THWC 411: Confidence Beats Correctness in the Hobby

What is up everybody? How About Cage Episode 411 on Friday, June 26th. Brought to you by card ladder use code Cage. Save yourself a couple bucks. Brought to you by Arena Club and by the Philly Show. We are only a few days left here in June. You know, next week is 4th of July. Big card shows coming up. Gotta prepare for them. Big Fanatics Fest coming up. National. I don't, I, I still gotta finalize my preparation for National. Get my, get my credentials, I get my badge, gotta do all that fun stuff. Getting excited though. I gotta tell you, I'm getting excited because, you know, this is like, you know, this is like the playoffs for the hobby. You know what I mean? We all get excited around, you know, the NBA Finals and we are excited around mlb, you know, the World Series coming up, World cup is here. But you know, you really, there is no match for this, this coming week. Especially with, you know, Fanatics Fest kind of, you know, really lumping in right there, you know, a couple weeks away from the National. You really are, you know, you're in that sweet spot here. You know, you're in the, you're in the playoff sweet spot for the, for the hobby. Yeah. So anyway, lots of fun stuff to talk about. I'll tell you what I'm buying. I spent a lot of money last night. I'll tell you what I'm, you know what, what I'm feeling was able to buy enough in alt auctions last night that ended pretty late again. But as I will buy enough where, you know, I don't run into the, the, the auto pay option and I'll tell you what I'm. What, what I won and that kind of stuff and why. But I'll start off with this. Our space, our hobby is a, It's a really interesting space to navigate. It really is an interesting place. There are people who are drawn to it out of its just amusement, out of its, you know, the nostalgic link. There are people who come to this because it's like, hey, I remember doing that as a kid. I want to get back into cards. And you know, not many stay that way, you know, because, you know, once you start to peel back some of the layers, the, the social aspects of it, you know, the investment aspect of it, just the value of the cards. You start trying to chase, you know, better and better items. It's. It kind of takes on a life of its own, you know, I mean, and it's hard not to, right? I mean, you know, when you were a kid, you could open up A pack, you know, and, and you bought a pack of Tops cards. That was all there was. You know what I mean? In the 80s, it wasn't like, oh, wow, yeah, of course you could buy a pack of cards. It was 35 cents. There wasn't another option. There wasn't like a super premium option also, you know, so it's funny, I talk about this with people all the time and you know, I say, look, collecting when I was a kid is different than collecting as a kid now because, you know, you could buy a box of cards and people are like, well, you kids can still do that now. Buy big league or buy, you know, chronicles or buy, you know, the difference is our kids today are not stupid and they realize that the box you're offering them is a box that is fun, sure, but pales in comparison to what else is out there. And you didn't have that. When I was a kid, it wasn't like buying a box of Tops cards was buying the worst product. It was buying the best product because it was buying the only product. And there is something to be said about that, right? There's something to be said about, you know, my son knowing that there's five thousand dollar boxes of national Treasure out there and me bringing home a box of, you know, Tops paper and him saying, you know, like I, as a kid, I had a very different analysis. I was like, okay, let's open a box of cards. Because that was the only box of cards. It's, it's, it's an interesting thing to think about. But when people come into the space, you know, now it's a very different space than it was card grading, you know, the vast amount of cards that are out there, the amount of releases that you have to know about, the way to buy, you know, breaking teams, you name it. And it really is, I mean, for me it's fun because if you're willing to put in time and you're willing to do some research, you're willing to, you know, do some fun stuff here, you know, you can build a great collection. You can find cards that are underappreciated, undervalued. You can, you know, you can, you can have fun with it. More than just the buying of cards and looking at the cards, there's a lot of different ways to enjoy this hobby. I was thinking about the space overall yesterday because, you know, when I commute and I go to the city for a day of work, I have an hour and change of commute each way. So I mean, hobby, social media, is great. You know, I'm on Instagram and, you know, just stories, stories, posts, you know, who's doing what, who's doing what. I get a mix of hobby stuff and, you know, financial stuff. You know, I try to also pay attention to the stock market, try to invest in that also. And I saw a fun Charlie Munger, you know, who was a Buffett partner there in Berkshire, a quote which I'll butcher. But it really had me thinking about the hobby and kind of like the participants in the hobby and what we do here. And there were. There were two pieces to the quote. One was, you know, for his hiring. You know, when they do the hiring, when he does the hiring and picks people to put around them. He says he always would rather have someone with an IQ of 130 who thinks they have an IQ of 120 because it's the guys who have the IQ of 150 but think it's 170 who are going to kill you. And it really made me think because this hobby is kind of filled with both of those, you know, and while I'm not hiring any of them, I love scrolling through the pages and you can kind of, you know, you could kind of tell which bucket the people fall into, right? You know, the more modest ones who, you know, kind of downplay what they're doing and, you know, they just operate and they do their stuff as opposed to the, you know, the blustery ones who may actually be smarter, but they are overconfident. You know, they are. They're out there, you know, doing their thing, right? And, and, you know, I, I see a post and it's like, you know, it's. It's those people who probably are smart, they probably are very smart people, but just speak in a way that is so like, I'm right and you're not, and it's, you know, like, here's what I bought and look at how great it is and look at what it was before and look at how much money it is now. And I'm the best, and you should have done this. And here's what I'm doing now, and I'm doing all this great stuff and, you know, this is going to the moon. I love it, right? Because I don't really pay attention to either side of, of that. I mean, I look at it as, as enjoyment. I don't watch much television. This becomes my real, know, the hobby social. That's why I'm kind of on it and why I don't really have much of a problem responding to DMS all the time because, I mean, it's. It's become my, you know, my real world road rules. It's become my reality show. But the funny part about it is this. The second quote that Charlie Munger threw out there was that you also have to be careful about those 150 to 170, those guys who are just, you know, I don't call them dreamers, but the ones who have, you know, crazy confidence and take these big chances because confidence beats correctness sometimes. And, you know, he says, like, I don't want to hire him and I don't want my personal life filled with these lunatics who are, you know, making these big bets. But the flip side to the equation of this is, you know, you can't ignore them. You can't ignore the Elon Musk of the world because, you know, sometimes the big bet that they make pays off their confidence. They're just, you know, this what they're what they're, what they're spewing, it pays off and they turn out to be right. Now, Charles Munger is not going to do that. He's a patient investor and, you know, is buying over time and, and, you know, holding and it's a fun little, you know, kind of, you know, counterbalance there. And I think to myself, you know, where do I fit in that? And, you know, which one of those do I kind of, you know, from a hobby perspective, which one of those do I kind of fall into? And, you know, there's a lot of great stuff out there on social media. What I would say most recently is, and I'll talk about it like spin a Tron. If, if you listen to this, you probably know who he is. Super collector, has amazing collection of cards, obviously has some great, you know, knowledge about cards, does great research, has a great collection. Did the, did the research and was right. And early on, a lot of his collection, it's worth millions upon millions of dollars. I mean, he has single cards that are worth millions of dollars. So, I mean, who knows what the overall collection is and the value of it? We don't really have to guess, but I would put him in all three of these buckets. You know what I mean? I'm not saying he's stupid, but he, you know, he, he kind of downplays it. He doesn't really, you know, when it comes to the cards, he's not really out there bragging about how right he was. Right. He instead is talking about pairings of cards and Numbers of cards and why the cards speak to him. But then at the same time he does fit the other buckets of having crazy confidence and kind of speaking about things in a way that, you know, gives off more confidence than there probably should be. And, and that puts us squarely in the Panini blockchain, which I took a jab at in my Tuesday news. You probably saw it and it's fun to watch that because there's another fun little quote that was out there by our friend no Shayway Vlogs. The, the, the, you know, the guy, he's coming back into the hobby now and I guess where he's chosen to come back is show some soccer cards and also to, to get joined the, the Panini blockchain, but irrelevant about him. He put something in there about one of his posts about Panini blockchain on the bottom of it and it was if enough people believe something, it becomes real. If I could make a shirt for the hobby and put a slogan on it, that would be it. Because I can't tell you how many times that is something I've seen in the space. Forget about Panini blockchain. We're not going to talk about that anymore. I'm just, you know, free flow for the brain. Tell you where it's going and I don't really prep this stuff out and maybe that's to my detriment and you guys get to go on this acid trip of an episode with me. But obviously it works for Panini Blockchain because that is all they're hoping for. It's not even cards. I mean 50 of the hobby won't buy an autograph card because it's a sticker autograph. You know, you won't buy a playing days card that's outside of a playing year. We have all these rules, but the Panini blockchain people think that you're gonna buy a card that' not even a card. It's like, you know, pretend. There are autographs in that too, by the way. And we, we won't even buy autographs because they're hard signed but on a sticker. We're gonna buy an autograph that's digital. It's a docusign. Docusign Panini Docusign blockchain. But it's funny because the sales pitch from the people who are now joining it is we just got to get enough people believe it, they believe it. It's real. It's almost cultish. It's like, hey, come, come join our cult and and believe in us Free Kool Aid in the corner. Anyway, all this to say, sometimes confidence beats correctness. And who am I to say they won't get enough people to believe it and make it real. But what is real is real that enough people come in and provide a little exit liquidity. I mean, the people who were in it a year or two or three ago probably hope so, because what is their end game? To hold these pretend cards that you can see on your phone and computer forever? Or is the goal to get enough people in that they're all worth more and they can sell them sort of almost a greater fool theory? And it's not just Panini Blockchain. I don't want to crap on that. Right? You see it with a lot of stuff and the confidence beats correctness. And sometimes I find myself as that, you know, 1, 130 IQ thinking I'm a 120 IQ and trying to say, all right, well, logic dictates here. We have 40 years of data saying that the 86 FLIR Jordan is the better card than the 84 star. But you get enough loud people, you get enough confidence in it, you get enough people to buy in, enough people to believe it, it becomes real and it can change. SpaceX can be worth $2 trillion. People can think Micron can continue doing what it's doing over a long time and not just be a cyclical stock. They don't look at the chart and see that it's done this before. Maybe not to this extent, but it's done. It's an interesting thing to watch, right? It's an interesting psychology in the space because we see this all the time. A card that was a nothing that people didn't really care about. Boom. A couple people start to believe in it and there is confidence in it and there's some hype around it, and boom, it's the next big thing. And literally this hobby, you see that all the time. And I guess the, you know, the, the fun part about this is, you know, I love being right. I love being there before other people find it. You know what I mean? Before it's there and that, you know, maybe that's a little vanity, a little ego for me, but it's one of the fun parts of the hobby for me. Right? I was actually in Panini Blockchain very, very early. I have since left it. I guess when enough people buy in and they believe in the Santa Claus of blockchain and it becomes real, I will have missed out. It just wasn't fun for me. So that's, that's it on the panini blockchain. But the fun part for this, right is you can't really fault anybody here. I love the space. I love the posts that, you know, hey, I'm the best at this. I'm the, I'm the sports card Mayweather. You know, Rohan's cards. Love that he's, you know, sitting in Greece, you know, overlooking, overlooking the, the, the water and, and, and sell me 25, 000 cards. It's great. It's like a, it's a confidence and it's in this space. You can have that in the space. You can do that. So what does that mean for me? It means that there are patterns, there are things you can see in this space that maybe you can capitalize on if you understand kind of the, the way that our space ebbs and flows, the way that things kind of move. I'm going to use a card you've heard me talk about a bunch of times and we're going to talk through it. Maybe we'll spend another five minutes, you'll get a nice 20 minute episode out of this. If you are a listener or someone who watches the show, you've heard me talk about Wendy's silver card a lot, a lot. And we, we talked about buying it months ago. Now let's put that, let's put a pin in it that we bought it. Here's the psychology of the space. For the last couple of weeks, all you've seen from people is headlines when be card prices crashing. Wemby's value crashing. Because it's, it's a sensational headline and it's something that, you know, people will click on really when B cards down 40% since the finals. Wemby's card now, okay, now We've done this 1500 times and we've talked about this kind of like the chart up, the chart down. And we, we would say, you know, in, in times where, you know, it was a little bit, I would say pan that chart out, you know, widen that chart a little bit. Let's not just look at the last month, let's look at like the last year or two years or five years. And while your card might be down a little bit in the last month or two or six months, if you take a wider view, you'll see that that card is up significantly over time. Whether it's the mantle behind me, the Griffey, almost any legitimate card things take little dips, especially active players based on performance. But the funniest part for me is this Jeff Wilson did it. They're crashing. Wendy's cards are crashing. And, you know, I saw sports card nonsense do it. Like all of the usual suspects who are part of this confidence over correctness. It works the other way, too. Our space, the people who are involved in our space can be convinced to have no confidence in something very quickly. Just a couple of videos that are out there. So you see Wemby's cards are down. They're crashing, and you go sell your Wemby cards. But are they really crashing? I mean, here's the fun. Sure, if you look at the Wemby one or two sales when he had just won the Western Conference finals and maybe, you know, had a, you know, a good game or it looked like maybe they were going to come back and win game four in the finals and kind of turn it around. Sure. That. That Wemby silver was over $3,000. Right. Maybe you want to call it 3500. All right, fine. And that was, you know, the peak, the, you know, the. The tippy top. I didn't really ever see it more than like, 33, 34. But let's just call 3, 500. Why not? For the sake of the argument. Right. The fun part about, you know, our market is it just takes one little card ladder, you know, indicator, one sale, one buy it now, one best offer, whenever. And boom, they can show that. Look what it is and say, this is the price, not stock that, you know, there's millions of them traded every day. It's one sale, which is all. All you need to make one of these little, you know, up ARR. Arrow, down 40. Now, we know this card better than most here at the Hobby with Cage, because we were buying it, you know, a couple months ago. We were buying it before he was in the Western Conference finals. We're buying it before he was going to make the finals. And, you know, the car was under two grand, you know, but even if we say $2,000, fine, the card went up from $2,000 to 3, 500, the card almost doubled. You know, that card's up 75%. So if it goes down 40% from 3,500, what does that mean? Right. Even if you use that, which, by the way, it wasn't down, it's not down 40%. But even if it goes down 40% from 3500, what happens there? That's 1400 bucks, 2100 bucks. It's still higher than it was. Right. But I'm here to tell you what's funny about that is you see, down 40%, okay? They used one sale, that's like four grand. And they use one sale that's like 2400 up. It's down. You know that the low, the people see that and they start selling. The truth of the matter though, is I started buying them back. I started buying them back, you know, when, when people were selling them after the finals, I started buying them 2100-2200-2300-2400. Why? Because just as enough people believing in something can make it real from a positive perspective, right? Enough people think panini blockchain is real. Poof, it's real. You know, but the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing us all he didn't exist. So the flip side works. The devil. Jeff Wilson, you know who you are. Not really the devil. It's not that important. But you understand, Jeff, sports card nonsense. Anybody else who's out there posting when these cards are crashing, you're doing the exact opposite. You're convincing people that they are crashing. And Jeff actually did a video about how they shouldn't be crashing. So I, you know, maybe. Maybe he's not the devil Kaiser. So say, hopefully you got my quote, but you get the point. And that's where I come in. Because just as you can convince people something that's not real is real just by getting enough believe in it, you can convince something is falling apart by continuing to beat that into them. And I gotta tell you, I mean, that one B card has not crashed. And that one B card is, it is significantly higher than it was when we were buying it when he started the playoffs. And you should look at, you know, card ladder on that. You should, you should see what the card is selling for and, you know, and notice that one headline giving you a sale at its peak versus one headline giving you a sale right after he has been eliminated from the finals. It makes for a sensational headline and it makes for people believing, you know, certain things one way. But the card letter value on this card is over $2800 right now. And if we go back, sure, if we go back a couple of weeks to when the finals were ending and, and, and you know, the card was doing its thing. Yes. You will see that when he was still playing, the card was selling for over $3,000, right? 2800, 2900, you name it, it was up over 3. And then did it dip down to 2200, 2280, 2250. For a little while there after the finals, it sure did but it immediately started going right back up. I don't see a lot of, you know, headlines about that. I don't see a lot of people posting. You know, you get the crash, you get the one big high one when you think you might win the whole thing and you get the one big low one and that's the end of it. You know, you never hear anything else about it. But I may or may not want to. I've won a bunch of these in alt last night because I think people are overreacting. Was it a $3,800, $3,900, $4,000 card? No, it had a lot of, you know, he's gonna win finals MVP at 22 years old. Baked into that when it was at those numbers, when it was at that peak, peak, peak. Has it come down significantly from that? Sure. Does that potentially make it a buy? Because you have a 22 year old kid who, you know his team is only going to get better. He's only going to get better. He's going to learn to play the game a little bit better. And they got a core at that team that's going to, you know, going to do what I think they're going to do, go back to the middle of May, right? And we're talking playoffs there. We're not, we're not, you know, we're talking about, you know, playoffs, playoffs there. The card has round trip to that, which is what you should have expected. To me, I think the card is a great buy. Now, now that's just me. I'm telling you what I'm doing. I'm not telling you to buy it, obviously now I own it. So that's, you know, I don't want to say go out there, buy it because, you know, I'm buying it. But to me, this is a fun one, right? Because the market does this. They tell you, look, go, go buy this car. Go by, go buy this car, Go buy the Star Jordan, go buy the messy mega cracks. You know, go, run, run, run. You know, buy, you know, the Otani Japanese BBM cards. They find these things that, you know, were out there and just, they weren't really real. They become real in the hype cycle and you go chase them. What I like to find is when the hobby is telling you that something is beat down, the hobby is telling you, look at this, it's crashing. Look at this, it's, you know that this card is, is garbage. It's garbage. You know, it's crashing. Like Pedro Serrano says, bring that shit to me, man, I'll take it. And I. It's funny because I am now. I bought a bunch of them, sold them, and I'm now buying back an inventory of them for less than I sold them for. What an amazing space all. Because I think if you follow along enough, you can kind of see the psychology of it. And we went through everything from Charlie Munger to Panini Blockchain to buying Wemby Silvers to getting on a card ladder, and you can kind of see the momentum of these things. It's almost like plotting a chart, like a stock chart. You can see where these things are going. You can see they have a chart of it. You can kind of see, you know, here on the bottom. Again, that's where everybody was beating it up to me, there are moves to be made here. I don't know, maybe. Maybe that makes me a combination of the 130 who, you know, thinks he's 120. Or maybe I'm. Maybe I'm the confidence guy. Maybe I'm the one telling you that, you know, if you. If we all believe enough in Wimpy, he becomes real. I guess time will tell. I hope you enjoyed this one. It's a little longer one this morning. I owed you an episode. I was one behind. Hope you enjoyed this one, guys. That's episode 411. I got some great comments about the last couple of episodes. You know, cleaning up the hobby, you know, 409, you know, this one here, I mean, I guess think of it as information. Think about it as your hobby. 4 1, 1. That's how I look at it. And that's another episode, guys. Brought to you by Arena Club. Brought to you by card ladder use code Cage. Save yourself a couple bucks. And by the Philly Show. I'll see you guys over the weekend. So, you know, why the hell not? Talk to you soon. Take care, everybody.