it's episode twenty yes it is i'm excited to be here and with adam has returned from new york adam how we doing man doing great can't be can't explain how great of a job you guys did last week shout out to kevin shout out to you thank you huge episode appreciate it congratulations are in order i didn't get a i didn't get a chance on the podcast to say even though we've talked probably three hours about this but congratulations on on randy orton i mean you guys probably were were like that was fresh off the auction last week you guys i can only imagine what the what the emotions were like coming into that episode yeah it was coming off kind of a high obviously and this happened so we record on tuesday and ended on monday i didn't expect what conspired with the viral and then while i'm recording i get word that randy has tweeted about it and offered up his gear which well get it short he did offer that up i have spoken with him however i have respectfully declined because while he was here at our event with topps the rip night he told the story about what he collects and basically because his dad never collected anything he saves all his stuff his gear like the thumb necks from mick foley match stuff like that so i just knew that it belonged to his collection even though i really appreciate it it was awesome to just get to chat with him about it and so since then yes he did honor it and offered it however i it needed to stay in his collection and so i i passed on that but really cool how this all conspired i never thought i would go this far but big big moment for the hobby big moment for my collection and just a big moment for everybody in my opinion yeah for sure i actually have a spot we'll talk a little bit more about that later on oh epic go by me my bad yeah don't be a little too early thanks but yeah i mean like it was good to see you guys have an opportunity to to chat about it and and share i know brett posted a reel and stuff like that on instagram brett for putting you and your guy putting that together that was an awesome reel it was awe it was so well done and i i'm just like i'm so excited that you guys got the chance to to talk about that even though i i wasn't able to join so we'll we'll rehash maybe a little bit of it but in the meantime it's good to be back and i so i was in new york city i had some work stuff last week but i also got to meet with with topps at the fanatics hq in new york spent a few hours with them great great team like can't say enough good things about social media team jeremy all the guys over at the combat sports team loved talking shop with them so really excited to to have that opportunity and thank them for for hosting me there came back home to like one of the most insane mail days i think i've ever ever had it was just like it was just like i i i have a picture of it here if you're following on patreon like royalty chrome like absolutely nuts i had another one which i'll talk about later as well thanks to jameson and a few others for helping me out with that one we'll get there but yeah it's like i i was listening to the episode and you know it it it i i'm a little upset that kevin did so well i might have a might skip my job know my job's okay but your job might be in jeopardy now so obviously the talent you're the talent in this equation i'm just the guy sitting here in the chair guy of doing my thing here you're the guy who puts these beautiful slides together you have it all scripted for me i mean i couldn't do this without you so so adam's not going anywhere for those you don't wanna see adam go somewhere i'm staying here as well but no kevin amazing job again and we'll be happy to have him back anytime he wants to come on so yeah absolutely so we have a special guest joining us here later on so we're gonna hop right into the opening pyro go through some of what happened on smackdown and raw you know i i watched so i was coming home from new york on friday and like got home just in time for smackdown and like the whole time like i'm watching this show it's like can this like what is going on with smackdown like there is like i like can it be saved like there is like i feel like everybody blames sort of like the booking malaise that you know plagued smackdown on road dogg and then he was gone and now it's just it's just there and i thought okay rhea ripley is the champion you've got cody as champion you've got all this stuff going on and just it feels so hard to watch i don't know if you feel the same way but it's like where where's the act where's the action like where where is like i just feel like we're missing something here i i feel like and not to be biased here i'm gonna be a little biased i feel like we're it felt like we were on the path to an o nine randy orton heel run yeah think that would have been huge for smackdown to get that type of randy orton obviously things are different we don't know if he's injured or not injured so i think that would truly help smackdown right now i think cody's kind of past the point right now so obviously they bring gutha over from raw to smackdown to me guthrie's not gonna really put butts and seats in my opinion great wrestler he's an amazing heel not knocking him chad don't kill me i'm just giving my opinion we're talking about what can be done to save it i don't know at this point obviously roman is gonna grab all the viewers all the attention he's great and you know you could have put him back on smackdown but you know raw's where he needs to be at right now so i just don't know man the product friday's kinda brutal i'm trying to follow along i pay attention to it all but right now man raw is just you you have raw and it's just time it gets to smackdown i feel like you're just ready for raw again at this point yeah and like i i think it's really difficult to put on a three hour television wrestling show like i think when smackdown went to three hours it just became unwatchable i think two hours is perfect raw is kinda like around the two hour mark but it's like wall to wall action and like i feel like the the star power on smackdown is a little bit below where it probably needs to be even with rhea ripley who is the biggest star in the company like you know i besides roman reigns like think that's that's tough man and and like you have obafemi on raw you have roman on raw you you know punk is out randy's out like you know as much as i love watching ria and trick and all those guys do their thing like it's just it feels like it's slow moving and plotting so on smackdown they had like gunther and cody were like going back and forth about you know how paul heyman was gonna give him his favor or whatever it's always about the paul heyman favors these days and i think like the the idea to put royce in a number one contender match out of nowhere was you know it it was interesting like great for royce keys introduce this new guy but like like like you know what's gonna happen so like it would it bred this like predictable situation but you know they're they're really putting these new people roy skies ricky saints joe hendrie like all those guys in really prominent roles it's kinda like sink or swim and i i wanna get your take on this analogy so it used to be when you were drafted in the nfl you had like a fifty million dollar guaranteed rookie contract i mean there were people coming in hadn't played it down were making more money than tom brady who's the top quarterback in the league right that has changed so now it's on a rookie wage scale which means that you have a slot of contractual money mostly guaranteed to play out your first four or five years depending on if you're a first round pick or a second round pick and beyond and the teams just basically throw you out there and it's sink or swim and if you don't play well immediately there are very rare circumstances where they keep you around right and so i think like for raw and for smackdown with these newer people it is very much in that similar vein sink or swim you go out there you get the crowd on your side or you are gone and we've seen new people get chucked every friday after wrestlemania we've seen people that just haven't been able to do that there's a lot of things there that i think has changed curious what your perspective is on like somebody like royce keyes coming in and being told go wrestle gunther and you're the number one contendership yeah that was just very random that was like okay cool for royce keys if you if you watch aew he used to be on there he dominated so kinda put him in that limelight i guess essentially now we're you know switching to the solas locoa which makes more sense you know but i i don't know i feel like you know you had ricky saints come up he got a match with cody you know i think that was probably more of a quote unquote favor from cody because him and ricky go back and have friends you don't know but again i feel like these young stars they're now giving them the opportunities back then when people would get called up from nxt they kinda just got buried so now they're like hey like you put a best time to sink or swim fatal attraction what a massive boo pop they got that's big for them that was yeah agree into this role you need that that's that's a victory that's a win i'm not a big jc jane guy but i like what they're doing i think they got a really good thing going and that's something smackdown needs obviously trick is so over right now and he's so fun to watch and my kids love singing whoop that trick we were playing in the car the other day and it was like a whole five minute drive can we play it again so but but again i think these these younger talents which you've watched and they're you know what's funny is these most of these guys and girls aren't even that young you know they're just young to the brand of smackdown or raw so at this point they need to show if they can make it so i think they're getting that opportunity but if you can't get you can't get the crowd behind you you can't perform on a match you're just gonna fall to the back of the line because there's somebody there ahead of you maybe behind you at the time of that but now ahead of you because you didn't live up to whatever so i think that they're giving them the opportunity it's how they grab it and and how they perform in it and and that's always been like the the whole analogy of the brass ring or whatever vince used to call it like you gotta go out there and grab that brass ring i i've never really sort of subscribed to that because i think it takes time in a lot of cases to establish yourself obafemi is probably a good example of of of the opposite of that where he just kinda like through nxt did really good things there but once he was on the main roster it was like get ready and go like fifty years is good too stephanie was the same way it was pretty stephanie vaquera great great example yeah but i mean like there's i mean you go look at baseball like you gotta play in the minor leagues you gotta you gotta play high a double a triple a all the way up through the show and like then they they sort of put you into the lineup and they sort of ease you in in most cases right pitchers may be a little bit different before the hitters and like basketball like they draft you they throw you on the court and if you can play you're gonna get time like i think here it's like they're now sort of taking that approach and it's not shocking that you know a company like tko is expecting that because they wanna know who the people are that are bankable right like they wanna know who's gonna put people in the seats and like i don't know like i think some of the times it works out javon evans trick williams all those guys that we've talked about endlessly over the last few weeks great solruca is another good example of that but even going as far back as roxanne perez and like she she showed that she can wrestle and and and keep people's attention saw tiffany stratton and stephanie vicair i mean like all the way going back these stars are now coming up and the people that can prove it are are sticking around right mhmm spot on you nailed it man then on monday night we saw more continuation of roman reigns and jacob fatou i i like this is it's kind of a rehash because it's kinda like similar to what solo and roman went through would be when coming up to the netflix premiere but it like it feels different because fatou seems like this uncontrollable monster which is i know the way that they want him to look and that's awesome i love the tribal combat stipulation i think that was what everybody was expecting because the samoans don't do hell in a cell they do tribal combat i love it i really hope this match lives up to it i don't think jacob's gonna win even though i think it's probably gonna be like a long drawn out violent match which i think is necessary but really cool to see them sort of go that direction again this feud feels good like it feels like it should've that that's a good sort of start and i was skeptical coming into it right yeah no i mean they they had a phenomenal backlash match this this storyline to get better fatu just looks like this animal that you just can't contain he's just dominant he's getting the best of roman and and again i think it's gonna be an amazing all around match it's gonna be fun to watch gonna keep your attention going obviously this is during the day here in the states where it's going on but i'm thoroughly excited to be watching this match and this obviously this this card but yeah i don't know i just think do we get one more match after this or of them two or is this kinda run its course is the question at hand at this time i'm with you i don't think fatu walks out with the belt but where does fatu go from here is the question i think you yeah that was always this and you've got him at the top right now let's just not kick him down to here let's keep the momentum going maybe he then goes to his smackdown and builds a rival there we've got we've got a pivot here and use him because he's got it he's got the it to be a more of a heel to he's not really like he's kind of like in that in between like yeah he's kind of a heel but everybody just loves him i mean he's just fun to watch not to like him yeah just you look at him like that guy can't do that stuff and he just does the craziest moves and he's fun to watch so again i'm loving the storyline i think it's great for roman i think this run of roman's title is he's gotta be fighting the best of the best i think they're making sure that he's fighting not some easy competitions he's getting some tough people to fight to make this look like hey i had to i was a fighting champion and i had to fight some of the toughest guys in wwe yeah i agree man i i'm excited to see that match i i think clash in italy like the clash pay per views usually like they they wrestle really hard and like they they put on these banger matches i remember drew mcintyre and roman going at it in clash at the castle there's the gunther and seamus did a couple of things that were great i think he wanted the clash pay per views like because really the the the european wrestlers get a chance to shine in these pay per views and they do it really well and so these pay per views tend to be like wrestling sort of matte classic pay per views which i love then from there we go on to like the obafemi challenge and i'm gonna borrow a line from randy orton and say like stupid stupid stupid why in god's name is brock lesnar back like i they could tell the best story of like oh i faked you out like i was gonna with sam and jacket you know all the other you know bullshit that they do with you know mark henry and and whatever which was a great segment that everybody always calls back to every time there's a fake retirement and because it was great it was a great moment that was well planned and and mark henry deserves all of the credit he gets for that segment yes this is i'm gonna say it's just fucking stupid i am sorry yeah i'm not thrilled about it don't think so had such an awesome moment at wrestlemania like you broncos out fans who have been lukewarm to him giving him you know the praise and the retirement after a long you know illustrious career as one of the best combat sports as athletes of all time oba established now as a guy who vanquished the beast like you literally cannot do it any better so then why the hell is he back on tv yesterday you know earlier this week if you're watching this on friday or saturday like i was dumbfounded by that insert shaming man song here comes the money yeah but he got paid a lot i wonder if maybe his contractual agreement said that he was supposed to wrestle to something i don't really know it's you you said it best that was the way to go out that was an amazing wrestlemania moment i was so happy to be there and thought i was witnessing brock lesnar's retirement unexpectedly so now we get this match i do here's my thing is you built oba up obviously last night brock caught him off guard gave him several whatever yeah f fives you know do we get brock winning this match and then they have a best of three at summerslam and that's where he retires at home i don't know because i gotta feel the the only reason why he's back is to wrestle at home for summerslam is what i gotta feel at this point i hate it it's awful from a moment just being within there to see it to just go wow this is a wrestlemania moment like no other that is the way to go out we saw procliche cry for the first time ever he may have never cried in his life till that moment and you you just witness everything and then all of a sudden brock lesnar's tears cure cancer too bad he's never done do so i i hate it i don't know i hope there's a good angle here maybe they just realized we don't have anybody that can compete with oba right now that it may the oba roman times not now we need somebody that actually could compete with them i i don't really know i'm dumbfounded beyond belief at this point but i'm here for it i guess i'm watching it so i mean like it's gonna be interesting like they paul heyman will tell a great story and they'll they'll cover it up this reeks of tko saying we paid him to be here through summerslam so get him here through summerslam and i i posted like a a thing in our group chat of like you know brock lesnar going to triple h and say you know oh yeah oba's gonna be the one to retire me instead of gunther and triple h with that jason bateman means like the fuck you are yeah like i think like yes yes but i mean like that's that's basically what this is like i i don't think it's gonna be brock versus gunther in minneapolis it'll probably be whatever the rubber match is here if he wins but i i oba has to win like there there's like you can't take that away from this guy anymore and i'm gonna be even more upset if they take it away from him and give it to gunther i love gunther's sort of like approach i love watching him beat the crap out of people but like i i don't want this moment for gunther i want oba to have this it it is the career defining moment for a young star that absolutely absolutely needs it and i think it's it's really important angle you could go is gunther beats cody and then lesnar fights title for career could do that i don't know i don't i don't like it i i don't like it at all and that's where we could be heading i or we're gonna be seeing a third match with him and oba i i agree the momentum behind oba right now is you don't need him to lose but guess if he's gonna lose lose to lesnar and then i just don't know i'm i'm so confused you had it done right and it wasn't even done it was so good designed it was done right let it be and then does tk is tko involved with this is triple h is there money is there a contract from a wrestling fan it's just like ugh story ending career the way to go out now we're gonna get a oh by the way he's not dead he's alive here he came back from he's jason jason forhe's over here he's like dead retired and then now he's back so here we go we're i'm saddle up to just watch the the run of lesnar's after retirement run who cares so that leaves we've got gunther and cody we've got roman fatu going at it again now we also have becky lynch and and sol rooka on sunday night main event saturday night main event mhmm i i love becky and sol rooka wrestling each other because sol is probably the most athletic female wrestler they have and becky is the least female athletic female wrestler they have but but becky gets great matches out of people in establishing soul ruka i don't think this is a title match or maybe it is they haven't really mentioned it yet i don't think sol is is gonna win this one but she definitely could win a potential future match i think putting a belt on sol ruka is a great idea because she'll have great matches on tv and she'll you know it it sort of opens becky up to go and do things with liv morgan or whatever if they want that to be the summerslam match for for liv morgan but now bailey's involved there so who knows we also have ria and her crew versus jade and the baddies which again they it's on saturday night main event which is gonna be pretty women heavy mhmm and that should be a fun one i think the fatal influence match or there's oh no there's gonna be paige and nikki and bree bree bella versus lash legend and nia jax i'm just like i'm not there as if as if that monday night raw match wasn't bad enough they're gonna run it back like ugh i'm all in for paige but not not that match that's not gonna be that's that's what i'll be using the restroom or taking a break for a little bit i'll catch my bloods single person on the face of this planet watching the pay per view is not watching that match even nikki bella's gonna take a break during the yeah even nikki bella's like sorry guys yeah i'm gonna walk you to the ring then i gotta go yep let's move on to some card market high spots here before our guest joins us so ryan mentioned it before randy orton goes tweets he's gonna give him his gear it's or entitles the gear ryan it being the gentleman that he is declines it but i just wanna like you've seen sam roberts from wwe you've seen every hobby publication ones we do like ones we don't like covering this we've seen everybody and their mother going and just reacting so positively and and so incredibly to this sale like how cool like we're gonna if we get to the title match topic at the end i'll i'll come we'll give you some more time about like the chase versus posting it on social media but like how did this feel in the moment knowing that you were the center of the hobby universe for your fifteen minutes of fame here yeah it was like thirty seconds of fame but it was still it was still an awesome moment no i did not expect it to go as viral as it did did i think caruthi towns is going against me kevin and i talked about this last week no never in a million years thought i was going against him in the bidding so it it was an awesome moment for me obviously i was out to dinner with my family when i won the winning bid getting in my car to drive home and i'm like waiting to drive off because i'm like watching it down to the second and i was thoroughly thrilled it went for the price it did so but just to see how much coverage tops it on this how i think bleacher report picked it up i think sports illustrated did an article carthene towns is talking about it then you got randy orton chiming in this tweet came at like literally i think five minutes into the recording recording i i texted kevin i was like he i don't know if he has his phone when he no i don't have the phone in here i don't have my phone tell him the only time i detach it from my body is when we're recording this podcast my other podcast is always next to me so but no so that was even wild like neil was putting it on the glass right here like read this as i'm like kevin's talking to me and i'm like mouth dropped everything so but yeah it's you know in my head so people the right people got could randy and i connected essentially and we just started chatting about the card essentially am i okay to talk about this here or do you want me to say this for later talk about it okay i didn't know because you said we talk about more i'll just speak real quick so we were just chatting a little bit about that about carthee towne's bidding about you know the bounty he had put out and just kinda just shooting in then he brought up hey so i tweeted this out you know because you were the winning bidder you know you the gear is yours and you know my response essentially was like i talked about earlier hey you know i i'm a collector essentially collect your stuff collect a lot of things and i respect one collector to another i know you collect your own stuff i just wouldn't feel right taking it i think he was his response was wow thank you essentially kind of like on the lines i owe you one i'm like you don't owe me anything man you know thank you and it's just a great conversation to have with him and and that's all i'll go into about it again there was just little couple things we chatted about but it was just the opportunity to kinda run back talking to him i think he was more in shock that he found when he found out that i won he was like no effing way you actually won this he won it and then that's kind of his words to me so it was just cool and again we may never we may or may not chat again but i it belonged home with him and i it would have been so cool to have something like that but i got what i wanted i got the card i wanted i got to meet my favorite wrestler of all time i got to have him in my shop i got to have him spend time with my family and i i got to have it just how much more do i really need do i really need like exactly like i got everything and i then some and that was all again thanks to topps fanatics and the team there the marketing team who really made this possible and i and i thanked them over and over and i've been talking to them while the story has been going on because i've been getting hit up from the well when this went down from those people and they were just like congratulations we just found out i know it's hush right now you haven't made it public and then i believe it was zach from the twitter the ex yeah okay branding social media team he hit me up while i'm in dallas and was like hey congratulations is there any way we can promote this that it's you know that you got this card i was like sure he's like do you have a picture with it i said i do it's actually from when it first got signed holding it i'll have it any day this week so he's like do you carefully post this i'm like not at all so it was awesome what they wrote up about me very small a big collector about it but again just thirty seconds of fame we're good i'm i'm myself i'm happy i i got the card it's coming home it's it's been a full circle it's my like the sisterhood the traveling pants with this card i guess is traveling the world just to get back home to me so again awesome moment and and it's just great to again to chat with randy about it and i'm i'm glad he he was just so cool about everything man really was do you yeah and that i i so happy for you in that respect and so on the heels of this then everybody else starts to recognize okay maybe maybe we didn't put like like let's let's we you and i let's take a step back you and i have said for a long time these cards are going to be exceptionally important cards i don't think people really recognize that until last week there were a handful of people that agreed with us like oh yeah this is gonna be crazy and whatever but like the general wrestling collector i don't think really had an idea of how important these cards were the the historic moments that these cards are tied to now granted randy orton had a match with joe hendrie it wasn't exactly his crowning wrestlemania achievement but it was still a big moment at his twentieth wrestlemania so on and so forth so after all this goes down the bounty start flying right you've got centimeters punk at thirty k you've got rhea ripley at i think it was like fifty k or something like that then you've got john cena jameson put out one for seventy five k then it was increased to a hundred and ten thousand dollars by neighborhood card shop shout out to nature loves you like that's the top bounty for john cena i think we all agree that that card is is the card of the product now that it's up to a hundred and ten thousand dollars it's a hundred thousand cash and ten thousand in credit from neighborhood card shop they're a big breaker on fanatics live i i think it'll continue to go up mhmm i think it'll continue to be something that if it makes it to auction with fanatics or with golden or with another auction house this could set records and i think you've mentioned before you think it will i think i'm absolutely on that train i'm just curious what your thoughts are there yeah if this goes public to an auction house of any type may it be fanatics golden crazy we sell the order on ebay but ebay you know something like that that yeah yes i am confident that this will break the rocks record as well as the quote unquote hogan record i think this will be the highest selling wrestling card in history and one thing to put in perspective again there this is the closest thing that you're going to get to a type of a logo man essentially because obviously there's no no such thing as an mlb logo nfl logo nba hockey etcetera these are revolutionary it is the first of its kind yes we know we're getting many every year we're gonna get summerslam we get debuts we're gonna get all that but this is the first of its kind like you alluded to wasn't a big match it wasn't to me it wasn't about the match it was about what this is first of a kind obviously sign in front of me but back to the scene is that this is the only wrestlemania patch match fought that we're going to get i would hope that we're not going to have one that he put on his suit because he was there from the wrestlemania this year but this would should be the only possible patch to ever exist of cena on top of the fact that it was his last wrestlemania on top of the fact that it was the record breaking seventeen championship so i gotta think this is going to beat both those i know several people that i are close to are gonna be bidding maybe i'll even go in on it i don't know i'm not a huge senior guy but i respect and understand what this stands for when the background that you and i have and adam collecting other sports for all the years we know how rare logo men type cards are logo men logo women at this point yes and because this is the first of its kind think about o three or four exquisite think about that stuff think about ultimate when it first came think about all these other things when they had logo and what those work now of even some of the lesser tier people this again is something that will be replicated but this is again at the end the day first of its kind i've held this card i know what they look like they're beautiful cards they are amazing they did a great job i'm excited to see what the cena goes for and i hope it gets a chance to go on auction because it needs to go to auction yeah and i i i have to believe that so let's let's play the game then this way if you pulled sina now i you and i have differing perspectives on this because you've said this is a card you're hunting it's it's not i only collect one person and so if i pulled sina i think there is zero chance i send it anywhere but one of the major auction houses i let it play out in the public eye i would get offers from anybody and unless somebody blew me away with like a quarter of a million dollar offer like it's going to one of the big auction houses it's going to get marketed to the largest degree that a wwe card has ever gotten marketed to before so even if it sells for less than the offer is that i get it still puts that card at the front and center of everything that is going on in in that premier auction for for that couple that time frame right so i wanna see this go to public sale i wanna see it go to just for the publicity of it obviously if if it was a card in hand and somebody throws a crazy offer at me it's gonna be for that type of money really hard to turn down but you know i'm you you've you may have a different perspective on that well i i'm now buying some spots and breaks i ripped a couple more cases yesterday i don't wanna talk about it for sure fight clubs you don't talk about it i've ripped several cases now i finally took me i'm not gonna talk more about it but yeah i don't things i don't tell you all the time but obviously if i were to pull this card it would not see auction i would keep it i would and if i pulled any debut patch unless it was to somebody i'm a sorry debut mania patch if i pulled anybody that it would probably keep it unless i knew that person i'm was friends with that's a true collector i mean just i would think it'd be cool just to say i pulled one of them i mean that would be the coolest thing ever that's why i'm ripping it obviously i know what i'm getting every time i rip one of these boxes nice kick in the nuts but i'm trying to pull one of these cards and i that's the gamble we all take when we're ripping our jordan brakes so different in my set i think i'd keep it because i think that card will be worth more one long term i think all of these will be worth more long term because in the sports world compared to the wrestling card world it is apples to oranges there is no comparison wrestling cards are here and other stuff is up here this gap is so big that it it'll never be that like this but the gap's so big that these should be worth more money they really should this is a really light bulb yeah you mentioned that these are kinda like the logo men type of i i think that's the way top sees it too yeah and i think that's the way collectors will eventually see it because i i have to believe more are coming i have to believe that you know it's the summerslam patches are not one offs right like mhmm we already know that those are coming because they wore them on the boots and we saw them so we know that they're happening and they're cool like these cards are cool and because wwe gear doesn't have kinda like that logo that may mlb jersey and nba jersey and nfl jersey has like that makes this very much the premier experience for a collector to own so i agree with you there alright let's let's move on to sapphire i was very skeptical coming into sapphire because last year you and i have talked about this on the podcast before and you mentioned it last week with kevin twenty twenty five sapphire was was not great and i think the lawsuit with wwe and fanatics no i'm sorry wwe and panini i've mistaken that pushed the fanatics license up a year so they were maybe scrambling to get sets like this online exclusives to to to market did not work out this year on the other hand feels completely different what are your thoughts so far on sapphire having now a week of it under your belt well i've ripped some with the family we the cards are beautiful first off the the cards themselves look amazing i i'm way better than last year ten times better oh there's of course becky just randomly a sapphire card sitting there like he was prepared for it but yeah so i just opened my mail way it's way such a big step up the autograph content's much better the case hits are much better the the overall feel when you're ripping it ten times better so they definitely knew they had more time to get this prepped to get this to be a better release it's doing great it's breaking great you said blaise had a really good case last night that we were in that we got i think skunk from what it sounds like i didn't get to watch it yet but overall you were naming some of the stuff that came out i was like damn that's a good case so again i'm loving it i i i am i kinda this year i think the only thing that i'm not hip on is exalted and i think it is because it just got buried i just don't think it got the opportunity but everything else i've made i love it i love universe i love all the chrome i love the logo factor royalty i love it at a half the price price point but we all would at this point but i'm loving everything at this point that they've done and sapphire did not disappoint compared to last year where i take the approach of like it's gotta get better i gotta rip this it's gotta get better it's gotta get better and it didn't get better last year i don't feel that way this year i mean the names overall again are a lot better in my opinion yeah so last year it was just red brand blue brand and like the the legends autographs i think were the three sets that they own nxt so they had four of the autograph sets this year it's a full product mhmm now there's not as much of it right because i think there's only about a thousand cases versus like three thousand four thousand cases of each of the the other configurations so it's much much more of a limited run but man these case hits look awesome the infinite sapphire or sapphire infinite whatever you wanna call it those cards specifically and they are impossible to pull but they are absolutely gorgeous cards the sapphire selections finally make their debut in wwe we don't have the autograph versions yet but you can't sort of like jump from zero to a hundred really fast hopefully next year they start ramping things up even further but i thought sapphire this year was a thousand percent better than it was last year they have the marks of champions they have main events they have the legends autographs they have the base variation autographs which were so rare last year that you could barely pull them mhmm and they've got full it's like a full checklist it is great it's great so that breeds my next question rank the the five configurations and we could even say six because value boxes and mega boxes but rank the five hobby delight retail logo fracture sapphire where do you rank each of those configurations on the on the chart here so i'm gonna put this perspective when i think about this is the product overall and the cost of the product okay logofractor number one logofractor dominated at the price that came out even at the prices still was number one because the content was loaded with all the one on ones it was probably one of the best pound for pound rips in almost history of wrestling cards because they just did not make enough logo factor is one delight would be number two for me love the delight it's a little more pricey but i mean i'm i've had boxes where i'm just like wow all three of these autos came out plus this number to two all this stuff so delight would be two for me i wanna give sapphire number three because of the look right now because of the way it's trending so i'm gonna go three on sapphire it's too early i wanna see more of it but i'm gonna give a notch over hobby i love the hobby but the problem isn't about hobby and i've been in a lot of mixer breaks lately with like dwight hobby royalty is man some of these hobby box i'm like really those two autos were in there but i've seen other ones i'm like holy crap like jameson jameson yes with the rock in his box i'm like what the heck like i'm watching these cases i'm seeing chad gable and no offense a jade cargo come out not awful but like but then i'm seeing you know other crazy boxes so i'm gonna give royal to hobby there and then obviously retail just because it is a lot harder to pull but the retail don't get me wrong could give hobby a run for its money from the content i've seen between super autos coming out between garbage pail kids case hits number not number ones overall they're all great skews this year i still wanna give logofractor number one because i got to rip some we've carried it the price point what i've seen come out of it all the autograph variations were in there superfractor sorry wow so to me that would be my ranking i love to hear yours i i so i'll i'll consider it from the same perspective here from price versus content and i think my only difference give or take is that i put delight number one i think even though it's crazy expensive right now like just the ripping experience alone of ripping a delight box and i ripped the case so like i i know what it's like like you can you can easily walk away not feeling great at the price that it is but it is still so much fun and like delight before i before i get on one thing about the delight that the the other ones on offer is something you me and brett talk about a lot and i just got in the marks of champion out of two as well the black geometrics i call them the black finance because that's basically what they are beautiful cards are just they are as like like if you go back to elite back at the beginning of twenty twenty three they had those sort of like cracked ice black cards for one on ones the one you're gonna all beautiful they're so nice and like i think these black geometric cards from from delight are just some of the most gorgeous cards that tops has ever made i am a fiend for super fractures i collect super fractures i just got my nineteenth of them in for becky lynch i'll talk about that here in a minute but like those black geometric cards are so cool and so that alone combined with the ripping experience i don't think the cost is out of whack as much as it used to be so i i'm putting delight number one i'm gonna put actually i'm gonna put sapphire number two k i i wasn't a humongous fan of logofractors just kinda limited autograph checklist even though i think the cards look really nice and like we're we're splitting hairs here because all of these are some of the best stuff that tops makes so like don't just because retail is number five or whatever here doesn't mean it's not absolutely awesome this year because everything here it's like the best of the best of the best i loved logo fracture i think sapphire the cards i love cracked ice sapphire just does that so well the blue looks really good the autographs look great the black cracked ice looks awesome on out of tens like love what sapphire the the case hit infinite sapphire one of the best case hits design wise i think that the tops makes i love the look of those cards in hand and then i'll go logofractor hobby and then i'll go retail for the same reasons that you did i think hobby if none of these other configurations existed i would have been happy with hobby like i don't wanna make it seem like it's a it's a shitty configuration because it it was really fun i opened i think six boxes of it it was great but nothing compares to delight nothing compares to those black geometric cards i like i almost like them better than the super fractures but i'm not gonna go that far if if you listen to this right now or whenever you listen to this keep in mind right now ripping the hobby more or less and ripping obviously the retail skus good time to rip right now because the buyback program's still going on yes with roman and liv that way where it makes like hey go rip a blaster for thirty bucks pull one of the base it's twenty bucks right back there plus the chance what else you get so something to keep in mind that's added value until that promotion runs which i think it runs to july sometime and i have to look at the data closer so keep that in mind because it's a good price point hobby i think it was a little bit like three to three fifty a box now and add a bonus because in a year from now they're gonna be five hundred plus and you're not gonna get that buyback yeah and i i went to bleecker trading one of the shops in new york just to see what is so down the street from finet and like i got a blaster there just to you know support the cause or whatever i pulled one of the roman reigns or two of the roman reigns base cards in one blaster and just you made money for another blaster yeah and then you probably lost some of other blasters so yeah so let's let's move on to some big sales here because we have our guests joining us here in about ten minutes a a double a triple dose of john cena here at the top we'll start with the two big ones one the the super fracture john cena one of one chrome from twenty twenty five this is the one where he has the microphone in his hand he's dressed up as a doctor with thugonomics i think this is the base one it might be the base i can't remember i think it is i think yeah i think this is the base one went for five thousand dollars via best offer we know who the owner is i'm not gonna spoil it right now but i'm sure they will make themselves known on instagram and they're close to us so i think like a huge huge number on the what i believe is the base john cena it's a great looking photo great card mhmm that was sold via best offer on ebay then very shortly after that another super factor this one was a a psa eight sold via best offer very shortly after thirty eight hundred dollars we had one go for five thousand that was the base then you have the variation that went for thirty eight hundred that's the one where he has the spinner title it looks like one of the later spinner title victories that he had still a great looking card but these have gone up about a thirteen hundred bucks or fourteen hundred bucks for a variation because i had one of these and i sold it for like twenty five hundred back at the end of his retirement tour they've gone up even more since then yeah i actually have one as well graded it might be an eight as well from my hitting the bloods pack a long time ago get a good grade for it in my national stash so i will have mine available at the national i don't remember which variation is but but yeah no this is great to see obviously these things are get these cards are getting more love the variations were super hard to hit for the base and then the only parallel they have were the one zero one so yeah think you know obviously the name's seen up but yeah i mean i i i i kinda get behind these what they are then go ahead very very quickly after so this happened yesterday as we are recording the one of one foil fractor was sold via auction out of china oh no it ended yeah it ended oh i was watching this to bid i didn't realize it ended yeah it ended yesterday i was gonna bid on it too epic fail by me way to go ryan so it was now i will give the caveat it was won by an account with forty six feedback or something like that so you may get another shot at it it is it was being auctioned out of china twenty six fifty this is the foil fracture one of one with the inscription the last time is now john cena autograph out of twenty twenty six tops universe or twenty twenty five tops universe this is probably one of my favorite cena photos favorite sina inscriptions like this card is absolutely gorgeous somebody gotta steal somebody gotta steal in my opinion yeah think the chine like having to import the card into china short subject serenity now serenity now the the having to import this in is probably what kept it it ended at a weird time too i think so yeah steel for sure this was i expected this one to go i thought i had a couple days left so i was gonna bid on it and try to add it to my collection and i epically failed yep you did we also had a big roxanne perez sale it's labeled as thirty two fifty it's not it went for her super fracture red brand autograph with the prodigy inscription amazing looking card sold for sixty one hundred dollars via auction again caveat here won by an account with like fifty six feedback or something like that so i don't know if this was a real sale i assume it was it hasn't been real listed but it sold two days ago as we're recording sixty one hundred dollars huge huge sale for roxanne perez very big this is her biggest ever do you mean to talk about it yeah i mean it's like you looked at me like i'm like i mean i yeah i mean that's a big sale we'll see if it actually gets paid for if it's one of the hacker accounts whatever you like to call them the what the terrorist here sorry terrorist alrighty no yeah beautiful carload love the inscription just looking at these it just i really appreciate what tops did this year by giving all that white space to really encourage more inscriptions every time i see one of these i'm like yep that was used to its satisfaction yep i don't know if chad actually ended up with this i wanna say he might have this is the gunther i don't remember this is the gunther one of one crowning achievements acetate auto one of one he's holding the crown from king of the ring awesome looking card there is another one with an inscription another one of one that i believe he did get because i i saw him post it but gunther thirty two fifty via best offer on ebay sold about a few days ago one of the bigger sales and royalties so far i believe outside of that's not a wrestlemania patch obviously yeah but these acetates look beautiful the platinum on them these really pop love this chad kudos to you for getting in front of gunther years ago because right now i feel like every week there's somebody in this space that wants to buy gunther cards so if you won this congrats if you didn't i think this i i just don't know like i don't his market's changed so much so again chad would know it best than anybody so i don't know if this was the right number or the wrong number i really don't know on this one i i i feel it's right where i where i would put it it's a great looking card i think the the acetate cards in royalty only have the one parallel which i think is the one zero one they don't have like all the the gamut of parallels here but like like i have you you pulled one of the becky lynch ones you sold i i have a couple of them now but those cards are absolutely awesome looking you have them like acetate for me when they were in immaculate in the panini era like i i love those cards when acetate is done well it's really hard to beat yep hundred percent right big card in in not just in the price but in the size of it because it is an oversized card the twenty nineteen transcended dual cut autograph of macho man randy savage and sherry martell if your if your name is steve and we know a steve this is this is a card for you because it is the the cut they used is inscribed i think that these oversized cut cards are gonna have a disadvantage on the market because they are oversized they're they're five by seven i believe they or maybe even i can't even remember but they're bigger than a more normal card size or the size of the garbage pail kids sketch cards like of them are generally that same size i have the transcendent one from twenty twenty one with the four horsewomen on it the one zero one so all of these oversized cards from transcendent traditionally don't sell as well as the the the single sort of traditional cards but that doesn't mean they're not valuable because this one went for three thousand dollars best offer earlier this week i think this is probably one of the biggest ones in the entire set i think the fact that it's a dual cut makes it a little bit less so than just the single macho man because there is a single macho man one as well yeah but like i remembered when these came out we were floored by these cards they're they are beautifully done though i mean i'll give them that again i i wish the cuts would have been a little bit better on them i get you know it's it's challenging at times to find some of those ones but i i will give it the fact that the autographs outside of good old steve getting cut off is they're both within the center picture right and you've got the imaging so pretty rare card obviously these were box toppers back then when they did twenty nineteen transcend it so to me three thousand bucks seems like a fair buy i mean it that's it yeah i think yeah it's it's a pretty good buy mean it's gonna be probably the only dual autograph card ever made i would assume even though it's not the size of a card but i gotta think that's one of the rares one the old i don't think macho man's gonna have cards for a long time if ever i know like if if they're gonna do cuts in dynasty or if they're gonna do cuts in a future version of royalty like i really hope they pony up the dough to get the macho man license back because like we need more macho man cards we do and he's just such a i think iconic figure in wrestling like as big as hulk hogan was in the eighties like macho man in the nineties with the slim jim ads like he's still on the commercials it's twenty twenty six so like it's like those are the types of things that i think you know define professional wrestling in the earlier eras of time collecting and stuff like that the wcw cards obviously enormously popular his card is probably the most expensive of all of them guerrero's up there too on that one i think eddie might be a notch higher i can't remember i do have they're varying quantities of all of them yes rare they the more expensive they are i don't i'm not i this is not my favorite set so i don't know a lot about it but like the the macho man card goes for a ton in high grades i i have a p s eight eight if i'm correct i think it's an eight i don't think it have pretty sure it's an eight so i have one in my collection i still need eddie guerrero i need a mister perfect there's a couple ones i like to get added that kinda fit the mold of my because i'm like i don't wanna cut to those guys like like i got a rowdy piper heritage on her from like o five but i'm like i don't wanna stick one years later i don't want a a cut so cool our special guest has just joined us so we're gonna pause the the recording here and and introduce our guests we'll come back we're gonna go through you know we're we're gonna go through everything mike from mc sports cards is joining us can't wait to have this discussion there's a lot of reason why he's gonna join us beyond just having a consignment business that that aligns to a lot of the things that we're talking about as wrestling collectors now entering a space where consignments are are gonna be a big thing but also because of his relationship with ryan and sort of what they were able to achieve really excited to have him on then we're gonna also talk about some of the awesome sponsors that we have coming up for wrestling card takeover so i'm excited to have that on we'll be right back

alright so here we are we're back with our special guest today this is a longtime friend of mine it's somebody i'm very close to in the hobby and been very close to for a long time it is unfortunately my honor joking to introduce my great friend mike cance of mc sportscards mike thanks for coming on the show today man how's it going appreciate you guys having me excited to be on and so i gotta ask what's your favorite wrestling match of all time next question this is great the listener's like alright i'm done with this guy so alright so i i enjoy you know i see clips on instagram reels and everything but i i can't say i've watched much wrestling unfortunately but it it does look very very entertaining okay well it it is and and you know how my much my love is for wrestling so i think you appreciate just a little bit so so we got mike here today again mac and i go way back i don't know how many years i've known you now thirteen fourteen i don't know ever since you were a teenager i'm getting old now you're getting old but as you are as well but what's your go a little bit back how did you get in the cards and where did you start your business from why you got into this space you know let the listeners know a little bit more about you yeah so i i always collected cards as a kid you know i was about eleven or twelve years old and i would just build sets go to you know target walmart buy the retail product build the base set just kinda got obsessed with it since then and slowly grew it into doing some shows and online wheeling and dealing and then you know ebay and the national and and you know just kinda like a big snowball effect over the last almost twenty years or so now but yeah i mean ever ever since i got into it i've always been obsessed with cards you know a lot of people take a break for a few years or they get back into it like during covid but feel like i just never stopped and have been obsessed with it since like two thousand and five or six but yeah i've i've known ryan since i wanna say at least twenty twelve or thirteen but yeah you know it's been almost been a long time years give or take yeah it's been a long time so i i say this about mike and i tell anybody this and not just because mike's here right now you are the hardest working person i know pretty sure not just in this industry in life nobody works harder than you again that will change one day when you when you have children with your wife i'm telling you it will it will one day but i i i praise mike all the time because man i thought i worked hard for years mike makes me look like i don't do anything so again kudos to mike you've built your brand up you now have nc sports cards which is what you've been known for for a long time but you have your consignment business now which has really blossomed on ebay for over the past i don't know how many years you've had it now why don't you tell a little bit more about about the consignment business and more about what the listeners can know about you and the business yeah well appreciate the nice words i know you know on camera you gotta be nice so i get a little bit no i i appreciate it so yeah i've i've always been an ebay seller i've had the account since two thousand and eight when i was thirteen years old so oh god i'm had the had the account for over half of my life but you know always just sold my own cards and casually bought and sold and then in about say twenty twenty twenty twenty one you know ebay came to us and said hey you're doing some really good numbers and you know let's try to get to this level and this level and we realized the only way we can get there is through consignment so we just kinda did it on the side with some of our friends and just people we deal with a lot and saying hey do you wanna send us some stuff and you know it ended up really taking off from there to where we made a a whole platform and a website and you know have thousands and thousands of clients and basically our our specialty is usually more on the high end side for ebay you know we do handle a lot of volume as well in in bulk you know we're we're running about a thousand to twelve hundred items a night and you know average sale price is about three hundred dollars which some competitors in the industry you know some people focus more on the bulk which they're better at and you know we try to take that high end approach and and by high end you know i mean couple hundred dollars and up is usually better to go with us there but you know in us offering more services on the high end side it allows us to process people's cards way quicker and you know ryan can agree with this like every package he sends us is usually up within two or three business days and you know we we've always kept that standard over the years and and really pushed to try to keep that standard so you know there there's lots of options with consignment and we're good in a lot of areas we're not the best in certain areas we're not the worst in certain areas we try to just kinda grip onto our strengths and and turnaround time and customer service and everything is some of the stuff that we really focus on yeah and i i think like so from from my perspective because ryan and you guys have had a great relationship for somebody like me that's been a collector more than somebody that that does a lot of selling i i i haven't been exposed to this space as much and i think like it's totally interesting to me sort of how this all works and i think in a space like wrestling cards we're just approaching the fringe of the mainstream we're just getting to that point where you know auctions that are on ebay or on the major auction houses are just reaching that public visibility side where hey maybe me as a guy with a thousand feedback isn't the right vehicle to sell one of these cards maybe we wanna go with somebody who has this well established business model tons of feedback tons of great positioning great marketing like for somebody like me who doesn't know a lot about how consignment works doesn't understand the process like what would you say in to introduce people to this format here yeah so i i always like to say you know first of all let me preface this as people will come to us and say why should we sell with you instead of do it ourselves and i'm never one to sit there and knock all the reasons why you shouldn't do it yourself some people enjoy it all that but with that being said basically with the payout rates that we offer if your card is over a hundred and fifty dollars you're actually getting more money from our eighty eight percent payout than if you sold it yourself on your account because i i think it's huge twelve point nine percent versus twelve percent right there and it only gets better on on our side as you as the value goes up so that that's like the biggest thing that i tell people because that is black and white there's there's no opinion or anything there it's yes you would get more just by default and then from there you know you don't do any work any shipping any listing all the only work you do is put them in the box fill out a quick thing on our site and ship them so you know when you factor all that and if you have a hundred cards you know doing it on your own when you're a casual it takes a while seller might yeah might take you you know a hell of a lot longer than it it would for us so you know there there's all the benefits from that side and then on top of that you know we do have tens of thousands of buyers who regularly check our store and know kinda every night there's gonna be consistent volume and and cool stuff so you know a lot of those people are always gonna look at our store but they're not always gonna see somebody who may only do once a month auctions on their page or randomly auction stuff so that's kind of the selling point i use of like you just get paid more by using us anyways and yeah and it's gotta be pretty easy right you you may i i went on your site i was gonna send some cards your way i don't i i'm not sure if they're gonna reach the three hundred dollar level but because most of the stuff that's above that i'm i it's on the shelf behind me but it's like you know i think for people to understand like this is a pretty easy process it's literally just couple of questions on the website put it in a box send it off and your team handles the rest yeah i mean that's that's it really all you can even just put the quantity we have an option that you don't even have to type out each card that you're sending you can just put fifty cards or something so as long as you have thirty seconds to count and fill it out it's pretty much all the work you gotta do besides shipping it yeah you've got a user friendly website where the seller can watch all their listings through your website it's very friendly you installed this what was well over a year ago two years ago when did you install your website again i can't remember it's been over a year i know that yeah it's i wanna say it's gonna be two years in july okay and this links to ebay directly is what this is yep so pretty much the the user experience we're aiming for and you know we're we're really getting there there's it's a lot a lot of work and a lot more to be done but we basically want it to be like when you're using us or you're on our site it's the same as if you're using ebay but you're just piggybacking through us so like our fixed price program i know ryan has used it many times before and like you know you can go on our site reprice your item and it instantly changes the price on ebay you know you get a best offer you get a text and an email saying new offer you click the link you go on the site you accept the offer accepts on ebay counter you know decline all that so really like the goal is to make it so there is no difference to you guys using us versus your own ebay besides not doing any work like some people don't like consigning because they're missing out on doing things as buy it now or they're missing out on instantly knowing where when an offer comes in or not having to wait for somebody to tell them or or things like that so we're we're trying to bring all of that into like a all in one service so what what would you say like for people who may not as be as familiar with the whole process like what is one of the biggest misconceptions about consignment that you guys deal with on a regular basis like what is if somebody comes to you and says you know something that they don't really grasp about the process what would you sort of point out yeah i i think a lot of people don't understand like the fee structure and that there actually is a service that can provide better payouts than you doing it yourself so i think a lot of people assume there's like fine print or there's some hidden fees or it's just too good to be true you know that that's more on the consignment side and i think there still is a misconception that some people don't like ebay some people think ebay is not the best option for certain cards and you know there are cards that are better on other platforms and there's cards that are better on ebay but i think people just you know assume ebay means chillers and fee and too many fees and nonpayers and too much bs and in reality like you know our unpaid rate is maybe less than two percent or something wow yeah and that's become a big big problem for us in wrestling they they vet pretty well to eliminate sorry go ahead no you're good i was just praising how you guys do a good job of vetting to make sure that majority of your visitors are legit like they have to get through they can't have certain things on their accounts strikes or whatever so you know we do a lot with mike and we actually had a really big ebay top seller account not to anywhere near mike's but something we were proud of we built for years we got rid of it we don't even use it we just sell in shop website and then i send a bunch of stuff to mike i try to send stuff out every week week and a half and then i put some better stuff on and it's great i don't have to deal with the messages i don't deal with anything yeah they deal with it all i it's great the money just gets thrown on my account so again i wanna say they do a really good job of getting rid of the as adam would call the terrorists is what he would like to call them so yeah yeah the messages you know alone if you dabble with ebay yourself and sell a decent bit the messages alone should be your your motivation to worth worth yeah worth worth going through you guys so you don't have to mess with it so so then once the auctions are done there's an account that you create as part of the the website experience money gets deposited into that account or i believe it's like sent out right automatically if that's the option that you choose yeah so basically you you know i'll walk you through quickly on the process here so yeah please you go on the site you create a submission kinda like if you were sending cards to get graded you know you print the paperwork ship us the package we receive it you get notified that we received the package usually within a one to three business days you get notified that your items are scheduled and that's when you could see them on the site and you could see the start date and the title and you know you have the ability to view and edit your titles and submit requests and everything and then the items go live usually for a seven day auction so you'll get notified on that via text and email you track your items in real time you log on right now and if your item's at eighty four dollars that's it you get a you get a bid for eighty five dollars it's gonna update right away so there's no lag there which is cool and then once your items end it basically sums up all your fees and your sales prices and you just log on click the the submission and all the math is done you know what you're getting and then you could see the statuses of like what was paid and what wasn't paid and then the funds just get released throughout you know usually about a week it's we do partial payouts now to get people money quicker so usually in about a week you're completely paid on your submission and anytime along the way when you have funds in your account you can go on and request a payout straight to your bank paypal check wire really anything that's awesome so one of the reasons that we wanted to have you on as well is because of a recent situation that you and ryan found yourselves in do you guys wanna talk through that yeah i mean basically yeah i want you to tell us more about wrestling cards while you're here mike yeah yeah so i know about one you do know about one yes you do so again i have a ebay is fine you know but you have to get approved sometimes when it comes to building a higher price that happened years ago and because mike has such a great standing ebay account and i can sign with them a lot so basically i have funds in there at times or i go negative or whatever based on what he bought me at the time because most of i don't cash out he gets my money for either whatever one way shape or form so basically i knew i was gonna feel comfortable having mike place the bids preventing any issues may have been like you can't bid on this card or just anything i wanted to prevent anything because i wanted to win this card so called mike about it told him he's like sure whatever you wanna do so we put a bid on that saturday before it closed to monday luckily that bid was enough and then i gave another bid on monday which was way more he thought i was crazy so luckily it did not go to that limit but so mike essentially handled the purchase of this particular card which we've talked about tirelessly at this point but mike do you by any chance have that card on hand anywhere close to you i do should i should i show it he sniffed it out for me yeah hold up the camera yeah there there he is it showed up today it is the randy orton wrestlemania patch auto that i am now the proud owner of thanks again to mike for making it possible in mc sports cards so essentially in a way we did kind of a cash advance on this essentially even though i had some money in there i'm consigning more with you every week why don't we go a little bit about how that works with you and stuff like that so the opportunity that you gave me and now that you're like here don't even worry about wiring me you're just gonna consign with us yeah so we we do offer a service it's it's not you know kinda publicly posted yet but we've always done it in behind the scenes and you know basically we called it's called funding i guess is the formal term now in the fair enough fair enough you know we do have people who approach us and say hey i'm looking to buy this item for this price and can you guys front the money and in exchange i'm going to consign x you know we have a lot of people who do that with us and it allows them to buy cards that they might not be able to buy on their own for various reasons or you know people who just wanna turn cards they don't really care about into something that they do care about so like in ryan's case the cards that he's gonna turn into this card are just not anything special to try to use the right word but trust me i it does me no good here essentially things like that it's i'm i'm literally like it's my goal when i'm not traveling to get you a run out every week i'm getting you another one this week actually auction's going off tonight i've been watching with you but essentially i i could easily have paid mike the money i told him hey let me just pay you the difference he's like hell don't worry about it like you'll have this paid off in like two weeks three weeks as much as you do so it was nice to know that a it didn't get to the number i was really willing to pay but b that it was like cool i can it more or less it's like a like a trade essentially over time you know let them make some money let them get rid of some stuff that does us no good in our store to go out and buy some stuff because i'm always big on i let my money try to build up with mc mc was a big part and i've talked about this of why we have the building we own right now i i i've raised a lot of money i built up for i don't know like eight months i think i saved in there had a really good amount of money and then you guys cash advance me the rest to buy this building and i gave you and matt all my lebrons you guys went out and sold them and basically i traded cards to buy a building thanks to mc sports cards again there there's a long history here with us now he's just not doing that for anybody there is a relationship here it has been a long time heck you even lived under my roof for three months back in twenty fifteen or twenty i was twenty fifteen when you were doing an internship here so so mike are are super close unlike any other but i'm honored to call him a friend he is he's one of a kind you're one of a kind mike and i say that in the nicest way but you're genuine you have a big heart and you you look out for your friends and you're always willing to do anything for the people you care about in life and you're always about hey what can i do to better this hobby you know what what is it the mc can provide that others aren't and you've got competitors out there you get along with these competitors as well but i think you guys do a really good job distinking yourself from them to you guys and what you're doing with the website you've built and you're always innovating you you we were talking today i'm not gonna talk about what we talked about but i was just like wow okay another step for mc sports cards that puts them yep more to the top in my opinion and i'm not just saying that because you're a friend but love what you guys are doing you have a great team under you something we don't get talked about i'm i've known moody for a long time just as long as you you've got great people under you and i think a business is always good as the people around them and i know you stand by your people all the time and i'm there with you i i love your team and and i'm proud of you i really am and i don't think i've told you enough i have told you enough i am genuinely proud of what mike has built because i have seen mike from where he started he's seen me close to where i started and him and i have built everything by just working our ass off and again i'll stand by it nobody has worked their ass off more than any human being on the face of earth that i know than that guy right there mike's gonna leave this he's gonna leave this this podcast he's gonna go into another room and expect theme music and stuff like that this is gonna this is gonna cost me i know no i'm just kidding i appreciate i mean like and and i think it's really important oh sorry go ahead mike oh no you're you're good so basically yeah i've i've known like i said earlier i've known ryan forever and you know to have a friendship with somebody that long and and you know to consistently be really good friends means a lot and you know obviously ryan's a great guy and great team and you know him and i just thank you basically since we first did that deal on the machado bowman platinum gold don't wanna flash it you hear that do you hear that that's still living a little bit about that but basically since then you know been really really good friends and i've got to watch him take his business from where it was when we first met to where it is now and i remember the trade nights at in florissant missouri at the the trade shop for yep yeah looks how was there any room for a trade night wasn't it happened but it wasn't so no again mike thank you again for for being a part of this story on the order and thank you for for all you do another big announcement we wanted to make while mike was on was mike is going to be one of our sponsors at wrestling car takeover at the national so that's right mike thank you for being a part of that we're happy to have you you'll be our only consigning company that is a part of this so if you want more information about that again you can tell the listeners a little bit about where they can find you at your website we've kinda talked about what you do but again you will be there some way shape or form you'll also be set up for the national as well so just tell our listeners a little bit about that yeah so happy to be a part of the the event at the national and we're we're gonna have some special rates for people who consign i don't know yet if it's gonna be just wrestling card related or just consign because of the event so there there will be a a benefit there but yeah to use our our service you basically just go to m c sports cards dot com and sign up and pretty straightforward from there you know if you know how to nice follow simple directions you got it perfectly yes thank you so much for for for being a sponsor and i you know like for for a space like this right so you admittedly you're you're not most of the consignors are heavily dominated in the football basketball baseball type of space i think like getting more wrestling collectors exposed to some of the peripheral hobby businesses that really do add a considerable service to to this is is so important that's one of the main reasons we went to mike to be a supporter of the event not just because of the relationship with ryan but because i think he offers something that as as a new growing space and obviously i've had a ton of experience outside of wrestling but others may not have like having the experience of of understanding the consignment area understanding how cards move within this hobby you know really improves a lot of experience we've always said don't collect on an island i think this relationship that you guys have formed helped and benefited both of you and and the relationship that we'll have as part of this event hopefully will benefit more of the collectors that listen to our podcast mike thanks so much for for being a sponsor there and thanks for your support there go to mike's website m c sports cards dot com i actually am am a newbie at this but i figured it out so if i could figure it out you guys can as well but yeah you also could could find us on instagram if you have any questions along the way you know mc sports cards on instagram as well as consign with mc you know the team is always monitoring the messages and aims to get back to everybody fairly fairly quick so know hap happy to be a part of the event happy to be on on the show here with you guys and you know the the more wrestling cards that get sold or consigned just creates more exposure in the space too because now there's more more buyers seeing the cards who might not be into wrestling but they might you know find a card cool or or you know things like that and and we do have a few pretty big wrestling collectors who do consign with us most of most of them do all sports so we we don't see a lot of wrestling from them because they keep that stuff locked away but we we did just sell it yeah we did just sell a really cool finest black out of ten auto of the rock yesterday wow so nice finest set in that that did about six thousand which i believe our client's very happy wow it seems like a big number was it graded it was a psa eight i it was oh wow the one that was pulled at hobby rip night by oh yeah yeah the chrome one that's mispulled yeah oh was it this was burbank this was the actual one okay did it have the label on there too the act okay that's okay that's awesome that you guys ran that yeah look at you talking wrestling cards i'm proud of you yeah see i fit right in the consignor was you know every time the consignor would share on his instagram page or story he would you know put a slide at the ebay auction and then slide at the miz like holding the card up that's absolutely hold it at the hobby rip night so pretty pretty cool story i mean kinda similar to how this guy was signed you know at hobby rip night you know i guess the it did something good for the wrestling community and and did something good different areas that creating some chatter so every card's got a story everyone does so again thank you mike i appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to come on have a wonderful vacation because i know you're on that take good care of my randy i would like him here asap back in my hands so but again it's it's been great to have you on and and again check out m c sports cars m c sports dot com on ebay instagram hit them up they're amazing mike's amazing thank you again thanks mike thank you guys appreciate it

alright huge thanks again to mike from mc sports cards joining us love hearing new exposed sort of parts of the hobby that most people in our space maybe don't know too much about like we you heard during the interview like yes these guys may not have direct ties to our community but obviously now we are getting to a spot where we're gonna start making waves and we wanna expose these people to wrestling cards we wanna expose wrestling cards to them and i think that's one of the main reasons why we're gonna be doing a lot of the things we're doing with wrestling card takeover speaking of which as one of our sponsors mc sports cards thank you we wanna acknowledge all of our sponsors here this is the first time we're announcing them and we're gonna try and do this for every one of them so hopefully as more weeks pass we're gonna have our sponsors join the podcast talk a little bit more about what they do for for the hobby and what they do around wrestling cards huge thanks to chad at sports card junction another one of the sponsors as well as card shop live you guys are on whatnot and and fanatics live huge wrestling breaker brando and john and jessica and all the guys over there love them and i i'm i'm very happy that they're supporting us as well thank you to chad at sportscar junction one of the original ogs planning committee he is the ogs yeah he is the og of the main event which happened a couple of years ago i'm glad to have him back on board i also wanna say thank you to to chris and christina and josh and everybody at cardladder they're gonna be supporting us as well i use cardladder literally every day and it is one of the best data tools that exist in the hobby i know there's a lot of ways you can get auction results you can get everything but nothing in my opinion does what cardladder does also a huge thanks to bcw supplies who's also gonna be supporting us i use a ton of their products to to house my collection i know ryan sells a bunch of stuff for them in the in his shop so thank you to bcw for supporting us as well stephanie and the mama breaks team love their community love what stephanie does she's been on our podcast before and i can't say enough good things about what she does and she's gonna be supporting us she's also and and ryan and i were laughing about this because we we we're gonna plan this very nicely there she's gonna try and do it like sort of a cosplay contest or so we've we've sort of started planning for wrestling card takeover so she's gonna offer some prizes i believe it's gonna be amazing i i haven't decided if i'm gonna come as paul heyman or as paul heyman so i think wait wait i thought it was hulk hogan yes i or hulk hogan yes but it's gonna be paul heyman but like you've gotta come dressed as your favorite wrestler we're gonna have prizes thank you to stephanie for supporting us and then nick and everybody at blizz online ryan and i are big supporters of theirs just for their wrestling card they are the only online digital repacks at the moment that that offer wrestling cards can't say enough of good things about their platform just wanna acknowledge all of our current sponsors we're gonna be bringing more on as the weeks progress wanted to spotlight them here as our announcement for book to last as part of wrestling card takeover if you're going to join us make sure to email us book to last podcast at g mail dot com let us know get on the list you just made the list and we're gonna well it wasn't very good you just made the list there we go not wasn't my best effort but our sponsors are the best ryan any any feedback from a sponsorship perspective i'm just looking at this list and it just makes me smile because these are some of the best people and and top brands in the hobby and they're on board for wrestling car takeover that event that you brett and myself have put on are putting on for this year it's just it's an honor to have these people pay we're in we love what what you guys are doing and we love what you're trying to build for the wrestling car community so again this list isn't finalized yet we have some people in the limbo and the wings that we're trying to finalize right now but it's gonna be awesome and we're kinda letting all these sponsors decide what they wanna do there as far as what they wanna do for giveaways but again we thank you enough to all our sponsors i've got some relationships with some of these people and some i have not yet and i'm looking forward to building those relationships with these people as i get to meet them at the national at the wrestling car takeover so again thank you all of our sponsors to this point thank you adam for kicking butt and staying on this thank you brett and we're ready to rock and roll it's gonna be here before you know it there's a lot of things moving pieces happening behind the scenes but again we can't take the national committee more importantly for this opportunity that we're given here and we're gonna make sure we knock out of the park to where they hopefully look at it and say run it back let's yeah oh sorry sorry let's run it back is that how you're doing days yeah yeah thank you so first and last time i'm gonna do run it back in my life so i think like so we wanted to offer this event for free for every wrestling card collector to come and be a part of we can't do that without our sponsors renting a room during the national week at the convention in the meat of the the district is like impossible so i think like we were just really excited to to get this on there and and huge thanks to our sponsors absolutely alright we're gonna wrap this up with our our title match topic i had two ginormous mail days this week i was able to secure the one of one garbage pail kids becky lynch super fractor similar to the one that ryan revealed on the podcast a few weeks ago so happy to have that in hands huge thanks to dylan thanks to jameson for playing middle middleman for me did a tremendous job accepting all of that i was also able to work with a a seller on tiktok see nasty's cards to get the the marks of champions super fracture autograph huge thanks to them but my question is this because we both now gone through humongous acquisitions in our collections because these are the two biggest ones that i've i think i've ever paid for in terms of becky lynch cards they aren't my favorite cards because obviously some of the ones i bought a long time ago probably would be at this level if they were sold today but how much of the grail acquisition like thrill of getting that card is driven by getting to own the card and how much of it is driven by sharing and showing it off with your friends and social media stuff like that in your opinion i mean i i think it's everything here's the one thing i'm glad we're talking about this because i was thinking this earlier today and the one thing i wanna talk about beforehand is just because you're quote unquote super collecting or trying to collect a particular wrestler or player whatever maybe doesn't mean you have to own everything it doesn't mean you have to own every one on one if you don't feel comfortable buying something at the price then walk away because i wanna reiterate i think the space is gonna continue to grow and with that what adam alluded to is that he paid record number prices obviously i paid a record number price for this card but it meant more to me than the card itself and i just paid record number before that with the orton inscription auto but i've been offered other things since then before then and even today i was offered something and i just was like no i'm good on the price man like i just don't have to have it so it's sometime the best thing you could do is walk away just walk away move on there's plenty out there there's gotta be more products to come the relationship with tops and fedex and w two b is amazing and we're gonna continue to get great cards so i wanna give our listeners that but yes when it comes to a particular card they're like hey when i saw this card on the sell sheet or when i knew this card was made i'm gonna go all in for it and that would be the advice i would take is maybe back off the three four five other cards that you're like hey be cool to have these but this is the one i want and go for that one get the one you want i'm not saying overpay but at times yeah overpay to get it if you know it's going to your home because you want to have that card and obviously like you said to share it with your friends i got to share my story thank you for first off for stephanie and eddie coming out here for the orton thing to get the video because there was obviously some scene footage that has never been posted because i wanted to be hushed about that moment i had until it came to fruition but again there's just so many great things about cards that i love but i just want people to remember you don't have to own it all i know that adam knows that at times it's it's tough to walk away but i want you to know you can walk away because there's a lot more people that are gonna continue to gouge and expect these record breaking numbers and sometimes it's best to stand your ground i know that i'm willing to pay you more than anybody and if you don't wanna take my offer shop it around but i may not be here when you come back just some advice i wanna give while we're talking about this yeah i mean like that's a really interesting talk track and i i think it's like obviously we're in a space now where there's a lot of competition and the competition is gonna continue to be more and more rabid like if if you think about the way things traditionally go i had to jump on some cards recently that i knew were were were not within the my expectation of their value but because of the way that i've established relationships i've been able to work through deals and stuff like that to ensure that i get these cards like jameson and i traded at to to basically offset the cost of this garbage pail kids he got a roman reigns card that i had that he really wanted i got this card we're both very happy i know the the seller is very happy because i traded him some cards as well so like even though a lot of these deals are are such a thrill and stuff like that ryan does make a really good point i had to walk away from the wrestlemania patch it's just too much money and you know that happens like i posted a long sort of read through of that you can go on main event and and see sort of my thought process there but you know i'm not gonna end up with the card that ryan got to end up with and that's okay like i'm totally fine with that because i got to own some other cards as a result through trades and stuff like that that are very special and more aligned to my collection too like if you were to go through my video that i posted on instagram all of my cards are super fractures and black one on ones like the shiny stuff really dominates my collection so does immaculate and so does national treasures and stuff like that but nothing like the chrome so getting these two cards is huge and i was talking about this with ryan because like the the thrill of being able to be at the center of the hobby for fifteen minutes this week was probably awesome and for me like being able to share this on my socials and with my friends was a huge part of it for me and i'm i'm i continually ask myself and i think they were talking about this on the crossover that's where i got the topic for this question it's like does this really matter is the thrill of announcing it just as important as owning the card itself and to me like i i wanna say no like i wanna say like it's it's not a huge factor but after what i went through this week and all the support that i got from my friends and my social and everything like that like it's a re it's become a big part of this it's become like your identity online is driven by the benchmarks of your collection and we've talked about that before of like how do you become the guy for this particular thing i think it's moments like this that really drive those relationships and start conversations with people so like you may not like ryan may not have understood the impact of buying this randy orton cards but i'm guessing he met a few new people who are probably interested as a result because they've messaged him they're like oh this is cool maybe some relationships blossom out of that type of an experience right yeah i think the the keyword and everything you said is the favorite word you said was relationships and this this hobby is really built on relationships and it does go a long way and again my relationship to mike helped me get this but it was just every relationship in itself and the amount of people that reach out congratulating me once this went public and obviously didn't they got having their conversation with randy horton but here we are you know i had another one with him and hopefully that sparks into us maybe talking more down the road he knows now that hey this guy is my card collector which is really cool to me to to know that hey that i i'm out there getting his cards and i think he respects and he he doesn't understand why cards do what they do but i think he's getting a little bit of better idea just from the conversation and it's just awesome man it's but again that that only happens because relationships and i think that is the biggest thing and don't live on an island as you've always said i think that is yeah wanna i don't wanna give you toot your horn here too much but you you don't you say some stupid stuff but no i'm joking get the island stupid stuff living on the island don't live on an island is probably one of the best advice i think you give to anybody in the card space enjoy this with other people enjoy this with friends and family and as i have again that's why i dove back heavy into wrestling wasn't because of my family and my friends you know neil is a big fin power collector he has a wrestling pass his dad used to wrestle with glenn jacobs otherwise known as gabe his dad's in the two wrestling hall of fames here in missouri you know i mean he has a wrestling background my staff also watch wrestling i get to enjoy this hobby with people every freaking day of my life then i get to go by the way i get to go home with my kids and then my five year old every day can we listen to randy orton song can we listen to trick wins can we rip cards can we watch wrestling like that's what it's about guys and girls this is what it's really about and i'm grateful that i get to do this every day but i'm grateful that we have this podcast now that i really get to let my passion out and i get my phone away from me and i get to talk for an almost two hours today this might be a record breaker podcast so if you stuck with this this long thank you thank you oh thank you yeah so like great great good great segments in on in my opinion yeah i mean it's like i mean you you've seen the video that topps has posted of of randy signing it you can see the rbi crew thing that ryan's sitting in front of as as part of that and like even like we've shown this slide now like twenty times like we've done this on twenty episodes and you can see like i i had that moment with with becky as well and like had i i gave her like a a package of cards for her daughter i was like hey i don't know if you collect your cards but here's a stack of stuff that you can give to rue she was like over the moon she's like are you sure like these are valuable cards are you sure you always want it i'm like yes absolutely like i have plenty so like i think like those types of moments really spread the the thrill of collecting and i think like when you get these grails in and you get these things that you get to put on your shelf because i i i say if a card is shelf worthy i go really really hard for it right so like if if that card ends up behind me in one of these cases that i have in my office like i go extra hard and part of it is because i get to share in that with all my friends and social media and stuff like that and that's really cool like i think that's a really cool experience now luckily i didn't have to give any money for these cards but the value of of all of them have are the biggest that i've ever done because i have a lot of brand equity that i've built up with people like jameson and like ryan and like bless online who has done a tremendous amount of work with me to process some of the things that i get from breaks and stuff like that nick like when we talk about everything that's going on with you know the the different consignment and what mike and everything is offering like those are ways to get money out of your collection and it's part of acquiring these other things like i may not have spent any money to get these cards that i didn't already have an equity in my collection but without working with swish without working with blaze online without working with mike if i if i needed to consign something or if i needed to process something through ryan or whatever those things wouldn't have been possible so again don't collect on an island be a part of the community do the things that we do every day we're we're here to to help you guys more than anything also wanted to give a shout out to babyface and sourface on their new podcast yep really good job there good job guys i tuned in the other night to listen i got to listen for a little bit while i was doing some work and i enjoyed it it's a great shout out to them great job on their podcast yeah it's always good to welcome new content creators to the space babyface not really a new one no you know a new podcast mhmm and like you know go listen to to all the other podcasts that are out there there's a lot of them i know tony and paul do stuff card foundation like we've mentioned them a lot here because it's a community effort right and as we get into the wrestling card takeover and we are running super long on this join us be a part of that be a part of the community come to chicago my family is gonna be there ryan's gonna be there all the people that we talk about all the time they're all not ryan's family i thought you're about to say that i'm like i knew you news to me that would be the worst experience of your life i love my family though because of all the busy it's hard to that week is that is a hard week on me and i just i don't have the time for it so yes go back go all the chlorophyll sorry no no so we're just wrapping this up thanks again to all of our sponsors for the event thanks to mike for joining us today we're gonna have more of our sponsors on next week we'll talk more about saturday night's main event clash in italy we've got a little bit of a break until cosmic i believe so hopefully we can go a little bit deeper into some collecting stuff for the first time in like weeks because it's been rapid fire yeah but yeah this has been wonderful man i'm glad to be back in the chair and we will welcome back yeah we we will see you guys next week ryan any closing thoughts before we wrap up here i will be holding the orton i guess when recording this i guess tomorrow or the next day it'll be back home so again we we can beat the the orton does the horse has finally been beaten i think everybody knows now that it's it's coming home to me but i'm again grateful for everybody along the way that had a part in it of any way shape or form may have been getting him here maybe the aftermath may have be documenting him may have be bidding on it again i'm very grateful for the people in my life and again it wouldn't be possible to do the things i do without those people so alberta has a wonderful week adam welcome back excited to get back on the horse with you next week again as we talk more about wrestling cards like we do every week and we will see you next week big ups see you later