What Makes A Show Great - Brad Beeman Season 6 Ep. 3

About this episode

Brad Beeman envisioned a small show in Shipshewana Indiana as a fun way to engage in the hobby. At present day Shipshewana Card Fest, Grove City Card Fest, and In The Fort are established must attend card shows in the Midwest. How did he build it and what should every show promoter do to be a success in this space?Keith of Neuhart Cards breaks down inventory management for shop owners. Gary and Jason do a little show and tell from the show last weekend.Keith Neuhart- @theneuhartcardsBrad Beeman-  @bee_sports The Ballcard Show: Jason OteroGary LeMaster

This episode is published by Ball Card Show.

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Transcript

Machine transcript — exact wording may vary.

Hello, and welcome to the Ball Card Show, the sports podcast for the sports collector. I'm Jason Otero. I'm Gary Lomaster, and this is season six, episode three. Boy, we've almost made it through the worst of the weather, but we're almost done with, well, no, not at all. It's just a hopeful, hopeful, hopeful thought, but, uh, football is almost done for the year. And then we hit this weird little lull waiting for baseball, but the first month or so of baseball is exciting. But then you got, I mean, we're just kind of getting ready to hit that drought. I'm a little, there's not much of a drought though.

Think about it. Um, pitchers report February 20th, Gary, 90% of people don't get excited about the reporting pitchers. I do 10%. I do are the 10%. Those of us that like baseball, even love baseball, but don't get into the weeds on the prospecting spring training and all that jazz. We feel just abandoned for like two to three months. Yeah. I'm sorry that that happens to you. You can fix that by just really nerding out over minor league baseball. Yeah. I've got relationships with people. I, um, as I'm wearing a Bowman hat, I feel like a hypocrite right now. Oh, that's funny about the football. I mean, first off, we didn't talk about this much, but, uh, just looking over the last week, we had so many close games, the entire playoffs. It was, it's been a great matchup. Fantastic. So we're now we're championship games. Um, you've got need a new head coach. I wasn't on my bingo card. I kind of had a feeling if they didn't get to the super bowl this year, it was probably going to be time, which, which stinks. Cause I think Sean McDermott's a really good coach, but I think we're back to saying exactly what I've said every year when everybody loses their mind over Josh Allen, it's the same. Go look back, look over the record, six seasons of it. This happens in big games late in the season. Yeah. I'm not going to disagree with you. I'm just going to say that there are extenuating things. He's had extenuating things every year. I don't disagree. The same thing happened to Jim Kelly back in the day. Like I would, I would think, I would, I would think that Josh Allen is a far more talented quarterback than Jim Kelly. And I'm not trying to dog Jim Kelly, but I'm just saying a different animal that is a different type of athlete. Oh yeah. He's a different type of athlete than most humans. But you have that, the Seahawks look like that was like the Niners might've been a little down. They they're not a bad team guys. Well, that was the thing. Like I watched that game and about halfway through the second quarter, I realized the Niners are out here giving it what they got. They're not playing bad. They're down Kittle, right?

They're down Kittle. There's some blocking there for sure that they depend on. There's some, yeah, but it was in general, the Seahawks right now look like the best team that's left. I think that we likely end up with a new England, Seattle super bowl. I don't think there's, I don't hate it. I don't hate it either. I don't think there's a world where the Jarrett Stidham led Broncos can, wouldn't that be something that would be something. I mean, if you're a gambling man, it's not a bad way to go buy some steady rookies and see what happens. I know you already caught that Stidham wave once. I did. If you caught it a second time, you still had value boxes. You'd be digging right now. So, and then Seattle, I think they beat the Rams. The Rams don't look great. Like there happened to squeak stuff out staff. One thing you don't give them is another week. One thing you don't give that program is another week to play. And that's, well, you don't give them an extra drive. Like both the playoff games, give them too much time. They look flat because they had 30 seconds to put a drive together. You know what I mean? Like they're good. They're really good. Uh, but it's been fun to watch. It's not been all blowouts. There's been some good games. No, only two blowouts. Every other game has been with a touchdown or less and right down to the wire. It's been a lot of fun to watch it play off football this year. Seeing the bears lose was a little bit heartbreaking, especially the way that they lost Caleb Williams makes one of the greatest playoff throws on a fourth down that I've ever seen to get the game to overtime. I had to, that ball had to carry a little ways by the way, guys running away, actively running away. Yes. And then for DJ more to do that.

Listen folks, DJ more stopped his route, right? Is that what happened? He, he, he, he took the route about seven yards deeper than it's supposed to go. And he jogged the last half of it. There is such a massive green space. Like I watched chase. Daniel does a really good job of breaking this stuff down. A former NFL quarterback chase Daniel. And there is a massive green area. That's all Caleb Williams sees. It's perfect. It's the perfect play call. He throws the perfect pass and DJ more just hangs him out to dry. Otherwise the bears are playing to go to the super bowl next week. Yeah. So yeah. Anyhow, that team is young.

That team is talented. They've got a really good coach. Yeah. Bears are going to be a problem for a little while. Yeah. And I'm not annoyed yet, but it's going to get annoying soon. I can tell you that about the Chicago fan base. There's usually empathy and sympathy because of the historic traditions. Right. But man, when they start winning games, that's a rough crowd to be around. Well, weren't you telling me that, uh, that, uh, game warrants Mike Dick, a sweater sideline sweater is up on golden right now. Oh, it was that now this was days ago. It was at 140 grand. Yeah. And Dick has a letter of like, yep, I wore this in the super bowl. Now that's like, that's sweet. If some popular bar in Chicago buys that and throws it on the wall, gets Dick going to come in, you know, to, for the hanging of it, that'd be huge. Yup. Yup. Yeah. That'd be pretty sweet. Uh, let's give people a little update. So today on the show, we've got some fun stuff coming up. I'm really excited. Uh, once again, Keith Newhart's going to be joining us for shop talk. Looking forward to that.

That'll be a regular segment. Quick reminder to our listeners. You can submit questions for Keith, any of the comments, whether it's on YouTube, Instagram, Tik TOK, Facebook. What am I forgetting? Is that it? Threads X X. We do have an exit count. Now we're there. So I'm going to get a blue check Mark soon, dude. Oh boy. Uh, I'm pretty sure you can go buy those now. So it's a little bit exciting. Don't throw water on my excitement. Yep. We're famous. Uh, the, uh, the other part of the show that we're really excited about.

So make sure to comment there for Keith so that we know stuff that you want to hear a shop owner talk about. Uh, and then Brad Beeman, uh, show promoter in the Midwest. We spent a lot of time bragging on him, the great work he does with shows. He is going to let us look under the hood of the process of promoting shows. We're going to ask some questions. What works, what doesn't, what do dealers do that drive promoters nuts and vice versa. We'll talk about that. Looking forward to that coming up here in just a few minutes.

And then a reminder to you of some shows that are coming up. So as we listen to this next week, last weekend of the month, we will be on Saturday at the Ohio state card show, the K six center and the fairgrounds. That's a greenie show. We're excited about being there for that. We've got a few tables, a lot of familiar faces will be there. And then the following day we'll be at grove city card fest, which they've now expanded to two gyms, one gym, 75 plus tables for TCG, Pokemon, all that fun stuff. And then the real players get that auxiliary gym to themselves. Baby all sports cards. I think it's over 200 tables in that room too. So that show continues to grow. Those will be busy ones. I'll tell you this right now. If Saturday's decent for Gary and I, we would love the opportunity to buy your cards on Sunday. Come see us on Sunday. We're going to be wiped. We may be sitting in one showcase waiting to buy. So we should have some money on us. So, uh, be sure to bring that stuff by and hang out. We have several other bigger regional shows. Should I make an announcement yet? Or should we wait one more week on a February one we're doing?

Um, let's wait one more week. All right. We got one that we're really excited to share with you. Hopefully next week we'll be dropping that and then we'll be in our regular rotation again. Uh, last week, Cincinnati, man, I'm doing a lot of talking here. Why don't you break down the show and then let's do a little bit of show and tell. I thought maybe we could talk through, you know, what we were thinking, the deal that walked up, why we bought what we bought, but let's show off a few cards here. Yeah. So we, we've talked about the Eastgate mall show down in Cincinnati that a city to city card shows puts on a, it is truly becoming a one of the better, uh, if not top three or four shows, a monthly shows in the Ohio Valley region. Uh, it's over 400 tables now and the traffic is, the foot traffic is always fantastic. Um, the promoter works really hard to, to keep it booked and full of dealers. Um, it's not quite a 50 50 split between Pokemon and sports. I'd say it's still 60 40, uh, sports to Pokemon, but with over 400 tables, that means you're going to get at least 220 to 250 tables of sports cards. And if you're a Pokemon person, there's plenty for you there too on the gaming side of things. Uh, one of the reasons I enjoy the show so much besides the fact that it's a great selling show for us is some of the coolest, most interesting, unique stuff walks up to the table and all price points too.

Yes. At all price points and stuff that hasn't sold in years or hasn't ever sold, um, walks up to the table. Uh, the only thing that I didn't buy that I really wanted to buy, uh, and I bought four other cards from the gentleman, but he had a 2007 top Sterling game used Babe Ruth, um, patches and bat. Um, we just couldn't quite get there on that card, but about four other cards from him. Um, I'll show you the first one, uh, from that. Let's go back and forth too. So it's not, we don't want a lot of people to death. All right. So this is not my favorite card, but it was my favorite card from that deal. 2010 tops, finest Ken Griffey jr. That's the gold number to 50. Now this card hadn't sold raw in four years.

Um, there was a PSA seven sale in December for $350. Um, I was very excited to grab that card anytime I can grab rare, shiny, licensed Griffey stuff. I'm all in. Yeah. That's my only thought process there. I don't disagree. And that parallel is a goal. Hold that back up again because if you see this subset, look close now, angle it down a little bit. Like it wouldn't take much for you to think that's just a refractor. And I know some of you were like, turn it over to that, but it looks a little bit more silver until you turn that over and see that it is actually to 50. If somebody else is just threw it in a value box and you're just flying through it. Yeah. You see something a little shiny. Check the back. That's a pretty cool one. Um, so some of my stuff came up and I did a lot of lot purchases, but I'll start off with a PC card that I could not believe. So a guy brought up some stuff that was really great. Two shows ago, we hung out for like 30, 45 minutes as the show was wrapping up. He had all the right names and he was willing to work with me on margin. I bought several cards. And then at the end of the show, again, he walks up and one of the cards he has out is 2016 unparalleled Dan Marino, number two, 10 color match. Just, and I, he had a number on it at first that I just wasn't too sure. And I said, look man, if you're in the ballpark of the number I'm comfortable with, I will buy this. I will put it in a box and it'll probably never leave that box until I'm not here anymore. And I kind of put them in these, except when I pull this out to look at it, but PC card, really cool. Uh, it's from an era where they were trying weird stuff with the designs at mid 2010. So 2016 up parallel Marino 10 PC, not going anywhere. Really happy to find that one. Oh yeah, absolutely. So I'm going to show another Griffey next and this will be the last Griffey that I'm going to show.

Now this American hero subset that upper deck did, there's a lot of them. So the, the numbering, this one's numbered one of three, uh, Griffey jr auto. Um, there are probably what, 40 or 50 cards in that subset, right? Jason. Oh, American hero has a ton. It's a ton and there's all kinds of way more than that. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Of three, there's probably a hundred of three cards out there. And the of threes. Yeah. Yeah. Of the of threes. Right. Um, but what I like about this one, two things, one, the auto is gorgeous too. It's the, the image where he's just finishing that iconic swing. It's in its Mariners uni. So, um, that's one that again, you know, you'll notice a theme and you hear us talk about it a lot for me, this type of stuff. I want to buy stuff that there's not a lot of comps for. There's not a lot of information out there on, and it's the right player and the right kind of card.

Um, this is a card that the most recent sale, um, was the first one in about a year. And it was a couple of months ago and it did in a red genie, I think did three 70 something. Okay. So I, I think this is probably a $400 card in the Mariner shitty, but it's my guess. Time will tell. I don't think it'll take too long to find out. Now that American hero set, um, I had a one-on-one that sold from that set. And it, again, it's like one for each game or something that we're talking. Yeah. Um, there's a gentleman who is building out and collecting all of the one-on-ones. I remember you telling me about that. Gary and I talk about collectability and, uh, affordability being able to meet. And that set is a great example of that because it is made so many, uh, cards in the set. Um, they aren't super unattainable. Now you're not going to see them that often, but the one of ones have a little cut with a highlight from the game. It's like a little cut. It's supposed to look like it's a scorecard or something. Right. Right. But They're accessible 50 to a hundred bucks.

It's a licensed one of one Griffey. And so this guy that bought one off of me has 270 of the one of ones. I just thought that was cool. So it's like, he's collecting Griffey one-on-ones and their license. And most of them are under a hundred dollars. Those sets are out there. And having that kind of a, of a PC means that you always have something cool to look for at every show you go to keep an eye out. Yeah. And there's a lot of people that listen that are a little bit critical and say, collecting is dead.

It's all about the flip. It's not, it's not. And I'll tell you this, the city of Cincinnati has a lot more collectors per capita than Columbus does. Oh yeah. Columbus is man. Like I think there's something to that, but I also think something for us. And if you're a person that sits on our side of the table, listening to this, one of the reasons Jason, that I think we feel that way. And I agree with you to an extent on that, but I also think that our showcases have gotten more and more tailored to the collector than to the person trying to flip stuff.

I think so. I still try to put 25% stuff that if a repacker wants to come through and give me a few grand off the rip at the beginning of the show, always a good feeling, always a good feeling. Notice the stickers. That's where we start. Yeah. What's your, I had some fun stuff. This is one of them. Guy walks up, hands me a leaf patch. I explained why I can't offer him anywhere close to what he wants. Then he offers, it shows another card. Once again, we can't get there. But I said, you know, I really like that kind of stuff.

And here's why. Then he reaches in his pocket. He's like, I've got a couple more, but I doubt you'll want them. And he pulls out two of these leaf Pele game. So gross. Both of them are two color and they're both numbered to three. Yeah. So gross. He set the comp on these. There's not any other recent ones and the cup is coming up. Yeah. So my thought was get it with some margin at all. I got a little bit, I think I was probably around 80%, uh, which is strong for me, but you know what Pele game used to three.

Yep. You get that. You get that. So again, leaf does some weird stuff. The game used Pele two color patches. I'll buy those. Yep. Absolutely. Sign me up. I know about soccer balls. All right, next, this is one I actually got from JT. Uh, if you guys remember, we were interviewed JT from triple crown 24 a few weeks ago. Um, I realized that this guy is on the AB train right now. However, he's still going to be a first ballot hall of famer. And that is a Tyree kill national treasures. Rookie auto numbered one of 25.

Um, again, a card that doesn't sell very often. The last direct on this card was I think 350 bucks. Uh, and it's a card that I don't personally care to hang on to for a year or two, if I need to. Uh, I don't think I will, but again, first, how much, how much was that card in COVID? Oh, I didn't look that back far back, but I bet it was probably pretty close what he was at his peak with the chiefs. I bet it was pretty, this market was pretty untouchable there for a little bit. It was a little expensive.

Yeah. Uh, okay. Uh, next one that I'm going to run is, uh, just this vintage because Cincinnati, if you have, there's a huge advantage in some cities to just have one nice, clean showcase of vintage in there with enough stuff where people know this guy kind of is interested in vintage. Yeah. When that happens, more stuff walks up to you within the first 30 minutes of the show, somebody walks up with three 55 Bowman's for me to take a crack at that whole deal ended up being awesome. Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Ernie banks, low grade.

Don't care. Old SGC slab. Don't care. Excessive awesome set. Yes, exactly. So when we talk about affordability and collectability, give me low grade, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays on 55 Bowman, 70 year old hall of fame cards, which by the way. This is such a cheesy design. I love that design. Well, you look at your hat. I mean, it makes sense, right? Like it's, think about this now. So like when you remember like the late nineties, upper deck did some weird stuff with like UD three and there was the UD was a UD X and it was all Y2K stuff where it was supposed to like a phone or pager or whatever.

Like I have an Iverson rookie of it right now. It's kind of the same thing. It was a nod to the technology, a color TV. Right. And for those of you who aren't familiar with that stuff that far back, the new Bowman anime case hits, those are based on, yep. They're based off of the 55 Bowman. Tons of this stuff walked up, but a lot more of it went out. Clean Pete Rose vintage. This is something that you're going to see in Cincinnati shows on a regular basis. If you love vintage baseball, the cleanest 64.

I didn't, I wasn't too sure about that one. I know, but man, it was nice when they're that clean and somebody has had it for a while and they know cards. I'm real hesitant of like, why didn't this get sent off? Why is that? But I can't buy and sell at the same time, Gary. I know we're like starting to get lines. Sometimes it shows. Yeah, it does get a little crazy because I'm happy talking with that one person over a $10 card for 30 minutes. Everyone's shocked to hear that. I'm happy talking. I'm not done with my vintage, Gary.

You got to, I'm not. Okay. What happens? Okay. And that was like your favorite one. And you know, it's not. My favorite one. I'm saving for last. This walked up to on-card IP, Ricky Henderson, rookie card. Okay. Auto 10 auto 10. They did it with an expo marker though. I mean, look at that. That's all right. 2006 Bowman Chrome, Ivan Rodriguez, orange refractor. Number two, 25 nasty. Um, yeah, I, I've already had a couple people reach out to me on Instagram about this card. Uh, I don't think I'll have it by the time we set up at a show again.

That's my, I guess. Our buddy up in Michigan that loves the same modern stuff we do. He's one of them. Um, now I'll be a very honest. I have it priced higher than the last couple of PSA nine sales. Those are the only two sales in 2025, um, because it's clean and there are none available right now. And you kind of don't mind keeping it. And the nice thing, well, the nice thing about a super short printed card from this era, 25 or less. I have the one that's available right now that anybody knows of.

Yep. Don't want to be a jerk, but nothing makes you happier than having that kind of leverage in a negotiation. Gary, let's not, not at all. That's a, that's a fair, fair statement. All right. Right at the end of the show, right at the end of the show, this walked up. And at first I didn't pay attention. Then I realized it's an auto. The heavy lumber, Daryl strawberry auto on a bat relic. Uh, now this fetches a lot more than most of his autos do. I was a little bit surprised because these heavy lumber sets are pretty liquid.

Plus you got the old school pinstripe Mets uni, the Mets market. I'm very interested to see what happens, um, this year with that, but man. Yep. Strawberry hit too. Okay. I think it's game used bat, right? Yeah. Yeah. There's a factor stacking. It has a lot of things. Yeah. Factor stacking that reseller language. Got a lot of things. What do you got? You got two left. I got two left. I got two left. I'm saving the best for last second. Best here. Retail blue. Prism Baker Mayfield rookie. Now everybody knows the retail blues are SSP, but prior to like 2020 or 2021, the acknowledged kind of commonly known print run on these was seven or less.

Can I quote you on the kind of commonly known? Yeah, sure. Um, so this particular card again, and this is a super weird one. It sold last in 2023. It's sold three times in 2023. You talk about a range for 700. It's sold for 200 and it sold for 56. Now the $56 sale, the listing just said Baker Mayfield prism. It didn't say retail blue. It didn't say SSP. So it was a weird listing. Um, it hasn't sold since he became what he is now. Right. As far as the hobby goes, but a retail red sold a few weeks ago for two 60, I believe, and the reds are about three times, three and a half times as printed as the blues.

So my guess is it's a four to $500 card. Uh, I don't know for sure, but we're going to find out again. It's one of those things. And I think I have the only one that is available right now. Yeah. I was going to say, I bet you could move that, move it at three 50. I think if, if it's one where you don't mind parking, I mean, but man, Baker's got a weird fan base. Some people go nuts over it. Yep. And it's gotta be the right thing though. I had an RPA sitting there and I was just getting beat over the head with a couple of bad comps that popped off on that card, but everybody wanted it.

They just didn't want to acknowledge the other three comps that happened recently, right? So I was like, I mean, I'd rather sit on this and watch the next 10 comps go low. I was an idiot. I should have unparked. Um, okay. This next one represents a trade that was phenomenal for me. So early in the show, I picked up a paradox Cooper flag. I had, Oh shoot. What was the other one? I picked up a Oh six Sterling. Oh, seven Sterling. I was so annoyed. So much bat. Oh yeah. I haven't forbid. I don't get the, uh, you know, I get one of those kinds of cards.

I get Gary's leaving me the scraps on the table and then complains when I get something. But I worked out a trade for a whole stack of show Hayes, but one of my favorites, I got this as a PSA 10 at the national right before show. Hey, went off is the deckle edge. Here it is. I throw back a couple of reasons. One, I'm almost done building the 1969 set, put a big den in it. Thanks to my buddy, Craig. Uh, I only have like 13 cards left. I have just the major stars and then a couple odd ball ones. So that'll be done soon.

But the deckle edge show, Hey, and I got three other Chrome rookies. I got a logo border, uh, and the Dodgers union, just several really good ones. I did that because I was moving out of five, 400, like 500 and $400 cards into one 50 to two 50. Why next week I have two shows and grove city card fest tends to have a younger audience. What I've learned about that is they want all the right names, but if you, if everything in there is 500 bucks and over, you can play that game, but it might not be super accessible.

So I was like, I bet I'll see the return on that quicker. And I divvy that up over some show Hayes and my margins were great because I was able to trade. So big old stack of show Hayes with the deckle edge there. Happy camper. Yes, absolutely. And that mantle was, I was sad. It was, I was sad. It was 30 minutes. You know, it's 30 minutes. Like, I hope I have that next week. That's how I felt about that. Kobe at the national. Like I had that Kobe auto for 12 hours. Now I wish I still had it. All right.

My very favorite card that I got this week. It might be my favorite card that I've bought in six or eight months. Mm hmm. Um, a card that sells almost never 1999. So second year upper deck, this is the quantum silver Randy Moss die cut numbered to a hundred. It is unbelievably clean. There is a very high probability that this card gets sent off for grading. Um, rather than going straight into my showcase. And I don't know. It's it's fantastic. You just don't see Moss cards for that early. That low numbered die cut and number two, a hundred at all.

Yeah, that's a filthy one. I'm assuming there'll be a nice tag with it. So that's a, that's a deal. No deal card. If, if there's the interest, right. Um, yeah, but like I said, it's a card that this is this type of a card. We talk about this. This is a card. That's an end user card. This is the person that buys this from me in all likelihood will be the last person that owns it for a long time. This is not a card that somebody is likely going to buy from me to flip because it's not going to be priced at a point for them to buy it from me to flip.

Like if we price it, everything can be end user. If you price it high enough, that's true. But this, this type of a card is a card that a moss collector is going to. Oh yeah. Want to 90s, 90s inserts or yeah. Or somebody putting that set together and you know, that's a card. Little, little back backline hint on these types of cards. Uh, a lot of these subsets had two syllable names. This was live wires. The correct spelling according to the checklist and according to sales is one word live wires.

You can sometimes find this stuff at a really good deal if you separate those two words because it's listed wrong and people who are actually looking for it. Don't look for it that way. They look for it the proper way. So yeah. Interesting. Okay. Last one was a weird trade. So I've shown you guys this, uh, this hoist Gracie that I've had as a patch auto number to eight from 2010 or 11 pretty unique card. Um, I had it stickered, I believe at 500 at the time that I bought it, there were no comps, uh, there were vertical autos that did 400 I thought with a patch, it's probably a $500 card.

Not that there's a massive UFC market in central Ohio. Um, but I had it sitting out in the showcase and a guy walks up to me and he says, Hey, um, I really liked that card and I don't know if you'd be interested in any kind of trade, but my cousin is rich Franklin. Um, and he's a Cincinnati. Fighter, I don't know if you know I said, yeah, I know he ended my dude Chuck Liddell's career I remember this very well with a broken arm. I believe he knocked him out Rich Franklin well-loved People's champ like that type of a vibe good guy from what everything that I understood He's like I got a bunch of these autos as like man Do I really want to trade out of that into somebody cool like Rich Franklin?

But like it would have to be pretty neat and then he starts pulling the stack out These so here's the ones that I traded this is what I traded for that Always Gracie now again. I got a pretty good deal on that Kid found it in a yard sale up in Cleveland He was like hey, I can't find anybody to buy this. So here's the number. I think it's worth this We both agree that we can stick it there I think he said he thinks it's worth $400 like I think it's worth five right a Comp pumps on a comp popped on this Gracie at 400. So now I'm like dang. I'm down a hundred bucks He's like, I don't care. I'll give you a stack. You tell me what you think? So it's stuff like this immaculate to 10 from 2022 Numbered what is that one Hall all-time greats?

This one's my favorite 2011 legacy auto this is before he went to Turkey and got those hair implants, I think That's the buyback right the hand numbered buyback it's hand numbered legacy is the subset And there's a sticker but it was on the Mac. So I'm assuming yes, that's what that is But the only comp I found was one BJ Penn. So I'm like BJ Penn is to Rich Franklin as bubble All right, how about a true gold auto? 2022 how about another gold to 10 and a PSA 10 book in 10 and 10 from 2021? We couldn't Yeah, you just showed the label there you go What do they call it? It's not gonna be disco. Oh, it is disco. Yeah This this sport gets a proper name and then Anderson Silva IP auto, which I just thought was really cool So it was a lot of trading wheeling and dealing are do you have another one or did you get us started?

No, that was it. I gotta start it. We're we're done with that. It's pretty good little show-and-tell why we bought what we bought All right, let's head over to Newhart cards in Delaware, Ohio with Keith Newhart for this next segment shop talk Hey, this is Keith Newhart at Newhart cards in Delaware, Ohio, and this is shop talk this week We want to talk about inventory management as a shop owner as a as a show dealer You look at a lot of different cards You look at a lot of different cards and sometimes you have to figure out where those cards go So let's talk about what we do So a lot of times we'll we'll buy a full like a two row box and we have to decide All right, where are those cards gonna go?

My first thought always is a shop is first so I like to make sure that our shop is fully stocked with singles and you know from from a dollar from quarter boxes all the way up so We always say that the shop is first so everything that we buy has priority of going in the shop Just like you as a show dealer would you know, where do those cards go? Do they do those go in a prices mark box? Do they go in your showcase? Do those go on whatnot? So Bought a couple cards yesterday. Just want to talk about them real quick. Like what we're gonna do with it So again, this is kind of one of the cheaper ones It's a Dylan Gabriel, but it's a three color patch from National Treasures, right? So Cleveland fairly local team You know, what will we do with this card? Is this a showcase card? Probably not This is more like a prices mark card. So this is something that we will buy put it in our prices mark box Maybe you know someone local or a Cleveland dealer is going to come in and try to walk You know try to walk through and buy that card So a couple of nicer cards have actually had the the opportunity by I think 3 p.m. G's this week This is a football one. This is Eric Kramer So these are 1997 numbered out of 150. So what is this card to us? This card is probably a show card This might be a national card for us. So this is one we may put back For you know for inventory, I'm sure we'll talk about the national at some point in the future This is one we may I know this might not be a shop card It's we don't do a whole lot of shows. So this is going to be one we put back for the national another one This card never sells it's an autographics Kurt Warner numbered out of 50 just pick this one up as well I think one or two have sold in the last year. So what do we do with this card?

Well, I like this. This is a Hall of Fame kind of guy. This is kind of what we like This will be a showcase card So we will put this in in the showcase Let our local customers have first choice before it hits eBay before it hits shows and that kind of thing So another another thing that we do is we do a whatnot show new hard cards whatnot three days a week We're on Wednesdays Thursdays and Fridays. So a lot of that, you know, two to twenty to thirty dollar stuff goes on there So again inventory management really really important in this business because you see so much stuff You want to prioritize some stuff because you do have real money in all of this. So that's really important It keeps your business going. It keeps liquidity in the market. So this is shop talk Keith at new heart cards Okay, I'm really excited about this this guest that we have for today Gary has set it up and Gary honestly had introduced me to our guest a few months back It was like hey, you got to connect with this guy that shows that he's doing every time I go. It may be probably years back He's been talking about so Gary. I'm gonna let you set up an introduction here for our special guest today I can't wait for everybody to meet him. Yeah, so Joining us today is Brad Beeman from b-sports From b-sports. He works very closely together with card collector 2 as well They co-promote a few things and they work together Brad has been doing shows for about six years now Starting and he'll tell us about this, but he started with a 35 or 40 table show upstairs and a little office environment and Grew it into one of the most loved shows in the Midwest He's now expanded that brand out to Fort Wayne which you've heard us talk about to Grove City card fest and there's more coming down The road so without further ado joining the ball card show right now Brad Beeman Alright, we are joined today by Brad Beeman of b-sports a lot of you guys who listen to the pod Religiously are dealers. So you probably already at least know Brad's name Thank you so much Brad for taking the time to hang out with us today If you don't know Brad promotes the ship Shawana card fest, which is kind of where he made his bones in this business He promotes the fort up at Fort Wayne, which is a great show that we did for the first time this year Grove City card fest and I'm sure that there are more things coming down the pike for Brad. So again, thanks Brad for joining us today now really appreciate being here and Just got to know Gary first, I think it at the March show and since then I've become a lawyer listener myself I'm not as cool as uncle Terry, but I'll do my best Very few people are us included Well Brad, I'll start with this and you probably you get asked this question all the time but for our listeners Tell us your story I know you started with a little 40 table show in the middle of nowhere and grew it into something awesome Kind of give us what that looked like Yeah, so like a lot of collectors. I was really into it in middle school I was a huge Ryan Sandberg fan played second base in Little League. Like that was my guy in the era Cubs baseball and Indiana University basketball Bobby Knight like that was even as a little kid and single digits seven eight nine years old That was my passion and that got me into card collecting and like most guys Girls cars high school cards didn't seem as important. So I stepped away from it for a while, but in 2014 My young son and I who's a freshman at IU and probably still hasn't woken up from the the celebration of the National Championship He's at IU and a freshman he got into sports and when I we were in Target and Came across the shelf and we're like what is panini?

Like is that the nicer form of cards now is that they're cheaper? Is that like Fleer was back in the day, you know, we knew what tops was but we went on this journey of really discovering cards together And my daughter got involved a little bit and she loves helping at the show. So she still stays involved in that way, but So anyways 2014 we kind of got back into it start setting up Started going to a local show Fort Wayne card show. It's monthly here The main brothers have ran it his brother passed away, but Greg still runs it today And I told the story quite a few times, but we went to a show in Elkhart, Indiana a guy named Fred who owns a card shop there did a show next door in like a Family dollar or like a dollar general that went out of business. Yeah. Well because the building was vacant No AC no bathrooms July So we went to a show in Elkhart, Indiana No AC no bathrooms July like 45 tables in there and Just sweating through your shirt but we were having the time of our lives and I remember leaving that show having to stop at a gas station on the way home to use a restroom and Remember thinking like just like any guy in the world like if that guy can do that With no bathrooms. No AC. I Think I think I could do that and I'll give the community I mean as negative as the internet can be and social media can be I went on Indiana, Michigan, Ohio card shows Again, that's Greg Maine's page And I just put if I ran a show and ship Shawana, Indiana Would you come to it or would you be a vendor like literally that's how the journey started and it's funny I call him day one vendors vendors that have been with me for five years since the 40 tables Like Brad Hollister and all these really great guys said yeah I I would I would even set up at it. And so we're like, okay, let's do that And I went to my father-in-law and I realized in the story not everyone has a father-in-law that owns a hotel I get I get that but he owns a hotel and it has a conference center. That's about 8,000 square feet I went to him and I just said hey, I just want to run this card show. We'll have a see bathrooms I got a handful of guys that are interested in setting up and I said would you cut me a deal because the room wasn't cheap, you know And and he said would you cut me a deal on on the first show and I always joke my father-in-law's the ultimate Entrepreneur he's like, yeah the first show Taste is free. Yeah, right. Yeah, so and I'll give him credit. He gave me a pretty nice discount He even owned the building that the barn was in and he gave me a family discount I mean I paid quite a bit but it was a it was a nice family discount really let us get our feet underneath us But so that's just sort of how it started and and we made a lot of good decisions and probably some bad ones and learned from them, but Not to not to belabor too much, but that's how it all started. I went to a show that Was fun and well done, but thought I could do it better and we just started the journey that way And so here we are. So you start with 40 tables?

I came into the picture in my experience with you and with b-sports and chip shawana was at the barn and The barn started with what about a hundred and fifty tables and got to the point where you were pushing to 50 to 300 which was Insane in that building if any of you are listening and we're at those shows You know what? I'm talking about What were the steps you had to take? This is kind of the more nitty-gritty to go from 40 tables to 150 to 200 tables and then now 500 tables Yeah, I mean the the one nice thing that we had is that while ship shawana is in the middle of nowhere and you guys Have been there like it's literally You have to drive 20 minutes to find it 30 minutes to find dinner if it's after 7 p.m. Yes But the beautiful part of it is it's not it's hour and a half two hours from Detroit hour and a half two hours from Chicago Cleveland, so it's pretty centrally located and we just got extremely blessed that One I think I Think in the early days, I hope dealers feel still feel this way I do think we did a good job of providing extreme value to the dealers I mean we were doing when we started out $40 tables buy one get one free Then we did $40 But that was a hard announcement for me when I had to come to people and say I'm gonna charge $40 for every table now Like there's no more buy one get one free and then we went to $60 So what I see a lot that goes on with show promoters is and when I say this, I didn't invent the wheel There's people better than me at this, but I see people have one good that first quarter show I think the first quarter of the year is like the homerun season for shows They'll have one really good show and then all of a sudden they want to go from 60 tables at $30 tables to 300 tables at $100 like I think what we'll give ourselves credit for it's just we had a really slow Build to where we're at now. We didn't make some crazy jump or tried to start out at 300 tables I feel like we made sure there was value for the dealers and the consumer the collector All the way through so there was really no magic pill. There was not. Oh, it was paid ads on Facebook That's what did it for like there was no one thing, but I think it was just extreme value I hope they felt that way. I hope they still feel that way today. And then secondly, I feel like People saw the effort we put into the show, you know, we try to get everyone look even today with 500 tables We try to get everyone loading their tables within 20 minutes of walking in the building and yeah Try to be friendly and if you need electricity, we're not charging the extra for it We're just pulling the cord down and you know letting you have electricity so I hope I think it was just the value we provided and we didn't get too greedy too quick and We probably didn't make enough money on the show for three or four years But we had an endgame of where we wanted it to To go to well You've definitely created and we fall into this category the dealers who do your shows are Extremely loyal to you and your brand There are other shows that schedule on top of your shows and we get reached out to you by those promoters Hey, you're gonna come to our show pick a different weekend. Oh, we will And that seems to be kind of a theme with a lot of your dealers So you've done a great job of providing that value and building that sense of loyalty in your customers, which is awesome Yeah, we certainly hope so and and you know, I'm sure you could find a dealer who doesn't like Brad Beeman or sure that's happened.

But for the most part, like we've been blessed by a really great following of dealers who like what we're doing. And I feel like, and you guys can answer this, I feel like you see the effort. Like I feel like, oh, these guys have a plan and they're releasing things strategically. And every time they release something for another set of shows, it's better advertising than it was before. So we're definitely not, we're definitely trying to make sure we innovate and keep moving forward because it's competitive out there.

Like you're asking for a dealer to pay for a hotel and to buy a table. And again, we've upped our table prices so that we could provide even more value, but now we owe you more. Like we're not taking $40 at Grove City. We're, you know, $100 for a one-day show is not cheap, but we feel like, okay, you're seeing the security walking around. You're seeing the advertising. You're seeing the videos. You're seeing that we're giving away 100 free kids packs at the door to any kid that shows up. So that's what we hope.

That's the strategy is just to provide as much value as we can, even though sometimes you have to raise table prices to provide that value. You're kind of answering the question already here, but that was kind of where I was heading with this. So one of the unique things about this interview is we have these two perspectives. So we both hear very different, you know, reviews on a show or expectations, right? And I think with dealers, one of the things that we talk about a lot is it's easy to point fingers everywhere, except for our showcases and our price tags, right?

Stay away from that, but let's keep it at all the other factors. So as the show scenes continue to grow, and we've had no doubt in the last two years in the Midwest, a massive wave of new collectors. Shows are busy. There are wait lists. In Ohio, there could be, in central Ohio, there could be three to five shows any given weekend, right? When dealers have a tough time thinking through and they start with table price, right? Why would I pay more for a show on the same day? And you're talking about value.

For Gary and I, that seems like pretty obvious. We know that we will cover that table very quickly because there's a little bit of an equation there, but what are the things that you consider? Like how do you measure the value you're bringing, I guess is what I'm trying to say. At the end of the show, how do you say, hey, this was a show where we brought the value for the dealers. How do you know that you did that? And if you feel like it fell short, what are the things that you tweak to meet that demand?

Yeah, I always, I have a saying where I'll say, if I have amazing foot traffic and a poorly run show, dealers will forgive me. If I run an amazingly organized show that no one shows up to, they won't come back. So we try to provide the organization in a stable environment and an amazing atmosphere. But I judge shows purely on how many feet did I get through the door for you? Now I have to monitor myself because my goal is to set an attendance record every time we have a show. Let's be honest, the February 1st Growth City Card Fest will probably have better attendance than the September, I'm making up a date because we don't have a September date, but the September 29th, time of year, school's back in session.

But our heart is we're gonna try to set an attendance record every single time. So I think value to your point, I've often said at Ship Shawana at noon, if we have any dealers mad at it, like let's say we've had 4,000 people come through, if you didn't have a good day, like- That's on you. You'll never say that to a dealer, but I'll say it for you. That's on you. But if I charged you $250 for a table and only had 800 people come through, I didn't serve you well. Now, sometimes you can do all the right things and attendance is down.

We did four Growth City Card Fests last year. I thought three of them were grand slams and I thought one was just really solid. So we did all the same things. We worked just as hard. So there's gonna be some fluctuation there, but my measure for did I do a good job for you as a dealer is how much foot traffic did I get through the door? And obviously a safe environment. Environment where families feel like they can come through and that's important too, but foot traffic is what I judge. Well, to the point you just made about a family-friendly environment and all that stuff, I thought it was a really interesting thing that you guys decided to do recently.

And I really liked it, which was the banning of any kinds of games of chance that tend to pop up at shows, whether it's dice rolls or wheel spins or things like that. We've got, and I'm not an anti-gambling guy, but I do think that in a family-friendly environment, we shouldn't be encouraging kids to risk 10 bucks at a time and maybe hopefully win something. Yeah, and that was honestly, I'll be honest, when I posted that, posted it in two or three different groups, probably got, if you count all the likes, probably got 450 likes or hearts, dozen amazing comments.

I got four people that said, you're stupid. You're dumb. This is no different than a mystery pack spinning a wheel. It's no different than opening a hobby box. And my only point to that is to say, there's already gambling in the hobby. Yeah, we don't need to add more. Do we need more? Yeah, right. We'll never take packs. There's nothing like the excitement of opening a pack. There's nothing like the excitement of opening a box. And if you make that decision, God bless you, and we'll always have that at our shows.

It's a part of the hobby. What I don't want is 14 year old kids doing dice games, trying to chase a one in 40 chance. And they leave, they came, mom gave them $40 to come to the show and they left with nothing because the dice game was unfair to them. I just, we don't need another layer. Now I've had a couple of dealers reach out and say, hey, I have a spinning wheel, but it's if you buy six cards from me, you get to spin the wheel and you get a seventh card for free. I said, the whole thing I'm saying is pay to play.

If it's free to play, let's do it. Let's spin a wheel, let's roll some dice, give them something for free. We do a Plinko board in the kids area and we do it at the national, but it's free to play and you win an item every time. So we're just trying to take that another level of gambling out of it. And, you know, people can a thousand percent disagree and say boxes are worse for kids than dice games. And I just, that's where we're at on it is we just feel like we could clean that up a little bit and make sure that there's enough gambling.

Yeah. I agree. There is a void of people willing to just say, yeah, I don't think we need that. Yeah. I think, and until more people say, yeah, I'm not so sure that's the right spot for that. We're going to keep seeing it everywhere, right? Like it's going to be like, there are things that dealers can do. Check your heart, we would say, right? Or just have like super high quality dollar value boxes and take their money. Yeah. Yeah. Give them great deals there. Opportunities there. As this, as the shows have been scaling and growing and you're measuring your success off of foot traffic, obviously the environment you have, I've just noticed that your willingness to be really creative in promotion sets you apart.

It communicates like when you talk about value add, Gary and I know that you're not just going to say, well, whatever worked last time, just run it back. Like you're, I mean, I remember the first ship that we set up at, we had, we were, I was walking and buying at one point in the day. It was packed. It was before you expanded out even further in the new space. And there was a drone flying overhead, capturing footage. And there was this weird moment where I'm a dealer, but in the moment I was buying a PC card and I can barely move, which is like, I hate being at amusement parks and lines, all that kind of stuff.

There's a drone flying overhead that forced me to look around this room with thousands of people in Shipshawana, Indiana. And I was like, I freaking love this. This is unreal. How is this happening? And when you think about the value add there, there had to have been some, so many moments like that for you, where you look, you're looking around the room, you dream something and you've grown it in a space that's very competitive at times, in an industry where people enter this space and leave very quickly.

When you look back, have there been a couple of milestones or a couple of key decisions you made where you're like, once we kind of set this in places, maybe it was just like a core thought or an approach to planning these out. There were a couple of things we did here that really seemed to make the biggest difference as we were scaling the size of these shows. Yeah, hopefully this will make sense. But one of the things early on was, I would say the show was in Shipshawana, but I didn't lean into it.

And we really started leaning into that. Like we added a buggy into our logo and we started calling the exposition barn, the barn. And so we just really leaned into where we were and what we were. And I think at first I thought I had to be fancy, like fanatics faster, even though that wasn't a thing then, but that was what was in my head. And I was like, no, we really need to lean into what we are and where we're at. And instead of saying, hey, sorry guys, there's not a lot of like restaurants here.

No, let's turn that into, if you come to Shipshawana, Indiana, it's 24 hours of cards. Like there's no distractions, there's no going to the casino it's cards, cards, cards. And that made, but if we're gonna do that, we need to provide resources, right? So we started doing the trade night and the trade night was like rocket fuel onto our show. I thought it might hurt the show because people would come to the trade night, that'd be enough for them. They wouldn't come back to the next day, but actually made it a two-day event before it was a two-day event and was really like rocket fuel on that.

And then like, it's even kept progressing to the point that now that we're in the Michiana event center, I think the thing that Ryan has really brought to the process is we want to every, if you're a promoter out there, your current show should be the promotion for your next show. So that drone, everything we do should be like, this show is not only, hey, we want to run a great show today. This show is our movie set for giving people FOMO that they need to be at the next one. So we really line up a lot of, we have a photographer, we have a drone guy, we have, you know, we spend the money on that even though you'd love to pocket it because we know we can use all that material for three months to say, see what you missed last time.

You can't, you gotta get out here. This is the most unique card show in the country. And here's why, here's the video. That's a visual world, here's the visual proof. One of the smartest. Very different from you hopping on Facebook and being like, wasn't that awesome? We'll do it again in a couple months, right? Well, one of the smartest things that you guys did the last ship show, I thought, and I'm hopeful that you guys saw a good return on it and it'll continue, was reaching out. And I think Ryan was pretty instrumental in making it happen and getting Kyle out there because you're exponentially growing your awareness when somebody like Kyle comes and then creates his content and pushes it out to hundreds of thousands of more people in the space.

And I hope to see things like that continue too for you guys. Yeah, you know, God bless him because Ryan shared my show on his videos for years before he became a partner. And that was such huge momentum for us, exposure for us. But, you know, Kyle probably has some crossover fans but Kyle has more followers than Ryan and probably a bunch of them that never knew the show existed. So I remember when Kyle dropped the video, one, he was very kind to us. I will say. He's a great dude. I know influencers kind of get this label, like truly a human that when the camera goes off, like you wouldn't know the camera was on or off.

He's the same, yep. Same guy. And so for him to do that, and I remember Ryan texted me and he goes, not only did he drop a video, I think it was almost an hour. Yeah. It was a long video. And I think the coolest part was, I think he got a Brady gold downtown or something like that. That shows the level of cards that are in the room to some guys and it was huge. So yeah, we wanna keep doing that. I know might not be as known to you, but SkyBee comes out every time. He's kind of known for ripping retail products and we wanna dip into that, but we're not ones to pay for that.

You know what I mean? If someone naturally wants to come out that has an influence like that, sure, we might throw a hotel room their way. Sure. But we're not interested in like, hey, we'll pay you five grand to come out. We think we got a pretty cool thing going on, but we definitely will keep asking people. And I think one of the coolest things, and it's definitely not for everyone, but like VeeFriends asked to come to Chippewa, Indiana. They're headquartered out in New York City. So I'm always amazed and happy when people wanna come out.

And of course, the influencer exposure just gets you into more and more markets. We're happy to have those guys and we try to treat them right when they come out. Eyeballs are important. So you have run small shows and big shows. And currently you kind of run the gamut. Chippewa is, I think by anybody's standards, one of the larger consistently run shows in the country that happens more than once a year. Grove City is turning into, and I said when you guys took it over that it would only take about three months before it became Columbus's thing that they were known for.

And it has, now it's a 280 table show because you've split off the Pokemon and TCG side into a separate gym, and then the sports in a different space. And then you've got, yeah, then you've got The Fort, which is about a 200 table show, right? So what are some of the unique challenges based on the different sizes of show that you run? What's different between a 500 table show and 150 table show or a 250 table show? Yeah, I mean, I would say like Chippewana, the thing, the part of that question that really sticks out is in Chippewana, I will say when it was a 200 table show with four foot aisles I remember.

No matter where you were in the show. Oh, you were going to get eyeballs and you were going to probably have a record sales day. So I think I heard you guys, you say this on a prior podcast. Sometimes a highly attended 80 table show is a bigger moneymaker than a 500 table show that has a really nice crowd, but maybe the dealer to customer ratio. That's the thing. And that's the number like, is there a number you target for that? Like Walker, like customers per table. Like, is there a, is there a kind of a, a number there that you guys shoot for?

You know, he's in the weeds on this. I am. No, it's interesting to me. Chances. The first time he thought about this, you know, that comes more into play for me on, should we expand? Some people have been like, why wouldn't you take over that whole building? You could do 200 more tables and the people on the wait list get very cranky. And I promise that's probably my biggest thing in life is that if you're on the wait list and I haven't got you in, it is not personal. I promise. I actually hear people say sometimes like, Brad doesn't like me.

I've been on the wait list two years. Like it honestly has, I promise that's not the reason. So sometimes people on the wait list will be like, why don't you expand? You could add 200 more tables. You're using 80,000 to a hundred thousand square feet. Like just go ahead and do it. And the a hundred percent reason we don't do that is for what you're saying. I don't, I come from the corporate world. I worked 20 years on insurance at a corporate level before I came here. They would know, like they would have like 6.2 customers per.

For me, it's more of a look and a feel. And when I feel it, if you ever see me expand Ship Shawana into 700 tables, I felt it. I felt like we could do it. Uh, my goal. And when I look around a show, I think Fort Wayne's a good example. Cause sometimes Ship Shawana can get so crazy and February feels that way. But like a Fort's Fort was a show in the middle of December. It's not going to be Ship Shawana. But when I looked around all day long, like every vendor had two to four people in front of their table all day long.

That's for me, the minimum it should be. I can't promise that, but in my heart, like I think I would love packed aisles. Can't move got dealers tend to do very, very good in those scenarios. But at a minimum, I want you to feel like, man, you know what? Like I could hardly get away from this table because there was always three to four people digging through our value boxes, looking at our stuff. So it's not scientific, but that's kind of my gut feel for, if I look around and people are looking at cell phones instead of helping customers, cause there's no customers in front of them.

That's a problem. Yeah. I know for the size of, uh, our setup, right? Like Gary and I are typically two to three tables, right? We, if it's smaller stuff, we may grab four or whatever, but there's a sweet spot for us, we've noticed as well. Like that steady two to four, we'll churn through a lot of inventory was steady. Really busy impact. Wow. We're, we're moving cards, but there's a sweet spot too, where if it's too crowded and you have a prime spot, it's easy for your table to get completely covered up with value back value box stuff people are trying to sell to you.

Yeah. And the wave you'll watch 50 people just cause they're not going to wait. It's too jammed. They want to go where they can breathe for a minute. Right. So I do think there's a little bit of a dance with it. Um, I'd rather have the issue of we're so busy and I can't keep up. They're not enough, but, um, it is, I think you're right though. Like there's a sweet spot too. Like you can have it crowded and buried. Um, but on ones where it gets super crowded, I'm always looking over at Gary, like, why didn't we just grab another table?

Why didn't we add one on, right? To at least keep everything over there for buying. Right. But, uh, I will say too, that you would kind of turn my mind on this. Um, every show is different in the sense to like at an 80 table show, 60 table show. I think you can sell and buy from anywhere. I think it's ship Shawana. I think you can sell from anywhere. Like twins and friends came out and did our show for the first time. And they, they were in the back. Cause like, I love them. They sponsor Grove city, uh, along with some other folks, but they were pretty far in the back.

Cause you and ship, you just kind of got to earn your stripes to move forward and move when you can. And they sold out. Like they were looking for inventory to buy. They sold out. I will say at a 500 table show, especially one that has a bunch of, I mean, sharks and an endearing term. A lot of money in the front of the room. Your strategy as a dealer might be, Hey, I took the cheapest table in the back. It might be, this is a selling show for me. I'll buy what I can, but this is probably going to be a selling show because I'm table for 82 and I'm going to catch the drags after everybody else's had their shot.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I don't mean that in a bad, in a bad way, other than to say, like, I do think as a dealer, their strategy based on like, okay, I'm going to ship Shawana. They have tiered pricing. The guys in the front are paying hundreds of dollars. The guys in the back are paying a lot cheaper. I'm going to take a cheaper table. Yeah. I may want to adjust my strategy that the downtowns aren't going to make it to me back there. Yeah. Well, the good news for us is we don't want them. Yeah. Right.

Oh, we want them, but people don't like our numbers. That's the issue. Uh, we'll take them. We'll take them with, as they come up. Uh, you brought up a really good point. I'd not to jump in front of you, Gary. I know you got another question for him, but I was just thinking like, there's different shows where you can kind of get a feel for inventory as a dealer, but then you also have different demographics. So when I think of Grove City Card Fest, it is a much younger demographic than I see in a lot of places in the Midwest.

And it is volume, like volume, volume, volume. So a perspective for me going into that Grove City Card Fest show, uh, coming up here very soon, a little bit over a week after this drops, um, like I traded down from some bigger cards and to some more attainable, like show, Hey, Chrome rookies and all that, trying to hit price points of where I saw a lot of kids. Now, again, we're not talking $5 cards. We're talking a couple hundred, $400 show Hayes, but the age demographic is really interesting to see as well.

Do you attribute that to Columbus itself? The partnership with Ryan and him, obviously with these massive trade nights and, uh, just that younger audience that's with them, or do you think Columbus itself has a really young collector base? You know, that's a great question. The thing I noticed about Grove City, and we get a ton of families through Ship Shawana because we do the kid scavenger hunt, but it feels like a lot of people that come to do the scavenger hunt, do the hunt and stick around for an hour or two and then go.

The people that come to Grove, like I see more strollers at Grove City. Yet the parents are collectors. They're not there just to check out their first card show. Like they're, they're buying things. And I don't know. I've thought about this honestly on my own too. I don't know if it's because it's in a school and we do a lot of advertising at the entrance of the school and we make it, the band makes announcements about it. I don't know if it's a young collector base. I'm sure Ryan's demographic skews.

Probably what eight year old kids to college to, I mean, adults definitely like his stuff too, but he has a lot. If you're ever at Ship Shawana, the pictures with the eight and 10 and 12 year old are plentiful. So I think Ryan skews to that demographic. I think it being in a school helps. The Columbus part, I can't answer, but it makes a lot of sense. I mean, I didn't even realize when we were starting the show that that is a town of almost a million people. I thought Columbus was probably like 500,000 people.

If you count the suburbs, it's cracking close to 2 million. Like it's growing. So picture Ship Shawana, 650 people live in the town. And then we got a natural base. Three of them have electricity. So I would agree with you. Like, and I don't think, I think people drive into Grove city. I think people from Cleveland will come down from Cincinnati. People fly in to Ship Shawana. And so you would only think to your point, there would be an inventory difference on what I should have in my showcases between entry level cards, you know, a guy wanting to buy up into a $200 card and feeling like, Oh, I, I've really upgraded my collection.

Or arena club sitting at your table, stacking up and posting notes. Like it's, it's different inventory. And you guys have probably mastered that as much as anyone I've, I've seen. It's a moving target and we're terrified. Cause we have to pay bills with it, but we're learning. It was like a minute there. Correct me if I'm wrong. There was a minute there, maybe a whole solid year. You could buy 50 to $150 football and just go anywhere with it and you'd be fine. And then it felt like early last year or late last year, all of a sudden you better have 1989 Jordan inserts.

Yeah. And the good news for us is, and people that have listened for a long time have heard me say this. I've been, I've been pounding the drum for the next big wave in this hobby from an investment standpoint and a return standpoint, being those nineties and 2000 stuff for about three years now, because we saw the exact same thing on a macro level 25 years ago, 30 years ago, when, what we consider vintage now first started to just really take off and it's because. The people who were kids when that era was a thing where suddenly kids out of the house, we have disposable income again, and we want to relive the things that we enjoyed as a kid.

It's happening again. Now people, my age, your age, Brad Jason's a little younger than us, but. Our kids are for the most part out of the house. There's a little more disposable income again, and we want to relive the things that we enjoyed as kids. And that's that nineties and 2000 stuff. And it's, it's like clockwork every 25 years. There's a window of stuff that just takes off. You know, what else is popular? JNCO jeans, my son got a pair of jeans. He wanted from the mall. We're not talking like eBay.

I found these vintage jeans. These jeans are like, we are back in my high school days with the clothing as well, which is the first time this has come around for me, I turned 40 this year. It's the first time it's come back around. But I think that's an interesting point. The rookie class product changes, all those things. It'd be interesting to see if tops Chrome having those three licenses lifts the price of tops Chrome color from 15, 20 years ago as well. Now that the big three all have, have those parallels as well.

Well, and I hope you're, I hope that does happen. I'll, I was at the Midwest monster. I only set up like once or twice a year. I'm not, I'm I'll be honest with you. I'm amazing at selling tables. I suck at selling. Like if I buy a card for a hundred dollars and it books at one 20 or, you know, card ladders at one 20, whatever app you want to use eBay. And someone comes up and goes, uh, would you take a hundred? I'd be like, I can't do a hundred. Um, how about one 15? They're like, no, that's okay.

How about one Oh five. And I'll be like, no, I can't really do that. And I'll be like, okay. I'll be like, oh, you're walking away. Yeah. Take it for one Oh five. Like I'm terrible. I have no margins whatsoever. If you ever see me set up, it's purely for entertainment. Not, we're going to come clean that out then, Brad. We'll see you there this weekend. Come, I'm actually going to come up, I think, and, and sit down with, uh, our friend JT, um, we, we didn't have a table. We were kind of open this weekend.

Uh, so JT said, Hey, come up, hang out at the table with me. You know, you can buy. And so I'm going to come do that. I think I have one more question related to the promotion side of promotion side of shows. And then I think Jason has a couple of questions more about perspective from your side of the promoter and dealer side of the table as a dealer. I'm sure this happens to you all the time. I know that I've had a couple of very long telephone conversations with you on this side of things. But for our listeners, somebody walks up to you at a show and says, Hey, I love cards and they feel like you did when you went to that show in the old dollar general, I want to do this, give us two, three, whatever the number is, what are the things that they can do to give them the very best chance to succeed?

Cause you can work your tail off and still fail. You're never going to be able to guarantee success, but what are the things that are give them the best chance? Yeah, this is really simple. You would think most guys do this, but I don't know if they do. I would start out with a, with a projected profit loss statement. You know, Hey, uh, if I sell this many tables and the show goes like, I think it will, I'll, this is my, this is my spread. I always, when Ryan and I look at every show, the first thing we look at is before we take any admission, if we do at the show before we sell any extras, what's our spread between what the tables and the rent costs and what we'll make.

And if that's really thin, then you're probably not going to be able to put much value into your show because you're already working at a breakeven. So try to make sure you have margin to be able to invest in your own show would be my first thing. Second thing I would say is start small. I know that's like not the sexy answer, but I would start with just, I'm. I think if you can master a 60 to 80 show table show, that's just tremendous. You'll be so set up and you'll learn so much to really be able to put on a two, three, four or 500 table show.

So I see guys sometimes jump in. They're like, I went ship Shawana. I've never done a show, but I'm going 400 tables. Like you guys have been dealers. Has that ever worked out? I mean, there's somebody trying it right now. That's one, two grand for a sponsorship and they've never promoted a show before. And it's in a small town, local to us. We're scared. We're scared when it's somebody we know and it's their first show and they're going big, we're genuinely not just for ourselves because we know that at that point, they probably put a ton of time in, right?

Yeah. But if it's $45, $45 table show with 60 tables, you'll sign up to help a buddy out. Your risk is absolutely your time is the only thing that you could possibly waste in that scenario. So that'd be the first thing. The second thing is people don't realize how much tables and chairs cost to rent. And I know that sounds funny, but like our bill at Grove city for 280 tables and to set them up and the chairs, I won't quote it. I'll just say it costs about as much as the donation to the, well, the donation is bigger, but you know what I'm saying?

Like it's almost as big of an expense. If you can find a VFW hall, a Legion that's like, Hey bud, we have a nice space that 50 tables would fit in comfortably. And guess what? We have 58 foot tables and 75 chairs you can use. I mean, Launching to success. Like instead of going to a convention center, you know, paying 10 grand and then they tell you your table bill's $25 a table. Like if you, that would be my advice to anyone. Find that and decent parking would be amazing because your show is gonna grow and that's gonna be the first thing that people complain about is parking got ate up as soon as your show got good.

But yeah, I know those are really simple things. I would map out your finances, make sure you got that spread because I would say don't do a show flyer on Microsoft Word. Like hire a graphic designer. I guess you can use AI now though. I feel like the AI flyers are all starting to look the same. I think ours pop a little bit because we really have like a graphic designer do it. But invest some money into a flyer, invest some money into some different things. And one thing I would do, I don't know if every promoter would agree with this, I would call the bar card show and say, hey, for the first show, two free wins on me.

I just need a guys like you. Hey, JT, Triple Crown, first show. You can't do that with every single table but get you like five dealers that have a following and say the only thing I request from you in return is for two weeks out from my show, you mention it on your socials and let people, you guys would do that anyways. But that's kind of the strategy I would go to. I'd find a profitable situation, find a place that provide the tables included in the rent. And then I would talk to guys like you about setting up for free the first time.

And if I lost, if I broke even or lost $200, I would consider it the best marketing money I ever spent. Sure. If your family can do that. If your family can't, then don't. You're offering a lot of perspective here. I'm thinking through two things that you've done that I haven't seen anybody else do the same way. And I just wanna give you your flowers as the kids say here, Brad. It's kind of you. I've never done one of your shows where you didn't hit the table and not only did you ask how's the show, but you spent a minute, you spent 30 seconds, you spent a minute or two asking how we're doing.

Like the human beings that are set up every weekend that are working, you know what I mean? The other thing you've done is, even setting up for us to grab dinner with you and like other dealers. And it seems like it's not unintentional. It's very much an intentional piece of this is that you spend time planning to build community with the people that you're working with. Like, is that something that's just like your personality or is that something that you've really had to put an effort in and have you, is that something you see a return on?

Cause it's felt on our end, it's appreciated. Thank you, that's a nice compliment. I would say it comes from a couple of different places. One, my job prior to this was I was a insurance field rep, meaning I always call it like a drug rep for insurance agents. I would represent large companies and I would go into offices and really just try to get them to like me so that they would sell more of us than Allstate or Progressive or who else. So that going to dinner with people and spending time with people or stopping to talk at a show, that all comes from like that 20 years of that was my job was to make sure people felt comfortable with me and like doing the job.

So I think a little bit of that comes from that. Say the second piece of it is I actually love these cards. So I like to come over and talk about the cards and that's how you know I feel like the show is going okay. If I can actually think about cards and not, oh, that's not what you got or no one's- If we don't see you, we're in trouble, huh? Yeah, if you don't see me, there's probably a fire that's being put out. But I had one dealer tell me, and I was like, I hope I can take that as a compliment because if you consider, if you like compare someone to a politician, it's not always good.

But he goes, I love how you mayor up the room when you're at the show. He goes, you're constantly walking, shaking hands, kissing babies, like talking. And I said, you know, part of that's ADHD to sit behind the admission table or if we have one or the registration table, I go crazy. It's hard for me to be a dealer because of that. I feel confined and I like to walk. But another part of it is just like, I want to build that community. We did something at Ship Shawana that I hope we can replicate over and over again, but we have our day one dealers and these are people I get Christmas cards from and like, we go to dinner and they tell me, I'm one of the first people they tell when they're having a baby.

And like, so that's the human side of this is if I quit promoting shows in 20 years, it'll be the people that I miss more than the event. So I try to take the time. I'm probably not perfect at it, but I appreciate hearing from a dealer that I do a decent job of making sure you guys feel welcomed and I'm not just, you're not just an ATM to me. You're all right. Well, I mean, that's just it too, right? You can see, like sometimes you can tell a promoter's stressed you can tell that they've been working really hard.

You know, they promote it. And sometimes they just don't have the traffic they were expecting. Like you said, you do everything the same way and sometimes it's just a different result. But I think that the secret sauce here is actually, I know it's going to sound cheesy a little bit and a little more sentimental than we typically do, but it's actually caring that the dealers are doing okay. Because you understand, like, especially guys like Gary and I, you know a long list of guys in a similar situation.

We depend on these shows. This is how we work. And sometimes we have a rough day at work. So I'm going to shift it. I want to keep it positive, but this is the ball card show. So you get a little, you get a little fun stuff. But for every 10 of those exchanges, I'm sure that goes well, there's probably one or two stinkers that are frustrated and the easy target at a show, if your business is maybe struggling or in a funk or you had a bad show, is to go after the promoter, right? To give, to throw that energy back.

And I guess, you know, from the dealer side, it can be, hey, not as many people came as I thought. Or man, only thing that walked up to me was this stuff. Or if I had a different placement at my table, then I would have done X, you know, you've heard all of them. What are a couple of thoughts that would maybe offer a dealer perspective of like, here's what you don't see, or you may not know. And I know that you would never in that conversation be like, well, here's what you need to understand, right?

That's just not how you do business. But for the dealers listening, like what are some perspectives that they have? Like maybe the schedule, the work that went in, or whatever it is, like what do you wish they would see or understand that maybe they don't when you constantly getting that type of negative energy from people? Yeah, I wouldn't tell any, kind of back to your last question about what would you tell a new promoter? I'm a, I don't know that I'm a sensitive guy, but I'm pretty prideful.

And I try my best to treat people the right way, but not every human is rational. And like, you're going to deal with some dealers that like, they may just not be a good match for your show. And I'm talking 5%, not 95%. Sure. There's just sometimes where it's like, hey bud, like, I seem like I disappoint you. Like, and maybe this isn't a good match because I'm working really hard here, but you're not feeling that. And that's super rare for us. I'm thankful for that. And it happens sometimes where I've had just super honest conversations.

I would say a couple of things though. One is I would prefer you come and give me the feedback than talk about me at the next show that you're at. Like I will sometimes go to like the Fort Wayne Monthly Show and be like, hey, I'm making up this name. Jerry was like, he's not very happy because his table was like a little bit farther down the aisle last time. Well, Jerry, come and talk to me. Like there was one dealer, he was super sweet about it, but he was like, well, King of Cards line was blocking our table the whole time.

Tell me during the show, like, come find me. That's an easy fix. Like, so I would just say- That's a solution, a line right next to your table? Yeah. So I would just say- That's great. I would say just like honest, open conversation. If you're willing to say it to your buddy sitting next to you at the next show, tell the promoter. Say it to my face. Yeah, like, and I don't mean it controversially. It's just like a lot of the things I hear are things I could have fixed if I had only known they were happening.

So that's what- That's a good perspective, yeah. Yes, I would say- I know you will find this shocking, Brad, but I have been accused at times of being a little too direct. But to your point, I never have to worry about anybody knowing where I stand on anything. Well, and I always tell, Brad Hollister and I were talking about this. There's two types of feedback. There's the feedback of, I'm telling you this so I can do better, which is fine feedback to give. But the feedback I love is, this is feedback that makes the whole show better.

Like, I love those conversations. I respect the conversation of, this is what would help me do better because you guys are all entrepreneurials, entrepreneurs, and every Saturday or Sunday is your playoff game. Like, it matters. I'm sure there's car payments, house payments. For me, two kids in college, tuition payments. So I respect that. I respect that conversation on how I can make you do better. But the feedback I absolutely love, and I get it at every- Seems Chipshawan is the one where people are like, in a good way, like they care about the show, not that they're picking at it.

Like, hey, if you did this, and sometimes I'm like, well, like I had one guy one time say, if you could have Tops make a set of cards just for your show. And I'm like, who do I call? Great idea. Some things I can't do. Not quite how that works, but it's a good idea, yeah. Maybe we'll get our own- Fire up the printer. Get our own Travis Scott set for Chipshawana with buggies. Hey. Hey, hold on, timeout. There's gotta be a custom card person out there that could do a limited run. Right. You connect us and we'll provide a solution that improves the show for everybody, all right?

That's you. I won't belabor it. I value both feedbacks. I value how I can help you do better, but I really value how we can make the show better. And the last thing I would say, besides making sure you have open, honest conversation, and not just telling the next show promoter or their next buddy what you didn't like, my next thing would be just know if your table location moves. Like, I don't mean when I move you across the show. I can see how that would be disappointing. If you move one table, two tables difference, like, it was not personal.

It's a Tetris puzzle. We got 500 tables. Some guys take three, sometimes take two, sometimes take six. Like, it's gonna shift things. Or sometimes the pole lands from the building structure. When they set up the tables, it landed a little funny on how they set it up because their measurements were a little off. Like, it was never personal that you change locations by one table. So just don't be overly sensitive. Now, if you went from best table in the house to worst, yeah, like, that's only human nature.

Something happened. Yeah. Probably try to send a, no, I wouldn't send a message that way. I'd have an open and honest conversation. All right, one more question I wanna, and I think Gary and I are more lost in the sauce on this, and you can help us, honestly. Let's talk trade nights for a second. So Gary and I are older, traditional show dealers. We know that there's trade nights. Every time there is one, we pop in if we're doing a two-day show and they have, there's something going on. I know the Fort Wayne show, there was like a trade night hosted at an LCS just north of the show.

We went up there, had a blast. We had a blast. But help me understand, what is it about trade nights that you said it was gas on the fire as you were building these? You know, ship's a great example. We get done, we're exhausted. I'm like, feet are aching. I've got everything, you know, covered up or packed up and we roll off. And Gary and I can't just leave the room like normal tired people. We have to walk into trade night, right? And it is, the energy is like through the roof. It is packed. People are set up at tables, pouring out.

I mean, it's jam-packed. What is it about trade nights that one, makes the show more successful? And two, what are the distinct differences? Because I think there are some people that are a little bit older in this space where their mindset is, well, that just makes me less money. Well, that just, a trade night's just another show, but for free. And why am I, you know what I mean? Like, we hear all those things, but when you see it in person, you can't deny it. The stuff that you hope, and if I understand correctly, like you help to organize the trade nights as well with Ryan, correct?

I do a little work on those, maybe living in Fort Wayne and not in Columbus. It's a little, I help a little bit. The scale of those, those are events in the community, let's flat out. There's an event happening in the community tonight and it's taken over, right? So, what is it about trade nights that has made them so popular again since, I don't remember this since the nineties. The last three to five years, three years especially, this just really popped off. What is it, man? And how does it differentiate from the shows?

Here's the funny thing. As a human being and collector, I feel awkward at trade nights. I don't particularly enjoy them. As a promoter, I love to see people enjoying the hobby and I love putting them on as a promoter. As a human, I last at the national trade nights about 37 minutes and I'm out. Like, I just, it's too much, I'm too old, whatever. But I will say this. One of the best changes we made, and Gary might actually disagree with this and I would respect it. One of the best changes we made was putting a four hour show in front of our trade night.

In the old days, really what trade night was for us was we used to have a vendor, he doesn't come anymore, but Jason Gillespie was like, hey, you're over at the venue, setting up the night before in the barn. Few of us dealers end up showing up. Why don't we open it up a little bit and have like a little trade night? He goes, I'll throw some money towards it to hire, make sure we pay the building rent and all that. So long story short, it started out with just like me and 12 vendors shooting the bull and them trading cards back and forth.

Well, you know how cards are. People are bored in Ship Shawana. Well, can I come with Barry? Can I come with, oh yeah. So then you look around and there's like a hundred people and you're like, well, this is kind of a thing now. And we even, I don't know if you remember this, Gary, we got to the point where we were trying to keep it a trade night, but it was like busting out of control. And I said, okay, if you bring a showcase in. You gotta pay. You gotta pay $20. We would make like $500 on people just wanting to have a showcase.

Cause they were like, it's so busy in there, I don't want anyone to steal my card. So I was like, I don't really want to turn into a show cause that's disrespecting the dealers. But I respect that if you have a $500 card laying on the table, you'd probably want it in a showcase. So when it got to the point where I started charging for showcases, I had to look in the mirror and be like, this is kind of a show. So like. When we moved to the MEC, that was priority number one, is to put a four-hour show, and I think it's worked out really well.

Four-hour show in front of the trade night. My friend, Neo, do you know Rob, Neo Cards of Comics? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He always says, like, I steal this from him, a show has an ecosystem, money ecosystem to it. So I come to the show, and I come to Ball Card Exchange, and I was like, I can't really spend money yet because I need to liquidate what's in my Zion case to then buy again. Because people only have infinite budgets, typically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they come, and they see something, they see a $300 card they love, and they're like, shoot, I can't risk that not being there.

Trade nights allow them to go sit down, spread their cards out on the table, and get that liquidity back. And then, in theory, we hope 80% of them, maybe they just enjoyed the show for the day, and at least the four-hour show before the trade night, you guys got to see them a little bit, maybe you did get that $300 sell that if it was just a trade night, you wouldn't have. They get that liquidity, then they come back the next day, they have $1,800 in their pocket, they got that $300 card still, now they have $1,800 to put back into the show again.

What dealers worry about, and it's fair, is, no, I think they're just coming, getting that $1,800 and leaving. I can't control that, but what I can control is putting you in front of the trade night so that you have a shot to get their business or to buy their cards before they just play dealer. So I don't know if that all made sense, I think that's why it works, is it allows the customer to get liquid or to buy the inventory or maybe find something they didn't find, and it's only two hours, and we provide water and some pizza sometimes, and it's just kind of a card party for two hours.

Do you think it serves a function? I think that there is a, and I'm gonna be very honest here, sometimes I have felt this way. I've gotten better about it and tried to become a person who just doesn't worry about things that are outside of their control, although it's not my forte, I'm working on it. But I think that you spoke to something there that's very much kind of the consensus among some dealers, which is, if I go into a trade night and somebody has camped out at a table, and you've seen it at SHIP, when it was in the barn, it very much felt different in the barn than it does at the mech.

It was so chaotic at the barn, that, and everybody was just all over the place, that you never really had time to think about what was going on with it. But you go to the mech and I walk into the trade night and there's a table set up and there's a quarter million dollar cards sitting on that table at the mech. Like some of these people are setting up spreads. The owner is 14 years old, by the way. Setting up a spread of cards that will rival the showcases of 90% of the people in the room and they got to do that for five bucks.

And there are dealers who are like, wait, time out. So I think providing that perspective is helpful. Do you feel that there's any cannibalization that occurs there, or do you really feel like it is, for the most part, bringing more liquidity back into the show the next day? Maybe it's a hope more than a analytical calculation, but I always feel like it's 80-20. I 1000% think 20% of the people are probably, they're probably paying $5. Our show runs from four to 8 p.m. and then the trade night, and then we come back on Saturday.

Probably people that walk in at 7.55 and pay $5 go sell their cards and we never see them again. That's a shame. That's not the intent of trade night. But you can't police it, really, either. I do, I think 80% of the money comes, 80% of the people come back. I don't know of all 80% of the money. And I also think that it provides more value to the show in the sense that if I go to Ship Shawana and get there five o'clock in the afternoon on Friday, I can do the show, stay for the trade night, come back the next day.

Whereas, if you didn't have the trade night, they come in at five, they're done at eight, they're just sitting in their hotel room. In the dark. In the dark sometimes. So I do think it provides value, but I will say this. I do think that show promoters have a responsibility to constantly monitor and tweak it. I think this is an ever-evolving animal and you'll never get it perfect because there's different kinds of humans that come to trade nights. But I do think the overall, I wouldn't do it if I didn't think there was an overall net positive for at least Ship Shawana, Indiana.

Sure. I do think it's out in the middle of nowhere and darn it, people need some things to do and it adds value to the show. But I'll give you one example of tweaking it. I don't know if you've noticed, about 90% of the tables in that room are circle. Yeah. They used to be square tables. And I told Ryan, I said, we're taking all the squares out and we're putting in circle tables. By nature, it makes more community because you're kind of a jerk if you spread your card across. The entire table. Entire circle table where there's six other chairs.

And I don't see that much, honestly. Most people try to keep it, because security probably. But with square tables, you were there. People were legit treating it like I rented this table. And we have a responsibility as show promoters. I don't know what the percentage is, but 90% of the money we make comes from the dealers who bought the tables. Yeah. It doesn't. Honestly, we don't make money. We get a little bit of sponsorship money. We don't make money off buying that square footage and putting those tables in there for trade night.

We just think it's a net positive. But we owe it to you guys as dealers to constantly monitor it without being the card police. Yeah. I think that a lot of people don't realize how good they have it. It's not like that everywhere. If you head down South, I know we ran a story a while back, which I'm not gonna make you jump in on, about a promoter that was policing if any trades were happening. But the more we dug into it, the more we found out that dealers in Florida are like, yeah, it's kind of like that everywhere down here.

You don't get to go, if you don't have a table set up, you don't just do trade. So in my mind, it's like, I want the environment where cards are moving and there's cash. That's all I care about. I wanna know that there's cash in the room and there's cards that are interesting. And if I can be in proximity to that, I devoted my work to understanding ways to profit off of that. And so complaining about that is just wild to me. I don't understand it. If somebody drives to Ship Shawana and they're there for Friday night and they plan on being in Ship Shawana Saturday, they don't have a table for Saturday.

They're spending money in that room. And I'm hoping that they spend it with me or the promoter next to me. But I think what I'm understanding too is there's huge marketing benefit for promoters to consider that if they have the space or availability to do something like that the night before. Because you could be freeing up liquidity for a lot of potential buyers the next day, right? Yeah. Obviously we're at a two day, but. I like that ours, no, we didn't for the four because I love Mitch Wolf and I just wanted to support his card shop.

So we did this, the trade night in his card shop. It was awesome. Yeah, he's, and he's, he said- Remind me the name of Mitch's shop again cause I wanted to give them a shout out. I had a great time up there. So that one is Sport Stop. Okay, Sport Stop. I had to think about it because the other shop close to here is Sport Spot. So we have a Sport Spot and a Sport Stop. He is Sport Stop Angola, Fremont area. But great guy, just wanted to do that. I think ours works too because the trade night is in the venue.

So I think that kind of helps keep it like a part of the event. But I think what some dealers need to understand too, like these are going to happen. It's whether we do it, or they're going to happen in the hotel lobby. And, you know, I have dealers and I'm sorry, I'm being long winded. I have dealers that have different perspectives too. Some will be like, I'm probably, if I was a dealer, I'd probably be like you guys. I want to sit behind my table, do my deals. I'll just go peek in there just to see what it's all about.

I'm tired after I'm going home. I have other dealers who are like, I don't like that you do that, Brad, but I still, this is one of my top three shows I make money on. So I'm just going to live with the fact that you do it, but I don't love it. And that's fine too. That's probably the minority because I think dealers have seen that we have tried to put guardrails on it. But the third part is I have a dealer, they used to be Carter's Cards. They changed their name, Chris Vermillion. He'll always tell me, he goes, I make X amount of money every ship show on a show.

I either make it on the floor or I make it at trade night. Like he looks at it as like show part two. Yeah, like I'm just getting started. I wouldn't have the energy. He does, so God bless him. So it's really as a dealer, how do you want to, do you want to be bitter about it? I'm not saying you shouldn't be, maybe you should be. Do you want to see it and don't mind it's there and get it in a way? Or do you want to like go, hey, this is our strategy for trade night. This is what we want to do. So it's really how you want to attack it.

And trade nights were a huge topic like two years ago. I feel like people have settled in a little bit about trade nights. And if you're one of the old school dealers and you're talking about growing the hobby and you can't even stomach a trade night, then what are you doing to grow the hobby? Well, I mean, just, do you really want it to grow? Like I hear people use that, like, well, they're just this and that. I'm like, yes, think about what you just said. There's 315 to 25 year olds in that room late.

They've been walking all day too. Like they love this stuff. The vast majority of us got into this hobby as a six, seven, eight year old kid who bought a pack of cards whenever we had an extra 50 cents. And we looked at our friend's cards and they're, you know, three ring, nine sheet binders. Let's go. And we traded with each other. We didn't look at anything other than whether the card was folded in half. Like, is this a player that I like? Do I have a player that you like? Do you want to swap these cards?

That's kind of the base, that the whole foundation of what we do is based on that. So the idea of being anti that is crazy. Yeah, and I think dealers can sniff out when it's out of control, you know? I feel like we've kind of got it. It's like caging a wild animal, right? Like, but I feel like there's a cage around it. It is wild a little bit and there's a lot of deals done and the guys probably do make money in there. But, and I do think it's the promoter does have to realize though, like, you know, you guys pay $150 a table.

You have some rights to give feedback that what you do and don't like about it. But to just say it shouldn't happen, I think that train has left the station. And it's short sighted. One final question, Brad, and then we'll wrap this thing up. As concisely as makes sense for you, as somebody who lives and breathes this space, this is how you pay your bills. What do you see, you know, we didn't send you a hat, but if you put your little tinfoil hat on in the year 2030, what do you see as the future of shows and show promotions?

Like what's the new standard? Do you see a world where the small local shows kind of fall to the wayside and everything kind of funnels upward? Do you see it germinating the other direction? What's the future of your business in the show promotion world? Tell us the future now. I promise you one thing. This is a guess, right? Sure. I think, I tell my buddy, I have a buddy, Josh Stewart, he doesn't do it. He used to do it in the basement of a church. It's 40 tables. Think that show lives forever.

I think the 40 table, $30 a table, there'll always be guys like us three that on a Saturday when their wife doesn't have plans for them is looking for a show. So I think that show lives forever. One of the pushes we have is to be such a unique value proposition that no matter how the hobby ebbs and flows that we're enough of an event. That's what we're concentrating on is trying to be an event that the kids scavenger hunt where we give away 500 packs and a dozen Zions. Like I wonder if just the, I made a flyer and I'm having 200 tables when the popularity dips, how will those shows do?

So our goal has been, I think the small show survives forever. And I think the national lives forever. Where do you find the middle? I think you better be pretty special when the hobby takes a dip. Cause I assume this will keep ebbing and flowing. If we know- It always has. We knew when, right? I think what the money fanatics is putting in this, I think prosperity is going to reign for a while. There will come a day where these things slow up and we hope that we're enough of a destination and enough of a value proposition outside of just come walk around in circles, looking at cards.

The cards are always enough and the cards should always be the focus. But we're just trying to get ourself in a space where it's an event and not just a card show. Because I do wonder what the market cap is on 150, 200 table shows by weekend. Yeah. This is probably the glory days of that. So we're trying to maneuver that and distinguish ourselves of like, hey, if this dips a little bit, are we special enough to still be a destination? That's a great question. I don't know if that answers your question, but.

It does. No, it does. It does. Hey, before we wrap up here, we would love to know all the ways, people that are checking in, other dealers that maybe are a few states on the other side of us, but ship maybe close enough drive. But how can they get plugged in with the shows that you're promoting? Definitely give a plug for Grove City Card Fest coming up, but we'd love to connect people with you, Brad. Yeah, I used to, I mean, before I met Ryan, it was just one spot. It was at B underscore sports, B E underscore sports.

That was it. And he has challenged me and rightfully so to be more diversified. So we have a whole Tik Tok and everything now, but at Ship Shawana Card Fest on Tik Tok, Instagram at Ship Shawana Card Fest, you'll see a theme there. We have at Grove City Card Fest. I will tell you what, there's a lady at the page at the home office who kind of does a lot on the Grove City. And you can tell it's pretty good follow that she does great job with pictures. and asking questions. I don't think to ask questions.

I just put pictures and say things. She asks questions, does polls and things like that. So, you know, agro city card fest at Ship Shawana card fest at B underscore sports. If you want to get crazy, if you want more insight into a show than you would ever want, there is a Facebook group called Ship Shawana card show underscore B sports. It is for the diehards. I get into things in there that most people don't care about but dealers love to talk about and diehards of the show. You can follow us on Facebook there.

And we also have Grove city card fest Facebook and I'm partner with a guy named at card collector too. If you don't already follow. Sounds familiar. Unique. I feel like I've seen or heard the name before. So that, that was a lot of ways to contact us. And I'll plug Grove city card fest really quickly started May of last year. I think you guys joined in second show cause you were maybe at Pittsburgh. Yeah, I was doing that show before you guys took it over though. I was doing that with John for a year and a half.

So you're day one GCCF. Yeah. So we took that show over in May. We blessed, we crushed that May. Didn't think anyone knew we were having a show cause the Facebook interaction wasn't the same as Ship Shawana but the silent majority came out and flooded us. Yeah they did. Ran a show the day after the 4th of July and thought how stupid are we? And it crushed again. September was okay. And then November was great. So we had four. We made a little change for this one. We're calling it the mega show because we have found that the Pokemon explosion is real and we need to honor it by giving it its own gym.

So the Pokemon folks will be 80 plus tables in the main gym. We've never been in that one. They'll be up there. We'll stay at our home for the sports guys like me as three. And we have over 200 tables in that gym. You can catch these two guys about what? Four tables down from card collector two on the wall until they tell me they hate that spot. We're good. We haven't had a bad enough show yet. We're saving that. We're saving that for a bad show, you know? And it, you know, this may be a later edit but we're also Authentic Inc reached out to us and will be a vendor.

And Will Howard is supposed to come. National champion Will Howard is supposed to come sign autographs. Their rates, their memorabilia. We're just the host. They said all that. So you'll see Ryan promote Will coming out fairly heavily or you'll never see this because I'll contact the guys and let them know that Will had to cancel. Well, if you guys want to know where we'll be any weekend that Ship Shawana is going on Fort Wayne, Grove City Car Fest we'll be at one of Brad shows. We have talked off and on about promoters and the work they put in and the confidence level you have as a dealer.

And Brad there, hands down we have tremendous confidence that you bring value because we've seen it. And when we depend on that it really means a lot to people like us that are paying our bills with this. And I know that you take it seriously and you actually do care how we're doing. And so I wanted you to hear that from us. We mean that we are known for being honest. So we would not make that up if we didn't mean that it means a lot to us. I appreciate that. And I can't mess it up. No pressure, no pressure.

We appreciate your time, Brad. Thanks for joining the ball card show. No problem. You heard the man Grove City Card Fest on Sunday next week. Be sure to come out and hang out. We'll be set up there. Brad will have everything prepared, adequate space clear direction on where to go. It's a great show. We hope that you can join us for that one and then be paying attention to our other shows coming up soon as well. There's going to be a lot more and there are some plans to do a little more traveling even outside the Midwest in the very near future.

Gary, what else you got? Where can people find us if they want to buy some singles on a random night on the internet on their phone on an application? Check us out over on Whatnot. You can find Jason and I usually together on Sunday afternoons. And then throughout the week, one of us will be on on Wednesday. Usually somebody will be on a different night as well. Jason occasionally will do a low end lot show but make sure you go bookmark our shows there. Hit the like and subscribe button here. If you're following, if you're watching this on TikTok or anywhere else, give us a follow there as well.

It helps us out a ton. We appreciate you guys more than you know. None of what we do is possible without you guys watching, without you guys coming up to us at shows and selling us stuff, buying stuff from us, hanging out with us. It means a lot to us to know that we're giving you guys value that matters to you. Yeah, that was very well put, Gary. Sometimes I'm eloquent. You know what? You have a way with words. This has been the Ball Card Show, The Sports Podcast. For The Sports Collector. Bye now.

Peace. ♪♪♪