Card Ladder Confidential Episode #20: Wemby Hype, Million Dollar Cards, and the Psychology of Repricing

Foreign. What's going on? Welcome back to another episode of Card Ladder Confidential here on the Stacking Slabs network. Episode number 20. It is that time of the month where we dig into the analytical and emotional side of collecting. And I do it alongside my friends Chris and Josh from Card Ladder. I was not expecting this, but we had a big auction end that drove so much of this conversations. Big sales. We got a lot of topics to dig into. We dive into wimby, a lot to talk about with his cards and collectability. We respond to the question of how long can high end pricing sustain without broad participation, without we talk about category repricing and a whole lot more. Card Ladder is the one, the only place I use to check out data on my cards and the broader industry. Make sure you're signed up for Card Ladder already. If you're not, what are you doing? If you want to show your support for Stacking slabs, hit the follow button. Tell a damn friend. Run on over to the Patreon Group. It's Card Ladder Confidential. It's episode number 20 and it's coming your way. We have made it to episode number 20 of Card Ladder Confidential. I feel like we should be throwing a party or some sort of celebration. This is a feat we are here. A lot of you remark on whenever Card Ladder Confidential shows up in your feed. So we're here to deliver that post holiday. I have to think about these things because we're recording it in advance so you'll get a little treat after your day off of work. And we have a whole menu of topics to dig into. And we start these things with the cold open question. And guys, this one wasn't that hard, although I was unprepared this morning. But just there was a big auction last night. And so whenever there's a big auction, there's a lot of narratives, there's a lot of everything. And I wanted to ask you both, and I'll ask each of you individually to select one card that ended in the auction and whether it's. You have good things to say about it, bad things, interesting things. I just want to start this conversation off with a card that ended in the premiere and something that is on your mind and I'll defer like based on that. Do either one of you have like a feeling of just saying, I know what the card is, I'm ready to go. Does anyone want to step up to the plate? I've got one and but Brett, do you have one? It's interesting you asked the question because I just recorded Saturday slabs on one card specific and it was probably the most obvious one and it was the Josh Allen Shield. And so yes, that is the card. And you know, I'll just, I don't want to take all the thunder from the cold open question, but I think you've got a lot of conversations about this being a million dollar football card. You've got a lot of people sharing this card and I'm all for excitement, I'm all for exuberance, but I am left with the question what does this mean for me? Like I'm, I'm just not sure what this means for me. As a football card collector and a co host of the Football Card podcast, I think primarily my takeaway on this card is that which I have not heard anyone talk about is the fact that this card was just manufactured from product people or executive people in an office at Fanatics before they got the license. And it's a brand new concept, a brand new card. Although it has all the elements we want in football cards, this is a brand new thing and it basically is confirming the decision of the manufacturer to create a card like this and see what the market does. And the market responded. So hats off to the people at Fanatics and tops, this is a home run. People are talking about it, but I'm just it. For so long cards and values has been built off of legacy and conversation about players and collectors debating on which cards should matter and why they should matter. And over time this elevates the price and that's not the case with this million dollar sale. This is a brand new card and, and it is the first time it has appeared at the auction out of the Topps Chrome product that just was released and now it sells for 1.3 million. So those are the questions I'm, I'm like wrestling around with what does this card mean for me? And then also I just can't help but think about the fact that this feels a little manufactured. So that's what I have to say. Yeah, it's great. It's a super interesting take. There's a lot of meat on that bone. I think zooming out to the Fanatics premiere as a whole, it looks like there were 605 sports card results that trickled into card lighter sales history from that one auction. And certainly it's headline worthy that two of the cards went for comfortably over a million bucks. But if you simply look at this auction and remove the brand new releases, if you just sort of like ignore the post license transfer fanatics slash tops Manufactured NFL NBA cards. The. And even like, there was a pretty high selling Aaron Judge 2025 card. So like, just to give like a taste of it, to make it a little more concrete, you had the Josh Allen from 2025 tops Chrome, which you mentioned. The Gold NFL Shield autograph redemption 1.35 million Topps Chrome super fracture LeBron from 2025 autograph 1 of 1, 1.26 million. Then 2025 Topps Chrome legend super factor Tom Brady autograph 1 of 1, 324,000 2025 top transcendent collection Aaron Judge MLB logo man patch autograph 1 of 1 PSA 1010, 252,000. Like, among the top 12 sales, the two highest and four of the 12 were 2025 releases. If you take those out of the population, this looks like a more normal premiere, granted, with more volume. Like, I was looking at some research I had done about premiere volumes in 2024, and they were sometimes a little bit more than 100 cards in the premiere, sometimes a little bit less 605 last night. That's crazy. But that's one big picture takeaway. So before I say my card, which I think is a great foil to your Josh Allen card, before I say that, let me yield the floor to if there, if there's any commentary on sort of, you know, what the impact is of these big, expensive 2025 new releases on the outcome in the headlines of this auction. I'm going to take your yielding and then propose a question to Josh. And I just want Josh's opinion as a longtime LeBron apologist and collector. Josh, what do you think about this 2025 tops Chrome Super Fractor LeBron Auto Sale for 1.26 million? Well, this is going to be what I brought up anyways, so you're teeing me up. Even better. I. So my overall thought on the modern stuff is it's obviously like out of control. People are paying exuberant amounts just to get back into this 2025. Especially Topps Chrome fanatics getting the licenses. Everyone's like, way overly excited. I. But I actually think this LeBron is like, pretty, pretty sick. And then my zag is like, I don't a million is a lot or whatever, but like a bunch of cards sell for a million. And this is his first top scroll super factor since 2009. This is not the variation. Granted, I would want the one without the autograph, but I know collectors put a lot of emphasis on the on card, like top Scrum autograph version of these super factors. This just, this just wasn't a thing from the 2000s Topps Chrome. But now like with baseball it is they a lot of people prefer the autograph and he's like debuting his new crown autograph which I get. People don't like it, but I think it's pretty, pretty sweet honestly. And it's just like a sick card. It's like his first top scrum super factor since 2009 and he's still playing. There's like a stupid Brady super fractor auto which is like four years past his retirement. This is playing days and it's towards the end of his career. Michael Jordan's PMG green is in the last full playing season for him with the Bulls. So there is a precedence for these super rare, you know, kind of one of one of one type cards that are in the later of the guy these guys career. And I don't think it's that bad. I think that's a. Maybe not exactly what I was expecting Josh from you, but I think as you talked it all makes sense and I, I'll just remark on this and then Chris, I want to hear your card is the fact that for me none of these cards, whether it's NFL, NBA, wwe, whatever the category of tops that they produced, they. They've done a really nice job on these sets and these cards. And I have a lot of nice things to say about it. I find it just interesting the prices that a lot of these cards are going to going for. So that's just when I look at these I'm like wow, that's a lot. But then I guess if you're comparing this LeBron playing day super fracture with other LeBron super fractures, then maybe it's not as crazy. But Chris, what, what, what is. What card do you want to talk about? Yeah, so I mostly found the Premiere to be a bit of a snooze fest personally. Why I didn't like most of the cards in there. Not saying that they're bad cards or obviously not. These are lot of these cards were extremely expensive and hotly desired and so on. But for my taste, I'm allowed to have taste that's different than the mainstream or that's different than the collector next to me. And for my taste, I didn't like most of the cards not for my collection. However, there were four cards that were at least of interest that maybe were bid worthy if they stayed at a price that I liked and none of them did. But. And, and among those four cards is the one sale that I, that I want to highlight. So. But the four that I highlighted were the 04 Blir showcase masterpiece one of one Shaquille O' Neal, which was a PSA7, it sold for 27,300. Another one was the 97 Flare showcase Legacy Row one Cal Ripken one of one PSA9 that sold for 10,650. The third was a 2005 Exquisite Base set Rainbow one of one Kevin Garnett PSA8 that sold for 9,600 bucks. So we're talking about like the low end of a premiere and the fourth one and the one that I want to position as the foil to the Josh Allen is the 1997 Flair Showcase Legacy Collection Row Zero Masterpiece John Elway one of one PSA Authentic, which sold for 24,600 bucks. That John Elway Row Zero Masterpiece is one of his first one of ones. I don't know the release schedule for 1997 NFL products and as a technicality there are 1996 college uniform one of ones that are these like phone cards that are in fact I believe have written on them 1 of 1. So I believe technically the first football 1 of ones are those. But I don't believe John Elway was in that set. And I believe 97 is the first year of one of ones for John Elway and he doesn't have many. I think it's maybe around a handful, not many from 97. And you know, the, the player obviously offers four one of ones for each player for each of the rows. And John Elway, you know, this is a, this is a Super bowl mvp. This is a regular season mvp. This is one of the great players. And this is from the early, earliest issues of one of ones in football. Not to mention it's a beautiful card and it went for $24,600 and certainly not a rookie. But as we established, neither was the Josh Allen. Now I understand that there's like a lot of like real, a lot of excitement about this idea that these like for example, these gold shield autograph cards are sort of taking the integration of player assets, in particular game worn memorabilia and sports cards to a new level because it's these, these are readily identifiable to a game. They're visible to everybody who's sort of watching and notices the special patch. And it's just sort of raising the bar from what we had previously had, which is like, well, maybe you get language on the back that says game worn. Maybe you get language on the back that says player worn Maybe you get language on the back. This is not associated. But typically, although there are some exceptions to this, but typically there, there wasn't much placement to a specific game. And so this card not only is placement to a specific usage of the, of the relic, but it's also commemorating an MVP season, which is obviously a very special player to the history of the sport. So there's a lot of belief in this as a category, but there's also a lot of reason why a lot of institutional stakeholders would like to see huge sales come out of these products so that when the next release comes, there's this notion that there's several million dollar lottery tickets embedded into each one of these boxes and that it can really drive a lot of excitement and enthusiasm to try and buy into breaks and open the. And open the products. So that's my card. Brett and Josh is the. The John Elway Row Zero Masterpiece. One of one for 24,600 bucks. A ton of money, but paltry in comparison to the Josh Allen. What a great card to select. Because when you shared it on the screen and I did not know that this was a part of the auction, my first thought was I've covered this card before and I thought, should I, should I have covered a one of one masterpiece? And as you were talking, I looked up the sales history. This card has sold four times in the last two years. One of one masterpiece with all the accolades and all the prestige that you just highlighted. And I think that to me is the. You kind of take the air out of it when you look up the sales history and see in 2024, August it sold for nearly 19k. Then September of 24 you sold it sold for 13k. Then in July of 25 it sold for 13k. And now we're back up in May of 22 or 26 for 24k. So great card. Agree with everything you say, but man, I just wish these cards, when they're awesome like this and they have all the elements would just stay rested in someone's collection for like a decade until I saw them again. Okay, so to like finish to put a button on that over, under on the next time we see this card at auction. If I set that to one year, are you taking the over or the under? I hope it's the over, but I'm going to say it's the under because we are, we're at the all time, we're at the all time high of this card right now at 24. So whoever bought it for 24 if they're not an Elway Broncos 90s or have some affiliation for this and they just bought it because there's an opportunity, maybe they think in this market they'll get more but I hope that's not the case. But that was good. That was good. We extended it and we've got a lot of stuff to talk about. Let's talk about Wimy. All right, so I don't know about you guys, but after and I'll set the stage here. So we we've got a tied series as we're recording this. We've got game three tonight. There will be have be game four will have happen and then by the time this gets released on Tuesday, we will be gearing for Game 5. So a lot just wanted to make that point clear. But I want to focus in on Monday night's performance. Obviously the 40 plus 20 plus game. I mean I could. It was just one of those games. It was great and it was a moment where Wimby did extraordinary things will this way to win in okc, which isn't easy. And what happened on the other side of it. The hobby responded. I opened up Instagram. Everyone with Wimby cards was posting them. Everyone's excited, which is. Which is good. Before we dive into some questions you, I'm sure you both were watching the game. I'm sure you thought of cards was there is there before we dig into this, is there any like opening comments or remarks based on the performance? Women Yama's cards collectors sharing their thoughts about Wemby's cards. Like any opening remarks that either one of you want to make before we dive in. Well, they're separate because he's obviously moved himself into top three best players in the NBA. He's top three by all advanced metrics this last season. He's only 22 years old. He's obviously like way ahead of any timeline people would put would put on someone at his age. He's on a a great young team. There's a lot of future hype for him. Obviously he's living up to it. Game one was incredible. 4020. You know, he's like putting himself with like Kareem and Shaq and Jokic with some of these numbers and playoff games and such. And he is only 22. I point that out again because most of these guys are like 24, 25 when they start hitting these. This playoff excitement. So he's obviously incredible. Now separating that from like his card value stuff. I thought his I thought he had the most ridiculous Sale in that whole fanatics premiere and it's the 2025 Topps Chrome Gold Autograph out of 50. I thought the same thing, dude. That card sold for $200,000. It's a Pop 3 already. It's out of 50. For some perspective, the highest sale of a gold refractor for LeBron out of any year of Topps Chrome, that's not a rookie card is the 2008 and it sold for 90,000. So like this card is selling for double any LeBron PSA 10 gold refractor ever. I think that's absolutely insane. And these prices are just not even close to being sustainable for Victor no matter how well he's playing. So there's just like a ton of like let's blow past him winning five championships and just start paying those prices immediately. And that's, that's fine. You know, there's excitement mixed in with the new release of Tops coming back. We've talked about this a bunch, but that card is an absurd sale. And his, his. The amount of value he brought in the premiere is absurd. 30 sales. 2000-002000-00100,000. 87,000. So people are really excited about Wembanyama and watching these games. I understand, but I, you know, the prices don't really line up. I just. Can you imagine being one of the other two owners of this card? You must be just throwing a party, right? For now, dude. For now this will be a pop 11 in like a, in a couple months. No doubt. So Chris, when I look at these numbers and I think about just the, capturing the, the hearts and minds of the hobby. You know, I think about just like the, the, the Otani side and then now there's Wimby and doing these things. And the question that I have is like at what moment does a player achieve all time collectibility status? You know, it's fine and well, when you've got a player that's just like a rising star that's doing these things probably way ahead of schedule, who's undeniably like Josh said, you know, one of the top three players in the NBA. But like, I don't know if, if right now like today, if Wimby never played again, I could say that his cards are all time collectible. Maybe they are. I don't know. That's why I want to propose the question like how do you think about all time collectibility and when a player like Wimby might achieve it or not? Yeah, definitely has not achieved it yet. And I think even the most ardent advocate for Victor Wembanyama's collectibility would agree to that. The resume right now reads a defensive Player of the year award. Like Josh pointed out, he finished third in MVP this year. So that's. He finished right ahead of Luca, which is amazing. Finished right behind Jokic and behind Shake Il just Alexander. So he's won two playoff series. Had a really iconic game with that crazy 30 foot three that was like I screamed when that shot went in. It was very exciting. But certainly the, the resume needs to be multiplied by an order of magnitude before. And I, I don't mean that figuratively. He needs to 10x. Just like the hobby. The hobby's going to 10x. Wemby's resume needs to 10x for it to make sense that he would be collectible for the long term. And so like, you know, you start thinking like, how does a player become collectible for the long term in the first place? It's a really great question. And I think one of the pathways to. I think there's two clear pathways. I think there's a, an accomplishments pathway and a cultural pathway. The accomplishments pathway is, you know, like for, let's take LeBron as a very recent example, anytime any player is getting to the end of a great career on all of their broadcasts, it's going to get thrown up on the screen. Such and such just got to 28,000 points. And here are the all time leaders in points scored. And LeBron's name will ring throughout broadcasting of the NBA for decades and decades and decades. And so anytime the topic comes up of like career totals and points, as one example, the name of LeBron will ring out and that will cause people to think about LeBron. It will trigger 20 plus years of memories of watching him play. And so that's sort of the scaffolding in one sense of how a player can remain present and in front of mind. It's like their accomplishments are so undeniable that they have to be constantly brought up as a measuring stick. And there are definitely players in all sports who have that. That's the accolade pathway. So what can Wembanyama do to get onto that accolade pathway? That's the, that's the question. And then. Or there's the cultural impact pathway, which is that you were so memorable and so important for such a long period of time that, you know, people will remember that image. They'll remember the moments, they'll remember how you shaped the way the sport is thought of. Like, Steph Curry is a Guy who kind of has a foot in each of those lanes. Like, the accolades are impressive. Four titles, one finals MVP. Arguably could have been more. Two regular season MVPs. So there's this very nice accolades path. All time leader in three pointers made and continuing to add to it. But there's also the cultural path. Like just, you know, like Josh was telling me a story one time like he was playing basketball on a, on a court against some guys and like they just tried to play like Curry. They just wanted to do nothing but just launch threes all game long, you know, like that's so, so like you can't even escape the thought of Curry if you're just playing basketball against people. And like you're just like, oh gosh, this is the impact of Steph Curry. So there's a cultural path too. And maybe there's other paths too. But like those are two clear paths and right now there's an enormous amount of work to be done for Victor Women Yama before either of those paths are viable to him having a sufficient legacy build to reach the apex of collectibility. And then the one other thing I'll add because I love that you brought up Ohtani. Shohei Ohtani is the favorite right now, a big betting favorite to win his first fifth mvp. Granted this is baseball. They give out two of them a year. It's certainly a watered down award relative to the NFL and the NBA. And in fairness to that side, Ohtani has led the MLB in war only twice. But nonetheless, if we step outside of the inter sport comparison and go in trust sport, the only player to win more MVPs than him, even if he doesn't get a fifth, is Barry Bonds who sits at seven. And Ohtani right now sits at four and is a favorite to get to five. And that just puts even a bigger gap between himself and Trout and Pujols and Judge and all these other guys who are three. So Ohtani is in full legacy build. Ohtani is like, yes, the accolade path is there and yes, the cultural moment path is there too. Now still, he has a ways to go before reaching the legacy build of some of the apex players in sports, in my opinion. But he's well on his way. I think that's a good comparison point to Wembanyama because I do think there's a lot of like, well if Ohtani can do this, then Wembanyama can do this maybe. But Ohtani is a lot of the way there. His, his power bar is filling up and Wemby's has just started. A lot of great thoughts there, and I want to kick it over to Josh, but I want to do so in a manner where we. Chris talked about accolades and cultural impact. That kind of trickles down into collectibility. I think. One thing that I don't think I've ever really talked about on stacking slabs a lot, but thinking about players and I think a element that straddles both, like, cultural impact and potential accolades is competitiveness. Like, something that we gravitate to with these guys on cards is we want to collect guys that we believe are competitors that are not worried about what they're doing after the game, but just care about winning. You collect LeBron James. LeBron James is a competitor. He has won. All he cares about is winning. Chris, you collect Michael Jordan, ultimate competitor. Michael Jordan just cares about winning Game one. I did not know that Wimby had that level of competitiveness in him. I was. I'm not watching him every night. I'm not reading about him every night. I'm a basketball fan who's watching Wimby when he shows up on my tv. And I was just like, damn, this guy is a killer. He's a competitor and he's wearing it on his sleeve. So, Josh, maybe like, as you think about just like competitiveness and collecting and the importance of it, and maybe what Wimby has shown or hasn't shown, like, how do you think that impacts, like, his overall market, just like now and maybe in the long term? Yeah. Well, first of all, that. That PSA 10 autographs, a pop five card ladder now tracks the PSA DNA autograph population separate from the non DNA. And that DNA has two PSA 10s and the regular has three. So it's five. I wanted to clean that up. The competitive thing, I'd say that probably sides more on like, the cultural side of it. What, like what Chris was saying, like, guys get the reputation of being quote, unquote killers. And it's always been like, oh, are you like a Kobe Jordan killer or are you a LeBron? Like the opposite or whatever. You know, you always hear that narrative. I would say the best player of the last 10 years is Jokic, and he's never once been called like a killer or competitive. So I don't really. I don't know that that really translates too much. And like, the killer we I think of is like, Westbrook, and he kind of has this, like, you know, he does too much and like, turns the ball over so it can kind of go both ways it's probably more of a cultural thing. You know, it's like Kobe has this mamba thing or whatever and. And it's. It kind of appears that women. Yama has some of that as well, which is great. Culturally, I don't know that it's necessarily going to help him translate into winning. We'll. We'll see. But yeah, it's like a fun. It's like, I would say like it's more fun for him because he's so big. We're just not used to like, we're kind of used to seeing it more from like the smaller guys. Like they kind of have this like small guy thing going on where they have to like alpha everybody and try to match up. Whereas seeing it from literally the tallest guy in the court by like a foot, seeing him sort of run around and scream at everybody is. Is an exciting thing. And it's like you see him pull up for three in the exact same spot that Curry did, like Chris pointed out, and the same court on the okc, and he's literally like two feet taller than Steph Curry. So I think it's more of seeing someone this much of an outlier in size doing some things that we hearken back to like smaller, more normal sized humans is. Is the part that gives him this cultural boost. You know, that's good. This has been a good discussion on Victor Wimanyama. Before we move on to the next topic, a lot will have changed before this goes live, but I got to get your predictions on the Western Conference finals, like based on everything you've seen so far. Granted to the audience, we have watched two games. The third game is tonight. And as we're recording this, what do you think is going to be the result? Chris, do you want to go first? Yeah. I think that the NBA script writers accidentally leaked the script when they showed us what happened in the mid season tournament, the Emirates cup. Because in that tournament the Knicks advanced out of their bracket to the finals. And on the other side of the bracket, it was literally OKC versus San Antonio and San Antonio advanced out of their bracket. And then you had a Knicks San Antonio showdown and then the Knicks beat them. And not only would that outcome mirror the cup, but it also sort of mirrors how those matchups played out during the regular season as well. The Knicks have a beat down or two of the spurs on their ledger already from the regular season. So that would be my predictions. We're going to get Spurs, Knicks and the Knicks are going to win. Oh boy. Josh, what do you think so? This is not what I'm rooting for, but I think the injuries are tough for the Spurs. Like no Fox now Harper's banged up. Womenyama always seems to get banged up in these long, drawn out series, so I'm worried about him. And the Thunder just have like so much more depth. They were playing like 11 guys the other day, so even. And like, they play better when Jalen Williams doesn't play. Nobody wants to talk about this. They're like, oh, Jalen Williams is out. Sam Street. They're literally better without him. Their record is way better without him. Their win percentage without him in the last two years is like 85% and with him it's like 75. So I think OKC will actually get better without Jalen Williams. And then they, you know, like I said, they play 10 deep. And the spurs are kind of very dependent on their top three to four guys. And if two of them are out, they might be in trouble. I don't want that to happen. I am sick of OKC just as much as the next guy. So I, I'm rooting for the spurs and then obviously the Knicks are gonna blow through the Cavs, it seems. And I'm not sure about the finals. I'm. I will be rooting for the Knicks over okc. We'll see. I'm not sure. I'm. I'm hesitant to root. I'm hesitant to think that Cat and Brunson can win an NBA championship. We'll see. I guess I should throw my hat in the ring while we're at it. I think this year, as a Pacers fan, I'm stuck with the most miserable ending, which will be the Oklahoma City Thunder vs. The New York Knicks. And oh, man, it's just like against my religion to say the Knicks are going to win the title. So I think it's going to be back to back for the Thunder as much as that result doesn't excite me at all. But I tend to lean on this element of the bench and what they can throw at you. And I value experience an awful lot of at this moment in time in the playoffs. And so I, yeah, I won't take anything away from the Knicks. The Knicks have had just a remarkable run. They've just been lights out, so in the Garden's rock and so. But yeah, Thunder, Knicks, Thunder winning. That's Brad. If the Knicks win, you get a great trump card because you've bounced them in two straight seasons. So. Yeah, but we don't have the title here. In Indiana. So that's, that's, that sucks. But yeah, that's neither here nor there. Good discussion. I want to talk about how long can high end pricing sustain without broad participation? It seems like anytime the market is going up, there is a cast of characters and a lot of characters talking about just where the hobby's going and how they don't feel like they're necessarily connected to it. So maybe we start with are we seeing strength from broad participation or is this concentrated conviction amongst a smaller but mightier or more wealthy group of participants all like, throw something else on top of this? It's. I can't ignore the discussions on Barry Bonds and what's happening on my Instagram feed. Everyone's analyzing the Barry Bonds market and although I don't collect baseball cards, I'm very interested in just like the fact that all of a sudden a player like Bonds who is historically significant and has the accolades to back it up, prices are doubling and tripling overnight. So the question is, are we seeing strength from broad participation or concentrated conviction? Chris, let's start with you. Yeah, I think the data will be instructive here. I saw one Kobe collector pointing out that in last night's premiere he had a 2010 NT Colossal Logoman Autograph PSA6 Autograph 10. Granted, it's out of two. It's not out of one. It sold for 660, 000 all in. So that's an enormous sum. But it's a, it's an early Kobe logoman autograph 1 of 1. You know, there were expectations that card would go for over a million bucks. Or another card that I think underwhelmed a bit was the opici rookie Gretzky PSA 9 auto 10, which I believe is extremely low pop in that grade or higher. So, you know, I look at some of this stuff, I mean, as I sort of scroll the results, you've got your obligatory handful of kaboom golds that go for the low six figures. But that's been going on for a while. You've got a PMG green and a PMG red that are in the low to mid six figures. I mean, that's, that's sort of been the case. You've got a few, you know, NTRPA PSA tens of like shea and ants that sell for 100 and change. That's pretty normal. You know, you've got your, you've got some Brady stuff heating up, you know, like his 2000 Bowman Chrome Refractor 95 that sold for 174. The previous sale was like half of that. So that's a, that's a big jump. But it's not, it's not like soaring into like unprecedented prices. It's not even an all time high for the card. And you know, then you keep scrolling and you get to you know, you get your Otani, you know, Bowman first chrome blue out of 150, low, low hundreds. You get your handful of LeBron and Jordan exquisites, you know, low hundreds upper 80s and 90s. You get your star 101 Jordan, you know, in a higher grade right around 100. Some of the other stuff that kind of like kind of leapt up is like John Stockton had A logoman autograph 1 of 1 from 2021 Flawless go for 105, 000. That was by far the highest price ever paid for one of his cards. But you know, as I kind of scroll the results it's like there's nothing too crazy here. Like there's definitely upward momentum across the board. But you know, if once again if you sort of take out those, those, those handful of headliners from brand new products you get a pretty standard picture of a pretty consistent trend. And I think like, I think, I think the trend is overstated and I think there's, there's reasons why, you know, you look at the card letter industry volume tab and 600, I mean, I'm sorry, 600 million in monthly sales for a few months in a row. That's obviously a giant number. You look at the grading reports and just like record numbers of cards being graded. But if you kind of like zoom in a little bit, you know, you can really see how it's siloed. Like a lot of the grad is coming from TCG sports grading is still trending up but, but not by any sort of monstrous proportion. And you know you look at auction results and you see that like yeah, we have these like kind of outlier new things like the first ever LeBron Topps Chrome super fracture on card autograph or the debut of the first, you know, because Josh Allen being a part of this, this first, you know, gold shield autograph, one of one card concept. Like you know, outside of sort of the outlier results. Like it's, it's actually, you know, not, it's not quite, it's definitely trending up but it's not as exaggerated as it might kind of feel if, if you, if you aren't parsing the results. Very good analysis there. I, maybe Josh, on the 605 cards, I thought I think, Chris, you brought that up earlier. I think that's telling. Like, if you take those certain cards out, the newer cards that were sold for an insane price and just looked at the rest, you know, you're kind of the perspective is it's kind of pretty normal business as usual. Maybe what's not business as usual is like the 605 number, especially if you compare it to other premier auctions over the last like, you know, two or three years, maybe zeroing in on that number, obviously putting up this volume of cards to end in one night suggests that there's a buying pool of people that is maybe more broad than the past. Like, what do you think about that? Like, the idea that we're going to run this auction, it's not going to be 100 or 200 cards, it's going to be 605 cards and you're going to like it. Like, what do you think that signals? Well, it lines up with the industry tab where we're showing the overall volume still continuing to rise, but we're not necessarily seeing individual cards, you know, 5xing like it was in 2021. That's kind of the same theme that keeps carrying through. And Chris is pointing that out with some of these individual sales. Like some of the individual ones, sure, they pop off because they're one of ones that were created a year ago and they, they sort of make these crazy prices. But like, if you drill into individual prices, you know, you're not seeing like 2x in the last year, you know, consistently. Except for Pokemon, which continues to be the outlier. It's like Pokemon we and then these sort of like tops chrome outlier cards. Those are the three categories that are really carrying this narrative that like every, that, that the high end is just like exploding, you know, and then, you know, you got your random PMGs and the kabooms continue to do their thing. So kind of what Chris was saying, it seems like it's more focused on a few things that make us feel like everything's going crazy. But overall I would say it's way more of like a broad. There's just like a ton of money being spent. In general, there's a lot. The stock market's at an all time high. Crypto's still really high. There's still a lot of money. Like paintings are selling for 15 million. Crystal sent me links of like these insane paintings that sell for 20 million. So there's still 85 million for those red rectangles, sir. 85. Okay. Yeah. See, so there's like just crazy money being spent on these speculative assets. Regardless, I don't think that we're, that we're just like blowing anything else out of the water. I think that's pretty standard. What do you think of this Dennis Rodman Green PMG sale for 348k which I believe is the to pop one and a PSA A. What are you doing, Brad? What are you, what are you doing here? I'm just asking, I'm, I'm asking what your question. I, I'm looking at the, the feed in the gray green PMG is just radiating and it's telling me it's Dennis Rodman and It's a green PMG in it. Sold for 348 000. I want, I want your guys opinion on it. Like what do you got? Good Josh the cultural king. Mr. Dress Wearer. Dude, this guy is the most overrated player in the history of the NBA. This card is insane. I can't believe this card is over this much money. If you know anything about me, Brett, you just teed me up for the most ridiculous card ever. I, I, this guy average, he averaged like, this guy averaged like nine points a game. Dude, Draymond green's better than this guy. He sucks. Oh now Chris, do you have anything to add to this Rodman green pmg? Well, you know, how much, how much did that sell for? $348,000. $348,000. That's a huge sum. One of the interesting parts about that. Let me just make sure I have my numbers right. I'm pretty sure that that sale didn't quite get. Yeah, okay, so Dennis Rodman obviously has a PMG green 10 copies. And he also has a credentials now from the same season of 97, 98. And the credentials now for him is number to five. And there was a lot of discussion last week on Instagram stories and such about how Kobe's credentials Now, which is eight copies, went for a fraction of his PMG Green in a private sale. So the PMG Green private sale was like 3.3 something million. And his credentials now out of eight sold at open auction for around 600, 650,000. Granted. With the caveat that that particular urine color. Right? Yes, the urine colored credentials now which like I'm always like cautious about something like that because like did somebody just bought that car. That's their grail and we are yucking their yum. But, but it's, it matters to the conversation here overall. And anyway though we, we look here and and now we have a different outcome which is where the Rodman credentials granted five copies only sold for 360,000 and open auction with fanatics in March and now here we have a PMG green selling for 348 in May also on Fanatics premiere. So there's a counterpoint to enter into the discussion about the credentials now versus the PMG green with the backdrop being how much does rarity matter and especially in these early 90s releases. Obviously I'm very much on the side of rarity matters a ton. But not everybody is. There's plenty of people who think that sort of the iconic nature of a set can trump rarity. And that's a completely valid point of view too. There is no wrong answer on this. There's just taste and preference. And the only other thing I want to add is the context of the private sale is very helpful. So like Aaron Judge had some monster private sales over the last few months. 5.2 million for his Bowman super auto first and then like almost 2 million I think for a Dynasty Logan autograph one of one and then he had come to auction the non autograph version of his Bowman super first Bowman Chrome and it sold for, you know, a seventh or an eighth of what I think, I think it sold. It ended up selling around 800,000 and the autograph one for 5.2. So I think we've got a couple examples here where the private sale market is just, I think, I think it's reasonable to conclude is, is stronger than what these cards will do at open auction. So but that, that on a certain level makes sense. You need to, you know, if somebody doesn't want, if somebody isn't voluntarily sending their card into auction and a buyer wants to pry it out of a collection, they need to pay stronger, they need to pay more than probably what that card would bring at open market. But that's, that's a side commentary too is the private versus public. I love the private versus public chat and it's good to recognize that. Before we move off this topic, I wanted to ask the question of, you know, we get the data from card ladder, we get the, here's the sales, here's what these cards are valued or what people will pay for them. And so we get so infatuated, especially with the data and with comps when we're buying cards in this moment where we might not ever see these people who bought the top 20 cards, who these people are, if they showed them off, it could just be very private, which tends to Happen with a lot of these higher end sales? What like outside of car ladder data? Like, what do you maybe as collectors look at in terms of trying to get a pulse on like what is actually happening in the market? Like, is there anything maybe Josh, from you, like when you're trying to just assess outside of the data and the sales, like that you look at like on the periphery about like to give you sort of indication and signals on, like, okay, I should have confidence to buy this Lebron card right now. Or you know what, now is probably not a good time because X, like, is there anything just from your experience that you can call out? I can only go off of my own experience here and I have two things to mention. One is my own like inner circles on Instagram chats of groups that I'm in are, you know, similar people that are buying similar cards to what I'm buying. If like a bunch of us have sort of raised the floor of what we're willing to spend either from each other or pulling from outside sources, whether we all agree to that simultaneously or not, or one of us wants to take the lead and like, hey, I'm willing to pay more. I usually kind of, you know, keep my finger on the pulse of that specific thing. I'm sure a lot of people do that. But it's specifically like right now with the football stuff. I know what I was paying a year ago and I know a few of us are willing to pay a bit more depending on the player, depending on this, like whether it's a black finite or it's like a gold vinyl. You know, some of these change and at different ratios over time. But like I'm, I'm sort of very aware of that specific example. The second one is it happens once a year and it's the national. When I go to the national, I'm very aware of like, what's the overall sort of sentiment about stuff being overpriced? Do they feel comfortable paying X amount? What types of players are overpriced in the moment? And I just sort of like take that and you know, each year brings its own sort of vibe where, you know, post Covid, the first show is just sort of like excitement to be back. Everyone was like spending big money. They, they were just excited to be back. Then it's like, okay, specific players are, are heating up. And then like specific categories like Pokemon are heating up. So this year I'm going to be really focused on what are people talking about, what are the crowds, like, what's the psa line like, you know, things like that. So those are the two that I'm always focused on as opposed to just trying to keep up with every sale and sales history. Chris, anything from you before we move off of this? Nah man, those are two great points and I always sort of have a hunch that like if I can too easily figure out what the stuff I'm collecting is worth, automatically starts to lose appeal immediately. Like I like, I like some of the mystery and like the stuff I've been focused on over the last year or two. I've focused on things that are almost impossible to price. So I just haven't really been in the in the mindset of like trying to take a pulse of the market for things that just, you know, really don't show up. Next topic I want to move into is the psychology of category repricing. I did an episode on this this week because I and I know this is a topic that you both have talked about and thought about for a long time as you've done content. But coming off the heels of the WrestleMania patch autograph Randy Orton sale which was shared on the Stacking Slabs Network, congratulations to Ryan of RBI Crew 7 for picking that up. Cool story. If you haven't heard, check it out on book to last podcast. But when that sale happened I was just like again another like new concept brought to you by fanatics and tops and Ryan, massive Orton fan and collector. He's got the best collection that I know of. And I was like there were watch parties of wrestling fans. Everyone was invested, everyone was excited to see because it was on ebay, it was very public. And so the say the sale happens, you know, north of 40, 000, which is a huge deal for modern wrestling cards. This is a you just it the category is slowly elevated in price. People are willing to spend more. There's new participants. But that was on the the larger side. 2nd highest WWE sale for Ultra Modern. And so I was pumped for Ryan. But then I was pumped to see okay, what are all the people I follow who collect this stuff? Like what is their response going to be? And I started to notice something that I noticed in other categories but I've never seen this prior to this. In wrestling cards people started to share their Randy Orton cards. Hey, check out my Randy Orton cards. Go Go Randy Orton, Go Wrestling. All this and it just, I found it so interesting that I was like I'm going to take a step back and and think about this topic and try to put some things together regarding it because I find it so fascinating. So like what I want to dig into is just like the psychology behind these bigger sales and the response and what it means for collectors in that category. Like I want to dig into like what actually happens from a psychological perspective after a monster sale and we can, this can be in relation to this big premiere auction we just saw and maybe in the Last less than 24 hours what you've seen or just in the history what you've seen and just want to dig into that because I find it very, very fascinating on just how some individuals in this space respond. So Josh, maybe you start us off just regarding kind of this mental game of gymnastics and category repricing that we go through as collectors. I was really hoping you picked Chris first. This is such a hard question because it's like, you know, you see the big sale, it gets an ESPN article comes up or you know, like everyone starts posting their cards and then it sort of like fizzles out. And I don't think we'll hear about Randy Orton sales for, for a while, you know, maybe ever. We probably won't hear but so it's like, it's probably just like a temporary excitement. People post their cards. I don't know that it actually is going to cause all Randy Orton cards to double tomorrow. I think it's just more of like people are hoping that will happen but I'm really bad at answering these like long tail psychological questions. This is more of a Chris thing. Chris, what. What do you have? Yeah, I think a big sale like that gives permission but it doesn't guarantee action. So it, it opens up a new window but it doesn't guarantee that a breeze will flow through. And I think there's something to the fact that too much transparency and too many details can start to make it feel like a unicorn event. So as much as we all love and celebrate the winner being named and by the way, massive congratulations. I do listen to the show that he does with Adam. I. It's just a great story, it's just a great hobby success story. But like there's so much detail surrounding that sale. Like we know that Towns was the runner up, we know that he was the winner and I think the onlooker, when they have access to that much transparency into what happened, starts to think, well, is this ever going to happen again? Like is Carl Anthony Towns ever going to be bidding on this and is Ryan ever going to want to be the winner? And like you have to have all these different things line up properly to work and quite frankly, that's as much as, that is a fair observation. Like, the next time one comes to sale, it might be a whole different group of people bidding. It's just. But I think that's one of the, that's a general life principle, is that the more we figure out exactly how a process unfolded, the more we sort of can scrutinize and analyze it and sort of start forming our rebuttals to it. And that's the trade off of transparency. Now, I'm a huge fan of transparency. I think transparency and reproducibility, these are like foundational principles that like, whatever the consequences of people, if transparency actually increases skepticism, I'm the guy who says good. I think skepticism is a hurdle that must be cleared. And that skepticism is a good thing. But I think that's a consequence of it. Now, the other thing that comes along, because I think you've covered this topic very nicely in some of the sacking slabs this week, Brett, Another thing that comes along is controversy. So, like, let no headline worthy sale pass without at least a handful of commenters and every social media forum noting that it's money laundering or that it's some sort of other nefarious activity. And in fairness to them, I'm sure sometimes it is, or it's something, something bad is afoot. We've seen plenty, plenty of examples of that too. But the controversy, if one has the stomach to withstand it, the controversy is definitely something that breathes extra, a few extra breaths of life into a headline. And I have, as I was thinking about this, I have this little story that I think crystallizes this nicely from something that's not cards at all. The Mona Lisa painting was painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the early 1500s, and after his passing it transferred to the French court. And then after the French Revolution, it transferred to the French government. And it has been in the Louvre. In the early 1900s, an Italian guy thought that France illicitly possessed this painting. And at the time, the painting was well known among, like, art critics and art circles, but it certainly was not known to the layperson. The average household across the world had no idea what the Mona Lisa was. That, that should be very clear here. People had no clue what that was. But the painting was stolen. There was an empty space in the museum where it sat for two years. And the intrigue of the theft and the controversy surrounding why would somebody steal this? And then sort of the international antagonism of the belief, you know, that what was it taken from France? Because, you know, whatever just Speculations run wild. And it was the fact that it was stolen. It was the fact that the theft itself, not anything about the painting, but it was the theft that made it a headline, that made it global news, and it attracted crowds. People would go to the museum and just stare at the blank space on the wall like that was an attraction. Suddenly that this stolen painting, why was it stolen? Eventually, after two years, the owner was caught trying to fence it and it was reacquired and put back. But now it became the most famous painting in the world and it probably still is to this day. And the thing that made it famous, the thing that made it iconic, the thing that multiplied its value infinitely, was the controversy surrounding it was the fact that it was the object of a theft and so on and so forth. I think there are parallels there to controversial card sales and transactions that happen in sports card hobby. Controversy can elevate the, the visibility of cards and pieces of art and other things to such an extent that they take on the property of being iconic not because of any intrinsic property of the item itself, but because of the controversy that surrounds it. Chris, bringing in Mona Lisa and Leonardo da Vinci, I think you've given the bad actors who are listening a really twisted idea on how to increase the value of their cards. Yeah, well, the mechanism is there and it's not pretty, you know, it's not. But like I was saying, transparency into how these things potentially work is helpful and I think it can help sort of the onlooker sort of deconstruct how certain things elevate in status and then they can make up their own mind if they want to continue to reward that or not. We're going to push the show topic out for next time because it'll still be relevant, probably even more relevant. And I want to ask, before we get, get to pickups, I just want to ask one follow up question here because I'm interested because as we're talking about this, this has got me thinking about just the reporting in card ladder and there is the sentiment. Often when a private deal happens or somebody sells something off platform, there is a contingent of people that say, can you report your sale in card ladder? Can you get it in there? And then sometimes the, the new owner says, okay, yeah, I'm, let's put it in there. And sometimes they just like, like, no, why would I do that? So we're talking about transparency and there's, I don't, like, there's no right answer to this. And I, I would say there are situations for me when I buy cards that yeah, some, sometimes I'll like try to get it reported and sometimes I'll just be like yeah, I don't, I don't care. I'm not interested in getting it reported and I don't really know why. Like from my end I'm one way or the other. But I would love to like get your all perspective on just like how you think about that topic because I'm sure like you're inundated constantly with like private sales stuff and it's probably a topic you deal with a lot. So maybe Josh will start with you on this. Like do you have any thoughts or opinions just regarding just like the private sale if it, or if the private sale gets reported or not in Cardlier, like how do you think about that? Well, Chris handles the private sales and he'll have way more information about this than me. And similar to the psychology question you got you teed up two in a row there. Ask me about, ask me about coding and developing within the sports card hobby and I'll, I'll. Or LeBron and I'll just keep going. But on the private sales it's usually a matter of like if the person feels like they got a steal on it, they don't want to report it and if they feel like they paid fairly, they do want to report it because they want to establish the floor of the value. That, that's like the one I think. Yes, that's, that's, that's a good call out. Chris, what about you? Yeah, exactly. And it's, it's always I think better on balance to get a significant private sale reported. Like the need for a private sale reporting really isn't present if there's a lot of other data available to price something. But if it's a truly singular, unique item that sells very, very rarely and a private sale can help shed some light into what has happened transacting for this card then I think it, the transparency there does a service to people who, who are trying to find, figure out what's going on in the market. But there's there, there's a big transparency requirements in order to get a private sale in. So the standard is that every party to the transaction must be named and must consent to being named. And not only are they named but they must have a public facing social media that they can be contacted through in case anybody who's looking at that sale would like to follow up. So for example, if a new private sale comes in and it's got you Know, like, like the Tom Brady super fracture private sale that was recently reported. It had a buyer, it had a seller and it had a broker. All three of those people are named, all three of their collecting accounts on Instagram are provided. And though that's. That level of transparency sometimes is a bit of a turn off to people, it certainly means that. And I would assume for all intents and purposes that any potential agencies that are looking at the space are going to be taking notes of what things are being purchased for and sold for and they're going to be taking note of who the buyers and the sellers are. So there's a lot of like when, when one does make one's private sale public, there's a lot of light that gets shined on it. The participants, the price, the. We also make notes. We don't reveal the documents, but we make note of what documents were used to prove the transaction. And all that information permanently stays in the public record. So there's a lot of light shine. There's more transparency into a private sale than there is into any particular public auction or result. So there's there like, there's a, there, there's a lot of privacy sacrifice by making that sale public that, you know, provides quite a bit of. It provides quite a, quite a deep look into the mechanics of how that sale happened. So and then, and that's a, that there should be a high bar to, to publish a private sale. It should, it should go hand in hand with inviting scrutiny, with inviting skepticism, with inviting further investigation and also, you know, it hopefully sheds light on what, on a particular market transaction that happened at a particular time. Good look at just how card ladder handles private sales before we get out of here. Always like to in the conversation talking about cards. Do either of you have any cards in your collection, whether new or old, that you'd like to share and talk about why you bought it? Yeah, I have one pickup ready to go. I showed this on Crossover, but I haven't shown it on the Stacking Slabs network. So this is the 2014 Top Scrum Super Factor, DeMarco Murray. And this was his offensive player of the year year in 2014 where he led the league in rushing. So I, I tried to buy that one on national pretty aggressively and the seller wouldn't sell. But so he reached out to me and we've got a deal done pretty quick. It's if at first you don't succeed, you know, they're always, we're always moving stuff around so if the timing's not right It's I always take the mental notes as the holder owner of the card. You get the leads in your head and when you need the cash you just reach out and hoping that somebody's ready to go. Cool card. I am becoming re infatuated by the super fractures out of chrome probably because top scrum is telling me that I should be but very cool card. Chris, what do you got? Yeah, so sort of a follow along to or a follow up to the cards that I called out in the fanatics premiere that are of interest to me. I've taken a great interest in the first one of ones and the early one of ones for Michael Jordan and I'm sort of expanding that scope now to take that same approach to football too. And so what I have here and shout out to Pac Nicholson I wish I could be a fly on the wall when I see his face when I show this. This is the 2000 ultra masterpiece one of one priest Holmes one of his very first one of ones a fantasy goat. And I have to credit pack for like continuously modestly placing Priest homes on on my radar and the hobbies radar as a fantasy goat and sort of it was a convergence of a lot of different factors of like all of a sudden I started thinking about early 90s one of ones and when I start looking at what's available I see a cool Priest homes card. I think about and I already have in plants in my mind like three first teams. One of the great fantasy runs et cetera is quite a natural fit. So there you have it. Oh that's so good. Cool card. Was not expecting that. Also whenever I think of Priest homes because Pac talks about them all the time I just like think about being in a grocery store which I get all my groceries delivered. I don't step foot in the grocery store these days. I don't have time too many kids. But when I think about Priest homes I just think about like the smell of a grocery store and looking over in the magazine rack and seeing the fantasy guides and just see seeing Priest Priest Homes on the front. So can't escape stuff like that. Really cool card both of you guys card ladder confidential 20 is in the can. Appreciate everyone out there for supporting. See you again next month. Lot to think about in that episode. I know I am thinking a lot about Wimby his cards, the impact on card culture. And I think it's just fascinating digging into a couple layers below the surface and trying to understand what motivates us to collect and continue to spend money on a player. Like him so much to talk about. I've got a ton of ideas for the next episode. Appreciate your support. Shout out. Card ladder. Card ladder. Confidential number 20. Appreciate you being here. We'll be back with another one. Take care. Talk to you soon. Sa.