Season 5 Ep 19 Sell Your Cards Efficiently and Smell This !

Hello, and welcome to the Ball Card Show, the sports podcast for the sports collector. I'm Jason Otero. I'm Gary Lomaster. And this is season five and episode 19, 19 closing in on 20 episodes in this year, covered a lot of content today is no different. There's simultaneously a ton of stuff to go over. And also there's not that much going on. There is a weird like lull in the summer where it's like, all right, it's basically like fanatics fest slash national time and everybody's waiting to be fed the latest information of what's going on. We actually don't have any major controversies to go over today for the first time in a minute. No, nothing too crazy at all, which means we won't have a hundred K view TikTok video this week. Oh well. Womp womp. We love to be known as the guys who bring positivity and we post a ton of that content, but the content that goes off, it doesn't sizzle. It doesn't sizzle. It doesn't sizzle. Hey, a couple of things before we get rolling into this episode, just a quick reminder to you, Gary and I are set up every Thursday night at 7 PM Eastern on whatnot for a show that runs two to three hours. Typically three hours. I don't know if we've ever been done in two. Yeah. Three. Sudden death auctions. We try to find stuff at an affordable price range and sprinkle in some better stuff. This week, however, we're going to start doing something I'm very, very excited about. Yeah. Well, do you want to talk about the video we just dropped a couple of days ago? Go ahead. Yeah. So we just dropped a video that's not the podcast a couple of days ago and we've told you guys this a little bit. We were reached out to by a company called Juicebox. Hold this up. We were- I like how you paused for that. You like that? Yeah. Like there was a photo op. We were approached by Juicebox about a month or so ago asking us if we would review their product. They sent us a case of their product and we dropped that video a couple of days ago. So you guys can go and watch that entire case get ripped. It's about a 45 minute video. You're going to see 50 slabs opened up. It's a 50 pack case and we just did an honest review of it. But the best part about that is we're going to be giving away $2,500 worth of slabs over the next- The entire case. Five to six weeks on our whatnot stream. So caveat, we're still going to be running our normal giveaways, but we're also going to be running these. These are only going to be for buyers in the stream. These are not going to be for everybody. If you're somebody that's part of our community that hangs out with us that buys stuff, you can spend $2 and you'll be eligible to win one of these. We're going to do 10 of these a week until they're gone. It's going to be a good mix, but we want to show you some of the really cool stuff that came out of the case. Quickly before you go into that. Yeah. When we first were reached out to about doing a case review, the immediate thought that both Gary and I had was like, all right, the podcast is getting some traction. At some point we knew this would probably start happening. How do we want to approach these as a podcast? Yes. Yes, for sure. Because we have on more than one occasion been very critical of influencers leveraging their reach for product reviews that would either be a juice case or they just kept it for themselves. We just tried to think through, what can we do to make this as honest as possible? As I was going back and forth with the one sending us over this from Juicebox, we just said, hey, the way that this will work is if you send the whole case over, we're going to give them all away. We'll give them away on Whatnot as giveaways. We're not keeping any of them. That is our plan going forward. Now, monetization at some point, sponsors may make sense as to that. We will always disclose if anything like that is happening, but in this situation, we said we're giving away 25. We're giving away the whole case in slabs. Yes. It's a whole case of slabs. These were some of the core. There's a lot more stuff like this in there, but this was the case hit. I'll zoom in on that so you guys can see what it is, but that is Adrian Beltre, 2023 Transcendent Collection Auto, PSA 10 number to 15. It's about $180 card that's going to be given away. Really cool, Justin Herbert, PSA 10 number to 75, blue color match, 2023 Mosaic. This one was sneaky. This is like a $100 card, SGC 10, Tops Chrome Sapphire color match, first Dodgers uni card, Bijan Robinson, RPA number to 199, and then just a really cool color match, Jamar Chase in an SGC 10. There was a lot of really nice stuff in the case. There were a few things if you watch that video where we were both kind of like, that is a floor, but I will branch in and we mentioned it in that video, but I want to mention it again in case you didn't see it there because the juice box was very adamant that we make sure we disclose this and you guys know this. They do offer a full guarantee on their floor, so if you hit a card in one of their repacks, you jump into one of their, somebody on TikTok that's selling their repacks, you go to Game Stop and buy one of their repacks, if you don't believe that that card is worth $10 or if you would just rather have the $10 than the card, go to juice box. It's juiceboxrepack.com and go to their product buyback tab and they'll walk you through the process to get your money for that card. They guarantee the floor. Now, I've said this in the other video and I'm going to say it here. Take a breath while you're saying it. You are responsible for shipping, so it's going to cost you five bucks to ship the card back. I would not engage that buyback program on the floor stuff, the guarantee, until you have several cards. Yeah. Otherwise, it doesn't make a ton of sense. You're just going to end up netting five bucks. I'd rather usually have a slab than five bucks. Yep. So, anyhow, that's it for juice box. Plug this week. There'll be 10 giveaways every week for the next five weeks. Until they're gone. Yep. Until they're gone. So, if you're watching this right when this drops tonight at 7, if you buy anything, it could be a card where we start at a dollar, it ends at a dollar. You are qualified. You may hit the case hit out of that. So, our goal is we're going to try to spread these out over 10 to try to even them out a little bit. Yep. And then there will be our plan is to have each of them in a bag, so it's kind of a week of sweating a little bit to see which one you hit. Did you hit a floor? Did you hit a ceiling? Whatever. Something in between. Yeah. Something in between. So, we'll be running that starting this week. We want to give it all back to you. Come hang out with us on whatnot. You'll see the QR code. Yep. Make sure that you check that out. All right. Let's jump into some hobby news. Let's do it. So, Fanatics Fest is happening this weekend. Right? Does it start Friday or does it start during the week? I believe it preview night's Thursday. Thursday. Friday to Sunday then. So, this will be running as this episode is dropping. I'm expecting to see a few things. One, even more big celebrity athletes. I'm expecting to see a lot more pop culture, relevant celebrities in the mix. And then, I'm really interested to see what dealers say because apparently, Fanatics is aware that they kind of banished all these super overpriced expensive tables to one spot and people weren't really forced to walk through the tables at all. Last year, the feedback that I got from my friends who were set up there. I had an opportunity to go last year and I was like, eh, and I probably could have squeezed us in this year, but I was still like, eh. It's not ... It's what it says it is. It's FanFest. It's not necessarily a card show. The problem is, is Fanatics has kind of strong-armed a lot of their bigger dealers, LCSs, bigger names in the hobby that are dealers, to being there. If they want you there, you should be there. Yes. And, I mean, there was a huge show that got canceled last year on pretty short notice here in Ohio because Fanatics basically said, oh, you want to keep your allocations? You better be here. So ... That's what we were told. Yeah. So, it's really important. Yeah. Very fair point. That's what we were told. Yeah. I don't ... Nobody from Fanatics told me that directly. But I'm interested to see if they do anything to increase the value for the people who paid $1,500 for a table to be there because there were not too many people who were super happy about that last year. It wasn't the table fees that crushed people. It was the union ... I don't know if you'd consider it like a dock worker, basically. You had to pay a union employee to bring all your stuff into the show and set it to its location and it was very expensive from what I understand. There's no way around that. If you want to be in New York City at that space, that's just costly doing business. I do think that bigger players are considering the bigger optics. It is a marketing expense to a degree. And some of these massive dealers, it's probably nothing for them to set up there and do. Right. They're going to have a lot of exposure. Tom Brady might stop by their booth. Yep. I mean, you just never know what's going to happen. I am looking forward to seeing the news that rolls out from this. I'm hoping to hear a lot about what they're going to be bringing to the licensed football scene, basketball. Where is this heading with authentication? If they speak to grading a little bit and some more of these direct options. There's a lot of topics that I think hearing a little more direction and vision will be really interesting to kind of see how some of these larger stories that we've been talking about are going to formulate. Yeah. Into the space. To the average dealer like you and I that set up in a more regional area and only do a few of the larger shows a year. For now. And then right after Fanatics Fest at the end of July is the granddaddy of them all, the National, Chicago. We are excited. We'll be there. If you are there, you can't miss us. We're not small humans. And I will definitely have a cartoon character t-shirt and hat on. Just for those of you that hate it. Yeah. Just to make sure that you guys really, really enjoy yourselves. Now, I booked the room for this. You did book the room for this. I cringed. Has everyone heard about the situation that we're in? I don't know that we completely covered the Washington PD show. There's no reason to. I think we should talk about it. So, we've heard me complaining about hotel rooms that for me weren't ideal. I'm not bougie. He is. Yes. Can I talk? Well, I just needed to clarify. You've had a good eight out of the last ten minutes. I just wanted to clarify. Look at the wave files. You can see them up there. When Gary's cheap about something, there are no depths he will reach to prove that point. If Gary likes something, he will spend money on it. Case in point. He drives one of those backward tricycle motorcycles. That's an expensive toy. It is. To most adults that are male going through a midlife crisis, they wouldn't select that. They'd pick the Harley. But, it's the same result because for them, they're like, I don't care. It's really fun. Yes. Correct. That is something that is so unnecessary. However, for Gary, for some reason, going from paying like $120 a night for a hotel to like $150 is like, how do they get away with this? The jump from $40 to $100 is what really gets me. We go out to the Pittsburgh show, 700 tables. It's in Washington, PA. It's a blue-collar town. He said he booked a house for us. I'm like, good, because the hotel we stayed at ... No. Caveat. You saw the pictures first. No. No. No. No. Yes. You saw it. You get to tell your side later. You saw the pictures. I'll just get up and you'll have another solo show. You don't have prospects. They don't want to just see you. You're not going to give them something. You're throwing me under the bus without all the details. You won't let me. Go ahead. Let me have a section here. Okay. Okay. Jeez. I was saying the hotel we had stayed at before was less than clean and less than desirable and definitely was not the non-smoking room they had made it out to be. Is anything inaccurate that I'm sharing with you so far? No. Okay. No. Then we go to Ship Shawana. I think we just got unlucky with the room because we did hit that hotel again, but there was definitely like a mold or mildew in the AC. I get out after we've been at the show for a long time. I come into the room and I'm like, did you fart? No. Did you just take your shoes off? I'm like appalled. Because we're still at the point with the business where we aren't doing separate rooms yet. We're trying to be reasonable with cost. Turns out we don't know what it was and it was like 30 degrees and we had the window open to get over the smell of that. So I just said, you know, let's do better. We go to Washington PA again. He says, hey, let's get a house. He sends me photos of an Airbnb to which I say, inside looks nice. As long as it's not in a rough neighborhood, I think we're good to go. Nothing else is said. The room is booked. We're driving from the show to the house, which is like a five minute, seven minute drive. At the most, yeah. And he goes, oh, I forgot to tell you. I knew immediately, I knew immediately this was not going to be good news and it was going to be related to the house. So I'm getting amped up. I'm like, just like you see right now. I was like, what is it? What do you do? So the owner messaged me and said, hey, from time to time when guests get to the house, they don't realize that this is in a working neighborhood. That's exactly how he phrased it. It's a working neighborhood. We pull up to said working neighborhood, I'm just going to give you a few details. There was some work happening up and down the street, if you know what I mean. Also, the door is open. There's a storm door to enter to the little storm room and then go into the house. It's open, bent open, and the grass is 18 inches tall. It's pretty tall. Every bit of 18. There's some two foot dandelions in the yard. This yard hadn't been mowed in multiple weeks. It probably hadn't been mowed yet this year, would be my guess. We get inside. I am treating him like we're married. I'm the spouse that is mad. I can't believe he did this. I just wanted a clean place to go to. We talked about this. I go up to my room to get everything set up. There are short and curlies all over the sheets. You picked the room. It's my fault again. You're right. I picked my room. I gave the nicer room to Gary because I was going a little hard in the paint on my frustrations with the exterior of the building. There's two rooms upstairs. I go up and then Kyle, who went to the show with us and set up, he's also in another room. We're now hearing bats in the wall. We have hair in the beds. Not in yours. Kyle had some hair in his as well. Then the granddaddy of them all. We get up in the morning. Everybody takes their showers. The upstairs, the shower, when we were done showering, there's like six, not we, when I was done showering, there was six inches of water in the tub. It wasn't draining super well. It drains, and then we realize the hair that was in the bed is all over the tub. At that moment, I walked downstairs and said, Gary, good news, you never have to book another hotel room again, but you also don't get to say what the budget is. I'm not gonna go nuts, but we're, so thankfully. But you do go nuts, that's the thing. I went nuts. I got a holiday in for the National. I know. And I got the same hotel at Ship Shawana. You're looking like a hypocrite right now. When did I reach too far? I'm just cheap about stuff like this, that's all. No, give me an example so far. I've booked twice, what have I done wrong? I booked a hotel that you booked before. Yes, which was fine. And then I booked the cheapest of the options with two beds within 10 miles. I agree that it is the cheapest of the options within 10 miles. I agree with you. There's no argument from me on that point. So where did I reach? In the 10 miles. But it's necessary. I just break. Where in Chicago? It breaks my soul to spend that much money on a hotel room. But you spend that much in sheets in a week. No, I don't. That extra $50 for a nicer room a night? Yeah, you do. No, no, no, no. This hotel, just so we're all on the same page, we're gonna be there Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Yep. Three nights. Yep. It's $1,200. Yeah, dude, you grew up in DeGraft, Ohio. Welcome to Chicago. I guess. If you'd have picked an Airbnb in Chicago, we'd be dead second day. I know exactly. I've seen this movie. We're lucky to survive Washington, PA. All stop. I am okay with us just having separate living arrangements. Nothing about this was his hobby news. We'll make this amicable for everyone. But if a $1,200 hotel booking the week of a massive convention within five miles at 1,200 bucks is too much, I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what to tell you. That number in general for some place to sleep at night, it doesn't matter the situation to me, it will always be too much. But I also recognize that it is what it is. But then you need to accept it. I just don't like what it is. Well, but you gotta accept it. Well, I can accept it and not like it. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. You don't like it, however, you have not yet accepted it. Well, I have. No, they just heard you. You booked it and I said, okay, I guess we're paying it. They just heard you. We're really dragging this out at this point. You are really dragging this out. Well, I'm driving home a point. Ha ha ha. Anyhow. And I know this for a fact. Your wife did not let you book those types of places for your kids. She probably never let you book a hotel. She always does all that stuff. Exactly. So you're not even speaking from experience. I complain about it to her too. You just go to filter options cheapest. Correct. Lowest to highest is how I sort. And then I look to see. My guy's got $10,000 cash in a bag, $50,000 in showcase inventory. Let's wheel this into this neighborhood. What's the worst that can happen? The door's pried open. Listen, in Washington, I normally stay at the Red Roof right across the street. Oh, I've been there. It's 47 bucks a night. It's perfect. We've been there. Yeah, I got the black lungs from the air conditioner running. All right, let's move on. Anyhow, more hobby news. National, we'll be there. Some of you have reached out. If you want to connect while we're there, we'd love to do that. Grab a spot to grab a bite to eat, a beer, hang out, whatever, just let us know. Absolutely. Couple sales that popped off in the last week. I thought this was pretty cool. So 2009, 2010, Exquisite, which Exquisite is still, when you're looking at early 2000, nothing will even hold a candle to it. This is a little bit later on Exquisite, right? Typically the really, really big ones are like the earlier. Earlier Exquisite, yeah. Earlier 2000. So 08, 09, Dual Logo Man, LeBron Jordan, sells for 1.1 million in a golden auction. Was it 08, 09 or 09, 010? 09, 010. 010. 09, 10, yeah. It sells for over a million bucks last week. And this is the one that was a little more surprising to me. Did that include buyer's premium? I don't know. I didn't check that. Or was it like 1.3 with buyer's premium? I didn't check. Okay. Tops now, one of one, gold auto, Steph Curry in a 10. It's the Olympic card where he's doing 500K on that card. Again, we, it's a Steph auto. It was not, was it that iconic? I mean, it was a good win. Like I remember watching the final game, but tops now. More and more indications that we are entering another boom cycle within the hobby. Like we just keep seeing it. And just like during COVID, when everybody in the real world was complaining that the economy was going in the tank, like everything was, not in this hobby it wasn't. And we're seeing it again right now. When you see sales like this pop off, we're definitely going this direction again. So ride the wave while it's here. Let's play a game. If I told you that card sold and you didn't have any of this information, on the count of three, we're going to say what we think that card should sell for. Without any of this information, I guess the other caveat would be without somebody overpaying, you're saying like, oh, that sounds about right. Yes. On the count of three, one, two, three. 25,000. 25,000 was my number. Okay, so 25 to 50 grand is our range. It went 10 times the top of the range. Yeah, yeah. I just don't, I mean, it's a Steph auto. It's a 10. It's out of that release, but that wasn't even the big chase in that tops now. No, the triple auto was, yeah. So is that card a million dollars now? No, but is it maybe going to go? Yes. What does this mean? Hopefully my eBay inventory doubles in the next month or two on value. But yeah, it's a really interesting one. And then Panini announced, we're not surprised. We kind of gave a teaser to this a few weeks back, but WNBA Donruss is releasing next month and Caitlin Clark will have downtowns in that product. Going to be stupid. So. There'll be 1500 bucks raw. The retail skews. Where do you think we see the peak per blaster? 60 to 70 bucks. Every bit of it. Every bit of it. Because what is that downtown going to do in the first two months? Two grand. Raw. Yeah. It's a monster card. So you're upside on that. I mean, it's a golden ticket chase. Now, the other thing that they were previewing in this set, which I didn't write down the name of it, but they're doing like a version of like the call up autograph of like for emerging players. They made it sound like just rookies, but I think if they're releasing her autos, that would have to come on the tail end with the higher end products next year, right? Doesn't she have a. She already has plenty of autos out. I think the rookie chase is going to be Paige Beckers. But. Without a question. Is her autos in Panini products as well right now? Paige Beckers? No, Caitlin. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, no, she has Panini autos all over the place. Okay. I think she's exclusive to Panini as a matter of fact. What am I thinking about? I don't know what you're thinking about. I'm wrong. Yeah, I'm fairly certain she's exclusive to Panini. But she may have an autograph in there, but they're basically building out an emerging players auto. And it looked like these were on card, almost like the old school, like SPX back in the day. Oh, yeah. Or SP. If they're on card, that's a big step for Panini. So. But doing that in Donnerist would be surprising to me as well, so. Maybe. Yeah. But they got to do something. And let's be frank, after this year, WNWA is going to be their most valuable product line. So they got to do something with it. Yeah. Okay, that's enough of that. Let's get into some value box. You disgusting pig. Just thinking about you're being okay with sleeping in filth. It's just sleeping. It's all I do here. Or it's not sleeping because you're laying. I sleep fine. I sleep fine. Let me ask you a question. We get up to that room. Everybody picks their room. You take your luggage up. Yep. Set it on the bed. You're tired. You pull back the blankets. Short and curly's everywhere. Hold on. Okay. Three options. One, nope, not sleeping in this bed. Two, brush it off, screw it. Three, just jumping in. It's a bed. So for me, I'm going to say, chances are I don't even notice it. That's, I'm not doing like a deep examination. The story is you noticed. That's body hair. Okay, maybe you don't see it everywhere. I brush it out. I just brush it out at that point. Like the whole bed or just right where you saw the hair? Well, if I see it, I'm going to check and make sure it's not everywhere. Chances are what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the sheet off. I'm going to shake that sheet off and then put it back on and call it a day. And then probably send a message to the Airbnb owner and say, hey, this happened. They were like, yeah, I did. But then I'm going to sleep immediately. Like, it's not like. Well, I'm a diva, I guess. All right. What we want to talk about in the value box today is sales philosophy. This has more to do with when a dealer or seller or side hustler or collector feels like selling their card. There are different approaches to it. There are some people that hold out for the highest value. There are some people that take a little bit of profit and immediately want to take that money and buy something else. And there's a whole lot of in between. So we're going to talk through just different sales philosophies for moving your inventory, your collection, whether you are doing this side hustle just for fun or as a business. When we do this, we try to explain that there are a lot of different ways to do things. Yeah. In the hobby, there is not one way. Gary and I do some things very similarly. There's other things that we do differently. But I thought this would be a good one for you to, at least as you're watching this, just to consider you probably have different cards that hit different categories here, but are likely selling everything the same way. And I think that as a dealer, especially if you can learn that there are certain cards that are probably better for this category than others, or considering a different philosophy to sales, you may see some better results. So let's jump into it. The first thing I want to talk about is approach that just focuses on sales velocity. And this is something that you've brought over from previous ventures. Like it applies in the card world, but it was your philosophy when you were doing eBay for just reselling in general. It's better to make some money now and keep things moving. So the sales velocity approach is basically saying, let's say I got a card at 50%, all right? This is just for round numbers. I know that is not the norm. I'm just using this as an example. Speak for yourself. Yeah, well, it's not all the time, bud. Let's not flex where we shouldn't, all right? It's how you blow your pants out. All right, wait, that sounded- Oh, I didn't like that. Like fat guy in a little coat. I was just picking, like you pick something up and you rip the pants out. Okay, okay. Anyway, sales velocity is saying, I bought this card, it's worth 100 bucks. I got it at 50%. I know I could get $100 out of it eventually, but it might take a little while. Somebody offers me 75 bucks and I actually consider it because I would prefer to take my $25 of profit and then take $75 into a card that's worth 150 and sell that card in a timeframe that is shorter than waiting on the original card to sell for $100. I do this all the time with my low-end eBay store. I offer discounts for multi-quantity orders and people say, well, you're not making much at all, but I'm moving through 10 items at once. Right. Because I would rather have the opportunity, the thing people forget about is selling, maximizing profit is where it stops, but don't forget about sourcing and buying better next time. You need liquidity. Yeah, so the person that focused on sales velocity, this is something I really emphasize with my low-end eBay store, but it's something that I'll consider, but not always a rule to live by with my higher-end stuff. Probably not something I do on something rare that I just picked up at all, but there are different situations for that. So the first one is sales velocity. Selling quickly, it may not be the biggest margin, but your mindset is, I'm trying to sell through inventory quickly. I would rather get some profit back immediately, buy better, and then rinse and repeat over and over and over and scale my business that way. Any other approaches with that that you'd consider? Can you give an example? Have you had a card like that where you maybe weren't originally in that philosophy, but you got there in the showcase? No, I'm like that with everything in my showcase that's not super rare. Okay. If it's super rare, I have a different approach to it, and this is something that's really important. We're gonna talk through all these things. At the end of the day, if you're trying to run a business and that's not all of you, but if you are trying to run a business, you should have a mix of all of these things as a philosophy because it's gonna apply in different ways to different things. I tell people all the time, there are plenty of cards sitting on this table that we can both make money on. Because let's be frank, in this business, in this hobby, you're set up at shows, a lot of the people coming to buy from you are hoping that they can buy something from you and then make money when they sell. And that's cool. I got no issue with that at all. If I made money, let's go. But for me, this is, if I can sell a card and make the margin I need to make on it, it's gone. It's gone. I don't care what the full value is. Say the card's worth $1,000, but like you said, I bought it for 500. And my goal is 30%. That means $650. Somebody comes up to me and says, I'll give you $650 for it. Guess how fast that card's gonna go away? Pretty daggone fast. And if they go and sell it for a grand, good for them. I accomplished my goals. That's how I look at sales philosophy. What's the target for me? Now, sometimes I buy a card like that, that I just bought, it just got delivered today as a matter of fact, a Shoei Otani one-of-one game use patch out of diamond icons. It's the gold, it's a three-color patch, it's a gorgeous card. That's a card that margin isn't the goal for me on. I've got a number in my brain that that card needs to sell for, and it won't sell for a penny less than that. It just won't. I'll keep it forever before I sell it for a penny less than what that number is. So sales velocity to me is more about the combination of keeping money moving, which is I think the whole point of it, with the term velocity, like we wanna keep our money flowing. I wanna turn 100 into 500 as fast as possible. And you can't do that if it's sitting in a piece of cardboard. But also utilizing that within the grand scheme of what are my target margins. If you've got a card that's tagged at $1,000 but you make your target margin at $700 and somebody offers you $700, unless you literally just bought the card and it's the first offer you've gotten or received, gotten isn't even a word I don't think, the first offer that you've received, otherwise you should take that offer because you accomplished your goal. Next. Yeah. Next. I think the biggest difference between Gary's philosophy and mine is unless it's a consignment piece for me, I'm never married to a number even on a rare stuff. I'm okay and my litmus test is this, and anybody can tell you, I try to put processes and systems around me. I can drive him nuts with process and systems questions. It's only because I've learned that I am naturally horrible with that and if I don't put some guardrails or systems in place, I'm a struggle. The way I approach that is time tells me, time tells me even on rare ... Now, if it's ultra rare, that's an exception. I mean truly ultra rare, not just valuable. If a card has been in my showcase, had plenty of eyeballs, plenty of people have stopped, talked about it, looked at it, asked on the price, asked if I had room, and I am three months to four months later of consistently being set up, different markets, not the exact same local show every time, the market is telling me something. That's how I approach it. Your price is too high. It could be that I have less show experience than Gary that I begin to make that decision, but that is when I will make that shift. I had a guy that I've done several bulk deals with. He does repacking, selling on his own, and he pays a really fair percentage for those cards where there's room for both of us. He came back for a Joey Votto of five auto, really cool image, but I've had it for like three and a half, four months. Yeah. Going into baseball season, just retired, he's well loved, he's still a very liquid player in the space for his stuff. There's a comp that justifies where I am, probably two, but the most recent ones have been down a little bit. He came back for it. He said, hey, is it worth having a conversation about this card again? Yes, it was. I just told him that. I said, you know what, I don't like to admit it, but I don't want that card to just sit there forever. I would rather at least get my money back on that card. Let's see what number you think. It got me, what, five or 10 bucks a profit on that card. That was the right decision for me to make with my model because I would rather make a better buy with that 75, 80 bucks, whatever I got, for the next card than to sit on that in the hopes that his market picks up when these high-end releases are going to happen every year, multiple times. There's only going to be more of five Joey Votto autos out there. It's just the way it works in this hobby. There are times with the idea of sales velocity, and this is really important too, and it'll go into the next point really well, I think. There are many times in this business where you just have to take the L. You might have overpaid for something, and unless it's a card you're comfortable keeping forever, you might just have to have the hard conversation with yourself, hey, I paid a hundred bucks for this. It's only worth 50 now. If I want to get my money back out of it, it's never happening. Happened to me with a couple of Jaden Daniels cards this year. I paid a good percentage, I thought, on cards, but it was as they were at their peak, not on their way up, and they didn't sell within a week. And guess what? They were literally worth half to 40% of what I paid for them. And finally, I just had to go, okay, I don't want to hold these cards until next year, and hope I just need to take the L. And I took a 50% loss on both cards, but at least I got some of that money back to try to start the process over again. And you have to look at when you're taking a loss, consider what tier of value the card is that you're taking a loss on. So that one would be a good example. If it's a $100 card, but now it's worth 50. That price point- It was a $300 card. That's different. If it's a card that's like $100 and then it's worth 50, for example, that's a price point by quickly getting that $50 out because you're not going to get the $100. We're establishing that that is true, that you're probably not going to get $100 out of it. You could get $50 today. I would give a guess that it would not be too hard to find a $75 card for $50 at a show. We do it all the time. If you're willing to work and do a little bit of research at tables, you could probably do that. That price point also is a more liquid price point because it's a more accessible price point for collectors. So me taking a step backwards and taking $50 to buy a $75 card that gets me into a $100 card, I'll probably be able to upcycle that sale to $150 within two months, maybe within a week if you buy the right kind of stuff. Now when we're talking about the $500, you get up to over $300, $500. Now when you're taking a loss, it's like it's a little more work to claw back, right? It hurts. It's still the reality. The chances of those two cards that I'm talking about ever reaching what they were is slim to none because they weren't numbered. They aren't short prints. It was just a really hot player and they were PSA 10 slaps that were going up. They were Jaden Daniels slaps. That leads into another type of sales philosophy that I think maybe in my opinion is the worst philosophy that you can have as a seller of cards for lots of reasons. The only way that this is a viable philosophy is if all you have is one of ones and unbelievably rare stuff. It's literally the only way that this is viable. But we all know these dealers. We all know these sellers, even if they're not dealers, sellers that you know on Facebook or in your real life that collect and they say they want to sell something. That's the guys who always hold out for the highest possible price. There's 10 comps on a card and one of those comps is $1,000 and the other nine are six to 800 bucks. They want 1,000 bucks. They're not taking a penny less than 1,000 bucks and if you don't like it, tough. Guess what? Those sellers are going to have lots and lots of cards and very little cash. That's just how it is. I've noticed too, and this is not like it's easy for us to be really gripey and pointing fingers and this and that. There's another segment of dealers. There's the dealer you talked about, especially the higher end. We've seen them. They're kind of grumpy. They're always mad because nobody will buy their stuff for a reason. But then you also have a new wave of collectors that are setting up at shows now. I think that we have a decent amount of our TikTok audience for sure. We have a lot of new people into the hobby. They're starting to set up at shows. They're starting to build out a business. They fall in prey to the same thing. It's with good intention though. They've purchased ultra modern because that's what they know. So when the new rookie comes out, they buy their base PSA 10. Six months later, it still hasn't sold because they're holding out for the highest comp, not realizing that every one of these new products softens. The market on the previous products. Yes. And so when it drops, you have a window of time. If you're not priced competitively and it's six months later and you think it's ... Especially if it's not a rookie. You're exceptions, right? But a lot of times you'll have stuff that's like graded up to a $50 to $100 card and they're not tracking the market recently and they're holding out for a highest that may never happen. Well, and what I see is that the folks who fall into this category as their main philosophy tend to fall into two camps and it's not the big wide open middle they don't exist in. They either have really high end stuff, maybe not even super rare, but really high end stuff. Maybe it's like a case full of downtowns or whatever it is. Or and these are the ones that really make my brain explode. They don't even have showcases, which again, that's not shade. When I first started, I didn't have showcases. It's okay to not have showcases. But they've got a table full of top loaded retail mosaic and prism color that are all priced at $8 to $10 and they're dollar cards, $2 cards. They were $8 to $10 cards three days after release when they first found this score at Walmart and priced it. But they've never adjusted and you say, hey, I'd buy 50 of these if we were at a couple bucks a piece, which is what their market is. Oh, I can't, I can't, no, I can't do that. They're $8, man, or $3 for $20. Well, I think the reason that that happens a lot is somewhere along the way, people selling cards got this mindset, some newer to the hobby, especially that, well, I'm in it for this much. And they're talking about what they got out of a box that they opened. That's not how it's ever going to work for you. No, I love it when people are like, well, this box costs $500, I don't care. Sounds like you bought a bad box. Yeah, I don't know. That's nothing. Well, I paid $100 for it. Yeah, you overpaid. That's not my problem. Nothing personal. But again, that goes back to holding out. What you paid means absolutely nothing. Now, what is a situation, can you think of a card that you have or have had, I guess the Shohei is probably a good example, that is a holdout for the highest. Yeah, there are, if it's super, super rare, if I can legitimately look at somebody and say, good luck finding another one of these, especially if it's not a one-of-one, when it's a one-of-one, it's legitimately like, whatever. But I've almost always have at least one or two, if not five or six cards in my showcase that I can legitimately look at people and go, have you ever even seen this card before? Well, this one sale from 2017, yeah, I don't care. This is, nope, don't care. I would even assume that even in those cards, in the back of your mind, you have thought through that margin. Oh, there's a number. Yeah. So it may be a higher markup than some, but I've never seen you actually have a unique, even big card where you are completely firm. I've never seen that where you're like, doesn't matter, firm, not even going to entertain anything. I'll be firm for a week or two, maybe three. But after that, it's like, okay, let's see where we're at. Because if you want those unique cards, you're paying up and you literally are testing the market. When people say they want to set the comp, the only way you can set the comp is to have something that hasn't been sold and sell it. Now the only way it's going to make an aggregate is if you do that on eBay, Golden or whatever, but setting the market means you're going to take feelers and they're not all going to be the ones you want. Like I have a couple of cards right now that Joe Burrow RPA and the Buckeye Uni, I've been holding out on that. I've had some offers. People want to chase down on that. Sure they do. But everybody knows that it's a pretty unique of 15 RPA with the Buckeye Uni. First on print too, right? Yes. Yeah. So I mean, it's one where I'm probably reaching a little bit, but I'm probably getting a month or two away once Buckeye season starts up. If I don't see a little more traction with that, it may be time to move that number a little bit. So holding out for highest, it's an option, but it is commonly interchanged with the reality that is. I'm asking for more than this card is worth. Correct. It is an option for you. And there are people that do this and have so much unique stuff that they get away with it. Yeah. Really high end vintage stuff. They can do that all day long. But it's going to take them longer to move stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Unless they know who they, unless you have, I've got a friend before we move on to the next one who that's the world he lives in, but he also has probably eight or 10 direct customers that don't go to shows that are multi hundred millionaires who, when he gets nice stuff, they have the expectation that he's reaching out to them and saying, Hey, I just got this. Do you want it before I put it in my showcases? Yeah. So if you've got that kind of a network, go nuts. The next one is one that is the terrifying game to me. It's a game that I don't play. It's the most popular approach that we're hearing from content creator dealers right now. I won't play this game. And it's what a lot of you have learned the hobby and believe things to be. And that is super liquid with thin margins. Nope. Now the chances are the stuff that you like that's brand new, you're buying from these people. Um, their cases are loaded with case hits and downtown's ultra modern short print. Almost everything will be slabbed out. Um, they have a lot of inventory. And the reason for that is if you're only going to make five to 10% on a transaction, you have to have a lot of it. Yeah. So that model we talked about last week where it's a, if you want to pull a thousand bucks over to pay yourself a week, you're talking about before any expenses at all, you need at least 10 grand to sell at a show or in a week. That's at a 10% margin. A lot of these guys are running at five. So there is this idea. It's kind of like flexing. Like I have all these cars, I have all the best stuff, I have all that. But if you purchase at 90 and you have to land at 95% of comp and don't, before you get started, like I know everybody pays a hundred percent. You may know one and it may have happened a couple of times, but they're going to find the lower comp and they're going to get their hundred percent to you based off of a lower comp. Yes. If you haven't figured that out yet. Don't buy any more case hits. Right. Like we're like, no, it's 90%. You had 400 on this downtown. I'm just saying it looks like it's 350 and you agreed to me. So now I'm offering you, you know, 315 on this, you know, and so that's how it happens. But this super thin margin, high volume, it can work and it does work, but it is not for people that don't have a lot of cash to throw at it and don't have or have the opportunity to develop a deepened relationship with consistent repack buyers every week. And also who are not risk averse because that, I've said this a hundred times on this pod and if you've met me in person and had any kind of in-depth conversation about this business with me, I'm sure the subject has come up. You are one bad comp away from getting kicked in the teeth. You go spend 15 grand this week on a bunch of downtowns and kabooms and two of the big ones, all of a sudden have a 10% drop over the course of the week. You might break even on the whole lot. I just, that's not a game I'm interested in playing at all. Now having said that, give me an example of a type of card that you would pay up for. So I've seen you up to 80. You say you never go over 80. Give me an example of something you would pay 85% for. In this category? It doesn't exist. No, no. I'm just saying, what's an example of a liquid card that, it doesn't have to be case hits. You're thinking just that. No, no, no. I'm not thinking just case hits. Like a graded Jordan rookie? Would you go to 85% on that? No. Really? No. What would be an example of something that feels safe enough for you to do 85% that you think you're going to get? It's got to be something of five or less, and it's got to be the really right names. What would it need to be worth for that to be worth the risk? Five grand plus. Okay. So you're... And I need to see consistent value there. It's not going to be an ultra modern... People are going to lose their mind over that. That's fine. I don't care. Listen, I run my business the way I run my business, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news. No, you don't. The way I run my business freaking works. It's worked for many years, and it pays me a very solid full-time salary. So I don't care if you don't like how I run my business. I don't lie to people. I'm transparent with customers. I tell them exactly what I'm going to tag there. You're very defensive right now. Well, I just... When you say that people are going to lose their minds, I don't understand the thought process that goes into somebody losing their minds over that. There are a lot of people that believe they would pay up for 85% and 15% margin on a card that's worth 500 bucks isn't bad. Do you think you're getting 100%? I'm just... I'm letting you know... Do you think you're getting 100% when you sell it? Because I have a newsflash for you. You aren't. If you get 100%, you're getting it on eBay, and guess what you're going to get in your pocket when it's all said and done? About 85%. You're not getting 100%. So when you tell me that you pay 85% for X, Y, Z, okay. You just changed money. You just... You said, here, I'm going to give you my 10 grand, and in a few weeks somebody's going to give me back 10 grand, and I have nothing to show for it. It's dumb. Well, there are people that play that game, and they're like, hey, I need to make 500 bucks at this show, and they treat it almost as if their money is based off of their time with those thin margins, and if I move enough downtowns, then I put 500 bucks. And you can. See, that's the thing. You can. We want to point something out. Just because we're saying we don't like doing it that way doesn't mean people aren't doing that. No, they do. There are people making a lot of money doing that. They may have 300 grand in the showcase. Correct. The thinner your margins, the more cash you need in order to make actual livable money. Ask those people what percent they're paying for whatnot inventory, because that number will look a little different than 85, 90% on that. So super thin margins, but very liquid cards is another sales philosophy. Here's the advantage of that. Sourcing will be easier if you're willing to pay up. That's about it, and you will probably have things in your showcase or in your store or whatever that people want to see. So there's some advantages. You will also have a lot of money moving your way because you will have repack buyers that if you consistently put that stuff out there, would be interested in buying it. You're going to be in a tug of war over margins and comps nonstop, so you really have to know your stuff. We know some people that run thinner margins than we would, and they do okay with it, but it sure makes us nervous. Oh, it terrifies me. Especially thinking of scaling it. Okay. Then we have this other category, which we've kind of already touched on, super rare items, but large margins. That's where I like to live. That's where I like to live. You like to live there, but I wouldn't say that that's not the majority of your sales. No, no. It's not the majority of my sales, but it's the stuff I look for when people bring that stuff up to the table. That's the stuff I try to buy whenever I can. I try to have a few of those in each showcase to slow things down. So like the LeBron Jambalaya, that's one of those. The Samberg Platinum Medallion, rare, hard to find. The Burrow RPA. When that stuff sells, it tends to sell in bunches too. I just picked up a really awesome, filthy Triple Threads Alonzo one-on-one patch. That's one that, there'll be lower offers on that, but that's one I'm okay hanging onto it for a little while. He's actually done a little better for his average and some of his other numbers lately, so that's an example of that. But there are those, you're taking a risk, you're paying for something without as much data. If it's super rare, it probably doesn't have a lot of comps. That's the trade-off. For some of you, you would rather hedge your bets by having 10 data points of sales. Over the last three years, it's just sold 10 times, or maybe it's five. But if you're going to start to play in this pool of the super rare stuff with larger margins, you're going to be taking more risks. You're going to be buying stuff that doesn't have a comp since 2017, 2018. Sometimes that plays to your advantage. Or it's never had a comp. Or never. I've got a few of those. They can be harder to sell until the collector sees the card they were looking for. Now, I would really, really encourage you, with stuff like this, there are a few sets that you can go, hey, it's the right set, it's the right rarity. But you better have the right player for it if you're not deeply involved in that world. There's some 90s inserts that are ... Precious Metal Gem, just about anybody. It's going to sell for you, right? But if you're going to pay up for something without much data, make sure that it's a player that has at least sold in the last few years, period. The positive to that philosophy is you can oftentimes get things at a much higher margin. When I'm buying stuff like that, I'm usually trying to double my money at a minimum. You're taking a risk. Yes. It's not out there. I tell people, if I'm going to park money in this card, it might sit in my showcase for a year. That's money that I've lost opportunity cost with, so I have to take that into account when I'm buying it. Another thing that I love that happens with those types of cards is they often become good trade bait. Oh, yeah. And they're trading off of that projected value that hasn't been realized yet, and you're able to get inventory cash, and now you've really taken that leap up, and you've already done some resourcing, which is awesome too. All right, this next one, what did I ... I had a title for it, but I wanted to change it. Yeah. Timing the market. Yeah, timing the market, yeah. There's a sales philosophy for some people where they buy in the off season, hold for in season for certain players. They maybe buy a little bit more of the prospecting type of stuff, maybe a little bit more Bowman. I think of this more of a football thing. I think of people, when I think of this philosophy, I think of people that are buying quarterbacks in March and holding them until the end of July. I think people do it with baseball too. Yeah, they do, but you do it really with any sport. You buy it in the off season, and then you hold it until the season. The big thing is, is you just got to buy the right names. You can't just buy anybody. Right. Yeah. You can't be just whatever. Yeah. The trade off with that is, you're going to need to be a little bit more aggressive on your margin. You're parking money. Because the easy thing to trick yourself into believing is, yeah, I'm paying 85%, but this card's going to be worth blah, blah, blah. That puts me into the 70, 75%. All you need to do is pay attention to what happens in the NFL, the drama, the trades, the injuries. Look at the sure, no doubt winners that were projected over the last 10 years, and you'll find out a very slim portion of those ever made anything of their careers or their value in the hobby. There are exceptions that prove every rule. I'm not going to issue this as a pure blanket statement, but I am going to say it's a pretty good rule of thumb. If you're paying 85% on something that you're putting in a box and holding for three months, you're going to lose in the long run. You're parking money at more than I pay for anything, and then just leaving that money where it can do nothing for you for multiple months and hoping. That's a terrible, terrible way to approach things. The alternative to that is, I have two cards right now I can think of that are in my showcase that are this category. It's not that I didn't buy them at the right percentage. I bought them at a percentage of current value. However, I've stickered them where it's like, I really think this card is probably going to hit this number in the next two months as we're finishing up camps and heading into preseason. It's a Herbert, the Mystique Auto to 25 of his rookie year, and then that Jamar Chase Splash jersey number to 25 rookie. Both cards that have comps where I am, but then they have off-season comps that are lower, I'm willing to understand that I may ... That's the tension points. This is a sales velocity thing. I have plenty of people interested in these cards for maybe 20% less than I have on the sticker, but I have a belief that based off of what I've seen with these athletes, Herbert's a weird one right now. Because it's weird, it doesn't completely add up to me. I do think he will get a little bit of a bump, but some people don't. I think I will see that realized value in the next couple of months. We're right on the edge of the excitement around football. If we get through training camp, we go into preseason and nothing has changed, it is time for me to realize that the value on these cards is here and it is not going there. Unless I want to wait for a Super Bowl or playoff run, which is a game you don't want to play. Look at the people that ran deep in the playoffs and didn't win the Super Bowl over the last few years. If you're going to play this game, my recommendation would be this. Don't play this game with a large majority of your bankroll. No. If you're going to play this game, say, okay, I'm willing to have 20% of my inventory that falls into this category. My inventory budget for this month is $20,000, so I can spend $4,000 on this stuff. You better buy it right. You better buy it at a margin that assumes that it's not going to go up. Buy it understanding that it's going to create that tension. We talked about this in a video a couple months ago. If I walk up to your table and there's a $100 card and I look across and all your cards are way over comps, that's a problem. We're not saying that you go over comps with everything. We're saying if you have a range of comps, especially with football, you see this with the offseason, and you are pricing at in-season, somebody's playing really well comps and now we're in the offseason and it's way less, don't expect people to be all over that number for you. That's what we're saying. Expect there to be tension there. I think most people who play this game, those cards don't hit their showcase until July or August. They don't put them out. They just stick them in a box somewhere. I've got some friends that have 30, 35 grand worth of football stuff that will not hit their showcases until the end of July because they don't want to have to have that conversation 10 times. I guess it just doesn't bother me as much, but I'm really comfortable in that setting. Oh, for sure. I'll be like, oh, well, what are you thinking? Oh, you want to offer an offer? Yeah, shoot me an offer. It's been here for a couple months. I think it's going to pick up in season, but I could be wrong. Or maybe you have something out and somebody will realize that value with a cash in trade. Dealers miss out on that a lot because they hear trade and they're like, I'm going to waste time. Somebody's going to show me a bunch of junk. It's been really good to me. As long as you have some philosophies that you approach trading with, I think it's fine. I tell people, when people ask if I trade, I say, yep. Before I dive into anything else, I say, here's how I trade. I will give you 100% of comp value for your cards against my stickers. If we're going to negotiate my stickers, we're going to negotiate your cards. But if we're good at that 100% against 100% of my sticker, awesome. And I work out a lot of trades that way. And I tell people, when I'm trading for somebody, somebody's like, oh, I love this card. It's $1,200. If I'm trading, I'm going to want some cash and maybe two or three cards. I don't want 75 of your $20 cards. Now, when you do a partial, like whenever you do a trade and you're buying something and you're adding cash, so they want this card, but you're going to add cash to them. Do you ask for a margin on the cash side of it? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely, I do. Yep. All right. And then the last one, which still gets a lot of excitement, people telling you that they're really good at this. There are some people really good at it. Chances are you are not one of them, but you could be, but probably not. The live by the slab, die by the slab, where people's inventory rests on what they gem out. They're constantly grading. There are very successful people who have done this at large scales, sent off hundreds, if not thousands of cards. They know what they're doing, pre-grading. They have the bankroll to leave stuff in PSA of $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $50,000 worth of cards. Way more than that, if we're being honest, for three, four months at a time before they ever get them back. Yep. But there are dealers whose sales philosophy is, I want to get more margin, so I'm going to buy at a margin clean, and I'm only buying stuff I think I can send off and grade. You won't see a raw card on their table. No. You'll see nothing but graded cards. The game of buying raw, grading to maximize profit, therefore you can pay really up on the raw, because you're going to double up when you get your tens, you better have a 80% gem rate, and I don't know anybody that has that right now. Not right now. No. I know people who used to. I used to be one of them. I never spent an extra $2.99 to clean the card. Again, it's one of those things. This can all be boiled down to this. If you're going to be running this as a business, like we do, you need to have a variety of these philosophies across your inventory that's going to enable you to have the most flexibility with your business. Putting all your eggs in any one basket is a dangerous game to play unless you don't care about the consequences. That means this isn't a business for you. If it's not a business for you, listen. Try whatever you want. Do whatever you want to do. I don't care. We'll answer whatever questions you have. Also, if it is a business, do whatever you want. It's your business. Try it. We're telling you from experience that having a good mix of philosophies that apply to different segments of your inventory is going to enable you to have the best opportunity for long-term success. I can't guarantee you that if you jump into this business that you're going to be able to pay yourself a salary and still be successful for you. What I can do is equip you with the knowledge and experience that we have and give you the best recommendations that we can give you based on what we see in our day-to-day lives running this as a business that if you apply those things will give you a better chance. at being successful. So when you listen through this, the thing I would say as I'm wrapping up on my end with it is we have a tendency to pick a model that's working for us and in this space we put all the eggs in one basket. And especially with the sales philosophy, because if you picked just sales velocity and you don't think there's ever a card that you should hold out for, you're missing out on profits. If you pick the traditional approach where we just buy stuff that we think will sell, but we're not gonna go 85% on anything, we probably miss out on the latest, greatest, hottest thing that just opened a lot of times because that's what people are gonna demand as soon as the product drops. What we do try to focus on is mitigating risk. That's key. That is why, so when we talk about a model that's dependent on grading, why would I introduce the risk of someone else's subjective view on the card that can make or break my business model? Correct. So I'm adding a risk in there. If I only did eBay, why would I take the risk when we first started the video on the pod, I made a video, eBay Standard Envelope Sucks. I was going through hell with eBay and their shipping. I was doing everything right on my end, they were failing on shipping and my metrics were getting hit and that was the day I decided I'm never gonna just have one thing and one way in this space again. Why would I allow myself to enter into a relationship with eBay only and if something happens with eBay out of my control, I'm done, the business is over. That's the key. When somebody else has control over your success and you're putting yourself in that position voluntarily. Right. Not ideal. And it's confusing to people too. We have split this out. I do shows, I do eBay, and we have the podcast business and whatnot. Those are three separate approaches, three different inventories, three different sales philosophies. And we're saying, look through these, find what works for you, mix and match, try new things, but be aware of the risks and find what's gonna work best for you. I may decide in a year from now that while Gary likes to target a certain margin on X type of cards, I have the bankroll now where I just wanna go super liquid and I'll pay 80% on everything and I just, I'm dropping five figures a week on inventory. Who knows? Maybe that model looks different at that point. Maybe I have a relationship with a repacker where I can constantly offload that at 90 to 95%. At the time right now though, it's worth considering the risks, the different ways we can do it, and considering a few different ways to sell. So if you're just doing eBay, I'd encourage you, pick a show, do one show and see how it goes. If you've only done shows, consider whatnot or selling on a different platform or marketplace or like there's a, the biggest hustle I've heard about, I don't know if I even talked to you, people that are just taking bulk and doing team packs and miscellaneous packs are like five or 10 bucks, but they're literally taking the monster boxes they got for $10 that have nothing in them and then just mixing in 20 to 50 different cards, they market it as a nostalgic repack and they're selling off hundreds of these a week. It blows my mind that people pay for that, but evidently they do. Yeah, they will. There's different ways to approach it. Consider what you're doing, consider the risks involved, and then maybe try applying one of these philosophies. Is there any one of these that you see that you could do a little bit better job of trying out? Asking Gary where he has room for improvement is his favorite question. No, I have, I guess my answer would be I have played all of these games. You play all of them from time to time, right? Yeah, and I have found the ones that work really well for me and I have found the ones where the risk profile is higher than I'm comfortable with, so I avoid those. If I had to say where I need to improve, it is at times holding out for the highest, which is ironic because my eBay store and a lot of what I do is all about sales velocity, but when we start creeping up, I think there's a mental hurdle for me. Over like 350 bucks on a card, I'm holding out, which is funny because the more valuable a card is, a slimmer margin is still a decent chunk of change, but for me, I think there's either an emotional attachment or I'm starting to buy inventory that I enjoy a little bit more, and so I could do a better job of maybe holding out a little bit longer. You've seen it happen where it's like the show's dead and I'm like, who wants a deal? Who has a rack on, who's got a grand? They want to spend it because I'm about to hook you up because I'm not going to waste my time at a show that's slow. I want to generate some income or bring in a lot of inventory, so when that doesn't happen. So I could do a better job of trying to find that price point on stuff that, you know, I can hang on a little bit longer, or bro, that one comp is not the average. No, yeah, exactly. All right, low in liquid. I've been so excited about this. I'm so excited because I wanted to do this, but it wasn't liquid, and it's just in the last month and a half really picked up for me. I bought a whole box of this and ripped it because I was so excited. You were, I remember. I did the math on the singles and it's one of the few products where it's like, hey, I got it at a price where, as I sell through this inventory, I'll come out way ahead. It is 1994 Fleer Ultra Beavis and Butthead. Craziest stuff ever. Let me see if I can get in with it. Remember? Yeah, I remember. Come on, hell yeah. Oh, we got to keep that one in. Just give yourself a shot. Well, I got stuck. My shirt got stuck on the hat. It's all coming apart. Oh, I love it. 94 Fleer Ultra Beavis and Butthead. Now, these cards are really dumb. I can't even show you all of them because they were going after 90s politically incorrect on a lot of this stuff. Which is a, yeah. So that was a little different for Gen X. Can't make it now. But what I really would like to highlight in this set is, now, a lot of these go for three to five bucks because they're just goofy and weird and they have a cult following. You demand a little bit more. They were slow sellers for me at first, but now they've picked up. But the big parallel in this set, which Gary's going to get to try. I'm not looking forward to this. They have parallels called sniffination. All right? Sniffination. And it is a scratch and sniff for Beavis and Butthead. So I'm going to find one. We're going to give it a scratch here. Now, these have, okay. So we've got Friday Night Wieners, 99 cents. Beavis and Butthead clean the house. Ooh, this is cool. This is chemicals are cool. It's a scratch and sniff for green fumes. I'm going to hold that one out. Citizens Butthead. But the one I really wanted to have him try is Art Offices, which is both of them in a stall. Now, this is actively for sale, so I'm going to rub and not scratch this, but just get it warmed up a little bit. Now, I want you to take, oh. I want you to take a nice big rip of this card. All right? Sniffination, Art Offices. I have smelled all of these. Don't ask. You ready? I don't think so. Oh, no. Oh, it's so bad. No, I don't want to do it again. And this is the last one. Chemicals are cool. This will definitely- Oh, that was awful. This will definitely burn through that one. Chemicals are cool. Oh. Nope. So that's, it's so bad. Oh my God. Don't do that ever again. Put it back in the plastic. Smells like a hot tub. I almost said words that will get clipped on YouTube. It stinks so bad. Wow. Well done, Fleer Ultra. Well done. Wow, those are 30-year-old cards and they still smell that way. That can't be safe. Still liquid. Low in liquid. 94 Fleer Ultra. I'm head-butting microphones. I can't see. Our pet's heads are falling off. Gary can't see, but it is time for the call-up. Bring it home, Gary. Gosh, I'm gonna try, but I am not in a good place right now. You know, there's another one. No, leave that in the plastic, sir. Wow. I gotta collect my thoughts for a second. I was ready for the call-up and then my stomach just tried to climb out of my body after you threw that under my nose. Did you like find yourself in a public bathroom? It was awful. Like rest stop, 90s, not clean. It's bad. It's real bad. I don't like it. Let's talk about something I do like. Minor league baseball and prospecting. This week on The Lookout. You called it the call-up. What are we doing here? This week on The Lookout. Why'd you say the call-up? I don't know. You typed it in there. Players getting called up. I guess. The Lookout, sorry. Is Houston Astros prospect Bryce Matthews. He is in AAA right now. Bryce Matthews was the Astros' first-round pick in 2023. He had a really good year last year, climbed in his first pro year, climbed all the way to AAA for a few games at the end of the year. He's been in AAA all year this year. In the 2025 season so far, Bryce Matthews is hitting .275 with a .396 OBP and slugging at a .483 clip. That's an .879 OPS. Very much in line with his career numbers, which is basically the equivalent of one full major league season. He's played 169 games. .256, .384, .455 for an .839 OPS. So far this year, he's hit nine home runs. He's stolen 19 bases, and on those career numbers, it's 28 home runs and 69 stolen bases. So there's a really intriguing power-speed profile here. Few things to mitigate that for him that you want to be just cognizant of. Dude strikes out a lot. Right around a 30% clip. That's what Ellie was doing. Here's what mitigates that. He also walks at like a 16, 17% clip, hence the 150-point difference between his batting averages and on-base percentage. So he's getting on base, and when he gets on base, he's dynamic on the base paths, and the power profile is there. One of the best athletes in minor league baseball. He was an All-State quarterback in high school, played his college baseball at Nebraska. Really, really great athlete, so there's gonna always be the opportunity for him to make tweaks and changes to what he does that stick and hold and are repeatable. I think that that will come into play when he gets to the big league club. Houston has a reputation for not doing a great job developing hitting prospects, so the fact that he's doing what he's doing in an org that doesn't have the best hitting track record for their prospects is a little bit eye-opening as well. He's gonna get called up at some point this year. He was a guy who, at the beginning of the year for me, was on my list of guys that is coming up at some point this year. I think once the All-Star break passes, Bryce Matthews is gonna be a rotational outfielder for the Astros. I'm a little surprised he hasn't gotten called up already because Jordan Alvarez has been on the shelf for a minute now, and while Jordan is not a positive player in the field, he was getting everyday reps in the outfield, not just DH-ing, so Bryce Matthews' cards are in 2023 Bowman Draft, still reasonably affordable. I would not go nuts and buy big color autos, but his base autos, I think you're gonna see that call-up spike sometime in the next month or so, and it would not be a bad play at all. Yeah. All right, before we wrap up, one quick reminder. We will be live on WhatNot 7 p.m. tonight, Thursday, Eastern Standard Time. We are giving away a whole case, a whole case of Juicebox Slabs over the next five weeks as buyer's giveaways. You buy a $1 card, that's what it auctions for, you are qualified to win the slab. We're gonna try to have a little fun with it, so we'll sort them out where there's 10 from each of the case breaks. If you wanna see what's in the case that we'll be giving away, there will be a link to the video where we did a product review down below. The whole case. Be sure to check that out. You'll see every single card in the case and our two cents on this repack product. This has been the Ball Card Show, The Esports Podcast. For The Esports Collector. Bye now. Peace. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪