we are back the national will not die not on my watch we will continue to have these conversations we're gonna be having one on the technical front today because that's what we do here on build for the hobby with my good friends at inferno red technology we typically have scott on these chats we have brought back an old character ed so we are tag teaming this episode we're gonna be talking about what the national revealed about the future of hobby tech which is a phrase that i heard scott say in the last episode and maybe scott have you copy gotten copyright for the hobby tech phrase so far i feel like this is this is on your brand no not yet but like i think that's like i've i've heard a bunch of different descriptions of like you know tech for the hobby and those types of things but i think and and you know maybe it works in our circle because when we say the hobby that means something to us you know in hobby tech people could be like oh are you talking about model planes are you talking about drones or and you're like they're a specific hobby but i think in our world it works so i'm gonna stick to it and yeah i i'll i'll submit the patent and the copyright when this is over so i i i felt compelled to dig into kind of what you both learned at the event and definitely wanna hit on enter the inferno and get some understanding on kind of that event and what came out on the other side i got a chance to catch up with ed in the back trails behind the convention center as we were both up early and at it and scott we i think we are like ships passing in the night we didn't get a chance to connect but that's what we're doing here maybe just like just to open it up before we get into the technical side of everything how was the national for you like did you come home with any cards what was your overall read on just the volume of people running around at this crazy show it was a blast i mean i think this was my fifth or sixth national each time it gets better excuse me for in front of red each time we see more and more clients we meet more and more people we find more and more opportunities so that's always exciting just like at the collector level i had a ton of fun walking around there's never enough time to see everything but i love i just love walking around i love looking at showcases full of stuff i can't afford and what i'll dream of having and spending hours looking through a five dollar box and ending up with nothing because i'm just like but it's fun i think probably the best cards i ended up bringing home were actually for my my wife and kids i got a couple disney cards like lady and the tramp from like nineteen eighty nine or something like that for the girls and then i got an ironman card for my wife she loves ironman so those are probably the cooler things that i brought home and just some like random baseball cards for myself but oh i bought a box of the wrestling cards actually i had no idea what i was doing i just wanted to open something so got a hobby box of aew and open it up and that that was fun that's awesome scott did you did you come home with any cards oh my god so i mean i think i mean i was there with obviously with our team but i was also there with my son and my son was there with his partners in crime so steel cuda cards was there and wagers which is their their brand were there and they man they we sold our lebron our our bgs eight five lebron x factor that we had we sold that so it's kinda crazy like when everything happens in the the vip areas at the the real big deals i mean obviously they happen on the floor but there's like these people set up basically take over the vip area as almost like a private show so if you have the vip passes like you're able to kinda walk around there and like there were some pretty heavy hitters buying and selling in the in the walmart kids section of the rehab pee area which is where you know some five figure deals were going down and so yeah so we i was excited we we the the biggest one of the biggest deals that i think we made which i thought was cool like the lebron obviously was big but we had pulled my sons and i and i think i probably talked about this on a previous episode but if not we pulled the tom brady one of one product hit from signature football a few months ago and did you know two day or five day whatever the walk through grading is and got a psa ten on the auto on authentic on the card this is the one zero one and we traded that for a jordan number to twenty three wizards patch auto which has a wizard season ticket holder i think is cool it's a very low pop on that card because he only played for three years and you know love it or hate it like if you're a bulls diehard and jordan didn't exist the wizards like whatever but that card you know was basically free in trade with the with the the tom brady auto so you know i thought that was cool that was my favorite pickup oh and one other card the christopher also picked up a psa six bill russell rookie that's super super clean so those are like the two our two favorite cards from the the national it sounds like the beginning of a michael jordan wizards pc is in order i feel like i mean i have a michael jordan pc as it is when you know when you start to get into the autos like they jump you know five you know four to five figures and there's a comma in the number doesn't matter right like so you know a hand a hand number to twenty three jordan auto that's super clean and graded is is pretty awesome so yeah you're right it's a problem but you know the market's crazy like you can't you can't jump into like lebron and steph and jordan and kobe like these numbers are like covid numbers so yes it is a crazy time certainly and i think it's just a wild type of innovation in the across the industry you know we twenty twenty five national we connected talked and you know a year later we've been doing these podcast episodes about the hobby tech and the happenings and i figured that maybe a good place to start would just be to get some sort of kind of like on the ground floor field report and ed you mentioned you've been to several nationals before and this i would imagine from a tech perspective technology might might have been more out in the open and glaring than ever before but maybe we'll start with just like what felt different from a tech presence at the national this year based on your observations yeah i mean it's it's definitely shown up more and more i think one of the the first things that comes to mind was just tops and their rapid redemption was based on technology where in the past it was based on standing in a line for hours and you know it may not have appealed to everybody given that it was more like a lottery type system and not everybody could get it but it was it was tops trying to innovate on a on something that they've done for a long time and i think that part of it was probably successful especially if you were one of the ones that actually got you know got to get the cards so that was that was neat to see and i'm sure that they'll take feedback and improve on that and all but i think the point is like technology they used it in a way that actually made sense and and cut down on lines wrapping around and people having to give up like two or three hours of walking around the show to you know to to get those packs a couple years ago i was in that line and scott called me he was like hey we got a meeting get over here and i was like i've been in line for like forty five minutes i can't walk out now so it's good to good that they're they're making improvements on that one of the other thing that i'll i'll i'll let scott answer too but i noticed and this may have been in the past but it's the first time i noticed that pristine auctions was doing like live auctions just for people at the show so you if you downloaded the app or you had the app then you could like actually participate and bid on items that only people at the show were able to bid on was my understanding so that was nikka's walking around looking at the stuff and they were actually like putting the item you could go and see the physical item there but then use the app to bid on it and then if you wanted you walk right up to their booth and get it it and lead with it which is pretty neat the way of them engaging their audience kind of across technology and in person so scott based on just those examples you see new ways to do business i think the tops example is a pretty strong one but do you do those create signals for you just as the leader of a a tech business on hey this is growing there might be more opportunities and more opportunities that the inferno red tech team can plug in and start helping some of these companies out i think that the i do think the live drops were a cool idea it made it i mean that was actually way way more efficient than the wrapper redemption as ed said and i do it created this weird thing though that happened and i don't know if this happens i don't feel like it happened with like the silver packs or the or the tops redemptions before which is like you would literally like join the join the drop find out if you got them go pick them up the next day or later that evening and there would be hoards of people standing outside to like immediately buy them and like so it was just like you didn't it was almost like you were going to the atm right because especially for like some of like the you know the nba boxes and and depending on which one you got not so much for your wwe or would i don't remember which one it was but there was that was an interesting kinda side effect i don't know if like tops knew that was gonna happen and i think though like to your point about like because there's things to do i mean i think it's funny like the more things change the more they stay the same is kind of the way that i was looking at it ed and i were talking about this like the the friction at the table and in the negotiation and the sales of what are people buying and selling cards still looks exactly the same as it did for the last several years and it's not even just at the national it's you know we we do a lot of my son does a lot of like card shows now and so him and his partners are out there like you know doing the same thing over and over again and i feel like there's still opportunity in that space to reduce the friction of buying and selling without taking away the barter that is like kind of the enjoyment of like negotiation and buying cards that you'd like and trying to feel like you got it at a good price and you know not feel like everybody's you know trying out to to get as much margin as they can so i think there's opportunity there but fundamentally like i think the ecl and and and and the auction i don't know i feel like the auction my opinion on the auction thing it was it it was cool that they did it but i i think it's kinda gimmicky like at the same because they're just trying to press people to to to go home and like later work on you know bid on their platforms which i get that's what they're supposed to do but the the drops are pretty cool so i don't know i feel like they're that spot that i just mentioned in the the negotiation buying selling space has some some room to grow or has some some opportunities that i know ed and i are gonna work on the weekend and knock them out see how it goes right ed no i'm going to vegas this weekend i'm sure so not this weekend the i would imagine you you both were busy in conversations and in meetings running around meeting with brands talking about just projects ideas innovations i'm curious was there any constant themes just in your whether they were set up meetings in advance or just organic meetings that you were having on the fly did were there any themes that continue to pop up that after the national was over you're like alright this is something that continue to come up in these chats let's dig into this a little bit further i mean ai comes up no matter what now and whether it's how can you use ai to solve whatever the problem is that you're talking about or is it can you use it as a solution or are you how are you using ai to to build things talking to other developers and just talking about like the the different things that we're doing where it's speeding us up where it can slow us down or where not where it slows down but where we can you know become more efficient things like that so it was it was neat i had some pretty cool conversations like with tim for example and like what he's doing and just the the amount of stuff that can get done so that that's pretty pretty regular conversation as far as like specifics about the hobby can't think of anything but i i think like i think that the there's a there's something that we're so there's a couple things like i think that we're there's the the consumer facing experience right like to the buying selling the drops like the the comps and like all everything that's like the you know the arena club repacks like that all like all of that kinda stuff right there's there's that type of innovation and products that are out there digital with upper deck and just fan engagement and things like that but then i also think like one of the this is probably more of a conversation to have with people who work at these companies and as they grow we're seeing a lot of opportunity for like operational efficiencies so internally like how they run their sales like how how they're actually doing their their engagement like what are they doing to be more efficient internally and what happens is like any this is probably true we see it in different industries as well where like you know the operational efficiency and effectiveness of the organization then reflects on the quality of the products that come out the door so if you can get better at your job internally and spend more time working on things that matter for the hobby or to the customer that's better right that's that's there's a lot of people talking about that right now and and without peeking into you know the inner workings of the the largest players i can't imagine that there's not if they're not doing it they should be and if they don't think they have they absolutely do have ways to improve in that space and it's just the burden of doing it had always been high right like you need to stop and think and then then actually make those changes was like technically involved and now that i think that that is a much easier easy is not the right word it's a much more realistic return on the investment if you work with companies who can do you know things like your traditional business you know process analysis but then can take an engineer who's a business solution minded developer and understands ai and then start to apply you know efficiency to the work that they do and that frees those people up to like i said work on product or get closer to the customer so i mean i think that's a really good use case for for ai in the hobby it's more you know business focused you know but at the end of the day it'll trickle down into the the ecosystem of the of the average person maybe the traits of the individuals at those hobby businesses that are leading the charge on this sort of thing or maybe not necessarily leading the charge that might be an aggressive word but are willing to have a conversation about how to implement ai and services that inferno red technology provides to help them or help their people focus on their jobs like where where are we at right now in the industry is it like one of those things that ai has become such a megatrend across all industries that inevitably these leaders feel like they need to do something is there a stronger level of sophistication where they have tried something now they're looking to take it to the next level maybe help us understand where businesses are at right now in terms of like adoption of ai to improve kinda their overall operations yeah i think i think that we're in a we're in a period of time where it's such a weird period of time because i think that the we're past the general understanding that this is not just a fad that this is like this is changing the way we work and you were you were coming out of the fear of ai is going to take all of our jobs and now we're starting to look and say okay if it's gonna change the way we work and it's not gonna take my job then where does it actually help benefit me as a person or me as a worker or if you're higher up in the the organization how does it create a more effective you know organization whether you're building a product like you're at a you're you're at one of the manufacturers and you're building cards and and trying to do that or you're you're building an infrastructure to ingest and then put out into you know ebay like a dc sports you start to think about that and what that return looks like i think that there's there's been hundreds and probably thousands of companies who have done projects in small you know some people who've actually probably done pretty big ones but smaller tests and experiments to see if like this is something they can get an roi and it's very hard to do in like very small increments and see like the bigger picture and like really test it but they're also now like no longer afraid to actually do those types of experiments and tests and if they work with i think teams people like whether it's internally on their own teams just people who are willing to take the time and effort to invest and to properly use the tools just like any tool because they can be misused they you can trust them too much they can they can do these tools can do a lot of good but they can also steer you in the wrong direction and and set you back if you're not careful and that's where you burn up all the roi but once you you know i think that the the hobby starts to see that if you find the right business problem you see the right place to put the effort and you bring the right people in or you have the right people internally to do it you can really start to see some benefits both in time advantages money return on the investment both of those things i think if you if you think that ai is going to say or it's going to reduce the amount of work you do as a worker i think that's that is a false truth like if anything especially on the engineering side and ed can attest to this like it you just end up you just go faster and the intensity and the the amount of work that you can do and this like whole thing takes over where you're just like if i'm not working like you almost feel like you're not you know you're wasting time because this thing that you control can continue to go and you have to really work hard at like not burning you know ten fifteen hours a day just because you're like just one more one more answer one more prompt one more one more kickoff one more agent blah blah blah because these things don't sleep and so there's you know there's a human impact to it as well but i do think as as these companies mature their their operations and they mature their technical capabilities and they see that they can get products to market faster they can respond to clients faster they can they can actually focus on the thing that makes the hobby great and you know maybe even getting grading done faster who knows you know i have the whole article in psa magazine about their mix of human and ai like they need to be telling those stories without spooking people on like how cards are graded because the value shifts so much but i don't know that's a long winded version of like where i think things are kind of in the state they are right now and i think anybody has an opportunity to to take advantage of of the the good that can come from this i'm a i mean i'm a positive ai thinker so i'm not shy about that we we know that appreciate the breakdown ed before we move over to enter the inferno and i wanna learn more about that maybe touch on i would love to understand from your seat as someone hands on the keyboard building stuff like obviously like you've built your career on the back of you know writing code engineering and now you're entering this new world where like scott said you could just be running stuff all the time calling new agents endless code like for someone who is hands on the keyboard doing the work specifically pointing at these companies within the hobby that you're supporting like how has this all been a shift for you like how dramatically of a change has it been for you to approach your job on a day to day basis with these new with access to new tools and just like a change of mindset about how inferno red does business i mean i'm the i'm the same way it's very positive i i like it i i love the fact that i can focus more on the problem i can focus more on the solution and i can i think of it as i can use all my expertise that i've developed i've been writing software since i was fifteen i i can use all that experience i've built up over the years to apply to something that can just do it way faster and so i'm not handing over anything as far as like one handing over capability but like i'm not expecting it to do it while i don't do it like i still have a very big role in it and a part of my process and the process that we do it in front of red is we make sure that there are points in our workflow where the human is in the loop and that's because we have expertise we have experience we've seen what happens when certain things aren't thought through we know what questions to ask whereas somebody that might just be they have a great idea and they have now the capability to to build that out and see it and see it come to life and get feedback which is all great and and but they they don't know what's what's next or they might not know the challenges that they might face going to production or how do they handle data ingestion and things like that data security and authentication and deployment and scaling and rate limiting there's just so many things that you you wouldn't know unless you've been doing this for a long time and i think that that's that's the part where i've enjoyed being able to kinda take a step back look over the shoulder of ai as it's doing it and and and steer it and like have conversations with claude about like the architecture and the decisions that we wanna do and lock those in as we go forward and so that's fun i've also as much as i like writing code i probably haven't written hardly any code in like the last almost year now which is kind of sad but at the same time it's it's been a lot of fun like helping shape what this process looks like for our company and for our clients also i mean since the last time we talked or on this on this podcast like in the old world i would have been like yeah i built like two new features on my current project but now it's like i've actually probably built and delivered two or three products and just there's how else can you do that like this this makes that possible and i think that's extremely valuable and and i like it a lot and it's fun so yeah and i and i think it's i think it's great just to kinda go back to the the part about like the people that might not have the developer expertise i think that's a good thing because it allows them to just focus on their idea and then that's where you know i know we're talking about the inner the inferno but i think that's kinda where we can jump in and help them and so yeah can we add one i'm sorry to interrupt you i one there's two weird things that happen as well i think that ed's ed kinda highlighted the one of the most important things which is like we've we've beat this to death it's just you know you get a chance as an engineer to use your expertise right your expertise judgment and taste like those are the three human aspects that are still in the loop as part of you but there's this other weird thing that happens that i think is like i don't wanna paint everything as like perfectly rosy and like life is so much better when you you know you take the the blue pill or the red pill like we we've had some conversations with our team where the the actual exercise of writing and building a solution for whatever the thing is like whatever the company or business problem is you gain a lot of expertise and subject matter expertise on the thing that you're doing right so like if you're building let's say you're building for i don't know like a a company that presses records because you have records from your ideas so it triggered so like and you build some solution that helps them be better at pressing records you learn the process or you learn whatever it is you're doing when you're when you're in the world that we're living in now you you lose some of that time it's spent on target where you're trying to learn and understand the problem that you're solving so it accelerates the time to solution or the time to market but it it takes away some of the learning opportunities to become subject matter experts on the thing that you're doing and that you have to really be careful and the cognizant of that and you and it takes additional effort by the humans involved to to stay engaged and understand and i think that's really really important so like it's so easy just to like be like boom done like hand wave i don't even know what it does like good job i don't know how it did it but i know that it like you know one plus one is two and then you just kinda walk away but what you didn't know is like all the you know what it took to actually you know do the thing that you're doing and not even just technically like i think in technical is one thing because you can you know it's it's great that it'll do something that you would take you a year to learn how to do but it's another one that like replaces the business acumen around the thing that is that you're doing it for and i think that that's really that has to be like intentional not to lose that and we we're we're we're seeing that right like the team has gone like yeah but i don't i understand what they do but like i would have been way deeper by now i mean or i would have had i would not may not not way deeper by now i would have spent more time because i would have had more time on the project working on it building it than i did so anyways so i just wanted to make that point but you were talking about enter the inferno yeah no i i just think it's important to get kind of your point of view on the way you're approaching your work and servicing your clients as we lead into enter the inferno we talked about it last time you were on and there was a lot of just mystery around like who the people were what they were building we didn't wanna kinda let the cat out of the bag before the event but you both were judges hobby tech was on the main stage which is a good signal for the future of tech in the industry on saturday but yeah i would love to get some feedback from you on just like what you saw what the pitches were who won what the idea was like yeah just any anywhere you wanna go with it i'll let you start on this one scott yeah okay so first of all it was awesome it was really really cool i think you know there's so much going on to national i understand that like you know people walking past the stage and if they weren't if they weren't paying attention or they were focused on cards like it would have been and they're kinda easy to to miss what we were doing but despite that and despite all the stuff happening you know on the first floor you know i think that we had a really good showing on the second floor i think that the promotion we did was great and the concept you know jeremy lee came up with the idea and we worked on it together and you know shout out to erin grace of storybook consulting like she's our fractional marketing officer and she's incredible she organized and ran the show and worked with the national and the team at the national to get you know it produced so i just wanted to call erin out and she'll play this back and and be like thank you for that but anyways so i think like that part of it was like incredible i think it was fun to have doctor beckett on the stage you know i think we had a chance before the event after rehearsals to walk with him like across the like around the show floor and just kinda hear his like history and experience in the hobby and like when he was at beckett and like when he what things were different and how things have changed and yet how much they stay the same as i said earlier that was cool the the event itself and we had some really good submissions we had i think we had fourteen or fifteen submissions from some pretty interesting hobby tech concepts we narrowed it down to four ed i think it's four and i apologize it's just a blur like how much time like how things are moving and we had a we i think infernal red decided to either support or offer some support to three out of the four there were some really great ideas like nobody won or lost i'll be clear like you know this was not an event where we felt there was like winners and losers it was really to highlight what people were doing in this in the in hobbytech and how they were trying to bring their ideas to better better serve the hobby or to do something meaningful and you know my favorite personal favorite one was the one i forget his name i do have this but like some this idea of like tracking rainbows and it's a it's kind of a spin on set creation but this platform to like almost to gamify the idea of like collecting rainbows of of inserts and being able to show like preview what inserts might look like if even if you haven't seen them and he was so nervous when he was presenting which is which is kind of crazy i mean i didn't think about the nervousness of of the thing because i was like i don't care i'll talk to anybody anywhere so i don't get nervous anymore but it was kinda cool to see like people like get a chance to to talk and present and pitch their ideas and i hope that they they follow-up with us and we're gonna follow-up with them and try to steer them in the right direction and give them some support whether it's you know advisory or technical and doctor beckett was doing the same and he you know his his pitch was his his advice and his engagement is always free and he does that because he wants to support the hobby and then jeremy wants to have a chance to highlight and give a voice to these people and their ideas while having him on his podcast which i think is very generous of him so it all came together well and i hope that we get a chance to do it next year at the at the national next year and we'll have more time to prepare we had a very short window this year because it came up late and we pitched it and they liked it so maybe we'll make it bigger and better next year ed what were your observations any fun ideas that resonated with you things that you were saying that were interesting yeah they were they were all interesting and the thing that i liked the most especially from the technical perspective was that they all had something functioning whether it was a prototype or like a like a you know beta out in like out in production actually like with users so i thought that was great most of the ideas actually all of the ideas were were grounded in like experience like as as collectors what they would want or even in a couple cases like firsthand experience couple of the ideas had to do with with tracking like card theft and and those were based one one of those was based off of like actually having her card stolen and having to deal with that and so she's created a product around it and so just seeing seeing the fact that these ideas were created out of actual passion and and like living in the hobby and understanding the hobby and and the problems that can come up come up or like the things that we wanna accomplish or like scott said you know like just having fun but making it based off of something that he and his son that that particular guy him and his son had done so i thought that was really cool but again like they all had actual things that they had started building so that to me was was really promising because that shows they have some skin in the game they've kind of already proved out their idea they've they've gotten feedback in in most cases and so they're kind of ready to to take it to the next level so so i've heard a couple things in this chat from the both of you i think there are two sides of this and i this is something i've been trying to like be very intentional about calling out for the audience and i think it'd be interesting in terms of the build to understand from your perspective where most of the focus is right now because scott you mentioned like at the beginning of this conversation like helping businesses operate better right help employees focus in on their roles and you know specialize their time through the use or implementation of ai and tech and then like i hear this rainbow example and that's like a more more collector focus more b to c do do you guys think that like the most of the focus when it comes to building right now in this space is focused on like pointing it at the collector or is it more focused on pointing it at the businesses that can better improve what they're doing so that they can create better experiences for the collector like b to b versus kinda b to c like where are we at right now i think i mean i think it's i think it's heavily on the collector right i mean i think there's a lot of people focused on the collector's experience but they're i feel like they're all solving like the same problem we saw a lot of people submit the same thing right it's like how can you show like give tools to make it easier for people to price cards and see trends and like you know like the same things that card letter do that card letter does card hq you know pick your pick your alt pick your platform and they all kinda do the same thing you know the safety and security piece of it is still also like you know around secure safety or around fraud and that's still consumer focused even though it's like they they kinda pitch it towards the the card stores or the vendors but i don't really think that that's who they're actually trying to protect i mean trying to protect people from buying fraudulent things so you know it's i don't know that you would even expect though to see like you know we see a little bit more on the backside on the business to business side because of the work that we do and just the nature of our business we're not like direct to consumer so you know i i see that opportunity there growing is why i said what i said earlier about not only just efficiency but also like platforms and and building things that actually drive revenue for their businesses i mean that's any business right that's where the investment is unless they're nonprofit even nonprofits drive revenue but i think like that's it's hard to see that if you're not like you know in the in the mix so i i don't know i think that i think that there's kinda wait and see like where the really big bets will pay off for tech you know not even just ai just like solving problems that people care about and matter at the end of the day it's like what you have to do to to to make money or to have an impact regardless of ai so i don't know i like to see what i like to see something innovative come out that i haven't seen in a while whether it's virtual or vr or ar engagements or you know the drops getting more fun more effective more efficient something to like make you know opening a store like what what are what's gonna happen to lcs like is it good or bad that brady's gonna open a hundred stores or i don't even not i mean the that vault is gonna open or whatever the brady vault what is it called card vault card vault thank you card vault card vault sponsored by tom brady like is that good or bad right like in what's gonna how do you compete if you're an lcs against something like that you know it's kinda like the you know the i don't know it's not a walmart per se but like it's you know a specialty store that has a lot more fun funds and if it's sponsored and supported by you know fanatics and and which is ultimately tops like does that mean like the allocation goes down for lcs or my son was saying like no dad it's probably the opposite that they're just gonna print more stuff to like flood the market and they don't want intentionally flood the market but they're gonna have to get get allocations out to all of these stores because they're gonna like put a hundred new stores into the market there's not enough stuff to go around so they'll just are they gonna just create more products like those are nontechnical issues that i think that are really kind of interesting in the hobby right now and so those are kind of the things i track but i know i kinda swerved off see i i i hallucinated and went down a different direction on i i wanna go back to kind of what you're talking about and it sounds like maybe you had a you were talking post national about this between yourselves regarding like this traditional way people going human to human people talking and doing deals at shows and like there hasn't been much disruption to that that's just something that's always been but surrounding these people making deals person to person there's all these conversations and products and people kinda pitching next wave of innovation in the hobby i was having a conversation on one of my shows with john a friend john on the football card podcast and he was talking about like something simple and it like has stuck with me and he was like a problem he had at the national was the fact that like it was so busy and you have all these dealers set up and you can't really see what's in their cases because there's so much traffic so he made reference to like which i'm thinking this is probably a space problem but like what if each dealer had like a video board and it was just like a presentation of like here are the cards that are available big cards so like you can actually see what's in the case when you have a high traffic show like that so i think like to me like that was like simple but like yeah that would be a that would help solve a problem of not being able to see cards because it's too busy when do you think i'm sorry to interrupt you one of our pitches like was like the somebody had an idea of like trying to get people to like list or register the cards they would have in their in their case at the show right or at a show what it was called like show manager i forget exactly what it was called card show i think card show oh that's right card show the problem is like even on a thing like that you're you're in these spaces right like it's a cool concept but there's just it will never get adopted there's like so many of these platforms where people are like i just take a picture of your case and instantly who is it that does that it's an m they had they were they were pitching like the instant catalog of like you take a picture of a case it catalogs everything identifies it creates a list for you like your creature inventory manage inventory that way like it's just the friction is it's not good enough and it doesn't solve a big enough problem for dealers who are actually at a show negotiating in real time especially at a high traffic show like the national or burbank or wherever where like they're not they're just like it's too it's just too much right like they're focused on like the deal like the conversations like they're buying and selling a lot of people right so they're they're literally pulling they got a stack of cards in front of them they're looking at and then they got random people walking up and saying like can i see this we take a hundred for that like and so you know the problems are like pulling comps having a negotiation agreeing on the buy and sell percentage and then agreeing on the payment method like those are the things that happen in a transaction at a card show and if you i think it would be cool to make it easy to show what's in the box or even to like it it's interesting to to try and entice people to come to your table and find things you're looking for but i also think there's an element of the the show that that takes away from like the ma or the the husband and the wife or the mom and the dad the kids walking around with their their family or their friends and looking at cards and finding them and like treasure hunting like there's a treasure hunt aspect to walking around a card show and not everyone is like immediately going in and like trying to go right to the thing right to the one they want there's some people obviously you know buying selling flipping whatever but there's just people who are just trying to to browse and want to find that thing that they didn't know they needed and and that's a really important part of it and i think that's the majority of the people that are there that being said you and i have had this conversation i do think that you should also empower the people who are in the business or in the hobby for the business of the hobby and are you know are trying to treat cards as investments or you know vehicles for for generating profit which i don't think is bad in general like i don't think it should be the only thing but i think it but you need to embrace it because that's how cards move around from place to place frankly buying and selling so anyways that's my opinion that's the part that i think that matters to to the hobby experience at a show ed when we think about like these these two worlds of innovation bringing new tech in making things simpler and easier versus kind of this old school nature that scott was describing that some people just wanna walk in and browse and they've got all the time in the world and they're old school i guess like what what do you think the balance is between the adoption and the creation or the creation and adoption new solutions versus just kinda keeping things the way it's always been like i know you're not only a collector who goes and browse but you're a a builder of tech so like how do you see those two worlds playing kind of right now and then just into the future i think it'll it'll work its way in but i mean this is one of those cases where you'll know right away whether you're doing it for the sake of forcing you know because you wanna use technology or because it's a natural fit if it's a natural fit it'll work its way in and you won't sacrifice the the human element or the the person to person element i mean nothing to me personally and yes i my whole career has been technology but i also hate technology at the same time i hate seeing like the amount of time my kids spend on their phones or or whatever it is like i'm always just grumpy about technology even though it's what i do but so same thing here it's like yeah i i could see cool cards on instagram all day but like the the time that i'm at a show and i actually see one in person for the first time is like first time i've ever seen that specific card like nothing really can change that like seeing it online and then seeing it in person is like it's like seeing a celebrity or something it's like a rare sighting it's a neat thing and and you just technology won't change that no matter how many feeds or or apps or or things i can look at cards online like seeing them in person is always gonna be fun and i think probably the same thing with doing deals i think doing deals in person is there's probably a lot more fun in that as well than there than it is just doing it blindly you know not knowing who you're working with online so i think i think it'll continue to work its way in technology into the hobby where it makes sense and it it and it won't i don't think it'll ever take away because there's too many of us that just want the the real thing so okay i love this great perspectives and point of view and as we're rounding the corner on this conversation maybe scott take us home when we return to the national next year inevitably we will be there is there anything you're looking for that or signals you see now that might impact the change of that show this year or is it just too early to tell like what's your perspective what is it like the the way too early like after the championship yes that's this is the way too early prediction yes way too early predictions i think the steelers have won the super bowl at this time we're celebrating the kickoff of a new year and a new quarterback i think the the national is gonna continue to be like the show i think we'll see like i think fanatics fest is carving out a pretty big name and part of the of the hobby i think that the whole comic con social celebrity cultural aspect of fanatics fest has has an actual strong place in in this in this hobby world it's kind of interesting i didn't go this year my son was there i went the first year but i don't think it took away at all from like the national and and in fact like how strong the card show market or the card show industry is right now and how it's spreading it seems like every weekend somewhere there's like another one popping up so i think that's gonna continue to be the story like the number of shows i'm again i i think that it'd be interesting to see what happens with card vault and i'm really excited to see like which one of these enter the inferno participants gets launched and and makes an impact in the hobby so i'm excited to be part of that and then we'll be back i hope at the national jeremy lee myself ed and when i don't know if doctor beckett will be back or not like we'll see if he's he's there or we'll have some other celebrity host try to get tim try to get you who knows we'll figure it out but but we'll be back with the internet in one way shape or form always good talking cards and hobby tech with scott and ed looking forward to doing this again soon alright thanks brett thanks ed thanks man bye