Ebay Has Failed Sellers!

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Ball Card Show, the Esports Podcast. For the Esports Collector. I'm Jason Otero. I'm Gary LeMaster. And we are bringing you episode two of season five, and man, I just, I've never seen so much of myself on the internet before. I liked it so much that I decided to show off my pipes this week. You're showing everything off, bud. We're in tighter confines than usual, so you do your big gestures and almost hit me in the face. I mean, you cheat death, and then you start breaking out salmon muscle teas here. I don't know. Listen, it's the middle of winter, and I feel spicy. All right. That's all I can say. That's good. We have a lot to discuss today, a lot of hobby news. I have a rant that I have been holding back, which is hard to believe, but it's been quite a while, and you've been on the listening end of this as a therapist, as a friend, as a mentor, but I've got to get it out. We'll be talking about that in just a moment, but let's jump in to some things that are happening this week in the hobby that I think are a pretty big deal. There's a common theme with a couple of these, which is theft, so maybe we start off right away with an arrest being made for a Cards HQ employee, one of Jeff Wilson's- Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Now, I knew you were going to start out right out of the gate. The accusation is that this guy has stolen somewhere around, the number I heard was $20,000 in sealed product. Okay. That's like two boxes. Anymore? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Depends on what the product is, right? Right. Stole around $20,000 in that. They found it on camera. Jeff is saying, oh, we have hours of footage that we've gone over. It's all right there. This guy's been scooping up these sealed packages and stealing them. He was arrested. Now, the accused is saying his defense is, well, you can't prove it yet. Well, there was also, and this is the interesting part of it to me, and again, I don't expect more. There's a lot of customers saying that this same guy, who was a breaker for Cards HQ, was dipping cards from breaks. Of course, Jeff, wanting to protect his business at all costs, even if the cost is truth, is saying, oh, no, no, no, no. He's never stolen a card from me. He only stole from me. He would never steal from you. I will say this. I'm sure that that happens on a regular basis and we don't know about it, but most of the time, because people are losing money on every break that they do, most of the time you're going to lose money. Oh, yeah. You're going to get killed. If people see anything that they can catch on camera, which there are ways to cheat this off camera, I feel like some of those videos would have emerged by now, but just for the record, stealing $20,000 in steel wax is a big boy felony. Well, yeah. You're over $5,000. Again, it's that whole conversation of, if you're going to steal, go big. The punishment's the same whether I steal $10 million or whether I steal $5,001. The punishment's the same, so if you're going to steal, steal three cases of Flawless and get to Mexico. I don't know what to tell you. We'll see what comes out in the court case with this, but my guess is, if I was doing this and I was in his shoes, it would be a box here, a box there over time, and that may be why Jeff's alluding to having all these hours of this. Look, this is going to happen any time you have something that liquid in that kind of space. This isn't like Best Buy where it's under lock and key at every turn, everything's scanned in, scanned out. Wait a minute. Which is weird. Should it be? Well, the thing is, is if you look at how Cards HQ has laid out, Jeff Wilson wanted to revolutionize the entire retail industry, all their singles are under lock and key. Yep. Now, I mean, it's an employee, so they probably have the key. Well, there's a hallway in the back. Well, there's a storeroom and a hallway behind the studios. It was a Forever 21. Of course there is. Yeah. So, they have like boxes and boxes. Some of it was organized, but I did see a tour recently. I wish I could remember and give credit to the vlogger that was kind of doing a behind the scenes tour, but it's messy there. You go back and there's cases of boxes open, the hallway has some shelves, but you can tell it's kind of scattered, which if you're breaking a ton, that's a lot of trash every day, I can imagine. If you're just doing what we do. Yeah. If we turn this camera 30 degrees one way or the other, or we were in my office and we turned this camera 30 degrees one way or the other, you guys would be like, oh my God. Yeah. It's not going to be easy to stay on top of it. But at the end of the day, this guy's saying, I didn't do it, or I've not been proven guilty yet. Right. Prove it. And then once it's only steel wax, the tinfoil hat conspiracists that have been right over the last few years about some of these types of situations are saying, I think this guy was grabbing a few cards during breaks too. So we'll see what happens with that. Certainly don't wish that it happens to somebody. I don't. I don't wish that happens to anybody. That sucks. But if it's going to happen to somebody, having it happen to a grifter isn't the worst person for it to happen to. Yep. You've got opinions. All right. Let's move on to a product release. I'm torn on this because I so deeply love this product when it comes to football products. Probably my favorite just because when you look at like the heyday era of this product in its prime, it's the best stuff and my favorite players to collect. But Topps Chrome Football has been released. Now, one thing that we want to say is, yes, we're glad about this. We think it's a good thing. It's selling like crazy. Oh yeah. I also would remind you Topps Chrome Basketball released not that long ago. True. This looks so much better. Topps Chrome Basketball was such a turd of a product. This looks just like this year's baseball did. So the design is consistent. There's not these weird inserts that don't make sense. It's just a really good looking product. And at least with the rookies that I've seen, especially the bigger hits, they seem to have taken a lot of attention to trying to photograph, get a photograph where the lack of a logo on the helmet wouldn't be apparent either way. Like Caleb Williams autos are head on almost like he's dropping back to pass, but you can't see either side of the helmet. The design looks really good. It's very clean. So I think it's a good looking product. I don't disagree with any of that. I think one reason that that's obviously better is because of how uniforms are made. So like basketball uniforms typically bear the logo right across the front. So when we don't see that, it looks super cheap, like some early nineties junk wax to have like a white Charlotte Hornets jersey with just numbers. It just, yeah, it was rough. They knew they were going to make money off of Wimby, but it just didn't look that great. Now, price point wise, you should still not be overpaying for unlicensed product. So it is a little steep. Yeah, it's a little bit steep of a product for what it is. If I'm you, I'm probably not ripping it unless you can find the retail when it drops. If you want to rip a little bit of blasters or a mega go, go nuts because that'll be out. I wouldn't be buying the hobby. I would just wait and buy the singles. I, that's what I agree. Those of you that jumped into the talk, Tops Chrome basketball, I don't know why I can't say that today. Or even some of the other football products. Well, yeah, but those of you that did that last year, just remember what you saw happen with the valuation. Oh yeah. You didn't get the Wimby auto, you took a big loss. So with Tops Chrome, if you want to open it because it's fun, the product is back. It does look good. I think it looks more cohesive with the brand. Go for it. This would be, in my opinion, six months from now, a great product to pick a player and start collecting a rainbow on that. You're going to have all those variations of color and all that. So I'm excited for Tops Chrome to be back for football. There's a good, decent vet auto list I saw. Jeff did have a gold Merino auto that was hitting a break this week I saw, and they're really pretty cards. I agree that they thought a little bit more about it, but we're ready for the license stuff. Next year. Can't get here quick enough. We mentioned Wimby, so let's go ahead and highlight on that. Since you're under a rock, you've heard by now, Wimby is out for the season with deep vein thrombosis in left or right shoulder. I can't remember. I don't know which shoulder it is. Now you were telling me that this has been a career-ending injury for players in the past. It's what ended Chris Bosh's career. I was unaware of that. Now, Chris Bosh, it eventually moved. It's something he battled for a couple of years, but it eventually moved to his lungs, and that's what ended his career. You start getting blood. If you don't know what deep vein thrombosis is, it's another word for a very specific — I can't even talk — a specific type of blood clot. When that happens, if that blood clot shakes loose and shoots to your heart, it can cause major problems, or worst-case scenario, it shoots to your brain, and you have a stroke. They're being smart and shutting him down. They're not in the playoff race anyways. He very well may come back from this with it being isolated to the shoulder. If he doesn't have any further issues with it, then great. So far since this is announced, the short-term effect that I've seen is about a 30% drop. Now I do think that what's going to happen, just like any stock or any type of an investment, when there's a big dip, people will start to buy, and it'll creep back up. I think that over the next two weeks, we're probably going to see it settle at about a 15% to 20% drop from where it was two weeks ago. If you believe long-term that Wembley is who he has shown himself to be, which is a generational type talent, like when he's on the court, it's special, this might be a good buying opportunity. So let me ask you, if you're going to buy, you think it's a good opportunity because he'll become a little bit more affordable, you believe that he'll be back, and he'll have the opportunity to show what he's capable of over the long haul, becoming a great, what price point are you targeting? Are you going after the high-end stuff? Are you going more mid-range? Are you going after autos? Because there is the risk that he ... I sure hope it doesn't happen, but there is the risk that he doesn't come back the same. Me personally, I'm still not touching autos because I think they're overpriced. Even now, I think they're overpriced. If I was going to buy anything, I'm not a guy ... For me, it's not a question of whether I believe he's a player, and I don't even have ... It's not like Zion, where I think he's going to eat his way out of the league and just doesn't care that much. I really feel that way about Zion. I just don't think he cares that much. I think Wemby cares, but that body type anyways was always a little bit of an injury risk for me, and then when you see something like this ... We talked about this before the podcast. It's not like Shaq, who was just like a supersized version of a normal human. His proportions and everything were like ... Wemby looks like somebody took a dude who was six foot five and just put him on a stretcher and just stretched him out. He's got to weigh, what? 190 pounds? I don't know his weight. 200 pounds at seven foot six? He's a stick. Back to the question, what price point would you target? I don't know so much that I would target price point as I would certain types of cards. I would be looking for numbered rookies from good products, and I would avoid autos. I wouldn't touch base, because it's so overproduced in the population, and that stuff is already through the roof. I would be looking at short printed color, known short printed color that isn't numbered, and then I would look at numbered stuff if I was buying them. I'm personally not. I'm going to keep an eye on it. If I have some people I've purchased from in the past that have a tendency to be just chasing the new flip, if they offer those at a discount, I'm going to grab them, but I'm going to need a good discount. I'm going to want my margin, and considering probably what's happening with comps, which is a conversation we're going to have in a little bit. Shifting gears, let's talk about Topps Series 1 release for baseball. Been seeing some hits come out of that. What's your initial? It's flagship. I love the product. Hobby boxes are a little overpriced. They're doing like $120, $125 right now. It should be like a $90 box, so I probably won't buy any of it to rip unless I can get a case of it on the cheap. If I can get a case on the cheap, I will. They didn't up the checklist, but they drastically upped the number of parallels and inserts, so it's a little bit watered down, but I will say this. This is really important. I can't tell you how many people I have seen between Facebook and Instagram and even on TikTok complaining about the product and how it's just nothing but a lot of baseball. That's what flagship is. That's what it's always been. Welcome to what it has been since 1952. It's what it is. It's offering way more than it did. Yeah. Now, 52, that's a pretty good year in hindsight. But the point being, if you're buying series one thinking that you're going to hit a card you can retire off of, you're outside your damn mind. I don't know what to tell you. The product is what it is. It's a fun product for set builders, but again, and it's cheap to rip if you want to have some fun, but you're going to get $30 worth of cards out of your $125 box at best most of the time. That's just what it is. If you do rip some of it and you get a big hit, sell it as fast as you can because other better products are coming very soon and as soon as Topps Chrome hits, like the moment Topps Chrome hits, every card you have from flagship is worth 60% less than it is right now. I have a theory. What's your theory? So first off, I love the design. I think compared to the last couple of years, this is the best one. I like that it has a little bit of a throwback, like early 80s vibe to it. I love 2023. I thought that was the best. Okay. Well, we can like different things. 2023 is great if you have a magnifying glass to read the text. Oh, it was brutal. It was 21 too. Yeah. But here's what I think is going to happen. I don't know if you noticed this, but on the border where they have the team on the left side, they used a foil surface on that, like you get with a rainbow foil. I've looked through a few stacks of the stuff. I do think now this is not a get rich. Yes. Thank you for jumping to the point for me. I do think that it is going to be a lower pop 10 on the rookies. Is that a massive flip? No, but it will be something that's 10s I think are going to be a little more scarce because the surface is going to get hit. I predict you're going to see a lot between the new centering with PSA and that surface. There's not going to be a ton of 10s out there compared to the last couple of years because Oil has begun to chip and it's hard to detect, even with a normal magnifying glass. If you have something pretty high powered, you'll start to see, oh my gosh, a lot of this has pulled away. So that'd just be something to consider. If you're somebody that likes to, for the PC grade, if you get a few 10s, that might pay for some of your other grading. I don't think you're gonna 10X it. But it will be a lower pop of PSA 10s. That's my prediction on the product there. And the last point I would make was series one this year. Last year's series one was a loaded rookie class. This year is not. Don't allow yourself to get pulled into the hype that's not hobby relevant. A perfect example of that, and I preface this by saying that I believe that long term, this guy is gonna be a starter in the bigs for a decade. He's probably gonna make two, three, maybe even four all star teams. And he's gonna be considered a really good player. He may even win a gold glove. After this little window of series one being released and it being his rookie card, he's not gonna have any hobby relevance. And that's Dylan Cruz. Do not go nuts buying Dylan Cruz stuff and do your research on these guys. Dylan Cruz is a guy who's gonna hit 270, which is a good batting average in the bigs these days. He's gonna hit 20, maybe 25 home runs. He's gonna steal 20 or 25 bases. And he's Brandon Nemo. A really good player who's gonna make some all star teams. Brandon Nemo's a really good player. He gets paid a lot of money to do what he does. He has no hobby relevance whatsoever. Like literally none. Don't get sucked into that. For the hobby to matter for a player in baseball, they have to have one skill at a minimum that they are exceptional at. Yes, and that skill can be PR. That skill. So like in hobby relevance, it can be that. They're gonna have to stand out. I don't disagree with what you're saying. I think the reason that people succumb to that so often is that they are letting the breaker tell them who they're chasing in a problem. Oh yeah. News flash for you. Breakers don't know any better. Well, they may not know any better, but if the good teams have been taken out of that break and it's a PYT and you have a team that has a semi star there, they're gonna make them sound as good as possible. They're gonna say, what if they have an upside? What if it's not 270, 20? What if they have a 30, 30 year? Like that's their job. They're selling product. Their job is somebody with a lot of money has said, sell through these cases. And if you can't sell through these cases in this timeframe, I'm gonna get somebody else who can. And some of you do that by shouting and screaming every card and the sudden death, whatnot. Some of you do this, you know, hyping up a player and talking about, I really believe blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day, they're selling to you. Car salesman love every car on the lot. Like it's just, it's just the way it is. So I think- You know how many cars you can fit in this bad boy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just think it's worth considering like, where are you getting your information? Do you need to go digging through scouting reports for three hours? No, but like look up the player, watch the video. Like do they, like what kind of relevance do they have? If you're not sure, I sure wouldn't go deep on that. Now, if you just want to get a cheap team and that's somebody that, it'd be cool if I hit their autograph, go nuts, have fun. But I think you're bringing a good point. Like make sure that the value is there. And the, you know, there's a, what's not talked about that often is the ceiling of the player. What are they capable of at their best? And now if we said everybody has to be Hall of Fame status out the gate, no, you and I have both lost money on players. Aquino for the Reds. I sure thought he was a beast until they figured out, just throw him off speed. He just wants to smash fastballs. Which it was fun to watch for a while, but man, I had so many of those autographs that I think a lot of them moved for less than five bucks this year. Well, and I think that, again, there's nothing wrong with being casual with your fandom and still being a card collector. But if you are casual in your fandom and you're a card collector, don't just listen to what a breaker tells you about a guy's ceiling. Feel free to reach out to us, reach out to me. I'm not by any means what I would consider an expert. There are guys who know way more than I do in this hobby, but I will say that when it comes to baseball, especially prospects and rookies, I probably know more than the average bear. I'm always happy to help. Feel free to shoot us a message, comment here. I'm happy to return. You're one of the nerds that is reading the scouting reports. Yeah, and watching minor league at-bats and watching spin rates and looking at Pitching Ninja and all that stuff. The point is, just ask Gary and then hold him financially liable if they know that. No, this is not financial advice, but I will tell you what I think of the player. Yeah. Let's talk about, so Tom Brady has been getting into a little bit of everything in the last year. We've seen him jumping into different business ventures, obviously commentating. Buying part of a football team. Buying part of a football team. As a commentator, when it started out, I was like, this is rough, this breaks my heart. But I think by the end of the year, I was like, he's doing good. He's doing well with it. He recently became a 50% partner in Card Vault, which a brand and LCS that was in, was it Gillette Stadium or was it connected to Fenway? Fenway. Fenway. Now, from what I understand, their market is reaching larger than that. I don't know if it's multiple locations at this point. I should have Googled that ahead of time. But he's coming in as a 50% partner with an LCS. What does that tell you? Or what implications do you think it has that Tom Brady is now invested in a local card shop? And does that say anything larger for the hobby as a whole? Or am I getting a little bit too excited for this? I think that you might be a little too excited, but I do think that it's encouraging. The reality is, there's always gonna be doom and gloom. The sky is falling, guys. Oh, we're in another junk wax era. Most of the people saying that, listen, if you're one of these people, please don't take this in as bad of a way as it's gonna sound. And I usually don't preface that. Normally I'm like, please do take it that way. Most of the guys who say that are broke. They're guys who can't afford nice stuff and are mad because all they can afford is junk that isn't worth anything. And I'm sorry if that's you. But we're not in a junk wax era. We're not even close. If you actually lived through the junk wax era, you understand what I'm saying. I think what this does show is that more popular culture is bleeding its way into our hobby, which is a good thing. That means there's more money coming in. For whoever that card shop is with Card Vault, for them, having that as a marketing piece is fantastic. And if they're able to bring him into the shop three, four times a year. Once a year. 30 minutes of signings for random. Yes, exactly. Giveaway tickets. Every time you spend 100 bucks here, you get a ticket. Like that type of stuff. Brilliant for them. And obviously somebody like Tom Brady, who love him, hate him, is the greatest to do what he did. He has proven to be a very savvy and intelligent business person for him to step into this type of a role. Especially with a, not small, but he didn't go by a piece of fanatics. He didn't take on risk of putting a huge LCS maybe down in Atlanta, a huge building. Matt, look, he did the math. Yeah, exactly. So I think that there is a positive upside to it. I don't think it's like, oh my God, yes, type situation. The hobby is, hey, we're going back to COVID pricing. Yeah, no, I don't think that's the case. I do think an important thing to bring up here is, in my opinion, this does not happen without Michael Rubin doing what he has done with fanatics. I think the relationship between players and this market was a lot more strained. I still think there are massive issues that we probably are unaware of. But to see the greatest quarterback engage like that, I saw like, it's almost like you saw the sales process of like Michael Rubin, like, come down to Fanatics Fest. Hey, this guy has been collecting all your autographs. He's got every version. You can almost see like how he's walking through that. And I think that, you know, whatever you got to say about Rubin and fanatics, he clearly is a master networker. He's bringing the right people to the conversation. And I hope we have more pro athletes that do this as a side business or because they love cards or because it reminds them of, you know, when they were collecting. And what we see now with these MLB debut patches and these rookie players, like it still blows my mind that I'm twice the age of these guys coming into the league, but they want that card too. I think we're going to see more of this. My son would be considered an old rookie if he came into the league right now. So I think it's a good thing. Speaking of introducing new things to the market, here's one where I'm not so sure about. I don't know if you saw this. Prostein is promoting a new marketplace platform. From what we understand, it will be called Bid. They could have called it Shill. Although they should have just called it. That's the other leg. What he's trying to do is offer more of, I don't know if you consider it a dropship model, more of an Amazon model where whatever you sell on this platform, whether it be live auction, buy it now, whatever, you just the next day ship all your cards to their warehouse and then you get paid in the same way that back in the day you could view an Amazon bookseller. You could scan the barcodes and ship 3,000 books to a warehouse and they would manage the orders for you. There's a history of some issues. You think? And it does seem like in the last year anybody of influence is trying to launch a new marketplace. Yep. eBay Live has launched, which so far has, in my opinion, been a failure. Tanked. Fanatics Live is still active and running, but I'll tell you, it sure doesn't look like what it did when it launched. Whatnot is gaining massive traction and it's maybe the most polarizing of all marketplaces right now. And you have eBay who, through their regular marketplace, has issues, but we hear like Dibbdit is a big one that resellers, basically resellers that have a following are moving to that marketplace. It's like a new one's popping up every two months. What do you think the advantage would be of dropping one with this model where you ship everything the next day to them? How is that a better experience for the seller? Well, I don't think that it is unless, and here's the only caveat to that, unless Probstein and their marketplace are accepting all risk, then I don't know that it does benefit because you're not going to have anywhere near as many eyeballs. You're going to have to work harder to drive traffic to it. They're relying on sellers to do their marketing for them. And if I ship a package with 1,000 cards in it that's valued at 10 grand and it's all in one package and that package gets stolen? Yeah. Well, the thing I'm thinking about is for the consumer, it's now we've doubled the time it's going to take to get your card. Well, I think this would only work if the way you're describing it is how it works, it's stupid. Now, if it was a CommC model for higher end stuff where I ship you my stuff and then you do all the backend work on it, then cool. But if I'm taking all the pictures and I'm listing it, why would I ship it all to you first so you can ship it out to people? Maybe it's, you know, maybe it is more that model. They're going to kind of curate what you have in there. They'll agree on the condition of the card that you propose. Like you have your spreadsheet. Here's what conditions I think these are. They verify they are. And then at their discretion, they're selling. I just don't. You know what that sounds a lot like? Star stock. Well, it sounds a lot like star stock and that shit tanked. It sounds a lot like something that people who have a lot of stuff they don't care about as much are going to ship. So it's CommC. So we'll see what happens with all that. I am open to hearing about new selling platforms where there are more seller protections. I do think that is needed. I'll tell you the one that is doing it right and is they're growing very slowly. They're not trying to market to the world, but the most seller protection that exists out there with the lowest fees and they're not a sponsor. But Matt, if you're watching this, we'd love you to be. My slabs is awesome. They allow not just slab sales, but raw sales and sealed wax sales. And the fees are extremely low, like under 5%. And the protections for sellers are through the roof. Same for buyers. If somebody buys from you and you ship the product and upload the stuff, if they don't pay within 24 hours of buying, the buyer's kicked off the platform. They're not allowed back on and it's tracked by IP address. So why isn't it more commonly used? It's just not marketed to where people know that it's available? Well, it's not enough eyes in the marketplace. It's the same reason that the eyes in the marketplace, I think it is. Everybody that I talk to goes, God, I hate Walmart. Guess where they all shop? Yeah. Walmart. Yeah. Because it's there and it's ubiquitous. Everybody, I hate eBay. Guess where people spend the most money? Yeah. eBay. Yeah. So we'll see what happens with bid. BYD, bid. Because, you know, we gotta be edgy. I will say, last year. You didn't throw a Z on it and made it bids. You really went out of winter there. Yeah, we're just in the soft launch phase right now. Last year, I took some pretty cool vintage boxing up to the National. Yeah. And one of the cards that I had in there was a unique Panini Cassius Clay. It was a high grade. The problem I ran into with people were offering was they really, realize that there were a couple of comps over the last several years that were Probstine and they just didn't wanna even acknowledge them as a comp. Because Probstine is so known for shilled stuff. So, that's an issue. Back to the theft that's happening. This one's great. Which relates to what we just talked about. This one's great. I believe this was in Montana. He probably thought he could just drive seven miles there wouldn't be any people, he'd be fine. So, a USPS employee is caught stealing $800 worth of cards, which you and I know, I mean that could be one card, it could be a lot, maybe it's eBay standard envelope, who knows. But the best part about this story is, one, he lives in a state where there are more cows than people and there aren't that many local card shops or card businesses. Just by law of averages. I'd say what, maybe 10 in the state? I haven't looked it up, but it can't be that many when your drive to Walmart is two hours. Right. He steals the cards from the packages and he goes, you know, close to here, there's a local card shop. I bet if I take these cards to them, this is like printing money. I just steal the card, then go to a card shop and say, hey, what do you give me for it? And I tell you what, they really gave him something. Because they said, you know what's strange about this? We just sent this. We just shipped these cards out. So, you know, there's stories where there've been hundreds of thousands of cards stolen. I know there's one that, a story that dropped in the Bronx, New York City, somebody that stole over 100,000 during COVID. But this has got to take the cake for what in the world are you thinking? Stealing the cards and taking them back to the place that shipped them out to buy them back from you. So. Moral of the story, if you're smart enough to know you're not smart, don't do dumb stuff. Yeah, I think. That's the moral of the story. I don't think that's gonna work out too well. No, I don't think it is. I can't believe it. So now it's time for me to talk about something that has been burning on my chest. I'm just gonna sit back and let Jason go. If I chime in, it will be very little for the next few minutes because this man has a lot to unload and it's actually really important information that you as buyers need to know so that you have some understanding of what's happening. And if you are a seller experiencing similar frustrations, you are not alone. So sir, the floor is yours. All right. eBay. We need to have a talk. We need to talk about your eBay standard envelope service. Last week, 200 orders of mine were dropped off, packaged properly, they fit within the metrics of eBay standard envelope, and they were never scanned. So right now there are 200 customers out there that think I've never shipped their item. This isn't the first time that there's been an issue. Since July of last year, I have listed right about 48,000 items on eBay. If I back up further than that, it was almost two years ago, we received news my son had a rough health diagnosis, as many of you heard, and it changed our lives forever. Like the way that we were able to spend time changed, his, some of the needs he had on the front end as we were learning to manage this, made it where it was just really hard for me to be at work selling and my wife to be at work, so made some adjustments where I would say, hey, I'm gonna focus in on these cards, I'm gonna do this from home, and it's gonna allow that flexibility. And I'm grateful that eBay has created that opportunity. Couple years ago, eBay introduced eBay standard envelope. They were so excited because they were seeing a huge uptick in the card market, just like all of you have. All of a sudden, there was way more money flooding this market, and eBay was smart. They said, we aren't Amazon, but we should be the place where people think about collectibles, unique things, rare things, and buy stuff. We began hearing and seeing on YouTube, podcasts all over, hey, we have this new program that we've come up with called eBay standard envelope. They realized that on cards up to $20, they were being priced out of the market because shipping was so expensive. I'm not gonna buy a $3 card and pay four or five bucks shipping for ground advantage or what we called first class at the time. So they said, what if we had a program where for under a dollar, you could ship cards, they would have to be smaller than a six by 12 envelope, and they, not six by 12, six by nine, and they would have to be less than a quarter of an inch thick. You ship those out, it's a discounted rate. We want your business. We want you to sell with us, and we wanna provide a shipping solution where it makes sense and it's affordable. Brilliant idea. Early on, they learned that this shipping service wasn't so reliable. While they worked out a deal with USPS for this service, there were still packages just not being delivered, packages being lost, people not paying attention to what size the package has to be. So people would put too many cards in, it gets caught in the machine, it's lost. So what did they do? They provided a program where through a third party, there's an insurance claim where any card that doesn't get to the buyer under 20 bucks, you just file a claim as long as it's been more than 30 days since it was shipped, it hasn't arrived, we'll refund you. And the PIP claim works. You are refunded your money. The problem is this. They don't tell you that it's affecting your seller metrics every time somebody even says, I haven't received my item. So January of this year, I get an email where eBay is saying, you have a very high rate of items not received, I'm very confused. I've got over 2,000 reviews since last June, I've sold 8,500 items, I have 99.9% customer satisfaction. My negatives aren't even negatives, they just are older folks that hadn't figured out how to change negative feedback to positive. And I only had two of those. I'm trying to figure out how I'm handling things the right way, I'm shipping things out on time. You see the tracking updates, you see that it's made it to the hometown, it just didn't get to the house, so I immediately say, hey, no problem, I'll refund you. The tracking shows that it got on the way there, but apparently it was lost, thinking that I'm handling things the way they're supposed to be handled. I call on eBay and ask them about this, and they say, yeah, we pulled this up, it looks like you've had 42 out of your last 2,700 orders that just never made it to the buyer. So because of that, we count those as item not received. I began to look into those items. Out of those 42 items not received, 26 of them consisted of only three order numbers. So when you sell five to seven cards on eBay Standard Envelope, even if it's in one order, that is five to seven different claims. So if I shipped out 10 cards to somebody, it met the metrics for the size of the envelope, it scanned on time all the way to the last town, but it never made it into their mailbox. You don't have one case, you have 10 cases of items not received. I asked eBay, do you see that I've shipped them on time? Do you see that I immediately refunded them? Yes, you did all the right things. Unfortunately, this is just item not received. I said, what happens? They said, well, you won't lose top-rated seller status yet, but if this continues, your search views will be suppressed. Those of you that think the PIP claim solves the problem are missing out. I don't care about refunding you 30 bucks. Here's 30 bucks for the 10 cards, or whatever it is. I care about my store being slowed down when I've done everything the way that it's supposed to be done. This continues to be an issue. Last week, before all these items were not scanned, I had a four-card order, went to Pennsylvania. It was right around the time of the winter storms. USPS had no update for a week on any of these items. At day 10, buyers are able to say, hey, this hasn't moved in the mail, I want a refund. That's opening an item not received case. That same day, tracking updates and shows that it's on the way there. I inform the buyer, I upload tracking. Hey, this was shipped. It just updated yesterday. I see the delay, no problem, but now that I know that refunding them right away does not benefit me, and it's better for me to hold out on the buyer to see if this happens to get delivered in this timeframe of this case, I just say, okay, let's keep an eye on this. It updates three days in a row to the town that the buyer lives in. I see that it's not arrived yet, and I reach out to eBay. They say, well, we can put a hold on the case. It looks like it's heading there. I said, okay, if you put a hold on the case, what happens? It just gives it a few more days to get to the buyer. Once we can see it's been delivered, then you're good to go. Well, what if it doesn't get there? I can refund them today and take the hit, but if I don't refund them and it doesn't get there, is that gonna be a unresolved defect, meaning that the seller never resolved this issue? The seller just left me hanging. No, sir, you're protected. We can see that you've shipped it. We see the tracking. We see you messaged them, and you've even called in to request a hold for this. Well, wouldn't you know it on day 10? I get an email right around midnight, four separate emails. These four cards were on the exact same order number. They were shipped in the exact same envelope. Two of them, the case was resolved in my favor. The other half of the order was resolved against me as a defect with eBay, basically the equivalent of saying, this guy didn't ship these two orders. He said he did, he collected money, he didn't refund. This was not what they told me on the phone. So I call in. They say, oh yeah, we never said that. Guess what? I call back in again. I called three or four times that day. I think I spent six hours on the phone. I finally started blowing up their Facebook just to get a response, and they say there's nothing we can do about it. Send an appeal in. Send an appeal in, no response. I reply to the emails where they told me two were too off. After being told five times that there's nothing they could do about this, all of a sudden, those two appeals are pulled off. Followed up the next week with the last 200 orders that I have shipped not being scanned. I know I'm going on a rant here. Stay with me. You're okay, I'm with you. I'm rapt attention. These 200 orders that haven't scanned will show that I printed out the label, but it will not show that it even was scanned once by the USPS. So right now, when we get to day 10 on these 200 orders, there's nothing stopping a buyer from saying I never received my item. I'd like a refund. eBay will look at their own tracking service, which they have their own tracking number, and say it looks like you never shipped it. I reach out to eBay, and they say, well, it must be the post office. They must not have scanned them. There must be a delay. And I say, well, this hasn't happened before. I sold 8,500 items. This isn't an issue. I dropped all them off. Why are all my ground advantage packages that are dropped off that day tracking but none of the standard envelope? And I said, is there any seller protection for me for what's gonna happen in the next few days? They said, if we can determine that it's our fault and not the postal service, then yes, there'd be seller protections. We really recommend that you just go ahead and refund them. Up to 200 orders refunded, 200 items not received, 200 cases where I could potentially have a defect on my store. It's not about, now we're talking about probably 1,000 bucks. Now it's starting to feel it a little bit. So if I could file a claim, fine, whatever. It sucks, but it is what it is. But they are willing to throttle my store and punish me even though, because they say, hey, we can't prove that you shipped this. Until I stumbled into a little forum, and this is where I just- This is the part that blew my mind. I can't, eBay, your service is a failure. This standard envelope is failing the buyer. It's failing the seller. And you only want to pass the buck onto the seller. This is why we're leaving in droves to whatnot. This is why buyers don't even respect the eBay comp anymore because it's becoming so antiquated. You know what's happening too. You know that you're losing. You're trying to capture this market with eBay Live, and it's a failure. Meanwhile, the bread and butter, the millions of cards moving through eBay standard envelope have no protection for the seller. So I find in a form a way that I can track this. You go to this website, you punch in the eBay standard envelope tracking. It shows an error, but all of a sudden you will get a zero zero digit that is the USPS first class tracking number. You copy and paste that. Now, none of this is on eBay. They have nothing to offer me. Go to another third party site, and then you can punch in the new tracking code that starts with two zeros. And I'll be if it doesn't show that the USPS has been scanning packages all along. I made a video yesterday in a reselling group I'm in just showing how to work around this. They were a five card order that was delivered that still shows up as not even being sent. And when that buyer reaches out and opens up an item not received case, it doesn't matter if I upload my tracking. Listen to this sellers. I don't think a lot of you realize this. It doesn't matter if I uploaded my tracking. A case being opened is the metric they're looking for. 10 cases open, five of them I confirmed tracking. It's been delivered. Case goes away, but it doesn't mean that that metric doesn't show against you. Just a buyer even saying I haven't received this package is going to hurt your metrics. You may not notice that it's been a downtake yet, but you keep going with these over the next six months to nine months as this service continues to get worse. You're going to see it affecting your store. I had two months right after these items not received cases began to build up. Two months where my revenue dropped by 60%. And a lot of sellers out there say, oh, it's not that, that doesn't hurt you. It absolutely does. I was on the phone with one of the eBay reps that told me, he's not sure how much longer this program will even be around because they have so many issues with it. Yet when it's time to resolve the issue, they take zero responsibility and put it right back on me, the seller. 200 orders unresolved will shut my store down. Why in the world would I continue to sell with you through this service when it's not working? eBay says, just move everything to ground advantage. Now we're doing the thing that was the reason you invented eBay standard envelope. You didn't want us to be priced out of the market on low end cards. It won't work. So what are we going to do about this? Well, they're not doing anything. I'll upload a video for you to see how to do this for yourself, how to find the tracking number, how to see if it's been scanned. USPS is scanning packages that. eBay is saying they're not. eBay's interface for the shipping is failing and showing that you've never shipped it. They're not going to protect you. And it's not worth it for me to spend six hours on $4 worth of refund doing everything that eBay tells me to do if I'm just gonna be punished for it on the tail end. How do we fix it? Well, one, I don't know that this shipping program can be fixed, but I wrote down three things that eBay could start doing right now for sellers that are just logical. They don't hurt the buyer and they will motivate sellers to stick with the program. The PIP claim is not a loss. That's a good program. You're gonna get your money back. It's annoying how monotonous it can be when you have low on stuff, but it'll work. But if somebody has an item not received claim and you can see a scan that shows that the seller has shipped the item on time and it's scanned through a distribution hub, that seller should take care of the customer, issue them a refund. However, eBay should not count that case against you. You follow their program that they promoted with their own tracking number and they're punishing you for that. If refunded, you should not have any strike against you. The other thing they need to fix is the combined order situation. If it's on one order number, it should not be 10 cases. It should be one case. These are shipped together in the same package. These combined orders with combined shipping and combined tracking should be one case. Until eBay gets this fixed, you're gonna keep watching people walk out because guess what, eBay? Whatnot is becoming a great place for the low-end market. You're going to lose. You have thousands of sellers that have issues with this this week and all you're doing is gaslighting us and telling us it's your problem. That never happened. I don't know why. Oh, I wonder why. Oh, we never said that. Fix it. My store's gonna be, I'm gonna start taking it down. Like if stuff doesn't get better in the next two months, you're not gonna feel that from me, but you're gonna feel it when it's enough of us high-volume sellers that are just taking our money elsewhere because you won't take responsibility. Why? The PIP claim is a third-party insurance company. If eBay protects the seller and it's an eBay issue, guess who's issuing the refund? eBay. It just comes down to money. It's as simple as that. I keep going, but I've already gone too long. No, it was good. But I just, I can't get over the fact that they are not even considering the problems this is creating for sellers. Well, the thing that I said to you and it continues to resonate as I listen to you talk about this, nothing drives me more insane than being asked to be accountable for something I have no control over. You did everything that eBay said as a seller is your responsibility. And they can see and they acknowledge. Yes, you did everything that we have asked you to do. Also, now it's your fault. I told you this yesterday. What do they expect you to do? Get on a horse and pony express that shit to Montana or wherever it's going? And they're always following. Well, you can get a refund. Okay, that's fine. I don't care. I'll just give them. You know how many PIP claims I've never filed? Yeah. Because if you're incentivizing high-volume, low-end to keep churning your- The store metrics matter more than the refund. Yes, you know this. You know this, eBay. Don't patronize us. We may be selling cards out of our basement. We're not morons if we're selling thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands of these for you every month. That doesn't make sense. That you're taking 15% off the top one. Yeah, that's the, again- Well, and it's a much larger percentage than that with low-end because it's 30 cent transaction fee every time. So they're taking more like 35%, 40%. I think that at the end of the day, the point you're making is very much the case. Those sellers are going to leave eBay. And to an extent, they already are. And the biggest thing that eBay had going for it was the most eyeballs. Yeah. And it's still, on a global scale, it's really not even close yet. I just want to point that out. It's not, but here's what I would say, and this leads into the next topic that we wanted to talk about. I know this has been a longer episode. Hopefully it's brought you guys some content that you care about, that's helpful to you. And like Jason said, we're going to clip just that bit as its own standalone thing. And I think Jason's going to make a video- I'll do a short video showing you how to do that. For that stuff. But, talking about what not, I think that the slippage that eBay's going to see is this. And this is where what not, and it leads to the next conversation we're going to have about comps- A hell of a segue. In the market, you know? 40 seconds in on this one. Well, I want to say this. What not has going for it, that eBay does not have going for it, is a serotonin dump. When you're on what not, and you're in a stream, and it's fast paced, and there's a lot of video action happening, and you're getting that serotonin dump of, I'm in this fight for this card, and it's a 10 second sudden death auction, and I better come with my best. There's no negotiating. There's no back and forth emails about comps. There's just pretty card, and I want it, and somebody else wants it too. You're starting to see where those lower end cards that are selling on eBay for two, three, four dollars, on what not are selling for six, eight, 12, 15 dollars. And sellers aren't morons. And you're starting to see where cards that sell for 30, 40, 50 dollars on eBay might sell for 20, 25, and 30. It's on both sides of the pan. And so with comps, one of the things that I've been noticing in conversations both online and live at shows lately, is the whole idea of comps are becoming very polarizing, and I talk to dealers. The two polar opposites on this drive me nuts, because they're both hypocrites. The guys who say, well, comps don't matter. It's my card, I'll price it however I want to, are the same guys who when they go to buy a card, the first thing they do is pull their phone out and check comps. Where's the lowest comp in the last seven years? Oh, this auction ended Monday night. Yeah. And the flip side of that is, the guys who pound on comps, like you said, they want to find the lowest thing they can find. What not, understand this guys, if you don't spend a lot of time on what not, watching and diving into some of these streams, I really recommend it, even if you're not going to buy anything, because you're going to see some things that make your brain explode. If what not ever figures out a way to be able to make their sales data, batch dump their sales data, the entire market is going to get lifted by 50%. That's a conservative number, because the lower end stuff sells so rapidly and so well. And if somebody can build an audience, it doesn't happen in the rooms that have four or five people in the room, where you can see a guy just on his desk with not good lighting or anything else. But you get a room with 30, 40, 50, 100, a thousand people in it, suddenly that $3 card is going to sell for 10 bucks every time. So understand what Jason's saying, eBay's not watching this, but if somebody who works at eBay is, you're going to lose, because those guys are just, if they have any personality at all, any ability to buy a ring light, and be able to talk to other humans, which let's be honest, there's some people in this hobby that can't. Yeah, I didn't even mention this to you, but this week, one thing I've been doing, it's just like scrolling through and watching more of that low end sell, because I'm really contemplating like, is it just time to pare this down to, all right, these metrics are going to, like the store's going to get hit, even though, I want to get back into it, but possibly moving my stuff over to whatnot a lot. And the coolest thing I saw, was there was one I was going through, and when I tell you, it was a middle school kid, I'm guessing probably, I mean, just going off of the voice, and his friends were hanging out with him, he had an autographed card sitting there, he had one, I think it was, maybe a Garrett Wilson. Yeah, nothing huge. Something like that, but it was like an elite, but it was a patch, it was maybe an, I can't remember, $30, $40 card. But as he is selling his card, it's so noisy that I like looked up from what I was working on, and I realized, it sounded like a middle school call center, because all of these kids, after school, go to his house and set up their own whatnot, and they're like, they're hustling right now. This is the model. This is where it's going. These kids aren't on eBay, trying to do this. You know, I do have, sometimes people will reach out and try to ask what I'm buying, and they go look on eBay to see if they can buy something and upcharge me, which I appreciate a concierge service, probably not gonna work, but. What do I tell you? Why do I not buy on eBay? You don't want to establish a new comp? I don't want to set a new comp. I don't want to fight my own comp. Yeah, if you're trying to buy right. And then if you're going to a show, and you're buying, or you're buying online, what I have found, is that every once in a while, you're gonna run into somebody who's just wholly unreasonable. Like, that's life. It doesn't matter whether it's cards, or your work, or just life in general, you're gonna run into a jerk here and there. Most people are relatively reasonable if you're relatively reasonable. If you're transparent and honest about what you're trying to accomplish, most people are either gonna work with you, or they're gonna say, hey, I respect that. I'm probably not the guy to buy from. I tell people that at shows all the time. Hey, I'm just probably not the guy to buy from. It's okay. No big deal. This super rare card that has only been available three or four times in the last 10 years, it's for a collector. It's not for somebody that's looking to buy it to flip it. It's okay. No big deal. If you wanna get a deal from a dealer, don't pull out your phone, find the lowest comp you can find, and shoot underneath it. Don't ignore comps you don't like, and listen when a dealer like me says, hey, here's how I do things. If I see 20 sales in the last three weeks of this card, and there's one or two that are way higher than everything else, and one or two that are way lower than everything else, let's just forget those, and let's look at this middle window and see what the average is and see if we can figure out something that's fair for everybody. But if you're a guy who just comes in there swinging for the fences to be at 50% of the lowest comp you can find, here's my hint to you. If you see somebody with a banner up behind their table, you see somebody with nice showcases, you see a face behind a table that you see at almost every show you go to, don't go to their table. Go find the guy who's the first time you've seen him who's probably setting up his collection because he needs money. Don't come to us because you won't like how it goes. Well, I think that's aggressive and also discouraging people to come to their table. No, you know what I mean. I think what is interesting is, I don't know if you've noticed this, but searching 130 point or whatever to comp a year ago, especially with newer product, there's fewer comps on most things. Well, 130 point only pulls 90 days. That's why card ladder is so important. In general, I'm saying that whatnot is putting a dent in what comps are even available. When you know there's a card that's selling 10 times more than you see on eBay, there's a good chance a lot of that stuff's moving through whatnot. Now, one thing, I don't think that that data is gonna hit the market because- Well, I don't know how they can. That's the one part. Because you're getting a video receipt. There is a way. You have to AI it and- You would have to, when you prepare your show, which I don't think they'll ever do this. Very few people do. You would have to actually list out every card. You'd have to say what year it is, condition, all, maybe not, but you're gonna have to fill that out. And the reality is, the moment they do that, they would lose 30% at least of their sellers. Because it's just so easy to go on there and just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I don't think anybody is gonna do that, but I think you bring up a great point. Like, be reasonable is kind of the conversation. Now, does that mean that, I bought stuff from Gary that I wanted. I've seen other people do it too. It doesn't mean that everything is firm, but it means that there are some cards that are gonna be firm at the price. Well, it isn't even necessarily that it's firm. For example, if I have a card that hasn't sold in six years, and I have some of those, the market is drastically different now than it was six years ago. Drastically so. That comp is irrelevant. So let's look and see what similar stuff is. Comps, that's the point I wanna make. Comps are comparables, not exacts. Like, if I'm selling my house, comps are not what my house sold for the last time it sold. Comps are what if similar houses sold for recently within a certain radius. If I've got a Michael Jordan PSA 10 that hasn't sold for seven years, well, what if similar ones done in the last six months? And we can kinda come to a baseline. But if you're just so fixated on, well, I have a Saquon Barkley I just bought. It's number to five. It's a pop one. It's a PSA eight. There's none higher, there's none lower. And it's the bookend. It last sold in an SGC eight five back in December for like 300 bucks, 320 bucks, something like that. Saquon's market is drastically different. The Of 30 of the same card sold two days before the Super Bowl for $340. I have the Of 5. Is mine only worth 320? 30 was raw too, right? The Of 30? Yeah, the Of 30 was raw. Is mine worth only what the Of 5 in an SGC case did two months ago? I don't think so. If you think it is, you're not gonna be able to buy it from me. Like, use your brains. Yeah, I think that there's a part too where it's easy for, I think you're being a little harsh, but I think you have dealt with this over and over because you're at so many shows. It's more about the unique stuff. But you're challenging people to educate themselves on how to do this. I think part of the problem is how they're being educated. If I'm into cards right now, I wanna jump in. It's overwhelming to dive through all this information. It's so much. The easiest way that I found to get into cards when I started was YouTube. Now there's thousands more content creators in this space than there were when I first, where I was just watching like infinity breaks in the background. Like, you know, like, but it's changed so much. The problem is these guys watch somebody with a big. playing in a microphone that have fans walk up to a table and off 50% over, over and over, and they get those deals. So why wouldn't that 15 year old kid or that 35 year old that's new into it, that all they know is they watch these videos of these people buying cards at shows, assuming that they're gonna get somewhere close to that same rate. Like there is like, that's not always how it's gonna be. My advice for you, if you're jumping into this and you wanna see the best deals on buying, this is gonna sound counterintuitive until you think about it, get a table at a show, set up, put a sheet of paper on the table that says, I'm buying, and watch what walks up to your table. Now that you have a table, you're in the driver's seat. Hey, when I buy, I'm gonna look at everything you have. I'm absolutely buying, but I'm gonna have to buy where it makes sense for me because I set up and I do this to make money. That is gonna serve you so much better than walking up to every table and demanding 50, 60%. Now, you and I have had stuff that's set out for six months and the market has changed. And if you show us that and it's reasonable, absolutely, I'll move on it. But YouTube can't be the only source. Don't listen to comps just because of what Gary says. I do love the house analogy. See what's out there. See what's similar. You know, oh, this exact card hasn't sold. Is there another one from that set? Is there a comparable player that has similar hobby interests? Is there a set that's similar to that set in the last five years? If it's a hall of famer, there's so many ways to dive into that. Well, and if you're buying, it's really important that you do that too. This, an example that happened to me very recently. It was my fault. And I don't put this on the person I bought it from. This is somebody that I have bought multiple things from. He's a good dude. Brought me a BGS95 Justin Jefferson optic hollow rookie, rated rookie. And I was in a hurry. There was a lot going on. It was a busy show. I was like, yeah, I'm interested in this. He's like, well, what can you do? So I just looked up what the last BGS95 did. It did 175 bucks. I offered him 140 bucks. He was like, that's fine. So I price it. I put 175 bucks on it. I put it in my showcase. I don't think anything about it. 20 minutes later, something comes up. What do you have on that? 170 bucks. Okay, cool. They look at it and then they look up and they go, man, like five PSA 10s in the last week have done like 150. Oh, well, I guess I'm holding this till next football season. Like, so as it's really important that you look at those comparables, not just that card. Even when you're in a hurry, you're gonna take a bath sometimes. You just brought up a point that most sellers and dealers don't ever consider. They think it's like an all yes or no game. Right. And it's like, oh, well, if they're right about the comp, then I have to, no, you don't. But it's okay to say, then I just need to sit on it. What I don't wanna hear as a buyer is, well, I paid more than that. That's a you problem. Yes. Gary, that's a you problem. 100%, that's what I'm saying. When that happens, sometimes it's like, if I really need to get my money back and I wanna break even on this, I have to take the risk of sitting on this card knowing for the next several shows, I'm probably gonna hear this. And if they start in just like, I understand. I bought too steep. I realize it's probably gonna sit around. I'll probably just wait and see what happens in football season. You never know. If somebody wants the card, they might meet you halfway. Yeah. Or maybe you're like, if I only lost 30% on this, let me turn and turn this. So I think it's a great conversation you bring up. There's a lot of data out there. There are direct comps for a lot of this stuff, but be reasonable with it. Be okay with somebody saying no. If you get offended by it, you're just not gonna last in this hobby. Yeah, exactly. Taking offense to it, it's just not gonna work because it's okay for you to say, okay, good luck. And not like in a jerk way. You can actually be like, good luck with the sale. It just is what it is. Before we wrap up, we announced last week that we're opening an LCS in Central Ohio soon. And we've just been really excited as we're working through what does that look like for us? We've been looking through buildings. We've been in contact with different agents, getting all the tax stuff set up, all the different things involved in that. And in the meantime, what we did not expect was the overwhelming response that we've had from all of you our first week of just putting video out there. Yeah. And we appreciate it. It's been so cool to watch. Across three or four platforms, what? Almost 50,000 impressions, 45,000 views? I don't know. I stopped counting it. Wow, that's way more than I expected. Yeah. So thank you for that. We're old, so we're surprised any time you see more than 1,000 views of anything. And for those of you that are younger, you realize that number is different than it used to be, right? But for us, that feels huge. You're listening to our story and we appreciate it. So without going into too much, the next steps for us will be continuing with this video content. In the very near future, you're gonna see us promoting whatnot shows where you can come hang out with Gary and I. We'll have a regular standing show going on. You're gonna be seeing both of us at shows doing a lot more buying and set up together. Selling with that. And then the big thing for us with the real estate space is to make sure that we are ready to put ourselves in a situation that is not completely leveraged against us. And we're also getting a lot of feedback from the real estate world. The one thing that's been surprising to us, and as somebody who's owned multiple businesses but have not had a brick and mortar space for probably nine, eight or nine years now, 10 years now, that space has changed so drastically that it blew my mind. The feedback we're getting is one of two things needs to happen. You either need to have an established track record under the LLC that you are gonna sign this lease under, or we're gonna do a very deep alien-level probe of your life before we give you space. Which that means where that's gonna end is us personally guaranteeing the space on like a five-year term. We would have no leverage to counter back on, okay, well we want a two-year term that switches over to the LLC. Okay, but you can't raise the cam rates. Okay, and we're just gonna be in a situation where we have to shove all the chips in. And so far, we've had some spaces that we really like. We haven't found one we love enough to shove all the chips in yet. We haven't found the one where we're like, this is it. We're still looking. And this is still happening, but I think that from the reaction that we got from you guys, the messages that we got, the comments that we got, I think there was a feeling that, hey, when are you guys opening? Two weeks, three weeks, a month? We'll be there. And we really want you to be there. It may be a little longer than that. Two months. It also could be three months. It also could be six. If the spot opens up where we're like, there's a no-brainer, this is the one, this is where we want y'all to hang out with us, we're jumping on it. But we're actively looking. The next step on this is continue going, running the whatnot, running a lot of shows together. And this last space we looked at was in an ideal neighborhood, had a lot of traffic. It was a strip mall, which we didn't hate. It was close to, one of the things we were thinking about are the complimentary businesses in the same area. So we had one that we were really interested in that was next to a Taekwondo place. Well, there's gonna be hundreds of kids in and out of there and their parents. That makes sense for you to cross market for each other. And then this most recent one, there's like a swim place where kids learn how to swim and all those lessons and stuff. So there's different environments that are gonna attract more buyers. We've heard grocery stores are great spots because husband drops the wife off and they got an hour to go dig through cards. We are like, the best example I can give is when I play baseball, every pitch, you're in a position where you're ready for the ball to come to you. And that's where we're trying to be. In the meantime. But we don't wanna chase, we don't wanna be a Keno. Yes, we're gonna be patient, but we're not gonna do nothing in that process. So you're only gonna see more of our stuff, more of our content. If you're friends and family that have followed us, you're about to get, like your feeds and your algorithm, you're gonna get fed a lot of us. But we're really excited to be launching this stuff. Pulling a good chunk of cash together to buy up just for the Ball Card Show and to begin running these whatnots and shows. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Anything I left out there? Like, subscribe, comment. Yep, absolutely. Get our message out there. eBay, fix it. This has been the Ball Card Show, the Esports Pocket. For the Esports Collector. I'm Jason Otero. I'm Gary Lemaster. Peace! . .