American Arbitrage Cards (Cary) Joins The Ballcard Show Season 6 Ep 6

Hello, and welcome to the Ball Card Show eSports podcast for the eSports Collector. I'm Jason Otero. I'm Gary Lomaster. Season five, episode six, coming back from what I have to admit was the coldest show I have ever done in my life in Xenia, Ohio. You were cold the whole day. I wasn't. Okay, Gary, but here's the thing. Two things you don't have, feelings to hurt and nerve endings. I think it's from all the acidic food. I think that's what did it. That's probably fair. All I know is I was wearing like thick Nike sweats, and when I sat down in the chair to like do some pricing, my legs were cold. Like, oh, that's cold, and it didn't take very long. So the air temp had to be cold enough for that to happen. At one point in the show, I actually was like, I'm a little sweaty. You had like a sweatshirt and a coat on. Well, let's just call it what it is. You probably had had two grams of caffeine by that point in the day. Not quite. I had had an energy drink. And somebody was willing to debate you, so you were just, you were all fired up about it. I was running up my normal fever. But you also were the kid that ate the worm, licked the glue, dare Gary to do it, he'll do it. So there's always a little bit of that contrarian nature in you. You know? That's fair. You know what? You don't get on the other ball card podcast. Somebody's saying contrarian nature in the first minute and 30 seconds. Listen, I said dearth a while ago, and you were like, what? Oh, I just, we, like, is that the first dearth of the day? Yeah. And it wasn't. I guarantee it wasn't. No, it probably wasn't. We had a fun show in Xenia. It was kind of a weird one. Air temp was like negative five in the morning. This probably was windchill. The space was plowed most of the way. But I don't think Green County, Ohio realizes how many people drive in for that show. Three buildings, all of them metal pole barns with concrete floors. One of them with a good heater. Yeah, it was one of those shows where at about 11 o'clock, I'm looking around going, oh, this might be bad. But then by noon, foot traffic picked up. And as usual. And the homeowners of that show seem to be doing a good job. Yeah. Yep. I'd agree. And they seem excited about just some of the different things they can do to promote the show, which as a dealer, that's what you love to hear. Somebody's like, oh, there's so much more we could do to promote this. I was like, great. Get more people and more money in the door. Yeah. Well, speaking of promoting shows, if you are, when you are watching this, we are currently at the fairgrounds in Nashville, Tennessee. No, you're not. No, next week. Yeah, that's next week. I'm sorry. If you if you are watching this exactly one week late. Yes. Then then we will be fairgrounds in Nashville at the Nashville show. Our next show that we will be at is February 20th through 22nd. It's a three day show at the fairgrounds in Nashville. They call it the National. It's 11. Yeah. You see what they did there? It's eleven hundred tables. We should be very close to the entrance when you come in. Come find us. We would love to say hi. Even if you're not there to buy or sell us anything, we would love to meet you. Shake your hand. And thank you for being a listener. Yeah. Good. I like that, Gary. That was good. See, see what I did there? I'm excited about it. Y'all think Gary doesn't like hotel prices. Wait till you. Oh, I could have recorded his reaction to here's how much hotels cost in Nashville. Now, I knew it was like that, like downtown right by Broadway. I wasn't aware that like like I think I ended up being like, I'll just drive 20 minutes from Brentwood. I'm not. Yeah. I'm not paying 150 hours more per night. Even you found a limit. You found a limit. So we're staying at the Hilton in Brentwood. All right. Well, we want to bring us cards or money. You know, we booked for four travel shows worth of hotels this week. And it was just like, for me, that is the word. I have no problem spending five grand on a card. But the idea of spending four hotels worth of lodging, lodging and running water now. So I've been like for the last like week leading up to buying this hotel, my Gary. Now, I did this a month and a half ago, like I have to do with my kids because they're like middle school, high school. You got to present the idea. Give it some time. I was like, now, Gary, I'm just going to remind you that hotel costs way more than any hotel should ever cost. And we're going to do it because we're not going to be 30 minutes away from the national in Chicago. So we're going to do it pretty close. And then again, I reminded him. And I think there's one more time. I was like, here's what that number means, which is about what it was last year. So we ended up finding another nice hotel pretty close next to a casino. So now the irony here, the irony is that he'll roll over with a lot of cash to sit down with poker table with with with no concern at all. Yeah, because I'm good at poker. But for him, the quality of the air, the smell doesn't matter. The curtains doesn't matter to him. For something like the national, I'm not that bad because we're doing more than sleeping at the hotel. It's a whole week. Yeah, we're there for a week. We're going to be in the room. Oh, you want to know what I was looking at? Well, you told me I was. That's my line. I would like the suite. Yeah. No. But you got to go through your stuff and yeah, we cook your own meals for money like that's that is I don't mind paying a little extra because we're spending so much time there. But like when we go to Pittsburgh for a show and we're at the show till seven o'clock at night and then we go eat dinner. And by the time we get back to the hotel, it's just like I'm going straight to sleep. I'm with you, but I don't want to care less. Hey, cockroaches coming in. Please. Sorry. You know, that's not I don't want to do that either. But you know, or or bathe and shorten curlies. I mean, I just I'm still not over that at some point. It's trauma when you keep, you know, with the fact that I keep bringing it up, I'm not done with it. But but we're booked. We got we got a show in Daleville, Indiana. That hotel was cheap. That one was doable. Well, we'll be commuting in from Anderson. We got that one booked. We got ship Shawana coming up. We got a month in the next month. Like we got Nashville, then we got ship two weeks later and then we got Daleville. Another two day show. Three weeks after that. There's another two day coming up soon, too. Yeah. It's we're busy. It's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of that, let's do our favorite little segment here, which, by the way, here in a moment. I'm so excited. I can't believe I didn't start with this. We have as a guest today, Carrie from American Arbitrage. When I started reselling because I had to about 10 years ago, 12 years ago, I really got into it. And along the way with this process, I ran into some of his content on reselling. He's niche down where most of what he does is cards. You guys are going to get so much value out of the interview. Am I exaggerating? Gary? No, it's great. It's fantastic. I cannot wait to share that with you. That's coming up in a minute. Keith from Newhart is going to share with us, too. But before we do that, let's go ahead to this segment. It's become a little bit of a fan favorite week to week. Let's talk through show and tell. And then I know you have an update for us. Lovely things that PSA is doing over there to be more efficient. Yeah. But let's do show and tell. Let's do. Yeah, let's let's do it that way. You go first this week. I'll go first. Now, listen, I do not do a lot of prospecting, but if you've paid attention last few years, there's one name when I see somebody swing and I really like it. As long as they're progressing, I'll invest in them. And I did. I actually went with a Bowman Chrome first auto. It's just this is a base moment. Chrome auto. But this is a host way to follow up. Now, this is a guy I just love his swing. I just think he's well rounded. I think he's in a good program. I think he's got a lot going for it. So pro Bowman Chrome first. This should be the year. This should be the year for for that to get a little more activity for him. We'll see. Yeah, there's a chance he gets called up the Dodgers. So weird about that. But he is a hell of a player. Yeah. All right. My turn. You know, we talk about leaf stuff a lot as a very entry viable way. You're not going to find too many Steph Curry autos for under a grand. This one's numbered to two. The red ice. It's his really nice auto. He's got a version of his auto that's kind of not so great. It's just kind of the swoopy C with a Y. This is the full thing. The auto is really clean. Had to pick it up. All right. This one is in that same category. Maybe one or two sales ever that I was able to find on card ladder. This is a cool because it's a dual. It's a dual patch. Both of the Manning brothers. What's cool about this is the name of the subset was cut from the same cloth and their game use patches, not number, but it's in a PSA nine for a thick boy. I haven't even scanned this. I'm sure it's a low hop. Yeah. Yeah. But I thought that was really cool with shows coming up in Indiana. Manning stuff is starting. I don't know if it's just because we're doing more Indiana shows, but I've been moving a lot more Peyton Manning than I expected. How does the price point? Is it moving upward? However, the velocity of the sales is getting better. This was one that walked up to the table Saturday at Xenia and you don't see it too often. And I was shocked at its value. This is rookie Albert Pujols on the golden debuts numbered to 500. OK, that's cool. Really, really cool cards and it's a really nice shape. So had to pick that one up. That one's sweet. Pop count on the Manning. Total pop 20, only one higher than a nine. Yeah. How many nines are there? There are 12, which is more than I expected, but there's only one 10 that exists. What year is it? Oh, oh, six. Oh, five. Oh, so it's that's Eli Manning. Rookie. Yeah. Rookie that year, but rookie jersey. That's cool. So what's your next one? This is cool. This is cool. Yeah. Steph Curry game use patch now on the comps of this all everything on the back. So oh, nine, oh, oh, nine, 10 is rookie year, right? Correct. Yeah. So this is rookie game used to pass to 249. The game used is throwing me off. How is this game used? Well, if it was if it was produced at the end of the season, it could be or it could be Davidson jersey. It's pretty orange. I don't know. But it's number to 249 game use, Steph. Another one you don't see a whole lot. It's in a PSA. I don't care. Yeah. I don't care. A 10 would be nice. Eight, I don't care. That's the right kind of stuff. All right. You're up. This is my favorite thing. 2020 transcendent on card, Big Poppy and Pedro. That is number five of five. Pretty nasty. Yeah. That's sweet. So one of the videos that drop Brandon stuff did where I purchased and paid strong, don't at me. Strong. It was like 83 percent, Gary. It felt more than that. It felt like it to you because you would never buy it for that. That's why. Correct. But it worked out exactly the way I thought it was going to. So I bought a purple refractor heritage rookie show hey, in a PSA nine, they had a comp that recently popped at 1500. The one before that was 1000. The one before that was 800. They were pretty recent sales. So typically that's something where you would shoot for the lower end of that. I felt like this is a card that's probably not going to make it through the end of the show. And if it doesn't, it makes it to Nashville. I'm fine with it. Like 30 minutes later, a dude walks up, wants the card, and he's got some fun stuff. He had some other show. Hey, some graded ones. Part of what he had was some decent soccer stuff. And I made this lot part of that deal. So Killian Boppe on the laser, the silver, and then a nine five base out of 2018 prism. And then his first prism cards. Yes. And then a double stick on the, uh, what's it called? Donner's debut. So that's like a rookie card, but that's at a PSA 10. So my thought on this is whatever the blue chip stock is for World Cup action in the hobby. Um, I feel like this is, this is a little piece of that. So I have the upside of what that could be now showing it could continue to climb. But as most collectors would tell you, while show hey is doing things that nobody else is doing in baseball right now, the value has carried along with it. And if he kind of was in a, you know, the same trajectory for the next three to four years, like I, I don't know how much more they can go up, but I also don't know how many more historic things we're going to see. So for that reason, I made that trade, but there's always two, the yes show. He could keep going up for a little while, but at some point his body is going to do what all sure. Athletes bodies do. And we saw Mike Trout climb and climb and climb and climb and climb. And then once his body betrayed him, this hobby is a, what have you done for me lately? Hobby. Now that doesn't mean that long-term Ohtani is not going to continue to grow cause it will, but there is likely to be a short term window over a two or three year period where his stuff goes down significantly. All right. My last one. Go ahead. No, you're good. You were about to say something about Ohtani. I don't want to forget that I was going to show off these unique low end liquid cards that I picked up. Oh, okay. Do you want to do that? Yeah. I'll show it real quick. I did a vintage purchase last week where I got a 54 Jackie, super excited about that. And usually the seller has like a box with some raw stuff that's interesting. This time it had a bunch of these world of wheels. They are a tops product from either from somewhere between 1953 to 55. And there's some of the big names in there, but when we talk about collectability, that's a great example of that. Most of these cards are going to be three to 10 bucks, nothing crazy, but I can assure you there's not a ton of these on eBay. Well, that's out of them in the X. I slid you a few boxes. Oh, the kiss cards. Yeah. And a 1978 Donruss Rockstars kiss card. I was blown away. If I had an eBay store, I never would have sold those boxes to you. Well, I'm glad you don't, but I don't, and you can do something with it. There's probably a hundred of them and they sell for three to eight bucks a piece fast. So anyway, my last one, this is the more like mainstream card of the week. Still very strong value. Second year, 2021 prism, green scope, Justin Herbert, auto, and a PSA 10. Nothing crazy, but very liquid, straightforward. He's a guy to watch because his market still has not responded to how good the team plays their relevance in the league, but man, he was expensive out of the gate. Yeah, and he still is I mean, this is still like a 400 ish dollar card, I guess looking at the class what a lot of them were doing for a while there I know I had that was it last year I had that of 10 Auto of his and I couldn't move it for a whole summer and I was under the last two cops on it But that's a pretty one. That's good. It was nice Okay, you had that show-and-tell by the way. Yep That's two weeks in a row where I've asked you how many cards and then I grabbed another one So I can't get you if you do that to me in the near future. That's alright. I would get grumpy unnecessarily about it PSA rolled out a new update to everyone. Hopefully you checked your email machine Gary More good news from PSA. It's it's the exact same. It's the exact same playbook as the height of kovat They just pushed out Return times expected service times. Now, here's what I will tell you with the expected service times They pushed it another week. So it went from 40 business days to 45 In what I'm hearing for most people is that it currently is more like 50 to 60 then it is 40 So days, yes, so that means 45 business days, which is nine weeks So two and a half months is probably closer to three to three and a half months realistically That's with no additional extensions on delays, correct they also Raised prices and those prices went up anywhere from 10 to 20 percent Depending on the service level. They also combined the value bulk stuff So there's no more TCG and sports value bulk as separate things It's all together and the prices we want more TCG and then they're like that's enough. Yeah And then the print and the price got blended. So we went from twenty two dollars to twenty five dollars on value bulk We went from twenty eight dollars to thirty three dollars on value. We went from 45 to 50 on value plus 70 to 75 on value max and 75 to 80 on regular submissions with Drastically extended timelines if you've been around the hobby for more than a year or two You've seen this before they did the exact same thing at the height of kovat They don't want you sending low-end cards They want to slow down the volume of submissions people are losing their minds over this and it's business 101 There is more demand than we can supply. We're raising our prices so that Those things balance out there's one thing I'm nervous about with this. What's that? You know what it is. I Hope Beckett doesn't get a wave of all these base cards. Oh, no. I mean it Beckett's just as long Smart now if collectors was smart about this. They would have said hey, this is coming. We're we're behind we're way behind What kind of promo could we put in with Beckett and SGC? Well, they could do that I could leverage it and then you're catching but but why are we sharing those resources? Well, there's not only sharing the resources. But again, the goal is to get Base cards and low-end stuff to not come in in such droves. Why are people sending base rookies to PSA? Because that's the only place they're gonna get a return on the investment. You're gonna pay $25 you're not gonna get a return on most of your cars. You're not right now but people still base PSA tens aren't gonna do yeah, but People still think that it is and if a PSA 10 of your let's use Jackson dart your PSA 10 Donruss Jackson dart base rate of rookie. Let's say it's 30 bucks Okay, so you paid $4 for the card you spend 25 to grade it you make a dollar Right, but if you send that same card to Beckett or to SGC You just lost 10 bucks because it's only one if you're one of the 80 old ones that sets up and he says it's a 10 Well, you lost all your money then because you're never selling it. So There's there's perfect business sense behind what they're doing. It doesn't affect you and I much because we don't grade much These extended turnaround times are gonna affect all the rest of you that are trying to fast flip rookies Because by the time you get it back it may not be relevant. Yeah, so that's what's going on with PSA. It's not shocking We've seen the playbook before Not a refresher if you're somebody that sends stuff off We really encourage you to reconsider sending base off. Look at the outcome. Is this now? Is it a base rookie of Albert who else yeah, we're like a Cemented goat with a cemented value on a PSA 10 base rookie obvious That's fine. But if you're sending off all the brand new tops chrome base rookie basketball stuff Let me tell you we've seen that movie. We did it you we we rode the wave everything in the market was hot by the time the cards got back those half those players are in the G League like just Take your time. Be sure you want to do that the amount of money you would invest. Let's say you're sending off 10 cards boy Over a three-month period if you gave me 250 to 300 dollars to churn over Turn it into two grand real fast. I'll turn it into two of those PSA tens three of them, you know value wise So just just be sure what you're what you're doing. That's the encouragement on that one. Yep up next We're gonna head up to Delaware, Ohio to new heart the new heart cards Keith new heart with shop talk Hi This is Keith at new heart cards, and this is shop talk Just wanted to talk to you briefly today about what makes a shop great What makes you get into your car and drive specifically to a location? So we're just gonna talk about a few different things. First of all, it's gonna be wax I think most of us know that top slash fanatics has halted the allocation to new shops of their unopened product Don't know how long that's gonna last but it makes the current existing LCS Maybe that much more important, especially if you like to wick rip wax So a good supply of not only hobby but of retail product as well because people have all kinds of different different price points Next up is supplies something you really don't think about But how many times how often have you gone to an a card shop and they just didn't have the right size? Top-loaders or the right cardboard. It's not a profit center for us a lot of supplies we will actually lose money on but it does bring in new people to the business and Allows them maybe to buy a blaster or a single something like that. So Next of all is how knowledgeable is the staff if you want if you come in? Do you need help? Do you need help trying to figure out maybe for a gift? you know what single you want to buy or What product you know is Drake May signing in this product if I hit in a receiver from Missouri? How good is he you want to have somebody on staff who knows the game who knows sports? And I think that's really important in the in the in the current card shop environment Next of all is fresh singles, which is really important to us How many times have you gone into? Your local shop and the same card is sitting in the same corner in the same same showcase months after months we like to buy new singles constantly and Move them around a little bit I guess so Lastly certainly not least we talked about this a lot, which is liquidity You know, is your shop able to buy and sell your cards from you? It's it's a it's a two-way street You know you buy from us. We like to buy from you. It also provides us with with new fresh inventory I think that people are looking for so again if you have any ever any questions Feel free to give us a call email us reach out to the guys But again, thanks. This is Keith and this is shop talk You Okay, so Gary I don't know about you but for me a couple of the things that I really think People forget is the fact that there should be some level of expertise at the LCS there are a lot of people that don't even know what they have when they walk in and so That's a that's a part of that environment that matters there to know that that's gonna happen and then as stuff gets weird with LCS is and allocations and now there's these different retail batches. They're pushing on people the shops that have hobby There's gonna be a little bit of demand there Yes, it's harder and harder to find in a brick-and-mortar that isn't exporting goods. Yeah, or the GameStop or whatever that is So I didn't mean to say the GameStop as if I'm old enough to say the Facebook I did say that but I wasn't trying the book a face to sound like that That's my job. I'm the old guy right here and here in just a moment as I shared before Carrie with American arbitrage cards is gonna be joining us Really excited for you get a pen and pad out so many nuggets for you to pick up if you're in this space Especially if you do a good amount with that high volume low end selling Let's go ahead and kick it over to him Well, we're super excited to jump in to this interview with Carrie from American arbitrage American arbitrage cards No bangers and the list goes on Cranking out the content, but I've got to say before we jump into this intro Really glad to have you with us and thank you so much for making time for this Was not expecting a quick response. I don't remember exactly how it worked I was like, hey, man, love your stuff any chance and he's like I've heard of you guys which to us It's weird that that's happening Since we turned on cameras, but Carrie, thank you so much for being here and a part of you I'm excited to be here. I love the podcast I like I said, I've listened and watched a lot of episodes probably most of them. So keep them coming Probably skip this one Come on, come on. Well, we'll be tagging you and all the clips So I'm sure you'll see them pop it up left and right when I came across your content I was for a long time I was a pastor full-time at a church and we had those early 2000 student loans from Bible College And I was in a space where you don't get paid a lot and all of a sudden There was some financial pressure I remember I was like I got to figure something out and I'd like to I heard of people flipping Baba so I went down the the wormhole of finding reselling content and I stumbled onto yours and I've honestly just kind of followed your story and I think there's something that resonates with people when they they're able to enjoy and appreciate that treasure hunt that flip Finding something cool and then making yourself obsessed about learning it enough ranting from me and the longest intro ever What got you in when did you know that that you wanted to resell that you wanted to flip that you wanted to like? How did this get started? What was the Genesis for you? I think I always was into it But I didn't realize it as a kid if that makes sense Like my parents we would do like our yearly yard sale and stuff and then I would ask my dad Particularly, could I do another one? Can I just sell my toys? So he'd let me sell my toys and I'd probably sell 75 cents worth I was selling them at a quarter way too cheap Should have kept a lot of those toys honestly and sold them now But I'd sell them that my dad would give me like five bucks on top of it So I could go to the usually the card shop back then so we'd go the card shop So I was always kind of like hustling. I remember I grew up in California and I wasn't allowed to leave my cul-de-sac I I was very darted I guess as a kid by my parents So I had an my best friend was two or three years older. I had this angels autograph ball I sent him to the card shop. I'm like go I didn't even offer him any money I don't know how I convinced him I'm like just go get me some money for this and he did it and came back and told me it was fake which you Know broke my heart at the time. But uh, yeah, I always had that in me. I went to college for a while That's part of my story when I got three degrees And I was gonna go I didn't really know what I was doing. I loved college So I just stayed for an extra degree and just kept going And I was gonna go back I was taking like a year off And I was thinking about what I wanted to do which was probably going to go back to more school get my master's Wanted to be a professor of like history is what I wanted to do and in that time This is a true story. I know i'll be honest with you guys. I I was working just a Just a college job. That was goofy and fun. It was at in and out I just liked it because there was no responsibilities and I got fired from it at 27 Because I was late because i'm late to everything so I got fired and it was it was the funniest firing because I got fired and then the The main guy got ahold of me days later. He's like don't worry about it You know, it's not for you, but we love you, you know, everybody liked me, but it was just like yeah, maybe don't do this So so I i'm like, okay. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna go back to school here soon I'm, just gonna my mom found a sealed pokemon game that she had given my little sister in the 90s A game boy game and she's like, why don't you try putting this on ebay? I had put together some lots of cards in the mid 2000s for fun and made a little profit But it was just something for fun an excuse to go buy cards basically And it sold really well and i'm like, oh my gosh, and then I got really into it I went all in within a year. I had my own shop Within a year and a half. I had an auction house where I did live auctions because i'm not really shy in front of people Or anything So I did that and that's kind of how my whole life changed. That's how I met my wife that's You know how I ended up having for most of the 2010s my own antique and collectibles auction house shop In utah northern utah and the whole time it cards was was a part of it, you know on ebay Um, you know in the auctions it was one of my favorite things to go hunt for And then you know, I was thinking about doing this is a long story. I'm, sorry I was thinking about doing content for a while. I actually started doing content in 2012. I think okay On youtube on a channel called it doesn't exist. I wish it does did I would love to just like Do a video where I just made fun of it, but it was called. Mr The dude is here. I don't know what that name means um, and I did like haul videos for my auction that I found and I quit I don't know why and then Seven years i'm like I gotta do it. I gotta do it again But I just kept pushing it off and I finally did it American arbitrage started in like november 2019 first video was how to sell sports cards on my main channel And and that was always the most popular stuff on that channel But I just wanted I wanted to be taken more seriously as a picker Yeah, and then my tick tock my picking tick tock took off almost got to a million Um followers on tick tock during that boom. So I really went all in on that and that kind of changed my life That's how I ended up here. I met a lot of my friends. I ended up, you know doing the podcast moved out here You know closer to my friends out on the east coast and um, yeah, this is what I do now Are you everything selling still? Yeah I sell everything, I'm kind of more niched down. I mean, cards is 95% of what I do. Talk to me about that. Talk to me about some of the differences, if you don't mind. Between like regular reselling and card reselling? Yeah. I would say the biggest differences between the two is the margins. Like a lot of people, and I still being, you know, all those years and still in reselling, I don't understand the idea of I'll pay 95%, I'll pay 90%, I'll pay 100%. It just doesn't make any sense to me. I'm used to finding hidden treasures at a garage sale, for example. You know, and I could tell you countless stories of me finding something for a dollar that was worth 50 or $2 that was worth 100. And I realized early on, you could do the same thing in sports cards. You're in the bargain boxes. There's stuff, the more educated you are about niches especially, they might not always be fast selling stuff, but you can find good cards, undervalued without having to even worry about percentages, just going through the bargain boxes. So that's the main thing is the margin. Like I can go out to a yard sale and buy something for a dollar and sell it for 50 or buy out a whole collection of something for 300 and make 1,500. The margins are much better. And consistently I could do that. That's just with a little bit of knowledge about what stuff people undervalue and what's actually worth. Nobody like loses their mind and tells you that you're screwing people over either. Oh, they do. Oh, they hate resellers. Well, but some people lose their mind. Yes. In our world, like one of the things and not as much Jason, he doesn't pound the pulpit as hard as I do, but I pound the pulpit hard that you can't run a business on five and 10% margins. It's absolutely impossible. When we were kind of talking to you before we even started the interview, you brought up the example and we see it all the time. People pay $900 for something to turn around and sell it for 915. Like that doesn't make any sense to me. Like there's not a world where I'm gonna put $900 at risk to make one and a half percent. Well, give me $900. I'm bringing out five rows. Yes. I don't understand the logic of that. And that's the times that they make money. Because there's times that the card, say somebody at last Saturday's show bought a Drake May for 900. He might not be able to get 915 now. He might have to sell that for 975. Maybe the argument is he should get out of that as fast as possible and take his $25 loss or whatever. But I don't understand that. With $900, even if I wanted a lot of Drake Mays, I'd be coming out with a hundred, and it might be prestige rookies or manufactured patch playoff rookies or something, but I'm coming out with a lot of Drake Mays that I could sell at $3 to $12 on an auction or whatever I'm selling them. Yeah. It's an emotional toll as well because we've got a lot of people that are taking it seriously like a business. I'm doing this. I'm setting up at shows. And when those downtowns or uptowns take a little dip or they get one or two bad comps, it's not that they're just parked the money there and they might lose. It's the emotional toll that 300 times today, somebody's gonna tell you last one did 950. Can you do 850? Right? And so there's a piece of this where it's not scalable. And I love that where you started was my margins are best when I go treasure hunting. You know, we did a episode a couple of weeks ago. What's the last two weeks ago? Where if we started over in 2026, we would still say value box, low end, bulk. Talk about the value of getting reps in. You talked about the knowledge Delta, right? Like it's important to niche down. One of the things that I think you and Gary both have this in common and it's kind of unique is you both are encyclopedias at times. So Gary, I'd like you to meet your version of you when it comes to college athletes, because I'm pretty sure Gary can give the family tree of this sixth man of the year from Colorado State in 2008. How do you know this stuff? Like where did you just like, do you just love college sports? Has that been the way or? I love this aspect of cards, learning the stories, learning the players. People are oftentimes surprised when I tell them I don't really watch sports that much. I don't sit, I'm maybe too ADHD. I can't sit and actually watch sports much. But I box score follow a lot. I love to just see who's the hottest player right now, batting average. I love the studying part of it. I think I got that from getting three degrees. I really love studying. I like doing that. A little of it comes, I think, from having a background in theater. I memorized a lot. I was always really good at memorizing. So I just, for whatever reason, I have an interest in it and it attaches. It's one of my skillsets. And I would say anybody doing anything in reselling cards, otherwise content, focus on what your strengths are. Don't try to be like everybody else. Even if it doesn't make sense, like you don't see people doing what you're doing right now because it's not done. Be the person to do it because there's other people out there who wanna see it. That's what I learned from the bargain boxing stuff. I was doing my main channel and my friends were like, do a card channel, man, do a card channel. And I wouldn't do card stuff on my main channel after a while because I'm like, it's confusing people. And I finally did it. First video blew up and I'm like, how the heck did this happen? I thought I would be like struggling, if anything, to get people to notice me over there. And the first video, it's like, oh, maybe people recognize me a little bit. Maybe that helped a little, but I wasn't really cross-promoting. It was just, I knew what I was doing because of years of doing it. And I was able to convey something that people wanted to see. They wanted to see a decently edited hunt through the bargain box with some explanation as to why I'm buying what I'm buying. It was that simple. And I still, you know, there's definitely opportunities for me to have changed my content on that. Like I could have been a dealer at a card show and blown up a lot more if I wanted to, but I'm kind of just want to stick to what I enjoy. And then that's, and that's putting in the reps. I mean, if you go to a card show and you know I'm there, I'm going to be exactly where you expect me to be. The table with 10 four rows. So you love the national. You're one of the only guys that absolutely crushes at the national, just eating up those value boxes. I'm a nerd like that too. Jason tells people all the time. Like I am, nothing brings me more joy in this hobby. Two things. One is just digging. I love it. I can do it for hours. There's a shop. We make a two and a half hour drive to at least once a month. And I will sit there for 10 hours. We will get there when they open. We will leave when they close and do nothing but dig the whole day. I don't take a break to eat. I don't take a break to drink. Occasionally I'll go pee. That's about it. If you have to, yeah. Yeah, sometimes. But, and the other thing. You haven't done the trucker model yet where you just bring the bottle. No, not yet. That's the next step. If he knew he'd get away with it, he would do that in a heartbeat. Yeah, for sure. The other thing that I, the second thing that I enjoy more than anything else is after that dig, going home and going through all of it and seeing how good I did. That's my very favorite part. That might be just as, that's a great point that I don't think about enough, but you're 100% right. It might be just as good, if not better, like going through and analyzing and occasionally going, what did I do? Why did I buy that? That was a little more emotional than it should have been. I gotta be careful not to bring home, because I don't buy for PC too much, but I will maybe take chances on some jazz guys and guys I love a little bit more. And I'm like, I don't know if I should have done that, but that's part of it. Who's your PC? I know you said the jazz. I know you got the- The jazz. I love role players. I'm a more obscure jazz guy from the nineties, especially, or 2000s, the better. I don't really care about the stars. So you're a Hornacek guy. Yeah, give me Hornacek. Give me even more obscure than Hornacek, even though. That's why I like Ostertag. Yeah. Ostertag, yeah, yeah. He was like a stiff, but like he was goofy and lovable. And like he, everybody hated him at the time in Utah, but like he also was good enough to play on great teams. So he wasn't a nobody. So I kind of like his story and he's an interesting guy, but you can get me like all the backup, Jacques Vaughn, you know, Howard Isley, John Crotty, cause he had a funny name. Like, just give me that kind of Adam Keefe, those random dudes. Anybody who went to the University of Utah, cause that's where I went to school. So all the Utah guys. Yeah. But outside of that, I like late nineties basketball in particular. So give me Jerry Stackhouse. Yeah. Anybody, gosh, you can give me Tony Massenburg. Just give me late nineties basketball and I love it. And then a little bit of football. I don't know. Like, I like bus too. I like guys who didn't pan out as well. You got a big Greg Oden collection. Yeah, I got Greg Oden's. I got a, I was looking the other day on my PC. I got a bunch of Tim Couch from a era that I was just buying everything. Tim Couch, for example, just like, give me the guys who were supposed to be great. Give me a Michael Olawakandi auto. Yeah. Stuff like that. Well, how convenient to be a Browns fan and have such a list of quarterbacks to collect. Yeah. No, I mean like, I like grew, it's weird. I grew up in Southern California my first 10 years, but I wasn't a football fan until I was in my teens. So we were already in Utah. I had no team in Utah for football. I kind of liked the charge. I've been a free agent most of my life. Okay. I've kind of rooted for the Browns. I went to the Cleveland National. That's why I have this hat. And once I find a hat that's been sitting around in this place, I'll just wear it for like a month and then I'll forget about it. So people, I do like the Browns, top three or four teams, but I'm really into the Jags now that I have a team locally. Okay. And, you know, I was actually going to games last year when they sucked. I didn't even go this year. So I don't know if they get good, if I'll still love them. I mean, I was excited this year. I would have loved to have seen them go to the Superbowl, but I'm trying to get into having a football team, but it's hard kind of being a free agent my whole life. So. I bet. Yeah, I bet. I was trying to see like, all right, you said you were a teen and that's when you went Browns at first. I was like, oh no, that doesn't make sense. That makes a little, that makes a little more sense. Well, I just always liked the underdogs. I mean, everybody does to some extent. And I just, their story is really interesting, you know, and just how much they've struggled. And it's going to be really, they're probably never going to make it because the management and everything's so terrible, but if they ever did make it, it would be really cool. If you want to just zoom in a little further south in the state, South Beach welcomes you with open arms. No, Miami, baby. Oh, Miami. I'm a Dolphins fan, so. Oh, you're O's? Yeah, if you like people underperforming, then I mean, I think we still owe Tua a hundred mil. So. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm not against, I'm not against the Dolphins. Like in Tampa Bay, for whatever reason, I don't really care that much about. The Jags are like, I can go to a game in an hour and a half. So that's actually really close. They're going to do a new stadium, right? They are, yeah. Yeah, that's cool. I was playing in Orlando for a year too in 2027, which is pretty close. I'm right in the middle of Orlando and Jacksonville, so it doesn't make a difference to me. Is Orlando, you live in Florida. Yes. So I try to find people who live there to validate my opinion of Orlando. Is Orlando not just all the worst parts of Florida thrown into a blender? It's like all the heat, all the bugs, none of the ocean, none of the breeze, all of the people. None of the snow. None of the, yeah. It's all the worst parts of Florida just thrown in a blender. So I'm not a native of Florida, and I know a lot of people who grew up here have a lot of issues with Florida. To me, when I think of Orlando, and I know it's got Disney and it's got Universal, and I got my passes and I'm trying to nerd out and go, it is a very generic city to me. I don't know, I've been all over the US, and it's just like, you could throw me in, I don't know, it just seems like it could be any city in America. There's not much to it that I've found out yet in the two years I've lived here. It is hot and humid, and it doesn't have all the things, like I'm pretty near the beach now, like a half hour away from the beach, that's nice. But I can see what you're saying. I never really thought of it that way. I just always think of Orlando as like, I can't quite figure out this city. Even though it has some stuff that's very popular touristy, it's just very generic to me, generic big city. It's not like a New York City or certain cities. Las Vegas has a very specific vibe, which I didn't really vibe with, because I'm not a gambler, but still it had a very specific vibe. And Orlando, I can't figure out. But I go there a lot, because the one thing about moving here to Florida is the card scene is amazing. Tell us about it. Is it just the show scene, shops, all of it? What do you like? Everything, yeah, we have a lot of good shops, a lot of solid shops. I went from Utah, which had shows two or three times a month, which is not bad, and they probably have them almost every week now, to Vegas, where it was like once every six weeks, if I was lucky. I'd have to go to California. They have one every week, which I didn't wanna do. That was like four hours away, three and a half, four hours away. And when I moved out here, I didn't realize that literally there's like a show every weekend. I can go, if I'm willing to travel two hours any direction. There's a show every single weekend in Jacksonville or Orlando, or next week is Space Coast again. So that's down in Cape Canaveral, which is like two hours. It's a cool little venue too. It is, it is. Yeah, I mean, that whole area is really interesting to me. I still wanna go check out the Space Center and everything. Come check out Ohio at some point because- I was there, I was in Bucyrus. There are four or five shows every single weekend in Ohio. I actually, I went to a show. I never released the film. It was near Bucyrus. It might've been in Bucyrus in the summer. And I'm gonna be in Ohio again cause I'm probably gonna go. I usually do a highway sale right after the national in Ohio. And my dad's from Springfield originally, so. Oh, we expect just a message. We'll meet up and grab a beer or something. Hell yeah, man. Let's do it. I'll drink a soda. I never really got into- That's fine. Growing up in Utah, I never got into alcohol. You had to sneak your Coca-Cola in there. Exactly. Let's talk. Okay, so what I would love to do, I think for our listeners, is there's gonna be tremendous value in your experience selling things, digging for them, looking for them. And when you talked about, there are two things you said. One thing you said, if the player has a story, the other thing you said is you were able to go through that box and just be like, am I getting this under value? And I think that the only way that you learn these things is with experience and reps and showing that interest, right? It's because you've bought the collection and comped out 5,000 cards to find the 500 that are worth selling, right? That's the process. But I think there are principles from your reselling journey that if more card people maybe took in or listened or applied some ideas here that translate from reselling, it would be really helpful. What do you think maybe some card sellers, you already mentioned Margin being one of them or how they're buying. Can you think of some reselling principles that maybe in the card space are ignored that would be a little more helpful to them? I mean, this is one that's talked about a little bit, but I don't think enough and it's bundling up, especially in making lots. when you're in a bargain box, because you got to remember for most dealers, this is the excess. This is the stuff they're happy to get rid of in general, unless that's their whole table, which some people are smaller, and it is they're more attached, and they're looking up everything that's that's never a good sign. So but a lot of dealers, they're going to have their showcases, they may have boxes for sale, and they're going to have their, their bargain boxes. And if they have good bargain boxes that should pay for their table, the bargain boxes, so that that makes it a little less stressful for them. So when you're looking through and you're grabbing a ton of stuff, a lot of dealers are excited. They're like, yeah, I'm going to be able to make a little chunk of money on something that may not individually have much or any value to them. They're not going to go grind out $5 a card on eBay or whatever. So bundle up make a deal make a stack. If it's $1 a card, realistically, there should be no reason if you're making a stack, you should ever pay $1 a card once you have, you know, asked for deals. I'm not the best negotiator in the world. But I will negotiate when I feel like something isn't fair. So people know this about me too. If I if I hand them a stack of dollar cards, say I had them 100 and they're like 75 bucks, 80 bucks, I'll be like, okay, fine. You know, I'm not going to negotiate because it gave me a fair price. Yeah. But you can always say, hey, they're like, okay, $100. You can go like, okay, well, I bought a bunch, will you do it cheaper. And then that cost averages your cards down, it allows you to have more flexibility when you resell, which is really, really important. You make the money in the buy, if you're spending $900 for a downtown, you're pretty much already screwed if its value is about 900. Maybe that's case scenario, you're out of cash. I mean, hopefully you haven't, if you're buying that stuff, you have a bigger bank roll. But, um, you know, you're out of that 900 until you get 915 or 920 back, I don't really know what the best case scenario is. There's a lot of gambling involved with it. And to like the mentality of like, maybe he has a big game. And then now it's worth 1200. Yeah, but you could you could basically utilize that $900 bargain boxing, get five rows, not just five rows of random stuff, but five rows of handpicked stuff filled with stuff that could, that could do five whatnot auctions that could make you three $4,000 if you play your cards, right? Yeah, well, and if you know what you're looking for, that's the like I had, I bought a card a few weeks ago, and it was in one of our show and tells it was a 1997 Pacific Philadelphia Adam Benetary. It's the only rookie card out of Benetary has the only one the only set, and you can find them in dollar boxes. And it's a it's $100 card. So much of that stuff in there. There's yeah, total stuff from 2006 2007. That has a lot of the offensive linemen that never offensive linemen are a really good one. Like a lot of times they have next to no cards or a random rookie from like unparalleled like Dion Dawkins. Well, and weird inserts like I found a year I'm sure you're familiar with the bright light set from 99 skybox the acetate colors. The greens and yellows were pack released. The oranges were never supposed to be released. They were a test run and they got a few of them got shipped and slipped into a few cases that went to the northeast. I found a Fred Taylor in a 50 cent box. It's a $200 card. Knowing what you're looking for, and being willing to take a chance on weird stuff like that is from no bangers podcast, Tim, he found I think it was two weeks ago, a Clayton Kershaw Jacksonville Suns. I think it was choice that I saw that. Yeah, yeah. But on the back, it was numbered to 25. So they totally missed that or didn't care. That's incredibly rare for a set. It's not a sexy set at all. It's not Bowman or anything. But it's a set that got produced a ton less than Bowman did. And to find a number to 25 variation just based on pure scarcity, that's a multi $100 card that he found. I think he paid probably knowing Tim less than $1 is little. I mean, Tim is cutthroat. Don't if Tim's at your table, be ready to make deals because Tim Tim goes after it. I respect him. I need him around me to push my deals. I'm like, there's nothing wrong with that. Like, I wish I was more like that. I struggle with negotiations. Well, you were talking about we're building a stack. I will never forget when Jason decided, not just the eBay side of things, which he had been doing for a while, but he was gonna go, he saw me doing shows, every single week, he would do maybe one a month, maybe two, and then he'd for like six or eight months didn't do hardly any. And he was like, Okay, I'm doing this. So I said, Okay, let's go. And let's buy. And it was his first time with an actual bankroll really going to show and go on. Okay, I'm here to buy to resell. And we went to a table. And the guy had a Bowman box. And it was all prices mark, but it was more value type stuff. And I put a stack together and handed them to him and said, This is kind of where I'd want to be on this. And he was like, I just can't get there. He said, Could you get here? I said, I, I just kind of shoot my shot right out of the gate. I'm not trying to lowball your whatever else. And he goes, Yeah, I just can't get there. I said, Okay, no problem. And I turned to walk away. And I took three steps. And he went, Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Okay, I'll do it. And Jason looked at me. What? Did that just work? Like, yeah, he would rather have cash than those cards. And as soon as he realized that I really wasn't like BS and that that was my number. He was like, Okay, that's fine. Just give me let's let's dive into this for a second. Because I think one of the things especially if we're spending time in the value boxes. So there's people that do low end stores that listen in quite a bit or low end selling. And I think let's talk through the challenges of that. So you have a card show. The number one thing I run into when I was sourcing for eBay or lower and whatnot is, it is amazing how time evaporates in a value box. And so you also have to get a feel for is this dealer going to be interested in me building a huge stack or not? What are the things that you look for carry? Or what are maybe some red flags? You mentioned one already about its value boxes, and they're not priced, and they want to look up every card. But that's a huge one. Yeah, that's a huge one. Well, let me maybe I'm assuming everybody, let's play that out. Why does that become a problem? It's because typically, a deal is found with the stuff that people care the least about as a dealer. That's where you can find the deals. Sometimes it could even be more valuable stuff, because maybe they're just opening boxes, and they don't really care about much of anything if it's not downtown or a kaboom. So you can get $25 cards for 10 bucks or whatever. But in general, the deals are found with the cards that the dealers care the least about. And if you're a low end card table at a card show, you're you're more attached to your cards, understandably. So that's how you're going to make your money. So you, you know, I would still argue you need to price your stuff, you know, you give me a dollar box, everything's a dollar put a sticker. So you if they get mixed up, you know, the green is dollar, give me a five, a 10, a 15, go up to 2530 is my idea. I'll go look in a $30 box if I know everything's 30. One of my least favorite things is not knowing what the prices are going to be. Because it's it definitely is a deterrent for a buyer wanting to put a stack together if they have no idea where your head is with your stuff. So yeah, pricing, you know, the pricing your stuff as a dealer is is huge, even if it's nebulous a little bit like, you know, it's a general not general price, but like, I don't know with the bigger cards, don't price them, but like price your lower end stuff is what I'm trying to say. So if they're if they don't price it, that's an issue. I'll throw one out. It's not always like this. But one of the things where I get this is more like a yellow flag or like just a caution. When I'm building a stack, and I've only put like five cards down, and they start thumbing through to see what I have in the stack. That's good. There's an emotional attachment is what that tells me. I could be wrong. But most of the time, there's some level of emotional attachment. What do you have in there? They're mentally deciding they're already doing math, they don't even know how the deal feels. And I think you and I are pretty similar in this carry. We let our personalities carry and we're pretty transparent with people. And so I may land at the same percentage as Gary on something, but I do it very differently than he does. So if I feel that vibe where they're starting to look through my stuff, and I haven't even handed the stack over, I'm because it's not natural for me to be like, here's my number, right? It's not Gary's very direct like that. It makes sense. But that's one for me, Gary, can you think of one, something where you're like, Oh, this deal is probably not gonna? Yeah, well, I'll give you an example on both sides of the table. When I when I start looking at a box, and nothing is priced, I'll say, Hey, how are how are these priced? And if their answer is anything around the lines of? Well, I don't know, just build a stack, and we'll look them up or well, I'm just gonna have to check. I'm out. I'm not even gonna waste my time. They're always gonna take care of you too. Yeah. But the flip side of this, for those of you who are set up as dealers and somebody like carry walks up to your table and is looking through a value box. One of the things I'm 100% sure you don't do on the regular carry. And if I'm wrong here, tell me but I'm guessing you don't because you wouldn't have success if you do. If you're digging through a value box at my table, and I don't put a value box out too often anymore, I used to quite a bit. But now we do whatnot. And that's where most of that stuff ends up at. But when I had a value backside on the table, and everything in there was 10 bucks or less, for the most part. If I see people comping the one and $2 cards, we're not getting a deal done. I'm not. I'm out. I like and I'm guaranteed that when I go look through people's value boxes, I'm not comping stuff into the value boxes. I know roughly what stuff is worth. If I lose a buck paying two bucks for a card, it's only worth a buck, I'm gonna make it up because I paid two bucks for a $6 card. Like, yeah, when you're living in the low end, trying to squeeze every penny out of every card as a dealer or as a buyer, in that manner can turn off either side of the table. 100%. I think that the way you approach it is such a big deal. I was up at Newhart cards that we do a lot of business with. And he had a lot of a four row and two three rows of like, all Bowman, chrome and tops, chrome stuff, a bunch of refractors and numbered stuff, no monster cards in there. But it was a deal. I didn't even have to ask for because so many deals, I think have happened, where there's a level of comfort and trust that we have each other's best interests in mind here enough to where that's gonna be a big deal. I think. Do you find yourself building relationships with these dealers then? Like, do you feel like there's a handful of regulars, they know what I want? It's a simple thing. It's super efficient. Like, how long did it take for that to happen? Maybe like six months of me being here in Florida. I mean, I obviously I had a lot of relationships in Vegas when I was there. And then I moved here. And for the most part, people knew who I was or got to know who I was pretty quickly because, you know, I'm filming or they they'd seen my stuff before. But yeah, the relationships thing is huge, because I'll go to a table and they already know what I'm looking for. So oftentimes, they'll have that. Or they know the prices that I want the stuff at. There's, you know, every dealer is a little bit different. But yeah, I basically like my last video I did, that came out yesterday was just two of my regular guys I buy from, they already have kind of like a set price I pay for certain stuff. And then I put a stack together, they tell me what that total is, and I pay it. It's that simple, because we've done deals so so much. And you know, I'm still picking out what cards I want. So I'm happy with the cards. And we know the price range. And and we go from there. So relationships are huge. And I think it's really important to when you're out there to just have a good time and talk to people and be friendly. Don't just talk to dealers because you want to build a relationship and make money off them. Just get to know people be cool. Have a good time. If deals come great. If not, you know, you may not shop at that table as much long term. If you're not getting good enough deals, that's fine. And and you know, but I think ultimately go at it with with the thought process. If I just want to make friends in this business, and then naturally deals will come because everybody wants to make sure everybody is making money amongst their friends. So established trust. Yeah, you establish trust you establish. Like Jason said that you've got your bet. There's nothing better. And there are several people that are like this outside of my very, very tight circle. But a few LCS owners, a few other dealers I deal with, I will look at the stuff that I want, I will hand it to them, like you said, and say, Hey, how much do I owe you? And I know it's going to be a fair number. I know I don't have to look anything up. I it's just simple. That's the best feeling that you when you reach that level of relationships with people in this business, where that level of trust is there, and you never have to worry about getting cooked. Yeah. And that's so important with bargain boxing, because the these people are going to bring the boxes to every one of the shows that I go to. So I know going in, that I'm going to be able to find cards that I can flip for a profit. Also that I'm going to be able to make content, which is a big part of my business as well. So I'm going to have a successful business outing. But thankfully, the business I do is something that I've loved since I was seven. And I'm blessed to be able to do it. Right. You know, I did not go to school to be a card flipper. You know, I went to school to do something more. I don't know if it's more serious, because I think I take this pretty seriously. But sure, I was definitely going to do something different. And I'm doing this because I love it. It gives me the reason to go out and basically be 10 forever. Yeah, just go look at cards. You know, we get to play with we get to play with toys for a living. And it's true. It's true. That's what I love about it. It's what I loved about it as a kid, too. Like I loved looking, you know, back then it was more pack related. Like I loved opening packs trying to find and it wasn't necessarily looking for kabooms. I mean, I was looking for a diamond king, which yeah, most packs and VP Donruss card, you know, it wasn't necessarily valuable cards. It was just well, you know, when you're a six, seven year old kid, you're a six, seven year old kid, you know, like the team that you root for, you know who their stars are. But I remember as a kid, I would look at I would try to figure out who was good by looking at the back of the baseball card. I didn't know who Ellis Burks was. But I knew he hit 32 home runs and that 30 or more home runs in the 80s. You're a good player. So I knew that I should keep my Ellis Burks cards. They were good to trade with. That's how I that's how I always think about it. And even now I still find myself as much as this is what I do, as much as this is where I'm at, especially with Bowman. I think it's why I like Bowman so much. It's why I like minor league scouting and prospecting so much is I get to relive a little bit of that part of my childhood where I can't watch all these games, but I can look at the stat line. I can look at the pitching ninja numbers. I can look at the, uh, the baseball perspective stuff and, and get a feel for who these guys are. based on metrics and everything else. And it makes me feel like I'm a kid again. I love that, too. I love like and I'll show you. You were asking earlier about like how I could take reselling principles or how I take reselling principles and apply them into sports cards and prospecting and baseball cards is a really interesting one because I, I try my best not to speculate or even prospect so much because you never know what's going to happen. But what I do do or what I actually do is I use what I learn to find cards that are already in a bargain box that they don't realize has value right now because they're not paying attention. Right. To what's happening in the minor leagues. Right. You know, and then if there is some upside beyond that, awesome. But I always like to try to buy something thinking I can at least make a little profit if I sell it right this second. And then if I if it sells in five months and he goes up, you know, and just does great, wonderful, that's a bonus. But like you look if you go and look at the top 100 that just came out for the MLB pipeline, you can find a lot of those guys in the 30, 40, 50, 60 range that have a lot of times leaf or wild card autos that are being given away in bargain boxes. Now, yeah, they might only be a nine dollar auto, a 15 dollar auto, something like that. But I live off that kind of stuff. That's yeah, that kind of that kind of lack of awareness with baseball cards. And that's probably one of my favorite parts about being a bargain boxer is that edge that if you actually know what's going on, if you know that Denny, Denny Avia, I don't know how to pronounce his name is averaging like twenty five point nine points a game right now. It's going to be an all star. And people totally forgot about him. Maybe not so much now, but definitely as of a couple of months ago, people were totally forgot about that dude. And he was the number one in bargain boxes. Yeah. Well, Alperin Senguin was the same way. Yeah. Sengun was the same way last year. But yeah, that's having that knowledge base. Like one of the things we talked about a couple of weeks ago is and you said it earlier, lean into what you know. If you know basketball. And this is what you're getting into the cards. Just focus on basketball, because that's what you know. If you know baseball, if you know, if you know soccer, if you know hockey, whatever it is, lean into that. But like to the prospecting side of things, I think one of our most requested episodes, I do it every year. And we start getting questions regularly in our comments and about January. When's the prospecting episode? When's the prospecting episode? Because people want that information. But I tell people all the time, it's a lot like crypto. By the time you hear about a prospect in the general like conversation, you got to put the work in. Yeah. Yeah. You missed. You missed your real opportunity. You might get 10% gain, but you missed the 200%. Yeah. But here's the thing, like that's 100% true with prospecting. But I can't tell you the amount of times that a player is popped off in any sport. And then I go to the bargain box that next. They're still there next day. Yeah. And they're still there because people are not going. Most stores are not going back into the bargain boxes. Fishing that out. I remember when I don't have time to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Ellie popped off. I went to Legacy, which is the Blaise brothers in Vegas. And I bought like sixty five dollar Ellie Daylight cruise cards when he hit that cycle or the four homeruns, whatever he did when he came up. Yeah. I bought them all because it was timing. No, they wouldn't have probably been there in three days, but I got there at the right time. Yeah. And those opportunities are everywhere. If you see anything, you know, if you had a if you go to a bargain box, you might be able to find like a Kenneth Walker autograph still in a bargain box this week. Yeah. You know, after he won Super Bowl MVP, you might be able to get it for two bucks, three bucks, five bucks, maybe or something numbered, and then you can flip it. That's the game I love to play. Just have that little extra knowledge above the people that I'm competing with. And then it's not even like the shop dealers don't have that knowledge. Necessarily, it's just it's a lot of work to go back through your bargain boxes. And most of them understand that they most of the people I deal with. Like, I respect that. Yeah, you went in there. You found it. Good for you, man. We we encourage that. We want people digging through our boxes and and, you know, when you find that gym in general, people are finding a gym, but they're also picking up their, you know, their their Cecil, their Cecil Fielder, as I like to call them, you know, rookie card because that's their PC or whatever. So they're picking up other stuff that might not have been taken out of the bargain box also. So when when. All right, let me let me hit you with a common business challenge people run into in the low end space. Finding the deals are there. Figuring out how you're going to move them is a whole nother conversation. The number one thing that I run into, and I know it because I dealt with it myself until I made some pivots, was it is easy, not easy. With time, you can scale a low end eBay store. Like right now, a 51,000 cards, low end cards on eBay. You're not getting immediate feedback on those purchases on eBay. I'm not running Vintage Commons at an auction. It's buy it now. Right. And most people were there. And what happens is some people that are interested in the business side, if they get in touch with the podcast, they know I do low end cards. Almost inevitably, within six months, they finally did it. They bought so much low end and so much of it is parked in a store waiting on somebody to click buy it now. You mentioned it before we started, but I'd like for you to address that issue. And if arbitrage, which I'd like to talk about, well, is is your approach to that? I want to hear it, because if if I'm not mistaken, live selling is where you're spending most of your time moving what you buy. Is that correct? Yeah, I'd say most of the cards that I sell are through live auctions. Yes, most of them. So talking about that parking, the low end, how do we get that unparked? Like what's your filter of how quickly you need to sell something? Some of those things. And it's and just so everybody knows, it's a constant thing that you're growing with and learning as you go. I don't have it necessarily 100% filled, you know, figured out at this point, but I've had more stuff parked as buy it now before in the past. Thousands and thousands. Right now, I think I have like twelve hundred cards on collects. I'd like to get that maybe to ten thousand at some point because I it's part of the business that I enjoy, like the unique stuff. But I'm also much more picky about what I park there. It's not going to be a 1991, you know, Tops Greg Jeffries anymore. It's going to be stuff that's particular that people want hot current stuff or unique, interesting stuff that would go there. What makes there that doesn't make it to your live selling? That's a good question. Like so liquid stuff goes to my live selling typically. So like I'm looking for my lives, the guys that are hot. You know, there was a lot of Seattle Seahawks and Patriots that went in the last couple of weeks. I know I have NASCAR guys and I'm kind of in the NASCAR capital down here near Daytona. So I get a lot of like prism NASCAR stuff, interesting stuff. And a lot of stuff, it's because I've curated an audience over time. It's stuff that I like. So, you know, certain 90s inserts and even then they don't always pop. Every auction is a little bit different. But my goal is if I go to a this is always my goal every week. If I go to a card show and I spend three hundred dollars, my goal is to make three hundred dollars that Monday. I want to make that back. You know, I'd like to get that cash back in my pocket. And then I may have, you know, some some weeks I have more stuff that's going as a buy it now. And then that will sit not typically much longer than a couple of months before I decide, you know, especially the better stuff. Some of the random stuff might sit forever, but like some of the better stuff. I'm going to decide, OK, I'm just going to run it or I'm going to send it to D.C. Sports or what I've been doing a lot with is buy it now on whatnot. So I'll have a back row at my show and then people will make me offers on certain stuff. It's a constant process of of learning, honestly. But my goal is to always get that that capital back, that next show. And to be completely honest, some of that three hundred dollars might be stuff that's left over from the show three weeks ago or four weeks ago. I'm sure that's going off. That did not work. Or, you know, I want something a little bit that's popping to go into my show, but I don't want to put the stuff I just bought because I want to give that a chance to get full price or get the best outcome. This stuff sat for a little longer. I'm just going to I'm going to run that. And then sometimes that does, you know, it could do better than what you had it posted at. It could it could bomb. Who knows? But yeah, my goal is just to try to make sure I break even from what I spend on the weekend and then have a bunch of inventory left over that I can disperse over the. So if somebody has too much parked on their colleagues or their eBay or whatever, and they're running into this, how would you encourage them to move out of that? If it's if it's low in like really obscure stuff, you might just want to box it up and sell it as a box lot. You know, whether that's on Facebook marketplace or wherever and move in, you know, take all your stuff down and start over if it's just kind of low like stuff that really isn't going to work. I personally wouldn't waste much time with any random, you know, junk wax stuff if it's Frank Thomas or Ken Griffey Jr., maybe load up with that or Cal Ripken Jr.'s. I'll put base. I very rarely put base on. But if I do put Lolo in stuff, it's going to be the sets that just came out, just came out. They're going to be up there just for a short time. And then I may move them as well. Yeah, but, you know, start. I also encourage people everywhere to start their Instagram, start social media. When I go to a card show, a big part of my business is what I'm going to make on Facebook with pictures, what I'm going to make on my tick tock with videos, what I'm going to make on my video. They're I mean, not saying that that's I'm buying the stuff to flip, but also I can make money three, four or five different other ways. While I'm doing what I naturally would do anyway. Right. So to be a low end seller, I think it's important to kind of have some diversification show your process. I will watch to this day anybody who's talking about low end cards, even though I know I would like to get to like the five to 200 more consistently range. I will still watch somebody grinding out, you know, dollar 30 free shipping eBay sales on YouTube or tick tock to this day because I'm attracted to that as a reseller. Now, come see me every Monday. That's all I get to do all day. That's awesome, man. That's good. Well, it's something I'm dealing with now. So, you know, a big part of the decision I'm making is trying to decide what's the next best step with this low end stuff. I'm literally I've scaled the size of eBay into too much shipping time. And I can't keep spending that amount of time on it. Whereas I think to your point with life selling, I can think lives are huge. I mean, I do whatnot. I also have my own site, Diptych Cards, which I tell us more about that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So Diptych Cards is part of district. If you guys know what district is, it's a live selling platform that also has like functionality. It's like, you know, discord where you can chat. You can also do buy it now. But we've we built out the main site, which is Diptych proper for years. We're the third biggest district. We've got like I don't remember. We have a ton of people on there, though. We have auctions going on all day, every day. But the cards one is like me and the no bangers, guys. It's our baby. And we've been building that up for the last year and a half or so. And it's fun. It's a place where you can go on and you can sell your cards live. And then, you know, we've kind of built and cultivated at this point, I think around 3000 members in that right now at the moment. Cool. And it's the same as it's literally the same type of setup as whatnot. But one really cool feature of district and diptych cards in particular is you can do shipping at the end of the week. So a lot of people are doing one, two, three, four or five shows combining shipping and then shipping it all out. Com C style at the end of the week, which you can't do on whatnot. No. So that's like one thing that people utilize a lot on diptych cards. So that's something that we've created. It's you know, it's definitely difficult to build, but we are having fun with it. It's something that we're we talk about a lot on no bangers, especially Tim. So to the card person that says I'm thinking about doing some content. What do you tell them? Do it. 100 percent. Best decision I ever made. Hands down. Who care if you didn't? Yeah, do it yesterday. But like, don't feel bad if you didn't do it last year. I started too late, according to everybody in 2019. Everybody was making the same videos. Is it too late to start social media? Turns out it was the perfect time for me. And I started sports card, the sports card channel three years later. You know, 2022 or 23. I don't even remember at this point. And it both of those decisions. Hands down the best business decisions I ever made. So on the content side of things, then, and this is something we kind of ask all of our guests who are content focused. When you went into the content side of things, and this is a question not just for our listeners, for us to when you went into the content side, did you go in with a defined strategy for growth or did you just throw stuff against the wall until something stuck? It's a great question. With my original channel, I had some thought on what would work, and it didn't necessarily work, if that makes sense. But I did adapt really quickly to what was working when I started my American Arbitrage channel. You know, I remember thinking if I could get to 1500 followers, that would be amazing. And all I'm going to do. And there wasn't many people doing it at the time. It's a different landscape is I'm going to make YouTube what sold videos or YouTube thrift store videos in vertical, you know, in the three second bytes, the eight second bytes, the 15 second bytes at that time. And that's all I was doing. I'm like, guys, I'm at the thrift store. Check out this plush right here. It's a Disney Build-A-Bear. I'm picking it up for a dollar and it's worth ten bucks. That was my video. And I was getting hundreds of thousands of views on those at that time and built that channel up to, you know, it got it's over 900. It's under 900. You were like only publishing full hooks. Yeah. Yeah. Just basically the hooks. And then you learn over time that if you want to pay you, it's got to be a minute. There's all that that hubbub, too. And it was paying you before that, but not nearly as much. But yeah, I just I learned that it was all about the hook. It was all about visuals and movements. And it still is like it's you have to you have to hook somebody on a short form video very quickly. And I think movement and the visual is very important, but it's changed over time. I think authenticity has really started to become a really big thing. And it's hard to package that in a way that that is authentically yourself and also watchable. Yeah. Like where people don't want to click away. You can't just be boring. So I've struggled. There's a reason why I do a lot of POV stuff. I'm more comfortable with that. Like I'm the avatar for you at a card show. Yeah. My latest thumbnail is me holding a stack of cards with the guy looking weird at me. I want people when they see that to go, oh, yeah, I go to cards. They don't really think of me. They think of the situation. Yeah. I struggle with being like the the Jeff Wilson in front of the camera. Hey, guys, with the face, that's not really my style. I don't know if it ever will be. And maybe that's for the good. I just have to lean into what what my strengths are. Well, that's what we didn't bring right now. Well, we didn't we didn't start video until February of last year. Yeah, no. Well, that was us. Like, we didn't start video until February of 2025. Now we've been doing the pod. This is our sixth year. Oh, wow. I didn't realize that. Yeah. Yeah, we. We didn't realize I'll go back to the backlog and listen. Hopefully. Yeah, we didn't, we didn't start video until this year. And the one thing for us that's been more of a challenge, I think is our main content is long form. So how do you, we've got to find turn that into something that drives growth because it's hard to get a 30 second clip with a hook that pulls people in and holds them enough to drive them to the long form content. It's hard, a really short form and long form for the most part, don't work really well at driving people to the other form, if that makes any sense. It never really has. I would, I always think of those as two different universes. And then when it's on YouTube, though, you're going to get, you're going to see the subs grow from both. And a lot of growth, especially like on my main American arbitrage channel has come from short form subs, even though, you know, and that's just part of it. It helps with, with the vanity metric of, of subs quite a bit, but they don't always necessarily cross over, but really I don't even know if it matters because there's going to be people who religiously watch your short form clips of this and never really get into watch your long form, but they enjoy it, we'll watch every and it's, you know, some of the highlights from your show, so they're still getting the basic message and, you know, you're going to still be able to make business deals off that in the future if you want, or, you know, contacts and meet people through that. So it still does generally what you want it to do, but that's always the thing. Like we, I started my other podcast, trash to cash, like in 2021. And I realized really quickly when we started, I wanted to be a serious reselling podcast, but I realized we weren't serious, you know? So I learned really quickly to lean into who I was. And now it's just that for that podcast, for me, it's just me, uh, doing standup is my, I just want to be able to roast my, my cohost for 90 minutes every week, you know, and I love that though. I love the idea that we literally created the show around our personalities and we do throw in actual stuff that's helpful, I hope. But like, I love the idea that the show that we became was the show that we wanted to watch, which was just like a fun, goofy, you know, a little bit sarcastic take on the reselling world and that's ended, ended up being what, like, what I like, what I like about your guys' show is it feels, let's see if I can put that, it feels, it doesn't really feel necessarily serious, but it feels like you guys know what you're talking about and you're very, um, I don't know what the word is. You're very passionate about it. So I want to listen to when you guys have a take, not just, and it's, it's not dunking on somebody for dunking sake, which I think a lot of these commentary channels are just looking for the one hot topic after another. Just to build their cloud off other people. I don't feel like that from you. I feel like you guys are passionate about something. If somebody is, is doing something wrong in the space or something you don't agree with, you don't, I don't necessarily feel like you hate the people. You're just like, this action is annoying. And then, you know, when they're, when they are doing something on the other side that you guys are in agreement with, you're all over, you're, you're praising them for that. Whereas I feel like a lot in this space, and I try to stay away from this in general, in this space, totally the drama part of it, I think a lot of people are just looking for the next thing to rag on somebody about, because that's their brand and what happens is there's a lot of good stuff that comes from that. They, they, they expose a lot of bad stuff, but they also throw a lot of people under the bus that don't need to be thrown on the bus because they need content this week. They, and a lot of times they want to do something else. They're more passionate about it or that's more collector driven, but. You know, it's, it's hard to argue with the 10 times amount of views they get when they do something dramatic. I think that's the challenge for us. Like we've said from day one, the, the goal of this podcast, uh, has always been, and will always be to provide value to people who want to either do this for a living or at least enough to fund the hobby for themselves. Yeah. Um, but that doesn't lead often to click baity stuff. It doesn't lead often to, uh, the, uh, that splashy craziness. Like we don't get personal with things unless somebody deserves it to be personal. Um, but that's really rare. We, we will, like you said, we'll call out bad actions. We'll call out bad behaviors, but like the one video we had that went off more than anything else. Was me saying Jason's son has the whole video memorized. It's pretty funny. Um, say, well, backyard breaks got sued last week. Like that one clip from last year outperformed anything else we did, which drives us nuts. Yeah. Let me jump in here though. That video happened. And that was basically the beginning of like, okay, your content is getting out there. Like it was becoming clear that the organic reach we were getting, the type of comments were thought provoking and not just emojis. You know what I mean? Like when people are engaging, exactly. Something was happening. And Gary and I, I remember we were having a meeting like this and I just brought it up. I said, Hey, listen, this, we can keep doing what we did there and we can probably get a ton of views, but I don't want to do a podcast just to be that, like, you know, there's, you brought up, you got these degrees and what do we do with them? And I'm in a similar boat with you of like, I did this and that. And you just learned that like, not to be too poetic with this, but we're all on our own journey and all the stuff that we did is useful. Your theater background makes sense to you. I was, before I stopped working in that space, I was an associate pastor at a church that was aspiring to be a mega church. And there were so many things that were like righteous gemstone that I hated. Right? Like, obviously not quite like the show, but there were a couple of things that did happen as a result of that environment. I was always figuring out how to help with a production on a budget. I was always, I was meeting people and having 10 seconds to make some type of lasting impression that we believe people were going through some stuff and looking for something that leaked when they walked through the doors. And it's like every bit of those soft skills and that experience is going to carry over. So when we, when Gary and I talked about it, it's like, I'm not pastoring a church, but I still want to help people. And now we have people who are growing a business that text when they're stressed out and they're in a spot. Hey, I've been there. I can help you. Um, so yeah, I don't know what that was all about, but it helps with how you communicate though. I could tell in the podcast, like it helps. And that's, that's a super effective thing in, in podcasting is you know how to communicate your thoughts effectively. Um, and, and as far as like the mega viral thing you had last, last year, I think those are, those are best when they're organic. Like my most viral videos ever are typically when I'm just like a, like I've had negotiations where I flub it and I like, I was awkward in it and I got mad and I don't usually get mad. Those tend to do well, but they, I look back and I'm like, I could definitely not manufacture that cause that's not my personality. But when it happens, it's kind of interesting and various layers, right? Cause there's also a layer of awkwardness to it that is different than a lot of people. And I, what's hard about those moments is like, I got a moment, like, you know, when it happens, you're like, I got a moment. I just, can I somehow convey this in, in editing that what happened? And then that's always the pressure. So I think the, the key with like podcast clipping and stuff is like finding those moments. And they're not always like super dramatic, but sometimes they're simple. It's just like a joke or an inside joke or some flub you made or something. You can take advantage of those moments and sometimes get a lot of views from them. I love that challenge of trying to find those moments. Um, and it's hard, but yeah, I can tell you guys like, I like your podcast cause I just listened to it and I feel like you guys are passionate about what you're talking about. And if you're going after something, it's coming from the idea of you wanting to help somebody. And I think that matters a lot. A lot of times I'll see people going after people and I'm, I just feel like they're doing it for clicks. They're doing it. They're almost just as bad in ways because they're just taking advantage of this situation to make money off as well. You know, and there's a, there's a tension too, that I know you feel this, but it's again, like you say, on brand for you is this is what the content is. This is who I am. But there's also this tension of sometimes there's this stuff happening and nobody's saying anything. And everybody just expects everyone in the hobby to ignore it because eventually it's going to go away. And the sad reality is the reason they believe that is because it's true and it happens over and over. So there's a balance of when to 100% reach and when not to and how probably is the bigger question, right? Yeah. That's what I love about the podcast that gives me a platform to kind of talk about stuff that annoys me without making that a part of my daily content. Yeah. I really want American arbitrage cards to be cards. Yeah. I want people to go, like if I'm watching a carry video, he's talking about cards, not about necessarily, you know, anything going on in the influencer verse or, you know, I don't care about tops. Who's Michael Rubin has it apart. I don't care about that stuff because tops will be gone probably at some point and somebody else will be here just like always. And what's going to remain is fricking cards. Yeah. That's going to be your bargain box. I'm going to be at the bargain box no matter, no matter if leaf is selling me cards, no matter if, you know, somebody, you know, 7-Eleven takes over everything. I don't care. I'm going to be in the bargain boxes buying whatever cards they produce at a good price that I can flip. I don't care. Don't sleep on leaf. Leaf makes a pretty nice leaf stuff. Yeah, I like leaf stuff. I like I like good values and I can find a lot of good values in leaf. Filed card, even on it, on it. Onyx, give me give me any obscure thing that, you know, what's it? There's some new ones. Pulse. Yeah, I'll take them all. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And some of those do really well on the live selling, too, because they're the first auto to market or that they're a little more there. You know, it's an accessible price point. All right. Hundred percent. Kerry, I can't tell you how appreciative we are. You took so much time with us. I think you add value to our audience with your perspective. And I think there was a simplicity of like, hey, guys, don't overcomplicate this. Here's what you're looking for. Do a little bit of basic math and put the work in on it. If people want to follow your story, if they haven't already, what are some ways I know you got a lot of different outlets, couple podcasts, couple channels, pump it all up. I want to hear. All right. If you're interested in the card stuff of American Arbitrage cards, pretty much wherever content is made, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. I have a sports card podcast with my buddies, Tim, over the years, sports and rod picking and punching cards, no banger sports cards. And the whole premise of that is we're bargain boxers and rods doing whatever the heck Rod's doing, spending too much money. But we're bargain boxers and we talk about that culture. And I also have my main channel, I call it, which is more reseller and picker focused, like American Picker style. And I'm doing daily YouTube videos on that channel right now, like life of a reseller, what my thoughts are. So that's something that's a little different. And I have all the short form content for that. And I have the Trash to Cash podcast, which has been around for about four or five years now. Yeah. Where we just reseller culture and smack talk, basically. I love it. One question we always ask before we wrap up, somebody walks up to you tomorrow and it says, what piece of advice can you give me if I want to start doing this? Let's make it more general for you. Maybe it's cards, maybe it's reselling in general. What's one thing, a couple of things that you'd say, hey, these are the most important things as you get started. It gives you the best chance to be successful. Yeah. The best chance to be successful is to get out to a local card show or card shop. If you're interested in sports cards this week and start digging, start looking up stuff, just get started. There's so many people with that analysis paralysis stuff. And the sooner you get started, the sooner you can have success in whatever you decide to do. Every single good decision in my life pretty much has come from action. Just starting, not really even having a game plan, business plan necessarily at that moment, but just getting started. So if you guys want to start doing, you know, card flip and go out to a card show or a card shop and buy a couple of cards. And if you're unsure if you bought the right card or not, don't worry about it. Just buy it. You'll figure stuff out. That's the best teacher. And if you're interested in content like seriously film yourself today, post a video, start your page, hit me up on Instagram. Tell me you started. I'll follow you. I'll be your first comment, your first like. So get out there and do it. Thanks, Gary. Appreciate it so much. Thanks again, Kerry, for joining us. I hope that you guys got as much out of that as we do. We are really enjoying bringing guests on and being able to bring somebody like carry on who has a wealth of experience, not just in the card world, but in reselling in general. There were six. I was taking notes two or three times. There were six or seven things that he said that struck me that I want to try to implement into the way that I do things. So hopefully you guys found the same level of value in that as we did. Make sure if you don't follow American Arbitrage cards, make sure you go do that. It's really great content. And he does a really good job at what he does. And you're going to learn a lot from it. Is that fair? Yeah. And I'll be sure to list as well the other podcasts and channels because he's got all kinds of content that he's putting out. But if you want to learn and you want to learn from somebody that's humble and they're speaking from experience, there's not a lot of people that have that combination. He's one of them. Yeah. And I think that is a unique thing anymore for somebody to be humble and an expert. Yeah. 100% content space. So what's left? Just send everybody off. I think that that's it. Make sure that you check us out. See us in Nashville. Yeah. Come see us at Nashville Wednesdays, Thursdays, Sundays on whatnot. We have started rolling out prebids. So if you can't be at the show, go look and see what's in the shop. Put your number in. If you win it. Awesome. If you don't, you didn't overpay for anything. You didn't impulsively swipe. We appreciate all of you guys. Couldn't do what we do without you. I think that's it, Jason. All right. This has been the ball card show, the sports podcast for the sports collector by now. Peace.