If We Started A Card Business In 2026 .... Season 6 Ep 4

Hello, and welcome to the Ball Card Show Esports Podcast for the Esports Collector. I'm Jason Otero. I'm Gary LeMaster. Season six, episode four, and Gary, we are in the throes of show season, and it's officially popped off. The throes of being buried under what feels like an avalanche of snow. I thought I'd give people a break on the Midwest weather report because that's where we started, but when you're middle-aged and you live in Ohio, this is all you get to do is complain about the weather whenever the Buckeyes aren't playing. That's where we are right now, but this weekend, if you're listening to this right when it drops, busy weekend for us. We hope we have enough inventory for both days. We believe we do, but we're going to find out. We've got the Ohio State Card Show. Greeny is putting on at the Kasich Center in the fairgrounds, and then on Sunday, Grove City Card Fest. It's a mega show. It's just amazing. It's a mega show. Yep. They got them TCG kids in the other building. That's all right. I'm playing around. It's not hitting my showcases, but I'm doing a little bit of TCG. You're dabbling. I'm doing a little bit of TCG buying for a couple of people. I expect that for you. I expect that from a man who's excited about the Harry Potter release. I expect that from a man who called around to make sure he had a case of Spongebob to read. Absolutely. I expect that from a man who wears cartoons on his head on purpose. No cartoons on my head today. It's just a red cap. Not today. I'm actually let down. I'm actually let down. Pitchers report in less than a month, so it was time, but I do have a cartoon shirt on. I got my Voltron sweatshirt. Well, I wasn't done making fun of you, but we'll just put a bow in it for now, but that's going to be expected. We've got both of those shows this week, and then we've been looking. The ball card show is going to be traveling this year. Next month, February in Nashville. We're looking at some Kentucky locations. We'll be up at the National. We're going to travel a little bit. We've got a few other ones on our radar that are out there. We'll see what we can do with that, but if you're in the Midwest, heading South, spreading out there, you're going to start seeing us at a lot more of those shows as well, so we've been frantically buying it up. In the meantime, our whatnot has kind of popped off. We're getting there. It feels like we have reached a new step on that climb. We're nowhere near the top, but we were kind of stuck on a step for a little while. We've taken a couple upward, which feels like a win. Remind me next time we can unpack this more, because I think, especially with our guests next week, once that's confirmed, this will be a really good conversation. I want to circle back next week for us to talk about inventory and the role it plays in whatnot compared to other spaces that you sell in. I think there's a lot there, but a big part of this is us figuring out what do people want to see in the live auction format. That's not the same as everything else. Next week, we've got that. We've got a special guest lined up that has built a whatnot business from scratch, and it is literally a monstrosity of a business in that space now with a huge following. You'll see some promos on that. Remind me of that next week. I want us to talk about what we've worked, and then obviously bounce that off of him to see his thoughts as well. It's been popping up. We've been very busy with that. If you haven't noticed, we're on three, sometimes four times a week between Gary and I doing solo shows. I'll occasionally do a bulk show, although that might have been my last one. I've given that three tries. As the inventory improved, the sales didn't on that. Sometimes you say, all right, I need to find another way with those cards. That's part of the business too. But it has been really fun. If you haven't been on whatnot, definitely go check it out. Been a lot more people in the rooms lately. I think we've probably got 20 shows. You can see them up here strategically placed over my shoulder, probably 20 to 30 shows that are already scheduled that you can just save and get a notification. This is getting a little bit of like a commercial, so I would like to change the subject. Yeah, let's show and tell some stuff. We've been doing this the last few weeks and you guys seem to like it. We've had several comments saying, hey, keep doing that. It's cool. It gives you a little bit of a feel for the stuff we like to buy, either because it's cool or because it sells well. So Jason, you go first this time. I went first last week. All right. I have a stack of cool. I have stuff that I think will sell well, but it's more a stack of really cool things. Now, I didn't have a show over the weekend and for the first time in, I can't tell you how long. I didn't do anything card related. It was unbelievable. I was bored by noon, both days. Not because I didn't want to sit and I wasn't having fun. I was just used to running around nonstop. Yeah. I don't know what to do when I'm not doing anything. All but one of these cards I'm going to show you came from New Heart Cards in Delaware, which we do a lot of stuff with. Keith is the man. These are really cool cards and sometimes he gets cards that are just unique enough where there's not going to be a lot of comps and he's waiting for somebody like me to appreciate it. And that's what this first one is. Tops, Rookies and Prospects. This is the Progression Veteran, LaDainian Tomlinson, Auto Patch to 20. That's gross. LT, Game Muse Jersey. The comps on this, couldn't find a whole lot. So you kind of have to just look around and see what you can see and go from there, which is the game that I love to play. So that's my first one. Rookie, Patch Auto to 20. What year is this? 2008. You're up, Gary. All right. First one for me. If you are in our Whatnot streams, you know that we love this guy. But Megatron Refractor, Rookie Refractor, it's gorgeous. Really nice copy of the card. Picked that up last week and can't wait to get it out in the showcase. This will be the first weekend that it has been in a showcase. All right, 2009, 2010, National Treasures, All-NBA, Isaiah Thomas, Game Muse Patch numbered to 10 on this right now. I don't buy a ton of Isaiah Thomas stuff because it doesn't get requested a lot. But if you do buy this stuff, look for the stuff with the old Pistons uni, go Game Muse, go low number, no directs on this one either. So we'll find out where this lands. But any of my Detroit people, you got to appreciate Isaiah Thomas to 10. Another raw one. I actually picked this up today, a few hours ago. I like it raw. Gary, I like it raw. One of the most iconic. Hey, Gary, Gary. You know that song? No. You don't? Should I know that song? Yeah. It's okay. Okay. It's all right. I don't. I don't know a ton of Wu-Tang. Sorry. It wasn't my jam back in the 90s. I think it was his solo. Anyway, go ahead. One of the more iconic insert sets, the FLIR Ultra Scoring Kings, Shaquille O'Neal. It's not the MJ, but it's a very nice copy of this card. And I haven't had one for a while. I think I've had one or two ever. I'm going to pick that one up today. All right. Pick this one up today too. Team Pinnacle. That's cool. Kobe Bryant. Die cut. This is the Team Pinnacle with LeBron on the back, and it's number 1099. Nice. Some really goofy comps recently on this, even on an eight, but you have some other ones lower. So sometimes you got to be careful. There are cards like this where you'll see that one most recent comp and- Get too excited. It could have been on eBay for three years and the one person finally. So you just got to be careful with that. Yep. This is the type of thing that I'll grab because I know this. We get asked about this all the time. Change the subject a little bit, but you would agree, Gary. We get asked about why we sell these raw. Why didn't you grade them? Why didn't you grade them? Why didn't you grade them? Because we don't have time, because our approach is to make money off these as quickly as possible when we get our margin. But I'm trying to buy more of, if the card is going to be a little bit more valuable raw and I can get one where even if it's an eight, it's an established multiplier off of the raw value, that's kind of a risk mitigator for me and that's one that I see helping me a little bit in those sales. Go ahead. This is my favorite thing. This was at the Lima show. Just chilling in a top loader on a guy's table. Now you're going to look at this and you're going to say, who cares? This is an extremely rare card. That's Adam Venateri's only rookie card. He's not in any other sets and it sells well. It's routinely a hundred dollar plus card. I think a PSA nine just went off at 138, 137, something like that a couple of days ago. I saw it sitting there. I was familiar with the card. You never see him. And I was like, yeah, I'll just take that. I just paid his price tag on it because who knows when I'll have a chance to grab one and stick it in the showcase again. All right. This one is a little weird because I don't see this set a lot, but you just had the Seaver patch auto to five. Do you still have that one? I'm assuming you do. It's one that's going to take a while to sell. Same with this. But when I saw the patch and what it was number two and that was game use and that was an old timer, I had to grab an Al Kay line on the triple color patch number to 10 out of the 2008 baseball hero set. I'll tell you guys this, if there was a design that has slept on value wise in those boxes more than anything else, this, you could convince me this is 1993 junk wax, right? Without the patch there, but there's a lot of parallels in this set of Hall of Fame names. There's some relics that I've seen in value boxes from Hall of Famers where people just didn't pay attention. So Al Kay line, three colored, nasty little lightning bolt looking patch to 10. That's my next pickup to show. And I'll tell you what, the game used Hall of Fame stuff is taking. It should. Good. Finally. Go check it. Look at what Clemente game use non number stuff is doing. Like it's crazy. Let's see. Next. I'll save the best one for last. This is another one of my favorite ones. This is not a massive card, but there's only two or three raw sales of the card ever. This is the highest graded version across every company. It's the mirror blue Eddie George number two, 50 Oh three a 50 a nine five is a huge grade on that. There are no PSA nines or tens, um, two raw sales ever to your point, like stuff that's hard to, to comp and find and is Ohio state legend. We're in Ohio. Yup. That's a good one. All right. This is probably my favorite card. I picked up last week. Not the biggest card by any means, but when you consider what it would have been like to hit this one and to open it, mystery refractor, Barry Sanders, nasty 1996, 95 in a PSA, a early refractor, early your finest, second year, finest. Um, and obviously, you know, Barry eights, nines, tens, sevens on super rare stuff. Still plenty of demand in the market for that. I'll be shocked if this makes it through Saturday. Yeah. Shocked. I picked up a really nice Barry, uh, this last week, a refractor, a Chrome insert, uh, Barry and a PSA nine to all right. Last one for me. Uh, another one that I picked up today. Hard to go wrong with, uh, Jim Brady rookies. What's fun about this one is this particular card was kind of languishing for a while. Um, but so far this year in January, every sale has been higher than the last. Oh really? Yeah. So it's kind of upticked and the last sale was a min Jim as well, and it was significantly higher than, than the rest. So I'm pretty excited to pick that one up today. Yep. Keith, I forgot to say this to you. Keith picked up the absolute red to a hundred Brady rookie. Oh yeah. You didn't tell me about that. I'll have to ask. He just got it in from PSA. Didn't get a super high grade, but it's an eight. I think he got an eight or a nine on it. He haven't the case yet. No. I think this one gets broken out for the show. Yeah. For the national. Yeah. There was that, you know, a couple of PMGs. He showed me, he's got some candy there. I knew he had some PMGs. He had bought like three PMGs last week, so we'll get him on to do show and tell with us one day. Okay. We've been through show and tell. Let's catch people up on a little bit of news. Not a ton going on, but a couple of stories that some of that we're sure you've heard and others that you maybe need a little more perspective on Gary. Once you kick this off with this discord fiasco. Yeah. There's a huge discord channel, Ryan's cards, and at its peak, there are about 8,000 members and they were all paying 20 bucks a month for access to the discord. Now, what was provided for that $20 a month? A whole lot of repackers in there buying a whole lot. And so if you had access to stuff, you were going to get pretty good payouts on your stuff. It was a hub. The guy who owned it decided that the 160 K a month that was coming in wasn't quite enough and he wanted to middleman deals, but not really tell anybody he was middlemanning them. Like, I'm going to buy from this person, sell to this person, get paid from the person I'm selling it to before I pay the person I'm buying it from. Long story short, got caught with his hand in the cookie jar there to the tune of about $250,000. Now you mentioned, yeah, you mentioned that you thought that he had since sold the discord channel. That's my understanding. But again, when it comes to this hobby gossip, I feel like people just hit record and say whatever. So I wasn't able to verify that, but that's what I had heard. The takeaway from this guys is a really simple one and it's why we wanted to bring it up because like Jason said, in some ways this is just hobby gossip, not necessarily hobby news. But it's important because I think most people think I'm paying $20 a month to be part of something. And I think there is at a minimum, a perception of protection in that, that I'm paying. So this must be a safe place with verified people. Obviously that's not the case. It doesn't matter whether you're paying to be a part of something or not. Do your due diligence, do your homework. We've talked about this ad nauseum in the past. Most scams, not all, but most scams. can be avoided if you just slow down, take a deep breath, look at everything, and say, this is the way I'm comfortable with this deal going forward, and if the other person isn't, don't do the deal. Right. Yeah, I think that's important. Another thing to remember is just because somebody has a Discord doesn't mean that they carry some level of authority in the hobby or a level of credibility just because they have gated content. You know, Gary and I have talked about one of the things that we'd like to add in 2026 is some more ways for people to get connected. Discord might be the right platform for that, but the moment that everything just becomes about a monetization or a hub for transactions, the creator or the person building that has just put a responsibility on themselves to manage and to hear that the person that had this was borrowing money, going full Chad Smith, telling them they were going to pay him back, they just need a little bit, I've got all this stuff coming in, blah, blah, blah. Listen, very straightforward and simple. Very straightforward. I can't speak for you, Gary, I can speak for me. I've never asked somebody to give me stuff that I'm not going to pay for in that moment. Not once in my business, not one single time. I've not borrowed, which there's nothing wrong if people do, but you better have that stuff written down. Why in the world do we think that because you like cardboard pictures of athletes and somebody else does that they're ethical and that doesn't mean anything? No. It doesn't mean anything. Let's like, do you like to eat? Yeah. Well, I'll be, we're going to be best friends, right? It's a nothing statement, right? Even you and I, our business, we've been friends for years. Never once. And our business, we have an operating agreement that spells out every single thing, several pages. Yes. So that there's no question about it. And you can avoid your friendship being affected. You can, you can say this is the business lane. This is this don't handshake deals are great until they're not. And it's not worth dealing with the headache when they're not. And when they're not, you've already lent the money out. Yes. So just a quick refresher. If you're doing a discord and you see value in the traffic that that group provides, that you're able to make some transactions. Like for me, if I felt like this was a viable vehicle for me to move a huge chunk of inventory, there's really strong buyers. That's a no brainer to me because just in PayPal fees alone, throughout like a month of shows, like it's going to pay for itself. Right? So, but the moment that people are asking for money or trying to create new ways to generate revenue inside this protected space, you need to be concerned. You should be cautious. You should consider leaving. You should, in those subscription, you should ask questions. So quick reminder, just make sure there's value there. Like I know one that's paid that we've mentioned before. Um, Gordy bonker, uh, bonkers cards club. Like he does a monthly call. They talk vintage cards. He brings in guests. The value is focused more on the community piece of that. And he's hoping that people find it there. Sure. I'm, I'm, I'm certain. I don't know for fact, I would have to guess that that platform is very beneficial for Gordy, for sourcing cards, that people have a place to go sell to create liquidity there. I think that's a great value as well, but I think there's gotta be something in the space. That's a secret sauce. And it sounds like the focus is more around the community side of that than it is the transacting. If you're going to do the transacting side, then just be prepared to be, you know, to be held to the full extent of the law. If you do anything that's unethical. Yep. That's the way it should be. So just be careful for those of you listening, everybody's pushing a discord gated content, monthly content. It's not that it's not that it's wrong, or you're going to get screwed over for doing some type of subscription. Just see where the value is. And so for me, it's like, if the value is they're providing community and valuable content, that's going to make me better. That's worth every penny. Cool. If the value is, I hope I can sell more cards in there. And so-and-so is going to introduce me. That should be a little bit of a red flag for you. Make sure that it's what people are saying that it is. Talk to other people that are in the group, that kind of stuff. Speaking of ethical things, and I want to make a very clear distinction here because there are two relatively well-known entities that operate with this same name within the space. One of them is who we will be set up with in Nashville in February. They are in Knoxville, Tennessee, and that is Underdog Sports Cards and Collectibles. That is not who we are talking about here. Very clear. That is not who we're about to talk about. That is not who we are about to talk about in any way, shape, or form. But hey, before you move on. Yeah. What's the dates? Like 18th to 21st? The 20th and 21st. 20th and 21st. Nashville, Tennessee, we're coming for you. We'll be down there. Come say hey to us. I know we're going to run into some friends like Clever Cuban and some others that are set up down there already. Big Z, some of the other influencers we've talked with or interviewed in the past. Come say hey. We'll be down there. All right. We will be there. That's okay. Nice little interlude. So the other Underdog Sports is based out of Wisconsin, and they're the underdog sports. I believe that's what they are at eBay as well. We're going to be talking about them today. The owner is a person by the name of Jason Metz. I believe with about 80% certitude that Jason is relatively new to the business side of the hobby since COVID. This is not somebody who's been around on the business side of this for 20 years. But I do believe he's been successful in other entrepreneurial endeavors and brought some cash into the space and has succeeded for the most part. And over the last week, some things have come unraveled. The first thing that happened, you may have seen the video he posted where he did a trade with a young collector by the name of Jose Jr. Now within that video, there was no acknowledgement that the deal was actually negotiated with Jose Sr., which it was. Jose Sr. has confirmed that. Jose Sr. and Jose Jr. have confirmed that they were very happy with the way this deal shook out, mostly because they already had a buyer for the card that they were trading for. So they were happy. Time out. Yes. So break this down because I want to break down just the first half of the story is that video released, right? And people lost their minds because they assumed this kid was being taken advantage of. Yes. I could tell you something. If you go back and watch that clip, Jose Jr. has not thought about money yet in his life. Not sure he's going to have to. Right. And that stack of kabooms that he was trading for meant nothing. You could see he was like, yeah, whatever. Yeah. Whatever. This is just what they do. And I know for some people, I think there's a huge hobby hang up with negativity. A lot of times there is, and we'll get pushed back for this. We do this every time. And we can even be in this category and people are going to freak out. There is a negative view of people that have money to just full-on play the game in the sports card space and buy the big hits and flip them and make money off of it and walk into a show planning on dropping several hundreds of thousands of dollars. The rest of the collectors tend to get a little worked up because of this inequality that they feel or this unfairness. So first off, we back up. We don't know how Jose Jr. was born into a family with this opportunity or how he was able to get into this stuff. But it was very clear to me that this kid wasn't even phased by this trade. So everybody was all worked up about it. That was put to rest. However, some things weren't. Go ahead. Yeah. And before I go ahead, I'm going to chime in to just summarize my view on what you were just saying. I hate pocket watchers. If that's you, stop it. If somebody pays what they want to pay for a card and nobody lied to them about it, nobody said anything other than, and they had access to the same information everybody else did. Who cares? If they pay more or less, who cares? Stop pocket watching. It has nothing to do with you. Okay. So let's move forward. So that video happened. Mets got a ton of blowback on that. His business got a ton of blowback on that. Opportunity, right? Great opportunity for him. Yeah. I mean, honestly, it was a huge amount of publicity. I mean, they got, if you didn't see the video, basically for a Tyler Shug green Kaboom, which is Tyler Shug's one of one Kaboom. It's probably his best card. Yeah. They got like three gold Kabooms, including a Drake may PSA nine like, uh, and several other cards. It, it was probably 80, $90,000 worth of cards for that one card. Um, so, but again, can you imagine going all in on Tyler Shug? Well, I could, if I already had a buyer for Tyler Shug, just like with, with Pokemon, I'd be a nervous wreck. Even if I knew I had a buyer, I'm not buying Pokemon stuff to throw in my showcase. I'm buying it. Cause I already have a buyer for it. Uh, I'd have been like, are you sure, bro? So that happens. Well, then this week, and this is where things took a really, really, really weird turn. And you can go find all of this. It is all publicly available right now on the Facebook page sports card scammer tracker, go search the name and you will find a thread with all of this, including screenshots, the whole nine yards. So nothing we are saying here is conjecture in any way. We're just reporting what we have seen underdog sports Mets. They, uh, had a very large percentage of the available purple and gold and green kabooms that were available on the market, like all players or all players. And it's not a large percentage of, I mean, the purples are, I think the purples are to seven. Was that this year? Yeah. That's a new thing this year. And then you've got your goals. Obviously the greens are the one of ones. Um, and they put a bunch of them up on auction at once and lo and behold, one bidder is bidding really strong on all of them. Must really like them. Must really like them. Every single one of them. He's also never bid on an auction outside of auctions by underdog sports of big, big carts. I only buy caboos from underdog sports stuff. And, uh, turns out that guy's an employee of underdog sports. Hey, so can I say it? Sure. Defensive show. Yeah. Defensive show bidding. Well, when confronted with this by several people who figured it out, the owner immediately went to threats of litigation and defamation, which is hilarious. It just means that he doesn't have any idea what that, both any of those things means. When on rampages before finally apologizing and, and asking what can be done to put this to bed because he realizes he is sideways. He is cooked sideways. That's not the word I would normally use. This is a PG 13. Yes, he is not Dr. James Becker. This is a PG 13 podcast. So I won't say what I would normally say. Follow. Um, then he comes clean and says, yes, it was our employee that was bidding on these, but we didn't know it. We had no idea. He was just saying that he would have paid. He would have happily bought those at those prices. Yeah. Somebody watched the whole back. Yeah. And it sounds just like it. Um, but just more evidence that the super high end side of this market, because there's so few cards and so few, few players in the hobby, not players on the field, but like people in the hobby who operate in that space. Yes. Yes. It can be so easily manipulated. It's not that many people buying the top 10% of cards. No, it's not too many people buying 80,000, a hundred thousand million dollar cards. It's a small number of people. And that market can be absolutely easily manipulated, which was the point of the person who brought all this to light. Um, he did this trade and yes, Jose senior and Jose senior were happy with it, but was he previously holding down the value of those? Well, and here's the thing until he had a bunch of them. We talk about propped up market. Listen, it's a one-on-one it's a kaboom. I'm telling you the other kabooms, there's a bajillion of them. And until enough people say that shouldn't be a 500, that shouldn't be an 800. That shouldn't be a $1,500 card. There are cards that should be, I have seen beautiful, exquisite patch autos. I've held some of the nastiest up high end, upper deck hockey cards that are worth more than any of you non-hockey people would imagine, right? I've held super high grade, really bad. I'm telling you right now that stuff is propped. I don't care. The only people that get mad when you say it are repackers that depend on that providing a level of liquidity to their customers. And it's really, really difficult to manipulate a market with tens of thousands of people operating in it. Yeah. It's very easy to manipulate a market with tens of people operating in it. Yeah. And that's just the reality of it. Let me jump in here. Yeah. I don't know if you've noticed, but anybody listening, pay attention to this. One thing that I've noticed, you just said 10 people operating within it. Tens, but yeah. But hear me out. Yeah. Something has changed in the last six months or so. And you saying that pointed it out to me. I don't notice this on like single sales on whatnot, but on repack breaks, it used to be, and I'm talking like a year ago, well-known brands are going to have a couple hundred people in the room. Yeah. Now you see a lot more of them that have 25 people and it's the same 25 people. And it's the day shift guy that knows how to get every penny out of this doing his job, doing his job with his regulars. But if you start to notice on these repacks, there's not even a couple hundred people in the room and they're selling the same amount of product. The math here is the same 10 people keep buying back in because they're in this belief that what they're getting provides some level of value or they're just addicted to gambling and they're not allowed to walk into a casino in 50 states. Bingo. That's, that's the reality. So there's evidence from this employee that they've been defensive shill bidding or whatever you want to call it. And so underdog Jason Metz is saying this was happening, but it was good intentions. No, he's saying we didn't know it was happening, but once we found out it was happening, this employee said that he was happy to buy the cards and it would have paid that to then resell them himself. I wonder if they were threatened with legal action too, because that's extortion, right? Entirely possible. I think that at the end of the day, pretty good rule of thumb. If somebody is actively voicing their threat for legal action against you, you don't really have too much to be worried about. It's the people who just go okay. And hang up the phone. And then three months later you get a subpoena or you get a summons or you get served. Um, the people screaming at the top of their lungs, I'm going to sue you. Okay. Sometimes, but not always. Yeah. Not always, but like, Oh, okay. Go ahead. The irony here is all this came unraveled because somebody thought they really needed to post a fake video of a kid that never made this trade. Yep. That's, that's really it. Yeah. Like I get it content wise, but I'll tell you this. You want collectors are tired of content creators, staging content. They're tired of BS. They're tired of BS. But that's what I'm saying. Like somebody told content creators a few years ago, we got to set up these videos, man, and it would look better. Could we do that with the kid? You know how many people are doing that? Like five people do that effectively. There's a reason we don't, well, it's not real. And it, it, it's, it's the same thing that everybody, it's just dumb. Yeah. Easiest way to say it. So anyhow, what do we have next Jason? We covered the news. Oh yeah. Let's jump in. So, uh, we, we kicked it off this year. We're still fine tuning it. He's been doing a great job with it so far. Keith Newhart and Newhart cards is going to talk about how liquidity works both ways between the shop and the customer. Let's check it out. Hi, this is Keith Newhart and Newhart cards, and this is shop talk today. We're going to talk about liquidity. So liquidity is a, is a, is a fine thing. We're in an industry that's a little bit different from everyone else's. So you can buy product from us, but you can also sell back that same exact product. So let's talk about it for, for a second. If you have cards, card shops provide liquidity. You can't go to Walmart and sell back your cards. You can't go to, to Dick's honestly yet. And so, so your cards are coming to the local card shop. What are you going to have? We always ask you come at least a little bit prepared when you bring your cards to us. You know, you bring us a stack of four or five cards. The first thing we're going to ask you, what do you want for these cards? Right? We're going to put it back to you so you can do a little bit of research. If you have no idea, obviously we'll help. If your comps are wrong, our comps are wrong, you know, we'll do a little bit of help, but we also buy two, three, four rows, car loads of stuff. So we always ask our customers and the same with that, a card show, Hey, where do you want to start? What's your starting point? Your number. We try to get you there. So on the other side of that, you guys also provide us with liquidity. So let's talk about the supply chain here for a minute. So tops right now, fanatics, uh, they charge us about two to three weeks before new products hit. So, uh, top series one baseball, 20 to 26 is a mid February product. Uh, they have charges already about a week ago. So we're about three weeks out that we had to cover that cost. So we're not going to recoup for a few weeks, uh, distributors on that side. So that's a little bit different. That's why we're all kind of going to miss distributors a little bit is they charge us the day that it ships. So again, that provides us just with a little bit more liquidity because we can, we can manage our money a little bit. So as you come in and you buy hobby boxes, you buy singles from us, uh, you provide us with liquidity as well, because we use that then to recirculate that money, go back in, buy new product by hobby boxes, by retail, by singles. So, you know, it's a, it's a two way street and, and, and that's what we really love about this hobby. And again, that's, that's not just as a shop, but that is also, um, you know, at your show, you know, your, your, your dealers need new products. So as you bring them new product, you sell them. Now you get cash to spend that money in the show. So, you know, it keeps the ball rolling. It makes this, this hobby, uh, what it is today. So again, Keith Newhart, Delaware, Ohio, Newhart cards, and this is shop talk. All right. Thanks Keith. Appreciate that. Uh, I haven't realized that tops was asking for basically three weeks in advance paying for it, uh, on the wax product. Yeah. The distributors, when they have distributors, it's paid upon shipping. Right. But that's one of the new dynamics here. So having three weeks out there, floating it out of when the product's supposed to come in and at one point tops was giving people a 90 day term. So they've tightened that thing way back. No, give me that money yesterday. Give me that money yesterday. So when you walk into a shop and you buy some singles and you buy some wax and I mean, it all turns back around the money they offer you goes right back into the wax, but I like that Keith can offer a perspective that is a little more forward. It's not gated content, but he's like, Hey, here's what's going through my mind. So hopefully you guys are paying attention to this cause he's actually dropping nuggets along the way for Gary guys like Gary and I that do business with shop owners. Yeah. I mean, a little more perspective. He's been doing it for almost 25 years. Well, no, 15 years, 15, 15 years. So he knows his stuff. He's been through the ups and downs of several cycles. There are a few waves of it. Yeah. Uh, okay. Speaking of few waves of it, I want to do something you'd mentioned this. I don't know. I thought it was a fun idea for our value box today. Yep. I want to say if we were starting a card business individually in 2026 from scratch from scratch, what are the steps we take now? A couple of caveats with this, uh, we're going to assume you don't have very much money, so you've got a thousand bucks. Now, for those of you saying, I don't have a thousand bucks, the principles will still apply. We tried to pick a number where it's like, you can't really go get a lot. Right. Be very careful. Um, let's assume that you have a collection and you have $5,000 worth of cards. You've got maybe a handful of showcase cards. We'll call those a hundred bucks and up. That could be $500, three, 200, probably a hundred to 200 bucks. Right. And then the large majority of your stuff's going to be two to seven bucks. Uh, value. That's what most collectors have. They have a box. They knew it wasn't a hit, but it was something. So they kept it. And here we are with this inventory. Time-wise you have about 15 to 20 hours a week to launch this business because you have other things going on. So let's just back it up. Start over. What would you do if you were starting that business? So Gary, what's your first priority as you're starting a new business for cards in 2026? Uh, for me, priority number one is realizing that my cash position at having a thousand dollars is not enough to actually do much. So what can I do to take that $5,000 worth of cards that I have and turn that into liquid liquidity. And that starts for me with looking at my collection from up here and going, okay, what of this do I actually care about that? I want to be with me and my family until I leave this earth. Anything that doesn't fit in that bucket is I'm going to do everything I can to turn it into cash as quickly as possible. And that may mean that I get less than full value for it. If it's still really low end stuff, I might only get 30, 35% for it, but that is cash that I can put to work in my business immediately. That's priority one. Priority one for me is I'm somebody that can get a lot of different ideas of what I'm going to get excited about. So I need to nail down this commitment to my business. So the first thing I would recommend is you come up with your brand name, you file your LLC, you get your federal EIN number, and you set up a business bank account. The moment that that has happened, I have had to spend money and I have not received any. And there's something for some people like me where that is a great motivator. When I bought a Rico 8170 to start my eBay business, I did not want to scan. I wasn't excited about scanning. I'd spent $800 on a scanner. So by God, we're going to get it back. So like, I think for some people, like the first thing is like, I've had so many ideas I've never acted on. If I'm starting a car business in 2026, the first thing is I'm going to get this thing set up. You know, depending on the state, it could be up to a few hundred bucks. Most of them, it's like a hundred dollars thereabout. You can get your account set up and get rolling with that. But that's step number one is treat your business like a business in my mind. Um, so we, you're taking a look at what you have already. I've taken, well, let's assume I've taken a look at my collection. You've set up a business account. Where are you going to start now? You got to sell some cards, dude. You got to buy some cards. What are you going to do? Well, if for me again, first priority is selling more than buying, uh, because I need more cash. So. You need to decide whether you're the type of person who is comfort, more comfortable not doing face-to-face deals. Uh, if you're more comfortable selling on eBay, selling on colleagues, selling on Facebook, doing claim sales, shipping stuff out, if you are not a people person, then that's, you got to decide where you're going to sell your cards. For me. I'm not necessarily, Jason will laugh when I say this, but he'll understand. I'm not necessarily a people person, but boy, do I love shows. Um, so for me it would be, okay, here's what I have of these, this $5,000 worth of cards. I sat a thousand dollars of it aside that is going to die with me. So there's $4,000 worth of cards. Now I got to turn these into cash. I'm going to build for me. I'm going to build a $1 box. I'm going to build a $2 box and I'm going to build a prices Mark box. And I'm going to start calling my local shows that I go to and saying, Hey, how much does it cost for a table? Let me set up. That's run a value box. I'm just going to run value boxes off the rip and know that I've got that thousand dollars, or in your case, 900 bucks, because you set up your LLC as stuff walks up to the table, but I'm going to be super conservative with what I spend that money on because I need a war chest. I need more capital. Why do you feel like you need the war chest to grow your business? Um, because it gives you the flexibility to take some chances. If I've only gotten $900 and a really great opportunity to buy a 12 or $1,300 card comes up and I can buy it for $900. Once I buy it, I'm everything is now paused. Everything has come to a complete grinding halt until it sells or until a bunch of other stuff sells. That's why. So for those very same reasons, I would take a different approach. Okay. I like this. So for me, I would think in two different categories, what can I sell quickly? And where is the parked value on my cards? Those are two filters I have. And probably I have this filter because I've done a lot of low end stuff. So this is a, this part of the business is a very familiar situation to me. There are many beneficial ways to do this. Um, Gary's having some success building out some two and three row boxes of lots of low end stuff and saying, here's the percentage of $5 cards. Here's the percentage of $2 cards. Here's the percentage of whatever. Right. And make an offer on the box and people are giving him great offers. So you can build out lots. I know people that do, you know, they don't have much time, but they throw up a few lots on Facebook. They sell two or three of them a week, make a hundred bucks, whatever. Um, but I would look at what is parked and what moves quickly. So when I got through the collection, who are the best names that I have in here are people that are collectible. Even if I didn't know that much about the space, are there some Mike Trouts? Right. And what's the name I'm familiar with? LeBron, right. Uh, Steph Curry. Like look through any of the major stars, you know, I'd separate those out, look up your values, figure where you're at, but I'm going to have two buckets. The first one is going to be my low end, moving that and buying it. And the other piece of that for me is going to be the higher velocity sales. So I might pay a stronger percentage. I'm not getting these for 10 cents on the dollar, but I'm going to be getting cards that I think I can sell pretty quick. So separating what I have there. And then I want to build a strategy on sourcing that type of stuff and this type of stuff. I'm a big believer in from day one, diversifying the streams of income. The reason for that is I think it helps you avoid the risk of I've got too much in this card until something happens. I can't like, you have to have the other things moving as well. Yep. Um, so similar, similar approach there. Uh, but I'm going to be thinking, I'm not as, I'm not as afraid of having 300 bucks in my pocket, but all of my cards either up on eBay or out at a table, or because I think the market talks to me and teaches me very quickly. People vote with their dollars, what they're going to do or not do with it. Yeah. Um, so that was, that was kind of the first one there. Um, let's talk a little bit more about, um, a priority or a focus. Okay. So you had mentioned niching down. One of the ways we wrote that down was if you hadn't a niche down tomorrow, what do you have, what do you know well enough to focus on? Meaning if I had to start a business, but I could only pick one lane within sports cards, what would it be? Yes. And so have you asked yourself that question, Gary? Yeah. And, and for the longest time, it's what I did when, when I first started doing shows and when you started doing shows with me, what did people know me for? Bowman. Yes. Baseball. I was the guy with, with Bowman and weird baseball stuff, because that's what I knew the best. It's what I could buy without looking up comps. A lot of times it's what I could dig through value boxes and find and know what I was looking at and mitigate my risk. The less, you know, about something, the more risk there is inherent in spending your money on it. Um, so figure out what, you know, that doesn't mean that that's forever what you have to do now. I do everything. Um, I even messed with hockey a little bit, but for a long time, I would say at least, at least 60 to 70% of my inventory was baseball and Bowman. And, you know, obviously we would say, Oh, she should niche down. Once you know, you're not going. to know right away. You're not. You're not going to know right away what what you're excelling in. There's going to be something you think you understand really well, but you never sell them. Yeah, there's a reason you don't understand it that well. You don't know the players or that market as well as you thought you did. Right. So you're going to have to listen to the market feedback if you're set up at a show or if you're selling on eBay. Why do none of these sell but all of these do sell? Make a mental note of that. You can't afford to do that over and over and over. But with the collection that you started with and the names that you pulled out, they're like these should sell quickly or any of those not. And why? A nation down for me, I would have a hard time answering that right now. What would you say for me if I had to pick a lane, Gary? It's a tough one. I mean, if you had to pick a lane right now, I think you would probably gravitate toward weird 90s, 2000s stuff or you would just go all in on vintage. One of the I guess I was going to say vintage too. It is a learning curve. But if I was starting completely over with a thousand bucks, I can do some damage. A thousand bucks on raw vintage. Yeah. Now things you'll need to think about in my business since I'm just starting it. Am I able to keep buying this on a regular basis? Only if you can sell it. Only if you could sell it. But okay, I sold it. Yep. Where's all the raw vintage? Like you have to think through that. Oh yeah. Is this something that's going to be accessible to me? How hard is it going to be to buy this again? Or is this a, I've niched down so much that it's going to be a year before I have the opportunity to get into the type of margins. Like, so you really need to really need to think through that. Late nineties basketball is one that I would kind of gravitate to cause I really love it. I find it interesting. There's more of a range on the value so I can work the percentages a little bit better. But that stuff's hard to find on a regular basis. Right? Unless I don't care what name it is. Yeah. So niching down something to consider, but you should at least be asking yourself, what do I know really well? If I had to depend on one thing, let's talk sourcing Gary. Yep. So you've got to go buy some cards. There's two approaches. I'll jump in with mine and then I'll let you go on your, uh, for a minute there. Uh, there's, there's two approaches I would take. I would give you a challenge. If you were, if it was you and I'm coaching you, I would say this, I'd say, do you ever get on whatnot? Blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Your new thing for your 15 to 20 hours when you're not doing anything else, you're going to have whatnot on in the background and you're going to only buy cards that you believe you're getting at 50% or better. And it's going to happen 10 times a week maybe if you have that thing on for five hours. But what you're going to learn is what to look for in rooms where stuff has a little bit of value and you have the opportunity to get a tremendous deal on it and the people selling that card aren't going to beat you up about it. Try to cancel orders, any of that kind of stuff. There are so many ways to source on this, do retail arbitrage with live selling. I'm just giving what not as an example. Ebay live has popped up. Prestige, all these platforms are going to live sellings, not going anywhere anytime soon. So the people that learn what to look for on the higher value stuff, no, I say that it's like maybe it's 20 to $50 stuff and you're like, I'm only going to get stuff at 50% or better. That's a risk averse way of seeing way more cards, learning what people will spend. Now what not can be weird. You get in a hot room where somebody is yelling and lying about the value, that's not the right space to learn. But you get in a decent room, you might see 150 cards in an hour and a half if they're hustling and you'll learn about some values and get some deals. So I would do that and the second thing I would tell you is you're going to take $100 and you're going to go to a local card show and you're going to buy a whole box of cards for $100 and you're going to be told no the first 10 times you ask for it. And eventually you'll find a box that somebody will sell you for $100, you're going to make sure there's $100 in there and then everything on that is gravy. But you're going to force yourself to start to see the value in the work of bulk orders. So you can dabble. So maybe that first few weeks would be like $300, $200 on what not, get $100 at a show to try to find a bulk box. Okay. I think for me, where am I going to buy is pretty simple. When I first started doing this, I bought 90% of my cards at the show because I set up at shows. And your best buying opportunities are going to be the ones that walk up to your table. They really are. Now you need to set some parameters early on because you don't have an unlimited budget. I would suggest that you don't ever want to be in less than a 50% cash ratio from what you started with. So if you've got a grand, you don't want to spend more than $500. That's my opinion. I know you don't see it the same way. That's okay. Because if you screw up and you overspend or you buy the wrong stuff that takes forever to sell, you've still got some money to start with the next week. But I did 90% of my buying as stuff that walked up to the table at shows. And for the most part, now here in Ohio, it's a little different. But even here, it's still there. People get it. Most people who walk up to your table and say, hey, are you buying? There's kind of an implied understanding that you're not paying 100% of comps. There are some people that don't get that, but most people understand it. And it opens up the opportunity for you to trade. It opens up the opportunity for you to maybe buy something that's a little weird and just be honest. Hey, yeah, I see this is worth a hundred bucks, but only three of them have sold in the last five years. It may be another year before this one sells. I'd love to buy it from you, but taking that into account, I can probably only pay you 60 bucks for it. If that interests you, cool. If not, I totally understand. Shop it around the room. It's a standing offer. But those interactions are going to give you lots of opportunities to not only learn about the cards you're buying, about what people are interested in selling, but it's also going to give you the opportunity to perfect your craft. Because believe me, interacting with customers in this world is a craft. It's something you have to practice. It's something you have to learn to be good at if you want to be successful. You have to change your approach over and over too. Stuff changes. Expectations change in the space. There are phrases you'll use that one year it's fine and the next year that kind of triggers people. I saw a video where somebody said that and here's what happened. If you're just starting a business, I would say target a smaller local show. Don't go buy a $200 table and expect something crazy to happen. Especially if you've got 5K worth of inventory, you probably have 2K worth of sellable stuff. 50 tables or less is what I would start with if I was just starting fresh. I think most people starting a business, I think you and I have learned this, most people starting a business, the thought of jumping into shows right away is just way too intimidating for them. We're usually begging people, just go sign up for your first show. It's not as hard as you think. We'd say the same thing there, but we know most of you are going to try to find an outlet online. This is where I would say this, unpopular opinion incoming. Don't start on what not right away. One thing you should do right away is turn your camera on. I'm going to start this business. I have no idea if it's going to be successful. Today I'm going through my collection to find blah, blah, blah. Do this with me and you'll watch a following of people in the exact same life experience as you going through the exact same thing, start to follow what's going on. With an audience, I think you can jump into what not, but understand this, it's not easy. Everybody, there was a time when what not was very gated at first, right? You had to do a full on interview process. We got in way back in the day, but we had to have the podcast to get in. We did nothing with it because we just weren't sure. We were hearing rumors about what not. We were kind of staying out of it. Fast forward a little bit and they opened the floodgates where like anybody can join what not. If you're alive, the people that had already been in what not when that traffic came in, just raked, raked it in. They did great on it. Most people jumping in now, if let's say if you went and bought at 70% singles this week, where let me finish my thought here. You went and bought singles at 70% this week at a show, which most would say, Oh, 70% not too bad. And you go run it on what not. There's a really good chance you're going to lose money. Really good chance. You have to have enough people in a room bidding on the same card for there to be an auction. You need at least two. So if you have 10 people in your room and only two are interested in your card, I hope they're more interested than $2. You're getting $2. What not is a space where the type of inventory you need, that target shifts as well. Same with eBay. You'll learn it there too. But the reason I'm saying that is don't just jump in with both feet without a plan, without understanding there are people that have done this before and I'm just telling you, jumping in right away with what not. If you have several boxes of stuff where you legitimately don't care and you're like, if I get 500 bucks out of this collection just to get started, but I learned what not, it's worth it. Go nuts. Yep. But most people jumping in, you go buy this inventory. I'm going to start a what not business. You're going to lose money for the first two to three months. If you can get through that, then it'll take off or you build a little bit of a community of following. If I was doing what not early on with my business, you would be all buy it now. Here's this card. Let me show you another cool card. Oh, what's that? You want to see this card again? Yeah, I'll sell it to you. Oh, well I've got a 165 on it. I'll be willing to split the fees with you. So I come to like 175 and if I sold two cards in a show, it's my stuff's still here. I didn't get cooked. I'm establishing a brand on what not. So there's ways to do it. Turn the camera on. Even if you're not going to publish anything right away, get in the practice of telling your story and putting yourself out there because like it or not, you better market the crap out of whatever you have going on in sports cards if you want to do a business with it. I think all the time, and I know you do too, of where we would be right now if we had turned the cameras on five years ago instead of one year ago. Less experience but a lot further down the road. Yeah. Just a reality. Yeah. Just a reality. Okay, other thoughts. First, you got a thousand bucks, first year in business. Some of them will be like, what are your expectations at the end of the year? What are you expecting? If you started with a thousand bucks, how much of your, so let's say you started with that and how much inventory are you expecting to sell on a regular basis? So Gary, do you mind, don't do your Gary math here. Let's do some across the board. You did 10 shows. Some of them were bigger than others. Local shows mixed in there. On average, at a weekly one day show, what percentage, if you had to, because it's pretty close for me. I want to see what yours is. What percentage of, let's say that you're six months in. Okay. What percentage of your inventory do you think you would sell on a regular basis? You're probably a couple times a month at that point, but at a show, let's even say now, what percentage? My goal has always been 25%. That would be a really good show, right? Yeah. That's always the goal. I'd say that right now it's usually somewhere between 20 and sometimes 30, 35%. Rarely more than that. Yeah. And if that happens, there's a good chance somebody came through that was set up ahead of time. They knew what they were looking for. They had a stack of five grand worth of stuff right away. But just do that math. So let's say that you were starting for the first time and 20% was a good number. If 25 is a goal, 15%, 20, whatever number you want. So what are your margins on those cards? If we're telling you that 70% buys are decent and you could do a net 20 with all expenses, travel and all that rolled in there, how many cards do you need to make your 30 grand of spending money, right? You've got to reverse engineer this thing. That's the key. I want to do this. How many singles do I need to sell at X percentage before I've experienced that? Because what happens is people jump in, they go through numbers three months later knowing that they've sold thousands of dollars worth of cards and I don't have much money and they're confused. And it's because those margins, that's it. That is it. Yeah. Those are the margins. It's most people I know try to set goals, but where most people fail is if you set a goal without understanding the path it takes to get there, the goal doesn't matter. And that's why the reverse engineering process is so important. It's also why it's so important to divorce yourself from the emotional connection to the hobby that you may or may not have. Your favorite player may be, let me try to think of somebody that I think should sell for more than they do and sell faster. You may be a huge Baltimore Orioles fan and you may be a big Cal Ripken Jr. fan and you may not understand why Cal Ripken Jr. just doesn't sell as often. You think he should and you just keep buying him. And all of a sudden you've got seven Cal Ripken autos sitting in your showcase. You've got a bunch of money parked and you passed on opportunities to buy Steph Curry because you don't like Steph Curry as much. You got to divorce yourself from that thought process. And like Jason said, it's all math at the end of the day. If you want to make a hundred grand a year in net profit and you can carry on average a 20% margin when it's all said and done, which is I think a fair attainable number. It's not easy, but it's attainable. That means that you need to sell probably $600,000 worth of cards this year to account for expenses and everything else. So that's a lot of cards, guys. It's a lot of cards. And what does that look like? How are you going to make that happen? Don't set an unrealistic goal for yourself. If you're just starting out and you're not full time, your goal, in my opinion, might need to be, I think I can net $20,000 this year. You can reverse engineer $20,000 and probably get there with value boxes in one showcase. Yeah. One of the things I wanted to add in. to was while you're starting your business, sell what you have. Yes. Work through that because what you would buy week one at a show, if somebody said they're selling to you at 50%, and what you will buy at week eight after having had to sell some of your cards, you will watch yourself get a lot more picky. You will learn that there's a lot of people full of crap that'll look you right in the eyes, directly lie to you because they overpaid for a card. There are people that have no clue what they're talking about. This is just where they like to drink coffee on Saturday mornings and they've set up there for 20 years and they love cards, they're gonna keep doing it. You have to be there, nobody will do it for you. Gary and I have bad purchase after bad purchase to prove this point. Yes. Like this is how we learned it. So I would say start, we said this a year ago in one of our podcasts, start with what you have. Yes. But let's spend some time on that before you say, well, I need to go buy this, this, this, this, and this. Well, that was why my priority one was how do I turn this into liquidity because I'm gonna need the liquidity. You're gonna need it. You're gonna have to learn how to sell it. And I think starting with whatever you have is key with it. If you're somebody that's listening to this by chance and you were like new to the space this winter, you got some boxes for Christmas, you're getting in and you're like, where do I start? I don't have a $5,000 collection, right? Don't go buy boxes of cards. No. If you wanna do a business with it, buy singles. I would still encourage you to start with the lower end stuff. Go to the $5 or $10 boxes at your local card shop. If it's a $1 box, I'm gonna look up cards that I think might be worth five and I'm gonna build a pile of the cards in here that are worth five bucks. I found five of them. Cool. $10 box. I spent an hour here. I found 10 cards worth 20 bucks, you know, or vice versa. Like however that works, like you're gonna have to dig, dig, dig. You're not gonna be an expert at it for a long time. It's gonna take a bajillion reps. We gave the $20 challenge last year and I encourage everybody to do it. Go to your card show this weekend, go to your card shop, your LCS. You have 20 bucks to spend in their dollar boxes. Don't necessarily look everything up. Dig through dollar boxes, find 20 cards that you think are worth more than a dollar each and go home and see how you did. If you're scared of losing the 20 bucks, look them up right there in the shop. Nobody cares. Yeah. Actually try, actually try that. I will follow up what Jason just said though and I think it's important and Jason's probably gonna disagree with me here and that's okay. If you're pretty new to this space and you maybe got some boxes over Christmas and you're excited, you relive in your childhood and this is fun, you're not close to ready to try to turn this into a business yet. You need to spend some time learning this space and understanding the product cycles and understanding what sells and what doesn't before you even think about this being a business in my opinion. It'd be like spending one week at HVAC school and then opening shop, buying a van, opening shop and going out to fix people's HVAC units. You're just not ready yet. It's completely different. There's no level of expertise needed to have a card business, but to have a successful one there is, yes. Yeah, so I couldn't disagree with you more. I think the best way for somebody that's new to get in is to just jump in and do it. But I think with that is, don't just go into a showcase at a card shop and I think that's what you're getting at is, just because you love it, doesn't mean everybody's handing you margin hand over this. Yeah. You're gonna have to be really careful but I'm thankful that I took a leap. I'm thankful I didn't know everything. I understood principles of hustling and flipping. You know this Gary, with houses, with clothing, with yard sales, I'm dangerous. You get me in those situations, I can do well with that. But, so some of those things translated. I look now at, and maybe this was the main point of this conversation, I look back now at what I've learned in the last three months, the last six months, the last one year compared to the rest and just understand that you're only gonna learn more and more and more. And what worked one minute isn't gonna be the thing that carries your business the next day. I don't still do 3,000 card dollar sales on Facebook for a four day period. Collect payments from people all over the world for $7.49 or whatever, right? Yeah. But there was a time where that was the way that I was cutting my teeth on this space. So find a lane, don't overextend yourself, get started, turn on the camera, get to work, go through the boxes, we will help you. Yes. We'll help you for free. That's what this is. Hang out with us, shoot us messages, ask us at a show, we will do everything we can to help you with that business. Your business does not have to be a big deal right away. But we'd hope that you're smart about your approach with it, which is what Gary's saying. Yes. Like, open it a couple boxes. Now, if you wanna flip the cards you got, that's fine. Sure. But I think what bugs Gary is we're in a space where in our 40s we tell people we sell cards for a living and it's kind of one of those ones where you're like, all right, this guy's unemployed. Right, okay, this guy, okay, he never got a job. He's never worked. I think he's done it all these years. And I think there's a little bit of that. So guys like you and I, when we hear somebody say, I'm starting a business, we'll be like, what kind of business? How big a business? Is it actually a business? Have you worked as hard as me? Have you been through like? That's part of it. But the other part of it, honestly, is that I get tired of seeing people jump into something, jump into something, get super discouraged and leave the hobby and never come back. They never got to enjoy the cards. Yeah, because it was instantly like, how do I make money with this? Learn the hobby and find out if you love it. Because the one thing I will tell you is this, if you don't love this, if you don't love this shit, it will bury you and burn you out faster than you can possibly imagine if you're trying to do this as a business. One caveat, if you have like a hundred grand that you don't care what happens with it, you want to try, then you can do that. But if you're rolling in with a thousand bucks and a $5,000 collection, then you're absolutely right. But if you've got a hundred grand and you don't care what you do with it, hit us up, we'll talk. We'll give you points. You'll be a happy camper. Yeah, we'll give you points. You'll be a happy camper. Well, we don't need that. We don't depend on it. I think that's kind of the point of it too, is like figure out where you want to start, go through your stuff. And if you're hearing this and you're like, man, it sounds like a lot of work, then we're saying, yes, probably don't mess with it as a business if that's the turnoff. Yeah, because it is work. It is work. It doesn't stop. I mean, Gary knows this. I've had a big uptick with eBay. Whatnot's been really good for me. The solo shows have been performing well. My show inventory scaled up. I don't have time. I'm out of it. I'm out of time. I'm exhausted. Like genuinely. Gary bugs me sometimes. Like, dude, you got to take a day off. And it's that there's nobody, it's not that I'm not doing like the fake hustle, grant card, 10X that bro. I hate that stuff. I hate that stuff. But at some point you're going to have to, you're going to realize just how much works in front of you and you can only do so much of it. So niching down will help. Being specific, being picky, look the card over. That's another one. Spend more time looking the raw cards over. Yeah. That's something I wish I'd spent a little more time on. Just really getting a feel for what presents well, what doesn't, what's going to sit there longer, all that. But, okay. Well, we managed to make this another long episode as well. It's more than an hour, not an hour and a half. We're good. I guess that's true. I guess that's true. I guess that's true. Soon, within the next few weeks here, we got to get Uncle Terry back on. He's been, ever since we told him what we saw with those desert storm packs, he was, he's not been too happy with us, but we'll get him back. We say what we say and we say what we see and that's all we can do. Don't forget, we will be this weekend, Greenies at the Ohio State Fairgrounds at the Kasich Center. Sunday at Central Crossing High School for Grove City Card Fest. Next weekend, Xenia, one of our staple monthly shows. Third weekend of the month, Eastgate in February. No, we won't be at Eastgate, we will be at Nashville. Nashville. We will be at Nashville, man. We've been wanting to get into Nashville for so long and now that it's here, I forget that we're doing that. One of you want to hang out with us and catch up with us and well, there's a good chance we'll call it a night at like six o'clock. We're old, but just in case. Hit us up if you're going to be down in Nashville. I know we're going to run into a few different people there. Yep. Anything else, Gary? We got a bunch of shows coming up. Be sure to check out our whatnot shows on Sundays at 4.30 this week. We will not have one because we will be at the Grove City show, but we'll be back Super Bowl Sunday with a fun one for you at 4.30. Yep. Anything else? I think that's it. You know what to say. This has been the Ball Card Show, the sports podcast. For the Sports Collector. Bye now. Peace. ♪♪