1550 - Recap: Podcast Episodes 1526-1549

Foreign. Doctor James Beckett Sports Card Insights. This is a recap episode episodes 1526 up through 1549. So that's what I am doing. I can amplify, I could correct if or augment in some way. But first of all, thanks sponsors Beckett Media, Beckett grading, Beckett authentication, compse.com, burbank sports cards, Mike Stadium Sports Cards, Heritage Auctions Hugging the Scott Auctions, Topps, Upper Deck and Panini. So starting right off here, cash grabs 1526. Here we are in the middle of the World cup which I won't say again if you, if you love the World cup and you love soccer, I still don't think you love the exorbitant prices. It seems like that a lot of things related to the World cup cost in terms of the tickets and the transit and all that and we have games here in our area. It's very exciting. But there are a lot of high prices and if you think like a business, you don't just think in terms of gross profit, you think in terms of net profit. I think FIFA's doing very well with that. But again they have once every four years to, to do this quote unquote cash grab. So anyway, the problem with cash grabs I try to spend a whole episode on is that you, you just say, well go to the alternative. I don't appreciate that. I'm not gonna. Well, what is the alternative? Well, the opportunities to watch on TV or, or to say no, I'm not going to participate in that. And I don't think that's easy for a hobby based and industries that have emotional connection. It's difficult. And so it does feel bad. I'm not denying that. The biggest cash grab I'm accused of I think is BCCG from back 20 plus years ago. And really I've yet to hear criticism for somebody that was running a business and making payroll to turn down a purchase order for a budget service. A budget service that would not be for everybody. Although some of the dealers I've talked to have done well with it. They don't oversell it. They, they admit that if it's a BCC, if it's BCCG10, that's mint or better, if it's BCCG8, that's excellent or better. And so when, when we talk about the tldr, the too long didn't read, apparently that applies to just the words on the flip. You need to look at the number and read the words. And so when you don't, I feel bad about that. But it's right there in I think all caps. So we tried to be truthful in the packaging and as I said, it was an alternative. Cash grabs frequently are when you're the only game in town and you goose up the price. So anyway, so much for that. And then the next one was another tricky one which is the definition of goat. And I've tried to. I think it's great to be discussing goats and it's, it's opinion based, but I just. I think you could have goats plural, but it's difficult to say that the goat of the era of the 80s was Joe Montana because he's been supplanted by Tom Brady. And whether Tom Brady has ever supplanted, I don't know. But so if you're the at in goat is all time. So Joe Montana is no longer the goat, but he was the goat until he was supplanted. So I think dialogue and arguments about goats are great and basically you could have a local goat, you could have a positional goat. Bill Mazeroski may have been the greatest of all time defensive second baseman and he actually had one of the greatest of all time World Series moments back there in 1960. The other thing which nobody likes but you could have goats with qualifiers, not that they're off centered or have markings on them, but you know, there's more to the story. They were the goat of something at some time and you could qualify that and it, it's just your opinion and you know, second place goats. I think there's a lot to be said for somebody that's second, comes in second in the MVP every year, every year for 10 years in a row and, and comes in second to Sh Otani again that would mean Sh. Otani is the goat, but the second best guy is very, very worthy. 15:28 Cons continuing kind of on that stream of what's definition of being iconic And I. I'm emphasizing strong visual impact, compelling narrative em connection and I think sometimes we, we just think it boils down to expense and rarity and in reality I think boils down to both if it's too available, even if it's expensive or if it's rare but not very expensive. So I think you really have to have both. Again, good to have a dialogue about cool stuff. These 1529 was the preview before I went to the Toronto Sports Expo and I, I offered five pushbacks which I really thought I'm going to be spending some time with Jeremy Lee and other content creators up there and other serious Hobbyists that might listen to the podcast, that really didn't happen. I mean, but I've, they're all topics I've, I've, I've discussed and, and that I'll be coming back to. You know, I appeal is here to stay. Grading consistency. If you think AI is going to make grading completely consistent, well, I, I will. I'll be speaking to that. And then the market manipulation, that stuff when the market manipulators leave, that means we have a dead hobby. So be careful what you. What you wish for. 15:30 were some ramblings about. I think they were my own ramblings about. Yeah, they were my. Oh, 1530 was the mailbag. Yeah. That. Which was filling up with autograph requests and somehow after I called that out, it's died off. So I don't mind getting autograph requests but you know, when they're boilerplate, a little bit frustrating. I also used that mailbag to talk about some products that I'd gotten from Panini and Upper Deck and, and you know, to try to discuss that in an interesting way. And since then I've gotten another hobby box from 2526 upper deck hockey. The extended. Okay, it's that time of year came out earlier this month. And you know, it's, you know, it's. We, you kind of know the drill. If you're a collector of Upper deck hockey, it's 12 packs of 12. The one. The SRP for this one is 225 a box. You're going to get six young, young guns. So young bun a young gun in every other pack. And. I, it's, I don't know that you care about me saying every single card I got in the box or even the. You get two or three good cards in every 12 card pack. They're, they're notable. You get almost enough to have a complete set or a good start in a set. So. But what I wanted to point out is that the, for all these products, the, the secondary market price, when something comes out, you want it to stay the same or maybe go up a little bit. But the way it goes up a little bit is if some of the inserts catch on. The, the way it goes up long term though is, and even, even short term is the perception of the rookies. You can get some tough cards of good players of veterans, but it's the rookie crop that frequently drives that. But not just the rookie car. The, the current and future prospects. And to try to figure that out, look at the past. So you look at the past and see how previous products have done. And sometimes they start high and then go low and then come back again as the. As. As the young players emerge. Anyway, thanks, Upper deck, for that 50, 31 ramblings with rich. Let's see. Oh, well, I'll just point out one thing. Rich and I agree on almost everything, but we really added, you know, a. We don't fully agree on the Broder cards, on the unlicensed cards. And that was interesting because I totally respect Rich's opinion and I think he respects mine. It's just that, again, you've had the passage of time and that's something that's happened to you. 1532 was after I got back from the Toronto show and I just, you know, I was saying 90% of what I got was hockey. That is way more than 90%, 95%. I mean, I got a handful of baseball and football and basketball cards, but I got, I got a lot of hockey cards. And that was exactly what I wanted to happen. The big issue here, which I don't think I tip my hand here because I haven't made my decision, is will I be going back next spring? I'm not going to go in the fall. I won't be going this November for sure. But the spring, the weather was nice. I will let you know. I will let you know. 1533 was the annual, actually sometimes more than annual, with Ray Fonio, Ray from Philly with the 2026 baseball card hall of Fame. I've enjoyed interacting on that. I hope all of y' all voted. It's. It's a worthy effort. It's getting tougher every year. And as I said, I maybe, maybe I should think instead of that I'm out of sync, is that I'm just early. The players I'm voting for are. Don't get in right away, but they maybe eventually will get in. And that will make me happy because there's some great cards here. The ramblings with rich.1534. This one was a little bit more about Rich. I mean, Rich ads sends me some stuff every once in a while or when I see him, we'll talk about. And I said, well, let's talk about the next time we do an episode together. And so a lot of those were about Rich and his experience. I learned. So I learned a little bit. I knew Rich loved music. We had a. We had a music trivia contest in the company. And I could, as I've said, I could it. You know, Rich eventually left me in the dust I was a finalist but nobody's gonna be rich on that. 15:35 Some more of Rich's accumulated topics. You should dig into those if you like. Well, whatever. I mean it's always interesting. 15:36 the education episode I'd been wanting to do this was accumulating some thoughts about that. Realizing I'm a lifelong learner and many of people that I really connect with are lifelong Lear. They want to learn, they want to learn new things. They will learn about the past. It's a way to stay mentally sharp. I believe the brain is a muscle and I am trying to have a workout in the hobby that is making it more of a hobby of skill than a hobby of luck for me and I hope it's that way for you too. The other side of the coin in 1537 the aspect of math, you know, the understanding math and really I think, I mean probability and statistics. I really would encourage everybody to take a short course on statistics or probability and you can do it on whatever Khan Academy used to do stuff. There's, there's certainly a lot of opportunities to learn statistical and probabilistic reasoning so. And the other thing that came out of that, I realized that I. I may have said this before but I, I figured out I'm pretty good at estimating how long something takes. If it's a hobby related task, whether it's sorting cards or whether it's going through a dollar box. I can kind of see that there's five dollar boxes and that's going to take me 50 minutes. 50 minutes if that's. If they're of and configured in a certain way and that's a skill also that is valuable to me at least. 1538 Recapping the Waters Creek show I had just been to the Toronto Sports Expo and I was not tired. It is another great experience. I used to go at least once a month to shows, Kyle's shows or every other month. But to go to a show two weeks before, no problem. I was energized. I did miss Thursday. Don't like that. But you know, sometimes it's not like life gets in the way. Life is life. The hobby is, is secondary to life. It's a part of my life but it's not, it's not my mainspring. But I will say this. I. I set aside the dates as soon as Kyle announces when the future shows are. I put them on my calendar and try to program around them. Like I said, occasionally I'll miss a Thursday if something comes up. But I am really trying to book that weekend. 1539 was continuing on with the education. I took an upper deck SPS box and tried to break it down in a way and I tried to keep it simple, tried to round off the numbers. But you could apply that to almost any product. That type of reasoning now you can get thrown off a little bit because hobby and retail and you don't always know exactly that stuff but trying to come up with approximately how many cards are out there and there's some YouTubers that do that too. But trying to present it to my audience. 15:40. 15:40 was the dinner conversation broken into three parts. It was really a couple hours man. It was a great conversation. But it is the worst audio ever and it is totally my fault. In fact, if I blame it on the audio engineer, that's me. If I blame it on the editor, that's me. So I love being hands on with the podcast but I made a poor decision in terms of the venue to have seven great guys to bat around some interesting topics. And I, I'm not. I don't delegate to another person and I don't delegate to AI. I wanted to make sure the content came through and it was a challenge. It was a challenge because of the very poor audio. 1541 was a rambling for me. Again just accomplishing or accumulating some of the topics that have come up where people. Again, I encourage you. It's Dr. James Beckett gmail.com I don't always. I rarely give a personal response but I frequently will bring it up in the podcast. So your question or comment frequently, not always. I can't promise that but is. Is discussed and if not answered at least addressed. But the main thing I, I tackled there and this came up the announcement that I was. Had taken on an advisor, a formal advisory role with Oyas and I was kind of overblown. They were making it a bigger deal than it is now. By big deal I mean my involvement is not that big a deal. But I am very bullish on the potential of that company. And it, like I said, it's way more than a, than a card company. It's. It's. It's. They have some exciting technology. Let's leave it at that. The. Let's see the, yeah, the, the second part of the audio. I wish I could say the audio got better. It didn't get better. It just was. Was just bad. We were, we were outside next to a, next to a busy highway where they were doing drag races. What could go wrong? Did go wrong. I looked into the cost of cleaning up the audio, but not only was it very expensive to do that, I would have lost a lot of the content. And so I thought, well, I think some people are going to skip it and I regret that. But it's better than not putting it out there at all. 1543 outtakes from the hobby hotline always encouraged that. The main thing that came up in that I think the middle part of that discussion and again it's a whole hour show. I'm just grabbing 15 minutes mainly of my own sports card insights but it was on the the safety concerns for shows and I just, you know Beckett the company now is part of collector's holdings and collectors motto what Nat Turner always says he wants to make it safe, easy and fun. I push back a little bit on the easy because I think hobbies are supposed to be a challenge, a quest. So I don't want to make it too easy, but I definitely want to make it safe. And when you go to a show the hobby needs to be a safe environment for kids and everybody and fun goes without saying. 15:44 the last segment of the of the hobby dinner conversation with these it was just great but unfortunately you had to be there and the the ultimate test for me is I tried to listen at double speed to the edited podcast and I could understand but then again I was there and it still was difficult. So again my sincere apologies. 1545 and 46 were about fixing grading. I wound up doing two. I didn't plan to do two but I wanted to get into some concepts of dynamic pricing and rock hard review expansion loyalty points and separate cues treating these especially the TCGs differently. So I, I these are things that we thought about when I was in charge with the BGS of getting it off the ground. But PSA is the the big dog in this in that part of the hobby and I hope they can continue improving to be able to serve the hobby because they're a necessary part. And then 1546 and through it all I had not been actually I do listen to Joe Davis's podcast but before he announced what he announced I actually called him out in a very positive way that he can be a positive solution because he's already handling so many cards from all the companies. So big fan of Joe Davis and got baseball cards and sounds like he's I just think it was obvious the opportunity that he had and some others like him although he's one of the top guys that's doing this. But I didn't know, but Joe, I anticipated some of the things you're doing and I hope you do great with it. 1547 was comparing grading to stakes. My disappointment in getting a steak from an otherwise good place but with the same grade. And I just. Not everybody has picked up on that in the way I intended. Think about grading cards and thinking that AI is a panacea. We just need to AI. Well, you want to do AI for grading your stakes. I mean, I just think that's, I just think we need to lighten up on the AI. We need to use the. Use AI where we can. But I don't want an AI graded stake. I want an inspector to look at the stake and, and in context and, and then lastly on grading, especially with a stake, is it, you know, I want accuracy. People say, well, yeah, you just need to have consistency or you just need to have conspiracy transparency. No, I want accuracy. I want to pay for what I get. And it may be that the, the consistency is that all the Tom Thumb stakes that are prime are the ones that the central market rejected because they don't look as good, you know, and, but again, so transparency and consistency. I want accuracy. 1548 and 49. The last two. Here were the beginning of my annual father and son episodes. I started out with Harvey and Jeremy Lee Harvey's about my. We're contemporaries. And so it was really. That was a lot of fun. And the next. I've got more coming after this and those will be great too. But start off with Jeremy because that was fresh because I had just gotten to know Harvey some at the Toronto Sports Expo. But one thing that did not survive the cutting floor was a long discourse we had about estate planning. And Jeremy has young kids. And so in the context of that I don't have young kids anymore. I have young grandkids. And that I've, when I've done my estate planning episodes, I've never really thought that that's actually, I mean, it's a good thing because maybe some of your grandkids will be interested. But even if they are, it's too early to tell when they were. They're really young and so it's a new challenge. But every kid wants to, well, your, your kids, your grandkids, you want to be a blessing to them. And it's not a blessing to give them a bunch of cards. They don't know, they don't know how to sell them. It's better to, to just sell them. And if one kid, you have 10 grandkids and one of them is into collecting. What are you going to do? Give them one tenth of the cards? If you give them 100 of the cards, you've got a pretty potentially significant offset. So I didn't, that's a one minute treatment of what Jeremy and Harvey and I talked about. But you know, when my, I did not in, in some sense I got my, my goudies and play balls that I got from, I say I got them from my dad, but really it was when I was over at my grandfather and grandmother's house and it was only because those, that box was worth about $40 which was again like I've said, equal to birthday plus Christmas from, from my grandparents who were certainly upper middle class and, and, and you know, gave us nice presents. I didn't get a present. You know my other siblings got the presents. My cousins I'm sure got presents. So I'm, I'm okay on that but that it's trickier now when the cards are worth so much more. So any rate can't solve all that. But oh, and lastly just on Jeremy's, on the last part of that talking about Jeremy's big Shoeless Joe purchase and he, he brought up two comments that I think relate what happens in the hobby and why this is the greatest hobby of all time is that he, he was framing mistakes as tuition which I think is the analytical part and then he was emphasizing that he had no remorse selling his really good cards. Not his best cards, he kept his very best cards but that next group which some really terrific cards in there to fund that grail card. And so the emotional side of not having remorse, the regrets are if you got remorse and the regrets are if you didn't get the to it do the tuition pay the price to be prepared to as Jeremy said to trust his gut more than the wisdom of the crowd. Anyway, thanks everybody. Still enjoying this and hope you're enjoying the hobby too. National's coming up. I will see many of you there.