Booked to Last: Are Wrestling Cards Really Growing? Plus Cosmic Chrome, WrestleMania Patch Autos, and the Cards Everyone Is Missing

Foreign. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the one, the only wrestling card podcast here on the Stacking Slabs Network. Welcome back to Booked to Last, sponsored by my good friends at RBI Crew 7. The biggest, the baddest, the best place to buy your wrestling trading cards. Make sure you check them out@rbi crew7.com. We are without Ryan in today's episode. What are we going to do? I decided to tag in myself, join Adam on the damn program to talk about wrestling and wrestling cards. A whole lot going on, fun topics. Adam and I kind of put a list together of some stuff that was on our mind when it comes to the wrestling card collecting community. And we riff, it's fun. We talk graps and a whole lot more. Make sure you RSVP for our party at the National Wrestling Card takeover July 31st at Embassy Suites. We have an incredible group of sponsors. It will be a incredible night of relationship building, collecting, talking to friends. You can do that@booktolastpodcastmail.com I'd love to hear from you. If you want to show your support for the broader Stacking Slabs Network, hit the follow button. Tell a damn friend. Run on over to the Patreon Group. But for now, it is Booked to last. Episode 23 coming at you. Welcome to Book to Last, a wrestling card podcast for the card collecting community that goes from the top rope to top loaders. We are your hosts, ryan Bannister of RBI Crew 7 and Adam Gelman of Main Event Wrestling Cards here on the Stacking Slab Podcast Network. Don't forget to like and subscribe here on Stacking Slabs, especially if this is your first time you're joining up. You can find the patreon@patreon.comStackingSlabs and you could follow Adam and I on social media at RBI Crew 7 and at WWE. Respectfully, let's ring that bell and get this slobber knocker on the way. What is going on, everybody? Welcome to episode 23 of Book to Last. Hey. Hey, wait a minute. You know you're not Ryan. I wish. I wish I was Ryan right now, that's for sure. Where's Ryan? No. Oh, my God. You look like Brett McGrath of stacking slabs. I'm sure you know, we're sitting here, we're gonna spend however long we take to talk about wrestling cards. But Ryan is, you know, enjoying a much needed vacation and the nice climate somewhere. So he's probably having a drink and we're talking cards. But he'll be back next week, so I'm just trying to fill in for him. Big shoes. Yeah, you got, you got like, I think when you have a weekly podcast and you like, we, you, we all have lot times. We all want to like enjoy our existence on this planet. Take some vacation time, you start to realize like, oh yeah, we got to figure out like how we're gonna fill these, these weeks in because I, I had some work trips, Ryan had some vacations and we have the national coming up. Like, who knows what we're gonna do that week. So I think like great to have Brett on. Get to finally do another sort of run through of wrestling cards with Brett. Sorry Ryan can't be here. Greatly missed. We'll have him back next week. But in the meantime we're, we're going to, we're going to continue on with our, our parade of wrestling cards here. And I think like unlike other, unlike other shows, we have absolutely nothing to talk about. There's nothing going on in wrestling cards. No, I'm just kidding. So we still have a ton to cover and a lot of good stuff to talk about this week. Brett, how beside before we get into this, like, how, how's your week been? How's everything going for you? Like, it's, it's got to be leading up to the national, leading up to everything coming up this summer. It's got to be crazy for you. It is. It's wild, but it's fun. Building a business in this space is been incredibly rewarding. It consumes a lot of my time, which is fun. I'm always working on something, whether content related or working on, you know, the potential of working with new partners, it's, it's endless. I've got a family, three kids. You've got kids. Ryan has kids. We got kids. This job. Yeah, I need this job. So splitting time between the two is primarily what I'm doing. But you know, I'm a sicko where I watch a lot of wrestling, like my downtime from work, which is the hobby and cards is watching wrestling. So the other weekend I was or other week I was just like doing an inventory of all the wrestling I watched for the week and it was like counting by the hours. And there was like multiple premium live events and it was I think Saturday night main event, there was an AEW show and then all the weekly television and I was like, I, I watch way too much wrestling, but I love it. So it's fun to have a little bit of an outlet and here to talk about wrestling and cards. Yeah, it's in, like, my wife used. My wife and kids, we used to, like, Monday Night Raw used to be, like, appointment viewing for our family. And she just got it to a point where she's like, okay, like, I can't. I can't keep doing this. And so she. She tagged out, and now she, like, any time I bring up wrestling, she's like, okay, sounds good. You know, it's just like the typical stuff. And, like, my kids, my youngest is. Is into it, but, like, none of the other kids really care. They all like other stuff now. They play Roblox, iPads, and that's basically it. And so coming on here and talking about this for an hour a week is like my. You know, it's. It's like it builds up and then you just. Just unleash everything in one, you know, hour here. So I'm totally with you. We're. We'll start off with the opening pyro. As usual. We've got an awesome sort of segment what we'll introduce here in a minute. Brett had some hot topics he wanted to talk about. I've got some hot topics I'll talk about. We'll come off the top rope with those, then we'll get into the sales and our weekly title match. So let's. Let's talk for a little bit about King of the Ring and Queen of the Ring, because I have not been a fan of this, and it's not necessarily I haven't been a fan of the wrestling. I've. I've just. I don't like the setup here, and I don't like the people in this tournament the way that they're booked. It just. It doesn't feel like a typical King of the Ring and a Queen of the Ring. It feels like a scramble. And considering you're setting main events for SummerSlam in my home city, you're coming to my area. Like, I feel like they owe us a little bit better of an explanation here. So, like, right now, the semifinal match for one of the semifinal matches for the men has been set. I set. Bread sent Brett a meme of a coughing baby versus a hydrogen bomb, which is Obafemi versus Dominik Mysterio, which they tried to set up on Raw this past Monday. And I like. Oba's amazing. Like, this crowd literally cannot get enough of him. European crowds make everything better. And it was just an awesome segment. And I love Dominic Mysterio trying to, like, play off of it, but, you know, that match again, are you putting Oba in the finals where he goes to Night of Champions and wrestles whoever comes off the other side of it. And then you have Brock Lesnar interfere, and Oba loses, he takes another loss. We talked about this last week. I don't know, man. Like, the. The men's side of this just makes me upset. Just because Oba should absolutely be the ch. Be the winner of King of the Ring without even a question. And now I got to figure out how Brock Lesnar fits into this. Yeah, I think, you know, that opening for Raw, seeing Oba come out, the aura, the superstardom, the collectability, all of the things. And I obviously listened to you guys talk last week, and it was so perfect at WrestleMania. But Brock is back in the picture, which complicates all of this. And now I'm looking at it and looking at his. Obafemi obviously deserves to run rampant and win this thing, but I. I'm not one who looks at the. The Vegas odds, but I will not be picking Obafemi based on what's happening. We're just in. That stinks. Just waiting for the inevitable Brock Lesnar run in, whether it's in the semis or in the. The. The final match. So, yeah, I'm kind of with you. It's. It's lost its luster a bit for me. So I think, like, just because I believe Obafemi is likely going to win next week versus Dominik Mysterio, it's possible he. They pull the trigger on the. On the Brock side the next week, but I. I don't see that happening until actual pay. Brock goes to Saudi Arabia every time. So, like, I feel like that the Hater of the Year award will go to Brock Lesnar flying all the way to Saudi Arabia just to interfere in this match. So that means I don't think Javon Evans, although he's awesome and although he's amazing, is going to win the semifinal match versus who's in the bottom bracket for the men. So that is likely going to be Jay uso, who is one of Roman's lackeys right now, and La Knight. So you either have Obafemi winning this or you have Jay USO or La Knight winning it, because I don't think Royce Keys or Finn Balor is ready for this. A SummerSlam match with Roman Reigns. It could be Dominic Mysterio setting up Triple Mania with El Grande Americano for the. For the mega title. But, man, I don't think the winners have been any less clear in this because, like, what do you do? Like, this is. You've booked yourself into a corner here and for the collectors out there who are praying for Obafemi to win a title here and dethrone Roman Reigns. Like, I cannot think of a better opportunity had they booked this correctly than Obafemi going into SummerSlam and wrestling Roman Reigns. Now, maybe they save that for WrestleMania, but that's in Saudi Arabia this year. So, like, it's not going to be the coronation that it usually is, right? Yeah. I wonder what I'm. What I wonder during these circumstances and I have these questions that I ask myself on should I just be patient? Should I be more patient and let the whole thing play through? And I try to map this to cards and collecting and it's like, does. Does this sort of booking help or hurt collectibility of a guy like Obafimi who's on a rocket ship right now? So those are the things I try to reason and ration with myself as I see these things play out in real time. And I don't know, like, I'm not sure right now outside of, you know, V1 bloodline storytelling, if this administration of creative and booking can get credit to. For me to just let everything play itself out. So I. I watch no matter what. If I don't like it, I watch. I'm gonna always be here. But I'm. I'm interested in, like, the impact on cards, specifically with Obafendi, because you have literally the perfect introduction into the main roster, perfect booking, perfect WrestleMania moment. And it just, it seems like we should just be off to the races and Obafemi all of a sudden enters this, like, tier one territory where guys like Roman Reigns sit. And I'm just not sure it's going to play out like that because of creative. So these are the things I'm constantly thinking about. And like, I. Ryan and I both sort of thought, okay, this is an opportunity to pull the trigger on that Roman Reigns versus Seth Rollins match. Now, they may have wanted to save that for a while because they don't want Seth Seth to like, lose again after losing the last time. And so Javon Evans ends up winning the the initial match. Everybody had Rollins picked. I actually built this deck over the weekend. I literally didn't even consider that it would be anybody but Seth Rollins. And like, Javon Evans is awesome and that match was awesome. But I like, he's not a main event talent. He's not going to carry a SummerSlam match with Roman Reigns. So I'm curious, like, you know, what was that sort of thought process? Maybe they have Something else going on, but it just. It puts a lot of pressure on that last match that's happening on Smackdown with USO, LA. Knight, Royce Keys and Finn Balor. Finn Balor and Roman Reigns wrestled before as well. And Finn was the Demon. I think he went in as a Demon. That was the one of the only matches he's lost as the Demon. And it had that freak sort of turnbuckle spot at the end, which I thought was pretty interestingly executed given the circumstances. But what I want to focus on the most is these European crowds were insanely hot. And I think we talked about this a little bit. Like, the global appeal of WWE overall in practice is insane. They go to these places, tons of people, crowds are hot. They're so into this. We saw it in Mexico, we saw it in Italy, we see it in France here. But there's not as much access, I think, to the global collectability yet for wrestling cards. Maybe in some of those other things where they're buying belts or they're buying shirts or whatever, but the cards really haven't made it over. Shout out to all the breakers and the stores and the collectors over across the pond, because they are rabid collectors and they're awesome. But I don't think, like, we've seen the true impact of global collectability for wrestling cards outside of the US Quite yet. Yeah, I think being a fan and being a collector are very, very different things. Yeah, I think fanatics should certainly help with this. And I think we have to remember, just as wrestling fans, you know, we're, you know, on year two of this, and it's been very apparent and evident the strategy for fanatics has been, all right, let's partner with the talent, let's try to get placement on shows, let's continue to work in the domestic market and really grow that infrastructure, which I think they've done a pretty damn good job of. And I would imagine, obviously I'm not sitting in any of these board meetings, but I would imagine, like, global expansion has got to be like, one of the four big bullets for fanatics when it comes to not just wrestling cards, but just trading cards in and of itself. And so you mentioned, like, there is breaking that happens across the pond in other places, but I think it's very fragmented. And I would imagine that fanatics will put some more emphasis and infrastructure on helping that form, because I think when there's more. More focus and attention in place in those markets, there likely will become more collectors. And that takes education and a whole bunch of other Things, but it's like undeniable. Like wrestling fans spend money, spend a ton of money. Just go in any of the WWE world stores when there's a big event. Like they're making millions of dollars of people buying everything. But wrestling cards has always been lagging. So I also think like too like there's always this like international shipping problem. And so like that could be something that gets solved and we, they figure it out. So I think and it will eventually blossom in other markets. I just don't think we're there yet. Yeah, I, I have to agree. I think like the appeal of wrestling not only in the uk, but in Japan, in Germany, in France, in Spain, in Italy, like all of these places that WWE has gone for pay per views recently, I mean we've seen just how insane these fans are and it's awesome on tv. Like the aura of these places is awesome because the crowds make the show. And when you go to WrestleMania and you see there are people who have traveled thousands and thousands of miles to be at this one show and they're there and they want to experience the wrestling sort of superstores that are at these pay per views, like they go and buy a lot of stuff because for them it's not as accessible as it is here. Like we can just order off of WWE shop and it shows up in our doorstep a week later. Like for them, like there's global shipping, Fanatics handles a lot of that, but it's still not like the cost has to be higher. And so doing it this way for them brings nostalgia to the experience and it makes it memorable. Oh, I got this when I was in the US going to WrestleMania or whatever. And I think like, as long as we can take that experience and sort of apply it to cards and say like, you know, hey, when you are looking at wrestling, by the way, there's all these other avenues that you can use to show your fandom. Like I, I feel like that's a natural extension and, and I've been talking a bit about it on videos for three, four years at this point. Because we've seen how much WWE is committed to going to global audiences for their pay per views and for their shows. And they do this European tour every year. So hopefully fanatics finds a way to capitalize on that because we'd love to have more people come into the hobby from outside the US and change this, change the landscape even further to a more positive experience globally for, for collectors around the world, no doubt. And you know, one market that does get Talked about enough is just like, the Latin American market. Like, we just, we just, like, there's momentum and energy around wrestling just south of the border. And I. Huge. Yeah. Think that is. There's a huge opportunity there. So I'm excited to see how it all plays out. Just, I totally forgot to cover the women's side of this. I just want to say one thing about this. They put Liv Morgan in a match with three women who absolutely deserve a shot at being the next person up in this semifinal match. You have Alexa Bliss, widely collected, huge amounts of fans. You have Chelsea Green, who is probably the unchosen, sort of like, why isn't she getting more time? She's been injured. She's back. This is her first match back. And then you have Becky lynch, who people have said, like, why aren't Becky lynch and live having a short program while Stephanie is hurt back here is hurt. So, like, then you put your champion in this match, which I have said is probably one of the worst indefensible booking decisions I've ever seen. One of them was bringing back Brock Lesnar back, which may have been out of their control, but this is, this is a close number two, and they both happened within the last hunt. Like, I don't know, man. Yeah, the. Yeah, I'm, I'm sitting there watching Smackdown and rooting my heart out for Chelsea Green because I, I, I wanted to see Chelsea Green get that spot and get that moment. And then after it was over with, my immediate thoughts were, well, okay, well, this has got to be some sort of vehicle in, in order to break up the judgment day or do something judgment day related, which I don't know if that's the case, but if it is, that just sucks to dedicate an entire tournament around. And the, the, the. As we're talking about unforgivable things, the most unforgivable thing of them all is looking at this list of amazing talent, and Tiffany Stratton is nowhere to be found. Exactly. We mentioned that last week. And then she shows up on smackdown. Not to, not to defend the fact that or argue about the fact that she's not in the tournament, but then to get involved in a tag match, it was just like, I'm like, what are we doing here? Like, what? Tiffany Stratton is one of those talents. Like when she comes on TV and I'm like, turning on my kids shows in the morning. And smackdown was on from the night before. Like, my, my daughter, like, stops in her track, she's like, who is this? I want to watch this. And it's. I don't know. I think everyone on this pod is like, closet tiffy time fans. And yes, that she's not on here. Like, Tiffany Stratton should have been in Liv's spot. I, I said last week, these brackets look like they were built by Chat GPT. And like, ChatGPT is like, oh, the champion needs to be in the tournament because the champion is facing the champion at the end. Like, so somebody was arguing with me on Twitter about, like, because I said, there's no reason for Liv to be in this tournament. And, and they said, well, it's a vehicle to break up the judgment day, just like you said. I was like, does a live Morgan vs Raquel Rodriguez match need to happen? Absolutely it does. Eventually. Eventually it does. Is this the setup that you use to get there? Hell no. Like, are you serious? Like, and this is in Wrestling fans love to book tournaments. Like, let's just. And Tony Todd is a perfect example of this. He loves tournaments because he's a mark and he's a wrestling fan at heart. And so every AEW show has a tournament of some sort. This is why you don't do tournaments, because it books you into a corner and you can't get out of it. And now the finals being Raquel versus Liv. So now you're doing. You're going to have the finals be Raquel versus Liv. You have to challenge the champion of your brand. So then you're doing SummerSlam Liv versus Raquel again. Like, I, I, I don't understand. It's, it's so dumb. But let's not spend 20 more minutes talking about bad booking decisions. I think we're getting down a path, but that was my thought. Can I just one, like to end this segment on just a positive note. And I wrote this down watching Raw last night, and I just wanted to highlight it because it wasn't really in the agenda. But talking about someone specifically that I think I hope we both can agree on is bringing freshness and energy to WWE television. I just want to take a, a minute to recognize Penta and I. That match with Ray Mysterio. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I did the, the go down the list on cage match of what his last matches. You've got the match with Ray, which was fantastic. You have the Fatal Four way in the tournament. Javon Evans match. Ethan Page, Saturday night's main event. Obviously, you have the six Pack ladder match at Mania. He's great, which was great. Penta is my favorite television wrestler in the wwe. I know I'm gonna get a spectacular match each and every time he's on television. And he, you know, I've been watching Penta a long time. I watched Penta in aew and he was more of a tag guy. But every time he was in a singles match or he was in a tag match, I was always just like, even going to the arena watching, I was like, this guy is incredible. But I, I fear that it wouldn't translate in wwe because we know what WWE has done with mask wrestlers not named Rey Mysterio for its history. But, man, this is exactly how a new talent should be introduced. A new. Just. Just let Penta cook, man. Let him cook. And he has really restored order to that Intercontinental title. And I just think he should get a ton of credit. And also, like, he's a guy that, I think kids, collectors, he just feels like a guy that is ripe to be collected from this community because he's, he's doing all the right things. And it feels like he's not like, soaring at the level of, like, Obafemi, but he's slow and steady, elevating his brand and his presence on the main roster. I, I have been proven wrong a number of times by Penta. Like, I, I've, like, I've, like, oh, they've got him in this weird match versus, you know, some guy on Raw. This is going to be boring. But Penta is cool. Like, everything about Penta is cool. His, his gear is cool, his mask is cool, his face paint is cool. And like, he's overcome sort of like the, the language barrier that exists with American audiences. Just don't really connect with people who can't get on the mic and, and cut a promo in wwe. That's part of the character package. And collectors love him. And, like, I'm actually shocked that there hasn't been, like, one guy, a collector, who has, like, stood out as, like, I'm going to be the Pentaguy. Because he definitely deserves, like, a major super collector behind him. And every match he does, I am just shocked at how good it is. And they mentioned that match with Rey Mysterio happened a couple of years ago on Lucha Underground or something like that, where Ray and Penta had a match together and it was just as good. This was a TV match. They didn't get the proper sort of like, non commercial interrupted match time. But that match was so freaking good. And, like, Penta deserves all the credit, man. Like, he has really overcome every hurdle that most new WWE talent run into and most People who come in with sort of like a gimmick that doesn't fit the normal WWE mold over. He's overcome all of that. And they did that one segment where he, like, met a kid who loved, who wanted his figure and like all the other stuff. It's just. He's great with kids. He's great to be that person, to like be a face and, and be awesome. I, I really hope that they run with this and sort of pass the torch from Rey Mysterio to him, even though it doesn't need to be mass wrestler to mass wrestler passing the torch, but just the, the commonality between those two experiences is so key. Great, great entrance music as well, which is half the he didn't get def rebelled. Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's. Let's move on to some card market high spots. And of course into Cosmic Grove. Like, it seems every podcast we. We get to talk about a new product these days. And, and, and that was after going months without being able to talk about anything. And Chrome, Cosmic, Cosmic, Chrome, Chrome Cosmic, however you want to say it came out last. Last week on Thursday. Breaks are flying. I've seen most breakers sort of like already out of product. Like most new breakers. No, most new breaks are not being posted on Fanatics Live or on whatnot. There's some people that still have some cases, but I think this product's been flying. Like, what's. Have you had a chance to sort of look at some of the cards and see how this is aligning to your own collecting tendencies? Because I, I've spent a lot of time sort of figuring this out for myself, and my approach is vastly different than it has been from other products. Yeah, I think it's been different to navigate because of what you suggested in the release cycle, we have been flooded. You know, you go from Chrome to all of its variations and Sapphire and then Royalty and now Cosmic. It's just exalted, like Universe. It's. It feels like we got everything at once. And so I think because we got everything at once, more or less, it's made me pick and choose where I wanted to spend my time and energy and effort. And a lot of the times for me, it's simply, what does it look like? How does it make me feel? Is this something I'm interested in? And I don't. I'm. I'm not ready to say that. Like, I think Cosmic Chrome is a bad product or I don't like the way it looks, but it's just not an area of focus for Me, I think we've talked about this privately, but I am such a massive fan of Topps Chrome. And it just came out, I feel like. And I feel like I'm still chasing stuff out of that product. And I've shown 2026 Chrome to football card collectors, basketball card collectors, and they're like, look at this design. This is amazing. I'm like, it's like my favorite Chrome design ever. So I've been so infatuated by that, that product, that everything else, like, I feel like I'm just like, does this measure up to that? And if it doesn't, I'm just sticking in my way. So, yeah, Cosmic Chrome. When I've seen it in other sports, baseball specifically, like, even though I'm not a baseball collector, I've just, like, thought, like, yeah, this just isn't for me. So I haven't taken that, like, plunge in, digging into the checklist, understanding the makeup, all the things that I usually do when I buy a product. I've just kind of sat on the sidelines and watched everything unfold. Yeah, I, I think Ryan and I are, are generally the same way. I've done a few breaks. I think I get my first cards in today when the mail shows up. But I'm a. I, I have two analogies here. You were in Vegas for WrestleMania last year or the year before, right? Yes, the year before. Yeah. And you know how Vegas loves a buffet, right? And you have huge areas dedicated this buffet, and there's every food you could ever want, right? And if you were in a restaurant and you're like, man, I'll just have a New York strip. Give me some potatoes, I'm good. But in a buffet, you have to go and eat everything because there's so much awesome food in front of you. I feel like this year of wrestling cards is a Las Vegas buffet. If I want, like, I ate so much Chrome, I ate so much Royalty, and I'm a big dude. So, like, you know, I thought, hey, this would be great. You know, I can just go gorge myself on Chrome and Royalty. And then a product like Cosmic comes out and I'm just like, I don't have any more stomach space left. I can't go and eat that piece of chocolate cake or whatever that's probably delicious. It's just not me. It's not for me. And I think the other thing I was going to say is, like, in a year where there is three products, like last year we had Chrome Finest and Cactus Jack, releasing kind of the out there product Like Cactus Jack is bad because there's no other options. Like, you either have Chrome or Finest or Cactus Jack and that's it. There's very few other choices in a year like this, you can put out kind of a crazy product like Chrome and there's like six other products, like, still on shelves that if you don't like this, you can go and continue to eat the Chrome, continue to eat Royalty, you know, from that buffet. And I think, like, that's where I was a little bit sort of taken taking steps back from Cosmic just because I was, you know, so full from Chrome. And I'm still, like you said, I'm still chasing stuff from Royalty. I'm still chasing stuff from Universe. I'm still chasing from all these other sets. Like, I don't need to go super hard on in the Cosmic because it's just like, it'll be here. Like, I can go and collect the planets as they, as they come out. I don't need to do it the same way like Chrome. If I don't get that out of two black refractor that pops up on eBay, there's only two of them. Like, what am I gonna do? So that I didn't go hard on breaks. I did a few with people that I like and I think it's, it's something that it doesn't speak to me kind of your point. Like, I, I'm not. I said on the podcast before, like, the, the 1990s laser tag arena, like, background for these cards just doesn't really speak to me. But I love the planets. I think the planets are really cool cards in. I can't wait to see them in hand. I. That was my, my main thing. But I'm, I'm curious, like, do you have. If you had to target like one card from this product, like one set or something, did you see any that really sort of like, oh, that one's cool. Not. Honestly, man. Not particularly. And again, it's not because I think they look terrible. It's just more of a representation. I just don't think they're for me. Like, when I think about my collection and my like, row of wrestling cards, I just can't picture a Cosmic Chrome. If I bought something, it wouldn't be in there for long. And it's just interesting and listening to you talk about it because I view, you know, you as a very, very hardcore collector because you're focused and dedicated on Becky Lynch. So it's just interesting for me to hear that you're kind of like, you're full and you're like, I don't know, like, I have to pick and choose my spots. And if I think if, like, if Adam says this because you chase what I view is like, almost everything. If Adam says this, like, what do other people say about it? So, like. Right. I think that concerns me a little bit. Just. I know we might talk about, like, price and longevity and if cards will hold, but it's just. I don't know. I just don't know if the market has the appetite for this right now. Maybe if it was released in fall and we hadn't seen a new product in a while, maybe people are excited. I'm. I might be. I might be spending more time with this, but it's just, there's, there's too much right now and, and the, the, the market's still forming in real time. Yeah. And I think, like, we don't have the, the, the spread of collectors here. The end users that are going to suck up another 3,000, 4,000 case release, like traditionally Tops or Panini releases a product. It's like 2,500 cases, right? Chrome, there were like, I think Slab Squatch on Twitter who does the breakdown every time. Great account to follow. Said There were like 4,000 hobby cases, 4,000 breakers delight cases. Royalty had like 3 or 4,000 cases like there were. There's just been a glut of wrestling products released inside of that massively packed release calendar. So it's not just like, oh, I can go buy a couple boxes of this and it's loaded because there's only a thousand cases that were made. Like, they made a lot of this product. There's only two or three autos per case. So, like, it just kind of like forces people to buy more to get what they want. And I just don't see a Becky lynch orange refractor out of 25, though. It's very hard to pull because you're only getting two to three autos a case selling for more than an orange refractor autograph from Topps Chrome Hobby. And that connection point for wrestling collectors just needs to be there. Like, we, we, we are not the same market as baseball or football or basketball, where you have thousands upon thousands of collectors all hunting for the same stuff. Does that also mean that cards like the planets are going to be, you know, cheaper to acquire? Maybe in some cases. But if there's still only 10 Pluto cards to go around and people want to complete their solar systems, like, those cards are still going to sell for relative Cost to what they would sell for in like a football or basketball. So you. They may not go for 25 grand, but if you look at the relative cost of the rest of the planets, it's still going to be a very expensive card. So. So I think like that's where I'm not sure if this is going to hold up the same way as it would in a basketball or a baseball, where you have a lot more people with familiarity around how these products work and you have more people to suck up all of like the excess stuff that falls out the bottom. Right? Yeah, yeah, no doubt. I think you have to have a reason to really want it and collect and like you were talking about if it is to complete the solar system. That seems like a good reason to collect if. Or buy in. If you collect a specific wrestler who you can do that with, that seems like a compelling reason. Are there any. Is there anybody? I would imagine no, but I have not looked myself. Is there any introductions on this checklist or is it this the same kind of checklist of talent? So I was just going to talk about that. So great segue here. So AJ Lee is a sig. Is a signer in this product. She has not had autographs in a WWE product for what like 10 years? Like she's like, this is her first autograph cards. So that's big, right? You pull an AJ Lee autograph, like the, the history that she brings to the division of, you know, the, the lead up to, to the diva era and all that other stuff. Like her, she has collectibility beyond just her recent run. And so putting her in this product as like a, an anchor sort of individual for whatever reason she wasn't in Chrome, which I thought would have been a massive like autograph to have. She had base cards but not autographs, like that's a miss. But having her in this product, like that's big. Then you have like, you have Joe Hendry and you have like the, the, the Dark State people from nxt, sort of Saquon Sugars and all those guys joining the Ross here. But they were in other products too. So I don't think that there's. Other than AJ Lee, like there was no one that jumped out to me. I was told that maybe Jesse Ventura has autographs in this, which I think is friggin awesome. But I haven't actually seen any of them pulled like the legend. Autographs are really hard polls in this, so I think maybe that sort of comes into focus. But yeah, I don't know if there's really like an anchor being that is like driving this other than AJ Lee. And then you have your usual suspect, Stone Cold Roman Reigns, so on and so forth. Yeah, I almost, if, if fanatics is going to continue to release at this clip, it almost, it almost, I almost think that there needs to be, you know, five and maybe 10 is too many, but five to 10 of those A.J. lee types of moments baked into the product to get people interested who are chasing, whether it's new talent or legend signing, something like that to make it a little more interesting. Yeah, I gotta agree. I, I, we're all waiting for Danhausen autographs. Like, we're, we're waiting for Danhausen cards. The only other like older wrestler that I think they need to bring back is Sable. And she's, you know, she's connected to Brock Lesnar. So like, get her to sign some freaking cars when you, when you get a deal with her. Like, seriously, maybe she doesn't want it, but there's got to be a reason. It used to be Batista. He signed for Panini. Like there's guys out there, but I mean, like, anybody who can sign is signing. Like, I think like that's, that's the thing is like, oh, you had a cup of Coffee in WWF in 1989. Here, sign some cards. Like, you know, I can't, I can't imagine what a Sable on card Super Fractor auto would do. I can't even imagine. I, I, I believe it, man. Like, I've said that for, I told that to Lucas at Panini. We were at the national and we were talking and I said, like, you got to get Sable to sign some cards. Like, we're trying, we're trying. Like, you know, it's, it's gonna happen. And the Rock was obviously one of those people too. And they got the Rock to do his thing and he signed a bunch of cards and now his autograph is diluted a little bit. But that first Sable autograph, Super Fracture. Can you imagine, man? Just don't, don't have the, don't have the wild man Mark Mero anywhere near the background. Yeah, where's Marc Mero? Why isn't Marc Mero signing cards? Geez. Anyways, I think, like, I just want to talk a little bit about the planets because they seem to be the big chase for this product, and rightfully so. You look at other sports like the planets drive cosmic. And for those of you who weren't familiar with baseball and basketball, like these cards, like the rarer planets in a PSA 10, like that's what people do is they get the planets, they get their solar system, and they want PSA 10 versions of all of these cards. Sometimes for like a Pluto, there's very limited copies. So the PSA 10 sell for a ton of money. I think there was a, a Wembanyama that sold for over 20 grand. And in Pluto, LeBron James sold for like 25 grand. Ohtani goes for like 12,5. Like it's, it's big. Now. WWE won't reach those levels, but they could get close on some of them, especially with a rare Roman Reigns or John Cena, you name it. So the sun through the Earth are very common. If you've watched case breaks, there's like two or three of these per case. And that's cool. I mean, like, you, you want cards like that because they look awesome. The sun cards, even though they're insanely common compared to other sports, like, they look really cool and they're very common. The Mars through Jupiter is like less common. So like, you can pull maybe one Mars card every case or every other case when you get out into like Saturn through Neptune. Like, those are very rare. And I think one of the. We've only had a couple of them sell. Becky lynch actually just sold for like $850. No, it was not me that bought it. So just keep that in mind. And then Pluto is like impossible now. I was dragged on Twitter because Pluto's not a planet. I didn't design the set. So it's, it's a, it's a, it's a solar body. It's a dwarf planet. Let's give Pluto some credit here. But I think like, the values here have been huge. We're seeing like there was a Becky Lynch Jupiter that sold for 360. I, I'm. These are not me. So I'm not buying these cards because I, I, like I said, we've already discussed why Dominic Mysterio, somebody's obviously picking these off because he's had like five or six sales. All of them are over like three, $200. You know, the, the, the sun is like 50 to $100. Like, they're big numbers for how common some of these inner planets are. But it's just, it's interesting to sort of see this play out in real time because you see the attraction they have in baseball and football and basketball. Right? Yeah, I think back to just, I think it's cool that you bake in something in a product that is, has collectors having to do something outside of maybe just staring and buying into breaks, but just go out and whether it's navigate ebay, whether it's, you know, make deals in groups to try to acquire a complete collection of. Of something. And I think whether it's this or whether it's something else in the future, like those types of chases I think are always good to, to put into products. All right, just moving on because we're. We're already 40 minutes into this and we love to chat but like we've got a lot still to cover here. The J USO WrestleMania patch put on fanatics collect recently. Yeet all around. Good luck to Breaker Mayfield. Alex, that's his card. What if you had to guess the hammer price here? It ends in a few days. We'll probably cover it maybe on the next podcast if it's done by then. But it was a 10 day auction. It's already up at like 7,500 bucks. Like curious, like this was his very important card. He first title, first world title won at WrestleMania. What would be your prediction on the hammer price here? So I think it's up to 8k I checked this morning. So I think it bumped up a little bit. It's so hard to tell. Right. We have one anchor, one, one like strong public anchor at auction, which is obviously the Orton. And I think what you have to consider with this card is what you referred to and I think it might get lost in the shuffle a little bit. But you know, going from Royal Rumble last year to in, in Indianapolis to going to WrestleMania in Las Vegas, I can remember walking into the convention center in Indianapolis and it was every other shirt was Jay uso shirt. Yeah, still to this day. Yeah, still. Still to this day. The guy sells merch. And so there's like this wave of momentum going into the Royal Rumble for Jey uso And I, I sat there and I was for the Gunther match live and I was like, ah, what, what is this gonna look like? And I was pleasantly surprised like I thought it was. They did a nice job kind of getting J USO the title in the way they went about it. And I think like that's really important just long term, whatever this price goes, whatever this goes for, I think Jay USO will always be an important character of this era. And there's not many of these that you could say and we'll see how long this goes. But like he won his first title, major title wearing this. And it's on a card and it's in a chase product. And I Just think that's really, really important. So I don't think if I had to guess, I don't think like that's, I don't think people who will be bidding are connecting all those dots. Maybe they are or maybe there's people who aren't connecting the dots who if they did connect the dots would be bidding on this higher. But just like that story is really important with this card specifically. If I had to guess a price, it's, it's impossible. I, I, I'll say, I'll say 225 right now is, is, would be my, that's where I was. Yeah I was, I was in the same spot. Okay. And like I think these cards, we need more public comps on these cards just to set the record like straight here. Like Randy Orton is not an outlier. Like Randy Orton is a huge sale. It sold for a ton of money. But I don't think Jay USO is going to sell for a little bit. It's going to sell for comparably to other wrestling cards a huge amount of money. So I think like having more wrestling cards clear the 20k mark which I think this will, I think that's good if it gets up into the 40k range. Like Randy Orton. Oh like all bets are off. Like Jay USO is not a widely collected guy even though he's had tag title after tag title now world title, intercontinental title. Like his resume is insane and like he's, he's still the one of the most popular wrestlers on the roster. And I mentioned what happened with Obafemi coming out and commanding an audience for all of last year. That was Jey USO and WWE pulled the trigger on that and it didn't, it went okay. But like it wasn't like Jay USO is not a wrestler that has Matt classic five star bangers. He's a guy that you know is, he's an entrance merchant and like, you know like and that's the, that's, that's not me saying it, that's other people saying it too. And I think it's, it's fine. Like that's what people love about WWE is the, is the, the spectacle of these entrances and the spectacle of the characters and that's Jay USO is no better example. There's no better example than Jay uso. The final note from me on this is just the composition of the card and the photo that is used. It is so good. It is. He's got the title in his hand. He's obviously title in the Air, which you could. Or hand. Other hand in the air, which you imagine he's yeeting. And it's just a perfect picture of uso. So I'm interested to see how this one goes. It'll be interesting if it did start to flirt up with the Orton card, what that would mean for the rest of everything. And before we get off of this, I have been saying this in my head, and I haven't talked. Where the hell is the John Cena? Where are we at, Adam? We had four. We've had four of these pulled in the last week. So we've had Gunther, Tiffany, Stratton, Finn, Balor, and I'm forgetting one. There was one other one pulled and Jacob Fatu. Where's Cena? Where's Punk? Where's Ria? Like, all of these are the big names that people have been looking for. They're still ripping these cases on whatnot in Fanatics Live. They're all over the place. There were a lot of cases and a lot of international cases as well. So maybe it's been pulled, maybe not. I have not seen it. I've been tracking them on Twitter. Follow me at SD Uncensored. You can get them every time they pulled. I posted on Twitter, but I think, like, one scene is pulled, man. Like, I'm curious what happens to the royalty product, because people are literally chasing that card. And, you know, I hope Jay sells for a ton. Like, I hope Alex gets his. His bag because, like, Alex is a good guy. And. And, like, this card is awesome. The set is awesome. Like, I hope people bid on this, but if it gets up into the range of, like, 40K, John Cena just became, like, a $200,000 card. Oh, yeah. Everyone who's breaking the product is doing backflips. They're all watching this one. So I'll be. I'll be watching. I'm excited. All right, so, Brett, you sent over some topics you wanted to discuss. I love doing this. This is my favorite part of the podcast. I love talking about hot topics. We'll call this off the top rope. Brett, I'll hand it to you to sort of lead into this, and then I'll give mine after you're done. Let's. Let's start with you here. Yeah. The first one is big cards locked in collections. Does this make things more unpredictable when big cards are auctioned? This is a topic that is on my mind, and I think here's some just things I'll throw out there. And, Adam, I'd love your reaction, but I just think about how important like price discovery is in so many other categories where cards are maybe trade trading more often and more fluid. And I think the, what my observations with wrestling is that the market loses price discovery a lot based on the dynamics of the market. And I think next like the scarcity of these cards when they become available, like it becomes very volatile when the cards do become available. People are scrambling trying to figure out like what they should be pay. Sometimes they underperform, sometimes they over perform and then some. And then I think the other element of this that we don't talk about enough as like wrestling card collectors is like it's such an emotional category. Like so many people, like they don't care, they don't look, they're collecting their one guy or their one gal and they're like they're just paying whatever. And I just find wrestling cards in comparison to like almost any other thing I collect in categories to be very emotional. So those are just some thoughts as I'm, I'm thinking through this one. Yeah, I think like I, I don't know anything about locking up cards in a collection. I don't know anything about hyper focus on one player, nothing about that. But I think like, like the lack of public data on wrestling cards and I know Drake has harped on this forever and he wants people to report public sales or private sales on in public on card ladder. Which I think is if you want to set your price that way and you want to do that, that's more power to you, man. Like Steve did that with Ria Ripley's that he's bought and now he's sort of like feeling the effects of trying to buy other Rhea Ripley cards with public comps out there. Like that's like the unpredictable nature of wrestling cards has made it easier for the, the hyper focused collectors to sort of not break the bank when there's public comps out there that might be outliers. So I think like yeah like this is very unpredictable. We've seen like somebody like I think we mentioned before, like there was a Charlotte Flair super fracture with an inscription that sold for like nothing because they don't think the people understood what they had. And so I think like it's a double edged sword. Like I, I think I, I. There is so much unpredictability and I would love for there to be more data because I am a hound for going on card ladder and just building out stuff and yeah, I don't know sort of if there's a real answer to this because it works both ways. Like, I've benefited from there not being public comp data. I've also been like hurt by there not being public comp data because people can name their price and, and they were. Chris and Josh were talking about this on the crossover. Like, there's just, it's just hard to sort of. Like there was a question somebody asked like, how do you negotiate with somebody who wants a million dollars for their one on one? That was the question on the crossover. And I loved the way they went through it because it was like, I don't know, like you got to, you got to figure out a way through it. And it's just like, that's kind of the way that I've functioned now for six, seven years is like wrestling cards just don't have data out there, right? Yeah. I think it works for you and it can work against you. That point you made is so true. The next one I want to bring up is buying one of ones and then relisting them for two to three times what you paid for. This is obviously something that happens very often and very frequently in wrestling cards. And I'll say this like, you can buy any card you want and you can do whatever you want with them as long as you're not manipulating individuals like it's your card. Like, go for that. And I don't want to be the person to say you shouldn't do this, but I'll just say like my observations. As someone who spends my entire professional existence studying markets and categories and collector pockets and niches and understanding dynamics and how things work, the wrestling market isn't built for rapid flipping right now. Can it? Will it? Maybe. But to do this and think that it's sustainable right now in this moment, I don't think is good operating. I just, I can't see it sustaining based on what I know about how this works. And I understand, I don't know everything, but just I look at it a lot. And then the other point I want to make, and this is something that I think about a lot, is ownership of a card does not create value. Like, I don't care what you paid for it. Like that. You, you can't just say that because I own this card and I've held this card for a couple weeks there. This card is, you know, two times what it's worth. When I bought it, I just, I don't, I don't buy into that at all. So those are just some, some thoughts under this bullet that I wanted to get off My desk, man. This is. It's topical because we've all seen what's happened on ebay lately. And. And I think, listen, I'm with you, man. Sell what? Sell your cars for whatever price you want. You can get what you need. Like, fine. All for you. All. More power to you. But it is very visible when you postcards constantly at 2-3x the price that they were paid for a couple of months ago. Like, this space is too small. Like there's. There's. Everybody sees it. Everybody has the save searches on ebay where that little blue dot pops up next to tops one of one panini 101. And you go on there and it's like a card listed for 30 or $40,000. It. Like it's visible, right? Like it's not like football or basketball where those cards change hands multiple times per day or multiple times per week. In wrestling, it's a. It's an event, right? Something sells for 20 grand. We talk about it because there's not many of them. So I think like that. That visibility and I think the entrance of Karl Anthony Towns into the space brings some people who want to take advantage of that situation rightfully so I would too, if I had those cards that I wanted to sell and move and I saw that there was a new shark in the water. Like, you damn right. I'm putting my cards up on ebay if I can. Now, I don't know if that really equates to people building a visa. A visible understanding of those Personas and the people that are listing those cards. I don't really have anything to say about it because it's not my market, but it's like, you know, it's. It's visible, right? So to your point, Brett, like, it's. It maybe has some of the negative effect that comes along with the positive effect of some of those cards actually sell good points. Next one for me, is there real growth or just the same cards changing hands? This is the new money entering versus just recycled money getting turned over and over again. And the way I think about this is, I think right now with wrestling cards, it's really fun and easy to highlight the big sales and talk about cards elevating in price. And we did spent all this time mostly because our friend was the winner, talking about the Randy Orton card. WrestleMania patch auto. And these are good. These are great signals for the health of the market and new buyers coming in. But I think we should be spending more time talking about volume and what's happening maybe at the low to mid end. And I think those indications really help us understand if this market is expanding because like anyone like new people outside of a Carl Anthony Towns or other A list or B list or D list, celebrities coming in like they're probably going to go for the one of one, spending thousands out of the gates. But most people aren't that way. Most people are trying to build out sets, buying, you know, cards out of 99 stuff that's like easy to access and it doesn't cost a lot of money. So that's one of the thing, that's one of the things that I'm trying to spend more time on is just volume. And it seems like there's more volume than ever before, especially if you go all the way up at like what car ladder is reporting on a monthly basis. But yeah, I think volume is something I'm trying to pay more attention to. So I come with data. So let's go. I don't subscribe to the fact that the market is, is not growing. I am staunchly opposed to any public narrative that says wrestling cards are not growing in 2024. This is card ladders data for WWE cards that have sold above $500. How many do you think in 2024 were sold across the whole year? January 1st to December 31st. How many sales of above 500 happen in the wrestling card market? Two hundred and fifty two thousand, three hundred and sixty seven. Okay, I'm way off. Yeah. 2025. So this was a year. So the reason I went back to 2024 is because there was a lot of products released in 2024. There was not a lot of products released in 2025. Do you think it went up or down? Up slightly. It was up more than double 4800 sales above 500 in 2025. Now that's all WWE products, not just 2025 products. So. But it's still a down year. Right. There's only three products that were released, but still we had more than double the amount of $500 sales. Where do you think? Do you think we're on pace or off pace for 2026? We are big time on pace. We are at 2634 sales of greater than $500. We are 43% of the way through the year, which means we are on pace for around 6200 greater than $500 sales. Okay. Huge growth. This is 33% increase year over year. Like that's Wall street would love these numbers. Right. So I think like to say, oh the VIP velvet rope area. Those cards are changing hands more frequently, but that's the only place that it's happening. You mentioned volume. Everybody is saying hey, I want to buy more wrestling cards. And it's happening at these lower levels. I, I can't even pull the data for the hundred dollar sales because there's too many. Like if you go over 10,000, it blanks out on card ladder which I got to talk to Josh and Chris about because I'd like to pull more data. But like these are, these are things that I think are huge indicators of success. Average sale price is up, gem rate data is telling us that everything is up. Like I don't subscribe to the fact that wrestling cards are not growing. No, they, they certainly are good data points. And the final one for me is our great cards, always liquid cards. And I think great cards and liquid cards are not the same thing. And what the way I always think about this. Inside wrestling and outside wrestling cards is the greatest. Cards often have the narrowest buyer pools and I think an easy one. Think about that Orton card. I mean how many people were actually we know too. Was there someone else? So there's. But anyone on the surface, would you look at that card and you talk through it and you all the elements, everyone's like man, that's a great card for all the reasons you just spent, you know, 30 minutes talking about. But not everyone's like that. Not everyone's competing for that. But that doesn't mean just because there's not, you know, a hundred people trying to buy it doesn't mean that it's a bad card or something else. But so that's how I always try to think about it. Like the narrower you get, typically that means that the cards might be a little more significant than your traditional liquid card that you can walk into any card show in America and sell for exactly the price you want. I posted on Main Event a year ago and the two year anniversary is coming up, coming up here this Friday. But I did a post of the prospective buyer pool. As you increase value on the cards, it shrinks exponentially. Like a hundred dollars. You got maybe like a thousand, two thousand people. And then by the time you reach like a $10,000, there's maybe three or four people that are going to buy that card. So. Agreed. I'm going to go through mine really fast here, but I just want to call out. I heard a horror story on Instagram this week and it was a card that I was looking at but man, like watch yourself now. That wrestling cards are bigger. Like, the bad actors are going to see this as an opportunity to take advantage of people who have not been taken advantage of in the past. And I want you guys to. Who are listening to this just because you know what's going on, and I am probably somebody who's been doing this for 25 years, still get scammed. But watch your self. Trust is something that cannot be assumed. It has to be earned. Do your. Do not do friends and family payments. Do your goods and services. Protect yourself. Like, just because it's on ebay, just because it's through a trusted platform does not mean that there aren't bad actors looking to do stuff that is really bad. And as wrestling cards get bigger, more and more of those people are going to come in. So I just wanted to call that out. PSA for everybody. Public service now. And not professional sports authenticators, but psa. Like, watch your back. Like, don't trust anybody. Take the stone cold Steve Austin approach, please. So I don't know if you have anything to add there. No. Do you have a specific example to call out? I don't want to, like, put this guy out, but. But, like, I think, like, I. I've been scammed before. Like, I've been scammed recently, like, within the last two or three years. And, like, it just happens, man. Like, people find new ways. Especially, like, the. What I ran into the most was, like, discords. Like, there are people who professionally sit on discords and scam people and like, suggest, like, they have the crate. Like, they. They did fake middleman deals. Like, these are just like, stuff that would never have happened in wrestling cards, like, any other time. But because these guys see new discords, new people don't know the history. Like, they're like, oh, yeah, here's the middleman for this discord. Go send him the card. He'll charge you 1%. And then you realize it's not the right guy. It's some dude in Vietnam. Like, I'm sorry that happened to me. I backed out before I actually sent anything. But I was about to send a PayPal payment to somebody to be a mailman on a deal, and I realized, wait a minute, this. This name is. This address has a Vietnam sort of IP address. Like, what is going on here? So watch yourself. That's all. Yes, I. One of the other things I wanted to call out, I was listening to a podcast and it said. And they said, is it more fun to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing? Is that why so many people are coming to wrestling cards and having fun. Like, I think it was probably hoage that that said this, but I'm not sure. He says a lot of great nuggets and I've already called one out here in this segment. But is it just more fun to do. Maybe it was Josh that said this, but is it more fun to do the opposite of what other people are doing? Is, is that just part of your collecting experience? I think it is. I certainly am. Always. I've been saying this for years, like, try to turn left when others are turning right in the space. And the fun part about wrestling cards, for anybody who listens to stacking slabs in the shows on here who might not collect wrestling cards, which. What's the crazy thing is, Adam, is I get feedback from people who listen to this show and don't collect wrestling cards, which is great, of course. Yeah. But the best part about wrestling cards to me is the opportunity to not only do that, but you can do that and collect unbelievable stuff that likely will hold or go up in value over time because the space is so dominated by player collectors and sometimes some bigger names and bigger cards get lost in the shuffle. So, like that's what's so appealing to me. Obviously, I'm a wrestling degenerate. I watch everything. I've been watching it all my whole life. I'm a collector. So bringing those two worlds together is fun, but it doesn't work like football cards or basketball cards where, like the goats are in these tiers. It's all over the place. And I think when stuff's all over the place, it presents really fun opportunities to get in and buy cards that you love and connect with. And sometimes even if it you're spending a little money, sometimes, like I feel like I'm getting a deal, which is always a good thing when I'm trying to pick up a new card. Yeah, I, I. Nothing to add there. You nailed it. Does lack of outside collecting experience from wrestling collectors put a ceiling on growth in our space? That, that's something that I think about frequently. And the reason I say that is because a lot of people in wrestling cards only collect wrestling cards. And it's unique, right? It's. It's unique that this exists the way that it does. And I think it makes the space more fun, more community oriented, easier to build those relationships because you have like minded individuals all chasing the same thing. But does it put a ceiling on the growth when you look at relative comparison? You just talked about people who don't collect wrestling cards. Listening to this podcast. Like, we have so much fun collecting wrestling cards. It's not about the money for us, it's about the experience as much as it is anything. And like, do you think that that adds a ceiling to things? Because there's not that greater understanding of how big some of these other sets might be. Like why the Galactics from Revolution don't sell for as much in wrestling as they do in basketball. Or why the planets from Cosmic like we were just talking about may have a different approach than they would in other sports. I think at first glance it is really easy to see and say that this category is limited and has a lower ceiling because of that. But I also think because of that this opens the doors in the eyes of the high end basketball card collector or the high end football card collector or baseball collector who watches wrestling regularly or watches wrestling as a kid and who hears a podcast like this or stumbles across a card on ebay and it gets them in the rabbit hole. And then they start to question and ask these questions, well, why isn't this, this flawless card going for the same thing as this Topps Chrome card? And they start doing the math based on what they know in their category and they find opportunities. And it's like in anything when, when there's opportunities and we connect with them emotionally and we think that there's financial upside typically will come in. And I think shows like this are important. Other people in this space creating content are important because it opens the eyes to, to people that there's opportunity in the space and not only financial opportunity, but opportunity to have a lot of fun. So I, I, I think in the moment it feels very capped. But if we kind of lay out the road for the next like three to five years, there are going to be more people entering the space who aren't even thinking about wrestling cards right now because enough moments percolated in their head for them to say, you know what, this weekend I'm going to spend some time trying to understand wrestling cards. And when they dig into the data in card ladder, when they dig into the sets and configuration, they look at the sales history, they're going to say, oh my God, I see an opportunity with Wrestler X and I'm just going to go. And so I just see that, for example, yeah, penta, before this gets released, I might need to go buy some penta cards. Yeah, get it, get your, get your bag. Yeah, but yeah, that's, those are my thoughts. Yeah, I think like, I think you nailed it. Like I, for me to Get a wrestling card grail is what, 10 grand, 15 grand maximum. Like in most cases I can't even buy like the most recent set rookie for that price in any other sport. And like if I bought the most expensive wrestling card ever sold at like 132,000, whatever it was, like that's not even entry level grail at most other sports. So I think like there's still a huge amount of opportunity. I do not believe there's a ceiling on wrestling cards. It all depends on the people surrounding it and the companies that support it. So just to sort of highlight a few things, just talking about these big sales that sort of drive it. I'm not going to call it the card specifically, but there was a cena that sold for 15k. There was a rock that sold for 13 and a half. Like you talk about like, hey, there are opportunities here to like post these cards for 2 to 3x and get the sales done. This like you can go on card ladder and sort by price and see like to breath's point, like these sales are happening. This flawless scenic card sold for a ton. And the rock super fracture from the super the retrospective set sold for 13 and a half both via best offer. So these weren't auctions. These were like best offer sales. Just interesting numbers to throw around and talk about like how much potential there is when you have new people joining the space. Right. I think that there's a ton of anonymous collectors out there. We like to think we know everyone who collects the stuff that we do. But there are a lot of people spending really big money on wrestling cards that are adding it to their existing portfolio of other sports or maybe they're celebrities or athletes. I just, I think we don't even have a clue of some of these people in these sales. So I hope we don't see some of these cards. I hope they stay locked away for a long time. Yeah. And Kyrie Sane is another one. She had a super fracture with an awesome inscription. The red brand from 2026 Chrome sold via best offer at 7K. Recently someone's been buying up the Oscar and Kyrie cards. I loved seeing this because it seems like it's one or two people that that might be doing it and they have such a huge market internationally. We were just talking about that. This is a humongous sale for somebody who's no longer with wwe. But this card's absolutely awesome. Yeah, I think that's great. Right? Someone just got future endeavored and people are still willing to pay 7k on so I would imagine this is a big time collector with a big bankroll. But it's exciting to see because there's so much movement on the roster. And it's awesome that these cards still hold value even if they're not an active talent. I don't know what happened to my images there, but it was an Alexa Bliss Super Fractor autograph from Cosmic chrome sold for 57.50. So this, this is the Milky Way marks and it's a weird set, very small autograph space. But I thought the Alexa card looked absolutely awesome. If, if it was on the slide you would see it. But it's. For whatever reason my images got erased. But like it was sold via Best Offer. Again, so not an auction. Just interesting to see that all these big cards are selling via Best Offer. Maybe that's an indicator to post your cards this way. But seeing that Alexa is still hugely collectible. She has not won a world championship in five plus years with the pregnancy and all the wonderful stuff that happened to her there. But she's. She has a concussion history as well. Like people are still ready to put a ton of money into Alexa Bliss. Yeah, she's like on the Mount Rushmore of collectible goats in wrestling. At this point it seems like last card I'll cover here because this was a really unique situation. So there were two of these that sold. It's the 6 WCW NWO. I don't even know the name of the set, but it's like the 30th anniversary of the NWO sold for $4,000. This one had one of those inscriptions. It was a NWO for Life. It's an awesome, awesome card. Not a Sean Waltman fan, but even this card looks cool. It's a throwback to the 1998, 99 WCW autographs that are so iconic. Not my favorite set either, but four grand via auction. This was won by a Zero Feedback bidder. But I know that this was paid and I know that this card ended up with somebody's collection because they posted it on Instagram. So humongous sale for this is the biggest Xbox sale. Sean Walman's character list. One, two, three, kid. Nothing's ever come close. This is just an insane sale. This was in Chrome. This was in Chrome. Yeah. I had no idea. They're very hard to pull. They have. I've watched, I've watched way too many breaks and I've never seen one that just shows you they're only out of 10. So like a lot of these autographs are very hard to pull and they're going to run through. I think there's some of these that will be in finest maybe, but like there was only three autographs like Nash 6 and maybe one other. I don't think it was Hogan. So there's going to be more of these coming. NWO still sells. NWO still sells. All right, let's just do a quick takeover update for the National. We are less than two months away, my friend. I hope you are ready. I want to say, like, if you are Planning on coming July 31st, the Embassy Suites, Rosemont, Illinois will be the biggest gathering of wrestling collectors in one spot ever. We have room for 350 people. I expect more than that, unfortunately, because we have such great publicity from all of our sponsors. Shout Out MC Sports Cards Sports Cards Junction Sports Card Junction Card Shop Live Bless Online Card Ladder Mama Breaks THC Sports Cards BCW Wax Culture Card Vault by Tom Brady is that that might be the best roster of sponsors ever assembled. Acknowledge our sponsors and let us know you're coming. You just made a list. Email booktolastpodcast gmail.com I I have done some cool things in this space and there's been some rewarding things to work on and we still have a whole lot of stuff left to do with this. But to be able to say that we're throwing an event at the national for you, the Wrestling Card Collector and these are the companies that are supporting it is it's an. It's incredible. So I am fired up and we will share more as it comes. But this has been so much fun to put together. Yeah. Can't say enough good things about our sponsors. We'll end with this. And I think this is right up our alley because we always talk about the cards that are forgotten and lost in the cracks. And with all the hype around new cards, what is something that you think many collectors might overlook in their journey that should be higher on priority lists or target lists given all of the glutton of products that have been released. Maybe some things that people are forgetting about. I would say research, like checklist research and understanding the volume of specific parallels in a set over time like that is something especially if I'm spending in the thousands on a wrestling card I have been trying to be better at. And the more I have researched individual sets and taking a wrestler for example and see how often they appear in sets over history and you start whittling it down like you start to understand the importance of the card at a level that gets me to take action. And that's what's happened with a couple recent purchases. And I don't know, man, I love digging in. I love learning. There's a lot of really good resources out there for wrestling cards for you to understand set configuration construction. And the more time I spend there, I feel like the less time I feel like I need to be just like checking save searches. And part of it is just trying to justify like my instincts tell me that this is something that's at a pretty good price point. Let me do some research on the back. And so this, this, this category is moving really fast. There's breaks on top of breaks, new products being released, new talent, People are getting excited. But I would, if anyone is looking for like something else to do, I would say slow down for a minute and focus in on trying to learn more about just like the history of products. And it can be something as simple as like starting from like, okay, when Chrome cards and you can classify Chrome and Prism in there. Like when Chrome cards existed, like how many X happened over this period of time? And I think you'll find some interesting things. That's what I've been doing. I think there's two types of buys that you would coming off of what you just said. There's the buy of like, I just saw this guy on tv, I need a card, right? And you just buy the one that's fits your budget, fits your thing and just, you just go and buy it and it shows up at your door and you're excited until the next guy shows up on tv. Then there's the type of buy where you're going through the data on card ladder. You're going through historical searches, you're going through stuff and you realize, I didn't know that this card exists or I didn't, I haven't paid enough attention to this. Things like the older top sets especially, like I found crazy stuff like we all love the garbage pail kids coming out in Chrome. Not many people know that there was a previous sticker set that had all those cars. So people have discovered those as a result of the new ones. Like stuff like that through research. Like people always say, like, I can't compete in this market. Well, you can if you put in the work. And I think like that's where a lot of the separation of church and state for most collectors is. I don't want this to be work. I want this to be fun. I want this to be a hobby. And so your, your commentary around research and finding those edges is so key to having success here these days just with the growing level of competition. But I would say even in addition to that, like as a title match topic this is where we usually get the time to sort of like think about something in a different perspective. And I think like for me like most collectors overlook the importance of the relationships that they build on this hobby. And we've always said that collect, don't collect on an island. Find your. Your trusted people and build around those relationships. And we've said it so many times it seems like it's cliche at this point but it is still the most important thing in this hobby is relationships with other collectors, relationships with brands. So not just you know, interpersonal relationships of Brett and I talking via text message I'm talking about your relationship to how you feel about a certain set that's released so you can curate your experience in a lot better. If I know my relationship with Chrome is better, I'm going to want to engage more with that product versus something like universe. Right. So I think like the relate the whole idea of the relationship all encompassing is just. Is so important and so many people overlook it and it's. It's just one of those lost arts of like I'm a salesperson. I know you've, you've had marketing experience and sales experience. You sell your brand every week. Like you have to be able to sell yourself and you have to be able to sell your. Your motives and your collection and it has to be visible. And I think a lot of people just want to focus on the next deal getting the best price penny to penny instead of saying like hey Maybe I'll pay $10 extra but I'm going to build this relationship higher than it should have been. Right? Yeah, 100%. I mean an example that I have with just an individual in who's also happens to be it's like a full circle. Happens to be a sponsor for wrestling card takeover but Brian THC like I recently bought two impeccable Roman Reigns 2022 from him and I bought the first one and the which was the green out of five and the experience was like so easy and seamless and I saw he had an out of 25 and I was like it it I I wanted the card even more after the experience was so good that I was like yeah, give me the other one. Let's take that. And so I don't know like that really like buying from people who I know and trust really matters and I will always look at his stuff because that I Will also say make sure it's not a one way street. Make sure that you're adding value to the conversation. Like the more it's a reciprocity thing, the more you give in the space. Helping people out, seeing cards, noticing something in a break, sharing that information to and, and someone who can benefit like you will get something back on the other side. I can promise. Like that stuff compounds, especially in wrestling cards. So this is. Yeah, great, great point. Yeah. Relationships are everything, especially in this space where it feels like everyone kind of knows each other in some way, shape or form. Yeah, that's the key is like this is a really small area and like man, you talk about the hobby karma is real, right? Like let's, let's not deny this. Like I don't believe in karma overall, but hobby karma is real. Like if you do something nice for somebody, like they remember and like where they should. But I've, I've just like those things happen so frequently where you can say hey, this card was pulled. And people do that for me all the time. And I try and say thank you every single time because they didn't have to do that. They didn't have to like reach out and say, hey, this card was just pulled or this, this person has this card for sale. Like you've, you've benefited from that with your Andrew Luck collection. You've benefited for that, for your Colts collection. I've. And I mean you're just talking about how you benefited from those types of relationships in your wrestling card collection. Mine too. Like I would not be halfway to where I am without the community and Ryan and I not. It's like it's nauseous probably feeling for some people how much we talk about this, but it's true, like this is what drives our community and it's so key and I hope people don't overlook it. But you know, that was one of the reasons that put this as a title match topic, just to cover that. So final thing for me and I'll put him over because he's not here. But just I want people to understand, like if you don't already, the role that Ryan plays in this space from the point of view of what he does every day professionally walking in and running a one of the best hobby shops in the country. It's all about dealing with people, like dealing with people being helpful, answering questions. And that's what Ryan is doing all the time. And so why I like listening to him on this show is because he offers that perspective. And I think whether It's Ryan or it's someone else. Like, it's really important to listen to those people who have their entire livelihood on customer service and being helpful. And I think the more people that in the wrestling hard space that have that mindset mentality, I think that only means good things for us, all of us in our cards. So yeah, it's just that wanted to while he's out, we'll put him over for sure. He deserves it. And the funny thing about it is like he owns. He has. He's probably one of the more visible card shops in the nation and no one dislikes him. Like, there are. There's like no single person on this planet that has a bad thing to say about Ryan Bannister for a reason and because he's great at what he does. And he's not the only one. Like, you know, you. You're by your next door to Andy at IndyCard exchange and like Chad and Sports Car Junction and like all these guys run these shops and they have become pillars of the card community because that like we have a few of them as our sponsors. Like even the breakers like Stephanie at Card Shop Live and what Brando does. I'm sorry, what Brando does at Card Shop Live and what Stephanie does at Mama Breaks. There we go. Like, like they build communities around this and like I, it's so awesome to see how people react and, and do those things. And. And I, I can't say enough good things. I mean like even a newer sort of entry to the space in like the Wax Culture, who's another sponsor of ours, like, they've recently sort of exploded into wrestling and they've built a great community as well. And that's why we've welcomed them on as a sponsor for Wrestling Card Takeover and you know, Timmy at. At Card Shop at Card Vault by Tom Brady. Like, these are the reasons they're the sponsors for this event because they're invested in the community and putting Ryan over as sort of like one of the initial people to sort of operate in that space as being like this helpful entity with. With Chad as, as one of our original sponsors for main event. Like, I can't say enough good things about what they do for this community too. So yeah, more we miss Ryan is having on. You talk about it all the time. You and Ryan, when you're talking about buying into breaks, of course you're, you're buying because you want to add to your PC, but in most of those instances you're buying because you like the people who are running them, and you're building that relationship, and that's so important. It's just like, if you got a business, don't be a dick. Like, be likable. Create good content. Like, be helpful. It's like, I feel the same way. Like, if I'm sitting there on the couch and there's someone breaking a product that I am somewhat interested in, but I really like the person, like, I'll go buy a spot and hang out for a little bit. Like, that's this. This is the world we're. We're evolving into. And so I think brand and reputation really matter. And it's, It's. It's not hard, and it doesn't cost anything to. To be helpful. And so I have noticed the people who are willing to sponsor an event like Wrestling Card Takeover, willing to help out people that they don't know from Adam. Those are the. Those are the brands and those businesses that continue to grow, and we need those in. In the wrestling card community to continue to elevate what we're doing here. Yeah. So thanks again to our sponsors, Ryan. Wel, We'll. We'll have you back next week. Brett, thank you for taking an hour and a half out of your day to, to stand in for Ryan. You did a. A tremendous job. And we've had a number of co hosts, Kevin and Jameson and everything, who has stepped in and stepped up while. While we've had to take a break from our podcast life to. To live our real life. So thank you so much for being a part of this. It's always great to have you on as a tag team partner, even though the freebird rule doesn't always apply. And I think, like, it's good to have different perspectives. Right. So Ryan and I, you know, that's why we bring on special guests as much as we can. But, you know, having different perspectives is what makes podcast content great. So thank you for, for taking the time and thank you, man. Like, you are the most visible, active contributor to the wrestling card community. And when this whole idea popped up that this was a potential thing, I remember, I think I told Ryan, I was like, on the phone, I was like, well, I. This can't possibly happen without Adam. You're a machine at putting this out and continuing to create an ad value. And I feel very lucky that you and Ryan are both doing book to last on the Stacking Slabs Network. I. I love listening every week, so appreciate all your efforts as well, man. Absolutely. Absolutely. So with that, we will see you next week. Ryan will be back, hopefully refreshed and not lobster fresh sunburned. But you never know. He's, he's, he's spent a lot of time by the pool having some daddy drinks. So, you know, that's good for him. Good on him. He's, he works harder than anybody. So we, we miss him. We, we miss his, his opportunity to join the podcast. But we'll have him back next week. We'll talk about, I'm sure, the finals, the king of the ring, we'll talk about some of the updates to some of the product list, stadium clubs on the way, nationals on the way, all that other stuff. So it's going to be amazing and we'll see you next week. Thanks, Brett. Thanks again for joining. Always appreciate joining the damn pod talking wrestling and wrestling cards. It's such a wonderful space to collect in, having a ton of fun and appreciate being able to share the passion with all of you on a weekly basis. You are going to get Ryan back in the saddle next week, but enjoyed my time here until now. Wrestling cards rule. Wrestling cards forever. Wrestling cards for life. Take care. Talk to you.