Jeremy Lee Joins The Ballcard Show - S6 Ep 36

About this episode

Use $20 for free on your first auction win with the code "ballcard" at registration. prstn.co/4e1Ek1J Follow Us https://linktr.ee/theballcardshow CHAPTERS 00:32 - Intro 01:48 - GCCF Recap 07:14 - Dalen - Droppin Knowledge 09:13 - PC Show and Tell 12:01 - Shop Talk 14:24 - Upcoming Schedule 16:15 - PTN Announcement 16:55 - Jeremy Lee In this episode, Jeremy Lee of  ⁨@SportsCardsLive⁩  joins the podcast to share experience and wisdom around collecting with intention. This hobby is bigger than any one experience and Jeremy explains why! Take Hobby Spectrum Assessment - www.hobbyspectrum.com Dalen -  ⁨@JunkWaxVintage⁩  Keith- @theneuhartcards The Ballcard Show - Jason Otero & Gary LeMaster Business Inquiries: ballcardshow@gmail.com

This episode is published by Ball Card Show.

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Transcript

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This episode of the ball Card show is brought to you by our friends at Pristine Auction, where items are guaranteed authentic for the entire time you own it, not just at the one-of-one not just while the cert holds. If you own it, Pristine stands behind it for a limited time. Take advantage of $20 off your first auction when you register with the code Ballcard. one-of-one the real thing. Pristine Auction. Foreign. Welcome to the ball Card show, the sports podcast for the esports collector. I'm Jason Otero.

I'm Gary Lemaster. And this is season six, episode 36. And ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, it's gonna be a banger. I'm excited. I'm fanning out a little bit. I'm not gonna be a banger. Jeremy Lee from Sports Cards live is joining us today for a great conversation. So here's the little teaser. Here's my elevator pitch for you to. To. I know attention is everything right now, and the ball Card show puts up way too long of episodes, but those of you with long commutes appreciate it. The conversation we're gonna have today does so much. If you felt overwhelmed in the space, you're newer, getting in, trying to find a way that you can enjoy the hobby in a pure form and. But also, how does this connect with me as somebody that's trying to flip some cards to pay for the hobby or have a business? This conversation with Jeremy is going to be incredible buzzwords that I'm going to be stealing from him for weeks to come. Hobbypreneur, Industrialization of the hobby. I. I love the conversation. I'm going too far with this. I can't wait. I can't wait to share this conversation. I know, I know, I know, I know. No, no. All right, all right. Grove City Car Fest. Gary, talk us through it. It was a great show on Sunday.

Always is. Brad and the team at B Sports and Ryan, the team at car collector 2. When they do shows, they do them right. This is one of the smaller shows that they promote, and it's not small. I think between the two gyms, it's 300 tables. It was Labor Day weekend, so I think anybody who had the idea that it was going to be as busy as the last one was probably coming into it with the wrong expectations. But I will say this. It was unbelievably steady for most of the day. And then unlike a lot of shows, the last part of the show really, really Beckett up and it got kind of crazy. We. We hit our sales targets. We exceeded our sales Targets. And we bought so much stuff, I. It felt like I just kept funneling people over to you the whole day.

I did not have many moments. I think I was able to catch my breath. And luckily, it's like a long walk to. To the restrooms. Yu-Gi-Oh it was like that. That two minutes of, like, not having a conversation was great for me, which, again, nobody ever believes me. Every time I do one of these personality tests. Myers, Briggs, whatever. I am technically on the border of extrovert. Introvert. I'm not on the border. I'm an introvert. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh So for me, it's just certain times, really. But one-of-one it was. It was steady.

I only had to buy one deal. You bought all the rest. We bought almost 700 cards. Yu-Gi-Oh I bought two of them. Jason bought 690. It was a fun day. We did a little bit of buying. You have a couple handy there. Now, here's what's cool. Here's what I love about this 90s goat boom and how it's touching the shack market and all these other guys from my childhood that I love watching. What's happening is people are going through their binders, going through their boxes, cards that they assumed were a buck to five bucks. They know that there are a lot of those that are up now. All of them are not, so don't misread me. But they're starting to bring those into shows because they're collecting Jamar Chase, they're collecting Burrow, they're collecting Jameer Gibbs, and they found out that these shacks they can sell and get a few bucks. We just got to see so much more of the stuff we love. Gary, I don't know which ones you Beckett but I know I bought a ton of really fun stuff from that era.

You did. I'm just going to show three cards that we bought that are a. A nice snapshot of the type of stuff we've been buying a lot of recently. Two graded cards, one ungrade. I'm gonna start with the ungraded card. Shout out to our friends Marcus and Noah over at Twins and friends. This is second year LeBron James etops. We've talked about etops before. I'm not going to go into the whole spiel, but let's just say that TOPS started the digital purchase of cards over 20 years ago. They were way ahead of their time. But this is a second year LeBron Refractor numbered to 2000. Really cool card. Funny, you were talking about Shaq. This is one of the hottest shack cards that has seen the biggest rise in value over the last six weeks. It's the Metal Universe and you're gonna see them this year. But it's gonna be actually up in a good photo here for you too. The Metal Universe Reebok Collaboration. It's the bronze. And this is a card that we bought like six of in Nashville back in April for less than five bucks a piece. They're raw doing eighty to a hundred dollars. Now. This is a PSA9. It's a 400 card.

Listen, nine on that grade. I don't think people understand like how tough those are. You're gonna see more of them. It shows. Just because that market's hotter than it's been in a long time. But I promise you it's a tough grade. That surface and edges are not impossible because if I guess it was smooth, you might be able to hide a little bit more. But they're toughness is going to be tough for you to pre grade. So a nine. I was pumped. Last one we bought that. I'm going to show you guys today and I don't know how I feel about it. Jason just turned and looked at me and said, I. I broke the seal and I went, what are we talking about?

Geez. And he hands. Don't tell everybody this. He hands me this card. We bought a vintage Pokemon card, Venusaur Hollow. I've been telling people that it was the turtle. It's not. It's whatever this thing is. I thought it was. I thought it was a Blastoise. Yu-Gi-Oh It's a Venusaur Hollow 90s 1999 vintage. Vintage Pokemon 1st Edition. And Yu-Gi-Oh so I guess we are no in the TCT market now. Thanks, Jason. That is not. That is not an announcement we're making right now. You bought it, baby. That's.

I'm gonna give the people what they want. I think it's a great ebay live card for Gary to. To fret and fear over destroyed on that. Hey, they. I don't know, man. What if it outperforms and then that's what sucks me in. I know I bought that for live though. I did not buy that. That's that showcase. Well, we'll talk about it later, buddy. We'll talk about it later. All right. We definitely have schools. I'm going to show you some of mine here in just a moment. Before we do that, what would you do if you had a thousand dollars to spend on a card? Have you thought about it if you. Somebody gave you a thousand dollars tomorrow? Do you have a Strategy, a game plan in mind. Oh, you don't? Well, it's funny you mentioned that, because we're about to drop some knowledge with Dalen.

Dropping knowledge with Dalen, dropping knowledge with D. If you gave me $1,000 and told me that I could buy one sports card, here's what I would not do. I would not immediately search for $1,000 card. I would start with the player, then I would look at it, their rookie card hierarchy. I would look at the product, the population, recent sales, how often that card actually sells. And most importantly, I would ask myself this. If I need to sell this card six months from now, who is going to want it? Because a card being $1,000 and having someone willing to pay $1,000 are two completely different things. I would rather personally own an iconic liquid card of a great player than an obscure card that is technically five times more scarce. Because when it's time to sell, you do not need a population report, you need a buyer. Always remember, my friends, scarcity can make a card rare. Demand is what makes it valuable.

That's a good conversation. I. I love the balance between the scarcity and. And could I get out of this card if I need to. And for a lot of collectors, I noticed, like, it's tough to not want to immediately jump to scarcity. That's a really popular word right now. But if you're not positive that that card can go in a box forever and you never need to do anything with it again, you might want to take a look at sell through rate on some of that stuff if you, if you want to move out of it or upgrade or whatever.

Well, that's the question we always ask ourselves when somebody brings a card up to us, especially if it's not a Zebra liquid card. The question is always, who's my buyer? Yu-Gi-Oh And how soon will they be here? Right. Like that's. You gotta ask. Now, speaking of cards that are gonna go into box that nobody. One buyer and it's you. I have three that I Beckett up at at the show. Now, the first one was a gift and it's really meaningful to me. It's so cool. Gentlemen stopped by one of the first people I sold a card to at a card show ever when Gary and I were meeting that we talk about that South High Legion show. If you've ever followed the podcast for years and years, it's an evergreen, smaller local show. It's a lot more guys have been doing it a little while that enjoy just hanging out with their buddies. And then I remember There'd be some big crowds in there sometimes too. But this guy was one of the first guys that bought for me. And I remember I'd always, if I had a player he liked or a team he liked, I always put him aside. We're talking five years ago, six years ago. So he comes up to the show Gross. And he says, hey, I was going through my cards and I opened this card in 2004. And when I saw this, I just was like, man, I think Jason really like this. I just wanted to give this to you now. So I'm already in love. It doesn't matter. Like if you know me, I'm already thrilled. Then he proceeds to show me this. Foundations patches junior seaweed and it's number to 50 game patches.

Disgusting. And you know, the, the Miami era was short lived there. I believe Seaw did the retirement, not retirement thing as well with the Dolphins. It happened a lot. People would leave Miami in this era and then go get a, get a Lombardi hoisted about six months later. But say all stuff game use 2004. And the, the alternate orange sleeve on that, that's just such a really cool one. Next one. I heard Gary say, well, Jason's probably the only buyer in the room and he's going to give you what you want for it. 1999 tops. Finest gold Refractor to a hundred. Eric Davis. And Gary, if you guys are ebay livers, you know, this is a vitally important detail.

That's a double sided refractory. Double sided Refractor, baby. All right, last but certainly not least, the sale I Knew was coming. JT Triple Crown 24. We talk about him often. He's a good friend of ours. He bought this card and he wasn't even fishing. But I was like, I need to buy that before you put that in your showcase. Finally wanted a good clean copy of this 1997 tops Gallery of Heroes. Dan Marino. Just a stunning card and in a nine tough grade on that card, I promise you the PC. So straight to the PC, never for sale. Let my kids have to deal with it. That's how, that's how that's gonna work, right? But I was pumped with that. Three PC pickups in one weekend. That's a lot for me. That's a, that's a big deal for me. All right, before we go any further, I want to head up to Delaware, Ohio. Keith at Newhart Cards for this episode of Shop Talk.

Hi, this is Keith at Newhart Cards. And this is Shop Talk. This week I figured we would Talk about grading now, not grading in your, you know, content wise or anything like that. I'm going to talk about grading and how it sits in the business today. A lot of you probably are too young to remember, but there was a gentleman named Alan, Mr. Mint Rosen, who was probably one of the first content creators or speaking mouths of the hobby in the 80s going into the mid-90s. And I remember a comment that he made in the mid-90s before grading ever took over and he said, look at what's happening in the coin market. He said, grading is literally ruining the coin market. And I don't know if you've gone to a coin show recently, but I think the youngest person in the room is 75 and there's probably 10 to 15 people in the room. Right? Grading did ruin the coin market. I'm not saying that's going to happen in the card market, but speaking to collectors, I want you to take a good look and say, how many Amon Rock Optic rookies do I have to send to grading? And another question we get all the time is I can't send a PSA or Beckett, where do I have to send to now? You know you don't have to send your cards in, right? We own probably one of the biggest, best shops in Ohio. I'm just not that humble. Brag, right. I probably grade 10 to 20 cards a year. What we have in our showcase, people have already graded or we sell a lot of raw stuff. So make your own decisions. Just because you send a card to GMA or HGA or any of the third rate kind of grading companies doesn't mean you're capturing any kind of value. So make sure you're grading wisely. You're buying as the card sits, you're not buying to flip that card and hope that, you know, your $10 raw card becomes a $200 graded card. So just kind of a word of caution, love. The market industry is going great. Just, you know, keep your mind or keep your eyes on the Prizm This has been Keith at Newhart Cards and this is Shop Talk.

Thanks, Keith. Be sure you stop by now. I have been hearing that people been popping in up in Delaware, Ohio. Maybe they've been listening to the pot a little bit. I'm not saying we're taking credit, but you know, drop our name every now and then. Let Keith know how you found us. But he's having a blast with that. If you ever have questions for him or topics you'd love him to cover in Shop Talk, hit us up on our Discord. They'll be available there. Let's talk through some upcoming shows before we jump into this interview with Jeremy Lee. What do we have this weekend, Gary?

Tomorrow, if you're watching this on Friday, when the episode drops tomorrow, we will be in Xenia at the Great American and Sports Card show at the fairgrounds there. The Greene County Fairgrounds, building one. We're in building one. It's about a 350 to 400 table show. If you can't find it there, you probably can't find it. That you're gonna see everything next weekend is the three day Mountain State Collectors Convention in Charleston, West Virginia at the convention center there. You saw Steve Greenberg was on last week to talk about it. It's a show that he promotes. They do a great job with it. We're really excited. We're one of the sponsors of that show. So come and say hi if you're in the area and it's probably worth a drive in if you're within a reasonable driving distance for it. The following weekend, our friends Jake. Our friend Jake down at Liquid Sports Cards in Cincinnati is running up his first larger show. I will be there. Jason will not be, but I will be there. If you've got some cards you want us to take a look at, bring them by and if you want to see some cool stuff, come and see us. Then. We're into October and Midwest Monster, another show that we're sponsoring and excited to be there too. First weekend October over in Fishers, Indiana. We have a gauntlet coming a couple weeks after.

That's Nashville, by the way. Yu-Gi-Oh we do have a little bit going on over the next couple of months. Be sure that you check that out. If you don't know that it's available, we have a discord. If you're watching this, follow the link in the description. There's a lot of different ways to connect with us if you like short form. We chop a lot of these clips up and put stuff in there as well. If you want to, you know, you get some Easter eggs, pick things apart and not have context and then. And enjoy the comments. That's a great spot for that. Finally, last announcement before we jump in this interview. Really excited about. Don't know if you saw Gary and I launched with Mike Geo a new show, pardon the nonsense. If you were somebody that looks back at those glory days of ESPN with around the Horn, pardon the interruption, where you have short segments firing back and forth, different takes where the points are made up and no winners. Actually we do score this out, but it's a lot of fun. We are, we are a few episodes into this in production and it's, it's going to be a lot of fun. So check that out.

Every Saturday night drop. Every Saturday night YouTube channel. Yep. Sports cards. Nonsense YouTube channel. All right, mom. We've been waiting for. So excited. Jeremy Lee, ladies and gentlemen. I'm a little bit excited and honestly, I think the technical term here is fanboying. I'm fanboying a little bit here. Jeremy Lee is on the ball Card show. I'm smiling just thinking about it. Thanks for joining us, Jeremy. Thank you both. Jason, Gary, it's. I love what you guys are doing. You are, you are so good at, at co hosting a podcast and bringing on great guests. So it's really my. I, I'm, I'm Zebra pumped to be here. I, this is one of my favorite podcasts, so thank you for the invitation.

We appreciate that and, and vice versa. Jason was listening to you before I was and he said, he sent me a text one day. He goes, check this out. And I went, what is it? He goes, well, this guy, Jeremy Lee, he got it started like doing this, looking at ebay auctions, just live talking about these as they were coming to an end on these big cards. And I dove down the rabbit hole and I was like, oh, my God, this stuff is fantastic. So now we both are. Are avid weekly connoisseurs of Sports Card Live.

So thank you. Thank you so much, guys. I appreciate that. Yu-Gi-Oh I, I have. I've gleaned like, I know as I was getting back into the space and looking through content, I found that it was overwhelming, as you know, to, to jump back into the space. And there's a lot of voices. I don't know how I spent so many hours listening to vintage hockey auctions in of players that I have never heard of. But just the way that you would talk about and what makes this card what it is, it's just there's so much value in your content. We really appreciate what you're doing. If you don't know about Sports Card Live, go check out sports cards live, sportscardslive.com and then also the author of Pops and Comps, let's not forget that either gets into the psychology of what makes the brain tick when it comes to collecting, buying, flipping, all that fun stuff. There it is right there. Perfect plug. Perfect plug. All right. Gary and I have already taken up the first few minutes. That's what we're best at. Jeremy, tell us a Little bit about your introduction into this hobby. What has brought you to this moment?

I mean, I've been in the hobby my whole life, guys. I, I saw sports cars for the first time in like 1980 at my cousin's house. I was a young kid and you know, had been going to hockey games. I grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, north of North Dakota and used to go to games and I saw these cards and I'm like, oh, this is cool. These are little mini pictures of players I just watched play because they should go to games with my dad. And I fell in love with it right away. You know, I was like 7, 8 years old. And you're reading about the players, the statistics, the little pictures, the, their demographics, all that. And that was it, that was that lit the spark. And I've been doing it ever since. I, you know, collected complete sets through the 80s of OPG. Hockey tops baseball, basketball, football. Well, flir foot basketball tops football and, and then the 90s hit. I opened up a card shop, had a card shop during the junk wax era. And then the second half of the 90s I was in, you know, college doing my, my education. So I was still in the hobby, but I wasn't, you know, filling up my binders with sets. Like I was through the 80s as much. And then when I got out of, out of school and started working and had some money, as the student common story goes, which was like 99, 2000, I, I just Beckett up where I left off and I've been immersed in this hobby ever. I've really been immersed in the hobby since about 1981, 82. And I, it's my life. So I don't know. That's a real fast forwarded version but you know, there's a few things that happen in between. But that's what brings me to today. It's right from those early roots.

You definitely have some skin in the game as they say. You've been, you've been in this for a minute. I have some teeth in it. What I love is how relevant your conversations are to what we see happening in the space. Every time I tune in and there was a conversation you had a couple episodes back where you were just talking like the, the buzzwords right now are boom or bust, goat market. Like just. It's interesting how certain words get real hot for a season in the space, but you were having a larger conversation of like, do people really see how the entire, I think you use the term the, the whole pie is getting larger and within that pie you have different segments. You have the true hobbyists. Right? You have content, you have branding, you have franchise deals, athletes, all this stuff. And one of the, one of the phrases that you've used is the industrialization of the hobby. Let's head down that path for a little bit. What does that mean in 2026? What are the things you're seeing? What does that mean? What are you maybe excited about or nervous about?

Yu-Gi-Oh so I mean that conversation you're referring to, I think I was using like the, the. I look at the, the hobby as, as an ecosystem. You know, the. I would call it the trading card ecosystem. And that would include sports cards, tcg, non sport. It includes the collectors. I, I think we use the term the hobby a lot. But what is the hobby? A lot of people, you'll see people say, you know, it's a hobby. You know, you shouldn't worry about your cards are worth. This is a hobby. Well, okay, fine, but the hobby is bigger than just collectors collecting sports cards. So I look at it like the, the highest level is this trading card ecosystem. And in it, those components that you mentioned, the hobby is a part of the ecosystem. The industry is a part of the ecosystem. Card shows, card shops, the athletes, like you said, grading companies, that's alt art of the hot. These are all segments within the ecosystem. Some of them are part of the, the industry. Some of them are part of more collector, you know, driven sort of things. So the overall like. And a lot of people are upset that the hobby has been industrialized so much that there's. You hear the term cash grab all the time. Guess what guys? Everything is a cash grab.

Yes, you. You said it yourself. You owned a shop in the 90s, right? And you've been in the hobby since the early 80s. I. One of my very earliest memories of the space was trading my grandfather's 1960 his Pete Rose rookie for 40 Fernando Valenzuela rookies. I thought I was gonna be rich. I thought I had made the greatest deal in the history of the world. Turns out I was wrong. But what you just said about people getting upset about this just a crack. This same conversation has been happening every decade since the 50s. Like it's, it's not a kid's hobby anymore. Well, it's never really been a kid's hobby. Everything, unless you get to the bottom of the nihilistic barrel where it's nothing but hunters and gatherers, everything's a cash grab.

To your point, it's always been based on money. When the cigarette companies want to sell more smokes, they put baseball cards in them. When the chocolate bar companies in the 20s, they put cards in them all the way through until really the cards became the product. I think that was really the Zebra era at tops and, and then in 89, Upper Deck comes in and says, hey, we're getting rid of the gum altogether. And we're, we're, and we're upping the quality, quality of the card stock. We're putting holograms for security. These things are being counterfeited. There's always been people in the ecosystem who have been driven by the almighty dollar. It's always been that way. Just because you collect cards and don't care what they're worth and fill your binders like you're just one small part of the, of the ecosystem. You may call it the hobby. You may feel like you have the right to the term the hobby, which I think we've, we've claimed is ours in sports cards. But stop kidding yourself and stop projecting upon the whole community that your way is the only way to do it. Guys, there's the industrialization. To come back to your original question, Jason, is ties into the other term, like the hobbypreneur term that I use, which is there's all sorts of infrastructure coming in now. There's all sorts of people who are trying to capitalize on the rise of collectibles and trading cards and sports cards because it really is becoming one and one with, with culture and society. Just, just like art and food and travel and, and all these other things. Collectibles are, are elevate being elevated into that, to that level. So the hobby is a very small word for what we, we really mean. We mean the ecosystem. And the ecosystem includes the hobby and the industry and everything else in between. It's a bunch of Venn diagrams under that big umbrella of the ecosystem. Right?

Yu-Gi-Oh Right. So the industrialization to me is, really means like we have, you know, forever. You thought there'd only be PSA and SGC and Beckett, right? And now there's 100 grading companies. Most don't matter, but there's 100 grading companies. Now you could only you before, you might be lucky to find one card show in your state or province a month. Now I saw someone in Florida say there were 17 card shows. Was that one of you guys? Someone just said there were 17 card shows in Florida last weekend.

Well, that sounds like Ohio. Yu-Gi-Oh The same way. Yu-Gi-Oh I'm sure. So the hot, the, the industrialization, all the new apps that are being released all the new tech that's coming out, all the people that are coming from outside the hobby and investing in cards. I mean, if you want to continue to believe that, that, that people don't care what their cards are worth or that you don't care what your cards are worth, well, there's more people out there, I think that do, then don't. And these cards, our cards are now looked at as alternative assets, but by people that have more influence over the hobby than the, the, this, the, the traditional collector does. For better or for. I'm not, I don't have an opinion on this. This is just what it is. I'm, I'm just what I'm seeing. Right? So you can either go out there and kind of complain about what you're seeing or you can accept the reality that you live in and you can adapt to make it work for you. Because as packs of cards get more expensive and you can no longer afford to buy a box of cards with your kid every weekend like you could in the 2000s or even the 2000 teens. Listen, I can't afford to go out and buy a Ferrari, but I'm not out there crying on social media about it. That's a very tough day. I know I'm being tough right now.

Yu-Gi-Oh that's great. It's the truth. Adapt. Go to the dollar bins. Go find another lane that's cheaper. Buy singles. Don't. Hey, here's one. Don't buy packs. Maybe just buy cards that are already out of the packs. Let someone else take. Pay the breaker tax. What it costs to open stuff. I don't mean breaking, I mean breaking even a box from retailer or a hobby shop. So I just want to encourage people. This hobby still has opportunities for you. Even if you've been priced out of opening flagship, flagship every month, you can still enjoy this hobby. You can still go buy $20 cards singles and build a beautiful collection based on whatever theme you want.

So, Yu-Gi-Oh build. Build a set that speaks to you. Jason's talked about building a Refractor set just the other night. We had our. We have a discord for our pod and for our listeners and we have a fantasy football league and he was showing the guys that went during our draft. I said that he wants to build. I. The way I say it is I don't make the market but I do have to live in it, right? Like this is how we make a living. So I, I don't make it. The guys moving millions of dollars around every month make the market. I just live in it. And I'm going to go a little out of order here because I think it lines up with what you were just talking about. So we talk. You were just talking about, you know, you don't. I can't afford a Ferrari, but I'm not crying about it. Right. That's really the truth.

Why. And I want to two part this question and I'm very interested to hear your thought process here. The first part of the question is why does content in our space tend to foster or create such polarizing reactions? And obviously to get clicks is the easy answer. But the second part of it is why is so much of that content based around criticizing and attacking other people for what they choose to spend their money on? Yu-Gi-Oh Okay. I want to do the second part first. I think it's because. Know why? I think it just stems from like raw passion for the individual hobbyists hobby and how they, how they hobby. So I think we, I mean for. There's also this. And this isn't just in the hobby. You know, there's this wave of entitlement sweeping our, our, our nations right now. Just the, a wave of. It's a, I don't know what it is a characteristic. I don't know what's driving, but there's. People are very entitled and people also I think are very protective of the hobby as they see it. So, so when, when you see other people coming in and throwing around thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds, millions of dollars, you see all these new companies coming to the space, I think that people are feeling threatened that the hobby, as pure as they would like it to be is no longer. They can't fit into it anymore the way they want to. And they're not maybe as adaptable as I'm saying that I think we should be or some people are being able to adapt to new circumstances is a survival mechanism and not only like to survive life, but also to keep yourself sane. Like you can sit there like I have a rule, it's not a rule, but I say in, in our house we don't complain about the weather. Everyone loves to complain about the weather. We don't complain about the weather because we can't control the weather. I cannot control what a big influencer says. I cannot control how much the price of cards are because breaking came into the hobby 20 years ago. I can't control this. So why complain about it? Well, so why do people complain? Because people like to complain because they are not unhappy and they want to find a way to make Themselves feel better, so they complain. It's the easiest thing to do. Coming up with solutions is very difficult, so people complain. You want to see more difficult is executing on those solutions even more, and then listening to people complain about the solutions that you tried to bring to the table. The NBA thing right now is the one that drives me crazy. I've not met a single person yet who doesn't either love it or hate it. I don't. I've not met anybody who's just like, Yu-Gi-Oh I don't really care. Some people are like, I'm never buying another PSA slab that doesn't have an NBA sticker on it because there's so many different iterations of the grading standards, and this is how we can separate it. And then you have other people that are like, I'm never paying a premium for that, for whatever reason. And it seems like every time somebody tries to bring a solution, it's a whole new wave of people complaining about what those people choose to spend their money on it. It drives me a little nuts. In our space, I'd love to just buy and sell cards.

I know. You know, speaking of, like, so the NBA thing, we talk about that a lot on sports cards live, too. We have been. I've had Mike Baker on, I think once or twice on the show as well. And you know, the thing that, like, just to talk about that briefly, you know, it's a second opinion is really what it is. And a lot of people, you hear them say, well, I don't need someone to tell me if a card looks nice. I have my own two eyes. And. Absolutely, you do. But not everybody understands or is as advanced as you are. And if it does bring extra money out of the cards when you go to sell them, I mean, there's an angle there. It's literally. It's. It's an. It's an angle.

It's. It's a. It's just a way to gamify the hobby. If that's. If that's how you participate in the hobby again. Right. But it's a second opinion. Like, you know, even when companies are audited, when their financial statements are audited, that's like the first stage of grading. And then the auditors get audited. That's the third. That's the fourth party. That's like the mba. You go to the doctor and they. You get a diagnosis you don't like. Don't you sometimes go to a second doctor to find out what they think? Like, it's a second opinion People read more into it, I think, than it really is. And that's all it is. But hey, no one's forcing you to buy them. No one's forcing you to.

Exactly. You don't want to buy them. Yu-Gi-Oh Your solution is don't buy them. But then people say, Yu-Gi-Oh but they're driving up the cost of cards now. Well, it's about time. The cards with high Yu-Gi-Oh appeal get the, the value they deserve. So if it took that to smarten up the hobby, then, then that's what it took. Because otherwise the hobby maybe wasn't going to get there on its own. I, I don't know. So you asked about criticizing. The other question was like, why the polarizing reactions? And I think it's, it's a very similar, similar thing, but there's a, there's competition in, in content right now for clicks and impressions, sponsors, partners, all these things. So, you know, the more outrageous you are, the more clicks you're gonna get, the more people's radar you're gonna get put on. But it's not only content creators that are delivering these polarizing reactions. It's just your everyday commenters on YouTube, your, your commenting accounts on Instagram and that. And I think it just comes back to that last thing, guys, which is I think people, I think there's a, there's a bunch, there's people out there who, the way they cope in life is to be negative and complain. Unfortunately, they don't have a better way. They don't have. They, they never, for whatever reason, the way they were parented or schooled or their first job, whatever it is, they don't have the mental capacity, unfortunately, to, to, to just bring joy to the world, to look, to look at the positive sides and to, again, to adapt to the circumstances that are now around them. It's so much easier to go on, to go on to a YouTube video or podcast and leave, leave a negative comment. I think that's the easy way out. I see it all the time on my own videos. People see the negative. It's like you're bringing nothing to the community. Yu-Gi-Oh you're not, you're. You're just saying NBA sucks. Well, why. Or whatever it is, you know, the hobby, socks or Fanatics is a monopoly or this or that. Like, you know, blame the leagues, blame the licensors for making the monopoly. Don't blame them. They're just out there living, running a, a corporate entity in the United States of America, which is a capitalistic society, which is what you all want you all want to live the American dream. That's what Michael Rubin and Fanatics, they're living the American dream. They're building the American dream for themselves, their employees, the athletes. But who allows them to do that? The licensors. The, the blame game is somewhat misdirected. Blame the people who awarded them those. Blame the players. They're the ones who vote. They're the ones who elect the leader of the, of the, of the players associations who then grant the licenses. Blame the friend. Blame the team owners. They're the ones who vote and, and let their commissioner do a deal with the, with the, with Fanatics like people. People just love to complain. I don't know.

And, and why did all those things happen? Back to the very first point we said money, money, money here at the ball card show. When we decided to partner with Pristine Auction, it's because it felt like such a no brainer. Pristine has gone out of their way to make sure that the entire collector experience is as transparent and seamless and authentic as possible. They offer fast paced live selling auctions where every sale sets a recorded comp. They offer 10 minute auctions where 10 lots go up and you can bid on them for 10 minutes. And they offer traditional daily and weekly auctions as well if that is more your speed. Most importantly, every item you purchase from Pristine, they stand behind and guarantee to be authentic for the entire time that you own the item. For a limited time, when you register at Pristine and sign up with the code ballcard, you'll get $20 off your first auction one-of-one as well as three months of gold status as a consigner. one-of-one the real thing. Pristine Auction.

It's not a charity. That's what it's not. It's not like. Listen, luckily for us there are so many generous people in the hobby who are giving away cards to hospitals to. There's this new sealed wax nation where he's giving cards away. I think he might even be doing something with, with sports cars. Nonsense. I'm not sure he mentioned to me but Phil Karnakis is his name. There's there all. There are these wonderful charitable endeavors out there going on to spread the joy of the hobby. Yu-Gi-Oh And that's great. But at the end of the day, you know, at the, at the levels that are running things, the price of grading and the price of cars like Nat Turner Co. Did not acquire collectors and PSA in order to lose money or to, to not maximize right value. Shareholder value is the number one priority for any organization that is A for profit organization and sorry to disappoint everybody out there in our ecosystem, but they, collectors, PSA Fanatics, ebay, all exist for shareholder value.

They don't. Thanks Milton Friedman. Thanks Milton Friedman. They don't exist to be charitable towards the collector. Not at all. So. And that's just the reality. I think there's two reactions that people are going to have to that take, which was fantastic, by the way, Jeremy. I think the first one is say it louder for the people in the back. And then I think there's a huge contingency that hears that and deep down, without saying it out loud there, they would offer in a moment if they wouldn't be humiliated, if they wouldn't feel embarrassed, I don't know the way then they've been doing what they were told. They've been doing what they have seen. They've been ripping the box, they've been doing the break. They've been. And it's just kind of a shotgun marketing approach to everything, right? Like let's just do everything and see if something sticks and that'll be my lane. And I think what's missing for a lot of people in this space is they're seeing all the things that you're saying, even if they can't articulate what's happening. And they feel like some injustice is there and it's easy to point at like, what value did I get out of it? But I think what they're overlooking is the value of enjoying the hobby at all. Something has changed or something was not understood or maybe a direction was never set. Like you said, they don't know the way. And so what I would love for us to discuss over the next few minutes with our audience is what is a path towards collecting with intention look like? Because I believe for the person that's kind of feeling maybe a little lost in the mix of everything that's happening in the space now, maybe a little bit of direction of hey, here's how to enjoy your collection a little bit more. Maybe some of those questions that they just skipped right past questions one and two and went to 10. Because the sizzle reel or the highlight or the hit, where would you start? People that are feeling that slow down, slow down and, and be careful who's selling to you. You know, if you, if you're, if you found the hobby because you heard about Tom Brady or Lewis Hamilton or Cooper Flag opening a store, you watch Carl Anthony Towns buying cards for half a million bucks, if that's how you found out about the Hobby. You're probably gonna go check out Fanatics Live or Whatnot or ebay live and get into some breaks because you understand that that's how you get cards right? Now just understand that, you know, you're playing the lottery. You are, you are gambling by, by, by going into breaks. It's, it's, it's getting. Now, I'm not saying it's 100 gambling because some people love it. I've met people that make a lot of money that love going onto these live selling platforms and spending it because they're out in the oil fields and there's nothing else to do at night and they're, they're making three grand a day and they're spending a thousand on breaks a day. They can well afford it, no problem, right? That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the person who is spending their rent money or thinks they're going to get lucky and they think it's so easy to spend 50 bucks on a break spot and they're going to turn that into 50,000. It's, it's too good to be true. It literally is. Understand if it's too good to be true. Maybe it is. So slow down and, and you can pay. You know, I'm talking to new people. If you're experienced, it's different. Like if you, if you've been in the hobby for over 10 years and you haven't figured it out yet, I mean, that's on you. I don't know. I don't know if I can really help you but, or we can help you. If you just can't came into the hobby and you find yourself be like, wait a second, I spent $10,000 and I have cards that I don't even want because I didn't specifically select them and I, they might be worth a grand. That's a quick way to say this isn't for me. So slow down, slow down. Understand the products under. First of all, figure out what you want to collect. And that's not easy. So consume some, find some content. Find some content. Some, some Instagram accounts, some Twitter accounts, tick tock, YouTube channels, podcasts, all these things. Find the people that resonate with you. Listen to them. I don't think, do what they say. I'm saying find inspiration in them and from there decide how you want to allocate your hobby budget.

Don't. If you're going to blow it all on breaking, you're probably not going to last very long. But if you're going to collect with intentionality and you're going to find maybe a player. You collect a team, a thing, theme, a set you find beautiful, maybe you decide you want vintage, you know, 90s modern, ultra modern. Find what you like. Take as long as it takes to find what you like. Dabble a little bit. But you can, you know, when you go to college, you don't, don't get to set the tuition. The tuition is told. Here's in sports cards, you can decide how much you want to pay for your tuition. You can spend tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands making mistakes or you can reduce your exposure to, to, to leakage there and you can get in and maybe, maybe you only spend 3 or 400 bucks a month, or 50 or 100 bucks a month, whatever it might be. So slow down, don't jump right in and get. If you launch into breaking, I don't know, you're launching in as, as into the gambler mentality, not the collector mentality. I think, and I only say this because that's not how I got involved in the hobby. You know, I got, I got into the hobby before a price guide ever existed. You know, where we collected purely to collect. That's how I know I'm a true collector. Because I remember loving these, these things as a kid. And I came in in the early 80s and it's like all I cared about was completing my sets and getting the, the first Dale Howard Chuck rookie card and he came to Winnipeg and etc. Etc.

You know, like the Beckett was annual back then. It wasn't even. It was. I didn't have, we didn't have a hockey Beckett Till 1990 up in Canada. And we had bas, we had the other. We had baseball forever and then hockey, football, basketball all came out within a few months of each other. A few seasons, those first episodes, those first issues, a few, maybe it was one or two years sort of thing. And, and that changed the whole game. The price guides being widely adopted as book value. That's what we, that's what you sell it for. And you can sell it for. The car drops will pay half of that and they'll sell for the book value. Etc. So again, slow down. I'll start, I'll stop rambling. Slow down, take your time, ramble away.

It's good stuff. Like the, the what you were just talking about with price guides. Again, it goes back to. Everybody likes to talk about the good old days, right? Well, I don't like this comp stuff. I want the Beckett. What do we Think Beckett were they literally, they, the publication sent questionnaires to LCS owners all over the country and said, how much are these cards selling for in your area? And then they ma them back and they consolidated the data and put it in a magazine. Those were comps. Exactly. It's how it worked.

So Yu-Gi-Oh we've. Technology has just sped it all up. If you, if you really don't like the way the hobby is, be like. You have to understand the, There have been forces in play that have pushed the hobby out of the 80s and into the 2000s. Those forces, I think the number one force there is simply the Internet that the, the, the bringing the world economy to one platform and letting people reach everywhere within seconds is incredible. Yu-Gi-Oh so, Yu-Gi-Oh absolutely. I, I think so. When some people hear this, they're like, okay, collect, slow down. I think they're gonna have a picture in mind of someone they know that collects and their first thing is going to be I'm going to just do what they do. And then they think about that for a little bit and they say, well, I don't know if I just want to build vintage sets. I don't know if I just want to collect an oddball like I collect Eric Davis from the Reds back in the day. Like he was my guy. Some of them want there to be some of the new and some of the speculating and some. And so one of the conversations that we had with you at the national was talking about there being a wider spectrum of collectors in this hobby and slowing down may lead to different destinations for different collectors. It doesn't mean we all land in this one spot where it's not that we would ever eliminate the nostalgia, but there's a lot of different ways to do this that still fit within that hobby framework, not just a business. Can you expound on that a little bit? I know you spent a lot of time on this.

Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I mean I think you're, you're alluding to the, the platform that I created called, it's called Hobby. The Hobby Spectrum. It's at the hobby spectrum.com and just to let you know that that is a, it's a 50 question diagnostic assessment rooted in psychology. The and the hobby kind of together that when the respondent takes the assessment, it at the end it spits out a. It's, it's a score, but it's a high score, low. There's no better or worse, it just is. But it's a placement on the Hobby Spectrum, which is a concept that I developed last year. And the hobbies, the Hobby Spectrum is, you know, it goes from say, zero to a hundred. You know, let me explain how it came about. For years now, I've been doing. I've been doing sports cards live for six and a half years. And I. We often, just like a lot of content creators, we often talk about, you got collectors. And I do this.

This is. I'm gonna show you what I've done a million times on my show. Guys, we have collectors here, we have investors here. We're all somewhere in between on that hobby spectrum, on that continuum. We all fall somewhere, we all fall probably somewhere a little bit different. You're right. And I don't know that anyone's an ex, like a zero or a hundred. I don't know that anyone is exclusively a collector or a. An investor sort of thing. So I was out for my walk one night after doing an episode of Sports Cards Live, and I was thinking about this. I'm like, wouldn't it be cool if I could take this sort of abstract concept and build it into a framework? So I came home and I started iterating on it. I had some great conversations with my assistant, Mr. Chat GPT, and I basically, like, if I wanted to create, like, how would I do that? How would you place somebody on the hobby spectrum? Well, I can't. Okay, a survey. Okay, what would I ask? And so I, you know, after months, painstakingly came up with this survey, figured out the scoring and. And then had to come up with, well, okay, so what do these scores mean? So we took the hobby spectrum, the 0 to 100, the collector to investor, divided up into seven archetypes, which are not approaches, but they're archetypes. And they go from, you know, the purest, which is the pure collector, to the tycoon, which is. It's not maybe the best word because it doesn't. Tycoon sounds, you know, like, like an oil tycoon sort of thing. But the tycoon is somebody who's in it for the money. Whether you're investing for the money or you're flipping for the money, you can all fit. You can fit into there. And so you got. And just to go through those seven archetypes that, that I had developed with, not just me, I have a. I have like an advisory team and I bounce it off some people. But you got. So you've got the purist, then you got the nostalgic, then you have the precisionist, then in the middle is the hybrid, then you have the builder, the operator and the tycoon. Those are the seven archetypes. They, you know, 100 divided by 7 is about 14.2. So it depends where you score. I know I most recent time that I took the assessment, I scored a 40. You can take it every 30 days because we changed 70 same as you, Gary, which is pretty cool. We Both scored a 40. That's a precisionist. And, and so the other piece of this is, Yu-Gi-Oh there's 100 scores there, there's seven archetypes, but there's way more than seven ways or 100 ways to approach the hobby. There's really an infinite amount of ways to approach the hobby. So, so it's, it's. And I, the, the tool goes deeper in, in, in later versions of it. But, but really back to Jason, what you said leading into this is that there's, you might see how other people do it. You might watch on social media the breaking and the grading and the grade to flip the rip to all these different ways to do it. But it's, it's worth understanding that there are so many other ways to do it as well. And you don't have to decide right away. And, and it's gonna, like I said too, it's gonna come down to the what. Who are you watching? We're in a world of social media. Whatnot the attention Media, I think is now what Gary Vee is calling it because it comes down to attention versus just followers and, and likes and all that. And so who are you paying attention to? Because that's going to probably influence you a little bit or inspire you. And there are options out there. It's not all about the loudest voices, might be the ones showing the big million dollar hits, but there's a whole other segment or many other segments of the hobby that you can fall into to help you pave your way and your approach to the hobby. And so the hobby spectrum does lay out seven sort of overlying archetypes, but you can be in any of them and do different things from other people. So I'll stop there for now.

Yu-Gi-Oh one of the things I found interesting is I was taking it, which Gary and I like, the three of us landed within a six point window. But there were certain questions where, when I read the question, I am holding that Eric Davis card in my hand as a kid, like I visualized that moment. And then there were other questions that were asked that I could only picture myself set up at a show on the buying side of the table, as a dealer working through these deals with that filter. So what I want to encourage is I know the large majority of our audience at least dabbles in some form of a hobbypreneur aspect business. Whatever. Take this assessment because I, it will force you to slow down. And the other thing I walked away with was an appreciation for some of that PC stuff. I have like a refined appreciation for that because I realized that, like, if I really like the card, I'll pull this up this week. Eric Davis Gold Finest Refractor to 100. It's in a Cardinals one-of-one I was the only person in Grove City, Ohio, interested in that card that day, I promise you. But when I saw it, it was a simple question. What do you want for it? Because this falls within nine. It text checks nine of the ten boxes. For me, it's the era, it's the player, it's short printed, it's a product I love. He's just in the wrong uniform. I'm buying the card. But it's interesting to me as you walk through that assessment, how it forces you to slow down and look at those different areas and how for some of us, we picture. Okay, here's the part of the, the space where I'm selling to generate, whether it's revenue for my collecting or a business that I pay myself with. And then this is my PC thing. The reality is those worlds are a lot more together than we'd like to admit.

Yu-Gi-Oh let me jump in there. Yu-Gi-Oh Because when I launched the Hobby spectrum back in December 2025, to just sort of in like what I call beta, I guess one of the first, one of the, the biggest feedback I got was like, well, there was a lot of questions I really had trouble answering because, you know, I might do both. Like, like you just said, Jason, like, I have a PC that I love and that is. Doesn't go to shows with me and I vend at shows. It's just my PC and then I have an inventory, my traders that go to show. So how do you reconcile the. The key, one of the key things about the Hobby Spectrum, and this is in a recent version, I don't know if you noticed it, but when you take the, the assessment, it, it puts, it really identifies your core archetype, the one that you're heaviest in. But it also assigns you like, the percentage of which you, you dip your toes into the other archetypes as well. So because, listen, I might have purist tendencies and tycoon tendencies, so don't put me in a Beckett Don't you know, I got a lot of that. Well, let me out of this box, right?

We don't. The Hobby Spectrum doesn't intend to put you in a Beckett It intends to help you better discover how and understand how you hobby and how other people hobby. So, Yu-Gi-Oh you can now see what I call the archetype distribution curve, like how you do fall into each one. And I think that's real, like, leveling up of the Hobby Spectrum platform. Then you talk about roles like, we all do different things in the hobby. I'm a content creator. Does that impact where I fall on this spectrum? I also, yes, I do go and set up at shows, but I also, like a couple nights ago I was up till three in the morning, just opened Canva, and I got my, my images and I'm making collages of my cards and I'm, you know, I'm sorting them in different ways. I'm totally nerding out proud, by the way, I'm the president the Proud Nerd Club. And, well, I don't know, I haven't been formally voted in, but, but you know, we have, we all have sort of different roles that we play in the hobby. We approach it differently. And you can, you, if you just want to collect, I mean, God bless you, go collect. There's, there's, there's a million approaches and ways that you can collect. And that's one of the other beautiful things about this hobby is that no two people really collect the exact same. I don't know if you, you. I saw you guys at the national where we chatted and you guys were set up talking to people, having a great time. When I do that, when I'm set up at a show, I love when someone comes up to my booth. I do a couple things just to break the ice with them. The first thing I'll say is, hey, if there's anything I can help you with, let me know if any, like, if you just want to throw money at me, that's fine too. Crumple it up, you know, or you get it, you got a husband and wife or boyfriend, girlfriend that come up and, you know, the, the girl's kind of just following the dude around and he's looking the showcase. I'll often, I'll often look at her, look at him and I'll say, Yu-Gi-Oh she dragged you to the card show today, huh? You know, get a laugh out of them, right? But the other thing I like to do is I, I like to say, hey, what did you pick up? Or how do you approach the hobby because I only know what I know from me, and other people have asked. I want to learn how other people approach the hobby because I find it fascinating and I want to learn. I want to know because someone else. We might have a conversation. You can have a conversation with one of your listeners. I could with one of mine, and they might say, no, I'm bored. I gotta find something, another way to do this, or I might get out. It's like, well, I'll go through the library, the records of every conversation I've had. Oh, here's some. I once met a guy who did this that might work for you, you know, if you want to stick around. So talking to more people, learning, listening, being open, having an open mind is such a rare thing, it feels like these days, and I encourage that to people.

Well, speaking of approaches to the hobby, one of the things that I have found fascinating for listening to you recently is the dive that you took not just into non sport, but I think when most people think they hear non sport, they think Pokemon or Magic the Gathering or Disney to an extent, when all those things fall into that. But you said, you know, what is, I think, untapped and really interesting is vintage non sport. What made you decide to go down that path and become kind of fascinated and a little bit, I think, obsessed with it.

1940, gumming Superman number one card. That was when I discovered that this thing existed. Did. Which is back in about 2019. I. I discovered it and it's like. It just made so much sense to me that both as a per. As. As the un. The. The what made. It made sense to me that this is something that is not yet widely understood as being what might be a grail in the hobby. Because it's the first appearance of a superhero on a card that I'm aware of. It's, you know, you look at comic books. Superman number one is the. Or action Comics. Number one is like the number one comic in the world. I grew up on Superman, Spider Man, Batman, you know, that's my era. I. I came before Pokemon. Is. I missed Pokemon. I was too. I'm too old for Pokemon to have. Have lived it, which might be costing me a lot of money if I would, you know, if I would have ever gotten the poke. Because I don't understand it. But. But it was discovering that card. And then I remember, you know, I never bought one. I remember being at the National Convention, Atlantic City, 2022, I think the second year after Covid.

Brutal show. I remember being there. Oh, God, Yu-Gi-Oh Was that the one with no Internet and then. And, and it was no Internet at that show. That was the problem. Yu-Gi-Oh Well, I remember being there and I remember seeing Superman number one. And it was in. I don't know if you know Brady Hill, an illustrious high end vintage collector. He does modern stuff too. one-of-one he had a beautiful copy in his, in his showcase. And I was looking. I can't. I walked by it every hour for two days, hemming and hawing. I never pulled the trigger on it. And I kind of regret it to this day. But that, you know, I, I saw it, I'm like, there it is. I gotta get one of these cards. I didn't buy it. And then I obsessed over from 2021 up until I. Or 2022 up until I bought my copy at the 2025 National. So not this year, but last year. And it was that card that really kicked it off for me when then I started looking at, well, Batman. I discovered the 1966 black Batman card and did some research and bought my copy of that card five years ago. And so I'm not new to vintage non sport, but I didn't have many cards. I, and I happened to. I built a collage of my non sport fictional characters two nights ago. I'm looking at it right now. So I know what I have. But I had the Superman number one, Batman number one. I Beckett up the Robin card number two a couple years ago. And those were the, those were the birth of me really liking this stuff and having an authentic passion for them. And then, then what happened was I bought the Walt Disney card. Not that, not the one with Mickey Mouse, the Disney alone card, the 1935 wills. I bought that card and, and now I, now I've got three cards. You know, I've got kind of three or four cards that are non sport. And to me, non sport is not to me. You have sports, non sport and tcg. Yes, those to me are separate categories. That's how I look. Just to remove the confusion between non sport and like Pokemon. But I agree with you that a lot of people think non sport. They think Pokemon magic. I divided into those three distinct categories. So earlier this year I was talking about Mickey Mouse cards with my, with David Chase, one of my co hosts on sports cards live, and started looking at, well, what other Mickey. What's the first Mickey Mouse card of just him and started going back and I discovered this 1935 Mickey Mouse set also by Gum Inc. I'm like, this is incredible. Like these cards are Amazing. No one's ever talking about them. I think they're completely under the radar. And, and I just looked it up yesterday. It was May 28th on an episode of my show. I announced to the audience that, guys, I discovered a grill. I have a new grail that I'm chasing and it was the number one card from the set, the let's make hoopy card. It's known as the hoopy card. And, and I was so excited to find one. I got it. But I said, I go, I'm not, I'm not letting anyone know what it is until I find, until I find one. Well, I bought one at the national this year like two days before the market exploded on the damn thing. It was the craziest timing I've ever encountered. And so my non sport fictional collection comprise is comprised of 11 cards total right now. Five. Yu-Gi-Oh 11 cards. And they're all hand Beckett I think they're all very important. I love them all. That's my extent. That's the extent of my non sport vintage collecting. It's a long way to answer your question, but do you think this so nostalgia drove that direction? Was that the first domino?

For me? Yu-Gi-Oh the just the Superman. I mean, listen, I, I, I, I saw the original Superman movies, you know, the Christopher Reeve movies in the theater. I watched whatever Superman was available as a kid in comic books. I read them. But I didn't love it. It wasn't like my main thing. I thought it was Zebra cool. And when I discovered there was a card and I love, I've been collecting vintage cards since the first, very late 80s, I'm like, this thing is awesome. So it was less nostalgia than I have for sports cards, but there was some nostalgia. There was just the cool factor, the history factor, the fact that I'm, I love ephemera, I just love collecting cards. And if you can put, if you can take the most iconic superhero and, and, and kind of mix him with, with cards which I already collect, it's like this is the sweet spot. And to me that was the best card out there. And the copy I could have bought from Brady Hill that day for like four or five. I forget if we got four or five, six grand. That car is probably worth six figures today and I didn't buy it. Luckily when I walked into the 2025 national last year, I had two main grails as my, my targets for the weekend. It was the Superman number one and the 1941 play ball Joe DiMaggio. Those were the two cards I had to have. And I. I remember going Wednesday, scouring the Fleer looking for as many cops as I could. Found them. The ones I found, I found. And then I decided which one to buy, and I went and I executed. I grabbed those cards and I mean, I got in just in time on. On that Superman. When I did, I got in just in time on Mickey Mouse this year. I bought the car at a 10x like two weeks later. It's just ridiculous. Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know if I feel like Nostradamus or what, but, like, I was. I was very, like the, the validation I felt when I saw, like, man, I'm glad I got in. So. Nostalgia a little bit. Just the cool factor. I just love this stuff.

That's so cool. All right, Jeremy. I think that. Well, I. I think a lot. That's what happens every time I listen to your content. I. You are my. When I go on walks, I've got your stuff in there because it always gets the wheels turning. I know our audience has a lot to digest, thinking through how they could collect with more intentionality and being aware that, yes, there's a market, it's expanding. The businesses are here to make money. It's their job. It's okay. Everybody can find Elaine and have plenty of fun. I want to connect our audience with you going forward. What are the best ways for people to in touch with you, to follow the content that you're dropping? Learn more.

Thank you. And before I say, I just want to say I listen to the baseball card show, the ball card show, when I'm out on my walks as well. So just so you know, we're listening. We should just hop on the phone and brainstorm together. But. So my. My YouTube channel is called Sports Cards Live. Yu-Gi-Oh you can check out the website of the same name on Instagram. I am J. Lee underscore Sports Cards Live. That's where I got like reels and takes in that. I have a. I. I share my personal collection on Jay Lee underscore cards. And I, I wrote that book. I wrote this book, Pops and Comps last year. You can find it on. On. On Amazon. By the way, the. The subtitles, truths, insights and psychology behind the numbers that drive the card market, which are the populations in the comps. Right. And Twitter. I'm at sports cards liv1. You can email me sportscardsliveshowgmail.com and check out thehobbyspectrum.com and fill out all the information after you take the. The assessment because there's some really Cool features coming to that. That'll. It's all about discoverability and community. So it's, it's going to grow as well. So I think that's it, guys.

Awesome. Well, we're real appreciative of having you on the show. Yes. An honor for us to have you here and hopefully we'll get to buggy to come back on again sometime soon. Yu-Gi-Oh And I want to repay the favor and get, get you guys on my show, but I want to do it separately. I don't want to bring you on together. I'd like to bring. Okay. All right. I'm going get your, your stories too. And oh, and I'm also a part of the sports card clubhouse YouTube channel. I want to mention that too because that's a great collaboration of content of some awesome content creators across the hobby. So check out the Sports card clubhouse on YouTube as well for more great content. Yu-Gi-Oh But Yu-Gi-Oh I want to get you guys on my show.

We'll make it happen. We'd love to Appreciate you, Jeremy. Thank you so much. Thanks, guys. I can't thank Jeremy enough for taking some time to, to spend with us. I told him when we finished the interview that we know how limited time is for those of us who do content and, and work in this space and he gave us that much time and I hope that you found it as valuable as we did. Like Jason said, Jason and I are both fans of his. So to have him on the show was really exciting for us. And if you haven't yet, make sure you follow his content at Sports Cards live on his YouTube channel, sportscardslive.com all the places that he told you about.

Yu-Gi-Oh And definitely check out that hobby spectrum.com it was just a really thoughtful questionnaire but it had me really like thinking through a lot of my approach as a collector. We will be back next week. Be sure to catch us there. We have so many more exciting guests coming up over the next few weeks. Be sure to give us like and follow. If you're here at this point, man, you're a die hard. Why not go ahead and click subscribe. Give us a follow. All the things this has been the Ball Card show, the esports podcast for the esports collector. Bye now.

Peace. Sa.