Turning Your Cardboard Into Cash

Hello and welcome to Season 5, Episode 8 of the Ball Card Show, the Esports Podcast. For The Esports Collector, I'm Jason Otero and I'm Gary Lomaster. We have a lot to jump into today. We do. But you wanted to start out complimenting me from what I understand of my good looks, which I get a lot. What's really adorable there is I mentioned that you had a cool shirt on and your response to that was to wait until we were recording to fish for the compliment. I'm not fishing. You brought it up first. Is that fair? It is a cool shirt. It's like junk wax. Deal with it. Yeah. It is something that does bring out a lot of emotion. For most people it's got a negative connotation with it, but for me it's very nostalgic. I think that for people whose only focus in the hobby is profit, it does have a negative connotation. But for those of us who also collect and really have a lot of fond memories of our childhood, walk into the corner store every time you had an extra 50 cents in your pocket to buy a pack of cards, or when I first started, an extra 15 cents, 20 cents in your pocket to buy a pack of 1982 tops. Yeah. I wasn't even alive at that point. Yeah. I know. I don't want to discuss that. Mine was more like the 90s of the junk wax eras where I was collecting actively. I had some, but those were more like- Like the meat and potatoes of my childhood collecting when I didn't care about anything other than a $3 Ellis Burks 1988 Donruss card was probably 86 to 91. I was like 10 years old to 13, 14, 15 years old. And then in high school you kind of, it's not as cool. You still kind of do it on the sly, but you don't really want anybody to know about it. Like let's just- No, it's definitely not cool, but I don't care about it. You're not cool. I'm not cool. But I don't care about it being cool now. Nobody's cool. Yeah. The Donruss card thing might be neat from time to time or interesting to our peers, but make no mistake, nobody thinks you're cool because you're into this hobby. No, but it is a lot of fun. We can think each other are cool. I do see a lot of that, like fishing for compliments for a junk wax t-shirt, for example, but anyway, we have a lot to jump into. First things first, we want to remind you April 24th, 7pm, Whatnot, our first show. If you haven't already followed, if you haven't bookmarked, do it now, leave the podcast, come right back to it. There'll be a link. There'll be a link in the description. Yep. Follow the link, get signed up. We are doing a lot of giveaways. We have sealed wax. If we have enough followers and bookmarks, we're targeting a thousand with that goal, we're going to give away a hobby. If we don't hit that, we will still have some retail, sealed wax to give away, some packs. Some slabs, some singles. We have some other random giveaways like this, a mini helmet. It's a Spiller, right? CJ Spiller. Yep. And it's ASA-certed. And shout out to our buddies, Noah and Marcus over at Twins and Friends Sports Cards. They've donated this for a giveaway, so we want to make sure that we shout them out. But yeah, just some cool stuff, not anything crazy unless we hit those goals. If you help us hit those goals, we'll be giving away some good stuff. Yep. So get signed up for that. The first of many shows to come. We're very excited about it. Make note of it. I want to jump into a story. Yep. Found it a couple weeks ago, reached out to the original poster. About a week later, I got a response this week from them, and I like the way that they broke this down. They shared exactly what they were thinking about it. But it involves a owner of an autograph company, Upper Deck, and eBay. And things got really tense for a couple moments there. You may have seen some of this online on socials as it was floating around. But Theo Chen is the owner of AutographsForSale.com. Also has a large website out there. A lot of really cool stuff. I was digging through just to see what type of things they have. So his eBay store is big too, right? eBay store is large as well. Website, a lot of IP autos, that type of thing. Really an expert in the auto space. Worked for both Beckett and Upper Deck, ironically, over the years. And just saw this post out of nowhere where somebody had an eBay listing that was taken down by eBay because of a Vero strike, which I'll explain in just a moment. And Upper Deck was the one going after them. This was a Tiger Woods autograph, which we know that in licensed product right now, Upper Deck has an exclusive deal with Tiger Woods. So what was going on with this? Why was eBay involved? How does it affect the seller? I want to break it down for you because I think you may be saying, well, I've never had Upper Deck go after me or Upper Deck pull any of my listings down. But the way that this happens can happen to a lot of sellers. So here is the story. Theo Chen has a 1995 autographed page out of Sports Illustrated Magazine of Tiger Woods. It was when he was playing for Stanford. It's certed, right? It's certed by JSA. He's one of many. He says he's had over a hundred Tiger Woods IP autographs that he personally picked up. It's listed on sale for eBay right now. It's unique to see a Tiger Woods auto from that era. So it does definitely have some unique value. Obviously, this is not an Upper Deck product. It's a page out of a magazine. Well, one day he's logging in, he gets a notification from eBay that he has experienced a Vero strike. The gist of this is that a Vero strike means you are not authorized to sell this. And that is a big hit to your analytics and metrics, right? You know more than me about that, but that's a big deal. Other ways this can happen. There are some brands that simply aren't allowed to be sold as a reselling product on eBay. There are also issues where if something appears to be counterfeit, that can be a strike as well. But this is the type of thing that can really hit a seller's metrics if they even happen. Multiples of these can literally shut down your account or put you in a category of seller status where your fees are higher and your traffic is lower. So for somebody in a space like this, credibility is kind of essential to even have or be in this space. So to get a Vero strike is a little bit concerning for any seller. It stands for verified rights owner. Now eBay typically will give you a minute to correct this. I'll give you an example of something I did that got a strike. When I first started reselling on eBay, I was what they call an everything seller. Anything you can find to make a buck on. And there's nothing wrong with that. But as I learned quickly, you can't just sell anything you want. I was walking through Goodwill and I found a unused CPAP machine with all the bells and whistles and the bag and the tag for like five bucks. Had I known I'd probably need it later, I'd have held on to that. Posted it on eBay, within an hour I get this strike. This is a medical equipment. This is prescribed by a doctor. You are not allowed to sell this brand. I can't remember what the name of the brand was, but it was one of the main brands. It's irrelevant at this point. But I got a strike. In that case, I had to take it down. I've had false Vero strikes, like I had some 48-leaf boxing cards that were PSA graded Somehow that was taken down, but that was by error. I just simply made an adjustment to take PSA out of the title and it was put back up. Doesn't make a lot of sense. In this case, there's a Vero strike. Upper Deck is involved because Upper Deck has exclusive rights to Tiger's Auto. And aren't they the ones that initiated the Vero strike? They initiated the Vero strike. Now, what should happen in this type of situation is eBay should, one, take a look at it because there's a reason for it. It shouldn't be automated. It shouldn't be an automated response. So I was able to get a hold of Theo, ask him a couple questions just to kind of get a reply of what was actually going on with this. He was kind enough to respond. I really appreciate him reaching out. And again, autographsforsale.com, he also has a eBay site. The long and short of it is the post on social media was him threatening Upper Deck's attorney with a lawsuit that he knew he would win based off of the fact that what they were doing, they can't do. Basically, they don't want anybody else selling Tiger Woods autographs at all if they can help it because it helps them drive sales of their product. So I'm going to read a quote from Theo just kind of saying, here's what happened and here's the gist of why this should not be happening. This is him talking about what he was listing and why it was taken down. He said, I don't need anyone's authorization to sell an original page I removed from a 30-year-old Sports Illustrated magazine, not from Tiger, The Photographer, Sports Illustrated or Upper Deck. Now, if the photo was one that I or someone else reprinted, that would be a totally different story. The fact is, autographed or single page features Tiger Woods or priced at $19.95 doesn't matter. The fact that it's autographed, the fact that it's Tiger, the fact that it's on a magazine page, none of that matters. Otherwise, every old magazine on eBay would be potentially infringing, not to mention every flea market, garage sale, moving sale, thrift store and used bookstore. This isn't, this is what was really interesting to me, this isn't the first time eBay account was hit with a false infringement claim from a company improperly using Vero. eBay rubber stamps the Vero, reports it with no screening, no due process and automatically escalating punitive actions against your account. So somebody even saying that they don't think you should have this, especially a bigger company like Upper Deck, basically initiates and starts a snowball effect that there's nothing he can do about it. Guilty until proven innocent and you don't get a chance to prove your innocence. So what would be their motive for it? This is an implication, this is not a direct, and again, this is us reporting this. We are not legal experts. We are not giving any kind of legal advice, we're just simply passing along information that was given to us. We have a podcast, leave us alone. The issue with this is, once this claim is made, Upper Deck faces no consequences for claiming a false infringement if that's in fact what's taking place here. However, the seller faces tremendous consequences, I mean, the least of which would be the credibility of somebody running a site called autographsforsale.com. So this is something where you have to wonder throughout the years, how many people have been hit with this not realizing that they could stand their ground on this? For Theo, he reached out directly to Upper Deck, there wasn't a lot of response, he finally found a way to get a hold of their general counsel. After being told that he was rude for threatening legal actions, his post on eBay, his listing magically reappears. Yeah, they withdrew the Vero claim. Yeah, I mean, it's a real issue. Well, yeah, anytime, and we share the story for this reason. If you're out there selling stuff, you need to understand what some of this backend stuff is. It's like when people complain about fees on eBay, I just shake my head because I'm like, it literally tells you what they're going to charge you before you hit list, before you click that button, it tells you what they're going to charge you. Why are you getting upset about it? This is also something that can happen, you need to know how to combat it and what your rights are. If somebody initiates that type of a strike against you, you need to know what steps you can take to try to clear that. It sounds like you got to figure out who it was that did it, figure out whether the claim was credible, know what your rights in that situation are, and then fight it. Don't just take it, because like a lot of things on eBay, you take it, you don't understand what it's doing on the backend, and then your sales drop. Now, if you're not a big-time seller on eBay, you sell five, six, seven things a year, I guess it really doesn't matter that much. But if you're a seller that's doing this and selling a few hundred to a few thousand pieces a month, like Jason just hit 10,000 items sold in the ball card store this week, which is a big milestone for him, this can have a real effect on you. So understand it, know how it works, and know how to fight it. Yeah, he wrapped up the email with a question that I think kind of paints a picture of how this can affect the hobby overall. He said, as for Upper Deck's motive, we don't know how many listings they've removed, which ones, and for how long this has been going on. We don't know what they've gotten away with, so why stop it? Yeah. You know, if I saw that I had an IP autograph in a Vero, I'm wondering, especially if I wasn't personally there for it, is this actually certified? Is this actually authenticated? Do I have something that's not real? Did I overpay? Should I go after the seller before? When really, it sounds like it's just a bigger company throwing some weight around to see if they can eliminate some competition. Is it possible that this had nothing to do with Upper Deck scrolling through all this, and maybe they have some AI software that's looking for keywords that just flag the system? Well, if we're reaching out to Upper Deck to see if they have comment on this, if we hear back from them, we will share their response as well. Obviously, we want to be responsible here and give both sides of this an opportunity to respond. We have not had anything back from Upper Deck at this point, but if they get back to us, we will let you know. I don't anticipate this is something they want to talk about. Probably not. And it is something that may be, possibly, I don't think it's likely in my opinion, but it sounds like it's possible that this may be, oh, I'm sorry that happened, here's your listing back, why are you so upset? Which happens to be on a $2,000 Tiger Auto. They have exclusive rights to him for trading cards and memorabilia. Yes. You can't have it all, people. Conker! You can't have it all. So, we started out with a little story like that to get everybody fired up. Another cool story that happened this week that was so fun, and I reached out to the owner of the company, because I know him, and got a little bit more detail on the story. You've heard us talk about a company in the past called MySlabs. It's a website, myslabs.com. There will be a link in the description for this video to go to their site as well, and we'll tell you why that matters here in a little bit. But their whole thing, they launched a few years ago as an alternative marketplace to eBay and Mercari and some of these other places. Their whole thing is, fees are outrageous, how can we create an environment that incentivizes buying and selling, allows us as a company to make some money, but not to crush buyers and sellers. So their whole structure is they split the fees between buyers and sellers and it's at a much lower rate Well, they just launched a new Upgraded part of the website, which is optional called my slabs unlimited and it is a flat monthly fee of $8 a month Now here's what's cool with that And if you're not buying and selling a lot or buying and selling high-end stuff, it may not matter to you But if you are It's amazing for eight bucks a month. You can buy and sell and trade and you don't pay any fees You pay that flat eight bucks a month. Now, here's what's cool. One of the first big transactions that happened on the site between two unlimited members was a 1952 tops Mickey Mantle SGC 5 that's a big card 80 to $100,000 card It was a huge huge huge deal and on any other platform the fees on that are gonna be astronomical if that card runs on golden the buyer is paying a 20% yeah buyers premium. So that's car sells for $80,000 the buyers paying $96,000 for it The auction house is raking in money This card sold and the total fees paid were $16 For that one month and what was really cool is the Byron's and it was a dream card for the buyer his Goal since he got back into the hobby five six years ago was to have a 52 Mantle and so he was able to do this and then what was really cool The owner of my slabs was telling me is once these guys were able to communicate with each other because that's another feature of my slabs Unlimited is you can get direct communication not just make an offer and in trade numbers back and forth But an actual direct communication because they have a trade feature now, too These folks only lived about an hour and a half from each other. So they met up had breakfast Exchanged card and cash and it was just this really cool experience that happened for Drastically less fees. I mean the breast is nobbly the breakfast cost more than yes transaction exactly Yeah, exactly. Even if they went to Waffle House The It's just such a neat neat platform now, they're not a huge platform, but you actually were playing around with it a little bit I've got a pending offer right now. Yeah, it it's it's a really well laid out site The filters work really well Setting up to sell is really easy But in talking to my rating stands out. Yes something unique as well. Yeah, so which by the way, we are not sponsored By my slabs at some point that might make sense, right? But we're just we're just getting the word out one thing that we keep hearing over and over is people are sick of the fees So yeah, yeah sick of fees. So in talking to Tim and Matt the owner of the company this week a little bit He was really excited that we were gonna talk about this I thought it was just such a cool story and we've talked about the website in the past In that conversation with him. He gave us something cool for you guys. Yep. So we have three unlimited one month memberships to give away Now a couple things you have to do to get that giveaway whatever platform you're seeing this on Okay, we have three of them and at the end of the week. We will random and pick three people. We'll reach out to you Through DM on whatever platform you hit us on you need to be subscribed to us. You need to comment on This video wherever you see it, whether it's tick-tock Instagram YouTube Facebook wherever you see it reels Like and comment and then you need to go to my slabs, which will be linked You do have to have one of their free accounts in order to get this now if you don't do that before We run the random you'll just have to do it in order to get it You'll have to set it up and then you'll need to give us the email address so that they can activate that for you But you'll get one month of my slabs unlimited for free to play around with see if you like it I believe that it's if you're Heavily into the hobby and you're doing a lot of buying and selling and you want to do some trading and things like that It's a really well spent $8 on a monthly basis You can actually see the cards when you're scrolling through you don't really open a lot of stuff And that trade features really neat So I mean the you know if you sell more than $60 a month on some of the larger platforms You've already paid for yeah exactly for your fees without any more so Definitely worth checking it out comment below, and it's just a really cool. Well it out for a month check it out check it out That's that's really good stuff um tariffs Are affecting the hobby actually yes question mark exclamation point? So we actually have the first impact of these tariffs now by the time you watch this I mean And again, here's here's thing. We are not gonna get into political conversation on this show. It's not something Interested in no, but there's been a lot of tariffs moving around a lot of percentages being introduced changing So we don't know what this will be like a week or a month from now But the point where this happened there's been some wide-sweeping broad tariff blanket Tara blanket tariffs that are affecting The industry so you were sharing with me how? PSA is addressing this already. It's already having an impact. Yeah, so this was a post from an international Seller and it would happen to be somebody in Australia and The only people that are gonna be allowed to submit if they're international are PSA authorized Dealers so you have to have a large-scale account where you're submitting a lot to the point where you've become a PSA authorized dealer Even then right now things are a little bit on hold because these companies are trying to figure out If there is any method they can utilize to avoid Tariffs because the tariffs have been been blanket. So if I don't think we have a lot of international Audience, although occasionally we see some weird stuff pop up, but I don't think we have a ton of international often it's however if you are somebody who does buy stuff from international markets if you're a big soccer collector a lot of times you're gonna have to buy from international markets because a lot of the Bigger cards are they're not here If you're a hockey collector Same thing a lot of those nicer bigger hockey cards end up in Canada more than they do here And we've got blanket tariffs there as well. So as you're buying things understand as things come into the country, you're gonna have Things that you have to pay but with the PSA submissions Now there's not really an ability for individuals outside of the United States to So submission aren't even allowed because they're direct submissions No, they have to be through a PSA authorized dealer and then those dealers have to decide how they're gonna handle Those tariffs as things exit their country and come back into their country So there may be a little bit of a slowdown on some of that type of stuff you may be the prices on some of that stuff may go up and The market will have to adjust with it or those things won't sell if I was in one of these countries I would be trying and I had an authorized account. I Would be Really interested in adopting that GameStop model right now Well, the problem is is those companies even if PSA is allowing them to submit they've got to figure out on their end Okay, how do we do this with the least impact? Yeah possible to our customers from a financial standpoint because it's gonna make a difference now What I'm unaware of is when it comes to printing the paper products all those things how that's gonna affect the industry What's actually made stateside what's what's imported But just as anything else when when the average things go up in price that consumables that we're used to I Never see cards go down. No, I says that stuff climbs. So It's it's impacting things. We'll just leave it at that. Yeah and show self-restraint. Yeah No, there's no way and listen if you guys decide to chime in what political stuff in the comments, you're welcome to do that It's a free country. We probably won't respond. I would say you're I don't want to see it. Yeah, we're just not gonna respond to it. Yeah. Yeah, it's got to be better be funny We did have a couple of a funny a funny post this week. But yeah, we're not political Um, I know that it's been mentioned a few times, but I did want to throw this question out So the Paul Skeen sells a little less than we were expecting a good bit less than I was expecting But it is clear a million dollars Fanatics made some money where it came from was not what we were expecting though the purchase so Dick's Sporting Goods buys the card. Yep As far as I'm aware, I'm not aware of any Brick and mortar or chain in the past purchasing a high dollar ultra modern card Are you aware of anything like this happen? No the and they're displaying it in one of their flagship stores, which is cool That is although Man I would I would feel like is the ROI there Um, I think that there's some ROI to it I think the publicity of it is the biggest ROI, but I I would be worried Like how are you gonna display this safely and not be worried about? theft like if somebody Decides they want to steal one thing from a Dick's Sporting Goods. Well, I was probably the one thing Do if they spend a million dollars on that item I'm pretty sure they're gonna spend some money to secure now moving that card on the black market would be almost impossible Because everybody knows who it is where it came from and what it is It's the only thing that exists, but that would make me nervous. It's been a million two million three on a card there's a scenario where they just set it up like it's a exhibit right and Skeens does well this year and They recoup some of that back and move the card there's also a scenario where He doesn't do as well or there's an injury Good so far this year That he's toying with that card never sells for more than that, right? Like he would have to put together a Nolan Ryan Career for that to sell for more I think that there's a window over the next two to four years where it could sell for a little bit more if he continues In ten years from I mean no nature of the product It's like the newest the latest yeah greatest now Yeah, 10 15 years from now if he's won four Cy Young's and 10 time all-star and has you know won 15 games a year Which is gonna be the new standard for like top-notch pitchers because they're not pitching enough to I mean He's want to know this year, and he's pitched nine total innings Yeah, like that's just the new norm for pitchers so wins or something that isn't gonna be anyway What it would take so it's just an interesting thought What would it take for that card to be worth more and he could have an excellent career? He could have an excellent career and that card may never touch that value again true although my again My argument is I think it undersold At this point. I thought it was gonna do three million dollars. It clearly didn't I mean there There's nothing that it could have been done to market this card more There's nobody else that needed to know about it. You can't tell me that Golden or whoever wasn't you know? You can't tell me that the big fish were not reached out to you and people weren't pleading with them to be involved with this I agree. I just it surprised me it went for about 35% of what I thought it would now I'm usually not that far. I did see not that far off. I don't know if it was Santiago or somebody else, but One of the bigger influences on Instagram ran into Reuben as the auction was running Michael Reuben And he thought it would land just north of a million So maybe we were just a little excited for it, but it is an interesting thought a product that big Three months after you know within three months of the auction Closing it's been what a month month and a half now We don't even know that the card can get back to that point that really says something about these Golden tickets that people are hitting out of these new products and there will be more patches So when this is not the brand new thing It'll be interesting to see what kind of market that demands the hype is always on the news But I'd love to know that if I hit something big like it's more than just collectors buying there Maybe a company interested in that for marketing purposes or whatever so Hopefully that that's a problem. I run into in the future Good luck take your collection into Dick's Sporting Goods and see what they offer We're trying to say Up next we're gonna do a segment that you will see every week in a show where as we've posted this to video We've been noticing what you're engaging with the questions that you're asking and so we want to drop a new segment called the value box The value box is us trying to offer something valuable to you for free take it and do what you will with it Hopefully it's helpful to you whether it's business related in sports cards Collecting or just some fun facts that will be helpful for you in the future And we wanted to start out over the next few weeks talking about How to start selling cards so for those of you that have been doing this a long time This will be a refresher Maybe nothing surprising, but I do think we're gonna drop some nuggets in here that may be really helpful for you But we're gonna walk through if I was starting tomorrow. You were starting tomorrow. How would we start selling cards? How would we whether it's for a business? Whether you're trying to fund your own hobby Whether you just have some cards that have been sitting around that you don't care that much about and you want to move What do you do to start selling so over the next four weeks? We're gonna talk about Selling what you have buying what you need Negotiating the deal and then scaling the business so those are those are the four things so today is gonna be all about Selling what you have so to kick this off. It's important that you notice We started with selling what you have yeah Yeah, don't don't there are a bunch of there are a lot of models out there a lot of influencers a lot of Grifters and the hobby that are gonna tell you go buy buy buy go buy this wax and open it to make money Go buy this single of this brand new rookie because they might pop off they am I getting sound effects Yes, absolutely Great everything you have because it's gonna multiply whatever the value is on your collection So we want to talk about how do you start selling cards starting with what you have a few different categories here? But I've been talking for a full minute, so you take off well and not only selling what you have understanding one really important thing There is no such thing as getting rich quick in any hobby or any business. Now you may rip a bunch and get lucky and hit a big card, but I promise it likely took you as much money as you spent to break even by hitting that big card. There's literally odds on the pack of that happening. Yes. So there's no, so these guys, Jason said, these guys that are trying to pitch you on these schemes to just 5x, 10x your money quickly, stop. So as you're trying to decide selling what you have, the first couple of things you need to ask and really be honest with yourself, am I looking to sell what I have in order to fund more purchases for the hobby for me as just a hobbyist? I'm not trying to make profit. I'm just trying to upgrade my collection or whatever else. So ask that question, or am I selling for the purpose of trying to see if I can turn this into a business? That's a really important first step. Which one of these things are you? I would say that the majority of people that start talking about selling, and I don't think this would have been the case even five years ago. I don't think it was quite the case now, but the majority of people that reach out, contact us, message me, message you and say, Hey, what do I do with this? Are people that were really introduced through breaking. And unfortunately for them, they're already down if they've been doing this for a while. So you have some inventory, you likely have some hits or case hits or autographs of players you really don't care that much about, but they have some value. And so the information that you're coming into this with is, well, the breaker on that stream told me that this was worth X. It had a sticker on it. Or you hit two or three big hits. You're like, this is easy. But a few months later you realize that you're maybe going to break even, probably taking a loss. So the first thing we want to say about selling what you have is you have to know what you actually have. Yes. The easy thing for a lot of collectors to do is to say, well, I spent this on it. So surely nobody cares. Surely it's worth. And that does seem logical. These are collectibles. These are licensed. This is a really good brand. This costs this. Everybody's opening it. It's everywhere. So surely I spent this and it has to be at least worth. Look at who that name is. That's a hall of famer, right? Like we can get real carried away. But before you sell what you have, you have to know what's in there. And the first thing to do is to comp your cards. Now, some of you are sitting on 20,000 cards in several boxes that you've been adding to it for a long time. You're trying to clear out the closet. Some of you have a Zion case and you only bought stuff at a certain price point. It's a little more valuable. Whatever the case, here's what I would challenge you to start with. And it is going to be a grind, but it's the most honest way to get introduced into this hobby. If you're actually trying to sell cards, you've got to force yourself to comp the cards, which is going to be really fun on all the hits that you have, the stuff that's higher value. But where most people stop is they don't want to go through the lower end stuff. They don't want to consider the possibilities of losing out. They want to believe that, well, yeah, these cards are worth a hundred or 500 bucks. But I mean, there's 3,000 cards in that box. It's got to be worth at least a buck a piece. That's the mindset that we have because the thought of if you're somebody that's been collecting through just opening waxes, I've got to be able to recoup most of this. The reality is it might be a little different. You might surprise yourself, but forcing yourself to comp through your inventory will help you a lot. Now, if you have a little bit more knowledge and you're saying, well, I know this is one to two bucks. It's a base hall of fame or whatever. Sure, that's fine. Separate your piles, however you want to do it. But taking the time to comp this stuff out is going to greatly impact your strategy going forward. Once you've kind of gotten to that point, now it's time, how do I sell this stuff? You have a few channels, a few things you want to keep in mind with each one of these channels. If you are wanting to maximize the value and you've got to play that time versus money game, then your best bet is to go list everything on eBay or go set up at shows and start a business. If you want to get full comp value for your stuff, and this is a really important conversation that I think a lot of people aren't willing to have. If you're not willing to do the work to get full comp value, you aren't getting full comp value. In the end, I tell customers all the time, and I try to make a joke out of it. Some people get the joke. Some people get offended. There doesn't exist a world where I do all the work and you get all the money. It's the same thing Jason said. If you go spend 50, 60 hours comping all your stuff, you're going to feel real rough about selling that to somebody like me at 70%. I don't blame you. I don't blame you at all. But if you bring that whole set to me, I'm not going to pay you full comp value for it, because I have to go do all that work. Know how you want to sell. If you want to make the most money you can, list it on eBay, list it on MySlabs, take it to shows. Don't walk around with it at shows because you're going to be selling to people who need to buy it at wholesale, because this is how we pay our bills. There are people that set up at shows that are just collectors that are funding their hobby, and they may be more aggressive because they're hoping something like that walks to sale, but it's not going to be probably low end stuff. So know what your end goal is. If you want to maximize value, that's how you do it. You have to put the work in. Otherwise, you can bring it to somebody like me. You can bring it to somebody like Jason. You can bring it to a card shop. What they're going to do ... Go ahead. I just wanted to say, when he's talking about the different channels, it's important to know also that there are several different ways to approach this. For the last year, I have been primarily spending my time in cards on a high volume, low end store on eBay. The reason I did it was I calculated the time I was spending and the technology that's out there with duplex scanners and AI, and it made sense for me to constantly source high volume, low end with free shipping through eBay, but on the hook for that, I'm committing to spending hours every day shipping items, dealing with customer service for people that bought cheap cards, which a lot of times cheap customers can be more difficult. Gary made a shift a while back that he wasn't going to do everything. He was going to focus in on setting up at card shows, going for higher tier price per sale items, buying two tables at the show and putting better stuff out rather than having 10 value boxes out at the table, and he scaled his business that way. Now, I have this base of this high volume, low end store, and I'm now bringing in a separate set of inventory to sell at shows. There's different ways to sell. There are people very effective at selling cards under $5 that might make more than a lot of you guys sitting on five figure cards in your boxes. I know you're laughing at that, but I'm telling you, the math is out there. Some of you all have been sitting on cards and you won't let it go for less than 95%, and guys like me are lapping you on the amount of money they're making, 50 cents to $1 a time because you're multiplying it over 100 a day. Time versus ... The value of time, it cannot be overstated. This is something we mentioned. There's a new podcast that Card Collector 2 brought out here about a month ago called Cards and Content. Really good. It's a really good interview style podcast. He spends about the first 20 minutes of it just talking about pickups and stuff. If you don't care about that, just fast forward and get to the interviews because they're great. Or watch the whole set of cheekies. If you like that kind of stuff, go nuts. That's not something I enjoy from anybody. Keep talking about it. I am. Just move along. The interviews are fantastic. The most recent interview was with Josh Roth from Roth's Cards. This is a guy who got started in the flip game in sneakers and then transitioned to sports and he said something that was something that I've said a lot and Jason saw it and went, we need to talk about that because it's a really, really good point to this part of the process, selling what you have. The first show he ever went to was the Dallas Card Show and wasn't even supposed to set up. Had a friend there who had sold a bunch of stuff in the first hour and said, hey, can I buy some of your showcase space? He sat his stuff out and did a $10,000 deal and he took about a $2,500 loss on that deal. On the value. On the value. He said that he would not be where he is now if he had not done that deal because that $10,000 in cash liquidity was more important than the extra $2,500 he could have just fought tooth and nail for because he was able to take that $10,000 and just start churning it. Some of you right now are listening to this saying, how in the world would a $2,500 loss on value be one of the best things that happened to you? It's going to hurt your brain to hear this, but I really want you to consider the value of when we say time, not just time it takes to comp and do shows or list, but the time it takes for something to sell. You can have a super liquid card. You could have the hottest rookie in short print in a 10 premium product, but beholding at this certain comp that you need. There's nothing wrong with that. We both have cards in our showcase that are priced away where if somebody's trying to make a quick flip off of our product, they're not going to get it and we're not going to sell it to them at that. But Gary and I both have the expectation when we buy something that there are cards that will take six months to a year to move. It's going to sell to the direct end user. But if you do that with the majority of your inventory, you're going to get lapped by other people taking 20%, 30% margins on stuff, 15% even depending on the card and they're repurchasing, they're making a good buy, they're selling again. They've made three or four purchases in the time that it's taken you to sell one and they've made more money. You're going to be card rich and cash poor if you don't do that. And to Jason's point, to make it even simpler, if you've got $10,000 in hand versus $12,000 worth of cards or $12,500 worth of cards, how fast can you go buy $2,500 cards at $400 a piece and get $2,000 of your $2,500 loss back and then do it again and then do it again and then sometimes take another step backwards because you bought something wrong. That's another lesson in how to sell your stuff. We can't go too deep in the weeds. Yeah, I know. I know. But the point is there are a lot of different ways to do this and if your expectation is 100% of comps on everything, it's going to lead to a lot of frustration unless you are a very patient person and ... Well, I'll just leave it at that. You're going to need to be very, very patient to get 100% on everything. Matter of fact, I'm just going to say it, you're not going to get 100% on everything. Not on everything. You're not. There's no way to do it. There's no way to perfectly buy and get 100% of comps on everything. No. But we're talking about selling what you have. So pick a lane. There's not a wrong answer here. I would argue too, try all the things out. Set up at a show. A table's going to cost you $30 to $50 max. I would not recommend going to Dallas for your first show if you're just getting into this. Facebook sales are still a thing. There's a lot of Facebook groups that are active. Instagram is very busy as a place to sell. eBay, MySlabs, whatever marketplace you want to use, but you're going to have to start processing it. One of the things that we see often with people that are wanting to sell, and a lot of times they want to do a business, is there's just this hesitation as if, I don't know enough. I don't feel like I'm enough of an expert. I don't know all the ins and outs. I don't want to lose value on this. I don't want to sell something that might be worth more later. It's like this paralysis by analysis. You're never ready. You're never ready. Just jump in and go. You just have to go. What I've learned is if somebody says, hey, I'd like to buy this, but I want to work out a deal, and you don't want to, you can say no. Yeah. Yeah, and do it nicely. You can say no, or I'm not really sure, or on this card, I'm really not sure if I'm ready to sell at that point. We both would really encourage you, start with what you have. Yes. Don't go buy stuff. We guarantee that over time, you will lose money buying inventory that is sealed for inventory to sell. Unless you hold it sealed. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. If the rookie class ends up being good. I would say law of averages, you're still going to lose money. Now, vintage slab stuff that already has a propped up value, be based off a hall of fame class, but the odds of you running into that, if you're just getting started and selling it pretty low, it's possible for sure. But that would be something that we would consider when we're looking through. Anything else when people are looking through their own inventory to sell that's really important? Understand, again, one of the things Jason said earlier that's really important. Every base card's not worth a buck. If you just throw that 14th year Tom Brady beat up base card from 2019 into your value box, you might get a buck for it. But your base card of Tim Anderson from series one, it's more valuable as fire starter than it is as a card. Don't try to sell it. You're going to get frustrated. You're going to get annoyed. Even the math on it, when I sell a card on eBay for $1.99, that's the cheapest I'll list a card for on eBay. $1.99, not $190. No. $1.99, free shipping. High volume, low end. $0.40? I'll get just a little bit better. I'll be closer to $0.50 on that. Now, if I can get them to buy two or three cards, which I do multi-quantity, there's strategies where you can make those margins much better and offer discounts. That's more eBay specific, but that $2 is really like $0.50 that I'm putting in my pocket. That's a point of reflection. For some of you, I think it's really important to consider this. If you need the experience, I recommend comping everything, learning what you have, learning what's not worth anything. Whenever you buy stuff at value boxes, going through all that, taking the time. I really think it was so valuable to me learning card values, but there's some of you that are just gonna say, I don't wanna mess with it. I don't wanna even sell stuff. Just separate that stuff out, put it in a four row box listed on Facebook for 25 to 50 bucks. Move on from it and establish what you wanna sell out of your inventory from day one. But start with what you have, sign up for the show, get the table, open the eBay store, set up your account on MySlabs, whatever it is, but get started with it now. Put a date now, whatnot, whatever, or you're not gonna do it, and you're just gonna be staring at that box later, and somebody's gonna tell you that you need to go buy these cards and flip them and buy this and grade them, and you really don't know yet what they have, what they're worth, if it's even worth messing with. So dive into that, it's worth it. This has been the value box. Are we coming across too harsh with it? No, I don't think so, I think we're good. This is what the people want. If you're selling, start with what you have. All right, right into another segment. We've been talking about building in more things that you're talking about on socials and asking us questions about. So up next is a segment we like to call Low End Liquid. As Gary said yesterday, I hit 10,000 orders on eBay in 10 months, I think that's a pretty impressive number. I could be wrong about that, but I do feel like that's a pretty good number. Solid. 10,000 orders on eBay, all cards. Now there were some hiring cards in there as well as I launched the business, but the large majority of these are lower end. Large majority are sub five bucks, yeah. Have there been some cards five, $700 that have sold in there? Yes, but the majority of the transactions were not that. So I'm gonna bring a segment to you where I look at a product that a lot of people set out in bulk for a dime or less, or you find it in a quarter box, 50 cent box, and maybe an oddball, weird product. But it's definitely something to look out for if the model for selling for you is the low end stuff. So up first, we have a series of cards. These are oversized cards, these are called Sportscasters. Now on the front, this reminds me of some curriculum from a health class back in the day in school. Well, do you know how people got these cards? No, tell us Gary. Well, I just think it's cool. So these were mail order only? Yep. So you had to have a subscription and you got them mailed to you every month in the 70s. On the back, a bunch of history, like this Joe Lewis on the back. At that point, they're marking his 27 world title fights. Here were the results on all of those. There's different symbols up here reflecting different sports sets. There are variations from different countries. Now, some of these graded, like there's a Larry Bird pre-rookie, that if it grades high, it's worth a lot of money. It was his, him and Magic Johnson and Wayne Gretzky. They were their first cards. There are some others that the title is a play, like special teams, what is special teams, or the Super Bowl. So some of them are not player specific, but then others, like this Pele, there's a lot of these that'll go for like five to 10, 20 bucks as I drop it on the ground. I bought a whole stack of these, like 150 to 200 of them for $10 at the Ship Shawana Show. I've sold half of them already. It's been about a month and a half. It's crushed, it's absolutely crushed on it. It's a product that is very liquid. When people buy them, because it's kind of oddball and obscure, there are people that want all the versions of the Pele from every country. There are people that want every play for the football. There's a lot of subsets within this card. So that becomes- Also very eBay specific, though. This is not necessarily stuff that you're gonna sell at a card show for full value. Yeah, this is online sales. When I say liquid low end, my assumption is you either have buyers for low end if it's local, which would be kind of rare, or you're selling at a marketplace like eBay. But Sportscasters, they're from 1977 to 1979, they were made. There were some licensed products, like a remake of this in the early 2000s. Donruss, the regular size cards, they were all numbered, also really cool. Yeah, I have some of those in my store. Those, I'll be honest, even though they're lower numbered, hall of famers, they do not move as quickly. Very niche. Yeah, very niche. So low end liquid, Sportscasters. If you're on any of them, and you're doing a low end store, what I love about these is I run a duplex scanner, Ricoh 8170, it's kind of like the industry standard for people doing this. I can feed these through, it scans them perfectly, it shows imperfections, and I can list, I listed 150 of those in less than an hour. So that's a bit of a cheat code, but you could even just take pictures of these. You will need a nine envelope if you're shipping them out, eBay standard envelope. I can dive into the weeds more on that, but that's our first low end liquid. Sportscasters, if you see them, they sell quickly. If you get them for less than a quarter a piece, and you're listing a lot of them, you're gonna actually do pretty well. You're gonna do pretty well on those. Up next, you're so excited that we're gonna start doing this. We've been getting a lot of feedback on the prospecting content, which is something Gary's really passionate about. So we are gonna launch, starting this week, I mean, we're just launching segments. Bam, bam, bam! Segments, pow! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! The Catalina Wine Mixer represent for those of you that know, you know. But Gary's gonna start a segment called The Lookout. Be someone that we need to be on the lookout for, and we have our first one right now. This is a name that if you're a prospecting person, you'll know, but I wanted to start with it because what he is doing in AAA to start this year is insane, and that is Nick Kurtz. Nick Kurtz was the number four overall pick in 2024 for the Oakland, well, not Oakland anymore, I guess the Sacramento slash Las Vegas Athletics. Nick Kurtz has had a few health concerns, mostly when he was in college, but he's a first baseman, six foot five, dude has just a simple, relatively compact, power-filled swing, but more importantly, his plate discipline is impeccable. He walks at just about the same rate that he strikes out, and more importantly, he's not a dead-pull hitter. This dude goes oppo more than he pulls. He will take what the pitcher gives him, and when the pitcher makes a mistake, the ball is going a really, really long ways. So to give you a rough idea, so far in 2025, AAA season has not played as many games as the major leagues have so far. And so far in 2025, this is his slash line, 476, 522, 1522 with three home runs. His overall minor league career, which is a total of 17 games, which were split between AA and AAA, he never saw anything below that, is a 407, 521, 1368 slash line with seven home runs. He's played a total of 17 minor league games. I don't know how many more he's gonna end up playing. The dude has legit 65 to 70 grade in-game power. Now, I grade power a little bit differently than some people do. Guys who only grade power by balls that go out of the park might have him more at a 60 to 65 grade than a 65 to 70 grade. I take gap-to-gap power into account as well. I judge it more on isolated power iso than I do just home runs, which is a little nerdy. Oh, it's so nerdy. But he gets to that power in games. 90th percentile EVs around 101. Max EVs so far with Wood is 105.8. He hits the ball away, opposite field, 44% of the time. 70% hard hit rate means he's barreling the baseball. When he hits the ball, it is the barrel of the bat. He don't need no torpedo, dog. Which is a different conversation. I love the innovations, though. Only a 31% ground ball rate, so he's hitting the ball in the air. He plays out west. They're gonna be playing in Las Vegas where the air is dry and the ball flies. Is he in licensed product yet? Yeah, he's Bowman 2024 draft. 2024 draft. But yeah, the kid just rakes. He's not a liability in the field. A lot of the questions that people are gonna ask about this, I'll try to nip in the bud first. He's not just gonna be a DH. He's not gonna win any gold gloves at first base, but he's not a liability at first base. There's one yellow flag. Health? He's just prone to injury over a few years. Not just, so. Yeah, his sophomore and junior years. Yeah, so. But I couldn't agree more with the power. Effortless power, opposite field, and he moves like an athlete. And he's only 22. Yeah, he's only 22. So he's gonna be able to stick. Call up this year? Oh yeah, yeah. I don't think he lasts in the minors past middle to end of May. Now, if you're investing and holding at him, here's my question for you. 17 at bats. Not at bats, games. Games, sorry. And we know that double and triple A, especially in that two A, getting introduced to that can be interesting. Quick move up from there. He's at triple. I know, I understand. I'm getting to my question now. Okay, gotcha. I'm gonna ask you. Fair enough. You ready? Yeah, I'm ready. Is there a probability that a guy like that gets in there, he kinda has a big showing right away when he's called up, hits some jacks, pitchers make adjustments, and he does hit a little bit of struggle, just because for as long as I can remember, the swing is really rated off of the volume of work and 17 games, I'm just gonna say it, is nothing. Well, no. That's nothing. He did hit 40 home runs over his two healthy seasons in college. He hit over 400. I know, but we wouldn't talk about most prospects' college career in comparison to 17 games in the minors. That's true, but I also, when I think there's- So you don't think that there's- No, there's gonna be adjustments. Of course, there's gonna be adjustments that happen, but here's the thing that's really important to keep in mind. What's, when I look at a player's swing, one of the things I look for is how loud the swing is, because the louder the swing, the harder it is to adjust when pitchers make adjustments, right? Like, the more that's going on, the harder it is. We saw that with a guy last year, you might have heard us talk about, that I really liked in the minors, and he came up and was good and then was never able to make the adjustment. That was Joey Weimer, because that swing is just super loud, and I thought he was okay with it, and he wasn't. I don't know if I'm right about this, but you said that. Is that exactly what I said was going to happen? You did, and I thought that the hands were good enough to keep it from happening. Don't want to toot my own horn, but- They weren't. Nick Curt's swing- I was right? You were. Nick Curt's swing, it is not loud. The front foot barely leaves the ground. It's just a sway, almost. He stays in the back hip really, really well, and there's not a lot going on with his hands. It's just to the ball. You know what was really weird with this swing to me? For the power that he has. When I say weird, I mean it in a positive way. He's almost through and out of the box like Ichiro was when he's done. Like, this stuff that's just carrying, it's like, the best way I can describe it. He has opposite field home runs. If you ever played slow pitch, and you knew that there was a defensive shift, and you knew that as soon as you touched the ball, it was a base hit, it was just in the wide. He's running out of the box as if he's already hit a hole, so it's not this power stance, big swing, a follow through on the swing that you have to unwind to get back. He backspins the ball like crazy. We talked a couple weeks ago about old school way of hitting versus this new school way of hitting. He's very much that knob of the barrel. To the ball. Knob of the bat to the ball. He's almost hitting down to hit up, which generates a lot of backspin, which is what allows the ball to carry, which is why he doesn't look like he's swinging super hard, and the ball goes 380 feet, and you're like, oh, I guess that got out, Oppo. Is he affordable right now, or are you a little steep? He's affordable in comparison to guys like Caglione and Bazzana. He's not cheap. I'm wanting to say his base autos are probably going for 130-ish right now, but Cags is doing 300, and Bazzana's doing 180. I think that Kurtz's floor, and you've heard me say this a hundred times, I prefer floor to ceiling. Kurtz's floor is the highest in that top 10 picks. Okay. Cags has the highest ceiling, but Kurtz's floor, just because he's going to get on base so much because he is willing to take a walk. That's a superpower early on. Yeah, like if you can have close to a 400 OBP early on. And you hit for power. Yeah. The two comparisons in my mind, floor for him is Baby Schwarber. Like, that's his floor. He's going to hit 28 to 30 home runs instead of 30 to 40. He's going to hit 250 instead of 215, though. He's going to get on base a lot. His ceiling, offensively, is Kyle Tucker. Okay. Like, that's the ceiling, offensively. A 35 to 40 home run, 280, gets on base a lot. He's not going to steal as many bases as Kyle Tucker does, but he's a little sneaky there. He'll steal a few. But yeah, Nick Kurtz, first episode of The Lookout here, first segment of The Lookout, is a guy to be on the lookout for. He's coming fast. I like it. Yeah. I'll even let you do it again. Awesome. I'm feeling generous. Let's rock. There's a lot of statistics. Well, I'm going to be nerdy about this stuff. Can you try to dumb down the nerd a little bit? Probably not. Probably not. There's cool kids that are going to quit watching. Well, the problem is, is if you dumb that down, the segment is, hey, you should watch out for Nick Kurtz. He hits the ball hard. Thanks! No, the segment is, I'm going to tell you the name of a prospect that's going to make money for you. Yeah, I'm not doing that. We don't want to do that? No, we're not those guys. I'm starting to be like a little bit of a troll with our Instagram. Just saying, telling people they're stupid when they post stupid stuff. When they say stupid things? Yeah. Yeah, so. One last thing before we go. What's that? I want to shout out, repping the hometown today. Me too! Shoals Jugrocks. You are? Yeah, Columbus Clippers. Oh, that's like minor league. This is like high school. Okay. J-U-G-R-O-X. Jugrocks. Go Big Blue. You guys brought up the. X on the end of things early on I do think it was definitely as far as I'm aware I'm not aware of another educational institution wasn't your mascot like a papier-mâché rock paper mâché And then when they're on the court it was like it was like not like costumes are now I mean this was the 90s early 2000s by God. We're talking a score Small you didn't even have a football team right well football would interfere with basketball. Yeah, yeah, so even if we could yeah We wouldn't do that. We were in Hoosier country like No regrets shout out to Schultz no regurts no regurts this has been the ball card show these sports party sports collector by now peace You