PWCC has been acquired by sports market company Fanatics, best known for making sports apparel and recently acquiring Topps. What are your thoughts on the acquisition?
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I’m not sure what this means for the daily operation of the website/location, but I hope that it will resolve their staffing problems and shipping times.
Best known for making the worst quality sports gear. One word, run.
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Fanatics CEO is Michael Rubin, which is known for being a really good entrepreneur. I guess it will be properly managed and for sure won’t have a financial problem anymore 
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Hard to imagine this is anything other than a distressed sale
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On one had, it’s been absorbed by Fanatics so it should be pretty stable. On the other hand, Fanatics products (jerseys especially) suck. Any time they take over from Adidas or whatever company was in charge, it’s a noticeable downgrade in quality without anywhere near enough of a price drop to justify it (if there even is a drop). Never used PWCC before, but honestly not looking forward to what happens now.
in all seriousness, it could be a situation where you forget the new owner, they get more of a capital injection, implement new things to stay fresh. Who knows. It’s not unheard of to shed losses prior to a new company buying another.
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My initial reaction is that consolidation is rarely (if ever) done for the benefit of the consumer. I’m happy to be proven wrong. The trend in our industry seem to be toward monopolies. Coming from a country with grocery cartels, i don’t really see it as a positive thing.
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There were a couple other offers from other companies, not sure if I can disclose them publicly. This was partly why the layoffs were happening. Really curious to see if/what changes will be made moving forward.
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I really dont love how vertically integrated the collectibles market is getting.
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OPEN THE EBAY VAULT
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I have a huge feeling that companies that have no affiliation with the collectible market in any capacity made bids
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Everyone wants a cut of the TCG/CCG pie. I couldn’t care less about who owns a company as long as they properly steer the ship.
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Fwiw:
This essentially is like if Pokemon purchased PWCC. How would that feel?
As public companies they have a duty to increase value for shareholders, and sometimes that DOES look like IPs collaborating directly with their own secondary marketplace.
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Did you sell at least $10,000 worth of cards on PWCC this year? Congrats, you receive an exclusive Eevee Promo
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Tell me more about this Eevee promo! Joking aside, there are fewer checks and balances in companies these days. The grading company being owned by the auction house scenario is an example
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Layoffs followed by layoffs and then a buyout would you adam and eve it.
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This definitely follows the trend of consolidation we see across several industries. Will be interesting to see how this affects the consumer in pros and cons.
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Even with these massive companies being vertically integrated, at least there is competition in pretty much every aspect of the hobby:
Grading (PSA, CGC…guess I will put BGS here)
Auction House (eBay, PWCC, Goldin, Heritage)
Vault (PWCC, eBay)
Collectible card game / TCG (Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, etc.)
Only thing that stands out is eBay could destroy the competition if they wanted to. 10% flat selling fees on the item price only, not on sales tax, import tax, and shipping. Making their vault accessible worldwide, and sales of the vault cards are kept in a piggy bank you could use for buying other cards (avoiding 1099s). eBay live wiping out WhatNot, etc, etc.
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I didnt even know I wanted all this
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