Episode 114 Who's Next?

Welcome back to Sports Cards and a Cup of Joe. This is your host, Joe Davis. And it is great to be with you today. And today we're going to have some fun. It's going to be a little bit of a different kind of episode. You know, normally I like to come on here and share some breaking news from the industry or share the ideas I have about some things going on in the sports card market or the non sport market. But today this is going to be a very open ended discussion where I'm going to ask you who's next? And I'm going to explain what I mean by that. But I hope that for those of you who watch this on the Got Baseball Cards channel, I hope we will have more YouTube comments than we've ever had because I want your opinions and I want each of you to help each other. And what I'm talking about is the greater sports card market players that are trending and we're going to talk about that a little bit. But who's next? Who do you think is or what group of players do you believe are going to be the next ones to take off? They're going to start trending. And let me talk about, let me give you the backstory on this first. Of course, Michael Jordan cards have always been in demand, but over the last year specifically we have seen tremendous growth. Not just on his rookies and his rare PMGs and rare numbered inserts and stuff like that, but we're seeing base cards selling for hundreds of dollars in PSA 10. We're seeing parallels that are not numbered, but they're bringing crazy numbers in high grade. And it is not uncommon, especially when we were taking in PSA bulk submissions for submitters to just submit large quantities of base cards of Michael Jordan. And now of late Griffey is getting the Jordan treatment. And what I mean by that is we're seeing more and more collectors submitting Ken Griffey inserts. Ken Griffey Jr. Let me get it right. Ken Griffey Jr. Inserts from the 90s, especially the tougher stuff, but even ungraded, some of them are bringing staggering amounts. We just sold a 97 flare showcase row zero, which is technically a base card, but it's a parallel of the easier to get versions, the row one and the row two. So the row zero is the rarest of the base cards. It's unnumbered, but I believe we sold that on ebay for close to $700, which was just shocking to me because it doesn't seem like that long ago that that was, you know, you would sell the row one and row two for $5 and you'd get $30 or $40 for row zero. And so Griffey is the guy in baseball right now at shows we're getting asked for Griffey cards. We're getting asked for, you know, rookies have always been in demand. You know, his 89 upper deck, the Griffey Jr. 89 upper deck is such an iconic card, it truly helped shape the future of the sports card industry. I believe it is one of the ten most important cards in the history of the hobby. That card in any grade from 1 to 10 is in demand. There are actually many collectors who are trying to build the rainbow of owning that card in every grade from a PSA 1 to a PSA 10. So his rookies have always been in demand. Even the Topps traded and the Donruss and the Fleer and, and the 89 score traded and so forth. Easier to get rookies. But what we're seeing now is we're seeing submitters grade later year cards of him and inserts and anything numbered and any parallel. And I'm literally going through boxes that have been sitting here in my store at one store or another for decades and I'm trying to find, hey, is there any Griffey inserts left in there? Is there any old Griffey base cards? I might want to grade some second year Griffeys. It's crazy things that were garbage that had no value to us. They were all oh, that goes in the dollar box kind of stuff. To now suddenly following on the heels of what Jordan cards have done over the last few years, but specifically the incredible growth over the last year. I was looking at a. Many of you are familiar with the ex titanium inserts, late 90s basketball, beautiful acetate cards. And I love Penny Hardaway. And Penny Hardaway has a titanium card with Jordan. Jordan's pictured on it, though he's not mentioned. Like when you slab it, it's Anthony Hardaway. And I bought one of those about a year ago in a PSA9. And if I remember correctly, I think I paid about $300 about a year ago at a show. I remember buying it in Nashville. It was like a fifteen, sixteen hundred dollar card. Now I was looking on ebay and seeing what others were asking for them and I'm like, okay, it's only been a year and that card is up five, six fold in a year. And that's true for countless Jordan cards. Jordan inserts the demand is not slowing down and the values are not holding steady. They're going up. And so right before the psa, before they shut down their value bulk services, I personally sent in possibly. I don't remember exactly. It was probably seven to 800 Jordan base cards. I just bought a huge collection, and I'm like, hey, this is. There's going to be demand for these, even though it's going to be months before I get them back. And these are cards that you buy on ebay all day for $5 raw, but in PSA 9, PSA 10, there's incredible demand. And so the point I'm getting to is we've seen this happen with Jordan. We are seeing it with Griffey right now. Griffey, of course, is probably the most beloved player from the last, you know, since he came out 35 years ago. He's just, you know, the most. Actually, it's been more than that now, 37 years ago, it's crazy, but Griffey is so beloved by collectors, despite the fact he never even played in a World Series. I think he made it to one AL championship, but he's the kid. He is so loved. And my point is, we've seen it happen with Jordan. We've seen it happen with Griffey. So who's next? And my point is, there are other players out there right now that all of us are overlooking. And a year from now, I could do a show and say, wow, we were all sleeping on Kevin Garnett or he's not the best example. But you get my point. Hall of Famers in their respective sports who we all overlooked because we're like, oh, yeah, he was good. He had a good career, but his cards are never going to really take off like this person or that person. You know, six months ago, I would have never said to grade cheap Griffey inserts, and now plenty of them are getting graded. So I've been trying to think outside the box, and I know there are sleeping giants out there. Let's talk 80s and 90s. Maybe not so much 80s, because we can't really talk about the inserts there. But in the 90s, when inserts became the rage, when that was the chase. Remember I had a store starting in 1991, and I remember when FLIR and Ultra, each year it started in the early 90s, and year after year, it seemed like the level, the number of inserts grew and grew. They started doing the parallels Topps started doing the topps Gold in 1992. And then it's like every year there were more and more inserts being introduced. And Fleer and a lot of their brands back in the mid-90s were the kings of it, in my opinion. Because you go back now, some of those transformational insert, the Dunkin Go Nuts and Jambalayas and the ex inserts and all the parallels, they were so ahead of their time in some of the things they did back then. So my point is, if we can figure out who that next person is or who that next group of players is, who are the ones that are the sleeping giants now? And I love having these conversations with collectors now. I've got to tell you, the greater market, it seems like everything is hot right now. I'm getting ready to head out to Fanatics Fest, where I hope to see many of you in New York this weekend. We'll be at booth 2747 if you want to come see us. But me, my team and I, we've been talking about, who are we trying to buy? When I walk the show floor, who am I trying to buy? Who should I be on the lookout for? And when we put up our buying sign, who are we chasing? The who should be at the top of our list? But it seems like the more, the more industry insiders I talk to, it feels like everything's hot. I literally spoke to a distributor, major distributor in our industry earlier today, and he said the best selling item he has right now is Lorcana boxes. He said, joe, a couple weeks ago, I had thousands in stock. Today, I don't have a single pack. And I talked to a store owner, longtime friend, and he just said, we can't get enough Pokemon. You know, everything we get sells out. It's just great. Everything we're selling, it's so popular. And in our store, we're seeing certain baseball products really in demand, selling really well. Finest has been very, very good. And it just seems like everything's hot. And the challenge with that is everything won't stay hot. You know, there will be a turn at some point where a lot of things will cool off. Maybe it's because of the economy, but there are always some things going up. And so I'm doing my own research, and I would love to hear from you to see what you think. And with this world of AI that we live in now, I said, I think I'll ask ChatGPT chat, who do you think are the next players that'll be trending? And I literally asked it a question. I said, based upon the growth in demand and sales and growth in sales numbers on Griffey Jr. Cards, Michael Jordan cards over the last several months. Who do you believe are others that could follow in their footsteps? Basically, you know, who. Who are those undervalued ones? Now, I trust collectors. I trust other dealers. I trust people in our industry far more than Chat. But it's always interesting to see what advice you get that way. So what I would love to hear from you in our comments today is, hey, I agree totally, or I think that advice is way off base, and here's why. Because I'm going to come back in on the comments and give you opinions and say, hey, that's a great idea. I understand why you think that person is really undervalued. And I'm on a lot of message boards where this question gets asked a lot, where variations of this question. It's like, hey, who do you all think. Yes, I'm from the South. Who do y' all think is the next person that's going to take off in our industry? Now, there's only one Michael Jordan. Let's talk basketball for a second, then I'll get to Chat's response. There's one Michael Jordan. When you talk basketball cards, here's my opinion. I put them in tiers. Basically, there's Michael Jordan, there's LeBron and Kobe. When you're talking about players over the last few decades that have a lot of these kind of inserts that we're chasing, there's Jordan, level one, level two is LeBron and Kobe. And then there's a massive drop after that. Yes, Steph cards are very in demand. Yes, some older Shaq cards are very in demand. But your biggest sellers, your most iconic ones that are chased are LeBron, Kobe, and most of all, Jordan. So I buy more basketball for myself than any other sport. That's my favorite sport to watch, which was my favorite sport to play as a kid. And that's who I do my research on the most. But let's see what Chat said. I just did a broad question. Which players, any sport didn't try to narrow it down? And let's see what they said, and I want to see what you think. All right, Most likely to follow Jordan and Griffey, Kobe Bryant, number one. Of course, Kobe's already there. Kobe's been trending for many, many years. Number two, Derek Jeter. And they said the baseball equivalent of consistency. Yankee collectors are everywhere. His rookie market has lagged Griffeys despite comparable popularity. The one thing Jeter does have going for him, too, five Rings and he played for New York. All he did was win, you know, no, his stats aren't going to blow you away, but five rings and he was critical to every one of those. Frank Thomas, very undervalued relative to Griffey. Same era. Key rookies, very affordable premium inserts getting harder to find. Next on their list, Shaquille o', Neal, one of the most recognizable athletes in the world. Rookie card still very inexpensive compared to Kobe or Jordan. His rare 90s inserts have been climbing steadily. Others that could surprise you. Tier 2 Rickey Henderson. It says vintage collectors have been buying up his stuff heavily. Of course his 80 Topps rookie is a six figure card and a 10. Now, one of my biggest regrets in the history of the hobby, I owned a 10 at the time. There were two of them and I owned a PSA 10. Henderson sold it at the 2000 national for $8,500 and should have stuck that one in the safety deposit box for a while. Scarcer issues on Henderson continue to grow. Nolan Ryan of course is very treasured in our hobby as well. Of course his vintage market is very strong. One of the things to keep in mind on these players is Henderson, Nolan Ryan mainly you think about, I mean Ryan's first car was'68. Henderson was 1980. But they both had very long careers, meaning that there were some inserts on them, some parallels on them, things like that. Of course they both had 93 finest refractors which are very in demand, especially in high grade. So it's tough for them. They didn't have this plethora of inserts like Griffey or Frank Thomas or Jordan had because of when their careers ended, says modern players to bet on Shohei, Steph Curry, LeBron, Caitlin Clark, Paul Skeens. I was surprised to see that one on the list because I'm not a big investor. I love Paul Skeens, but it's still very early in his career to be on a long term investment list when it all. Well, obviously it's very early in Caitlin's career. Also Ohtani more established. Curry and LeBron obviously are some of the greatest of all time. Both have four rings. And so their advice went on to say look for PSA 9 and 10 copies of Iconic Rookies, look for rare 1990s inserts, look for low pop parallels and look for cards with strong visual eye appeal and collector nostalgia. Now when it comes to that, I think of another icon who I didn't mention on the list, but I'm seeing that kind of treatment on, and that's Bo Jackson, especially the 90 score. Bo Jackson, you know, the, the iconic pose with the bat over the shoulders. But another one that's really trending now that has shocked me is the 1991 score bow breaker. If you're not familiar with that one, look it up. It's a black border card. It's a tough card in high grade, but there are plenty of them out there just like the 90 score. But the 91 score is even more plentiful because most of you are saying what people are actually grading that it's several hundred dollars in a PSA 10 now. So Bo, we all love Bo, right? But Bo didn't win any titles. He didn't win any MVP awards. He was a monster in college, but due to injuries, he had a short career. He played baseball and he played football, which was great. But so did Dion, and Dion won multiple titles. So nobody's talking about buying up Dion cards. So sometimes it's just the personality, sometimes it's the card, sometimes it's that combination. Right now there is huge movement on Old Metal Universe cards, especially in high grade. I had someone coming in asking for David Cohn metal cards and I'm like, seriously? And had no clue. There's a Twin Towers card of David Cohn with the twin towers in the background and high grades on that are hundreds of dollars now. You know, I had someone just offer me a second year Kobe metal universe in a PSA 7. And I've always loved that card. I had one previously sold it and I was like, you know, I'd love to add one of those back to my collection. And it's like a $300 card now in a seven. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. This is a base card. And it's not a rookie, it's a second year base card. But those old metal universe cards, mid 90s FLIR stuff again are very in demand. So sometimes you take the perfect combination of an iconic design card that's tough to grade and the right name, then you have potential for upwards growth. So I started to just call this video the 90s. The junk is no longer junk or something. But because forever we would get phone calls, hey, I've got an 80s and 90s collection I want to sell you. We're like, no, we're good. We got plenty of that stuff. And now I'm literally working on an internal list of all this iconic stuff from the 90s that I'm looking for. Like, I'd love to buy up some base sets from the 90s of certain brands and just break them down. And I never thought I'd be saying that. So I don't need any base tops from the 90s. I'm good there. But some of these outliers like Flir Metal and certain Skybox issues and things like that, they have, I mean, look up a 90. I believe it's a 95 electrified Jordan. It's a base card, but it's very strong and high grade. So are there other players from that set that could take off? We will see. But one of the things that is so exciting about this hobby is every day it seems like someone else is trending. Oh, now we're buying up Griffey. Now we're buying up Jeter or whoever else it might be. And what has died in the past to where you thought, no one's ever going to care about that. There's so much of that produced. Suddenly there's demand again and things that were hot. I had a conversation with a client just last week and he said I always loved the the Flair showcase inserts from baseball in the late 90s like the diamond Cuts Griffey. And he said, now I'm chasing those. I'm trying to buy up all that stuff from my childhood. And if you've been a follower of my show since the onset, one of the first episodes I did was called Collecting youg Childhood. And I talked about how generationally as different, you know, how the older a generation gets. If you were born in the mid-80s and then you were ten 12 year old collector in the mid-90s and you saw a lot of those cool cards but you couldn't afford them. Now, decades later, you have more disposable income, maybe, hopefully. And now you want to go back and buy those cards and now they're a lot more than they were back then, but they're still just as beautiful, they're still just as collectible. But now there's even more of us chasing them. So I want your thoughts, I want your opinions way more than I want what I can pull up on my phone. And I would love for us to help each other. I love to get opinions. I love it when it's backed up by facts. My data like, hey, this guy. The pop reports are so low. I think they're a good buy and I would love for all of you to exchange ideas together. I've shared what AI has told us. I want to hear what you think again. For me, part of this fun is that's the early years when I had a shop. So it's really cool for me to now go back and chase some of this stuff and to see others chasing it, because I'm like, wait a minute. I love those old Starburst inserts from Pinnacle baseball in the mid-90s. They were beautiful. They're iconic. And now certain players, they're trending. All those old refractors that were tough to pull then, they're really tough to find now, and they're even in more demand. And so the key is not only what kind of insert, what kind of base card, whatever you have, but which players. Because I'm telling you, when a trend like this starts in the hobby, it's not going to stop at Jordan and Griffey. There are others who will break out. And then in six months, a year, whatever, we'll all be looking back and saying, how did I miss that? How could I not have seen that this player, who is a Hall of Famer and won a bunch of rings, like in the example of Jeter, or this guy, somebody like Bo Jackson, he was always so popular, even though he didn't win a lot. Who's next? I think this is a fun game. It's a great opportunity for each of you to sell the rest of us on your ideas, on your thoughts, and maybe together we share some ideas and collectively we hunt down some of those cards. And maybe we just share a bunch of ideas and none of us get it right. But that's part of the fun. I can tell you I have plenty, plenty of cards that I bought up because I was sure that was the next thing, or he was the next thing, and they weren't. But I've also had plenty of that I got right. And that's part of the fun. I have plenty of friends who buy and sell stocks, and some of them, it's profitable, sometimes it's not. But it's boring. You can't hold the stock in your hand. I guess you can hold a stock certificate. But my point is buying players that you love to watch, or you used to love to watch, that has a sentimental attachment to you. So don't miss the big picture here. This has been more of an investment episode. Some of you don't follow my show because I talk about investments very much. I'm trying to share this because I'm seeing trends in our industry, and like a snowball that keeps getting bigger and bigger, I think this trend is going to continue and more and more players are going to get added to that snowball. Six months from now we'll be saying, wow, Jordan inserts are so hot. Griffey inserts are so hot, and this guy, and this guy and this one. Or we'll start saying, we're already talking about Metal Universe inserts being in demand and ex inserts being in demand. Next we'll be talking about, hey, that set, that was a pretty cool set too. Now those inserts are trending. Everyone's chasing those. Remember when kabooms and downtowns first came out? They weren't the chase that they are now. They were just another cool looking unnumbered insert. And now that's the rage in so many boxes. When they get open, it's hopefully I hit a kaboom, hopefully I hit a downtown. And now Topps is coming out with cooler and cooler inserts and some of their products, the Helix and others, to compete with those type. They're similar to color blasts and things like that. So part of the fun in this industry is always figuring out what's next. What's going to catch on which players are going to catch on which players that have lied dormant for decades, whose cards have lied dormant for decades do you think are going to catch on next? Whether you're a collector of those players, whether you're an investor in those players, that's part of the fun. So I hope this has been fun for you to revisit some of these names, some of these old inserts. But again, I want this to be such an interactive episode because I want to hear from you, I want your thoughts. I would love to hear who your sleeper picks are. Who do you think is going to take off next? And so I hope it's been fun. I hope I will see many, many of you in New York. I hope I could see all of you. But I know you want all be there. But again, come join us at 2747. We will be in New York buying. We will be selling, we will be taking in grading, we will be taking in pre grading, we will be taking in consignment. I already warned my precious wife. I said I may not make the flight back. I may have to drive back. If we get bombarded with a lot of drop offs, I may be finding a nice rental car for the 17 hour drive back. So that would be okay. That would be a great problem. That'd be a great challenge if y' all support us that much at the show with drop offs. So come and bring yours. We can't wait to see you there. And again, I hope you've enjoyed this episode and I want to hear your comments and hear your thoughts. As always, remember, most importantly today, never forget that Jesus Christ, he loves you. He gave his life for you. Remember that. I think you are awesome and I appreciate each and every one of you and I hope you have a fantastic rest of the week. Sam.