THWC 440: The Hobby Confuses Me

What's up, everybody? Habu cage episode 440 on a Thursday, August 20th. I can't believe August is basically over. Today's episode brought to you by Arena Club by card ladder use code Cage. Save yourself a couple bucks. And by the Philly Show. No hat today. You know, I kind of did my hair, you know, so no, no additional sponsor today via hat given to me or shirt given to me by, you know, a listener. But you know, you can always get like a kind of a one time sponsorship. You just got to send me a shirt. It's the way it works. All right, guys, so I'm going to start off today making you mad because that's the way it works. You, you're lucky. I don't care. That's what I'm going to say, all right? Because this morning I woke up feeling a little bit like Vincent Van Gogh, all right? I woke up feeling like Van Gogh. And if you don't know this, Van Gogh did a lot of artwork. And you know, one of the ones, you guys should look up one of his earlier works, right? From I think 1885 maybe, something like that. That number sticks out of my brain. It's called the Potato Eaters, right? It doesn't sound like a fancy piece of artwork or anything like that, but that's what it's called. You guys can look it up. And why I remember this is that it was important to Van Gogh. I remember, you know, reading about it took him like two months or so to, you know, to put this together. He called it the most meaningful and, you know, best piece that he'd ever done because of all the hard work he put into capturing the harsh life of the peasants. You know, how he thought that he was capturing something there, capturing this moment. But, you know, as often happens, the public crapped on it. You know, the public will like, Yu-Gi-Oh this is garbage. They, you know, they, they didn't think this was anything fancy or anything like that. I mean, he did not come to any type of fame until after he died one-of-one I think he only sold one painting during his actual lifetime. But the point stands. The same thing happened with, you know, Monet. And he used to say all the time that, you know, the, the market valued his quick sketches, you know, the things that he did quickly over the stuff that he toiled over for a long amount of time. Right. You know, he spent a lot of time doing what's called the Water Lilies, which was installations, these huge, massive pieces that were in his, in his own study, in his Own office took a long time and, and they meant everything to him. You know, he worked on them while he was losing his eyesight. But valuation? Nope. Art dealers, buyers, they wanted a smaller, you know, the quick things that he did. Landscapes and, you know, he didn't like that the public would pay a higher price for those things. That didn't take him a long time. So why have I wasted two minutes of your time talking about Monet and talking about Van Gogh in a hobby podcast? Well, I'll explain it to you. My numbers would be through the roof if I gave you trash, if I just gave you clickbait nonsense, because that's what people like. The question I get the most is, Cage, what should I buy next? Whatever you buy seems to be the right thing to buy. And I want to make sure that I get the same stuff you're buying because you always seem to be buying the right stuff. That's the question I get the most. People want to make money, which is fine. The question I get second, and it's a close second, is how come you don't have bigger numbers? How come your news is only seen three or four thousand times? Everybody knows it. Your hobby news is everywhere. How come your, you know, Your, your, your YouTube numbers aren't higher? How come your, your, your, your listens aren't higher? Everybody knows you've been doing this for a long time. How come your numbers aren't higher? And I have an answer. It's because you guys like shit. That's the thing. Like, the hobby prefers garbage. I did an episode yesterday that I would consider an opus, and I didn't do it to make it an opus, but I did an episode yesterday that I thought, like, if you ask me, when I die, right, and by then I'll have 10,000 episodes. I will remember that one. Because to me, that was hobby. To me, that was me telling you why I do this, right? You think I do it for money? Trust me, I don't make. I make peanuts doing this. You know, when it's all said and done, I probably lose money if you factor in all the stuff I gotta pay for. I'm not doing this for money. I do this because I love the space. I love being involved in it. I love the comments I get from the few of you who do like some of these episodes. You know, the, you know, the back and forth, the discussions. I like the search for cards. I like so much of it that there's too much to name, but I'm not gonna name it all because you Guys don't care. Look at, just look at the numbers for this week. Right? So just a comparison without even having to look them up. Right. Yesterday I did an episode about basically finding your inner child and what connects us to this hobby and, you know, what would your 10 year old self think of how you're doing today and, you know, bringing yourself back to collecting and, and, you know, chasing your dreams. And I mean, it was like, it was like, Yu-Gi-Oh you know, like, I got kids. I want to make sure that, you know, they chase their dreams for as long as they can, and so should you. And the hobby allows people to do that. We all know people who have, who have, you know, started a business in this, who have quit their jobs and turned this into, you know, a passion for them. You know, I mean, stacking slabs does a whole podcast about it. He does a whole, like, you know, turning passion into profession. And there's so many people in this space who have done that and are doing really well and love the life that they live. And I'm sure they work hard, but I mean, this hobby does that, you know, and every once in a while, you have to remember why you're here, why you have a hobby. And you know, how this is an escape from the nonsense that goes on in your regular life, right? The stuff that you love, the stuff that you enjoy. You came to this because of COVID which was destroying everything. You came to this because your job sucked. You know, you came to this because you had stress somewhere else and you remember a time where you were more innocent, where you were a kid, where you liked baseball or football or basketball and collected cards of your favorite player because it made you feel good. That's why you came back to this, why you spend your money here, Right? But you don't. The numbers on that Obsidian, but if I say PSA is going to kill the hobby, or PSA and Fanatics are at war, or I got an angry O face on the thumbnail about some great poll that happened, or how to flippy dip your $5 card today into $12 tomorrow, boom. There's thousands of people who want to view that. Those things go crazy. I mean, I got my best, my best views in an episode. You know, earlier this week, I got, I got a crazy amount of views on an episode called Is PSA about to kill the Hobby? Do I have to do that? Do I have to, like, shock you all and scare everyone that the hobby is going to die? When. All right, I, I guess that's what we got to do. So instead of naming this, the hobby confuses me, which is the title I'm going to go with, right? I should just make the hobby with Cage episode 440. You have to listen to this or you will die. I mean, how are you going to skip that episode, right? I mean, I guess I got to do clickbait titles. The thing about it though is I think maybe I'm not that dumb. And I guess I think maybe you're not that dumb. Maybe those of you who are listening to this, who are within earshot, you don't want the rug pulled out from under you. You want to actually know what you're listening to. And, and maybe that's why my audience numbers are what they are. Maybe it's because you, the people who come here resonate with the content, understand it, you know, and this is the same way that you think, I don't know, maybe I got to mix in every once in a while some nonsense about how, you know, if this, this and this don't happen, the world is going to end in 22 seconds. So make sure you click the subscribe button right now because if you don't, the world's going to end stupid one-of-one There's my little eight minute soliloquy. I will give you some hobby stuff. You ready for this one? We are in an unprecedented time. We really are in this space. If you didn't listen to my news, listen to my news because I kind of almost made a mockery of it this week. Every piece of news this week was a million dollar sale. Every single piece of news this week was a million dollar or a sale that was close to it, or cards that are up for auction now that are already over a million dollars. I said earlier this year, before everybody started making content about it, about how we were going to have a record number of seven figure sales this year. We're gonna have a record number of eight figure sales this year also. And the seven figure sales are not 1.1 million. They're all ridiculous, they're all high and alt has cards that could both push 2 million this year. We're to going gonna have a record number of millions. Two millions, you name it. It is an amazing year. And don't ask me how long it's gonna last because I don't know. And here's a little secret I'll tell you. No one does. I am your influencer's favorite influencer. That's the way it goes. But none of the people you listen to, they don't Know the answer. They don't know what inning we're in. Everybody can make an educated guess. They were all wrong last time around, including me. And you know what's funny? I noticed some people buying Peyton Manning cards yesterday, right? And I reached out to one of them and I said, oh, you're in some Peyton Manning stuff. I did an episode. I forget which one it is. You know, I've done a few of these. I think which one it is. I was trying to find it using Yu-Gi-Oh and my Yu-Gi-Oh crapped out on me and actually said it was hallucinating. That was what my Yu-Gi-Oh said to me yesterday. And he's like, I'll look mine. It took a little while and he found the episode. And the episode was a comparison between Peyton Manning and Tom Brady and how you know Peyton Manning and is a close second to Brady and in some categories, beats him the whole deal, but doesn't get the love. He doesn't get the hobby love. And at the end of it, if you guys who have been with me for a long time, remember this. I used to give plays. Me and Andrew used to give plays. This particular episode, though there was no power in Tulum, if you can believe that. The whole city of Mexico had no power. So Andrew Goldin join the episode. I did it myself. It was just audio. But one-of-one I played it yesterday, and you know what happened at the end of it? I gave a play. And it's boring, right? Plays are boring. But I'm gonna tell you what the Blue Ice one-of-one because everybody's kind of navigating the space. I'm gonna go buy a Mickey mouse car for 20, 23, because that's the next thing people are gonna put money in. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Let's chase this crazy stuff. Get this. My play at the end of it was Peyton Manning's rookie card from Topps Chrome. I told you, don't even have to stretch for a PSA 10. Buy a PSA 9 because it was 200 bucks, the $200 card. And this was like two, two and a half years ago. So I decided to look up what it sells for this week, and it's basically 700 bucks, six and change. So if you were just done that nice, basic, easy stuff, you don't have to go crazy. You don't have to go by Disney. You don't have to go look under a rock for some, you know, crazy thing that no one's buying. You just buy a Peyton Manning PSA9 rookie card for 200 bucks. Now, a couple years later, it's worth three, three and a half times that value. Sometimes the easy stuff is the way to go. And there you go. I'm gonna keep this one short today because, you know, I yelled at you guys for a little while and you know that's no fun. You don't want me to listen. You don't listen to me. Yell at you. For those of you who enjoyed the content yesterday, I appreciate you. Those of you who didn't F you. No, I'm just kidding. I love you, too. I'll talk to you guys soon. Take care, everybody. And that's another episode brought to you by Arena Club. Bye. Card ladder. Use code cage and save yourself a couple bucks. And by the Philly Show. Take care, everybody.