Defensive Shill Bidding A Defensible Strategy?; The Downfall of Snype (Part 1); Playing Over/Under With A Twist

You're listening to Cards to the Moon, a podcast about trading cards from both a collector and investor perspective. We hope you'll stick around for the ride as we take a deep dive into the state of the hobby, share some hot takes, hopefully some useful advice and fun stories along the way. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Cards to the Moon. This is episode 331, and my name is Clark from 5cardguys.com. You can also find me at 5cardguys on Instagram, YouTube, and on Facebook. And co-hosting with me today, as usual, is Hyung, who is at ChoHyung on Instagram and YouTube. And we also have John, who you can find on Instagram at TradeUatRecess. All right, let's get right into it. Off the top today, I wanted to actually talk about this when it launched a few weeks ago, but the timing to discuss Snipe, which is the new online auction platform by Rick Probstine. The timing worked out better because some of you already know, when the first ever round of auctions were about to end on Snipe.com, the system glitched and crashed. Big oh-oh. From other reports that I read, the Snipe feature, I guess the feature where it gets its name, where you could bid last second on an item. When you tried to do that, it didn't work, and what it did instead was it prematurely ended the whole auction. So as of this recording, if you go on Snipe.com, it's still down, but it does have a message that reads, quote, We're experiencing a system-wide technical issue due to high volume that affected all auctions on the platform. To protect the integrity of bidding and ensure a fair experience for every buyer and seller, we are temporarily taking Snipe offline. All impacted auctions will be cancelled and relisted with full visibility once the issue is resolved. Thank you for your patience. We'll be back shortly. End quote. So, first question for you guys. Do you think Snipe will recover from all of this? Or do you think maybe Probstein should have stayed on eBay where he was the number one seller in trading cards? Yikes. I mean, it's not ideal, I think, for Snipe, but I think it's something that every new business will probably run into, whether it's glitches or issues. Yeah, I would say that's a pretty big one where it's just like, man, out of all the things that could go wrong, that's probably one of the worst things, I think, as a startup, if you're launching a new product or starting a new product. But with that being said, should they have gone back to eBay? I'm sure there's a reason why they left in the first place. I think it was the right move that, obviously, there's a lot of money on the table for Probstein to kind of go independent. But I would think that maybe the better idea was not necessarily start something from scratch. I'm pretty sure there's smaller platforms that already has the build, maybe, and not test pilot it on day one launch. Maybe do a beta where it's like a three-month period or something that could have maybe avoided this. But I definitely do think it will hurt them. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, if you go on the Snipe site, it does say Snipe beta on it. So there's a beta version they're testing. But yeah. What do you think, John? Conspiracy. Conspiracy. What if they started all the original bids were Probstein, his products, and his friends, and they realized nobody's on this platform? Glitch it all. We're about to lose a lot of money. I was looking for deals. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But joking, half-joking aside, that is an absolute disastrous start. Probstein, I don't know how it is with the rest of the market, but Probstein has not really built the greatest of reputations when you compare them to Golden Auctions and some of the big brands in terms of faces of auctions. Even though Probstein is mostly an eBay product. And I think it was kind of an uphill battle to begin with. And then to have this happen on the opening soft launch, that is an absolute disastrous start. I don't know how it's going to be really difficult to recover or get consumer confidence already to their initial launch on their own as an independent party. So it's a tough look, tough start. I don't even know if it's a nail in the coffin to their start to begin with. It could be that bad. I don't know. So yeah, I don't wish them bad luck. Obviously, you want everyone to succeed. But man, hopefully he can take himself out of this one because that's a tough first look. Yeah. I mean, I think when we first even discussed Snipe, when it didn't even launch yet, we're all hoping that it will work well because competition is always a good thing. But when it did launch and when I wanted to record this episode a couple weeks ago before this disaster, I was going to say the site itself doesn't look great. It looks pretty clunky. You know what I mean? It looks like I might have paid an intern to do it. And that's how it looks. Shots fired. I mean, I'm just being honest. Yeah, for sure. The functionality of it seems to be working. I didn't bid on anything, so I couldn't tell you for sure if the functionality of bidding and placing my bids worked out. It looked like it worked out until it didn't, right? Until the very end, and this is where we are. But one of my other kind of critiques about it was that if you do a search on Otoniatos, which is what I'm looking for these days, seven cards appear. You know, the volume isn't there in terms of what kind of cards are there. So that was a worry of ours at the beginning, right? Like, would people come to find the cards that they actually want? Or is it kind of like golden in a way? You know, golden. Sometimes you see cards that, oh, I'm really interested in bidding on this. And there are weeks where I'm like, there's nothing I see. Because it's not like eBay where there's millions of cards and you can find something that you're looking for. So I think, you know, hindsight is 20-20. And you kind of alluded to this, I think, Hyung. But maybe it would have been better if they partnered with not golden because golden is obviously bought out by eBay. So if they left eBay for a reason, gold is out of the picture. But maybe they go to Fanatics Collect and they work out a sweetheart deal. You know what I'm saying? I want my own corner of Fanatics Collect because I could bring this to the table. Maybe that was the better move. Absolutely. I think that's a good point because the true value lies in why is Probstein valuable, for instance. They've built their own customer base as well. And they have a huge audience. So they have that value. And they don't have to specialize in this whole new idea of Probstein, right? So yeah, to your point, I think a different partnership like Fanatics Collect or someone who already potentially has a platform that has credibility there might have been a better, I guess, maybe cost-effective and high upside with a renegotiation of partnerships in terms of fees and stuff where there might not be as much overhead. But like I said, we won't know the whole story and why Rick Probstein went that way. That's kind of the surface from the outside in. So that's what I would have actually done if I was him. I agree. Yeah, I think Probstein is learning some valuable lessons here, right? And for me, I think that's the difference between what Golden did when he launched his own site. I feel like he had a lot more investors, so a lot more money going in. And you actually need a lot of money to start something like this up. For sure. Whereas Probstein, I'm sure he's doing well. But Golden is probably on a different level than Probstein is in terms of startups and getting investors to come on board. So I think that's the difference. All right. Well, good luck to Probstein. We'll see what happens when the site is back on. And I'm sure they'll work out the glitches. But long term, I'm not sure if I'm confident how long it will last. All right. Let's move on to hobby headlines. All right. We're a couple of weeks behind this story as well since this issue first popped up again. But it's a pretty big issue. So I'm sure you heard there's shill bidding drama. Specifically with high-end collector Patrick Ryan admitting recently to mistakenly bidding on his own item on Fanatics Collect. And when I first heard this, we're all laughing. How can you mistakenly bid on your own item? But I think he has a bunch of items. And he did consign it to a third party who reached out to Fanatics Collect. And that's where the auction is being consigned or the platform that they're using for their auctions. So I could see how there could be kind of that error. But the controversy really grew when Patrick Ryan went on Dr. James Beckett's podcast where they discussed the difference between offensive shill bidding and defensive shill bidding. What? There are sides of shill bidding? This is interesting. This terminology is new to me as well. But for those who aren't aware, I did a little bit of research. In a nutshell, everyone's pretty much against offensive shill bidding. That's when you put a bid on your own item or you get a buddy to put a bid on their own item to ensure maximum value of that item on auction. That's what we know about. But defensive shill bidding is what happens if you don't have a reserve on your auction. And Dr. Beckett was giving an example where there's a listing by an auction house which may have incorrectly or poorly described the listing. So it's not getting the right number of traffic or eyeballs to it. So what ends up happening is that it looks like that auction is only going to get 20 cents to a dollar in terms of its recent comp value. So is it okay then if the auction house didn't do their job in listing it to bid up to the reserve price to protect recent comps? Isn't that what a reserve price is for? It's like a reserve is not met. So why don't you list on every card a reserve price that if it's not hit, end of story. And to me, it's justification of why you would shill bid in a particular situation and justifying that it's something different other than shill bidding. Because the practice of shill bidding to me is we shouldn't be saying it's right or defensible in any sort of way. If those are the cases, those are very avoidable. Like I said, if that's the main reason, then put a reserve on every single thing that you feel you don't want to sell at a certain price. And that's what a reserve is there for. If the reserve's not met, the item's not sold. And that's your simple solution to that. I think you start getting into really gray areas when you defend shill bidding for any reason. Especially because there are a lot of things that happened in the 90s era, the junk wax era, where we're not aware of because the communication, the stories don't really leak out. But to justify something like that when it's been always not justifiable. Shill bidding to me on an eBay auction, I'd be pretty upset if I'm bidding at that, knowing that somebody else is bidding that shouldn't be bidding. And it happens on eBay. It happens in the past. And it's not saying that, you know, I think it's going to go away because I think it's an issue that kind of has always been around but no one has really addressed it. Or there was never a reason to address it until things like when it does happen, right? Like right now in this case. I mean, before John, you answer, I want to make the counter argument and I'm playing devil's advocate. I think for most of us here, we're against shill bidding, okay? I don't want people to write hate mails like, oh, Clark from Cars to the Moon loves shill bidding because of the way he's defending it. I'm just playing devil's advocate here. The reason why auction houses and I'm sure eBay generally discourage reserves on auction is that it's not friendly to the buyer or the user. So just say every auction had an unrealistically high reserve price. And if that was the case, no one's winning an auction. So, you know what I mean? Like no one's going to get up to the high reserve. And so what auction houses don't want is to deter users from coming onto their platform. If you bid on like five items and the reserves are super high, you're like, why am I on this platform? Because I'm not winning any cards. And usually the reserve prices are secret, right? They don't say what it is. So that's the counter argument to why they don't want auctions with reserves in general. And so if that's the case, Dr. James Beckett was saying that there was no reserve. But the reason why that the bids were super low was it was the auction houses error in enlisting it improperly or maybe without that much detail. No. So there are no eyeballs to it. But me as a owner of that card until the bid is won, maybe I bid to what the reserve price should have been if it was there. I want to hear Johnny, let's hear your take. I'm like 100, there's no such thing as defensive, I can understand it. So a scenario came up with Will on our podcast, Will Choi. And a company was offering a promotion on a certain type, I'm not going to say anything, but on a certain type of card or player, and you get 100% of your sale. So they would take zero commission, it was like a promotional one-time thing. And Will came to me and he's like, if I wasn't happy with this sale, couldn't, and this is before this dispensary, this is a couple of months ago before this thing blew up. He's like, couldn't I just buy my own card back at like no cost to me, because I'm getting 100% anyways. I'm like, yeah, I guess you could, like, if you didn't like the price, just buy it back. You pay the card and then you just get it back. I was like, holy, you could totally do that. So because it's not illegal in any of these platforms, I can understand why people do it. It's just natural instinct. If I'm about to lose thousands of dollars on my card, even hundreds of dollars, whatever your space is, and you want to protect that, I don't know, like power to you. But the greater or the more macro thing about this, this is essentially, you can just put completely market manipulate every comp. This is why people now start to go, take eBay with a grain of salt, take some of these sales with a grain of salt. We don't know what's happening here. And I get it. Luca Prism with 20,000 PSA 10s can't really market manipulate that. That is just a function of supply and demand, right? The market will speak for itself. But some of these big boy cards, like if you're looking at Shine 150 and you're looking at real monstrous cards, it's just so ripe for market manipulation, which is such a shame. So I'm like, yeah, completely against it. I get why people do it. There's sort of that defensive element, but this is, I don't know, somehow they're going to have to solve this because it's, yeah, it's no good. It's totally a slippery slope. And kind of what you're saying, a lot of these auction houses, even eBay, if you list it, you're not allowed to bid on your own cards. That's just a rule and they don't want to deal with that. But the problem is, if you can sign it to a group, you're not listing it yourself. So you are able to bid on your card, knowing that it's your card that you can sign. And that's obviously an easy way of getting around it. Or even having a buddy say, okay, this is my card, can you bid on it? So there's two, three degrees of separation even. So that's hard to police. And I guess that's my next question. Will there be a way that you can essentially prevent shill bidding, even with better technology that's coming out there? I don't know. I think there will be, or at least trying to reduce it. And what John said is exactly right. And that's the scary part of unregulated markets. And what we get into and why I'm against shill bidding is because there's enormous amounts of market manipulation that could be going on. And I'm not saying it is, but I have a strong belief that in some areas, definitely. And that's the scary part about an unregulated market. And for me, it's realizing that it is the potential harm it could do, I think is more the issue in the macro lens than, yes, you're absolutely right, John, when somebody is fighting for their life and they're trying to cash out on a thousand dollar card, and they're potentially getting $600 for it when it's worth $1,000, yeah, the individual might be prone to justify that it's okay. And I get that. I'm not discounting that because it's kind of then every man for themselves. And you start contributing, I think, negatively to the hobby. So for me, it's more along those lines of, yes, justifications everywhere. And there's no right or wrong answer. But I'm hoping that we could collectively see the bigger issue or the negative impacts it does have on our hobby. And eventually, I think people, the bigger entities like fanatics, they need to put things in place that make sense for the future longevity of that, right? And I think it's not good for the platforms to allow people that list their own cards to bid on their own cards. Why? Because of what you were saying, John, right? Market manipulation. So some people can argue, if you don't like the price that it's going for, and you're willing to pay it and buy it back, what's wrong with that? You're not bidding it up so that you don't pay for it and then have it listed again. Some could argue, what's wrong with me just buying my own card back? But to your point of market manipulation, what happens if you want to bid a little bit more and then create a new comp? And then guess what? You want to list it somewhere else. It's such a slippery slope that if platforms start allowing it, then people are not going to trust their platform. It's like, how do I trust that this is a real comp and real deal that's gone through and not a platform where market manipulation can happen so easily, right? So I think it's also in the interest of eBay and Fanatics Collect to not allow essentially what is showbidding. Any other thoughts or concerns that even right now, there are some of these fake comps or elevated comps out there because of showbidders? Yeah, 100%. And that's why I think it's important to not get swayed by trends. I think seeking true value and understand why a card would hold value, I think is the most important thing from an education standpoint. If you're dumping enormous amounts of money, we're not talking about base cards here, we're talking about when we see it all the time, we've seen it with Zion Prisms, we've seen it with Luka Prisms, Silver Prisms. Those things can easily get out of hand and if you're not buying with true fundamentals of why, let's just say you are in quote on quote investing in sports cards, you believe that certain fundamentals of the sports card hold value. For us, it might be we strongly now believe in the Topps Chrome brand. We see in history that, hey, that's the card you kind of want or in baseball, Bowling First Chrome. It's like history has told that those are fundamentals. So I don't have a problem investing in those fundamentals as opposed to, hey, this card is hot and then we don't know if it's being manipulated because most likely trends follow that same and it's not saying that manipulation can't happen on like classic vintage cards. It happens everywhere but yeah, just buy with proper fundamentals of, hey, this is a good investment. This is a solid investment. I truly believe in it and I think when you do that, you can never go wrong because regardless of price, you truly believe the value is there in the future, right? So – What do you think, Jon? Yeah, I think generally, it is a concern. Do I think it exists out there in the stratosphere? 100%. It's out there and I mean, we've seen it happen before. I firmly believe, remember when the Mac Jones Don Russ came out and it was like a $10,000 comp? Yeah. Like if I put on a criminal's hat, I could see how that happens, right? Let's say you just start ripping whatever. You can even say it about, I don't know, the NBA prison manga, like the new stuff which I'm going to get to in my 1v1 little teaser. But anytime a new product comes out and let's say the three of us opened a thousand cases of Don Russ and we grabbed as many Mac Jones as possible and then the first couple of listings come out and the three of us just shill bid it, right? Like we'll shill bid the first Mac Jones to like $5,000 and then the second one comes out, we'll shill bid that one to $5,000 and the next thing you know, you got two comps at $5,000. And then we start listing the ones that we have, right? And we start cashing on that money. So I get like not just defensive shill bidding, but like any form of market manipulation. It's out there and yeah, it sucks. And I don't know how or what the answer is for eBay and some of these auction houses on how they can regulate it. Because at the same time, they don't want to be too restrictive because they also want to make money, right? So it's like this little battle right now. Like unless there is some other bigger governing body that brings down the hammer, it's just going to kind of continue on this path. So I don't know what the answer there is. It's out there. It sucks. Everyone has to kind of watch out for themselves and be careful. There's not much more to say to that other than that, I guess. Yeah, for sure. You got to do your own research and as you were talking, I was just envisioning a criminal organization just in their dark lair or basement, just ripping cards. This is how we're going to make money, guys. And it's confirmed that it was John who had those $5,000 Mac Jones sales. The mastermind. Mastermind. That's genius. That was a genius plan. No, yeah, it's right from market manipulation, like you said. And I think this is a good segue to the last question I had on this segment. Some auction houses do bid up to their reserve prices. I believe I read that. It is a legal practice. So if you do have a stated reserve price and it's not even close to reserve price, some auction houses might bid up to that because I guess their justification is if they don't do that, then it's not going to get sold anyways. So might as well bid it up to the reserve price and to see if that spurs on any other bidders to bid one more, which will be over the reserve. Do you think that's okay or do you just not agree generally with that kind of practice? See, I think that's a little different because it's not necessarily individual's listings that you're trying to individually do it. You're protecting. If that's a policy, let's just say, and it's a trusted auction house, I don't necessarily see like anything wrong with that because I don't think they're trying to up the bid because it would just be that minimal amount, right? And it's their platform. So they're more trusted than an individual, let's just say, listing a card on eBay and doing it that way where they're personally benefiting from it, you know what I mean? So I think situationally, I think that would be a lot more justifiable than what we are discussing. How about you, John? I think I disagree. I think it's still a form of market manipulation. I think it's similar to if we were selling our home and there's no potential buyers. You got nobody coming but the real estate agent comes to – let's say we're buying a home and the real estate agent comes. Their real estate agent comes and says, hey, we got like three offers on the table at a million dollars. Do you want to pay 1.1 like, you know, you got 24 hours to react even though it's not there. They're clearly just sort of lying to you to get the sale done, right? So that it's a form of – I think it's personally bad practice because you're kind of representing that the market is at a certain price. It's there. Now you have to make the decision. Do you want to bid on this to go a little bit above whatever the market is supposed to be at, right? So it's – yeah, I don't agree with it as well. I get why auction houses do it. They're trying to entice some activity and obviously they're making commissions so they want to make some money and they're also protecting some of their listers. But all of this is – it's a form of manipulation in some sense. Maybe less than the shill bidding, less manipulation, but it's manipulation. I tend to agree more with John. I think it's okay at the very least if it's super transparent that the auction house is putting up a reserve bid. So if I could see that this auction is, oh, it's met the reserve because the auction house put that reserve bid on it, then fine. But that's the thing. I don't know how transparent they are. I think you might just see, oh, the reserve price has been met and you don't know if it's the auction house or if it's another buyer. So if there's that transparency, fine. I'm okay with it. But generally speaking, I don't like it either because if an auction house has to put that reserve bid, I would rather have them not and kind of show me more clearly, oh, the market thinks in general that this card is not worth that much anymore. So they got to relist it. That's what they got to do. And knowing that the reserve price hasn't been met, if it doesn't meet it again, then relist it. And then at some point, it's like selling at home, using that analogy, you got to lower your price. You can't just keep it at – you can keep it high, just expect not to sell it. So that's kind of where I stand. It makes sense what you guys are saying and now that I think about it, I think the reserve is the answer. It's like that's what a reserve is there for. Let it play. If the reserve is not met, you're not going to sell it. You're not going to be pissed. It is what it is and that's what a reserve is there for. If you have to keep on listing reserves and people might be scared to bid, that's the excuses that they make to justify. I say, you know what? It should be easy. It's like if you have an issue, put a reserve and I think – you shouldn't justify defensive shill bid because if you have that option with the reserve, that it is what it is, right? Yeah, I'm gonna say this one more time. I don't want to, sorry, did you say something? Or if you wanted to remove reserves, just buy it now, don't even, you can't put it in an auction unless you just run it straight, right? Like an auction is, it's going and it is what it is. If you're scared of not getting market price, then list it at what you want it, like as just like as if you list a house, right? List it at a million dollars, and if you don't get that, you will have to adjust your buy it now price. And it goes both ways. I've done auctions where I'm like, damn, it went way higher than expected. And there are times I'm just like, damn, like nobody bid on, somebody got a deal. And I had to ship it out, it is what it is. So it's like, that's why I agree with John, an auction is an auction. And if there's, that's why if there's an issue, use the reserve, if not, like let it play out and there should be zero shill bidding. So, and sometimes I look forward to purchasing on bids. I think it's thrilling sometimes to bid on items, right? So I don't mind the whole auction process. So I agree, like you gotta just let it play out. Yeah. And Clark, sorry, before you go on Clark, the point you made earlier is a great eye-opening point, because you know how you mentioned before auction houses don't like, sometimes don't like reserves because if there's no activity, then consumers can be like, why the heck am I on eBay if everything is on reserve, right? And I think you said, I would like it if they were transparent about the reserve. That's a great point, because if they were transparent about it, hey, we put the $500 bid, like we did it. I think the easy answer to all of this is what? Like, that's a bad look for the auction house. You're like, what are you doing? Like, that's stupid. Like, why did you put the bid at 500 bucks? Like, no, I'm not in agreement with that. So I think that is a clear, for me at least as a consumer, is a clear answer that, you know, having the reserve or manipulating the reserve in the background, you know, not transparently, you know, if you were to do it transparently, the clear answer is it would probably be a bad look. So the whole thing is just not a good practice. Agree, agree. You know, in business, transparency is usually a good thing. So I think it applies here as well. And I was gonna end the segment by saying, we're all against shill bidding. I don't want any of these clips to be aggregated out and edited and manipulated in a way where it says, you know, where it sounds like this podcast is endorsing shill bidding. We are not, we're not for sure. So I just want to make that clear. And there shouldn't be, it shouldn't be a sport either. There shouldn't be offensive and defensive shill bidding. That's ridiculous. Shill bidding, shill bidding. Yeah, I agree. All right, if you have any thoughts or feedback on this issue, we'd love to hear it as well. You could always DM us at cards to the moon or at five card guys on Instagram. Okay, let's go on to our next segment. It is over under. All right, I gave this over under segment a little bit of a twist, okay? So it's not gonna be a one set number. Actually, it's gonna be one set number for most of them, but it's not gonna be, do you think this card sold for more or less? It's all recent kind of, essentially recent things that have popped up in the hobby that's sold for around the, in this case, over or under a hundred dollar mark. Okay, so let me just start. You'll get it. Okay, so let me just start. You'll get what I'm saying. The first one is, Labubu tops Chrome 10th anniversary box. And Will, Roy and I, we actually got, actually, Will was able to get a case, so we're just buying boxes off Will, but it was 50 bucks for one box at presale. What is the, and it hasn't shipped out. I think it's gonna ship out closer to Christmas actually, but you could buy the presale ones on eBay. What do you think they're going for now? Over or under a hundred bucks? Wow. Like Labubu tops Chrome. Labubu, we've talked about this. 10th anniversary box, yeah. 10th anniversary box. I mean, we said that it was a trend and it's a fad. Did they even come out with this before? I think maybe Labubu is 10 years old officially. That's crazy. I thought it just blew up recently, but I guess, yeah, I guess it's been dormant. So it's probably like, yeah, just blew up viral just recently. So we wouldn't, this would be the first edition of like their pop culture sports cards. But we said Labubu is kind of like fading out, right? But we have Will, we have our host buying these things. So it's obviously, you know, in demand, or at least, you know, there's sales. People are buying it, because if you guys are buying it, like I wouldn't pick you guys as Labubu fans, but Will got a case. Like that's insanity. So I'm gonna say it's over. Okay. I cannot believe you guys bought Labubu, Topps Chrome. That's so- It looks, you gotta look at the cards. It looks nice. Is it? That's, like, you know, Topps Chrome's done a great job of like capturing all of these little like pop culture collaborations. And they've been like, clearly they want to make some serious money. So they're just pumping this stuff out. The Labubu craze, I'm not, I think it's gonna be, it's a flash in a pan. Like, I think it's already on its way out. I hope you guys make some good money on it. I think, I would guess it's less than a hundred bucks. Like, I think it's on its way out, but yeah. I hope you got your boxes soon, so that you can just get rid of it quick. That might be the plan. That might be the plan, but it's coming out in a month. So I'm a little worried, but like I said, the pre-sell, you could have got it for 50 bucks US. You could buy it on eBay right now for $90. Oh, wow. So there you go. It's under a hundred. That's good ROI still. Yeah, if you flip it right away. Yeah, for sure. All right, next one. I don't know if you heard, I just saw this myself today, earlier today. Bobby Witt partnered with Whataburger, right? The franchise, the burger franchise stores. And I guess you could get promo cards of Bobby Witt, different promo cards of, you know, there's one where he's holding a Whataburger card. So it's like a baseball card with Bobby Witt on it. And there's an orange foil one. It's not numbered, but it's, I guess it's more limited because it does have a foil to it. It recently sold on eBay, over or under a hundred bucks. If it's over, it's a shill bid. Is it a top scroll? No, it's just a Bobby Witt, Whataburger promo card. You know what? He should have eight. And not, not on a, not all of them have foil on it. You know, some of them are like more paper. Yeah. So you know what? You know what would have been sick? He eats a Whataburger, then with his greasy hands, greases up one of the cards. So there's a Bobby Witt grease stain, and then he autos it one of one. That would have been Whataburger promotion genius. Parallel. Who would actually go for that card? I like it. I would buy it. Okay. Sorry. That was a, that was a crazy tangent. You need to be on the Whataburger marketing team. Orange foil, Bobby Witt over under a hundred. That was the question. Sold on eBay recently. Unlicensed. I got to go under. But the fact that you're bringing up this question, I feel like it could be over. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I know it should be under, but it's going to be over. I'm saying under two. Okay. You're going with your mind, with your brain. Yeah, logic. With your logic. Logic. I'm going to, I'm going to check hobby logic here. It's sold for 60 bucks under a hundred, but still 60 bucks for a $5 combo. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's crazy. A little nuts. All right. Speaking of fast food combos, I was going to save this for Roy, but I'm going to use it on you guys. The Pikachu, the Japanese McDonald's happy meal promo. Remember that just a couple of months ago where a lot of, and it was only in Japan. And then you saw clips online where people were just buying happy meals and dumping it on the side, like hundreds of happy meals just to get the promo card. So crazy. The PSA, the PSA 10 pop count is almost at 115,000 right now. Wow. That is nuts. So there's a lot. And Roy is still waiting for his PSA grading to be back because it's so backlogged, backlogged. What did it recently sell for? Over a hundred, a hundred bucks. 115,000 is nuts guys. We're talking 10. No, but that's what I mean. 115,000 PSA 10s. That's five, six times more than any other sport card I would say in terms of their base mass produced like Zion Williams sim, right? Like those prisms. But I gotta say it's over for some reason. Wow. The Pokemon market is pretty hot. I'll say this, when the pop count was like a lot lower than 115,000, what it is now, I think the first one sold for like 300 PSA 10. Makes sense. But what is it now? I could see this as being a nice fun collector piece for almost every Pokemon collector. So I think there's, you know, it won't go to zero. You know, it's not one of those kinds of cards like a Tyler Hero, like Donruss or something like that. But I could see it being like 50 bucks. I'm going to go under. Under, okay. The last recent sale price that I just looked up, $85. So it's now under a hundred. Yeah. It's a buy? Is it a buy? I might buy a one or two off Roy. Roy has a bunch coming. So by the time he gets it in his hand, it might be even lower than 85 US. So we'll see. All right, last one. I'm upping the over under to a thousand and this might be easy cause you might've already seen it. We all tried to get the 2025 Topscroll Basketball Jumbo or in some cases, a case of the product yesterday, sold out under a minute. I don't think, I think Roy got one hobby box but everyone else we struck out. The Jumbo, the hobby box was going for 370 retail and the Jumbo was going for 699. So 700 bucks. Obviously people are flipping on eBay. Over under a thousand for the Jumbo right now. Over. Crazy. I haven't seen the price but it has to be over. Like to me, that thing is so hot right now. Like people would overpay for that cause who knows you might be able to sell for 2000. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe. I think, I mean, the fact that we in our chat group wanted it badly. I think even for ourselves, like potentially to rip it open, says a lot about how desired this product is. 370 USD, it's expensive. I mean, damn, that's expensive. I'm talking about Jumbo. This for this one. Oh Jumbo. 700 for Jumbo. 700 for Jumbo, USD. And then the, yeah. Yeah. That, this is, I could easily, and the fact that it's sold out in like two seconds, like that's easily double. If I, if I saw it on eBay, I would at least see double the price. And I probably see it selling at least double. So I'm going, yeah, I'm going over. Okay. So the price on eBay right now is just under 1200. So it's over. Yeah. Not quite double. I think they print a lot and still sold out pretty quickly. That's crazy. So yeah, it's, I think, I think, I hope that goes down a little bit. Yeah. It's a pre-order. So I think it's going to keep on going up. You think so? I think so for a bit until people realize how stupid it is. And then. All right. Yeah. It's going to people start getting product and it also depends on like Cooper flag, right? Yeah. You gotta remember the breakers are going to buy up everything that they can as well. Right? Right. Yeah. And right now, Cooper flag starting to get hot. You know, the Wemby autos are going to be hot as long as you know, Wemby's playing. I don't, I don't know if he's playing right now, but you know, I think that's, those are the big chases. I think Vijay Edgecombe too. Yeah. Lots of good rookies. So it's like, it's, it's a good, it's a good class. And I think the hype is there. So I think it should sustain. Especially at being the first Topps Chrome release. People are going to hold this product too. The true heads are going to hold, hold some of this product. So I don't think it's all going to be ripped. And I think the resale market's going to be insane on these. I can't disagree. It's, it's, it's crazy. The frenzy for Topps Chrome basketball back since 2009, I believe. So the hype's there and yeah, Wemby and Cooper flag being in it for sure. The hype will continue to grow. All right. So that's it for our under segment for this episode. Let's finish off with our regular weekly segment. We call Pick One. So Hyun, as usual, do you want to start things off for us? Yeah, let's do it. I'm going to go with two really good players, Aaron Judge and Juan Soto. Off-season pickups for a thousand bucks. Okay. For a thousand bucks. So for a thousand bucks off-season pickup, I have a 2017 Topps Chrome. They have that 1987 insert, you know, silver pack. So a gold out of 50, SGC 10, okay, of Aaron Judge, right? I don't know if you could maybe see, see this, right? Gold, gold out of 50, SGC 10. Went on bids for 1095. So just over a thousand bucks. Okay. So decent deal, I think. If you're looking for, you don't like the typical Topps Chrome, Aaron Judge, the catching photo, I think it's a little more rare. And then this card. Oh, that's a rookie there. Gold versus the Juan Soto refractor numbered to 499. or sorry number to 250 tops chrome update refractor sgc10. Juan Soto's rookie refractor sgc10 went for 10.25 on bids. Oh what a deal. So I think they're both good deals to be honest but what would you guys go with if if you guys had a thousand dollars to spend? Hmm go ahead John. Yeah I'll admit I'm obviously a little bit biased. I'm not a judge collector although I've come on board but I am I do like Soto so I mean comes from a slightly biased point of view but really I think judge is popping off so I can't say that that's not a good buy like actually that I think sgc sorry I'm going to take a step back sgc10s in general because of the the downfall that we're studying of sgc10. I think they're great buyers period and you can whatever you want to do with it crack it out and try to recreate it 100% a great play. The gold is nice but it's you know judge is becoming unaffordable to many so obviously people are going to the more obscure cards to try and kind of get within their wheelhouse in terms of price so I think that's why these cards like the gold silver silver packs are such a strong price. I like the Juan Soto better because number one I think Juan Soto's prices are suppressed you know he's a great buy right now and obviously he's he had a month he had a pretty darn good year again and he had 30 bags or 30 plus bags which for the first time in his career right so I think he's a buy it's sgc10 so it's a buy there and then you're looking at flagship right like that's flagship refractor at a 250 that's low numbered compared to general refractors and flagship because it's the update so I'm all for the Juan Soto one but I could see the arguments on the other side but it's Juan Soto for me. Yeah you know I was leaning towards Juan Soto but I don't know I've been wrong so many times on Aaron Judge like so many times you know and I just think he's creeping up until you know to Otani territory where he's going to be a legend you know like if he isn't to Yankee fans already to other you know MLB fans baseball fans and I think with that growing hype and if he continues to do what he's doing for another two three years 40 50 home runs every season high average I think yeah I think we're beginning to see it with this card people are going to his lesser cards because his tops chrome or bowman chrome are is just unattainable right now and look what are we doing with Otani we're looking for these kind of you know second third tier cards to buy you know numbered because we're just priced out of all the other ones and these lower end or middle you know second third tier cards are also going up in price right so I think the pattern is there to repeat for Judge as well so I'm going with the Judge I know it's not a popular card it's in those silver packs which I generally don't like but it is numbered to 50 you do have the RC logo on it it is good looking it's a better look than his you know outfield catch one that I just still don't like so I'm going with Judge in this case interesting I I personally like silver packs I think one when when you rip them I love them and I do too and I did too when you hit it's great and I think they're underrated because it's a more limited rookie card uh than than the typical base but um I I don't like the fact that you know it is numbered to 50 but the card doesn't look it looks like the regular 1987 because it it's gold color anyways so it's kind of like takes the I guess the gold out of it like if you were to go 2018 and do silver pack on Otani a gold one would be like I think a lot more standout-ish uh on the silver pack rather than that typical year uh 2017 so that's my only downfall on that card where I wish there was more distinguishable features other than the number 250 on that but I'm leaning towards Judge as well before normally I would say Juan Soto I think just because what John mentioned like it's it's the OG it's the flagship and I think if if prices go up that's the first card to kind of go up because there's no we talked about Juan Soto in the early early episodes that there's not a lot of parallels out there and what John said it's the update there's no tops chrome regular Juan Soto's uh he he was only an update set so very limited on his rookie so I think numbered rookies in general are underrated on Juan Soto's but I think it'll be easier to attain that card rather than the Aaron Judge I don't think that card the Aaron Judge card you have a chance to buy that like it's very difficult I don't know when the next will appear there it's just so limited right and especially if people value that like I would I think it's a buy at a thousand bucks like if I if somebody offered that right now to me for a thousand bucks I think I would be like deal right and then I probably wouldn't sell it so for me for that reason I think I'm gonna go with Judge just because it'll give me time to find maybe a nicer Soto or something that you know might be of good value with Soto too and I think that's where I would go I would go paper Soto paper parallel Soto yeah I like that play yeah that's a good one honestly if you put that Soto card against anyone other than Judge or Otani I would probably go with Soto to tell you the truth but because it was Judge or Otani obviously I go with those two all right John you go next yeah so I teased the the manga a little bit and I mean I I admit I haven't done my research on the new Prism NBA manga I just see it all over Instagram of how much they're selling for and how awesome they look yeah and I don't I from what I understand I don't think they're all made equal some of the images are kind of normal and then you got like Luka in the sort of like Game of Thrones attire you got Joker with the cards which is that sick yeah incredible sick and then obviously Chef Kure with the cooking up like so I it looks like this manga thing for NBA I mean I know when they originally started it it it came with some because it's all about the imagery whoever the illustrator is they got to do a bang job and and this this one in particular is absolutely killer it might I don't know if it's the same illustrator as the you know the Patrick Mahomes and kind of like the John Snow like Game of Thrones sort of a look like that that one's another sick one but I'm gonna go it looks like manga is here to stay it looks like manga and I don't know how rare these are by the way as well they could be SP they could be SSSP I don't know but it's it's clearly making waves you know kind of like stepping on the kabooms of the world and the color blast as like the new kingpin of uh rare case hits so we're gonna go long term and this is always the quintessential question like kaboom or like a rookie card right so the the Joker prism 2015 silver PSA 10 right now goes for like 4 to 5k USD right that's like your standard and 2015 prism is is low pop I don't know what it is but it's low pop versus a manga the last manga raw Joker sold for 9k the latest one and I get it the manga the latest one with the the Joker card with a with a him showing a card yeah I think it was 9k I could be wrong that's raw by the way I think the PSA 10 was like 20,000 or some crazy number but let's say the raw obviously there's hype right now and I don't know again I don't know if everybody knows how rare or not rare these are but let's say it comes down for argument's sake for this 1v1 so let's say it does come down to like 5 grand are you going long term for Joker are you are you in on the specific manga card or would you rather go prism silver rookie PSA 10 like you're kind of like standard investment in Joker uh that's easy for me because I just looked at the pop count for the silver prism PSA 10 for Joker 192 yeah so really low oh it's low it's juicy I feel like that's a no-brainer if it was like Luka pop Luka don't you silver prison pop then that would be more of a debate um mangas you know that card looks cool but manga itself I don't know if it's I think it's too early to say if it's uh here to stay or if it's just another fad you know and even I don't know if you heard the episode last episode we had with Roy and Will and Roy was he's being a manga snob like if it's not by a Japanese artist it's not manga so he's like I don't even know who drew that you know it could be an American artist that's a great point but uh he's like you can't call it manga if it's not by a Japanese artist so right um but what if it but well what if it is yeah then it's that much greater or sicker or authentic who would know to find out I guess so it's but if yeah right I'm gonna go with the silver prism rookie is is are there numbered versions of the manga I don't think so and what was he said what by the way I also like the latest bowman baseball one the bowman anime yeah yeah you know what I I used to dog them a bit just because I'm not a fan of manga but I will say the prism those uh are they prism which prism manga basketball ones the NBA ones they're ridiculous but they're not that ridiculous that that that I'm what the prices I'm seeing um but yeah I I was thinking it'd be marking manipulation yeah it's perfect victor especially could be mad that's the scary part we don't know I mean you could probably do research on print runs but um you wouldn't know and I think I I I'm starting to be a lot more open-minded to stuff like manga because I look at like if if we all say okay what's one of the hottest like 90s card it would be like pmgs right um so I could see the potential of like non-rookie super desirable insert like kaboom looks like it's kind of that card at least in the numbered versions with the gold brady selling for you know hundreds of thousands of dollars and I I get that to me I'm like yeah that that kind of like I would be a lot more open to that if it was numbered because it mimics kind of like that pmg but a non-numbered set to me is is very tricky because I don't know how that's going to age or you know what the pop count is on that is it what we're seeing is it increasing and obviously the prices right now are at peak and it might not reach that price again it may too it might go up tenfold we we wouldn't know but with that risk you know we're like for me I'm a casual like old school like collector and that pop count of like 192 silver prism this is what why we liked silver prisms in the first place early 2012s 2013s 14 15s all the way up to I would say even 2017 2016 they they weren't mass mass produced and they started doing that in 2018 so I think you know Jokic is just so undervalued in general like it's insane his card prices compared to the rest of his peers I think he's going down as one of the greatest you know just because he's winning championships too so for me it's not even about individual accolade it's like he's super super underrated but that manga I think is overrated and his silver prism is super underrated so at 4 5k we've seen it all before with the you know even Kobe Bryant silvers the you know or the refractors 96 tops chrome if we all said 2003 tops chrome refractors of you know even LeBron James Steph Curry prism silver prisms earlier we'd all say the same thing it's like man this is a steal at 4k 5k so for me that's where I see Joker's market and I think he's so underrated and he's going to get the love eventually but that silver prism especially at pop 192 is something that you keep in the safe and I think more and more people will do that just based on the legendary status he's he's accumulating so for me it's silver prism sorry I dragged that out a long a long time I loved hearing it do you guys know if this is the first NBA manga I don't even know I don't think so is this the first there was other ones was there another one that's not confusing football but I'm pretty sure that was another one I know football there was multiple years but anyways okay I'm with you guys on the prism thing the low pop count the the lore and the OG ness of I mean I'm so for the original refractors topstrom included that I personally think topstrom moving forward should make the refractor numbered like pink refractors those can come once in every pack who cares pink like donut circles but make the refractor numbered out of a thousand or whatever like make the OG refractor kind of like the Juan Soto out of 250 update like that needs to be one of the the OG needs to be numbered and it's good I think it would kill it like I think the the value people would love the fact that it's it's rare anyways besides the point back to the 1v1 um you know what I maybe I'm buying into the hype I don't know like I I think long term specifically if a particular artist or or whatever does a really great job and the aesthetic of the card looks really awesome and for for this one if this is in fact the first NBA manga let I don't know hope maybe it is but if it for example if the argument is the first one as well I think that has some merit to it kind of like when you look at the kind of goofy images of the original Kabooms I don't personally like those ones but those prices are skyrocketing because of the popularity of Kaboom and because they're the OGs from I don't know when they were from 2012 so I think I'm a fan you know let's say that the mangas did come down in price like get off of this craziness and it did come down to kind of similar ballpark even let's even for argument's sake let's say the PSA 10 Joker manga is the same price as the PSA 10 Joker rookie refractor I think I'm okay with the manga long-term like I think there's a potential here because I think you may have big buyers that are gonna want to complete this especially because I know there's a chef curry and there's a Luca that are also crazy desirable there could be set collectors of manga similar to PMG and also the the Joker I think it's the I I think is the best of the three it looks incredible so even as your PC if you were a Joker collector like having it in your collection is such an awesome piece versus kind of like the original rookie which is also awesome as well I'm not trying to say it's not but I see the argument for manga now maybe I'm just drinking the juice a little bit too much but I know where this is going John's gonna pick the prism it was good I was literally just extrapolating what was processing in my head yeah so you're going with sticking with the manga I'm sticking with the manga I love that card it is a sick card but yeah okay my pick one is pretty straightforward I'm going up in the upper echelon of values 50,000 bucks okay damn 50,000 and you know what that means it's Shohei Otani and they're both green refractors and they're both rookies okay so the difference is one of them's the Bowman chrome rookie the batting right right BGS 9.5 auto 10 and the other one is the tops chrome green refractor PSA 10 no auto grade so you got the tops chrome PSA 10 versus the Bowman chrome BGS 9.5 they both sold for around $50,000 recently so tops chrome is the one where he has no it's like a close-up image of him kind of swinging yeah you see his face more clearly no the Bowman chrome is a swinging right yes Bowman chrome is where he's batting yeah yeah and then the tops the tops chrome non-auto the autograph they're both autographed as well sorry rookie auto oh they're both autos sorry okay tops chrome rookie auto okay the one with the face the one that you owned before yes refractor yeah yeah sorry to bring some pain back but sold too early let go whoo I'll go first in a coin flip situation I'm all about the batting image so I think this is a coin flip situation obviously the market has spoken there eat they're basically equal but I think I don't know like I can't even say in the long run because we're at like max peak on Shohei so the market is speaking in terms of like its maximum potential is also clearly there's also a PSA 10 as well so PSA 10 versus BGS 9.5 PSA 10 right right and that's that's what's making the difference right right right okay okay okay I'm still I'm still with the batting image man I think the batting image is is critical to the appeal of the card so and obviously surely is it going to continue to make his mark more so on the batting side than the pitching side the pitching is just gravy on top so I I think yeah it's it's coin flip 51 49 it's the it's the batting even though it's a BGS 9.5 okay I know what hey I'm just gonna ask so the subgrades if you want to think about cracking it yeah yeah I need to know the option there for sure they're not they're all 95 except centering is a 9 okay so min Jen see normally like it's the Bowman chrome image for me normally but this is my justification of why I would lean towards the tops from image I would say in order and this is probably unanimous but it's gonna be Bowman flagship the pitching auto is gonna be the most desirable then they released Bowman chrome which is his batting image auto and then tops chrome was his third so it was always one two three of demand the in the earlier days I would say one two was like neck and neck but it was always one two and then tops chrome kind of like was there's a huge gap right like in terms of desirability I feel like that gap between two and three Bowman chrome and tops chrome have diminished immensely to the point where like we said it's almost even the difference is a PSA 10 versus a BGS 9.5 in normal circumstances I still believe the Bowman chrome is a superior card but I think in this situation I would go tops chrome green auto because I know that some dumb guy will value that way more because it's a PSA 10 even though for to us we're just like you know what the value is in the BGS 9.5 right but some dumb guy is gonna overvalue that and to me that's what that's the only reason I would and I think it would look phenomenal and in tops or in a PSA 10 case that specific specific card of an Otani auto I think I appeal wise massive massive so I'm gonna go tops chrome green yeah okay well kind of using your points I'm I'm going for the the value I know the value is there with the BGS 9.5 I hate the fact that I'm paying even a bit of a premium for the PSA 10 for the tops chrome and it's Bowman chrome too like I would rather have the pitching I think that's number one but the batting is like a 1B really so because it's Bowman chrome the brand and and it's also better value with the BGS 9.5 I'm going with the Bowman chrome all right there you have it another great episode we appreciate you guys we'll have a brand new episode for you guys next week so we'll see you then talk to you later bye hey thanks for listening to cards to the moon we'd really appreciate you subscribing to our podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts and you can also connect with each of us on instagram at five card guys or you can follow young at integrity sports cards or John at trade you at recess you can also check us out at five card guys calm thanks again and hope to see you guys next soon