Opening The National: Live From the Main Stage With the Hobby’s Biggest Names

So people are rushing in to get their tickets and have their spot at the show. The excitement is the chase. It's always, what are you going to find next? Where are you going to find it? And that's what really keeps me driven in this hobby. Sports cards are really just the mechanism to tell really amazing stories about beautiful people. We get to use these sports cars to tell these stories. It was a good reminder and encouragement for us of why we have our platform. I go to shows and I see young kids talking about which service should I use to submit to. It wasn't like that before. So to see where it's at now, all the structure and support, data, all the innovation with AI coming online, there's a lot of room for growth. We have three and a half million people that downloaded half a billion cards. And so we have that brand and that's what we care about. And that's what the national does. So the technologies kind of got diluted over time, but we had to build up other things. There's always new technology businesses starting up new things. It's really exciting to see what they're offering. I think we're now moving to the point with more like strategic partnership. Welcome to the Collector Nation podcast here on the Collector Nation Network. Whether you're chasing grails or calling bluffs, we take you inside the hobby. Here are your hosts, Ryan Alford and Brian Lutton. How are you all doing today? I know you're excited to be at the National. This is a big event. We've been waiting for what seems like years. A year. I've been excited for this show since it ended last year. Yeah. Yeah, this is my very first National. So I've been super excited to be here and soak it all in. I've heard everything. I could probably hear about it under the sun. But getting to see it firsthand is a huge excitement. And getting to see the people rushing. Oh, literally rushing in as we speak here. Are they rushing in for you, Greeny? I think they're coming in. Well, my booth is downstairs, so we'll have to usher them downstairs. But this is one of the greatest things to see is all the people excited to get here for the first time. Yeah, so if you are watching this and not here live... They just opened up general admission. So people are rushing in to get their tickets and have their spot at the show. I do want to set up a little bit about y'all's history and why you've gotten into cards. So, Greeny, we'll start with you. What has gotten you into cards? I know you've been in it for 20-plus years. You've been at the National for over half of them, you said. So what brought you here today, and what keeps you coming back? Yeah, I mean, like any childhood, I always collected cards. You know, my dad and I, we would open our packs. We'd have our checklists, mark them off. And as always, you know, you grow up, you go away to college, you maybe forget about cards. But after college, I found my cards. I rediscovered my love for collecting, sold a few cards, realized, man, I can make a car payment. Then we hit right. And it's like, wow. And, you know, it gradually turned it into a business and started doing a lot of card shows, traveled the country, came here to Chicago, would head out to the West and just enjoying seeing new different areas. And, you know, the excitement is the chase. And I can't wait to actually talk to Ty later about the chase. But, like, it's always what are you going to find next? Where are you going to find it? And that's what really keeps me driven in this hobby. Yeah. Yeah. And Ryan, what about you? What got you into the hobby and what keeps you here? Well, I mean, I grew up a poor kid from Easley, South Carolina. And I think it was my first taste of, like, economics. The buy for a certain price, sell for another. Going to a card shop and, you know, getting reminded how small I really was by the guys that ran card shops in the 80s. But in all seriousness, it... It fueled my passion for sports that I already had in a different way. By being able to own a piece, even a card representing the player that you watched on TV. Because I watched and played sports like 99% of the time. And so it started with Roger Clemens in 86th. That was the chase for me. And then I was just like everyone else in 1989, King Griffey Jr. That was my first, you know, that upper deck card that everyone now wants. And it's cool though. And King Griffey Jr. Now, right? Green. Unbelievable. I bought, I bought one 20 minutes ago, but. Yeah, one of the most iconic cards is the 89 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. Yeah. The inside joke, they're still printing them today. They're not, but it is an iconic card. And you said something a second ago, which I found very interesting. The economics of the cards, just the buying and selling. I get really jealous of people that can do that without getting attached to the cards. I get attached to them. I love the cards. I do love buying and selling them. Obviously, I do this for a living, but I get attached to my cards sometimes. And the people that can just... turn it on and turn it off, take $5, turn it into six, right? Like I get jealous of that sometimes. Well, I own 42 cars by the age of 21 because I bought and like, I don't get it. I have moved about 40, 40 times. I don't get attached to it. My wife says, I'm glad you're attached to me. Because you don't really, you don't get attached to anything. Yeah. But, you know, so that was my first taste of it. I was a hustling kid and saw that as a way to make money when I didn't have money. And then, but I also, but I played sports and loved sports. So there was always a, I'd have like four cards, the ones that weren't for sale. Right. Everything else was for sale. Right. So I have to ask specifically Greeny and I guess to, you know, talking back to when you were a kid and into it. What is the biggest change that you all have seen in the hobby from in the 80s when it first was becoming popular to now? I feel like there's been a lot of changes that's happened. Yeah, sure. There is still the passion of collecting, right? We just talked about it, the passion of collecting your favorite players or team, but the big business that it's become. And the money has been different, right? People were spending money back in the day, right? Yeah. You know, 52 mantles were still expensive back in the day. Jordan rookies were still expensive. But now that people are looking at cards as alternative assets is a major change and a major influx of money into the industry. Yeah, I would say it's the both the the money and the marketing of it all and the the democratization in some ways by the variety and different things. But when I grew up You know, Frank Thomas became the chase after Kenny Rippey Jr., by the way. You know, the Marv McGuires and all that. But you didn't have all these parallels and variations and all that. And I know that's not new, by the way. But in the 80s, you didn't have that. No, you didn't. And so your most valuable card might be $30 or something. Other than vintage stuff that was $200, now's $2 million, these cards, with great... Grading is probably the single most denominator of change is everything's going to be graded. It's going to add a certain value for the highest grades. But grading, I think, is the biggest. I mean, grading it is. And while I do love it, there's a lot of cards that need to be graded. You know, the reason that we're backed up 11 million cards is there's a lot of cards that don't need to be graded. So I have to ask, both of you are huge businessmen in the hobby. What does it take to make the hobby more than just a hobby and make it a business and make it something that can be profitable and not just a side hustle? I'll let Ryan go first. He has the card shock. We'll do that. I think it starts with separating business from collecting. And I think really kind of teed it up for me a little bit, which is if you come into it, staying the collector, you're, And treating every box and every card as your personal collection. Right. That's very difficult to treat it as a business. And it's, I think where you see people maybe go wrong is I think they have a hard time dividing that path. And, you know, and I, you know, I mean, I, I'll dip, don't get too high on your own supply. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is. It's true. You're right. It's, uh, it's, it's almost like, so I, I owned a bar at one point, right? Yeah. You don't drink in your own bar. You own a shop. You don't rip your own wax. Yeah. Right. I mean, it's kind of the same premise. Yeah. And I think, uh. There's so much data out there and so much knowledge to be had. You can make money. We live in a great country. You make money a lot of our ways. And I think if you choose cards, it's probably not as clear and easy as a path as it may seem. But the data is out there that if you really want to and you can separate business from pleasure... There's money to be made. Absolutely. For sure. We try to be really a specific genre, right? Like you can buy everything, right? You can buy vintage, you can buy new cards, you can buy wax. What we try to do is specialize in like the insert card things instead of doing it all. And that's kind of how we make our focus. And we're able to actually keep in line that it is a business first and foremost. Yeah. So kind of on that path, what is your focus in the business? Right now, we specialize in nostalgia. We're in the 90s and the 2000s. And those cards are coming back. They're cards that I collected when I was growing up of age. And there's people that are in our age brackets that... You know, when they were kids, you know, we had an allowance. We couldn't afford the $100 and $200 cards. And now those people are growing with jobs and they're able to go back and fill in their Ken Griffey Jr. insert cards or the Frank Thomases or the Jordans. So we try to go out, you know, we travel the country to buy these cards to bring to this show. And I think that's an interesting point that you just brought up because, as Ryan was stating before, you know, the high-end cards were $200 back in the 80s. But now the same people that find that nostalgia are willing to pay for that nostalgia. And I think that that's a very interesting kind of dichotomy and difference in the hobby. And that's probably why we're seeing it. You have this perfect intersection going on where guys my age with kids, you know, for all the overprinting they did in the 80s, it might have helped because there's all these guys my age that we're collecting that now are back into it. And they have, you know, more capital. And then you have institutional money finally looking at us at the at the chart going, wait a second. That vintage group of cards is 20x what my 401k has done the last 30 years. Hmm. Right. You can't call it cheap card number anymore. No, you can't. And that's been the very interesting thing over the last couple years is people looking at their bank accounts. They're looking at their cards and which ones are growing quicker. Yep. Yeah. And as we kind of round out the segment, we kind of have two different parallels of how much national experience you all have. Ryan, this is your second year. Greeny, you said that you've been here 20 plus years. So what is one piece of advice that you have for people at the national and one thing that you see people do wrong or maybe that they should avoid at the national? You know, the biggest thing I always told people, just have fun, right? Just come and experience it. Have your list, have your few things that you want to go. But if you just come in here and say, I'm going to walk around and just look. You can have a great time without buying a single card at this show. I mean, the museum quality pieces, you know, you hear the same thing from everybody else, right? The comfortable shoes or this, but just come with an open mind and have a good time. Yeah, two things. Be patient, especially if you're here multiple days. There's plenty of cards, plenty of deals to go around. The best deals probably don't happen on the first day, if I had to guess. Dealers become more motivated. Maybe not at all this week, I don't know. Always going to be out of the card. There's a term that I use called leaving space. If you come in so ready to only have a deal with this card, with this dealer, with I'm coming here because I want to do these things. Leave space to be surprised and delighted. Absolutely. And find the joy of walking around and especially if you're here multiple days. Walk through the museum, see the history of the National, learn about Mike Berkus, learn about what this has meant to the community year and enjoy it. If you're here for one day, do that a little faster, but leave your face to not think you have it all figured out. That's right. And you hear this from a lot of people, too. If there's a card that you see. and you really want it, don't lose that card for 10%. Just buy it. Patience. Right. And, you know, you can make a deal and, you know, you don't have to. I think it's a seller's market, potentially. It is. It's an absolute seller's market right now. And it's a buyer's market, too, if you fire right eyes, right? If there's such a thing. We talk about the Jordans and the Griffys. If you can pick who's next, right? Right. All right, final question before we invite our next guest up. What are you trying to buy at the National this week? So I'm a LeBron collector. Yeah. Disappointed he went to Philly since I was in Cleveland, but I understand. I'm looking for one just rare LeBron card to add to my collection that I do not have. All right. Brian? I am looking. I don't know that I'll buy. I brought a lot to sell, actually. So I'm selling some good cards. Some Michael Jordans. Some big cards. But if I find a Ken Griffey Jr. PSA 10 in that upper deck... It may walk home with me. But I don't want to over... I don't know if you're going to overpay for anything right now because the market is so crazy. Right, yeah. But I'd rather probably have a, you know, a balanced trade. But that's back to the nostalgia. I feel like coming to the national second year, kind of the... I got my bearings under me now, like buying back, starting where it all started. Would be cool. Yeah, that's awesome. It's a lot of fun. And just have fun. Yeah, that is awesome. Ty Wilson. What's up, brother? Hey, you know, we had to have the filler before the true star got up. Yeah, whatever. Whatever. Yeah, listen, this is great. I mentioned earlier that the chase is what keeps me driven. You actually created a whole show about chasing cardboard. Tell us a little bit how that started. I know everyone has a background in collecting, but you took it to another level. How did you get to where you are now? Yeah, so out in the crowd there, you can see Matt Coleman. He's the mastermind behind the production. Most people are like, you're a good host, but the production quality, like that's really what's the best part. Sure. He had an idea probably six, seven years ago. Hey, can we take American pickers to the sports card world? Sure. And so we kind of messed around with it for a few months, and then we filmed a pilot episode in Houston with the idea of pitching it to a network. Yeah. Networks like sports cards, not going to work. Too small. I think if they came today, it'd be like, maybe we were wrong. And this is just the second four. But we said, okay, well, we're going to keep doing this. We love it. Let's go see what we can do on YouTube. And here we are, 115 episodes, five years later, producing the show. 115 episodes. You do. Oh, my God. Do you ever pinch yourself and go, what happened? Like, how did I, you know, like, it's, I mean, not only the discipline to do it, but having a producer that trusts in you, that believes in the vision and the audience has come along, man. It's amazing. The audience has 100% come along. It's the only reason that it's worked, right, is the audience is dedicated to seeing, they're not here to see us. They're here to see the stories that exist across America. Do you think that not getting a network to dictate what you're doing has actually been better for you and you get to own everything? That's a great point. Yeah, I mean, we hadn't really thought about it, but yeah, I think it's probably been a blessing in disguise. For sure. Sometimes you never think about that. I mean, like, yeah, it'd be great to be on the History Channel and the distribution and their range, but then you're kind of privy to what they want you to do. Yeah. So now you get to decide where you go, who you buy from and how you do it. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. But you would have taken that Sony deal, you know? We still would have taken the DA, my friend. I believe it. But hey, once you have it, though, you earned it. Yeah. And then, you know, a lot of shows these days, you self-produce and then get picked up once you've kind of proven it. And it gives you more leverage. For sure. You know? I mean, you do have leverage in those, a different kind of leverage. When you've got the audience community that you bring with you. Yeah. And you can't, you can't buy that. You can't, you have to have the authentic content. And I tell people all the time, like, Oh, you know, like you can't just throw a number out there. You have to connect with them and you have to give them a reason. And they have to, you have to earn their attention every time. And that's what y'all do. Telling these stories, which is amazing. Yeah. Talk to me like, like, I'd had Ty on my show a couple weeks ago, but I want you to pretend to have it a little bit, Ty. Maybe a quick story, something coming up, something in the past, something, one of these, because this is what I love about their show, Chasey Cardboard. It is American Pickering Story. It is the storytelling. It's the fabric of America in a lot of ways. Where you guys go, the cities, the towns, the basements, all that stuff. Maybe a quick story or two, Ty. Yeah, so I'll share a couple that we talked about, right? I mean, the best part about what we do is this surprise element of just meeting a new person. Like none of it's staged outside of that first introduction when we meet somebody. We have to get a cameraman behind the front door, right? It's all real. And so we're learning, we're responding to real stories, real people on the fly. But we had a situation where a husband had terminal cancer. And they reached out to us and said, hey, as a family, we're a fan of your show. Can we talk about the collection? And we didn't. I mean, we knew it was urgent. We knew it was urgent. Sure. We went out there, and if you've seen the episode, you guys know, like... If you haven't, go watch it. Like, bring a box of Kleenex. It was one of the most emotional moments in my life, period. I mean, Matt and I had to step out multiple times just to kind of compose ourself because of the reality of it. And just pulling ourselves back and say, man, sports cards are really just the mechanism to tell really amazing stories about beautiful people. Like our amazing country. We get to use these sports cars to tell these stories. And so it was a good reminder and encouragement for us of why we have our platform. And man, that episode, it wrecks some hearts. It stirred some souls. That's for sure. Yeah, I was one of them when I went back and I skimmed through with you coming on the show. And let's just say my wife was like, are you crying? Yeah. Let me tease one for you, though. Yes. So we got one coming out in two weeks. Okay. Guy calls us and he goes, hey, I have a 40,000 square foot warehouse. I've been buying collections. I've been buying boxes because I love the haunt and whatever, right? I have five other businesses. Let me just stockpile. But I'm 75 and I got kidney stones. I'm done, man. Like, come take this off me. Sends us one picture of one room. And we're like, oh, dude, we got to go do this. Indiana, seven hours from me. So we go drive out there and it's three floors of a warehouse. Oh, my God. One room is dedicated to collections he's purchased for 20 years. One room is dedicated to all of the starting lineups. He collected starting lineups since 88. Okay. One by the case. Okay. And then another room. Yeah. He would go out and wait in line and just keep buying hobby and retail boxes for almost a decade. I like that. And he would open one or two from the Bon Cesar, and he would keep all the rest sealed. And so he had no idea what he wanted. He was just, I'm done. Yeah. And so we blind wrote numbers with each other to see how close we would be, because we had no idea. Yeah, right. But I'm not going to slow-roll it, but it was an insane moment because he was a little offended what... And I was a little offended. It was like, wait, what? That's okay. Yeah, that was good. So tell us, so we see a lot of the episodes and you go into people's houses, but tell us about the down and dirty part, right? Like go into somebody's basement. You go into somebody's attic. There is mouse, right? Like tell us about some of those collections. Like what is the dirtiest place you've been? The dirtiest place. Oh, man. We've been to some basements and garages that, I mean, mine's pretty dirty. I haven't slept in them, but it makes you. I get it. I mean, you go right to the bathroom and wash your hands. Yeah. And even we load the cards up sometimes and we're like, should we be breathing this without a mask? You know, like for real. Yeah. Everybody thinks their house is a mess. They're always like, I don't want you to film here. And we're like, hey, Matt's a pretty good editor. We know how to get good angles. Sure. But there's some situations we go, no boy, this is... I'm sorry. I know that there has been boxes of cards that I am not taking for that reason. Yeah. I'm sure you've had to have those, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the best part is when they go, if you want this, you have to take it all. We've all been there, and you have to do it, right? Because this part here is so good. Sometimes, we don't want to say this on network TV, but sometimes things go in the dumpster. It's a dumpster dive. Let me ask you this. We have a world where content's been democratized. Okay. You know, like the network TV thing we talked about, you got more and more content creators What I love about what you guys are doing is how different it is. I mean, it's not scripted, but it's professionally produced. Talk to me about if someone's watching this and they see all the contents out there. For the good, bad, the ugly of being a content creator in 2026, and would you do it again? Yeah. I got eight kids. Two of them are here. So I support a family of eight by producing content and selling sports cards. So I would, I mean, absolutely do it. What a blessing. So the good part is we get to tell authentic stories and have real conversations. That's amazing. The part people don't see is how hard it is to do that. So the ugly is it's really expensive. What we don't show is the time it takes to do this, right? You're day in before you're filming, usually their next day out. So you're three days in on an episode. you don't get paid as much as you think on a YouTube video that gets 150,000 views, right? Everyone's like, man, you're millionaires. Like it doesn't work that way. It doesn't work. The CPM is really low for this stuff. So you, you, but we don't want to, we don't want to advertise that, right? We, we do it because we love it in the backend and we try to get good sponsors that we have had great sponsors that have made it work for us. Outside of the show, I follow you on other social platforms and specifically on X. You write a lot of thoughts, like your thoughts on PSA, why people should grade, how they should grade. Your journalistic style of that, where did that come from? I think just being in the corporate world. Yeah. You know, I can relate to Ryan a little bit, you know, being grinding out, trying to survive. You have to learn how to produce good writing and emails and have good conversations, ask good questions, or you just won't survive. Sure. So that comes out a little bit in that stuff. And I love reselling. I love the business part of reselling. Yeah. So tell us about that. You're on eBay Live, right? Yeah. Right. Talk us through that. How do you decide what to put? Do you specifically do shows based on a player, a team, a sport, or do you just grab and go? Oh, so we do. We do grab and goes over lunch. We'll probably three or four times a week we'll grab and go. Sometimes my son Jax and my son's Kai will do that for me. Uh, but it's a lot of it's, it's, it's show oriented. It's a, you want to go buy the T two Oh sixes from Aaron's collection, which we're getting ready to go sell live on eBay here in about an hour. Uh, come to this live stream. Right. And there's great, I mean, it's just insane platforms. Now the tech is so much better than it used to be. So selling is a, is a breeze. So let's talk about that for a second. And I don't know how long you've been doing this, but the platforms are absolutely amazing with eBay Live, whatnot, and all the TikTok store. When I first started doing this, I used to sell on Beckett auctions and there were no pictures. And you would just sell auctions. Yahoo had auctions. And now we're live selling. I don't even know that I really list cards at run them for seven-day auctions. I don't know. Are you noticing that trend? Nobody's just listing auctions anymore. They're doing live sell. You're exactly right. So I'm one of the few guys that I only sell on eBay on 10-day auctions when I'm not selling live. So you're probably talking to one of the few guys that sure does that, right? I trust what the market will tell me about a card. But you're so right. It's so community-driven. People, I think they misunderstand live selling. They think it's kind of a cesspool of just... content and people out there spewing stuff. But it's like, no, these are little communities that exist. And people want to be part of a community. That's a big component of this hobby. And live selling allows you to create that community around your personality. So that's the beauty of it. Which is a great thing about a hobby shop, right? Yes. Ryan will create a community in his hobby shop and people come into that. So there's live selling what you're doing. It's not on their platform. It's on your own platform. But that's really the way of it is. Nothing beats a face-to-face interaction anymore, right? Yeah. Nothing beats going through a secret passage to my office to a collection that a lot of people would love to have. I should wait to see that verse. You're coming, boy. You're bringing all eight with you. Yes. But no, the community thing, that's the big... a big proponent of all the tech that's cut like and i'm bringing some with me by the way we're going to talk about it in a little while but the tech can bring the communities together you know i i firmly believe that sometimes we're like throwing dirt on these platforms and look you can abuse anything but it does allow people from all over the world to build community within these buy, sell, trade. And I'm all for it. And I do think it can be done in a healthy way. I love what Ty is doing. And that's the one thing I'm gonna say about the content. And I can't say this enough. Anybody can pick up a phone and you can do stuff, but to tell stories and to make people move is an art. And that's what I really love about what y'all are doing, man. And I personally will keep promoting it. Listen, I enjoy it. I found your channel maybe 114 episodes before. You've been following that long? Yeah, I have. We have an office. He's also a member of the fan club. I'm enjoying time. So we have an office where we work on it. It's not a store. So we sit there and we process inventory. We have our big screen TV and, you know, in the morning we'll watch our local sports channels and then we flip on an episode of Chasing Carpool. So, yeah, I've seen, maybe I've seen 110, but I've seen pretty much most of them. And I mean, I enjoy it. I'm going to ask both of you guys this question. Having a store and chasing different collections, like what is the most unique item that's either walked into the store or that you have found on the road? Hmm. You got one ready? Yeah. We have a... Some people are going to hate this comment, but there's a large Pokemon community here in ours. And I got enlightened. I mean, Ken Golden's been enlightening me. He's on the show and watching him, now knowing him. But how big that community is. And a guy walked in with a box. It was a booster box. And, you know, I knew we sell Pokemon. We sell sports cards. But I just... I knew it was like an older Poyot. It's a $100,000 box. You know, like, and I'm just like, and I'm a sports guy. Sports cards guy. And I know it because I own a store. So I know probably more than the average sports. But I was blown away at, you know, the value of even Pokemon now compared with that. And then, I mean, I've had some 80s. you know basketball walking i mean yeah i don't i i'm almost it's almost sad because so much stuff walks in the store every week i'm surprised every week because of what it is and i'm a sucker for buying i don't know stuff that doesn't even matter like vintage 70s 80s like baseball basketball football cards it doesn't matter i'll sit there and they'll come in and i'll look and i and i have i should be doing something else And two hours later, I'm still flipping through their collection. It's like, it's the best two hours of my day. Heck yeah. So here's the best part about buying collections. Because you've done it a lot. Sure. You've done it as well. You never know the nuances of a collector until you start getting into their boxes. Of course. You might think it's a bunch of 88 Donruss. And it could be. But they might have thrown 2,000 Bowman in with 88 Donruss. Right. They might have thrown a bunch of Skybox EX Sentries in there because it was a cool car, but whatever. The nuances of collectors, they run wild. Yep. There are so many stories, and I can think of just 10 right now, but there's just stories of us finding crazy cards amidst junk flacks because collectors are just different. But I'll take you back to episode eight. You've seen almost all of them. You probably remember this. We're in Oklahoma. We do a blind bid... On a house auction. Okay. So it's like some guy Facebooked us. Hey, it's a blind bid. Some guy died. He died with cards on top of him. We didn't put that in the episode. That's good. So this guy was a hardcore collector. I would remember stealing. You remember this? Yeah. So like, I don't know. What do you do? It's a blind bid. They give you all your pictures. I write down $8,200 and I send it off. Good. I get a call three days later. Hey, congratulations. You got to be in 72 hours. You got to be in Oklahoma. I lived in Idaho. You got to be in Oklahoma in 72 hours to pick this up. So Matt and I were like, okay, let's go. So we get a U-Haul. We get there. Some of the boys are out there with us. We're carrying boxes into the U-Haul. We just happened to open up one of these boxes and we see a Michael Jordan flare cart. And they happened to pick it up and they pulled up and they realized Michael Jordan signed the back of a 94 flare Jordan. It was from one of his flight academy autos. I send it to PSA to get authenticated. It's real. We end up finding the COA later. Yeah. But again, in the middle of a bunch of nothing, we find this Jordan auto. Yeah. It was like that propelled us. And it's a reminder every time we get these big collections, don't assume it's junk. No. Don't. So this is one of the coolest things that I ever got to buy. It was in the area where I live in Cleveland, which is not far from Canton, where the Pro Football Hall of Fame was. And somebody listed a lot of footballs from the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And this one happened to be from the 2000s. Pro Football Hall of Fame game where Tom Brady made his NFL debut. And I got this certified by Nears as being used in the game. Now, I can't show that Tom Brady ever used it, but he did hold it last year at the show here and kind of looked at it. It was like, he didn't sign it for him? He did not sign it for me. And I will tell you that I'm glad he didn't because he was rushing signatures that day. Oh, I see. But he did hold it. I've got to agree on your hard time. It's deflated. It's deflated, right? This is one of the coolest things that I have found out in the water. That is pretty cool. What's the craziest thing you found? And this is the one? Well, that's the artifact, right? So the craziest card that I ever found, it was at a little tiny show. Someone gave me a flyer to a show at a church an hour and a half from my house. And I woke up that one morning and I'm like, I'm not fibbing it. And then someone was like, you know, go to the show. And I went and I got there and there was literally four vendors, 10 tables. And I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. And I'm, that's whatever. I'm going to dig through boxes and... This is probably 2013, so imagine my excitement then what it would be now as I flip through this dollar box and I see a Charles Barkley Precious Metal Genge Green. And I bought another... In a dollar box. In a dollar box. Obviously, it was a monster then, but I bought... 20 other cards that I couldn't even remember, and I don't even know that I cared. I just was like, I'm going to grab a stack and be on my way. Just tip them on the way out. I sold it two weeks later to Nat Turner for $5,000. I redid my kitchen. It was the greatest thing ever. It was awesome. Probably could add two zeros, didn't it? You could add two zeros. Well, listen, guys. So, Ty, maybe drop where they can find you, all the deets on Chasing Cardboard. Yeah, go to YouTube, type Chasing Cardboard. You'll find it there, Instagram, Chasing Cardboard TV. You'll see us. You're a great follow on X, too. So you do. You've been to the U.S. You've been to the U.S. You've been to the U.S. You've been to the U.S. You give a lot of insight on knowledge that you've learned over the years. So, listen, we appreciate it. I appreciate both of you guys jumping on here. Thank you, Radney. Appreciate you guys. Have fun with you. Ryan Alford with Collector Nation, Collector Station. And we are joined by Mike Baker of Mike Baker Authenticated here at the 46th Annual National Sports Collectors. convention on the mike burkus memorial stage and it is our pleasure to be with mike he is one of the most experienced and recognizable graders in the hobby a former psa director of grading and a veteran with decades of hands-on experience and expertise evaluating vintage and modern cards mike founded mike baker authenticated the company behind the mba diamond sticker that highlights exceptional eye appeal On already graded cards, Mike has become a trusted voice for collectors seeking clarity in a crowded grading landscape. His accessibility, deep knowledge, and commitment to educating collectors has made him a standout figure in the grading community. Mike, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Man, I was getting impressed just sitting here. I was like... I took regular on my show. So Mike's a dear friend. Check the box. Check the box. And, you know, he's the world's greatest grader. WGG. WGG. You know, even that title, he did not self-title himself. So, but I did. I mean, three Mickey Mantle perfect tens. That's all you got to say. Unprecedented. Mike, I don't know if he loves it or hates it when I'm right on him, but he is amazing. And his work speaks for itself. Speaking of that work, Mike, let's take everybody back a little bit. How did you get started in the hobby and what led you to PSA originally or even a stop before that in the grading world? Well, I started in 1989 with professional coin grading service, BCGS, which is the sister company to PSA. So I was a coin encapsulator next day to the line for a couple of years. I heard that PSA, the idea of PSA was looming and the coins were great, but not as cool as sports cards. And so immediately I was kind of on track or trying to put myself on track to have the opportunity to kind of insert myself in any way I could. Sweeping the fours, whatever it took to kind of get into that stage where I could take the grading test. and get on board and eventually took over the room, managed and trained actually a lot of the senior leadership that's still here at PSA to this day, 35 years later. So it's kind of cool to see their growth, the growth of the hobby, the growth of NBA. So things have been good. Yeah. What's the... You've come up in the business, Mike. You've done and graded at the highest level. It's like... I don't want to say grading's having its moment. Yeah. It's been having it for several years. Yeah. What's it like kind of watching that evolution? And, I mean, it's got to be both amazing and now having MBA. Maybe, you know, the mindset for you... seeing that growth, that evolution, and now how big of a part of the hobby it is. It's mind blowing is probably the word to, I remember, you know, when being a greater FSA in the early days and the, there wasn't a lot of dealer support then dealers. No one likes change period, but in our hobby, especially, and having a young kid tell guys that are seasoned veterans, what their cards condition was and things like that was hard pill to swallow. It was, it took a lot of effort working with collectors to say, Hey, I'll buy this card. provided it's created by the PSA, and that kind of switched the mindset. But walking into a store and seeing a PSA SMR back in the day, that was a big change. You know, seeing eBay come on and seeing it go international, yeah, become more of a mainstay. The awareness gap on what this micro niche is was super wide. The fact that it's, you know, starting to narrow, and you say, like, it's still having its day. You have companies like eBay, right? Fanatics, PSA, all 10-figure companies, if not more. And they're doing their best to make that awareness shrink. And card grading or sports collectible authentication is more mainstream. I go to shows and I see young kids talking about which service should I use to submit to. It wasn't like that before. So to see where it's at now, all the structure and support, Uh, data, all the innovation with AI coming online, there's a lot of room for growth and, uh, you know, sky's the limit. Yeah. Mike's, I, I'm fascinated that you mentioned coins and coming from the coin world, because as I understand it, the grading system fundamentally is based on how coins were graded. So it's not an entirely perfect system. If you had to start from scratch, uh, What would you change? What would you look at that maybe the system got wrong along the way, either by happenstance or just evolution? But what can you do from a grading perspective if you started this from scratch? Well, right now, PSA started, or PSA, NBA starting from scratch, and the experience I have from PSA, PSA didn't have a half point until 14, 15 years after they started. They included that. They've made some adjustments throughout the years. having NDA produce a gradient encapsulator product starting about a year and a half ago, we added the 9.5 as a mint plus grade, which I think is huge. So it's not a high end nine or a low end 10. We can actually define that based on with having the 9.5. Also adding the pristine and the virtually flawless grade has added another dimension for a gem mint 10 because there are better cards within that category. And it's, you know, a lot of collectors love the granularity of, what the grade really is or what the card really is based on the grade. And so it gives the graders a lot more flexibility to identify that realm. If we didn't have that, then the sticker would be assigned to it, much like we're doing with third-party services, PSA in particular, because they don't have a 9.5. They don't have a pristine. They don't have a flawless. So the diamond sticker really represents what we believe would cross over to an NBA holder for that grade. And it's definitely on the tracks with the collecting community and dealers. It's hard to ignore the math. And the math, the comps on the sticker are crazy right now. So hopefully, knock on wood, that continues. And our brand awareness will get a little smaller too. And off to the race as we go. Ryan mentioned I've been around the hobby a long time, which I have. But admittedly, I've never submitted a card to Grader. I don't typically buy and sell cards. I collect partnerships and media relationships in this space. Yeah. Uh, so that one said, yeah, this, this week could change a lot of lives for sure. Uh, so that being said, as, as a neophyte to the process, talk me through a little bit. If I were to submit a card to you, peel back that curtain a little bit. What, what happens when that card goes off in the mail? and I wait however long for it to come back. Yeah, well, that's the biggest fear. Number one friction point is sending it through the mail. That's why when grading services show up, they charge a premium because they get inundated with the fear that something's going to happen, lost, damaged, stolen, whatever it could be. The process being for a raw card, We're actually gated. It's going to go through collector station. Models like that where the shop owners or the designated strategic partnerships will take the cards in. They will be the front end of the house. They deal with the customer's concerns, comments, whatever, but also gives you guys an opportunity to then buy the stuff if a deal's made once the parts come back and or even before. You know, because maybe someone doesn't need to get a grade, it's serialized, it's a one-on-one, whatever it may be. Though... dealers will then send it to us. We will do our normal process. You know, it gets received. Everything is imaged front and back. It's assigned a serial, a randomized certification number. That gets graded. We provide a heat map showing all the conditions, where we see the concerns of the card. If it's an upper left corner, you can go to it. After you get your cards back, look at the digital heat map and you'll see a highlighted area for the concerns that we saw as to why it couldn't get a grade higher or whatever it may be. It gets encapsulated. It gets welded. It gets returned to the... the sub hub, so to speak, and it gets returned back to the customer. On our crossover product, third party graded cards that come in looking for a diamond, that's basically a hybrid crossover service where based on a bronze, silver, gold, or black, the customer can then choose what they want to do. Bronze is the equivalent grade. Silver is the equivalent grade, but it has superior eye appeal for that grade. A gold is a half point undergraded or more. Usually a half, but sometimes you'll find a full. And a black is virtually flawless, only assigned a gem mint or higher cards. That's the one you want. That's the one. Yeah, everybody wants that. There's just not enough to go around, unfortunately. It's a small segment of the market. That's the service we're providing here on site. And back at our... our shop not that far away from here inside the National. We've got a mountain of plastic right now for people mining for diamonds, is really what the tagline is. I have a two-part question to that end. So, one, do you see a day where there's consistency across the board between grading companies, where they fundamentally accept the platform? Yep. And then, as far as emerging technology goes within the AI space and other technological advances, where do you see the future of grading go? I think there's two camps right now on how it separates in the future of anyone's game. I know for us, machine learning, AI technology is 100% on board with. It's more assisting the greater, though, than it is the greater assisting the AI. The machine's not telling you. That's right. I agree. Yeah, I think it's very helpful with centering. I think it's very helpful with sizing. Cards that come in that measure two and a half by three and a half from 1957 to present, we've incorporated it into our inventory. So every card that we get, we know how much inventory we have for plastic. so that as we get lower, we can add our order, our next order to have another container of plastic arrive. So everything's kind of timed for titling cards, which is a huge time killer to identify parallels and blues and reds and all that stuff. AI and machine learning is big time with that. We've incorporated that. We've API'd into VCP, talking card ladder type resources. So all that kind of valuation, we have uptick charges like PSA. So based on fair market value. So that fair market value, the median fair market value, it goes up and down. So there's algorithms and all this good stuff that the AI is absolutely capable of merging this data. So things that would take three or four to five steps, it's not taking one to two. And that's just like that. Just like that. So that's really powerful. And I see a world where it'll get down to like a half to one step. person. Ultimately, robots can take pictures, and all the raiders need is a setup to hold the card, visualize the screen, touch the area of the heat map, and then move forward to encapsulation or stickering, and it's off to the races, back to the... Right now, it's all about liquidity. So the longer it's being held, the less liquidity, the market conditions can be erratic. The faster you guys get to make your decision, once you have it in your hand to go, that's our point of contact to removing that friction so you guys get it back as quickly as you can consistently is our goal. Mike, it's awesome. Maybe where can everybody learn more about what you're up to, what you're doing, all those things? Yeah, well, our website's grading.mba. Our Instagram handle is grading.mba. So it's kind of consistently messaging. We're small in the social media stuff, but enough to get it out there. Show schedule where we're going to be doing the diamond stickers, crossover reviews everywhere, all the shows that we go to. That's one service that we always provide every show we go to. We have a stacked list. We're hitting the Far East in October. We're going to be at the Macau show. We're going to go to Taipei. We're going to open an office in Tokyo, probably have it concrete by this time next year. So we're going. Going. Yeah. And Collector Nation every month. That's right. Comes on, shares knowledge. That's right. And he's five for five on the onscreen. Literally put the, we make him guess the grade. And he's doing it remotely. And literally we're showing the microscope on the card. We don't tell him the grade. And so far, five for five, exactly. That's a great bit. He knows what he's doing. I should just break the streak, so just get it over with. You can also find him at WGG, worldsgreatestgrader.com. Well, if TriStar had an autographed pavilion for graders, Mike Baker would be a celebrity. He would. He is. He is. Thanks for joining us. Oh, absolutely. Thanks for having me, guys. 100%. Always. It is very cozy up here on the Mike Berkus Memorial stage here at the 46th Annual National Sports Collectors Convention. It is our pleasure. Ryan and I, Ryan Alford of Collector Nation and Collector Station, along with Jeremy Levine, Big Play Collectibles Network, to be joined by Brian Ludden. Brian is the founder and CEO of Luddex. a platform that's transformed how collectors identify, organize, and value their cards. Under his leadership, Ludex has become a major technology partner across the hobby, known for its fast and accurate computer vision scanning, intuitive collection management tools, and constantly expanding the market data engine. Brian is the driving force behind Ludex. product roadmap and its mission to make card collecting smarter, easier, and more accessible for everyone. And you have a major, major role and responsibility here at the National this week. We appreciate you taking a couple minutes to join us today. Awesome. Well, thank you for having me. It's cool to be on the stage. I mean, this is a new, a new edition. So it's excellent to be here. I appreciate you guys. In full transparency, Brian and I host Collector Nation podcast together on Fridays. Brian and I have been doing that for six months now. Been a top five sports show on Apple pretty routinely. And so Brian and I, we thought, Hey, we made the big stage, baby. Yeah, we made, yeah, we did. Unbelievable. We met last year at the national. So it's our one year anniversary. I have to go. Exactly. Ryan, have you learned anything from this guy in that time? Dude, it's been like a fire hose, but Ryan is both a wealth of knowledge and become one of my dearest friends. And I just want to see Let X take over the world. I appreciate that. He deserves it. They're doing some amazing things. I know you've got some big announcements. Look, we're going to get to it. One of the best parts of how to navigate around here, which we'll get to. Yeah, man. Jeremy, I'll let you... start the round here with Brian. Yes, since we're at the National, Brian, let's take everybody through Luddix's participation and engagement. You have the interactive map, which is, for anybody out there, we'll talk about that a little bit, is an amazing tool and a resource for navigating 500,000 square feet of space. You have the VIP party on Saturday. What else are you guys doing while you're here, and what's the goal coming out of the National? Yeah, I mean, it's like there's so many different moving parts. So we have a corporate boot downstairs. There's some giveaways going on down there. So my team's manning that. During the day, our responsibility is the VIP lounge. So we run it from when it opens till six o'clock. At 6 o'clock, it transfers over to another, the trade night managers. But so really everything that has to do with the VIP experience is what we're doing and what we're assigned to do. But it's really an honor. I mean, our first VIP lounge was 5,000 square feet. one year in Chicago as a proof of concept and we had a stage and it was great. Then we went to now we're at 50,000 square feet. So, um, and the nationals been amazing. David Marino and his team are just amazing. The production value just goes higher and higher every year. The money that is in this industry on a corporate level is also something that's changed a lot in the last couple of years. But, yeah, the interactive map is another thing we do for the national as like a – It's not an obligation. It's what we want to do. It was another idea we had. So that was cool because we did last year, we had like 15,000 downloads of the map. And we're already at 35,000 this year. So it's starting to take, like anything, it takes a little while. It helps people. Once they realize that they want to participate. So you mentioned the VIP lounge and the VIP party. Talk a little bit through what is the VIP experience. You said you're responsible for that. What to you? What is the VIP experience entail? So really it's about making sure, well, one, manning the chaos that it is. I mean, people are wandering all around. I had about 15 people sitting in our back room that we use for meetings and offices during the day, and they set up their trading. They had their cards out and they're trading. I'm like, bro. I have a meeting there. Do you mind? Do you mind? A million other square feet to do that. No, they're like, wow. And I was thinking in their head, they're like, man, this is badass. We found the frigging jewel. That is the Nashville, though. That's amazing. And then, yeah, the VIP party at night, there's... Ultra Pros having one on Thursday. The Board of the Nationals having one on Friday. And then every Saturday, we get to have a party. Bring the friends of the program, employees, and just, it's a blowout party. It's 6 o'clock to 11 o'clock, and it's fun as hell, man. What's it been like, Brian, you know, when I came in back into the hobby, my first thing being, you know, tech, I was like, all right, where's the tech? That's how I learned about Lodex before I even met Brian. What's it been like... being on a tech journey in the hobby, which are almost like competing planes in a way. Because I know you're an old school car guy. I mean, I've been in the storage unit. I talked about that earlier with Ty. It's awesome. But how's that journey been and what's it been like? I mean, it was a daunting task. And I would say that if I knew how hard it was going to be, I probably wouldn't have done it. But being naive as an entrepreneur, like you know, is a gift because it lets you keep going in some delusion for a while. But honestly, it's like this industry is changing fast. It starts with a growth. It starts with growth. After growth, then the corporations start coming in. The multinationals come in. And then there's going to be some kind of attrition. And then there's going to be M&A deals. You know, that's when you really have a mature industry. But the technology during that time has changed. I mean, it is unbelievable the volume and velocity that the tech world is moving at. And so what I try to do now is I try to concentrate on relationships and partnerships, first-party data, and brand. Because the more of these scanning apps that come out, they kind of dilute themselves. And the separation from Lutox is the community. We have 3.5 million people that downloaded half a billion cards. And so we have that brand. And that's what we care about, and that's what the national does. So the technologies kind of got diluted over time, Ryan, but it... We had to build up other things as a differentiator. That's why I think it's so smart, like doing the VIP lounge here at the National, the greatest card show, the greatest event in the hobby, on the greatest stage with Mike Berkus stage here. I feel honored to be on. Can't say that enough, Jeremy. The premium brand that LudX has become in the hobby and doing a premium experience, that's why I love what the brand has done because you've got a great app, but there's other great apps. And how do you stand above it? How do you take care of your customers? How do you evolve? what that's what's been clear is watching that journey but i do want you to touch on some of the new features coming out because i know they're exciting and they're actually not so duplicated because i've seen what you're doing and having been in the tech space here in the hobby for a year i know how great it is i'd love for you to talk about some of those new features Yeah, so the main thing outward facing will be the collection web inventory management system. So what we did is we took that app and we put it onto a desktop. And the functionality of desktop is... connecting to graders, connecting to marketplaces, and being able to organize your collection in a way that no one's really been able to do up to this point. I have my whole collection in there. I have 10,000 cards on there. If I wanna find my Jordans that are over $100, You hit the filters and your Jordan is over $100. And the cool thing about it, what I really like about it, is this ties into the social aspect of Luttex. So if Jeremy was interested in seeing my, you know, Jordan's over $200, $200. I sort it and then I hit a button with share and I can email it to him or I could text it to him. And so we can be making deals and going through the inventory that way. And, you know, it's going to be used. I think card shops have taken a liking to it, too, for inventory management. That's the biggest thing, redoing the app. In fact... Probably in about three hours, the whole app is changing. We're rolling out the V2 of that. So we're excited about that. But in 2025, we were just building out this technology, and it all kind of came to fruition at the same time. As more and more collectors embrace the digital world and the technology, you've been at the forefront of addressing pain points and problems within the space. What is the next iteration that you see that can be addressed? Where does your mind go as far as helping the collector ease their pain? Well, I think it's like we have so much information on a collector, right? We're like, you know, I know what you collect. Do you have a favorite team, favorite player? Have you bought things new? Do you sell things on the marketplaces? So we know a lot about those people. And what I think is gamification and the ability to trade cards that, I mean, Ryan and I have talked about this for a while, the never-ending card show. So if I have my collection and I have 500 cards that I mark, that I'm willing to trade, you can go in and search and say, looking for the card and you'll be connected with me and say, Hey, what do you want for that card? So the social aspect of it and the billing out the cohorts and community is, is another separation too. It's a, so yeah, I think the, it's just awesome to like be able to, it's a social, I mean, look how socialist thing is, right. And nothing in the ecosystem of collecting is, can, can, can explain what this is, but everybody wants it. Right. Everybody wants it. So it's that, uh, the sharing mentality, the trade blocks, making offers on other people's, um, collections. I think that's going to be a, a really, a great piece of, uh, a nice addition. I think that's fascinating to talk about the social aspect. I saw a post recently before we started here, uh, Guys saying, hey, if anybody's at the National looking for a Barry Bonds, he's throwing a wing and a prayer out there. If anybody sees this, get a hold of you. But now you're creating a platform to address that. Yeah, there's dudes like when I first, the national I came to, the guys had like signs up and said, I'm looking for Frank Thomas rookie cards. And I'm like, he has a billboard on him. I'm like, man, I think maybe tech can probably help that guy. Yeah, exactly. And then we're in a world where Frank Thomas might actually be right around the corner phone. I think he might be on the autograph list. He's in the autograph list. But yeah, no, it's a funny, it's a great opportunity. This industry keeps growing. There's new brands coming in like Collector Nation. And like, it's just like, it's just an unbelievable opportunity. And it's getting younger too. I mean, it's unbelievable how many young kids are out there doing their thing. Your kids are here. My kids will be here. But yeah, it's a cool event, man. What's the national for LudX? Obviously, it's the largest card show. You're involved here. I heard you say something earlier, and maybe the traffic on the website. It's amazing how it all comes here. If you go to any site... or any creator, they're talking about the Nash. Yep. And maybe the halo effect, you know, what is, it seems like it's gotta be, I thought it was intense, but then I heard you say some numbers and I was like, it's even bigger than I imagined. Yeah, I mean, getting that data in and seeing, you know, the normal people we sign up a day, it might be like 2,000 a day, 3,000, 2,500 a day. And the national will sign up 5,000 for four days in a row. And then, yeah, and the scans, like, instead of 300,000 scans a day, we'll go up to 450 a day. So, I mean, it does, I mean, this year especially, we're seeing a big jump, but it's pretty cool. How about... Deeds on learning more about Luddix, download app, interactive map, all those things. Yep. So, yeah, Luddix, go to Luddix, the app store, and download Luddix. With the, you have a seven-day free trial. And with that free trial, we have, you also can use the web version. So, you know, knock yourself out on it. It's a cool experience. I'm proud of it. I'm proud of my team for building what they built. I'm really honored to have such talented people around me because I don't know shit about tech. But you must know people. Yeah, I hire good people. Not what you know until you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm smart enough to know I don't know anything. Well, Brian, thank you so much for joining us. We've been with Brian Ludden of Ludex, really a central figure and a central company here at the 46th National Sports Collectors Convention from the Donald E. Stevens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois. Brian, thank you so much. Thank you, guys. I appreciate it, man. All right. Thanks, bud. We're here on the Mike Berkus Memorial stage at the 46th Annual National Sports Collectors Convention. Ryan Alford, Collector Nation. Jeremy Levine, CEO of Big Play Collectibles Network. And we are joined right now by Tyler Teapot-Nethercott. From SportsCard Investor, he is the Senior VP of Product at SportsCard Investor and one of the leading minds behind Market Movers, the data platform that has changed how collectors research, track, and value their cards. Known for combining deep analytics with a collector-first mindset, Teapot has helped build some of the hobby's most influential tools while educating thousands of collectors through SportsCard Investor's content from advancing price data. to collection management helping expand Cards HQ and grow the hobby through innovation. He continues to push the collecting industry forward with smarter technology, better insights, and a long-term vision for what the hobby can become. Welcome, Tyler Teapot, and other copy. I appreciate it. Thank you. And if you will copy and paste that to me, I'm going to put that on my LinkedIn. I love that. I was impressed before you came up here. Now I'm like, damn. Thank you. You're important. You said that to my wife, too. Yeah. Will do. She's like, all these shows you got to go to. She's like, what do you do? Yes. Cardboard? You make money with cardboard? Yeah. It's amazing. All right, I got to jump right into it. So I love you guys' content, number one. I appreciate that. I'm a card-carrying fan member as well as, you know, getting to digest all the stuff. You guys, the discipline with the content is... As the content creator and just being in marketing for 25 years, I know what that takes. So number one. I appreciate it. It's a lot of work. It is a lot of work. I never sought to get into content. I started in the company. I actually got connected with Jeff through his content in 2019. Got into his Discord and then got plugged in when he had market movers in beta. and just was working on the tech side of things. And my background was in tech data finance. And then one day he was like, oh, let's do this live stream together remotely. I was in my basement in Michigan. Next thing I know, hey, we want to get a studio in your house. We want to get a channel going. If you go back to the oldest videos, I'm just this quiet little guy that's 40 pounds later than I am now, just like, hey, everybody, here's some data. And you just grow into it. You grow into it over time. You get a little more comfortable. Get your reps. Yeah, get your reps. And I just, I don't know, I try to keep it authentic. It's a lot of fun. And- It's been very humbling because of how many people Fanatics Fest here already really value the 101 level education. There's such a learning curve to get into this stuff, especially in the modern. For people who collected back when maybe we did when we were younger, you're like, what is this? All these refractors, parallels. So we try to really regularly do that. And our content team is... really creative ideation. They come up with the thumbnails, the titles. So they just, you know, hit the camera and say, go. And then, and then the rest is the rest. So it's mostly on them, honestly. But I do admire the education content. It, I mean, I'm in the hobby. I own a store and I'm going, oh, okay. I just learned something watching your content. Like the special on parallels, please do yourself a favor. I don't care how knowledgeable you think you are. Go watch it. It's like one of you are probably more popular. I think who knows. It was like 57 minutes long of just slide after slide of all the parallel. me was just junking out because i can watch the content forever and ever ever but it's so informative that and then the uh why did they ever make these cards yeah i was like so agreeing those are some of my favorites and i'm i don't i'm not a negative guy like i'm pretty you know cup half full just like i do not like to critique what other people like but sometimes you see a card and you're like I've seen your work, designer, Ed. Class of Panini, your upper deck. Like, what are you doing? This is super weird. But I don't know. My favorite one all time might be during COVID. Panini made an optic baseball unlicensed crisis parallel, crisis toilet paper parallel. It's literally rolls of toilet paper. I'm like, I guess that's a time capsule thing, but I don't know that I ever need that on a sports bar. Please cross some threshold here. There is an occasional pack I'll open. I'll be like, am I getting trolled? Yeah, you are. You are. Yeah, you are. It's the designer who's going... T-Pot, throw this in here. Yeah. So T-Pot, we've been fortunate even today and throughout what we do day in and day out, but today especially to talk to leading minds in technology and authentication and grading and now content creation. Yeah. Things are accelerating so fast, particularly on the technological side. What is the biggest change you've seen even since the last year, the last national to now, how content creators are approaching the hobby? Well, I'll just go back to 2019 when Jeff was making charts manually in Excel by dumping data into it just so he could see how much Jaron Jackson and Lonzo Ball and Luka Doncic's cards has gone up. And he started the technology space. As he looked around, it was like... whoa, this is a very tech laggard industry that's on the come up. Again, it's being reborn and it needs to be reborn back into technology. Everything's changed. Now AI is changing. So six years in with MarketMover, six and a half years since we launched the product, we're now viewing it as... The data is really valuable. It's no longer the competitive advantage because you go in the chat, GBT, and say, how much is this Luka Doncic card worth? And it's going to go hit our software and find it and pull it back. So how do we take those next steps? Every single year at the National for the last six, I've been to five. I had to miss last year due to sickness. But there's always new technology businesses starting up, new things. It's really exciting to see what they're offering. I think we're now moving to the point with more like strategic partnership. Oh, you guys specialize in this. You specialize in this. You've dedicated time and energy. How do we bring these things together to truly have that like rising tide, rises all ships moment? And that starts with like, you know, companies like ours, new startups, as well as the big, big dogs, PSA, eBay, Fanatics, you know, the manufacturers, Fanatics, Topps. All of us need to be working together. And I think that's what really gets me excited because I'm still a collector and a hobbyist at first, even when it's, you know, I'm competitive too. I think there's a lot of room for all of us to be working together. I mean, hey, you open another franchise store in Detroit. You talk about that process. Yeah, it's amazing. So we've been, we, you know, we, we got some outside investment capital, which has been really exciting. Gives us the opportunity to invest a little more into our technology, but the big piece is Cards HQ growing the retail presence. When we opened the shop in Atlanta, uh, Jeff and Carter, they expected our forecast that our numbers to be, I think like 70 to 75% e-commerce. And they thought this will be a great home hub, really good presence. We want it to be impressive, but they didn't expect it. It's flipped. It's like 75, 80% of our card sales are coming in the physical location. It is a very popular spot, very community-driven and community-focused. And so that got us excited to go, let's start getting these around the United States. The community, the hobby wants more of this. People have been asking. So we're going to be in Lake Orion Township. It's Great Lakes Crossing just outside. It's basically Metro Detroit, close to where the Pistons used to play. And so there's going to be a big audience there, a lot more hockey fandom. And then we're looking to open at least one to two more locations in cities to be announced next year. So we're trying to spread our wings, trying to be really mindful of where there are other hobby shop presences because we're not trying to, like, steal somebody else's thunder. The whole United States, not to mention the rest of the world, has plenty of square footage and land gnats to get. There is a little card show coming in two years to Detroit. Yeah. Well, it looks very similar to this. But so the national is coming. That'll be the 48th national you've approached, Detroit. I want to ask you, you mentioned data. That's one thing with AI. Anybody can access that data now. But the other side of that is what you said. What do you do with it? Yeah. So from a content creation perspective, what makes a good story? Oh, gosh, that's such a good question. I mean, we try to take these angles of like education and entertainment, and sometimes you can weave them together. Sometimes you focus on one or the other. I think you can use the data as the foundation for that. And a big space that we're pushing into now more is going to be not just pricing, not just comping, not just collection tracking, but exploration, discovery, more of the qualitative facts about cards. How do we build that education tool into our products so that people can actually go out there and discover, oh, I want to collect Aussie LBs? What cards even exist of Aussie LBs? How do I get to this? How do I use a tool to help? train it and learn what my preferences are based on the attributes of the card. So that's kind of peeling back the next layer of the onion to get to that, that type of a layer. And I think you can build the story around that, whether it's laughing at silly designs or, you know, make, I spent like 14 hours on that slide deck of all the parallels. That was a labor of love. And I was like, This is going to be worth it. I know the people need this. And that was one where I could laugh at it too. I'm like, why is this a sand glitter, a regular glitter, a sparkle, an extra sparkle, a mini diamonds, a regular diamonds, and they all look like the same card? Just call it the same card and print it on the back of the card. And then all of our lives will be so much easier. I love the fact you touched on it. It's really interesting where you got everything digital, online, live selling has never been bigger. But things like the National and things like you said about the in-person stores, it's really fascinating to me, this online, offline componentry of community building. Maybe touch on that just a little bit more because I think that is a fascinating part because it's biggest live breaking is... The stores have never been busier. Yes. Yeah. Well, look, I mean, I think if I go back to the nostalgia, which is the powerful drug that sort of seizes all of us when you start going back to when you were a kid, some of my absolute best memories from being a kid were like going over to my friend's house, pizza hot box on the floor you know some cherry coke or something like that yeah and we're gonna play like four hours of legend of zelda and then we're gonna flip through our binders of basketball cards and trade until i'm gonna switch debbie cakes you know and just make sure we're being very quiet downstairs so we don't get yelled at and so that's the community aspect whether it was one-on-one group slumber party whatever it was at school you know in between classes but the teachers go and put those away we're like we're learning negotiation and business and Um, and so you kind of bring that back to the forefront with the physical presence. Not everybody's social. There are people who are a little more reserved, a little more introverted who they, they like to stay at home and build their PCs. So that exists too. That's the beauty of what the online whole marketplace has brought to those people. They don't have to venture out, but there's. 100,000, 200,000 people are going to be here this weekend. That's really the heartbeat of it. You can't replace it. People travel from all over. Australia, Malaysia, all over the world, they're coming here for this incredible event. And that is what kind of gets infused into Cards HQ. And we, in spite of having like 11,000 square feet of storefront, anytime we have trade nights, especially if there's a big local event, a show, it's like fire marshal's got to be there, line out the door. And so we just, that's what we're trying to really nurture. That's the piece that we're most intentional about. You mentioned the community aspect of it, which manifests itself with people rounding the corners and standing in line, much like we've had this morning here. The other fascinating thing that I found about the hobby, unlike any other industry, is the generational aspect of it. You have kids collecting Pokemon. You have grandparents collecting the nostalgia of it. You have middle-aged parents are now reconnecting with their youth. Take us back a little bit. Where did you connect with the hobby? Where does that nostalgia start with you? Yeah, so I was a 90s kid. So my dad, I remember when he brought home his first packs, my dad's buddy Lenny was like, hey, you know, Mike, check out these cards. And it was like Shaq's rookie year. It was 92. So we had everything from the classic stuff, the classic set from 92 and some Team USA and some other, you know, and then, of course, his Upper Deck and Stadium Club. And then they started, I kind of got really into it when I was eight and it was like Shaq and Penny. And, you know, we were Pistons fans being from Michigan, but also Shaq and Penny were kind of my guys. So I was super into that. And it just took off from there. And, like, I still maintain that the absolute three best years in the history of sports cards are 1996, 97, 98. Best inserts. The parallel game took off. That's when the innovation and design stuff really started to catch its, you know, get its momentum. And I think those are some of the best cards in existence still. They're some of the highest price-stickered cards out here on the show floor. And so that's what that's what got me into it. And then it was back in 2019. We're in the basement of our house getting ready to move into a new home. I'm packing boxes and I'm like, oh, my sports card binders. And next thing I know, I'm like just in a trance and my wife's going, come on, we got to go. We got to move. And I'm like, hey, I'm having a moment. Let me let me get the tingles off my arm first. So that's what bit me, found Jeff's channel. And so I still I'll always be a 90s kid at heart. But I like everything now, all eras, all sports, non-sports, Pokemon. It's kind of a problem. What's the biggest... I mean, you obviously had the big announcement with Detroit. It happens to be so smart. Is it just ironic that it was the national next year? Does that have anything to do with it? Look, I mean, we've been looking at dozens and dozens of different cities around the U.S. and evaluating all the things you would expect. You know, one... When you start with an expectation that you're going to have at least 11,000, 12,000 square feet. And then we're like looking for spots with easy access, free, abundant parking, higher ceilings, all the things you're kind of looking at like, you know, Oh, old party cities and things that like went out of business or, you know, well, don't, don't put the fireworks place in there this year, the Halloween store. Let us just come in and figure out like, what's next on Carl's old's gear. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's going to be really exciting when we hopefully get to announce one of the ones next year. So maybe soon. But yeah, it worked out. It just really worked out. So you get in there. You're trying to negotiate timing of leases. And then sometimes they've got to do demising and other things. There's a lot that goes into it. And some of the members of our team have been absolute... air warriors, road warriors, like flying to look at locations. It's going to look brilliant next year. It just worked out, and it's a super cool spot. And so we're really excited about two years from now when we get to the post. Congratulations, by the way. I mean, it's a big deal. Appreciate it. Yeah. Well, you and your team have a sense of what the producers here and the board goes through trying to find. You've got to check a certain size venue. You've got to have access to all that stuff. So congratulations to you and your team. Tyler, Teapot, thank you so much for joining us. Let everybody know where they can find us. Yeah, please. So first and foremost, on the Market Movers YouTube channel. That's the one that I get to kind of treat as my baby and do all the different stuff. Of course, over on Sports Card Investors YouTube, Cards on the Table, several other contents. We just did a great video about the National on the Jeff Wilson podcast. So that's all of our content channels. And then, of course, Market Movers. And we're running some great promos. If people want to use code national, get a month free and 30% off, check it out. We're really excited and just really excited about all the technology and great cards and everything. And teapots underscore PC on Instagram for when I'm actually active on there. I try to stay off a lot, but I get back on and off. You guys did a great job, man. I appreciate all y'all do for the hobby. Thank you. Just excited to be up here with you. Appreciate you guys up here and let's have a great show. Thanks, Steve. All right. Appreciate it. Thanks for tuning into the show. Be sure to follow us on your go-to podcast platform and catch the full video episode over on YouTube. Visit us at collector nation.com and follow Ryan on Instagram at Ryan Alford. Now get out there and collect yours.