Booked to Last: Buying Wrestling Cards When the Market Runs Hot

Foreign. Welcome back to Book to Last, the official wrestling card podcast here on the Stacking Slabs Network. Hosted by my good friends Adam and ryan. Presented by RBI Crew 7. The biggest, the baddest, the best place to buy your wrestling card singles and wax. You can do that@rbi crew7.com There is a whole lot shaken on the wrestling card front and glad that this podcast exists. Glad that there's an opportunity each week to talk about cards that are moving and strategies to land the cards that you desperately need for your collection. Adam and Ryan give an update on what is happening with the WrestleMania patch auto at Goldin A fun topic they dig into is buying and selling in a hot market. I think you'll get a lot of value in that. Always enjoy the conversation around wrestling cards. I'm having a lot of fun buying and selling in this space, building my personal collection out. If you want to show your support for Stacking Slabs Network, hit the follow button. Tell a damn friend. Run on over to the Patreon Group Wrestling Cards. There's momentum. We're here to talk about it. Book To Last 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 host Ryan Banister 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 here joining up. You can find the patriot@patriot.com stacking slabs and you can follow Adam and I on social media at RBI Crew 7 and at WWE. Respectfully, let's ring that bell and get this slobber knacker on the way. It's episode 33. Yes it is. Welcome to our episode. We are done with summer, kids are back in school and wrestling is building up the Sunday night main event. But better yet, Adam, how we doing? I had a great weekend man. I had a great weekend. So do share. I gotta hear. It's not, it's not wrestling card related and I know when other podcasts go into this stuff I usually fast forward. So Please fast forward 30 seconds if you need to. Yu-Gi-Oh my son had the the walk off tournament winning hit in one of the games that he plays so that was pretty fun. We had to drive like an hour each way so I got a lot of podcasts listening in which informed some of the content in this podcast. So we're gonna have some fun today and a lot of wrestling news on the docket and a lot of really big stuff happening. So let's get into it. And I think as we get into the different aspects of TV and as we get into, like, how this impacts the card world, like, I think things are, are changing dramatically. So let's get into the opening pyro here. First off, there were some rumors, and this is rumors at this point because I think things tend to change on a daily basis. There's been a lot of talk that cuts are coming. I've heard it from multiple dirt sheets and whatever. I usually don't speculate on this, but you and I and, and Brad and a few others when we were at the national were talking about this, I thought that Blue Ice not going to be back on tv. I thought after she was kind of like, you know, written off after that attack from Lyra Valkyria on Saturday night's main event, the last one, that she would be moving on. But it seems like there's been reports now that she's resigned, which is great news because I hate to see another four horse woman leave the wwe. But I think from the way that she's been Beckett fans have wanted her to move on for a while. I'm not of that. I think Bailey's one of the best women's workers they have and she's a great wrestler and I would hate to see her go. But Yu-Gi-Oh she's definitely the fourth of four in my opinion. What's your take on this? Do you think she's done or is she coming back? Well, I don't know. If you saw her Instagram post the other day that kind of made it feel like it was goodbye. Unless it's one of those things where I'm not going anywhere. We know that her best friend is Sasha Banks, obviously. What's her name now? I don't follow. Mercedes. Mercedes Emanate. That's it. Yes. That's actually her real name, I think. Actually. So, Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know. I think there could be a possibility that she would go to Yu-Gi-Oh but she needs to stay in wwe. She needs to be a lifer. She's dedicated so much of her life to it. She's wanted this since she was a kid. I loved her story coming up. I love when they turned her heel. She did such a great job. I never thought she mvp. I never thought she could be so good of a heel, being that much of a baby face. But sometimes it's the best heels are the best baby faces. The best baby faces are best heels. And I Think she is perfect for it. I am with you. I don't want to see another of the women's Horsemen having to leave. So let's, let's hope that they get this figured out and they keep her. But whenever you have these call ups from nxt, people are getting pushed out the door. And that's what the other names on this list here. That's what we're hearing as well. The biggest name that I'm hearing. I don't like it because I think they're just not using R Carmelo Hayes and I would hate to see him out the door already. We obviously know about you. Great. Oh, he's so, so great. I, I'm just going to be so mad if they let him go. I think that's wasted. Even though you drag off. But Melo is such a wasted talent that they need to use. Yu-Gi-Oh that was the one I forgot. So I was going to put Dragon off on this list and I made a mental note to add him when I saw that last. That's why I got you Dragunov. I'm not as upset about, I don't think so again, like, here is my take on this whole thing because I think there's been targets of the Creed brothers. Damian Priest, Carmelo Hayes, Bailey and Johnny Gargano. Johnny Gargano's actually removed all the WWE stuff from his page. He's listed his booking information. Fine, whatever. Here is my take. I think we are getting back to a system because it used to be WWE and WCW were fighting over talent and they were just sort of like lock these guys up for years because they all want their competition to have. It happened again when Yu-Gi-Oh first came on the scene. I think we're getting to a point now where both rosters of Yu-Gi-Oh and WWE are so filled to the brim that we're starting to get back into this sort of territory wrestling type of approach where you do your stint, you have your top eight guys that don't change and then you have guys that come in and out and go and do their thing and then leave. You had that with Big Cast, you have that with Dragon off, you have that with all these other guys. Dragon off was never really a big name in wwe. He was in NXT UK for a while and he's a great worker. But let's be honest here, like him, the Creed brothers, Johnny Gargano, like they put on amazing matches and they're very good wrestlers, but they don't have that package that I think WWE graduates towards. Which is charisma, you know, promos, wrestling, all that stuff. So I hate to see Carmelo Hayes goes. Cause I think he is one of the names that is like has everything, they just never. And maybe he doesn't want to stay. Maybe he's not happy being in the mid card. It could be that way too. But I, it's not good news all around. I guess we'll probably find out more than next week I would assume. But I mean Gargano, I could see him going to be with Tommaso. I mean those two just paired up together for so long. I mean why not go there? I'm sure if Johnny's gone, I'm sure his wife's gonna follow, you know. And the Creed brothers. Yu-Gi-Oh you just, there's just nothing on the great wrestlers. But we're not in the era of tag teams. I mean go to Yu-Gi-Oh where tag teams are more praise and stuff like that. Just you know, you want to see the best for these wrestlers. But there's times like you don't want to see this wrestler go. It was hard to let see Seamus go. It'd be hard to see Bailey go. And I just feel like Carmelo just hasn't gotten the real shot that he should because he was so, so good in nxt. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean him and the Trick Williams feuds and everything like that. I just, just there's sometimes wasted talent that WWE misses and these guys have to go on to bigger and better things to prove it, I. E. A Cody Rhodes, look what he had to do through all those years. And I, I look back to the, the territories. This is like a world thing now. It's so many eyes, New Japan, tna. There's so many things that these wrestlers can go off and build themselves a better name and that's why they're just, just two big companies battling, you know like it was back in the day with WCW and wdf. Now you have everything across the entire world where there's opportunities. Matt Cardona, perfect example. Zack Ryder fell flam, he just got in I see. Yu-Gi-Oh he got injured. Yu-Gi-Oh he's just terrible. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh it is. But I mean like I said, this is Ty we, we doom and gloom. There's been more cuts every year that goes on than it should be and it's again at the end of the day you just move on and you find new wrestlers you like or you follow them where they go. I mean like looking at this from like I think card wise you want to stay in the same place. Yu-Gi-Oh Unless because you stay with one team, your cards become more valuable to those fans. I think the same is in play for dub for wrestling cards. If you stay with wwe, you build and build and build. Unless you're doing it at the beginning of your career or at the very, very end of your career. I think that there's arguments to be made there. I think these are some situations where that may not be true. Bailey going to Yu-Gi-Oh I think helps her cards short term because I think Yu-Gi-Oh booking is. We one-of-one get it, but I think Bailey moving will give her a short term bump. Gargano reuniting with Tommaso Ciampa and doing the DIY thing in Yu-Gi-Oh very good for. Because cards don't really have value. The thing is with Gargano and Champa, they're both huge card collectors. Gargano's cards with the inscriptions that he's done for years and years now because he's always been a collector. Like he knows how to treat things. And that's why I hate to see him go is because he does do a lot of really cool things on his one on ones and all these other things. His wife, I would have liked to see her be a producer. I think she's a great sort of wrestling mind and she has the history there. I would have loved to see her stay and produce women's segments alongside Tyson Kidd who is Natalia's husband. I think they would do a great job. But Yu-Gi-Oh I mean like it's like it's no longer like it's free agency. Right. This is just like, you know, when the big name talent from, you know, your baseball teams go and test the market. We saw what happened with Shohei Ohtani going from the Angels to the Dodgers. We see what has happened with different football people moving around. Taquan Barkley goes to the Eagles, all these other things and, and they have a career renaissance as a result. I think there's definitely possibility here for that to happen. We've seen Yu-Gi-Oh come, people come to wwe. We're going to talk about one of them here in a second with Blake Monroe, I mean helps their cards tremendously in that respect, but only moving one of these ways. And Blake Monroe is still very early on in her career. I think that's probably one of those special circumstances very early or very late that you can move around. Yu-Gi-Oh I just wonder what they're doing with her. I mean like are they. I mean they've waited so long to get her so called debut or she attacked Julia. How do they just. How are they burying Julia the way they're burying her? That's what I'm trying to figure on. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, her cards have probably. I mean, they've got to keep going down. They're just not using her. I. I think I've had conversations before on here. At one point, her Vikir cards were number one and two, two and one. And they were bringing premium money. And now Julia's just getting Beckett and not even a mid card anymore. It's like getting below that jobber. Yu-Gi-Oh she's like a jobber, which is crazy because she's so talented. But I don't know. I mean, Blake Monroe, a lot of people got high hopes. She was very dominant in Yu-Gi-Oh I enjoyed watching the matches with her and Tony Storm. Man, they put on some Absolute bangers. So I just don't know why WWE has waited so long to give her this opportunity to. Maybe they're just building her up to something bigger and better because she is not a midcard type wrestler. She is top of the cream. She has the talent, she has the charisma, she has the healness in her use her right. Yu-Gi-Oh I think I have to believe that there's something specific that kept her out, whether it's lagging, nagging, injuries from, you know, when she was finishing up in NXT or whatever. But I think, Yu-Gi-Oh there's a lot of question marks around Julia and I think it just goes back to like, you can't just be a good wrestler in wwe. You have to have the complete picture. And I think Julia has a good entrance, she has great wrestling skills, but outside of that, she is not connected with the crowd at all. And I don't know why, because I. I like she did in nxt. Blake Monroe is probably something that has to do with an injury. She's. They're definitely strapping rockets to everybody that comes out of NXT the best they can. We'll talk about two more that just debuted on Raw in a second here. But I think, like, overall, Blake Monroe on smackdown, she one-of-one be held down for very long. They just don't have a lot there that she can just sit around. Like. I fully expect her and Tatum Paxley and all the new people who have been brought up into smackdown to get involved very quickly. I expect them to likely put her into the feud for the women's US Title, like with JC Jane right away. They've had matches in the past. Like, I think, like all of that stuff really does factor in, but outside of that I think this last week of wrestling on TV was probably the weakest that we've seen in a while. But I did like a lot of the stuff they did on Raw with Solo, Sikoa and La Knight. I liked what they did. Yu-Gi-Oh With the Matrix, Solo being the man. That was great. It was great. I liked the way they did the debut of Bronco Nima and Lucian Price. I liked the way that they did sort of the. The Lucha matches. That dive through the second rope that Dragon Lee had, I saw that. I'm just like, how did he even propel himself through that rope, let alone do a cannonball? I was insane. However, they are about to Give away Penta vs Ray Phoenix on Free TV heading into this tournament championship. And the winner gets Roman Reigns in Mexico City. It's. I. It's got to be Penta, which will be a great match. But how do you give this match away on free tv? I don't know. But I think it's going to be an Absolute banger of a match. These two, obviously brothers, they. They know each other. This is where I expected to see when the tournament line down. Like, it's got to be Penta and. And three Phoenix at the end of it to battle this out. I got to think P is going to go on. He's just got more to offer. He's more talented, and he obviously is a household name that could really put on an Absolute great match with Roman Reigns. We know Roman can work with anybody. And. And this is. Somebody like Roman has not really had a match with this type of wrestler. So the fact that he hasn't. He really hasn't. That's a good point. I think it's just going to be awesome. And I think that Mexico City crowd is going to be amazing. Yu-Gi-Oh Hot high. I love that. Hot. So, I don't know. I. I don't know. I guess they're just trying to get more eyes in other ways to show great matches. I don't. Don't really know, but I love it. I think it's. Why not. I mean, why not make it free? Yu-Gi-Oh And I think. I think Penta has shown very quickly that he can connect with the crowd in a way that I didn't really expect that he would like. I think, you know, coming in, he's wearing a mask. Mask wrestlers are always compared to Rey Mysterio. He wrestles the same style. Like, look at what Dragon Lee has had to go through. And with the crowd, look at what it took for Chad Gable to sort of get The Grande Americano thing over, like, it's just. It just never really works out because you get pigeonholed into these Topps of situations. But Penta has done great with what they've given him. He's always made the most of all of this, and he wrestles great matches. He's very charismatic in the ring. I don't think Ray Phoenix has much of that at all. And I think now we're going to see exactly how much WWE believes in Penta. Putting him up against the reigning sort of guy of the era in Mexico City is going to be absolutely insane to watch. I cannot wait to see. I want to see how the storyline. There's going to be much of a storyline with this built up. I don't think they have much time to build it. I don't. That's what I'm thinking. I'm like, how do you. You know, you're just not gonna have a storyline. You're just gonna go in and just have a match. Yu-Gi-Oh Style and just say, this is the match. I mean, that's kind of. I would think you'd need to build up for a week or two at least, knowing that he's going to one-of-one But I. I don't know. I mean, right now, you don't have anybody facing Rome. We have La Knight or whatever, feuding, kind of whatever is going on. I don't really. Now you pivot to, you know, Bronco Nima, Lucian Price, and let me draw a blank, Rhys Keys, and it's like, okay, what are we going here? Like, where are we going here? We had a fork in the road, and now we're. This is. I'm confused. Really confused after last night, to be honest with you. Yu-Gi-Oh it's. It's. I think they did the debuts right. Like, it's. But the crowd had no reaction to these guys. They're. They're very creator wrestler faction lack. They're. They're creator wrestler faction lackeys. And it's like, you know, it's like, if I were to build up a guy like Royce Keys, I would build wrestlers and create a style that, you know, basically look like Bronco Nima and Lucian Price. And just them in the background, they can lose as much as you can because they're really not important people. Both them and Blake Monroe wore debut patches, so we're getting a pretty large crop for next year's Chrome. Yu-Gi-Oh Which is going to be awesome if you. And so I think next year's chrome is going to be absolutely stacked. We're Talking Obafemi's debut patch. We're talking Blake Monroe, all of these guys. I mean like there's going to be what, like 10 of the Yu-Gi-Oh guys as well, which one-of-one be as big of hits, but you know, they're, they're gonna have value. Like there's gonna be. We had five this year, I think it was. Next year there's going to be 10 to 15 and there's going to continue to be these year after year. But seeing that Blake Monroe wore one and, and all these, like, there's a lot of wrestlers that have come in the last couple of years. Obafemi leading that class. That card's going to be. Well, you also guess money. You also have jc, Jane Fallon, Henley and Laney Reed. I mean there's going to be. What do we have this past year? Was it six or is it six? We had Sol Ruka, Stephanie Vacair, Julia JC Mateo, RIP and Roxanne Perez. Roxanne. So we had five. So we're going to get more than double that it should be. And we still have at least four months left in the year for potential call ups. So I mean that's going to add more value to Tops come next year by adding these. And kudos to Tops. Getting these on these wrestlers for their debuts, even if it's not matches, it's still their debut, you know, and, and it's, you know, kind of, it's interesting. But I'm curious what they're going to do with Nima Price and Royce Keys. I don't, I don't know. They. Another one. They'll have Royce Keys. Yu-Gi-Oh Royce Keys. Yu-Gi-Oh Because he came at Rumble. Yu-Gi-Oh his debut is at Rumble. So we have Royce Keys as well. So Yu-Gi-Oh I get. We're gonna have a lot, which is great. It's gonna be great. All right, let's, let's move on to some card market high spots real fast here. There are two auctions that we've been discussing. Now hold up, hold up. We did not discuss the banger from Friday night Smackdown match between. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Oh, you're totally right. I was like, we got at least touch base on that. Let's go back. CM Punk, ko. I had it on the agenda. I just skipped over because we got into the. I accidentally skipped over. We at least kept over Cody and Randy. I mean, I have that here too. I know it's giving you a hard time. KO and Punk had a very, very interesting match and I was waiting for that. We knew the crowd was going to Be hot. I mean, well wrestled. Probably the best kick out I've ever seen on live TV with. With the Stunner and Sammy and everything. God, it was, it was well executed. No one expected anything. I think the best kickout would have to be it was it Shawn Michaels. Sweet chin. Undertaker. Undertaker. No pedigree. And Undertaker kicks out. That was okay, but yes, that was on a pay per view, but yes, yes. But I mean like still that one of the greatest. I'm like, I was just in shock when that happened. But no, that. Yu-Gi-Oh God, just like just way to ruin a great patch auto the end there. I, I guess we're building up to a triple threat fatal four way. I don't really know. I guess now they're talking about. I was reading because they recorded Smackdown last night. Apparently, apparently we're gonna get number one cont now. And it's like, I don't know, I feel like it's just KO just in my opinion, gets screwed again. But that's my opinion. I would have loved to see KO one-of-one I think it's hard to take the belt off of Punk. So I get it, I get it. But Punk doesn't need the belt to be successful. Like he, he's one-of-one it now like two or three times since he's been back. He got his goals accomplished. Let ko, who hasn't held the belt for years and years in the middle of probably one of the craziest returns from a severe surgery where he is over. So it's not like this is entitlement just for being there. He is over. He's earned it. Like give him the run because the crowd will love it. I really hope they do. Maybe they just wanted CM Punk to get that one victory and then he KO can take it the next one. I don't know. Did you see they hinted a little future match with Orton and Punk for the bell? Did you see how they hinted that? I mean, I think one thing we got to give Triple H, long term storytelling and little, little snippets, little things that they do that could be several months in the future because they're planning ahead. So I'm just saying, I mean like you'll have this Cody Rainey match and that should x that whole rivalry. I think it does because obviously we know street fighters coming. You got to assume he's going to step away. And plus Cody, let's be honest, needs to step away for a little bit. I think it needs to be refreshed. Let's go. Miss you. Let's start Missing you, you know. So again one of cko but I mean there could be different long term plans. We know CM Punk's a name that drives. We know we're coming on the tough time of year with NFL coming back where WWE's got to compete with college football and the NFL so you probably want to keep the right names but I'm not saying Kevin Owens isn't but CM P, CM Punk's a massive, massive name. I mean he is and I think that's why we had to get it on him. We knew Sami Zayn wouldn't be that name coming down the stretch and it's unfortunate when these guys work so hard, especially KO Yu-Gi-Oh put himself back. You gotta hope there's one more match where he gets it right. But I don't know at this point I don't know just what I think I know what's going to happen. I clearly don't know anymore. I predicted quite a bit correctly. Yu-Gi-Oh but I flew up to Vegas to watch Randy Orton one-of-one and now one-of-one and that had to be more injury based than anything because there's no flipping reason why he should have lost that match with everything built up and I agree so again I'm just getting in my opinion feel here but I, I do like, I like what they did, they hinted that and that made me very excited because I just want this Cody Orton thing to go away. I think Orton needs to get the last lap needs to punt Cody out, concussion go off, miss you for a month or two. Like look rounds didn't need to go off but after that match needed to step away, take a couple months off, refresh, come back new storyline. That's what Cody needs. We need a new fresh storyline and maybe a heel Cody because there's a lot of rumors little Paul Heymon hints here we got now I like it. I, I, I, as long as he's not with Obafemi I'm fine. I think for me money in the bank is going to be the two ladder matches. Obviously I think you have probably a number of talents in there but I think the other championship matches are probably going to be Randy and Punk, probably going to be Becky and Liz and then you have probably one other match. Is that going to be something to to keep Obafemi out of the ladder match? I don't think he can one-of-one money in the bank. I, I don't want him to one-of-one money. No, I don't want that's not, he's not a heel. He's not going to be healed there's wwe makes me. I don't. I think that's an epic fail. He's so. I got to think his merchandise is just on fire. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh absolutely. You know, I would say. I would. I would not be shocked if they put it on like Jacob Fatu or something like that and tell the story of Jacob Fatu and the bloodline and Roman Reigns and all the other stuff. That could be an option. But you know, that's still pretty far off. But I think from a title match perspective, I think we're easily heading towards Punkin and Randy and Becky and Liv based on Stephanie Vacair's title match coming up in September 7th, I think. Or it's a triple threat, but I think I hate triple threats, by the way. I think it's the most lazy bookings. Stupid shit. But anyways, I think too in it. I mean, we. We saw the banger triple threat match last year with Roman, Punk and Seth. That made sense. That's a little bit. Okay. I'm like, all right, there's. Okay, okay, okay. You can't always say that. Let's all. Well, we got. We're forgetting the Drew McIntyre, Seamus and Guther. I mean, arguably one of the best triple threat matches that people say in history. So I get your point. But there's times where like a guy like Brock Lesnar who Goldin perform a 20 minute match had to have a triple threat match to make it relevant. So again, agree to disagree. This is why you have me. I'm the voice of reason. You're the voice of whatever you want it to be. So. So when you. It's like, if you want to do the shield in a triple threat match, fine. If you want to do Punk and Roman and Seth in a triple threat match, because of the history there, fine. If you want to do Drew and. And Sheamus, Yu-Gi-Oh we're giving a lot of. I'm giving a lot of examples. There's also been hundreds of these match. There's been 10 more. But I want you to use your words a little bit and make sure the listeners don't know that you're just shitting on all these amazing triple threat matches that just randomly, verbatim came off my head as Legendary matches the night. So. All right, let's move on to some other stuff here. Card market high spots and there's a lot of them. We have two major auctions running. I mentioned it before we went back to wrestling here. We had John Cena's WrestleMania patch autograph start and go about A million miles an hour in the first day. Within 24 hours, it's already up to $112,000 with buyer's premium. As of when we're recording this, Rhea ripley is the second auction. That one up to $24,000 with buyer's premium. We're about a month to go and there's. They've out of the gates was just fast bidding right away. Love to see this happen because I think both of these cards deserve the attention that they're getting. But are you surprised at all? No. I mean, with this, with the bidding structure, it is. You have to get a pre bid in or you have to bid before it goes to extended bidding or you're not allowed to bid in that. So I think people now are saying, hey, let me throw my bid in. I'm in the fight. I at least get a bid in this now. And that way they can battle with the extended bidding. So I, I don't, I don't hate it. Plus, obviously it could be a strategy of somebody saying bid now, drive it up. So then eliminate people thinking that they were going to one-of-one this card for significantly less. I think both these cards are on pace. I seen it's going to be over 200,000 at the rate it's going. I want to think Ria's going to get to the $100,000 threshold to get. Remember, the buyer's premium here is 22%. It's not 20%, it's 22. So this is including buyer's premium at the time, if I'm correct, which is what you're showing. Yes, it will show on card ladder. Yes, it will. So with the buyer's premium. So, no, I'm not surprised. We've got a month to go. But one of those things where I know it's a month and these are cards that you're not going to forget about. But if you forget the bid in, if you're really serious about going after these, you got to throw a bin in or you don't get the extended bidding. Fanatics changed that rule. So now anybody can participate in extended bidding. I don't know if Goldin has. So maybe that's something. I don't know. I'll be honest with you. That's what I always thought. I don't know if it has. So if Fanatics sent out like a, a bunch of emails saying, like extended bidding, you don't have to bid to participate. It's just, you know, anyways, I'm going to take the pro stance. I want you to take the con stance if you can. Should these cards have been listed together in the same auction? I'm going to say yes. If you can argue the no whether you agree or not. Just to have point counterpoint here. Do you believe that these cards should be in the same auction? And here's why I say they should. 1. And this is not necessarily what both of us believe, but just let's lay this out because I've seen a lot of talk about this. Like why are you putting both of these in the same auction? Well, here's why. There is a marketing machine behind the Summer 100 auction. I've already gotten like four emails about it. I've seen Ken Goldin make a video on Instagram talking about all the different people that wanted to see the cards. At the National. I've seen a ton of marketing that does not come often. We've seen these cards go in auction houses before. They didn't get a lot of attention. We saw what happened with Tiffany Stratton. The more eyeballs you can get on this scenic card specifically because then it's different era echelon of auctions I think is really important and I think you take advantage of everything that you can to get as many people to see these cards. And not only that, but see there's other viable wrestling cards alongside it which we'll talk about here in a second. Now, whether you believe it or not, what are some of the reasons you don't list both of these in the same auction? I don't have a lot of cons. I guess the only con would be if somebody financially wanted both of these. It would tie up money to get one or the other. That would be the thing. But let's be honest, we probably got to assume the people going after these, I. E. Maybe a Carl F. Towns, I. E. I don't know. Jalen Brunson with the R.E. we don't know. Have more than enough money to where like if they wanted both of them, they could afford it. But that would be a con. I don't really have much to say. Con wise, you're gonna get the eyes on this. You're piggybacking the top two cards in that product. I don't think there's. Sale wise, these should be the top two cards that everybody was searching for. For men and women. Yu-Gi-Oh great. I don't. I don't have a lot of cons here besides that being that you're taking money away from one to the other. But like I said, it's not like, normal people can bid on these. These are people who are professional athletes, could be actors, could be business people. You're talking a different strategy, a different type of people that are going for these Topps of cards. These are not traditional collectors who collect John Cena. You know, we'll spend four or five thousand hours on a Superfractor. We're talking possibly a quarter of a million dollars, if not more, for this potential card. So I don't really have a lot of cons. As much as I want to give cons, I can't. I kind of. I think that's. I think it's a genius marketing strategy. I think it was a big one-of-one for Goldin to get not only the Cena, but. But one-of-one By the end of the national, we've got Rhea Ripley coming in this blood. Summer 100. Genius. Yu-Gi-Oh And I think. I think from a Cena perspective, like, the audiences are. Are very different. So I think, like, if I'm somebody who wants to buy the best wrestling card ever, this is my opportunity. It doesn't come very often. Last time that this really came about was, you know, over the last few years, once or twice, like, so if you want to buy that one card from a sport that's up and coming in your mind, this is the opportunity to do Whatnot, by the way, there's a very nice consolation Prizm here, right, for you, which I said last week. If we even go beyond that. These aren't the only two wrestling cards that are in this auction space at this time. There's four other ones. I'm showing three on the screen. One of them is the Ray Phoenix, which is already sold once. That's at $1,200 as of our recording. There's the Grande Americano, WrestleMania patch autograph. These are owned by the same person. Pierce Sports cards. Great guy. Talk to him all the time. Like, both at twelve hundred dollars right now. Probably both signal well below where we're seeing the other two. But I think the Grande Americano one probably has a chance to clear five figures. Then you also have the Rhea Ripley logo diamond, the WWE logo diamond, which I think is probably the premier card for Rhea Ripley in the product. Outside of the star swatches, which we'll talk again. There's a lot of stuff here to talk about. That's at 1600 right now. I think that one easily clears five figures. So all three of these cards are easily going to capitalize on all the marketing that is currently going on in the summer 100. These are part of different auctions. They're going to end significantly different times. But why not take advantage of this marketing? It's. You're going to have people coming in to see the scene auction from the millions of videos and emails and tweets and posts and everything. Why not put these cards in front of them as well, Right? We already know the refeeding sold once on Fanatics, so, you know, the guy who bought this must feel, hey, I think I got a really good deal. Let's pair him up. I mean, why not grade it? So he did get it graded. You got it. Great. You're right. You're. What did it upgrade? I can't tell on your pick. The seventh, it was. I mean, these are. These are tough. These are sevens or eights, from my understanding. All of them, actually. I don't want to grade the order, to be honest with you. I. I want to be able to. It's just. I don't know. I'm just. I don't want to grade it. I don't know. To me, I want to be able to just go, do I want to touch the patch today? I can go touch it. So if it's in a holder, I can't do that. I believe this Ria has sold once and correct me if I'm wrong. Yu-Gi-Oh it has. Okay, so it was a while ago, though. It was a while. I mean, Goldin clearly went out or at least made. Did their homework or at least said, hey, we need more wrestling to go with this to get more eyes on it. They're going to promote it correctly. Yes. These other two WrestleMania patch holders are going to significantly less. But why not take an opportunity to capitalize on the marketing of everything else to go. Oh, I'm just also piggybacking off of these. Oh, if you want this one. Oh, if you like El Grande Americana. Not. Not the one that's in Yu-Gi-Oh right now. The original Chad Gable. But no, I mean, go for it. What do you got to lose? Maybe just money. Yu-Gi-Oh And I think there's one last thing I want to mention here before we show you the last card. There are reasons why these is Beckett change in the grander, grander scheme of the hobby. Like, even if all three of these cards clear five figures, that's not even ground level high end for football and basketball. We're talking below. These are middle cards, if not lower middle cards for every other sport besides wrestling. So if you have people that have money and have people have funds to spend on these cards and are also involved in those other sports, this is the fun part of the hobby for them. This is not their business. This is not where they make their money. This is just, hey, I like Grande Americano. What happened with Mask versus Mask? I love Rhea Ripley because she's a superstar and I see her as my favorite wrestler. That's the type of thing I see these Topps of cards falling into. Like, for somebody like you who just bought a Roberto Clemente batnob cut autograph, like, like this is something that's like, oh, I really like these cards. I love Flawless. I love the WrestleMania patch auto I might want to throw a few dollars at this because I have it and it's not, it's not going to break. Right? It's not going to break me like spending, you know, a million dollars on a LeBron James on it. Right? Yep, good point. Now here's one. This card could get closer to the six figure mark than I think people are expecting. This is The 1 of 1 John Cena, Shohei Ohtani dual foil fractor. This was part of the World Baseball Classic when Shoey Ohtani hit the home run and did the you can't see me thing. Currently sitting as of where we're recording $25,500. Another Shohei Ohtani autograph. Tops now just sold for like six 96,000. So I mean like this isn't going to get that high, but this could get close to six figures just given Shohei Otani's market. Correct? Yu-Gi-Oh no, I actually met the father and son who I did too. They're great. They were in our store about a month or so ago. I got the Seth Rollins cosmic chrome Superfractor out of one of them. Great, great father and son. And I'm, I'm pulling for to them. They was excited all about this and this because Ohtani's name is attached to it and how awesome of a card this really is. This is really cool. This is gonna. This should exceed 6 figures just because OHT stuff is on another level. That was going to be my point. Talking about the cena patch auto work of pairing apples, oranges at that. This was an Otani logoman auto, which is more than one of the WrestleMania patch auto We're talking millions in the millions. Jameson just sold one. Yu-Gi-Oh So 1.3 or something. 1.7 I think, whatever, sure. One point, whatever. But we're going to talk about John Cena. That should eclipse 200, $250,000. Bo Yu-Gi-Oh is the only one that he's ever going to have made and Ohtani is going to have multiple logo mans every year and wears a new jersey every time. So again, attaching these two together, this buyer's got to be a whoever's going to own this, who all it takes is two die hard Otani collectors that love wrestling and this could really, really explode. Yu-Gi-Oh I agree. I agree. Because we're talking about this. Let me explain some context here. We've talked a lot about buying and selling on this podcast it is doing. And I think the reason that this is so important is because even if you're a die hard collector and you don't do much selling, understanding the way that the market works is such a key edge that very few people really understand. And they're like, well, I don't want to put in the work. I don't have the opportunity to put in the work. I don't have the resources, I don't have all this other stuff. If you want to make your dollars stretch further in buying the cards that you want for your end user collection, having a good understanding of the way the market works will save you money. It will also help you to achieve equity if you have to move pieces of your collection in the long run. So I was posting, I mentioned earlier my son hit that, that single. I was posting his video on Facebook. I try to stay off Facebook as much as possible because it's literally like the lowest common denominator across almost every group. The worst takes, the worst questions, everything. People don't have a good understanding. We live in a social media bubble. Facebook is far enough outside the social media bubble where the takes just get progressively worse because people don't have context. And in wrestling, they have even less context because this sport has never been popular enough to get those takes smacked across your face every single time you turn on a podcast. So I saw a post that was a fair question about those two cards we talked about before. Why would you list them in the same auction? And it was followed by a ton of reasons why you shouldn't do it, very few reasons of why you should. We're trying to sort of give you the opposite side of that because I think it's the right side of it. But also there's an understanding of how to buy and sell in a hot market, not just buy and sell overall, which we've covered before, buying and selling in a hot market. So let me open this discussion with what is your most difficult lesson that you've learned about buying and selling in a market like we're in, right. Holding too long and not thinking. If there's a comp that isn't, like, below what I paid and just not cutting your losses and moving on. I learned a lot from COVID When things were astronomically stupid, it made no sense. I feel like we're in that again, but in a different way. And it got to the point where I'm like, oh, no, you know, I gotta hold it. I. I can't lose money. And then it keeps going the other way, keeps going down, and you're just. Next thing you know, you just cut your losses and you take a massive loss. So there's Sometimes you don't know where the peak is. You're guesstimating that when you're buying that that it's gonna either hold or go up more. That's the thing when you're buying, you don't want to lose money. Nobody wants to lose any money. That's not why you're buying and selling. You're buying and selling to make wise purchases and selling to make money. But sometimes, if you see a trend going the other way, sometimes better to get off the train before it crashes or derails, in my opinion. I learned the hard way. I learned. Learned a lot of great things and learned a lot of bad things. I call this 2.0, because I think we're in this Covid bubble craziness again in a different way, but with different aspects with the goats and all this stuff. And I had a conversation this morning while doing a walk with Jerry, one of my employees who does all my grading. And he was like, ryan, I need your opinion. I've been holding Tom Brady cards for years. I bought these, I graded them, and I'm looking up a 2004 Topps Chrome. And I think I have, like 30 bucks into it grading. It's 800 hours right now. I. These were ones I just put back. I thought it was like a $200 card, tops. And I'm like, you need to be selling right now. Because I have been there. And he goes, hey, I didn't do cards in the COVID bill. And I said, I'm seeing the trends again. If it's rare, you're fine. I think you can hold and be smart about. But at the pop report or if the card is a mass produced thing or they're readily available and there's a cop every day. Sell, sell, sell. Yu-Gi-Oh I think there's this phrase, it's like the hobby in general buys the hype and sells the news or whatever that phrase is. And I think to a degree, that's That's a really interesting sort of way of looking at it from a wrestling perspective. I think most people are operating in a mindset. They're like, either things are way too expensive and I'm upset about it, or things are way too expensive and I want to take advantage of this. Or you're like me and you're just like, I just want to get my PC at the lowest possible. I think the most difficult lesson to learn is that there are a ton of people out there who want to tell you exactly what their strategy is, how they buy and sell. They want to tell you all about their wins and leave out their losses. There are people who will talk about both, but it's really hard, really hard to sort of cut the wheat from the chaff and say, this is the people that I need to trust. So a lot of people take all of that I just said and say, collect what you like, which is my least favorite phrase in this hobby. And I'll tell you why. Because I think when people say, collect what you like, they are missing the point way too much. Because it's really easy to be told what you like. And a lot of people figure out what they like because of the stuff that they look at and the stuff that is served to them on social media. I think it's just about collect the way that makes sense for your budget. And as long as you're doing that and you're not overextending yourself and you're not spending money you can't afford to lose, you're going to be fine. Like, I really wouldn't look at it in a. In a net loss and net positive, unless this is your business, like, it is for Ryan. But I think for people like me who are more on the collecting side, just find the things that make sense for your PC at that time and not even worry about the money if you can afford it. Don't worry about what happens when you are the end user. Worry about what happens if you need an exit strategy. And that's where I'm thinking, what do wrestling collectors really struggle with in this sense, more than other sports in terms of that exit strategy or in terms of, like, I need to actually get these cards out of my hands. Where do you see wrestling collectors struggle more than what you see in other sports? I feel like they struggle with, oh, I. There's three Zebra collectors for this guy, and I need to. My wife's looking at me through the glass window. That was creepy. You know, with Russell, I think that people are like, oh, I can buy this because three guys want it and they'll pay whatever. And sometimes that's not the strategy. Sometimes you want too much. I mean, there's times where I passed on Randy Orton and Seth Rollins, and I'm like, no, I'm. I'm okay. I don't need that. And there's times they're like, crap, nobody wants to buy this, so I need to get out from this or move it. You know, I. I've seen that over the years. And the one thing I love, again, I'm not knocking this, but there's people that dive into wrestling cards thinking that they could take advantage of things, and they just don't understand how the. The hobby, the community is with the wrestling people. And I think that's the difference that the wrestling card community offers than others. I was able to buy a really nice wrestling lot today that I showed you earlier from a really good friend of mine. Friends of mine that owned a shop that walked in and they. They flipped it to me. I was like, hey, I'll pay this, this, this. And they weren't trying to gouge me. They're like, what do you think? Can I get your opinion? I gave him my thoughts. We negotiated very little bit, got it done quick, easy, big deal. Nine cards. Nine great cards. So I think it's one of those things where people think that they can, like, oh, well, Jim Brown is worth this. So Andre the Giant's got to be worth what Jim Brown is. No, it's. You're comparing apples to oranges in a much bigger market versus what the wrestling card can market. Yu-Gi-Oh I think. I think you nailed exactly what I was going to say. There is not a lot of scale in wrestling right now. There may be in the future, but right now. Yes. With more cards. Yes, absolutely. But there's not a lot right now. So I think my thing that people. I see people struggling with is two things. One is the education level. I think people tend to not have the familiarity and the experience to understand how to get things in and out of your collection the way that you want at the price that you want. But I also think is when you're a seller or a buyer, you don't realize, like, wrestling has guys, they have the guy for this person, the guy for this person, the guy for this person, or this set has a guy, this product has a guy, and they will go and buy it. I'm the Becky lynch guy, you're the Randy Orton guy. Everybody has that in wrestling. It doesn't exist like that. In other sports as much because it's. The scale is too big. There's multiple Tom Brady guys, there's multiple Michael Jordan guys to a vast degree, but there's also multiple Anthony Edwards guys and multiple Randy Moss guys from Minnesota or Joe Maurer, you name it. Because the scale is bigger. So recognizing your audience size is such a thing that wrestling collectors struggle with the most. When you run into the guy or the guys for this specific thing, take what they're offering very much more seriously than you would in another sport. And I think like if somebody came to me and said, hey, I have this one of one Becky lynch card, I'm probably your best audience. I may not offer you the best price, but you have to recognize there's probably only one or two other people beyond me. So if all three of us are saying the same thing, you're probably getting information you need to pay attention to in sports. That's completely different because I can take this LeBron James to four or five different dealers and maybe get four or five different offers. Yu-Gi-Oh but the one comments that I saw this Facebook post, it was so funny. It's like comps are dead. I have heard this now on like five different podcasts. We don't need to in like insert our own take here because it's been beaten to death on like six different podcasts. But what is a situation where you're running into exactly? Kind of what we're discussing here where you would pay above a comp in wrestling specifically when it comes to a one on one, it's obviously hard to compare. But for example, you know, like somebody like Obafemi who's on a trajectory who, if a Flawless rookie patch auto walked in, I would probably be more prone to probably pay with what the last one did because there's not a lot out there. I think when it comes to the rarity of the cards and what you believe into the wrestler, what the future holds, whoever that may be, I, I think there's times where like you're like, I don't want this card to walk away. I need this card. Let's use Flawless harsh watches, for example. We know this is, we've talked about this. We know I'm a big collector of them. Thc Brian is Jameson is a few people. I feel every time I'm buying one of these, I am paying the highest new comp to buy one to hold it back. And we're going to talk about one here in the sales. That's funny, I didn't see, I don't know what's coming on the slide, Ron Burgundy. But at the point is that is the perfect example where I'm like, I had to buy a lot at the national, but I was able to buy almost a complete set in one shot. And I paid over what comps were. But we agreed a trajectory where hey, this is where the last sales were. I think it's up X. Can we come to an agreement? And I'm paying 10, 20% higher than these were selling. And now we're still seeing them drying up. As expected, in five years these probably one-of-one be hitting ebay regularly. I mean, let's be honest, I think those are things to consider. It was a one time thing that is something where Flawless hearts watches is something that's big into basketball and obviously football cards. A basketball cards bring insane money. So I think that is would be a great example for me to bring up because I am willing to pay what the last one was or sometimes higher just to get another one off the market, in my opinion. Yu-Gi-Oh I agree with that a hundred percent. Star swatches keep coming up on this show for a lot of reasons. And it's not just because Ryan has a position in them. It's just because they are the cards that are making the most waves right now. Outside of the tops inscriptions and stuff like the Zebra fractures and whatever. I would say there's a couple of situations where a lot of wrestling collectors are going to be uncomfortable paying above comps, but there's a couple where they should feel more comfortable. One of them is if it's a very highly desirable set and a very highly desirable wrestler within that set. I've also, I've always said Prizm Golds. I mean you can go back to 2022 and I was saying that Prizm Golds, kabooms downtowns like you may be put into a position where you have to pay above the most recent comp for two reasons. One is there may not be a lot of data out there because wrestling doesn't have scale, which we've mentioned before, or because you have the up and up and up and up middle finger graph type of situation. Both of those are going to require a comp being paying above comp because you're up against everybody else that is chasing those cards where you're looking at I'm buying a one of one Becky Lynch. If it's a one of one Becky lynch from one of these competitive sets, my radar changes completely because I know I have even more competition beyond just the other Becky lynch collectors. I may have collectors of Prizm blacks. I may have collectors who want the black finites. I may have people who want the kabooms in high grades or whatever it is. There's a lot of reasons why those comps may not apply to your specific situation. And if you're going on Facebook and say comps are dead, blah blah blah, I don't think that's right either. But I also think like for the people that are like, well, I never will pay above another comp. Well, better get ready to start thinking about that a little different. So on the I'll let you respond before I ask my next question, which is the flip side of that. Okay, let's go to the next question. What is the situation where you wouldn't necessarily pay above a when there is a high pop report or there's readily available sitting on ebay. I think, you know, I use this to my image all the time. Whenever I'm pricing cards for the shop and I'm looking and I'm like, you know, these are cards we need to sell. So I think there's times where obviously my guys here don't want to. They're not looking to overpay, they're looking to buy so we can make something. But there's times they come back to me and say this perfect example, a product just released. Let's just use tops football just came out last week. Think about Fernando Mendoza autos out of this product right now. I would not be caught dead buying one anywhere near that comp. Because we know this is the first of its kind. We know that if you're going to buy this, you better flip this quick. I'm not saying Fernando Mendoza is not going to be anything good. I think he's going to be good. I'm just using example here. But we know what's on the horizon. Oh, we have 20 friggin products that come out in the next year on cards. I think there's times where you need to be cautious and we with having a shop, this happens a lot. We just had some a tops chromatini order factor to 25 come in and I'm like one did four grand. I'm like, I don't want that. Like I don't want to pay anywhere near that. Like I don't trust like the next one could drop a dude 1500 less. I don't know. You got to be cautious with that type of stuff because when it's the new, the new wears off. And Adam knows it's better than anybody with Becky lynch cards. Yu-Gi-Oh Where he's like, I got to get it done, Ryan. I need to get these cards. Get it. And then two weeks later, it's 30% of that price. It's just exactly. Every time. Exactly. And there's times where you've got to be cautious knowing what window looks like. One thing I want to use Backflip. I bought one of these today in that lot and we were talking about this here to you, Brett, myself, the liquid silvers from royalty. Beautiful cards. There's not always got a Becky there. Oh, Ria. Becky wasn't in the set. But we think that this is a very low pot. They didn't make a lot of these. I think you said maybe 15 to 25. What slap said was like 15 to 20. I think these have long term value. I think these are ones you could pay up to get. I was going to bring that up when you brought up kabooms. I think these are the next potential insert type trend for wrestling because, oh, they're doing a helix every year or they're doing this. But again, just got to call first. Yu-Gi-Oh Royalty had a lot of first. Yu-Gi-Oh first is key. First and at first and only. Only. That's the game change. That's why kabooms and wrestling are going boo, boo. And everybody wants to build PSA 10 sets. And I know Tim is down to one person he needs and it's driving him nuts to get it done. But I mean, like, there's just times where you just. You can pay and then you don't need to pay and you just got to decide, go with your gut. But also know this industry, know the hobby, know the trends. I think those are the biggest things to really look at when you're doing this. I do want to talk about the liquid silvers for a second here because this is the. Like, I've seen the liquid golds. I've seen the liquid silvers in hand. This is the first time I've owned one. And thanks to Rob Singleton for that with me on that Shout out. Rob. Great guy. Yu-Gi-Oh he's a good dude. We met up outside of his office and did the deal. It's great. These cards are absolutely gorgeous. And these are the first they're going to be. They're insanely expensive in baseball. They will be insanely expensive in football and basketball if they put them in definitive collection for other sports. Go. I mean, oh, my God, these are going to be insane cards. I am going to hold this one long term. I may even send it to you. Ryan. So I don't sell it and you will hold it with the rest of your crap you put in your to me eventually like hey, a Becky just popped up. I need you to buy that Right? Exactly. To me is not the wisest. I don't want to sell this card because I love these cards so much. Besides that point up time Ryan nailed it. Like new has its place and people grab like when Universe comes out eventually those cards are going to be insanely expensive the first few weeks and they're going to drop. It is not representative of the market dropping. It's a representative of shelf life of these products. But I would say let me take that a step further. If you are looking at the market in general, the entire market is not up and we talk about things being hot and all these other things. There are like very, very specific parts of things that are Zebra hot, things that are medium hot and then there are things that are not so hot. And when you look at the bulk which exists in in Topps Chrome 2026 versus the high end rare desirable hits, there is a humongous difference between them. So I am definitely not paying above comps on Laney Reed autographs and Topps Chrome, which we talked about last week because she signed 10,000 of them. But if it's a Laney Reed Superfractor autograph, maybe that changes a little bit because she's just gotten this push. Those are the Topps of circumstances you need to be aware of and consider. So when somebody comes on Facebook and says, oh, the market, they always say the market is hot and blah blah blah. It is in very specific circumstances. We've talked about this a lot over the last couple of months, especially leading into the national and even at wrestling card takeover. When you're walking around those tables and you're seeing people put them out in front of them, a lot of the cards tend to be these rare and desirable versions of from the popular sets Prizm Flawless select the impeccable number sets. Like we could go and spend two, three hours just talking about our favorites transcendent from before in the previous Tops era. You know, rare undisputed cards from 2015 tops gold from are the gold refractors from 2014 out of the Tops. I mean there's so many of these. But you have to be a student of the game to figure out how those make sense for your own collection if you are a collector or if you're stashing them to afford other cards for your collection, stuff like that. So I think there is this really large education Gap and experience gap that exists in all sports. And you can see it if you go on the sports cards nonsense Facebook group and see the differences there. But that exists in wrestling too. All about the game and how you play it. Adam. Thank you. Hunter. Hearst, Helmsley. Yu-Gi-Oh Motorhead. All right, let's get on to. Speaking of sales in a hot market, let's get on to a few of them. Julia's one of one. Patch autograph booklet from Royalty sold for $5,000 via Best Offer on ebay. I think Brian was the seller of this card. I love the look of this card. I think it's one of the best book. Really stands out. It looks beautiful. Great photo. Solid autograph. Awesome patch with the Fleer the lotus Fleer $5,000 Vicare sold for. Was it Vicair that sold for 10,000. The book was on them. Ria Rio Vicare. It might have been vicar. Yu-Gi-Oh They also sold. Yu-Gi-Oh Back to Julia. Like, I mean, her market still for her rare stuff is up there. There's people that still believe in her. And I mean for the talent. Yes, but. And they should. Yes, and they should. It's just a matter of is WWE gonna get this right with her? It seems to just keep going the other way. I hope they flip the switch and figure it out, but we'll see. But I mean, this is beautiful. Crazy things have happened. That's a damn fact. It took your girl getting her nose busted up to become the man. There you go. Speaking of star swatches, a gold John Cena PSA 10 from Flawless Star Swatches sold for $5,000 via Best Offer. Like yesterday or a day before as we're recording this. That's an insane price. That's a huge price. But I will say very, very, very few of these will ever grade A PSA 10 because thick cards never grade well. And it actually looks good in the slab, which is something that is rare for one of these cards. Yu-Gi-Oh I'm kind of really consider grading a lot of my Flawless PC stuff. I just haven't just because I'm like, Yu-Gi-Oh it's probably not in good shape, but I've seen a lot more nines and tens come out than I've realized. And I think I just also don't want to pay the premium money and wait 10 years to get it back right now. Right. So. And I think this one is more than double the previous sale of a gold. Yu-Gi-Oh But I get. You gotta assume though it's a PSA 10, so you gotta factor that almost double being I'm assuming A pop one. It says pop question mark. I mean, I. I gotta assume that adds the premium for what it really is. Yep. Agreed. Let's see here. This one shocked the hell out of me. This is the Obafemi white sparkle from 2024 Prizm Speaking of cards that I literally love, the White Sparkle set from Prizm is one of my all time favorite parallels they did in prison. This is a PSA 10 sold for $2500. I had a chance to buy one of these like six months ago at a PSA 10 was like 800 bucks and I am kicking my cell phone. It would have been gone by now anyways. You're right. You're right. But this card is absolutely awesome. Probably one of the best photos on any Obafemi card out there. He's standing up with the North American title on the ropes. It's just awesome. PSA10 selling for a ginormous amount of money. What's your thoughts on this? How many White Sparkles they make of each card? You remember around 20. And the pop report on this is nine. I don't know how many of them are PSA 10, but there's only nine of them that have been graded. Okay. So Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, like. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean it's. You're not. They're not making it anymore. We know that. But no, I think if you consider that obviously the gold, the. The big one you want, but this is. These are not easy to find. They were in these special white Sparkle packs you to buy on Penny's website. I think I still have. Which were expensive. Yes. Which were 2, 300 a pack, I think back then, if not more. If you could find them now. I don't know what they're worth, but no, I mean, I. And it's a rookie. And it's a rookie. It's gonna be like he didn't have a lot of rookie stuff. He had three sets worth or four sets worth, whatever it was. So this being in Prizm being a really tough parallel, has a ton of hobby history. Like, this card is so cool. I love the White Sparkles. I have both. I have all three of the White Sparkle autographs for Becky and they're some of my favorite cards. Even though they're stickers, I love those. All right, that's it for now. I do want to close with a title match topic that's more about collecting here and it sort of talks about like how you approach a target for your PC. Besides the person on the front from our title match topic, what is the most important Part of a trading card that you value above everything else. When it comes to trading card, if it has an inscription is number one if it is on card. But the image is also key as well. Sometimes though there's not just. I can't just pinpoint one but I think the image really started. I know you're big on the images so I'm sorry, I know I'm still in your thunder but I think especially when it comes to wrestling cards, images, everything we're seeing in sports, how they're doing these variation football ev moments. Let's talk about the Saquon Barkley Flawless autograph he has where he's doing jumping backwards. Yu-Gi-Oh that thing is like insane compared to the other ones. And it's because of the image. So I mean that is something to consider for me. I put a lot of factors in but imaging sometimes what I buy. I just bought a. Brian, send me a link. There was an undisputed didn't buy it for me. I bought it for a nine suit to be 10 year old. It was an undisputed Bray Wyatt one of one. It got listed for starting bid something by now. 500. He said he's like, I don't know if this is worth. The image was amazing. Like the card, it was him. I can't describe it but when I, when I saw it, I hit it. I go this is probably a three to four hour card but I don't care. This doesn't hurt. And Brian goes, I'm not kidding. It's probably one of the best Bray Wyatt cards I've ever seen. So that grabs attentions. A lot of times we're like where somebody collects like us where if it's a one on one and we don't really need the image has a lot to go with. Yu-Gi-Oh shout out. Steven Pellegrino who did all of the image stuff for Panini did probably the best run of cards I've ever seen a photo editor do. He's amaz amazing. But I'm not going to use images because I. That's my number one. Stole it. Stole it. But I think there's a couple of things that you said there that are really key which is images make cards stand out. I think autographs and inscriptions are secondary in that respect because if you have a good image with a, with a crisp autograph on card with the inscription really, really hard to beat that. I think the parallel is something that is becoming more of a factor for me because I see the way that the gold or the white sparkle or the black finite looks with all those other things that you consider. But you know, it's really hard for me to get behind inserts unless they are really, really well done. And I think like for me it's, I'm gravitating more towards the base sets, towards the, the rare stuff of the base set, the base autograph. And if it's an insert autograph, fine. It's just gotta look really cool. But I think the card design itself is such a humongous part of it. And I really, really dislike when card companies go completely off the deep end. I understand some good stuff has come out of them going off the deep end. Look at kabooms and everything like that. But I think for me personally I'm very traditional. I'm very sort of like, I like the vertical cards, I like the good photos. Action shots versus studio shots. I will not buy cards that are studio shots unless there's like a reason for it. In other sports, in wrestling it's different because they use the renders for a lot of stuff that makes sense and the personality of the wrestler is built in their render. But I think in other sports I one-of-one touch studio shot cards. I one-of-one touch any of that stuff. But the more the parallel reflects, the coolness of the card I think has become a huge factor for me. And I like those Zebra fractures, man. Seeing that, that champagne swirl on a card really gets the hair on the back of my neck to stand up because it's just, it's, it just stands out on a shelf. So I have a word that I've sort of put into this which is like shelf worthy. If the card is shelf worthy, that's when I start paying over comps and stuff. Yu-Gi-Oh it's, it's really hard. But you nailed it with the photos. I'm going to throw you out something that is a very underrated product. Opin did it was an online only and it arguably. Yep, there it is. It arguably had the best photos, photogenic and some of the best looking parallels. And the boxes are still fairly inexpensive. Unfortunately redemptors expire but they did some of the best stuff with that product for just being the stock. It was. And they were thicker cards. But the parallels, not just the one of ones but the ices and everything. I, I, they did such a great job with that product, man. It's, I wish they could have done that more in one year and get a lot more traction. I think we're going to get a taste of that in Stadium Club. Hopefully we get a taste of that in Stadium Club. But I think the autographs in Photogenic are horrendous. Unfortunately of course we know that but the base cards are, are some of them. And the, and the triple what. Where it's like the. What do they call? Was it triple exposure? Triple exposure where it shows like the beginning, middle, the. The end game coming down. They had ones for the entrances too that were really through. Yu-Gi-Oh it's a really good. Cool but awesome bray. Why the f doing hanging on the rope? You know, looking back. Oh man, just such a great product. Love it. Yu-Gi-Oh So I think like as we get in that's a good place to end it here. But I think as we get into some of the part of the year where they're taking a break from releases which we. Excuse me. Which we definitely needed and so we'll, we'll get to explore some more of these collector type topics and stuff like that, which I'm excited about. And some of these like sets that we don't spend a lot of time talking about like photogenic or some of the older top sets that I think like 2020 Road to WrestleMania. I've like sets like that which have really cool designs and really cool sort of that the booklet card from that is awesome. On card. Bray Wyatt's first fun house card. Like those are the Topps of sets I want to focus some time on an upcoming podcast. So stay tuned for that and other other sort of like lower of the sort of totem pole stuff that we don't cover a lot. Maybe we'll take some time in future podcasts to do that. We also have some upcoming stuff here with special guests that I'm working on right now. Not going to spill the beans yet, but there's some big, big things coming there. I can't wait. I think next week we're going to have on Tim Benito from Card Vault by Tom Brady Wrestling Card Takeover. Sponsor wanted to get him on the podcast and thank him for his support and to and Card Vault support of what they did for us at the National. So that should come next week. But beyond that I think we're, we're good for this week, man. Any other things you wanted to add before we wrap up? We were talking about older products. I just bought a pretty cool collection from one of my distributors. A bunch of a lot of blasters, ton of cool old Star Wars. However, I feel a little froggy in. It was three or four blasters of 2014 Topps Chrome WWE. So maybe in the future Maybe. Actually, Yu-Gi-Oh those are, those are some fun. Maybe. Maybe I'll open one on the podcast for. For the fun of it. Yu-Gi-Oh Unfortunately, you can't pull the gold refractors out of them, but you know, they're cards that are fun to. You can pull the autographs, I think. And those are Zebra There are Zebra factors you can get out of there. Plus I get any braise. Give it to the kid. Anything. Orton Parallels. Yu-Gi-Oh So those are so much fun. So. Yu-Gi-Oh so maybe. Maybe. Well, I bought a pretty cool collection. There's other really cool WWE in there. I haven't even looked at it. We just agreed on the deal. It's actually sitting in tubs. It came in on a pallet last week. So I've got some things up my sleeve for the. For the next six months to stay tuned. You know what's, you know, it's really funny is like there was a recent sale of a sealed box of 2015 Chrome, I think, and it went for just an enormous amount of money. And like I've seen people selling packs on ebay and packs on Facebook for just not so much. And there's. It's like, I don't know if I trust that at this point be doing that. Wouldn't be doing. I wouldn't be doing that. But man, those products are so hard. You know where those boxes are sitting in probably old school hobby shops across the country just buried in some back room, back room and just like probably have the 40, $50 sticker on them and not being sold. That's where they're sitting at. Shout out to my friend Ben and I, we actually like calculated the print run. I think there was something less than 250 cases made of 2014. On the hobby side, there are so few of those boxes. We still to this day have not seen the Rock Superfractor yet. I don't think Hogan was in that set. He was in 2015, but I mean there's just so many Zebra fractures that we haven't seen. I think Andre the Giant recently sold for a ton of money. But speaking of old top sets, man, those are. That aren't 1998 and 1999. Like those sets are so short printed. They might be the. The lowest printed chrome sets in history before they released the WrestleMania Cactus Jack one. So anyways, with that, we will see you next week. Big Gulps. See you later. Lot happening on the wrestling card front. Adam and Ryan digging into all of the topics that matter. Enjoy an episode of just Adam and Ryan going back and forth, talking about wrestling and wrestling cards. Thank you so much for supporting book to last shout out RBI Crew 7. Go check them out at rbi crew7.com for all your wrestling card needs. Appreciate everyone for your support. Take care. We'll be back next week with another one.