Everybody Else Is Winning + When Will the Bull Market End? + The Junk Slab Era

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And Please also welcome Mr. Joshua Adams to the show. Hello, Joshua. What's up, guys? Chris. Boys. Jeremy. Leighton. Good to see you, Leighton. That one. Oh. E103. Maddie is killer. Yu-Gi-Oh It could be yours for the. The low, low price of it. I didn't. I didn't even look at the numbers yet, but I can't even imagine. I had a one a long time ago. It's, you know, the problem is, and it's not a bad problem, but when you get a collection like this and you're also a collector. Yu-Gi-Oh I was going through the spreadsheet and then I was like, oh, it would be more fun to select which cards I'm interested in. Just to go through the cards themselves. Guys, I wish you guys would have had like video or pictures of me doing this. It was hysterical. You know, at first from the spreadsheet, I'm like, oh, a couple cards made me interested. I'm going through, I'm like starting to sweat. I'm like, what am I going to sell to be able to buy, you know, these, these cards and keep it? And I'm like, you know what? I'm going to take a break. I'm going to get some cold water. I'm going to splash some water in my face. I'm going to get back to focusing. Chris, how are you doing? Doing great. Doing great. Great to be here. Great to see Leighton, great to see Josh and always great to see you, Jeremy. I appreciate that, buddy. Appreciate that very, very much. You know, we're, we're coming off a big Fanatics Premier auction there on Thursday. And I mean, the hobby is, you know, we thought maybe after the national we'd have a bit of a hangover, if you will, like we have in past years. It's not happening. You know, basketball doesn't start for several months. Football is just getting underway. You know, regular season hasn't started yet. Baseball's in the, it's a, it's a good time in baseball right now. Hockey, it doesn't start till, you know, another month and a half or so. Soccer, the, the, the World cup is now three years and 11 months away. So a lot of time to get ramped up for that again. Yet the hobby keeps on making headlines. I forget the final count on Thursday, but before we went live, I counted like 62 cards that were a hundred thousand dollars or more. Oh, and then I do remember now because Adam did the count during the show. I think it ended with like 94 cards ending at 100k or more. That's $9.4 million for those who wanted me to help you with the math. Just on the first hundred thousand dollars of those cards and only on 96 or 94 of the 615 or so cards in that auction, leading me to believe it's probably a forty million dollar night over there on Fanatics. But like, and I'll even start with you, Leighton, on this one. Like, what's going on is why, I mean, we. Is Fanatics 10x in the hobby. The 10x I say, I say just for fun. Is it the Fanatics effect? What is it? What is it? Why is the hobby not slowing down when a Lot of people are, are getting a little bit nervous about it. Any idea? Sure. Well, I'm only going to talk about the vintage side because that's where I have a little bit more expertise. And what I am seeing, what I believe to be true, is there is absolutely more demand coming from more people. Some of those people are absolutely new. Some of those people have been around. Some of the people that have been around though have been docile. They've been inactive for one reason or another. But you know how it goes. If you get to the water cooler at work and everyone's telling you about this new show called Lost, which I guess I'm dating myself, is a couple of years ago. Right. The point is you might check it out, guys. Everyone is talking about cards. If I wear my Just Collect shirt to the deli, I've never made so many friends. It's incredible. Back in the day, people are like, you a bail bondsman? I'm like, what? You know, if I told them the name of my company was Just Collect and now they know exactly what our company does. So times are a change and I don't know if it's all, of course due to Fanatics. I'd like to think that some of the people that are watching the show tonight and that are behind the scenes and maybe even on camera have been doing it for a long time, have something to do with it. However, I do believe that Fanatics has put an incredible amount of intelligent money and effort into bringing more people aware of what sports cards are, why they can be special, and of course the underlying why they can also be valuable. Well said. Man makes. I like what you said, Chris. What do you, what, what do you say about this topic? I think it's an under appreciated take a specific part of what Layton said, which is that yes, it's new people, but it's also people who've been here for a long time, some of them are dormant, who are waking up. Maybe they were just on the sidelines for a while, but keeping an Yu-Gi-Oh on things, maybe they just went away and now they're back. Certainly seen some of that. But even more to the point, the people who have been around, who have been active, who continued buying it whether it was 2017 or whether it was the bubble of 2021 or whether it was the valley of 2023 and 2024 or whether it's now. The difference is that the intensity has been turned up several, several degrees. Like I can speak generally that I know people who were, you know, consistently collecting and or dealing or trading over the last half decade, who had chances to buy cards for 20 or 30% of the price that they paid this summer. But they didn't do it back then, and they did it now. There's just something in the air. It's. There's a new level of conviction. There's maybe new levels of fund fomo. Maybe there's just an urgency. Maybe it's just we're all getting a little bit older and we're like, you know what? Let me just. Let's do this. Maybe it's just something organic about the nature of the demographic, that we're increasingly gaining more purchasing power. But I think a really underrated part of what he said that I would highlight or that I would underline boldly is that it's not just new people. It's plenty of the same old folks that we would see at the national every year. Every year, Every year. But this time around, and at this moment, they are spending much stronger and with much more passion. You know, I. I was watching the auction on Thursday night, the Fanatics premiere, and there were probably, I don't know, 80 cards I wanted to buy, and if only I had about, I don't know, $3.2 million, I could have bought them all. But I didn't buy a single card. It's just. It's so expensive now. So I do find myself still buying cards, but, you know, I'm picking up. I'm picking up, you know, old early 2000s hockey patch cards for 30, 40 bucks each, you know, nice and cheap. I'm not. I'm not out there spending 40, 50, $60,000 to get a single card. I would like to. So I'm an example of somebody. I'm still finding ways to add cards and be happy and build my collection and curate my. My hobby expression, if you will. But not only are the cards so expensive and many of us can't afford the mean, if we could. It feels like. It feels like. Like, can this last? Like, is. Is a drop coming? Is a pullback coming? And are some people a little trigger scared? I think is the term to shy. Sorry, A little trigger shy to make purchases because we don't know what's coming around the corner. Part of me thinks, well, it. What goes up must come down. I mean, this can't go on forever. But then part of me wonders, when is it going to end? Because it seems like more and more people are coming in and they're buying more and more things. And so, Yu-Gi-Oh it's Josh What. What do you think of all this? I think a pullback's coming. I think it's silly to think that in any market, it only goes up all the time. So I'm just waiting till things go down and I'll buy more stuff. But. But what do you think it's going to take, Josh, for that to happen? Like, is it just a matter of waiting for it, do you think? Like. Because right now all. All the signals that I'm receiving are telling me that it's not coming anytime soon. And by that, I mean I just heard Cooper Flags opening up a card shop in the somewhere. Yu-Gi-Oh or somewhere like that. I think Maine. Where? Maine. Thank you. Bangor, Maine. Maybe it was. Is that what I heard? Like, I didn't expect to hear the Cooper Flag was going to open up a card shop. So more and more of that is happening. That's only. I don't think that's going to slow the. The hobby down. So when is. Is it once these shops are open with all the Tom Brady shops, the eventual Lewis Hamilton shop, the Cooper Flag shop, once they are in business for four or five years, and then they. Their business slows down, they have to maybe, you know, cancel a lease here or there or get out of a lease. All of a sudden, now we're going to see some signal that, hey, that store didn't work out. What does that mean? The hobby's crashing? Is that what it's going to take? Is that. And then. But that might be four years down the road until we see one of these car shops not being able to make their rent type of thing. Although Beckett up by Cooper Flag, how you'll never not make your rent. You just might have to put in more money for that. So I don't know, Josh, like, what's the timeline on that? I know we. We don't know the answer, but I mean, how your gut feel. You're. You're a very experienced hobbyist, Josh. How long do you think we have? I don't predict anything, especially the future. Okay, I'm not gonna push you any further. Let's go. Let's go to Leighton or Chris. Either of you. Chris, you almost look like you're about to say something. Well, that's because I always have something to say, Jeremy. I know. You know something that I was worried about causing instability was the Absolute flood of cards that has come to market in August as a result of people doing, buying and selling at the national and then having the convenience of being able to drop off some of their Excess cards that they're using to fund other cards with marketplaces and dealers and auction houses. So, you know, several of the premier auction houses handed out tens of millions of dollars in advances at the national against new inventory coming in. And not only did it happen, in other words, like, not only did it, did it actually this inventory intake occur, but also people noticed it, which is a very important part of it too. I saw plenty of collectors and participants in the space commenting on, oh my goodness, this many cards are now going to have to be absorbed by the market in August as these new, as this new inventory has to get pushed out by the marketplaces that took it in. And so I think several of us were watching and holding our breath and waiting to see if the market could actually absorb it. I mean, I don't know what the record high is for cards in a premiere, but There was over 600 in the August one and I think it's got to be pretty close. So given that that much inventory was, was dumped onto the markets over the last 30 days and I don't know, Jeremy, I mean you, you sat there and analyzed hundreds of cards on Thursday night. And from where I was sitting, it seemed like almost all of them. Not only were the prices strong, but it was just record high, record high, record high. If it were Cajun, we'd be smashing the bell. So I just, I, to me, Jeremy, I think, I think I was, I was watching and waiting to see how the increased inventory would get absorbed. And I think so far it's, it's gotten more than absorbed. You will. And that's, you know, Leighton, I feel like it's. We're going to be having a bit of a throwback to the 80s when there was just. There were cards everywhere, especially the late 80s. I even like, Yu-Gi-Oh the very beginning of the junk wax era when everybody was collecting. Like Leighton, you were saying that nowadays you walk into deli, everybody knows what you do because your shirt says just collect. In the early 90s, everybody collected cards like every. More, maybe even more people than today. It was absolutely ridiculous. And the card companies had to run the presses 24, 7 non stop because they had to feed the demand. And nowadays I think we're in a similar situation where they are bring. There are so many people coming to the hobby whether again, whether they're new, whether they've rebounded back in, but they want to buy cards. And as we're taught when we talk about the ultra modern stuff, because that's the entry point for so many people, they need cards to buy. If they, if, if tops can't make enough baseball cards to satiate the demand. Well, I mean that's not what they want to, they want to be able to fulfill that demand. But, but it's got to be such a tough balancing act to find a way to add value. So they, that's why we have so many parallels and inserts and all that. But to, to Layton again, I feel like, I feel like we're entering, we're going to be. This could this, this could be the very beginning of an elongated, a very elongated junk wax era. If that junk wax era lasted from like 88 to 93, call it five or six years, the junk wax era, we could be, this could be a 25 year long junk wax era where in 30 years from now we're going to look back and say Yu-Gi-Oh those, there's just too many of them, whether they're base or, or inserts. And then it's going to be a matter of, of really selecting the key cards. But I mean late and you were around back then. Do you feel any similarities to, to what was happening back then in terms of what we're seeing now? And I know you're a vintage guy, but you were, you're, you know, there's similarities to cars from back then or not cards, but the market and the, the supply. A lot of questions in there, Jeremy. I'm sorry, I do that. Oh, it's okay. So I'm going to try to comment on the junk wax question first. You know, we're not a huge wax dealer, but I think I understand enough of the landscape. I think we are probably closer to a junk slab era than we are a junk wax era. And the reason why I say that as a store owner who is grateful to deal directly with Fanatics and get products, some products from Tops right now, the only product that Fanatics slash Tops is putting out, in my estimation, in my opinion that could reasonably be construed as a candidate for junk wax would be the TOPS flagship based product. And the reason why I say that is because every other line is sold out right away, meaning from the manufacturer to a combination of the stores and the consumers. And so you really do need a flagship product to be at Sam's Club or cvs. So as you were alluding to before, if you want to buy cards, Tops can help you Uptown those cards. But there's not nine different base products like that. There's one flagship product in many different forms, albeit. But I believe that's the closest we are going to come at least in the near term with junk wax. I, in my estimation, I think we're closer to a junk slab era. But I wanted to point this out. I don't know everyone's exact age here, but I know that when I was a kid, meaning a teen, certainly before I could drive, one of the biggest problems I had if I bought a pack or a box or acquired some cars that maybe I wanted to sell was liquidity. And if my local card store owner or card shop was not buying, I maybe had the opportunity to go to a handful of card shows a year. And then I remember discovering the America Online chat boards when I was about 14. They had sports, you know, whatever. And I remember one day my dad went to the post office. I'm like, hey, I need you to mail some stuff. And of course I did it very casually. I put it in like a bag so he didn't know. And it gets to the post office and later on he came home. He's so mad at me. He's like, what the f are you sending out 11 packages for? I'm like, well, because, you know, there's this thing and people are, you know, he's like, oh man, you're crazy. And so one-of-one I believe that liquidity available today that Chris was alluding to at a much higher level at the convention, specifically the national, but also Fanatics Fest some of the other big ones as well. That wasn't an option when we were all younger. And so I believe that that alone is really helping the cycle pick up speed, Velocity and also the demand. Right. Because a lot of people back in the day, if you bought $100 card, you didn't sell it right away in the first few weeks, you're like, Yu-Gi-Oh I'm never really going to be able to sell it. Now. There's a lot of different ways to cash out just on a hundred dollar card that you got from a break. And I think that that's, you know, a really important part of what's happening for the collecting, you know, public. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I mean the, when you look at the junk wax era compared to now and you, you're labeling it the junk Slab era, I think that's a, a fair descriptor. It's not the first time we've heard that as, as we all know. But the key difference between the two eras really is just the fact that 35 years of human history has, has gone by and we have gone technologically a lot further than we ever thought we would ever go. If you were to go back to the late 80s and think what we could do nowadays in terms of like this right now, sitting here on a screen of people doing this on their phones. I mean it's a bit off top, but I remember seeing the first commercial for sending a picture with your phone to somebody. You know, I know a lot of us are. It's not that long ago, it's not even 20 years ago. Maybe it's 15 that that happened might not even be 15 years. When the iPhone came out in 2008, I believe it's like, Yu-Gi-Oh so we're coming up to that. But the fact that the market is bigger than it's ever been and not, not just the amount of collectors in North America. The global market is so broad right now. And I think everything you said, Leighton, makes sense and is contributing to where we're at today. The global market, the ease of transacting. We have new companies sprouting up all the time helping people do business in this space. Trade cards buy and sell Card Ladder Auction Wire, Grail guard. I mean I'll just to name three who are with us today. I mean it's, it's non stop 90s auctions. Mr. Midwest, vintage Joshua Adams with a, with his niche auction house. I mean and that, and I seriously, I mean there's, it's, it's fun. When you go to, when you go to Card Ladder's front page, you can see all the different auction houses right there that are fed into that comp system and they're all now kind of integrated there with comps Auction wire for current searches. Like there's so many ways to that, that, that innovators are trying to remove friction. Doing a great job at it as well. So all that layered on top of the economy, which is apparently not bad right now. And just how much, how much sport itself has become culture, you know, it's become a major part of culture around the world. So I don't know, I'm with Josh, I think, I think that a pullback has to happen, but I don't know when it's going to be. But I'm one of the nervous people. But I'm not stopping collecting. I am being, I'm being more selective when I'm spending significant money. But man, it's, it's a crazy, it's a crazy time we're at right now. Chris, Josh, do you have anything to kind of bounce back with? Chris, go ahead. Yu-Gi-Oh I like how calmly Josh actually explained that typically no market just eternally goes up and there are pullbacks. And I think the calmness is the headline. There's been cycles throughout this hobby's history and throughout my 10 years since returning, I collected. But as of very young kid in the 90s, I certainly wasn't mature enough, old enough, capable enough to understand the larger business cycle aspect of what was going on. I just had a shoebox full of cards and I would open a pack if I had enough allowance money to buy one. But since returning in the mid 2010s through today, I've experienced several cycles. There was a 2016 cycle, I remember that was one of my first indoctrinations into this, this dynamic market was seeing the Fleer PSA 10 Michael Jordan start the year at 20,000, go all the way up to 45,000 or so, and then by the end of the year it was back down to 20,000. And that was the only card that was moving that way. And I was laser focused on Michael Jordan at that time. There was a lot of cards of his, especially from the 80s, that were doing that, that had that trajectory. And then there was this more gradual, slow uptick. Throughout the late 2010s, I saw more people from my age group, more people from my demographic continuing to come back. The Michael Jordan collector groups would start off with 200 people, then they'd have 500 the next year, then they have a thousand the next year, and today they have, you know, tens of thousands. Then I saw a second cycle during my return, which was obviously the pandemic cycle. And lots of us remember that. And I don't know that there had ever been such a pronounced change in the aggregate spend on the secondary. So, you know, going from having this sudden celebrity infusion and Michael Jordan Fleer PSA tens again up to 700,000, and then all the way back down to 200,000 in the coming years of 2023, 2024. And so then we're on, now we're on a third bull run. And it is, it's always different and it is different this time. There's so much more institutionalization. But the, but the difference that I want to focus on is Josh's calmness about his understanding and his, his, his acceptance of the fact that there will be a pullback. And that's part of human psychology that, you know, it's not that there's like a magic price where as long as we increase at this rate, it makes sense. I mean, there probably is one where it's a sustainable growth rate, but that's just not how human psychology seems to work in the market context. If we see a good thing, we want to make it great. If we see a great thing, we want to take it to the limit. And eventually we extend ourselves too far and then we have to relax and let things correct and let things stabilize again and then we can do it all over again. So I think there's a, there's a different, there's a different level of experience that we have. I'm speaking specifically kind of to my cohort. People came in within the last 10 years or so. People came in with the last five even, who have seen the cycle once or twice, who have endured it, who have seen how low it can go, who have seen the turnaround and seen how high it can get. Now I take a bit of comfort. It's obviously not going to be fun, bracing for the turnaround. People are going to lose money on some of the cards they've bought right now. People are going to get frustrated and panic and leave and it is going to be volatile and it's always going to be volatile upwards and downwards. But the comforts, the, the, the, the acceptance, the calmness with which we can say this too will pass. And we can confidently say that having been through it a few times is a major takeaway. And I thank Josh for making that, for providing the example. Yu-Gi-Oh it's got to happen eventually. I think we all accept that. It comes down to when. And again, back to that like, elongated junk wax era analogy that I made. Is it going to, is it going to expire in, in as quickly as that did, or is it going to go longer? And if so, how much longer? Leighton, I know you got to go, so anything you want to say before you head out? No, I just wanted to say I appreciate you guys having me on. And then a special shout out to my father. He's dealing with some medical stuff, so, you know, for those out there that believe in prayer or spiritual stuff, appreciate any love you throw his way. And I'll see you guys real soon. All the best, your father, Leighton. Wish you my best from the Sports Cards Live community. We'll see you soon, buddy. Take it easy. Guys. Couple, couple comments, guys here that have come in. This one from, from He Hate Me says the reason we had a junk wax era is because everyone was collecting the exact same cards with absolutely zero hits or exciting cards other than rookies. There were a few hits. There were the autograph heroes cards, there were the, the, the, the, the Zebra bowl and the Stanley cup holograms. Were some hits back then, but. But he's right. Not like there are today. There were basically none. But that. That's another interesting difference between. Between the two eras. I. I have to call out this comment here from Silver Raccoon says, you know, you're old if you've seen the Wrath of KH in the theater and also hold Con Caniple in a slab. I love. I saw the Wrath of Khan in a movie in the movie theater. It's like one of the. Might still be my favorite Star Trek movie with Ricardo Montalban. I mean, what a great. From Fantasy island as the. As the villain. Chris is like, what are you guys talking about? Fun comment there. Okay. Lots of great comments, but I want to go to. Well, Chris, I know you have a topic you want to discuss. It's. It made it into the title of this episode, which is the Bull Market Paradox. So why don't we. Why don't we jump into that? We could. I could spend another hour going through comments right now. There's some great ones. I'm going to let you introduce that topic while I just make sure we do save some of those comments for later, if that's okay with everybody. Go for it. Great. Okay, so there. There is something in the air right now. Jeremy, I noticed it when I was watching your and Adam's terrific coverage of the premiere. I noticed it when I listened to Cajun and the Tall man do their recap of that premiere the next morning. I notice it when I talk to my hobby friends. I notice it in group chats. I notice it throughout the ecosystem. And it is what you alluded to. But I'm gonna explain what it means. I've. I've titled it Everybody Else Is Winning. Okay. That's what I've told. I like the bull market paradox, too. The paradox is this. A rising market can make collectors feel worse even when their own cards are becoming more valuable. So in other words, we can be more miserable and actually have less of an enjoyable time in the hobby. While our card values that, you know, that we may have never even expected to see this type of growth are certainly not within such a short time span. Suddenly, cards that we bought a year ago or two years ago have gone up 20%, 40%, 50%, maybe even more. But instead of being able to enjoy that for what it is, and granted, not everybody does enjoy that. Not everybody cares about that. But for those who are sort of price conscious, instead of being able to enjoy that instead, the experience is mostly this. It's mostly looking around insane. Not how grateful I am that this card that I bought is now worth more money. And I could sell it and get other cards. My purchasing power has increased. Instead, it's, man, if I bought that other card, I'd be doing way better right now. Or, man, look at my friends. I mean, I'm talking to my one guy over here. He was way early on this category. I mean, he's up 10x. And I'm talking to my other buddy over here, and I actually sold him this card or I traded to him this card, and it's up way more than anything I have. And gosh, like, this is. This is actually anxiety inducing. I'm. I need to catch up here. I need to. I need to chase this market. I need to find my spot in it. What I collect isn't doing well enough. Everybody else's stuff seems to be doing much, much better. And then we get into also the tales of regret, which, like, you know, oh, man, eight years ago I had that card and I sold it, and today it's worth tens of thousands of dollars more or whatever those numbers might be. And it can really actually induce a lot of anxiety. It can be a real anchor that weighs down our hobby experience. And this isn't special to the hobby. This is a general phenomenon. This occurs in the social media context. And I'll be honest, Jeremy, when I would see these studies or these articles that would say people's happiness is really low on social media because they just look around and it's just people posting highlight reels of their lives, but it really makes them. It makes it look like everybody's life is so much better than mine. And I said, no, I don't do social media that way. I think myself, I curate my experience. I don't suffer from that. I know that this is a facade to some extent. I know that people only present their best selves. I don't get Beckett down in that. So I was always dismissive of that literature. But now, living through the last few months especially, man, it's true. It's. And it's. And it's, It's. It's just maybe part of the human condition. It doesn't need to necessarily happen in the social media context. It can be walking into the show, it can be walking the Fleer at a show, it can be talking to people at the local card shop. It can just be watching content, but just getting that feeling that everybody's doing better than me, everybody's had more success than me, everybody's smarter than Me, everybody Beckett the right cards and I just didn't. You know, that can really become a weight. It can really become a psychological burden. And it's. And it's a real thing. I mean, I can feel it. I just think it's in the air. I think many people are dealing with it now, if someone out there isn't dealing with it. I'm not trying to speak for everybody. Great. And share your secret, because I've got a few ideas for sort of how to cope and deal with this too. But before I get to that or explain sort of how I deal with it or how others do, I just. I want to put the topic on the table, introduce that idea and just let it out. Just address this elephant in the room and describe it and sort of categorize it as this sense that in a hot market, when even our own cards might be doing well, that it doesn't feel like enough. It feels like everybody else is doing better and that we're falling behind. So that's a topic. I want to put that on the table. I love the topic. Josh, do you want to jump in with any initial thoughts to kick us off? Sure. I will say I don't experience this because I collect for myself and I actually don't pay attention to what other people are doing. Otherwise it would drive me crazy. I have enough professional anxiety during my 9 to 5, so I kind of leave that at the door. And I like my cards for my cards. And if they go up, they go up, they go down, they go down, and I will still enjoy them no matter what. And it's a great way for me to relax. If I started comparing myself to what other people did, I would have even less hair, if that's even possible. So that's. Yep, there you go. But, Yu-Gi-Oh no. So, you know, but I get it, though. I get it. You know, you always say, oh, I could have bought this, I could have sold that. That's. That's human nature. And I get it. So. Well, Jeremy, listen to how Josh is. Monies for spending. It's a coherent philosophy and it. It's consistent end to end monies for spending. I don't. He doesn't care to check the value of his cards after he's bought them. When he's ready to make a move on a card, he'll do what it takes to get it. And he's not obsessing over market performance or comparative analysis. How's my portfolio doing compared to someone else's? And it sounds different, you know, a year or two ago in that context, you know, it sounds easier to maybe execute it sound. It sounds a little bit like, well, okay, but Goldin it be fun, you know, if maybe you were like, wouldn't you enjoy it a little bit? So, you know, it's, it's, it's the same philosophy, but it sounds different now. In this era, that philosophy suddenly is the prescription. All of a sudden that philosophy is like, man, how do I adopt that mindset? How can I take on that view? How can I take on that mentality to help sort of coach and guide me through what's a very turbulent time? Especially if I'm suffering from a high level wanting to compare to my friend. So it's amazing the coherent philosophy. It can sound so different. Just maybe a year separated. Absolutely. I wish I, I wish I could feel the way Josh does because I, you know, I do. I have regrets. Absolutely. I cannot sit here and look and look at everybody and say I have no regrets. With any card I sold in the past or any card I did not buy in the past. I do have those regrets. I, I wish I would have kept certain cards longer. But then what do we do? We tell ourselves things to get ourselves. Well, this is what I do. I tell myself things to get myself out of that rut, rut type feeling. I say, well, I made the best decision I could make at the time with the information I had. I did what I had to do at the time. I put that money into, into other cards or other things I needed for life. So, you know, and, and then, oh, but I, and I still have a great collection. So don't feel too bad for me. All these things are true and, but they still don't completely erase that feeling of, you know, that FOMO where it's not even a fear of missing out, it's a fear of having missed out. A foho fear of having faux homo almost. I don't know how to say it, but it's like that. Yu-Gi-Oh don't say that. Right. But I. The fear of having missed out foe with a silent h mo. one-of-one that, that's real. And I'll tell you, doing that Fanatics auction on Thursday, covering it on Thursday with Adam, I saw a lot of cards I used to own selling for a lot more money than I sold mine for like big money, like life changing type money. It's hard to just say Yu-Gi-Oh money's for spending or Yu-Gi-Oh you know, I still have, I have some great cards still. Or you know, I made the best decision decision I could at the time. It's kind of like I once, I once folded Beckett queens at a, at a poker game because, you know, we were on, we were like on the bubble sort of thing. And like I'm folding. That guy's got kings or aces. I folded, he turned over like ace high. And I'm like, man, you know, I should have, should have known. I should have known. It's, it's like I should, it's like I should have known sort of thing. But I, but I didn't. So I have regrets. I'm not going to pretend that I don't. I. Go ahead, Josh. So the fallacy with this argument of I should have sold it and it would have had life changing money in reality, no one holds on to the very end. You would have sold it if it went, you know, a specific number higher. So like the idea that you're gonna hold it if it's a million dollars. Come on, if it goes to like six figures, you paid a thousand bucks for it, you're gonna dump the card. So I mean, it's like you can't. No regret, no regards. As someone said no regerts at all. Yu-Gi-Oh no, I, I wish, I wish I had no regrets, but I don't. I'm not, I'm not gonna pretend like I don't. Like I have no regrets. Like, don't get me wrong, I sleep well at night. Life is good. I'm not, I'm not losing any sleep over this. But when I'm watching the jambalaya, the Michael Jordan jambalaya in, in a, in an inferior grade sell for $130,000 and I sold my superior copy for 60. Like that's a, that's a huge. You could. A lot of people that's, that's pay off my mortgage type of money. For many people, that's go buy a Ferrari, whatever it is. That's, that's go buy your, your new car and not take, not make payments whatever it might be. There's. And to your point, Josh. Yu-Gi-Oh I might have sold it somewhere else along the line. The, the. The regret isn't that I didn't sell it. The, the regret is, is twofold that I sold it then and that I don't have it today. Never mind selling it in the, in the middle somewhere. So to Chris, to this topic piece of it though. Yu-Gi-Oh My cards I have are doing great. My cards are doing, they're. I'm. Some of my cards are killing. And now I want to keep saying that so that I can feel better about the cards I missed out on. But like Chris says, and this is this fallacy or this paradox, which is, while I do have cards that have done really well, the magnitude of joy that I get from that value appreciation is not quite as intense as the magnitude of sadness that I get from the cards that I let go too early or the cards that I didn't buy when I could have bought them and wanted to buy them. So, you know, it's kind of the same thing happens with, like, gambling at a casino or playing. For me with playing poker. I could go to the casino, one-of-one $1,000 and feel okay about it, but if I go to the casino and lose $1,000, I feel way worse on that. If you're measuring the intensity of the feeling, the feeling of losing $1,000 is way worse for me on that magnet than the feeling it's up here. The feeling of winning a thousand is down here. So it's. And I don't know, Chris, that must be some sort of human psychology that I suffer from, and I'm sure a lot of people do. Josh's money is for spending mantra or way of living. I mean, Yu-Gi-Oh money can be spent, but I mean, I'm also someone who thinks about that rainy day and thinks about when I might need to put a roof on the house, buy a new house, whatever it might be. You know, I can't just spend all my money. I mean, money's for spending. I think, after you have prepared yourself for the future. I think it's really goes without saying, Josh. Yu-Gi-Oh duh. Yu-Gi-Oh absolutely. Okay. Okay. And coulda, shoulda, woulda. I mean, that's another thing that, like, I, as a human being in this hobby, I have so many coulda, shoulda, wouldas. Of course, we all do. I mean, that's silly to say. So I don't get as bothered about those. Because the other thing that I take some comfort in is that, like, the people that sold me the cards that I sold too early. What about them? You know, I mean, they also missed out on an even greater value appreciation. So in a way, comparing yourself to not just people from. From earlier in the. In the sequence than you, but also everybody in the hobby who. Who does buy and sell regularly or semi regularly has left money on the table. It's almost part of the experience. And this is what really does get me out of any of these, like, feelings of sadness or regret is that it's. I'm lucky I'm in this hobby. Like, if I wasn't in this hobby I wouldn't be as wealthy of a human. I'm not talking financial wealth, I'm talking all aspects of wealth as I am because of the hobby. So I know that, you know, we've all, not all, not everybody but many, many, many people in this space have sold cards along the way that they could have got more for. Just look at how Beckett these auctions have been year after year after year, month after month, year after year. So that's kind of how I deal with it, I guess. Any comments from either of you before we go to the chat where there's lots of great comments. Chris, you want to. Yu-Gi-Oh I, I love those that stream of thought Jeremy and it pivots to what we can get to next after comments and if there's time is that you know, there we have the catharsis, we put it on the table. We express genuine sentiments. Like I love the raw honesty of sort of your take that you can admit and you have self reflected and you understand that for you, you know, the, the pain of losing a dollar is stronger than the happiness from gaining one. And so just being able to, you know, sort of put that honesty on the table to express that this is a feeling that's going on to sort of just let it out, to just, just let the anguish spill out. What comes next? What we can get to after the comments is then what do we do after we've processed, after we've said this, after we've sort of spilled our guts, what comes next? And you were, your comment was already going in that direction one-of-one But, but that's a, there's a cliffhanger for what we can talk about next. Yu-Gi-Oh So when you, when you just said that, you know, to you Jeremy, a the, the, the pain of losing a dollar is greater than the joy of say earning a dollar. That made me think of the, the the maybe it's just another phenomenon where and we talked about on a recent episode either sports cards live or the hangover of my cards are worth more than yours. Right. If I, if which is also tied into I wouldn't buy this card right now at like, like here's one on my desk right now. This card right here. I showed it last night or on Thursday night as well. I would never buy this card for the price it sold for the other night but I'm also not willing to sell this card for the price it sold for the other night. So it's like once I have the, the, the value or the, or the, the item that has financial value associated to it. I, I like this, like I don't want to sell it for the money yet. If I didn't own it, I wouldn't go buy it. How does that make any sense? Well, what's the name of that? That's the. There's a name for it, Chris. You know it. It's the, it's called the endowment effect. Thank you. The, the endowment, the endowment theory. Is that what you called it? Yu-Gi-Oh Or endowment effect. Yep. Effect. That's the, it's the endowment effect. Right. This is already mine. I, it's worth more to me that than it is if you had it in your hands. So I think, and I think a lot of people, we hear people always say, Yu-Gi-Oh you can't deal with him. His cards are always worth more than your cards are. I understand that feeling. When you're a dealer, like when you're a, when you're, or you're in dealer mode, you have to put that aside or, or not just don't sell your cards. But that's why I will never put this. Well, I one-of-one never say never, but I'm not putting this on in the showcase that this doesn't even come to card shows with me. It stays nice, safe and protected. So Yu-Gi-Oh all these things are leaning. You can tell I'm going off on some tangents here and I know you're going to try and get us back, which I, I'm glad you will, Chris. But yes, it all ties back to that little phrase you mentioned, which is that the pain of losing a dollar is greater than the joy of earning one. I don't know. Is that just me? But I think that does explain a part of my psychology. I do have that psychology in my head and that's why I often say I like cards more than money, but especially my cards more than the money I could get for them. But isn't it interesting that I'm not willing to sell this for the price it sold for, but I'm also wouldn't buy it if I didn't have it already for the money that it sold, that it sold for. And that's the endowment effect in play for sure. So, Chris, bring us back to reground us, please. Thanks for tuning in and being a part of the sports cards live community. Don't forget to like, subscribe and most of all, keep collecting more great content to come. Sports cars is a lifestyle.