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I missed reporting on this news last week, but Jesse Steinberg has been named the new general manager of SGC. If the name sounds familiar, Steinberg had not only been with SGC from 2019-2025, but he’s also the brother of Peter Steinberg, the former president of SGC.

Steinberg was most recently VP of operations at PSA and returns to SGC at a pivotal time for the company, if not for grading generally.

Due to backlogs, both PSA and TAG have stopped certain service levels of grading (PSA’s cheapest level is currently $79.99/card, while TAG’s is $149/card), and wait times have increased at all the main grading companies.

From an SGC perspective, per GemRate’s recent June 2026 overview, SGC graded approximately 39,000 cards that month, which was down 19% from the previous month and down 75% from June of 2025. That grading total placed SGC at the bottom of the list of principle grading companies, beneath PSA (2.5M cards graded), CGC (763K), Beckett (146K) and TAG (54K), each of which is up both month-over-month and year-over-year. So, not great news from an SGC perspective.

TCG is admittedly dominating the grading industry right now (in June, sports cards were 27% of the cards being graded), but I still think there’s a place for SGC in the industry. Their expertise has long been with vintage sports cards, so if this plan isn’t already in the works, I think they should lean into that expertise and specialize in, if not focus entirely on, grading vintage sports cards.

Whatever the case, I’ll be curious to see what Steinberg decides to do going forward.

In this issue you'll find:

Auction highlights
News in the hobby
Jack Lambert’s rookie card and player profile
1960s football HOF rookie cards, pop count vs. pricing
ICYMI
Recent Vintage Card Voyage video

Let’s get into it.

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Auction Highlights

In order of closing date:

Fanatics Collect July Premier Auction (ending on July 23 - lowest price items are $1,000 and includes Jackie Robinson card mentioned below in News Briefs)

Goldin 2026 Global Football Auction, Part 2 (ending on July 25 - includes soccer card mentioned below in News Briefs)

SCP Summer Premier Auction (ending on July 26)

Other active auctions:

Hunt Auctions August Internet Auction (ends on August 12)

Wheatland Auction August 2026 Sports Cards & Memorabilia Auction (ends on August 23)

News Briefs

⚾ Babe Ruth PSA 2 Baseball Card Sells for PSA 7 Price

💰 Rare Piedmont-Backed T206 Honus Wagner Returns to Market for 1st Time in 25 Years

⚾ Top 6 Iconic Pee Wee Reese Baseball Cards

⚽ The Greatest World Cup Soccer Card Ever Is Live at Goldin Auctions

⚾ Top 5 Most Iconic and Valuable 1955 Bowman Baseball Cards

⚾ The Greatest Jackie Robinson Card of All Time Is Up for Auction

⚾ Donn Clendenon: 1969 World Series MVP Had Fascinating Life, Interesting Baseball Cards

Vintage HOF Rookie Card: Jack Lambert

Much like Walter Payton, who was profiled last week, Lambert was named to both the HOF All-1970s Team and the HOF All-1980s Team.

Jack Lambert - LB

HOF Induction in 1990

Standout Stats:

9-time Pro Bowler, all consecutively
7-time All-Pro (six first-team, one second-team)
4-time Super Bowl winner
Defensive Rookie of the Year (1974) and Defensive Player of the Year (1976)
Career AV (Approximate Value) - 137

1976 Topps #220

Grade	PSA Pop Count	SGC Pop Count	BVG Pop Count
10	32	2	0
9	324	15	14
8	989	102	82
7	647	143	96

The average price came out to be $91.52.

Hobby Thoughts: Pop Count vs. Pricing for 1960s Football HOF Rookie Cards

Takeaway: The card with the best disparity number also happens to be the most expensive one, so Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus’ rookie cards are worth a look.

I again looked at collector grade (for this decade, that being a PSA 6) and PSA 7, to see if there were cards where it might make more sense to buy a PSA 7 (if you’re looking for more bang for your buck), because, say, while the population count is a lot smaller, the price difference between the two grades might not be that big, relatively speaking.

Some notes:

While he has the best disparity score, Namath’s PSA 6 Card Ladder value came in at $7,250 and his PSA 7 at $12,690, so if you’re looking for something much more affordable, Otto’s rookie cards at the same grades are $147 and $172 (and his price increase was the smallest between grades).
That said, players like Sayers and Butkus have more name recognition, and their cards both have pop count drops (21% and 33%, respectively), with their PSA 7s landing in the $750-$1,200 neighborhood.
Other than Namath, only one other PSA 6 rookie card came in above $1,000 (Ditka), while six other PSA 7s did (Butkus, Tarkenton, Dawson, Ditka, Alworth and Biletnikoff).
From a pop count perspective, 11 of the 20 cards dropped from PSA 6 to PSA 7, with Namath’s taking the biggest percentage drop, from 348 to 187.
Ten of the 1970s HOF rookie cards had a worse disparity score than Ray Nitschke’s 3.03.

Methodology:

I used the current Card Ladder values for both the PSA 6 and PSA 7 rookie cards for 20 HOF rookie cards in the 1960s, which I picked based on earlier research identifying the highest-priced collector grade rookie cards among the 49 HOF RCs in the 1960s.
Then, I determined both the price differential (the PSA 6 price divided by the PSA 7 price) and the pop count differential (the PSA 6 pop count divided by the PSA 7 pop count, on the assumption pop counts get smaller as grades increase).
After that, I determined the disparity (the price difference divided by the pop count difference), to see where potential value might exist (since, presumably, the lower the disparity number, the higher the potential value).

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