Archives for September 2021

Stocks that traded heavily or had substantial price changes Friday:

Broadcom Inc., up $5.78 to $497.68.

The maker of semiconductors and infrastructure software reported earnings that came in ahead of analysts’ estimates. It also issued a strong forecast.

DocuSign Inc., up $15.48 to $310.05.

The maker of electronic signature software issued a strong forecast for its full-year results.

MongoDB Inc., up $105.76 to $507.41.

The database company reported strong quarterly results and raised its forecasts for the full year.

PagerDuty Inc., up $3.08 to $47.38.

The cloud computing company raised its outlook for its full-year results and said it was seeing strong demand from customers.

Yext Inc., down 88 cents to $13.03.

The online brand management company lowered its forecasts for the full year.

Oxford Industries Inc., up 61 cents to $94.15.

The clothing company reported results that came in well ahead of what Wall Street was looking for and raised its full-year outlook.

Alaska Airlines Group Inc., down 73 cents to $57.11.

The airline lowered its outlook for third-quarter revenue, citing an increase in coronavirus cases in recent weeks.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., up 9 cents to $15.48.

The technology company’s earnings came in ahead of analysts’ forecasts and it also raised its full-year outlook.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Oscar De La Hoya’s return to the ring will have to wait after the fighter said he tested positive for COVID-19.

The 48-year-old De La Hoya was scheduled to fight on Sept. 11 against former MMA fighter Vitor Belfort in a pay-per-view event at Staples Center in Los Angeles. It would have been his first fight since being stopped by Manny Pacquiao in 2008.

The former boxing champion posted a video online Friday of himself in a hospital bed, saying he caught the virus despite being fully vaccinated.

“I am currently in the hospital getting treatment and am confident I will be back in the ring before the year is up,” De La Hoya said.

De La Hoya, who has been a boxing promoter since retiring, was to have fought the 44-year-old Belfort at 185 pounds, 40 pounds heavier than he was for his loss to Pacquiao.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Americans have become obsessed with collectibles, bidding up prices for trading cards, video games and other mementos of their youth. The frenzy has brought small fortunes to some, but a deep frustration for those who still love to play games or trade cards as a hobby.

Among the items most sought after — and even fought over — are the relics of millennials’ childhoods. These include copies of trading cards such as Pokemon’s Charizard and Magic: The Gathering’s Black Lotus as well as Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. game cartridges. Some cards are selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars and an unopened Super Mario game recently sold for an astonishing $2 million.

This is more than a case of opportunistic collectors looking to cash in on a burst of nostalgia triggered by the pandemic. Everyone seemingly is angling for a piece of the pie.

The corporations who own franchises such as Pokemon are rolling out new editions as quickly as they can print them; internet personalities are hawking the products and raking in advertising money; companies that tell collectors how much their possessions are worth are doing unprecedented businesses — and in at least one case getting financial backing from a prominent private equity firm looking to get in on the action.

But while some collectors and investors see dollar signs, others complain about the breakdown of their tight-knit communities. Players looking to play in-person again after the pandemic are unable to find the game pieces they want; if the pieces are available, prices have gone up astronomically. Critics of rising prices have become targets of harassment by those who now consider trading cards, comics and video games no different than a stock portfolio.

“Prices are going up, and access is going down,” said Brian Lewis, who operates a YouTube channel under the name Tolarian Community College.

The collectibles frenzy has been fueled partly by a self-fulfilling cycle of YouTube personalities driving hype around collecting and the rising prices of collectibles. This can lead to big paydays as advertisers notice the frenzy stirred up among the influencer’s dedicated followers.

With more than 23 million subscribers, Logan Paul made several videos where he simply opens up boxes of vintage Pokemon cards, hyping the prices he’d paid and bringing in millions of views. Australian YouTube personality Michael Anderson, who goes by the moniker UnlistedLeaf, has garnered millions of views doing similar videos.

“It may be a burgeoning industry, but this is still big business. Brands want to reach these audiences,” said Justin Kline, co-founder of Markerly, an influencer marketing agency. Based on standard industry metrics, he estimates Anderson earns upward to $50,000 in advertising revenue doing unboxing videos, while Logan Paul may earn six figures per video.

The hype has sent collectors scrambling to find out if their Pikachu, Charizard, Mox Emerald or Ancestral Recall cards might be worth a fortune. To do so, they turn to grading services, which have been flooded with orders.

The grading service Beckett’s has effectively stopped accepting any cards to grade unless the customer is willing to pay $250 per card for its ultra-fast turnaround service typically reserved for the costliest collectibles. The turnaround time for basic grading services is more than a year, the company says.

In response to record demand, companies are releasing new versions of the games, including premium products that command higher prices. Whether the momentum is sustainable, at least when to comes to prices, is unknown. Other fads like Beanie Babies or Pogs blew up in the ’90s only to crater, leaving most collectors holding worthless junk. Pokemon and Magic have been around for decades, and have seen surges of interest before.

In the meantime, auction companies and grading companies are making fortunes riding the current speculative frenzy.

Based in Portland, Brian Lewis produces several videos a week under the nickname “The Professor,” in hopes of teaching new and existing players about his favorite hobby, Magic: The Gathering. With more than 600,000 subscribers, he also comments on the state of the game, particularly the issue of rising prices, both on the secondary market (cards purchased from shops) as well as the prices companies are charging for products like Magic.

“I worry deeply that these rising prices will have an impact on the average person’s access to the game,” he said. “There’s a growing class of investors in Magic, and I think it’s not having a positive impact on the game.”

But the frenzy goes beyond trading cards. The U.S. Mint released a 100th Anniversary collection of the Morgan silver dollar, considered by coin collectors to be one of the most beautiful designs ever made, early this summer. The products sold out in minutes.

Three weeks ago, an unopened copy of Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System sold for $2 million, making it the most expensive video game sold. Only a few weeks earlier, a copy of Super Mario 64 sold for a then-record $1.6 million. An unopened copy of Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda from 1987 sold for $870,000 in early July.

Some members of the video game collecting community have questioned whether the prices paid have been exaggerated by the involvement of third parties like Rally, which sells “shares” in collectibles.

Meanwhile, the trading card community is seeing its own lofty prices as players scramble to find coveted pieces for their collection.

A mint condition Black Lotus from Magic: The Gathering’s first set known as Alpha, sold in January for more than $510,000. That price is double what a card in similar condition sold for six months before in July 2020.

Austin Deceder, 25, primarily buys and sells cards on Facebook and Twitter as a middleman between players wanting to get out of their games and new players. Based in Kanas City, he now travels the country buying collections as his full-time job, having to balance his enjoyment of the game with now being involved financially.

Deceder had a used Black Lotus card that he says he sold for $7,000 in September 2020. “Here we are now and the price on that same card has doubled.”

It’s not just the ultra-rare cards seeing inflation. Take the widely available Magic: The Gathering card named “Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer.” The card, depicting a bespectacled monkey sitting on a hoard of treasure, was $30 earlier this summer. The card now sells for closer to $90, Deceder says, as game stores have reopened after the pandemic.

“Now that people can play in person, card prices are moving up again,” he said.

Not everyone is happy, however. Some enthusiasts say the frenzy has brought out the worst in fans and speculators. Nowhere is this more evident than among collectors of Pokemon cards, with its motto “Gotta Catch ’Em All!”

The frenzy in Pokemon began late last year when Logan Paul did his first unboxing videos, which only led other content creators to make similar videos and collectors to bid up prices on cards new and vintage, said Lee Steinfeld, 34, a long-time collector in Dallas who does videos, including unboxings, under the name Leonhart.

“That’s when things went super crazy,” he said.

Since then, boxes of Pokemon trading cards have been routinely sold out at hobbyist shops and big-box retail stores. Fistfights have broken out, requiring chains like Target to restrict the number of packs an individual customer can purchase. The Pokemon Company says it is trying to print as many cards as possible to keep up.

“Pretty much the entire Pokemon community has deteriorated,” said Shelbie, a creator of Pokémon videos under the name Frosted Caribou on YouTube.

While most of Shelbie’s content features unboxings or discussions about upcoming products, one of her most popular uploads was an hour-long video focused on the problems in the Pokemon collecting community since the frenzy began last year. Shelbie, who declined to give a last name to avoid being a target of harassment, said some harassment in the past has come from some of the community’s biggest collectors, particularly when she has talked about prices.

Later this year, Pokemon will be releasing a set to celebrate its 25th anniversary. While typically an anniversary set would garner interest from any collector, this time Shelbie said she’s hesitant.

“The set is going to be amazing. It’s also going to be impossible to get. It’s going to be awful actually,” she said.

But the surge of interest has been good for the corporations and Wall Street.

Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast division makes the tabletop role-playing game “Dungeons & Dragons” as well as Magic: The Gathering. Wizards reported second-quarter revenue of $406 million, more than double year-ago revenue. Hasbro executives told investors in July they would soon be raising product prices. Wizards has introduced premium packs of cards with harder-to-find game pieces that sell for four to five times more than a regular packs.

Wall Street has also ridden the wave of interest. Private equity giant Blackstone purchased a majority stake in Certified Collectibles Group, a company that grades collectibles like trading cards, in July for $500 million. The company has doubled its employee count since last year and is buying another 30,000 square feet of office space, President Max Spiegel said.

Whether that’s good for the players who have long participated in these hobbies is unknown. Long-time collectors likely stand to make money in the future, but those who recently entered these communities may be purchasing overpriced cards hyped by those who stand to benefit the most, community leaders said. It’s not unlike the stock market craze that drove prices of GameStop and other “meme” stocks higher earlier this year.

“There’s now a whole subculture who are using Pokemon as a stock market. I don’t know how those people can look at the community and say this is healthy,” Shelbie said.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A House committee investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection has requested that telecommunications and social media companies preserve the personal communications of hundreds of people who may have somehow been connected to the attack. It’s a sweeping public demand from Congress that is rare, if not unprecedented, in its breadth and could put the companies in a tricky position as they balance political and privacy interests.

The committee, which is just beginning its probe, did not ask the 35 companies to turn over the records — yet. In letters Monday, the panel asked them to confidentially save the records as part of the investigation into the violent mob of former President Donald Trump’s supporters who stormed the building that day and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

Republicans immediately criticized the request, which includes Trump himself, along with members of his family and several Republican lawmakers, according to a person familiar with the confidential request and who requested anonymity to discuss it.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who is hoping to become speaker of the House if his party wins the majority in the 2022 elections, directly threatened the companies, tweeting that “a Republican majority will not forget” if they turn over information.

A look at what the panel is asking for, why lawmakers want it and the potential legal issues surrounding the request:

WHAT THE COMMITTEE WANTS

The committee sent letters to the 35 companies Monday, part of its larger probe into what happened that day as the Trump supporters beat police, broke through windows and doors and sent lawmakers running for their lives. The letters request that the companies “preserve metadata, subscriber information, technical usage information, and content of communications for the listed individuals” from April 2020 to Jan. 31, 2021.

The request includes the “content of communications, including all emails, voice messages, text or SMS/MMS messages, videos, photographs, direct messages, address books, contact lists, and other files or other data communications.”

The panel released the letters publicly but withheld the list of individuals, who Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said last week numbered in the “hundreds.”

The companies that received the letters range from social media giants Facebook, Twitter and TikTok to telecommunications companies like AT&T and Verizon to conservative and far-right platforms Parler, 4chan and theDonald.win.

The panel has also requested that 15 social media companies provide records about misinformation, foreign influence and domestic extremism on their platforms related to the 2020 election. But the requests to preserve personal communications raise unique questions about the relationship between the technology companies and Congress.

WHY THEY WANT IT

Democrats have said they will examine all aspects of the attack — including what Trump was doing in the White House as it unfolded. Several Republican lawmakers talked to the president that day, and many of them have strongly supported his lies about widespread fraud in the election.

In the days immediately following the attack, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that some Republican lawmakers might have been connected to the far-right supporters who stormed the building or were involved in the planning. There is no evidence that’s true, but Democrats have said that they will look into all possible leads.

In the letters, the committee wrote that “the inclusion of any individual name on the list should not be viewed as indicative of any wrongdoing by that person or others.”

GOP PUSHBACK

McCarthy issued a blistering statement on Twitter Tuesday evening, saying the Democrats’ efforts “would put every American with a phone or computer in the crosshairs of a surveillance state run by Democrat politicians.”

He also said that if the companies turn over private information they “are in violation of federal law and subject to losing their ability to operate in the United States.”

It is unclear what federal law the companies would be violating and how they would be subject to losing their ability to operate. McCarthy’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

TO COMPLY OR NOT TO COMPLY?

If the committee does eventually ask for records, the decision on whether to comply, even partially, could be difficult for companies that want to cooperate but are also wary of turning over private communications of lawmakers to their political rivals. And because the request would be from Congress, and not law enforcement, the issue becomes more complicated.

Telecommunications and technology companies field requests all the time from law enforcement and the courts to turn over private information, and they often comply. But even though the committee has the power to subpoena, the calculation on whether to cooperate with Congress is often as much of a political question as it is a legal one. Democrats are in the majority, but Republicans could take over with a favorable election map in 2022. There are also regulatory and public relations factors. It’s highly likely that the issue could be tied up in courts.

“It’s as much about the law as it is about the optics,” says G.S. Hans, a law professor at Vanderbilt University who specializes in First Amendment law and technology policy. He says the companies are likely “talking about this from the general counsel’s office but also from their lobbying arms, because I think it’s both things at once.”

The sweeping preservation request from Congress, he says, is “a new situation” for many of them.

Most of the companies on the list contacted by The Associated Press did not respond or declined to comment on the request — including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Twitch, Twitter and TikTok.

Two companies, Reddit and Facebook, sent short statements saying they will comply with the committee’s requests.

___

Associated Press writers Barbara Ortutay in Oakland, California; Tali Arbel in Phoenix; Michael Liedtke in San Ramon, Calif.; Matt O’Brien in Providence, Rhode Island; and Joseph Pisani in New York contributed to this report.

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