Cards Are Going To The Moon!! Surface Issues With @JunkWaxHero & @MidLifeCards ​

In our massive country, there are card collectors throughout the land participating in the hobby. There's Mike of Junk Wax Hero and Greg of Midlife Cards. And while distance may separate them, here is where they come together to talk cards. Hey, buddy, how are you on this fine day? I get so much joy from that entry song. The point where it, it shifts into the whistle. Yeah, so great. I, I whistle along 100 of the time and I'm just, I know I've said this before, I'm just bopping along. I used to think that nobody could see me, but now I know you can. Yeah. And if you're out there listening, we appreciate you. This is Surface Issues brought to you by Sewell Sports Cards, buddy. I mean, there's so much we could always talk about. There's always something happening, but there was something happened that happened. It will have been a week and a half ago now, but I, I just gotta pick your brain on this. Sports Cards Live, which took place. Oh man, it would have been like June 13th or 14th, something like that, where. And then the follow up discussion that went over onto the hangover on the sports card clubhouse again. Don't miss those episodes. This big $500,000 Tom Brady deal where a broker named Bruce was involved and connected Steve, a collector with Jorge the card owner and all heck broke loose. Yeah, I, I know that you've seen it. Tell me your initial thoughts after this wild Sports Cards Live episode. Well, I think we can agree first of all that Bruce is absolutely jacked and he's going to be at the national so I'm going to try not to upset him on this episode. It, I watched it, I started watching it on like Sunday because I usually start watching Sports Card Live on Sunday and I didn't get through everything. I got through like an hour and a half of it because it's a four hour episode and people started talking about it and I was like, oh, I gotta, I gotta get back and watch this. What are people saying about this episode? I didn't know what had happened. And so I got back on this morning and I started watching it some more and I get like, I don't know, two plus hours in and then Bruce shows up. Bruce is the one, he's the broker of this card. Steve has been on for a long time at this point and has been telling his side of the story of how he got scammed and he's saying the scammer is Bruce and that they have a lot of text messages and emails and whatever between them. And when Bruce Joins. It's. You could not script a TV show better than this. It was spectacular. And Jeremy is so good at this. There's nobody better than Jeremy hosting a live like this where things don't go as planned and somebody joins unexpectedly. Bruce Joint like, I guess he must have messaged Jeremy and said, hey, I want to come on and defend myself. No, he was in the chat. We got a backup wait for people, people. We got to back up a little bit and just set the stage slightly. So Jeremy Lee, Sports Cars Live. Everybody knows Jeremy. I'm going to pull it up on the screen so people can identify the episode. If you've not seen it yet, you've got to see this. It. We're recording this a little early. So this was four days ago for us. This is. How do you come back after a 500k Tom Brady scam? That's the episode in question. And what Jeremy did was he brought on this guy who got scammed out of $500,000 buying this massive Tom Brady card. He's on Prism. Yeah. Finite. Yeah, yeah. So he comes on, he's telling how he got scammed. The guy in question that he's talking about ends up in the chat. Jeremy messages him, I think via email or the guy reached out via email. The guy ends up coming on the episode. And now you've got the guy who's out $500,000 and the guy he's blaming for the whole thing on the screen at the same time. Okay. So the faces. Jeremy's face once like, right as it starts to happen and Bruce joins. Jeremy's face was priceless. But Josh Adams, I don't know Josh. I've never talked to him before. I found myself watching his face a lot because his face betrayed him a lot. He was in shock, I guess, and awe and alarm many, many times. And it was like my wife sitting there watching with me for about 20 minutes and she was laughing at his face because he just can't help himself but go, yeah, yeah. Now let me ask you this. So let's. Let's get down to the basics. What is the. What is the obligation of a broker of a deal? Because we have Steve the buyer, and had done a lot of deals with this Bruce guy. Yeah. And a lot of big money deals. And he knew the list of cards that Steve was looking for. And so what Bruce did is he apparently found Jorge, who allegedly had a card that was a big card on the list that Bruce had seen and held in hand. Correct. But he sent an AI photo to Steve, the AI photo. The AI photo could be. We've seen this a bunch of times where people take a photo of their card that they actually have and they ask, chat, GPT or some other AI system make my card look better. And so it enhances the photograph but makes it skews things in the car. So that. That's very possible. But what I have a problem with here, we don't know. We only know Steve's side and we know Bruce's side. What we don't know are the facts. We both, we have both of their sides and they obviously conflict, conflict with each other. The problem I have is when Bruce said that he went over to Jorge's house and Jorge handed him the box, all packaged up. And he said, the cards in here? And Jorge said yes. So Bruce slapped his shipping label on the box and shipped it. And that's where Bruce, in my opinion, went wrong. If you are responsible for a $500,000 card, you have to open that box. You have to open the box and confirm the card is in there. Don't you agree? I do agree. And that goes back to the question of what's the obligation of the broker? Like, to me, the broker means you're the middleman. So I give you the money, you give me the card and then you exchange the money that was received to the person for whatever amount is between you guys. And the card gets. To me, it doesn't feel to me like that's what happened here, but that's what I would have thought a broker should do is he should have identified the card is the card. He should have made sure that it was secure. He should have then ensured that it reached Steve and he should have ensured that Steve's money got to Jorge. And all he really did was from what I can tell, is slap a label on Jorge's box and give some Steve the routing number for the bank account. From Jorge to Steve and to me, that's not enough. That's. That's the issue that I was struggling with, is it seems like he should have done more. And I also think if you're doing a deal that big, it's got to be in person. It's got somebody, somebody can fly first class. Yep. To San Diego. What's the max you're going to pay for a first class ticket? I don't. Five. Five thousand. I've never flown first class. Me neither. Five thousand dollars. Right. Maybe a hotel room. One percent of the deal and of the deal. And. And Josh was questioning him. You can tell Josh, I think Josh is an attorney, right. He's a defense attorney. And so he's questioning, he's peppering him with really good questions. And he asked him how, what was your cut? And Bruce said, my cut was going to be $5,000, but I didn't get anything. And Josh said, oh, you didn't get anything? What a tragedy. With a completely straight face. Killed me. It killed so good. Josh is good. I do like Josh. I enjoy his. His style, for sure. Yeah. So the other thing is Bruce, I don't think Bruce said where he lives, but we know that he's out of the country and Jorge lived near him in Mexico, so I can assume that Bruce is also in Mexico. And I found it peculiar that no law enforcement had reached out to Bruce or Jorge about this. Yeah, I don't. I don't know how that's possible. I don't know how it's possible that the law enforcement would not have mean. This is like an FBI deal when you're talking about $500,000 when you're talking about going across country lines. I mean, this is a massive deal. And the fact that it seems like the only people who have been contacted are attorneys. Like, what. I mean, at what point do you call the FBI? Like, I don't. I don't understand. And, you know, I. I don't know anything about Jorge or. Or Bruce, really. I don't know. Well, Bruce, at least I know, is an actual person. Sure. Fair. Because I saw him and I heard him talk and he had not acknowledged that there were communications. Nobody knows anything about Jorge. If. If somebody like Jorge was out there and wanting to sell his card, I think there's an easier way to do it. I think what you could do is you could reach out to someone like Chris Sewell. And in fact, I would recommend reaching out specifically to Chris Sewell, collector, investor, dealer, in that order. And I would look to sell my. Well, look at this. This looks different. Wow. Sewell sports cards. This is the first I've ever seen. And when I first clicked on go, did I click on the wrong thing? We've got Chris Sewell, collector, investor, dealer, in that order. We've got links to his stuff, his ebay store, sell your cards form. So if you wanted to sell, I mean, Jorge could have gone on here, he could have clicked on sell your cards and he could have filled out Jorge and Gutierrez or no. Yeah, I think it was Jorge Gutierrez and how many cards he's looking to sell. One like that would have been the way to do it. But this is actually. This is fantastic. Yeah. Chris Sewell, collector, investor, dealer. In that order. Look at this. Beautiful. He's got what clients say. So that would be my recommendation, is reach out to Chris and sell your card that way. And Crystal, you know, on a deal like that, I can promise you Chris would travel to you and the deal would be done and there would not be any issues along the way. Yeah. So Bruce to me, surprised me because I thought, as. As we're hearing the story, I thought Bruce was a loathsome individual, but he came on, and I'm not saying I want to be friends with him, but he was more sympathetic than I expected. He. He seemed to be pained by this. And I don't know if he's pained by the loss of his reputation or pained by the half a million dollars that he lost. Steve. I don't know. It's tough to say. I mean, I could. I could talk about this for a long time, but I don't. I don't think that that's what's going to happen. Yes. He seemed. He seemed like, hey, I told Jorge. But it just feels to me like a broker has a bigger obligation than. Absolutely. Well, I. To pay. Yeah. I'm absolutely. I'm not saying that he did the right things or he did enough. All I'm saying is that he did seem pained by it. And Jeremy said to him several times, he implored him, do more. You should feel more pain from this. He should call the police, and he should. He should drive them to Jorge's house since he's been to his house and knows where he lives. Yeah. And he should be a significant participant, unless, theoretically, Jorge wasn't real. If Jorge wasn't real, that would be hard to do. But assuming that he's real, then why not drive the police, go over there, write down his address, if you don't know it, and then give that. Send that to Steve. Steve. This is where I visited him in this house on these dates, this address. Give this to the FBI. This is the phone number of Jorge that I have all these text messages from. This is the phone number. So they should be able to track who had that phone number. It seems like there are some real obvious things that we could be doing to help Steve get his money back. Yeah. And the right thing to be done. Yep. All right, great. A great episode. I just want to recommend everybody go watch that and then listen to the hangover episode here on Sports Card Clubhouse because it was Chef's Kiss. Great work by Jeremy David Chase interrupting. Not interrupting, but jumping in with some good questions. Yeah. Now the other thing I do want to talk about with about Jeremy, our buddy here, real quick before we move on to our next topic is he's participating in something at the national on the main stage, which seems fairly interesting. Now I've got a press release here that talks a little bit about it where he's going to be hosting this thing called Enter the Inferno. It's a pitch event for innovators in hobby tech. We need a Mike Petty like thing where you lean into the microphone and say, enter the Inferno. Enter the Inferno. And there's a website for it. So if you're looking or you're listening at home, it's infernored.com forward/, enter-the-inferno. And that would take you to the website about it. And it sounds sort of like a Shark Tank type episode. And they're looking for people to do some tech pitches on the main stage at the national on Saturday, August 1st. So if that sounds like something that anybody out there would be interested in, I would definitely recommend checking that out. It's always entertaining to see what's happening on the main stage and obviously Jeremy's fantastic. So did you have anything you wanted to add to that? I just think it's super cool. It sounds very Shark Tank. Like Jeremy will be the Mark Cuban, I guess. It sounds really cool and I'm thrilled for Jeremy and hope they get a lot of really interesting product pitches. Yeah, for sure. And I, I wish I was smart enough to come up with a product that I could pitch, but I'm. Let's pitch him a podcast. There you go. A podcast called like Issues with Surfaces or something. Yes. Okay. Next thing on there is. I wanted to talk to you about. Neo did a video. It will have been about a week ago when we. When, when this airs, but Neo did a video about the sports card bubble. And you know, is there a bubble? But what he was throwing out there was where is all this new money coming from? And he pulled up a card ladder, by the way, Card ladder, also a sponsor of the sports card clubhouse. SCC gets you. What does it get you? An extra two weeks. A month free. So an extra two weeks free if you use SCC at card Ladder. But he pulled up a card ladder chart and it was the total volume of sales by month. And the, the, the chart was unbelievable. How sharp it has gone up over the last. Yes, over the last year and a half it's been insane. And before that, no downtrend Ever? No, basically no. Even during the crash it was mostly flat. Yeah. And he said where is this money coming from? He said is it that people are selling things to each other or more? So I buy this card off of you for $2,000, I sell it for $4,000. I use that money to buy the another card off of somebody. Is it just the same money that is being inflated or is there new money? Are there new entrants that are coming in that are infusing additional money in? So that's my question to you right now is we've got this, this huge, I mean to call it an inflation in the market value is, is an understatement. It's hyperflation. And where is that money coming from? So what do you think? Oh man, I think that there's a lot of here and sure. Part of it is a lot of people with money have decided that sports cards are an attractive alternative asset. And they're, they're buying from big deal there. We know of big dealers who are pretty new. Like look at Cards max, he's like 25 years old. You probably don't even know who Cards Max is except for the fact that I interviewed him back in like October, November on this channel. Cards Max is like a 25 year old guy who was dealing kind of in college. Dealing cards in college. He got his chemistry degree and he was making more money as a card dealer than he was with any job he could have gotten outside of college. So he just became a full time dealer. And now I don't know what his revenue is, but it's, it's in the millions, I'm pretty sure. I don't, I'm, I'm not, I don't know that for sure. But he deals very, very high end cards, like six figure cards regularly. And that's more and more common these days is these young guys buying and flipping big cards. Not brokering, but you know, sort of brokering because they, in some cases they'll know somebody who wants something, they go and find it, they buy it and then they flip it to the person they know wants it. There's also repacks, but there's also the, the belief that iconic cards will never stop going up. The Steph Curry 2009 tops just a base tops card paper, not even chrome. I bought one at the National 1011 months ago for 800 in a PSA 8. Yeah, PSA 8. It's tripled in value in less than a year from $800 which is what the comps Were at that time to $2,300 now. And that's, that's not sustainable. It's just not now. I do think the growth in the hobby, in the, the value of cards is real, although not to this extent. I think that, that what we're seeing, the growth in terms of percentages, isn't sustainable. We're not going to see triple, you're not going to triple your value on iconic cards in the next year again, in all likelihood. But five years ago, the infrastructure wasn't there for this type of growth to be sustained. And now we have. And I hate to say it because you know my issues with psa, but PSA has done an amazing job of inserting themselves everywhere in your lives and making it easier for you to buy and sell cards very, very quickly. Ebay is also, it's very easy to just buy a card on ebay, immediately grade it with psa, vault it, and then sell it. And so you can very quickly buy and sell cards. And people have figured out, I can buy this card for $100 and I can flip it for $120. And for some people, for you and me, it's probably not worth it because we're employed full time with other jobs, but there are a lot of people who do that full time where they're just buying cards for $100 and flipping them for 120, which can be very, very lucrative. Yeah. When I was young, what they told me was go to college, get a stable job, save 15% of your income, put it into a 401k retirement account, buy a house, get a 30 year loan, keep paying on it. And if you just start doing both of those things over time, then eventually you'll have a pretty good life. And eventually. I, I was at a friend's house a couple of days ago and his wife, his daughter, his adult daughter came downstairs and he's like, where are you going? She goes, we're gonna go over to Monterey for the day. And he goes, well, at least somebody's enjoying their life. And it made me laugh. It made me laugh. But my, my thought is, are people, do you think that there are people? Because I've heard a couple of people say some things that. It made me kind of go, wait, did they just say what they. I, I've heard a couple of people say, you know, yeah, I mean, I don't, I'm not putting money in the market anymore. I just use that money on cards. And I was like, whoa, right, like. So I think that you Know, because the stock market is at all time highs right now too. The stock market is out of control. High. Has been for, for a long time. Yeah. And so it's sort of like, well, is this a hedge or is it a literal alternative asset? And when I know that when we say alternative asset, people think alternative asset. But, but like using your. Whatever it is, fifteen hundred dollars a month or two thousand dollars a month that you would have put in the stock market, instead of putting in the stock market, you're buying Pokemon Wax. Like there are people that literally that's what they're doing. To be clear, we are not recommending that. No, no, no. We are not financial advisors and we are not recommending you do anything with your money. You should talk to your financial advisor. 100%. And that's what, what, what I described of. Get your house, you know, buy your house, pay it off as fast as you can. You know, put money away into a retirement account. That's what I've actually done. Yeah. And then any money I'm using on cards now is after all of those bills have been paid. Me too. And 100% of it. And so I'm not taking out any debt for cards. No, no. I've never bought a single card on any version of debt. Not a credit card, not a. I mean there was like, there was like once at the national where I was like short 800 bucks and I said, dad, will you get it to me and I'll pull money out of the ATM in a second sort of thing, but not money I didn't have. And I'm wondering if that's some of the new money. But we've got inflation nationally is, is over the last several years has been at a rapid pace. It's happening as much right now as it has in a while. I don't know. I don't even believe the numbers that the government puts out. But there's definitely inflation happening. I see it in the prices of everything that's got to be part of it. And college is almost unattainable now too. And so is homeownership for kids in their 20s. Homeownership. I don't know how people could afford the, the down payment on a house. Yeah, I don't, I don't. My. I mean. Yeah, but the. And then the other thing though is the stock market being high. I'm wondering there are some people at the age where you have to start taking money out of your retirement account at a certain age. I think it's 70 or something 70, maybe it's 71. The required minimum distribution. And the required minimum distribution means people have to take money out. And if they're taking money out in the markets at an all time high, there is extra money. Where are you going to spend it? I don't know, man. Like, let me, here's, here's my, my final question about this topic and maybe it'll lead to more when things slow because I think we agree this is not a sustainable pace. When things slow, will it be a plateau? Will it be a soft turn and, and slow drop over time or will it be a sharp drop that happens in a very short period of time? Well, I don't know, but I'm gonna, for the sake of this podcast, I'm going to make a guess. If I think that we're at a point now where the card economy will somewhat closely follow the overall American economy. Let's just stick with America as the base economy for this. And I think that if the American economy, which, let's say the stock market, which I know is not the economy, but forget that if people stop spending largely, let's say GDP stalls out for an extended period of time, we will see a flattening and probably a steady decline in the card market. I don't see a collapse coming unless the, if it does, then I feel like the entire economy has a cla, has collapsed, which would be really bad. But I think that like I said before, I think the infrastructure is there for long term strong growth in this, in this world that we inhabit. And what was it that led to the long term strong growth of this hobby? Because if you go back 20 years, there were no signs of strong long term growth. So what, what are the entry of? It's the entry of all the people who, I think there are a lot of new people who have come into. And you and I are saying the hobby, it's not really the hobby because a lot of them are just, they're, they're buying and flipping or they'll, they'll buy it and their card has gone up by 30 and they'll sell it because it's a, it's an easy gain. But there's, there's a lot of that. And then there's just so many people who have a ton of money, unlike you and me, who are just out there buying six figure cards, seven figure cards and they see this as a better alternative asset than, you know, NFT money five, six years ago. Or art, you hang art on your walls. This, this could be better or watches. I don't know. I'm not in any of those markets at all. But you know, if you look at. So I watch a Jon Hamm show on Apple TV called your friends and neighbors and they highlight. He steals alternative assets from people's houses, art and watches and things like that. And it's a very good show. You should watch it if you don't already. And I kept waiting for the baseball card episode and he finally stole a baseball card from, from a house. And it became, it was like, okay, it is now, since it was something stolen from this house, a legitimate alternative asset for people. And it was a Tom Seaver rookie card. They said PSA 10, but it was not really a PSA holder for some reason. I don't know why they can't just show it in a PSA holder, but they can say it's PSA 10. I don't know. But what was I saying? I don't know. I passed out a few minutes ago. No, yeah, it's the people who have entered the market. There's, there's so many people. I get messages from people. Jeremy has talked about getting messages from people saying, hey, you're in the card market. I just, I just joined too. Or you run into people at card shows that you know and you say, hey, I didn't know you were into cards. Oh yeah, I just got in. Yeah, I, I had, I'll give, I'll give you a micro example here that I've been experiencing is there are a few Barry Bonds cards that, and Barry Bonds is a very interesting example, but just stay with me for a second. There are a couple Barry Bonds cards that I was bidding on an auction. I try to buy at auction because I feel like then I'm gonna probably get the real value of the card instead of what. Maybe I was the only person willing to go that high and do a buy it now. But I do buy it now, but I try to do auctions when possible. And there was a card that ended last night, a Barry Bonds card. And, and the highest the card had ever sold for was like $840. So I'm thinking to myself, it's probably going to hit a new high. So it's probably going to be 875 or something. And it sold for 12 $50. And, and I mean we're, we're talking about 50% higher than it had ever sold. How much FOMO? Well, and, and okay, so part of the inflation of the card prices could be FOMO based because there have been Some Jordan cards, for example, that if you missed your opportunity, now they're unaffordable. There was a Derek Jeter card last night and it was, it was literally the same thing. I think the highest the card had ever sold for was like 650 bucks and it sold for over a thousand. And I'm like, I, I don't even know why I watched the auction because I was, I'm. And, and I'm like, I'm looking in card ladder and I'm, I'm going, okay, what's the highest it's ever sold for? What's the trajectory like? Okay, three months ago, three months before that, three months before that. So if it's staying on, kind of this increase and it just like blows away any sale ever. And I don't think that Derek Jeter is a FOMO guy. I don't think that. I think Bonds might be fomo. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts in a second when I finish this thought on Bonds's market. But seeing what Ken Griffey Jr's done, seeing what Kobe has done, seeing what Jordan has done, you know, Wemby has done, Brady has done over the last few years, that it's like when it, when it sort of starts to catch, it's like it turns into a rocket ship before it starts to level off. And it feels to me like that's what's happening with Barry Bonds right now. And I don't know what, what the reason would be. So do you think, side note, do you think Barry Bonds cards are going to be. Because he's a very interesting character. He's kind of cagey, he's got the PED use. What kind of. He's got, he's got, he's, you know, he's west coast guy, not the Dodgers. You know, he's the, he's San Francisco. Like there are a lot of things that you would think would be possibly working against his cards, but his cards are on fire right now. Like, I, I know because I'm, I'm, I'm watching 90s and early 2000s bonds cards and I'm looking to see what they're selling for. They are going nuclear. Is that, is that long term a thing or is that just a short term fomo? I think there's a fomo. There's a lot of nostalgia there and I think that people realized that Barry Bonds cards were undervalued. And he's got a lot of really cool cards too because he was the greatest at that time. So from like 1997 to 2004 when refractors were and inserts were amazing, he's in all of those sets. And so it makes sense that he and Jeter would be, would have these cards. And I think that those cards started going up in value pretty quickly because people started saying hey, these are undervalued. And I think that there's some like influencer influence behind it where you've got people on, I don't know, TikTok and Instagram saying this, this insert is undervalued. Go out and buy it. Probably some pump and dump too. And so the card goes up. So it was a hundred dollar card and then it goes up to 150 and it goes up to $200 and it only sells once every three months or so. And people say, oh man, they, this has doubled in value in six months. I've got to buy one now. And then they go above because they're afraid they're going to miss it and it's going to double in value. And then somebody else comes along and sells it and it's this crazy loop, not a loop, but cycle where people are bidding up because they're afraid they're going to miss their opportunity and it's going to be too expensive. I'll give you an example, a personal example. I bought that Mickey Mantle a year ago. The 1953 Topps Mickey Mantle was half the price of what it is now in a PSA one. And I was afraid it was going to become too unattainable for me and so I paid up where a year ago it was half. I, I'm going to pull up card ladder because I just want to illustrate this without it just being anecdotal. And you'll also see how badly I butchered the, the, the data and the facts of, of this particular card. So I'm going to pull it up on card ladder. Well, you'll see that I'm gonna. Are you blunder this? I'm gonna, I'm gonna do my best to make this work. Okay, so here's the card in question. This was the Jeter card I was looking at. Okay, it's 1451. So it's 1998 Topps Chrome Baby Boomers refractor Derek Jeter. And that's what's throwing it off on card ladders. It has Yankees in there saying, well, there's only a couple of matches where they said Yankees. So here's the card in question. In May, this card in a 10 sold for 800 bucks. So it's up 75% more than 75 in April. $700 in Jan. That was January of last year. So it sold three times in 2026. 700. 800. And this was a month ago. Yeah, it went from 800 to 1451. Yeah, there's probe. So there could also be some, some shill bidding we should ignore. That's true. But. But check this out too. It's an old label. It's not even a brand new. This is a really old label. This is a really old label. This card probably wouldn't even. Well, I don't know if it'd get a 10 or not. So I'm watching that card because I'm like, that's a cool looking card. Like, I want to see what this card does. Dude, I was thinking this card would go for like 900 bucks. Went for 14.51. I, I could show you another one if you want another bonds that wasn't there another one. I thought there was another bond that I was looking at. Yeah, this card right here. So this is a 1999 Top Stadium Club refractor. Let me just do my little thing with this. So this sold for 276. Those top stadium club refractors are nowhere near as popular as the no tops chrome. 100%. 100%. And. And that's why one of the reasons I was looking at it is because I was like, well, this actually might be an opportunity to get kind of a cool card. It's gone up 8x in a year. No, Mike, in April 2027 or April 27, 2026, it was 127. It sold last night in an auction for 276. It more than doubled in two months. Yeah, but it's 8x in the last 16 months. Look at February 2025. 32 bucks. 32 bucks. And this is, this is what? I'm 32. And I'm. I'm like sitting here going like, now I like this card. I like stadium club. I am a particular stadium club guy. But then you also see, like, is that on the case? It's not a brand new flip. You know, this was graded several years ago. So I'm sitting there and I was going to bid on it because I was thinking, oh, I'll bid 140 bucks on this thing. Right. I bid half of what it sold for half. So I went, okay, well then let's see if there are any others for sale. So I go on, and there was an 8 because that one was a 9. This 8 was on for sale for. You bought it? Yeah, for 119.99. And I look and I go, this is a wounded buffalo. Mookie calls these wounded buffaloes. Terrible picture. Looks like it's hiding something. Yes, but it's blurry. It doesn't have a picture of the back. So I went in, I checked. The cert number was recently graded. Recently graded card. Type in the cert number. Look at the front. Look at the back. It looks like a 10. The card looks like a 10. Okay. But it gets an 8. So I make an offer because it was 100. 1999 or best offer. As I'm watching the other one last night, the guy sends me an offer because I started watching it yesterday to see this was my backup plan. He sends me an offer for $110. And I said, I think I'm gonna do it, but just in case, I'm gonna counter him at a hundred. Yeah, the. Counter him at 100. He takes it. Yeah. I get the eight for 100. As the. Which is insane because before yesterday, 127 was the high for a nine. So it was an insane price. But if the nine sold for 276. $100 for an eight. Seem. That looks great. Just graded. Seems like a good deal to me. So that's the way I'm playing. It is. I'm just trying to look for where is the price point that I could participate in. But how. Why is it not. It's. Leave ebay up for a sec when you go. Keep going, though. No, I'm done. I was. I was just gonna say this is what's happening in real time. This was last night. As I. As we record this. This was last night. A bonds card sold for more than double it had ever sold for. The Jeter sold for over 50% more than it had ever sold for. That's insanity. Yeah. What do you want me to look up? KSB cards? I don't know. How do you do that? Just type in KSB cards. Yep, that's it. Oh, go. Yeah, click on that one. Yep. KS eBay store. This dealer has. Search for Topps Chrome traded. Yep. Just enter and then list the how many they have. 984. Okay. Type in starter set. All right. That's the one on the top there. Click into that. This one I just want to highlight because this is a seller that really impressed me. I'm looking for 2004 Topps Chrome. Orlando Cabrera. I'm trying to complete the 2004 Topps Chrome Red Sox players who. Who played in and won the World Series that year, and Orlando Cabrera is missing. I can't find them. So if you go down into the description of this here, he lists out all the players who are in here. One of them is Orlando Cabrera, right there at number 47. So I messaged this dealer, and I said, hey, is there any chance you would break this lot up and just sell me the Orlando Cabrera? And he says, sure. High book value is $4. Last sale was $5 and 50 cents. I said, look, you're going to all this trouble for me. I'll give you 10 bucks plus reasonable shipping. And he said, I'm not trying to get rich here. I'll just do it for 550 plus shipping. Wow. Yeah. What a guy. I assume it's. Yeah, it's very sexist of me, but that's cool. Yeah. So it has KSB cards. Very, very fair and 100% feedback. Could have easily taken advantage of me and said, I want 20. Yeah. I mean, what can we say here? That's. I was not expecting that story to play out the way that it did. Very cool. There are good people out there, Mike. That's my takeaway. Absolutely. All right, well, is there anything that we haven't covered that we. I mean, did those bonds and Jeter cards at least kind of, like, make you go, whoa? Yeah, absolutely. That's crazy. Pedro Martinez cards are way up, but not like that. The Our Buddies Collector Investor podcast, we're doing a thing the other day, and they were going through each decade, and they worked backwards on who was the face of baseball each decade. Yeah, I saw that. And, yeah, I texted Chris later and I said, chris, come on. I love Ted Williams, but he's not the face of the 1940s. It's Joe DiMaggio. Yeah, I, I, I was wondering how they would handle that one, too, but when they went into the 2000s, they said Albert Pujols was the face of the 2000s. Do you think Albert Pujols. Now, don't get me wrong, his numbers are lunacy. Absolutely. But was he the face of baseball in the 2000s? I think so. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't. Even though the Red Sox won more World Series than anybody else in the 2000s, who would you put, like, David Ortiz? No, it's either Jeter, which I know you're getting at. It's Jeter or Bonds, or it could be Pooholes. And when he said pooh holes. Because on my first thought when he, when they were talking about it was Jeter, but when he said pooholes, I thought, yeah, okay, that's fair. Because Pujols was a rookie in 01 and immediately had the most insane stats for a decade. So that does make sense. And he did go to the World Series at least once. 2004 against my red Sox and lost. But yeah, I think I'm, I'm agreeing with pools. I know you think it's Jeter. Well, I mean, the Yankees, when I'm looking, I have it pulled up here. Why not a Rod? A Rod was a better player in the 2000s and won a World Series with the Yankees. But he was, I, I don't, I don't think he was the face of it. Like he was, he was banned. And yeah, if, I mean the Yankees, the Yankees went to four World Series and they had just gone to two in 98, 99. So when you're entering 2000 and the Yankees are looking at their third straight World Series, when the 2000s start, I mean, four in the 2000s, they were 2000, they won. 2009, they won and they lost. 2000. 2001, 2003. Oh, I forgot about 032. Convenient, convenient that I forgot the most painful season of my life. So they went to four. They had just gone to 98 and 99. So that, so in a 12 year stretch, they went to six. And he's the face of that team. And when you look at like 2001, you know, and, and the, you've got, you got the president throwing out the pitch and cheaters. The one saying, you better not bounce it up there, you better throw it over the plate like he's the fate. I don't know. I, I, I know I'm biased. I know I'm biased. You make a good point. You, it's hard though, because they were pretty bad for a lot of the 2000s and the red Sox and you just reminded me that they did win two World Series and the Red Sox did too, but the Red Sox were a better team for much of the 2000s. Now Jeter was the, I don't know, it's tough to say. I, they didn't have a stable face of the franchise, though. The Red. David Ortiz. David Ortiz. I, I guess the, the part I struggle with. Listen, I, if I was a Red Sox fan, I'd love David Ortiz and I know that David Ortiz is a likable guy. I, I understand that, but we're, we were just talking about how, you know, one of the reasons. I don't want to go. I don't want to go here with you. I. I love you too much. So we'll just go ahead and move on. All right, we're. We're done. Let's wrap this up. I'm feeling like Gonzo on the stage, and that shepherd's hook just went around his neck, and they yanked him off. Yeah. Let's get out of here. Let's get out of here. All right, buddy, as always, it's a pleasure to spend time with you, and I'll see you in a week. Sounds good.