The Short Print

    NEWPORT BEACH, CA – In a seismic shift that has rocked the sports collectibles industry, Collectors Universe, parent company of grading giant PSA, announced today the acquisition of rival Beckett Media. However, financial insiders and people who spend too much time on hobby message boards have confirmed this massive consolidation of power was merely a "strategic acoustic distraction" designed to draw attention away from their simultaneous, clandestine acquisition of "Timmy’s Totally Rad Bike Spoke Klackers, Inc." based in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. While the hobby world hyperventilated over the implications of a near-total monopoly on plastic-encased cardboard, Collectors Universe CEO Nat Turner quietly signed the paperwork to acquire Timmy’s, a small injection-molding firm specializing in plastic clips that hold baseball cards against bicycle spokes to make that cool "thwip-thwip-thwip" sound. "Look, buying Beckett is great for synergy or whatever. We...

  BY JASON "THE HAMMER" HARRISON – Investigative Journalist Friends, colleagues, fellow crusaders against the scourge of fraud and malfeasance – Jason "The Hammer" Harrison here, and I'm fuming. Not just a low boil, folks, we're talking full-on, volcanic eruption of indignation! Because while I'm out here exposing intricate Ponzi schemes involving graded Topps Chrome refractors and tracking down shadowy figures peddling counterfeit autographed memorabilia, there's a crew of absolute clowns running amok, pilfering card shops with the grace of a drunk octopus in a silk factory, and somehow, by some divine intervention or cosmic joke, getting away with it! I'm talking about the "Fumbling Five" (though forensic evidence suggests sometimes there are three, sometimes four, and once, possibly just a very confused badger), a gang so inept they make the Wet Bandits look like Ocean's Eleven. Their latest caper? "Dave's H...