Scalpers Are in TROUBLE… Topps Is Selling Boxes UNSEALED

I love it when Topps listens and I especially love it when they listen to me. Some big news has come out to help combat scalping on the secondary markets. Plus a really big set about to hit the scene and other great card talk all today on Cards on the Table. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Cards on the Table. My name is Tyler, Another cop, better known as Teapot. We are here inside the Arena Club studio in Cards HQ and you demanded it last week after a really fun video. So we are running it back with me in this seat, Scotty b. Cards and Mr. Benm Burrows on Instagram, YouTube and X who's been with us for years. Happy to have you guys both back as well. And I am happy to be repping Detroit on my sweatshirt in this icy cold studio in the middle of the summer in Atlanta. We're heading to. We're heading to Detroit. We're heading to Detroit for Cards hq. I've been holding this inside for months. We were looking at cities, we've been looking at all kinds of cities all over the US we made the decision that Detroit was the next best place to go and I'm really, really pumped about it. We're hoping to open later this year. If you missed the announcement, go watch the full video on this channel that came out a few days ago, as well as the interview that Carter did with Jeff on the Jeff Wilson podcast channel. Super excited about that and we need people. So if you are interested in going to work for us at Cards HQ Detroit or any other jobs that we might have open here in Atlanta or with our corporate operations, you gotta go to cardshq.com, go all the way down to the bottom of the page, click on job openings or go to cardshq.com pages job board easier to navigate to the bottom. We've got a ton of open positions, everything from store managers and lots of other stuff. We're going to need lots of people to get that store open and operational by the end of this year. And other than that, we've got a really exciting topic to talk about, one that's already causing some waves a bit, I think largely due to misunderstanding, Topps is making a decision to slice or remove the wrap, the shrink wrap from product that's coming out specifically now. It's happening with Topps Chrome Update Basketball, which we're going to talk a little bit more about after this topic on the mega boxes. So they're testing this out on the mega boxes and basically this is meant to combat scalpers. So obviously, if you're buying a box in the secondary market, the whole reason you have the shrink wrap is to know that it hasn't been tampered with, to know that the packs haven't been searched, taken out of the box, that type of a thing. And we saw this move come from Rob at Burbank Sports Cards. I brought this up. I know I'm not the only one. I was joking in the intro. But, like, I did bring this up as the idea last year when we were talking about how do we combat these secondary market prices. They're so inflated. They're so inflated. And everybody hitting the, the, you know, the, the eqls and everything else and just getting in line and the bots hitting and taking all the allocation. We see this product come out at like an SRP of like 300 for just as an example for a product. And then we've seen it go 800-1000-1200, $1300, depending on the product and secondary market. So of course the scalpers are going to scalp. They're going to take that opportunity. I think probably the three of us would. It'd be really hard. If you manage a box of that at $300 and you can make $900 easily, you're going to go do it. So Rob out of Burbank took the initiative and his daughter Sammy announced it on social media with a product that came out, I think it was top scrum football recently. And they were like, you can buy this for $600, a hobby box. And we're going to open it to know that you're going to open the cards if you want to open it as a hobbyist, if you want to. If it's your box, your Percy, and you want to get into the cards, you can buy it at 600, or you can buy it at the normal secondary market price. It was like 10001200 bucks, and we'll leave the seal on for you, the shrink wrap on. And I thought, man, what a gesture to do that, eating into your store's own margin, honestly, at the end of the day. And there were so many comments, like, mad about it. They're just like, why don't you just sell it to us for $600, you know, and keep it sealed? And what about us sealed wax collectors and all these things? Like, you got to separate the two things. If you want to be a sealed wax collector, you can do that. And you could still buy this product. I don't know that there's any details out. I think, I think they're all just shipping. Maybe Ben, you know this a little bit more, but I think they're all just shipping. With the, with the seal removed, there's no option to buy one way or the other. But there are other box formats. You can buy a hobby box, you can buy a jumbo box, you can buy a value box, you can buy whatever other format if you want. Sealed. I really applaud this gesture by tops. Personally. I think it's a great gesture. I want to see how it plays out. I don't think there's any need to be like I want to hold a Mega box long term for sealed investability. The big piece here, and I think is important to reiterate is do not go buy these on the secondary market. I wouldn't. They're not, they're not sealed like they're meant to be ripped. So if you're buying them, you rip them and you know, don't go from there. The one thing I would also be concerned about, and I'm going to let you guys talk as well, would just be like buying into breaks for mega boxes. I'm sure there's going to be people like running breaks. I don't know how that's going to work. I don't know how whatnot, fanatics, ebay are going to handle that. But I wouldn't buy into brakes because I'd be worried about packs being searched or weighed or some other thing that could happen. But I love this. I think people want to be able to get into this really important product and be able to afford to rip it and this will help curtail this. But what do you think, Scott? Very first thing discourages scalping. That's great. People aren't going to be buying this, flipping it instantaneously, but there's other good things that come with this. The first thing is we're going to get more single to the secondary market quicker people are going to open it and be able to sell those cards. We're also going to have more products available longer on the TOPS website, which is nice so you don't have to have that immediate purchase on the eql, which is a really good thing. I think overall this is a very big positive. And you've mentioned this in the intro. You've been saying this yourself for years on Spitball and Cars, the channel that we have together here. You've always market movers. You've talked about this and then have been pushing for it and they finally listen to you. So maybe Topps is watching us either way, I think it's a great thing. There are some negatives have to be careful with. The very big one is going to be people being taken advantage of. Some people aren't going to realize this is a thing when they join breaks and they will get taken advantage of because you can search the packs easier. You can open those packs and reseal them easier. So that is going to be a major issue. And you talked about, well, it's only one box format. This could become every single box moving forward if it's a successful initiative. And for Topps, obviously they want to make a profit and they want to sell their cards for as much as they would like to. And I bet you they could even list their boxes higher, make more money. But they don't. But for them, they also want to create a healthy environment in collecting. And so this helps create that healthy environment where more people can actually open boxes. Because for people like me, I can't justify spending $1,000 on a hobby box. I had a hard time when hobby boxes were $200 and I'm priced out completely of opening wax, like literally completely. Even blasters are $50 a box now. Yeah. And so if I can at least have the opportunity of an exciting product like this at closer to market value at like msrp, then I think it's a very good thing for most people. Even though there is going to be the concern in the future for people who own sealed wax, like, well, now I can't continue my run, but it's one of those things where that's not really a major thing in sports cards relative to Pokemon. And Pokemon, if they started doing this in the Pokemon center with like The Pokemon Center ETBs or the booster boxes, that'd be a lot bigger deal. I genuinely only see this as a positive. Besides, like again, there's going to be bad actors who are going to be pack sealing, but there's bad actors in every facet of the hobby. If there's want to be made people fake shrink wrap things still to this day and whatever. So Ben, what do you make of this? I like it. I don't love it, to be honest. So first off, I'll say that I think it's objectively a positive thing that Topps and fanatics are trying to do something. Doing something is better than doing nothing. That's a positive. However, I lean more toward the side of I think collectors should be able to do whatever they want with their own stuff. And I don't like the Idea of manufacturers putting their thumb on the scale to influence how people collect. And that's exactly what this is doing. And I think there's also. People are probably gonna be upset about this, but I think there's a clear linear path here for the market to regulate itself. People say we need box prices to be lower. That's completely within your control. The most powerful tool the hobby has is to vote with its wallet. And people that are upset about high prices are not voting with their wallets. Or they are, and it turns out that their opinion actually isn't as popular as they think. We can make the argument that a very small portion of the community is driving up box prices, but I don't like the precedent that it's setting by fanatics and Topps regulating what people are doing with those boxes. I like Rob Barris out of Burbank. I consider him a good friend. I think he's really, really smart. I don't love the idea of saying, hey, we're going to sort of police what you do with your stuff. I just objectively don't think that's good. Yeah, I don't see it that way. And so we can disagree on that. And then the point that I'll also make is I think there are other solutions here. I would rather see them try to increase and improve what they do with combating bots. Now, again, I will preface that by saying you're trying to hit a moving target. It's like playing, you know, it's playing offense and defense. Often, you know, the best offense beats the best defense. Right. So it can be difficult. But I think there are other mechanisms at play here. And I just don't love the idea of policing how people are going to use their own collectibles. I think it is not a dangerous precedent, but I don't love it. I don't love being told we're going to charge you different on what your objectives are. It's an interesting perspective. I really don't see it that way as policing because it's just a net. What would you call it? It's not that you have today. You have one choice before this, and your one choice is pay secondary market value outside of getting it with your bots or whatever else you're doing. Let's say you had one choice and it was to buy this product. Let's assume they were doing this with. Let's go back to Rob's example for, you know, as a choice. Choice is the only Choice. You pay $1,200 for this sealed box or not. Yeah. Now I'm giving you a new opportunity. I'm not policing anything. I'm opening a new door to you. You actually now have more options. You're actually closing a door. In one sense. There's no closing the door. He still said you could still buy it for $1,200. If you want to pay an exorbitant cost based on secondary market, which is largely driven by a small portion of people who are whales, who buy into brakes and other things, you still can do that. That option has not been taken away. It can't be called policing. When you're given more freedom and more choice, it's the exact opposite. So now you have a chance to buy the product and do it, whether it's Topps doing it, whether it's in the stores. My original idea was not for tops. So, hold on. You can buy it at that, but only if you use it in a very specific way. That is policing it. It's not policing it. That's exactly what it is. No, it's not. That's 100%. No, it's not. It's not policing it. It's. This is like saying you could fly somewhere or take a train or take a car and somehow we're policing you because the cost to take the train is cheaper than taking the boat or the plane. Like, that's. That's what. That's what this boils down to. It's a different price point, different access, that. We're telling you that if we're going to do this, you could still keep it sealed on your shelf if you want. He's not telling you you have to open the product. He's just saying we're going to cut the seal off because our expectation is that you're buying it. I think this is a good idea. My original thought was more, rather than Topps doing this direct, I just think there's some risk through the mail, if anything, like having open boxes or something like that. But was that they actually partner with their. Distribute with their TOPS partner, TOPS Direct accounts, and say we're giving you wave one allocation and we're giving you this much that you can keep sealed and we're giving you this much that we want you to sell on release day. And up to this point, we're giving you 10 cases and those 10 cases you're gonna cut open, like, as part of it. And we want. But we want it to be at a really good price, like 300 bucks. We want it to be, like, really affordable. And accessible for people to get into. That was my original suggestion, which is kind of like what Rob was doing. But I don't see this as policing at all. I have a hard time with having people who purchase from Topps opening my product and then selling it to me. Because that's when I think there's going to be some more fraud than what's actually happening. I trust that Topps can deliver to me. Like if it's in front of you. No, I guess if it's in front of me at the store, like rapper Redemption. So that's what's been happening. Okay, that's fine then. But if it was like just on the shelf here open, then that'd be tough for me. The one thing I will note is I view this generally as a pro consumer thing. Right. Anti consumer is kind of how it is right now. It's. It's literally just to those who have bots and those that are breakers, that's like all that's getting the EQL in our discord that we have with Spitball and Cards. We have a chat where we actually discuss product releases. It's amazing how little people in that discord get product. And it's because breakers are going in and buying all of it and breaking is not inherently bad, but they're the ones benefiting from them being sealed. It's more of a problem when it's not, because now people can't really trust buying in. So it benefits people that are individuals. So I view it as pro consumer. I also get where you're saying completely, but I think it helps more people than it hurts because there's significantly more people who want to open their product than those that want to keep it sealed, in my opinion. Yeah, interesting. Well, that was a good debate. I'm glad we had two different perspectives. One's right, one's not, but no, I'm just kidding. I got to represent. It's honorable for you to admit. Always takes the side of no other opinions allowed. But it's a good. It's a good topic. Interesting to hear another perspective and I'm sure there will be plenty of it down below in the comments. Also, a great topic is every week we get to rip Arena Club Slab packs and we're doing it this week. Scott, you did Pokemon. I did Pokemon. All right, you're gonna show off why you kinda went that direction. We're doing Emerald packs. Yeah. So I was gonna do baseball, but I decided not to do baseball. Mainly because there were just. Sounds silly when I say it out loud. There was only, like, Ohtani rookies today. I know it sounds silly when I say it out loud, but. But I like the diversity. I like the idea of not quite knowing I'm gonna get. And so I chose Pokemon because there's some cool cards in here that I would like. I love vintage Pokemon. Ironically, vintage isn't really vintage compared to baseball cards, but here's a 2002 Dark Tyranitar. That's freaking awesome. We also can scroll down. Like, the. The cards I'm probably going to get, those are, like, the harder pulls. I have one of those Dark Tyranitars. Do you have one? Cool. I'll give you an Arena Club slot pack for it. I also really like this legendary collection. Geodude Legendary collection is my favorite set of all time. And the reverse holo foils are amazing. Yeah. Popping off. Let's see what I get. Let's see what's got evolving skies 10. Oh, it's 2021. 2021. See the value? Okay, cool. All right. That was about where we were last week on a couple of them. We do have a running thing going right now between Jeff, Ty, and I. Whoever has the most wins. The most valuable card will actually get with over 12 weeks will actually get a diamond pack. Right now, the score is tied to me, to. Jeff won. Yep. So we'll see if I can. So Rob is benefiting from Jeff being out. We're using Jeff's to reward Rob for all his hard work. Producer Rob. So he went with basketball. Come on, Rob. Let's go, Kobe. That's sick metal. Rookie BGS 95. These have been. These have been rising. Kobe's been rising. Let's see where this lands. Oh, boy. Rob, I'm happy for you. We're happy for you. Rob, I'm not happy for you. All right. That's gonna be tough to beat. I. I went back to the well with soccer. I think I won the first two weeks, and now I've been on a cold streak. Yeah. I got that great Messi card that was worth like 2,500 bucks to start us off. So I went back. It's World cup still going on, so I went soccer. Emerald, let's go. Hey, that's. I know that value because I just made a video. That is not going to be Jeff this week. We're going to be equalized 222. Yeah. It's not a bad one. It's not terrible. I beat you. Nice card, but yeah, Ronaldo. Okay. I was really hoping it'd be messy. There was a lot of Ronaldo and a lot of messy and some other cool stuff in there. But the first year, first year Prism, honestly, can't go wrong with that. Really cool. All right, so if you want to go to Arena Club, go try it. Arena Club for the first time, you can use promo code SCI and that'll save you 20% off any slab pack of your choice, no matter what the value. So that can save you some coin on those. And you can chase all kinds of cool stuff broken up by different sports, non sports, and so much more. Go to arenaclub.com and use promo code SCI to save 20%. All right, we talked already a little bit about Top Scrum basketball. Let's actually talk about the substance of the product, not just one format, whether or not that's a good idea. So we've got the checklist out. It's dropping on August 6th, so we'll basically get on the other side of the national and then we'll have Topps Chrome update basketball for the first time in a long, long time. And these are going to have obviously the big chase, the rookie debut patch autographs coming out. And the checklist obviously includes Cooper Flagg, Dylan Harper, Con Knippel, Ace Bailey, the whole gamut. It was a really good, really good class and non auto versions. You got Vijay Edgecombe, Trey Johnson, Carter Bryant and more. And then also we'll have the Alter Ego cards. We're gonna have the Minions crossover, which has been really polarizing, like, really polar. It's like people are like, take my money. Or like, that's the dumbest thing ever. So maybe you guys can weigh in on that. Ben, what do you think of this product release? Are you excited about this? Are you gonna let someone police you and buy a Mega Box? What do you make of all this? I'd prefer if they didn't police me to buy a Mega Box. I think this is going to be a really interesting litmus test for the secondary market at the ultra, ultra high end. I think these cards, these first rookie debut patch autographs for this specific class, you have Cooper Flagg in it. I don't know that Topps could ask for a better recent number one overall pick. Outside of Wemby. Yeah, outside of Wemby. To land here, you know, it's going to be really interesting. I think he's going to be far and away the most valuable card. I'd be really interested to see what you guys think his RDPA could potentially sell for. I'm sort of Expecting it to top a million dollars. Probably well, well above that. Truthfully, I think there's maybe a couple guys here that could top a million dollars. Outside of Cooper Flag, I think Dylan Harper could be really, really interesting. Spurs just had a really great run. That team is set up. It's very young, it's very athletic, it's very deep. You know, him being on that team sort of makes me feel a little more comfortable with his longevity within the hobby. He's got I think a better chance to win a championship than maybe like a con knipple. You know, Khan was awesome as a rookie. That team. I'm not in love with it. You know, some of the other guys know are, are in similar boats. So he'll be really interesting to see what kind of NBA finals. Even if it was a loss Premium gets, gets put on that. But you know, long term Key seems to be set up a little bit better. But I'm also really interested to see what the non autograph versions are going to look like. We haven't seen that before. Obviously with the guys like BJ Edgecomb, they're still on Panini deals so they're not going to be signing for this product and they won't be signing for fanatics probably for a while. It'll be really interesting to see what the Delta is between the autographs and the non autographs. Yeah, they've got the glass canvas in here which are super cool. Fanaticals have been popular with some. We talked about alter egos. The Flag in particular with the main event I thought was an awesome like play on words. That card looks amazing. You got Helix. So much more. Scott, I know you're mostly baseball, but you know, you and I were basketball as kids. Are you going to chase after any of this or what's your, what's your take on the product overall? He's a big minion guy, right? Big minion guy. I'm going for the Minion set. Probably cost me fortune. Super Fracture, Steph Curry. What do you guys think of the Minion set? Do you like it? Like I, I like the Minions. I think they're funny. At least I like Despicable Me. I don't know about the newer movies, but I don't. It doesn't bother me. This type of stuff like never bothers me. Like, it's like the mascot cards they did in Tom's. Like I don't like Garbage Pail Kids, but it doesn't bother me. You do kind of remind me of the villain from Dispatch Open. I Can be. Sometimes. I love the police, especially when we talk about Topps practices and selling cards online. But I will say I like the set. It's a good set. Topps Chrome Update Baseball is a fantastic set. It generally highlights those players who debuted a little later, right before the cutoff for the rookies the next year. And then on top of that, it also will have the players who were traded and have their updated jerseys. And now we have the introduction of the debut patch that's been added and recently, recent years. The one thing I'll note is I'm kind of confused about this set. We've seen weird practices from Topps in the past when it comes to, like, Shohei Ohtani. We saw the same thing in the early 2010s with, like, Nolan Arenado and Garrett Cole, where they would actually print Topps Chrome rookies and then Topps Chrome Update rookies. I'm totally cool with the idea of a Topps Chrome Base rookie card and a Topps Chrome Update debut card. Where there's a differentiator. Exactly. But there's not. Yeah. And it's one of those things where they're just kind of milking the brand, which is fine. And they've kind of taken the approach, especially with Topps Chrome baseball. And I'm going to bring it to basketball, I promise. But what they did is they usually hold out a few rookies to put into Topps Chrome Update in order to juice that set as well as Topps Chrome. But now they're just juicing Topps Chrome because they know they can sell tops Chrome Update because of the debut patches. So it kind of feels like Top Scrum Update is the exact same set as the first set with slightly different checklists. The larger checklist on, like, the inserts with the ability, they know they're going to sell a ton of it because. Because people are chasing those rookie debut patch autographs. So I don't love what's going on here personally, but that's me as a collector. But at the same time, it's going to be a good set. I do think that these are going to go for ridiculous amounts of money compared to baseball. Yeah. We have Nick Kurtz going for $500,000, Paul Skins going for a million. We're going to see Cooper flag something stupid. I could do like $5 million. I don't think 5 million, but 2 would not. It's going to go first double at least. Highest baseball. It's going to be crazy, but I'm excited to see what happens here. I just don't understand what they're kind of doing to some of these sets. I would love here thoughts on how I would fix this situation back in the early 2000s. So the rookie cards and tops flagship were usually of a player who is being drafted. So I don't know if we can show it on the screen. Like, here's LeBron's rookie card right where he's actually on the draft night. And then it's a great iconic rookie. And then his TOPS Chrome is an action shot of him actually playing in a game. This might be against the Pistons. I can't remember who it's actually against. Either way, it's him playing. I want them to do that here. If we're going to have two Tops Chrome rookie cards of a player, don't have them. Just be like both boring images. Because Topps has been doing that in Topps Chrome. Make one like the LeBron where it's like the draft and the next action shot from the season so we have time to pick. Good photography. Yeah, that's how I would justify. There's a lot in this. Like, first of all, I'm looking at the wax prices for right now for hobby boxes for the regular Topps Chrome that came out right now, the last sale on those $841 jumbos, almost eighteen hundred dollars. These are going to be even more in demand. Yeah, I don't know. Like, I think. I don't. Jumbo's 3,000. I don't know, maybe more. They're. They're gonna. When these cards aren't released yet and they're trying to chase them, these big, you know, debut autos, it's going to be big time. One thing that you guys didn't mention was there was a lot of stir when Luka Doncic was not in the regular Chrome. He wasn't in the checklist. He's in this checklist. So when that came out originally, people were like, where's Luca? He's back. There was something with transitioning licenses or something along those lines from what we understood at the time. Ben, I agree with you completely on Dylan Harper versus Con Knippo. I think the Kahn will go for a lot of money. Sure. If both go to auction or surface, I think Harper will outsell him. The run with the playoffs, people are seeing the upside. There's a ton of breakdown videos just showing. Like, this guy for his age has an insane bag. He came off the bench on a deep team. He's going to be. I think he's Going to be an elite scorer in the league for many years within the next few years. So that'll be a big deal. But overall, I mean I really like a lot, I love a lot of the inserts that Topps has been coming out with. I've been a big fan of a ton of these and I'm excited to see some of these new ones come out. The part that has just blown me away is the price premium. The big, big price tags for the autos of players for Steph, for LeBron that we've seen from Topps Chrome. And now you're getting like more. Yeah. So like what's the next step? Super fractor auto sell for or the LeBron or whatever. It's basically just doubling the supply within a given year. Now it's no longer the first but like how many people actually care about that? I don't. It's just going to be really interesting. There's a lot of money going into this product unopened and then into brakes and everything else in the secondary market. Very, very popular. And I think it is going to make baseball prices look a little bit silly, relatively speaking. Do you guys feel the same way as me though where we're kind of having the same product with. Yeah, it does. Patches? Yeah. Is that an issue for you guys or just me? Kind of does look like that. I don't know that I would call it an issue, but I definitely think the. There's a clear purpose that Update plays for baseball because the call ups, you know, promotions work differently. Obviously NBA players, NBA rookies don't necessarily have to make their debut immediately. There are guys that, that start in the G League or are on two way contracts, but it's a less significant moment than we see in baseball. You don't care about those players usually. Yeah, they're probably not going to be the superstars. And so I think there's a clear reason for Update Baseball to exist. I think there's a little bit less of a reason for Update Basketball to exist. Like Scott said, if we're seeing great updates for photography, maybe that moves the needle a little bit. I do like the idea that it's kind of packed with a bunch of cool inserts and obviously you have the RDPAs, but frankly this is a product that if I was thinking about consolidating a little bit, this would be one I was thinking about, you know, what clear purpose does it have other than housing the RDPA at this point? If it doesn't. If it doesn't house a very Specific reason, like a very specific purpose, a very specific card. Why does it exist? I'm struggling to get there with this one. Money. I think t money is a big driver but. And people will buy it and it is a cool product. So there were some other really big news. I have thoughts around this and I'm going to wait until give you guys a chance to speak on but Michael Jordan, it was just announced, signs his legacy deal with Upper Deck. So he signed a new legacy partner deal earlier this week. We know that they've had the exclusive autograph rights all along for Jordan and this keeps those exclusive rights with Upper Deck. Jordan, they said, is going to be more involved with the product selection and creation. So there's some new programs. There are 23 factory sealed packed autographed packs autographed by Jordan from the 1986 FLIR basketball set. So the sealed packs that would be put into 2026 Goodwin champions. That'll be interesting to see how that moves the price on those when they. When that product comes out, a one of one will have rookie pack inscription on it. Upper Deck is working with ebay to auction a full box of 1986 FLIR basketball signed by Jordan with rookie card box inscription with 10% of the proceeds benefiting Boys and Girls Club of America. So they're doing some interesting things with that. Ben, I'm going to start with you on this. What's your reaction to this? Did you expect this legacy partner deal to go through with Upper Deck? Did you expect fanatics to come in and scoop this like they did with LeBron? What do you make of all of it? Yeah, so just from what I've heard internally, I know a lot of casual collectors have sort of expected tops and fanatics to come in and scoop up all of these athletes. I have never really gotten the sense that Michael Jordan was going to move at all. You know, the sense that I've gotten from a lot of industry insiders is that the players and the leagues that actually work with Upper Deck love Upper Deck. Absolutely love Upper Deck. Even though it's a smaller company, they love the experience. They love the fact that it's a little bit of a smaller company and they feel more important. I don't know if it like moves the needle across the market in a significant way. It'll be interesting to see what the chase is. Goodwin Champions is kind of a weaker set, if we want to be honest. Maybe the market for it changes a little bit with these new chases in it, but I never expected there to be a Fanatics in play for Michael Jordan. I think people have speculated for a long time that Jordan has like a lot of equity in Upper Deck at this point, so it could be a little silly, but this is how Upper Deck wins as a smaller company. They latch onto these very specific athletes, these big athletes, and they keep them for really long periods of time. Frankly, I think somebody like LeBron being with upper Deck for decades and then moving over to Fnatics is going to be the exception. Much less than the norm. So it's interesting if Google Gemini is accurate. I looked this up yesterday. Michael Jordan has an estimated net worth of $4.3 billion. Upper deck is privately owned, but it said, from what I read, I thought it has to be more than this. It said its valuation was $135 million estimated. That seems low to me. It has to be higher than that. It just has to be. There's no way. But then they had the valuation of Fanatics. Collectibles come out at like 10.1 billion. Yeah. So even if Jordan has a 30% ownership stake in Upper Deck, and even if Upper Deck's worth half a billion dollars, like how much of what he does. I know hockey cards are big and they still have some others DC and stuff like that. But like, just having his autographs is literally a money printing hack. I don't know what stipulations or how many they're. You know, maybe they're just not. He doesn't want to do a ton of them or something like that. But it has to be about the relationship, about probably more than money. Like even just like, hey, I did the Nike thing, I'm doing the, you know, I'm doing the, the, the Upper Deck thing and I'm just gonna stick with it. I gotta imagine somebody at Fanatics is like pounding their fist because this is just like it's the last stone in the Infinity Gauntlet, like for everything for fanatics. It really. That's my opinion. But Scott, what do you think? I love it. I think it's awesome. So here's a collector's perspective. Of course I would like to see more Michael Jordan autographs with LeBron James and dual Dynasty autos. I love the fact that he's not signing Tops products. It just adds a premium to all of his autograph from the late 90s, early 2000s. Yeah, I think that's really cool. It's one of the players, like, he has this mystique to him as a person and his cards have that same mystique because he's not being printed over and over and over and over again every single year and being milked every dollar possible out of it. And. And maybe that's why he chose Upper Deck. He doesn't want to sign a million cards like Topps would make him do. And I'm sure that could have been negotiated in a contract. But from a collector perspective, I think it's awesome. And it keeps those Grails. Grails. And I understand for, like, even me, I own zero Jordan autographs. I'm not trying to keep my cards valuable. Someone's going to make that claim. I just think it's cool those Grails will still maintain that status. It is unfortunate we're not going to see, like, a really cool triple of. I don't know Jordan and Rodman and know Scotty Pippen. Again, those are all created unless Upper Deck signs those players. But I think from that perspective, it's a great thing. I also think it's great for Upper Deck. It's nice to have a little bit of competition in this space. We're in an oligopy already. Might as well try to not make it a monopoly right now. And so I like that he's signing. Yeah, I don't hate it either, to be honest. I. I kind of like it, too. We've already seen wax prices. Crazy. We don't need to add Jordan autos into it. I don't know. Yeah, add Jordan into Topps, Chrome Update, basketball autos and a super Fractor and something else. I just. Yeah, it would. It would. It would just break a Minion Jordan and break every. Can you imagine? A Minion Jordan, Minion Jordan. Oh, man, there's got to be a way to do that. Remember when. Gosh, I was just looking at this with 2005. You're too young for this probably, Scott, but 2005, MVP baseball. What was the name? They had Barry Bonds on there, but his name was like something else. Like, it was like, oh, John Dowd. John Dowd. John Dowd. Yeah. So like, they, like, make a minion card and just put, like, Jael Morton or something, you know, on there. Who knows? All right. We're getting a little off the rails, but. All right, one more topic here. World Cup's been amazing. About as good as it possibly could have been. Drama. Pks, you know, red cards that turned into. Not red cards. No cards that turned into red cards. Drama with Argentina and the refs. So many things. Soccer cards have been really hot over the last year. And one thing that's been Particularly beloved by soccer fans globally, really more than anything else are just the Panini World cup stickers. They're affordable. You can get into them. Little paper pack. People literally like to make the sticker album. Parker from my team has done it in 2022 and now again like trying to fill out the whole sticker album. So it's been very popular. We had the announcement that Fanatics has taken over. Was it 2032, Ben? I think some probably. I think it's 2032. Right. And they're wearing the like things that they're saving until then, until they get the light. Talk about it. Not allowed to talk about it. But the stickers have been a key release for panini since 1970. They and. And they're very popular, very iconic in PSA 10 condition. They're very expensive for a number of players. So we don't know what's going to happen. Ben, do you think the. The stickers are kind of like overrated now in an era where we have so many choices for different cards, or do you think they still have staying power when Fnatics takes over? Do you think they should keep the stickers going? Like, what's your attitude to this overall? So I'll say that I'm not a big soccer guy. I don't collect soccer. I'm sort of lukewarm on the World cup, you know, because I'm not a soccer guy. It's kind of just this thing that happens. I think objectively the World cup sticker albums are one of the single best products that is produced by any company across any sport. I love the fact that it is a mix of largely low end, but there still are like parallels and chases that you can find. I love the interactivity of it with kids coming in and they're trading and actually physically putting together. Like, I know set collecting isn't as popular as it used to be and I think this bridges the gap a little bit where you have this physical album. I know a lot of set collectors, they'll do it and then they kind of put it in the shoebox and then it goes in a closet somewhere. I think these are really cool to be able to pull off the shelf. If Fanatics doesn't continue the sticker albums, I think it would be a horrific mistake. I think it would be one of the worst that they've done in a really long time. I think it's a great format. I think it's great for kids and frankly I think I'd like to see something similar across A bunch of other sports and other events. I'm not sure what that looks like. You know, other people smarter than me are working for these companies that can figure that out. Unless you want to pay me to do it, I guess I'll consider it. But I think it's a great product. I think it's one of the best out there. This is a great time of the year to see it. And again, if fanatics doesn't continue it, big mess in my opinion. I think the fact that it happens every four years, just like World cup, it's like a big thing and it is a big chase and it is mass produced and I have to imagine fanatics is going to do it, continue it in some capacity because from what my connections have told me over the years, this is a very big cash cow. Even though it's a low end thing, a low end purchase price for, for Panini. And it's a big blow. It's another big blow to them to be losing this. And they've. It's kind of the one thing I was rooting for them to be able to keep over time. I don't really. It won't have the same cachet and everything as like Panini World cup stickers. Fanatics has gotten smart about the nuance as well because there is a difference between like trading cards and stickers and we kind of see that overlap sometimes where like Topps is able to produce like some hockey stickers to some extent. Yeah. They are more nuanced with the verbiage now and they are covering everything. They are, they're getting all of it. So there's unlikely to be loopholes there. Okay. What do you think Scott? What do you like the stickers? I love them. Sticker guy. I will say these remind me of like, you know, Easter comes and you go get your Caterbury eggs and then Travis comes and you get your. What is it? Eggnog, candy cane. There's seasonal. So I actually, I kind of disagree with you. I don't think this should be brought over other sports. This is for the World Cup. It makes sense. For the World Cup I don't want Caterbury eggs on the 4th of July. I want them at Easter, which is the World Cup. So I think for what they're doing, it's fantastic. I hope Topps fanatics, I need to keep them separate. They're the same thing when I'm saying this. I hope they don't change the set. I don't want more parallels. I don't want serial numbered stickers Besides the one on one. What Panini has done with this set is fantastic. I have a nephew shout Out Max who is getting to the age where he's collecting. He's on Pokemon for a long time. This is I think the first introduction he has where he's actually enjoyed collecting something sports. This has TCG vibes to it. To me, yes, that's what it feels like. 980 player checklist. All of it's almost low end. This is literally the last relic of collecting that we have. Where people are collecting and trading and having fun chasing random no name players that no one will care about next year. Yeah. Like I. Everything about it is pure. Not everything. A lot of it is pure. I think that's great. But now Max will have more interest in other sports sets because of this. It's a great entryway. It's probably if we look at like actual distribution around the world it has like the most people opening these of any product released in this four year span because it's everywhere. Every country's doing it, chasing their guys and I think it's a great thing. But I do want it to stay just to soccer, football, wherever you want to call it. Depending on your country. You're foreign watching this. Thank you. But I think it's good how it is and I wouldn't change anything. All right. Besides the name of yapper. Caterpillar. Cadenbury. Cadbury. What did I say? Caterbury. Caterbury. Ty is a. Ty is a pronunciation stickler for you. He's a pronunciation stickler. I picked on Ben so much today I had to get you on the way out. But they won't let me back in this seat if I don't live up to the expectations of razzing people while I'm here. We really appreciate you watching this. Let us know what you think of Cadbury eggs and everything else we talked about today down in the comments below. Make sure to check out Arena Club and go apply for these jobs with Cards hq. We're growing. It's a great time to be in the hobby. Until next time, Happy investing. Keep on collecting and make sure to have fun.