Apparently Collectors acquired Beckett today and it is supposed to remain an independent brand.
Could this mean that there’s a chance that NSU magazine could be brought back?
PSA has it’s magazine. Beckett should have an entertainment trading card focused magazine to go along with the sports focused ones.

That would certainly be good if that happened. (Perhaps TOO good to be true.)

This is too good for me not to comment. For those who don't know, Collectors is the parent company of PSA. In 2024 Collectors acquired SGC, and now Beckett/BGS. Yes, it's keeping them all separate for now, but this is a consolidated monopoly by anybody's standards. At best, the grading standards and fees of each grader SGC, BGS and PSA will be slightly different. Bottom line though is that it is all in the same pot and will be subject to whatever incorporation the pot decides to do going forward.

For the longest time non-sport card collectors have been largely indifferent to graded cards. It was the sports card collectors that would shell out extra money for some "expert" to tell them card condition and stick it in a slab. It added more money to eventual sales, so this was done all for sellers and investors, not really ordinary collectors.

Now that some non-sport cards, mainly certified autograph cards, are regularly hitting 3 and even 4 figures in brand new sets, many high-end non-sport cards intended for sale are getting the graded treatment, like it or not.

Up to now the pecking order for grading services has been PSA for the best cards, followed by BSG. Graders like SGC and CGC are popular with eBay sellers because they are faster and cheaper, but they are second tier and not regarded as well as PSA or BGS. Other names are even farther down the list. Cards graded by lesser services will carry lesser premiums, if any at all. As it stands now, if I wanted a big card graded, I would stick with only PSA.

As a final note regarding Beckett, I had been told prior to this acquisition, that they had changed their magazine policy for the coming year. No longer would they be accepting the unsold magazines for return credit. Naturally this makes a difference to retail outlets who don't want to pay for dated things that they can't move. Expect many organizational changes to come to Beckett in the near future, but of course we are likely to hear about them only after they have already happened.

Saw this and thought the same thing about the future of Non-Sport Update.

It would be great if Beckett decides to look into reviving Non-Sport Update, where they can use the magazine to help them promote the grading of non-sport cards, and let PSA handle the grading of sports cards

It’s likely that Beckett examined their portfolio offerings and started getting rid of the unprofitable/less profitable operations before the sale. Beckett company takes the hit, may get some more $ at the sale date so that PSA owners don’t have to deal with the shutdown.

Could also be that Collectors told Beckett that they didn’t want NSU as part of the transaction.
Let the Beckett mgmt team look bad so that the purchaser can put the blame on them.

Fairly standard process when companies prep to sell themselves.

quote:

Originally posted by jcracch:
Fairly standard process when companies prep to sell themselves.

Right on. Beckett isn't reviving anything, and Collectors now owns another big chunk of the grading card market. On Blowout, members are already discussing if they should swap out BGS slabs for PSA slabs.

Never much cared for that game and the results can be both surprising and/or disappointing. There are definitely different standards applied between graders and a 10 here, may be a 9.5 or even a 9 somewhere else. I have always considered card grading a random crapshoot, but then again I collect for fun, not to make money.

Thought something was up when they dropped NSU
There will possibly be more shocks to come

I think that anyone with items at Beckett should try and retriene them ASP

I think that it is possible that CardTalk/NSU on-line may also suffer long term depending on how the fees to run it are paid and possibly the licencing to use the Non-Sport Update trademark.