Another MBA question
craig44
Posts: 12,697 ✭✭✭✭✭
My understanding of the Mike Baker sticker "service" is that a silver sticker is what he considers in the top 15% for the assigned grade. a gold is top 5% for the assigned grade and a diamond to be the top .01% of the assigned grade.
here is the description for the gold sticker from his website:
"These are truly exceptional examples within the assigned technical grade, generally representing the top 5% of the population, for that grade"
there is an SGC 9.5 1959 topps mantle that has been consigned for the summer REA auction that has a gold sticker on it. Here is my question.
the SGC 9.5 Topps Mantle has a population of 1 in the SGC pop report. that being said, how can it be in the top 5% for the assigned grade when there is only one in the assigned grade? to extrapolate that further, how can any card technically receive a gold sticker unless there are a minimum of 100 in that assigned grade for that grading company? And to go even further, unless Mike has images of each of that minimum of 100 cards, how can he possibly rank each of them to arrive at an accurate "top 5%?"
these things make no sense to me. what am i missing?
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Comments
People seem to like stickers.
The card is already graded and people find the need to grade the grade and buy a holder for the holder. There is no limit to what collectors like or find valuable.
Some collectors will pay less for older generation holders or if the holder is scratched or pay more for a sticker service or if there is a slab mag on the holder.
It's a big silly game that we all play using our own rules.
You can't add logic to the illogical
LOL!!!
Great question. Their service I believe has some merits, but as you pointed out needs some mission statement refinements. I would like them to solidify cards like a 1987 Topps Barry Bonds, which is very hard to find completely centered or the 1989 UD Griffey jr or a 1975 Topps Nolan ryan. Those kind of cards need some back up relooks. The 1959 Mantle kind of speaks for itself.
I like a 2nd opinion of a card by the same person everytime (called consistency) who has a lot of experience in grading since the infancy of grading….rather than a variety of graders (leading to inconsistency) when submitting to PSA or SGC.
I can understand the same person everytime looking at cards. (is Mike himself reviewing EVERY single card?)
what i cannot understand is his claim of "top 15%" or "top 5%" or "top .01%" for the thresholds of his sticker reviews.
look at the pops of some very popular cards: 1989 Griffey PSA 8-46,242. PSA 9-33,503. 1980 Henderson PSA 8-13,676. 1975 topps Brett PSA 8-3,265.
there is just no conceivable way Mike can even come close to knowing which of those cards in each grade should be assigned to his thresholds. With 13,676 PSA 8 Henderson rookies out there, it would be impossible for Mike to even come close to a "top 5%" standard. or a "top 15%" standard. I mean statistically it is just impossible. he would need images of those examples in order to start making a ranking. Think of the time it would take. otherwise, he is PURELY subjectively attaching stickers to those cards.
That is to say nothing of the 46,242 PSA 8 Griffey rookies. I mean, come on, there is just no possible way he could meet an objective standard of top 5% of those cards. impossible. It appears to be a shell game. If you check out the socials, people are pretty quickly coming up to speed on his stickers.
what are your thoughts about the POP 1 1959 Mantle "earning" a gold sticker as top 5% of assigned grade? doesnt that seem disengenuous at best?
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Isnt this really just a centering sticker? To me the #1 indicator for a card being "high" for its grade is centering. Its so overwhelming in my evaluation that it outweighs the strength of the other characteristics.
I see why some buyers would pay more for a MBA sticker. I wouldnt pay more but more power to those that do.
Did PWCC know what the actual percentages were when they were pumping their top level stuff? Did they care? There’s your answer.
Mike reviews every card. His helper determines if a card is a Diamond CANDIDATE via a digital review to be sent into MBA for hands on review . No guarantee that it will receive a Diamond upon review in hand…
Yes, it is subjective for color and registration and print, but the value added is that one person is making the determination of eye-appeal leading to consistency rather than multiple subjectivities entering “the equation “.
I would rather have someone doing a job with much experience than multiple people who have less.
Centering is the only characteristic that can objectively be measured. So, yes it carries a lot of weight. Corners to an extent can be categorized: dog-earred, rounded, frayed, touched slightly, chipped, square and untouched. Other qualities are in the eye of the beholder: color, registration, print flaws.
nobody has addressed the 800lb. SGC 9.5 gold stickered pop 1 Mantle sitting in the room...
how did that one get categorized as top 5% in its assigned grade?
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
how can Mike determine which 1980 henderson PSA 8 cards are in the top 15% of assigned grade when he has certainly never personally seen even a third of them? (I cannot imagine Mike either has personally seen or has an image of 4500 PSA 8 henderson rookies much less the whole pop count)
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
The 800-lb elephant is one-of-a-kind….and as such it is in the top 5%. Or he might not even sticker it meaning in his professional opinion, it is not an SGC-9.5. Rather it is an SGC-9.
I have had that happen (1959 Bob Gibson RC SGC-8.5 (on eBay now)…it was not stickered and Mike Baker said it was a 8, so sold it at an 8-price ($8500)…and now own an PSA- 8 Gibson RC) and still respect his opinion.
Mathematically, I understand what you are saying -- Top 5% but there's only one of this card in that grade...
Do they mean Top 5% of all SGC 9.5's (across all sports and players)? But at what point does a sticker get ridiculous? Why should I need a sticker on a GEM MT 10?
I understand that within each grade there are probably better looking cards than others. And I've also paid a premium for nicer looking cards within the same grade (don't really care if there's a sticker on it or not, if the card looks nicer than most in the same grade, then I'm willing to pay extra to get that card). But sometimes when purchasing through online auctions, we don't actually get to see the card in hand. So the stickers can help as a reassurance that a card is on the "higher quality" side of things.
But to your point -- I've also wondered how can they make that 15%, 10%, 5% claim unless they have actually seen all examples and then categorized them appropriately. From a different perspective -- does 85% of all graded cards look "bad" for the assigned grade?
the quote from Mike Bakers own website:
"These are truly exceptional examples within the assigned technical grade, generally representing the top 5% of the population, for that grade"
if there is only a "population" of 1 for "that grade" then there is, by definition, no top 5%. or 15%. or .00000001%
there is only that one card. That one card cannot present better than itself. it is irrational.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
So by definition, if there's a population of "ONE", then being in the Top 5% obviously doesn't apply where it should simply be known as "BEST EVER IN THE HISTORY OF ALL MANKIND".
very good point you make about if the remaining 85% of all copies are "bad" for the assigned grade. The folly of this endeavor quickly becomes apparent when one starts peeling back the onion.
the quote from Mikes website:
"These are truly exceptional examples within the assigned technical grade, generally representing the top 5% of the population, for that grade"
that would mean, for example, the top 5% of all PSA 8 Rickey Henderson rookies. It is absolutely impossible for anyone to think they can accurately rank the entire population of the assigned grade for a particular card. yet, that is exactly what Mike Baker is purporting to be able to accurately do. And charge a fee for.
I suppose it would be possible if there were just a few hundred and there were images available for all copies to make a legitimate ranking. but the larger the pop numbers get for specific cards, that very quickly becomes unattainable.
If Mike were to actually make the claim that his stickers represented the top 5% of all examples of a particular grade across all years and all sports it would make the difficulty of his task exponentially more difficult (impossible).
But I do believe he is only referencing specific cards in specific grades.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
It should simply be referred to as the highest example ever graded. it would be possible that there is a raw copy yet to be graded that is in better condition.
to sticker a POP 1 card as "top 5%" graded in the population is not accurate and a money grab. I dont see how it can be anything else.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
This is the dead horse beating. You've persistently questioned the methods of people who are recognized as the premier representatives of their place in the business. You answer your own questions. Yes, it's a money grab. Yes, it's a worded attraction to those who insist on spending their money on opinions. It's not for everyone. Those who participate do so because they can handle it. It's just numbers and hype. You're right. Absolutely right. Now try to change it. Seriously. Go ahead.
Deleted
With a POP 1, it's easy. It is all percentages.
It can be the top 50%, 10%, 1%, or any number.
It also means it can be the lowest 50%, 10%, 1%, or any percentage.
It can simultaneously be the top 5% and the lowest 5%.
The problem starts when there are just a few with a certain given grade, let say 10 PSA8s.
If 3 of the 10 PSA8s have a top 5% gold sticker, then the math isn't mathing.
To add to the moneygrab, MBA is going to include a Bronze Diamond sticker to the lineup soon, which basically means he agrees with the 3rd party's given grade on the card, and you'll receive the same grade if you cross to MBA grading .
Take this card, for example...
It is a Beckett Pristine 10 Black, with all 10s subgrades.
It also has a MBA Black Diamond sticker as top .01%.
Did it need one? Can it be better than the other Beckett Blacks, if there are others?
Now to muddy the waters further, with the upcoming Bronze sticker, wouldn't a Bronze sticker be more appropriate, since Mike is basically agreeing with Beckett's Pristine Black grade. I doubt it would ever happen, but imagine getting a Bronze sticker on a Beckett Black. LOL
Even worse are the slabs. Want to guess where all the cards Brent "bought back" under the direction of the Feds to avoid prison time have ended up? MBA slabs.
Arthur
Delete
There is a video on YouTube that is worth watching…I can’t post the link.
If you Google, “Eye Appeal Revolution is Real”…it talks about how much appreciation the silver and gold diamonds from MBA add to the sale of a card compared to those without MBA Diamonds. 35 minute video…
The video is probably not for this crowd though, but thought I would throw it out there for those with an open mind.
Subjectively re-grading something that was subjectively graded doesn't mean it's objective.
I think the real question is where is the company that will apply a sticker to the best of the MBA stickered cards?
That would be the real appealing card. One with a nice grade from the original grader, an MBA sticker on it and then someone else's sticker saying this is actually a top-tier best-in-class MBA stickered card.
I am not saying that the stickers dont often add value. I am saying the process itself is not what Mike Baker is trying to say it is. if you look at what he is promising, you will see he cannot possibly deliver it.
eventually people will discover this and the whole grift will come falling down.
that doesnt even touch on the fact that he has brought Brent "mastro" into the fold as an official part of his company. how could you ever trust someone with that kind of business partner?
you know what they say, "birds of a feather..."
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
yes, it is dead horse beating. and when i see a grift or bad actor in the hobby, i will continue to beat that dead horse. there may be someone reading that information for the first time who didnt know. you know this will not end well with brent involved.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
It's not lost on me that there's a opine about Marketing in a topic entitled "Another MBA question".
Someone should make a sticker that represents a card being gifted the grade.
Maybe a stinky scratch and sniff sticker that means it's garbage for the grade?
It's good to know that you're trying so hard to save exceedingly wealthy people from accidentally tripping over their own fat wallets. Thanks.
The bottom line is its an opinion on an opinion. Maybe, like referenced above, some day there will be an opinion, on TWO different opinions on the same card. Talk about getting the warm fuzzies about your pieces of cardboard!
People pay for his service because money talks and you know what walks. There are higher price realizations with his stickered cards. History has repeated itself because the same could be said for Brent and his PWCC-S, E, A, HE, and PQ, annotations. If hammer prices weren't higher for this service, than Baker's business model would fail.
I don't think its front page news, but Brent and Baker are working together. It's also not front page news that Brent has done some unethical things and at times doubled down on his unethical things. Buyer Beware.
I think you are personally getting lost in Baker's semantics. It's his sales pitch. Sales pitches sometimes contain deception, outright lies, or misinformation.
If it makes people feel good to get their cards reviewed by Baker, more power to them. I have a lot of really nice vintage cards in PSA holders and have never even once thought about sending them to Baker. It's not for me. I understand that others feel differently.
I'll keep it on topic, but I think the bigger issue is the fact he slabs cards, puts his stickers on his slabbed cards, and is associated with Brent. I'll hand you a few red flags about that sentence.
Mike b lovin thems trimmed cards
It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)
Not even a minute do I buy the whole buh buh buh I'm a man-child japery - Me (2025)
So after posting over half the posts in the tread and probably 25 to 30 total posts, you finally have gotten to your end result or goal. You seem to think he is a bad actor in the hobby and as such you don’t think he should have a business where he is involved with grading cards? If you don’t like his service or don’t believe in his methods, then you’re 100% able to exercise your free will and not buy his cards or utilize his service correct?
You have gone on post after post about his top 5% getting gold stickers and trying to sell everyone on the math. Do you think maybe there’s a possibility that the 5% means of all the cards in the hobby this card represents the top 5% and not the literal there’s 100 graded and this gets the top 5%? Using your math there are only three PSA 10 grades in the mantle rookie, so he would not be allowed to give any of them a gold or a black label because there’s not enough of them to go around in a 10.
My Question for you is have you ever used their service or dealt with them directly? Have you ever had a question for them and their service, and I find it hard to judge someone or their service if you’ve never used them.
I am not a fan of stickers but I don’t think Mike Baker literally means the percentages to the assigned grade. Agree a different definition is necessary than percentage of the assigned grade because in order to have that as your definition you literally need to look at all sales all time for the grade and one grade higher and rank each card which is not what I imagine he is doing. However, if this Mantle (have no idea) presented as better than all the 10s if there are any or combination of PSA 10s and SGC 10s then I would give the card a sticker if I was in the business of giving them out. This does point out that top percentage of assigned grade is a silly concept. To me both the assigned grade and next grade up need to be looked at to see if a card is nice for the grade. This is what I do in VCP when I am deciding if I am willing to pay more due to eye appeal tax on a card. I hope the stickers go the way of the dodo bird as they add costs for something we all can do by looking at history in VCP. I think on grades the hobby is evolving to the concept that the grade really means that number + or minus 1 with some outliers but inconsistency exists to such a high degree that we are really assessing the card.
Also by pure definition as the only 1 it is in the top every percentage for the grade because it is literally both the top 1 and the bottom 1. So it can be assessed as on both the top .1% of the grade and the bottom .1% of the grade. The person having them sticker can be pissed that it did not get a diamond sticker because it cannot be argued that is does not meet the definition for a diamond. That is why top x percentage of grade is a silly metric.
Do you not think that anyone in our hobby who would go into business with Brent Huigens is a "bad actor?"
either way you look at it, the 5% sticker cannot be realistic/accurate. It sure seems when using Mikes own descriptor that he is meaning the top 5% of the population of each specific card.
Looking at it through that lense, how can Mike in any way even begin to think he can pick out the top 5% of any high pop card? How many of the total pop of 46,000 89 upper deck griffeys in PSA 8 do you think he has personally seen or seen an image of? a thousand? three thousand? five thousand? it is not enough to back up HIS claim that his stickered cards meet the top 5% threshold.
If you are looking at it through the lense that MIke means the pop of EVERY single card that ever graded a PSA 8, it is absolutely impossible that he would ever be able in any meaningful way to make a claim that a specific card meets that threshold. You have made Mikes claim exponentially more difficult and impossible if you are going down that road.
either way, he (or anyone else for that matter) cannot make the claim of judging a card to be a top 5% example with any degree of accuracy.
At all.
Why would I have to have used his service or dealt directly with Mike Baker to judge his "service?"
Can I have no opinion on Bernie Madoff because I didnt directly deal with him or use his service?
Can I not judge Enron because I never owned stock?
I believe you are falling to the Appeal to Experience fallacy here.
who would use the services of a company that employs one of the most untrustworthy actors in recent hobby memory simply to have an opinion on it? people can (and should) make judgments about things all the time without having to personally experience things. I think it is really bad to do heroin, but I have never done it.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
If stickers are going to part of the hobby I do agree with Craig that I prefer them to be given by a company not associated with Brent Huegens.
It's also curious to note that Baker was the head grader at GAI which was generally shunned by most collectors and that his tenure at PSA corresponds with the early flip era that many people associate with more lenient grading standards vs those of today.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
Brent is the main reason the entire sticker progression has happened. Without the original concept pedaled by PWCC, there would be no other person(s) involved. It's strictly up to the current stickermeisters to gain or REGAIN the trust that was already badly damaged by nefarious practices. What else could these guys do? It's their "profession". If more people were doing it, that would only preclude more arguments about who's doing it best, or worst, or whatever. The point is, it's these guys, or no one. It's up to those who know or care to decide for themselves if it's worth the effort to get the damn sticker.
I'm in no way defending them, only trying to make sense of why there's so much negative spat being thrown around about it. There's been so much other crazy sh!t that's happened over the years in this business and it will just never go completely away. Nor will the people who create it, until they retire or die.
I would say the sticker concept was pioneered more so by CAC on the coin side than PWCC. The green and gold stickers also pretty much mirror the MBA silver and gold concept. Like CAC, MBA has also now entered the grading game, too.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
Yes, I understand that part of it, while having minimal knowledge of coin grading history, however, the sports card side of it didn't blow up UNTIL Brent made it happen. That was essentially what I was hoping to imply.
Does anyone have a 1989 upper deck Griffey with a mb sticker ? I've never seen one .
Oh, but wait. That's part of the proposed narrative. Thousands upon thousands of stickered Griffeys pumped up by incorrect percentages.
(yes, I realize it's hypothetical)
Anyone here ever been in sales?
To me, stickers are no different on a seller who points out the great(?) centering on a card. OK, I'll look..............AND DECIDE FOR MYSELF.
If someone puts a sticker on a card and it sells for more money, that person is going to look for an excuse to put a sticker on his cards. Doesn't necessarily mean he's a "bad actor", but where money is involved watch out.
I was lucky enough to learn right from the start of my collecting as an adult, my cards, (mostly 1972 Topps Baseball) that were in pretty good condition were worthless to the card shop guys. One guy in particular pointed out a microscopic "dent" in my Steve Carlton card that had perfect everything else.
If you don't have a good eye or much experience, good luck.
Lots of points being made by both sides of the question, and my simple point is this. How many people have ever submitted cards to PSA only to wait 6-8 months for grades. Then when you get your grades back what you found out was that it took 6-8 months to learn you received grades lower than expected, no explanation for the lower grades, and for that service you are hundreds if not $1000’s of dollars. How did you feel when that happened?
What about those that send PSA cards in to be reviewed for a potential bump which could result in a price increase of $1000-20,000 on your card only to get rejected and you pay good money for that no bump review. Pretty frustrating for sure and it has happened to all of us.
Most collectors see MBA as only a “silver label or gold label company that can make their cards increase in value” in their current grade. I think that is a fair assessment, but one thing I appreciate is before I send cards to PSA I can send them to MBA for $10 a card to get another set of eyes on them via an online submission. I think that I have a decent eye for cards but having a couple extra sets of eyes look at my cards from guys who were graders at PSA is a great advantage as a collector.
For $10 a card submitted online with an answer in 48 hours, and with details on why a card will not bump - corner, surface issue, other tell me how can you beat that? Site is very intuitive and easy to use, quick results, and on top of that you get high res scans of your cards that you can use when selling on eBay or Facebook… Plus if my cards get a gold label the value rises greatly versus VCP prices by buyers and collectors.
Better prices when I sell my cards, quick expert reviews that save me from submitting cards unnecessarily for reviews, and getting questions handled promptly by their staff plus excellent customer service. Would love to see someone explain the downside to making more $ on cards and saving $$ by not subbing cards that are flawed.
KC
Well done KendallCat. You make ample great points.
@KendallCat
"Would love to see someone explain the downside to making more $ on cards and saving $$ by not subbing cards that are flawed."
A couple of thoughts.
As has been pointed out previously, the "service" provided by Mike as stated on his website is just not possible. The math doesnt math. I believe the reason he uses the figures "top 5%" and "top .01%" is to seem more authoritative. If he simply wrote that a gold stickered card "looks to us to be one of the best examples in the hobby", it would obviously not have the same gravitas as the much more authoritative "top .01% of the population." It is a sales pitch. and a fraudulent one.
Baker has a cloudy reputation. At best. I believe he was head grader at PSA when they graded the known trimmed wagner back in 91. he operated GAI grading. We all know about that outfit. I am not sure why anyone would want the guy who ran that place grading or opining about their cards now.
He has also brought Brent Huigens aboard in his new business. Why would you want to do business with anyone who freely associates with a person like Brent?
Is it because you may be able to make more money when you sell? Would that be why? That is sure how it appears when I read your last post.
I suppose it comes down to stuff before principles...
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.