THWC 405: OK- What Now?

What's up everybody? How About Cage episode 405 on June 15th. Can't believe we're halfway done with June. Which means we're the second half of June, which means knocking on the door. It's fanatics fest a month away. He got national right after that. Fun time. Fun time. So we Got an episode 405 brought to you by Arena Club, brought to you by card ladder use code Cage. Save yourself a couple bucks, get a subscription and the Philly Shop. Lots to talk about. Lots to talk about. Let's, let's, let's take a moment here. Since the last recording, the Knicks have won the championship. Pretty amazing. It's the first time in my lifetime to see the Knicks win a championship. As somebody who in, you know, in middle school and high school watched the Knicks get close, you know, knock on the door, get to the finals, get to the, you know, conference finals, you know, be snubbed by the Knicks, be snubbed by the Pacers, be snubbed by the Rockets, you know, Patrick Ewing get close but not there. You know, this was a cool thing, a cool thing for a lot of New York fans, a lot of New York Nick fans. And you know, as I thought about it, well, you know, my son is not exactly a Nick fan. You know, he's 13 years old, just turned 13, and he has not seen a New York championship. I mean you get spoiled sometimes, right? You know, la's had a bunch of championships, you know, with the COVID bubble, Lakers to the Dodgers, you know, you've seen a lot of championships out there, man cities and you know, I mean Chicago's had a championship in his lifetime. Boston's obviously had championships in his lifetime. Hell, Oklahoma City had a championship. But you know, you go Back to like 11 for the Giants, he wasn't alive. You got back to 09 for the, the Yankees, you know, again, nothing with the Knicks. And it's an interesting thing. I mean my daughter is 17 and you know, while she was alive, a couple months old for the last Yankee championship and like a year and a half old for the, the Giants. This is a cool thing, you know, and for, you know, for 25, 30 year old Nick fans coming into the, you know, the, the, you know, the prime of their fandom. I mean, congratulations to you guys. Congratulations to the actual Nick fans that are out there. You know, I don't count myself currently as one of them. I never really was pulling for this team, you know that I wasn't really pulling for any, any team. I've Been kind of an NBA orphan. And people who, who know my podcast now for, I don't know, 1400 and some episodes worth, you know, know that during COVID I was, I was a Hornets fan. You know, we liked, we like Devonte Graham. We actually left him to go for the spurs when he, you know, left over to the spurs for a minute. He's not in the league anymore. But you know, I mean, that was a fun little thing to watch and follow along. You know, you got the NBA league pass. And I told my son, who was much younger at the time, hey, pick a team. And Hornets in the 90s. The Hornets were cool too because of their starter jackets and you know, the colors of the team. So yeah, maybe it was maybe pick to fill a mellow ball, I don't know, but never really, you know, I'm not jumping on a bandwagon, you know, I was a Knicks fan as a kid and never really came back to this team. You got to give a lot of credit to Brunson, you know, averaging over 30 in the finals, scoring 40 plus in a closeout game and winning the MVP. You know, know, it's something that not a lot of people are able to do and you know, if you want to talk about just, you know, put a bow on this and we move on, you know, doing it like a team. And as a team player, you know, Brunson's quote unquote a star. I mean, he was not a high level draft pick. I mean, he was not Luca in Dallas, you know, and he obviously had a chance to shine. Lucas injured and you know, sign a contract and then he took a pay cut to build the team around him. And you know, it does tell you a little bit about the parody in the league and about the cohesive nature of building an actual team. You know, three of the five starters on this team were, you know, his Villanova teammates, you know, with Josh Hart and you know, with Mikel Bridges, who they traded a lot for to get him over here. You know, the Knicks were kind of skewered for a lot of these moves, a lot of these moves, including the signing of Brunson originally. And every Nick fan gets to forget that they were screaming and yell about overpaying Brunson when he, you know, brings home a championship like this OG Anunoby, you know, call Anthony Towns. These are players that other teams kind of gave up on. And you know, the Knicks put this, this, this group together here and, you know, had a hell of a run. And you know, listen, I've said on here that they're not, you know, the best team in the league. I think the odds came out for next season to win a championship. And both the Spur, at least the spurs and the Thunder, are ranked ahead of the Knicks for odds to win the championship next year. You know, we'll see what happens. Lots of things happen in the off season. Trades are made. Who knows where Giannis is going, who knows what LeBron's going to be doing. There's a lot of fun, you know, stuff to still happen. But now NBA is done and you give a lot of credit to, you know, it's the Knicks. And congratulations to the fans and to the people who bought Brunson's cards. But wait, as we are five minutes in, a week ago, a little more than a week ago, when the Knicks made the finals and they were up, you know, by two games or one game, it was June 7th, maybe they were up two games or nothing. I came on here, I did an episode and we talked about how, you know, Brunson's cards had taken a hell of a jump. And as always, I look at the, you know, the prism silver because that's what we've been looking at when it comes to, you know, to Wemby. And we watched the Wemby, you know, fly and then take a little bit of a dip. And you know, we can look at where they are at now. But you know, we came on here, we saw Brunson coming into the finals. You know, the card was like a thirteen to fifteen hundred dollar silver, maybe, you know, fifteen hundred dollars on June 5th. But then after they had their wins, you saw the card jump up. And I came on here and showed you guys a picture I can show you again here. You know, and it's not just a fluke. There were several of them. Hopefully you can see all those. Yeah, you can see them. So there you go. As high as $2,325. 22.75, 2175. You know, auctions best offers. One was a PSA. So basically 22.50 average for those sales. There's on June 7, June 9, June 10, multiple sales here on card ladder. And you know, I came on and did an episode when that 2325 and the 2275, those are June 7th, so basically a 2300 average. And I said, you, you cannot really buy the card at that point in time. People like, oh, you can't get financial advice. I mean the comments were great about it. Like how are you to say to buy and to sell. And I said, it's nothing to do with Brunson, you know, has nothing to do with Knicks winning. You name it. It's just at that point in time, at those prices, everything is baked in. Like, you know, him winning the championship, him winning the mvp and maybe even winning the championship next year is baked in at 23, 23, 25, you know, 2300 for that prism silver. Everything has to be perfect for that. And, you know, even though the pop is less than the Wemby and the pop is less than even the Luca, you know, you're now talking about that card selling for more than the LUCA prism. You know what I mean? Which is great. I mean, you know, look, Luca never won a championship, and it looks like Brunson, you know, at that point in time, was going to. But I. I try to tell people that more supply is going to come out, right? People are all holding it for this moment. People are holding it for the championship. People are saying, all right, he's gonna win. You know, this is what. What's going to happen? And so. So was I right or was I wrong? I mean, we can fast forward to the sales from this weekend. So, you know, June 14th, June 14th, a lot of sales June 14th. So they won on the 13th, June 14th. So what we have here is 1875, 1829, 1850. Wait a second. I mean, that's still up. That's definitely still up a lot. But when we talked about this on June 7th, the sales were 22.75, 23, 25. So it's. It's down $500. But he won. He won the MVP, scored 40 something points in a closeout game on the road. They're gonna have a parade here on Thursday. Surely that's a typo. It meant to be up 500, not down $500. Right. Interesting. Interesting to think about that. And it's one of those things where it's a, you know, buy the rumor, sell the news, you know, hype cycle, you know, understand what people are doing, understand about supply and demand. And while Jalen Brunson is a great player, the odds for next year's championships, the odds to next year's MVP is neither of them favor him and the Knicks. And I don't want to take anything away from this. I. I don't. I don't want to take anything away from, you know, from. From what the New York Knicks just did it. This is an amazing thing, something that's never been done in my lifetime. I'm gonna be 50 in a couple years. I'm so old. I chipped a tooth this weekend. Yeah. Ridiculous. I don't know if you get to hear it. Can't wait to go to the dentist later today and tell you guys all about that tomorrow. Miserable. Anyway, what he did was amazing. What the Knicks did was amazing. What the team did was amazing. Take nothing away from it. But when you go to cards, it's not a Brunson indictment at all. It's human nature. It's psychology. It's just supply and demand. It is the way that it works. There was a moment that a card will peak because everything is baked in. And then when what was baked in happens, it does not go up because it already has all of that stuff baked into. Doesn't mean you missed out on the run. Look, I'm not crapping on people who bought Brunson early. I mean, let's do a quick little fun, you know, review. Let's go back a month. You know, let's. Let's see what they were selling for a month ago. Should we look at, like, May 7th? That'll be a fun thing, right? I mean, in the playoffs, but obviously nowhere near. So this is a fun. This is a fun one. May 7th. $400. So that's the flip side to the equation. And I don't want to be that jerk off that says, bob runs in bed. Right. What I said was, on June 7th, you can't be buying this at $2300. There's only one way for this to go, and that has been proven correct. It's back down to 18 and change. But if you zoom out to the wider picture and go just a month before that, June 7th. On May 7th, you could have bought the car for $400. You bought it for 400. You're not complaining about selling it today for 18 and change. And that's the wider view. Sure. If you go Back to just June 7th like I did, the chart's gonna be a big down chart. Why do I say this? Because now basketball's over, hockey is over, some team won. I don't even know. A red team beat. I think a gold team, I don't even know. And so that's over. But we didn't talk about cards prices for that, because I can't even name a player on either one of those teams. Is. Is Eric Lindross still playing? I don't know. I. I know that guy. Wayne Messier. Gretzky, something. He. There's a player there. I promise. I Know who those guys are. But anyway, hockey's over. What are we watching now? Baseball? I mean, we had a little injury scare for Otani. Lucky for all of us, he's not actually injured. Judge is, Murakami is. But no, we're watching World cup guys. If you haven't seen it yet, go to cardboard. Chronicle stories, Josh's stories. Because he's right. What he's posting is right. He has a nice little. Hey, the World cup is here. Look at this. And there's a chart of, you know, Messi's cards for one month. And it's like this. And then it falls off the, the cliff and your mall's cards, and it's a one month like this. It's kind of like what I did with Brunson. If you just go back to, you know, the beginning here, and you go back to June 7th, and you go one week back and you see him peaking because everybody was jumping on it thinking, oh, man, the Knicks just went from a, you know, a 2 to 1 underdog to a 2 to 1 favorite after winning two games on the road. You know, let's jump in and buy Brunson cards. You bought him at $2,300. That chart is going to be like this. You know, it's going to be a down chart. Despite the fact that he won a championship and won the mvp, it closed it out the way that he did. The World cup is the same thing. This is one of those, you know, you know, buy the hype, you know, sell into it events. I mean, and, and World cup is even more than anything else because it happens one every four years. And Josh's charts are right. They're all correct. Everything is great. You know, he's right that there's a little bit of a dip here because what happens, a lot of supply comes out golden has an auction of just soccer cards. And, and while, you know, a Pele card sold for nearly a million dollars and, you know, some Super Fractures Holland cards sold pretty, pretty well. You know, some cards in that auction did not sell as much as, you know, people would have thought they were to sell for. And what's the answer to that? Well, there's just so much coming out because everybody has the same psychology here. Just like everybody was holding their Brunson cards, hoping to capitalize on a championship. Everybody who bought last week, the same thing's going on with Messi and Ronaldo. People have been buying for a year. And, and you ask, what are you buying for? I didn't hear anybody say they were buying Ronaldo's cards, hoping he was going to win the Saudi Arabia Cup. I don't know if it's called that, but you understand, I didn't hear anybody tell me that they were expecting Messi to have a great season in the MLS in his little pink pajamas and win MLS Cup. And that's why they were buying Messi cards, because they were hoping he was going to win the championship in the Major League Soccer. Championship. I don't know what it's called. Throw this. A trophy for it, Maybe a medal, Maybe you want a hamburger. I don't know. It's like a burger league. No, Everybody who's buying soccer is buying for the World Cup. People are buying Yamal saying, this guy is the next wonderkind. He's gonna score all these goals. He's a win in the World Cup. People like Mbappe cards not because he's likable or looks good in a dress. It's because Bob already has one World cup. And if he wins two, all of a sudden he gets to be talked about in a different regard. And those two guys, their teams are favored. They are the. They are the betting line favorites. And people are buying their cards not because of, you know what may happen after. Because the next World cup is not till 2030. I'll be so old I might not even be here by then. Forget about it. 2030, Panini will still have the license for the World cup that that year fanatics take over the following year. So it makes sense that the one month chart will be like this. But it's also. Now let's take a step in the other direction, like I did with Brunson. If you happen to buy BRUNSON not on June 7th, but on May 7th at 400 and you're sitting pretty now at 1800. If you pan out on the Messi and Yamal, you. You've got three years of up and then a little bit of a down in the last month. Sure makes sense. We're finally at that World Cup. The World cup just started this week. People are looking to capitalize on it and sell. Of course some of the prices are going to go down. You'd like to hope that some people who are moving some of the cards are insignificant profit because they've been buying them the whole time. But it is an interesting thing to think about Brunson, what happens from here if you're going to be buying his cards now? I don't know. People are going to tell me in the comments and my DMs who cares? I just want to own his card because he took, he took the championship home to New York and did something, you know, the Patrick Ewing and John Starks and all the rest of them couldn't do. And that's fine if you're going to buy that card, you know, hang on to it forever. That's great. Not really talking to you. And it's really not about Brunson. It's about all cards. It's about, it's about, you know, the psychology of the collector, the flipper, the investor, and just the participant in the hobby. Right now, if you are looking to buy soccer cards, I would say there may not be a worse time ever than this past week to buy. And what's funny is, you know, if you're a seller on cards and you're going to see those charts that are correct, I mean, Josh Cardboard Chronicles is right. What he posts in his charts, they're correct. Also. It would make you think, like, as a seller, this is the bad time to sell. Well, I mean, you are selling into everybody else dumping their supply. But I'd like to hope that maybe you're a seller who has bought the cards before the last month. You didn't just buy it a month ago and hope to sell it this month and then know you're, you're that down arrow. You'd like to think maybe if you bought it a couple months, six months, a year, two years ago, that you're doing just fine. Maybe you didn't sell at the very, very tippity, tippity top, but I think you're doing just fine. And, you know, to the folks out there who think this is a foreign episode, you know, my apologies, if you're a collector and you're just, you know, tuning in, you know, what am I collecting, what am I buying? I don't really have much for you today. You know, I hope if you're a Nick fan, you've got, you've got your, your, you know, your, your cool card today. You've got your, you know, your Nick's cards, you've got your Bridges and your Anunobi and your Carl Anthony Towns cards and you're, you know, you're enjoying those and you know, you've got them on display and, you know, you're rubbing yourself with them because you're a collector and you don't really care about the value of the cards. Maybe slept with them on your pillow, under your pillow, and that's cool. You know, there is definitely a segment of you out There a small segment, small but loud segment of people who collect and don't want to hear anything about values of cards for the other people out there. Is there a lesson to be learned? I think there is. I mean, what's the next thing you know? Are you holding Ohtani? Are you holding Ohtani because you're expecting him to win the MVP and a World Series? You know, Patrick Mahomes won the super bowl and his cards went down. Is maybe the time to sell Otani when the playoffs start. I mean, that's fair. Ohtani's card values and you know, he's doing well. He doesn't have the power numbers though. He's starting to hit home runs again. He doesn't have the power? No. His batting average is better. You know, his WAR is as good as it's ever been. His pitching is fantastic. Nice tough test this week though, against Tampa. That's a good team. The Rays, the Yankees see him all the time. Got, you know, good team. We'll see what Otani can do against, you know, a really good offense. Would have been nice to see him pitch against the White Sox this past weekend. Their offense is pretty anemic. Although they did light up the Dodgers yesterday. If you had Otani cards leading into the season where there were expectations at hype, his prices were up a little bit compared to where they are now. And you can, you know, you can probably blame the lack of home run power there as well. No real headlines. But now we have no choice but to focus. World Cup's here and then when World cup ends, it's just baseball. Except football. August 6th. We are now not that far away. You know, when national ends, you've got the hall of Fame game right there. That week you got football, preseason football, August 6th. So that's the best thing about this hobby. I call it the best hobby in the world. I say, okay, what now? There is always something now. There's always some lesson to be learned. There's always some card to buy, some card to sell, somebody to speculate on, some hype to buy into or sell into. And while basketball and hockey both ended on the same weekend, we have the World cup now taking us right into fanatics Fest, the national, the NFL preseason baseball postseason. Then the NFL will start up and basketball will start up and just hakuna matata, you know, the circle of life, all that fun stuff. Well, guys, that's a Fun1. It's 21 minutes long. I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you did, you know, you gotta thank my sponsors arena, club card ladder, use code cage, save a couple bucks. And the Philly show. Because of those guys, you get free content almost every day. 405 of these, man. Hope you guys are having fun. If you're not, keep it to yourself. Now tell me. Send me a dm. Tell me what you didn't like. You know, I'll probably ignore you, but maybe I'll try to fix it. I'll talk to you guys soon. Take care, everybody.