Chasing Cardboard: Stories, Reselling, and the Hunt for Hidden Cards

There's some crazy cards in collections hiding across America. We have just scratched the surface. How does someone go about discovering that you know what you did? You cannot expect to find a vintage collection in the Facebook marketplace. We'll spend 50 bucks and put a newspaper ad in that you're buying collections and watch who calls you. It's not the 17 year old. It's going to be the older guy that's sitting on a bunch of cards in his basement. Look, we're always chasing something. Ty is chasing cardboard. What are you chasing? That's the big question. Welcome to the Collector Nation podcast here on the Collector Nation Network. Whether you're chasing grails or calling bluffs, we take you inside the hobby. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. In the hobby, we're all chasing something. Chasing a grail, chasing a card, chasing a set. chasing cardboard. That's Ty Wilson. That's what they're doing on YouTube. It's been a smash success. We talk about the ins, the outs, the collections, the garages. All those things that you uncover when you are in the hobby. You never know where things will go. You never know how you'll touch someone. Ty's been doing it the right way. That's why he's been successful. You're going to learn from his successes, his failures, and along the way, you just might chase something else right now on Collector Nation. Ty, what's up, brother? Welcome to the show. What's up, Brian? What's up, Brian? How are you doing? Thanks for having me today. I'm good. I'm not in Kansas City. I'm in South Carolina. I guess you're in KC. Correct. Are you a Mahomes fan? You have to be, right? The guy's got the keys to the city. Him and Bobby Wade Jr. can do whatever they want, KC. You have to be fans of those two guys. I like Bobby Wood Jr. I think I like Mahomes. He seems like almost too good to be true sometimes. He's pretty polished, but I think he's the real deal. Everything you hear about him is pretty cool. Dude, when I think about what I've been doing with the kids and starting this journey for me as one of several businesses and things I'm in, I do look at the story you've done, and I think a lot of guys, and similar, oh, man, that's awesome. Is it as awesome as it seems? The whole transition to cardboard, you know, it's so perfect, right? Yeah. Yeah, man, it is amazing. The amazing parts are... that we get to go tell incredible stories of incredible people. Most of the time, incredible people. We get to tell, tell incredible stories on the road across America, best country in the world. I get to do with my family. I get to write my own schedule. I get to hang out with cool people like you, like didn't say no to people. I don't want to be around, but the unglorious part is the work behind the scenes that people don't get to see. And they think it's just like flip a switch and go all in. And there's a lot of that. But the stuff behind the scenes, man, is real work. Who came up with chasing cardboard? So Matt Coleman's the producer of the show. He's out of Dallas, Texas. He had the idea of like, how do we blend American pickers with sports cards? He's been a producer for 20 plus years and goes, let me use my skills. You're a good podcast host. That's what I was doing, you know, seven, eight years ago. Can you be the host? And so we took that idea and filmed a couple of pilot episodes with the idea of pitching it to networks. And we did. We pitched it to networks. And four and a half years ago, they said, these are really cool. But sports cars, man, that's not big enough. So good luck. Go do your own thing. And so we took that personal, man. We're like, let's go throw it on YouTube, see what happens. And it exploded. It exploded like we had 20 or 30,000 views. We're like, oh, shoot, this could be really good. And so 120 episodes later, five years later, four and a half years later, here we are. Yeah, man. I'd like to meet those producers and laugh at them. You know, now I've kind of been watching this percolate for several years. You know, my friend Gary Vee has been telling me for 10, you know, like this shit's coming. And I knew I collected growing up. I mean, I was 1986. Yeah. Darryl Strawberry, Roger Clemens. Still got the cards. Still got the players. That was 86 to 93. So good couple first years and then really bad next ones. Yeah, I'm the Junk Wax Dad. That should be my username. Junk Wax Dad. I love that. That was unfortunately that time period, but boy, I loved it. And, uh, but nonetheless, I didn't get back into my kids too, but I saw this sort of like percolating last year. So those producers, if anybody's looking at the economics now, I'd love to know if they would still say no. I don't think they would. I don't like, and we get this, we get asked this all the time. Why don't you go back to Netflix and, or go back? Because it was, it was a history channel. It was A&E and, and go back and pitch them. And it's like, why? Like YouTube is the most leveraged in the world. We control the narrative, which is great. Exactly. Uh, Josh Pate is a friend, and he does a college football thing, and he's gone independent. I mean, he still does and goes on the shows and leverages their universes. He borrows their land sometimes, but he's got his own land on YouTube as well with his show. And he's done the same thing. He negotiates all his sponsor deals. I mean, it's a new... it's a brave new world in media. The last, it's been per, it's been really coming for 10 to 15 years, but like the last five, I feel like it's just, if you've got the right idea and persistence and willingness to stick with it, you know, it, There's never been a better time to make it yourself. Totally agree. Yeah. You know, it's the persistence. It's the stick to it of NIST as they say, right? Like if you don't have that, man, don't even jump into it. Cause it's a two or three year grind to get, get off the ground in a competitive space. Yeah. I had to do that with the podcasting dude. I mean, I tell people all the time. I mean, I've been doing it for, I'm almost 10 years in now. And it's like first two years, I tell the story every time, you know, uh, My mom and I made up the 200 listeners of the show. Me overanalyzing it and her going, honey, I really enjoyed it. And I see in the IP address, you know, that all link back to my mom's house in Columbia. At least mom's listening. I guess I'll keep doing this. mom and all of our burner accounts. Yeah, exactly. But then you go, okay, you either do one of two things. You guys had a great idea out of the gate. You had a producer and you guys are great on camera. Mine was like, wait a second. I sound like I'm in the library and I'm dead. Yeah. And I'm like, I tell people all the time, don't forget these four letters. It's a show. S-H-O-W. Go look up what that means. It means you got to carry the energy, baby. You got to make it interesting. So true, man. Like you're natural at it though. And your voice is great. So I can see why it finally took off. But I had to open it up. I was just like, you know, and this is how I am in person. Like even 10 years ago, this is how I am in person. This is me. And I was like, wait, I just said you'd be myself. Not like, you know, the guy that's talking about SEO, you know, search engine optimization. It's really interesting. Well, no, it's not. Yeah. You got to make it interesting. Man, you guys are interesting immediately. You guys are storytellers, man. That's what I love. It's like, I'm a creative at heart. And so, and I'm a storyteller myself. They're not all as good as chasing cardboard stories, but they are, you guys are good at it. I'll just give you that. Thank you. I love it. I mean, where did that creative energy come from? Well, the creativity, I think it spawns out of Matt's, uh, skill set as a producer. He's a very good producer. Uh, out of me, I was in corporate sales for 15 years. Like you can appreciate this. You were in the corporate world of marketing. Like, I mean, I sold enterprise software for 15 years and to survive in that world, you have to ask really good questions to get really good deals done. And so I learned how to ask questions. And so that, I mean, that's the, that's the secret sauce to any good story. is just asking the third, the fourth, the fifth level questions. And it comes out. It just naturally comes out. And so we were able to kind of combine those two. And the stories have just taken on a world of their own. What's the feeling of walking into these random strangers' houses, garages, you know, tombs? Yeah. That's why it seems, I'm sure, like, wait, did we just go back into a, is Doc, where's Doc? I'm in the dime machine. Cue the Doc clip. Where's the DeLorean? I gotta get out of here. I mean, it is, sometimes it's like, you guys gotta feel that way. Oh, we do. You can walk in and open the garage at the basement door and just smell. You feel like the smell takes you back 30 years immediately. But man, it's so fun. It's hard for me because I'm such a collector at heart. I just want to dig right into the cards and just go search for stuff. But you got to... You got to grease the skids with the sellers. And so it's like, let's ask questions. Let's help them. Let's guide them along. And then let's dive into the cards. But there are some crazy cards in collections hiding across America. We have just scratched the surface. People are always like, can I find these collections? And I'm like, they're everywhere. They are everywhere. I promise. So fun. That would be me. So this happened to me, Brian Ludden, who does the show with us on Fridays and owns Lidex. He's got a storage unit. I went up to Chicago three weeks ago. And this is what I would do if I were you. Like, I would be a hard time. Like, you know, your producer yelling at me. Like, I just shook Ralph's hand, the collector, and I'm over digging through the box. Hey, don't interrupt me. I'm going to do this. That's what I did in Ryan's storage unit. I was like, wait, we've been here an hour and a half? I thought it was seven minutes. Yeah. That's a real struggle. That's a real struggle. It would be like, we'll get some money and we'll figure that out. Like, just tell me, I want to look at these for a minute. That would be me. I mean, that's kind of how it feels. Do you, how often does it happen where you go through that stuff and someone doesn't even know what they have? Yeah. I would say we, well, we get enough leads now to where we're, we're being very selective. So like we lean into those types of collections where it's a guy where he goes, I, you know, I collected for the last 40, 50 years and stuff things in boxes. And I hear that and I go, all right, be there tomorrow. Okay. Yeah. We can film. So like, surprisingly, it happens more than like more than you would think. But it's because we cherry pick those collections. And that's the best part about it. Right. It's like that's what get your energy flowing. The great unknown about a collection, not just when you're with the seller, but like when you take it home. Man, talk about getting the endorphins going like that'll do it. Unknown's an interesting word. It is. It's like that intersection of curiosity and specter and excitement. I don't know. And hoping that it's not 1989 tops. Yeah, well, we can get into that. For sure. You still pick it up on things. Yeah, that's about the only thing that walks in my store. It's like, I got these old cards of mine. I'm like, don't be $89, Donruss. Don't be $89, Donruss. Don't be. Oh, it's 1990, Donruss. That's even worse. That's even worse. How many times out of 10 is it? Worse than you thought it would be. Like, not as good. Especially, like, the unknown stuff. Have you already cherry-picked? I mean, have you, like, gone down the road so you're not walking? I know you're not filming, but, like, when you're walking into something, then you think it's good, and it's not so good. Well, a perfect example. I mean, five minutes before we started recording today, we just released a new episode today. And we're filming with a guy named Stan in Ohio. And he said, I got binders and binders of stuff from the last 50 years. And so we, an incredible guy, like an amazing guy, but was a true collector. And unfortunately we had to break the news to him. Like, man, 99% of your stuff is junk wax. We extracted maybe 200 cards out of the 50,000 cards in two hours that were worth more than $20. And so it was a rough conversation, but like that, that could happen every single time we recorded if we wanted it to, because that's what we get. But you're just like your shop. Most of our leads are that. Wow. So every once in a while, we have to give the audience, like remind them, like, hey, guys, there is a lot of stuff out there that is not valuable. Yeah. I get texts because my numbers, like, I don't know where it got. I think it got published on like Craigslist or something. Does that even still exist? I don't know. But I get deals like text to me. And I feel like it's friends of mine that have like a burner number and they're, they're just punking me. Cause every time it is like, it's Bill Bozo, you know, like 1991, uh, Bowman or something like, I don't even know if they made it in 91 Bowman, but I, you know, the big card that's like not King Griffey Jr. Not even, not even remotely King Griffey Jr. Like some guy you never heard of. And like every, like every, every other day. It's like punking me. Brutal. I don't get it. It's never Mickey Mantle. It's never Ricky Henderson rookies. It's never nothing. I'm like people. I think I'm getting that. And it's like there's so much data out there. I always just assume everybody's already scanned their cards or done whatever. And they know exactly what they have. Yeah. You're like, people trying to get over on you. Oh yeah. Oh my goodness. Yeah. We, we have learned so many of the signs of somebody that is trying to pull a fast one on us. Like you, you start picking up on missing players and sets and runs. You kind of go through stuff and you're like, okay. And then you, you see them like avoid questions about cards and, Uh, or things that they're keeping like that's huge, right? If you, if you start seeing them avoid questions or skate around it, I immediately, it's a red flag. Uh, no big hits, big cards taken out kind of like a, a fake ignorance about their collection. Like you, we, we don't broadcast it in the episode, but like, we'll step outside and I'll be like, Matt, he's hiding something. I can already tell like he's pulled the big stuff out. We're walking into a trap here. Let's be careful. Um, So like, again, you can't, you don't want to throw that guy under the bus, but like we're, we're picking things up all the time or we know, and we'll ask questions off camera and we're like, bingo. This 86 Flair basketball set's awesome. There's just one player missing, unfortunately. Both the sticker and the red card. You know the one with him dunking? His name's Michael Jordan. Who? You're in the middle of Chicago. He's got Jordan posters all over the wall. I have no idea what happened to that one. I don't even know who you're talking about. Okay. We're going to go ahead and leave now. Yeah, I guess. That's especially worth... $150 maybe. I don't know. Probably one of the biggest drop-offs from one card to all the others. There's some good cards in there. I have a fair amount of this. The one good thing I had for my collection was like 86 and 87 Flare basketball. Oh my gosh. So that wasn't terrible, but everything else was. Talking with Ty Wilson, he is chasing cardboard all the time. What's... Tell me a good story that's not out there, Ty. Is there anything unpublished that you want to announce here on Collector Nation? All you do is story tell. Or maybe one that's coming up. Tease it a little bit. I'll give you two that are coming up. One is probably two or three months away, so this is a good one. Speaking of the junk wax, we bought this. I teased it on Instagram because we walked into a warehouse in... In Indiana, 30,000 square feet. This guy had been buying collections and buying sealed wax for like 30, 40 years and just stuffing it in a warehouse because he didn't. The endorphins, right? He just wanted to open it and he would stuff it away. But it was literally, Ryan, like 98% junk wax. And so it was such a concerning buy to me because I'm like, we have to get a 26-foot U-Haul, take this back to KC, whatever. and somehow justify a fair price. Well, fast forward three weeks after we get it back, and I'm going through it with the boys, and I find in the middle of junk wax rows, we find probably 15, 20 Kobe rookies, three to four Tom Brady rookies. We find a star rubies, a metal PMG, essential credentials, all these random like crazy cards in the middle of junk wax. So it wasn't even on the episode, but like I'm coming back and I have like my Ray-Ban medicine and I'm like doing these little shorts for like future use. I love those. These cards and I'm just like in shock, truly in shock because like I was basically going to throw them away. So that's the nuances of collectors, man. And then one other man, we have a really cool Jordan episode coming up and it's one of the few times where I, I got, I paid a guy, a collect paid a guy more than he wanted. The guy wanted 20 K. I, I, I paid him $28,000 just because it was worth more. I got home, excuse me, went through the Jordan collection, the Pippin collection, and I realized it was worth even more than I thought. And so I called him up two weeks later and I said, Hey, John, I, I sent him something and I said, don't open this until you call me. And he calls me up and I said, open it up, opens it up and it's an extra check for five grand. And he goes, what's this for? And I was like, man, I just uncovered more value. I just wanted you to be taken care of. And it's a cool story because he's a disabled guy and he's trying to do something for his wife. And it was just really fun for us to do that. It probably won't be on camera, but it's just a neat story behind the scenes. Hey man, that's what keeps, I sense that about you, and I think your audience does. And I think there's not... A lot of people hear that, and I want to make a note of this. People hear that and go, oh, yeah, man, I do the same thing, man. Yeah, man, that's awesome. You know what, Ty? Not many people would actually do that, and they're fooling themselves. And it takes a lot of credibility, a lot of... I don't know, just good heart and, you know, good people. Like, that's legit. Like, it's not that. Like, people like to think they would do that. But writing that check ain't easy. And that's money. You've already spent it. You've already, hey, you exchange value for value. And then after the fact, you go, I'm going to write $5,000 more because I've got more value. It says a lot, man. That's cool. Yeah. It's one of those things, man, I want to be able to sleep at night knowing that we treated people right. You're probably the same way. It all comes back around. Your witness, your testimony, all that's incredibly important. You got to represent. Yeah, man. It does. And I do feel that way. I'm the most imperfect person on earth, but I'm never trying to get over on you. I'm just trying to live my best life and to do the right things, but not in expense of someone else. I don't mind getting blamed for being too ambitious or working too hard or that, but not that I take a shortcut by not taking care of something that I should have or whatever. There's a fine line between perfection and morality of it all, but dude, it's big. Talk to me. Favorite moment doing this with cardboard? With chasing cardboard? I know you probably got your favorite baby or whatever, but is there a single moment that when someone asks you that question, you're just like, oh, that's it? Probably recency bias, for sure. But we had an episode about four months ago with Mary-Kate And her husband who was dying of cancer. That was a moment where we realized how important our platform was. I think we realized how important it was to take care of people and use the platform to glorify the Lord. So her husband was dying. She reached out and said, hey, he's a huge fan of you guys. Is there any way you can come out to see us? and film this collection and tell the story. I think he has two weeks left to live. So, and it was like, colon cancer just found out four months ago. It just erupted in his body. And so we'd stop everything because the story was so real. And we flew out there, filmed the episode, and just the emotion, you throw away cardboard. Like the cards were cool. But you throw away cardboard for a minute and just realize how important these people are, these stories are. That to me stands out by and far as the most important moment for us. And then to top it all off, we took their cards. We didn't pay for them. We said, we're going to sell them for you and every dollar goes back to you. And then we put their GoFundMe page in the page and the links, man, the hobby came around them and they paid $22,000 for their cards. Most of the collectors sent the cards back to the family after paying for them. And then they gave an extra 30 grand to the fan, like we 50, 60,000 bucks to help the family out. And just notes were written. And, it made us realize, man, this platform is here for a reason and it's not sports cards. That's awesome, dude. And I mean, that's what happens when you build an audience and build a platform that moves people. And it's interesting. I mean, I say all the time, once you build and have that community, you can point it in different ways, for good or bad. And that's an example where, yeah, it was about the card and people were interested in that. And that might be the kind of the interest grab. But then after that, what's the next layer, you know? And that's what you're, I think discovering or have already well down the path of knowing. And that's big. We get comments all the time, right. About, can you show more cards? Like the collectors come in, like, Hey, can you stop telling stories? Like, we don't care about this. Like, we just want to see more cards. And our response is always like, I think you might be on the wrong channel. Like cards are just the mechanism for us to tell a story. It's hard to balance that. It is, but you guys do a good job. I don't know. That's where it's clear. Give your producer credit. You credit for bringing it to life and then him for maybe sort of formulating the stories. It's interesting because it's always clear to me the first time I watched an episode and saw the show, I was like... someone with industry experiences behind this, like, you know, like that was clear, but that doesn't make a show work. Otherwise every professional producer that's experienced would have a hit show or a bit accessible. That it's not how it works. It's gotta be, then it's the, the stories that come to life, the people that are bringing them to life and the, how it's all woven together. And, you know, it's, Do you ever stop and just go, do you think you'd be, whether you're hobby famous or famous, but does that stop for a moment and think about, okay, I'm a YouTube star? Well, I wouldn't say that. I don't know if we're YouTube stars. Well, you know, the hobby you are. Yeah. Yeah. I think sometimes maybe we get ahead of ourselves and think we're bigger than we are. And that's a good chance for that. That's the beautiful thing about having a close friend on the same team as you is like you hold each other accountable. But yeah, man, like we've been super blessed. Like this thing has taken off and like there's been moments where you go, wait, I quit a very good job and I'm supporting eight kids by filming collections of sports cards on the road. Like what? What? Like, how cool is this? This is really amazing. So, yeah, there's no doubt that I feel lucky and blessed to be doing this. Let's talk about the business. Okay. I mean, I'm a business guy. I usually get right to the business, but I actually wanted to get into that stuff first. Hope that's all right. Yeah. Yeah. What's going on in the hobby right now? What's your take on the landscape of the hobby as a whole? I think a lot of people think it's a bubble because of how fast prices have risen, especially like goats and low pop stuff. I don't think it's a bubble, man. I think it's actually pretty strong. I think you're seeing a lot of fresh, healthy money entering the hobby. which I think is good for the overall kind of perception of sports cards. But I'll say, Middle tier down to low tier, it's much more of a grind than it was even four or five years ago. If you want to survive running a business in sports cards and you're going to focus on low end, you are fighting a current that is going to be very difficult. That was different. That was very easy to do by six years ago. Define low end. Yeah. Well, I mean, like if you're, there's a lot of guys that was thriving the $10 and below stuff, $20 and below stuff like that. It's so overprinted. Like this idea of scarcity, man, like it's so overused in the hobby. There's nothing scarce in this hobby. Like it's overprinted everywhere. If you don't have this parallel, there's another parallel right over there. You can go get it. If you want orange, I got purple. I got yellow. Whatever you want. So it becomes really difficult. I was just having this conversation with Johnny. Johnny works for me here and he's like, man, these are low pop cars. I'm like, they're low pop, but... there's 20 other parallels that are low pop as well. And you, when you combine them all, it's not low pop. Uh, so it's just, it's kind of, it's, it's hard to wrap your mind around. Yeah. Very competitive. Now content exposure, all that's feeling that is, uh, yeah, I think it is too. I mean, I wouldn't be in it. Um, so I mean, I'll, I always give solace to people that like, I don't chase unicorns and, and I mean, I did have legacy here. Uh, I've got the, uh, The old junk wax boxes to prove it, unfortunately. Those will come out on an episode eventually. You know, when I light them on fire. Yeah, right. If this doesn't work, I've got plenty of kindling to keep me warm in the family. But no, you've got so much institutional money coming in. You're finally going, wait a second. you know what? That Willie Mays and that Mickey Mantle, that's gone up more than my stock the last 40 years. Yeah. Yeah, you're just now catching on, buddy. That's real. That's very real. I mean, I know three or four guys that are taking on hundreds of thousands of dollars to go diversify wealthy assets. These wealthy guys are coming in. Wealthy ladies coming in saying, hey, I get your 400 K. Go diversify. Buy me Grail sports cards. And they're not going back on the eBay to resell. They're going into vaults. And so those last comps, man, are driving prices super... I mean, you look at Michael Jordan's stuff right now, Tom Brady's stuff. It is stupid how prices have gone up. And it's because institutional money and wealthy folks are coming in diversifying. This is an alternative asset. It's not even a question anymore. No, totally. And I still think... I'm not going to be the one to do it, but I still feel like it was just ahead of its time and not targeted to the right people. The fractional ownership thing, you know, like crashed and burned every time. Oh, I already tried that. No, they tried to do that towards the wrong people. They should have done it towards stock people and not card people. Yeah. The true collector doesn't want a fractional piece of something. But the guy that's just trying to make money doesn't really care about what it is. The device is not holding on to his Google stock in his bedroom. You know, like, let me coddle this thing like, uh, no, it's Jordan cards. You know, the collectors, I, oh, they get to stare at it in their, you know, their set collection in their bedroom or wherever they keep that thing and pray to it or whatever they do. Uh, hopefully not that, but you know, I mean, it, yeah, right. But it is an interesting time. And I, and Jeff Wilson was talking about this yesterday and I agree with it like this. The true collector versus the flip. Like, it seems like we're kind of either you got a hardcore, very small, like 1% that's the collector. You know, the guy that still got his notebook at the National that I'll see and just like fall down. I can't believe he's still doing that. Respect him, but still just can't believe it. And then everything else in the middle, like 70%, is this sort of a collector, but a flip or two. Yeah. And so, like, that's... the state of the hobby now. I think everybody's kind of like, I can at least fuel or pay for my addiction or my hobby, whatever you're going to call it. I mean, it's, it's a lot of that now. And I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. It's like, I started to think about it. And it's like, you know, it's better than sitting at the, the casino or, you know, sitting at the bar or doing whatever, you know, like, there's a lot worse things to be doing. Man, you're so right. And I get so tired of people complaining about the reselling and the flipping in this hobby. And I'm like, you realize like if that disappeared, how boring and unhealthy this marketplace would be. Like, yeah, there's some people, there's some players in this space that are just idiots. And like, you're going to learn the hard way. Like their reputation is going to boot them out of the hobby anyway. Short game players. Yeah. Yeah. But the flipping and the making money to fuel this and do like, it's, it's so important to fuel the collecting as well. Like I, they can coexist and they should coexist. And I get, I'm just done with people complaining about one or the other. What's your thoughts about sealed and scalping and all? I mean, you know, it's like, I tell people the same. This is what I say to people. if those people weren't scalping, your cards aren't worth as much as they are. Because if everybody can get whatever they want whenever they want, then your card values go down. And then suddenly everybody wants to get and chase the million dollar logo man out of a $5 pack. And I'm just like, well, that's not the way it works. You know? Right. What says you about that audience? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if there's one thing that we could solve for it, I don't need, I don't know the solution to it. It's how do we make it more accessible for kids? Yeah. That is a really, that's a tough one to solve because you, I mean, shoot, you go to a card show. Now you've experienced this probably in your shop too. Kids are bringing in $50,000 in cards and their Pelican cases. And I'm like, you're like 14. How do you, my, my sons have been grinding the hard way, building a great collection. Yeah. Like you don't need, you don't need a collector's choice box. You don't want a collector's choice box that we had growing up. Like you, you want to open flawless too. So it's like, there's a balance. I know. I agree with you. How do you make it more accessible, but they don't want the $3 value back now. So yeah, well we can, tops can come out with a lower price tier and make it accessible and it will sit like all the other stuff like that at Walmart as the one thing on the aisle. When you go in, You know what I'm talking about. That 19, you know, like, I don't know, 19, 20, 23 score box. It's, you know, whatever. No one. It's the same one that was there three years ago. And so it's like, I don't know the balance that because it's like, you're not going to get $3 packs to have $3 million cards in them. It's not. Yeah. So if you want the big chases, you got to spend the money. And if you spend the money, it's really expensive. It's a lot of investment. I don't know, even as a business guy and understanding the economics, I don't know the exact solve to it. But I do think... You know, believe in capitalism and supply and demand. And if you can go get it everywhere and it didn't have some scarcity, rarity, demand, then it's not going to have the value that it does. And then people are going to be as interested. Yeah. Some people just want to complain about something. And that's the easiest target to complain about. But, you know, I... we kind of talked about it offline. There's that beauty in collection buying. That's a, that's a solution for those that are really scratch. Like you want to scratch the itch, go buy a collection, dig through that. You can get that for pennies on the dollar and have fun with that as opposed to wasting, wasting money on sealed wax. Anyway, it's going to be a waste. I'm telling you now it's gonna be a waste. Go buy a collection. That's what I would do. Talk to me about that process. Let's do the ties. Um, I'm making up numbers, Ty. I like this. This is the marketing. Ty's five steps to finding a collection. Worth having. Three, five, two. You know, whatever it is. Yeah. How does someone go about discovering that, you know what you do and now you don't give it every way trade secret here, but you know, it's kind of what, what the question is. Yeah, man, I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid to, I mean, go to the chasing Ty Wilson, YouTube channel. I'd share all the stuff that I've learned. I'm not afraid of it. Cause I know most people won't do it anyway. They won't do it. Actions, everything. I mean, the first thing, and I tell people this all the time, If you want to buy, you got to know where your demographic is. Like you got to go to where your demographic is. You cannot expect to find a vintage collection in the Facebook marketplace. Like the 70 year old man is not posting it in Facebook marketplace. So think about where he is. He's probably reading a newspaper. He's probably going to the library. Like, I hate that like stereotype, but it's the truth. And this is where we found some of our best leads. Go spend 50 bucks and put a newspaper ad in that you're buying collections and watch who calls you. It's not the 17 year old guy that just got a, you know, a new Drake make card. it's going to be the older guy that's sitting on a bunch of cards in his basement. So like go where your demographic is and where you want to buy and like, go find those people and you'd be surprised. And I mean, I think the second thing is you got to be willing to take risk. Most people do come across collections, but they don't have, they don't have an in them to take a swing. And like, that's what it takes. You got to take a swing. You got to go all in. You got to sell every card, take your money, and you got to go take another swing. And eventually, you'll start finding some really good collections. And I think the biggest thing is like, dude, your reputation is so important. If you go build a local reputation, collections will find you. You might take a while, but like, give it a year. If you take care of people, the word will spread and you will get a call on a life-changing collection. And it came to you because your reputation. Those are three really simple things you could do. And I think would be super easy. Maybe go to church. Go to one of those old Baptist churches where, you know, the old people go, I mean, yeah, then you solve two problems in one, you know, you hear the good word and you, uh, and you might get a collection. Okay. Okay. I'm telling you, man, those people that go to these old Baptist churches are old people. Like, it's around here. It's like they're still in the S&S cafeteria at 12, dude. Like, I know where these people are. I know I could set my clock to them. Church on Wednesday night, church on Sunday morning, and S&S cafeteria at noon on Sunday. Average age, 76. There you go. Go to a church and your shirt just says, I buy collections. May or may not subscribe to a reverse mortgage. I mean, there's a few. We can identify these people. That's what we do in marketing. There you go. You know, and you can help them with that. Look, they're just trying to, hey, we're living longer. You got to extend that savings plan and a bunch of cardboard in the basement. It's not helping them. Not at all. That's the thing. It's a two-way street of value. Someone's got to get there and look, going through every card and figuring out every value and grading or not grading and going to resellers. It's a lot of work. Also, to the people that poo-poo, you're just going to that guy's collection and buying it low, sold it high. No, I'm doing all the freaking work. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I flew out to Detroit yesterday. This is not a Chasing Cardboard episode, but I flew out to Detroit to meet a guy who wanted to sell cards to me. And he was telling me over lunch, he goes, I before I reached out to you, someone passed your name to me. And he goes, I reached out to six, seven buyers. Each time they were like, I want to cherry pick. And they lowballed me. And they wanted me to go to them. And he's like, nobody wanted to actually come and make my life easy. And if you could bottle up the marketing strategy, the secrets, it's that right there. You make their life easy. You give them a fair offer. You go to them, take the stress off them. You're going to get crazy good stuff. 99% of people won't do that. No. No. It's too much work. You want to all send it to them. Amazon effect. Hey, can I get it in two hours or tomorrow? Deliver to my house, you know, hand it to me. Gift draft is a gift because I got to hand it to someone. I don't want to put anything on it. Could you write my name on it for me? It's like, exactly. I'll pay the profits. Exactly. So talk to me, Ty, this balance of, okay, you go to, if you buy something, you're, Like you said, you gave that example where you went through it. You'd already had a good idea of what was there. It was more. You gave the guy five more thousand. But where's the balance of fairness, of reality of, okay, dude's just got 20 boxes of stuff in his basement. You open one and you go, all right, this is a junk wax. There's stuff here. All right, I'm going to give you five grand. What's the balance of you have, this isn't where you thought you knew you were getting 20 Jordans and there could be the upside, like in your situation, like it's almost the sight unseen, like, but what's the balance of going and getting home. And if you've got $20,000 worth of stuff and you paid five, like where does the morale, not morality, but I guess it's just board judgment. What's the right thing to do. Is that, is that just what am I reading? Am I telling my own story here? Like, like as I talked through it, but yeah, but like, is that, how often does that happen? It doesn't happen often. And I think there's two questions here. One is how do you assess collections? And then what do you do if you don't assess it correctly? Uh, I think the first one is like experience is really important. Like you're going to make mistakes early on. I made a lot of mistakes. A lot of them were filmed and like, I didn't go back and tell you how much money I lost. Everybody likes the train wreck better than the, you know, the takeoff. Right. Right. I mean, I lost tens of thousands of dollars that first year and a half of just not buying corrections the right way. Um, so some of it's experienced, you just kind of get gut feels, you learn arrows, you learn like that you get tipped off on things people are saying. Um, and then it's also just, what do they want to sell for? It's not your job to be the buyer and the seller. If a seller wants to sell something at a certain price and it's a great deal to do it right and take it. They, so the argument a lot of times is, um, well, I could go sell it tomorrow and get these comps. And I said, okay, try it. In fact, I encourage you to try it because you can't, you haven't sold 150,000 items like I have on eBay. You don't have the audience. So you're not going to get the price that I get or sell it as fast as I sell. And you're going to quit after two weeks anyway. So like, I hate that argument anyway. It's like, you can't go do it and you won't go do it. So let's already decrease the margins that you would get. But I think it's, it's experience and just understanding like you've built an audience, you've built the system. Don't devalue that just because somebody else thinks they can sell it. But to make sure I distill that correctly, someone goes, Hey man, I'm, Dad's got an old collection. I think he wants $10,000 for it. It's a lot of 50s, 60s, 70s baseball. I don't know. It could be worth 10x that, but he wants $10,000 for it. You walk in, you open a box. I'm not saying you see a perfect 10, Mickey Mantle or anything. But you validate, okay, there's more than $10,000 here really quickly. Yeah. Yeah. No problem whatsoever handing the guy 10 grand cash check, whatever, walk out and deals done. I wouldn't say there's no problem. I think it's you assess the person you assess the situation. If it's a dire situation and you, you know, you're going to crush it. I think you need to be, if it's a guy, you need to be reasonable. You need to treat people fairly, of course. But yeah, if it's a guy, you're like, I don't like you anyway. I'm going to give you a 10 K walk out and be good. There is some of that. There really is. I hate to say it like that, but some people earn what they get to eat. Yeah. Yeah. It is a really tough one. You have to balance it. I don't want people to think they should be obligated to go back and pay people more just because I did it a few times. That's just the way, that was my gut telling me that was the right thing to do in that situation. But man, we've got great deals. And if you don't get great deals, if you don't hit home runs, your business will never take off. If you're just hitting singles all day, you're going to quit. You do this to get the home runs. And home runs can happen without you taking advantage of somebody. If he's happy and you're happy, that's a win. That's how I simplify it. There it is. That's the formula. Happy, happy, all happy. I know we're at the top of the hour here, Ty. If you got like five more minutes for me. Totally. Let's, to that end, to kind of close that chapter, what percentage, if for something, maybe not what you are at this stage with the leads you're getting, I mean, you've earned the right to get whatever you're getting now. You've put in the equity, you've done the things. But what's, if someone scans the room, scans the boxes, they've got a rough number in mind, I think I can make this reasonably. Is there a percentage that you're aiming for or they should aim for reasonably? I mean, ideally, you aim for 50%. I would want 50% margins almost every time now. And it goes up or down depending on the amount of work. So that's the biggest thing. The two drivers and margins for me are the amount of work required to get there. and the sell-through rate of particular cards or arrows or players. If stuff that you get might sell for $1,000, but it's going to sit for five months before that buyer comes along, you got to decrease the buy. You got to pay an aggressive price because your money's just stagnant. So people devalue that a lot, but it's a really important thing, sell-through rate, because otherwise you're going to run it on a 10-day auction or something. You're going to get well below market value, and you're going to lose in the deal. So... I'm aiming for 50% on average, and that covers a lot of mistakes and gives me room. Ty, I'm destined and have to get a numbered list out of you. It's just like I'm obsessed with it. So what are the four things? I'm not going to leave this alone. Three things, two things. I did it through. No, but this is worth specific. The four things... on ties lists that are sort of undervalued that you think like, maybe it's 1961 tops baseball, or maybe it's Hank Aaron's, which I personally think are too low. Like what are like a handful of those things, hopefully numbered perfectly sequential, sequentially, no pressure. Yeah. I'm kind of screwing with you, but the biggest thing is there's got to be some things on the list that people should be just in the back of their head. Um, so future hall of famers playing now, I think those are devalued, uh, not devalued, but like, those are really good opportunities. I think guys like Steph Curry to me are no brainer buys longterm stuff away. Steph stuff away. LeBron. I can't believe I'm saying this LeBron, um, probably Aaron judge, probably Mike trout get their low pop crazy insert stuff and stuff it away. That's the stuff that people really go after. Um, I'm with you on the Hank Aaron's. I think Hank Aaron, Clemente, Jackie Robinson, the highest grade you can buy of that stuff is only going to go up. I do think there's still a lot of alpha, as they say in the investment world, in the 90s inserts and 90s SP. You look at pop reports and some of the 90s inserts and parallels, like you think of like artist proofs for Ken Griffey juniors, even guys like McGuire and Bonds who are, fairly low value. Like you can get PSA 10 of some of those cards and they're like pop 70. All it takes is for bonds to, to get another resurgence or, or Griffey to keep climbing and the big money coming in scoops those cards off the market quick. So things like that are, are extremely important. I think a lot of, I think a lot of IP autos on card autos are, PSA slabbed, I think you're going to make a pretty good run. You go find Larry Bird or Jordan or Curry, any of these guys, and you go take cool cards to get them signed, rookie cards to get them IP-autoed, and then slabbed. That stuff, Messi, Ronaldo, all those guys, man, it's going to keep climbing. It's stuff like when guys start passing away, those markets, man, they... they just surge. So those are four things for you that come to mind. Like right now, why should Keel and Neil so undervalued? I have a, I have a thesis on this. You might not agree. So I think Shaquille O'Neal is undervalued. And I think it's the one thing what might hurt Wendy, but maybe not because most people can't relate to seven foot plus guy. You like Steph Curry, you go out, you do his fadeaway jumper. You shoot a three like you can be Steph Curry. You can't be seven foot two, 350 pounds Shaquille on your driveway. You can't. He just bulldozes people over and dunk. So like it doesn't relate to the common person. And so because of that, I think he's like less collectible. That's my, that's my, it's probably completely wrong, but like, that's what I've always thought. It's probably the best theory I've heard. Cause I've heard nothing that made any sense. That at least makes some sense to me. But as a 6'5 guy that could dunk and still can, I didn't relate to that. But I was not 7'2 in an absolute Hall of Fame beast. Well, you're close. You're very close. Yes. But I think that is interesting because the kids don't go out in the driveway and go, here I am doing the fadeaway shack. Yeah, my jump hook. And Gene Jordan, you know, the shot or the ball fake. You know, I think that Utah player still back there, whatever his name was. Aaron Russell. Aaron Russell, yes. Yeah. He's still in the paint thinking that ball's gone. But I love it, man. Hey, good insight. I think we're going to number those after the fact, Bill. Okay, we're going to put one, two, three, four. We're going to dub in number one. Can I ask you a question? Yeah, ask me a question. Can I ask you one question? Yeah. So content creators getting into the space. Yep. You've crushed short stuff. Instagram, man. I've been so impressed. I was telling Bella, I've been taking notes about how you do things. You're just so good at it. What would be a couple tips for guys like me who are trying to crack into the short form and grab attention in that world? I want to be transparent. I've done it for 10 years. I saw... So... Nothing replaces time. Kind of like with a podcast. Here's what I started 10 years ago, Ty. Started doing podcasting, the business show. I started doing IG. I thought I was late 10 years ago. I mean, I was like... And 10's... It's probably more like 9. I think it's 2017. And then, you know, so... time and it was a different algorithm when I built a lot of the audience that's kind of stuck with me and ridden the line and built and built and built. It's a different algorithm today. So I don't have to give back any of those followers. I don't. So like what it takes to build today is a little different, but I'll say this consistency and consistency. I think sometimes we get high on our own supply. What do I mean by that? We think we know what everybody wants, and the data actually tells you, okay, this is what people respond to. This is how they do. And sometimes people like to be their own creative director. And I probably did that at the beginning, and then I stepped away and let other people manage it and go, all right, what's working, what's not? And attention is fleeting. Right. So you've got so little time. So it's the absolute opposite of what you do now. You're building a story over an hour, over 40 minutes or 30 minutes, all that. This is how do I grab attention in 10 microseconds, you know, and keep it interesting. But then once you've got the audience, you know, you've got to continue to feed what they're most interested in. And I do think no one likes it's not sexy, but that consistency. It's just kind of like the podcast. I've done my business show, rain, shine, sickness, health, two times a week for seven years. No questions asked. Like we replay a few episodes now, every now and then we play and look, don't be, Hey, here's another thing here. This is actually the best juiciest tip, Ty. All right. Never be afraid to replay your greatest hits. Guess what? Ty. So on TV, when everybody used to watch it, maybe it's YouTube now, but let's, if you're old enough to remember this on television, you, You know those commercials? I mean, can you hear me now? It was my first ad campaign. And you know why you know that name and you know why others do? You know how many times you see the same commercial? How many times do you see that same commercial? How many times do you hear it? Thousands. But somehow, someone decided on social media, I can't post that again. I've already posted. It's done. Are you kidding? I'm not saying you post it five times a week, but you replay your greatest hits. And that creates leverage. It builds momentum and there's stuff with the algorithm. So don't be afraid to play your greatest hits, learn and look at the data and don't be your own creative director. Let, you know, learn from and ask people, you know, like what would be, what do you want to hear? What do you want to see? What do you want to do? And it's kind of back to what you said, like actually mean everything. It was so obvious. Like, yeah, I'll ask people. They tell me what they want. Most people don't want to ask. They always want to put out what they put out, you know? So I don't know if that's helpful. That's good stuff, man. Two times a week for seven years is incredible. Yeah, man. I mean, and you know what? If you knew, and you will know, we're going to become best buds at the national and your kids will be high-fiving. I don't know. How old are your boys? 17 to 16. Yeah. Mine are, they seem like that age. They're old. They're 15 and 13. But sweet. They're the 13 year old turning forward. No, he's four. I'm excuse me. 15 and 14. I'm like taking years off of them. I think I'm this wishful thing. I'm doing that on purpose now. It's like when they're seven, I want it. How are, when are they going to get eight? When are they going to be nine? Now I'm like, wait, when are they going? When are they going to stop right here? Can I stop them at this moment? No, totally with you. Please stop time. Yeah. But, yeah, man, it's, I don't know. I'm blessed. But I am ADD, so I'm all over the place. The fact that I've stuck with somebody two years for that long is my, you know, and my wife's like, I don't know how you've done it. But I will say this. My wife and certain people, not because they didn't think I could do it. You know, there was a lot of chuckles those first couple of years. Yeah. They don't laugh anymore, Ty. Isn't that funny? Funny how that works. Right? You can relate to that. I'm sure you can. Oh, you're going to be a YouTube star, huh? Oh, okay. That's cool, Ty. Good job. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. and uh now you get to live the dream and it's not perfect it's not everything you know that maybe people have in their mind but you know what we're blessed to do it i love this man had a lot of fun man me too thanks for having me on i really appreciate it drop the deets website channels all that stuff Type in Chasing Cardboard on YouTube. You're going to find us. You might find us on Instagram, too, if you type in Chasing Cardboard. Facebook, we're on all the major platforms. But if you want to watch full episodes of Chasing Cardboard, go to Chasing Cardboard. Chasing Ty Wilson on YouTube for reselling stuff. All the goodies. That's it, man. That's how you find us. Hey, guys, we appreciate you for listening. We appreciate Ty. Look, we're always chasing something. Ty is chasing cardboard. What are you chasing? That's the big question. Let's go find it. We'll see you next time on Collector Nation. Thanks for tuning into the show. Be sure to follow us on your go-to podcast platform and catch the full video episode over on YouTube. Visit us at collectornation.com and follow Ryan on Instagram at Ryan Alford. Now get out there and collect yours.