Jeremy Lee and co host Joe Poirot stay locked on two of the toughest topics in the hobby right now: shill bidding and the latest PSA controversy.

Jeremy continues unpacking the listener email from a former prosecutor who feels that phrases like “essence of shill” normalize fraud. The chat weighs in, with some agreeing and others arguing that honest talk about how widespread shilling really is is exactly what protects newer collectors. Jeremy pushes back on the idea that he is endorsing anything, explaining why he refuses to pretend the market is clean while still choosing to participate in it.

From there the conversation moves into what “going after” bad actors actually looks like. Jeremy walks through his work with multiple auction houses, including REA, to tighten up terms and increase transparency around active reserves, non paying bidders, and house bidding. Joe raises the distinction between true shill bidding and active reserves, and they dig into why transparency and education matter more than empty outrage, especially when it comes to giants like eBay.

The back half of the segment shifts to the PSA buyback story that has the hobby buzzing. Jeremy and Joe react to reports that a batch of PSA 9 Pokémon cards sold through the PSA offer program later appeared as PSA 10s under the same cert numbers. Even allowing for missing facts and possible explanations, they walk through the optics, the conflict of interest concerns, and what it means when 11 out of 30 cards can swing from a 9 to a 10 after the fact. The bigger question becomes grade reliability itself and how much subjectivity collectors are really willing to live with.

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