Brent Weyer (@deepvalueinvestor) Returns To The Pod Talking About Investing In Significant Cards Of Players, Whether Buying Ohtani Cards Is A Trap, Choosing Scarcity Over Grade (Part 2)

You're listening to Cards to the Moon, a podcast about trading cards from both a collector and investor perspective. We hope you'll stick around for the ride as we take a deep dive into the state of the hobby, share some hot takes, hopefully some useful advice and fun stories along the way. Welcome to another Friday edition of Cards to the Moon, this is episode 278 and my name is Clark from 5cardguys.com and 5cardguys on Instagram and on YouTube. I'm doing the intro solo today because we've got a great guest for this episode and we'll play that interview in just a bit. If you're a long-time listener though of the pod, you'll know that Brent Ware has been on the show before. He always brings great insights into the hobby, especially if you're more into investing in cards, so stay tuned for that. But first, off the top, I just recorded next Tuesday's episode with John and quick spoiler, we did another round of quiz show for that episode. The main question I asked John was to list the top 10 cards graded by PSA of active MLB players during this past offseason, which we said was from November 2024 to February of this year. So the list I found actually gave me the top 20, so to set up the show for Tuesday, I'll give you guys right now the numbers 11 to 20 on that list and then you can see how John does guessing the top 10 on Tuesday's episode. Alright, so I'll start at 20 and go up to 11. Number 20 is Shota Imanaga, the Chicago Cubs pitcher. We just saw him during the Tokyo series. 4,800 cards graded during the offseason. Number 19 with 4,900 cards graded is J-Rod, Julio Rodriguez. Number 8 with 5,000 cards graded, Mr. Bryce Harper. Number 17, also tied with Bryce, is Ronald Acuna Jr. So looks like people are hoping that Ronald Acuna has a healthy rebound year this season. Number 16, Freddie Freeman with 5,200 cards graded. Number 15, Mike Trout, 6,900 cards graded. I can see that a lot of people like myself are hoping for a great healthy year for Mike Trout as well. Number 14, Junior Caminero, 7,000 cards graded. Number 13 and number 12, John actually guessed on the Tuesday show and this just fell out of the top 10 but pretty close. Number 13, Gunnar Henderson with 7,600 cards graded and Juan Soto also with 7,600 cards graded. And number 11, we talked about him a couple weeks ago with Hyung who was really high on him this coming season, is Wyatt Lankford, 9,700 cards graded. That's the list. Let me know if any of these surprised you at all. We'd love to hear from you guys. You can always DM us at 5cardguys, all one word, or at cardstothemoon, also all one word, on Instagram. All right, without further ado then, here is the interview with Brent Ware. Enjoy. All right, we got another special guest on the pod today, but he's no stranger to the pod because I believe this is his third time on Cards to the Moon. His name is Brent Ware, also known as deepvalueinvestor on Instagram. And if you're a loyal listener of the pod, you'll know in the past couple of interviews we've had with Brent, we've learned a lot from him when it comes to valuing scarcity of a player's card over the grade of the card. And we got yet another recent example of this to illustrate this point once again. But before we do, Brent, welcome back to the pod. Clark, thank you, man. I love being on this podcast. Like I've said before, your guys' podcast was one of the first podcasts I started listening to that was focused around sports cards. And I really loved how there was such an emphasis on baseball. I still think that's a big missing piece in a lot of the sports card podcast era is there's not a lot of focus on baseball. So I've always appreciated that about you guys. Appreciate that. And we still talk a lot about baseball cards. So things haven't changed all that much. And we're going to talk- It's such a foundation of the hobby. Of course, yeah. That's what's surprising to me as well. And we will talk about baseball cards in this episode. So I'm excited to do that with you. This interview will be on episode 278. And I had to check, but you were last on episode 214, which was last June. So not quite a year ago. But yeah, I'm just wondering what have you been up to in the hobby over the past year? Are you still buying? Are you selling more? Chasing after anything in particular? Yeah, always buying and selling and trading and always chasing after great cards. Looking for unique rare and scarce cards that have significance. We've talked a lot about rarity and scarcity over grading of a card. And I think it's really important to always continue to communicate the importance of the significance of a card also. Because in the era of cards where everything is rare and scarce, where everything is surreal numbered, where everything is got out of 50 or out of 25 or out of 99, it really waters down the importance of a lot of cards. If everything is rare and scarce, then what does it matter? And so that's where significance of a card comes in. So just because a card might have a low serial number doesn't mean it's a significant card for that player. And one thing I've talked about with people a lot is, start off by collecting a guy that, as I call him, is a bum. Like a Dwight Howard of the world. Or a Manny Machado. Or somebody that's not top tier as far as collectors are going crazy over them. And get a feel for what cards are truly significant for a player. Because I always tell people, it's great that it's numbered out of 10 or 20 or 50, but is that card important to that player? So I'm always looking for those types of cards. I also started working at Fanatics last July. So that's been a lot of fun being able to take something that I love and am so passionate about and turn it into a career and a hobby. And I worked in medical device sales for a long time, selling the surgeons and selling widgets. And that had its place and it can be fun sometimes, but when you're not passionate about the widget, like I am about sports cards, I feel like in this space, it's a dream. That's amazing. Yeah, I was hoping you would bring that up. Because like I just mentioned, we last spoke in June and then you got this job at Fanatics a month later. So I'm sure you've been busy with that. Yeah, absolutely. It's a fun space to work in. And sometimes I pinch myself because there's not a lot of difference between what I do and the hobby as a collector and what I do for Fanatics. And it's flowed really well. Amazing. Great to hear. I do want to make one comment about what you just said about Manny Machado, putting him in the bum category. My co-host, Heung, would argue against that because he's a big Manny Machado fan. And I feel like, I agree, he's underrated. Wouldn't you think about Manny? I say bums because I say it as a joke because I think it shows how incredibly difficult it is to be highly collected over a long period of time in this hobby. Because I call Dwight Howard a bum. And it's a joke because he's a five-time All-NBA player. So it's like if you're buying a young player right now and you have all these aspirations as to how great you think they'll be someday. Well, Manny Machado, for example, is considered a bum and he's on his way to Hall of Fame. As far as in the hobby community. I don't get a lot of people seeking Manny Machado from me. So I use that terminology just to kind of reiterate and make people's wheels turn like, wait, Manny Machado is a bum? How good does this next guy have to be? How good does Bobby Witt need to continue to be? Have long-term collectability if Manny Machado is a bum? Excellent point. So I love to say that. I say it as a joke because as a sports fan, of course, these guys are not bums. Manny Machado is, like I said, on his way to Hall of Fame and Dwight Howard is in the Hall of Fame now. And we call those guys bums. So that's kind of the joke of it. Yeah, no, I'm glad you made that point again. And the other thing you did mention was just looking for the significance of a card. I love that because to your point, there's so many new products coming out and a lot of them are serial numbered. Really, generally speaking, it's not that scarce. Serial numbered cards in general, right? Right. And you used the example last time you were on the pod. I remember this. How do you know which one will be a significant card for that player? Can you kind of go over what your process is when you're trying to determine what is a significant card for the player that you want? Yeah, so for example, in baseball, the first Bowman Chrome Auto is always a significant card for the player. Right. And then as you get into what's really, truly rare and scarce for that player, you get more into the gold, the 50, the orange, the 25, the red, the five, the super frapper. And so that's a great example. So you could be a Paul Goldschmidt collector versus a Shohei Otani, right? So Shohei Otani is extremely collected right now. People are going after his cards. A lot of hype around them. But how many of those cards of Shohei Otani over long term are going to be truly significant? You could collect a guy like Paul Goldschmidt and get an idea of what cards are truly significant for a player. And then if you wouldn't buy that card for Paul Goldschmidt, why would you buy it for Shohei Otani? Right. So, you know, you see people spending $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 on a second and third year finest red of Shohei Otani autographed. Or if you look at a player like a Manny Machado or a Paul Goldschmidt or anybody else, is that, would that be a significant card for them? Probably not. So why are you reaching just because of the name of the player? Right. So I try not to reach no matter in the name of the player. So I don't have any Otani cards right now because to me is most rare and, you know, significant cards are his first bowman autos. And they're very expensive right now. So I'm patiently waiting. I don't want to, I don't want to reach for a card that just because it's expensive doesn't mean it's significant. Right. No, I'm glad you explained that. And you already answered the question I had later down the road, but we'll revisit it because I want to, I want to see if there's any exceptions to some of the rules that you're setting, which I think are great rules to follow when you're trying to invest and find cards that are worth or potentially worth a lot more down the road. But before we get into that question, I did mention that there was a kind of an example that we can kind of go over in terms of, this is like where you should value a scarcity of a card over the grade of a card. And the last time you were on, I'm sure you remember, you talked about the Mike Trout first bowman. So more recently, and I think you actually tagged me on one of your Instagram stories, the Mookie Bets 2014 Bowman Chrome gold refractor, first Bowman auto, the BGS black label sold last month on golden for about $62,000. Right. And I'm guessing you don't think that was good value, especially if you knew that the BGS 9.5 gem mint of the same card, the gold refractor sold in November, 2024, just a few months earlier for almost 11,000. Okay. Yeah. And, and as well, that's not it. An orange of that same card number to 25, BGS 9.5 auto 10 sold for $21,000. So if you do the math, you could have bought that BGS 9.5 orange and gold for half the amount of that black label. So you want to speak on that? Well, I already know the answer. What side are you choosing? Or, or like I shared with you, you could have bought two 9.5 oranges plus two 9.5 golds for the same price. Yes, that too. As the black label gold Mookie Bets. So what's interesting to me is, you know, collecting has been long established around grading being the primary source of scarcity and rarity in the card as you go back to vintage. Right. Well, with modern cards, I, you know, I've talked about this before, but I, you know, I think it needs to be reiterated again is when there's a card that's more rare and scarce of that card. So for example, the Mookie Bets gold, well, there's an orange to 25 and a red to five and a super fractal. So how significant is the grade of that gold? If there's more rare and scarce cards available of that card versus if you look at vintage, there is no other option other than grade to significant, to be significant for the card. Right. So if you see a 52 Mickey Mantle, the only thing that makes that card rare and scarce is the grade. Sure. But for a gold Mookie Bets, I always caution people to not overspend on the grade of a card if there's a more rare and scarce parallel of that card available. So for example, $60,000, if you look, it's last red to five sold for that. So I would take a red to five in any grade over any grade of a gold Mookie Bets. And we joked last time, imagine us being kids in 2014 opening Bowman Chrome where Mookie Bets is in the box and you pulled a gold and I pulled a red and you said, well, mine's in better condition. Do you want to trade? I don't know what it would take. That red would have to be bent in half for me to trade you that card when I was a kid, right? And even then I'd probably stop and say, I don't know. And so I see this happening in the hobby quite a bit where it doesn't translate the way it did with vintage to modern. So I always caution people. This is my collecting style. What I love to do. It's to seek the most rare and scarce version of a card regardless of the grade. And in fact, if I were to find a Mookie Bets red in a PSA 7, I'd be happy to get a discount on it. So those are just examples. And I tagged you because it reminded me of the Mike Trout black label where you could have got a gold Mike Trout and I think a blue and like 25K for what the person paid for an X-Fractor black label. Well, now just the gold alone is worth more than the X-Fractor black label. So that video that we did, age... really well because you would have been way better off buying a blue, a gold, and having 20K than that black label X-Thrasher trout. Makes sense to me. Makes sense to me, yet we're gonna see these cases over and over, I'm sure. It won't stop. Yeah, yeah, and I've learned now, being in the hobbits a lot, like I can't tell people they're wrong. It's just not how I collect. You know, like to me, I just, I'd rather have a red to five any day over any grade of any other color other than the Superfractor. Yeah, me too. And you know, like it depends on your budget as well, but Brent, I'm happy to tell you, I took your advice. I had a Mike Trout First Bowman Chromato, and it was in a, it was just a base, and it was in a PSA 9 slot. I sold it, and for the same price, I got a BGS 9.5 Mike Trout Refractor numbered to 500 First Bowman Chromato. Oh, wow, there you go, nice, I love it. And you know what's so interesting about trout, I've shared some posts on this too, compared to Otani, for example, is you know, if you look at a gold First Bowman Mike Trout, he's got 50 golds that are autoed. If you look at Shohei Otani, he has between Tops Chrome and Bowman Chrome in his first year, he's got 150. Crazy. So Mike Trout had no rookie Tops Chromes, and he had no rookie Bowman Chromatos. So all he has is a First Bowman if you want an auto of Mike Trout. So supply and demand I think eventually will matter. So I like trout right now, and I like his values right now because I don't think people realize how limited the amount of autos of Mike Trout there are. That's a good point. Yeah, like on the hobby side, we don't talk about that enough. We talk about the player and we're hoping that he rebounds, but in terms of the hobby side, like compared to just like you said, a more modern players or players that are younger than Trout, there's just so many more of their cards around. Or even if you look in the same year as Trout, Freddie Freeman was a First Bowman Chromato in 2009, just like Trout, but he's also has a Tops Chrome rookie in 2011 auto and a Bowman Chrome rookie auto in 2011 where Trout doesn't have any of those. So even Freddie Freeman has three times the supply between his First Bowman and rookie autos as Trout. Trout's autos are super limited. Yeah, this might be a good time because just before we started recording, you mentioned you just picked up a Trout. You wanna talk about that? What was the deal? Yeah, yeah. So it was a card that was such a grail to me when I started getting back into collecting and I just never thought I'd be able to ever purchase this card. And I brought it here to show you guys. Pick it up here. I don't like it to see the light at all, but so I got the gold, gold to 50. And what's so important to me is the quality of the auto. I've been doing a lot of posts on auto quality. There is such a range of autos, especially in my Trout, especially on the older First Bowman Chrome autos of golds and oranges, where some of these autos are half faded off. What they do is they tend to darken first and then they start to fade. There was an orange that sold recently where the auto was half gone and it did 80K, I think. And I just think, it's like modern eye appeal. So just like vintage has eye appeal, eventually this is gonna matter. So there's a red Verlander at auction right now and the auto is pretty bad versus his other autos. It's just too bad because I won't buy a card with a bad auto on it. No matter the price, I just have no interest in it. It's like buying a extremely off-centered, miscut Mickey Mandel 52 top. I get just, I can't look at the card and all I see is the bad auto and I just don't want it. So my only point is this gold, my Trout, I was very picky about getting one with a great auto. And it stays in the dark. I think a lot of these cards back in the day were just out on display at card shows and card shops and especially high-end Trout and their autos are just, they're bad. So don't just look at the BGS 10 auto and say, oh, it's got a 10 auto or the SGC 10 auto. Like a lot of these autos are dated seven, eight, 15 years ago and they've been out in the light, they've been on display and they're half gone now. So. You know what, you might've answered the mystery for me because I cracked out my BGS 9 10 auto of the base Mike Trout Bowman Chrome. And then when I crossed it over to PSA, it initially got a seven auto. I don't know how that happened, but maybe that was the effect of time on that auto. I didn't examine it carefully, but who knows. The gold, the first Bowman gold refractor auto that you just showed us, did you acquire that in a trade or did you just buy that straight out? I bought that straight out. And when I bought the card, I had a bunch of other Trout cards that I have in my collection that I, they're great cards that I purchased over time because I could never afford the first Bowman that I wanted. Like I said, I won't buy a card unless I feel like it's a significant card for the players. So I never really just had the base Trout because it just didn't resonate with me. I wanted something that was significant, like the gold, the 50. So I sold a bunch of my other, my Trout cards to bring some more cash flow back in. So I didn't have this entire selection of Mike Trout. I like to look at my collection like a portfolio in some ways too. So I don't want to have like too much risk with any one player. Because active players are a significant risk no matter where they're at in their career. Otani is a significant risk right now. Mokubetsu is a significant risk. Trout's still a significant risk. So I always try to make sure and manage those expectations. Yeah, another excellent point. And just by showing us your card right now, we know you're into high-end baseball cards. So this might be a perfect segue into my next question, which is I'm curious what your answer will be for this particular question. Moving forward, in your opinion, which rookie card will be considered a baseball player's best rookie card? And we debated this on the show before, and I value your opinion. So do you think it'll be his first Bowman Chrome Super Factor Auto, or of course the MLB debut patch rookie card autos? Oh, wow, that's a tough one. What I think is really cool about the debut patch autos is it's making the rookie card cool again in baseball. I think that baseball has been way too just siloed into the first Bowman Chrome as being the only chase. And it's almost like the rookie cards have just been like an afterthought. There's just so many of them. They're undifferentiated, there's so many sets. And so the first Bowman was very differentiated. Now it's cool, it makes it so where what I'm noticing is opening wax, right, for example, in baseball is a lot more fun now, and there's a chase. Because when you're opening, when you're looking for first Bowman Chrome autos, a lot of these guys aren't even known yet. So you could be opening packs of Bowman and you get first Bowman guys that could be Mike Trout someday, but you don't know it, you have no clue. And they're not really a chase. Versus now, like Paul Skeens, for example, that's up at auction with Fanatics Collect right now. That was a chase card because he had already become a great pitcher, right? So now you have a chase in baseball. And so I think what's really cool is the debut patch brings another avenue for baseball to be chasing instead of only first Bowman Chrome. And so overall, I think it's good for baseball collecting overall. Which one turns out to be the most desirable? I mean, in my heart, I still am first Bowman Chrome Super Fracture all day, but I can absolutely see the place for the debut patch. And there's plenty of room for both of them. If you look at football and if you look at basketball, there's so many grails and there's multiple sets of grails. Like Mahomes has multiple grails. But in baseball, we just kind of had one grail. And so now it's kind of interesting to have two grails. And I think it just expands the hobby for baseball. Yeah, no, I agree. And I love how you sidestepped the question by choosing both as the answer, but that's fine. Yeah, I kind of feel like I'm just, yeah, I don't have a real, you know me, I usually have a really strong opinion and I kind of don't, like I can see where they both fit in. No, for sure, I can see that too. And I love your point about like the first Bowman Chrome autos, when you're hunting them, you're hunting them as prospects. You know, they're not established rookies even at that point. And that kind of reminded me of a episode I did with my two of my friends that I started recollecting cards with and they hit the first Bowman Chrome orange refractor auto of Juan Soto. And when they ripped it and opened it, they're like, who's the 16 year old kid? I know, it looks like he's in T-ball. With the oversized helmet. And then, you know, they just forget about him for two, three years until he gets called up and he's a 19 year old rookie sensation. And then, you know how the story goes from there. But yeah, just to your point, that's exactly right. Well, speaking of MLB debut patch, cause that's one example of how I've seen like the hobby really evolving as it continues to grow, just getting more creative with these chase cards. I'm wondering if there's anything on your radar when it comes to the hobby, you know, any trends you're noticing or are there any new and interesting areas of the hobby you're exploring that can be potentially good investments too? I mean, I'm noticing the hobby overall feels really healthy right now. The market feels really strong. I'm noticing a lot of strong sales at auction, especially for cards. Like for example, I was at a card show and I was working and there was a dealer that had some really great, you know, Shay cards and some great Luca cards. And, you know, a few of them hadn't sold in a while. And a few of like Shay, for example, is super hot in basketball and this market's going up and up and up. And then Luca had just been traded to the Lakers. And so, you know, this dealer had these cards out and I had a good conversation with him around it. Hey, I think these cards would actually do better at auction right now than haggling at a card show. And so I'm noticing a shift from, you know, in 2022, 2023, it was really scary to send cards to auction. And now I'm noticing a lot of collectors probably selling themselves short, selling privately a lot of times versus what they could get for cards at auction. And, you know, haggling at a card show when you could put that card out and get a lot more eyes on it at auction, depending on the player and depending on, you know, how hot they are. For example, so Shay is really hot. So that would be a great example. Or Luca after a trade. So I don't know, I feel like, I feel really comfortable with selling cards at auction for the first time in the last six months versus, you know, 2023. So that's been a shift. I'm seeing cards go for way higher than I expected. You're seeing record sales constantly. And, you know, it's a fun time right now. I agree, yeah. Again, I think on the last pod we recorded, we're just talking about different monster cards that are up for auction now. And it just seems like that week after week, to your point and over the last few months, especially. Yeah, the hobby just keeps seeking rarity and scarcity and significance. And it just continues to consolidate and consolidate and consolidate and consolidate. And I've talked about the Pareto principle where most cards will eventually have very little value and very few cards will hold all the value. Well, I say that because that's the way art is, that's the way watches is, that's the way housing is. Yes. You know, very few zip codes in America have most of the value of real estate. So it's one of those things where, I don't think there'll ever be an end to consolidation in this hobby. And that brings me to one of the things I love about modern sports cards and serial numbering is the complexity to it. So the more complexity to something, the more interesting it is to me. So getting back to serial numbering and all the different parallels, all the different versions and all the different sets, to some people that could be like, oh, it's too much or I'm uninterested. To me, that's exciting. To me, that's interesting because now it's like, who can figure out what's the most significant card for a player? Who can figure out what's gonna be the next set? Who can figure out where there's opportunities? I also believe in, you know, for example, ratios with really scarce cards to a card that's not as scarce. For example, a red PNG to a green PNG. In football, I really like, because I think a green PNG is to 15 and a red is to 135 in football. But a lot of times the ratios, a green PNG was selling for three, four, five X a red. And to me, that's just not enough. I think that's gonna continue to exponentially, the ratio is gonna continue to grow over time. That makes sense. Like, I don't know why a green isn't 10 times a red right now. The green is to 15, the red's to 135, the green is extremely scarce. And I think just like, I don't think, another example would be like a black finite in prisms in football. A black finite's to one, a gold's to 10, and then you have all the other colors. Well, a lot of the black finites in football were selling at three to four X, the gold to 10. Why isn't it 10 X? Why isn't it 20 X? Like, I think we're just gonna keep seeing the hobby evolve into that and just continue to see a discrepancy between the rare and scarce and significant are gonna continue to increase in value as for the hobby. And then you're gonna see the other cards kind of fall off. Amazing. I'm writing all these notes down. Look at the ratios. Complexity, I just have so much fun with it. You know one thing that I started getting interested for the first time in a while because of some added complexity is even like vintage cards and this whole idea around eye appeal versus the grade. Right. That adds some complexity to me. So it actually makes it vintage interesting. Yes. Right, so. Totally. You kind of read my mind. On a tangent there. No, no, it's all related, I think, because we have a friend that comes on our pod every once in a while and he started to really get into vintage. To your point, a lot of it is about eye appeal. And it's like, oh, I found this PSA 4, but it's centering is way better than this PSA 5 and 6. You know, and he'll just rather go for the centered PSA 4. And then that has added value because when he goes to the shows, they often sell more than PSA 5 and 6 because other people are looking for centered, really nicely centered cards as well. Yeah, I think Matty C on Instagram does a lot of posts around the 52 means. It's all that have been really, really educational and great to watch. And, you know, it makes me think about modern too, though, with autographs and patches, right? Like eventually right now, people are just blindly paying money for an old autograph. You know, first it's old to me, right? Like a Joe Maurer or a Buster Posey or a Trout. Like these, we're talking now 2000s, Kershaw, First Feminados. And if it says nine, five, 10, they just buy it versus like really looking at that auto and looking at like, would this be an eight auto now? And so the 52 mantle and what Matty C is talking about, eventually you're gonna look at like 2009, Mike Trout, First Feminados. in gold and I'll probably do a post at some point and I'll probably show how like nine out of the 50 still have a good auto. Right. And eventually that's gonna matter. It might not matter right now, but it will matter. A centered 52 tops mantle didn't used to be such a big deal about the centering, but now we have a great understanding that the centering on the 52 tops mantle is really rare and scarce. Yes. The other thing I warn people of is that's the case for the mantle, but that might not be the case for the maze. So just because you might pay two to three X for a mantle that's centered, I don't know that that's the same case for the maze in that same set. So you can't always just apply it to everything. Yeah. But it's an interesting topic. Good point. Yeah, good point. You know, when you're talking about the complexity of the hobby right now in terms of the different offerings and the different parallels that exist, I wonder if you would categorize like to show Otani, this is the question I want to ask you about Otani, but you kind of answered it, whether it's a trap to buy into Otani now, you know, like to make money, you usually like to buy low, sell high, but then, you know, I'm personally FOMOing hard on Otani cards and I'm like, should I buy high and hopefully sell higher? Is that the mindset or is that a trap, do you think? Well, I would focus on, instead of just saying show hey Otani or just buying as cards, I would be very specific on the cards that I'm buying and whether they're significant or not. And so if you have a budget, say you have a budget of $10,000, can you get a significant show Otani card at $10,000? This is the question for you, do you think you can? I have one in mind, like his first Dodgers autograph card. Would that be, you know, am I stretching? Am I stretching there? How many other players have a fourth or fifth year card that's the first card of them with a new team that's significant? Right, that's a fair point. I don't know of any other ones, you know? Maybe I'm wrong here, but that's not usually a significant card for a player long-term. It could be for Otani, I don't know, but so what I would focus on that more than anything. And if, for example, for your budget, if you feel like you can't get a significant card of him yet, then I'd wait. Instead of buying cards that you can afford just to have one, I would wait until you can afford to buy one that you think is significant. So that might be a stretch at being a, just because it's a Dodgers first year, thinking that significant might be a stretch. But I mean, it's Otani, he's a unicorn, you know? Like he might be breaking the rules. But that's what we tend to do. That's what we tend to do though in collecting is we start stretching and reaching because of the player. And, you know, I wouldn't buy that card for Machado or Freddy Freeman. Absolutely not. I wouldn't buy Freddy Freeman's first Dodgers uniform auto and think it's significant. I agree with you. So why is it for Otani? Because he's Otani, but we could debate this all day. That's true, that's the debate, yeah. Actually, the question I wanted to ask in terms of complexity, I got kind of derailed with my own question, but, you know, now he has like three versions of his autographs. Like, is that something also that could be an interesting factor? Yeah, yeah, that makes me want the original autograph a lot more. And then also a lot of his original autographs, a lot of the loops on them are pretty like light, like he picks up the pens. There's a lot of autographs that are more of an eight or nine, they're not really tens. And so that adds complexity. Can you get an original autograph that's actually bold? That's a 10 autograph. So I think the more complexity, the better. Another example of the complexity would be a lot of the green PMGs in football were having issues with being backdoor copied. And a lot of the backdoor copies were coming in BGS labs. And it made a lot of people just step away from green PMGs in football and feel like, ah, it's too complicated. I don't know which ones are the right serial numbers. And so all that did was made me want to dive into understanding which ones are the right serial numbers and can I find the right serial numbers in a BGS lab that no one's paying attention to and then just cross them over to TSA and then voila, everybody wants them. So it creates complex complexity to something. And I tend to seek that because if what you're doing in this hobby is easy for anyone else to do, that should tell you something, right? So- That's true. I'll just leave it at that. That's true. Yeah, no, I love that. I only got a couple of more questions for you, but we're talking about Otani, we're talking about different players. Are there any players you really like right now in terms of potential investments that you feel is just a little underrated at this moment? And in any sport or baseball? Baseball in particular, but you could venture off to basketball. We talk about basketball cards as well on the pod. Well, here's one that's gonna completely throw you off is I bought wax for the first time. Wow. In quite a while. And it was basketball. Okay. And watching what's happened with show this year, I feel like Cade Cunningham on the Pistons is starting to turn that corner. And watching what the Pistons are doing, I feel like they could potentially be the OKC next year. Okay. And Cade Cunningham could be turning that corner. So I bought a case of sealed prism 2021. Right. Because it just felt super cheap to me. So that was just like a random fun one that, I feel like, I think they're selling for about 600 bucks a hobby box and nobody talks about it anymore. But if you look at the 2021 class, you got Mobley, you got Cade Cunningham, obviously at the top. There's a whole list of just like really good, Jalen Green on the Rockets. The Rockets are trending up. So that was a random one. So I like to dabble in all kinds of spaces. But I like to stick with in baseball, the Freddie Freemans and the Mookie Betts and the Bryce Harpers and kind of those more established guys and they're more rare and scarce cards. So I got a red Paul Goldschmidt recently to five because I just think he's a hall of famer. And I think it's an interesting play, thinking about collecting the red, the fives of hall of fame players. We don't know what those values will be eventually because there's not a lot of them. The only one I can think of really that would be older that's in the hall of fame would be a Buster Posey and you see his values continue to climb. And so. I like those. That's been a fun space too. Nice. I like those choices. Yeah. You know, every time you talk about Shea, it hurts me a little because, you know, as a Canadian, we knew him far in advance and we didn't do anything about it. None of us did anything about it until now. We're all FOMOing on SGA as well. But. You know, it's been fun to watch what his cards have done this year based on performance. Yeah. And I think for a while, the hobby, like people were having great years or, you know, great runs and their cards weren't really moving that much. And you're seeing with Shea this year, wow, even like a card to 99 has tripled in value in a single year. So that's pretty exciting in space. I love it. Love seeing it. Canada represent. All right. Staying on basketball. I know you're a big KD guy, Kevin Durant, but I think I saw on someone's Instagram that you traded one of his biggest cards away. Do you want to talk about that trade and your thought process into making that deal? Sure. I don't know if you know Darius on Instagram, but you know, he's one of my fellow bum collectors. And so you could call Kevin Durant a bum also, so. Right. Isn't that funny that like, you know, two time finals MVP of the bum. But so he's been a big KD collector for a very long time and I'm a big believer in, you know, I call it like future nostalgia. I think a lot of these guys right now, like Chris Paul, Kevin Durant, you know, even guys like Carmelo Anthony, Dwayne Wade, a lot of their stuff is down 70, 80, 90% from their peaks in 2020, 2021. And I think eventually over time, people will have nostalgia for these players a bit. Yeah. You know, if people have nostalgia for, you know, Eddie Jones on the Lakers, you're telling me they're not gonna have nostalgia for Kevin Durant, you know? So it's interesting, or like Glenn Rice, or Stefan Marbury, or like, you know, these guys that people just have nostalgia for them now, but I remember those players at the time, no one really cared that much about them. Yeah. So I like to collect these players' best cards and Darius is a big KD collector. He had some cards that I really liked. I'll show you what I got in exchange. Sure. So I traded him a Kevin Durant Exquisite RPA to 35, the parallel, for a couple of cards in cash. And I thought there were cards that like, I would never be able to replace or see again. I'll show you the first one here is, is a Russell Westbrook Exquisite 2009 one-of-one game use patch. His rookie and exquisites to, I think it's 250 or 225 or something like that. It's not that interesting. It's too many. This is his first year of game use following year one-of-one. And I also got the other bums, first year super fractor 2004. Right. So when I'm collecting bums, it's not just that it's a great Dwight Howard card, it's gotta be a set that's highly desirable also. So 2004 super fractures is the first year of Top's Crown super fractures. So I got this Dwight Howard, just inducted in the hall of fame. Yeah. And I got this Westbrook one-of-one 2009, beautiful auto game use patch in exchange for the Kevin Durant. And I'm telling you, I felt like I was gonna puke when I made the trade. Like, because the Durant has more of a defined value, but these one-of-ones are very difficult to value. Right. And again, the complexity of, you should see the chicken scratch on a notepad that I had trying to understand and figure out the values of these cards and have these ranges. Right. A card like that Dwight Howard super fracture could have a range of 10,000 to 30,000. Yeah. It's like, it's really difficult to understand or the Westbrook, same way. Yeah. You had a Yao Ming sell for 35,000 of that same card. So it's like, who's gonna be more collectible long-term, Yao Ming or Russell Westbrook? And how would you value those two together? And then I start looking at ratios of other years of Yao Ming to Westbrook and it can get complicated quickly. Right. I feel great about it because I feel like I got cards that they're grail cards of these players. The Durants, my rationale for is a great card, but it's one that I think I'll see again. Yeah. No, I'm glad you explained it. And yeah, every time I speak with you, I learn something new and more valuable tips on how I can implement some of those tips in my own, the way I collect as well. So yeah, always appreciate you coming on Brent and I'm sure this won't be the last time we speak. You kind of seem to be a perennial guest of Cards to the Moon. So hopefully it remains that way. Well, I really appreciate that, man. So as a fan of the show, it's really cool to be on the show and keep doing what you guys are doing. Thank you. Keep the podcast going and you guys are one of the OGs in the space. Appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks Clark. Hey, thanks for listening to Cards to the Moon. We'd really appreciate you subscribing to our podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. And you can also connect with each of us on Instagram at 5cardguys, or you can follow Hyung at Integrity Sports Cards or John at TradeUatRecess. You can also check us out at 5cardguys.com. Thanks again and hope to connect soon.