Season 5 Ep 37 Nat Said What?

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 five, episode 37. Here we are, dude. 37 straight episodes. Every week, we are setting new PRs with consecutive episodes. I'm just going to say this, we're having guests. My uncle contributes on a regular basis now. It feels like an actual show. I mean, five and a half years in, look at us now. Look at us now. Looks like we made it. We haven't had that for a while. Well, we didn't make it today. Give the people what they want. I don't know that they do. I want to remember our roots, where we came from, and part of that was me randomly breaking into song that nobody asked for. Correct. That was a deep track, though. I mean, there's people here watching this that are deep track folks. They get our inside jokes. And if you don't get our inside jokes, there's five years worth of content to go listen to, so you can. Well, there was also one summer where we had that mango habanero whiskey. Do you remember that? Oh, yeah. We'd make our own cast of Four Locos. We did that for a month. So there's a month of us half-sauced starting the podcast, and it also lined up with me being in a real big Garth Brooks kick that summer. It was aggressive. It was a lot. Thunder rolls. There's some people out there that remembers. It was a lot. I sang that so long. More than you want me to change the subject now, like infinitely more you wanted to stop then. Yes, I did. And you guys could check that out. And it didn't happen. Go back, look it up. Let's give you some housekeeping items for the Ball Card Show. First off, show schedule coming up. So this week, Gary is actually not set up anywhere. As you're watching this, he is in a different location than the studio. Yeah. It's crazy. He is out of the country. Magic. I'll be set up at Xenia, though. Yep. Repping. Just look for the banner. Building 2 will be there. It was a great show last month. Anticipated to be the same this month. The following week on Sunday the 9th, Grove City Card Fest. They've had two of these already that we've been at? Yes. This is the third one. Super excited for it. Always a huge turnout. It's a Sunday show. If you're anywhere within a reasonable driving distance of Columbus on the 9th. Worth the trip. It's worth the trip. It's definitely one where you'll see a lot of cool cards, and you get to say hi to us, which... Yeah, most of the... Not just us, to be fair. Most of the Midwest's better-known influencers are there, are set up there. You want to see people that are monetized for their content. If you want to see people who are somewhat famous in an extremely small niche of the world. If you want to see people who don't do this for free, that'd be us. Now, the cards that we're selling, that's a whole different story. It may or may not be worth our time. Probably definitely is absolutely worth our time. So be sure to check us out there. Grove City Card Fest. And then the following week, Eastgate. Yes. Cincinnati. Week before Thanksgiving. Holiday schedule will be a little different. Gary and I are kicking around a few little ideas we're excited about. We're flirting with the idea of doing our first ever live stream show, where you get to hang out with us, jump in the call, maybe jump on the show, who knows? No rules. Embarrass us. Talk to us. Live stream that bad boy. Pay attention to us. But we're looking at the holiday schedule, so pay attention to that. And then a big update for us. Yes, this is big. We're going to two days a week on whatnot. Yes, we are. We're going to two days a week on whatnot. Dose. Dose. We have been really appreciating everybody that's been a part of it. A few short months, we've been at this, what, five months now? Since, yeah. Five months. April, May. Yeah. And then we're at like 6,500-ish followers on whatnot. That blows us away because it's a very crowded space, so we appreciate you hanging out. We are ready to scale this thing out a little bit. Two shows, two different nights, none of them on Thursday. One thing I learned back in the day, when you make a change, you don't leave one of the options at the current state, you split them. So everyone's equally unhappy if they prefer Thursday nights. We will be starting on November the 11th, two shows a week. One Tuesday evening, and that'll be a normal six o'clock start time on Tuesdays. And then we're going to do a Sunday evening show at 4.30, that'll be 100 auctions. So we want to scale it out a little bit, maybe not run quite as late on the midweek one, but ultimately it's more cards for all of you and two times a week to hang out with us. So by the time you see this, we've got all the new shows in. Be sure to bookmark those because some of the Thursday ones were canceled now. That will be going twice a week. Be sure to jump in on that with what not, man. Last week was really fun. I picked up a ton of the really cool 90s, early 2000s stuff at Eastgate. Oh yeah, it was fun. We picked some really cool stuff in general, like that stuff, there's some one of ones. Just some really cool stuff. Yeah. So be sure to be a part of that with us as well. Any other announcements? Have I announced this show to death? I don't think there are any other announcements. I think we've covered all the bases. Well, I stumbled into this story and if you're very active on socials with the card drama and big players in the hobby, you've probably seen this story. I said something to Gary about it, I was like, hey, check and see if this is legit because I think it might fire you up a little bit. So I'll set this up and then I'll step out of the way. Gary's going to explain. Nat Turner had a really interesting, what would you call it? Take? Yeah. Interesting take on PSA's grading services in 2019, two years before. Yeah. So they announced, Nat Turner's investment group announced that they were going to acquire PSA, or Collectors, the holding company for PSA, in late 2020, it was yielded and finalized until 2021. This is a fun story because it just goes to show that it doesn't matter how successful you are in any given business. When you go into a different business, you oftentimes don't have any idea what you're talking about and that's okay. So in 2019, the blowout forums, if you don't, blowout forums were the old school place in the hobby where everybody who was hardcore hung out. Before you could complain on YouTube, you complained in the blowout forums. Yes, you complained in the blowout forums and it's really fun to go back and read some of the stuff there. There's a lot of really good information, too. Just go search those forums. But in 2019, Nat Turner posted a lengthy post and when I say lengthy, I mean 10, 12 paragraphs about how unfair and predatory upcharging on submissions was, where you submit under one level and then they upcharge it. He was complaining specifically about a Tim Duncan rookie number to 40 that he had. He had submitted under the $8 at the time level and they wanted to charge him $1,000 to keep it in the PSA 9 holder that they had encapsulated it in and he was losing his mind. Two years later, he and his group purchased PSA and he's the CEO. Guess what he didn't make any changes on? What's that? Oh, he didn't make any changes to the upcharge structure at all. As a matter of fact, they got stricter about it. Weird how that happens. Well, but you know there is someone who loves it. Oh, yeah. So much so that he made a point of saying, don't forget about me, guys. Hey, where are you going? Are you going to play basketball? I like sports. I like ball. I'm working on a floppy disk drive right now for my side hustle because I'm just a poor rich kid that builds computers in high school. Everybody's favorite pick me. All right. We don't even need to say the name. Just leave it there. All right. Nat Turner has this take. Nothing has been done about that. Now, I'll say this. I will say this. Mathematically, it will work out for you if you get the upcharge, assuming that it is a liquid enough card. Sure. And, you know, how much are you in on that card? Right. Well, I mean, yeah, there's some people that are newer to this that will buy the card because they see tons of margin, because they think it will nine and then at nines and then they're on the hook for another thousand bucks or three or four thousand, depending on what it is. There goes the margin. Yeah. And that's the thing. Like an upcharge in and of itself isn't the worst thing in the world. However, if you don't understand how it works, it can be a real kick. You know, you can be a real shock if you're if you're rich and your wife buys you all the originally authenticated dream team stuff from Barcelona probably doesn't affect your world that much. But if you're doing this for a business that's supposed to be profitable, isn't it a lot like if you're playing a hundred dollars a hand on blackjack versus twenty thousand dollars a hand on black? Nobody plays twenty thousand a hand on black. You just tip in the dealer. It's just a percentage. Right. Well, it's not a casino. It's collectibles. OK. Except for Arena Club. Well, they empower packs. My gosh. I can't even. You cannot use YouTube without an Arena Club ad. No. Which, by the way. It's never heard that many bad things about Rico is just being shoved down our throats. Matt Turner has an interesting take. Maybe he's changed his opinion on it. You know, maybe once he looked at the numbers, it's amazing how quickly the an understanding of how profitability works will will change your opinion on something. So they'll just keep paying this and then we just buy out the competitors. We can make SGC a boutique. And by boutique, we mean choke them out of existence. Let's just be real clear about one thing. I'm just going to get. We are very disorganized with this outline today, so this is going to be good for you. Scattershot. I'm going to tell you what SGC has become. Now, look, I love SGC. I think vintage looks better in SGC. I think SGC should become and maintain the status of the vintage grading company. I think there's a great opportunity there. But SGC has become a parts car for somebody that works on custom hot rods. Yes. That's how this is. If you're familiar with what a parts car is, people go to the junkyard. They find something that's got the thirty eight hundred GM motor that there's a bajillion cars that run on that. They keep that car just for parts and they got it for everything they need right now. That is what is happening with SGC. And to say anything different from that is just dishonest. It's just not accurate. Will they have the opportunity to do something with it? Sure. But not before they rip the transmission out of their couple headlights, a taillight and the fender. You guys see what I'm saying with this? That's kind of what's happened with that. So when you see the sentiment of somebody's like, that guy sounds like a collector. He sounds like somebody that's like, I'm really invested in this. I shouldn't be up charged like this. And all of a sudden, it's just crickets. I love that the Internet exists, the way back machine. Oh, yeah. Where people can go find the stuff and say, find the receipts. It's interesting that you say that now. If you went through the archives, the annals of history, OK, you would find Gary and I have probably said some stupid stuff in the last five years. Absolutely. I would guarantee it. I would guarantee it. One of them would not be me singing because that was great. But there's going to be stuff that we've said too, I'm sure. Oh, 100%. But this has got to be so relevant. And the fact that somebody's like, now that everybody's talking about this up charge, look at what I found and blow out for them. It's just end of the day, PSA is a business. Their entire existence is based on generating profit. That's their job. The end. Their job is not to make your life better outside of doing so in such a way that you'll continue to give them money. It's a value proposition. To Jason's point about SGC, PSA did not buy SGC because they saw SGC as a great company. They bought SGC because they bought 150 graders without having to train new ones. And boom, there we are. And that's what's happening now. It's getting stripped down. Boca Raton is the new PSA location. Conveniently enough, same address as SGC. How about that? We have everything we need to scale our operations. Let's continue this conversation. This is something we talked about a lot because of the Mr. Man Cave story. All of these memorabilia autos. We said something very direct and important. There was only one qualifier, I remember, but we might have two now. But it's a pretty unique situation. We said that the IP market is dead. The IP auto market is dead. On cards. Because if we can't validate where this came from, how was it signed, are we putting stickers on a card? It really doesn't seem to affect the value. Now, the caveat was vintage cards, dead stars. Where there were no pack-pulled autos. Where there's no pack-pulled autos. But recently, a really neat card was shown. This was a Sapphire Red Yamamoto, correct? Yeah, Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Rookie. It was a rookie Sapphire Red to five in a slab with an IP auto in white kanji. Can you, whenever you edit this, if you could throw an image up on the screen so everybody can see. Beautiful, stunning card. Beautiful, stunning card. But it raised some concerns or frustrations for some influencers. Here's one take where it's a group where I've enjoyed content from them for quite some time, but this just seemed like a silly take to me. You want to jump into it a little bit? It is a silly take, but I'll tell you what inspired it. Well, sure. The same thing that inspired Nat Turner to forget about the upcharge. The take was very simple in that nobody should be trying to buy or get autos on cards live in person. It should only be for hats and jerseys and balls. And conveniently enough, the person who had that take, and again, let me qualify. This is a good dude, but the take is motivated poorly. Conveniently enough, this is a person who makes their living breaking so that people can chase the pack-pulled stuff. Do I agree that the pack-pulled auto segment commands a higher value? Absolutely. Do I agree that the IP slab auto market is in the tank? Yes. However, the specific card that inspired this take, which you've seen on the screen here, is such a unique thing. Anytime you find an auto of a Japanese player in full kanji on a U.S.-issued card, there's going to be a premium for it. There's a new card that Topps just released an image of. It's a Shoei Otani. one of one out of diamond icons it's got like eight actual diamonds embedded in the card and it's so tiny it's a one-of-one and it's in full kanji the reason that those command such a premium is because they are only on the lower numbered cards and they're gorgeous the kanji alphabet is beautiful to look at so when it's in that format it's gonna command a higher premium to base a take on one individual card that sold for near a pack pulled auto price and it's that situation it's just a terrible flex take to make it well it just seems really obvious that it's about keeping the value where the packs are yeah of course you and I are gonna immediately dig our heels in on that because we are running from the other side of the ecosystem sure we're also the ones that would say yeah you're not gonna hit a pack pulled auto if you don't open a pack right but you can go buy the pack pulled auto two months after release when the market is softened yep now you're not gonna randomly stumble on to a massive hit that way you can get lucky buying collections but it's gonna be a lot more work on your end I just when he said I don't you know put that on baseballs put it on jerseys put it on posters put it on bats that's fine put it on that put it everywhere except for where I sell the license black pack full stuff yeah so just understand where that's coming from I do agree however that just because you went to spring training with a sharpie and threw a bunch of Bowman paper autos in an authentic slab that does should not demand the same premium yes so they don't at all that that makes sense to me but let's think about the collector for a moment genuinely if I pulled that card because he referenced it as a risk it was a risk to get that signed because it's already a high value of five card right when you're collecting sometimes it's about how do I get the most value out of this card right sure I have a hunch that if I had that card and I had the opportunity to go up there and get that auto in kanji that that experience is probably worth a little more to me than pulling that out of a pack and that's a segment of the collecting community in my opinion it's just kind of getting like pushed to the side of like and it doesn't matter and that's not where the money is and the markets not moving there and if you want to go get a sign and he said this to in the video if you want to go get a sign go get it signed but I would like to say sometimes there are unique pieces sure unique ways of doing this where sure that is unique a piece being unique and low numbered in a PSA slab is going to drive up the value and there's nothing wrong with that and I'm willing to bet large amounts of money that that particular card that we're referencing here was not signed against the dugout pregame like that in all likelihood that was a private signing somewhere where they paid a good way to have by the way we talk about value people paying two three hundred bucks for a signature and this is made where we may say the IP market is that because there's very few cards that will demand you're not gonna get that back yeah this may be an example for that or it's not but it's okay sure keep them in there let people know that their IP verse pack pool I have some I'll do Hall of Fame autos I'll do Hall of Fame IP autos all day I bought an Iverson IP auto this weekend right and sold it like 10 minutes later I can't tell you how many base chipper Jones on card autos in a Beckett slab or my gosh Jerry Roger rice Joe Montana like there's all Joe Montana's out there that I don't find a ton of those but they can tease out Frank Thomas is another one if I buy an IP Frank Thomas base rookie or whatever it's gonna sell and it's gonna sell within a couple months yeah now it's not massive card not as big as like one of ones or something out of transcendent or whatever but there's a demand for the right once the moral of the story here is in a collectibles world there is some demand for just about everything right depending on where you want to price it at speaking of things that have a high demand so let me ask you one question for you okay if you had the opportunity to have a pack pulled of five of that card in a PSA 10 yep or the kanji white ink of five IP in a PSA 10 what would you pick for my collection or to have for the way I would you to walk up to the table you can only pick one the pack bolt I'm picking the IP yeah I'm taking the pack bolt because it's easier to sell if it's for my collection quicker to sell yes yes exactly I don't know the quicker and easier I think I would sell that in an hour on eBay maybe but if you're trying to reach above and beyond that's where you'll be yeah just all right anyway interesting conversation we had some cool cards walk yeah I didn't want to ignore it yes speaking of the cool stuff we were at Eastgate this last weekend which has turned into one of our favorite shows Cincinnati Eastside southeast side of Cincinnati it's in a it's an order mall now yeah okay northeast is like Kings Island we said okay okay I got you yep but southeast like off of 32 and 275 and that mall 300 tables for a 350 ish great show if you're within a few hours it's a great show to go to and it's long enough that you don't feel crazy rushed if you're there it's like 9 to 4 ish well and it's a show where really cool stuff walks up you always see some nice that we were just talking about Jackie Robinson that walked up this was that same show last month this time guy comes up and he's got a lot of mid 90s basketball some of the like not so great graded slabs but it was like flair metal the right stars metal universe I cut stuff like yeah in nines but then he's going through he's like here's some other stuff too they just casually pulls out two p.m. geez one of them is a Scotty in a six or a seven yeah it was a six and it was a red p.m. G and the what was so cool about this is all these cards he had opened them as a kid he had two p.m. G's and he hit both of them yeah he hit both of them opening packs and he just pulled him out a few months ago and went a bunch of stuff off I should just go get this stuff graded and lo and behold Scotty Pippen p.m. G I don't remember who the other one was it was a comma but in the basketball stuff that 96 97 one Derek Coleman it was somebody that what I would have remembered that it was a but it's still probably a three or four thousand dollar car yeah the Scotty last sold it 22 K and he just had him casually sitting in binders we built out a stack of like stuff for why not right like some of the hey these are the right kind because we do a lot of that late 90s or 2000s basketball were Metal Universe tens of stars it was like Steve Nash and Jason kid yep and he was like I don't know exactly where these are so we do what we always do we pull out card ladder we showed him what we were seeing and he was like oh so those tens are worth a good chunk more yeah and I said yeah I'd like to buy them from he's like I don't want to sell them now he thought he thought they were 50 or $60 cards and yeah they were more like three to four hundred dollar cards and did we want those p.m. G's yes but two things one do we want to park that kind of cash to to is he really ready to sell and the answer is no yeah he really was answer was no he had a tag on the back of the Scotty and we talked about it on the way home I feel like if we had pulled out that much cash and said here we'll take it he would have said maybe maybe like I don't think he was ready to actually sell it I encouraged him to reach out to some auction houses and ask for over a hundred percent of hammer price to see what happens on it and then also to wrap in those other cards as well with like hey if you're running these I want these as well and I want 105 or 110 percent of hammer price yeah cuz I think the Scotty would carry that Scotty might do 25 I don't think there's right now right now yeah so interesting stuff whenever something cool like that walks up we want to let you guys know about it it was a fun for a show I have some not so great news or great news Gary and I are officially tied in our pick'em challenge yeah after two weeks to start the season where Jason just put a BTA on me it was it was very depressing well now just a quick reminder those two weeks we picked all the games and then Gary's like you know what if we just did no no you said what if we just did five I didn't say what if we just don't recall that oh yeah this is taking too long but that would be about the exact time that the tides began and I was getting destroyed and then over the last four weeks chipping away dog it has just been a consistent three and two four one three and two four one and lo and behold this week again four one three two and we are now tied at 33 and 24 on the season both of us not too bad for having a couple teams that have like way under perform yeah yeah I'll take that so as usual we're gonna take a few minutes and pick five games this week if you've been following my picks if you've been tailing my picks for the last few weeks you've done well see how cocky he's being after being embarrassed how many years you coach football oh a lot yeah how many years did I play you I don't think you played any oh that's right okay here we go first game Bears at Ravens 1 2 3 Bears the Ravens suck right now and no Lamar again I don't think he wants to play he's feels like he's a little bit like can you guys just give me a different offense and then this hamstring will miraculously right back up yeah does he what what's going on there this year is it just he knows it's just not the same caliber I think this feels like him holding out on a contract basically I don't think he's holding out on a car I know that but it feels like it did then he is I've always two things can be true at once Lamar Jack is an amazing football player one of the best of this generation and probably the best overall multi-threat quarterback in the history of the NFL that's all true also he can be kind what he has it in him to just be a diva about things and I think you're right I think this year he sees a defense that hasn't been great and early in the season he's trying to carry everything and no matter what he does the defense just gives it up and he was like a little tweak here it might last all year I'm not gonna risk he doesn't seem I'm not gonna risk this for that yeah yeah it's how it feels which it's gonna be hard for him to be a champion oh I mean look at I know I know how it sounds there's a there's a there's a 40 year old fat man in a chair telling us he doesn't have what it takes to be a champion but I'm just I'm not aware of anybody that just landed into a championship can you give me a quarterback there probably been some close like Trent Dilfer and Brad Johnson come to mind but they weren't the focal points of their offense right in the last 15 years have we seen anything like that no like even with my homes no I mean my homes you say what you want about my homes but my homes cares and he goes well and he plays hurt yeah now I'm not saying injured but I'm saying I think he has played injured but he plays hurt when he has to yeah he plays Lamar doesn't tend to play hurt very much so we both took the Bears there how about Bills at Panthers the Bills all of a sudden two losses in a row that Panthers have had a game or two where they're like oh they have there they've got a winning record what do you think here I think the Bills win I don't think they let that happen three times in a row now this is one we could be wrong on just because we see what's happening in this year but we still believe the Bills are capable of what we've seen in the last yeah I mean and don't get me wrong the Panthers at home this year have been a good team and Rico Dowdle has been something else since he took over that running back job but I think we both think that Josh Allen will get the ship right of this week and take the Bills all right I'll go first on this one yep Cowboys at Broncos if there's one team that has cost me points in this this year it's the Cowboys I still hate their guts I still don't think they're that good and the Broncos have shown some late late drives shown some I'm gonna go it's in mile-high I gotta go with Denver on this one I'm going with the Broncos I'm going with the Cowboys on this one yep what's your reasoning there last the Cowboys getting CD lamb back last week all of a sudden the whole offense was just wide open full throttle because George Pickens is really good too which is what I think what they were envisioning when they traded for George Pickens CD lamb back both of a CD was over 100 and had a touchdown Pickens was 85 yards on six or seven catches and everything opened up when they couldn't bring safety help down into the box or rotating everything to one place the defense still has some issues but I don't think Denver's offense is very good I think Denver got luck and I don't wanna say lucky cuz 33 points in the fourth quarter isn't lucky that's a thing but the Giants did get very lax I think they thought they had the game sewn up and it was just letting the clock run out yeah I just can't be unimpressed with an offense that scores that many points in a quarter in the NFL I don't disagree obviously they didn't keep the door closed the Giants but I think the Cowboys win that game all right there's our first differentiator I think the next one might be two Packers at Steelers who you got excuse me I at home I'm gonna go with the Steelers I'll go Packers on this one the Steelers can put up a lot of points yes they can the Packers can play defense and we haven't quite seen the Aaron Rodgers meltdown that's gonna happen this season this could be that game maybe he's just getting the ball out so quick that it hasn't been an issue and if it was in Green Bay I'd be taking Green Bay but okay so you think it's a close I think it's a close one I think it's yours have played a lot of close games this year yeah I think it's a home field advantage thing and they're gonna they've got a bad taste in their mouth after old man Flacco went into town last week and put the Bengals on his back and and got a win so I think that they bounce back from that all right Giants at Eagles one two three Eagles the Eagles are more talented but they have been laying well how would I put this how would you describe their season so far their season is we are better than you defensively we're not gonna really try to throw the ball too much although this last week they opened it up and it was good Devonta Smith had a fantastic game Jalen Hurts had a fantastic game I think that the Giants are a better team than their record indicates, but I don't think they'd go into Philly and get that win. I think we've got a lot of differences this week. That would be my, that's my dark horse. This one is the Giants. I had the Giants pick to beat Denver last week. We both did, and they were for three and a half quarters, badly. They were just putting it on them, so Jackson Dart's the real deal, it looks like, by the way. He looks pretty good. How about him high-fiving that official? I didn't see it. It was a single, single touchdown, and Jackson Dart went up, stood in front of him and went, pop, and high-fived it. It was great. Okay, let's jump into a segment we're going to do for the first time. It's nothing uncommon for us to talk about personally what we're working on in our businesses, but in that Bonkers Cards interview we did last week, if you haven't had a chance to see it, go back on YouTube, check that out. Good stuff. Great content from Gordy, just really good insight, but one of the things that I noticed is as he was building out his brand and his business, he had no issue being really vulnerable with where the business was, what he was working on, what was working, what wasn't, and so I thought maybe we do a little segment here called Open Book. You and I, although we have a joint business with the podcast, whatnot, that type of stuff, we still do all of our show stuff separately, so if you come to our shows you'll see there's a section of showcases, another section, an area in the middle. Gary and I keep those separated right now, so we're each working on stuff that's a little bit different. I want to jump in, open book in here, what's working, what's not, what are the challenges, what are you working on in the next three to six months to grow your business, and maybe that'll give a little bit of perspective and just be an open book. You see what I did there? I do. Amazing. I'm going to let you kick it off. What are you finding more success with when it comes to sourcing? Just to be clear, you can take a question and you can decide, well, I want to talk about where I'm sourcing, or hey, I've been buying more of this and it's working really well, or hey, I've stopped doing this as much because it doesn't seem to be as effective in sourcing. Where would you start? For me, I would say that, and we talk about buying all the time, so I don't want this to turn into that. For me, what I've been having a lot more success in is buying either the weird stuff or the somewhat older stuff from people who are more primarily focused on ultra-modern stuff, if that makes sense. So they're less attached? Yeah. So somebody walks up with a bunch of stuff to sell, and the whole box is a bunch of ultra-modern football and there's some case hits, but not high-end case hits, and a lot of retail color, and then there's this little pocket of stuff that they probably got from their dad, and it's 90s basketball or it's older football refractors, things like that, things that don't have a lot of data points. I will take chances on those things for two reasons. One, I really enjoy them and I like them. Also, while not having data points is bad in some ways, it's also really good in other ways. So for example, we've done this a lot, we've run a lot of this type of card on our whatnot streams. I bought a Topps Tech, a 1998 Topps Tech Vladimir Guerrero Senior. It's a PSA 9, it's a pop one, there's none higher, and it's the diffractor, which is the tech version of a refractor. It's pattern 47. The refractor has never sold, even raw. There is a base version of pattern 47 that has sold, but it's never sold. There's no data points anywhere. But it's a Hall of Famer and it's an extremely rare card, and the price that the person wanted for it seemed unbelievably reasonable to me, so I bought it. Things like that are where I am having more success. When I go to an LCS that I have a relationship with, I'll take on some of those bricks that they may have a hard time selling because most of their customer base is the same people coming in over and over again, whereas I'm seeing thousands of new people a month. Those are the things that I'm having success sourcing, the ultra-modern, easily obtainable stuff. I have a hard time buying because nobody wants to move it at anything resembling what makes sense for me from a margin standpoint. I would say when it comes to the sourcing, I'm finding a little more success. I'm really drilling down and causing myself to be more selective with which names I'm adding into my inventory. To do that, I am literally keeping an eye, so Gary and I have a code we use where we can see on the back of every card in our showcases, we'll be able to reference what we spent on the card, when we bought the card, and the year. I'm able to see, did I move through a bunch of stuff? If it's an A, I bought all these in August, do I still have a ton of A's? If I start to notice that, hey, this segment of stuff that I purchased in this month was flying, who were the names, and what's still in the case? What's in the case from June? I've been paying more attention now that it's three to four times a month, set up at shows, larger, smaller, what's actually moving quickly. Not only what players, but what price band is moving more quickly. I'm selling less $500 to $1,000 cards right now, and way more of the $50 to $150. That seems like a no-brainer, but I can tell you, and so could you, reference in the last two, three years, there have been times where that three to $500 was way more popular. For me, the thing that I'm having more success with is just trusting that I've got to stick to my margins, but I've got to try for more of the right players. The way I'm doing that is saying no to more of the wrong players. Some people walking up that are used to me buying from them are a little bit puzzled now. You used to just grab the whole stack. You used to just this. You have an eBay, which I'm trying to focus a little bit more on that sell-through rate, because in my mind, that inventory becomes the bank for my business. If I know I'm moving X percentage of inventory on average per show, I'm set up three to four times a month, how much inventory do I need to have to consistently pull the right amount of net profit off of the inventory to make my income? That's where I'm really trying to get laser-focused on sourcing. I think that within that sourcing, a point that I wanted to make, and it can't be made enough, I don't think. When you're trying to buy something for your inventory, especially if it's something that's a little older that doesn't have a lot of data points, don't make the mistake of when somebody says, do you want to buy this? Are you interested in this? Don't make the mistake of just immediately pulling your phone out and going to card ladder or to 130 point or whatever. There's a very simple question you should ask. What do you want for it? Sometimes the answer is a number where you don't even think about it. You're just like, cool. That seems fair. I'll take it. Because some people say, I just want to unload cards, and they mean that. They just want to unload these because they're not interested in this card. They're interested in having some cash. Yeah. It's a card that you made. This happened to me a couple months ago. Well, not a couple months ago. At the Midwest Monster, somebody walked up with a PSA 10 Sedan Raffaella Bowman First Refractor Auto, so about a $400 card, $375 to $400 card, PSA 10, and he said, are you interested in this? I said, if it was three months ago, sure would have been. I said, but this is the type of card that I'll wait until December or January to buy, and then I'll pay $180 to $200 for it, and he went, oh, why don't you just give me $200 for it? And I said, okay, cool, but if I had immediately opened my phone and said, well, it's selling for $375 to $400, I'll give you 80% of that. I would have paid more, and it wouldn't have made any sense for me to do it. And more importantly, the seller was happy with $200. Yes, 100%. Now the chat's going to get mad, well, what's he doing? He's getting money and buying cards with it. Yeah, and listen, cop slaves, listen to me very closely. There's no such thing as an unfair deal if everybody involved in the deal is happy with the end result. Let me say it again slowly. There's no such thing as an unfair deal if everybody involved in the deal is happy with the end result. It's that simple. Now, should anybody be trying to take advantage of somebody? Of course not. But ask the question, what do you want for this? You'll be surprised at the answer sometimes. The other one is, why are you selling it? If it's something that's like, if somebody walks up, especially a younger person with vintage, that's a question I'll ask, why are you selling it? Sometimes that answer helps you a lot too. All right. What are you selling more of lately? You want me to go first? I can't keep late 90s basketball in my showcase. No, if it's nice and the right name. I'm selling a ton of it. The price point that I'm finding a lot of success is right around $200 to $400 on the basketball. The $50, $90 stuff, it can sell. The stuff, once I notice it's like $150 to $200, maybe $300, they're selling a lot faster for me. On average, still my average sales are at a lower price band. With basketball, people are reaching a little bit further because they see what's happening in the market. I'm buying stuff where I'm trying to catch on trend, which we talk about a lot. Hey, this seems to be going up, so 80% of the LCS sticker might actually be 70% of what you could demand it to show, but you better pay attention to market trend and have some data to back that up because people are going to question that immediately. If you can show them, hey, here's three other refractors from the exact same set, same player in the same grade that are already demanding that, so that's my argument there. The one thing that no question, and I love this, is the late 90s, early 2000s basketball stuff has just been popping off. I would expand on that and say not only that stuff, but the late 90s to mid-2000s, what we call the modern era, not the ultra modern, but the modern era stuff, if it's the right names and it's numbered and it's stuff you don't see very often, it's just flying. We predicted this three years ago. As people get to be my age, Jason's a little younger, but when you get to be- We're in the same decade now. We're in the same decade now, but you get to almost 50 years old. Your kids are out of the house for the most part. You've got disposable income again, and what do you want to do in your hobbies? You want to relive your childhood. It's the same thing that happened to the vintage market 30 years ago. People that are 80 now turned about 50, the vintage market exploded because they wanted to relive their childhood from the 60s and early 70s. Modern? I'm cutting you down a little bit. Yeah. Modern is moving, and then to the price band point, selling volume-wise, way more of the $20 to $130 stuff than anything else from a volume standpoint, which is nice because a lot of times that's the easier stuff to buy, too. There's more of it walking up to your table most of the time. All right, what's the next one? What are some recent challenges in your business? I'll go first with one while you do it because I didn't give you much time on this. Sure. The one that I'm really focused on now is squeezing every penny and putting it right back into inventory, not taking more off of the top than I need to for me, and realizing that the quicker I scale the value of my inventory, the quicker I can scale my net profit and therefore increase my net personal income. What that means is fewer PC purchases. That means on a card that is a brick that I might get $500 out of, but somebody sells it to me for $300 because they've had it forever. If it's been two months and you get that offer at $400, take it and run. Go buy two or three more cards at a percentage you can get it. That's been the biggest challenge for me is focusing on that rebuilding. I could go down the whole eBay route right now. I'm choosing not to. That's not a challenge as much as it is a frustration. It's become very challenging for me to value my time. Those of you that have been following the podcast know the time in and the output over the last several years, things are changing on that low-end market. I don't want to make too much of it, but eBay has been a real challenge emotionally for me lately with that low-end, high-volume stuff. I think there's two sides of this for me. You said we were just going to get vulnerable about this stuff, so we're going to be very straightforward. Just don't make it a humble brag. No, not at all. Balancing your liquid cash versus inventory and understanding that when this is how you pay the bills, that that liquid cash matters a lot because if you have a down show, you still have to pay the bills that week. Understanding that and having to say no to purchases sometimes that I would normally be like, yes, I will take that right now because I need to make sure that I'm still in a position to pay myself every week so that my wife knows that she can write the check to the bank, write the check to the phone company, the electric company, and everybody else. That's a big challenge for me personally. I would say that one of the other challenges, and I think you felt this too, we've experienced it a couple times over the last few weeks. As our business together grows, our time starts getting crunched a lot more. As our time starts getting crunched a lot more, the stress and the tension of how do we allocate that time can lead to, and you and I don't argue. We don't fight. We argue. We argue, but we don't like, it's not ever personal. We're trying to get somewhere with it. We experience that tension sometimes, and when you're in business with your best friend, you have to really make sure that you're keeping your brain in a business mode to the point where sometimes you're even having to say in the middle of a conversation, listen, this isn't a personal thing. We got to get through this on a business side of things. the demands on our time grow and the demands and the expectations for what we bring all of you grow that tension can be challenging sometimes. Yeah I would agree like that that time factor is a big piece. We talk about it and I know some of you just rolling your eyes hearing us talk about it's so much work it's so much work. You have no idea. When stuff starts to scale you have to keep feeding it so when we're set up 40 to 45 weekends a year you don't get to take two weeks off of sourcing. No. You don't there's never two weeks where if we have two weeks where we don't have to source that means we didn't make any money those two weeks we got bigger. Right and then when you want to take a vacation I leave for vacation desperately need a vacation in a few days from the time that we record this and this week I have had we haven't record this podcast I have to edit two podcasts we have to make sure that clips are all ready to go also I still have to buy stuff because I have a show where I'm at and then I'm missing a week so I have to buy enough that I have enough for the following week when I get back and we do the Grove City show and yesterday I went to a place that I normally buy a lot of stuff and I spent three hours there and didn't buy anything it's like where does the time come from. Yeah. It is legitimately way more way more work than you can possibly imagine unless you actually do what we do. And the only way that you the only way to address that one the feeling and all that is to commit to when I see something that is not working a commitment to a kill it then and there. Yes. And not what if it to death. Yeah. I am personally thinking through what do I want eBay to become if the time I'm putting in right now does not equate to the value I need it to. Fifty thousand cards in this store something tells me I could probably do nothing and keep some income rolling. Sure. But if I want to feed that machine do I. You know let's say that eBay is firing on all cylinders for me. Can I still justify three to four hours of shipping every day on low end stuff when I'm set up every week. So that's the tension I'm in. I think the smart people in this space which we're going to be doing an interview with with our favorite LCS in the area soon and the owner there has made a distinct point of diversifying the streams of income within that space and committing to that model so much so that they do some things a little bit different inside the brick and mortar than most people do. I think it's super smart but that's a challenge right now is just trying to think through like what do I simplify and how do I take that time that I'm buying back put it right back into the thing that's most important. At some point you learn enough about this space where you can make money on low end on whatnot it shows on discord on your I.G. on Facebook and the problem becomes deciding where will I be most profitable and where do I want to scale and when do you want to sleep and at some point some of those things are going to have to get peeled back right now. I'm in my 40s here just about 12 hours as of 12 hours ago I'm in my 40s. I don't have more time to add into my day. No. So that is the biggest challenge and I think as I talk with other people similar space to us where they're now doing this full time maybe they haven't been doing it they're not established 20 years they've been doing this they're in the last five years they're trying to figure this out too. There's a lot of ways to sell and a lot of ways to make money or an income on this but you got to be mindful of your time because you can't do all of those at a hundred percent. Just not well and with all that being said last question here in this segment what do you feel like for your business to grow for our business grow what are what do you think needs to be focused on right now. I'll say for me and then let's do one for us with our yeah with our yeah. So for me I think the focus has got to become profitability not can I probably buy this card at 70 percent and sell it at nine. How much money am I actually netting profit when I've paid for my cash and cash leaves when I've paid for my gas to get to the show. I think that's where I'm at now is like as everything is scaling and moving and growing and moving in that direction. I need to know how the numbers actually work out and that's a commitment that I have to I nobody's going to give me that. I got to go digging to find out how profitable are each of these areas. I probably need to time audit some of this stuff. eBay for sure needs a time audit because if I come out and say hey I have 10 weeks 10 hours a week to give to eBay and that includes shipping what would I do different. I'd probably change the inventory. So those are the conversations I'm thinking through right now having those conversations with myself in my own head. For me I think that it is very simply trying to diversify my revenue streams. Jason sells on eBay and does shows. 98 percent of my revenue streams are shows. I need to get some of those eggs into a different basket but I hate the idea of eBay. I just I hate the idea of eBay. So it's finding what that is and I don't know exactly what it is. I play around with the idea of eBay but I don't want to do low-end stuff and the risk of doing high-end stuff with returns and everything else is something I don't really want to mess with. So where do I diversify what those revenue streams look like. So for the joint business we have whatnot and that's something that we've been trying to scale. We're unapologetic about that. We tell you if you want to hang out with us it's a continuation of the podcast. We try to make it feel like that. We try to have collectible things that are affordable so that you could feel like hey I bought 10 cards that I'm excited about getting this week not hey I bought one and it was too much for my budget. What do we need to do for our business? So we've thrown it out there like at the end of the day a dream down the road is a brick and mortar. As we announced that to you we did not know that Columbus was going to have 19 LCS open this year and at the same time Fanatics is publicly stating that they have no intentions of adding more licenses in the area. As a matter of fact they want to downsize the number of direct accounts that they have. So we're jumping into an extremely competitive space. So for us it's just like all right thank goodness we did not sign a lease on a brick and mortar to be chasing down an account that wasn't going to happen and then when it was some of the numbers we hear of the expectations of residual purchases every month just to have a chance at the like it's just a different space. Yeah so you and I've talked about this a little bit one of them is how do we scale out whatnot. So we're going to go to two nights. We're going to see what works best. We've kicked around the idea of do I say some stuff we've thought about? Yeah sure. We've kicked around the idea of having our own show. We've kicked around the idea of offering like support or applications for show dealers things that aren't even out there yet. Like we have so many things that we kicked around but it's so hard to give more time and mental space when the day-to-day and that's where I think a lot of people are feeling the same thing that we are that are doing this for a living. Yeah it's a lot and again I know the perception is oh you guys just go set up at a show on a Saturday for a few hours and make a few thousand dollars and then go home and play video games all week. Like that's not what this life is like and like Jason said we there's a few things that we have ideas for within the space that we both feel like are fantastic ideas but in order to give them the appropriate attention we would have to take attention away from things that are already generating revenue for us. But I think what we're both saying as we're discovering this together is we are both feeling that we are going to have to simplify some things. Yeah. And that's going to be painful. Yes and well we've talked about just with Whatnot. I mean if we're being being vulnerable. Be candid this is a weird episode if they're still here 55 minutes in. We've had several I wouldn't say intense conversations but each of us trying to get the other one to understand where we're coming from as far as what we want to do with Whatnot because the reality is is we saw a really nice strong growth and then we've kind of plateaued. We know what to expect now but we want it to keep growing. So the question of how that happens what do we need to do to make that happen we have different ideas on what that looks like and trying to make those ideas blend together in a way where we're both comfortable and happy is work. I'd say this to the you'll you'll you'll know where I cover this. The idea of me and my buddy love cards so we'll do this business together. That's great. And Gary and I are lucky that we get to do that. But our brains are never going to be on the exact same wavelength with how we start. They work different. When I talk about profitability and Penny Sleaze as soon as I start the sentence I know in his mind you're like oh my god I just he's still talking about efficiency. He's obsessed with it and he hates it at the same time. And when I hear him talking about you just don't see it every day I'm like I know but he gets burned sometimes on those too. And like it's it's a balance like we have to figure out what's going to work best for us and you just have to make a decision and go for it. And here's the reality we have failed more times than we've succeeded in any of this. Absolutely. We have made purchases that were nowhere near as good as we thought they were. We've gone into whatnot shows believing we would have a record sales night to hit 60 percent of our normal sales. I mean you're gonna have to try things and be okay with failing just the only way this doesn't work is if we quit working on it. Right. I know this sounds super cheesy on us but I know that there are some other deal we're feeling some of the same things that we are and just know that as this market is drastically changing my gosh so much has happened in the last year and a half. I don't anticipate there would be less changes next year. It's always a roller coaster. You've got to constantly build and adapt. So open book for us shows have been really good to us this year. Yes. Whatnot has become a viable income stream and while we still needed to scale tons to be where we want it to be whatever that means it's required a ton of work and it's made things fun but along the way we have to constantly be looking inward and say what could I be doing better. You talking about I should ask another question before when somebody walks up. Yeah. It's a little thing like that me saying this is a cool card. Is it a name that I'll ever be able to sell it. Right. Because the reality is it could be the right card but I'm going to have to move it to 80 percent. And now I did I pay 75 percent on this card. What are we doing here. Yeah. And did I park that money for three months to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Well I feel like we're halfway through a therapy session. Thanks for letting us sit on the therapist couch with you guys this way. As always give us a follow. Help us. We're stressed. We're tired. Follow subscribe like all those things we appreciate you taking part in our community being a part of that next week. I cannot say who it is yet. Oh yeah. I can't. I'm dead serious. I am so excited for the guests that we're going to have next week on the show. Gary and I have been trying to make this happen and been working with busy schedules. This guy's had a little bit going on this year. Super excited for that next week. I can't wait to. We'll give a spoiler. We can announce it. We'll put something up. Yeah we'll put something up on Instagram or TikTok or whatever. This has been the ball card show the sports box for the sports collector. Bye now. Peace.