Goodbye Fanatics Fest, Hello National! | The Hype #445

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We're going to have some free breaks. We're going to have an opportunity to win a huge card. Come say hi because we got a lot of stuff going on. We have a few of our new limited shirts and of course we're throwing the road to the national party. And I'd love to see my Hype podcast listeners there in person so we can meet and you can tell us, you know, how we fix the show if we need to kick Dan off, stuff like that. So you're gonna love this episode if you're like, Dan shouldn't be on the Hype. Well, well actually no. Be on the, on the show later on. But yeah, but we don't want that. We, we want to be one big happy family. And I gotta say. Or you can say that you just hate the Rams and you gotta. He's gonna stop on his Rams. Hot takes. That's what, that's, that's what we really need to hear over at the, you know, the national. The party of the National. It's gonna be Thursday, July 30th, 30th, 6 to 9pm local time in Chicago at Pete's Dueling Piano Bar. If you guys are familiar with the layout of the that area, there's that big shopping center. I can't remember the name of that shopping center. It's a plaza where it's got a bunch of places to eat and play and they got. If you're staying in the area, right? Cause there's like what, like nine or 10 hotels right there within walking of Donald Stevens Center. So if you're right there, easy to get to, you know, uber necessary. You just walk down, walk from the. From the convention center, if that. I might be overselling it. That's if you're walking slow. Yeah, exactly. Which I get it. After a day of the national, you might be walking slow. I'm so excited to be going to the national again. I took a year off last year, actually. Last couple of years, I want to say. So I'm excited to get back out there and see everybody and the party. This is what, four years in a row now? Fourth straight year, Fourth annual party at the national. So. And it's just growing every year. I love that it's now, you know, when we put it out there, the amount of emails and messages I got when we put that message first up and people being like, I'm stoked. It's the thing. I look forward to hearing people in person. I think you guys heard people at For Access being like, can't wait for the party. It's just really cool to see something that you guys said. We've all started here four years ago of like, what if we do this every year? And now it's like our. Our community looks forward to it as much as we do. And so thank you guys for making it something that we look forward to doing every year and something that you guys look forward to. I can't wait. Absolutely. It's a good time. And, you know, we get to do this with you guys. And irl, that is like the key word I've been hearing in real life. So you guys listen to us and digitally and, you know, we communicate digitally. So it's nice to be able to have you folks in person. And, you know, these are longtime fans that love hanging out with once a year. And we'll see you guys there. I mean, we're going to have. We, man. We're going to have Bub City barbecue. So it's. It's going to be. And there's some more special surprises to be announced later. We're going to do our raffles. There won't be karaoke this time, but we have like two expert dueling piano bar. Bar artists that can, like, play any song. So it's going to be fantastic to have that in the background. A big group effort. But I. I was still today. Yes. If you are feeling like, you know what? I still. My star needs to shine. I think you can still get up on that stage during our private hours, which we will have it from 7 to 9. Private piano carry, not karaoke. Private piano playing where everyone gets to sing along. And like I said, get your, get your shine on, go up on stage and you know cc, yeah. We were there last year and Joe, who will be from Mojo Bear Gaming, will be there again this year. He got up on stage to dance to Coolio's Gangsters paradise. So. So when I say they can play any song, they can play any song. So it's. It's gonna be awesome. And one of the things that is we're not gonna be able to have anybody under 21. But we. There is a place to hang out right outside for them if you, you know, you have to bring a little bit of the older ones. I also wanted to do some free breaks for you folks that are going to the party for your kids. So if you're like, I can't bring my kid in this year. Yep. We're going to do some free breaks for them as well. Back in, you know, the normal hours of the national at our booth. Yeah. So that should be fun. That'll be really exciting. I can't wait. It's going to be a blast. Yeah. Last time you were there, Joe Staley was in a crab costume. That's. Oh, man. That's right. Gosh, what a highlight. Joe Staley singing Under the Sea brought the house down. It's. These are the 10 things you get with the Mojo Break party. And of course our good Friends with Sports Cars nonsense going to be there as well. Co hosting and saw a lot of names, a lot of familiar names there that are coming through. So very excited about it. But Fanatics Fest. You know what, here's my main takeaway from Fanax Fest, a show I was not at Everyone's Voice. You weren't there irl? Yes, I wasn't there irl, but I was there in spirit. But everyone's voice is intact. Everyone's. Ah, mine's about 70%. But you know what though? Usually everyone comes back and it's like 30%. Well, you know what, it is pretty good. There was. It wasn't as many. We didn't do any breaks this year really, like we have in the past. That's when I think your brain is trained to talk a little louder. I did like four or five social media videos and you know, naturally with the sound in the background, your voice goes a lot higher. That's why it gets thrown out. That probably lack of water. But mainly it's like you throw a camera in front of me and it's like, I got to talk louder. Yeah. And I don't really necessarily need to talk that loud, but it's just the ambiance of noise around me. Like the WWE stage that was literally right by us that unfortunately I have to take Cult of Personality, which is one of my favorite songs from Living Color. I have to put it on pause for, I don't know, three or four months because I think I heard that song 155 times this weekend. So. Because it's an, it's a wrestler entrance. Right. And it was, the whole thing was fans could go up there, do their own wrestler entrance. And I'm sure, obviously a very popular song. Was it CM Punk? CM Punks, Yeah. So everybody would. It's cool experience. Believe me. That's like top notch. I know. Justin Bieber came out. It's part of the Fanatics games as well, was the wrestler entrance stage. So it was one of the events. Justin Bieber came out and every time you heard a big roar, it was probably a celeb that was on stage doing some wrestler entrance. But yes, Living Color, Cult of Personality, one of the all time great songs, is now out of my playlist. You'll be waking up in a cold sweat. You heard again. Yeah, so. And man, I feel like they've used that song for a lot of things. It's a great jam. Very underrated band. So, yeah, the main thing, I mean, just, just watching it from afar and seeing, I mean the FOMO was real for sure. And seeing the amount of star power there. And I feel like every single year since this show, now three years in, I felt like year one, the takeaway was that was number one. They had to make it as big as possible. Can't get any bigger. Well, year two felt like it felt like at least as big this year. I mean, it felt like watching it, this was on another level. It was astronomical. On a completely different plane of existence, how much bigger it felt. Yes, it definitely a collision course with, of course, the World cup final, which is why this event was timed with that. Because normally I think they're going back to June to have this event, as June is a landing spot from what I hear. But you had the collision course of that. You, you just had fanatics. I will say, like, I don't think there's a company that markets better than fanatics. I mean, I, I, I went, I got back from obviously in a dream world at the show with everything going on. I mean, I, I literally call it a dream world. And I wanted to come on here and be critical. Believe me, I wanted to. But there really, there was like, I'm just trying, I'm trying to find a reason to be critical of the show. But we can, we could also discuss on why it's not the national and, and you know, why they are two different shows. But I got back to the hotel and on Sports center they were showing clips of the show. They had Trey Young ripping the, the New York Knicks jersey on stage. Like the moment we're talking about like got back after dinner, like 10 o' clock and there was like just more highlights of fanatics fest. So insane. You know, obviously the shtick of Brady slapping Paul. So there was just all these moments wrapped into this event. And while you were there, there was just these moments happening all, all around you. Things were happening. I gotta say if they are thinking about, if that is true that they're thinking, okay, we're gonna go back to doing it in June next year. Frankly, I don't know why they would. I know the World cup final was this weekend and that's a big reason why they tried to coincide with that. But like you have a gap in that All Star break, MLB All Star break week. Yeah. Where there is very little on the sports calendar. It's kind of the perfect moment to be like we can get all the eyeballs can be here. Obviously you can get baseball players that maybe wouldn't necessarily come because I saw there was obviously Aaron Judge was there and like there was huge. You know, there was Dodgers who were walking the show floor. So like. And then on top of that, all of the other massive celebs and everything. But you had this window of attention in the sports world where it's like if you want to maximize the amount of eyeballs, the amount of people who want to get in on it, it's kind of the perfect spot to have a show like this. If you are trying to be Sports Comic Con, I don't disagree. But my, my, my, my having to travel next week now to Chicago, I get that because you know, there's a lot going like twice would be like, well, one of them's got to move. One of us got 100% because it's exhausting. But I mean that doesn't speak for the majority of the population. So you know, there's a handful of us that are in this, you know, like. Well, not a handful. There's a lot of us like in the different businesses that are, are doing both. Right. And you know, we actually did the west coast card show as well. Right. So we had three in the span of two weeks to, to attend to and staff and, and that's the challenge for us. But I get what you're saying because there's just like less sports going on right then and, but next year we won't even have the World cup to lean on. So maybe it is, you know, the right timing and you get, you get NBA, you get NFL players to want to come out there because they're not necessarily camp now. Well, maybe, maybe some of the football players did go to OTAs though. So you get maybe a little less if you're in July. There wasn't a ton. Yeah, I was going to say in terms of like active football players, there was a few out there. Right. But not as many. So maybe you have it in June. Might be a little easier to get. Might be a little bit more in the off season for football. But. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I get your point. Like if you were just looking at from our perspective in the trading card sports cards world. Yeah, it's tough from. So I guess it's, that's what fanatics has to do. And obviously I think from what it looked like a much bigger presence of the hobby at this year's show, it just felt like there was more table set up. I mean again that, again, I'm talking from sport, from social media perspective of like seeing deals go down and seeing these big displays on, on the show floor. It felt like I saw more of that this year than I did last year. And part of that might just be just people strategizing and being like, what are the kind of things we need to put out there? Well, I think, you know, everybody has, as you know, you, you kind of surround yourself with success in a sense that you see how much social media is coming out from fanatics. You see, you know, Card Collector 2 and all these guys. And we've, and we've tried this approach for the last three years. We do a lot of social media too, but I think that's even heightened even more now. So especially if your algorithm and social media like mine and yourselves is hobby related, you're seeing all of it. You're seeing 10 times more than you would on a regular random Saturday or Sunday or Friday. Right. But I think it is actually kind of the small part of the show if you're walking as a consumer. And this was the first year I noticed like Starbucks had a huge presence. They, they had free drinks every day, different ones, which I'm not a, like A big Starbucks guy. I go in there and get my same coffee. I don't really try to try other things but they had like new refresher drinks that I believe they were kind of testing there. They look good. And you. I had the blue one and it was, it was really good. And they were giving out free 10 gift cards that were in the design of popular trading cards. Like the opichi one that I got. There was like an 86 Fleer I believe there was like a 52 Bowman design. There wasn't any copyright infringement because they were using just the border and you could collect those every day. A different one every day. And I believe our social media girl Sophia did it and she got a custom like Starbucks jacket for free. She did. So that was a huge activation. They had. They had like nine athletes coming in and serving coffee. So it's like you see Starbucks. Then there's Target, you know in there, there's at and T has a booth in there. Tick Tock Shop has a, has a booth in there. So there's a lot of. Then of course you know, Nike Adidas, you know Premier League, F1, Mitchell and Ness, you know all these other companies also that are sports related that are there and showing off their things having limited drops. So but the cards were like in the center where we were. And then there was more like bigger based breakers and card shops that were on the other side where like V friends were. They had like Suncoast and backyard and Card Vault had like big booths out there. Swish. And then in our areas because more like just your common selling singles and wax. Yeah. But from a selling standpoint, I will tell you guys this. I gave our team a goal of a pretty lofty amount to sell singles and boxes to the point where I didn't think we would get close. Like the chief of strategy was like I don't know man, I don't know if we'll be able to hit that. And we exceeded that number. Hell yeah. So that's like, that's the crazy aspect of it is it's like it's not known as a card show but we felt like there was just so much commerce going on. Yep. I think you too people are feeding off the energy of just like they're seeing again speaks to like what we're talking about. Like it's whether you know at a certain point the reality, what you could say, oh, it's all online is not reality. Social media is not reality. But like people do see that. They're like, well I went in, in on the action as well. Oh, that table's got cool things that I didn't notice. And it, it attracts everybody. So, yeah, people want to get in on it and they don't want that fomo. They want, they, they want to feel like, you know, I made a big deal too, you know. Right. That's exciting that, that's, it's becoming that. But yeah, I mean, it, it just looks like this is, this is firing on all cylinders. It does feels like it's not stopping the momentum for this show. Yeah. And what I really, my biggest takeaway with all of this too, is that there was probably the most amount of youth that I had ever seen in my. At any show. And I've been going to show since 2013. And I would tell you from like 2013 shows to 2020, no kids. Very rarely if the kid was tagged along with his dad and he didn't seem to care. Now, you know, you. We did a deal with, I didn't ask ages, but this person seemed like they were 7, 17, 18 years old, bought a $19,500 card, pulled out a bank bag, pulled out a bank bag and, you know, all organized. And, you know, knowing that, you know, it was an 86 Jordan PSA 8. So a card, that's a card that's gone up quite significantly over the course of the last couple months. And, you know, this person believed that this was an asset and he was like 17 or 18 and. And looking forward to possibly making a couple thousand on this maybe at the National. Yeah. You know, so it was just, it was wild to see like the, the youth just becoming and like asking for Tops case sets. This was what was important to me. I was like, there was kids coming up asking if we had Kaijus in our, in our thing. Like, we're talking about like 10, 11, 12. So for fanatic standpoint, that's what they really love is if they're going to be building young collector collectors into these case hits that they have now, which are, you know, battling against the downtowns, the kabooms, all these other case hits that people love right now, they need to have this youth generation. And there was, there was some semblance of that here at this show that I was getting asked about these case hits. And then even Da Card world said we're buying helixes. Yeah. So look, there's a gap to be filled with now that Tops is, is, you know, this is the first fanatics fest where Tops is all in on everything in terms of football, basketball, baseball, They, I mean, yeah, that's why you've seen this uptick in, in the SPS and TOPS products. That's why, I mean, I don't know if you saw. I'm sure they were promoting the hell out of it. With Tops Chrome Baseball coming out this week, they have finally changed the Ultraviolet design to the one they had in football and in basketball and. Oh my God, they look so good. They look so good. I wanted to, I think we bought a few of those. I really want to start buying those. I actually bought the 20. I don't know if Bubba showed it to you, the 2024 Complete Ultraviolet Set, but it was, it was the green groovy looking right design, the retro one they did, which is a fine design but like, God, the moment they introduced that one for basketball, I just went, I need this so bad. That's the one. Yeah, I need it. I need, I want to collect the football and the basketball ones. And now of course with this new Tops Chrome release which we're going to be doing this week on all the platforms, check us out mojobreak.com as well as Fanatics Live and get into your TOPS Chrome, which is always. It's just a great time of year when Tops Chrome is out. It's the best. We're gonna have a big release date too. I think you're in shop, so that's gonna be really fun. Yeah, but I mean what I will say national, you know, as we wrap up this podcast, we do have Brent from Replay Sports Cards coming up next. We did an interview at FedEx Fest with them. Learned a little bit about their business, their origins, good dudes or good dude. I didn't meet anybody else besides Brent, but seemed like he was very knowledgeable. So listen to that. Coming up, the quick little interview we did at Fanatics Fest. But yeah, I mean if the, the biggest thing of the national is like I, if I'm looking for the 1964 Tops card number 1 52, I'm not gonna find that at Fanatics Fest. Yep, I'm gonna, I'm getting like the cream of the crop type of card names and little to no dollar bins and singles and stuff like that, but the national, it has it all. That's. And this is the thing and we say it every year and I think it became so. All the lead up to that first one, there was the feeling of, oh, it's, this is the national killer and it just, it's never gonna happen. I, I will say, I will say that pretty firmly. This is an this has its own audience, it's got its own place in this world and in this hobby and in the sports world. The fact, I mean, I think to, to speak to that you mentioned west coast card show was happening. I believe Dallas was happening as well. These are by themselves. If these were happening on three separate weekends, we would have seen an influx of, of reactions and social media content from all three of these shows as we have in years past. The fact that. And again, I. There were no boots on the ground at Dallas. We had boots on the ground in West Coast Guard show. And I know there was a lot of talk like it was still an incredibly busy show. There was still a lot of people out there. I saw photos and video and. And you know what, there were athletes there who were going out. I think I saw like Angels players walking the show floor buying cards and stuff. So like there, it speaks to the health of this hobby in this industry that we can have these three huge shows basically one for each time zone in the United States and they can all thrive and they can all coexist. Yeah, a hundred percent. And I mean, let's face it, I mean I. West coast from. For us to go out to New York, that's a, that's a, that's a bit of a trap. So if I, if I was just a hobbyist, I probably would still go to the west coast show as opposed to fanatics. I think if you have a business or you're doing an intro to sports, like you go to Fanatics Fest and it's a little less daunting than those type of shows. Right. Because you can like kind of dabble into the sports card area. You can do the Starbucks, you could do the, you know, the WWE stuff. You can shop, you can look at all the other activations and kind of dabble in the sports cards. I'm actually thinking about bringing my family out to Fanax Fest next year. Nice. Because I think, you know, if they, they go one day and they don't like they did the Fanatics fest, they can go do something else together in New York and. Right. Yeah, there's plenty of things do. Right. So whether you go to Chicago, Rosemont, there's like, okay, you got Cubs games, things like that. Right. There's not a lot to do. You do have. It is a bit of a trek from the Rose from the Rosemont area to downtown Chicago. If you're going to do that every day. If you're like, if you brought the family out, you're right. Yeah. You can Only see the bean so many times. Right. I do love that bean. The bean school. We love the bean. You do the rocket. No, that's in Cleveland. I was like, you can do the Rock and Roll hall of Fame, but no, that's Cleveland. There's a lot to do with Chicago. I say they got. Isn't the. I feel like the Natural History Museum there is really cool and they got some good. It's. It's Chicago. It's one of the great cities. Well, yeah. And a deep dish pizza and it's enough of that to try every, like all, all of them on different days. One of the. Yeah, it's one of the finest cities in the America. And we'll be there. I will be in Rosemont, but we'll be, you know, probably I'll try to get out to there. We got to go to. We got to go to Richie's for those that if, you know. You know, I wasn't even gonna say it because I almost don't want to blow up our spot here, but yeah, shout out. Shout out to Richie's. Yeah. Can't wait. But yeah, I mean, that kind of is, you know, the experience was great. You know, celebs being around helps the hobby helps it bring awareness. I mean, we, we obviously did a deal with Jason Sudeikis. Super cool, just as funny as you would think. Really authentic person with his son Otis that we did content with. Carl Anthony Towns was great. You know, it was good opportunities that we had for the bit for our business and. But you still had the availability to walk around these booths and buy cards from a lot of single sellers. Yeah. So from a card standpoint, they had everything covered. Yeah. And the thing is. Yeah. In the national, the thing that I'm excited about is like, we're gonna see what upper deck has to offer. We're gonna get to see the panini areas, all these other big car brands that you don't get to see at Fanatics Fest. So that's, to me, what I'm excited about. And if there's anyone who's like, oh, the glitz and glamour Fanatics Fest, well, guess what? We're probably going to see a lot of those names that you saw walking around Fanatics Fest. Probably going to be walking around the national as well. Yeah. Because they're, they're. I mean, I could speak for definitely Sudeikis. He, you know, he was involved. He. That was the thing. His son was involved, knew what they were talking about. And it wasn't just like, they're paid to kind of walk around. You know, when I saw that, I'm like, okay, he clearly, like, cares about the stuff and understands it and is interested. But I thought, okay, probably one day on the show floor because he's a bit. He was very busy. I mean, he was literally at the World cup in the halftime show on Sunday. Amazing. So I, I, I actually rewatched that last night. I didn't even know because I was. We were at the Fanatics Fest. We were watching it, but we were also kind of tearing down at that point and still open to the public there, still selling singles. And I turned around and I saw Bieber. So I thought that was, to me at the time, I thought that was the whole, the whole thing because it was Bieber to Shakira and then the kids singing, right? And so I thought that was a f. That was the whole thing. Got home last night, I was like, hey, let's watch this. Because I didn't see it. And I was like, wait. Madonna was in this. Wait. Bts. Bts. Kermit the Frog. You know, freaking Sudeikis. Ted Lasso. And it's just. Yeah, it was, it was cool that that halftime show was really, they really stepped it up. I liked it. I know there was a lot of. I think there's a lot of international fans who are like, get this halftime show out of my soccer. But sorry. Well, you got to do what your country is good at, right? I mean, you know what we're good at. If they had it in Norway, it may be like a rowing thing the whole time. Just Viking songs and that be awesome for them. That would rule out. That would, that would be pretty fun to watch. But it's sponsored by Tops too, which is crazy. I've never. That that made me like, this hobby is crazy that we are actually now seeing a. Just a major television event sponsored by Tops. That was kind of the cherry on top for their weekend, right? Of Tops and fanatics of like, what the ultimate flex of like, where they have come in the last few years, where they are now that now Tops. I mean, just remember we doing, Remember us doing an emergency podcast the night it broke that, oh, my God, it's the end of Tops there. They've lost the MLB license. What's gonna happen? And here they are, they're sponsoring the halftime show for the FIFA World Cup. Pretty incredible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's wild. I mean, one thing I will say that that didn't quite hit the mark compared to the last two years. And then we're gonna get into this replay interview. Here is the three drops that they focused on the EQLs, the Series 2 Fanatics Fest NYC Edition and the UEFA Club competition Fanatics Fest edition and the baseball Cactus Jack definitely underperformed from the, from the customer being able to flip it at the show. So in the prior two years, I think it was like the first year Cactus Jack was like, I. I don't know what the price, but people were able, almost able to double their money on Cactus Jack. And we were buying them. We were buying 10, we bought five, we bought eight, you know, whatever of this one here and there customers coming up all day trying to flip it. This year, the tops Release the Series 2 is 360 to the customer. We bought some at 300. There's actually people willing to lose money. Wow. So yeah, they're just like they thought that they'd be able to flip it for a lot and they got desperate. Is it maybe just because it's what, three years of? It's the same. It's essentially the same two or three products that they've been doing. Yeah. It's a 360 hobby box. Right. And it's, you know, so something like if they offered, you know, heck, if they're like we were a week away from Topps Chrome baseball. What if they just offered an exclusive Fanatics Fest version of baseball? Yes. And you get it a week early. Yes. That would have been huge. And we only opened a few. I had a good, I had a Colson Montgomery Chrome card in my blaster number to 25 rising stars. And then Bubba hit and he ripped two boxes on on Fanatics Live with Junk Wack. Vintage Junk Wax Vintage. Great guys, but great guy and, and wife by the way. They're awesome people, Dallin. Just dudes out there doing, you know, it was awesome. Just great. Great at breaking and talking. You know. I try to be good at talking as well. And we hit a super fractor Rising Stars. The, you know the, the Big Apple insert. Super fractured Derek Jeter. Yeah. That was so awesome. Awesome, awesome hit. And that was only three boxes. So I'm like, maybe these boxes are loaded and people aren't even willing to try them sleeping on it. And then same thing with the club competition. I think we started buying it like 600 and we got down to like 4:50 and we were still buying some. Cactus Jack was the only one that I think people were able to flip for a profit consistently. But it really paled in comparison to the last couple years. And I think it was because Tops charged a little bit more. And maybe they wanted people to rip at that price. Because I think at that price, it's a good value to rip. They were too early because to. I guess, sort of spoiler alert for the Odyssey. It literally happens in the first minute of the movie. Travis Scott is in the movie. Travis Scott is the one narrating the po. The Odyssey poem. I'm like, oh, my God. What? So anyway, they were. They were. They were early. They needed to wait for the Odyssey to come out and get that. That fever to. Is it causing a spike in those Travis Scott cards? I think it should. Yeah. He's now star of the biggest movie of the summer. So, you know, wow. Try it. Should have, should have, should have waited. Yeah, they definitely should have waited. And, you know, so maybe, maybe I'll be trying to chase some Travis Scott out of those cactus jack boxes. I know somebody hit the 101 and had it signed by him at the show, so. But yeah, that's all we got. Let's check out this interview we did at Fanatics Fest with Brent from Replay Sports Cards. Get business done with the new American Express Graphite business Cash unlimited card with unlimited 2% cash back on all eligible purchases. Unlimited 5% cash back on flights and prepaid hotels booked through American Express. Travel online and a flexible spending capacity that can grow with your business. You'll have the confidence to keep building. Apply today and earn a welcome offer of $1,500 cash back after you spend $50,000 in qualifying purchases on your new card within the first six months of card membership terms. Apply. Learn more at Go Amex Graphite. Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink? Or a sweet vanilla smooth caramel maybe? Or white chocolate mocha? Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks Frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. What is going on? Everybody? We are here. It's Fanatics Fest. It's Saturday. It is absolute chaos. And we are here with Brent from Replay Sports Cars. We're going to sit down and I just want to know a little bit about your. Your origin story. How you guys got here. How'd you guys start? How did you get into collecting? And. Yeah, I just want to talk a little bit about your shop and your breaking operation. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for having me. Like you said, Fanatics Fest has been nuts. I believe it's yalls third year, our third year doing it. We love the show. This is everything the hobby is about. And A little bit more sports in general. Man, I've collected my whole life. I opened my first pack, I think when I was six, my birthday, and just from then, have just always collected, always collected. It's just been. Just been something really special to me my whole life. Back pre Covid, I kind of was ramping up my collecting, kind of doing what a lot of people here are doing now. Just kind of before a little bit of the boom, going to shows, meeting people, networking. I lived in Charlotte, still do, and then just decided I wanted to kind of take it to the next step while I was in college, started a company, started meeting people, buying, selling cards, going to shows, then just in Charlotte, met up with some really great people. One of my co founders now, Mike Martin, we met in Charlotte, decided we want to open a shop in Charlotte, right in the city. That's kind of where it started. We opened a shop there, started to grow and expand into what replay is now. We originally One stop sports, but then rebranded it about a year and a half ago to replay. What was the thought process us behind the name Replay? We loved the name One stop, but we got. We got together with the group from an overall brand perspective and just kind of looked at the name and everything. It was a little confusing to some people, but it was kind of a small. It was. It was our brand. Right. And then as we wanted to grow and expand, we did something a little bit more national, a little more recognizable, a little more clean. You know, replay for us is just like. That's what cards are like, just replaying memories of sports and different players and stuff. And, you know, we want the cards to replay memories for people, but also, you know, just kids and their. And their parents to replay their memories and sports memories and stuff too. So a lot of that important question. Have you ever broken any panini replay? Panini replay? No. Oh, I haven't. That's a good one. It's a fun one. They actually had some Steph Curry rpas that they. They held back, you know, for, like, if they're damaged. Yeah. And they put them as, like, big chases. But other than that, the product was kind of weird. Yeah. Old school. Yeah. No one's ever asked me that. Yeah. It's funny. It's funny you brought up replay because that was the origin story of honors football that you guys have probably ripped that. Yeah. Honors. So like mosaic and Mosaic. Yeah, that all came from replay back in. What year does that. Yeah, 1560, because it was towns. And they felt so bad about it that they gave Us some mosaic boxes afterwards. Nice. But it actually, the legend lived on because of the curries in there. So it's kind of. It kind of became like a rebound of a. Of a. Of a thing, and it kind of plays in. You said replay. I replayed the memory of replay in my head, so. And then also, like, instant replays and stuff, too. Like. Yeah, there's lots of different things, but now we got a new one. And you said you're based out of Charlotte, right? Yep, sir. Okay. Are you guys in downtown Charlotte? Yeah, we're in South End, so it's, like, adjacent. It's right over our little tiny bridge. But yes, essentially, I gotta say, Charlotte, one of my favorite cities to visit. Absolutely. I. I don't know if anybody. I don't know if you've been there, but, like, it is one of the fastest growing cities. And I gotta say, downtown, one of the cleanest downtowns I've ever been to. Yeah. And you got the NASA hall of Fame, so. Yeah, we're walking distance from NASCAR hall of Fame. Nice. Right by the light rail and everything. That was our first store we opened back in 2021. Prior to that, it changed the ton, and since then, it's changed the ton as well. Yeah. And you guys are right there by the Panthers stadium, too, right? Bank of America. Walk there. Can walk to the Hornets. That's the nice thing about the city. Big city feel. Not a whole lot of surface areas. It's really a small city when you think about it. But you guys do breaks. Where do you guys mainly break at? Which platform? We break mainly on TikTok, around 18 to 20 hours a day, seven days a week. We just started a second channel to mix it in a little bit. We do what? Not single streams, ebay. Live here and there as well. Nice. Yeah. Are you primarily focused on the sports categories, or do you do any, like, tcg, Pokemon, stuff like that? Yeah. So TCG is, like. It's tangential to our business, which we have it because you have to like, everyone loves Pokemon. I never really collected as a kid, but now I have no choice. So we definitely sell a lot of packs, a lot of singles. I love Pokemon, but it's mainly sports. We'll have some of the entertainment stuff to break on release. You know, some of the tops from Disney's Marvel, stuff like that. What's your heart? I mean, for somebody that is starting out, like, they're thinking about starting a breaking business today. What is your hardest challenge on doing live breaks? That's a good question. I mean you have to build an audience in a community. Fortunately for us, we started with that in our shops. We didn't really do live breaks, we do occasional live breaks, but we really built our brand and community and following and then, you know, we basically just translated that what we do in person onto our live breaks. We're very particular with our breakers and how they engage and behave and act with our community when they're in shop and also on stream too. So think just building that brand and that trust in a way that you want to behave both in person and on air and just making sure that you do that as often, ideally as much as you can, so people trust you and want to follow you there too. And how do you navigate getting products is obviously hard. We're in a hot market right now and it's really hard to get certain types of products. How do you guys as a business navigate getting the product you know your customers want? Yeah, I mean it's great having shops because people, people just come in and tell us we're direct with Tops, Upper deck, Panini, all that. So you know, we get everything through there. And you know, as people, as we sell through certain products, we're collectors as well too. So products we like, we just do as much as we can as that, you know, with streaming. We have our director of breaking on TikTok. He's, he's a collector, he loves products. He has a really good idea of what does well and what our consumers like. So we just real time communication with each other across the shops on our streams and everything, talk about what's doing well, what people are asking about, chats and we really just make real time decisions. You know, the product comes out Tops, Chrome, Black Football. It was doing really well on streams. People liked it, I like it, our customers like it. I went and bought 100 more boxes on secondary market just to have it. And we've been breaking it the past couple two days just to keep giving our customers what they want. That's another tip I have for breakers is like listen to your audience, listen to the people that are supporting you and that are there, you know, spending their time with you and try and tailor your product and stuff to them. Obviously within reason, but that's worked for us. What's the biggest hit you guys have had in recent memory for one of your customers on streams? Just off the top of my head. Topps Chrome Football release day, we pulled a Kaiju Dart, pulled a couple super fractures, probably the dart in recent memory. You guys are in Charlotte have you guys. Has Luke Combs stopped by the shop? He has not yet. He's been traveling a bunch. We're actually good friends with his college guitarist is a really good friend of mine. Oh, yeah, I follow him. Adam Church. Yes. Yeah, he's great. Our first ever trade night we did at our Charlotte store. He. He played there and, you know, we did some fun stuff there. But he's a really good friend of mine. So you guys have had music in the shop? Yeah. That's awesome. I love that. And we're. We're gonna open it. One of our franchise locations that's opening up in a month or two is gonna be right in Nashville too. So we'll do some stuff with Luke. We'll have some fun there. Awesome. Awesome. So obviously super busy schedule for all of us in the industry right now. We have the national about 10 days away. Are you guys gonna be set up? The national? We will be set up at the National. Our booth is a little bit different. Last year we set up on the second floor and we. We. Basically what we had was we weren't selling. We did some breaks from there, but we were talking about our Replay Gives Back initiative. We were handing out cards, taking in donations, talking about our brand and really just engaging with collectors, especially young collectors who are learning and just kind of trying to contribute something positive to the collectors. Collectors that were there. But we don't have a booth set up, selling. We're doing something a little bit bigger this year upstairs. Again, we're just gonna be talking with collectors, giving out stuff, giving out packs, taking in donations that we can then go give to our communities and everything too, so. Awesome. Well, we'll have to do something together at the national as well. I love the origin story. I gotta get out to Charlotte, but you guys gotta follow these guys here in the Charlotte area. You've probably already been in their shop. If you haven't, you need to go and check out. Yeah, check out the breaks on Tick Tock man. We'd like to thank you for taking the time, Brent. Thank you. Big thanks once again to Brent from Replay Sports Cards. Make sure to check them out and follow them. And make sure to check us out wherever you get breaks. Mojo, Break.com and of course on ebay. Live single streams Hockey. We got brand new hockey this week. Ultimate Collection Hockey. One of the best looking sets around. Always a favorite of mine. I always love ripping Ultimate Collection. When I was doing breaks, it was one of my favorites to rip all the time. And ultimate collection is one of the best looking sets. We're going to be ripping it on ebay live on release day. We got big breaks coming up. I think a lot of our release day breaks already sold out. So thank you guys, a huge hockey community who is growing over on ebay life for doing that. But we will have more breaks throughout the weekend. And of course we're doing gaming as well. Pokemon Pitch Black still ripping that. Plus don't know if they're doing Lorcana, but we do have a big Lorcana set coming out on Friday. So keep an eye out. Tcg, gaming, hockey, singles, all that good stuff. Plus we do have some big news at the national. We're ripping at the ebay booth. We've got more information to come, but mark your calendars for Friday, July 31st. We're gonna have some very special breaks that are big enough for the national. We keep the biggest stuff for the national. We want to do it big. So that's exactly what we're going to try to do. Maybe look back at some other stuff we've done in the past, Maybe give you some ideas of exactly what we're bringing to the table at Our eBay live RIP, live from the show floor at the National. Join us then Friday, July 31. More details to come. Thanks again for listening to the Hype. Thanks again to Brent from Replay Sports Cards. Again, make sure to follow us Mojo Break Media. Wherever you get podcasts, just search Mojo Break or if you're watching or if you're listening to this, I should say make sure to subscribe to Mojo break Media on YouTube and make sure to follow us all over social media. We got more content from Fanatics Fest rolling out. We're gonna have a ton from the national as well. You know where to find us and we'll see you guys next time on the Hype.