1575 - Recap: Podcast Episodes 1551-1574

Foreign. Doctor James Beckett. Sports Card Insights. Another recap episode episodes 1551 up through 1574. Right before this, I'd started the beginning of my Father's Day episodes with the Jeremy and Harvey Lee. Got a lot of good feedback from that, but that was in the previous group. So 1551 and 52 were Greg Miller, popular YouTuber midlife cards, and his father Michael and really enjoyed their dynamic. I regret that I didn't see Michael at the National. I did see Greg and it just was a good time of reminiscing about the good old days. And that was a very enjoyable time I spent with him. Next up was Cage Lawyer and his son one-of-one And Cage Lawyer is not his name, but Cage Lawyer Junior. one-of-one a chip off the old block. And my lovely wife Diane got a kick out of one-of-one as being a 13 going on 33. But he's obviously going to be a success in life at the rate he's going. So well done, cage and perhaps Mrs. Cage. These were all two parters. I spent about an hour with each of the father son groups and I've done that each time and if I could fit it into one episode, but it's usually better than that and just a unique thing that I'm really enjoying doing over the years. Last up on the Father Sons was Ben Bush from Waco with his sons Ryan and Sterling. I saw them at the national, did business with them. They've become part of my roster of people that I go through. If they're in a show, I'm going to check in with them and if they've got the stuff they normally do, I will enjoy reconnecting with them and picking out some goodies. Before we get too far. Thanks. Sponsors Thomas Panini, Upper Deck Heritage Auctions, Hugs and Scott Auctions, Mike Stadium Sports Cards, Burbank sports cards, compse.com and Beckett Media. Beckett Grading Beckett Authentication. 1557 was the Tribute to Jack Smalling and I really enjoyed that. I'm really disappointed that there hasn't been more said about that. Thank you, Ben Bram, for bringing it to my attention. I wasn't close friends with Jack, but I certainly knew him and respected him. Spent more time with him in the 70s and early 80s, but his satchel Page story was priceless and it gave me a chance to reminisce about one of my early business partners. My first business partner in the hobby was Gervis Ford, but shortly after that was Denny Yeckes. And Denny also was a big help to Jack as well. Next up was Outtakes From Hobby Hotline with Adam Palmer and Rich Klein. I'm frequently on with Adam and I'm frequently on with Rich. It's an hour long show and you really need to just watch the show. You can listen to the show or watch the show and I patch auto when I'm there. I usually get it from the podcast platform a few days later if I'm not on the show. But it's very topical, it's very timely, and yet I'm trying to bring timeless insights to some of those issues. And anytime I'm on with Rich is a good time. In fact, I think that's the only time I'm on with Rich in this group, and that is a rarity because I really enjoy working with Rich. And the next 25 episodes, Rich Will, I'm sure, get more than his share. Sports card Professor Darren Ostrom, the next one he originally asked me about because he's trying to compile this history of the hobby in the old days, the 80s and 90s, and mentioning about virality and how his virality evolved. Short story, I really felt like virality was based on discoveries and hard to find short prints, low supply kinds of things. And that's my lane one-of-one But I don't know that I aggressively introduced this concept and Darren would be interested in this is that in the junk wax era, there was reverse virality in the sense that the viral story would be, hey, quit buying that stuff. It's going to be cold as ice. And so you can say, hey, this is hot, go buy it. But you can all say, this is freezing cold, you need to move on. And these weren't just trolls telling you, don't do that. This was the voice of wisdom that in the early 90s, cards were everywhere and that was bad. The next one was the other episode with Darren where he really wants to publish a book. And I think it's tricky to publish a print book, certainly to print up a bunch of copies and hope to sell them. So I try to give him some good advice. I've said I'm a pro bono consultant. I generally give strategic encouragement, which is encouraging the person, but not always encouraging the strategies. There's a book in there, but it's hard to make it financially worthwhile. So I try to give him some good ideas of how he could do that. Speaking of virality, which is how we got started is what you want is viral. You want people say, hey, you got to get this book. It's really good. And so how you can increase the virality or have a viral hook. The four great motivators, I think are greed, exclusivity, fear and love. And greed and fear really get people's attention in that you're going to miss out if you don't get this or the FOMO aspect. So I thought if he did a book and it was the hundred I iconic 90s cards and then get PSA to do a registry about it, then people would go out and get the book. And Darren would be great at that. He'd tell some great stories about the sets and the players and the cards. Next up was my friend Philip. I'll say his name now, but he used to live in Dallas. He just said, hey, I'm going to the west coast card show, the old Burbank show, and I want to buy a $30,000 card. What do you think? And I really hadn't thought about that. Doing Venmo and Zelle and PayPal and wiring cards. And then later, as you know, now it's prompted me to contact Brian Gray and say, I know you're doing a lot of big cash deals. What are you doing? So one-of-one I don't think I need to retract anything that I told Philip. And by the way, he did get back with me and the trip went really well and it turned out he spent more than that, so I'm not going to get his last name. But again, he made some great pickups and he thought it was helpful, but he actually had more cash and it did some combinations of things. So I'm so glad it went well. The reason I do the recaps is that in hindsight, I don't want to steer anybody wrong and I didn't want him to have a bad experience. I'm pulling for him to get the card that he wanted at a good price with a transaction that doesn't go south. The Ramblings 8.0 1562 was just me and I hear things on the other podcast that I listen to. Everybody makes mistakes, but the labeling mistakes are problematic and I think they're catchable by Yu-Gi-Oh So I'm hoping that happens. Got into the dynamic pricing and again, I think as you move away from luck towards skill, you ought to be buying things that you could say, I want that card. I think that card is a good deal, not I hope to get something good out of this box that I don't see what's in there. And I had been thinking about the national versus Disney World as soon as my extended family locked in our Disney World trip and I thought the National's coming up but Disney World. The reason I will be reducing my collection is that my heirs all would want to go to Disney World and not go to the national or be involved in the hobby. And so I need to find new homes for my cards doing that. And I'm going to fully enjoy Disney World and I'm not going to be comparing it to my grandkids. Hey, I'd really rather be at the National. I'm not going to be saying that. I'd really rather be right there and enjoying even standing in line. Even standing in line with these grandkids that are wide eyed and excited about seeing the characters. I'm a sports guy but is the biggest superstar for one of my granddaughters. But I don't like standing in line any place. But Disney World makes it good because you're working toward something and again, it's just very exciting. What's in it for me when I go to Disney World I can vicariously enjoy when I went when I was younger at the National I don't have to vicariously do anything. I'm really enjoying it and it would be difficult for me to bring a family member who was not equally into it. That's one of the points I was trying to make. Next was the outtakes from Hobby Hotline with again Adam Palmer and Tony the Tony TJ is online guy who just he works hard. Adam works hard too. Tony had done a lot of research and we tackle some stuff again. I strongly recommend just patch auto when it comes out. Make it part of your Saturday morning routine. It's pretty much every Saturday. I'm on once a month and I listen to all of them. But it's good stuff. And out of an hour I generally pick up 15 minutes worth of stuff. I think. You know what, I want to say this to my audience and make sure you hear it. 15, 1665 I called it Weekend Update but basically I didn't want it to go without saying that I thought I had just experienced not the best show of that weekend because I think the Fanatics Fest was spectacular. But the Dallas Card show and the West Coast Card show, the biggest weekend ever in total, maybe even including Nationals. Although the national that was just over with was spectacular in its own right. And the national did add some fresh dealers which I think is a big positive. And Kyle is not easily able to do that. He is constricted with the space. But it was a great show and I'm looking forward. The next one is in five more weeks. I'll be there. Thank you, Kyle for providing a lot of enjoyment for people in this area. Even with all the competition. He really shined. 1566, one of my favorite episodes. David from Cardboardom had sent me some of his research and I wasn't blown away because I try to keep up with everything, but he went deeper. The mystique of the leaf baseball set from the late 40s has generated books, research, controversy, and I'm somebody who identified this in print as a 48 leaf set. And I've given my reason, so I don't want to rehash that. But David's research was excellent and I had some tweaks to it in the statistical aspects, but just wanted to make sure that we further the knowledge. I love the passion that he had and that other people collect. That said, it's the ugliest, magnificent set you can imagine. The production quality is so bad and I wanted to bring that out in the way that happened. I wasn't going to do an episode I thought I'm going to put in this Franken Wagner episode because I think it's more than just that. It's reinvigorated and taken the Yu-Gi-Oh appeal discussion to a new level. And I am not one that thinks that you get rid of the numbers, just do Yu-Gi-Oh appeal. No, I think the numbers are very helpful for a technical grade. After all, I was co founder of the Beckett Grading. Unless you're in that seat, you have to bring order to the chaos of Here's a card, what's the condition? Is it authentic and all that. And the Franken Wagner really is pushing the limits and for good it's going to get that conversation out there a lot of buzz. Okay. The next three were all about hobby hiring generated by my young friend who found himself looking for a job with some hobby insights. He's done stuff on Whatnot and I've seen him at shows. He didn't want to come on the podcast because I don't know that he thinks his former employer might be listening. But so I'll honor your anonymity, but I'll break it into three episodes, three perspectives. The first perspective was just how do companies looking for people find talent, fill their jobs in retrospect? Now I'm seeing that there's a lot out there for companies looking for more senior positions that's more formalized. But I know for us we looked local if we were looking for somebody and we did a lot of viral and friend of a friend, we put some ads out there, but generally we weren't having random people walking up to our building and knocking on the door. A reader, a listener, a subscriber, a dealer would, would send people our way when we made the opening known and we would promote from within. So if somebody got started, there are a lot of people that now, looking back in hindsight, they got their start not in the mail room per se or in the packing and the receiving shipping and stuff like that, but there are people that work their way up and I'm proud of that. The second one was about, from my friend's perspective, what do you do to find a job? What kinds of things can you do to put your best foot forward? And then the last one, Brett McGrath is doing, I think, excellent work on this. And I didn't see him at the National. I had a long list of people. He was near the top of the list and I just needed to make a more special effort to track him down. And frankly, looking back, I think I know where he would have been a lot of the time. But I want to be of assistance if he's going to escalate. He's got so many irons in the fire. But this is a worthy one. Making a regular occurrence of talking about this because if the hobby is going to grow, we need great not just more collectors. We need to 10x the number of people working in the hobby. 1571, 73 and 74. Coming down the home stretch here, Brian Gray, never at a loss for words. We go way back from when he was a teenager and he follows the beat of his own drum and has done great. He got great stories and there's no way I'll ever have a 15 minute episode that just stops there if I interview Brian. So if I see him and we get on a roll and then I just got to chop it up. So three 15 minute plus episod notes that were enjoyable for me. I know they're enjoyable for Brian. I hope they're enjoyable for you too. So I just try to break that up. We have not overlapping lanes now. We had a lot of overlap 40 something years ago, but now he's in a way different part of the market and I thought that would be helpful for listeners to hear his perspective. And then 1572 sprinkled in there was the national recap again, just detailing my lane. When people are walking around and it's so crowded and the way people are dressed. You have no idea what whether. I don't think, I think you could guess and be wrong whether somebody's got a hundred bucks to spend or a hundred thousand bucks to spend. They're just out there. And you can kind of tell maybe by what tables they're lingering on or whether they're interested in TCGs or breaking or they're a company executive. I guess they're dressed nicer if they're an executive. But even that is not a sure thing. I'm former. I try to be casual and comfortable, but just bump into the different people. You're on your way to someplace and bumping into some amazing people. Some were new friends, but some were people I hadn't seen since the previous year. And it's just terrific. It's the greatest hobby in the world. And the national is the one place, and I think it always will be the one place for the hobby, for the industry. It may be Fanatics Fest as a celebration of the glamour of the industry and how hot it is and how integrated it is into the social and popular culture, but the National, I'm going to be interviewing some of the OGs in the coming weeks that I connected with there. That was me. And then I started publishing and doing price guides and grading and had a company and got kicked upstairs. But I never lost my zeal for collecting. And some of those guys, that's the kind of inventory I had. But I hate being behind a table. I love being out in front of the table. In fact, when I'm doing my dollar box stuff, I want to sit down and be in the aisle, which not every promoter or venue allows. But I had a great time. You know, I've really enjoyed these last episodes, especially the Father's Day things and the tributes. As I said, I got a little Tribute in for Mike Burkus. Great friend and wouldn't have the national. Wouldn't be for Mike and his comrades. So thanks, everybody. Be back again in a couple of days with another fresh episode. The man in the house of God is doing all of that.