When To Quit.... Season 6 Ep 9

Hello, and welcome to the ball card show, the sports podcast for the sports collector. I'm Jason Otero. I'm Gary Lomaster. Season six, episode nine, busy week once again, and boy, we have made some changes to our business model this week. It has rocked social media by that. We mean we got at least 10 comments of like, is everything okay? Are mom and dad fighting? Are they still happy? Everything's great. So today here in a few, I'm real excited. We're going to jump into this whole concept of like in the card space, you have got to be able to adapt, adjust, change your business model as the market responds. And we both have made some decisions with that, that probably it created a little bit of a domino effect once one of us started making some moves and it's like, all right, we both internally look. So we're going to jump into the weeds on that. If you're in a spot where something's worked for a really long time and it's not anymore, this is going to be a high value content episode for you. Absolutely. Gary and I are going to be vulnerable. The stuff we've tried that's worth the stuff that's failed that we've had to quit doing. Why? And then even why some things work for me that don't work for Gary and some things work for Gary that don't work for me and why that is. So I'm really looking forward to it. We're going to be really vulnerable with you guys, but we try to keep it honest here on the show. Uh, before we jump into that, wow. Big week for the community here at the ball show. It was, uh, it was a crazy week in a lot of ways. It was a very humbling week, uh, in all the potential definitions of that word. Um, and our community has been so awesome and supportive and showed up and showed out, uh, in ways that we can't be grateful enough for. Yeah. It's weird. Um, first time I've ever like been emotional in a sad way on the podcast was last week. And so a lot of things have happened as you know, of course, first off, like we have this discord community, there's a lot of people engaging in that way more than we were expecting, feeling a lot of love and support. And then we had the interview with Mike on SCN last week. And I'll tell you guys since that day, a lot of things have been kind of silly for us. Um, a lot of things that we've been working really hard for seem to be kind of coming together. Um, whatnot. If you were there Sunday and you're been a long timer, like I'm choking up in the show because of the number of people in the room and this being a dream of Gary and I's that at some point we'll provide enough value and build trust that people understand where we're coming from and they value the community and our approach. And it was just one of those nights. You had our highest average sale per car, just the stuff we've been working so hard. The highest number of people in the room. Uh, we, we really felt like we put together a high value show. Uh, not, not high value as in like all these expensive case hit type things, but just like there wasn't a dud in there. Uh, and people showed up and I know for a lot of people, you know, you, you go on whatnot and you see these rooms with a thousand people and number 1500 people and, and all kinds of craziness going on for us. You know, the numbers that we saw are dwarfed by those people are 10% of that. But for us it was huge. Yeah. And uh, you did, Jason did. Jason looked at me and we both were a little like, wow, a little, little choked up, a little tear. We're like, oh my God, it feels like this might be turning a corner is how it felt. When you manifest something long enough in your like mind's eye, you're just like, I am, this is what I want to do. This is what I'm working towards. And you spend weeks over and over and over working way too many hours. And you're like, man, when is some of this stuff? When is the momentum? Where is the, and then to have that happen, it's just because people responded to what you've been doing. It's such a rewarding feeling. Um, we hopped on our audio downloads of our podcasts and they were more than three times what we have. And it was our content from last week. And it, it just, um, it's been incredible. So those of you that hopped in messages this week and just said, Hey, I found you through sports cards, nonsense, the interview with Mike, uh, and that you're engaging in the content. Like it means so much to us. We appreciate that Boston was a milestone moment for us where we began to see some hard work and the message of our content getting out there. So I'm making this way more dramatic than I should, but that's how I do everything, baby. What would you expect differently? And I think that for those of you who have been here with us, and there's a lot of you that have been here with us since episode one, uh, with Jason and I sitting around a too small table, two big dudes around a tiny little round table, uh, talking sports cards, talking baseball cards, talking our business, talking our lives. Um, you've seen some structural changes in what we do. You've seen some format changes in what we do, but the one thing that I'm most proud of is that we've stayed committed to who we are and the value that we want to bring to you and the, and the core principles of what the ball card show to show is about, which is helping people navigate the hobby on the business side of things mostly, and on the collector side of things as well. And, uh, our goal is that that never changes, no matter what the structural changes are, no matter what the view counts are, that that doesn't change. And if you catch us slipping on that, we would expect you to give the same energy we would to anybody else starting that grift. So you see that stuff and you feel like there's a take, like you hold us accountable on it. And I promise you, this will respond honestly to whatever that take is. Speaking of takes, okay. Speaking of takes before we get too far in, and I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole. Um, there was a, uh, uh, something that happened with a whatnot streamer this week that was real ugly and real bad. And a guy that I actually have a lot of respect for came out and talked about it and shed light on it. And that's Boston card Hunter. Um, and he always does a really good job of making sure he has his receipts in order, making sure he knows what he's talking about before he calls something out. And he did that with this and it was really good content. He went on in that video to talk about, Hey, maybe I should just try to take some of these guys out of business. And I'll be the first one to say, please do because we need in that side of the hobby, more transparency and more honesty and more directness. Uh, but I do think it's important. One of the things that he said as he was talking about that really hit me, I don't want to say the wrong way. Cause it didn't like, I didn't have a visceral reaction where I was like, but I just went, wait a minute. And I do say, I do think that because what he said was this, if I was going to do this, I would just need a little bit of money. I go rent a space. He kind of threw out his concept, which to be frank was a pretty good concept. But the part that hit me wrong, what was the concept for those that didn't hear it? Yeah. The concept was like, I'd buy, I'd rent like a warehouse area. I probably read it for a thousand bucks a month, which feels a little cheap, but Hey, I don't live in Boston. So maybe it is. I'm pretty sure the real estate market's not cheaper there than Columbus, Ohio. Uh, and he was like, I would make it a eBay, uh, not an eBay, but a PSA submission hub. Uh, part like that part, like shipping supplies, have a big enough space. I could host my own card shows and content. Yeah. And the next part was where it got me. And he said, I think I could do all of that and be really successful financially with it, with my phone and two hours a week. Now, Nick has a ton of experience on the business side of things. He's got a ton of experience in the SEO world. And I do think, and if you don't know that, just pause for 10 seconds and let him fill the space and he'll tell you that's fair, but he does. And I do. And he also has access to a lot more capital than most of us do. Yeah. So I do think that with a good chunk of change and his experience, he could be successful in it. I don't think he could do it in two hours a week, not a chance in this world, but he could probably do it in less than 40, especially if he had, I guess, if you're investing and hiring it out and it's, you know, yes, two hours a week, that's like fanatics numbers. That's like TSA numbers. Yeah. That's like, that's like the turnaround times that they tell us that he gets really upset when they don't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Come on now. Two hours. But even then I was like, okay, he's talking about himself, but he followed that up with, and a lot of you could too. It's really important that we all understand that there's no such thing as running a successful, financially successful business in two hours a week. That's a brick and mortar like hub type setup. It's just not real life. You just have to have such tremendous capital. Yeah. I mean, the amount of capital that you would need and the amount of already known and internalized experience, you would have to have to do that. Um, and he may have been speaking hyperbolically. He may have been just trying to throw in something out there, but I know a lot of people watch him. He has a bigger reach than we do. A lot bigger. Yeah. And in the comments, I saw a lot of people echoing what he was saying. And I just think it's really important. And not that I think anybody's going to go flush their life savings down the toilet trying to do this. Right. But understand if you want to do something like that, if you want to do something like what Jason and I do, whatever it is, you better plan on working your ass off. You better plan on grinding it out. You better plan on spending money that you're not sure you're going to get back and it ain't going to be easy. And I think that is the thing I wanted to say in response. Yeah. Um, we really tend to have a little more of a watchdog vibe when we hear the sentence, and you can too, or it's easy for you. Now, what was he trying to say probably was, hey, listen, everybody's telling you, you need a room with 5,000 people and you just lie about comps and freak out. And that's the only way you're really going to make money in the space or get juiced allocation or whatever, whatever, whatever, which obviously now he's not going to be talking about that. And he's buddies with fanatics, but I do think he's probably trying to encourage people to be like, if you want it, you don't have to do this. You don't have to be unethical. You don't have to be yelling at your customers. You'll be tearing cards up, go open a warehouse and do some creative things. What I do like is it's a push for this thought of like, what's next? What's innovation. Yeah. If fanatics is clamping down on direct accounts, that doesn't mean that there's no space to monetize in a brick and mortar. So from that perspective, I found it really interesting, but you and I just have a real pause and hesitation when it sounds like quick, easy money in the space. Well, but, but yes, yes and no Gary, but our story is we're both working blue collar jobs and now we're doing this. I think if somebody's jumping in from an investment standpoint, it is different for them. There are a lot of people with that kind of money, but this idea that you could do four different types of things within that business model at two hours a week, I just wouldn't want that to be sold to people as an expectation of a reality, putting your head against the wall and whatnot. So I should go rent out a warehouse space for a thousand bucks and do content. And by the way, I don't know too many warehouse spaces at a thousand bucks a month that PSA would be in a hurry to build one of the onsite grading spots, but there's other ways to do it. Like you could have cool equipment in for people to rent and do their own pre-grading. Like there's probably some pretty unique stuff. Well, tag is supposed to be bringing out an onsite encapsulation tool for LCS is, which will be a weird thing that we can talk about a different episode. Let's do it right now. Okay. Let's talk about this tag machine. So I love the idea of I can encapsulate my card onsite, find a location, especially for PC or really cool cards. I just want to protect. If I knew there's a solution, if it's a bigger card, hypothetically, and I'm going to grade it later, but I don't even want to wait on PSA, something like that, where I get it encapsulated immediately, get some feedback on the greatest fine, but what's going to happen the first time in three months that somebody does a YouTube video where they do that to the same card three times and it doesn't get the same grade. Now tag will be able to say, well, they touched the card. It's been out. Surely it was damaged and blah, blah, blah. I don't think it'll matter. The first time AI grading is not exactly the same every time. And it's available in store and you start seeing content compounding about it. I think the brand would be cooked because at that point, they don't have their thing anymore. Unless the kiosk just takes over the credibility piece. Well, I think that the first thing you said is accurate. I don't think it's possible to crack a slab without, at least on a microscopic level, altering what's inside that slab, at least minutely. And I don't know how close you've looked at the way tag scans cards, but it's like, it looks like a neutron microscope. Do you think it'll be accurate? Do you think it's more accurate than the human eye? Yes. Do you think it's more consistent? Yes. When it comes to the way tag grades, I agree. I agree that with grading in general, the goal should be consistency across the board. We talked about that when we were on SCN with Mike, like back in the day, a 10 was a 10. Right. But the idea that- And a lot of 10s were 7s too, though. Yes. But I'm talking about perception in the marketplace. But I think that there is a lot to the idea that taking subjective thought processes out of the equation is a positive thing. Sure. The market hasn't responded to tag from a cost standpoint in the sports world. They do in the TCG side of things. But the TCG side of things, in my experience, seems to be way more open-minded to alternative grading sources than the sports card market does. I'm going to push back there. I think the only reason that's happening is because it's exactly what was happening with COVID, where all of a sudden, HGA was a viable option, and CGC, and FCG, and all this. And I think it's when the market is so hot and nobody can slab this stuff in time, the money's going to spill over because- because the singles still carry so much liquidity that people are willing to play the game. Yeah, but even in COVID though, the values of those other places didn't match PSA's values. May not have matched, but they were a lot closer. People were paying for HGA. Well, yeah, but they were paying 70 to 75% of PSA. With the- How's GMA? How does that work out in sports cards right now? Well, it doesn't, but in the- That's my point. But in the TCG world, they're not paying 75% for TAG. They're paying 95% for TAG, and they're paying 95% to 100% for CGC. Is that true? They're paying that close for TAG? Yeah. Yeah, like- I know CGC. Do you think that's because CGC actually established them? So is this what happens when there's actually competition? Yes. So that's a great case study. So CGC gets a huge influx of the non-sport, the TCG market. It's because they have the comic pin market. Their buyers are already paying sticker value. Does a PSA 10 carry more than a CGC 10? Not a pristine- Not a pristine. Just a 10 to a 10. Just a 10 to a 10. I don't know. No, a 10 to a 10 is probably 85% to 90% in the TCG world. Okay. Pretty close. Yeah, it's pretty close. That's even a little tighter than the SGC to PSA gap that was happening like two years ago. Oh, yeah. For sure. That's interesting. That's what I'm saying. In the sports world, it just isn't there. I don't know that it ever will be because that's what consumers are going to decide that. The companies don't. The companies have no control over that. Yes. I agree. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. All they can control is the quality of their product and meeting the promises that they make to their consumers. What the secondary market decides those are worth is the secondary market. Do you think TAG will actually compete with PSA, BGS, SGC? On the sports card side of things? Do you think it will happen? You have an option of getting the card immediately. Here's what I think. Now that we're thinking out loud here and rambling on. We're way off script. I think TAG gets love in about six months. Here's when it happens. Okay. When the 2026, not 25, because they're going to run 2025 football, it's going to be nuts. The PSA backlog is going to get worse because they're not stopping grading. Guys, I could've just dropped a special. It's going to get worse. Well, the special is because he said, once it slows down into a crawl, we'll do specials again. And everybody said, why am I paying for this membership? Yeah. Right? But let's fast forward to the fall. Fall-winter, brand new Top's Chrome football products, Top's licensed football stuff hits. I can see more people doing the quick flip with TAG on the lower end hobby or the big hit retail stuff that drops off quickly. If I can get this in a slab within a couple of weeks, and the soonest that this same card is going to get back from PSA is three, two months from now, and I'm still catching in season, I think people are going to make some of those plays because I'd rather have 85% of the potential 10 right now than 85% of wherever that lands in six months, which we know the answer is down. That was the COVID plan in a nutshell. Like I made a good chunk of money sending base and retail color 2019, 20 mosaic to GMA at six bucks a slab and turning a $5 card into a $25 card for $12. I feel like CGC makes more sense for this though. No, I don't. I don't disagree. If CGC can meet demand for it, well, they're showing that they can meet their backlog, but they're showing that they can meet a demand. I don't know if they could take on 30% of the sports grading market right now. They do have a nice looking slab, but if they already have that reputation where they're competing at the PSA price point on TCG, then that one makes the most sense. And I agree with you wholeheartedly, especially on vintage. That slab looks, it is a more crystal clear plastic that they're using in that. You see the card better just flat out. So somebody is going to get that attention and it's going to happen. My prediction is when the football stuff starts dropping, that's going to be kind of nutty. I do think tag may be on to something with the idea of instant grading. If I had my slab back, so let's say in 10 minutes you put it in the machine, it scans the card, it drops the card into the encapsulator, it encapsulates it, it laser prints the info because tag doesn't use flips. They laser print on the slab from a tamper proof standpoint and then it spits out your card at the bottom and you have your grade in 10 minutes. But think about, so somebody opened a blaster and they hit a rookie numbered card that in three months is going to be half of what it's worth now. You can cash out and get 85% of that instead of, you know, being under, I do think if the backlog continues, when all three majors are getting new product, really, I mean like we're not even talking about dynasty football, but my goodness, I cannot, I can't afford it and I can't wait. Triple threads to triple threads, tribute, pristine, a fanatic. Since you're listening 20 minutes into us talk about you. Yeah. Right. Uh, tops tech. Let's do it. Let's bring it back. Maybe the football. Can you imagine the people who complain about variations now? My God. We're tops tech. They'll lose their minds. 74. Yeah. They'll lose their minds. I don't know if we need tech. We kind of already have, like basically they stumbled onto retail exclusive parallels kind of as a way that works. Obviously you can head down a rabbit hole with top stack. We're not going to get all that, but a lot of parallels like the holiday, the Easter, the fall league, we saw it's a fun rabbit hole. It is. It is. And the early stuff, it does well for us on whatnot. If you do too much of it, you will get cooked, but sprinkling that stuff in is pretty cool. Uh, all right. Um, we mentioned it before. If you're just joining us, getting involved with the community, we launched a discord. Uh, the QR code on the screen will have a link tree that can take you anywhere, but hop in the discord. We have, you can ask Gary or I questions, show off cards that you've hit. Look up local shows in the area. Ask Keith at new heart cards, a question for a shop owner. Um, ask us questions for the podcast, just all kinds of stuff in there. Uh, so go give that discord a follow and link will be in the description link in the description as well. All right. So while we're at it, I mentioned Keith, let's head up to Delaware, Ohio, new art cards, Keith new heart with shop talk. Hi, this is Keith at new heart cards and this is shop talk. Last week we teased about what is the number one question that we get. And when I say that, I mean it's on the phone through DMS in the shop. What is the percentage that we pay? And the answer that we say every single time is, well, it depends, right? You bring us a two row of base rookies and inserts and refractors, you're going to get paid a different percentage than you to bring in a LeBron rookie autograph, right? So yeah, we like to say, you know, we'll pay 70% on who crossed the border and everything. It just doesn't happen that way. Will we pay more on some stuff? Absolutely. But as Rick from pond store say, we got to keep the lights on, we've got to frame this, you know, we got to put this in a mag, we got to do this and that. And when was the last time in a show that somebody paid you a hundred percent of comps, right? So, you know, if I'm paying 85, 90% trying to keep the lights on, pay my, you know, taxes and payroll, you know, you're not coming in and buying a card at a hundred percent most of the time. So, you know, it's really hard for us as a shop to work on five, six, 7% margins. And to be honest, I don't know how a lot of the repackers do it as well. You know, they come in and they pay us 87% and then they're turning around and trying to sell at 91 or 92%. Those margins are super thin. And some of those margins, you really only talk about when you're talking about gas and food and Kroger, that's the kind of margins they work on. But cards, that is such a small margin for one bad comp goes on, you know, there you go, right? You lose your, you lose your whole bankroll. So yeah. So is that a complicated answer? Yeah, it is. But you know, for us to say across the board, we're paying 80% or 85% or 60%, whatever, there's no real true answer. So just kind of wanted to go through that, just how we think in our brains. And also we, Gary and Jason taught us how to get on discord. So if you have questions, please leave it in that, that we may answer in there, or we may save it for the, for the next show as well. So thanks. This has been Keith at New Heart Cards, and this is Shop Talk. Don't you love it, Gary, when you know the answer to a question like, what is this worth? The answer is it depends, but you just want it to not be and to be a flat percentage. I think what I appreciate with Keith is not everybody is super direct and honest and upfront of like, it just depends on the card and how I'm going to move it and where it's going to go and how long I'm going to keep it. Well, and I think it's really important to understand that comps are a guideline. They're not a Bible, right? There are certain types of cards where the comps are extremely important. When there are 30 or 40 sales a day of a card, I had a couple of downtowns and uptowns in the showcase last weekend and somebody was like, yeah, you heard me. No, I didn't. I didn't hear you. I think it cut out. What was that? There were a couple of downtowns and uptowns. I know what you, I know you heard me, uh, in the showcase and somebody was trying to buy them and they were like, well, the last two did this. I said, how many sales do you see yesterday? And they kept scrolling and kept scrolling and kept scrolling and they were like, oh, like 30. I said, okay, so we're not going to go off the last two, right? Because unless the last two are around the average. Yeah. If they're around the average. Sure. But if one is crazy high or one is crazy low, let's look at the big picture. Right. But on cards that are super rare, I don't care what it sold for last. If there's not available, like I want to be reasonable, but I'm not, I'm, I have no obligation whatsoever to sell you a card for what it sold for the last time when there's not available on the market. I just don't have an obligation to do that. Yep. Okay. Let's jump into the meat and potatoes here, Gary. I said that we were going to talk about changing and adapting business models. You and I dropped a couple of big announcements this week, some stuff that's changing. And the difference is now when we make changes to our business, people were like, what's going on? What's happening? Right. We've been doing stuff like this for a long time, but I thought it might be a good time to talk about things that we look for when it's time to change something in our business model. Yeah. Talk through some of the failures we've had and stuff that just doesn't seem to work for us, but might work for other people and then help people think through when it's time to make a change and just kind of a process in that to be more efficient with our businesses. Absolutely. Do you want to kick it off? Get us rolling? Yeah. I think it's really important to say sometimes it isn't even because something failed. It's just because things change. Your big announcement was that you were thinking about shutting down your eBay store. And then I got a text from you a couple of days ago with just a picture and it said 10 items. You shut down 51,000 listings. It was like 52 too. And I texted you and said, how do you feel? And I won't say exactly what you said, but you said, I feel relieved and good. I'll find a way to edit this. The edited version is, I feel like I've been on a road trip and my stomach's been backed up and I finally got to use my throne. That's how good it was. It's a big shift for you and you're going to be focusing almost exclusively outside of shows on the whatnot side of things because that has been really successful for you. There's something about your personality, the way you're able to communicate with people, the way you are able to entertain and engage that whatnot works really, really well with. On the flip side of that coin, I've been feeling for probably a month now like something's not working on whatnot for me with my solo shows. And for those of you who may be listening and don't know what we're talking about, we have the ball card show and it's a whatnot channel and we have run three shows a week on that. We are on a joint show where Jason and I are together. It's a lot of fun and I think it's probably our most successful show. Sunday's at 4.30 p.m. Yes. Jason has a solo show where he runs his own inventory and does his things his way. And I have a solo show where I do the same thing and we go back and forth on Wednesdays and Thursdays with that show. And Jason, since we started doing this, has just seen steady continual growth on the whatnot side of things on his solo show. For me, it's been the exact opposite. It's been a steady, steady, steady downward trend. And I have spent hours and massive amounts of my emotional and mental energy trying to figure out what the problem is. And as somebody who's a very, very competitive person, Jason will tell you all the time, I'm competitive even when I don't know. I'm competing with Gary and I don't have any clue half the time. I have no idea. I don't even know I'm being competitive until somebody points it out to me. That's just how I'm wired. So for me, it's been trying to figure it out and figure out the system. And I have increased the value of the inventory. I've increased the quality of giveaways. I've changed time slots. I've done everything I know to do and it's not working and it's just getting worse. And Jason making the decision to pull the plug on his eBay store gave me the courage to step back and go, you know what? It's time to admit defeat on the whatnot side of things and stop doing solo shows. So I made that decision this week. Just to be clear, how many weeks did you do shows where you didn't make money? Like you say defeat, I think it's real important to get in the weeds. Where you lost money on what you ran? I don't think I had a single show where I lost money on what I ran. So just to be clear, like when you say that, I think that's important because people will run down the trail of like, oh me too, I've been running downtowns and I've been losing three grand a week. Yeah, no, it's nothing like that. The message here isn't perseverance on that one. Yeah, no, no, no. It's not that I've been losing money on shows. It's that the amount of time, effort, and energy that goes into the show compared to the profit from the show didn't make sense anymore. And I couldn't figure out how to change the trajectory. Or to change it, you would be making compromises. that leave you feeling like an employee of this platform and not that you're managing your business the way you want to. Well, exactly, and at the end of the day, it's just like you with your eBay store. It's not that the eBay store wasn't successful. It's not that the eBay store wasn't generating profit for you. It's that it was taking so much of your time, effort, and energy that could be better utilized in other aspects of this business for us and for you individually, that it didn't make sense anymore. Well, yeah, I'm coming back from the National in Nashville. Huge show, three days, 12 hours of driving round trip, 13 if you count me getting to where you were, and you get back. I have the store in away mode so as to throttle sales a little bit because I don't have time to ship all week, and I get back to 300 orders. Yeah. And I'm already, like now, and with the ESE, you know, it's convenient with standard envelope, but it's also inconvenient because you're stuffing envelopes. So think through pulling the individual card, penny-sleeving the card, putting it in a semi-rigid top loader, folding up a sheet of paper. I'm a painter. I know it sounds silly, but multiply that over hundreds of times, and I was back. I was already behind because I was gone all weekend, and I was staring at my next 12 hours of work, 10 hours of work, and I didn't have time because there's another show coming up. And so as that scaled out, it's just like, if I want to keep doing this, I can, but I can't also do shows and do content and do whatnot and parent two teenagers and have a happy marriage. Like, it all matters together. And so, you know, eBay's not going anywhere. I'm just not going to be doing high volume, low end. That's it. Yeah. And you're going to be scaling more on whatnot. Yeah. And for me, I went the exact opposite direction. I opened an eBay store, which is something I never thought I would do. I've watched you just bang your head against the wall and be frustrated with it. But you and I talked. Yeah, but hold on. You've also seen me not feel like that a lot of times. For sure. And you and I talked it through and, you know, I'm opening an eBay store that is going to be focused 99% on 90s and 2000 stuff because that's the stuff that I love. It's the stuff I feel passionately was the two best decades this hobby has ever seen. And I want to be able to bring that stuff, the really unique, interesting, rare stuff you're never going to see anywhere else to a much broader audience. Because while people in our whatnot streams and in my soloed whatnot streams will look at a 2009 Topps Chrome Devin Hester red refractor that hasn't sold in five years and go, that's really cool. It's going to sell for $8 and it's a $200 card because there aren't enough people looking at it, right? Like, and so for me, being able to cast a much wider net with eBay and reduce my frustration level with trying to figure out what it is about me that isn't working. And at the end of the day- Do you feel comfortable leaning into that? Yeah, for sure. I think that, yeah, go ahead. Let's do that. Let me prompt you a little bit here because I'm going to try to catch you a little differently than just a declaration. I want to get in the weeds with it a little bit. You keep saying it doesn't work with me. Yeah. You and I spend a good bit of time talking through it and even like, all right, here's some things I would do differently. But the conclusion I came to is those adaptations would prevent you from being yourself. And we have never for one day done this business acting like somebody we're not. Yeah. And I don't live my life that way. So- Like if you get kicked in the teeth on that Hester, you're going to vocalize it. Yeah. And the people that love the podcast need to understand, he turns that on, but he can't turn it off. Yeah, that's just who I am. What you guys see in here, this is who I am in my daily life. We are, Jason and I, neither one. If a camera's on, our camera's off. This is who we are. It's the same no matter what, which is something we're really proud of. But at the end of the day for me on whatnot, like one of Jason's great strengths as a human is that when he gets in the head space of being positive, he can stay there regardless of what's happening, right? Now, when it's all done and he steps back, he might be in a different head space, but in the moment he can say, this is the head space I'm going to be in for the next three hours, regardless of outcome. Yep. I can't. Even when I try to, it doesn't work. Like after streams, Jason and I will talk and we'll dissect things. Usually it's my streams because I'm so like just frustrated. If something's not working and you see that it can, that's such a frustrating feeling. And Jason will say, well, you did this or you did this. And in my head, I'm thinking I went out of my way to try not to do X, Y, and Z, but it's just so unnatural for me in those moments. And at the end of the day, what I don't want to do, two or three things I definitely don't want to do. One, I'm not ever going to be something that I'm not. That's most important. Secondly, we value you guys as our community. And so many of you support us on whatnot at shows, Jason's eBay store, hopefully on my eBay store when it's up here in the next few days. Oh, we'll be, hey, now that you got one, we'll be pumping the stores. Yeah, but I hope that you guys understand that the last thing we want to do is put you in a situation where you feel guilty or we're making you feel like you're letting us down. Or they're having a bad night, I need to do something for them. Yeah, like that's not what we want to put onto you. And I think I do that, even not realizing that I'm doing it. And part of it's because I have such a passion for the stuff that I put out there. Here's an example. So yeah, go ahead. This is a card that it's a Gary Sheffield autograph rookie. It's hand numbered. I believe these were the golden runs from back in the day. That's such a cool thing to me. And I know what it's worth. And I know that if I put it out there on whatnot, if only nine, 10, 15 people are in the room because they're like, oh no, Gary can get a little grumpy sometimes. Then it just gets this internalized cycle that happens and compounds. And then I'm just like, guys, I know there were supposed to be 60 more auctions, but I'm out. Deuces. Peace. Yeah. I'm going home. Yeah. I'll say this. I respect the crap out of whatnot sellers. If you have to do that, that takes so much guts. Now there's a trade-off, like people might not feel great about it, but if you're getting crushed, do not give away 500 bucks for the sake of finishing the auction. Now. Yeah. There's other, like there's things, you can decide, hey, here's my total costs. And I'm just pushing through because I'm growing my audience, marketing expense, whatever, whatever. But Gary knows what to do with X amount of cash buying cards. So when you remove the option of that chunk of change that you're sourcing for inventory and you can't work that money, like Gary can do it with show showcase stuff, he's going to crush on eBay. But I want to lean in on the niche thing. Sure. Because I think this is a mistake that a lot of people make. And we're about a year in on whatnot. We've sold, what's it say? Almost 12,000 items. Over 12,000 cards. And we've got like 10,500 followers right now. If we try to run an exclusively 90s show right now, which Gary has marketed well, he's got the graphics for it, the cards are exactly that. We don't have, in my opinion, a wide enough reach to niche down and expect anywhere close to the volume we get on our Sunday show. I agree, but I do think that for me, as we're getting into this, so this, guys, if you're watching, just be prepared. This might be a little back and forth ping pong-y. That's right. I think the hard part for me was being able to look in the mirror and realize it was me. Because you and I have had this conversation and I think you finally understand that for me, this isn't a competitive thing. It's me trying to figure things out. You and I could run the exact same cards on the exact same night at the exact same time. And you're gonna have 30 to 50 people in the room, maybe 60 for most of your show. I'm gonna have 15 to 25. And we have the same follower base following us. And there's only one variable outside of that. That's why I disagree with you, though. Okay. Because I just explained that variable. I just spelled it out, but it's not good enough for you. Yeah, but you just ran a show the other night that was 99%, 90s and 2000s. Did I advertise it as 90s and 2000s? No, but when you're scrolling through, when people are scrolling through Whatnot, when people are scrolling through Whatnot, they don't see your slide when they scroll up to your page. No, but when you're reaching out to your current community and saying, hey, I do a 90s and 2000s show. Here's the graphic. This is when the show is. What about the shows that weren't 90s and 2000s shows that were the same way? That's fine. But what I'm trying to say is it's, I don't wanna give you a pass to just be hard on yourself unnecessarily. Yeah, I agree with that. I think I mentioned that, but hold on, hold on. Okay. The people we've talked to that have been successful with niche shows, every single one of them says the same thing. Every single one of them that we've met that's like, I do a 90s show. What do they say? I've got five, seven other guys. We each take a night and we all market each other's shows. That's how you scale out if you're gonna niche down that far. So it's like one, it may be unrealistic expectations to expect the same traffic on a show that's typically not only 90s and that does everything to one that just is. But I think what's tough is you and I talk about this all the time. Whatnot is a different type of comp. You and I could look at a pile and say, and even if you feel like you wouldn't have the same people in the room, you and I would look at the same piles and be like, this is not gonna do well. This should do well. Yep. And that 90s stuff is even trickier. And it's what I, when it clicked for me, when I was talking to you, I was like, you're explaining the same things you're talking about now. Is it something in my purse? Something, something is happening. And you kept saying like, it's a $30 comp. I didn't get seven bucks out of it. And I just kept thinking, if you're going and finding the stuff in value boxes, it's got 30 and $50 comps. Go get the 30 and $50 comp. What are we doing here? Yeah. And curate that and take your audience and say, hey, I'm gonna be posting even more rare stuff that I would be scared to run or whatnot. That's really cool. Like that's where it's gonna be. So I think you'll be more efficient with that because it's gonna feel like more passive, excuse me, more passive income, especially two, three months down when you've got a thousand, 2000 unique cards in the store. And I think you're gonna find it to be more profitable and it actually will fund your showcasing as well. Sure. But I wasn't gonna let you off the hook of like, it's just me. I think that it's a hard task. And then you add in that like that live environment and the feedback and reacting to the people and what just happened in the sale. Like that's a game that you don't wanna spend that level of emotional energy and time on. Yes. And I would say that it's probably not all just me, but I feel very comfortable. This is really important to understand. This isn't me biting, beating myself up. It's not saying that it's at least half me, right? And if that's the case and I can't change me, nor do I want to, I like who I am. I'm comfortable with me. If I can't change that, then no matter what I do, it's never gonna be as successful as it could or should be. And I don't wanna put that kind of effort, energy, time and emotional real estate into something that's gonna cause me to feel the way whatnot has made me feel. It's made me doubt myself. And I think that's not something I like the feeling of. Right. Right? Like it's made me doubt myself. Like you've seen it from me over the last few weeks. Like it's made me doubt myself. Well, you were doing it a little bit here in the interview and that's where I'm like timeout. You know, I'm not gonna allow my best friends to unnecessarily do that. I do think there's things, you know, we're probably repeating ourselves a little bit here. Sure. But what I wanna focus on is the fact that like, Gary and I talked about it. He made a video because obviously there's a lot of you guys that are in every week, but what we really feel like is, oh, okay. Because in this space, you're constantly adapting and changing and your arbitrage strategy changes from one platform to the other. And here's what I will promise you. Listen in those of you that are starting a card business. I will promise you that the people several steps ahead of you have found three or four channels that they are moving inventory through. Correct. They are ever changing channels. The relationships are the same, but there are different platforms. It's possible that if Gary's like, I don't want whatnot, but I wanna try another live selling platform, he may find something that he likes. Or you're talking about doing a niche down show every four to six weeks. It's like a goat show, a Griffey show, a 90 show or whatever, giving the appropriate time to just target that audience. And I think we all have to be changing all the time. So let's do this. One, it's appreciated, but I think I know the answer is Gary, are you looking for people to try to give you pointers on whatnot right now so that you don't give up on it? No. And I do appreciate there's so many people that have reached out asking if they can help. But right now, no, I'm done with whatnot as a regular thing outside of our joint show for a while. I'm gonna finish up the two shows that I have on the schedule. Well, one show by the time you guys watch this, I'm gonna finish that up. And then it probably be four to six weeks before you see me on whatnot again. And it might only be a 50 auction show, like whatever I have curated that I think the audience wants to see, that's what we'll run. If it's 50 cards, if it's 100 cards, if it's 30 cards, like that's what we'll do. That's cool. So what I love is that after you made this decision, you felt like you had a little time to think differently about whatnot and your focus went to, all right, okay, the Sunday show is still bringing us money in every week. So how do I create efficiencies with that time? And in like three hours of digging that you didn't have to use before, you've already stumbled onto some automations, building out ways to see SVR pre-bids. And we probably had the most efficient show we've ever had on Sunday. Like as far as like the ability to move cards quickly and move it through and some stuff you're working on. So like selfishly as your business partner, I'm very excited at what you'll be focusing on with whatnot because it's gonna fill in some major gaps that we both have. Yep. And then I get to help you on eBay to avoid a lot of those mistakes. Which you're gonna. Yeah. You're gonna. Yeah. But let's talk a little further. I think there's a lot of people that hear this and they say, you know, I need to make some changes and I'm scared what's going to happen. And maybe you and I could just run through a list of all the things that we've drastically changed in our business over the years. And what we're hoping you'll see is like, you should always be evaluating. Is there something I'm spending time and money on that is not worth the squeeze? And at some point, you're going to have to pick time over money or money over time. But let's walk through some of these that we, some changes that we made as our business was growing so that people see just, this is a pretty common practice and it's a helpful tool to keep your business efficient. Yeah. I mean, the biggest change in our business that we made was right at one year ago, we turned cameras on. That was a huge change for us. And we've talked about it before, but it was a huge change and it was a scary change. I know that sounds crazy, but it really was. We were all of a sudden putting ourselves in front of a whole lot more people and we didn't know what was going to happen structurally for our business. From an individual business standpoint, I think the first thing that I would say that I made a major change on was probably about two years ago now, maybe not quite two years ago. I said, you know what, I'm not taking value boxes to shows anymore. Value boxes used to be a big part of what I did. You had loaded value boxes. Oh yeah. They were great. Nice stuff in there. And people loved them. But I started noticing at shows and I usually was paying for one extra table just to have my value boxes on them because I had two or three, four rows. Always covered your table. Yeah, but it got to the point where that's all it was doing. And if that's all it was going to do, I'm not a break even person. If I'm doing something and it doesn't generate a positive flow, probably out. And for about three, four months of setting up every single week, I just saw less and less people looking through value boxes, less and less people taking the time to do that. And more and more people looking at showcases and more and more people buying $25 and up stuff. So I remember telling you, hey, I don't think I'm going to do this anymore. And then the first show I showed up without them, you were like, oh shoot, you were serious. You really didn't bring those value boxes as you still had two or three value boxes over there. Right. It was tough for me to let go of it because I felt like it was helping me diversify and it felt like I didn't waste money that I had spent. That's one of the hardest things is the business of scaling. You're staring at parked inventory and you're considering not having the same vehicle to move it. Like that's scary. Um, you know, am I committed to this stuff forever now? Who's going to buy it? Well now I have to bulk it out. I'm not going to get anywhere close to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I think the thing that people ignore is usually when that's happening, it's because something else is taking place that needs more attention just flat out. So when you made that decision and then you're like, all right, now I'm just doing showcase stuff. How long was it before you realized that that was the right choice for your business? About a week. Like as soon as I made that shift, I saw pretty quickly a 15 to 20% uptick in my overall sales. Oh really? Okay. Oh yeah. So one of the things that shows and we talk in generalities a lot, so understand that this is just a generality. It's not a shot at any person. There is a kind of mental assumption that people walking a shows have, just like if you're walking through a downtown, the better looking a storefront is, the more likely you are to walk into it. When you're walking through a show and you see a table with one or two small showcases and 10 value boxes, if you're not interested in value box stuff, you don't even usually stop and look at their showcases. The larger profit margins were in showcase cards for me. So removing value boxes, I immediately didn't have as many people stopping at my table, but the people who were stopping at my table were people who were looking to spend more money than the people who usually are spending time in value boxes. In my experience, there are two kinds of value box shoppers at card shows. The first one is people who are sourcing for whatnot or eBay, and they'll build huge stacks but they want big discounts. That's fine. I've done that myself. The other people are people who are set builders, have a small budget for the show. They're just looking for the coolest thing they can find for the $40 that they brought to the show. Again, that's a perfectly feasible way to enjoy this hobby, but those aren't the customers most of the time that allow you to scale your business because those are customers that you're not making very much profit from. So focusing on the types of items and cards that drew the customers who had the most money to spend led to a big jump in my overall revenue. I look back, one of them that I made was what I was going to sell. I love baseball, played it, coached it a little bit, and I more enjoy when I hear prospects, I like watching their swing, seeing live BP, seeing what they're doing. But I really bit into this hard because I was a product of the... I was understanding what was happening with cards when the Bowman class of Bobby Witt and who was that one, Poisson, Robert? Oh, yeah. He was the big chase. Robert Poisson was in that set. Anthony Volpe is in that set. Didn't they almost move him to pitcher or something? Was that the conversation? He is. He's pitching now. Is he really? It was the time when everything was starting to pop off. So you could follow a couple prospects and really profit well from it. But what I realized is the person shopping Bowman, they know all the names and they buy Bowman and maybe one or two other products. And there was such a knowledge gap there that I was always chasing down, what do I do with this F25? When you start getting the nicer stuff, you're also projecting where you should hit this and where it'll land. And you get five guys that all of a sudden don't get past that level that they thought because they hit 2A and saw real pitching. Yeah. Like you're cooked. So I just decided I'm going to remove that volatility. For three or four shows, people asked where the Bowman was and I said, I think I'm moving away from that. My business did not suffer at all. I thought for sure, oh, well, I depend on this and I'm moving a lot of prospects and it didn't affect it. The other stuff I put in was moving better. Bowman is a really good example of changing for me as well. Like in the exact opposite way, I used to be, like you talked about people know my value boxes were juiced and they weren't, like they were super juiced. But I was also known primarily as the Bowman guy at shows here in the Midwest. And that was great until I was so niched down that 80% of my showcase was Bowman. And if there weren't Bowman buyers at that show, I was dead in the water. It's November. I was dead in the water. So I made the shift to start diversifying more and more. And now to be frank, Bowman is probably 10, maybe 15% of my overall showcases. Not because I don't love it, not because I don't love baseball, but this is a business now. This is how I pay the bills now. A bad show isn't the end of the world, but three or four in a row over the winter, uh, because baseball is not a hot market at that time. And now I'm in a bad spot. So I have to have enough stuff to appeal to as broad of an audience as I possibly can. Yep. I think that's a really good point. And we both tried to figure out niching down without niching down too much, essentially. I was all in on the basketball stuff because it was very profitable for me. If you had very little experience in cards pre-COVID, but you understood a little bit like that, you know, Mike, in the interview was like, oh, so you were in pre-COVID. I was like, let's not pretend I had an established business pre-COVID. I was collecting and flipping cards. So whenever that happened with the basketball market, I was like, oh, if I just check the box score and I'm like snap listing stuff on eBay, when somebody triple doubles, I'll make a ton. But what I wasn't anticipating for was that off season going into the next year where everything just, I mean, yeah, huge tank. So, um, I've moved away from that. So like basketball in my showcase, it's going to be one to three of the biggest name rookies right now or established stars, or it's going to be late nineties, early two thousands that are liquid. That's it. That's the game. I'm like, if it's like mid two thousands, it's like first year prism stuff, weird stuff like that. Uh, anybody in that was, was in the dream team or dream dream team adjacent era, right? Like that type of stuff, because I'm familiar with their market and I'm familiar with scarcity, but if you get into the weird stuff like that, Tim Duncan, we were guessing on, yeah, I wouldn't have bought it. I knew it was less, but you could tell me, you know, I knew it was less than it should be, but man, I would not have guessed as low as it was. But I think when we quit niching down so much, uh, but set some parameters, like what did that mean? I saw the same amount of cards at tables. I bought fewer of them that created a stress for Gary and I, and I think that was about the time when the shift in our business went to like, Oh, it's not about, can I sell enough this week? Which matters, but it's, can I even find enough to keep the showcase stock? Right? That, that necessitated a big change in our business. The next thing that I had to make a shift with Gary had this one down pretty good, but as I began to sell through stuff at a higher speed and now I'm moving thousands of dollars at a show and not hundreds of dollars and now it's happening every time I began to pay too strong because I was like, that's really cool. I want that in my showcase. I want people to see the right kind of stuff in here so they'll spend some money and there's some truth to that, but if you're willing to take shortcuts on margins, I can promise you it's not worth losing 20 bucks a piece to have a cool card in the showcase. And that's what was happening. I was paying strong on the highest comp, believing that I liked the card so much that somebody else would have to pay close to sticker and a month later, three other comps would hit and now it's at 90%. I'm already under and they're going to offer me 10% off of that, you know? So I think I'm not overpaying was a huge shift in the business because now I was picky. Now I was rolling into shows knowing my showcases weren't where I wanted them to be. Yeah. And I was not going to take that shortcut anymore. For me, it's the opposite of that. It's something you've been kind of on me about lately. I'm very, very, very adamant about what I pay for things and sometimes I probably should stretch a little bit. I'll give you an example from a couple of months ago that I still kick myself over. I showed off a really cool Griffey junior gold refractor that I bought and a really cool Griffey junior auto to three, the same seller walked up to the table and he had an awesome game used Babe Ruth relic. It was awesome. It had a pinstripe. It was, it was great. And I was so focused on not breaking my own rules where if I'd have just stretched 3%, I'd have had that card in my showcase and I have to understand and get better about understanding that every good rule has exceptions that prove it and I need to be willing to embrace those. Now, am I ever going to do that with case hits and things like that? Probably not. But on that really kind of unique, weird stuff, I have to be willing to break my own rules occasionally. I would, I would agree with that, but I would say that we've already shifted that focus with the case. It's a little bit. You and I make a point of having some of that. So like we're going to be at ship bigger shows. Yeah. I am going to have five to 10, maybe a few more case hits in there of relevant players. That's the super liquid stuff. It's like a jumpstart. It puts some holes in the showcase. It gets money moving. It is a part of this space that's not going to change. And I know this on a day where I have a really bad show and I need to move stuff, I sure hope that repacker that got five downtowns takes one more lap just to see if there's anything in the showcase this time, you know? And so I, um, that's a rule that we had that we've already changed. The other thing too is I've been pushing you when I push you on that, I'll just say, Hey, how did you buy this week? And if he bought really good, then I'll look at him and say, go pay 85% on those. You're still at 71% across the board for the whole week, right? If you, if you add those in, but that's hard assuming you sell through on all the other stuff. Well, no, you would still be at that cost average. It wouldn't change the cost at all. You paid 80% on these cards, you paid 60% on these and it lands you at 70% across the board. So you still have to sell it to get your money out, but yeah, you're, you, but that's where you can't inflate the sticker on the really unique stuff. Right. That'll hurt you there. But yep, we made those shifts with it as well. The one that was tough for me was I was making my bread and butter on, uh, on Facebook. Yeah. I talked about it in the interview. I was literally running thousands. I do the nine card grid and guys, 50 cents a piece. Let's go. I had 50 cents, $1, $2, three. And I would have a ping pong table that had stacks at the end of the week. Thousands of cards across the table would sag sometimes. And it was just a post-it notes and collecting payments and all this. But what happened was this moved to other marketplaces. The non eBay people found out about what they found out about live selling options. They started going to more shows. Instagram became a place where people were buying and selling cards in story sales. And then you had this, this mass wave of people that jumped in, in the middle of COVID that realized all their cards had gone down, that just quit paying, but kept claiming and sales. And so you were spending five hours a week tracking down people for four, $43 and 25 cents, right? Like, you know, and it's Facebook, what are you going to do? Call the cops on the $40 stack that they aren't going to get. You know what I mean? So, uh, that was something that was hard to let go of. When I looked at eBay, I've been ready for this for a while. The growth forced it to happen. Like I can't keep, keep up with it. So we'll shift it. So all, I mean, hopefully you guys are hearing this. The point of this. I know it's a little more rambly from us this time, but the point we're trying to make is if something's not working, stop doing it or change it. Nobody is going to view anything any kind of way. It's up to you. This is your business. These are your metrics and what works well one year may not work well for the next. If you'd have told me I'd be on whatnot two years ago, I would laugh at you. And now I'm sitting here looking at this as like, I can diversify my personal business to the point where whatnot is taking care of everything. And then I just snowballed my showcase inventory over the next year. That's going to be a tremendous shortcut for me. But there's risk involved because I'm looking at 52,000 cards that I've got to move or do something with. So don't be afraid to make some changes in your business and to adapt. Don't be afraid to say what I'm doing isn't working. It's okay. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because you make a change that it's going to be an instantaneous positive either. I think that's a really important thing to say too. For example, that's a great point Gary, making a shift from whatnot to eBay. I've already been somewhat frustrated, not because I don't think it's a good thing, but because it's taking me a lot of time. There's a time investment on the front end for me to learn this and for me to get it to the point where it's a smooth operation that takes less time and less mental energy. It's going to take more on the front end than I even thought that it would. I have to be okay with that to see the rewards on the other side of it. I also have to be okay with the fact that maybe I won't see the rewards on the other side of it. That's a possibility, yeah. I'm not going to know until I'm willing to put the time, effort, and work into learning it and trying my best to make it work. I think my encouragement for you as I hear you say that is, if this was your only thing, then I would be like, well, you better be grinding. This is all you do is list, right? I think what that's going to become for you is you are going to buy even more efficiently at shows because you have another lane that is often slept on, on value, that it's going to walk up or there's going to be boxes of it. You're going to have opportunities to be like, okay, well, I dropped a grand, but I have eBay inventory that'll probably get me five to 6K over the next two months. Those types of buys, the efficiency of eBay buying for that type of stuff that you're going to be doing, when it happens, it's going to be great for you. I can't wait to see that. It'll be a lot of fun. There's nothing saying that I won't six months from now be like, all right, got to do a high volume low end again. Schedule changed. Can't go do shows. That's what I love about this business. We're in charge. Yeah, there's a lot of ways you can do things here. You can undo them. Maybe something happens in live selling where Gary's personality, like he's talking about this personality issue thing. Maybe something changes and there's a platform where it's like, he just rakes there. I don't know. In a perfect world, there is, for me, there is a platform where people have an attention span longer than two and a half seconds who care about learning about the card that's on the screen that they're about to bid on and share the same passion for it as I do. When you say that, and then I use the word whatnot, I just don't ... Yes, I know. That's my point. Where are the old guys that are doing live auctions? That's what you're asking. Yes. You know? I think that we're only going to see more and more platforms for this. It's just not going anywhere, but by that point, you and I will have that thing figured out. We'll be marketing it, running the shows. Humming. Yep. Humming along. Okay. What else do we have here? Let's go over some ship schedule stuff. Yes. Ship schedule. Show schedule. Well, ship is the front of it. Ship is the show. Ship Shawana, Indiana, this weekend, Saturday, Friday and Saturday, oh yeah, as this drops. As you're listening to this. The following week, we have a week off. We will be going to JT's wedding. Very excited for that. Very excited for him to see my dance moves. I did hear- I am not. ... that there are going to be adult beverages, and I will make sure to make some memories. Little lubrications. Yes. I will make memories. Who is that guy? Oh, it's just a guy who does card stuff with for like the last year. He's trying to do the worm, and he doesn't have a shirt on. But we'll, you know, if my goal, if I make it into the photo album, that's my favorite thing. If you make it into a random wedding shoot, because you were, JT's got to be so nervous hearing this. Lucky for him, my wife will be there, and she will not allow that to happen. Oh, shoot. But we've got that week off. Gary might catch a Sunday show. The following week, the 21st, 22nd, we have the Eastgate show in Cincinnati, 22nd is Grove City Card Fest. And then the last weekend in March, we are going to do a show that's a brand new one, the Bronco Bash in Daleville, Indiana, close to Anderson in that area. It's supposed to be a large show. I've only heard positive things about the promoters and other guys in the industry. So we're going to give that a shot, see how it goes. And hopefully, if you're in the Northern Indiana area, you can come hang out and say, hey, I guess more central, north-ish, northeast-ish. And then that first weekend in April is Xenia, as always. And then my fat butt is on a cruise ship for two weeks. Yep, yep. Deuces. Be paying attention as Gary's vacation comes up. There will probably be one or two shows where we may have a table available for some of you like we did last week. And can you give that a plug one more time? Who was that week partner with? It was Kid Again Sports Cards. And yeah, keep your eyes open for that. We will drop those. We will try to do it with more than one day notice this time. That was kind of fun that way. I thought that was cool. If you are somebody who's wanting to do this, maybe you set up at one or two smaller shows or you set up regularly at those 30 to 40 table shows and you're wanting to make the jump to a bigger show, we want to give our community an opportunity to set up with us, get some exposure that just comes with being there. I always hesitate to say things like that because it sounds like I'm doing this. That's not what I mean to do. Well, no, we worked our butt off to get these spots. But at the end of the day, you will get a little more exposure than you probably would on your own. We'll be there to help in any way that we can answer questions. All you have to do is be willing to bring inventory and be willing to make content with us and have a good time. And if you're just a content person, we'd be open to that too. I don't have a lot to sell, but I want to shoot some fun content and all that. We'd be open to that. Okay. I feel like we've been, this has been, I feel like there's a lot of meat and potatoes in here, but we just kind of freestyled it. I think that covers just about everything. Quick reminder, brand new discord. We're dropping different. There's fun content in there. There may or may not be a video of Gary and I in a garage band in the early two thousands playing a local bar. So there's a lot of fun stuff on there. So check that out on the discord, whatnot, every Sunday at four 30, Gary is going to give me a link for his eBay store so that you can go follow that as he gets that up and running. Only thing left to say is this has been the ball card show, the sports podcast for the sports collector. Bye now. Peace.