What Turned the Hobby Into a Gambling Machine? + Breaking vs. Collecting + Who Should Regulate the Hobby?
Chapters
About this episode
When did sports become so intertwined with gambling, and what did that do to the sports card hobby? Phil Chronakis remains with us as Greaig Miller of Midlife Cards joins the panel as the first-ever Sports Cards Live guest co-host. We dig into a major shift that happened years before the COVID hobby boom and ask whether the legalization and normalization of sports betting helped create the environment that transformed sports cards as well. That leads us straight into one of the hobby’s most contentious questions: is opening wax gambling? Collecting, breaking, ripping, chasing, compulsive spending and the psychology behind all of it come into the discussion, with some very different perspectives around the table. We also hear from Collectors MD about what they are seeing firsthand from collectors struggling with these behaviours. Finally, we look ahead. Does a hobby with this much money flowing through it eventually face greater scrutiny? And if some form of regulation is coming, is the better answer government intervention or a hobby that learns how to govern itself? Subscribe to Sports Cards Live on YouTube and wherever you listen to podcasts. Discover where you fit in the hobby at thehobbyspectrum.com. Search auctions across the hobby at AuctionWire.ai and use promo code SCL for 45% off your first year. Check out Pops & Comps on Amazon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This episode is published by Sports Cards Live.
Transcript
Machine transcript — exact wording may vary.
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Before we move along, Phil, I want to bring on our Guest Co host, Mr. Greg Miller of Midlife Cards. Greg, I see you're giving me give me this in the background. I'm gonna bring you on right now. Greg Miller, everybody. Our first ever guest co host on Sports Cards Live. Welcome to the show, Greg. What's up guys? Thanks for having me. Hey, how you doing Phil? Nice to meet you, Phil. Likewise. All right, well Greg, you've been listening in the background. I wouldn't mind getting some of your thoughts on what you've heard so far before we move on to the next topic that I'm going to introduce. Courtesy of Phil. But anything you'd like to state that you've been that you've heard. Greg, anything come to mind, any questions you may have for Phil, Mr. David Chase, or even myself?
Well, I know that a lot of people feel that maybe not technically is PSA monopoly, but when they really control all of the realistic competitors and the major competitors, at the very least they're an oligopoly and they have a major influence on pricing. And then when you see things like SGC raising their prices to $50 like a week before PSA says oh, we're going to reopen something at 59.99, it sure feels like there's some collusion going on between them. So, Yu-Gi-Oh technically, probably not Sherman antitrust law stuff, but it sure feels like it's getting close when they start doing coordinated things like that.
Phil, any thoughts or just look, I heard you use the word collusion, Greg, and collusion certainly gets my ears up, both as a consumer fraud litigator. In my career, that's not allowed. I'm not aware of evidence, I'm not aware of proof of collusion. But yes, what you described price fixing would be an example of collusion. That's different than how many companies do I have a choice to send into and what qualities do those have? Look, overall, I understand there's a lot of frustration about grading, but some of it the vector of the complaints usually different than the analysis of whether it's a monopoly. My understanding and my experience, since I submit cars at PSA and wait, I sent in a Cal Raleigh autograph and he had 60 home runs. I got it back from PSA and he had 15. But the fact that there are delays or price increases or the controversial pricing structure, if your card is greater than 10, those aren't problems because or whether or not collectors is or isn't a monopoly. Right. We're upset about something that is the flood of amount of grading. And the company's response is saying we're not able to do it. That doesn't. That is not a legal or legal issue, whether it's a monopoly or not. To me, that's just a corporate policy of saying, hey, we're going to make our money this way and it's not as consumer friendly and we're going to get a lot of complaints. And when the complaints come in, yes, they come in all over the board, including. And you know what, these guys are slow, they're expensive, they turn on and off and they're a monopoly. I don't think the monopoly itself is what the consumers are reacting to, though.
Appreciate that response, Greg, that satisfy your sort of query. I mean, I totally hear what you're saying 100%, but there's certainly a lot of power in a very small number of office buildings. And that's I think, and for me, the turnaround time, I'm not complaining about that. I mean, I know that that's something people are complaining about, but that's not necessarily evidence of collusion. But there, there are a series of events that seem to be kind of coincidental to say the least. And I think the pricing is the Most evident of that. Not necessarily the turnaround time, but. But it does. I mean, it doesn't really matter. It's just, it's, you know, we're in the weeds at this point.
You know what, Greg? You know, and, and guys, is like, from the way you put it, Greg, right there, a lot of coincidences in terms of the scheduling of things and the rollout of things. You have. Maybe, maybe we're giving the. These companies too much credit to think that they would be doing that. Because it sure seems when you look at it from outside, it does look like this. Okay, now it all makes sense now that we see you did this, two weeks later you do. Later you did this, now you do this. Okay, these do seem to be a concerted effort to have an impact on the market. But is that us giving them too much credit? Because there's a lot of things they can't do. Right. Why do we think they could do that? Right. I just, you know, just putting that out there for a, an alternative point of view. Greg, David, Phil, just put up your finger if there's any. If you want to jump in on anything, because on anything on that. Otherwise I'm good to move on to a new topic right now. Okay, so let's do that, guys. And this was, this was a really interesting one because I didn't. Until you look back and think about it, really, we realize now that there's so much gambling in society right now, sports gambling, whether it's just straight up sports gambling or it's gambling with sports cards. And Phil, there's something that when sports became vice, like was a term that you used when we were chatting the other day when sports became vice. Like, can you explain that comment and. Yu-Gi-Oh And just expound upon that, please?
Sure. I appreciate it. Jeremy, as I remember, you and I were talking about what really kicked off the hobbies, you know, where we are now and where we were 10 years ago. And we were talking about Covid's impact. A lot of people give Covid dual credit, appropriately, both the technology influx that kicked off social commerce that we have now, as well as the flood of money that, at least in the United States from some of the relief government programs, the money that sort of people needed to spend, and a lot of people spend it on cards. I think the real catalyst for where the hobby is now and where that vice comment came from is the 2018 Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court decision Murphy versus the NCAA. That decision invalidated a 1992 law that had outlawed gambling or sports Betting, promoting sports betting, actually doing it throughout the United States, with the exception of Nevada and a couple other grandfathered states. And in 2018, the Supreme Court turned that around and said, actually, we're just going to let the states decide. And governors from both parties in the United States wanted that to happen. This wasn't controversial because once sports gambling became legal, or at least once states could make it legal, those states could use those funds for roads and hospitals and police departments and things that people need. But my view of what happened then is once sports gambling became legal, something else changed. Now, this is two years before COVID One thing is the day before that Supreme Court decision, you never heard on a sports broadcast someone talking about the line or the over under or a parlay. In fact, the NFL throughout the 80s 90s and aughts thought that any mention of gambling would hurt its product, dilute its integrity. The day after the Supreme Court Decision, DraftKings and FanDuel were co broadcasting sports. I'm not saying this is a bad thing or a good thing. It was though. Why did that matter? Because suddenly the ability to bet on sports, the ability to watch sports and legally bet on it, not have to make calls or find somebody or hope the ease of doing it from your phone as well, started to make sports, not sports cards yet, but sports more participatory than it had been. If you remember the movie uncut gems from 2019 with Adam Sandler, the idea of a parlay involving Kevin Garnett's performance in a game, you could suddenly do that on your phone from your couch every night, every game, if you wanted to. That part becoming, feeling closer to the athletes, being allowed to bet on games, hearing the broadcasters talk about gambling without that decision. My view is that we don't get the hobby to that point of, you know, influencer media celebrity hype and coolness that it, that it did become. After Covid, without that additional impact of legalizing sports betting, people could feel closer to their athletes by betting on them. Every incremental step and collecting cards had that feel as well, especially with autographs and relics in those cards. So I think that my comment, you know, sports became more vice light is caused by a legal change that happened eight years ago now. And that legal change to me was the match. Covid was the kerosene.
Interesting. And how does that spill into the hobby then? Like, do you see a, do you see a correlation between that 2018 Supreme Court decision and where the hobby is now with breaking and repacks and, you know, like, so you can spend $20,000 on certain packs or products of cards and maybe get very little value, or you can get a million bucks worth of stuff. How do you, how do you see that 2018 Supreme Court decision having an impact on, on the hobby? So I, I see it having made the hobby, you know, except interesting to more people is the first thought I have. Meaning that collecting cards when I was young, I don't know about you guys, was not cool at all. Nothing I did was cool. And everything became cool later in life. Marching band, collecting cards, Dungeons and Dragons. So collecting cards became cooler when gambling became legal because people suddenly were doing something they hadn't been allowed to do before with sports. First of all, bet on it. And then these are the same cards they're opening before. But yes, the prices get more expensive. The complexity of insert programs got more increased over the odds. My view is breaking, repacking, opening boxes, any form is not gambling. Is not gambling. I fully understand and have a lot of respect for the opposite viewpoint, but I think, you know, we need to, like, be precise about our terms. And I'm going to borrow heavily here from somebody a lot smarter than I am, Josh Luber, who I think is maybe the smartest person in the hobby. His blind boxification white paper should be a must read for anyone who's opening a single pack of cards because he's describing exactly how the brain works and what process is going through. My view, which is largely informed by him and my legal understanding, is that gambling involves money in for money out. Collecting involves money in for a collectible. And you can hope that collectible is worth a lot of money. I get it. And you can sell that collectible and get money. But there is a significant important difference between gambling and collecting. I think we are seeing behaviors that remind us of gambling. And we're seeing certainly people run into trouble with their own behavior, their ability to say no. That doesn't make collecting gambling. I just want to point out, breaking has always, you know, predates 2018 for sure. The ability to open cards and not know what was inside has. Well, you could do that with a pack of cigarettes 130 years ago. You could do that with Goody gum 100 years ago. What changed is not that it became gambling. What changed is that the level of complexity of the chase programs in those products trigger more of that dopamine response. But collecting is something you acquire and keep. You can sell it now for more than ever. Jeremy, your example, by the way, that you can spend a million dollars on a Box of cards. People can spend money, crazy numbers on a lot of things. That itself doesn't make it gambling. And the fact that you don't get as much back as long as what you're doing is buying something in the box. And in breaking, I think of breaking as this great democratization of an expensive product. You can target your investment to your team, to your player, to a box that you otherwise one-of-one break into at all, given its price. So I see. And look, I respect the hard work that collectors MD does for people who do encounter difficulty. But my strong view is collecting is not gambling. Collecting has aspects that remind people of gambling. I think collecting and gambling are two planets in the blind box solar system.
I just. Okay, I just have a. I see a big difference between collecting and opening product. I think collecting is. I consider myself a collector. I do not open products at all. So I don't. And I don't. Although you could buy singles and gamble, prospecting, I believe, is a form of gambling. I think you'd argue against that because you're getting a card, the card might be worth zero. And it's not only what it's worth, it's what you're hoping for. In my mind as well, right. It's. I can assign value to something that other people don't. But if I'm happy with what I got, I don't consider that. I. I don't think that is as much of a gamble because I'm happy with the results of the expenditure into the blind box. So I. I think when you don't know what you're getting and you're taking a chance that I. I don't know how that isn't gambling. Maybe there's a. Maybe there's a legal way around that, Phil. Like, you know, it's why. It's why breakers would send something to somebody so that they wouldn't be in the gambling context. They could say, okay, you didn't hit anything in your break. You got the packers. You didn't hit. We're going to send you a card one-of-one so that we're not accused of being a casino. So here's something. But the buyer, the customer I like. And I've said this before too, Phil, I used to go to the LCS and I would spend 1000 bucks on boxes of cards or packs, get very little value for my return, either externally assessed value or my own assessed value. I get very little. And I'm in the car on the way home. I would have those same feelings and emotions. I would have after leaving the casino, after losing a thousand dollars and coming home with zero, not even empty packs. So I'm not sure how you get there for yourself, but. So I'm a little bit more curious about that now. Before you respond, let's go to Greg and David and see if they have anything to add. And I certainly don't want to go. You know, I don't want us all to pile on it and, but, but I, I think it's like, it's, it's a pretty like, compelling position. I feel like that if I've had those, because it's just my first hand experience, I had the same feeling of like, self disgust. Why did I buy after that first box, I got nothing that I wanted or, or a value. Why did I buy that second box? Why was I chasing like you're going to chase when you're down a few hundred bucks at the casino playing blackjack. So, Greg, any thoughts on that?
Yu-Gi-Oh for sure. You said a couple of times collecting isn't gambling. I completely agree with that. Collecting isn't gambling. But I do think that people use this hobby to gamble and not to collect. I think that some people use this hobby and as a form of gambling and it just happens to be a very small part of the Venn diagram that overlaps with the same hobby that we participate in. So when somebody's buying cards that they like or a team of a player and they're putting them in their collection, I don't think that's gambling, but I do think that there are people that gamble using sports cards. But that's my take.
David, any thoughts before we go back to Phil? Yu-Gi-Oh a little different version of what you guys are saying, but like, you know, when you're saying that, like, you know, people who are betting on sports and having that rush of trying to like, root for a team or anything, I think that we've seen that in the past also. You know, when Jerome Walton Cards came out back in like 89, 90 kind of time, I started watching Cubs games. Okay. I was rooting for him. And you know, in 1990, when David Robinson had his rookie, I was, I became a Spurs fan. And I think that fantasy football has also brought in a lot of the newcomers into the NFL where they started to really understand the players specifically and follow them game to game and watch them throughout the entire season. And then I think that that might have also brought into collecting because they really knew those players from watching it and watched all the way to the end of the game, even though the score was 27 to 7 because they wanted to see if their quarterback threw another touchdown at the end. So like, you know, I think it's more than just the sports being legal. I think there's always kind of been that version of loving a team or liking a team and bringing it where kind of brought it into collecting.
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Look, I like something Greg said. Greg said very much. And so I want to make this point whether it's, you know, whoever's opinion about what part of it is or isn't gambling. And I really like the idea that people can use it as gambling, that's for sure. I want to start with this. The definition doesn't matter as much as the ability to solve a problem. So for whoever is running into either compulsive spending problems or things that remind us of gambling, Jeremy, you made the great point of sometimes you're done with a purchase or a break and it has the same feeling. So if someone finds themselves in trouble, that is what Alex's amazing organization does, you know, and it doesn't matter if it's select few people in the hobby or if it's affecting more. The resources to deal with that impact exist at collectors MD which is great. That being said, my opinion is we're still opening cards the way we were, you know, 40, 50 years ago. The fact that they're more expensive and have more intricate chase programs in them, that is thanks to Upper Deck and Panini is doing different things to our brain. And also in the junk wax era, you could never have the feeling you had Jeremy of like, oh, why did I open that so much? Because you could buy as much as if you wanted for as a dollar apiece. I think what's happening now is, yes, the ability to lay on your couch at two in the morning and click a couple of buttons and be on a break for a really expensive product. While we're not using our best judgment, maybe, Jeremy, you said before, maybe I've opened some wax, you know, after, you know, some temptation. That's all of us. But that's this, you know, compulsive spending is not limited to the hobby. It's just a hobby issue now that the hobby is so expensive. So now there are resources specific to the hobby, like those at Collectors MD but my view is the thing we're doing when we're opening cards or buying cards or keeping cards hasn't changed. The prices have changed. The way we get them has changed. The technology has changed. The law hasn't changed. If anything, it's, you know, slightly more permissive. And, you know, I feel that if there are people that are getting into trouble with it, they deserve and need the help and the compassion, you know, and the patience. But I think largely what we have is, you know, the same hobby we had 50 years ago, just with a lot of different features that require a little more attention.
All right, appreciate those comments. Couple comments from the chat. Savoy here says it's how each individual perceives it that's gambling. I. I think that makes sense. Maybe not legally, but I don't really care what the law says. If I feel like I've gambled, I. It doesn't matter to me what any external entity says. Alex from Collectors MD says the people that join our peer support meetings are experiencing the exact same fallout that compulsive gamblers experience in traditional gambling environments. Clinicians define breaking as gambling. Okay, appreciate that, Alex. And D.J. here says, I feel like if y' all got people who not who know market, this is a laughable discussion. If you're not important, you don't have to listen. D7 4 7. If you're gonna insult this discussion and call it laughable, you don't have to stay here and listen to it. But I'll continue your comment. You say a lot of this has been litigated. The hobby is just becoming big enough to have people pay attention. Maybe that's a good thing, that it's big enough to have people pay attention. Alex comes back and says, it is very subjective at the end of the day, but we have to go off the impact Many collectors are inevitably experiencing firsthand.
That's what. That's. That makes sense to me. I got resonates with me. And Savoy here says nobody talked about gambling when you open cases and boxes and packs before COVID That's just not true. Savoy. I talked about it, but no one was listening because we didn't have all the commentary and all the social media that we have today before COVID So you don't know if people were talking about or not. And I promise you, I was talking about it because I was very unhappy. After I would lose what I felt like, lose my money at the lcs. I could exchange lcs with casino. I felt like I was leaving the casino. I would leave the LCS because I worked hard for my money, and I would leave with the hope of getting a big hit, like a big spin on the roulette wheel or getting dealt blackjack. That's what I was hoping for when I would open packs and I would not get that. Very rarely was I lucky enough, and I'd go home feeling like I just lost my shirt at the casino. But I would also go to buying singles because that's how I balance it, and that's where I went to ultimately and exclusively. Greg.
I also think that if you do it through cards, it's easier to kind of disguise what you're doing with gambling. If you say to your spouse, I'm going to the dog track, they know you're going to gamble. But if you say, oh, I just collect sports cards, I really like watching football, and I collect cards. And so I'm buying into these boxes. I'm buying boxes of cards, and then some cards show up. It's. It's sort of like an easier way to mask what is actually happening, which makes it, in my opinion, even more dangerous, because people don't really see warning signs in traditional ways. So I think that's something to consider about it, too.
Yu-Gi-Oh And you know, Phil, I love how you collect the unopened wax. You are. It's almost like you're, in a way, you're entering the casino, but you're not spinning the wheel. You're just sort of looking around and saying, you know what? I'm going to save my money and hold these, because as soon as I open them, it's sort of a. It's a gamble now. You can have a lot of fun, and it's fun opening wax is what I hear, But I never found it that much fun. It might be. It might be fun in the moment, but as soon as that moment's over, unless you hit something that you want or you think is valuable.
The. The fun. The fun is over. And the, The. The feelings after are much stronger than the. Than the anticipation might have been for me. Not. I'm not saying this for everybody. Okay, back to you. No, look, I love those perspectives. And listen, what I think is most valuable at my collection. I'm older and, you know, so this is. Are the memories I have of collecting the stories of the walks to the store, the people I collect with. The cards have prices, they're valuable. The boxes have prices. The memories are priceless. The past, by the way, on the point of this has to be litigated. People are paying attention now. We gotta remember our history. In the 1990s, there was a wave of litigation against Tops Fleer Skybox Upper Deck by parents who were concerned that cards from the 80s and early 90s still in junk wax era were promoting gambling. A lot of the same complaints you're hearing now, and those cases were even brought under the RICO statute, that this was a criminal conspiracy of sorts of. By card manufacturers to. And those cases were litigated and none of them resulted in any of the legal findings. I strongly agree that if it feels like gambling and you run into a problem with it, get help. We don't need legal definitions. But this has been litigated. This is being litigated again now. I'll take it to somewhere in the future, though. Jeremy, you mentioned Nick Jarman. And I think when I met you at the national, when you were doing Enter the Inferno, and I saw Dr. Beckett for the first time, that's, that's where. That's where I had seen Nick. Nick Jarman, as the president of the Certified Trading Card association, is trying to start and implement a trade association around the hobby for the big players, the small collectors, and everyone in between. I'm encouraged by that development, just like I've been encouraged by watching Alex develop Collectors md. Because if Collectors MD is, you know, the hospital, the hobby of sorts, you know, if people are in trouble, that's where they can go. The CTCA is sort of going to be like the Church of the Hobby. And what I mean by that is this is a trade association that's going to try to identify our values as collectors as, you know, the stewardship we have over the hobby and say, here's how we want breaking done. I don't care what the, you know, will will write the law, so to speak. And I think the CTCA is a valuable prospect for the hobby, because if it's broad enough, if there's enough participation, the rules that the CTCA encourages people to follow as part of their membership, rules for breakers, rules for repackers, rules for local card stores and retailers, those rules will be what the regulators look to when they come. And what I mean by that is we can debate over whether it's gambling or not, but there's going to be some state legislatures later somewhere. There's going to be, you know, somebody in an attorney general's or prosecutor's office somewhere who isn't a collector, and he or she is going to notice one thing, the billions and billions of dollars going into the space and all the cash walking around the large shows and someone's going to make a name for himself or herself by saying, hey, it's a problem. And someone said it's gambling. And so, so when and if that happens, things like a trade association, things that Nick Jarman is working on starting would be there as a layer of, you know, other self governed professions, including lawyers, have those rules and standards. They're still accountable to the law, just like everyone in the hobby still has to obey the law largely. But a trade association in the future, if that comes in, I think that helps us. It doesn't change whether this is gambling, whether this is a monopoly, but it provides structure and reliability and participation and ideally trust. I think going forward, the most important things are that community aspect when we're getting together at shows, or when we're getting off our phones and couches and meeting each other, even in rooms like this. So I'm encouraged by what I'm seeing in terms of what's being built around the hobby, resources for people who are running into trouble, organization so that the hobby can be the mature market that it now is in the 2020s. And also in my specific lane, hopefully an emphasis on charity. I want to say something about breaking that is undoubtedly not gambling. This box is very hot. I'm a sports collector, but this is a Disney box. This is a 2024 Disney Chrome Zebra And this box has been on fire lately. All of Disney has been on fire lately. What Sealed Wax Nation is looking to do with this box, we've identified a children's hospital in Nashville and we want to, we're going to donate this box so that it can be broken and that the proceeds can be directed towards children in need. So that when we talk about the price of cars in the hobby and the impact of breaking and whether or not that constitutes something bad, we can also Remember it can be it is being used for something very good. That's what I hope to do with Sealed Wax Nation and I like, I love the initiative there. Appreciate those comments. A couple more from the chat here Phil and and David and Greg of course. First of all Alex at Collectors MD says regarding Collectors MD we are not anti breaking or anti collecting. We are pro responsibility and accountability and I think he's also, I think Collectors MD is also pro balance and self discipline and self control and, and all these things that can be very difficult when the, when the drug of gambling is something that you are very prone to, to being sort of under if you will. Phoenix here said we are at a stage where the whole industry should be regulated. Let's go around the, around the the horn on this one. Let's start with Mr. David Chase in the top right square here. David, we are at the stage where the whole industry should be regulated. I'm not going to make this a yes or no thing, more of a what are your thoughts on that? Is this more of a bits and pieces thing for you or, or the whole thing like Phoenix says? I'm gonna have a bit of a different question for you Phil, but David, your thoughts?
Yu-Gi-Oh you know it's hard for me because I don't rip wax these days and I think that the hobby really did change with that when case hits and one of ones and really the Chase cards ended up being implemented, you know and I really didn't really want my son to get into opening up packs either. And you know even for us to all question should it you know, is it gambling scares me a little bit with children opening them and I think that there are parts of this that should be regulated just to make sure everything's on the up and up again. I'm not really somebody that rips whack so like it's not like the biggest thing for me to do that but, but I think that there are issues and I think that maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to have some regulation and then Phil Thanks David. Phil, the question for you really and it segues nicely off of David, is regulation. Are we talking about like external government mandated regulation or self regulation like Nick ctca, what do you think the pro proper type of regulation would or maybe maybe would be for for this hobby slash industry? Phil, do you think it's self regulation or government regulation which Yu-Gi-Oh I'll leave it at that.
Well I've rarely seen at least in the United States, I've rarely seen an instance where government regulation improves an area. And what I mean by that is, you know, we have a lot of success in American history as making things safer and regulation is to credit for that. I don't know that the hobby is there. So my strong preference is that a hobbyist at least be part of the decision on regulation. And that is why I'm a big fan of what Nick Jarman is doing with the Certified Trading Card Association. Because self governed industries, it's not like the people are better people. But speaking as a lawyer, accountable to the state bar and the states in which I'm licensed, there are rules governing my behavior and my ability to continue. Now I don't want anything about licenses to be, you know, other than the ones for printing cards to be discussed here. But I think if there's going to be organization, I'd prefer it to be internal and with the consent and the hopefully enthusiastic participation of as many people in the hobby as possible. When I hear regulation, what I think of is someone coming in from above who doesn't really know much about the landscape, maybe doesn't have the same motivations that we are having in this room saying we want our hobby to be safe and joyful for our children. That may not be the motivation of someone coming in to regulate. So yes, self regulation, especially the type that the CTCA is starting, is going to be better for us because for starters, you want people with experience in the hobby to be the ones discussing and ideally implementing any rules necessary.
Appreciate that. Let's go to Greg. I mean, I very much agree with what Phil just said. The when I think of regulation, it seems like it's like when we talk about safety, when we talk about safety, life needs electricity, things like that, to make sure that, you know, nobody's going to get harmed physically in a lot of cases. So I don't really have a lot to add. I think Phil answered that really well. Okay, thank you, Greg. Jim? I don't know. I'll put this one to you, Phil. I'm not really following the question, but he says when Phil donates a box to a children's hospital to raise funds by selling to breakers. Does Phil's charity help them to sell to breakers? I think he's assuming that when you donate a box of cards to a hospital that they're then going to sell that box to a breaker. There's a lot of assumptions here. Can you set this set of straight here, Phil?
Sure. Well, let me tell you what we do at Sealed Wax Nation. So far, what we are doing for the hospitals we've donated to is bringing a check and donating money. What we are looking, and I know from experience on some donations I was part of before Steel Wax Nation hospitals actually don't want big boxes of cards. There are hygiene issues, there are security issues, there are patient jealousy issues. So what we're talking about doing, though, since it is a hobby charity, is looking into ways to raise money by breaking cards, you know, as opposed to, you know, and so we might donate a box of cards to a breaking organization with the proceeds going to the children's hospital. We have that as a plan, yes, but so far we've just donated money and that money is the proceeds from the Chasing Cardboard and Pristine Auction sale from my collection.
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