Prepping For The Collectors Supershow; Pokemon and WWE Card Market Update; Introducing "Conspiracy Corner"

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 another Friday edition of Cards to the Moon. This is episode 348 and my name is Clark from 5cardguys.com. You can also find me on social media at 5cardguys, on Instagram, YouTube and on Facebook. It's another solo Friday intro, but I did record a short pod session with two of my other co-hosts, Will and Roy, who I met earlier this week for lunch at a local deli. So stay tuned for that because we talk about the card show that both Will and Roy are setting up at as vendors and dealers. It's called the Collector's Super Show, hosted by Sport Card Expo and CSC, and it runs from February 13th to the 15th near the airport in Toronto at the International Centre. So we do say this a few times in the recording, but if you're in the GTA, please drop by and say hi to us. We'd love to connect and maybe record a little something for the pod. Speaking of the pod, Will, Roy and I, we talk about not just setting up at the show and the preparation behind it, but we get into the Pokemon card market a bit as well as WWE cards. We also test run a new segment we might do a little more often in the future called Conspiracy Corner and Will had one for today's episode relating to the issue of PSA once again raising prices and who might ultimately be behind it. So you don't want to miss that segment. But it is a short episode so hope you enjoy it and again, if you're in the GTA, please drop by the Collector's Super Show and we'd love to connect with you. It's always nice meeting my fellow collectors and on that note actually about meeting fellow collectors, one funny story before I play the rest of the episode is that after we finished lunch and recorded the podcast episode, we actually ripped a box each of Topps Chrome La Boo Boo cards. None of us hit anything and it was probably one of the worst ROI that we ever ripped. You can actually check out the IG reel and YouTube shorts that I put out to go with this episode to see what we actually hit. But as we were ripping, our server was this nice older lady. She asked if we were ripping Pokemon cards and we said it was La Boo Boo, which I'm sure she had no idea what we were talking about. But then she called over another server, a younger guy who she knew collected Pokemon cards. So we started chatting with him a bit, found out that he hit the Umbreon from Prismatic Evolution and recently got a PSA 10. Roy told him it was worth several thousand dollars and then we invited him to come to the card show this weekend. So you never know where you meet other collectors, right? Good way of finding out is to start ripping in public places. Okay, that's it for me. Enjoy the convo between myself, Will and Roy at the Center Street Deli. I'll see you later. All right, we're here at a local deli in Toronto. It's called Center Street Deli and I'm here with my podcast co-hosts, Will and Roy. And we're recording this two or three days before a big show that's coming up where they're both setting up tables. So I want to take the opportunity to ask both of them what they're looking forward to and if you're in the area, if you're in the GTA area, it'd be a great opportunity for you guys to drop by and Will's going to share where he's going to be located as well as Roy right afterwards. So Will, let's start with you. What are you looking forward to at this show in particular? Are you looking to buy or sell anything? Yeah, what's on your mind? Well, for me, this is my first official show where I'm set up by myself. I've done one show previous with Roy sitting next to Roy, but that was a much smaller show in scale and size. This will be my first one where I'm doing it by myself. I'm situated in the netherworld or the underworld or wherever the furthest direction you can go. I'll be there. It's funny because when I requested a booth, I requested a corner booth. Little did I know that meant it was the literal corner of the building. So I'll be either your starting point of your show or the ending point of your show or I'll be that booth that is just too far. You're like, ah, I just stopped halfway through the show. No, you got to definitely visit him. But when I looked at the map, it was pretty hilarious because he is at the literal corner of the show. You want to tell them what your booth is called. I know you're setting up and what are you thinking about leading up to the show? Like, what do you still need to do in preparation for it? Yeah, so my booth is going to be called Top Rope Pop. It's fun to say. I'm going to be featuring a lot of wrestling cards because my hobby collection has kind of gone that way. But I'll still be buying, selling, trading baseball, basketball, whatever, golf, anything that comes my way except for hockey. I'm not interested. Sorry to all my fellow Canadians. Yeah, so it's going to be a lot of fun. I'm super excited. What was your second question? What do you have to do to prepare? Oh, in terms of preparation, you know, in my younger years, I fancied myself a writer and one of the things I say about writing is the editing process goes on forever. At a certain point, you just have to give up and stop and let the piece speak for how you wrote it. That's the problem I'm going through right now where I'm just constantly, constantly working on something. I'm thinking about signage. I'm thinking about more penny sleeves and how I'm going to have my camera set up and all these things. It's just like useless. Roy told me just put up a sign saying that I'm buying wrestling cards and just let the people come and that might just end up being what I do. He also mentioned off-air to bring a big balloon that says WWE, so I thought that was a good idea too. Well, speaking of Roy, he's the veteran dealer now. He's been to many, many shows. Are you doing anything differently in preparation for this show or is the same old, same old and what are you looking forward to at this coming show on Friday? Yeah, it's pretty much the same process going into it, comp the cards the night before, but what I'm looking forward to is just I'm setting up with a few friends and that's the best part of it, just the community. I get to see some friends that are flying in from Edmonton, some friends I only see when I do card shows, which is far and few between nowadays. I'm just looking forward to meeting people, seeing what they have to offer for trades and just speaking the hobby, talking the hobby with them. That's the best part of these things. It's not about really about the cards or the money, it's just the people you meet along the way. It's cliche, but it's 100% true. What I like about this show is that it's kind of this combined TCG and sports card show because the Sports Card Expo, which is coming up in April, they are partnering with CSC for this show and I think it's called the Collector Super Show. Again, if you're in the area, you need to drop by. We'd love to see you. I'm going to be dropping by on Saturday personally. I'll have Cards to the Moon, the podcast stickers that I have left over, so please come see us. I'll probably be hanging out with Will because he'll be lonely in the corner of the showroom floor. The southwest corner he just mentioned, but yeah, come see us. Speaking of Pokemon cards, 2026, we're more than a month in now. Is it still booming? What's a quick update about the Pokemon card market? As you guys probably know, there was a big crash in October and people were panicking and it went throughout December, but once December passed, everything's been up again. Things are good. Things are moving and the hobby's still hot for the Pokemon, especially high-end vintage or even high-end Japanese. I guess people are kind of transitioning, hey, I kind of want to get out of modern, collect something more unique, collect something that's exclusive, or just collect high-end because that's what people are doing in the sports card world, and they're using that same knowledge and approach to the Pokemon world, and those cards are just going crazy right now. I feel like I say that every week that I'm on here, every month, but nothing changes. It's the same approach. Collect high-end, collect what you like, and those are the things that will do well over time. Yeah, it's funny how the Pokemon card market is still white hot, and then, you know, we talked about One Piece before, and that's been growing a lot lately, too. Will, how about wrestling cards? Anything about wrestling cards that you want to talk about? So we are on the road to WrestleMania. The Royal Rumble just finished. We're heading to Elimination Chamber. The winner of Royal Rumble gets to challenge one of the champions for the belt, and then the winner of Elimination Chamber gets to challenge the other champion at WrestleMania, so this is like playoff season. This is the fun time of watching wrestling and also collecting wrestling. There is one newsworthy note recently with wrestling cards. It seems like Panini either overprinted or had a bunch of their downtown cards backdoored, and they've been flooding the market. So when I first started talking about wrestling cards on this pod, I said I was targeting downtown cards, and now what we were seeing is just like there's too many on eBay, and the people who are selling it are selling it without the sealed Panini stickers. So they've been unsealed, and they're selling for just cheaper than the authentication, you know when eBay sends it off to authentication. So these scammers are either reprinting or they're backdooring or something, but something funky is going on and people are starting to catch on like there's too many downtowns. I appreciate that PSA, Public Service Announcement, I was going to talk about PSA because we just heard the news about them running the best perfect business possible, which is to provide slower service and charge more and still stay busy, which is amazing. But let's save that for the next time we meet in the studio, because I think that'll be a more in-depth discussion, and I know Will will have a lot to say then as well. But last thing I want to do, we kind of talked about the software, I don't know if you want to give it a test run Will, Conspiracy Corner, remember we're talking about possibly doing a Conspiracy Corner segment, I think it might be fun, and just kind of a segue into PSA, we'll talk about that later, but do you want to share what your Conspiracy Corner is? So when it comes to Conspiracy Corner, it has to be really off the rails, just over the top. So today we got that news that PSA is increasing their pricing, they're getting rid of bulk, they're slowing down their service times, they're basically doing everything that, everything the opposite of how proper business is supposed to be run, which boggles my mind as a business owner, like I'm trying to figure out how I can apply PSA's tactics to my own business, but my conspiracy is that this is all under the control of fanatics, because fanatics at some point in the near, not too distant future, is going to buy a grading company or start their own grading company, and we're all going to be so grateful to fanatics for fighting against the bullies that are PSA, fighting against all the injustice that PSA has caused, and so we're all going to look at fanatics as these heroes, but really, it's all a long game, it's a long con for them to just own and operate every facet of the hobby. So there you go. But I love fanatics, thank you fanatics. Mark today's date, February 10th, let's see if this becomes a reality in the not so distant future. But appreciate you guys, again if you're in the area, the GTA, Greater Toronto Area, go to the Collector Super Show, is this the first time they're doing it, Collector Super Show? Okay, so that's why I still got to get used to the name, but Collector Super Show, it goes from Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Will and Roy will be there all three days, so check their booth out as well. Oh, Roy, we didn't say what the name of your booth is. So I'll be setting up pretty much dead center of the middle of the venue, under Pokey Fam Collectibles I believe, that's a friend of mine from Edmonton, so if you're from Edmonton, check them out, I think they do local shows, but I'll be setting up with them. We have about six tables, and yeah, I'm pretty much right in the middle, just like diagonally across from PSC I believe, yeah. So if you just want to say hi, you want to check out some cards, or if you have anything to trade or just talk, just swing by. All right, see what happens when you're a veteran dealer, you get a marquee spot right in the center. Something to work up towards too, Will, but yeah, we'll hope to see you there. 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.