Live From The National SCN Booth S6 Ep 30

Foreign. Hello and welcome to the ball card show, the esports podcast for the esports collector. I'm Jason otero. I'm Gary Lemaster. This is season six, episode 30. And your boys are too fat for the heat in the building today. And we're not talking about cards. No. The national is wild this year. Today is Thursday. Thursday. Normally we record on Tuesday. I think it still would have been wild. The line was five wide three blocks this morning. It's as busy second day of the national as it usually is on Saturday. I can't imagine what the weekend's gonna be. Let's talk about the air temp while we're at it. We're old man complaining. We haven't hit the weather yet. We have hit the lines. But it is warm up here, boys. If your boys pass out. Toasty. It's toasty downstairs. It's about 20 degrees cooler. Yu-Gi-Oh There are more people upstairs this year. Yu-Gi-Oh it is crowded. And SCM built this amazing studio here on site. But the ventilation in here is not ideal for the chubby. For the businessmen in this space, it's not ideal. Let's talk about the upstairs space here. Okay. Because last year, I don't know exactly how many more tables they moved in up here, but they reconfigured the second Fleer entirely. Yes. And it is still absolutely Beckett up. Yes. It is wildly busy. And the Topps of collectors, the number of people we are. We are sitting right between modern baseball. Yu-Gi-Oh Vintage baseball. Yep. Non sport Disney. And everybody is busy. Yep. There are collectors here looking for everything. You can imagine stuff that we're seeing walk up to tables. It's just blowing our minds with that. Oh, that Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle Duel 101 out of Dynasty. Yes. I was like, did somebody pick that up around us? Not around us, but it did get moved at the show. Because I sent it to a guy. I was like, what do you want for this? And I knew the answer was going to be wildly outside of what our little budget is. I wasn't anticipating it being, who do we need to walk this card to? I wasn't anticipating it being several multiples of our entire bankroll. Yu-Gi-Oh But, Yu-Gi-Oh I sent it to somebody and that person came back and said, I wish I'd had a shot. The guy who bought it just came over and showed it to me. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh That's how quick stuff moves here. Pretty unique piece. Let's talk a little bit about the media presence. So I see a little bit more of that engagement upstairs down around all the activations it's been pretty heavy volume of that. Everybody has a phone out. Yep. Everybody has a camera in your face, so. And there's a lot of people capturing. And we're one of them. Right, but we are. I certainly understand why that has been a little more restrained this year. Because at some point it's a little much. Everyone grabbing footage within two feet of you. Now let's get to the meat and potatoes of this, the walkie taco. You went full lettuce intentionally. Yu-Gi-Oh In these trying times for lettuce. Listen, unashamed, I am a 50 year old man with digestive issues. What a dream. If that had been bad lettuce. What a dream. You said it's me versus the Ozempic. Me versus the Ozempic today. That's the show we need. Man versus Ozempic. Sign me up. What's the threshold here? Just shot. Dozen donuts. All right, what do we got here? My notes are all over the place. I mean, I wanted to talk about how different the national experience has been for us this year. Okay. So most of you guys know this is what we do. I've been coming to the national for years and years and years. The national. The first time I was in Chicago, I believe was in 2003. And it was just this second Fleer That's all it was. Now it's the whole center. But we've always been here as guys walking the show, buying, selling, transacting, setting up in the VIP lounge. This year we're here as media guys. Yep. And it's been a very different experience. It hasn't been bad, it's just been very different. People that know us are walking up. Hey, are you guys buying anything? Not right now. We can't. These badges don't let us do that. Yu-Gi-Oh not this time. We did have a really cool guest. Let's talk about a few interactions we had. Yes. So first, Daniel Van Kirk walks up. So wild. We were not expecting that at all. It's always weird when somebody who is way more famous than you will ever be walks up and is like, I really like your stuff. Because a year ago I was just slinging $3 cards in my basement live on trying to get 50,000 cards in the store. Yes. He comes walking up with his Allen and Ginter card and says, hey, I just got into cards in the last few months and your content has helped me get a grasp on this in a way that I wasn't able to find anywhere else. Then he inscribed it with his. That's hip hop. That's hip hop from Bob's Burgers, which I like. Come on. It was a really cool experience. And it's always. We talk about this a lot. When we launched this podcast, it was, we're just a couple guys talking about cards. And it turned pretty quickly into how can we bring value to the people that are listening to us? And we're so intentional about that that the number of people that have come up. Daniel Van Kirk comes up. But lots of other people who watch on the listen to the content in our whole space, not just us. And the feedback of the stuff you guys are talking about has been helpful to me in this. I'm a new dealer. Yu-Gi-Oh And nobody else is teaching how to do this. And I'm sure I'm saving up for my family's vacation or I'm starting my kids college fund or I got so wrapped up in the chase of ripping these products and it got to be a problem. And I just said, hey, if I'll put in the work, then I can fund the hobby and be smart financially about these moves, so. And you've made a best friend. Papa Gio. And you guys, I can't even. You guys are so close. Listen, Mike, I'm telling you right now, I see you. I see you wanting to chastise dad every once in a while. No, sir. One of my three favorite humans I'm not related to. The thickest. He's in that one. Yu-Gi-Oh He got to hang out with Frank the Tank this morning. That was cool. So he had his Dolphins gear on. And I said, is it as bad as I think it's going to be? It's not going to be good. It's not going to be good. Dang it. We just bought a big. Malik Willis. Yu-Gi-Oh Oh, no. Speaking of quarterbacks. Okay. We also had another interaction today. Our friend Jeff Wilson. We did. We wanted to give him a thank you. Yep. Posted the clip. If you haven't seen it, you want to check that out? But we wanted to thank Jeff for the interview. And Gary found a great gift for him. What do we give him again? Well, he thought when we told him we were going to give him a gift that it would be like a Jordan or a Kobe. But we really wanted to be thoughtful and get something direct for the piece. From the heart. From the heart. And we found it card of 25. Yu-Gi-Oh Will Greer, RPA out of it. Can't go wrong. And it was really important to us that when we gave it to him that he understood just how valuable it Was now. So we left the price tag on it, and I believe it was $5. Yu-Gi-Oh All right, Jeff, you were a good sport. We appreciate you. So is there anything PC wise, you're keeping an Yu-Gi-Oh out for this week? The last two years, I've tried to find a nice Luke Keakley card. Last year, I didn't find one anywhere. And we were actually walking and looking, actively looking. Yu-Gi-Oh This year so far, we haven't had a chance to really do that much. We've just been doing all this stuff. But, Yu-Gi-Oh a really nice Luke Kuechley or a really nice Ed Oliver. I would love to find one of those. I'm not gonna find a cool Ken Anderson car here. And to be frank, in Ohio. Yu-Gi-Oh we get. We can find that stuff. And he signs like a champ one-of-one so. But a cool Luke Keighley or cool Ed Oliver. You found a cool Zach Thomas. Yu-Gi-Oh Zach Thomas stuff. I'm keeping an Yu-Gi-Oh out for Jason Taylor. Just the unique 90s insert stuff. I'm kind of falling into that lane of stuff that I'm trying to find. I want to talk about something that we've been hearing a little bit from some of our regulars that we're walking up that we're out trying to source on the Fleer It's a conversation that's come up a few times. I think we can shed a little bit of light on this. But I want to talk about expectations of buying or more importantly, sourcing at a show like the national because it is a different. This is a different animal altogether. Yes. If you're. If you're coming to the national and you may see this episode and you're coming up on Saturday, this will drop. Whatever. If you're coming to the national or any show of this level, Fanatics fashion the national, the west coast show, and you're coming primarily to source cards to resell. From a business standpoint. Right. You have two options, in my opinion. Option number one, focus on value boxes. Option number two, buy guys who you think are on the way up and be willing to pay at or over over current comps because you believe firmly that they're gonna continue to rise. Here's my arbitrage game. This is the only tip that might do something and you would agree with this. You're gonna have to put in volume in the showcases and you're gonna have to basically catch some people that probably priced some things a few months ago. So it's like right now, the 90s chase, the basketball is Zebra hot. Where most people are Going to find those deals is in the value boxes. But there are players. I remind you, last year I found the deco ledge PSA 10 Shohei rookie. Someone had priced that probably February or March. I saw when that comp was. So that's how I map that out. If I'm looking through a showcase, I'll look at a few cards that are unique but probably have sales. Sure. Not a ton. And then I'm going to look at the sticker and then I'm going to look and say, when did this sell? And if it was three, five, six months ago. There's a lot of vendors that only do this show. Yep. They save all year because there's nothing on earth like this show. So you may be able to find an opportunity where they're happy at sticker. The trend has moved the value a little bit on there. But to do that, you got to just keep moving and plugging along. When you see two or three or four cards that you're familiar with and the stickers are just not where you're going to touch it, be happy and move on or buy the card and pay up and enjoy it. If you are. If you're looking for something for your PC and you're walking this show and you see something really unique that doesn't sell very often, I'm telling you right now, if you walk away from it thinking you'll be able to come back later because you just didn't want to pay the premium the person wanted for the card, that card likely one-of-one be there and you'll be kicking yourself. We had one of our listeners stopped and said, hey to a sportsman. Dan Shout out was telling us about a Tony Romo card that he was looking for and he found and the guy wanted double what the last comp was. It was a game used three color patch number to 15. Right. And he tried to make an offer and the dealer actually got upset with him. We've had that, that story two or three times from different guys. Understand by the end of the week with this number of people, I don't care how good the dealer is, they're probably people out. And if you're hitting them at 60% of their tag, they're probably not going to be very happy with you. But I just, I told him, I said, you're right. But at this show, that dealer knows there's a very high probability that there is a Tony Romo collector that's been looking for that car that isn't buying it, worrying about what it used to Sell for. They're buying it for them to keep forever. Yu-Gi-Oh And if it's the only one available and it's 400 bucks, guess what they're going to pay for it. Yu-Gi-Oh They're going to be 400 bucks. So if. Balance it out, think of your budget. What are you actually going to spend? Can you afford the card? If it's truly unique and you've been looking for years and you see it. Listen to your heart, baby. Yes. Enjoy it. This is the moment you've been waiting for. That's the Zach Thomas PMG that walked up. Yes. You know, months back at the Xenia show. Like, that's a card I've wanted. When it walked up, I knew I'm not going to have a crack at this anytime soon. I. This is. This is time for. So I'm hopeful to see a little bit of that PC stuff. For sure. All right. What else we got, Gary? I don't know. What did you have on our list? We burned through. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, we can spitball for. I don't think people need to spend necessarily. I don't think anybody. The crew, the guys working together, Everybody's sweating to death here. We don't keep it going. Hopefully, if you haven't had a chance to make it to a national someday, you get it on your list of things to do. Yep. If you love cards and you love this space, it really is an experience that you can't get anywhere else. There are parts of it that are going to make you want to pull your hair out. Right. And there are parts of it that you're going to think are the coolest things you have ever experienced in your life. There are very few other places where you're walking down an aisle and rubbing elbows and you look and you're like, I know that person. And it might not even be a card person. Like with us, you know, voice actors from famous TV shows. You're gonna see. You're gonna see all kinds of folks, and everybody's, for the most part, really nice, really accommodating, willing to sit down. You know, what I hear you saying is just so many people out there touching grass. Yes. Yu-Gi-Oh that's good. That's good. You get out there, touch some grass, see some humans. We saw it. Professor was here touching grass. The nutty professor was. He was here touching. Which is unfortunate because I had a crisp 20 for him to make up for those penny sleeve discrepancies if he's ever back in Columbus. So that he's set. Yu-Gi-Oh So Whether he goes to LJ's, shout out. LJ's. LJ's one of our favorite local shops. Or whether he's at Car Collector 2, that extra buck for penny sleeves. We wanted to try to help cover for a few months for him. I do want to address one thing that I've seen a lot of the reaction videos, national content. Okay. This emphasis on the long lines. Yep. Yu-Gi-Oh there's. I bet. I bet by the end of this week it's a half a million people or more in this facility. You don't have to be here. You don't have to come. But there is nothing on earth like the National. No. Nothing at all. All right, what do we got coming up? So next weekend, August the. You are on vacation. I'm gonna be in the Bahamas. I'm sorry, guys. Sorry. I will be in Circleville, Ohio, at the Circleville Card convention. Circleville Card convention. And then ship Shawana again. Another show. It one-of-one the national, but it's not like anything else. Come out to Amish country in Indiana. Make two days out of it so worth it. They do a great job. King of cards is going to be there. Confirm Kyle will be there. So if you've ever wanted to meet Kyle, it'll be a great spot to do it. What else have do we have after that? Remember after that? It's been a long week. It's been a very long week. And it's only Thursday. Yep. This has been the ball card show, the esports podcast for the esports collector. Bye now. Peace.