PSA Backlog Update; Is Performance Finally Trumping Potential for Collectors?

Before we jump into today's episode, quick shout out to our sponsor, ebay Live. If you think ebay is just a marketplace, you're missing a whole side of it. Ebay Live is where real time excitement means rare, exclusive, hard to find cards and collectibles. You can watch live auctions, catch exclusive drops, and buy directly from trusted and quite frankly, the best sellers like myself. Well, it's all happening. It feels like a show. Not just shopping with great hosts, the aforementioned me creators and streamers. Plus, everything's backed by ebay's protections and authenticity guarantees. To check it out, download the ebay app, tap the ebay live button right under the search bar. Make sure you follow. Obviously, sports cards. Nonsense. Let's get back to your show. So the PSA backlog currently sits at 14 million cards, which is why that means that they took in 4 million plus cards in, like five days. All right, welcome back to another episode of of the Hobby Handbook. How you doing, Trent? I'm doing good. I don't know if you've noticed, but I put a couple things on my wall to where it's not just a blank slate behind us anymore. Slowly but surely improving the world. We're getting there. It's not on our list, but it is series two release day today. I know. I thought about that this morning because I was building out a break and I was like, shoot, we don't have that on our topic list. What are we doing? We're falling behind here. You know what? We're talking about it though, now. What is your. I know. I assume you have not opened any Series 2. You were not lucky enough like I was to get my Series 2 a day early. Shout out, tops. No, no, that is not a shout out. FedEx, for the record, tops has nothing to do with that. They just ship stuff out in FedEx. Happened. It's funny. My FedEx Express guy had it. He's like, I don't know why I got this package. It's a ground package. And I'm like, I don't know, but thanks for delivering it early. So I'll take it. I did not get lucky enough. I Every release day. Like, I mean, we've talked about it before. I have not gotten lucky enough to get the boxes direct on tops of. So I have to go to my LCS on release days and hope that the line's not too long on a lunch break. Hey, you get to support the lcs. We're going to talk about that in a little bit. What are your any thoughts overall Big Picture Series two. Anything you're excited for, any feelings for our audience to consider? I mean, for me personally, I feel like the hobby perspective as a whole has kind of shifted away from the collectability to more of the financial side, which is fine, however you think about it. Me, I'm a huge flagship fan. So I mean, you can see I've got, you know, flagship parallels are basically half of the things up here. Because I mean for me, I'm a sucker for the golds out of the year. I'm a sucker for the Independence Day parallels. So I mean, things like that, like I'm a big parallel chaser when it comes to just the paper copies. So I'll be opening some hopefully today and chasing some myself. Well, I know you'll be breaking some. My boxes came in yesterday. I, you know, it's exciting in that it's a set that has your. Some of the big rookie chases. You know, you got Sal Stewart, you've got Murakami. Very, very cool there. I found it to be a little bit repetitive. You pull, in my opinion, I think there needs to be a little bit more diversity in terms of your inserts. You pull way too many of these. If this wants to focus, it does not. There we go. The beautiful looking card. But it's, you know, the glove work. I think you pull like six of them or seven of them per box, which is just like I, I felt like I saw it too much. I did like, you know, I saw a good amount of numbered cards come out of it. I did happen to pull an Independence Day nobody huge, Joel Peguero, but you know, still Independence Day. The big thing though, if the audience has not seen it yet on my YouTube video, is doing really, really well. I'm not surprised. But I pulled my very first one of one ever yesterday. I know I showed you on stream last night, but for the audience, Jimmy Rollins, one of one Platinum auto on the 1991 throwback. Very, very cool. It was unexpected. I was actually literally like I was on my, I think second to less pack and I was saying that it was kind of a disappointing hobby box and jumbo hobby box that like I was like, I really don't feel like we've pulled anything of note. Like our relics were nothing crazy. We didn't really pull any big name parallels or cool inserts, etc. And I was like, oh, there's our auto. And I saw that it was a 91. I flip it over, I'm like, oh, whoa, 101. So that was cool. It was a 101 mail day for me as well. I know you're waiting for your Fanatics collect mail day. I am. I got in for the audience to see a huge piece from my personal collection, the Soto on the Heat wave. Super Fractal 101. Bought that from Fanatics collect a few weeks ago, so that was exciting. Well, if we're doing show and tell, if we're doing show and tell, I might as well show off the leaf one of one that I picked up yesterday. So I. I broke this yesterday. Jonah Tong. One of one cyan printing plate. And the guy who hit it, shout out to Lee. He's a great dude. And he's like, immediately after I end the stream, within five minutes, he goes, I know you want it. Buy it from me. I'm like, okay, fine. Name your price. I think 70 bucks. Oh, that's easy. That's. Well, that's what I mean, it was like, I was like, yes. Like, this is. This is just a cool card. And now, like, I mean, I'm looking at this and I'm like, I'm like trying to strategize in my head, like, man, I want to get Jonah Tong to sign this thing. Like the Canadian can. And on there, like, that would be cool. Super cool. Yeah, that'd be very, very cool. Now, we talked a little about, you know, you're going to go. I know you're going to be headed to your LCS, about to grab some Series 2 today. One of the things on my list was a reminder and, you know, a little piece of education for our audience about the importance of relationships in the hobby. Little story about a really cool, really big card that I picked up at my LCS the other day, but it also was not from the lcs. So I was at my card shop, you know, it was platinum anniversary release date. Had to go in, grab some boxes. I, after I did that, was flipping through his value bin, just kind of playing the looking for inventory, because I always need inventory. And while I'm doing that, you know, this is Sheps Cards and Collectibles up in Hendersonville, Tennessee. If you're ever in the area, check out Sheps. Great shop. Jason's a great guy. But so while I'm doing that, I hear Shep call across the room. He goes, hey, Al, come here. Come take a look at some of this stuff. And while I had been doing that, he was working with somebody who had come in that had a lot of stuff that he was looking to sell. You know, he was looking to Just offload some of the cards that he had amassed. And, you know, Jason basically said, hey, I'm buying a good amount of this stuff. But there are some of the cards that I just don't think that are a fit for me. They're not really going to go in my showcase, and I don't really think they'd move for me here. But, like, maybe I know that you might be interested in some of them. I flipped through one of the very first cards that I see, which is a very, very cool one, the Ken Griffey Jr. Kramer's Choice auto. So the card's a six, but the auto's a 10. But these were super hard to hit back in the day. Really, really cool card. And then I see the big boy, which was the Aaron Judge Dynasty patch auto numbered to 10 PSA 9. It's got a dirty patch. It is a crazy, crazy cool card. And I said to the guy, I, I doubted that I was going to be able to get it because it's a really expensive card. I said, how much you want? His price was totally reasonable. He was going, based off the last comp of this direct card versus, you know, some of the other, other Dynasty Aaron Judge patches that some people might say you might change the price of this card. Some people might say it doesn't depend. You know, I thought it was original price. So I said, let's do it. About the judge and about the Griffey. I would not have had that opportunity if I was not somebody who had gone in and bought from my local card store again and again and again. Taken the time to talk to the owner, to get to know him, to have, you know, his mom who works at the front desk and, you know, at the cash register and chat with her. She says hi to me every time that I come into the shop. Talking to the people and getting to know them, building those relationships can quite literally get you an Aaron Judge tops Dynasty Carmen. So that's the way to do it. I mean, like you said, you have to have the conversations, know what the people like, like for me, my LCS owner, huge Star wars fan. So if I ever see something cool, Star Wars, I'm gonna bring it to him. You know, like, it's. It's things like that where, you know, over time, you build these relationships to where you get that opportunity in the future. And you. You don't know when that's gonna come. And it also goes beyond that lesson, goes beyond the local card shop, that goes to working online with people, that goes to Being at card shows, etc. Putting in the time and building up those relationships is what really allows you to start to, I think, get some of those really cool opportunities, cool deals, things like that. Because people, as you said, you know that your LCS owner really likes Star Wars. You find a really cool Star wars card, you think of him, you're not gonna. You. Your first thought is not, I'm gonna toss it on ebay and try and get the most money that I can. The guy that pulled the. Or that hit the Jonah Tong one of one yesterday, you would not have ended up with that printing plate if I didn't complain about the Mets every single day on my streams. Correct. But if you had not built up this community where you now have a relationship with him, you didn't have to tell him that you wanted that card. He knew. Yeah, like, building up those relationships. I know that it might seem like. I don't want to say, like, unnecessary work or, like, do I really want to sit at this guy's table and chat with him for 30 minutes while I'm going through his value boxes? The answer should be yes. But there is. There is more than just being a decent human being. It will literally get you more in the long run, in my opinion. I feel like it's to a point, though. Like, you can't force it either, because, like, when you start, I mean, you can. You can tell when somebody's, like, trying to. To, like. I don't want to say fake be nice with you, but kind of like that to where, you know, it's one of those things where I feel like it comes naturally with time. Like, you can't just force it the first time you walk up to somebody's table and expect him to give you his table at 50% off. Like, no. Like, if you build a relationship, you see somebody over and over and over again, then, yeah, it'll come. Yeah. Well, I think that I was listening to, and I want to have him on at some point, a video. I think it was Triple Crown. He had a video that he posted about the Midwest monster and kind of was a really good show for him, but it was also a show where he felt like he was dealing with a ton of the, like, repackers, guys who are just in it for the money. And he's like, you know, I had so much fun when I'm dealing with people who are actually, like, trying to find a cool card. And I'm. I feel more motivated to give somebody a better deal when I think that it's going to end up in like a good home versus somebody who, and I think that he, the, the, the, the line that he uses, to some people it's just numbers. Yeah. Like the card does not matter. It's just, you know, the card sells for this much and I can make this much and that's that. And I think that if you are somebody who is at a table and you are only trying to butter up a dealer because you're wanting to get a good deal because it's only about numbers, that's not going to work. But if it's like, you know, I can go through, and I'm somebody, I, my living is made off of selling cards, but I can be going through a box and come across a card and be like, oh, that's a super cool Alex Rodriguez card. I'm buying that for the PC there. I think that when you actually really enjoy cards, even if it is a business for you, making sure that you have, that you stay grounded with it allows you to, I think, have those conversations and really start to build that relationship where they know what you like, you know what they like, and you can kind of, you know, build those, build those relationships and it's worth investing in. Yeah. Because if they, you know, especially if somebody's a big time dealer, they're going to see cool stuff come up almost all the time. And if, you know, a really cool A rod card comes up and you're the guy who's always buying a rod, you're the first person they're going to reach out to because time and time again you've done it. So I think the common denominator here is time being a good human being and just, you know, make, keep it natural to where, you know, you're not trying to force anything and you're not doing it with the intention. Because I feel like here's where some people go wrong too is if you're going in it with the intention of, okay, I'm only going to be nice to him so that in six months he gives me a better deal. It's never going to work like that. Yeah, yeah. Oh, no, Absolutely. Now we were talking card shows. I, we met last year at the PSA booth, standing in line. Yes, we did. The national is 49 days away. I think it is. I think so. Yeah. As of today it's 49. How long do you think the line at the PSA booth is going to be this year? I don't know. And I'm really curious to see. I wouldn't Well, I know it's gonna be incredibly long. I've got a feeling that it's going to, they're going to shut down submissions at the show. I just have a funny feeling, I really do. Because I mean, last year a big piece of the line where people just dropping off cards to submit at a value rate. Now it's going to be. So now it's going. Yeah. So now I think it's going to be a lot of grading at the show to the point where they're overwhelmed. That's a fair. That is a fair point. And I think especially some of those, I say value tiers, but it's not a value tier. But some of the tiers where it's not the same day turnaround, where it's like, hey, by the end of the show you'll get your card back. I can very. I think it's going to be a long line. But I think that to that point, I think that you, you could be right, that if you're somebody who is planning on coming to the national Saturday, Sunday this year and previous years, you were able to drop off a car to get graded and it was going to be ready to be. To be picked up on Sunday. They might run out of capacity. Yeah, yeah. I was nervous about it when I dropped stuff off. I mean, I think it was what, $149 for same show turnaround, I think. And then around there, 50 was the cheapest for like same day, I think. Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, I did that. I just did end of show and I mean, I got hosed on. It's right there that Shohei Otani red ink. But no, it was. Yeah, I was, I'm worried to see how it's going to be this year, especially considering the value tiers are shut down. Yeah. And I wonder if they're going, like I said, if they're going to see an overwhelming number of just end of show pickups. Yeah. At the same time though, I mean, on one hand, that $150 for basically four day turnaround time based on what PSA turnaround times is right now, is incredible value. Yes. Because you know, if you are paying, I'm pulling up the PSA website right now. 79.99 for regular. If you're paying $150 for express service right now, that's 20 to 30 business days. Yeah. So you're looking at two months versus three. So I wonder who knows if they're gonna say end of show pickup is gonna be $299 or something crazy. It might be. I every year have graded something at the National. It makes, you know, really, it makes really, really good content. It's what's fun is that historically what has happened is I have hit a big card in Topps Chrome every single year. Kind of comes out right before the National. I think I remember the one from last year. Didn't you have a red Pete Crow Armstrong? I. So in 2023 I pulled a. Or 2024, excuse me, I pulled a Yamamoto Orange Auto out of top Scroll True Orange. So I graded that at psa. And then last year I bought a PCA because I did not have a card. And then out of Topps Chrome, I didn't want to risk, you know, going because Tops Chrome came out, I think a week before the national last year. Yeah, I didn't want to risk not pulling a monster and not having a card. So I bought a PCA Orange Cosmic Auto. But then I pulled a showing Ohtani Red Wave out of five out of top. We also, we also graded that. I sold that way too early, but that's fine. I mean, it's how it goes. Probably same with Yamamoto. I would assume it's the Yamamoto actually has been fairly. I, I keep a try, I keep track of it. Like we talked about the Ohtani last week, but I think that Yamamoto has been about, has been pretty steady. I sold it for about $2,000 and I think it's still around there. The Ohtani obviously went nuclear. But I'm very, very curious. I really do like. And I, I. The reason why I segued us here to PSA was PSA announced yesterday that they have on their website they a tracker of what the PSA backlog is. So the PSA backlog currently sits at 14 million cards, which is why that means that they took in 4 million plus cards in like five days. Yeah. And the Burbank cards shut down submissions. Yeah. I assume that that's the cards that they've received. That number might continue to go up as they, as people that did those and, you know, are working to get those, you know, packages packed up, shipped out, et cetera. Actually send them in because those submissions are good for 30 days. But shout out PSA. I love this. I think it's a great thing. To me, it's like the national debt tracker. Like, you can pull that up and you just see it turning and turning. And now it's like the, like you put that on one window, PSA on the other one, it's like, oh, let's see which one's going to grow faster. Yep. Luckily, it might go up for a little bit, but then in theory should just start going down, down, down, and it'll be really, really interesting to see. I love it. I. I really like the transparency. I think that in general, I. I would love to see this stay even after they reopen. Value tiers show people, hey, how large of a backlog or basically, how many cards do I. Do we have to grade before we get to your card? Yeah, I mean, I'm in a weird spot right now. So I submitted two cards for crossover. One at the regular level, one at, like, the more express levels, and the. I submitted all three of those in the same package. I had a value bulk, I had the regular, and I had the fast turnaround crossover. The regular crossover, I think, was supposed to be completed about a week ago, which is really interesting. And I was like, okay, fine. Like, it is what it is. The weirdest part is that I'm pulling up my site right now. Oh, actually, it updated this morning, but the crossover estimated June 2 is in grading, and the value bulk estimated August 27 is in QA checks. I will say the QA checks is deceptive. I had a submission. It's. It's gonna get delivered to me today. If the grades popped this past weekend. I posted a video on it. Somewhat great. 11 out of 14 cards jammed. It was all Ohtani judge rookies. Very, very good. But it was supposed to be done. I think it was June 5th, and it was a two days behind. I got enough charge. So, like, I know that also delays things a little bit, but it hit QA checks, like, on May 2nd. It was in QA for like a month plus. So QA can be deceptive. Just. Just absolutely. Yeah. No, it. But it's interesting because it's been in QA checks for. For a few weeks now, which is the weird thing. I'm like, this is a value bulk. Like, this is supposed to take much longer, so. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, to be fair, the fact that a crossover is taking longer than expected, I'm afraid that they're giving me another sense of false hope. Because just like last time whenever I was in grading with the crossover that didn't cross, I'm like, man, oh, it's in grading or it's in assembly. I'm like, they're assembling the new slab. No, I got it back. And it's like, no, it didn't cross over. I'm like, yeah, that is tough. I'M debating on crossover wise and I'd love to hear the audience perspective, and I probably want to get it reviewed by somebody. My Ohtani Tops Finest Rookie auto. It's a PSA9. I look at it, it's got clean corners. It looks fairly well centered from what I can tell in the slab. The surface looks pretty good. The auto, I think would 10 a PSA 1010 last sold for $60,000. My goodness. I'm debating whether or not that's going to be my card at the national that I try and do and try and try and get the upgrade on. It would be like $2,500 to grade it based on last year's pricing. So we'll see how crazy it might be. Yeah, that's wild. I. I mean, it's one of those things, like it's. It's a gamble. It's an expensive gamble, but if it pays off, it pays off big. I mean, for me doing the crossover so far, the first one, I put on the first layer of clown makeup. Yeah. So I'm wondering if I need to get the second one ready for the second crossover. Because it's like, I feel, I mean, personally, this is only the second crossover I've ever sent, but I imagine that every time they get a crossover, they're just like, ooh, here's $100 in my pocket. Nope. Yeah, I think. I think I would crack it, which would be terrifying, but. Yeah, you're gonna have shaky hands, dude. Oh, no. I would pay somebody to crack that. I'd get Mr. Minty or somebody to evaluate it, confirm that I. It's worth shooting my shot on and have him crack it. Yeah. Somebody numb to seeing gigantic cards. Exactly. Somebody who just does this all, all the time. It's their full time job. Now. Where do you want to go next? You want to talk finest? You want to play your game? What do you. Oh, let's talk Finest first. Let's talk finest. We've got a good game coming up. Let's. Let's let it sit a little bit. So the tops Finest pre order was on Monday. I missed it again. That was my fault, though. I mean, I'm going to. I'm on half blame tops and half blame me. I missed it because I didn't. I was not on the website and did not try to preorder. It was not a situation of. I went on the site and couldn't check anything out because shout out tops. I was actually able to buy a couple of boxes of chrome black football, which is awesome. So like that worked. That was able to go through Be good etc. So I blame myself on not checking the Topps website. I still would like to see maybe a little bit better communication of release days, pre orders, things like that. But Finest pre order was on Monday. I do think that it's a really, really fun product this year. Have you seen some of the inserts? I have and they look really cool. I mean my thing, I think the same thing happened that happens with 90% of releases. I get a text that says, did you get any X? And I go, from me, I go, oh, is that today? Yep. But they're bringing back the man, the Ohtani. The man looks incredible. Yeah. I also love the look of the. What was. There was a JJ Weatherhole one. I'm not seeing it on the website right now, which is funny because it was there the other day. Where is it? But the thing that I was curious on your opinion on Two Days later Mega boxes. So something new with finance this year is that there is retail or value Skus Topps would rather call them, which is fine. There is value Skus. There is a. There are Mega boxes. Oh, it's the finest phenoms of Weatherhole. That card looks amazing as well. I've not seen it. I'll. I'll send you a picture after and I'll send the picture to Brendan to toss up on screen. But the, the Mega boxes, they are still in stock two days later. 70 bucks a box. You know, you're getting six cards per pack, eight packs per box. So like it's a solidly large box. You know, it's $70. Do you think that it is good or bad that it is still in stock two days later? What does that say? So part of me thinks that there wasn't enough marketing for it, that there's going to be the value skew. Because like, I mean for me, I didn't even know that there was a value skew until you put it in the sheet. Yeah. So I mean there could be that. I'm kind of wishy washy on whether I like it or not because obviously Finest has always been a hobby only product. So I'm curious to see, do you know if there's any like exclusives to the Mega Box? So the Mega Box has an exclusive black and white mini diamond parallel, kind of like the. Like they used to do in Bowman Draft when they had the right mega boxes. Yeah. All right, well, I mean, I think it'll be interesting. I mean the fact that they're still There two days later, I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt that not enough people didn't know about it versus people don't want it. Because Finest is always a really popular product. We've seen it shoot up in value like crazy with both 24, 25. So I bet you that people just don't know because, I mean, I'm tempted now to go see if there's any open right now and go pick some up because it's always a super fun product. It's always like solid. So why not, you know, add another skew to it to where it makes it a little bit more affordable if people want to rip it. Yeah, I, I, the complaint that I heard and have heard from some people is, well, that means that they print like the, the complaint about making some retail for it is that you're going to have the print run on some of your refractors, X fractures, things like your base cards be significantly higher. I don't care. I, I don't care. I think it's a fallacy. I mean, I think it's a fallacy. Just because there's another SKU doesn't mean that they increase print run. Because the same thing I hope that they did increase the print run. My thing that I really like and appreciate is that you are able to get. You know, the average collector is able to say which happened. And I'm not, I'm not the average collector, but it happened to me. I missed the, I missed the release day and pre order for the hobby boxes. Great. Now I'm just sol not going to be able to get anything for MSRP delivered to my house on release day, et cetera, because everything sells out immediately. I love, we've talked about it before. I love how Topps has made the value products actually have value. You look at Platinum Anniversary, some of the cards people are pulling out of blaster boxes are crazy. I mean this, this tong came out of a blaster, you know, like. Yeah, I really, really love and appreciate that Topps. That said, hey, I think that their approach realistically is they know that hobby is not going to get any. They're not. They're only going to be able to do so much to lower the price of hobby boxes or keep the prices low because of market demand and people being able to break product. I think that, I think it's a reality of the world that we live in today. You like it or not, it's where we are. But by taking these products, by taking Finest, a product that previously you would have had to spend 3, $400 minimum to be able to open a box and get the chance to pull a really cool car. Now you have the chance to pull that for $70, a much, much more reasonable price. And you can still pull numbered Ohtani. You can still pull. And we need to see the checklist and see. You know, I'm sure that there's going to be some case hits and things that are hobby exclusive. Like it was for Tops Chrome. You know, you couldn't pull the Kaijus out of your mega boxes or blaster boxes, but there are plenty of really big, really cool cards that you can hit out of those value SKUs. And I think that it's a huge win and I say make those super, super available. Let it be. That should be the case for every product in my opinion. Yeah, I, I agree and I mean we, we touched on this very briefly but I, I gave a shout out to, to Slab Squatch when I did this the, with, with Bowman. But I mean even with Bowman, like people are like, oh, they're just increasing the print runs. It's like. No, they decrease the print run. So it's one of those things where, you know, I feel like Topps is actually noticing that, hey, like we don't want things to get too out of hand because I mean it is a tough balance. You know, gotta pull the levers in the right way. Yeah. Obviously if you increase the print run, the supply increases which in turn should make the price go down. Yep. So it's, it's a tough balance where, you know, do you want cheaper boxes, do you want less print run? Where's the balance here? Yeah, it, it is a. Tops is in a. I do not envy them for the spot that they are in in terms of having to find that balance of appealing to the average collector who can't afford the however many hundreds of dollars it's going to be for a box msrp and then that price is going to go up even more aftermarket because of the world that we live in. While also navigating that if you just increase the print run so that you can meet said demand, then people are going to say, well, you're printing too much. It's a very rock and a hard place. And I think that, I think the approach of adding in the value skew, making that pretty readily available for people and if people are going to be upset that the base refractor cards Maybe is a $3 card versus a $5 card, get over it. Yeah, I think that's a that that's a risk that I'm. I'm 100% willing to take. Exactly. It makes it more available at everybody. Yeah. So I guess we'll see how it affects everything in a few months. Who knows, maybe those mega boxes are going to be or I guess the value skew it. Okay. So they just don't like it. I think Tops and like you're just being referred to as retail because I think that panini made retail be like. I think there was a really negative association with retail and I think the tops is putting in a lot of work to make sure that there is. There's value in these SKUs that are available at retail stores. So there are value SKUs. Here's, here's the way that I want you to think about this. If you are a collector who's like there isn't any value in these value boxes, go on Reddit, go to R baseball cards. Sort by like the top posts and every single super fractor that I have seen from Platinum Anniversary. Ben Rice Auto. Ben Rice Non Auto Roki Sasaki Image variation. Guess what? Blaster box. Blaster box. Blaster box. The first card that I saw pulled from Platinum anniversary was somebody that got it early found it on a shelf at Walmart. I think it was Ken Griffey Jr. Red Auto 5 out of a Blaster box. Yeah. I mean I'll put it this way. I can't even. I opened two boxes yesterday. I pulled a John Kenzie two hobby boxes. John Kenzie Noel Base Auto for the first. One second. One second. Yeah. Who he. He got dfa second one. I can't even remember the guy's name. And look, I'm a nerd. I know a lot about baseball and baseball players. I don't even know who this guy was. Two base Autos meanwhile, pulled a red Brett Sabre Hagen out of a blaster. Like I'm to the point where I just want to go, you know, value boxes all the way for plot for Platinum. I think. I think I did a video on it. I think value is better than you texted me that release day. You're like, these are loaded. Yep, they are. I am going to be very, very curious though to see in Finest and and and Topps approach in general when it comes to being the what case hits are in value SKUs vs Hobby exclusive for products like Finest, Topps, Chrome, etc. You want to play your. You want you to play case hit game. Yeah. So more more before we get the dozen comments. The SSP game case hits are Not a thing in Topps. So I brought this up to you. I want to play a game where we are drafting the best super short prints. Now, I caged this poorly because I kind of just threw it up in our sheet that we'll talk about things. Yeah. But here's the direction I want to go. I want to go in, like, I'm not saying a specific. Like, 2018 Ohtani update. SSP. No, no, no. Yes. I want inserts. I want things like that. So with that, I want to give you the one. One pick. For you, Alex, what is the best super short print, hands down? No question. You're putting the pressure on me with the. Of course. Of course. I'm going to take what I think is my personal favorite. And there is bias here. And that I am a baseball collector because I think that. I think that a lot of people would say the one one should be downtown or kaboom. I don't hate that. But this is my list of my favorites. So I'm going to take home field. I 100% knew you were going there the whole time. I mean, it's no question. And I think you can guess my one one or my. I guess one two. My first round. First pick. Because I literally sent you a picture of one last night. The anime. I mean. Oh, my gosh. Like, it's a. It's the same thing where you can. The manga. Like, you could. You could make an argument for that. Yep. So I'm. While I agree with you, I'm also a baseball guy, so I'm. I'm going anime in my first round. First pick. Okay. And then your second round, because I assume we're snaking this. Yeah. We could snake it. I feel like if we snake this, I'm gonna. I'm gonna sweep you here. I'm going Garbage Pail Kid. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I. I'm a sucker for a Garbage Pail Kid. And, I mean, it's a great addition. I wish that Garbage Pail Kids were added to football so that they could get that, you know, excitement. I think we might see them in Bowman when they inevitably have a Bowman Prague. Yeah. Because, I mean, we see it. We see it with Bowman basketball with, like, the Cooper flag, like, holding the flag sideways. Like, that's an awesome car. It's a fun insert. And I think GPK number two is my go to. Okay. I see that. I'm still. I feel like a large portion of the hobby is screaming at us, saying, you guys have made three picks in the downtown and the Kaboom have not been selected. Yeah, I mean I'm going with. You can look at my shelf and you can basically pick my four rounds. You can go up and down and be like, oh, okay, there's one, there's two, there's three, there's four. I don't have any kabooms or downtowns on there. So it's like I'm going to take, I'm going to take the kaboom. Okay. Saw a post the other day. Brendan, who does my football single sent this to me because he, it's his version of the Ohtani Bowman chrome refractor. An Ohtani Kaboom PSA 10. Do you know what last sale on it is? No. I feel sick because I was looking at golden and I saw a Downtown and. Or I'm sorry, I was on fanatics collect and I saw a downtown and it was just I think 2022 Panini Diamond Kings, Ohtani Downtown and it was like $15,000. I was like, I remember when these were less than a grand. Kaboom. Ohtani PSA 10 is 30k. Oh my goodness. And so I, I, you know, I debated, you know, Downtown has the value there and you know is, is going to be for a very long time a legendary insert. But in terms of building out a well rounded team here, we already got hfa so we're going to take kaboom to go with our home fields. And then I think I got to take, and I hope that this is okay in how I do this. The all aces slash all kings. I consider them the same. I know ace and kings, but I consider it the same essentially card there, one letter has changed. It's okay. Yep, the A versus the K on the card. So I'm doing kaboom with my two, two and all aces, all kings with my three one. All right, well, I mean if we, if we have a baseball, if, if the crowd's more baseball heavy, you're getting swept here. The best looking, the best eye appeal card out of all SSPs is the crystallized. Until you see one. I don't like the Crystallized. Interesting. Yeah, I, I looked at it like when I pulled one for the first time, I was like, I am actually amazed at how good these look because it has the depth. It has like the geode feature. I'm taking Crystallized next and then to wrap it up, I would love to do this in terms of a one specific card, but I will encompass the entire set. The spotlight, the Nolan McClain spotlight. To me, that was going to be my pick for the record. Yeah. I mean, it's a cool card. And funny enough, like a good buddy of mine, he breaks as well. He posted and said. Or he messaged me after the break and was like, hey, you're not going to believe what we hit. Because I debated taking the Mets like three times and I just said, you know what? I should probably pump the brakes here. And guess what pulls Nolan McLean. Spotlight. And I was like, classic. It's the way it goes. Spotlight. I was literally looking at my list of inserts that I would consider in this draft here, and Spotlight was, I think was going to be my pick. I was debating whether or not that was going to be too similar to the All Aces and All Kings in terms of, you know, the kind of all black card, etc. But I love the spotlights. I love them in 2023 when they came out. Love that they made them a short print to make them kind of increase some of the values there. I'm now sitting with my final pick between in my mind, three cards. I'm going to. Again, we can do honorable mentions. Yeah. I'm omitting the downtown because I feel like I already kind of checked that box with the home fields in my first. In my 1:1. It's a little too similar, which is why I might. One of my honorable mentions here is the Kaiju. I think they're really, really cool cards, and I really hope that baseball has them this year because the. The. The. The prospect of an Otani Kaiju. Yeah. Game over. Game over. And then I've got three cards that are very rare and very niche that I'm torn between. Alter Egos. Oh. Oh, my gosh. Which I think is probably going to be my pick. Yeah, you have to take that. I don't care what else you have. I can't believe I've got a list of things right here. And I can't believe I forgot to put that on my list. Alter Egos, I think is going to be my pick. Other honorable mentions, though, and I'm tempted to take Constellation over Alter Egos, but I'm going to take. Don't you dare. Don't you dare. I want. I'm. I'm. There's a guy who has an Otani PSA 10 constellation, and I have been trying for months to get. I know you have. I DM'd him yesterday. I was like, hey, I got this really cool Aaron Judge. Would you be interested? I was like, partial trade. He goes, I do like Judge. I'm like, let's do this. Come on. Come on. So I want to. I like, I will not put together the full Alter Ego set. I really want to put together the full Constellation set. I bought the Vladi this past weekend off and I collected. I think I have a Matt Shaw in my. My case somewhere. I might have to. If you don't have that one, I don't. It'll be a birthday present or national present. But Constellation I'm very tempted for. But again, I think that they're very. It's. It's a similar look to the all aces given that it's kind of all black card with, you know, details of galaxies and such. And then another all black card that I also considered for the audience just to think about. And it's a sleeper one. The World Series at night. I feel like that one just doesn't have long enough legs. Given time, I can see it grow. But yeah, I mean there's only been what, one run of them. But you could say the same thing for the alter egos. Yeah, that is true. And the Kaijus. But, but, but I think alter egos to the point of the like, I'm very happy with home field. All aces, kaboom and alter egos. I think that's a very well rounded game. That's a strong list. Yeah. So we got to know from the audience who wins, Alex or Trent. Trent. You got the anime. I do like gpk. Gpk. I was like, I didn't get to it. I had to take my home field. Crystallized in the spotlights. You are very clear. You are all Bowman. I am. I thought about that earlier too. I was like, I was like, wow. Yeah. These are all Bowman inserts. I do want to say an honorable mention of mine and I need to put a caveat on this. The ultraviolet All Stars. Only football. Football's is. And basketballs. Basketballs look the same. Yes. They're. They're 10 times better than baseball. So much better. And I'm like, why can't we just have this in ours? Like this would make it so much better. Yeah, I, I had that. And then one that I personally obviously I wanted to put in Golden Mirror. SSPS or just image variation. SSPs. There's some good ones, there's some bad ones. But one that I really liked that I wish that they brought back is the him from Bowman's Best. Yes. I thought they looked cool. I thought they looked awesome. And they just did one run of them in 2023 and now they're just collecting Dust. So. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. So, I mean, we could go on all day talking about the strokes of gold. There's so many really, really cool ones. But I think I'm happy with my list. I hope that you are happy with your list. Yes. I want to touch on all of the big sports events that are start. That are happening. Starting kicking off tonight. Game four of the NBA Finals should be really, really interesting. I. Wow. I know a lot of people are pulling for the Knicks and you know the fun of that. And I know a lot of you mean America is pulling for the Knicks. And I know a lot of people in the hobby who have a lot of money in Wemby are pulling for the Spurs. I was glad to see the spurs win game three. Mostly just in that I like it's. It will be good for this series to go six or seven games. Yeah, stop. You know, so my thing is. So, so here's the thing. I'm very curious. Just when it ends, what is the better case scenario for the city of New York? Because it's gonna burn out either way. You've seen the mobs in the street. They're like, like Nixon for it. Everybody's going insane and it's like, we're gonna burn down the city. If the Knicks win tonight. It's like, whoa, whoa, dude, this is not Philadelphia. Calm down. Yeah, it's. I think that it's. I think New York is going to be in trouble either way. I think that, you know, what is your. Having seen three games, what's your prediction? Call it. I mean, I think, I think spurs in six. I think I'm, I think I'm going Knicks in six. Oh, okay. I mean, the thing is, like, I feel like, I don't know if it was, you know, jitters or what, but I mean, the spurs look so much better in Game 3. They did. But, but it also was a close game. Yes, yes, it was. Like I, but I agree with you, it's got to go long. It's got to go long. Like I, I feel like if the spurs get the momentum, they're going to beat the Knicks. Yeah. I also selfishly was very, very glad that the spurs won on Monday because I'm doing this Thursday night on ebay live. My very first. You know, I say first, we've done like Brendan and I have partnered on one and it's the, the multi sport has been his. My very first multi sport stream. So these are all my cards. You know, this is inventory that I source myself versus selling Brendan's football cards. I've got football, I've got basketball. I bought a decent amount of Wemby stuff and I was sitting there after they went down O2, you're like I was sweating like oh my God, am I, am I going to do this big multi sport stream the day after the spurs get swept? And now the answer regardless is no. Because even if the Knicks win tonight, it's going back to San Antonio. And my guess is my prediction is going to be the Knicks will win tonight, the spurs will win in San Antonio in Game 5, and then the Knicks will close it out in Madison Square Garden Game 6. But so that lets me get my multi sports stream in. And I'm going to be honest, I I think that I may have gone a little too hard in some of the bigger cards. And I mean it's big for me. Like I'm not, I'm not debut sports, I'm not selling $20,000 cards. But like I have some very nice like I've got Giannis rookies, I've got Kobe rookies, I've got Wemby cosmic rookies. Like I have some very nice stuff. I said, you know, if I'm going to try because one of the things for me is that as I mentioned previously, kind of the whole goat market and I we have a topic on this we can touch on briefly in a second. I am having trouble sourcing enough inventory and if I can diversify by adding in some of these guys like Wemby, LeBron, Steph Mahomes, etc. I think that there is it provides some opportunity. And I said if I'm going to do it, I want to do it. I think I'm probably going to get cooked on some of this stuff. So if you guys are looking for some good deals Thursday night at 6:30pm Central, especially the basketball. I mean I've been getting cooked on some stuff in general recently, but I think that I'm very curious to see how the multi sport goes. We can report back on that next week. Well, I think part of the inventory problem is that there's not enough stuff being put out there. So I mean like for me, like this is actually crazy. I listed stuff for the first time on ebay in a really long time. Shout out Haystack dude. I listed 120 cards in one hour on eBay. With Haystack I literally used my phone. Click a photo, flip the card, click a photo and just did that or 240 times. Yep, I look, I open up the haystack website and all you have to do is just go in and just match the cards and using it right before the stream. Well see I don't. You don't even need the haystack. I know you don't need it, but I have it. Yeah, you don't even need it. I literally just balance my phone on, on like a stand and just went tap, tap. And I think there was like three out of 120 cards that I needed to adjust. Yeah. And then just set them all up. Boom. Posted. I'm like this just changed the game because like you know, for me I have a box of stuff that I'm like oh, I want to list it on ebay like but I don't have the time to sit here. Right. I don't have time to sit here for hours and list everything. I can put an hour away on a Saturday or Sunday and list hundreds of cards with ease now. So yeah, shout out haystack that the software, software is legit and it's, it's awesome. Yeah. So I, I getting that stuff listed and you know I pre list all my stuff. So again to the ebay side, my ebay live, all my stuff is pre listed. You can go see the pictures of everything that we got. All my, you know, I said I was, I was using the haystack yesterday for it. So I think that I'll be curious to see how the multisport stream does. We will report back on that. NBA Finals will know a lot more next week. Well, will it be over by next week? I'm trying to think when game seven theoretically would be. I think it would be. It might be on Wednesday next week. Okay. Very curious to see whether or not we know next week what the result of the finals is. We will know the result of my multi sports dream. The other thing that is happening kicking off tomorrow is the World Cup. Yeah. And I don't think they're available anymore. I'm going to look real quick. I'm opening up the Arena Club app something. Game seven is Friday, June 19th, so. Oh, okay. We, we will be able to talk about it. So the, the, the, the packs are no longer available unfortunately. But did you see the World cup pack that Arena Club did? No, I didn't. This was I think one of the coolest packs I've ever done. They've got all their different stuff. You know right now looking on the website, they've got their special series go. They've got a bunch of Pokemon packs. They've got a hockey pack which they don't normally have hockey stuff. So that's, you know, cool to see that they're expanding there and doing some of that because the Stanley Cup's on too. Gotta shout out our hockey fans. Yeah, they had a pack that was centered around the like World cup experiences. And what that was was every pack guaranteed had two tickets to a World cup game and a hotel stay at a four or five star hotel in the city where the game was taking place. Interesting. So obviously your grails that you're chasing is, you know, final semifinals, things like that tickets. But worst case scenario, you open one of those and you're going to get a group match somewhere in the US that you get to go to and still have a really cool experience. Here's my question. So is it possible to pull a hotel without pulling tickets? I don't think so. I was about to say cuz I was like, I was like, man, that would, that would be, it's like, it's like, oh, here, like do you hotel for fanatics fest at the World cup final? Hey, I mean to be fair, like you put that on ebay. Yeah. But you know, really, really cool, unique packs. And obviously they, they do all of their regular, they've got all their regular packs from the $25 one up to the $2,500 one that I will maybe never open. I don't think I have that kind of money. No, I'd be sweating that too bad. But the special series packs that they do, they do them all the time. But that was something that I've never seen them do before and I think is a really cool thing and something that I would like to see them do more because I think that like the experiences side of sports in the hobby is really, really cool. I know they've got their partnerships with the spurs, they've got a partnership with, I know Giannis. They just, I think launch one with the Rangers as well. Texas Rangers, like you could partner with some of these teams and do some really cool things. So. Yeah. But World cup, are you buying the soccer? Exponential growth, soccer is going to explode, etc. I mean it makes sense. I mean it's an international market, but I mean I feel like at least the majority of folks who probably listen to this are predominantly baseball, basketball, football. Maybe a few folks have, have a handful of soccer cards, but I doubt we have folks, especially here in the US who are soccer only. I mean, when we talk about going to shows. I went to a show this weekend and I don't think I saw A single table. I saw a table that had all hockey. I don't think I saw any tables that were full. Soccer. So I mean, I feel like it's, it's one of those things where it's slowly trickling in. But obviously the international market is there for sure. Nobody can deny that. And I think the World cup, we're going to see a boom here. We've been talking about seeing a boom with soccer for a while now. But I feel like a lot of people are scared because they don't know what to buy or what to open or things like that. Yeah, I personally feel like there's a lot of pumping of the soccer market of the World cup is coming. Soccer is the most popular sport in the world and it's gonna. I feel like I've been hearing that for six years since I've been back in the hobby of, you know, in 2020. When I got back in, it was like, oh, the 2022 World Cup. And you know, you've got all this growth and it's the most popular sport and it's, you know, there's so much upside and growth potential. And I think that is still true. But I sit here today and I say, outside of, you know, looking and saying, okay, cool, you've got Lamine Yamal, whose market is crazy because he's so young and so good. Outside of that, I really feel like it's kind of in the same spot, which is just people saying like it's gonna blow up and that this is not data backed. I have not looked at it. I could probably go to Card Ladder and look at what the growth in the soccer market overall looks like. But I feel like personally, and I'm sure we'll get people in the comments saying that I'm wrong and that's fine. I feel like it's a lot of people pushing soccer is going to be huge because you have the easy narrative the World cup and then it's going to slip back to its normal state of it's the most popular sport in the world. But card collecting isn't the most popular all over the world. Like card collecting is super, super popular in the US and is growing in other places. And I think fanatics will help that. I think they're really pushing to do that. It's, you know, basketball collecting is huge in Asia. Obviously Japan is big into in terms of collecting Ohtani stuff. But I think that, I don't know, I feel like I'm personally a little skeptical on the soccer market. I think the World cup is going to be huge. I'm super, super excited for it. But I, and I may be in the minority there, but that's kind of my, I honestly agree with you just because like I said, I, for me, I don't even know what to buy. Like, I mean I do, I buy them all. What, what's the best set? What's, you know, I, I, it's just that naivety of just not knowing. Yeah, yeah, I, I'm personally a little bit skeptical, but we'll see, we'll see what happens there. The, the market clearly has, has identified that, you know, Lamal is one of the biggest guys to grab. You know, Lamina's crazy values wise, like you look at what his prices are going for. I want to transition us to one of our last like real topics. I've got a kind of feel good story to really close out today, but Jeff Wilson on his podcast the other day was talking about something and I said this to you and I said I think it'd be an interesting topic to talk about about talking about how the hobby is looking at and moving I think towards a preference for performance over potential for a long time. You know, we in the hobby love to speculate. We do Bowman perfect speculation set I have seen lately. Personally I can, I can say this. The potential is not selling. Yeah. People are focused in on what have you actually done. Have you actually, you know, are you actually a good player? And there's still plenty of potential speculation. You know, you look at, Mike was talking about this on SCN on Monday. You look at Wemby. What has Wembley done? He's won a defensive player of the year. If he were to retire today, he's just a what if. Yeah, that's it. But he at least has done something like he has proved it to some extent. He's, they've made the finals, you know, he has done something. The goat market that we're in I think is showing the movement of people saying I would rather buy somebody who I know is going to have some long term relevancy, upside, etc. Versus buying the young rookie who could be something. Yeah, 100%. I mean even, even just active players who are playing well, players who have been established for over five years are selling a lot easier than those potential guys. Yeah. And it's, I see it in terms of the inventory that I'm sourcing obviously I love to have rookie cards and first Bowman cards and those types of things. I buy probably three times as many vet cards as I do Rookies and Bowmans, because those guys are established. They, they have the performance, they have established themselves and they have the collector base that those guys actually will, I think, sell a little bit more consistently. One of the questions that I had, and I'm curious on your answer here, is outside of your clearly established, top of the market players, Eurotanis, WEMBY, LeBron, Curry, Mahomes, etc. Who do you look at today in any of the big three sports and say this guy is going to overtake some of those guys or become the next market driving, you know, top of their sport guy? Because I, I'm hard pressed to think of it. Baseball, you've got Ohtani and Judge, who is going to be. You know, Ohtani is only 31. He's going to be relevant for a long time. Judge, he's in his mid-30s. You know, he's got a couple more years of being elite, most likely, and then we'll start to slow down probably. So there will be space. But I look at it and I say, you know, it's got to be somebody who is elite. Elite. And I don't know who that's going to be. Yeah, because I mean, yeah, that's exactly where I want the lens to be because there are players who are very, very good, 100% very, very good. When I look at baseball, I think of, you know, big rookies from the last few years. You know, you've got Corbin Carroll, Gunnar Henderson, you've got Julio Rodriguez, Bobby Witt Jr. These guys are all very, very, very good. Is it sustainable? Is it long term? Nobody knows until the time comes. I mean, these guys have already hit big slumps before. Who is the next guy? Nobody knows. So the safe bet is, well, I guess if we don't know who will be that next Ohtani like, or, you know, Trout like. Let's just go with Ohtani and Trout. That. Yeah, you know, it's. It's really tough because you have guys like I look at and I know I have bias here. I look at Juan Soto and I say, statistically, with what he's doing, you know, when Ohtani hits his mid to late 30s, Soto is going to be like 30. Yeah, like, he's. Soto has a long. Because he came up so young. I mean, he's 27 right now and he's in his, what, sixth professional seat? No, no, no more than six season. I think seventh. Oh, no, more than that. Because he can't. He was a 2018 call up. Oh, yeah, true. Eight. Eight. Eight year. Wow. Yeah, what am I thinking? So, but like, but I think the challenge there is Soto is pretty well established from a market perspective. I think that you have to pick and this goes for football, basketball, etc. You have to pick somebody who is really young and, and you also can't pick somebody who is already established themselves super strong market wise. You can't pick Wemby because that's, he's already, he has, he has arrived. From a market perspective as a market leader, I don't know who it is and I would love to hear from the audience who it would be. I think baseball, you got to find a prospect and you know, hit the right guy. Realistically, whether it's, you know, Jesus made or Leo or somebody else. But the thing with both of those guys is I don't know that either of them have to be Ohtani or Judge. You have to have something that is prolific. You need to be somebody who is hitting 50 homers. You need to be somebody who is a two way player to really I think garner the level of market attention that you need to be the guy 100%. And I don't know who it's going to be and I, it's a weird spot to say. I don't that there's not a clear path like Will Cooper flag Be that Will A.J. deBancer? I don't know. Like it's, it's an interesting spot because I feel like a lot of the stars are getting older. Ish. You know, Judge is getting up there in age. Obviously LeBron and Curry are way up there. It's going to be really, really interesting to see from a market perspective how we treat that. The changing of the guard there. Yeah. And nobody knows it'll come with time. But I still feel like there's still going to be a huge number of speculators. Oh yeah. I think I mean the same thing right now, like as we wait for series two, which is today. But in this little lull, what do we have? We had 20, 26 Bowman. So what are people doing? They're chasing Ethan Holiday, they're chasing, you know, Edward Florentin because they could be the next big thing. So I feel like it's one of those things where it comes in waves and at the end of the day, at the end of the day, if you want to speculate, prospect, whatever, have fun, have at it. Because like at the end of the day it's your money. Nobody should tell you what to do with it. But if you want to make smarter decisions, you Got a balance in between speculation and real performance. Yeah. I feel like I've seen a lot of my audience lean far, far, far away from speculation. And I think that it is, that's where I therefore want to speculate on who the guys that are not going to be speculated on in the future are. Yeah, exactly. It's, it's, it's. But it's weird because like you saying, you know, guys, you know, Bowman's out and guys are wanting to chase that. My guys are not wanting to do that. Yeah. I got cooked so badly on Connor Griffin first Bowman stuff. I bought a lot of just first Bowman chromes for like 60% comp. It was one of those where it was like, it's a deal that's like too good to pass up on. I think that I probably lost 50% of my money on them. Yeah. Because what happens is you, timing is everything. We've talked about this before, but there is always a race to the bottom when a prospect is on the verge of call up. That is when you sell after call up. It is a race to the bottom of who can get out of it quick enough. But even, but this, and this is where I think that the like people, I think my audience especially is smarter than maybe the average market because I was selling Connor Griffin first Bowman chromes on stream live at a dollar on eBay. Live, they were comping that day for 30 to $35. Consistently sells for $12. Why? Because my audience knows that realistically it's speculating on that upside is not worth it. And that's like I'm going to be very interested to see where and how the market goes in the next five years from a, like what type of players people are actually putting money into chasing, building collections of, etc. Because I think it's going to. Well, here's the thing that I want to touch on with that. So if they're comping for 30, $30, how much would a rookie of the year increase? Set price. Well, that's why my audience, it's a trick question. Spending the money because they're smart enough to know it's not going to increase the price. That's not true. Do you know how much a Nick Kurt's first bone refractor selling for? I got offered one yesterday and I comped it. Refractor is probably 60 bucks. 40. No, but this was the base. Conor Griffin. Oh, okay. Okay, gotcha. Yeah. He wins rookie of the year. The price is not going up. It's not going to be $30 like that I think is the point. And that's where the audience is smarter and knows what is actually like going to happen. And I think that that's where like, okay, then what? And how is this going to evolve and change over time? I don't know. So, yeah, you know, what does increase the value? Sure. He wins three MVPs in a row or something. Yeah, sure. What are the odds of that? Like, but who's going to do that? And that's where we don't know. And that's where I want to speculate on who we're not who. We don't need to speculate on the future. So that's the way to do it. Somebody that has, you know, could be in that conversation, you know, he's probably already arrived. Too much from a market perspective is Paul Skeens. Did you see the Paul Skeens Little League stuff? I did, and that is too cool. So for the audience that's listening, there's been some. There was. I saw a video on it the other day. Paul Skeens was just driving home, you know, in whatever Pittsburgh suburb he lives in, and he came across a Little League practice. And what did Paul Skeens do? He got out of his. Struck out. All of them. Struck 101 high and tight. To a 12 year old? Yeah. To a 12 year old? No. But Skeens saw that he pulled over and he spent like two hours at this Little League practice with these kids. He played catch with all of them, he talked with all of them, etc. I think it's a super cool, super awesome feel. Good story. There was a comment on TikTok that I saw this morning that really, it got me in my feels. And it was somebody that said he may have needed that more than the kids. Get you back to your roots, find the love for the game. Good for him. Yeah, 100%. He's such a cool thing. What it says to me is if I was a kid and I live in the Pittsburgh area, I'm keeping a Paul Skeens card in my pocket at all times. Because you never know if Paul Skeens is going to come across your Little League practice. But it's awesome, the fact that he took the time to go and it wasn't a publicity stunt. It's not like there was, you know, we're going to get some cameras and come and do this. There was no. The only videos of this that came out of there were the dads that were at practice hanging out, taking a video with their kids. But you know, those kids are going to talk about that for the rest of their lives. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's just the fact that he said, you know what, this will be good for those kids. Yep. That just shows his character to that, to the, to the comment as well. Though it might have been good for him too of just like, you know, it's the helping other people, you know, makes you feel good too. You know, being altruistic. I'm sure it made skeens feel pretty good too to, you know, just be able to get out there and, you know, talk to these kids and talk about baseball and just have fun with it. And it's, it, it made me feel so good. Rarely on TikTok do I repost a video and I was like, I'm reposting that because that, that was awesome. That's our feel good story of the week for sure. And it just, it's, it was really, really cool. I love to see it. Absolutely. Yeah. I gotta, I gotta make a little video about that. I didn't mention this last week, but, but we've talked about it a few times. My 100 in June friend is a machine. So I, for those of you listening, I wanted to kind of challenge myself when it comes to social media. I talk about it pretty frequently because I just enjoy the metrics and seeing what topics drive engagement in the hobby. And so I challenge myself. I wanted to post 100 pieces of content in the month of June and mostly videos and just talk about different things and just get a feel for like, hey, where's the hobby at? Like what topics are really driving engagement? And honestly, I mean, to no surprise, the majority of videos that are doing better than others are kind of like controversial takes, you know, and I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. I've posted a couple of feel good stories and they did okay. But I feel like we need more of those feel good stories to kind of get the, you know, the vibes up. Controversy and negativity brings a lot of attention because it gets engagement and conversation and likes and shares and all this and that there's a space for it. There should be some, you know, criticism when criticism is fair, reporting about issues, when issues come up. But also if all that you're doing is being negative and trying to be controversial, I also think you're, you know, you gotta be balanced with everything you do, everything in moderation. You know, I think I'm, I'm like 34 videos in and I made, I'VE only been called an idiot about 15 times. So, I mean, that's, that's a good ratio. 50 is pretty good. So that's a pretty good ratio. Now, next week we were talking about a elite pitcher. Yes, next week we do. And I'm not going to. You're going to. Audience is going to have to listen in to see who it is. But we have a pretty cool guest coming on next week. One of the better pitching prospects in baseball. Yes. Top 100. He's on the top 100 prospect list. He will be on next week. On next week, we're going to talk baseball cards. You name it. You guys won't want to miss that. It's going to be a really, really fun time. Anything else before we let the audience go, Trent? I mean, I would like to see if the audience has any questions that they would ask a top major league prospect. Put them in the comments of the video. That way, you know, if there's something like really that you want to hear from this person about. Absolutely. We'll. We'll ask it. So drop it below so that we can, we can see what's on his mind. Yeah, absolutely. So looking forward to that. Next week should be a lot of fun. You guys won't want to miss it. I appreciate you guys checking out this week's episode of the Hobby Handbook. We're coming. Catch you guys next time.