Beckett
Beckett Media: A publisher of Hobby-related price guides and websites, and a professional card grading service.
Dr. James Beckett was a professor of statistics at Bowling Green State University, who also collected and dealt baseball cards as a hobby. In an effort to "bring order to chaos," Beckett left his position at Bowling Green to turn his love of sports cards into a business. In the 1970s, Beckett and collaborator Denny Eckes were responsible for some of The Hobby's earliest price guides, which offered more detail on the prices of specific cards than the newsletters that had previously been read by collectors.
Beckett's price guides relied upon information from sellers throughout the United States, who supplied information on customer interest and sales of products. Beckett's guides carry two value labels, one based upon a high value, the other denoting low values. As the condition of collectibles is important in ascertaining their value, Beckett price guides also included a series of definitions for estimating condition.
In Novermber, 1984, Beckett founded Beckett Publications and the first issue of Beckett Baseball Card Monthly (BBCM) was released. Throughout the 80s, BBCM grew in popularity in parallel with The Hobby as a whole, with many a collector treating the price guide section in much the same way investors looked at the stock listings in the Wall Street Journal. At it's peak in the early-90s, BBCM had a monthly circulation of one million copies. Into the 90s, Beckett Publications began adding similar monthly price guides for football, hockey, and basketball.
In January 2005, Beckett sold the company to Apprise Media for $20 million. The company was renamed Beckett Media as part of the sale. On January 26, Apprise hired Peter Gudmundsson as the company CEO; while Dr. Beckett was given the ceremonial title "Senior Advisor."
In 2008, faced with declining sales, Beckett converted its four monthly price guides (including BBCM) into seasonal titles and created a new monthly multi-sport price guide/magazine: Beckett Sports Card Monthly (BSCM). While BSCM's launch was successful, it also earned the company flack from single-sport collectors. Today BBCM, (now known as simply Beckett Baseball) and the other single-sport magazines have gone back to a monthly schedule, except Beckett Basketball which is published bi-monthly.
Currently, Brian Gulledge is the President of Beckett Media. Chris Olds, a former sports writer for the Orlando Sentinel, San Antonio Express-News, and The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News is the current editor of both Beckett Baseball and BSCM, and is assisted by Andrew Tolentino. Susan Lulgjuraj of The Press of Atlantic City and co-author of the popular cardblog A Cardboard Problem is a contributing editor.
beckett.com
Beckett was one of the first Hobby media outlets to embrace the internet. beckett.com went on-line in the Summer of 1995 and allowed collectors to buy, sell, and trade sports cards. The company had affiliations with dealers of collectibles, and its website contained a searchable inventory of products, which consumers were able to buy from the sellers through links on Beckett's site. As of 2005, $13 million worth of products were sold through this system, and 165 dealers had affiliations by the following year.
In 2008, a controversial redesign of the beckett.com website was unveiled. While new features were added, such as the ability to search for any card by year, set, player name, et al, many collectors were not happy with the new, confusing, layout. Other issues included the site's very slow performance, a proposed (but never implemented) "pay-per-trade" system, and the deletion of the popular bulletin boards. Some former users of the beckett.com bulletin boards would go on to form the website Freedom Card Board; while others, fed up with the slow performance of the site, would create Baseball Cardpedia.
Later in 2008, Beckett unveiled "Behind the Scenes," a Wordpress-powered blog that largely replaced beckett.com's news and opinion site.
In February 2011, the current beckett.com website, which fixed many of the bugs of the 2008 site, was unveiled. Behind the Scenes was integrated into the new site.
Beckett Grading
In 2000, Beckett launched a professional card grading service called Beckett Grading Services or BGS. The following year (2001) they launched two more graded services: Beckett Vintage Grading and Beckett Graded Card Reviews. The vintage grading service is also known by its acronym BVG. In late December of 2001 they launched the controversial Beckett Collectors Club Grading or BCCG. It was intended as a complement for their existing grading products. Beckett intended BCCG for the non traditional consumer who would find the lower price point appealing.