Is All Card Content Equal? S6 Ep35

This episode of the ball card show is brought to you by our friends at Pristine Auction, where items are guaranteed authentic for the entire time you own it. Not just at the one-of-one not just while the cert holds. If you own it, Pristine stands behind it for a limited time. Take advantage of $20 off your first auction when you register with the code ballcard. one-of-one the real thing. Pristine Auction. That would be a bridge too far for I, I think, anybody's sensibilities. Hello and welcome to the ball cart show, the sports podcast for the esports collector. I'm Jason otero. I'm Gary Lemaster. And this is season six, episode 35, two weekends in a row without a show. I got to relax. Gary. I did not. No, Gary did not. It was more draining than a show. Like a two day show weekend. My daughter's baby shower was on Saturday and it was awesome. But anyone who knows my wife knows that it was not just a small gathering of close friends and the ladies in my daughter's life. That's not how these things go. It was a full blown, like, themed thing. I think we had about 40 or 50 people there. How many pounds of meat did you smoke up? About 35 or 40. Yu-Gi-Oh It was a piece, you know, a whole lot of brisket, a whole lot of pulled pork, made some egg salad. It was a farmer's market theme and so you can imagine. Yu-Gi-Oh How much egg salad did you intentionally over make for this particular situation? I tried to over make. It didn't. It was all gone. It might have been more popular than the pulled pork was. It wasn't more popular than the brisket, but it might have been more popular than the pulled pork. But my wife, for a week and a half or two leading up to this, bought every vegetable in quantity that you can possibly imagine. And it was all the decoration for this themed party. Decorative vegetables. Oh, no. It gets even better. Because they went from being decorative to the party favor was that everybody got a shopping bag and got to go shop the farmers market to just take things home with them that they wanted to, which was a cool, cool thing. It wasn't cool for my wallet, but it was cool overall. Elizabeth loved it. We appreciated everybody that came out well. That's what matters. By the end of that day, I wanted to sleep for a week. It was a lot. You got a group text that was work related and didn't respond and that you're the most like, workaholic person I've ever worked. Like the chances of you not responding. I was like, I'm actually proud. It was like not that late. Like it was a time normally replies like he's wiped. Yu-Gi-Oh I was like it was a day. But Yu-Gi-Oh congrats to Liz and Alec and little one on the way. Sepia, Soon Grandpa, soon. Yu-Gi-Oh That's awesome. I had a nice weekend with the family. Birthdays all around. My wife and my son. My son. Yu-Gi-Oh 17. Yu-Gi-Oh Welcome to the old folks club, bro. Does not feel possible but we had a, we had a nice time, had family out, had a nice little get together fun time. This week we are back to the grind. We have three eBay live shows. At the point where this one drops, it's not too, this episode drops. It's not too late to still catch us for our third show Friday night. Late what time, Gary? It'll be tonight at 10pm Eastern Time Eastern. 10pm Eastern Friday night we will be running a show as well. And then Sunday Grove City Card Fest and then we're kind of off to the races again with our schedules. It's a little wacky for about October. October is a little, a little longer than that. But I think clear into November we're, we're a little bit busy there, but we have that coming up. I wanted to start off with a little bit of hobby news. We don't do this as often anymore and I'll tell you why for those of you wondering. Because we used to just cover stories and do reactions for the first 20 to 30 minutes of episodes. We felt like a lot of content out there and ours was becoming was just so heavily emphasizing reaction to hobby news. And I think sometimes that definitely is merited. Right. But I think there's other times where people are just reacting to reactions and if we're trying to bring as much value as possible reactions all the way down, our opinion is that we're going to try to make sure to balance that out with more value than just crazy criticism. Even though sometimes criticism is a really healthy response to things going on. But when I saw the release of this Topps Chrome Black digital pack that you can rip but you own them and you can vault them and they're real and they're not NFTs and the price point, I thought it was a very interesting conversation. Definitely worth one diving into not brand new news. By now we're recording this, we're four days behind the news cycle. So you're getting this a little late, but I still think it's worth a discussion. So Gary, explain people your understanding. From what I get, there's traditionally in Topps Chrome black. Is it three or four packs in a box? Four. It's a three three pack box. Three pack figuration. You can buy one pack for a hundred dollars. You can buy up to six packs a day and there is a limit on how many packs a day you can buy. So essentially you could buy two hobby boxes worth of this. My understanding is every pack is guaranteed a parallel or an auto and. Yu-Gi-Oh so, so let's. That's. That's what, that's what the general public knows. Let's dive in. How do you feel about this? What do you think about this? What were your first thoughts? It's a very interesting concept. My first thought was Fanatics is trying to do something new which I think there's a lot of merit to. If, if they're seeing the success that repacks have with this digital rip and vault approach, why not apply it to what you have now? Now the, the back end challenges of it are a whole different animal. But at the end of the day for the consumer they're able to buy these at half the price of what the secondary market has taken this product to already. It's a 5 to 600 product per box now. Which by the way not a good product. Right. At all. I think Mike said on SCN last week that he thought it should be 150 product. I don't think it's quite that bad. But it's not good. Right. So the, the auto checklist is Zebra deep with a lot of non. You guys remember a few years ago when, when Panini started putting some really bad names in really high end products like Flawless and nt. You would get like the random Kelly Tripuka Auto. Like there's those kind of names in this product. So the concept is, is fine. I really like the fact that they put some limits on it. I imagine that was much more to do with just physical stock availability than it was trying to curb people's gambling appetites. But either way the end result is it does at least put a hard stop on a daily limit for people. That may have an issue there, but I don't hate it. I'm very interested to see if they extend this out to other products and whether this is a concerted effort on their part to try to curb the secondary market inflation. Yu-Gi-Oh I think one of the merits to this approach is that I have to give credit that it is making hobby product more accessible. The price point does make sense for a lot of people. What's really interesting to me as I began to think about this More and more is after Fanatics has rolled out the no fees on exchanges within the platform, you'll have the opportunity to vault it. Is this going to be a shot in the arm to that marketplace on singles? Because fresh stuff stays hot for a little bit. So how long would I be waiting if I want them? Do they have to go to the vault first and then I can get them at home? What's the turnaround if I'm wanting to sell them now, from my understanding, unless I'm completely missing something, correct me if you know I'm wrong. There is no buyback option on anything that you open out of this product. No. That is a distinctive from a lot of the other digital repack space that you see is a cash out option right away. That would be a bridge too far for I, I think anybody's sensibilities like the manufacturer offering to buy back the singles direct from the consumer is probably a bridge too far for anybody in the space. So let's talk about the supply and demand, maybe more of the logistics. The supply chain here you're talking about just inventory that is available stock that people can readily find. Right. So I don't know how many cases of this are going to move, but I'm going to guess it's a bajillion cases that move with this format immediately. Thinking of who's impacted by it, I want to know who is affected. Is this affecting the allocation of the LCs? Is this affecting the allocation of breakers? Is this simply affecting the secondary market to some degree? Who's going to be impacted by the fact that now there's a direct to consumer option, packing out hobby boxes, essentially what we're doing here. Yes and no. You're not actually packing out skewed hobby boxes. That's a really important thing to understand about how this process works. There's no way to do that. They would literally have to have somebody on camera somewhere ripping the pack as you digitally rip it. What they're doing is they're taking a, a print run X amount of the print run. And these are the cards that are available in this. They're putting them into a database and then they're randomizing, pulling three of those a time from that database and assigning them to somebody. So these are not like collated, random collation Beckett out products. This is a whole separate part of the print run that has its own skew just for this. And it's just literally raw cards in bins that are assigned a data number in a data set. And it's that data set is then randomized and then somebody from Fanatics is going and pulling those cards out. So should the pack odds be consistent with whatever the hobby skus would say? Well, one would think they should be, but I don't know whether they are. By, by your logic though, it shouldn't impact that in any way because they're just taking a sex. Correct. Yu-Gi-Oh so. So if, if that product was going to be shipped out and now that it's not, who's being impacted by it? Because the consumer is likely to be, especially on a product like this. Like I would see pretty. If I. If I'm an NBA person, I might not want that box at 300 bucks. 4, 5, $600. Well, I mean I could buy a pack or two. Yu-Gi-Oh Assuming. Assuming that everything is done via true randomization of a collation set, which is what Tops has always done for years and what Fanatics says that they do, then it shouldn't impact pack odds. But what it does impact is at least in the short term, sell through at secondary market prices. Because to your point, if I can buy the equivalent of a hobby box for $300 online and then have to pay 15 bucks to have the card shipped to me, right. I'm in that for 315. But at my LCS, these are 585 or 550 or 500 bucks. Why would I do that? Unless I just want to keep it sealed for some reason, which I guess there's merit to that too. There are people who collect sealed wax or invest in sealed wax. This is not something that can be an endless stream of cards though. Right. Once that, once that skew set, once that part of the print run that was pulled for this purpose is gone. Yu-Gi-Oh it's gone. That'll be the end of it. A concern would be if we begin to see massive product hits coming out of this. Because you're going to feel, you're going to feel a sense of from the breakers, from the players from the LCS is they're going to Bowman, I'd sure left for these to come out of boxes that one of us own. Well there somebody buys them. If Fanatics is going to do this, there should be massive product hits that come out of this occasionally. Like if it's going to be a real skew. Yu-Gi-Oh you're right. Then that needs to happen. We've talked about this ad nauseam, but it's worth noting. Like yes, we have been very free with criticizing if Fanatics does something that we don't like or that doesn't make sense. But I think that we've seen a couple of moves from Fanatics recently that seem to be a real attempt to try to reign in the inflation of the secondary market and they deserve credit for that because we can't cry and scream and one-of-one and moan that the secondary market prices are too high and breakers are charging too much and then also yell at Tops when they try to do something to change that. This is a way for people to get into this product at MSRP at a reasonable price point. It isn't going to last for very long. I don't think that, that you might get a week of that activity with the limits that they have in place maybe two weeks before that section of the SKU is emptied out. But at least it gives people an option to get in affordably. If they start to do this with Topps Chrome and with Pristine and with higher end products as a way to try to combat that very fast inflation of the secondary market where MSRP is 400 bucks. But day two it's a thousand dollars in shops. We should be praising them for that. That should be something that we are saying. Thank you to them for not criticizing. Oh, now the breakers aren't getting the hits. Who gives a crap if the breakers get the hits? End of the day we want those going to collectors. Don't disagree. By the way, I'll remind you, this is our show. You just did that like it was a one minute take one-of-one This is not the other one. Which one-of-one one random thought of something I think is going to happen that is Zebra djenny car wise and I can't wait for people to get caught doing this. But there is not going to be anything stopping people from doing a break of a product that they would not be able to get in hobby now and splitting it up amongst viewers like I mean this stuff out screen recording, like is it convenient? No, but it also is something. It's gonna. Hey, tell me that's not gonna hit Whatnot at some point. Well, we're gonna see that. But as soon as Fanatics sees it they'll, they'll shut that person. But that get to not one out there trying to get wax. Like oh if I just had some boxes, man, I got these guys ready to break, you know, with their Facebook group. Right? They're going to try that. They're going to try, they'll try. Getting the cards is going to take a while. It's gonna, it's gonna take a little bit one-of-one I would give this an overall thumbs up. I think it is innovation. I think it is attempting to do something about that secondary market. Do I think it yields that result? No, I don't. I think there's a. The entertainment factor of the break that keeps people paying more. It's just been shown until something stops that it's going to continue, in my opinion. But I can think of a lot of products where it's an interesting product. And at a fraction knowing that you get the whole pack, people may be more interested. It scratches the fractional itch just a little bit for some people without them having the risk of, you know, you know, getting a nothing. It's a lot easier to. To take an $80 hit to the teeth than it is a $450 hit to the teeth. That's true. That's true. All right, next thing I want to do here is jump over to an interview with a legend in the space. Somebody's been doing this for longer than you or I have. Gary with Greeny Sports Cards about an upcoming show. We're really excited to Whatnot and to pick his brain a little bit more about the space in general. We are excited today to have Steve Greenberg from Greeny Sports Cards on the show with us. Steve, welcome to the ball card show. It's been a long time coming. I'm finally glad to be a guest on this show. I appreciate it, guys. Well, you and I have known each other for. For several years. You have been promoting shows in the Midwest for how long now? But as long as you've had that beard? I think my first show was early 2000. Some somewhere in there. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh As I say, it's got to at least 20 years. I used to write it all down, you know, by hand. Now everything's on my. My Google sheets. Well, I wonder where those are. You wouldn't be surprised to know that a lot of promoters still just do everything by hand in a notebook, which is wild to me with everything that happens at a show. But listen, people are creatures of habit. There's. I'm sure there's. There's promoters that have been doing this way longer than me that probably write it on note cards and things of that. Sure. I always. I always chuckle when I get the random promoter that's like, yes, send this here to an AOL address or whatever else it is. So, I mean, Yu-Gi-Oh it took us a lot to stop writing it down, and we created these Google sheets, and now we have a form that people fill out. I mean, we still do email. We still do a lot that way. But it, it took some getting used to to come into the, the new wave of, you know, Google forms and sheets and all sorts of that. But it does keep you a little bit more organized and streamlined, right? Absolutely. There you go. How many shows do you think you've done in the last 25 years promoted? Steve, what do you think? 12. It's churning in here. I mean it's, it's in. It's a couple hundred easily. I was gonna say you do at least 10 a year that I'm aware of, right? Oh, I sometimes do 10amonth. It's a lot. I know. So this year alone I think there's 32 next year so far our calendar has over 40 on it. Yu-Gi-Oh that's amazing. And one of the things I've always appreciated about the way you and your team promote shows is you do. One of the main reasons we have any on today is to promote a large show that you're doing a three day, but you'll do everything from that kind of show all the way down to a little 40 table show every single month. It in what appears to be a really con. Concerted effort to serve every different community within the space. Is that something that you guys really take into account when you're planning? Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, yes and no. I mean we, we've. The Kirtland show is the one you're, you're mentioning, which you've been to. It's in a little senior center and little Kirtland, Ohio. And it's one of those, you know, every year we're like, okay, Kirtland, it's, it is just one of those shows that is just great for the community. And we're like, there's just. You can't get rid of a little 40 table show. The community loves it. We're not asking somebody from Oregon to fly into that show. Right. We have a little five mile radius of, of moms and dads that bring their kids to that show. And it's just a, it's a fun show. And Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh we, we take that just as serious as we do the, the Mountain State Collectors Convention, which is coming up in a couple weeks. Yep. When you look at the, the development and the growth in this space, obviously there's a lot going on right now. That's no surprise anybody's watching a sports card podcast. Right. But the show scene has absolutely exploded in growth over the last few years. And I mean in the last two in the Midwest especially, it feels like there are more shows now than Ever before. What are some of the biggest differences you'd say, you see now when you're promoting a show? Maybe it's factors you have to consider that even 10 years ago were not as much of a consideration. Like, what has changed as a promoter in the show scene for you? Yu-Gi-Oh So, I mean, there's. There's a bunch, Right. Obviously, we can talk about how TCG runs a lot of shows, but it used to be where I would. I would set my dates for the year. I would put ads, paid ads in the newspaper. Right. Because there was no Facebook. Now there was no social media. So video. I've done that forever. Now anybody can make an Yu-Gi-Oh Fleer posted in a Facebook group with 30, 000 people and they're a show promoter. Right? And people see it and they flock to their shows. I mean, it's. I'm not making fun. Like, it's just. It's. It is. It's so different than, you know, I. I would have to. I'd have to schedule my shows out. I'd have to contact my rep at the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the News Herald, and every Thursday or whatever day, there was a collectible section every week, and I'd have to. Whatever it was. 250 bucks. I can't even remember. But, like, that's how I would get the word out. Or, you know, we. Email was starting, right. So I would do that. I had phone numbers, and I would call people. Like, it's. It is so different today to promote a show. I guess promote's not even really the right word to, like, start a show, I guess, and. And get people to come, because it is more. It does take more than just a Facebook post. I mean, there. There is a lot that. That really goes into it, and the. The dynamics of. Of creating the room and. And the flow of the traffic. People don't. Don't understand some of those little nuances. And. Yu-Gi-Oh you know, we'll. We'll see. Right? Yu-Gi-Oh I. I think you're right that there's a lot of people that get excited about the idea of starting a show but continuing to do a show successfully. That's a whole. That's a whole different thing from starting a show because you're right, the. You know, we joke around about it, the Yu-Gi-Oh Graphics everywhere, which, man, it's. It can be a powerful tool, but sometimes it's so much noise that not a lot stands out. One thing that I've noticed is that when people bring up the Greeny name, there are relationships attached to that. People that have been in the space for more than just a minute. And I think that there's a little secret sauce there that maybe some young promoters have. What does it take for those relationships to cultivate where you have that kind of brand loyalty with the show? Because I think, you know, when I think of promoters that have established a brand in that, you're, you're towards the top of that list with the type of retention you have with vendors, the reputation, what does it take to build that? Obviously, time. But what are some of those other factors you'd encourage a young promoter? Maybe they have the work ethic. They just don't know. Hey, I'm missing out on this. What are some things you've learned over the years? It, I think it takes more effort to not respond to somebody than it does to respond. Right. You hear a lot of times, man, if I could just get that promoter to respond to me, whether email, text, call, like it, you see the message coming in, just respond to them. Right. It's not, it's not difficult and just getting them to entrust you. Right. Like, it's, it's easy. People ask all the time, well, how much traffic do you get get at your shows? And I, and I always, like, listen, I, I, the next show could have zero people. I don't know. Right. But 20 years worth of doing shows tell somebody's going to show up next week. So that's what I just tell them, like, we're going to get more than one person through the door. Right? It's, it's. But I get that question. A lot of, well set up at your show, but how much traffic do you get? You know, I wish I knew the answer. How many people were going to come? It's, it's worked. People have come every single time. Yu-Gi-Oh but it's taken 20 years to get people to come through the door. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Well, we've got a, we've got a show that Gary and I are Zebra excited about joining you for here in a couple of weeks down in wonderful, wild West Virginia. Why don't you tell us a little bit about this show coming up on the 18th to the 20th. Yu-Gi-Oh Of September. So, Yu-Gi-Oh September 18th through 20th, we are in Charleston, West Virginia, which again, you're going to say, man, Charleston, West Virginia. I'm going to do a show down there. When you get there and you see this building, it's the convention center right Downtown. It's beautiful. The room is awesome. The city is terrific. The people that work in the convention center are Great. They love having us there. Literally, the, the hotel that, that most people stay in is right across the street. And then you can literally walk Downtown to the restaurants and eat dinner if you want to catch a 30 birds baseball. They're in independently, they're. They're down there. It's just, it's a great little town. It always seems to amaze us. We find something different every time we're down there. And then the people love the show, right? The, the. All the people that show up just are so thankful that there's a large show in their community. And, you know, we bring people in. I think there's like seven different states going to be represented this time. Look forward September 18th through the 20th. That's really cool. Yu-Gi-Oh we, we kept hearing people said, you got to get down to the West Virginia. I mean, I can't tell you how many times somebody said greeny West Virginia show people were throughout the whole year. So as soon as we saw something go up, we said, we got to jump on this. I know some of our friends will be down there. Keith's going to be coming down. So if some of you that enjoy the podcast that want to run in Keith, if that show's close by, you'll get to say hey to him and try to lowball the crap out of him on something out of his showcase and see how that goes. Yu-Gi-Oh we, we like getting Keith Newhart out of Delaware, Ohio. Sometimes it's not easy to do, but Yu-Gi-Oh we're going to have them. Staff will be there. Gemini Thomas Fisher will be there. And we have key cards, card sharks and so many others that come around. Ga grading. We actually had Leaf. I don't know if you saw. I made a post yesterday, but if I can show this. See this? Yu-Gi-Oh please. This is our promo card that. That leaf made for us. It's got the Mountain State Collectors convention logo. It's Jerry West. It's a promo card. So I don't know, we, we're going to give those to people that Whatnot the show. So that's a great idea. That's a great idea that leaf did for us. And man, we, we just, we can't wait to, to get down there. I get the. The show is one thing, right? I mean, the city again, the restaurants are terrific Downtown. So go out, explore the city. You know, we, we made, I think Friday, 5 o' clock so that people could really go out at Downtown, hang out, have dinner. And in the different. I mean, there's, there's not chain, right? There's a chain. Right. But hit the local restaurants down there and Yu-Gi-Oh you know, see what the city has to offer. Yu-Gi-Oh So as we wrap up here, there's two things we definitely want to talk to you about and make sure that our listeners know about. The first one is your show every Tuesday night. Live, correct? Live, Yu-Gi-Oh Live, Yu-Gi-Oh And for those of you watching, there's a big difference between what we do and going live. We can edit things Steve and his crew can't. And I know that a guest that we've had on that a lot of our listeners really enjoyed, Joe Wismirski joins you every week as well. Tell folks where they can find that show and what it's all about. Yu-Gi-Oh So every Tuesday night, 7pm to 8pm Eastern time, we're live on, on our social media, Greeny Sports Cards on Facebook and on, on X. But we're also on the Big Play Collectibles Network, which is something that we created national time. So it's, it's a vertical on the Big Play Sports Network, which, you know, the, the Big play network has 4.4 million social followers and we now have a vertical on there. The Big Play Collectible. Awesome. So, Yu-Gi-Oh that is every Tuesday night, 7pm to 8pm Eastern time. And we have different guests. We have people in the industry, we have athletes that come on. We have coaches, influencers, hobby promoters. So we just try to make pretty good hobby content for, for everybody. And then Joe Smirsky joins us out of Phoenix. Sports cards. Awesome. And then how else can folks follow you, your shows? And, and you're one of the few promoters who actually sets up as a dealer at a lot of big shows too. So how can people find you for that stuff? Sure, just Greeny Sports Cards on, on everything. Greeny Cards on Twitter. But Greeny Sports Cards is our, it has links to all of our, our Instagram, our YouTube tick tock. I think we're on Twitch maybe, I don't know. But we're, we're learning. We're learning them all and trying to connect with everybody. It's funny. Like, even at some shows, I, I have kids say I see you on TikTok and I'm like, oh, Yu-Gi-Oh I guess I posted on there too. So we're, we're trying, and we're just, with the help of guys like you, we're just trying to, to build the, the hobby content and, and keep people interested in cards. Absolutely. Absolutely. We, we really appreciate you taking some time out of your day. I know, leading up to these big shows. It's really busy, but we want all of our folks to become some of your folks too. And we can't wait to spend a few days with you here in west in just a couple of weeks. Yu-Gi-Oh that'll be fun. You guys have a great spot. People will see you there. Maybe the podcast will be up on our stage as well and get you guys up up there. So Yu-Gi-Oh we look forward to that. September 18th, 19th and 20th in Charleston, West Virginia. So Yu-Gi-Oh thanks guys. We really appreciate it. Thanks, Steve. Have a great rest of your day, man. Thanks. All right, so be sure to join us September 18th to the 20th at the Mountain State Car Collectors Convention down there in Charleston, West Virginia. Gary and I'll be set up there. Keith will be there. You heard a lot of the other names that'll be joining, so definitely come check that out. It's going to be a really fun show. Anything else you have to add to that one, Gary? No, we just appreciate Steve taking some time. It is a. You heard him talk about what their promotion schedule is like. It is a crazy amount of work and effort and energy. So squeezing out 15, 20 minutes to just talk to us. We really appreciate it. Yu-Gi-Oh absolutely. So one of the things that we Tribute in the Discord, which if you did not know it, we do have a discord. If you follow the link in the bio, wherever you're watching this, you'll find the Discord. A couple hundred people in there. We asked randomly, hey, does anybody have any questions? And we had a few pop off today. So Gary, if you're open to it, I'm just going to drop some questions in here and we're going to tear through them together rapid fire these quick answers. Okay. Here at the ball card show, when we decided to partner with Pristine Auction, it's because it felt like such a no brainer. Pristine has gone out of their way to make sure that the entire collector experience is as transparent and seamless and authentic as possible. They offer fast paced live selling auctions where every sale sets a recorded comp. They offer 10 minute auctions where 10 lots go up and you can bid on them for 10 minutes. And they offer traditional daily and weekly auctions as well, if that is more your speed. Most importantly, every item you purchase from Pristine, they stand behind and guarantee to be authentic for the entire time that you own the item. For a limited time. When you register at Pristine and sign up with the code ballcard, you'll get $20 off your first auction one-of-one as well as three months of gold stat as A consigner when the real thing pristine auction. Okay, first question. What, if anything, changes for the way you guys approach shows, live selling, etc, following a market correction? Will the next one be approached differently than the last one was? So what would change in our business if there was a market correction in the next month? Gary, you and I see a massive market correction. What would change? Not a ton. And here's why. We approach this business very differently than most other dealers do. We focus on buying at a margin that makes sense for us. And part of what makes sense for us when we look at how we buy cards is if I need to get out of this card, can I get back what I paid for it or am I going to be forced to take a loss if I need to do that for us, Most market corrections in this space tend to be in the 20 to 25% range. They're not 50 or 80% corrections. Those aren't corrections. Those are crashes. The only, the only time that has happened in my collecting experience was when the junk wax collapse happened. And I know a lot of people are wringing their hands and junk wax. No, we're not. It's not even close. And if that's how you think about the space, I don't know how to have a conversation with you about it because we're not even on the same planet as what that was. So for us, what would change is we would reprice our inventory to likely break even point and then start buying at the same margins we do now in the new environment. Right. Like, is that what you think too? Somewhat. I think the thing that would be very different would be live. Live would be a big shift for us because you still have to be able to source things that people are willing to spend more than you paid for them on. So, right, we would take a, we would take a hit on live inventory right away. It doesn't mean that we'd even need the niche in a different direction, but what it means is we'd have to pay attention to what the market's actually saying. Yu-Gi-Oh And here's where I think a lot of people in a space like this mess up during a correction is they try to Mosaic their way through it. And it's almost like trying to strong arm people into believing what you had shown should be worth more than the market is demanding right now. Right. When that happens, it's best to go with the current, baby. Do not try swimming upstream with that. So for live, if we found that 90s and 2000s is fun, but it's only Griffey and Jordan that are performing, then we probably would shift to more of a focus on, hey, on these days we do goat shows. And if more market. More market dollars went into the speculation of the up and coming quarterback class, we would probably pay attention to that. Now, Gary would not enjoy running that stuff as much and neither would I. But that would be an adjustment we'd have to make if we want live selling to be a big piece of that model as well. Yu-Gi-Oh that's my take on it. All right, next question here. Would love to hear your thoughts on being approached with trades for a card or cards in your showcase. What's your baseline methodology and do you veer from it on occasion? How do you ensure it doesn't take a lot, lot of time? I find when someone talks trade to me, it's a much longer than a straight buy, sell conversation. It blocks the showcase from potential cash buyers. Then we had. That was Jungle collects. Jay Reed piggybacked on that. Somebody asks, are you buying? They look through. You look through all their stuff and give them a number, and then they want to do a trade. Do you adjust your numbers at that point? So let's take both of these on at once. How do you. How do you. What's your baseline methodology for trades? Gary's gonna find out. I break his rules a lot here. And then after that, what. What do you do when somebody's talking about buy, sell, and then all of a sudden they pull a button hook on you and try to get you on the trade. So for me, I. I don't like to trade at shows unless it's a trade up. You can't always do that. But that's what I prefer. If somebody wants to trade for me, it's very straightforward. Jason will be the first to tell you he breaks this rule. I just let him do his thing. When I'm working the deal, this is how I do it. I will give you 80% against our sticker. That's it. That's. That's how I trade. If you're not comfortable with that, I totally understand. If you want to sell me the card, we can talk about that. If you just want to buy the card, we can talk about that. But that keeps it very simple and very straightforward. As far as the somebody pulling the button hook and. And switch that on you at the last minute, I find that the best way to handle that is the same way that it's best to handle almost anything, and that's to nip that in the butt. On the front end. Hey, are you, are you looking to sell this stuff or are you wanting to trade it towards stuff? I saw you looking at a couple things in the showcase. Usually you'll get an answer right then and there. Oh, I, I would be interested in trading. Okay, cool. Now we can go to the next part of that conversation. Here's how we trade. That's my approach to it and it, and it keeps you from wasting a lot of time. I think Gary's right about the time. I think that that is the most time efficient way to address that. But I cannot tell you how many times a deal that ended up being a screamingly good deal was down to the wire on would we give them the right amount of cash? And then all of a sudden they like the card in the showcase enough to say, well, I can't do that, but would you entertain trade? I have a few of these cards that I wasn't interested in selling, but if you'd be willing to trade, then we can do that. If it's a 600 card we have and it's been in the showcase for a month or two and doesn't have the nibbles that we would expect on it, somebody likes that card and I'm in that card in the showcase at 70% and somebody has two or three Otanis, but they want full value on that and I can roll that margin into those Otanis. I'm doing that every time. I don't care what Gary says. No, absolutely. And I'm not doing an extra percentage, blah, blah, blah. But the caveat is the card that's in the showcase, I have to have purchased that, right? Yes. I think there's a mental hurdle for some collectors out there that buying is the tug of war. Trading is a more pleasant experience and sometimes people are more generous even trading. So if you would have said, what's the cash number? Sometimes that cash number exceeds the trade value they want. Sometimes you just got to take the time to ask the question. Now, as for the button hook, right. I think that some of that is mitigated on the front end by saying, what's not available? What's the PC? And if somebody starts to go there, I say, well, hang on a second, I thought you weren't interested in moving any of these cards. Are you sure you want to do this? Because what I'm trying to find out is, is this about them needing to have a one-of-one Because sometimes it's as simple as in their mind, if they're trading for the card they want that feels different than giving money for it, even if those numbers would work out similarly. So I'm more open to it. I've seen it be very helpful to us. What I'm not interested in trading it is on the lighter stuff. That's where I can't. It just tends to not work out. It tends to not work out. You know, you want to adjust on that. The twenty, thirty dollar cards, there's a whole stack of them. What do we think? And then we do waste a lot of time that way. And I could tell you the reason that a lot of people do that is they really want to get 90 on 30 cards. And we just can never be that as a business. So it's. It's sometimes a workaround of them trying to circle back and say, well, what if we do it this way and I get what I want still, I. I can't. I can't get there for you. But anything else you'd like to add to that, Gary? No, I think the only thing to touch base there, because the last thing was somebody who sounds a lot. J. Reed sounds a lot like me in that when somebody is like just blocking your showcases and taking a ton of time, you're just gonna have to get a feel for when you feel like somebody's wasting your time and learn to kindly and nicely move them along. Hey, it's just. I don't think we're gonna get there, man. I appreciate you letting me take a look at your stuff. Yu-Gi-Oh I got. I got people trying to look for us, for Jason. I. A lot of times it doesn't matter because Jason handles 90% of that activity and we have a dedicated spot where there's no showcases for him to work in. Two caveats I should add in there. One, if you bring me something that's really cool, but it's not liquid, I'm not interested in trading. Yu-Gi-Oh a trade is a. Is for cards that I think are. I'm going to believe that you're providing something at least as liquid as what I have, if not more liquid. Especially if I'm trading down into multiple pieces. Like, are these going to be cards that people are going to ask about if I threw a sticker on them in the next half hour? Yu-Gi-Oh And if they don't meet that criteria, then we're back to where I'm like, hey, you're not going to like the trade value I'm giving you here because there's a reason you're trying to trade it and you can't Sell it. It's like, Yu-Gi-Oh we know that too, right? Yu-Gi-Oh So I think that's a good point. Adjusting the numbers, I think it's important for every vendor to have in mind how you want to handle it. Some of you buy stronger and you operate a business that way. Brent Shannon was talking about, you know, case sits on downtowns. He's 90, he's not 95. He'll never be 95. 90s where he taps out, out. So for him it's not going to make sense to trade a lot on those Topps of cards because the margin's not there. So he may be like, I have to be at 75 trade value on this kind of stuff. Or hey, maybe that's live selling. So it's going to be 60. We're going to ballpark what we think that trade in value is towards this Downtown or whatever. But know your metrics enough. It it's an easier game to play if you know exactly where you are on each card. If you have a system for saying what you spend on each card, it gets a lot easier because if I turn that around and I can tell we're tight on the margin, it's not the right card for a trade probably unless somebody is just wanting out because it's a PC card for them or something and they'll give you something Zebra liquid. Okay, last question. P. Ridge or Pridge? I think it's P. Ridge. How can I incorporate selling football and basketball into my Whatnot shows when it seems baseball does the best in my streams? Let me tell you, very common feeling for every live seller. You are not out of the norm here. It is a rite of passage. We're going through it right now. Not for the same thing, but we're going through it right now. Our 90s and 2000 stuff has been doing really well. And when we drop in a thirty dollar ultra modern quarterback rookie, that's relevant. Seven bucks fifty. Well, it's not typically that bad. We get fifty to seventy percent. Fifty to seventy percent. We're not making money on that card. It was a while back when we were kind of doing everything that if it had a higher value, we get closer. But everything interesting that was not worth more than 15 or 20 bucks was getting nothing. So here's what we're going to do because this is something that we are currently dealing with right now. Gary and I are going to continue what we're doing. 90s, 2000s or a goat emphasis. I know on ebay live we have a nice long title where we can Explain what's in the show. Yep. We're going to begin to market ultra modern football show, goat show, ultra modern baseball show. And we're going to set the dates on that a couple weeks out so that we have time to curate something that's actually good. What I would not recommend. This is what I would strongly emphasize. So what did he say he was doing? He does mostly baseball. He's wanting to do football. What I don't recommend is you have half of a football show, but you say, well, I got to do a football show because nobody's buying. And you just schedule it next week. Week. If the inventory you have for that show is not interesting, you will have done two things that you didn't want to do. One, you're throwing a show that you will not have the right stuff for so your retention rate's not there. And two, you have a loss of credibility with your marketing. People will say, the next show is basketball, but I just went to the football. So make sure that whatever it is, you've done a graphic for it. Do all the things you make a post about it. Hey, in two weeks I'm going to do this football show. Here's a couple of the cool cards. If you only have five of them right then, but they're the nicest ones. Do a video show the five cards. Here's why I'm going to run that. Tell your audience, hey, we've been running that. Those you've been buying football and basketball, been getting great deals. I thought I would do a show exclusively for X, Y or Z. Set it out, get the right inventory, put more effort into it and deliver on what you say. If you're going to say that you're going to run a lot of really awesome stuff and case hits, make sure there's case hits there. Make sure it's the kind people want. Don't let it be like a sale for each card of what the value should be. Make sure make it stuff. That's obvious. That would be my recommendation. Yu-Gi-Oh there's. There's nothing worse than going into a stream that says nothing but bangers. And the first twelve cards you see are two dollar cards. Those, sir, these are not bangers. Yu-Gi-Oh I think that the key for any part of your business, if you're just doing Whatnot just to have some fun, who cares? Just run some cards and, and whatever. But if it's going to be part of your business, then you have to approach live selling with the same intentionality that you do everything else. You need to Curate your shows. Our live selling results got better almost immediately when we started intentionally building shows and not just going, here's a box of stuff, let's run it. We started intentionally building shows. We created a strategy around how we were going to build our shows. We began marketing those shows appropriately. Jason does a great job dropping promo videos for our shows. Just previews of some of the cool stuff that we're running. It isn't even always the biggest cards. It's just stuff that we know that we don't see very often. So we're 100 sure that y' all don't see very often. Right. But approach it with intentionality and with a plan and then take notes about what works, what doesn't, and adjust the plan based on that feedback that you're getting. Jason says all the time, the feedback that we get from the live selling world has more of an impact for our business than anything else because it's so fast. And we can learn really quickly what our audience wants and what they need and what they're willing to pay for and what they're not and adjust how we buy based on that. Yu-Gi-Oh One little nugget I'd add on there as Gary brought up. The feedback is. It is. Once you realize that, you can look at how this week did and make adjustments that make you more money the next. I know that sounds so elementary, but I'm telling you, it's not so straightforward out of showcases. It shows. Live selling is different that way, but once you do that, the challenge is not over. Correct acting. Gary and I, after a show, especially one that doesn't perform Zebra well like an average show, Gary and I will draw up 10 takeaways each, and then we have to spend the next 10 minutes whittling it down to is there really anything this time that needs changed, or are these just things we noticed? And I think that's important, too. Most people would say, err on the side of trying all the things. Just make note of them. And if something has not been working for you, listen, there was a narrative with early Whatnot where people were like, just keep going. Hemorrhaging money. Just keep going. Eventually, eventually, eventually. I think that was true for a lot of people that jumped onto Whatnot four years ago. But right now, if you have a pulse and a phone, you're on the platform that's very saturated now. They do have terms of use and all that, but we don't know how well that's being policed over on some platforms based off of what I'VE seen. But pay attention what's happening. Adjust what you need to. You can't fix everything in one show, but it's okay to niche and have more than one type of show. We're heading that direction. We see a lot of people doing that. Make sure that the inventory is what you say it is. Make sure you do everything you can to tell people that the show's coming up. Don't expect people to just flock to your show because you're live. Nobody's doing that. I guess some people are. We're not famous enough for that. And we don't do business with anybody that's that big of a deal that just because they're live, they're doing that. I don't think any live seller will tell you it works like that, so. All right, let me make sure. I wouldn't have anything else on there. Oh, my gosh. Sorry. I didn't see anything else. I saw what you saw. Yu-Gi-Oh this is. Something new popped up. Jeff getting a little shout out. Hey, shout out to Jeff. By the way, Jeff GP on the live, he moderates the Discord. He helps with all kinds of stuff. He's leading our fantasy league that's coming out of Discord. He's in all. I mean, he's just been. He's been a huge help. A huge help and resource for the ball card show that doesn't get the thanks that he deserves as often as he should. So shout out to Jeff. Shout out to Jeff. Even if he tends to take Gary's side, which he's a smart man. That's all I can say. All right, let's head up to Delaware, Ohio. Now, Keith's segment today is really good because he does something he doesn't do often. He actually made some picks of some things that he said might be solid investments down the road, which is definitely not the lane that he usually does. But he had some interesting takes. I like where his head's at with this. Let's check it out. Hi, this is Keith at Newhart Cards, and this is Shop Talk, people. One of the questions we get asked about all the time is what should I buy? What should I buy? If I want to buy something and hold it for a year, what should I buy? You know what? I don't give this advice out very often, and probably more than not, I'm wrong. But here, let's give a really quick few takes of maybe some things that I think are undervalued. First of all, just in the shop the last week or so, we bought a 2012 Prizm LeBron. Just a base, first year Prizm LeBron. It's 300 bucks. We bought a 2012 Tom Brady Prizm. It's like $90. That seems undervalued to me. Looked at the PSA 10s, so I think first year football, prison football could be an undervalued asset. May want to take a look. Hobby boxes are around 2.6 to 3 grand, while basketball is like 10k. I like the unopened version. Again, it's not a cheap, cheap way to get into it, but I think that could be kind of undervalued a little bit. Next I went to hey, you know, we should be buying Tim Duncan and Yu-Gi-Oh Well, I looked at that, that it's too late. Those cards have already taken off, skyrocketed maybe a little bit under the radar, but they've already exploded. So I kind of threw that away. Another one that I think about is, hey, how about the captain, Derek Jeter? There's still a lot of upside in Derek Jeter stuff. I know it's not football or basketball, it is baseball. However, his stuff still is pretty undervalued, especially his early stuff. So may want to take a look at that. And I would stick to the highest grade you can get. So if you can afford PSA 10s, do that. If you can't drop down to PSA 9s, maybe stay away from the, the, the raw stuff because there's a lot of trimming and that kind of thing in the, in the 90s. So maybe do that. Finally gonna throw out one Pokemon. I know you don't want to hear it, but there's a product or a set called Destined Rivals. Pokemon does reprint. They just reprinted that set. It's really Tribute 30 to 40% retracement. I think it's a great time to get into that set and just hold it, don't open it, hold it. And I love all unopened sealed stuff, so don't, don't forget that either. So if you have any questions, anything, comment, we'll, we'll respond. This has been Keith at Newhart Cards and this is Shop Talk. I know a big part of the conversation probably about a year ago we had some interviews where people were asking like, what will get love out of the Panini products? And I know a lot of people were thinking like the first year Prizm select some of those products. And so we're starting to see that happen. Obviously with basketball, some of the football is a little trailing a little bit behind on that, but it's definitely interesting to watch. So, Keith, thanks for that one. Coming up next. Very excited for this, Mike. Junk Wax Hero. This is a guy that has kept me level headed about what's happening in the space for years. Not too sensationalized, not overreacting and not ignoring things either. I can't wait for you to meet our new friend, Mike. Here he is, Mike from Junk Wax Hero joining us on the ball card show. Mike, we're so excited to have you with us today. Well, I'm thrilled to be here, guys, because I think I discovered you. When was the Jeff Wilson thing that you guys had? Was that a year ago? It was over the winter. It was in November when Becca Beckett first Tribute some numbers because they were going to invest into Beckett again. Right? Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh that's when I first. I think. I don't remember if I was following you already and just hadn't really Beckett up on you, but I noticed you guys then and I was like, man, these guys are so much fun. And you're. You handled that Jeff Wilson thing so well. It was like masterful how you handled it. And then you're also funny and you work so well together and you're very different from each other. So I saw that on Instagram and then I started listening. I don't, I don't listen to every podcast, but I then went over to podcast and started listening there and I'm like, these guys are so good. I'm not into selling cards. If I had time, I would be. But I don't do any selling very little one-of-one But I just enjoy listening to you guys tell the stories, you know, actually I was listening to last week's and Tim. Was that his name? He sang himself in. I was like, there's no way I'm singing myself into their podcast like he did. But Yu-Gi-Oh I've really enjoyed what you guys do and thrilled to be here. And then I made Jason take a selfie with me at the national. And that happened. That happened. Didn't run into you had to twist his arm really hard, I bet. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I hate getting. I hate people boosting my ego. You ended up in my Faces of the national montage. I'll take it. Yu-Gi-Oh I'll take it. I. I want to jump in with something you just started with with. Because I do think one thing that's unique about this interview and we try to be just direct and honest with everybody. The majority of people that are guests on our show have an emphasis of selling cards, whether it's this is how I fund my hobby. This is flipping for fun. A lot of people say fund the hobby, but they enjoy the flip a little more than the collecting. But we're in a situation here where you're kind of planting your flag and saying, hey, that's not what really interests me most. I really enjoy collecting things. So tell us, what do you love? What do you collect? What's your emphasis? Maybe some things that you're working on right now. Yu-Gi-Oh great question. So I actually, I love Arbitrage videos. I love, you know, looking at. Somebody pulled a $1 card out of a bargain box and it was a hundred dollars. I watched those videos. I love card show. Setting up a card show videos. That's just not. I don't have the time for that. Although I am sitting at a card show next week. All right. In a different capacity, which I haven't talked about yet. But I love learning about cards. I spend an inordinate amount of time reading about cards that maybe I didn't know about or what's happening in the market and finding a card that I think I, that I need in my collection that fits in my collection. Right. At a cheaper price than I believe it should go for. That. That gets me going sometimes. I'll. I'll overpay if it's really rare, but I just love filling holes in my collection. And I, I can't remember many cards that I've sold that I didn't eventually regret selling them. Yu-Gi-Oh What's the, what's the biggest one? What's the one where I'm sure you can go back, say this one I really regret. There are two that really stick out for me. One of them I regret and one of them I don't yet. The big one, I sold a Caitlin Clark 2021 Sports Illustrated for Kids autograph that I paid $110 for. All in, including the authentication through PSA. I sold it for $1900, I think. And her cards have since then come way down. I would still love to have that card because I'm a, I'm a goat collector. I'm an iconic card collector. I love autographs and that really fits in what I like to do. But her cards have come way down, her values have, and so I feel good about that. Plus I turned that into like a Ted Williams 1941 play ball that has skyrocketed in value. I turned it into a one-of-one Gretzky rookie and a Tops Tops rookie and a Sandy Koufax rookie, all of which have gone way up in value while hers have gone down. So I feel like it was smart, but I still want to have that car back. Yu-Gi-Oh And then the other one I have is a. I don't remember what exactly it was. It was a mid-90s Flir Jordan card that I got. I bought at a card show in Augusta, Maine. I got it, sent it off to PSA and it got a 10 and I sold it for like $360. So that was the market then. Yu-Gi-Oh I just looked it up about a month ago and it's going for like 1400 now. And I'm, I have no recollection of turning that 300 and whatever dollars into anything good. So. Yu-Gi-Oh I kind of wish I had that one back. Yu-Gi-Oh that can happen a little bit. I, I want to, to talk a little bit about how I ran into some of your content and been digesting it. I've been telling Gary about it for quite a while, but I, I would see some different takes that you had, whether it was stuff on YouTube. And at one point I was in this routine because part of my jumping into this full time was I had a high volume, low end ebay store. I was in a situation where I was kind of forced to be working from home. The schedule was kind of inconsistent. We had some things going on health wise. And so I spent my Mondays shipping and sometimes it ran into Tuesdays. And a big part of my weekly routine was you're clearing the bases. Weekly sports cards, news. I love hearing that. I, I mean, and I mean that. And the reason that I enjoyed it and found so much value and I still do in it is because a lot of the card content news is so sensationalized and dramatic because we have, for the size of the space, we sure do have a lot of people creating and influencing. I'll just leave it at that. And so. But what I appreciate was your, your content is one where you will go digging for the stories that are truly interesting and bring up a lot of questions that not everybody has quick answers for. Like you give people the meat and potatoes a little bit. It's not just a flash in the pan reaction. And then on to the next breaking news and then on to the next breaking news. So I. Loading this question up for two minutes. But really what I want to ask is what makes a hobby story worth sharing to you? Oh man, that's such a good question. So I look at people like Neo and Dustin as the best hobby news guys out there. And I know there are others, but those are the guys that I look at and Neo, really, I hate to say Dustin isn't as good as Neo, but they're both up there. Neo is just more like me. In fact, when you look at our Sunday morning recap shows, oftentimes Neil and I are covering a lot of the same stories, which is always interesting. But he puts out these daily videos and so does Dustin. And I'm just in Yu-Gi-Oh of how they do it and how do they have time for this. They both have full time jobs like I do and I used to chase those stories too, but I always found like they felt to me, my videos, I'm not saying Dustin's and Neo's. My videos felt like empty calories. I felt like I was just rushing to get a story out and get views and I didn't enjoy that at all. I think those guys do a much better job of putting out a story, putting out a news story with some meat and potatoes and I felt like I had to wait. I didn't have that ability to just, oh, News Tribute at 7:30 in the morning. I've got to get a video up by 8. I also don't have the time for. I'm very strict about not letting this type of thing get into my daily work life because my job is what sustains my family. And so what I started doing was saying, okay, I'm going to push all these stories into my Sunday recap video if it's important and if it's interesting and if I can explain it quickly to the average person. And a lot of times people will come to me with these elaborate stories that they're trying to explain to me and I'm like, I can't explain that to the average person. This is way too complicated. And if that's the case, I'm not going to put it in my Sunday video. And sometimes stories are not really hashed out. When I might get on Monday, I'll bookmark it and say, let's see where this is. On Saturday when I go to record this video and on Saturday when I go to record, I go through. I'll spend probably an hour and a half prepping the video, going through, trying to put everything in order. And if you watch, you'll see sometimes things are not in the order I expected them to be, but and then saying, is this newsworthy? Is this noteworthy? Is it worthy of me even bringing up in any way? And oftentimes I'll take, let's say 100 bookmarks that I have and I'll call 20 or 30% of them out and just say, nope, this is gone. Nothing. Or I'll say, let's push this to next week and see if anything has happened with this. And sometimes I just end up with this amazing episode that flows so well, and by the time I'm done, I'm 50 minutes in, I'm like, man, that feels like it was 10. But sometimes I feel like there really wasn't much this week. And the episode ends slow, you know, kind of slowly, and it's. And short. But for me, it is something that is interesting, noteworthy, and makes people think. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I. I've noticed that you have a way of phrasing things with a question. Even if you don't do the vocal at the end that you're supposed to get, you're leaving people thinking, what do you want to do with this information? And I think what really shows is especially those ones that you hold off on, because Gary and I can tell you when we see a good story, because we love to do content like, it's. You want to bring something fresh and energetic and exciting or. But we've already had a few times over the years where we run the story, and six hours later, some very helpful information drops. Now, this angle was about me and not about the story. So in that moment, it's like, are we bringing value to this with our content? And again, sometimes I'm overdoing it. What are people expecting of us? But, Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, and in our space, and I think it's true in any space. But Jason mentioned it earlier in a lot of the same ways that we had Steve Greenberg on this episode as well, from Greeny Sports Cards. He made this comment, you know, you know, you make an Yu-Gi-Oh Fleer and post it to a Facebook group with 30, 000 people, and now you're a show promoter. I think that that same mentality crosses over into the content space, the dealer space, and there's just a lot more to it than that. And taking a responsible approach to the way that you portray a story to the. To making sure that you have all those details before you jump the gun, just to try to be the first is. Is a really important thing. And the people who are consuming this content, I think, for the most part appreciate those of us who take that approach. They might get the. The news from that person three days later, but they're going to get the whole story. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I think it's a pragmatic approach. And, you know, I put out a video two years ago that has probably 150 and 175,000 views on YouTube. And I hate it with a passion. It's my, by far, my biggest, my most viewed video. And within a couple of hours of posting it, I was like, this video is terrible. It's trash. And I hate it. And it's blown up and I still hate it. I mean, I still get comments on it virtually every day. And I rushed it. It was one of those things that it fit what I wanted to do with my channel. It was the perfect fit. In fact, vintage find, rare, perfect for me. And I didn't take the time to do it the way that I should have done it. And I still regret it to this day. Yu-Gi-Oh we've got one of those too. We had a clip, the first clip we ever had go bonkers. I think it's probably 750 or 800, 000 views now. And Jason's son, still, he quotes it, quotes it to harass both. Like actually to harass me. And Yu-Gi-Oh we, we have one of those two. I think anybody who's done this for a minute has at least one, one of those. How long have you guys known each other? Oh, man, 20ish year. Well, I mean, we've known each other. Alex just turned 17, right? Yu-Gi-Oh And we knew each other for a couple years before he was born. So, Yu-Gi-Oh 20 years. We were in a local rock band together. We ended up being in two or three different ones together over the years. Huh. We can leave that there. We do not need to name or reference it in any way because there's probably some YouTube videos out there. Oh, gosh. Let's talk a little bit about your PC. So, you know, in, in this, in this scenario you're talking about, you know, the first goal of mine is not equity margin percentage. I think that's going to be refreshing for a lot of people to hear that and a good reminder for those of us that do collect but also sell. But I, I was hearing you share a story about trying to one-of-one some auctions on some 80s hall of Fame auto slabs and your strategy. All of a sudden I was hearing somebody say, well, he was like, this one was a seven. Even better. So I think for newer collectors, that's going to break their brain a minute. But I'd like to cover a couple things. What are some of the things that you PC when you say there's holes in my collection? Like to maybe be a little bit of an educational moment for those that are collecting to just think more broadly. I think a lot of folks in the space right now are focused on what's brand new and they forget there is so much out there. I personally love the stuff that you're buying. The Pedros, that late 90s era baseball stuff is just fantastic. But what's your PC? What does it mean for you when you have holes in your collection? And then if you don't mind touching on that little story about trying to get these certain cards and not being afraid of a lower grade. Yu-Gi-Oh So my PC will take me some time to go through because you mentioned Pedro's. I want all the Pedros up until he leaves the Red sox end of 2004. So I don't want anything from 2005 or later. I want his earliest autographed cards to be slabbed, authenticated by PSA or cgc. But I want all the other ones to be raw. I don't want any of them because I don't want to pay up for them. And so I'm happily, I'll take a RAW card and I'll buy it off ebay or I'll even take a PSA5 and then just clip it out because you can get a PSA five way cheaper than a RAW or PSA nine. So I'll, I'll gladly. I bought two or three of his black refractors in a PSA five. Yu-Gi-Oh And those are Zebra expensive Raw. They're Zebra expensive in a 7, 8, 9, 10. But in a 5, I got them for about half the price I would have gotten them for raw. And then I just crack them out, put them in a mag case, put them up on a shelf in my wall. And I'm thrilled with that. I also want. I have hall of Fame rookie autographs. As much as I can do, like 1950s. I'm not going to get all the 1950s rookie autographs. I'm probably not going to get all the 1960s, but maybe I'm closing in on the 80s, which is tough because you've got Gwen and Beckett and those are the last two I need. And that's the one that I was talking about, which is if I can get the Gwyn. I think that's when we're talking about if I can get the Gwin in a low grade, like an authentic with a 7 graded autograph where the PSA has authenticated the autograph and graded a 7. That feels perfect to me because the autograph can still look very good, maybe a little bit streaky, but not terrible. And same thing with a lot of these cards. I, I also want Iconic Cards of, you know, the goats. So I shopped for a long time, over a year for 1953, tops, Mickey Mantle. And I want it in a very low grade. I got it. I think mine is A. It's a one because a kid in 1953 wrote his name and the year on the back of it. But the front of it looks perfect, you guys. Yu-Gi-Oh perfect. And because it's A1, I can buy that and still have a budget for more cards. Because I don't want. I don't want a PSA8 because then I'd only have one card. I want to have a lot of cards. And by doing this, you can do that. And then people say, well, for investment purposes. I didn't always think about it for investment purposes. Just recently I've been talking about, like, using card ladder has made me think about the values a lot more than ever. But I'm also not buying these cards thinking about them as investments per se. But my mantle that I just bought three months ago has nearly doubled in value as a PSA one. And so if you think that only the high grade vintage is going to skyrocket, you're wrong. It's also low grade. And then you can buy more cards and have more fun. Yu-Gi-Oh What, what do you. Where do you draw the line on a PC card? So let's say that you're looking at a PSA 6, a 5. Right. What type of condition issues for Mike are? Just like, that's, that's a good deal. But I. For me, or does it not work like that? It's just, that's a card that I want. It's a card I don't have. That's the best value for what I want for it. Like, how do you view that? If the centering isn't virtually perfect, I'm walking away from it. Oh, okay. All right. Centering has to be really, really good. Well, you don't want the Kofax we have in our showcase right now, though. Everything else is fantastic, but it's damn near falling off the. The card. Yu-Gi-Oh I've bought a couple of big iconic cards that didn't have good centering back when I was just getting. Getting into iconic cards. And I look at them and I just love them a little bit less. It's like that kid that you have that kid, and you're like, do I love him as much as I love him? That's. That's how I feel about a couple of my older iconic cards. I have two kids. That's really funny. Oh, shoot, that's good stuff right there. So if somebody was building out a criteria, this is a bonus question. I do this a few times every. Every interview, Mike. But if somebody was like, hey, I'm a little bit burnout on this flip game. Non stop flipping, non stop. Like, what criteria do you think are important for somebody to say, hey, I want to get serious about collecting. I want to be intentional about it. What are the things you'd encourage them to think about as they venture out into getting out of these value boxes where they can maybe turn 10 cards into 20 and just spending some money on cards that they're gonna love? Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, knowing sports is good. You guys talked about that. I think Tim was talking about the importance of actually knowing sports and having players that you. You like and respect. For me, it was saying, you know what? I love the, the all time greats. And I want to have the most important card of all, these all time greats, careers or of their card lives. And so I made a list of all the cards. I did a lot of research for all of them. Not only the most popular or most most iconic card, but it's a card I have to love. Like Ted Williams. I'm a. I'm a. I'm from Maine, so Boston Red Sox are my favorite team. And Ted Williams, his rookie card. I'm a big rookie card collector. I don't like his rookie card. He looks weird in it. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but he's doing like this corkscrew. He's doing a follow through swing, and it looks like a little corkscrew position. It's weird. It's always cartoony. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh So I decided to go with the 1948, 49 Leaf. Ted Williams, which I prefer. It's probably, in my opinion, the greatest baseball card of all time. They make him look kind of like a superhero. Down low, angled up, and the coloring is amazing. So find cards of athletes you love and the cards that you actually appreciate and like and will like for a long time. And I think that you will enjoy your collection. And I started doing this, I got back into the hobby six years ago, and I started into this probably four years ago, thinking I'll never have a collection that other people would appreciate. And I'm now at a point where I'm like, man, my collection is amazing to me. And that's all that matters, that you keep using the word iconic. I think that's a really important thing. You're saying you're starting to see it. We are on live selling where our card being iconic is carrying a little bit more demand. For example, some junk wax era stuff, like the provision cards. They're timeless. Those are. That's a timeless insert set. That doesn't mean that it's always the most valuable, but it stands out to people. I. I took a hunch one time on a Garrett crochet auto, but it was the image of him at the Green Monster. And I know that's the old Clemens. Yu-Gi-Oh it was a nod to the Clemens card. And Crochet had just been injured and it did not matter. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh it's. It. It didn't matter that he had just been injured and they were saying for some time because that's such an iconic image. Right. So I do find that to be really interesting, and that's really good encouragement. Gary, do you want to take this segment that we're gonna do you want to lead this bad boy? I'm doing all the talking. I'll tell you what, you introduce it and I'll hit the topics. How's that work? Yes. Okay. I. I knew that we were cut from the same cloth, Mike, when you introduced the idea of Jomo. The joy of missing out. Yu-Gi-Oh And there's nothing that's made me feel more in my 40s than how much I enjoy canceling plans. Yes. Not having to go to the thing, not needing the brand new thing. A home. My favorite T shirt that I got at TJ Maxx. I will buy more of them if I can find them discontinued somewhere else. Right. Like, I have my routine, my things that I like. So everyone's familiar with fomo. The fear of missing out, which is definitely a dynamic at play in our space this often. But there's also the joy of missing out. Things that we're not too worried about missing out on. So what I've done is I have just a handful of different topics, segments of the space, things that are happening, and we're each going to go around and say if we have Jomo or fomo and then explain why. Great. First one. Now we actually have to be thoughtful here now. All right, so the first one, Jomo or fomo? Mike, you have to go first on these. All right. Yep. Tcg. Oh, Jomo for sure. I. I just have no interest in it. I think it's cool for other people. I have nothing against it, but I didn't grow up playing Pokemon or Magic the Gathering or anything like that. I grew up watching sports and playing sports, and so those are the things that interest me and I don't want to learn. This is another thing about getting older is like, do I want to listen to brand new music or do I want to sing the songs I already know? And that's. That's sports cards for me. Yu-Gi-Oh for me, I'm gonna just own reality and say a little bit of fomo. It's such a. And I think here's why. There's something about the space and the collectors in it, and we see them because we're set up at shows all the time. That reminds me of what it was like to collect sports cards back in the 80s when it wasn't all about a margin or a percentage. It was just. It's just like, I like Squirtle. You have a Squirtle card that has a swirly in it. I'm going to buy that card. And we don't see that as often in the sports card world. So there's a little bit of a FOMO there for me. I. I am. I am more on Mike's in with this with one caveat. When we were at the national, right by where I met with you, Mike, did you see that Bo Jackson Battle arena area throughout the week? Absolutely crazy. Like, so many people in line at every moment of every day. So a lot of the Good for them. Yes, absolutely. A lot of the corporate booths had stuff happening, but it was scheduled content all week long. Right. This person's coming. There was. There was just people playing the game all week long. The tables were Beckett They had some competitions too. But so that type of thing makes me wonder, like, if something like that continues, I would probably check it out. I would probably see, do I enjoy playing the game. There's a collectibility piece with that too. It is a brand new. You know, it's not brand new, but within the last few years, a newer product, but Eileen, a little more on the Jomo side. But there's a little bit. There's a little bit of curiosity. I'm kind of like, I played sports, I enjoyed sports. The market is appealing, but I don't want to learn. It's learning new music. It's just like you said, I don't want to learn it. I probably should. Okay. All right. Tops just released a whole new thing. We talked about it earlier in this episode. Digital pack offerings on real products. So they released this with Topps, Chrome, Black basketball, Jomo or fomo. Digital pack offerings of real cards. FOMO on this. Yu-Gi-Oh I think that it's very cool. It's a nice change. I wonder what it's going to do to the industry overall as they start to blow this out bigger and more. Where our are some breakers and you'll start seeing like I think Dustin and Neo have both put out videos in the past week or so. Will some breakers go out of business? Will how will this change the industry? And I. I wonder the same things. But Yu-Gi-Oh I think it's very cool. 100 bucks gets you four cards of the tops black. I don't think I'm gonna do it actually. I'm quite sure I'm not going to do it because I don't want to rip. I don't want to have a million cards I don't want. I just want to buy the cards I do want. Yu-Gi-Oh And I don't. Yu-Gi-Oh So. But I do get a little FOMO over it for sure. Jason. FOMO for me as well. I think this is innovative. I do have some concerns about how will this impact the industry? How does this affect allocations? Is this, you know, in my mind the scarcity mindset is. Is this coming directly out of the LCS's opportunity for. Prof. And that's where relationships happen. Like that stuff makes me a little nervous. But can we pause for a moment and appreciate that somebody put a limit on something digital? Finally, there is a limit. Here is how much. Now, we can all argue about the amount and what that should be and what that should look like. But I appreciate the nod that this can be addictive and it is a way to present some value direct to the consumer. Now, the convenience of them having their own marketplace, those Topps of things, why not vaulted? Why not just move it while it's in here. But that's smart on their part. So I do think that's interesting. I mentioned this with Gary earlier on this episode, but I am curious to see some of these, we'll call it shady practices. How long will it be before somebody's screen recording and splitting up those four cards into 30 teams and trying to do it that way. But I'm sure that'll be policed. What do you think, Gary? FOMO for. For most of the same reasons of as you guys. I think for me the. The biggest. And again, we're a lot like you are, Mike. We don't rip very much. Jason probably rips a little more than I do. I try to find a blaster or two of a new product if I'm interested in it because I feel a little bit of responsibility to at least know what's in there so I can talk intelligently about it. But for me, the. The biggest part of this is it feels like between this and a couple other things that Fanatics has introduced recently, they are actually making an attempt. Whether it's the right move or not, I don't know. But they seem to be making an attempt at least to try to curb the insane explosion in the secondary market on prices of wax that happens almost instantaneously. Now, why would anybody go buy a box of Topps Chrome black basketball from David Adams or steel city for 600 bucks? If I can just buy three packs for 300 bucks and spend 15 bucks to have it all shipped to me. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I don't believe I've ripped anything this year. I usually do about one box a year. And just today, the Tops put out the pre order for a new tennis set, and the hobby boxes were like 90 bucks. And I grew up playing tennis. I love tennis. Oh, cool. And so I thought, oh, maybe I'll do that pre sale. But then I forgot about it when noon came around today. So I don't know if they sold out, but they probably did. All right. Okay. I got a driver's seat, buddy. I've been. All right. Talking too much. All right. Jomo or fomo, the current boom in the goat market. Oh, big time FOMO. Big, huge FOMO. I started buying these cards three or four years ago, and I have a list of 100 that I want, and I'm only about 55% of the way through. And most of these, the ones I don't have are the more expensive ones and things like Shaq, for instance, I want his beam team. And I was like, I can get that at any time. And now it's Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson. I want one of all these guys. And while I have a lot of the cards on my top 100 list, some of them are now out of my reach maybe forever, which I worry about. So, Yu-Gi-Oh definitely fomo. But I also. I've definitely capitalized on the iconic car big boom market by already having a lot of these cards. Absolutely, Jason. I'm. I'm gonna be a FOMO as well. The. The thing that's tough is, you know, Gary and I have enjoyed this late 90s, early 2000s stuff forever, and it has always been inventory that. So two, three years ago, the. Even. The Duncans, the Dirks, the. The names that don't drive as much value, we were buying those and selling them, and I can't tell you how many of these electrified Jordans we sold for Five to ten bucks. Yu-Gi-Oh Live over and over and over and over again. So. So I'm enjoying that this is happening. I'm a little nervous for newer collectors or more so people re entering the space with this excitement because they can open up their Pandora and be like, oh, I got two grand in here in Jordan's and just assume that this train's going to keep rolling. So there's little hesitation for me on that. What I'm most excited about is to see what other situations like Shaq are going to happen that are past due. Like, who are the other players like Shaq that like Tim Duncan. What are we doing? What are we doing? His market should be. And it's starting to tick that way, but for me, it's more of a fomo. I'm enjoying this. It's. It's highlighting an era of sports cards that I love more than any, so. Well, as who? Go ahead. Go ahead, Mike. No, no, go ahead. Well, I try to think about why could Shaq all of a sudden be popping off? And it could be because he's still famous. He's still on TNT every week. And who else fits that? Who's a hall of Famer all time Great, very popular. Charles Barkley. Yep. Yep. And his market has not gotten there yet. For me, this is. As much as I hate to say it, I'm gonna go on the other side of this with a little bit of the Jomo. I love the fact that the market has taken off, but what concerns me about it and. And where Jason and I have been very, very cautious as we buy stuff. Stuff is there's a lot of stuff that has exploded that there's no logical reason for it to have exploded. The electrified Jordan is a perfect example of that card. It is a base card. It is a card that if you find a box of that stuff, you're going to pull three or four of them out. It's not a 300 card. It's been a 10, 15 card for 20 years. And that car doing 300. But another one that. That again, we. We ran one on our ebay live the other night. The 1993 Downtown Collab. That Upper Deck did. It has Michael Jordan, one-of-one Gretzky, Reggie Jackson, and who's the fourth? There's a fourth athlete that's in there. There is Gretzky, Jordan, Reggie Jackson, and there's one other person. Montana. Oh, Mon. Montana. There is a card in there with him and Tweety Bird, and it says Kaboom. Yu-Gi-Oh And it's the only card that Jordan's on that says the word Kaboom. That card is doing 2 to $300 right now. You could buy those packs at the national for 30 cents a piece. Last year we did. We gave away dozens of them. We opened a few. We opened a few, pulled one of those cards out and jokingly signed it ourselves and did it as a giveaway in our stream. We sold one. And I told people, I said, guys, I'm. I'm not saying this card should be this, but this is where the. The things are at. Started a buck go. And we just sat back and went, oh, my God, what did I do? Gary? It was over 100. $130. Yu-Gi-Oh Like the most recent sale was 250 before we ran that like it. So for me, there's. That's where the Jomo comes in. And it's more because from an overall health of the industry, the last thing. And it happens every cycle. We all know this. And I just hate that it happens. People come back in or come in for the first time. Most of the time it's people coming back in. They collect it as a kid and they see it. They come back in and then they. They think that they have cracked the code. And then this stuff that should never have exploded is what falls back. You know, the new Fleer doesn't apply to electrified Jordans. The new Fleer applies to luminescent triumvirates. It applies to that kind of stuff. And then they're like a year from now, when that stuff is now $60 and they paid 250 or 280 for it, and they did that 30 times. They go, well, this is stupid. And they leave and we lose those people. So that's. That's where my Jomo comes at that. What am I going to do with all these two or rookies now? Yu-Gi-Oh All right. Jomo or FOMO bounties on cards. Jomo. I don't. I don't need to like, I don't rip at all. I don't join breaks. They're just not for me. And so I. I've never put out a bounty. And I can't imagine ever being in a position where I'm considering cashing in on a bounty either. Jason. Jomo. I'm tired of people offering bounties that don't mean anything. Like it's. If you can create a video and say, I'm offering this. I don't know if everyone realizes because someone posts a bounty does not mean that that person has the means to pay for that card. I think there's a belief that just because somebody posted it, oh, somebody put a bounty out. And then even more recently on the the Cooper flag where we're trying to fractionalize the opportunity if it runs at this. What are we doing? I am, you know, now if I was somebody that was ripping cases every month, sure, I'd probably love that. Do I love the idea of redemptions or fan experiences? If you hit a product hit, I think that's brilliant. I love the MLB debut patch. I love that they're are creating those Topps of Goldin ticket experiences. But I don't need some random breaker influencer offering me money that they may or may not pay. Like if, if I hit that card, everybody can throw out their offers then. Yu-Gi-Oh I don't mind missing out on that. Agreed. Jomo for me. Mostly because they one-of-one me. Self absorbed self aggrandizement gets on my nerves really bad. And that's what most of this stuff is. It's just a. Hey everybody, look at me, look at me. And that's annoying. So Jomo for me. All right, Jason, I think I understand what you're asking on this next one. You want me to ask it or you guys? Yes, you, you asked this one. Because I want to make sure I get this right. You mentioned Transformers. I believe I saw the Sonic the Hedgehog product that's dropping on Panini. What. What about these new non sport that's tapping into the nostalgia. These new products that are releasing that are clearly for that, that 90s era fan base. Is this a Jomo or FOMO situation? Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yep. So it's, it's mostly a Jomo because I don't want 2026 products about 1990 nostalgia. I want what, what happens though is it makes me say, well, is there an actual card from that era for this person? Yu-Gi-Oh So if like they did today. I was looking up Steve Urkel cards because I was influenced by a on mantle newsletter where they, they talked about Steve Urkel and I was like, oh, I need a Steve Urkel card now. Yu-Gi-Oh I don't want a 2026 Steve Urkel card. I want the 1991 or whatever 1992 Steve Urkel card and did I buy some? I'm not gonna say that would be embarrassing. But I want though those era like I also want. I'm big into horror movies and if they have horror movie cards come out in 2026 for Scream, I want the original Scream cards if there were some, but there aren't Any. I was looking this week. When did that come out? 1996, I think. The original Scream movie. Oh gosh. Yu-Gi-Oh And then like they have 1988 Fright Nights cards. Yu-Gi-Oh For movies that came out in the 70s and I don't even want those. I want them from the original era. So Joma, for the most part, sure. But I like them and I know they're very popular. They're just not for me. It's, it's probably just being perfectly honest. A little bit of FOMO for me. Everybody who consume our content knows that I'm a big SpongeBob guy for a lot of reasons. Let's not stop there. Most well, and the Care Bears and all kinds of other cool stuff from back in the day, I'm a big fan of a lot of that stuff. And so for me, these Topps of products, if they are done well, I will be full on all in on that stuff. I'm more inclined to be in on the non sports stuff than I am the TCG stuff. I, that's where I was gonna go with this. And I'm a little bit torn. I think I'm a little bit fomoey about this and I think it's because I turned 40 this last year. I'm embracing that. I am, I'm a middle aged man, my hairline is going back and I've got one run over the next 10 to 15 years of people believing that my generation has stuff worth presenting to the youth of today. And once we get past that window, I am forgotten. I am dust in the wind, as Kansas said. So I, I do love the attempt to do that. But here's what I am not going to miss out on. Do not bring me your Sonic kabooms. Please do not. Not. I, I, I love the idea of ripping cool looking products that would be cheap and fun to rip. So if they did like, if, if like the collector's edge parallels met like Mortal Kombat again or Street Fighter or like, and I'm sure that these skis all exist and everybody's about to blow up my phone to tell me that, but that's the type of thing I could get interested in. It's when we start trying to inflate a market and present a level of demand that's not been there with spongebob. That is a massive franchise. That is a huge, it's like it's not Disney, but SpongeBob is an established brand that has like been in fashion for better or worse. It designs all kinds for better. Always 20 years. So that, so that doesn't surprise me as much. But I know that I've got just one more run at people thinking the stuff I did is cool. Jenkos are back. Baggy jeans are back. Baggy baggy T shirts are back. I'm in my moment right now, so I think I might be more of a FOMO there. Gary. Oh, gosh. Okay, last one, Mike. A topic of ad nauseam conversation in our space. Jomo or FOMO repacks. Oh, definitely Jomo. I'm not interested in repacks. I find them to be interesting, and I find them to probably be a better value if done right than ripping a box of tops. Cards, for instance. But it's still ripping, and it's still ending up with cards I don't want in, in most cases. And I just don't have an interest in having cards I don't want. And I don't have the time or the energy or the wherewithal to try to flip them. So definitely Jomo. Jason, I'm gonna land on Jomo camp there. I'm not opposed to them. Once a year, I'll get in a repack break. Now what I do like watching is the Zebra high end, Zebra volatile. It gives me the same feeling when I'm standing around the baccarat table and people have way too many chips pushed in. I get to watch everybody else spin the wheel, right? You like the car crash? You, you like? Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh They're going way too fast. I better see what happens here. But I, I, I'm not saying they're all like that. There are definitely good repacks. We've had interviews, interviews with some repackers that. Very ethical and you know exactly what's in the product. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna be like, I would rather go buy a really cool Zach Thomas card. That's what I do. Or Eric Davis. Like, I, I would enjoy finding that more than I would enjoy it. So for me, I don't feel like I'm missing out. It's a Jomo for me. Yu-Gi-Oh we're all on the same page here. It's a Jomo because like Mike said, it falls into the category of ripping. And ripping is something that, if you do this for a living, we tell people this all the time. Like, if you do this for a living, you're not going to pay too many bills. If you're ripping a lot of product, it's just gonna, you're gonna eat up any profit that you had and be in the Hole really fast. It's just not a good ROI play. Buy the cards you like, buy the things you collect. If you like to rip, do it responsibly. Nothing wrong with a reback, repack or a box or whatever, but for me, it's definitely a joke. Jomo. Yep, that was fun. I'm glad you brought up Jomo the other, the other day, Mike. All right, last question that I have for you. What kind of content do we need more of in this space? So it's easy for us to point and say, I don't like this, I don't like that. I don't like this. If there's one or a couple things that we need more of in the space, what do you think it is when it comes to content? Yu-Gi-Oh So what I wanted to do several years back was more storytelling and, you know, finding collectors who have unique stories or unique collections and telling those stories and asking them questions and just kind of going through, why did you collect these? What got you into them? And what. I would ask them questions like, what's the one card that got away from you that you. That you needed? Or what's the most expensive. How do I phrase this? What would you walk away from because it's too expensive? Things like that. I think people are. People like you and me are really interested in the people behind collections, and there's just not a lot of that out there. And even Jeff Wilson was putting out videos like that on high end stuff, and he was doing really, really good videos for a year, maybe in 20, 24 and 5, where he would sit down with people, just regular people with high end collections, and ask them the story about their collection. Those are amazing. And there's just not enough of that out there. I think people, people love the negativity and that's what does the numbers. You know, when I put out a Sunday video and I say, is Darren Revelle doing this on purpose? That's gonna do numbers, right? PSA messes up again. It's gonna do numbers. But, you know, a video. How do you come up with a good title for a video about a random dude who has this really cool 1997, I don't know, Mirror Gold collection? Right. It's hard to do. And then speaking my language. Yu-Gi-Oh I think that's a really good point. A lot of the content that we see now is very transactional and not just just the deal at the table, but it's like rapid. I've only got so much time. It's so hook heavy where if you don't have something sizzle in the first five seconds. Nobody's watching it one-of-one But I think those stories are missing in our space. And the reason we know that is I think people jump into the space, starting with the belief that they have to flip cards. People are starting there now. This isn't a place we land where people are like, oh, this is getting kind of expensive. Maybe I should sell some of these. With the content that's being presented, I think the large majority is that. And I get that Gary and I sell cards for a living. We're going to talk about our business, but I think focusing in on those collectors and their stories. That's why I ask you, what do you mean when you say you have holes in your collection? Because I think a lot of people jump in and it's just like, what are we chasing? What are we flipping? What are the margins? What are the percentages? And I just don't think those people will be around in five years in the space if they can't personally enjoy it and build some relationships. Yu-Gi-Oh well, I think the industry has kind of pushed us into that position where it's gotten so expensive to rip and it's gotten so expensive to even join into a break or a repack that you inevitably, you're spending way more. In 1990, I was spending a dollar on a pack, and I didn't need to flip. You know, I was out a dollar out of my mowing lawn allowance. But now you're spending $100, $200, $300, and you feel like you have to get something out of that. You can't just say, all right, I just blew 300 bucks, and now I have all these cards in my collection. You feel like you have to break even at least. So now you're flipping, too. Yu-Gi-Oh I think it's great insight, Gary. Leaning in. Go ahead. Yu-Gi-Oh I'm leaning. I think that the. The statement that you made early on in that answer, Mike, about how there's so much negativity out there, and one of the things that Jason and I have really come to realize over the last two years, especially as we're at shows, and this is something that's a good reminder if any of you are watching this and you create content or you consume a lot of content in this space, this is a very small world, you know, that we live in, in this niche, right. In this hobby. And within that small world, the amount of people who make content and consume content is even smaller. Within this space, there are what at least two or 300 creators, 10 of which almost everybody who consumes the content knows. And then there's the next tier that maybe have to. Let me tell you all this at a show, any given weekend, 80 of the people that are walking around that show have never turned on a YouTube clip. They have never known you, bro. They have no clue who Jeff Illusions. They certainly have no idea who we are. And they're just there because they like cards and they want to buy cards and they want to sell cards. And you get to have really cool conversations with people that have nothing to do with any brand that you've established or anything else. So don't, don't get twisted in the idea that, you know, the negativity cells or this or that. Yu-Gi-Oh it may get clicks, but in the great grand scheme of things, that level of constant just mopiness and the sky is falling is going to bleed into everything else you do. And it's not good. It's not a good thing. Yep. Mike, how can we share you with our community? How can they follow the content? I know that you have a couple different things on going on, some new things that you're beginning to drop. Why don't you share that with everybody? Yu-Gi-Oh So first and foremost, I am on YouTube. Junk Wax Hero. Look me up there. That's where I put out my, most of my stuff. I also have a newsletter which I've just revived. It has a lot of subscribers, very engaged. I put one out every Monday. It's free junk waxhero.com and then I've just started putting out Daily ish reels on Instagram, which I'm fairly familiar with, but also on TikTok, which I have, I've never been on until this week. And so I'm just kind of braving it over there by uploading my Instagram reel over to TikTok too. And so far, so good. But today was day three, so we'll see how long I'm canceling before I'm canceled on TikTok. We, we want to make sure everybody heads over there gives you a follow. Get on TikTok. That's the, that was the space we weren't expecting. That was the first one to kind of pop where we had a little bit of a community growth over there. But guys, I can say it over and over. Gary and I are going to be dramatic as we present and sometimes we sensationalize, we get worked up. Mike is going to give you the facts, he's going to dig for stories and I have found tremendous value in the work that you do with this. Thank you for doing this on top of your job. It's. It adds value to this entire community and it's meaningful. It really is. We appreciate you. Thanks so much for hanging out today. Thanks for having me on. This is a blast. All right, Great interview. Be sure to give Mike Junk Wax Hero a follow. Content dropping on a regular basis, whether it be his show or the show through the network that he's working with as well. But there's always really good stuff in there. Gary? Yu-Gi-Oh What do we have coming up over the next few weeks? Let's see this weekend, Grove City Card Fest. Come see us on Sunday at Central Crossing High School. Fantastic show. It's A CC2 and B sports show, so you know it's going to be well attended. Have some of the best dealers in the Midwest there. If you're a TCG person, we still love you. You have your own separate gym of about a hundred TCG tables. Yu-Gi-Oh if you do both, there's a sports gym that's a couple hundred tables, so it's about 300 tables total. Yu-Gi-Oh the following week we will be at Xen at the Great American Sports Card Show. I believe we're in building one this time. And then that next weekend after that, it's a greenie show. The Mountain state collectors convention, the 18th, 19th and 20th of September down in Charleston, West Virginia. Then we get into October and it just doesn't stop. Nashville's in October. Midwest Monsters in October. Yu-Gi-Oh we're sponsoring Midwest. We're a sponsor for Midwest Monsters. So we'll be near the front of the show there. Come see us over. And you're gonna be a grandpa. I'm gonna be a grandpa at some point in October. That's gonna be a big month. Yu-Gi-Oh So, Yu-Gi-Oh there's a lot happening. So old dude, the gray in the beard wasn't a. Wasn't a. Yu-Gi-Oh Gray in that beard for 15 years. I don't know if I want to give you credit on that one. Yu-Gi-Oh I. I sent. I sent a funny picture I found the other day. Remember when I had the pure Amish look where I shaved the mustache? Just had the beard. Unfortunately, that was only like 10 years ago. And the beard was still just red. There wasn't an ounce of gray. What's the claymation from the Abominable Snowman that you look like? What's the guy's name? What's his name? Yukon Cornelius. Yukon Cornelius. Hey, put a picture of that bad boy up. That's what Gary looked like before. The gray and the beard. I do remember you without gray. All right, that's enough. This has been the ball card show, the esports podcast for the esports collector. Bye now. Peace.