Relationships Over Everything - Ryan Durkee Season 6 Ep 16

About this episode

Follow:  https://linktr.ee/theballcardshowRyan Durkee of Sick Sports Cards Shares his journey with Gary and Jason in a heartfelt, honest episode of The Ballcard Show. Launching a business, growing a community, greiving, living out sobriety, and making a difference with cards....all this and more on this episode. The Ballcard Show: Jason Otero & Gary LeMasterRyan Durkee : Sick Sports Cards On FB Business Inquiries: ballcardshow@gmail.com

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Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to the Ball Card Show, The Sports Podcast. For The Sports Collector. I'm Jason Otero. And I'm Gary LeMaster. And one of us is far more pale than the other. After Gary goes back to back, almost a dynasty, back to back cruises, gone for two weeks, you do look nice, bud. You got a nice, you know, you've been kissed by the sun. Little raccoon action, because I had sunglasses on at all times. Were you wearing intimidators? The same glasses I always wear, you know. Do you have them nearby?

No, I don't have them nearby. I'm telling you guys, he's channeling Earnhardt. He's channeling Earnhardt with that vibe. Oh man, no, I've been wearing those sunglasses for years. Yeah, no, vacation was awesome. Much needed. You yelled at me a couple times because I did a little bit of work, but I don't know how not to. I unplugged way more than I thought I would be able to. Yeah. By the end of the second week, though, I was bugging you like, okay, that's 10 days. Yeah, but we had some really cool stuff happen.

So it was worth it. But I did get, I think I got 65 pages written as far as my book goes. If you guys remember, I was talking about that a little while ago. So yeah, all in all, very good, very relaxing. I am glad to be back. The last day of vacation is always hell. Travel, it's just getting. And Miami, can I just say this? If you're listening and you live in Miami, why? Why? Why? It may be the worst place ever. Tell us you haven't heard Welcome to Miami by Will Smith without telling us. Oh my gosh.

Well, here was my Welcome to Miami. Traffic, awful. The cruise port, awful. The airport, worse. The food. The food is good. We went to a Cuban restaurant the second night we were there, and I was mad. My friend Josh Kuznick, he lives down there, and I had to find this Cuban restaurant on my own without being told about it. And then the minute that I said something to him, he was like, oh yeah, I could've told you about that place. It was fantastic, and it was cheap, and you know it's good. No, here's how you know it's legitimately the right place and the good stuff.

There were 130 people on the patio waiting to get in. No way. 90% of them were Cuban. So that's where you were going and I didn't want you to- You know that it's the right place. It's good, good, good food. And the people were so fun, and Krista got Cuban coffee at the end, and the top of her head almost flew off. Yeah, she didn't sleep for two days. No. I'll tell you this, I've not had Cuban coffee, but I've had a lot of Puerto Rican coffee, and it always amazed me. So my grandpa would have like this much coffee, and then it was cream, right?

And you're like, oh, okay, this is going to be watered down. No, no, no. Up north, we make tea, we make sun tea with our coffee. You head down there, it is bold. It is going to- I saw Krista order it, and I just kind of looked at her sideways, didn't say much, but it reminded me of the, did you ever see the Ralphie Mae bit about drinking Cuban coffee? No. He did a- Is this going to be even further down the track? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He did a whole bit about, because he asked for Cuban coffee, and they brought him out that little tiny cup, and he was like, oh, no.

He had never had Cuban coffee. He was like, I need a real cup, like a full cup of coffee, and they just went, okay. And they brought him out a 12 ounce coffee. And he was like, I could see the future. I didn't sleep for a week. Yeah. Two grams of caffeine. Yeah. It was legit. So anyhow, vacation recap. That was it. It was fun. I'm glad to be back. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the episodes while I was gone. Jason did a couple of really good interviews, and we're going to be talking about something here that has popped off since our episode.

If you haven't gone back and watched the episode where we interviewed Big John Eisner from Big John's Cards, this would be a good time, after you watch this episode, to go back and check that one out, because it's very apropos. It was really interesting. Part of the interview I wanted to discuss with him, we've been talking about doing something for a minute, but once the dust settled over this whole FTC letter from a congressman where it does mean something, it doesn't mean something, we thought it'd be cool to just have a perspective of an attorney that understands the card space to just kind of say, hey, here's what might be happening.

Here's what can follow a letter like that. One of the things he was saying, almost in time, was a lot of people forget that SGC was included in that letter, so whenever, if anybody is looking into this, which is an if, there's a lot of factors involved, they're going to have to look at what was done to SGC and compare that with Beckett. It's interesting, antitrust lawsuit. Now again, a reminder, anybody can sue anybody. Just another reminder, we are not legal experts. We have no advice. We're just reporting what we're hearing here, but allegedly, antitrust lawsuit going after the very fact that there's a monopolization going on, and I think the bigger conversation here is, if this gains any traction at all, how many seconds before attorneys that know how to make money are building out the class action against fanatics?

Yep. It's definitely, and we've been talking about this for six years, there's no such thing as a truly healthy market without competition. There just isn't. One of our listeners and one of our moderators in the Discord, Jeff, sent me a book, and Jeff, I'm not going to lie, I did not get the whole book read while I was on vacation because I was writing too much, but I did read the intro to it. It's about the history of baseball cards and collecting. I learned a couple of things very early on that were very, very, very in line with what's going on in our hobby right now.

Back in the 1860s, when they first started putting trading cards into packs of cigarettes, the Duke Cigarette Company was the ones who kind of started that, and they realized very quickly that the advertising cost of putting cards into packs of cigarettes was destroying their profit margin. It cost them way more to do that than to make cigarettes. They ended up deciding the only way we could not put those in is to buy all of our competition so we don't have to fight against each other anymore. They created the American Tobacco Coalition, something, but they basically bought up everything and they ended up getting dismantled because they were trying to get rid of competitive trade practices.

All that was going through my mind as I'm reading that was, boy, that sounds awfully familiar if you replace cigarettes with grading and you replace card brands with fanatics. It's not a crazy tinfoil scenario we're looking at. No. The things that we said were going to happen have been happening. Now, listen, Gary and I have had a lot of takes over the years that were way off, but when it comes to what we see happening in the industry with the large brands, the acquisitions, buyouts, lawsuits, this stuff is unfolding, and the reason we think it's going to happen is because it's happened over and over and over and over and over in the court of law.

It's history repeating itself. Now, how that plays out, I don't know, but all this to say, if there's momentum that lays some baseline in this industry for a monopoly, I'll be very interested to see if Panini has enough money because that's the last second Hail Mary, right? Hail Mary. Well, they've already lost the licenses. They're gone. Yes, but they could go after them for the monopoly. Yeah, they could do that, and then it would force the PAs and the leagues to at least offer licensing to other people.

Well, more than anything, I think it would put a magnifying glass on fanatics, right? Sure. Sure. I mean, but again- That's a lot of things that would have to happen for- It is, but it's a really important thing to remember here, and this is where a lot of Panini's argument falls apart, not legally, but ethically and morally. Panini is arguing that fanatics should not be allowed to do what Panini did for 15 years. They're like, we did it, and it was fine, but now that you're doing it, wah, wah. Yes, and no.

They didn't have all the licensing, did they? They did not have MLB. Yeah. I think that, again, I think that- Fanatics doesn't have hockey. Right. Yeah. Well, yeah. Upper deck has said that they're not selling. Yeah. Cold, dead hands here. Yes, exactly. They're like, nah, bro, we good. So it's just be interesting to see that. Now, every lawsuit's not the most exciting thing in the world, but there is a pattern here of discussion, and it seems to be gaining a little bit of momentum and steam, and also wherever there's a ton of money flooding a market, there are going to be lawsuits and class actions and money grabs from attorneys and people that just go, you know, ambulance chasing, right?

Essentially for that. So I think it's something to keep an eye on for sure. But let's talk for a second about the Topps Chrome release. So first off, I'm going to say it. Awesome. I love that Topps Chrome football is back. I love that licensed Topps Chrome football is back. It looks good. It's sharp. I opened a blaster, you know? Hit nothing. No, I got $60 at New York Cards. Okay, well, there you go. Very good. But I cannot believe what is happening to LCS owners' direct account allocation for this product.

So if I understand it correctly, and this is not one source. This is a ton of LCS owners, okay? When you do a podcast about sports cards, there's only so many things you can play in the shop that are podcasts. We're one of them. So we're in a few LCSs around the country. And they're saying that there was an expectation for the LCS to promote the ever-living crap out of this Topps Chrome release, right? And a belief that this is similar to other Topps Chrome licensed products where I won't get everything.

I'm not going to get all the breaker, delight, you know, all these different formats designed for breaking. But should get some hobby. Should get some jumbo. And should get a lot of retail because that's what we've been told. We'll get all the retail we want. Hobbies where they're starting to check everybody's grades and scorecards, right? Multiple LCS owners. Like Rob from Burbank got one box, one case of jumbo, one. Now how in the world does that happen in one of the largest brick and mortars moving more singles than anybody else?

Why would that be, Gary? Oh, I can tell you why. Why? Two main reasons. What's the main one? One, the largest amount of the print run was allocated to breakers. The end. And Rob is not big on breaking. The second part of it is the rest of the print run, only a small portion was put out until Fanatic could see what the market was going to respond to. And the rebuys have been right around a grand on hobby boxes. Even north of that. Yeah. Yeah. And they had shop owners that knew they didn't have enough product that knew this as a product where unlike Gilded, unlike some of these Bowman products.

If I have it, it's going to sell. Unlike all these other expensive ones, I have to take them. They're reaching out. The rep's reaching out. I can't not. Finally, Top Scrum, one where I'm going to have margin because there's demand. This hasn't happened in a minute, right? With a Fanatic's product. And then they go and give the thinnest possible direct allocations and the day of release. Now, these shop owners have had to purchase all kinds of crap. They're hanging up these countdown clocks at Top Centum.

There's all your marketing, the crap out of this, and we're not going to give you enough for your local market because it's this simple. I want my money back as fast as possible. Most businesses would like that. And they have figured out Fanatic's will always make more money funneling this stuff to breakers to move it at the highest possible price. Because guess what? Their margins are what does it cost? How much more than it's worth can I get out of it? Yeah. And that point right there, and this is not on our sheet.

This is a side tangent, but it's related to that point. I heard a few people talking about how something needs to be done about what's happening with the secondary market on sealed wax. And not the long-term secondary market. Not the, I bought a box of this and I'm holding it for 10 years and see what happens. It's the, I bought this and I got it, and today I'm going to sell it for four times what I paid for it. One of the things that I've seen a few shops offering to do, even with retail, which is wild, but I've seen shops, even Mike Geo, they're breaking company.

They were like, we will beat everybody's prices, but it has to be ripped. We're not sending you sealed boxes. Shops are, hey, it's this price if you let us take the wrap off or rip it in the shop. And it's this price if you want to walk out with it with the seal on it. There was talk at the industry convention, at the TOPS convention here a couple of three weeks ago, that TOPS was like, we want to do something about the secondary market. Let me explain something to y'all. If you think TOPS wants the secondary market to slow down, you are outside of your mind.

They will give- With a little less demand. A little less demand. They will give lip service to it, but that problem could be solved in five minutes in a meeting. It is not a difficult problem to solve. You go from giving 65% to 70% of your- your print runs to breakers to giving 10% of your print run to breakers. You start allocating LCSs properly to meet the demand for their local communities. And then you do the one thing that they have done, which is ramp up the retail SKUs. Like those three things will bring the secondary market down by 30%, maybe 35%.

They don't want that because they make their money on the second order from these shops. That's where they make their money. And so how could you feel any other way than disrespected if you're a shop owner and you don't get enough because they make it sound like there's scarcity and by noon, the day of release, oh yeah, we got a bunch more. Would you like to pay three times as much as it cost last week? Yeah. Yeah. And that's where Fanatix is ramping up. You want to see the backend of every card you sell?

Get the hell out of here. Like at some point, and so here's the reality. It is still going to be more profitable for them not to worry about the upset shop owner. But I'm telling you, I'm telling you, at some point, at some point, the volume of consumers cannot keep up with this. Well, they can't. The volume of consumers can't, but they'll just then funnel more product to breakers. Like that's the reality. But what I'm saying is we're propping and we're propping and we're propping, you know? I remember building the Fort out in the woods, right?

And you always got one limb too many, right? And it's like, well, that didn't work out. Exactly. Like at some point, those things are happening. Now, here's what I'm not saying. I'm not saying the product sucks. I'm not saying the marketing is bad. I'm not saying I don't love that Topps Chrome Football is here. What I'm saying is, stop being deceitful in the communication with the people that have carried this industry for the last 25 years. Yeah, and understand that, and again, Fanatics is all, they're a publicly traded company.

So they will always focus on where the most profit margin is in the short term. And that's the hard part about it. Companies used to think long-term and this hobby will always be more successful long-term when the average participant in it can afford to rip some product. Here's my hot take with what we're seeing. Tinfoil Hat, the aggression in which they're going after short-term games is positioning for a whale to come in and buy Fanatics. That's possible. I think it's a less than five-year goal.

It's so aggressive that they're building up the value. If you have all the sudden, like how do those reports look when 60% of your product was on the second wave pricing? How do you report? Oh, they look great. I think there's a lot of this that is positioning this thing for a sale. And what I mean by that is it's not like they're trying to get out. They're just getting set up. Could you imagine this in any other industry? Could you imagine this if you were making candy bars and you called the local grocery store and said, hey, do you need a few cases of our candy bars?

Yeah, sure, we'll take a few cases. And then you called them three days later and said, did those sell? Yeah, would you like more at three times what we are charging the first time? They would laugh at you. Why? Because they'll go buy candy bars somewhere else. Hence, people throwing around words like monopoly. Yeah, yeah. That's what, and now here's what, the people that fight this, one, they're connected to breaking, right? The funny thing is, Gio actually was taking a bunch of hate from breakers because they thought he was bringing down their potential to be egregious with their pricing.

Yeah. And he was like, now listen, this is coming from the guy who said the market responded on what Tops Chrome Basketball is supposed to be. That is a $1,200 box. Clearly, eBay was not the second wave pricing, but just immediately as Tops Chrome Basketball was hitting eBay, 1,200, 1,200, 1,500. He's like, so we can introduce this at a $400 price point, but if people are gonna be spending $1,200 on eBay, the value is much higher. So even he looks like when we got the football, he was even like, all right, timeout.

Timeout, this is getting silly. The problem is people are only paying $1,200 because it's the only option that they have because the manufacturer artificially held back product to drive that price up. If there was, if every LCS, I shouldn't say every because there's always gonna be greedy people, but I tell you right now, I know Keith Newhart pretty well. And if Keith Newhart got 10 cases of Tops Hobby, he's gonna sell them at MSRP or pretty daggone close. But when he knows that he's getting one case and the next order is gonna be triple, he doesn't have an option but to follow what the market does.

There's no option. Like I've seen him sell plenty of products at or under MSRP, but when there's a hot product and the company you buy it from is forcing your hand, don't get mad at the LCS. They're having their arm twisted up behind their back to where their shoulder's almost out of socket. All right, put your tinfoil hat back on, right on the tail end of that, beep, boop, beep, tinfoil hat. You know what would be really beneficial for fanatics? If your goal is to prop up the second, the rebuy, the secondary market of this product, what if you had 20% of your breakers that know how to break but they're not quite the product, the hobby darling that you want them to be?

What if we just overnight decide you no longer have product even though we know you have a strong liquid position and now you get to duke it out on eBay, Dave and Adams, Blowout, everywhere else to run that shit up? I don't know how tinfoil that is. I mean, it was like overnight, everybody's like, what happened? Yeah, I don't know how tinfoil that is. And what really cracks me up is we have some people, we hear, everybody hears about these meetings that they do with the LCS owners on a regular basis, fanatics.

One of the most recent things that fanatics has asked of LCS owners is to, if anyone says I'm thinking about opening a shop, please discourage them. Yeah. Who's doing that? Right? Who at the time where they have more volatile growth, they're raking in hand over fist, would say we want less people to consider investing in a shop. Is there not enough product to go around? I don't think that's the case. Well, there's not enough product to go around when you funnel more than half of your print run to a very specific channel.

And I think that's the kicker. And what sucks about it is the product that we're talking about, we started this conversation about Tops Chrome Football. It's a product that I was so excited about. I don't know that I'll rip any of it. Like I'm not paying 80 or 100 bucks for a blaster. I'm not paying 200 bucks for a mega box. I'm just not. And the singles are also in crazyville. Like there is stuff happening on the single side with this stuff that you were talking about, like the breakers doing this.

That's not tinfoil hatty to me because we're watching it in real time on the single side of things. Now, I'm not gonna use the term case hit because they aren't case hits. This is something that you guys, little tip, unlike Panini, Tops publishes pack odds. They don't have case hits. They have SPs and SSPs. And the depth of how short printed it is will be very clear with the pack odds. But like these Kaijus that appear to be falling roughly one every five to six cases in their hobby only, the buys that are showing up are other breakers buying them.

Well, if I pay 15 grand for this, that's just a marketing expense because now we can tell people, well, you're hitting $15,000 cards in this product. And we're gonna make way more than 15 grand with that marketing expense. Backyard Breaks is not even hiding behind it. They're like- We haven't even brought them up in a minute. They're publishing the list and they're overpaying for stuff on purpose. Like they hit one for somebody, they tried to buy it from him for 12 grand in stream and he wouldn't sell it.

So out of spite, they went and spent 13 and change on one. Cool. Yeah, it's like, so again, back to a point we've driven home a lot of times, don't get tied into the hype of things. If you open this product, you hit something big, please listen to me, just sell it. If you really love it, buy it back in three months. If it's a product hit, an actual product hit, maybe sit on that. Yeah, different ball game. But like, if you just hit an SSP, you hit a Kaiju, you hit one of the tech mobiles, I promise you this, I will buy one of those tech mobile cards eventually, but I will not do it anytime soon.

I think the card is awesome. I think that looks great. I do have one more piece of news that's gonna really piss you off. Oh, great. Great. Did you see this rumblings about the Medallion Club? Oh God, yes. The breakers that pay 160 grand a piece for first access to stuff? Yeah. So it was like, oh, that's not real. And then there's been a lot more popping up about it, just arguing that they have first, basically for about 160, 150K a month, this is all allegation, all right, that these breakers will have access to way more product first, right off the rip, and then the large majority heading to them, they're handing over a couple mil in tax write-off for cost of goods expenses, and then getting the hookup.

So the self-dealing is something. This is why we like to live our life with singles. You ready for a little show-and-tell here? Yes, give me your show-and-tell. I have bought nothing for two weeks, so this is all Jason's show-and-tell. This is all mine, and these are all cards that I picked up at the Eastgate show in Cincinnati on Saturday, and I've already got pricing on here. I don't care, you can see it. Buy it from me. The only time to hide from, yeah. Favorite card first, favorite card first.

2002 Bowman Chrome Refractor Joey Votto PSA 9, numbered to 300. That's nasty. Low pop card. Oh, yeah. Low pop card. Let's keep things early 2000s, just how I like it. 2001 Gallery Albert Pujols Rookie in a 10. While we're on the Joey Votto train here, one of one. So nasty. On card auto game used patch Joey Votto Majestic from I think like 17 or 18 national treasures, 2017. Caleb Williams on the rookie auto to 75. A little bit bigger than what I normally do with a football. I try to stay in that one to $500 range usually, but I have told you guys that I think they're still upside on him, and I believe that.

I'm matching my pricing in an SGC 95 off of a PSA 9. We'll see how that goes. But it is a rookie auto to 75. And last but certainly not least. So the lighting won't quite pick it up, but this is a gold from first year exquisite Jason Kidd to 25. So some fun stuff there. Yeah, very cool stuff. That Kidd is a super cool card, but if you haven't listed it on eBay yet, I would. Yeah, yeah. Well, I like showing things off for a week or two first. I do too. I just, I know what Kidd has done for me in showcases, and he moves pretty quick on eBay, but.

Well, then you know what will happen. It'll sell in five minutes. Right. And then the cards I can't ever move, you'll get twice as much. Lower the bet to guarantee the win. Yeah, there you go. Okay, I want to do a little mailbag question here from Discord. I told you, I was just going to throw it at you in the moment. It's show theme, but this is HaleStateCards21 on our Discord. By the way, we do have an active Discord. You can ask questions, hang out, content in there, reach out to Kidd. Lots and lots of Easter eggs.

Yeah, lots of fun stuff to find in there. Okay, HaleStateCards21 asks, I'm getting ready. I have the opportunity to set up for my first show. It's being advertised as 200 to 300 tables, and I can get a table for a reasonable rate, $85 for an eight foot table. So a few questions about it. Should I take the chance and get one? Two, how much inventory money-wise should I plan on having? I'm assuming one showcase with value boxes. And three, what would be a good cash position to be in a feel good about buying opportunities?

So a lot there. I'm sure you and I are going to ask about 10 questions for HaleStateCards21 to think about, but let's dive into this because with our content, this is probably the most common conversation that we have because people know you and I make our money for the most part at shows. And so let's dive into this. So first off. Yes, you should do it. Opportunity to set up for a show, absolutely. Get out there. We say it all the time, touch grass, go to a show. Your worst case scenario, your absolute worst case scenario is you have an $85 payment that you paid to learn a lot of lessons.

Yep, yep. It would be hard for that to happen. Yes, almost impossible, but that's your absolute worst case scenario. First thing I want to say is, I don't know if you realize it, because when you attend, but you haven't ever set up, in your mind, it's everyone in this room that's behind a table knows what they're doing. They are professionals, they are vendors. I would venture to guess 60 to 75% of every show are people just like you. They're like, hey, I'm just thinking about trying this out. Or they do this instead of the Corvette coffee club that they do with their buddies in the summer.

Or, hey, I like opening football cards whenever it's football season. So I set up at a few shows to generate a few hundred bucks every weekend so that I can keep opening cards, right? But there's a lot more people that are just hobbying that lane, which is good. That's a good thing. But mentally, I think a lot of dealers, when they're doing their first show, there's this hurdle or barrier of like, I don't know what everybody else knows, and everybody else knows everything, and I just don't want to screw it up.

Gary's right. The worst thing that's going to happen is you're going to learn a ton of stuff and spend $85, okay? The price for the table, it really depends on where you are, if the promoter has a reputation for getting good traffic to the shows. quality of other vendors that are in the building. Um, you know, I, I think 85 on a eight foot table could be cheap or it could be expensive. It just depends. Right, Gary. Yeah. I think that one of the things that you and I talk about a lot, and it's been a harder mental transition for me.

Uh, the cost of the table is way less important than the quality of the show. Yes. You know what I mean? Like at the end of the day, uh, for us, we're, we're lucky enough and have worked hard enough to be at a point where we just signed up for a really big show. Uh, and probably the highest per table cost we've ever paid. Uh, and we were both like, do I want to pay it? Probably not. But does it really matter? Probably not. Cause we know the promoters and we know what kind of crowd will be there.

So that extra a couple hundred bucks a table was like, ah, it's annoying, but it's simple. Like, so questions we ask. So for, uh, for Gary and I, now we're hitting a price point as we catch larger shows where some of these tables do cost a little bit more, right? So we were looking at two tables at the higher price point with better traffic or three tables and save 250 bucks. Right. Um, further back in the room for me, that's a simple question. I can't remember how I worded it to you. Cause we were going back and forth.

I was just like, do you think that location is likely to cover the difference of X amount of dollars and even with less space. And when you break it down like that, it's like, it's pretty simple. Yes. Yeah. Nobody's excited to spend a ton of money on tables, but if you know, you've got traffic, uh, you'll have great buying opportunities. Um, at a show like that. Now I'm getting ahead of us. Um, the second question was the one that I thought was the most interesting. The level of inventory, correct?

Okay. So this is a really important thing. And I think a lot of people struggle with this. It doesn't matter. All that matters for the inventory you take is your expectations. So Jason and I kind of shoot for about a 30% or better sell through rate. Right. Per show per show our inventory versus our inventory, which means if we have 30 grand of inventory in a showcase, we want to do 10 grand in sales. That that's the only equation. So if you only have. 2,500 bucks worth of inventory. That's perfectly fine.

You can still set up at the show and you probably should just adjust your expectations that if you're going to shoot for a 30% sell sell through rate, that means you're going to probably make 750 bucks, 800 bucks. I think too, I'll pause here and just say, yeah, I think there's a pressure for people setting up, especially the first few times that you have to know the answers to all these things. And I think that's just the biggest illusion out there. Like it's okay to go. You have pricing, like here's what matters.

Organize your stuff, know what you have, know what you're asking for, know what you're willing and not willing to take in offers and then be friendly. And I don't think you'll fail if, if you do those things. Correct. Um, if there's not enough people at the show, that's a promoter issue. That's not a you thing. If there's a bunch of people, but everybody's lowballing you one of two things, they're all trying to flip cards. They smell a little blood in the water, right? They see somebody with the new stuff.

They're like, I'm gonna try to go buy the whole table. Haven't seen this before. Or you had wishful thinking with your stickers, you know, on five to $20 cards, please do not sticker that at the highest ever comp. Like you'll, if it's the highest ever comp, a lot of that's going to be in the box after the show, but if your goal is to sell cards, organize your stuff, price your stuff, know where you need to be. If people give offers or make it simple, if you don't want to negotiate personality wise, buy five cards, save 15% out of these value boxes.

Or if you spend a hundred, you only spend 90 or 80, whatever it is, just come up with your game plan there. Um, but it's, a lot of this is not as complicated as people want you to think it is. Correct. There's so many people in this space that wants you to feel like it's impossible. Or if you're not coming to a show with one of the, the Louie bags where these guys bring out these great big bricks and like, here, here's the, here's a little fun fact, 99% of those guys. Y'all ready for this? Oh yeah.

Not their money. Right. Yep. That's somebody else's money. Card and cash, baby. That's what they're doing. And so it's easy to see all this and our media is hit with $50 rare or 50 K rare Jordan transactions all over YouTube. Right? The reality is your bread and butter is probably going to be under 50 bucks for most people at a local show, especially getting started. Yep. And then your last question was how much money should I take to feel comfortable buying? Is that right? Yes. Uh, yeah. Yeah. That whatever you're comfortable with, like if you have $500 that you're comfortable spending on new inventory, then take $500.

Uh, if you are comfortable spending a thousand dollars on new inventory, take a thousand dollars. I will tell you this, Jason and I both, unless it is a massive show, we normally start the day with somewhere between a thousand and $1,500 in cash, a smaller local show. Yeah. Yeah. If it's a big, big show, we might take two or three grand in cash now, because we know we're going to sell a bunch. Yeah. We're going to have to have access to more access to more, but like, as far as the cash we take, and if this is your first show, I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Here's what I would tell you though, and this is something that dealers, if you're a dealer, listen to me because I know half of you don't do this and it's annoying as hell. Have change, like go to your bank and get some ones and get some fives and get some tens. It's annoying because the banks take their time. I know sometimes you lose a half hour trying to get some $5 bills, but you have to have it. Um, Gary and I are starting with our filter, which is, these are a couple of guys that were working blue collar jobs.

So let me back up a second. Hail state. If you've got a liquid position, um, and you're, and you're really wanting to scale or grow or whatever, this buying is where you win. Selling is going to happen. Buying is where you will win. So if you have, I would encourage one of two things. If this is all super overwhelming, the easiest thing to do is have a really short list in your mind of what you're buying and anything else that comes up. Hey, I appreciate you showing me. I'll pass here. Super normal.

And then run your show, bring back the cards that are left in your money. Compare your inventory that's left value to the cash you brought in and start very simple with the accounting process. Some people get overwhelmed because money's coming in and I'm buying throughout the show and this and that, and I've got all these cards and man, I thought I had more money than this. What's going on. So just keep it simple for yourself. It may make more sense to just, Hey, I'll one off this, everything that I sell, then I get home and then I get reorganized and then I go out to a show and buy or whatever, but, um, yeah, for sure.

Yeah. I think that, I think hopefully that answers the question in a nutshell. Yes. You should set up worst case scenario. You're out 85 bucks and you learned a lot and you met some fun people and you probably had a pretty good day. Yeah. Um, realistically, you're gonna lose some money on some buys and sells. You're going to make some money here and there. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to have a good time and you're probably going to want to do it again. Uh, it can be pretty addicting.

It's a fun, it's a fun game to play. Um, and then take the money that you're comfortable spending. Like, I don't know what your inventory is like. If you have a showcase and the smallest card you're going to put in your showcases, three grand, and you got some 10 or $12,000 cards in there. Well, you probably want to take a little bit more money cause you are going to have the ability to, I will tell you this at a two to 400 table show. You're unless you're in the top 0.05%, you're not going to have the most money in the room, but if you start setting up at smaller shows, there's pretty big advantages to having more liquidity than anybody else in the room.

So yeah, like if we go to a, I want to bring that up. There are certain shows like, especially a little bit smaller, local regional shows. Gary and I will sign up and attend those knowing we're not moving 30% of inventory today, but we also know there'll be a lot of the lot purchases. And if we are one of the five guys in the room that brought a little more cash than everybody else, I mean a little bit more and you're just trying to buy and you tell everybody you're trying to buy pretty incredible stuff can happen there too.

So we'll bring a stronger cash position into those shows where we sell less, which I know sounds silly, but it's, it's, it's part of a strategy that's worked out for us so far. All right. Our guest today, uh, this is a guest that I'm, I've been, uh, lucky enough to develop a relationship with a really great guy started talking to Ryan about coming on the pod two or three months ago, timelines just weren't matching up, we finally got it nailed down. So joining us today. All the way from new England.

You'll hear it in his voice is my friend, Ryan Durkee from six sports cards on Facebook wheels on cards on eBay. He's going to have a lot of great stuff to share with us today. Get your pen out, take some notes. This is a good one. All right. So we are joined today by Ryan Durkee of six sports cards, cards on wheels. Uh, I've, I've been looking forward to this for a while. Ryan and I have been friends for a few years now. We've gotten to actually meet each other in person a couple of different times at the national.

Um, thanks for joining us today, man. We appreciate you. Thanks for having me. No, absolutely. We, uh, you and I met through your Facebook group, which is something we're going to talk a lot about today. Uh, for those of you who aren't aware, uh, who don't like submerge yourself completely in the hobby, uh, Ryan, uh, owns and runs one of the larger, uh, Facebook groups, uh, dedicated to sports cards called six sports cards. Um, if you're not a member there, go join. Yeah, there you go. Represent pimp it pimp it.

And, uh, I met Ryan through that. And, and one of the first things that I realized was that right. And I have very similar personalities, which can sometimes be a good time. And sometimes we butt heads a little bit. I'm terrified. The good news is at the end of it, it's all good. Whatever that looks like. So, um, why don't we just start off the rip here, Ryan, tell the folks what your hobby journey has looked like. How'd you get into the hobby? How'd you decide this is how you were going to make a living, what you were going to do?

I got back into the hobby in, I was actually thinking of this earlier. So I was at work. I was very annoyed at work one day when I used to work full time and I didn't want and I didn't want to go home and I was like, you know what? Let's let's do something. So I went to a local shop. They, I asked them what the newest release was. And I think, I think at the time, funny enough, it was baseball. National treasures are immaculate. Yeah, I know. I already see in your face. Ah, cause I, I'm not a fan of baseball.

They didn't have it. The owner, Frank was like, tried these other shops. I ended up driving down to the shop locally to me now. Um, and got a box of a case of triple threads baseball. And you only open up a box or when you open the case, you flip the boxes open, you sell them out, get organized. One of the boxes was it weighed way more than every other box. And I'm like, what the heck is going on? And it ended up being the, uh, I'm going to screw this up. It was a whole thing and say, go one-on-one, but it was.

Um, just, I don't know. It was a huge guard, like weight wise. And it wasn't a, like, obviously it wasn't a huge value, but it just weighed a ton and then that got me hooked. Then I went home that night, started looking up groups and, you know, I showed somebody like, I'll join this group during this group and the rest is history when it comes to the Facebook stuff that I think my first. I had, I've had a bunch of baseballs and then I, the one thing that I know I won the first night was a yellow boot of Hulk Hogan autograph, one of the replica boots, I think I still have it somewhere that checks out that, that, that tracks.

History. So you got back into the hobby. What year was that? Do you remember? Was it pre COVID? Was it the beginning? Absolutely. Pre COVID. Um, what's going to kill me? I, uh, probably 2012, 2013, 2013, 14. All right. So you, you've been around, uh, you, you weren't a, uh, a boomer baby, uh, as I've started calling the, uh, the COVID guys, nothing, nothing wrong with that. We're glad to have them in the hobby, but yeah, uh, it was a different world pre COVID and a lot of these guys don't, uh, don't understand that in the least.

So some of us older guys that get grumpy about stuff, they don't get it. And we're like, wait a minute, we don't know. He grumpy. Who would have thought? So when did you start setting up at shows? Uh, so the first show I did a lot of local shows, um, well, I started going to a lot of them locally. And then I set up pre COVID, uh, we set up locally at the VFW, the elk shows locally, um, and then my first national was probably 2016, 17. What was that? Like overwhelming. Yeah. I remember my first, I remember my first national.

It was like, Oh my God. Whoa. It was just, you started whatever eight, nine in the morning and you couldn't even use the restroom. It was just, it's one after another, after another, after another. And it's like, before you look down and look at your watch and it's four o'clock and you're like, all right, I haven't eaten all day. I've had to use the restroom for the last three hours, but you're so nervous to go, because like, you don't want to miss out on the deal, whatever. Um, but then, you know, as you go through year two, year three, you start to meet more people, trust me.

Well, Hey, can you watch my booth for five minutes and get to do those things? But the first year it was just like, Whoa, this is crazy. Cause especially the size of it. You never see anything like it. Yeah, it, uh, it definitely, I remember having the very, those same feelings the first year I went. And I want to say my first national was probably 12 or 13. It was Atlantic city. So I was worse. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. The Atlantic city is the worst. Uh, I don't know why anybody would choose to have any convention of any size and Atlantic city.

It's just the absolute worst. We went to the one that the most recent one Atlantic city in. We were there with the friends and the couple of kids, and it was just the boardwalk, everything. You, it just didn't seem, it didn't fit. It didn't fit the Bible. You go to Chicago. it's cards everywhere, like every hotel, Skywalk, every hotel, lobby, trade nights, whatever you may go through. You go to Atlantic City, you go outside to get food and it's Atlantic City. It's just, it's, it's a different vibe. And it's like, all right, a little uncomfortable, if you will, just as far as the amount of money going around the value.

So it's like, I, I don't want to come back here. And the guys that are carrying around a backpack with half a million dollars in cash in it, it's just like, and if people hear that number, they're not in a lot of, a lot of our listeners are people who go to just their local shows and they, they can't get their head wrapped around that. But when I tell people that they're like, no, people don't do that. Yeah, they do. Went to a show Friday, locally appear in one of the big guys. He had a display, which I'm not a huge fan of this at all.

He probably had 250 grand cash just laid out under his buying sign. Of course, he offered a wired everybody afterwards, which made zero sense to me, but you know, let it be. But yeah, no, you said the national, especially as you'd be the rowing safes, you see it's, it's a whole new, there's a ton of money. It's wild. Yeah. Yeah. Let me jump in here real quick, Gary. So Ryan, whenever you, you, you, you hit the big card, right? You're like, I'm getting back into this. I'm hooked. You said the rest is history, but I want, if you can remember, like, when did this go from like, Hey, this is a fun thing that I'm doing to like, maybe I want to like do this.

Like, I'm going to treat this like a real business. Not it. Maybe you were kind of halfway flipping stuff here and there, but when did it become a thing where it's like, no, this is what I'm going to do. This is it. So for those that don't know, I'm in, I'm disabled. I'm in a wheelchair. I know you guys know this, but so what I was doing full time, I was working on commission sales. Um, and because I couldn't actually go into somebody's house, I was splitting everything with other coworkers at the time. And when you have to split every deal you do with somebody, you leave a lot of money in the table. So I started getting into, I got into cards just as like I was in a bad mood one day, grumpy, go figure. And then I started seeing the money side of it. I'm like, all right, you know, can I make this work? Like, can I do it as a side hustle type thing? Um, that turned into me making it being more rewarding than my actual job went.

But then I was like, all right, well, how do I actually get insurance? How do I do all this stuff on my own? Met Rachel. We kind of put it together. I did work at a card shop for about four years as like the front of house guy, if you will. And at one day he was like, not that you're too smart to do this. Like, I don't need you anymore, but you can do this on your own. And then to be coy, Frank, whatever the term is, it was just kind of me having to grab them and say, all right, let's do this. And I got very lucky. Uh, cause I did, you know, I built my reputation on Facebook as somebody that was reliable, got to help run a room that was starting out the room kind of folded. And then honestly, Joel Leland, you guys know him. He's the one that brought me in this sick. I think now it's like eight years ago. Um, and then sick is kind of just changed everything in my trajectory as far as hard cards go. But so luck, that was one big thing, part of it too, but just kind of taking, believing in yourself and taking a shot at it and just saying, let's do it. I want to, I want to jump on a second. You said there about reputation.

Cause I think that that's really important. You said you got lucky and maybe I think the timing was right, but it was because you were ready for that. You know, when, when the luck came, you were prepared for it. Um, but one of the things I want to applaud you for is I know one thing you don't skip out on a payment in the sick group. Not if you want to have any transactions at the card space with anybody that has access to the internet, I promise that's not the room to play those games. And how do you maintain a space where there's like an active marketplace going on in a space where there's a lot of money moving around? And how do you keep a priority of like, when to call something out the right way to do that? Is this buyer just, you know, forgetting or did they need somebody to light a fire under there? But I'm, I know I'm goading you and I'm saying this so nicely. You're going to give me a blunt answer here, but I want people to hear like how, how seriously you take that. Um, I've made a ton of mistakes with it over the years because I've definitely jumped to conclusions with it, but it's just, you, you guys have all seen this.

You see somebody text it. Oh, I'll do it in 30 seconds. I'm driving the fact that time that it took you to type that message, you can load up your app and click send like the, the BS behind that. And like those excuses I've not, I mean, I haven't seen them all, but I've seen so many of them. It's like, no, you're lying, dude. Like just, you either don't have the money, which it's fine. It just admit it. Or you're just lying. Like just, just make the payment. But I think my reputation that I know it is a lot of people know this, like it's not the room to play around.

And because you make one or two mistakes with doing that, it's like, I don't want to deal with you anymore. And I'm in a lot of group chats with other admins where they're like, oh, you need those guys. Well, cards are fun for me. Yes. I make a living at them, but sure. If they're going to give me a headache, you as a member do not deserve that same headache. Like I can deal with it being the head guy, but you know, you have people from all aspects of life all across the country that need that $50 need that 10 50, like to send the Bible, to do whatever they're not in a cushy spot or anything like that, where some people are, where it's like, all right, I can wait a day. Like, no, no, you committed to play pay. You lost move on. Like, let's just, you lost you won your Texan in 10 seconds. And here's my address. Respect goes both ways. When you win, when you lose, you lose. And so that's, I guess you can call it the mass soul in me.

Just, that's what bleeds into that side of it. Like, just let's keep it on there with everything and let's move on. One of the things that I figured out really quick about you and you and I are a lot alike in this way. And Jason is a little different. Although if you push him far enough, he gets to where I am on the get go. I just turned into Ralphie in the Christmas story when he's wailing on the kid. Like I'm crying. Like I'm in the Beatles. All right. All right. You said something at the very beginning of this before Jason even asked about the other part about reputation and developing the right reputation. And in this business, more than any business that I've ever been in your word and your reputation means more than anything else. And to the point where for me, I don't care if people like me, I do want them to respect me. Like there's a lot of people in this, in this space, in this hobby that don't necessarily like me, but there's nobody that can say I've ever not paid them. There's nobody that can ever say that I've ever not sent their stuff. There's nobody that can ever say that if I say something, I'm not going to do it. That's way more important to me than people liking me. Um, and what has ended up happening for me and I've seen it for you too, is you end up attracting the people who think the same way and business and life gets a lot easier because people aren't worrying about feelings. They're not worried. It's just like, let's just do what we got to do. And then we can go have a beer. It's fine. Exactly. Like you kind of, we just said on, if you look at all the rooms across Facebook now, there's thousands of them. I know for a fact, at least five of them, I can name on top of my head have started because I've removed them from the room and they go and create their own room. And that's perfectly fine.

You can do that. But I know I have a reputation of this is how sick is don't not play around. Like, I don't mean like that. Like I'm not being the judge of anything, but like, don't play games with other people's livelihood and other people's money that you might get away with elsewhere. And that's helped me and also hurt me because like the room, some people love it. Some people hate it. And that's just, that's just life. And it is what it is. I would much rather have people hate me and not have to deal with them. And my life be a lot smoother than everybody think that they like me and I like them and then they can do whatever they want to do. But on the Facebook side of things, then back kind of to our outline here, you got it back into the hobby. You were setting up at a few shows. You got to start help admin and moderated a couple of Facebook rooms that you got brought into sick. When, when you got brought into sick, tell us what that looked like. I know what sick looks like now. Why did you make the, why did you make the decision? Hey, I think that this might be the place to really grow my brand, grow this brand into something that can drive everything else.

The people that were running it at the time, honestly, it was Chris, Joel, actually two Chris's Joel. We were essentially a family. Like as far as like you have your real friends in real life, if you will. I felt just as close to these guys within three months. Like we ended up setting up the national together and it just, it grew and we all were very aligned and balance each other out where we had an issue here. You text somebody else, they'd get back to you. And like everyone actually cared for what was going on within the room. And we had all aspects. We had the breaking side of it. We had the lines, we had the buy and sell everything. It was just, it was a very fluid train that was moving and it was actually fun. Like it was, you get on Facebook, you know, a lot of people say, are you trying to avoid real life? Like I actually enjoyed it. Like you were hanging out with people, talking to people. Our group chat was nonstop. You know, it was just, it was a lot of fun. And that I think got me hooked because it was like, all right, I can quote unquote roll with these guys as far as let's see what we can do in the hobby.

And it was awesome. Like it was just, it was just fun. Now I think that was when I do the hobby, I want it to be fun. Yeah. I want to make money, but the fun part means way more to me than what the backside looks like just because. So, so did you realize what you were doing with your brand? Because I think you were ahead of your time a little bit. Like where I see everybody now with a card business is coming to the realization that I have the reputation, but I never built the value of my brand. And what I mean by that is like seeing the ballcard show at all the shows. If all we did is content, I think we have less than half of the audience that we do right now. It's the fact that that brand goes with us to 50 shows a year and everything else we're doing is attached to it. So did you know that this would become as large as it was?

Like, were you feeling like, Hey, this Facebook group's about to pop or was that just kind of like an added when you talk about luck timing? Like I, cause that, that, that group launched the brand and the stratosphere as far as recognition. Right. Yeah. And I think I've had a reality check, honestly, probably my first national with it. Um, when I, so I got brought in the sick and then we set up at the national and I had my old sick logo because six logos has changed. And, you know, we did the flyer and the not flyers, the stickers and give out giveaways, but the amount of people that stopped at the booth to say hi to me was humbling for myself. Like that, yeah, that was crazy. Cause you know, you're there at the national biggest sports card show of the year and people are like, Oh, you're dirty from sick. Like, and he could be from Alabama. He could be from Arizona. The next guy's from, there was a few guys from Canada and it was like, all right, we, we, we, we have something here. Like, let's let's just keep going. It's my wife hates it because I'm a, I know I'm an arrogant guy. Like I'm always like, Oh my God, our head, his head's not going to. And I'm like, like I I'm many, many years ago. Cause I've gotten used to it. But like it was to the point where like, I was shocked. Like here I am a dude from Attleboro, Massachusetts.

Like, no, like this, I don't, I'm not a celebrity by any means, but it's like, these people actually want to come see me. And like, it was, it was awesome to do it. Like that was humbling if you will. Um, and then we just kept moving. Like we do the giveaways sometimes in the room, send out the sweatshirts and the shirts, the stickers. I mean, it's, especially around here, there's probably 15, 20 guys that wear the sick shirt around here, every show they go to. And it's like, this is really cool. Like, all right. Like, I'm a part of this. Like, this is awesome. So, so in that process, and, and I'm not going to ask you to spill any trade secrets or, or give away any secret sauce here, but if you're able to, would you say that the process of growing sick was, because when I first got to sick, I want to say there were probably six or 7,000 members in the group, and now you're close to 30.

18, 18, 18. Okay. I thought we were a little bigger than that now, but that's okay either way. So I've seen it grow. Was that growth purely organic or did you guys sit down and go, here's how we're going to do this? It was all we, from day one, I've never been a fan of, Oh, add your friend. We'll give away 50 bucks that I've never been a fan of it. I think we've maybe done it twice. Um, so it's all been word of mouth. Um, just Gary knows Brad, Brad knows Steve, Steve knows Carl. They come in that way. Um, just because I wanted the room to last, like I didn't, you've seen it. You've probably both seen it. You see rooms come and go. Yeah. I can't say there's a hundred percent confidence, but I can say it with like 90,000 comments. I think six, one of the most longest standing rooms that have been around from way back when. Um, and I can name me 20 that have come and gone.

So I'm just, I think the organic side of it helped maintain it. Cause it wasn't a, I don't know the right term, like a short, like money grab type thing. Like it's something we wanted to sustain and grow with it. So I like, I prefer it that way. And I want to give you guys props on something I saw that we participated in was about a month ago. Uh, you and Mike Marshall decided to use the room to do a fundraiser, to support a family whose little girl is dealing with some major health issues. Um, and it's not uncommon to hear groups doing that.

But when I tell the people watching and listening to this, the cool thing was he ran a flashlight on this. And when you see how many people gave a crap. about that. You know, all you hear a lot of times about these groups is, this is where the DJs are hanging out, right? That's what you hear. But you also have people that are in community that make a point of walking at this one point in the national to the dealer that they've only known through Facebook. And I think people, you know, my age and older 40s up, I think we still don't quite understand that those things happening on the internet are still able to build real relationships to right? Yeah, like, my son has friends who plays video games with across the country, but I'm learning some of them are real friends. So I thought that was awesome to see the community component that you guys have built there. Especially coming together for a cause like that.

You know, that's, you probably see my face. I'm not gonna cry. But I maybe after the commute, like you're I'm very big on the relationship side of it. You know, there are like I said, before, there's so many different personalities, so many different lifestyles that are within the room. But the one thing that you can never, like, I don't know, if you can, if I can use a Facebook group to help somebody else in a shitty situation, sorry, in a crappy situation. Yeah, you're fine. I'll do it. Like when when I lost my dad three years ago, I was shocked at the amount of support that I got within the room. We've done that type of stuff for a long time, and I will continue to do it. The problem is, it's not like I could get a message every day as far as like, can you do this for me? Can you do this for me? And having to tell somebody? No.

It crushes me. But it's like, when where do you draw the line? It's like, what's the severe side of it? Like, or when when is it actually needed? And that is one thing I will do until the day I give up on sick, like when I'm done with cards. If you need help, in the community, like you're active in the community, and you supported the page or whatever, we're there like that. And you start it's awesome. I don't know if you guys remember, but we used to do the fundraiser for my birthday, Frederick's attacks. Yeah. I actually got a phone call from one of the top guys at the foundation in Philly, we raised over $330,000 in four years, when I did it for that foundation. You want to talk about watching a grown man cry, I bawled my eyes out. And it's like, I know 3% of you like I've actually met maybe three to 5% of you. The rest of you are just online. Friends that like I've gotten to know, but it's wild what the internet can do.

Yeah, well, and it's that sense of community, like, and it's very, very real. And in this business, especially we're, when it comes to the way that the card world works, there's really two things you're insular locally with the show scene, most people who even most people who set up at 3040 shows a year aren't getting outside of a three to four hour window from their house. Those of us who actually go out out and do this are the small minority of people everybody else. It's in these online communities, whether it's Facebook, whether it's Instagram, whether it's discord. And those relationships are just as real as any other one. And the one thing that's really cool about it is what what we all have in common with it is we're playing with toys we played with when we were kids. And, and it brings everybody together. And it's it's a really cool thing.

So, um, let's move into something that you and I both did recently. And, and how that has affected business. You were streaming on whatnot, quite a bit. Yep. Jason and I still have our solo show, not our solo show, but our joint show that we do on Sundays. Jason still runs a weekly show on whatnot. I run one every six to eight weeks now and I moved stuff to eBay. Now I'm not doing the high volume that you're doing as far as listing volume and sales volume goes. But I just transitioned over to eBay because the type of stuff that I want to sell in those environments is not stuff that whatnot responds to super, super well. Why did you decide to make the shift from whatnot to eBay? And what have you learned in that?

I decided to make the shift this year, mainly for the ROI purposes. It was, it was a complete money play. Um, at the end of the day, I, when I go on whatnot today and I look at streams, um, there are certain streams that I think do very well and they make a lot of money and that's awesome, but I'm big. I don't like how they manipulate things and lie about what certain things are worth. Um, not to call anybody out, but you get on a stream and anyone that knows cards, you look at a card and you're like, all right, that's a $50 card or six, whatever the number is. And they're showing comps or it's, it's like a $200 card or that's what they're saying. And it's you're screwing people over. Um, and that is just not something that I'm about. Um, you can buy it a good price. You can sell it a good price, but to absolutely continually stab somebody in the back on a price on a card. I don't think that's fun. I don't think it's long-term sustainable. I think eventually like the worst thing you, you probably see it too. You go to a show, something goes up and they're selling and give you a card to get paid $84 on whatnot. Like, okay, look it up. Well, the last ones are 13, 17, 22, 23. It's like, all right, well, yeah. Hey, hold on. Do you get like, when they hand you that stack and it's stuff you actually want and they say, I bought all this on what not your first thoughts. Oh no.

I don't know if you're gonna be able to see it, but my favorite thing, I got one right now. Uh, I ripped them off. You get a mag card and it's got like a 48 sticker or a 72. And you're like, you look at it like, all right, that's from whatnot. And me, the cynical side of me goes, all right, I know you got screwed when you bought this card, but how bad was it? But unless they got it in the ball card show stream or in the six stream, because we give that shit away every day. And that's exactly why I stopped doing it. It's like, we were talking earlier, you sell a card and like, all right, well in my brain, like I know this is a $40 card. It's off for 1250. I go on eBay and two weeks. I'm like, well, they just got it for 30 bucks. It's not that it's a problem. It's like, I have the skin or I have everything else here. Let's just do it. Like, let's just get this up on eBay. And then you get a 24 seven business model, like you're online, you're on whatnot, when you're live, quote, unquote, for two, three hours a day, eBay is 24 seven. And you get like, kind of exactly what you have, you have that niche market or niche market for certain cards.

They're not looking at they're not getting on whatnot every day to buy them. They're getting on what I mean on eBay at eight o'clock at night when their kids are in bed for 20 minutes searching for it, if it's there, great deals done moving on. Yeah. Um, so that's, that's one of the main reasons I went to eBay is just to have the 24 seven exposure, but also the reward of it, the ROI side of it. And you're on eBay. Your store is, it runs the gamut, right? Everything from the low end up to whatever you feel like putting on there. Okay.

Everything. It's like having a full 35 foot display, 35 feet display at a show. Here's it all take what you want, which I like that because you get a lot of people that they want to hire and they get the lower end. And that's what I try to be is get something for everyone. Really? I have, I have a theory. I just thought of this. So just we do this all the time, Dirky. I'm just jumping in here. But I'm hearing more of what you're saying with people who have been doing live selling for a while. Right. And Gary and I spent a lot of time talking about this, where it's like, if he knows he has something unique, and he knows the value to a collector of that card, it is hard for him to detach the possibility of this getting 30% of what it could do anywhere else, right?

And I think there's a lot of sellers that are like, it seems like if I'm not yelling or lying, or creating the false sense of urgency, then that's the only way I'm going to get there. I happen to think there's like a middle road, but I think here's what's going to happen. I do think with live selling, you are going to see a little bit of an exodus back to eBay for a lot of people. I do think for the exact same reasons you're saying. I also think the people that don't want to be those guys are going to move almost exclusively to pre bids where everything is pre listed before the auction, and it runs. And so I think you're going to have a lot of dealers that have to decide do I want to put 10 to 15 hours into this show by the time I pre bid list photo, and it may not perform and I've already sunk those hours, whereas eBay you throw it up there and then I'm going to have days where I'm buried in shipping and days I'm not. But I think it'll be three lanes. I think you're going to have the yellers not even close guys, right? You're going to have the people that are doing kind of that pre bid, which is kind of what eBay starting to push. I know pristine does one and they're even tracking their sales of small singles as comps on card ladder with their live auction. And then you have eBay the push with all that stuff. So I do think there's some reform coming to a lot of this. It'll be interesting to see just how many whatnot sellers make that same shift to say you know what I'd rather just put this up on eBay and wait on wait on the proper return on that investment.

My I don't have a card. I don't worry. My thing with whatnot in eBay in shows is let's take a let's take $100 card PSA 10 slab that sells every day for $100 with whatnots fee structure, you have to sell with whatnot fee structure compared to eBay fee structure compared to what a repackers now paying, you have to essentially sell that if you're a normal Joe Sloan whatnot, I think you're right around 11 12% fees, you have to sell that card for about 111% above market to actually make money on the card per se, when you compare it to buy a card for 100 or you get a card that's worth $100 a repack and now it is going to pay you $90 for that card, just with a quick email, it's gone. Yeah. So when you see the people on whatnot that are running all these flashy cards, I'm like, Alright, well, why?

Why are you using a repacker? And it's because you're getting more. Great. Good for you. But are you getting more because you're, you got the right buyers are just willing to overpay. Let's be real. Nobody wants to overpay for a card. Like if you maybe there's one or two guys that will, but for the everyday downtown, everyday uptown, everyday kaboom, whatever, everyone that's in the game knows, this is what the card goes for. You're literally screwing somebody when it goes for 170%. It's not I don't think that's cool. I don't think that's fun. When you can just send an email and you get the 95% for that card and you don't wash your hands of it. Let them screw somebody over.

Let's let's actually let's dive into that for a second. This is one of those side tangents that I thought we would land in tangents going to be the right word. Okay, so let's talk about that for a minute. Because comps is a is a subject that I get a little annoyed with on both ends of things. So what are comps comps are what people are paying for a card? Yep. What happens if whatnot ever actually gets their AI right where they can report sales of cards? Now are those people overpaying? Or is that a comp? And if it's a comp, did they actually overpay?

If I start an auction at $1, and I don't lie to anybody about anything, and it sells for 800% of what the last five averaged, did I screw somebody? Or were four people in that room just fighting over that card? And all I did was sit on a stand in front of them and not say another word. Oh, I like this. This is good. Like what's what's what what is what is a comp? Isn't it just what somebody paid for something? I think I agree with you as far as what is a comp as far as like what if if those comps were reported that that could change things to side or two arguments for this one, if you go on if we go on one right now, and we actually scroll through stream by stream by stream by stream, the shows that quote unquote do well or do bad or like mine, not a ton of noise, not a ton of music, just kind of here's the card, bam, go 20 seconds, whatever it is they go. When you go on to I'm not going to call them up, but you go into the streams, we all know what I'm talking about. And I have to turn down the volume on my phone because my wife is standing or sitting on the couch next to me can hear it clear as day. And they're not even yelling about the card. They're just telling you, Gary, you're an effing idiot because you haven't been on this card enough. Yeah.

That is not, I agree that I agree with you completely on. I think what I don't think there's, I don't think anybody with a brain disagrees that the bad actors are bad for everybody. It damages the entire economic ecosystem of the hobby. It extracts money that never comes back and never recirculates. Um, that's bad. But I also know that there are people who have given us a hard time. There are people who give guys like clever Cuban a hard time. And if I sit a card up that hasn't sold in four years, and there's three sales of it ever, and those sales are $5, $8, and $6. I've had that card sell for 60.

He just did that. Um, if I have the right gentleman, he just did that with a cosmic card. I believe it was a Jordan. It was a Yordan, not a Yordan. Uh, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a base rookie. And if you watch his streams, and we've had Alex on the pod, I'd like to consider at a minimum, a hobby friend. Uh, we, he literally set the card on the thing said, Hey, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, cosmic base rookie. And then he just has conversations with the chat while the auctions run. He doesn't talk about it. anything. He doesn't say anything about the cart sold for $170. It's like a $9 card, $8 card.

And it was paid for, and it was on eBay live. I think that is, then this could be my own personal problem. As far as like, when everyone probably does, like when you know, when you think you know too much, you don't know enough, like, I don't know if I probably screwed that up, but you know too much, you always worry about what the next person's doing. And you think they're wrong. Maybe they're right. Maybe they're just doing it. My thing is like, especially with what you were talking about, with what you went to eBay with, if you have a pop 7,755 Luka Dantric rookie, there's a set market for that card. That card sells for, I don't even know, $200 every day, $185 one day, $215 the next day. The average of the last 350 of them are $200. With what you're doing on your eBay, where you have a Black Refractor David Wells card, number out of $699 from 2012 tops, I can understand that card doesn't sell every day. It could be a $3 card one day, but you might have that buyer that will pay $30 for it because they need it for a set.

When you think about the common cards, that's where I think comps matter, because there's, it's like buying a car. You're not going to go spend $50,000 on a baseline Honda Civic card today because you can go buy it everywhere else for $25,000, whatever. I haven't bought a car in 10 years, but whatever. There's a baseline and there's a tracker that says, this card is worth this. It's sold for this for a million times, and nothing's been a reason to make that Honda Civic worth 2x besides in my term. The Civic scored 47 in the first game of the playoffs. They got 47 miles per gallon, bro. Come on. Exactly. Actually, you say that. So that's really funny. I was, I literally looked at this morning because I have 52 Wemby Silvers, PSA tens. I've been buying them for a while. I haven't posted on Facebook. Nobody's seen them.

They're literally sitting in a Zion case behind me here. I bought them for like $1,100 and I wanted to see what's going to happen when he gets into the playoffs. Five of them sold on Fanatics weekly, April 19th. So the day before yesterday for 2520, that was all five of them. One sold on eBay after he dropped 35 last night for 2750. And it's like, that I understand. Okay. We're in the moment. He dropped a bomb. Like, let's see how it goes. But come July when the season's over or maybe not July, but August, whatever, there's no reason for these jumps. Like there's a consistent brand share, what they're worth. Yeah. But maybe I'm on an island alone. Who knows?

No, I think, I think it's a good, I think it's just a good conversation to have. I agree with almost everything you're saying there. I just, it gets in my, are you more asking like what's going to happen when, because it's just a matter of time till these other platforms, it does upload to card ladder. Now it would only be for the, like those guys that we're not mentioning, we're not mentioning they're never going to do pre-bids ever. So it would not, it would not make the comp, but anybody that takes the time to list it with images and condition and all that, those could hit card letter. But I want to give us a thought here for context because the eBay market right now. So Gary and I are setting up an India Miller time show.

We're really looking forward. It's like 400 table show, really cool vignette, two days. Um, and there's going to be a lot of tops, chrome football that walks up. You guys are you already know where I'm going with this, right? And I'm going to pull up card ladder and there are going to be legitimate auction comps of a card at $200 and they're going to hand it to me. And I'm just going to hand the card back and say, I'm going to pass and they're going to be baffled. And the three of us know why, because yes, that's a real comp, but it is also a real comp of a product that has become, in my opinion, overpriced and it's first to market numbers.

And we all know two to three months from now, aside from this percentage of the cards from that set, it's going to settle down somewhere. Right? So Josh Allen, like that Josh Allen of one 50, the first one that sold the blue color match on it, do I miss it? $7,500. There are listed, there are listed PSA, 10 silver auto rookies listed for less than that card sold for. It's insane. I got offered a, uh, what was it? Kaiju. Is that how you say it? Yeah. The new case. The one posted comp on the market right now, I think it's 11, 11,000 for the cam word.

I can't offer me for eight grand last night. And I'm like, no, like, cause I'm one comp away at $6,000 for taking the bath. I actually posted in the room. Like don't get caught holding the bag. Yeah. I think there's a couple of things to that. If you look at the downtown craze in the Kaboom cream, the first year that you hear that every time you go to a show for sheer downtown, first year Kaboom, I know in six years, I don't, well, I don't know, but I know I'm going to hear in six years, first year, cause you first year tech mobile, whatever the, whatever the insert is am I missing on the opportunity now? Am I like, but I agree. Yeah. I think that you you're only missing on the opportunity. If you don't take advantage of the cycle of the product, if you want to buy a couple of kaijus or like for me, I want to buy at least one, if not a couple of those tech mobile, they're awesome. But I'm going to wait two months before I even think about it.

Once everything settles or then there's grab it and hold it long play. There's going to be two or three higher end football products that drop for 2025 in the next two, three months. They don't have that much time to get these out. So there's going to be a level of saturation with that rookie class. So I would definitely, I would wait a minute on, on some of that. If you're trying to buy it, wherever the established established value is going to land for a little bit. Let me ask you, cause I just had a conversation with a gentleman in the room who actually hit one of the tech mobiles. You get the patch homes one. Oh, that's nasty. Do you sell it now raw or do you gamble and try to get a 10 on it? Cause what's the market going to be like in maybe 15, 20 days when you get it, whatever level you go with, where's the market going to be? Is it going to be higher raw now, or is it going to be high? You are talking, you are talking to two guys who believe very firmly that you can never sell something too fast. Like, like we, we are all about velocity. Like, um, it, I don't see a world where that is a card that makes sense to grade. Um, I'll push back there only. Well, let me rephrase you push back. Let me finish my thought. And then you can push back. I don't, I want to agree with the full thought. I want to disagree with that. I'm what I'm saying is sell that my homes right now. If you want to grade one, buy another one in two months for 40% less than what you sold yours for, and then grade it. And there's your upside and it's built into, you're still pocketed a little bit from it. Here's my argument to it. Look at the Cooper flag, top scrum rookie. I know it's completely different ball game altogether.

The first, or even I think it was, I think it was also the Drake. Maybe the first PSA tend to market when I think it was Cooper flag was going for just some stupid money. Yeah. What's going to sell more the first rod of market? Like then you put your premium, whatever, two X, whatever number you want to go with. What's the first PSA 10 going to get you? Because I think probably the next month or two, you're going to start seeing a lot of these new, well, I know we're switching terms here, but talk to them. Basketball cards that people send for bulk are going to start hitting the market. What are those going to do? What's the first LeBron James? I agree with you entirely, but just from the jump, what's the first pro tops Chrome in a pro union, LeBron James, PSA, 10 silver, Raywick, whatever number you want to go with. What's that going to do? Is it going to outsell the two X multiplier from what the raw ones did? We're using the wrong card, but you get what I'm saying. That's all I'm getting. I think it's the timing is it. So it's like, if you have the confidence that you're going to be the first to market, great. If five PSA 10s pop before yours, you're screwed. Whoops. Whoops. You better go walk through and you better be sure, and you better be sure it's going to Jim. Cause that walkthrough is going to cost you two grand, but my homes is the right. This was my pushback. If there was a quarterback right now that I think has a good bit of upside going into the season, just because it's like recency bias with his market. I think it's him. I think if there is a quarterback, that's going to see a little love in general, their whole market going into August, September. I can't imagine that he's not one of those. So timing's everything. If you're going to play that game, if you're going to send it off, go express. Can I afford to send this to be sure I'm the first one to market?

What did you not with walkthrough? How much did you say that is right now? Depends on the card. It's going to be anywhere from what? Two to 10, right? So that was, I don't, you probably saw it. There's a cause you Brady up right now. Yeah. On eBay. I posted it yesterday. How much money? I don't know who it is. And if you're watching, I'm sorry, but how much money did you spend to get that card back in three days? A lot. Well, if you want to put a tinfoil hat on, I think there's some relationships that move these things along a little quicker for people, but fair enough. But cause I think it was at 17 grand. I have no idea what it's going to end at, but I've made a comment like you're, you must've been, you're going to eat into your profit.

Let's call it five grand. I don't know what it's going to go for, but maybe 20% of your sale price is going to be, or maybe it goes for 50. I have no idea, but I think it'd be better than a Patriot uniform, but that's just mine. It's just that whole tops Chrome market has been wild, wild to watch. I told, you know, Marcus and Noah, we've been on this cruise ship and I was talking to them and I was like, I'm kind of glad I wasn't here for this insanity because just watching it from afar has been absolutely wild. It gets on a boat and then they have the fanatics credit card that drops PSA action. Uh, the, what is it? Trust lawsuit that drops a tops. Chrome football was a disaster for out LCS direct accounts. Um, and the repat rebuy. So yeah, it was, it was a lot, but like watching some of this stuff, like another room that I know you're into is called old school and I don't like the room. Um, but watching some of the offers that had been made that people have said no to has, I mean like, like eighth year, I know it's first year tops Chrome license for 15 years, whatever. But like some of the five figure offers that people are saying no deal to on like third tier players is just wild behavior. I'm like, what, what do you think you're going to get for this? I love Gary and I love that room. But the one thing I love most of the rooms, it, it reminds me import that whenever I get on that room and I see a monster, I'm like, yep, there's no shit. And then they turned down 80 grand. I'm like, yeah, it must be nice to say, no, I don't need that $80,000 for this piece of plastic right here. I'm like, Oh my God. It's wild. But you've seen it with this, this tops Chrome stuff. I know that the eBay market on the low end side of it has just, if it's a color right now, it doesn't matter who it is. It's going to get five bucks.

You don't know. That's I have major FOMO. So Durkee, I made the shift out. I was doing high volume, but mostly low end. And it got to the point where Gary and I get back from a weekend show. I had two days of shipping. I couldn't do anything for two days for eBay. It was just, yes, for eBay. So I pulled way, way back. I'm having some success with live selling. But man, if I was sitting on some of that, like I would be putting base up right now because it's so expensive and scarce. I would be putting base rookies up and they would be flying.

So I'm missing out on the fun with that. But we like Gary and I thought it was before we, we'd probably buy very similar when it comes to larger deals with the price per card situation. Like I know probably come father's day timeframe, maybe, maybe even this weekend, cause I'm setting up at a show. You'll have a bunch of, you'll have a bunch of bases. Like what do I pay for it? Like what it's cool to own, but it's like, you look at a prism card now, you know, as long as it's not the big rookie, it's a dime 30 cent card, whatever you want to pay per card. And then I'm going to offer it to somebody that's like, no, every card sells for $4. Like, well, uh, I can't, I'll talk to you in three months. Like, well, that was you, you posted, you posted a box. You do this occasionally in sick where you'll just post a four row.

Hey, you posted one a couple of days ago and will tagged me. And uh, I did, I have no idea what was in the box. It might've been the greatest value in the history of the world, but I did the math on the price per card and went, Nope, doesn't work for me. And that's exactly what I priced it. It's exactly. I priced it at $4 a card. Yeah. Or maybe it was three. Uh, I forget. I'm actually sitting right over there. Um, but that's you and I buy very similar comes out. I look at a box because I don't kind of, when I'm thinking about whatnot, I look at it as I might lose money on this card. I might make money in the next car, but I need to figure out what I'm into essentially every card for, especially when they're all the same value. No one of you, a $2 card, what might be a $5 card. But when you go to whatnot, if I have 30 people in the room, 29 of them might hate Tracy McGrady, but I get that one or two guys that like Tracy McGrady.

Now that Tracy McGrady number card is going to go from $2 to $8. All right. Well, that helps me out math wise. I'll lose money on the next Jackson dart. And that's, that's where I like eBay more because now I can put them all up, say, all right, $8 a card, make offer. All right. $6 for the Ron Laconia, $7 for the Tracy McGrady. Trayvon Green goes for six and it moves. The other side though, that I like with eBay is the under 20 thing. That is my perfect wheelhouse because you're guaranteed that money no matter what, you know, we talk about reputation and sketchy stuff within the hobby.

You put a card on eBay and it sells for $25. I ship it to Gary, Gary gets it says, Hey, this card's beat the shit. Or, you know, he's not happy with the condition. I got to make it right. You send a card, you get $18 and it sends off in their new envelope program. It gets to Gary and he's like, it never showed up. Cause let's just say it happens all the time. You still get that money as a seller through their insurance policy. Whereas that's why I like the under $20 stuff. Cause I know as soon as you pay me for that card, I'm getting that money 95% of the time, as long as it doesn't get complete, like the plane doesn't crash.

Um, so I liked that part of it. So that's why we hit, we had 115 cards that sold that we had. Well, not me. My wife had to ship last night. Love her. Thank you. Uh, Rachel, exactly. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be able to do anything. Oh, I give you hell all the time. I'm all, it's always team Rachel. I hashtag it. You know, going back to your reputation. So like what we talked about earlier, when I meet people, she's one of the, she's, if she's next, she's the first person I make sure that they meet as well, because no lie, if she wasn't there, nobody would get half their stuff.

Like you're like, Oh, you ship on time. No, she, she, she does. I print the label, but she actually runs it. Like she does all that stuff for me, which I'm grateful for, but she deserves that credit. Not me. Well, let's let's let's that's, that might be a good segue into this, this last thing we wanted to talk about. And I made sure before we put this on the list that I talked about. So if you're watching this, this is not me springing this on, on Ryan at all. Um, so you talked about losing your dad a few years ago.

I, my dad's been gone for five, 16 years now. Um, so I've been through that and I remember you going through that. And then shortly after that, um, you became sober and I noticed a big shift in you and how you interacted with people. Um, like what kind of was the impetus for that? And then how has the hobby helped that journey or hurt that journey? Um, like, what has that all been like for you? Uh, the biggest thing with, for me with going sober, um, this is not a joke, but it's meant to be funny that there's 24 hours in a day, um, 24 hours to do business, because when I was drinking, you know, there was, it was basically card for two hours and then beer for whatever it can go to bed as far as how it helped me in the hobby.

Um, financially, obviously that improved as well, but more the people, um, you know, it's, you can now talk to somebody and, you know, you're not worried about that type of stuff, like the drinking and getting all that I can actually connect with more people. So out of everything, that's the one thing, like, I can actually talk to somebody and remember it the next day. Um, that is huge for many things like, and also with whatnot, going back to it. I don't gamble as much on, you know, breaks and repacks and all that type of stuff.

So, um, the sober part of me, like, uh, you, everyone knows him, Bobby Frazier, um, phenomenal guy. There's a photo on Facebook somewhere, wherever him and I meeting at the national one time, and it's me behind the table and there was 13 bud light cans on the table, and then I ran into him, um, at the national last year, which I just passed a year and a half sober. And I won't say exactly what he said to me, but what he said to me. Just hit me. And I know he's not the only one in that there's actually people out there that care about you, even though you maybe never met them, there's a thousand horses behind you that actually give a shit about your life.

And I, now I can see it. And that is just, I mean, I'm going to get emotional. That's okay. It's it was, uh, it's a big part of my life that I'm just very, very glad it's behind me. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's a good thing. I mean, the, you, you said earlier, like, uh, being able to remember things the next day. I, there were, there were legit times and you know, this, I would message you something and you would see it and you would respond and you, the response was usually, okay, I'll get to that.

And then like three days later, now that I messaged you back, what were we talking about again? Yep. Yep. Nope. Absolutely. And it was, it's, it's, it's just a much clearer, it makes it more enjoyable because you meet somebody that you've never met before to show, and you can actually connect with them, like not to get on a tangent, but I think that part is massively missing within the hobby, the relationship side of it. It it's just, it's way too much transactional now, whereas I would rather know, I'd rather you not buy a card for me, but I'd rather know, not like everything about you, but know, Hey, your, your son plays baseball.

You had a great day. You got to hit whatever that side outruns any amount of money that you could ever make in this hobby. Cause we talk about it all the time. I tell people, I would much rather you not buy or sell something from me or to and walk away feeling good about the interaction that we had. And then we get a shot at it the next time, then you buy or sell something to me and walk away going, I don't feel good about that at all. Like the relationships definitely matter, especially when you're trying to do this for a living.

This is something we tell our listeners. Cause you know, there's a lot of our listeners are other dealers or people who are aspiring to be. Um, and a percentage point or two here or there is not worth the long-term relationship at all. You're going to do so much better working with people and making things two-way streets and helping each other. Then you ever will trying to squeeze an extra 2% out of one deal, because all that does is put somebody a bad taste. It tells me what I'm buying. If the first thing you say to me is, well, what percentage do you pay?

Well, all I know is that if the next guy says 1% more than me, you're never coming to me again. And it doesn't matter how much I've taken care of you or how much money I spent with you or whatever else. So yeah, I'm with you there. It's, uh, it's, it's very, it's like you go to a show and just being in a wheelchair. There's an amazing how you actually literally walk right into me. Cause they're down looking at their phone, like they're just staring at their phone, not even looking up cause they're trying to comp the car that they just looked at.

It's like, well, just talk to them. Like, just like, you can ask that guy on the other side of the table will tell you what a concert he knows, but you're afraid to ask him. Well, I tell people I've gotten to the point where I'm starting to become the grumpy old dealer at shows. Hold on. Time out. Oh, easy now. I'm I've, I've won it. Like if, if the first thing somebody does when they want to look at a card is they start saying, well, I just stop them like guys, I have a sticker on the card, just make an offer.

What do you think? I don't, I don't, I don't need you to give me your rationale for it behind seven different things. Just what are you thinking? If I can do it, I'm going to say, yes, I'm not going to ask for five bucks more. I'm not going to try to negotiate seven ways from Sunday. I'm here to sell cards, not show and tell them. Right. But like, just make an offer and then we'll go from there. Like, I don't get, I don't get that. That is one of the, I had a great conversation with the guy at the mall show last week, if you vend every weekend or you've been three weekends a year, you know, 95% of the guys that are coming up to your table, the buy cards are buying to flip.

They're buying to make their, they're sending it to another repacket. They're doing whatever they want to do. So you can either, and I've been this way too. I am this way with certain cards. Firm on your number, like that niche cards. I'm firm on those, but those diamond dozen pop 7,500 cards. Take them, take them. Exactly. If I'm, you know, hopefully I bought it at 70, 80, whatever percent in a larger deal. You want to give me 92, 88. I don't give a coot about what the number is. If a plus B or a minus B is more than what I paid for it.

Have the card. Cause I know if I give you a good deal, when I get 150 more of those exact same level slabs, you're coming back to see me before you go to anywhere else in the show. And it's like, all right, well, you gave me $3,000 in cash. Maybe next year on that more now it's six. Now I'm like, all right, every show I go to, if you're going to it, no matter what, when the doors open, I got an extra X amount of grand to then restock throughout the whole show. And I'm not grinding out the 10, 15, $20 extra because I want to have fun.

Well, and, and it's that whole ice. The way I say it is there's plenty of cards in my showcases that we can both make some money on. There's a few that I'm making the money on. That's just how it is. If you want those cards, that's kind of the price or real daggone close. Uh, everything else, if it makes sense, my goal, my job, the hardest part of this job is buying. My goal is to buy things right enough that what number you throw at me, I feel good about, and you feel good about. Yep. So I have the exact same thing with our display case.

There's like 40 cards that everything else will be easy. My man, these ones, you're probably not going to like me, but we'll figure it out. If it says Tom Brady on the front, you're not going to like me. I know, I know what that showcase looks like. All right. So I told you when we started, before we started the interview, there's one question we ask everybody, and you've had an hour to maybe roll it around in your head here. So if, if somebody is wanting to jump into the world that you live in, which is running a, a good size Facebook group, uh, that you've built a brand and then launch in an eBay store, getting into the business side of this world in the way that you did.

What would you tell them? 1, 2, 3, 5, whatever things give them the best chance to be successful. Um, most importantly, honor your word, you know, stay with, you know, stay with treating people right. Make sure that you like do the basic stuff, um, the right way, but in all honesty, stay humble because in this world, you can lose it in five seconds. If you don't, if you do the wrong thing, so just take care of people and you'll get rewarded on the backend side of it, but never, never take it for granted because we live in a world where you make one mistake, you can lose it all in a heartbeat.

And that's whether you deserve to or not really. Um, so just be mindful of what you're doing and make sure you're taking into account what other people are thinking and be respectful of them. And don't put the money first, put the people first. That's really it. That's probably as corny as it can possibly get, but I mean it entirely. Yeah. The relationships outlast the money more than anything in the world. Yeah. I agree. Okay. I guess the last thing we got here is the floor is yours. Where can the people find you?

We've been talking about the Facebook room, but this throw the spiel out Facebook, the eBay, the, what, that, where can people find you if they want to interact with you, buy from you, sell to you, all that good stuff. So Facebook six sports cards, I think my name shows up in here, but Ryan Durkee, um, so many messages there. We can figure it out. eBay cards on wheels. I am really cool. So the cards is actually with a Z. Um, you know, yeah. 1997. Exactly. That's, that's when I was really cool. Um, I do have an Instagram six sports cards, three, five, eight, two.

Um, I check it every now and then, but honestly, I'll be at the national. I'll be any local show in new England. I'm at at least one day for the most part. Um, but Facebook is probably the best way to get ahold of me. And then I give out my phone number to everybody, so I won't blast it here, but I prefer to communicate that way just cause it's real life. Um, on my phone, it's on all day long versus every different there's 9,000 different apps or whatnot, actually. Sorry. What? Not as well. Six sports cards.

Awesome. Yeah. That's where you meet me. Well, we appreciate you taking some time with us today, Ryan. This is one that I, uh, started asking you about a few months ago. Well, I'm glad we were finally able to get it on the schedule guys. Make sure you give Ryan and sick of follow y'all. Thanks again, man. And we will see you at the national. Yes, sir. Take care guys. Thanks. All right. So be sure to check out, uh, all the different platforms that Ryan mentioned there, whether it's the eBay store, um, whether it's the Facebook group or just hit them up on a, on a profile.

But I, I really appreciated his ability to kind of share a story of the business side, but then also to just share his heart about what care, what he cares about. And, uh, I don't know. I haven't spent as much time with him as you have Gary, but it's really clear to me that he means what he's saying about those relationships and community. Um, so be sure to give him some love, go follow him, go check out the eBay store. I do know the man buys a lot of cards, so it's definitely worth seeing what, what hits the store.

Is that scaling out? Um, let's see if everybody, a quick reminder, uh, what we got going on. So as this episode drops, I am flying from Vegas to Indy to meet Gary. I should land right at three or I should land at the facility at three. So right when it's starting up, uh, we will be in Noblesville, Indiana at the Miller time show. I know we had mentioned Northgate before, uh, that was on the calendar. This is, as we shared, there've been some larger shows, more region we're branching out. So, uh, heading back to Indiana, um, uh, for that one this week.

Uh, so be sure to come hang out. If you're catching this Friday, we're there this evening and then, uh, Saturday as well, whatnot, every Sunday at four 30. Um, so, uh, be sure to take advantage of that. Anything else, Gary? Uh, no, I think that, that you nailed almost everything there. Make sure that if you haven't yet hit that little like button down here, hit that subscribe button over here. It helps us a ton. Uh, you guys are going to see some really cool stuff happening over the next few weeks, a new partnership that we, uh, have, have, uh, solidified.

Uh, so you're going to see some presence there on the pod. We're excited about, um, other than that, not it. I think that's it. This has been the ball card show. The sports podcasts for the sports collector. Bye now. Peace.