THWC 443: Why I Left The Hobby

What's up? Everybody happy with Cage episode 443, brought to you by Arena Club by card ladder, use code, Cage. Save yourself a couple bucks. And by the Philly show, which is coming up, man, it's gonna be here before you know it. So you see the title, and you came here to, you know, to see the episode. And I'll explain to you why I decided to leave the hobby. You know, sometimes you just have to make that difficult decision. You know, you gotta. Got a lot of great DMs saying, hey, are you okay? Hey, where are you? Hey, what's the story? Hey, no more episodes. You know, how am I supposed to take a shit if I don't have you talking in my ear for 15 minutes? I got, you know, a couple people messaging me. You know, how am I supposed to deliver the mail? I got this dog biting me, and I don't have your dumb voice in the background, you know, the soundtrack of my life. But, Yu-Gi-Oh I decided to leave, and, you know, maybe four or five people will care, but I only left for a week. All right, enough of this, you know, clickbait baloney. You know, you're gonna see a title, why I left the hobby, and be like, oh, my God, another person's leaving. No, it was. I'm entitled to take a couple days off. Me and the fam go see, you know, the. The big mouse. Go to Disney World, as I usually do, a little annual pilgrimage. Found out Boston Cardhunter was there at the same time. No, we did not plan that. I didn't see him. He looked like he was having a romantic dinner with his wife in Epcot, and it's not something I want to disturb. one-of-one pictures were getting a little crazy. A little too much champagne there, Mr. Boston Car Hunter. Looks like you and your wife had a great time, though, if you know what I mean. Wink, wink, wink. one-of-one I come back, I look at my episodes, and I hate every one of you guys because I have to do clickbait titles. I have to say why I left the hobby. I have to do this nonsense because, you know, I leave you. And. And there was one episode while I was away, and you guys get to click on whatever episodes you want. You can, you know, play whichever ones. And do you. Do you click on my favorite one of the year, which is, you know, hobby. Like a 10 year old. What would the 10 year old think? No, you click on why the hobby is going to be destroyed, which I put in as a title, just like stupidity, because I was making fun of you. Guys saying how you just want to, you know, sensational title and you'll click on it. And that's like my best episode of the year. You know, when the crash will happen and why everybody tuned in for that. And it was a joke. I didn't tell you when the crash was gonna happen cuz I don't know when it's gonna happen. I don't know if there is gonna be a crash happening. But man, you put a title out there like that, you put a title out there of when the crash will happen and boom, I get three times as many views as I usually do. Now what's funny is on the audio side, I guess my audio listeners are a little bit more, what shall I call you? Vintage? A little more aged. Got a little more gray in the hair. But you guys seem to listen to the episodes that don't have the clickbait titles just as much as the ones that do. So one-of-one enough of that fun. Why I left the hobby. I'm never gonna leave the hobby. I'll wiley the answer to that question is easy. When I leave the hobby, it's because left the earth. All right, so I've been away for a few days. Hopefully you guys will forgive my, my, my, my few days of not doing an episode and you know, come right back and, and pick up where we left off. It's been an interesting week. You know, after walking 30,000 steps a day and coming back to the hotel room, I would go on instagram and answer DMs and you know, and, and chat with people, answer questions. But you know, just try to stay in touch with what's going on in this space so I can come back and tell you guys, you know, hey, I'm refreshed, I got my soda. I'm ready to rock and roll and talk about what I saw. Couple fun things, right? Number one, instant packs. All right, Fanatics did this on Topps Chrome Black. And it's an interesting idea, right? Obviously the narratives around it are very self serving for everyone involved. Okay, okay. I saw idiots who are still trying to get you to buy Panini Blockchain talking about how this was good for Panini Blockchain. No, it's not. Stop being silly. Guys. It's not a digital pack. It's a real card. It's a break. The same way that like a break becomes digital because you're watching it on your phone, on Whatnot or on Fanatics Live. These are physical cards, but that they held back. And you can open them by basically being Your own breaker. It allows you to open that pack on release day in a. The same way that a breaker would be opening it up, you know, in front of you on screen. And if you want the card, you can send it home. If you want to sell the card, you can sell it in auction. When it gets sold in auction, the person who is going to buy it, they have a physical card. It's in their vault, it's in their house. It's not a digital card. So that was my, my favorite kind of like, you know, nonsensical take. Oh, this is good for digital. This is a step towards digital. No, it's not. No. As a matter of fact, I think it was a step away from breaking. And if I were a breaking partner of Fanatics, I'd be watching this very closely because what it's doing is it's allowing Fanatics to, to yet again cut out the middleman. And they're just, you know, they're testing it out, right? They just, they held back a little bit of the supply. They want to see whether or not people buy this stuff. I bought one just to see how it worked and you know, got nothing. But it is a seamless thing. And the card goes right into my Fanatics vault. So, you know, had I hit something huge, it would already be in the Fanatics weekly auction. You don't have to wait, you don't have to get it shipped to you from a breaker and then ship it out to a auction house. It keeps their platform sticky. And if you think about it that way, right, if you're opening the card, the end consumer, which is what they talked about, right, not having distributors involved, they got rid of those guys, right. They want to get the cards in the hands of the people who are buying them. So you're opening a pack, it's automatically in your Fanatics vault. After you open it up, it's right there to click a button and sell it in the Fanatics weekly or premiere auction. It's a sticky process. And anything that keeps those cards in their universe is a smart move for them. We'll see how the hobby likes it. I gotta tell you, if I were a breaker, I'd be watching it pretty closely. I'd be watching because it basically allows people to be their own breaker. The and if this is something that catches on, breakers will only be left with repacks, which is. It's fine. I don't see that happening anytime soon. We're not talking about this happening this year or even next. Obviously, you know, there still has to be boxes. People still want to open boxes. Card stores still need to have boxes. But if I were a breaker or a card store, this instant rips is something I would watch closely because if it's successful for Fanatics, think about how much easier it is for them to be able to just have a digital package instead of physical rapping. I mean, it's, it's something that, that is, you know, it's sort of the next generation, the next phase of the hobby and tech allows it to happen and makes it. I mean, it's much smarter for them to do this because if you have boxes being opened at home and somebody hits a debut patch, people they can do a whole bunch of stuff with it. We'll talk about the debut patch, Cooper Flag and that guy who pulled it and Kevin lalanne getting on a ferry. And you see the article and now it's it being auctioned at Fanatics, which as soon as it was pulled, you guys, I did a whole episode on why they should sell it with Fanatics. But so is the con and so is the Harper. Well, guess what? There was a battle for that. I'm sure every auction house had to compete for that. I'm sure every auction house had to, you know, had to reach out to the store roadie breakers and, and, and, and try to be put in touch with the guy who hit it. This way they could sell on their platform. Well, Fanatics has this significant advantage, right? It was just an advantage with those redemptions because when somebody redeems a redemption, they are the first ones to know who it is. They have the information because it's a Fanatics card and their crew can reach out to the person who redeemed it and said, we need you to sell this in our auction. Here's what we can do for you. First, where Ken Goldin or Heritage or these other guys, they got to sit back and hope that the person reaches out and they got to make a video about bounties. They gotta make alt, has to, has to be creative and make an auction for a card that they don't even have yet, right? But Fanatics, they know who redeemed the redemption. Well, now if there's an instant pack opened and one of these whales are hit, one of these white whales are hit, one of these grail cards, one of these, whatever word you want to use for it is hit in an instant. They know where it is because it's in someone's vault on their platform. They're basically getting first dibs to reach out to that person and say, we will sell that card for you. If you want to auction that, auction it with us and we'll give you the best results. We'll be able to take it from here. People haven't really peeled back the layers of this instant rips. The only takes that I saw were this is good for Panini blockchain. No, it's not dope. This has far reaching implications and it is another very smart move by Fanatics. And I anticipate them expanding this out because it's, it just makes too much sense for them from a business standpoint. So we touched on it. But obviously all three of the big debut patches are going to be in the Fnatic's premier auction in September. Promised to be a huge, huge auction. Which by the way, there have been some major auctions. I'm going to talk about this. Right, so. So the biggest question I got is prices. Are prices coming down? No. Okay. If you specifically look at the Bowman Chrome Tom Brady or the Fleer Jordan and compare the price right now in the eights and the fives and the sixes and the nines and to the prices that those cards were selling for immediately leading up to the national, sure those cards are down, but those cards had a monstrous run up to the national because those are the ones that everybody was buying to try to have at their table, to try to have in their possession at the National. Very liquid cards. And they've come down a bit. Sure, right. But you have to expect that that happens every year. A little bit of an August kind of, you know, August kind of drop off after the national. It's just what happens. We talked about it in the lead up to the National. But guys, I mean, if I wasn't gonna do a clickbaity, why I left the hobby, the, the title of this one would have been History May not Repeat itself. But it doesn't Definitely rhymes. And here comes a sip. It definitely rhymes History. Why? Because I feel like I could have done this episode. Wait, I did this episode already. We'll call it the Flight to Quality. Right? Because we talked about this. We've talked about this a bunch of times. When the market runs. When the market runs and people sell their cards at profit, they're all looking for the same thing. They're looking what to do with their money. All right, I sold the card. I sold this card at a profit. What do I do next? And what you find here is that money flows in two directions. Okay. Obviously there's some gamblers who Buy, you know, back into the, into the, you know, the new stuff as well. But the money really flows into two directions. Yu-Gi-Oh people buy goats too, but the two directions of this one, it's what's next. Okay? It's why Messi exploded. People thought the World cup was coming. You know, we have this big event, it's going to be timed with Fanatics Fest. And people, you know, in 2023, 2024, 2025 started buying soccer cards. Messi, Ronaldo Yamal was there, you name it, you had a good rookie. And money flowed into soccer. It's a what's next? Right? And we'll get back to that in a second. Because you make your profit, people make this decision. And I'm telling you, the money flows one of two ways. It's into that what's next or it's into what we call the flight to quality. And anybody who thinks that doesn't happen wasn't here last time, wasn't here the time before that and didn't look at the auction results for Heritage Platinum because their August auction that happened last week. Oh my God. Yu-Gi-Oh You want to talk about some monster prices. And I'm not just talking about the, the really nice looking PSA8 mantle that, you know, shattered its prior record sale thanks to a Mike Baker diamond sticker and some nice centering everything. I mean, I can probably point to six or seven dozen auctions that ended that night. Specific items ended at night that went for way more than I anticipated them going for. And we talk about this all the time, right? It's when there's, when there's, you know, when there's questions about what's going to happen next in a market. There is this flight to quality. There's this flight to blue chips. Right. There's this flight to quality, you know, assets. It's why you see gold go up. When people don't know what's going to happen with the world economy, when we're printing too much money and the interest rates go up and down and up and down and we're at war and the Strait of Hormuz is still closed, people buy Goldin, people think a 52 mantle or a 54 Aaron or Josh Gibson or whatever it might be that these vintage cards that stand the test of time, they are the closest thing to art in our space. They are the closest thing to trying to buy a Picasso or trying to buy a monetary. Sure. Some of the, you know, more recent stuff may have a little Bob Ross quality to it. And those are. They have value as well, right? But the market itself is built on that, you know, that consistency, that quality, those vintage cards that everybody knows they're a place to park your profits and people are doing it and they're doing it significantly. But I mean, this happened the last time around too. I remember because see this Mickey Mantle that I have sitting by my. I had one, I had a PSA5 and you know, I moved it and it currently would sell for a lot more than what I sold it for. But after I sold it, it did fall. I mean, we have these peaks and valleys, right? We have these runs, we have these interesting times. And the other thing that we see happen, right, so fight the quality obviously involves goats. We've seen that. We've seen, you know, the Michael Jordan cards, the LeBron cards, to the Kobe cards in basketball market, you know, the what's next? It's the, you know, it's the Wemby's and you name it. So that's the other side of the equation. We've seen it. I have some ideas about the what's next that I've started to put some of my money into some of the what's next also. We talk about that in a not so distant future episode as well. But you also see in the what's next thing, it's rhyming again. It's repeating again. I just left Disney World. I gotta tell you, man, people spend money there. And the narrative is hilarious, right? Everybody's like, Yu-Gi-Oh Disney, it's a huge intellectual property and it's a huge. I didn't see anybody there buying cards. And let's just think about that for a second, right? I know we are the card hobby, right? But like, even if you go to a basketball game, you can buy cards, right? They said, you know, Fanatics is setting up there. They got cards at a, at a basketball and a baseball game. You can buy cards, right? If, if you go to the Mecca of something, you know the cards are going to be there, right? Like, you know, the hobby is going to have cards. You go to the national, there's cards there for you to buy, right? Disney is not focusing on cards. They are a licensing machine and they license themselves Whatnot, you know, now they have a license with Epic Games and Fortnite and you can get Disney skins and their intellectual property is there. And I know, you know that like Star wars stuff and Disney is all about, you know, they have the IP and they're gonna license that out and get the money. And that's what they care about from cards. They have Lorcana. People don't seem to be pushing the Lorcana stuff as much as the Topps Disney Chrome. You got Mickey Mouse, you got Marvel, you got the whole deal. I gotta tell you, I was at every park. I was at almost every store. And I see a lot of money flowing, right? I see a lot of food being eaten, a lot of alcohol being consumed. I see a lot of ears being worn and a lot of, you know, merchandise being purchased and churros being eaten and sweatshirts, and just the money is flowing. I don't see any cards. I didn't see anybody looking for Topps Chrome Disney cards while they were there. The only place I see people talking about Mickey and Marvel and Topps Chrome are the people who are gonna try to get you to spend your money on it. So that's one I would be a little careful about. I mean, I come on here, I do my thing, right? I've seen this movie before, and this is the chapter of it that gets me a little more concerned, because almost everybody is doing well. And when almost everybody is doing well, what happens is everybody is looking to kind of join that herd of what's next? Where do I put my profits? I just did great on Otani. I just did great on LeBron. I've held these Kobe and Jordan cards for so long. I'm gonna take some profit because the money is right. What do I do with this profit now and the herd you kind of get shepherded into? Well, Mickey and Marvel. It makes too much sense, right? I mean, these are huge intellectual properties. And. And there's Avengers, Doomsday movies coming out, and that's gonna be huge for the Marvel cards. And I mean, look, Mickey Mouse is huge, and Disney's a huge. You know, you gotta. They have this first Chrome 2023, and. And somebody listed their Mickey Mouse Superfractor for $20 million, and that's gonna be the next thing. I'd be careful about that. I mean, you like Disney and One of Us and Disney cards, great. If you peel back the layers of who's talking about it, you'll realize that there are people who own a lot of it and so on and so forth. I don't want to get into the whole, like, you know, pump and dump and that kind of stuff, because that's silly. It's just more of a. I would pump the brakes on that. And that's coming from somebody who literally just spent a week in Disney World and does it every year and is a huge Disney fan. I'll open a Disney product here and there. I mean I opened one last week because we were going and I have opened up like Disney Wonder and you know, I like the park stuff because you can get a car of a churro. It's fun. Fun. I don't ever anticipate ever opening that and saying like, Yu-Gi-Oh I need to collect these. It seems forced to me. And that was my kind of, you know, my take because I'm seeing a lot more content about Disney and Marvel and how they're hard to find and how the collector base on that is so strong. And I mean I don't. There's not many eight year old girls collecting. I tried when my daughter was 8 and it was huge because you know, Frozen was a big time. But like how many people really want a Elsa card in the people, you know, and the ones who do, who want to collect Elsa, do you think they care that they have a out of 100 Refractor Elsa that cost $10,000 in the last auction? They just want a card with Elsa on it because they're eight and it says let it go or there's an icicle on it or whatever the hell it is. Those. I get a little, I pump the brakes on a little bit because that to me is, it's forcing. Where's the money go next. one-of-one I'm happy to be back. I hope you guys didn't miss me too much. From the dms, it looks like you're happy that I was gone and I got a lot of DMs telling me how great the week was and I should just stay away forever. And you know, that's, that's one man's a couple men's opinion. But I'm happy to be back. We'll do some more content for you and well, there you go. That's episode 443, why I left the hobby and now I'm back. Brought to you by Arena Club, by card ladder use code Cage. Save yourself a couple bucks. And by the Philly show, which I will be at in a couple weeks. Hopefully you guys will be there and we'll see you there. Take care everybody.