Season 6 Ep 13 Marz Cardz Joins The Ballcard Show

Hello and welcome to the ball card show. The sports podcast for the sports collector. I'm Jason Otero. I'm Gary Lomaster. This is season six and episode 13 and you sir are fighting for your life this morning. Those of you saying that I'm always sick. Shut up. I don't like your tone. So we get we get in the car to head to Indiana to Bronco bash this past weekend and Jason's like, yeah, I've just got this little, uh, head cold. I'm not actually sick. It's like just my sinuses and over the next 48 hours I just watch him deteriorate into a shell of a man as the last day of Bronco bash. He has not much of a clue what's going on to the point where he got home and went, oh, I, uh, I bought a lot of things. I don't remember buying. Yeah. I was like, man, I haven't bought much like that. And then I got back and I started looking through everything. It's like, yeah, I was just out of it. I just not feel. Yeah. So you were not at all. We're just okay. The suit of fed on a regular, uh, cough drops and drinking herbal teas. Uh, and you know, it's, I think it's one of those 72 hour bugs that I'm going to be extra dramatic about. Um, that's probably what's happening here. I'm just super excited that it didn't land on me too. Yeah. By the way, can we talk about how I'm, I'm live from a new location? Oh yes we can. It's very nice. New location. My wife decided, you know what? Maybe you shouldn't have to stay in the basement all the time. So finally finished out of the office. So got a little fun, new things to look at. Fun old things to look at. It's so pretty. It's pretty. They're nice. Um, okay. I want to get right into it. Gary, you ripped a kid off at a show. Stop it. Stop it. I absolutely did not. So, okay. I'm going to set it up and then you can go. Oh God. You weren't even there. How are you going to set it up? I'm going to just share my experience, your experience. Okay. Is my experience not relevant here, Gary? Well, you weren't there. So you would tell me that my experience did bring up the whole topic. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. And then I will actually tell the story. See, this is going to look dumb. Now you're going to come across really needy in this story because I wasn't even going to go there. Okay. Once you go ahead, Gary, you've now completely ruined the set up, abolished it. Just like any punchline I'm about to deliver that you're familiar with. Go ahead. So here was how it's a different vibe. Now you see how it's a different vibe now. Why is it a different vibe? Because I can wingman a story like this, but if you want to monologue the story, it's just going to be like a defense trying to make their case. And now I'm not going to believe it as much. I'm going to listen with a different filter. Go ahead, buddy. Okay. So, and this is a story that I'm going to try to not get too specific because the goal here isn't to embarrass anybody. This time, this time, this time, the goal is not to embarrass anybody. It's a teachable moment. So I had a card in my showcase and a young man, probably 13 years old or so. Matter of fact, I know he was 13 years old because his father made sure to tell me that, uh, comes up to our table with a few of his friends and he's looking through the showcases like a lot of these young men do, which is awesome. Uh, and he's talking to his friends about the cards he's sold today and how much cash he has. This kid's literally walking around with about 10 grand just in a sling across his chest at 13 years old. Talk about selling a Jordan rookie today and a few other things. And he's comping a few cards in my showcase and he's obviously not liking where I'm priced versus what he's seeing. So he's not seeing anything. And then he sees just a raw card over one of my small showcases. It's a 2024, 2025. So last year's a rock stars out of Tops Chrome, Nicole Jokic. I've got an $80 tag on it. Now when I tagged it, the last sale was 30, but before that was 80 before that was a hundred. So in that situation, I'm going to kind of ignore the high and the low and tag it. The entirety of he and I's conversation was him seeing that card and going, would you take 65 for it? And me going, that's a fair offer. That's fine. So I pulled the card out and he hands me $65 and I go on with my day. It's a pretty, I'm pretty busy. Jason's walking, doing his thing and I'm taking care of the table. And about an hour later the kid shows back up. Hey, can I get my money back? What? Can I get my money back? No, I don't know. That's not, that's not how this works. It's not my fault. You couldn't walk around the room and flip the card. Um, no, he was trying to flip it and he couldn't know, that's obviously, I mean, what brings him back an hour later? Like I'm making an assumption there, but yeah. Um, and so he's like, well, it's a $15 card and you had $80 on it. I said, it's not a $15 card. And I said, and you didn't pay $80 for it. He's like, well, well, I thought it was this year's. Oh, so you thought you were getting a $200 card for $65 and now you're mad because you found another outlier comp that wasn't there when I priced it and you made a mistake. So now it's my fault. No, I'm sorry. Unfortunately I can't, I can't give you a refund. So he stalks off and within about three minutes this older guy comes flying at our table. Now this guy's a dealer comes flying at our table yelling at me about how I, how I ripped his kid off and how I'm selling $15 cards for $80. Um, and I'm in the middle of a deal as this is happening. And I just looked at him and went, yeah, that's not what happened. And then I went back to my deal and uh, I thought that was the end of it. And then he just kind of kept going. And so finally I said, sir, this is what happened. And he's huffing and puffing. Well, a few minutes later the kids back again, that's right. And he's mumbling. And I was like, buddy, I said, I'm a lot of things, but I'm not a liar. And at this point his story has changed to his dad that I told him it was this year's, which obviously didn't occur. Um, and so now I'm getting actually pretty annoyed. And uh, I was like, because our whole thing, like you guys watch us, our entire brand is like, we're very transparent and very honest about how we do things. Um, I think eventually the dad realized that his kid just done up and because another one of our dealer friends heard him talking about it and I, he heard him say to his kid, this is your fault. So eventually I think everything calmed down. But as a teaching moment for everybody involved first, if, if your kid knows what he's doing and he makes a mistake, guess what? That's a valuable lesson. We've all done it. Every single one of us has bought a card that we thought was one thing. It was something else. Um, it, it happens a lot, especially when you're moving large volumes of things. Um, secondly, teaching lesson for dad, if dad had come over to our table and said, Hey man, I think my son really made a mistake here. Um, he, and I know that that's not your fault, but he, he really like, he thought it was this year's. And, uh, is there anything we can do here? Like if that's the conversation that occurs, I'm one of two things is going to happen. I'm either going to give them their money back and take my card back with the caveat. Hey, I appreciate you making a mistake. I would say that my preference would be that here's your money. And then we just don't do any business in the future. Um, or number two, I say, Hey, here's what I do. Let's find, let's go find the card on eBay. And if it's cheaper than what I sold it to you for on eBay available, I will give you the difference back. Does that seem fair? Like there would have been a conversation about trying to make it right. But when somebody makes a mistake and then you come in yelling at me, um, you have shut off all end results that are going to be good for you, you know? So Jason wasn't even there. The kid wasn't wrong that the value is down on the card, but the kid was also wrong that it didn't recently. Was it a recent 80 and a hundred just hasn't sold in a while? No, within the last, I mean, within the last four sales of the card. Okay. Well, yeah, like that's the thing. Like you've got the last four or five sales of the card with a high of a hundred. And when I priced it a low of 30, yeah. Since I priced it evidently, another sale had gone off. If you, yeah, I'm sure the new stuff made that one. Yeah. If you're out here thinking that we're all rechecking every sub a hundred dollar card every week on pricing, we're not, we can on the liquid players that are moving up. I think a lot of dealers do that, but on like an unlicensed Yoka die cut. Yeah. We typically are informed. Yes. Yes. Now should we stay to on top of our stuff? Yes. But sometimes with the time it gets a little bit, a little bit crazy to do that with every card every week, but correct. Yeah. All I was going to say was I came back. You're like a thing happened. I'll tell you in a minute. And I'm just like, Oh, great. And there's still a tension over towards us. And I'm like, what did he do? He snatched somebody by the throat and lifted them off the ground. It happened, but this was not one of those, uh, one of those days that wasn't that, but yeah, so that happened teachable moment for everybody involved, but, uh, me off too. How'd I rip you off? Tell me to sit down that Mississippi stud table. I didn't tell you to, I was sitting there and you decided to come over and sit. Well, you were at a blackjack table that I had just gotten my teeth kicked in at, and you were doing just fine when I left that Mississippi stud table. Yeah. We live and we learn love is blind. Hey, before we, before we move on, I want to, I want to do one of our fun little segments. We haven't, we haven't done it in a few weeks. J T triple crown 24 started this segment out of the box where he's talking about little gems. He finds out in the wild, why he picks them up and all that. We have another one of those segments for you. Let's take a look at it. Something that I am always cognizant of when I'm going through a value box is the particular serial number of any given card. That's Miguel Cabrera card that you're seeing right there is number 24 of 60, which happens to be his Jersey number. Personally, as a collector, I'm not one who gets all excited over Jersey number. There's only one type of serial number that I get excited over because it's a date that means something to me, but otherwise it's not really my cup of tea, but I know it is for a lot of people out there. It's not always a guarantee that you're going to get a premium for a car just because the serial number happens to be a Jersey match, but there are collectors out there who do make that a priority for their collection, or they exclusively collect cards of their player where there is a Jersey match. Other serial numbers that you can look for are of course, the bookends that would be your first on print. So card that's one of 99 or the last on print, 100 of 100, for example. You can also look for stats on cards. A really popular one a couple of years ago was when Otani had his 50-50 season. Cards that were serial number 50 of 50 were selling for ridiculous premiums over their fellow counterparts of the same card. You can also look for kind of unique ones that are maybe a little more time sensitive, like for example, Bam Adebayo, his 83 point game, maybe cards that are numbered 83 out of 149, for example, may command a little bit more of a premium just because people want to remember that specific game that he had. A little bit more niche there, but it's something to always consider when you're looking through value boxes is that a serial number can sometimes elevate a card that would otherwise probably be the same value as whatever it's stickered at. Thanks, JT. Appreciate that. Be sure to give Triple Crown 24 a follow. A lot of great content. He does a breakdown mid negotiation where he like pauses the video and kind of gives his thought process and a lot of his content. So very educational, very helpful, rooted in experience, not just a random theory of somebody that's not engaged with what's going on in the space. So be sure to give him a follow on that. You know, Gary, we have a few weeks coming up here. I'm nervous. Like, as this drops, you're on your way to your boat, right? Yeah, we're probably sitting in the probably sitting in the airport in Columbus, fighting for my life through security. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And I've heard that the port of Miami is just an absolute nightmare right now. So that'll be fun, too. That's a fun time. That's a fun time. We will be needing your support, people. I will be solo on whatnot for a few weeks here. Yeah, I've got several shows of that. So be sure to bookmark those. Come hang out with us. We do have a lot of fun stuff. Gary and I just made a purchase that's going to have our shows for the next few weeks. And there's a lot of really fun stuff in that we both had a chance to take a look at it. We have an interview coming up here in just a little bit with Mario from Mars Cards, an LCS story that begins back in the show scene. A couple of brothers. Can't wait to share that with you. But before we do that, we have one more stop that we need to make in Delaware, Ohio. Keith Newhart at Newhart Cards for Shop Talk. Hi, this is Keith at Newhart Cards and this is Shop Talk. Been out of the shop for a few days with a little bit of R&R. I am back and ready to go. One of the first things I did is pull up Facebook, which is always a bad idea. And the first thread that I see is, are card shows dying? Are they slower now than they were two weeks ago? Right. And it just kind of got me thinking, listen, we've been in business 15 years. I've seen ups. I've seen downs. I've seen everything. You know, 12 years ago, Panini took over, Topps. The world is ending. Upper Deck can't do baseball anymore and such. So we move past that, right? 2020, we have COVID. Boxes are $1,000. Nobody's ever going to buy a box. Nobody's ever going to pay $40 for a blaster. We move past that, right? Now we're in the fanatics is evil scene. One fly. The fanatics is evil scene, right? Fanatics has taken over the world and, you know, we're not going to be able to have this license or that license stuff. That's done. So now we're seeing shows are bad. People put your feet on the ground, right? Go to a shop, go on to whatnot, go to card shows. See what's really happening in the trenches. We're at the top of the market now. Enjoy it, right? One of my favorite movies, one of the best quotes is get busy living or get busy dying, right? So, you know, stay out of the Facebook threads about he said, she said and go visit yourself. Enjoy it. We love what we do and have fun with it, right? This has been Keith at New Hard Cards and this is Shop Talk. Alright, thanks Keith. Be sure that you give Keith a follow. Go check him out in Delaware, Ohio if you're ever passing through. There's always going to be some good signals in there and some fun stuff to pick up. Alright, so we've got coming up now something that we've been planning for a few months and it's gotten pushed back for different reasons and we finally, all the stars have aligned. You've probably seen them on your social media if you consume any sports card content at all. They do tons of great content around the shop and the shows that they do. They are just as busy if not busier than we are. We're super happy to bring Mario from Mars Cards in Cleveland, Ohio onto the Ball Card Show. Live in studio, Mario Mars Cards in the Ball Card Show. It's been a long time coming. We're glad to have you with us. How you doing, fellas? Doing great. Like Jason said, we've been trying to get the stars aligned for this one for a few months now and we finally got you. You're over being sick. You gave it to Jason, so he's fighting for his life. I can't even say you gave it to Jason because you were fighting for the end of it when we were in Bronco Bash this last weekend and Jason got it from his wife. Sorry, I thought it was the one handshake I gave him this weekend. He had already started it when we were on our way out there. There's nothing better than knowing you're going on vacation in a week and getting in a car with your best friend and business partner to drive three and a half hours in just an airtight container and him going, yeah, man, I think I'm getting sick. Oh, great. Thanks. This is going to be fun. No windows down, just hot boxing. Remember when you had a corporate gig where you'd just do a thing where you'd call and be like, hey, I'm sick today. Remember those days? Yeah, I do. No more of that. No time to be sick anymore. We don't get to slow down and stop power through everything. Well, I'll jump in with this. I noticed this orange banner every time we were setting up as we started branching out of the smaller local scene and starting to do more regional shows on a regular basis. And I see this this dude is set up every time and Mars cards. Obviously, the branding is fantastic. I would logo and all that kind of stuff. But you always seem to be having a fun time at shows. And you can see there's a couple of lanes of people that are doing it for people that love it and people that are just getting through it. Right. And you seem to really enjoy this stuff. So over time, a few conversations got rolling and I was like, man, I really want the people to hear your story. So we'll shut up here a minute. We want to hear the story, the genesis of Mars cards. Where'd you start and how did you get to where you are today? Absolutely. Well, thank you, guys. Appreciate that. So I think our story, it's pretty similar to a lot of the collectors out there. When we were younger, obviously, we were heavy into sports cards. It really started with like WWE figures. That's how I was mass huge into wrestling when I was little. So, you know, I had the thumb wrestlers. I'm older. So it's the thumb wrestlers. The you know, the WWE figures. And as I, you know, kind of continued the collecting journey, got into baseball and football. And it was just it was an immediate passion for me. So I absolutely dove head first into it. Tons of stuff at the house. And I think like everybody else, we kind of fell off a little bit as we got older, you know, got into the high school and college stuff. It fell off a lot. And then, you know, married, got kids. And then as my son got older, you know, he started to get into collecting. Right. So we'd go to the local card shop and start, you know, grabbing boxes here and there. And back when he was collecting, man, a box of a hobby was a hundred bucks. And I'm like, dude, we got to pump the brakes, man. This is a hundred bucks. This is a hundred bucks, dude, for a hobby box of five autos in it. I know it's fun, but, you know, we had to pump the brakes, but we had a lot of fun with it. And, you know, we'd be putting binders together and the itch kind of kept growing and growing. And then I'll segue to my brother-in-law, who's the, you know, other half owner here. We started talking about cards, my nephew and son, and then they didn't know that they were into it at all. So we're like each collecting, having no idea that we both, you know, love the hobby together. And as that came together, you know, we started going to stores together and buying stuff together and ripping with the sons and the cool part about it was we never expected this, right? We never expected that. We just had a blast collecting. I remember us being on FaceTime and, you know, pulling packs together and we're both, both places here and there, we're both going crazy. Oh my gosh, we pulled this. And then we're like, okay, so we have a lot, way too many cards right now, right? We have way too many cards and we were selling stuff and looking through eBay and kind of got into the little fun eBay selling to try to fund our hobby, right? And as we did that, we're like, you know what, dude, we have so much on each side. Why don't we just put it together, you know, put all our stuff together and start selling together, right? And we saw just this crazy influx of sales happening for us. And we're talking like, you know, we were putting, you know, 50 cent cards on there and dollar cards on there and 10 cent cards on there. But little by little, it was stacking up for us to where we were like, okay, maybe we should do something with this, right? So we started to make like fun YouTube back in the day, you'll see like really, really wildly not professional YouTube stuff of us opening packs. And we're sitting there in our little 10 by 10 maintenance room with a flipped over poker, green felt mat, you know, putting stuff out there and making YouTube videos. But I think the biggest thing was when we created our Instagram together. And back in the day, you didn't have like whatnots and you didn't have like those, you know, selling platforms. That wasn't a thing. So we were early on into the Instagram like stories and Instagram lives. That was our big thing, was doing Instagram lives. And little by little, we started to see the content kind of go here and the following go there. And it really just kind of sparked something in us is like, I think this is something we can kind of ride the wave on. That was the big part. It was never did we think, hey, we want to, you know, create this really fun atmosphere. We always want to create a fun atmosphere, but we didn't have Mars cards in mind at all. It was just a fun, you know, real names was on the Mars cards personal account when we first started. So when you when you started that process, you were selling on eBay, you're kind of do this. Did you just go straight from being eBay sellers and content folks into opening a shop or was there a bridge there where it was like starting to do a lot of shows? Because I think there's a lot of people who are where maybe not where Jason and I are now, but where you guys were when you were doing the eBay stuff, thinking about going to shows. Ideally, one day they want to own a brick and mortar if it makes sense. What did that bridge look like for you guys to then, you know, we're doing this. When did you know, hey, we've done this enough. Let's pull the trigger on a brick and mortar because that's a huge, huge commitment that I don't think a lot of people understand. Like you're signing usually a five year commercial lease like you're doing all this kind of stuff. Yeah. So I guess like just like anybody we were, it was like, we had no idea like background wise. We had friends in the hobby, but we didn't have anybody that we could lean on to start. You know what I'm saying? Like we were, we started with the eBay stuff and then that really started, you know, kind of exploding for us. So to your guys's point, yeah, we really looked into like the local card shop or the local card show scene. Right. And I would say, you know, the wild part is that we didn't even go to card shows before we even set up. It was like a, it was like a just a new experience for us setting up. Didn't know how the flow worked. Didn't know how to set up anything. Your first show was when you set up at? Yes. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. So it was the very first, we didn't go in and do any research or say, Hey, let's go see what this kind of stuff's all about. No, we just sat down with no, with no, you know, card display, no showcases. It was like, you know, we're very creative. So we had like cardboard boxes that were stacked up and our cards were like float across them there this way. And then they were on the table that way. And, you know, as we, you know, kind of walked around and looked at everybody, we're like, wow, we are so out of place right now. This is insane. And I don't think we had those massive cards. Like, you know, everyone kind of starts out, you walk to every table and there's, you know, 800, 900, $1,000 cards here and there. It was, you know, the $5 that was laid out with a little sticker and the $6 and then, you know, the $15. But the cool part was the first time we had ever set up, we were there crazy early and we didn't know that other vendors walk over and buy from you. Right. We had no idea. This is like, oh, this is a thing. Like we're just, are we doing this right now? Okay. I smell blood in the water. Yeah. Right. And so we're sitting there and they just started stacking stuff, you know, and picking stuff up and hey, could we do deals here and there? And we're like, yeah, absolutely. Next thing we know, a lot of our product was gone before we even set up our very first show. So like, okay, we got the, we're looking to show you, we got, we got the right stuff here. I think we can expand on this. And yeah, so then we would start to, again, let me, I'll pump back just a little bit. We have a really fun dynamic. So my brother-in-law lives out in Indiana, right? So he had engineering background. So he moved out to Indiana originally from Cleveland, like I am. So him and my sister and the kids moved out to Indiana probably like six, seven years ago, maybe even longer. It was, it was a while ago. So our dynamic was really fun. He's setting up and I'm driving out to Fort Wayne and Warsaw and all those little shows. And then he's driving out here to Strongsville and Middleburg Heights. These are all local to my shop here in Brunswick with all, all within a, you know, a 10, 15 mile radius. So we would drive back and forth and find all these little fun shows to set up at. And like, again, we have a fun dynamic as we, as we continue to grow is where we saw the opportunity for bigger shows. But to get back to the point, yes, we started out at the very, very small shows. And as we're doing it, the love of what we were doing started to escalate crazy. Right. And we, we were sitting there one day after a show and kind of threw the idea out of like, what about a card shop? You know? And like, that's when we both at the same time, kind of like light bulb and eyeballs, like, dude, I wanted to say this too. Like card shop is my dream. As I was little, we always wanted to have, I always wanted to have a card shop. Little did I know would be with, you know, my brother-in-law and you know, the nieces and nephews and sons and daughters all helping out here. But as we continue to do shows, we would slowly put aside for it, right? We're putting aside for, hey, down the road, we're going to need product down the road. We're going to need merchandising down the road. We're going to need cases and wall shelves and all that. So we were putting away for it. And we never really had a concrete date, right? It was just, let's go to each show. Don't worry what we have. We're just going to keep stacking and keep stacking and keep stacking. All the while, both of us having full time, you know, 50, 60 hour a week jobs. You know, I was in the retail space and you know, managerial spot for almost 25 years. So I have that background in the customer service and I love talking to people and I love engaging. That's the best part about, you know, having the shop is the engagement that I have on a daily basis and making it, I always say, you know, to making it a memorable experience. They're going to remember who Mars cards is when they leave here. So as we continue to grow, I live in a, in a smaller, I mean, Brunswick's a suburb of Cleveland. You know, it's a, it's a, it's a decent sized town, but we always had this one little spot we were watching, right? There's one spot in this city that as I would drive by or drop the kids off somewhere, I'm like that, look, that's an ideal spot for a starter, you know? And I was, it was always in the back of my head. So one day we're driving down the street and a for lease sign pops up into it. And it was an immediate U-turn. It was an immediate U-turn, right? So I turned the car around, go up there, call the phone, the phone number that's listed on there. Nobody answers. I did this for about three straight days. Nobody was answering, right? So went to the neighbor next door, one of the, I think it was an insurance agency. He gave me the direct line to this, to the landlord. Sure. Got in touch with them and asked for a meeting and a setup to, to go inside there. And that day, you know, we handshook on, on where, and this is what we're going to do. Like we didn't waste a space. It was about a 300 foot square foot, you know, shop for our, you know, again, we talk, always talk about organically building. We're not going to go crazy into this. We're going to see how it goes. It was a 300 square foot spot that we actually asked if we, we actually did some demolition in there to open it up. It was, it was, you walk in and you walked about maybe 10 to 15 feet and there was a door into another room and we asked, we asked, is it, could we tear this wall down? Is that a thing? And they were very hesitant on it, but they said yes. And we did it. So it opened up to our very first card shop there. A little small L shaped, you walked in a little L shape here and straightforward and that's it. There was no corners. There was no storage room. It was a bathroom and about maybe a five by five storage space inside. It was, it was, it was wild, but yeah. So to get back to how we, you know, how we came about it, it was, we were constantly putting little stuff away and never, never announced it. You know, we never, our social media, as we were going, we were doing the videos and we were recording ourselves at all of the, at all the shows and that great following there. But we never announced anything, you know, we never said, Hey, this is the, this is our show coming soon. We said, Hey, this is our show and we're going to be here starting at midnight, coming soon. It was work, you know, eight to six 30 and then from seven to midnight we're in there painting and doing new stuff to it and ordering and putting fixtures together. And again, the, the, the butterflies that we were going through of knowing this, a dream is about to happen was the really cool part. And it was those, it was in 20, end of 2020 into 2021, we were doing a lot of online breaks and that was helping fund a ton of stuff as well. We were on IG live like crazy, right? 2020 Instagram breaks, you were ahead of the curve. We were on there, yeah. We were in 2020, 2021, 2022, we kept going through it. And then the cool part is like, not the cool part, but this is what you, this is as a, you know, a dream chaser for your hobby shop that you're looking for. It was, you know, we're at work at 6 a.m. We're there till 6 p.m. He's jumping on live, cause we have a live at seven. So he's in Indiana. Guys, Mario's a little late today. Sorry about that. I have the product, he doesn't. So he's jumping on and talking and melting, you know, I'm a little late today. You know, cause as a manager, you never leave, you can't leave. You can't just leave your shot. You can't just leave what you're doing. So yeah, we were doing the Instagram breaks. And so from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. I'm at the nine to five job, actually the 12 hour job. And then coming home and immediately getting ready to do breaks from seven to however long it takes, eight to however long it takes. People don't understand. This is a 70, 80 hour a week gig if you're doing it full time. It doesn't matter whether you own a shop, whether you're just doing shows, whether it's whatnot, you're sourcing, you're selling, you're constantly working on social media stuff. So when you guys did the shop, what was the year that you guys opened that first small shop? The first small shop was summer of 2022. Okay, so right at the tail end of the boom, of the COVID boom was when you opened the shop. So that's really interesting because you open the shop at the tail end of an environment where it felt like if you bought a card on Tuesday, it was worth more on Saturday, right? Like that's what that period was. It was, but you opened the doors to a shop right as that is about to come to a real correction point. Because from late 2022 into early 2024, everything kind of just went about a 50% correction. Yes. So what did you find was the key to you guys maintaining a constant revenue stream and being able to put yourself in a position to be where you are now, navigating a hobby that was in a downturn? For sure. And I think that our business model still hasn't changed from where we're at. When we started to where we're at, it was having product that's affordable for everybody. So we were in that range of dollar box, the value boxes were so important to us. Those value boxes of having, it's behind me right now, but having 30 to 44 rows that people can come in and sit down and go through these. These are stuff, these are things that we, and the great part about those value boxes when we first started, that was all stuff we had ripped for three, four years. Cost, it was already there. We're already there. We were sunk into those, that was ours. And little by little, our model never changed. It was always, we want somebody to leave with something when they walk in the shop, right? So there's a price point for everybody. We have really fun, we had really fun wall cases that had those 10 to 15, $20 cards, right? And those would just be flying through. And like you said, the climate of the hobby, nobody knows that that downturn's coming, but you know at some point it can't sustain where it was at, right? So to jump into those $500 cards and $1,000 cards, and yeah, it's cool to have those in your shop, but that's museum-like. We want to move this, and we're not a museum. We move our stuff, right? We price it correctly. We buy it in lots so that when I'm pricing it, it's exactly what it should be priced at, right? And people started noticing that. Like, dude, these are great prices. Well, yeah, I buy in bulk. So when I buy in bulk, I can price that stuff out great for everybody, right? And so that's- You're not setting your own comp on eBay to argue against. Yes, yeah, exactly. It's sitting there and to start, you know, we didn't have, you know, we weren't fanatics. We weren't with fanatics, right? We weren't with Panini. So it was sourcing product through eBay and through, you know, friends that may have had, you know, a small brick and mortar that had some extra stuff. Hey guys, do you have anything that you could, you know, kind of let us have? So it was a lot of blasters and it was a lot of product that wasn't popular. It was, there was hockey and there was- Stuff from DealerNet. You're like, what? DealerNet, yes, absolutely. What scraps do other people have that I could buy? Yes, what does not, what is going way down in price that nobody likes, I'm buying it. So, and to have that, again, we talked about, you know, we were within our means and we were building organically. We didn't have six figures to make this great shop, right? We wanted to build organically. It started with, you know, two six foot shelves and it grew to two eight foot shelves and it grew to three, you know what I'm saying? As we grew and as the product continued to flow for us, that's when we added more stuff to our shop and that's how we continue to grow. We always talk about growing organically, whether it's here at the old shop and now at this shop, we're still adding small stuff to it. We don't have to put that massive revenue into that shop to start. And that's how we started back in, you know, 2022. But I think the big thing was there wasn't, in our area and just like everywhere else, there's a lot of shops have been around for 30 years, 40 years. It's just that older, great places to go, nostalgic places to go, but it wasn't that welcome in and come hang out and come talk, let's talk sports. You don't even have to buy anything. We're engaging with everybody. It's our personality, the same way that I am in a card shop, our card show is how I'm at it in my shop. Like we're engaging, we're talking, we're, you know, it's not a point of sale here. You know, you can come in and sit down and, you know, let's dig through a dollar box and spend hours, just BSing about stuff. That word of mouth got out really quickly about, you know, a small little shop in Brunswick. That's, you know, a little different than the other ones. Yeah. Well, I want to jump in here real quick. You keep using this, this term organic. And I think that there's really something special here that I'm going to try to pry out of you. I think you're going to give that to us. Yeah. The, you know, you're talking, you're in a management role. Your brother-in-law has got an engineering background. You're seeing what's happening in the card space. What you're doing is working. Surely at some point you both looked at each other and said, should we just bankroll this and go, should we just go find the funding and just dump on it and go, but you chose not to. And I don't think it was just about, could we find some money? I think there was a reason what my assumption is you'd have missed out on a lot that you needed to learn, but what do you think you would have shortcutted that would have hurt you just by dumping money on this from day one, you know, going for a big shop, you know, chasing all of that. I think we would have really missed the grind and the work we put into it. And if that becomes special, when you see the growth from day one to where we're at now. So when we first started that shop, it was, it was a four day a week, you know, we're open at 3.30 to seven, you know what I'm saying? The hours were really small. I was still working, you know, full time. And my wife, God bless her, was help, was in the shop and would open the shop for me. And then when I, when I got off of work, ran home, changed and then shot for the last two hours. So building that and bringing her in, she has no idea still what cards are, but she, she's again, can talk to anybody. She's my love. She's definitely when you don't have that blessing, you can't go as hard as you possibly can. Right. So we saw the incremental growth of just me being working all the way until 5.30 and then jumping from six to eight, you know what I'm saying? And working in the shop. And at that point we were like, we've got something special here. What if I just went head first? Right. We're starting to make some, you know, little revenue here and there where we're able to pay each other, you know, out of what we've built at the shop. And I feel like if Mario went 100%, we can take this to another level. Cause I was at like, I was at like 20%, really. Right. The weekends, I was working the weekends, right. No days off, you know, up until, right. No days off, no hours off, always thinking about what's next. But I'm like, if I can dedicate 100% of what I can do and what I can put into the shop, we're not going to lose. I just know it. That's the confidence I had. That's the, you know, the, not the cockiness, but the confidence and what I can do. And well, it was rooted in what you were saying. It's because the grind was the work was showing evidence. It wasn't that you just parachuted in and said, okay, I'm, I'm planting a flag here. This is, you know, you, well, it's okay. It's okay to be a little bit cocky when you know what, you know, like one of the things that drives me nuts is when people look at somebody like, oh, he's being cocky. Well, it's only cocky in the sense of being annoying. If you can't back it up, otherwise it's just really strong confidence. And there's nothing wrong with being that confident when you know what you're doing. And now you guys have moved from that small shop into a bigger shop, a shop that's becoming well-known, not just regionally, but nationally, you guys do a lot of great content, but here's the thing that I've noticed is that you guys are still to this day. I don't know if it's every weekend, but it damn sure feels like we see you at almost every show that we're set up at. So you guys are running a shop full time. I don't know whether you're six days or seven days a week, but then you're also at least a day, if not two days, every weekend. And a quick reminder, those of you that live on the coasts, like Northern Indiana and Cleveland look kind of close together on a map, but they're actually more than a 30 minute drive. They're a little bit of a hike. They are not close, especially for a guy who hates driving. They are not close. Well, at least Jason has me to chauffeur him around. But in general, you guys are doing that and you're at these shows all the time. And when I ask you about it, you were like, well, here's our thought process on this. We're going to try them all and we'll keep the good ones on the schedule. I don't know whether that's the long-term plan until you get the full schedule kind of hammered out to where you know, over the course of a year, here's where we're going to be. But tell us how a little bit of how you view the show scene versus the LCS scene and how they feed into and support each other. For sure. The importance of the show scene and the LCS is I think way bigger than people imagine, right? There's a lot of shows. So there's a lot of shows in the Cleveland area, not massive shows, but they're fun, smaller shows, which are very important. And you guys, as you see now, right now it's insane for shows. Like it's, you know, shoulder to shoulder. Ohio, it's crazy. It's Ohio. There's shows every weekend. Yeah. Every single weekend and they're always packed and we started out when it wasn't packed, right? It was just us sitting down and maybe you got a flow of 50, 60 customers or people walking through the doors. You're happy to do a thousand dollars that Saturday. Yeah, dude. We're barely making table, you know, table costs, but it got our name out locally, which was awesome. And that's what our big thing was. Yeah, we weren't making crazy money, but we were making connections in the area. And that was huge for us. So especially in the Cleveland area, you know, within a probably 50 mile radius, you can cross off, I don't know, seven, seven shows a month. It's insane. Like if you want to go East, East and West and South, you're going to find a show that's happening monthly and you can hit four of them in one weekend, you know? So that's always been the great part is our, we were able to get our name out there. We were able to, hey, here's Mars Cards. Here's this, here's that. But what we decided to do was, here, you know what? I'll take it back just a little bit. We used to break a lot, right? So we were on Whatnot very early. So we were in on Whatnot in 2021 is when they kind of started reaching out to us, 2022. That was back in the day where they were vetting you. We were having one of these. We were having a Zoom call. When I first opened our Whatnot account, I had to go through all this. Yeah, I had to go through all of that. Now it's like, you have cards? Yeah, go ahead. You can start your stream tomorrow, you know? And they're just, it's a wild West kind of happening right now, right? So as we continued to grow our shop in the small shop, we were like, we don't have product to have on the shelf and break all the time, right? So if we decided to break and we had a great night, there's nothing on the shelves for our customers. And that meant a lot to us to make sure that when a customer came in, they had product. So we made a decision. We don't wanna break. We're gonna pump the brakes on breaking, right? So our product kept getting bigger and customers kept coming in and they kept buying stuff. So our decision was, how about we just pump the brakes, period? I don't have to sit there and grind seven hours a night and then go through. If I would have done seven different breaks with 30 different people in a night, I have 200 new orders that I have to do the next morning or I'm staying up till four in the morning and I gotta work at six. It's like, so we pumped the brakes on that. And we thought like, what if we just supplemented it with going to shows? You know, maybe we do some shows twice a month and that could supplement what the breaking side of it was. Little did we know, we would stumble upon places like Ship Shawana. You know, and Ship Shawana is a mega show in the Midwest. And we started just like everybody else. We started on a waiting list for a year or two, right? And then one day Brad had called us and he's like, guys, I got a weird scenario. Like, there's a little bit of grass outside in the front. Would you guys wanna set up a tent out in the front? At the barn, yep. Right by that food truck, yep. We 100%, we'll do whatever we want to get on there. So we were one of the, I think we were the first along with another a couple of vendors to be under the tent as people walked in to the old red barn. You know, we had the Bluetooth cranking, you know, cranking music and the welcoming and the food trucks right next to us. It felt like a little party outside and Brad was absolutely loving it and, you know, got us to the inside. And then eventually now to where it's at the Michiana Event Center and 500 Tables. So yeah, circling back to like how we integrate our LCS into the card shows, those same guys that are circling card shows in a Cleveland area, in a suburb, the moment that's over are circling right to the LCSs to kind of see if it wasn't a great show, they're in here. If it was a great show and they wanna sell to me, you know what I'm saying? So that integration of having a LCS in an area in a 20 mile, 30 mile radius of 10 to 15 shows started pulling everything towards us at the shop, right? And that's, again, the wheel started turning, like what if we just set some weekends aside to go to some bigger shows and we can supplement revenue, add a big show and bring it right back to the shop. And it started working. working really well for us. So for us, you know, we're lucky enough to have, you know, my son is, you know, at the time he was 18, 19, now he's 21, 22. So he would be able to run the shop for us. And he does still to this day, he's running the shop for us while we're out of town. And we're able to do that same exact shop open, doing well at the show, doing well. And we can bring it all together and continue to, you know, help fund and revenue our shop continually. So it's, it's pretty clear through the marketing and just the growth of the shop now that you've kind of really hit stride with the content, right? Yeah. And this is something that sounds silly to people newer to the space, but this was not a given with an LCS even three years ago. A lot of LCSs that have been established for a long time really didn't place as much of a priority on social reach as much as I have cards. You need cards. This is where you'll come get the cards, right? So fanatics steps in. We now have direct accounts. The allocation game is very different than it used to be. Sure. You hear of a lot of turnover. You hear of like town hall meetings where there's expectations. Fanatics wants a shop to look like this and to do that. But you're telling a story of like, Hey, we came up in this, in this time, we grew this thing organically. We have established a relationship with fanatics. So let me ask you this. Somebody that's genuinely positive. That's kind of built this out that didn't just parachute in. Yeah. Like what is fanatics looking for in 2026 from an LCS? What do they want? What do they want? Cause that seems to be what a lot of people are fussing about. Yeah. Yeah. So we, and we came in, it couldn't have been more perfect time for us to get in and say, we're going headfirst into a card shop. Right. We had a really small shop. We you know, like I said, we're sourcing from everywhere and we just got that email from tops, you know, and fanatics at you welcome to our tops direct. And we, that was the, that was the pivotal hugging and jumping all over the place for us. You know, as a small card shop that they had even come in, you know, when, and it would get another perfect storm, 2023 was the national was in Cleveland. Right. So we're getting all of those people into our tiny shop. Right. So, you know, the head of all those fun places had stopped into Mars card shop. Right. And, uh, showed they were shoulder to shoulder. If there was like five people in our shop, it was hot. It started to get a little hot in there. It was tiny, you know, it was a little sweat and you know, they came through, they love that. They love the aesthetic of the shop, but to take it to a next level, that's where our brains like, okay, this is awesome, but we're always looking for something bigger. Right. Um, so getting it straight from the mouth of fanatics of this was in 2023, Hey, card shop 2.0, this is what it should look. This is what we're trying to gear towards. Right. And we had that, but we had it in an old look. Our shop, you know, had the vinyl panels all around. Uh, you know, it was cool and it was a fun, cozy little spot, but in 20, you know, from 2023 to 2026. And you're to answer, your question is tops wants there and fanatics wants their brand everywhere. They want it everywhere. They want it on every swipe of Instagram, every swipe of Tik TOK, every, they want it everywhere. So for us, we've always been involved in social media. That's how we've gained our traction. Like back in 20, like I said, we were doing this in 2019, 2020. Um, so right where we're at now, it's been just a consistent, every single day, something matters that is in my shop that I'm going to video or record or talk about. Um, and for fanatics, what they're looking for is probably to hear the word fanatics or tops in every single swipe of a, of an Instagram post or of a, uh, you know, to see their product being open, to see the, see it on people's balls and seeing, you know, the kids opening the series one and popping up and seeing celebrations. And, um, that's the only way they're going to be able to move forward and continue to grow. The hobby is to see it every single swipe. And for those shops that aren't doing that, they're on the back burner, man. They really are. Priority that they're like, not only trying to elevate what shops are doing now, but even to the point of like, Hey, for those of you that just aren't doing this and also have no further interest, yeah. Yes. Growing this with us. Um, does it sound like there's going to be a lot of interest in continuing to work together? Cause in their mind, that's not working together. Sorry, Gary. I know that's okay. I want to ask you the same question then, uh, Mario, that we asked Keith a few months ago at new heart, uh, when he, when we interviewed him. Um, and it sounds like the answer is going to be yes, but I'd like you to flesh it out. Yeah. One of the complaints that I hear from LCS owners, uh, when it comes to that fanatics relationship is that to, to a lot of them, it feels like fanatics wants all the benefits of a franchise relationship without providing the same support that you would get from a franchise or do you, have you found that if you actually do the things that they want you to do, that they provide that level of support, or is it just kind of like, we got to do this to make sure that we're staying in front of mind? Yeah, I think it's twofold, right? It's a twofold answer. Um, yes, I think that the benefits aren't there as a franchise that you would get as a franchise. Um, as far as consistent communication, as far as, um, elevated product allocation, just like anybody, everyone needs allocation. Everybody needs more stuff, right? We all do. Everybody does, even though what you're out, you need more of that. Um, but I think that what we've seen is not to, I wouldn't say not doing everything and we're not going, we're not going to be at the, um, tops conference this week. That's probably something that's a little bigger for them. But you know, when you're doing it on an Easter weekend and we're very family oriented and we're very, um, you know, uh, our, our values are huge and like a Easter weekend to not be with my family is not going to happen. Right. And that's their tops conference. So that's twofold. We'll see how that goes. You never know. I don't know what's going to happen, but we're not going to be there. Um, but at the same time, um, yeah, we've, we buy everything. We don't say no. And we're seeing more stuff coming to the shop. Right. We are seeing it. You know, we're seeing maybe a shop that's in the area and not getting a hobby that we got or a second wave that we got. Uh, so yeah, I think it is twofold for sure. We are getting what we are seeing the, um, the benefits of the yeses, but playing ball, yeah. Of playing ball. Right. Yeah. And, but we also, again, not seeing everything we want to see out of a direct partnership with tops. And that means whether it's, um, you know, having all of the, um, advertisement that they want, you know, send me, send me the things. Don't make me pay for all the advertisements that you got. Send that to me. You know what I'm saying? Like, let's do this. I'll, I'll promote it, but you're not going to pay for it. What are you going to make me pay for that? Give me, come on, let's go. Uh, but yeah, it is, it is twofold for sure. It is, um, it's something that, and we're going to, it's going to, you never know where it's going to go. Tomorrow is the last day of panini ever or today is the last day panini will ever have a, uh, you know, football licensed, licensed product with football. So tomorrow is a whole new day, guys. You don't know what's happening. It's a day we've all been kind of looking forward at for three or four years now. And now it's here and it's like, okay. And it's here. And that's one of those things. Yeah. And that's one of those things too, as, as a small shop that's building and building for the last three plus years. Tomorrow is the day we look forward to. Cause now we're on even playing field with everybody as far as like, yeah. Or even a, even a old school Southern or GTS account where you kind of still got some of the benefits of being there for 20 years. Yeah. You're that's exactly the bright, exact words that we have been saying. It's like we're on even playing field at a spot with top. So we feel very comfortable, um, where we're moving forward. Um, you know, that's, that was always been a big thing cause there aren't local ways around here that can put panini stuff at better prices than us, just because of being direct with them. We just can't do that. Um, when you're with a distributor, you're with a, you know, but now being direct and, you know, it puts us on a playing field with everybody that we feel very confident. We talk about the confidence, like feel very confident of our next, the next wave of bars cards. So when you, um, are, are thinking about the growth that you've had, the new space, you've got the, the, the direct account you're growing. One thing I think that sets you apart in an area where you're talking about there being a lot of saturation, 10, 12 shows a weekend up in that area is you have unapologetically been like, Hey, we are here for the community. Our branding is going to be consistent with the city of Cleveland. Um, and we have a buddy of ours that we used to do Facebook breaks with back in the day, Vic from boomtown sports cards in San Antonio. They took a very similar approach where it's like I am the same timeline as you too. Yeah. He, he doubled down and said, I'm here for the community. I know he, like it was, what can I do to be involved and represent the community as a local card shop? And I think it may not be spelled out by a fanatics, but they seem to be lapping that up whenever they see it happening with the shop. Sure. How does an LCS actually do that? I mean, it sounds grandiose to people like us that love cards, but like what does it mean for a local card shop to, to represent a community? Yeah, for sure. Um, I'm Cleveland born and raised, you know, I've always been here forever. It's a town of blue collar, you know, hard hat, you know, just a gritty city, man. Doesn't get the respect it always does. And even in the card space, like there's a lot of phenomenal card shops around here, you know, but we don't get that same, um, you know, kind of love in this area. And that's something that when we started, it was like, we're going to try to put Cleveland as one of those places as a destination spot. Um, and that includes it. We go crazy when it comes to supporting the kids in this area. Like it is, it's never a no, it's how much, it's how much you need. What do you, what's going on? Um, you know, we are involved in the local baseball league. You know, we sponsor that league. We sponsor the soccer. We sponsor the, the, the dairy queen stuff. We have baskets for every single raffle that you guys need. And we want to make sure that if it's something that evolves with the youth in this area, that we're going to be involved with it. Right. It's a place that people love to just come in and hang out at our spot. It's awesome. Like the parents that tell us that the kids, they can't wait to come to Mars cards this yesterday. I forgot it was, um, spring break. I'm like, why is it crazy in here today? It's Monday. What the hell's happening? And it was just kids everywhere. Yes. And there's a blast. And that kind of stuff resonates with us as far as being able to help being in the position to help is huge. Actually doing it as massive, you know what I'm saying? And that's huge for us. So the advertisement that we put everywhere, the golf outings that are all around here, the wingdings that are all around there, you're going to see Mars cards, some kind of representation at all of those. We're going to have a whole banner. We're going to have a basket. We have our banners at all of the, um, youth football or baseball facilities around here, right in center field. Like we make a fun, a great donation, have fun there, um, show up for their, uh, opening day with free packs for all the kids and, you know, go to the tournaments and all that kind of stuff just really is massive for us as far as not just getting Mars cards out locally, but spreading throughout the Cleveland area and into the next County and down South County and keep moving. And it's, it's been fantastic to see Saturdays and Sundays be a destination spot for customers to have those 40 minute drives. And now I'm coming from a hour and a half away. I've seen, I saw you guys on Tik TOK. I'm a man. I only posted like one Tik TOK three months ago and the following us on Tik TOK and, you know, just fun, cool stuff like that. And to be able to see me when you walk in is cool. Like they see me on the video and like, Oh, I didn't even know you would be here, man. Like, yeah, dude, I'm here. This is what we do. Yeah. And there, you know, and when I'm not here, it's more like, Oh man, he's not here. It's like, yeah, he's at a show. And so we try to, you know, really, um, you know, where Cleveland on our chest, everything that we do is Cleveland, you know, the hat, the shirts, the teas, we talk about it, Cleveland, this is our city. We enjoy it. We want people to come up and see it too. I think if I'm fanatics and I'm listening to this, I am taking note because I think this is something that a lot of LCSs are missing. And here's what I mean by that. I think there is a tendency sometimes with a lot of these newer LCS direct accounts that I have the LCS to grow the brand. And it's not that their passion necessarily is the dream was the brick and mortar and we grew it to this. So once it's here, it's firmly rooted in the community. Yeah. A lot of times it feels like the shop has leveraged for more online reach, social reach, breaking reach, you know, live selling reach as the end game. But here it sounds like everything else is funneling this experience that's rooted in the community. That was like the most 90 sounding thing ever sponsoring the little league team, the bowling league. Like I remember when local business made that a priority. I always had my little league hat from, um, the local shop that sold the cons high tops from the late age. I didn't have any new shoes, but they always gave everybody a fresh trucker cap for little league. And so you went to Queens, right? I think everybody remembers a time when the local shop invested in the local community and just wanted to be a consistent presence. Yeah. And I think that's a bit of a lost art anymore for sure. For sure. And I, and from the ground up, when we started Mars cards, we came in and we had a fun Instagram and a great social media following, right? That's all well and fun. Like having that national thing, if we're going to survive, we have to be big locally. Yeah. And that's our biggest, that's what you'll see out of Mars cards forever. The national stuff is super fun. Um, connecting with a lot of cool people and people that I never thought would know who we are, know who we are. That's awesome. That's great. But I'm in Cleveland, Ohio. I'm in Brunswick, Ohio. I have to make sure that Brunswick, Ohio and Cleveland, Ohio gets every bit of Mars cards, you know what I'm saying? And just continues to build that and build that out. That's how we are going to survive. We don't do the breaks up. But my number one question, I swear one of the number, are you guys on whatnot? Like, no, we're not on one. That's everyone's, the breaking and the whatnot thing is wild. Like the, I'm talking like seven year old kids. You on whatnot guys. Are you doing whatnot? Like we're not man. Why not? Like, Hey, we enjoyed this part of it. You know, we've done that part, you know, and if we ever need it, maybe we will. or no, you know, we're never gonna say no to that if we need it, you know, it's there. We have a great following there. If we wanted to jump on, we can. But for us, the local, the local scene and for us to survive as a brick and mortar around here needs to know me. You know, they need to know me around here. And that's what we really dig our heels in and how we, you know, there's not many knows when it comes to around this area that people come in and, you know, especially those who support us are gonna get massively supported as well. Yeah, so I guess, what's on the horizon? What do you have cooking up? Because you're not somebody that likes to sit still. We know this at the end of this conversation. You're always got something that you're working on. So what's coming up? I think we always talk about just bigger shows. We don't do any bigger, like massive, you know what I'm saying? We haven't done Dallas. We haven't done Nashville. We haven't done, you know, these bigger, real big shows. And those are some that, you know, eventually down the road, we'd like to do that in the actual like car show space, in the shop space. It's continually to organically build. It's continually another shelving unit goes up. Another wall case goes up. Our trade nights are becoming insane here. We're about to announce one today. I'm gonna announce the next one for this month. And it's one of the number one DMs we get. When's the next trade night? When's the next trade night? We couldn't walk. We had people lined up outside the door. There could have been a shutdown if a fire marshal went through our last trade night, which was awesome. And that's, people still talk about that to this day. They're still talking about that. I saw your RIP night videos. Your RIP night video was crazy. It was nuts, man. We, yes. And those types of things to bring a community together and ask, hey, where are you guys coming from? They're driving an hour and a half. They're driving 45 minutes. It's not just the local scene. So continue to build those trade nights into just a great destination night for everybody. And then again, down the, building on next level in our shop when it comes to non-sport stuff, right? We do incredible with the football, baseball, basketball, the Marvel and the Star Wars and the Pokemon and the One Piece and just building that side of it. We never really even touched that part, you know? And we're at where we're at. So yeah, always looking for that next, what's next? Like you just asked me, that's what we're always talking. What's next? What's our next move? Can't stay still, can't stay stagnant. Yeah, that's kind of how we are. Last question. And then once you answer this question, tell the people where they can find you. We wanna make sure all of our folks go follow you guys. We ask this of every guest we have and as concisely as you can, whether it's 1.2 points, four points, whatever. If somebody said to you today, I wanna open a shop in my hometown, what are the two or three things that you would say to them that would give them the absolute best chance to succeed? Sure. The number one that comes to mind immediately is those relationships you've built in the past, you've got to be able to have those still, right? And by that, I mean, it's going to be very tough to accumulate product, right? Having just singles isn't gonna work. Having just retail isn't gonna work, right? You have to have someone that wants to come in and rip hobby boxes. So those relationships throughout your time at working it, because I don't think you've, if you're opening a card shop, you haven't been doing this for a month or six months, a year. You've been doing this for a while. One would hope. One would hope that you've been doing this for a while. And those relationships that you've built, everything we do is relationships, building a relationship with you guys, just talking up, hey, I've seen you guys, boom, love that. Those are relationships I love building. They're true, they're always gonna be there. Guys ever needed anything, 100%, you can come to me. Hope I can do the same thing for you guys, with you guys. But those are things that every single person I make a deal with, that's a relationship, right? And in the LCS space, you have to have somebody that has been there that you can at least lean on for questions, answers, maybe product, just to get you started. I always talk about, and I'll shout them out, in this area, Youngstown Sports Cards, great guys, I've known George for a long time. When we announced we were gonna do that, his first thing was, what do you need, buddy? That was his first text was, what do you need? It's a relationship, I've been with him forever, and he was able to help us in the beginning of, either it was getting us product, fronting us for a little bit to help us, and then move that way and be able to repay him back. But having those relationships is key, number one. And then for success, social media, man. You have to have some kind of rolling excitement for what you're doing, right? I've seen a couple guys that have been big social media guys that are now opening card shops. I'm like, okay, the social media stuff is probably working really well for you. The card shop stuff is going to be, I don't wanna say a rude awakening, but a rude awakening. It's very different than what we, it's a different, humbling, stomach-churning experience. But if, like I said earlier in this take, was the grind and the hard work and all of that will pay itself forward if you're doing it the right way. That's our biggest thing. Just do the stuff the right, do it the right, do the right thing, that's us. Do the right thing, do the right thing. It'll come back for you. But to be successful, yeah, you've gotta have product. The singles are great. There's some, and you have to be, and you have to buy, you have to, if you're not buying, you're dying. Like, that's our biggest thing. If you are not buying, you're dying. It's massive. That might be a T-shirt. We might steal that one. I'm telling you, the wild part is in my, let's say, 30-mile radius here. We have a lot of older shops, some newer shops. The amount of people that come into my shop saying they're not buying is wild to me. Because you know what they did? They allowed them to Google Mars cards and find me from their shop, and they'll never go back to there again. It's a fact. It's a fact. It's free. Push people to Mars cards, and when you walk in, everything is transparent with integrity and honesty and showing this is the last thing, this is where I'll be at, and guess what? They'll never not come to Mars cards again. That's it. And then they're, oh, damn, well, I gotta grab something. Let me grab a, you know, let me grab the Series 1 hobby real quick while I'm in here. So it's like those type of things, being able to buy and having that, instead of putting your, instead of putting the, I see six-figure shop being built right off the bat. To be in the red for that long is going, it's gonna be tough, man. It really is. If you can find that fun medium of a smaller to mid when you come in and you're putting six figures into a shop and the questions of what's happening with Panini, that's big, that's massive. Well, what people don't understand is that six figures for a shop of any size is not very much money. It's not. We've got a couple of LCSs that we have good relationships that we know really well that their quarterly bill for product from Fanatics is multiple six figures. Yes. Sometimes it's once a month when they drop 11 products at once. And if you wanna keep your allocation for the next stuff that comes down the road, you gotta buy it all. And they got rid of terms. They used to give you a 60 or 90 days. Now they're just like, nope, we need that cash. Bro, they're gonna get three weeks in advance, dude. We got uppercutted. Dude, we were on the ground like, oh my Lord. And we're a fun established place. We've been there and it's like, geez. And you're like, oh, I gotta send out 150K and I'm not gonna see any return on that for three weeks to a month. Minimum, minimum three weeks to a month. I'd release them. What if it's a flopper? Yes. What if I sell one hobby box of that for the first week? What if it's prison black football? That's, dude, they duped everybody with that. That's crazy what they did to people on that one. 150 bucks for an Eddie Lacey auto. Oh Lord. I'm seeing Chris Chambers, dude. Miami Dolphin receiver. LeGarrette what? What are we doing? Like that's a wild one. So, but yeah, like that kind of stuff that we've already been established. And yes, they're hitting you for six figures. Six figures is not a lot. It's not when it comes to what the product is being forced on. And guess what? You know what they're gonna do well? They're gonna hit me with a wave too the day before release date. Hasn't even been released. And I'm getting a wave too. At a higher price than wave one. At a higher price point. Yes, 100%. So those, you gotta be ready for everything. And like I said, the grind that we put in, I think has established us to a spot where we love where we're at. We love the growth. Our business model hasn't changed from a 300 square foot shop to a now almost 2000 square foot shop. You know, as far as, you know, try to stay as small as you can for as long as you can. But our business model hasn't changed. And we're seeing that as well. Like some shops may have been like, oh, we're not doing any more shows. Like we have the shop, we're good. No, you'll see us every other weekend somewhere. You know, we love that part of it. That's what started all of this for us. And it's cool when people come up to us and, you know, want us to come to their shows and hey, I have this show in here. I would love to have you guys. Like, that's cool. Like for us, like, let's try it out. Sure, we can try it out. If it doesn't work, it's off the list. If it was, if it's good, too, we'll do the next one. Yeah. How do people find you? What's the best way to get ahold of you, follow you, all that fun stuff? Yeah, so our biggest one's Instagram, marscards at Instagram, IG. We've been doing that forever. You can also find us at marscards on TikTok, marscards on Facebook. I love, I'm not a huge Facebook guy, but the meta of Instagram to Facebook auto posts is the best thing ever. So you can find us there. Got a lot of fun stuff there. And that's the great part. Just having the Facebook part of that with the moms, do just texting, tagging, sending people to our shop. That's fantastic. And then if you're locally, we're in Brunswick, Ohio, 1655 Pearl Road, Brunswick, Ohio. That's the best ways to reach us. And it was a pleasure, guys. I knew it was gonna be fun when you guys asked for it. That was really cool. Hopefully you got some good, fun content out of us. Oh yeah, we appreciate you taking the time. I know the shop's getting ready to open or it might've just opened in the last 10 or 15 minutes. So we appreciate you giving us an hour of your time today. I know what that hour is worth because I know what it's worth to us. So we definitely appreciate it. And we will see you up the road, guys. Make sure that you go give Mars cards to follow. If you see him at a show somewhere, go say hey to Mario. He'd love to talk to you. And we appreciate you, man. Thank you, Gary, Jason. I appreciate it, guys. Have a great rest of your day. You too. All right. So one thing that we have encouraged in our discord, which if you haven't yet, go hit our link tree. It's in the description below and go check out our discord. It's just a fun place for our community. Nobody's gonna try to sell you a bunch of stuff. We're just hanging out, talking cards, talking sports, talking life. But we have a section in there for our mailbag. And we're still trying to figure out exactly what we're gonna call it because we want it to be fun. But every good suggestion we've had is borderline PG-13. So we're gonna stick with mailbag for now. And we've got a question from Morels86. It's a little bit long. I'm gonna condense it a little bit. But basically, Morels has a eBay store and he sets up at shows. He does pretty good volume of business on eBay, around $150 a day, five to 10 cards a day. But his struggle is that he's finding that his showcase at shows is basically leftovers that haven't sold on eBay as the hottest players and cards sell quickly. Am I losing out on money by selling my best cards on eBay and paying the fees and shipping and not saving them for shows? Or should I just focus on moving cards as fast as possible to keep me liquid no matter where the sale happens? I thought that was a really, really good question. I think it's something that a lot of people deal with because especially if you're trying to scale it a little bit you have a consistent amount of revenue. The natural next thought is how do I grow this, right? So you're gonna start looking at your margins and seeing if you're giving anything up. Am I being efficient with my inventory, right? I think the answer, and I'm pretty sure you're gonna say the same thing, is yes, you need both. You need things that are going to move quickly at top of market and you need cards that you focus more on the sales velocity and taking a quick 10, 15, 20, 25% on. The value of selling low-end cards is that often you're already in at such a cheap cost basis off of what it's gonna sell for that you can focus on velocity. But you know what you can't do that with right now? Shohei Ohtani. All right, even low-end. Yes, I am not putting any of my Shohei stuff on eBay. If I had big stuff, autos, I would still probably want an auction house to market that for me. To give up that fee when most dealers are having to buy super liquid stuff pretty strong, that's where you'd wanna be at the show scene. That's where that 13% in fees you actually want back in your pocket. So that's my answer. Anything to add to that, Gary? Yeah, a little bit. For me, I think it depends on what your eBay store is. It sounds like yours is very much a crossover like of the type of stuff. My eBay store is focused almost solely on one specific niche. And that's not a niche that has a ton of overlap with my showcase. Now I do have cards that are both places. For me, usually the stuff I have in my showcase, the price in my showcase is a little bit lower than my eBay price because I'm trying to net the same amount, right? It all depends on the type of shows you're at and the type of customers that are at those shows. If you're at your small local show every month, then yeah, probably just focus on eBay because that's where you're gonna move those bigger cards. But if you're setting up a bigger shows, I use a sticker system. I just put a big colored sticker on the back of a one touch or a slab that's in a slab bag for the stuff that's on eBay and in my showcases. And then as it sells, I just take it down off of my eBay store. Yeah, not everybody, but most people that are doing this, at least to pay some bills with it, are going to leverage both opportunities. It's really important that you have a system that as soon as a card sells at a show, you can take it off of eBay because that double sale, if you do that a few times, it really will hit your metrics. And then now these things that made more sense for eBay aren't even getting the full exposure eBay can offer. So you need to really think through that. But I really like what Gary's saying, like he has a lane for his eBay stuff. Do you know in your mind, when you're looking through a stack of inventory, what stuff you have that is better for eBay and better for showcases? So a baby step to that, if we're jumping too far, is to just make note, like over the next few shows, what are cards that are going to sell? What are the things that are going to sell? What are the things that are going to sell? What are the things that are going to sell? Cards that have a good comp value that have several sales on eBay recently, but are not moving at shows for you That's the data telling you that that's a card. That's better For you, so I sold a TJ Ford RPA number to 1750 on eBay this with that with the baggy shorts that were less. Yeah Yeah, it was a it was a RPA really cool card of a player who was a good NBA player Obviously not a great that card would never have sold at a show for me It would have literally sat in a value box for months and months and months no matter how cool it was And it's sold on eBay within about a week of listing it. Yep Same with the vintage tops Venezuelans for me. So if I get weird vintage stuff That's like even lower grade if I put that out in a show every single person walking That's gonna pick up the tops Venezuelan. They're gonna turn it over. They're gonna see the paper loss They're gonna see the condition issues and they're gonna try to play the game and I just put it up on eBay and said hey Look, they're back of this card is roached 67 Venezuelan, it's tough to find. Here's the price and they were snap selling So yeah, I think it's finding a lane and everybody's gonna target different stuff. So for me odd ball weird vintage stuff makes sense on eBay I can funnel it there because it's not gonna be an instant sell In the show and for me ultra modern relevant quarterbacks unless it's a big big card or super unique I'm selling in the showcase. I'm not gonna give up percentage points to eBay on that. Yeah. Yep So hopefully that answers your question one more question this week. This one's from our buddy Jeff He's interested in how the process of buying has changed for us recently both between whatnot and for shows But I think basically with the overall volatility of the market and kind of the surge in the market what has changed for us from a buying standpoint Because of the surge in the market everyone is trying to Free up cash and flip cards, so it's created a unique dynamic I think and Gary would agree with this where we have a lot more people that just don't have a basic Like naturally have a grasp that I'm going to a vendor. I'm selling a card I should expect that they're gonna want to buy it for less to pay for you know to sell it for more, right? I think there's a piece of this where everybody's trying to move everything Right now because there's so much excitement and I want to move it free up cash and then I want to do this and then I want to do that because it's a new thing for a lot of people But for both of us, I think we would say we're buying more and we're getting more picky. Both things are true Yeah There are a lot of cards that are the right parallel That I used to just snap at because it's the right parallel that I pause and say is it the right parallel and the right? Player right the right parallel and the right player and the right uniform Is it the right slab on the right player in the right? So it's just really thinking through those factors and I think that the biggest change that I've seen for us both Together and individually is the challenge of buying cheap slabs. Oh, yeah Of the right names twenty to seventy dollars seven. Yeah, it's almost impossible unless you want to buy a Tristan Casas You know somebody that's not very relevant Anything that's the right names of the right players Especially PSA slabs it's getting Really really tough to get a hold of that stuff. I think it's I think it's the repack scene that's created that I think it is the fact that as those companies have grown They're like realizing that twenty to seventy dollar price point is where most of our degenerates are gonna spend their money Well, I also think the turnaround time at PSA isn't helping either, right? It's taking longer and longer for that stuff to come in and people aren't sending as much of that kind of stuff Because the prices have gone up and it's kind of silly to send a ten dollar raw card and spend $35 on it and it get a nine and you get twenty for it when you sell it to a dealer, right? Yep. Yeah, the math's not math in there. Yeah But but I also want to say that there's a new level of pressure for us as well when we buy now As we've scaled and grown like if a show gets slow. I Look at Gary. I'm like I have to go walk. I don't know how long I'll be but I got to go find my whatnot stuff I'm looking for this look for that showcase stuff for the most part I don't do a lot of buying for that while I'm set up at a show But I'll hit value boxes and look for hidden treasure I don't know you bought some pretty cool stuff that walked up this week some really cool triple. No, I mean walking up. That's fine I didn't go walking anywhere. No, no, no for sure But there's there's as you as you grow the there's only more pressure to buy you become less worried about can I sell enough? Because you know, you know, you're just learning what merchandise what inventory people buy like any shop owner would write people respond with their dollars So when you learn that then it's like, all right, I need a lot more of that and a lot less of the other stuff Well in and as our businesses have evolved you're talking about the the stress of filling out a full solo Whatnot show every single week. I actually have found that with the lane that I've taken with my eBay store that There are times when buying gets a little easier because I can buy Some of the weird stuff that nobody else in the room is gonna want like I bought a 2012 exquisite Basketball Sean Elliott on card booklet auto with the whole Wildcats Head patch in it that person could walk that around that room a hundred times and everybody say that's cool I don't have a use for it with my eBay store in the lane that I have. I have a use for it Yeah, yeah, so that box was nasty that you went through it was well You got to it first, but you left all the cool eBay stuff for me. So that was that was well And let's let's talk about that, too So Gary and I look through the same value boxes now and now that I'm not doing a high volume low-end eBay store And he is doing 90s eBay I'm looking for more of the goat players like I'm going after more names, which I've talked about for whatnot It's super important and Gary can hit the same box and we both walked out with a big stack Inventories worked better for each of us the stuff that I bought for whatnot some of that I'm sure he would put on a sort of most of it. He wouldn't and vice versa. So I think it's committing to that lane and Learning what doesn't fit your metrics for how you're moving cards right now? Yeah, and it's okay for that to change because it's going to on a regular basis Yep, you know as the market changes as your business changes things are gonna change. Yeah, is there anything else? We got Jason or it's no, but I love those questions I think Keep those coming hop on the discord again Like we want to be a resource and a help so and then you can always shoot us messages on Instagram We do our best to reply to those We don't get to all of them right away But we try every week to make sure that we've gone through and caught everything. So Like follow subscribe hit the little bell button down Here all those things that helps us out a ton. Like Jason said follow the link tree hit the discord Follow us all the places. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah I'll give a little preview this week. I am going to be set up at Xenia So if you're watching this today the day it drops you're always watching it today the day it drops will be at the Xenia show Tomorrow so be sure to check that out taking the 11th off having a little bit of time with the family That's great. And then I'll be in Cincinnati at Eastgate on the 18th So make sure to make a note of that come say hey, Gary's gonna be out sailing away He's on a boat, baby Living his best life and that's what we'll be doing there. So Awesome. Well, you know what time it is Jason. It's time What has I been huh? What has it been? I have no idea where you're going with this So what's time for us to do our ending? Oh, I didn't know that's what we're doing This has been the ball card show the sports podcast for the sports collector. Bye now. Peace