opening day because demand crushed them.

I'm not saying the backlog caused the vault fake. PSA never touched that card. This was an intake failure, not a grading room failure. But everything in this industry right now is optimized for throughput, and the fakes aren't slowing down: last year over half of submitted '52 Mantles were rejected as inauthentic, and nearly 25% of submitted '86 Fleer Jordans were counterfeit.

Add the July 28th class action (188 pages, RICO claims, alleging grading is marketed as objective but run subjectively) and December's buyback regrade mess, and it's been a brutal stretch for trust.

So here's my question: is the machine moving too fast to check its own work? And what do you do about it?
I run the cert on everything now.
Every card.
Every seller.
Even PSA.

This is Hobby IQ, co-produced by Hobbycomp and the CTCA, the Certified Trading Card Association.
Know more. Collect smarter. Stay ahead.

I have this Charizard EX but I don’t know if I should grade it or not. Give me your opinions. It has a small white spot on the bottom and the centering is what I’m worried about.

Submit cards today and use code MINT10 for 10% off. No minimums. Send a couple of cards and see what you think. mintauthentication.com