THWC 398: Just Buy Goats?

What's up, everybody? It's Hobby with Cage. Episode 398 brought to you by Arena Club by card ladder. Use code Cage. Save yourself a couple bucks and buy the Philly Show. Man. We are, you know, the. The days of June are counting down. What are we June 3rd here on Wednesday, you know, before, you know, it'll be the middle of June, and then we'll be counting down to July. It'll be Fanatics Fest, and it'll be, you know, national and, you know, it'll be. It'll be, you know, the best time of the, of the year for the Hobby. We're kind of, you know, approaching it here and, you know, June 3rd, Wednesday night, baseball. I mean, there's hockey going on, but I don't know who's paying attention to it. You got the Finals, the NBA Finals tonight. You know, game one, Knicks, Spurs. Run it back 99. You know, you get to see some, some Knicks fans who weren't Knicks fans a couple weeks ago become the biggest Knicks fans on Earth. And, and that'll be fun. You won't see me really cheering for the Knicks. I haven't really cheered for the knicks since the 90s. Haven't. Haven't seen a Knicks championship in my lifetime, which would be cool. As a New Yorker, that's cool stuff. You know, everybody loves the Knicks. Got a lot of fun DMS after I said the spurs were going to win the series. I think I said they would in five, maybe six, who knows? But, you know, Nixon four. I got a lot of Nixon four, which, you know, I mean, if you'd have told me Nixon four against the Cavs, I would have laughed. You'd have told me Nixon 4 against the Sixers, I would have laughed. And they did it both times. You know, I mean, they are on a hell of a streak. But, you know, you can, you can mix into that a little bit of Ohtani pitching tonight, which is a fun thing, right? I mean, he now has a. A lead in the overall WAR category over Chris Sanchez, who is another pitcher who's having an amazing year and probably his biggest competition for Cy Young in the National League right now. You know, all it takes is one or two bad starts from him and, you know, the war goes down because now you got Ohtani approaching the top 10 in WAR for offense and the top 10 in WAR for pitching. You know, combined WAR of 4.7, you know, not even at the midway point of the season. You know, you know, the guy's, you know, headed for another 10 war season, you know, the MVP, you could basically give it to him now. Started off the game yesterday with a double and then, and then a triple. Two runs. He had two rbis. They won. And tonight he pitches. You know, so if he goes out there and has another, you know, pitching performance and keeps his ERA under one. You know, it's funny because I talked about this in my other episode about people not looking at it and it, you know, everybody's going to be looking at Wemby. The Wemby card market is front and center and for good reason. He's in the finals, you know what I mean? You're not going to get any more, you know, relevant than this. And, and if he wins a championship and a finals MVP and, you know, starts to put his name with some real accomplishments, you know, everyone should be talking about him. But I'm not buying him right now. You know what I mean? I'm not, I'm not buying his cards right now. I'm trying to buy cards of, of, you know, players that folks aren't talking about even though they're killing it. You know what I mean? You know, look at, look at what Otani's doing and you know, people are like, oh, his cards are priced high. The price for perfection. Well, I mean, he is the most valuable player in baseball right now. Possibly the most valuable player that has ever played during my lifetime, you know, and while, you know, Barry Bonds put together some great steroid aided seasons there, you know, in San Francisco, on San Francisco, loved him. I don't think he had a, you know, 100 mile an hour fastball that he could locate with a sweeper that he could Throw with a 12 mile per hour, you know, gap in how he, how he throws it. You know, he had some great WAR seasons and there are some fun stats about him about how he had, you know, more walks than plate appearances and you know, how he did the cream and the clear and evaded the federal government for a long time, etc. Etc. I don't know the cream in the clear. I was at a Rod Balco. I mean, you got so lost in the nonsense. Who even knows what was going on and what, what, you know, what wasn't. It's natural for someone to come into the league and be a speed demon, 40, 40 talent, an MVP caliber player. And then all of a sudden, you know, you know, not be able to run because your head has increased in size four times. I know about big heads. People look at my head, it is gigantic. Enough of the Barry Bonds slander. I really don't care about Barry Bonds. You want to buy his cards and you know, that's perfectly fine. You want to be a Barry Bonds fan, fine. Not gonna happen here. But even if you are, and even if you are the biggest Barry Bonds supporter and think he was a great player at the time, and he was, and he won a lot of MVPs, Ohtani's better by any and all measurables. You can't even make a comparison because Otani pitches and pitches better than anyone. So you have someone who is one of the best hitters and one of the best pitchers. He would be this year an all star as a batter if he wasn't pitching. He would be an all star as a pitcher if he wasn't batting. Think about that for a second. That is ridiculous. And as I sit here, I own three Otani cards. So let's, you know, let's. I am being a homer. I think he's amazing. I have some of his cards, but three of them, maybe four, but the fourth one's small. So. Yeah. Anyway, you get it. You understand where I'm going with it. But it got me thinking yesterday about what people are buying. What people? I saw two great stories. I don't know whether they were kind of going back and forth on each other in the stories, but people I respect in, in the space. And, you know, it started off by one talking about how, you know, he may not be buying Michael Jordan cards anymore because, you know, where his collection is going and what he's enjoying collecting and what he, what he likes doing is more post 2000, you know, more modern players. And this is someone who has previously bought Otani but, you know, is also buying staff and is buying kabooms and is buying LeBron cards. And it's just, you know, kind of all over the place, but more modern and, you know, took a little swipe that I didn't like about, like vintage collecting and how like a Honus Wagner is not going to speak to them and doesn't speak to most people like a Kobe would speak to certain people. I think even mentioned, you know, kind of like the Wonder Shine index and how it, you know, they could easily have a honest Wagner if they wanted, but they'd rather have more Kobe than Honus Wagner. And that's an interesting thing because, you know, then the response to that was. And, you know, this is a great conversation. I'd love to know what you guys think about this also, when it comes to your own money, you know, the commentary that was made Was basically like buy the goats. Don't make the mistake of buying somebody else. You know, if you have a stack of cards of somebody else, just sell that stack and put it in Brady. Sell that stack and put it in Jordan. Sell that stack and put it in Otani is what they said. So coming around to Otani because I don't really think they were an Otani person a couple years ago, but basically don't get bogged down in the nonsense. Get rid of all that nonsense of, of, you know, active players now, current players now, you know, the guys who could be the Wembies, let's call them and just put it all in a goat. Put it all in a Jordan. Now I've done some episodes about this. I love this topic. This is one of my favorite topics because I, I don't know that there is a wrong way of doing it. Sure, buying goats makes sense, right? I mean especially if you look the last couple of years, look at what's happened with Michael Jordan's prices. Look what happened with Kobe's prices. Look at what happened with all of the, you know, prices of these goats, Brady included. Messy, you know, it's blue chips, right? They say flight to quality but, but, but take it from someone who has bought messy, messy cards. Take it for someone who's bought Brady cards and has, I don't want to say regretted it, but is probably moving out of the Brady, you know, buying market because the prices have gone up. There was something to be said about buying younger, active, modern cards. That's not to be said about it. You know what I mean? And you know, we've talked about this enough. I don't need to beat it to death. But like the people who have Wemby cards right now are excited. The people have Brunson cards are excited. Hell, the people who have Carl Anthony Towns cards, guards are excited. Dylan Harper, right? I mean think about it. If going into this year or during the season you're a Spurs fan and Harper was your guy and you were out there trading your con canipple and your Cooper flag and getting multiple Dylan Harper's back in return, you probably feel good about yourself right now. You know, spurs are favorite to win. Dylan Harper, you know, have having a great run here during the playoffs and people are more interested in his cards. While knipple and and flag are not playing and no one's buying them. Presently we see more selling pressure on those guys than buying but Dylan Harper people aren't selling his cards per se because at least not cheap because he's playing, he's out there having good games. He's out there potentially winning a, a championship. I mean, it's pretty cool. You could feel smart. You feel like, you know, you picked your guy. And think about those people who picked Dylan Harper over Khan or Cooper Flag. They probably thought themselves, you know, but most people probably thought they were being silly. Not right now. You know, during this week, those guys get to take their victory lap. And it's something that just doesn't happen with the goats. You know, you're a Peyton Manning guy or a Brady guy. You have your debates. I've done an episode on that too. It's almost like I'm like the Simpsons, man. I've done an episode on almost everything. You can go back. I did a great, you know, Manning episode talking about how he's, you know, just as good, if not better of a quarterback than Brady was. Why was Card so cheap? The Knipple vs Harper debate or the Flag vs Harper debate? Right now you're a Harper guy. You making arguments. You're talking about what he's doing, talking about how next season he could be going into it and, you know, talking about like, you know, being better than those guys. Why? Because he may have a ring and be an important part of, of the team that won the ring, an important reason why they won the ring and maybe go into next year having this, you know, this base of this team. We're like, can it. I mean, would they make the play in. And Flag didn't even like, are those teams really going to compete with this first team? No. So maybe you feel good about it. But you, you're a goat buyer. You're a Brady buyer. What do you, you know, you, you can't really say, hey, Brady's better than Manning. Look what he did last night, you know, or you can't really say Manning is better than Brady because, I mean, he went out there in game one of the finals last night and look what he did. You know, he threw for 400 yards like you can with Dylan Harper. You know, when the draft comes and you know, Knipple adds somebody to the team, right? And you were buying. Now on the dip and maybe the Hornets add Giannis. I'm just throwing it out there. Now your, your kanipple cards go up and you're going to social media. Haha. I was trading for Knipple when you guys were all on Dylan Harper. My guy's gonna come out next year and have a great year. They just added Giannis. He's Gonna be a, you know, an all NBA and they're gonna win the championship and blah, blah. It's conversations you're able to have, it's arguments you're able to make. It's fun, it's action. And a lot of the goat guys, you know, sometimes, myself included, I'll just buy the Mickey Mantle and sit on your hands, miss the fact that a lot of people are drawn to this space for the action. And I don't know why they miss it. Because even our collector friends, if they're being honest, some of them will tell you that they enjoy the chase, they enjoy the hunt, maybe even more than owning the card. You know, they like identifying the card they want to go after. They like the negotiation, like the action, the back and forth of what it takes to obtain the card, to find that card, to research that card. But then when they actually have the card, it was more fun climbing the mountain than being on top of it. So why is it so different than collecting these young, active players over their goats? You get to climb the mountain with them. You get to argue about how your guy's going to get to the top before the other guy is. You get to brag when he goes out there and has a great game or wins or gets a championship or an MVP or has a huge game. You can't do that with Peyton Manning right now. You want to show clips of what he did back then? Sure. So I get the sell your everything and buy your goats. It's safe, right? As somebody who owns more Verizon than anyone under the age of 50, should I get that? Trust me. But I've missed out on a lot of great growth in my portfolio for the last couple years because I've owned that Verizon. Had I been buying Google, I'd be a lot richer. I'd be a lot wealthier of a man. And you can do this also when it comes to even Brady, because I bought a lot of Brady cards and they've gone up, sure, just like Verizon has for me. But had I bought almost anything else, hell, you mean. Lamina Mal hasn't really done much except get injured, although I think he's going to be there for the World Cup. He got a lot of, you know, fun baked in, you know, what can he do? His cards have all flown. Hasn't done anything, but there's excitement there. People want to buy his cards, people want to own his cards for the what might be. It's the same as companies. People are buying the growth potential. People are buying the earnings potential. They don't pay so much of a premium when the call, you know, when, when the company is already a known commodity without that growth. Hell, Nvidia, which everybody loves. It's growth, it's growth, it's growth. They just increased their dividend a huge amount and a lot of people sold. Why? Because that's an indication that they're maturing as a company and they're not going to continue to have this exponential crazy growth going forward. And people want that. People want that, that ability to risk it with their guy, with their bet. Now let me give you the flip side. Let me put you back into 12 year old Little Cage's body. 12 year old Little Cage loved Ken Griffey Jr. In 1989. Kenny got hurt during the year and Cambridge Jr. Did not win the Rookie of the Year. There are two Rookies of the year and National League Rookie of the Year. Not wouldn't it be Griffith because Griffith was in the American League, but National League Rookie of the year that year was also an 89 upper deck and he had some in the extended series. And if you go back to your Becketts in 89, you'll see that Jerome Walton's cards were giving Ken Griffith Jr. A run for their money because Walton won. I'm 99.9 sure that my old man memory is correct. I think that was a pitcher for, for Baltimore. Maybe it was named Olson who won the Rookie of the Year for the American league. But I'm 99 sure. Jerome Walton won the Rookie of the Year. Yeah, Greg Olson, Baltimore. I looked it up. Greg Olson won the Rookie of the Year. Gotta love it. Greg Olson, American League Rookie of the Year. And how about Jerome Walton? See, I nailed it. Yeah, see, there you go. So I'm right. And 12 year old Little Cage traded all of his Kangaroo Junior cards for Jerome Walton. Why? I wanted some action and you know, at the time Griffey was hurt, he didn't win Rookie of the year and at 12 years old I'm like wow. Well, I mean Jerome Walton's a better rookie than Carry for Junior. He's winning and the Beckett bore it out. So I had a ton of those 89 upper deck, a card that 44 years later I'm gonna have over my shoulder to do a bunch of episodes about. I don't have any of those Jerome Waltons anymore. So sometimes, you know, the trading for that, you know, that hot new guy doesn't exactly work out. Now at the time, King of Junior was also a rookie so it's not exactly the same. But you understand what I'm saying now? I mean, you get the point. The point here is sometimes the bets on those players don't work out. And you know, the point of the person putting the story out there of, you know, buy your Jordan, buy your Kobe by your Otani, you might not get the significant upside that picking the right active current player, non goat is going to get you. But Dylan Harper, as great as he is now, he may turn into nothing. You know, he may win the championship this year, never go back and, you know, become a six man, and who knows what's going to happen? That's the fun. You're making your bet, you're having your action. But if you sold all your Brady's and all your, you know, Messi's and all your Jordans this year to put it in Dylan Harper cards, you might be happy right now, might not be happy next year, the year after, in five years. And I think that's the point. And you kind of have to, you know, pick your guy, pick your time, pick your entrance and your exit and kind of know what you're doing, know what you want to do going in, you know, make a little bet, fine. You know, pick your guy, put some money on it, buy some cards, fine. You know, to use the old. The old, Diversify your portfolio, maybe buy a little bit of the goats, maybe buy some Jordan and some Kobe and then sprinkle in your Dylan Harper if that's your guy, or Ace Bailey if that's your guy, or whoever it might be. AJ depends on this year. But yeah, that's it. It was a fun back and forth in the stories that made me want to come on here and kind of give you my thoughts on it. I want to hear yours. You know, drop me a DM Cage lawyer on Instagram or go ahead and write in the comments and let me know what you're thinking. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. That's 398 individual hobby with Cage episodes brought to you by Arena Club. Buy card ladder, use code cage, Save a couple bucks and the Philly Show. I'll talk to you guys tomorrow. Take care, everybody.