The best and worst things about The National!

Hey, everybody, it is Mike. This is this Week in Sports Cards, and I'm joined by teapot, Mr. Pot. How are you? What's up? I got my corporate shill shirt on. I'm ready to go. Well, you're having. You have your corporate shill shirt, which I know people like to comment on. I'm having my microphone issues, which I like to comment on. I had this microphone issue fixed a week ago, and now it's cropped up and it's worse than it was before, and it's not fixed, fixable in the way I fixed it last week. And I think. I think I need to buy another new microphone or it's my laptop issue, which is also new. Both of them are new. And the microphone has just stopped working. It's funny because when I plug it in, it recognizes it. And then I do a test and it works, and then it just stops. Every time within 20 or 30 seconds of connecting, it says, oh, we used to recognize this microphone 10 seconds ago, and now we don't. We just hired a new director of IT at Cards hq. Let me get him on a plane to Maine and see what we can do. I'm. I'm usually the guy at work who finds everything wrong. Hardware, software, Things are tweaking out on me. Market movers I'll have on my phone, and it's not working at all. And the guy next to me is, like, perfectly scanning pictures. It doesn't. We're on the same network. I don't. So I'm sorry. It might be my fault, actually. Like, it could be a contagious thing. Probably is. Yeah. I. I'm pretty technical. I'm good with software. I'm pretty good with hardware I can troubleshoot, and this one has stymied me for some. Yeah, good. Good word choice. Thank you. Actually, Greg Midlife. Greg used the word crescendo on a video this morning. I was like, there's a word you don't hear on sports card shows very often. I'm a big crescendo guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was impressed. I liked it a lot. So we're here today. First of all, LeBron 20 minutes ago, announced that he's signing with the 76ers, which we're going to get to at the end of this. Yeah, we're recording this Friday afternoon. We're going to talk about that at the end of this. But I want to talk about the national, because the national is coming up in four days, and I want to talk about the best and worst of The National. How's that sound to you? Perfect. Let's do it. Awesome. And the hot dogs. And the hot dogs. Chicago dogs are better than New York City dogs. They're better than just about any dog. They're really good. And I texted you after. But for people who haven't watched Cards on the Table, you had a great rant and you don't. There aren't that many. There aren't a lot of rants like that on. On Sports Card Investor where you get to really see who somebody is outside of sports things. And you ran. He had a great rant about New York City and the food in New York City and Yankee Stadium. And I, I loved it. It was really good. Yeah, I, you know, I just thought I'd come with like the good, the great, the bad, the ugly, the, you know, unpredictable. And then every time Ryan and. Sorry, Jeff and Carter are on Cards on the Table now, they like, it's like their mission to gang up on me for like accusing me of something I've. I said as being stupid. But the comments have spoken. People want more glizzy talk, more food reviews, more. I got a dm. I don't know if you know who the stand up comedian is, the British stand up comedian Jim Jeffries, but he messaged me on Instagram and said like, this is a guy with almost a million followers on Instagram and was like, hey, great entertainer. I loved your opinions. Like, keep going, my son. And I love listening to the, the show. That was super cool, you know, so I love it, especially coming from a true entertainer. Um, he's a pretty funny guy. And so that was, that was really cool. So I kind of had to throw it a little bit back at Jeff. I will say I did completely butcher a phrase related to like the national vs Fanatics Fest during that. I don't even really know what I said, but I think the real phrase is like, you know, Fanatics Fest is for sports fans who might be collectors and the Nationals for collectors who might be sports fans. And I, I twisted that into something else. It made sense, though. I understood what you were saying. Yeah. So what I'd like to do is go through a list of best and worst things. And if you have some best and worst things, I'd love to hear yours. Maybe we trade. But I want to say beforehand that I love the National. It's my favorite time of year is going to the national and so I have some. I probably have more worst things about the national in my list than best things. But those few Best things hugely outweigh the worst. So hopefully nobody's saying, well, you just got six worst things and only four best things. So he must hate the national. That is not the case. The best things are much better than the worst things are bad. That makes sense. Yeah. Well, for both of us who work in technology, you kind of take that QA mindset and always continuous improvement. I feel like a lot of my, my reviews of app releases and things are like that. But I completely understand where you're coming from. Yep. Okay. So I'm going to start with a best item. And for me, I love the corporate booths that have museum level items that they're showing off. You know, the heritage, the reas that you can go in and just see these multi million dollar cards or items that they're selling. I love that about the national. Memory Lane had an insane setup at Fanatics Fest. They had, they had the Hannes Wagner, they had the Mantle, they had the, the George Mikin, which I did a little social reel on with them. They had everything. They had everything. They had all the, the gaudy roots. They had all the big iconic cards basically in there. What was kind of a smaller booth activation. So I completely agree. It's. Man, you see stuff on social media, that's one thing. Being there in person is another thing. I, I think it's the equivalent of like, oh, there's LeBron on TV. There's LeBron in front of me. You know, for people who are fans of him. Yeah. And like a couple years ago I held the, the Wagner at some. I don't remember whose booth it was. Maybe it was heritage is. And just, just being able to hold the Wagner, get a picture of myself with it. Those things you don't get to do every day. Here's a five million dollar card and here's me holding it. It's crazy. They didn't charge you 237 either to take a photo with it. Probably like, like the live athletes, so. Well, Jalen Brunson charges 900 and some odd dollars. The Knicks prices were wild at Fanatics. Somebody was like, even Landry shamit was like 280 bucks. Yeah. Tyler Colic too. It's crazy. Yeah, the charges when the Celtics won two years ago, they were just out taking pictures. You wanted a picture with Jalen Brown, you get a picture with Jalen Brown. There's no. They weren't charging for it. Yeah, well, making $60 million a year, maybe not Tyler Colic, but I know that is a crazy thing. I mean, I Jeff mentioned that apparently Fanatics fest costs like 80 to 90 million dollars to put on. I don't know how much of that was like trying to recoup everywhere they could. I don't know. I don't know the numbers of it, but yeah, it was. I think it's a little cooler when you can just take a photo. Maybe. Maybe you pay for an auto and take a photo or so. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, you had to take the photo with the. I think it was Heritage, with the heritage logo in the background. So, you know, it's just, it's free advertising for them, so it made sense. Cool. Yeah. What about you? What best item do you have? For me, the highlight of the national is always the people. As much as I love cardboard, I am kind of a people person at my core. And you know, the hobby's really interesting because you get all types of people with all interests and some introverted, some extroverted, some social, some more reclusive and try to respect that. But I just, I spend about half of my time at the SCI Market Movers card, kids trade zone booth and so we get a lot of walk up foot traffic of people coming in there. It's both exhausting and rejuvenating. I don't know how to explain that because at the end of the day I'm like, whoa, I feel like my cup is full. But I'm also really tired. I, um, but it's, it's really, really rewarding and I had a lot of that at Fanatics Fest. Even with people coming up and just loving, especially the intro level, like 101 type content. There's so much to this hobby and people don't understand. And when you try to like put it into, you know, systematic presentation and just help people kind of get up to speed in an accelerated way, there's a lot of appreciation for that. A lot of fathers and sons, a lot of just guys getting back into it, a lot of even moms now and women. Like, it's. It was just really cool. So. So I love that part. Going to the show and then it's like really tough because you only have a few days and some people are only there one or two days. I want to be able to like actually connect more with people who I've actually interacted with more on social, you know, on Instagram or through DMs or other places. There's just not enough hours in the day and like availability and that's kind of the, like, other side of the coin. To that, that I wish, I almost wish it was like somehow like a two week thing with like the show and then everybody like hangs out for another few days and is like, let's just do stuff together. Yeah. So where can people meet you at the National? Is it the Market Movers booth? Yeah. So our booth. I can get that booth number. I actually think I put it on my Instagram story. Let me pull that up because I keep forgetting what it is. I'll memorize it at some point. But we are going to be at booth number 563. 563, yep. That doesn't sound right to me. I think that's the Cards HQ booth. Okay. I'm at the Market Movers booth with Sports Card Investor and Card Kids Trade Zone. I don't think that's. That might be the right number. But we have three different booths between Cards HQ and, and our corporate setup. So. And you and I haven't met in person, so I'll be sure to stop by. Absolutely. Yeah. I'll be sure to not be there. No, you'll see me coming. Yeah. So I did want to also say because this. This week in Sports Cards is sponsored by Auction Wire. Auction Wire will have a booth where they'll have a portion of the Just Collect booth. Stop by, get a demo there. Auction Wire is an amazing piece of software and we both love software. It allows you to search across almost 60 auction houses and marketplaces for whatever cards you want. There are tons of filtering opportunities or options in there. And strong recommend use the code SCC for 60 days free, which is the longest you're going to find. I see a lot of people offering 45 days free month and a half. This is giving you 60 days free, two months. Code SCC auction wire dot AI. All right, let's talk about my first worst thing. By the way, people was very high on my list too. So thank you for using that one. The worst thing, one of the worst things is the food. And you mentioned this and that. That's actually what when I started saying, okay, I got to make this list. The food at the national is not only not great, but there's also super long lines. There's just not enough places. And you suggested having food trucks around the kind of the entrance. It's like a semi circle or even almost a circle. I think that's a really good idea. Yeah, I don't think they'll do it. No, they won't. There's probably some insurance reason or emergency reason that they need to leave. There's always a lot of security and police in there and like drop offs and stuff happening. It might be a little too congested for what it is because they, at Fanatics Fest they had this area that was. There was no other track. It was just literally food trucks that were able to pull down and in and then they snaked the entrance line all the way through it. And so there was nothing else happening there. The spot that you and I know at the, at the Stevens center is like that's where people come and I don't, I don't see them doing it there and it's too busy outside on that main drag. But it would be nice. Yeah. Yeah. But we sustain ourselves. We. I would recommend anybody bringing snacks or granola bars or whatever you can bring just to get yourself through the day, especially if you're going to be there for a long time. And I like to walk across the street. Not sponsored by Slice, but there's a restaurant called Slice. I think it's S, L Y C E. I've heard of that and I haven't been. It's very good. I like to walk across there for lunch. It's a very, very short walk and there's almost nobody ever in there. I have a bag macro bars that were on sale from Whole Foods that I, I bought one for each day just so I know I have something. And then usually it's become like a running joke. I'll have a, I'll have a bunch of beef sticks. Oh yeah, I just caught some like big time noise. I don't know. That wasn't me. Sorry about that. Caught a bag of, I'll have like a bag of beef sticks in my thing and everybody's just like beef stick walk around. But you gotta stay, you gotta stay like you gotta keep, keep your macros up at least so you keep the energy. Yeah. What about worst items for you? The worst item is. There's a few different ones. I mentioned this on another video, but like to me, card shows, the big card shows. The National's a little different, but they can feel like Groundhog Day. I called like, it's like there's so many of the boosts that just have the same cards over and over and over again. The national is the big one that has a lot of different stuff. It's out there, but it's so big it's hard to find. Which is really my bigger issue that like the site map, the event map, there's no way to know. There could be a table that has all your Favorite types of cards somewhere on the show floor, and you have no idea. You have no way to know. And then your buddy comes up to you and is like, oh, I just found this, you know, booth that has whatever. Oh, what was the booth? Oh, I don't know. You know, it just. It was back there by the, you know, bad food stand, you know, in the back. And that's the part that I wish they would change. I think, as I understand it, the national, being a very old event, has a lot of grandfathered in deals with like, specific locations where dealers want the same booth every year, the same location, and they sort of honor that. I understand that from a relationship perspective, but I would like to see them just be like, we're resetting the whole thing and we're going to make this about the people attending the show and like, concentrate it. And we need you to understand as a dealer, that's going to benefit you because people can find you. People will know that you have this type of inventory. You need to tell us. And we're going to put you into this spot. And it's not to like, pigeonhole people into a weird situation, but like, if you're not into tcg, you should be able to easily avoid tcg. If you're not into whatever, you should be able to avoid that. If you're not into vintage drink wear that, like things that you see but. Or you are, you should be able to find it. You know, there's a lot of different stuff there. And that's kind of the thing that drives me crazy is I. I start getting that weird, like, FOMO feeling of like, God, I can't. I feel like I'm going too fast and too slow at the same time. And how do I know what's out there? And I think it would be a lot better if they were like, concentrating things at least high end, low end, doing some, some kind of organization. Yeah, I think first of all, I had that on my list as well. So I've got a few notes here. One of them is the layout is really difficult in Chicago. You've got the. Just. It's kind of all over the place. Difficult to find your way around. I'm directionally challenged, so a lot of this is my fault. Guilty. But, you know, I'm. I'll be in a room and the rooms are huge. I'll be looking around like, where am I? Which way did I come from? And it's. It's really unclear and there's really no logic to the way that things are Set up at the national, where I think Jeff said it pretty well. Where he said that at Fanatics Facts, Fanatics Fest, you walk in and there's this big setup that makes you excited to be there. And at the national, you walk in, you're like, okay, I'm here. And there's like these really old school guys. I don't really know. I'm not familiar with who's there at the very opening, but you kind of get the feeling that it's somebody who's been going to the national for 45 years. Yeah. Rather than people that customers, collectors will be excited to see when they walk in. Yeah. And I think. I think that's a really good point about the National. I think it would be really cool if they had a way in the app. Maybe they do. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, because I get. I'll forget where I'll be walking and looking at a table, and then I'll find myself looking at it again and realize, oh, wait a second, I've just looked at this five minutes ago. And if I could mark off in the app, I've looked at this table. I've looked at this table. Yeah. And then it would, it would simplify things for me and help me organize my thoughts and my direction better. That's a great idea. I don't think they can do that in the app. That's a great idea. Just click the table. Just click the booth. Yep. Seen it. Kind of makes me want to talk to my team about Quick Vibe coding something out for next week that. I mean, that's pretty lightweight idea. You just load the site map and you could check, check off the numbers. That'd be a great idea. The GM Mint app, which was kind of. I don't know if it's still out there, but they were trying to kind of launch it a few years ago at the national and it came out and they had, they had like, more information and they put out, like their own version of a better app, a better map on their phone. And I think they were trying to, like, go up to dealers and load some of that information in. And as I understand it, the national event coordinators, organizers, like, gave them like a cease and desist. And we're like, you can't do this. Like, this isn't allowed. Like, this is our. This is our event. And something weird happened and it got like, shut down. So that was a little odd and concerning. I don't know. I like your idea. That's a pretty lightweight thing. I Don't know, maybe I just need to print one off and just sharpie it off when I go around the show floor. But yeah. All right, let's get back to a best because you just mentioned something that I have on my worst. But I want to go to a best thing. You already mentioned the people I've mentioned the museum stuff, but not just the museum stuff, just the absolutely bonkers inventory if you are looking for a high end car. So I have a, a viewer, a friend of mine who is looking for the 97 or is it 98 FLIR brilliance, Pedro Martinez and a PSA5. You're talking about a five thousand dollar card. It's a very, very rare card. It's number to 24, I think 24 Karat Gold numbers. 24. And you don't see them very often. They come up for auction once every year or two. But you're going to see it at the national. Those are the types of cards you see the whatever card you desire that's really rare. You have a good chance of seeing it as long as it's not like NASCAR or there are some things that are really obscure that you're just not going to see there that because there isn't a lot of demand for it. But the crazy 90s inserts, the pre war baseball, the 19th century baseball. You're going to see amazing things that you've either never seen before or have never seen in person before. Yeah, I 100% agree with that. There's so many really cool cards like it that kind of ties into your first, you know, like which is just there's, there's a lot of great cards and you have to be careful with your budget when you go. I know people who blow their entire budget in the first 10 minutes that they're there. Yeah, it's easy to do and I mean look, the best advice I can give if it's, if it's how you want to orient your experience is to come with a list and like go with that list. But it's tough. Let's say you build out your list of 10, 20, 50 cards, whatever that number is that you're like I'm hunting these cards and you get there and you find your number 10 and it's a rare card. Maybe that Pedro, you just said is your number 10, but you find one and it's priced fairly. If you don't buy that, it will be gone. Like there's a good chance it's gone by the time you come back around. There's no, like there it can happen that you're like, oh, whatever. But if it's that type of super rare desirable card and it's not priced at 2 to 5x over comps, it's. Somebody's gonna snatch it and then they're gonna mark it up 2 to 5 x comps knowing that you, you know, somebody else wants that. So you're kind of like forced. That's an interesting. That's a, that's like a pain point. It's like you're forced to quick, ah, shoot. This is what I came with. I came with. You had that experience recently. You, you made videos about like some of your bigger pickups and you were like, oh, man, like, I didn't think I was gonna buy this card. And then you bought a different one. And I picked up two bigger cards than I ever thought I would. And it puts you in a weird position sometimes. You just make that, you know, you make that decision and you move on. If you end up finding your number one, then maybe you're forced into a weird spot where you're then trying to like sell your 10 that you just bought or something or free up some other capital or something. But yeah, that can be really tough. There's a lot of really cool cards. And if your orientation going in to the show is very focused like that, where you have a certain number of cards, like the mo. The best thing I can do is if you walk up and the dealer's like, hey, you know, anything you're looking for, just like, ask them straight up, do you have any of these? You know, do you have any of this stuff? Like, show them whatever. Maybe they say no. Dealers also, a lot of people don't know this. They hold inventory back because there's only so much display case room. And I mean, I've heard people come up and talk about like, I'm just going to throw an example out there. I don't know if this was the one, but somebody's like, oh, I'm a big Ronnie Brewer collector. And like, I, you know, I went up to this. Nobody's going to have Ronnie Brewer out at the 2026 National. But I just threw it out because I saw this guy had a lot of like mid 2000 stuff and was like, you don't have any Rodney Brewer dude? And he's like, oh, yeah, I have like his limited logos and pulls it out, you know, something along those. Like, that's just an example. But that can happen. If you see similar inventory, asking the dealer doesn't hurt. Just to say, hey, do you have any of this? And they might look at you with a funny look and be like, who the heck collects, you know? Ronnie Brewer. Shout out Ronnie Brewer. Yeah, so it's. Dealers will save their, their hold back their best inventory for the National. Yeah. And that also includes their best eye appeal items. And so if you see a card. So last year I was looking for a 55 tops, Clemente rookie card, and I wanted it in a one or 1.5. And I found one in a one from Ball Cart, Ball Park Memories, Garrett Wells. And it was a one that had pretty good eye appeal and it had been going up pretty rapidly in A one. And I said to him, offered him a little bit less than what he was asking for. And he said, no, that'll sell in the next two or three hours at the price I've got it at. And I knew he was right. And so I just bought it. And of course it's. It's doubled in value over the past year. But that's, that's the decision you have to make. Either you want the card or you don't want the card. And you have to sometimes pay more than you expect by 5 or 10%. Yeah. Because cards are bonkers right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you see some of those dealers, I mean, look, there is going to be. I would say one of my biggest frustrations is there's a lot of overpriced inventory, like sometimes massively overpriced. Fanatics had stuff that was wildly over sticker and it felt a little predatory to me. I was like, how much of this is like people who are not collectors just walking through and they're trying to like score some extra money. I don't know, I guess you're running a business, whatever. But like, there are ways to talk to a dealer and quickly gauge whether they're like reasonable or not. So some of them are just not. They're just not reasonable. Others you can say, hey, like, great card. Do you mind if I look at that? You know, if I look at that card and yeah, I'm super interested in this. Just curious, like, here's what I'm seeing data wise, you know, how did you get to this number? Do you have any room on it? Whatever? And then they're going to reveal their colors pretty quickly and either just be like, I don't do comps. Screw you, get out of here. Or they're going to be like, oh yeah, let's like work together. And you know, you can kind of sort through that. But yeah. Yeah. So there's. There are a lot of complaints about prices at the National. I find it easy to just quickly bypass those tables that have. That are unreasonable. Yeah. And there are definitely a lot of dealers that have reasonable prices or that their prices are a little high and they'll come down on them. Yeah, yeah. You. You mentioned that the national was stomping out certain things. I think it was the mint. Mint thing that you said. What was that again? Oh, yeah, the GM mint app. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I did. That's just what I heard, by the way, that that might be hearsay, but that's heard because it was shut down during the event. Yeah. Another worst thing is the national busting up parties and trade events that aren't affiliated with them. And this is pretty common. And I know you guys have some affiliated trade nights, but we, we had a YouTube get together that was busted up by the hotel and we heard. I don't know that it's officially true, but we heard that it was because the hotel had to agree with the national to not allow any unaffiliated events. Yeah. And we had three or four hundred people there. My baseball collector put this on. And so everybody just got kicked out 20 minutes into the event. Yeah. And it's things like that. And trade nights used to be very popular. You know, you go to a trade night in a hotel lobby that the hotel was fine with it and the national put the kibosh on all those things. Yeah. Which is kind of not great. No. So I wasn't able to go last year because I was really sick. Really sick. And. But my good friend Justin, who runs Rabbit Hole Auctions, was at that event last year. And then they had to pivot and go outside. And Justin paid for the pizza and like he told me all about it. I was supposed to be there. And then I was like, man, that sounds like a saga. Some of my best memories at the national, going back to my first one in 2021, were like those pop up trade nights at the hotels. And like a few of them, I sat there until like three in the morning just like talking to people, sitting in the hallways, like hanging out, whatever. It was very organic. It's a zoo. I understand why the hotels, like in general would be like, oh, there's like a fire risk here or something. Like, I can't, you know, this is too many people. Sure. But it's definitely gotten more like formalized. Like it sounds like last year, like, you know, get out of here. We're not allowing this. We do a spitballing, cards meet up now. This will be our second year doing that. And it's at Pete's Tiki Tiki on Friday night at 8:30. So anybody's welcome to come to that and say hi and hang out. But I guess they were already like, you can't have cards out or something. I don't know. We're gonna. We'll see how it goes. We'll see how it goes. But yeah, Justin from Rabbit Hole was just launching Rabbit Hole at the time. He was sponsoring that get together. That's right. And they kicked everybody out and he still bought everybody the pizza. It was just out on the grass and a lot of people, like, I didn't know what was happening because there was no way for them to organize anything after everybody was kicked out. Yeah, a lot of us, probably 30 of us walked down to Shoeless Joe's down the street and so we didn't even know that Justin was still doing the pizza and all this stuff. So. Yeah, good on Justin. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. All right. What about a best from you? What. What do you love best? Well, I prefer it. I strongly prefer it in Chicago to Cleveland and Atlantic City, which are the other two places I've been to. Interesting. I am looking forward to it in being in Detroit in a few years. And we'll obviously have our new Cards HQ location there too, which will be great. But you know, Chicago's not perfect. There's a lot of stuff that, like you said, it's, it's not perfect. The, the WI Fi sucks inside. The, you know, the, the floors are hard. It's. It's a bit dated. But it is a big venue and it's really easy to get in and out. It's close to the airport. There's a lot of hotels, a lot of restaurants, a lot of other things. And if you are crazy and want to venture deeper downtown, you can do that. Um, so I think overall, like, when I heard it was going to be like, Chicago, Chicago, Chicago, Detroit, I was like, okay, good. I'm not going back where there were like junkies shooting up on the corner, you know, like in Atlantic City and, you know, trying to steal my, steal my, you know, Zion case or something like that. Yeah, you mentioned hard floors. Where are your hokas? Yeah, I got them. I just bought a pair. Yeah, me too. So I, I also wear hokas. I just last night, after your video, after Cards on the Table came out, I was like, you know what? I should buy them a new Pair. And I went and looked and it been 13 months since I. I've had these hokas and I walk every night and I was like, I should buy some new hokas. And they're due to get here on Tuesday and leaving very early Wednesday morning. So I hope there's no delay in the mail. Yeah, so the. Another thing that I love is the post show events you mentioned. The, the one that you're. You guys are putting on. Yeah, we're also. There are just so many post show events. I'm going to one at Shoeless Joe's both Thursday and Friday. CIA is putting on one Thursday YouTube get together, and then there's a Friday smaller dinner at Shoeless Joe's. And these are awesome. And they're just this fun people to meet people. Yep. Viewers of the channel and commenters and other YouTubers that, you know, you watch. I, I like meeting those YouTubers that never show their face and they introduce themselves and you're like, that, that stuff's fun. And then the commenters that have been commenting for five years and you don't know what they look like or what they're like. Yeah, yeah, that's a lot of fun. That's a bit like when you meet somebody who does radio, you don't look anything like what I thought, you know, not that it's bad, but there's a guy, there's a guy on YouTube, Big J Basketball. I don't know if you've ever seen his channel. No, he just, he just opens, like retail. A lot of retail, sometimes hobby. He's kind of more of like a value, but he likes opening packs and he's been doing it for, I don't know, at least five years, I want to say. And I've. I've watched a lot of his videos and he came up at the national one year and was like, hey, Big J Basketball. And if, like, I'd closed my eyes, I would have immediately known, but I've. He never does face cam. Yeah. And so I saw him and then the first thing out of my mouth was like, dude, you look like Manu Ginobili. And he's like, that's why I collect him. Everyone tells me I look like Manu Ginobili, so I just collect him. And it was, it was a really. He was a really cool guy. I only knew his. I only knew his forearms and his hands, you know, from the, from the videos. So that is a lot of fun. Yeah. I had never met Adam Gray. I love Adam Gray is one of the best at what we do. And I was. Last year I always assumed he was like 5 foot 8. I know last year somebody said, oh, there's Adam Gray. And I look over and he's like 6 foot 3 or 6 foot 4. I'm 6 2. And so I'm, I'm already tall. And he's, I think he was standing and talking to Jeremy Lee and he's just. And I'm like, oh, that, this can't be right. That. Yeah. And I didn't get a chance to meet him because he walked off in the opposite direction. But there are, there are, it's always surprising meeting these people and being like, I expected you to be a lot shorter than that or a lot taller in some people. Yeah, I'm like five eight, five nine with my new Hokas. And I feel like a straight up midget. At the national with a lot of the other content creators. I mean, I look up average stats and I'm like, apparently 510 is like average in the U.S. you know, so I shouldn't feel that short. But everybody's like 6:2 or higher. It feels like when I walk around at the show, there's, there's a lot of very tall people and you don't expect it. Like, obviously Troy Trike Cards, he played college basketball and overseas and stuff, so he's super tall. It's. I'm, I'm always just like, yeah, doing one, doing one of these with everybody, it feels like, well, if you're 5 8, but 59 in Hokas, maybe you should put your hocus inside another pair of hocus and you'd be 5 10. Yeah. And then inside of a graded guard with an NBA sticker. Perfect. Yep. So anything else you wanted to cover on the best or worst of the national list? No. I mean, look, if you haven't been, if anybody hasn't been, and you can't go this year, maybe. But like, I would try to prioritize it if you're, if you, if you like going to event, it is, it can be a bit overstimulating, a bit exhausting. And if it's not, if big crowds aren't your scene, it's very crowded, especially in Chicago. There is, it's tight. The aisles are tight. That was one thing about Cleveland, that they had a lot more space between the tables. That was kind of nice. But it's, it's an event, it's an experience you got to go to. It is a card first experience with a lot of other stuff, a lot of great people and A lot of cool stuff, even outside of the national, you know, the national itself, with all the trade nights, like you said. So I think it's great. It's the best thing in the hobby as far as, like, events go and there's stuff they could improve, but I get really excited about going every year. And then I do get excited about going home or going on vacation, like I'm going to the week after, because it's nice when you work it. It's. I mean, yeah, it's pretty exhausting, to be honest. I'm sure. Yeah. And if anybody's Ubering in to the national, make sure you tell your Uber driver, just drop me off like a quarter mile away. You'll walk there much faster that last quarter mile than you will be dropped off and your Uber driver will be happier. Yeah, true. Yeah. Find a, put a pin in a little hotel nearby, like right around the corner and just get there. And that's a good, that's a good tip. That's a pro tip. Yeah. Yeah. This is my fifth one and I learned pretty quickly, just drop me off even a half mile away. Take me eight or nine minutes to walk. It's going to take you 30 minutes to drive me there. Yeah, I did that at Fanatics Fest twice. I was like, just here's fine, go. I'll get out. I don't need to wait. Yep, absolutely. So let's talk LeBron a little bit. Last time you and I talked was four weeks ago, three weeks ago, I guess, and we were talking about the potential for LeBron to pick a new team, one that he hasn't already played for, and how that could impact his legacy. And 20 minutes before you and I started recording, Shams announced that LeBron has signed a two year deal with the city, the 76ers. How does this, first of all, before we even talk about the 76ers, how does this impact his legacy in the card world and in the basketball world? Yeah. Yeah. So I think this is kind of like I've been saying all along, I didn't want him to go to the Sixers because that just seems weird. It seems like a weird final spot. Like, I've never thought of LeBron being on the Sixers ever. Obviously they made the move for, for Jalen and they, you know, they're, they're rebuilding, they're retooling. They went deeper and looked better than anybody thought they would in the playoffs this, this past season. And look, the guys, I mean, two years, $8 million, something like that, like 8 million a year. Was 8 million a year or just two years? 8 million. I just looked it up. I didn't even see. Yeah, it was a two year, 8 million deal. So, like, Rich Paul's out there, his agent saying, like, this isn't about chasing rings, and now he's going to the Sixers and basically making no money that feels like he's chasing a ring. My response to that was, why wouldn't you be chasing a ring? Shouldn't every player be chasing, like, trying to win? You know, I'm very thankful, and this isn't the question you asked me. I understand. I'm very thankful he did not go to Miami because even though I'm a little disappointed Giannis is in Miami, I'm a huge Giannis guy, and I would have been very conflicted, like, about what to do now I can actually root for Miami with Giannis, even though I don't think they're going to be very good because they have no other players. But anyway, yeah, I'm happy about that. Somehow, now that it's happened, I feel like it does make sense. This just fits within the ring chasing, holding out decision process of his entire career and wanting to make it about, you know, himself. Neither you or I, we're not. It's no secret you and I are not LeBron fans or guys. He's had a remarkable career, incredible career, and I don't know. I. I think LeBron knows right now, the debate is raging. It's very generational about who is the goat, whether it's him or MJ for a lot of people. And if he somehow goes and wins another ring, especially at what he'll be. He's. He's a little older than I, so I think he's 41 already now. It'd be insane, Mike. It'd be insane. If you, 41 years old, goes to a team and wins a ring. He's still playing at a really high level. Like, I hate to say it, but he's playing at a very high level. So this makes Philadelphia very scary. I. I think they've got a lot of, like, versatility in their roster. Max's offense is insane. Jalen's is. You can be there when he's hot. And so the card market perspective, they're gonna. This is all going to be marketing. Like, everything at this point is just going to be marketing. And they've got a team they can market, plus a player they can market. I. I think it's going to depend whether or not he wins. If he Wins. It's. Things are going to go nuclear if he doesn't. I don't really think it'll impact anything. I think people just think of it as like, ah, yeah, he kind of like went and did his last few years thing here and nobody really cares. And like, moving on. They'll just remember the first 23 years of his career that were, you know, remarkable. Will the 76ers have to trade for Bronnie now? That was. I asked that same question. I think we talked about it on spitballing cards or something. Maybe. I don't know. I didn't hear whether or not Giannis was bringing any of his brothers to south beach. So I don't know if Bronnie's going to Philly now or not. Yeah. The joke that I kept seeing on Instagram and Twitter was Financis has agreed to a deal with Miami for $5 million. Unfortunately, Miami has not agreed. Unfortunately, Miami doesn't have the cap room. So the thing you mentioned, all the guys, they have, they have their starting five is unbelievable. It's Maxi Embiid, LeBron, Jalen and Vijay Edgecombe. It's insane is when your fifth best player is Vijay Edgecombe, your fourth best, fourth option is Jalen Brown. And Jalen wanted to have his own team and he rejected. He forced his way out of a trade to Portland to go to. To. To go to Philly. Yeah. The fourth option on Philly. It's pretty shocking. And you have to wonder how all these egos. And they are big egos. And that's not a criticism, that's just the nature of who it is. Yeah. How are they going to play together? Is this sort of a. What year was it that the Lakers had Karl Malone and Gary Payton? And was it Shaq and Kobe? Yes. And they were terrible. Yeah, well, they weren't terrible. They lost to the Pistons. Right. Which part. As a. As a 90s kid who collected both Carl Mullen and Gary Payton, I felt bad about. Because I wanted those guys to get a championship. But. But, yeah. No. So this is. This is a crazy team. For some reason, ESPN hasn't managed to update their depth chart. Even though they've got LeBron on the team already on the roster, they still have Paul George on the depth chart. Wow. But I mean, maybe they just have to wait for the teams. But yeah, this team's crazy. What's interesting is they. They still. Apparently they have. They still have. They signed Anthony Simons, too. You remember him, like 2018 draft class. Who's like, 14 a game who can shoot from three. Like, he became a fan favorite for the Celtics last year until they traded him. Yeah. So he's. He's on the. He's on there. Dean Wade, who played pretty well for Cleveland, is on their roster. Yeah. Like inferior D. Wade. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So they've got. This is a scary team. If they stay healthy or if they're at least. If they at least are healthy when they get in the playoffs. I'll tell you whose card market I would be worried about right now is actually Tyrese Maxey because he's an up and comer who was scoring, you know, 30 a game and now he's surrounded by other stars and that's problematic for card markets when you're not the clear. Number one. And he's surrounded by a former MVP in Embiid and then another, obviously former MVP and a Finals MVP and. And an up and comer in Edgecomb. I think he's kind of like lost in the. Lost in the shuffle now. He's. That doesn't mean he's not good still. He just. I don't think his cards are going to be as hot. I don't see how they could be. If you're the coach, aren't you limiting him B to like 20 minutes a game regular season? Yeah, you have to. Yeah. The team is so good. Just get him to the, to the playoffs. Yep. Yep. I think, I think, I think they should have tried to keep my boy Drummond instead of letting him go to the Knicks. That's right. Absolutely. Teapot. Thank you. Any last thoughts before we wrap up here? No. Super excited about the national. Hope to see many of people watching this video there. And obviously I'll see you, Mike and Greg and everybody. That'll be awesome. And yeah, just pray we all stay healthy. People always get sick before, during, and after the national. It's a lot of interaction, so hopefully that's not any of us. Take your zinc. And. And exciting. Crazy to see where LeBron's going. There's going to be a lot of buzz. I think there's a good thing that it's happening before the national. I don't know. That's pretty wild. Yeah. All right. For listeners, check out AuctionWire. AI use code SCC. Thank you guys for watching or listening.