THWC 428: The Hobby Is Unrecognizable Now.

What's up? Everybody happy with Cage episode 428, brought to you by Arena Club by card ladder, use code, Cage. Save yourself a couple of bucks on your subscription. And by the Philly show and by anybody else who wants to sponsor, I mean any of you negative negligees in the comments. You want to sponsor me, I'll say your name. You can give me $5, you know, but that's fine, too. Little different one today. I mean, it is the week of the National. I've already done a couple of, you know, fun little, call them puff pieces, right? About my excitement for the National. And I mean, you can probably tell just my voice and how I just log in and do the episode here. Early morning, July 29th, first day the national opens, and in a few hours to the public feeling some FOMO and that kind of stuff. I could do another episode about the National. I probably will. Maybe I'll do another one later today if I find a little bit of time. Maybe I'll do one tomorrow, you know, before I go. We'll see, we'll figure it out. But I guess my, my fun one here, and maybe I should have saved this and released it while I was at the national because it's not really, you know, it's an evergreen content. I'd like for you guys to think with me for a second. It's going to be a little brain exercise, a little thought exercise, if you will. I got a message from a hobby friend and he said, I got a great idea for an episode. And it's, you know, hey, talk about all these celebrities and athletes getting into the hobby and opening their card stores. I thought about it for a second and Yu-Gi-Oh it's noteworthy. I don't know whether or not even me, as verbose and allergic to brevity as I am, can make a 15 or 20 minute episode about that fully. But it really had my wheel spinning. And here's this Marty McFly. That's gonna be my episode for today. I mean, it's funny when I look back in the 80s when back to the Future came out and they fast forwarded to, you know, to the Future in 2015, you know, Back to the Past in 1955. It seemed like, you know, it seemed like forever ago. 2015 was. Seemed like so far in the future, they were going to be dehydrating and rehydrating pizza and there were going to be hoverboards and there was going to be all this crazy stuff. But what I remember as a kid was it was so unrecognizable. It was such a futuristic thing. And it had me thinking, you know, about things that change things that people predict. The card stores being opened by celebrities and athletes. And, you know, the list is for everything from Tom Brady to this week. You heard about, you know, Lewis Hamilton opening stores. I mean, talk about somebody who has a lot of followers on Instagram, you know, to. To. To. I mean, Carl Hanny Towns being involved in it. There's so many different folks in here. It had me thinking about how the space looks now. And I want you guys to all be Marty McFly's with me as we go back and we think about potentially going forward. And I'm gonna say this. Anyone who was here five years ago, anyone who, you know, this is their fifth, sixth, whatever, national, right? Anyone who was in this space even during COVID I'm gonna talk about the pre. Covid. Even the people who are in the space, you know, during COVID and who went to the 2021 national, right? The hobby is unrecognizable now, and that's five years ago. It is going to be a completely different space in five years, for better or for worse. And let me start with this. The hobby has passed me by. I know a lot of you guys out there are laughing. I know a lot of you guys out there are saying, what the hell are you talking about? I can't wait to see you. We're going to smoke cigars. We're going to high five. I thank you all the time for your great content, the whole deal. Yes. But we go back to a time. And by the way, this is a good thing. Let's just throw this out there as a start, right? We go back to a time where the Mint Collective was in Las Vegas and the hobby was trying to grow through an industry summit and an expansive new. You know, I don't call it national alternative, but another show, right, that was national, like, but really industry hobby. There were a lot of, like, you know, panels. The panels were, let's talk about cards. Let's talk about mistakes you made. Let's talk about the hobby. Let's talk about growing it. There were meetings of people about, you know, how do we get Wall street money into this? How do we get finance into this? You know? You know, can we fractionalize cards and treat them like stocks that way? And yours truly, with my partner, Andrew and Lucas Tigers Bronze podcast. Oh, my. Were one of two, you know, sponsored podcasts, official podcasts, who were doing live shows from the Mint Collective us and sports card nonsense. And that was a big deal. My silly face was on posters and, you know, we hosted, you know, cigar nights and. And it was a cool thing because it was. If you took a snapshot of the hobby in 2015 when nobody was buying cards and you could buy hobby boxes for less than $100 and you fast forward to 2021 and saw the post Covid boom of this, it was an unrecognizable thing to people who have been in the space. I mean, I was collecting UFC cards, you know, buying and selling UFC cards to be with very little, very little cost to them. $50 a box, $40 a box for tops, let's call it, you know, after main event, $40 a whole box. Open it up, guaranteed autos, you know, and over a bunch. And selling the people to think that there would be enough bandwidth for a 2021 Mint collective with the biggest podcasts in the business up on stage, Mike and Jesse, myself and Andrew and Jeremy Lee up there, you know, as a moderator, you know, Adam, the real 27 guy moderator, you know, you know, talking and, you know, that was a huge step and would have been unrecognizable to anybody who was traveling from 2016 to 2021. See, what the hell is this? The national has how many people at it? They're adding a breaking pavilion. What is that? What does that even mean? And the hobby created its own celebrities. Think about that for a second. Because it was still in that step of progression, it went 2016 cards in the basement. You didn't tell your friends about it. You didn't tell your coworkers about it. You didn't tell your friends, your enemies, your neighbors. You didn't tell anybody, right? You collected your cards, you know, you looked at your pictures of men. You didn't have an app that, that told you what your collection was worth on a daily basis. And you weren't checking it. You weren't getting messages on Instagram to buy your cards. You weren't, you know, talking about going to national. Maybe you were. It wasn't setting records, it wasn't expanding. And then 2021, five years later, boom, you had hobby lebrities. Jeff Wilson Card Collector 2 the hobby at that point in time was still this growing thing, this thing that people were trying to figure out. And there were some names that were building themselves out of it. Now Fast forward to 2026. The Mint Collective is now Fanatics fest. I'm not saying has anything to do with it, the whole deal, but Just think about it. There was the national nothing in 2016. There was a National Mint Collective 2021. There's the national and Fanatics Fest in 2026, and that's going to be a nice microcosm of everything. Why? Because, I'm Sorry, Card Collector 2. The hobby has passed you by, too. And if you don't see it yet, you will when we Fast forward to 2031, because we have Card Collector 3 now, as I like to call him. I actually like the guy. I met him a couple times. Kyle, the king of cards. He's the new guy. Hell, we've even passed Jeff by. Jeff Wilson doesn't get the play that he used to. No, it's. Let's, let's talk about Roth cards out there using Yu-Gi-Oh to make his Spider man videos and, you know, flippy dippy on the cards and, and, and like I said, king of cards. And. But the people are still here. Jay Lee is still doing awesome content. Hell, Dr. Beckett has been doing awesome content through it all. And when I say the hobby has passed me by, I don't, I don't mean I'm leaving. I don't mean that I, you know, I'm changing anything up. There will always be a segment of people, the ones who have been here through it all, the ups and the downs, who will enjoy the content and, you know, will, will, you know, will have a different type of conversation, but during the upswings, like 2021 and here in 2026, we are cyclical. The hobby is cyclical, the content is cyclical, and the participants are cyclical. And here, what I'm going to tell you is the couple minutes I could spend on the athletes. Why, I think even Kyle's gravy train, even. I mean, definitely we're on the down slope. I think of Jeff and, and, and Ryan. I love these guys. Like, I, I friendly with everybody to the most, for the most part, there are a couple people who have me blocked on, on Instagram. But it is what it is. You know, I mean, I'll see all these people and say hello at the National. But what I'm saying here is the truth. You had nothing. Then you had Card Collector 2 and Jeff, and now you have, you know, hundreds of thousands of followers for, you know, the Kyle, the King of cards. But, but you know what's also happening? Fanatics Fest does not Fanatics Fest, you know, and Fanatics themselves, they don't need these guys. It's nice to have them. You know, I see PSA doing content now you know the origin story of Kyle Kravitz and the King of Cards. Okay, maybe PSA needs it. Maybe PSA is not getting all the athletes. But you know what I saw at Fanatics Fest was Fanatics doing content with the athletes themselves. You know, Carl Anthony Towns is there. He can climb a building. You know what I mean? The wrestlers are there. You know, Cody Rhodes will do content. Tom Brady will do content. Logan Paul will do content. You know, Justin Bieber calls in and they post that themselves. In prior years, it was, hey, Cage, we need you to host this hobby. Companies wanted you to interview or moderate a panel with Derek Jeter, which I did. Now Derek Jeter just does it. And if they need someone to walk the show, they get Kevin Gandhi, an ESPN commentator who's going to be on ESPN Jeopardy. To walk Anthony Edwards and buy cards with him. The celebrities are here, the athletes are here. They're opening their own stores. They are now part of this. And whether you want to admit it or not, my kid, your kid, anyone consuming content is more likely to just listen to Tom Brady opening cards himself, then myself or Ryan or Kyle or Jeff talking about it with them or talking about it with them. Not even there. Because if you got a hey, I'm gonna open packs and let's talk about the hobby or I'm gonna open packs and I'm gonna turn the camera and there's Derek Jeter opening packs or there's Tom Brady opening packs or Logan Paul opening packs or speed opening packs or whoever it's gonna be, you know, that's this next phase. And in 2031 we'll all still be here, but it's gonna look completely different, just like it looks completely different now. Healthanatics Fest, they had Messi there. Tom Brady, we're not talking about athletes. Talking about the greatest athletes in their sports were there. It's a good thing. Let me say that it is a good thing. And the national is one of those last bastions of fun for the hobby. It's old school hobby. It's funny because you know, the youngsters who like that it's growing. You used to complain that so many vintage guys set up there, those vintage. Well, guess what? You're turning into those vintage guys. I know I am. And the youngsters are gonna soon be the vintage guys. Give it a couple years, man. Give it a few years. But I don't mean vintage like cards. I mean this is a good thing. It's progress. If you're interested in the space growing, you can't say that it's a bad thing that Lewis Hamilton is opening a card store. That's obviously a good thing. You guys know me. I own Verizon stock, right? It goes up, it goes down, I don't care. I collect my dividend. But when I hear that they're partnering with Google and Google's investing and buying fiber and let's go, it's Google. I didn't think Verizon would be, you know, making a deal with Google, but let's do it. It's the same thing. Our little hobby, our space, our boring little cardboard pictures of men and women and cartoons that we gotta expand it out now, right? This little space that used to be kind of a hidden little gem. It is wide open now. TV stars, the dude from Shark Tank is walking around on TV with cards on his neck. Come on. Athletes, celebrities, opening boxes. That is not going to stop and it's not going to stay where it is now. That's going to continue. It's going to grow. There will be more people opening card stores. And this isn't a bad thing at all, just different. I will promise you this. I will continue to make content. I'll tell you about my own world and how I'm navigating the space. I've had some fun celebrities on the podcast. You know, I mean, I've interviewed Derek Jeter, which is pretty awesome. Adam, you know, Michael Parsons, Gary V. Patrick, Bet, David, I mean, you name it. I can't complain that, you know, names are coming into the space and find it interesting and fun and I think you should find it, you know, to be a good thing as well. But enjoy the national because that may be the last place where it hasn't encroached yet where you can just spend a couple of days and do the hobby. It may change, who knows? I mean, with the success of what Fanatics Fest is bringing and having, you know, basically a Knicks championship parade walk right through it and, you know, people loving the celebrities kind of walking around and stuff. I could see the national adding some of that. I think that the, you know, the two happening kind of like this with, you know, the attendance that they're going to have, the record breaking they're going to have. But kind of catering to the hobby in two separate ways is really a good thing. And I just did 15 minutes of things that change. All to say that I'm looking forward to going to the national and spend some time with the stuff that hasn't changed. The stuff that I fell in love with in the hobby. Who knows how much longer we're gonna have it? And there's your episode for today, 428, brought to you by Arena Club, by card ladder, use code cage. Save yourself a couple bucks. And by the Philly Show. I will talk to you guys soon. See you at the National. If you're going, send me a message. I've already set up a little cigar group with people who want to, you know, meet up for cigars. And some of them might be meeting up today before I even get there without me to have cigars, which is cool, man. That's why you set up an Instagram chat. So if you hear this and you're going to be there and you're interested in maybe, you know, meeting up and smoking a cigar, send me a dm. I'll add you to the group. Talk to you soon, guys. Take care.