alright we are back with another conversation exploring the nineties category hopefully you all got a chance to listen to last week's chat with andy at buybuy baby cards i'm excited when i was thinking about after i got done talking with andy i was like i wanna have another conversation with somebody else in the space dig in and explore because i'm having fun and i'm joined today by josh adams you know josh josh runs nineties auctions he has been in the hobby for quite some time and i always enjoy our one off conversation josh has been on the podcast before but figured it'd be a good time to get josh's perspective on what's happening in the nineties category and we're gonna talk about his some of his cards in his collection as well but josh we're talking both midwesterners it's seasonably warm as we record this but we're both inside talking into microphones and screens hopefully we get a chance to get out a little bit but how are doing man i'm good thanks for having me back on and it is midwest early summer right it's like above freezing so it's shorts and t shirt weather around here that's right are you are are you to the point right now as a chicago bears fan where you can celebrate how awesome of the season that you had or are you still kind of upset with how it it all ended so conflicted there never in my wildest dreams that i think that we'd improve this much in one season so i was like everything was gravy after even making the playoffs but then you get greedy because you wanna see want your team to win once you're in it you're like come on we could still win this i mean that that rams game was a heartbreaker but i just i'm excited for next year but as a bears fan i'm always like i've been hurt before so i'm i'm nervous to see what happens next year but excited you should be coaching quarterback is half the battle and i think bears fans have both of those locked up we're gonna be like digging into a lot of different fronts but i just wanted to start with a very basic question and it's a question that i have as i'm having these conversations and wanted to get them get various perspectives and get your perspective but what is going on with nineties right cards right now and kinda what's your honest answer and assessment of the category so i think it's a you know a very healthy market in terms of nineties nineties cards themselves i mean you're seeing all time highs with with bigger cards i think you're also seeing collectors really just like our age like you know forties and older who grew up in that time period really buying that nostalgia and buying into stuff cars they couldn't find you know when they were sixteen seventeen eighteen years old and now they can afford it and i i just think that market's gonna stay healthy just like fifties and sixties stays healthy with people from that generation who are children who grew up in like the seventies eighties nineties let's i would i was i'd love to maybe like explore that a little bit because to me when i think about you and your collection i think about your nineties stuff and obviously it's part of your brand but then you're also a vintage collector and you like to buy vintage cards you've touched on like the comparison a little bit but how do you when you toggle back and forth between kinda like vintage and nineties do you think the nineties category in collector behavior is mimicking some of what we've seen in the past with vintage in terms of collector behavior or is it completely different i think it's i think it's there's a lot of similarities and i think you can the touchstone i think are like the most popular players from that age like if you look at mantle and ruth then you've got jordan kobe ken griffey junior are extremely popular now with people today as you know i saw those guys play i love that i love the history of the of the sport and i think that's also gonna propel people to collect stuff in the nineties going forward like you know a generation behind us who you know hear about jordan hear about shaq and colby the the the market in terms of nineties feels very busy we're gonna talk about a peyton manning card that was sent to me by several people and results from different auction houses but it also seems to be a little all over the place and i can't figure out if it if this is like a great thing if like the the grading scarcity across grading companies is causing some of this desire demand all of those things but i think you alluded to it like you said like i think the the market feels healthy right now do you is is that in fact how you feel like do you feel like the market is healthy and like maybe what are some of those signals that lead you to think of the market in that way right now in nineties so i think it's a healthy market in the sense that there isn't this you know overinflated hype on some cards that the bottom will fall out soon because i look at i look at a lot of collectors content on instagram like pages of collectors and what they're buying and you see them buy these cards like love this card i've always wanted this card but then you don't see them turning it around in a month saying oh look it's for sale so you see who's holding stuff and to me the people that are holding cards are these long term collectors and you see them not looking to flip stuff really quickly so when they're in the hands of collectors i think it's a sign that's a very healthy market the the it's easy i think in this market when it's very aggressive and people are spending a lot of money to like compare it to pandemic twenty twenty one just because we're saw record sale prices across the board i mean cardliner reported four hundred and forty five million dollars in january in online sales which is insane and although there's like big sales happening across the board it it it feels very different from pandemic to right now how i don't know like how do you maybe think about twenty twenty twenty twenty one and what was happening with nineties and the nineties category to like what you're seeing today with cards that are selling or collectors that are getting cards and keeping them rather than flipping them so i think it's it does feel different than it did six now six years ago jeez that does than it did six years ago it feels a lot different you know you had these ultra high spikes you know like they the you know there's that middle finger graft people like to say but it doesn't feel that way now it feels like stuff is kinda rising at a healthy pace there isn't that much i think explosive you know crazy rise in prices i mean we'll we'll get to the manning because i have i have some thoughts on that but it does feel like it's natural growth people are buying cards they want and believe in there is always gonna be hype i think there's always gonna have that social media pump aspect of it but it doesn't seem as rampant as it does as it did in twenty twenty how would you maybe define like in the nineties category the the real demand versus kind of this artificial momentum that we see maybe when newer products come out like how do you assess when when a card sells like that it is maybe in the right spot and we might not see it kind of next month on another auction site like what how do you look at that well i look you know you look to see who bought it if they wanna if they wanna show you who because usually in our space if if it's a collector and they buy a card they wanna show it off here's what i got and if it's and it i guess you see who who buys it and see whose hands it's in and look at their like like you had andy on the last time you just you see him buying a card you know it's not going anywhere you know you see certain people buying cards you know they're sticking in the in the in the pc for a long time that's how you do it help help me understand the i think i do i look at that all the time where it's you see a big card that's on a site up for auction and then you know after all all the dust settles and the card finally ends up with that collector they inevitably post it and it's fun it's like we as the audience get to understand where that card ends up i think what i'm learning about just not just nineties but cards in general is that they the community of just like instagram specifically is only like one small sliver of the hobby as a whole and a lot of times when these cards sell they might be ending up in collectors but they're anonymous collectors and they just kinda get stashed away in their collection we never see them again so we never we can't really follow the trail because those people don't care to share on instagram through your experience and just like maybe running nineties auctions or just your assessment as a collector competing for some of this stuff at auction like is that portion like that silent portion of the hobby is that a is that a big portion of the hobby that we just don't maybe talk about enough i think it is because there are some people that have been in our auction that sign up that i always put a there's a spot for you know social media handles and some of them who buy cards in a significant volume from us don't have social media don't post and the cards that we have that are maybe the maybe the headliners sometimes those go to those people and then yeah they're stashed away like i was i look to see if someone's gonna post any cards that that they went in our auction some of them they they just haven't posted you know it they go away they're they're hidden in a collection forever yeah i always i find that interesting it's i'm i'm definitely one that when i get a card i wanna show it off and try to get the reaction from my peers understand collectors all operate differently let's dig into this this manning example which i think is very interesting and i think if we zoom into it it really epitomizes kind of the core of why i wanted to have these conversations but this andy was one of them that sent it to me alongside a couple others after it happened but the the example was the nineteen ninety eight metal universe peyton manning pmg psa eight it sold this past weekend on fanatics for twenty four k which i think everyone would say man that's a very strong sale i think the part of the story that hasn't really been told is that within the last ten days there was a bgs eight point five copy that sold on alt for twelve thousand forty one and a bgs eight copy that sold for ten thousand six hundred and eighty five dollars via dc sports on ebay so same card same print run different outcomes from your perspective like what what is this is this a psa premium story is this buyer confidence the platform timing like this seems like this type of example is becoming more and more common in nineties like how do you assess this so i look at it as this is a collector card as opposed to like a commodity card that there's a good million copies for the manning and when there's a collector card there's such a smaller pool of people buying it that it makes sense that the next one would go would go lower the first one that's selling a long time always shatters records and then there's one less person who wants it because they got one and i think then that causes the price to go down doesn't mean i think that the market's unhealthy or that the card is losing value i just think that the number of people that wanna buy it is small and i think it also gives a false sense of abundance for the card too so it goes there's fifty copies this card will come up or you know three now we'll get one more this year it'll pop up but it's not like a card on ebay you can find any day of the week and it's like oh yeah it's like a jordan scoring king so it'll show up i could buy one whenever so i think there's something to do with it but i think there also is a psa premium attached to most most cars especially nineties serial numbered cars there is a psa premium attached to it if if there's a collector who just like wakes up and checks their card ladder save searches and sees this manning result of the twenty four k sale you know there's a lot of different ways that you can interpret it especially if you don't go like a couple layers deeper what do you think collectors misunderstand when they see results like this maybe like it can be specifically in the nineties or just in general with comps and sales of collector cards as you call them i think that's they misunderstand that the the lack of availability of these cards is really understated by the frequency of of a recent auction can i give you an example i have a yeah we had a ken griffey junior starquest gold out of a hundred sell i think ours was a psa six and it's set like it sold for like eighty five hundred dollars and at the time none had sold for about a year and then literally four came out within that month and it drove the price so far down because again and the pop on it's like twelve in psa so there's not that many of them but it's out of a hundred and you just saw four show up in thirty days so think the average clock is gonna think oh well i mean there's a hundred that's four there's nineties five other ones well i'll be able to get one but really i haven't seen one in a while now so i think that that definitely contributed to this over the sense of overabundance of these cards there's a i'll give you an example there's a jordan the jordan essential credential now just sold last week in a psa six at an all time high there's a bgs nine in a separate auction ending in a couple i think in a week or so and i'm almost i don't wanna guarantee it but i'm i could almost guarantee you is not gonna top what that sold for or even come close and i think there's this a sense oh if a six sold for this my nine has to be worth more but not in cards like this though i just think it's very it's a whole different market in cards on these collector type cards this is fascinating i think there was maybe rewind the tape five years ago you see one of these manning sell in a in a year and so like the desire and the demand goes up and people feel like they this is their one opportunity to get the that that card now with the way these cards are selling there's more and more that come out and so because the timing in between sales isn't as long as it has been the price typically goes down because there's a lot there's a lot of factors that go into that and i don't know that's just something that i've definitely been noticing in in nineties especially like these pmgs or essential credentials it's like rare and scarce like grails that people have been waiting their whole like collector career to to land on the flip side of that collectors who are holding these cards seem to be getting get very upset when they can see their like precious grail that they've worked forever to land and they've had in their collection continually pop up at auction and maybe the price goes down i think just coming from abundance we're we're as collectors it's a long game like you know you're we shouldn't let like these small incremental sales like negatively impact us but but it happens like can you maybe speak to that do you see more like do you have you noticed like more frequency with some of these fifty copies a hundred copy cards maybe now than before and then like also like do you do you gather that some collectors who own these cards who continue to see them come up for auction maybe have some negative sentiment about the activity that's happening to kinda like drive those cards to auction for sure i mean before the pandemic i think you would see maybe one credential or pmg pop up in an auction a year and even then it wasn't hall of famers and at the hall of famer you'd to dig it from a personal collection or a or like an off you know off-site kind of like someone you know you know a private sale sorry now i think because the prices have gone up so much there's almost an incent people are like well why would i paid nothing for this card why would i hold on to it i'm just gonna sell it and get a ton of money for it almost like it doesn't make any sense to hold it anymore but i think what your point is is a hundred percent on point that you can't let these incremental little blips or little sales affect it if you like the card you like the card for why you bought it in the first place not because it went up let's say thirty percent but they're down fifteen percent you like it for other reasons than that i think real i think collectors i wanna say real collectors understand that and i think they don't get bothered like i don't get bothered bothered by dips in prices also when i buy a card from my collection i stop looking at the price i'm like i have it i don't need it i don't care what it goes for anymore because i bought it oh i love that i one of the this has got me thinking and maybe it's because manning i would just love your opinion on this like obviously like if i look at manny's cards over the last couple years like his market in general has gone up dramatically but like i asked this question because it's like outside of being in commercials and you know being peyton manning and kinda you know running you know his production company all this i'm like is that like really driving his cards up which i i would say no like i almost attribute it to like the category where it's like the category of nineties cards are are performing well maybe higher than ever before and naturally like someone says like oh look at managed cards and compared to brady's like maybe it's time to start buying and collecting this stuff like in nineties how much of it do you think it is is like when we're talking about like increase in demand and prices how much of it do you think it is player dependent and how much of it do you think is category dependent i think it's mostly i would say category dependent but i think the two are very intertwined right like any any basketball into the parallel set in the nineties gets a bump because mj and there are some really awesome late nineties parallels that don't have mj in them and they just kind of just have been flat forever like you know twine time is such a cool card it's like such it's like a basketball net and but you know mj's not in it so you don't really i think it's a kobe a twenty four carat that's very popular but imagine if mj was in that it'd be insane i mean for football it's a great i love that set in football i mean there's a randy you got every every star of the decade moss there's a farvet auction right now so i think it's definitely player dependent but i think it's the set also has you know this sort of like long term staying power like ruby's is always will always be popular essential credentials will always be popular pmgs are you know like the the green and the reds are the gold standard in football and and basketball and which i find so cool is that in basketball there's fifteen greens right there's ten in in in basketball in football some of the ruby rookies are at a thirty that's great i think fifteen too some of them are some of them are very low print run-in those nineteen ninety eight star rubies i love the example we're gonna get into scarcity and it versus availability here in a second but i love the call out of jordan you can't have a nineties conversation without talking about jordan i often think about like twenty four karat gold and just like it feels like it's more popular in football and in baseball which is rare as opposed to basketball and it's the answer is always to me it's like well because jordan isn't in it but i i'd love to get your opinion on this as and this isn't like i'm not asking you for like hard and fast and like this is the way things are but just like your sentiment in like the relationships in your network of nineties collectors i'm trying to understand like it always starts and stops with jordan do you think it's like someone lands jordan grail in a specific parallel and then over time they just like naturally have interest in like collecting other players within that set and then that's what like copies get gobbled up and then eventually like demand goes like that's how i don't know if this is true but that's always what's happened in my brain when i think about like nineties basketball like what's the store is is that somewhat true not at all true like how do you see it yep with like jordan and his involvement and the demand of the these parallels so i think the demand that some a lot of those sets that he's in they have a chock full of hall of famers like you got shaq kobe garnett so many great players and all these like i'll give you an example actually from personal experience so diamond dimensions is like my favorite insert set i love it i love the when i first saw it in a pack when i was like twenty i lost my mind it's the coolest thing in the world and it's hand number it's got everything i like about nineties cards i finally landed a jordan which i wanted for a very long time and i'm like you know what this is a cool set so i wanna build in the set because i like i like the way it looks plus it's got again it's got kobe it's got shaq it's got chris the chris weber card is cool i think iverson but i think that happens a lot i think that the there's like the jordan spillover effect that people want other cards another example would be you know like sp off sp profiles at a one hundred another dot nineties die cut hand numbered card which i think is just the best design in the world yeah i think they're definitely that definitely happens awesome let's talk about scarcity and availability i think a lot of the nineties cards we talk about are numbered a lot of collectors you hear say they never come up and then like we are mentioning you see them routinely in auction once there's a big sale so i think there's this like dynamic as individuals who might not be collecting in the nineties but have a interest in collecting in the nineties they they are just trying to figure out like how do i enter the space and not do something i shouldn't like buy at the wrong time i think a lot of us are looking for kind of this rarity and scarcity mix when you think about nineties cards today like twenty twenty six in february what nineties cards do you find to be truly scarce like it could be players parallels stuff you just like hear about and you never see honestly a couple that come to mind are football ninety seven pmgs like the greens you know there's a big auction right now for a lot of like i think some sent a whole set it looked like but i mean those you very rarely see and there there's also a problem with there's been some like sheet cut copies that were created by different companies that their their you know reliability authenticity has been questioned those are i think extremely tough to find i think a lot there's a lot of late nineties baseball that is such an incredibly cool sets that are just really really hard to find they're either stashed away in collector's hands or you just like just never seen like late nineties hockey starquest golden hockey like tell me i'll give you an example there's a a a gretzky sold a couple weeks ago and it's in an eight and it it got it got unfortunately relisted right away but before that you know you haven't seen a gretzky in the there's like a it's a pop six and there's a hundred hundred copies there's six of them floating around how do you mention the the green pmg examples and just like maybe pmg in the counterfeit or sheet cut how do you advise collectors who maybe come to you and ask like i'm interested in getting into this stuff but i don't wanna end up buying something that is like you know a counterfeit or a sheet cut like do you have any like hard and fast rules that you share with collectors to better enable them to make sure they're spending a lot of money they're actually buying a legitimate card yeah i mean i i don't wanna make it an ad for psa but psa does have a does have a guarantee a warranty on their on their slab cards and i think that that accounts for a lot my my first comment though for anybody is just do all your research the more research the better spend a month you know comparing looking at all the auctions comparing cards learning what they look like you know finding the different you know idiosyncrasies of each card to make sure you're buying an authentic card research which player you know which players you like and then look at the pop reports look at what they've sold for or what comparable players have sold for over that time and then get a price in mind and stick to that price if you can do that let me know because i never stick to the price always i always overspend you well you're you're you're helping segue into like this topic of patience that i wanna dig into where it's man it's so hard sometimes where let's say we sold a card and we've got some extra funds and a card we've always wanted pops up and maybe it's we're having to buy it for you know almost double the price of the last comp and let's say the last comp was two years ago so we're trying to like validate the used card ladder like i know it's high but should i do this or should i wait like how do you think about just like the patience part i know it's really hard as collectors when we have our mindset on it but like some of this ninety stuff like we might not have seen it for three years it pops up we buy it and then like i guess the fear on the other side is someone sees the sale and then goes and you know auctions theirs off a couple weeks later like how do you think about patience in the nineties category and like whether it's you buying or selling like what's your philosophy so my philosophy is always money is for spending and if you have the means and the card is available i buy it because my justification is how much is my time worth if i've been looking for a card for years and it shows up i'm like well you know what just take my money here here it is i if i'm comfortable with it right i'm not gonna you know mortgage a house or put myself in a hole if i have the disposable income to pay for that card i'm buying it just because i wanna stop looking for it and i've always wanted it so i'm happy and that's happened to me like four times the past year so like definitely definitely a subscriber to that belief i love it let's talk a little bit about your company i whenever i'm i'm zeroed in on a topic i like to talk with either collectors or people building businesses in the space you've you're doing both i wanna maybe dig in and and i know there's a nineties auction has your february auction ending on the fifteenth so i would just encourage anyone out there to go check out what's happening in that space and obviously it'd be a good way to you know connect with josh shoot him an email but i guess what what what are you seeing just as you continue to build nineties auctions like what kind of consignments have you been seeing like what sort of themes over the course of kind of the the the opening of the doors to now have you seen just on the nineties front we've seen more of consignments of you know these collector cards that we're talking about earlier stuff that you don't see in ebay every month or you don't see an auction every every week it's stuff that it would stick out in our auction like we have a jerome bettis essential credential in this one out of thirty two you know guy sent it to us he's like this is the spot to go to you'll get the most publicity and that's really what we've was our goal from the beginning it's nice to finally see that being realized we had a i'll give you another example we had a film at eleven basketball set out of you know two thousand fleer mystique tracy mcgrady out of eleven and after that one sold there's three kobies and a and a gun that came out of the woodwork so it's the same thing like you see these numbers and then you're like well i gotta sell it now how do i hold on to it when it goes for so much but i think for these again for these collector cards the pool is a little smaller and you're not gonna get maybe people that are buying to flip or buying just because they wanna speculate it's people that are buying because they they believe in the card believe in the player or like or a collector that's always wanted one and has been looking for years we finally found it that's what we're trying to focus on has have you been surprised at any type of card whether it's rare parallel from the nineties or just set from the nineties that you maybe throughout your history of building your company you would have expected to see some copies but maybe there maybe there hasn't been a lot and that gives you the feedback that like maybe this set or this parallel or this player is like highly desirable desired and stashed away in collections because like as much as we've tried to promote what we're doing like we still haven't seen any of these cards yet you know i'll say this because i'm also a collector but frank thomas he's my my favorite baseball player of all time we don't get that much frank stuff and his i mean compared to ken griffey junior like and they're mostly in the same in almost every set anyway and the griffey's pop up from like i mean i would say ten to one average odds more than frank and frank and frank thomas' numbers they always show you that graph him compared to mike trout the first five years are identical i think it was better but you know just it's unbelievable but he's his stuff is stashed away you know i i have some of his cars i'm not getting rid of them ever and i know other collectors that have pretty rare pretty rare copies of of certain issues and they're like nope stick them away you know die diamond hands how would you how would you the griffey griffey's a whole another story because i feel like we could spend the you know the next hour just talking about griffey and what's happened with his cards mhmm and he's always been since we were growing up it's always been all griffey when it comes to collecting baseball in this era but where would you where would you kind of rank the big hurt in terms of like collector demand desire when you're like stack ranking nineties baseball guys i'd say it's griffey bonds and frank i i think just for my i mean a little bit of bias is creeping in there but also i i see it at shows i see it at other auctions where where with thomas cards i mean i haven't seen a rare frank i haven't seen a twenty four carat thomas in there was one in ebay last year that was getting like just pumped and shield and kept getting re relisted till everyone just like alright we're sick of this but i haven't seen one authentically sell in a very long time like in a very long time yeah it's i haven't you know i'm i'm digging through card letter quite a bit and i can't remember the last like banger i've i've seen some d m people d m ing me privately on frank thomas cards but nothing publicly so that's that's an interesting story line yeah okay so maybe let's talk about you mentioned the betis is there anything else cool that's kinda going right now that caught your eye in the in the february auction so this one is a cool card because i love like very localized nostalgia there's a bulls twenty fifth anniversary equal sugar sponsored card with michael jordan it was given out in april ninth i believe it was nineteen nine nineteen ninety one so twenty fifth anniversary of the bulls and it was a door prize and i love that kind of stuff because like they only gave it at the game you couldn't get it if you didn't you know unless you went and that's up for auction i think those are that kind of nostalgia is really cool i love that stuff that's awesome i would imagine you know being close to chicago i just remember michael jordan was so merchandised in this era that there were so many rare things that popped up and it's kinda fun to see that stuff pop up today so and i'm always fascinated by the results so you could everyone who's listening you can check out nineties auctions and what's happening is there is there anything else specifically you wanna call out before we move into your personal collection oh thank you yeah one other so we have a two thousand it's two thousand three but it's mostly nineties players two thousand three bowman chrome x fracture hawk is complete set number to one fifty with eleven graded cards you got like lemieux jaeger eisermann all the stars of the of the nineties are in that set and it's just a really cool looking set that's awesome alright let's move over we just started talking about them so we we have to continue the conversation the first card i have up from josh's collection is the ninety eight metal universe pmg big hurt frank thomas psa eight maybe a nineties parallel that baseball parallel that is maybe revered and has the most positive things to say from collectors through my conversations but back to your point i can't remember through all the investigation really seeing too many of these thomas pmgs so talk about this card obviously you're a big hurt fan maybe talk about kinda your acquisition of it anything you wanna share about why you like it i first of i love the pose i love i'm a big fan of vertical cards so love the pose it's you know post swinging the big hurt i love the pmg champs just because of the you know that like circular refractor shape on the back i bought this card raw off instagram and i think it was like twenty eighteen or twenty maybe it was twenty nineteen but i bought it raw i'm like i'll send it in back when you can send stuff in and get it back within a couple months and like the grade didn't matter i just didn't want it to get like bent and like you know broken by one of my two kids running around so was happy to see it come back like this no complaints if it was a six i'd love it just as much but it's one of my it's probably my favorite top three favorite cards beautiful card we move over to your ninety eight skybox ex two thousand one frank thomas central credentials future and a psa ten now that's that's something on these cards you certainly don't see every day what's the story with this one so i'm never a big grade premium guy but this came up and it was like you couldn't i couldn't pass it up at that price and i always wanted one i'm like i'll just buy this one it's fine you know and i think it's just one of my favorite essential credentials are great they're my favorite like parallel sets the way they look the acetate the color is just phenomenal some look like i like this better than the than the than the now it's like yellow i think this this looks better against the black and white jersey just a great looking card if you had a i love the pose if the poses are sick they're they're exactly how i remember frank thomas if you had to put the pmg up against the central credentials maybe a two parter like as a take frank thomas out of it like which one do you like better the ninety eights head to head and then then throw frank thomas in at these two examples like which one do you like better wow that's a that's like picking which kid you like right i would i would say i mean gun to my head i like the pmg i think the pmg shines the sparkle on the pmg is so cool when it hits the light i love it awesome alright chicago theme is very heavy in this one we're moving over to a card you don't see every day but you mentioned it which is the ninety seven ninety eight upper deck diamond dimensions michael jordan this one is hand numbered thirty one so little pay little little serial numbered reggie miller number who joe jordan owned but it's okay we won't get into that but this is a bgs eight this is i love this card because josh it's so cool looking and when i think of jordan's cards in this era this is not one that comes to my mind and that's kind of what i like about it alongside its unique design elements in the way it's cut but what's the story with this one so i i love this my favorite insert design of the nineties when i was younger the card shop i'd go to never had fleer skybox they only had upper deck and tops so i really never really was exposed to a lot of the skybox fleer cards it was always upper deck and i would buy tons of upper deck cards and i always you know saw ads for this i thought it was the coolest thing the die cut and the hand number they're my two favorite things bought this from a friend in milwaukee drove up you know we had lunch got the card came back it was a a lovely it's a great memory and it's you know he's a dentist so still it's okay though but yeah it's a great it's it's one of my favorite top five in my collection is this one that and i i didn't do any legwork to look it up but is this one that sells regularly because i i don't think i've seen this one you know it doesn't there was one that sold a couple months ago and i think there's there isn't one up now but there was one a couple months ago it does not sell that with that much frequency what and your your pro handwritten serial numbers do you like that love handwritten serial numbers i think it's actually it gives a more intimate kinda personalized feeling of the card i know there's a lot of people don't like it because you could manipulate the number on the bit on there but like unless it's number twenty three one or a hundred i think you're safe no one's no one's forging thirty one for sure and we'll close out with the this card every time i see it i i think it's the black jersey josh but the ninety seven essential credentials jordan future and a psa six just the color scheme the reds and the purple with the black and red jersey is just so iconic but man what a card what do you have to say about this one i love this card so much i i i love the issue it's again the black against the red and like blue purplish is just really is really sharp it's like i love i can pair it with the frank thomas you know you know my chicago childhood there is no there is no baseball you know there's a there's a football i can't think who's in football from the bears there's no one really you know good mid nineties bears are very forgettable not very great yeah you know so but i got this from a private sale from a friend of mine and i did the whole consolidation thing and gave up you know talking like what andy said in your previous episode i gave up so much stuff for it but it's stuff that i could really find with a little bit of legwork within a year i could replace it this when these cards come up i feel like i had to do it it was it was tough i have zero regrets and i'm so happy i did maybe talk about that process to consolidate and i think a lot of collectors in the nineties especially these cards aren't going down in value they're only going up so like collectors have to make the decision right to sacrifice in some instances like you know fifty to a hundred cards to just get one like you said you don't regret it what for like is there any advice in that moment where you like have to make that decision like how do you how did you know that this wasn't going to be something that you were going to regret like what gave you that sort of confidence so i was leading up to it it was at the national last year and i was leading up to it and i was like he was like yeah here's how much i want and i was like okay i went through all my cards and i was like oh man i spent like all this time like twenty some years of collecting building sets putting together a pc of certain players i'm like i'm i have to give all that up and then and then talk to a friend he's like listen all that stuff you can get it again like go search search ebay and you can find eighty percent of the stuff that you're getting rid of the other twenty okay you'll it may come may not but would you rather have this or twenty other cards that you could probably find within a month and that kinda sealed it for me and he's like do you want them yeah of course i want this card doesn't do it and that that sealed it didn't look back so that's a good card to not have to look back on a jordan credentials future alright josh amazing collection as we're rounding kind of our chat out here i'd love to get your perspective on what do you think based on the nineties category what's happening it can be collectors market anything related to the nineties what do you think is going on that is right right now like what what excites you about the category i think what excites me the most is that you've got a good group of collectors interested in buying these cards and keeping them and i think that will create demand a higher demand but also stabilize prices in terms of like you know this like smooth you know up to the right kind of growth as opposed to this like you know really fast rise and sync up and down to you know unpredictability so i think the fact that there's so many of us that collect these kind of cards i think it'll show a keep a steady demand for i think a very long time on the flip side of that where do you where would you like to see maybe where opportunities i guess for improvement based on your observations improvement in the nineties category just with the way it's shaping up like things you maybe things you don't necessarily like what that's happening in the space right now well i'd to see more knowledge spent about like different issues because you know there's so much there's so much variety between basketball football baseball hockey also in terms of nineties cards and even within the same sort of insert sets and it is you know the more knowledge the better you know the more research going through checklists going through different product information always i think helps make an informed collector a better collector so i think the spread of more you know widespread knowledge about the different issues and what advice would you have for anyone who's listening to this who is interested or maybe has always kinda peaked inside and but never made a purchase in nineties like what sort of advice do you have for them if they're getting going to maybe end up starting off on a good experience and not getting whiplash of buying a car that gets a know fifty percent haircut you know a month later i would say with anything so when you're spending a significant any money i would say do your research research research research don't feel rushed to buy anything take your time and find something you like and that you don't mind hanging on to for a long time more than you know more than would say more than a year and just research is always better research is the key josh always enjoy our conversations we'll have to do it again soon yes thank you for having me