Why The Grading Mess Matters to All of Us!! w/ Graig of MidLife Cards

Welcome to the Golden Age of Cardboard podcast where we remember a time when stacks of cards were held together with rubber bands and Mickey Mantles were put in bike spokes. We hope you will enjoy and reminisce as you come along with us as we tell stories about the baseball cards from the golden age of baseball. We will examine the state of the vintage baseball card market and talk to some of the greatest collectors in the hobby. You won't be hearing us talk about any chrome or shiny cards. Here now, to take you on this retrospective journey, here's your host, direct from the shallow end of the gene pool, my son, Mike Moynihan. Yo. And hello, everybody. Mike here. Welcome to another awesome episode of the Golden Age of Cardboard podcast. Sorry, had to cough there. I wanted to do an interesting video because today, because as I watch YouTube and watch other things that's going on in the hobby and. And follow the news, I like to know what's going on in the hobby, as I think a lot of us do. Sometimes we care, sometimes we don't care about what's going on in the hobby. Some of it affects us, some of it doesn't. One of my good friends Greg over at Midlife Cards did a video last week, I think, and two weeks ago maybe, and he was talking about the grading landscape and do should we care and why does it matter? And so many people are on run the full spectrum of caring and not caring and does it affect me? Doesn't affect me. Well, I wanted to have a deeper discussion about that, so I thought, well, why not get the guy that actually did the video and it's Greg from Midlife Cards. Hey. Hey, man. How you doing? I'm doing well. Most of your videos bore the piss out of me. Let's be honest. And no, I'm just kidding. Appreciate the feedback. I love. No, I love your stuff. And what do you think of the new digs, by the way? The new. I've. I've seen multiple videos showing it off and jealous is not the right term. It is fantastic. I am loving it. So we got to get you to Dallas sometime or something. Yeah. Yeah, I would love to go to a Dallas show. I'd love to go to one of Dr. Beckett's dinners. I'd love to see your card room. All of that sounds fantastic. Sounds like you're going to be here like two weeks. So if only you had off during the summer, if you were a teacher, that'd be awesome. I know, I know. If only I had endless amounts of money. So we're going to, we're going. I don't know when this is going to air, but we're going to a World cup game in a couple of days. So we're excited about that. Nice. Yeah, that'll have already happened by the time this airs. But yeah, your video was intriguing to me for a lot of reasons because I thought you made some very good points. And when you. Why don't you give a recap of the video if people haven't seen it? Just a brief one and then we can get into the point. Point. Well, I think a lot of people get frustrated talking about grading and they're like, why are we talking about grading again? This is a hobby about cards. And we keep talking about grading, we keep talking about grading, we keep talking about SGC and PSA and back in. Is in Monopoly and turnaround times. And, and to me, I think that we are all more affected by things with grading, with things, with turnaround times, with things within the hobby than we realize that we are. And I think there are times we're like, oh, that doesn't really affect me. Why are we talking about this? But I think that it does affect all of us. I think that things are so intertwined. It's sort of like, you know, years and years and years ago. You know what I don't know World War II is. World War I is when we were manufacturing things within the United States, what was happening in a different economy didn't affect us as much in the United States economy. But now that we're all such a global economy, well, what's happening in other countries? Like when Greece was having issues a few years ago, it affected everybody. And I think that sometimes we don't really realize or acknowledge that things affecting parts of the hobby that we don't think affect us actually do. Yeah, the, the hobby ecosystem is so integrated now. You know, buying and selling platforms, grading stuff shows. All of it matters and affects all of us to some degree. I do agree that it can vary the, the depth of that effect. Right. And that's what I really want to get into is like, I want to talk about specifically how it affects, how you think it affects you and your hobby. And then I'll talk maybe about how it affects this specific topic of what's happening in the grading landscape affects me. So you want to go first? Yeah, sure. I mean, there was a, there was a card I bought at the West Coast Card show in February that I don't know for sure if I'm going to keep it yet. Part of it depends on how the card comes back graded. It was an end to a Sitting Bull Indian card from Ellen and Ginter and I think it's going to get a one, might even get an authentic. But if it got a one and a half, I'd probably move it because it would be worth more than I would want to pay for it. So I sent it into SGC six weeks ago. Yeah. And at the time I was thinking, well I'll probably have this backed by the national and if this card comes back and it does get a one and a half, then I'll probably bring it to the national to include in some sort of deal or maybe sell or maybe trade or something. But now it won't be backed by the National. And so when you show up at the National a lot of people have cash or they have money in an account that they can then, you know, transfer electronically. But a lot of people also bring cards as part of a potential deal. And now because of how long it's going to take, remember at one point it was 5 to 10 days for SGC to get my cards back to me. Now it's, I mean I have a friend who emailed me that it was like 65 days, 65 business days. And then there's private emails that SGC sending to customers saying yeah, we're really closer to 80 to 90. And so when I show up at the national that's a potential thousand dollar swing that I will have with me of just this one card for me. And then so when I show up to the National, Greg, you're just one guy. Well yeah, but I'm one guy that's being affected. Potentially a thousand dollars, it's probably more like a 400 card because it's not going to get the one and a half. But the point being it, it has this, this effect on one person attending the National. Now if a hundred thousand people go to the national and other people have the same thing, that's a lot of potential money that potentially isn't going into the room that could have been going into the room but because it's on hold. And you know, one of the things about PSA is know PSA doesn't charge you until they grade SGC charges you up front. So the other part of it is, is I have money in this last submission that I won't have with me at the national because it's tied up at SGC as it's taking three or four months to get the card graded and returned to me. So I know a lot of people would say, well, Greg, come on. Like, I don't, I buy graded cards. I don't send cards in for grading. Well, okay, but maybe, maybe the graded card you wanted to buy was N2 Sitting Bull, Allen and Ginter in a one or a one and a half. And there won't be one there that would have been there had the turnaround happened sooner. And then the trickle down from there of the dealer who maybe I would have traded it to or sold it to it. It's just, it's a delicate ecosystem. And when any piece of it, grading is just a very small piece of it, right? If any piece of it is disrupted, it affects the other parts. Just like if there's a slight downturn in the economy and all of these retired guys who are getting their required minimum distribution checks, that amount goes down because the market goes down by 10%. That little change affects money going into the market, which affects other areas as well. So in my humble opinion, and hey, I've been wrong before, trust me. Ask the three ladies that live in the house with me if I've ever been wrong. I think that it affects us more than a lot of us realize it affects us. It's all interconnected in. I'm gonna push back real quick just on what you said, a part of what you said, just to create a conversation, not because I disagree with you. I actually do agree with you completely. But someone might say, well, Greg, it's okay because yeah, you won't get it for the national, but you'll have it for the next show that you go to, or it's just taking longer. It doesn't mean you won't get that value realized at some point. What would you say to that? I would say ask the business owner who is owed money from a customer who hasn't received the money back if it affects his business that he hasn't received the money as quickly as he expected to receive the money or should have received the money. The sooner you get your asset, the sooner you can then make your next move and your next decision. And that asset being withheld prevents you from continuing to move forward. Which again, as we look at the trajectory of cards and what is happening with cards, it affects the trajectory if it's just one person. So I hear that and I respect that. And if I am guy who lives in Idaho who doesn't attend card shows, only buys one or two cards a month, doesn't sell, just buys, puts in collection in cabinet and looks at them and enjoys them that person is affected less than me, but I still would make the argument that there is some effect on that person. But then you look at a person like Leighton Sheldon who on sports cards live the other day showed this collection that he acquired which is all raw. There are a bunch of 39, 40, 41 play balls. There's a couple of nice DiMaggios in there by the way. I think there are three. And he's like, well, do I send these off? Do I wait, Do I send him to SGC instead? Now those cards probably would be in that $80 in faster turnaround time. So he's probably actually not going to be affected. But you know, as I think that we know when the low end market, because most people live in the shallow end of the bull, they don't live in the deep end of the pool. And the part that's being affected is the shallow end of the pool. It's the cards that are the bulk, the value cards. That's the everyday person. So when you say, well, I mean, you know, the, the Wall street jobs haven't been affected. Well, have the Walmart jobs been affected? Because that's actually more people. And so to me there's actually more people being affected. There are a lot of people who, the way they participate in the hobby is they buy raw, they submit in bulk, they wait, they get their shipment, they sell the graded cards to people who don't want to grade and they want the finished product and they don't want to do the gamble. And those people are now kind of iced out. Again. It doesn't really, it's not something that directly affects me, but if it affects other people within the economy of cards, then it, it, I think the trickle down and that's the example I kept saying, I said if something's happening upstream, you know, if the water is being contaminated upstream, the people downstream are all going to be affected. And I think that we're all kind of downstream from each other. So I'm going to get back to the grading. I'm going to bring up another concept that maybe people can really, if they can't relate to the grading, they can relate to this. So Cardbox, you know, buying just, I'm a RAW guy, I buy new boxes, I buy sealed product or whatever. Okay. All that has been going up tremendously. That affects the amount you can buy, which then in turn, well, I'm gonna only buy singles. Well then that affects how many people are going to open the product, which means how much of those singles actually get out into the market. You see the trickle, like the, the one affects the other affects the other. It's not in isolation, it's not in a silo. Well, box prices are up. Okay, well, if you're a singles buyer and you want to buy a player run of or complete a rainbow of a guy or whatever, less of that's going to get out there because less people can afford to open it. Right. That just makes sense. It's totally logical. And so when I look at the PSA shutdown, the sgc, the Beckett, all the things that are happening in the grading spectrum, it affects me maybe even more directly than you. I made graded card. I, I don't. I have walls of raw cards sitting here right next to me. But I like graded cards, specifically PSA graded cards. And therefore cards that I have in a stack right over here on my desk, I cannot send in right now. And they're lower grade. They're that common guy type of cards that I just like to own and like to have graded and criticize whether I should grade them or not. That's not the point. I like that. And therefore I'm going to do that regardless of what someone else's opinion about that is. And to that end, I can't do that. And so it's, it's affecting me. I also like, I already graded cards. Let me, I'll finish. Sorry, Greg. Yeah, but. And so if Craig Halbig can't send a bunch of cards or Leighton Sheldon or some d. Any dealer that has these bulk collections they're acquiring and they're, they're wanting to put them back out into the hobby verse as fast as they can, and they can't because they're going to shows and they're doing this and that's the captive amount of value in, that's being held by psasgc. Any of the grading companies right now, it's, it's all captive. It's all stuck. Right. And that's not getting back into the market and being able to cycle through. We want high turnover of, of dollars. Right. We want stuff to get in and get back out and get back in and get back out. And that has been disrupted to a point that's going to cause a lot of people anguish. And, and so I can't buy graded cards that I would want to buy from Greg or not Greg, Craig or you're Greg or Leighton or whoever, because they're stuck. They're being held captive by the grading companies. Go ahead. Yeah, so I'm trying to, I'm trying to use an analogy that a lot of us can wrap our heads around to, to share why I think again, I'm not here trying to just sit and convince people that I'm right. I'm, I'm sharing the reasoning behind the observation and comments that I made in my video. You know, the price of bread in California has gone way up. Now it's not because bakers went on strike. It's not because yeast and flour went up in price. It's because gasoline prices are up. And by gasoline prices going up, the cost of transporting the bread to the grocery store has gone up. And so as a result they charge more for bread because they're still going to make their margin. Now what a lot of dealers are going to do is they're still going to send cards in. I think a lot of them are just not going to send them in at value in bulk. They'll go, well this card was close. So I'll put it in at the, the level that is still accepting the $80 level instead of the $40 level. Well, what happened is the cost of that good just went up by 40 bucks. So they're still going to submit the card for grading but instead of it being a $40 cost to the submitter, it's an $80 cost to the submitter. And those, you know, people have been asking me lately on my Q and A is like why do you think we're having cardflation? You know and well, part of the reason we're having card flight, there's a lot of reasons and I shared some of them in my last Wednesday video. But one of the reasons is if the cost of grading keeps going up, that's being passed on. Absolutely. I, I was, you know, year a few years ago back during the pandemic when I was bored and trying to do things with, with cards to afford cards as I was buying some raw soccer cards at the time time and I would send them in for grading and when they shut down everything and then they opened it back up but they started with really high prices. It was like 70 bucks or something was like the only open that was like the lowest tier of open. I sent the cards in for 70 bucks and, and then when they came back my cost into those cards was more because I had to pay 70 bucks to get them graded. So if, if the inflation is built into those lower tier cards, you don't think it's going to affect the cards and the tiers above it? I think it will. Of course it will. And to that end, you have, you know, you. Let's say you want to send in a card that doesn't meet that criteria of being worth $80 to submit, right? Now, first of all, you can't do it with PSA at all right now. But that's. Let's say you could. Let's say it was even 25 or $30 to send in a card. Well, to your point, you know, they get it back and it comes back a subpar grade. They're taking an L on that card, they're pissed, you know, and whoever submitted it. And now it's like 10 or nothing, right? Nines, tens, or else you, you, you shouldn't grade it at all. And, and maybe that's where we should have been as a hobby for a long time, regardless of the cost of grading. But I don't feel that way. I'm. Again, I, I grade cards that I want to have graded the, the grade that comes back. Do I want them to be higher? Of course. But if they come back lower than I expected, I'm still just. The card's going in the beast anyway. So I don't look at it from a value add standpoint, but I am a collector. There's so many more. You know, the ecosystem includes people across that dealers and collectors and flippers and all the different people that are in the ecosystem and involved in it. And so I look at a car, I see a car to the show and it's priced crazy. And hey, why. Why is this this way? Well, I've got more into it because I had to grade it and this and that, blah, blah. And I'm like, I, I'm of the. Not my problem. But they would still want buds. They're still not going to. A lot of people don't want to take an L. And so they basically say it's this or whatever. Some people that aren't me go, well, I guess that's the cost of getting into this card now. And there you haven't been it. The prices go up and then the prices keep. You know what I mean? It's, it's a, it's a momentum thing in large part, but it's just also basic economics, you know, and you and I both love that idea of integrating economics and finance into the card world and how do they correlate? And it's shockingly similar, right? Shockingly similar. Supply, demand, cost of goods sold. Right. You know, and part of that cost of goods sold is the grading price, the price you paid to get it slabbed. What do you have in. I paid for it. This, I graded it for this. That's my, you know, total cost in this card. So. And they want to make a margin, right? Dealers want to make a certain margin of profit or else why are they doing it? They're just wasting their time. So it's. All of these things matter and it affects all of us. And I'm not trying to make the, you don't have to believe me or Greg. We're, I'm just making a case that I, I, I can certainly tell you it affects me. If you don't want to think it affects you, fine. It absolutely affects me. And how I'm hobbying, I am shopping very little now because the prices have gone up so much and for reasons that are, well, all the reasons are always out of my control. But, you know, it's just like I can choose to participate or not. And right now I'm choosing not to participate, not because I don't want to buy cards, not because I don't have money to buy cards. It's not wanting to pay. What it is. You said a sec second ago, you said, it absolutely affects me. And if it absolutely affects you, then it absolutely affects other people. Because if you're affected, if you're, you know, from a microeconomic perspective, if you are disrupted in what you're buying. I'll use another example. Our buddy Chris from Missouri, you know, and he did a video the other day saying, hey, thanks for everybody, you know, being worried about me and stuff, because they like had a tornado that came through the town and he had some buildings that he owns that were affected. And he was waiting on the insurance to settle with him. He had a bunch of money tied up that he couldn't do anything, he couldn't do anything until that got finalized. And so he was like, stuck. And if you've got, you know, 500 cards as a dealer that are stuck at PSA and your inventory is stuck at PSA and you can't sell those and you can't move those and you can't get those into the market, then you're stuck. You have assets and resources that are tied up that are not able to be utilized, which is affecting you and your business, your spending ability and your buying ability and your, you know, your selling ability. And if, if a few people are affected, then how could everybody not be affected now? I do. Yeah, go ahead. I gotta interrupt you because you're on a roll and I love it, but now you're bringing up an idea to Me. Okay, so I don't want to do. I'm not gonna. I can't do graded cards. I don't want to do. I'm going to shift to raw. Well, now everybody, you know, more and more people make that decision to shift to raw, and that drives up the prices of raw cards. And then, well, you know, if you leave one area of the hobby, barring getting out of the hobby altogether. Let's take your bread example. Okay, I used to buy Wonder Bread, but now it's gotten too expensive. I'm going to buy the generic Walmart bread or Target bread or whatever. Well, now the demand for that goes up. So that price is going to start increasing over time. You know that there is a. Okay, I'm not going to let that affect me. The price of Wonder Bread, it's not going to affect me. I'm going to shift to this choice. I have another choice. Well, if you shift out of. Okay, I'm not going to do psa. I'm going to do SGC or TAG or cgc. Well, now their demand goes up, their prices are going to start going up commensurate to the higher demand. And so to think, well, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna outsmart them. I'm gonna be, you know, I'm gonna zig and zag when everybody's, you know, doing their thing. I'm gonna go against the grain. Well, the grain's gonna catch up to you. You are not gonna be. You're not the only one coming up with some unique idea of how to outsmart the hobby ecosystem. You will, and it will start affecting you. Right, so. Well, the PSA didn't affect me. Yes, it did. It did. Through those four different things that you decided to do that now everyone's doing. And now you're affected. Sorry. No, no, no, I agree. And, and to your point, it's like, you know, our buddy Isaac at the penny sleever, like one of the things he did a few years ago was he put, he made some molds and, and he came up with some one touches that fit various oddly sized cards that are vintage cards. The 49 bowman, you know, 48 bowman size, the oversized 53 tops. Like you can buy one touches from him for there. So let's just say that people go into raw. Fine, I'm just going raw. Okay, Knock yourself out. Well, then what happens? Well, if you go raw, you need somewhere to store them. And if you want one touches, now that affects the penny sleever. Now if the penny sleever is Affected, that affects BCW or whatever the other companies are. I mean, there's, I just think that there's a domino. And you know, there are, there are. It's not that anybody is right and anybody is wrong. It's not that the people who say I'm not affected are wrong. I mean, and Mike, you might push back and say, well, actually, I think they are wrong. Well, okay. I think that some people, like you're a financial planner and what you do as a financial planner, and I don't know if that's the exact term you'd use, but let's just go with that for a second, is you look at 30 years from now, you look at when the person's going to be retired. You don't look at this moment and, and maybe today we strike Iran and the market goes down 2% and people go, oh my gosh, I just lost all this money. Relax, you're not going to use that money for 25 more years. You're fine. You know, and so some people look at the short term, some people look at the long term. And the long term is the 1000th domino in the series of dominoes. And the short term is the first three dominoes. And some people will look at the short term. Again, this is not a good thing or a bad thing. Just people are wired differently. I have two kids. One is looking at retirement and one is looking at this afternoon. And that's fine, that's just different. And so if you're looking at the first three dominoes, oh, they raised prices. I don't use psa. I'm not affected. I could see why someone would feel that way. But then there are other people who are looking way downstream. And the way I'm wired is to look, well, wait, if this happens and this happens, if that happens, then that happens. It's like a game of chess or how do you get, you have to go backwards to figure out how we got to the end of the game. I think it's more like chess is the way I'm, I'm approaching this topic and I think you are too. Instead of Connect 4 where there's only like 12 moves. And the great thing about having that longer term perspective, especially about the hobby, is I think you, you see that more and it's easier to, to feel that way the longer you've been doing it. I've been through all kinds of hobby crises in air quotes there, you know, and collecting since 1981. I've kind of seen a whole lot of stuff And I try not to let the day to day news cycle affect how I hobby. And it doesn't mean it doesn't affect it. There's a difference between the, the real tangible effect and your enjoyment and happiness with the hobby. Do you agree with that? I do agree with that completely. And what I literally was just writing down in my notes because I'm at the age now where if I have a thought I have to write it down or else I'll forget it. So pen and paper right here, ready to go. I was literally, I literally just wrote down also don't think we should panic is what I just wrote down. And to your point, we shouldn't panic because of this. We should just be aware of it. We should. You know, people say, why has there been so much cardflation and vintage cards? Well, I'm sorry, but I think part of it has to do with what's happened at SGC. You know, SGC's turnaround times have gone way up and that makes there now be a bigger premium on cards that are already graded because you don't have to wait three months to get your card back. So if you have a raw card and you have a vintage card before, people might have said, I'm just going to buy the raw one. Looks pretty good, I'll set it in for grading. But now if you have to wait three months instead of a week and a half to get it graded, people go, I'm just going to buy the graded one because it's already done. Who knows what grade they're going to give it. I don't have to wait, I don't have to worry about mailing it. I'm just going to pay a little bit more for the graded one. Well, that those incremental little increases to price because SGC slowed down their grading is part of why we are where we are. It's not the only thing. Again, I, I did a, I talked about how, you know, dealers buying from each other in bulk now because inventory is harder to get. It's easier for us to sell on the open market, whether it be with CIA or eBay or Facebook or Instagram makes it where the dealers have to pay more. And if the dealers have to pay more, then the dealers are going to charge more. It's a lot of things, but it is not as appealing to buy a vintage card when a, you don't know what the graders are going to do to you because we have more inexperienced graders than we've ever had. And B, the price of grading has gone up. And C, it takes forever to get your cards back, so people don't want to deal with it. And if people don't want to deal with it, then there's a bigger premium on cards that are already graded. Because I know it's going to get a five, because it's already in a five. Even though that one looks like a six, it'll probably come back a three and a half. So I'm just going to buy the five, and then, whoop, the price goes up there. And those little incremental things are all part of what's happening with Cardflation. So how would you say, given the current environment, are you enjoying the hobby equal to how you did, say, three years ago? More or less? How would you answer that? That's a. That's a really good question. It's a really tough question. My experience in the hobby is so much different than it was three years ago. You know, I started my channel three and a half years ago, and I knew one other collector, and it was my dad. And now I'm going to go to the national, and I've got 50 people that I'm looking forward to hanging out with. So that skews a lot of stuff. I will say this. It's very frustrating right now. It's very, very frustrating. There are moments that I look at the hobby and I go, gosh, I just want to get my card back. I have to wait this long to get my card back. Like, it's not nearly as fun to buy raw if you're going to eventually grade it. And some people go, what are you in a hurry for? Well, I'm in a hurry because maybe depending on how the grading goes, it might affect whether I want to buy it. If I buy the card and it comes back at 10, I'm probably not going to want to keep it. It comes back in eight. I probably will. So it's frustrating that it takes forever and we don't have any options. So the graders, again, people say, because I. I get it. I understand where people are coming from. They're saying, why are you letting who care? Grading's a scam. Just collect raw. Just don't buy cards already graded. Yeah, but for a lot of people, part of the fun is buying raw and getting cards graded. And part of the fun is looking at a card and going, man, they're charging, like, three prices for it. But I think that card's gonna get a five. I want to find out if I'm right, and if so, I have A little win in there. And so there are parts of this hobby I'm having more fun. The thing that I love the most compared to a while ago is there's so much access to learn about new things. And I have so many more people that I know that know about those things. I'll be at a card show and I'll see some random non sport postcard and I'll text Ryan Nolan and I'll go, hey, Ryan, what is this? Is this rare? He'll go, no, that's not rare. I go, okay. And then I keep going. And then I see, you know, a non sport music card and I'll text David Chase and I'll say, hey, David, is this, is this his rookie card? No, that's not his rookie card. And then I'll keep going. It's like, so it's changed. So in some ways it's more fun because I have more access to learn, but in, in some ways it's frustrating because the wait time, the inconsistencies, all that stuff. So it's both. And I know that's not the answer. That's, you know, a sexy answer. But. But that's. There are parts of the hobby that are way more fun than three years ago, and there are parts of the hobby that are way more frustrating than three years ago. So has. Okay, got a couple things to follow up with that. If you were to. If your enjoyment of the hobby was a five before and you've had some good stuff that's made you enjoy the hobby more and a few things that have made you enjoy the hobby less, are you still a net positive, would you say, three years from now? I'm definitely a net positive three from three years ago. But there are some things that it feels like it doesn't need to be that didn't need to happen. You know, we didn't need to do to SGC what we did to sgc, you know, so those are irritations. And listen, we all want to have our cake and eat it too. We all want to have a perfect situation. We all want to have everything, everything go perfectly and easy for us. And we all take for granted all the great things that are happening and we focus on the two things that kind of suck that are happening. You know, your house just got built. I can't, I can't believe how fast your house got built. And everything probably went super smooth, but there were a couple of headaches. And those headaches are the things that annoyed you the most along the way instead of all the Things that are going smoothly and making it go quickly. So it's definitely a net positive. But that's okay. Great analogy. House build. Now that I'm in, I don't even think about the things that piss me off in the moment. Right, right. Well, once in, in three years, we won't be talking about the things that are pissing us off about grading. Now if all the grading is AI, let's just hypothetically this world where now grading is all AI. You send the same card in 10 times, it gets the same grade. That's never going to happen. But let's just say that that happened. We won't look back on and, and be causing and turning at night about how PSA suddenly became super inconsistent with grading back in 2023, 4, 5 and 6. We won't think about that anymore either. Well, we may reminisce like I can still recall the annoying things about the house build, the things that pissed me off, the things we went over budget, whatever it was that pissed me off in the moment, but I don't, I don't dwell on it anymore. That makes sense. So. All right, here's, here's an exercise. I think you and everyone listening, watching may, this may help you if you're struggling with either side of this coin is. And I thought of this while you were talking. Make a list of the things you enjoy about the hobby. And that can be, hopefully the longer that list is. For me, let's say I enjoy putting vintage sets together. I enjoy buying five star autos, I enjoy buying this and that and grading cards. And some of those things aren't ideal in the moment. I enjoy making content all these different ways. I enjoy piddling in my card room and sorting cards and you know, oh, I'm gonna put this picture over here now and every little part of it. Make a list for yourself and then go, okay, if this part isn't ideal right now, grading card, grading for me, not ideal. You know what? I, okay, I'm gonna enjoy the other parts of the things that maybe I wasn't doing because I was focusing on grading or, or whatever in that moment when I could. Now I'm just gonna, you know, grab my Tony Gwynn autograph in front of me and go, man, let me look up Tony Gwynn and let me just enjoy his career or watch it. Let me find a YouTube video about him because I have this cool card of him. Like there's so many things we can do and we get so, I think as a hobby, individuals get so Narrow minded. They get so locked into something that pisses them off, they lose the, the rest of the joy that all the other things that they might could enjoy in the moment. And to make that list and to go, you know what? There's 20 things here that I really enjoy. Two of them are goofy right now. Okay. There's 18 other things I can have fun with, you know, but I think the, the shorter that list is for an individual, if they're only a flipper, you're, you're kind of screwed. Yep. You. But you've done that to yourself because you've narrowly focused. Yep. I've intentionally been had a, I have a broad collection. I have a broad. But I do like all these things like so I can. You know what? I've been buying a lot of five star autos over the last year. Not a lot of vintage cards because of what's been happening. It doesn't mean I enjoy the hobby any less. I wish I could buy vintage cards too, but I'm glad I'm able to buy five stars, you know, or whatever. Yeah, for me. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And, and for me for a long time I preached being more of a narrow collector. Being a narrow and deep collector who, who really learned strongly the intricacies of the, the different sets and the different eras. And if you get too broad then you have all of these distractions. And, and I, I preached that for a while as like consider this, consider being narrower and blocking out that noise. Well, with the noise is happening in the narrow area, like I feel like a lot of it is right now. What I have done is I have, I have gone broad and I have started to learn about and research some of these things that weren't previously on my radar. So to your point, if something's going wrong here, pivot and go over there. If grading sucks right now, then focus on something else. And so I, the last six months have been really fun. Even last year has been really fun because I've been doing a lot more researching and learning and diving into not baseball cards and not football cards and not basketball cards, but all the other stuff. And that has been fun for me to learn. And like I was saying earlier, it's like we have so much information at our disposal. I, I, another thing I've learned about is modern and pack odds fascinate me. It fascinates me that there are certain cards that are one in a hundred packs from 1997 and that card over here is 40 bucks. But the card that is one in 20 packs is over there for 500 bucks. And I'm like, wait a second, that card's way rarer than those cards. And researching pack odds. And that's been really interesting to me. And so, and would you have thought that would be, so would you have thought that that would be something you could. Wow. I tried something different and it, this is pretty fun. You know, I like to learn and I like to discover and I like to go down rabbit holes and, and then what you do is because of this YouTube community, you'll find certain channels and certain people who, that's their thing. And then you become drawn to it. Like, you know, Brian, high pop professor who's brother with iconic Al. He's way into pack odds. So I'm texting him all the time as I'm just scrolling through cards. I'm not really buying much, but I'm more interested and curious about, I'm going, why is that card not worth more? And he'll go, well, because he knows all about the pack odds and he knows all about all the variations. And, and so I've, I've reached out to those people and I, I watch their channel and I learn about that stuff, even if it's not necessarily something that I am collecting, will collect. But then it's just a rabbit hole that gets me off of this grading annoyance. But the thing I, I, the thing I, I hope that people walk away from this conversation is, is even if you don't care about grading, you have to care about grading because it's part of the ecosystem. Why do people keep talking about grading and PSA and SGC and inconsistencies and anomalies and turnaround times? Because even if you don't think it matters to you, it affects you. And, and so there are, I'm, I'm not a breaking news guy, but sometimes there's hobby news I feel like I have to cover because it does affect us. So I care about the cards more than I care about grading, obviously, but I feel like at times I have to cover grading because it affects the card part. And if we don't acknowledge that and we don't realize, oh, that's part of why this other thing is happening, then I think that we're overlooking part of it. And more than anything, I love these conversations and I love kicking around ideas and I like hypothesizing and I love saying, well, what do you think about this? Well, why do you think this? And is this part of this? Like, to me, these sorts of concepts are what My whole channel is based on, of here's a topic, how does that maybe affect all of us? And I just kind of talk about the topic. There are people, if you want to see rare, awesome cards, there are other people who have much better collections than me. I just love talking about this stuff because it's fascinating and, and thought topics and conversations and spitballing and brainstorming and stuff like this to me is really interesting. And even if I haven't sent a card into PSA in five years, well, it's probably been three years since I've sent a card to psa. I still care what's happening on the PSA because it's going to affect me. Yeah, I think awareness is power. Right? Being aware of all of this, as tiresome as it might be, and we're not even talking about. We've talked about some, just aspects of it, but we're not getting any specific news or anything. But we're trying to connect dots for you guys to think, okay, be aware of this. This is how it might affect you. You're like, I don't care about grading. Well, it might affect you. And here's how. We've hopefully gone through enough of that to at least get you to think about it and at least get you assessing if you make your little hobby checklist of things you love about the hobby. Okay, I'm aware of this issue. Where might that cause me some other angst in some other areas that I enjoy? Right. And so I love these conversations too, Greg, and I appreciate you coming on to have it. I appreciate what you do for the hobby, for the community. You know, we go to our buddy Mike Junk Wax Hero every Sunday to get our, you know, hobby news. That's, that's where I get a lot of it. If there's something breaking during the week, you know, Boston Card Hunter or Mike or somebody else will handle that. Right. I'll get it. And I like to watch it, to be aware. Sometimes it's okay. I don't need to worry, like, that's not gonna affect my list. Right. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. And, but awareness is. I do like being aware of what's going on and I appreciate you continuing to have discussions. Well, I appreciate you having me on. And it's always fun talking hobby stuff. I'm looking forward to the national in a little over a month. And I know, you know, you're not going to be there, but part of the fun for me is not necessarily coming home with new cards. That's Great. But it's also looking at cards, discussing cards, looking in cases. Why is that card interesting to you? I love that stuff. And the last thing I'll say before you wrap this up is the Hannes Wagner photo behind you over your head. Looks awesome. Looks great. It's up now. It's. It's up now. Yeah. I will not be at the national. And I'm not even. I don't. It's weird. If you would have told me five years ago, three years ago, two years ago, mike, you're gonna have a coming soon. You will not even be interested in going to the national. I would have said you were nuts. Of course I'm gonna go to the national. I may. I'm sure I'll have FOMO as it gets closer a little bit, and I'll enjoy seeing everybody's recaps, but I probably will still. Not probably. I am sure that I will still be like, yep, I'm excited about maybe going to Philly in September. And, you know, there's some other Nashville show I want to do. Like, there's some other things I'm gonna do instead, and that's just okay. You know, I'm gonna have fun zigging and zagging that. You're gonna have fun going. I'm gonna have fun not going, I guess. But, yeah, it's. It's a great hobby, guys. Just enjoy it. Find places you can, you know, find joy. And, you know, we all, a lot of us say, don't let the industry affect your hobby. Don't let the industry it. It will affect you. But your joy of the hobby is your choice. You get to choose that. So your happiness level is on you. And so, Greg, thanks for being here, man. Appreciate you coming on as always. And guys out there, have fun with it and keep collecting. That's the key. Thanks, Greg. Thanks, bud. We'll see you guys soon for another episode of Golden Age of Cardboard. Thanks for joining us. See ya.