Geoff Wilson Joins The Ballcard Show

Hello, and welcome to the ball cart show, the sports podcasts for the sports collector. I'm Jason Otero. I'm Gary little master. And this is season six, episode 19. And it is a doozy Gary. We've got a such a good word. One that we've been waiting, uh, what four or five months for this one? Uh, six, it was a six month bet. And, uh, we, we, we wrote it out and we want bag on it. I know a lot of you guys were following along as we, as we rode this wave and we're excited for it. And yeah, Jeff Wilson, sports card investor himself is joining the ball card show this week. Today, we've got about an hour long interview topics clear from the Genesis of sports card investor critique city faces on a regular basis, owning an LCS as licenses have shifted and direct account allocations have changed all kinds of stuff in there. Uh, and I'll be honest that the immediate takeaway Gary and I had was we were surprised how open he was to talk about some of the things that we asked about. So that's coming up very soon. Really good content, great conversation there. Before we jump into that though, I I'm maybe more excited to show you this than I am to show you that interview. And it's, I'm just going to call it what it is. It's a grail. It's a grail. It came to the table. It didn't come directly to me, Gary. You know, so that the gentleman Jason and I'm getting this card from has done a lot of business with us. He has very similar tastes in cards, loves the nineties and 2000 stuff just like we do. And Jason was working a deal and he just pulls out and says, Hey, I picked this up at a, at a show down in Cincinnati, a molar here a couple of weeks ago. And I went, Oh my God. I said, you, you have to show that to Jason. He's like, what? I said, that's his guy. Like I asked one of his main PCs. That's what he said. Oh, I said, just slide it under his nose while he's still talking to this other guy. Just slide it under there and see what happens. I'm working a deal, got stacks of stuff. We're comping out and all that. And he slides this Zach Thomas 97 middle universe, PMG red right under my nose. And I'm not going to repeat the words you can guess, but well, it's mother's day week, you know, and my mom raised me better than that. But if you could think of a few four letter words that if you're shocked would come out, it was all of those. Yep. I I've wanted this card for some time. So for it to walk up, it was a question of like, if I had a, what he wanted in trade cash, worked out a cash and trade. That one is never going to be for sale. My kids will have to sell that when I'm dead. If I don't plan well enough, you know, but that one's staying with me. Zach Thomas, PMG red. I'm just looking at it right now, bud. Yeah, it's really cool. I, uh, I only, I didn't buy anything PC this week, but I did pick up a really cool card at Xenia Saturday that went straight onto eBay. This is a, it may go on my showcase too, but in my opinion, it's a pure eBay card, but look at this bad boy. It's not a monster, but it's sweet. Oh yeah. Upper deck SPX winning materials. Look at game. Use ball. Jose can look at the ball. Yeah. Look at the chunk of that ball. It's a gross, really cool card. Yeah. Not an insane, but a fun one. Fun one. Yep. We picked up a lot. There was a little more of the bread and butter stuff this week. Um, I did get that Oscar Mayer, Barry Sanders. That was kind of a unique one. Yeah. PSA nine. I was shocked that it wasn't worth more than it was. It's a police card, but it must've been highly anticipated. And remember 1989. So there was a lot of them bad boys made up. Yeah, but still it's cool. Yeah. Um, so anyway, really fun pickups. We wanted to, before we jump into this interview, do two things. Uh, we're going to go to Keith at Newhart cards in just a moment for shop talk. But before we do that, we want to give you a rundown of the next several weeks of shows where we're going to be, where you can find us and hang out. Uh, this weekend, this Saturday, the what's the date, Gary? Uh, that sounds right. Yeah. This Saturday we'll be in Cincinnati. It's the East gate show. It's a mall show that keeps growing every month. So many end user collectors set up there. So you will find some unique pieces. Uh, we'll be at center court right by the food court, right? How we like it, right? How we like it right by the food. Um, right after that, the next week ship Shawana, Indiana, one of our favorite two day shows in the country. Uh, we'll be out there Friday and Saturday. The following week, I will be in Antigua reading a book or taking a nap, listening to the waves, probably eating some food, ignoring his phone more than he ever does. And that's saying something. Gary will be in the Antigua of Ohio. Oh, that was leaving that alone. Uh, uh, the week after that Indianapolis two day show Midwest monster, uh, two weeks after that Nashville three day show. And then to cap off June, we will be at Columbus card fest at the convention center. It's a gauntlet, baby. It's a gauntlet for us with the size of inventory and the size of our business. We are going to be working and we're going to have to buy a lot, but we're excited. So, so those are a lot of larger shows, uh, as small as the chill coffee. One's probably a hundred tables somewhere around there. And then, uh, Nashville's 1200 tables. So quite a range, quite a range over the next few weeks should be fun. All right. So we, uh, told you a few weeks back at any time that something happened in the sports card, a world that had anything to do with the legal side of things. We were going to have our friend, big John Eisner from big John sports cards, uh, come on to the pod and, uh, talk about it. So today he's going to be here. Uh, we're going to bring him back whenever things like this happen, uh, in our space. So you can get a lawyer's perspective on it. But if you weren't aware, the, uh, NFL PA has sued leaf trading cards. And, uh, John is going to tell us all about that, what he kind of sees happening in that case and how it could impact our space. Take a quick look. The NFL PA is currently suing leaf trading cards. Hi, my name is big John Eisner. I'm an attorney who happens to love this hobby. And I'm going to tell you about what's going on. As always, this is not legal advice. It's simply me telling you about a current situation. The NFL PA has sued leaf trading cards in federal court, alleging that leaf has violated the NFL PA's six player or more rule. Now the NFL PA has exclusive rights to group licensing deals that they define as six or more players. So if six or more players are involved, it triggers the agreement that the NFL PA has and holds exclusively to them. Now, the NFL PA says that since leaf use six or more players that fall under that agreement in a 12 month span within their products, they should have had to contract directly with the NFL PA. The NFL PA says that they're doing this for a number of different reasons, one to protect their exclusive rights, but two to also protect their players because they don't want it to seem like their players are endorsing products. They don't actually agree with. As of this recording, leaf has not filed a response. I expect that they'll have a number of arguments like first amendment, that they'll argue that the six player or more rule is different than what the NFL PA is saying. It's going to be an uphill battle, I think for both sides, honestly, but this will be interesting because federal courts have always been divided when it comes to these types of individual player agreements. So I want to see what happens next because in all honesty, this will determine the future of unlicensed sports products. Before we hit this interview with Jeff Wilson, let's head up to Delaware, Ohio, Newhart Cards. Keith, what's shop talk this week? If not you, then who? My daughter graduated college this past weekend and one of the speakers asked that question and I'd heard that before and I really hadn't given it much thought, right? But for some reason this week it resonated through. We've been in business 15 years and when we come in the door every single morning, we all have our little rituals. What do we do? For me, there's 30 deals sitting in the back. So what do I do? I price deals. I figure out where they go. Do they go on eBay? Do they go on whatnot? Do they go on the showcases? I make sure that the shelves are stocked. I make sure that the supplies are in. I look at yesterday's sales, right? And then I maybe look back a month and then a year. Let's see how this month's sales look compared to last year's. What we really don't do is take enough time looking forward. What do we want our business to look like in a month from now or a year from now or maybe five years from now? It's a little harder to do that, right? That takes projections. That takes insight of where the hobby or the industry is going. So when that speaker said that, it actually made me think, where we're at in this hobby, this industry right now, there are people standing behind us. They're waiting to pounce, right? They're waiting to jump over us with new ideas, new experiences, new ways to run a business. And if we get stuck in the mud and our feet are in the mud, we're going to be dinosaurs. So I asked a couple of my younger associates, hey, write down, kind of give me an idea. What do you think we could change about this business or where do you see changes going forward? And it was really interesting to see a few of them, really simple things that we'll probably implement here really soon. But a lot of them were things out a couple years that maybe there's a little bit of fear in me. Do I want to spend the money? Do I want to spend the capital? Do I want to move to a bigger space? Do I want to increase breaking? So on and so forth. But what I thought was, again, there are people behind me that are ready to pounce, are ready to push us. And if we're not ready to make that step and innovate and amend our business, then we're going to get left in the dust. So again, you ask that question. If not you, then who? This has been Keith at New Hard Cards in Delaware, Ohio. Thanks, Keith. Appreciate it. Be sure to hop up to Delaware if you haven't had a chance yet. Go hang out in the shop. He's a fun place to hang out. Some fun people hang out there as well. And some monsters coming out of that shop lately. Yeah, out of retail. Even hit some bigger stuff. Quite a bit of it, actually. Super Jackson Dart was a Cooper Flag Auto or something. Two Cooper Flag Autos. One of one Mariana Rivera. Like some bangers. A lot of retail. Yeah. Super excited for this, guys. As you know, we had a bet with Jeff. We're not excited for the reason that we won. The bet was that Beckett would actually not immediately take off on the grading submission volume. We just believe that we were concerned some of what we had seen with SGC would be happening again. Beckett was down. Yeah, Beckett was down about 20 percent from November. Their TCG market is either steady or growing on submissions, but the sports card market did not. So Jeff's a good sport. He said a bet is a bet. I'll see you guys on there. It's time. Ladies and gentlemen, Jeff Wilson. Well, if you know anything about the ball card show, it's that we really hate to gloat. But here we are, Jeff Wilson on the ball card show. And Jeff, I got to tell you, you're a good sport here. We did not know what to expect. We had a little wager. We came out on top. So thanks for making the time and being a good good sport here and be willing to take the interview. You guys you guys won fair and square. So I'm here and I'm I'm ready for all the hard hitting questions you guys have promised me. OK. All right. So I thought maybe we would start with just kind of like a warm up, a palate cleanser, if you will, because we've had this segment running for the last few years called Pop or Drop. It's kind of like a buy or sell segment. Rapid fire. Pop, you're a buy. Thumbs up. Yes. Drop is no, not interested. No way. It's a sell. But I wanted to just start off rapid fire a few questions. And Jeff Wilson, you're going to tell us pop or drop. Are you ready? Great. OK. First one, the hobby is healthier than ever before. Pop or drop? I'm going to go pop. OK. Hobby wax prices are too expensive to sustain the hobby right now. I'm going to go pop. Wax prices will come down over the next two years. I'm going to go pop. OK. Kabooms and downtowns will become more desirable and more valuable over the next three years. The licensed ones. That's a tough one because they're they're already so hot right now. Gosh. The key players, the greatest ones probably pop. A net pop on that one then? OK. A competitor will emerge in the grading space in the next two years that will create some real competition. One that doesn't currently exist? It could be one now, but maybe they're throwing a little more weight around. That's not like one. I'm skeptical. Drop. OK, last one. Pop or drop? Will Greer. I mean, at today's prices, how can you go wrong? You're going to pay you're going to pay 50 cents for one of his, you know, low numbered rookie car. I'm going to pop all day. Why not? You can probably get it signed at a 7-11 somewhere. That's right. You could. Yeah, you could. You could have the greatest Will Greer collection of all time for probably about three bucks. Pretty accessible. Definite pop. OK, so let's jump into a little bit of the content space. I want I want to share a little bit of the story, but then there's a part of this, too, we want to talk about, which is. It's nuanced, creating content in this space as somebody that works in this space. Right. And you guys put a lot of content out at a very high production value. So here's what we want to give tremendous props. There's nobody anywhere close on the production value of the content and the volume that's going out. You know, you have several different brands between the LCS with Cards HQ, Market Movers, Sports Card Investor, Jeff Wilson Show. So you got a lot of irons in the fire. What what do you want people to know about what it takes to generate that much content and to put production value into that space? Well, it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of investment. It takes a great team. And I think I'm sure we're probably going to get into this right. Like I think one of the criticisms that I think people have of me and have of Sports Card Investor is we're very commercial. We promote. lot of things. We have a lot of sponsors, right? We're beholden to a lot of brands. We promote a lot of things. Yes, that's true. And that is also what is required if you're going to be putting out the amount of content that we put out and at the production quality we put out, right? Because we have always reinvested really a hundred percent of what we've gotten from sponsors and business relationships and everything like that back into expanding the content, increasing our production quality and making it better. For me, we're in an awesome position of being the biggest content creator in the space and I want to maintain that lead. And so how do we maintain that lead? Well, we continue to reinvest and we continue to hire more really, really great people. We continue to put more effort into the content that we're creating and we just continue to try to do more, but it requires money to do all of that, right? So that's why we bring on sponsors. We continuously reinvest. So when you look at your content that you're creating, if you had to set a percentage of what percentage of content is organic in the moment, this has just happened, or I just want to give a take on this. And then we talk about that production value, how does the content planning go for those things that are not just organically popping up for you? We had a whole team. So we do a lot of our content is pre-planned in advance. I'll occasionally do some reaction content or we'll occasionally hop on a news story or something like that. But for the most part, our content is planned in advance and some of us plan very far in advance. So I mean, our video team, we have five full-time videographers on staff plus a contract videographer. And so they plan out like all the YouTube videos and typically like two months in advance, we'll know like, hey, here's the card shows we're going to go to over the next two months. And then from each of these card shows, we want to try to get three vlogs or box battles or whatever. We're going to open up two vintage boxes over the next two months. We're going to do a sports card grading 101 video, whatever it is, they kind of come up with the outline of all of it and then run it by me. We obviously meet about it and strategize about it, but they come up with kind of the first draft of everything. And then on the social side, we've got five full-time people on our social team. And so they kind of do a similar approach with all of our social content and obviously website, email, SMS, all that kind of stuff as well. Do you have to leave space in there for reacting to things that are happening in real time? Because obviously the content production schedule is there. You have all these moving pieces, but you still have moments where it's like, hey, this needs to be talked about right now. It's super important, but you also don't want to let the quality of the production fall off. Do you block off space for that or just tell your team, hey, part of being here is being real flexible? Yeah. It's kind of needing to be flexible, but we also like on the YouTube side, we have the weekly show on Thursdays we do called Cards on the Table. And that's really meant to be, hey, in this show, we're going to cover all the news of the week. So that's a show where we never know what the topics are going to be until like Wednesday. But we know we're going to do the show and whatever the biggest news topics are of the week, that's what's going to get discussed during the show. But yeah, there's a little bit of flexibility, especially on social, like social is a better platform to be able to react in real time. YouTube takes a little more production work. So we typically don't vary from our YouTube schedule very much, but we will on social, certainly. All right. I'm doing all the talking. I got one more and then I'm going to hand it over to Gary. When you look at the brand distinctions that you have, there's very different brand distinctions, a pretty large family of content. How do you manage that? How do you separate as you're talking through a platform like Market Movers, your own brand in that? How do you distinctly separate them knowing that like you're having to share team, but keep each of these lanes a little bit unique? Yeah, that's a good question. So we do a lot of planning around that, right? So like SportsCard Investor is meant to, SportsCard Investor is kind of meant to appeal to like 99% of the collecting audience, people who are getting into it new for the first time, people who are casually into it, as well as people who are in it often. But we do a lot of content around education, inspiration, and entertainment, right? So I mean, those are kind of the three pillars like educate, entertain, inspire is what we try to put all of our content in one of those buckets. This stuff we do on the Market Movers channel tends to be more data-driven, more analytical. It tends to be for people who are more into it and they probably are more active in buying and selling and everything of that nature. We've got the Card Crew channel that my son does, which is obviously more kind of oriented around that age range and kind of the active flipping that he likes to do. We started a Pokemon channel not too long ago. I'm not on that one because that's not my bread and butter, but like our production team runs that with some of our people from Cards HQ. And so yeah, every property we do, we try to just give it a little bit of uniqueness. And then obviously my personal one is really meant for kind of my personal takes and reactions on things or just stuff going on in my personal life a little bit more so. Yeah. Okay. So a piece of content that you did here relatively recently, I believe, at least I saw it relatively recently, you kind of were talking about your entry back into the hobby, coming back into it in 2018. And I think you said your son went on a trip to the grocery store with his grandma and she bought him a pack of cards and said, Hey, your dad did this when he was a kid. And that's kind of what brought you back into the hobby at that period of time. Then you launched the Sports Card Investor channel about a year later, late 2019, right? Yep. My question is this, and this is probably one of the first like pow questions. When you made that transition back into the hobby a year later, you launched a channel and you position yourself as kind of an expert. How did you balance the ability to do that with the reality being back in for a year and then position yourself as an expert in the hobby to a large audience? Well, first of all, I don't know that I would agree that I fully position myself as an expert. Like if you watch the intro to those videos, it says, I mean, it explains exactly what I'm doing. I mean, the intro to the videos back then says, I'm a tech investor. I've gotten back into the cards, gotten back into cards. And I think it says something like, join me on my journey to profit from the hobby I love. Like that was what the intro was back then, right? So, I mean, I think the story, I set it up in such a way as that. The other thing, and the content that I was doing in those early videos, if you watch all those videos, is I was looking at, I was taking data sources that existed out there and was applying that to cards, right? I was tracking the price movement of cards. And then I was trying to get predictive around, hey, here might be some good cards to buy or that type of thing by using other data sources and applying it on top of card price movements. And in the videos, I was very clear like, hey, here's what I'm doing. I was using data from like FiveThirtyEight. I was using fantasy football rankings from ESPN.com. I was using like a lot of different types of data and then kind of saying, here's where people's card prices are today. Here's how these people are projected to do in fantasy football this fall. And so here's where discrepancies may lie, right? Didn't work in a lot of cases, right? And I mean, and it also did work in some cases too, right? I mean, all the clips you see are obviously like the Will Greer thing, right? And I said, and if you go back and watch the whole video and people see the clip, right? But if you go back and watch the whole video, I was actually not sharing an opinion. What I was doing was I took this projection that ESPN had done or FiveThirtyEight had done on the likelihood that each of the quarterbacks drafted in the NFL draft were going to go on and have a successful NFL career. And they gave, Kyler Murray was their highest likelihood, but Will Greer was like third highest or something like that. And then I compared that to the card prices. And I'm like, well, hold on now. Kyler Murray's cards are trading for, I forget what it was, but like 10X or 8X Will Greer's cards. But Kyler Murray's only got a 15% greater chance of having a successful NFL career according to this data set. So then if you merge the data together, then Will Greer has this, as far as like value per likelihood, Will Greer is much higher than Kyler Murray. So that I was doing things like that, right? I did certainly do like sports cards 101, but all the content on there was fairly basic. And I think it's still accurate, right? I don't think I mess much up on there. When I did a baseball cards 101 early in the channel's history, I admitted, and I did a soccer cards 101. And I'm like, look guys, I don't know that much about baseball cards. I don't know that much about soccer cards. So I went out and got other people to do the videos with me, right? So like on baseball cards 101, I had a local card shop owner do it with me. And actually with soccer cards 101, I had a breaker do it with me so that they could like inform me, because I'm like, I'm still learning the difference between Bowman and Bowman Chrome and Bowman draft. And like, I didn't know all the nuances back then on any of that stuff, right? So, and look, it is a complaint that people have like why, you know, and, and okay. But like nobody else was creating this content. So that's a good point. That's fair. A hundred percent fair. The people who come after me and especially these people that were around back then, and they're like, you were creating these videos, you know, sports cards, one-on-one, you didn't know what you were, what you were doing. You were only a year in or whatever. Okay. Then why didn't you do it, Mr. Expert, like Mr. Collector of 20 years or 10 years, because clearly people wanted and needed the content. Because by the way, my videos were not well produced at that. This was before I had any employees. I was doing it on an iPad and editing an iMovie myself. It was zero cost. It was zero frills. And if you go back and watch the videos, the production quality stunk and I wasn't very good on the videos either. So like there was no barrier of entry for somebody else who was a longtime collector or a card shop owner to create those videos. And, and if they knew a lot more than me at the time, they should have done it rather than complaining that I did it. So that's, that's kind of my take on it. Gary, can I jump in with a, do you think Jeff, that some of the volume of pushback, like the timing, cause it sounds like in other interviews we've heard, you were like, yeah, I knew there'd be some criticism, but there came a point where I was like, holy crap, what's going on? Do you think that the timing of what was happening in the hobby, like you were absolutely, nobody can argue that there was a lane for this and a demand for this style of content and this approach to collecting, investing, flipping, whatever you want to call it. Right. But had we not had that COVID boom, do you think you would have experienced the same kind of pushback? No, probably not to the same degree. You know, it obviously got real popular and so a lot of people were watching. And I also like, you know, the other thing I will say, and I'm not, look, I'm not here to defend myself in the fact that like, sure, I've made mistakes along the way too. Right. Like I'm not, nobody's track record's perfect and mine certainly is not. But the other thing I'll say too, is that like a lot of this stuff in those videos and that kind of stuff, that stuff was really working back then, because the whole industry was immature. You had so many people coming into it and people were flipping Zion cards and John Marant cards. It was a wild time, baby. Do I wish in retrospect that I had, you know, taken the stance of like, stop buying, you know, these guys and start buying Jordan and Kobe and, you know, of course, yes, I, that would have been the much smarter thing to say, but that's not really what people were doing or focused on as much during that era of the hobby to everybody's detriment, including my own, including my own. But that, that seg, that like couple years in time was all about like, who's the next, you know, up and coming rookie who's going to break out and literally have a score 40 in a game tonight, because then tomorrow their cards are going to double. I mean, it was that instantaneous of like how crazy the market was back then. Well, and, and to that point, like in general, one of the things I will say, that I've, that I will again, give you props for the, and it's several times recently, you've done a really good job of like, Hey, we screwed this up. We want to address it. We want to make it right. I know that there was a piece of content you put out a few weeks about, about the missing Shohei Ohtani one of one. I know the guy who owns the card and I saw that and I was like, what is he talking about? And you came out and you were like, Hey, we screwed this one up guys. Last week you had a situation where I don't think you screwed anything up, but you, you definitely took the lead on something. You had a video where you bought something from a guy at a show. Turned out that this was somebody who should not be anywhere near a place where children are. And you came out and you made a really strong statement about it. You offered some actionable solutions to the issue. So we definitely want to give props where they're due on that front. You know what I mean? Yeah, I appreciate that. And, you know, and, and, and in that case also spoke, you know, behind the scenes multiple times to the organizer of that card show as well before, you know, putting, putting the video out and was happy that, you know, was happy to learn that the organizer of the card show was taking it extremely seriously and, and, you know, changing his own, you know, upgrading, you know, screening of dealers and everything in the future too. So, um, I appreciate that, but yeah, I mean, look, there's definitely, we, we, I will like, we've definitely made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I do think, and I don't think, I don't think we get credit for this very often. And I honestly think that we sh we should get credit for it a little bit more that when we see something changing or when we feel like, oh, we're off based on our approach, we do try to change our approach and take a different approach. I mean, like one of the, one thing that we did in the early days, which has been called out before by other content creators is we used to do like card picks, right? We used to do a card pick of the week and we started this in February of 2020. Um, we did a card pick of the week and we discontinued it in October of 2020. So we only did it for about six months. And the reason why we discontinued it was for a couple of reasons. First of all, I saw a behavior pattern, which was occurring, which was, you know, people were relying on whatever we put out as a card pick of the week and then just instantly instant buying on prices on that card prices would, would, you know, sales would go up the second we put the pick out. Yep. Every week, often then followed by a correction downward, you know, a week later. Right. So like that wasn't a good pattern to see. It wasn't. So even when you were winning on a take, you were losing three weeks later if it didn't sustain. Yeah, a hundred percent, because it was a lot of people were just trying to like buy in at whatever I said and then sell the next day or later that night or whatever. But then like three weeks later, when the, you know, people weren't necessarily paying attention to what, you know, that anymore, and then prices are just kind of coming back down. Um, so I saw that behavior pattern. I'm like, that's not great. People are going to get hurt by this. Also, also I was starting to see a shift in the market a little bit and I'm like, uh, we're picking a lot of like, you know, whoever the hot new guy we think is going to break out in one of the sports is. And I'm like, that market is like way frothy and overheated. And I think that like, that's not necessarily, people shouldn't be putting all their money into desire. Well, it's a job. Right. So, you know, that, that too. Right. I was like, I think this is not how things are going to sustain. Like, I think money's going to return to the goats and, you know, you're going to get a lot of like, so, you know, that as well. And so, and, and, you know, so we're like, you know what, we're going to stop doing this. And it's, it's, it, it, you know, it had its run. We did it for six months. We're going to stop doing it. And I think repeatedly, like over the years we've done that, like where it's like, if we do something and then we're like, ah, okay, this isn't feeling good or it's not looking good or the market's not reacting right. Or, or we just don't think this is the right way to go without it anymore. Or, you know, whatever it is, we're getting, you know, uh, bad feedback, whatever it is like, well, we will change. Right. And so, you know, and I think that there's been a number of times over the last handful of years that we've done that. Do I wish in retrospect, do I wish we had never done card picks? Yeah. That would have been a better strategy. I think that's, I think that, that perspective and reflection, I think people will find some value in that understanding. And I think the context of what was happening in the market at that time is important, right? It was like that. You bought a card, somebody had a double double. And if you wanted to double up, it was already there for you. Um, I do think speaking to the fact that you even saw when we picked a player, the market responded, was there a point in that where you're like, holy crap, this is a lot of influence. Like this is maybe even more influence than we anticipated in this space. Yeah, sure. I mean, I never thought any of this was going to grow the way that it did ever. I mean, it, you know, it, it, I felt like there was a need for content and for a product like market movers and that kind of thing, but like, you know, this has continuously surprised me throughout the whole history of the last seven years since I started doing content and, and getting into the commercial side of the hobby. So yes, I would say continuously. Yes. That like things surprised me that happened as a result from us saying something or doing something. Yeah. There's a little bit of the Spider-Man, right? Great power, great responsibility as you think through that. So like last week, you know, as you address that issue with that transaction for the first time in a long time across all platforms, even people that love to hate each other's guts on IG all seem to kind of rally around this thing. Right. And I don't know if you noticed it, but I sure saw people that had been incredibly critical of you at every step, even on the things that we'd say, all right, come on guys, come on, chill out, rallying around a support, you taking a stance and making that type of step. And I do feel, you know, cautiously optimistic that I think that, that more people could see that as well. And I'll say to that end, like, I think I'm probably more aligned with the average collector on a lot of things that maybe people think there's also certain things because of, you know, because of my business relationships with some of these companies, there's also certain things that I address behind the scenes that I don't necessarily come out and do a bunch of videos about. I mean, whether it was the whole whatnot backyard break situation or recently, whether it's been box prices with fanatics, like I've shared my opinion about, about these things with executives at these companies. Um, I don't come out and put them at, put them on blast on, on videos necessarily all the time, although I have talked at length about, you know, issues with box prices, as have you guys recently in a few of your podcasts. Um, but, um, you know, I think I'm a little more aligned with the average, average person in the hobby than, uh, maybe sometimes, you know, people, you know, people like to think so. Well, let me, do you mind if I jump in Jason, just as a followup to that, and I don't know whether you'll have an answer for this one, Jeff, you may, or you may not, I don't even necessarily disagree that that may be the case. Why do you think that people don't see that, that alignment? Why do you think people don't see that alignment? Um, I mean, I think I'm noisy. I think I put out a lot of content. Um, and, uh, I think that, I think that some of our content, like the, you know, the, the phrasing, the thumbnails, the titles, some of that kind of stuff is, is, is, uh, oriented at, you know, gaining engagement, gaining traction, getting people talking, getting people reacting, that type of thing. So I think I'm opinionated and, and noisy. And I think that I've certainly have said things along the way that, you know, have rubbed people the wrong way or that people don't agree with. I think I get, I think a lot of the hate that I get is also associated with the fact like an underlying thing is the fact that I have a lot of commercial ties. I'm a business person and I am in business deeply with companies in the hobby and I'm making money off of the hobby in multiple, in many ways. And, um, and I think that you've got a. Collect a large collector base that enjoys collecting. They don't really like the commercialism of the hobby. Um, they especially don't like what has happened with like box prices and, or now even maybe card prices with, you know, the way that some cards have gone wild. Yeah. Um, and they blame me for some of that or a lot of that. Can we talk, you, you mentioned, uh, wax pricing and all that. You know, there's been different LCS owners that responded differently. And one, one to take you had recently was like even considering cutting the wrapper off and doing similar to what Rob did over at Burbank. But from our understanding that didn't happen. What we have talked about on our podcast is, you know, what people were actually getting as direct accounts. Some of them were shockingly finding that they were getting a lot less than they expected. The secondary offering hitting on the day of release at or over where they were seeing secondary prices on the big three. So if it's as, if it's economic, if it's a change of mind, if it's whatever, why didn't that, was that option ever made available at cards HQ? And if not, why did you ultimately decide, Hey, this is not the route we want to go? You're talking about the cut, the wrapper thing. Yeah. We, we, we still may pursue that. I saw that, you know, I saw that Rob was doing that. I thought that was a good idea. I know a couple of card shops have done that. I think that's a good idea. The challenge that any card shop operator, including cards HQ has is that our wave one allocations from tops are pretty small. And by the way, even though we're cards HQ is one of the biggest card shops in the country, and you know, I've got a really good relationship with tops and fanatics. Our wave one allocations are tiny compared to what we need. Same with Burbank. Rob said it in his videos, how, how few cases of product that they got. Guess what? We get about the same amount they do. Right. So it's not like we don't get very much. And we also don't, even though we've got a big shop, we actually don't, we hardly get, we don't get much more than most other hobby shops, some of which are a lot smaller and have a lot lower customer volume. So it's not like tops is feeding us all of this allocation and other shops aren't getting it. So what we have to do just like other shops is we have to then buy a lot more when it's reallocated on future waves, or we have to go to the secondary market and buy a lot, whether that's on dealer net or whether that's on eBay. And so, I mean, with tops Chrome football, we bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of boxes off of eBay just so that we could have enough inventory and to fill our, to fill our showcases. So that, so I like the idea of the wrapper removal. I think it is a good idea. And I do think we're going to put something like that into play. The challenge is you can only afford to do it with the small allocation that you get with wave one, because that's the, those are the only boxes that are priced at such a, such a price wholesale that then allow you to resell them at a reasonable price and do, and do some type of thing like that. Right. So for a lot of these products, I mean, you know, you might be getting three cases. You might be getting four cases, something of that nature. So you're talking 36 boxes, 48 boxes. Some products is more, it depends on the product, but a lot of products aren't. So then it's also like, okay, so we're going to advertise. If you come into the store and get a box of tops, finest football, if we remove the wrapper, we'll give it to you at a cheaper price than what you're getting, you know, not, not a marked up secondary market price. But I, I, I don't know exactly what our allocation was on that product, but I think, I think it was quite low. I think it was like literally like 36 boxes or something of that nature. So then it's like, okay, so we're going to do it for the first 36 boxes. But then once we hit box 37, we got to stop doing it because now box 37, we bought on eBay for three times what we paid for boxes one through 36. So it's a little bit of just a logistical challenge there that we get so little of that first phase. I think it's awesome that Rob did it and is doing it. He's doing it just on release day. And I think, I think that's a good thing until you have more than 36 people show up on release day and then you've got, you've got a problem. Well, let me ask you this followup question too, that I know you have a question after this Jason, but I think this is an important one. Um, obviously cards HQ, you have the shop, but within cards HQ, you also have a relatively decent size breaking platform, right? Yeah. Do you have a separate allocation for your breaking than you do from the shop? We do. Is that a drastically larger allocation? No, not for us. For some breakers. It is, it is, and it depends. It depends on the product for some products. Yes. It's significantly larger. Okay. Um, for other products, not necessarily. Um, I, you know, I, I, I think tops, I think there's more variance in how breakers are allocated than there are card shops, because I think the volume difference is maybe greater between the upper end of the breakers and like other breakers. Sure. Um, but it's a similar, like with our, with, with our breaking account, it's a similar setup in that we are buying wave two, wave three, you know, secondary market, we're doing the same thing with breaking that we're doing with in the hobby shop, the wave one that we get for breaking is not enough by itself to meet the needs of our breaking business. Just like the wave one that we get for the hobby shop is not enough to meet the needs of the hobby shop business. So I'm going to fast forward a little bit because you're heading right in the direction of a question I really wanted to ask you, because I think what you're sharing now resonates with so many LCS owners across the country. Things have changed. Things are different. But for you, it's not new to experience this challenge when you open cards HQ and you've been public about this. I remember you opened this shop and I remember seeing photos of this and I'm like, this thing is enormous. Nobody's going to be putting in shops this big. Like I grew up expecting the local LCS that smells like mothballs and has a box somewhere in the corner. It hasn't been pulled out for 20 years, right? Like the mom and pop. And since you dropped this all over the country, we're seeing more shops going for more square footage, larger footprint, a place to watch breaking happening in real time, more trade nights again. And we are not TCG people, but I do think what you see happening where people show up and build relationships across the table from somebody inside a shop. up playing a game or doing a trade night. I think, I hope that the larger people throwing weight around in this industry really see how vital that is. But as you launched in the middle of all this, you shared that you never ever got that panini direct allocation that many would have expected. So where I think you can offer some encouragement to shop owners is for the ones that had been getting X amount of cases of Tops Chrome, whatever, because they always have, and now things are changing and they're looking at their shop saying, Hey, I'm getting one fifth or one 10th of what I usually got on that first drop. How would you encourage them to navigate that with their shop? What are things they need to really be thinking about to sustain that until hopefully that can grow or they have a model where they're able to source more of that inventory? What advice would you give them? Yeah, it's a challenge. I mean, first, first of all, we still don't have panini direct. We're never going to have panini direct. Do you want it now though? You're a little more than before. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't do a lot for you these days. Although, although I like WNBA, I'm a fan of WNBA and I would have liked to have gotten some of the world cup product direct. But yeah, I mean, we, we definitely struggle with that in our early years. We were, we were buying, and I mean, still to this day, we're buying panini exclusively off the secondary market. And so we have panini in our showcases. We try to carry the new releases. When panini comes out with a new release, we try to get it. We have to go through dealer net or through distributors, which you get very little from, or we buy it on eBay and you know, you're making 6% margin, 8% margin. You're not making much, but we feel like it's important for us to have it just as a service to our customers. They want to get a box of prism football. We should have a box of prison football. You know, it's like, it's kind of, we kind of need to have that. And so, you know, we, we, we do carry that stuff. We, we really leaned heavily. And, and, and also by the way, Topps has been, Topps has helped, Topps has grown our allocation. But when we started with Topps as well, like we were not getting huge allocations off the bat with Topps. We're still not getting huge allocations with Topps, but our allocations today are better than they were. But when we first started, we got like, we got a Topps allocation that was probably, I don't know, maybe middle of the pack or maybe, maybe, maybe better than middle of the pack, but certainly not like not outstanding. Sure. And we got and we got no panini allocation, but we had an incredibly large store to fill. We leaned very heavily into singles and, and, you know, for that, the singles business has been really good for us. And we continue to lean very heavily into singles, even though now our sealed product business is very, very robust. And, you know, we, we do a lot more on that side. We still lean very heavily into singles. I like the idea of like, you got to figure out what you can control and lean into what you can control because you can never control if you, if your entire business is dependent upon what somebody else is going to give you or allocate you, that's a scary place to be. Yep. And, you know, and it's, it's so, I mean, I, I, I like the fact as singles, I always want singles to be a very healthy part of our business because even though we have a very good relationship with Topps and Fanatics now, I can't control what's going to happen at that company. And I mean, who knows like what their opinion of us, of us is, you know, three years or five years from now, hopefully it's still really good. And we got a good business relationship with them, but I can't control that. So I better be, I better, I better have plans to continue to be able to viably operate it as a business without that. So singles has been a big thing for us. So was TCG a huge piece of that then because the timing of that, right? When you dropped, like it was able to carry you as you were scaling that out. TCG is huge for us. And in fact, I'll tell you guys something that I don't think we put out there publicly before, but TCG has now passed sports in terms of retail sales in our store for the last six months, consistently every single month for the last six months, the sales of Pokemon and TCG, both in terms of dollars and transaction volume has passed sports in our store, which is really surprising to me. That is something, if you, if you had bet me a million bucks on the day our store opened that two years after opening, we would be doing more TCG and Pokemon than sports. I would have happily taken that bet. You are nuts because we have no content reach there. Everybody knows us as sports card investor and sports cards. We have no content reach. So I'm like, there's no way that TCG and Pokemon are going to pass sports cards, but it has that's in store now, not with breaking with breaking. We're very sports card oriented. But in store, it has been that. And, and, you know, we did, when we started the store, we put, we intentionally designed the store. So when you walk in the front door, the whole front half of the store is all Pokemon and TCG. And we did that intentionally because I'm like, the sports card people are going to find us. They know we're here. They're going to hear about us through our content and they're going to find us. So make them walk to the back. The Pokemon and the TCG people, I want, they're going to, they don't know who we are. And if we're lucky enough to get one of them in our store, I want them to feel like it's their store. So I'm going to do the whole front of the store is going to be, you know, a mural of Pikachu on the wall and you know, the whole thing. Right. And that was, I think, probably one of the best decisions we made when building out the store. And that's been great. I mean, that community is awesome. Very friendly people. I, you know, very, very, very good, passionate community. It's not, it's not my thing. Like I'm a sports guy. It's not, I don't, I don't get as excited about, you know, Pikachu as I do, you know, Kobe or whatever, but like, I appreciate their passion and, and the fact, I mean, going back to like giving advice to shop owners, it's diversification. It's diversification of your customer base. It's diversification of your distributors. It's diversification of where that revenue is coming from. I think it's really important. And so I think honestly, another huge win that we, another thing that we did that was very smart in the early stages is we named our store cards HQ, which is ubiquitous. It can go across sports and it can go across TCG. I think one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of other card shop owners have made, if you at the tops conference, if you go around and ask everybody what their store name is, 80% or 90% of their store names have sports somehow associated with the title. It's either bullpen or ballpark or gridiron, or some sports reference is in the title of the store. And I don't, and I can understand why, because when they started the store, I mean, Pokemon probably wasn't even on their mind. It was like, many of these people started the stores years ago, but that is detrimental today. Like they care about it. Maybe they don't care about it. Like maybe they're just like, Hey, I just want to, I'm just here for sports and that's going to be my primary thing. And that's what I'm known for. And that's what I care about. I don't really care about the Pokemon community. Maybe I'll carry some, some, a few boxes, but they're not trying to become like a big gameplay store and everything like that. In which case, okay, I get it. But I think if somebody were starting a card shop today, I would say, really think about TCG and Pokemon and how much of your business you want that to be, because that's a big business. And I think it's smart to diversify and then you should build your name and your store design around it as well. Awesome. Yeah. I, I I've, I've seeing the, the shop owners that seem to be gaining some traction and not kind of spinning their wheels. What do I do? What do I do? Leaning in on a singles lane or they haven't been at shows in a while and now they have more of a show presence again. They're starting to source a little differently, offer a few products. So it's encouraging to hear that at different sizes and scales, a lot of these challenges are the same challenge. It's just up to the shop owner to figure out a direction forward on that. Gary, I skipped over one of your questions. That's okay. Did you see it up there? I did, but I think Jeff kind of addressed it earlier. I guess I'll ask it a little bit more directly and he doesn't have to dive in as deep as he did. Like you said earlier, there's a lot of common critiques that content creators in the space get. We get our share. You have one that is pretty common and you said it earlier, and that's that cliche of being a corporate shill. Is there any validity to the thought process or idea there that the way you create content is affected by people that are writing checks? Like it would have a negative impact on your brand partners if you maybe said what you really thought or is there any thought given to that stuff? How do you balance that? It's a fair question. And look, we're all human. And so naturally I'm going to have a little bit of bias towards people who I have a good relationship with. So to me, it's not about the dollars as much as it is like a good working relationship with somebody. I have a lot of really good relationships at Tops and Fanatics. I mean, look, there's a lot of opportunity for people to criticize Tops and Fanatics and I know a lot of people do. From a business savviness perspective, I think Tops and Fanatics, under Fanatics leadership, I think they are an extremely busy, savvy, business savvy company. I think they have run a masterclass in a lot of elements of their business from product innovation to especially marketing to just navigating these licenses to forcing to the cutthroat nature of how they've gone around and won all these licenses and continue to win licenses and do things like it is a masterclass. Now, do you have to like their style on all of it? No. Would it be my style on some of what they've done? No, it wouldn't be either. But I mean, I certainly respect it and I learn a lot from it. And I've got a lot of business relationships with people there. So naturally, I'm going to give them, I would say, more of the benefit of the doubt on something. And conversely, a company like Panini, where I have no business relationship with and frankly, I really don't think they have been well run. I do not think they are a business savvy company. No question. I think there's so much more they could have done to innovate their products and to market the hobby over the last 10 years while they had the licenses that they did not do. And now Fanatics and Topps is exposing all of that because they're doing everything Panini should have done five years ago. And so, am I going to be a little biased towards Topps and a little anti towards Panini? Probably, yeah. Because I'm going to give Topps the benefit of the doubt, certainly on more stuff than I'm going to give Panini. I've got a working relationship with Whatnot, obviously. They've been a great supporter and a great sponsor of what we've done. When that whole Backyards Breaks thing happened a year ago, my approach is like, I'm not going to go out and blast Whatnot because I've got a good relationship with these people and I built a business on these people's platform. They've been very supportive and good to work with and good human beings has been my experience. But this has kind of messed up what this guy said and Whatnot's not come out and said anything and the whole thing. So, my approach there was like, I'm going to pick up the phone and make phone calls to Whatnot and be like, what are you guys doing here? Because this isn't great and something needs to be done about this. And so, I discussed some of my concerns. I would say, yes, I give the benefit of the doubt to PSA on a lot of stuff. I know PSA's leadership very well. I respect PSA's leadership. I'm friends with Nat Turner. I know Ryan well. I know a lot of the different people at PSA. I've got a business relationship with them on multiple fronts. But I genuinely think they are good business people who have a good overall sense of trying to balance the success of their business, but also trying to balance the health of the hobby. And so, do I give them the benefit of the doubt? Absolutely. So, I think that's a little bit of a human instinct. And I can understand people being critical of that. I get it. And I tend to think that most of the people who are being critical maybe of, oh, you're not attacking PSA enough over this issue or whatever. I'm like, okay, if you were in my shoes and you had the same relationships with PSA and you got to know these people on a personal level like I do, you probably would take the same approach that I'm taking. So, it sounds like you're saying that takeaway happens more often when people focus on your microphone and not take into consideration the relationships that conversations may still be happening just because a video didn't drop or whatever. Do you ever find yourself feeling in a creative space? Like you're working on a piece of content and you start heading down the lane, maybe you're like story mapping it or whatever. And it's just like, oh, I don't know if we can say that. Is that something that you have as a filter? Because part of the challenge you have is where we don't have a ton of competition in this industry right now as far as, all right, grading lane, manufacturer. There's not a lot of places where you're going to find those brand partnerships. It's just a little bit siloed right now. Does that ever interfere with the creative process? I think to a degree that we are a little more careful when it comes to how we're approaching something with certain companies. Yeah, I'll say yes. And this is not something that is mandated by the companies because we have definitely, in my opinion, when something really needs to be said, we've said it. And when a company, even a good partner of ours, when there's something like that happens that's like, okay, this needs to be addressed. I think on the most important things, I think we've, I think we have addressed it. I think when it comes down to like one, like a situation that's like, okay, you know, this could be bad, but kind of what happened here, I think I probably do lean in the direction of saying like, you know, this is a partner of ours, like maybe we reach out to them. Like maybe we contact them and say, hey guys, what's happening here? What's going on? And we're hearing this from our viewers and it's circulating on social and we're, you know, that type of thing, right? But we have, it's a balancing act, right? And so we try to be fair. We try to be representative of the collector community. We also try to be fair to the companies that I think people are sometimes unfair to. Like I think that PSA, Topps, Fanatics, I think they take on too much criticism to be quite honest. I think there's stuff that, I think there's stuff that they legitimately should be criticized about. And then I think there's stuff that people just jump all over and are just way too hypercritical of. And it's like, come on guys. Like, you know, PSA is grading 2.2 million cards a month. Stuff's going to get messed up. And you know, stuff gets messed up at every company. So you pulling this one story out about this one grading order and it's like, okay, come on. Like it's yes. Should that have happened? No. Is that worthy of like going live on YouTube and ranting about for three hours? Also no. Right. I think that there's, I think there's validity to that to an extent, but I also think that part of the problem is, is that some of the mistakes that these companies make are not mistakes that most people would consider like normal in the line of business mistakes. And I think that's why some of that publicity gets so ugly. When it's a really bad mistake, when it's something really, really off, when you have to your point, you have the platform you have, and anybody who doesn't understand the gulf between your level of platform and almost everybody else, like you're here with the level of reach you have, you know, the next person is here. We're way down here. We had to do a bet to get you on the show, Jeff. Come on. When you have that reach, do you, that to speak to that balancing act you were talking about, that reach is why you have those corporate dollars coming in. You built the reach, you earned it, you worked for it. Like no question there, like you didn't snap your fingers and get lucky. The only luck I think you experienced was that COVID hit right as this was happening and everybody was in their house and you had a lane, but you worked your tail off to make it happen. No question. But you built that audience. Who has, who do you have a greater responsibility to then at that point when you're making those decisions, that audience or to the sponsors? I think that's where people get like hung up a little bit on that question. That's fair. And this might be easier to discuss if there were like certain like specific examples or situations that we can talk through. Like what I will tell you is I have never had, I have never had a, like a sponsor call me up and say, you cannot talk about this or we will pull our sponsorship contract. I've never had that happen. I have had sponsors get concerned or, you know, about something and like say, and reach out and be like, hey, I know you guys might cover this story. Can we give you like the information from our point of view before you cover it? Like I've had that happen before, but it's never been like a mandate of like, you know, no, you guys can't do this. I mean, I'll tell you recently, I would just to give an example of this, like, you know, you might've seen on the Market Movers channel where Teapot, Teapot's been doing these grading experiments where he's sending cards to PSA and then getting them regraded by BGS on this. By the way, I don't think any of these great companies like this. We have Teapot fans here. Yeah, but I mean like Teapot, you know, I don't think PSA like probably loves the fact we're doing this, even though we've got a good business relationship with them and everything else. They've never told us we can't. I think they probably would prefer we don't. But when he had an issue recently where he had a card that was in a Beckett slab as authentic and then he sent it off to PSA and then it came back, you know, they slabbed it, but then they deactivated the cert and determined it wasn't authentic. That whole thing happened. PSA reached out and they were like, hey, they were like, we know this happened to you and we know you guys are probably gonna be putting videos out about this. Can we talk to you about like what happened? Like, so you guys understand and can we come on your platform to like do an interview to explain like, you know, from PSA's perspective, like how this process went, right? So that was their ask, which I thought was very reasonable. It's like, they're not telling us we can't do the story or that we have to shut it down or not publicize it or whatever, but they are saying like, we want the opportunity to explain our point of view, you know, and even come on your show and do it, right? So like, I think that that is what I think is probably acceptable of like the relationship that we would have with a sponsor or a business partner where, you know, that, right? Like, I think we got to give them the benefit of the doubt. We got to hear from them and listen to them, but that doesn't mean that we can't still go on and say what needs to be said to your point, to serve the community and serve the audience that watches our content and trusts us. Sure, fair enough, fair enough. But I'll tell you what, Jeff, if you had told me we had ever be having this conversation, I don't know if I would have believed you, but I appreciate you being a good sport. I think context that's been provided to me in this is just understanding how, in the same way that my card business has evolved tremendously in the last six years, yours has as well. And as we grow and change, there's different perspectives on that, but we appreciate you taking the time to meet with us. You didn't have to do that, and it means a lot to us. And being willing to field questions that you knew before you came in here, you didn't see a single one and you knew they wouldn't all be softballs over the plate. So we really do appreciate that. Yeah, for sure. I expected some zingers and we got into some good topics there, but I appreciate what you guys do and keep doing it. So I'm an occasional listener. I have been actually for a while. I don't get to listen as much as I would like to. As you guys know, there's a ton of content out there and it's hard to keep up with what everybody's doing, but you guys pop up in my feed every now and again. And so I like the perspective and the energy that you guys bring. I don't always a hundred percent agree with what you guys are saying. And you guys have certainly been critical of me at times, but it's part of it. So I appreciate the energy you guys bring to the space. Well, if you guys are anything like us, that was a rather enlightening conversation. I think Jason and I both came away with it with some answers from Jeff that we didn't necessarily expect. He was a little more open than I think we expected and honest about some things that might make some people uncomfortable, but he was truthful and it makes sense from a business standpoint. We'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Make sure you comment, tell us what you thought about those things and engage in that manner. And if you haven't yet, this will be a great time to hit that little subscribe button. Right down there. If you haven't yet, underneath that subscribe button, there's a link tree and you can follow that. It'll take you to our Discord. It'll take you to our Whatnot. Whatnot stream every Sunday at 6.30 p.m. until football season starts again, at which point we'll probably kick it back again. But right now, 6.30 seems like the go-to. Every Wednesday at 7 p.m. And for the foreseeable future, if you're stocking a low-end eBay store, Jason is your guy on Fridays at 1 p.m. where you can buy 20, 30, 40 card lots at a time of stuff that he pulled down from his eBay store when he decided to change directions and people are really enjoying that. That's been a fun one. It's a chill vibe and people honestly just hang out and chat the whole time too. So if you feel like skipping out of work early, you're daydreaming, just put Whatnot on, hang out. You don't have to buy anything. Come hang out Friday. Yeah. What do we got? Is it time? I think it's time. This has been the Ball Card Show, the esports podcast. For The Esports Collector. Bye now. Peace.