it's episode thirteen yes it is and i have returned adam how we doing buddy we all like a good return right like the we need like a we need pop like we need like the pop on demand like so like the crowd can go nuts when you come back and your music hits and everybody gets to go crazy like that's that's how i feel well i'm little disappointed you didn't give me any music interest nothing i i don't wanna do i'm not i'm not that technologically advanced here my friend i i you're far you're farther ahead of me on this one my friend so i could tell you is very limited but yeah i mean it was it was good to have jamison on last week hopefully you got to to listen to the show i think he did a great job so i've offered him your seat we'll see if he accepts oh nice so i'm getting you're gonna bits and pieces in man you're fired nxt thanks jamieson for filling in buddy i appreciate i knew he would be a great fill in and and we didn't miss besides that didn't miss a beat it sounds like so that was good yeah so we'll get into just the normal stuff here but yeah i i know you had a good time in mexico maybe not the best time due to the illness but hopefully at some point we'll we'll get to hear all of i'm glad we're doing the podcast today and not yesterday i don't know if i would've i would've been the same energetic i finally feel ryan esque i guess you could say after since last wednesday so it's been almost a week but no i feel great it was a good time i'm ready to be back i've been actually getting a lot of things caught up working on cards because there's a big event next week where we're gonna probably are we talking about today a little bit or no did you put that in there to discuss or no today i'm not sure we can we can talk about it a little bit right now if you want well the big event next week for the industry and the hobby especially wrestling cards related is the topps industry conference in phoenix arizona it's gonna be held at the arizona cardinals stadium i'll be there with my wife it is the best of the best shops and breakers from the entire world that attend the conference it is very informative it is massive for our industry now with the announcement of football coming back and all the releases coming you know we've got basketball football baseball wrestling all those things to go with it so i'm i'm excited to go there and bring back a bunch of information which will will tie into the show next week but wrestling should be a pretty big segment from our understanding there from what you've briefly talked adam yeah i mean like last year so just because this is probably one of the most important events for the industry side of the of the hobby now that tops controls everything this is this is something that i think we we wanted to to dedicate some time next week once ryan gets back we'll be able to sort of cover what happens but last year i mean they announced the debut patches they announced the wrestlemania patches they announced all the sets that we got through the year and are still getting and and i think this year given that we are you know getting rapid fire product after product here they're probably gonna go into the next phase of the calendar so after we get royalty which is beginning of may i mean we were expecting that they were going to probably announce quite a few things coming up at this conference and last year tiffany stratton was there i know a lot of people got to have a good time and meet her yep i was one of them she was awesome yeah she i heard she was awesome dulles i can't go my son his first baseball game is that is that week so i wanna make sure i'm that he's his high school sophomore year so it's a big deal to to be able to see him play there's there's only a few games that we're gonna get to go to but i think like this is a really important event so we'll we'll cover that next week in in totality i hope we'll cover and if you wanna get live updates i'm sure people will be tweeting about it i'll absolutely on main event everything so really big conference especially now that tops says football basketball wrestling you name it they have everything so this is gonna be a a really important podcast next week so don't forget to like and subscribe here and and we will cover that next week but yeah glad you're gonna get to go because i'm i'm excited to hear what you find out it's awesome man it's my favorite one to attend it is the best networking and it's the it's just a positive time from start to finish i enjoy it i thoroughly look forward to this little getaway it's and again i don't get a lot of we don't get a lot of free time once you're there but just getting to see people out we could see once or twice a year and just kinda get your minds together and just tops does a great job they really do to put on this there's really no boring moments like yeah you're sitting through some stuff some information but it's good information it's stuff that they're bringing to your attention of what they're doing in the future and if you're passionate about this hobby like i am and a lot of the people are that go there you you thoroughly are looking forward to this and excited about what they have next in store so yeah and this isn't collectors going to this event this is dealers and breakers only so it's and not everyone gets to go that's the thing like it's it's limited to an extent they do and they're you know they they sell out and they this is gonna be a record number and there's still a lot of people on the waiting list that aren't gonna be able to attend so yeah yeah it's it's a big deal so i'm excited for this let's get into the opening pyro man what is going on on raw and smackdown man they are moving champion it's overhound like it's like first of all they switched the world championship a few weeks ago now they're switching around the us champion we've got sami zayn taking over carmelo hayes for some reason i have no idea why there's gotta be something that is gonna drive that switch because otherwise i mean carmilla was on a good run like he he was great match great matches the whole time he was on that title run yeah and i i was i've never been like a huge like sammy fan in terms of like putting him at the top of the card like i like the stories he tells i like him as a mid card wrestler and this is a mid card championship but it's like i i don't really understand why you're moving around this title then they move around the tag titles with the usos last night like i i mean that's gotta play into the main event with roman and punk i i really don't understand what's been going on but i will say like when you look at the card like actual card for wrestlemania like seeing the type of matches that they have on this thing like it's gonna be top to bottom a great wrestling show but half of wrestlemania is starting and ending feuds and a lot of this now is like well we're not gonna end a feud we're not gonna end this we're not gonna do that we're gonna just completely move everything around like two weeks before wrestlemania i don't get it so that's just that's just me yeah but yeah and i i like i i'm just not a sami fan like i i like i like when he's with kevin owens i like you know sort of when he's doing his thing but like i don't need to see sammy as champion anymore like i it's just like he just doesn't do it for me maybe it's just because the him and trick have been kinda going back and forth they figured that's a better role give sammy his opportunity in mania but i mean carmelo hayes deserved that he's carried it correctly he put on great matches we we know the past between carmelo and trick if you followed nxt if you didn't wow that was a great rivalry they used to be you know partners trick used to be kind of his bodyguard and they had a great rivalry once they started turning on each other and stuff like that so i don't know if they're gonna are we gonna get a triple threat match are they gonna implement carmelo in this or are we just gonna get this is what we're getting because i gotta think trick's gonna walk out the champion at this point i mean you're if you're wanting to get a belt on him already this is your opportunity so i don't know i i was really confused by the tag team title change because i thought that this may carry and then we would get you know roman winning and the usa's already being tag team champions and you re redoing the blood lights i really don't know what play we have here we'll find out one you also don't i don't if you have talked about later is the now we've got a gunther match with seth rollins which again i forgot to that was a little late i built this i built this yesterday morning so i mean i don't which which would be a great match don't get me wrong but you have no storyline there and all of sudden boom now we got a match great match i'm i'm i'm excited i hope my boy seth can win but i think they were hopeful that breaker would return i don't think the injury's gone the recovery's gone as well so this is a pivot i'm okay with the pivot but i don't get there's just nothing that was built up to this so i really that one more confused me is just as much as the tag teams yeah i think the whole seth and gunther thing great match like let's let's be honest that's gonna be absolutely amazing to watch but where did that come from like i like i get it gunther wasn't booked on wrestlemania ray mysterio is hurt i think that was the plan is to have ray versus gunther and maybe even have him end another career but which would have been a great send off for ray mysterio if that's truly what he wanted to do but he's injured now gunther is without an opponent and listen seth rollins is great but you gotta like like at some point gotta pull the plug on breaker versus seth like at some point like you've gotta be able to say okay it's unlikely that breaker is going to be available like let's pivot a little bit earlier than we're probably comfortable with but you know i think like having seth come back and do this whole masked man angle really just i mean it kinda went nowhere like he he gave paul heyman a chair shot he he attacked paul heyman a few times but like there there really wasn't the payoff because you know the payoff i thought was gonna be breaker coming to save paul heyman which would have made complete and utter sense instead of gunther showing up out of nowhere in jeans and a t shirt and being like what okay curious how they're gonna play this one when they on monday night raw next week how they're gonna alright build this up to mania i don't know it just kind of like it it tells me injuries that we knew were gonna wreak havoc on this wrestlemania are truly doing so absolutely who knows what is going on behind the scenes it seems like they're scrambling but at least the matches will be great it won't be a bad you know situation i was very disappointed to see that they're gonna do a four way women's tag match with all those teams including the bellas my favorite people on the roster like yes they they are gonna get a lifetime achievement award of these tag belts the tag belts really don't matter much anymore i get it but i don't know if people understand like how much of a clusterfuck four way tag matches are in wwe they don't have four people going at once they have two so you have like four teams with two people wrestling it makes absolutely no sense and it's even worse when it's a triple threat but now you've got the bellas in there too who have not even come close to showing that they can work a match it should have just been bailey and lyra versus bliss and charlotte that would have been great so what you're saying is you're already predicting the worst match in mania both nights is that one right absolutely it's not even gonna be a question i think i think there's potential for other matches to be kinda rough but it depends on like the i don't if jelly roll is gonna be involved in one but i think like overall like like this is gonna be like brock versus oba is gonna be worth the price of admission like just that should be that should close night one if i feel like i am more excited but that would be that would be exciting that could no one brock that could start wrestlemania i'm sure it will i'm sure that'll be one of the opening matches one of these days and like it's gonna be a three to five minute finisher spam fest they're gonna beat the ever living shit out of each other and it's gonna be absolutely so much fun to watch yes i cannot wait it could be a main event and it's and like at this point like is there a bigger favorite for king of the ring if they do that again in this in the middle of this year leading up to the title matches at summerslam than obafemi is right now absolutely not i mean cannot like you cannot put him in a match where he's gonna lose because this guy has been built better than any prospect in many many years even breaker like even breaker even vicar like all those guys like he has been built better because of what brock has done for him for him and it's just absolutely amazing to watch if you followed nxt man he just destroyed the roster down there he absolutely kicked butt down there and he was fun to watch which i'll actually get to watch stand and deliver in person i got we got a lot of recap of next week because i'll be at smackdown friday and i'll be at stand and deliver on saturday i got a packed weekend man so i'm excited lots of wrestling in my life this weekend and fly out sunday night so it's it's it's a busy busy weekend but i'm excited i'm excited to see orton come out and obviously being hometown hometown boy regardless of the you're just not gonna get this crowd to go against him no matter what yeah he's already getting cheers like they're not gonna boo him like i again like i love seeing unhinged orton back at at the full strength just like you've been saying now since we've started this podcast but like there's gotta be something on cody's side that makes this interesting and the stephanie mcmahon thing on friday like yeah okay or on monday was okay yeah i was like oh okay fine but like that doesn't really do anything for me like cody rhodes doesn't do anything for me either anymore like i think there's there's these these aspects of wwe that are just kind of like nails on a chalkboard for me and just cody going out to the ring and saying what do you wanna talk about is definitely one of those things right now over the cody i'm okay with it alright let's we have a ton of card stuff to talk about so let's let's dive into it i've been under a rock the past week so i'm excited to see these alright yeah there there has been major developments we're gonna start with exalted because it's the new it'll be the new product by the time this podcast goes live ryan and i have talked a lot about exalted we've talked a lot about exalted with breakers we've talked a lot about exalted with dealers like there are a like saying there are mixed reactions to this project product is is probably putting it lightly what i mean just from what you've seen what you've heard what is your initial sort of thoughts on on sort of what you've what your opinion is for exalted coming into this release i mean again i i've seen very little but from the box hits i have not seen anything it's like wow that was a loaded box wow you got a monster hit yeah i have yet to see it now granted i like the on card stuff i'm always about that but i think this product's i mean it's it's a breaker friendly product we know that's where it's gonna be geared towards but i think it's gonna get absolutely buried top chrome is a week away and everybody wants tops chrome i'm already cutting back tremendously on breaks for this product i'm gonna join a few with the the normal people i do i don't know personally if i'm gonna rip any of it to be honest with you i i i'm all in on tops chrome at this point yeah i i like now if this product came out in january when everybody was starving yes and like we were walking through a barren wasteland of wwe product like this would have been a perfect product to you know as a to fit to the void appetizer yeah yep for the main course because i mean you you put out universe and universe exceeded my expectations considerably all the event used gear multicolored relics on card autograph relics my you know like it was just absolutely much better than i expected it was gonna be exalted doesn't have that same like bang to it like it doesn't have like that that chase hit that that cool aspect that isn't available anywhere else like we've gotten on card autographs from tops before there's no auto relics in this the main feature of the product is acetate and stock acetate stock cards with autographs which normally i'm a sucker for like i love acetate cards especially when they did them in immaculate for panini those auto relics were absolutely the coolest hundred percent man you're you're spot on with that man but when it's when it's like this it's like okay if you wanna do this as one insert in a greater product that that i can do like if they did these black and white signatures with the acetate in like a in like a tops universe or if they did it in a royalty or something like that that i could understand but making every card with that as the feature just it doesn't it doesn't make sense as much to me as the feature point of an entire run now i think the cards look good i mean they don't look bad they don't look like oh my god i have to go out and go buy all this stuff but i think like they're not terrible looking cards they're just they don't have that same pizzazz that universe does they don't have the same attraction points that chrome does i mean we'll get into chrome here in a minute but you know i think like if this came out in january i'd be probably pretty excited about it now i feel like oh it's a week before chrome like there's no way i'm spending any money on this when i'm saving all every dollar that i could possibly muster for chrome yeah i'm i'm with you on that front man like like i said with the exalted the one here that looks like a nora spotlight love it could have been make those more rare and implement them into something else to add more you know value to them but yeah i think this is just one of those things where two you know it's a little too late at this point i know this was you know a pushback as well but i mean week before chrome i mean after everything we've seen on chrome like how do you compete with what chrome's gonna do i mean i'm all in on give me universe over exalted right now from what i've seen now it's early it is early we have not seen cases getting broke we'll see that all day some you know wednesday whenever you listen to this whenever release day essentially but again there's not as much out there to break of this i'm just not seeing as much a but b i'm kinda glad i'm not willing to go as heavy on this because i'm with adam i'd rather save my eggs and go in all on on top of chrome for everything it has to offer so if you are a person that needs to pick and choose your battles where to put your money i i think we're sitting here telling you we're gonna be the ones that put in the tops chrome not this exalted product yeah and and like the other thing is is like if this was a hundred dollars a box sure like make this yeah i mean no question mean like that's that's where like you know this is two autographs and a relic per box right now i think it's like two seventy five three hundred i'm i'm looking right now to get an idea remember what it is see if can find anybody with but it's not it's not the price on fanatics and wwe shop was two twenty a box so i assume retail is gonna be over that by a little bit so let's say it's two sixty two seventy five a box like that's still pretty expensive so da at this moment which is tuesday is three thirty five a box yeah that's i can't i can't justify that and i'm and i'm sure that's gonna correct itself to come down but i could see it being like okay two fifty two seventy five you know sure people will be more prone to do it but man that's that's hard to swallow like that's the thing like i think this would have been so much better as a lower cost sort of product single pack kinda like fully loaded used to be like do it like that give people because like i think loaded was forty fifty dollars a box i i didn't know that i mean like like from a format perspective is like make it one pack make it cheaper make it like you know a hundred dollars hundred twenty five dollars cheaper autographs i know the technology to produce these cards is expensive acetate's not cheap to work with so like that's probably what's driving some of the preorder stuff that was a little bit more expensive but like there's not much of this that they made i doubt that there's a ton of this out there and i i bet i would have to guess there's either under two thousand cases maybe closer to fifteen hundred and like it's not gonna be like three thousand cases like universe was and chrome will be thirty five hundred whatever but i mean like i i feel like the value here is is just not there at three thirty it's not there at two seventy five maybe at two hundred but you can probably find singles for this pretty cheap you can probably get into breaks pretty cheap eventually the the the strategy here and this is the one time i'm gonna heed ryan's advice i am completely out until i have really gone through chrome made sure i've got what i need got my big hits out of chrome did all my breaks for chrome like there's no money i can spend on this because it's literally i have to i know with first day issue coming on the eighth that's gonna be crazy expensive with all the hobby breaks now with all the stuff we'll talk about here in a minute like the debut patches are gonna drive prices up like chrome is gonna be an absolute banger and i think this is this is gonna fall very flat as a result no i think it's not i think it could fall and then somebody like me could go in and say okay it's still a wwe product it still has the hits it has it's still an easy break let people start dumping this on the back end it's something like me and go okay it's wwe product i'm gonna go in and buy it but i i think it's gonna go down because i think it's just it's literally has one you think about this we waited so long from finest to universe universe and then all of sudden we're getting this but hey next week stops chrome i mean there's no time for this product to succeed and breathe in my opinion i think it's gonna fall under the radar breakers have this week and essentially to break it maybe a little into next week and after that they're probably gonna have to tie it into some breaks with like tops chrome and stuff like that yeah this this feels like a mixer product it is what it is i mean like like when and here's the other thing if they had twenty products a year put out stuff like this sure you're you're putting out two products a month three products a month like they do for baseball you can you can have a product like this and it doesn't injure the overall calendar when you have eight and this is one of them that's a problem but that's just my personal opinion but well i mean like it's gonna have it's gonna have stuff like that all throughout this like this type of a release when it's gonna be completely buried but the people want access people want opportunity and i think this is gonna sit on shelves because people are gonna be focusing on other stuff so the singles will come down they'll be a lot more affordable that's what people have wanted well here's your opportunity this is the chance and these cards are not bad looking they're on card autographs the vent used material like everything has the same pedigree as a lot of these other sets which is good so people who want cheaper singles this is an opportunity but so far the singles are not selling very cheaply i've seen cards sell very very high so maybe there's still just a ton of demand for it even though we're kinda meh on the overall sort of process here others seem to be i need this it's the new car effect right now is what it is and it's obviously does not release to the you know technically till tomorrow but people are getting it in a day or two early from shipments which is fine so those people are taking advantage of the cash in to get top dollar right now and i get that from that perspective but these will all come down to reality they'll they'll correct themselves in time yeah the preorder shipped really really early so people had so the the release is supposed to be on april first and so you'll be listening to this on april third or april fourth but the the release is supposed to be on april first people had them on the twenty ninth so like the sunday of release week they had these in hand from the preorders because top shipped them out so quickly so there's a lot of boxes out there there's a lot of cases being ripped stuff like that so yeah we've got we've got a good amount oh and one other thing so blake monroe who people have been waiting for those cards forever for blake monroe to have cards mariah mae from aew fame she has a base card in this and the base cards are only one per box so that could be a sleeper spot to grab in a break for people like she has she just has a base card she's gonna be live autographs in chrome we saw saw her signing those at a nxt event a few months ago but this is her first wwe card it does not have the rookie logo on it but it's a it's a first blake monroe card we're gonna get people like that i think we've found out that joe hendrie is gonna have cards in chrome autograph we're gonna have a lot of new people coming to chrome i think kendall gray will probably have autographs in chrome so like there's gonna be a lot of really amazing stuff coming in chrome but at least for now you have for a week until that happens blake mcgraw blake monroe does have a base card in the set which i think is pretty cool it looks great too alright let's talk about the big dog here topps has been running overtime with this they have been previewing just an absolute ton of stuff just keeps getting better and better and better and every preview seems to amp up turn up the volume like i i if like exalted is like turning up the volume to like a six this is like oh this goes to eleven like this is this is going to be one of the best wrestling sets as it stands right now on paper we'll have to see how it does in execution but on paper right now this is looking like one of the best wrestling sets that has ever been made because not only do you have all of the traditional sort of stuff from topsyrome last year you have the base variation autographs you have the regular blue band blue brand red brand autographs you have the the legends autographs you have nxt autographs that was all last year they have kicked this up so significantly because not only did they add like three or four extra case hits they've now added garbage pail kids and the nineteen eighty six tops you know sort of throwback extra audio yeah all on card you also have the alternate persona autographs you have jay and tiffany getting their buyback stamp cards from last year you have a crazy dual autograph checklist which i've seen a preview of you have the debut patches nwo thirtieth anniversary stone cold thirtieth anniversary i mean like it literally goes on and on and on and on and i cannot be more excited because these garbage pail kids especially given the popularity that they had in baseball these cards just look so awesome and there's i don't think they have autographed versions of them which is really unfortunate but like i saw these i like i lost my shit i mean let's say arguably everything that we're seeing right now and there's still more that we may find out between now and next week's release this hands down should destroy twenty twenty five tops chrome yes absolutely destroy and the only difference that you might get in this that you weren't getting in twenty five is hulk hogan autographs i mean we should still be getting rock autos we'll have stone hogan is on the checklist he's a stickler he is okay but you still get you get sticker hogan autos there you go so i mean i don't how understand how anybody's all in on twenty five right now at the price point it's turning out because obviously it's been dried up this this right now it's gonna go up there's no question it's gonna get ripped to shreds by breakers and people wanna rip this product i i'm thoroughly excited again i'm just looking past exalted i'm just trying to get to next week to tops chrome which i'm thoroughly excited to get back from my trip and start ripping some of this stuff next weekend yeah i mean just like just a little just to talk quickly about some of these things like the nineteen eighty six so when i was young so i i was born in eighty two nineteen eighty six tops came out and i was four years old by the time i was five or six i was getting into cards that was like the first like team set i went to the card shop and spent my allowance on with kirby puckett the minnesota twins and kent herbeck and all those guys like i still had those cards in a binder until my parents moved a few years ago and like i found it like in the basement like somewhere so it's it's like fortieth anniversary is the reason they're doing this they did it in twenty sixteen for heritage and they had on card autographs for that too you can i i posted on twitter you can see the comparison between the two john cena cards but they're on card they're chrome they have super factor autographs these cards look absolutely insane they look great and given the nostalgia factor of this like these are gonna be insanely popular cards i'm hoping the checklist is good for them it looks like it's gonna be good based on the previous they've jake cargill alexa bliss john cena i'm sure rhea ripley will have one and you know all the guys roman reigns would be my i would i wanna see roman reigns get a card here we'll see if he does and then you know that's sort of what drives a lot of us as wrestling collectors like that nostalgia right absolutely no i mean you're danny your age i'm only a year younger than you and to me when i see eighty six i think of the barry bonds top traded rookie exactly as the xrc or whatever you wanna call it so to me it takes me back to nostalgia and obviously cecil fielder was the big big rookie back then from eighty six tops showing our age here obviously it's taken us back to memory lane and to growing up as kids and stuff like that so no i'm excited for everything they're doing with this product i i mean there's just announcing that dennis rodman nwo i'm like i don't need a dennis rodman auto but i need that one in my collection just because that's cool card yeah because i have several of the wcw and wo cards they did back in the late nineties so it would it would go next to macho man grow back to that design it is yes autograph cards to the tops did those back in the day so i i have the macho man which is one of the top ones i still need the eddie guerrero is another one i gotta track down but those are iconic and legendary and to to now we're gonna get a rodman s i'm all in bring it to me yeah i would guess we're gonna get a a number of of cool autographs on that set i'm really i i like i love the preview they did for the stone cold set it it feels almost like cactus jack last year but leveled up then you see the garbage pail kids cards and they have all the blood all the gore it's just like it's it's so cool like when they did the the garbage pale kids cards in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen and then again in twenty twenty one with the transcendent oversized sketches like they were very tape and like they were they were stickers back in in the original thing i have the becky lynch in both a t shirt and a card it's a great like a lot of people are sleeping on it and those cards are crazy undervalued but they're not even cards they're stickers so apologies there but then you look at the transcendent oversized sketch card which is original art they were one per box in twenty twenty one transcendent those still go for like six grand seven grand apiece i know kevin kulikowski from he got both of ours years ago one was charlotte flair rightfully so who was the other one we hit it was charlotte flair and somebody else but he got it from me back in the day he has several of those he was ahead on that but i mean again i think what it was is i got two cases back in twenty one and i ended up letting adam do a big group break of them and i end up buying spots for myself and my family and then my kids crushed it i think one hit like a mcmahon auto one hit the signed bell to kevin owens one hit they hit both of the garbage bill kids in both cases and again those were incredible when they did those so kudos to ada or not adam kevin for buying those up because those are only gonna keep going up because it's a onetime deal yeah those are awesome and so i think like baseball these cards are super popular but i i did get some information like just from stuff that's been floating around in terms of rumors like there's gonna be a stephanie vicair julia dual autograph there's gonna be a bunch of dual autographs here that are really cool and it's it's awesome to see that you know tops has all that and they still put the debut patches in here too which is just gonna drive prices insane so rather than continue to beat the the chrome drum here we'll come back next week by then i would hope we have maybe some more information about sort of what's happening at wrestlemania we we hopefully will have a lot more information on what's happening with sapphire cosmic all of that stuff because you know all of those things we know are coming it's just a matter of when and how we do have a lot of more information we we can't share at the moment but we will be sharing hopefully after the industry conference because it will be live at that point but man this is shaping up to be just bang bang bang bang bang like product after product and oh by the way royalty is coming out soon soon as well and that's gonna be just this mega set that is gonna drive people up the wall so i i really am excited for these next few months this is what we've been wanting right this is the this is everything in that respect we're getting what we've been asking for adam but we're all getting it at once so get your get your finances in order yeah i wanted to spend some time as well talking about a comment that was made on twitter it ignited a little bit of an interesting discussion and i wanted to highlight it here because it's cardladder is an official sponsor of stacking slabs i love the work they do i use it so much like i i'm on that website so much during the day just researching stuff looking at at information it's just a treasure trove of data if you don't have a subscription yet make sure you get one it'll help you tremendously but one of the things that was said last week on twitter was that will stern who i believe is one of the writers or contributors for collect said over the past year every single card letter index in zin the green except the one which is wrestling and i think like he didn't really say anything more than that but and i i think it's really important to have a discussion about why that is the way that it is because cardladder is a data hub for everything people look at this from a psa perspective gamestop does power packs based on it like there's so much information here that card ladder funds to the rest of the hobby that i think it's really important that hey wrestling is down like the it is the only index in the red but there's a reason why that's the case and i wanna just take some time because it's like there's a dialogue here know you and i talked about this a little tiny bit but i really dove deep and we'll go through it here so you'll get to react live but wrestling if you look back a year wrestling is down about two or three percent it's not crazy but it is the only index in the red when you have like star wars and pokemon and everything in triple digit growth like it stands out right yeah it it does but i got my reasoning but i wanna hear what data you've got here but i got my thoughts on this why it's down but i wanna hear what you've come up with because i'm curious if it's gonna be the same so if you if you look at the overall index for wrestling there's four hundred and thirty five cards that they track most of those cards have been added in the last couple of months because i've been begging chris hoge to to to add some more wrestling cards so the the total rate of growth over the last year is negative six point o two percent if you're following along with us on patreon you'll see the graphs i'm showing them on the screen but if you remove every wrestling card from before two thousand you lose about thirty five cards off the index so instead of four hundred and thirty five cards it's now tracking four zero three and as expected the rate of growth there is a hundred and five percent in the green so in reality the reason i think behind this is related to one person and that person is hulk hogan hulk hogan's cards after he died spiked to insane levels and now that most of that hype has moved on and you know his his death is not as fresh people have gone and spent the money they're doing in tribute to him all of those cards have started to come back down and because they represent you know a large portion of the value of this index because the all stars cards are are so expensive you bring those down and the whole index goes down so once you take those cards out wrestling as a whole is performing very very well yeah and i i had a feeling that was where you're gonna go but my other theories to go with this is the community that we have in wrestling is by far the strongest and most devout community that looks out for one another i think you're seeing out of any other landscape of collectible in our card industry you should say i think a lot of the stuff's getting traded behind closed doors and not getting bored i i think that's the biggest thing i mean at shows at behind you know dms or contacts hey that's the that's the ria ripley collector that's the orton collector there's the becky collector there's the roman collectors the kevin i mean they're not they don't need to be traded on platforms they are trading behind the scenes so then there's less data out there to where like these are all going at higher rate i mean the deal is these cards are trading at higher than what they traditionally would trade at i can we could contest to that completely because adam will come to me and be like well i thought i could pay this but i gotta pay this now i'm like he's like that's twice what i paid a year ago but and again i think that's a lot of wrestling cards is it's the loyalty it's looking out to get those cards in the right hands of the right collectors so a lot of times i just see a lot of it getting traded off ebay i mean a lot of the bigger cards i buy i i couldn't tell the last time i bought a big i haven't bought a big card on ebay exactly think of how much becky lynch you've bought think how much horton i bought again there's times they have to go buy this stuff when they when they pop up or the super fractures or a new release that's different but i think a lot of this contest to wrestling cards are getting harder and harder to find at shows they're i i searched one on one wrestling every day on ebay and right you just don't see a lot of great quality one on ones and when you do there's a reason why it's sitting on ebay at that ridiculous price it's sitting at if somebody's throwing a dart against the board so i think that needs to be taken into consideration here mhmm outside of the hogan is that majority of this stuff that's trading hands is not being done through a platform esque of like an ebay or heritage or fanatics or anything like that so people need to consider that and think about that yeah and that's one of the main reasons i wanted to talk about this is not because this data is complete in any way this is a tiny so like if you look at the baseball the football the basketball indexes there are thousands of cards in those indexes for wrestling it's four hundred and thirty five we are still very much in the infancy oh we're way wrestling behind we're at least yeah we are way way behind now they are tracking some of the most liquid cards in wrestling right now but i you know thankfully over the last few weeks we've added the kaboomas we've added the downtowns we've added some flawless cards we've added some of that stuff we've added a a a lot more capabilities to see wrestling currently in its modern state but to ryan's point and drake brought this up on on twitter i know a few people were responding like i don't we don't trade card i mean you you you i mean roscoe was talking about this as well like i think like no one goes on on facebook expecting to talk about data and comps the way that we would normally do it's literally you pay what is the asking at this point because you really don't have a lot of flexibility with so little data that's out there now i don't subscribe to drake's idea of like everybody should go and report their private sales that is never something that i'm going to do for selfish selfish reasons but it's something that i think this is a really important context because this is these these indexes are so visible and so i i think having ryan and i having this discussion on a platform like stacking slabs where we love what cardladder does this is not cardladder's fault other than the fact that they just can't keep up with the demand for adding cards to their indexes which we understand completely we're talking about this from the context of like everybody else who's using this as a data point saying oh wrestling's down wrestling sucks all this other stuff you should be embarrassed to collect wrestling cards we are projecting here much the opposite and we wanna give people a reason to do that and so i even went a little bit deeper into the data because adam went deeper folks i'm just looking at this whole boom highlight of this i'm looking at here oh this is gonna be interesting so here is a this is much more in-depth just to give people the context here so in total for the market and i'm gonna do a lot of talking here ryan i apologize for it i'm i'm here to listen yeah the total sales volume if you look at year over year total sales volume is down eleven percent i track the number of sales that go down on all the major auction platforms i have a spreadsheet that i go through it's down average sale price on the other hand is up high dollar sales very much has been trending the right direction for a long time most recently it's up just under double digits it's up about nine percent so this is just comparing recently this does not include a lot of the stuff that we're gonna see for chrome because remember if you look year over year by the time we were at this point in the year last year chrome was already out we actually had sapphire by this point and so you had a lot more high dollar cards in chrome trading hands on public platforms than we did right now because right now it's just universe that's literally it and so this is a measure of hey there's only been one product released so far in twenty twenty six there are only three major hobby releases in twenty twenty five but look at all the stuff that's on the way so by the time we have this conversation at the end of summerslam i think these numbers are gonna be completely different but overall like social buzz ryan and i monitor this pretty quickly social buzz is through the roof i mean like people are talking about wrestling cards in ways they've never talked about them before the demand for product is insane ryan can speak to that as a dealer more than anybody but we have four products coming we have exalted we have chrome plus sapphire and there's gonna be a wrestlemania exclusive there is no royalty word of that i can't tell but for more we can't we're not gonna talk about that right now but we will next apparently it's gonna be really awesome we will next week royalty's coming and then there's gonna be cosmic after that so like there's a lot of stuff here that's on the way and these numbers will look very very different when we talk about this later on in the year yeah we're on the mean the thing is like we are again on the road to wrestlemania the hottest time of the year for wrestling wwe related and we're getting products and cards are up i mean there's just too many great things coming together right now when we were feeding for so long for something and just in a lull here we are it's just boom we're on the road and oh here here's three products in what five weeks six when did when did universe come in five or five weeks four weeks it came out like the end of february i think exactly so i mean it's gonna be bang bang bang again not just on the road to wrestlemania i mean i i in my opinion wrestling cards will stay hot through summerslam which also leads into the weekend of the national where wrestling cards or somebody like me who hoards and hoards and hoards brings them there where people are just ready to go buy wrestling cards at the national and stuff like that i mean there's the growing of wrestling card community continues to grow more people are jumping ship from sports cards to wrestling cards because like i watch wrestling two three times a week i don't have time to watch baseball six games a week i mean that's the thing right you could follow wrestling on social media and you could just watch a couple guys that cover the main spots and you can get a whole smack down a raw in twenty minutes done i mean if you really don't have the time so it's a lot easier to cover i i just continuously see it growing i'm excited for what's on the horizon not to to trump your document here in front of me but no no i i think this is right yeah but it's exciting man the future is very exciting i think we're gonna get to see a lot of what tops wanted to do in twenty five we're gonna see what they wanted to do in twenty six for twenty five and i think sky's the limit with what they're going to do in the future for this industry and i'm thoroughly excited to go talk to some of the wwe heads next weekend sorry next week and bring back some information that i'm allowed to bring back i'm i'm super excited to absorb this a lot yeah we're gonna they are there's gonna be i know my my jaw is gonna go drop when i hear some of this stuff even though i know some of it i'm gonna know some i don't let's move on to some big sales now that i've run my mouth enough here i'm gonna get myself into trouble if we don't worry listeners i had to take over a little bit because he was going to town so we had universe as we mentioned has sort of the big hits have started to land the biggest sales so far happened on march twenty fifth was the hulk hogan's probably his one of his last on car autographs exalted i believe there are on car autographs for exalted because that product was built around the same time universe was beginning of twenty twenty five so i would say this is probably gonna sell more than the exalted one will it is the one of one foil fracture autograph one of my followers on twitter actually pulled this card in a break sold it for seventy five hundred dollars best offer on ebay just absolutely enormous price i was i i was shocked when i saw this price i think he got a great great deal on it and i think that you know whoever wanted this card clearly knew that this was gonna be probably one of the last but it is it's a great looking card great photo one of one foil fractures look great in hand i i just got my becky lynch auto relic in hand it looks incredible and like better than i thought it would it shimmers in the light i have i've never never seen the foil fractures before in hand and getting one in hand finally it's cool it's a really cool looking card so this one seventy five hundred dollars best offer i i don't know man this was this was a lot bigger than i thought it was gonna be i was shocked when i saw this surface the other day by somebody else posting about it but again if it is his potential last i i could see that i remember the kobe bryant select is it sky's the limit i can't remember the insert his autograph he had that was reported his last on card auto we ever had and those bring big money that was the one he signed i think not to quit not to it was pretty close to before he passed so again those bring big money people knowing that we don't know that this time if this is so somebody's going on a limb maybe they know something we don't know but that that's a big sale man that's that's a very big sale for hogan being so far since he passed so yeah i i don't think his his cards in chrome are gonna be on card i think the product was built way too late for that to happen product lead times are usually about six to eight months so it's right on the cusp there but i don't know what like the autograph signings for chrome were happening i can't even remember at this point they we got we had all the social media posts so maybe it's close yeah but i'm i'm guessing they're gonna be stickers because finest was stickers so we'll have to see next one speaking of obafemi here his twenty twenty four select future gold vinyl one of one mid nine psa sold fixed price for twenty nine hundred dollars that is just an absolutely enormous price as well for a retail insert and you know a great photo great looking card i just was never very high on this set just cause it was like it kinda was one of those retail ones that wasn't the throwbacks and it wasn't the other ones so these kind of like fell a little bit behind being all nxt but seeing somebody get three grand for this card is absolutely nuts i i'm assuming this card probably originally sold for like a thousand or something like that at one point is my guess i bet i bet it was like six hundred dollars cashing in on the hype but again his hype train could be a very long extent of it so again yeah kind of a big number but if you're all in on him and you wanna get his stuff right now you're gonna pay a premium i mean you're you're buying somebody that's the hottest he's ever been unless you were following nxt but he's on the main roster now and he's about to fight one of the one of the best wrestlers top wrestlers of all time i mean brock lesnar is a is freaking nature just just to give context because last week i was talking about with jameson his flawless one zero one sold for about like this much at the end of twenty twenty five beginning of twenty twenty beginning of twenty twenty five oh man what a steal so like his logo diamonds and like we talked about last week sold for fifty one hundred dollars that was like march or april of last year yeah i remember that's going off that can that got pulled around probably probably around release not too far for release i remember that yeah yeah so like to think that if those cards resurfaced i think those are close to five figure cards at this point given the hype seeing that this one sold for three thousand listen it's not a bad card like i i don't wanna make it seem like we're shitting on this card it is not a bad card it's just it's a retail insert it is not even like one of the main sort of hits and if you he only has the concourse level in select so there isn't like a ringside obafemi there isn't a premier level obafemi so i think that's one of the main reasons maybe why this one's sold a little bit higher is because you can only get the other one in concourse not my favorite looking card either but that gold vinyl that one comes up again huge money there i don't even wanna think about what a prism gold would go for right now i think the prism black is easily a five figure card a lot of the flawless stuff probably up there as well given that he only has that one autograph set that jameson was talking about last week one for brian and thz solruka this is the one of one disco so this is from undercard this is the twenty twenty four prism second year yep the second year this is not her rookie sold for twenty one thirteen via auction on march twenty ninth on ebay every time i see metaverse cards which is a chinese seller post a card not only do you have to deal with the idiot that is sabotaging all the wwe auctions but metaverse has their own problems and like i feel bad anytime somebody has a card that they need from this seller unfortunately because they post everything as an auction and in wrestling you just cannot do that it's just if we i'm telling you guys right now there is not a good confidence among a lot of people to sell rare and desirable especially one zero one autographs on wrestling via auction format you gotta take it off of ebay you gotta take it to instagram or facebook you gotta do fixed price on ebay or something because there is guys who will go and sabotage the auctions on purpose and and this is even worse because i've i've been told that there's some issues there beyond this i don't have any clarification there they're just allegations at this point but i think like i checked here this one did sell to a legit buyer so it did probably went to somebody who who wanted this card it is a second year disco going for twenty one hundred dollars but it but it is her only undercard black though because they didn't do undercard blacks in twenty three so it's her only black undercard ever so that's correct yeah i mean honestly i'd as a psa ten i don't hate this buy i like this buy i really think it's a good buy it's a it's a it's a good it's a good person to have a satch of yeah and you know i know i was talking with brian about a few different things like because he collects soul cards and man like she is when she eventually debuts which i think will be very shortly after wrestlemania given her performance in the rumble inject some life into something with her move set and her ability her cards are gonna explode so picking this up early not my favorite parallel i like the i think this is the worst of the black one of ones but it's it's one that the other ones are not gonna come up like they're they're stats they're in collections yeah they're all in collections quickly to getting through some other ones this is an older card this is a wwe heritage chrome from back in two thousand seven this is the undertaker superfractor they are out of twenty five so this is well before tops adopted a normal parallel structure for chrome of base sets the superfractors back in this era were out of twenty five that's why i'm not a huge fan of these sets like but these cards sell for enormous amounts of money this is a nine five undertaker in a s g c holder and so we're talking about lesser greater grading company for modern cards it is a super factor out of twenty five and it's still sold for a thousand dollars a thousand twenty five dollars huge price lot of people chase these cards they are very very desirable and i think like for heritage this is probably the weakest of the heritage sets i think the the horizontal ones are a little bit better some of the other ones are a little bit better but huge price in this undertaker alright let's we're we're we've we've made it through in a little bit quicker time than i expected which is great that never happens it never happens considering all the news that we had to talk about and like i think from a a title match topic we're gonna get into some of this because we've talked a lot a little bit about how this is all playing into to the next few weeks next few months the title match topic for this week we have a number of products coming what is a good strategy if you are not playing with a you know thick wallet worth of cash here like what is a good strategy over these next few months to make sure that you're not first of all bankrupting yourself like ryan and i are about to do here but also you're you're being mindful of some of the things that are coming what is a good strategy in your mind ryan that you can think of hey i know chrome is coming i know that hot on that heels is royalty and all these other things what is what would be your strategy for somebody that maybe is a little bit more budget conscious or just even anybody just to make sure that they're not losing their minds in this space you know there's a couple way to look at this from anybody who wants to rip this at a good budget chrome has megas and it has blasters that's your better way to go plus blasters should be around the thirty dollar range they're supposed to be held at that price which is perfect great entryway into wrestling but also there's chances you'll pull case hits supers autos we've seen i think last week saw the lid morgan super came from blaster out of the product i mean there's potential there with tops where they do all their blasters so from a ripping standpoint to get your fix my blasters are megas that's your first start when it comes to brakes i think you really gotta consider the products at hand and know where you wanna put your eggs because there's a lot of baskets to put them in with the future ahead i'm gonna be all in on tops chrome and royalty those are the two that i'm going heavy heavy heavy heavy so when i am doing exalted it's i'm breaking with bless i'm breaking with stephanie i'm breaking with slabstocks i'm breaking with few of the people that i just kinda traditionally break with and that's it i'm stopping there i'm only buying orton and if that's available i'm not buying any of the y six for my boy there's no autographs of uncle audi so i'm just to be honest with you even if there was it's not worth the price point i'll just buy them at uncle audi auto so look at it from that chance standpoint feel comfortable who you're breaking with price match them look around make sure their pricing is fair especially on tops chrome because you're gonna see an abundance of brakes everywhere on platforms all around either brake with that person because you like them or break because it's a good price for that spot you know those are things i think you should really highly consider from a couple standpoints i have to agree with all of that and i think like you have to choose your battles like k cool i have probably a higher budget than a lot of people and i have to choose my battles because like ryan i'm going just ridiculously hard on chrome ridiculously hard on royalty there's a lot of stuff i want depending on what sets becky is in like i've gotta have those cards for my pc those are those chrome dominates my pc prism like chrome stock cards are my jam i've said that probably a hundred times on here royalty i love the the immaculates and the flawless types of stuff like i am a high end collector like that is what i've migrated towards as i've gotten older and stuff like that because i don't get excited as much by the base cards anymore i don't collect the base cards i do build rainbows for chrome i do build rainbows in most products because it's fun because you know there's not as many wwe products out there it keeps me from going into the blessed packs and and really truly going nuts but like i think like you know once the once you have five sets in a row like there's gonna be an overwhelming amount of cards that you have to chase and like so like sapphire like i thought last year sapphire was gonna be like gangbusters it was not and and so like i think this year i'm probably gonna play wait and see on sapphire we'll see what the wrestlemania release does we'll see what the what royalty looks like in terms of a box break case break type of stuff like there's gonna be stuff that you're gonna be priced out of but as long as you're not collecting roman reigns or the rock or whoever like a lot of those cards are still like if you collect the miz like jml does like go buy your miz cards man they're not gonna be crazy expensive like i know you know rgl loves to go collect nikita lyons even though she really isn't on tv very much anymore like he can still get that stuff pretty reasonably priced it's when you start getting into like the really big names that you're gonna have a top ton more competition because those are the visible cards so it's really about first of all who is your pc because if you have a limited budget your pc choice is gonna dominate quite a bit of that anyway so keep in mind with tops chrome the spots like liv morgan vikir roman and centimeters punk are gonna cost probably a little bit more because those buyback cards are gonna associate with that so if you if you feel roman's gonna win and liv's gonna win then maybe look into some breaks to now two names are gonna cost you a pretty penny i mean actually all those names are gonna cost you a pretty penny in breaks but something to consider in tops chrome is the buyback program to where a base card is worth twenty bucks refractor's forty i mean there there's potential more money to be made there it's all a matter of the breaker is aware of that again if it was lesser names like a jay uso last year was probably a really good buy versus like tiffany stratton where you could have bought jay for a really good price and probably made your money back just with the buy back so another thing to consider yeah and not everybody has to be like me where you need every card of of your collecting target right so maybe like if you're somebody that has a limited budget maybe you're not doing breaks maybe you're not buying wax wait on the wait the singles all hit on ebay and wait till they come down yeah that way can get you don't have to be front of the line for this yeah you don't have to be front of the line for this stuff you don't have to be the guy out there like buying every brake slot i know steve was on this podcast talking about this a couple of weeks ago like it gets to a point where like you can't do that anymore so if you have conscious you know understandings in your own mind i'm not gonna go buy wax i'm not gonna go buy brake slots i'm just gonna buy singles and i'm gonna target that one single that i want for this one person you can probably do that if that's a garbage pail kid or if that's one of the royalty booklets like maybe that's an expensive card maybe that's that royalty booklet is a five hundred dollar card but if that's the only thing you're buying out of royalty that's that's five break slots for a number of wrestlers instead of buying those breaks let's just buy the card you want it's not gonna give you the same dopamine rush it's not gonna satisfy that itch it's not gonna scratch that itch as much but man like if you don't have the money to spend like that's okay you still have access to a lot of these things and ryan mentioned specifically the blasters and the megas they were up on dick's sporting goods they were up on wwe shop and fanatics like a lot of different a lot of different places have them and they're cheap they're they're they're very inexpensive topps has this by design and the megas have had those cool persona cards last year so the ones that said like rest in peace or because stone cold said so or the man or whatever those cards were really cool and they're pretty collectible so you never know yeah no i think that's i'm curious what they're gonna do for the retail if they're gonna add something like that like a a case in the megas or something like that but yeah again i think there's just gonna be a lot more opportunity for more affordability i know tops is huge on wanting people to dive more into this type of industry as much as other ones and price point is huge they wanna make sure that these shops that are partnering are gonna have these more products affordable and at a price point like hey you need to be this price not above not lower for the first so many days because we wanna enter people in and i'm all for that i think it's awesome but they said we're gonna give you a little bit more than usual but you need to honor this because we want more people to dive into this landscape and and again it's just getting more people into wrestling especially topscome coming out next week and mania being what seven or eight days nine days later i mean that's what better opportune time you need to have them at the store too like you gotta have them oh yeah that well that was the deal last year when we went to rumble it released the week of rumble and we went to the wrestling wwe store and by the time we got there all you could buy was blasters they were out of megas but megas were what everybody wanted were because they were fifty sixty bucks at the time and they were just gone and i mean i bought a bunch of blasters and and so my kids could rip but i'm like so again megas i don't again they could be making more this year i know they're going heavier on the retail because of what what it does to get a collector in so again there's there's a lot of advice we gave you here on how you could go approach it obviously do what you want i'm not saying he's saying is right i'm not saying what i'm saying is right but take it from two guys who do this from two different levels he buys becky that's it but he buys her everywhere i buy too many wrestlers between me and my son but i have the worst luck in breaks i have the worst luck i've never hit a one zero one in a break of any of my guys me and again yeah you're in the same boat but yeah we continue to do it we continue to say nope slap me across the wrist back across the face kick me in the butt i'm just gonna keep doing it but again i i've really changed up and what steve when we had him on said it best again he sticks to certain platforms i stick to certain people i only wanna break with i'm not everywhere breaking i'm anti whatnot now and again not a shot at whatnot yeah i'm not buying a lot of whatnot yeah i'm staying away just because you know why it's a rabbit hole once you get on there there's so many people on there breaking and it's like i'm good i'm gonna stick to the people over here these people here and here's the issue every big one zero one i see comes from whatnot and i'm like i probably should be breaking there but i also am just okay with staying in my lane as per se and enjoying it but it's i'm in so many breaks like adam it's like i i've taken the adam approach don't don't try to follow the brakes just wait till they come in the mail so yeah i it's you can't they're just they and a lot of the breakers just take literally forever to rip them open like cardshop live probably does it the best of anybody i i don't i think brando ripping boxes on cardshop live is a science at this point and he does it so fast and he does it so well like that's really the only place on whatnot that i'm probably going to to be spending money but like if it's fanatics if it's stephanie if it's you know blez like if i can even get becky's her slack sells so fast on there i gotta talk to swish about that but like you know i think like there's there's a ton of things that we talk about with breakers like you have to have a strategy and if you don't have a strategy you are setting yourself up for failure my strategy is a bad one but it is one that i think a lot of people take but it's also something that if you know what you want and you know how to get it and you know where to look you you gotta be fast you gotta be quick and you gotta communicate better than the other people because you can send messages you can be on ig you can doing all the other things really important to have that at the forefront of your mind so for next week this is gonna be a landmark show i think for us in a number of reasons not only because ryan will be back from the industry conference we'll have a like just an enormous amount of information to discuss i have a feeling but we'll discuss maybe introduce some of the plans we're doing at the national as well there's a lot of stuff that we're gonna be talking about in this next week's episode make sure you are subscribed to stacking slabs here on spotify you can go to his patreon group w w w dot patreon dot com slash stacking slabs you can follow my patreon group which is free main event wrestling cards at w w w dot patreon dot com slash main event wrestling cards follow me on twitter at s c on sensor follow me on engine room okay we're gonna skip all ryan can be found everywhere at r b i crew seven he makes it easy unlike me and i am so excited for chroman i have three fdi boxes coming hopefully i mean i'm not i'm trying to think of like when the next recording is i i think we might i might have it in hand so maybe if we're lucky yeah i think riffing live is it scheduled to to release on wednesday next week the eighth yeah so but they've been coming a little bit early so as long as there are no product delays which is as long as right maybe we get a live rip here on the on the podcast next week we'll have to see but either way like this is gonna be a huge show we'll talk about what we're seeing with chrome we'll talk about the industry conference talk about the national a little bit at least from a starting point this is gonna be huge stay stick around thanks again for joining us this week welcome back ryan great to have you back thanks so we'll see you guys next week big gulps see you later