Examining What Topps Did To Promote The Hobby In Japan And What It Means For Growth In Newer Markets; Gold Logoman Patch Cards Cool Or Gimmicky; Guessing Most Graded Baseball Cards During Off-Season

You're listening to Cards to the Moon, a podcast about trading cards from both a collector and investor perspective. We hope you'll stick around for the ride as we take a deep dive into the state of the hobby, share some hot takes, hopefully some useful advice and fun stories along the way. Hey guys, welcome back to Cards to the Moon. This is episode 279. My name is Clark from 5cardguys.com and 5cardguys on Instagram and on YouTube. Coasting with me as usual is John, who is tradeyouatrecess on Instagram. Hyung's away for the next couple of episodes. He's actually down in Arizona right now in the final week of spring training, working on the second season of his personal podcast that we also help produce. Go check season one out. It's called Conversations with Hyung Cho. He sits down with some baseball prospects and ex-MLB players that he has connections with to generally talk about the game of baseball. We'll put the links to that podcast in the show notes below. Off the top today, there's another new card that Topps will be inserting into a future set and it's going to be the gold Logoman baseball card. The details are that only six players will be wearing the gold MLB logo patch on their jerseys throughout the season. They are the award winners from the 2024 season. That includes Aaron Judge, the AL MVP winner, Shohei Otani, the NL MVP, Tariq Skubal, the AL Cy Young winner, Chris Sale, NL Cy Young winner, and then the American League Rookie of the Year, Lewis Gill, and Paul Skeens rounds up the top six, who is the National League Rookie of the Year. After the season is over, there's going to be 10 authenticated gold logo patches from each of these players' uniforms, which will then be inserted into the Topps cards. I believe they'll be autographed as well. These new gold Logoman autographed cards are coming out next year. John, your initial thoughts, do you like it or do you think there's going to be too many Logoman cards out there all of a sudden? I like it. Long time ago when we talked about fanatics and their ability with their merchandise game, I think we mentioned something and I still to this day think it's a great idea. If Shohei, Aaron Judge, or whoever has a record-breaking season, you take whatever materials that you have, maybe it's a game worn jersey from that record-breaking season, and you chop it up and you disperse it as one of ones within all of the different products. We came up with many different creative ideas. I think this is along that path. Some can say it's more gimmicky, you're washing down the logo, whatever. I think it's great. It's just more and more chases. If this is a regular thing ongoing, you can chase a gold Logoman, you can chase MLB debut patches, and it just continues to add to the potential. I don't want to just look at it from an investment perspective, but for an investor, it adds to the ROI potential. For a collector, it adds to the unique collectability. It's great all around. I'm 100% for it. For many more of these game use patches that are very specific to either a game or a season or something, and then on-card autographs, all of that jazz, yeah, 100% for it. It's great. Yeah. No, I generally like it as well. I might be a bit of a purist though. I wish they didn't do the Logoman. I wish they used something else to commemorate their award-winning season in the prior year. I don't know what that would be, but at the same time, I can imagine these players, if they had a special award patch and they had to wear it throughout the season, I'm sure they would be a bit sheepish about it. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah, they're reminding their teammates or anyone else that, yeah, I've won the award last year. Maybe this is a more subtle way to get it on their jerseys. It's making the Logoman that every uniform has a different color, gold in this case. But yeah, at the end of the day, you add these, I said there's going to be 10 per player, so that's what? 60 more Logoman cards, but there'll be 60 gold ones. Just like you were mentioning. Oh, there's 10 per player? 10 per player, yeah. Okay. And they're dispersed in different sets? I don't know about that. Yeah, they didn't say if it was all in one set or mixed. Or it could be out of 10 in one set. Right, right. Okay. I get it. I'm assuming they'll be in one set and they'll be numbered to 10, yeah. But yeah, no, I like the creativity of it for sure, right? So yeah, we'll see what Fanatics Tops comes up with next. But I think for the most part, it'll be another great chase. I'm sure it'll be going for thousands of dollars, so it'll be good to see them build on this. I don't know what else. I don't know if you have any other ideas what they could do. I'm sure there's a ton. I'm sure they're discussing it. I'm just thinking, you know what the downside... I will assume this... We're assuming this is going to go into a pretty standard release product. It's not going to go into, what is it, like Tops Dynasty, it'll probably go into Tops Chrome, right? I'm going to guess. The downside to this as a collector is we've seen the prices of Tops Chrome update, which is generally a forgotten product. And what are boxes like Canadian, like $500, $600, $700, $800, like... Yeah, that's true. This is just going to add to the craze of the initial launch and reselling prices. So that's probably the downside to all this. Good point. Yeah, I didn't even think about that, but that's probably true. Maybe the next thing they have to think about once they come up with these unique patch autograph cards is distribution. Like do we just put it into regular boxes and, you know, see the prices of boxes go up or do we do it another way? I don't know, through like their Tops Now engine. I don't know. You know what I mean? Like it could be anything other than the conventional rip and chase in hobby boxes or jumbo boxes. So yeah, we'll see. That's a good point. All right, let's move on to hobby headlines. So I got the idea for this segment when you messaged us, John, in the chat group about how Fnatic seems to be upping their marketing game with getting more players involved in opening packs and even checking out new insert cards. We've seen that with Mike Trout, who else? Corbin Carroll, Bobby Witt, all those guys are getting more involved. Now, most recently, the MLB kicked off its season with the Tokyo series. And of course, Fnatic was heavily involved in promoting baseball cards in Japan to continue to grow its base in Asia. And there was also an article in The Athletic and it was titled, quote, from building stadiums to selling trading cards. Baseball biz is different in Japan, end quote. Part of the article was on how Fnatic's slash Topps was trying to promote the hobby essentially outside of the US. So what I thought we can do is I'll go over some of the key points in that article, and then we can just react to each point on whether we agree or not, or we just want to add any additional commentary. First point. We already talked about this on a previous pod, but Topps, they put out a 2025 Topps Series 1 Baseball Tokyo Game Exclusive Set. And it's essentially this year's Topps Series 1, which we all ripped, you and I and Hyung, a couple of weeks ago, and none of us hit anything huge except that Daryl Strawberry autograph card, right? But this Tokyo Game Exclusive Topps Series 1 set, it also includes some unique cards to the set, highlighting Japanese MLB players, for example, and the history of the league in Japan. All right. So my question is, what do you think about the strategy of essentially repurposing a set that's already here in North America, that's already been released, right? But adding new cards to it that's unique and even more appealing to the country where Topps is trying to promote their products. I kind of like it, because I think it adds to the collectability of the niche product, the off product. Because if this was a Topps-created Japanese set and it had a totally different look, it would be completely niche. Like it wouldn't, for a collector, it would be completely on the side, kind of like when you see Panini release, like the Caitlyn Clark collection or whatever. It's completely different, right? Whereas this has the same look as Series 1. If you did rip open boxes of Series 1 and it was collecting a set, you can kind of have this like an offset and it'll kind of go together with the set. So I think that's a great idea, like creating these niche sets that still have the theme of the flagship set. I'm for it. And having its own parallels and stuff. Yeah, some people say it's gimmicky, but I don't know. I still think it's good. I don't know. Maybe I'm drinking the Fanatics Kool-Aid a little bit too much these days because I am not disagreeing with anything they've been releasing. You know what, John? You're not alone. Like I'm loving everything that's coming out these days. So maybe people will write in to us saying, hey, are you guys working for Fanatics? But no, I like the idea and I actually like your point about, you know, if they had just come out with a completely different set just for that very specific audience, it might be too niche in that sense, right? And I think what it does is also like it reinforces the Topps brand, the Topps Series 1 brand, you know, like so that as they continue to grow the base in Japan and outside of the U.S. and Canada, Topps Series 1 will be something that, you know, possibly the rest of the world will look forward to once Major League Baseball starts. You know, we always equate Topps Series 1 to like, oh, MLB is about to start in a couple weeks and that kind of generating that excitement for baseball and for baseball cards. So yeah. And I mean, there could be also a specific strategy for Fanatics for connecting the two countries, right? Like if for us in North America, we're collecting Series 1 and we, you know, I think most collectors would also agree they probably like the fact that it looks like Series 1 so that you can kind of connect the two sets. And then overseas in Japan, if everybody's collecting this Japanese subset, that might get them to now look at Series 1 and start purchasing those as a way to kind of connect the two sets together. So I think it's, I think it's a, there is a brilliance to it for sure. For sure. No, for sure. Another thing I was thinking is that you can also like extend this, not just to countries, but to specific cities, right? So think about it. If Topps, you know, is doing their stadium tour again, they've been doing it for the last couple of years where they're going to each stadium, like setting up like their trailer or their truck. I can see them making boxes of Series 1 or it might be Series 2 during mid-season and making unique cards of the hometown players, you know, wherever they're stopping. So if they stop by the Rogers Center, they can release Topps Series 2, but also have like the special exclusive set of Topps Series 2 with Toronto, hometown Toronto players, Blue Jays. You know what I mean? I was just kind of brainstorming to myself and I imagine you have this Topps Series 2 and some of the unique cards that you can pull from the Blue Jays edition is, you know, the 1992 or 1993 World Series card with multiple autographs on it of players from those championship teams, right? Or even like the World Series MVP. I mean, every city won't have that, of course, because they haven't won the World Series, but for the ones that have, like us, you know, back in the 90s, it's been a while, but we are World Series Championship City. You know, you can have the 1992 and 1993 World Series MVP cards, you know, and have them autographed. Do you remember who they are? 1992 and 1993 World Series MVPs? Damn, is Joe Carter one? No, he was not either. He was a hero, of course, but yeah, not. Pat Borders? Yes, 1992. You got it. Pat Borders? Oh. In 1993. Just clutch hitter. Bobby Alomar? No. Oh my goodness, clutch hitter. He was, but. I'm thinking Dave Winfield or Kelly Gruber. Oh my gosh. No. At least I got Pat Borders right. Yes. He was a DH. I think he played for the Milwaukee Brewers. I don't know. He was a DH. I think he played for the Milwaukee Brewers. I don't know. He was a DH. I think he played for the Milwaukee Brewers. I don't know. He was a DH. He played for the Milwaukee Brewers for most of his career until he came to the Jays and won a World Series with us. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why is the name alluding me? I know who you're talking about though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Paul Molleter. Paul Molleter. You got it. So, you know what I mean? Like that's super niche, but I would love to have one, you know, those cards, you know, as a Jays fan and, you know, for nostalgia reasons. Right. Yeah. I think we're going to have a lot of that throughout the rest of different cities that Tops visits. That's awesome. Just free idea for you guys, Tops. All right. Point number two, we also talked about this before, but I thought the tops collaboration with renowned Japanese artist Takashi Murakami was actually really cool. I was telling our friend Roy actually that I told my wife about this collab and she was instantly more interested. in it because she was familiar with Murakami because he also did a collab with Louis Vuitton. Did he also do a collab with the baby car seat company? I could have sworn he did one too. I think he did one with Dior, one of those companies. But anyways, keep going. I can see that, you know, his unique flower motif kind of fit well into that collaboration as well. But yeah, my point is that these collabs can bring attention to the hobby who might not necessarily be in it, right? For instance, I love the dual autograph card of Otani Murakami as well. And you know, that might be of interest to people who are into Murakami more specifically. And you know, they just want that card. So what do you think about just these collaborations and trying to get more people outside of the hobby into the hobby in some way? Listen, if there's anything that's going to get our wives to allow us to spend more money on the hobby guilt free, I'm all for it. Yes. But you know, like, jokes aside, no, actually, no, I'm probably pretty serious about that. But in terms of, I mean, we kind of touched on I think a couple of episodes ago, and these collabs, I think they're great. And I think we kind of talked about like Pokemon sports card collab, if there was ever such a thing, I think it would definitely appeal. I mean, I think it's already been kind of appealing. I think that's why, like the Net Marvels thing was appealing as a Donruss insert at one point and the anime version of the Panini, like the case hits, like I think all of them, they're not necessarily collabs with specific people. But I think the more this starts to happen, I'm sure it starts to connect collectors and sports, you know, either whether it's memorabilia collectors, or just sports fans or whatever, I think they're doing trying to make an effort into connecting different markets into this into the sports card scene. So yeah, I think it's fine. It's great. Yeah, it's funny, because in that article, they mentioned that at the games, they have like Pikachu dressed up in Dodgers uniforms, right? So like, obviously, in Japan, Pokemon is huge. And there's already that crossover. So I think it's a matter of time, we're gonna see a Pokemon collab with MLB with Tops. And then I think that's gonna be, you know, people are going crazy over Pokemon cards now. But man, once that comes out, it's gonna be crazy out there in Costco. I mean, don't put it out in Costco. I don't want to see people get into fights. Let's think of another way. And also to your point, yeah, let's have Tops collaborate with Chanel or something like that, you know, then I feel like our wives will be fully on board at that point. Or some high end brand, you know, that they're more interested in. I'm down with that. Yeah, I don't know if you saw too, before I go on to the next point, Otani and Murakami, they started opening packs. So I thought that was cool on there. Yeah, on their IG Reel. So marketing, stepping up their game, kind of, kind of what you mentioned before. All right, let's end off with a couple of quotes from the article. And they're both by David Liner. He's the head of Tops trading cards operation. The first quote, he says, quote, even more broadly in Asian collectors, they tend to buy and hold a lot more than American collectors. A lot of what we find in Asia and in Japan is that when collectors find that cherished card, they keep it, which actually for us is great. We'll take collectors of any shape and size. But ultimately, these cards, we want to find a destination and find a home among a true collector, end quote. So for me, what I like about hearing that is, it seems Tops is intentional or more intentional about making cards that are for quote, unquote, a true collector. And it's also not just about printing as much cards as you can and essentially having another junk wax era, which is what we're kind of afraid of, right? So yeah, what do you think? Am I being too optimistic here? Or do you think there's some truth in that? I mean, it makes sense. I'm sure they're not getting those stats from sports cards. It's probably the trends that they see within Pokemon because Pokemon, they print through the roof. And yet a lot of these hits hold value, even long-term, right? And Roy talked about it a lot, but you have some of these monstrous cards at like five, six, $10,000, and you look at the pop report and it's like PSA 10 pop report of like 2,500. Like in the sports card world, you'd be like, what? Like how is a card that that's that readily available going for that kind of a price? I think it definitely shows, whether it's a thing or a trend in Japan or just Pokemon collectors in general, like it does appear that they do hold onto whatever they're purchasing for the sake of holding onto it long-term or for their collection. And it's bringing them joy. I'm not sure how, it's on the American side, I kind of go back and forth because like if their goal is to 10X the hobby, which we all know kind of is, it was just like marketing speak, but they're not actually, like obviously it's going to be incredibly difficult to literally 10X the hobby, but if they are going to grow it in some sense, I think things like getting investors involved or resellers and all of that stuff, like people hate it and obviously true collectors hate it, but there's a place, right? Because they're also kind of generating interest and price movement and all of that stuff and demand. And so I don't know, sometimes I look at that quote and I go, oh, it would be great if North America was more like when we were young kids, you know, junk wax era where we're collecting sets and even if it's a $2 card, we cherished it. And it was in a huge, you know, our collections were massive back then. Like I would have these giant boxes, whereas most of the collectors today, they like to kind of whittle down their PSA collection to like a small case that holds 30 to 50 cards of their best, right? So yeah, I'm not exactly sure how to make the quote and how it would best translate to North America, but yeah. Yeah. I mean, kind of to your point, maybe it's just at this point in time, you have to have two different strategies, right? You can't just have a one size fits all, you know? Like if you know that Japanese collectors tend to keep and hold their cards, then you could print a bit more because they'll really please the overall crowd, you know, by increasing the supply as long as the demand is there. That might not work in North America where part of the collector base also includes primarily investor types, you know, that are looking for a quick flip. So, you know, you gotta, I guess you gotta always monitor the state of the hobby in both demographics and different countries all the time. And I think, you know, I used to always think more simply like, oh, let's try to think of an overall strategy that will work for everywhere. But I don't think that's feasible now, you know, because different countries, different people in different areas of the world just collect differently. And that quote kind of highlighted it for me in a real way. So yeah. You know, the second part of it is like the whole idea of supply and demand. And this is the last point that I want to bring up. You know, it's ultimately it's a question of whether tops, they don't fall into temptation of overprinting to maximize profits in that way. So what I mean is like, listen to this quote by David Liner again, quote, what's tricky about our market in general is the demand is well exceeding our supply, which is great for collectibles, but we allocate a lot of product. So what we're trying to do is when we grow the market, grow it properly, ensure that the products being opened, it's being collected, it's being consumed, we want to avoid any junk wax era, we don't want to oversupply a market, end quote. Now, again, I'm assuming there'll be some who just look at all these cards that are produced already right now and, and scoff at what he just said, you know, but at the same time, I really feel it's about growing the demand side of things as well, right? Which is why I love what they did for the Tokyo series. You know, I hope we see tops do even more of that in the future when, you know, when it comes to activations, and we see that the supply really does meet the growing demand in the hobby. Do you know what I mean? Like, I think if we think about what the future state of the hobby is, they have to kind of go hand in hand. You know, the junk wax era was all about way too much supply over demand. But as we're talking about growing the hobby, which means essentially increasing the demand, then then we can be comfortable on increasing the supply as well. But you know, how we monitor that, I'm not sure. But but yeah, your general thoughts on this whole idea of supply and demand. Yeah, this is Yeah, this is a big topic. I mean, from the quote directly, I think what jumps out at me, first and foremost is, I do like that they are immediately coming out and recognizing I don't know if that has anything to do with their accountability, but they're immediately talking about I think this is something that a lot of companies shied away from because they wanted to just overproduce and whatever kind of forget. But they come on and talk about they don't want oversupply, they don't want another junk wax era. And I mean, yes, when you step away, so at first, like you give them some credit, great. And you step back from it. And you realize, well, yeah, of course, you don't want to for the best interest of your company. Of course, you don't want you want to avoid a junk because you're going to just completely collapse the sports car market and all these sort of medium interest collectors slash people kind of dabbling are all going to walk away because they're like, oh, this was not worth it. It wasn't fun. I don't like spending $200 and getting nothing. And this is, you know, and they walk away. So you got to kind of keep that interest moving. And you can buy people hitting products and getting fun rips and all of that stuff. So I don't know like this. I don't have any stats to back this up. But from my general observation, I feel like a lot of the demand recently, from TOPS perspective, like TOPS perspective is probably let's see how many boxes we can sell, how much money we're making. And if boxes are selling out like hotcakes, then we're doing pretty good. And the demand is pretty crazy. But a lot of it, I feel is from breaking. I think breaking and I don't know how much of it is collectors, how much of it is like degenerate gamblers, you know, like it's starting to really kind of blur the lines and blend beyond just collecting community. So, you know, and we can sit here and you know, the three of us, when you walk into a hobby store and you want to open TOPS Chrome and they say it's 700 bucks, you're like, like a normal collector can't buy a hobby box, but you can enter breaks. And that's where breakers can afford to buy it at seven, 800 bucks. And the demand will continually get gobbled up, like all the boxes would gobble up because breakers are selling it easily at 800 bucks. They can probably sell at Paul's skiing spot for 300 and already make half the half the cost. Right. So, yeah, it's a it's a it's a tricky one. It's a tricky one to talk about the man, because I feel like breaking has now really blurred how much really a supply and demand. And I think that the actual true collector here is kind of getting forgotten. Right. Yeah. If you get what I'm saying. Yeah, for sure. I mean, we've I've had that discussion with Paul Hickey as well. You know, when he's when we do our joint pods and it's kind of this never ending question, right, that, you know, how much is too much for breakers and and how do we deal with it in the future? Maybe it is to limit the amount of product that goes to breakers, but at the same time as a business for tops. You know, you don't want what's the incentive if you want to increase and maximize your profit, right? So, yeah, so I guess it's a balance. And I guess at the end of the day, that's what makes this question so tricky to quantify and to figure out, because there are so many moving parts. Right. It's like like you were just mentioning. It's not just about collectors. There's a breaking aspect of it. And there's all these different components to the hobby now that weren't there during the initial junk wax era. Right. So and now the grading, you could put that into it. And so it's kind of, yeah, a lot of a lot more things to consider. Like, I mean, if you were to fast forward three to five years from now, right, and the tops, you know, they're generating mass amount of incomes, they 3X their profit. And let's say most of it is through breaking. Right. Because in its current path, you know, like if you're really trying to grow the collecting community and people who love actually loving sports cards and not just like these people that love gambling, you know, how many of our kids that love baseball or love hockey are still going to be able to collect? You know, top series one or tops Chrome update, we probably can't collect because if a hobby box is six, seven, eight, nine hundred thousand dollars, you know, that's not even a birthday present. That's like that's like a happy graduation. It's insane. We got we got you one tops Chrome update for your high school graduation. Yeah, exactly. So like what are these actual young folks growing to love sports cards or is this market just being accelerated because of breaking and sort of the gambling culture? Right. So. It's hard for me to kind of look at this one clearly because I think the collector space is going to really, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know really what to think about it. I'm just kind of spewing garbage out of my brain right now. You know, like even as we're talking about it, maybe you limit the quantity that, not just breakers, but individual buyers can buy because, you know, like the hard part of just making it widely more available is that anyone could buy the hobby box and flip it, you know? And so it's like this, it's like just regular sellers looking to profit off the flip game, not just breakers and hobby shop owners. So I don't know if it's about limiting, you know, certain products, not every product, one per customer. But you're kind of seeing in the Pokemon world, like you can only order one box online now just because, you know, they want to make it more fair, right? So I don't know if you just got to test it out with some of the products and then keep it $200 a box, you know, it's going to sell out. And that's the other part of it too. Like the demand is so high, good luck getting one, you know? And you're just kind of shut out. And then that kind of leads to disappointment as well. So I don't know. There's, you know, even for collectors, there's no such thing as retail price anymore, right? It's not like your local hobby, you know, your local card shop gets a supply of thousands upon thousands of cases, again, they just sell it to you at retail price, they probably have to also go to the aftermarket to buy more cases. And most LCLs that I know, when you walk in, and even if it's like a week after release, you're paying resale price at your local card show, right? So this whole like, you know, most collectors miss out on the retail price, and that breakers are obviously continually causing the price, because I mean, you know, when we collect, I think we're probably taking this a little too far, but when we were collecting, you know, during the COVID era, right, we're going back to like Zion, Jamarat days, like prices went up, not necessarily because of breaking, breaking wasn't crazy then. Prices were going up, because collectors were going crazy, right? And the return on investment in like a prism box was 1500, 2000. Because, you know, even if you got Zion or Jabez, that was like a couple hundred bucks, and you could PSA 10 it and then sell it. And if you got a silver, even crazier, you're probably making up the price of the box, right? So the chance of return on investment made sense, like the prices were what they were based on sort of the ratio of return on investment, right? But now, because breakers are just buying up everything, the price of a, you know, Tops Chrome update box is whatever it is, five, 600 bucks. And then for us hobbyists, you buy the box, and the return on investment is horrible. Like you are, you spend 500 bucks, good luck even getting five bucks from that box. Because the box price is not based on the potential ratio of ROI, it's just strictly based on how much breakers are just selling. And then, you know, so I don't know, like it, yeah, I feel like collectors really kind of get screwed in this current landscape. Yeah, I mean, maybe we just got to wait for all the hits to be pulled, and then things start to drop in price, and you go for the cards that you actually like, the secondary tertiary hits that we can afford. I don't know what the solution is, but you know what I know for sure, the hobby always evolves, you know, and it's going to change again. And I think, you know, where we are right now won't be where we are in the future. So, yeah, good discussion. We don't have all the answers. If you guys have ideas, all you listeners out there, we'd love to hear it, and we could even discuss it more to see if it would actually work in our opinion, or if there's more questions to be asked, because even right now, we just talked about different ideas, but then we have like two, three more questions on top of that. And, you know, it's just kind of this circular argument right now, but still interesting discussion to have nonetheless. OK, let's move on to our next segment. It's quiz show. All right, so just one question for you today, John, and it's one of those questions, we've done this in the past, where you need to fill out the list. OK, so the question is, who are you ready? Who are in the top 10 list of active MLB players whose baseball cards got graded the most by PSA this offseason? All right. And the data collected was from November 2024 to February 2025. That's how we're defining the offseason. OK, so top 10 guys you think had the most cards graded the past few months with, you know, opening day coming up next week. Current MLB players. Yep. Oh, man, I really need Hyung's help here. You can get at least half easily. Shouhei's number one, 87,300 cards graded. Yes. Wow. I'd imagine from previous year, Aaron Judge will probably still have some decent fire. Aaron Judge number four, 21,500 graded in the offseason. Yeah. Paul Skeen's got to be like number two. Paul Skeen's number two, 50,600. Keep going. Jackson Holliday, I'd have to assume he's in there. Jackson Holliday, number five, 20,400 cards graded. So people are still high on Jackson Holliday like I thought. Yeah. I don't know if this one might be in there. Jackson Churio, the other Jackson. Jackson Churio, number seven, 16,600. OK, man, this is where it gets hard if there are prospects. Gunnar Henderson. No, your first miss. Yeah. Current MLB, who else? So number three is still on that list. Number three, I know you'll get. Oh, my gosh, who would be number three? How many am I missing? Kind of the big chase last year. I think you got half. So Shoei Otani, Skeen's number two, Aaron Judge number four, Jackson Holliday, number five, Jackson Churio, number seven. So you're missing three. Number three, number six, number eight, number nine. OK, number three, got to be Ali. Ali De La Cruz, number three, 30,600. I don't. All right. You got the you got the top five. This is from this past year. Would Corbin Carroll still make the list? No, he dropped off. And I assume the rest might be prospects, which is going to hurt me. Or top rookies or, you know, young guys with potential. Still with potential people that, you know, obviously are there, they're still high on because they're getting these cards graded going into the season as well. Is Juan Soto still in there? Juan Soto is not in there. Yeah. Number six, I'll give you a clue. You said Jackson Holliday, you said Jackson Churio. There's one more. One more Jackson. Jackson Merrill. Jackson Merrill, number six, 17,800. Yeah. So now you're missing the last, the bottom three, eight, nine and ten on this list. Man, Jackson Merrill. Number eight's a big big card collector, actually. Oh, Bobby Witt. There's a lot to promote. That's a good clue. Bobby Witt Jr., number eight. Yeah. 15,500. Number nine, another Japanese player. Oh, Rory. Second one on this list. Oh, no. OK. Yeah. The other one, what's his name? The Chicago pitcher, right? No, no. The other one, the other. Remember, there's three Dodgers pitchers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Dodgers pitcher, they came last year. People are screaming and cheering now listening to this pod. Oh my gosh, embarrassing. I forget his name. Help me out, Clark. Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Yamamoto. Yamamoto, number nine, with 12,200. And the last one is a Yankee prospect. Rookie. Jason Dominguez? You're right. Jason Dominguez, number 10. Damn. I think people are excited about Dominguez this year. His first legit, legit big season, potentially. Yeah. I think he's going to break into the opening roster. So the first one is going to be a big one. So looks like he's over his injury. So 10,700 of his cards were graded in the offseason. There you go. You did, you did well. You kind of, you got the top five easily. I'll give you a 75, 75 percent. I'll take it. Thank you. There you go. All right. Let's end off this episode with our regular weekly segment we call Pick One. And this is when we put up two cards and then we debate which one we would rather invest in. So since Young's not here, do you want to start things off, John? Yeah. So, you know me, I got to kind of go to hockey. Ovechkin, he is nearing that record. I can't believe at 39 he is scoring at the pace that he is. But he is he's going to break it this year. I think he's seven or eight away. OK, he's going to do 100 percent. He's going to do it this year. This is going to be a once he gets within three, it's going to be like trying to give your teammate a hat trick. At that point, you're not even caring about the team. You are just feeding Ovechkin all that. He's going to start getting 10 shots a game and he's going to get it this year. Question before you before you go on. Yeah. If he's got the opportunity to break the record, he tied Gretzky. Yeah. Open net, would you take it? Like if I was Ovechkin? Yeah. Oh, 100 percent. No question. Especially a guy like Ovi that just loves scoring goals. He will 100 percent be taking that with no shame. I would I would pass it, you know, just I want to break it with, you know, his iconic one timer off the slot. You know what I mean? Right. No, no, no. Anyway, go ahead. You know, you know, the Nick Young meme where he's like giving me like the face. Yeah. If he passed it on open net that his entire team would be going like this. Like, what do you mean? Yeah. Anyways, back to the one you want. Yes. So we're going Ovi Young Future Watch Auto. PSA nine recently sold, I think, around fifty to fifty three hundred. OK. Beginning of the season, it was actually closer to six. So it's surprisingly it's I mean, interesting. It's season lol. It's come down sort of as expected. I'm a little bit surprised and given where he is in the goal scoring pace. And I'm going to put that up against. I'm going to put that up against McDavid's Future Watch Auto PSA nine, which is in and around that price, too. I think the last one was fifty four or fifty five hundred USD. So for many. Hockey collectors, this you're obviously a grail hunting and a lot of and I'm talking about collectors more in our wheelhouse, like you probably wouldn't have the funds or the means to go and get McDavid and Ovechkin and Crosby and Matthews. And you kind of have to choose one for most collectors, right? This is like you're putting all your eggs in one basket and you're going to trade up for whatever you're going to do. So if you were to have the one versus the two, like, are you going Ovi about to break the record? He's going to go be known as the greatest goal scorer of all time. I don't think anyone's. I don't think many are going to get close to this one all time legend. Or are you going to go McDavid who is carving out potentially all time legend status type of career? Right. Yeah. And I know you you like both of these ones. So I kind of yeah, this is a hard line this for you. Oh, man, there's so many inherent biases, though. OK, but this is a good one. OK. But because of my inherent biases, which I'll lay out right for you right now. I had a chance to get the Ovi future watch at a much steeper discount. So I'm already feeling crappy about that. And I have like a rule where I just can't buy into the same card. So you already know my answer. But and I'm also a Canadian. So McDavid, you know, just love rooting for him. And the fact that he is a Canadian player where the hockey hockey card market is still the biggest here in, you know, in Canada. Those all those three things considered. And one more thing, I think I know we've been saying this for a while, especially when ESPN and Disney got NHL rights, but they haven't really done a lot with it. But I still think the game of hockey will continue to grow. You know, we saw kind of like this uptick during that Four Nations Cup tourney right in place of the All-Star. And and, you know, I think the last article I read was Gary Bettman doesn't know if they'll do it again next year, but he knows that the bar has been raised. And I feel like that's saying that we're not going to have another All-Star game anytime soon. You know, they'll probably try to, you know, build off the success of Four Nations Cup. All I'm saying is I think hockey is going to get a bigger profile in the coming years. And I think active players, because, you know, after Ovi, you know, gets his record, I'm sure he's going to think of retirement shortly, soon after. Right. And and McDavid is still going to be down in the top five. Dave is still going to be dominant. Like, I don't see him slowing down. And I think, you know, as his career progresses, it's a risk, of course. You know, I was actually talking with Deep Value Investor, Brent, on the Friday episode. He reminded me that any active player is still a major risk because you just don't know what's going to happen until they call it quits and all their career stats are in the books, you know? So having that, having said that, I mean, if there's one player that I'm just super confident about in hockey, it's going to be Connor McDavid. So no question. It's a biased answer, but McDavid is my answer. Now, if I were to remove one of those biases, your hurtful experience with the Ovadge club, let's say you did buy it at that time and you still own it to today. Would you be swapping that out for the McDavid? Oh, okay. That's interesting. No, I don't think so. If you take that bias away. So that's, that's the big one. Give me the Russian rocket. Yeah. It's, you know, like, Oh, what an amazing career. And to your, you know, what you, what you mentioned earlier. I don't think that record is ever going to be broken again. That's going to be one in the books for a long time, but unless NHL make different rules that make goal scoring easier, which is, you know, honestly, it's a possibility. Every major sport have changed rules over the years to increase production just to get ratings up. So maybe that's the scenario. But as of now, yeah, I think it's a record that won't be broken for a while. Yeah, for me, this question, if you were to tailor this to me, it would be Crosby instead of Ovechkin. So I got to kind of look at it from that lens, right? Really, honestly, I think if you're to ask anybody this question, whether it's Crosby, Ovechkin, McDavid, the three, their prices are very similar. I would say Crosby is the more affordable. I think his PSA 9 is like $42,000, it's about a grand cheaper. But it's in and around that neighborhood. I think it really comes down to who you just like, or who you want, right? Like for me, I would, I pick Crosby, or I've been chasing Crosby, because that was a chase back then. So there's sort of like some sentimental aspect to it. And obviously, I've loved Crosby's career. And I think he's going to go down as top five, already is, I think top five NHL player of all time. But when I remove that bias lens, just like I tried to remove yours, yeah, like on the other side, McDavid is, it's like almost like Otani, it's as safe as an investment can get outside of the injury risk. So you're kind of trading injury risk downside with more upside, like McDavid, like you said, Four Nations Cup, growing the game of hockey, not to mention if he continues on his path, and he actually wins one or two or three Stanley Cups, like McDavid could go down as top two, maybe greatest, I don't know, like he's gonna, his skill level is unmatched. Like, no, it's something we've never seen. Any hockey player, any fan of hockey will admit this is something we've never seen, like a guy like McDavid. So it's tough. I think it comes down, like for me, between Ovi and McDavid, like I actually, as I was journeying down this Crosby path, I actually considered, should I switch gears and just, is it kind of the same price? Should I actually be getting a McDavid instead of a Crosby? Like I'm still kind of, it's like 60, 70% Crosby still, but there's a part of me that's like, am I being stupid here? Should I be actually getting the McDavid instead? Because his future watch in the future, like you said, it's got that upside, right? His career's all undone. Totally. His PSC9 could be like 10 grand, like we don't know. So maybe I'm more on the Canadian bias. There is obviously some more bias here, but give me the McDavid. It's not by much, but yeah, give me the McDavid. I think he's worth that. He's worthy of that risk. There you go. You know what? Obviously you removed that bias, but my choice was still McDavid for the record. So it's McDavid sweep. So McDavid sweep. I agree. Yeah. Imagine, I mean like seriously, imagine he wins two cups. That might be a good selling point for his future watch to tell you the truth. That might see a really huge spike in value unless it's a really long-term hold for you. And these generational talents, especially in hockey and like a sport like baseball, they won't be denied. They're going to win. They're going to win. You know, like McDavid, he was game seven. He was like a couple of goals, he was like a goal away from, he was right there. So he's not going to be denied. The question will be, can he win two, three, four, whatever, but he's going to win for sure. That's a good one. I like it. All right. Speaking of generational players, again, speaking with Brent on Friday for Friday's episode, I was talking about Otani and I was saying how I'm just FOMOing hard on Otani right now, you know? And he talks about like going after the significance, the significant cards of players, right? So example he uses, if you heard Friday, it was like, if you went after a lesser player, would you go after his like Bowman Sterling card? Probably not. So why would you go after the Bowman Sterling of Otani? Like you're just talking yourself into getting a lesser, you know, less significant card of that player. So if you want to really invest for the future, you'd like to go for the, for this case, Bowman Chrome, obviously, or Topps Chrome. You should rather just save up for those significant cards than going for a cheaper one. Right. That being said, I said, yeah, but we're talking about Otani. Okay. So those rules don't apply. And we just kind of laughed about it, right? Because we could just debate it forever, but having, so that's the context. And I'm looking at Otani cards that I'm like, that I can afford probably now I could scrounge out a few thousand, sell off a couple of my other cards. So would you rather have the 2024 Topps Heritage Shoei Otani red ink, real one auto, and it was a mystery redemption. Okay. So it wasn't in the 2024 Topps Heritage when it came out, but it was a mystery redemption card and they revealed it in January of this year that was actually Otani red ink number to 75. Okay. A PSA 10 sold recently just under 7,000. All right. Or the 2024 Bowman Chrome Shoei Otani, which is, I believe also mystery redemption, orange refractor autograph number to 25, a raw one sold recently just last week for 6,000. Wow. The raw of the Bowman Chrome 2020, and I chose these two because I believe these are one of his first cards that are on-card autos of Otani in a Dodgers uniform. So yes, the Heritage is a PSA 10 that sold for 7,000, number to 75, real one auto, and the Bowman Chrome is orange number to 25, but it was raw for 6K. I think, I mean, 6, 7,000 for a non-rookie card is pretty wild. And I mean, it's obviously completely inflated because of the Dodgers uni, which I get because if I'm not getting the rookie card, I'll probably try to go for the Dodgers uni because the Dodgers uni already at this point has become iconic, like he's, I don't think most people even associate him with the Anaheim jersey, no offense, but like, you know, even visual appeal, I think for the average collector, you look at sort of the old, you know, if you get a third year Angels uniform, you're like, ah, you know, like Dodgers uni, like even though we all hate the Dodgers, but it's still for Otani, it's so weird like that, but give me, you know me, I think you probably knew my answer. I think PSA 10 is number one, right there, knowing that it has like a great grade. I think that's one check mark for the heritage side and you and I, we both love heritage in general. So I know some collectors would be like, oh, heritage is ugly, I don't like that design, I prefer the chrome look. And then you know me, I like red ink, like the red ink is super cool. I think following, doesn't matter what year it is, PSA 10 Otani red ink through the years, I think will become really collectible. I think they'll still hold their value. I think at the six, 7,000 price point between the two, it's already a crazy price to begin with. I think the red ink at just over $1,000 more in a PSA 10 slab is way better of a price than the Bowman chrome, even though it's an orange, I get it. I think the six grand raw is pretty, it's a pretty inflated price. So the price point, the fact that I love red ink, that's a bit more of a bias. And then the PSA 10 slab, I think it's an easy one for me. Yeah. I'm looking at the Bowman and it looks, it doesn't look centered. So it's probably going to get a nine at the most. So if it's raw, raw and PSA nine are pretty comparable these days. So if you get a nine, it's a $6,000 PSA nine card. A PSA 10 could be over 10 K though, right? So that's something to consider. But you know, if I'm looking at this card, I'm thinking it's a 6K PSA nine card versus a 7K PSA 10 heritage number to 75. You know, unlike our, again, our mutual friend, Roy, who does, who doesn't get the appeal of red ink. I think he's in the minority, right? Red ink's awesome, you know, and a number 75 versus number 25. Sure. But they're both mystery redemption. They don't really have that kind of significant, you know, it's not like part of a rainbow, right? It's just for some reason, this mystery redemption is number 25. They're actually, they have a, for the Bowman, I'm mistaken. They have one that's numbered to five, the red parallel, which is, I think there's one listed for 50, 60,000. So that's way out of the price range. And there's a super factor. So if there's a super factor, a red and an orange for the Bowman chrome mystery redemptions, whereas the heritage, it's just a red ink number to 75. And you know, like certain, certain parallels are beyond the, the serial number, right? Like red ink, I don't, I don't even like red ink is a red ink. So it's, it's, I don't even think people care. It's numbered to 75, similar to like Topps black out of 67 or Independence Day out of 76. Like those parallels have become iconic in themselves. So the number is like almost meaningless. It could be numbered out of 125. It could be numbered out of 25. It's the red ink that it's what kind of pushes its weight around, right? Yeah. Greed. Heritage it is. Another sweep. We're aligned today for this episode. I almost bid on the PSA nine. It sold for 3,300 and I'm kind of regretting not doing that, but oh man, I'm okay. I'll just keep on the watch list. That's actually, that's actually a good chase card. Now you got me interested. I might have to pick it up if before this episode airs, in case people are thinking the same thing after this, after hearing this 1v1, but anyway, we appreciate you guys. Thank you for tuning in a week after week and yeah, we'll have a brand new episode for you guys next week. Talk to you then. Bye. Hey, thanks for listening to Cards to the Moon. We'd really appreciate you subscribing to our podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts and you can also connect with each of us on Instagram at 5cardguys or you can follow Hyung at Integrity Sports Cards or John at TradeUatRecess. You can also check us out at 5cardguys.com. Thanks again and hope to connect soon.