Unexpected Card Price Surges Shake Up The Hobby This Week

We actually just scanned our millionth v Friends card. That's awesome. Congrats, Gary Vee and team. You made it. Gary's Gary and you know, people that try to hate on him, it's just so annoying. Have you seen the market for this guy? Oh, we're just talking about that in the office. Like pandemic. Six grand went back to like 2,500 as of, I don't know, six months ago, and now suddenly it's back up to like five, six grand again. The Ken Griffey Jr upper deck rookie. Would you sell them, though? I wouldn't because of nostalg it probably. Welcome to the trading Cards and Collectibles podcast on the Radcast Network. From chasing grails to calling bluffs and going inside the hobby, are you ready to collect? Let's get at it. Here is your host, Ryan Alford. Hello and welcome to Trading Cards and Collectibles here on the Radcast Network. Ryan and Brian coming to you for our weekly Friday edition of of the show. What's up, Brian? Oh, you know, nothing. Yeah, just a, just a normal week of converting to a C corp, moving, you know, a month, holidays. So it's just really just pretty normal around here. How about you? How's it going in your end? You know, just relaxing, remodeling, still a little bit unwinding. Two companies starting, three others sharing, you know, four other ideas with you. Filing paperwork for the end of the year for taxes, and I feel like that's about a third of it. Yeah. That's what you can remember? That's what I can remember. No, man. Hey, thankful it's been a good year. A weird, it's been a strange year in some ways. But it's, it's, it's all good. Happy, healthy, family's good trade. You know, most of the cards I've bought are up, so that's all that matters. That's all that really matters at the end of the day. I mean, kids are great. You can always have another one. You know exactly what seek. I mean, talk a little bit about the business. Like, you know, we talk about the functional things that Ludox and I know you do some of the behind the scenes. But, you know, running a, a company of, at your scale in the hobby, with all the players you're talking with and the partnerships, I mean, what's happening behind the scenes? I mean, it's like, it's, it's, it's one of those things where every day you come in here and there's Always something different, and there's always a challenge, but there's always, you know, there's good things. You get some wins once in a while, but my day is meetings and meetings and then partnership meetings and then more meetings. I think last week, I was in meetings for 31 hours, and I don't. I don't. I don't waste time in meetings. I'm like, all right, guys, what do you got for me? But it's marketing. It's. It's branding. It's customer acquisition metrics. I mean, it's. It's a. It's really just a big data company, and that data comes to me, and I process it as good as I can, and then I make a decision. But, yeah, it's. It's a little bit of everything, man. Yes. And then just tracking all the card movement, you know, and, like, all that. Have you done anything with the storage units? No. I was there last weekend, though, and I found two inserts. 90 inserts. Uhhuh. One was Jordan Beam Team, and then one was Chipper Jones out of 98. And each of those cards are worth, like, raw 3, 400. Chipper. I'm a Brace fan, dude. Chip. I mean, I got. I got freaking Ronald Acuna Jr. Behind me, you know? At least you could do this to me, Chipper Jones, you know? Yeah. Just make me an offer. I'll get you what's here. Oh, I'll get you. Thinking of this. Have you seen the market for this guy? That's weird just talking about that in the office. Yeah, it's like. It was like, you know, a couple, like, pandemic six grand went back to, like, 2500 as of, I don't know, six months ago, and now suddenly, it's back up to, like, five, six grand again. The Ken Griffey Jr upper deck rookie. This one's only a seven. Yeah. The tens are going for. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, would you sell them, though, the 10? I wouldn't because of nostalgia, probably. In the storage unit, I found 30 of those king Griffey juniors. Tens or just ungraded? Ungraded. Raw. Did they look good? No, I looked at. I took, like, five, and this was a while ago. This is last year when I found them, and it was $2,500, and I was like, you know, I doubt there's a 10 here, so I have to go back there and pull them back out. There's a whole binder of every rookie card. Collectibles show is where you'll find all of the channels and Learn more about what we're doing. And ultimately, hey, we want to hear from you. You do case hits at collectibles show. I want you to send in your favorite pools of the week. And here's the difference. This isn't about just value. Hey, we want to see some $10,000 hits. Had a couple of those myself a few months back. But it's not just about the value. It's about what you're collecting, what means something to you. Share a story. Share a video of you holding up the card that you hit last week that was your favorite player and you nailed it. So case hitsollectables show. Send in those videos. I want to know the stories. We're going to bring them to life here on the show. We're going to do a segment each week once we get rolling and get some videos in where we share that on the show with us. We want to feature you on collectibles show. Dude, I want to come up there and see. You actually want to just see the storage unit. You guys come up with a road trip and check it out on location. That's what I'm talking about. I'm going to have to bring the crew and just come up there and, you know, make an excuse for. I don't want to wait till the national, though. No, I do it in the spring when it gets a little nicer. Yeah, we're gonna plan that out. I mean, if you haven't been following along. Ryan bought storage unit. Is it two storage units or three? Three. Three. Would you call these. I mean, what are those things called? The tractor trailer containers. Yeah, smaller. Like the. The storage units are smaller. Yeah. But I would say that fills up probably a half of a semi trailer or 3/4. It's like 5 million cards. What's 5 million amongst friends? It's a lot of cards. And Brian just, you know, every now and then stumbles in there and pulls out, you know, a couple inserts worth a thousand dollars between the two of them. Got 20 King R junior rookies in various conditions, and who knows what else is in there. Well, you know, it's interesting. You talk about, like, basketball was not that popular back then. No. But now it's interesting because we. We have 330 million scans. What percent you think are baseball? I know it's high. And that in 1986, if. If we could transpose it back to that, it had been 92%, 93%. But something tells me it's close to half still. I'm just guessing it is. It's 45% are baseball. So I don't want to do the math on that, but it's a lot. And then. Then it's bat, then it's football and basketball. Kind of, like, go in between. And then Pokemon sometimes sneaks up there, but those are at, like, 10 to 15%. Football's never more than 20%. You know, if there's a good CLA, like a quarterback class, it gets up to probably, like, 25, 30, 25. That's it. And the funny thing is, it's. I'm a football card guy. Like, I'm football cards, then basketball, then baseball. Like, I know baseball anymore, but I don't. You just don't collect it as much. There's just someone that. Like the legacy collections. There's just so many baseball cards. Right. And. Yeah. And. And so it's almost impossible for it to ever flip. Now, it could flip on a. You know, maybe, but it hasn't flipped in three years. And it's pretty much, like, dialed in where it always kind of hits. We actually just scanned our millionth V Friends card. Oh, that's awesome. Hey, congrats. Congrats. Gary Vee and team One million scans. Hey, you. You made it. We're gonna give. We're gonna find out who that person was who scanned the millionth card. And I have a couple V frame cards that Gary gave me that. I'll give it to that guy. That's cool. Andy Cranick. Is it Cranic Cranium. Andy. I like this. The president. Good guy. You got him on the show. Yeah, I like those guys. I mean, you know, Gary's Gary, and I kind of, you know, like, if you got. I think you're just looking for a fight for fight, like, if. Or like, to just be disgruntled. Like, if you really dislike Gary, like, is he my cup of tea every day? Like, no, but I respect the hell out of him, like, and have no problems with them. It's more just if I. You know, it's kind of like, am I ready to turn that program on? Not always. You know, I don't need Gary to remind me some I probably should have been doing. Like, it's more that than anything. It's more me than Gary, but. But people that try to hate on him, it's just, oh, so annoying. And, like, I get why it's easy to, like, look, when you're successful and you talk and you've been in front of the camera for 10 years. You get fat, people get fatigued. But don't get it confused. Dudes running circle around people. He's balling big time. He's authentic who he shows. That's the thing. It's like he's not everybody. I can't stand fake, you know, like, I can, I can. We're all made different and have different personalities and people, like, get more, you know. But he's exactly what he says he is. It's harder to be authentic in today's world than it is to be someone else. You're not exactly. What's going on this week? We got some movers, I'm sure, in the weekly card market and the ludic scans. What's happening? I think. Yeah. These don't surprise me. Let's see. See? I mean, finally. Drake May is not in there. Yep. He was like four. Four weeks in a row. He was a top guy. Okay. There's two of these guys that kind of surprised me and one that should not after his week last week, his first breakout game. So Shedure Shador. So his downtown PSA 10 was traded 1200 bucks end of November. Now it traded $2000 now. And scans have increased by 34%. The second one is so situational because Daniel Jones went down and they gotta go find a quarterback and they find Philip. I'm gonna tell you something, Brian. Google, like search results are an inflection of what's happening in the environment. Right. Like I. I used to a lot more but still do with some clients because we do Google Ads and all that stuff. I look at the search trends and they tell you like literally the sentiment of what's happening because search volume on different things. LUDX is absolutely the sentiment meter of the hobby because it is 100% reflective of the hottest news. Okay. Shoulder big game number one, Philip Rivers. What hitting the scans. It's so topical. Yeah. And it's crazy because if you think about it like that shows how big this industry is. Because the only way you can have efficient pricing like this is if there's a lot of. There's so many people, so much volume. So there's people. It's like, should our Sanders buy it? And. And then, you know, the fallers, there's a reason why they fell and people are. People are smart in this industry. And you know, do you buy this fallers when they. When they fall, do you sell this? The. The risers when they rise? That's the question. But I mean, Philip Rivers comes back and he's a 41% scan rate. His PSA is 22,004, tops. PSA 10 is up from 160 to 210. And then this last one. I mean, I don't even want to put you on the spot. This is hard. I would not have gotten this guy. I have no idea. But I bet it's someone that's underrated. I don't know. It's. Let's. Let's put this. It was. He's five years after Philip river started, and he's still playing at a high level. Yep. Stafford, 31%. Okay. And then on the fallers, we have one faller, and it's the mirror image of Philip Rivers. So, yeah, the other Daniel, the other side of the coin. I feel bad for Daniel Jones. I'm just gonna go ahead and. Let's just circle. This dude's had resurgent year. I didn't like the fact he was playing with the broken fibula or whatever that was. Like, you're always putting more. Even when you think you're not, you're putting more pressure. Something on that other leg. It did not surprise. I was watching that game live when it happened, and I said, he's done. That's Achilles. I could just tell. And the way he pounded the ground immediately, you knew. He knew. I mean, you had to deal with the Giants and that incompetency, and then you get with an organization that's got a team put together and you show with why you were a top pick in the draft and, you know, not the number one, but a first round pick. And I hate it. For him. Yeah, it's tough. Yeah. I mean, his. His stuff's almost down 50%. It's 50? Yeah. From a 250, 20, 19 panini, silver prism PSA 10, 250 to 132. I mean, at 100, you got to buy it. Yes, I would agree. I'll be a buyer. How long it takes just to get PSA to do something? I mean, buying a PSA 10 for 100 bucks for a legit quarterback, you know, you're already 25 bucks ahead. Yeah, I'll just go out, buy some nines and maybe have them regraded. Maybe I'll get tens. I don't know if anybody ever does that. That would never happen. Oh, let's crack some nines, baby. You know, I mean, I know how it is. I mean, I. You go to the bar back when you were single, you crack some nines, hoping they'd go home and be a 10, you know, but you didn't. You just. But you didn't have you weren't judge, jury and executioner. You know, you get to make the grade. Oh man. Just saying. I don't know. Allegations are allegations, but damn. I mean, it's just like what, what do we do? This industry has had a sort of a cloud a bit, you know, always a bit. And not, look, it's not hurting sales, but just a little slimy. Right. Since the, I mean, when I was in 80s, 90s, every dealer was slimy. It's gotten better. It's a lot better than it was then, I can tell you that. But it's always had a little bit of this over. Like everybody's trying to get over on everybody and it's like I finally, you get something and it's still like everybody's trying to get over on somebody. Why? I mean, and look, prov. Innocent till proven guilty, but damn right. Where there's smoke, there's fire. You. Yeah, and it's. I don't know, man. Like, don't you make it. I don't know. I, I. Where do you draw the line? Like there is no, I mean it's almost like they're above the law in a sense. Whoever in this industry a market leader. Because I've never seen news that takes people down like pwcc that, I mean that went out of business, but that was just, that was just debt. They just had too much debt in a shrinking market and they were giving 80% or 90% of the money loaning it to you on the all time high of cards. Like that was a disaster waiting to happen. But beyond that, like anytime there's a grading issue, anytime, like it's, it's fine. Hey, there's, they didn't print a 101. Okay, whatever. They'll keep buying it. They'll keep grading it. Like if this industry is very resilient. I mean, it just shows you the category is so strong that it carries even the, the bad players like it. Because the category can overcome because again, all of us degenerates, you know, are, you know, it's still going to be our pastime, you know, like keeping up cards, collecting and doing stuff and we're willing to sort of turn the other way, you know, I don't know. Like, is it, I wonder if it says something because look, as much as I want it to be less dominated by males and all that, does it say something about the, the population of the audience that, that we kind of are willing to sort of overlook these things? Yeah, I mean there's, well, there's so Many nuances. Right. Like, to this industry. So, like, if, if that offends you as a grader, like, or a customer. The, the, the issue that's happening with grading companies is that the, the big three, three and a half with sgc, this is like perfect material for an AI grading company to come out and be like, see, we're going to do this differently, and you got to trust us. The issue with that is it doesn't matter if you're better. What's the secondary market going to do, and how long is it going to take for your slabs to be worth what these, you know, leapfrog, CGC and Beckett and psa. I mean, you run out of money, your tech company, you will run out of money. And there's a lot of carnage on that. Now. Are they better than other graders? Probably at this point. But yeah, there's. It's. The business model is really rough. Really rough. I love Mike Baker's doing, but, I mean, I know he's got an uphill battle and scaling and all that. I mean, I'm realistic, but I still like what he's doing. And, you know, he's bringing a little bit of evolution to it with being able to see why your card graded and have an online serial code to that. And I mean, I know that they have codes with the cards at vsa too, but you can't, you sure can't on every card go to a site and see why it graded, what it did, that's for sure. Yeah. And Tag does a good job. Mike Baker is amazing. There's, there's, there's great people and I don't know, I hope, I, I hope that what we've heard will be just proven absolutely false, but it's a lot of power under one company, you know? Yeah. I mean, and I like, I mean, I like the guys. I admit at psa, I got no problem, like, personally with psa, but I can acknowledge the sort of position they're in that allows them certain rights of playing all sides of the fence, right? Yeah. Like in the financial world, when I was trading derivatives with my company, like, Goldman Sachs just played by different rules, and I had to trade with Goldman Sachs against them, every single trade. And they just had different rules. And they're like, whatever, take me to court. And I'm like, oh, I'm not going to take you to court. I'm worth, like, nothing, and you're worth like a trillion dollars. So. But they would just back out of trades and they were just like the, the credibility they don't care. Cause they're so big and they're not going to get hit. I'll say this and we'll see. Open invitation. I have gotten a lot of yeses and I've got some of the. We've, we've had some big names that are willing to come on. I've got, we've got them scheduled. PSA has been the most, what do you call it? Dodge dodging. Like yeah, it's, we got a top 10 sports show in the U.S. one of the, you know, biggest tech players in the hobby. Credibility. I got a number one show in business. You know, we're not doing this in a basement somewhere down in a van by the river, you know, like so. But this is what it is. It's a little dodgy dodging, you know. We'll see. Well, we'll see. We'll try getting NAT on here, you know. I know, I like that, I like that. I like all those guys. I like everyone. Yeah, me too. There's someone I don't like but I'm still, we're still going to call a spade a spade or at least go like this real somebody come on here and tell us that didn't happen. Well the best thing in corporate America is if they send a letter saying it didn't happen, then it, then it happened. Absolutely happened. Oh, so Otani one of one Logo man is already at over a million bucks on auction is and now it's gonna set the record for highest ultra modern card sale. Wow. A million bucks for a single card out of like 20 to 20, 25 tops. I think that's amazing. Good for that person. I mean it's crazy that I guess in theory, I don't know. I'd like to know sometimes what these cards came out of. I mean a lot of times they're breaks out of you know, expensive hobby boxes. But sometimes, sometimes you go to Asheville Brian Asheville, NC On a couple's retreat and you go into the shittiest card shop you've ever seen and you buy five packs of Donruss and you go back to the room and everybody goes to sleep and you start going through the second pack in your boxers, your wife's snoring and the fourth, fifth, sixth card is gold and it's Josh Allen out of five. Come on. Yeah. Five thousand dollar Josh Allen. This was exactly a uh, it's, it'll be a year ago in January that I did that. That's why going to marriage, that's why I go into marriage weekends. That works. Everybody's asleep. And I was, like, doing a. The silent yell dance, going, no way. I was like, unbelievable gold downtown. Josh Allen. Out of five. Out of a. I think the moral of. The moral of the story is go to marriage counseling weekends and just buy a bunch of stuff and your marriage is perfect. Yes. And. And he's my favorite player on his chances. I mean, unbelievable. It's a good story, and it's true. It's like car work now. It's. It's. I think it's 5 to 10. I mean, like, it's. It's so rare. It's like, what's what? Somebody willing to pay. Yeah. Make an offer. Someone out there. Yeah. You won't sell it. No. You don't sell. Well, not stuff I like. I mean, I got. Yeah. Everybody needs to come to the store. You're gonna see some fun stuff. Unfortunately, I'm gonna put some of my collection out. That's not for sale. It's fun to look at. You know, you can hold it. You don't mind me holding my gun? Just kidding. Just joking. It's got cameras, museum pieces. Museum pieces. But that. That's a good story there, dude. The biggest hole in the wall card shop I've ever seen. That's crazy. Oh, that's why I say so. Great. But look, Brian, I gotta tell the rest of the story. Literally, I go in there and I. I was kind of downtown hunting a little bit. No, no, of course I'm realistic. No way I'm getting it right. But the guy in front of me bought everything but the last five packs out of this box. And I was gonna buy everything that was left. The box. He bought, like, 15 packs. And I'm, like, counting as he's going through it. I'm like, all I did was come in here to buy the rest of that hobby box. It was a hobby box. And he goes. He bought 15 ahead of me, and I bought the last five. Corey Guys, life never turned around. He's probably. He is probably in a van down by the river, but no one in the shop. I didn't go back to the shop. I mean, like, I went back to Greenwood. I missed an hour and a half away. Like, I didn't go back and go, look what I found on your shop. Maybe I should have. But it was more just. And I think I actually negotiated the packs too. Like, I didn't pay full price. You should have given them a rebate. Giving him a rebate. I think there he had him, like, at like 24 a pack or something. I think I got him down to 1575 bucks for five thousand dollar Josh Allen. Yeah, that shot's probably out of business, you know. Yeah, I don't know, you know, nice. They were nice people, but it was just a dump. I'm just gonna stop. I'm not gonna name any names. I don't even remember the name. It was, you know, by then we'd had, you know, the afternoon cocktails with all the couples. It was a couple's retreat, you know, getting away, you know, that was awesome. Don't let my work there about that. Because then when I take her on a couple's retreat, she won't know the. The real reason why I'm doing it. It's to buy packs and break them. Because it works. Yes, I heard about this. LA sports card burglary. $100,000 worth of Pokemon and sports card stolen from a Burbank, California shop. How does. Is it like a smash and grab, do you know? I don't know all the details. All I know is there's. I've heard about four or five of these stories. A lot of increase in theft. I'm like, surely. And it's terrible. I mean, I don't. You don't want this to happen, but surely you've got insurance covering your merchandise. You would hope. I mean. All right, tell me. I mean, I'm new to this, but I mean, I keep insurance on what I own. Like that could be sold. Most of shops, most of our shops don't have it. Like, at least the ones that. I know they didn't. But I mean, it's not that. Yeah. I mean, is it? Yeah. First of all, it's very hard to find a, A real company, a carrier that does it. When they do do it, you have to make sure that your inventory is up to exactly what it is if you want the money back. Right. Else it goes under like this umbrella. But at some point, that's why we're Ludox. I went to talk to Chubb Insurance and I said, why don't you use our technology? And so when you go into these shops or these collectors, you can have a digital receipt. And then those guys, if they sell the car, could take it out and you have a. You have your value and they like the idea. But I got busy. I don't know, like, they didn't get back to me. But I still like the idea, Brian. I have insurance and I have inventory. And the reason I have both of these is because I scanned Every one of them through legs. And I have my digital collection and I had a spreadsheet. So there you have it. That's it. Yeah. So I'm a living case example of exactly what you described the. But it is tough. Like I haven't, I'm not doing everyday business yet. I haven't even opened the doors. But I can imagine once you're in and out, in and out, in and out. But look, if you're gonna have like a Shopify or something, which we will, you gotta do it. You got to keep up with it. So you got your inventory so you know what's available. Not so you know, it's more I think a reflection. And I have no idea. We might be this, this company, they might have perfect insurance and everything else. We don't know if it's this specific story but it's more I think a reflection of kind of a little bit how behind some of the industry is, I think with the digital aspect of I don't know and shopifying everything. Right. Yeah. I mean the one good thing we get the shop in Texas. We just found out who our neighbors were and it's Arlington. Arlington police department is moving in. Yes. Hey, that's perfect man. You give them a 10 discount and they're there anyway. So yeah, I'm doing here. Hey, if you're listening and easily stop by men in blue or fire department, military police, 10% off every day, all day. And free coffee and drinks from me. So yeah, serve the ones that protect us every day. That's awesome. It's good for business and it's just good for life. Cool man. Any final thoughts? Anything else happening? I know we've got a few announcements. Don't we, don't we have a new you? You know, there's so many updates to LudX. Every day there might be a piece of hardware that may or may not be in pre sale mode. Yeah, it's the Lodox Lightbox and we created it. I started it a year ago and probably on iteration 20, but it's. It's a light box that takes perfect pictures. You can do penny sleeves, you could do top loaders. And then there's a stand from our partners at IPEVO and it just takes the best pictures. You can go to our website lux.com to check it out. We do. We are doing pre orders delivery by January 15th. But I, I invented this with a guy from Canada because I just saw the need for having something at this caliber and hopefully people like it. But yeah, yeah, So I used your pre demo, like, at the national, and it worked pretty damn good. I think that was the pre model, the whatever you want to call it. And the concept, though, and it. It was getting pretty damn good for a. A demo model. Yeah, I'm sure the final. It. It makes it super fast, dude. It's like, you know, like scanning them in with a little slide. Kind of fun, too. There's something like. I don't know. It's like, hey, it's kind of fun, like sliding the cards in. It's a cool sound if you do top loaders, like, click. Yeah, I think that's what it was. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, so I get so happy when I do it. Yeah, exactly. I think it's the cash register, like, going, you should. You should have added a sound effect to the side, you know, like when it goes through. Oh. You know, get the store up and going. You know, I think we'll announce next week some stuff that you and I have been talking about with the collectibles media and all that. So we'll. We'll save that for next week. But, God, the store. You know, my. My wife held an event in my store last night before I'd even opened. You know, she had her Christmas party here. That's cool. So it went well. No, no cards seem to have walked off the. And so, yeah, man, it's starting to look like a. A legitimate spot around here. I'm gonna do some B roll film for that probably over this week. We'll have it for next week and talk about some exciting things Brian and I are talking about in the media space for where and when and how you can watch this show and other shows in the hobby. So we'll. We'll tease that and leave it there. Other than that, hoping the Jaguars stay hot and, you know, and Josh Allen keeps kicking it. And the Bears need a comeback. They need a comeback week. They have to be. Cleveland. Gotta beat Cleveland. Bounce back. You know what the high temperature is going to be on Sunday? I don't want to know. I remember the high. That score might be. Six to three, two good defenses. And that's a frozen ball is what that is. That's honestly, like, almost too cold for me to go. Almost. Yeah, almost. I just had to drink more beer. Exactly. Cool, man. Appreciate you as always. And you know where to find us. Collectibles show. You can watch the full episode. You can download content from there. We got the full episodes. We got links to all of Ludex's stuff and want to send a shout out to Jason and Matthew who are here today. Jason's one of my biggest fans from the business show Jason Center. His dad Matthew's here. We want to thank them for stopping in the studio. We'll always love it. Hey, they might have got some special stuff. So, hey, give us a shout. We'll come and see us in the studio. And of course, you know where to go. Go the App Store. Type L U D E X. You're going to get the greatest scanning, trading, digital collection, management, everything right there in the App store, no matter where you're at. Ludx Changing the game in the hobby. Tech we're always changing the game right here. Ryan and Brian are always here for you in the hobby and we appreciate everyone for listening. And we'll see you next time on Trading. Thank you, buddy. Hey, brother, thanks for tuning in to the show. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast platform and don't miss the full video version on YouTube. You can find us at www.collectibles.show or follow Ryan on Instagram at ryanolford. Now get out there and collect yours.