Passion to Profession: From a Card Shop at 13 to Building DT Sportscards with Dave Thimesch

Foreign. Welcome back to Passion to Profession here on the Stacking Slabs Network brought to you by my good friends at ebay. It is that time of the week where we dive into the entrepreneurial and operational journey of individuals in the sports card industry. Building cool things. Today I'm joined by Dave DT Sports Cards. DT Sports Card sits between collectors and one of the most important decisions they make with their cards. Grading. That makes this more than a grading business. It's a trust business. Dave has built an operation that reviews, prepares, tracks and and submits thousands of cards each month. This conversation gets into Dave and his passion as a lifelong collector and turning that into a business that he runs today. If you want to show your support for the broader Stacking Slabs network, hit the follow button, tell a damn friend, run on over to the Patreon Group, shout out ebay. Passionate profession would not be possible without without their support. We got Dave DT Sports Cards coming at you. We are back with another episode of Passion to Profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay. Excited for today's conversation we have Dave from DT Sports Cards, a long time business builder and participant in the hobby. We are going to be talking about his business grading, collecting, everything in between. Dave, we both just got back not too long ago from the national. It was madness. Has the dust settled at all for you yet? Slowly but surely come back to a mad house and it's just like the show never stops. So what were your maybe some primary takeaways outside of like the show? Definitely felt the bigger than ever before. I'm not sure how much more expansion can take place. I think it felt organized even though it was very chaotic. Those were kind of my observations. But any observations or takeaways from you being at the show, I mean it just keeps getting bigger, bigger and bigger and more people I think based off of like the, the upper level, I mean it seems like they could expand even more right? They. It doesn't seem like that they take utilize that upper level to the Velocity extent. But I mean how much more do you want to just keep adding and adding and adding before it's overload but it, it seems like they can certainly handle it right now. It always feels like the. I don't want to just say the only the good cards are upstairs because that's pretty generic. But it feels like there's some dealers up there that we know have good cards and have consistently have good cards and it's almost like you have to wait in line to get through the aisles because they're all jammed up and. Yu-Gi-Oh that's a good observation. You look over to the right a little bit and it's like there's some more space. But there must be some sort of method to the madness of how they're constructing everything upstairs in the second Fleer Yu-Gi-Oh it's. There were times when you moved from one Fleer to the other and the upstairs felt like a different show completely. I suppose that's what you have when, you know, you kind of give the older. The older priorities first crack. It's going to be basically going to go from old vintage to the newer modern. So. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh it's crazy. All right, well, let's jump into you and your story. I was kind of digging in, doing some research before we spoke. Saw that, you know, maybe I saw an old picture that was posted somewhere of you as a kid. So as I understand you've been a collector, someone passionate about cards essentially your whole life. Maybe share some perspective before we get into your business about Dave as the collector and how long cards have been a part of your life. Yu-Gi-Oh I. You're right. Cards have basically been a part of my life for ever. 1987 is when I first started into it. I know that because the very first card that I ever wanted was a 1987 Tops Mark McGuire. That bright green jersey just pulled me, right? And so I started in 1987 and just dove right in. Cards were an obsession with me immediately. So much so that at 13 I actually opened my own card shop. So ran that for a few years until I started getting through high school. Then, you know, college and girls and sports and all that starts taking over your life. So there was, there was about a 9 to 10 year period there when I went off to college where I was kind of out of cards a little bit. I still collected a little bit of memorabilia. But then in like 2009, Steven Strasberg and that hype pulled me right back in. And I've been in it non stop ever since then. You gotta. Let's rewind the tape a little bit. How does a 13 year old open a card store? Right? So like my family on both sides, like they're all small business owners. Which kind of plays into, I feel like where it led me down in my direction of life. So they are all small business owners. They all got all sorts of business. One of the things that my grandparents actually, they owned like in my hometown, it was like a half city block and it was all like retail, retail stores and stuff like that. And they, they approached me one Time when they saw how heavy I was into it, and they're just like, you know, we have a space available if you wanted to give this a shot. I was like, let's do it. So they offered a spot. And that's where I started learning a lot of the business aspect of cards, for sure. Do you think, like, the entrepreneurial mindset that you had maybe then and had today was a direct result from seeing, like, your family members around you building businesses? Was that some sort of an inspiration for you in that moment and then later on in your life? Yu-Gi-Oh it. It certainly helped. Right. Because then I could have some guidance, maybe not necessarily in the card world, but at the business aspect of it. If I had any questions or concerns or whatever, like on how to do something business wise, of course I had a lot of help that I could turn to for sure. Another part of it, I would say is that I kind of always used the business aspect of it to fund my collection. So it wasn't like I had like a corporate job or, you know, a 9 to 5 job that I would use that paycheck to fund my collection. It was always kind of like in the hobby, in the industry, the ways I could make money in that to fund my collection was what I found that I like doing. So you mentioned getting back in 09 Strasburg. There are these, like, milestones moments that I've been doing this long enough and I talked to enough people building businesses, and there's that moment is certainly a moment where I find a lot of people have gotten more serious about cards. But I also feel like that era isn't necessarily like, talked about a ton. Like, people talk about, like, oh, three with LeBron. And people talk about 2012. And then obviously people talk about 2018, 2019, like right before the pandemic when kind of there was this reemergence of mainstream sports cards and culture and mainstream society. What was it about 2009 that kind of sunk its teeth in you? Well, when I first started getting back in with the whole Strasberg News, it's not like I just shut off cards for that kind of gap that I was out of it. But when he kind of hit the radar, I started looking around. I was like, oh, look, you know, let me look at ebay and stuff like that. I bought a. Was like his 2009 USA Stars and Stripes auto for like 175 bucks. And I was just like, well, you know, I'll put this away for a little bit. Well, it was. I probably like a Month later, maybe not even a month later, I. I sold it for like 650. And from that point, I was just hooked. I was just back in. I was like, oh, my gosh. Things are much different now because the decade that I missed, one time in college, I went to a card show and when I was. When I was first went to college was 99. So grading was just starting and relic cards were just starting, but there was no autographs. And then I went to a card show during college and literally everything was like, autographs, relics, graded. And I was like, what the heck happened? So then when I jumped back in in 2009, it's almost like I had to get caught up on the past decade and things were much different. But once I sold that Strasbourg card, then things were off and I just started learning again what all happened in the decade that I missed. So you jumped back in and 09 and then when did you identify an opportunity to start DT sports cards and work on PSA submissions? I. We have not, I don't think we've ever in the history of this show talked with someone who does what you do. So I think it'd be interesting to understand kind of the why behind it and just the timing. And then we'll get into like, you know, the grading and the operations behind your business. But, like, maybe talk a little bit about that. Yu-Gi-Oh When I first got in, I thought that a good way and fun way to. To make money would be to open product, right? Open product, flip the cards. And it was fun. Don't get me wrong, I love to open product. But I quickly found out that ripping product is not going to be the way to make a lot of money. And in fact, it was going to cost a lot of money. I started piling up a little bit of debt and I was just like, you know, I got to figure out a way to satisfy my itch of ripping but make money. And that's when I jumped into group breaks. I was like, why don't I just do some group breaks? So that's when I got into the group breaking world. I did group breaks through, like blowout cards. I had a. When I still have a good relationship with blowout, but that's where a lot of like my relationships started, through blowout cards. So I started breaking through blowout cards. I just. One thing led to another, you know, over the course, gradually growing the breaks bigger and bigger. And that's how I started being able to make money instead of losing money. But I did breaks from probably 2011 12ish. Solely breaks until probably it was 2019ish. By that point I had moved to Arizona. Being in Arizona, you have all sorts of access to, you know, spring training stuff like that. I like to go get autographs, so that was fun. Around that time I discovered that, hey, I could take some of these cards that I was getting autographed, get them graded by PSA and sell them for as much or more as like some of these pac pulled cards were getting at the time. So I was doing that. I was grading. Friends of mine that were getting autographs were seeing what I was doing and they're like, hey, can you grade mine for me too? So I did and I was. And then, so I started getting more business grading that way. And at that same time then I was also like, well, I'm doing all these group breaks. It only makes sense if people want to grade their cards that I'm opening for them to offer that as a service post break. So people started having me pull the card back, send them in for them. And that's when the grading business really kind of started growing as well. I would say leading up to Covid, it was probably like 80% breaking, 75, 80% breaking, you know, 20, 25% grading. Covid hit, shut everything down. The price of product just exploded. And for what I like to do break wise, the cost of the product basically made breaking not feasible for me. I mean, I know breaking is huge and where it is nowadays, but for me. So that's kind of when I went all in on the grading part of it. And that's when I really started growing the grading part of it. And eventually just like a year or two after that, then it was 100% grading and no more breaks for me. We're going to dig into the, the grading of all. But you mentioned blowout days and I would love for you because with all the OGs, people go back and they talk about like that culture in that time frame, which I think a lot of people who are newer, or I can even say newer like myself getting back in 2019, like blowout existed, but maybe not at the level where it was like the spot where everyone in the space interacted, whether you're a collector or a business builder. Is there anything different outside of like, you know, the platforms, like we all use Instagram now to communicate and socialize. But like during that time, like was there any big differences during that time or is it still kind of just the same? Everyone's doing the same thing, but the platform's just different. Maybe talk about the blowout days that everyone always goes back and, and talk about. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean that's like before Instagram, right Before Instagram, before Twitter, before all the new social media platforms were the way people communicated and, and showed off and transacted. So Blowout forms at the time had built this massive community that was the most popular at the time. So that's where a lot of people, I think got started. So you were part of kind of that group of people connecting on Blowout. You obviously probably built a following through breaks and then you had people reach out to you about submitting cards to psa, which then you lasered in on. Like that's the opportunity for me. Was there a bunch of people doing what you were doing at this the time? Were you, were you kind of on an island? Like what was the group submitter landscape? What did that look like when you kind of went all in on it? There were definitely group submitters out there. There were definitely group submitters out there. In fact, one of like when I was first getting started actually and growing it, one of the big things that happened was Mark's cards. I don't know if you remember them. Yes, I do. When they took everybody's money and just split. So there were definitely others out there. I honestly, like, I mean I didn't really pay that much attention just because as I, I was getting going, I already had this kind of, kind of community, I guess that were going directly to me anyways. But then when I started going all grading, that's when I, of course I went out. I would start going out and advertising and stuff like that. So they're definitely out there and there's definitely a lot more now. But Yu-Gi-Oh it, it's definitely grown. When I think about your business and you mentioned the marks cards, ex. I think about like the most important element is like trust. Like people are, you know, sending you kind of their price possessions to then get encapsulated and there's money transfer. Like how do you think about the trust element and building those relationships with people so that they feel comfortable sending you their cards and knowing that although you can control the grades, you're going to get them their cards back and the money exchange is going to go smoothly. Like how do you think about trust as kind of a central force in your business? Yu-Gi-Oh it's, I mean, so basically transparency, I would say is the biggest thing. The way I kind of try to build trust is transparency. I try to give anybody that gives me cards to send in for grading, try to give them as much transparency throughout the whole process as humanly possible. I want them to be able to see basically anything that they could see. If they were to submit on their own from psa, I want them to be able to see. So I give them all that information. Oftentimes that shows when I'm taking in submission, you know, I'll get the question like, well, why, you know, why should I trust you? And I'm just like, you know, that's a good question. Why should you trust me? Because you don't know me. So all I can tell them is all I can do is give you full transparency, as much information as I can and reputation. Right. I have a lot of people locally here. I would say the majority of my businesses in Arizona have said I ask around about grading and everybody just recommends you. So clearly you have a good reputation, which is awesome because reputation is almost anything in this business but reputation and transparency for sure. Can you maybe shed some light on for anyone who maybe hasn't used someone like DC Sports Cards before? Like maybe talk about like why individuals use a service like DC Sports Cards instead of like doing it on their own? Like what, what are some of the reasons that you get from your customers? What, what do they not want to do that you do? If you are experienced and it, you know, people will feel comfortable just doing it on their own. But there are far more inexperienced people dealing with grading out there than we could ever imagine. Every single day people will come to me. The I know PSA tries to do their best to not make the process intimidating, but it can be intimidating for people not knowing what their cards are. So it can be intimidating just trying to get the whole, the forms figured out, submission submitted and how do I package it, how do I mail it off, you know, all that kind of stuff. What if I'm going to get upcharged? So going through somebody like me, you don't have to pay for a membership to psa. There's no membership fees. You basically can just give me the cards and I'm going to do all the work for you. You don't have to go through the process of trying to figure out their submission process throughout that process. Like I said, I'm going to give you all the information that you would see on PSAs so you can feel comfortable on where they're at in each step post grading. Since I am submitting such a large amount, I can save you on like return shipping from psa. Like if you send in like a five card order on your own, they're probably going to charge you 30, $35 in return shipping, where, you know, I can get that down to like a quarter per card. So then once that comes back, get the cards back to you. One thing that I do offer in addition is a, like a prep and review service. And I think a lot of people find value in my review part of that, just because of the accuracy, that I'm no grader by all means, but I grade so many cards and see so many cards and when things come, you know, like, I'll look at cards when they come back, especially when I see grades that kind of catch me by surprise, I'll try to take a look at it and see why it graded, what it did. Always learning. I always equate it to like a cat chasing its tail because PSA doesn't, they're not the most consistent bunch. So I always feel like I'm kind of chasing their grading standards. So a lot of people find value in the review process of it. So if they give me cars to prep and review and I already have them, I might as well send them in as well. Right. So, so how the obviously any business wants to grow and I would imagine like a signal for growth for you is the more packages coming your way, the better for business. How over the years as DT sports cards has grown, like how have you had to refine or build the right operations in place so you're not losing people's cards and you're able to do your job as efficient as possible to best serve your customer? Like how do you think about the operations behind your business? Extreme attention to detail, for sure. I mean when you're dealing with that many cards and people's cards, like you have to stay organized, right? So just like try to build in fail safes at each step. Every single step is, is like a check, right? Like get the cards in, verify it against the submission, moves on to the next step, verify it again to make sure the previous step was also correct. And just as it moves from each step, you just gotta keep checking so you don't run into big issues. Extreme attention to detail, for sure. You've been doing this for a while. Obviously there's so much discourse regarding grading, you know, from at the national, before the national and even now, like from your point of view, what has changed most about the grading business since you started submitting cards at scale? I mean, as far as like a group submitter goes, I just think volume. It seems like everybody wants to grade their cards now, whether it's worth it or not. But psa, you know, they're doing a good job of implementing things for people to make grading easier, hoping to alleviate those fears and stuff like that. I would just say like the volume. How do you manage through, I guess just being a main line of communication to your customers from PSA when there's changes that take place, like pausing certain levels or managing the backlog, like, how do those sorts of updates from PSA kind of impact what you do and the relations you have with your customers? When I first started, obviously it was really small and it was easy to just go in, log into psa. When somebody said, you know, where's my stuff at? It was easy to just log in and say that. As I grew a little bit, it started getting to a point where it wasn't so easy just to be able to log in and see where somebody's stuff was at. So I came up with like a Google sheet, a database where I told people, you know, you can click your, or you can go to this tab here, find your name and click on the submission and then it'll tell you like the status. Eventually it got to a point where that became too much. Not only that, but then there's, of course there's privacy concerns where I had everybody's, you know, you could see everybody's name on there and stuff like that. That's when I built, where I had a web developer build a website for me and you can go in and you have an order tracker section in your account. You have an account to fill out a submission form and all that. But then you also have an order tracker section which will attach your submission to the submission at psa. So at that point then you can be updated as it moves throughout the process and you can get all the information, like I said before, like the estimated due date and all that kind of stuff. As I grew and had to implement stuff like that, it's just, you know, it's because I am one person. Of course my wife now helps me and works for me a bit, but I Goldin answer every single question. So I had to get it more of an automated way for people to be able to, or to communicate all that information to somebody without having to do it one on one. I can't imagine I'm always like, whether it's a business like yours or consignment, it's just Absolute madness. Just the keeping the organization. And I always admire and appreciate those individuals running those businesses because I'm not sure I could operate with the same level of attention or detail. But I think one of the cool things about a business like yours is you get to see a lot of cards. And I'd be curious, as I'm sure the listeners would be too, like, what are the moments in time that you recall when you get a submission in, when you're, you know, opening up a box and looking through cards that, you know, you're prepping and then are maybe sending off to, to psa? What are maybe some stories or cards that are just like the ones you think about, you can't stop thinking about today that stand out. We were going through about 1200 cards a week submitting, which means I'm also looking at probably 1500, you know, to 2000 a week. So I've seen a lot, a lot of comes across my desk and it's almost at the point where like, so I see like, I mean, it's always cool to see like these in person, Jordan signed cards or like rare, like Jackie Robinson, you know, first year cards and like a Brady finite or something like that, you know, comes across my desk. Like, that's always cool. But the thing that kind of like stops me in my tracks is when like the oddities come across. Like for instance, like fake cards when I'm prepping, reviewing and like a fake card will come up and be like, what is this? What on earth? You know, and then I have of course, make sure that it is fake and. And I'm just like, man, people are faking this stuff now. So like stuff like fake cards or like when like a Whatnot streamer sends me a box of literally like 600 downtowns and kabooms and stuff like that, I open a box and just like, how does one even accumulate all these, right, you know, stuff like that or like, like names that come across my desk that I'm like, wait a minute, I know that name. So like, I'll just kind of do a quick Google search. Sure enough, it's a professional athlete, right? So those are kind of the cool things that you see that come across that makes me really stop and look. So maybe thinking about you getting, let's just say out of some of these examples, you getting a Brady finite and opening that up. Do you feel like any different knowing the magnitude of that card? Like, do you feel maybe an overwhelming responsibility that the card needs to be taken care of in a special way just based on the value and the significance? Or is it just like these are all cards for my customers and I need to manage them all the same, I guess. Does it change when the value of a card is significant? Yes and no. I mean, if something like that's coming across my Disco know about it beforehand. Nobody's gonna just mail me a brain finite without me a heads up. Right. But like for the most part, it's kind of all just because I handle so many cards is just kind of another card, per se. The times that I do get a little bit nervous is when somebody wants me to like crack something out of a, like a BGS slab that's on that level. Because that's when I'm like, oh my gosh, I can really mess this up. Yu-Gi-Oh I. That is one bridge I have not crossed yet. I'm too big of a. I'm sure, like there's a. Once you have your process in place, it's pretty straightforward. But on the cracking side, I've. I've not gotten myself to feel comfortable enough yet. Although there are cards that are in my collection that I'm like, I need to get this and PSA Slab or this and that, but I'm too big of a scaredy cat to do that. Yu-Gi-Oh it's. It's almost just safer just to send it in as a crossover and let them deal with it for sure. Where do you see, maybe just in your experience and understanding the changing landscape of grading, like, where do you see the biggest opportunities for you as a business owner of DT Sports Cards? Kind of in the next, you know, two to three years. Automation, I think, which also plays into the growth of it. You know, I had to go back to my web developer and say that I'm just spending so much time, you know, updating everything that I need more automation on this. So she's hopefully very close to having my site fully automated, which will hopefully free up a ton of my time. Obviously just along those automation lines, like PSA keeps implementing PSA offers the partner buyback program, stuff like that. There's so many little things that they offer that then people come to me and ask if I can help them out with that, if I can accept the offers for them and stuff like that. So everything that PSA kind of throws out makes me have to step back and evaluate and see if it's something that I can also offer to my customers as well. What does maybe kind of the growth trajectory look like for you, just in terms of submissions? Obviously the industry is expanding. There are more people grading cards than ever before. Like, how do you think about earning the business of some of those people? That are grading cards for the first time. And then not only when you earn their business, making sure that you're able to continue to maintain kind of the same standards and communication that you. You would have had if you, you know, you just started the business and you had that one to one direct communication with all your customers. Like, how do you think about that? Like, scale the growth, but also maintaining your standards. I am definitely at a max point being able to do things myself. That's probably my biggest downfall, and I'm willing to admit it. You know, I have a friend who, he has a shop and does streaming stuff like that. And he'll hire anybody and everybody. He'll hire a person to do this, he'll hire a person to do that, so he doesn't really have to do anything. Right. And I get it and it's nice. Whereas I have a tough time giving up that control because I'm very worried about quality control and mistakes and stuff like that. I feel like the more people I add, the more likely something could happen and go wrong. And so I am definitely like at a max where it of. Of what I can do myself. And I have a tough time as far as scaling goes, ripping off that band aid to be like, you know, do I need to hire somebody to do this or that or whatever. So knowing that I'm there, it takes me a long time to make those decisions and jump in and rip the band aid off. So it probably limits my scalability, which again, I'm totally willing to admit. But it also to me means that when I'm ready to make that next step, that I'm fully ready to go, I have the processes in place because I don't want to give up that quality control. So much of what you said resonates with me. And although we do different things in this space, I feel that. And maybe this can be a Dave and Brett therapy session here, but why do you think it's so difficult and so challenging to like, let the reins go of something that you've built and developed a certain way, Even though you know that if you did make the investment, you had the perfect person to bring in and you gave up the control you. It would help you specialize your time on like, growing the business. Like, why is that, like, decision point to make that move so challenging? So my wife, she's an optometrist and she opened up her own practice a few years ago. So she. In opening up your own practice, of course, you know, you don't just jump in and you know you're making all sorts of money. So we've actually been relying on my income to support my family, and we've been doing it for a few years now. So it's almost like, I know I can do it, but I need to rip that bandaid off. I wonder if we're just. If I'm just scared. But, you know, obviously, I. We can do it. And. Because I've been doing it, but it's. Yu-Gi-Oh it. I don't know. It's a good question. I think I may answer you on that one. Yu-Gi-Oh you're. You're not. You're not. You're not alone, man. It's. It's. Yu-Gi-Oh People ask me, like, how are you doing all this? And I'm like, I, I, I'm just doing it because I love it. But I, I know that, like, it's like a hamster wheel sometimes, and it's like maintaining kind of a certain level. But, Yu-Gi-Oh if I'm. I'm hoping that eventually, one morning I wake up and I have this huge, like, moment and breakthrough where I'm like, all right, let's change it all up. Let's bring in people. But I haven't quite gotten to that point yet. And I do like to have control over kind of the business in each and every situation. But I don't know, it's part of being an entrepreneur. It's growth, and you, You. You gotta figure it out. Maybe as we're kind of like, rounding the corner on this chat, like, you've been building this business in the space for a while. You've been a collector near nearly your whole life. Think, like, oftentimes we, as builders in this space, we, you know, also our collectors, and we don't want to lose sight of that. We don't want to lose the love of we have for cards. So we're constantly surrounded by cards, whether it's professionally or for a hobby. Like, how have you found just over the years as a business builder to kind of, like, maintain the same joy and satisfaction that you. You've had just as a participant in the hobby who was previously doing work, whether it was buy, sell, trade to fund your own collection because you love the cards. My wife and daughter always say to me, I don't know how you can work so many hours in a day. And to me, like, it's never once throughout my whole life ever felt like work. I get to look at and play with baseball cards for a living, right? So, like, like, I still get giddy thinking about that. And I think once it feels like work, I'm probably in trouble. So the fact that it just it doesn't feel like work ever to me is I think what a true collector feels like. Right? Yes. Can totally relate with that and is a really good time to run a business in this space and it's also a really good time to collect cards in this space. Dave, really appreciate the time, the insights about building DT sports cards. This was a fun chat. Looking forward to doing again down the road. Absolutely. It was the first time I got to connect with Dave in that setting. Really appreciate the insight, his passion and understanding of his customer. There's so much we can learn from people building in the sports card industry and we'll continue to share those insights here on Passionate Profession. Shout out ebay for their support. Thanks so much for tuning in. Take care. Talk to you soon.