Paul Skenes 1/1 MLB Debut Patch Auction Is Live!; Plus Joint Pod With Paul Hickey Of The Sports Card Strategy Show On Wemby Injury; Breakers Good For The Hobby?; Thoughts On Topps Composite Football

You're listening to Cards to the Moon, a podcast about trading cards from both a collector and investor perspective. We hope you'll stick around for the ride as we take a deep dive into the state of the hobby, share some hot takes, hopefully some useful advice and fun stories along the way. Hey guys, welcome to Cards to the Moon. This is episode 275, my name is Clark from 5cardguys.com and 5cardguys on Instagram and on YouTube. I'm doing the intro for this Friday episode solo because I'll be playing a joint pod that I did with Paul Hickey of the Sports Card Strategy Show in just a bit. We talk about the Wemby injury and how that's impacted his card prices, plus we answer the question of whether we generally buy in when a star player gets injured. We also give our high level view on breaking, and I thought that was an interesting discussion because our respective opinions differ. Would love to hear what you guys think on that issue. And we also touch on Tops Composite Football, which Paul definitely knows more about. So for Cards to the Moon listeners, I know we don't talk football cards that much, so if you do collect football cards, I think you'll enjoy that particular segment. First, just want to highlight one big auction that just started, and it's supposed to end on March 20th. Of course, I'm talking about the Paul Skeen's 1 of 1 MLB Debut Patch Rookie Card. It's up on the Fanatics Collect auction site, and there's a full page dedicated to it. You can check it out by clicking on the link in our show notes. This will definitely break the MLB Debut Patch record, but how much it goes for exactly, that's anyone's guess. Let me know what you guys think. We'll see who's the closest after March 20th. But if you're looking for more affordable, but still high-end sports card auctions, shameless self-promotion, you can check out our site at 5cardguys.com slash daily auctions, where we update the page every day. I'll include that link in the show notes as well. All right, with that, enjoy the Join Pod with myself and Paul Hickey, and we'll have a brand new episode for you on Tuesday. See ya. See ya. Talk to you, man. Just talk cards. A lot of fun when we do these things. For sure. I'm excited. I'm always excited to talk with you. News from last week, and we've hit on it a little bit on the Sports Card Strategy show this week already, but the data is ever changing and the news is ever changing in the sports landscape. Victor Wembenyama, shut down for the season we all know by now. Unfortunate news for those of us who were holding some WEMB cards in anticipation of maybe selling them during the NBA playoff run as the Spurs kind of souped up their team before the trade deadline and looked to be making a potential run at the bottom of the Western Conference playoffs to get in maybe in a play-in game. But I want to lead this into a topic. Early reports on the Victor Wembenyama market are kind of all over the place because he's still one of the top guys in sports cards. One of the top athletes in sports cards. And while we've seen some of his sales on his popular cards dip a little bit, we mentioned his Prism Silver Raw on this week's full episode of the Sports Card Strategy show has dipped down to under $200, sorry, that's wrong, under $300 is what I meant to say, and under $250 in one case. And before that, it was selling at over $400 before the injury. So post-injury, selling for under $400, in some cases under $300, although changing all the time because two sales before we recorded today for over $300. So I want to go over some Victor Wembenyama cards that are down since the injury and then turn it over to Clark to talk about what he thinks about Victor Wembenyama's market overall and then lead that into a question, which will be, what do you do when a star player gets injured? Is it an opportunity to buy in eventually during that injury and then sell when the player comes back? Or is it like panic sell mode, get rid of anything you have from that player and move into other things or a little bit of both? So a few things that caught my eye, Victor Wembenyama's 2023 Prism Blue out of $199 and the Hyper Prism PSA 9 is down almost $300. His Blue Wave Raw Prism is down $184. The Prism Silver that I mentioned a minute ago, Raw, is down $163. Green Ice Raw Prism is down $139. And the Hyper Prism PSA 9 is down $108. The Prism Silver PSA 10 down $103. The reason I kind of zeroed in on these cards, Clark, is because they're more like, other than the out of $199 Blue, for example, they're more common cards. They're not the base cards, but they're more common cards, probably easier to find, probably easier to make plays on. And many of them that I just rattled off are Raw. So you could still potentially go buy them Raw, grade them and make money even while Wemby's still out. What say you, first of all, about the entire Victor Weminyama situation? Yeah, like you just mentioned off the top, you know, it's unfortunate news of his injury. But just focusing on the sports card market, especially Wemby's, in general, if you believe in a player like Wemby, like he's a generational player, he's kind of in his own category. I'm looking for opportunities to buy. And like you said, you've already seen the trend that there are people selling right now because of the injury. And a lot's unknown about the extent of his injury. And it's kind of scary, actually, blood clots. It's a serious thing to definitely consider. So you don't know which way it's going to go. Like, you know, I've been reading articles that Brendan Ingram, who's a Toronto Raptor now, he had a similar kind of condition and he's still playing, so he's fine. But then we also had Chris Bosh, another former Raptor, and his career ended, right? And then, you know, each situation was different. So you got to take everything with a grain of salt. But with Wemby, he's such a young guy, you know, it looks like he keeps himself in shape. He's got the best doctors, I'm sure, working on him. And I think I'm hopefully optimistic that he'll return and he'll just kind of resume how he's been. And before this injury, I was all in. I might have even shared it with you. And with my co-host at Cards to the Moon, I'm like, oh, I'm looking desperately for a Wemby card. And I know you had Wemby on your top five list in terms of who you're targeting for this year. So we're both high on Wemby. But I think with that sentiment, I'm looking for opportunities to buy at lower discounted prices. But that being said, I'm probably still waiting, you know, the news is fresh and there's nothing I can see that will bump up his value until, like, we hear news that he's, you know, how well he's progressing. So you might as well wait till the offseason. He's not coming back this year, right, or this season. And I'm sure it might even go down further. So that's what I'm doing. I'm just playing the waiting game. But he's always on my watch list. So I'm ready to go whenever that number hits the, you know, the number in my mind for some of these cards that I'm targeting. Yeah, I'm doing the same thing. I'm licking my chops because I think his prices will continue to go down because of all the reasons that you mentioned, like, and he may not be in the news cycle for a long time. There may there may not be anything to report on this until we get much, much closer to the 2025-26 NBA season, which is a long way away. I mean, I think I think we've got six months potentially of his prices potentially going down before we see them start to rise again with the hype of maybe as early as September. Maybe the prices start to go up a little bit if the news is positive then. But yeah, I mean, anything short of him doing something spectacular on Instagram that draws a bunch of eyeballs or something and sets off something in the hobby, which I honestly can't see that happening. We're past the rookie hype. The real thing that I think he had going with him was the potential playoff run, which is not going to happen anymore. So I'm with you, man. I think this is this is an opportunity to to. I think the key part of what you said, let the prices continue to come down, because I think that it's even though I rattled off a bunch of data, it's still way early. And some of the raw data could just be condition dependent, to be honest with you. Like it's it's easy to manipulate data a little bit to the to the point that you're trying to make. And I'll be the first to admit that when I look at raw data, you definitely have to dig into each card and say, OK, well, did that did that card go down from 412 to 245 because the market really thinks it's only worth 245? Or was that maybe a sale or a couple of sales of something that's just like ridiculously off centered or has a documented surface issue or something like that, especially when you're looking at raw cards. So for those of you kind of new to the hobby, definitely take the data with a grain of salt. OK, Clark, so I want to ask you, do you have any examples or examples from anyone in your network, your co-host, anyone that you know where they've really gone like all in on someone during an injury, like start when a star player has been injured, anything you can think of where someone's gone all in on a player, like like seriously spending a lot of money, whether it's on one card or or just getting high volume of a particular player in anticipation of them of them coming back. And did it work out or did it backfire? I mean, me buying my trout, does that count? Yeah, absolutely. That's actually I was wondering if you were that that was going to be your example, because we talked about Mike Trout a few times. So I've dipped into the Mike Trout market and, you know, I've shared the story before that I have a refractor now and I paid about five thousand for it. And, you know, it's the same thing every year, spring training. He looks like he's in the greatest shape of his life. But, you know, you're still like a little nervous about what he's going to be doing and if he could maintain his health. But you know, guys like that, these are the elite guys that when you look at their potential and their upside, it's huge if they're healthy. And that's the guys that I'm targeting in terms of, you know, if there is injury news and their prices drop significantly, I look at the upside and is it worth that risk? Right. So, you know, other guys, even Ronald Acuna, you know, like he's had two ACLs and, you know, it's serious injuries and he's a he's a runner. So obviously he's got to have healthy knees. But the potential is just extraordinary. You know, with a 40 plus home run season, 70 plus, like who else is going to be able to do that except Ronald Acuna? You know, maybe Shoei Otani, maybe if he runs more, but, you know, it's a short list. So those guys, I'm always looking at Acuna cards as well. But then, you know, if anyone else like is not in that elite top tier, then I'm selling like I was really big one time on Eloy Jimenez. You know, like he has just a 30 perennial home run power and he was just on a bad team for a couple of years. And you're like, if he stays healthy, then he could really boost his stats. But then he just started to deteriorate. He never really hit that peak that a lot of, you know, people who are into prospect hunting back in the day thought Eloy would be at. And then there comes a point where you just got to say, you know what, I'm just dumping at that point. And then you look at his card values now, it's below 100 bucks for his first Bowman Chromato base. And those used to be three, four times that at its peak. So, you know, case by case example, but it's kind of simple to tell you the truth. When you kind of filter out who the top elite players are, you look at their upside, how they accomplished that peak at one point in their career. So you know, it's possible. And then you kind of see, evaluate the risk at that point. So yeah, Wemby is in that category. I know it's only the second year, but he had a phenomenal first year and a phenomenal first half of his second year. Doesn't look like he was slowing down anytime soon. That's why I was all in. I'm like, I saw what I needed to see. And there you go. Yeah, I agree with you on Wemby. I think, you know, from the hype coming over from France, I mean, there was hype around him when he was like 17, 18. And then the NBA did an amazing job like bringing him over with the Metropolitans 92 team and playing against Scoot Henderson's G League team and featuring it on NBA.com and everything. And so the world knew about Wemby and Wemby has been living up to the hype, I think for multiple years, at least. And to your point, one, one extraordinary year and a half in the NBA where he's legit. I love what you said about if it's not top tier talent, it's probably time to just cut bait and or at least not buy it. Maybe I think the strategy would be if any of you are holding a player that gets injured and they're not literally like one of the top five bona fide athletes in their sport, it's probably a good idea to either a get rid of them if it's a maybe lower tier card anyway, or if it's a card that you're into for quite a bit of money and the card is, you know, an autograph card or a lower serial numbered card or something that has the ability to potentially bounce back. I would say, hold until there's news of them coming back or positive news around them and then probably start to look to sell if it's not one of the top tier guys because to Clark's point, I've definitely taken bets in the past on guys that had potential but had never really achieved it and then suffered an injury or some kind of setback and they just never really end up getting to where you buy in at them for and so it's kind of a recipe for disaster. I wouldn't take risks on buying into guys that haven't kind of already been there. I think Mike Trout's a good example of somebody that made sense slash makes sense to buy into because you look at the MVP awards that he's won and he was the perennial best player in the MLB by far for almost 10 years. So that's different obviously than Eloy Jimenez, which is a great example of kind of what not to do for everybody out there. I think my other thing that I'll add and you've kind of alluded to this is it really does depend on the card and it really does depend on the buy-in point if you're looking to buy an injured player. So, for example, last year, I bought into Joe Burrow when he got injured towards the end of the NFL regular season in 2024, sorry in 2023, the end of the 2023 regular season and he had the calf injury going into training camp. He had he then he had like hit his wrist on someone's helmet and underwent surgery. I think on the wrist and that's what shut down his season. So I it was a mixed bag for me because I bought one of his optic hollow PSA 10s for well under what the comps were going for. I would say a month after the injury and I did really really well on that card. It just the market bounced back for Burrow like I thought it would and I made money because of that but also mainly because of the buy-in point. Now other Burrow cards. I kind of broke even on I've said I'm going to I'm going to go all in on Burrow right because I had been waiting for a chance to buy Joe Burrow. His prices were so high for so long. Well, some of the other cards didn't bounce back, you know, and so I think you gotta and I'll be honest. They were base prism PSA 10s or the ones that just did not bounce back. And if you think about if you think about it, that makes sense, right? Because those are the ones that are probably the easiest to find. Whereas the optic hollow PSA 10 is a little bit more of a short printed card. There's there's fewer of them. And that's probably why I was able to do well on that one, even though I bought both low one bounced back one didn't so I think it depends on that's why I say the right card for the right player at the right time. If you're looking at this strategy. No, I agree. I'll just add to that. Kind of the same thing applies when you look at Wimby's silver prism, and I'm glad you kind of rattled off the raw data because we don't tend to look at the raw cards on our podcast. And this is easier to grade apples to apples or compare apples to apples with graded cards. So if you look at the silver prism PSA 10s, that's also followed the trend of the value of the cards going down in the past couple weeks because of this. The injury news, I think it's at 700 now on average, and and then it was like 8900 even a month ago, so it's gone down, but kind of to your point with those base prisms, like there are over 4000 PSA 10 silver prisms, so you got to look at the pop count as well. And that's going to put a slight ceiling on how much it will bounce back because of the pop count. So I think a better play is, if you can afford it, those serial numbered, lower numbered, higher end cards that have dropped. And if any of those cards, you can expect those cards to bounce more higher when you start to hear good Wimby news again. So that's kind of, I guess, what I'm looking at. I'm looking at the top silver factor and things like that. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, if you look at the prism silver PSA 10s, it's reasonable to think that it would bounce back to over $1000 because they were selling for 900 about a month ago before the injury. Now they're down at 700. I think in order to actually make money on those, you have to wait until they get closer to closer to 500. So if they get closer to 500, that's probably why when I start buying them, because of your point, the pop count 4300, the blue out of 199, for example, it's a pop 78 in PSA 9, only a pop 66 in PSA 10, a pop 16 in PSA 8. So pretty elusive card to try and buy graded. Obviously, there's only 199 of them in existence. So, but yeah, buying like I love the idea of it. But I mean, that one went for 2300 before the injury and then immediate post injury 2030. So it went down by $300. On one hand, spending $2,000 on a card to make 300 may not make a whole lot of sense to people. But could you buy that card raw throughout the offseason for closer to under 1500 or closer to 1000? Now, to Clark's point, I think that that would be definitely a play, knowing that, you know, you could spending 1000 to make 1000 makes a lot more sense. Yes. Or, you know, you just got to hope that you get traded to the Lakers. Which you never know. I mean, you never know. No one's untouchable, I guess. You think that, you know, you think that someone's gonna be the the guy that's gonna be untradeable. And apparently, that's not the case with with our guy, Luca. So, um, speaking of Luca, what what's your update on your your Luca card slash cards since the trade? Um, so I mean, my cards numbered in 99. So you don't see a lot of transactions, right. But I, I made that joke, because I did see the silver prism spike up after that, after that trade. And I'm like, Oh, I wish I held on to my silver prism. But obviously, there's no way of knowing that he would have, I guess no one really knew that this trade was going to happen, except like three people in this world. So you never know. But yeah, it was interesting. It's kind of come down a little bit. But I think you've always mentioned this, right? When there's like, news like that, those that's a selling marker, I guess, you know, using your words, and I hope I hope people made some money because of the trade. Um, alright, so one thing that kind of caught my eye that we talked about earlier this week on the sports card strategy show is the release of tops chrome football. So this is an unlicensed release. Um, it's actually technically like the first year of tops chrome football back because of the trade. The 2023 release was actually tops composite football, and it had tops chrome in it, which was kind of like fanatics is version of of panini chronicles, in my opinion, is kind of like, was was like horrible, just absolutely horrible. It, it slaughtered CJ Stroud's rookie card value before he slaughtered it himself by totally stinking up this more season. But I guess that leads me into my question a couple like, I have several questions for you about this. Like, first of all, does this this release strike you as something positive for the hobby, something negative for the hobby, something neutral for the hobby? What's your take on the overall comeback of tops chrome football? Because I know a lot of people are going to immediately just be super pumped that this is already that, you know, they can already go by. I mean, I know tops already sold out right away of like the hobby boxes, the hobby cases, but you can still go to tops.com and buy kind of the equivalent of like a blaster box type situation. And then obviously, you could get it, you can get it on eBay and stuff. What's your take on 2024 tops chrome football? Yeah, I mean, I always come to you for football card news and football card advice. But for me, I'm not buying tops chrome football, because I'm not into football cards as much. But I definitely see the parallel between this release and tops chrome basketball. Right. So that's where my head goes to right away. And if you look at the trend of tops chrome basketball, since the hype, everything's kind of come down. And the only thing that's been selling from tops chrome basketball, obviously, are Wemby cards and low numbered LeBron cards. So everything else is kind of has a very little value. Like I bought a tops chrome basketball, I didn't hit a Wemby card, I didn't hit a LeBron card. So my whole total value of my $300 I paid for the tops chrome basketball is probably worth $2. And the players look like they're in rec league uniforms. I mean, it's not awful. Unlicensed product, right? So I'm expecting more of the same with tops chrome football, you'll get the marquee players, maybe the Caleb Williams, that's probably the chase. And of course, Tom Brady has autograph cards. So those are the chase cards, but they're very few and far between. So other than that, I don't see, you know, a lot of value, other than the top players. So that's kind of where I stand. This is very similar to tops chrome basketball release, in my opinion. Yeah, that's a great, that's a great comparison. I mean, we've already seen the market for tops chrome basketball did not do very well. It had Wemby autos where, you know, some of the photos were okay, where you can see the back of his jersey, like with his name didn't look too bad the way that they did that. But a lot of them even tops mercury to me were just in a they even had game you stuff and tops mercury, which is cool. But I just, I was not a fan of that unlicensed product. I was not a fan of the tops composite football unlicensed product that had a very, very low gem rate tops composite chrome had a very low gem rate. CJ Stroud's cards there had like under 35% gem rate kind of across the board, at least for the achievable cards. The tops chrome commercial with Caleb Williams and Jim McMahon got a lot of love, which I believe it deserved. I think the commercial itself was one of the better pieces of creative that I've seen in a long time. Um, the issue that I have with the release and the way that fanatics is positioning the release and the way that fanatics is actually positioned itself is that it is promoting all of the chase cards to the point where it looks it kind of looks and feels like you're going to get a chase card if you buy the product. And not only that, but fanatics owns a breaking platform. Uh, well, it's technically a live shopping platform, but let's be honest, it's basically a breaking platform fanatics live. And so what I don't like, I'm just going to come out and say it. I said it. I said it in an earlier episode this week of the sports card strategy show. I'm going to say it in front of you and get your take on it. And you can call me wrong. You can, you can side with me, whatever. But I, the reason I'm telling you is because I really want not only your take on it, but, uh, the cards to the moon audience. Like, I'm curious, what does the cards to the moon audience think of what I'm about to say? And that is, I, I see a serious issue with this Caleb Williams commercial, for example, leading directly into people buying into breaks. Because if you follow the marketing funnel, it basically takes you from the commercial to the website to buy the product. But all of the product is sold out. And the thing right at the top of the page is buy into breaks for this product on fanatics live and get $25 off breaks for this product on fanatics live. And I see that I see break buying into breaks is a major problem, not only in the hobby, but in society, because it's basically people pissing their money away gambling. And I think there's a greater risk to the hobby for people to come in, lose a ton of money, get pissed off and then leave because they're not anywhere near the cool Caleb Williams inscription. Right. And we talked a little bit about this, I think, with the Paul schemes, the kid who pulled the Paul schemes. I may have mentioned on, on cards to the moon about, you know, my, my opinion on when a kid pulls, when anyone pulls the top, what, whether it be the tops MLB debut patch, whether it be one of these one of one inscription autos from Caleb Williams, I don't like the way that fanatics is positioning this to the hobby as the best way to try to get this card is to buy into breaks. What's your take on that? Yeah, there's a lot there. And I, I think, I think it's a fair point that you bring up. Right. And I think I saw a clip recently during tops rip night where Michael Rubin was mentioning the general breakdown of how their product is allocated and 40% of it goes to breakers. So it's a big chunk of their business. So from a business side of things, it makes total sense how they're marketing it. Right. And, and kind of what you mentioned about the commercial, I think it's a genius marketing move by fanatics because a it's unlicensed. So what do they focus on the autograph? You know, that's, that's what they have. Right. And, and that's what they're going to try to get people to buy into, you know, trying to get these autograph cards. And I think, um, I haven't really thought about the funnel that you kind of outlined about, you know, going to the website and then finding that the only way you can really get your hands on these products is through the website. are through breaks and I think that's a real possibility that people can go down that kind of rabbit hole and find themselves in in breaks but at the same time if I'm honest I think there's enough people in the hobby that will look at this and maybe get discouraged that they can't get their hands on the product but it won't make them want to get into breaks they'll just be resigned to getting something else or like me I'm waiting for singles I might as well just buy the singles yeah what I want on eBay so there's other avenues to get the cards you want and I'm not I don't have any problems with breaks I just don't participate in that many breaks to tell you the truth and at the same time I don't you know think it's a huge problem but at the same time I understand the greater perspective and the view of this being another form of gambling and like everything else it has to be addressed at some point whether it's sports betting or even sports card breaking it's kind of in the same boat so I think it's one of those things that you should never kind of shut the door on in terms of the discussion you should see how things unravel but at the same time I feel like and this is only my opinion that it's a little maybe premature to see how things will actually play out in terms of whether breaking does become a serious societal issue even and you know as as more people get into the hobby like how many of those people will be impacted by something like this you know whether it's a gambling issue or not we don't know yet but I like I said I think it's something worth monitoring over time yeah I really appreciate your perspective on that because I think well no one loves to just stay in their lane more than me I love to just stay in my lane and be like okay well let all these people waste their money on breaks and I'll go buy singles like you said so I'm good with that I just think I guess where I've become a little bit more passionate over the last like to be honest with you maybe one to two months on this issue is because many of our members that know offseason.com join and the first thing they say is thank goodness I found you because I've been wasting a bunch of my money on breaks and I relate to that because when I first re-entered the hobby back in like late 2020 I was kind of getting hit up by all these breakers like hey you know I'm like oh that sounds fun I'll try that but then the feeling of like basically going to a roulette table and and you know spinning the roulette wheel and and losing a ton of money and getting nothing for it set in real quick for me on the breaking and that's kind of what flipped the switch for me doing what I do now and what I've done for the last five years which is basically what you said just you know try to but and what we always talk about which is try to buy the singles for the right card for the right player at the right time and don't go down that rabbit hole of breaking I know people feel differently about it I know people feel like hey this is like it's legal we know what we're getting ourselves into we're not idiots we get it and who is Paul Hickey to say don't buy into breaks so I understand if you're gonna buy into breaks and give yourself a chance at one of these one of these and Kayla Williams inscription autos which are pretty cool I mean as long as you know that you know it's it's entertainment budget don't expect anything out of it only spend what you can afford to lose and be okay with losing then I would say great but what I but I will kind of go on the record and say that I think it's it's short-sighted and a bit selfish of Michael Rubin and the powers that be at fanatics to be pushing breaking so hardcore down our throats when it's already something that people have done and do and and so to allocate I didn't know what you said and obviously like we're both kind of getting it second and third hand but if they do in fact allocate 40% of their of this particular product or any particular product to breakers a I wouldn't be surprised be when I think about it it kind of pisses me off like it kind of like I just don't I just don't know that it should be like that I would be I would be more comfortable with you know 10 to 20% to breakers you know I just I think breakers are already in a position where they can they can scalp the general public with it with the with the opportunity to potentially get a hit on a card and look I know breakers have to grind I know breakers have to do everything that everybody else does to make money it's not that I don't respect breakers it's just that it's not for me so maybe I just need to go back into my lane and shut up and I'm happy to do that you know I totally get where you're coming from as well and and because like I said I don't I don't break as as often or at all really in the past few years I rather prefer buying singles on eBay so that's where I'm coming from but something that we discussed on Cards to the Moon and Hyung brought up this point is that if you hypothetically take away half that allocation to go to hobby shops for instance right the demand theoretically will still be there for a product like Topps Chrome Football or Topps Chrome Basketball and wait till it's licensed then the demand is going to be through the roof what's the difference between getting it from breaking and the breakers kind of setting the price versus the hobby shops kind of allocating more of their inventory at higher prices for their own profit you know and and if you do have something in I don't know how they would do this but if you say you can't we're only going to give you these boxes but you can you can't sell it for more than 300 bucks let's say let's say that and or if you do you're gonna get penalized we're not going to allocate any more funds to you just say they could do something like that okay fine then you got all these you got even more demand because you can buy boxes at a relatively affordable prices but then what happens to the second-hand market you see these boxes relisted on eBay for six seven hundred eight you know so at the end of the day the market is the market and I don't know how to fix it I'm not saying that's right but we get to the same problem of boxes costing too much when the demand is so hyped up and there's all these hits so I'm thinking that whether it's by breakers or whether it's by second-hand sellers on eBay there's still that issue of expensive boxes I'm not sure I don't have the answer to that I'm just laying out that scenario and maybe that's something we have to try to creatively find a solution for yeah and I think one could argue that you could be addicted to ripping wax and you could be addicted to breaking and there's addictions for everything in our society potentially people are addicted to overeating they're addicted to undereating they're addicted to all kinds of things right gambling drugs everything so maybe Netflix maybe the sports card strategy show maybe I mean look who am I again to say this or that I think it just kind of hit me that the actual product manufacturer is the one promoting this breaking but you could also say look Paul Michael Rubin just understands that that's the market he's not trying to change the market he's just going with the fact that everybody likes to break and buy into breaks and that's cool and I will I agree with what you said too I mean we wouldn't really be able to buy the singles without someone the singles wouldn't really necessarily have as much value potentially one could argue if everything was just kind of like print on demand online like they definitely I mean I would actually I would disagree with people who just kind of blindly say the only reason we can do what we do is because people open stuff out of packs or buy into breaks that's not necessarily true I make a lot of money just buying print-on-demand stuff and grading it and selling it so I would disagree with people that say like we need this in our world for the thing that you do Paul so who are you to say no I don't really need it but I'm also not like I agree with you too I'm just kind of opening the discussion I'm definitely not the person who's gonna like go further down the rabbit hole to me it just struck me as like huh okay so they really like this really is a thing where that from the top the actual card manufacturer the people actually making the cards are gonna tell us you should buy into breaks to get this product that just I don't know why it hit me like of course they've had fanatics live for a couple of years now I don't know why it hit me two years in it just had something to do with seeing Caleb Williams and Jim McMahon who I idolized Jim McMahon as a kid and then Caleb Williams I really really like him I thought the commercial was amazing so I dug into it because of the commercial and it just hit me Wow okay breaking huh there it is all right um good stuff though so Clark one other thing I wanted to ask you about because I'm curious like you and your co-hosts at Cars to the Moon I have a lot of respect for you guys put out a lot of great content I love the Cards to the Moon community um how well do you personally track your inventory and is inventory tracking something that you and your co-hosts talk amongst yourselves about or with your audience members about I'm just kind of curious like I know a lot of people would track their inventory for different reasons maybe some people are selling like thousands of cards and so they have the need to use some sort of software program that also helps them list and then there's there's people like me who are more on the side of I track my inventory because I want to know how much I paid for each individual card so that I can hold myself accountable to like am I actually doing what I say that I do which is making money flipping sports cards but what's your what's your inventory tracking philosophy it's a great great question and I can't speak on behalf of my co-hosts like they have a lot more cards than I do so obviously their answer is gonna depend on you know how many cards they have and what their system is you know they have cases and cases and and every time they go to a sports card show you know I I can fit the cards that I want to look to trade or sell in my in my small pouch right versus them carrying around cases and like I even when I saw you at FanFest you know with the backpack and everything else to carry all the stuff but with my and maybe it's because I tend to gravitate more towards middle to higher end cards so obviously those cost a lot more I'm not buying a bunch of those so it's easy for me to track because I just use card ladder there's a there's a function in card ladder where you could type in your cards they seem to have a very robust database and it's easy for me to track and I personally think it's very useful right before card ladder before I had a subscription to card ladder I'm a spreadsheets guy as well so I used to mark down how much I pay for a hobby box and and then you know when I rip I see what singles I'm able to flip and then I'll keep track of it on the spreadsheet so I know not everyone is into spreadsheet you know that doesn't do it for them but it is a great visual way to see profits profit and losses and and you know that's what I realized Paul to tell you the truth when you can when you start tracking it on the spreadsheet and you rip wax it's really evident how much money you're losing usually that's I want to ask you when you brought that up like how do you how do you assign so let's say you buy a hobby box for $200 and you you get say a card that is is valued at $35 or to do easy math like $50 so but then everything else is like nothing so do you do you say that you you know you sell that card for $50 and you're out 150 or do you do you actually try to maybe assign less cost to that card because technically you got more product how do you you know how do you assign like your your profit loss to the actual single or singles that you sold out of a hobby box yeah in that case yeah if it's a base like all those base cards that I really mark that as a loss like a $0 some yeah and then you know like with the card that you do sell you have to incorporate sometimes the grading if you do end up grading it so that's a simple calculation you can put in your spreadsheet and and yeah that's just really keep it simple that way yeah I like that I mean I think it's hard to do it's hard to look yourself in the mirror and go okay well I spent $200 on this hobby box I got this card I sold it for 50 I think a lot of people probably say well I'm gonna chalk that up to entertainment budget and I made $50 and so it's a $50 profit and so I mean that's fine if that's what you do but I like I mean I personally like what Clark said he does more because I think you're you're actually able to then go back and say okay you know do I really want to keep buying and ripping this wax man people people hearing me for the first time are probably like who is this guy like how does he not understand that we have to rip wax I do understand I'm just there's already people ripping wax it's not my I'm just someone who can go on to eBay and see tens of millions of cards listed so I don't need to buy to get singles that's discipline okay and so is inventory tracking so back to inventory tracking I like what you said about card ladder I know market movers also has a feature let inventory tracker there's a lot of great there's a lot of great software applications out there that allow you to track your inventory I was a g-sheets guy until I figured out a little way to build an inventory tracker into our premium membership at no offseason.com so actually now that's a little simpler the inventory tracker at no offseason.com I would say I wouldn't say it's better or worse than market movers or card ladder but I would say it's just very very simple so if you just want to like manage everything yourself understand like your total P&L, profit and loss, your total return on investment by percentage, the total amount of money you've spent on cards. And then your average total price sold, average profit and loss per card with some cool graphs and charts. So that's what I use. And then you can download it into Excel if you want to. So I just think it's important, whatever you use to track it, whether it's, I mean, you can just type it up in an email to yourself for all I care. But I think as long as you're, my recommendation is that we all should be holding ourselves accountable at least, and look, if you're, if you are in it for completely different reasons than I'm in it for, I'm in it to make money. Many people are in it more to have fun and because it is a hobby and I totally get that, but still just kind of keep track of your stuff because you want to know, you want to know what worked and what didn't work for you because then you can have more fun. I think. I agree with you. And like you, you know, it's part of a small part of my business as well in terms of trying to make money off sports cards. And it's very useful, especially during this time of year when it's tax season. So my accountant really appreciates the spreadsheets that I give to him and you know. That's good. So without divulging too much, just give us kind of an overview of like what you're willing to talk about in front of your audience regarding the tax side of sports cards. And I can, and I can give you guys my, like my personal experience as well because a lot of, a lot of our audience members asked me about that from not only, so there's obviously two different types of taxes, you know, clerks talking about the end of the year tax return. And then obviously there's like taxes on each individual purchase. That's more sales tax clerks talking more about the income tax. So from an income tax perspective, what do you, what are, what are you able to share with us? Clark? I'm not sure. I guess I don't know how different it would be from the States to Canada, Canada. Yeah, exactly. But you know, like was it last year or the year before it was a pretty rough, rough year for like make, making any kind of money on, on sports cards after the pandemic hype and I just kind of offloaded. 2022 was pretty rough. That's the year. Right. So, so I was able to write off a lot of things against you know any profit I might've made or income that I might've made through just creating hobby content. So it kind of balanced it out. So that's really for me, it's that simple. Like, and if you had a great year in terms of flipping, then, then, then I'll could, you know, you could offset that with some of the expenses that you incur throughout the year. So to tell you the truth, I'm glad I hired an accountant for all of this. I'm just like, you know, it's, I just keep tracking the data, kind of what we're talking about in terms of inventory tracking and he'll kind of summarize, oh, how, how I already kind of have an idea of how good or bad a year it's been before I submit all the information, but he'll put it in a nice kind of summary format, but yeah, it's kind of like just balancing it with, you know, one part of your business to the, another part of your business. Yep. Keeping track of your purchases, whether it's in the spreadsheet, like Clark said, or, or just in, you know, in general, a list of your purchases with the receipts, you know, whether you're, you're, you guys are all going to have receipts from grading companies. You're going to have receipts from card shops, from eBay. Now from eBay, the thing that I think sort of changed the game and, and made taxes more of income taxes, more of a discussion in the hobby was a few years ago, eBay started sending what's called a 1099 K form, sort of like a miscellaneous income form to anyone that had sold over $600 in which, which basically was everybody at that point. And so depending on how much, how much you're selling on eBay you would get like a miscellaneous income form from eBay, which you would need to give to your tax professional. If you do your own taxes on like TurboTax or something, you have to, you have to file that. So I think that's probably what spurred most of the discussion around like, what can you expense? What can you not expense? Clark and I aren't here to answer those questions. Those needs to go to your tax professional. But you know, from, from my, my sake, it's similar to what Clark said. It's like, look, this is, this is like running a business. You got to treat it like a bit, you got to treat it like any business. So you keep track of your income, you keep track of your expenses. And then, you know, for me, I file jointly with my, with my wife. So it just goes into our overall tax return. But yeah, I mean, everyone's going to have different philosophies on, on how to keep track of that. And we actually have at SportsCardSchool, at KnowOffSeason.com, we have more on, on the sales tax piece. So if you're interested in, we talked about the income tax very vaguely, but on the sales tax piece, if you want to learn essentially how to avoid paying sales tax, may not be a problem in Canada, but in the United States, it can, depending on what state you live in, some people are paying way more sales tax on sports card purchases than others. So it's good to know all that information for sure. There's a lot, there's a lot that can go into it, but look, at the end of the day, everybody just have fun. Yes. You don't want to listen to me and you want to buy into breaks because that's your thing. That's totally cool with me. I still love you. We're ready for you at KnowOffSeason.com when you get sick of breaking. There you go. Love Cards to the Moon. Clark, anything else you want to talk about for today's joint pod? No, I mean, there's, you know, in the last Cards to the Moon episode, we talked about Wembe, but we talked about Wembe in context of the WNBA Prism product release. That's kind of crazy just how much it's going for. And obviously it's because of the Caitlyn Clark chase. I don't know, to close this episode off, I'm curious about your thoughts about the WNBA Prism product. What are you doing? Are you all in on the Caitlyn Clark hype or, you know, what's in your head? So as you alluded to, my strategy for 2025 is I'm only buying five players. There's a bunch of reasons for that. We won't get into it, but I want to put myself in a box. So because I'm in that box and Caitlyn Clark is one of my five, I have dipped my toe into the water buying some of the Caitlyn Clark WNBA Prism singles in auctions because they actually were priced less than I thought they would be. And I think I'm in a position financially and geographically to where I can dip my toe into buying some Caitlyn Clark singles out of that release for between $50 and $80 a piece, getting them to PSA right away. Essentially my play is to try to be maybe not literally first to the market with those cards. But in that first wave where I think if I'm all in on each individual card, including the grading fee for under $100, I think the cards I'm looking at buying out of that release should sell in a PSA 9 for at least my money back and in a PSA 10, I should at least double my money. I think worst case scenario. So I'm about say eight to 10 cards deep into the WNBA Prism Caitlyn Clark. Now I know a lot of people, um, at no offseason.com premium members have asked me about like Cameron Brink and Angel Reese and some of the other players. I'm just not into, like, I don't subscribe to the philosophy that because Caitlyn Clark has a massive card market that these other players have anywhere near the size of a market or will like sort of ride the coattails of her popularity. Like I think people understand who Angel Reese is. I think certain people understand who Cameron Brink is and maybe some of the other players. I think Caitlyn Clark is in a stratosphere of her own. My advice to people who are new is like, don't, don't assume because there's one popular player in a sport, uh, that like, I mean, a good example would be like people going and buying Yamamoto because, because of Otani, right. Or people maybe buying Jack Caglione because of Otani, you know, because Otani transcended, you know, he wasn't the first player to come over from Japan, but he was the first player to actually hit and pitch at the level that he's hit and pitch at. So I threw out like one Japanese pitcher and then, and then an American player who supposedly can do both as well, at least on his, on Jack's first Bowman chrome, it says pitcher and DH. So the kind of like Otani don't assume that that, that next player is going to be anywhere near as popular or have as much hype or success as the player, uh, that, that was the one that kind of blazed the trail. So what I, that's my way of saying for Caitlyn Clark, just be careful, be careful about Paige Beckers. Be careful about Juju Watkins is women's basketball and the card market, uh, growing. Yes, but is Juju Watkins or Paige Beckers or any of these other players, uh, they're not in WNBA prism yet. Obviously they're still in college, but, uh, I've just seen a lot of people try and prospect on them being the next Caitlyn Clark. I don't know how you guys feel about like the whole, the next thing, but I'll throw the word of caution out there. So I answered your question and then, and then some about WNBA prism, but, uh, that's where I'm at with it. No. And then you, Caitlyn Clark was on your list. That's why I wanted to ask you that question. So yeah, thanks for that. And I'm, I'm in a complete agreement with you. Caitlyn Clark's in her own category. And the one thing, the one main difference of what you mentioned between the Shohei and Jack Haglione comp is there's going to be a market for Jack Haglione cause the MLB market is so much bigger than the WNBA market, right? And the WNBA market, I agree, it's growing mainly because of Caitlyn Clark, but it's still comparatively a very, very small market. And because it's a small market, comparatively speaking, you, I don't know if you're going to have that many buyers for like the secondary tertiary players. So Caitlyn Clark's the only one, if I'm targeting anything from the WNBA product, Caitlyn Clark's the only one I'm, I'm going for in any of the EBA. I've been looking at them, 1200 bucks, a hobby box. It's not worth 1200 bucks. You might as well buy a silver prism for 300. You know what I mean? You might as well buy four silver prisms instead of a hobby box, that would be my advice. Good call there, Clark. And, and I, and I like what you said too, about the Caglione comp, because you're right. Like people have been buying Bowman Chrome firsts for, for a while of, of, of all sorts of guys. So definitely different when it comes to the WNBA. Good stuff today, man. Well, it's, it's always great talking to you. Everybody, everybody else at Cards to the Moon, love all of you. And thanks, thanks for doing this with me. Yeah. Can't wait for the next time. Sounds good, man. Hey, thanks for listening to Cards to the Moon. We'd really appreciate you subscribing to our podcast, wherever you listen to your podcasts. And you can also connect with each of us on Instagram at 5cardguys. Or you can follow Hyung at Integrity Sports Cards or John at TradeUatRecess. You can also check us out at 5cardguys.com. Thanks again, and hope to connect soon.