The worst advice we ever received on cards!

This is Season 5 and Episode 12 of the Ball Card Show, the Esports Podcast. For the Esports Collector. I'm Jason Otero. I'm Gary Lemaster. And we are back with another episode full of delicious card content. Delicious. I have prolonged eye contact in there. I don't know why I did it. You made it awkward. I'm still doing it. Yeah, it's okay. Right now. Look at me. There, that's better. You gave the audience a break from the eye contact. I get that a lot when people say, look at me. That's better. It's a common thing. I was just trying to help the audience out a little bit. We did our first what not. By the time you watch this, we will have done two what nots because we're recording this right before the next show. But wow, it was a lot of fun. Really appreciate you guys all coming and hanging out. I think that we peaked out at about 70 people in the room, and I don't think we dropped below 27 or 28 at any point, which for a first show, if you know anything about what not was fantastic. Hey, people hung out. That's what I wasn't sure about. For those of you, and several fill my phlegm comments in the chat, I saw that, request for me to sing more often. There were none of those. Well, maybe one. I may have paid them for that one, but yeah. That wasn't good. It was good. Yeah. We are going to keep doing this again every Thursday night at seven o'clock. Come hang out with us. Bookmark the show at the Ball Card Show on what not. At the Ball Card Show. Now, we do have a giveaway to show for our next show. You all will be stuck with just me. I'm the only one running that. Gary is- My daughter's getting married. His daughter's getting married. So, I should get there for that. We've got a signed Jamal Charles official Broncos jersey. It's JSA certified. Jamal Charles, for you youngins who may not remember, for about five years was an absolute monster. He did 1,800 yard seasons for the Chiefs and the Broncos. Then his knees kind of gave way, as running backs tend to do. Yeah, but this is going to be a buyer's givey for Jason's solo show on May the 8th. Come and check it out. Buy a card. You could buy a $5 card and get that jersey. You could buy a $1 card and get a $2 mag and get a free jersey. I hope there's not too many $1s. There's all kinds of ways you could do that. I agree. But it's out there. It's possible. But yeah, be sure to give it a follow. Bookmark it. We'll be doing this every week. As long as you guys want to hang out with us, we'll be there. Every Thursday at 7. We've got to talk about the draft. Yeah. It was interesting. Now, if I recall, a couple weeks ago you said this is the most highly touted and talented quarterback class you've ever seen. Is that correct? I think I said the exact opposite. I think I said there's not a single quarterback in this class that should have had a first round grade. That should have had a first round grade. I misunderstood you the whole time because I was sitting there thinking... Yeah, it wasn't a single one. Well, do we get to the meat and potatoes of this whole story? Well, we can talk about that part of it. Everybody knew Cam Ward was going to go number one overall because NFL teams are desperate for quarterback play. Do I think Cam Ward's going to be a bad NFL quarterback? No. Do I think Cam Ward is worthy of the number one overall pick in a draft that had guys like Abdul Carter and Mason Graham and Travis Hunter? No. But quarterbacks are always going to be graded on a slight curve. What was really interesting, as everybody, you've heard ad nauseam and we're going to add to that nauseam. You like that? I like that. That was good. That was really good. Travis Hunter went number two overall and his teammate, Shadur Sanders, fell and fell. The fall from grace. We didn't see a first round pick and then the next day we didn't see a second or third round pick. It took until pick 144 for the Cleveland Browns who had already drafted Dylan Gabriel in the third round, which was also a head scratcher, to trade up and select Shadur Sanders. Before we go any further, I think let's stop and just acknowledge the wide variety of talent represented in that quarterback room in Cleveland right now. Yeah. You've got- Deshaun Watson. Oof. Kenny Pickett. Yeah. I think you've got presumed starter now, Joe Flacco. Joe Flacco. And then Dylan Gabriel and Shadur Sanders. You know, what would be even funnier is if they gave Flacco that contract and then benched him. That would be such a- Well, they didn't pay him that much. I know, but it would be such a Cleveland thing to happen. For sure, but I don't think they will. Dylan Gabriel ain't ready to start. Do I think that Gabriel and Shadur Sanders will see some playing time this year? Yes. Yeah. But the one thing I think that everybody needs to take into account with Shadur Sanders' slide. There were all kinds of rumors and thought processes as to what it was. Everything from Stephen A playing the race card to people saying that Deion and his camp and that circus they didn't want around NFL teams. I think what really happened is the NFL as a whole said, this guy's a backup at our level. He got picked in the fifth round. That's backup territory. Dorian Thompson Robinson got picked like seven or eight spots higher in his draft than Shadur Sanders got picked in this draft. I think what NFL teams saw was a guy who they thought was potentially a high-end backup, which he went later than that, but here's the reason I think he went later than that with that being the case. When you're in that territory of being drafted as a backup, the intangible stuff, the locker room stuff matters way more than it does. People were like, well Caleb Williams had all the same concerns and everything. Caleb Williams is a hell of a lot better football player than Shadur Sanders. Not on the same planet of athletic ability. We're not even talking about the same thing, which is why the attitude and all that other stuff wouldn't have mattered if Shadur was that level of athlete. He just isn't. When you're drafting a guy to come into your quarterback room and to learn and be ready to go if it's needed, you don't want a guy who blows off meetings. You don't want a guy who goes into a meeting with the Giants and Brian Dable has sent ahead an install package for you to study and learn, and then you come to the meeting and you get quizzed on it and you don't know any of it, and then when you get called out on it you have an attitude about it. A team doesn't want that in a backup quarterback. I also think part of the fall was, the unexpectedness of the fall, was that a lot of people in the NFL really like Deion Sanders and nobody was telling him the truth, and he is Shadur's agent. There's a reason that agents exist. I'll stop you there. You don't think so? I think there was a delusion. I think people like him, but I think he has to be a nightmare because there's never a no that he accepts. That's what's made him successful. But people are also not going to tell him the truth. But they may have been telling him the whole time, it wouldn't have mattered. That's fair. That's fair too. But at the end of the day- Look at every presser that was negative for him and how he responded. Oh no, that's true, but I also think there's some- Double down on narcissism. There's some thought process that goes into not putting all the blame on the kid in this situation. You've got a kid who was raised by a guy with that approach to life. I'm the greatest at all things. Nobody can stop me from doing anything. And this kid has been fed that his whole life about himself. And there's a certain level of confidence that comes out with that that's a great thing for a quarterback to have. But when that confidence goes into delusion, it's not good. You want them to have the memory of a goldfish, right? You want them to forget and move on and all that. But I don't know if you saw this clip, it's a couple years old now, but it resurfaced of Deion talking up Shadour in the Jackson State locker room with other players there. And it's just side eye after side eye. And we don't know exactly what they're thinking, but it sure looks a lot like, are we doing this again? Is this every game? Is it going to be like this? There's also that idea, I think, that NFL teams had that a lot of Shadour's success was very carefully curated. Yes. You know what I mean? It was very carefully. Everything was made around him to make him look as good as possible. Well, let's give credit where it's due then. I think you're bringing up a good point. Deion Sanders was the original NIL deal. He realized that he was the brand. Yes, 100%. And that's how these players are marketed now. They are the brand. Now, was Jordan a brand? Yes. Was Bird, were all these players brand? He understood there was value outside of just the sports arena that he had to offer, and he protected it at all costs. Coach Prime. I mean, how many years later are we saying, two, three decades later from relevance as an athlete, and we're saying Coach Prime as he's coaching Colorado? It's pretty impressive. So I think Deion understood as a parent and as somebody who'd been through this as an athlete, is there a possibility maybe he saw, hey, my kid's good, I'm going to say he's a first rounder, but I'm going to get him as much money as I can now, I'm going to build that brand out now. He cost him a lot of money though. He didn't cost him money. If he comes back to Colorado, he gets about 4.8 million in NIL money. His first NFL contract is going to cap at 4.1 million over four years. But if he gets anywhere close to a start, he's going to have so many irons in the fire where, hey, if this happens at the end of training camp, I just think that marketing dollars benefit from him finding a starting role somewhere. Let's talk about that and how it relates to the hobby then. Sure. So my advice, take it for what it's worth, I will not be putting a dime into Shador Sanders' autographs or anything else. Panini Instant dropped a product immediately on draft day. One autograph card at a minimum per package, they were $300 a piece. If you are buying Panini Instant autos of Shador Sanders for $300 and hoping that someday you're going to make money on them, you are better off just rolling up to the casino, taking that $300 and slapping it on green on the roulette wheel and keeping your fingers crossed. More of a 26 black guy, but I get what you're saying. Well, that's a 50-50 shot almost. We're not talking about a 50-50 shot, we're talking about a 5% shot that Shador Sanders explodes. And, like you said, let's say he gets a start or two. I think it'd still be a cool story. I think it'd be a cool story, but let's say he gets- And I don't dislike the kid. No. That's what I want to say too. What's his problem? He is, to a fault, optimistic with every single thing that he's doing. He loves the camera. He smiles. I've not heard him. Now, I might be missing something. I haven't seen an interview where he's being toxic. He's very careful on the front-facing appearance to the public. For sure. Clearly, there were some issues in the locker room and in meetings, and there had to be some issues in meetings. There had to be. Anytime. Because, as a raw athlete, the parallel I had, which is not the same, but was like, this could be a Braxton Miller situation. A good athlete- No. He's not that great of an athlete. That's the thing. He's not that great of an athlete. If he was a great athlete- Braxton Miller was a phenomenal athlete. Braxton Miller would run a 4'3", 40. Shador's running a 4'7", 4'8". He's not that great of an athlete. That's the thing. It's one thing if you are an amazing athlete and you have some of those personality traits. You're going to get away with it. If you're not an amazing athlete, you're just not. There was a clip that popped up of the pre-draft process of him and Cam Ward doing drills together. Cam Ward is just- not on the field, although the field stuff was, too. Cam Ward is verbally obliterating Shador Sanders. Shador's like, hey, let's make a song together on this TikTok. Cam's like, I'm here for football, bro. What are you talking about? He just verbally obliterates Shador, and Shador has no concept of how to handle it because he's been so insulated by that environment. He's been so protected from that. When you walk into a real locker room where your dad's not the head coach, where people aren't worried about stepping on your toes- Guess what, Rose? All of us were drafted into the NFL. Nobody cares who your dad is at that point. It doesn't matter. You played sports enough to know what it is like to be on a team with somebody whose dad is the coach and who probably should not have the position that they have. Because of who their dad is, they get it. It's not fun for anybody. But like when Deion said, there are a couple teams I won't allow him to be drafted to, that doesn't help. Oh, yeah. That's insane. No. But backing up, you talked about this Panini Instant product where it's a guaranteed auto. Let's just be clear, because I think we've talked about maybe four or five products in the last year, and it's not just Panini that's doing this. No. When it is a, this player's set, guaranteed auto ... I might eat crow hair if there's some oddball set I'm wearing. Even Jordan's stuff like that, Jordan has all these collector's sets. They tried to do this- But not with guaranteed autos. Through the 90s. Well, not with guaranteed. That would be different, right? But we know who Jordan is now, and he was established by the time they dropped those sets. So that's a little bit different. These player sets with a guaranteed auto, I haven't seen them pop off. I've never seen them pop off in value. They're not going to. Yeah. And the moral of the story with Shadur Sanders, don't buy his stuff thinking that it's going to make you money, no doubt. Pay fifth round draft pick prices. Pay Clayton Toone prices. That's where it should be. Is there cultural relevance that props his value up? Yes. The market's going to demand that, but you have about a six month window to find out if it can be anything or nothing. Because if it's a $300 auto right now, which it can't be $300. No, you're losing money on a base auto if you buy that at $300. What's that product dropping at? Ballpark. Do you have any- Well, it's $299. It's already available. It was Panini Incident. It was $300 for one card. $300 for that. He gets one start. I don't know how it's worth more money. It's probably worth less. And if that one start is bad? If the one start- Isn't amazing, right? Let's that's it. There's he he's not gonna get the opportunity to come in as a fifth round pick and meet Fifth round expectations now. I do think this And I don't have years of experience with film But fifth round Like I again, I don't what did we talk about a little more like a statement? What what did we talk about? With quarterbacks, so at the NFL level a quarterback in order to be Successful and I don't define successful as being a pro bowler. I mean like top half of the league You have to have at a minimum one thing one thing that you do Extremely. Well, yeah, okay now Grading on a little bit of a curve I would say that the one thing that he does super well is he has a very accurate thrower of the football I will there's no question. He's a very accurate thrower of the football. However, he takes a lot of sacks Now some people would say that's because Colorado's offensive line was really bad and there's truth to that There were also a lot of sacks He took when he had the ball in his hand and it was a five count before the ball left his hand It doesn't matter how accurate you are if you can't process information quickly You don't have five seconds in the NFL to throw the football unless you are the athlete that Josh Allen or Kyler Murray or Lamar Jackson is you just don't have five seconds to throw the football on a regular basis So he's gonna have to like learn some things as far as processing information Quickly making decisions quickly a lot of the throws he made at Colorado that were highlight real throws Were throws where he didn't release the ball until he saw the receiver come open. Mm-hmm. You can't do that in the NFL That's not how it works. You throw to grass you throw to a spot. Yeah, you throw to grass. That's it You throw to an open grass and so there's a lot of things I think NFL teams just looked at and went He's not a starter right away if ever sure. Okay, if he's not a starter right away We can't draft him in the first two then it just becomes what's the talent acquisition cost? And he's a and he's a backup. Now. Are we prepared to draft a guy? Dylan Gabriel went ahead of Shadur Sanders from a pure football standpoint. There's not a world where that should happen. I agree He went two rounds ahead But you know why he went two rounds ahead because the team knows that Dylan Gabriel can come in and he's not gonna cause waves There's not gonna be a circus around him Nobody's gonna be screaming for you to be there started had a lot more to do with just the meetings and yes Absolutely it did. So it's a little more of a statement It's it's checks and balances. It's not they're trying to let's all punish somebody No, but it's just is it worth the is it worth the headache or yeah This guy's gonna be a backup for us for at least a year. Maybe two Do we want to deal with the headache that comes along with him being the backup? He has opportunity to compete any he in some ways That's a it's a great wide open opportunity. It's a great spot for him and and listen I Wish the kid all the best. I would nothing would make me happier. I didn't expect fifth round I didn't expect fifth round expected second or third But nothing would make me happier for this kid to go in and prove everybody wrong. I'd be cool That would be awesome good for the kid good for the league good for everybody Dionne would be levitating I don't think it's gonna happen, but yeah, I hope I'm wrong. He's no Daniel Jones Buckeyes a lot of Buckeyes were drafted Quinn Shawn ahead of Travion was surprising, but boy Travion couldn't have gone to a better Vrabel the the Patriots had a great draft. I think variable Miami's in Miami's in full rebuild Oh Rainbow, I think took the the Patriots GM and just shoved him in a closet three months ago went We'll let you out after the draft. No, that's probably the terms and conditions of him coming There's like there's a one way I do this All right, let's talk a little bit about Panini and in the last couple weeks, they've locked out a few big contracts for autographs the more interesting thing in this story is the expiration date of the contract so Panini announces autograph deals with Mahomes Travis Hunter and Arch Manning So exclusive exclusive so they're not signing with any other company This is where they're signing they will be in products until one day before the license is Going to be transferring to fanatics. Yeah for their license expires. Yeah. Yep. So what do you think the implications of this are? What does it do for Panini? It does a lot for their football product. Well, I mean, yeah It does a lot for their football products. It does for their football products this year What fanatics got the last couple years with Caleb Williams and Bryce young and a lot of those guys only signing for them Yeah, so Panini went on the offensive and said, okay, we got one year We're I think we're gonna see more products from Panini than we have ever seen Those autographs are gonna be all over them. Mm-hmm, and that's their kind of last hurrah What is this? Auto market does it drop it a little well, it depends on how many things my homes is signing Well, there's this parallel with like bonds signing again, like bonds autos from 25 years ago have gone down. Well, yeah There's more out there Yeah, I don't think that that's the case because active player the reason that bonds autos dropped is because Anytime somebody hasn't signed for 25 years for anybody and then they get licensed autos again The money's on a shift to the new stuff. Sure. It's just how it is I don't think that's the case with my homes We got an active guy who's been signing year after year after year after year the only way that it really causes his market to go down is if Panini somehow convinced him to sign a Hundred-thousand stickers like and if that's the case Panini spent forty million dollars doing it because he's not signing stickers for ten bucks a crack Right. He's probably two to three hundred bucks a crack. Yeah Yeah, yeah, but for for a company that's Not so sure that fanatics is gonna have the license because they're monopoly that contract structure is pretty interesting Well, yeah, they know they know what's up. They know where's heading. Let's talk through update or product releases We have a ton of really many releases coming out. This is April 30th through May 7th So some of these will have dropped by the time you're able to check this out But I'll just run down the list and then we could point out a couple that we like or that we really would stay away from yep 2025 tops chrome black baseball 2324 flawless basketball Panini prism Premier League soccer Panini revolution basketball impeccable football Bowman baseball, that's I think on the 7th or close to it National Treasures baseball or peachy platinum hockey Clearly Donruss football and then immaculate football all dropping in that short period of time Which I honestly like for an LCS that's kind of like a tidal wave of products to it is it's not a little window Yeah grief, that's a lot of money to spend if you own a shop All right product you love product you hate I'm not a fan of tops chrome black baseball. It's just a lottery product. It's expensive It's got five cards, and you can absolutely get washed Yeah on it you kind of have to open a case to find out if you got anywhere, right? Yeah, it's still you still get washed a $20 bet on there. You absolutely get packaging is cool. I love that It's in case it's a pretty car. Yeah, I don't think it's a good value Product at all when it comes to their short printed rookie autos. How do they stack up to some more products? What would you compare this to? It's kind of in its own little niche maybe like museum collection or tribute. Yeah It's not gonna hold the same value as flagship chrome. That's kind of the Yeah, the pinnacle for rookie autos not a bad Let me finish the thought not a bad rainbow product No, but wait three to six months for the prices to die down We are seeing I don't know if you've noticed as much too But I'm seeing a lot more set building with subsets in the last year a lot more people kind of wading into that On new products, which I think is a great thing for the hobby I think you see it a lot more because of your eBay store. I don't see it as much but That's because that's not where I yeah It's happening with ultra modern, and it's happening with ultra modern subsets, and it's not just old guys Yeah, doing it that I've always collected vintage. Yeah, which I think is a really good thing So not crazy about top scrum, which one of these is like I'm not crazy about any of the basketball products I'll just go ahead and say that my least favorite product is panini revolution I think it is a product that if it disappeared no one will be sad about no and and again guys the rookie class In this your basketball product is so bad well I mean flawless is a gorgeous product well flawless has so many good vet Yeah stuff and they have logo man's and all that kind of stuff But flawless is also gonna probably be five grand a box six grand a box. It's gonna be overpriced for sure yeah The rookie class is gonna keep it from being a ten grand box like it has been in the past But I bet it's every bit of four to five, but you can hit LeBron logo man's you can hit You know all that stuff, so there's still value in flawless It's just an expensive product on vet and then how much are you willing to spend on the risk of a vet? How much are you willing to spend on your hit being a Chris Kamen on it yeah, like that's just the reality Impeccable football, it's really pretty not my favorite products in the world, but it's really nice It's the football class is good. Yeah, rookie class is good the quarterback class is good So it's an expensive product, but if that's where you live. It's not a bad one Opeche platinum hockey now this is not a low in liquid segment But I'll tell you right now Opeche platinum hockey base sells on a really regular basis for me Yeah, so if you're a hockey buyer, and you're in an eBay store There is if you want to put in work. You can mitigate if you lose a little bit and then Clearly Donner's football It's okay the autos don't really hold up. They kind of fade and The acetate cards so surface is usually rough on those I think again my favorite product out of this whole list is Bowman baseball But everybody knows how I feel about Bowman there There will be a case or two now draft had a rough year this year overall right was draft the product or chrome the product Where they were like there's really chrome was rough It was rough this year draft was pretty good Which it's hard to do that with a Bowman product because there's usually a handful of prospects people are already excited about yeah Draft was good chrome was chrome was like a deep dive like who could I convince myself? I should yeah buy into one of the very few products. You'll ever hear Gary, and I talked about justifying breaking with fair Yeah, if you're gonna buy into breaks on on Bowman my advice is this and you're gonna usually find these on eBay Find somebody that's doing a 10 or 15 case player break Find an obscure player that you like a lot that you've done some research on and go buy that player in the break Don't go buy the big names in the product. You're gonna get washed and they're gonna go insane, but you can But Anthony Volpe was cheap as hell in 2020 player breaks. Yeah Junior Caminero was not super Davidson de los Santos yeah, I had I couldn't spit his name out I had Leo de Vries stuck in my head Davidson de los Santos was cheap player breaks Yeah, and he popped off last year So do some research find a couple guys that you really like Moises by a stereo, so we're gonna talk about later It was cheap in player breaks, yeah, so yep Bowman is probably my favorite retail product It's the only way I'll rip Bowman. I won't touch hobby. Yep Okay, value box time. We just finished up a series on what we would do if we were starting a card business tomorrow We walk through all the different things you need to consider from what you should you sell where do you buy it? how do you negotiate and where do you scale and This week we want to talk about it may carry over for a couple weeks depending on the engagement we have with it But what is the worst advice you've ever received regarding collecting or dealing cards? Yeah, there's a lot of advice out there There are a lot of forums where you ask a question. You'll have ten different answers from ten different people. There are Facebook groups Like the sports card nonsense one which I know Mike and Jesse are over it It's like a necessary evil to keep it at this point, but it's probably the most toxic page I've ever been on it's rough tons of terrible advice out there It's just from collectors not for Mike Jesse they do a good job with it but I Want to jump into some of the things that we've heard Over the years and break down why it is terrible advice some of this advice doesn't sound so bad off the rip Until you actually start following them on their advice The logical rabbit hole and then you're like wait a minute this doesn't work So the value box the worst advice we've ever received. I'll let you kick it off with the first one The the one of the first things that I was told by friends who were dealers when I started setting up at shows Was you have to price your cards over market value because everybody wants to negotiate and it's the only way you're gonna get full value and Like you just said when you first hear that you're like oh that makes a lot of sense stores do that all the time the problem with that is Very simply that it it makes a fatal assumption and that fatal assumption is that your buyers are morons They're not it's the assumption that your buyers don't know the market value of cards and that you can give them 20 or 25 percent off and then they pay full market value and they're happy and you're happy and everybody wins is a Fallacy less than 1% of people walking at a show Don't know the value of cards or don't pull out their phone immediately to check what comps are to see if you're close Pricing over value on your stuff to negotiate backwards is silly. Here's what you should do instead You should just price your stuff in line with the market Or if you can price it a little bit under market and still make the margin that you need to make Do that your stuff will sell quickly and you won't have it to deal with as much negotiation and haggling Are you still gonna have to deal with the people that want to come in and offer 70%? Absolutely. That's just the reality Let's peel back the onion a little bit. What are the negatives that will happen? If you follow this advice the first one I thought of I Never expected and I should have but I never expected that a large portion of my business would be repeat buyers Whether it's a show or eBay or whatever you think of that, you know, sure they would but anybody that deals knows They're targeting certain cards But your inventory is revolving non-stop and everyone that's dealt over a period of time would say I've had three months went three month windows Where I was convinced that I needed to kind of move this direction my inventory and it just didn't really pan out. A couple of injuries or a couple of products that just were kind of a dud that I wasn't expecting. And then other months where it's way better, but buyers are looking for certain things and if you don't have those things nonstop, it's hard to keep repeat buyers. But you know what will end the possibility for that quicker than anything? One bad transaction. Yeah. One poor transaction. And for some of you that have been doing this, you feel like, oh, I bumped up the price, I brought it back down, they were happy, they bought five cards. But at some point, if they're a dealer, they're gonna be pricing that, which a dealer, it's on you if you bought it as a dealer and you didn't check comps, right? But they're gonna go home, they're gonna look up the value of their cards if they didn't do it there with you. And they were feeling really confident about it and they're gonna lose a thing called trust and your ability to tell them what you think a card is worth. Now, there are people that just buy players and there's a card they're looking for and they know that it's 20% over what the last couple comps have been, but they believe a card is worth that and they want it. And that's a different situation. But you will lose the ability to have returning customers. But taking your $100 card and putting $125 on it just so you have room to negotiate is silly. How about this, price your $100 card at $100 and then let people know, hey, I'm open to fair offers. I can't sell it at 80, but 95, does that work for you? They're gonna say 90 and you're gonna say, oh, okay. Because hopefully if you were smart, you bought it at 70 or 75. What most people, the reason most people are avoiding that I think is they don't like saying no. They aren't comfortable with like, no, I've got to get this out of it. They want people to feel like there's a deal so they think they'll have a higher close rate on that. You're gonna have people that are trying to undercut and all that, it's okay to say no on that. But definitely don't recommend marking up the price just to be able to negotiate and lower the price. I don't know about you, but if I am at a table, so when Gary and I go shopping at a show, very rarely are we looking for one card. If we just see one card in a showcase that we really want, we'll go after it. But most of the time, we're trying to bundle a deal to get to a better margin and to find something that makes sense for the buyer and the seller because sellers maybe are at 90% on this card, but they have another one that they're in at 50%. And now we just worked our way to 70 to 75% on a deal with five or six cards, right? But when you and I walk up, we are looking for a baseline. I'm assuming you do this as well. Yeah, to have an idea of whether somebody knows the market. Three to five cards that I'm pretty familiar on pricing and are they in crazyville with their sticker? That's really what we're trying to figure out. Absolutely. And if we are doing that, there is a really good chance that just pure collectors are doing that as well. If they're only collecting one player, they might be obsessively collecting. They may know that player's market better than you. There's a good chance they do, okay? Marking it up to mark it down, terrible advice. Yep. Next one, I'll kick this off and we'll kick it back and forth. Go nuts. The next thing, and it's worded a lot of different ways, but being told that speculating or prospecting is where all the money is in collecting, grading, flipping, whatever you wanna do with cards. This idea that the only way to really experience buying safe if you're a collector, where there's room on the card to make sure you invest it well, or to grow a business that you have to do it with prospecting players or speculating where their market will be. Well, there's a guy named Sports Card Investor who has a track record of pushing, Jeff Wilson pushed this type of content over and over and over through the COVID boom. Here's a player you don't wanna miss out on. This is the one you need to be investing in now. And I could go down the list, and this isn't a, it's easy to have strong opinions about Jeff, and there's reason for it, right? Everybody knows mine. But the general consensus of all this is, go back and look through the track record of the number one influencer, if you will, on sports card investing over a four-year window, and it's loss after loss after loss after loss after loss after loss after loss. The difference is, that guy has a ton of expendable cash to blow on Olympic lanyards that Michael Jordan wore. You don't. You don't have that money. Your spouse is not shelling that money out to you. If she is, keep her, or keep him, or keep them. No judgment. No judgment at all. But what I'm saying is there is a grifty tendency out there, and there are people way worse than Jeff and what he's done in the past with that, and he seems to be shifting lanes, interestingly enough. Crazy, he's shifting it into things that can never get injured, Pokemon. Yes, moving to markets where there isn't that risk. Now, do I think that he genuinely believed that he should invest in those players and actually spent a lot of money? I do, I do. I think he really did. I think he really did buy heavy into those players. There may have been some pump and dump stuff there, but I don't know that the reach was that strong. There were people buying in, but there is a new grifter popping up every month in the card industry selling you their course, selling you their content, selling you their tips, selling you their spreadsheet, selling you their business model. This is how you're gonna find the right people to send off just in time before the next season, and if they become the quarterback, they should be blah, blah, blah. Go look up the great quarterbacks out there right now. The Mount Rushmore, whatever your Mount Rushmore is, look at their value, look at what they're selling for. Your fifth string quarterback is not that guy. They've not established that market. They haven't done it yet. They're not there. I love how fired up you are right now. Well, I just don't understand. You have a real-time market in front of you. The people that are pushing prospecting don't know how to negotiate. They can't buy at 60 to 70% and do it in a way where they're happy and the dealer is happy with the deal. They don't buy a margin because it takes so much work. You and I do this all the time. It takes so much time to consistently buy inventory at the right margin. You want to buy at 90%, spend $20,000 a week on inventory and collect five to 10%, that's a business model that might work for you where it's easier to find case hits that you can buy at 90% or whatever. But for the large majority of us out there, prospecting can be such a grift and scam if you're counting on that to be where you find your margin. And I would even amend that to say not just prospecting but speculation in general. Will there always be an element of speculation to this hobby? Absolutely. And we love that. Let's be fair. We both love that. But if the advice that you're getting is is that the best way to see a profit in this hobby or to increase the value of your collection is to take risky speculation, it's bad, bad, bad advice. And if you are getting, it's a lot like crypto. If you hear about somebody from an influencer, it's probably too late. You're late to the party. You're late to the party. Now, are you always going to be, are we going to miss everything? No, but you're later to the party than you should be. You should be doing some, and listen, we have a segment called The Lookout. I give you guys somebody to look out for that's going to be coming up soon, in my opinion, in baseball. You have 50 to 100X prospects before. Yeah. And you have lost hundreds on Bowman Autos over the years as well. And notice that I'm not telling you to go invest in those guys. I'm telling you what I think could happen if you want to take a shot at it. I'm not telling you that you're going to 4X your money. I'm not telling you that they're a great investment or anything else. In general, the idea of sports cards being an investment tool is asinine anyway. This is a hobby that can make you some money. But if you are not a dealer, if you don't have a business, if this isn't a business, it's not an investment tool. It's a hobby and it's a business. That's not an investment tool. It's like a lot of collectors out there are begging an influencer to tell them who to spend their money on. Yes. I don't understand it. Yeah. At all. I don't understand it at all. If, and the reality is this, when you dive into this hobby and you go beyond just building a binder out that you like or you have a box of cards, nothing wrong with that. It's awesome. Yes. But the moment you step beyond that and are curious, is there an upside to investing in a player, investing in someone's potential, speculating where the market will be, you better be putting a lot of time into researching that. And the large majority of people that I talk to that are like, I'm really big on this player. When I ask them, oh, that's really cool. Why do you see in there? Because if somebody has a good argument, I'll write the name down and look it up. Absolutely. Because someone told them they were buying it. 99% of the time, somebody said I should buy this. Bowman is, it can be a trap because what I'm not going to do is act like you and I are baseball experts because we are not. But what we are confident in is our ability to go find the information that gives you the data to say, does this person really have a legitimate chance of getting called up this year? Are they on a team where that position is going to have a need to be filled sometime soon? Or are they so buried in single A as a pitcher on the Dodgers that it's going to be seven years before they get that call up? I think that's important. So before I let you jump back in, the reality is most of you don't know where Mahomes' market is right now. Most of you haven't spent 20 minutes looking through Luka's recent soles to see, has the trade actually impacted him? The Lakers are in the playoffs, barely, probably not by the time this is over. But look through the established players. Look at what's happening with the market. People that you have a lot of data to go off of. Who are the last five players that you thought would have an uptick? Did they? If they didn't, here's the secret sauce. If they didn't, if they underperformed, if you lost money, go look at what happened. Do an autopsy on your investment. Yeah. You will grow so much more into a smarter buyer and investor and speculator by taking a look at your failures rather than just onto the next rookie that might 20X for me. That's a scratch off. Again, that gambling component, sorry. No, you're good. And that's all very valid points. And baseball, Jason's correct. Neither one of us, I would call a baseball expert. That being said, I do think that we probably know more about baseball and what we're looking at when we look at a swing and what we look at when we're looking at pitching mechanics than the average bear. You gotta have some knowledge of what you're looking at. Again, baseball prospecting especially, if you're hearing about somebody from an influencer, it's probably a little too late. You might not completely miss, but you probably aren't getting in at the bottom. And I mean, we talked about the next point at the same time. Using cards as an investment tool, like your 401k, is asinine. It's terrible advice, and there are people out there that give that advice. Don't listen to them. Conservative markets tend to win over the long term with that type of stuff. There are people, so I do think the caveat is, if you're super wealthy and you can get into extremely rare stuff that is very expensive and you have the tolerance for losing that money, you could have a bigger upside with a super high-end. 52 mantle PSA 10. Yes, that's the game you have to play at that level. Now, there are people that are like, no, I do this. There are some nerds out there. They're doing all right. I know people who have cashed out their 401ks to buy cards. That's insane to me. And I do this for a living, and that's insane to me. Don't do that. Yeah. All right, what do we got? You should always hold longer. You're always, it's gonna go up. Just have those diamond hands. Horrific advice. You have two, they have two ACLs. They only blew one of them. Horrific advice. Listen, here's the reality. This is very, very simple math. For every one card that you sold too soon, for every one card that you sold too soon, there's 99 that you sold that went down. Period. A perfect example of this we saw in 2023. Elie De La Cruz, right before his call-up, his market was pretty high. And that's normally the correct time to sell a baseball prospect, is right before their call-up, okay? Elie was one of the handful of humans who played the game of baseball whose market quadrupled for three months after his call-up. When they just saw what he had. It's just so unbelievably rare to have happen. And there were so many people that, and I sold a bunch of Elie the week before call-up, and I made good money on it. I could have made four times as much. And I could have said to myself, that was so dumb, Gary, and next year I would have held onto three guys way too long and lost money on them. There's no such thing as selling a card too soon. That's just not real life. If you sell something and you made a profit on it, you did not sell it too soon. And if you find yourself regretting selling things all the time, you have to ask yourself a question. Should I just be a collector and just hold stuff forever? And there's nothing wrong with that, if you choose to do that. But if you are actually trying to make a little bit of profit here and there on this hobby, there's no such thing as selling a card too soon. Well, and there's another baseline piece to this. It's just, you're gonna stop enjoying it. Yeah, because it's gonna be nothing but regret. If you're constantly worried about, am I gonna lose, you know, you're up on the card, you have money, you could go enjoy, this is fun. We go buy sports cards and get paid to sell them. Like, if you're making money on that, unless you have information that nobody has, that nobody has, that's not out there, should probably be okay with taking the win that you got. And if you have that information, you should be a sports bettor, not a card collector. Yep. Because with that mindset, let's say that like Gary got his 30% profit on that. And he bought again. And as soon as he could get that 30% profit, he did it again. And he did that 10 times in the timeframe that that card may go up two or three times or down two or three times where the value was from one injury. you know, a hitting slump, whatever could happen, right? Seven errors, I don't know. Whatever it is, like, he's up more than if he would've just held on that. Because this is a constant churning, moving business that's over and over and over. And you stack those margins over time, right? And now you've surpassed that 4X. That's what a lot of people aren't considering is that 30% margin, 20, whatever your percentage is, right? Over a long period of time, if you're able to consistently do that with velocity, you're outperforming where that card would have been. If you're somebody that only sells cards once a year, then maybe sit on it, it's your money. Maybe you open it in a pack, you're in it for nothing and it's worth 500 bucks, sit on it, hang onto the card. Be okay if it goes down to 200, you're still up, right? But don't expect every rookie that people get excited about to be worth way more. And they don't always go up. But that's the key here, that cards just don't always go up. Sneaker flippers are like feeling this at the same time right now. There was a time, but it's not like that with everything. Last one. We've alluded to it, but I think it's important to point out. There were a lot of people, especially during the COVID craze, when retail boxes were selling for two to 3X the sticker price, that encouraged a model of opening sealed products as a way of getting inventory. There is no math behind this anymore. You are losing money when you open. Now, Gary and I will talk about products like Bowman, like Allen and Ginter. But listen, it's really important to understand a point when we talk about those products. In order to not lose money on them, there's a lot of knowledge and expertise and willingness to work that you have to have. If you don't have that knowledge or expertise or willingness to put the work into it, you're gonna lose money on it. So don't take me saying I've never lost money on Bowman as you're never gonna lose money on Bowman. Because if you don't have the knowledge that I have and how that market works, you may take a bath. Some products, you have to have them listed on eBay that week, because within two weeks, that $3 card is worth $1. There's a time piece to this that nobody's considering too. I talk about how I'm able to scan through. If I had a huge stack of vintage, let's say it was all the same set, like 72 tops, right? Baseball. I can have 1,000, 2,000 of those up and listed within an hour or two because of AI. But when you have a brand new product, a lot of those AI softwares do not read and have the recognition yet because there haven't been enough transactions to verify that that's the card. Now you're filling out a spreadsheet for each item. When you have a box of, I'll use Allen and Getcher because that's when I referenced, right? Because the celebrity cards is the other ones that will sell. Get a couple hundred of those up, it probably took me two or three hours to get them all listed if it's a brand new product. Those are going to, 20, 30% will sell in that first week. The rest of them will sell over the next year. I have to pull each of those items. I have to ship each of those items. I have to sell those items to somebody looking for cards that sell for $1.99. And there's some of you that watch this that just enjoy that and you're not jerks. But I'm gonna tell you this, there are a lot of customers out there looking for a bargain on a $2 card that ain't gonna be any less cheap when that $2 card is lost in transit and there's customer service issues. So, all of that you have to factor in. But if you're opening big product, like if you open Topps Chrome Basketball last year because you thought it was gonna be good for inventory, everyone in the market was telling you, you gotta open this, this is gonna be great, Wimpy Autos, it's gonna be life-changing money. Chrome Update, the MLB debut patches, you gotta do this, the buyback program. Have you noticed a theme yet? People marketing a product, market it. It's their job to tell you that, right? The math behind it doesn't make sense. How do I know? I've opened enough product and lost enough money opening to realize that this is not how you source your inventory. Correct. I beat that to death. You did, but that's okay, it's a good point. It's not the way to do it. Is it possible? Yes. Do you recommend it? No. Can you lose on it? Yes. I did it with Beavis and Butt-Head. I opened a box of sealed Beavis and Butt-Head out of the, was it the Fleer? Yes. Really cool set. Did some of the cards go for five to seven? Yeah, somewhere around there. And 95% of those are still in the store. I thought they would be a lot more liquid. I did a test, blah, blah, blah. Turns out, they're not that liquid. Turns out the 10 people that wanted to collect that set were the ones buying all that stuff. Yeah, they buy one or two of the cards. Yeah, that's it. So yeah, a little bit of the worst advice that we've received. And maybe we'll expand that next week to maybe the worst advice that we see other people giving. Yeah. If you're seeing this, comment below with the worst advice you've ever received. Yeah, we'd love to hear what your worst advice is, too. And if it's something that we've told you, screw you. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Gary, you want to hit him with some prospecting now that we told people to chill out with it? Yeah, yeah. Let's do it, The Lookout. So again, just a refresher, if you're new here, first off, thanks. Hit that like and subscribe button. Hit the little bell so you get notified when we drop new content. We do a segment called The Lookout during baseball season. And that is me as a pseudo-not-really-expert that just loves baseball. Prospecting enthusiast. Yes, a prospecting enthusiast. Goes over a player that I think is going to be called up to the bigs soon. So far this year, I'm batting 500 guys I've talked about have gotten called up. Last week, we talked about Tim Elko, who has just continued to do nothing but mash this last week. I don't think it's going to be long. This week, we're going to talk about a Chicago Cub. This guy is the number 57 overall prospect in baseball. His name is Moises Ballesteros. Now, Moises Ballesteros is a catcher. He would be a top 10, maybe a top seven or eight prospect in baseball if he was even remotely functional defensively. He is not. That should tell you how good his bat is. If you are a top 60 prospect in baseball and you are useless on one side of the ball, you're really good on the other side of the ball. Ballesteros, 21 years old. His cards are in 2023 Bowman. He has autos and color, all the normal stuff. All the kid does is hit, and he hits really well. He's not a pure power guy. He's kind of a Alejandro Kirk body style. Short, chubby kid, like you picture a catcher. That's what you got, except he's not very good at the defensive side of it. That being said, so far this year in 2025, he's hitting 414 with a 475 OBP and a 586 slugging percentage, and it's only with two home runs. He's got a 1061 OPS, and he's in triple A, playing at about two and a half to three years under the average age of the level. He has risen from high A to triple A in 18 months. The two way leap is a huge jump. Yes, from high A to two A is the hardest jump in baseball, in my opinion. Now here's the crazy thing about Ballesteros. He's got great pitch recognition, great plate discipline. He walks at about a 12% clip, and he strikes out at about a 14% clip. Does not have high chase rates, sub 20% chase rates. Sprays the ball all over the field. We talked about a guy a couple weeks ago that's like that. He just, whatever the pitcher gives him, he's gonna take. That's a lot of gapper doubles, and when you're a fat kid hitting doubles, they're probably triples for other people. The Cubs are one of, if not the best teams, offensively in baseball right now, so it might be a minute before he gets up, but they're not gonna be able to keep this bat down too much longer. Cards are still pretty affordable. I think base autos are right around 60 bucks. Colors get a little bit crazier, but you can still buy some nice non-auto color for very reasonable prices. And in Wrigley Field, his swing plays. It's just a really compact swing that doesn't have a lot of moving parts, and he takes what pitchers give him, and hits the ball wherever it needs to go, and does a really good job of it. So Moises Ballesteros, this week's feature on the lookout. If you have any questions about him, hit us in the comments. I'll try to dive in and answer them. You said 23 Bowman? 23 Bowman, correct, yep. All right, before we wrap up today, as we always do, it's another segment of Low End Liquid. These were weird ones. You showed me this, you were like, have you seen these? I was like, no. This is kinda cool. So recap, if you heard this before, I gotta pitch it again so they know that I'm not full of crap. All right, that's all that this is. Oh, hey, drop the eBay store name. We've had a lot of people ask what the name of the store is. A lot of people ask, see, it's a double-edged sword. If I trust them with this, and they sabotage me, I'm a dead man. That's fine, fair enough. But I don't know that it'll stay a secret, because it's out there. If you're looking for the store, the name of the store is The Ball Card Store. Super original. Yeah, so I sold a lot of cards over the weekend. I'm just under 44,000 active unique listings right now. And in the last 11 months, I've sold over 11,000 items, and I'm carrying a 99.9 feedback, which I'd like to keep. Please don't sabotage that. What I'm trying to do with this segment is just show you products that you can find in your dime boxes, quarter boxes, flea market, antique mall, card shop sometimes, that you can find on the cheap, that will sell in that less than $10 range, and they sell at a quick rate, which means they're liquid, low-end liquid cards. I really like this set. This is a fun one. I picked this up in an antique mall, almost the entire set, and this is all that is left. So there were a lot more than these, but this is the 1971 FLIR World Series cartoon set, okay? So in 71, FLIR did this set with an artist. And this one, I've got a numerical, but we're in 1910 here. This is the Cubs and A's, Yankees, Giants, Cardinals, Yanks. They all have really cool cartoon designs with them. They have some type of reflection of what happened in the series, 62 series, first NL series slam, right? These have sold at a really quick rate for me, and there's a lot of individual sales too. Yeah, so it's not only multi-quantity, because I had someone mention that, well, yeah, you have such a big store that people are buying a lot of cards. Well, sometimes it's just a set and there's not a lot out there. This would be an example of it. If it's a card Gary hasn't seen, like this is something I'm surprised that he hasn't seen. Now, what do these sell for? Three to five bucks, three to five bucks. I don't think I had a single one sell over five. But again, it's that vintage card stock, Card Dealer Pro or whatever AI scanner you use does pick these up right away. They're very desirable. I don't know if this was a short or printed product, and that's why. I don't know if it's because the artist that was involved. But in a lot of these, they mention a player and what they did in the series. Matty's last series win, a record setter, fourth series shutout. And this is the A's and Giants series in 1913. So if you see these out and about, they can be found in dime quarter boxes. This was an antique mall. I got the whole set and it averaged out to like 20 to 25 cents per card. This is the 1971 Fleer World Series set. Cool. Low and liquid this week. Low and liquid. Be sure to bookmark the show every Thursday night at 7 p.m. on Whatnot. Yes. We are once again grateful for your support. Oh, we didn't mention this. What did we not mention? For those of you that haven't turned this off already, because I've been rambling. We were, Gary was featured in an article of the New York Times this last week. We were both interviewed, but apparently Gary had something more interesting to say than I did. But just talking about the effects tariffs might be having on the hobby. Those of you that are dealers know that essentially our protected sleeves and mags and topplers is where we've been hit the most right away. All the stuff we get from China. All coming in from China, so. But yeah, I mean, if you wanna look us up, it's in the New York Times. Print is available too, right? Yeah. We need to get that and print it out and frame it. Yeah, we probably should. It'd be a cool thing to have. I'll just mark Gary. I've never been interviewed by the New York Times before. And you were so well-behaved. I was. You did before the interview say, hey, Gary. We didn't have a pep talk. He interrupted you. If you don't know, Gary shows a lot of restraint in the show, but he shares his views in everything and that carries into politics. And we do a good job of not bringing too much of that into here, but you were. We try. You were very well-behaved. I try. I'm very proud of you. I did my best. All right, this has been the Ball Card Show, The Esports Podcast. For The Esports Collector. Bye now. Peace.