1564 - Out-Takes from Hobby Hotline 071126

Foreign. Welcome Dr. James Beckett Sports Card Insights. Thanks Sponsors Beckett Media, Beckett grading, Beckett authentication compse.com, burbank sports cards, Mike Stadium Sports Cards Heritage Auctions Hugging the Scott Auctions, Topps Upper Deck and Panini Outtake episode from Hobby Hotline on with Adam Palmer and Tony TJ is online. Enjoy those guys. Per usual, I try to capture any fresh think I have not already said. I will say this, you should watch the episode because first part was about the Keith Olbermann restored authentic altered Hannes Wagner card. I did not pull that out because I think it was heavily dependent on the screen sharing and without that it doesn't pack the punch. So if you go back to the video, you'll see things that Tony in particular pulled together. So that was valuable. But that is not part of this. So here it is. Thanks Hobby Hotline for providing a forum for live call ins. It was announced this week that Michael Jordan and Upper Deck have extended their partnerships. Michael Jordan had an exclusive with upper deck since 1991, signing for autographs and memorabilia and stuff. Upper Deck also announced that this year in Goodwin Champions there are going to be pack redemptions for the 1986 Fleer basketball packs that are signed by Michael Jordan himself. Unfortunately, the price of the Goodwin Champions box has jumped pretty significantly since its announcements. I don't want to call Upper Deck a little guy because I grew up around when they were big when I was 13. But in this particular case I'm glad Jordan stayed with Upper Deck, extended the contract. Apparently he has a lot more input about what his autograph goes on and what type of products they want to go for. The nostalgia part of him. Get more items from the hobby and maybe have him autograph it. And this 86 flare box which we auctioned off on eBay. 10% of the proceeds go to foundation, so ebay is going to auction off the bots, which is 101. And these redemption packs, I like how they're numbered 1 to 23 and signed off. That was terrific. Upper Deck's doing their part in trying to 10x the hobby. And who doesn't want to have a chance at a Michael Jordan card or autograph or especially Rookie or the Rookie sticker. This story has legs. What people I think are missing is the fact that it's announced as Michael becoming a legacy partner. And I emphasize partner. He doesn't need money, but I think this is bringing him into even a closer relationship with Upper Deck. Perhaps he's participating on an equity basis for this product or other things that he's doing. He's getting some creative opportunity to do some fun things. His goatness is being challenged. So this is an opportunity for him to say, hey, I'm still relevant. I'm still doing cool stuff. Because his autographs are really tough. Now if I got one of these, I'm going to open the pack because there's like a 1 in 12 chance of getting a Jordan in that pack in any pack. Okay. And there's a 1 in 12 chance of getting the sticker. So there's no way I would not open this very carefully. And they truly are wax packs. You can unseal them and unfold them and flatten them out and be careful with it and get the autographed wrapper laid out. But here's the negative about this is that from 40 years ago there was a systematic distribution of these cards to where if you just peek at the first card on the bottom or whatever, if you could just get an idea of one card, you would have an idea of the sequence and you wouldn't. Jordan was in the pack that I don't like. On the other hand, there's going to be a couple of Jordans in there and there's going to be a couple of Jordan stickers in there and they're pack fresh. Might wind up being a Black Label 10, who knows? It's no way I could not open a pack if I got it. I am a collector of cards. Not packed. Yeah. I think if open the pack and the first card is a Bill Lamb beer, I believe that has the Jordan. Ie I know the collation going to be a Jordan within the pack. I would be interested to know who came up with the idea because this year we've seen a lot of nostalgia redemption. Topps did the Mickey Mantle Redemption and now we have a 1986 Fleer Redemption. So maybe this idea came to fruition because of what Topps did with their Mickey Mantle Redemption. Because the Redemption from that one sold I believe for over $100,000 more than previous comps. It was a PSA 5.5. The redemption sold through golden, which gets crazy. But the 5.5 redemption sold for 293. When I believe the other sales of PSA 5.5 of the Mickey mantle were like in the 13140 range. Guys, upper deck is probably pitching Michael Jordan every year to get some more autographs from him. The interesting thing about this is it doesn't dilute the market as badly as some other ideas. If they serial number to 1,000 autographs of Jordan. That's bad. But this is autographing the rapper. There's a lot to like about this. There's a lot of smart people at Upper Deck. There's a lot of smart people at every one of these card companies. They're creatively doing things. But like I said, the word partner I think is critical. Michael Jordan had to personally embrace this and say, yes, I want to do this. And I'm sure he had some creative input because he wants to be the goat. He is the goat. But LBJ is going to be messing around this next year doing interesting things that are pretty unprecedented for a player of his age. Although Kareem finished pretty well too. But Michael's maybe feeling the footsteps. Yeah. I would be interested to know what input Michael is going to have. I called him Michael, like I know him personally. Michael Jordan. What input he's going to have into some sort of sports card related products going forward. Because the closest industry to sports cards really is kind of speakers. I definitely think it's a cool addition to Goodwin Champions. Like I said, it's one of the more anticipated products every year already. So it's definitely adding to the excitement of that product. Michael Jordan wants to do stuff that's interesting, that hasn't been done before. And I think he's embraced this because it wasn't a me too copycat thing. Hey, fanatics is doing this. We're going to do this. This is pretty much an original idea and it will be well executed and I think it's great. So Michael, again, the partner is saying, yeah, I want to do this. Back 20 years ago it was tough to get players to cooperate with anything. And now Michael Jordan's got a seat at the table. He's saying, if I'm going to do it, this is the way I'd like to do it. Here's what we had in mind. Here's what I'd like to do. It sounds terrific. Well, for the ongoing relationship, without diluting it too much, Upper deck, this is their strongest hole card, you know, for the value of their company is they have Michael Jordan on speed dial. And Michael Jordan saying, yes, I'm answering the call. I'm here for you. Here's what I'd like to do. What do you think? And almost no matter what Michael Jordan says, the Upper Day said, you bet, Michael, you want to do that? We want as much as you'll give us, within reason. If you are lucky enough to get one of these, just look for the Clark Kellogg. If you get the Clark Kellogg, then you're gonna get an NJ in the pack. I read an article the Sports Business Journal, but. And they said Jordan's going to have much more influence over which historical moments will be celebrated, which objects he will sign or not, how limited editions will be handled and the inscriptions used. Finally, they said he's going to have more input about the type of memorabilia. Right now, Upper Decks does not have the NBA license. So doing things like this, where they can get things which were made in the past and get him to sign it, I think it's a wonderful way to pay tribute to the greatest baseball player of all time, next to Will, in my opinion. Yeah. Another piece of this story is One of the PSA 10s for Jordan sold for 390k last week. Yeah, it was the highest sale of a PSA 10 in five years. So we've seen signed Jordans go for more. We've seen Jordan PSA 10s with one of the NBA stickers sell for more than that. But it is one of the base versions of the PSA 10s. It was the highest it's sold in five years. And I think it's one of the more iconic cards in the hobby with only 335 PSA 10s. Probably one of the more expensive base rookie cards in the industry as well. Out of these packs. Personally, I'm probably on the other side. Not like Dr. Beck. I would not probably open that pack. I think I would keep it in the seal there. It's cool. They're bringing more of the nostalgia into these packs. Again, guys, the problem is if Upper deck announces in 2027, we're going to do this again with another 23 or four backs and another box, and everybody's going, that's great. The Boys and Girls Club's going to get another big check, and collectors are going to get this. But there has to be some restraint here because Hobby likes to beat dead horses and promote things to death. So if there's some restraint here, this is going to be a terrific promotion. And then Michael can say, let's do shoes or got some jerseys or I've got other things we could do. Nice. Yeah, definitely. Topps announcing they're going to be selling the preordered Topps Chrome Update Mega boxes that are sold directly through your website without the wrapping. It's an experiment to see what happens, and I'm glad that Topps is trying to experiment with things. Every company's different on this, but the shrink wrap is the first level of protection. But the second level Use the little tab, making sure the box top is the little circular emblem or something that some of them do and some of them don't. And then the third level is what's in the actual pack and the searchability of a pack once you open the box. And that's problematic. So if that secondary protection is there of a tamper proof seal of the flap of the box that you can't get into the box without damaging the box. But we still have all these CRT threats of that too. So I'm hoping that all that stuff is resolved. Because the crooks, you slow them down when you do these things, but I don't know that you stop them. And so I'm hoping it's a successful experiment because this is letting people know that fanatics thinks it's good for people to get the box at a reasonable price, open it up or that somebody can sell it to their friends or people in their store or whatever or at a show and you're selling at a reasonable markup. They deserve credit for this experiment and trying to protect the collector. The point that resonated with me was will they still have the little tamper proof piece of tape? Proof I looked for it. I can't find information about that because Haas is going to sell these directly to the consumer and to other dealers. And then what happens after that? Because you can easily switch out bags, they weigh them, you do a number of things. I'm not a buyer of this product, but my son and I used to buy the Allen and Gator products up to about two years ago. So we love those. But yeah, we'll see how it goes. But it's definitely a step in the right directions. If you're in the market for these types of items to piggyback on your guys point here, if it still has that piece of tape, isn't that essentially the same thing as having the wrap on there? No. No. You don't think so? Go in the side. People do heart surgery. Going in through your leg, through your groin, to your heart. Guys, I don't want to be thinking like a criminal because it infects your mind, but find a way to peek in there or to kind of slide it out and slide it back or just so Unfortunately, Adam, they might try to beat that system even if the tamper proof box closing mechanism is intact. Yeah, criminals are going to do criminal stuff. It might slow them down, but they're going to try and find a way. That's why buying directly from Topps or people who have a Good reputation in this industry is more important than it ever has been. If you're buying them directly from tops, which right now they're still available, which. But these were sealed. I think that they probably wouldn't be. You can still buy these right now, which for new Topps products. This is the longest I've ever seen any of them available on their website. The blasters, for example, those sold out in five minutes when they dropped the blasters. And I think they did EQL for the hobby boxes and jumbo hobby boxes, but when they dropped the blasters, they sold out in five minutes. I did see someone say that maybe this is because they just printed a ton of these boxes and that's why they're not selling, but maybe this people just don't want to buy the boxes of wealth of shrink wrap to resell them. And I think $85, these used to back in the day, probably three or four years ago, these were probably 50 or $60 boxes. So you're seeing a pretty increased price. It could also have to do with the price, but Topps is at least trying to figure out a solution to boxes prices on the secondary market to help collectors. And in their statement they said this is an initial test of a larger program working to ensure that more collectors can buy the products at retail prices, which $85 is still a little high in my opinion for a box. But at the same time, who knows how this will go and what their next steps are. It's an experiment. Adam, you said it. Well, if the end result of this is that reputation matters even more than it used to, then that's a positive development that you're going to be careful buying from a stranger. But these are mega boxes and they're 85 bucks and I think it's a limit of four per customer. Maybe the lack of sellout hate. Again, think like a criminal. But the criminals may not have figured out how to beat this system yet. And so they're not going to jump in with both feet until they figure out, hey, how can I work this to my advantage? Just buying and open them and enjoying them or selling them for a reasonable markup. So if it hasn't sold out because the scammers have not figured out yet how they're going to do an end around, then the people that are getting the product are the people that want the product for their own personal use and for their direct customers or their friends. You have a buying group, all these things, but it's only 42 cards in a box. 42 cards at a time for 85 bucks. You're paying 2 bucks a card for 40. One of them are not worth 2 bucks. But they're trying to figure out that, and I hope they're not able to beat the system. As we said, the junk wax era was precipitated by people being overly aggressive of buying stuff because of the potential for future resale. This is defeating that. Not going to be buying it, thinking, hey, I can flip it and get it to somebody else. You're thinking, I only need to be buying what I really need for this because the shrink wrap's not there. I'm probably going to need to sell this sooner or open it myself. Now, Obviously, you're paying $85 for the chance to get one of the debut patches I believe advertised on the box. There's only nine players. I think there's 93 that have autographs and then six players who are Panini exclusives that don't have autographs, but they have debut patch cards. So, Dr. Beckett, any cool experiences you've had, any card shows recently? Let me tie that into what we were just talking about. And that is there's a positive tension between buying singles, buying exactly what you want, and buying unopened and blind box, not knowing what you're going to get. And that can be slab packs, that can be an opened product, sealed or not sealed, but you're getting something, you're not sure what you're going to get. And so you're paying extra for the chance to maybe get something great. I understand that in the best interest of the collectors in the hobby, that product me opened because ultimately we are card collectors. And so that tension there of products that are new need to be opened up. And some of them are opened up with people that are just lottery chasers. But for me, they're going to throw that other stuff in the dollar box and I'll get a chance to look at it. So I don't need to worry about paying 85 bucks to buy 42 cards that I only really want one or two. I can take my 85 bucks and I can buy 85 cards, all of which I want, and I'm better off. But I don't have that opportunity if people don't open up these boxes. It's a good tension. Junk wax era, not enough was opened. It was put away. And then when everybody brought it out. Oh, there's a lot of cases of these things. Yeah. For people to buy singles on ebay or car shows, people have to open the boxes. The man in the house of God is doing all of that.