One of the Worst Card Shops Ever

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So when your kid casually drops, I don't like peanut butter anymore, or I need five green highlighters for a project due tomorrow, Uber Eats has you covered. Get everything you need for back to school today from your favorite brands like Aldi and Staples and Uber Eats. Order now ends 97. $5 or less before taxes and fees. Select items only. Availability varies. Select see app for details. Dude, that is so dumb. That is so stupid. Are you. Are we serious? I disagree with you, actually, completely. That is the dumbest thing I've heard of. No, that. What am I bidding on? Oh, you might not even one-of-one it. If you one-of-one If you one-of-one this. All right, everyone, welcome back to the hobby handbook. Trent is back this week. He's done gallivanting in Mexico, wherever the heck he was in the world, just running around town. You know, I'm officially unemployed. As I have been happily saying it to everybody, I am unemployed. I'm just out of the air force officially, and I got a few weeks until. Thank you. I've got a few weeks until my new job starts. So the wife and I were like, we haven't been on a vacation since our honeymoon. Let's go around. And so we went to LA to visit a buddy. Well, we drove from Utah, so we stopped in Las Vegas, went to Los Angeles, went to San Diego, and then came back through Vegas for a card show and everything. But nice little, you know, week, week and a couple day trip. So Yu-Gi-Oh it was a lot of fun. And you're. You're also gallivanting, so. I am. Gal. We can talk about my gallivanting in a second. I want to hear more on your gallivanting first. Dude, I had so much fun. I had. We did something major every day. One, a big highlight, probably for the people listening was, I went to a Dodger game. And you. You know, what's that? Yu-Gi-Oh I saw Ohtani. For those of you who have never been to Dodger Stadium, I will say this wholeheartedly. Even though, like, I've been to Met games at Citi Field, I've been to Met games at Shea Stadium. That was the most fun overall stadium experience that I have ever been in my entire life. Dodger Stadium, phenomenal. I got to see Edwin Diaz come out to trumpets. Edwin Diaz, in classic fashion, almost blew a save right in front of me. It was awesome. Have you been to Fenway? I've. Not that. That's another Beckett list to go to. Fenway's my number one stadium. So I was curious in terms of where it ranks. I want to get to Dodger Stadium. I've heard great things about it. It's obviously a Zebra historical stadium. Obviously. With how good the Dodgers are, it's, I'm sure, bumping. I mean, they're struggling right now, but whatever. Yu-Gi-Oh I got. I got a Goldin Kershaw bobblehead because it was bobblehead night. And. And what was sick was, so my wife was with me and my buddy and his wife, and a dude was like, hey, does anybody want to trade? I've got an older one here, like. And I was like, well, we have two of them. Like, sure, take one of them. So now I've got two Goldin Kershaw bobbleheads. It's just something cool. It's celebrating his last out where he's, like, doing, like, the fist bump in the World Series and stuff. So it's just neat. That's awesome. So much fun. Yu-Gi-Oh I'm glad you had a good time. And now you say that you're getting a new job, you're getting the same job just as a civilian versus correct. Yu-Gi-Oh I'm just changing my outfit effectively. I don't have to. Literally, Yu-Gi-Oh I don't have to, you know, wear my uniform every day. I just come in a polo and khakis, and I'm doing the same job effectively, which is awesome. Not even moving desks. So Zebra easy transition. So got a little bit of a gap time, so went to the front row card show in Vegas. Spent way too much money, as you saw. I don't know if I want to show the viewers what I Beckett up. Yu-Gi-Oh I might. Yu-Gi-Oh you can't. You can't do that. Okay, fine. So I'll start off. So my goal at the front row show was to buy a big Ohtani cart, right? I made a video with this one already, but 2018 pitching X Fractor awesome card X fracture. So. So here's my thought process behind these buys. I wanted a Refractor of some kind, right? I thought about a regular Refractor, but then I thought to myself, you can get refractors and blasters hobby mega jumbo. Every single skew of Topps Chrome mega boxes only have X fractures. So I'm like, I'll get them an X fractor. Sure enough, walking around, I saw not one, but two pinks. Oh, that's upside down. The regular pitching and then the Update pitching. Both PSA 10s. Another one that's like, well, these are Blaster box exclusives, so why not. But the big dog, which funny enough wasn't even the most expensive card, but the big dog in my eyes, 2018 pitching Refractor. Now, Trent, I thought you just said the refractors weren't a good idea. Well, update refractors are numbered to 250, so I have myself a numbered Shohei Ohtani rookie. I spent way too much money, Alex. I spent way too much money. I'm sure you did, but. But it's Shohei Ohtani, so safer than some things. It actually this kind of you you talking about. The X Fractor has My House a have a question that kind of can transition into my gallivanting et cetera and talk about some releases this week. So this Wednesday, maybe Thursday it is what sometime this week Logo Fractor goes on sale on the Topps website. I think Logo Fractor boxes are. I think it's 120 bucks for the box. Something really unique this year though is that Logo Fract or that Mega boxes this year? Previous years mega boxes did not have numbered X factors in them. Yu-Gi-Oh So this year you can pull. I actually we were up at Walmart on Saturday night scraping a few groceries and there were some Finest mega boxes on the shelf and Topps Chrome mega boxes you can bet. I bought both. And rich both. I pulled an orange X Fractor Detroit Tiger and I was like, oh, it was Spencer Torkelson, unfortunately. But the fact that which is crazy but we look five years ago and pulling a torque to 25, you're like would have been huge. But previous years, I think Logo Fracture would have been a fairly clear one-of-one over a standard Mega Box because you know, hitting all the numbered parallels that you're going to hit there there are more autos. You got the Logo Fracture variations. There's There is nice stuff in there, no question. This year I think it's a little bit more of a question because for me, I actually literally just bought a case of mega boxes to put aside for future card shop. More on that in a minute. But seeing that logo fractures coming out, I'm like, you know, do I want to go buy a case of logo fracture to put aside? But mega boxes are 70 bucks MSRP. You can generally get them for 80 bucks right now online. Is a mega box better than a logo fractor box price? You know, at a per dollar basis? What do you think? No, I do. Okay. So I will say this. I have not looked at the checklist or the odds for this year's logo fractor. Yu-Gi-Oh But here's the reason why I love logo fractor personally. Legend autos like or just vet autos. Are there legend logo fractor autos. Not. I misspoke. I meant just vet like veteran autos like Soto has signed in the past. You know, Judge has signed in the past, Ohtani signed in the past. You can still pull those guys versus the thing that really scares me with retail this year. I should say Value Skus are the rookie checklist for the value Skus. Have you seen that checklist? Oh, you are not opening that box. You're not opening a mega box to pull a JJ Weatherhole auto. No. But if you get lucky and you do hit an auto, you're going to pull Jimbo who pitched an inning, got shelled and is in playing in Mexican league right now. Hey, put some respect to Jimbo's name. It's like Kenny Powers dude. Like I don't. Well actually a Kenny Powers auto would be pretty awesome. I do have some bad news for you. Oh. Looking at the logo for actor auto checklist, it don't do it to me. Only rookie autos. There's 45 of them. Which gr that's a way better like only 45 autos and it's got all the big names. You've got Eldridge, Chase, Burns, Delauder, Colson, Montgomery, Schlitler and so on. Like you, it is a very. And that, that is a nice thing that it's a trimmed down checklist. Obviously you're not guaranteed notto. I'm curious. I haven't looked at the pack odds or anything but it got me questioning because like to your point on the Ohtani X fractor, the Otani or the X factor parallel in general, I think is one of the hobby's favorites. Yes. I think that the Exclusivity to mega boxes. Generally, mega boxes are more short printed. People tend to like them and prefer them. And me looking at that, I'm like, dang. An Ohtani blue X for actor is a like $800 card, probably number to 150. That looks sick to be able to pull that out of a 70, $80 box. And I know a logo fractor is very, very nice, but I think that discounting autos and that's a pretty big thing to discount. I would personally take a blue X fractor over a blue logo fracture. Agree. Disagree. I. I'm going to add a caveat in there. I would prefer a base X factor and cash in my Beckett which. Well, and that's a dollar per dollar perspective. That's where it's going to be a difference is that mega boxes, I can buy them at 80 bucks apiece pretty easily. Right now, logo fracture boxes, I got to pay 120. So you could open two logo fracture boxes or three mega boxes. Yu-Gi-Oh I'm going with the Megas. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh absolutely. I'm going with the Megas. Even though, like, Yu-Gi-Oh it's tough. I mean, I'll have to see a few of these open to actually like really figure out what I want to do or open a few myself and kind of like deep dive that question later. But it's. Yu-Gi-Oh it's tough. I mean, I feel like we're. We're reaching a point where things are tough. Speaking of other releases Pristine released last week. Do you rip any? No, no. Cause I was, I was out of town, but I mean, I haven't seen nearly any posts about it. Have you? Not. Not really. I. I entered a break with Eddie, as always. I buy the Red Sox and I get nothing. But I like to support more. I can. Well, it's one of those things, like it's a. That's a. A relatively big release each year. That is a traditional release. They've been releasing pristine for over 25 years. It's a pretty quiet release. Yu-Gi-Oh Or over 20 years and I haven't seen anything about it. Like to me it's like, I feel like we're starting to reach a phase of a little bit of a softening in the market. I really do. I think we're. I think things are starting to settle down at least like box wise. You know what I mean? Do you think it's a softening of the market or do you think that it's a. Intelligence of the average collector is growing? AKA Pristine has always been a box that I have Said if pristine was a $300 box, I would love it. Pristine singles do not sell incredibly well, especially considering the price of the box. Yu-Gi-Oh 100%. It's to the same question that we've had about the goat market. Is it just you know, a pump of Jordan, Kobe Griffey, et cetera, or is it the average collector saying hey, I'm better to put my, I'm smarter to put my money in these guys who are proven known commodity, etc. Versus buying the 17 year old prospect in rookie ball. Like I think that maybe part of the lack of Pristine hype could also be the fact that the average collector is smarter and says, hey, I'm gonna put my money into Topps Chrome or I'm gonna put my money into a set that those singles hold more value long term. Yes. Yu-Gi-Oh And I mean even, even just regular Topps Chrome box prices haven't really changed a whole lot. I mean pretty high, they're like 450 a box I think for a hobby right now. Yes. But in terms of like at release, like we, we haven't seen a, we haven't seen like a basketball or a football where it's like the boxes are 3x what they were on release. Now you're always going to see a difference in the TOPS presale and retail on release week, but we really haven't seen anything crazy. And I, I think it's a still a good decent rip. I mean like the rookie checklist is still really good. I'm still happy with it. Like, I don't know. I think Topps Chrome is like you said, I do think that it is people getting a little bit smarter and moving away from. I don't want to say risk, but I mean it is inherently risk. Oh yes, absolutely. I mean any boss that you're opening is inherently risk. You know. Yes. Anybody, whether you are a hobbyist who's opening stuff, whether you're a full time person like me, who does cards, whether you are Ruben or Mayhem, they will tell you that opening a box is a risk. That's part of the game. If you want the highs, you have to have the lows. But I think that Pristine, I think pristine, if you, if your average collector is smarter, I think that they're realizing hey, what a pristine auto goes for is not crazy compared to what a Topps Chrome auto goes for. And the fact that I can buy a Topps Chrome hobby box. And granted you get less autos in a Topps Chrome hobby box versus a pristine hobby box, no question. But I'D say that your Fleer is probably about similar, if not higher out of Topps Chrome. And their ceiling is undoubtedly higher. And it's about the same price. Yu-Gi-Oh And I mean even something as small as the buybacks or something like that. But I think that the smart collector, like, you know, the intelligent collector like you're talking about that we're, we're going into. If you want to buy players who are just guys you want to collect, buy pristine autos, buy Bowman best autos. Buy the cheaper stuff. Bowman Sterling from back in the day, like stuff that is not the investment level set, like Topps Chrome is a set that if you are buying the Topps Chrome rookie auto of Kevin McGonagall, that is an investment piece. You are paying a premium for that because it's Topps Chrome. If you just want a McGonagall auto, go buy something out of paper like flagships. Right. So I mean, I'll put it to you this way. I had somebody reach out to me and he goes, it was a 2022. Bowman best UFO autograph of Joshua Baez. Oh, obviously Joshua Baez. Crazy debut game. Yu-Gi-Oh But he reaches out to me and he goes, hey, I've got a couple questions. I hit this in one of your breaks a long time ago. Obviously ripping 2022 stuff. He's like, I need some advice. Do I Express graded with PSA for 349. Looks really clean. Just looking for advice. What would be your advice to him? Sell it today? No, just sell it raw. Cash in on the hype. Guess what the next message I got was. What? Sold it for Bowman best insert auto to 50. I mean like. Or I'm sorry, to 25. I mean still to 25. But I told him, I said, amazing. Congrats. Now I challenge you to see six months from now what that card sells for. Graded. I bet it's under 500 even in a 10. Yu-Gi-Oh it's. We've talked about those prospects and it's the same thing with opening box. You hit something big on opening day, when you know hype is at its highest, sell it like. And you saw a bias. Did he have three home runs? But then the next day he went what, over 5 with 4Ks or something like that. Like, that's the, the reality is, is that he is. People look at three home runs and say, oh my goodness, he's going to go crazy. He's going to pop off. He's going to be the next greatest power hitter Ever. The reality is he's probably going to be a really good baseball player who hits a lot of home runs, but also has a lot of holes in his game and is not necessarily, look what Kyle Schwarber sells for. So it's get rid of those. If it was a first Bowman Auto, I can see an argument. If you are really, really into him and really a believer and I still would vote sell after a game like that where you then are going to be able to take advantage, you probably could buy it back for cheaper six months from now. You might be wrong. But more, 99 of the time, you're going to be right there. And if, honestly, even if you have something like that and you say, oh, but I want to collect bias, that's where you say, okay, go buy a Bowman best auto. Go buy a Bowman Sterling Auto of his and sell the first Bowman. And now you can have a car that's a cool one to collect and some money in your Beckett Yu-Gi-Oh I have on my shelf right there, I have a Carson Benge True Blue, First Bowman Auto. Yep. I'm a big Mets fan. I love Carson Benge. What did I do? A year from his call up, I was buying Base autos. Refractor autos. Base autos, Refractor autos. Buying a bunch of them. Yu-Gi-Oh And you know what I did? I bought that blue and I said, this blue I'm keeping. And my goal is to sell all of these and make enough profit to cover that blue. I could have bought three blues with how much I sold his stuff for on release day or when, when he got called up. I mean, that's what, that's what it is. If you can find these gaps and these, these little moments. And it's not saying you're, you're expecting a card to go from a hundred dollars to 15,000. It's not going to happen. But 100 to 150? Heck Yu-Gi-Oh 50. $50 in your Beckett Yu-Gi-Oh Do that a few times and guess what? You can have a blue on your shelf that you're into it for basically nothing. Yu-Gi-Oh Oh, absolutely. Now transitioning slightly back to for Steam, which is actually going to transition us back to me traveling. I don't know if you saw my little. Yu-Gi-Oh nice little segue. I don't know if you saw my video about the local card shop that I was scouting and checking out. Well, we are in upstate New York right Now visiting family. Mrs. Clever Cuban is also on a little bit of a gap between jobs. She left her old job and is starting her new job early September. So similar to you, she's got some time off so we're up here with her family. But I'm also doing a little scouting for future card shop as we've talked about. And one of the things that you want to understand is the current competition. Did you see my video about. I didn't know. I've been kind of off, offline for. As you should be. I went to a local shop here that recently opened probably in the last six months if I had to guess. My in laws had texted me at one point because like one of the reasons why we are intrigued with this area is that there's not really much hobby shop wise up here despite the fact that there's a good amount of money and the fact that there's a pretty solid population, etc. And they were like, oh my goodness, somebody came in. This is. And I mean this in the nicest, nicest way that I can. One of the workshops that I've that's like a new modern shop that I've been to in a long, long time. It was maybe 80 square feet. 80. They had. That's stupid small. That's like the length of this bookshelf behind me. Like they had next to no sealed product. So no boxes. A woman walked in while I was there and she said hey, do you have any more of the. Do you have any of the NBA Topps Chrome update? And they're the person working at the desk and what like one. How do you work at a card shop and know what that. Not know what that is but also like I understand if somebody came in and said hey, do you have any Topps Chrome? You know that's been out for a month and a half at this point. Definitely has dried up retail wise. Definitely has dried up hobby wise has gotten to be a lot more expensive. But for a product that like I literally that night walked into Walmart and I found 15 blaster boxes sitting on the shelf. If you're a hobby shop, like that is a new hobby shop. When I'm a new hobby shop, I'm not going to have distribution right off the rip. I who knows how long it's going to take to get distribution. I'm going to go on to Dave and Adams. I'm going to go onto ebay and buy boxes at whatever market price is and put them in the shop and maybe I make a couple of dollars if not break even on those boxes so that you have product on the shelves. So that was just one flag. But the even bigger flag was what some of these cards were priced at. And we can actually play a little bit of a game here. Oh, no. Oh. If we're going off that, then it's going to be fun. Before you jump in there, I. There is a shop near me that or where I used to live. And it's literally in a Walmart parking lot. It's in a Walmart parking lot. Yu-Gi-Oh And when I mean, insert top series one. Okay. Blaster box for $50 dog. I. The shop was selling series two blaster packs for $7 a pack. Blaster packs. I Beckett I pulled the pack off of their, like a little pack dispenser. I was like, this has got to be hobby, right? It was a blaster pack, dude. Oh, I hate dogging on local shops. I really do. I do, too. Like, I want. It's a grind, but like, so important. Do better, but. Exactly. You need to do better if you're going to do it. Because all that this does is this takes the mom who doesn't know a ton about cards and comes into the store and either can't get anything of any real value or is looking at something and buys a card because that's the price on it. And she trusts that you are somebody that is knowledgeable and is going to be reasonable in terms of your prices. And they get home and you give it to your kid and they're like, mom, this is a $10 car. Let me translate for you, Alex. You mean the mom gets taken advantage of? Yu-Gi-Oh that's what it is. I'm not going to propose that when I have a shop that every single card that I have is going to be dead on at last. Comp, dude. I mean, people, you know, I understand. And LCS has overhead. There is value that they provide. There's one thing for being 10, 15% over comp. There's another thing for what this was. So let's play a little bit of game of. And you already know that their prices are high, but we're going to play if you show me 1991 tops for more than a dollar. I'm leaving right now. Their boxes literally were all junk wax. And I knew everything was ranging from one to $5 junk wax. But let's talk some showcase stuff. Let's do it. I'll tell you the card and a rough valuation on the card, and then you have to guess their price. Roberto Clemente blue pristine, not auto, numbered to 75. It's about a 10 to $15 card. Yu-Gi-Oh I. Well, I would have said it's like a five to $10 card. I mean, let's go, let's go. Price point. Price point should be for an LCS. I could see $25. How about 100? You're kidding me. Dude, I would photo with the sticker. We will put it up on the show. I would get it over to burn out loud. Okay, next one. JJ McCarthy Mosaic Rookie Genesis PSA 10. It is a $275 card. Based off that we're seeing a $600 sticker on that bad boy. How about 895? You're kidding me. For JJ McCarthy or JJ McCarthy? Dude, how many shows did it take for me to sell my PSA 10 Downtown? It took Fanatics fest. It took the national. It took a local show. Like, okay, how about Goldin Kouser Topps Chrome black green rookie auto. It is a, let's see, $30 card. Oh, please be 50. Please just give me one. 125 and then the last one that I'm going to leave you with. Hank Aaron 1989 throwback silver pack base card. So just the mojo. So a $2 card, please. Don't be over 20. How about you double it? $40. Look, I said this before. I don't like dogging on a local shop. I don't even haggle with local shops. You know why? Because I love what they do. The only time I haggle is if I'm going through a value box and I get $51 in singles and I say, hey, could you do 50? That's the only time I haggle. I have no problem with haggling at a local shop. You know, we were having some conversations this weekend because I had Brendan up to be scouting, looking at the area as well because, you know, he's talking about moving up here with us when we eventually do to open the shop that we're looking at doing. And, you know, there was some conversation amongst the other adults that were in the room about, hey, are you, are you as a shop going to be somebody who is flexible on prices and moves prices? And my answer is yes, because things change. I have no problem negotiating. If you want to come in and you want to buy $10,000 worth of singles and I gave it to you for $9,000 a plus, I'm in. It's one thing to say, hey, you know, this car, the comp on this one changed a ton. The challenge was, is that one to the point of they didn't know what Topps Chrome update basketball was. The people that were working the shop clearly did not seem to have knowledge about what it was. And they, you know, they said we sold one card yesterday. I don't think they're gonna make it. In my opinion, you can't survive. Yu-Gi-Oh you can't survive like that. But I don't, like, I'm, I'm, I try not to and I'm, you know, I didn't put the name out there. I'm not saying, oh, I visited this local card shop. It's like just, you know, hey, if you find a shop like that, leave, that's fine. I got some comments of like, oh, why did you ask them if they move on the price? Because they would have to change on the price of everything and down like 10x in some situations that think, Aaron. I said in my video, if I was flipping through a dollar box and I saw that, I'd probably say and just pass on, it'd be a fine deal. At a dollar and a dollar box, it's a two dollar car. It's not something that I would buy and run on stream. So it was rough. It was also nice because I was like, okay, cool. The competition that is here is not really competition for me. Yu-Gi-Oh And that's what matters is like you can, you're willing to move around. I'll put it to you this way. Another card that I Beckett up at the show, 2022 Topps Chrome update. Julio Rodriguez. X factor. X factor. We talked about X factors. I know, but so this one's number to 99 because it's from Update. Yep. Now I was walking around and I saw a Bobby Witt Jr. X Factor. And I was like, man, this would be a great combo. You know, the two biggest rookies of 2022, Julio and Bobby. This one was a PSA 10. I forget I can tell you what it was stickered at. And if I'm not mistaken, it was stickered at 2200. And I think now I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but it was something in the range of obviously it doesn't sell often, but I think the last sold was a nine for I think like $600. Ish. Okay. So I said, hey, I know you're stickered at 2,200. I don't want to. And this, I very rarely do this. If we're this far apart, I very rarely do this. But I said, you know what, this would be a really cool one to pick up. And I said, hey, would you be willing to do 1200? And here's my rationale, here's how I got there versus just walking up, hey, 1200. Like it just seems like you're lowballing them versus saying, hey, here's exactly how I came up with this value. If we can get something done, we can get it done. Obviously I don't have it on, on my table here. We Goldin get a deal done. But doing that, there's a big difference between just walking up and effectively lowballing them off of their sticker. I mean, when you're offering half, a little bit more than half of a sticker, I would perceive that as a low ball. But if you give me the context, I mean like even with my stuff, it happened at the national, hey, last sold did this. Are you willing to match that? And I look and I'm like, yes, absolutely. Yu-Gi-Oh And there's some stuff that you're not willing to patch auto on. If it's, you know, we talked about it in last week's episode of. You know, comps are only valid and, you know, reasonable for so many things. If it's an exceedingly rare card where you're not going to find another one, etc, but like give the context of it. But like something like that, the pricing, like that, like what? It's one thing if it's like, oh, everything else in their showcase is fairly reasonably priced and clearly something's off here. And you say, hey, you know, I'd love to have a conversation on this card, but when everything is 3, 4, 5x, I mean they had Prizm Blasters from this year, which literally I, my local Target has probably a hundred plus prison blasters sitting on the shelf. They can't sell them at 35 or wherever heck Panini is trying to sell them at. They had them with a 65 sticker on them. They're selling on eBay for 20 bucks. Yu-Gi-Oh you can't like, because what's going to happen is that mom's going to go in there, like you said, she's going to feel burned. And guess what? She's never going to shop there again. If anybody ever asks her for it's not going to be able to continue to engage with the hobby. Right. And it just, it's a sour taste versus an LCS that, hey, if I spend $110 on a card that sells for a hundred bucks, I'm happy with the card. And guess what? LCS made some money. Yu-Gi-Oh it's a one-of-one one-of-one for everybody. But when you're, when you are taking everything from the customer, dude, it's just so wrong. My thought though was I'm curious, and I said this when we left one. How much are they buying at? Do I need to bring them all my junk? Are they just, are they just truly not knowledgeable in buying at crazy prices? Or are they buying at Zebra cheap prices and then marking it up? Which I said the whole purpose of a local shop is you're supposed to be getting the same customers back again and again and again. That like, I know Shep has talked about how one of the things that's really important in a local shop is that you provide liquidity for your customers. That they come in, they open a box, they, they, they support you by buying this box. And a lot of times they may not hit anything big, but when they do hit something big, you buy back from them. But they're looking to sell it because that kind of spreads that goodwill. And sometimes you buy a card and it's too high and whatever. But if I walked into a shop and I sold them a card for $10, where the Roberto Clemente, that's a 10 to 15 card, they pay me $10 on it. If I come back next week and that card has a hundred dollar sticker on it, what am I, I'm saying to myself, okay, are you just straight up scamming me or are you trying to straight up scam other people? Because you only paid me $10 on this card, you're gonna mark it up 10x what you paid me from. Yu-Gi-Oh So either you lowballed me and told. Lied to me about what the value on this card is massively, or you are lying to your customers and saying, hey, this is a card that we reasonably think we can get a hundred dollars for. Yu-Gi-Oh it's tough. I mean, there, there's opportunities everywhere. Even at the, the Front Row show in Las Vegas this weekend, I sold, I sold a few cards. I sold a couple of George Lombards and Max Clark's. Why? They just got called up. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh I went to a few. Crazy. Yu-Gi-Oh I went to a few booths and somebody offered me 85% and I said, Yu-Gi-Oh I'm cool with that. You know, do you know why? Because I'm into it just fine. If I went around and I haggled people like, it is not worth my time to go around and haggle for another $20 when I could be looking at other stuff to buy or trade towards. And I ended up, I did, I ended up trading some of those towards a James Wood first Bowman Refractor auto. It's a PSA9, but it's just a cool one. And I'm like, you know what? Hey, that's a fun one of a guy who's playing really well. Absolutely. And, you know, it's another thing of, hey, he's been in the league for more than a year. He's pretty much solidified himself as a solid bat or the best bat in the Nationals lineup. I know they're not the best team, but they're still solid. I mean, they're better than the Mets, but we don't have to talk about that. And why not? You know, a guy who might have a hot start and then fizzle out, or a guy who's decently solidified. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh It's. It's just interesting, and it's been a great trip. Otherwise, you know, I think we're making some good headway. We. We have to figure out our life here. In terms of. My wife's new job is remote, which is awesome. She'll be able to be home more, she'll be able to see her daughter more, etc. It's a little interesting. And it's always this, like, it's nice to have the flexibility of, hey, we can make a change, make a move whenever we want, but then we can also do it whenever we want. And it's kind of this, like, oh, like, there's not a, like, deadline or end date. And then you're waiting for, like, oh, like, when will I be ready to leave Nashville or make this next jump or make this next step, et cetera. So we're working on figuring out our timeline. It's been a really, really good trip, and we've been. I. I was saying to my wife today, because we were driving down, doing a little bit of daycare tours for our daughter, and after we. We go back down tomorrow to meet with a realtor to tour some homes. Things like that just get a sense of the market. We know that most likely anything that we're seeing, we have no chance at buying unless it sits on the market for, like, months and months and months. But just a sense of what's there. But I drove from Nashville up here over the span of the last week, I will have done over, like, 32 hours in the car driving, you know, those tiny back to school emergencies that somehow become your problem. That's why I love Uber Eats. You can order school supplies, snacks, and lunchbox essentials for $5 or less. So when your kid casually drops, I don't like peanut butter anymore. Or I need five green highlighters for a project due tomorrow. Uber Eats has you covered. Get everything you need for back to school today from your favorite brands and like Aldi and staples on UberEats. Order now ends 97. $5 or less before taxes and fees. Select items only. Availability varies. See app for details. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Shave ice by the beach, a trip to the state fair and a throwback flick at the local drive in. They're more than just items to check off the summer Beckett list. They're also opportunities to earn 2% daily cash back when you use your Apple Card with Apple Pay. Apply for Apple Card now and use in minutes with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more@applecard.com It's a lot of driving. Yu-Gi-Oh dude. I mean I only did like 20 and I'm smoked. But you know that's, that's what you sign up for. There's just, you get to be able to bring the dog and why we, you know, being an hour north of where most of the things are is because we're at a beautiful lake house where, you know, it's remote and beautiful and quiet and nice and such a great vacation vibe. But it's nice. We found, I'm, I'm hopeful that we may have found a good spot for a shop. It's something that's being built right now and should be ready mid to late next year is my hope in terms of the building. And then obviously you got to build yourself out in this and that. But like the timeline seems to work pretty well. It's in a good location in terms of, you know, like a shopping center type thing where there's grocery store and things that people are going to be coming to run errands and you know, swing by the card shop and spend some money. So Yu-Gi-Oh Alex is gonna hire somebody to camp out at the Pokemon machine inside the grocery store and scalp the Pokemon box. We actually were in the poke the the store today and I don't think they have a Pokemon vending machine. My Kroger just got a Pokemon vending machine. Actually I, I say just there was somebody there when I went last week and they were and I was like this new, like it's been here for a couple of months. Maybe I'm not observant. I think I'm more observant. I don't think, who knows. Whatever. I got lucky. I got like eight things. When I went one time I was like, oh Dang, boxes. I've never even. I've never even hit. There's always somebody standing there and I'm like, I'm not gonna do this. It's to that point though, it's really interesting on back to our discussion though about that shop that is, you know, does not have any wax. It is such an interesting balance because if you don't have any distribution, where do you get your boxes? And obviously if you can get boxes at retail that are selling for more, that's a good thing. But you also don't want to be the person. I remember back in Covid days when I was living in Michigan, there was an LCS owner who would hang out at Target and clear out stock whenever he could because he was able to get stuff. And on one hand I think it's a bad thing because your casual collector is therefore not able to get anything that then hopefully levels up to be your collector. I also get it. If you're looking for inventory and you can't find. You can't get anything. You know, when I open up a shop, I'm going to pay whatever, you know, market is, try and pre order as much as I can on the TOPS website. So we get it on release day, etc. But you know, I. My rule would be if you see it, give it a day. If you come back a day later and it's still there, you grab some boxes. That's my personal. That's fair. Yu-Gi-Oh that. That's completely fair. Versus like the clearing out the shelf. Fighting an 8 year old for a blaster of Topps Chrome. It's like drop kicking a 7 year old across the room so that you can. I mean I get it, you got to do what you got to do sometimes, but I don't know. Little Timmy deserves a blaster every once in a while. Maybe it was his birthday, maybe he got the honor roll. Who cares? He can come buy it from my shop. Trent. Yu-Gi-Oh for. For 89.99. No, we're gonna. We gotta be 10x comp. Come on, Trent. Or 10xing the hobby by 10xing the prices. Speaking of 10xing or just growing value, did you see. Have you seen the whole alt bounty auction thing? No, what is that? So you saw the Cooper fly got pulled? Yes. I meant to talk about this on last week's episode and I forgot, like literally just straight up ADHD forgotten. The Cooper Flag got pulled. And a day or two after it got pulled, alt put up on their website the Cooper Flag debut patch. There's one Problem though. Alt does not have the Cooper Flag Debut patch. Alt has no promise of the Cooper Flag Debut patch. auto they are doing is they are basically. But my understanding of how it is is they are running an auction. The winning bid is a binding bid. So if the owner of the card were to say, yes, I would like to take this off, I would like to take that bid and I would like that Alt will charge your credit card, bank account, wire transfer, whatever. They will get the card from the person who has it and they will send you the card and they will send them the money. If the person who has the card does not want to sell the card at that price or does not want to sell the card, period, nothing happens. What do you think? Dude, that is so dumb. That is so stupid. Are you, are we serious? I disagree with you actually completely. That is the dumbest thing I've heard of. No. What am I bidding on? Oh, you might not even one-of-one it. If you one-of-one If you one-of-one this also just saying this so I don't get a lawsuit in the mail. I hope that every bid is legitimate. And you know, I don't know, like, I got something shilling wise to talk about in a minute. But dude, how do you, how do, how do you say that to a customer of like, well, we don't have the card. We also don't know if we'll actually get it. But, but trust us bid on this. No, my perspective on it and why I actually think that it's a really interesting thing is what it effectively does is set to some extent a Fleer for your card where you're pricing. You, you get the you know of girl that is offering $2 million. You get Kevin O' Leary coming saying he's going to do this. You got blessing, you're going to. You people talking a big talk of I'm going to offer and buy this car. The reality is this winning bid for 30 days or I don't know, whatever the time period is, is a legitimate offer. The money can be pulled from their account tomorrow and you can have that as your Fleer So that gives them a negotiating power for the card. You can go say, hey, you know Kevin O' Leary Shine. This guy was willing to pay $4.8 million. I'd like 6. It sets it. It helps set a market without having to actually take the risk of setting the market and auctioning the card off. Like I just saw. Did you see the otani All Kings 100:1 that Kyle King of Cards sold at the National. Sold again on Goldin Oh, I didn't see it sold again. It. So I'm 90 sure it's the same card. I don't think that. I think all. There's only one on one. One, one, one. All kings and think Kyle's was a PSA6. I think it's the same card. It sold for, like, just over $200,000. But, like, to me, that seems cheap. Personally, if a PSA 10 of the base does 40k plus. Yu-Gi-Oh the one of one doing. Yu-Gi-Oh the one. I can see that. Like, if there was a bounty auction on that, if I could say, hey, you know, alt's gonna do a bounty auction on it. You see that the market is willing to pay 200 on it, or the ALT customer base is willing to pay 200. You say, all right, I'm going to keep it. And if you want to sell it, great. As long as you are clear to your customers that this is a bounty auction. We do not have the card. We do not have the rights to the card. We are in contact with the owner and we'll let them know what the offer is. I think it's cool. I think it's stupid. Still, I mean, what prevents me from telling everybody on here, all right, guys, you guys are bidding for this card right here. If it goes for what I think it should, then I'll sell it. If it doesn't, then I one-of-one charge your card. It's your card or a card. A rant. The Cooper flag. What prevents me from doing it, too? Like, you could. I just. I feel like you don't have the room. You don't have too much. There's too much room for fraud. There's too much room for fraud. What fraud? Trent, I just want to play tiebreaker here. I. I agree with Alex. I think it's a good thing. You're both wrong. No, no, no. But, Trent, hear me out before you say I'm wrong, because I think you're going to say that regardless. Let me just say that I think the point of it is it legitimizes the bounties. Like, people have to put up or shut up. Like, that girl can't just say that she's going to give $2 million. She's probably not going to do that. I mean, she might, but you don't know that. Now, we know exactly what these people. It would be better if they were public bids and not private bids. But they're not. It's not like you get charged if you one-of-one the binding bid, though, if they decide to Try and sell it. Right. And then the other thing I would say is he's also made it pretty. I talked to him last week. The guy that one-of-one it or found it, pulled it. He basically said that he has no intention of selling it, which is crazy, by the way. He just wants to hold it like that. He just. He has no intention of doing anything except redeeming it and telling the mavericks. No, that's it. There's so much that's wild to me. That's why. What prevents me from putting a $12 million bid in? And then it's like, I don't got $12 million. So because all the bids are Certified you have to be able to show that you can provide that. It's like a Fanatics premier auction where you have to show that you have X amount of money in terms of. You have to be one of the darlings to be able to bid is what I'm hearing. Great. So now it's a closed auction. So Joe Schmo can't one-of-one it now. You weren't going to one-of-one it anyways, Trent. Prove it. Alex, you don't know me. You don't have that kind of money. Does Joe Schmo have 3 million? Probably Udos. He's signing plenty of Topps Chrome autographs, so he might. Brendan, did you see that? They put up the. Well, and Trent as well. They also now put up the Dylan Harper for bounty auction. Oh, did they really? Oh, I didn't see that as well. Just do it. It's a good bounty auction. Every card. Just bounty auction. Every card. Why not? I mean, I think if there's a big enough card that makes sense. Yu-Gi-Oh I agree. Where do they draw the line? You know what I mean? Like, where, where do they go from? Like, okay, here's a, you know, the Cooper flag, where it's like, all right, here's a 20 chromotani auto. It's a bounty for the one of one. Like, I don't know, man. I. You know what? It just smells fishy. My opinion may change depending on how this shakes out. In the meantime, I don't like it because I don't like change, guys. You're hesitant to change, of course. I mean, stick your head in the sand like, you know, when a card is bounty worthy. Yu-Gi-Oh that's fair. I mean, would that. Would that one of one Ohtani have been bounty worthy? The All Kings? Yu-Gi-Oh probably. I would think so. Yu-Gi-Oh But it's one of those things. I don't know. I just. Every time I see Alt post and I've talked about this before. All I keep seeing is record sale for this card, record sale for this card, record sale. And it's like when every single card becomes a record sale my spidey senses go off and I'm like I should they all be record sales? Yu-Gi-Oh I. It's a very interesting question. I actually have something that the. I made a video on this yesterday. I was watching just scrolling through Whatnot single streams and it was one of those typical streams where you get the full hand point, 3, 2, 1 gone when there's 7 seconds left on the clock, you know, running huge cards at 5 seconds etc. These guys were running. I think it was a Tatum auto. I can't remember exactly what it was but I think it was a Tatum auto based on what I was able to comp. Cause I did it for a two minute auction to really give people time to bid but it was a sudden death two minute auction. It was a 1500 dollars card roughly. There were a couple of people that were bidding on it. Bidding, bidding, bidding, bidding. It sold for 6k. Payment failed, tends to half. Then what does the host do? Then the host of the stream says hey you know Trent 8, 6, 7, 9, you were bidding on this and you know they beat you out at 6k. Are you still interested in the card? They said yes. And the host said would you take it for 4,000? They did not. They said they'd take it at 3,500 and then they bought it at 3,500. That screams fraud to me. That screams and I'm not naming anybody. I don't want to become an 8675. You were getting shill bid up. They bid you up to see how high you were willing to go. And then their account that has a fake credit card in it that's going to get declined. One the it tries to charge you says oh payment failed. Now we know how much your dumb. I'm not going to swear on this podcast but was willing to pay on this card but and they said hey you want the card we're going to go down from. You bid 5,800 bucks. How about $4,000? We'll give you a nice deal. Yu-Gi-Oh So you shielded up freaking three grand. Yes. And what I said in my video is I said if you are ever in a room that is doing this, leave. First off that is a huge. The fact that they went down is one thing. You know I've had it on ebay happen where I have a card that sells and the person that wins the bid says, hey, I'm, you know, I can't pay for this. And I go to the person that was in second place. I said, hey, they bid this, you know, and I've never had somebody take me up on it. But would you be interested in the card? I've been asked if that, if I would do that, that I've been on a card and I lost. And I said no because I don't trust that that bid was legitimate. But if that happens, odds are they are fraudulent. Shill bidding, etc. If at a minimum, what you need to do in that situation is you say I'm still interested in the card, run it again at a dollar. And if I see that same account that just bid me up to $6,000 bidding or have the same type of thing happen, I'm gone. Dude. How do they combat that? I mean like, I have an idea of a good way to combat it. If your payment fails, you have to go back. You are not allowed to bid on anything until you can have a confirmed payment with any auction house. Yes. Like there's a Goldin like there's a Goldin of like you cannot bid on anything until this is fixed. I don't know how it works, but. And if you as an account cancel an order for an account for another account a certain amount of times, let's call it three times, that account is no longer eligible to buy from you to bid for your stuff. Bingo. Because what happens is you have the payment failed. So where they have the fake credit card, they also have accounts that will legitimately one-of-one these auctions. And then after the fact, canceled. Boom, done. They're not going to get in trouble and not and Whatnot. Did try to prevent this a little bit. You now get charged a percentage fee if you cancel orders. Good. But, which is good. But I, I, I think you could take it a step further because I think that you, you want to combat shill bidding. And to me that was so clearly an instance of rampant fraud, shill bidding, et cetera. To go from 6000 down to 4000 because they knew it was a $1500. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I mean it's, dude, it's just gross. I mean two instances today of gross malpractice, one from a shop, one from online. Really boils down to do your research in terms of like, not research isn't the right word, but just sit in a room for a little bit. Sit in a stream. If you want to buy into a break with a company, watch Their breaks. See how they operate. Go into that shop. Comp cards while you're there. Like take a little bit of time. Don't get caught by the bright shiny lights. Don't get entangled by the come on chat. Come on. Like no, listen to the streamer when they're telling you this is a $70 card and it's a $12 card. You know those tiny back to school emergencies that somehow become your problem? That's why I love Uber Eats. You can order school supplies, snacks and lunchbox essentials for $5 or less. So when your kid casually drops I don't like peanut butter anymore or I need five green highlighters for a project due tomorrow, Uber Eats has you covered. Get everything you need for back to school today from your favorite brands like Aldi and Staples on Uber Eats. Order now ends 97. $5 or less before taxes and fees. Select items only. Availability varies. See app for details. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Shave ice by the beach, a trip to the state fair and a throwback flick at the local drive in. They're more than just items to check off the summer Beckett list. There are also opportunities to earn 2% daily cash back when you use your Apple Card with Apple Pay. Apply for Apple Card now and use in minutes with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at applecard.com Yu-Gi-Oh a car that you are not interested in, listen to what they say it's worth and then go comp it yourself and all of a sudden you're going to realize wait a minute, they are lying through their teeth. All right, let's, let's role play something real quick. Okay, you just did that. All right, I lied. What's your next move? No, you just, you just comped that. That $12 card that, that I'm saying is $70. Come on Chad, come on. Oh, 70. Last sale was $12 and then I get banned and I move. Ignore that guy. Ban next. Come on Jack, come on. Then I'm banned so I never have to see their piece of trash stream again. Dude, it's absurd. Maybe somebody else sees my comment is like oh well wait a minute. And they look it up. You. The reason for quick 5 second sudden death auctions, etc is they don't want a consumer to be able to educate themselves. Anybody who is running a hobby business or a business in general that does not want you to be an informed buyer to know what you're buying, what price you're paying does not want to give you the tools to go and, you know, make this. Make a decision on your own if they are trying to actively prevent you from doing so. Red flag in my book. And I would seriously consider whether or not you're wanting to support and willing to support that. Whether it be a card shop that is hoping that you are not an educated buyer and you're just going to come in and pay these stupid high prices or if it's a stream, whatever. As a shop, I view it as my responsibility to educate my customers. If somebody walks in with a collection or somebody walks in with a card and says, hey, are you looking at selling this? I'm the shop owner there. I'm going to show them, hey, here's what I'm seeing. Sales wise, I want to have a buying station where I have a computer screen where I have a monitor that they can. I can see they have more. They can see. Show them the comps. The last three are this or the last five or this. Whatever. Here's an outlier. That's a really low sale. I'm going to not consider that because it doesn't help you. Or here's an outlier. That's a really high sale that I'm not going to consider because clearly something was weird there. Here's where I would value it and why. I can offer you 75% or whatever percent we end up paying, depending on the player, the card, the set, the year, all that jazz. Explain my thought process to you so that you are informed in when you get to make your decision as to whether or not you want to sell me a card or whether or not you want to buy something from me. Hear me out, Yu-Gi-Oh robot in your store that you put a card into and it spits out a 60% offer. And it just says, take it or leave it. I wonder if we can hire Bart to do that. Stop. He's going to get violently attacked every day. He would. All right, we've hit go. We've hit two pieces of the trifecta. We've hit online funny business. We've hit card shop funny business. I've got the third of card show funny business. Yu-Gi-Oh let's hear it. Here is a quote, a direct quote from the show that I was at. A dealer and a consumer. I was sitting there, I was just looking at his stuff. I was like, oh, cool. A bunch of nice 90s stuff, some interesting inserts. And the guy looks up at the sale of one of the cards and he goes, hey, this Card last sold for $100. I see you've got it stickered at 300. It sells pretty frequently. Would you be willing to do 120? This dealer goes, if I went off of recent sales on card ladder, I wouldn't be able to set up here. I wouldn't even have a business anymore. These are my prices. Take it or leave it. Thoughts? Card ladders for your side of the table, not for mine. It's the, it's the same thing as dealers who say, well, I bought a card at this price and I'm not willing to sell it for lower, etc. I have no problem. I have plenty of cards that I have that my price is not reasonable on. I'll embrace that. But if it is a card that I can go on to ebay right now and click buy it now or I'm gonna find multiple copies at that same show. Don't put it in your showcase. I have no problem. You know My Mookie bets 1 of Superfractor stars of the night. I've gotten offered significantly more than what I have into it, what I paid for it, et cetera. And I've said no. I have. I had one guy who messaged me like seven times in one day. I didn't get a chance to respond to him because I was working and driving and doing things and literally like seven times in like a six hour period. He wanted the card. And I said, here is my bottom line. I'm not going to go lower than this. I'll tell you my price is not reasonable. I will tell you heard me at the national say to so many people, here's what I can pay you on a card. Don't take it. You can find better. Like, my price is not reasonable. What I'm willing to pay you is not what realistically you can get for that card. I'm just not the right buyer, I'm not the right seller, et cetera. I'm fine with doing that on a car that you are quite literally not going to find another one. Yu-Gi-Oh Or if it's, it's a standing offer, hey, if you don't get offered more, my offer will stay the same. You can come back if you really need cash. But if, if you have a card that there's so many copies of that you just made a bad buy, if you are not willing to say, hey, I'm gonna take that loss liquidated and put it back into something that is probably a better one, I mean, there's, there's one dealer in Nashville who? I think five or six shows in a row, I saw the same Julio Rodriguez, Cosmic Chrome, PSA 10 bass, Rookie. And every year, this for the sticker stayed the same. The comps went down and down and down and up. It at one point was 50% of what I had offered him at a previous show, but it never sold because he's not willing to move his price. And it's your card. You get to determine how much you want to sell it for. But don't waste anybody's time if you're going to be so unreasonable on a card that they can go out and find somewhere else. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, instantly, too, it's. And guess what? Whenever I walked by that guy's table Sunday night, 15 minutes till close, it looked the exact same. And it's like, hey, man, like, the reason why you're not gonna be able to set up at some of these shows isn't because of card ladder. It's because you're not embracing sales. Yu-Gi-Oh You know, like you said, there's a point where, hey, if you've got a one of one, you have the only one in the world. Ask what you want. Obviously, there's probably a reasonable price range for it, but, you know, it is what it is. I ended up. I'll tease this for next week because I still haven't even opened it yet, or I'll make a video about it, but I ended up selling that Aaron Judge Bat Knob Auto. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I ended up selling that. I think I got a really good deal on it. I think the guy is Zebra happy. I think it was fair for both sides. It was a trade plus cash and do. The card that I got in trade, it is also an Aaron Judge 1 of 1. I'll make a video about it, but it is sweet. But at the end of the day, I'm happy. The guy who collects it is a huge Aaron Judge, one of one collector. We're both happy. I had some cash to go spend at the show and, you know, everybody wins. Those are the best scenarios. Yep. Absolutely. Yu-Gi-Oh I also think it's interesting just on the card show side, something that I've thought about and I'm curious who the first company to do this is. You see at the car. Any big card show. I guarantee you that you saw one of Arena Club's buyers this weekend at front Row. You may not know, but, like, I know a few of them. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I saw plenty. Guarantee. They obviously do the repacks. Zebra Zebra cool. I think. What's the code SCN to get 10, 10, 20, I don't know, percent off some sponsor plot. But they obviously do the slab packs where you can pull the cards, all this and that. For that, they source a stupid amount of inventory. I'm surprised that none of these companies have built in liquidity and sourcing for them in their app that you can scan a card and say, hey, I'm interested in selling this. They have an algorithm or somebody that's sitting behind a desk that is able to look at the card and say, Yu-Gi-Oh or nay. It spits out an offer and says, similar to PSA offers, basically, but the other way around of like, hey, you mail us the card and we will. And it might be that you don't want to have to handle the logistics of all that mail coming in, etc. That it's easier buying from one person. But I feel like it's an opportunity that you might be able to source some stuff at a really solid rate, at a really solid volume. And I'd be interested to see. Well, I feel like you could easily pull that into their app. Haystack did that at the national where they had the. This. You scan and, you know, it's able for people to see all over the show Fleer Dude, I'm telling you, if. If local shows started implementing that, I feel like it would make things a lot more competitive. And because there are times where you walk around and, you know, I. I did this. You know, you see the signs that say, paying 90%. What do I get? I get a 79% offer, and I'm like, it. I wish that I was a little bit more Tom Brady Downtowns. No, no, no, no. I wish I was a little bit more confrontational in these scenarios. I might build up my confidence for next show. We'll see if this happens again. But every time I go, I literally just stand there pointing at their sign and they're like, what? And I go, your sign says 90. Why are you giving me a 79 offer? Yes. Well, that's only sometimes. Yu-Gi-Oh Then why is it on your stupid sign? I get it. Why. So I walk up to your booth and look like a bozo, but I felt like a bozo going to him. Yu-Gi-Oh it's. I don't know. I feel like there should be. And it's something that I'm working on in terms of bringing on some buyers for clever Cuban cards because I need to source more inventory. But, like, I made a video about it a while ago in terms of having transparency in terms of, hey, if you want to sell me a $5 card that fits the following criteria. I will pay you 70%. And yes, I understand that you can go sell that $5 card for 100% potentially. But how much time is it going to take you to sell that individual $5 card, to pack that $5 card up, etc. Would you rather just go to a Show, find a three dollar bin or a two dollar VIN, find a bunch of $5 cards that fit my buying criteria and just be cashed out? One easy transaction, Zell. Easy done. Like, have transparency in terms of what you're going to pay for people. Like, I want to have that when we have the shop. In terms of. No, here's our general buying rates and we will vary depending on certain season player, everything. Yu-Gi-Oh but like, here's what you can expect. If you bring me cards worth less than $20, it's going to go into a value bin that might sit in my storage locker for three years. You're getting X percent. Yu-Gi-Oh Bring me a $10,000 Ohtani car. We're playing a different game. Yu-Gi-Oh And. But that's reasonable. Versus, like, hey, it's not like I brought up to him like $3 cars. Like I said, I had a couple. George Lombard first. Bowman autos. Yu-Gi-Oh Was I expecting to get 90%? No. But when that number started with a 7, I was like, dude, come on. Like, I, I get the intention of the sign. I need to get a shirt that says, if your sign says you're buying at 90% and you offer me less than that, I get to punch you. It's like, look, we each have our marketing now. It's, it's. I would love to be able to get to do more merch. I need to find a way to do it because, like, I've had people tell me that they want the, like, it's for sale, not on sale. Above a shirt that says that. Or like, you're never going to go broke making a. All the little things that we have. But Yu-Gi-Oh it's, it's really interesting. I got to give a shout out to Brandon. Brandon wore a shirt that said I can't. My mom said no. I was like, dude, that is too good. Yu-Gi-Oh it's. But I mean it. To bring us back to our conversation about the national it. That's the same thing. If I'm going to make an offer, if I'm going to say, you know, I'm buying at 90%, it's not everything that I'm buying at 90%. If I'm going to tell you that I'm making an offer. George Lombard Jr. People that are not offering to pay strong on him right now are just scared because they know that his market is very high. That's why you're trying to sell the cartoon. But be honest about it and say, honestly, Trent, put it on ebay. That's where you're going to be able to get the most money that you can right now because you need to find somebody who's willing to do it. Any dealer in this room is going to be hesitant to buy it because they're not confident enough that it's going to hold its market. I saw a great TikTok on it. This was a Pokemon themed tick tock. But talking about like, hi, I'd like to sell this card. And the vendor says no, sorry, it's too high for me right now. And the buyer and the person goes well, that's why I'm trying to sell it. And then he goes, Yu-Gi-Oh but I want to wait for it to go down until I buy it. And like, but like you just need to, if that's, if you have a card like that that is skyrocketed up and is by all like likelihood going to go back down at some point, sell it on ebay. Like you need to find a end user collector who is willing to take the shot, not somebody who's looking to make some money on it because they are likely smart enough to know that it's probably not a good thing to buy it at 90% when it's up 300%. Yu-Gi-Oh And another thing too, just a really good insight for people, trading stuff like that is a better move. Yes. You can trade into stuff so much easier than buy. Well, some, some dealers are a lot more stingy, but most dealers are pretty reasonable. Yu-Gi-Oh are pretty reasonable in terms of trades. You can get more value out of a card if you're trading into something bigger and you have cash. Yep. Every time. I mean like this James Wood. Do I think that The James Wood first Bowman to499 is more liquid than my base? George Lombard Auto Absolutely. I can get money out of that a lot easier than I think I could. The Lombards for sure. Yu-Gi-Oh So it's just the little nuggets that, that hopefully help people go a little bit further at shows, online, everywhere. Hopefully learn a little bit from the hobby handbook. Gosh, he's so good at transitions and segments. Do you have anything else to add to the handbook in today's chapter? Trent? Yu-Gi-Oh I kind of Want to complain a little bit more? Give me one second. So I'm not done yet, folks. Oh God. Dude, PSA is ticking me off. So I mentioned this. Probably two months ago at this rate, I submitted two orders at the same exact time. A value bulk order and a regular crossover. Tell me how. I've had the value bulk order back for over for nearly three months now and my regular crossover estimated completion June 2nd is still in grading. Have you contacted them? No, because I don't want to and I'm afraid of confrontation. I don't know. No, I haven't. Like an idiot. Honestly, no. Like, like and this is like a Call them, don't email them, call them. Their phone line opens at 8 or 9am Ask to speak to a manager. No, no, no. Not your manager. Their manager. No, you don't even have like, Truly, this is something that, like I don't think that people talk about a ton. I have had nothing but great experiences with PSA customer service via the phone. They have been Zebra nice, Zebra accommodating. I had an order one time that was, you know, scheduled to be done by this date and that date came and went. I called, they said, not seeing anything on our end. Give me like we're, we're apologetic, Zebra nice about it and said how it works is it needs to be over two weeks late for me to be able to push something in our system that basically sends something to like a like action team or something like that that will be able to then investigate what's happening and hopefully get things back on track. I waited the two weeks, I got no movement. I called again the next I called again, explained that I had already talked to somebody previously told. They told me to call back. At this point they said, great, let me do that. They did that within 24 hours. Moved. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean my thing is like, call them. Do you know what the worst part is, Alex? The worst part isn't that I want this card moved. It's just the fact that I know that it's not going to cross over. I just got, you know, just got that feeling. I'm like I am wasting all this time, all this energy on a card that they're just gonna say no and send it back to me. Yu-Gi-Oh idiot. But truly, like call them and anybody in the comments as well and that's listening. If you have a card, don't call them for your card that's due May 27, 2027 and say, well, he hasn't my card moved. Don't, don't Give me that. If you have a card two months past estimated completion date. If you have a card that is well past the estimated completion date, just call them. It's not. Don't be a. You know, whatever. These today that are afraid to talk to people on the phone call. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh I. I'm. I'm gonna let loose if they say. If they say something like, oh, give us a couple weeks. No, let me speak to your manager and then their manager until I get $5 in PSA credit back, and then I'll feel like I one-of-one You want to talk to the assistant to the regional manager? Correct. That's all I got. I think I'm done complaining for the day. It was good. Thanks for the. The therapy session. We'll complain again more next week. What we do best. No, we'll. I'll try. Maybe get us a guest or something next week to chat through with some stuff so we can chat on that offline. We can take it offline. I hate. I'm. I'm. The best part about leaving corporate America is having no corporate America lingo. Not my last note. Just piggybacking. We were doing something. We were. I forget what it was we were doing upstairs at My House, and my wife goes, Yu-Gi-Oh that's a good build. And I was like, what did you just say to me? And she goes, sorry. Like she. Like she hadn't turned off her corporate America brain. And I was like, you just start twitching. It's like, no corporate America lingo. Give me. Just give me hobby lingo. That's what it's all about. So it's good to be able to chat again this week. Trent, glad you're back from all of your gallivanting. I'll be gallivanting for another few weeks and then back in Nashville in a few weeks. But you'll have me here in this office again. It was a good time. Appreciate you guys listening to this week's episode. Catch you next time. You know those tiny back to school emergencies that somehow become your problem? That's why I love Uber Eats. You can order school supplies, snacks and lunchbox essentials for $5 or less. So when your kid casually drops, not only like, peanut butter anymore, or I need five green highlighters for a project due tomorrow, Uber Eats has you covered. Get everything you need for Back to school today from your favorite brands like Aldi and Staples on Uber Eats. Order now ends 97. $5 or less before taxes and fees. Select items only. Availability varies. See app for details. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi step projects and when you need more than just answers. Give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started@chatgpt.com by selecting work mode available on plus and Pro plans.