THWC 424: Fanatics Fest Stories

What is up everybody? Hobby with Cage episode 424 brought to you by Arena Club by card ladder. Use code Cage. Save yourself a couple dollars and buy the Philly show, which you know is now approaching not that far away. The next Philly Show. We are a day removed from Fanatics Fest. My feet are finally starting to heal. 70, 000 steps across the four days. Not so bad. You guys have heard me talk about it a lot. This is going to be a little bit of a different episode. We're not really been talking about Derek Jeter. We're not really talking about, you know, Justin Bieber and that kind of stuff. If you haven't seen my news yet, it does a cool little one minute recap of Fanatics Fest and the hobby for the week. So take a look at that. It's on my Instagram page. Cage lawyer and but business out of the way now. The real business. I have some fun stories from Fanatics Fest. I was there Thursday and Friday, you know, Thursday running around on my own. Brought, you know, my cousin, my cousin's kid and they had a blast. My cousin bought autographed photos from a table and was so thrilled, you know, he bought four pictures for $200 and left. You know, I'm coming next year. Like I really wanted these photos, you know, I would have had to really. It was taking me a long time to find them. These were great. It was like an Edger and James photograph. You, you want to talk about something for everyone? This guy left thrilled. He's gonna put these autograph pictures up on his wall. And I think, you know, one of them was like 30 bucks, you know what I mean? You know, one of them was, was, I think Heinz Ward catching a pass over Charles Woodson in the end zone in the Super Bowl. And you're like, all right, that's what makes you happy. And, and listen, not to belittle it, that is the summary of this. There's going to be something that makes people happy and something that makes somebody else happy. And there's something for everybody. For example, I'm going to talk about my son, right? Because you know, we were there. I went, I took another friend of mine, it was his 50th birthday, took him on on Friday and then he was there, he took his family Saturday. I took Ian, my son, Saturday and Sunday and in the first hour that he was there, we were close by where the Tops booth was, where you know, where Victor Wembanyama was. And you know, obviously he's mobbed with People. But before he went out on stage, we were close enough to him and some of the folks from Fanatics where, you know, somebody asked my son if he would. If he had the chance to get a picture with Wemby, would he do it now? Of course he would. I mean, you know, Wemby's amazing. But my son's answer kind of speaks a lot of volume about, you know, about fanatics and, you know, where they've come and where they are in kind of the universe of, you know, of what people think, you know, what he said was, no, I'd rather take a picture with that guy. And he pointed over at Michael Rubin and it was heard. And Michael Rubin came over and said, all right, well, let's take a picture. Ian grabbed his phone, took a little selfie with him, and, you know, that it didn't matter what else happened that day, how many times we got on the F1 simulator like he was. Every time he had a chance, he would send it to another friend. Look, look, look who I took a picture with, you know, and that's. It's Fanatics Fest. That guy is Fanatics. But he is just one of so many people who make this happen. Some who I got to, you know, catch up with during the event. And it's got to be fair. I'm not getting paid a dollar to say this. I don't care. I had that much fun at this event. I can't wait to go back next year. I can't wait to take my son next. I brought family members, I brought friends. My friends brought their family members. And, you know, I hope it continues on the path of growing the way that it's growing. It really is an experience. And I have to say thank you. And I have to say thank you to. There are hundreds of Fanatics employees that work to put this together, if not more. I mean, if you told me a thousand people, I wouldn't be surprised if it was four figures worth of people who put this together. Um, you know, everybody from. I saw Ag there with the stain tattoos, Ag, the OG Everybody to the. The legal department that works behind the scenes making sure everything gets taken care of and all the contracts are signed and you name it. Who I met some of the folks from the legal department as well. To. I mean, Mike Mahan is there working his butt off. I see him on the phone the whole time. And, you know, to, you know, the. The content guys who are posting all of the amazing stuff. I met some of the content team from Fanatics also. Just. I Seek people out, you know what I mean? And you know, take from that to just the folks who are just running around with all of the fanatics games people. I met a couple of people who were handlers. They wouldn't tell me who they were handlers for, but they're handlers. And, you know, it was a really funny one. I was at Black Jaded Wolf's table. I'll talk about Sharon in a second. And one of the, you know, the camera people, handlers came over with Natic's game vest and the whole deal. And they walked over to the table, went through a binder and pulled out a Pokemon card and bought a Blastoise for $30. Like, look at this kind of intersection of the whole thing, right? You know, that little one minute for me was, all right, this is somebody who, you know, works for fanatics. They're handling a celebrity, whether it's Kevin Hart or Justin Bieber or, you know, who, who knows who it is. When they're done with that, fanatics games are over. They go to the collector zone and buy themselves a Pokemon card for their collection. Like, that's cool. It's. It was fun to see. So couple fun things and you guys, I hope you enjoy this, but I gotta tell you, Sunday I could probably do 20 episodes of stories from the show and people I gotta thank, you know, from Lou, the king of cardboard, not king of cards, King of cardboard with a K. King and then cardboard with a C. The king of cardboard. Lou just, I mean, amazing help trying to educate my cousin and his kids on what to buy, what not to buy. You know, always, always, you know, table hopping with buying and sell. Black Jenny Wolf who. One story and it involves other people. There were fanatics exclusives. And we stopped by, you know, Sharon's table, blackjay Wolf, and she said she was trying to put together, you know, as many of the fanatic soccer exclusives as you can. Now one of the things I love about an event like this is that you have event specific merchandise that they sell and you got to get it through eql, right? You gotta. It's random. And I got one soccer box and we opened it up and you, you know, Ian walked over and showed her what we have and she bought them all because she was buying this, you know, the, the Fan Fest exclusive. So it's soccer players everywhere from Holland Yamal to lower end guys with like a New York City subway, like circles NYC behind them in the backdrop. And then there's autographs and there's, you know, limited Cards. And there's, you know, with the Freedom Tower behind it, Statue of Liberty, you know, they have. They have them every year, but basically, $385 to buy that box, right? And you got value in it because of these New York Fan Fest exclusives. Now we opened one. My son loved it, and because he realized that there was this. I'm gonna call it a backstop that, you know, that. That the black Jada Wolf table was buying your hits. If you got a bad box, you could still sell them and recoup some of your money. So to make a long story short, he opened nine boxes of this, I think. And the way he did that was he would go over to where the EQL was being sold, and he would ask people when they came out with the soccer are you ripping that, or do you want to flip it and offer them 400, 425, in some cases, $450 for the box they just paid $386 for in cash. And he was able to successfully, in the early part of the day, get those folks to sell him a box. He would go back, he'd open it up. Some boxes, there was more than $400 worth. Some boxes there were less. One box was really bad. It was only like 200 something dollars worth of stuff. But in any event, he was able to kind of, you know, open it up, keep cards that he wanted for himself, the autographs, the rookies, and move the fanfest exclusive ones to recoup the cost and go back and kind of do it again. Now here's where the story gets fun. I'm standing there waiting for him to do his thing, and popping out of the arches of the tops, you know, booth, comes the card ladder team. I didn't even know they were there. I didn't know they were there. I see Christina. She says, what is it? What is this? What is this little lunatic of yours doing? And he explains, and she's like, go up there and tell him to sell you a box. And she finds out that it's like a random lottery and turns around and goes to the back, like, try. It goes like, full on, full on. Christina Mode was like, sell him a box. And that didn't succeed. Good on fanatics. You know, they're. They. These were reserved boxes. But she then went online on the line, as they were doing with Ian, and found people who had won the raffle but were only buying the baseball boxes and said, hey, if you buy it for 386, go ahead and buy it. He'll give you more in cash. And we got two more boxes that way. And if you really want to put a little fun note on it, in one of those boxes, he got a triple auto of the Barcelona team. All the guys were on the Spanish World cup team for, you know, the Spain World cup team. And he sold that already for basically three boxes. I mean, you know, maybe. Maybe a little more. I mean, it is. It was a fun thing to watch him kind of like hustling and like, hey, you're selling, you opening that? You know, would you. Would you sell it to me now? Then he would run back, open it up and sell some things here and sell some things there and then move on to continue, you know, the same, you know, bunch of money that we started with, kind of keep rolling it in. He was hunting for a yamal of this, you know, the. The. The Fanatics Fest exclusive. And there's a one of one that wasn't pulled. There are autos. We didn't get any yamal at all. But he took home Vinnie junior out of five, which has got some value to it. He took home the triple auto that, you know, is now sold, and he got a Holland exclusive that, you know, like everybody else in America, we fell in love with Holland. My wife, we knows who Holland is. So he brought it home for his mom. And it was just a fun thing, you know, watching him run around, you know, approach people to kind of buy their stuff from them if they're willing to sell it. Take no for an answer a bunch of times, you know, you can't be shy. And I was a little surprised because I expected this last day when the crowd was a little bit less, that he would want to run over and do the F1 simulator or punch the UFC thing or. Or jump off the top turnbuckle in the wrestling activation. And he just wanted to open the cards and sell the cards and buy cards and sell cards and just run around the collector zone. We did all that other stuff afterwards because after a while it was harder and harder to get boxes and, you know, we wound up going on the F1 simulator many, many times. I think I may have to buy one of those things. We wound up going on them, you know, many times and buying cards and just, you know, having fun. It was, it was. It was a great day there. So big thank you to the card ladder team. One of the things that was mentioned was I said, you know, what are you guys doing? Well, you know, it's. This is a sporting event, you know what I mean? And It's a major event. I mean, this is. Think about, you know, in your lifetime when the convergence is going to happen, 200,000 people at a sports event, and you combine that with the, you know, millions of people who have converged here for the World cup final going on that day and the wrestling event that was going on, all within a 24 hour period during our lifetime. That may be the largest 24 hour, you know, sporting event, location ever, you know, and it's something to think about. It's pretty crazy. We got the Knicks championship there mixed on top of that. So that was fun. And a big thank you to Christina for, you know, having some fun with my son and, you know, helping him get the last couple boxes, which wound up being very good boxes too. So that was fun. Yeah. And I mean, we, we, we had a blast. We really did. And, you know, I enjoyed myself there. I know my son had a lot of fun. He's already asking me if I know when the next year one is scheduled for so he could add it to his calendar. And, you know, so that's fun in and of itself. Black Jaded Wolf and your team, the entire team, they were great. Let Ian stand there and open, you know, boxes, throw things out in the garbage, which has a huge amount of value to it. Right. You know, and just stand there at the table and pretend like he's a dealer for a minute, you know, and work the table and oh, yeah, you're doing this. You know, for a kid who's 13, that's a cool thing. I took a picture of the two of them together and, you know, that's a lot of fun, you know, and we watched the World cup while we were there. We bought some cards, sold some cards and just had a really good time. And when you layer that on to the. I spoke to a lot of people who were there. I did not hear anybody say anything bad about it. Not a single person who was there. Not one. And, you know, I would tell you if I did. Every dealer thought it was a great show. Every dealer was surprised by the amount of, you know, buying and selling that was going on. I think for the most part, the dealers who were buying were surprised, based, if you take it as a comparison from last year, how many people came to the show with cards to buy. A couple people told me it had like a Dallas feel to it because people go to the Dallas show, you know, to sell cards to, you know, repacks and the whole deal. They said it had a lot of that. Like in the two Years prior, the collector zones, which were smaller both years, significantly smaller in year one, you know, you didn't have the steady flow of people coming up, hey, I'm selling buy this, buy this, buy this. A lot of deals show me they had to pause, you know, for a minute on their buying. So they had to, you know, figure out what they had and you know, take a minute to sell some, some cards to build up their cash flow, to keep taking cards in, which that's a healthy sign, it's healthy sign for the market. It's a healthy sign for the show that fanatics kind of pivoted it to get enough collectors, enough people in there bringing cards in, right? Because I could tell you for the last couple of years, people coming in empty handed, you know, because they were coming in to go to the wrestling stuff, to go get an autograph, get a pick, everybody kind of was walking in with a backpack full of cards this year, you know what I mean? Everybody's walking in with stuff to sell so that they could trade, they could buy, they could do something else. And yeah, I mean it is a, it was, it was, it was a fun four days. I gotta tell you. I'm really looking forward to going to the national on the heels of this to do a little compare and contrast, right? To see some more vintage stuff. I mean, if you like me, like the vintage stuff, there was more vintage at Fanatics Fest than I, than I thought was going to be there. You know, I like a little vintage cards here and there and I, I mean just the, the sheer volume of the show at the national is, is an amazing thing. Also, you know, I'm looking for some, you know, for some specific cards. I will tell you this. I left the Fanatics Fest with like no cards left to sell. Like everything that I wanted to sell, I sold at that show. Which is amazing because that was, it was not that kind of show for the prior two years. So just from a card show perspective, people, you know, the biggest knock on it for card guys was a, this isn't a card show, it is a card show. And you know, I think any of your favorite dealers, if you ask them would tell you it is a card show, right? It's way more than a card show. But there is a humongous card show going on in there at the same time as Justin Bieber is giving you a concert for the price of admission, right? I mean it's a card show. It's not fair, right, because you're buying a ticket for it, whether it's 70, 75, 80, 90, depending upon the day to get in. Kids tickets are nowhere near that expensive. But, I mean, you're going to a card show, but at the same time as Travis Scott is performing and Wemby walks by you, and you get to go to the Knicks championship parade part two that they had standing right there next to the cards. You know what I mean? So I. I guess maybe I shouldn't call it a card show. I'm calling a card show as a positive because it hasn't really had a card show component, you know, the way that it had this year in the prior two years. The card show was amazing. Everything else is amazing, too. I mean, you know, you have a massive card show going on while, you know, while. While John Cena and Cody Rhodes are doing fanatics games behind you, and Kevin Hart is, you know, putting on an ice bath show, and Cooper Flag is signing it all. I mean, like I said, I could probably do 20 episodes on this. I wanted to thank a couple people, and I want to thank fanatics of folks that I met. You guys know who you are. I can't name every single one of you, but talk about a cool and fun experience, right? Collecting baseball cards to go back to Josh Luber, who, by the way, the ghost, right, that he's doing was everywhere. Also collab with lids. I mean, that was everywhere. You know, that. That was another cool thing just to go. To go back to, you know, a couple years ago when he was writing white papers about, you know, collecting, being cool again. I can tell you that I've been involved in cards for a long time. It's never something I would have told anyone that I did. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, yeah, what's your hobby? You're a golfer? This. No, no, no. I collect baseball cards now because people know that this is a space that I'm involved in. They say I'm getting texts from co workers. Did you see Justin Bieber? And I'm like, yeah, yeah. Me and him, we had lunch. I went to the corner store with them. No problem. Me, Haley, Justin, we just sat down, had the porterhouse. It was fantastic. Thank you. No, I didn't. I saw him. I saw him, but I wasn't, like, hanging out with him. But it's fanatics adds that level of cool to it. You went to fanatics Fest? No one's like, really? They're like, oh, I was thinking about going, should I go next year? That's the answer I get all the time. For anyone who Wasn't there. Not really. You're going there and you know, you're doing cards. No go to Fanatics Fest. Oh, man. I wanted to buy a ticket. Yeah, I'm definitely gonna go next year. That's very different and that's very cool. And I mean, I think it takes a lot to make baseball card collecting cool. They've done it. So there you go. That's my, my quick little episode for today. A different kind of recap. I have nothing bad to say about it at all. Right. We talked about fan cash. I could talk about. I'll do a fan cash episode because I spent a lot of fan cash and that ecosystem is, you know, that is going to be an interesting thing going forward. If you happen to be a sports bettor, you'll get fan cash that you can go spend on cards at their events. If you buy jerseys, if you buy sports stuff like I do for my kids, there's fan cash just everywhere. And I'm spending it on cards foreign, my friends. Oh, and just a little, you know, if you saw my story, great. I bought cards in fanatics collect auction on Sunday night and more fanatics flowers. Sunday night, midnight. The auction ended. I immediately paid. I immediately put in my shipping request. I'm recording this Tuesday. I have my cards. I have my cards in hand in less than 36 hours from when the auction ended. That's amazing. And I have come on here and crapped on their, their, their shipping, their turnaround times because, you know, sometimes it will take it two, three weeks. I didn't think I'd have these cards for the national. I got them in time for this weekend shows if I find any local shows to go to. So, I mean, impressive stuff. Good on them. You know, I, I reach out to them to thank them and they said that their turnaround time is down significantly. So bid in the collect auctions, bid freely because you will get your cards quickly if you want them in your hands. And that's it, guys. Episode 424, Fanatics Fest stories brought to you by Arena Club, brought to you by Card Ladder. Who I mean, the team was there. Got to see Stiff. A lot less stiff, but I got to see Stiff. Got to see, you know, hoj. I didn't see Josh, although I did see a story that he's having a run and this fat guy may be on the run. It's the last thing Josh wants to hear. But talk about the content that that would be. If Friday morning my fat butt wakes up and joins the Josh run, I might like, be able to stay on his pace for like, 30 seconds. But I'll take a lot of pictures and make it look like I made it the whole time. So that might come. Brought to you by Card Ladder and by the Philly Show. Guys, thank you for all the great messages. I'm trying to put as much content out there as I can about Fanatics Fest. It was, you know, in my backyard. I was there all four days. I know a lot of people couldn't make it there. I'm trying to do my best to kind of, you know, put out there my thoughts on it. And I, I thought it was a great show. I mean, and you guys are, you know, I'm getting some really great messages. I get some not so nice ones too, but I get some really great messages from folks saying, you know, that I'm kind of, you know, they could feel the energy of it. They could feel kind of like an honest reaction to it. Father, son kind of stuff. You know, taking friends there, taking family members there, and not only not being embarrassed by it, but like, you know, my family members are thanking, like, oh, that was amazing. We're definitely going to go back next year. Yeah, it's cool stuff. So I appreciate all the, all the, the kind messages thanking me for the content. Makes me want to make another episode. And I will soon. Talk to you guys soon. Take care, everybody.