Episode 43: Finals and Rookie Cards

All right, what's up, guys? Good evening, everybody. We're on episode 40 something or other. As, as you know, when I, when I open the show, I never bothered to check, so I have no idea. But we are. We're here for another hangout, so hopefully people will pop on and join us. Click the, the link that'll be in the chat box eventually, scan the QR code, go over to our YouTube, etc. Etc. And join us. But, yeah, today we're gonna. I want to hear a little bit of final feedback from you guys, see what you thought about the series and if you think it'll impact people's, you know, buying perspectives at all. I mean, there's been a lot of talk about the Wemby love maybe not being as strong as it was before. Then we're going to jump into talking about rookie cards. And I, ironically, and I, I don't share show ideas. Dan. Dan's card account that has the Brewer Baker podcast. It's a hobby buddy of mine, but him and I don't talk podcasting at all. They actually released their episode on rookie Cards from Baseball Perspective today. So just kind of ironic timing. And according to Mitch and Dan that did their research and I did not even bother to Google this. 20 years ago, 2006 was the first time that the rookie card logo or emblem showed up on a base card. So the first time it was ever sort of identified as a rookie card with one of those shields or logos or emblems. I thought that was interesting timing. So we'll jump into all that. Joey is in a cage. His wife has locked him up. Sean. Sean's wondering why Joey's not here again. His wife has put him in time out for. For not being a good boy. And so he may. May he'll be joining us. I think his average is gonna be every other week. In reality, Joey's on summer break right now, but he'll be. He'll be in and out, so. And as will some of us. The point of having multiple people here and hopefully more of you guys joining is that, you know, it's not always gonna be the same crew and same voices. But let's go around the horn. If anybody's got any hobby updates, I'll start. So the only car I got in this week was, I think last week I mentioned that I was on. I joined Caitlyn for cold Lunch cards on a WNBA card podcast and we talked about the Connecticut sun and, and also I. This week was when I finally antied up and. And bought tickets for a couple different games for my daughter and I. So I got in. We've done jersey numbered stuff in the past. This is in Alyssa Thomas oneon one. It's called the first team signature. So she's no longer on the sun, but this is a Connecticut sun card and you're not going to be able to see it, I don't think. But it's right there. Jersey number number 25 out of 25. It's a purple parallel. As I've been buying tickets to games and thinking about the sun, it's. It's become very obvious to me that Alyssa Thomas is going to be, you know, go down in history as the greatest sun player ever. She's just spent so much time and she's just probably the most consistently dominant player. So that's a fun little pickup. And then the other hobby update I have that'll be talking about throughout the summer is I did end up booking a trip to Dallas to go down the Dallas card show. I got a couple hobby be heading down there. I'm more going. I. I actually don't love a card show. I mean I like my tolerance for being amongst the crowds and everything is pretty minimal. So I'll probably only go for maybe Friday, but I'm gonna go catch a game with a friend of the hangout, Carter. There's a WNBA game down at the Dallas Wings is playing Thursday. And then I think Saturday Kyle and I are gonna hop into Dallas and do a little JFK sightseeing. So gonna mix a couple different experiences out of it. But I'll be at the show at least all day Friday and I'm sure a little bit on Saturday, but doing a few other things. So that's my, my hobby updates. And how about, how about you, Adam? You got anything going on? We know Adam's got a card he pulled recently. You gotta pull out. We're gonna do this Disney thing every week now. Yeah, yeah, we gotta. I mean it's only things I've been buying for the most part, so I guess it's fair. But yeah. I sent this to the group chat earlier from a retail mega box I pulled the Dark Wing, the numbered out of 101. Like a Dalmatian print. Wow. Looks pretty cool. Is that a rarity? Like a Dalmatian rarity? Yeah, yeah. So the whole set's number to 101. It's just kind of a Dalmatian print. This just happens to be the Darkwing one. But they're kind of tough pools. You don't really See, because of how many options there are of parallels, you don't see these as often as some others. But yeah, it was pretty, pretty funny. I was kind of slow rolling it a little bit and I was like, this is. There's no way. I'm like, of course. That's actually perfect. That's what I would have bought anyway. My wife, that's probably her favorite parallel anyway. She loves all like the animal characters and that print she loves. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I like it. For someone who's not into the Disney cards yet, if I don't mind asking, like, how much are the hobby boxes or are the blasters worth it or do they even have blasters? Yeah, so blasters are like 39.99. Megas are 69.99. And hobby boxes retailed I think at 5 or 420. They're selling for about 600. And for me, the. I bought a number of the retail boxes. Not all of them have come in yet, but you on average get one number card per mega and you get like probably one number of cards 70 of the time in a blaster, but you only get four in a hobby box. So the odds are a little better if you just buy the retail stuff. In my opinion, you don't have quite the high end chase. You're not gonna have as good of odds on like the really, really rare stuff, but you're going to get a better kind of mixture of stuff than you would. And admit it, Adam, you were a little giddy pulling that. It was like being a kid again, ripping some wax. You're not wrong. Foil card of your favorite player. No, that's like super fun. Yeah. So like, I was like, I said slow rolling because I saw the. I peeked the side of it and saw the parallel and I was like, oh, that's the best parallel we've gotten in these. So I'm just kind of slow rolling and I saw the hat and I'm like, man, that's pretty surprising. If any character I would want, that would be it. My wife would probably pick something else I did pull. It was funny. We only hit three number cards and four boxes. But she really likes the great mouse Detective. And we pulled one number of her. One of her favorite characters as well. There's, like I said to the chat earlier, just the odds of that. There's a 200 card checklist. Getting three number cards and two of them being like the absolute number one chase for each of us was pretty funny. What's the number you're off from the full rainbow. The Darkling Duck. I know you're like, what do you. What are you at? Like 10 parallels now? How many parallels are there? So the others. The other set I did was. I already finished the entirety of it. It's just a different run of cards. That was from a top neon set and that was like the Dark wing for the Bringing it back full circle. That's like the rookie, if you will, isn't it? That's his first modern card. This is. This is Chrome. Now the other one was a Chrome insert, essentially like a. A parallel of the base card. I did the full run of those. This is his first like flagship TOPS Chrome card, if that makes sense. Gotcha. All right, cool, man. That's the only one I have of that so far, but it just came out yesterday. Yeah, I was gonna say I saw. I've been seeing some posts on. On Instagram about the just dropping recently, so. But I will say I. I personally think the other set, the neon stuff is nicer. It's 55 point card stock on the chromes. Okay. And it's really like really nice. But you only get, I think it's like three or four Chrome cards per box and there's not a guarantee of any of them being numbered. So like it's pretty feast or famine. I've seen people rip a case and get like one or two chrome numbered cards and it's numbered out of 99. It's real tough. And the paper stuff's pretty junky. So yeah, it's. It's kind of a feast or famine thing, which made the. The rainbow of all the chromes pretty tough because they're just kind of watered down in the product. Right. Very good. Cool stuff, dude. Anything, any other updates? I don't think so. I think just. Just that I have some basketball stuff coming in, but it hasn't showed up yet. But I think that's about it for me. Tim, what do you been have going on your hobby life? Any, any new pages completed or any new projects you've been working on? You know, I'm. I'm definitely working on some stuff, some full pages. Sometimes I think I have nine cards and I'm waiting for the ninth to come in. Or I think I ordered nine and I'm like, man, this ninth card's taking a while. Then I go and check and like I never ordered a ninth card. So I have some. A Brandon Clark page, who obviously he passed away not too long ago, but he does make my cut because he averaged exactly 10 points. So that's, that's one of my thresholds. Like if they didn't hit one of the, you know, the quantity thresholds. If they average 10 plus, I will collect them. So like someone like Drew Timmy, who still does because if he had a strong stint with the Nets, I will collect. So Clark's coming in. Purvis Ellison, I'm gonna be done with soon. And actually two guys right after that that are involved with the show, so to speak. Tyreek Evans turns to Joey and then just this is all falling alphabetically. I'm not choosing. I get next and Kenneth Freed for Ryan. So I have a couple of those building up over time. And I gotta say I'm very impressed with the Kenneth Reed page in particular. I think there's a lot of nice parallels of him and the colors really work nice. And they have some good photos in the select and Prism cards of his, especially early on. So I'm excited about that one. The minimal. Yeah, he had a ton of cool action shots like in early Panini years. And he was just such a, you know, exciting player to watch back then too. Lots of, you know, high energy plays and they captured a lot of it on the card, so that's cool. And he was, he was a big prospect coming into league too, so they were ready to get him in his sets. And so between. And he was. I don't know when he left the Nuggets, Ryan, but I feel like probably he was riding that sweet spot of panini from like 2012 to 2016. So you've got a lot of different inserts and parallels in good looking cards. And. Yeah, I bet that, I bet that'll be a fun page to finish up. Yeah, I want to say his last season was maybe that 16, 17. It might have been 17, 18. I can't remember. Somewhere around that. Yeah. And I'm. Unfortunately, they didn't make a Nets car to him. I know he was with us briefly, but that's one of the ones they didn't get around to, unfortunately. But in terms of other hobby stuff still, you know, collecting each of these new sets, but I don't have it in front of me right now. But if you check out my page or if you guys have seen, I've been getting more of the aqua lava Cosmic from Cosmic. And I think the team that, that really works with them the best right now is, is the spurs because, you know, traditionally it's gray and, and black and white, but they've incorporated some teal in there, some of their uniforms and in their arena and on the floor this year a lot. So I think I've always been a big teal guy, if you guys know me. So I, I've taken these modern spurs and mixed them with a lot of teal refractors when I can. So one I got in this week was Stefan Castle and I think that was a cool one. I, I saw them going for like 75, 60, 75, which is not that much money. But I, you know, I was holding off for a little while and then I found one for 30 and I hopped on it immediately when I wasn't exactly, you know, adding it to my cart at the time. But I was just cruising on ebay and saw it and I'm like, all right, just got to grab that now. I'm not going to see it for 30 again. Looks clean. I got it. It looks perfect condition. But definitely really, really love the aqua lavas with the spurs. Yeah, I bet that works because that, that the orange, pink and teal go back to. They call it the fiesta theme and it goes back to like their original logo. Back in the 80s and 90s there was a time original optic 16, 17 optic had a tail, a pink and an orange parallel and I did that. I did the three card run for like Kawaii is one of my. Like I have an optic binder. So yeah, those, those colorways do work sneaky well for the Wait. So you have a teal Kawaii from the mid-2010s. I did. Don't. Not anymore. I gotta at least see a picture one of these. That sounds crisp. I probably archived. I'll. I'll share with you. All right. Brian, any updates on your end? Yeah, just one sports card recently but it's this Malik Beasley from Solet. Nice. Got part of the Nuggets logo so I had to grab that one. That's a nice piece too. Yeah, anything that's kind of like the Nuggets logo. It's not like a crazy expensive yokich card obviously Chase probably from a pair of shorts maybe. Was that, would that have been like in the, the leg of a shorts or. It could have been, yeah. It's definitely their alternative uniform. Just trying to think of where it might have been. Yeah, it could have been on a warm up too. Oh, there's a lot of warm up stuff coming out of silhouette too. But yeah, I mean if you put that full logo, you know, that would be quite big. So yeah, you're right. It's probably not a jersey. It could, could be shorts we got Ryan. I'm going to add him because. Hey, what's going on, man? This is his topic tonight about rookies. So glad you can. Yeah. And sorry for being late. I. You're good. I have to get Starbucks for my wife. It's so important. It keeps it strong and whatever you need to do to get through an evening for sure. So. So I'm assuming we all watch the finals. I'm wondering, does anybody have any quick, you know, we don't have to go into, you know, depth about it, but do we have any. Sean's tagging you as ng Ryan, so no glasses. Ryan is in the house. Any takeaways as far as how the series went or, you know, some of the. I'm fascinated with all the. The fallout. Both. As far as, you know, people are already over analyzing roster construction, the fact that Brunson's not a max player and is that the next wave of contracts and then the, you know, Wemby, is he dirty and the technical fouls and he's not the superstar that he was going to be in the face of the league. And the people just, I mean, they go into the stratosphere with their takes. But I wonder if you guys have any, you know, takeaways from watching the finals or just maybe how it'll impact the hobby at all. I love, you know, the playoffs in general, but the finals and then thinking of the historic implications of everything know, now certain people are champions, certain guys aren't champions. I think Wemby's going to be great, obviously, as long as he stays healthy, but definitely a punch to the gut in his rise in this series. You know, I think he'll be fine over time. But the Knicks are just, you know, as a Nets fan, such an amazing basketball team to watch. They were really difficult to root against. And as a Nets fan, I don't. I never really had animosity towards the Knicks because we never really kind of clashed and had a rivalry. So, you know, I enjoyed watching this with my father in law and a lot of my friends who may not even be into basketball in the last couple of years. Really it encapsulated the city in New York. I definitely didn't work in the city today. Didn't want to be involved in the mob or just getting home. The subway system was. What a mess. That was like. That's my personal nightmare to be stuck in something like the subway systems in New York on a day like today. Yeah, and it'd be hot and it's just, you don't want to. You don't want to be there. So I definitely avoided the city. But in. In terms of the team and historic implications, Jalen Brunson, incredible. Not many point guards lead your team to the finals, scoring 45 in the. In the closeout game. You know, it's a very small group of hall of Fame point guards who have done, you know, who have been the leading scorer on their team and won. So I think those historic implications are. Are pretty interesting. And then there's a thought. You know, how high does he go up in the, you know, the best player in the game currently list? Which is a whole other discussion, but I think it's an interesting one and, you know, not quite as much, but I think OG really took a ginormous leap in terms of how. I think, you know, many people are seeing him, you know, in terms of wings, not just defensively, but, like, how valuable they are to their team. I would probably think OG is, if not in pretty close to top five wings you'd want to have on your team in the NBA, you know, so I think there's those historical implications. And then, Cat, you know, I. I think it's not set in stone, but I would probably put my money on all three of them squeezing into the hall of Fame when their careers are over. It's hard to say early on in their careers, but, you know, they're stacking up a lot on their resumes and quick. And I don't know, east is going to be tougher next year, but I don't know if this Knicks team is, you know, is done yet with. With this group or most of this group. So I think a healthy Celtics and Pacers and Pistons, maybe adding Norman Powell at the 2. I think it's going to be crazy, the east next year, and. But this next team has just been so exciting to watch, and it's going to be exciting to watch next year. I think they should all get into the hall of Fame because the NBA, the Basketball hall of Fame, is like the hall of, like, slightly above average. So pretty much everybody gets in. I think they're getting no problem. I think Wemby just tasted more adversity going through Wemby's past. I think the last four or five, six years, he's had a lot of adversity that he's had to face, just, you know, loss after loss, and I don't think it's chipped anything away from him. And I think he came back with a level of aggression. But I think I was a 22 year old who didn't really know what to do with the aggression he was feeling and how to channel it directly. And we also had a head coach that was a little inexperienced, so he didn't really know how to call the shots at the right time. But I think they're both going to find a level of maturity over this offseason and I think the next 10, 15 years in San Antonio are just glowing. Yeah, this team's here to stay. And just to quickly go to the spurs again, if I could jump in one more time. I think one of the coolest things about the series, whether they won or not, the Harper Fox dynamic box. Always a solid point guard, former all star, but you know, he's not that great defensively. He's not the best facilitator. I think there was many times in this series where he was getting picked on by OG and others to force turnovers, especially in Game 4. And he kept shooting when he definitely should have created for someone else, particularly down the stretch of a couple of these games. And you had heard after game one or after game two, Derek Harper had shared on his tick tock some memes that other people created saying Fox sucks and then quickly deleting it. Like I, we know how talented Harper is and what he's going to be. You know, I, I've, you know, quantitatively his numbers aren't there yet. I look at him as a more aggressive, cage cutting, better defender. Maybe not as good of a shooter yet, but he is incredible at slashing, incredible at defense. There's not a moment where Fox deserved to be on the court more than Harper during the entire series. So Fox is under contract. He has one of those John Morant contracts, one of those lamelo ball contracts that they're not going to be able to get rid of easily. So I think Mitch Johnson has a tough decision next year. Are we really going to keep Fox in the lineup over Harper? Or maybe you play harper at the 2? I think if Popovich is there, I don't know if he'd sit Parker so easily. But I think Fox needs to come off the bench as a six man and be like a scoring threat when he comes in. And then Harper needs to run this team. I think it's a matter of time. The longer you wait, you know, I think it's a detriment to the team. I think Harper is ready to run this team and he has the killer mindset which he's like begging, banging on the door, give me those minutes. And so he's what's going to happen with him over, over the next year or two is going to be very fun to watch. Yeah, good takeaways guys. I, I just enjoyed it just not having any investment in E13 and that was kind of how I went into it is just like I don't want to watch some good basketball. And you know, the Knicks come back and what was that Game three or whatever it was or game four rather. That was really fun to watch. And then just the series as a whole and it was funny to see the momentum shift. You know, when San Antonio took the one game and everybody's like, oh, Wimby is going to be the greatest player ever. And you know he's, he's the one. And then to you know, kind of passing the buck off to the Knicks and now the Knicks are going to be the greatest ever. You know, it's always interesting to see those takes and people that are maybe in the card space as well maybe a little over invested in one player or another. So I was, I always like getting a little laugh out of that as people kind of go through these massive like shifts in, in how they view whatever the game outcome was. But yeah, I think for me it was kind of just showed that there's a lot, there's levels to this where you can have a player like Wemby who's fairly developed at this point. I mean he's, he's a great player. He's going to be a great player, you know, willing that he stays healthy. But that coaching kind of took over in that regard. You know, they came up with game plan to stop him. They came up with a way to, you know, he's, he's not quite there yet. And they exploited his weaknesses. I mean that's really what happened. And I think people are quick to jump on the oh Wimy let us down and all this kind of stuff. But to me he played like what is he, 22 now? Something like that. He played like a 22 year old. I mean he's not going to be the greatest player ever at 22. So I don't. He played like a 22 year old. He acted like a 22 year old. He gave when, when he told the media see you never. And it's like it's, it's just a couple months. When bhs come, we will all be right back here. And, and that's the kind of the thing about it is like we, I think it's card collectors and I'm going to bring this back to like what I've seen like in the card collecting space. Since we're a card podcast is it. We, we tend to be overly invested a little bit because we've bought their rookie cards. We paid X amount of dollars for these cards. Right. And I've done the same thing. I fall into this trap. I try not to, but you just do. And then you over, you try to overanalyze it when a 20 year, 2 year old is just acting like a 22 year old. I mean, let's be real. So you know, I just, I think that there's kind of that aspect of it. But overall, just my overall take was it was pretty fun. It was a fun series to watch. Just all the ups and downs for additional fun for me just to laugh at. Another takeaway is these are going crazy on ebay. Jalen Brunson AUTOGRAPH rookie CARD I just got this in a retail blaster at Walmart, you know, before he even broke out on Dallas. And I was like, oh, that's that guy on Villanova. And I kind of hung on to it and I think now's the time to move it. What do you guys think? Yeah, yeah, move it and then you can, you know, you put together another like 15 pages of your employer. Yeah, I think, I think that's the, that's the plan. But I put it on Facebook Marketplace and I'm already getting tons of messages, you know, because of, you know, New York. So you know, people want this thing. So I think it's time to move it. Yeah, I would say so. You know, just talking about that real quick is like, it is kind of interesting because a lot of times the lead up to like a finals will be when the price spikes. But I think there's just so much fandom in New York right now and a lot of the players didn't have these hype cycles. A lot of the New York players. So now you're kind of seeing like prices increase after which is not typical. It's typical usually the run up. So like the web and Yama exponential growth and then decline. That's more typical because it's all the people trying to get in and flip it or whatever. But I think with a lot of the guys from New York, they were never like really hyped players to begin with. Maybe like cat back in the day. But that was like prior to the boom and stuff. So interesting to see how that is working out right now. But yeah, I would, I would definitely move it. Be like a card. I would. What are they going for just out of curiosity. So the most recent one was sold for 199 and that was sold June 4. So none of these have been sold during the finals. So I think this week I'm putting it up for 300 and seeing who bites. 2 to 300 for a sticker auto. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just, you know, it's nice to have. It's cool to have. I like it. But yeah, I think in general with guys who get traded happens a lot these days. No one stays with their team and then they go to another team. They're. They're not as much of an allure for me to keep. You know, I don't have as much of an affinity for maybe if it's a net that I loved and I have the rookie net card but like if Jalen Brunson maybe was a Nick from the beginning, I would maybe want to keep that. Not that I'm a Knicks fan, but I, I would have more attachment if that person stayed there long, you know, long term. But yeah. Anyway, I'm ready to move it. Were you gonna jump in there, Adam, before I say respond to Ryan? Oh, sure. Yeah. I was gonna say like I wish I could have been more Ryan with glasses mentality of not caring. I've hated the Knicks forever. I was hoping to never see them succeed in my life. So I wasn't very pleased with the outcome. I will say they played well. I mean they countered the the game of Wima and the spurs pretty well. They were out coached dramatically. I had PTSD watching. I felt like I was watching a Celtics game again, just chucking up threes and trying to get their way out of the game. I do think the Fox hates a little bit warranted. I've read your comments in the chat there, Steve. The, the money he's paid is definitely a correlation to the expectation you have for him on the court. But beyond that, he's supposed to be the coach on the court as well. He's the veteran leadership. The coach is clearly not, not capable of making the game time decisions as well as he should be to be in that position. He should have been a little bit better of a veteran leader on the, on the court. Especially on the play. They got blocked by OG and Anubi. I mean you got to pull back on that or even before that. Like when they saw he was getting trapped on so many plays, it's like either pull him out or say hey man, stop holding the ball. Stop trying to create a shot for yourself. Create a shot for Others, but. But yeah, I just. I felt like as a. As a whole, it was disappointing because everybody's going to point the blame towards women both now and in the future for not winning that championship. But I don't think the team was ever designed for him to succeed. Honestly, they. They played a brand of basketball that wasn't cohesive with what he's the best at. He's a 74 freak. And every time I felt like they found him inside, it was when he was in the worst positioning and it was like a bailout position rather than it being a forced play that they got it kind of in a mismatch inside. So I just. I didn't enjoy seeing the coaching. Like I said, it brought me back to watching the Celtics getting pissed off of that all season. If I was the spurs upper management, I would do the same thing. If I was the Celtics upper management, even with the success they had this year, I'd probably look for another coach. I think that was the weak point of the team. They're definitely. I agree. And I wonder if. I wonder if there's any regrets about leaving Chris Paul, you know, and if that veteran leadership in the locker room could have made a difference, you know, and that's tough. You got a young coach and we all know CP3 is very outspoken and he's had teammates that he rubs the wrong way. But I. I do wonder if, you know, by the time you get to the finals, that veteran leadership can go a long way. And I agree with you on Fox. And I also think, like, you know, the. The roster wasn't built the way it should have been. I think they had an additional Luke Cornett. I know they had Kelly Olenek and they had a few other scrub centers. Like, they had way too much, too many players that weren't capable of playing in the playoffs sitting on their bench when they could have had a little more depth that could have helped out the coaching staff and everything. What I was thinking right, as you were talking about the hobby side of it, this might be a good transition to the rookie card. Thing is, I was watching the series and like, looking at all the feedback and thinking like, this hobby just never learns, right? We. We anoint these guys as the next whatever, the next LeBron, the next goat, the next Jordan. I was like, harold Miner should be here having this conversation with me, right? Because he was Baby Jordan, like going back to as far as I can remember. And I think where we're at now is there's so much money in the hobby and Then people are rooting for the money in the investment side of it, too. Right? And, like, Luke was anointed the next face of the league before he did anything. And the reality is we're in a situation right now where there's been, what, eight different consecutive finals champions, right? So there is really no face of the league right now. Is every year a team, you know, peaks and. And gets over the hump and does something amazing, and then the next year, they. They may or may not struggle, and, you know, OKC got to game seven of the final of the Western Conference finals, but, you know, the. The year the Celtics look like the best team and the best chance in a long time to repeat, they got bounced in the second round. Right? So it doesn't take much for a lot of diversity come into the league. And I think a lot of the frustration with Wemby right now is people that jumped on either as a fan and were like, I'm gonna watch the next goat of the league are. You know, I think what our algorithms share more with us is the card side of it. And I bought all this unlicensed Wemby crap, and I need it to be an investment. And now what if it's not? And what if instead of winning an MVP and two championships in his first five years, what if he's just another guy that has to fight to the top, and when he's 28, he reaches the peak of his powers and wins a championship or two? And what if he's just that guy? And I don't think people appreciate, you know, the fandom side of it as much because we anoint them so quick. And I think it'll be interesting to see. To maybe to wrap this up before I move to rookie cards. I think it'll be interesting to see because you said so many teams, different teams have been winning. I think the last eight years, there's been not. Hasn't been a repeat. Like when the 2000 and 20s are over and there's only three more championships to be won in this decade. Will Shea have the most championships? Will Tatum have the most championships? Will Giannis? Will Jalen Brunson? Will Tatum, you know, Jokic, you know, I think that'll be interesting. Who. Who can win two in this decade? Yeah. And just a go off what you're saying, Steve. It's. It's interesting to see the point of view from, like, all the card people, because that's mainly what I follow on Instagram, and I'm sure you guys do, too. They're buying at the kind of up to the peak that's when they're buying and the prices that they're paying, especially on that run up, you know when oh he's going to be in the finals, might win the finals or whatever. You're literally paying probably the price a decade or two from now of like multiple championships, multiple MVPs. I mean as things roll out, how many players nowadays are worth the prices that people are paying for like a women Yama card right now? Like you're paying the prices of like a high end like Kobe or Jordan in some cases or any other player that that may have even be less than what you could pay for now because there's plenty of NBA champions where you can get their stuff for dirt Chief. I mean we've talked about Duncan many times on this channel and his stuff as you know, being a what was it, five time champion or something like that. Similar along those lines. But multiple MVP is the same deal and like decades later he's, he's still not worth the hype price that people are paying for like one mino now. So it's kind of, it's crazy. And you like you said Steve, people fall into the same shop year after year after year and you got to figure some of the guys have probably fallen into it before but yet they're still buying into the hype. And I just, I didn't it never under. I never understood it. So I think that's probably a good transition into our rookie talk. Let's talk about somebody that is worth the hype and I just thought so talking about rookie cards. So I, I'm here more just for the conversation because to be straight up, I'm not a big rookie card collector and actually Adam know that I just sold off a bunch of cards and he, he kind of picked up on what some of the ones were as he was scrolling through ebay I think because he, he messaged me selling off those rookies. Huh. Because I had a whole collection of all the Celtics retired numbers there like IPSA graded rookie cards. I sold them off just I'm just not a huge rookie card collector. Just unless it's you know is a specific. I'm more like my collection is going to be more towards like my memories of watching a team. And so you know, if I wasn't watching John Havlicek and Bob Koozie, you know I'm not feeling the need to have the rookies as much. So I thought Ryan Ng Ryan when you brought this up was a Pretty interesting topic and I thought we'd start with just what a. What a rookie card is and what it's not. Because I think what's interesting is I was thinking about the. One of the few rookie cards I really love having and I still have my PC is the Bird Magic rookie card we talked a couple weeks ago about. Well, why is that the rookie card for Bird and Magic when each of them have, you know, different mini cards within that top set. And then you think about today where like each player has, I don't know, a hundred different base rookie cards. And then on top of that you've got the parallels, the inserts, the game used stuff, the not game used stuff, the autos. So it's really interesting to see like you know, over time what will end up being like the rookie. Like what will be like Jokic, what will be his the like rookie that if somebody just wants to go back and get like a rookie card it'll probably be the Prism base, but in reality it'll probably be the Prism Silver, but that's a parallel. It's not really a rookie card. So I think it's like the waters are so muddy that I really will be interested to see how it plays out over time. So with that said, I thought we would talk about what's Michael Jordan's rookie card and see if you guys had any thoughts on that and then maybe we'll share some cards. So for those that don't know, Jordan was his first NBA licensed pack pulled card was in 1986, but he was drafted. Tim, what year was he Draft? I feel like you would know. Was he the 83? I think it was 83. 84. 84. So you'd be in the league for a couple years. And prior to that his only other license card was the star card which were team bag cards that were like sold at arenas only so they weren't readily available, they weren't distributed nationally. So as long as I've been in the hobby there's been a debate, you know, the 86 flair was the king of his. Like that was his true rookie and the star was an xrc like a pre rookie card. But momentum has changed. You know, that was his first NBA license card. So I don't know, let's toss it around. Does anybody have any strong feelings one way or another about what the Jordan rookie is? And maybe like I said, we'll use that to start sharing some of the rookies that you guys brought us some stories you have about rookie cards. I feel like for years and years and years, the rookie card was just the base card. So. So in my head, when I was collecting and enjoying collecting and young and just kind of getting into it, I was looking for that, that base card rookie card, the one that said RC in the back. It. Right. Like, my head was like, I want that rc. I think changed a lot. Ever since the rookie card badge has kind of come out, the rookie card badge kind of got popularized. I don't know, like 070809 sometime. But Panini's carried it all the way through most of their products. Because of that, it's really started to change the way that people perceive rookie cards and inserts now. And just like you said, parallels, all those kind of carry that same rookie card moniker now because they all carry that same badge and Beckett doesn't print nearly as many magazines and they don't have the foothold that they did anymore. So people don't really recognize what that is. So I think it's changed a lot. And I think nowadays you can have a insert that is a rookie card that has the rookie card label on it. And. And I think it would be considered like a rookie year version of that person's card. Yeah, I think it depends on the person and how much money you have and what insert or base card satisfies you, I guess. Right. You know, because not many people are going to be able to pony up for a joker prism silver, you know. So I think, you know, I actually have the rookie for Yokik, but you know, to me, to me that's fine. But someone else, you know, like Ryan maybe would want a silver or something that, you know, maybe he could afford that. I can't, I would say to bring it back to the Jordan as the XRC or they just explore. I like the star cards, so I determined for myself like 10 years ago to chase them and consider them rookie cards because they're a licensed product. Right. So that's my take on it. It's like if it was unlicensed, then I would be like, nah. But he's. He's drafted in 84, right? I don't own one, by the way. Do you own the. The 86 but not the 84 given he was drafted in 84 and you got guys like Ewing in there, Isaiah Thomas, what some of the other ones I got. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So you got a lot of people that came out of those star team bag sets. So I consider them rookies. But, you know, there's. There's always been The XRC designation because it's not packed full, because it didn't come out in stores or whatever. I get that side of it. I've just always taken the stance that, hey, these are kind of cool to collect and I consider them a rookie card. I don't explicitly consider them XRPC just because I think they're fun to chase. So that's kind of my thought on it not owning the Jordan. I think the big point and this is just, you know, this, this, you guys may agree with this or heard of it. The big push on the Jordan XRC being the rookie is because they're worth so much now and they're going up and up in value. So I think there's a large push from the people that own them to call them the actual rookie card and change that kind of designation as XRC because they're now into it for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, you know, there's also that side of it. Yeah, I agree. And I just want to point out the Chad is sort of picking up on this and this is a crazy one. Makes a good point about, you know, continuing. So while we don't have Beckett, stuff like TCDB and comc do help us. And so the true rookie card should be just a base card from the base set and everything else is, you know, rookie year and in the incom C does label it that way. TCDB does as well. So I think that's a good point. There was a time when I first got back on the hobby that I thought the hobby would push towards like in 2012, 13. I don't. I think Panini's like house brand or Panini Prestige were the first ones released for that season. I was thinking maybe the hobby would go towards, okay, that's the first product. It's one of the things that I do think Topsail be helpful for in the, in the hobby for those people that do like rookies is that they have, you know, tops. What my brain's broken today. What's the base set for Tops called? Stop Series one. Right. So traditionally at top series one, I think, and then on top, then after that they'll release their chromes and their finest. So I do think that'll be helpful. NG Ryan was talking about the, the rookie badge and I remember back in the hobby boards or the blow up forms or whichever ones was on at the time. And I think it was 2019. Panini released rewards packs and they were kaboom rewards packs. It was a whole set of kaboom cards and Jason Tatum, even though he was in his second year, got the rookie badge on it and people were like up in arms that this was gonna someday sell as a rookie card because nobody would remember that it was released in 2019 and Panini put the rookie badge on it. And you know what? Those people were right because that card sells for stupid money right now and it's AI generated Tatum rookie kaboom. And it goes for just insane money. I, I actually pull, I got, I got one of the packs and I pulled the Tatum and I kept it for a while. I ended up selling for like a thousand bucks. But I think it's like well, well, well North. So yeah, that that rookie badge carries some power and they put that on everything now. They put it's on all the parallels, it's on even some of the, the relic cards. So that was a good point Ryan. I also had one of those and sold it way too too soon. It was just such a stupid card. I mean I still don't think it was worth what I sold it for but. But yeah, I haven't looked. It's one of those ones. There's no point in just pissing yourself off. I haven't seen what they go for. But to kind of spin back around. I do think the Jordan 84 is the XRC and the 86 is the regular rookie. I, I wouldn't argue one way or the other two vehemently in terms of trying to change anybody's opinion. But I do think the other kind of on the flip side of the sports spectrum, the mantle 52 tops versus 51 Bowman's a little bit more of a clear cut, just hobby influence the decision kind of situation. The 51 Bowman's is rookie even though the 52 tops is exponentially more popular. The 84 Jordan has that kind of nuance to it being a star brand, not pack inserted, not regional or not nationally or internationally released like I think the Tops was or the FLIR would be. So, so yeah, I do think that that's kind of a confusing one but I think that the Mantle was a perfect example of showing what the hobby can influence and push versus like what the true rookie is. I also think that's the influence that you see of people coming into the basketball hobby after everything kind of blew up and got crazy is I never saw common cards become valuable like they were. I never saw second year cards become valuable like they were. But I think there was a situation where Jeter's rookie year was considered like two or three years because he was prospecting during those times and it wasn't necessarily a rookie card. So when I saw basketball, baseball card collectors start coming into the basketball card collecting area, they were bringing some of those same mindsets directly into our processes. And the, the, it did start to change valuations of some of those things. Yeah, that's. I'm trying to look it up right now. But, but Ryan, you're spot on. And I gave a shout out to the Baker and Brewer podcast, which is a baseball card podcast. They happen to drop a rookie card episode this week and they talked about one the history of the Babe Ruth rookie card because he obviously way back then there's several different iterations and what the hobby is taking his true rookie. But you're spot on with remembering that fact about Jeter because what like MLB statistics, like as far as numbers of games played, his rookie season was like 94.95. But the cards that the hobbyist taken to for his like rookie year cards are at what that 92 upper deck or something. So you're. There's definitely a correlation there. And what would have traditionally been XRCS is you know, his rookie. And then in a very disgusting just connection because it was Wander Franco and he's just a bag of crap is it was actually like Wander Franco coming up before anybody knew he was going to come up in a league. And so his only cards were Bowman prospect cards and those had to kind of took the baseball side of things by by storm. And those became his quote unquote rookie card even though they were for a prospecting set because like nobody's ready to make Wander Wando cards. So yeah, the baseball side of it definitely is more history with rookie cards. And I think there's a lot more base set collecting in baseball cards and a lot more obviously history. So it's, it's an interesting correlation because the basketball side has similarities with a lot of differences and I do have a couple to share. My mail day today is actually all rookie cards. This is a Ben Gordon, nothing crazy. It's a photographer proof from Skybox LE that year number to 35. Got it on ebay. Super, super, super inexpensive. Got a Sean Livingston rookie here. It's a Elgin Baylor autographed. This one's really cool. It's numbered to 2, 200. I also have one numbered to 25. Elgin Baylor. The whole idea of him signing that autograph was he was the best player for the Clippers at the time or back then. So he was like the, the senior player compared to the rookie coming in that year. This one's a Port Zingus I just picked up. Wound up going on a weird nick pickup. Of course it's all replay because it's just the worst product they ever had. Number to 49. It's a port Zingis rookie. And then I also got the other variation numbered to 49. Just picked these ones up again. Just, just over this week I was buying New York Knicks cards because I do have a familiar disdain for the Knicks. And then this one is a con knipple. X fractor. Can't really see it that well. Apologize. Con knipple. Oh, there it's a little better. X fractor. I thought that was interesting because while I have the VJ edge comb and I have some others, it's very similar to like the Moses movie. Moody. I'm sorry? Not Moses Moody. Moses Mobley. No, the checkerboard. Excuse me? Yes, the checkerboard. Very similar. The checkerboard and that and that X fracture pattern. All super similar. This one is the Luka Doncic X factor. Well, checkerboard. Yeah. Classic X factor pops. I just love. It's the semi green chrome Kobe rookie year. 96, 97. Nothing crazy, nothing special. Pulled it out of a retail box and it's just my pride and joy. So just some rookies to kind of run through the years, but nothing too, too nuts. I. I couldn't quite see the detail in the Kobe, but doesn't look all that green. Like maybe it looks like maybe a little bit of greening in his arm and maybe up the neck, but doesn't. There's definitely much more hugged out copies out there. Yeah. And this one's just been in the collection so it hasn't had any issues with. With, with being in light. So. But he does look a little green. He does look a little green. I'll show you guys something wild. I've had this for 10 years but like literally I. I can't see on it. Yeah, that's super. It's crazy. I don't know how is some like green, some don't. But yeah, that one I bought back in blowout days when I was first kind of getting into the hobby and it's. It's just never turned. Yeah. I actually bought this Duncan here. This is Tim Duncan. Tops, chrome refracture. And this one has greened over the time that I've owned it which is again probably, probably not that 10 year mark, but maybe like six, seven years I've had this one. But that one also used to be like relatively not green. Right. And so I, you know, for those of you interested in the greening effect of Tufts refractor cards or just the base did it too, go listen to Kyle's episode where he actually talks to one of the manufacturers about how that happened. And it's all like chemical based. So it's actually the chemicals that they used in the cards and how they reacted over time. A lot of people have speculated over the years that it's, you know, the sun does it or if you leave it out or if there's too much humidity, but it's literally just like the combination of the elements that went into making the card. And if there's too much something, you know, reacting with another chemical screen. So you just don't know. And here's. I pulled out my Anthony Hardaway 93 finest here and you can see that one is just poked crap. Those. I don't know if there's many that aren't. I mean, that was just like that 93 finest that was, you know, the first year of the refractors and whatnot. It's. I would be hard pressed to find any of those that haven't turned that way. But as you get years down the road, they do turn green and some of them don't. Who knows? It's like a crop shoot. I pulled out a couple of rookies that, you know, from the last five or six years that I feel like the designs, you know, to me and maybe some of the. In the younger generation will be looked back at, you know, and in terms of, you know, in 20 years they'll look for these sets, in my opinion. But I loved recon. There's a couple years of recon. I think they really did rookies very nicely. Like we have here the future legends inserts. They had like these rainbow triangle prismatic designs going on. I thought they were beautiful. Not reused images, which is always nice. These are very excellent. They had the following year Wemby. This one's not Prism. Not maybe not as nice of a design, but I think they, they really did rookies well, Recon, this is probably my favorite. That's a little Wendy rookie on the top, right? Yeah, yeah. And feeding off a Wemby. Actually, no, that's my second favorite 1B rookie. I. I love the. The recon base, actually. You know, I'd love to get this in a higher rarity, but I'm sure they have already missed that. That train. But the. It had triangles, those white triangles behind all the players. I know I Think I mentioned this on a couple of these episodes, but with. With Wemby standing there, or really anyone, it looks like a V. I think they. They probably had that in mind when they designed this set with Wemby's rookie year. So I. This one, I always look back to keep it in my showcase. Some other ones in recent years designs, particularly designs that I. I think are really nice. Photogenic. You know, who. Who doesn't like photogenic? Best shots in the game in, you know, I don't know. Have we ever had sets that had better shots than photogenic? Like, even in the tops era? Like, I feel like these are. Are just incredible. Modern. No, I think for. For modern. Yeah, you're looking at those. Those are great. Oh, the emotion sets were. Were great in the 90s, for sure. I. I think back to those, and I think these are like this. This year of. Or a couple years ago of photogenic. Like, you see it says focus down there. That's stealing right out of Emotions playbook. So I think they were going for the same idea and this is a cracked ice version. But, you know, the shots are just incredible with these. Can't go wrong. I think people will be hunting photogenics for. For years, especially because they're gone now. They're now vintage. Right. Also mosaic. This is a storm chaser insert set. I thought these are really beautiful. This one's for Joey. He's out there listening. Purple storm chaser for Keegan Murray. Not the best rookie from the set, but the one that definitely fits this coloring the best from this class. Love the storm chasers. And then three more here. Quick. Always very big on the. The big baller sets. The rookies here. I think these are beautiful, particularly the. The vj. I think big ballers, to me could be first or second coolest inserts so far in the tops era. And then top selection, it's. It's flagship, but it's Costco exclusive, which I, you know, when I started seeing these online, like, I've never seen those, and I saw someone say it's from Costco. I'm like, wow, that's very random. But now I gotta get a lot. Okay. Yeah, they do look kind of nice. I like those. I love the yellow. Really pops. Especially the Tyrese Halliburton and Pacers. Pacers ones are really nice. But, you know, of course, the bounce house, I feel like I'll always be looking back at these. Bounce off has the rookie card logo on it. Yes, yes. Okay. Little orange one on the bottom. It's Interesting because, you know, I think we, we talked about having the rookie card logo and it's like all the inserts now have the rookie card logo, so it makes it harder to distinguish. But. Yeah, go ahead. I know you got one more, One more here. Tops Finest or no, sorry, Tops Chrome. This is. What is it called again? I forget the name. It's like Cracked Court. I feel like it's called. I gotta look it up again. But I feel like these are so clean with the logo right underneath them on card autos. I just think the shots of these. Yeah, they're posing, you know, at, you know, media day. But I, I just feel like the, the, the name plates on the bottom and the team plate, I just feel like it. That has a very early 2000s kind of feel to it. And this particular autograph set, I definitely love these ones and I, I think that a lot of people will be coming back to a bunch of these different sets over, over time as iconic sets or insert sets for the 2000 and twenties. So it's a crazy one mentioned Stadium Club, which I think is probably the closest to the photogenic, right? Oh yeah, Stadium Club bordered. Yeah, that was kind of your comparison back in the day, I guess you could say, which I agree, you know, they better release that soon. They can't, they can't miss on Stadium Club. Oh, you mean new. New Tops. Yeah, yeah, they better or whatever. We got this despicable this week and I, and I was like, come on, man. Trying to defend you guys. And those are. Yeah, we were talking about those. The minions thing. It's like super sp or whatever, you know, highly rare or whatever. And it's like, come on, guys, you want to get kids into collecting, don't. Don't make it a flip fest for 30 year olds. Like, literally, it's stupid. I, I was thinking about like future topics and I was like, at some point I need to invite Tim on for like a Festivus Feats of strength Aaron Grievances style episode where I just send him all my grievances against Ops Natics. And Tim has to like try and talk me from not like chokes living them because I see stuff like those minion cards. I'm just like, what are we doing? Like, it's. I just don't even understand there. But we won't, we won't get into tops right now. I appreciate you guys sharing. Adam, I'll pass you in a second if you've got anything you want to share. I know you've got some vintage cards. But I was. It's funny when we're leading up to this and I was thinking about one of the reasons I'm not a big cut. So currently, like I said, what I'm doing is most of my collection is like stuff that I like, key memories throughout my life. So like the work, the Red Sox, World Series championship teams and the Bruins championship teams. My favorite pop culture stuff. And right now I'm very heavy on the wnba and I do chase not many, but I do chase a couple WNBA rookies. And the reason being that a there isn't as much WNBA product. But for several of the stars in the league right now, they only have one rookie card, right? So their only rookie card was in from Rittenhouse, which is very famous for doing like pop culture cards. They had the WNBA license for a while and they were in factory sets number to 500. So if you want an Alyssa Thomas, a John Cole Jones or Agent Wilson rookie card, there's no parallels. There's nothing. There's just one rookie card and, you know, there's only 500 of them. So there's something about that that seems like a little bit more of a meaningful part of a collection for me. So I do chase a few of my favorite players there. I mean, I don't. The Asia Wilson sells for like a raw copy, sells for like 2500 to $3000, so I'm not touching that. But a lot of the other stars you can have for between 50 and $200, as long as they're on high grade. So that was the one thing about rookie heads I just want to put as I. Part. Part of it is just there's so many options right now. Do you want the Prism base card? You want the select base card? And I think in the end, I kind of just don't want any of them. I think this. They're just so mass produced that they just don't have the same appeal for me as they did when like we were kids. And like the Shaquille o' Neal tops gold foil card or the. Or the Redemption upper deck rookie card was like the Chase card. It's just right now I think base sets just aren't Chase cards, so they kind of don't appeal to me. But Adam, anything you want to share? Yeah, I'm not much of a modern collector, so a lot of the rookie stuff isn't much for me. And I've shared a lot of the vintage stuff, so I didn't necessarily pull any of it out. I did have to go Frantically check to see how much greener my Duncan rookie was than I last recalled it. It's still looking pretty good, so. Oh yeah, that's nice. Yeah, I'm happy with that. When you said it's gotten worse since you've owned it, I was like, oh shoot, it's in a box next to me. I gotta find this thing. I bought it because it was like kind of a surprisingly not green raw copy. But the, the one, the vintage rookie card I pulled out, it was kind of on the same ideas that Jordan XRC 84 star is the Jerry Lucas cons from 1963. And I like this one a lot because his first true rookies in 69, which completely omits his entire career in Cincinnati. So this one coming out in 63 is his like XRC to be the equivalent of the 84 star, I guess you would say. It does depict him in Cincinnati and I like that a lot. Especially being that it's not just a couple years, but it's six years earlier than the true rookie. But that was just one that I had pulled aside as kind of a unique one for the. Hold on, let's see the back. Is there any hot dog stain on the back? It's not bad. No, that's pretty good. And I said it jokingly, but some of those, they got the like the dots, they were like dark brown or some of them like a sort of a purplish because they were in packs of hot dogs. So. Yeah, right. Yeah. And I mean I'm sure the salt and everything just wasn't good for the cardboard. So. Yeah, I really like those. I mean they're kind of regionally distributed very similarly to the. To the 84 star. And they were. They were made and distributed in this area, in Cincinnati area. Like there's one more since I had to grab the stack up next to me. That's 61 Oscar the same year as this traditional rookie. That's awesome. That was great. All right. Not to. Not to plug myself, but I'm sorry, I'll let you go in a second. So we don't talk over but I do want to. If anybody wants to go listen to a little more rookie talk. Many years ago I did a couple of of episodes of the Wax museum podcast with Kyle. So I just looked up when it was in 2021. If anyone cares, it's episode 102, 142 and 143, or 141 and 142. I. I'll post links to them on our page, but we went through at that time what we thought were the most iconic rookie cards for the Eastern conference and then a separate episode for the Western Conference. So we dug a little bit deeper into rookie cards. I know I made some mistakes in that one. Like, I misquoted Clyde Drexel's rookie team. So if anybody wants to go back and pick us apart or see how things have changed, you know, over the last three or four years, it might be interesting if you. If you're a rookie card collector. So I just want to throw that out there. Like I said, I'll add that to our. Our Instagram page. Yeah, you should go to the hobby boards, where they're all cataloged for you. We haven't brought up the hobby boards, I feel like, in a long time, and our. Our stuff shows up there, too. So check out the hobbyboards. Dot com. That's it. This is a long, little last plug. I like it ending with the hobby boards. Plug is a. Is a pretty way to go out. But does anybody else have any final thoughts on rookie cards in your collection? The meaning of them? Are we ready to call it a night? I was just gonna add that. For me, like, the parallel, like a silver doesn't detract from the rookie aspect, in my opinion. As long as, like, the design of the rookie, a variation of that in color or like, a silver or gold prism or something like that, I think is still a true rookie, just the more desirable version. But I think when you start getting into the inserts is where it is no longer a rookie, I think that's fair. You take. Yeah, I like that. Nailed it. It's funny, though. I would. I would always, like so for Paul Pierce, when I did, I did all of his, like, 98, 99 refractors. I always grabbed a base card because even, like, the tops paper, because to me, that's like the true rookie. So, like, I'd want to pair them up, like, you know, and again, we're talking, like, I don't know, Like, I don't do graded cards, like a Pierce paper tops and the Pierce base chrome. We're not talking big bucks, but there was something about if I'm gonna grab the refractor, then I also want the. I want the basic rookie to go with it. So I would do the same thing with the silvers, you know, for my. Yeah, but I agree, Adam. Like, especially now, where the silvers are like the chase card. Like, I think there's a. You can make an argument that that's a. That's a like quote unquote, a true rookie 100 all right, well, other than that, I think Adam ends on some good points there, and I think everyone else is saying we're good to go. So as always, Sean's a crazy depp was in the chat. Anyone that I might have missed. Really appreciate you guys joining live. Ryan will clean up our audio or not clean up our audio and post to podcast sites soon. So if you guys see this after the fact, please check out the video as well, because you'll definitely get a better sense of seeing the cards that people are sharing. And appreciate everyone joining us and have a good night. We'll see you next week.