The Voice of a Generation Situation

[00:00] The voice of a generation. You know who it is. That's right, Jason Page, the guy who sang the Pokemon theme song. Actually one of the most iconic theme songs of all time, and that's kind of inarguable.

[00:14] Jason Page has still been deep in the Pokemon TCG community. I don't know if you knew that or not. And he recently found himself in some hot water over some drama about a fake card in his signature

[00:26] and people accusing him of being scummy and scamming kids. I didn't really follow that too closely, but I did see his response. And there's a couple of wacky little nuggets in his response that I can't resist the urge to talk about.

[00:39] Hello, Internet. I've seen what's circulating. A video of a vendor's reaction to a trade I made with kids back in March, claiming that I'm a con man who scammed them with a fake card.

[00:53] I want to address this directly. Fair enough. Amen. That's the best way to do it. That's how you handle business like a man. Get out there, hang on, let your nuts air out a bit. Get your chin on it. And maybe get your teeth on it too and start staring a little bit.

[01:09] Now, something I didn't know about till all this hoopla started bubbling over is that Jason Page seems to have given himself the title of the voice of the generation. It's integral to his marketing.

[01:22] Am I the only one that finds that a little peculiar and kind of douchey? No doubt what he contributed to Pokemon is huge. That theme song is still one of the most iconic boner jams of all time.

[01:35] but I don't know I've just always found that kind of stuff like it's me the voice of a generation just to be really just a little yucky especially like checking his website he also sells voice of

[01:51] a generation custom cards that he signs for 50 bucks as well as others signed accoutrements for a lot of money. But anyway, this has nothing to do with, like,

[02:04] the scandal that he found himself in that he's now making this video for. I just saw this and thought it was odd. Like, I assumed that the convention was the one calling him the voice of the generation,

[02:16] you know, to hype it up on their marketing, but no. Seems like that's Jason Page's decision. I understand your anger when seeing and hearing all of this. the instinct to protect a kid is the right instinct.

[02:31] I'd have the same reaction if I heard that kids were getting scammed. But here's what the vendor's video didn't show you. The truth is that the trade we made was absolutely fair and in their favor.

[02:45] So, in a nutshell, what happened is some kids went up to another vendor to trade a card, and that vendor gave them a valuable Gengar, which they then took to Jason Page.

[02:57] It's that Gengar that's in front of them. And they traded it for one of his signed cards, which apparently didn't hold equal value or was a fake card, as people were alleging.

[03:09] And that's where all of this stems from. So this is his response to those allegations. I'm going to talk about this in terms of playing costs, not potential market value, which could be significantly higher. This card is a top one autographed, inscribed, graded AGS 10 company custom promo card.

[03:29] They don't sell these. It's a limited item. The vendor claims that it's a fake card, but it's clearly a promo card indicated by their logo on the back. And there's a market for promo cards. Many vendors, including myself, carry and sell signed, graded, authenticated promo cards.

[03:44] I've been selling them for years. There's a lot of misleading mumbo-jumbo in there. So, pop one, what that refers to is how many cards of this kind exist when it comes to grading cards. So, low pop means rare and usually means more valuable.

[03:57] In this case, it means about as much as this part. I don't know if you can hear that with the mic and the noise getter have set up, but what I'm saying is it's stink. It's empty stinkiness because what has been graded is a, he's calling it a promo card,

[04:13] but it's a custom card from this company that they have graded themselves as a 10. Which is already fucking shady That already weird It not an official real card per se It real in like a tangible sense as in it exists therefore it is We bringing out the fucking Rene Descartes here we getting real philosophical but it not a legitimate actual official Pokemon promo card you can tell just from the back

[04:41] That's not even a real Pokemon card back. So there's not really a market for it, as he's suggesting, because again, this is just a one-of-one from this company that they have created themselves that no one's really fishing for.

[04:54] So that's already kind of a little peculiar for him to be trying to paint it in that light, at least in my opinion. But what he says next is just categorically false. At all my events, AGS, for those of you who don't know it, is the third largest grading company by volume right now behind PSA and CDC.

[05:14] They give out these promo cards, and they're limited, so there's a small resale value, probably $5 over some, graded authenticated with autographs, can sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

[05:27] That is a liar, liar, plans for hire moment right there. AGS, by no metric, no stretch of the imagination, not even your wettest pipe dream, is the third biggest card grading service by volume or by fantasy and imagination either.

[05:43] When you look up all of the grading companies ranked by volume, almost nobody even bothers to include AGS because their volume is significantly lower than the Big Five,

[05:55] or I've seen it go as far to like eight grading services, and AGS doesn't even break into that. Their volume is just not anywhere near what Jason Page is saying where it's the third largest.

[06:07] There's no one on the planet that thinks that. Nobody at AGS probably thinks that either because it is just provably false. So I don't know why he's trying to say that so it sounds better. They're like, oh, this is very prestigious.

[06:19] This is AGS 10, an AGS custom card. But it's just not true. No matter how you spin it, AGS is not one of the biggest players in the card grading space. And when you look into them, every source talks about how they are a much smaller and newer addition to the hobby.

[06:38] I actually didn't even know anything about AGS until Jason Page mentioned it. And I'm someone who's very deep in the card collecting hobby. Granted, I fucking hate card grading. I think it's a complete scam, but I'm not going to sit here and rant and rave about it.

[06:54] But yeah, AGS is not what he's hyping up to be and glazing it in that way. That's very misleading, and it is just not accurate. And also, I think it's very weird that AGS graded their own custom card that Jason Page signed as a 10.

[07:10] That feels already very odd. Because another big thing about card grading is that it also is card authentication, so you know you're getting something real, something genuine. But here, it's not an official real Pokemon card.

[07:25] It's a custom one of their own company that has a 10 on it. I feel like you don't need to think too hard. only a few neurons need to be activated here to deduce why this might come across as a little shady.

[07:40] The Customs Promo AGS card that I had previously autographed and inscribed, which are two different things. Here is my price list. I post this at all of the shows for the past three years.

[07:52] This is what it's been at the top here. It's the base price of the two versions of my signature. The one on the AGS card was the $100 full autograph. And, yes, I couldn't believe these prices when I saw them.

[08:05] I am not a convention goer. I've only been to, like, two ever. And I've never done, like, meet and greets or paid for, like, you know, a celebrity autograph or a photo or anything. So I don't know what normal prices are.

[08:17] These feel outrageously. So if you look here, his regular signature is $50, and it's his fucking initials, basically. But if you want his full name, like his full signature, it's $100. It's double the price to do his full name versus his initials.

[08:34] And it goes all the way to a premium item upcharge of plus $150 for it. If you want it in two colors, it's like these prices, they had my jaw on the floor.

[08:46] I don't know if this is standard practice, but what the fuck? I was always going to be the assumption that at these conventions, at the meet and greets, you pay for an autograph or a photo or both.

[08:58] I didn know it got so deep into the nitty nickel and diming where you can pay for initials or you can pay double for a full signature And it not like it was cheap for the initials either

[09:12] And then going all the way up to like $150 upcharge for the item that you have on sign, it feels extremely high. That is what I want to say about that.

[09:24] There was an inscription from me on that card, which I charged $25 for. after I signed it, the card was then graded by AGS. The service itself costs about $18 plus shipping. People spend money on grading because it adds significant value to a card.

[09:40] So $5 card, $125 autograph, and inscription, $18 grading costs. We're at $148 plus whatever the shipping costs might be for you. It was graded a 10 out of 10.

[09:53] The higher the grade, the higher the value, which gives it a more inherent value to a collector. But let's just stick with the pure costs that were calculated. About $150 total cost.

[10:06] Yeah, I suppose you can break it down that way, but I don't think that's really a good way of doing it because your signature is the main bulk of that value and you have assigned that value yourself.

[10:20] So you could say tomorrow I'm raising my cost here. all of a sudden that's a $3,000 card now because that's what I'm charging to do my whole name versus my initials. Like, it's just, you are arbitrarily assigning that value to it

[10:33] from your own prices on your signature. So I don't think that's really, like, the best way of doing that. No, here, actually, it was a really good trade, and I was really looking out for him because I charge so much for my fucking signature.

[10:46] It doesn't seem that strong because that card to someone who doesn't really care about autographs autographs doesn't have that inherent 120 plus value because your name's left on it you know what

[10:58] i mean so i don't think it's a great way of breaking it down but you can i just personally wouldn't put a whole lot of water in it now his next section i actually think he does a good job of talking about the gingar that the kids traded to him this is the card the kids traded with me

[11:15] there's a video of the kids holding up this exact card you can't see it very clearly but here's a screenshot of that video. I'm cropping out the kids' faces from the vendor's video and protecting

[11:27] them. The vendor is also posting a screenshot of a Gengar card in his video, but it's not the photo of this actual card we traded. It's just something he grabbed from somewhere else. In the card world,

[11:40] the condition of a card determines its value above almost everything else. The kids were told by this vendor that this card was worth $150. So when this video popped off about this whole situation here,

[11:55] a lot of people viewed the vendor as like a really good guy giving the kids a great card worth $150 as claimed. It's a Japanese fossil Gengar. And Jason Page here is about to show you that this

[12:10] isn't a $150 Gengar that he gave them. Now, let me show you this card. This is an ungraded Gengar Japanese fossil.

[12:22] At first glance, the condition looks like a heavily played HP at best, clearly. But when you zoom in, you can see the ding here, the scratch there. There's scratches everywhere. Another ding over there.

[12:34] The top of the card, the foil is sticking out almost on all of the edges of the card. There's a whole bunch of scrapes on the bottom. This thing is scraped more than any other Gengar that I have seen online in the sold items.

[12:49] This could be labeled damaged. I think it is inarguable that that card is damaged. That card looks like it was scratched by the house cat, and then they used that card as toilet paper in their desk bathroom. That card is disgusting.

[13:03] That card is in a terrible spot. It is in awful shape. It is not a $150 per scene card that he traded with them, as the claim was.

[13:15] This card's $150. It is not. In that condition, you'd be lucky to give that shit away for fucking $10. I'm exaggerating a bit. It's probably like a $40 card, and that's being pretty generous. That's assuming someone wants a really damaged copy of it in the first place.

[13:31] As there are some like this on TCG Player and eBay, The vendor told them that their two cards were worth So it was traded for of value but the vendor states it worth Well based on TCG Player and eBay recent sales that just not true The actual market value for

[13:51] this card in HP condition might be about $75. And here's how I arrived at that. You can see the TCG Player and eBay sales listings, you can see that if you zoomed in on all the cards,

[14:06] there's absolutely no card in any of these sold items that's even scratched as much as this is. And he's exactly right. The reason why I think it wouldn't even be $70 is because this one is in much worse shape than all of the other damaged cards I've seen listed on TCG Player as well.

[14:23] It's in horrible shape. it is not the $150 value that he told the kids that it was. Now whether or not he did that maliciously to get a better deal for himself, because now he's got $77 worth of value coming from those two cards to him,

[14:39] and he only had to part with a damaged Gengar that I guarantee he probably couldn't have moved in the first place. I don't know if he did that on purpose or he just didn't know. I'm going to tell you, knowing what I know about the card community,

[14:52] I feel like it's very unlikely he didn't know that it was in such horrible shape and wasn't actually worth $150. I think this is also a lesson that vendors at card conventions and just in general in the community

[15:05] aren't really looking out for your best interest to give you the best deal. Like, oh, that's so cool, champ. Yeah, absolutely, I'll trade you. This card's worth $2 million. And they hand you, like, a fucking common from, you know, Twilight Masquerade.

[15:20] But we just calculated the cost value of the promo card I traded to be about $150, and the market value of this Gengar, at the very high end, appears to be about $75.

[15:35] I don't want to make this about myself, but those who know my history know that I've been on the side of feeling taken advantage of before in my career, and it shapes how I think about fairness and transparency and kindness.

[15:48] Now, I honestly don't know a whole lot about Jason Page post-Pokemon theme song, so maybe he is like an amazing guy. It's very possible, but what I can tell you is the way he calculated his own card's value is also not entirely by the book, I'll say.

[16:08] But being very generous using that terminology, I don't think that's exactly the fairest way of calculating the value he gave to the kids' trade either. So he is right that the vendor did not give them the card he said that he gave them,

[16:21] a $150 value card, but he is wrong that his trade was like a great one for them, and it's, you know, $150 worth of value from his trade. I think that is also incorrect.

[16:34] I know you came back to my booth later that day, and you traded that promo card back with us for another Jason Page autographed card, and you left happy with that trade as well. However, if you are not happy, I'd love to connect with you in private, and we can all look at these cards together, and if you want this Gengar back instead, we can trade back for this.

[16:56] So according to Jason, they actually came back and traded that card with them again for another Jason Page autographed card, so I'm assuming they didn't want the HDS promo Jason Page signed card, they probably wanted a real Pokemon card there.

[17:15] I'm just assuming though I haven't heard anything about that outside of Jason Page talking about it here. And then he says, if you're not happy with that though, we can trade back and you get the Gengar. Which, alright, I mean that's fair enough I suppose.

[17:28] He then goes on to say how he would never scam anyone in the community or anything like that. But anyway, I wanted to yap about this a bit because I do think there are a few things in here that are very misleading with the way he presents the card he traded with them.

[17:42] I think he's 100% right about the Gengar I think he did a good job of showcasing that the vendor was not being truthful about that trade in the very beginning but I do think the way he defended his

[17:55] autographed card by using provably incorrect information about AGS and the volume and you know this and that is just a little not true

[18:07] so I wanted to just blabber about it I suppose That's really about it. See ya.