Relax… The Sky Isn’t Falling 6.22

This episode of the Ball Card show is brought to you by our friends at Pristine Auction, where items are guaranteed authentic for the entire time you own it, not just at the win, not just while the cert holds. If you own it, Pristine stands behind it for a limited time. Take advantage of $20 off your first auction when you register with the code Ballcard. Win the real thing. Pristine Auction Foreign. Welcome to the Ball Card show. This is season six and episode 22. I'm Gary Lemaster, and as you can see, my normal partner in crime is not here today. I am joined instead, and I'm not gonna lie, kind of happy about it, by Keith Newhart from Newhart Cards. You guys see him in Shop Talk every week. And he graciously stepped in this week to co host with Jason, celebrating his 20th anniversary and as Jason calls it, the Chillicothe of the Caribbean. So I got big, big shoes to fill. I don't think I can do it, but, you know, we'll. We'll give it our college try. I don't know. I've seen your shoe game, Keith. It's. It's pretty strong. Like, I like to think I have a pretty good shoe game. Keith's. Keith's shoe game is legit. Next. If you're in Delaware, Ohio, and you stop in the shop, beyond stopping and saying, hey, make sure you check out and see what. What Keith's rocking on the feet. Because I appreciate it. Sometimes it'll surprise you. Yes, it should. Sometimes it'll surprise you. Well, there's a lot for us to talk about, and I'm really excited to hear your perspective as somebody who, unlike us, who are out there on the road grinding it, you're in a shop absolutely. Seven days. Well, you guys are open seven days a week. We're open seven days a week. Yeah, we are. And so. So you have a little bit of different perspective on market movements and things like that do. So that'll be a good thing. Let's. Let's just jump right into the thing that's on everybody's mind. Every content creator on planet Earth was losing their mind about it. Last week, I did a little video just telling people to just relax. It's not the end of the world, the market. But PSA announced that as of June 2, which by the time you guys watch this, that will have been three days ago. They are pausing, accepting all submissions underneath the regular submission level. Now. They're not shutting the whole world down. But no more value. No more value. Bulk for a few months. They said four Months. My guess is it'll probably be closer to six based on everything else that they do, usually being about a 50% difference from what they actually start it and say. But there have been a lot of like, what's going to happen with the market? I've heard everything from liquidity is going to crumble and everything's going to just be destroyed to they're never going to bring back value. Bulk and value levels. What do you think, Keith, is the likely short term and long term scenarios here? Absolutely. We've already seen the effects of it. We've had a couple of cards this past week that would have been easy sales force in the shop by graders and, and there was a sock, I think it was an endrick and it was a $400 card. And he was like, well, okay, in a PSA 10, it sells for a thousand by the time I pay the $150 grading fee, which is the new, I think the new low end, and $50 to ship and insure it. You know, I've got $700 or so in it and I'm hoping for a PSA 10 to kind of make the money. So he decided against buying it because of that fact. I think if he could have graded it for $49, he would have bought it in an instant. So already seeing the effect of the effects of that on the short term. I think on the long term, if you've been in this business or industry for more than four or five years, we felt the effects of this during COVID They kind of did the same thing. Right. They shut down some of the grading levels. I don't think it's going to have a huge long term effect except maybe we won't be buying, you know, Colt Emerson PSA9, you know, 26 tops cards. Right. Yeah. Which we're okay with anyway. So I don't necessarily think it's going to have huge ramifications. I think it's definitely going to go through the national. I don't think we're going to have any kind of, you know, change in their, in their, you know, in their pricing scheme until after that to see where they're at. And, you know, we'll see because again, the majority of those cards that they're grading seem to be Pokemon and TCG. Yeah, it feels like about 60 to 65% of that backlog is TCG stuff, which is just wild to me. It is my, it is. My gut says that in the, in the medium term here we will see kind of what you said there will be those cards that people would have bought to grade. But like. So, for example, that Andrik you're talking about, if you're watching this and you don't know who Endrick is, he's a really good soccer player. He is, yes. Really good young soccer player. That's a card though, that I would also say if that was a card that was in your showcase three months ago. Right. And this was in the situation that it is, that customer probably would have bought the card because they wouldn't have had to do the $150 level. They could have done the $80 level. Exactly. And gotten it back in four months. But since the World cup starts in a week and a half, that's. That, that's the issue. So I think that some of those things will happen. I think in the short term while we're in this, I think we're likely to see some increase in pricing on the cheap PSA slabs. The, the under $150 PSA 9s and 10s. I think there's, there's a huge demand for those. That's what the price band that every repacker will buy anything you have at 95. There's so much demand for that that I think that those cards are going to see probably a 15 to 20% increase in value during this pause. But the thing that everybody's got to keep in mind, and I don't think anybody's thinking through this, there are 10 million cards sitting at PSA right now and they, they said they announced today. Since their announcement, 2.5 million more have shown up. So they're sitting on a 12 million card. Mm. If they put all their focus, all their energy into getting that backlog 50 to 60% of the way cleared, by the end of this, we're gonna have 7 to 8 million new cards in PSA slabs. Hit the market hard and all at once and, and what happens? Does that roll downhill? Like are we gonna see. Obviously, you see is, is, you know, are we going to see. Is, are we going to see that? We, you know, it's, it's become harder and harder to sell an, a modern SGC card. You know, I can't give them away. Yeah. Is that going to change? Is that market going to change at all? We saw a few, somebody came in today which we don't see very, very rarely do see. We see this Pokemon cards that were SGC graded. It just doesn't, there's just, no, it just doesn't happen very often. So are we going to Start to see that more and more. Like we did again during COVID when GMA came out of the. The, you know, the woodwork, and say, hey, we'll. Yeah, we'll grade your cards for 10 bucks and get it back to you in two weeks. Yep. You know, are we gonna see that? There was a little flip game for that for a while. I was. I made. I'm not gonna lie, I made a ton of money sending off base, Mosaic, Zion and job stuff to GMA, getting it back. I have $10 in the grade. $10 all together and shipping in the car. And they would sell for 34.95 as fast as you put them out. Yep. For sure. I do think that the. The question about these other companies, though. I've been banging this drum for three years. People tell me that I'm nuts. I'd love to hear your take on it. I don't think that any comp. The reason I don't think any company is going to rise up and compete with PSA is not because there aren't companies out there that can do the job just as well. I agree. Tag, I think, does a better job. I like their slabs. I think CGC has one of the nicest slabs on the market, and they do a good job grading. Sure. But until consumers are willing to pay close to PSA prices for those cards, it doesn't matter. No, no. Not gonna happen. Yeah. It's just not. We, you know, we can, we can. We can hope and dream all we want. It's just. It's not gonna. They just, they, they. It's. It's. It's. Again, it's the same grade, you know, primarily for the most part. Yeah. But they just, they just. They don't buy in. They don't buy in. They, you know, they. I mean, you know, people who were really behind hga, if you remember back in the day, like, they were really bought into that. But it's, you know, when an HGA, you know, card. We had a chrome LeBron HGA 9.5in. And it was. It was, you know, like we had put a, you know, a radioactive sticker on it. Exactly. I mean, no one even looked at it. They laughed. I mean, it was kind of like, aha. That's kind of cool. But. But yeah, so it's. It's just not going to happen. PSA again during. After Covid became the standard. And. And like you said, until consumers decide that's not the case, then it's just not going to be the case. Yeah, it's the Same reason that leaf cards don't sell for as much as license cards or whatever. It's not because they don't make nice products. They do. A lot of times they're n. They are. But the consumer doesn't care. They don't. That's so short term. I think we think the same things long term. I. We haven't seen a massive change in singles sales as of yet. No. I think that the people who are buying primarily to grade, I think the stuff that's gonna really take the hit are the paper Otani rookies, the paper judge rookies, the things that people are counting on buying, and two and a half xing, you know, based on a grade, that stuff's gonna go down. But to be frank, it probably should. There's no reason that a paper Shohei Otani rookie that there are lots and lots of out there should be 180 to $200 card raw. It's just ab. Absolutely doesn't make sense. Correct. I mean, that's the world we live in. And I'll sell them all day long. I know you will too. Yeah, we'll take him. If it has Ohtani name on it. Yeah, we will take it. Yeah. For sure. All right. So the other big thing that happened this week and this hit my radar. I'm not sure how it hit my radar because anybody watching this knows how Jason and I feel about the TCG side of stuff. Yeah, yeah, I. I get it. I get that it's a thing. I don't know anything about it, but this piece of news really caught my attention. I sent it to you immediately and you were like, I haven't heard anything about it. Never heard. I did not hear that. So Pokemon's. The company that owns Pokemon is called the Pokemon Corporation International. Tpci. Yep. They manufacture the products, they sanction all of the major tournaments and events and several of the large collector cons that have sanctioned tournaments at them. Right. They announced a few days ago some pretty drastic things that if anybody ever tried this in the sports card world, there would be a riot. It was just a revolt. Right. But they announced that no PSA graded slabs are allowed to be sold at those events. No individual cards worth $1,000 or more are priced at $1,000 or more are allowed to be sold at those events. And none of the Japanese Pokemon center sealed product is allowed to be sold at any of these events. That is a. You know about that market than I do. But that seems like a seismic change. It is a. It huge decision made by the company that sees that their product, that the trend in the market is going against what they believe in. Right. You know, they're a trading card game. A game, you know, it's supposed to be affordable for everyone. So when they see market pricing, so unlike a lot of our other industry leaders, they feel that that's not the way they want to see the market. So they're putting their foot down. Again, I don't know. Again, I don't know how this is going to drill down, you know, but at their sponsored events they are, they're trying to make some waves and they have. Obviously. I just wonder if that's gonna eventually trickle down to the LCS level because I know there, I, I know of at least one or two LCSs that are primarily TCG or heavily TCG who run sanctioned sponsored tournaments that have. Great question. That have an actual judge from TPCI there. Yeah. Is that going to be. Hey, if you want us to be able to run those things at your shop, you can't do these things either. Yeah, that's a great question. That's a great question. It feels, it feels like a seismic shift in that market. And I know we were talking before we hopped on, right. How much of a thing Pokemon and, and TCG in general has become for Newhart cards. I know when we interviewed Jeff a few weeks ago, he was, he told us we were the first people he told that. Right. The lion's share of what they do at Cards hq. How big of an effect would something like that have on you guys if it, if it ended up coming to that or do you guys play more in the lower end of that pond? Yeah, well now we definitely don't do sponsored events, so we don't do the gaming and that sort of thing. So we buy, sell sealed product and individual cards obviously. So what we sell. So just a quick, you know, nobody asked, but here we go on TCG player. We sell raw cards so they only. So, you know, so that basically will know if, you know, not affect that side of the market. Obviously in the shop we make by graded TCG cards all the time, higher end stuff and obviously sealed products. So for us specifically, specifically that's not going to change our business model whatsoever. Pokemon's always been a, you know, we'll print more and then when you think you're tired of it, we're going to print some more. You know, Prismatic, they've been reprinting now for a while and that's what, four or five, you know, sets ago? Yeah. Sets ago and they're still printing it. So, you know, so that's, you know, that's not a change in their business model. It's always been we're going to print and make it for the collector. But there's just such a growing demand for their product now that that's not going to change. So the sponsored event, like I said, that's, that's the company making a stand now. We'll see how far that goes, how it trickles down, but it's definitely a major stand. Yeah, I was, I was blown away by it when I read it. I was like, oh my gosh. Like this is. And I hear, I hear people. I know several people who play the game and then I know people who just vend it who are dealers and have never played the game in their life. And it really does feel like TPCI is saying we want this to get back to being just a game. And that's what fanatics or that people are in. Hobbyists and collectors have been screaming at it fanatics now for, for months to say step up and you know, put, put ceilings on product or do something to kind of control this. But you know, obviously it's, it's gone unheard so far. So. Well, let's, let's talk about that a little bit. I know that this was kind of on our radar to talk about, but let's jump into it right now since we're there. Ye. When it comes to that side of things with fanatics, I know that we've had. And you know me, I'm in your shop every week and I don't. I rip hardly anything. Like occasionally I'll grab a Blaster Omega or something. Sure. Just to say I did it. But yeah, there have been. We were talking. There's several products in a row have not been great. Allocations keep getting choked. And then even with a new product that's coming out that is a fan favorite. Yes. Platinum anniversary allocations in a cheap product like it's always been a readily available product. You told me you got one case of retail, one case a hobby. Yeah, I actually checked. I got two hobby. So I feel special. But. But only one case. One case of retail and that'll be gone in 10 minutes. Yeah. You know, because they're going to be 25 or 30 bucks for blasters. People love the product. It's an actual set, collector's product. People like to put the set together and this is one of those products that fanatics should step up and say, listen, how many do you want. You know, and keep printing it? Because it's. It's a. It's a. It's. Wasn't that kind of what they said they were gonna do, though, with that, like, retail vault where, like, we're gonna limit your hobby allocations, but when it comes to retail, you can pretty much get what you want. And that hasn't actually panned out, right? That is. That has panned out very, very little, to be honest with you. Yeah, it's. It's. It's. Again, especially on this. And. And I think everyone knows that they've cut most places on series two Hobby. We. You know, everyone got a lot less than they did last year. We got fewer retail cases as well. So again, there will be a wave two, more than likely in a wave three. I mean, they're just offering us more Finest football this week as well. So, you know, I finally had to turn down something, and that. That kind of was the. The one I turned down, but it wasn't the T shirts. I turned down a significant amount of T shirts. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So. But, yeah, I mean, to be honest, they've kind of put out about four or five duds in a row on the hobby side, you know, Topps Chrome and Topps Basketball were hits. But then, I mean, you know, Topps Chrome Football obviously was expensive because everyone was looking forward to it and this and that. But, I mean, hoops, to be honest with you, has been a horrible product. Rough product. Rough product looks bad, Quality control is bad. Just. Just not great. Again, when I'm talking this, I'm also talking hobby only. Yeah. On the retail side, it's actually not a bad product for 30 bucks and 65 bucks. But to try to get three and $400 to get one autograph of, you know, Desmond Bain, you know, it's not a great product. Product that even in Panini's worst day was $279 product. It was. Now I will. And for years, it was an $80 product. Yeah. I will step on Panini's foot real quick. And they snuck a product called Panini Signatures Basketball the day before Tops Signatures Basketball product. And it's the worst product that I've ever seen. Go look at the singles if you get a chance. Is it worse than photogenic? It is awful. Wow. Okay. It is. It is. It is terrible. So you heard it here first. Keith said it's the worst product he's seen in years. It is. It is a horrible product with awful autographs. We sold a box to one of Our breakers, I believe. And he, the, the autograph with this was an encased redemption card of, of it's a Nemhard, but it's like his brother, so. Oh gosh. Literally. Yeah, it's like ace. It's like hitting an ace flag. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So. But yeah, they've put some, some, you know, tops back to fanatics, has put up some products that haven't been great. So this week I think they're going to be all right. So Topps Chrome Platinum baseball is going to be very good, followed by signature football. So, you know, anything football wise will be fine. Again, the price point is going to be too high. But there are football fanatics who will buy it. So that's the hard part. Like if people will pay it. Yeah, we can pound our fists against the wall all we want. That's what I was going to ask you next. Like. Yeah, you've, you've heard Jason and I expound on this as if it was a college thesis. The things that we think that fanatics is doing wrong and things that they could do to make it better. But sure, from the perspective of somebody in the trenches who sells a lot of wax, like you're a singles based shop but you move a good bit of wax. We do, absolutely we do. If, if you were, if you had an hour, and we won't take an hour here, but if you had an hour with the, the leadership at fanatics to sit down and they were listening, actually listening. Yeah. What are the things that you would say, hey, as a mid sized LCS, that's been around for what, 17, 18 years now? Yeah, we're on our 16th year. 16 years. Yep. That's been around for a decade and a half, longer than most shops. These are the things that we think that I, Keith Newhart, think you guys could do to make this better for shops, for collectors and for fanatics, I think you got to first stop or you know, start with your product mix. Right. That is one of the things that I actually worried about when, when, when fanatics took over. Is, is every product going to look exactly the same? Is every, you know, is every product going to be chrome? Is it going to be, you know, this or that? And it's kind of been that way so far. So, you know, there's no reason why they can't bring out $150 hobby boxes. You know, that's maybe not guaranteed autographs one out of every two boxes. I mean, you know, Topps did big league baseball, remember? That was a, that was Fire. Yeah, that was a. Yeah, Top. That was a $50 product that you got an autograph every two boxes. There's no reason why they can't kind of done that and they haven't even propose that yet. So I think that's the first thing that they have to do is bring out affordable product that they're going to maintain and keep affordable. You know, again, the second thing I think they really have to manage is just the look and the feel of the product as well to make sure that we have different, different feels. In Panini, you could buy, you know, Donrus baseball or donors football, but then you'd come back with a national treasures, which is a completely different look. And then, you know, you come back with, you know, an optic, you know, so stuff that has different looks, we haven't seen that yet with tops. Hopefully that comes down. But I mean they're paying, you know, millions and millions, if not billions of dollars to get this right. And I hope that it comes pretty soon. They're gonna, they're gonna lose a lot of hobby product box product buyers. Yep, we've already seen that a little bit to people like especially on Top signature basketball that just came out. People are getting just as good hits in the retail product. The same hits. How about that? As they are getting in a $500 hobby box. So do you think that, that maybe and I just thought of this as you said that because I've thought I've. I've seen not just it at your shop, but our buddy Vic in San Antonio owns Boomtown, a few other shops we know the owners of. And then just in like the general, like retail world, do you think that part of Tops like under wrap strategy, they're not going to come out and say it is that we really in our perfect world would love for hobby to be 90 in breakers hands and everybody else have retail and split the, the hits so that people can still get stuff. Yeah, I mean some of these comments may get me in trouble, but you know, who cares? I've been in business 15 years, but I. One of my distributors that I use, he started basically the week we opened. So I've had him for 15 years. His thought and some of the people that he talks to, his thoughts are, you know, they're going to bury everybody in product for a while and see who comes out ahead. Right. Recent email last week from direct from Top saying, hey, you know, get your accounts right. You know, you have a lot of product product coming. If, if your, if your credit cards getting denied and this sort of thing, there's going to be a problem. So everybody got those. There was some talk about it really quickly, but I think that could be a, you know, a possibility is they're, you know, they're sending us so much product and I get 8. It feels like 8 to 10 tracking emails a day. Like, oh, here we go. You know, here's. Here's four of this and two of this and five of this and here's your T shirts. And, you know, so. So maybe, maybe. I mean, it kind of feels like that sometimes, but, you know, we're just, we're riding the wave at this point. Well, speaking of riding the wave, you sent me an article today and I said this will be a really good thing for us to talk about because it leads out of the conversation we just had about fanatics. Right. Cards hq, Jeff Wilson shop in Atlanta just announced that they have received what sounds like a very large private equity influx of money from Shamrock Capital. And they are going nationwide. And they're not giving hard details, but Jeff's exact words were, if you live in or near a major city in the United States, there's probably a Cards HQ coming your way. Yeah, yeah, that's big news. I mean, he runs in those circles, you know, with a. The, I guess the, you know, the venture capitalist. Yeah. So I guess it makes sense. But yeah, I think with, you know, the Tom Brady stuff and, you know, from what I understand that kind of the more, you know, brick and mortar shops or the more braking channels you have, the better allocation you're getting. So I don't think that's a surprise. So, yeah, it, I mean, you know, it wouldn't surprise me. It's probably a pretty decent business model now. Now, on the other side of that, you know, for guys like us who collected in the 80s and the early 90s, there were tons of shops that tried to do the multiple locate, you know, multiple store locations, and eventually that didn't go over quite so well, you know, but it's. I can see a lot of, A lot of folks trying it, you know, in a good market. Why not? Do you, do you think that there is a correlation there? Because we see, like you were just talking about the Card Vault, the Tom Brady Card Vault. There's what, 12 or 13 of those now? More locally to us here in Ohio and Cincinnati, there is a chain of stores called Card Stocks. I believe they are at 11 or 12 locations just in the greater Cincinnati area. Now, their model is very Gamestop. It's small retail locations, eight 900 square feet. They're, they want to be within 20 minutes of everybody in Greater Cincinnati. But again, you know, is there a thought process, do you think happening that Fanatics is trying to create these experience places, kind of like the Fanatic store in New York City, right there in Times Square. And their focus is so much there that like the cards, HQs, the, the card stocks here in Ohio we have Midwest cards, which is kind of a similar thing. Right. All those place is, here's my concern with it. All those places are cool and they're places that you visit as a collector, as somebody who's deeply in the space. Sure. You visit them once and you go, I guess I, I went, I had a beer at their car. I, I had some, I had some chicken fingers while I sat there. That was cool. Right. All the boxes were 20% over what I can get at New hard or, or wherever. Right. Like, Right. All the singles are 30% over market. Right. It's more like a cool museum that you visit. Sure. Than it is something that's creating actual community and building a foundation. It works. It works. Until it doesn't. Yeah. And that's, that's the part that, that worries me is if Fanatics is focused on creating as many one time users as possible, eventually you run out of one time users and you've neglected your actual base Here at the Ball Card show, when we decided to partner with Pristine Auction, it's because it felt like such a no brainer. Pristine has gone out of their way to make sure that the entire collector experience is as transparent and seamless and authentic as possible. They offer fast paced live selling auctions where every sale sets a recorded comp. They offer 10 minute auctions where 10 lots go up and you can bid on them for 10 minutes. And they offer traditional daily and weekly auctions as well, if that is more your speed. Most importantly, every item you purchase from Pristine, they stand behind and guarantee to be authentic for the entire time that you own the item. For a limited time. When you register at Pristine and sign up with the code Ball card, you'll get $20 off your first auction win as well as three months of gold status as a consigner win the real thing, Pristine Auction. I've said it a few times, they're building an upside down pyramid. Yeah, I mean we say it all the time, you know, all right, go to, you know, Dick's House of Sport, you know, and Bright. Buy your, you know, your Chrome Blasters or whatever, but they have top loaded singles in there. Now like five dollar top loaded singles. But what happens once you hit that Matthew Stafford, you know, and you want to redeem that 20 bucks? Where are you going? You're not going there. Right? You're bringing them to us. I have thousands of dollars of them stacked up that I have to send in, so. And that you have to wait to get paid for. But you've given that money out to the customers already. Yeah, exactly. So, so yeah, like I said, it works until it doesn't. You know, if there is a small downturn or even a large downturn, you know, in the economy, in the market itself, then you know, when you have 20, 10, 15, $20,000 a month in rent per unit or you're a breaker and you're getting $10 million of a certain product, you know, then what do you do? You know, when you know, it feels like 2013 a little bit over again. When you know, distributors were calling us and saying, hey, here' list, make offers on stuff because you know, and that, that is a, that was a real thing. Yeah. So again I hope that we're not in that situation, but wax prices stay that high, I, I think we're going to have a problem. I think that's why fanatics is leaning into the breaking world so hard because if they can have their cake and eat it too, then that's great for them and the eventual public offering. Like if, if you can get your thousand dollars for a hobby box and it's not coming from, you know, 50,000 individuals that are buying hobby boxes, but instead it's coming from 12 breakers. From a fanatic standpoint, it's the same amount of money with less shipping cost. 100%. Yeah. If you're shipping the same product to from 200 shops down to 10 breakers. Yeah, yeah. I mean they're saving thousands of dollars every the logistics side of it. That's the thing. I think a lot of people don't. It is the strategy that they're, they're deploying. It feels that way. Same thing. Like I know that like Dick's House of Sports, right. They had pallets of tops football, not, not, not a case or three palettes while the LCs are getting a case. Right, right, exactly. Yeah. So you know, again, I'm not on here to say woe is us. You know, things have been really, really good. So I'm not saying that. But things do change and again, if, if, if prices do remain, let's say, you know, topps Chrome is 8 or 900 bucks a box. It does push People to break instead of buy their own hobby box, Right? Yes. You know, hey, I can. I. You know, I want the Browns or not the Browns, because they have, you know, but let's say I'm a Rams fan. You know, if I can pay 30 bucks for a break instead of buying a box for 900, yeah, I would, you know, I'll do that. So I think that is definitely pushing them towards the breaking part of it as well. Yeah. And I. I would hope that if they continue down that path, the one thing I would love to see them at least make an attempt to do is to put some guidelines in place for the breakers that have direct accounts that'll hold them accountable from fibbing to customers. I. There's nothing worse than seeing somebody bring you a big hit that they got out of a break a week and a half ago, and they are convinced that it's worth $5,000 because the breaker said that you're. You. This is a. This is a used. This is a used Civic. You got yourself a used Civic. Yeah. It's a 800 card. Yeah. And you just have to watch that person deflate. It happens every day. Yeah. Yeah, it happens every day. I hit this when I, you know, when I hit it on the break a week and a half ago. By the time I got it here, you know, it went from a thousand to 400, and now it's 200 bucks. Yeah. You know, so. Yeah, I think that is a big thing. And I also have seen the kind of the. I don't know, it's an interesting trend, to say the least, that, you know, as soon as you pull a case hit, the breaker is offering you money on the spot. Yep. Which sets a comp, or an unrealistic, you know, comp of $6,000 for that car because the first person gets it. And then. And then what? Jaden Daniels. Kaiju. Yeah. That card, the first sale. It's a 1800 card. It is. Yep. That's where it's at. Yes. Okay. Well, that's good. One last thing. Keith and I just thought of this. It's not in our notes. I didn't talk to you about it. Yeah. But it was a question in discord. And it was expounding on your shop talk from last week. So as a shop owner, I. I'm in the shop at least once a week. I know Jason's there at least once a week. So we get to see you and Nick and Brian and even Colin sometimes. Yeah. Doing their thing. You talked last week about, you know, making Some changes in what you buy, how you buy it. Yep, yep. Somebody asked in our Discord in, in the asking LCS section of the Discord. Quick hit there if you haven't joined the Discord yet. Yes, please come on over. We have a lot of fun in there. Nobody's gonna try to sell you anything. No, it's just a cool community to hang out and talk cards and sports. But they, they wanted some expansion on that. Yeah. When, when somebody comes into the shop and I've seen, I've seen both sides of this. I've seen people walk into your shop with absolute nukes and I've seen people walk in with a four row of 1988 tops baseball. Absolutely. How do you decide not just what to buy, but are there times when you just have to say we just can't buy this or do you always go, hey, I'll make you an offer. You just might not like it? That's kind of my line. I'll buy anything, but if it's a four row of 1988 tops, I'll give you five bucks. Like I don't have to worry about somebody leaving me a Google review. That is the problem. Yes, that is the problem. Everybody thinks their cards are worth something, even though a lot of times they aren't. I guess for what I really meant when I, when I, when I said that was, you know, again, just because something has a comp doesn't mean that it's good for us to buy. Right. Sure. And one of the cards, and it's still sitting in the showcase if anybody's interested, it's a Jon Bone Jones Chrome Auto to 25 I believe again, 5 or 600 card. And you know, we, we, we bought it. We don't have the market here, you know, so that is 100, an online, an ebay sale. It has it, you know, and obviously it has a market for it, but it's just, it's one of those cards that I know we're going to sit on for a while. Yeah, right. So again, you know, us spending 400 or whatever it was on it, you know, not a crazy amount of money, but I know that we're going to sit on that card either a hoping for the right buyer to come in or be for somebody to, you know, see it on, on, on ebay and think, oh, okay, I'm going to make an offer. So. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, and that kind of stuff like so into the weeds a little bit there, huh? Do you, is there, do you have any metrics that you utilize as far as a certain level of liquidity for things. Because I know for me when somebody walks a card up to the table, if it's got one, maybe two sales ever or maybe it sells once or twice a year. Yeah. That tells me one of two things. Either it's unbelievably rare, it's the right player and I'm good. Right. More often than not it just isn't much liquidity associated with the card, regardless of rarity. Sure. You guys have any like metrics that you try to use or you have in your brain is like what level of liquidity are we going to make offers on or. Yeah, no, that kind of stuff I absolutely love. Right. You know, I love the stuff that's, you know, was, was a 1997 this and there's four sales now that, that I love. It's the, it's the brand new stuff. Not necessarily that, that, that I don't necessarily love. And, and a lot of that. Again, I know this is a sports show, but I'll, I'll go back to Pokemon a little bit because a new product called Chaos Rising came out not very long ago and obviously as soon as it hits the streets, people are opening it and boom. All right, the, the major hit is $800. Well, we know you know in a week that's 400 bucks. But everybody wants to sell it, you know, based on the $800. And, and I'm, and, and we explain, listen, we're not going to buy new and we didn't do that. We did that with Topps Chrome Football as well. We're not going to buy much of this for the first couple of weeks because we know it's going to happen. Yeah. You know, especially if it's a new case hit or, or, or something or the, you know, the big hit in a Pokemon product. So. But no, something from the, you know, you know, a Star Rubies comes in and then it's not that different. Yeah. Yeah. I think we bought a germane die the other day. What's number to 20? I can't remember what it is. It's. But it's again hasn't sold in since 2020. So I love that kind of stuff. What I don't necessarily love is the brand new product that has comps that just doesn't work for us. Well, there's a lot of that. I'm sure that that goes into the strategy of what your different channels are too because like that Jermaine Die star rubies. I'm 100 certain. I know where that card went when you bought it to the national box. Yeah, absolutely. So that strategy, like, yeah, the stuff that breaks down, that goes to showcase. I know you guys have a pretty hard set policy. When you buy something, it hits the showcase for at least a few days to give your. It does your customers a shot before it goes on ebay and then, you know, it goes on ebay and it's in your showcases, whoever gets it first. And then you also have stuff that just like is this is a national card. I know I sold you a card earlier this year that, that Vince Carter. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. That Jermaine Die thing. Is that kind of your target with that stuff? Just the unique, interesting stuff that. That's where the customers for it are. Speaking of it, I just bought this. Let's see if I can get it on camera here. Right there. Tom Brady topps Chrome Auto Dr.40. And again does not sell very often. I'll buy it. I'll buy it this week. Yeah, exactly. Going right to the national box. Right. So cool stuff. There's a Kobe autograph we bought in the same deal and a mid-90s Magic Johnson hand numbered card. So yeah, that stuff I love to take to the national again. Looking for the end user there. Yes. And some of that our prices mark stuff. We're going to do something this year like a number to 100 or less. Just again, cool stuff that you don't ever see that stuff we love. I love the no comps or the, you know, it's sold, you know, twice a year for the last four years. Yeah, that, that will buy all day, every day. You know, that's. That's an easy. That's an easy. We're suckers for that. Yeah, I, I am too sometimes to my detriment some. Sometimes I end up stuck with something that is just. I bought it. I always joke that and I still think it's an awesome card and I think I ended up losing 40 or 50 bucks on it. It. But it was a card I bought from you that sat in your showcase for like three or four months and finally I went, do you want to sell it to me? And you went, yeah, that's fine. That was that Tom Landry Auto out of Panini Black. Yeah, it was a freaking awesome car. It was a hall of fame. Coach has sold one time in seven years. Yep. And I thought for sure this is. And it got tons of attention and nobody bought it. I ended up running it on whatnot. I know, I know. Yes. And so sometimes those that affinity for that kind of stuff. It does. That's what makes this. This hobby great. You know, it's. It. Beauty is in the eyes. Right? So, you know, if we. We love something, maybe no one else does, or you wait for that one person who walks by your table and says, I gotta have that call. You're looking at an Ed Oliver collector, Keith. That's a. Yeah. Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder. Right. I can't thank you enough for taking Jason's place this week. We appreciate you. Yeah. If you are in the central Ohio area at any point, make sure you stop up in Delaware, Ohio. It's a pretty short drive from the north part of Columbus. Oh, yeah, Go check out Keith at Newhart Cards. You can find them on Instagram. You can find them under the same name on ebay. Check out Facebook. I don't think they do much in the tiki talkie world. We are on there. But I'm trying. But yeah, that's a different world. They also run a race. Really? Couple of really cool whatnot shows every week as well. Wednesdays is the nifty 50. Yep. Right. Seven o'. Clock. Yep. Yep. And there's just 50 cards. Nick runs that. Nick is Keith's son. And then you guys run a Friday show too, right? We, We. We dropped that one. So we do a Wednesday at 7. A Thursday. Okay, Wednesday and Thursday. Perfect. So give them a follow on, uh, whatnot and check out their shows. Always cool in interesting stuff. If you haven't yet, make sure you hit that like and subscribe button straight down here. Helps us out a ton. A lot of really big news coming from the ball card show here soon. Follow us on whatnot. All the stuff you hear, say it every week. I don't. I don't like to just drop a commercial all the time, but overall this has been a great time. Keith, appreciate your insights. Absolutely. Thanks for having me, as always. This has been the ball card show, the esports codcast for the esports collector. Thanks, guys. Peace.