The Unfiltered Interview With Gary Vaynerchuk On Topps Chrome Veefriends, Current State Of The Trading Card Industry, His Mount Rushmore Of Trading Cards, Why He Loves Toronto, And Much More!

You're listening to Cards to the Moon, a podcast about trading cards from both a collector and investor perspective. We hope you'll stick around for the ride as we take a deep dive into the state of the hobby, share some hot takes, hopefully some useful advice and fun stories along the way. Hey guys, welcome back to Cards to the Moon. My name is Clark from FiveCardGuys.com and at FiveCardGuys on Instagram, Facebook and on YouTube. I'm going to keep this intro short and sweet, but as you can tell by the title of this podcast episode, I'll be playing the full interview I had with Gary Vaynerchuk, who's a successful entrepreneur and a motivational speaker amongst many other things. Now we talked about Topscroll and BeFriends, which he's out promoting, but we do also spend a good chunk of time discussing sports cards, how he got into it, what he collects, the sports card industry in general, and we even had time at the end for some rapid fire questions, which I think will be entertaining for you guys to listen to. But what I didn't really touch on or want to really spend too much time in the actual interview with Gary about is how I first really got to know him through his content and how it changed the way I looked at what I wanted to do professionally. So I thought I could do that right now briefly just to give you guys a little more context in why I was really looking forward to this interview. As I mentioned in past episodes, I was a former journalist for about 15 years for a local newspaper here in Toronto. Long story short, the newspaper industry was dying and I had an opportunity to jump ship and pivot to digital and social media marketing working for my friend's education consulting company. During that time, I guess the algorithm started showing me a lot of Gary Vee videos, which I naturally gravitated towards because of his direct way of communicating and practical social media tips that work for me personally. It's also around that time I decided with some friends to create a sports card blog called Five Card Guys, and then it wasn't long after that I created all the social media accounts for it, and if you listen to the first episode of this season, season five, I got two of the original Five Card Guys members on the podcast sharing more of that story. Anyway, fast forward about seven years, the Five Card Guys Instagram were closing in on 50,000 followers. I reconnected with Hyung and John and we started this podcast, Cards to the Moon, which is now closing in on 300 episodes, which is awesome. And along the way, we made tons of friends in the hobby, which is probably the best part of it all. But like I said, Gary Vee had a big part in helping me grow Five Card Guys as a brand and also giving me the motivation I needed at the time to even consider doing this, making hobby content, something I love doing on a full-time basis. So hope you enjoy listening to this interview as much as I had doing the interview with Gary. And just a quick heads up, there's a little swearing in this episode, okay? I figure I just had to let Gary be Gary. So our 35-minute conversation, it's pretty much unfiltered. All right, enjoy. Okay, today we got a very special guest on the pod, and for me, this is a full circle moment because one of the main reasons I really got into podcasting was because of one man about seven or eight years ago kept preaching that audio was a great way to capture attention, especially if you had a passion for something that you love talking about. And that's one of the main reasons why Cards to the Moon exists. And fast forward to now, I've got the man himself, Mr. Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia, successful entrepreneur, New York Times bestselling author, and the creator of VeeFriends, which we'll definitely talk about today, with a launch coming up May 7th. So Gary, a pleasure and honor to have you on the pod today. Thank you so much, my man, really. I'm really excited about this. One thing I forgot to mention already is that you're also a lifelong collector. So I've already heard your story before about how you made money selling baseball cards as a kid. I think one of the few people I know who made money during the junk wax era. Hold on, brother. Okay. How old are you? I'm 47. Well, I think you know that, were you collecting in the junk wax era? I was certainly. You know, that's like, I mean, plenty of people made money in the era. It was, you know, it's if you held a thousand Mike Greenwell, 87 Tops rookie cards like I did. None of that appreciated. So like, I made more money on Ben McDonald, and Waldo Joyner, and Corey Snyder, and Al you know, David Robinson, hoops, and just ungodly amounts of Brian Taylor, and Pat Lestache, and Kenny Lofton, you know, made a lot of money during the Bo Jackson scorecard, Bowman, Ken Griffey, oversized cards. It's just the millions of cards I kept from that didn't appreciate the way we had hoped. So we learned our lessons. Sure. Yeah. And then, you know, we had Popple, Scott Erickson. Yeah. Those didn't go up at all. Kids, if you're listening, hot man Popple was like schemes times four. We all, he was as hot as it gets. See it's hard to prospect even now. So there's a lesson that we can all learn from the junk wax era. But I did hear a story about how you were able to flip some of those cards and that's how, you know, early signs of entrepreneurship then. So for the benefit of our audience, I'm wondering if you can share when you got into collecting how long you've been in the hobby and what kind of cards do you like to collect even now? Thank you. So first of all, just for everyone who's listening, it's, I'm about to obviously go on this major tour of media around the Tops Chrome, VFriends launch May 7th. And this is going to be the most fun tour of anything I've promoted my whole life. I've been doing this for a long time, sneakers and books and wine and all sorts of things. But this is the ultimate and Clark, thank you for kicking it off for me. You know, I don't know when all these are going to air, but this is the first one I'm doing. Awesome. Thank you for having me as a rookie. Eric Conrad, third grade, a kid, I didn't know what divorced parents were in the early eighties. I was only, I don't know, seven, eight, nine, maybe it was in second grade, but he was never around during the year, but he was always around during the summer. I didn't comprehend what that meant. It was, you know, but he was one of my friends in the neighborhood and he loved building card houses. I would go over his house and we'd go to his basement and we would build card houses out of playing cards. One day we run out of all the playing cards that he had and he goes in a drawer and pulls out baseball cards. It's the first time I've saw them. I grew up very poor. We didn't have a lot of, I didn't have many toys. We didn't really spend money on stuff. You know, I was born in the Soviet union, very humble beginnings. I'm a huge into baseball at this point. I'm a huge Yankees fan. I moved to Edison, New Jersey two years earlier. I'm New York Jets, Knicks, Yankees, Rangers now, sports is my life. I'm like, what is this? He's like, these are baseball cards. It was 84, yeah, so I was eight, nine, 84 Fleer. And a mix of 83 tops. I lost my mind, but we're building these houses. I'm like, how do we get this? He's like, we can go to a store. So we rode our bikes to Crousers, which is like a 7-Eleven in New Jersey, Oak Tree Road. I walked in and there was a box of 84 Fleer as well. They had tops too, but Fleer for some reason was catching my attention. I bought a pack, took it home and I opened the pack. And then I proceeded to take a pair of scissors and cut out the circle logos of the baseball logos of the cards on them and put them on a piece of paper. That is my, I've never told that story. That is my full introduction to these cards. About a year later, I start getting into it a little bit more and like a little bit, buying them occasionally. And then it was a year later, 86, I go to the US 1 Flea Market in New Jersey and my parents are buying, like my mom, my dad was working, but my mom, my uncle, my aunt, they're buying like pickles and Russian food and who the hell knows, like a t-shirt. We were immigrants and I were going by the booths and I stumble on a baseball card booth. It changed. My life changed in this exact moment. They had a bunch of cards. I'd never seen that many cards in one place, packs, boxes, singles, but they also had a price guide. It was not the Beckett. I think this is now a memory. I think it was called CDM. Okay. Let me actually Google it while I'm on it, CDM cards price guide. Similar to Beckett, I guess. Similar to Beckett in paperback form, right? Right. In like something like that. Anyway, I bought it. I begged my mom for it, it was like two bucks. I bought a pack of 86 tops. I opened the pack and looked up the cards in the price guide. I've never been the same since. I now realize cards are worth money. I was already lemonade. I was very much shoveling snow. If I wanted stuff, I had to make money and it was in me, I was an entrepreneur. The next year, so now I'm fully in and this is when cards explode. I go into sixth grade, 87 tops comes out. As you know, that's like the iconic kids. What pre-COVID when I got involved in COVID was for cards in this era, 87 tops was that moment in our era. That was when every single kid in my grade collected cards out of nowhere. There's a baseball card club in my junior high, John Adams Middle School in New Jersey. I join it and that's it. A year later, I'm doing shows as a 13-year-old. I know every card in existence. I know what the Beckett is. I read it cover to cover. I have a very good natural memory. I can memorize prices. There's no phones back then so I can make trades with friends where I know I'm getting a better trade. I know the values. I'm off to the races and from 1987 to 1993, I am predominantly doing baseball card shows as my hobby and my career because I'm an F student. I basically quit all sports and I am a full-pledged maniac. Anything you want to talk about in that era, the first day I saw Upper Deck, the 90 Leaf Frank Thomas, the rise and fall of Opeche baseball. Anything you want to, sports flicks and Greg Jeffries' Insanity and Griffey. I lived every minute of it. Yeah, I love that because I want to establish that Gary is a legit collector. From all the stories that you've talked about on different podcasts, I love that about how you're really a true collector and as a lifelong collector of baseball cards especially. I think we can segue into why we're talking about Tops Chrome VFriends. You know that Tops and Tops Chrome are very popular and iconic brands in the hobby and now you have this collaboration with them. So I'm wondering- Before we go there, knowing that your audience is more like VFriends. I can do the VFriends thing in one second. Very simply friends, I'm trying to build the next Pokemon Marvel. I believe that I am incredibly capable in comparison to most. I'm also not delusional or naive. I know that it's a remarkably hard thing. I'm going to do it the rest of my life. Every day that goes by, I spend more time on it and less on everything else. And you know, that's that. Like 1966 Donruss Marvel cards, I don't know if you do this on video or if this is audio only. Both. Good. So this Spider-Man rookie card, this would be worthless if Marvel didn't do a good job and got people to fall in love with Spider-Man. Now if you go to eBay comps, you'll see over the last two years, it's getting insane. I'm obsessed with fictional character rookie cards from Shrek to Betty Boop to Popeye to Fred Flintstone to Elsa. But I think I'm going to do it. Obviously this is the first Chrome. We've had two other series in Zero Cool, which is a company that Topps bought. They were going to do their fictional stuff there. They killed it. It's now happening obviously in Topps Chrome. We've all seen what's happened the last couple of years with Star Wars, Marvel, Disney. I think everyone here would literally be on the floor flabbergasted if they went to eBay right now and typed in VeeFriends, one word, not separate, V-E-E-Friends by the way. There's been a four-year market. Anyone who's listening here who's been to the National in the last three years, even if they're very cynical about me or it, will know that my booth has always been packed. And so I think this, I mean, now that we're recording this at this moment, I don't know if you saw this, Clark, prepping for this, but the boxes were sold on pre-sale for 99 bucks. $300 on eBay right now. I'm actually upset about that because I wanted this to get into as many hands as possible as it gets more expensive, that gets harder. So for everyone who's listening, if you want to jump on board, what could be the next Pokemon early and get into our world, especially if you have somebody under 10 years old, VeeFriends mission is to push positivity, but practicality and accountability. So I think it's a parenting tool, but I want it to be like Marvel. Like we have comic books coming out and some of it's very mature. It's for 18 year olds. I plan on making films, I plan on, there's cartoons on VeeFriends.com slash cartoons on YouTube kids. If you have a 6 to 12, if you have a 5 to 10 year old and you want to get into a hobby, like a lot of us right now listening have a 5 to 10 year old and their kid might not be as interested in sports as we are. This is a perfect boy or girl hobby. Like the best part of the hobby is doing it with someone you love, a best friend, a homie, a brother. I've had Brandon Warnecke, AJ Vaynerchuk, collecting has been huge for me forever because I had both of them, a brother and a best friend. I have my son, but I also have. nieces and nephews that are more into fantasy, not into sports. So that's what I'm trying to build. I hope everybody checks it out. Vfriends.com slash chrome if you want to stay updated. Now Clark, I'm gonna go all the way back and just make this entertaining for everybody else. They don't need to hear about Vfriends. 95% won't care. 5% know enough about me to know they should fucking care. I mean, they're gonna win with me. And I can't wait to see all of them. Whatnot, we're on whatnot slash user slash Vfriends if you want to get into that. All right, back to cards. No, I appreciate you sharing that. And I do want to talk a little bit more about Vfriends because I do have personal questions. We'll save it at the end in case some people want to bail because they're only about cards. Let me get you up to date with what I collect. Sure. Because my whole life was prospecting back then because we all did that. I'm now purely vintage. Oh wow, okay. And left field. So let me break that down. I, my son is of the age 12. He's prospecting and waxing. And so I get my fix of the gambling through him. Yes. So that's enjoyable, but it's not what I do. What I do is I probably the most modern stuff I'm doing. I'm collecting Wemby. It's high because if he gets hurt, I'm wrong. But he's 100% the face of the league if he doesn't get hurt. Agree. Like 100, not 99. Agree. I've been DMing with him since he was 14. So I know his character. I mean, Jesus Christ, if you don't understand how good he is at this young of an age watching, then you don't know basketball. Right. Basketball is America's pastime now in a lot of ways. Like it's inching, closing the gap on football. Although the ratings are down a little bit, I get that. But you know, like the sports are much more evenly spread out now. I've seen football and basketball very popular, but the baseball collecting is off the charts and awesome and boom and so fun, prospecting. But that's. For sure. Prospecting is quite expensive now. When you and I were prospecting $2, $3 was expensive for a kid. Right. I don't do a lot of that. I did a ton of vintage. I continue to do vintage. I'm trying to think of like what I, like I was bidding on some 61 Fleer, Oscar Robinson and Jerry West recently. On the modern part, I'm obsessed with Kaboom. Okay. I'm obsessed with Kaboom. It's my favorite set. I have a very substantial Kaboom set, collection, excuse me. In fact, back to VFriends, one of the reasons I think VFriends is gonna be a very expensive, very exciting, very collectible product is we made an insert called Erupt, which is one in every 3,000 packs, 13 cases. Yeah. And it features 10 of our VFriends. The big one is Empathy Elephant, which is a monster character in our world for our collectors. Kind of like a blast. Like in like real, you need to like, like real high way up there. Not number one. That's the very, very, very, very lucky black cat. Yeah. But top 10. But the Erupt designs were done by the original artist. That's cool. Yeah. So got him. So Kaboom is something I collect very aggressively. I'm very into that set. But I mainly collect vintage. And the last two years, I've bought 90% of what I've been buying. And I'm buying a lot every week. And for the people who are listening, who saw me out and about in 2017, 18, 19, very loud, the reason I got quieter on posting sports cards was unlike NFTs where everyone can see my wallet and it's public domain, there was too many like gossip people on Twitter and social that were making claims about me buying Durants and flipping them. I didn't sell a single card and I didn't want it to hurt my reputation because I knew that people believe lies. And so I just stopped posting because people were like, he's posting to drive up. And I get that. I'm actually empathetic about that. I'm not angry about that. Or I get that people think that there was just no way for me to prove that I'm buying cards. And if I post them, I didn't want to carry extra weight. So I've been more quiet about specific. But I'm very, very, very involved in like all the thousands of conversations I have at every national. I think people were surprised at how deep I'm in. It's my favorite hobby. It's been my hobby my whole life. I can tell, yeah. So I collect Kaboom. But the last 18 months, I've been out of my fucking mind on fictional characters. 1940 Superman, Gum Inc. rookie. The 66 Donruss Marvel set is just insane for me. It's got Spider-Man and Thor and Hulk and Iron Man and those rookies, Daredevil. I've been buying a lot of like weird stuff like Scooby-Doo's rookie card, Fred Flintstone, Shrek, the Smurfs, like really into fictional rookie cards. I actually think it's the next big boom for our industry. I think a lot of the Comic-Con crowd will go into cards as a gateway through fictional rookie cards, which I sense is going to be a thing. And obviously, because I'm building out a fictional universe, it feels very natural. It's been fun. I also buy off the beaten path baseball rookie cards. Okay, such as? Burke Ross, Mickey Mantle. Are you familiar with the Burke Ross set? I've seen one, yeah. Yeah, so Burke Ross was the wildest story. An entrepreneur who owned a cookie company or a waffle company or some sort of confection made illegal trading cards without the rights from the teams or the players and put them in his packs and sling them around Brooklyn and New York until he got heavily sued, but he made two years of it. So that's a weird one that I really like. I'm very into the Jack in the Box, Alvin Hayes rookie card for basketball. Hank Aaron has a rookie card from a company called Johnstone Cookies from 54 that I like to collect. I like supply and demand, Clark. Okay. And I like stories. So I think these rookie cards that are not made by the official companies in that era, there's not a lot of them. It's really cool. And I'm actually, I have a TV production company called VaynerWatt. So if anybody has a kid who wants to be in Hollywood and wants an internship, it's vaynerwatt.com if you wanna send a request there. I was trying to bring a little value. I think I'll make a documentary one day in my life before I die about off the beaten path rookie cards. So that's a look, it's very eclectic at this point because I have such a foundational collection. I'm sure everybody can resonate with this that's listening. Once you kind of scratch your itch and have your base of like everything you ever wanted to have, you start to get weird. Because I don't want to stop collecting and chasing and flipping and like all that, even though I've kind of stopped flipping because of where I'm at as a public figure and what went down. But yeah. No, I love how you just kind of take over because you've already answered like a list of three or four questions I already had, right? And even when you're talking about like, we're on a kind of a boom cycle right now, I'm wondering, and we've seen some bust cycles as well, how big a factor or how much of an impact do you think trading cards will be for even your goal of growing and expanding the vFriends IP? Do you see the future on a macro level, trading cards being a big thing still 10, 20 years from now? I really love this question. I think everyone's going to head nod on the other side of this. This boom cycle we're in right this second feels like the most sustainable boom cycle I've seen since 1986. Wow. Here's why. I think this boom cycle is more similar to 87 to 90, where it's just actually happening. Meaning, you had the McGuire Sosa moment with eBay just coming out. You had the LeBron 03. That was the first time. From 93 to 03, I was out. I got in for a few seconds looking for my Sammy Sosa common cards during that boom of that summer and eBay. And then I went heavy in 03 for LeBron. I was right, but I bailed a little too early before the premium products came out because I fell in love that summer and just like stopped collecting. Yes. Which sucks because I had an ungodly amount of FLIR base and I was going to get the other stuff. I got up for that, but I never got to the good stuff because I was out. And then I didn't come back until 17. This is not a boom cycle. I think this is the new floor. I think cards are a culture. I think with streaming, with breaking, with podcasts like this, the media is what makes things interesting. This is real, in a different way. All the speculators who got hurt with how much they paid in 20, 21, in 23, they're gone. Yes. And now what we have left is all of us that actually are about that life and that base is much bigger. The good thing is all the kids that are still in it that maybe lost a little bit in 21, 20, they've learned that lesson recently. If you look back at what the content I was making in 18, excuse me, in 18, 19, 20, 21, I was talking about speculating a little bit on like Acuna and LeBron and maybe the biggest reaches I had were like Deer and Fox because I loved his game, which ended up probably not being right. But most of what I was talking about was buy vintage, buy vintage, buy vintage. Right. And I think a lot of kids have learned in this last cycle that are still in the game. I've met them at the last national for damn short and they're in my DMs right now. Everyone's being smarter in this boom. You agree with me Clark? A hundred percent. This doesn't feel like people are not gambling as much outside of wax. I think people are getting their itch and look, flippers are gonna speculate rookies every time. And guess what? That's their business. Yes. Their business is short term. But I think a lot more people collect and flip instead of just flip. I think a lot of kids that came in to just flip got seduced by collecting. I was always flip collect. Right. You know this, the big debate of flippers versus collectors. I think it always should be both. A lot of people became flippers because they needed money to collect. A lot of collectors that started to flip because they themselves got off the ideology of the purity of it and realized a regular job can't fully pay for their hopes and dreams. Yes. And I think not judging a flipper when you're a collector and not judging a collector when you're a flipper. When these flipper kids are like, oh, all these old guys with their old baseball, fuck you man, they love this shit. And all these 60 year olds or these fucking kids, these fucking kids are helping you in a way that matters. Yes, I agree. To me, I have love for every angle. Outside of people who are trying to do bad behaviors and trying to hurt people, counterfeit, stealing cases or like manipulating with bad intent. I think you're allowed to share your passions. You know, a lot of people are about to become bigger personalities. They're gonna go through what I went through, which is like at first you're just sharing your passions and then all of a sudden you're an influencer and you have to be careful because now all of a sudden when you say something about something, people are gonna think you're manipulating. It's really hard. It's a hard thing in this world. But if you have good intent and you have long-term vision, you should be in a good place. But I do not view this as a boom. I view this as the new floor. And I think it's incredible. And you can smell it. It feels different than 1920, 21. It feels different than 03. Though that was a little bit more similar because that was pure LeBron. It's different than Sosa Maguire and it feels different than the 86 to 93. It feels more like 83, 84, 85, which have led to 87 to 92. It's really nice. It's a new floor. I love hearing that. And I agree with you. I feel like it's definitely feels more sustainable and I'm bullish on it. And I may be biased because I have this podcast and I'm doing it full time now. Thanks in part to you, Gary. And I'll get to that in a second why that is. But I know I only have five minutes with you. So I was wondering if I could just do a kind of rapid fire questions that I'm really interested in hearing your answers. First, what's on your personal Mount Rushmore of trading cards? You have to choose four. Jackie Leaf Rookie. Yes. 61 Chamberlain. Clear. 1990 Frank Thomas Leaf because that is like my childhood like obsession card. Right. And probably the 1966 Donra Spider-Man Marvel in a high grade. Nice. In a high grade. High grade. Yes. Great Mount Rushmore. All right. What do you think is undervalued or underrated in the hobby right now? Fictional rookie cards. My friend, I'm telling you, I'm gonna be right about this one. And this is not because I want it to be. It's because I watched for four years and I'm at Comic Con and I'm in different cultures besides trading cards. And I can see it because cards are now becoming more standard. Like we're saying. Yes. I can see the nerds getting seduced where they stayed on Funko and comic books and figurines. I can see them being seduced. I can see it. I can see it. And once they get in on Topps Chrome. Yeah. They're gonna then get into what I said. The 1980 sticker of, you know, Wolverine's rookie card and the 66 Marvel. Like why don't you spend the kind of money you're spending on a super fractor from... If Iron Man's super fractor is 50K, then what should Iron Man's first rookie card and 66 Marvel that barely exists out there graded? Right. It shouldn't be 80 bucks. Yeah. I think we should start making those connections. Yep. And that's why I love about VFriends. It's rare that you get to be on ground level while it's happening, right? Like I know so many people that collect Pokemon cards and they're like, oh man, I wish I knew what I knew now in 1999. So I feel like VFriends is there's a parallel to that. Look, it's audacious, maybe even obnoxious for me to be saying that that's my goal. You're talking about the most successful intellectual property of all time. Right. I do think though for the few that are listening that really do know me or follow me a long time and definitely my friends and family, they know I'm not fucking around. And like, even if I get to 10% of Pokemon, well then this is the moment. Yeah, I'm really proud of it. I'm really pumped about the blasters. I pushed heavy to have that skew in our first year. It's a very long-term deal. I've done with tops. This is not MetaZoo. I'm not fucking MetaZoo. I know some good, I don't know who it is, but it sounds like some good people just bought the MetaZoo thing. So I hope, I wish them, like that's the other thing. I root for everything. I root for MetaZoo. I root for the other IP. I root for the kid that's listening right now that's getting motivated by what I'm saying, who's gonna use AI to create a universe and then one day have their trading card. So I think it's and, not or, but I'm telling you right now, I really think I'm gonna pull this off. I love it. I love your confidence. And two more. Regular weekly segment we have on our podcast, it's called Pick One, and I try to make it challenging for whoever's playing. So one, on one side, you got the red refractor numbered to five of your favorite VFriends character, okay? Numbered to five red refractor. On the other side, knowing that your favorite color is green, your favorite number is five, a green refractor of that VFriends character, but the serial number is five of 99. Which one would you choose? Fuck. I would choose, well, I would probably choose the five of 99 because you're right. For anybody who's listening, if you wanna know why I love the number five, please go to my Instagram, garyvee, and there's a video pinned at the top that says why I really wanna buy the New York Jets. If you love your mom, or if you are a mom, warning, you're gonna cry. So that's why I love the number five. So I'm gonna go with the five of 99. Plus, it's gonna be, for me personally, it'll probably be a better ROI price because that odd five's gonna be expensive. So I'll go with the five out of 99 green. All right, and last, yes. And last one, whenever we have a guest, I like to make our last question a little Canadian-centric since I am Canadian. So I always wanted to ask you, out of the thousands and thousands of cities in the world, you have one VFriends card and NFT that singles out just two cities. One, St. Louis, and two, of course, my hometown of Toronto, Canada. I was wondering if you could shed any light in why you chose Toronto to have the honor of being represented in the VFriends universe. And I wanna show you this. Hope to get this signed by you one day. I can't wait to get signed up for it, bro. By the way, brother, I'm gonna be in Toronto a lot, so email me after this. Toronto's one of the cities that I want to build VFriends up most significantly. So I plan on doing the shows up there in the coming months, years. I plan on doing pop-ups up there. So you and I need to connect. Yes, you and I need to connect. The answer is I can't tell you, there's some alpha on it, but I will say that it is because I care about Toronto. And I will also say, for you and anybody in Toronto, that when I started to become quote-unquote Gary Vee, aka travel a lot, speak, books, all that. I'm a New Yorker through and through. I'm a Jersey boy through and through, but I've really lived in New York now for, geez, what are we talking, 22 years and it's in me, right? I cannot explain to you the way I felt the first time I was in Toronto. I think it was like 2010, 11. I was like, oh my God, this is the first city that kind of feels like I like it. I just was very snobby about how much I love New York. I'm a huge fan. And I can't wait to sign up for you personally and spend some more time with you. Love it. This is really gonna be one of my great, in the same way that you probably feel excited that you now do this full-time and you pinch yourself. Look, VaynerMedia, VaynerX, my advertising holding company, you're talking about a 2,500-person company that I started from scratch that's doing $350 million in revenue. It's amazing. It's a big company, very proud of it. And it's really weird because most people just think I'm a motivational speaker. They have no idea that I operate right now. VaynerSports, Sauce Gardner, Aiden Hutchinson, Josh Emmett, Corey Sandhagen in UFC, Boba Shett, oh, Boba Shett, we rep Boba Shett. Yes, sir, yes, sir. And Kirk, we rep two. Alejandro, yes. VaynerSports is the contract agent for Boba Shett and A. Kirk. It's an incredible company that we have that we're building one of the biggest sports agencies in the world. WineTex.com. If you buy wine on the internet in the US, go check it out. Building that for my dad. It's exploding. I'm doing a lot. The GaryVee brand, all the things I'm doing, nothing is close to be friends for me. Wow, okay. That's amazing. It is what I spend my life on. I'm going to pull it off. And I would love and be honored if a small percentage of the community listening became a collector. Here's why, let me tell you actually. Forget about the fact that I do believe if I do what I think I'm gonna do, it's a nice little fun investment. It's actually super secondary to what you'll learn. Come to one of our whatnots, anytime. You will be flabbergasted. And I think we all know this. In a world where, unfortunately, a substantial part of the internet is quite negative, this is one of the most positive places on earth. The community we built. The be friends. Our slogan in be friends is from strangers to acquaintances, acquaintances to friends, friends to family. I think a lot of you listening, especially if you're listening to Clark's podcast, you found a nice community in trading cards. It's like one of your favorite places, if not, probably like for me, your favorite place of friends. I think there's something really going on at be friends around this. And we have a huge contingency around the world. And I really think you'll find some of your best friends. And I think, actually, this is now, let me go a little more narrow. I believe to be a great card flipper, businessman or woman. Having more education of things helps. Like I think my knowledge of, I'm starting to try to study upper deck hockey cards, because I just want to understand everything. Because the more I understand, the more savvy I am. Sure. I think be friends, learning about how we're doing it, watching how we're doing it. We're also innovating a lot. Here's one, Clark, here's a little fun one. Okay. I think we're gonna innovate the Chrome product more than anybody ever. For example, in our Chrome product, in be friends, there is a character in be friends called Entrepreneur Elf. Yep. We have an insert called Entrepreneur Elf's Favorite Entrepreneurs. Yes. And there's a Michael Rubin auto. Superfactor, there's me. There's Steven Ross, the owner of the Dolphins and related real estate. There's Bobby Brown, the makeup artist, Ariana Huffington. There's Dana White from the UFC. There's Kevin Hart, because he's really an entrepreneur. It's a massive, that kind of auto in Chrome, are you nuts? Love it. Next. Next, back to innovating. Here's the big one, I think. I created a one of one of every character for Blasters. Oh wow, okay. In the Blasters, there's a blast off, one of one. A one of one of every character called the blast off. That's unheard of for a $25 retail blaster box. Right. To have a one of one. That's true, yeah. Innovating. I love it. Gary, I know we're over time, but I just want to say I appreciate all the content and the value you've been providing over the years, which has been a big help for me personally, not just in growing my business with all the practical social media tips and advice, but also, and I think maybe more importantly, the motivation and encouragement you gave me to really completely change my career and pursue what I'm doing now, which I love, in my 40s, right? And I know you're big on that too, so. I'm proud. So thank you. Thanks again, Gary, for your time. It's an honor. I hope to run into you in Toronto or FanFest or the National, you know, we'll be there. You'll be both at Fanatics and National. Yes. Well, please bring that little. I will, to get a sign. And looking forward to hugging it out and talking about it. When is this podcast dropping? This Friday. Amazing. Well, I'll make sure to share it out. I wish you well. I wish everybody in Clark's community nothing but health, because you can't control that, unfortunately, but happiness and fight for it. Last saying, in life, you find what you're looking for. So if you're looking for negativity, if you're looking for bad, if you're looking for that, hope in life and in the hobby, you can find that, right? We know that. For sure. But if you're looking for positivity and hope and happiness and good, you can find that. And obviously, the listeners of that have found that in you. And keep doing that, because that makes life much better. Gary, thank you so much. Thank you. Take care. Hey, thanks for listening to Cards to the Moon. We'd really appreciate you subscribing to our podcast, wherever you listen to your podcasts. And you can also connect with each of us on Instagram at 5cardguys, or you can follow Hyung at Integrity Sports Cards, or John at TradeUatRecess. You can also check us out at 5cardguys.com. Thanks again, and hope to connect soon. Bye.