Top Sports Card Strategies From The National 2026

This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability various 18 starting a business can seem like a daunting task unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing, to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into sign up for your $1 per month trial@shopify.com specialoffer what's up everybody? It's Gary Vee and this is the Sports Card Strategy Show. Because you know this. There is no off season. No off season when you get into this game. The reason why you pay someone like Paul Hickey to get your sports card strategy together is because when you're starting out, you need perspective, you need wisdom, you need insights. And so he's been around the track enough times where he can actually coach you up and guide you. Doesn't mean he's going to take you to the promised land tomorrow. But you now have a coach by your side that can advise and kind of even create these pathways where you can get the education yourself. And that's a lot better than thugging it out on your own. What? Your kids better buy my rookie card now. Cause after this year, the price one-of-one coming down. Welcome in everybody. I'm your host, Paul Hickey. It's time to sit back, listen, learn and earn with me on the Sports Card Strategy Show. What's up everybody? Welcome to the Sports Card Strategy show. Welcome in Nooffseason.com family. We're happy to have you with us to help you make money flipping sports cards. On today's episode of the Sports Card Strategy show, we will review our top 10 strategies from the National 2026. We'll also talk to folks at ebay about what's in it for us. Meaning they want you to use ebay live. But why should we? And ebay expands their authenticity guarantee program. What does that mean for us sports card flippers? What's unique about this episode of the Sports Card Strategy show is that all content is being recorded during the 2026 national, where I was last week, of course, in Rosemont, Illinois, where it will be in 2027, and then Detroit in 2028. I believe. I believe I'm correct on that. One more year in Chicago before it goes to Detroit. And let's talk about breaking, because for those of you who have ever listened to multiple episodes of the Sports Card Strategy show, you know that I do not like braking, I do not like buying into breaks, mainly because it's just a fiscally irresponsible way to spend your money. It doesn't really have anything to do with anything against breakers in general. As a blanket statement, it doesn't really have anything to do with anything against people who buy into breaks. But breaking is a fiscally irresponsible way to spend your money. It's gambling. Basically. When you're buying into a break, you're gambling. And in addition to that, you know, there are shady things that happen in breaks, right? Early on, when I first got back into the hobby in early 2021, late 2020, I bought into a couple breaks. I didn't know what the hell was going on. I didn't know what a break was. I learned by experiencing things myself and doing things myself. That's how I best learn and evolve and get better. And so before I got really good at making money flipping sports cards, I was experimenting with a lot of things to try to learn how to make money flipping sports cards. And I bought into some breaks, had a horrible experience, not because the breaker was irresponsible and the breaker was actually a really nice guy, but didn't like it. Didn't like, you know, paying money for nothing, essentially. And sometimes it was literally nothing. Like I wouldn't even get mailed my cards. So I don't like breaking. I've tried to figure out a way to allow breaking into my ecosystem. I've even tried working with people to try to figure out strategies, breaking strategies, if you will. And so until someone comes to me and presents a way to make money buying into breaks, I'm going to continue to talk about why people should not buy into breaks and why I think breakers, while not necessarily always bad people, aren't the most creative content creators. They're creating content, but to me, it lacks creativity. I mean, basically you're just ripping open boxes. Anybody can rip open a box of wax. Anybody can buy wax. And even for people who say, like, oh, well, if you want to try to hit this card, it's Cheaper to try to hit it in a break. To me, that's bullshit because you should just buy the card. The cheapest way to do it is to buy the card. By the time you buy into all the breaks and try to open all the wax to, to get that card, you're gonna spend way more than you would if you would have just bought the frickin card in the first place. So what's ironic is right now I'm walking through what I believe to be probably the most amount of money spent by any corporation at the national and it's Whatnot. It's the Whatnot area. And as far as, I mean, if you were judging live event activations, it would be hard to put Whatnot behind anybody because I mean, look at this shit. I mean like they had to have spent more money than any other company at the national in the history of the National. Possibly when you even combine companies together like this is like its own event within the event and it's all Whatnot shit. I've talked about Whatnot in a more positive light in the past on the Sports Card Strategy show because at one point I was led to believe that Whatnot would have fiscally responsible ways to buy the right card for the right player at the right time on their platform. They haven't proven that to me yet and they don't, they don't care to. Which is fine, they reach out to me every once in a while to PR them. But you know, the best, the best way to get the right card for the right player at the right time for the right price is ebay and only ebay. But I kind of want to show you what the hell Whatnot does at an event like the national because I believe that this is why they've been successful. They do pour a lot into the hobby. They do have good live event activations, but they don't really provide truly good value to the hobbyists. So if you're new to the hobby, welcome into the Sports Card Strategy Show. I'm going to tell you, make your own decisions. Don't be blinded by the kind of the window dressing, if you will. Right what not might be the most attractive person at the party initially, but once you pull back the curtain, you don't want to spend much time with them. Whereas ebay is one of the more attractive people at the party and you also fall in love with them because of all their other good qualities. So I've been excited to, to say this. If you are sick and tired of getting slaughtered buying into Breaks and ripping wax. You need to join NoOffSeason.com NoOffSeason.com helps you buy the right card for the right player at the right time and actually make money flipping sports cards. No. Offseason.com helps you make minimum of 30% annually, all the way up to 130 annually or more using our guideline strategies, plays and tools not only@nooffseason.com but also@ HobbyFlipper.com and it's less than a dollar a day on average. So I mean, look, if you must, you can still spend some of your budget on bullshit like buying into brakes or ripping wax. But if you really want to make money flipping sports cards, don't participate in any of what I've shown you in this little video clip. Just walk right through it like I just did and go to ebay or make a deal with a dealer at the card show. But make sure that you're comping everything out. Make sure that you're using Card Analyzer and predictor tool to get the most recent data and comps or Hobby Flipper to get the most recent data and comps and make sure that you're not feeling obligated to overpay a dealer. All right, remember, Sports Card Strategy show is now powered and sponsored by Slab Dynasty Cards, a next gen sports card platform built for collectors that includes a 2% marketplace fee or a 0% marketplace fee. If you're a no offseason.com premium member and a choose your chase feature as well. Start your dynasty today using code no offseason for 20% off your first slab dynasty purchase. Again, this is Sports Card Strategy Show Top strategies for from the National 2026. Buying, buying, buying. We buy everything. There's one of these signs around here somewhere that says we pay 75 to 90% of comps. Let's talk about that real quick. Everybody. Does that make any sense at all to sell your cards for anything less than 85% of comps? I went up to some of these buyers during the national and I just wanted to test some things out with what are they gonna pay? And I gave them some very liquid cards to look at. Cards that are well comped out, we can agree on the prices. And one Gentleman offered me 80% of comps for cards that I know that he can sit there and sell for 100% of comps. That's an immediate 20% cash profit for him. But I looked at him and I said I can sell this for 87% of comps on eBay. And he said, well, Yu-Gi-Oh but you're gonna have to factor in your end of the year taxes. You're Gonna get your 1099k from eBay. And I'm thinking, first of all, don't tell me how to do my end of the year taxes. That has nothing to do with this. And that's another topic for another day. By the way. We've got some content at sports card school on that. But my point is, you don't pay a 20% fee on eBay. Transactionally, you pay a 13% fee. So if anyone is offering you anything less than 87% of comps, and occasionally people will say it's 85%, but then they round up. If, like, they're gonna pay you $112, they'll round up to 115, or if it's $116, they'll round up to 120. Good buyers will do that. Good buyers will do that. But other buyers, unfortunately, will just basically try to convince you to pay them less. And essentially what that amounts to is you getting ripped off. Because remember, you can always, if it's a liquid card, if it's a card that's selling often and there's several comps for them, which, if you think about it, loyal listeners of the Sports Card Strategy show and members of Nooffseason.com and Hobby Flipper will know those are the cards that we're talking about. Those are the cards that we want you to buy. So in those cases, you're going to be walking up to buyers with those Topps of cards. Now, if they're offering you less than 87% of comps, just walk away. You can sell those on eBay for 87% of comps. Now, will there maybe be some other fees for you towards the end of the year with taxes? Sure. But you can make your decision on what to do, how to file your taxes. Right. So in other words, you have other expenses. You may or may not be an llc. We don't know how you're filing. Like, that's why. That's a dumb comment by that buyer who was basically just trying to convince me to pay him less when he was already going to make a pretty massive profit off of my cards. Now, the other trick that I want you to avoid, which another buyer tried to use on me, and this is very, very common at any card show that you'll ever go to, people will want to try to buy all your stuff. And, you know, they might hand you back a couple of cards that they're not interested in, and that's fine, but a tactic. And I don't think it's malicious. I don't think that buyers are trying to rip you off in these cases. But another tactic that buyers will try to use at card shows. And again, when I say buyers, I'm referring to it could be anyone trying to buy your cards. It could be these people with these signs, which are everywhere now at every card show you ever go to. It could be at your local card shop. It could be at a trade night. It could whatever. But a tactic that people will try to do is they'll say, okay, well, they'll look through all your cards and they'll be like, all right. And you're getting excited, right? Because you're like, oh, they're gonna make me an offer on all these cards. Well, they'll separate them out and they'll say, okay, look, what I want to do is I want to pay you 90% of comps for these cards. And it'll typically be like more desirable cards, maybe like your, your kabooms, your downtowns, your other case hits. And then they'll take the other desirable cards, but not as rare like your Prizm silver PSA10s, maybe your top chrome Refractor PSA10s, or your base card PSA10s. Things like that could be like your BGS9 5s of the Kobe Bryant 1996 tops that you're all getting from making Our plays on Nooffseason.com one-of-one they'll take the non Kset cards and they'll say, but I want to pay you 80% of comps for all of these. Well, if you think about that, your stack of 80% cards that they're wanting to pay is going to f you times however many cards that is. So. And they'll try to position it as, oh, isn't this so great? Because I'm buying in bulk. They'll say, I'm going to do you a favor. I'm going to buy your cards in bulk. But because I'm buying your cards in bulk, I want a bulk discount. Well, that's a horrible deal. That's like basically saying, I want to buy an entire subdivision of homes that are all worth a certain amount on the market. And everyone can kind of agree that they're within this range. But instead of paying that range, that average range, what I want to do is I want to take these 70% of the subdivision that I don't like the Fleer plan as much, and I'M going to pay 80% for those homes and I'm going to pay 90 to 100% for the other 20% of homes where I do like the Fleer plan. So now you're the, you're the realtor or you're the developer of that subdivision, whoever's selling those homes. And you're going to. Wait a minute. You want 80% of my inventory at an 80% discount? Like, what planet are you from? You're not going to screw me over times 80% of my inventory? Like, that's just ridiculous. So you got to, you got to, you got to fight back, you got to negotiate, you got to renegotiate, reset the table in those situations. And then one more thing. In terms of the selling tips, you're going to want to establish an actual paid amount for each card. Because. Because what buyers will do is they'll talk about what they refer to as a value. Now, this is not the value of the card as we know it. This is not the value of the card as we talk about on the Sports Card strategy Show and@nooffseason.com and Hobby Flipper. This does not mean what the card sells for. This means the agreed upon amount before 0.8 times 0.8 or times 0.85 or times 0.87 or whatever, right? So the value is not what they're going to pay you for. The value is the agreed upon amount of comps with which they are then going to deduct their percentage and establish the amount that they want to pay you for. So what will happen in these bulk deals? Another thing that will happen in these bulk deals is you'll spend quite a bit of time with this person or these people, and then at the end of it, your numbers are way off because you're under the impression that the value is what you're getting paid. No, the value in their eyes is the comps that you've agreed on, quote, unquote, that they will then times their percentage by to get their lesser amount that they're gonna pay you. And, you know, I think that at some level this is a deceiving strategy by them. Because you've spent so much time with this person. You're sitting there, there's psychology involved in this. You're sitting there with these people and you're like, wait a minute, like, do I walk away from this? Can I. Is this, is this socially acceptable for me to walk away from this? So that's why I think early on you need to establish what the heck's going on. And go card by card. You know, I made a bulk deal with somebody yesterday, which would have been Thursday at the National. And this episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses setup required compatibility and availability various 18 plus early on in the, in the negotiation we established, I want to go card by card. I want to understand because I'm sitting there with my Hobby Flipper portfolio open, right? I'm literally sitting there and this was cool. Sitting there with my Hobby Flipper portfolio open and I'm marking cards as sold at the show, which I've never been able to do before. And so this amazing platform that we launched, hobby flipper.com again, no offseason.com members get it for free. And you can, if you're not a no offseason.com member and you just want to join Hobby Flipper, you can do that too. Hobby flipper.com but you get way more if you join nooffseason.com but one-of-one I'm sitting there and I'm like, this is great because I've got Hobby Flipper open. And as I'm making this deal at the National, I'm looking at what am I into each card for? Because that's a data point that we all need to understand. There's, there's, what is the agreed upon value of the card, which is the comps, right? What comp? So for example, Jaden Daniels, Kaboom horizontal PSA 10 rookie, right? That sold several times for 29,000 over this past month, but it also sold for 20. 29,000, sorry, 2900. That sold several times for 2900 over the past month and then it sold for 2600. So how are we establishing the comps that we're gonna negotiate on? So there's that data point. Then there's the data point of what percentage of comps are you paying me for this? Right? And then there's the data point of what am I into the card for? Okay, so that's important. That's very important because you want to know what am I gonna make from this deal on a card by card basis? And I can't emphasize that enough. So I'm sitting There with my hobby flipper portfolio open and I'm establishing early on in the deal, this is the, this is the percentage. But I want to do it card by card. And then what that does is it allows me to take cards out of the deal. And that's important. You can take cards out of the deal. If you, if you are going to lose on a card because of their whole 80% BS, take it out. Go from what would have been a deal where they were buying 50 cards from you down to a deal where they're buying five and you're up on those five and you feel good about it, that that's great. So look out for that. Now, lastly, I was talking to my friend Clark Kim from Cards to the Moon about this. Why are trade nights important? Why are peer to peer deals that have nothing to do with a dealer table, why are those important? Right? And I think we nailed it. I think a lot of times when you're working with dealers, the dealers are thinking about, look, I want to buy at 80% or 75% of comps, which is ridiculous. 80% is ridiculous, by the way. 80%'s effing ridiculous. 75%. They shouldn't even be allowed to be a dealer at the show. But in their, in their defense, and Clark brought this up, they're thinking about their overhead cost at the show. They're thinking about, oh man, I paid X amount for a table. I paid X amount for travel. In some cases. I've got employee overhead, I've got inventory that's not moving. I need to profit as much as possible. I need to squeeze out as much as possible on these deals so that I can actually make some money here, make some profit. Because let's face it, like, a lot of these hobby businesses are not thriving. And when you have a business that's not thriving, you try to, well, people that have businesses that aren't thriving, that aren't good people, then try to make up for that in other ways and try to rip people off. So that's why Clark and I, our conversations are important. He's very smart. Again, he's the podcast host of Cards to the Moon. We've collaborated a lot. Check out his stuff, his Instagram cards to the Moon and five card guys is great. So shout out to Clark. But Yu-Gi-Oh he brought up the point that, look, you know, we're like, why are, why are trade nights important? Like, why and why can you get better deals at trade nights? Like when you're, when you're dealing peer to peer, like If I show. Again, a good example is I showed a couple dealers at the. Buying everything. Buying everything, buying everything, tables. And you guys know what I'm talking about. If you've ever been to a card show in the last three years, I show, I show them the jaden Daniels Kaboom PSA 10. And I'm just using that card as an example, right? And it sold for, you know, it sold for 2900. 2900, 2900. And then it sold for. And it did sell for 3000. Then it sold for 2600. Right. Same card. Not literally the same card, but the same card. You know what I'm saying? And so one could stand to reason that the dealer could sell that for 2,900. So what do I want for it? I want 2,700. That's leaving $200 profit for the dealer if they just want to sell it less than 10 minutes later. Okay, so that's pretty freakin good. That's a pretty good deal for that dealer. That's not good enough for the dealer. The dealer again is thinking about all of their overhead and everything else. So they're. My best offer from dealers was like 2300 for that card. So am I going to leave $400 on the table? No. I can sell that same card to somebody at a trade night or just a peer to peer deal sitting down. And if you've been to the national or if you've been to big, any bigger, bigger local card shows, you see people that just are there to want to make deals. Peer to peer, they don't need a dealer to make deals. Everybody's got great cards. Especially if you're listening to the sports card strategy show. No offseason.com and hobby flipper. But point is I can get. I just want 2700 dealers. Like no, can't do 27. Gotta, gotta, gotta. Only do 22 or 23. 2250. That's my best. Okay. Dude, it'll. You could sell it less than 20 minutes from now for, you know, a $200 net profit. So I'm handing you $200. Nope. I want you to hand me $600. Okay. F you on to the next. That's why trade nights are important because we can make deals with each other. And again, you guys know me and we're going to talk about ebay a lot on this show. I'm a big ebay fan. Auctioning off the cards on ebay will give you the fair market value. All right. If you need help selling your cards at the right time, use Hobby flipper and no offseason.com's sell alert feature for premium members only. Join nooffseason.com now before no more spots are available. All right, so we spent some time talking about top selling strategies at the national and other card shows. And I want to spend some time talking about buying strategies at the national and possibly other card shows. So as you know, Nooffseason.com is the only place on the planet with sports card rankings now updated every day thanks to our technology@ HobbyFlipper.com powered by Hobby Flipper, our Nooffseason.com sports card rankings are a great place to understand what cards to buy for the best roi. And so I take that strategy and I use it at the national and other card shows the same way that I would look for deals online. I'm applying that to the national and other card shows. So for example, we've got Ken Griffey Jr. 1989 Upper Deck. I made some plays on that card in PSA 9 to to crack and submit to BGS in hopes of nine fives. So just the other day I was able to look at five of them in a dealer showcase and determine which were the best five or were all five going to be BGS 95 candidates? Which were the best out of the five is what I meant to say. And I determined that three out of the five would be good BGs 95 candidates. I got all of them for $450 each. And then I was able to also get a Kobe Bryant 1996 tops PSA 9 from the same dealer for a bit of a deal negotiated to get that for 320. So feeling good about those deals. Another one I just made. And I'll get to why this is a strategy at a card show here in a second. Is this Michael Jordan 1991 Upper Deck SP1 in SGC95. I'm gonna crack that out and submit it to BGS in hopes of a BGS 95. This is a play that I've been making, many of you have been making as well. Premium members@nooffseason.com have been making this play having a very high success rate. So why is this a card show strategy as well as an online strategy? So online strategy because the numbers work. Card show strategy because you can actually do what I did with the Griffey and what I did with the Kobe and this Michael Jordan 1991 Upper Deck SP1. You can get them out of the showcase, look at them, examine them through the slab with your own eyes. So Zebra clean this Jordan. Zebra clean were the Griffeys, Zebra clean was the Kobe. And when I say Zebra clean, like, obviously they didn't gem at their respective grading companies, but out of the four major categories, you've got your centering, your edges, your surface and your corners. I was able to determine that only one of them would be docked down to a 9 at BGS. So that is a great card show strategy. And I will say that the card analyzer and predictor tool as well as Hobby Flipper have really, really helped me price things out at this show. Yu-Gi-Oh FI is spotty, but I've been able to toggle between the Yu-Gi-Oh fi and the 5G as necessary. And I have for the most part so far. I'm recording this segment of the Sports Card Strategy show on Friday, July 31, so we'll see what Saturday, August 1 is like. It's probably going to be a little bit more crowded because it's a Saturday. Maybe the Yu-Gi-Oh fi will crap itself. But so far so good. So there's your buying strategy. And I've got another important strategy that many of you may not have anticipated. I've done some content before on like the top 10 tips to go to the national and they're not all card related, they're basic survival needs related. So I've implemented for the first two days of this national Thursday and Friday, what I call the Egg McMuffin strategy. And it's very, very simple. On my way to the show each day, I've gone through the McDonald's drive thru and I've purchased not one, but not two, but three Egg McMuffin sandwiches. Why? Because the numbers work out, my friend. Not only are they less expensive than the food that you buy here at the show, but they're healthier. The calorie numbers are better. You've got egg, you've got Canadian bacon, you've got an English muffin. And yes, I left the cheese on for a little bit of extra flavor. Sometimes I take the cheese off. But why did I buy three every day? Well, that's the other strategy. There's three square meals in a day for most people. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. And what you can do is you can pop those little extra egg McMuffins after you eat your breakfast, you pop the other little Fockers in your backpack and they make for a nice mobile lunch and mobile dinner at the national. The Egg McMuffin strategy. All right, so we have hit on our top national strategies. So Obviously this is a different type of episode of the Sports Card Strategy show only because all of the content is being recorded at the National. Typically I'm in the comfort of my own home studio when I record the show or go live with the show. But this past week I was at the national and this entire episode is not necessarily about the national, but one thing that is cool about it is if you're watching on YouTube.com Paul Hickey you can see some footage from the national. And one thing I'm looking at this year that I've never really looked at in years past are vintage cards. Never really been interested in vintage but premium members of Nooffseason.com who watch the Premium Pod every week. Now the Premium Pod is only for Premium members of Nooffseason.com it's an extra weekly episode of the Sports Card Strategy show. Premium members of Nooffseason.com who pay close attention to the Premium Pod get some extra insights such as which vintage cards am I buying this year and what is the play? Join NoOffSeason.com now to see my reveal of the player and the cards vintage that I'm going after and understand the play. All right, now is typically the time in the Sports Card Strategy show where I brag about how much people love no offseason.com and Hobby Flipper by reading testimonials from premium members who have emailed me. But I'm gonna do you one better. Today I met up with Juan and his crew and I talked to Juan, who's a premium member@nooffseason.com about how much he loves no offseason.com so let's get into it with Juan. Thanks again for doing this Juan. All right, what's going on? I'm here with my main man Juan, who is a premium member of Nooffseason.com, one of my favorite people to hear from. How you doing Juan? This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required Compatibility and availability Various 18 hey Paul, I'm doing great. It's great to meet you in person. This is awesome. I agree. I appreciate all your support. Zebra cool to meet up. So Juan Tell the Nooffseason.com family and the sports card strategy show how you got started in the hobby and when you got started. Yu-Gi-Oh so you know, I got started after Covid like a lot of people. And over the first five years I spent a lot of money on sports cards and lost a lot of money on sports cards. And you know, once I found out about you, no off season hobby flipper and really started thinking about the science of it and just focusing on a couple cards, things have really kind of turned for the better. That's awesome. Okay, so if you don't mind sharing, like, do you have any examples of like the mistakes you were making when you first got in? Yu-Gi-Oh the mistakes I was making was like stock market mistakes. Buy, buy high and sell low. Right. Buying anybody because they might be hot, doing breaks, things of that nature. And now once we started focusing in on a few players, buying them at the right time. You know, I'll give you an example. I sold a Caleb Williams on your guys recommendation. Beckett up a PSA 10 last year for 140 bucks. Sold it for 360 here at the sports car at the show. That's awesome. Good work. So how did you originally find sports card Strategy show and Nooffseason.com? Yu-Gi-Oh I think it was on Facebook. Just like a Facebook scroll. And then I tuned into the podcast. I was like, oh Yu-Gi-Oh this is a different, this is a different spin on the sports card and how to invest in sports cards and not falling in love and keeping certain sports cards but just trading it like, you know, stocks and bonds. So. Yu-Gi-Oh well that's awesome. So as you're at the national, like how many card shows have you been to? Is this your first national? This is my fifth national. Been one in Cleveland, Atlantic City, I think my third one here in Chicago. So each year it gets better and less confusing because I'm just focused on a handful of things as opposed to everything. Yu-Gi-Oh I love that. That definitely helped me out as well. Like my first few card shows, I Goldin really handle what was going on and so I was kind of spreading myself too thin, narrowing that focus. I think like what we talked about on the show and@nooffseason.com makes a lot of sense. So now that you've gone through the process of being a Nooffseason.com member and doing what you were doing, going to card shows, how do you find it? Navigating what we talk about doing online and then bringing that to the show to be successful, especially here at the National. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, it helps me focus on what I'm looking for. Right. I know what I'm looking for. Like a lot of it's the goats. Right. LeBron, Jordan, Kobe. Right. And you think, oh, why would these cards ever continue to go up? Well, because they're the goats. Right. The Shohei base card, I think it's number 600. I bought that thing a year ago, five of them for 100 bucks. You could sell them raw for 225. Now I'm sending them off to BGS because you can't get stuff graded at PSA right now. But those could be four or five hundred dollar cards. And so it's fun and you can make money. So that's the difference, I think really, between other strategies and yours. That's awesome. Thanks, Juan. Yu-Gi-Oh I think with like the Goats, you can be more patient. It sounds like that's what you've done. You've bought the right card for the right player at the right time and then you're patient with when you're selling it so that you're reaping the benefits of those prices going up. And I think that makes it easier to navigate a show like this versus kind of like consistently trying to flip online. When one of the biggest challenges I came across is like when I would buy online and then try to come to a show because everybody at the show wants to transact at like 80 to 85% of comps. And that's hard to do if you've left a comp online. But sounds like you've been patient again, you bought the right card for the right player at the right time. So it's really paying off for you. Yu-Gi-Oh I'll give you an example. I marked that Caleb Williams card, the360, which is at the high end of the market. And everyone that approached me said, oh, well, that's the high end of the market. I go, Yu-Gi-Oh but if he gets off to a hot start, that's going to be a 400 and something dollar card. And someone was like, Yu-Gi-Oh that's true. And they bought it. Well done. And when did you buy it again? Over a year ago. Okay, awesome. Last year, Heading into the season. Last year. Good stuff. All right, Juan. So, okay, other than like making money at the national, because we're doing all the right things at no offseason and you're a great support. I want to thank you for that. Other than that, what's your favorite part of the National? My favorite part of the national is sharing it with my Kids you just met my oldest, he's 22. My youngest is 14. He went to his first when he was nine in Atlantic City. And it's a great week for us. It's boys week. My wife's at home watching the dogs and we're just having a great time spending quality time, fun time with my kids. That's amazing. I'm glad you're enjoying the hobby and I'm honored to be part of your hobby journey, man. Nice to meet you. What's up? I'm here with my man Teapot. We're at the national talking some card strategies and I asked him about a card that I've always been intrigued by. I've seen it in a lot of showcases this week. I would kind of forget about it. It's the Irvin Julius Larry 1980 tops. Talk. Talk about that. Yu-Gi-Oh With. With Magic. Yu-Gi-Oh Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh You're saying Irvin. I think Irving, you're right. I call him Irvin, but it is Magic. You're right. I mean, you're a State fan, so maybe you can call him that. But Yu-Gi-Oh you know, all time iconic, top three, most iconic basketball card of all time. In my opinion. You got to throw the Jordan 90, 86 Fleer in there and probably LeBron's rookie. And those are the three, his chrome specifically, I would say, but I don't. Those have been on the rise. Goats are on the rise. Everything's on the rise. If it were me right now, and there's something I think is completely insane, but I can't deny that there's something going on, which is all these NBA stickers. If you go out and find one without an NBA sticker and it's a high grade that you could afford, then go take it to Mike Baker and see if you. Then you. That's like everybody's getting instant value on those. It's crazy. So I think that's the short term play. Long term, I would just park it away. I think if you're like going after a card right now in the basketball market and you're like, hey, I want to put one away for a while. There's. You can get one of those in all different grades. It's a great card. They're not making more of them. So, you know, that's phenomenal. That's why I'm glad I brought it up with you because not just like the trending of the pricing and everything, but. But the play of NBA sticker. Do you say that specifically because it's like technically vintage and the Yu-Gi-Oh appeal comes into play with that. So that will drive up the price. Yu-Gi-Oh we're seeing it everywhere right now. We're seeing it on every card. Ultra modern. Everybody's. There's. I've seen cards with as high as 80 to 100% premium on them for, like, a gold sticker. Not even the black diamonds. I've been very critical of it. I wouldn't personally pay up for. For it. I think it's crazy. I'm also not the kind of guy that pays up for like, a 10 when I can get a 9 for my PC. I like to have cool cards no matter what. But it is. There's a craze kind of going on right now. I just talked to a guy who did a card that was at like 40K and then they went and got an NBA sticker on it and flipped it for 53,000. Like, it's just. So you're seeing 10, 20. The higher the value of the card, the more there's. It's not going to be, like, double the value, but. And they're not like, handing them out, you know, on everything. I just. I'd like to know more about the process. But if. I mean, it's worth. I think it's worth the shot, honestly, if you can. If you're doing that, even to stick it away with the sticker, who knows how those are gonna value over time? I don't know, but it's crazy. That is an interesting play, Teapot. I love that. And Yu-Gi-Oh we're gonna dig into the pricing on that 1980 Irvin, Magic Johnson, Julius Irving, and Larry Bird, technically Larry and Magic's rookie card. Thanks, Teapot. All right. As I mentioned earlier on in the show, I will be making some vintage plays this year. Will it be any of these people? Will it be Tony Gwynn? Will it be Fernando Valenzuela, Dave Concepcion? Will it be Ernie Banks, Ed Matthews, Willie Stardrill? I saw someone's phenomenal Roberto Clemente collection the other day. I don't know. It could be. It could be some of these guys, or it might be so far from these guys that it's crazy to even mention their names. But you got to be a premium member@nooffseason.com to hear on the premium pod who I'm making my vintage plays on. Okay. I've noticed that a lot of prices have gone up over the last year. I was just talking to Teapot at Sports Card Investor and Market movers about this and shout out to my guy Carter, as Well, Carter just came by and said hello Cards hq. Cards HQ is opening a new store basically right down the street from where I grew up and lived. Great Lakes Crossing Mall in Michigan, about five miles away from where I grew up, which is pretty cool. Alright, so prices that have gone up huge in the last year, just kind of an anecdote from walking around at the national and I'm reminded of a lot of cards when I look in showcases. For example, just talked to teapot about the 1980 Topps Magic Johnson Rookie. That's also like the triple card with Julius Irving and Larry Bird in it. Teapot said one, in his opinion, one of the top three most iconic basketball cards. And that's obviously I don't really love opinions, but I do respect Teapot's opinion. So like if Teapot says that that comes from a place driven by data also combined with a collector point of view as well, which is important when you're investing in sports cards. You want to know is this collectible, is this desirable? So sales data is a huge part of it, but also the collectibility is a huge part and oftentimes go together. So there are some other cards that I have just noticed price tags in showcases on that I was purchasing a year ago or two years ago and they've gone up a ton in the last year. And I mean I've owned these cards. The general sentiment of the hobby right now from people that I've talked to is that while prices could continue to go up, prices have risen so much for a lot of the goat players or top players in each sport that I think a lot of us are wondering like can this price increase continue? Of course it can. It just depends on the supply and demand and but from a short term flippability standpoint, I think there are some questions with some of these cards. So for example, Wemby's Topps Chrome Rookie Auto PSA10 was a card that I owned and made quite a bit of money flipping. Last year I saw a sticker on it for 12k and I almost shit myself when I saw that sticker. I had to do like a triple take. Is this a Refractor? Is this like low serial numbered and. Nope, it was a PSA10. It was the base auto from 2023 Topps Chrome in PSA10. Now I did double check the pricing at hobby flipper, @nooffseason.com and in market movers and despite the 12k sticker it is only a six thousand dollar card. Now having said that, that's More than double what it was worth a year ago, which is interesting, but it's half of what it was stickered for. So a couple other Jordan cards like Michael Jordan 1988 FLIR PSA 9 and 1987 FLIR PSA 9 are easily double what they were a year ago. Which is fine because if you're doing like a crack and submit to bgs, which would be really the only play that would make any sense in my opinion, you're also seeing double of those prices and you still have the same amount of downside that you did a year ago because the BGS9s have essentially risen along the same rate. So it depends on like when people talk about prices going up in the hobby, you gotta look at what's the play, what's the intention with the card. So for example, the Wemby I'd be a little leery of buying because he's coming off a big season. Now I'm not saying be leery of buying Wemby. I'm saying that particular card, for example, having almost 3x in the course of a year. Just be careful on something like that. Make sure you're buying it in an ebay auction with more than 20, 30, 40 bids and you're protected by the authenticity guarantee program. And you have looked at say the Hobby Flipper data and understood like what the trending it could be again in May, right? Like if that card is down now compared to it was where it was last May and you can get it in an auction, okay, maybe I'd be leery on six grand. I think there are other better Wemby plays that you could get in the sports card rankings. But I'm just, I'm just sharing that as one scenario that using that card as an example now with the Jordans, when we look at like these goat prices going up, if your intention is to buy and hold a card like the one like the Topps magic Julius and Bird card that we that I spoke with Teapot about his suggestion of the Mike Baker Authentication MBA sticker as a Blue Ice a great one because you have an intention to alter that product in some way that could see the value go up. Those three players having been retired, what's going to happen with that card to make it go up from where it is now? Looking at the trending of that card, if it has been going up over the last year, might not be the best time to buy. Why not wait until it does start to come back down a little bit and try to get a deal on it in some way, shape or form. Now, who's to say that it's not going to continue to go up? Maybe it will. That's going to be. But that's why it's a tricky purchase, right? That's why you almost have to figure out how to alter it in some way. Not physically alter the card, but alter the product. Meaning, are you going to regrade it? Are you going to go with the Mike Baker authentication play that teapot mentioned a minute ago? I think that those are cool ideas to toss around with the Jordan 1988 and Fleer base PSA 9s. I mean, no reason why those cards should double in a year other than the fact that it's an indicator again of what we've talked about on the sports card strategy. Show the market growing, the demand starting to outweigh the supply. And the only way that happens with a Michael Jordan card like that is more people coming into the hobby buying cards, thinking through what else to do. I think about the 1980 tops. And I think while it's nice to see it at a show like this, maybe I don't buy it at a show like this. Maybe a show like this reminds me that cards like that are out there, but the best way to buy it is in an ebay auction. And just take my time with it, right? Like really do some true analysis around when the best time is to buy that card and what's the best buying format? What's the best grade? Are there. Are there regrade opportunities? So stay tuned. You know, I think that's a great one to add to Hobby Flipper to see how it plays into the Nooffseason.com sports card rankings. So stay tuned on that one. So again, there are a ton of data tools out there. Ebay doesn't give you everything that you want. Nooffseason.com and Hobby Flipper together try to do that. Nooffseason.com has created this new data tool that's ready for our premium members, Hobby Flipper. The purpose of Hobby Flipper is aligned with the purpose of NoOffSeason.com to help you find the right card for the right player at the right time and to help you make money flipping sports cards. As such, Hobby Flipper doesn't compete with Market movers or Card ladder in terms of the number of cards it tracks, since less than 5,000 total cards actually have repeatable plays. And I think that Bird Magic Dr. J card should be in the 5,000. So I think I'll be adding that soon, within the next few months, really it doesn't make sense for us to be tracking like 6, 7 million, 8 million cards the way that market movers and card ladder does. So we're gonna stick to our our focus. 5 to 10,000 total cards in Hobby Flipper at any given time. And the best thing about it is it helps you immediately see the plays to make and the plays to fade. Based on the math. We've got the raw to grade upside, we've got the regrade upside, we've got the already graded upside. The best thing right now is when you click on a card details page, if it's a raw card or a PSA 9, it's going to calculate the math for you on a raw to grade or a regrade opportunity and put you right in the mix for. Is this a thumbs up? Is this a thumbs down? With what grading company? I think Hobby Flipper doing a lot of the work for you is a huge value proposition. Also, I've mentioned this before, but like the portfolio feature and the flips feature really come in handy. That's the inventory tracker, that's the sell alerts new and improved@ HobbyFlipper.com so definitely make sure you're taking advantage of those switching gears real quick. Ebay is featured a lot in this episode. Ebay Live. How can the sports Card Strategy show and Nooffseason.com family utilize it to make sense for what we do? We love ebay core. How do we get value out of ebay Live? Yu-Gi-Oh we know ebay wants us to use it, but what's in it for us as the nooffseason.com family? All right, everybody, I'm here with a very special guest. Ashish Chhabra, the General Manager, VP of eBay Live. Very excited to talk to him today. How you doing, sir? This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 pig restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses. Setup required. Compatibility and availability various 18 plus doing great. The energy is fantastic. How could you not be great here? Absolutely. We're here at the national and welcome, Ashish, to the Sports Card Strategy show in the Nooffseason.com family. We're happy to have you. Okay, so first of all, let's just start with a general question about ebay live. So on the sports card strategy show, we love ebay. Kind of everything that we do revolves around ebay, mainly the core product though, and bidding on auctions. So just kind of tell us a little bit more about the live shopping offering that you guys have built over the last several years and where it came from and where it is right now. Sounds good. Awesome. Well, first of all, thank you for doing everything with ebay. Ebay live is basically ebay brought to life in a live shopping format. And what that means for us is it brings the sellers, the community, the voices behind the amazing inventory that makes the ebay platform special and unique to life in a really engaging space. So you got live streaming just the way any live streaming platform works. With ebay's core platform built in the ebay inventory, ebay sellers built on the foundation of ebay's trust rail that we've been proud of for 30 years. And what that has meant is it brings to life all the live shopping fun, but in a really positive community, forward trusted way that we're really proud of. Absolutely. Okay, so talk about real quick. What Topps of products are sold on live mainly and then what Topps of products like don't make it to the live shopping platform on ebay? So for now, at this point, across both collectibles, fashion, even electronics, across multiple categories, ebay live exists and is doing really well. We started first in collectible space, especially trading cards. And so that's really been a fun part of the business. It continues to do really well within that, sports trading cards, breaks, the collectible card games switch over to comic books, coins, sports memorabilia. So across the gamut, the toys space. Across the gamut of collectible space, ebay live is doing really well. We have sellers, streamers, content buyers, very special thriving communities across all of those. We have some really good emerging communities in fashion, across luxury and apparel, beauty even doing really well across all those spaces on ebay live right now. Okay, great. Thanks for that context. I just kind of wanted to establish the context of the entire product before we jump into collectibles and get detail oriented into collectibles. So we're here at the national recording this and you guys have an amazing, I don't want to call it a booth. It's a whole area here and it's centered around ebay live. There's interviews, there's live streams. Walk everybody through what you guys have going on at the national this week and like all the work that your team's put into it. And just all the highlights of the live event activation here. Yu-Gi-Oh thank you for that compliment earlier. The entire space here brings to life everything that ebay brings to the table in the hobby space. You see the big live booth back there. Right now, one of our sellers is breaking live. We've got Marshall Falk up there. And so there's the live activation. Right now, the space we're in is your price guide challenge. And so this brings to life another aspect of ebay platform that is incredibly powerful for collectors. Scan your card, get a price range, price guidance. So the entire space is built from live to price guides to the some amazing collections across the board. And you got breaker pavilions and streaming pavilions all around this space where we have live shows running right from nationals on ebay Live right now. Yu-Gi-Oh it's amazing. I mean, it's one of the best live activations I've ever seen. And it's. I saw Donovan McNabb earlier. We got Marshall Falk. Like you just said, it's really cool. Okay, so I want to jump into a few things that I know our audience is really interested to learn about with the live platform. So from a collectible standpoint, there's all different kinds of collectibles, and we talk about sports cards and specifically how to help people make money flipping sports cards. One of the reasons why we're so in love with ebay core, is because you mentioned trust early, like, early on, like, ebay is the most trusted platform, protects the buyer, which in turn makes it like the best place platform to be a seller on. And so being able to participate in the traditional auctions. And we all know when you have a desirable item listed on ebay, and in our case, a sports card listed on ebay, if it's desirable, it's going to do well because ebay has the largest audience by far. It's not even close of hobbyists that are interested in the sports card that's up for auction. So that's kind of our number one favorite thing is to auction off a sports card at the right time on ebay to get the maximum return. And you know, of course, if it's an item $250 or more domestic in the US and meets meets certain other criteria, it's authenticity guarantee. And by the way, I don't want to sidebar too much, but I did see an announcement that there's authenticity guarantee program is expanding to some other areas. So that's interesting. But as it relates to live, I'm wondering. Well, first of all, how did you decide which sellers would get on live, and can any ebay seller apply to be a live seller? How does that process work? So when we first started the process, we were very, very selective. We wanted to make sure, as I said earlier, trust is the heartbeat of ebay as a platform. And you kind of touched on that earlier. Well, we were very selective, making sure sellers we're going to bring on, partners we're going to work with can both bring an audience, create fun shows. That's a big part of, like having the. Creating live content is about not just having inventory, but also being able to create a fun show and then bring trust to the table. And as we have continued to learn in the space over the coming weeks, even you should expect more and more sellers to be invited into that program and be able to do it while making sure that the trust standard we are applying will continue to apply. So we'll continue to make sure that the sellers that are streaming on ebay live meet our trust criteria, meet our trust standard, but expect more of the sellers that are tuning into your shows to be able to apply or even get invited into ebay live. So that sort of answers your question around how we've been going through the selection process there. Okay, so more access potentially to trusted ebay sellers that have built up a reputation over the years, but that maybe haven't had as big of an audience or as big of numbers as some of the folks that you've started with that are also trusted sellers. That's exactly right. So that's where we'll continue to go. And as we have continued to scale the platform, what we're beginning to get to is a place where we have enough streaming content that buyers who are already buying in this category, we're beginning to surface live streams in a more relevant fashion for the ones that find it interesting, find it engaging. So we are able to funnel a lot more of the. You touched earlier on a lot of buyers on our platform in these categories. We're thinking of being able to funnel more of them into these live streams, which gives us more comfort and confidence in being able to open up to more streamers and more sellers to be able to use ebay life. So I have, like, a general concern overall with just live shopping in the hobby, and it's hard. I'm going to try to, like, put it into words that make sense here. So we've seen with some other live shopping platforms, cards specifically, that sell for a lot higher than the fair market value, what we would Consider the fair market value. We've also seen like, sort of a lack of tracking the data of those items. And like, and if someone's willing to pay a price for something, that's fine, like, there's more power to them. Like, they want the card. To your point, it's an entertaining show, they like the seller. There's nothing wrong with any of that. Our audience though specifically is really trying to get the right card for the right player at the right time for the fair market value of the card. And I use that phrase meaning like, basically when you have 20 to 40 or more people bidding on an ebay auction, it's going to get in its authenticity guaranteed. That's a level that our audience knows. Okay, there's at least 20 to 40 to 50 to several hundred people that I could resell this card to for a very similar value. Hence the fair market value. When you're on a live stream, you don't necessarily. That doesn't necessarily come out of the box with that live stream the way that it does when you can sit down and look at an auction. So as ebay, how have you guys thought through some of those situations with where people, yes, they might overpay for an item because it's an entertaining stream, but have you thought through and where will things go in the future in terms of being able to get the data of. Okay. Joe Burrow, 2020 Optic Hollow PSA 10 has sold in 50 eBay auctions today for an average of $320. We want to make sure that it's not selling for 5, 6, $700 in it or $100 in an eBay livestream. But we also want to track that data so that it kind of gets into the same access of the data where the ebay core is coming from, the auctions. So I know that's a lot, but just kind of talk me through your thoughts on that. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, you touched on a couple of different things. All the auto's lead back a little bit to trustworthiness of the. The experience. We're standing at this table price guides. We have spent a lot of time and energy building something like this. We don't want to build experiences that don't connect with each other. So when we start talking about sellers having their ebay stores and being able to pull that inventory back into ebay live, whatever price it sells at, that goes right back into the core pool on the transaction values and it powers this. So that's one part of the ecosystem. The second you touched on Authenticity guarantee and how that's become a really important part of it. And you talked about expansion and all those things that we're talking about here. Just know that the same sort of rules apply to all ebay livestreams. All ebay live items that meet the same threshold and same criteria go through the same process from an authenticity guarantee perspective. So all the trust policies, trust ecosystems, all of those things, same things apply. Autopay that makes sure that the items are actually getting paid. And we can see a through line from a transaction to a payment. All those same things work consistently across ebay live and ebay core. And so that's one of the things we're continuing to be really thoughtful about. I meant what I said earlier. Trust is maybe the most critical currency we have. And so we are being very thoughtful about making sure these things are similar and consistent across ebay live and ebay core. We don't necessarily see them as two different platforms. We see them as two different modalities of commerce that work in inside the ebay ecosystem and actually reinforce Flawless across both of them. Yu-Gi-Oh and you hit on ebay price guide, which I don't talk about enough on the show. That's a great tool. So it's good to know what you said. Like data from live streams are coming into price guide. They're being aggregated as part of the same collectible item. The price guide includes data from both. Or at least that's the intention moving forward. Yu-Gi-Oh And look to the degree that it's an ebay listing that actually already was tied to a card and we can tie it back, it will all flow right through into price guides. This is why I keep going back to. It's built as one platform sharing the same rails, and that's why it feeds into the right same way that any core transaction would into price guide and price frameworks. Okay, that makes sense. So I'll let you go here in a minute, but I'm Zebra into this conversation right now, so I appreciate your time. From a singles stream standpoint, that's obviously easier to do because the seller, the host, the show host can preload the items in, talk about some of the challenges that might happen from trying to track those items from a breaker and maybe just kind of give an overall view from your standpoint on how braking fits into eBay live versus coming on and being a live seller that's selling single sports cards. It's a great question. Look, breaks, obviously the format is slightly different to begin with. You're actually buying A spot, you're getting a team, you might be getting a player. That is one place where we're still working through a different few different ways on how the price will can flow right back in. But again, that's another place where when I think about letting on trusted sellers to make sure that the experience we're putting out there, the way the experience is getting built, the transactions that are happening, they're still trusted. So those are pieces that we're still building into the ecosystem the same way pricing and how that kind of feeds in is one of the things that we're still working through. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, I can't imagine that that would be easy at all. But it's good to know that you're. It's in the, you know, it's on the task list, I guess, or it's not in the. It's not necessarily in the current sprint, but it's maybe in the backlog of the sprint plan. It is. And I think one of the biggest things that, where I think the price guide again becomes really interesting in breaks is you get a card. Can we actually give you values on that in the in stream? So those are the kind of things where we think about how does the integration work. And so again, like lots of things in flight, lots of things that we are constantly debating ideas on that. I mean, I would think that ebay has a huge advantage as opposed to the competitive live shopping apps. EBay Live has a huge advantage because of what you said earlier. Like it's really one family, eBay core, eBay live trying to come together. And I can't imagine that it's easy to make that happen because live shopping is very different than the traditional ebay product. It is. But again, like I think the things that I think that make live shopping tick, obviously there are things that are unique about it. You're seeing the entertainment action going on behind us. You're talking about streaming, you're talking about all those pieces that are new and unique to it, but a lot of the heartbeat underneath that, people looking for amazing inventory connect with sellers and community that they are passionate about, those we are able to derive off of ebay core. And that I think is a really big strength for ebay live in that it actually runs on the same rails of positive community. Trusted sellers, trusted inventory. EBay's trust, capabilities built in and depth of inventory all brought to life in this entertainment fashion with live connect between buyers and sellers. So that's why we continue to feel confident that this can scale really well for Us. Okay, I have one last question. It's kind of tongue in cheek here, but I think you'll know where I'm going with this and I think you'll have a very good professional answer that's valuable to the audience. Like, I think there are some live shopping hosts on whatever platform, it doesn't matter, that aren't entertaining. You're not like, you're not. It's not a good show, it's not engaging. People are there because they like the host or they want to see what kind of cards and items that the host has. But even objectively, like you're watching a duck race or you're watching somebody spin a wheel and there's nothing happening. And so again, it is a little tongue in cheek, but the actual serious question is, does eBay Live have a mechanism of some way or a review process of reviewing what hosts are doing to make sure that the programming is, I mean, it's all subjective, but that the programming is headed in the right direction and engaging and not just kind of somebody messing around before they actually start selling the. And honestly, I think it's. I think it is more likely to happen in breaks during the process of when the slots are being sold and all that. So I'm not trying to be critical to these sellers, but it is. That process lends itself to some downtime that has to be filled. It's not always filled with the best, most engaging content. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses. Setup required. Compatibility and availability varies. 18. This is a complicated space as you talk about it, right? The piece that we review the most for, spend a lot of time and energy on is making sure the experience is trusted. For us, that's table stakes. So we watch, we keep an Yu-Gi-Oh and we have mechanisms to detect any places where things happen, whether it's commerce that's happening in a way that we don't like, content that's getting produced in a way that we don't like. We don't think it's professional, we don't think it's appropriate for our platform, our audiences, we watch for that, we enforce that pretty hard. When it comes to taste, it's subjective as you said, it gets hard to enforce something. What we constantly watch for is what kind of engagement is it getting from audiences. And we use that to drive a lot of how we sort, how we rank. And if it's not getting engagement, it doesn't get ranked. So there is a big part of that that actually takes care of that. At the same time, we do put our guides to our sellers and our streamers a lot on what are the best practices, what are the things we see work with other streamers that are having success? And we expect a lot of times, as sellers go on, as streamers go on, they learn from that, they adapt, they play, but they keep getting better. And at times they surprise us. Things we didn't think would work, we see working. And we used that to become part of the next generation of best practice. So we work. It's a nuanced answer. It's not quite maybe what you're looking for, but works across a few of these themes this way. No, it's a great answer because you hit on some great points there. Like, it is all about trust. First of all, you have to make sure that the buyers are getting the items that they want and then they're getting them in a timely manner and they're authenticated and all that. And then you're right, there is actual, like engagement metrics that you can look at. And then if there's an algorithm that feeds that, then that does take care of itself. So I think it's brilliant answer to my question. I love it. Ashish Chhabra, GM, VP of eBay Live. Thank you so much for your time. I will say it's come a long way, like in a year. I mean, like, again, we're at this live activation here at the National. It's come a long way in a year. I can see just the amount of sellers, the amount of engagement, being here. Happy to share this interview with all of you who weren't able to be here. But I will say, being here, definitely you can see how well it's grown in a year. And anything else you want to add for our audience? Well, look, thank you for first of all having me on the show. Thank you for being here with us and thank you for the compliment. We are proud of what we're building. We are working really closely with our sellers and buyers. We're excited by the reception we're getting from our community, which has been really positive. And look, what you can continue to expect from us is that trusted growth. We're going to continue to Lean into that in a way that we are building this the right way, leaning into our community. Build a positive community around a really trusted group of sellers on a platform that enables that. Awesome. Thanks again for your time. Appreciate it. I thought he did a great job. We're going to talk to Lucy from ebay about it in a second. But before I tee up our interview with Lucy, I want to talk about the ebay authenticity guarantee expanding because that's another thing. News item that came out this week while we were at the national and many of you have probably already seen it on social media. Shout out to Joey, Davina, one-of-one at ebay for helping these interviews happen, for giving us the information about the authenticity guarantee and everything going on with ebay. I'd like to say hello to my friend Mike Nett from ebay. Janie Parisini. What's up? LBD is somebody I met from ebay who's a great guy. My guy, Jay Wright, of course. Megan. What's up? Megan's the OG friend of the sports card strategy show. All right, so ebay authenticity expands. Authenticity guarantee, of course, reinforces buyer confidence. Here's what's changing. Graded trading car eligible raw and graded trading cards, $200 and above will now qualify for the authenticity guarantee. This is down from $250. This is a good thing because $200 is a lot to spend for a sports card. And $249 and below, we're not covered. So we used to talk on the sports card strategy show about a little Beckett of cards that weren't covered and sort of what to do and beware if you were bidding on those cards. But now I think those being covered is a good thing. So there's, there's different categories, and the category we care about are the sports trading card singles. So those are covered now from $200 and above, which is great. Eligible listings will automatically display the blue authenticity guarantee badge when they qualify. So again, beware of sets, lots, kits, decks, box packs, art cards, and redemption cards not being eligible at this time. All right, coming up next, we've got Lucy Yang from ebay. She's the GM and senior director of U.S. collectibles. Let's get into it. All right now, I'm Zebra excited to bring in Lucy Yang from ebay. Give us a different perspective on things. Lucy, I've had a chance to talk to some amazing folks at ebay this week, so happy to have you on the sports card strategy show. Welcome to the Nooffseason.com family. Tell us how things are going for you at the national, and I'd really like to know more about your specific role at ebay, what you do at ebay. Yu-Gi-Oh happy to. This is actually my first national, so I'm really excited to be here and just to see all the excitement and the vibrancy of the hobby on display. I'm really excited that ebay is showing up in such a big way here again, probably the biggest way we've ever shown up at the National. But to your other question about who I am. So, Lucy Yang, I'm the general manager of U.S. collectibles, which includes categories from trading cards to coins to toys and comics. So a broad range within that. I know you've probably talked to some other folks on the team before, and I'm really excited to be here to represent ebay. That's awesome. So thanks again for joining us. So I was kind of telling you before the interview that our audience is Zebra detail oriented regarding buying and selling specifically sports cards on ebay. So I would say what we're doing is we're looking at sports cards that are typically $50 to $5,000. And so one thing that I'll ask you just off the bat, we've already kind of mentioned it on this episode, but talk to us about the authenticity guarantee program. That's something that launched several years ago. We've been huge fans of it on the sports card strategy show just because of the buyer protection. We use ebay for many reasons, but one reason is the buyer protection. And the authenticity guarantee program we believe has worked really well. So it has been $250 cards and above for the US to us only. Tell us a little bit more. We know that it's changing the lower level of 200 and above, but tell us a little bit more that we may not know about what's going on and maybe why ebay decided to make the decision. Yu-Gi-Oh great question. I mean, we're also big fans of authenticity guarantees, so it's great to hear that your viewers and listeners love it as well. I think the way we see it is it's not just buyer protection, but seller protection as well, so that they can have peace of mind as they ship cards out. And there's an independent, you know, PSA authenticator to be able to check those cards. We're, as you mentioned, we're really excited about the price threshold drop to 200. And as you know, authenticity guarantee checks not just the authenticity of the card, but also the condition of the card, which is relevant for both raw and graded. So that part is really awesome. The other part that maybe has gotten a little less pressed is that that threshold drop also applies to the grading add on service that PSA provides through our program and also the vaulting. And so folks will be able to access vaulting and grading add on also at that lower threshold. Now, I'm so glad you brought that up. Those are amazing points because we have seen an evolution of not only the Authenticity Guarantee program, but also how it connects to those grading at checkout options and the vaulting options. So I'm really glad you brought that up. And another thing you brought up which is key is the seller protection. So a little story, a little personal story. I've told it on the Sports Card Strategy show before, but it bears repeating because I think one of the reasons listeners connect with our show is we talk about these actual real world scenarios that happen to us. So I recently sold a LeBron James Topps Chrome 2003 rookie PSA9, which is obviously a big card. I believe I sold it for somewhere around $2,500, maybe, maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less. But. And it was a, I would say it was a profit of about 500 for me and it was probably within a few months from when I bought it. So I think I bought it maybe in like March and sold it during the NBA playoffs. So I'm Zebra excited. And the buyer's Zebra excited. Well, what happened was it got off, it got to the authenticator, it got authenticated, and then it got shipped to the buyer. So my peace of mind, it's 100%. I'm like, I'm good at that point. Well, the buyer filed a dispute because it was lost from the authenticator to the buyer. Now, much to my pleasant surprise, my initial mess, I was about ready to email Davina and see if she could help me out with the situation. But it was already taken care of by the Authenticity Guarantee seller protection that you mentioned. Because as soon as I clicked on my email that took me to the ebay page, it said, you're good, you don't need to worry at all. And then one more thing is bringing it down to 200 also helps. Another little thing, when items get lost in the mail, it's obviously not the seller's fault, it's not the buyer's fault, it's definitely not ebay's fault. But it happens. And sometimes people get frustrated. But the United States Postal Service, when you ship Ground Advantage or you ship via the United States Postal Service, you automatically for ground advantage, you get protected up to a hundred dollars. Now that authenticity guarantee is coming down to 200. There's a $50. There's $50 that you would get back if you don't insure. And there's $50 less that you would have to insure the item to get to the authenticator. And all those numbers as, I mean, I warned you, Lucy. I said we were detail oriented. But like all those $5, $10, $20, like, add up when you're trying to do what we do, making money, flipping sports cards. So. All right, now back to you for anything else you want to add in terms of like, the features and functionality going on with like the ebay core product related to like, we talked about Price Guide before the interview. Is there anything else you want to share? Updating our listeners on Price Guide I think would be great. Great. Yu-Gi-Oh I'd love to talk about Price Guide. So Price Guide is a tool that ebay has built over the last year or so and you can access it for from a couple different ways. And because sometimes when I say that, people are like, I don't know where to find it. So one way is that you can go through my ebay and if you scroll down, there's a link called Scan cards and you can actually take a picture of the front of your card and it'll help match you to the right catalog entry essentially for that card. And you can browse accurate pricing information, both historical and current listings that are up. And the other cool thing that it shows you is relevant card ladder indices tied to that card. So like whether that's the player or the sport or whatever pop count if it's a graded card. And you can toggle between different, like grades. So you can check what a PSA 9 was, what a PSA 10, you can check what the ungraded was. So you can make some decisions about if this is the card that you want to buy or sell or if you want to maybe grade it first. So. And then maybe back to the what I said originally. So the other place that you can access that for now is if you go to the View item page, the page that you're literally browsing and shopping for your cart. There's a just above the add to cart or buy it now button. There's all these insights that are already on the page itself, but there's a link that you can click See insights to see more. And so everything I just described is also there. And we're looking to bring all those insights across all of ebay as we, you know, I know people interact with ebay in different ways, whether that's selling, listing, buying, comping. And so you'll see us continue to invest in this because we know that, you know, ebay is the place that has so much pricing data and sold data and we want to make that more accessible and be the definitive place and one stop shop for folks. Yu-Gi-Oh you brought up some other great points with like being able to toggle between the grades and I mean you're already thinking like how our listeners think. So I feel like you might be actually a F of the show if you, if you listen, if we know you'll listen to your own interview. Right. I mean everybody does that and then we hope you, you become an actual fan of the show. So I could see that happening. A few more questions I want to ask you while I have you. So you're over all of collectibles, not just trading cards. So I, I just have to tell a quick story, like one of the reasons why when I got back into the hobby at the end of 2020, you know, I'm looking at memorabilia, I'm looking at other sports related items, not just sports cards. There's obviously like ticket stubs and all sorts of cool things, autograph memorabilia, things like that game worn stuff that gets sold on ebay. One of the reasons why I decided to go specifically into sports cards is because pricing on items from a grading and even raw standpoint sometimes is, is very similar. It's more of a stock market because you're essentially based on the amount of volume of sales that happens on ebay from a sports card specific standpoint, partially because of the grading. But even just cards in general, you have that stock market appeal that's trickier with memorabilia, that's trickier with ticketing. But what's your take on how those items can eventually, over time, maybe relate more to sports cards in that aspect? Are those items being also tracked in the price guide, things like that? Yu-Gi-Oh good question. So for now those items are not tracked in the price guide. But what I would say is those are really important categories on ebay as well. I mean we're standing behind some really cool memorabilia here. So we got the Michael Jordan auction going on with Upper Deck and that's going to be going on through August 9th. So if you haven't checked it out, you should, or the listeners should. But I would say with memorabilia it's a little bit different because it's more not as catalog based. Right. So there's Just a lot of one of one type stuff that's just hard to track over time. But what we're focused on is how to continue to bring like trust to the shopping equation. So I don't have anything to report here, but that's definitely something we're focused on. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. You can or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability various 18. Okay, so there's two more questions. Okay. When I check out, I'm getting automatic checkout for just about everything that I do when I'm selling. My buyers are not always getting automatic checkout. And I'm getting like with it's like I'm like, your card's gonna get charged within an hour. So I'm like, so when I. What's that? That mindset has changed my bidding. So I'm. I'm filter and other. I'll give a shout out to Janie, Janie Parasini. When she was on the Sports card strategy show in the fall, she said, toggle in your search to the authenticity guarantee. Make sure that's on. Which is a great tip. And I've been doing that ever since she said that. I don't know why I wasn't doing it before she said that. But she's Zebra smart so I'll give her credit for that now. But it's changed my bidding even more because now I know I'm gonna get charged. Like I can't. If I one-of-one that auction, I can't change my mind. So my question is, well, speak to that a little bit. And also if you can answer the question, maybe why it's not always happening with the people that are buying my items, because I think our audience wants to know a little bit about that, if you can. You asked a lot of great questions, so I'm going to try to unpack that one. I'm assuming you have a pretty large store. Is that possible? Yu-Gi-Oh Okay, I apologize. I didn't know that already. But I think there's a couple of different reasons. And so I'm speculating a little bit here, to be totally honest. But certainly the idea is to enable automatic payment for everyone going through just to enable the trust that you're talking about so that you know that your item's getting paid for the seller. Right. It's possible that for some large sellers we enable a combined shipping so it allows buyers to be able to buy across multiple items in your store and be able to combine that shipping before it gets sent out. So we do allow something like a seven day. It's not really a grace period but basically opportunity to shop and combine your cards. Right. And so for you it's actually a good thing as well. So you don't have to individually ship cards through Ground Advantage and get that price like doubled or tripled or whatever. There are other small reasons as well potentially. But overall in this gets you maybe the, the second part of your question is ebay is taking unpaid items really seriously. And so I one-of-one report you, but I'm glad to hear that you're definitely paying for all the items that you're bidding on. But earlier this year we even, I'm sure you know, but we announced a policy where buyers will no longer be able to cancel auctions if they one-of-one it. And so with that we're definitely taking this quite seriously. And over the next, I would say month or so, you'll see stricter consequences rolling out. Remind us for payment and yes, some, you know, consequences for if you don't pay and that will ramp up as behavior continues. So. Okay, we love that. That's something we've been wanting for several years. So thanks for implementing that and thanks Lucy Yang for being on the Sports Card Strategy Show. Really appreciate your time. Nice to meet you. Thank you. Thanks again to Lucy Yang from ebay and thanks again to Davina for setting that up. And our guy Joey. Joey has just led me over to the new packaging. So according to Lucy, this is a prototype of the new packaging that you all will be getting when you now buy an item that meets the authenticity guarantee. Which I have to say looks pretty cool. What do you think? Let me know in the comments@YouTube.com PaulHickey what you think of the new ebay authenticity guarantee packaging. Alright, great stuff with Lucy Yang from ebay. We appreciate it. She's the GM and senior director of U.S. collectibles. Now it's time for our latest weekly segment that we've added. It's the Flipper rankings update in the Top three Flip. So again, if you're a member of Hobby Flipper, which all no offseason.com premium members are, or you could just go join Hobby Flipper if you want, it's phenomenal and will only keep getting better. There's a gamification aspect, meaning essentially you can compete with other flippers. And so once you fill out your portfolio and have your flips, you get entered into the flipper ranking. So the top flippers. Over the last 30 days, Rose Bros. Has moved into the top spot from a net profit standpoint. 17 total flips $7,979.34 profit margin 95.7. Brian Kite number two, Zach E. Michael Stock, Gavin Shinn SCI Brady Lefty McKee. Josh at HobbyGuys. Fetty Collectibles. That's a new name. Welcome in fetty. Fetty has 20 flips making just under $1,000. $979.05 in the last 30 days. 23% profit. Paul E. And Sean red five cards. And then look at that. Our guy Juan, Juan D is number 14. Great job getting into the top flippers. Now for the top flips Rose Bros. In the last 30 days. That that dang. Bo Nicks, John Elway, Donruss Downtown Gold out of 10 PSA 10 is still murdering everything with a $5,575.73 net profit. LeBron James Panini 1 and 1 manga from Zach E. PSA 10 still number two at $5,000. Then we've got some Shohei's from Brian Kite, another Shohei From Gavin Shinn, two WEMBY's from Rose Bros. Another Shohei from Brian Kite, a LeBron from our guy Lefty and a Cooper flag Chrome blue X Fractor Raw Raw flip by Josh Hobby Guys, $512. Other insights include. Look at this. This is. This is interesting. Monkey D Luffy PSA Magazine promo card base. Our guy Lefty McKee with a raw flip. $294. He sold that for. Congrats, Lefty. This is our Flipper rankings. We appreciate everybody who has participated in the Hobby Flipper portfolio and flips. We aim to make Hobby Flipper the most actionable insights platform in the hobby and we appreciate your support of that platform. I'm excited for what's coming in the next several months for Hobby Flippers. Stay tuned. I've had a lot of fun putting this show together for everybody from the national. I've tried to make it where it's a valuable experience whether or not you're at the show or whether or not you're ever able to make it to a card show. I want this content to be relevant in the future, right. For future card shows, future nationals, or just when you're making plays online like we normally talk about on the Sports Card Strategy Show. So one more reminder, we've got the member store for our Premium members@noallseason.com so the way that this works is every time you pay, whether it's monthly or annual, you earn member points. @nooffseason.com you can redeem those member points for really cool things, including not only access to our Premium member Discord, where we've got some great conversations going on with our Premium members, but also you can host an episode of the Sports Card Strategy show with Lefty and I for a certain amount of member points. So go check that out or get a small group consulting call with me. I'd love to help you out with your Sports Card strategy. So redeeming your member points@nooffseason.com for a small group call, sort of mini webinar, intimate webinar, Live with me would be great. Thanks everybody so much for joining us on this special edition episode of the Sports Card Strategy show put together from the 2026 national in Rosemont, Illinois. Everybody have a great day. Thanks so much for being here with us on the Sports Card Strategy Show. If you enjoyed the content on today's show, there's plenty more waiting for you@noallseason.com just go to no Offseason right now. You get our formula based Sports Card rankings, Sports Card School Inventory Tracker, the Ability to Grade with us, and the Premium podcast where we answer an unlimited amount of your questions. Check it out right now@nooffseason.com for everyone@nooffseason.com I'm Paul Hickey. Thanks again for being here with us on the Sports Card Strategy Show. We'll see you again soon. Have a great day.