How To Fix Grading Companies & Negotiating Deals

We are back, Season 5, Episode 10 of the Ball Card Show, The Sports Podcast. Or The Sports Collector. I'm Jason Otero. I'm Gary LeMaster. And we are rolling through this Season 5. It's crazy. I was thinking about this the other day. People have been like, yeah, we've been catching, it's been really crazy what's been going on since we- What have they been saying? Did I say that really fast? You just sound like a bunch of marbles. Farmer Fran. What are they saying? We've been getting a lot of comments from people- You sound like the farmer from Napoleon Dynamite. At shows that- Tony Arrowhead. About seeing us on YouTube and stuff now. And my response has been that this has been almost surreal the speed with which the podcast has grown since we went to a video format. We don't believe anyone wants to see us. They want to know, hey, what do these guys look like? Then they see us and they're like, oh my God. But you're here. Yeah. And we're grateful for that. We're very much so. This week, what's been really awesome is, especially on TikTok, seeing the engagement with the discussions, people debating each other, talking about what they would do with grading, which we want to jump into your conversations that you were having with us on socials here in just a minute. But yeah, just tons of gratitude. Before we get started, and we'll say it again before we finish, April 24th at 7 PM, we are going live for our first What Not show. If you have not heard that, then you are a first time listener or watcher and we appreciate you being here with us. Don't forget to like, subscribe, comment, engage with us. We're pretty responsive with any questions you have. We'd love to help you out. Let's jump into some hobby news. Let's do it. Starting out with the release of a product that I actually really like. I really like this product. It's a product where if I don't get a big hit, I'm not devastated, but I buy this in retail. So that may be part of it. If you can find it. If I can find it. Optic Football release. Now, everybody knows this chase for the downtown has become the big thing. Everybody's trying to buy them. If you have them in your showcase, it's a product, an insert set that you're going, it's gone in 90 to 95% all day long, which is kind of crazy to see that happening, not for a month or two with hype, but every release. This time though, we've released Uptown Girl. You know what I mean? You got something to say? That's Frankie Valli, right? I don't know. Joe Heshy will send a mob to throw you in the trunk of a Lincoln if you don't like Uptown Girl. If you see me right now, you'll understand that it would take a mob to pick me up. Please, please don't. Yeah, that's no fun for anybody. Actually, people were impressed that I hit that note. No. If I tried to walk like a man at the hour that we're recording this, I would struggle with that. Anyways, Optic released. Oh yeah. Downtown's as always, Rookie King's as always, I think Blazer's is another one that they've got like 800 case hits, but they were just released Uptown's, which is like a downtown except it says Uptown and it's a cutout. It's not a die cut card, but the design of the card is like a cutout with a marquee sign. Now, what I will say, and we realize- They look cool. They should look cool, but again, a little bit more of a grift from Panini on their way out the door. How can we get a little bit extra? These things appear to be popping out of boxes as fast as I've ever seen anything pop out of boxes. It has been a deluge of photos of hits of these things. I would say this. If you want to collect the Uptown's, I think the prices are going to slowly settle. They're not going to drop to the floor or anything like that, but $2,500 for a Jaden Daniels Uptown right now, don't do that. Just don't do that. This is going to land somewhere between the nice home field advantage and the downtown's. I think they'll probably maintain values very similar to the downtown's. Really? Yeah, I think they'll maintain similar values to the downtown's. Unless these are happening more than once a case. This year in Donruss, first off the line, they had, or this was last year's Black Pandora's and stuff. They released the Optic last year and the cases of first off the line had 25, 30, 40 downtown's in them. So, who knows? Yeah, you're going to see a lot of them open right around release time. That's for sure. Long story short, don't overpay for these things off the rip. If you want to collect them. There is a downtown in this set that I want, and I very rarely want things like this, but my boy Ken Anderson has a downtown in this set. You have to get it? I do. I have to get it. I've already got two or three people on the lookout for it. Gary will pay over 100% for that. I don't know about that. As a matter of fact, 200% is not too much for this guy. I don't know about that, but I will buy the card eventually. You're going to have a hard time finding comps. That's true. Okay, let's have this conversation. Downtown's, now don't just rationally think through this with me. Do we need a Ken Anderson downtown? Do we need it? Because the product, because here's where I'm starting to be like, this is what's happening with some of these fanatics releases. Like, hey, there's a huge vet auto checklist, but when you look through the names, do we really need it? Do we really need that anymore? I do, but I don't know that there's too many other. I know of one other Ken Anderson super collector. How many other Ken Anderson tier collectability players are going to be getting down? A lot. Well, not just downtown's, but in general, and here's why. They are cheaper to get autos from than the hottest guys who are playing right now. It's cheaper for the manufacturer to say, hey, Ken Anderson, we need 5,000 stickers signed. Are you cool? Five bucks a piece. Sure, sure, sure, but what I'm saying is for the downtown product, are we starting to water it down? Oh, hell yes. Hell yes. Be mindful. Excuse me. It's the same thing as- I was finishing a sentence, sir. I was trying to fill your dead spot there. Fill my flim? Yeah. Oh, that sounded weird. I don't like that. Anyway, go ahead with what you were about to say. It doesn't matter anymore. I think that the overall checklist for this stuff has been watered down for a while. I mean, look at the downtowns that sell for next to nothing currently. You're really struggling right now, aren't you? That was so horrible. Okay. Anyhow, the more we think about it, the worse it gets. Don't think about it. Dick Butkus last year, hall of famer, but you can buy the downtown for 180 bucks. Terrell Owens kind of did the same thing, hall of famer, but pretty cheap. Some of these older guys that they're throwing into these sets, they don't really do anything other than allow them to space out the insert rate on these things across cases. Right. Do you think the downtown market ... So if we see that ... I haven't gone through the downtown checklist. I should have. But if we continue to see more players like that inserted into this, will that lower the market on it? No. The only thing that will ... Let's just shoot straight here. The only thing that's going to lower the market on downtowns is if the people who consistently buy into repack breaks stop buying into repack breaks. The market for downtowns right now is entirely supported by repackers. The same thing with the market for kabooms, and the same thing with the market for every other case hit. It is entirely propped up by the repack market. If that market stops caring about those things, the prices will drop precipitously. They'll drop by 40 or 50% if that happens. This will be ... In the recent months, since Prism dropped, this will be the hottest football product. Yes. Retail ... Because of what's happening with Pokemon and non-sport on release day, or when there's restock days at the major retailers, I don't anticipate it getting better with sports cards. There's just more people in the aisle now, and guys that went and got in line for Pokemon that are used to flipping product are sure going to grab Optic as soon as it's restocked if they find out there's a little bit of an uptick. Right now, it's silly. That's the next comment that I wanted to make is the retail secondary market on Optic is already stupid. These boxes ... What are you seeing on a blaster? 70 to 90 bucks. Oh my gosh. Don't do it. Don't do that to yourself. These things are retail, 35 bucks. You can buy them for 35 bucks if you're just patient. If you really, really, really need to scratch the itch, hop on eBay or someplace and buy them for 45. Do not jump into lines for them at 70 to 90 bucks. Don't buy them at 70 bucks a piece from the guy who just took the picture in the backseat of his car where he cleared out Walmart. Just don't do it. Don't feed the trolls. My favorite is, hey, I'm at the store. Who wants to pay me for something I haven't checked out with yet? Acting like it's a StockX in the shoe-flipping heyday before COVID. People new to the hobby, this isn't the first time this has happened. This happened four or five years ago with retail product, and then it stopped happening like that. It can stop happening again. You could get a Dayton Daniels downtown, but there's one downtown per case, and you might hit a Ken Anderson downtown, which would be the odds of you getting that. I'll buy it. Well, right. But the math is not in your favor on this. Maybe a whole product, but I can't imagine that it's going to be more than 3X five years from now. It's not a whole product if you're buying it at secondary market prices. That's what I'm saying. There's got to be an upside on that. Just don't do it. Don't be the trolls. They'll go away. But it does lend a lot of credence to something we talked about last week, which is, are we about to see another boom? One of the first signs that we were having a boom the last time one occurred was retail shelves getting wiped out, and that product getting marked up to 2X or 3X, and actually selling at those prices. We're starting to see it happen a little bit. Now, when that boom took place, there wasn't a sport left out of the boom. No, everything went off. So, everything, if there was a possibility of an upside, was wiped out. Hockey maybe a little bit. We're not seeing that quite yet because this basketball class is so horrible- It's really bad. ... that the market hasn't dictated a demand for that. Now, if we start seeing this year's basketball product flying off the shelf, which I can't imagine at this point in the season. It's sitting on shelves. That's when you're going to know across the board something's going on. But football is disappearing. Good baseball product is disappearing. This is a good pivot point into this next conversation we're having. We're talking about how the downtowns are propped up by the repack market. You obviously have the breaking market, which, just a quick reminder, Fanatics Panini makes so much more money if breaking and repacking exists than they do if it doesn't. Sure. Just a quick reminder. I'll go a step further with this. I love TikTok because of what it has enabled us to do in building the community with all of you, the engagement that you have, the ability to give a take on something that's quick and concise. I actually like to digest a lot of information on there. But TikTok is running rampant with horrible margin breaks and repack products. I send you probably once a week, like, hey, watch this guy go live and he'll blow through all of these $20 repacks and all of the cards are $5 to $10. Listen- All of them. Combined. And people buy five to 10 of these at a time. And they're repacks that are in a non-bubble wrap manila envelope that dude has handwritten a number on. And guess what? There's a hundred people in the room buying the stuff. So it's insane. This theory of it'll be worth what people pay for. If they're under the illusion that there's something big in there, then it's on them. But what is happening with the repack market, the breaking market? How is it impacting young collectors or early collectors, I should say? I love this take Rob over at Burbank Sports Cards had. Now, just for an example, like for context, Rob there is someone that's just a multi-generational shop in Southern California, had been around a long time. His allocations have to be, he probably buys a lot more wax than any of us realize. He always has the new stuff. But he has from the get, like when the boom started, like around early COVID time, he was saying, hey, I think that breaking could be detrimental to the hobby overall. I think that this gambling component, while exciting for the singles market, is going to be bad for collecting over the long haul. He's not changed his position on this. And Burbank has only grown through the season. They're getting ready to open a new facility. They've got these awesome murals all over the place. He's building a model out where he wants the most efficient system for singles inventory. And he wants, I think he's got 24 showcases that are fresh, that are updated. That's a lot. That's a lot. And you have hundreds of people a week walking him, selling them stuff, like hundreds of people a week. But Rob went, I believe he went live or he may have even posted it as a story on IG. And he had a quote that I just wanted us to unpack just a little bit. And he's talking about why he has a tough time with the gambler aspect of the hobby, the repacking side of the hobby. And he truly believes it's detrimental to collectors overall. No cards even be around in 10 or 20 years if the emphasis continues to go to people believing they're going to hit something big and losing 80% of their money every time or 100%. So he said this, give people an option when spending hard earned money. Go away from the fleeting moment of breaking or opening wax. Now this is a shop owner, a big shop owner. And build something or go somewhere that is lacking the satisfaction in the hobby. People are entering the hobby quickly and they're exiting it because they're getting into the gambling side of this. They don't even realize, they don't even know that collecting is an option, which is sad. And all the vintage collectors and buyers that are listening to this, which is probably very few are going to say, as we said growing up, amen. Like yes, this is killing it. What happened to collecting and buying something because you liked it? That's why they get frustrated with the incessant comping over a card you don't even know if you want. Like it used to be not that long ago, you would look for cards of players that you knew of, sets that you understood of a value, had a grasp of, and maybe you'd open up Beckett to, and I'm not saying we go back to, what does it book for? for because we've all seen the nightmares of buying off of the book, right? What I am saying is you have key influencers in the hobby with a proven track record that are concerned over the gambling emphasis in this hobby. Collect what you like. If you want to buy something and keep it, that's okay. You don't have to flip it. Now having a business is a different aspect altogether. That being said, it's really important to also say while what Rob is saying in this quote I also agree with, there might be a hint of not so much selflessness there because anybody who's in this business will tell you that the margins on singles are much stronger than the margins on wax if you are an LCS owner. Now that's a recent change though. I just want to point out, yes. It's not really, we had a window. The margins of, they were printing money through COVID on this. Well, yes, we had a window. During that time he was still saying, I don't think this is good, so I just want to. Yes, that's fair. That's 100% fair. But to clarify further, there was a window where the resale value of wax and the wholesale price of wax were way, way, way out of whack. And then the wholesalers went, we don't like this. So they spiked it right back up. For a minute there, if you had allocations for five cases of prism, football or basketball, you were making 10 grand a case. That was about a year and a half window. Then the wholesalers went, we're not going to give you five cases anymore, we're going to give you half a case, we'll give you an inner at wholesale, and then everything else you have to buy at market value, which was about 10% under retail. And then Fanatic steps in and says, oh, you know, I like this. Like I'll give you an example. Yesterday I went into- We'll get rid of the middleman and we'll do the same thing. I went into LCS yesterday, I asked about two products they're getting ready to release. One of them was Tribute. Yeah. And I said, hey, when is that out? Because I like that. It's a beautiful product. I don't think it's a big win product for most people that are opening it. You can, but it's really pretty. There's a good chance you're going to get a really good vet auto out of there. You're going to get a good chunk of your money back. You have a possibility of hitting something huge, but they're just really pretty. It's usually about a $400 to $450 box. Which that's almost doubled from where it was five years ago, six years ago. But the interesting thing was that I said, hey, where are you going to be introducing the price of that? They said, we're not sure yet. I was like, okay, that happens. He's like, well, we don't know when we're going to get more cases. So Fanatics now is just kind of teasing with a smaller order, unless you're like, yes, I want to buy 10 cases of everything and go under half a million this year. Well, you buy all the good stuff if you'll buy all the crap too. You want these WWE paper cards, we'll take it. That's what's happening. It happened with Heritage High Number. It's happening with like Bohm and Chrome U, basketball with the Cooper flag and the Juju Chase. That's another product. They can't give an honest answer. They used to know where this was going to be introduced. I remember signs being out on the counter. Hey, this drops on this day at X for a hobby box. They can't do that anymore. So that's changing. The end of his quote here, he says, the reason the loud mouths are getting away with this. So I love that he said it like that. The reality is there are people over hyping, yelling at you in the stream, giving you incorrect comps, telling you you're going to hit something that they know is impossible to hit. They're posting videos to Instagram to get you to buy their courses. And again, Panini and Fanatics only make more money, the more exposure to this stuff that there is. It's not their fault that people are breaking the product. No. They said they're getting away with this because people don't even know about the satisfaction of collecting in the hobby. They don't know that they can enjoy opening a blaster of Top Series One and not hitting a major hit and being like, wow, I'm glad Top Series One released and I got a few rookie cards out of it. You and I cringe at that thought, but there's nothing wrong with that. And it's almost been demonized. If you're not up money. Which is almost impossible if you're ripping stuff. Especially on hobby. Especially on hobby. What are the expectations here? We need to get people off of gambling and into collecting is how he wrapped that up. Very concise. And that's very true. Now, will there always be a little bit of a gambling aspect if you're ripping stuff? Absolutely. The only way you can avoid that is if you are intentionally strategic about what you rip and how you rip it. It's what I do. The only product that I rip a lot of is Bowman. If you've been here for a while, you've heard me talk about it. I only rip Bowman retail and I only rip it by the case and I'll rip one or two cases of it every single year and I never lose money on it. But I have a strategy and I know exactly what I'm doing with it. That doesn't mean he makes money because it takes time to sell them. Yeah, for sure. It's not like that. And very, very, very good point. It's not like instantaneously you're going to, you know, that case cost $1,100 and you get one card that sells and you make your money back on that one card. But over time, I've never lost money on a Bowman release ever. So always understand that if you are ripping stuff on a regular basis and you're doing it for the purpose of making money, you will fail. The end. If you're ripping it because it's fun and you have the disposable income to do it and you don't mind when you take a bath and you're excited when you get a win, hey, have at it because without folks like you, it's hard for me to buy stuff to put in my showcases. And there's a counterpoint to what Rob was saying over at Burbank and that is, okay, we want to eliminate this. Let's just have people collect. Let's take the big hits out of products. Let's make everything 15 to 50 bucks and now you're opening what is commonly referred to as junk wax. Yeah. But you're not going to take the big hit because you're not gambling anymore. Well, nobody wants that either, right? There's got to be a balance. There's got to be a chase. There's nothing wrong with a chase and a product, but what he's saying is there's going to be a high turnover rate for this industry period because we're not creating collectors out of the experience. Let's not make this hobby just a casino. Yeah. Like every time I go through my Eric Davis PC and I'm showing people cards that I've collected and I'll show them the cool stuff, right? But then I was like, this is what I really like. Here's 10 binder pages of the 89 score. Tom Brady, who's now launched his fourth LCS in the last two months, brought in his binder of his collection. Yeah. I saw it. Which I saw a whole sheet of Eric Davis. It literally looked like my childhood. Yes. And it's like, don't forget to enjoy collecting cards in the midst of all this. This gambling component isn't going away anytime soon and I'm afraid that a lot of you that even tune in that are just getting started will get swallowed up in this. So then your question is, well, I only know about breaking on TikTok or going to whatnot or whatever. How do I go to a show, go to a card shop, get on Facebook marketplace, dive in, do some research, find a player that you like, or you know what, this player, I've always enjoyed watching them growing up and they're from a time where it was like all game use patches. It doesn't have to be a big thing. But anyway, I thought it was really interesting that the card father is throwing that heart of a take out there that we're forgetting about collecting and gambling is kind of running rampant in it. And he, you know, he stands to gain a good bit if he, if Burbank was breaking nonstop, they'd make money. Oh yeah. They have the audience. That's not what they do. Exactly. They're true to who they are. So, all right. I've worn that topic out, but I think it was worth the discussion. Up next in hobby news slash conversation. We want to spend a little bit of time talking about something that had tons of engagement from y'all last week when we released the announcement from PSA about the extent of turnaround times for TCG and prices going up on their services because the comments that we were flooded with were PSA is a scam. I don't understand why everybody doesn't use tag. BGS has been around forever. If we all just quit spending money with PSA, they won't be king anymore. Why does everyone hate SGC? The slabs look better. Like everyone had an opinion on how to fix the grading issue. So I think we just want to walk through each of these different graders and there's no way we're going to have everybody. I'm sure some of you are launching a grading company and you can't believe we left you out, but we did because these are the ones that in what we see walking up to tables, what we see move consistently online are used the most. Is that a fair way to say it? Uh, yeah. I don't think there's anybody left off that wouldn't be like an obscure, smaller. GMA is the only one I was thinking and they do great. A lot of cards. They don't add any value to the card whatsoever, but they do great. They will protect your card for you. Yes. Yeah. Um, so basically what we want to talk through is why this is not a simple fix. So let's start off with PSA. This is the, you know, they broke, they broke the news about things changing for some of you. This is the first time for others of us. This has been several times. Um, we've ridden this rollercoaster before, but there's a consensus out there that they're grading tougher and they're raising prices and people are getting these bulk submissions where they were jimming out at 60 to 80% 80% is aggressive, 60% 70% and now all of a sudden it's 20 to 30 and they're saying this is a scam. What do you, I'll let you dive in with PSA. We've now, we've spent a lot of time on PSA, so I don't want to stay here forever, but what, why is it not a simple fix of PSA? Just add more employees, um, change your centering expectations that you just tightened up. Why is it not a simple fix? Well, grading in general is never going to be a simple fix because it involves human subjectivity. It's that simple. Uh, one of the things I calm down, tag people, calm down. We'll get to you in a minute. One of the things that I think people get the most frustrated with about that we saw the most comments about and that I hear a lot is PSA. They make more money if they grade your card stronger, so you can buy a 10. That's a little fallacious. You can't just buy a 10 and PSA only charges you more if the value of the card in the grade that it is given, and that could be an eight, okay? On some cards that might be an eight, not a 10. On vintage it might be a five, right? If the value of the card in the grade that it is assigned causes it to go into the next value tier that PSA gives. Now one of the things that people got really used to with PSA over the last four or five years that I think they're cracking down on a little bit more beyond grading standards is say you had a card that in a PSA 10 was worth 600 bucks, but that first tier you submitted it in is really only supposed to be up to 499. For a good while they didn't really bat too much of an eye about that $200 difference. Now they are. Now you're getting charged, and people don't like that. But they also don't want to get a nine. So I always tell people if you get an upcharge from PSA you should actually be happy about it. Absolutely. It should be something that you're excited about because the card's worth more than you thought it was worth, which means that either as an investment you did well, or if you want to sell it you're going to do well. And the posts that you see in regards to this, people complaining are like, PSA made me buy my card back from them. Yeah that's not really how that works. That's not really what happened there. Your card's worth more than you thought it was. And nobody, just so we're on the same page, nobody who is following PSA's guidelines is going from a $20 submission rate to a $5,000 submission rate. That's not happening. The only way that's happening is if you subbed a card that you damn well knew was worth a hundred grand in a decent grade as a $20 submission card. If you're that stupid, that's a you problem, okay? You're not going to get away with that anywhere. Now as far as the whole conversation of PSA being king and they shouldn't be king, listen- Well let me- You want to get to that later? No, no, I think you can, but right before you do. So to recap, one of the things that Gary's saying is there is a way for PSA to make more money. It is by giving more tens that increase the value of the card so that there's an upcharge. So you can't say that they're a money grab and that's why they're grading more strictly and slowing down turnaround times, right? It makes them less money. It doesn't make them more money. Correct. I'm trying to, maybe there's an angle I'm not considering here, but I can't see a scenario where the recent changes with PSA make them more money. Now you can make an argument that three years from now tens will carry a higher value and maybe a nine will look a little bit better because it's harder to get that. But as it sits right now, you can't say that PSA is trying to rip me off with an argument as to how stricter grading guidelines and a slower turnaround is going to do that for you. Yeah. And also one of the comments that we saw some version of several times was, I sent PSA my cards and it took four months to get them back and all I got back was crappy grades. Send better cards. Yes. Now, don't get me wrong. Does PSA screw some stuff up sometimes? Yes. No question about it. I had a sub not too long ago where I got absolutely brutalized and the cards were not graded accurately. There's no question there. But at the end of the day, if you're getting a bunch of fours and fives, there's a reason for it. Don't go off of what your breaker tells you the condition is. Yes. They have 10 seconds before they open the next pack. They're thrown in. They get into a top loader. Yes. I mean, there are ethical breakers out there. I'm not trying to say everyone that breaks is bad. I want to be really clear about that. There's a huge fraction of this where it's very ethical. The problem is people that do this on a consistent basis spend several minutes going over each card under basically a microscope. Correct. Or at least a jeweler's loop. Yes. Something where it's very, yeah, a jeweler's loop, microscope, a bit aggressive. But there are people that do that. They're spending time on this. It should not be easy to get a 10. It has nothing to do with how long it's been in a pack. Absolutely nothing. It doesn't mean anything. Pack fresh is the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. I opened 2017 update series baseball looking for judge rookies. I pulled some. Two of them have a soft corner. That's to be expected. Yeah. I shouldn't expect a 10 out of that. So the expectation that if you just started sending off cards and you sent 40 off and it's the first time you've done a large submission like this and you can't believe your gem rate is so low, you need to do homework on what it. takes to make a 10. Now, is there also this reality that they're grading tougher? Yes, they are. So you should spend even more time pre-grading. Okay? For sure. So if that happens, it's not the end of the world. You may have lost a good chunk of change on that, expecting nines and tens because somebody told you, you know, just follow their course and send it off. And who's that idiot? I don't want to say his name. We're getting to the point where I'm about to start dropping it on a regular basis, but you need to pre-grade your credit card. You need to spend time. Not everything's going to 10. That's the point. If it's easy to 10 everything, we're all screwed. Yeah. Everything gets out of touch. So it's not a simple fix for PSA. Do they have issues that they could address? So some things that we think that would help. Staff appropriately, pay your people appropriately. Your turnaround times will probably change pretty drastically. If that's a concern that you have. Yeah. Maybe their financial model is, hey, we're where we want to be. The amount of money coming in makes sense. The amount of money going out to employees, staffing and all that leaves the margins. Right. So let's tighten this up a little bit. And for the next three to five years, we should be sitting pretty. Yeah. That's probably, probably what's going on. Go ahead next. I'll hit my end point at the end of all this SGC. So SGC has a reputation for grading a little tougher than the way PSA has over the years. They have a reputation for carrying a lot of vintage cards. Yep. Some of the biggest vintage cards in the world are graded in an SGC slab. Some of the highest prices sales of all time are SGC slabs. It is the only slab that has like a black border around it. So I like that they call it the tuxedo. Visually for PC, it really makes a lot of cards pop. Yeah. They are usually a little quicker and they're usually cheaper than a lot of other people out there. Right now they're a little backed up. Yep. They're a little slower right now on their standard submission. Which when this starts to happen, it's usually going to hit all grading at some point to a degree. But there are people that are like SGC is way better. Now, in case you aren't aware, the parent company of PSA acquired SGC. Yeah. They're under the same umbrella now. So it's the same family. So for those of you commenting, I hate PSA. That's why I do SGC. It's going to the same account. It's going to the same bank account at the end of the day. Now, would it be smart? Like I talked about, wouldn't it be sweet if SGC picked a lane and they're like, we are the official, we are the number one vintage grading company. Right. If I was, if I was the parent company, that's what I would do. Everything would come into the same hub. Vintage would go to SGC. Modern and ultra modern would go to PSA. They don't want to not take that money. So they won't do that. But the thing with SGC is very, very simple. They do a good job grading. They're pretty consistent grading. They do have one grade tier that will outsell a PSA 10, and that is the gold label SGC 10. It is extremely difficult to get a gold label. SGC 10 is the equivalent of a BGS black label. It actually is handed out a little bit less. I think it's 0.2% of cards that SGC grades get a gold label. Of all the cards I've ever submitted to SGC, I have gotten one gold label card, and it wasn't a huge one. It was an Ozzy Albee's rookie out of a lower end product that I graded during the COVID boom. The simple reality for most of these other companies we're going to talk about is very simple. Does SGC do a good job? Yes. Do the slabs look good? Yes. I like them a lot with color cards and with vintage cards. I think it looks great. With a lot more like the base and standard chrome stuff, I don't like the look of it as much, but prism color pops really well in those slabs. Here's the simple reality. An SGC 10, at best, unless it's a super low numbered card, like of 10 or less, that doesn't have a high PSA 10 pop, is going to get you about 70% tops, value-wise, of what a PSA 10 is. That's just the reality. We can talk about how it should be all we want. Should is the dumbest word in the English language because it has no bearing on reality. We can talk about should, and we can even agree on should, but the reality is that if I have two identical cards, and they're sitting in my showcase, and one's a PSA 10, and one's an SGC 10, the PSA 10 will sell faster, and it will sell for 30% to 40% more 100% of the time. The end. Does it make sense? No. But that's just the reality. It's the way it is. If you're arguing against that in the comments, you're wrong, and I can tell you from years of experience setting up at shows, almost every single week, you are wrong. Perfect example. I had the Marvin Harrison Big Kahuna Auto to 150, SGC 10, and a 10 on the Auto, so a dual 10, right? Much more in demand going into last year than this year just because he didn't get a ton of targets. Hopefully that changes for him, but there were repeatedly sales at 550, 550, there was a sale at 800 on that card. I had to fight for the value of that Marvin Harrison to be close to $100 under the PSA 10 on a card to 150 that's pretty collectible. It was not happening. People wanted it much lower. You sat on it for a while before it finally moved. I had to, but again, we're talking about a 20%, 25% difference on that, and I don't have a good reason. I think it looked better in an SGC, but anyway. That's just the reality. If there were one of these where I'm like, hey, I think they're already to a point where they should have more value, I think SGC is that one out of this whole list. They should demand more value than they do right now. Up next, BGS. This is a fun one. If you're new to the hobby, you're just confused. Why do people have such strong opinions about a brand that's been around so long and has been the industry standard for 20, 25 years? Well, I'm glad you asked that. Gary, do you have a litany of reasons for them? Yeah. Just to recap, prior to 2019, this started to shift before the boom, okay? The first boom for COVID for a lot of you guys. Prior to 2019, Beckett BGS was the place where we all sent our really nice stuff. We wanted the subgrades. That slab carried a premium. It was the V standard. PSA was where we sent all of our off-centered stuff so we could get 10s on it, right? That was just the reality. Again, if somebody's trying to argue against that, you're new to the hobby. Anybody who's been here for more than five years knows exactly what I'm talking about. To this day, older BGS slabs will carry some premium on higher-end stuff versus newer PSA 10s. Now, on the ultra-modern stuff, but on older stuff, it does. Beckett, over the last five and a half years, six years, has just over and over and over again just shot themselves in the foot and shot themselves in the foot and shot themselves in the foot. Dr. James Beckett sold the company. The new ownership came in, did some weird things, allowed PSA to get a little bit of a foothold. PSA understood how to market better than Beckett did. Beckett was one of those companies where we are who we are, kind of IBM versus Apple. Just standing on their legacy really is. Yeah, IBM versus Apple. Apple went, oh, well, you can just go ahead and be who you are. We're going to sell to everybody who doesn't have a clue who you are and take over everything. That's what PSA did. Between the baffling decisions that BGS made over and over again from failed new logo rollouts to new slab rollouts that didn't work. The database merge of Beckett Vintage Grading, which was like a standard for vintage. This was like, you got a velvet protector. It was very nice, Beckett Vintage Grading. They merged their databases with pop reports, what this card is, and all that. They screwed it all up. In with their standard slabs, and they're lost. You can look up the cashless clay that I keep mentioning. Comes up as a Cal Ripken. Comes up as a Cal Ripken mid-80s card. It's not even technically in their vintage category. Yeah. And they're like, yep, we did that. I reached out to customer service. Can you re-slab this in a new one at the grade? Yep, we did that. Can't guarantee you the grade. You can send it down. Yeah. I'm like, well. Yeah, don't want to do that. No. The logo redesign was a fail. Yeah, it was a fail. Then they tried to play it off like it didn't really happen, except it was at the national, and there were hundreds of pictures being posted of what they were trying to do, and then they backpedaled really fast. Then the new CEO that they brought in is now going to jail for millions of dollars worth of fraud. Now a new company owns them. Now I will say this, BGS is starting to see a little bit of an uptick in submissions. That's because PSA is backed up and has pissed a lot of people off, and SGC is starting to piss people off with their backups. And the non-sports market is going nuts. So there's demand. So if there is one company, if there is one company that has any chance of dethroning PSA, in my opinion, it is Beckett. Now if you go back to our older episodes, you're going to find us being like, please just close the doors while you still have a chance. Yeah. Years ago, we were saying what they're doing, they should just be closed, they don't have a future, this and that. So we would love to see that that's a company that if they can get their stuff together, they have the ability to truly compete with PSA. Because they have so much name recognition in the hobby. The word Beckett- Subgrades is a huge thing too. For sure. But literally the word Beckett is so synonymous with sports cards that a lot of you that are coming back into the hobby after 20 years away, that didn't come back during COVID and are coming back now, are like, why aren't people using Beckett's? It isn't even called a price guide. People just call it a Beckett. People used to call Tough Stuff Beckett's. It was just synonymous for price guide. So the name has a lot of value if they can put the marketing dollars into it and if they can deliver on a promise. For example, you can't call anyone. If I need to get a hold of somebody at Beckett, I've tried this. You're sending an email and they're maybe getting back to you. SGC is the same way, they don't answer a phone. The customer service issue, and again, it would probably have to get farmed out to be financially viable, but to put somebody on the phone- There are AI bots that exist that you can't- I hate it. The good ones, you can't differentiate from a person. That's not what Whatnot has. Well, no, I agree. They don't have that one. What I'm saying is the good ones, you can't differentiate from a person. So you could do a few things, but in general, if there's one company that could make a push against PSA, I think Beckett is it. What are they charging for their lower tier? $17 or $18? It's dropped a lot, which is also part of why they've had an uptick. Now, there is a play with BGS. If you're unaware of this, because of the subgrades, if you have something that's really clean and you don't want to wait four months on a turnaround, and you've got to be very confident. Now, this has got to be probably for bigger cards. Getting a Beckett slab that is True Gem or True Gem Plus- Or a Tanner Black label. Yeah, like a Tanner Black label, you don't probably have to do anything with it, but on a 9.5, you really do have an argument that you think it will tend. Now, somebody's going to have to have realized costs with that. They're going to have to take a gamble on it, but that's- And the risk of cracking it. But compared to like a BGS 9.5 with good subgrades is an easier sell than a SGC 9.5, that looks like a 10. Oh, absolutely. So there's a little bit of value there. We got to keep it moving. Yep, let's keep it moving. Tag. And maybe we just wrap up with this one for today, because there's a few others. The true AI grading platform. Now, here's what we know. The slabs feel great. Although, they are a little brittle. Well, some people like that. If you've had to crack and re-sub, yeah. But if you accidentally drop it on the floor, it also might shatter it. Yeah, but pretty decent design. Their whole thing is like, this is completely objective, right? It's AI- It's AI only. 100% of the way. Well, the truth is, it might be the most honest statement that can be made, because getting a 10 out of that is almost impossible. Which isn't the worst thing in the world. The challenge that I'm running into is people trying to argue that at shows when they want to sell it, they can't move it. So now they want to move it on margin to a dealer, and they're like, it's AI grading. It's a nine, but yeah, it doesn't mean that it's selling. It doesn't have the value yet. I appreciate the concept. For those that's been in the hobby a little while, this is about the fifth time we've been told that there's an AI brand out there, only to find later that it wasn't quite as AI as you're saying it is. So that's probably why there's a little hesitation in the market with it? I think that that's part of it, but I will- Remember HGA was saying that they were doing that. Yeah, but they weren't actually. Tag actually is, and they've actually shown demos of it, and the process that they use is great, and it's wholly objective. There is no subjectivity. A nine is a nine, a 10 is a 10. It's always going to be a 10 or a nine. There's no, if you take it out and send it back, as long as nothing changed on the card, it's going to get the same grade. But it leads to what you just said, and I want to wrap up this whole segment with this. The one comment we got more than anything else is, why is PSA king? Why do people keep sending their cards there? This is very simple, and it goes back to the comment we talked earlier about should. Like it, hate it, loathe it, whatever. The reality is this. PSA sells for considerably higher margin than anything else, and it sells for a considerably higher margin than anything else because the overall market says it's worth more. And the people who are complaining, here's a very simple, somebody said, how do we change this? I'm going to tell you how to change it, okay? And you can do this, and if we get enough people to do this, it'll change. You know what the chances of us getting enough people to do this are? Zero. You won't even do it. I'm going to tell you how to fix it. You can take steps this weekend at your local card show. When you go to somebody's table and you see an SGC10, I want you to pay 100% of PSA prices for it. When you see a tag slab, I want you to pay 100% of PSA10 prices for it. When you see a BGS95, I want you to pay 100% of PSA10 prices for it. And if you are willing to do that, and enough other people are willing to do that, then the market will change dramatically. Guess how many of you are going to do that? Zero of you are going to do that. do that. You know why? Because you know it's not worth what the PSA 10 is worth in the market. The end. There's no other conversation to be had about it. Well, I think there is, but I agree with everything you're saying. PSA wasn't always king. It can change over time. It's usually with poor service. It's usually with an issue that happens. PSA, if the turnaround times become a year and a half, or a year, and all of a sudden we're seeing Beckett improving, or SGCs. That all happened already. Well, it's happened, but- It didn't change anything. PSA wasn't in the position- They were in 2021. Okay, go before that. What I'm saying is your perspective is over the last five to seven years, this is the way it is, and it's not going to change until something happens. I'm saying it has been other graders before. It has, but not since the hobby has become what it is. The amount of money that is in the market that is in PSA slabs, the- Okay, hold on. Hold on. Let me ask it this way. I hear what you're saying. The gem rate continues to fall, and the turnaround time, fast forward this two to three years. You're not getting your stuff back. You used to send off 20 cards a month. Now you don't even send off three to five, because you're like, unless I have something really big and I'm sure about it, I'm not sending it off. That will affect the market and what people are willing to pay. It might, except if 10s are rarer and the pop on the 10s goes down and PSA has still maintained, then the value of 10s goes up. There's not as many out there. Right, which means the value goes up. The same reason that BGS 10s are worth more than a PSA 10. The model that PSA is really leaning into, to me, from what I can see and the moves that they're making, is they would much rather get 1,000 subs a month from 1,000 group subs, and each one of those subs has 10,000 cards in it, than they would to get 100,000 subs a month of two cards from you and me. They don't care whether you or I send our five cards in. That's why they love the GameStop stuff. Yes. They love that GameStop's sending them in. Increases their margins because there's less to do- Less time. On the back end. It's all in one order. I want to reinforce what you said. If you want to make a change tomorrow, start paying 100% on the other side. Come to my table. I will happily sell you all my SGC and CGC slabs. You might even go 95% out of the kindness of your heart. You won't. I promise you, you won't. Don't complain about something that you're not willing to do something about. You can complain. Hold on, hold on. Half of this podcast is complaining. Yeah. We don't do stuff about half. You're allowed to complain in the hobby. You're allowed to complain, but don't expect there to be change. Complain away, but don't expect there to be change if you're not willing to do something to effect change. I'm not convinced that this is as set in stone forever as it sounds like you are. I think that there's so much momentum in the market. The reason that it changed prior was a little bit a service issue, like you were talking about. It wasn't as much a service issue as it was one company recognized that the dynamics of the market were changing and another company didn't. Now those dynamics have shifted. I don't know how that momentum, I don't know how PSA grades a million, a million point one cards a month and Beckett grades 70,000 cards a month. I don't know how that difference of momentum truly gets flipped. Do I think Beckett is our best bet to do something? Yes. Do I think they will? Probably not. Yeah. There's no motive for SGC to take over the market. No. They've already got it. They want it to be one and two. Yeah. Yeah. One and one A, which is not quite yet, but I'm hopeful that it could change. I think competition would be great, but everything else in the hobby is heading in the monopoly direction, so I don't know that it's going to change anytime soon. All right. We've got a lot still to get to and we've already gone through a lot, so let's rock and roll. This next one, the value box we've been bringing to you over the last several weeks, and the topic for the value box in this four week series is, if I was starting a card business, if I was trying to sell cards to make money, what would I do? We broke it up into four weeks, sell what you have, buy what you need, negotiate the deal, and then scale the business. Today, we are talking all about negotiating the deal. Now, we have left breadcrumbs over the last several years in our content over how we negotiate, the approach that we take to buy with margin, but I think we could give a quick overview on that and just a couple of things that would be helpful. Now, I wrote down some bullet points for me. I know that you had some ideas in your own mind with your approach, but the first thing that I wanted to say is, consider your temperament and your personality when you're negotiating. Gary and I create a very different experience for the person that we are buying from. We both have found ourselves to be effective in buying, and there's some principles that we don't have any variation from, but we definitely present ourselves in a different We approach it differently. Yeah, absolutely. So, the first thing that I'm going to say about this, which may be the very first thing that you're like, well, it doesn't affect me, but I think for most people, if you're starting to try to buy things and negotiate a deal, like, hey, I want these things, you've made an offer, and the implication is that the seller is saying, I don't know about this or no to you. Now, you're in a negotiation. You weren't in a negotiation when you just threw out a number and they said, yeah, no problem. You're in a negotiation when there's resistance. So, be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Be okay with the fact that somebody just said no and told you that they're probably not interested in moving things at the price that you initially threw out to them. Don't assume that they're a jerk because they don't want to sell to you at the price that you want to pay. Great point. Sometimes it just doesn't come together. Another part of this that's really important, and we'll try to give you the back and forth of this as we go through these points, understand whether you are in the position of power when you're buying or whether the dealer is in the position of power or the person you're buying from. If you are walking a show and you are not set up at the show, you are not going to be able to buy at the same margins that I, on the other side of the table who I'm set up at the show, have a very professional table set. A banner that says buying. That anybody who walks up and goes, oh, this is obviously somebody who does this for a living. This is not just a guy throwing some top loaders on a tabletop. You do not have to have all of those things to be able to get a deal. No, you don't. Not at all. But setting up is a different… Understanding which side of the table you're on is really important. You're not going to buy from the walking side of things at the same margins that I do sitting on the other side of the table. When I walk a show, I don't buy at the same margins. So anyway, go ahead. No, I think that's a great point. I had a guy yesterday at a show that was, or two days ago, and today's Tuesday. It's a Sunday. I was at a show. I've seen him before. He asked if we're buying, and they always say, it says you're buying. Are you really buying? This is somebody that's been rejected all day. They break something out that's a case hit. It's in the 10. It's a relevant quarterback. They start out with, oh, I just don't know. I don't even know why. I mean, you can give me an offer on it. You look it up. You give them an offer at margin, not being crazy with it. They're asking $100 over comps. They do not have the leverage. They're going to do that all day. He kept going. They started arguing. They said, man, I've seen you at a lot of these shows. You really should just set up a table. That right over there, that's the guy that organizes the whole thing. I could probably help you get a table for next month if you want to put some work in. I was ticked at the guy. It takes a lot to get you there. I get there really fast. Yeah, but it was just like, you're wasting time. You are not in the same position that I am with this. I'm not paying you $100 over the comps. I can't make any money on that. Anyway, know where you are, which side of the table you're on. That's great. Learn to be okay and good with the word no, because it's a two-way street. This is an area of improvement for me, which I'd like for you to maybe think about over the next couple of minutes. When it comes to negotiation, what could you do better? I think for me, being more comfortable with no on a sale when somebody's trying to buy for me in a negotiation, I've got to do a better job of saying no. The problem for me is if somebody puts a lot together of five or six cards, I'm like, I mean, I'm going to make $200 here right away. I've only had these cards for a week. I could probably buy better. All true. I didn't fail, but I'm missing out on ... I put so much work in to find those cards at that margin that I really should be okay saying no. Hey, I just can't get there. I appreciate it, is what it is. Nothing wrong with that in the negotiation. Be comfortable with the word no. The next one I had, value the business relationship in any way that is possible. If it is somebody that is consistently having the type of stuff that you like to buy, if you've been able to work out a deal, if you see that they are reasonable, that they have a similar approach to establishing value, negotiating, try to do something. That might mean that sometimes you buy a card more aggressively than you typically do, but you've purchased from this guy two or three times and you want to keep that relationship open. You let them have a win and you say, hey, I'm paying up a little more than normal on this one, but I value a relationship that we've had dealing with each other. Yeah, 100%. That is so important because there are a lot of people that can create a sizzle reel that they can throw out on TikTok, Instagram, and all that of them making a big purchase and beating somebody up, getting to a really low percentage, but guess what? That video is out there and people aren't going to want to do business with you if you're just trying to be as aggressive as possible and not valuing the relationship. Vice versa, the flip side of that is anybody can put out a sizzle reel of them paying 90% on stuff when anybody who does this for a living can tell you that if you are paying 90% on everything, you aren't going to be in business very long. Not for long. Yeah. No, not for long. You might be in the content business. Yeah, but you're not going to be in the selling cards business. Quick reminder to those of you watching, how did he buy that and he's making money? He's making money from you watching. That's what's happening. They're making money from your content. He's making money when it sells on Whatnot for 150%. That's true. If they can do that. No shade. No shade at all. I think it's great for everything. I hope you buy our stuff at 150%. Anyhow. But you should comp things before you do. Watch for red flags. There's some red flags for me when I'm going into something, I ask a price or I'm beginning to negotiate. I see things that I want. Here's some red flags that pop up for me where I'm like, I don't think this is going to work out. Make a mental note of this before you go further into the negotiation. The few that I wrote down were this. If you have no price or if I look up to a box, maybe it's a value box, I see some decent stuff. I had this happen over the weekend. I said, hey, what do you have on this? Just pull anything out and I'll be reasonable with you. So you have done none of the work to set a price. You aren't willing to take the risk of setting a price and allowing buyers to catch something that is on the uptrend, right? Yeah. But you're expecting me, so you want to establish whatever the highest possible comp on that is. And for me, that's the way Jason described that. I have it even simpler. If I walk up to a table and it's got a value box, same example. Of stuff that's not just like $0.50, $0.50 stuff. And I say, what are these priced at? And they say that. And I'll grab one card that looks good and I'll go, how much is this? If the first thing that person does is take their phone out, I just say, hey, never mind. And I put the card back. I'm not interested in pulling 400 cards out of your value box, which I probably will do. And spending the next four hours while you comp every single one of these cards that run from $2 to $10. If, yeah, no interest at all, I will pass. I comp those cards. Like, that's the difference. Now, the value box I bring to shows is not as much as it used to be. Like, it's a two row, but they're all comped. They all have a price on them. Yeah, everything on my table, thousands of cards. Every single one has a price tag. Now, that price tag may have been put on four months ago. And if you see, and I tell people to dig into my box, hey, if you see something that the price looks way off on, it was probably priced three or four months ago. If you're interested and just set it aside, we'll figure it out. Yeah. But there's a starting point. Absolutely. Next red flag I have, people trying to get you to negotiate collection site unseen. So this is more on collection purchases, buying with margin. You and I had one that we were considering over the last week. There was not a price. We had a feeling that the person selling it had a price in mind. And it was just come on out here and take a look. I'll be fair. It was an eight hour round trip. Yeah. What is fair to you? What is this worth? What do you want? The red flag, which I don't want to be too assertive with it because it just wasn't a deal that made sense for both of us. That's really all it was. And it's a guy that I've bought a lot of stuff from and I like the guy. Yeah. Good dude. This deal wasn't right. But if you're buying a collection and somebody starts with, I just don't even know what's in here, but they can tell you how many cards it is. Like within, like if it's a big collection or like, uh, this is a 22,500 cards, but I don't know what's in here. They know what's in there. Yeah. They know what's in there. They've counted. They've counted it out. And they're probably about to introduce to you the favorite play for sellers, which is a price per card rate. So here's 10,000 cards. Here's a few pictures of a bunch of cards worth five bucks, but there are 8,000 cards not worth anything. But I think, you know, 50 cents a card, a buck a card, you know, there's gotta be money in here for you. Not when it's going to take me six months to process this, get it all on eBay, put it out of shows and whatever. So that's a red flag for me. If it's just sight unseen, they can't give you any details. They have a card count, but they can't tell you anything else. Just come on out here and make a deal. Time is money. I've, you know, out of the shot here, I've got, you know, 4,000 cards that I need to process and put on eBay. If you're doing this as a business, you may not feel it right away, but wasting time on a negotiation, it costs you money. It costs you money. The amount of time that this business has taken for me since I quit my day job to just do this, I didn't realize how much work I wasn't getting done in this business until that happened. Yeah, yeah. Other red flag I had, just diverting when you ask specific questions. So on a vintage collection, I asked for, if they have a card count and they say, you know, I think it's this, I asked them up to this year, what percentage do you think is this? And if they divert the conversation rather than saying either, I have no idea, or I think it's this, now I'm concerned. Yeah. Now I'm concerned. And it's probably not the right one for me. That's more specific to collection buying. Next point, value box. Negotiating the deal, your number is math. This is my favorite point. Not a feeling. Your number when you're buying or selling and negotiating a deal, it is a math decision, it is not a feeling decision. Now, the only caveat was what I mentioned about if it's a valuable business relationship, you have a track record of doing business. That's still math. You know that they're, yes, it's true. That's still math. They're going to take care of you on the other side of this deal when they have something. Math, not a feeling. It is tough. You go to a two-day show. You thought you had the right inventory. Day one, your buddy's already done five grand. You only did $500. Your buddy's like, yeah, I don't know what's happened. It seems like the kind of stuff people want. You seem to be priced reasonably. Day two, you're halfway through, and thank goodness somebody comes and they start saying, can I take a look at that one? Can I take a look at that one? Can I take a look at that one? Can I take a look? And the stack goes up, up, up, up, up, up, up, and you're like, yes. And then they come in at 5% over what you bought everything at, and you're so tempted because you don't want to feel like you're taking a loss or you're not doing enough business at the show. Is it a feeling or is it just math? You have to have a number in mind that you're willing to sell. You have to. Now there are other math factors like how long has it been at the showcase? If I've had no nibbles and it's been in there six months as we said a couple weeks ago, maybe I'm priced wrong. Maybe there's some comps that have come through. But you have to have your number. You have to have a percentage you can't get at. Now there are some cards where they are gonna be, this is an 85% of comps card for me. There are some cards that I'm like, I don't care. Based off of how liquid this person is, their trajectory, we're still in the off season. They just had an ESPN documentary come out on them and it's gonna take off. I'm at 100% on this card. And if I'm wrong in three months, now I'm at 90, now I'm at 80. And I think that math gets even simpler. The way I do things and the way Jason does things they're similar although not the same. You have to decide, and I took this as a lesson from, I owned a sign company for many, many years. And the one thing that was so important in any type of a service business is to figure out what your shop rate is. Our shop rate was $65 an hour. So whatever business we did needed to generate at a minimum $65 an hour. That's what it took to cover the overhead of the business. Not profit, overhead of the business. And then anything above that was profit. I brought a very similar way of approaching this business to this business. I know what my margins need to be on average. And I know what I need to pay at different price tiers percentage wise to get there. One of the first things I do when somebody brings a box to my table to look at. Hey, are you buying? I'll always look, that's what I always say. I will always look. If I start flipping through, and I might have said something about this the other couple weeks ago, but I'll reiterate. And it's a bunch of high-end case hit type stuff. I won't even keep looking. I'll say, hey, what percentage are you needing to be at? Again, I'm putting the ball in their court. You know why? Because it's their cards. It's not my cards. And I'm not going to beat them up, whatever their answer is. Hey, I need to be at 90%. Hey man, I appreciate it. Is there anything in here that's not case hits and stuff like that, that you're going to be a little more flexible on? Well, no, not really. That's where I need to be. Hey, I get it. I'm just not your guy. And I'll point them towards somebody that may be. Because, back to your thing, I want to keep that relationship open, right? For me, I'm going to give you a little bit of my secret sauce. Sometimes this will work for some people. Sometimes it won't. I think part of the reason it works for me is because, like Jason said, my personality is very straightforward. And my wife tells me it's intimidating. I don't think it's intimidating, but it might be to some people. I'm just very direct. If something's worth, and these percentages have changed. Okay, I'm going to have fun here for a second. Yeah, you're good. Because he's so direct, there have been times where there's a really introverted person. And I've been there where the deal just didn't work out. It may have been something similar to that, but because you're so forward to that person, like, you see them like heading down the aisle, they see you and they're like. Go the other way. It's like the Good Samaritan. They like cross the street and went across, yeah. Not every customer's right for every, every buyer and seller aren't right for each other. They're so worried about eye contact. Yeah, which is okay, it's fine. But my, and these percentages have changed as my inventory needs have changed. I used to pay a little stronger on low dollar stuff because it was a bigger part of what I do. Now, it's not a big part of what I do. So if I'm going to buy stuff that's worth less than 30, 40 bucks, if I'm going to buy it, it's got to be at a margin that makes sense. So for me, that break point is around that 30 to $40 point. Anything less than that, I pay 50%. And I don't want to buy two cards. I want to buy 100, right? If it's worth less than five bucks, I'm not interested in it at all, unless it's just a throw in. Like, if you buy all this stuff at 56%, I'll give you all this. Okay, cool. And for some sellers, they're cool with that because they just want to get rid of that stuff too. Some sellers, it's most of what they have in their box and they're not comfortable with that, and that's okay. Back to being okay with no. No, I can't sell it at that. Hey man, I appreciate it. I appreciate you letting me look. It's just probably not the right stuff for me. The next- Some of you listening to this are like, well, that's 50%, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, some of these shows cost $150 a table and they're not even that big. Some of them are $1,500 a table. That's a big one. But let's use an example of like, there's a regional one that we went to a couple months ago. They charge 100 to 300 bucks a table. You're going to be getting hotels. You're going to be driving out. You're going to be buying meals. You're going to be buying inventory that will not sell at the show because you need to constantly resupply. It costs money to do it as a business. Now- And the time cost of money is really important. If you sell me 10 cards that are 40 bucks a piece retail value, that's 400 bucks. I'm willing to pay about 200. And here's why. If I pay more than that, I'm costing myself money because otherwise I could take that 200 and buy a card that's worth 250, 260 and turn that card way faster than I can turn that low end stuff. Way faster. Now the difference is Gary already has a consistent customer base at that price point. Correct. Yep. That's a super important detail. This is for me. Now, let me go ahead and it's not to put egg on your face or mine. You and I rolled down with our regular price point inventory for shows to a regional show that had a pretty good turnout a month ago. It wasn't for us. We got destroyed. Why? We didn't have the right stuff for the show. So- The guys who had that $40 and under stuff, they killed it that show. We have buddies, shout out to twins and friends that I would consider them buddies at this point. Yeah. They're good friends. And they put out value boxes at that particular show which normally they put out case hits and they crushed it. Yeah, they have like seven or eight four row value boxes and they just absolutely murdered. They did great. So yes, what he's saying is for some people it doesn't make sense, but he has a deep knowledge of the prospecting market. He has a deep knowledge of, you know, that two to $500 range all day and then weird subsets from like 20 or from like 2000 to 2015 that a lot of people aren't like familiar with without researching. So there's a difference in that. Now I'll pay, that number for me would be $300 but those $40 cards better be a liquid player. That's what I'm gonna look for, liquidity. So I'm okay with that 25% on that at max, at max. 75 then. Yeah, yeah. That 25% margin. Yeah. You're paying 75%. Yeah, that's some, it's math. I know, but we were talking in one level. Well, you're smart enough to figure that out. Well, but what are your breaks? Cause that my bands were what I was kind of shooting at here. So that's my first band, 50%. That's the low end. So then we get to that 50 to like $300 card range, right? Which is kind of my meat and potatoes. That's where I want to have 60 to 70% of my overall inventory in that range. That, depending on what the card is, I really want to be at 70%. I'll maybe push to 75% and that's my max. I don't care how cool the card is. I don't, if it has consistent comps, that's my max. If it doesn't work for you, no problem. And then over 300 bucks, I will get to 80. 80 is my max. I'll still want to shoot to be at 75, but I will creep up if it's the right thing. I buy a lot of cards. People are like, you can't possibly buy cards that those, I do, I do. Well, the difference is not everybody. Now, if you're only going to bigger shows, you've been doing this a long time, it's different. But in the regional show market, there's usually not more than three or four tables that brought several thousands of dollars to just buy inventory. And that's a part of collecting too. Like there's people walking around that have a card worth 300 bucks, but they hit it in a pack and they graded it. They are quadrupling their money or they are getting that 75% is a ton of profit for them because of the price point they were in on a product or maybe they hit it on a break or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Or traded for it. So that 75% of, I think that's 75% is where I try to be. I think anything under $20, it's probably like that 50% for me. But I am in an earlier stage of I'm trying to work towards the higher value stuff. Now, last week I did great pushing into more of that three to $600 range. But the other thing you're going to find is unless you have consistent buyers, that stuff will stay parked for a little bit longer because not everybody's ready to spend $500 at a card show. Some people just want to buy a bunch of cards at a card show and they can't buy your card for 500 if that's what they brought for the whole week. So something to consider there. We have a nice long episode here. Let's keep it rolling. Two things as we finish up with this segment. Be grateful for the deal. Be actually grateful because if you're doing a business with this and you don't have this opportunity to buy or sell with a negotiation, even if it's a little painful, if you don't have those opportunities, you don't get to do this. No. Your business is nothing without people that put confidence in your ability to sell them the things that they need at a price that they can afford. Yeah. It's pretty simple. Yeah. The second thing that most dealers really miss out on, and it is when you are consistently, especially at a show, I'm learning you have days, especially when you get better stuff in there, where you just don't have a moment to think through the day. I can't imagine some of these influencers where it's just three people deep. Oh, yeah. 50 across, nonstop. You got a bunch of kids interested in the hobby, which I try to take time to encourage them and ask them who they PC, give them something out of value. Like you don't have time, but take time to follow up with the people that you did a deal with. If you can get to follow their IG, if you can give them your card, if they can shoot you an email. I can't tell you how many times just in the last six months by taking that extra step to thank them or an eBay transaction where somebody bought several or they said, hey, if I buy 10 cards, will you give me this percentage off? If we work out a deal, I'm writing a personal note. It's eBay standard envelope. I'm still writing a personal note and say, thank you so much, blah, blah, blah. Email me if you ever are looking for anything else and before it even hits the market, I can let you know if I have it, right? Some of the closest friends that we have in this hobby are people that we met at shows that either we were walking a show and we got to know them as a dealer or they were walking a show and they got to know us on that side of the table before they ever knew about the podcast or the YouTube channel or the TikTok or anything else. They're just people that we met. They're people that we have dinner with when we're at big shows. They're our friends and that doesn't happen without that step. Yeah, and if it's only about the transaction, you will not have that recurrency unless you just have the best stuff at the best price nonstop, which is impossible. Yeah. Like it really matters to keep in touch with the seller. All right, low-end liquid segment. This is a little bit oddball. You hadn't even heard of this segment. You called me, you were like, I think I'm gonna talk about this. I was like, what the hell are you talking about? So we talked about scarcity last week and how it can affect the bigger card market, the higher price market. It can help and hurt. Yes, you can demand a higher premium, but a lot of times it's gonna sit there for a while because for a lot of buyers, they want data points that show this is what this card is worth. Yeah. The beautiful thing about low-end, scarcity- Is a big deal. It's just gonna multiply how liquid a card is. You don't see it that often and I'm in it for under five bucks. So yeah, let me get five of those. A lot of times you're in it for under five cents. Yes. This would be an example of that. I was in these for five cents a piece. Yeah. I bought all of these at the Ship Shawana. It was a complete set. This is the 1984 Donruss BMX- So weird. Set, BMX Action. Now, what's really cool about this is if you were a product of the 80s or 90s, you know that BMX was a culture, not just a way of riding. BMX and skateboarding. Yep. And this particular set, different manufacturers would sponsor athletes and a lot of these, you could call it rookie cards, but some of the early X game guys, this was like their first card that existed. So you have like, here's an example, like Hyper Manufacturer and they have certain athletes that they're pushing or you just have a new bike that they were getting ready to do. It's a really cool looking card to be honest with you. So like, this is all out again, out of 1984. There's some of them that are just the manufacturers, like here's the Redline BMX Options. Huffy. Yeah, Huffy is in there. Murray, you remember Murray Bikes with the big foam padding? Nobody remembers Murray Bikes. Yeah, it's because they were cheaper ones. That's what I had. But the Murray Bikes. So this is a product, for example, I'll just give you math on it. When I say liquid, I look at the 90 day sell through rate on eBay. I have listed 60 of this set in the last month and have sold 20 of them. So over a three month period, the projection would be close to 100% sell through rate. Obviously the more desirable stuff goes first, but even a 50% sell through on something weird like this that you're getting for nothing. When you're in it at a 4,000% margin. So yeah, 1984 Donruss BMX Racing. There are athletes and it has a bio on the back. They're really clean cards, actually. The shape of these are in. That was the first thing that I said when you showed them to me. I was like, those are actually in really good shape. This is an example of something that not only sells for people that are into BMX, but it is pop culturally relevant as a throwback retro thing because people remember BMX being awesome. So this is your low end liquid for the week. 1984 Donruss BMX. Don't be afraid to buy weird stuff when it's super cheap. Yeah, give it a try. Absolutely. It's a really good point. If you've never seen it before, chances are a lot of people have. So it's worth grabbing if it's cheap enough. That's pretty true price points three to eight bucks I think I put $2.99 on all these I do multi-quantity discounts on it So, I mean if I get a five cent card and it sells for five bucks liquid, that's a great huge selling fast So yeah Okay last segment and like Jason said we know this has been a long episode. Hopefully it's your welcome Wow. You're welcome the lookout This guy is who I picked last week and then he got called up over the weekend and that's chase Majorette for the Chicago White Sox now you may remember we talked about him in our prospect Kind of preview for the year of guys who we thought might get called up Majorette got the call now He was originally drafted in 2022 by the Boston Red Sox and he was part of that trade one of the key parts of the trade him and Kyle teal that brought Garrett crochet to the Red Sox who the Sox just signed for 180 million dollars over seven eight years, whatever it was Majorette's got called up and in his first pro game at the MLB level he did something that nobody has done since Larry Walker and he had four plate appearances with a 1,000% on-base percentage and he had a one for one and three walks Now that doesn't mean he's gonna be Larry Walker and have a Larry Walker Hall of Fame career But it is a nice little indicator Especially since he's followed that up by still hitting over 400 and having an on-base percentage over 800 He broke up Garrett crochet's no-hit bid the other night Which was really fun to see like the guy he got traded for he broke up the no-hitter in the eighth In that game against the Red Sox with the for the White Sox Here's the thing about chase Majorette the comp for chase Majorette in my opinion is another former Red Sox Red Sox Red Sox shortstop Dustin Pedroia Now I think majors gonna bounce back and forth between short and second for Chicago, but he's a middle infielder same type of player Walks just as much as he strikes out. Maybe a little more He's gonna hit right around 300. He's not gonna hit a lot of home runs, but he's gonna hit a hell of a lot of doubles He is gonna make pitchers work on every at-bat He is not gonna have very many two and three pitch at-bats He's gonna have a lot of six eight ten twelve pitch at-bats. He's gonna make a lot of in-zone contact He's not gonna hit the ball super duper hard But he's gonna go oppo when you give him a pitch to go oppo with He's gonna pull when you give him a pitch to pull his his splits were almost Perfect. It was like 38% oppo 36% pull 29% center like wherever you're giving the ball. He's just gonna put it where you give it to him to again, not a not a comp, but that's the way Tony Gwynn used to hit like Where where you throw the pitch? I'm just gonna put it where it goes. I'm not gonna try to do what I want to do with it I'm just gonna take what you give me and that's how major it does He's not gonna be super flashy His stuff has already ticked up just a little bit it ticked up in the fall last year because it looked like he was gonna Get called up by the Red Sox at the end of the year. He didn't end up getting called up But now he's here. I don't think we see him go on extended slumps The White Sox are not a good team. Although they're better than I think people thought they were gonna be so Expectations are pretty low I've got several nice Major with cards. I'm part owner on his super fractor auto his Bowman super fractor vested interest I do have a vested interest in the guy. That's that's no no qualms about saying that that being said Go watch him hit go watch him swing the baseball bat. Go watch how he plays. I think that you will be Very pleased with what you see Dustin Pedroia had a really strong card market for about four or five years. Yeah That was the lookout before we finish up are we gonna talk about your hat, I love my hat What's your problem with my hat? Well, I mean it does look like a Chuck E. Cheese prize. It's awesome. It's soft It is furry. It is like a boa for men. Yeah, I like it. I'm a big fan All right, all Care Bears theme today. That's ghastly from you sure did. Yeah, you did that you did that This has been the ball card show these sports by these sports collector by now. Peace You