Number
PSA has $400M in grading orders sitting in queue
PSA controls roughly 70% of the collectibles grading market and had 14 million cards — approximately $400M in revenue at ~$30/card — waiting in backlog when Nat Turner acquired the business, indicating massive suppressed demand.
$400M
Revenue backlog in queue · USD
“it's a business that controls something like 70% of its market. So absolutely dominant in its market. They have $400 million of orders just sitting in the queue. Haven't even got to it yet. $400 million.”
Framework
Credence Goods + Third-Party Trust = Dominant Recurring Business Model
PSA built a dominant business by solving the 'credence good' problem in collectibles: buyers can't verify authenticity or condition themselves, so a trusted third-party grader becomes a monopoly tax on every transaction. Shaan calls this model capital-light, network-effect-driven, and near-impossible to dislodge once established.
“attestation, credentialing, these are huge businesses that are just some of the most beautiful business models because you become basically a trust tax on an entire industry. You don't have to be the best buyer or seller. You don't have to own anything. It's super capital light. All you have to do is become the trusted third party. And that's hard to do. But once you do it, it's an incredible position to be in.”
Steal thisFind an industry with credence goods and no dominant third-party authenticator, then build the trusted grading/credentialing layer.
Number
PSA grades cards on ~$80M revenue, $20M profit before Cohen buyout
Sports-card grader PSA did about $80M in revenue and $20M in profit as a public company before Nat Turner and Steve Cohen's group acquired it.
$80M
Annual revenue · USD/year
“I looked it up, they're doing about $80 million in revenue, $20 million in profit, publicly traded company. And then this guy named Nat Turner alongside Steve Cohen.”
Fact
Scarcity is only credible from an independent grader
Jack's bear case on NBA Top Shot: the producer itself declares the assets scarce and runs the trading, whereas in physical cards an independent grader like PSA certifies scarcity, separate from whoever makes the cards. Self-declared scarcity is no more meaningful than valuing every YouTube clip.
“The reason that I wouldn't be bullish on this is because they are the ones claiming that the assets are valuable and facilitating the trading. Like, in the basketball or the collectible world, it kind of works because the grading authority saying how scarce something is is independent of the producers that are making the basketball stuff.”
Number
PSA's parent sold for $700M to a group led by Nat Turner
Shaan notes that PSA, one of the two big trading-card grading companies (via parent Collector's Universe), was just acquired for $700 million by a group led by Flatiron founder Nat Turner.
$700M
Acquisition price · USD
“So there's two big grading companies, one of which is PSA. PSA just got bought yesterday for $700 million by a group led by this guy Nat Turner.”
Prediction
Miss
Ecommerce 3.0 is livestream selling that makes Shopify a dinosaur
Shaan predicts the future of e-commerce is TikTok-style livestream selling (as already happening in Asia) — sellers running stores from an iPhone, holding products up live and answering questions — which he says will make Shopify's grid-of-images stores look like a dinosaur.
“That's what I think e-commerce is going to look like. And I think it's going to make Shopify look like a dinosaur in the past.”
Steal thisBuild livestream-native commerce tooling for solo sellers running a store from a phone.