THWC 436: Your Card Values Just Went Up- Why?

What's up, everybody? Hobby with Cage, episode 436, brought to you by Arena Club by card ladder. Use code Cage. Save yourself a couple bucks. I got a couple emails yesterday about people signing up using my code, which is pretty awesome. Keep it coming. You save, I think like 25%. It's, you know, you save yourself a couple bucks. That's what I say. Save a few bucks. Why not put a code in, you know? You know you're gonna use it. I'm gonna go to a show this weekend with my son. Not sure what day we're gonna be going, but we're gonna go. He's gonna be buying and selling cards, and card ladder is gonna be, you know, is gonna be what he uses the whole time. So, you know, if you buy it and selling, you gotta use it one-of-one Also brought to you by the Philly show, which is right around the corner. Excited for that. That is like, you know, one of the highlights for me because it's a big show I get to take my son to. You know, he doesn't go to the national with me. Fanatics Fest, we enjoy. But that Philly show is cool because I make a point of, you know, buying a vintage box of cards or two and just opening it in the back with him, with everybody else. And we pulled some Jordan inserts, some 90s Jordan inserts. The last time we did that, we opened boxes, some Shaq inserts, rookies. So, you know, I try to have some fun with it. one-of-one that's enough of that. That's what the episode's brought to you by. That's not why you're here. You're here because the title of the episode is, your card values just went up. Why? And Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, all of you, and I mean every card. All right, you don't have to look in Card Lab for this. This is a. This is a more omnibus statement that I'm making here more global. Why? Because alternate assets are a thing. And if you don't believe me, you know, go a couple months back and see the Celtics being bought for 6.1 million, $6.1 billion. And people are like, Yu-Gi-Oh that's a lot of money for franchise. You know, we. We check out these franchise values and, you know, how much they're worth and blah, blah. Then the Lakers get bought for $12 billion this week. $12 billion. It's kind of crazy. That's kind of crazy. Or is it? People are looking for places to put their money. People love sports. People are investing in the space Apollo just invested $2.6 billion in the Yankees. And for the average person like you or me, we're not gonna be able to buy into team ownership. But aren't cards sort of like buying into player ownership? Maybe people buying into card stores are also headline grabbing. The Lakers, $12 billion, that's a headline. That is sports front and center. That's the value of sports front and center. How about the headline? That card vault by Tom Brady is taking on investors. Go take a look at the investors, look at the money being put into our space. And it's heavy hitters and it's not all athletes, right? I mean Aaron Judge is on the list, but so many others are as well. Go take a look. And isn't that a great thing that you know, when Tom Brady joined 50% of a store now I think they have 17 stores, cardboard by Tom Brady and now it's car bought by Tom Brady plus a whole bunch of other backers, whole bunch of other, you know, people who are or investing in it. So that, you know, you all have global expansion. Pretty soon you're gonna have a cardboard in every state. Maybe not North Dakota, I don't have anything against North Dakota. It's just the first state that came to my brain. And I'm sure they'll be in Canada, it'll be global. They'll have a card vault by Tom Brady in the United Arab Emirates before you know it. And Lewis Hamilton opening a card store. There is, there is a movement here into this space and I've seen a lot more posts about it recently. The high end, these art pieces, these museum pieces, these one of one type, you know, crazy pieces. They are commanding the attention of people who are looking to put their money and invest their money into things that are not cash. You know, there are more seven figure sales this year than last year, than probably the last two years combined. This will be a record setting year depending upon, you know, who you look at. We're at somewhere around 25 seven figure sales already this year which just blows the other years out of the water. And we probably will have a record for that this year. And it's not just that, it's the amount of sales way in excess of 1 million. You know, if you have 20 million dollar sales, great. You know you usually have a bunch of 1.1, 1.2s. You know, these are all crazy numbers. And we haven't even seen what this Cooper flag is going to sell for. Right. And that's on the heels of the OHTANI Selling for $11 million. And there'll be more Ohtani's and more Ohtani judges and, and, and there's going to be Mendoza cards that come out and there's gonna be Cooper Flag patch auto that are, that are. And it's not just the new stuff. I record this on August 13th and tonight alt will have an auction ending where the PMG red Michael Jordan is already at like a million two. I mean that's a card that was nowhere near a million dollars not that long ago. And here it is, a seven figure card. Yet another sale that will be over seven figures. Hell, there's an Ohtani in it that's, you know, it's not over yet. And that's at six hundred and something thousand dollars. Who knows how close that gets to a million dollars? The Ohtani Orange auto. It seems like a bargain. Yes, I own one. It seems like a bargain now with everything else going up, you know, the greatest baseball player to ever do it. It is a fun thing to watch this space and this asset class and patch auto evolve. Right. So did your card values go up? I mean economics, supply, demand economics. You guys remember that commercial, right? Supply, demand, economics. It really is sometimes that simple. The high end will lead, right? And you have a bunch of people coming in looking for those best in class assets. And that does trickle down. Those headlines do matter. This Cooper flag being pulled was everywhere. My neighbor was talking about it and she doesn't know anything about cards, you know, but her husband bought a tops now for the Knicks for OG Anunoby's, you know, shot and was hoping to get, you know, the one of one. One of his friends got one out of 70 and sold it for a lot of money. So now she's all in on cards now too. You know, I gotta, I gotta buy cards. We gotta buy the, you know, how much is the Cooper flag gonna go for? A lot, you know, and the pivot on the topic to put a little bow on this one here. I think all this attention is great. I think all of the attention by the modern cards, you know, from the older cards that are getting love now because why wouldn't your best Michael Jordan cards be worth more when a Cooper flag is worth millions, right? Why wouldn't your best vintage cards sell for a ton of money? Why wouldn't you pay a ton for one of the three Mickey Mantle PSA 10s when you see the other cards selling for what they're selling for, you know, and people are chasing the best of the best. It makes sense. More demand, you Know, you gotta focus on the supply part, right? Because don't expect things that have a ton of supply to fly in price because it's just the way it works, right? But if more people are coming in, that increases the demand across the board. And that demand is obviously at a fever pitch, which is why we see, you know, PSA backlog not really going down. You know, why we see, you know, the demand for product, why there are steps being taken to get, you know, product in the hand of actual end consumers by ripping the plastic off of is a very fun thing to watch. I like that word fun. And some people have problems that I say it so much, but this is our hobby. If you're not having fun here, you need to find a different hobby. So I'll continue to use that word because this is fun and I hope you guys listening to this episode are having fun now. I started this off and I just pivoted like crazy because I started this off. I was about to hit record and I said to my son, I said, what should my episode be? And he said, I should talk about whether or not bounties are real and, you know, whether or not it's healthy to have these bounties out there. And so I pivoted to this. But we're gonna throw something down here. I love the innovation in the space. I don't know whether or not what Alt is doing will wind up having them sued for it. You know, putting an auction up on that platform for a card they don't really have the right to auction because they don't own it and it hasn't been consigned to them. It's an interesting thing. I could see some people feeling aggrieved, you know, if that auction ended at a lower price than what the people, you know, were getting offers for. And it kind of spooked some offers around. I could see someone who was litigious taking an issue with that. I also can see the other side of the equation, which is talk about like an interesting idea. An interesting idea. I'm sure they have a legal team and I'm sure they ran it by them. But talk about an interesting idea, because, you know, if you're out there with that card, you're the guy who pulled it and you're not getting crazy offers. You know, we see all the headlines, right? We see all the headlines out there that are, this is a five million dollar card. It's. There's a three million dollar offer. C Bless is offering, you know, you know, time on his Only fans channel and. And a million five. And people are offering money. But you know what? He might have the card, and maybe people aren't actually offering him that money. Well, you look over at Alt and they have bids already in place where someone is willing to pay. I think it's $3.6 million the last time I looked for the card. So if you're the guy holding it and you don't have any offers that high and no one is actually materialized, and these bounties that are out there are not actually turning into. What's stopping you from calling alt and saying, all right, you're at 3, 6 already. We got the card. Let's put it in there. Go do some, you know, go do some promotion. Go do some promotion on it and let people know that this auction will actually get them the card. And I guess the flip side is, what do they have to lose? You know, they're being talked about by people like me. This is something I've never seen done before, an auction for a card they don't actually have and that hasn't been consigned to them with the hope that it attracts enough attention that the person who's out there would say, okay, you know, let's do it. I guess you could argue that it's a way to house the bounties and make sure that the bounties are legit. And I could imagine you would have auction houses sort of know, following suit. Why wouldn't you? You know what I mean? You know, it's a way to validate that bounty, you know, through an auction house that's ready to. Ready to pay for it. So, you know, I pivot on this. My son says, what about bounties? Are they good? Are they real? I think what Alt is doing is basically proving out that if you have a bounty, go ahead and put it. Put it through us. Go ahead and bid. You know, we're legitimizing the fact that you have a $3 million bounty on the card. It's right there. And, you know, and we're going to run it through, you know, an auction platform. I don't know what ends up happening. I've seen some content made by the guy who pulled the card. He doesn't seem to be on Instagram that much. I guess his son is. And, you know, they seem to be focusing their content on trying to reach Cooper Flag himself. I don't know that that's the right, you know, method for doing this. You know, I don't know whether or not Cooper Flagg is actually going to respond. I think they might have a better time, you know, tagging Erling Holland. And he might write nice, you know, in the, in the responses. If they posted and tagged him. Maybe he'll buy it. You never know. In any event, it's all good for you, it's all good for me because it's all being talked about and eventually that Cooper Flag will end up somewhere. It's either going to be bought, it's, you know, someone's going to actually pay their bounty, or it may go to an auction house. I've said on this show a couple times, I would probably, if it were me, use Fanatics because you got to think, you know, they will do the most to promote it given their ties to the athletes, you know, and, you know, maybe they get the mavericks to bid on the card. Got to think they would do the most promos, maybe even, you know, get the guy who pulled it and his son to, you know, take a Tribute, you know, the Collect vault with the card and maybe meet Cooper Flag or somebody else, you know, and do some videos about the card, do some content about it. All of which is great. It's all great pr, right? And you know, it's one of those things you got to give credit to Fanatics for because it seems like every month it, or every couple of months, there's something else in the news, right? We, we rolled from Fanatics Fest and the national to the Otani, you know, Duel being sold like at the national, basically, you know, that the, the, the double signed, double gold logo man, Ohtani selling for eight figures. And it was like immediately following that boom, Cooper Flag chase is on and it is everywhere. And that's gonna sell for a lot of money. I mean, you know, I don't think $5 million is out of the question for that card at all. It's a number that, you know, I've been saying since the beginning and listen, it's fun to patch auto really is. And if you are somebody like me, someone like probably you, who has spent time in the space, who has seen, you know, the market evolve, you almost feel, I don't one-of-one say vindicated because that means you felt, you know, wronged at some point in time. But you, you almost feel like you get to come out of the basement a little bit. You know, I can tell you I speak about cards with coworkers more than I did, you know, pre Covid, you know, you know, you brought up that you collect cards or you buy and sell cards and it Was like, really? Isn't that for kids? Nobody's saying that now. Nobody's saying that at all. Because they see it, it's everywhere. You know, they know that it's big business. And instead of isn't that for kids? It's oh, you really know about that. I'd love to learn more. Or hey, my kid really wants to learn about it. Maybe I can get you on the phone with my kid and you can teach him where to buy, where to research, just download card ladder, use code cage, save yourself a couple bucks. That's what I tell you. You should tell all your kids. The point remains, guys, it really is a great time for, for the space. And I love all of the promotional stuff being done, all the eyeballs that are on this. We really are, you know, it is a time like I personally have never seen before in this space. And that's exciting. You know, let's hope that we alt art you know, good stewards of this. You know, let's all be thankful for, you know, the interest in the space and kind of treat each other the way you'd want to be treated. Because normally when the money gets up, the bad actors are drawn to it and you start to see things like, you know, grandpa stealing that Patrick Mahomes at the national and more break ins. And you know, the thing that can derail this is if the PR and the press and the news headlines shift away from the cards to the bad stuff that happens, the thefts, you know, someone being robbed by gunpoint for their Pokemon cards, etc. Etc. I mean, to the extent that you guys listen to my dumbass, let's try to keep that stuff to a minimum, you know, and, you know, let's all enjoy the, you know, the, the run that our space has been on. That's it. That's the deal. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. That's episode 436. Your card values just went up. Why? Well, I told you why. And you may disagree, which is why there's comments in the YouTube section. And you can tell me what an idiot I am. If you looked at my story today, you see somebody really, really ripped into me called my content. I think it was vapid or I don't even know what the word was. It was. I had to look it up. I don't even know if I'm saying it right, but man, I got haters out there with, with great vocabulary. Hope you guys enjoyed this one. It was brought to you by Arena Club. Buy the Philly show and buy card ladder, use code cage and save yourself a couple bucks. I'll talk to you guys soon. Take care, everybody.