"Hobby Money" Hobby Quick Hits E234

What's up Foos? Main event J uso here from the wwe. When it's just me between matches, it's day one ish. And that means it's Chumba time. With hundreds of casino style games and new titles arriving weekly, there's always something fresh to try at Chumba Casino. The daily boost make it even more fun and have me bout to get em all during my downtime. Ready for a fun way to chill out and enjoy a few minutes for yourself? Let's Chumba. No purchase necessary. VGW Group Voidware prohibited by law. CTS and CS21 sponsored by Chumba Casino Step into the world of power, loyalty and luck. I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse with family. Cannolis and spins mean everything. Now you want to get mixed up in the family business. Introducing the godfather@champacasino.com test your luck in the shadowy world of the Godfather slots. Someday I will call upon you to do a service for me. Play the Godfather now@Champacasino.com Welcome to the family. No purchase necessary. VGW Group voidware prohibited by law 21 terms and conditions apply. Hobby Quick Hits. Delivering that breaking hobby noose directly to your earlobes. You want to know those hot drops from the car shaft. We've got you covered with your host, John Newman. Foreign folks, welcome to episode 234 of Hobby Quick Hits. As we approach the national here, I hope to see many of you at the National. If you see me, come shake a hand, say hello. Love to meet as many you as I can. Right. Like our. Our flagship show, right. Sports Carnation. Our tagline is the hobbies, the people. So it's not just words to me. It's. It's my mantra. So with that being said, this episode is titled Hobby Money. And I just wanted to do an episode kind of where we talk about some of the things I've observed over, especially over the last few years about what I've seen in the hobby and financial stuff. And you know, whether you, you know, you have to see whether you agree with me. Did I. Am I right? Am I wrong? I always appreciate that feedback. So that's what today's episode's going to be bad about. Not gonna be long. It's Hobby Quick Hit. So we're gonna kind of tackle it and be done with it, at least at this time, but still. So thanks everybody out there. Hope to see some of you very soon. Let's start the show. Okay, now a quick word from our Great sponsor. Followed by the new product release schedule. Then we'll go around the Hobby Verse to tell you all the latest hobby happenings and news. Then we'll tackle today's topic of discussion. Hi, this is Pat Hughes, Cubs announcer, coming to you from the Sports Card shop in beautiful New Buffalo, Michigan. The Goetcher family has built an incredible place here for collectors to buy, sell and trade cards and memorabilia. Be sure to stop by and let them show you around. Thesportscardshop.com Connecting sports athletes, the hobby and collectors around the world. Hi, this is Alan Pinkett and I'm here to tell you the Gocher family has done it again. They just opened up the sport card shop in Downtown Valparaiso, Indiana and it is awesome. If you're a collector, you need to check this place out, tell them Alan sent you and get a free gift on your first visit. All right, let's go over the product release schedule. That's for the next two weeks, starting with July 29, we have 2026 Panini Contenders PFL 2026 Tops Tribute Baseball 2026 Upper Deck Artifacts Golf 2526 Upper Deck FLIR Ultra PWHL 2526 Upper Deck Ice Hockey. Going to the 30th, we have 2025, 26 Topsuifa Club Competitions Inception Soccer, Soccer. Not as easy to say as you think. Going to end of The The Month July 31, 2526 Panini Prison Basketball 26 Pro Set Metal Football Hobby and Jumbos Pokemon Mega Evolution Pitch Black Build and battle decks. And 2025 tops resurgence Football blasters Delights, Hobbies and Megas. Let's go to August. August 5th we have the 2026 Topps Chrome baseball, the Megas. Also Topps Chrome Update Series Basketball Blasters Delight Jumbo Hobby Megas the 7th we have 2026 Leaf Seasons in the Sun Baseball. Also August 7th we have 2026 Onyx Track and Field Trading Cards. 25/26 Panini Revolution K Soccer 2026 Wild Card Splat Summer Splash Baseball Pokemon First Partner Illustration Collection Series 3 Yu-Gi-Oh Gi oh Legendary Arc V Deck. Also on August 7th, Upper Deck Platinum DC Trading Cards. And that's your your rundown for the next two weeks. As I always say, Happy Happy ripping. Choose your weapon. Happy ripping. All right, and now our feature presentation. Okay, so again, like I said in the intro, I'm just going to share some of the observations that I've noticed, you know, in the hobby, whether it be in person, online, as a show dealer, as a show customer, As a content creator, the whole, the whole ball of wax, just things I've observed and sort of, I don't want to say put the puzzle together, but sort of, you know, connecting the dots, if you will. One of the, the negative things I noticed and maybe it's not as new as I'm trying to make it out to be, but I think we're starting to see sort of. And I don't like it. I'm not hat, you know, excited about it. It's not something I like to see, but I think we've seen like a cast system sort of develop right, where we have the higher end of the hobby, which is the smallest percentage, truth be told, sort of look down at anyone that's not in that space rather than look at it as we're all under the same umbrella, we're all under the same fraternity. Sure, one person might have more discretionary income than another, right? But instead of like supporting each other's hobby, it sort of becomes sort of a flex fest, especially on that higher end. And a look down fest when someone that's not in that upper space, you know, post something or does something in the hobby. We've seen sort of a divide and even though that, that top space or that top cast level is, is smaller, it's still, it still exists, that riff. And it's disappointing because I try to whether someone, regardless of what level of collecting you're at, right. I view everyone as. We're all in this fraternity, fraternity together. We may go to different colleges, but our fraternity is the same. But unfortunately, I don't think a lot of people view it the same way. It's become sort of a competition to be better than somebody rather than to just enjoy cards in your own way and support other people who enjoy cards in their own way. I think it's become a flex fest. I think that's even happened on the content creation side. So that's one thing I, I've notice and again, maybe, maybe it's not new, but it seems to have really gotten worse. Maybe that's the way to phrase it, investing over collecting. You know, I got in again, sound like a broken record here, but I got in the hobby as a 7 year old kid in 1979 and I just wanted to get as many cards as I could get. I didn't care about the values or what they're worth. You know, I put rubber bands around them, True confessions. And for me it was about the love and passion of at the time, baseball cards and you know, as obviously I get older. That really hasn't changed. Now, obviously I do content creation. I did my first show at 15. So I don't want to, you know, I'm not trying to be hypocritical with the financial aspect, but it was, it's not, it wasn't the driving force then for me. And even today, even though I'm a show dealer and sell online, it's still not the driving force today. It's, you know, if, if the financial aspect on the way, I'd still be collecting cards, I'd still be doing content creation. But I think for some it's just about, you know, it is just about the dollar signs and money. There's no attachment to cards. There's no nostalgia for certain people. There's no story that, hey, my mom or dad or my grandpa or my cousin or my buddy got me in the hobby. It's just strictly, I'm going to buy this for a hundred bucks and sell it for 300. And that's the only attachment. And I remember at last year's national, going downstairs in Rosemont at the Donald Stevens Convention center and there was, you know, all the tables and trade nights and just walking around. Not a trade night guy per se, but I was walking around, kind of taking in the, the moments and just hearing some people and it was a lot of younger people, but I even heard, I don't want to like, just make it out to be a younger collector, younger hobbyist deal. I, I heard some older folks too. The cards were just vessels to financial. Right. You know, I heard people say things like, Yu-Gi-Oh I got this an hour ago, I can let it go for this. Or if you wanted to, I'll take these two. If you wanted to take this. They were just strictly monetary items. There was no PC or, you know, and that sort of thing. And again, to each their own. But I think we've really lost a good, a high percentage of people who, you know, I don't want to say high percentage, but we've lost a little bit of that nostalgia and why that we're in the hobby, if you will. And you know, it's sort of disappointing, but again, it doesn't, you know, and, and that. Let me say this too, as well, right? Whether you like that or you don't care, you do care, right? At the end of the day, you control what you want to collect, how you want to collect. And that's again, that's the beauty of collecting is you're your own CEO, right? To whatever direction you want to Go. And those folks really shouldn't affect you other than maybe having an opinion on it. You know, let's talk about the breaking aspect. You know, we're going to do an episode on breakers coming up. I believe it. I don't know if it'll be the next one, but it'll be very soon. But we've seen, you know, breaking, which I've always said has, you know, at the time, saved the wax industry, right? We, we went from a time where products were collecting dust, sometimes on shelves, certain products, and now everything sells out. You know, you can make a product that sells, you know, cornhole players on it. Someone's gonna buy it. Someone's gonna buy into a break. There's nothing that doesn't sell. And, you know, I think, you know, it's, it's, I think certain breakers, like any part of the hobby, right, do it the right way, price it the right way, and then others are just see dollar signs and it's just about maximizing roi, not about building community and that sort of thing. And, and I think it's, it's sort of fed into that flipper mentality. I'm gonna buy into this break at hopefully a low price, hit something big, and in turn just sell the card. It's like day trading. And again, not for me, but, you know, it's definitely huge part of the hobby and a huge part of the money, and it's huge part of why Fanatics, slash tops and other manufacturers are doing so well. It's, it's the breaking part of the industry. And so for those breakers that are doing it the right way, kudos to you for the greedy, unmoral or immoral, if you will. You know, that's, that's on you. And, and you know, that's. It's too bad, I guess I'll say let's talk about price manipulation. This is something. There's two sides to the argument. People say it's, it doesn't happen and other people say it's happening. I may. It's happening. Part of the camp, I think we're seeing people, you know, band together, if you will, or work together to try to set pricing, obviously at a higher price to maximize their earnings. Whether that's through shill bidding, whether that's on bidding on a card even with no intention to buy it, just so it looks like it sold for a price level, I, I firmly believe that is going on. And I think a lot of people who follow the hobby pretty closely, I think the high percentage of those people will Tell you it, it a hundred percent is going on. It's hard to. How do you stop it? I think it just comes with people saying, I'm not going to do that or I'm not going to participate. But you know, you got to have everyone doing that and that's never probably going to happen. So I don't think it ever goes away. I think you just have to know, you know, if you're in the market to buy a card, I think you just have to have a budget and if it works out where you can acquire a card you're looking for, you know, great. But if it doesn't, you know, don't overpay for it or, and just be wary that some of these techniques and practices are going on to raise the prices of certain cards, maybe even certain players. Right. So you got to just be aware about it, be smart, hopefully not participate in that, you know. You know, I've done a show binning episodes. I don't want to rehash that, but I've been asked to like, bid on somebody's car to drive the price up and I just, I just one-of-one do it. And I'm sure they weren't happy with my answer, but I'm just not going to, just not going to do that. I'm not going, you know, I feel it's a problem. I'm not going to contribute to something that I feel is a problem. Another thing I get from people who correspond with the show, whether that's via text or PM or DM or email, is, you know, someone saying, man, you know, my son or daughter's like, priced out of the hobby. This stuff is just so expensive. They like, they want to participate in the hobby, but it just likes just stuff so expensive. It's becoming very difficult. And my answer, you know, to, to that those correspondence is like, you know, I know it is tough. I, I, I get it. But there are ways to, you know, for a son or daughter or anybody, I don't want to make it up just to be a kid's thing, but anybody can be priced out of the hobby, including adults. So how do you combat that? Right. There's still ways to enjoy the hobby. Right? You know, if you're going to a show, go to those dollar boxes, those, those bargain boxes. You'd be amazed what you find in those. I, I do them at my own table and I've had cards, you know, that were turned out to be, come out to be $40, $50 cards. Someone will actually find them in My dollar box. And in some cases they're like, are can you still sell this? Like this card's like worth a lot more. I'm like, hey, good for you for finding it. Yu-Gi-Oh you know, you reaped the, you know, you did the work, you get it for a dollar. So go through those bargain boxes and you'd be surprised what you can find. Trade, right. If it, you know, the whole hobby is not just, you know, cash money. Right. Make some trades with people. So maybe you can't afford a card cash wise, but you have some existing inventory that someone who has the card you're trying to get would rather have. And both sides can be happy with it with a potential trade. Right. So it doesn't always have to be transactional with currency. Right. It can be transactional with cards for cards. So trading, hitting the bargain bins, you know, maybe going to some lesser known auction houses and maybe picking up some deals potentially that way there are ways, you know, if you want to put in a little work, there are ways to still enjoy the hobby and be, you know, financially and fiscally responsible and save some money. Hey, it is Ryan Seacrest here. Want to bring a little Hollywood excitement to your day? Take a few spins with with Chumba Casino's brand new game. Ryan Seacrest 10K Ways. It's free and features 10,000 ways to play giving you nonstop action including thrilling bonus re spins and cascading reels. Every spin brings something new. So step into the spotlight, enjoy the excitement and play today@chumbacasino.com no purchase necessary VGW Group voidware prohibited by law CTS and CS21 sponsored by Chumba Casino when you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place. So nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickranger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. Another thing we, you know, we've seen more so maybe Covid has something to do with this. But I again, I don't think it was it just since COVID I just think it's gotten worse since the COVID crescendo, right? Is that flipper mentality again going back to the. The non attachment to any cards just the cards just represent dollar signs like what this card is $50 this card's a thousand dollars. Not this, this player means a lot to me or hey, did you see what this guy did this week in the league? And, and that sort of thing. So, you know, there's. Oh, and again, that's not relegated to just the card hobby. That could be real estate, right? We, we see shows where people buy beat up houses, demo them and then rebuild them and then just, you know, to make a profit. It's a business, a legitimate business. So I'm, I'm, it's, it is legitimate. Not like anything illegal. It's just not the way I hobby. And again, to each their own. I'm just saying it's, it's, to me, it's escalated. You know, when someone asked me a question, you think there's more flippers than collectors? I still say there's more collectors than flippers. But I will say this. The flipping population is, is growing. But so is the collector. Hopefully so is the collector population as well. I'm going to kind of close on one more topic, right? Credit cards and the hobby. You might be hearing that right now, scratching your head like, credit cards in the hobby. You know, credit cards are a great tool. I have them, so I'm not going to be a hypocrite. I have multiple, right? I have joint ones with my, my wife. I have some that are my own and my own for my business side of the hobby. And it's an easy pratfall to go down to, you know, we, we, you know, credit cards, easy, you just put it in the machine or tap to pay and you get an item and it's yours and you don't feel like you bought it because no money, you didn't pull money out of your wallet or money out of your account. And now you're taking an item with you and then that bill comes, right? It's an easy pratfall to fall into. And I, I've already told this story, but for those that don't know, during my heyday in, in probably the 2000s, early 2000s, I was opening, you know, a lot of wax and running up, you know, putting it. Sometimes I would pay cash or, or pay it in full, and other times I just charge and say, well, I'll just pay off my credit card whenever. And one day I opened the mail and that credit card Blue Ice 10k. And I kid you not, one credit card, which is what I use, I didn't have a bunch of them where I had big belt, but I maxed out that card. I think at the time at like $10,000 and I'm like, holy smokes. I, you didn't, I didn't even realize. It kind of just happened and snuck up on me and that's a really bad feeling. It's kind of scary. And I was also early in my marriage and I'm like, I can't. I got to, I got to put a stop to this. And so I did eventually pay that credit card off. I stopped adding to it and it took a few years to pay off that credit card bill and get back to, to baseline and zero. And it taught me a very expensive lesson, right, to be more wary of what you're doing and how you're doing it. And it hasn't happened again and it will not happen again. Matter of fact, at the time of this recording, I have a zero balance on my credit cards and I'll even go outside having, say I have a very close to zero balance even on my joint of cards with my wife. We went to dinner the other night, we were talking about finances and my wife does, you know, to her credit does a lot of the household finances and, and bills and that sort of thing. And she pointed out, hey, you know, we're very close to having our, our credit cards be at zero, which is a really great feeling. And even with my personal credit cards, they are at zero. So that's a good place to be. It allows you a little more discretionary income to take vacations with my family, do card stuff solo. And that's where I'm at. And I will say this, and you know, I, we, you're seeing a lot like, you know, I talked about, we let off sort of with the flexing with some of that higher echelon, you know, if you will, the 2 percenters that are, you know, the high rollers of the hobby. And you'd be surprised, and I know this factually, that a good percentage of those folks are paying for some of these big transactions with credit cards. And I'm not even talking just one, but multiple. I know some folks are taking out financial loans against their credit card with the purpose like I'll pay it back and then we forget about the interest payments. Right. You know, that's how the credit cards companies make money. Right. They don't make money if you just pay off your balance in full right away. They make money on the interest payments. They don't really want you necessarily to pay off those cards. And where I, I know there's certain folks that are buying these big time cards on credit and again, that's their business. I'm not trying to, but as someone who I just told you ran up to 10,000 and I'm, I'll tell you some of these other folks, it's more than the 10,000. It's multiple cards at 10,000 or even more to acquire something to post and kind of flex it. And they don't realize that that rabbit hole they might be going down that could lead to some financial trouble. I don't want to say ruin, pretend, but potentially that that's always a risk. Right. You know, I've heard people have to claim bankruptcy when you claim bankruptcy, right. You don't get to keep your stuff. You have to generally sell it to try to recoup as many of the funds that you one-of-one when you claim bankruptcy. So I'm not saying that's going to happen in every situation, but I think it's, you're going to start to hear more about people getting into, you know, financial troubles. You know, if they admit it, if they make it public, which, you know, I don't know if who will or how many people will be honest about that, at least outwardly, you know, maybe internally or with family or spouse. But I think there's going to be, and I think some people are already ready there right where they're getting those bills in the mail and you know, getting that sticker shock like, oh my God, now I got to pay, start paying these back. And you know when you have multiple of them, there's a minimum balance due. And I've heard of situations where people can't even make, when you add them all up, they can't even make the minimum balances on, on multiple cards. So I, I guess when it comes to, you know, money in the hobby, just, you know, be fiscally responsible, know what that, what could potentially happen. And obviously you want to avoid that for yourself. And if you have a family and married, you know, that will be a hard one to explain to a spouse. If you secretly ran up a six figure multiple credit card line that, that could be a, that could lead to more problems than just financial, that can lead to, you know, some, some problems on the home front. So just wanted to share some, some observations if you will, things I've noticed, things I know to be occurring and just shed some light on it. So with that being said, we're going to wrap up this episode of Hobby Quick Hits. I appreciate all of you, hope to see some of you here at the national this week and thanks everybody. We'll see you soon. Hey it is Ryan Seacrest here. Want to bring a little Hollywood excitement to your day? Take a few spins with Chumba Kick Casino's brand new game Ryan Seacrest 10K Ways. It's free and features 10,000 ways to play giving you non stop action including thrilling bonus re spins and cascading reels. Every spin brings something new so step into the spotlight, enjoy the excitement and play today@chumbacasino.com no purchase necessary. VGW Group voidware prohibited by law CTS and CS21+ sponsored by Chumba Casino when you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place so nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickranger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.