THWC 421: Me and The King of The Cards!

What is up, everybody? Hobby with Cage, episode 421, brought to you by Arena Club. Brought to you by Card Ladder, which I used a lot yesterday, as does everyone. It may be the single most used thing at the Java center this entire weekend. Use code Cage. Save yourself a couple dollars. And by the Philly show, which, you know, we're in the midst of Fanatics Fest. We've been talking about it for a while. We'll have the national soon. And then, you know, it's back to your. Back to your regularly scheduled regional shows. So I gotta tell you guys, early, wake up here July 17th, Friday, try to do an episode for you here before I head over to Fanatics Fest. And it was, let me tell you, I want to do a kind of like a recap and kind of tell you what it is, because a lot of you guys aren't there. A whole lot of you guys are. One of my favorite things yesterday was, you know, I'm online and somebody taps me on the shoulder, I thought it was you. Let's take a picture here. Like, love your content. We agree on a lot of things. Which, by the way, is. That is the. The comment I hear the most from people when they say, I listen to your content, I watch your content. You say, you know, I feel the same way. It's usually people of a certain age, you know, which is, you know, the demographic of my show. And, you know, so it doesn't really surprise me. But it's good to hear the other end is check the YouTube comments. There are some people who clearly disagree with me. So it is what it is. All right, so let's just jump right into it, right? Because I do want to talk to you about Fanatics Fest. I'm going to start off with this fun little thing and it's. If you have an idea about Fanatics Fest in your brain, based on the first year, which had a lot of media blitz and a lot of stuff on it, your idea of what it is is completely wrong. Now. It is a entirely changed and upgraded event. And I'll start off by saying, you know, I'm gonna an Instagram chat, you know, Instagram Group with a lot of people, you know, from various walks of the hobby. Everybody from, you know, Card Collector two and, you know, Mealy Pops and, you know, some of the. The Gary Vee crew used to like the sports talk pod, you know, down to just regular collectors and the whole deal. It's a great cross section of the space. It's one of my favorite, you know, hobby Groups, which we talked a little more in that, but it is what it is. Everybody's got their own lives going on. One guy, you know, chimed in and said, hey, you know, fanatics festival, you know, I wouldn't want to go because it's not really about the cards. And you know, I'm not really into the whole like, you know, follow wrestler around kind of thing. And somebody else, you know, chimed in and said, no, it's not like that. This was even before this one started. So let me tell you, you know, my take on it because I have been to all three now and I'll continue to go to this one here all weekend. This is a different experience than it was the first year. I think they took a lot of great feedback in the first year. It was huge. Like one side there were no cards. And the Javits is huge. If you haven't been. There is a huge, huge convention center, you know, multiple levels, multiple floors. They had food trucks there for lunch and like all kinds of craziness. But when it started, you know, they kind of had the sports activations, the leagues and everything in one area, you know, in the NFL in one spot and you know, soccer, Premier League and just, you know, and then they had kind of the middle was where they were going to do all the shows and the promotions and the stage and all that. And then kind of off to the back corner of the show was cards. And you kind of had to like be looking for the cards to get there. And it was a small section. Fast forward two years, right? So that was year one. We're in year three now. You cannot do anything at this event without walking through and being in the cards. You know, there are walk of fames where like the celebrities walk and people line up and the whole deal. That's a new thing this year that those walk right through the card sections. And you know what I would say is the amount of space dedicated to cards from the first year to this year, it's got to be triple, if not five times. And you know, the. There are two different segments of the floor and there are cards, what they call collector zones on both sides, right? So, you know, if you're looking to stand on a fence where, you know, the celebrities walk or you know, where the stage is or where people are, you know, giving presentations, there's cards right there and there's kind of no bad place for the cards. No bad segment. I spent. I was there yesterday before 9:00am, opened at 1. I was there before 9:00am and I stayed until almost 6:00pm So, I mean, I was there yesterday for nine hours and I missed so much. You know, sort of like a national feel. Which is weird because I feel like in prior years I was able to do kind of almost everything. And I'm staying away from certain things because I know I'm going to do them with my son when he's there. You know, we'll wait in line and do an F1, you know, simulator. We might do that, you know, 20 times. Who knows? But man, massive. And there's just so much stuff going on that you miss it. You know, I feel like people showed me videos and pictures of stuff that was going on and I was like, wow, where was that? I didn't see it. Celebrities are just walking all over the place, which is an interesting thing, right? It's got an old Disney World feel. If any of you guys are, you know, are. Are of a certain age like me, you know, when I went to Disney World as a kid, the characters were just walking out of the park and you can run up to them and take a picture and grab their leg and hopefully not knock their costume off. But now it's a much more structured and rigid meet and greet stand online. Don't touch them, don't take a picture. They'll sign something that's the Disney character. This has got an old school Disney feel. Like, I was walking down an aisle looking at cards, and there's Seth Meyers from know from Saturday Night Live. Just walking up the aisle looking at cards. You know, just not. Not surrounded by, you know, armed guards or police officers. I'm. I'm sure there was a security guard kind of hanging back, you know, walking with him somewhere. But, you know, just walking up the aisle looking at cards, you know, Jason Sudeikis walking around. I mean, you see a rod all over the place. I was just walking and having to pick my head up and you see it on my story. And I'm looking right at Cece Sabathia and David Ortiz are standing next to each other walking, and I'm like, what is going on here? That's like Montague's and Capulets there. Why. Why is it that Fanatics Fest is able to, you know, work miracles and. And let the Yankees and Red Sox be friends for a day? It's kind of crazy. I will never be friends with you. Big Poppy, you destroyed us too many times in the playoffs. Great player, though. But we're not gonna be friends, so, I mean, I'll continue on it, but I do have a story. And we're gonna. We're gonna call this Me and the King of Cards. Me and the King of the Cards. So I've made some fun videos, right, where, you know, you can poke fun at people, especially people who are, you know, who are kind of getting very popular. This is kind of what happens, you know, I mean, if someone's taking time to kind of poke fun, it means obviously you're doing something right. I. I like to think I'm doing something right every time I look at my YouTube comments. Because if everybody loves you, I don't know doing something wrong. But it's funny. I try not to, you know, bother people who are doing their stuff because, you know, there are kids who come in and, you know, want to take a picture with ryan car collector 2. You know, they want to meet Jeff Wilson. You know, you know, they want to. You. They want to chat, they want to, you know, want to do that thing. And I try to interrupt people. The one. One group I almost interrupted yesterday was Ryan was doing some content that almost. Almost tackled them while I was on camera. That was pretty funny, but I didn't do it. Maybe I'll do that today. So I was walking around yesterday with my cousin and his son, and son's in his 20s, and I know him, you know, his whole life, basically. So I still think of him as a little kid, which probably was why I tried to pick him up in the UFC Octagon over my head. I was able to do it, but, you know, now I'm in a little bit of pain. Maybe I'll share that picture with you guys, too. Anyway, we're walking around. He just got into cards maybe a couple months ago. He's, you know, really immersing himself in it, enjoying it. He sold some cards, sold some stuff, bought some cards. He's into Kobe, you know, so it's. It's been fun kind of watching him learn. And, you know, when we got lunch yesterday, we sat down and I tried to explain to him, you know, sticker autos. I tried to explain to him, you know, college uniform on, someone who's got pro cards. And, you know, because he's making a lot of the mistakes that, know, you make when you come into the space. You know, he's got Jackson dart sticker auto with the, you know, old miss uniform on, or, you know, I mean, he's got, you know, he's got a college uniform on, and, you know, he's buying green Parallels. And. Yeah, so, I mean, we walked through, like, the college uniform, you Name it the whole deal. But I digress. We're walking around the card aisles, and from like three aisles away, he looks over and he goes, is that the king of the cards? Is that that guy? I watch his videos and I'm like, oh, no. I'm like, we have a fan on our hands. And he says, I like that guy. I watch him and I watch that cards HQ Jeff guy. I like the Kyle guy better. I like the king of card stuff better. I'm like, do you want to go over and say hello? You know, do you want to meet Mickey Mouse? You know, do you want to meet Goofy? Do you want to meet, you know, Donald Duck? It's the same kind of thing, right? I'm like, but it's not David Ortiz. It's the king of the cards. Which, by the way, tells you something, right? So he's like, yeah, yeah. So we walk over and there's a bunch of people, and I, I, you know, I catch. I catch Kyle's eye. He gives me a big hug, and I'm gonna give him some real credit. Guys, get ready for this one, because it doesn't happen that often. So I introduce him. I say, this is my cousin. He watches your stuff. And very quick, the king of the cards. Kyle says, all right, I got a question for you. He says, my cousin here. He says, you watch my stuff? He says, yeah, I watch it all the time. He goes, do you watch his stuff? And he points at me, do you watch his content? And my cousin goes, no, I don't watch it. He goes, that's it. You just. You made my day. So wait, you're related to him, you're family and you watch me, but you don't watch him? Good. That's all I needed to hear. Like, son of a. You got me pretty good. It was pretty, pretty bad. So that was, that was one of the highlight, fun little get to laugh at yourself moments, because there were a lot of those, you know, half of me left the show saying, I got to step up my game here because, you know, Jason Sudeikis is not coming to meet me. You know. You know, there are, There are some, Some. Some fun, you know, moments being created here by fanatics for, you know, for the folks that, you know, have earned it. And, you know, you got to take a minute to think about that for a second. Right here is a relative of mine in his 20s, full time worker, you name it, and he's. He views Kyle, the king of the cards, as a celebrity, whether you do or not. And whether we're talking about Kyle for a second or not think about that. Think about kind of what the hobby has become, right? If you want to go back to, you know, Josh Luber's manifesto of making it cool again or making it cool for the first time and coming out of the basement, the white paper. It really is a fun journey that cards have been on the last decade or so where there is an event that I will say this fanatics fest is really about the cards. It's great. It's about fandom, right? It is this year more about the cards than anything else. You have, you know, tops set up. You know, F1 is giving away a card. There's a soccer set up, and they're giving away soccer cards and they're teaching you about soccer cards. The card tables and card booths are literally everywhere in the show. So much more of a footprint. And obviously there's other things going on. You know, they have celebrities doing signings and autographs and giving presentations. And, you know, everybody yesterday told me, lebron's here. We're going to go see him announce what team he's going to play for. And I said, I wouldn't expect that. And it didn't happen. You know, that only happened to KD last year. But it is fun to watch, you know, these guys out there talking about fandom and then, you know, to see Mr. Wonderful from, you know, from Shark Tank go up there and spend millions of dollars on cards and to see celebrities come and buy cards and talk about cards. If you get nothing else out of it, you see that fanatics has. Has really put this into the space, right? It's really put it into the conversation. It's become part of pop culture. And there are a lot of people there, from the governor of New York, right. To all of the. All the sports guys and celebrities. And, you know, it, it's. It shows that, that this space has grown a lot from the last couple years, and. And I anticipate it continuing to grow. And that's a lot of the conversations that I had with people yesterday as well. You know, for the card guys, the question always becomes, you know, are we. Are we headed for a cliff? You know, can prices continue to do this? And when you see an event like yesterday that, trust me, it's getting a lot of pr, I turn on sports radio, people are talking about it. The sports radio that I. That I listen to is there, doing their show from there. ESPN is there, you know, and the guys are there. Tiki Barber's doing a show from There and you have, you know, your ice bath with Kevin Hartnett and you got Tom Brady. I mean, yesterday, if you didn't see it, find a clip of it yesterday. Canes. The chicken was there. I really wish they had some chicken. Like didn't find a way to get some Cane's chicken in there. And then we're really talking and there was a soda thing like Coca Cola for soccer and they didn't have any Coke. Like, if you could put the canes next to the soda and you could get me some chicken fingers with some cane sauce to dip in and maybe some, you know, Coke Zero. Forget it. I'll never leave. I'll sleep there. But anyway, funny moment. They have a dunk tank and they filled the cane's dunk tank with cane sauce. And you know, you throw a ball at it like the clown who's making fun of you. They put Gronk in there and Tom Brady dunks him and he's just covered in sauce. It's kind of gross, but hilarious at the same time. Fanatics. Games are going crazy. Some fan is leading, which is, you know, that's a cool story. We'll see how that, you know, shakes out. They're giving away money, they're giving away a Ferrari, they're giving away a card. A card that, if you guys know me and know my page, should be familiar to you. But in any event, it's fun. I'm looking forward to going back if you have thought about going. And like, you know, I'm a card guy. I don't, I don't need to go there for. I'm not going there for wrestlers. I'm not doing photo ops. I'm not, you know, getting autographs. There's enough cards to keep your attention. Trust me. I walked around the show yesterday and almost exclusively was in the card areas and I didn't even get to all of it. And I'm looking forward to going back today, making some more deals, buying some stuff, selling stuff. I made some trades yesterday. I got a nice Luca yesterday. A nice Luca. I think his mark is a little. A little underappreciated. I took a. I traded some smaller cards and I got a Luca blue prism rookie PSA 10. You know, numbered. Gotta stick with the numbered stuff. But yeah, you know, made some trades, made some deals, had some fun, and look forward to going back again. Kyle, the king of the cards, he got me good this time. Gotta give him credit. That was, that was a funny one. It's gonna stay with me for a long time. Now I gotta make, you know, my cousin and his kid actually watch the show. And there's another episode. Guys, I'll come back to you. Maybe I'll do another one tonight after I get home and kind of tell you about day number two. And I hope you guys enjoy this one. If you're there, send me a message and we'll meet up. And if you're not there, you know, tune in for the next episode and I'll let you know how it went. And that's another episode of the Hobby with cage number 420. One of these brought to you by Arena Club by card ladder use code, Cage. Save yourself a couple of bucks. And by the Philly Show. Take care, everybody.