Your Best Arguments AGAINST My Card Market Optimism

Geoff Wilson Show · 2w ago · 48 min

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So last week I put out an episode titled this isn't 2021 why I'm not Worried about a Sports Card Market Crash and you guys had a lot to say about it. Now, in that show, I explained that even though the sports card market is unbelievably red hot right now, I'm still very bullish about the long term. And while a short term downward price correction is certainly possible and potentially even likely, I said that I believed the market as a whole would be significantly higher in five to 10 years than it is today. Some of you agreed with what I said, some of you thought I was completely insane, and some of you made arguments that caused me to rethink or at least refine some of what I said. So let's talk about it. The Jeff Wilson show is brought to you by Arena Club, the official home of Slab Packs. Now available every day, Slab Packs offer an exciting way to collect rated cards with confidence. Plus every pack comes with an instant offer to buy your Slab. Don't miss out. Explore the latest Slab Packs and more by downloading the Arena Club applause. Just search Arena Club in the App Store and use promo code SCI for 20% off your first purchase. Here we go from the Arena Club studio inside Cards hq. Now, I'm not going to rehash my whole video from last week about the reasons why I think this isn't 2021 and why I'm not worried about a sports card crash or at least a 2021 style sports card market crash happening again. I assume many of you probably saw the video last week or maybe saw some of my posts on social media about it. Well, I know a lot of you saw the video or saw the posts because there were hundreds, maybe thousands of comments and I understand why this is a hot button topic for a lot of people right now. You've seen the market go berserk and for some of you, you're probably really happy about where prices are because you probably have. Your collection may have become a lot more valuable over the last year, year and a half. But at the same time maybe you're very worried that we're about to be on the edge of a cliff like what happened back in 2021. Or maybe you feel like you've been left on the sidelines. There were a lot of people in the comments who are seeing all the prices go up and they feel like it's affecting them in a negative way because it is, it is harming their ability to participate. It's making everything so expensive and, and you know, just out of reach for a lot of collectors. And I, I get those point of views. And so I think there's a lot of, just a lot of tension around this and around where the sports card market is right now. And I get it. And we're going to talk about your comments and the comments that, some of which I think were very on point and others I think we're very off base. So, again, I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on last week's episode, but let me just at least remind you quickly of the 10 main points that I made. The first was I said today money is flowing towards much better cards, cards of the goats than it was back in 2020 and 2021, right before the sports card market drove off that cliff. Number two, I said collectors better understand scarcity today than they did back then. Number three, and this one was very controversial amongst a lot of you. I said, in today's sports card market, there are more collectors and fewer pure flippers than there were back in 2021. We're going to talk about that because a lot of people disagreed with that one. Number four, I said that set building is returning and that's a good thing for the health of the sports card market. Some people didn't agree with that one as well. So more to talk about there. Number five, I said participation in sports cards is at record levels. Number six, I said Fanatics still has room to grow, which I think people largely agreed with. But people had some interesting takes as to why that's a bad thing for the sports card market. Number seven, I said athletes are actively joining the hobby. Number eight, I said international growth remains largely untapped. Number nine, I said the hobby's infrastructure is stronger. And number 10, I said the market already survived its stress test. And by that I mean we've already been through a market crash. It already happened coming off of 2021, and the hobby is now back stronger than ever before. Now, what I didn't say in that video, and I want to be clear about this again, I didn't say that card prices cannot go down. In fact, I said, and I believe the exact opposite of that, I said it is entirely possible that we will see a price correction and the price of many cards, all cards, could drop 20%, could drop 30%. Absolutely, that could, that could occur with how hot things have been over the last year, year and a half. We could see this price correction in the next six months. We could see it next year, we could see it the year after. That I'm not sure. But at some point in time we will see a price correction. Because even in healthy markets, there are price corrections. Happens all the time in the stock market. Prices run up and then they pull back somewhat. Now, if the market's healthy, they'll eventually run up again to all time highs and then maybe they pull back and then they go up again to all time highs. Right. And so hopefully, I think the sports card market is healthy. I think it is. And I think that a little bit of a price correction coming up sometime soon here should be expected. But I also think if you look five years, 10 years out, we should be seeing prices at levels significantly above even where they are today. And I don't think we're gonna have another 20, 21 style systemic collapse. I don't think that. So I put this video out, I put these comments out on social. And what did you say? Well, maybe to nobody's surprise, one of the first groups of comments that I saw was people saying Jeff's view is biased because he has businesses in the hobby, so he has to say positive, optimistic things. So. So that the hobby will continue to grow. Okay, I got a couple things to say to this. First of all, duh, that I have businesses in the hobby. Yes, clearly I have many business interests in the hobby in addition to a huge collection, you know. So, yes, I'm heavily, heavily invested in the hobby. I'm not trying to trick anyone there. I think I've been pretty open about that fact. But you're giving me too much credit that I can control the entire market just by sitting here and being optimistic. Like, if you think that's the re. Like if you think I'm sitting here saying optimistic things because I'm trying to control the entire market and make the market grow, I think you're giving me a little bit too much credit. Look, I appreciate it. I'm honored. I'm humbled that you think me sitting here in front of this microphone, talking into the camera can control a market with tens of millions of participants and billions of dollars being transacted every single month. I'm humbled that you would think that. But that's not reality. So, no, I'm not sharing optimistic comments just because I'm trying to, you know, control the market. And here's something that's going to surprise you. Guess what? I don't like the market surging up the way it has been over the last year. You're probably surprised to hear that, right? I don't like it. You know, Why I don't like it because I would rather see slow and steady growth, not big surges that could be followed by big corrections. Right. And as I've said, obviously in my video last week, I don't think we're going to have a monumental, massive correct, you know, correction, but we inevitably will have prices decrease some just because of how hot the market has been. I would prefer slow and steady growth. I would prefer that the market grow 10 to 20% a year for the next 10 years rather than the market grow 60% this year and then next year it's down 25%. I would actually prefer not that because I believe huge run ups followed by big swings down make the market feel unsteady and unsteady and volatile is scary to new collectors. If you're getting into a market, if you're new, if you're trying to learn all of this and get into this for the first time and maybe buy investment cards for the first time, you don't really want to do that in a market that is surging and then could have maybe a quick drop off because of how hot it's been. I'd rather you do that in a market that has, that is consistently going up 20% a year, 15% a year, and feels like it's going to continue on a pretty slow but steady growth for a long time to come. Because that way I know you're gonna have a good experience. If the market's surging and you buy at the moment that happens to be the top, you're probably gonna have a bad experience because you're probably gonna see your card values, you know, go down and then you maybe bring them back into cards HQ to try to sell one of your cards four months from now and you're surprised to learn it's down 20 or down 25 or 30% from where it was four months ago. I, I don't like that. I want slow but steady growth. So no, I'm actually not encouraging this crazy, you know, spike in the card market because I don't think that's the healthiest thing for the card market. Slow and steady is what I would actually prefer to see. But at the end of the day, I don't control the market. Nobody does. And the market is gonna do its thing. And that's how we've seen the see things play out the last several years. The market has done its thing and I sit here and commentate on what is happening. Okay. Another big theme in the comments is that the macro economy absolutely can crush Card prices. I heard this a lot. One YouTube commenter made this point very well. He said, in a true financial crisis, people sell even assets they consider safe because they need liquidity. And on Facebook, somebody commented, food and gas come before sports cards. And you know what? Yu-Gi-Oh they're absolutely right. If we get a severe recession, financial crisis, huge unemployment spike, or liquidity shock, card prices probably go down. And they could probably go down a lot. I agree with that. But this isn't really a rebuttal of my thesis about the health of the card market. That is a risk to virtually every asset class. If you have the economy Tribute, stocks are going to absolutely get hit. Real estate will probably get hit. Luxury goods are going to get hit hard. And yes, collectibles will also probably get hit. The interesting question, though, is what happens afterwards? Does demand permanently evaporate or does the category recover? Well, I believe the category will recover. And while everything may decrease during an economic decline, I believe when you get on the other side of that, sports cards will come rallying back up, likely faster than most other investment categories. That's my guess. And that's what I believe will probably happen. So, yes, be careful. If there is an economic decline on the horizon, it could affect the entire market, no doubt, but it will affect everything. And that's the reality that we live in. Unless you're going to liquidate everything and put it in cash, then I guess that's kind of how you ride that thing out, right? Okay, in terms of my list of the 10 points, the point that was pushed back on by far the most was when I said, today there are more collectors and less flippers. People very much disagreed with this. Instagram had comments like, there are more pure flippers than ever. Where are the collectors? Um, I. And I saw that across all the different platforms, right? Comment after comment after comment. Even. Even Darren Rovelle chimed in on my list and said he agreed with some of the points on my list, but he very much disagreed with that point. So let me say a couple of things. First of all, I. Are there more flippers today than there were in 2020, 2021? Maybe. Maybe I underestimated that. Maybe I underestimated the amount of flipping activity that is still going on today. But there's a very important distinction. The number of flippers versus the percentage of overall participants in the hobby. I still believe that from a percentage standpoint, there are less flippers today than there were back in 2020 and 2021. Now the hobby is a lot bigger. Today there's more, many more participants overall. So maybe the number of flippers today is also greater than it has ever been in history before. But the overall hobby is much greater than it has ever been in history before. So as a percentage, how many flippers versus collectors are there today? I still think that from a percentage basis there were more flippers back in 2020, 2021, and there's a little bit less today percentage wise. I still believe that's the case back in 2020 and 2021. All I like that era to me was all about flipping and it was all about speculating on whatever breakout rookie star is going to have a good night tomorrow. I mean, you saw just crazy stuff happen. You saw, you know, some no name basketball player get called up from the G League and in his first game coming out of the G league he scores 18 points and the next day his cards are up 600%. You saw that happen all the time. All the time. And those were the cards that everybody was paying attention to and that everybody seemed to be buying. It seemed like back in 2020 and 2021 people were buying cards strictly because they wanted to be able to sell them a week later for double. And I don't think today feels that way nearly as much anymore. I don't think that's what people are doing nearly to the same degree. I just don't. That doesn't mean flipping is not part of it. That doesn't mean people still aren't speculating. That doesn't mean that, that, you know, a baseball prospect who gets called up isn't going to see his cards go up 500% still. Cause that still happens. But it just feels to me like that's just a much smaller part of the overall market today. Now there were a lot of people who said, well wait a minute, go to a card show. Look at all of the people at the card show that are buying. All the people walking around buying out dealer tables. What are they doing? Because they're certainly not collecting. Fair point. You know what most of them are doing? They're buying those cards for repacks. That's what all those people are doing. All those people walking around card shows buying out dealer tables. They get all their sticky notes, they're pricing things out, they're buying for repacks. Is that flipping? Well, it's a little different. I don't really consider that flipping in the same way. It's really acquiring inventory for a business inventory a sense. It's the same way that cards HQ buys at card shows all over the country and then sells the cards on our website and in our store. Is that flipping? Well, we're a business. That's what we do. That's what every card shop does. That's what every repack does. They buy cards and then they resell them. We're professional resellers. Right. So are repack buyers. I don't consider that quite the same thing as flipping. When I think of flipping, I think of somebody who's buying Zach Wilson because they think he's going to have a great game this Sunday and his cards are going to be up 30% on Tuesday of next week and they can flip them on ebay for that profit Tuesday of next week. That's what I think of flipping. And there was a lot of that happening back in 2020 and 2021, and I think there's a lot less, at least as a percentage of that happening today. So, you know, less flipping, more flipping. I guess it depends how you're going to define it if you're going to include repacking in that at all. Now, what I will say, another theme of comments that I heard was that there's, you know, a ton of breaking today, a ton of repacking today. There's a ton of chance taking today, money being spent on chance. Yu-Gi-Oh that is true. There's a lot more breaking today. There's a lot more repacks today. So if you consider that speculation, it kind of is in its own way. Right. But that's still different than what drove the 2021 singles bubble. Breaking, repacking. It can absolutely become overheated. Expected value can get better, bad, and people can spend beyond, beyond what they should. And that does happen today more than ever before. But that doesn't necessarily create the same mechanism as thousands of people all piling into the same Justin Herbert or Zion Williamson's cards just because everyone expects their prices to rise. It's different. So that's why I say flipping is less today than it was back then. But depending on how you want to look at that, I can understand why so many people felt differently than I did about that topic. Hey guys, let me take a quick minute to tell you about cardshq.com because almost everything in this store is available for sale on our website. All of our sealed product, all of our graded cards, and many of our supplies are all available on cardshq.com so next time you're ready to make a card purchase, check out cards hq.com okay, some other things I heard from you. One is that manufactured scarcity and parallel overload are problems. Okay. I think that's a fair criticism for sure of the industry overall. One Instagram commenter said. Does the hobby actually understand scarcity better, as Jeff is saying, or has the industry simply become better at manufacturing and marketing scarcity? Fair point. I think, yes, yes, the industry has become better at manufacturing and marketing scarcity, without a doubt. I mean, you know, you got, you know, a player now every year, each player probably has a few hundred different one of one cards, right? A one of one no longer is what it used to be. A gold out of 10 or a black out of 10 is no longer what it used to be. Players have dozens of parallels in every single product and then a bunch of inserts. And then sometimes those inserts have parallels. You know, case hits aren't as special when there's bunches of case hits, right? So, you know, and there's so many different products. Right. So it does, it does maybe weaken scarcity if it's heavily manufactured. So that's a fair point. Now, at the same time, a couple of things are going to say in response to that. At the same time, if they didn't create all these inserts, if they didn't create all of these one of ones, then everybody would hate the products because all of the products would be filled with just base cards. Or if they printed less product overall so that they could still maintain a reasonable ratio of being able to pull parallels and one of ones and everything, then the price of those boxes would be four times what they are today. So pick your poison. It's very difficult right now for the manufacturers. Demand's so high, so the only way they can make, they have to make more product to meet the demand so prices don't go even crazier. But then in order to make more products, they have to make more inserts and parallels and one of ones because if they don't, it's going to make all of the boxes very hard to pull anything. And then people are going to get mad when they buy expensive hobby box and it's nothing but baseball based cards and that's it. So that's, it's a, it's a mech. It is a, it is how manufacturers respond to the growth of the hobby. I understand why people are concerned about it. I don't think there's a perfect solution to that problem. And I want to make one very important distinction as well. Most of the money today that I was talking about in my video, it is not flowing into buying. You know, number to 10 Dylan Harper cards. Some of it's going there for sure. Dylan Harper's actually been pretty popular in the sports card market this last year. So some of it's going there. But the cards that I was talking about, the ones were really all the, all a lot, the vast majority of the money is going. I was talking about 1980s Michael Jordan cards and 1990s inserts, rare inserts of Ken Griffey Jr. And Barry Bonds and you know, Kobe and players like that. I was talking about a lot of older cards. I'm talking about Tom, you know, early career Tom Brady or even Tom Brady's first case hits like downtowns and kabooms back when they didn't actually print that many downtowns or kabooms. And those cards, they can't be recreated. And that's the category I'm talking about. So when I say collectors understand scarcity more than ever before, today they're looking into the past. They're looking for scarce cards of the greatest of all time. And there actually are a lot of very scarce cards. When you look back 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, there's a lot of scarcity in some of those eras of the hobby. So even if today you feel like things are overprinted and there's too many parallels and too many one on ones and all these things, I would say, okay, yes, but that's not really what has driven the market over the last 18 months. What's driven the market is people buying the rare cards of the, of the goats from a decade or decades ago. That's what is driving the market right now. Another thing people said in the comments was that goat cards can absolutely become overpriced and that just because people are buying goats, it doesn't mean that those cards one-of-one go down in value. And guess what? That, Yu-Gi-Oh that's absolutely true. In fact, we already saw that happen in the last crash back in 2021. We saw Michael Jordan's 1986 Fleer absolutely tumble in price. We saw Tom Brady's Contenders, rookie Ticket Auto, absolutely tumble in price. We saw LeBron's exquisite rookies and Topps Chrome rookies from 2020, from 2003 absolutely tumble in price. The goat cards got crushed, as did all of the speculative cards. But here's the big difference. The Go cards all came back and today all of those cards that I just mentioned, they're way back up in the market. Many of those Topps of cards have already gone way past their all time highs back in 2020 and 2021. Some haven't gotten back there yet, but they're all heading back in that direction and most are past those all time highs. The Michael Jordan cards came back. The Mac Jones cards, the Mac Jones cards did not. The speculative cards largely died, but the great cards of the all time greats, they came back and they're hotter now than ever before. So yes, Jordan can go down, Kobe can go down, LeBron can go down, Griffey can go down, Brady can go down. But if I'm thinking five years out, if I'm thinking 10 years out, I'm going to bet you that their cards, especially the good, the good quality ones, the scarce ones, the iconic ones, they're going to be worth more five to ten years from now than they are today. Might they go down 20% or 30% next year? Sure. And might they be two or three times more valuable than they are today, five or ten years from now? Yu-Gi-Oh I bet they will be. That's my guess. And guys, let me just be clear here, right, like this is not financial advice. I am just telling you what I think and giving you my observations of the sports card market. But nobody knows for sure. This is risky. And I get that people in the comments are like, hey, I'm being too optimistic. This hobby is full of risk. There's risk around every corner. This whole thing could crash out and die. Sure could happen. 100% could happen. I don't believe it's going to happen. And I gave you all the reasons in the last video why I don't believe that that's going to happen. But it could. It's risky. None of us know for sure. I'm just telling you what I believe. And what I believe is if you buy the really good cards of the great goats, those things are great to lock in your safe and hold onto for the long term. And by the way, this isn't just like a phenomenon of the last five or Donruss. Like look at the history of the hobby. Topps has been making baseball cards for 75 years. And those baseball cards, they've gone up for most of those last 75 years. I mean, that 52 mantle, it's only gotten more valuable as the decades have gone by. So there's actual long term track record here to look at. This is not a five year phenomenon. You got some real track record in history when it comes to the sports card hobby. And I believe that track record in history on a macro level will continue long into the future. Okay, another thing I heard a lot of in the comments was that the hobby is getting too expensive for normal collectors. In fact, one person on Instagram said this isn't for the normal guy anymore. And a lot of people report responded and liked his comment. Yu-Gi-Oh that's fair. Look, a normal collector isn't buying a $50,000 Cobie card. And now normal collectors have a lot of trouble stomaching the price of a lot of sealed product. Hobby boxes. A lot of releases have become very, very expensive and people are concerned about that. It's become less attainable. The high end cards have become less attainable. You know, sealed products, very expensive. All of this is true, all of this is true. But I would also challenge the fact that participating in the hobby requires that. And I'm not trying to say that, I'm not trying to say things aren't too expensive, but what I am trying to say is there's a lot of different ways to collect and there's a lot of Jordan cards and there's a lot of Brady cards and there's a lot of Ken Griffey Jr. Cards and there's a lot of vintage cards that are attractive, that are desirable, that even, even, even in some ways are iconic, that are under a hundred bucks. Under a hundred bucks. There's cards inside cards hq right now you can buy a Tom Brady card for $40 from the 2000s. That's really attractive to look at. We got one on the shelf. You, you can, you can find these cards. You can find Lebron's and Jordans and Curry's and Brady's and all you can find any player you want to find, you know, under 100 bucks. It may not be the card that's making the headlines, it may not be the card that's getting posted all over social media, but there's still the opportunity. And honestly, a lot of those cards still prove to be pretty good investments. You don't have to be spending $20,000 on a card for it to be a good investment for you. The Jordan market, the Michael Jordan market, the entire market has moved up. There are Michael Jordan cards that you could have bought for ten dollars a year ago that are now forty or fifty dollar cards. They there, there's plenty that have gone way beyond that that were very affordable cards. You know, there's $80 Michael Jordan cards that are, you know, three or $400 today and you could have bought that for $80, you know, a year and a half ago. So. And the same with Tom Brady and the same with Ken Griffey. Jr. And I mean the list goes on and on, right? So it's not just the high end of the market that moves things. The high end of the market gets the headlines. But really with these goat players, the entire market has been moving up and you can get in at any level. So while I do agree that the hobby has an affordability problem, I don't think that that is, that should be an inhibitor to participating and I don't think that should force you onto the sidelines. It may just force you not to buy the card that's being touted on social media that hit the record sale number, but buy something that's a little bit more under the radar. And when it comes to sealed product, yes, I would love to see hobby boxes be less expensive. I don't like collectors walking into Cards HQ and having to shell out as much money as they sometimes do. For some of these new products, I'd like there to be a better value return, but it's largely controlled by supply and demand and the demand is there right now. What I will say that I do think Topps is doing a good job at is they are deliberately trying to maintain lower priced products such as, for example, Topps Flagship Football, which just came out a couple of weeks ago. They tried to price that at more reasonable levels and they tried to make a lot of retail product available at all kinds of different price points and they succeeded. That product hasn't, you know, spiked 300 in the market since release. You can walk in to Cards HQ and you can buy a Hobby box or a Blaster box or a Mega box of Topps Flagship Football, the brand new product, and feel okay about doing it. And so I want to see Topps continue to keep an Yu-Gi-Oh towards affordability and to segment their products in such a way so that there, there is plenty of offerings available for collectors who want to come in and buy something for 50 bucks and don't feel like they got to spend $500 in order to get something that they can enjoy opening. Okay, another comment I heard Fanatics growing doesn't automatically mean collectors are healthier. In fact, one person on Instagram said Fanatics Growing is good for Fanatics. That doesn't automatically mean consolidation, exclusivity and higher wax prices are good for collectors. Yu-Gi-Oh I agree. That's not what I was arguing. I'm not arguing whether Fanatics growth is good for collectors and higher wax prices are good for collectors. And look, as you guys know, I've got a deep business relationship with Fanatics and I am A proponent of what tops and Fanatics are doing. Doing. I think that they are making a lot of right moves. I think they are doing a lot of good things. I understand that the popularity they have brought to sports cards, which they absolutely have brought in a lot of collectors and have really made the whole thing more popular. It has led to higher wax prices. Obviously, the fact they have exclusivity has led to less choice for collectors. So I understand there's criticisms and things that collectors don't like as well. But what you can't argue with is what my original argument was based on. Fanatics has absolutely grown and will continue to grow the market. Fanatics, whether you like them or not, and whether you like their tactics or not, you cannot argue with the fact that Fanatics has done a very effective job at marketing and will continue to provide more marketing for the sports card market as a whole. They've done a very effective job at getting more athletes involved. They've done a very effective job at building international distribution. They've done a very effective job of getting the hobby more mainstream exposure. They've done a very effective job at getting more new collectors to enter the hobby. And guess what? This surge in demand from new collectors is a large reason why card prices have gone up. Look, Fanatics can grow the market enormously while still making decisions that collectors disagree with. That can happen. But my argument was that Fanatics has and will continue to grow. They're just getting started. They will continue to grow the market. And that part of my argument I completely believe is true. 100% Fanatics is going to continue to grow this thing. Honestly, whether you feel like it's in the best interest of collectors or not. Okay. Another thing I heard people were saying Pokemon and TCG could be considerably more vulnerable than sports cards. Sure. Probably is, I guess, right? I mean, you think sports cards have been hot over the last 18 months. Go look at the Pokemon market. Go look at how poke if you. It's funny, if you go into market movers and you look at the charts of a Tom Brady or. Or Michael Jordan, you're going to see like this big, you know, big spike on the chart right over the last, like 12 months. Then go load a chart of some popular Pokemon card and the spike it's seen over the last 12 to 18 months will probably put the spike of the Michael Jordan card or the Tom Brady card to shame. It will make it look small. Consider, you know, compared to the spike of what we've been seeing in the Pokemon card market. Obviously the Pokemon card market is actually what has the grading company shut down right now because there's been such a massive spike in grading in Pokemon. It's not sports cards that have shut PSA down, it's Pokemon cards that have shut PSA down with their value levels. So is Pokemon actually the, the market that's in the bubble right now? Maybe more than sports cards, but at the same time, Pokemon has an even deeper true collector base than sports cards. It has a bigger collector base, more people involved in Pokemon, bigger fans of the Pokemon ip. If you don't believe me, spend time here in Cards hq. The aisles on the Pokemon side of the store are busier than the aisles on the sports card side of the store. And the people that are coming in to buy the Pokemon, I would argue that the, that the vast majority of those people are collectors, not flippers collectors. So, Yu-Gi-Oh the Pokemon market might be overheated, maybe even more overheated than sports cards, but the underlying franchise and collector base are exceptionally strong. And in reality, I also don't think that the Pokemon market is that connected to the sports card market. So I don't think that that argument necessarily changes what I was saying about sports cards. Okay, couple other, couple other comment sets here. People challenged my idea that set building is making a comeback. I saw people in the comments saying, you know, people haven't collected sets since, you know, 1991, and, you know, the vintage collectors who build all those sets are dying off and, you know, stuff like that. Right. That's actually not what I'm talking about, and I should have clarified, but I'm not talking about people building 792 card sets of top series one baseball. That's not what I'm collecting about collecting. That's. That's not what I'm talking about. Right. What I am seeing is something that I barely saw five years ago, and that is collectors intentionally assembling complete insert sets. Take a little scan around Instagram at various card accounts and you're probably going to see collectors championing the Kaboom set they just built, or the Downtown set, or the Dunkin Go Nuts set, or the Noiseboys set, or the takeit2.net set. Collectors are set building, but they're doing it differently today than they used to. They're building complete sets of all kings. They're building complete sets of ultraviolets. They're buying complete sets of anime cards. They're building case Hit sets. They're building insert sets. They're building rainbows, parallel rainbows of a particular card. And Look, I'm not saying this is like a huge segment of the hobby. It's not. This is still probably a small minority that are trying to build these sets. But set building went from almost invisible five years ago to noticeable today. And that's progress. And set building is collecting. And so that's what I like to see. All right, one other argument. This one I laugh at, that a lot of people made in the comments, they said, because Jeff is saying this time is different, that means we're obviously in a bubble. Come on, that's not analysis. Every market environment is different. Sometimes this time is different, can be wrong, but sometimes things are actually different. And things are actually different. Today, the question isn't whether someone uttered the phrase. The question is, what are the underlying facts? And I'll give you the facts. In 2020 and 2021, there was pandemic behavior. You had the stimulus, the liquidity, the checks being sent to everybody that people were spending on cards. You had extreme rookie and prospect speculation. You had retail product flipping. You had a bunch of brand new inexperienced market participants, and you had dramatically weaker hobby infrastructure. That's not like today. You can't just sit there and say, you know, it's a lazy, lazy comment. To say that because I'm saying this time is different means that it's not different and that we're in a bob bubble. That's lazy. No, everything is different today. Today we have a different market with different participants, different products, different businesses involved, different distribution mechanisms and different demand sources. So you can agree whether those differences are sufficient. But simply saying famous last words doesn't actually rebut any of those differences. That's just lazy. Stop being lazy. Come on. Make better arguments than that. All right, I want to end on this. There was one argument that people made in the comments that actually was in favor of my overall thesis that this isn't 2021 and the sports card market is going to be healthy for the long term. That I didn't think about. I didn't put it on my list, but I think it was actually. It would have been a good addition to my list if I had thought about it. There were several people in the comments who said kids and families are a bigger reason for optimism today than ever before. In fact, a commenter on my YouTube video said, he said you should add number 11 to your list. The number of kids in the hobby and at card shows. Yu-Gi-Oh actually a lot of people said this across Facebook, across Instagram, across Twitter, when they were responding to my. To my comments. Now look, the kids getting into the hobby are not, are not driving the Michael Jordan PSA 10 prices, right? That were these record sales that we're seeing. But they are building the collector base of 2035-2040-2045-2050. And that matters enormously. With my thesis being that I believe in the long term of the sports card hobby. If I'm saying the cards that are popular today, the cards that are setting these record prices today, will actually be more valuable in the long term. 10 years out, 20 years out, 30 years out, you need those kids today participating because that kid today at the card show who's spending 80 bucks, you know, to buy cards, that's that same person that 30 years from now is going to be spending $80,000 to buy a grail card, right? So yes, I do think the number of kids that have entered the hobby and we all see it, go to a card show, you'll see it everywhere. I do think the number of kids entering the hobby is a really good, healthy sign for the long term. And I didn't mention it in my list and I should have. So there you go. That is a summary of the comments that I heard the most in my thoughts. And did those comments change my mind overall as a whole? No. I still strongly believe in the long term future of the sports card market. And I don't think we're going to see a crash, at least like we saw back in 2021. But what the comments did do is they correctly pointed out things that we all need to patch auto for. We need to be careful about the broader economy because a bigger economic decline could absolutely have a negative effect. We do need to look for a slowdown of collectors coming into this space because if cards cool down in popularity with new collectors, that's going to be a problem. We also need to look for a slowdown with the popularity of collecting with kids because if cards lose popularity with kids, that's going to be a problem 30 years from now. We need to look for regulation because regulation coming into the sports card market could have unexpected consequences which could slow the market down. We also need to look for slowdowns in international expansion. If that doesn't take hold and an investment stops going international, then that may not be a great sign for long term growth. And of course, if something bad were to happen to one of the major players like Fanatics or psa, that could have a bad effect on the sports card market as well. But outside of monitoring and being careful and keeping an Yu-Gi-Oh on things, which is absolutely smart and the right thing to do. I'm going to remain optimistic. I'm going to remain bullish about the long term. And once again, let me be clear. My optimisticness, my bullishness doesn't mean that I don't think prices will correct. At some point. They will. Someday, maybe not long from now, you're going to see some of these goat cards that have been superheated over the last 18 months. You're going to see them drop 20 or 30%. Maybe more. Maybe more. That will happen at some point in time. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. That happens in every healthy market. It will happen in, in sports cards as well. But look at it over 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. I like the direction we're going. All right, there you go. That's my analysis of your comments. Thank you for being so spirited in everything that you had to say back to me. I love reading your comments. Even if I don't agree with them. I love reading them and I love hearing what is on your mind. And of course, don't forget these full length episodes of the Jeff Wilson show are available on the Jeff Wilson show channel on YouTube. They're also available on on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify. So make sure you listen and subscribe everywhere and I'll see you soon with my next one. Take care.

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