Member-only story
TECHNOLOGY
I Built an App to Track Sports Card Grading
My friend had $50K in cards at PSA and BGS with no way to know what was where or how long it had been there.
My buddy is a serious collector. Baseball, basketball, football, whatever’s valuable. Sends stuff out for grading all the time.
I didn’t know what grading meant until he told me. You send valuable cards to companies like PSA or BGS. They authenticate them, grade the condition, seal them in plastic.
Makes the cards worth more. But while they’re there, you’ve got thousands of dollars sitting at some facility with no easy way to track it.
He sent 15 cards to PSA in March. Then another batch to BGS in April. Then SGC a few weeks after that.
Two months later I asked him what he had out there, and he had no answer. Started digging through emails trying to piece it together. The whole time I’m watching him stress about the fact that he’s got thousands of dollars sitting in New Jersey somewhere, but he can’t tell me exactly what or where.
That’s ridiculous.
The Problem
He told me last year he had close to $50K worth of cards in grading. Three different companies. Some…
