It's OK To Just Collect!

Hey, everybody, welcome to the Ball Card Show, the sports podcast for the sports collector. This is season five and episode 15, and we're going to jump right in to it. Let's go. We'll go. I mean, you're the one supposed to lead this thing off. You just drop it in my lap. You always do. Five years. I just wanted you to feel the pressure that I'm under. Okay. Well, now I do. I don't like it. You go ahead. My point exactly. Big week for us. We've been on the go like crazy. You hear us complain about this nonstop, but it really has been nuts for us. Once again, thank you everybody that's been joining in, whether you found us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, or saw us at a local show, it has been really cool to run into a lot of you in the last couple of weeks. And then just as the video stuff's been gaining more traction, meeting more of you. If you don't know this and you haven't followed us on any of the socials, I'll give a quick plug here. We're most active on TikTok right now, is where a lot of the base for the podcast is. And we go live a little bit before each podcast episode to see what you're thinking about, questions that you may have, to make sure that we're delivering content that's valuable to you. So if you've not joined us on there yet, keep an eye out. I do a lot of eBay content throughout the week and lives, and we do that before every episode. Anything I'm forgetting on that? No, I think you got it. Make sure to check that out. A quick reminder, tonight, this is Thursday, as you're seeing this, Thursday's at 7 p.m. We are always live on Whatnot. We run sudden death auctions for two to three hours, usually do two to 300 auctions in there. We have consistently been upgrading the quality of the inventory, you're going to notice that this week. Tons of MEM, GameUse stuff. We've had a big push for the early 2000s stuff. We take requests and we try to find the stuff for you. So make sure to hang out with us, even if you're not going to buy anything, we'd love to see you in the room. Absolutely. Yeah. You've added nothing. No, this is you right now. When do we make a shift? I'm the reactor guy. Are you? Yeah. You throw the pitch, I swing at the pitch. That's the vibe. That's what we do. That's a take. Interesting. All right. Let's jump into a little bit of news relative to the hobby, PSA updates, that we are now entertaining this mid-grade service once again. On value plus and higher. So if you're not aware, PSA pre-COVID and up until the beginning part of COVID had the ability when you did a sub to specify a minimum grade you would accept. So if you're sending a card, hey, if it's not going to grade a nine or better, then I just want you to send the card back to me, not slabbed. And that was an option. Now you still had to pay the full grading fee, but if it didn't meet the minimum grade that you wanted, then they'd send it back to you. That went away during the COVID backlogs. This last week or so, they have brought that back. Again, you will still pay the grading fee. However, on value plus and higher tiers, you can specify a minimum grade. Now, in my opinion, this is a really good thing. A lot of people didn't even realize it went away. I've heard people talking about this going, I didn't even know this disappeared. It did. I think it's a good thing for two reasons. One, every sub recently, and I've heard everybody talk about this, has at least one or two cards that just gets a brutally low grade for no reason that you can discern. Sometimes it's a justified thing. There's a big dent that you missed or whatever else. But in general, there's one or two grades you're like, a four? What? You can avoid that completely. The other thing that I think will be really good about this is it's going to keep pop counts where they should be if people are utilizing this. It's going to be, hey, I sent this card in. It got an eight. I'm going to crack it and try to clean it up and re-sub it and hope for a better grade. If you get a nine the next time, you're like, ah, I think I can get a 10. Now, all of a sudden, the same card is in the pop report three times if that happens. This will help eliminate some of that. Now, the downside is that it will give people an easier out than cracking a card to try to resell it as raw. One of the things we've seen over the last several years now is that raw cards are selling for as much or more than PSA nines on ultra modern stuff pretty consistently. There are some ethical questions here. If I send a card in, I set a min grade at nine or higher, it just gets sent back to me. Min grade not met. That's what it's going to say. It's not even going to tell you what the grade would have been. Then I'm like, okay, well, I guess I'll just sell this raw now and let it be somebody else's problem. That's still an issue in the hobby now even before this, but I think it opens it up to being a little bit more prevalent because cracking the new slabs is pretty difficult. That's my thoughts on it. That was a long swing. Yeah, it was. I reached way back. It was like pre-pitch count swing. Yeah, I pointed. Like stepping out. I did. I went. You're doing the gloves. Called my shot. We definitely got an elbow brace. I did the no more thing. Ankle brace. You got to get the signal from the coach and you had two more minutes. The only thing I would say about this is if all of you would be willing to put on your tinfoil hats with me real quick, the hobby's rigged, PSA hates all of us. If I'm wearing that hat, I'm going to find it quite coincidental that the men grade service has once again been reintroduced at the exact time that there's a massive backlog. Isn't it convenient that now a PSA grader can say, it doesn't look like a 10 to me and they said a men grade of 10. Now I don't have to grade that and my efficiency just went up 300% in a day how many cards I can get through. That's a fair point. Now take the hat off. PSA would never do that to you or me. They're so fair. They're so kind, but most of all consistent with their grading. Here is the rebuttal to that. The rebuttal to that is that again, this only applies to value plus. The backlog is currently on value bulk. What's the turnaround time on value plus right now? Less than 30 days. That's the rebuttal to that. The bulk is where the massive backlog is. That's where your value bulk is four or five months. Is value plus where the massive group subs are or only? No, that's value bulk. That's value bulk. I'm allowed to be an idiot and still be concerned with what they're doing. For sure. I don't think it's a terrible point. It's just there is a rebuttal to that. They usually don't have a rebuttal, but in this case, you heard it here folks, Gary sharply defending PSA. I wouldn't say strongly defending. You heard it here. Jeff Wilson, our favorite hobby influencer, had a little rant this week. You're going to tee off and I'm going to swing? I thought I would switch it up for you. I thought we were doing this in value box. I just thought I would switch it up for you. All right. Well, we are, but we're just going to talk about his rant. No, I like this. I like that they're getting behind the scenes right now. Yeah, to see what's happening. Just to see how chaotic this is. I got a little rant this week and Jason directed me to it. I want to get Jason's just thoughts on the rant before I get into mine on it. So just a quick recap. It's been entertaining for us to see some of the comments. So just for clarity, let me start with this. We're a sports card podcast. We pride ourselves in being considered the garage band of sports card podcasts. We did this for four years before anybody really knew except for locally that we were even doing this podcast. During those four years, anytime something happened in the hobby that was relevant, a sports card podcast covered it. Here we are in year five with video still doing that because we are a podcast talking about things happening in the hobby. When that is true, influencers are going to be talked about. So if your favorite breaker does something that we would say is borderline illegal, criminal, poor customer service, we're going to talk about it. If an influencer says something that is brilliant, we're going to talk about it. If they say something that is stupid, we're going to talk about it. You're going to notice a theme here that if something happens in the sport card space, hobby, industry, whatever, the sports card podcast is going to talk about it. And that's not chasing. I'm not done swinging. You can say that we're riding coattails, we're doing this or that. Yeah, we're talking about things happening in the hobby, trying to be relevant and a source for that information and dialogue. That's how media works. If you don't understand that, I can't really help you that much more, but we're going to continue to do that. So before you jump in and say, oh, you're knocking on Jeff. When Jeff puts his soapbox up and says, I'm going to address the hobby and I'm going to give hard takes, nobody will believe, which ends up being the version of mild salsa at a restaurant. It's not authentic. Right? It's Taco Bell hot sauce. It's Taco Bell hot sauce. People like it. Nothing wrong with it, but you didn't whip that up fresh. Okay? So we're going to just address this issue. He was saying that, and this is one of those pieces of content he released where I think there is, he does have some merit in some of the things he's saying. Some of them seem wildly hypocritical to me. However, the gist was he's tired of people saying the hobby is dead. Do I hear it from time to time? Yes. Does he have a lot of people in Cards HQ saying the hobby is dead? No, he does not. Are there probably people in his comments with his content that are saying that? I'm sure. Everybody wants to say it's junk wax. Everybody wants to say that collecting is dead. Everybody wants to say it's just a lottery ticket now. We happen to know that's not completely the case. And Jeff made a good point of saying this, like when he was a part of the junk wax era, there were still hits that everybody was chasing. He was talking about the Griffey rookie. He was talking about the Mattingly rookie. You said I could swing? So he was like walking through in the junk wax era. There were hits and people chase them. The gist of what he was saying, the products are just so much better now. So collecting can still exist and people can still chase hits. There are still set builders, but it's not 750 commons that people are putting together. That was the gist of it. So you can't say the hobby's dead. There are still collectors. It just doesn't look like it used to look for you. Okay? Yeah. Does that completely cover that? Is there any bias in the way I'm saying that? No, not at all. I think you covered both sides of it. My reaction to it was, I'm going to try to be somewhat diplomatic because like Jason said, there were- Don't be diplomatic. Don't be diplomatic? Just, I like this. I did. Okay. So he said a few things that were true. It was all canned and somebody wrote it for him. There you go. Dude acts like he couldn't afford, he was saving money to go buy a $1 pack of 1989 Upper Deck. He said, if I had the money, yeah. Yeah. If I had the money. But on another podcast, he talked about growing up rich. Last week, right? Yeah. Like the dude is just what he is. It's fine. Like Jason said, some people like Taco Bell hot sauce. It's okay. I love that. That was what I went to. I was like, I'll break this down for you. It's about salsa. Really? What do you think about it? At the end of the day- Two things. Things that two fat boys can relate to. I don't like disingenuousness. I don't like pretend. I don't like hypocrisy. Another screed this week talking about responsible actions in the hobby and people getting in over their head on things and how breaking, you know, there maybe should be warnings on things followed up immediately by their sponsored segment from Arena Club where they ripped $500 packs digitally that they're getting paid to do. There's nothing wrong with Arena Club. There's nothing wrong. No, no, no, no. Honestly, they have a little bit of a better reputation than many of them out there. That's not the issue. The issue is the blatant hypocrisy. That's the issue. Yeah. You can't rip that many cases of mercury on a flight and then also talk about how the products are just better, but it's really the same. Well, and my favorite was when he was like, you should just take your entertainment dollars because this, all this is, is entertainment. If you were going to go to the movies this week, then you decided to stay home and get it. How many of your breaks, Jeff, can somebody get into for $24? How many movies can you get into for 24 on the night? Not too many. Well, I mean, I missed the dollar theater, but the point he's trying to, he is so afraid of taking a stance on anything that he just gives emotion and then just gives both side of the fence every time. It's so frustrating. I do want to commend him on this thought that I don't disagree with, which is there are collectors still out there and there's a new wave of true collectors, not just flipping, where I just had to completely push back against the content, which, hey, the reason we're giving Jeff this much time is if we made a video that was like a decree thinking we give a state of the union address to the hobby, we better bring it and bring good points to the argument. Yeah. So that's the platform he's going off of. That is the way he's presenting the information. Nobody asked him for a state of the union address. Nobody elected him to be the hobby president. That's for sure. And when you talk about him having writers for his videos, he admitted he didn't even write his book. He didn't write collecting for dummies. He was not capable of writing the book, sports car collecting for dummies. He needed to hire someone to write a book about collecting for dummies. So I'm going to leave that there. I only said it a couple of times, but the other part he was talking about was like, you know, it's just a different product. It's better now. There were cards that were valuable then. It's not the same in 1989 when you went and bought a pack of upper deck, it did not cost you a car payment to get into that box, right? The box was $36, which in today's dollars is probably like $72. But Jeff, you referenced upper deck as the high-end product. What does a high-end hobby box cost now? A mortgage. At least. I mean, the highest end, $10,000, $12,000, $15,000. And you even referenced that too. So you can't say it's the same game. It's not the same. Are the principles that they're saying yes? And you brought up a... Really good point in defense of Jeff, what you were saying that you remember the collector saying through the junk wax era. Yeah. I mean, this complaint that everybody's just chasing the newest thing has been around forever. Not just the junk wax era. Since before that, people started complaining when people only wanted the newest rookies and they didn't want anything from ... and that was the 60s and 70s. Ever since sports cards became anything more than something that kids bought at the grocery store in penny packs, one card in a penny pack with a piece of gum, five cards in a nickel pack with a piece of gum. Ever since it became anything more than that, people complain about the hobby changing. Their easiest way to make that complaint is, well, there's nobody collects anymore. What they're really saying is, nobody wants my crap. That's what they're really saying. Nobody wants the crap I have, so it must be everything in the hobby must be trash now because what I have is great. Or they were convinced that what they were buying was only going to go up and to the right. Yeah. Greg Jeffries. Yeah. They thought they were going to be in for ... and it's not. Wally Joyner. I think there's probably some fatigue if you've been in the hobby a long time of so many people brand new to the hobby throwing out all this terminology that you know over the years these parallels are going to change names 20 times to try to keep them fresh, that the majority of these players people are excited about and ultra modern are not going to pan out. Everyone cannot be a star. That is not how it works, despite the fact that you all receive participation trophies at the end of the year. There's only so many stars in each sport that are going to emerge. There's only so many rookies that are going to make it, and I think there's some fatigue from those collectors of, hey, everybody's trying to push the new thing. Isn't this the greatest, the greatest, the greatest? Wait till you've been taken to the cleaners on a handful of stars. Wait till you've ... and I think that that is part of it. I also think there's a piece too where because they emerged in the hobby with an affordable wax product over the years, and now they feel priced out of that. This is not a have and have not. It is, this hobby has gotten so much more proportionally expensive than it was before. If people were just used to, I would go to the shop, I would buy a box, I would buy them once a month, open them up, and I built my collection that way, and now it's too expensive to do that. Now, if I want to buy ... hold on, I'm swinging. If I want to buy singles, if I want to buy ... get into it a different way, I have to learn so much about the market. I don't get a magazine published every month that's just going to tell you what they're worth. It's real time, and I got to use this aggregate, and he doesn't like it, and everything's over comps, and I don't care if it's a case hit. I never wanted a case hit. It's just too much to dive into, and I think that's the tension. I think there is, but again, the same thing applied then. Upper Deck in 1989 when it released literally was double the price of anything on the market. Yeah, a hologram, dog. Double the price, and people lost their minds. How are kids going to afford a dollar a pack? 50 cents was bad enough. I remember when it was a nickel. That's always going to change, and again, proportionally it is more now, but I will push back a little bit. There are accessible products. The problem is the people complaining about not being able to buy products don't want them. They want the really nice stuff cheap. If the really nice stuff is super cheap, guess what? It's not anymore. Really nice. It won't have any value. What people are really saying is, I want the really valuable stuff, but I only want to pay $100 for a box of it, but I want the hit to be worth $10,000. I think there's a segment of it that is like that. I really do think there are a lot of people like, it's only been in the last five to ten years that I couldn't ... In the last ten years. What I'm assuming is somebody that's been collecting for like 20 years, okay? Sure. That's what I'm talking about, but in the last ten years, it has become unaffordable to roll into Walmart and buy a few boxes every week. That used to be very doable. That's what I'm trying to say. There are a lot of people that open stuff, even people okay with retail, people that aren't chasing after ... I mean, we're chasing it, but they're not pursuing and expecting a super huge ... I know a lot of people that just feel like, man, that's a way more ... The price, the point of entry is far more expensive than it used to be if you're going to be involved in opening anything. That's fair. I think that plays a role in it. Now, what Jeff did do a great job of was bringing up a topic that is super relevant. It's a topic we see somebody drop a video or have a podcast about every year. There's a video to this effect. If you're new to the hobby, you're going to see ten more of these in the next ten years at least. It did bring up a great discussion. I do think that you hold it in tension. Here in a little bit in the dollar box, we're going to talk even more about ... So many of the people watching the podcast, especially those of you that met us through TikTok, are brand new to the hobby. You've been introduced through breaking, through repacks, maybe gone to a show or two, and you're hearing people talk about PC and just enjoying collecting, and you're like, hey, I'd like to do that. Now that I kind of understand how to flip and hustle a little bit, I want to figure out what I just want to hang on to and don't care if anybody likes. We're going to talk about different ways to approach that. For some of you, you're going to be like, how in the world did somebody start on the other side of that spectrum and work their way to collecting, but it's happening more and more with new collectors coming in. Yep, for sure. Next in news, WNBA kicked off this week, and it kicked off with a bang. Kaitlin Clark is the- Angel Reese, bang! Kaitlin Clark is the truth. It was fun because the Indiana Fever opened up against the Chicago Sky, so it was Kaitlin versus Angel. They knew what they were doing. Yeah. Boy, did it live up to the hype. One, we're seeing in real time the Angel Reese psychological meltdown as she's actually being forced to grasp the fact that the thing that she is best at in her life, which is basketball, Kaitlin Clark is exponentially better at than she is. Kaitlin Clark drops a triple-double. There was an interesting stat that I read. In the history of the WNBA, the top three players with the most 20-point 10-assist games in league history. Number one, I'm blanking on her name, Vander Sloot. 463 games, she's had 10 of those. Next on the list was Diana Taurasi with nine in 583 games, and then there was Kaitlin Clark also with nine in 50 games. It's just unreal. There was also something that happened in this game that I think is really important to talk about because the narrative is being pushed. I think the league is pushing the Kaitlin versus Angel narrative. They're smart to. It would be better if Angel was actually good. It would be better. They're pushing that narrative. However, in this game, there was a series of plays. Fever on offense, Angel Reese hard fouls somebody on Indiana's team and it doesn't get called. Kaitlin Clark looks at the official like, you're not going to call that? And the official just blows her off. So the next time up the floor, coming back, Angel Reese goes up for one of her patented doink layups, and on the way up, Kaitlin Clark puts it on her. Puts it on her hard. Now, was it an intentional foul? Absolutely. Did she give it a little bit extra? She sure did. She was defending her teammate. She ended up getting a flagrant one. Angel Reese lost her mind. Started MFing Kaitlin Clark like she lost her mind. And here's where it got weird, and this is something I think is really important to address because you may have seen something about this in the news and got a different take on it because people are absolutely clipping this statement from the NBA up to make it look like something that it wasn't. After this occurred, there were people in the stands being accused of saying some pretty awful things to Angel Reese that were racially based. There is no place for that. None. You can absolutely say horrible things to Angel Reese just about her basketball play. There's no reason to be racist in any situation. The NBA comes out with a statement that says we condemn this, we are investigating this. I have seen this clipped up to make it look like Kaitlin Clark said something racist or that somebody on the court said something racist. That is not what occurred. So if you saw those clips and you're thinking that there was that kind of a vibe going on, that's not what happened. This was from the stands. That being said, guys, Kaitlin Clark keeps dropping triple-doubles. She's going to be on TV 47 out of 49 games this year. Her market ain't dying anytime soon. Her market is not dying. You had a really good buy on a Kaitlin Clark card this week that I think doubles in the next month. So if I were looking for Kaitlin stuff, I would be looking for parallels of the rookie card that you see comps spread out pretty heavy on. My hunch is, which is a hunch, this is a speculation, it's not investing advice, my hunch is those ones that you see a larger spread on, you're going to see the top end of that grow a little bit. So in this case, I was able to get a variation ice rookie and I got it around 70 bucks. There's some comps there, but there's a couple of recent ones well over 100. I think within a week or two, that's the baseline and then there could be a little more excitement with it. I think if you can target the top end of comps, Kaitlin is so liquid, you might need to scroll a little more on card ladder. A lot of times people don't realize that you're looking at 20 sales, but that's all in the last day. Sometimes in the last two hours. So you need to really look through that. That's my play on it. It's going to be people saying, oh, there's these lower comps this month, but I'm also going to be, yeah, there's these higher ones. What has she possibly done to be on the low end of that market right now? In general, the WNBA, I think, is not slowing down. I think that they finally have their star. They finally have somebody that is going to drive viewership and drive excitement about the league. Stadiums are actually starting to fill up more than 20 percent, and if Kaitlin Clark is playing, they're selling out. There are a host of very good players in the league whose cards, I think, are really undervalued. Their low end market sells like crazy right now. So don't be afraid. I can't believe I'm saying this, because in the past I would never say you should dabble into the WNBA, but I do think it is a largely untapped market that's going to continue to grow. Two things I want to say. First one, a little bit of pushback. Not necessarily pushback, but just clarifying something. You mentioned how Angel Reese lost it on the court. It was all worked up. They had to hold her back. That's true. Both her and Kaitlin had what I would consider a bad attitude in that moment. Kaitlin, for the right reasons, had an intentional foul. She threw a little shade. She was provoking Angel to get a reaction. Let me talk. You've got to work on this, bud. Swing, buddy. Care Bear hat means emotionally you have to be older than your hat. That's Gasly. He's the villain. Yeah, don't care. Don't want to know his name? Don't care at all. But both Angel and Kaitlin, since that, and pretty quickly after the game, said it was a play on the ball. It was a rough foul, but it was a basketball play. They're both saying this. I want to be fair in this. Angel is a very polarizing character in the WNBA. There are many different theories as to why that is. But this stuff happens in NBA five times a game, and they don't all get this much press. Know that there's a massive narrative with this. It is something that is intentionally and can be used divisively. I guarantee you that we'll have comments saying this or that. There'll be race-baited comments. There will be social issue comments about this. There will be comments about Angel Reese being a star, Angel Reese not being any good, Kaitlin getting all the love, Kaitlin not having any accountability. We understand all of that. But I do want to say, at the end of the game, they're both professional athletes. They both got in the heat of the moment, and they both immediately were like it was a basketball play, whatever. Now, are there optics with that? Do they truly feel that way? We'll never know on any athlete. But it's not like they were trying to say, oh, now it's on, there's bad blood. They both just got in the heat of the moment. Kaitlin intentionally fouled a girl. It was an intentional foul. The people saying, oh, no, I can't believe they called Angel. Oh, no, it was 100% intentional foul. Watch her knee, too. She's giving it a little momentum. Oh, yeah, she's giving it to her. Yeah, for sure. I mean, and there's been bad blood between those two since college. Yeah. The second thing I want to say, I agree with everything Gary's saying about WNBA market trending up, but imagine any other sport where there's only a handful of players that if you hit, you're doing okay on. You just described almost every sport. I would say that basketball this year was pretty rough, but the wax sales also proved that to be true. I think in football, you have 10 or 15 players that people are really excited about. I don't think even for a second, if you opened up Prism Wax right now, that you have anywhere close to the same amount of players that you'll be able to get value back on. For WNBA? Yeah. I would agree immediately. However, I do think there are 10 to 15 legitimate stars in the WNBA that as it grows, those are not a terrible thing to have. I think that's two, three years out. I don't disagree. And the reason for that is if there really are these other stars, then someone needs to ask the question, then why is the Indiana Fever getting that many of the games? Why did the Bulls get that many of the games? Gary, you're arguing with yourself. We're both doing this podcast, so the questions are rhetorical for people. Thank you. Mine was also rhetorical. I understand that, but the other games were available. There was local broadcast for them. Yeah. There aren't a lot of local broadcasts for the WNBA. That's my point is there's eight to 10 of these stars that we're not going to know about. We're just going to see stat lines, and then when they play Caitlin, then you get to see them. So that's something I want to say. The reason I'm giving that word of caution is the hiring wax we announced is going to be released in the next year. There are going to be massive chases in it, but if you think it's a product like some others like baseball- Products where you've at least got all these other people and prospects where there's some hype and some collecting it may not be quite the Same yet. Yeah, it might even be a better play as to keep it sealed Yep, it might be a better place to seal NBA Conference Finals coming up Yeah, not what I means. I wouldn't know not at all. I Did not the Knicks don't surprise me too terribly much I Kind of thought they were gonna beat Boston even with Tatum, but once Tatum went down it was a foregone conclusion I just expect more of a self-destruct before they get to the playoffs with that program That's so you see them put that team together. We got a physical very physical four teams in this Yeah, the East the East finals could be a bunch of crappy 89 to 94 games Yeah, there might not be a whole lot of points scored Oakland City is really fun to watch, Oklahoma City. You said Oakland. Yeah, Oakland City's not a team Oakland City is a small college close to where I grew up. I don't know that Thanks for catching it. You're welcome because we could have moved on And I would have been ecstatic about that. Yeah, I see what you did there. Yeah, but but we didn't Oklahoma City and the T Wolves will be an interesting matchup Who do you think gets through on that you think okay see handles it I think okay see handles it that being said It's not a sweep No there is an outside chance that Anthony Edwards goes nuclear for six games and There's nothing anybody can do about it. The thing that Oklahoma City has going for it. You mean nuclear? That's what I said. Oh, you said nuclear. I Just didn't know if we were both playing the game or just oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize I said that's all right I'm stupid. It's fine The thing that Oklahoma City has is On the defensive end. They're a very physical team on the offensive side of the ball SGA is just he's almost unstoppable right now the counter to that though is With the T Wolves Anthony Edwards is one of the more physical finishers in the league and he's not afraid to go inside and and Body up going to the rim and Rudy Gobert is What a two or three time defensive player of the year who can still play defense at a very high level and Julius Randall has been there before like it should be a really intriguing series I don't think it goes seven But I could see it going six Pretty pretty easily and it's just a question of who can steal a game or two on the other person's court in the East Tyrese Halliburton for the Indiana Pacers to get to the finals Halliburton is gonna have to do what he's done For the first two rounds, which he's proven to be able to yeah I mean everybody knew he was a great passer a great distributor of the basketball, but I don't know that anybody Anticipated him going out and having multiple 30-point games as a scorer They're gonna need that from him because when the lights shine the brightest Jalen Brunson is the truth He will disappear for stretches in the regular season. He'll be like, what does everybody make a big deal about this guy? He scored 17 like nine games in a row and then the playoffs come around. He's like 30 37 36 31 38 1940 like He is the truth when the lights shine the brightest and the Knicks are hungry hungry hungry Their fan base is hungry to get back. Oh, yeah to that promising. Not that the Pacers aren't but Yeah, now let's talk about from the car perspective Whenever you have Teams emerge. I want to say like it's all complete shocker, but it's not the front-runner It's not all the front-runner big market teams. We can at least say that and the Knicks are a big market team However, not everybody expected him to run this deep No, and then you have three smaller market teams with stars on them when it comes to buying these guys Here's the problem by the time you will have watched this We are like close to peaking on the value of any star on Those rosters for this year during this season if you're buying any of them right now Understand you're paying the premium that they might go to the finals that they might be a finals MVP But only one of those teams will have one of those players, right? Yep, and then within a couple months after that Unless a person who is coming off the bench has never done anything before does something magical Their markets gonna soften a little bit Halliburton and Anthony Edwards have both kind of seen this place. I mean not to the finals, right? They didn't make it quite to the finals last year Halliburton, right? Right, but they short of that But the similar excitement of all he's overrated boom. He's not and he can carry his team. We've already seen that bump So if you're buying them, you're probably more of a hold over the next three years I think they'll continue to be special or you're buying for the PC But you're probably not buying With much margin that you're gonna be able to get out of the card in the next three six months before the next season starts, right? You're playing that game for the two weeks after the championship. Yeah, I do think there is one player that does have a hot take tremendous upside In the near term if you want to play this game And that is McDaniels T Wolves when Jait Jalen McDaniels Jaden Jalen Jaden or Jalen one of the two big basketball guys well his rookie autos are in 2020-21 and They're very accessible price wise and he has had multiple high output games and as a big part of that team if the T Wolves Get to the finals over Oklahoma City and if somehow they win a championship I believe it will be in large part because he has been a big-time secondary role player to Anthony Edwards and if that happens a guy who you can buy his rookie autos right now base for 15 to 30 bucks depending on the product on the lower end That's a card that if he goes off a few times You could see a nice little spike And I don't think he doesn't go off like that's the other side of that if he doesn't go off I don't think they drop too much from where they are I mean you're gonna have the normal offseason drop But I would not say go out there and start buying Anthony Edwards or as SGA's market is already peaked Don't go by SGA Don't go by Anthony Edwards. You might catch somebody sleeping at a show that may be nice for a little while Yeah, but in general his stuff is already trended up. We've had people asking for him on whatnot So people were already kind of playing that game Jalen Brunson's market is already baked It's just not great for as good of a player as he is It's just you don't see the love for Trey Young stuff sells for more than Jalen Brunson stuff does and I would argue that Brunson is Way better player. Mm-hmm. So anyhow NBA Conference Finals talk check Good job you like that. So let's do the value box at this time. And what we want to do is unpack a little bit further what Jeff Wilson's video was talking about that collecting isn't dead and Gary and I certainly agree with that And as we said there were some good points that he made in his video Certainly things that we have different opinions on but we want to talk to the person that was introduced to the hobby through breaking through repacking or Content around like flipping cards, right? Maybe you've stumbled into cards by you know death scrolling through YouTube It death scroll doom scrolling Get that one taken down probably through YouTube and you found somebody doing all these transaction videos at a show and you were interested in it or the Upside of financial part of it But now that you're into this you're kind of enjoying the hobby a little bit You want to figure out what you want to collect to have your own PC? It's nice to enjoy the hobby Even as a dealer we have things that we collect just for ourselves our PC personal collection that we hang on to or things that we like to have you if it's not a specific player and it's separate from The things we're always trying to do business with we might have a number on a card But we'll throw a ridiculous number on that. We really don't care if it sells, right? Yeah So if you're in that space, we want to talk through different approaches you have Maybe you've been collecting for a while and one of the ideas that we have here for you May be something that kind of sparks an interest and then you find yourself Down the rabbit hole of building out a collection or set or whatever. So That's what we're gonna do. This is gonna be pretty elementary focus on like how we would approach beginning to collect from certain genres, etc But let's just jump right into it. Let's do it So when we're talking about collecting we're talking about things that you actually don't mind hanging on to forever potentially I Would argue that They don't have to argue. Well, I would just say that in general That's the thought process for collecting You're collecting it. You're not buying it with the intention of selling it later I have three things that I PC three people that I PC I do have cards that are in my showcase that I don't care if they ever sell but they are for sale The stuff in my PC is never for sale It will go to my kids and if they choose to sell it they can it's not gonna be worth a lot because I PC The stuff that has stood out to me over the years my favorite football player of all time is Ken Anderson So I PC Ken Anderson stuff I've been very lucky to have him be my favorite player because I can buy his stuff cheap And I can get nice stuff and enjoy it myself Every once in a while, I just pull it out and look at it because I enjoy it I PC ed Oliver the Bills defensive tackle I PC him because the first time I ever saw him play was his first college game. He had just turned 18 He was in the three technique. He crossed the guards face grab the guard by the chest plate grab the center by the chest plate and Used them to sack the quarterback three steps into a five-step drop and I my jaw dropped I was just like oh my god, you know when his stuff came out I started collecting it and I've recently started collecting Nicer Luke Keekley stuff because I think he's the smartest defensive player that I ever saw play and I thought it would be fun to start Collecting him before he got the call to the hall All random things you'll notice there's a theme They don't get a ton of hobby love so they're not super expensive and as a dealer I don't have to worry about going broke at shows as people bring stuff up to me to sell to me I feel terrible for people who P. I don't know anybody who actually does but who PC Patrick Mahomes people with money Yeah, maybe but I absolutely do that in general like that's why I PC what I PC. Yeah There's a lot of different approaches to it So there are some people that just PC a player, but it doesn't even have to be like that So my personal PC is Eric Davis from the Reds He is affordable. Although in Ohio he does like pretty well. He does are he he'll move quick No, he's fairly liquid for the status of star. I would think I would say yeah for the whole of very good Yeah, Dan Marino that can get a little bit pricey, but doesn't have one today. Yeah, I did I did do you want me to brag on you? No, I'm gonna brag on yourself No, I'm gonna shout out the listener who gave me a great deal on it John I appreciate you Gift for Jason and he was happy. I was happy you were happy. Everybody won. Yeah, it's a sick card Marino other dolphin stuff, but I'll target like as I was growing up I really liked the defense is basically all Miami had for like 15 years was But it was pretty tough and so like the the Zach Thomas the Jason Taylor era. That's a boy for me Cameron Wake Yeah, so that stuff's stuff that I'll PC and then random Reds I also this last year dove into some set building So I'm about 60% through the 1969 top set whenever I have time and the resources to mess with it I'll go digging it shows whenever I don't it's waiting on me to finish it My goal with those sets is it would be cool for me to have 10 or 15 complete sets of vintage cards that carry some value For me to leave behind when I'm gone and the family's gonna like oh my gosh We didn't even know these were here right and they're they're worth some money. So there's a lot of different approaches. There are people that Will just PC a certain set or certain error cards or I'll tell you this from the low-end eBay market There are people that just select PC really oddball versions of cards. Yeah, not necessarily valuable just weird weird stuff So let's talk through how you could get into the different categories. I kind of wrote out different different options But the traditional way that we've all heard about collecting Jeff was even referencing it in his video was set builders So a traditional set builder will build out the basic checklist So on vintage cards vintage sets or junk wax and earlier you basically had a run of cards It was typically five to seven hundred seven hundred ninety-two cards. Yep And it was everybody was in there. There were rookies in there Some of them were miscut and had the other player on the yard Some of them were clean, but you just took your time to build out all seven hundred ninety-two cards in the set Then you have so you have people that will do that currently I don't see that happening as often in this market now Because of the price point for people to get a bunch of base It makes it kind of challenging to open wax to get into that and so many people throw away base Set collectors hate it when they see that the thought of cards being thrown away just yeah bothers them They don't necessarily want them and they're not necessarily even building the set. But how could we throw them away? It's because there's just bajillions of them and a lot of people don't build sets anymore Set building can be I know this sounds counterintuitive it can be a Viable lower price point of entry way to have a very targeted collection base you If you're doing it through opening wax, it can be rather expensive However, you could decide just to build out this the base set and find that stuff on eBay for a buck or two a piece So baseball is a perfect example of this series one tops jumbos if you buy two jumbo boxes You should be in theory pretty close about 80 to 90 percent of the way to a full base set and While Jason's point of it being very expensive to do that can be true However, it can be a way for you to jumpstart a set and do something you enjoy So if you want to rip some wax Make the goal. Hey, I'm gonna rip a couple boxes a series one and I want to build the whole set and I'm gonna jumpstart that set by doing this and then now I have a bit of a personal chase. Remember, the chase doesn't have to be about hitting a big card that you can flip for money. It can be about that feeling of satisfaction of when that last card, when Jason finishes his 69 set, I'm almost 100% certain the last card will be the mantle. And when he does that, the first feeling he's going to have is not going to be like, man, this is worth a lot of money. It's going to be like, I did it. I did it. Here's the binder. I did it. It's the whole set. It's right here. And I had to work for it. And there's a feeling of a reward, a feeling of reward that comes with that, that I think we miss a lot in the hobby, because all we chase is the serotonin rush of, you see the videos tops post all the time, life-changing card. Sometimes a life change is just that feeling of satisfaction. You had a bad day and you hop on eBay and the set you've been working on and you've got alerts and the card you need popped up and it was only $4 and you grab it. And when it comes in, you're like, gosh, I did it. And it makes the whole day better. Yeah. I would agree with that. Some of you are hearing this and like, I have no interest in putting together a set of non-shiny, non-rare, non-whatever, and that's fine. There's a whole new wave of set builders, especially in the last five years that have rolled in. And what they do is they pick a subset. So out of tops, maybe you have a little bit more money to spend, but you don't want to go nuts. You're not buying a bunch of downtowns. You're not doing it that way, but maybe you like baseball and you're like, you know what? I'm going to build out every year's home-filled advantage sets. And a lot of those are going to be 30 to a hundred bucks. There's some of them out there for 10, 15, right? And you can find them for five sometimes. That's the type of set that, although you're just building the set, I have a hunch that those parallels are going to get steep in the coming years, but that's one where you're kind of taking these, but they're case hits, right? The home field. Case hits, full set, nowhere close to the cost of everything else. How are we doing on time? Let me take a look at your watch. And you're able to build that subset out. It may be a cheaper insert set. Maybe you like a mosaic had this, these really cool images of the bank set. Do you remember that? Yeah. Where it was like in a landscape, really cool shot. Maybe you want to build out a parallel set. There's affordable ways to do that. You can go to Cardboard Connection. What are the sites? Beckett still does have a checklist and others that you go to for that. Cardboard Connection is the big one. It will break down the set, all the subsets, the variations of that set. And a lot of these now it's like, Oh, I like, um, all right. So let's say it's the bank football set, right? Out of mosaic. They have numbered to five. They have no, you could pick a certain color wave of that. Well, that's what I was going to do the base. Like there are so many ways to build a set that doesn't have to be 700 cards. It doesn't have to break the bank. And it visually is going to look really cool. There's awesome ways to display that stuff now. So there are subsets as well. Yeah, for, for sure. And again, to Jason's point, maybe you don't want to collect a base card set and that's fine. I don't, to be frank, when it comes to ultra modern stuff, I don't know too many people who do, uh, and that's okay. But if you're going to collect set, maybe you pick a set from your childhood. I've always had a soft spot for 1990 tops. They're corny look and they look like comic book frames and I loved them. Uh, but if you're doing this, maybe you want to do a whole set. Mosaic is great for this. You want to do a whole set. You don't want to do the base. Pick one of the reactive colors that aren't numbered and build the set. Uh, so you can do that. Uh, we talked a little bit about the idea of a PC find, figure out who your favorite players are. Uh, and I would really recommend not just like my favorite team. It's easy as a Bengals favor me to say, I love Joe Burrow. Well, so does everybody else. Uh, and that's okay. But if you've been a Bengals fan your whole life, maybe don't PC something from maybe Corey Dillon. Yeah. I love Corey Dillon. Yeah. Isaac Curtis, Chris Collinsworth, like who's your mama? Um, Chad Johnson, Ocho Cinco, like pick somebody that you really enjoyed watching as a kid. And you'll be shocked at how much fun it is to be digging through a box and find a cool card of that player. And you look and it's five bucks and you're like, really? Yeah. Well, and that's, that was the point I wanted to bring up with PC is you can determine your budget based off of an era. So if you're my age, which I'll be 40 this year, the junk wax era is where you kind of cut your teeth on cards. So the wonderful thing about that for me is there are so many baseball greats and basketball greats in that area era, but they were in sets that were so overproduced that it's very affordable. Yeah. Um, I know people that are like, I'm trying to get every card from this year to this year of this person. And most of them are less than five bucks a piece. Yeah. And you can hop on eBay one night a week and just see what's available, order stuff with standard. And like, it doesn't have to be expensive. What you see on YouTube though, is this is my PC and it's worth more than a house. That's not where everyone lives, right? It's not. So you can absolutely have a nostalgic PC and it can be an expensive player and be affordable. I let's say IPC, Ken Griffey Jr. And I set a cap at anything interesting under 50 bucks a piece. There's still a, you will have thousands of cards that have not been repeated and still not even be touching the surface on what's available out there. And what's really cool about doing that, especially if you are really plugged into the community and, and when you're collecting and you're PCing stuff, I really recommend getting plugged into the overall community. And here's why we talk about this a lot. This hobby is all about relationships and some of the stuff that I PC because I'm tied into the community because I know what other people PC and I have hooked them up on things either as gifts or given them to them at a really great price. When they come across something that I PC that might be worth $500, they'll let me have it for 50, right? Because they know you're not trying to flip it and sell it to somebody else. I'm a hundred percent certain that that's how I'm going to get my Ken Anderson optic downtown because somebody in the community knows that that's who I collect. I'm not trying to flip it and make money on it. It's never leaving my possession and they're going to sell it to me because they pulled it and they're in it for 50 bucks and they know that that's something that I collect. That's a big part of it. It's so much more enjoyable to PC in a community because people help people and you'll find out really quickly how that works. And it's a lot of fun. Yep. So if you're not somebody that's collecting, you hear people talking about it, you're in the hobby, ripping, chasing hits, and you have a little bit of fatigue, I'd just encourage you in the different examples, even if there's a hundred different ways, another thing you do is chase parallels. I am a person who buys cheaper things in the card space. When I started setting up at shows again, that was the biggest leap was I mentally was like, cards up to $50 don't exist. If they walk up in bulk, I'll buy them. But for my showcase, I'm targeting 50 to 500 bucks on most stuff. That was a shift for me. One of the rules I made for myself is every month in 2025, I'm buying a one-of-one. It can go in the inventory, it can go on PC, but I'm buying a one-of-one. I have licensed one-of-ones that are worth a good chunk of change and I have non-licensed ones that'll go in the showcase for 50 to 75 bucks. The point is I'm forcing myself to collect something a little bit different. Now, are all these PC? No, but it's a way of setting a goal of like, hey, I made a goal that I'm going to collect a one-of-one every month. I know that sounds silly, but for some of you, that may be a way to enter in to find a good spot. You can do this on your own budget and just enjoy the hobby, enjoy collecting. And setting a goal is a really good part of that because if you set a goal and you give yourself a budget with it, you can keep yourself from falling into the trap of overspending, of getting sucked into something that you can't really afford. This should not be a hobby that causes you financial stress. This should not be a hobby where, and listen very carefully to me because I know I'm talking to some of you right now, this should not be a hobby where you're hiding the credit card bills from your spouse. Ever. That's not what this is about. If you find yourself in that position, there are resources out there to help you, but that should not be what this is about. Simplify. Is there anything wrong with trying to buy stuff and make money on it? Of course not. And some stuff's expensive to invest in. Yeah, and some stuff is expensive to invest in, but the hobby side of this should be something that brings you joy, not stress. It should be something that you can sit back and have a little bit of reminiscence to your childhood and enjoy that. Not be stressed about how I'm going to make this minimum credit card payment because I spent 10 grand last week on breaks that I couldn't afford. That should not be what this is about. That's the whole point of this segment is that this hobby should be something that really fills your heart, not makes you stressed and worried all the time. One final note before we move on with this. To those of you listening to this, rolling your eyes, you can't believe that there's people in this situation. I mean, this is just ridiculous. They're not even collectors, this and that. I would remind you that those of you that have been barely paying your table fees for the last 20 years and all of a sudden now you're making money at shows again, it's because of a massive influx of new collectors to the space. It's because people are learning. And whether they get introduced through breaks, whether they get introduced through repacks, razzes, whatever, they're here. And if they're interested in collecting, you should be advocating for that to be a good thing. It's better for everyone in the hobby. So don't get too high and mighty when there's been a drought in your sales and all of a sudden it's picked up. It's the new people coming in as well that are driving that market also. It's the repackers buying stuff from your showcase. You had no idea they were repackers because they paid stronger. But don't forget to enjoy collecting. Don't forget the hobby survives because there are new collectors in the space. Flippers will come and go. Speculators will come and go. That's been around forever in this hobby. That's never going to change, but the collectors are going to be driving the market on that over the long haul. Low end liquid. This is a set that, if you don't know this, I have a high volume, low end eBay store, tens of thousands of listings up active right now. And what I try to do is give a set that I've noticed has been selling for me pretty liquid. This set in particular is one that I was kind of surprised, but over the last couple months I've made a mental note. I try to do that. If I start to notice a trend of a set that's selling, sometimes a random top series one, series two subset kind of gets more popular. Why? Because somebody is collecting it. Somebody's building the subset. So this is case in point. These are not the prettiest inserts I've ever seen, but it's a cool idea. These are in 2020 tops. This is the decade's best. So it has a player or a moment in baseball. It shows what decade is from, but decade's best batter, Tony Glenn. Decade's best award winner from the fifties, Willie Mays. Decade's best pitcher from the seventies, Bob Gibson. So tons of categories. It's a pretty large subset. All these in my store are like $199 to $249, but I'm noticing that they're starting to pop off. I know for a fact there are tons of these in the dime boxes that you'll see at an LCS or at a card show, or you can buy a whole, you might be able to buy the whole set on the cheap and split them out on eBay. But this week's episode of the low end liquid will be decade's best. Not huge markup, but they are starting to sell kind of quick for me and there may be something going on there. Check them out. And again, as a reminder on the low end stuff, Jason will tell you on a $1.99 sale, you make what? 40 cents? 40, 50 cents. Yeah. Yeah. That's 25%. That's solid numbers. Okay. The lookout last thing this week, this is one that I really was excited about because I was excited about this kid when he got drafted. I thought he was drafted way later than he should have been. And only because he doesn't fit a typical first base profile because he doesn't have tons of just raw power. And that is CJ Kafas of the Cleveland guardians. He was drafted in 2023 third round pick in college. Dude just hit. He doesn't have great raw power and he's a first baseman. And that just doesn't profile super well. MLB teams want power at first base. Now here's the thing. 50 grade power. He gets to it in games because he has such a good feel for the barrel of the, of the bat. I think that realistically he's a 20 to 25 home run guy in the bigs, which is on the lower end of full-time first base production. But he also is probably going to hit pretty close to 300. He's 23 years old. He's in triple-A. He started the year in double-A and he's come up to triple-A. He's evenly split between the two so far this year. I don't think it's too long before they bring him up because Carlos Santana is not cutting it at the plate at this point in his career. Still a decent first baseman, but the thing about Kafas is he's defensively a really good first baseman. Gold glove caliber first baseman defensively. So far this year he is slashing across two levels. 371, 460, 616. That's a 1076 OPS and that's with four home runs. That means he is hitting doubles all over the place. Strikeout to walk ratio a little bit under two to one. So not amazing, but better than league average. I think he's like a 1.6 to one strikeout to walk guy. In double-A this year he was almost one to one, which is amazing. His career slash line, which is basically one full major league season. It's like 533 at bats. His career slash line in the minors is 306, 411, 539 for a 947 OPS. Currently he's in Columbus with the Clippers. If you're in central Ohio and you're a baseball fan, you should be going to Clippers games anyway. But if you get a chance before he gets caught up, go watch this kid hit. A smooth left-handed swing. Nothing crazy. He's picked up a little bit more power to the pull side. Can spray the ball wherever he wants to spray it though. Good eye for the batter's box. A little bit aggressive with the swing, but he doesn't chase. He does have a little more end zone width because of that though, because if he sees a ball in the zone, he's going to swing at it. Cards are very affordable right now. Again, it's 2023 Bowman draft. I'm wanting to say you can pick up his base autos for under $30 right now, $25-ish. And again, I don't think he's too far from seeing the majors this year. So this week's The Lookout, CJ Kafis, Cleveland Guardians. Before we head out, just a quick reminder, click that little subscribe button if you're watching full video content. If you're seeing clips from this in socials, there should be a link in the bio to get to the full episodes on YouTube. These are all streamed on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio, wherever you get your podcasts. If you're audio only or you drive for work, there's so many ways to engage with it. We appreciate you. We are live tonight, Thursday night at 7 p.m. on Whatnot. Can't wait to see you there. Anything else I'm forgetting? No. Come hang out with us tonight. Got some really cool stuff to show you. Yeah. Oh, and then tomorrow, Friday, we will be at the Ship's You Wanna Show. Yes. Somewhere in the middle, two tables. Look for the big ball card show banner. We can't wait to see you there. This has been the Ball Card Show, the sports podcast. For the Esports Collector. Bye now.