THWC 427: What Inning? The Game is Just Starting!

What is up, everybody? How about with Cage episode 427, brought to you by Arena Club by card ladder, use code, Cage. Save us up a couple bucks. And by the Philly show, quick one today. Hopping on here early morning, July 28th, as we. We use the phrase the road to the national. It really is, right? Everybody's got their own different road. Some people already there, some people already out in Rosemont. I got some messages yesterday. Hey, you're here. Let's get some dinner. And I'm like, it's Monday, dude. Like, nothing's open, guys. Like, Yu-Gi-Oh we're. I'm here, I'm set up. We're ready to rock and roll. You know, people. People aren't really even getting to the show or allowed into Wednesday. So here's, you know, at least a couple people there 48 hours before the. The show opens, and Wednesday, sort of like a, you know, that's like a. A VIP thing in the, in the early opening. And then, of course, it opens up and, you know, I one-of-one be there myself on Wednesday, so, you know, people are going to be partying, having fun without me. It's. But, Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, a lot of excitement around it. I can't help but to think big picture on this stuff, right? The question that I get the most from everybody is, you know, it's a. The same kind of thing, right? What inning are we in? Right? You hear it on the, the crossover last week. You hear it every time. It's. It's almost become sort of like the hobby cliche question, you know, where are we? And the reason why people ask that, it's pretty straightforward, right? It's because we've seen this. This amazing run. And, you know, people who have been here before have seen it. They've seen. I don't say the Fleer fall out, but they've seen the Fleer fall out, you know, and it, you know, it gets people a little on the. On the nervous side. If, you know, if you've seen cards kind of run the way that they have, it's. It is human nature to kind of ask, okay, you know, you know, when's this gonna stop? Or is it gonna stop? Or, you know, how much longer can it continue in the way that it has? And, I mean, listen, we're all guilty of this. We look at charts for the last week, the last day, the last month, you know, the last couple of weeks, the last six months, and the chart looks crazy. But, you know, I always say this. I always say this. You know, if you if you look at it over the length of time, right, it sort of flattens it out. It's, it's almost like, you know, any stock that you can pick that's had a crazy run and then a pullback, look at the, you know, semiconductors this week that are all pulling back, right? I mean, if you were riding Micron, you know, it's an interesting stock chart to look at, right? Because it's not bad. You know, when you look at the chart wide, if you happen to jump into it in the last week or two, you're not too happy. And that's what gets people kind of, you know, questioning what's going on, right? And what's funny about it is the, the, the, the hobby is not stocks because it's not, it's not based on the same type of fundamentals in the whole deal. And you know, Michael Jordan Card does not have quarterly earnings every three months to tell you the, the, the health of what he's doing because he's not playing anymore. You know what I mean? You can make an argument that active players are a little more like that because they go out there and they play and some of them one-of-one championships and some of them fall flat on their face and some of them get injured. But what's amazing about it is if you look at it overall, you look at, you know, the American market, you understand it, you know, the global market, you understand it, that, you know, the premise there is that it's based on fundamentals. There's money that comes in. They're looking to buy a piece of something and they're looking for that over growth, right? That's why people put money in like the S P 500, you know, they buy, they buy, you know, Vanguard funds that track the overall market because the overall market is going to be healthy, right? And it gives you diversification, etc. Etc. So what I'm going to say today to all of you is I love this week in the hobby. I love the last couple of weeks in the hobby because it gives me a chance to take a step back and look at the, the charts, look at the space from a wider view, right? So not only do you get excitement and exuberance the same way that you would have for the IPO of SpaceX, right? Everybody's talking about it, everybody's getting in. Everybody wants to be involved. Well, that's what you've had this month. Everybody's talking about Fanatics Fest. It was all over the place, was on espn, it was on the news. Justin Bieber showed up. I don't even think he was invited. Now think about that for a second. He, you know what I mean? You have, you have, you know, celebs who want to be a part of the space that we're in even without being invited. They hear about it, they see that there are other celebrities there, you know, doing this stuff, you know, excited about it and they show up and want to be a part of it. And then those guys are collecting cards, they're buying cards, you know, they're. That is a cool thing. It's excitement, you know, and within our space itself, that excitement continues this week for the national, right? I can't tell you how many messages I've gotten by text, by dm. It's a lot, you know, it's at least six, it's maybe seven. There's a lot of messages saying, hey, when are you going? What are you doing? Let's meet up, let's grab a cigar, you know, let, let me buy you a drink because you've done 300 episodes this year. And, you know, it kept me entertained on my mail route, on my commute, on my truck drive on, on the toilet, whatever it might be. That's excitement. It's excitement in a different way than what Fanatics Fest brought, but it's excitement nonetheless. And I read the messages, I see the posts, guys, just look around. There are more tables at the national, first time tables this year, than probably ever before. There were more card folks set up at Fanatics Fest than ever before. There were two huge collector zones, huge. And I spoke to at least 60 different people who were set up because that's what I do. I walk around, how's the show? You know, some people ask, well, how much is that? How much? I ask, how's it going? And without fail, without exception, everyone loved it. On Thursday. They said it was the best Saturday they've had. That was at Fanatics Fest. I can only imagine with the record attendance at the national, what it's going to be like. And you get to sprinkle in at the national, hopefully some new people, you know, some folks who get to see the well rounded hobby and industry that we have. You get to see these humongous cards on display, right? You get to see these Honus Wagner's, honest Wagners. You get to see the Mickey Mantles, you get to see the museum stuff that's being auctioned. I mean, Heritage is. I just got their mailer for their Platinum night, which is always, you know, the end of August. And they usually have items on display there. And it's like walking through a museum for the price of your admission ticket. You know, Robert Edward always does a great job with that. You know, Goldin always does a good job. And you want to talk about the health of it? Yesterday, Goldin reached out to me about a card that I bought last year. Do I want to sell it? I wrote back immediately. I haven't heard back from them, but that's the health of the cards. But back to the national for a second. I see people setting up with different type of items than I've ever seen before. Right. I see. I talked about Rodman yesterday. There will be soccer cards set up. There's a friend of mine who wants to meet up and have a cigar, says he's gonna bring me a cigar. Wrestling cards set up, UFC cards. There's gonna be more of that. I'm gonna get the UFC card, Father, in next year, but there's gonna be UFC cards set up, wrestling cards, F1, racing cards. There's got all kinds of stuff set up. There's a new room. Pokemon is gonna have a, you know, a huge thing. And it's fun to see the space evolve into what folks like, because, I mean, listen, the breakers are going to be there. The Repackers are going to be there. They'll be there in full force. But I remember doing episodes about the National a couple years ago where they introduced the Breakers Pavilion, and it was huge. And it got the breakers in there, and those guys were able to set up and make noise and hoot and holler and do what they needed to do. And that was big at the time. And now it's there, and they've added on to that, and they're adding a whole new room in. So really summary, right, because, you know, you guys will hear me rant. It's National Week, so I get excited. A lot of people are enjoying the excitement. You're sitting at home. Maybe you're going to the national, maybe you're not, but you have been someone who has been involved in this space for a little while, whether it's six months, a year, three years, five years or 10 years, at some point in time, you question whether or not this was the space for you. Now is your time to be excited about it. Because if you've bought anything reasonable, anything that's not a. You know, just as long as you didn't just prospect on Bowman Chrome, long shots only, you know, and you bought something. If you want any type of goat, you want any type of card of anyone who you've heard of, you're probably doing pretty well. You're probably taking your victory lap because I can't tell you how many articles I've been sending me about how sports cards are beating the S and P. Sports cards are a better investment than buying a house. Sports cards are this, sports cards are that. And I mean, my own hobby friends, you guys included, you have to be smiling out there. And I know you're wondering what inning is it, right? Because everybody's worried about the Fleer falling out. Everybody's worried about, you know, whether or not we're at the end stages of this and do I have to run for the hills? I mean, listen, you have that phrase out there, right, of, you know, no one ever got went broke taking a profit, right? And if, if that's what you want to do, go right ahead. This is not financial advice by any means because I, I'm not even talking about the finances of it or any specific card. I'm talking about the overall market, the overall hobby, the overall space. I don't even know if we're out of the first inning yet if we're really going to talk about it, right? Because let me, let me sprinkle this on top. It seems like every other day Fanatics comes out with an idea that just takes us to another level. I know that sounds silly, but let me, let me unpack it for a bit, right? You have all of your patches and your MLB debut patches and all that stuff, right? You have all those things and we've seen, you know, the 5050 Ohtani, they created a card with a logo man in it of Ohtani for, you know, for his 5050 game. And it sold for seven figures and they lay it on top of that and they pulled out the baseball MLB debut patch and Paul Skeen sold for seven figures. And now that debut patch is expanded out all over the place and you're going to see the Cooper flag one sell for millions of dollars. And that puts life into the market. That infuses energy into the market. It gets people looking for that chase, right? Whether you want to admit it or not, there's a, you know, human nature is with people want to chase that stuff. I tell you guys, when the skiings was, you know, card was in the boxes. My son, you know, one of that for Christmas get a box. As long as skiings hasn't been pulled yet, he wants to try to chase it. That's, you know, that is life changing stuff right there. If you are the one that gets that Goldin Ticket from, you know, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, you know, the Wonka Goldin ticket. That's what they're creating here and it really does create a lot of buzz, a lot of energy, a lot of excitement. And if you want to talk about the health, right they come out the gold logo men and you know the otani wants over $3 million. You have the dual logo man of judge and Otani that sold for seven figures. Well now you have these repeat gold logo men, you know, for Ohtani and judge and you know, school. You have, you have the Ohtani one, the, that's a dual gold logo man signed by him twice with his autograph on the top and the Kanji autograph on the bottom. Just take a minute and look on social at what the bounties are, right. And it kind of tells you that what Fanatics is doing is working right? The, the box prices of those, if you happen to buy those, which I Goldin get in on the pre order or regular sale, I just, I wasn't EQL'd and I wasn't able to buy them. But if you were able to buy in on those baseball chrome boxes, the price has gone up significantly. Why? Because they announced this card and people want to chase it and it's going to help the breakers. It's going to infuse money into the space. It's going to have more, you know, people chasing this and probably bring new people in because when that card sells it's going to be all over everything. It's going to be all over espn, it's going to make the news, it's going to be everywhere because at bare minimum I've seen a six and a half million dollar bounty on it that was from you know, Kevin o' Leary and, and Shine and, and you know, his crew, what are they called? Secure. I think I've seen a 10 million dollar bounty and a 12 and a half million dollar bounty for this card. Now I don't know whether or not those are bounties that are actually going to, you know, follow through. I know for a fact the six and a half million will. Right, because these are the same guys who were on stage at Fanatics Fest spending millions of dollars to buy cards. And we know that they've bought the dual logo man. We know this is, you know, right in their wheelhouse of cards that they would add, you know, whether or not someone actually pays 10 or 12 remains to be seen but it almost is irrelevant at that point. Right. You have, you know, you have the ability to open up a box of cards that's a couple of hundred dollars and pull something that is 6 and a half to 10 to 12 million dollar card out of it. That's a cool thing. It's going to add eyeballs to it. It's going to add, you know, more energy to the space. It's going to add people to the space. It just is right. You know, you're gonna have, you know, my son talking about it with his baseball team, his soccer team, the kids in camp, they're gonna go home, tell their parents. The parents are probably someone like you who was away from the space for a while and will research it and say, holy cow, you're right. You can open up this box and buy it for 5, 600. I think a jumbo is like just under 7 now. You could buy a box and maybe hit this, you know, life changing money card and maybe they don't hit it, maybe they get something else. Maybe Fanatics is smart enough, puts enough value in those boxes, puts enough, you know, Met cards, Yankee cards, you know, something that they love, that maybe the mom, the dad, the kid, they stay. Maybe there's some nostalgia to it. Maybe the dad remembers opening cards as a kid, does a little more research and sees the national happening. You never know. So what inning is it? I don't know, man. The game I think is just starting because the people we have playing, I think are playing at a higher level than they've ever played before. The national is executing the trade nights are going to go as smoothly as they've ever gone. There are more trade nights and more build one-of-one to the national than we've ever had before. Right. People are adding trade nights. This soccer expo is a couple years old that is, you know, blowing up. You know, the other sports, the other collectors doing this, there are trade nights at hotels, there are high end private trade nights. I mean there are a million things going on around this, that this month it's, I mean it, it has renewed the energy, I believe. And if you are somebody looking at sort of like, you know, taking a pulse and, and trying to see, you know, where we are, I, I, I don't see any reason why this slows down anytime soon. And you know, you like to think, okay, after the national, don't we have a slowdown? Okay, well let's just look at the, a couple of days after the national ends, you know what happens? The first preseason football game literally days after and you have preseason football, everyone is going to be going crazy looking for what quarterback is going to be the guy you're buying back into my homes this year, Right? So then football starts, and you know what happens right after that? You know, right as football is ramping up the NBA, so a slowdown. I don't. I don't think so. I mean, I think you're gonna, you know, cycle right out of these big shows into other big shows and, you know, the sports are going to continue, and then you're going to have, you know, football starting, basketball starting. You have the World Series. You have Ohtani winning another MVP and maybe another world Series, and just, you know, the craziness that comes with that. And think about what cards are going to come out of that, what Fanatics is going to be able to make out of those. It is. It's a fun time to be in this fun space. There are people in the comments who like, how many times I use the word fun. I don't know how you fault me for that, because it is a hobby and you're supposed to be having fun. And if you're not having fun, probably not the hobby for you. And if you're not having fun now, I don't know when you'll ever have fun in this space because it is as energized as I've ever seen it. There are more people here. There's more money being pumped into it. $90 million spent on Fanatics Fest. Fanatics had to lose money on that. A lot of money. But they're trying to build something not just for that show, but they're trying to build the space. Because if they build it big enough, everybody wins. So what inning are we in? I don't know, guys. Whatever it is, it's early. And that's kind of, you know, going to be my answer going forward until I see a change. So I hope to see you guys at National. If you're going, send me a message or let's try to meet up. I'll be walking around. I don't have a booth, but, you know, I mean, I. I could just stop at a booth and be like, I am here. Put up a sign buying and cage. You know, buying at 105% and then an arrow towards me. That would be fun, but hope to see you guys there. Hope you guys enjoy this episode. That's 427, brought to you by Arena Club by card ladder use code Cage to save us up a couple bucks and by the Philly show. Talk to you guys soon. Take care, everybody.