THWC 399: The Week To Win

Let's get it. I'm in the cage. Episode 399 brought to you by Arena Club Card ladder Use code Cage. Save yourself a couple bucks. And by the Philly show. It is June 4th. June 4th, Thursday, the night after game one of the NBA Finals. I'm going to read you something. I'm going to read you Victor Wembanyana's sales. Wet Banana Wembanyama. He had, he had a good game. Let me read you his sales of his prism Silver Rookie PSA 10. The card that many of you got from me. Much cheaper than these prices. As long as you listen to the show. Ready for yesterday's sales on Card Nighter. All just from yesterday, June 3rd. Right. $4,560. $3,852. 4,025. 3,982. $5,100 on eBay. PSA 4,399. 4,101. 4,139.95. I have a June 4th sale. Can't really tell you whether or not that's, you know, after midnight or if it's this morning. I mean, I record this in the morning of June 4th. So I have a June 4th sale. And this is now after they lost the game. Card letter value 39.95. Based on all those four thousand dollar sales from yesterday, the best offer accepted on eBay was $3,050. A thousand dollars less than the card letter value and more than a thousand dollars less than what most of those sales from Yesterday were. I mean 3995-4100-4101-4399, 5100. $4025. 45 60. A lot of sales. A lot of people, you know, in that lead up to, you know, to game one there buying Wemby thought a video on ebay. Yeah, all of it on ebay, basically with some names, you know. Now what is it to make of that now that they lost game one? Well, let's start off with this. Talk about like a sports betting perspective. The spurs started off as a minus 220 favorite. Then a lot of money came in on the Knicks and spurs got to minus 200 as I wake up this morning with the Knicks winning game one. The Knicks are now favored to win the series. That's what happens when you go and win game one on the, you know, on the other team's home court. Now The Knicks are minus 130 and the spurs are plus 110. Now that's going to translate over into cards. I know we don't like to look at this as sports betting, right? But the spurs won game one of the Western Conference finals in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City then went on to win game two and steal game three right back from them on the, on San Antonio turf. After that, up to one, Oklahoma City was favored to win that series again. Now we all know how it went. It went to game seven. It was a long series, a lot of injuries. Oklahoma City and the spurs wound up winning it. Very possible. The Knicks win the series. They are now favored with Vegas odds. They're now favored to win the series. This is an interesting time if you are somebody who likes the action and many of you guys who listen to this do, because unless you think it's going to be a sweep, you think it's going to go to at least five games and you'll know, you know, after game two tomorrow night whether or not it's going to go to at least five games. The spurs win. I sit here. Game one was June 3rd. Do you guys know the date of game five? June 13th. All right, the NBA Finals starts on June 3rd and could feasibly, I mean, if it went to a seven game series, it could feasibly go all the way to June 19th to be 16 games. Game five, the 13th. There is a, a large amount of time between the games here, right? Game two is Friday. Game three is not until Monday. Game four, June 10th. It's a week, you know, traveling back and forth and all that stuff. But that's a week to win. Because as you can see, if you're a believer in Wemby now and you think that, you know, when we goes out there, has a game by, you know, wins game two and then maybe steals game three and they're back on track to win the series. If that's what you think. Ebay, as we saw from the one June 4 sale on the card ladder, you're getting Wemby now at the price that you were getting him for when it looked like he was going to lose the Western Conference finals. Because now the Vegas odds say he's going to lose this finals. But here's the cool thing, right? There's got to be a few of you guys out there who are thinking, well, if, if I think that the spurs are going to win, I might as well just bet the spurs, okay? Wouldn't tell you to do that or not do that. But let's talk it through. Why cards are a Little different. If the spurs win, you did fine. You doubled your money. If the spurs you don't happen to win, you are out your entire bet. That's the thing about betting versus sports cards. It's all or nothing. Either gonna double your money, you know, or you're gonna lose it all. What happens if the spurs do lose? But it goes seven games and Wimpy averages 35 and 15 and, you know, four or five blocks a game and at 22 years old, gets pretty close. Sure, maybe in the week following your purchase, the cards don't go back to $5,000 as they were yesterday. Maybe they're even a little lower. But here's the fun part. Because he's no longer the odds on favorite this week, you can most likely get his cards at a discount, at least at a discount to what they were selling at yesterday. And maybe in the week leading up to these finals, and who knows, maybe it goes down even further. I mean, anybody who knows me and saw me at shows knows that I had a lot of these and I don't have as many. I still have some holding them just in case he wins. I'm in them significantly less than even the reduced price for ebay today. So I'm, as they say in our space, sitting pretty. But here's the fun part. And this doesn't just go for one minyam. It goes for everybody. It goes for Ohtani when people aren't looking. It goes for everything, right? People. People like to ask me, you know, like, you know, how do you navigate the space? If you wanted to, you know, put some money in here, what do you buy? Blah, blah. And it's very easy to tell people, just buy Michael Jordan. You know, just keep setting record prices on Michael Jordan because the next person comes in is just going to buy it for more money. Here's a fun one. Because this is a week to win. It depends on your strategy. It's like buying a stock, right? You can buy it and if it goes up next week, you can sell it. You can sell it the same day if it goes up. Some people do that. They're called day traders. The cool thing about the Wemby is if you're now going to get it, maybe the next one goes into the twos. You know, if you're not going to get it, less than 3000, maybe 2500 or 3000, whatever it might be, right? Because now people are afraid. People are like, oh, I better, I better dump it now. The same way that you had that emotion, that psychology of people in the lead up before game one, buying and paying four or $5,000 when last week it was three or 3200 or 3300. You have the same mentality of people who have it, who held it, thinking it was going to be a ten thousand dollar card if you won, which it might be now, rushing to try to take advantage of the 4 or 5,000 that it was yesterday, accepting a best offer of 3 because they're still in profit at 3. Now if you get that sort of panic, that sort of psychology to the other end and you're a believer in Wemby, you might be able to win this week. And here's how. If he wins, great. It's most likely going to sell for more after this series than it sells for today now that he's no longer favored to win. But if he doesn't win, very different from sports betting. You're not just throwing away that entire bet, you're not just losing it all. You still own the card of a 22 year old who came as close as you can. If he doesn't win and has a huge ceiling for next year, you have the, you know, you have the lead in and the preseason for, you know, for the coming year, you have the, you know, the ability to, you know, to sell again in the lead up to next season. Who knows what he does next year. You know, maybe he goes from defensive player of the year, mvp. Got some votes for MVP this year already. You never know where we're gonna sit on it, you know what I mean? But the cool part is, is if you're able to buy in this week, you're buying it at a deflated price now because he lost or Right. And this is sort of like risk management, you know, if you're a believer in SGA long term, people are dumping his cards. This is the current reigning two time MVP who I've made fun of a lot. And you know, maybe you don't love him, but his cards are selling significantly lower this week. And I mean a couple injuries away from him being in the finals and potentially repeating not just MVP but finals MVP and winning another ring and you know that team's not going anywhere. You know that team's only going to be better next year. The guys are almost irrelevant. This same methodology can be utilized year in, year out. You know, I talked about people having Dylan Harper cards and them taking their victory lap. Being able to brag about Dylan Harper to all the people who bought Con Canipple or Cooper Flag and like look, my Dylan Harper, you know how great he is and he had a good game last night and you know, you know, he may go on and win a championship before your guys. Okay, well, if you really are a Cooper flag guy or a con canymple guy, you should be buying them now. Should have been buying them two weeks ago when everybody forgot about them, you know, when they were eliminated from playoff contention, you know, or buying now during this off season because no one's looking. Same thing. Ohtani, I talked about it, right? Don't look now, but you know, Ohtani was huge in, you know, leading up to the season. Everybody loves the long ball and he's only got 10 of them. But in case you weren't looking yesterday, he pitched. He started off the game with, he took a perfect game into the fourth inning. And that's after having six innings of no hit baseball, his last start. Meaning that between last start and this one, he threw a no hitter. More than nine innings of no hit ball. When all was said and done, he threw six more shutout innings and he gave up in six innings, no runs, two hits in a walk. So he gave up two hits and a walk to the entire opposing team, he himself. And no runs. He himself had one run, he scored one run, three hits and two walks. So your opposing pitcher had three hits, two walks and a run and gave up no runs, two hits and one walk to the entire opposing team. He beat the team himself and he dropped his ERA to 0.74. He's had nine starts, all nine quality starts. Only Chris Sanchez has 10. No one else has more quality starts. He's only started nine games, all of them quality starts. And think about this ridiculous stat. He has like 40 runs scored. He's pitched 61 innings and given up five total runs. It's just crazy what he's doing going into that game. The odds for him winning the MVP were minus 900. I'm sure they've gotten even more. His whip, I mean, is tiny. And going into that game, his WAR was leading the majors. I'm sure I didn't retract this more. I'm sure it's going up. But people are not talking about Ohtani right now because it's the middle of big baseball season. You know, you haven't had the all star break yet. Basketball is big, hockey is big. We're gonna have football, you know, in the next couple of months. People are start talking about that. But while no one's talking about Ohtani, he's putting together another almost lock it down. MVP season and they will start talking about him soon. So this is a, you know, it's a fun thing. I talk about this being a week to win because, you know, maybe you could jump on some Wemby cards cheap if somebody's panicking, if you believe in him now and, or long term. But it's not just about wimby. It's not just about SGA or con. You can do this with almost everybody here. You do this with almost everybody and I mean, listen, I, I'll spend another minute on Otani. It's almost like you don't think they're going to get a hit. I mean, I watched the whole game yesterday. The only question you're going to have with him is qualifying for the ERA lead because he now has 61 innings pitched and his team has played 62 games. And the rule for baseball is you have to have as many innings pitched as your team has scheduled games. So he has to throw at least 162innings. And because the Dodgers are on a six man rotation, he pitches one game less. Basically, you know, there's an extra game there than most pitchers. Most teams go a five game rotation. So the only question for him is going to be at the end of the year, will he have enough innings to qualify as the ERA leader? Because if you look at the stats today, The Dodgers played 62 games, he's done 61 innings, he's one inning shy of qualifying. So Christopher Sanchez with his like one five ERA double what Otani's is, looks like the leader in, in era, even though Ohtani is, is half of what he has. So that's, it's an amazing thing to watch. If you're not watching, you should try to watch a game where he pitches and hits. The last two starts he had, he let off the game with home runs and then we're out to pitch this game. He didn't hit home run, but he was on base five times. It is, he's just running around the bases, he's scoring. He doesn't take a break, he leaves. You know, he bats, he goes in the dugout, grabs his glove, comes out and pitches. You know, he pitches and then he leads off the inning batting. You know, I don't know if there's going to be somebody like this again in my lifetime. Probably not. There hasn't been anybody like it, you know, in the 50 years that I've been here. And it's just fun to watch. And yes, I have a couple of his cards and if I didn't after watching him do what he's doing, I would buy more. I'm not telling you to do it, too. It's just, you know, it's very easy to be a fan of this guy, and he's staying healthy. Knock on wood. And what's crazy about it is I'm more impressed with this season. He had a great season last year. Mvp. He had a great season the year before that when he didn't pitch and won 50, 50. And it doesn't look like he's gonna hit 50 home runs because he's pitching and because they give him the day off. Sometimes while he's pitching, he doesn't bat. He's definitely off the day after he pitches. He's not going to have the at bats. He's not going to have, you know, the power numbers, the counting stats won't be there. But he's not batting over.300, you know what I mean? And. But what he's doing from both sides of the plate, it's an amazing thing. He is clearly by far and away the most valuable player in the league and probably the most valuable player that I've ever seen. Just because, you know, there are people who can pitch and there are people who can hit. But doing them both at an elite level, you know, being the best at it in the league from both sides, that's just. I mean, you know, you talk about Deion Sanders playing both sides. You talk about, you know, somebody like, you know, like Charles Woodson being able to play both sides. He was not an all pro wide receiver. He was great defensive back. You know, it took about Travis Hunter, you know, being able to play both sides of the ball. He's not the best at either. It just. It really is an amazing thing to watch. And, you know, yeah, I consider myself lucky to watch it. I hope they don't really have a work stoppage next year because I don't want to be cheated out of watching, you know, greatness. Anyway, guys, that's a week to win. I hope you enjoyed this one. Hopefully you understand what I'm saying. I'm not saying go out there and, you know, and put all your money in in Wemby. But there may be opportunities if somebody you believe in now and or long term for you to be able to grab his stuff. And there's another episode brought to you by Arena Club by card Ladder Use code Cage Save a couple bucks and by the Philly Show. I'll talk to you guys tomorrow for episode 400 of the Hobby with Cage. Talk to you soon, guys. Take care.