If you build it....they will Troll! Season 6 Ep 12

Hello, and welcome to the Ball Card Show, the sports podcast for the sports collector. I'm Jason Otero. I'm Gary Lomaster. Season six, episode 12. Gary, can you smell the ocean breeze? You're almost on a boat, baby. Almost there. About nine days till we leave and we're both like, you're dragging into the vacation, right? Yes. Well, and I can talk about this now because by the time this releases, it will be fully public knowledge. But this morning, as we record this episode, I am anxiously watching my phone for a text from my daughter who is going to the doctor at 10 45 this morning for her ultrasound. Ooh, people. Yeah. Pop. I think pop is what we're going with. I'm not going to ramps. No pop is the old fart. That's true too. Oh my God. You're so old. You're a grandpa. I know. It's crazy. Isn't it? My grandpa wears a Voltron shirts and a Care Bear hats. What's even crazier is that she's 28. So that is wild. Now that makes me feel right. Because when I met her, she was a kid younger than my daughter. So that, yeah, she was like 10 or 11 when you came into the, into the picture. Yeah, that's, that's a little, well, anyway, I'm glad you're getting to do that. I'm going to take a little, uh, follow my wife on a business trip, a vacation the week after you're back to Las Vegas. So any of you, yeah, Gary, come on. See every once in a while I busted out. Yeah, that's good. I didn't know you had joy in your heart like that. Um, I got a spit take on that one down in my heart where I don't know. I don't have it. Uh, yeah. But those of you that are in the Vegas area, let me know what shops I should check out. What else? Yes. Those are cool. Really not interested in the repack vending machines. I don't have a Google location. I'll probably spend money on them, but not on purpose. It'll be, I'm walking by it and there it is. But, uh, going to do some do work there. So any of you in the Vegas card scene, let me know where I need to stop by and what I should check out. Uh, we doing buying all the professor will tell you. He'll, he'll tell you. Oh, I asked him in his chat, but that would require leaving your basement to tell you that they're all terrible. Everything in the world sucks. You know? Yeah. It's all crap. Why? I don't know. I just like everything's out to get me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll take what though. Speaking of professors, a lot of people are joining that show. Like not nobody. It's like, there's enough people watching that. Brian Gray was like, I have a chance to do a monologue for 20 minutes and get attention. I'll call in a professor. A professor was like, Hey, um, you ghosted me for quite a while. Yeah. Let's not worry about that. There's a lot of people in here. Let me tell you everything. I just kept commenting cause he was talking about this whatnot repack thing. And I just kept saying over and over in the chat from the ballcard show, Brian, are you still sourcing for arena club? Brian, are you still sourcing the big repackers under your name? No comment. No comment. Yeah. Uh, there's one thing that I know to be, and this is really important to clarify. I don't think Brian's a bad dude. Don't take that. But Brian loves some Brian. I think that's the best way to put it. Brian is a big fan of Brian. He made a bunch of money off a leaf, bro. I mean, say what you know, that's, yeah. I mean, he, he has been in the business forever. He has started, um, a couple of different companies that actually were relatively successful. He kind of was a big part of the push to the cut auto cards, uh, back in the early two thousands. Um, and then he bought the leaf brand, the old leaf brand at pennies on the dollar and said, let's turn this into something. And he did so good for him. Um, but he'll tell you all about it. But, uh, no, I, you just quick story. Just quick story here. Not at all. You've told, you've been on me to call into a professor show. And I just feel like the potential for that to go sideways is strong. Cause when somebody says something dumb enough, you're not going to not right. And boy, when they all, when they all from the comfort of their basements get angry about somebody else's original thought, that's when you get in trouble. If you get me and geo on there at the same time, it could be like tag team, Royal rumble action on that. I think, I think it could be, I think it could be real bad for anybody that's on the opposite side of that. Why Mike and I have very similar, uh, personalities and very similar tolerances for stupid. Just like a snow plow. It's like, okay, here we go. Yeah. Well hop in there. I'm sure they'd love to be mad at you too. You know, you know, let's just go ahead and jump into the first topic. I'm, I'm sick of the negative comment that is just about other people that have actually built a business from scratch. Like not about a scandal, not about a bad person. Like everybody's now, I know this is going to look, this is going to look super goofy, but like what is with everybody hating on clever Cubans like business? I don't like the, like the business as if there's something, well, I know, you know, we'd both know the answer. You're going to tell me, do I love the arena pack commercials? No bros getting paid. He's one of the only guys that doesn't have an affiliate code. I don't think, but I saw somebody getting onto him because he said this card will do really well in my whatnot show, even if I buy it at comp and people lost their mind. Yeah. Here's what the reality of it is. And one people hate other people being successful because it shines a light on their failures in their minds. And the thing that's crazy is, is you might not even be a failure. It just might not be your thing to create a business. That's okay. Um, one of the things, uh, about clever is that Alex is an open book. Like you can't, you can't really attack him because all you got to do is go look at his monthly content where he opens his entire financial records of his business to the whole world universe. Here's everything. And we, he talks about all the time that like his whatnot stream, whatnot is not the same as the rest of the card world. And if you go into his streams, you're literally never going to hear him say, Oh man, we're really low on this chat. Like ever, ever. And if a card goes stupid, he'll do a video like, Hey, uh, this is an $8 card. It went for $136 and was paid for. There were like three people that just wanted the card. Like he'll even be like, Hey, he'll, he will say things like when a card goes super high, he'll be like, Hey now guys, it's maybe a little, like you can't attack the guy. Standard auction, not sudden death. Yeah. Free bids available. He's basically providing self exclusion that whatnot hasn't yet. It's an open book test. And people lose their minds. It's like, okay, I understand there's things in the hobby that drive people nuts, but let's not go after the handful of people that didn't start super wealthy coming in from crypto and being unethical and find somebody else to be pissed at somebody that actually did something shady. Look, we had a different opinion than him. I thought he had a rough take a while back. He hopped on the show, immediately held his ground on that. And there's some perspectives he even changed and admitted it. He referenced it in the show. So there's some of you out there and I've even been reaching out to a couple of you guys that are better than this. I'm just going to say it. Some of you content creators have gotten lazy. It's laziness. I don't want to have an original thought about the space. So I'm just going to find someone or something that other people have talked about to share that activity. And here I am doing the exact same thing, looking at you directly in the eyes saying, have an original thought. What would you like him to do? Would you like him to put a cap on them? That's called buy it now. What would you like him to do? Cut his following in half that he built by himself? Yep. Left his job for before there was all this following. What would you like him to do? Close his books so you can't see the revenue he's made? What would you like? What would you, what's the solution here for a successful business owner? I'm going to step further. Hold on. Okay, you're doing okay. Fire away. Here's what I don't understand. This is one of the things that drives me nuts about the card industry. If I go to a restaurant and I order a New York strip and it's $50 at one spot, but I happen to think the chef cooks up a better steak at 75 bucks, two blocks down the road. Guess what? Shut up and take my money. And if they have deviled eggs, Gary's already in. Contractors. Oh, this guy bid $2,000 to change the carpet in this room. This guy bid 3000. This guy has better carpet. This guy provides a better service. This guy has a warranty. This guy will make it right. Guess what? We went with the $3,000 option. Who's creating the content saying, guys, what are you doing? There was a cheaper option available. We're talking about collectibles that have a range of prices. People have the opportunity to pre-bid. People have the opportunity not to, and this is where we're going to say fraud. You know, this is scam. Somebody's taking advantage. They built a freaking business and it's working. And some of you need to actually get engaged. Go walk a freaking show for once since COVID and meet the human beings that are buying cards that like them. No, wait, wait, wait. They like, and here's what's really going to get you. They like the new stuff too. They like the new stuff too. They like, I don't, but they like downtowns. They like the cases and they're in it. So what are you going to do about established business owners that actually build something that's successful? That's what it seems like people are becoming upset with. It's okay when you're on the come up, like people like us now, Gary, but I'll tell you what, in two years, if we have financial comfort for once in a while, right? Like if we have actually built our brand, the way we've been grinding it out 70 hours a week for three years, that's when, and this is nothing new. People successful know this all the time, but I'm telling you content creators that are just in this lane of everybody else sucks. You suck. You don't have an original thought and it's the hobby needs it. And that's a long monologue. That's okay though. Content to your point. I think that there is, and you see this in almost every niche space. Um, I'm a big, I'm a big fan of poker, right? And, uh, to the point where when we go to casinos with our friends, y'all get mad at me cause I'm not interested in just walking around a bunch of table work and it's not, I'm going to go take my happy ass over to the poker tables and sit down with a grant and go make your money, but you're working, but I enjoy that. Yeah, I enjoy that though. Um, but I've watched a, one of my favorite content creators in that space and he just did a video and I might, this might be a good idea for a little short form video for us to, in this space, he was reviewing other content creators with the question in mind, are they a poker player who makes content? Are they a content creator who decided that poker was the niche they wanted to make content in? Yes. Yes. And I think that happens in this space a lot. There are people who maybe have bought a few packs of cards, but they have a good personality. They may have even been a content creator somewhere else and they see this industry getting hot and they come into it and they're like, what's the fastest way to get clicks? Yeah. What's the fastest way to grow an audience outside of Eric Michael and getting paying for bots? What's the fastest way? Be as negative as possible because negativity drives clicks. Everybody likes to get down in the mud and wrestle around in that dirt and feel like we're all on the same page, angry at the man. The reality of it is, is that the people that are making that content, if all you're getting, all you are getting your like perspective on this industry from right now is Instagram or Tik Tok or short form content like that. Yeah. You probably think that this is coming to a crashing halt at any second. Like everybody's just riding a bubble, like go to a show. Like Jason just said a few minutes ago. Touch grass. Yes. Come out. I'm telling you right now in the last year, at least the last year. And I would even go so far as to say even before that, although it has grown, we're in a, we're in an uptrend and up cycle in the, in the space. I haven't been to a show of any size at all. When I say any size at all, a hundred tables and up that's been bad. And a lot of them blow your expectations out of the water. We were just back to back days at a monthly show in Ohio. That's a big show. And then a show that's quarterly in Ohio. It was crazy between those two days. I bet we saw five to 6,000 people. And it was lighter traffic than normal because March madness. Yes. Like we both are like, like they were slowing down a little earlier in the afternoons, which honestly not mad about it. Cause then it's like, sure, let's get out of here. But we had a whatnot stream. We were in the middle of two days. Like I think between those two days we were 30 hours. Yeah. And it was rough, but, but I think you're making a really good point. People that are poker players that happen to do content and people that do content that happened to pick poker and what you and I will never be able to not do. We won't ever be able to not have the experience leading the content because that's what that's our story. Sure. But I think it is a self-fulfilled prophecy for the doom and gloomers that all sit in the same circle and say, we're not doing it. Let me get, let me tell you a story. I'll tell you a little, little story time here. And I'll try not to be too controversial in this because that's not the intent, but I was a pastor for 11 years and I grew up in a denomination. It's been around like 120 years. The denomination is like, what brand of church are you a part of? Right. Yeah. And the one that I was a part of had like a big heyday through the fifties, through the, I would say probably through the seventies organizationally. What I mean was like the organization was growing, their global efforts were having larger reach, their gatherings had more people and they were multiplying growth. If you looked at a franchise model from a business perspective, they were continuing to scale out. And then something happened where the culture shifted, right? Massive change, post-modern thought, whatever you want to call it, different styles of churches. Now there's different music. Now there's different opinions. Now there's different political takes and where there had been a similar lane. Now you have all of these. options, right? That organization, in my opinion, which I'm no longer part of, there are things that I deeply appreciate, but I felt like it became a situation where we would get together and we would all agree that we disagreed about the same things with the rest of society. And it was almost like the rallying cry became, do we all agree that we dislike the same things? Not the emphasis of what we're for, what we're hopeful of, and what we're working towards, holding the line, hold the line. And what happens when you, yes. And what happens is if that becomes the banner that everybody's marching under, you will watch any organization, any organization in the world, this is a business principle, it's not a religious thing, wither away. Numerically, statistically, all those types of things. And this is not about me being critical of that group I came up in, it's just an experience that was so evident right in front of me. And the people that are committed that no matter what, it's about holding the line and not even enjoying the hobby at all, because you're not even allowed to enjoy it anymore, unless it's exactly the way you want it to be, which is never going to happen. No. You all are going to just find yourselves irrelevant and angry and just stay in that little circle. And that's okay, but it's not going to profit anything. The thing that's beautiful about this hobby is you can literally enjoy it in whatever way you want, believe it or not. And I know this is going to absolutely blow some of y'all's minds. There are people in this hobby who only collect ultra modern and who collect it by building sets of 2026 Tops flagship, and they do it by hand. They would much rather spend $500 to do that than go buy the complete set at Walmart. There are people who enjoy the hobby by collecting the most irrelevant player you can think of because it's what they like. They enjoy that part of it. There are people who invest in the hobby and don't really collect. All they're doing is buying with hope of gain. It's a beautiful space because you can do all those things. There, unfortunately, is also a lane where people just want to be miserable all the time. My guess is this. Let's get more direct. This is what's happening. If this is who you are, my guess is you're miserable in every part of your life, and all you look for is the worst in things so that you can point at it and feel slightly superior to it. Cut that shit out. Just enjoy what you enjoy. And if you don't like this space- Why are you here? Get out! I'll answer you why. What are we doing? I grew my following to this. Yeah, Blake. Yeah, what are you doing? And here's the thing. Yeah, it just doesn't make sense. Most of these negative people, here's the irony. Most of these people, not all, most of them are like, it's all just this. It's all just that. It's all just this. They don't enjoy building sets up. They don't enjoy anything. They don't enjoy an affordable PC. No. They want to hit that logo man out of their retail blaster that has been sitting on the shelf for $15, and they want the realized gains of the current market. Yeah, yeah. And it is a reality that people get priced out of this space. And before you say anything, I too am down here in my basement recording. I too understand that some stuff is ridiculously overpriced. We're going to talk about it in a minute with this direct consumer, the bots buying up wax, all this. There are issues in this industry, but guess what happens with growth? Volatility. Every single where you go. And it's happening right now, and it's not the first time it's happened in history, and it's not going to be the last. We're interviewing an attorney, Big John in a couple of weeks, and he's breaking down like there's some thin ice with some of these legal things that have happened over the last year. It's not all buttoned up, but I think there's a lane of people that are negative that have decided one is too expensive, two, I can't afford it, three, that's everyone else's fault. And there's also people that decided, hey, I like this stuff and it's expensive, so I'm going to, hear me out, hear me out, hear me out. I'm going to invest time and effort into this hobby that I supposedly love, and I will fund my hobby by spending an hour in a dollar box flipping carts. By spending five hours a week with eBay, generating a few hundred bucks a month, and then I can go rip a hobby box and enjoy it. They don't want to do that. I'm not sure they really enjoy the hobby. Well, I think that that's what it is. I think that at the end of the day, if you find yourself identifying more and more with that way of thinking, you're not helping yourself, you're not helping anybody else. And my advice would be this, you don't have to be miserable. You really don't. It's a choice. It's a choice. It's a lot like when you first started, and this is something I think a lot of people don't understand. When you first left the business world and went into carts and eBay and everything else, something happened in your brain. And I think it's really important to say that two things can be true at once. One, there can be issues, like you just said, in anything, whether it's the real world, whether it's the hobby, whatever else. But you said something to me about six months after getting into eBay and really diving into it hard, like hours and hours and hours, like your full-time thing, almost two full-time jobs. You started to lose a lot of patience and sympathy for people who complained that they couldn't make money or they couldn't do this or they couldn't do that. Whatever you feel the issues with this hobby are, or in your life, in whatever you're doing, I promise you, I promise you that some focused, dedicated hard work will solve a lot of them. Will it fix everything? No. Do you have to get a little lucky? Sure. Does sometimes you need a hand and a little help along the way? Absolutely. But if you think that Fanatics owes you something, if you think that the dealer at the show owes you something, if you think that the person streaming on whatnot owes you something outside of just honesty and transparency, you're doing everything wrong. Nobody owes you anything. If I buy this card, what's going to show you in show and tell, if I buy this card and I find this card, I told a kid this this weekend, I don't work really hard all week to have cards to sell on the weekends so that you can make money. I don't owe you anything. This card may have sold for $100. It didn't. It's never sold anywhere ever. It may have sold for $100. I don't owe it to you to sell it to you for that. I don't owe it to you to sell it to you for 85 or 90. It's mine. I can do with it what I want to. If I want to put $700 on it and never sell it, I can do that. And I don't owe you a thing. Does that make sense? Yeah, but I don't know what, go ahead. No, if you approach the world, like everybody outside of you owes you something, you're going to be miserable all the time. Yep. I agree. Yeah. It's, it's, um, the people saying that they, they don't like this and they just want to be able to go get this. And there's a good argument of like, okay, how many Americans can actually go open prism black for 850 bucks? And here's what I would like to say. It's okay for some products to completely suck in the market to respond by not buying them. How many Americans can go buy a Mercedes tomorrow? Well, that's where I was heading with this. Yeah. One of my favorite cars I ever had was that charger. I had a charger with a Hemi and four and a half miles a gallon for, I mean, it was loud. The car was heavy floating, but heading down the interstate, man, I'll tell you once a week, somebody stuck their head out the window. They would love that thing was just, and it had some nice touches on it. There were a few things that were done to it. It was a nice car. And I'll tell you this never once for a second in this universe, would I go buy that car new? No, it makes no sense. And it's okay for me to say it makes no sense that that box costs $850 and say, I bought this nasty vet auto for a hundred bucks out of this box of prism black that dropped a few months back. Remember how that was a big flop? Thank God that some people just like to open wax. And the problem is this insecurity that if I am not the one pulling the levers, opening the box, hitting all the hits, then it's unfair. It's unfair. Yep. It's not. No, it's everywhere else in the world. This makes sense. But for some reason in this space, it is an anomaly. It's an injustice outside of the legal framework that holds a society together. Fair is an illusion. Yeah. It's all a matter of perspective. We talked about this years ago on an old audio only version of the podcast. I hate the word fair. What? Well, that's not fair. No, I don't care. That's so subjective. Yeah. Yeah. Well, everybody has such a different take on it that the word's almost meaningless and everybody's been handed a different deal. But here are two guys that weren't handed anything in this industry that literally started in value boxes and just kept collecting and been grinding it out. So say something to us about it. Right. Well, you won't because that one doesn't apply. And here's what I'll tell you. When you go to a show this weekend, if you've thought about putting shoes on on a Saturday and heading out the door, maybe put down your video game controller and go to a show. Easy. Now I have a video. I know you're yeah, but you're an adult and we'll go to shows to work your job, right? Yes. When you go out there, here's what you don't realize. The people that are just chronically negative with no substance. About 70 percent of the people in the room are just like us. Yeah. 70 percent of the people in the room have been grinding it out. They've been buying it. They don't go rip a bunch of wax. They buy singles. They appreciate collectible items that go to the end user. They have some huge whale brands that they're just turning over to the repack or whoever. Sure. That's fine. That's their model. Whatever. It's actually a little more stressful for them because they're running on such razor thin margins and there's an expectation of providing supply on a regular basis. But most of the people doing this are not the people that you guys are ripping on. But you fail to see that they exist and they make up a much larger portion of this space, this industry and this hobby than you'd like to admit. Well, it's no different than the conversation around whatnot. There are definitely bad apples. There are people who are bad actors anywhere you go. But I will die on the hill that the majority of people, the vast majority of people selling cards on whatnot are pretty good dudes that are just selling cards. Are there bad actors? Absolutely there are bad actors. And which rooms are going to get the most attention? So think about the ones that have the bad actors. Yeah. And why? Because you're saying a lot. Well, attention span, you're going to see a lot of cards in a short amount of time, right? There's going to be an entertainment factor. There's a reason they built the following. And these ones where it's like intentionally manipulative about going over, like it's entertaining as crap. You guys can't quit watching it. Yeah. How many times are you going to make the same video about the same five people? Yeah. And here's the reality. Here's the even harder truth. Half the people in that whatnot room are okay with it. Yeah. It's just like we were talking about with Alex earlier. He had a card on eBay Live literally go for 30 times comp and it was paid for. You know who was okay with that? The person who paid for it. The other two people who were willing to pay up to a dollar less than that for it. Who cares? The world that we live in in this space right now, sometimes, and I know we're going down a rabbit hole here. I don't care. I'll try to keep it as short as I can. But if a card sold for $30 as the last sale publicly, something you guys all got to remember, that doesn't mean that's all that it's ever sold for. You don't, the sales shows aren't reported. I can tell you right now. How many times is this sold in a show over the weekend? Yeah. Like this card. Exactly. Like if you think that like that's the Bible, you're wrong. Like if a card sells. And they're the same people that buy the last comp. Yes. And come to you and demand 25% over it there. I tell you this much. I held my ground and sold every single one of them. Jason's held his ground and sold every single one of them. And I think almost every dealer in the room last weekend did too. I wasn't selling an Otani rookie under comp. As a matter of fact, I was getting 10, 15% over on some of them. I don't care. And what you show me, that's the market for Otani. Yes, exactly. Like it. I had a card of an Otani rookie. The last raw sale was $650. I have mine tagged at seven. That's what I got for it because there was one on bids with three days left at six 40. Yep. Like I don't care. Yeah. So, so what, so let's, let's pivot here. Is that all right? Can I jump in? Let's talk about what an original thought is. I don't mean that sarcastically. I know. I don't mean it sarcastically. We say that. And I know we're not the only ones I've, you know, I've heard other people give a similar idea of like, Hey, so what are you going to do about what's your solution? What's it? And, and I think that the common one that comes back is accountability. Well, that's a good one. And then what, this is a problem. We all agree. This is a problem. Is the problem solved? Well, it's not so simple. Is it? I don't think we all agree on what the problems are. Yeah. But let's talk about what an original thought would be on a rough take. Okay. It is not, Oh, you're leveraging your following. And so because you built this business, it's unfair that you auction an item starting at a dollar. That would be an unoriginal thought. And one that I would argue, it's not really thought through because you look silly when you say it. Right. A different one would be, Hey, this person keeps lying. Let's talk about dishonesty in the space. Why are sellers consistently becoming dishonest about the value of cards? And what would it take for the community to do something about this, to establish that this is not okay. That's an original thought, engaging accountability, and not just this sucks. That sucks. Everything sucks. see you tomorrow. But that requires work, effort, engagement, a pulse, relationships with people that do enjoy the hobby. There's just a whole rabbit hole there that you'd have to dive down and figure out, but it's exhausting. Is that enough of that rant that took 30 minutes? I think so. Yeah, I think we're good. We beat that to death. We haven't done show-and-tell. Let's do show-and-tell. Let's do show-and-tell. I want to go first. You go first. I found this card this week. It's never sold. It's really cool, and it's a guy who has a really strong hobby market. It's also up on that 90s and 2000s store on eBay right now. Check that out. Johnny Manziel, rookie patch. That is numbered one of five. Got a little laundry tag on the top? It's an NFLPA logo tag. It's a total five-color patch set up. It's nasty. It's on that 90s, 2000s store. I saw it, and I was like, got to have it. That's definitely a Gary card. That was my first one. Is that who can't get cards PCs? Yes. I may reach out to Kyle and say, hey, got one for you. He'd be like, is it worth 10 grand or more? Hit the dirt. On that stuff, he doesn't care. He likes Johnny. Okay. I'll go first. This was a PC pickup, all from the same guy. I'm going to give him a little shout out. Don Jones, grab a centerpiece card shows. Love it. Newark, Ohio. Don's a good guy. Been doing this a long time. He knows I love Eric Davis. He's been working through a collection buy, and he grabbed a few for me. I'll show them real quick here. This is a pop one. Kind of a unique piece. What year is this? 2022. Archives, snapshot, picture day, on card, auto, PSA 10 pop one. Then we have, what is this one? Top Supreme auto to five. Eric Davis, which by the way, you didn't get to see the All Smoke Baseball podcast with him. It was fantastic. Then this one's really fun, just because I want to read the names off to you. This is just a Reds PC card. Paul O'Neill, Willie Mo Pena, Juan Encarnacion, Adam Dunn, Eric Davis, Joe Morgan. Pretty random one. That's No. 200. All right, you're up, Gary. All right. This is a more speculative play on my part, but we'll see. National Treasures, Shadur Sanders, rookie auto to 99. Take a shot there. See what happens. Where do you think that'll stick her? Do you know yet? Like 130, 140 bucks. That's where his, when retail first dropped, that's where those autos were. Yeah. Then they flattened out, but that seems like a good value. All right. This is a little bit bigger for me, for this type of a card, typically, but I thought it was pretty cool. I picked it up yesterday at Keith's in Delaware. CAG's true orange rookie auto, out of series one. Smart play. He's going to be really good this year. So it looks like he's got some stuff figured out. Foil cards make me nervous. Buying big rookie cards makes me nervous. Big for what the product is, right? I'm not saying it's a huge card, but yeah, I thought that was the one that was like, there's some upside here. This was a fun one. These are the types of cards I like to get because I'm never going to lose on them. 2014, true colors, Kobe game use patch number to 199. PSA nines have been doing a couple hundred bucks recently. There hasn't been a raw sale in quite a while. It's probably going to tag at 150. Nasty little card. Constellations top chrome. Is this shorter than a case? You looked at it. Yeah. Constellations are like one every five. That's what I had that skeins of in Nashville. They're gold cards. Yeah, they're really cool. This is the Freddie Freeman. The surprise for me is, and everybody that does baseball knows this, a lot of his stuff, aside from maybe like the dynasty stuff, just seems a little undervalued for his trajectory, likeability, relevance in the hobby, all that kind of stuff. So pick that one up. If I'm picking up a case hit type of thing, that would be ideally what it is. The way to go. This one actually walked up to the table in Grove City. I did something that I don't normally do on this card, and I paid full on the last comp when last comp was over a year ago. There it is. So the last comp was $105. I paid full on the last comp. It's the image variation out of Heritage, Aaron Judge, a PSA 10. I've got it listed on eBay. It's the only one up on eBay, and it has a ton of watchers already. So those are the times when I will pull the trigger on something and just pay full go on it. When it's not out there, it's not available, and the last comp was really old on a player who's doubled or tripled since then. Another reason for that, Grove, is the product itself. So if you really get into the weeds on Heritage, one of the things that people realized last year was the image variations were much more short printed than they were the year before. And so when you hear a narrative like that, people in general are going to say, oh, maybe those image variations are going to get more love in general, and they go look at the megastars and all that kind of stuff. This one is just a really fun, I don't care if it sells, it will pretty soon in this area. Braxton Miller, rookie auto to 10, 1 of 10, number match, jersey match. Do a little rookie auto Braxton, best spin move in college football, don't at me. This one for me, and this was a fun one from Eastgate this month. I don't usually mess with non-sport stuff very much, but this was too cool not to grab. 1 of 1, dual auto, Caleb Presley, and Jerry. So it was like- The Barstool Boys? Yeah, the Barstool Boys, 1 of 1, dual auto. Just a cool, cheap 1 of 1 of something cultural significance. It's like a $65, $70 card. It's not anything crazy, it's just- That'll be an eBay card, right? Yeah. All right, favorite card of the whole show, happened in the last hour on Sunday. I was able to get a lot, included in that lot was a Bowman rookie 10 paper pitching show hay, some vintage, and I could not believe this was in the stack. 2001, SP Authentic, Tiger Woods tour swatch. This is a tournament worn red scrunch. Now, I don't have photo matching evidence, but I can tell you by golly, this wasn't worn on a Thursday, and this wasn't worn on a Friday. That's red, baby. And that color wasn't worn on a Saturday. This is a Sunday red tiger. I've priced it with comps. I may jack the price up on that. I may price this- What's out there? What's available? Well, I just don't want to sell it. That's a problem. A red tiger tournament worn patch. It's in a 9. I don't care. I would have bought this in a GMA slab. This thing is freaking sweet. No offense, GMA. You're good people. I'm sure you do good things. People well, I mean, we talked about it with Mike on the podcast. People forget many, many moons ago, GMA, when they launched, they were the real deal. So anyhow, what do we got next, Jason? Let's talk a little bit about the rumblings over the product release of, I believe it was the Bowman U basketball that's also now featuring vets, NBA vets. It's just Bowman basketball. Bowman basketball. Bowman basketball. Yeah. Let's talk about that for a second. I'm going to go first. This makes sense. It's not that weird. People are losing their minds over it and it is finally a true Bowman product. This is what Bowman is. You'll get a turn in a second. I promise, Gary. It is prospects and pros. What happens if you go open Bowman baseball right now? It's going to be prospects and it's going to be pros. People were freaking out at the fact that now, listen, I understand you can add trash to a set list. You can add a bunch of worthless stuff in there. You can prison black football this thing if you want to, right? I don't think that's what's happening. I think they're just trying to make it consistent. And the other thing that I'm wondering on these NIL structures, is it getting a little bit trickier? Because if Panini can throw money around, are they snagging up maybe some of these prospects? And so Fanatics had to enhance that checklist a little bit with some bet autos. I think that unless I'm wrong here, I don't think Bowman basketball has the university players in it. They're still going to do a Bowman university. Oh, really? Yeah. This is just like old school Bowman basketball like it was back in the day. Rookies and vets, it's Bowman basketball. Licensed just like it was back in 96, 97, 98. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. I think you are. Okay. I thought that they were still going to do like a Chrome U and a Bowman U product. You're checking on me right now. He's going to fact check me in real time, which is perfectly fine. I could be wrong. I don't think I am. Well, I don't want to give the wrong. No, no, for sure. I do know that the product is four autos a box. From what I could see, there's only one skew of it. I don't think there's like a jumbo and a hobby. I don't think. It's not a setup like Bowman baseball is. I'm trying to find the checklist. I'm going to get a cardboard connection. Yeah. I'm fairly certain that that's the case. It's going to just be all professional stuff, just like it used to be. I think that what we were going to get into on this is there was somebody bragging. Now, do we know whether this person actually pulled off what they say they pulled off? I don't know. The way that Fanatics is set up, there's like a waiting room and all kinds of things, but anything's possible in theory. Correct me if I'm wrong, Jason, but they were bragging that they got the vast majority of the direct drop, correct? Say it again. That person was bragging that they got the vast majority of the direct drop. It was a bot software advertising. They got the large majority. It came out to like, I can't remember, it was 560 cases worth, I think was the number. It's both. It's both? Okay. So there's Cooper Flag Pro Uni. They're basically getting Cooper in one more year in con. It was really smart. But there's no like current college players in that class. No, there are. Oh, there are? Okay. Okay. The base checklist will run 200 cards and NCAA players will make up an additional 100 card prospect set. Okay. Cool. So it is both, but they were able to find another way to get rookie on another rookie in there. Yeah. So it's smart on their part. It's going to make it a way more breakable product and a more likely product to go over MSRP. The fact that it is pro uni on the vets is really interesting to me because that's just in line with baseball. So essentially it's a similar vision if this is what it's going to be going forward to what's already going on with baseball. Is that fair? Well, or at least Bowman Chrome baseball. Well, but no, because there's no college uni guys in that stuff. I think you're missing everything I'm saying. Yes, there are. Since when? In basketball. In basketball. Yes, but that doesn't line up with baseball. They wear minor league unis. That's my point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. Is this because you were really wrong about the product checklist that you're getting in the weeds here? I said that I could be wrong about the product checklist. I owned that on the front end. Came in pretty strong. Came in pretty strong. But my point I want to make about this is that just like baseball, it is prospects and pros. It is very consistent like that. Yes. Yep. So this bot does a post or this bot software is saying, hey, we snagged all this stuff up. Here's the problem. Here's what Gary and I really want to dive into. So Fanatics has made it very clear that they are making an emphasis and a push to have more direct to consumer options. The other thing that's very clear is they're not in a hurry to open new direct accounts for LCS is so much to the point where they have verbalized, hey, for the rest of this year, none. And we're likely to shut a few down. I know in Ohio, that was the conversation. And even a month and a half ago, in one of the Fanatics meetings with all the LCS owners, it was stated, if anybody is thinking about opening a shop and brings it up to you, discourage them because we're not going to approve that. So Fanatics has said, we want this to be more accessible. We're going to put this in Dick's Sporting Goods. We're going to make it available online, direct to consumer. And the really nice stuff, only some LCSs are going to get cases of it. Most of the stuff's going to go to the breakers because they're happy paying whatever we say, because they're going to get over it. Am I missing anything there yet? No, I think you're summarizing the situation pretty well. So the question that I have, the discussion I want to have is if we're getting stories of these bots that are buying up everything that's supposed to be direct to consumer, and the LCS is getting nowhere close to the same amount of options that they had when distributors were a thing with licensed product, is this actually direct to consumer? Or have they created a bigger problem for themselves? I think that Fanatics' commitment to having more available direct to consumer, in their minds, is taking place in two ways. One, they are releasing more product direct through their website with their drops than they have in the past. However, they don't seem to be combating bots very well. The other half of that, though, in their minds is they are making retail SKUs much more available. And let's be frank, how many people who we see at shows on a weekly basis are wanting to or able to rip $800 to $1,000 hobby boxes of this stuff? But they can rip $80 Megas, $70 Megas, $40 Blasters. And that stuff, Fanatics is making, the LCSs that have direct accounts can get as much retail stuff as they want. Right? Why do they not want more retail than they're getting? Why does the LCS feel like, man, just, so let's chop this up a little bit. Sure. They're getting that instead of what they used to get. Instead of the real product. That sucks. Instead of what everybody in the local, and here's the thing. If they cared that these bots are, I'm saying this like such an old person, like they're actual just robots walking around. I don't think that, but I still don't understand how they work. Both things can be true. If people using this software to scoop everything up the moment it drops, right, are creating a lack of availability for the direct-to-consumer you advertised, it's almost like if there was a local institution that represented the community that was entrusted with the direct allocation of hobby product, had the opportunity to make it available to their local community, that would be a way of ensuring the local ecosystem and the consumer has the opportunities to access those products. But then you'd have to give profit to the shop owners and give them a little bit more money. I agree with you. I agree with you. But I will also say the counterpoint to that is this, and this is more devil's advocate than anything else. If Topps was going to say, hey, Fanatix was going to say, hey, no more website drops. Everything's going to be allocated to dealers. Are you also okay with Topps saying to shop owners, yes, LCS owners. We're going to have two channels, one to breakers, one just for LCS owners. There's no more direct-to-consumer. Would you be okay, and I would be, if Fanatix said, oh, by the way, LCS, the MSRP is $599. If you sell it for $600, your account's gone. You have to sell it at MSRP. Would you be okay with that? That's an easy question for me to answer, but I don't own a shop. But I think that that's one of the things that Fanatix is trying to combat. They saw what happened with Panini products over the last four or five years, where everybody just said what the manufacturer says is the price is imaginary and we don't care. It's $599 a box, but no, it's $1,200 and that's just how it is. One of the things I think Fanatix is trying to accomplish, whether they're succeeding or not is irrelevant, but I think one of the things they're trying to accomplish is an SRP is an SRP, at least on the first run of product. Is that the finish of that thought because I don't want to cut you off? Yes. No, you're good. That's the problem though, Gary, and that's what led to where we are now. A year ago, shop owners were buying this product and they were being told, hey, here's where we want you to be. They weren't enforcing it like you're saying, but saying, here's where we want you to be. And then they would say, okay, well for the last 20 forever years, not that many, last five, seven, 10, 15 years, I have been able to get six cases of Heritage. And they said, okay, we're going to send you one and then in a month you'll have a chance to reorder. And at the time that you do that, we're going to undercut that price suggestion direct on our website and you can buy for the same amount as all the consumers. Yeah, no, I'm with you there. Like I said, there's structural issues with how it functions. One of the things that happened and we've talked about this before. And if somebody has more expert experience in this, and there's something I'm saying that's off, please let us know. I don't want to just run off the mouth and that's not true, but that really seems to be the case for a lot of this stuff. One of the things that happened early in the COVID boom is that the manufacturers and the distributors decided that they were no longer actually interested in being manufacturers and distributors. They were much more interested in being retailers. It used to be that everybody had their lane, the manufacturer manufactured cards and sold them at wholesale to a distributor who then sold them at wholesaler to a retailer. A typical chain of action, just like any retail environment. And then the end user had both the opportunity for the most gain and to be able to buy at a reasonable price. Early in COVID, Panini and their distributors saw that the secondary market was flying on this stuff and they said, oh no, no, no, no, no. We're not okay with the LCS and the end user making the majority of the money. We need to be making the majority of the money. And so they changed an entire structure that had been in existence for 50 years, 60 years up to that point to where all of the risk and very little of the gain got pushed out to the end user. Like I know this is hard to believe for a lot of folks that have only been in the hobby for the last five or six years, but you used to be able to buy a hobby box and probably get a 60 to 70% return on average. And you'd have the opportunity for a 10X return. But to me, the peak of the insanity of this was 2021 Prism football. When that product dropped, it went to $1,200 a box almost instantly, which was crazy though. Two years before, Prism was a $200 box forever. The product hit like outside of the one of ones and of tens and stuff, but like the best cards you were likely to hit was a Mack Jones of 99 auto, right? Like that was your best case scenario on a $1,200 box outside of case hits and things like that. If you hit that card, you took a 30% loss on your box. It was an $800 to $1,000 card. People started doing the math and doing content around that. I'm like, okay, you got close to the product hit and you lost 600 bucks. And that's when breaking had been around for a while, but that's when the fractional side of things really started to take off. Because if you wanted a shot at that card, you could buy the Patriots. We're not going to fix the problem. We're not going to fix the problem. We're going to transfer it somewhere else. We're just going to make it less painful. Yeah. We're going to outsource that. Instead of losing $700 on your box, single box. You can lose it 200 at a time. You can lose it 200 times on a case. Yeah. Exactly. 200. Right. Yeah. So that was kind of the genesis of where we find ourselves. Now I do believe, one of the things I do think is true, and you're going to have people out there that think I'm an idiot for saying this, but as somebody who's run multiple businesses in my life, fanatics does have a long game. It matters to them that this is a sustainable business model, mostly because of how much money they had to pay to consolidate everything. So it matters that this is sustainable long-term. So they really, I promise you, they are thinking about all of these things. I agree. And it's a game of what's the lesser of evils that allows us to see a return on this investment over the next 15 years, not how fast can we make money this quarter? That's not their main thought process. We may disagree with their choices, but the reality of it is this, breaking isn't slowing down. Mm-hmm. Well, let's time out. So their lesser of evil choice around breaking was, there are so many skews of products that are very desirable to the hobby buyer that has money, we didn't make those as available to the consumer. We made them more available to the breaking accounts because that is where they can ask for the most and still give meat on the bone to the consumer, and they're not going to complain because if they can charge you over cost or over their expense, significantly regardless of what MSRP is, then they're set with that. Yes. But you still have the ability as a consumer, if you want to go rip series one, you can go buy hobby boxes at a reasonable price, you can pay $160 for a hobby box. And it's not like, now yes, are you probably going to take a bath most of the time? Sure. But Fanatics also has done a really good job of doing some cool stuff. There's still a redemption floating around out there in 2026 hobby boxes. I don't disagree with that. Somebody yesterday in Lancaster down at Cards on 6, shout out to Brian, in Lancaster, Ohio, they opened a hobby box in his shop and it had a redemption card for a $7,500 gift card for Fanatics in it for the 75th anniversary, and there's a lot of those out there. Yeah. Even in the retail SKUs, Tops Chrome Basketball, very desirable set this year, going to be an iconic set, I think for a long time, I've seen absolute bangers coming out of retail stuff. Now it's not the $50,000 cards, but I've seen multiple $10,000 cards. Yes. Yes. And no. So here's, yes, you have. And yes, we've seen them at shows, but you know what you haven't seen? The other 5 billion people that ripped through blasters and got dog crap, because they're not walking up to your table and saying, Hey, you want to buy this? In every speculative space, there's going to be, there has to be that for the bangers to have value. It's the same argument. I agree with that. What I'm saying is I'm not so convinced that they're showering the consumers of retail with so many more blessings now than it was happening before. No, they're not showering it. But the point is, is that it's not like you don't have an opportunity at good stuff. Now, are they, are they very obviously funneling product hits and, and juice stuff to the big breaker accounts? Yes. And if you don't think that's real, then you're not paying attention. It's just math. It's obvious. It's just math. Yes. Yeah. It's, it's obvious that that's happening, but you know what is also obvious? It's smart business. Yeah. They want to see, they want people to see that. Yes. It's smart business. It's also, if it's happening really shady. Yeah. No, I, I, I, and I would, I would agree that. I would not argue it's smart if it's happening intentionally. I think down the road that could lead to some issues. If I'm, if I'm building a, if I'm building a product and I want to get the most bang for my advertising buck, am I better off having a influencer with 10 million followers show that product off or going to 200 that have 2000 followers each? I think we'll be able to answer that question with a deposition interview in the next five years. That's fair. I really do. I think some of this, it's like in and of itself, that one thing, this thing, that thing's on issue. I think some of these things combined create more of an issue. But the contrast between this approach for direct to consumer and the fact that this is the second or third time people were waiting in queues for like an hour to get a box of something and it's like, nope, these two things, these two guys bought it all up. It's all gone. It's all gone. So they need to acknowledge that this is happening and it's a problem and they're trying to fix it. Yeah. Um, but it seems like they're just going to push more consumers to retail or breaks. That's really where they want it to live. Yeah. Well, it simplifies, I don't disagree with you, but from a business standpoint, it makes sense. It simplifies their life. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, the counter argument on all of this, like, I know it's been brought up a million times, but the resale market does communicate something. Yeah. So on some of these products, you know, the product dropped at 500 bucks and within two days it's selling for $1,100 all day. That's an $1,100 box of cards. Yeah. And the, and the Trump card counter argument to all this is if you don't like it, buy singles. Yeah. Like that's the Trump card. Way less downside. Yeah. Yeah. Just buy singles. Yeah. Yep. So, uh, we talked about people not being negative and then we did that for 45, 50 minutes. Uh, but hopefully you understand where we're coming from on this. This is something, the direct to consumer approach, we need to step it forward. What are we going to do about the bots? What are we going to do about, uh, LCS is not quite having the same access to some of this stuff. Um, and then also like FNAX is dropping a cool product. Um, and, uh, Keith's going to talk about it here in just a minute, but they dropped this like beginner's kit. It comes with a binder sleeves, top loaders and like six or eight packs and some of it's the new basketball, like that type of stuff communicates, Hey, this is a, we're trying to evangelize the hobby. I love that kind of stuff that they're doing. I just want to see people like Bowman basketball should be an accessible product online. And I still wish that they would, they did it two, three years ago, uh, with a tops flagship with the golden mirror parallels. I sure wish that they would create promotions that reward set building. I like Madden does. Yeah. I wish they would create promotions that reward a set building. They've done little bits of things like they did that golden mirror one. I don't think anybody completed it, but it was at least there as a challenge. Um, they do it with the MVP buybacks, but if, if you create something like say it's home field advantages, if you complete the entire home field advantage set, you send it into us. We verify that it's the whole set. We're going to give it a special stamp and send it back to you. Like set number two 63 was completed and the first 500 get that. And then when we send it back to you, you're going to get a jumbo box. Like we're going to say like something like that, that rewards, uh, the activity that keeps the hobby growing and somebody had to buy a lot of cards to build it. Yes. Whether it's singles or they bought boxes, like there should be something for completing the whole set. I don't think it's anything crazy, but I think there should be, if you can complete the full run, like master set series one through update and you can submit that somehow there should be rewards there. I think that's good. And again, they did this with the, the MVP buyback is a really smart strategy for a lot of that. So I do see those efforts. Um, but we've got to figure out what is this direct to consumer actually mean? Um, does it just mean we want big box at real tailors and we want really tight margins and we want them to keep us competitive with our website and the storefront feels like that. It feels like that. Well, we've said for a while, what it really feels like is they want all the benefits of the franchises, but none of the downside of having franchisees. Yeah. Yeah. Having said that, I opened a big boy box this week. Yeah, you did. I don't know if I'm going to do that again. So you had the experience that opened a gilded box, a beautiful product, beautiful product. I think it's like five cards, uh, got a good deal on the box. Um, and I got a really good deal on the box. So yeah, I leave that there. Where'd you open that box at new heart cards? Delaware, Ohio. Let's head up to Delaware. Let's head up to Delaware. Is that what you're trying to get me to do? I was trying to, all right. All right. Yeah. Hey, and actually Keith has two products. and kind of show both ends of the spectrum of new stuff that's dropping right now and give us very honest Keith opinion. Let's head to Newhart Cards. Hi, this is Keith at Newhart Cards and this is Shop Talk. We're gonna talk about something we usually don't talk about. We're just gonna do a couple of product reviews here really quick, just to kind of give you an idea of maybe some of the stuff that's coming in that maybe either you don't follow or you don't pay attention to. So let's get right after it. This is probably one of Panini's last technically licensed products, all right? So it is Prism Black Football. Sounds awesome. Three autographs, say an extra autograph. Sounds great, right? No, not so much. So for $850, you can get either retired veteran cards or NIL guys. So you're not getting Drake May, Bo Nicks. Heck, you're not even getting Derrick Henry, right? You're getting LeGarrette Blanatos. You're getting Eddie Lacey autographs for 800 bucks. So it seems like a good deal. It is not, it's a horrible product. We have plenty to sell if you're interested. So come and check us out. Sorry about that, Jason. Next up, we'll kind of give you the opposite end of that spectrum, right? And we're gonna do Topps Official Collector's Kit. So these are kind of interesting. They're gonna be about 50 bucks, which is gonna be a pretty good deal. So, but inside you get two packs of series one baseball, you get a heritage pack, and then the cool stuff happens, right? You get two Topps basketball packs and one Chrome basketball pack. And then they're gonna give you some supplies. So you're gonna get a mini binder, you're gonna get some top loads, a mag and some penny sleeves. So this is kind of Topps, I guess, putting out the branch, the olive branch saying, hey, we have two and $3,000, I've got gilded boxes, but for 50 bucks, we're gonna make an entry level product. I think this is a really good idea. Fanatics does a lot of things wrong, as you know, from some of our videos, but they do a lot right as well. So I think this is a great idea. So again, we don't really do product reviews, but these are two opposite ends of the spectrum. I felt like today was a good day to kind of do that. So again, you have any questions, drop a question in our Discord, come to the shop, email us, call us, whatever you have to do, we're always available. So again, this is Keith at Newhart Cards, and this has been Shop Talk. All right, so I mentioned it a minute ago, but I do think that those little kits they're putting together for people are kind of cool. Good way to get in, check out the space without Fanatics shoving like an expensive product on you. I thought that was a cool idea, and Keith did not hold back on the Prism Black. He's like, hey, I mean, if you want an $800 LeGarrette Blunt Auto, great product. He got me laughing, I couldn't help it, I'm sorry. All right, what do we have coming up? So this weekend we are in Daleville, Indiana. Come say hi to us. At the Bronco Bash, yep, there's gonna be a lot of people there. I didn't know who all was coming, but this week on social I've been seeing And that is if you're watching this on Friday when the episode drops, that is today and tomorrow. Yep, Friday, Saturday. Daleville is close to Muncie, Anderson area, so. Yep, 27th and 28th of March. We'll be there for that. Whatnot, quick reminder, every Sunday at 4.30 we are live, we're in a singles, got a lot of fun stuff, a lot of baseball this week. Yep, it's the right time for it. The right time for it, a lot of fun baseball, a lot of really low-numbered stuff. I know there's like a weird Aiden Hutchinson to five and some cool stuff in there. That's not baseball. That's a football card, but still a good name. It's also a really cool card in there. Jose Canseco, Auto Slab, some fun stuff like that. So be sure to check that out. We now do pre-bids on our Wednesday and Sunday shows so you can see what's available. And people talk about sellers pushing and trying to get over comp and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah We put pre-bids up because we want to eliminate the possibility of that ever. If you like a card, you can put a pre-bid in, leave, find out four days later, did I win the card for the amount I wanted to spend after you comp it. We're trying to do that for you and just so you have an informed decision. You know who else does that? Clever Cuban. Yeah, chill out. Leave Alex alone. Leave Alex alone! I'm sorry, if somebody's ripping on somebody and they have a reason for it, I'm all about it. But when it's like this, it's like, this is silly. Well, the thing is, there's things about everybody that you can find a rip on. There's plenty of stuff you can rip on for us. Rip on those things. Don't rip on stuff that there's no basis for. You build this business by itself and it's successful. Yeah, that's the worst. Don't you guys hate that? It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. He put that out by himself. He owes it to me. All right. The next three weeks after this week, guys, hit the like and subscribe button. Hit that notification bell on YouTube because you don't want to miss the next three episodes. Big John Eisner, Mario from Mars Cards in Cleveland, and Jacob from Whiffle Breakers will be joining the Ball Card Show when I tell you that you are going to have knowledge dropped on you. You're going to have situations that maybe you didn't understand how they worked clarified in ways that you're just going to go, oh, I'm not exaggerating in the least. There's so much quality, actionable content that you're going to see over the next three episodes. I will be on a boat. I won't even be thinking about y'all. I love you, but I won't even be thinking about you. I'm just going to be reading and writing and sleeping and eating. You'll be thinking about me, Gary. I mean, I imagine we'll talk and text a few times throughout that. You wish, bro. It's a vacation for me too. I'm just kidding. This has been the Ball Card Show, the Esports Podcast. For the Esports Collector. Bye now. Peace.