The National Main Stage HIJACKED! Has The National Improved?? Get Off My Lawn With John & Rick

It's time for the John and Rick show. Live from the National. Live from the national, baby. Let's go. All right, we're recording this for sportscard Clubhouse. This is extra innings. Rick, are you having a good time at the National? Yes, I'm having a fantastic time. It's all about the people, and, man, the people are incredible. And I'm really enjoying myself here at the National. I'm having a great time. I have to say, the Nash group does a great job. As crowded as it is, I'm never waiting in line. I can get through places. I'm not fighting to get anywhere. It's really flowing. Fantastic. This year I Beckett up a bunch of fun cards. Nothing real big, but blew all my budget pretty early, as he always does, and got fun cards. Now Rick got a card before the show even started. Rick, what'd you get? I got a Ruth card. I got to pick up a Ruth card every time I show up at the National. And even before I got into the front door, I had a card in my hands that unfortunately, the label was not correct, but psa. I ran over to the PSA booth. I was literally second in line to get my card fixed. I still haven't been able to pick up my card. Now it's on. We're Saturday here. Tribute it off on Wednesday. But they're really organized. There's plenty of people to help you. There's just not enough people to grade behind the scenes. And that's probably the issue with psa. They're just totally overwhelmed. And they unfortunately had to shut down their operation here for on site grading, just like Beckett did. Yep. So we. We hijacked the stage. We are where they are doing the seminars right now. And the guy who. One of the guys in charge of this is a guy that had a card shop in Myrtle beach who I know and used to buy cards from. So he let us set up here. Jeremy Lee helped get us approval. So we hijacked the stage. We don't have a whole lot of time, but we wanted to support Sports Card Clubhouse. We're honored to have been asked to do extra innings, and we are just having a blast here. The parties have all been fantastic. Fantastic. We've seen so many people now. There are a lot of YouTubers who we miss who aren't here. But there are also a lot that are here. And my national experience has just been fantastic. I agree. I heard. I heard from a dealer that's record attendance this year. And it shows in the lobby. It shows in the PSA lines, but it doesn't really show on the show Fleer I don't notice really a difference. The aisles are pretty wide now. When I think they expanded, you know, the upstairs, a lot of people, kids, a lot of kids, they gather in the kid trading areas. And so it's pretty well spread out, really organized Once you go in, literally the first day we walked in, and people are guiding you to get your passes, where to go. So it's well organized. It's just, just. They're pretty much overwhelmed when it comes to the amount of people. And they're doing the best they can. Yu-Gi-Oh they have these in the VIP room. They have these recycle centers. They're like big garbage cans. And you can donate your cards after you rip your packs open and you don't get hits. All the. All the common players, they just throw them in there. Like they're throwing them away. And it says cards for donations. So I don't know what they do with those cards to try to find out. Maybe donate them to sick kids or hospitals or grade schools. I don't know. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, so I've been coming for years. And the first time I came to Nashville, in Chicago, the upstairs lounge, vip, when I. It was a place just to sit down. Literally, there's cards on the tables, loose cards open, packs, garbage cans full, which is kind of to relax, you know, no noise. But now you walk in, it's literally a trade show upstairs, a daytime trade show. You would not know the difference from a nighttime trade show to a daytime. So there's plenty of advertising, like a constant trade show. People doing live, live interviews, giving away T shirts and every tape. Probably a hundred tables, circular tables, round tables, and all of them are full with cards on the table, People trading, buying cards. So I think what happened was the. The national just pretty much gave up. Just. They're gonna do it one-of-one We're just gonna let them do it. Trade upstairs. Now. We just saw BIG is going to be selling cards. So there's a company, I believe it's called Pulse, and I think they've been making cards for three years. They. They appear to be unlicensed. They didn't have emblems, logos. But they're going to be selling these Big League Chew boxes. So you can look for those coming out. The cards look pretty cool. We just learned about those. Who doesn't like Big League Chew? There should be more companies that. Unlicensed companies, this is probably unlicensed that are doing this because that's how we grew up, right Is opening up Kellogg's boxes and what's it dick? Hostess stuff. They need to bring it. Cutting them out. Cutting them out. gem mint tens, baby. gem mint tens. So this is John and Rick live from the National. Even though this isn't going to airline. This is not going to airline. We got an audience out here. They have no idea what we're talking about. And while we're sitting up here, I'm waiting for someone to kick us off the state. Who are these old farts up here? We definitely got the. Okay. John knows someone German. You have to quit calling us old farts. That's true. I'm sorry. We're young. We're young for our age. All right, we're on a tight schedule. They let us on here for just a few minutes. So we're going to wrap this up. Thanks for hanging out with us. Wait a minute. We're only at six minutes here. We got a little more time, okay? Come on, man. I need screen time. You want to talk about more stuff? Yu-Gi-Oh more stuff, man. It's a relaxing chair if nothing else. We got people watching us. I don't know. These guys are eyeballing us. No, we're okay. You know, let me say this. A lot more kids, I think John would agree. A lot more kids with their parents. Some kids are just. I don't know where their parents are. The upstairs they had like a. The lounge. The upstairs vip, they had a trading area for just kids. Training area for. For kids downstairs. And you had to be 16 years and older, younger. They had. You could make your own car. That card had a. Upper Deck. A lot of interactive stuff. EBay Live was. They have their whole stage. Like a whole stage. I haven't have a stadium type set up where people can sit and patch auto Chris Chelios was when I was filming yesterday was there. But the lines. Let me tell you because we stayed at this Lowe's hotel over the years and Johnny, you can explain when he went downstairs what was going on with the line across the street? Oh, it was crazy. The line for the national yesterday. Yesterday morning, which was Friday morning. We are. The Lowe's is about what, four, four, five blocks? Yu-Gi-Oh To the National. It was crazy that along the line of just to get in to the National. Yu-Gi-Oh And we've never seen that before. Last year it was probably maybe a couple hundred. But as many. I said it before. I'll say it again. As many. Many people are here. It doesn't feel overwhelmingly overly crowded. It doesn't like. You don't feel bunched up or uncomfortable. And if everyone asks how's the prices and how's the thing, I don't notice much of a difference. Nothing. We're setting it. I think the big cards, they're asking some ridiculous prices and, you know, wanting to get the top dollar. But the cards I bought, I got great deals on. I thought they. I thought I got great deals. A lot of the cards that aren't the top cards are. Are selling really cheap here. Yu-Gi-Oh And we noticed that it's. It's well set up. You know, when you first walk in, there's plenty of pre war vintage. Literally the whole section is pre war vintage. And then you can go to a whole different room. And it's mostly modern. I know one thing that's very different this year is in the nationals of the past, it was like with the breakers and the yelling and the screaming, they were kind of like, you could hear them all over. And we didn't even see any of that. We had to go out of our way and we went way in the back and then we finally ran into that. But you don't have people on stage yelling and screaming and that carnival atmosphere atmosphere at all. You wouldn't even know that was happening. Yu-Gi-Oh you really would. Completely different section, but they did. I mean, it's so much corporate now. Yu-Gi-Oh it really is. It's really changed. And they're selling a lot of things that aren't carts. Yu-Gi-Oh A lot of things that are not. And there's a lot of new companies and the new businesses and they're selling little figures and supplies. And there's all kind of new companies that I didn't recognize that are popping up the half court basketball area where you can shoot baskets. They have foosball. I mean, and right before we got on here, there was a guy doing a seminar on investing in baseball cards and comparing it to the stock market and everything. So, you know, that's what we're going to see as long as this boom continues is seminars on card investing at these shows. And it's moving more. Seems like it's moving more to that than collecting anymore. And that's why I think the. The more collecting cards that I was able to get really cheap, but the investment type of cars, they're asking very high prices. Yu-Gi-Oh very high prices. It's, you know, one thing that I enjoy. When John and I were here a few years ago, it was hot as heck. Yu-Gi-Oh we're sweating. John's wearing his sport coat. It feels like it's 100 degrees. Well, I wore my backpack for four days. My back's killing me. I like to wear a sport coat. I can stuff all my cards in here, but literally I can walk free. I don't have to carry that. The main hall is actually. Is cold. Yu-Gi-Oh Which is really nice. The main hall is many degrees cooler than the rest of the. It's interesting. And the nightlife, you know, we've had some get togethers at Shoeless Joe's YouTube on Thursday, Friday, even Wednesday. We always have a get together at the Lowell's hotel. We had no issues. There's signs up at the hotel saying don't trade in the lobby and so forth. But I don't think overall there was as strict as last year when just what I'm hearing, they seem to be. Have softened on. Which is good. Yu-Gi-Oh which is very good. They opened up the upstairs. We're sitting upstairs here. So I think we have a huge audience wondering what we're doing up here. They really do. People are actually looking at us like, hey, we can't hear you. We're not important enough for them to actually put us on stage like they do for who was on this morning. Hobby hotline. Hobby hotline, Yu-Gi-Oh Like they get up here, they get microphones, they get the fancy video. Rick and I just have my phone and I propped it up against his backpack. And that's how we do it. That's how we do it. That's how we do it. We're old school. I know, I know. And I don't know anything else. I mean, there's so much going on here, unfortunately, you know, that everyone's interested in grading. Who's grading, what's grading. And they make. They have a huge. It's all about Microsoft Baker stickers, Mike Baker stickers. It's all about stickers now. But he even closed down. It's all about stickers getting those stickers on. Before you leave the show, we're trying to figure out what we're gonna do tonight, Saturday. But we bump into everyone. I turn a corner and there's someone that we recognize. So Yu-Gi-Oh that's the wonderful, wonderful. That's why we're here. We get to spend a lot of quality time with a lot of people and meet new people and got introduced to a new channel. I shared last night, a wonderful guy. Talked to him all night. John. John from Canada. John. Both bought most of his cards the first half hour of the show. And they were not really expensive cars. And for the most part, both of us have been just walking around, enjoying ourselves, talking to people and that's basically what it's about nowadays. Yu-Gi-Oh So. Yu-Gi-Oh Anything else? We had a great time here. Yu-Gi-Oh Thanks for. For watching Clubhouse. Hey, thanks for inviting us on the. That's us. I one-of-one say it. Us. Good looking gentlemen here and. Anything else you want to say, John? That's it. This has been John and Rick live from the National. See Yu-Gi-Oh See Yu-Gi-Oh Hey, now.