Season 5 Ep 31 Buying....What Is Fair?

Hello, and welcome to the Ball Card Show, the eSports podcast for the eSports Collector. I'm Jason Otero. I'm Gary Lomaster. And this is season five, episode 31. We've been talking a lot about buying and we're going to keep that a big part of the conversation. Yep. I mean, if this is what you are trying to do, either for a living or for a substantial source of income, if you haven't figured it out yet, buying is the hardest part. The selling is pretty much the easy part. So if you were sent here, I know that there have been some people doing some content around this series. If this is your first time hopping on the podcast, welcome. Thank you for being here. Be sure to like, follow, subscribe. If you want to know what's going on, we are on all the socials, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what is important to know is we started a conversation around buying last week. And if this is where you're jumping in, I really recommend that you hop back to the first week of this. The thumbnail just says buying right question mark. So how do we know we're buying? We asked a bunch of questions. We're going to jump into the weeds, give some more strategies. Yeah. I think that's the biggest thing. Last week was the big overview. This week, we're going to get into the nitty gritty of what that looks like day to day. Yep. And then I believe next week will be when we start talking about selling platforms, how we do some numbers when we're buying to make sure that we're right. But we'll talk about our margins. We'll just flat out say it. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. I'm not scared of it. There's nothing to be scared of or ashamed of. I think sometimes people get weird. They're like, oh, if you let people know you're making too much money, then no. Clever Cuban does his recap of his business every week. Shout out by the way, if you don't follow his stuff, really good content for sports car business. But he just did a thing where he broke three boxes of the Bob Ross baseball. Yeah. And he told people what he was in it for. And then what they, I think what they did was they broke every box live on whatnot and auctioned off each individual card. Immediately. Immediately. Yeah. And he did not make any bones about it. He was in that stuff for about $1,500 and after all of his fees, he made $6,800. Wow. That's awesome. Good for him. Nobody should be upset about that, that he tripled more than almost quadrupled his money. It's a really smart model when you think about it because if you're going to rip hobby and you're doing it as inventory, which a lot of people think that they should break for inventory, buy blacks for inventory for singles. And we say, no, no, no, no, don't do that. But if you were to one, work your butt off to have a nice following correct to be trustworthy. Yeah. Cause that doesn't happen without those two things. Sell it as soon as the product drops, the moment you open it and pick products that are a little bit interesting where people are like, this is weird. These could get super collectible or not, but I want to take a chance. Well, that's the key right there too. If you're going to do what he did, make sure you got the right set. Have you seen the Ellie Bob Ross? So he has a Bob Ross hairdo. Oh, that's awesome. But he's built like Slenderman and then you have, then you have trees all around. It's kind of creepy. Hey, in editing, pull up an image and throw it on there. You'll see it. It's wild. It's, I kind of want it, but I know it's way more than I'm willing to pay for a car. Probably. Yeah. So, um, let's give a recap. Uh, last week we were set up at Xenia. We didn't melt for the first time in there in like three months. Yeah. Uh, two reasons for that. One, the temperatures were a lot better. We had a nice breeze going through the building we were in and two, hardly anyone came to the show. It was weird. It was. And you know what? It wasn't just Xenia. I talked to several other people that were at different shows around the country. There was another show about 50 miles from Xenia. It was slow traffic around the country. Well, and then, um, I talked to a couple other people in other States and the traffic was, it was a really nice fall weekend and traffic was just a little bit slower. It also didn't do it. We're about to head out. Well, culture collision was last weekend. Collect a con was last weekend. So there were two really big shows and even like culture. Uh, well that's your collision. I think that's a, the, the collective con is Jeff Wilson's biggest show now. It may be, but I know that culture collision. Um, I heard Trish talking about it and he was like, I'm not going back. It was literally just flippers trying to walk around the show and buy. So yeah, wasn't worth it. It's a crowded space. Like at some point, at some point there's only so many shows that can be sustained at one time. The back to school window in almost every industry is hit. And that's been going on for a long time, but it was a lighter traffic show. We still had plenty of people walk up with really cool stuff. I'm trying to think of my favorite buy. Oh, my favorite buy was right as I was tearing down about two cards. The TJ watt to five and the Letterman Marshawn rookie auto to 25. This was one of those shows. None higher. Such a cool card. This is one of those shows where you had the cool stuff for the most part. It's been, it's been in your direction for about the last three or four weeks. Yeah. So, and I've been whining, so it was time, which means it'll be, it'll be mine as well. Is that how you look at that? Well, I just assume. So this week we will be at Cincinnati at East gate. Let's go. Let's go. You want me to do the rundown? Yeah. Do the run. All right. Just so we can clip this up. I'll start it over. A lot of shows coming up really quickly for you to come hang out with us, buy cards from us or just shop around. Here's what we got. We've got East gate this weekend in Cincinnati. Next weekend, the 27th will be in Newark at Don Jones show the 28th card fest in Grove city, a B sports car collector to say people that put on ship. You want a great show the following week. I'm really excited about this Midwest monster, Midwest monster, Indianapolis, a J and J put that together. 450 tables. If you're in the Midwest and you said you want to pop in and say, Hey, but Ohio is a bit of a drive. This is probably the right one for that. Yep. Week after that, two shows again, we have, what would that be? Xenia? And then I'm down in Lucasville. Yep. We have a show down there as well. We'll name it that midway madness. So we got fairgrounds. Yeah, we got monsters. We got madness. We got it all. That's the next several weeks. Yep. Come see us. Come say, Hey, it's a lot of fun when folks come up to us at shows and say, hi, we'd love to meet you guys. Yep. A quick reminder before we jump into more stuff, since it's been an infomercial for the first six minutes. Anyway, we are live every Thursday night, 6 PM Eastern on whatnot. The shows have been a blast. Thank you all for continued support financially and emotionally. Yes. Some weeks the emotional support is more important. This week, Gary is, well, you won't see this. Gary will have just finished a solo show. I am going to a concert with my son. So yep. And I, at first concert ever where I was offered, my wife's like, you want me to buy you a, some, some earplugs. And I said, yeah, I think we're there. I turned 40 next month. I think we're at that spot. 21 pilots, right? Yeah. It'll be a great show. All right. Columbus natives. All right. Let's jump into it. Hobby news. This is something that dropped last week. I think it's still worth the discussion. Yeah. Fanatics fest decides that the festival next year will take place. Is it one week before the national two weeks before the national, but I mean, it's still tight, tight window. They want to capitalize off of world cup, um, the traffic in Newark. Uh, there'll be a lot of people there for sure. Uh, but now we have this situation where as the hobby is booming, shows are taking off. These larger shows you would think would make sense to kind of spread out. Yeah. Uh, they're clustered up. You've got national fanatics fest, Dallas, the West coast card show fanatics fest and Dallas are the same dates. Yeah. Like one of the things that I've heard little conspiracy theories is that, you know, fanatics fest wants to take over and eliminate that doesn't make sense for fanatics. It really does. Or fanatics fest. It's not a traditional card show. It's just not, it's not trying to be that, but this year it's going to be really interesting because when you stop and think about it, most of the big dealers and big shops that set up at the national fanatics puts a lot of pressure on them to be at fanatics fest as well. Like you don't, like I've heard stories of you want your allocations. Like, yeah. So there's a lot of pressure to be there. Your tables are five grand and yeah. So, and you got to pay Porter's 500 bucks to carry yourself and you're not allowed to carry it in yourself. Rumor has it this last year, whoever got a table rate, they set it up where people were the first year it was rough because they weren't making as much. But I guess this last year they made a ton of money. But it also was like, you're asking dealers who do that and the national, which is most of your big folks, you're asking them to outlay between the two, what 30 K over a two week period just to be there. Well, that's a lot of, of asking them. Most of those dealers also do Dallas. So Dallas is going to be a little bit bare. And then the week before Dallas is a West coast. Uh, you're, you're talking about if you're a national level dealer doing all these large shows, you're talking about a month where you're probably outlaying 50 to 60 K just to be set up and hotels and everything else. Well, while we're talking about cash moving around, yeah. The inventory nightmare, if you're selling, oh yeah, that's like, we know dealers, LCS owners that they're building out that inventory all year long and that pressure for them to be there. Now I'm sure with fanatics, I'm sure has some LCS owners or relationships where they're like, we want you to be there. And others were that we want you to be set up, but it's like crunch time for a lot of them, especially the smaller size shops that would be doing that. But buying enough inventory, let's say that you, you're planning on fanatics fest, the national and the West coast card show. Yeah. And you're somebody that's typically like an eight table or a square booth, like 30 to 35 K maybe 40 in outlay. Sure. But how much inventory do you need for those three shows? Let's say you're running a 30% margin, which is a strong margin to average, but let's say you're doing that. Well, in fanatics fest and national, you can sticker probably 110, 120%. So that changes. Yeah. Yeah. But let's say you're running a 30% margin just to cover your costs. Let's say your costs between all three of those shows, we'll go on the low end and say it's 30 K just to cover your costs. You got to do a hundred grand in sales before you make a dime. And actually more than that, it's like, it's more like one 20. I tell you, man, I don't, I don't think that's a big number anymore for dealers. Well, it's not, it's a big number for us. It's not a big number for every dealer, but it's still a big number. And more importantly, to your point, what do you do for inventory? You're at the net, you're at fanatics fest and you put out your nicest inventory. Cause it's actually more expensive to be at than the national. Right. And you sell 80% of it. And two weeks later, you've got the national. And if they're set up at both of those, I would think a lot of them are also doing the West coast card show. So are you emptying out all your showcases? Like is your LC and maybe now look, you know what a really good problem to have is I've got all this money and no cards, right? Like that's an easy problem to solve, but it is interesting. Now, I think if you're fanatics, we're saying all of these like perspectives of why would you do this? It's the world cup. Yeah, no, there's a world. There's a reason it makes sense. And they say that after this year, they're going to go back to it being the previous month, about six to eight weeks prior. So if they do that, that makes sense. And it does make sense to want to capitalize on the hype of the, if you are soccer people and you're listening to this, if you're not a soccer person, the world cup's a big freaking deal. People are starting to come up to our tables now. Hey, do you have soccer? People are starting to want to start building their soccer inventory. That happened a few times. And I tell them all the same thing. I will bring my soccer inventory out in May next year. And I told them the same thing. No, I don't have any soccer inventory, but if I do, it's like a huge name and it sells pretty quick. But I think it's going to be really interesting. I don't think they care too much that it's affecting the other shows. No, not at all. Because if it's about the fan experience, why wouldn't you try to have exclusive access to these athletes? Now, you thought hotels were expensive last year? Oh God. Like you better be booking those now. Yeah. Like now. Yeah. You know, if you and I end up out there, it will be because one, the content blew up enough where it justifies spending that kind of money. I'd like to go see it. But man, I think a lot of like average working people, even in this space are like, can I justify spending three to five grand just to be there? I've heard people ask, do you think this is going to affect attendance at the national? No, this Fanatics FanFest is not going to affect attendance at the national because they're targeting two different people. Fanatics Fest is targeting sports fans who may also want to buy some cards. The national is just card collectors and memorabilia collectors and that's all they're there for. So they don't care to go try to kick a soccer ball or throw a pitch or get an MMA ring. Although it would be funny to see some of the guys at the national get into an MMA ring. This brings up an interesting topic that is not in the notes, but I'd like your off the cuff take. Okay. I'm good at those. So with what we see with shows, I mean, you and I depend on there being a show every weekend. Yeah. Let's be honest. We depend on, in Ohio, we are so blessed. Oh, there's five to pick from every week. Ohio really is a great card market because you have a lot of options for local shows. You've got three decent sized cities to support that. And you have a decent interstate system that can connect you across there wherever you need to go. But are we coming up on a point where we're too congested locally? Let's maybe start with the Ohio scene. Are there too many shows? Is it not sustainable? Because we're saying on a grand scale, one must be affecting the other, but is that happening at the local scale? Yes. And the problem is that the places that are getting oversaturated with shows are the places with the lowest population density. Columbus doesn't have three shows in a weekend. It's one of the few places that could probably support three shows. Occasionally two. Yeah. Or even three in a month. But you know what? Pike County has like seven shows every month. There's 12,000 people in the county, so there is any time, and you see this across the board in any industry, any time there is a boom in any industry, you're going to have people trying to figure out how they can make money in it. One of the ways that I think people assume is an easy way to make money in this business, it's not if you're doing it right. It is if you're doing it wrong and you don't care to build a brand with it, but one of the ways that I think people think is an easy way to make money is I'll just do a show because I'll charge these dealers $40 or $50 a table, and I'll sell 100 tables, and I'll do 5K on that Saturday, and I'll pay $1,000 for this room, and look at me, I'm making money in this hobby. It's not that easy to do it right, and what you will find, we've found it, if promoters don't do the job that they're supposed to do for a show, the good dealers will just stop going. There are some shows that I just kind of do when there's nothing else because it's a good buying opportunity, it's close to the house, but I don't seek those shows out because- But my point is, to this point, they're still popping up left and right, and there's not, I couldn't name three shows that have closed in the last three years. No, but eventually what will happen is those shows will start to dwindle down and dwindle down and dwindle down until it's 15 dealers, until it's not 15 dealers, maybe it's 30, but they're none of the same dealers, and the inventory that you end up seeing at those shows when you go, if you're trying to buy, is nothing but retail wax and top loaders sitting out on a table with nothing crazy worth buying. It'll be guys who found their junk wax collection when they were a kid and think they're rich and they'll throw it all out on a table at $1 a card for 87 tops and $30 for their baron bonds. This is an incredibly detailed and lengthy answer. You asked me to go off the cuff, that's what happens. Off the cuff, just boom, here's what I think. Sorry, go ahead. It's fine, it's fine. Yeah, for me, I'm wondering, will there be some consolidating in some of these areas? I do see that in rural settings. I do think though, and I think you would agree, it's important that there are shows with $30 tables. Of course there are. With 50 tables. I set up a lot of shows that are $30 and 50 tables. There are so many people that would like to set up at a show, but they're intimidated to set up at a huge one and spend $200, $300, they don't even know what they're doing. They're nervous. Two of the biggest shows that we do on a regular basis are $35 a table. How many tables are in total? Some of the small shows we do are $50 a table. Yeah, they're $300 to $500 tables. That's not small. No, no, no, but some of the small shows we do are $30 to $50 tables and promoters are charging $50. Oh, my favorite. I remember that one. Remember that dude tried to charge me the same for a six foot table? Oh, yeah. I looked at him, he's like, yeah, it's a table. I was like, okay. Yeah. Mentally noted. Yeah. I do think there's some consolidation, but when you talk about, there's just, I think it's a little bit, it's a little bit too saturated. It's going to take care of itself. I think dealers vote with their plans. Their time and their money. Their time and their money, and so do collectors, but I think it's important that the small local shows still exist. Absolutely. I think there's still consolidation. Sure. Some of these spots, I think they need to say, hey, you've got 50 to 75 tables and you're filling them. I've got 50 to 75 tables and I'm filling them, and we're one week apart from each other and we could rent out this venue, split it, and triple the size of the show. It's like the Brian Regan standup joke, one of my favorites. That guy's hilarious. He's like, you ever see two log trucks passing each other? You got logs? I'm like, what am I doing here? I think there's a little bit of that, and we're probably getting to the point where if it's a discussion at a larger level, it's maybe something that'll be considered at the local level, especially when we have nut jobs like the dude in Florida creating environments people don't want to attend the shows. Anyway, I created a 10-minute segment out of that unintentionally. Back to hobby news. Well, say, let's talk about other things that aren't sustainable. WNBA Don Russ. That's right. You heard me say it, right? I didn't say National Treasures. Didn't say Optic. Didn't say Optic. Didn't say WNBA Silhouette. Didn't say Rookie Royalty, which if you bought it, 3K, great for you. If you bought it, 30K. They're projecting pre-sale on a hobby box of Don Russ WNBA to be $750 to $800. That is insane. Absolutely bonkers. Let's play a game. Katelyn Clark is out for the rest of the season. Not her rookie stuff, but still. In five months, what does a Katelyn Clark downtown sell for? Oh, it's still big. How big? $1,200, $1,400. Off of an $800 box? Oh, yeah. No, it's insane. That's atrocious. Yeah, no. It's insane. A 1.5X for The Chase? Yeah, no. It's insane. Becker's will sell for more because it'll be a rookie. But, yeah, at the end of the day, you're talking about a paper set, 24 packs, five cards in a pack, and one guaranteed auto per box, and oh, by the way, there's sticker autos. So we got 24 times 24, you got, what, 80 cards, 100 cards in a box? You're paying eight bucks a card. Eight bucks a card. Name five players for me, those of you that are paying $800, and you'll be like, oh, I can do that, and then I'm going to say, name 15 players, and then we're going to have a long pause. I might struggle at 15. Now, again, the issue for us is not that the product is releasing. No. The issue for us is not that we don't think there should be Katelyn Clark downtowns. The issue for us is there apparently is no ceiling when your floor product can be charged at $800 a box. Yeah. At $800? That's the entry-level product. $8 a card? Yeah, it's insane. It's absolutely, actually, it's more than that. All those players I can't even name that nobody's looking for, $8, $8, like, yeah, we're not exaggerating. No. That's what it's going to be more for. Eight bucks a card. It's crazy, and here's the thing. You know that quality control is going to be not great. Sure. I don't know if it's in our notes, but did you see this this week speaking of Panini quality control? The new football downtowns? They look beautiful. One of the better downtown designs. There's a Megatron. There's a Calvin Johnson downtown. It's Brandon Pettigrew. It's not even Calvin Johnson on the card. They took a picture off of an old Panini card of Brandon Pettigrew and put it on the card. Some dude just flipping through his old card, he's like, wait a minute, Brandon Pettigrew PC was like, no, no, no, no. So another thought about this. Are the buyers the idiots that are buying this stuff, believing in the scarcity of the Caitlin downtown, or are we the idiots because there's so many idiots that will keep buying it that we're missing out? You know what I'm saying? So it's both- Like downtowns, like- Both parties are idiots. It's that simple. Both parties are idiots. We just threw shots at 90% of the card community. Well, here's the thing, guys. I don't think they're idiots. I just- End of the day- People want them. These companies are going to put products out at the highest possible price point that they think people are going to buy in that. Now one of the things that props this up is breakers. Because people are like, well, I'll never spend $800 for a box of Donruss, but I'll spend $200 to get no break and take the chance. That inflates wax prices. The other part of it is that Panini is leaning into the fact that the WNBA is probably going to be their main license going forward. So where do they make money? They know they can't sell unlicensed baseball for big money. They know they can't sell unlicensed football for big money. They're going to make football products going forward. It's going to be NIL stuff, and it's going to be retired guys that they can get individual licenses from, just like it is for baseball. So you're looking at a situation where they're trying to figure out, okay, what's the market going to bear for us to maintain a business model? And as long as we keep paying it, they will. But what's crazy is if Donruss comes out at $800 a box, what the hell's Prism going to be? $25? Well, but they're giving the people what they want. Now this is a great point. The people are so, the people, collectors have become so obsessed with the case hit that the value of the product, the quality, the tier of the product is being determined by a case hit because Donruss is designed, here's what kind of pisses me off. There need to be accessible license cards. I'm not saying this for me. I know a lot of people think that we're cheap. We don't have money. We don't make any money. We don't really do this for a living. I get that. We hear that nonstop. I mean, for the average person that wants to open a product, Donruss is supposed to be available. It will be in blaster form. I think that's where the hobby is going. No, it won't, dude. Because here's the thing. It's going to be lined up down the aisle. It's going to be scalped and sold for $120. Maybe. If hobby's doing $800, that's absolutely happening to that product. Well, I mean, a hobby basketball NBA was doing six, seven, and I can go to any store in America right now and see 50 blasters. The difference is you know who's in that product. Well, yeah, but we're not talking about Caitlyn rookies. They're talking about Caitlyn, finish the sentence for me, downtown. Well, yeah, but there's downtown's available now. Sure. Yeah. A little pricey to get into. Sure. Yeah. My point is there needs to be big league baseball for the kid that actually is mowing the lawns and wants to open a hobby box. Donruss should be, or has been, an accessible product. And now- Even the last two or three years, it's gotten to four or 500 bucks a box, which is crazy. I'm speaking historically. Oh, yeah. It's been there. It was an $80 box, $70 box for years. If it's just as simple as throwing a case hit people get excited about into a product, and now it's a 4X multiplier on quality, do we ever get to have a conversation about having on-card autographs on other products? Does it ever change? No. How cheaply can we make this, and how expensive can we be on the charge? Yeah, what's the margin we can get to? So I guess back to my point, you and I can say downtown suck, which the sentiment for downtown's is what I think sucks. Yeah. You and I can say that all day, but the market has determined that they're going to continue to spend money on these, and that collectors, flippers, whatever you call it, whatever's propping it up, it's propped up. Yes. Agreed. But that downtown is not rare. No, not even remotely rare. Some of the of 99 stuff you have is way more rare than the downtown you have. They'll never tell us, but knowing the products that these are in, the print runs are massive on this stuff, I would guess that of downtown, I would say there's at least 10,000 of each one. No. At least. At least. I guess what I'm saying is, is the downtown cool? Yes. I like the idea. I like the design. I like the printing, and I think it should be worth a little bit more than Home Field Advantages are. Yeah. It was super cool when they were $100 a piece. You could buy golds five years ago for $200. Maybe they're $200 to $500, but when we start saying $2,000 for this, get out of here. Silly. You're right. You're insane. All right. Let's keep it rolling with positivity, hobby positivity, what it's all about, NFL picks. I am kicking your butt so far. I don't know about kicking your butt. Week one, if you don't remember, Jason went nine and seven. I went seven and nine. This week, Jason went ham. I thought I had a really good week, and I did, but Jason went 13 and three this week. I'll tell you what. My fanatic sports book. You liked it. I like fanatics when it comes to the sports book. I went 11 and five this week. I thought I had a really- Not bad. ... really strong week, but Jason went ham. Cumulatively, Jason is 22 and 10 so far. I'm 18 and 14. One of the things we decided going forward, instead of picking every single game, because it takes a long time and we're not a pure just sports picking podcast, we're going to pick five games every week that we think are interesting and talk about them a little bit and make our picks, try to give you a little bit more insight rather than just flying through 16 games. Interesting that we are changing the rules now. Many would think that Gary did that, but in this situation, it was me because I don't think you want to hear us talk that much about, I picked this team. You picked that team. I picked this team. You picked that team. How many games we have? We have five. Five games. I didn't really think through this too much, but all right, here we go. Steelers at the Pats. Steelers at the Pats. I am going to go with the Pats. I'm going to go with Steelers. Okay. Now, do you want to add any comment? It's five games. If you have a statement on it- A little bit of commentary. The Steelers didn't look good this past week, and New England did look pretty good. Drake May looked really strong, and this game is in New England. Mike Vrabel is not the kind of coach whose teams have letdowns. Any team that keeps the Miami Dolphins in the game right now doesn't deserve a pick. For that reason, and my disdain for all of the leadership in Miami, quarterback on up, I will go against the team- That beat them? Yes. You're going to go with the Steelers. Okay. Easy enough. Lions- I made that really confusing. Miami is trash. Yes. He's picking the Steelers. I'm picking the Pats. Yes. Made that confusing. Lions at Ravens. Great game. Really good game. Tough game. I picked first last time. You pick first this time. I think Dan Campbell's got those Lions feeling like they got a bad taste in their mouth still from week one. Okay. I think this is a tough game. Man, it's tough to play in Baltimore. The Ravens are good. I think the Lions get them. I think you're going to be a Ravens. I'm going Ravens. Yes. Yes. All right. We have two different ones. Yes. This could be a big week. This could be a little bit of difference. Week three, Chiefs at Giants. One, two, three. Giants. Chiefs. I think the Chiefs are bad. I think communication's off. I don't think the Chiefs are good. I also don't think the Giants are good. I think if Russell Wilson can throw for 400 yards- Almost 500. Kansas City can't keep up with them right now. That's my philosophy on that. Now if Russell Wilson goes out and throws three picks in the first quarter, which he's perfectly capable of, then that goes sideways. I just can't say, the Chiefs haven't started 0-3 in like 30 years. I just don't think they do that this year. Rams at Eagles, you go first. I'm gonna go with the Rams in this game. I love this, I'm going Eagles. They're really good, they're at home, Philly's tough. See, I think it's the exact opposite. I don't think that, as much as I hate to say this and people are gonna laugh at me, I don't think the Eagles trust Jalen Hurts all that much. Like, if he's gonna get all of his scores on the ground, the Rams look really good. Puka Nakua is a monster, guys. He's an absolute monster and nobody talks about. I don't know, like, I don't know many people that have the accomplishments I agree. No, no, I agree with you. But still, the commentary always goes back to this. And it's not just us, it's everywhere. He averaged 4.8 yards an attempt this week. Like, AJ Brown has done nothing all year. He's like two catches all year. All right, well, I disagreed with you. I got the Eagles on that one. Let's see if we at least agree on this final week. The battle of the backup quarterbacks. Bingles at Vikings. Now, by the way, we went through all the games and we're like, where are the toughest decisions? There's so many injuries that make things uninteresting. But here we have equal playing field, which is no quarterbacks. So, I gotta go first here. Yep. You're really struggling on this one. Jake Browning or Carson Wentz, who do you have more faith in? I'm going Vikings. And the reason for that is twofold. One, to cheer against your team, naturally. Fair. But two, I think the Bingles will come up, try to build a strategy around this guy. And I think things will look differently next week and they will coach themselves out of that game. I'm taking the Bengals for the exact opposite reason. They don't need to do anything different. Jake Browning is nowhere- Oh, we're agreeing on that thing. We're agreeing on that. Jake Browning looked, he looked competent. He looked like he could do the job. He didn't look bad. He's the same type of quarterback as Joe Burrow, just nowhere near as good. I just think the Bengals- They're both pocket passers. They're not gonna change the offense up. The team trusts Jake Browning. When Burrow was hurt two years ago, Browning came in and kept him in playoff contention the whole time. I think it comes down to this. Will they or will they not mess with the offense? And you're a fan and you're saying, I don't think they're gonna mess with it. If not, that's the Bengals' best shot. But if you just start seeing twice as many runs as normal, some of that stuff happening. Yeah, I don't- So I'm Vikings just to see what happens there. If they didn't make that change mid-game in a week where Browning got like probably three reps in practice, they're definitely not gonna make that change when he gets all the reps. So like a clean sweep would put you back in the lead this week. Yeah, because I think- So we didn't agree on any of those? I don't think we did. I love it. Yeah, I don't think we agreed on any of them. You know what? There's five games there. Yeah. You want to sweeten the pot? What are you thinking? Next week's show is what? What do you mean? Newark table fees. Done. All right. Simple. Table fees. Gentleman's agreement. Simple. All right. You think it's simple? Yeah. Gosh, if I get five, you're gonna be so mad. Okay, I don't think that'll happen. There were some tough ones in there. Let's jump into the meat and potatoes of the pod today, the value box. We're gonna dial in and get even more specific on buying right. So again, just a quick recap. Last week we talked about a few things. What do you know? What do you not know? What's worth niching down? And why are you even trying to buy cards? And who did their homework? Go ahead and get that started. Homework last week. If you didn't catch last week's episode, this can be your homework again this week. Take 20 bucks, no more, no less. Go to your local show. Go to your local card shop. We had a few people comment that their local card shops dollar boxes are trash. Don't go there then. That's fine. We had a few other people comment that they killed it when they did this. Take 20 bucks, go buy $21 cards, and then don't comp them. Just pick out the 20 that you think are worth the most in that dollar box. The best cards. Go home and see how you did. Jason and I did this last week. And we both, we were within $1 of each other. We basically, mine was 59 bucks in comp, so almost triple, and his was 58. It's almost like we know a little bit how to do this. But we do it. And those boxes, the owner, Ryan at Lock City, which he was awesome to let us go there and dig through those and all that stuff. Worked with me on some vintage stuff I bought as well. Shout out to him. But he was like, those boxes have been pretty hit. And they were. So we were working for it. But the things to notice, it's not necessarily about what that number ended up at. What I'm hoping that you're able to see is, these 10 cards were no brainers to me. I know I can sell these. Yes. What are those 10 cards? Are they ultra modern football? Are they modern? Is it basketball? WNBA? See if you can make any sense out of trends with what you were picking up without comping. And all we're saying is, that might be an indicator of an area you should lean in and try to buy a little more because you're naturally more knowledgeable there and you have more interest there. So hopefully you did that. Could do that again. By the way, everything that we bought out of a dollar box, stuff we're gonna run on whatnot because we thought it was cool enough to run. Yep, for sure. Anyway, let's jump in. Buying right. So the theme for this is, buying is the hard part. Correct. Buying is the hard part. For a business, like Gary and I do, buying is the hardest part of the job. Maybe next to just embracing the fact that you're always working. Yeah. You don't really, like you see on Instagram, buy a few cards at a show and then take the rest of the week off to the next show. Yeah. We wish and pray, at some point that's possible, but we just don't see it as real life. And I think most of the people where you see those clips would say, yeah, no, I have to work nonstop. Yes. Okay. How much time do we spend buying? Is what I wanted to start with. So, buying is the hard part. It's absolutely necessary. How much time do you think you spend buying? Maybe you could go off of a weekly or monthly or. So my week in general looks like this. We are very lucky to have a lot of really good hobby shops within an hour and a half or so. And we are very lucky enough to have really good relationships with the owners of several of those shops. So for me, a typical week involves Monday. I usually go to at least one, if not two of those shops. Then Tuesday is a work day as far as like content creation goes. But I also will, when I leave here today, go hit a shop. Wednesday is content refinement day. I don't usually do anything there. Thursday is whatnot night. So during the day, I go hit a couple other shops. And then Friday, depending on how I've done throughout the week at shops, may go someplace else. In addition to all of that, I'm constantly scrolling on Facebook. I'm constantly scrolling on Instagram. I hop into whatnot streams that look like they have the type of stuff that I want. On any given week, I'd say by the time you count drive time, I'm at least 20 hours a week buying. And then you add in shows on the weekends where 20 to 30% of our time at a show is spent buying as well. So it's a solid 50%, maybe 55% of my week is spent buying. Yeah, I don't spend quite as much time there, but I think more time will be spent that direction. I'm probably closer to 15 hours right now. Part of that for me is when I make purchases, I do a couple things. If I'm buying for eBay, I'm buying in bulk. So it's not usually something where I have to buy. I don't even have to buy necessarily every month because most of the time I'm buying 10,000 cards or more, which sounds crazy until you see it like those comedies where there's a briefcase. Have you ever seen $100,000 in person? And they open it up, it's just one little stack. 10,000 cards is not a ton, but for inventory, there's that. I have basically started blocking off certain days that I have a route. When I was reselling stuff on eBay that wasn't even card related, I did the same thing, tried to build a routine out of it. I would say the biggest shift that we both have made in the last year is, and we'll talk about it in a minute more, but developing relationships with LCS owners. This does not mean that stuff is given away to us. There are times every month where Gary and I call each other and we didn't buy as good as we had hoped, but we bought the right stuff. Or, hey, this LCS owner, man, last time I was there, I felt like I was able to get a really great margin on this type of stuff. Today was not that day. That's gonna be the way it is. Why? They put the work and the money into finance so they can charge whatever they want for it. And they don't owe us a discount of any percentage. So it is probably 10 to 15 hours for me. I too do the whatnot thing where I should organize it a little bit more, but there's probably two or three nights where I'm looking for the right type of show with the right type of inventory. If I don't see stuff for the showcase, but it's good value box stuff, I'll hang out there for an hour, buy a lot. Sure. And then I'm buying, at that point, I'm probably getting stuff at 50%. Yeah. But you have to find the right one, the right length of auction. I've got a laptop up while the phone's running the stream. I'm on card ladder. If I have to backspace, forget about it. And then I'll source it out that way. So it takes a ton of time. If you want a business, the sourcing will never stop. Nope. And the hardest part of this for us is fresh inventory becomes stale inventory and not in that long of time. No. And you, and really, especially if it's not super unique. Well, and there's stuff that you'll buy and you'll think to yourself, there is no way this card lasts through the week. And three weeks later, it's still sitting in your show. I've got one right now and it's a Jordan. It's a Jordan Power Boosters and it's clean and it's nice. And it's a pretty card. And I've sold seven or eight other nice Jordans from the same era since I bought this card. And I didn't think it would last a week and it's still sitting there. And I'm priced at 20 bucks under the last three comps. It can happen with anything, no matter how liquid you think it is. You and I have noticed that this year has been different than the last couple when it comes to the first few weeks of football season. It's not selling. It's just not moving the way it did. And we got the right stuff, like 50 to $150 ultra modern rookie quarterbacks that are relevant. So all the names that you're thinking, but they haven't been moving as well. They're just sitting there. Now what's happening? So Gary and I also have to realize, Justin Fields is hurt, Joe Burrow is out, JJ McCarthy. Who else? Who wasn't playing well anyway. Yeah. I mean, there's just, Jaden Daniels is hurt. So now what are we looking at on Burrow? I think his market softens the rest of the season. I don't see that. He may be out the rest of the year. They basically, it's a three to three and a half month recovery time. There's probably a bigger Joe Burrow conversation at some point too, like. Well, is he the next Andrew Luck where they just don't put an offensive line in front of him and ruin his life? Yeah. But that has nothing to do with buying, right? It's just an insight. It does give insight into the fact that when we talk about inventory going stale, there's a few more weeks where we bought right on that football. And if it doesn't start to move, turns out we bought wrong. Yeah. So the market determines if you bought right. So it's easy when you're buying. I think this is a good point. Pat myself on the back. It's easy to focus on that number, that margin for the card you bought. I bought right. Cause I got it at 65%. Well, 65% of nothing is $0. Correct. 65% of something that's now worth 80% is a 15% margin. And if you sold that on eBay, you broke even probably under a little bit, right? So the numbers change. When we say inventory is stale, it can even be the things that for the last three or four years, this has performed really well for us. But you set up three weekends in a row and it's not moving. You didn't buy as well as you thought. Yeah. And you need to reprice that stuff and get it ready to move. And which leads to the next question. You got to answer this one of two ways because you cannot have both. Pick one. Would you rather have a lot of inventory or would you rather sell a bunch of inventory? This is probably a question that people who've been setting up for the first few months of their business are wrestling with. And I remember the feeling. I remember coming home from a show and being like, didn't sell too much, but I'm sure glad I still have this for the next show. Why? Yeah. And the reality is this, there is nothing wrong with me saying that. But the reality is, until I could detach from that feeling and that emotion, I was not in a full-blown business. Correct. I was a collector that was flipping some cards and there's nothing wrong with that. No. But I could never make the leap to be in somebody that's like, this is what I do to earn income until I could realize, you got to make the sale when it's there. Don't be excited about terrible sales that day. Now, sometimes shows are slow and they're better buying shows. Sometimes, hey, people are holding off the first couple of weeks of NFL. Maybe that happens next year. And that means you and I wait till the first few weeks of the NFL to buy. Yeah. But you can't assume that the margin determines that it's the right thing. And your inventory needs to move. Do you want to have really cool stuff that never sells? Or do you want to move stuff and sell cards and try to make money with it? And if you do have really cool stuff that takes a long time to sell, you need to try to balance that against more liquid stuff. I always try to have two or three things that I can legitimately point at in my showcase and go, when are you going to see another one at the National? Maybe. You know, so. So yeah, the question for you to think through, would you rather have plenty of inventory that you really like, right? At all times? Or would you have a bunch of inventory that sells? Yeah. And it's hard to have both. The people that have both typically bought an extra table or two to do show and tell with their collection. Yeah. And that's fine. Majority of people aren't there. Okay, next one. This word. I hate this word in our business. I hate it. It's an important word. It's an important word, but I hate the way that it's used. Four letter word starts with an F. Yeah. Well, yeah. Two different words. Fair. Yeah. The word fair in our business gets thrown around a lot, and the reason I hate it is because everybody only uses the word from their perspective. They don't use the word across the board. I prefer the word or the words what makes sense rather than fair because if you're trying to sell me something and you paid $100 for it and it's only worth $80 now and I'm willing to pay you $56 or $58 for it, that's what's fair for me. That's what makes sense for me. It may not make sense for you, but when we use the word fair, it starts bringing feelings into it. You as the seller may be like, well, you're not being fair to me and get really upset about that. Whereas, I can look at it from both of our standpoints and go, hey, this is what makes sense for me. If it doesn't make sense for you, it's perfectly fine. There's no reason at all for feelings to come into play. I'm not insulting you. I'm going to make offers based on what the market is and based on what I need from a margin standpoint for my business and if it works for you, if it makes sense, awesome. If it doesn't make sense, also perfectly fine. This is one of those examples we talked about, Gary and I sell differently. I'm comfortable living in the feelings. If somebody is a more emotional seller to me, you're like, let's get it out of this gear and think numbers here and let's see if it makes sense because that's naturally your personality to go that way. Mine, you feel good? I feel great. I feel great not because we're about to figure this deal out, but now you know every Saturday when you see me, you've got somebody that's interested in your cards. All we got to figure out is the number. See how it's like we may be trying to land the same conclusions, but I'm comfortable there because I'm an emotional person. I'm more of a feeler. I read body language. I read into people's tone. You make note of it as data point. I don't know where this is going. Buckle up. I've got an engineering brain. Right. Yeah. Word fair. Fair to who? The buyer? Well, then fair to me would be a really good margin because you understand that Gary and I live under a financial pressure to produce income every month that we drove out here really early. We drove three hours here with cards with your PC that nobody else has this card in the room, right? Yep. If I'm selling. I guess if I'm buying, like we brought cash and nobody else here is paying this strong. Nobody else even wants this. We're the guys for that a lot of times, the weird stuff, right? That's fair for me. Fair for the seller. I mean, my gosh, the box cost you 500 bucks. This card's worth 200 and somebody is offering you 150 on it. That's not fair. Yeah. So now- That's why I hate the word. The buyer should be bearing the pressure of fanatics releasing a crap product for 500 bucks, right? Yeah. So, and you buying it. Now that's not fair that I have to make up for your poor financial decision, right? That's why I hate the word fair. Is it fair for the collector? This guy's attached to Jeter. He's got a great Jeter PC, right? You don't know how hard he actually had to look for it. We got a guy, a regular guy that's a Jordan guy, right? Yeah. Awesome stuff. Yeah. And it's gotten to the point where it's like every once in a while we have something to understand, but we always have a good conversation, right? Oh, yeah. But if he brought a Jordan up to me and he said, here's the price and here's the story of how I found that card, is it really fair for me to throw my number that I'm always at with him? It's not going to be fair to that collector. If we had to work hard to find that card, sometimes they have to overpay because they love it that much and they're not going to see it again. What's fair? So the point is you could take that word fair and kind of wad it up and throw it out. It's dumb. Because it's not one that's going to help you with your buys. And a lot of times it does create this tug of war dynamic that we're talking about. It gets people into their feels and this is just business, which like Jason said, he's really good at the feels. I'm not super great at the feels. It can go the other way, too, because I can think of only a couple exchanges that have gone really bad for us, but one of them was a couple of weeks ago up at Cuyahoga Falls and it wasn't even a deal. You were trying to buy. There was a guy that had some cards. He was like, we've all seen this. Somebody comes up in a hurry. They're like all disheveled. They're trying to get cash as quick as possible. It's a different pace than everybody else walking the show. They're kind of frantic. They're throwing the cards down. There's never penny sleeves on the card, it should be, right? And they're like, what do you give me for this? What do you give me for this? And he's like, well, let's see what they're worth. Let's look it up. He's like, it's got to be worth at least the way you start talking over it. It's got to be a $300. I just always will just nod. Okay, yeah, yeah. So let's look it up. I just repeat. Let's look it up. So you're looking it up. There was a card that was $150 comps, right? Consistent. The last 20 comps were between $140 and $160. It's not a mystery. It's not a gray area. This is what this card's worth. It's a rookie orange laser. So the guy in the meeting goes, okay, I would do that. I would do that. Give me that. And he's like, that's a hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give me that. I can't. I can't. Pay you a hundred percent. I can't. How, what do I sell it for? And the guy looked confused at him. He's like, well, what do you give me? And you made an offer. And on a $150 card, we're not talking like it's $3,000. I made a 75% offer. It was 78% because I remember raising my eyebrow like, my guy went over 75%. He wants this card. Dude's like angry, grabbing the stuff off the table. He's just like rambling. There's like 10 or 15 people around the table. I lost a little bit of control in the moment because I was like, you want to play this game? I love this game. So I was like, hey, buddy. I waited for him to turn around. Now that there's like 30 people watching him, I was like, hey, sorry, that didn't work out. But if you'd like the promoters right over here, I'll walk you over there. You can get a table. You can ask $300 for that card if you want to. So it's like, that's the trade off of playing the emotional game. I look like an idiot. I'm not as much of an idiot as he did, but still, I was an idiot nonetheless. All right. So fair. You got to decide who and what and what ... It's a word that just probably means turnout. The way that I say, you say makes sense. So because I'm a feeler, the way I would say it is, a good deal probably feels a little bit uncomfortable for both of us. So it's establishing, I'm uncomfortable reaching above this number. You're uncomfortable coming my way. We're honoring the moment here. What a deal is going to look like is, as we're feeling this, we're going to make a decision of yes or no. Right? Obviously, it was a data point, but sometimes that's helpful for me to be like, yeah, I'm reaching a little bit too high on this. And if I tried that with my personality, it would fall apart immediately. It just does. It's not authentic. Yeah. All right. So I was telling you that you wouldn't be able to read this, and I can. Well, this next point is one of my favorite points. Identify the right seller and the right buyer. That's different for everybody, depending on their model. I used to say this when Jason and I worked at the same company in a sales role, I used to say all the time, not every seller is right for everybody. Not every customer is the right customer. And that goes both ways. Not every seller is right for every buyer, and not every buyer is right for every seller. Corporate every seller. I love that. Yeah. Where we were. Yeah. But that's just the reality. There are going to be some people that you buy from that are not emotionally attached. They just want to get some of their money back. You're going to have some customers that it's a collector and they are wanting to upgrade part of their collection, but they have a hard time getting rid of what they have in order to do that. And you have to feel that out and just decide. Some customers, we've developed a few relationships with our buys for whatnot. There's a gentleman that comes to Xenia every month now. He comes straight to our table, and he hands us a stack of 80 to 100 cards that he's pulled this month. And he says, hey, this is what I want for them. And usually it's about what we want to pay. He knows kind of where we want to be. And there's no, it's a perfect relationship for us for that. It's not a, is this 80%, is this, it's, here's a stack. I would like to know the next time I show up at this show, I bring you a stack. And you're giving me cash. And if I'm in the ballpark and it makes sense. Yes. This will keep happening. We have other relationships too of people that if they're selling outright, which they do, they demand 85 to 90%. We have a relationship that's been built on trust over years of doing deals. And they will bring stuff in knowing they might get a little bit of a less percentage, but they know that they're immediately getting cash to walk the floor that day. And there are, I'm only doing it on cards that they're in right for, like ones that they've graded or ones that they pulled or ones that they hit where they're like, there's not that much of a difference in that 10% for them. But for us, it makes all the difference for our inventory. So. And I mean, you've got to decide what kind of buyer you are, what kind of inventory you want to carry. We have friends who. This is probably the most popular model right now that you're getting ready to talk about. And some of you are like, before we go for it, when you hear what we do, that doesn't mean you need to do it. No, no, no. We're just saying there's different approaches to it. Yeah. So like we've got friends, literally twins and friends. Their whole business model is probably 80 to 85% of what they buy is case hits. And they already have buyers lined up. They know what percentage those buyers are going to pay. And so they are, they know what they're able to pay and they play pretty strong on that stuff because they know they have a buyer for it. We are the guys who most of the shows we do regularly, the promoters, when the most of the shows, promoters are going to have their table right at the door when people come in. But they send the weird stuff to us. Hey, see that big white banner over there? Go see those guys because that's the kind of stuff we like to buy. Let's talk, let's dive into the weeds on that a little bit. Yeah. Kind of hypotheticals now. So people ask us, do we ever sell downtowns? Yes, we do. When we can buy them. At 80% or less. Within our business model. Yeah. Most of the time that doesn't walk up to us. Why? We've been kind about it. But most people in the area know we're never, ever, ever going to be the 90 to 95% case hit guys. Nope. And that's okay. Now, some of you are saying, well, some of those cards are big. You're passing up on $100 in 30 minutes. Yep, probably. But we're also moving a bunch of cash out, right? And putting ourselves in a way more competitive space on these. And the time that's going to be spent at our showcase is somebody trying to haggle us down below our percentage. So it's just not a game that we play very often. They'll be in there. Now, for some of you, you're like, well, I could easily buy 100 case hits a month, a week, whatever. I can buy them at 90% and I already have somebody buying them at 100%. That might make perfect sense. You should do that then. Go for it. Go nuts. If that market softens, just know that whatever you have in stock deflates significantly. You're one or two bad comps away from taking a bath. And I don't like to buy things where I'm one or two bad comps away from taking a bath. It hasn't happened yet with downtowns. Well, that's not true. It happens with almost every one of the vet downtowns. The rookie downtowns, no, but the vet downtowns, like last year, the Dick Buckuses went from $300 to $180 in a week. I think uptowns hurt that too. Yeah. If you bought those Dick Buckuses at $260 and you had to sell them at $170, you took a bath. Yeah. So what are you trying to buy? The right buyer and seller relationship. Are you trying to buy case hits at 90%? Are you trying to buy unique PC cards at 70%? We probably carry more of those. There's a risk. There's a risk. Gary and I can also have weeks where there's tons of people in the room and we don't move as much stuff as we want to because the stuff we have is for the end user and repackers may have been our best shot at money that week. And they're like, yeah, I just don't know what to do with that. There's one comp or there's no comps or, well, that's cool, but yeah, I can't, nobody's going to pay me to sell that to them because of that. So that's a trade off. Our margins are right where we want to be, but we may have less volume in the show. But whenever you and I have a good show- Oh, it's a great show. Our margins, we're dancing, all right? Yep. That's a lie. We don't dance. Are you buying bulk low end? Are you buying from LCS? So however you're buying, it's going to look a little different, a little bit of a different approach. Let's dive into the weeds a little bit on the LCS side of things because I think it is a really untapped, I think a lot of people who set up at shows assume that they can't buy with anything resembling margin at an LCS. And that is simply not true. There is work involved. It's so hard. Let's be honest. The first work is you got to develop a relationship, right? Like the person making the decision on what they're going to sell you these cards at has to be comfortable with you. They have to know that you're going to continue to support their LCS. They have to know that sometimes you're going to pay up on some things. But one of the easiest things you can do, you should try this the next time you want to buy inventory at an LCS, besides doing the homework and spending a lot of time in their value boxes. Also, don't be afraid to say, hey, is there anything in the showcase that you've had for three or four months that you're just ready to move off of that I can take a look at? It's a great question to ask because if you're willing to buy some of their bricks, then oftentimes they're going to be willing to sell them to you. Then some showcase inventory at an LCS is the right stuff for shows. I mean, I don't think people realize this. The show scene, if you're doing that on a regular basis, thank you for finishing my sentence again. Is that where you were going? Is that where you were going? I'm going to have to put a lot more eyes on that. It may be something where you have a better chance moving it at a show. What I don't want to do is make this sound like it's easy because I think some people listening to this are going to walk in with no history at an LCS. Don't do that. That's what I said. Ask that question. It will come across almost offensive, right? There's a delicateness to that. I think the key is this. Don't expect anything when you ask that question. Be super okay with a no and be like, I get it. No worries. That's fine. I even had a deal at an LCS that will go unmentioned where it was like, hey, I'm looking at this stack of cards. They had showcases where they're pulling them from everywhere. Here's the stack. I just say, hey, I'm interested in buying all these. I'm set. up at shows all month. Um, so I'm trying to do with inventory. I'm trying to see if there's a way to buy this with margin. Is that something you do? If so, how do you like to do it? Are you a card by card person? Do you want to just throw a number at me with the whole stack? You want to hear what I think? And I just stopped and it created. Now this was somebody I hadn't spent much time with. I knew some of the staff in there. It was about a $3,000 stack of cards. Nothing crazy, but a lot of like the 50 to $200 stuff, um, in a shop that didn't have many people in it at the time. And it was met with like aggression of like, well, you don't know that everybody's trying to come in here and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So what did that tell me? All right. This person has had some really bad experiences with people trying to buy from them or they're under stress or the shops in a situation. I don't know what all is going on. And I just said, Hey man, I don't have to buy any of these. If, if you, I'm just asking a question, you know, you could tell me to leave and I'll leave now and I'll never come back and bother you. Any of that. I just chilled and just sat there. And what happened? The stress that that owner was dealing with started to come out. Now is that maybe not the most professional thing? Probably not. I don't know the guy that well. Um, I hadn't been there. Um, but 10 minutes later there was a deal. Yeah. And it was a deal that left me at about 70%. Yup. Um, does that always happen? No. But I think I've been told no so many times. And I think respecting the work that they've put in, like that's what a lot of people that get frustrated with LCS owners don't understand is the overhead that they had, the amount of money they are in the hole on every day when they turn the lights on before they sell a card is a lot bigger than you realize. Yup. And a lot of people will say, Oh, well there rents 10 K. So you just need to sell 10 K worth of cards. What's the margin that they're selling those cards? Right. How many people are walking in the shop and doing that? How much do they have to spend every month? Just so you have wax in there. Guys, the fanatics direct accounts, they're pushing $5,000 sweatshirt quarters on some of these big shops. They're calling them in and tell them, Oh, you need to work three more hours a week even though you've been in business for 40 years and you got a 22 year old from fanatics telling you this is the hours that your shop now runs. Uh, you wanted a boxing too bad. Here's 20 cases of paper WWE cards. It is different. And so if you're going in there expecting like you're hustling, you're not hustling. They've been hustling long before you. They're doing what you dreamed of doing already. So just have a level of respect. If somebody says no, no is the answer. If they push back on you on your margins, maybe you are being too aggressive. Value the longterm relationship there. I think there are deals there, but if you don't approach that with respect, the deal ends that day and you know what you can get? There's people that you know, there are people that have purchased from me that are dealers, right? As she goes purchase heavily and I'll look at you. The deal made sense. It wasn't where I wanted, but the way that they approached me, the disrespect was there and I just said they may buy from you, but that is the last time that I'll do a deal with them unless they pay full sticker. And what happened? One of those guys walked up at a show recently. Yup. You got any more stuff? Nope. It's right. That's exactly how I said it. There's a sticker. That's the deal. Yeah. Um, so I am one. So what we've gone through so far is the one theme I think you should take from this is there's a lot of different sources and ways that you can buy and you should use all of them. You cannot rely on just shows to buy. You cannot rely on just your LCSs to buy. You cannot rely on just whatnot or just Facebook. You've got to use all of them in ways that make sense within the time that you have in order to maximize your reach. If you're wanting to do this as a business. Yeah. I think I want to put a pin on this segment because where we're heading next with this next week, we jump into real specifics like our own rule book for buying. And we'll, we'll try to lay out some specific scenarios of when we use these rules, how they affect the deal, how we use them in negotiations, how we buy better by sticking to our rules. We're going to talk about the margins that we try to buy at for the different type of inventory. And we're going to introduce an idea. A lot of you have heard of this, but many people don't consider cost averaging when they're purchasing lots. And it's a game changer for your business. If you're doing that with cards. One last thing this week, right? Tools of the trade. Yeah. Yeah. So no low end liquid this week, but I do want to do one of our tools of the trade. Now we did a whole segment on grading with this, talked about the centering tools, some other stuff we use. This is one that Gary and I get more questions about than anything. And we have a label system we use for pricing and stickers on the back. People ask us all the time, where do you get your labels? How do you pay? And they assume we're spending a lot of money. We are not. Not at all. Shocker. We're doing it on the cheap. This is the Nelco P21. No, we do not have an affiliate link. Should we have? Maybe. I don't know. I don't want us to just be like schlepping stuff. I mean, it's just really not who we are. However, the Nelco P21 is on Amazon 15 to 20 bucks. Get you this label printer. It opens really easy. There's a roll of the tape, super easy to manage micro SD to charge it. This is how, oh no, I made a mess. That's okay. This is what I use to churn through inventory. What do I mean by that? When I make a big buy beginning of the show, this is Bluetooth connected. I have my phone out and this stuff is back in the showcases in 30 minutes. The app is really easy to use. You can add your logo. We don't do any of that. We just have a price and an SKU system. The only thing I do is occasionally if I have like a tiger or something, I'll put a goat logo or Jordan thing on it. It's a really good tool to have. It's cheap. When they break in six months, guess what? 15 bucks, you're back in business. I use clear tape because people can see the card fully. It doesn't block the view. I use opaque because it's easier to see at a glance what the price is. Yeah, it is. That's true. I also like people leaning in and asking because it's a thermal printer as well. There's no ink cartridges or anything like that. It is super easy to use. Like Jason said, it's a cheap way to professionalize the look and consistent look of how you price things. Tools of the trade this week, Nelco P21 printer. Amazon has them for 15 to 20 bucks. There are different colors. I buy whatever can be delivered the quickest. I had a pink one for a little bit. Yeah, whatever one is on special. Jason's on his third one. I just had to buy my second one. I drop things. Mine hadn't broken yet, but it was starting to give a network error code every time I tried to use it. I was like, screw it, we'll get another one. Yeah, I don't know what the other label make. Maybe the nice ones are 30 bucks. I have no idea. This does the job really well. It gets the job done for us. Anything else before we wrap up? Quick reminder, whatnot, 6 p.m. Eastern. Gary will have just finished his solo show when this drops. I'm not used to this dropping on Friday yet. Yeah, we'll get there. Then this coming week, we will both be ready to roll. Yeah, the next month is crazy for shows. Jason mentioned it earlier, but I will mention it one more time. If you haven't yet, give us a like, give us a follow, or whatever platform you're watching this. It helps us a ton. We are getting closer and closer to that 10k mark on TikTok. Which means we can get paid for our efforts. Yeah, we can get paid a little bit for our efforts when we get to that point. What's the hourly rate come out to on the podcast? Negative 50, 60 bucks right now. That's okay. We love doing it and we enjoy the fact that you guys enjoy it. It's very gratifying for us when we have people come up to us at our show and say, hey, you guys encouraged me to just get out there and do this and now I do it three times a month and I love it. That's an awesome feeling. But yeah, give us a like, give us a follow, wherever you see this. Say hey to us. Jump into Whatnot on Thursday night at 6 o'clock. Even if you don't buy anything, just come hang out and it feels like the podcast for two or three hours. This has been the Ball Card Show, the Esports Podcast. For the Esports Collector. Bye now. Peace! you