Topps Mercury Might Be A Trash Product!?!?

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Ball Card Show. The Sports Podcast. For the Esports Collector. I'm Jason Otero. I'm Gary LeMaster. We've got a lot to get to today. People be dropping crazy expensive Wimby products. We've got two weeks worth of stuff to build in because I had a vacation. We've got stadiums being put out of their misery. Just ignore me completely. Keep going. Yeah, just jump in there, bud. What you got? No, I already did. We got two weeks worth of stuff to go over because I was on vacation last week. That's right. You were on vacation last week. You were. I was just about half the man I was a week or two before that recovering from my Pro City Jordan. Are you back to normal now? I'm back, baby. Yeah, I'm back. I got nervous there for a minute because I was like, this is taking a while. Real question is, are you fulfilling all the medical requirements? That is none of your business. Oh, if this was a different kind of podcast or so many jokes I could make right now. Parents didn't raise a quitter. All right. Yeah. How's vacation? It was good. Very chill. Stated a new place in Tybee and I think it'll be where we stay all the time now. Really, really fun and cool spot. Fun and cool. How else would you describe it? For me, fun and cool because it was- Hey, don't use any more $10 words with me. Fair enough. For me, it was all those things because it was away from all the people. It was very comfortable. It had a private pool, which I used one time because I don't like to be outside that much. The AC was perfect. I've known you for how long now? A long time. 20ish years? About 20 years. Yeah. I think I've only ever been in water with you. Twice maybe? Both of those occasions it took a little liquid courage for you to feel comfortable bathing with it. Now, it could be this. I've been out of shape for most of my adult life. Maybe it's just feeling uncomfortable, but somewhere along the way I was in a public pool or a water park or something with family and I just took a moment to look around at how many humans I wouldn't want to be within two feet of, but now we're soaking in the same tub of water. You're just human stew. It was a day where it was hot and the water was warm. I was like, oh, this is disgusting. Now, I pretty much just only prefer if it's a pool, it's somebody's pool. Yeah. Or the ocean. Or a rental pool. Ocean's fine. For me, I sweat. It's nice enough for me to be outside and in water. Yeah, but if I'm not in the water, I'm going to be very uncomfortable. I love to sit on the edge of the pool with legs in the water. No, hard pass. The upper part of my body is just pouring sweat as I roast in the sun. Hard pass. For those of you that wonder what that looks like, I'll be sure to grab footage next time. Here, he's just pouring sweat out of his body. Next week, we're taking kids to a water park. Oh, I'll have fun with that. I love them and I hate this. Which one are you going to? Great Wall? Up in Sandusky. I forget the name of it, but it's one of those artificial wave things where it's like surfing, boogie boarding. Have you seen these? Yeah. Like on the cruise ships. Yeah. And you can run them out and the kids love that. Sid's going to be just doing work. Alex can do all the tricks. He can do barrel rolls on the board and all. I cannot. I might get out there, but I need a full wetsuit because I've seen- And they're going to have to crank up the wave machine. No, no, no. Here's what happens. So it has to do with surface tension. And I've seen this. Big guys, they get out on those boogie boards and at first it's great because they're like three boogie boards wide. So it's easy for them. They're like, this is simple. But they start to spin and it turns into an uncontrollable death roll. I've seen these guys. There's a 50% shot you're losing your shorts right there in front of everybody. There's a 100% shot my butt crack is going to be at least six inches out by the time I climb out of there. So if there's nobody else there or I have like a full wetsuit or like a onesie or like- Please send me pictures. What's that white gown that the Latter-day Saints wear? It's like an old one. You don't know about that? Mitt Romney's underwear. You don't remember him talking about that? That's amazing. But anyway, something like that would be- You look like the Freeze from the Incredibles. Yes. So, but anyway, yeah. So we're going to Waterpark next week and I don't want to do that. I want to tell a story about a recent pickup. Okay. Talk away. I had like percentage wise, this might be my biggest card come up slash gambling venture. Okay. So a couple of weeks ago, now my wife and I both really enjoy putting like 20 bucks in- Just being degenerates. Yeah. To fanatics. Sportsbook. And then we'll do, we love doing parlays. We'll do three or four small, like three to $5 parlays. And if one of them hits, it's usually like 50 to 200 bucks. Sometimes I'll do like a 10 leg, which is stupid, but I'll just pick teams. But a couple of weeks ago, we decided to jump in. I placed a few bets. I assume they all lost because there was one upset that hit almost every one of my legs. But then I went and checked the next day and it was a hit for like 150 bucks. That you bet five bucks on. Five bucks to 150. Well, that's fantastic. I'm trying to pull it up right now so I can verify what my picks were because I honestly can't remember. And once I do, boy, will you all be so impressed with me? I tend to get very ambitious on my parlays and it doesn't work out very well. Okay. Well, this was kind of weak. It was a $10 that paid out 150. It was a plus 1430 four leg. Connor, anytime touchdown. This was commanders and Cardinals. Jaden, anytime touchdown over 39 and commander's money line. That's like reasonable. A couple of weeks later, you're just like, oh yeah, that's, that's it. I don't get those odds. So I, uh, I'm bored one night. I all of a sudden remember, oh, I've got that 150 bucks. So I'm going to do one of those breaks because I'm in for five dollars. Yeah. I'll go to fanatics lab. I'll do a break that, uh, cause now I'm not throwing money away. I'm $5 into this and we, the hobby had one of those repacks. I have never like jumped into like expensive repacks. I do like watching them because it's actually a really good way to see like mid end what's moving high and stuff that people are chasing because these guys know when they have a hit, they're going to talk about the value of the card. Right? So I get into one of these breaks. Uh, it's a random, I would get the spot for $150 and it's the Packers. Now on a repack break, I could get nothing for this. Correct. I'm telling myself I'm out five second to last card. I hit the Jaden Daniels, mosaic, Ricky, Jane, Jane Reed, mosaic, Ricky, uh, script, no huddle gold to 10 PSA, 10 auto 10. That's why I don't sell ultra modern, but hit that card. It's probably like a five that probably pushing $600 card with the way he's been playing, um, off of a $5, $10, $10. Yeah. Still. Yeah. So I was pretty pumped about that. That's we both had some good luck on that front lately. I, I got a Josh Allen. Oh yeah. Explosive BGS, uh, nine, five, uh, number one of 10. And it's a true gem plus for those of you who don't know what that means. BGS is a grading scale. Their gem equivalent to a PSA 10 is nine, five. Uh, that's their gem mint. And they have four categories, uh, edges, corners, uh, surface and centering in order to be a gem. Three of those four have to be a nine, five or better. A true gem is all nine fives and a true gem. Plus is all nine fives with at least one 10. This is a true gem. Plus, um, I got it, wanted on Facebook and I was in the card for like 45 bucks. It's like an $1,100 card. Massive score. Yeah. It was, it was a big win. Uh, other updates. The Lamar Jackson sold. Yeah. Did you give an update on yours yet? No, because I don't want to. Whoa. That week off that week off. I forgot. This is actually breaking news. I just made that jingle up. I could tell that was a trombone. Was that what that was? Yeah. Okay. I actually have a good one. And, um, it's been a minute since I've done this. Do you have to do it? I do. I don't want you to. This is where video would come in really handy. Saturday in the park. Stop. Thank you. Was it? Come on with me. I don't want to play this game. No, nobody wants you to play this. You play that tenor. You go with top of the trumpet. Nobody. All right. Well, anyway, anybody'd like to join the show. I'm filling out an acapella brass section. All right. So you, you, well, let's do challenge update. Yours is exciting. Mine is not so much. Well, it's exciting. It's exciting content. It's unfortunate, but it's exciting for both of us. Uh, so as you know, we've been sitting on these two cards, geez, been sitting on this Jay Dom sick. Well, the sicker that he'd had a while ago. Yep. Yeah. He picks up, which would you origins booklet? Yes. Rookie autos of Josh Allen, Baker Mayfield, Saquon Barkley, Sam Darnold number to 10. Who's who? Yeah. It's, it's a huge, huge card. So Gary is in the group and runs a flashlight. Well, let's talk about yours first. Let's give you your plot. I'm so excited to get to the climax of the story. Um, uh, Lamar sold. I got five 25 out of it. Um, so you moved up about 25, 28%. Yep. Yep. Uh, and what's funny was it was a card that a lot of dealers wanted to buy, but it was a collector in car. And listen to me, if you have something truly unique, that looks good. Don't listen to anybody making offers on like, do your research on what it's going for, uh, you know, a nine to a 10. This is the biggest dispute people have been having recently is how much of a multiplier, if there's not 10 comps out a PSA, 10 comps, how much of a multiplier should a nine to attend be. And if anybody's telling you, that's like a 1.5, laugh at them and walk away at least two, maybe two and a half. If it's super low number, I have like three or four dealers that I have respected over the years that clearly tried to come in and low ball on this, like just low ball on the value, not even the offer, uh, which I don't have a problem with somebody saying, Hey, this is what I think the card's worth. I probably only be in like 50% if you want it. And I'd be like, no, thanks. It'd be like, okay. But, but trying to justify their low ball. Yeah. Yeah. So 525, um, shipped out. So I am in the market for a new one. I really thought Lamar would pop a little bit sooner. This is a quick reminder to me. You have the excitement going into training camp as it gets rolling, but there's almost like a little bit of a what's going to happen and who's going to pop. So peak is two weeks before kickoff of opening day. And then, and then we're getting into it now where it's like, whoever's emerging over the next few weeks and we'll start to pop, which Kyler's looking good. Yup. Uh, Saquon what's going on over there? Well, Saquon looks great. So there's a lot of factors at play into that too, that the Eagles have stuff going on. Anyway, we could go on and on, but let's talk about what happened with your book. So you told me it was going flash line. And I was like, Oh boy, he's going to, he's going to bury the competition. Yeah. And it was the nicest card of the night in the flash lines. In my opinion, there was a PSA seven, like 10th year Kobe auto that ended up going for double comps. Um, my card was the first one to go off and explain flashlines. So the way a flashline works is it, a lot of the bigger rooms will run them. Uh, they're on for an hour spots costs $1 and however many spots sell is however many spots sell. And the card is going to run whether five spots sell or whether 5,000 spots sell. Um, this particular card is a card that I felt very confident that at worst I would break even absolute worst case. I'm going to break even on this card. Uh, it got the most votes because the way these works is rooms put up a thread, let people post things that they want to maybe flash. And then everybody in the room votes. My car got the most votes, uh, by a lot, like almost double anybody else's. If only that equated to dollars, you know? Yeah. And so this, they put the card up and you know, I'm committed to it. There are guys who will back out of things like this when it happens. And it's a bad look for everybody. That's not who I am as a human. So I'm, I'm taking my gamble here, but I felt like it was a reasonable gamble. Like worst case scenario, I'm going to break even I'm in this card, you know, 1300 bucks. Let's break. Well, 15 minutes into the hour, it's sitting at about 180 bucks. I'm starting to freak out. Half an hour in it's at about 300 bucks. Now I'm like, what is going on? Long story short, it ended at nine 55. So I took a $345 bath on that card. And we told you guys early on in this, there might be times where you take a step backwards. I was shocked that this was when I took a step backwards on because Josh Allen, MVP level Baker Mayfield, MVP level, Sam Donald MVP. Oh, there's never, it was a perfect storm for the card that I was shocked. I'm like, okay, he's going to be two to 25. Yeah. And unless I can, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to find a steel. I'm going to have to find something where people are just like, I just want out. Like I'm going to have to, there's no other way. Yeah. Um, but the timing with that combination of quarterbacks all being on like, and it was right before Monday night football. It went, it went to hour before Monday night football. I was like, this is going to be really good. I figured worst case scenario. I break even best case scenario. I'm at two grand like 30 minutes in I'm texting him and he's like, dude, I might get 30%. Yeah. might be ahead of me. And honestly, if it wasn't for the last 10 minutes, yeah, you'd have been like six or seven. Yeah, it was, it was rough. It was, it was not a good experience. I said, I texted you. I said, I hate it for you. I love it for the podcast. Well, and at the end of the day, one of the things that I'm starting to see with these, and I thought that it was just certain things like people were putting up stuff that wasn't super rare or in general, even flashlines, which historically tend to go for over comps are starting to slow down. And it's a good reminder to everybody to be aware of the market. When we, when we talk about the reality of the market right now, that's not doom and gloom. That's not woe is me. That's not anything else. It's just that the market is cyclical and we're in a, in a slower part of the market right now, time-wise, not just over the, this year, but just in general, the market is down year over year and it'll eventually go back up. But right now it's, it's down a little bit. And Jason was talking when we were prepping for the episode about, you know, people struggling to sell things on Facebook right now. And my experience with that is that the reason people are struggling to sell things on Facebook is it is mind blowing how many people are trying to sell things for more than what they're worth and will not even consider selling for what they're worth. There's a card I looked at yesterday and I'm not going to talk about the rumor or anything else. It was just a cool card. It was a relatively rare Kevin Durant on-card auto, like a third year insert number to 25 and it was a BGS black label 10. Okay. And the, the owner of the card was really cool, super chill. It was a deal or no deal type format. I just threw out, Hey, what's a ballpark on this? Um, because his listing said, you know, this is the only, as far as I can tell, the only BGS graded one. And of course that's not the case. There's like four or five different nine fives in the sold and a BGS 10, not the black label, but a BGS 10 in 2022 when the market was quite a bit higher than it is now sold for $840. So in my mind, I'm thinking the black label is probably 14, 1500 bucks at the most. But I don't want to insult somebody. So I just asked him for a ballpark. And his response was I recently turned down $3,000. I was like, bro, good luck. I don't want to tell you a BGS 10 sold for $840 when the market, especially Kevin Grant's market was higher. Well, yeah, but I mean, even in that scenario. Okay. So that's annoying. Well, I wasn't even annoyed, but it's just in that scenario, it's like, these are, you're even talking about ones that are, I could see like a gray area on comps, right? This is a little bit unique, but it's not just there. It's, it is $20 cards for $40. Yes. And people, $30. Yes. And that buyer sale, look at the sale. And then people were like, here's my steel last comp, $220. Take mine for 210. What? Here's the problem. For two years, if you had a basic knowledge of the modern ultra modern card market, what types of parallels are unique, a little harder to find what teams move quickly, what players people collect. It was hard to take a big loss buying on Facebook. Yeah. If you knew how to do it. Yeah. You know? Oh, I, if I don't, if I don't take a big win here, it's fine. Cause out of these 10 cards I bought, one of these basketball players is going to have a double double. And now it's worth three times the value that happened all the time. You could hedge your risks. Is that right? Bulking out. So now averaging now that's not happening. And I think what's happened is enough people on these Facebook groups have seen 10 on the card. Didn't comp it cause it takes forever. Somebody else will claim it. And they offer seven 50 and the seven 50 offer gets accepted. But the problem is the cards were five bucks. And that's happened more and more and more and more to the point where, in my opinion, Facebook is rarely the place to sell like it was a couple of years ago. I've posted a few cards in there over the last few months that are like nice 200 to $500 range, which actually Facebook was a great place to sell that stuff. Yeah. Um, and it's like almost crickets. And if it's price, typically you're even getting offers of like, would you accept this? Would you? And I never say firm on it. People know that's where you're not even getting offers. I'm talking, I'm not talking about stuff that I'm coming in five times over comps. I'm talking about stuff that's pretty collectible and nice. So you threw that Jaden Reed, you were talking about up one nibble. Well, I made an offer just to get you started. And I even texted you ahead of time. I said, I'm going to make an offer. It's a no deal offer. I get it. I'm just trying to help you get started. Yeah. Um, I offered three 50 and then somebody else offered four and that was the, that was all that was happening. Now at the end of the day, you're in the car for 10 bucks. So if you need 390 bucks, it's good to know you can get that. But realistically, I think if you put that card on eBay for five 99, yeah, you're probably going to get close to that. Yeah. I mean, it's got two raw comps at two 40 and two 75 in the spring off season. There's a PSA nine that popped for how much? Two 30 to 30, but there's a raw comp two months before that at two 75. Yeah. Well, and it's ultra modern raw is going to outsell a PSA nine. I know that's insane, but it's because people think there's a chance at a 10. Yeah. But, um, anyway, so it, it, you know, I think it's, I think it's a five to $600 card. The, the traffic that you're getting, um, has gone down quite a bit. I do think it's still a good place to buy because there's some people that literally are not equipped to be organized enough for eBay that have no inventory management of what they have. And Facebook is like the best way for them to sell. Um, and it's also a place where like big collectors were like, Hey, anything I don't want to keep when I buy this collection, um, I'm just going to throw it on Facebook auctions, whatever auctions are hot right now. Um, which those had kind of died out to claim sales, but now auctions are kind of heating up again. Well, they're heating up again as far as if you're a buyer, but if you are a seller, that's what I mean, you better be ready to sell it 50% or less. I think if, yes, if you have, you need to have a couple of staple pieces that are going to carry the sale. Like you need to have a couple of cards that are a little bit bigger where you're like, this is liquid. There's not much debate on where we are. Like if you had a CJ optic hollow rookie, like that's probably not getting 50% you're probably going to get, no, no, no, no, no. If you have like weird, um, so Durki's last auction, I, I would go on the record. I don't want to drop his name because it's fair of some experiences. Uh, I leave him out of it. But I would say that based off of what I've seen with that auction compared to 90% of what I've seen out there, it's a little different. So there was a PSA nine Stroud hollow that went for 38% comps. Yeah, no, it went for like 85 bucks. Yeah. I would say that that group is probably a little out of the norm. The probably a little bit richer taste than most of the groups out there. Um, but yeah, you're, you're not getting comps. No, especially if you're throwing up 200 cards. They're like, I'm, you're paying your, it's the convenience. So what's your time where it's on a claim sale when I would do these dollar sales? Yeah. I had eight hours to take pictures of cards, to sort cards into ship cards. Yeah. Um, if I could have just thrown all them up here, if I could just thrown all them up on auction and come back four days later and wherever it is, it's at, you know, maybe that would have been better, but it's not that much less time really. No. So I don't, I don't know. I, something's definitely happened with that card shows honestly seem to be, um, I think they're still decently attended. Um, I just don't see the same. I guess I'm not looking for the same thing I used to be for the most part. I don't think I see the same like quality control of what types of tables are going to be out. No, we talked about this six or seven months ago. One of the things that's starting to happen more and more at shows and to an extent it's sad. Um, there are people starting to set up at shows that have no business even remotely trying to set up at shows. I mean, we're talking about guys with tables full of top series one base cards. Um, we're talking about guys with tables full of origins and Phoenix low end base cards, uh, in top loaders for five bucks a piece. We're seeing a lot of people set up at shows that are desperate to recoup some of the money they've spent on breaking and they've been breaking cheap products because it's cheap to get into and they're trying to recoup and they're finding that being a dealer is way harder than they think it is. Um, there's a lot more work and effort and energy that goes into it than people think there is. And when I, when I see those people set up at shows, I just, I just kind of shrug and they, I'll talk to some of them and I'll say, Oh, how'd you do today? I did 2,500, 2,800. Oh my God. I, I did like $85. I was happy to cover my table fee. Yeah. You don't have anything anybody wants to buy, man. Yeah. But for that, that person doesn't care. So maybe this is what's happened. A lot of people, I wonder if there's a chunk of people doing what I'm doing where they've just found a different model they like better than setting up every weekend or maybe they, I'll be honest, I got tired of, it's okay to love something, but your time still counts when you're driving and setting up and tearing down. If I was at your point in life, I would not do as much as I do. My kids were your kids age, a whole different ballgame. Yeah. But what I'm saying is, um, a lot of dealers talk as if it's not work and it's like, that's just your, you know, on these two day shows, you're putting in 25 hours. Well, yeah. And you're, and it's a two day show. You're like, I just did that one up in, in Medina. It was, I was in the show with Airbnb and food and everything else for 400 bucks, 450 bucks plus my time. What did it, did it go poorly? No. Would I do that particular show again? Maybe not. Um, maybe drive down and back. Well, I think more that specific show in the, the promoter of that show is awesome. And there's a lot of really great sports card shows. Um, this was a collector con show. So it was sports cards, but it was also Pokemon. And it was also a bunch of autograph signers that were horror movie, like be horror movie stars. Um, there were a lot of people showing up in random furry costumes and just, it was not just a sports card show. Um, and so for the type of stuff that I have, maybe wasn't the best fit for me. Uh, the show itself I think was successful for the promoter, for the people who had the stuff that it was the right stuff for. Um, I've done some of, of his other shows and they've been really good. That particular show might not do it again. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, and it's not like all doom and gloom. Like, um, for both of us, our card businesses are to the right. Yeah. We're booming. It's just, the landscape is changing. And I think for me, there's massive advantages because now it shows it's not all dealers like me that are like needing X margin because they're, you know, this is inventory that they recently purchased. You have like 20 to 30% of these where it's just people that have collections and this is stuff that they want to move and they're happy to offer bulk discounts. They're happy to move it. And honestly, somebody showing up with $200 or $500 to buy a whole box of stuff was more than they were expecting on the whole day because they were happy with the right box. Right. So, you know, like that show that you're talking about setting up to sell, cause I was up there for a few hours with you. I could see what you're talking about. Not so sure I'd want to set up for two days on that, but buying for me, that was a show I got. I mean, got all those pro line autos that sold instantly for instantly the pro line autographs, um, a whole stack of those, a bunch of, uh, first edition first slash stuff go. It's starting to trickle, but there's like, there's like training cards and energy cards in there that are worth three to five bucks. The issue is selfie rate. So it's going to take a year to move them. Right. A bunch of a dime a piece. Less than that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, a whole box of the sport flicks, which has like Pete Rose every three or four cards. And then with the timing that obviously, you know, has moved some, although I did keep one of those, uh, for myself hunging up on the wall there in a one touch, in a one touch baby sport flicks and a one touch baby is high tech when that came out. Um, but that's just a trade off. So it's interesting to see what's happening. We'll see if it starts to pick back up. If it doesn't, I just think people are going to have to kind of adjust to what's happening. Um, here's the other thing to consider though. And I think this is playing a factor. Something drastically changed in the last year. What not used to be hard to get onto. And so now it's not. Now it's like if you have a pulse and you'll sit through this meeting, you can sell singles on what not. And the scam rates on whatnot are just going through the roof because of it. Fanatics is launching singles as a category. I saw it last week. It may have been up for a while, but it seems like I actually have several shows. They're actually vetting people now. They're actually vetting people. Um, eBay live is being advertised. Uh, right now there's a lot of complaints about how lunky that is, but, um, that that will be an option as well. And we're hearing a lot more platforms. So I think there's a lot of like collectors that are considering, am I better off, you know, doing the whatnot route or auction route at the end of the day? You know, it's less time spent. So I think that might be impacting it to a little bit. I mean, I don't think, I think you're right. I think there's a lot of different things that are, that are out there. I just think that at the end of the day, what we're starting to see at shows, except for the big ones, um, we're seeing more and more folks trying to be dealers that really aren't equipped to be dealers. And one of two things happens. Either they don't sell very much and it sours them on the experience or they give stuff away. And I think the third option we're going to see more of is they sold a lot and then they don't know how to resource it. Right. Or they resource it thinking that, or they resource it with breaks. Oh, I got it at 80% thinking they're going to sell everything at 100% and then it's sitting on their table and then they realize they have to sell it for 70 and you end up losing on a repurchase inventory, boy, that would be, we've all lost. We've all done it. You're going to lose in this business. You just hope that your wins outweigh your losses and you mitigate it by buying properly. I tell people when they bring random stuff to my table, because a lot of guys know if you've got something unique, I'm a good guy to bring it to because I'm probably going to be interested in it, but if I'm, say there's a card, I've got a card sitting on my table right now. I've got an $850 tag on it. I think it's probably going to end up selling eventually for 7 to 750. The guy brought it to me. He wanted 1,000 bucks for it. I said, well, I don't think it's worth 1,000 bucks. Here's what I think it's worth. I told him exactly what I was going to tag it for. You've heard me do this. I'm very transparent with people. This is what I'm going to tag this for. I'm going to offer you 500 bucks for it. I know that's a low offer, but here's why I'm offering you 500 bucks. If I sink 500 bucks into this card, that 500 bucks is probably going to sit in my showcase for anywhere from six months to two years. Now the card in question is not a card that's going to lose value. It's super low numbered. It's very low pop. It's a 10. It's a nice card of a Hall of Famer. But if I don't give you that 500 bucks, I can take that 500 bucks and buy five cards that will sell really fast and I can do that 30 times. The opportunity cost of that money is lost as this card sits in my showcase. So if I'm going to buy it from you, I've got to buy it at a price point that I feel very, very confident that I'm never going to lose money on and that I'm comfortable parking that money in for a good while. Is there a chance it could sell in 20 minutes? Sure. Do I think that it will? No. And I've had it for two months and I'll probably have it for another six. And it draws a lot of attention to my showcase, so there's marketing value to that. But at the end of the day, these are the thought processes that if you haven't been doing this very long or you're just trying to get into this, if you don't think that way, you're going to take it. You're just going to take it to the face on a regular basis. You got to start thinking about it differently. You got to start thinking about dollar allocations and how much it's going to cost you to have your money parked somewhere if you don't have an infinite amount of money to use. And this has become a little more of like the dealer-heavy episode, but what you're talking about, mitigating those risks, is exactly why I wholeheartedly believe in a high-volume, low-end store. And I'm reentering back into shows this fall and I'll have a showcase out and I'll have some bargain boxes, but let me give you an example. I had a claim for like, maybe two or three claims, for like 15 cards that never arrived. And in the past, that would be like, oh man, your eBay's screwed. Without second thought, I refunded these people, and USPS just screwed up. It happens all the time with Standard Envelope. I refunded and it was like 15, 25 bucks, something like that. The guy says, thank you so much, hops back in the store and buys a 50-card lot because you realize he has a decent person and there's good inventory in there. I'm buying these at bulk for, a lot of times, 10 to 20 cents, and one or two cards is worth 10 bucks. You realize how much you just bought back in value? A lot of times, less. So yeah, and whenever I leave, when we talk about multiplying your profit, my number's always stupid high. But I, too, have probably tens of thousands of dollars in inventory that are not going to sell on the next year. Yeah, they're just going to sit for a while. My 87 bonds will sell all the time, slowly. They will sell. They will, like 87, like there are certain sets that are junk wax sets that are going to sell. For a buck a card. A buck, buck 25, buck 50. Yeah, yeah. I don't sell anything under 175, by the way. With reshipping. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the point being, you're in the card for a dime. After shipping and eBay fees, you're 50, 60 cents. Yeah, but you're 5Xing what you paid. That's massive margin. And you do that with 20,000 cards as numbers start adding up. And then you put some 10, 20, 50, $500 cards in the store as well. The point is, you actually have to think about, once this stuff sells, how am I going to repeat this? How can I grow this? Honestly, like with my business, which I'm sharing a little more than I probably should, if I chose to just inject $20,000 in inventory right now, it would solve a lot of headaches for me. If I decided, hey, we're going to take a leap, I'm actually going to hire someone to ship and then my full-time focus is going to be sourcing because that is probably the biggest challenge on high volume. Yep. Getting good stuff. That would be great. But there's one problem. And until I have personally, I believe this, I don't think you do this all the time, but until I have become an expert of what I'm doing, until I'm an expert at pulling 200 cards a day, until I'm an expert at constantly supplying off of the revenue generated and not dipping into the well over and over, until you learn that, you're going to be just trying different models. You're going to be doing auctions. You're going to be trying to break stuff. You're going to be hopping on whatnot. You're going to be trying to do shit to the wall and seeing what sticks. So there's a process of like, you're going to have to walk through it a little bit. Pick a lane. Learn it. Yeah. And we're off on a tangent. We haven't started even talking about what's on the notes. Any of the stuff we had on our notes. No. We're 35 minutes in. But I'm with you. I just think things are changing. Actually look at your stuff and it's humiliating sometimes to acknowledge that maybe you're not doing as well as you thought because it's a massive flex. This hobby is a massive flex. Everybody wants to show off the box of cards they bought that is worth 20 or 30 or the one card that's in there. But the truth is we also can run tight margins and have a very profitable and successful businesses. You just have to use your brain on it. All right. Let's talk about. Notes. Some notes here. All right. Let's dive in. We're 36 minutes in. Let's get started. So the Mercury Drops. Wimby product. High end. What is it about? $8,000 wholesale? MSRP. Well this was all direct. Okay. MSRP was $8,000. Secondary market is up to $95,000. Just to clarify, this is Topps Mercury. It is a high end Victor Wimbenyama only product. It's the only player in the set, although there is somewhere in there, and it hasn't been pulled yet, that I've seen a dual auto of him and LeBron. And Finax is like, please don't let that get pulled. Please don't let that get pulled. Yeah. Not yet. It's at $9,500 a box, and I believe there are eight cards in the box. So you're paying just a little bit over $1,200 per card in this box. We had comps pulled up this morning. Now, disclaimer, this stuff just dropped. Early release was what? Wednesday? Thursday? Yeah. There's a few auctions in there, but we're looking through RPAs that have sold. This is on card ladder, so verified sales. There's going to be, over this weekend, if you're listening to this the week it drops, I'm sure there will be, I mean, what do you think? There'll probably be 50 sales. There'll be quite a bit more sales. So everybody keep in mind a few things here. We have four verified, and I'm just looking up mercury. RPAs. Yeah. RPAs. Three napkins. One is game used to 50. Yeah, but it's a napkin. But it's a napkin. That one went for $3,600. That's the most recent. We have a RPA to 99, also a napkin, $3,800. So it dropped 10% in one day. The RPAs are the, now I'm sure you could have like a to one, to three, obviously that would be different, but- Yeah, to five. Yeah. I think it's to one, to five. I don't think there's any to two or three. I think it's one, five, 10, 25, 50, 75, 99. Okay. But the up 99 on the 10th did 38, and then the next day an up 50 did 36. So about a 30% drop realistically in one day. We did see one big card. So it was a 35. It's actually a filthy three color patch. It's a different image. So I don't know what parallel this is, but it definitely looks different than these guys. Yeah. Well, it's the exact same frame. It's just a way better design, honestly. We'll talk about that in just a moment. It was the first one to market. Yeah. First one to market to 25. It looks like the A from- 35. 25. Okay. The listing says 35. Yeah, but the image is 25. Yeah. It went for 15,000. So here's somebody that made a few grand and they had seven other cards. So there's somebody that probably doubled their money, but I'm looking at this person that had an of 50 and the biggest card is 3,600. A lot of these other parallels, there's probably one or two cards also because they do have some cool insert subsets that are going for less than a thousand. So let's call it 56 and then you're left with what, four? Like you're taking a bath. So here's the issue and I'm going to try not to get too fired up about this because I know a lot of people just ride on tops. And I'm a big fan of what Fanatics is doing with tops and I can't wait for this stuff to be licensed, but let's call this what it is. This is a high-end Leaf product, guys. It's an unlicensed, no logos on anything, product. On card autos. On card autos, but Leaf has some on card autos too. It's a $9,500 box. Bless Fanatics' heart, they assume that you guys are all morons. There's an assumption that you idiots will buy anything that they put out. They did a great job on the packaging with the box. They did a great job with the marketing. This is a grift. There does not exist a world where this should be more than a $1,000 to $1,500 box. There does not exist a world where that should be the case. $9,500 for this? Well, yeah. So do you really feel like that number you just said is accurate? What do you mean? $1,500? For a product that has one player in it? Where I promise you, I promise you, I promise you, in two months, this stuff will be worth less than half of what it's going for right now. I don't disagree with what you're saying there. So it's the whole ROI question. If you have to hit one of the five product hits, product hits, in order to break even, what the hell's happening? What are we talking about here? It is an absolute grift. Okay, as always, great points, extreme examples. We just explained somebody doubled their money. They didn't double their money. They less than doubled their money. It's a $9,500 box. It's a $9,500 box and the one card is 15K. That's not doubling your money and then after their eBay fees, they're what? Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. There's seven other cards. There could be two or three other autos in that box. There's probably a parallel sub 50. I guarantee, like the resale value. There's usually one auto in the boxes that I've seen. If you're thinking, I've seen multiple. Have you seen multiple? I've seen one mostly. No, because you have the RPA but then there are also the other parallels that have autos. They can be. They're just not guaranteed. Exactly. Okay. But there's $3,000 more in resale value on there. If they sell it immediately. Yes. That's what I'm saying. If they sell it immediately. That's what I'm saying. Everything you said about the design and the way they thought about the price point and it's one player and it's unlicensed, I agree with. What I disagree with is where this should be. I think this is probably more of a $4,000 to $5,000 box. Here's a reason for that. This isn't just any player. Like you're saying it casually. If it was licensed, I would agree with you. But you're saying like it's just one person. It's not just, it's somebody who is a cultural phenomenon at this point. So was Zion in 2019, 2020. This is a dream for fanatics that they have an international player that's at the height because this is in line. Sure. He's got a huge international market. So they're looking at an even larger scope of market than typical for something like this. Baseball, there's places where you would see a lot more of this, but I honestly think Wimby probably like what others, there's no football superstar that's going to have this draw internationally. No, I don't disagree. My point is you're getting an RPA, you're getting an on-card auto, you're getting it from a brand that typically doesn't have a license. It is released just for this. The only reason I can justify in my head spending serious money on this, which I would cut the price in half. I think $4,000 is about the right spot for it. So a little less than half, I guess half on the low end. The only reason I would consider this is, is this something, I know, just let me finish the sentence because your head's going to want to explode at first. In the way that people revere, please let me finish because I already know what you're going to say and you can't contain yourself. In the way that anything out of the exquisite product from the early 2000s, not even the big ones are obviously monsters, licensed goats, okay, we're already there. But even the lower end stuff carries a high value. Why? Because it was so expensive and there's not a ton of, there's, you know, you're going to see a lot of people open to this. It's not like Top's Chrome. It is very limited number of people that are opening it. Now wealthy people may open several, but you're not in 10 years, you're not going to see a ton of these out. The question is, did Fanatics pull something off that sustains to some level five to 10 years from now if Wimby actually is that guy because of how expensive and because of how short printed the product was. So here's my answer to that. No. Here's why. I think that 10 years from now, the low numbered, highly sought after stuff from the actual Top's Chrome basketball release will be worth more than this stuff. Why is that? Because this is basically a boxed insert set. It's not. What's the, what's the functional difference between other than, than other than scope of the skew, right? What's the functional difference between this product and the Panini Caitlin Clark blaster boxes that were all Caitlin Clark? Other than the size of the skew, what's the functional difference? I guess, market cap right now? Well, yeah, but my point being that the Caitlin Clark stuff that comes out of Origins or Prism or anything else is going to be worth way more than that pure Caitlin Clark product. Again, we're talking about an unlicensed product. What's the functional ... Here's a good point to make. You don't have pack odds in there, essentially what you're saying. You know what you're getting. What is the functional difference between, say, this product, and this is a really good parallel in my mind, Leaf Pearl. Pearl is a product that Leaf releases about once every four or five years. It is super high-end. It is super low-printed, probably a lower print run than this stuff. Both are unlicensed. Both don't have team logos on them. Both have really nice-looking patches and autos and on-carts. What's the functional difference other than marketing? I'll tell you the functional difference. Victor Wiminyama is the functional difference. You can't. You can't. You can't. Leaf Pearl has Erling Haaland. Awesome. Awesome. Erling Haaland is a bigger star worldwide than Victor Wiminyama. Okay. Great. I do not know that, especially stateside, the general public places the same value as the international. I don't disagree, but you literally just said the biggest reason that this is going to be a big thing is because of the international base. I did not say it's the biggest reason. Well, you said it was a big reason. No. I said Fanatics is considering this a dream because it's part of their goals to have a more international market. I just feel like this entire ... This is a ... I think this is probably what bothers me about it more than anything else. One of the things that you guys have heard me say on this podcast ever since Fanatics took over the licensing on this stuff and started really making a push back in with Tops is that one of the things that I appreciated about what Fanatics was saying they were trying to do was that they were trying to look after the long-term health of the hobby. They were trying to balance profitability with long-term health of the product and long-term health of the hobby economy and the infrastructure of that. Products like this are the exact opposite of that. They are the exact opposite of that. They are an opportunistic grift that is only going to see short-term benefit for a very few people. That's not how you build a sustainable ecosystem in anything. I'm agreeing with everything you're saying. Let me tell you what I don't like about the product. One, the price point is off by at least double. We both agree with that. Yeah. You know, there's like a marketing principle when you're trying to either rebrand or launch a brand or revise like the vision or message. An example of this would be this. If you meet with a marketing firm and they're only, let's just say that you're just tackling your social media approach, which when you talk about money being spent, I think most people would lose their minds if they realized what's being spent for Fanatics to have a particular voice where whenever they talk, this is how people see, feel, everything. Massive dollars. But let's say it's an Instagram. It could be a small business. What a marketing firm is going to recommend is you have everything the way that you want it. You have all of your images there. You've had a page. You've been uploading it before you ever announce it, before you ever drop it. You have presented the product. Not one post on Instagram. You might have 50 to 75 daily posts before they recommend making your page public or letting people know that it's even out there. Why is that? Because until you're actually doing the thing that you say you aspire to, nobody really believes you. You don't have the best restaurant in town when you're not serving food yet, no matter how cool the restaurant is, no matter how cool the building was, no matter what the story was of your grandma's secret recipe. Until everybody has a chance to taste the meatballs, they don't care. The question that I have is, did Fanatics drop the ball by releasing anything before they had both the NFL NBA PA and the league license? In hindsight, will we look back and say, it was just a money grab? They should have waited two years. Yeah. I think that there's a lot of validity to that question. I think that the answer is pretty obviously, yes. It was a money grab because they took so much of their liquidity to buy these licenses and enter into these partnerships. They then started having issues with some of their other businesses, like the issues with the Major League Baseball uniforms and things like that that were impacting their bottom line. It was like, oh, our cash reserves are pretty low right now. How can we beef those back up? Well, these idiots will pay whatever we slap on a box. That's what happened. Let's not forget, it was less than three months ago that reports were that Michael Rubin was already having discussions to bring in a lot of funding. What's incredible to watch has been Fanatics' growth to success from being a place where you get subpar jerseys and memorabilia to being a cultural hub, like a curator, really, honestly. That's been awesome. But when you think about the type of money that they're spending and how spread out they are, wow, that's really an interesting take. It's a scary tightrope to walk. With the Wimby product, you have to release ... It says rookie year. You have to do something. I get that. Yeah, you put his rookie cards in your main releases. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear you. Let's make a shift then, because we were talking about ... There's no way we're going to get through half of this. No, we won't. You're right. We'll save some for later. Tune in next week. Let's talk for just a moment about ... Honestly, with the Wimby product, with Topps Chrome, we've seen it now, Composite is hit and miss, but I would say the majority, the majority of the stuff, the design just doesn't look good. Is Topps already such an established brand that there's some framework? Brad Paisley. I'll give you a Brad Paisley quote. Which by the way, Brad Paisley technically is one of the best live performance guitarists out there. He's a heck of a player. Yeah, heck of a musician. Somebody asked him about country music, and it was because you had this big wave of pop country, which is not my thing, but it's clearly been a crossover phenomenon. Now we see Post Malone, Jelly Roll, you've got all these different genres. Oh, I went to see Jelly Roll last night or two nights ago, yeah. Yeah, he's cool. But you just completely threw me off of that. Back me up one sentence. Back me up one sentence. You said Brad Paisley. Okay, yeah, yeah. Somebody asked him, where's the point where it becomes not country music anymore? He said, country music is defined. The best way to describe it is like a coloring book. There's a set picture with lines in it. Inside those lines, you can color it however you want, but there's a set picture. This is what country music is, right? For some, that may be a steel guitar, violin, whatever, chord structures, how many minors you play, whatever, whatever, whatever. But there's kind of a line. Tops is that. People were so excited that you were bringing back a product they love that, honestly, there's some variation in design, but you know when you're going through a box, like, oh, this has a lot of Tops chrome. Here's where I'm confused about your take on composite. There's not a single new design in that. There's not a new design in composite. Every design in composite is from a previous Tops product from the last 25 years. I don't know if that's completely true. I'll pull up a couple for you in a little bit, but there are some. Like the Tops chrome. The Tops chrome gallery, the ones that just say composite, that's actually inception design. From when? 2005? When nobody was buying cards? Roughly, yeah. Horrible idea. Every one of those designs is either an exact copy or based upon a previous Tops design. So like the Tops chrome is 2023 chrome baseball. It's literally the exact same design. Tops chrome black looks just like Tops chrome black baseball. Yep, we're on it there. The ones that are labeled as composite are based on inception. That coloring book kind of background looks just like Bowman and Tops inception products. The resurgence I think it's called? Here's my point. Was an insert set. You're missing my point. You are missing my point. Okay. Go release that inception product now where the cards look like the ones that we're talking about that just say composite. Go release Chronicles is a great parallel for this. There are certain products in Chronicles that are ugly and gross. There are versions of inception that look a lot nicer than that. The Allen and Ginter. It's out there. Some people buy it. Most don't. I think that there's a certain amount of purposefulness in that. It's kind of the same thought process as they're never going to get the quality control to the point where every card is a 10 because if they do, 10s don't have value. Products like composite or products like Chronicles, I believe they put some pretty ugly cards in there so that the good cards stand out. Is that why there are Wimby in a suit cards? Yeah. Also because they don't have licensing. Yeah. Well, yeah. But figure that out. But like Draft Night cards are always there in their suit from Draft Night. There's a reason for that. That sounds a little more... Well, the reason for this is they don't have licensing. They could do action shots. I'm not buying it. They've had plenty of time to get photographs. It's not like this guy's been playing for five minutes. This goes back to the point of why were these products released when they were released? I think that they were released to make as much profit as possible and in order to make as much profit as possible, you cut back production costs as much as possible. You cannot tell me that it costs less for them to redesign Topps Chrome Basketball than to have a framework similar to what they put out before. It doesn't look like the old Topps Chrome. It looks terrible. You can't tell me that they intentionally designed it that way and it's bad. It's a bad design. What I'm telling you is that good design costs more than bad design does. So you think that they would have spent more if Topps Chrome Basketball looked more like Topps Chrome Basketball for the last 20 releases of it? Um... 15, whatever we have. You don't believe that. I think that there is... You think that's a poor design. Oh no, it is a poor design, but again, at a certain point, the better the design, the more it costs to make. So is Fanatics cheap or not? Yes! Yes! From a Fanatics production standpoint, from a production standpoint, Fanatics' goal is to produce things as cheaply as possible so that they can make as much money as possible. So then in that same vein, hear me out. This is a good discussion. How did Fanatics catch people off guard? How did... Like, look at what happened over the last several years, the last five years. The fact that they even went after the licenses caught people off guard. And how did they do it? By spending a lot of money. They became the blank check that none of their competitors were expecting. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. They have not stopped being that. Just when you think they're out of funding, Reuben's just like, no, I need more money because if we're going to do this, you have to spend. But if the product doesn't look good... Like if Wimby is... If Wimby is actually Wimby. If Wimby is not Greg Oden. Hear me out. Greg Oden was supposed to be great, but like, there were different expectations between the two. Yep. 100%. This is the product that you get right. This is our first year. And you can't be so brilliant with your marketing in nine out of 10 areas. And then when you get to design, you have products that just don't even look ready. It's like, that's Panini stuff. When you have a monopoly, you can. You can, but it just doesn't seem consistent with the brand. It doesn't seem consistent. I understand that it doesn't seem... It's consistent with Panini. It doesn't seem consistent with the brand, but here's the issue. Again, we're dealing with an ecosystem that has proven, and this is just the reality. It's why boycotts don't work in general. We live in a economic ecosystem where consumers are idiots. And I bring myself into that because I still buy this stuff because I enjoy the hobby and I love what I do with it. And if this is my only option, well, it's my only option. At a certain point when you are a monopoly, when did Panini stuff start going downhill and when did Topps stuff start going downhill? When it became a monopoly, when there was no competition for dollars anymore. If you wanted a licensed football product, you could only buy it from Panini. If you wanted a licensed baseball product, you could only buy it from Topps. When that occurs, there is no financial incentive whatsoever. What is the only rule when you are a publicly traded company? Every incentive is financial. When there's no financial incentive to create a good product because you know whatever shit you put in a box, people are going to buy as much of it as you make, what's the point? Why do you care how good the design is? Why do you care what the quality control is like? Why do you care whether these athletes give a crap about what their autograph looks like? Why does it matter? People are going to buy it regardless and your profit margins go up when your production costs go down. It's a no brainer. The only companies that have to try really hard are the companies that aren't licensed. That's why do you think Leaf Trinity has better patches than anything else on the market? There's the issue for them. that stuff doesn't start mattering, the cultural relevance can actually bleed out. It can, but has it ever in the baseball card world? Yes. I mean, has it ever died? Yes. No, it's never died. Panini is the perfect example of this. No, the company died. I'm talking about the hobby itself. And Panini only died. And I will say this until I'm dead. The reason, the only reason that Fanatics got these contracts is because Panini got lazy and they assumed nobody else would spend more money than them. So they didn't even try to compete. They were just like, oh, we're just gonna renew it. You guys will take whatever we offer. So you think you're putting Fanatics in that boat and saying they're doing the same thing? Well, now that they're a monopoly, what always happens with them. Do you think they're doing that right now? I think they are on the path of that, yes. Because it's the only logical path. There's no logical path for a publicly traded company, not one logical path, that once you have a monopoly, what reason do you have to create quality? Ask Louis Vuitton. I don't know. Ask, I mean, here's where it's inconsistent. There's just so many brands that them caring actually is the thing that has sustained them on it. That have the corner. But the Louis Vuitton is not a monopoly, man. You gotta compete against Kate Spade. This is a monopoly. You just said Kate Spade, so you're definitely done with that debate. Well, but my point is, is you're- Kate Spade. Coach, whatever. Lisa Frank, what's next? My point is, is that it's not a monopoly. This is a legitimate monopoly for the three sports that North America cares the most about. Hockey is a distant fourth, and Upper Deck will continue to do their thing there, and good for them. But it's a legitimate monopoly, which again, is what it is. The reality is, is if you're listening to this podcast, you can stand and stomp your feet just like I am right now, and guess what we're all gonna do? We're all gonna buy this shit. So we can yell and scream about it, but at the end of the day, they know we're all gonna scream about it, and we're still gonna buy it, right? So yes, and for some time. Yes. But what do we learn from Panini? At some point, people say, I'm not spending that much. It happened. It happened. A little bit. The market fluctuated. Now, COVID, blah, blah, blah, all that. That's a real thing. Not on sealed wax, because that's what we're talking about. Volume? The number of people buying sealed wax didn't change? The number of people buying- That absolutely changed. The number of people buying their own individual boxes of sealed wax changed, but the number of boxes that Panini was selling didn't change. They just went to breakers. So from a company standpoint, I'm talking about from Fanatic's standpoint, they don't give a shit whether one breaker buys 100 cases and breaks it individually, or whether 100 people buy a case each. They don't care. But they do, bro. Look at what's happening with LCSs. They're being cut back on what they're allowed to put out there. Yes. They are being, people that have had allocations for 15 years, we're not talking about somebody who was breaking, and then they got a Google address, and now they have an LCS, right? We're talking about established ones. They're being undercut by the online direct price. Yes, but here's the other part of that. So apparently they do care. No, but why do they care? They just opened up allocations to non-brick-and-mortar people. If you are a breaker, and you are on a platform, you get higher allocations than brick-and-mortar stores do. You wanna know why? Because that's where people are spending their money. No, because allocations have become so limited, and the price point is changing. Fanatic's is selling. This is happening, this is dirty. Spoke with a local shop. Well, no, Fanatic's is undercutting their own. They're selling cases, and then after all these local shops have their cases, then their direct price is dropping and cutting margins. So the LCS is saying, well, then why don't I just wait to see where this lands and hit up a wholesaler? Yeah, a dealer net, yeah. That's what's happening. That's the reason for it. If allocations were offering the margins they were three years ago, then everybody would be keeping down the door. Allocations are not gonna do that. So if it either matters or it doesn't, if they don't care, then why do they need pictures of what the inside of your shop looks like now? Why do they care about your social media? That's what I'm saying. They're so intricately involved. They design the cards better. Well, no, I don't disagree with that point at all. That stuff matters. No, I'm not saying that it doesn't matter from the standpoint that you're talking about. What I'm saying is from a bottom line standpoint, there's no financial incentive to do so. That's all. That's where we disagree with each other. I agree with that in the right now. I wonder if that could sustain five years from now. I think it'll sustain 10 to 15 years and then another company will come in if they get lazy and do what Fanatics did to Panini and cut it all out from under them. And who was it before Panini? Before Panini, there were 50 companies. Probably Upper Deck was a big player, right? Well, I mean, you had Pinnacle, you had Upper Deck, you had Score, you had Leaf, you had Donners. These were all separate companies. Well, some of these were conglomerates. No, no, no. They were separate companies. Leaf and Fleer, right? Panini, Leaf and Fleer were two separate companies at one point, well, they were one company at one point, but then they became something completely different in the early 90s, the mid 90s. They split away from each other and you had 50 different products. You had Collector's Edge. And then when those companies started going out of business, Panini started buying their brands and bringing them all in house. To where you had conglomerates. But before the exclusive licensing world, you had lots of competition in the space and you had a much healthier ecosystem because everybody had to compete for the same dollars. When one company has no competition for the same amount of dollars, all you're trying to do at that point is increase the spend from an individual customer. You're not trying to compete for a piece of the pie. So you already have the pie. If at some point, the next step in gaining those margins is increasing the dollar per unit from your customer and you're not releasing products that are satisfying customers, especially, so like the Mercury one, and I know you're with me 100% on this. Five years from now, you're gonna have heartbroken people that feel like they were taken advantage of. Yeah. And they're gonna have to realize. Because they were. No, they weren't. They were stupid. They were stupid. That's fair. Okay, that's fair. That's fair. What else do you spend $10,000 on that you don't make sure is a, like other than vehicles, find me another $10,000 depreciating asset like that. Well, we're. Crypto? Yeah, we're also talking about a hobby where probably 30 to 40% of the people in it and 70% of the people who break regularly are degenerate gamblers. Fair. Right. But I do think that when people. They're just chasing losses. Six months from now, they can't believe that in their $10,000 box, their RPA to 50 is selling for two grand. Yeah. Yeah. Which is why if you're buying personal boxes of this kind of stuff, you're outside your mind. It's been a very negative episode. We've been channeled. Coming up on an hour and 10 minutes. I think we gotta put a bow on this. Wrap it up. All right. Real quick on releases. Okay. Bowman Sterling. Overpriced. Chrome Cosmic. Decent. Didn't they adjust the pricing to be more reasonable? Yeah. Okay. 200 card base set, 10 variants of each card. Yeah, it's a lot. So base set builders, not horrible. Wasn't it last year. It's a 2,000 card set if you wanna complete the full rainbow. Wasn't last year's checklist way larger than this? Yeah, last year's was like 330. So they listened on one side, but they made it up with all the variants. So that's a product where you really can't, like you could buy a box and hit a massive card because of planetary pursuits, like there's stuff out there that's pretty crazy. And it's a reasonably priced box. It's a reasonably priced. It's like 240, I think. This is a product that I think 10 years from now, I don't think Topps Chrome Cosmic exists in 10 years. I don't. No. But I think it's one where if you have some low, you know, print run stuff or some short printed, like it's weird. Like in the way that some of the Metal Universe stuff and metal products, leaf products, some of the weird Skybox inserts from basketball in late 90s that were just like, what is going on here? I think you'll see a little bit more of that. What else we got? Panini Black basketball. Phoenix is hitting retail for football. Yep. That's a big deal. No, basketball. Oh, basketball? Yeah, Phoenix basketball. I think that for the way that the card looks, that is a well-designed card that never seems to fetch a very high value. It just doesn't have a good perceived value in the market. And then Origins just released for football. All right, we gotta wrap this thing up. Yep. We got a lot more to talk about, but we're gonna have to end it there. This has been the Ball Card Show, the Esports Box. For the Esports Collector. Bye now. Peace.