Do LCS's Need TCG? & Big Announcement S6 Ep32

Foreign. Welcome to the Ball Card show, the sports podcast for the esports collector. I'm Gary LeMaster, and as you can see, Jason is not with us today. Instead, we have Keith Newhart, who's gonna help out and hang out. And Instead of a two minute shop talk this week, you're gonna get about 25 to 30 minutes of Keith, which I don't think any of you will be mad about. I know that our videos with Keith at the national kind of popped off. Everybody seemed to really enjoy those. So thanks for joining us, Keith. We're glad you're here. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. As always, I appreciate your time. Oh, no, we. Everybody loves the. The insight that you provide. I know that we always look for that. You and I always chat up about whatever is happening in the space. So we'll just share that with. With the audience this week while Jason is roasting his tootsies down in the Bahamas. Yes, he is. Yes, he is. Well, let's go to the national. We talked about our experience at the national last week, and then you were on vacation for a week, so nobody got shop talk from you last week. You got to get out and about, which is good. But tell us about how the national was for Newhart cards. Absolutely. One word. Unbelievable. Record breaking again. So we've grown every year. I think this was our eighth year, seventh or eighth year that we've done it, basically beating our previous record every year. This year was just leaps and bounds of last year. So I think if you listen to this podcast or listen to me, you kind of know our story. What we do, we start buying in the spring, holding stuff back. Don't buy one single card at the national at our booth. It is a purely selling show. And I think people were kind of learning that. So it was a great experience. Had a lot of really, really good buyers, a lot of repeat buyers, a lot of Ohio buyers. Yep. You know, that just had known what kind of stuff we were putting back and Yu-Gi-Oh it was just really just a good experience, you know, all over the board. So, Yu-Gi-Oh no complaints whatsoever. Was there anything that you guys saw moving faster or that people were clamoring for over other stuff in. That was different than in the past, I think, you know, which everybody's talked about. But it's, you know, it was Jordan, it was Kobe, and it was Griffey. Those were the three main ones we sold. We saw we sell almost every showcase card that we take. But this year we sold. Yu-Gi-Oh we sold every Kobe that we had, every Griffey that We had and every Jordan that we had. So we had three, you know, Jordan rookies, I think, and a Kobe Whatnot, and, and, you know, LeBron as well. Everything we took of his that we sold. So it was the goats. That's what, that's what people were really focused on this year in the, you know, the 40 to $5,000, you know, mark. So there was. And all the buying in between. So, Yu-Gi-Oh that's what everyone was looking for. Did you have, did you notice or hear people talking? One of the things that we addressed last week was there were so many content creators there, obviously, and most of them spent as much time as they possibly could, whether it was because they knew it would get clicks or what. Talking about how overpriced the national was this year. Yu-Gi-Oh Did. Was that an experience that you thought was the case or did, did you feel like we did that? The pricing was pretty much in line with what it always is at the National? I think, I think so. I think, you know, there are, there are show and tell booths. You know, obviously, you know, you saw some, you know, this was a $100,000 card, but they had it marked at 400,000. They don't want to sell that car. They just there to, you know, kind of put everything on the table and say, ours is bigger than yours. And this is what we have. So for us, we again, talked about it before. We don't, I don't price anything until the week before. Everything is listed at comps. I'm not putting it 20, you know, 20% above or anything. And that makes it so easy for us. Unless there's a, unless there's a, a comp in the, in the, in two or three days before the show that maybe is an outlier, everything is going to be right in, in line. So again, we go to sell. We don't go to, you know, pretend to, to, to have a museum piece. We're, we're there to, to move product and we do so well. I know how many cards you had in that booth, and the idea of pricing all of that in one week is just, it's wild behavior, Keith. I don't know how, you know, I, I started that, I started that psychotic move a few years ago with a lot less cards, and now with, with as many as we take. I still do it. There's a lot of long days, long nights before I try to really focus at the shop and, and, you know, and do my thing. But Yu-Gi-Oh it's, it's a little psychotic. The week before, for no doubt about it. Well, we've, we've got one more year in Chicago and then we go to Detroit and then we're back to Chicago. We are. Let's talk about the future of the national. Obviously this year record setting attendance. Have they given out the final numbers yet? No, I've heard again they never really release the numbers. I heard someone today or Yesterday throw out 200,000. I would be shocked if it wasn't more. I know that's a. Fanatics fest was 230. It was. Yu-Gi-Oh Fanatics fest was 230. Yu-Gi-Oh So it wouldn't surprise me. I mean it was busy from the, the opening bell till you know, they started kicking people out. It was in Sunday as well. I mean Sunday was Beckett You know, usually a few, three, four years ago you'd start to kind of put your stuff away a little bit, try to sneak out. But I mean there were buyers in there all day on Sunday. We were out on Saturday like one o' clock on were like that's it, I'm tapping, I'm good. Exactly my exhaustion. I saw a picture of you and Nick and it was just like you both looked like. I felt it was, it was rough on the old feet, that's for sure. So what do you think the, the future holds? Obviously we've got the contingent of the hobby and my personal opinion is that it's a very small vocal contingent that just the sky is falling. The Chicken Little crowd. What do you see going forward for the national? Do you think that we're going to continue to see the, the year over year growth for the next few years that we've seen the last three or four? Do you think we're going to level out a little bit? What do you think is going to happen? I don't see any stopping us. You know, I don't, I don't. There's no indication to see that. Right. You know, there's nothing that says okay, you know, the shop volume is down or our transactions are down or, or you know, go to any show in a local show, there's no slowing down. Yu-Gi-Oh Now I think there's so many levels to selling, you know with your live selling, with ebay, with shows, to shops, to Facebook, Marketplace and all the other things in between. There's so many ways to buy and sell. I don't think people get stuck with a card anymore. Like maybe back in the day where you had just ebay and maybe one local show a month. There's so many different ways to move and shake in this industry and, and we see new people still every single day coming in to try to grab their peace. So I don't see any kind of slowdown at all for a while. I really don't. Good. Because I hope not. For those of us that do this for a living, that's always one of the things that cracks me up. There are people who I know who make that sky is falling content that this is what they do for a living. It's like, what are you doing? What are you trying to speak into existence here, man? Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh no, it's like again, I was a stockbroker before this and finding finance, bro, and, and you know, it was always one of those things where it's like, you know, I don't care if you, you buy or you sell. I still make my money. Right. But we all want the market to go up. We want, you know, we want the market to go up. If you're betting on, on the market to go down, that's just, you know, that goes against kind of, kind of human, you know, human thinking, in my opinion. I think if you're, you know, if you're in this market or in this industry, you got to root for it to keep going. Yes. You know, and try to drive that. And also, I don't know how I feel about you calling yourself a finance bro, Keith. I don't, I don't know how I feel about that. I don't know how many we sold to this past week or the, you know, the week at the national, but felt like I felt like I was one of them. So I throw that out there, you know, that's awesome. I know that we go to, I know my route is probably six to eight shops around Ohio every two to three weeks. Obviously we're your shop every week. There's three or four that are relatively close that we're at a lot. But every time I go into a shop, it's busy like it is. It's not. There doesn't. There's not a 10 minute window where there's not at least five to 10 people correct in every single shop, from the smallest to the biggest. So we heard, you know, Michael Rubin did a lot of different interviews throughout the week at the national. Talk about, you know, Fanatics, plans and what they're trying to accomplish. One of the things that they rolled out this week on really short notes notice. I've heard this from you and two or three other shop owners that I'm friends with is that, and I believe it, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it only applies to retail SKUs. Correct. But now they're saying, hey, guys, you have to sell an MSRP for 30 days and we're going to monitor you on that. Absolutely, absolutely. And that news came in two days, I think prior to the product. It's Topps Chrome Update basketball prior to the release date. So, you know, if you follow the big boys like David, Adam and Blowout, they were at $90 a blaster on that product. So MSRP was 45 bucks. Right. So again, you know, I'm not going to boohoo me or anything like that. Don't feel sorry for us. But, you know, when they're able to sell it for 80 or $90, but we have it on the shelves for 45 bucks. And the problem is, I have no problem with that. You know, our cost is low and we make plenty of money. The problem is they don't give us a lot. Right. You know, so if they gave us two or three or 400 blasters, absolutely. You know, heck, if you want us to sell it for below MSRP, I got you. But when they give us 20, 40, you know, we have to limit it. Hey, you get one, you know, one per household per visit. And it's just, it's, it's a struggle and it's, it's frustrating that way to know. Again, don't know, don't, don't boohoo me. But knowing that if I go to Dick's, they have 600 blasters on, you know, on the, on the, on the pallets full of them. Exactly. So again, you know, Topps flagship dropping here in the next few weeks again, we have tons of, of blasters coming in. So great. Msrp, perfect. But when they limit us, they highly limit us and don't let us buy back in. I just feel like there's money being left on the table on some of those products. So do you think that there's any plan whatsoever to apply that, that pricing across the board? Because it seems really strange to me because I can't speak to Blowout, but Dave and Adams has a physical shop. At least they used to. Steel City has a physical shop. Why are they allowed to sell those at 90 online? Are they still being forced to sell them at 45 in the shop, or does that only apply to the little guys? That's a great point. I don't know the answer to that. I know they get a lot more product than we do. That is for sure. So, Yu-Gi-Oh there was a lot of talk among Other shop owners, like, okay, are they going to, you know, is the, you know, are they going to, are they going to get phone calls for pricing that at 80 or $90? Because, you know, believe it or not, or, you know, they're the leaders. You know, we look when we're pricing our product, we go to Blowout, to Steel City, to Dave and Adams to see where they're pricing and product. It kind of give us an idea of what the market is, you know, where the market is, you know. And again, when we see their price at 90 bucks and we're at 45, you know, again we have them back in stock but we had to pay secondary market value for. So, you know, it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's tough. And yes, I do believe that there's going to be a rollover to the hobby side eventually, but it hasn't, it hasn't come down that far yet. Yu-Gi-Oh I, I will say this. When it comes to that type of a thing, while I think there will be a little bit of, of pinch as they get it worked out, as long as, and this is the caveat here, as long as it applies equally to everybody in the space that is a retailer of hobby and products, I think it'll be a good thing for the long term. Health of the hobby. Absolutely. Yu-Gi-Oh But only if it applies evenly. You can't tell the local LCS, hey, here's your one case allocated and you have to sell it at MSRP or hold it for 30 days and not do anything with it at all, but let the big boys sell it for whatever they want to. That doesn't work. That doesn't help anything. It does. And again, on the other side of that is, you know, with, with map pricing back in the, you know, 2010s to 12, it was the other way. We Goldin lower the price of a product and for 30 days. And that's how the market was then. Right. So, Yu-Gi-Oh you Goldin give some of that stuff away. I mean, absolutely. I remember as late as 2015, 16. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh Yep. I had accounts with GTS and Peach. I didn't own a shop. I just, I owned a sign company and I had a tax ID so I could get an account and I would get bid sheets. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh 100. I would get bid sheets. Hey, we have so much of this. What do you want to pay for? It was unreal. Again, completely different, you know, circumstances back in the day. But Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, so again, we can't Belly ache too much because it could be the opposite direction. Sure. You know, could drop as soon. The one thing that I think people don't give enough credit and there's plenty of things that you can complain about. The people running the show with. Like there's plenty of things, but one of the things I don't think people give them enough credit for is they are smart business people and the last thing that they want is for this to come crashing and burning down. Yu-Gi-Oh that. That's the last thing they want. Like we are. Yu-Gi-Oh They're invested the same. Same as we are. They don't want to see that bottom either. So. Yu-Gi-Oh I, I'm with you. I think again, we're definitely moving forward. It just depends on if they pull back on the, you know, the reins a little bit, so. Right. But Yu-Gi-Oh feels good right now. Well, let's, let's talk about the other side of the card market a little bit, Dan. This is becoming more and more true for local shops, especially the smaller ones. You know, it's not as big of a deal for the card vaults or the Midwest or the big, big boys, but for shops like Newhart Cards. For shops like cards on six down Lancaster, for sure that we. Yu-Gi-Oh The TCG side of things and the non sport side of things. Yep. Has been one of, if not their biggest drivers of growth over the last 24 months. Yes. To the point where a couple of shops that had applied for the. What do they call it? Not the probationary Fanatics thing. What is it called? The, the. It's like the minor league. Minor league. Yu-Gi-Oh You know what I mean? I do, Yu-Gi-Oh Pulled back from it and they were like, we're getting distribution on this other stuff. Right. And it's doing what we need to do to keep the shop growing. And we'll just focus on singles and we'll only buy. We'll buy hobby products to sell at secondary market prices. But only the stuff we know has got a good sell through rate. Yep. Have you found that for you guys to be true and if so, what do you see in that market that is either different or that parallels the sports market? Yu-Gi-Oh well, I mean, I, believe me, I fought against it. I fought against it for years, you know, but again, it was, you know, it was so different when, when we first started buying Pokemon, you know, it was, it was, you know, cost on ETBs were $31 and we would put them out for 35 bucks and no one looked at it. The T, you know, the TCG market was kind of Dead for a while. So now it is not. And I think the thing that's helping shops now is you can get a pretty decent allocation on tcg. And again, Pokemon is not afraid to go back and re reprint their products. They make a game, they make it very clear. We make a game, we want people to be able to play it. If people also buy stuff and invest in it and grade it, whatever, but we're making a game for people to play. Yu-Gi-Oh our distributor called us yesterday and say, hey, congratulations, Destin Rivals is printing again here. We're sending you more cases of it. And that one was many sets down the road. You know, that they've come out and it has affected the market. I mean, it has Tribute However, we get more cases of it, we get more product to sell. So that's good for the collector, that's good for the, you know, the game player that, hey, I can, I can have access to that game again and I don't have to pay outrageous prices. And again, I think with TCG it is affordable. You know, it is really affordable. You can buy a booster box for under 200 bucks. You can buy an ETB for the most part, 70 to 100 bucks, you know, compared to, you know, 900 for Topps Chrome update basketball and Reeve 75 for Topps Chrome Baseball. It is, it is really affordable. And there's an actual market for the commons in that stuff. Like you can throw that stuff on TCG Player and almost all of them will sell really Fast for a dollar 99. Yu-Gi-Oh absolutely. There are people who collect the sets and put the sets together and it's just, it's not the same game as the sports card market. Very rarely do you ever see somebody come trying to fill their 26 top set anymore. They go to Meijer or to your local shop, buy the whole set. Buy a set for 50 bucks and you're done. You know, there's no fun in that. But Yu-Gi-Oh TCG and I keep mentioning Pokemon, but Lorcana is now on fire and Riftbound and obviously One Piece and all the other ones. And then there's new ones that come out every day that have kind of gained steam. So it's a growing part of our business. There's no doubt about that. Even the, even the non TCG stuff like Disney and Marvel. Marvel Chrome has been wildly hot this year. Let's talk about the consumer then. Sure. What do you see? And Jason and I give people a hard time. Outside of the jokes, what do you see as the biggest differences between the sports Consumer, the sports collector slash pack ripper to the TCG non sports side of things. Well, you could see it at the national. Again, I didn't see it because we were busy behind the booth, but there were pictures and videos of people showing base cards all over the Fleer Right. So you're ripping a Topps Chrome baseball box. Boom. Here's the autos, here's the refractors. Everything else gone. Yu-Gi-Oh I've never seen a TCG card on the Fleer Right. I, I know it doesn't get, you know, thrown away here. They keep them, they, they put the master set together. Right. They are true collectors. They are true players of the game. Completely different from the, you know, from the sports side of the game. So Yu-Gi-Oh it's, it's. They're two different, two different bodies, that's for sure. Do you find consumer behavior to be different as well? Yu-Gi-Oh I think they're a little more cost conscious on the TCG side. Right. So again, if you, if you, if you watch, you know, content or, or any videos, you see people standing in line at Meijer for hours to save 20 or 30 bucks, you don't see that in the sports game anymore like you did during COVID They're a little more price conscious, They're a little more MSRP conference, you know, conscious. So they would rather pay, you know, stay in a line for a little bit and pay 34.99 for a box instead of going to your local shop, walking right in, paying 45 bucks. So they're a little bit more price conscious, I would say, than the sports average sports collector on the single side of that world. One of the things that, that we've got kind of noticed and we don't deal with that stuff really at all. We have people tell us all the time we need to, you've told us we need to, probably need to just have it. Yes. Do. What we kind of been told is that unlike the sports world, most, not all, but most of the people buying singles aren't looking to buy those, to flip them, they're buying them for their collection. Do you find a difference in negotiations, a difference in style in that side of things? I would tell you that with this much, the sell through rate is very much faster on the TCG side. Okay. You know, I mean if we buy a, you know, let's say a 200 card, decent lot, we try really hard now not to buy the cheaper stuff. Just because if you listed on tcgplayer by the time you pay all your fees and everything, you're not making any money. Right. So. So Yu-Gi-Oh So even the 20 doll up stuff, for the most part, if we list it today, it sells today. That's wild. Or it sells tomorrow where cards will sit for a while. So Yu-Gi-Oh I think that that's the, the biggest difference for us is that then the negotiation again, we price everything as close to fair and as close to most recent sales that we can. Obviously if a card sits here for a month, the price is going to move. Time to go. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh exactly. That'll change the direction. But for the most part TCG players or buyers will, will pay the price as long as it's fair. Okay. Yes. So would you, would you say then for, for smaller shops, if the owner's listening to this and they've been on the fence about diving hard into that world, would you tell them that it would be highly beneficial to their business to make that move? Absolutely. Yu-Gi-Oh It's, it's again there are some days when we finish the day and Pokemon outsell sports and, and, and Pokemon takes up 5% of the shop on a, on a space wise. So I mean it is, it is growing. It is, it is well, well worth. Worth. Worth dipping your toe into. Yes, I promise. Awesome. Awesome. Yep. Well, so there you go guys. Some good insight on the TCG side of things. And again Jason and I are probably gonna have to figure it out. I don't, I don't one-of-one Jason definitely doesn't one-of-one He'll have to eat a little crow because I know how much he's made fun of the TCG and folks over the years. Yu-Gi-Oh of course. But Yu-Gi-Oh So here in just a minute though. If you saw the thumbnail for this episode, you saw a big question mark right in the middle of it. And we have a big announcement coming up and a little going to go to right now. Stay tuned. This is really exciting stuff. Ladies and gentlemen. One of our all time favorite gem mint 10 humans. See what I did there? Buddy is in the studio with the ball card show D with Junk Wax Vintage is joining us for something we're very excited about. How are you buddy? I am always well, my brother. How are you? I am good. I'm a little, a little bit fatigued and I'm sure you are too. Last week was the national. We had just a couple things going on. Gary and I were joking about it. Like it, it's been a long time since I've been that busy every day it was, it was bonkers. Excited about what we're going to dive in today. Everything is centered around education. But the first part of this conversation I want to jump to is just how unique of a time and space in sports cards we are all a part of right now coming off of this year at the National. It's such an exciting time in the space. Dalem, what are you seeing? You know, this is peak. You were at Fanatics Fest and the national. You've got a growing community that you've been working on for some time. What are you seeing in the space that makes it unique right now? Excuse me. So I think what makes it really unique, you know, I've been in this hobby a long time. Like I've talked about before, what makes it really unique is the number of brand new collectors that are coming back to her or coming into our hobby right now. You know, I have never seen the influx of young people especially. So between Fanatics Fest and the card combine, shout out to Fanatics. And then at the national and our sports cards nonsense corporate area, we literally got the opportunity to engage with hundreds if not thousands of brand new, totally green, just started collecting a couple of weeks ago. Collectors. Yu-Gi-Oh And for somebody like me that has this enthusiasm for the hobby, it is unmatched. It is so cool to be able to talk to these brand new collectors and relay that enthusiasm and then educate. Right. Because our hobby has changed significantly, especially over the last five years, 10 years, let alone 30 years. Right. So believe it or not, there's even people that are coming back to the hobby after a really, really long hiatus. You know, people that kind of left the hobby in the late 90s and then they're kind of picking up boxes and packs. And if you started back then and then you come to the hobby now, it is a almost completely different landscape. You know, back in the 90s, almost every single card was different, or excuse me, almost every single card was the same. So we ended up with a lot of duplicates. If you remember back then, the error card was a big deal. Yu-Gi-Oh And if you think about it, the reason that error card was such a big deal back then is wasn't because of the artistic value of the card. For in most cases what it was was scarcity because those error cards were rarer than the others. Right. Right now in the hobby we have in 2026, we have built in scarcity with numbered cards and one of ones and RPAs and things like that. You know, those didn't really exist, not as they do now back in the late 80s and 90s. So I think the biggest difference I'm Seeing is the brand new people coming in, especially young people, which is unbelievably heartwarming and exciting to see. And I think it's going to keep going that way. You know, like I said before, I. I touched on the Sports Cards nonsense podcast from the national with our buddy Mike. I know it's a hot take, I get it. But there's a lot of people that think that our hobby might kind of crash a little bit. I think there will always be ups and downs, especially player specific and season specific. Sure. But I think we're looking at a new normal. I don't think it's going backwards. I think Fanatics is doing everything, everything they can to 10x the hobby. And I think they talked about it again on the SCN show from the National. They believe that they've maybe 5x the hobby at this point. And I can tell you from personal experience, between Fanatics Fest and the national, it shows. Yu-Gi-Oh it's at least X. Right, Right. That's right. That's right. And to your point about it being overwhelming for a person that's just either coming back or coming in, we talked to a few people and I know you did too, at the national where that was their first card show. And I can't even imagine the national being my first show, but with that taken into account, obviously education is so important and it can help set the direction for somebody to have a great experience in the hobby. But all education isn't equal. And one of the things that we've really admired in your content lately is you've been doing a lot more just quick educational hits directed towards those new folks or even people that might have been around for a little bit now, but it's still just overwhelming. What inspired you to start that process to create that experience for people? Yu-Gi-Oh that's a wonderful question, my man. I can't say there was one. One individual moment. It was the cumulative adding up of many moments. Okay. So a lot of you know that when we started JWV, we started on TikTok, Twitch, Facebook, Kick and YouTube and we would go live simultaneously every morning and every evening. About nine months ago, we got the amazing opportunity to take the whole kit and caboodle over to ebay Live. I only have to go live on one platform and I think it was everything I thought it could be. It's incredible. But throughout those five platforms and now ebay live, I have fielded hundreds of questions from people that are brand new to the hobby or again, if they're coming back after a Long hiatus. And again, we've talked about this many, many times. For better or worse. I have an extreme radical reverence for sports cards. They've always meant something to me, ever since I was a little kid. That has not changed. Today when I see a new collector come into the hobby and they kind of get burned, for lack of a better term. And there's a lot of different ways to get burned, Right. So to speak. So you could get into a break and say you're watching a breaker and they're getting everybody Hyper up and it's those really quick auctions and they're all sudden death and say they're huge products. You know, some of those breaks are big. So people are not spending 20 or 30 bucks, they're spending 5 or 600 over a thousand sometimes. And if you were to save up money and to get into your very first break and the breaker Hyper up the product like it's going to be the next coming of Christ. And then the next thing you know, he pulls the cards and either you get nothing or what. Sometimes even worse, you get a card that you think is huge, but in reality it's not so much, you know. And when you have those disappointing moments like that, that's when you can see people kind of wash out of the hobby a little bit if those things happen repeatedly. Yu-Gi-Oh right. Yu-Gi-Oh So what I've kind of taken on my. As my responsibility is to set a fair and accurate expectation of what to expect within our hobby. Right? Yu-Gi-Oh of course there are five and six figure cards out there. And one of the coolest things about our hobby is that there's not just one, there's a whole bunch. You know what I mean? So there's a lot of really, really valuable cards in our hobby. But as I've also said before, I understand that money has been and will always be part of our hobby, but in my humble opinion, it should never be all of the hobby. It should be about the people you meet and the experiences that you share and the memories that you make. Right. So that's what we really try to bring home on the JWV channel is we try to create those experiences because people might remember the cards you pull, they might remember the money that they spent, but what they remember permanently and long term is how you make them feel, you know, and that's. That's the most important to me. Yu-Gi-Oh So whenever I see these new collectors that are getting into breaks or maybe they get into a single show and they grossly overpay for a card because the host is kind of trumped it up, you know what I mean? For lack of a better term. If you've noticed, on my channel, I try to do as best as I can to practice what I preach. Right. If you, you, you've watched my show and I'm so grateful that you guys have spent some time watching our show, by the way. Thank you. I do my best to not oversell cards. You know, I do my best to not oversell breaks. And every single item that we start on our channel starts at just a buck. So the community decides how much those spots go for. Right. You know what I mean? And that makes me feel better at the end of the day as a seller because I know that I'm not taking advantage of anybody. I'm not trying to, you know, again, run up a card that doesn't necessarily deserve to be run up. Right. So that is where the foundation of all that education came from is because I've been in this, especially business wise for the last six years. I've fielded hundreds of questions from all these newer collectors of hey, I got into a break and the card I got wasn't worth what I thought it was or worst case scenario, I got into a break and I didn't know the breaker and I didn't get my items, you know, things like that. So I just think the more education that we put out there, the stronger our hobby will be. And I think right now, again, I'm going to touch back on the new normal. I think that we need to build a foundation and I think that's what's been going on really for the last couple of years. And I, I must shout out to Fanatics again. I know I'm going to sound like a Fanatics fanboy, but just to be very clear, I am beholden to no one. Right. I do not have allocated product. I have no deal with Fanatics. I'm just telling you like I see it. I'm calling it Ace and Ace. And there has never been a company that has put as much capital and energy and really strategic thought into how to grow this hobby and to grow it the best way possible so it has a really good foundation instead of like we saw the opposite of that back in the 80s and 90s with the junk wax era. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh And I will get on my soapbox a little bit whenever I hear somebody talk about 2026 and it possibly being a new junk wax era. How to say you didn't actually live through that period without actually saying you didn't live through that period. Yep. And I know you gentlemen remember our hobby today is nothing like that. Not remotely close. No, not remotely. To share with the audience that might not know, back then in the late 80s and early 90s, there was several different card companies that had licenses. Okay, so imagine if how Topps has the license right now, Imagine if Panini also had the license. Imagine Topps had the license. Imagine Upper Deck had a license. Imagine. And then let's make up five fictional companies that also have a license because there was Score and FLIR and Donruss, you know, and all those sport flicks and different Topps of Pinnacle Collector's Edge Pacific. Yu-Gi-Oh there you go, my brother. That's right. That's right. Now, mentioning those names is extremely heartwarming. Right? Because we love those. But that's not the landscape that we have today. It's just not right. And I know that there's some people that are not happy about Topps having all of those licenses. But what I think that does is it helps to create the foundation because it makes it easier for new collectors to find products and to be able to trust what they're buying. Right. Because back then in the 80s and 90s, you could go out and you could buy pretty much anything and you had no idea what the future looked like with that product, you know? Yu-Gi-Oh And most of those brands now are owned by Panini. So your Donruss and your Score and FLIR and all those, you know, so those have now just kind of become, you know, under the Panini umbrella. So they still exist, but a lot of, you know, those are not licensed, you know, to this day. Right. So I think there's pros and cons to having a trusted company like Tops and Fanatics having all those licenses. And again, I think it all feeds back into the foundation that we've been building for the last couple of years. And we're going to continue to build over the next few years. And to end with this, I mentioned Michael Rubin was on the SCN podcast Shout out to Mike Giovanni. He mentioned that this is just the beginning, and I could not totally agree more. I do think this is just the beginning. I think we're going to continue to build a wonderful foundation. We're going to keep having awesome young, brand new collectors come into the hobby. We're going to keep seeing people that have left the Hobby 20 years ago Coming back to the hobby. And in my humble opinion, there has never been a more exciting time to be a collector than there is in 2026. Well said. I, I think when you mentioned these guys that have been out of the space and then they're back in and some grumblings from time to time of like, well, it's just Fanatics we don't have. I miss all this competition. I think sometimes what's happened is when people see the excitement of the sports card space and the popularity growing and the accessibility to these athletes now, these events, you are front row to personally engage with your heroes. I think it's brilliant. But I think part of the challenge for a lot of people is they get into the space and they say, well, if I'm doing this, I'm diving all in. And so they don't do one thing, they do all the things, they open their boxes, then they find out about hobby, then they get into breaks, then they go after repacks then. And then they find themselves in that burnout state that you're talking about. And their conclusion often is, well, this is all just too much. Yep, I'm going to go back to X or Y or whatever. And I think this is why education matters so much. One of the things that Gary and I love about our little community is it's a lot of people our age that love the 90s and 2000s stuff and many of them came to that point of burnout and then all of a sudden they started to do a little bit more digging and they realized set building is not completely dead and it can happen with early 2000s Topps Chrome black refractors or a PC of a player that's not so expensive that they can't afford it and they actually have a treasure hun on their hands or if I'm going to rip hobby now, I know what products are out there, what I could potentially hit and find the best value for me. I can't spend a ton of money on on hobby product, but I love Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary. It has been one of the more affordable, huge hall of fame vet auto list. It's a beautiful product. It's a chromium. Chromium. Look that up. If you're under the age of 20, that was the technology that they were breaking out. But I'm hopeful because as much as we see this frustration at times with people, I see a revival of people enjoying sets that they build. Now those sets aren't just vintage, it's new stuff too. It's a subset out of flagship tops. It's. So I'm hopeful that education can bring another opportunity to the person that just dove in and it's overwhelming and they're feeling burnout. Like, like what are the elements in education? Like, if you had, hey, here's a few things that I think if people would spend a little bit of time digging or find some information on that would really help them sustain and make the most out of their hobby experience. That is such a great question, my man. A very poignant question. So first and foremost, checklists. First and foremost, like by a mile. Okay, so one of the things that I touched on and in some of our educational content and maybe even a couple of times, and the reason why is because it is so important. If you are getting into a break and you have not checked the checklist of the boxes that are within the break that you're about to pay for, you're living dangerously, my friends. You're living on the edge. So there is Google nowadays, right? All you have to do. So, for example, and I could not agree more, my brother, I think you already know, I am absolutely in love with anything. Topps Chrome Platinum, one of my favorite modern products of all time. Maybe even number two, I would say, because 2022 Topps Chrome cosmic is my all time favorite modern product. But I digress. So especially with Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary, just like you said, it's kind of veteran heavy. There's a lot of beautiful autographs. If you're getting into a break of 2025, Topps Chrome Platinum anniversary, you should definitely be going to Google first and type in 2025 Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary. And then after that, you type the word checklist. It's just that simple. And you can do that with almost any product, whether it's Panini or Tops or any year. You know, shout out to Beckett. They do a wonderful job of putting those checklists up there. Sometimes they're not available, but if they're not available right away, typically they're up there within, you know, 72 hours. Ish upon release. So the checklist is your friend. You must check out that checklist because that's going to tell you what your opportunities are, right? There's almost nothing worse than getting into a break and saying, hey, I'm going to buy the Mariners, because I'm looking for Ken Griffey Jr. And then you find out the hard way that Ken Griffey Jr. Isn't even in the product. Right? Not great. So that is, number one, I would say check checklists and check them often, as often as you possibly can, and get to know them very, very well before you buy into a team break the Second thing is, there's a. Not just myself, but there is some awesome educational content on there, on Instagram, on Facebook, on TikTok. See if you can find, you know, even if you don't resonate with yours truly, find somebody that you do resonate with, because there's a lot of people putting out some really good information. As you said earlier, Gary, not all information is good information. So you kind of have to consider the source as well, you know, so you got to have to be intelligent about that. But I really think at the end of the day, you just want to go into it as knowledgeable as humanly possible. And one of the great things about our hobby is there is no real right or wrong way to do it, in my humble opinion, because even if I wouldn't go out and just buy a bajillion different cards from a bajillion different sports, there's somebody out there that. That's how they collect. And that's 1000% okay. Yu-Gi-Oh it's all good. You know. Yu-Gi-Oh What I recommend for people that are, especially when you're brand new, because it can get so overwhelming so quickly with NBA and MLB and NFL and F1 and UFC and WWE and Star wars and Pokemon and Playboy, everything else. Nascar. Right. So you can get into all these sports. They're really accessible. Right. But it can become really, really overwhelming really, really quickly, like we talked about. So what I recommend for people that are brand new is find something that you love. You don't just like it. You're not just buying it because you saw somebody on the Internet talk about it. You have a personal relationship to that item, you know, and ideally, you want something that evokes emotion. So if you, for example, and this is totally random, say you were 6 years old and you went to a Chicago Cubs game and you saw a specific player have an unbelievable play, and that has burned like a hot coal in the back of your brain for the last 15 years. That would be a great person to start with. That's why I collect that Oliver. That's why I collect Oliver. That's exactly the reason, I think one of the really fun things, when we first discovered you and then had the opportunity to reach out and talk to you and found out the type of person that you are. We. We tell people this when we talk. We get a lot of a really great feedback. The episode that you were on with us and we did a nice long interview and we go back and watch that. If you haven't seen that, by the way. Yu-Gi-Oh If you haven't seen it, it was such a great thing. And Jason and I tell people, and we are not exaggerating, we were at a point with our business and with our content where we were just kind of spinning a little bit. And you fixed us in a lot of ways. We mean that. And, you know, you. Your focus with your community is on the collector side of things. We talk to the collector side of things as well. However, a lot of our focus is on the other side of the table because that's what we do and that's who we are. And we knew from the moment that we actually got to know you, had you on the show, have been able to interact with you since then, several, several times that we wanted the Junk Wax Vintage experience to be part of the ball card show experience. And that's the whole purpose of this today, leading up to this, is to announce to our community, to your community, that we are excited that Dalen and Junk Wax Vintage and maybe if we get lucky at some point, Mrs. Junk Wax Vintage. Yu-Gi-Oh the MVP, no offense, are going to be a regular. Are going to be a regular part of the ball card show and the ball card show community and family with a new segment called Dropping Knowledge with Dalen. Yes. Hey, sound. Sound bite of an applause here, right? Yu-Gi-Oh that's right. That's right. I could not be more humble than honored, gentlemen. I have received more positive feedback from the show that we did because I've been on a few podcasts at this point. All of them are great. They're all good. I've never had a bad podcast per se, but I have never received the amount of positive feedback that I did when I went on your show. Hundreds of people between finding us on social media to coming into the chat on ebay live and saying, hey, we found you from the ball card boys. The interview was awesome. I love those guys, you know, and it. I think it became very apparent very quickly that we share the same heart. Yu-Gi-Oh When it comes to the hobby, you know, we're kind of cut from the same cloth, so to speak. So I think it's going to be a wonderful opportunity for us to work together, you know, threaten me with a good time. And it's also going to be a wonderful opportunity to get some great knowledge out there, you know, for our hobby that we love so much. Yu-Gi-Oh And outside of what we will be doing, I want to send people to your content opportunities to hang out with you on ebay live. So. So what are the ways that people can connect with you? Best right now, Dalen. Yu-Gi-Oh So on ebay Live, we have the same username on every single platform. So for better or worse, there is only one Junk Wax Vintage. It is all one word. No punctuation, no spaces. So we go live at 10:00am Central Standard Time most mornings over on ebay Live, and then we do an evening show that starts at 8:00pm Central Standard Time. But I'd say the easiest and best way to get a hold of us is through Instagram and it is Junk Wax Vintage, all one word. J, U, N, K, W, A, X, V, I, N, T, A, G, E. And we would love to see you over there. We do have a private Facebook group as well, but if you want to find us over there on Instagram, that'll kind of be the door that opens all the other doors, if that makes sense. And you have a lot of educational content already available on there. So if somebody's like, hey, this is me. I'm the one that just wants to set a plan, build a little bit of knowledge around this. Great start there, Dalen. Thank you so much for making the time. I know you have a whole lot going on. We're very excited for your success and you and the missus and can't wait to get this rolling. I know our community is excited and Gary and I are really excited ourselves. Absolutely. Hey, I. Like I said, gentlemen, I'm humbled and honored and it's going to be incredible. So I have never been more excited about the hobby than I am today and I sincerely appreciate the opportunity. And you viewers out there, be ready, my friends, because there's going to be some awesome stuff coming. Yes, sir. All right, guys, we hope that you are as excited as we are for this new segment with Dalen from Junk Wax Vintage. He's going to be with us maybe not every week, but a lot. He and Keith, we're trying to bring in as many different voices in the space that are positive voices for the hobby that are educational that you guys can learn from. And we hope that you will enjoy Dalen as much as you've enjoyed Keith and Shop Talk and JT for out of the Box, we'll we have those segments. We're really excited for it. Real quick upcoming schedule for us. If you're seeing this episode on Friday, Ship Shawana starts today, goes into tomorrow. We encourage everybody. If you haven't had the opportunity to get out there, take the time to get out to Amish country in the middle of Indiana. It's a blast. We're going to get Keith there one of these days. I know, I know. We keep telling Keith we got to get him to more shows. Now there's a show that we're all doing together. You and staff, me and Jason. Tell them about that Greenie show, Keith. I know it's in September. That's as far as I got. I believe it's the 18th through the 20th, the third weekend through 20th. I think it's in Charleston. Is that correct? It is at the convention center. Yu-Gi-Oh We don't do many shows. We're open seven days a week here. So, Yu-Gi-Oh so Greenie, I always like to support him if he. If I can. And yes, we're all going to do that show and looking forward to that one. I believe it's the Mountain State Collectors Convention, so it's a three day show. If you have time to get down there, we'll be there. Keith always has you. You guys know the type of stuff that we have. Keith has that same type of stuff but turned up to 12. So if you like really cool, interesting, unique stuff that you don't see very often, come down. We'll be right up front with Keith and those guys. I think we both took sponsor booths, so we'll be there and ready to rock and roll. Keith, where can the people find you guys? Where can they buy cards from me? Where can they find you online, all that fun stuff? Absolutely. We're located in Delaware, Ohio. Again, we're open seven days a week. We're also on Facebook on Newhart Cards. Instagram is the Newhart Cards. Twitter is Newhart Cards, TikTok is Newhart Cards. So pretty easy to find. Like I said, we're. We're open seven days a week, so come and check us out. Awesome. Keith, can't thank you enough for filling in for Jason this week. Really appreciate it. As always. This has been the ball card show, the sports podcast for the sports collector, Peace.