Are Comps Dead? S6 Ep31

Foreign. Hello and welcome to the ball card show esports podcast. For the esports collector, I'm Jason otero. I'm Gary LeMaster. The Season 6 episode 31, Back from the National. I would use the word fresh, but Gary and I are still exhausted. Middle of the week after the show. It's been a lot. What a week, huh? It was wild. And for all the nationals that I've been to, this one was obviously the most different for lots of reasons. You saw last week, we had a very short episode there at the SCN studios, upstairs at the National. It was so crazy. The amount of stuff we had to do, the amount of people we had to meet, I don't think we got to bed or even back to the hotel room very often before midnight. I know we drove home on Saturday and we both were like, we're gonna be home after an eight hour drive earlier than we got to the hotel any given night. Yu-Gi-Oh it was. Yu-Gi-Oh it was, it was a lot. I, you know, I'm, I'm extroverted. But every time I do one of those assessments, I'm like more towards the middle than people expect just because I'm outgoing in like a social setting. I'll tell you what, I was done peopling. Oh, I was, I was done. I think I was done peopling by Friday morning. Yu-Gi-Oh I was. I was pasting on the smile. And all of you who came to say hi to us, please don't take that as that we didn't want to see you or hang out with you. Oh, not at all. Boy, hundreds of thousands of people every single day. It was something else. I is a lot. We're gonna jump into national recap. Let me give you guys a little preview of the episode today. So we're going to talk the national this year. Cover a few of the things that we heard, which at this point are kind of cliches. We're going to address some of those, debunk some of the myths that get thrown out into the social sphere every year at the national, talk through some recent pickups, show schedules and all that kind of stuff. And then a big conversation Gary and I want to have today. Is our comps dead. Whenever people go to a large show like the national and they see some cards that are over the last comp, everyone starts freaking out, using phrases like comps are dead. Comps don't mean anything. Well, that's, that's, that's not true. It's not true. And Gary and I are going to talk about maybe A different approach that could really help you if you're somebody that feels like, hey, the way I've looked up cards, no vendors are paying attention to it. I'm not getting over traction. You may not be looking at cards the same way that some other people are. So you may agree with us, you may disagree, but we're going to dive into that concept. Our comps dead. All right, Gary, you ready? And we're going to talk some baseball trades, too. We are. Trade deadline just passed. It was wild. Yu-Gi-Oh it was. There was a lot of movement. There was a lot of movement. Some people didn't move, and I'm grateful for it. I thought we were going to lose Ellie. I know it's coming, but I thought we were going to do it already, so. All right, national recap. So Gary and I had a tremendous opportunity there. We really enjoyed hanging out up at the SCM booth with everybody in the network, meeting so many people that maybe we've only connected with through emails and some work stuff. And then so many of you that listen to the podcast from all over the country, even internationally, I thought that was really awesome and we touched on this a little bit. But, Gary, why don't you kick it off and sum up what. What you noticed about the national this year compared to any other year. So many humans it was. I was coming into. I knew that Fanatics Fest more than doubled their attendance from the first year. Yu-Gi-Oh I didn't. And I don't think the national doubled attendance, but I bet it was 60% up. Wednesday, 1st day of the show was about as busy as most of the last two or three Fridays have been. Thursday was busier. Friday was worse. Saturday morning, you Goldin make move. You literally Goldin move the lines. People get obsessed about the lines, but there's a reason for it. They're literally three blocks long, five wide. Yu-Gi-Oh Like, it's wild when you come driving in there. It was so bad one day that the police weren't even letting people pull into the parking garage. They were making you drive past all the way around the block and come in the back way just to be able to park. Regardless whether you had a parking pass, whether you were media, whether you were a vendor, whether you were just vip, it didn't matter. Yu-Gi-Oh So all in all, it so peoplely. That was my biggest takeaway from the show as far as what was slightly different from other years. One big thing that I noticed was so they reconfigured upstairs. Massive improvement from the year before, in my opinion. I thought the layout made a lot more sense, the way a flow of traffic kind of lined up with the way people were walking into the building. I thought upstairs it was nice that there was a stage up there for some of the. The traditional, you know, sessions and speakers and. And content going on over there. I thought it was nice to see some activation style corporate booths up there. Obviously we're one of them, so I'm tooting our own horn here. But there was other really cool stuff too. Like Tik Tock Shop had some cool stuff going on. The ebay. Sellers Lounge was awesome. Like, we eat so much junk throughout the week because we're just on the fly and what's available. So it was nice to be like, hey, here's. Here's a healthy granola bar that's actually made with. Did you just call walking tacos junk? Because those are fighting words, Gary. I was words. You may like them. That does not make them not junk. I don't think things you enjoy. You have vegetables, you have powder cheese, number 74, dairy. You ate lettuce on purpose. I did. What a dream. I mean, what a dream. I'm traveling. I need all the help I can get. That'd be your worst nightmare at the show. Think through this. Hey, we gotta go to this meeting. We got five minutes to get the other side of the convention center and you have to make a pit stop. Not a good plan. Not a good plan. It worked out. I would say that upstairs though, that I noticed. Drastic improvements to the layout, the space. I'll still say this, like, still give it two more feet. Well, and here's why. It's like, you know, it's. It's a show where people sign up, get on a wait list, they do the lottery, they do all this stuff that they got to do, but it takes a really long time to get down on that main Fleer And honestly, best show in the country. It should. That kind of. It should. So by. By the. What's the. What's the law here? By the law of elimination. By the law of. What's the word I'm trying to use here? I have no idea. Common sense. It only makes sense. Well, you have a nice vocabulary. No, help me with the phrase. I haven't, but I don't. I have no idea what you're talking about. Okay, so law of averages. Law of averages. By the law of averages, a lot of younger vendors and newer people and content creators and all that, you had a lot more of the vendors that do content upstairs on a regular Basis, you had like, huge names like Ryan Car Collector 2, and Kyle King of the cards downstairs. But a lot of. A lot of established names, at least in the newer wave since COVID were up there. And I noticed they drew a large crowd. A lot of people started upstairs. I thought that was pretty unique. I. I think that that's something that from a planning standpoint, the. The folks making those decisions should at least consider. I think there's a really delicate balance that they're trying to strike, which is we want to be respectful of the people who have been here for 25, 30, 40 years. We want to make sure that those people always have the opportunity to be here because they help build this into what it is. Yu-Gi-Oh I think that's a really important thing to. To consider. But I also think that for people who are just coming into the space, the faces that they see on their phones and on their TV when they are looking for sports car content, outside of Jeff, outside of Ryan. I know Kyle was downstairs, but they even had Kyle with just like one table right beside the walking taco. Great spot, by the way. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh great spot. But they had trouble with traffic from it because hundreds of people waiting in line for him. There's a delicate balance there where you want to be respectful, but you also have to recognize that a lot of the people that are paying to come to this show are coming to see. Yu-Gi-Oh The faces that they see on their TVs and on their phones. And I think overall, they did a really good job of making that accessible. I didn't feel like that was they made it accessible, but I think that if they look at it closely, I think they'll see that upstairs. They can probably expand the aisles to make that a little easier. There's even. There's even, like, you could have one or two of the rows that are influencer rows that have tables Right. Where that traffic can kind of flow consistently. And the people that hate that stuff can avoid it all together if they want to. Sure. Like. But there were, like, there were snarls in traffic where people were lining up to meet whoever. Yu-Gi-Oh At the SCN table. Like, we. We were there and it was cool to meet people, But Alex had had 30 people waiting to talk to him all the time. Mike had 30 people. Dalen always had a crowd. Gordy had the vintage guys. So there were these snarls that. That hurt traffic flow. And like I said, there's that balance between we got to get as many people in as we can. We've got to try to clear the wait list, which is backlogged forever of dealers. We want to be respectful of the folks that have been here for a long time. But the people downstairs, the influencers in the larger corporate areas, did a really good job of planning their spaces. So they bought huge spaces, 60 by 60 spaces. And they did a really good job of planning within those spaces how to control traffic flow. I'll tell you. I'll tell you an area that I've watched grow every national for the last three years to the point where the consistent traffic is much higher than I'd expect. And I think it's a good thing for the sports card space. But that Bo Jackson Battle Arena. Oh, gosh, Yu-Gi-Oh You have people there hanging out, playing the game all week. They had a tournament with cash prizes. They had. Yu-Gi-Oh there were a hundred people in there playing. And we've talked about this on the show, too. Like, I think that's something where the non sport tcg, especially tcg, like, they have these events on a regular basis at these shops now where people rent out space or they've expanded their footprint and it really does foster relationships. Well, I think that was a great example of it, where you could be going and doing everything else. Some of these people were parked and just enjoyed playing the game. All. Yes, I thought that was really neat. All right, I. I want to lean in on some of these cliches that we, that we hear around national time. And I think the first time everyone goes, they're like, Yu-Gi-Oh man, that's true. It's definitely what's going on. Somebody's got to do something about it. Then you go to another one, then you go to another one, then you go to another one and you realize that there are some things that are just going to exist that are always going to be tough to manage. And that's what happens when you have the biggest show on earth for sports cards. I think that's the case. So let's talk through some of these cliches. Lines. Everybody, you know, everybody, negative. Day one, day two, wanted to complain about the lines. What do you have to tell them, Gary? It's the biggest card show in the world and. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh it is, isn't it? It's pretty straightforward. If you don't want to wait in the line, you don't have to. There's a few ways around it. You can buy early entry, you can buy VIP or wild idea. Just come at about 11 or 12 and there one-of-one be much of a line at all. Yu-Gi-Oh but people will be lined up at 6:30 in the morning to get in at 9 or 10 when, when hundreds of thousands of people are in a, in a, in a building. Yep. It's going to be crowded. And there's not going to be a way around it. Nope. And whether you're way, whether you want to get an autograph, there's going to be lines. When you want food, there's going to be lines. Think about going to any baseball, football, basketball game, concert, concert, amusement park. Here's, here's what you can feel better about this year in Chicago. At least it wasn't Lollapalooza because I saw some of those aerial photographs. That was crazy. Yu-Gi-Oh It was a big pit of mud. Yu-Gi-Oh And it was the same, it was the same time as the national. It was a horde of humanity just covered in mud. But Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, at the end of the day, that's just how it's gonna be. Yu-Gi-Oh Know what you're going into? I, I sometimes I see people complain about things and I'm like, have, has all common sense left, like the conversation. Like, what are we talking about? There's gonna be a half a million people in this space this week. What, what did you think it was gonna be? Yu-Gi-Oh Now I will say there was some funny content. I can't remember exactly who posted, but somebody's like, what it's like walking behind a person. Like every two to three steps they would stop or swing their case around or tie their shoe, abruptly stop. And your favorite game is red light, green light the whole time. Well, and, and your favorite game is messing with me. You, I'm trying to follow you. And you'll like cut a little traffic and just give and you'll go quick and make room for somebody to come in between us. And then those people are like the slowest humans on earth. Yu-Gi-Oh I'm trying to keep up with you. I can't get around. Thank God I'm tall enough to see for everybody. I'm forcing you to set picks. It's the worst through the crowd. If it makes you feel better, do that to my wife too. If we're going through the store and they have like columns, I'll do this until she realizes. Oh, he's just making. Jeremy did it to you one time this week and it made me very happy. Oh, well, I'm glad you feel better. I was just trying to keep up with his brisk five mile an hour walking pace. That was a lot of fun. All right, let's talk the next cliche. We're going to get into this a little bit more. When we talk, comps are dead, but prices and everything is overpriced. Here's take. No, it's not. Everything's not. Some things are, some things aren't, Everything's not. Some tables, every single card on the table is wildly overpriced compared to the market. But I'm going to let you in on a secret, and this is something that none of you guys want to hear. The ones that are complaining, Other people. Yu-Gi-Oh the, the complaining. I wouldn't say none of you, some of you would agree. The, the dealer on the other side of that table. Yu-Gi-Oh Owes you this. They one-of-one you nothing and you one-of-one them nothing. You don't have to buy anything from them. They don't have to sell anything to you. I promise you this, though, a hundred percent certainty that the dealer who has a hundred dollar card priced at $150 is not going to be swayed by you shoving a phone in their face. Yu-Gi-Oh I promise you. I promise. I promise. Can you have a conversation with them and, and make an offer and see if they're open to offers and, and see if you can land somewhere? Yep. And if you try to do that, worst case scenario, you're probably going to walk away with at least a contact that's friendly. But that dealer isn't interested in having that conversation. They already know. They know what they did, they know and they don't care. And in a show like the national, you know why they do that? This is a good point. Because they're probably going to sell most of it if somebody's been coming there a long time and they actually are doing it as a business and not just there are some people there. And, and I love these booths too because I like walking around and seeing the stuff. But there are some there that have been there a long time. They have some unique pieces and random memorabilia and stuff and they've put prices on it where they're perfectly happy boxing it up and bringing it back next year until somebody wants to grab that piece. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think the younger wave of people believing that every show is a flip game. Right. Every show is for me to source that. We'll talk more in a second about comps that everyone is beholden to whatever, you know, information you point at them. The reality is this, the people that have been sitting up there for 20 years that have stuff stickered a little over comp probably have learned people pay it, especially on the interesting and unique stuff people pay it and if you, and if you're not interested in it and it's really unique, chances are somebody else in that room is. We were talking about that a little bit on the last week's pod, but what was the show, what was the card we saw Jason in the NBA slab? The hot dog. Ted Williams. Oh, yes, Frank's. It's. It's 54. Oh my gosh. Ted Williams card. Unbelievably rare. Yu-Gi-Oh In an MBA slab. A Mike Baker slab. And there was going to be a deal going down. Multiple six figures, which is more than a PSA version of that card has sold for. You know why? Because it's rare. Wilson Franks. Wilson. Wilson Franks. Yu-Gi-Oh 1954 Wilson Franks. It was an NBA 2. Yep. It was sharp. It was unbelievable too. It was an unbelievable two. But I mean you're talking about a 300, 000 card and the dealer's firm and he's gonna sell it if he didn't already. Like, some things your phone and what it tells you don't mean squat. Yu-Gi-Oh they just don't mean squat. You want the card? I have the card. This is the price. Oh, nobody else has the card. Guess what? I don't care about that. Yu-Gi-Oh I don't care about what your phone says. Yu-Gi-Oh So anyhow, we'll get into that later. But now the differences. Now important caveat here. If someone hands you a hunt, the, the average person would hand you 100 cars and say, well, this is rare. The reality is there's not that many car. Like there's a lot of cards out there. But in a, in a room with 100 tables, 100 tables, there's not that many cards that meet that category. There's a lot of vendors that believe their inventory meets that category. But those cards are probably the ones that get passed on. The ones where people were really frustrated. It's the ones where the vendors are looking at the goat market. They see the trend. They've priced the Jordan appropriately where the next within the next five sales that's probably gonna hit. And somebody thinks they're going to come in and scoop up a high grade Jordan insert under the last comp and then they're mad that somebody's 20 over it. No chance that person that's bringing us to the nationals interested in getting a bargain over so many pieces of content. You just can't buy at the National. You can't buy at the National. I interacted with a couple of them because it was like, what are you talking about? Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I know. People who spent millions of dollars at the national this year, but they bought just fine. It's almost like. And volume buyers. Not just. Not just high end rare stuff like people bought volume and we're happy people that specialize in 50 to 300 slabs that everyone's saying are impossible to get decent. I. It was probably the approach. It was probably. And honestly, relationships, I think that's a big piece of it. I don't want to spill too much of our candy there, but. Nope. The other thing that people kept talking about, which has become a more and more heated thing, which I think I'm starting to become an older man on this one, is the whole trade night. It's unbearable VIP lounge space. What's actually going on there are people even trading. Should it be regulated? What did. There's a lot of conversations around that. Now there are a couple events in the week in the evenings or sponsored trade nights. Right. So there's. I know that SCN had one night where they were a part of a sponsorship of. Of one of the trade nights. Several different corporations can. Corporate sponsors can do that as well. But by and large, I remember even a few years back back in Cleveland at the ix, you could. Now there was a lot of trading going on, but just about any part of the day you could go to that VIP lounge and catch your breath. It was a little quieter, people were a little more chill. It's like the 90s New York Stock Exchange Fleer right now when you go in there. I know some of the guys that have been around the national for a while have kind of been a little bit. I don't know if annoyed's the right word, but it just kind of like, hey, this is. This is not what it's intended to be. And I think for the first year ever, I'm starting to agree a little bit with that. It's hard because I love that I was able to trade cards because, you know, a few years back that was part of me affording the national was knowing I had cards up there and if a vendor wouldn't buy, maybe somebody would trade for me or I could roll into a better deal or somebody would be interested in buying something for me. I don't know. But now the volume and the traffic and it's people my age, not kids. Like everybody pictures kids at night. It's always been that way, international, like the. The. So I think there's two different things you're talking about there. Trade night and VIP lounge. Even though they take place in the same area. Sure. Different Two different things. Right. The VIP lounge area has always been a spot where lots of business gets done. Always from Atlantic City to Cleveland to Chicago, when the national was in anaheim. So last 10 years, specifically, it's always been a thing. Right. Like, there's always been a lot of business getting done in the VIP lounge. More and more people have bought VIP because they've made more and more available. They've had bigger rooms, and it's a great revenue generator for. For the national, but that's always been a thing. And people who don't have VIP go hang out in the hallway and sit their cards on the Fleer and. And they do stuff. Trade nights. There are two things that have been happening with trade nights over the last two or three years that have made them, in my opinion, get to the point where they're just about unbearable. First off, people that love those trade nights, but, Yu-Gi-Oh okay, well, they are overselling the bracelets. And there were two nights this year where half the people with bracelets Goldin even get in. They Goldin get in the other thing. And this year was the first year I really noticed it. The amount of corporate spaces in the tray in the VIP lounge had tripled. Yu-Gi-Oh tripled. Like, I don't think that that's a bad idea, because they know that that room's full all day. Like, I don't think it's a bad idea. But for trade Night, then you have to go, okay, we're gonna have. The only way to make it functional, in my opinion then, is you're gonna have to say trade nights are three hours. And you get bracelets by the hour. And you get your hour. The next group gets their hour. The next group gets their hour. And you're gonna have to have people pushing people out the door, like, make an announcement. This hour is coming up on its end. Everybody out. Let the next group of people in. Because what's not fair and what's not functional is a system where people go buy a bracelet, have to stand in line, and lose part of their day at the national itself to get the bracelet, and then go get in line, lose another hour to hour and a half of the day on the show Fleer just to make sure you're in line to get into trade night and then still not be able to get into the trade. Yu-Gi-Oh like, that's not. That's not functional. And when 3, 4, 500 square feet of that space that didn't used to be covered by corporate booths is now covered by corporate booths, that's a few Hundred people that can't get into the space anymore and you just end up with a cluster. And I think there are ways around it. I'm, I'm mind blown that somebody hasn't come along and just said, I'm renting out a ballroom a mile up the road. Come on down. Like that. That surprises me. But I also think a lot of people stay connected. They don't want to leave the space. And it's very convenient. It's very easy to have a spot to, to go and hang out. And there's, they do cool stuff with it. Like, what was the night? The first night they had a bunch of athletes wall. It was Walmart's trade night. Right. They sponsored that had a bunch of very relevant current athletes there. We saw them all coming in in their limos. We were like, oh, that's why, that's why they didn't let us go upstairs. Even though there was an hour left in the day. We were like, we're supposed to be a lot up there. Nope, not today. Yu-Gi-Oh I, I think I'm a little bit less critical overall than you are of, of the space. I just think they've got to figure out the, the traffic and the flow of it. It sounds like there was an enforcement of the hotel lobby vi trades, trade nights or trading going on, which honestly, again, if I stayed there and I want to sit in the lobby and trade some cards, I should be able to. Well, okay, not a bad argument. Also, if I stayed in that hotel and I paid for a room and I walk in and it is a zoo of 5, 000 and I'm coming in after a long day as a vendor and I spent thousands of dollars for my table and thousands for this room because it's connected to the convention center. I don't want to hear all that. That probably contributed to. Oh, I think it did to the overflow of trade because a lot of people are used to just going back to the hotel lobbies and hanging. We stayed at a hotel about a mile away and there's plenty of action going on in that hotel. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I think we're, we're a couple two or three miles. But it was close. But I, I, when it comes to the ballroom, I have no idea what it costs to rent out of space. I don't know. No clue. Yu-Gi-Oh it would be a lot. It would be a lot and it's a risk. But there's so many events happening in the evening all over the city, all over the area. One of the first nights we got to go to a party that. That the network put on with mojo Break, got to meet Yu-Gi-Oh man Curtis Granderson, hang out with other people doing content. And then the more I look around, the more I realize, like, if there's a nice restaurant, bar with any kind of large space, it is rented out. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh it is. Like, just radiates out of that event center. You know, anything within a few miles is gobbled up. Yep. First time I heard of it. I know you've been aware of it for a while, but the international and soccer show sat next to some people around the blackjack table at the casino that were from that show. And they were telling me. And it sounds like it's gained some traction at some point, too. It's a heavy tcg, too. Tcg. Heavy tcg, Yu-Gi-Oh Which the. The national. I will say this. If you are a person who gets really angry about TCG taking over your local card shows, come to the national. I would say less than 10%. They really emphasize the sports stuff. Yu-Gi-Oh And it was. If there was tcg, it was kind of tucked in places or it was a few cards in a showcase. It wasn't overwhelming. Now there were people expecting there to be a lot more of that. We were next to sports boy Jesse Hobby nonsense. And when we were up at the booth and a lot of people came up asking him where there was more of that kind of stuff, sounds like there wasn't a ton of it out there. But again, sports collectors. Yu-Gi-Oh National Sports Collectors Convention. Yu-Gi-Oh So. So that was. That was the emphasis on that. Overall, though, I. I think these are great problems lines, people wanting a better deal, but looking over means there was a lot of cards people wanted, if they felt like they wanted it, but they could. Like there was the right stuff there. The demand for the VIP lounge, the trade night, those spaces. I think it's great. I honestly went back and forth. It's probably a good move that they're. Hey, any of these hotels connected the convention center. We're not doing this volume and loitering and, you know, I know I sound like a party pooper there, but if I was staying at that hotel, I don't know if I'd want to see that every night coming in too. But overall, it's great. Can't wait to go back next year back in Chicago, and then we go to Detroit and then back to Chicago again for 2029. Yu-Gi-Oh And. And by that point, Gary is going to have two artificial hips and two brand new knees. So we'll be we'll be good to go there. Rolling me around. Let's jump in a little bit to baseball News. You wanted to talk through a little bit of the trade action that had been going on. Yu-Gi-Oh I made notes on a few trades that I thought this wasn't reasonably relevant from a hobby standpoint. First one, Marcelo Mayer gets traded to the San Francisco Giants for Eric Miller. It was a wild trade. Scott Breslow, it is Boston's gm. If you didn't know their hot streak, he's decided, okay, we're gonna go all in here. Mayer has not panned out the way people thought that he necessarily would, but there's still a ton of upside there. He's only 23 and you get back a pitcher with an almost six ERA who has a really high walk rate and is a reliever. Mayer is on the IL right now, but a change of scenery might just be what it takes to unlock him. The one that really stood out to me from a hobby standpoint that you've still got some time to make some moves. On another trade where the San Francisco Giants got some really good value back. They traded Helio Ramos, who is a league average outfielder, to the New York Yankees and in return they got Henry Lalanne and Kaden Kent. Kaden Kent is not anybody that I'm losing sleep over. He's Jeff. Jeff Kent's son. Solid player. Will probably eventually get to the bigs and be a fourth or fifth infielder, platoon bat, no worries. Henry Lalanne has true frontline upside. He seems to be past his shoulder issues, sitting in the high 90s. He's 6 foot 7, built like a tank, and he's gotten traded to a team that's one of the hardest parks to hit in. I see what you did there. Candlestick is one of the hardest parks to hit in in the bigs. So lalanne is a guy that you can still pick up pretty cheap. Another one, Jefferson Rojas, gets traded from the Cubs to the Mets. He's a top 100 prospect. Fringe top 100 prospect, but he was the Cubs number one shortstop. Good defender. I really like the bat. There's a lot of pop there. I know he's gone to the Mets and so that you just don't know. But if he gets there and is good, it's a great fan base. Everybody's talked about Adley to Boston. I don't think Adley's a great hobby play. I think it's a really good play for the Red Sox. Yu-Gi-Oh the Red Sox did great on that didn't they? Well, no, no, the B. Baltimore cleaned that clock. Oh, really? What did they get long term? They got Anthony Anson, Kyson Weatherspoon and Andy Azakar were the main pieces there. Anson and Witherspoon are both top 100 pitchers. Anson has been dealing and I kind of like India as a car. He's an outfielder, just a toolsy outfielder in the really low levels right now. But he's only 18 and there's a lot of tools there. But Anson's the real deal. Adley's gonna help Boston this year and they have him under. That's kind of. Yu-Gi-Oh they wanted. They wanted him this year. Yu-Gi-Oh they're all in, but they paid a heavy price. The. The trade. That's a trade that I made. The note that this is one of those deals that long term could be looked at. Like when the Nationals traded Juan Soto to the Padres and just Velocity the Padres because the Nationals got back James Wood and C.J. abrams in that deal. James Wood is going to be one of the brightest stars in baseball for a decade and C.J. abrams is going to be a perennial all star as well. Soto's a great player, but you got way more value back in that deal. But the trade, that. That stood out to me from a hobby standpoint more than any other. And you're not going to have much time to make this move. But Tarek school ball going to the Dodgers, he's not cheap, but he is not expensive. When you compare him to Skiings or Mizarowski. Like, you can buy Tarek school ball rookie autos cheaper than you can buy Jacob Misarowski rookie autos. And that is wild to me. Let's talk about that starting rotation down there. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And. And everybody was mad that the Dodgers got him. But listen, the Dodgers paid decently for him. Zaire Hope's a heck of a player. River Ryan's 800 years old and he's still a prospect because he can't stay healthy. But boy, if he ever does get healthy, there's not a lot of miles on that arm and he's got filthy stuff. Braden Smith is whatever, but Dodgers are the only team that had a real shot at trying to re sign school. Everybody else was a rental. And right. The Tigers wanted like Milwaukee. Everybody's like, Milwaukee should get him. The Milwaukee's not giving up. Jesus, mate for three months of Tarek school ball because he's never resigning there. Like it's not happening. But that rotation now is Skuball Yamamoto Blake Snell, Tyler Glass now coming back healthy at the end of the season. And oh Yu-Gi-Oh you got Shohei Otani pitching lights out this year. Like how do you beat that rotation? Have we seen that? Something like that. The closest thing I could think of is like mid-90s Braves. Yu-Gi-Oh this is better. This is a better rotation. That's tough than that. That is tough. I mean the, that rotation was Maddox and Glavin and Smoltz. Those were the main guys, all three hall of Famers. No question about it. But when it comes to just pure stuff, school balls, better stuff wise than Glavin. He's better stuff wise than Smoltz. I still think Maddox is the best pitcher I ever watched with my two eyes. But then Yamamoto, look at what he did in the postseason last year and he's been really good this year. I mean that rotation is in a seven game series. I don't know how you beat school ball twice or Yamamoto twice. I don't, I don't know how you do it. Yu-Gi-Oh And if school ball wins a series and then resigns with the dodgers on a 10 year, 400 million dollar deal with 300 million of it deferred, his stuff's going to go through the roof. Yu-Gi-Oh just through the big contract would really. Yu-Gi-Oh And it's, and it's still relatively cheap. You can still get nice rookie stuff of his. Relatively cheap. Yep. All right, let's take a look at some recent pickups. I know we have some stuff over the last couple weeks that we Beckett up. And then I grabbed some really cool stuff up at Keith's today that I one-of-one I one-of-one show you guys. I'll go first and then we'll go every other here. How about 2006 tops all star rally patch auto to 25 of Dwyane Wade. Pretty neat piece there. Not one. I see a ton. And the of 25s. I don't think we could find a sale on it, right? Nope. There hasn't been an of 25 sale of a patch auto of his since 2023. From that year. From that year? Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh from that year. Pretty cool all star jersey on that. What you got? This one doesn't suck. Derrick Rose Topps Chrome X fractor. Rookie. Those are numbered I believe to 288. They sell about once every never really cool card. All right. Speaking of weirdness, Clear path to greatness. Upper Deck, acetate Autograph. Rookie card. Justin Verlander. You can kind of see through here the silhouette of him. Absolutely gross. I love the unique stuff like this Another guy who I think is undervalued. Like oh for sure. Crazy value. Well, let's talk about unique things that sell about once every and ever again. How about 2000 ovation? This is the standing ovation. Allen iverson numbered to 50. Yu-Gi-Oh I think three or four sales ever. The last sale was two and a half years ago. Yu-Gi-Oh really cool card. I've got a 2018 tops tech Shohei rookie. Now for those of you that are involved in our lives, you understand that we talk about tech and how it's a cool set builder product because there are a bajillion different patterns. Especially back in the day. Be like pattern 34. Pattern 97. Right. There's so many of them but this is one of the shohes. There's a lot of different versions of this card. SGC95. What's sad to me is, and Gary said it, and I don't disagree with him is when it comes to moving cards outside of vintage or for Zebra desirable stuff, SGC has made it tough. That 9.5, I'm not sure how much that means right now. What's unfortunate is this is a product where the, the grades can be pretty tough. You've got like full foil designs all the way to the edges, acetate cards. So a lot of surface issues are very common just from going through the pack and penny sleeving them. Right. But it was a little disheartening to look through and I just want to believe that 9.5 still means something to me. It means it's a nice car. Hard. But to the value, I'm not sure that it's going to mean a whole lot next to a PSA 10 or a PSA 9. Yu-Gi-Oh that's the thing. I don't even think it's an issue of being a 95. It could be an SGC 12. It's the SGC part that hurts. I don't know, 12 might be a little bit unique out there. It might be what you got. How about Dragon Scale? A Mecca Abuka Rookie Field level numbered to 51 sale ever. Pretty cool card. Yep. That's all. I got two more. I got two more. This is one that is unbelievably condition sensitive, but this one is Zebra nice. How about the Rain Men? Michael Jordan? These are fun because chewed up ones, you'll. The nice thing about them is is they're very obvious when they're chewed up. So when you're checking pricing you're like well one did 160. You click on the picture, you're like, oh, that's why you don't even have to zoom in. You're just like, Yu-Gi-Oh And then this might be my favorite thing we've bought recently as Ohio State fans. How about the JSN National Treasures? True rpa. And oh, by the way, it's the black box. One of one way to sweat that when it's a video. That was good. You like that? Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know. I'm a little impatient today, but I appreciate the effort, and I think that everyone out here besides me really enjoyed it. Enjoyed that. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh No, my grumpiness is not your problem. It is your problem often, but this is not one of those times. Oh, shoot. All right. That was some pretty sweet stuff. You want to jump right into this? This value conversation. Are comps dead? All right, so essentially, a piece of content that I kept seeing by a bunch of different creators over and over and VIN and people that are walking the Fleer is essentially, comps are dead. They don't mean anything. And in most cases, people were just complaining that they believed cards were overpriced. Right. But I want to talk about something that I think is happening across the board, and I think it's a very healthy thing. I think it's very healthy that people are acknowledging that what once worked for landing on a price point for a transaction is not necessarily working the same way anymore. I think it is a good thing. So our comps dead, Gary, or is it just the way that people have been comping, quote unquote, that needs revamped? I think that the idea that that comps are a bible is dying. Thank God. I also think, to put it a lot more bluntly than you ever would, more and more dealers, more and more vendors are realizing that they can say no to these guys that shove phones in their face all day. Yu-Gi-Oh They can just go, no. Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know. I'm good. And they're starting to realize that these guys are making more money on their cards than they are, and they're tired of it. Yu-Gi-Oh I think that the people who I saw making that content, the people I saw complaining about. About it loudly in person this last week in Chicago were all people who I've seen do videos or seen in person just walk up to a table and look at a card, and the first thing they do. Yu-Gi-Oh Is take their phone out and go, hey, last one did this. Can you do this? No. Yep. No, I can't. Yu-Gi-Oh Would you like to have a conversation? We can have a conversation. Yu-Gi-Oh You would be shocked how many people I know this week who saw cards priced at 150 of comps who still ended up buying the card at 90 to 95% of comps because they just had a conversation. Yu-Gi-Oh I tell people when I'm walking a show and I'm buying, or even if I'm looking at something somebody's trying to sell me something in a Facebook group or wherever, hey, I see that you have this card priced here. I like it. Are you open to offers? Yu-Gi-Oh that's the first thing I ask. Yu-Gi-Oh And, and even then, if they say, Yu-Gi-Oh sure, I still don't talk about comps. I still don't say, well, the last two or three did this. So I'm thinking this. I promise you that dealer has had this conversation 15 times in the first 30 minutes. There is show. They don't care what your thought process is. They don't care. What's your offer? I have a hard price at 120 bucks. What's your offer? Right, right. Like, and if they say they're open to offers, I'll make an offer. And if they go, oh, I, I Goldin do that. How'd you get to that number? At that point, I'll go, well, here's what I was thinking and why I. I get it. If you can't, it's not a big deal. My goal in every one of those conversations is to do one of two things, whether we're on our side of the table or whether we're walking a show. One, my goal is to either buy the card or cards. And two, if I'm not able to do that, I still want people to walk away from us or us walk away having made a friend and feeling good about the conversation. Those are my two goals. That's it. Yu-Gi-Oh I think I'm going to get a little more on the tactical approach with this. I think that when people are making that statement, comps are dead. Those are people who have by and large been able to operate their business. They're buying, they're collecting, acquiring whatever you want to call it, under this premise that the last one is the final word or the last one carries the most weight. And what we've had is a wave of cards popping off that are not the brand new rookie class. That still happens. That's still a thing. But we saw this attention to the goat market this year, and now we have a new thing in place. This is something that's existed for a long time. It's called projections. It's Called actual comparables. This Jordan insert hasn't sold N88 N4 four years. But all of these other things are happening with Jordan inserts. And an eight is a high grade on that set. What information can we pull from a lot of different places to find some type of landing point here? And I think people that have never learned to do that are walking up to vendor tables and they're going, last one did. And it's three years ago right on a Jordan or whatever. And if did, I'll tell you what it did probably about 3, 30 to 40% of what it's doing now. Whatever it is, just about the. The race to the last comp is what's dying. And I can't. I don't think that could. That there could be a healthier thing for the hobby than for people to be forced to look at. To draw a wider net to look at a card. So, like, weird card that Gary and I look at this. Dwayne Wade to 25 patch auto. Gary said from this year, there's not a lot of patch auto to 25 and none in the last several years that have sold. So what are we going to going to widen the net? 060507 now not go clear back to rookie, but we're going to look at all the patch auto Are they to 25? Do they have patches? Do they have autos? Is it on card? Look at all of those factors that then bring in a value for right now. But if you've been chasing the last comp as leverage, that is over, baby. It's done. And it's done. It's. And listen, this is really important too. We're not saying that you can't or shouldn't try to buy with margin. Right. If this is what we do as a living, people are going to be pulling their hair out. Yu-Gi-Oh You have to like, that's just the way it is. What we're saying is the way to do that is changing drastically. And here's the irony. You and I talked about it yesterday. If people can begin to see a range on a cardigan, which you know who did this really well. The freaking Beckett catalog. Well, Yu-Gi-Oh because it was like, here's the high, here's the low, here's the range. Yu-Gi-Oh The high is like best condition. All that good stuff. Here's the range. There's another product that people in the vintage world swear by. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh And it's an app that it does exactly that. It only really works well in the vintage World, but it shows you the range. And you can look at what PSA vs SGC right beside each other. You can look at raw in different raw grades. Like there's. People do that. Now, there are some caveats here. Well, for example, though, like this 64 Hank that we Beckett up. Right. And an SGC4 I could pull up on a grid on their app, Bvg4 Psa4 Sgc4. Or I can slide the Psa to a3 or a3,5 next to an SGC for whatever calculation I have in my head for these. And I can see the range between all three of those companies and where they're, where they're averaging out. It just draws a wider net. Because you know what? Gary and I haven't done a bajillion of vintage sales. Yu-Gi-Oh we love vintage. We buy and sell vintage. But sometimes we need a wider look at that. And if you just chase the last comp on vintage, I promise you that's not a game you want to play. No, it's. It's a very different. It's a very, very difficult game to play. It's a very difficult game in general. Now, what I will say is on the Hyper liquid stuff, Hyper, Hyper liquid, Downtown silver rookie stuff that's selling 20, 34, 40 times a day. Well, Yu-Gi-Oh the last three, four, five probably matter more than they would otherwise. But the counter to that is you could also argue I've got 20 comps to look at all in the last week. Yes. So it's somewhere in this range. Yes. And, and I think that, that again, more and more dealers are getting comfortable with that. And here's who it hurts. And again, bluntly, it hurts people that want to be lazy and still make money. People got so used to, hey, the last one did this. I'll give you 80 of that. And the assumption was that the person on the other side of the table was going to be so impressed by the stack of cash that you throw in front of them that there's no way they're going to say no to that. So they just go. And as a market grows and more and more people come into it and more cash flows into it, your large backpack of cash means less to the dealer on the other side of the table than it once did. Right, so that's a good point because that, that, that was the scene. Who's coming in to cash everybody out at the smaller regional shows. And it's still a thing somewhat. But you're right, if the volume is there and the Attention is there, and the number of collectors sl. New people to the hobby are there. The. There's going to be a few takes of that. And you and I learned that lesson, and it was terrifying to us. I remember there was at one point at Repacker we were doing a ton of business with on a regular basis. Yep. And there was a situation where we just came to an understanding where it probably wasn't best for us to continue doing things the way we were. And it ended just like that, peacefully. And then it was like, okay, we've been depending on this for a big nut of the. Of what's coming in every show. Yep. And when it didn't happen, what happened to our numbers? They got better. Why? Because we weren't selling all of our best stuff in the first 30 minutes of the show at 88 anymore. And we still sold all our best stuff every show, but it was 92 to 95% most of the time. And it gave the opportunity for those cards to get in the hands of who? Collectors, the end user, whether it's a collector or flipper, whatever. It gives us the opportunity for it to go into the hands of somebody that's going to hang onto it for a minute and not just sheet it and throw it. Now, to some people, that doesn't matter because the volume of sales and all that. And again, we're not saying that we don't sell to Repackers. No. Anybody that's saying that that doesn't happen, I would be surprised. Or they don't know that the person they've been selling to is doing that. But what I am saying is it gives you an opportunity to sell to somebody that you may build a relationship that comes back on a regular basis and checks out what you have and they at the table. And if you're in the show scene pretty consistently just about every week, that's a pretty smart business strategy to make sure that they get a crack at the good stuff, you know? Yu-Gi-Oh And. And the. And the people who we deal with from a repacking standpoint are almost exclusively at this point, people who we've developed relationships with, who they know how we run our business. And more importantly, they know that we know how they run their business. And I know that you know that we know that they know. Well, nobody's trying to get over on. On anybody. Right. Like, right. The days of. Of the average dealer at a show not understanding that if I sell to you at 85, you're selling it at 130 in your repack. How's that work? Well, I think that's a pretty extreme example. I don't think there's. Most people sourcing for repacks are not getting 130. But the end user, the, the end repacker, like, that's where that's fallen in there at. Which is fine. Top of the triangle. Yes. Yep. Like Michael Scott with the calling cards. It's not the pyramid sch. Oh, shoot. Yep. Yep. But I, I, I want to go back to this point of this conversation that comps are dead. It's the same people that say it's a race to the bottom. No, it's not. Then why are Jordans back up? Why, why are. Why are. Why are certain quarterbacks going into this year popping off that we're heading down at the end of the year? You know why? And I think what happens is some vendors understand and some sellers understand to hold their number or they believe there's upside a month later and not being in a hurry to get out of it. And that card gets a healthy comp a month later. Well. And in the really rare stuff that tends to be the case. Yu-Gi-Oh And, and it's an even bigger conversation. Like, like you said, the comps are dead. It's the, the race to the bottom. It's. I was talking to somebody earlier today, a good friend, and it was. We were talking about the space and how exhausting it is to just be inundated with nothing but negativity about everything all the time. Yu-Gi-Oh This person's a bad person because they did something differently than I would have. Or like, even Kyle, like, king of cards. One of the nicest dudes you're gonna meet in this space when a camera's off, like, legitimately one of the nicest people. Kyle is one of the nicest people at the national this year. He had a video and people were crapping all over him for it, where he bought a card from some people six months ago, sold it for way more than he ever thought he would. It was an Otani one of one. And he ended up telling these people, I'm going to give you 20 grand in cash to make up that difference because I made so much more money than I thought I would. I'm also tell. Give me all your receipts for this trip. I'm paying you for it. And also, here's a base. All Kings Otani. Yu-Gi-Oh And people are crapping like, you just did that for views. Can we just not enjoy a moment where somebody did something really nice. I know, I know. And they wanted to Share it with you too. Like, Yu-Gi-Oh Why do we always have to assign the worst possible intent and the most negative way to view something that we can? It's wild. I know it's for clicks, but my God, how many, how miserable must it be to live your life looking for the worst intent in everybody all the time? Yu-Gi-Oh And here's what I know, that the people that are like that, it doesn't end with sports card content. No. It's their life. It's how the co workers are treated, the relationships around them, their family, and that misery pours over and that anger's got to go somewhere. So why not a random sports card nerd like me? I mean that's, that's a lot, that's a lot to get to that point. But good on you. But Yu-Gi-Oh no, I, I, I think the people that are committed to the negativity, this is the week where they really get to shine. It's like where in the last month more people have enjoyed this hobby than probably ever in, in, in the U.S. in one 30 day period. In one 30 day period. And so that's the problem. Problem. Right. And anybody enjoying it, or heaven forbid, people who made a decision years ago that hey, this is cool, I want to make money on it, that have built a business, enjoy it as well. They must be the worst. Yu-Gi-Oh it's wild. It's absolutely nuts. The one take that you have when we talk about this is we're wrapping this up. I, I really love what you said too. You said the last three sales might be dead when a card hasn't sold in a while. So some people are just trained. Comp offer, comp offer, comp offer. But if a card is on trend, heading up and it hasn't sold in a while, it may not be anywhere near those numbers. Those numbers may be arbitrary. I guess they're a baseline that at one point there was this established value. But there's also something to the reality of market forces. Like if a card hasn't sold in them, let's even go shorter. Card hasn't sold in a month. Okay. And, and it looks like it sells about once a month. Yep. And the last two or three sales have all been a little higher than the last. Maybe one little pullback. And one of the things that a lot of people don't take the time to do when they're buying a card or when they're selling a card is to look and even see what's publicly available. Like that's, that's a trap that I know that we've fallen into before for we're like, man, this card hasn't sold for a while. The last comp was 500 bucks and before that it was 600 bucks. And it's the right player and we buy it and then we go look and there's three of them available at 149 on eBay. Yu-Gi-Oh Well, the inverse of that is true too. Well, we have a card right now in our showcase that we are slightly under the last raw sale of. We're a little over the last couple lower grade PSAs, but the cheapest one listed anywhere is 1900 bucks and we have ours at 13. What's available matters. Yu-Gi-Oh In that situation, like it matters. Well. And usually where it hurts people is on the other end of that, right? Sure. When they buy the card, it hasn't sold in a while. And then there's 10 cards available at half the price and it hasn't moved. Oh, no. Now I will say this. Sometimes there are, there are people that never mess with ebay once that have been looking for that card and they look at shows for it. You can still sell those, but there's a lot of times, especially if you're spending a little more on a card, that you can really lose out on that. So I'm glad you brought that up. I always roll my eyes when I'm buying something and I can't decide. And you said you look up what's available. I'm like, here we go, another step. But it's. It's necessary. It is. Especially on stuff that you think scarcity drives the value. So if somebody's willing to play that game and you could say, hey, this cards doesn't sell as often, I'm not exactly sure what I'll get out of it. And then I always try to say, I think I'm going to sticker this somewhere around this range, but I think it probably lands here on. On stuff like that. Yep. If I'm someone that slabbed Otani rookies that you can look at me and tell me to shut up. Right. But when we're talking about unique things that, that don't sell too often, once every few years, and there's a decent buyer base for it, you've got to look at all of those factors. So let's, let's answer our question. Are comps dead? I would say comps are not dead, but the way that people utilize them in buying and selling cards is changing. And I think it's for, for the better. I, I would just Say comps aren't dead, but last one is. Yu-Gi-Oh And it doesn't mean that that last sale is irrelevant. I just mean it only tells a part of the story. And I think most of the cards that people buy, that's the situation. Yep. Yep. All right, let's give people a rundown of some upcoming shows, some lives. Now, if you haven't been paying attention, we have been on ebay live for what, about a month now, Gary? Yu-Gi-Oh I think we've done a total of seven shows now. Really having a blast on there. It seems like it's been a good fit for not only us but for our community. So if you haven't made a leap over there, remember it's at the ball card so store. Yu-Gi-Oh this is the ball card show. That is the ball card store. Go give that a. Go give that a look. See, We've got over 20,000 sales in the store and 100 positive feedback. We'd love for you to come hang out with us. And I know that over the last couple weeks we've made some sizable purchases of some really cool 90s and 2000 stuff which has become our bread and butter. So you will want to hang out and see whatever comes out of it. It's a nice thing about not having pre B. I'd love for ebay to have it, but I kind of enjoy the surprise with our community. Like hey, check this one out, right? This one you haven't seen in a while, you know, so. So we have those coming up this weekend. I will be. As this drops. I will be on a plane to the Bahamas for five days to stay at Atlantis. I'm gonna be hiding from those slot machines all week. Then we've got Circleville card convention. You'll be there at Circleville elementary the following week which is what, the 14th? 15th? Ish. Somewhere in there. We will be in ship Shawana. Shawana. I like to do the Albuquerque to that two day show. One of our favorites in the Midwest, Brad Bowman B Sports and Car Collector 2. Put that on. Do a good job. Kyle from Canada. Cards can. The cards will be there as well. Making an appearance. September we have a really fun show in a new state. First show in the state. Well, you've done. You've done the Huntington show before, right? Done the Huntington show. But we will be in Charleston, West Virginia at the greenie show. More details on that coming up. I believe it's September 8th. Three days, three day show. 18, 19, 20th. Yep. And then. What am I forgetting? Is that it, Gary? I think that is it. We've got a few more things on the horizon, but they're not exactly, exactly hammered in yet. But Yu-Gi-Oh come hang out with us on ebay live on Wednesday and Thursday nights. We start at 7:30 Eastern Time here and there. We occasionally pop up for something for fun, but those are the two nights you can always find us. Make sure you give a like and a subscribe and a follow here on YouTube if you haven't yet. And Yu-Gi-Oh I think that's about all we got. All right, this has been the ball card show, the sports podcast for the esports collector. Bye now. Peace.