Finally Did It - S6 Ep 25

This episode of the ball Card show is brought to you by our friends at Pristine Auction, where items are guaranteed authentic for the entire time you own it. Not just at the win, not just while the cert holds. If you own it, Pristine stands behind it for a limited time. Take advantage of $20 off your first auction when you register with the code ballcard. Win the real thing. Pristine Auction. Foreign. Welcome to the ball Card show, the sports podcast for the esports collector. I'm Jason otero. I'm Gary Lemaster. This is season six, episode 25, back fresh from the national. From National Tennessee big show. 1400 tables, three rooms. Yes. Two tired middle aged men. Yeah. When you use the word fresh, I was surprised because I'm still not fresh. I'm not. That was a fresh. That was a lie. No, the. The show was a blast. I know we're going to dive into it a little more, but, you know, one of the things, and I'm springing this on you, I'm interested to see you do this to me all the time. A little in the first 30 seconds. I like. Yeah, we. Do you want to fight for the next hour? Before you go any further, you want to be in a fight for the next hour? Because it's up to you. Sure. I don't think this will be a fight. I think this will be entertaining content for the folks and for us. I love that I do notes and then I'm the one that does this to you. You don't do this to me. I just want to be. I don't like this shoe. I'm giving a little shoe on the. Go ahead. Let it ride. Let's go ahead. So you guys know Jason and I story. We've been friends for a long time. We discovered something on this trip and we've. We've always talked through, like, what are the things that. If there were going to be things that came into this business that could hurt us or hurt our friendship or hurt our relationship, what would it be? And you know, the one thing that we've discovered this weekend that neither one of us ever realized would be potentially the thing that just drives Paul Bunyan's wedge into our life. We hate the way each other drive. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. You're the worst. You're the worst. The difference is this. When you're driving, when you're driving, I'm on my phone. When I'm driving, there's a GPS on and you're like, I need to verbally tell you this, as if this is before the McNally Atlas even existed. We got to a moment where I said, listen, I'm begging you. We can't do this every show. You can't be navigating me. I can't be yelling at you. Like, we. We've gotta be able to be in a car with each other. And so what the default was was Gary would say from the beginning, oh, I'm the world's worst backseat driver. Oh, I like to be the one driving. And I was cool with it until I heard him whine to his wife about how much he has to drive us. And then I'm like, okay, well, that narrative's done now. You can't have it both ways. And so then I drove more than half the trip. This was wild to me, though. GPS is on, and he's like, hey, here in 30 minutes, you know which outer belt we're gonna take? I bet it's this outer belt. The name of the outer belt, not the. I was like, yeah, I'm just gon. I'm just going to follow the GPS here. I have driven through Louisville before. I know there's outer belts, and we're heading south. And he's like, I wonder which one it is. And then he kept going. And then there were exits I needed to take that I didn't need to take. And finally I was like, listen, if I miss a turn, I'm fairly confident that problem will be resolved within about five minutes. And I'm willing to play that game, but I can't keep doing this. All right, go ahead. You wanted to unleash on me. No, there was no unleash. I was just saying that we discovered something that neither one of us thought would be the thorn in the side. But it was. But we. What was the agreement? I. So mine is when I feel like you're about to wreck us, and yours is navigation, for the most part. Yeah. So, like, if I see a truck getting close and you're like, we're fine, but I don't think we're fine, I will jump panic. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. And when. And when, like, I'm the type of driver that when there is a merge happening, I know I need to be in the right lane, and I'm in the left. I start the process of getting over there probably a mile ahead of time. You're like, 50ft's good. Yeah. Because the zipper method has been tested, and it is the most efficient the studies have been done. Also. Also don't care. How about how you feel about it, Gary? I'll be honest. I care about us getting along. The. Yes, we came to a reasonable. A reasonable accommodation, which was shut up. We're shutting up. Yes. And then within 10 seconds of this episode, I have something I want to talk about. That's fine, Gary. I'll remember that. And here's what I know. Anybody that's been listening for more than, you know, a couple months knows I did this to you so many times that I'm getting off easy, if you're getting to count this one, because it's been a lot harsher on my end. So I'm going to acknowledge that. I'm going to acknowledge that. It's true. But let's dive into the Nashville show. One of the things, a big takeaway. So we're set up again. Last time we were able to set up with one of the sponsors right by the front entrance. This time it was just as the ball card show room two, a little over halfway back in there. 1400 tables in the show. And one of my favorite things about this show is before the doors have ever opened, there is a line five wide wrapped all the way around the fairground building. Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people waiting in line to be a part of the show. So for those of you that are just waiting for the hobby to go to zero, don't go to Nashville. Stay away. It's like a lot of people really enjoy cards there and mostly single. So yes, look out. Still going on. The hobby's still alive. Not dead yet. Not dead yet. Maybe next month. And we had, I mean, it was so much fun. We, the show itself. Now I will say this, they are very long days. Friday, the show goes till 8pm now, we ended up cutting out a little bit early on Friday because we had a dinner we had to get to. But we, we always got a dinner we got to get to, don't we, Gary? And then Saturday, very long day again. Show is 9 to 6 on Saturday, but Saturday we got to have some really fun. We got to go to Shep's Car and Collectibles. I'm ripping her hat right here. Yeah. Shout out Shep's cards and collectibles. Sports card nonsense. Was doing a live or Geo breaks. Was doing a live break at the shop. And so we got to go hang out there. Really great vibe. If you're ever in there in Hendersonville, right? Yep. If you're in the Nashville area and you want an awesome shop that feels like a real lcs, go check them out. That's funny. Yeah, like half of the dudes in there are ripping boxes and Gary and I are just digging through the valley, digging through boxes, stacking piles of cool stuff. He also, he showed me a really cool vintage card. I grabbed a few vintage slabs and he's like, you want to see something interesting? And he showed me a 73 alkaline error card that I've never seen in person before. Some of you are going to know exactly where this is heading. But this was a new one for me. It was the bandage variation and I guess they were just a limited release and they didn't like that there was a bandage showing at his hat. But if you ever see that K line and you see the bandage, grab that card. Yeah, that thing is a lot more rare. But really fun shop. It's clear that there's a collector's emphasis. All the wax is there. But maybe now's a good time for me to show them one of the things I bought off. Like this. This place is so unique and collector focused that they have some really fun stuff. This is one of them. So I did a quick video on IG and TikTok about this, but how about a 1987 Kraft Mac and Cheese? Eric Davis, Jose Canseco dual on card IP shrink wrapped certed by jsa Find another one. Somebody said cook it. Yeah, yeah, like 35 bucks on it. So I was like, there was so much cool stuff like that. There were tons of that kind of stuff. And we were talking to the owner and he said that they made a conscious decision to really lean into that IP auto market. So they had tons of that kind of just interesting, unique stuff. If you've got a guy who's reasonably well known that you're a PC and you want to find, find something unique, I'd say you have a better than average chance of finding it. At Sheps, they had a huge island down the middle, really wide with a countertop and it just box after box underneath. You could dig there all day. He just kept handing me boxes and stuff. So one of the, one of the guys that was there elbowed me while we were over in the open area looking through boxes and he goes, I know the kind of stuff you guys like. Go ask for the boxes behind the shelf. Yeah. Oh, okay. I will now. Just fun, like NFL patches, autos. You got a Scott Hamilton IP that we're going to run and watch whatnot. Like we got a Richard Petty Silver Inc. Yeah, Auto that we're gonna run stuff. Some really fun stuff. So it was great being out there at Chefs. One of the things that Gary and I talked about doing is just talking about trends that we're seeing in the show scene. Because we are there pretty much every week. We're by no means the authority. A caveat. Gary and I do sell cards for a living, but most of the cards that we run are under $500. There's going to be some cards in there with a few thousand bucks each, but for the large part, we're running that. So that's our filter. We want to talk through the trends that we're seeing at shows, and maybe it's something for a mental note, maybe it's something other dealers will resonate with. Maybe it'll give you an idea for the next time you're in this area. But maybe we could run into that a little bit. We have a bunch of show and tell today for you as well. Some really cool stuff we've picked up in the last week. So let's dive right in. The first thing that I had written down, you and I both made a note of this was the people walking that show. The offers that were made on cards were very close to sticker for the most part. Most. And that was there the occasional low ball. Of course there was. Or just trying to source lower than we can make it available to them. You know, it wasn't as a tug of war, but. But most. Most of the buys were. And this was the other fun part about the suit. They were close to tag. And outside of one or two deals early in the day on Friday, most of the sales we made were one or two cards at a time. They were not people buying them to. To flip them in bulk or repack buys. These were collectors walking up and seeing something cool that they liked and going, oh man, yeah, can I, can I. What do you. What do you think you can do there? Like, that was the conversations a lot. One of the things that was unique about it is while there were a ton of collectors, because we. We do emphasize that we'll have a super unique 90s parallel of a player that's not super liquid. But we know they know they have a big PC market and at some point it'll happen. A lot of that stuff moved. The thing that is like intersecting with the liquidity and the uniqueness is that 90s insert stuff has officially, officially taken off. And we're not just talking Jordan. Jordans were flying. People were requesting them. So we were in building two, which means people have been through hundreds of tables before they got to us. When they get to us, they're saying, do you have any Jordan? And I was like, well, what are you seeing out there? There's not any out there. Yeah. And so. And it was that lighter price band stuff, like under $200. Jordan Bonds, Griffey, like if it was a Frank Thomas superstar, it was gone. Yes. So it's been really interesting. Like we've been hoping for it. Obviously you can just always say, like, I predicted this, but we stayed committed to that lane because that's what we knew what we were excited about. That's probably part of the reason we don't get super pumped for downtowns. It's just because we, we just have stuff that we like. We did buy a few. We did buy a few. And. And they sold. Right. But by and large, it was a lot of collector stuff. Now I know that runs against the narrative of the sky falling, but I think that everybody could kind of agree that if, if that's true what we're saying, that that's probably a good thing in general if people are moving away from chasing. Nobody asked us for Jackson dollars park zero. But I could give you 10 names from 15 to 25, 35 years ago that were just being asked for on a regular basis. The only guy that you and I heard a lot of requests for was Mizarowski. Yeah. Tons of requests too. But that makes sense. We're in Nashville. Right. But Missourowski was a once an hour request. Yeah, we got a couple. We had a couple cards. I think we bought one or two while we were there and churned through those as well. Soccer stuff was flying. That's no surprise. Gary had that big mall card that he was able to work into a collector's PC. It was a trading cash deal. Yeah. But it was really interesting. Now a couple of things, you know. So Nashville is going to draw people from all over the country. We were talking to people from Iowa, Birmingham, the New England area, Florida, California. Yeah. Well, I mean, Nashville's not. There's usually enough flights getting in there. Right. Driving easier to get to than ship. Yeah. Yeah. For it's like six hours for a huge portion of the population on the eastern half of the US So great location for that. But let's talk about sell through ring because it was silly. You are running some numbers here. Yes. Our. Our target for shows. Even before we merged everything together, each one of us, if we had a 30 value sell through rate on any given show, we felt good about that. We went down to this show and our value sell through rate was a hair over 50%. And our volume sell through rate, just physical inventory, number of cards, we were at 77 or 78% of what we took with us gone. Yeah. And those. You wondering what that means? That means like we've been saying that we've been seeing the lighter price point. Stuff is just moving so much faster. The other thing that I noticed was I was seeing that in tables where I had seen nothing but slabbed case hits. Seeing a lot more of that stuff now, what did not walk up. So we've had two Nashville shows. Now, I know there were some of you that will disagree with this. Just our experience has been that this is more of a, from a dealer's perspective, more of a cash out type of show. You have a lot more collectors, so by proxy, more people that aren't in a hurry to sell their cards. Right. So that would make sense. If it's a stronger collector base at the show attending, then it's less people that are like flip, flip, flip, flip, flip with everything that they have. Right? Yeah, I've, I mean, two shows in a row where we've seen something similar. Again, if you had anything from the Braves, Dynasty and auto, like we went through probably five to 10, like Maddox glavin, Chipper, like that kind of stuff. We restocked some more. It sold the next day. Like as soon as you put that stuff out, it was flying. Shohei stuff was moving. I think we came back with one Shohei card. We moved a lot. We'll show that one here in just a minute. But the sell through rate was, was really something that even left us nervous. You know, first week of us having everything together, we're like, I really hope we do well. We need to, we need to. And then like begin middle of day two, we're like, ah, oh no, what are we gonna do tomorrow? Because we got Columbus Card Fest at a couple days, right? Yes. Yeah, it was, it was fun and exciting. And again, second time we've done that show. I don't imagine we'll miss any more of them. It's just a fantastic show. They do a great job of promoting it. The crowd is always fantastic. The other dealers are all really great too. Like we, we, we decided with the sell through rate that we had that we were better off on Sunday, which is the third day of the show. Just not even putting cards out and walking and, and trying to buy some stuff. And we bought some really cool stuff. So yeah, overall, trend wise, lots of collectors out there, guys. And we keep saying this and we're gonna keep saying it because somebody needs to authentically counter the narrative that everything's crashing and going to zero. We're there every week. There are thousands of people out buying cards because they like them for their collection. Guys this, the. The guys screaming from the rooftops that everybody's going to be holding a bag and like, it's not what we see at all. Yeah, not everybody. There's certainly a big piece of that. But I think the other thing that happens is the people expecting that turn and burn flip. If they're at a show that's collector heavy, maybe they don't want to source there as much. Yeah. You know, maybe they aren't in a hurry for that. The other thing that probably helped us a lot with that, Gary. And maybe skewing our view a little bit. It's fair. The day that dealers set up, there's usually a lot of deals happening. You. And I said, hey, with live selling, with ebay coming up with whatnot and all that, let's get our showcases and banners up and let's go hit some boxes. So maybe there would have been more of if we just set some cards out or whatever. There could have been a lot of traffic there. But I think the other thing is, like, at some point, it's not that big of a space. Like, that's the thing people think is this is machine, this big space. I've seen about 40% of the people that were set up in that room multiple times in the last year. And I'm mostly a Midwest guy. So it's big, but it's not. So we may have a reputation that we're not in a hurry to give out some of those deals. I don't know how that would get out there, but it's possible. Right, Gary? Sure could be impacted in a little bit. And. And we did have a lot of success doing what you said. We. From a showcase inventory buying standpoint. Sunday we did okay. And this on Friday we did okay. Saturday there wasn't much, but we. We were able to start stacking the level of inventory that we need for where we're going with live selling. And that was a lot of fun. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. It's new to us that we're parking such a big position of liquid so that you have a little bit of a base like with ebay live. One of the things that I'm hopeful will be a part of that soon is pre bids, but that does not exist right now. So. Right for us. And we were talking with other people like JT Triple Crown 24, who sells live, give him a phone. Which by the way, one go subscribe to JT Triple Crown 24. If you're a dealer that love the dealer perspective and angle, JT has fantastic content. He also found this for me. Oh yeah. At the show. Zach Thomas Platinum Medallion, 1998. You now own all three of Zach Thomas's best cards that aren't like the masterpiece one of one. Yeah. And I can't find anything on that. So if you're out there hanging on to it, you know I got a shot. I got $5 for you. I'd be very interested in that. But where was I going with that with jt? Jt jt. Oh, he was just explaining like because of that lack of pre bid, it's not a bad idea for live sellers and ebay life to have a little bit of a war chest where you have your stuff organized, where you're able to take on requests or you see that a certain era or players taking off in a show so that you can keep that fed. So we've been trying to expand that parking money there, knowing that we're going to get that out within the next month. But yeah, that, that's a filter too. All right, are you ready for a little bit of show and tell because. Yeah, we've got some fun stuff. I'll let you go first. Yeah. All this stuff, guys, when, if you come to Columbus Card Fest, this weekend will be in our showcases. Yeah. Unless they sell on ebay before then, which I doubt. All right, first one. Jason mentioned this card before. This card is never sold even raw. This is a pop one with none higher. And we just took a shot at it based on extrapolating data from other versions of the card that sold. But it's pretty cool. You guys can see that is the Otani judge. Tops now, dual 10 of 10 black foil. It's a PSA9. There's not even any raw sales on it. The gentleman who walked up with it sold us this and three or four other Otani slabs that all sold and said, I think this is what you can tag this at. And we thought he was a little strong, but we didn't think he was crazy strong on what he thought we could tag it at. And then he told us what he would take for it. And we looked at each other and said, probably worth taking a shot. Sometimes this type of a card is a card if you can buy it for a price that you're 100, sure somebody else will Pay what you paid for it, then it's worth taking a shot on. Yeah. And that combo of guys, hard. It's got upside. Yeah. Yes. Hard to miss. One thing that we've been paying attention to is the 90s trend because we're so excited about it. I saw this on Sunday. Just very cool. This is a collector's piece. This is a pop culture. I wouldn't be surprised if a casual collector buys this. That's a Griffey fan, but it's 1989 upper deck pack with a Ken Griffey auto in the right color of that blue, green. And it's an. It's a 10 on the auto. Iconic set, iconic pack, iconic autograph. And it's slapped up in a PSA 10. That's something somebody puts in their office, right? That's like a. That's a show piece. Yeah, yeah. As Don Jones says, that's a centerpiece right there. That's a collector's. That's a collector's deal. Yep. Next one. This was one we actually found yesterday after we got home at a local shop. And I was. And again, a card that's worth taking a shot on coming into football season. How about the flawless Joe Burrow RPA on card numbered to 15? The card is not sold in three years. Like, how big was that card then? It was when he was hurt. So it did like 2,600 bucks back then. I. We're not even 100 sure where we're going to tag it at yet. But again, a card worth taking a shot on, very rare. This flawless on card stuff just doesn't come available very often. So when it does, you have an opportunity to scale up with it. So picked this up yesterday at a local shop here in Columbus. Again, paying attention to trends is super important if you're set up as a deal. Are you watching what's happening and what people are interested in? Are you asking them why 2000 Fleury X essential credentials, Latrell Spreewell numbered to 2001 pop 2, 1 higher in a PSA 8. As all this stuff lifts, as all of the stuff that has interest like this lifts. If you can get into a low pop, don't be scared of an 8, don't be scared of a 7. The people that know what this stuff is know it's tough to find. And that was the combination of what set it's from an iconic player from a national championship team. There's some excitement around it. So seemed like a no brainer. Now this is one where there's not data to tell me exactly what this is selling for. You just have to trust your gut on some of these and know that it's a risk. Maybe something else happens. But my hunch is, as everything else is lifting from this era, this is the type of card that's lifting as well. Yeah. You know who won't buy that card from us? Who? P.J. carissimo. All right, what you got? Early select Kobe Silver PSA 10. This is bread and butter stuff for us right now. Like, if you're a dealer, this is the kind of stuff that we see. Just it'll be in the showcase for 15 minutes. Like it. It will be gone. That type of stuff, you can't go wrong if you can get it right. All right, pick this up today. Number two prospect in baseball, Leo DeVries. Optic Gold Vinyl. One of one rated prospect. Listen, we don't do a lot of unlicensed, but if you're going to do it, number two prospect. One on one is probably not a bad way to go. It's got the eye appeal of the gold pretty card. A little bit of a color match type of vibe with that. No way this survives Columbus. I'd be shocked. I'd be absolutely shocked if it does. Agreed. This is one that's really fun. This is a pop two and the same person owned both of these. 2013 flir retro. This is the essential credentials. Eddie George numbered to 40, I believe. That is the future. Yeah, that's the lower numbered one. Essential credentials future Eddie George. Iconic Ohio State Unique, iconic photo. Beautiful, beautiful card. Again, two PSA 10s owned by the same person. Yeah. Gorgeous. Yes. Definitely will get some attention now. Yes. Did that have a recent comps or is it like it's never sold? Yeah. So you've got. No, there's a raw sale. The most recent raw sale was like two years ago and it did like 140 bucks two years ago on that stuff. Doesn't tell you a whole lot. Nope. Right. Yeah. So, okay, my favorite card. My favorite card that I picked up. How about that's jam Antoine Jameson in a PSA 9. That's rookie, right? Yep. Yep. Factors. Right, Factors. So set. This is like the Teemu dunk and go nuts. For those of you that don't know, there are some monsters in this set. You like that one? You like that? I did. I did like that one. That is my. That is my favorite pickup for the week. Now, if you follow the trends on this card, this one had a comp that popped this week. This stuff is getting hot now. Don't chase everything. You see, I'm a little more comfortable with the 90s stuff. Yes. And what players have a little bit of, like, a cult following. What sets have a cult following? So, like essential credentials. And this set, they have those factors. So if it's not a following. Right. It's guys who are building PSA set registry card sets. It could be that, too. So. Yeah. And nine's a silly grade on that. And eight's a really good grade on this one, actually. Apparently pop two. One higher on that. So. Oh, those were so. They flaked so bad. Especially on the back. Yep. Yep. Okay, what do we have next? Oh, I know what we're doing. I'm excited about this. So Keith does this Shop Talk segment with us every week. He had an idea. What if I did a little series leading up to the national? So let's head up to Delaware, Ohio, Keith Newhart at Newhart Cards with this week's Shop Talk. Hi, this is Keith at Newhart Cards, and this is Shop Talk. We're going to start this week with a little mini series. Right. With the national coming up a little more than a month away, I figured we would start kind of on a global level and then get down to brass tacks as we get really close to the national. So let's start, first of all talking about the national on a bigger scene. So this is our 11th straight national. There's only been three locations in those 11 years. Chicago, Cleveland, and Atlantic City. Atlantic City now is gone. Cleveland, the IX center sold. That one's gone. So we're in Chicago this year, the next year, and then we're going to be in Detroit the year after that. So again, let's talk about Chicago. First of all, it's not in Chicago. It's Rosemont, Illinois. Nice suburb just outside of the city. It's about 30 minutes, I believe, from downtown Chicago. It's probably the only national where I always say to people, you know, you can come in, you can park your car and never have to drive again while you're there. There's nightlife, there's shopping, there's bars, there's a casino all within walking distance. So really great place to bring the family. Next, I want to talk about maybe your budget. Even if it's a hundred dollars to a million dollars or anywhere in between. Between. The national is a great place to come. There are quarter boxes, there are dollar boxes at the national. Right. There's also $100,000 cards and million dollar cards just. Just to Be able to see that kind of stuff is really cool and dig through some boxes where you might be able to find some PC stuff or stuff that maybe you can flip at the show. A couple other things. There are impromptu trade nights in every single hotel. That's, that's right downtown by the National. There's also, there will be a National sponsored event as well. And then on every single floor, aisle, everywhere, VIP lounge, the lunch lounge. There's also deals going on there. Also wanted to talk about two misnomers I think that a lot of people talk about, especially in the, you know, the talking head kind of space. One is you can't find a deal with the National. Completely untrue. Yes, there are tables and tables of 1987 top sets that you will see there. And there are tables with $100,000 cards that are 40% over what the value is ever sold for before. There are thousands of tables in there and thousands of dealers that are willing to sell and buy and trade. So don't let that stop you. Next of all, another thing is, hey, they should have a goodie bag at the front door with a deodorant stick in it. Again, completely false information. There are more Prada and Gucci in that, in that convention now than there are Marlboro T shirts, right? It's not the 80s any anymore where dealers sat and smoked at their, at their booth. I think in 11 years we've had two people come up to our, our booth where we were like, oh Lord, what does that smell? Right? Doesn't happen anymore. So again, want to make this kind of a little mini series as we get closer to the National. If you have any questions for us, you want us to answer, comment, go on Discord, give us a call, email, whatever you have to do. So this has been Keith at Newhart Cards and this is shop talk here at the ball card show. When we decided to partner with Pristine Auction, it's because it felt like such a no brainer. Pristine has gone out of their way to make sure that the entire collector experience is as transparent and seamless and authentic as possible. They offer fast paced live selling auctions where every sale sets a recorded comp. They offer 10 minute auctions where 10 lots go up and you can bid on them for 10 minutes. And they offer traditional daily and weekly auctions as well if that is more your speed. Most importantly, every item you purchase from Pristine, they stand behind and guarantee to be authentic for the entire time that you own the item for a limited time. When you register at Pristine and sign up with the code ball card. You'll get $20 off your first auction win, as well as three months of gold status as a consigner win the real thing. Pristine auction. All right. Keith will be bringing that series the next several weeks leading up. And don't forget, new hart cards will be set up at the national. We'll be sure to do some content hanging out with them. We've even talked about. Maybe you and I will have some giveaways to send people to. Keith, if you like this type of stuff that we were just showing. Really nice refractors. They'll have all the cases and all that Keith loads up all year for the show. Yes. There's really cool stuff, and the value boxes are unbelievable. Just get there after us. That's all we ask. Just show up one minute after we're done. That's all we're asking for. But you want to be sure to get out there for that. Quick reminder, as you're listening to this, if it just dropped, you still have time to get to Columbus card festival. It is Friday and Saturday, the week that this drops at the Columbus convention center. Gary and I are set up on the front row there. We've got a couple tables. Be sure to stop by and say hello. And while I'm at it, can I just say, like, what? The coolest experience in Nashville for both of us. Multiple people walking up and telling us they just set up at their first show. Oh, yeah. That they just started their business, that they just found a PC because they used to rip all the time, and now they're collecting a player. And it's so much more fun for them that them and their kid once a month, go do this thing together where they set up at a small local show just to build relationships. Like, those stories are starting to compound, and we're hearing those on a regular basis. So if you stop by to share that with us, know that that, like, warms our heart. It means the world to us. We work really hard, and that's the reward. It really is. We love that. And if any of you need help, one of the things that we say is we. We've dogged on some people that offer some terrible material out there. If you have a question you want somebody to help you with, and you think that we might be somebody that has the answer, it's free. Shoot us a message. Jump in the discord. Lots of great information there. Links down in the description. Yeah. Yep. Okay, let's talk through it. Gary. First week joined inventory. Everything under one umbrella, we had theories on what we wanted to do. There were things that worked really well, things that were challenging, things that we're going to perceive to be an issue down the road. And what we're committed to is bringing everyone along with us on this journey. So let's talk through. I mean, this is stuff that you get back from a three day show like that. All the driving, you're exhausted, you know, your Thursday to Sunday. Right. So essentially four days gone, you're catching up. And yesterday we had to scramble for more inventory anyway, so some of this we're just going to be fleshing out for the first time here. Yep. But let's talk through what worked well and what didn't. The first thing I wanted to talk about was one of the things that we communicated last week was let's land into our strengths, which was Gary's going to emphasize the selling, I'm going to emphasize the buying when it walks up or when people are trying to get a deal. You go first, Gary. I think what went well, what could be improved on, what's a mess that we still have to work on, and maybe you think it's like you just hit the jackpot with your business partner and there's nothing and that's okay too. I. I think. Well, I already feel that way because unlike. Well, here's the reality on that front. I mean, one of the things that you and I were committed to from the time we just started doing the podcast, let alone joining our inventories and everything else, was we're never gonna let anything fester. If we're annoyed with the other person about something, we're gonna talk about it and be done with it. And we do a good job of that. I think that the things that I thought went really well was you being the guy who's mostly doing the buying, even though you do it very differently than I do, and me being the guy mostly doing the selling, which we both also do very differently. And I know there were times as both of those things were happening that we watched the other one and we're going, I would do this differently, right? Yes. Yeah, yeah. But in general, I thought that that worked pretty well. And when one of us was overloaded, obviously the other one stepped in and I needed to buy something. I did. And if you needed to sell something, you did. Yeah. I tried to have a filter, like, unless I'm not sure about this card, I'm not going to bug Gary, but that's going to happen 10 times on the show. Bowman Autos are going to be something where I'm like, because I don't care what those comps say on a new Bowman product. I don't care. We had a Murakami to 10 walk up. I was afraid to even touch it. I don't want anything to do. And the number was I didn't want anything to do with it. But it was like looking over him and I was like. And he was like, oh, hell no. No, no, no. Stay away, stay away. Right? So. And not everybody's gonna feel that way. That's fine. But that was one of the things too, like still being able to lean over there and get the job done like that. I'm sure for Gary, when he would hear me say, you know, if there's a stack, there's some cards where I'm like, oh, you need full sticker. Fine. In my mind, I'm just thinking about this lot, right? Gary's mind works a lot more card by card. And I'm just like, so there's been times I Even in the last week I bought some stuff and Gary's like, halfway through, he's like, what do you think? Like, these, what you paid? What? And then he'll be like, two or three cards, he's like, oh, we kind of are in the same spot margin wise. So adjusting to that is a thing. We did finally set up a laptop dedicated hotspot. Trying to. Trying to be a little quicker with that. So I definitely need to improve. And part of that is like learning what to pass on a little sooner from the eye test. But I would say that that was one of the differences. Now, I think this week we will be a lot more buried with buying than last. Just because Columbus tends to be one where there's a little more flipping going on. Just the market is more that way in this city, so I think we'll have a lot more people trying to free up cash in that first hour of the show. We're on the front row, so I think we'll get. We'll get peppered with a line a little bit that'll be interesting to see. You know, if we're two or three deep, how do we keep it moving? How does. How do we keep the showcase stuff unburied from people waiting in line to sell? So some of that stuff's going to be a little bit tricky. What were you seeing on the selling end? I think we talked about a little bit at the front end, but in general it was very. People were making fair offers, so it made it very Simple. The systems that we have in place to know where we need to be make it a little easier. I think that the one thing that we did run into this one time, and I think it's just gonna be something we get better at. But when one of us is needing to step in and do what the other one normally does, and then we need a little bit of help with it, knowing what that handoff looks like and how to make that happen in a way that. That neither one of us is making the other person look bad, because we don't. We. One of the things that I have to realize and you know, about me and I'm learning about myself is that sometimes I don't know how I come across in my mind. I'm. They asked the question, I gave them an answer. The intentions are pure and right and kind. And you're really good at reading body language. It might as well be in, you know, hieroglyphics to me. So there was one specific time where I was at another table doing some buying, and I got a text. You help. And I come back and part of the deal is done. And then there's questions about another. And I look at the part of the deal that's done, and in my mind, I just want to see how we got to that number. So I know where I'm going with the rest of it. And it came across as I was trying to renegotiate that part of the deal. And so to you, you see what's happening? You see the buyer. I just saw the buyer like, what? What the heck? And there's so much more about to happen. Yeah. And. And I am just trying to get myself caught up with it. And your immediate reaction to that was to you, again, intention wise. You weren't trying to scold me in front of another person. No. That's how I took it. So now my hack will go up immediately. What are you doing here? Yeah, yeah. It's a 20 car. What are you doing? There was one that you were like, what did we get out of that? The reason was we had a sticker system. Gary priced it up. Gary is an encyclopedia on the light stuff. I'm trying not to give up more points than I need to. And that's the easiest way to lose margin is on that front 50 and under stuff. Yes. Everybody's like five bucks less, seven bucks less, and that's 13%. Yeah. And that stuff adds up. So to some of you, you're like, oh, my gosh, you're those guys. Yeah. We Pay our bills. We're doing that. Yeah, we're doing that. We try not to price it egregiously. We try to be like, where it should be. But. But yeah, for us, some of those handoffs and knowing what the other person is thinking. And at the end of the day, I'm gonna. For. For the next. Forever. I'm going to hear Gary negotiate differently than I would, and he's going to hear me by a little differently than he would. I think the key is that we just keep talking about it. Yeah. And when our stuff was. When our stuff was separate, we would hear the same things. Sure. But it didn't matter as much. We would think to ourselves, I would have done that differently. But it didn't have any impact on. Right. Me personally, right now it's both of us. And every transaction impacts both of us. Right. And we're going to, like, I know this. I'm going to hear deals not happen that I would have taken some profit on. Right. Yep. But I'm also going to hear deals happen that we got an extra 10%. I never had to give up. Yep. It balances. Gary's going to hear me offer strong on some cards, but he's going to have to trust that at the end of the show and on the right opportunities, that cost average is landing in the right spot. Yes. Right. And then what we both have to commit to is if our results shift. It's all an open book. Yeah, absolutely. We may end up. Who knows? Yeah. Like, it could change. But I felt overall, like, it was pretty good. There weren't too many moments of chaos. Now the thing that you and I have to work on, we both know this is. We're almost too good at addressing things right away. I'll put it like that. There's probably a lot of things that should be a note down on my phone and a conversation at, like 9pm after dinner, like, recovered. But you and I are like, hey, we've got to figure this out. And I don't want to be fussing with you like a spouse for the next six hours. You know, when we're on a road trip, like, let's. What happened there? You know, let's, you know, fix it. Yep. But Gary and I are both very forward personalities, so it's just headbutts. And if you walk up to the table, sometimes people are like, you guys are. I was like, yeah, this is normal. We're fine. I hate his guts and he loves me too, you know, so. But yeah, that. That was. That was A little difference. What was incredible, though, was Sunday making that commitment to just walking by the show floor. By the way, a show like that, most people. I would say not quite half, but probably about half of the vendors weren't even there for Sunday because of Father's Day. Maybe 30%. I don't know the exact number. It looked light. Okay. Yes. You have two categories of people that are there. People that are committed to sell through everything they have, and you might get a good deal. And then you have people with completely full showcases that have hardly sold anything because it's show and tell, and the prices are, you know what? Way beyond where that car has ever been. Some of you listening to this are going to be like, oh, they're talking about me now. If I see a tag that's not ending in a number that divides easily by five, I know that we're going to. If a tax is $37, it's gonna be tough. Yeah, but a lot of times it is. A lot of times it is. But that was the kind of table where I got this. And that worked out all right. Yep. But, yeah, so. So there was a little more of that. So I didn't know what to expect. We Both sourced for 2 and a half hours. Covered the whole show, given what was there. We did. Our margin was silly. It was really good. But we were taking on unique stuff. Weird stuff. I bought a leaf quad odd quad quad patch that has magic Larry and Kobe in it. The magic has, like, a piece of the jersey, like the manufacturers patch. Kobe's two color. Larry's two color all game used. Who's the fourth on that one? I'm gonna feel bad because it was a great name. I can't remember off top of my head, but, yeah, me either. There's stuff like that. Kirby Puckett game use patch to 15 out of 4 with Paul Molitor with Paul Mol. Pair of hall of famers gross patches, game use. So sometimes it's like grabbing a few of those weirder cards where we feel more comfortable with the market. Like this. This is a good example of that stuff where we know that. Yep, it's an eight. Yep. It's Latrell Spree. Well. Yep. It's not a ten. Yep. It's Jameson. We know that. That stuff we can move, right? Yes. I was impressed that we were able to. To do as well as we did and to, like, to multiply our time. It felt so good. You came back with stack of cards, and I was like, oh. Because our first thought was how in the world. Are we going to be ready for Columbus? There's no way. The amount of money we took into the show with us to spend, both of us were like, no way. There's no way we spend this. But okay, just in case. But what was wild to me is you would think that with two of us, we would have gotten 50% more efficient. We probably got more like 60 to 70% more efficient because, again, not only are we dividing and conquering, but because we both do things a little differently and have a different eye for different things. I was going past things that I knew Jason would be the one to. To worry about, and he would stop at that table and have a conversation. And I was just focused on the things that I knew. And. And we really multiplied our. Our labor capacity way more than one would think. The thing that a lot of people think, I'm believing this, I could be wrong. My assumption is that a lot of people think it's price and cards, which is true when you're buying. It's a lot more about personalities. And there are people I can figure out just in a quick conversation that I'm going to get on their nerves, and they're not interested in me being their friend. They're not interested in this. They just want to know, what are you going to offer me? And there's other people that would love to hang out for 30 minutes while we talk about this $20 card together. And then maybe the deal happens or doesn't. But I think learning where it'll make sense to pause, where we're connecting with people and where we're not, I think that's where it's going to help us a ton. Because there are certainly people you can buy from that I can't, and vice versa, right? Sure, Absolutely. That helped us a lot. One of the things that we've adjusted to is our accounting system. So when we're separate, we had our own methods. We're like, hey, accounting wise, how do we want to track all this? Everything from $100 and up is spreadsheeted. Now, what are the columns you're using, Gary, for each card? I'm trying to remember name. It's nothing crazy. Yeah, it's nothing crazy. I mean, to be. If anybody wants a copy of the spreadsheet, we're happy to send it to you. Hit us up on Discord. I don't know. Let's find out if it's any good first. Gary, what's in there? So it name. It's the card data. Well, and whether it's raw or graded, date of purchase, cost, tag, sell price. And then there's several columns that automatically fill in. Once you fill in what the sell price was. So it's a fill in your profit, it's going to give you your individual margin on that card. And if you're trying to figure out margin, a lot of people have different ways to do it, but there's actually one accounting way that is correct. You take the profit and you divide that by your cost. There's your margin and then it auto fills in. Show total cost of goods, show total sales, show total profit, show total margin. And then the second sheet is just an expenses sheet that you know for us, the expenses that we track our hotel costs and table costs because that's the fees that the business pays for. The business doesn't pay for our food. We pay for our own food. Not yet. Not yet. We can't afford a third employee. Essentially. We can't afford those feed bags at this point yet. Yeah, no, I thought it was really good. One of the things that we have to factor in. So now we're tracking everything 100 up. We still have stuff in the showcase that's way lighter than a hundred bucks. Like probably 30 is the lightest, 25 30. But with live selling, a lot more of that's moving into there. And one of the challenges we have on the accounting end is we have to buy such a high volume of live selling. We've got to figure out how to integrate those purchases in separately from our showcase. But part of the advantage you have in sourcing for live shows is that you can buy a large stack of ten to fifty dollar cards. And many times that's how you get a good deal on a 300 or 500 or $2,000 card. So what we've done, and I think it's going to work well for us, but we have to be honest, like there can be zero ego in this, right? None is. We went through about 500 cards we purchased and it was if the traffic is light on ebay, live or whatnot and the people are not engaged and this performs poorly, what do we think that floor is? What do we think is worst case scenario? That's the number we built off of. For our tag. Yes, for our tag. So that we can say across all purchases about what percentage are we at now? Quick reminder, we said it last week, if you don't actually sell that stuff. Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You might be at 100 on your showcase inventory. If you Bought a bunch of live stuff. Well, and that was a conversation we had on the way back, which was, okay, we've got quite a bit of money parked in this stuff. We know for us, live selling is a big part of what we do. But how many shows are we committed to between now and the end of July? Because July's a tight month for us. There's not as many shows as normal first month of doing this together. National at the end of the month. So we lose a week and there's a lot of expense there. What are we committed to doing to make sure we turn that potential dollars and profit into actual profit? Yeah. So not an easy task, but that's one that we're tracking along the way. If there's anything we'll have to adjust down the road. Now, there's other ways of doing it. Some people just track total spend on live. So we spent X amount of dollars. Forget the comp value. What we think we'll get out of it here was the spend. What did I do? Track it in basically in rears like a month later, right? Yeah. We don't have the luxury of not considering that because we have to leverage those buys towards the showcase stuff. Is that a good way of putting that? That's just where it is. So if there's a system that may change, we'll keep you updated on that. But that was definitely one of the adjustments that we made. Anything else from that first weekend? No, I mean, overall, I think we both felt really, really good about it. It was such a. Such a relief to not feel anything other than a united and shared purpose of what we were doing. There was no, like, how's Jason doing? Or how's Gary doing? Am I buying enough? Is. Is. Is he selling enough? None of that. It was all just. And we were so much more efficient and so much more focused and able to execute our plans with that being the case. Yeah, I'd agree. I'd agree. All right, so Columbus Card Fest. We're hoping to. I think we, you know, we've got a little bit of a war chest on the live stuff, but we talked. We're hoping to run into a little more of that ultra modern 30 to $75 stuff. Yeah, there was not much of that. Let's talk about that for a second. Yeah, that was feedback we got in Nashville that that stuff had dried up. So when I say that it's like the NFL Genesis and honeycombs and zebras. Right. And the mid range to lower end RPA is, you know, stuff like that? Yeah, like the bucky rpas that were selling like hotcakes at 30 bucks. A lot of that stuff is dried up now. Why is that? Well, the price bands on repacks have gone down. The backlog on grading has gone up. There's a lot of factors involved and some people are just going to be hesitant to say if this card has upside, do I want to do anything with it right now? So as that's happening, the 90s stuff was flying. I'll be real interested to watch this over the next month. Do we see that as a trend? Or maybe it was just more for that show, but that's the type of stuff we need to add in. Other than that, if we can get some slabs, that'd be great. Those are getting real tough to find. Fine. Yeah. Rough up to get slabs out in the wild right now. Yeah. Unless you're buying the big, big stuff. The. The lower end stuff is not there. Yeah. I think from a standpoint of recap, though, I think we've. We've covered about all of that. I know you guys saw at the beginning, but I do want to mention. And you're going to hear us mention it. And it helps you guys so reward for you and it helps us make sure you click the link in the description underneath us. If you've never set up an account over at Pristine Auction, they're going to give you 20 bucks free just for setting that up on your first auction win. Helps us out too. Lets them know that we were a worthwhile partner. So. And if you forget to do that here, we'll have some cards of the QR code at the. Yes. At the show. Oh, one more card. This is. If this doesn't sell, this is going to be PC. Okay. Oh, yeah. Mark Martin Select Black. One of one. That ain't the Valvoline. Just full Viagra. Full Viagra. The use of the word full there. When Jason told me he bought that card, what was awesome was he prefaced it with, listen, if it doesn't sell, I'm going to buy it. Don't worry. He knew my reaction. We bought a race. I may purchase this this week still, I don't know, but it's a possibility that Mark's hanging out. Big Meek Mill fan. Didn't know if you knew that. Big Meek Mill. He's a big rap fan. That is not a connection I would have ever made. Yep. Mark Martin, number six. All right. Well, that. That went off the rails a little bit. That's okay. Fun stuff coming up. We've got the national a few weeks there'll be a lot of content around that people that we're meeting up with as well to do some content with. Those of you that have been asking about the network things that are going to be happening. We're building out some really fun segments, some short form stuff that's going to be new and not boring. We'll just leave it at that. Should should be raising some eyebrows at the very least. And then last thing I'd say before you head out, go find you a 1987 Kraft Mac and cheese. Jose Canseco Eric Davis Dual Auto if you get this week bet you can't proud owner of a 35 dual auto baby and I can eat this. I wouldn't. I bet it's the same. It's probably better. 87 Mac and cheese has to be better, right? The cheese powder is probably better for sure. Home plate heroes all right. This has been the ball card show the esports podcast for the esports collector. Bye now. Peace.