1580 - Rich Klein, O'GOAT or GOTE?

Foreign. Welcome Dr. James Beckett Sports Card Insights. Thanks Sponsors Beckett Media, Beckett grading, Beckett authentication comc.com Burbank sports cards Mike Stadium Sports Cards, Heritage Auctions, Huggins and Scott Auctions, Topps Upper Deck and Panini Episode with Rich Klein, my frequent co host, had a podcast session over Zoom and split it into several parts. So you'll be be getting rich Klein week this week. So thanks Rich and thanks listeners. And here it is. I got an email from a guy who's younger than us but old enough to be a dad and he's big into Pokemon and he's wondering if there's a window for Pokemon. You've said the 20 or 25 and some people say 30 year window of what was cool when you were a kid and when you're older. And whether that still applies to TCGs who, who don't have the generational history. Because right now Pokemon Goldin be higher, it Goldin be hotter. He thought I was saying Pokemon didn't have legs. I think it absolutely does have legs. Here's the thing. Pikachu can't break his leg. He can't get arrested for intoxication driving. Even bad news puts you in the Pokemon. But nothing bad can happen. Good can happen. It's a static character. It can be further diluted by new ip, new characters. But my point is there has to be a nostalgia aspect as well as a what's hot right now aspect. And I think Pokemon has that all those original characters and no, they can't break their legs. But if the only news is they set a new high price record, Pokemon all the TCG has plenty of legs right now. And the fact that Fanatics is looking to get into that world more tells you that they think there's legs and and that there's an upward mobility in that market as well. Okay. He specifically used the words long term hold. And I guess I can't say that it's not a long term hold. If long term is 20 years, you get out to 50 years, a hundred years. Because coins and stamps have tested the hundreds of years things cards, maybe G206 old judge T206 is still very popular. You can't look at vintage Pokemon cards and say Yu-Gi-Oh that was produced a long time ago. That's got weathering. No, they all look mint in their rounded corners and they all look like they were printed yesterday. So I think the nostalgia is the tougher play. The lithography and some of the workmanship and artisan stuff when a lot of those cards were done. The artwork done by hand. And early photography. There's a charm I don't think Pokemon can ever have. But long term hold. I don't think it's worse than sports cards or modern sports cards. But you just don't know. The culture already is moving away from stuff. So anything that's physical, people still like LPs. But most people listen to digital music. That's in the cloud. I listen to digital music too. There are some sites I know that play the old air checks which I listen to. And that nostalgic thing with Pokemon and the other TCGs is if you actually played the game just like when you were a champion card flipper, you one-of-one some card flipping contests at the National. That's what we did back in the day. We did card flipping. We did various games with the cards then. The 60s and even 70s are now TCG of the 90s, 2000s. Remember at one of our company lunches, Doug Kail talking about all the different Pokemon characters. And that has to be 25 years ago. Speaking of flipping, it's worth me being frustrated again to mention the story. I came in second in the flipping contest in Houston 1974. Second Prizm got nothing. It was like Glengarry to Glenn Ross, you know, the movie. But first Prizm was a Topps Jackie Robinson High number with vivid red. And it's been memorialized in some hobby publication. The picture of the cards. It wouldn't have changed my life then. But why Goldin I come in first if I was so good, how come I Goldin one-of-one a regional contest? Rich. But you wanted the national younger guy. I lost to a younger guy. You one-of-one at the national, so that is pretty good too. Did you see the interview with Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who is a very intelligent thinker. He was a fabulous athlete, took good care of himself. I think he's really slowing down now. But his concept was the O apostrophe goat. It was just part of an interview and I just excerpted it. I thought the ogoat is one of the greatest of all time. I like this. Trying to be a peacemaker. So an O o goat. It's one of the greatest of all time. And so he said you can have more than one goat now. The problem is the A is all but one of the greatest of all time. And then the other one that I invented is goat G O T E, which is greatest of the era. Which Babe Ruth was the greatest of his era. Shohei Ohtani, right Now, if he keeps going, if he has another 10 years of greatness. He really could supplant Babe Ruth in terms of power and pitching. But the concept of the Ogote from Kareem or My Goat G O T E greatest of this era. It gives opportunity for conversation without rancor. Michael Jordan was the greatest of his era. Pretty unquestioned. Tom Brady. But before that, Joe Montana was the greatest in terms of winning Zebra Bowls. And LeBron James is the greatest of his era. And I'm not of the mind that he's got to one-of-one another championship. LeBron James never should have been in the Finals. They weren't bad. But he took Cleveland Cavalier teams, which in reality, when he was younger should have been nowhere near the Finals. He took them to the Finals. In fact, one year he should have been the MVP of the Finals. Even though the team lost in the Finals. He was that good. And the rules have changed. That's why eras, I think are important. And these hot stove league kinds of conversations are part of the health of the hobby. Okay, Does Pokemon have a similar thing? What's the greatest Pokemon of the era or of the position or of the team or whatever? So I think Pokemon loses some of those layers of fandom that keep basketball, baseball, football, hockey, any of the sports in the public conversation. And part of it is this goat thing of somebody being reminiscent of somebody else. You're not saying that Umbreon reminds me of Charizard or Pikachu or something like that. I don't think they all have characteristics and attributes, but out of my hell. This is a book that was written called the Five Topps of Wealth. I think it applies to life and I think it applies to the hobby. Obviously, the first one people think of is financial wealth. I'm thinking about knowledge wealth. You and I have knowledge wealth. Okay. The book calls that mental wealth that will not be held in high esteem when everybody's got a phone that has Yu-Gi-Oh and the ability to look up anything or come up with a quick summary instantaneously of something you would have had to remember before, and now you just. I can't remember. But Chatgpt or Claude can tell me what it is and the reason it needs to stay. Somebody is wealthy if they're smart, because then they can harness Yu-Gi-Oh instead of being a slave to Yu-Gi-Oh because they don't really know enough to know that Jade is a dude. You and I, when we go through value boxes, we don't need to be comping cards. But I've seen people comp cards out of the quarter box with a Dollar box, it's like, excuse me, especially in the quarterbox, it's a quarter, dude, don't worry about it. If you having to comp a quarter card, you're in the wrong world. Maybe you're seven years old and you've got an allowance in coins. The seven year old I can understand, even though some of these kids get bigger allowances than I ever saw when I was a kid. Okay, the third one, and they're really not in this order that we should appreciate is be wealthy in time. That you have enough free time to enjoy a hobby and enjoy the sport, that it's enjoyable. You're wealthy if you have free time. In many cases now, if you have too much free time, I think that's maybe not so good. But I have free time to enjoy this hobby and delight in it. And so in that respect, I am wealthy. You would not be wealthy if someone else controls your time. It's called being in prison. And it's not a good feeling that you're stuck, you have to do what you have to do and somebody else telling you what to do. And so it's a measure of wealth to have some free time and to be able. No, I don't want to do that or I don't want to do that right now. The next one, again, which also applies to the hobby is physical in the sense that it's hard to think of somebody that's really wealthy in the financial sense. If they have bad personal health, they could be a millionaire that's got stage four cancer and you're going to feel bad for them if the money can't solve their problem and they have a debilitating illness. So most of the people in the hobby have to be physically healthy enough to enjoy it. And I think when we're young, we take it for granted. And as we get older, we realize that our physical health slash wealth is the ability to draw on reserves and to be able to go, I know at the National, I'm waiting for one of these years that I'm going to go there and on Saturday I'm going to run out of gas and I'm going to say, I am getting too old. It hasn't happened yet. So in that sense trying to maintain good physical health, and I know you are too. one-of-one the fifth type of wealth is social. And I think you excel in that. Many people excel in that. I aspire to that because I wouldn't have been at that show if it hadn't been for my friendship with you. And you Said, you might like that, check it out. And I'm really glad I went. I did the early entry vip, which was discounted to less than what the at the door would have been, which is tricky. But by getting there early, I was able to hit a guy who had nobody at his table. And then when you came up, I was still there because it was fruitful. But that was a social connection that makes me wealthy. I always say my pro bono consulting is friends and friends of friends. I get the benefit of your friendship and then I get the benefit of your friends. And same thing with me, the friends of my friends, I'm generally going to like them. The enrichment in this hobby is fantastic because everybody at the national or everybody at Kyle's show or even at this ntx, they're generally singing in harmony off the same sheet music. Last two things. One is the unfortunate scheduling that Kyle has of his next show with Rosh Hashanah. It's a little frustrating because it basically means with the way my schedule works is I'll go Thursday, Friday and that's it and I hope to be done again. It's just frustrating when someone hits one of those things and that's a different type of holiday. But there have been issues that have come up with the Dallas card show, with Halloween, with July 4th. Sometimes you just have to go with when the hotel and the convention center can give you the center. So I'm frustrated but not upset. Yu-Gi-Oh the previous weekend is your show. Then lastly, Alexis Ohanian, the Reddit founder, bought onit with the nil kind of cards. And I'm questioning that business model when you do all the athletes for all the sports of any school, that sounds great. But if you overprint the quarterbacks and underprint the gymnasts, it's just tricky. I think you have to do that. But the intention supposedly is to expand this and make sure that everybody's covered. But if you've got a thousand of each guy or gal on the track and field team, that's not only not a short print, that's like a quadruple print, a thousand, even if they're serial numbered, unless somebody wants to get a hoard of them. So I think it's an interesting business model. And he's Serena Williams husband and he's got deep pockets, he's got vision and he likes to zig when other people zag. So I'm pulling for him. But I think the business model is tricky because not everybody is going to collect the complete set. I guess if you're a Booster for Nebraska. You're going to get all the volleyball gals, but at every school, unless you've got an alumni network that's going to say, we'll take half the sets off the top and send them out to our boosters. And the coke. Fun thing, they can't sign autographs. Actually, I think there are some character voices that can sign autographs or whatever. But one-of-one the undiscovered college nil athlete that's not in the big sports, that goes on to fame in Hollywood or being a newscaster or something, yes, that could have value and that would be speculative, but the manufacturer doesn't benefit from that unless people are taking a position and setting aside those. Again, I'm pulling for this onnit concept that they can do these sell type of products and that the schools will benefit, the players will benefit of the pride of having a card of themselves. I'm just questioning the financial aspect. Even if they're autographed or memorabilia, game used kind of stuff, it's still a lot of moving parts for something that is not going to be probably mainstream. I remember I would talk to agents every once in a while when I was working for you and the prospects in the moment, they were having players sign 1, 2, $3 per autograph for their cards. That's the more expensive people. Sure, but there were a lot of the people who signed for a couple dollars a card when they were prospects and no guarantee of making the majors. Granted, this is 30 years ago, but still the same procedure. One thing I once pitched to somebody I knew at Panini and I think Topps Fanatics could pull this off and I would love them to do it. Before all the players start leaving us, could you imagine a Zebra bowl set where you get autographs of everybody who ever started in a Zebra bowl that's still living. And you can short print the Peyton Mannings and the Joe Namaths and the Patrick Mahomes of the world. And yes, you can put in more of whichever offensive lineman from the Hogs you want to put in Mark May or Jim Lachey or whatever. But you could come up with one heck of a product of yesterday and today. And some of these people would be so thrilled to sign autographs. You can get the older guys cheaper. And the grail would be Tom Brady, who's friends with Michael Rubin. You put less of his autographs in, but you put a few of those in, too. That to me, is the type of onit model on. It's going to flip it upside down. They have to do more of the quarterback and less of the gymnast. And so that's the problem. Yu-Gi-Oh you're right. Last thing here, just to end on because of talking about no names and undiscovered things and goofy names like Logan Ward that I had dinner with at the Hobby Hotline thing, and he just is famous for collecting cards of people with goofy names. You know who sends them to him nowadays? Maybe you. But I. Yu-Gi-Oh one-of-one my point is that one of my things in the dollar box is guys with goofy names now, because I just think there's a market for that, as well as people that don't have very many cards. I'm talking about after the fact, looking in the dollar boxes. And when I see somebody that doesn't have very many cards, there doesn't have to be that much demand. If a guy's only got one card.