Joe Knows.... Season 5 Ep 43

About this episode

Gary and Jason Cover The PSA Disaster. Joe Wysmierski from Cut The Nonsense and Phoenix Sports Cards breaks down the IP Autograph and The LCS scene in Phoenix. Uncle Terry Shows off a real one ... Ed Reed.  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

Machine transcript — exact wording may vary.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the ball card show, the sports podcast for the sports collector. I'm Jason Otero. I'm Gary Lomaster, and this is season five, episode 43 deep into December at this point, quick year. And Gary and I are back from a snowy trip to Fort Wayne, Indiana. Yup. I had a fun, I had a fun time at that show. I had a really fun show. The building is great. There was plenty of room for people to walk and like interact. Nobody was bumping into anybody. Um, and the, the location was easy to get to. If you needed to come in the night before and stay, it's not like going to Chicago where it's a five or $600 a night hotel room. And we just, it was a really fun show. A lot of collectors. Uh, we didn't really have any repackers that we sold to one, tried to buy something from you, Jason. Yeah. Well, you want me to tell them about it? Yeah. Tell them the story. It was, I will say this. I was working with a customer and out of, out of the right side of my ear here, I hear Jason say something that sounded like me and I immediately was like, Oh, this is going to get good. Well, you know this, I am going to say things the most consumer, uh, customer appreciation way possible, right? Customer service. I'll find a way to say it with a smile. This kid pissed me off. It's getting pissed me off.

So it's like dead giveaway. Like I understand in concept, people that are repacking or sourcing find a table where they're going to see several cards that they're interested in and they take their roller case and they turn it over and sit down cause they're going to be there a minute. That doesn't really bother me. What does bother me is before you've even looked at anything, you come rolling in like Paul Walker and fast and furious. You like skidding that thing in there. You drop down on the case, you got your arms up over, you're blocking up, you know, no big deal.

Blocking up a showcase and a half. And then you just start throwing numbers, which, okay, hey, let's play. Let's play a game. I do this all the time. I do this every week. I'm not intimidated. And they always have the exact same haircut and they always have the exact same look and they take the exact same approach. And somebody told them, if you throw your case down in front of your showcase and throw some post-its on the table and start tapping around like you run the place that dealers are going to just be like, Oh yeah, whatever you want.

Right? So this kid starts out, he's looking at a few cards. The first one is a very easy. I love it when the first card somebody picks is a baseline. There's established comps. It's card that's probably sold 50 times in the last few months or 10 or 20, whatever, like plenty of data there. Cause I'm going to learn right away. Is this person, you know, trying to play a game or are they being direct? So it was like a, the first one was like a honeycomb Lamar Jackson from this year. It's a case. It's like a fit around a $50 card, 40 to 60, whatever.

I'm just, I think I had it like on 55 and he's like, best I'll do here is 40. Can you do 40? And I said, yeah, probably not. Right. He probably couldn't get there. Well, the last comp was the last comp was 45. Okay. What was the one before that? 60. What was the one before that? 55. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like, sounds like I got a sticker on me. I work with you a little bit. Then he goes to another card. He gets to that card, starts talking it down. And it's, it was the, it was a downtown, the last comp on a downtown, which when they start doing this with downtown, so I'm like, shut up. You know, there's literally 20 transactions in the last three days at a minimum on this car. Right. And the last one was lower. So he's like, well, the lower, when I said, well, it sounds like it's heading down. You probably don't want to mess with it. Well, then he gets mad at me for that. The exact next card, the exact next card is trending up max. Crosby Kaboom. Okay. Brandon, the last couple have been up. Now there's some con there were some comps around four 54 70, but the last few were like, the last one was five 60. The one for that was around five and then five 24, seven, something like that. We was trying to work the sticker value down below five. Right. And finally I go, hold on a second, bud. And I knew I said it loud enough. We probably had about five people around that was when my dealers next to me, I said, so you only want to look at the last comp when it benefits you. But if it's the last comp that helps me, we'll screw that comp. I'm not going to play that game. Yeah. Actually what I think your exact words were, wait a minute. You wanted to use the last comp on those other two cards. And now you want to ignore it. Yeah. I was like, this is going to be great.

Yeah. So he, uh, he just couldn't believe that somebody called him out. I'm just thinking like, is this what needs to happen? More like dealers just need to say something. You don't have to be a complete jerk. But I was like, you're being hypocritical and wildly inconsistent here. I thought we were playing a game of averages, but now you don't want to look at any of the ones that benefit me. So he patted around and I didn't work with him on that. And the best part was he paid up on the honeycomb. He gave me the number I wanted. It just felt like a huge rocks. You were like, get this car back, this car back. Yeah. You were like, all right, thanks man. You can go.

Oh yeah. It takes a lot to get me. So it's just like the demeanor of it. And again, anybody can shop a show. And here's the thing too. I think some of these guys are, usually as guys that are younger, they're like college age, but it's like, whoever said, this is the playbook of like, this is how you have to act to make this work. Guys, there's so many ways to do this. If you're watching this or listening, there are so many ways to do that. And for every five kids that has that same haircut and does that same approach that just tries to, their whole game is driving down the value of the card because the percentage is arbitrary. If they can work 10 or 15% down on the value, that's the game. That's the hustle.

That's the whole game to buy at 70% is to tell you you're getting 85 now is part of the problem created by the dealers. Absolutely. They're going to be going to the wayside soon, but they are, there are dealers that are marking everything 150% over. The beautiful thing is if you don't do that, if you actually do the work of looking through comps, adjusting, when there's an adjustment on a card, when somebody points out that a card's trending down, when they're right, you're like, you know what? I see what you're saying there.

Like if more of that happened, there'd be a little bit less of these games too. Yeah, I really, I really think that, but we know people that are sourcing for repackers and you wouldn't know it. They have more cash on them than anybody else in the room. They're friendly. They talk about the cards. They make it clear what they're doing. They say the price that they want to be at. They don't try to beat you up on the value of the card when there's established comps. And the one thing that I say that separates the ones that we deal with from the ones that the others do, uh, the other ones that we just end up never doing any business with is the ones that can't ever see our perspective. Yeah. The good ones, the ones that are actually good because they don't waste their time. Think about that kid. How many interactions did you probably have like that that day? I'm going to guess not very many. And that's the thing. Well, no, I disagree. I think it's a law of average. It's like, uh, it's like the solar sales kids. Eventually you're going to get somebody that needs some cash. And if you've been working, I think that's what happens. Yeah. But the guys that will look at a card and I'll say, well, I see what you're saying, but you also see those two or three comps that I'm, I'm saying support my sticker. It sounds like this might not be a good fit for both of us. And the good ones understand that and say, yep, no worries. Let's look over here. And when that happens, I'm more likely to grab a card that I know that I'm in at. Like maybe I got in a lot and I realized I was in a better than I thought. Yeah. Hey, I actually have a little room here. Let me hook you up a little bit. I'll get 30% margin on this and you're getting this card at 70%. Yep. I do it all the time. You've seen it. Like people will say I'm leaving money on the table. No, I'm not. They're coming back. They're coming back. They know how I priced my cards. They know that I'm okay with setting stuff off to the side that doesn't make sense for them. And they know, I know the game, they're playing and I'm cool with it. If you are making, if you are making your target margin, we say this all the time. If you're making your target margin, who cares whether somebody else is making money on the card too. If everybody can win, that's a good thing. Um, sometimes it's not possible, but if it is do it, keep your money moving, let more people win. And that helps the entire ecosystem of the economy of the hobby. Yeah. There's a huge vacuum for content for these people that source for repackers of quality humans saying, Hey, here's a good way to do this.

Like I never thought I'd say this, but I think the ecosystem of this industry hobby needs some of the nice people out there. The ethical people that are sourcing to repackers are trying to get stuff 80, 85% knowing they'll get 90 to 95. Right. It's not an easy game to play, but there's people out there that have, have learned that a little bit of honey will get you farther, you know? And I think that there's a huge vacuum of content because all you see is this idea that I'm going to go in here and impose my will because I have cash. Yeah. And when it, I don't think it w it does, it works enough, but I don't think it's sustainable. Well, it it's not sustainable. If things go the way we talked about a little bit last week where we're entering a little bit of a downturn because there won't be as many of the dealers that are set up, but I use air quotes on purpose. And a lot of people think I am being rude when I say that. I don't mean just condescending maybe a little bit, but here's the reality. I would say at now at the show, we were just at up in Fort Wayne where it's a waitlisted show. It's a vetted show. The tables are a little bit more expensive. Um, well promoted. Yeah. There's not, there's not as many of those folks that set up. There's a few, but at your typical local show, at least half of the guys who are set up, they're just guys who rip a lot of product and want to get some of their money back. Like they're not dealers. So for the, the guys who operate like that kid was, he sees those guys and they just want some cash. He's going to have wild success thrown around a hundred dollar bills for people who know their margins, for people who know what they pay for cards, for people who know the market, who are intentional about what they do. It doesn't work as well. To your point, there are several people I can name right off the top of my head that I love doing business with that I know are selling or sourcing to other repackers, uh, because of what you said. And it's never personal. If they don't buy any cards from me that day, they're still going to come back and look the next time. They're not going to be mad that we couldn't make something happen. The guys who pout and get all pissy and don't want to come back because they didn't like the fact that you wouldn't give them what they wanted. Eh, I feel like there's a, we're in a bit of a situation where heels are really dug in. There's been a huge shift in the dynamic of power in the space. And it used to be more about who had allocation or who had the best singles or who had the best inventory. And it's just kind of become who's willing to play the game of spending enough money at 95%. And that's where a lot of the power has moved until it doesn't. If that consolidates enough, like pay attention, pay attention. Those of you that are selling mostly to repackers that are doing this as a business, pay attention to what is already happening with downtowns. What is, and we're not, it sounds like we're exaggerating. We had conversations with some people that are in this space over the weekend that we're just saying, like, yeah, downtowns are getting weird. Um, and on top of that, whatnot is actually somewhat enforcing these regulations they're putting in place for their stuff. And people are all of a sudden saying, yeah, I think we'd just rather do singles. I think I'd just rather ever, you know, avoid the risk. So pay attention to what's happening. But you said something that struck a nerve. We weren't even planning on talking about this three times in the last month, three different situations. People that I know that have been in this space for quite some time have had LCS owners mad at them when they make an offer because they have the intention of reselling the card. Yeah. And I think, I bet none of those guys gave a crap during COVID about this when they were getting their panini cases and selling them at five X. I think none of them gave a crap about that. Well, they didn't give a crap about that. And, and I can't stay in pocket watchers anyway. Like if you have a card for sale and I negotiate to buy the card from you, the moment that I hand you money, your concern about what happens with that card is null and void. You shouldn't even think about it. If somebody buys a card from me and they turn around and walk at three tables over to somebody else and sell it for more money.

Good for them. Yeah. Like that, that's a positive thing. I had an interaction where I paid somebody's sticker price for cards and then they were mad because they didn't reprice their cards for four months and the market had changed and I had them on my table at a higher price. I can't control what you do in your business and to be upset with somebody for paying you what you wanted for the card because you're going to collectible space. This is the game. Yes. Like let's, what are we talking about? How many collectibles exist that have zero to no liquidity right now?

Oh, hobbies are out there where if you want to flip it, cool. There's two shows a year and it's a six hour drive. Jason will tell you about some paintball guns. Oh geez. I've been a serial collector. I've always had something like that. I mean, I got into paintball back in the day I had, so I grew up, so in the nineties paintball hit this heyday and then there were a couple brands that made it like affordably accessible to get into this space. Now that wasn't a cheap hobby either if you were actually playing it competitively, but like there was a bunch of us that would, we lived out in the country and Southern and we'd catch up every weekend and go out in the woods and shoot paintballs at each other. It was so fun. But yeah, I've gone in a little deep into paint and not gotten money out. Maybe I have my own scuba tank to refill with compressed air. Don't worry about it. Maybe I bought all that when I was newly married and I played twice and you know, my wife has still had some questions. Thanks for bringing that up, Gary. I appreciate you doing that. But my point is some of us need to realize that we are lucky to be in a space where there's that type of interest in the collectibles that we deal in because that is not the norm everywhere else. Yeah. And be consistent if that's your stance, if your stance is, Oh, I just don't want to sell to anybody that's dealing, that's going to make money off of my cards. Understand this. You are not a dealer. You are a collector that's selling some things. Yes. You are not a, you are not a true dealer. You are a collector that sells things or you're a flipper that collects cards.

And there is nothing wrong with that, but just understand you're parking a lot of money and preventing a lot of money from moving. Now I've been to some LCS is in the area. I could start listing them off where I've just decided, Hey, this is never going to be a spot for me to source anything, but they get cool cards and I like to go and see what they have. And sometimes they get some cool throwback wax and I'll want some of that, you know, nothing wrong with that at all. But this idea that I don't want to prove, you know, I don't want the possibility of somebody else making a penny off of a card later, even though they pay a hundred percent of what I'm asking. That's wild.

But the idea that you would give 10% off to somebody that doesn't set up at shows, but you wouldn't do that to a dealer. That's stupid, right? It's wild behavior. No, no, no. It's just dumb. Like I don't understand it now. Oh, it's, it is dumb. And I think that it goes to something that, that I say on a regular basis, if you want to squeeze every penny out of every card you have, you're going to have a whole lot of cards and very few pennies. Um, it's just not how it works. Yeah. Context. We're not saying that everybody that walks up to the table owes us a deal.

We're not saying that at all. If we go to a shop or we go up to somebody's table or we go into an LCS and we see a sticker and we offer the sticker, or if we say, Hey, could I give you 85% of what you have on there? And it's a, well, I normally would, but you're a dealer. That's weird to me. You're allowed to do that. I just think that's a terrible decision and I'm starting to hear it more and more. And everyone that does that is feeling the pressure. And I think they're really, you have two ways to think about singles. Thank God I have another way to diversify and to protect myself against a really quickly changing market that's consolidating or, I mean, whatever. I have singles here. They got to go, but I'm not giving these away.

Take them or don't. Right. You can, you can choose to do whatever you want with your shop, but don't also be frustrated when your foot traffic stops and don't underestimate how many of the people that ask for deals on singles are spending a lot of money on wax too, that will take that money elsewhere. Cause guess what? Everybody's got it. It's not unique to your LCS anymore. And fanatics doesn't even need your LCS. They'll go find the next big chain. Yeah. GameStop is coming for you. So it was Dick sporting goods. Yeah. I mean, I mean, at the end of the day and before we go to our, I'm glad you brought up this story so that I could just jump into negativity right away. It's great. It's, I don't think this is negativity. I think it is a reality that needs to be discussed and related to that. I'm getting really tired of seeing people for clicks because, you know, it's not what's actually in their brains rolling down and just trying to pretend that negotiation shouldn't exist. Let me explain something. Jason, Jason tried to, we talked about this a little bit last week, what we buy at, how we buy and Jason threw a couple of flags on me and forced me to clarify some things, but here's a really important thing to remember. As long as two parties mutually agree on a transaction and neither party was lying to the other one about something, no one is taking advantage of anyone.

Period. It's that simple. So to pretend that if somebody pays 70% for something or 50% for something or 80% percent or whatever percentage you don't particularly like or agree with that they are taking advantage of someone, get out of here. The only time they're taking advantage of someone is if they're lying to them. Period. Yeah. I, there's one caveat with that and that is when somebody genuinely doesn't realize that something's way bigger than it is, but it's still fair, but that's at the discretion of the buyer if they want to disclose that.

We had somebody that's a fan of the podcast that came up to the show in Fort Wayne over the weekend, had some stuff they knew that we'd like to move on, whatnot, some singles that you and I would both like. And one of them, they had stacks. So like when we buy, I'll be like, all right, this piles, whatnot, that comes out of a different pouch of cash for our business. And then I have my showcase and Gary has his stuff. So it's a little bit messy, but we have our own system. And one of the stacks I was handed, they threw a number at me and I just said, Hey, that's just not enough. That's not enough. I still left plenty of meat on the bone for myself, but that was at my discretion because I thought there was such tremendous value and it was pretty liquid stuff. Yeah. So, but I'm not obligated to do that. No one is, but this retroactive frustration is foolishness. Oh, it's insane. You know what? I bought a Nissan Altima with a bent frame and I was furious for, for like a year and a half driving this car. And this was in one of the most stressful seasons of our life. We had so much going on and I had a construction gig where I just needed a little four banger with good mileage. So I got a newer one. It was beat up. The dealership was dishonest. I was super mad. Guess what? I should have passed on the car. Something wasn't right. I thought it was a minor thing. I thought I knew better. I thought I could fix it right away.

That's on me. I'm the idiot. Now, do I troll that business and let people know every time somebody talks about a car there? Sure, sure. Have I left a lengthy Google review? One of the only ones that the company didn't respond to. Absolutely. That's called checkmate. But, but I bought it. I did with my money. It's my loss when I went to trade that in. Yeah. Speaking of buying things, tops, tops fanatics is, uh, why am I not even getting the names right? PSA is buying things. Yeah. It's, it's been a, it's been a week. Um, and it's only Monday. PSA is buying things and, uh, they did something real interesting this week, Jason. Yeah. Yep. So you've seen the story by now.

I'm sure, uh, that it was found on Twitter. Um, Gary, remind me to shoot you the screenshot. We will put this up in the screen so they can just see the account that it came from because I want to give credit. But essentially somebody sent off a submission of cards. There were Pokemon cards. I can't remember exactly how many, but several of them, uh, as they were submitted, the grade was a PSA nine is what was, what was told to them. And the images that showed, Hey, here's your cards are graded. They had the certain number, everything. And I said, Hey, here's our offer.

They're all PSA nines. The, uh, the submitter says, okay, I'll take the offer on those. And then a little bit later, these nines magically reappear as tens with the exact same cert number. Weird things are never going to happen. Did we say this to PSA? PSA isn't going to, PSA isn't going to risk their, their reputation over something like this fraud at scale. Yes. So, and here's the thing. So this was the whole thing that we brought up when we had, uh, Alex with clever Cuban come on and I'll be honest, he held his own. He brought up some good points, but he just was at a different disposition when it comes to the belief of the integrity of that company and the changes and shifts that they're making. Now, and the very important clarification to make, because we do our part whenever this is put out, there is that this submitter has been reached out to you by PSA. They've been told that it's been made right. PSA made sure that they clarified this was a one off situation, but the incubator is still there. And that's the problem.

That was the whole point of our argument. Why would we allow for this to happen? It's going to continue to happen. Mistakes are going to happen. The temptation is going to be there. Now, one of the counter arguments that people make all the time as well, you know, they're just sourcing that to other repackers. Yeah. They could charge more for a 10 than a nine. Like this is, this isn't that crazy. It's a pretty big spread. If they did that with 10, let's just say they did 10% of the nights and they sprinkle them out over however many thousands are coming in. Right.

In a month. That's a chunk of change. Yeah. And, uh, the statement from PSA to the general public was nothing. Right. Crickets. Yeah. Correct. That's the mode now. Hey, probes theme. Where are you, dude? Where are you? Oh, where are you? What are you going to say? Yeah. And they expect us to be stupid morons that are never going to remember it. Can I tell you why? Because there, because there's a lot of stupid morons that aren't ever going to remember it. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's maybe what I'm actually frustrated with is the contentment with it, which is why for us, when other creators give us a hard time about bringing light to these things and talking about them, it's really important that somebody does.

It's really important that somebody, not that we're policemen, but that there's a reminder out there tapping on the shoulder. Hey, don't forget this happened when you're making buying decisions, when you're thinking about where you're spending your money and how you're investing your money in this hobby. Remember tap, tap, tap. This, this happened. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's, it's a hopefulness that we'll forget. And you know, the, the other pieces, you know, we gave, we gave Danny a hard time from cut the nonsense because he was like, what difference will it make? The part where he was making a lot of sense was he's like, people forget you can bring it up, but most people are just going to move on. And you know, he wasn't saying this, we've talked about it, but I do think that that whether you embrace gambling as part of this or not, which it's really hard to deny it at this point. Oh, for sure. Um, at the very least the targeted marketing is impulse spending.

Oh yeah. So, um, I, I just want people to not forget, I'm not saying it's everything, but within one month of people talking about this, it's already happened. Yep. Within one week of probe Steens, whatever this all is going to become. I don't know if it's a federal investigation. I don't know if this is going to be, I don't know if nothing happens. I don't know if it was just a hack and we find out that there was something else going on, but I would have to think if there was anything like that, an attorney would have said something by now. I also don't think they would have shut the company down within three days and run back to eBay with their tail between their legs. But the scariest part of this whole story is within a week, everybody forgets. Yep. eBay's got them back in there. Let's get our 130 million off of them or 5 million or whatever that's going to be over the next 10 years. You know, I, I, so it's, it's just, Oh well, so what? It's kind of the vibe with that. That's a problem. It's a problem, not just for me and Gary, it's a problem for all of us. Yep. Like we got to remember this. So PSA says it's a one-off keep an eye on it.

Double check your cert numbers, check your grades. You have one more thing to be concerned with. One thing that seems very certain is the reputation PSA has is getting worse by the day. Yeah. Well, and I don't know that again, outside of their slab bringing the most value, I don't know what their reputation is. What helped me understand is what is wrong with just being a good grading company? Like what is wrong with the money going into that and being able to get through what's coming in quick enough for it to be a viable option? Like I feel like you have the, you have the market. Here's, here's the answer. Nobody's gonna like the answer. Greed.

Collectors is a publicly traded company. Their entire goal is to return higher share values to stockholders. They have to increase revenue exponentially in order to do that. The end. Yeah. It's that simple. Anyhow. Man, we're in a bad mood today. Should make this next part real fun. All right. One more thing. And then here, and after that we are super excited. We do have a special guest today, Joe Wismerski with Phoenix sports cards. I hope I said that right. We'll find out what he's in and cut the nonsense. He's going to be sharing the perspective of somebody that believes in a management role with Phoenix sports cards. So I'm counting on him to bring the vibes up a little bit since we're down in the dumps here. But before we finish all this negativity, we have one more story to bring you. We brought up the fact that they were going to be doing this reverse Dutch auction on jumbo tops, Chrome W a WNBA NBA. And they were going to start at 3,500 fanatics that posted some things. And we were saying like, we don't know exactly. This is just what everybody's saying. It turns out they did not do a reverse Dutch auction. They just did a full blown panini and started that thing at 3,500 worked its way down. And it took how many minutes, Gary? 42 minutes to get to the floor at 1750. Remember when the jumbos pre-released with hobby on the fanatics website, they sold out in under two minutes. So if there is a lesson to be learned here by fanatics, it's that maybe there's not a market for four or five X your original starting point on a product. I think you miss it. I think you're missing it. What's that?

They did sell out in 44 minutes at three to five X what it's worth. They're they're happy. Well, that's true. I mean, 44 minutes and the cheapest one went for 1750. They're like, sign me up for that again. I was hopeful that they would do what they indicated originally, which is the way that a reverse Dutch auction typically works, which is it starts at whatever number and whatever the floor ends up being, that's what everybody ends up paying. Uh, it creates stability in the market because right now what we're going to have is some people who paid $3,500 a box for their cases and some people who paid 1750 a box for their cases. And there's no way to merge that reality. The people who paid 35, if they're breaking it, you're going to get bent over on those breaks. And the people who paid 1750, they're going to try to do the same thing and make more money.

It just, and, and here's the other thing that happens. This is a game that's going to get played with the breakers. They're going to introduce these jumbos as a mixer and they're going to project the value at 3,500, even if they bought it 1750. So they're going to tell you the value on this break is X. So the hustler breakers were like sweating it out in minutes, 30 to 40 of like, man, we got to be close here. Right. But that is how they're going to do that. So if you got it at 2k, you're going to advertise a $3,500 value when you break this out.

they're going to throw it in a mixer, right. Or if they got five boxes of it, you know, just, just, just however it works or cases or whatever. Um, but yeah, they're going to say that their margins baked in regardless of where they got it. And then they're probably going to add 30% to that. So there's some people that are gonna be paying up for it. Gary, what cards out of this product would demand $3,500? There's a few. I mean, you're super low. I mean, you're super fractures, uh, of the big names. Uh, you're super low numbered autos of like Cooper flag and VJ edge come and LeBron, uh, and Steph, like those guys. Uh, what do you think? Like their base autos land for LeBron is licensed four to 500 bucks, maybe six. That's about what they do in Panini.

I mean, you're, there's not a world that you can hit a LeBron and a Steph auto in this product and you're still down by 60% if they're both base. Yeah. Ah, like, like that's the, that's the reality. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. Uh, I, this is something that I said, right? Like the, the, the, the Cooper flag, uh, super, by the way, has already been slabbed up as authentic. Uh, it's, it can really hits a auction floor, but yeah. Like at the end of the day, a few years ago, the manufacturers along with the distributors decided that they wanted to make the money, not the people in the hobby, making the money. They, these companies used to act as actual manufacturers distributed as acted as actual distributors. And then the LCS is, and the end user, us ripping wax had an actual opportunity to see a return on investment.

Yeah. About six months into COVID the entities of the manufacturers and the LCS is what, you know what? We, we want to transfer all risk to the customer and we want to seven, eight XR margins. Yeah. Have a day. Yep. Yep. So if this is a glimpse of what's to come, then expect there to be these breaker focus skews, um, across the platform. It's not surprising. And here's the thing too. I always say this because it is easy for our filter to be an economic filter first as people that are dealers, people that sell in singles and people who have avoided the trap for the most part of getting way in over our heads on wax. Yeah. Just quick reminder.

There's a lot of people in the U S with plenty of money that prefer to do this with their discretionary funds. And the thing that everybody in the hobby likes to do is demonize the people that can't afford it and don't mind playing the game. Yep. It is not their fault that this happens. What we get concerned with is a model for marketing, selling and moving and entering these products into the ecosystem that simply can't be sustained. Right. That, that, that's our big push on it. But it's easy to say, well, nobody should have that and nobody should buy this cause you can't hit this and you can hit that. Have you ever been to a casino? Have you ever, like I've sat at the blackjack table, I've sat there for a couple hours before, right?

My idea of risk tolerance and some of these people are far different, right? I put my dollar chip out all day. Yeah. They came there to move that 10 grand at that table right then. Like that's what they want to do with their money. And so it's easy for us to say this is how it should be shouldn't. But what I'm concerned with is, is this the new model to fanatics? Basically push them out to just do exactly what they're doing. And it's frustrating that we're hopeful for so much more for the consumer than that. So much more value.

They have so many ways to add more value and that's my frustration. Yep. Fanatics can get fans closer to the game because of all the things they're doing. Don't, don't just cookie cutter this, please. It wasn't sustainable. Then you having the baseball license created a little bit of competition. This is not sustainable with, with everybody, every product, every time, you know? Correct. Yep. All right. All right. What are the news that we have? Good grief. You got me talking about that repacker and it was downhill from there.

I think those were the two major things. Well, before we jump into this interview, which we're super excited about my hobby, uncle, your hobby, uncle, uncle Terry, real ones, no real ones, bud. And they don't get more real than old ed, but I'm telling you, I played the exact same way as this hellion. And I knew he was a damn football hellion when he was just a collegiate football player. I damn tune into these Miami hurricane football games. I see this one running around and I'm thinking this one moves different. This one hits different.

And bud, this one thinks different. He approaches football unlike any other man I've ever seen. And I love him, but I've loved him since the day I saw him strap on a helmet and tell everybody, I'm going to win a lot of football games out here. Someone better scoop me up. I screaming it, but I said, get every single one of these cards you can. Cause this guy right here, he's the baddest of the bad from damn Miami to damn Baltimore. They don't get better than old Ed Reed. Thanks uncle T up next, our favorite person from cut the nonsense.

We just put it out there. We play favorites. Joe's our favorite. Joe from Phoenix sports cards and cut the nonsense is hopping on this call here in just a moment. Let's be sure to make him feel welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, we are ready. And we have our guests in the building. Joe was Mirski is here from cut the nonsense, Phoenix sports cards and anywhere else. You may have seen him, Joe. Thanks for joining us for the show. Thanks for having me first time. Long time.

Oh yeah. I appreciate it. Now we were unapologetic. We picked you as our favorite from cut the nonsense. Um, because, well, it started, uh, about two months ago when I was stuffing envelopes from some eBay orders and someone unapologetically said, I'll just tell you the truth. Our LCS pays about 50%. And I was like, I know I'm not crazy. Somebody just said the truth about buying with margins and running a business. So I've been, I've been, I've been hooked ever since and I've really appreciated the fresh takes honest opinions. Um, we're not always right, but we're always honest with what we think and what we say.

And it gets us in trouble sometimes, but it's even easier for me. Gio is got a little bit of little man syndrome. Danny just kind of sits there a lot and you share a lot. So it's simpler for me. Yeah. Well, I, yeah, I appreciate it. I'm, I just, uh, I'm, I'm a motor mouth and, uh, and I appreciate you bringing that stuff up. Like, dude, I, I can't stand, like, that's where I try to remove myself from the comments where people are like, ah, you're not making any money. I'm never coming in there to sell you my cards.

Dude, you just have to lay it out. Like everyone's situation is different. A hundred percent. But like, if I told you the amount of repeat customers, because I do show them exactly, like, this is why I'm paying it. This is exactly what happens. And when it goes in the case, yes, I'm putting it at that comp that I'm giving 50% for, but then I have leeway to then offer it to someone else at a discounted rate. Like it just makes sense. That's, that's the way it is. And, and you're not going to get it every way.

Like we were actually talking about this this morning. I had someone who was trying to buy a card of mine off eBay, right? They wanted to be off eBay cause they wanted a deal and then they wanted it below comps again. And they were letting me know that I wasn't paying my fees on it. So they were helping me out to justify why I should give it to him for a smaller price to my response is, dude, I completely appreciate the interest. I love it a hundred percent. Um, but you're also benefiting from this too, not paying any tax on it. Right?

So the tax is huge. And then you're telling me the price is going to be all in. So now you're not also, you're also not paying for shipping. Um, so, so you're winning there too. And if we compounded those two things together, we're back to where we begun, uh, with the, with the original price prior to tax and shipping. Like that's, that's what it is. But just laying it out to people and letting them know, like, dude, it's business. It's business. And if, if it doesn't work for you, there's another shop down the road.

That's the key. And I think that that's the part of the conversation that the people who get so butthurt when people like us say, this is how we pay. This is why we pay. Uh, and what we pay. The reason they get so butthurt is because they've had a bad experience where somebody has either lied to them or didn't explain things to them and wasn't willing to let it walk. Like there's always another deal. When somebody comes up to my table, Jason's heard me say it before they come up, Hey, are you interested in this card? Sure. Let me take a look.

This is what I can pay. Here's what I'm going to tag it at. It might sit here for six months. I have to take that into account when I make you an offer. I'm parking money. Nobody explains those things when you take the time to do that. To your point, Joe, it's amazing how many times those same people keep coming back to sell you stuff at whatever rate you're paying. And, and Gary, honestly, what I'll tell you is the reason you came to me is because the first shop that you went to passed on it or they didn't, they didn't offer you at all. Like, that's, that is the absolute truth. So you're, you're stomping your feet now and you're upset because you thought you had this, like this gold mine, but this is what it goes for out in the market. And, and you can't believe that I'm paying you actually probably equal to, or maybe even a little bit more than what you were getting there before.

And nowadays you're starting to hear more and more, well, is it cash or a check? And do you need my ID? Yeah. Because I know that's part of the process with GameStop and they're only taking graded cards, but I mean, they get all, all your ID information. And now, um, this was the first time I saw it at the shop. Have you ever seen a GameStop master card? That's like a debit. No, but that's crazy work. So when you buy, like when they're buying high priced cards or like, um, PlayStation fives or whatnot, they're not shelling the cash out.

They're loading it onto like a master card that, then you have to like, yeah, dude. And it says like, it says on the front, GameStop, but it can be like GameStop debit. So it has the master card logo and it says debit on there too. So that was the first time I had experienced that. Um, this past week guys, like, yeah, I sold a PlayStation, some graded cards. With GameStop though. Like I don't want to hear anyone over the age of 30 say anything positive about GameStops offers. You guys remember what happened when it was time for a new console or the new game came out, you went in with $300 worth of video games and they said, here's four bucks, deal with it. And we all deal, we all dealt with it because we were already in line at midnight for the new Halo release.

So I don't want to hear anything from people defending offers from GameStop. They're up and they're way up right now. Jason, the little hack with that for the game, for any of the gamers in the, in the community, you have to go two months before the release of the game and that'll be the peak of selling the old version. So my kid gets so mad. Okay. Like dude, he's like NCAA football or Madden. I was like, dude, you're not going to have it for, for June or July, but, but we're going to have some credit going towards the next one. He's like, like, but that's, that's a little insider.

I wish we could get away with floating our offers like that. I mean, we consider seasons, but man, these percentages are, but anyway, we, by the way, you missed it. We have been, we have not been in the best mood. I was going after a really weird interaction I had with a repacker at a show in Fort Wayne over the weekend. We were talking about how that reverse Dutch auction ended up not being a reverse Dutch auction. So the breakers will be able to say, well, I might've paid 3,500 in their mixers and then charge whatever.

I want to talk about a different space that doesn't get talked about a whole lot in regards to specifically the Phoenix scene, because I think there's something unique that you experience at your shop with proximity to spring training and everything going on there. I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the current IP market. I'm honestly, obviously going to want your opinion on like viability, you know, investment value, but could you at least just paint a picture because I think being a part of an LCS in Phoenix where you have all this baseball taking place in the area and definitely has to be a little bit more of an ecosystem there than probably I have in house. What's it like? Like what, what does that seem like? Is it madness?

Is there tons of it? What are you seeing on a regular basis there? Do you, do you have, do you have cable or direct TV? Do you know that vice channel? Like where they show like the dark side of the, I would really love to peel back the curtain for you on it. Cause it's wild. Like there is a community. First of all, they're called graffers, right? That, that is the name. They're, they're graffers. They go out, and there's a community of them and they know everything about the event who's coming in. They know tail numbers of planes.

They know who to expect, like we'll be at the airport or if it's, if they're flying private. They know restaurant details. They're friends with security at restaurants. They know when they're leaving, they know where the pull up is going to be for them to be picked up. They know hotels that players are staying in. They know where they, like there's people that have been trespassed. They know where they can go on the hotel property. They will buy plane tickets that are refundable to get past security so that they can meet someone as they're walking, get their bags.

It is a wild, wild community. And all of that kind of culminates around baseball because in the Phoenix area we have spring training. So we have the cactus league, which we've had a ton of great players out here. Really having Otani is huge. Trout huge. And then the prospects have been really good because we also have the fall league. So like Kevin McGonigal, he was just out here and signing and doing that kind of stuff. When the diamondbacks drafted drew Jones, he literally was 17 years old and just sitting in the stands and people would buy tickets to go in there because they knew these players, they play segments of the games in fall league and then they actually just sit in the stands.

And so these people would, they go in there and there's a whole method and process, right? So they have these foam boards where they cut out the windows and they place the cards in the foam boards. So it's an easy that you can hand it or reach over people and they have it sectioned off where you needed to sign. The other thing is Funko Pop windows. So they start signing Funko Pop windows, guitar picks. So we have this giant, there's always something kind of going on down here in Phoenix from spring training, fall ball.

Then we have NASCAR that comes in, there's music events. Then you start to see more celebrities with like the Barrett Jackson car auction, the Phoenix Open golfing. We've hosted Super Bowls, March Madness, WrestleManias, Royal Rumbles. I think this year is the women's final four. That'll be huge too. So all these events. And then the one that nobody really talks about a lot are we kind of missed the mark in the United States. Here's the soccer market. So we don't host a lot of Team USA, but we get Mexico, a ton of Latin America, like big name players that played in Glendale at our stadium.

Sure, we lost our hockey team. They'll be back. But there's constantly, there's this flow of celebrities and athletes and these are, they're grown men. And they're out there, like they know, like there's a whole- Harassing famous people. Yeah, you prep the cards, you prep the windows. They're taking erasers to kind of scuff up where they want them to sign so the autograph catches and it doesn't skip. They're taking their kids to get them up to the front of the line to do that kind of stuff. And then they know like to change shirts or to change hats.

They're like, hey, we're only doing one. And they'll change where they are in line to get it. Dude, it's a huge, huge market. The amount of baseballs that get signed and that we sell, it's crazy. Well, that's where I wanna jump in. Yeah, that was my question. So this is all happening. So IP stuff that walks into an LCS in Central Ohio, not as much. From time to time, it's usually somebody that's clearing out closet or garage and they found some baseballs. And most of the shop owners around here are like, is it certed?

And even if it is, not really sure I'll be able to move in unless it's the right name. You know? But like, do you have like a, is there liquidity because of all this happening in your city? Like, is there a scene of people buying and selling these with value? So we still have that same type of market that you have as far as like old school shops that are like, eh. But yes, to answer your question, yes, there is liquidity in it 100% because our shop, we probably have monthly. He just randomly drops in, but we have a JSA rep that comes in and goes through the IP items and certs the stuff.

So we're able to then take the items. Once they're certed, get them out there, get them on eBay. And then our shop also, we were lucky enough to partner with like Fanatics. So sportsandhollywoodmemorabilia.com. Our stuff goes up on there. So it's a huge like market for people to see it. And we just, we don't have, it's not like getting a signing at a shop where you have one person that signs 5,000 items. And so now you have a truckload of Jose Ramirez, who's great by the way, he sells a ton, but 5,000 of them is tough for a shop to move.

But if you have 5,000 unique items, that's where the money can be made. So getting them to sign weird things and different things, like we have Johnny Depp on a guitar pick, right? And then the guitar is made to look like the Pirates of the Caribbean. Well, Johnny Depp also is a musician and does that stuff. So it's kind of cool. But for someone to just like, these guys have a backpack with baseballs, guitar picks, Funko Pop windows, cards, and then you see the influx in your shop during these peak seasons.

Like when we are so happy, like we've been putting Bowman aside and separating firsts and rookies and that kind of stuff and prospects, because we know we will just, we'll be able to sell even the most no name of them all for three to $5 a single. Because they're just going to take it out. With the stuff that walks in that you're buying, because I'm assuming that these graphers are your source for a lot of this stuff. What percentage of that stuff, if you had to guess, fails authentication? Very little.

Okay. Very little. And it's also, I don't want to say we have 100% pass rate, because that would be absurd. But I do know that the JSA reps in the area, they know who's there. They know who's in town. They know too. So they know what they're looking for. And the community of these graphers, it's very, very small. So it may seem big to them, but when we're thinking on the whole, everyone knows and it's all about the information that they can feed to each other or give misinformation for someone to go somewhere else for a signing.

When they talk about the TOPS hobby days, the hobby card days. So different shops in our area, especially during spring training, because there's athletes there, they get different guys to show up. Well, these guys have befriended different card shops and they're like, hey, who's Fanatic sending your way? And they'll make sure they get there in time to get those autos before someone else. Because a lot of these guys, they sign so little because it gets to a point of harassment. Like a great story.

I mean, we're four hours from Vegas. So when the Superbowl was up there, these guys took a bunch of stuff up to get signed. And like Victor Cruz, they met him at the airport. So Victor Cruz, right? We get it. You did your little cha-cha. Yeah, we love it. He gets off, he's walking. They're like, hey, Victor, just a generic football to be signed. He goes, I got time. He goes, I got energy for one. I was like, what? Oh, that's good stuff. I'll collapse if somebody hands me another one. So one of the things I'm hearing you say, I guess I just had the wrong perspective of this.

In my mind, I picture, like I immediately think of spring training. I was thinking about all the other events. Phoenix is huge. What, top five city in the country now? Top five, seven, somewhere in there. Which by the way, I've known Joe for about three days on Instagram beyond just the us doing podcasts together. If you are ever in Columbus and there is a trivia night, you are the ringer. I am taking you and we will rake. I'm telling you the random facts that came out in our little conversation.

But the perception that I have when I think about it is, oh, it's spring training. So you have this influx of autos, but I just pictured all the people going to the games, getting a card signed here and there and it adds up. You're saying that's just such a small, tiny slice. It's a hustle. The large majority of what's circulating are people that are making a job or a gig or a hustle out of this. It is not, so the people saying, I don't want pack pulled because it's so expensive. I just want the experience for the collector.

99% of that, they're full of crap because it's somebody out there just flipping these autos is what you're saying. Yes, and that's why they get really frustrated when athletes are like, they want to personalize things. And so you'll have people say, oh, my name is Tu, like T-U, because it's an easier thing to wipe off. Or like, oh, J, just the letter J. Like something that would be easier to try to wipe off of that, that item. Dude, more times than not, they're not the ones going into the game, buying the stuff.

They know where the players' entrances are, those type of things. For spring training, it's huge. They know when the guys show up. When Otani was going for rehab, they knew where to be for him to sign things. And these guys would ask for, hey, can you do it in kanji? Nope, he's not doing it, not doing it, not doing it. He just gave them that. And there's a difference too. There's the autograph, and they will give them what's called a short graph. So it's just like a letter through. So that's crazy.

The other thing too is to your point, when you're talking about pack pulled and IP stuff, there's two, they're very distinctive groups, right? Like there's the snobby pack pulled people, and I'm one of those guys. Like I'd rather like it, because I don't like how a big gaudy autograph looks on a card. I think it ruins a card. But there's the other side of it where people love the fact that that person potentially held it in their hand. They held it, and they signed on that card, and it's not a sticker, and they love it.

They have to have that. So they could care less what the card looks like, because when we look at like Hall of Famer IP autos, and they're graded on like an old Cal Ripken or like an Eddie Murray, it's signed over their entire, like you can't even see their face. It's just like, why wouldn't you just have an index card at that point, right? For me, I don't understand the reason of why you would do it on a sports card, because I think it takes away from seeing that auto. I get that you want to have something close to it, but if you're going to do it on a card and do like the IP, like do it on something you could see the auto.

I hate it too. I hate it too. But Mojo Break did a take on this on the network like a month ago about, it's all pack pulled. But like he was pointing in reference to that nasty Yamamoto Kanji auto in a white ink with red. That is a unique piece. That is something you can actually, in my opinion, you can make an argument that there's not a lot of these flying around, and it just looks awesome. It's a unique signature. Do these graphers, do you have to play the game that some dealers play? I guess this would be a better way of wording it.

There are people that walk up to our table every weekend, and within about 10 seconds, we can tell they're acting like they have no idea what are the cards worth, but they're just pushing for a number that's never going to happen. Do you have people that try to play that game with the IP market, or is it by and large, they understand? I'm not expecting pack pulled values here on this stuff. It's not certed. It's not pack pulled. Is that a tug of war for you on a regular basis, or is it understood?

No, it's understood. And to be really, really clear too, is like we're not just buying IP from any, like we have graphers that we have worked with that we know when we get their stuff, there's no guessing on it getting certified or not. Like we know, so we're not just bringing, we're not just welcoming, like we're not just saying, hey, Phoenix Sports Cards opens up for any IPs, like bring it on down. I was feeling bad for you if that was the case. No, and what it comes down to for a lot of these guys, right?

So you have a lot of older guys, but then you have a lot of like hustlers, like younger, like college kids, because we have ASU right here too. I mean, 64,000 students, right? It's a huge university, not quite as big as the Ohio State. But what I can tell you is these guys with being college students, they don't really have the huge bank roll. So if you provide items to get signed, it's kind of a one for one for like, hey, I'm gonna give you, cause Rawlings, I think it was, we looked at a while ago, I think it's like $26 a ball, something like that.

It might even be higher than that. So to get a case of balls is crazy price for someone to go do that. So if you say, hey, you're going to get Otani, dude, I'll provide you with the balls. Give me a one for one, and then break me off like a $40, 50, I'll pay for your gas to get there. Like when we've had guys that have ran up to Vegas for F1, hey, we'll put you up and feed you and provide you with the stuff. You just, you can keep one of each person, but we want everything else back that you get.

So are you finding with some of that stuff, especially during spring training, is Otani still like now signing for those guys or is he almost impossible? I don't know where they get the info, honest Gary. Like they will know that he's here for rehab and no one else will know. And they'll be like, I've heard the stories. They're out there at like three in the morning for his, and they're lining up cause they know like he'll sign five. So they'll sit there at the gate at three in the morning and know that he gets there at seven.

Wow. And he might only sign two or they might come up there and it's a dead pen. And he just, pen doesn't work. And he's back on like, yeah, it's 24 hours. Yeah. It's crazy. I, it's great to hear some of the stories about where these guys have met. Like a big one last year is Scadaboo. He wasn't really super known. They win the big 12 championship. These guys were at the airport when they landed. And like, if you could get like a Cam Scadaboo who's already a high energy guy but he just won the big 12 championship.

He put the most gorgeous. I mean, fanatics and whoever would die for an autograph like this on the stuff. The football was the entire panel and it was scat for like, it was huge and bold and beautiful. And like on a football, like if you know the right time to get these guys, like the big thing that they've been chasing the last two weeks. So Bowman Chrome University came out, right? And Jordan Tyson is a wide receiver for ASU who's supposed to be a top five pick. I don't know. Top five pick, right?

But he's not, he's not like readily in Bowman U. He's kind of a hard one to find in there. And so these guys have like beat up all the shops around getting all the singles and that kind of stuff because he will sign at practice. Like they'll wait for them to leave practice. Yeah, and they'll sign right there like it's it is such a big deal to get that kind of stuff and and be first to market With it and guys will list it. They'll list it and it's not even certed like that's where it's crazy. Like yeah Well, it's so easy away I just want to circle back because there's such a narrative with the IP that it's this pure form of collecting in the sports card space and Guess what? This sounds a whole lot like dudes that wait on the retail to hit at Target and wipe it all out Yeah this is not different if you're watching this and you're an IP purist if you truly are person just gets autographs for yourself understand you Are probably less than 5% of that entire market are made up of people like you. Is that accurate fair?

I think it is probably in the ballpark Yeah, it has to be I mean think about any major city to like wherever you find Any like paparazzi or anything like that There is someone who has an a unique item that they are reaching out to get signed like yeah It's crazy and I'm telling you you've seen the videos online where people are like, they're they're getting harassed at the airport or whatnot If you went if you go to the Phoenix sports cards Instagram cheap plug there We have a video so we had one of the graphers where those metaglasses When he went to UFC fights and so they were I think in the in the Paris Hotel or like in one of the the the bridges to another hotel where there's a lot of restaurants and he captured like Everyone coming in on these UFC fighters like to get the stuff and this guy he actually he went to issue He's moved to California and like he's known for getting IPs. Like that's what he does He's Nate Diaz wrestled him on the corner of a street in, California He's like, I'll wrestle you for my autograph like but he gets that kind of stuff to your point It isn't there is there's nothing pure about it. There really isn't like it is really a business and yes There are there are individuals that we have gentlemen that come in and they'll go through our singles Because we have like a five for a dollar room, right? So they'll just get them on a different different card every year And that is there there is some wholesomeness to it What is the living collection right, you know the living yeah the tops living yeah yes, so there is there's a couple of guys like younger graffers that they've They're working on a living collection. Like there is there is that to it? So I don't want to diminish it. Yeah, but dude, it is it is a serious cutthroat business and like it's wild I Want to point out the parallels and I think if we would look at the TCG space There's gonna be similarities, but there are in any space gonna be people that are just collecting cool you do not represent the majority in this space because there's a lot of people that collect and consider the profitability piece or fund the hobby or but this narrative out there that well if I just collect this stuff or that stuff and I Know that there are people that just collect I do a high volume low in eBay store low grade vintage stuff in there There are people that have way more fun Dropping 20 bucks on a handful of cards a few times a week of just a player that they like or a set that they loved And that's all that it is. Most of them aren't consuming a ton of this content, but there's always this the grass is always greener for another space right another side of the space and the hobby and There's a lot of it. It's just a flip. So Let's let's shift gears a little bit coming out of that concept of like Hey people are treating this as a business by and large there's a name they have relationships with LCS as they know what they're looking for I'd like to talk for a minute from your perspective as somebody that's working at an LCS You're seeing day-to-day the interactions with people and one of the questions Gary brought up to us to me this week was What are the things that people maybe don't realize like what's the worst approach to take if you were walking in to either buy something or?

Sell something at a store like what are the big no-no's that maybe? Collectors don't realize maybe they just saw a video Maybe they heard someone say this but like what are the no-no's at your shop? Like if you start to hear someone say this you're like this isn't gonna work out well for them. I will say just actually in life if you come into a situation, you're not willing to learn or Don't come in thinking, you know everything because you did see a post online or whatnot like When when we have items up on our shelf like wax to be open, right someone's like, oh, well I can get that I can get that cheaper on on tops comm you guys price match that and To my point like I will say, you know, that's great. Can you pull it up and see like if it's still oh, it's It's no longer available. Okay, so So unfortunately, you can't still get that on tops right now But these are the these are the vendors that do still have it available and we're actually $20 less so 100% like I mean you can see it here It's here readily available to you or you know when people want to buy stuff. They're like I can see it You know cheaper online Okay. Well, what's the shipping that you're gonna pay on that? Well, that's another 15 20 bucks. Okay?

Well, I I'm gonna save you the shipping today. I won't charge you shipping in the store if you buy it off the shelf That's that's one of the things and it's just a smugness like come in and be like the some of the best Experiences that you can have in the shops Anywhere is just oh my gosh. Did you got that product? That's so cool How did you guys get that product in like? Oh, you know it trickled in or we had to buy it off the street or this listen that just ask questions the other thing is if you're looking at singles and We price our singles sometimes a little bit under comps like it's super fair and They'll say well, can you make me a deal on this and I say every time Because it's it's not even we haven't even pulled it out of the case yet. We haven't even looked at it Okay, so I say okay. Here's what I'll do for you Now if I pull up this card and the most recent comp is below the price we have there I'll honor that for you but if the most recent comp is above that then you have to agree to pay the higher comp and they're like Like I was like, well, I know we're not even looking at things It's not like you've taken time to look and see if there's a better deal out there You're just instantly assuming that a shop is here to just gouge you and and more times than not We've done that and they'll be like, yeah, sure sure and we'll pull it up and we're under and I'm like, dude I'm just joking. We'd probably stay at this price because it's pretty fair right there and and they're like, okay cool cool But like by the way content gold if you like that's like a new version of the coin flip that is way more high-stakes Yeah, let's find out what the data actually says on this card Interesting. I would dude. I would love to do that. Like it's it's crazy being in a in a bigger city, too The other thing that's kind of rough for big city shops, right is The amount of stuff that comes in where you're kind of second-guessing where they're getting it from like the sealed stuff yeah, and you're just like Hey, and you know, unfortunately the appearance of the people bringing it in and kind of lead to You know, I don't judge a book by its cover, but I will look twice. Yeah Gary and I have a rule that if we ever see somebody walk into a show With like the wrong type of box like when we see a diaper box with we want those cards Yeah, I Mean we see stuff your actual marketplace all the time up here to your point with like sealed wax and stuff where it's a brand new product that Retails at $34.99 the secondary markets 45 and they've got 20 of them for 500 bucks first come first serve you're like Yep, oh that I mean it's every day I I could show you our Instagram stuff It's like hey you guys buy in this and we tell them all the time like we're direct with this So this is our prices that we pay like it there again. There is no There's nothing hidden here because yeah, then then you'll ruin any relationship in the future But if they know where you stand and what it's all about Dude, we will we will make music for a lifetime Promise you but when you say it's so funny you say about the boxes and the diaper stuff. So on Facebook marketplace, I bought a 1997 Bowman's Best Jordan atomic refractor that was sitting in a pile of cards in a Chiquita banana Which which that box if you know anything, it was actually the top So the lid has a hole in the middle of it And like there were cards like sifting through the bottom and it was just sprinkled in with 90 Pro-set hockey like yeah, dude, and I'm looking over my left here. Like the other box. I'm gonna buy is priority mailboxes Yeah, like if those those are like free storage things people think you could take from the post office like priority mailers Like I'm looking at just loaded with a bunch of loose stuff in there. It's it's wild Yeah, conversely when somebody walks up to us with a box of color-coded stuff. I'm like this isn't gonna work I can tell you right now. There's no chance that we're playing the same game I hate card shows. I hate them. Like I just The floor is horse give us why so I have a shirt that says I love card shows that I wear sometimes but I hate it because The exact like interactions that you're talking about like these are people that are Primarily in the industry. It's not like you're you're talking to like families who are pushing kids up and you're getting them excited It's the people that know what the business is about and they know what?

Not to do and what not to say and then they can write and you to do it over and over again All right, and you see the same people at the same shows and they're trying to do the same thing over and over again So that's what I'm like, I hate it But you need those people in the room, right? Because they do keep a lot of the stuff kind of moving right? Um, and and I get it a hundred percent but for me, I just I can't stand it and and I bring it up to him all the time like I I'll show things like I'll be like, well, what do you have in your let's let's do a trade. What do you have?

So that card that I want are you gonna offer that to me it at 80% of the price like? Like, you know, it's gonna be a problem when they pull up that that Zion case that only holds one card in it That's those are the guys Like before we even like you guys do big cards and we'll look and if it unless it's weird like a weird big card That's actually what we would consider collectible Like there's probably an end-user out there that would be happy owning it and not just flipping it through repackers We will send them on But the only thing I'll push back on you on a little bit is it's the same for us like there are people that just need to learn where we are what stuff we buy because We don't exaggerate there are people that will walk up to us and they have 10 downtown's and they're like I would give you guys a deal. I'll be at 87% which honestly that's pretty competitive for downtown's Although they're starting to soften which we called from trade night as as that's happening. We'll do that We'll send them and walk them up to a table where we know somebody pays that number that they're looking for and then over time People realize that weird stuff that has some value that's Gary and Jason and they'll come up to us There's also people that just know hey, you know where we're gonna land on our percentages and they'd rather deal with somebody That's not a jerk and doesn't create a 30-minute tug-of-war out of this and just says do we all agree?

This is what they're worth. Okay. Here's my calculator. Here's the percentage and Some people will learn pretty quickly not to keep coming by your booth in the same way that some people Probably don't continue walking in every day with the same stuff to try to move right so It can't be hectic for sure though, but let me ask you guys this so You guys you guys specialize in finding unique stuff, right unique inserts. I'm trying to Stuff. Yeah, right. So what if you had 30 year old guy come up to your table and say hey, I want to do what you do Can you teach me how to what to look for?

like That's that's where I struggle at the card shows because you see it's very territorial at a lot of the shows and there's There's groups of guys that aren't willing to open up and like they're they think that they're gonna well They're gonna be taken from my plate. That's why we have a podcast Joe. I love that Yeah, that was the genesis of I mean we started off just two guys after work Let's talk cards because we both love it, but we morphed into There is not it There's so much gatekeeping that is frustrating in this business and in this hobby on stuff or it doesn't matter. Yeah Understand that's fine people out there trying to make money off of relatively common knowledge and All it takes is somebody pointing you in the right direction to learn it for yourself Does it get a little exhausting sometimes?

I know it does for Jason because he started going live on tik-tok Just while he was doing eBay orders and he gets a hundreds of questions Just DMS about eBay stuff. It's just a little exhausting sometimes. Yes, but at the end of the day we get to pay our bills and live a pretty good life a man because of Cardboard pictures of dudes and occasionally girls. Yeah We don't get to do that without those people So we owe it to them To try to help in any way that we can as long as they're respectful and and kind in the way they approach it I'll still get my panties in a wad when somebody's demanding or a jerk about stuff But if somebody's nice and kind and just wants to help Yeah There is a void of value being offered in the content space with sports carts. There is a void There's a scarcity mindset because some people were raking in hand over fist during kovat their value box is tripled Think about that that that was one thing that was super unique when your $2 cards would snap sell for 15 bucks Right 10 bucks just because it was a rookie, right?

Of nobody, right? We experienced that but one thing that I found was you know When we started doing our content and got a little bit of traction the negativity got so hot that got so popular But like at the end of the day, that's not why we did that. That's not what we want to do We want people to know what's going on. We want you to be informed in this hobby in this ecosystem but if we're not offering value, then what are we just a couple old dudes being grumpy? It shows there's a bajillion of those guys out there.

Dude. And let me tell you this. So I have a great, like, and why I wanted to ask that too, is like, I had a great experience with a guy on eBay. Excuse me. So I, I got one of those, um, pinnacle Ken Griffey jr. Blow in the bubble. Uh, that's right. Uh, came back a PSA. I was stoked, bought the card for $4. That's the one that came back at eight. Right. So I, I listed on eBay and, and I had these notes from when we were recording early and I was asking like, Hey, titles matter. Right. So you want to make it as, as general as possible, draw as many eyes, but you want it to be finite enough.

So it describes the exact card that you're doing. Right. So I know that's kind of crazy, but that's how you have to do it. So I, so I put that in and then when you have the card listed, eBay brings up potential matches, right? So not even looking, I just pressed the first, Oh, that looks like my card, press the first one. So cards listed, I have it, uh, I had it for 115 bucks listed. Okay. And no other eights out there. Uh, the last eight that had sold sold for like $60 though, but there wasn't anything listed at the time.

So I was like, all right. And people have been talking more and more about that card. And I'm like, look, and it's a good card. I didn't know that there was multiple different variations of that card to begin with. So what this gentleman reached out, he said, Hey dude, um, I just want to let you know the card that you have there in the picture and what's graded is not what the title is. And I was like, what are you talking about? And he's like, so you, you must've clicked the first one that said museum collection.

And he's like, if that was a museum collection, eight, um, you have it for like a third of the price that it goes for typically. And I was like, Oh dude, I didn't even know. He's like, yeah. And he's like, walked me, like wrote this long thing, like took the time out of his day. And I will continue to talk about this over and over again, because. Dude, I learned so much and there were even older dudes at the shop that didn't even know that there was a difference, that there was a museum collection.

He's like, when you look on the back, he's like, look it up. There's a museum collection card. He's like, you can look at the background behind Griffey. There's like different books on there too. Like I was like, Oh dude, like, thank you so much. Like, I don't know everything. I get that a hundred percent. I did make a mistake. You weren't like, bro, that's not the card. Make sure you change the title. You're going to screw people up. Like, he was like, Oh, do you know that they're like, and just the way you approach people.

I'm like, dude, that now I can share that story with other people who don't know. Like it was a great experience of being on there and it's what our hobby really should be a hundred percent. It's not a, uh, gotcha moment every time, or like you're doing it wrong. Dude, I was, I brought up a reference to Jason about Mr. Mom, right? Like I always think about North to drop off South to pick up these telling Michael Keaton, how to drop the kids off at school. And there's just people honking at him saying you're doing it wrong.

Yes. You're doing it wrong. Like that's all we get in the hobby for the most part from a lot of people. And it's because that fact that there was such an influx of people buying value box cards and now they're, they're either buying retail and they bring you a binder full of retail color that is just the same card printed in five different colors and you have to tell them that they're all those colors are worth 50 cents each or a dollar. Like, like I'm not telling you you're doing it wrong, but if you're trying to get value, like what are you trying to do with your collection?

That's a lot of the things that we ask about and we take that moment. It can't be a transactional sale because we work in an industry where if you are not developing younger kids to have a love and passion for this, whether you want to collect or you want to sell, if they're not doing it the right way, it's going to phase out like everything else does. Joe, I have actual goosebumps. I have actual goosebumps and I'm fat, so I'm not, well, what you're saying is on point, absolutely on point. And, and for me, Jason will be the first one to tell you.

I have a, a very low tolerance for stupid and I have to actively work to combat that because I will kind of snap. And as somebody who's been around for a long time, like you have, it's, it's really difficult not to get frustrated when you see the same people ask the same questions over and over again about things when it, Google exists, uh, and, uh, it's funny, Gary, we, our, our comeback, whenever someone does that, we always say in the shop, we'll say, man, if there was only a tool that you could use, that is on your phone, that would tell you that they're like, oh, I know Google, like, yeah, I go, yeah, we're going to use the same thing.

We're going to tell you to do like the same thing, but it's the, what I have to what I have to force myself to remember is that until the same person has asked me the same question three times, it might be the same question, but it's a different person every time. And there's a lot to learn in this hobby. If you want to be successful at it, this is not a hobby that you can step into. And in a week, just be like, okay, I know it now I'm ready to make money. It'd be hard. Yeah, this should be hard.

You're in a space with a moving target. Gary and I, before we did this, we both worked on garage doors. We would sell the job and we would do the repair and we were pretty good salesmen. We were making good money with that company, but we didn't want to keep working on a ladder all day. But when you show up to a house and the springs are broken, you measure the springs, you give a quote, you fix it or you don't. Sports cards, collectibles, there are moving targets. You're diversifying. Platforms change.

Metrics change. Algorithms change. There's so much to learn. And just when you think you've got it figured out, you have to adapt. It's going to be like that for a long time. But the difference between the people I think that will make this make it whatever that is, sustainability is probably what I'm talking about there. And the ones that won't is that scarcity mindset. The ones that think there's not enough to go around. It's happening in content right now. You watch this cycle. It's almost like clockwork.

Somebody's very honest and blunt. They get a grassroots community. People pay attention. They start exposing things that aren't happy. And as it moves on and on and on, they get this reaction and it never leads to anything but a negative external. There's no learning. There's no investing in other people. There's no offering value. We're just sitting around complaining. And then you watch their content and they fade out of the hobby just as quickly as they got in. We had people saying eBay was not viable.

And so I just showed, actually, I buy stuff all the time in bulk and I have all this leftover stuff. Let me show you how I bag everything on eBay, how I scan everything on eBay, how I use AI to put 50,000 cheap cards up that you think nobody wants. But here they are selling. You know what I mean? And there's a huge need, I think, for LCSs to take the time to actually educate, to not be jerks, to realize that, you know, we mentioned it on Cut the Nonsense last week. If it consolidates to a point and everything becomes chasing this 90 to 95% comp, the moment that changes, all these people are going to feel it's not just that they lose money, it's that they just lose any faith in this segment being something they can even enjoy anymore because they feel lied to.

And there's a reason for that. They have been lied to. They have been. So two questions for you. First of all, so everyone knows it's not a scam. You need to lube your your springs and your rollers, right? That is that is well, not the rightly. Lightly. Leave the rollers alone. We hate we hate grease and tracks. But yes, really? Well, if you can get into the bearing, you can do that. So what about out in like arid air places like Arizona? We're real dry out here. So that's why, like we, like I keep that can, it's got the little extender piece.

I give it a little spray. It'll spray WD 40 away and use the silicone lubricant and get nylon, get nylon rollers and don't spray the rollers, spray the hinges. Okay. And then don't try to replace the springs at home that you need a right tool or you will die. Like maybe not die, but you might shatter a collarbone or your skull. Yeah, it's going fast. That was my first thing. Yeah. You'll be the same afterwards. You'll be that guy talking to Gary and asking the same question over and over again. For sure.

So that was my first thing. I wanted to clear that up for anyone who had those questions about it. Thanks for qualifying that. Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing, and this is not, uh, let me preface it. We're not creepy or creeps at the shop either, but we, when we started doing Pokemon, we actually learned, we had a grandma and her grandson during a summer, like four years ago, she was like, uh, she goes, I'm going to go to the salon next door. Uh, can he sit here? Like, he'll like look through the cards and all that stuff.

And he started teaching us about where the value was in Pokemon. And this kid was like 11 or 12 years old. And he's like, no, those characters don't evolve the right way. You're not going to want to put your money, dude. And I'm telling you, if you don't have, and the kids, any young kids that watch this show too, they'll tell you like growth mindset. If you don't have a growth mindset that you're trying to constantly evolve and learn and grow, dude, you stay stagnant, you die. It's like, you think, you think about being at a hospital and when you're alive, that heart monitors going up and down.

Right. But when you flatline and stay stagnant, you're dead. So like, if you're not constantly trying to evolve and move, like, dude, your business will die. And, and we've had to do that with Pokemon this past week, gal came in with her dad. The other thing too, real quick, another sidebar to the sidebar is do not assume or judge people. You don't know what people have financially. That is a huge thing that people do in our business. You have no idea. Um, we have a guy who comes in every week at our shop and spends five to seven grand a week.

And he wears the same basketball shorts every time he's in same outfit, business owner, he, you would think like it was, you would think, and it's crazy because you want to assume, um, don't do it. Don't do it. You'd have no idea. So this guy and this gal come in, he comes in with his daughter and he's like, she loves one piece. She wants to get into one piece and do all this stuff. We're like, yeah, we have some of the boxes where we're trying to learn it. Right. We're trying to understand what goes on because in Phoenix, we also have a huge TCG, like the people that actually play the game.

Like we have ranked players that come into our shop, which then creates these, right? Like they're game players. So there, there, there's two groups. There's the collector and the player and the players. You talk about a level of arrogance compared to like the collector. Like you'll have a grown man, uh, standing, looking at cards for his deck and a little girl be like, oh, I love that character. And he'll be like, yeah, but the power that they possess won't get them through the first round of the game.

So it doesn't really matter anyways. She loves it. Let her, let her play the game. Yeah. But with one piece, this gal, she was like, dude, it's going to overtake Pokemon. Like, and I'm like, and then Chris who works at the shop, he's learned all the stuff about, he's like, no way. And I don't want it to, I don't want to learn anymore. No way. No way. And she's like, I don't want it to, but what are the cases cost right now? Dude, that you're right there. And so you're looking at the stuff and she's telling us all about it.

She's like, think about it. She goes, how many people really collected formula one stuff? I was like, not, not a ton. She goes, when did it really start to spike? I was like, well, like COVID time. She goes, yeah. She goes, that was also the start of the second season on Netflix of the formula one stuff. She goes, one piece, just sign their deal for live action. They have season one and now they've guaranteed season two. She's like, that's going to be an over 500 million homes. And it's an anime that's been going on for 28 plus years.

You take a note, Jason, we need to buy some one piece. I'm not, I I'm a nerd, but I'm not nerdy enough to do this. Dude. And I will go. You're an eBay guy. Go and look at one piece, manga, manga cards, right? It is insane. And, and they're, they're slowly overtake. They overtook magic and Yu-Gi-Oh in grading. Uh, they're number two. I mean, they are a distant number two, but, but they're getting there. And it's crazy. If you don't, if you don't listen, like these kids know, they know you could just brush someone off.

And, and guess what? They didn't, they didn't look like they were high rolling $750 and one piece cards later, like, and they're giving us this education about all this kind of stuff. Like, did you don't know who's coming in? You don't know if it's someone who wants to buy your business and they want to see how you interact. Like if you don't have that growth mindset and you don't try to learn and grab knowledge, dude, this will never evolve. Like you always have to be ready for the next big thing.

Yep. That was a lesson for Gary and I, this year, we were listening less. We were just following our routine. We bought up for football going into August because the first six weeks of football always pop off. We'll buy a little more of the super liquid ultra modern, like the 50 to $150, the cheap RPAs, the case hits, just knowing that for that first six to eight weeks, typically we can rake that stuff will fly off the shelf. And it didn't happen this year. And what did we not expect? Baseball stayed hot.

Now there were people that were paying attention and listening. It wasn't Gary and I, cause we're just, it's a grind in our routine. Yeah. We get back from Fort Wayne on Saturday night. We got whatnot on Sunday. Here we are a Monday recording. Like it's we're seven days a week right now, just so we get afford this opportunity, but we missed out on that. And it hit us in our showcases. It hit us on our whatnot stream. And the moment we began listening a little closer, so that's great encouragement.

Like if you're in a business right now, what Joe's saying is if some stuff that you're doing is not working, when's the last time you ask somebody what they're When's the last time you asked somebody to look at your showcase? I do that with Gary. Sometimes if I've had a couple slower shows, I'll look at it and say, Hey, does this foot, what do you think? Show me which ones you wouldn't have bought. What's in the showcase that you wouldn't have messed with. But if you're not, if you don't have that level of curiosity and let other people that know more than you say something, you're in trouble because it changes quick around here and changes real quick.

You don't know what you don't know. Like, and Gary, with you coaching too, like, you know, all the time, if a guy comes back to a huddle and he didn't run the playwright, he's like, well, I didn't hear it in the huddle. Then why didn't you grab him? If you don't know, you don't. No, like, no one's going to be mad. Yeah, like, come on, guys. All you have to do is look at the number on this board right here. Let's just look at that. Come on. So like a year and a half ago, what percentage of the wax in your shop would you ballpark was non-sport?

And then how does that compare to now? Has that changed much or. Full cards HQ, or are you like more sports? I just I've just thrown out an example. So when you say non-sports, are you do you lump TCG into that? Yes. Yep. Yep. Yep. OK, so we have we have like two full showcases of singles and then like boxes of hollows and like stuff like that. But like we have we do not have an inventory in the back. Like when we buy, it goes right out. Like we can't keep it stocked. Like two full showcase. Like it is constantly and it is price to sell.

Our guy, Chris, he'll go out to other shops to buy to get in. Like if you can get good deals here and there. And then we have like two showcases of wax for that. Realistically, if I took TCG out of it, like Star Wars, all those other things like. We're honestly not getting enough. Like you need more Dune Chrome. We didn't we didn't get offered. We know somebody that'll sell you. Oh, God, we just interviewed Keith. He'll hook you up, bro. I saw that. Yeah. No, that's I mean, you know what? I was trying to give it away on Black Friday.

Nobody would take it. We OK, we did get off for that. But with the biggest signers. OK, so the the two biggest people in Dune are not signers in the product. Like that's where it was like. But, you know, that that's that's really hard. I mean, Star Wars. I mean, Dune is it's starting its kind of thing. But like, did you want like the Star Wars stuff, really? Even wrestling, they just didn't print it off there. Well, that there weren't enough that anthology product, I think, is a really good long term sealed hold, even though our buddies hit the product chase.

They had to do twins. Yeah. Twins and friends. They hit the dual Hogan, Ric Flair, one of one auto. That's like immediately. Yeah. Which usually when I see like a product hit in the first week, I'm like, that sucks for everybody else. But when somebody, you know, you're like, that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And this is an old one up, but it goes back to your thing that you were talking about earlier about the IPs. Like when you're buying stuff so much like you, you kind of have seasons that you put it out.

It's funny. This past Saturday, they just found a Hogan and Macho Man. It was like back to like WrestleMania five, but he signed it. Terry Bollea, Hulk Hogan, like five time champion at the thing. And I'm like, why? Like, you just have so much stuff. It's all sitting back there. Like, yeah, because you're trying to accumulate things, but not like you have one like you have just those one offs. And the other thing back to sorry to to claw back to the IP stuff is fine. It's really interesting is. Hollywood memorabilia and anyone who's not a baseball player signed on a baseball seems to sell crazy like UFC fighters on baseballs sell ridiculous.

Wow. And yes, if you can come across some guys who are not licensed to fight in the United States and they come over to watch shows, if you get those autographs, that's crazy. Like the one guy, they call him, I think the pirate Shara Bullitt, the guy who has one like I that's kind of cloudy. He's a UFC fighter. He he's not sanctioned to fight in the United States, but he signs in the United States and all of his fights are overseas. So people love that kind of stuff. That's just weird. Yeah, just just a weird one off.

Learn something new every day. All right. So I want to take a stab at some, you know, we do the tinfoil hat segment from time to time, but I wonder what are some LCS predictions for 2026? I'll throw one out. I don't know if Gary's even thought about this. I don't know if you have one, but. I will start out, it's two part. I think in 2026, we're going to see a consolidation of fanatics direct accounts, they've already communicated some intent to kind of throttle that a little bit in the state of Ohio.

I think there'll be more accounts removed and coupling that. My hot take for 2026 is I think fanatics is going to be investing in some of the larger shops and going with more of a multi site model to expand them out to 10. Let's say that they cut back on five or six, then they'll kind of take over those regions. So it's a little more franchisee approach or repeatable. So that's my hot take. What's your hot take for 2026? The LCS, anything you think is coming up the pike? Well, as a fanatic, what do you think of what I said?

I, I think you're spot on it. It's kind of it kind of upsets me because I get the like card vaults and all that kind of stuff, but those are really like they're museums. That's what they are. Like they have high end stuff and and I get it. But there's no like gritty, grimy digging through boxes. I'm trying to complete my set. Or where's your five for a dollar section? Or where do you even have boxes to buy? Like I need storage boxes. Like I don't know what to do with that. So that I get it. I get it 100% because those places are gold mines.

If they're put in the right location, like having it outside of Wrigley field, having it, you know, where the Mavericks player or where the Red Sox, like I get it. But sitting on 59th and Thunderbird, like that's that a card vault doesn't work there. It just doesn't work in that community. Um, but, but I can see that happening. So I agree with your take a hundred percent. Um, I think a lot of that you're going to start seeing, um, you're going to see more of a flooding of retail wax and the availability of retail wax and hobby stuff is going to, uh, definitely be more direct to consumer or direct being fun.

Like the jumbo breakers, like that kind of stuff where they can, where they can get rid of the, the jumbos, the hobbies, but they can get rid of the high volume and not have to like have it sit on the shelf. Um, I know that at our shop, we signed an agreement for blasters and that kind of stuff for 2026 product. Like we had to say what we would buy, you know, and we have to agree to their price mapping. So you're going to see that, um, do you guys have a, uh, a Dick's house of sports near you down the road from me?

Yep. If you walked in there, I had, I, I mean, it's, I saw NT and I was like, Oh, yeah, yep. They have it all, man. They, they have it all. And, uh, pick up a sandwich and a $2,000 box of cards. You know, we, do you guys have shields near you at all? Don't have shields. Okay. Another big sports. Gary thought you were going to say sheets and he got real excited. Okay. Like on your bed or no, like sheets, you have it. You got to come back to Ohio, but Pennsylvania brought it over. She's gas station.

The best. I don't, it's a, you customize your food in here and they make it fresh for you. And it's all the combinations. It's the best QT. We have a QT. How dare you? I'm telling you, that's a bold statement. QT is like Bucky's junior, but she does that. She does that dive bar with a nice menu. Like there might be a steak in here, but this is the only way you're going to sell me. Is there, is there the ability in the bathroom for me to purchase cologne? No, I have one of these other vending machines on the wall.

If you know, I'm not a deep trap. I haven't seen that since the nineties, bud. Yeah. Yeah. I need some, I need that in there. So, but dude, you're going to see, I think you're going to see more things. Like dude, the, uh, game stops. Like they have a good wax selection too. Like if you're just looking to, to throw some money in and I mean, my son and I, we opened up an absolute calendar, hit a kaboom kaboom. I've said for a year, uh, I give it 18 months before game stop says game stop brought to you by fanatics on their sides.

Uh, I mean, it makes sense. Cause geographically they're already established there at the very least they can benefit off of the brick and mortar buying, but see, here's the best that they're sourcing repacks out of that. That that's not a bad play for them. And it's a way to funnel the, so what we get as a brick and mortar is we get. Like forced fed all of the apparel stuff. Yes. And we just don't like sleeves and stands and like, that's where you're, that's your, there's your franchise fee, bud.

I, yeah, that's what you guys were saying. Like, that's, that really is, it is the apparel. Like they do give you a choice. Like we just, we really don't, there's no one in the history of the time that I've worked there that has come into Phoenix sports cards and said, Hey, I'm looking for a shirt. Do they really give you a choice though? Or do they say, Hey, you don't have to buy this, but next year, your tops Chrome allocation might just be a little lower. Well, let's not put Joe, let's not put Joe as a fanatics dealer.

What I can tell you is they've been fantastic with us. Like they, they've been anything, anything better. Here's what I would, here's what I would say though, to the, the fanatics and the GameStops and the Dick's a house of sports and all that. Here's what those places can't do. And this is something that I think a lot of people who are just collectors in the hobby don't understand. Most of these people, and we have a guy in our comments with Keith's interview. I, I felt a little bad cause I dunked really hard on him enough that he deleted the comments.

But people think that hobby shops are just raking on wax. They think that you would just have 200% margins that you paid a hundred dollars for those tops Chrome boxes that you're selling for $600. Like they, all these places that fanatics is funneling wax to, they're never going to be able to replicate the experience of a good single shop. They're never going to be able to replicate the experience of having people who know cards and know sports and know the hobby behind the counter to help them.

They're not going to be able to replicate that experience. If I roll into a GameStop and ask the. 19 year old behind the counter who, you know, probably knows Pokemon pretty well, whether I should grade a specific sports card. He's got no idea what I'm talking about. Um, shops make their money on singles. They don't make their money on wax. Yes. Is there some margin there? Of course. Well, I wouldn't say that as that's a pretty generalized statement, but that's not, I don't think it's a wrong generalized statement there.

If you can, I would say there's a product by product basis, like on that, because there, there is, there are some, there are some big boys out there that you can turn real quick. Like, uh, panini, for instance, I think panini black basketball, it was the last that they made came out at 4,400 direct cost. And those cases were selling for 12 to 13. Like those are, those are definitely one-offs, but like when you're talking about trying COVID numbers, right. And when you're getting offered a case of archives and archives, baseball is not flying off of your shelves.

Like you, that's not a thing that you could one X or two exit. Yeah. And they've also increased the price too. Like when I was looking at the cost of, um, a, a blaster for tops Chrome basketball, and it was like, Cost 34, like 95 for the shop, like 32 or 34. And that was the cost of the shop. Like, I'm like, Yo, like that's, that's intense, man. That, that goes up real quick because you're used to seeing it at 16 for a cost. Um, and so, yeah, they took their, they took their little piece out of there and they're eating, but they're also, I think they're at a point where they're going to have to figure out with having all of these licenses, if there's not just a blank check, like how do you kind of manage the amount of product and, and how do you manage it, releasing it, where you can actually digest it?

Because when you're throwing like 14 skews of December is atrocious for you guys this year, October was crazy. And we're like, we're like looking like, I hope that comes in. But think about when we talked about the buyback stuff, because you are literally taking in a, essentially a gift card that you can then use or activate for them to take it off your shelf. Like when I had to go to another shop because we had 3,500 in buyback and we were running out of wax before our shipment would come in, just so we had something for black Friday.

I wasn't, I was using what they paid. So they paid a $20 buyback card. The other shop wasn't giving me a deal on the wax. Like I had to buy it at shelf price. Like, you know, just to kind of keep everything moving. So you have stuff because that's the one thing I'll tell you. The shows, if you, you have to have product, like if you're setting up, you have to have stuff, that's how you're successful. If someone comes into your shop and there's not a box on a wall, they'll turn around, especially in a big city.

And they'll go down the street to someone else. Yeah. I mean, we've got a, we've got a shop here locally. Um, fun little shop, uh, is not direct with anyone buys the wax that he has. He has enough wax on the wall for people to see stuff on the wall, but he uses dealer net and he's a single shop and he does really, really well because it's a great open the biggest space. Nope. Doesn't spend a crap ton of money on marketing, like just lean and efficient. Yeah, but, but I think no trade trade nights and parking lots doesn't have a problem.

Well, he's got a little space there, but it's not a lot of that going on, but I see what you did there. You're bringing up like this sentiment of focusing on people actually learning the space and becoming familiar with it. And I think the best analogy I can give to what seems to be happening with LCS is in the early nineties. there were cool coffee shops on every corner. And then somebody said, have you had Starbucks? And everybody's like, Oh my gosh, that's good coffee. And it's quick. And their customer service at the time was known for being excellent. And it was just a different thing. And then everybody was pumped because Starbucks was in town. And little by little by little, more and more Starbucks came.

And little by little by little, all those other ones went under and the space became different. Now Starbucks, for the most part, are much smaller. It's more of a drive-through. It's more of a kiosk. I think efficiency wise from the top down for fanatics, it may make more sense for that. I mean, Card Vault is the sports card version of that kiosk at the airport that has the really nice headphones. Like, Oh dang, Beats by Dre. Oh, sweet. Those are nice. You know what I mean? But the whole point is it's transactional. It's transactional. It's transactional. And I think the shops that survive when there's a big change going on, and I think big three being under one umbrella is part of that. You're going to have to have space for people to learn, for you to give them opportunity to spend time with other collectors.

They're going to have to have enough space for that to happen. And if we're just shrinking down size and pushing wax at everybody, I'm concerned about the long-term viability of that. And I think people are going to look back in five years and say, Wow, I can get all these products that I couldn't get on release day, but I couldn't name you 20 people in my small town that are still collecting. Yeah. And here's the parenting side of it too with it. The kids are seeing all the content and so sensationalized. When they see all these huge hits and whatnot, they're dragging their parents in. The parents are half-hearted into it and they're just opening their checkbook and then they're getting walloped over the head with all of this stuff. And they're because you didn't take the two steps to educate them. And then the moment you try to talk to a kid that's with their parents and tell them, Hey, what are you looking for? I don't know. I just want this player. This is that. You have to let them know that box, there's the potential to get it, but there's the potential to get nothing in that box too. And that's okay. But then you have these players that you can collect also. And where we are in society, dude, there are so many children that run their household. It is wild. It is wild. I don't know, but it starts at home.

Hey, I like that. I like that. All right, Joe, I can't say thank you enough for hanging out with us, spending some time giving us honest takes on what you're experiencing. I mentioned the podcast, but here before we wrap up today, do you mind telling people a few places where they can check out your content or follow the work you're doing down in Phoenix? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm at Phoenix Sports Cards Tuesday through Friday. We're at 59th and Thunderbird or at PHX Sports Cards on Instagram. And then Wednesdays, I'm on Cut the Nonsense on the Sports Card Nonsense Network.

So check us out. Dude, you guys have to come out too for spring training. And there's a big show. I know you guys are show guys. I don't know how it would travel, but our Arizona State show, which is put on by a group called Collectibles on College, they're doing the show inside of the Diamondbacks stadium for spring. So on the concourse, they're going to have all the tables set up and then they'll have a trade night in one of the lounges and that kind of stuff. So I don't know what that would look like, but dude, I'll definitely get you guys in touch because I think it's going to be a cool environment to be in there. And then you can see what the IPs are all about too, man. Yeah. Yeah. Meet these graffers. Maybe get an interview with one. That'd be sweet. That'd be sweet. Appreciate you, Joe. Thanks so much for hanging out. Absolutely. Thank you guys. So once again, big thank you to Joe. Be sure to follow him everywhere that he was mentioning that, whether it's at the shop or Cut the Nonsense on the Sports Cards Nonsense Network. We've got a little bit coming up for you. Holidays will be a little bit different. Schedule might look a little different. So be paying attention to some of that.

Also, whatnot, every single Sunday evening, 430 Eastern PM. And then I don't know if you notice it lately, but Gary and I are popping up with our individual shows as well. We've been having fun as we pick up stuff at shows that maybe isn't in the joint business, being able to run some of that. So keep an eye on those bookmark, those shows coming up. And then this weekend, if you're listening right when this podcast drops, we'll be in Xenia, Ohio, one of our favorite Central Ohio shows, Central Ohio ish. And then also the following week we'll be in Cincinnati at E-Skate Show at the E-Skate Mall. January is slam packed. We have Card Fest. We have the, what's the one Greeny's doing called? The Ohio State Sports Card Show, Xenia, E-Skate.

So be sure to follow that. Once again, from the bottom of our hearts, we're so appreciative of those of you that take a minute to follow, like, subscribe, engage with the content, shoot us a message, walk up to us at a show. It is getting weird for us that there are that many of you that listen and it means a lot that you do. So thank you for that. This has been the Ball Card Show, the sports podcast for the sports collector. Bye now. Peace.