what's going on we are back card ladder confidential i have done a lot of content with the cardlider team over the years and a lot of different configurations but i think this is the first this is a one of one configuration and i think it's going to be exciting i'm pumped i am joined by josh and christina this time so we've got josh and christina on the program i am very pumped for this the topic we're gonna talk about signal versus substance what actually holds the hobby together and a whole lot more but josh i talk to you regularly on this so i'm gonna ask christina first christina how's it going welcome to card ladder confidential we have been in a lot of communication behind the scenes on this show and just us working together but and we've done content together but this is the first time you've been on this show how are you doing i'm doing well i'm excited i'm for normal listeners i'm filling in for chris as you know who usually is here like you get one chris you get another what's the difference there's actually a big difference that everyone knows but yeah i'm super stoked thanks for inviting me and it's a pleasure to be on the screen with joshua and yeah let's let's dive in i'm excited i always appreciate the christina and josh dynamic especially when i'm consuming crossover so it'll be fun to bring it to life here we usually start with a cold open question and we are going to start with a cold open question and we'll start with you christina i wanna know right now twenty twenty six it's almost march or it'll be march when this goes live what is one thing and it can be in the hobby or it can be at the industry level what is one thing right now in this space that gets you really excited oh this is a good one one thing well i mean it kinda goes into what we were like going to talk about coming up but like we just came off of a show and now i'm gearing up for national and like i'm super stoked for july like and to be with everyone in rosemont so i'm gonna say shows shows get me like super stoked in twenty twenty six there's like an energy and we'll dive into it in a little bit but i'll just tease it like that i love the tease we are going to be talking about shows i honest it's what's crazy about this is this is the second conversation i've had today where the national and planning has come up and it's not mean it's just now starting march as this goes live and i think the hobby as a whole is getting ahead of their planning schedule which is a lot of fun i'm excited to talk shows josh what what excites you most right now it's that but like more specifically just like being at the booth and like having the card ladder team there and then like customers asking for help or just saying something to us and then like hanging out with you guys and having the whole like hobby crew just sort like be there altogether as my i'm looking forward to that as always and and there's this show we just went to is like a reminder that's like this is my favorite part perfect segue into the west coast card show and i'm excited to talk about this experience with both of you i have not had a conversation yet with anyone who is at the event in this format i've traded some dms but let's just start with the show itself and we can go in a lot of different directions maybe we'll start here and christine i'll point this at you but like cardladder has been setting up at these shows for a a long time and i know you are very particular and very good at making sure that the activation continues to grow evolve become a place where not only your team feels comfortable but people feel comfortable interacting with the brand and i've been it's this is a testament to your planning but so many people have said to me man like what i wanna do is kinda try to do something like card ladder where it's like people are just comfortable being around the space and i think that's not easy to come by at an event like the national or any of these other shows but let's start there with like the setup and how you showed up to the west coast card show like what's your feedback like how did it go anything you wanna share and we'll just dive in as you kinda launch off yeah well first off i wanted to give a huge shout out to nick stiff arm wax who's our creative and who every single show we go to steps up his game somehow and creates the most amazing graphics for our booth so we were at the west coast card show and i was chatting with him and i was actually driving at sunset on a freeway in california and there were like palm trees on both sides of the road and like an exit sign and the sky was just like that gorgeous california's like golden sunset look and i was talking to him and i took a picture and i was like this because we were talking about what the booth looks like what it's going to look like and he came out with this awesome like green on green like keeping it card ladder and recognizable but a great background of the exit sign saying west coast card show and like having card ladder branded there and then like outlines of palm trees and the la like cityscape and it just looked phenomenal as it always does when he puts a spin on our booth and our brand couldn't like i i have the best team and that includes josh but like yeah so i think the thing that we always what i always struggled with when planning booths is why would someone come up to a tech company and waste time with us when there's really cool cards in the room like i personally and i know josh and chris as well especially when they run away from the booth as soon as i turn my back we'd rather be on the floor looking at cards like we love you guys you guys are great but like we would rather be enjoying the cards in the room than like standing at our booth so we have to make card ladder useful like booth useful in some way so we're charging station and then for west coast card show we did a merch drop of new hoodies which were really popular at national so yeah so i'm actually wearing one of my new hoodies now and still partnered with amaj or homage as i think chris calls it but yeah so you know we just the goal is to have somewhere you can land i guess like the show floor is never easy on your feet like we all know we're all using our phones to comp cards or message people who aren't there or we're trying to meet up with someone the internet's always kind of spotty so it drains your battery quicker and then like we wanna see your cards too like if if we can't leave and go see cool cards like we expect you to bring the cool cards to us like show us what you just picked up show us what you're like looking to sell on the floor to different dealers like come to us with like cool conversations because the that's what we're here for so i think i i really appreciate like you like giving me the nod there it's totally a team effort like josh and chris bring the great conversations and like josh is there to like help with any tech support people need and you know we're just we're just there to like give you free candy and a place to plug in your phone like but bring the cards so that we can all have fun in this experience that we all enjoy doing together speaking of cards this is one of my observations from the national which was one of my favorite parts and josh i'd love to get your insight on this but one of the cool parts about the setup is that it becomes a magnet for collectors who use cardladder who consume cardladder content and they wanna meet everyone and then of course we do what we do is show our cards josh is from west coast card show like are there any memorable cards and conversations that you are left with from that show where you that's just like what you're thinking about now it's like someone bringing up something to the booth showing you their collection maybe showing you a pickup something that they're selling like what stands out yeah it's usually like a side conversation that i have with like one individual collector where we're talking about cards and life and stuff like that i usually remember those the most it's funny listening to you guys talk about how the booth is like yeah we are a tech company and it like doesn't make a lot of sense for us to like be the popular booth but we've just been like you know what like you're not here to like sign up necessarily or like get a promo code you're probably just here to hang out and we just kinda lean into that and it's like part of our brand you know like we're part of the hobby as well the you know the founders of the company are here to represent and and do the same thing you guys are all here to do which is like collect and chat cards so like we just kinda lean into that and we've like maximized the incentives for you to come hang out with us because we can't leave the booth so like we'll just bring you to us with free stuff and couches and charging stations and it's perfect is there so we have this perception and maybe it's this instagram bubble where we kind of can tell like what cards are trending like the records the highest prices that people like screenshot from cardladder and post on their instagram stories i always am tried because i'm you know i have three little ones i don't get to get out much i'm always like trying to measure is is what i'm reading on instagram like real life or not like you were in the mix real life like with collectors with people buying selling trading i'm curious like was there like anything specifically whether it's like category going up rare cards that were available that might not be rare cards like what stood out to you in terms of like the mix of that show that's maybe not as big as the national but maybe like the next tier down like what are some of the observations and things that that you saw christine we'll start with you okay sweet well for anyone who doesn't know this version of the west coast card show was sports only and that's like key so you were like i i believe there was like a a rule that you had to have at least eighty percent sports in your display i'm not don't quote me on that i that's what like someone told me and then i heard it repeated but i don't know if that's rumor or actual hard fast rule but you could tell that these were sports dealers and sports collectors who showed up and they wanted to see sports cards and it was awesome like as someone who collects basketball and dabbles in hockey like i was just so stoked to be able to go to every table and see cool cards that i would collect or that really speak to my interests instead of kind of like walking by a few tables like in the show floor where you're just like oh like not for me and keep walking so that i thought was really cool and i thought they did a great job like shout out to the west coast card show team jay and donald and their entire group for one making us feel at home like on the west coast like which is our old stomping grounds we used to go to jay and donald's show when chris and i lived in la and we're part of the hobby scene pre card ladder so like it was a nice nod to see all of those people that we we used to hang out with at trade nights at like bullpen and burbank like every saturday night like so it was really fun to do that and then like yeah they just organized the heck out of that show to keep it sports and i thought that it was such a win like i i i could gush over it for the next hour like yeah what what were some of your observations just in terms of like inventory mix cards you're seeing cards yes if they were transacting yeah so like i was told that there was a lot of money in the room by dealers like they they definitely said that i didn't like there were i mean jeremy lee picked up a bunch of like early two thousands baseball memorabilia stuff that he showed on his show like i picked up a nice card that we'll talk about later that is a side side pc of mine i saw like you know this the like regulars with their high end like lebrons and jordans and lukas and yeah i just i don't like i i never get to the show floor that much like i think i was like three rows in and like chris came and ran me like down and he was like i need you back at the booth like like on saturday so the fact that i got like through three rows i was pretty stoked about but i think yeah josh took a lot longer walk and he could probably talk about this better yeah josh what what did you see what kind of cards what kind of action what was what stood out to you it felt like a a solid like dallas show with more sports than dallas because dallas has been a lot of pokemon mix with so i echo what christina said it was really nice having the sports only and i think that was probably a product of this show being very open to listening to what people's ideas were and what they're after and you know people have been saying for years like national needs like a this is the sports section this is pokemon and i think these guys took that and they're like we should just do this for the whole show and i thought it worked out really well the cards i saw i did a couple laps i was like looking for the football one on one stuff i found a few like select jamar chase blacks i saw a lot of like usual stuff you know kabooms and downtowns and high end and autographs exquisite there was like a lot a lot of high end stuff i there was like very little pokemon like they did i feel like they did a really nice job not that pokemon's bad but if you're like if you're gonna market sports only i think you should definitely like try to enforce that because people are coming in with that assumption and i think they did a nice job of that what about maybe before we move on to the next topic i'm curious the kinda i don't know like these shows i'm always it it what matters so much to me is always like the the the dealers that are taking the time to invest in going up to these shows and setting up their inventory and we all know like through the history of going to these shows like the dealers that we know and trust who always have good cards to share even if we're not gonna buy them their cards that like we could stand there at the showcase and like see their amazing collections and then have like fun conversations like this just catching up and talking about what's going well and maybe what's not going well like did you observe like was there a healthy mix of like these dealers that you know a lot of collectors like to interact with at these shows or were was it a bunch of like net new like maybe more regional dealers that you are unfamiliar with i guess a pretty good mix of both i don't know i didn't sense anything different than dallas to be honest in terms of like the that sort of mix it's it was a good mix of like basically like everyone that we that you expect to be there plus like a lot of new people given that it was like west coast so i i did notice like a lot more people from the west coast i'll say that that i haven't seen at national so that attracted a lot of different people but all the like major dealers that i see at national were there as well so i i i got the sense this was one that all the major dealers took is like this is gonna be here to stay this is a big show we should incorporate this yeah same it was a good mix of the people you expect at a large show with regional people who are who don't make the trip or can't set up at like a national but you see walk around at national like so i think i think it was a great mix for a regional show awesome that is a show that is on a lot of listeners' radar that's on my radar so good to hear you had a great experience i wanna move on to the next topic which is about price and just this question i've been having is like when does price stop leading and i've been thinking a lot about this and maybe even though he's not here maybe chris has been influencing me in a way where based on some of the way he's approaching his collecting what he's doing trying to uncover things whether it's one of ones rare and scarce cards but maybe we'll start there like there is so many different ways to approach this hobby and it's so easy to get caught up like buying similar adjacent stuff to what other people are doing i think a lot of us as collectors go through that and like when we start to enjoy the hobby the most is when we're on this path of like research trying to find out cards that mean something for ourselves and try to find opportunities and the the most apparent opportunities for me are always the ones where the cards aren't you know ten x the cost of the last comp and their stuff that no one really knows about so maybe we start here and i'll ask you josh like how do you think collectors will rank cards when rank cards once price loses authority because i think price has such a strong stranglehold on the industry as a whole i'm just wanna kinda get some perspective on how you think about that yeah like right now it's it's like a lot of hype driven or like new releases i'm seeing like really high top scrolling prices out the gate i'm seeing like the prism football price is super high so like right now it's a lot of like i'm doing what other people are doing and they're increasing the price so the price is going up so i need to pay more and there's a lot of that like you're saying when that like settles and time passes you're left with like what are the sets that are the most historical you know like i'm thinking back to like early twenty tens with prism like we're all just sort of figuring out like what are the best sets those are the ones that held up the player on the card you know people are gonna end up like people are buying the like khan kniep'nipple rookies right now for example because he's the best rookie or the most exciting rookie or whatever the most popular rookie in the class and they know they have to get a rookie so they're just gonna spend a ton but when the dust settles you know that the player is gonna end up like driving a lot of the value and people will move on from the rookies so that and then the the biggest one obviously is like the rarity the scarcity how many of these there are whether that's population reports or it's just straight like you know serial numbers out of fifty out of ten out of five out of one christina how do you think about this i know you for the most part you maybe collect a player that's not mainstream and is not like the most desirable player but you collect maxey because you have a connection and a relationship and i'm i'm assuming that your collecting for him has been affordable enough that's allowed you to like explore a lot of different products and sets that people who are just trying to chase money might not have you know gravitated to for various reason maybe like does your experience collecting him like has that afforded you the ability or opportunity to maybe uncover some things that you like or don't like about specific cards that you might not have if you were trying to chase like the the the highest value of something and trying to make a buck off of something yeah for sure i mean so the main pc is luka doncic one rookie one of ones right like so i'm not buying those every year let alone every week to have a mail day those are you know the grail cards that i'm i'm searching for and trying to get good deals on so that i'm not we're stuck at mortgaging my house in order to in in order to afford and then when i started collecting maxi kliba who i do not have a relationship with let me like make that clear no matter what brett tells you i do not know and do not have a relationship with i started collecting him because i was watching luca play basketball and he was on the team and luckily he got traded to the lakers so i didn't have to blow up the entire pc that i was starting with kliva but like yeah so the way i the way i attack luca pc and maxi pc are very different right like with luca i'm looking for something very specific with maxi i'm looking for really cool cards that like you said are under the radar and i'm literally going through checklists to be like one is he on it two what do these cards look like three like who is my biggest competitor shout out shout out dietmar from germany who is my biggest competitor in picking up cards and and yeah so i mean i love the metal cards from twenty seventeen i love the essentials set like i put together that whole rainbow minus the one of one at the moment so i'm looking for that for kliva i love the colors on though those they're so bold and it like makes me look at other sets differently when i'm looking at luca's and i'm like oh i have this opportunity to buy this card but it's like the money like you know plays a factor but then also i don't love the aesthetic of the card like i do some of the like you know very underrated sets that i can get for extremely cheap for kliva and then it makes me go look for those cards in luca in twenty eighteen and unfortunately some of those don't exist or were made a little different and you're just like like it doesn't doesn't hit the same but but yeah so i mean i don't know where i was going i lost my thought sorry guys the the the the luca one of ones this being specific and being like this is kind of the sweet spot for your collection yeah are you to the point where you know where specific one of ones are that you want and you have to figure out how to get them out of collections or is it more like i have never seen these cards that i want and i don't even know if they've been pulled out of packs it's both there are definitely cards that i want that i know the people who own and they're not moving them mhmm but they know i'm interested so if they ever want to move them they know like on their first call hopefully and then it's you know it's the black prism that's never been seen never been rumored to be pulled which is like rare right like we get those april fools bullshit like posts that people do which are so like ridiculous when you're talking about something that someone like is really passionate about and like chasing that you're just like i pulled the card and it's like no you didn't stop it just stop it right now but like yeah so like things like that and then it's twenty eighteen threads i own the one zero one and the one eighty one of luca which are the ones with the jersey and behind him in the black dazzle one of one and i'm looking for the one forty one the blue jersey and like it would be awesome to add that to the trilogy of that set like that collection i think that i saw it once a long time ago but i haven't been able to find it again on instagram so it's like one of those things where i i believe it exists out there in the wild but it hasn't been sold and it's like publicly and i can't find that picture of it that i think someone once posted so yeah like it's it's you know a scattering of mixes of never been seen in black hole collections that i know aren't gonna be moved letting people know who have the card that i'm interested when they're ready to move on or move up into something else and then just like chasing those phantom cards that we know made the checklist but no one's ever seen and you're just like gosh i need this card for my pc wow those cards they they kill us when we can't find them again josh i wanna check-in with you just in terms of like your collecting i i we've had so many conversations where you've talked about like okay i'm like gonna move out of this lebron and i'm going to like put that money in these football one of ones and you've shared the reason why you're doing this and what you like about it i'm curious like it i feel like ever since you started to do that like i don't think more people have like followed your lead but it just seems like there's more people in the community who are like zeroing in on this and i know this from like the the lens of like players that i collect and one of ones that are like two to three times more expensive now than they were like two to three years ago what are your observations on like your pursuit with building out your collection like are you seeing more people kind of doing similar adjacent stuff is it getting harder for you to land the type of cards you're looking for like what what have you been your observations as a collector over the last you know several months and you're talking specifically about the football stuff yeah it's football but anything else you wanna talk about yeah i mean the prices on this stuff this football stuff have gone up i don't know how much can be attributed to me i don't i don't think i should get much credit for that or blame for people having to pay more i just blame myself for that i'll be like i've had to pay more for sure and there's more people that have come in and like found joy in it or whatever there's always like a sense of like like some people may need like one other person to make the leap into some some category that's like not respected or that's like you know it's not cool to buy running backs or whatever and then like a couple guys like you and john started doing it you have a podcast talking about running backs being cool and it's like okay maybe now like maybe i should pursue that running back collection i've always wanted you know if more people have confidence in it and but for like for me on this football stuff i just like those are the players i've always enjoyed the most because i've always played fantasy and i just i didn't really like need a reason other than that and i've i just have always like had the urge to get into the one on one stuff and this that was like the perfect place to be able to like test it out but you're right like in the last two to three months i've really slowed down because it's getting more competitive there's only one of these you know like a lot of these cards i'm after especially like the new this year's release in twenty twenty four is like very competitive for like the pukas and the chases and the bijans like it's it's really hard to get them like some guys are grabbing them and then they're moving a couple times but for the most part they're just like going to one of like ten to fifteen guys and then they're just sort of like stuck there for a while so i personally think that's great i don't i knew going into this i wouldn't be able to get every single one of these i don't think that's realistic to think like i'm gonna have every one on one that would be great but it's not possible so to see like other other people that are treating it similarly to the way i am which was like i'm just gonna hold these and i like these players i think that's great it's fun to see what about i have to ask you since we're on this like what do you what's going on with like lebron's cards right now like what are you seeing especially with you know this uncertainty of what's happening next with lebron are you seeing more interest less interest more people wanting to buy certain segments of his cards like what have you observed he's probably just like following the general trend of the overall hobby prices he's not spiking like i'm seeing with kobe and mj he's definitely like lagging behind those two guys which is good if i wanna like pick up some stuff he's still like you know a hundred times more expensive than any of this football stuff so like it's just sort of like a math game of you know i can't afford to have both so i'm kind of like picking and choosing but he's definitely not jumping in value the same as some of these other guys which is fine he doesn't i don't know if it's because like he's you know like looking very old and like playing a lot work like this is the first year i've noticed it's like okay he's old and like he's like five steps behind and he's forty one or whatever and his his points per game is way down so maybe there's some of that okay before we move over on off of this topic i wanna just maybe get both of your observations just from like a cardladder perspective like has there like what have you seen in cardladder it could be like literally one sale it could be an index it could be industry it could be anything is there anything specifically from a trends perspective in cardladder that you've seen over the the last you know few months that stands out to you just in terms of kinda pulling on this thread during this conversation christina i'm i'm tag me in hockey hockey okay so i know that this just happened and maybe this is a flash in the pan but sunday when us team usa won the gold jack hughes' young guns sold over two hundred times oh god on just sunday and i've been seeing his cards like routinely go for like higher and higher since sunday and now we're like like for anyone everyone who's listening to this like i like we're what five days out six days out from that at this point so like i just i'm seeing it ripple too because some people are like well if jack hughes is selling for this mhmm then austin matthews should be hired too and like they're playing that game which is like totally fine but yeah i've been seeing a lot more hockey every night hit my pendings so i just wanna point that out and i'm excited because like it's a new fandom for me and go usa like women's and men gold like over canada like canada tears collected and like sprinkled across the nation love to see it christina all the canada people just shut off sorry because because christina's cutting a promo on canada right now josh i wanna kick it over to you for your observation but i also wanna like i want your observation josh but i wanna open this up because what you said christine is so important and it's like this jack hughes moment like i said to first of all like i i still can't get over the entire way that game unfolded and how great it is and i after it ended i looked at my wife and i just said good luck any sporting event this year topping that because the whole thing was just so good and of course i started to think about cards and you were comparing like this is what the hobby's doing right now comparing hughes with matthews and pricing but what what like i wanna factor in and throw into this equation is like that moment that moment we all saw and witnessed in that goal is one of the greatest sports moments in just american sports that we will see for a long time and i don't know like whether like you look at their nhl careers you look you compare hughes to anyone else it's like people are gonna start justifying prices but like no one can replicate that moment that literally made this guy an american hero and will forever so there is like yeah i just yeah but beef in order for jack to get his moment right like for hughes to get his moment helly had to block that goal on the other side of the ice and like i was watching the ka'chucks like podcast and the where it hit the the goal like where the stick like the puck like hit the stick on his goal stick like left a mark because it wasn't a normal spot where like you would use the stick to save like it just like was pure like perfection so like in order like i just i just wanted to say like there team are two heroes yeah there are two heroes in this game and there's like a whole like roster of heroes as well like that came together for this team but yeah because i've been seeing and people keep saying like when i started collecting hockey everyone told me like don't pay that much for a goalie like don't like goalies are not what you're supposed to be spending your money on like that like that and and then like to see helly's like prices rise this week too i've been really excited because i was like yes like this is when i came in to hockey i was like why wouldn't you want to collect the goalie like he's always on the ice like like he's the one who makes or breaks your like defense like what are we talking about but but yeah so i i know i love it josh i i don't unless you're doing something under the table i don't fancy you a hockey collector but there's a lot that i think in terms of collecting just from this this game in the fallout we can learn like what what are your observations on just like moments in cards and their duration and comparing and contrasting with other players like what have you seen from this olympic moment in relation to maybe cards or what's going on in card ladder i'll zag i just feel like it the moment i the moment when it happens is when i avoid the cards because people are like ten x ing and i'm just like oh i just and people always ask the question like and chris and i always have the opposite answering it's like the sports or the cards i always choose the sports so like for that game i just was like let me just enjoy this game itself let me just enjoy this moment i was watching youtube videos i was like making my kids watch it they're like what is this like watch him score this goal this is when we beat canada the only sport they're better than us at and we're better than now and then they were like posting about how they're like well we played the better game we just had less goals i'm like well that's not how that works we won you know just the fact that they were like being bitter about it just made it that much sweeter so the all the moments from the game were awesome and i i soaked them in but i zagged in that it had nothing to do with cards for me just during that moment christina do you have another point yeah i just wanna say like the whole like we played a better game like our goalie literally blocked more shots than yours did like in the shot taking too like not just the two to one like shot take you your team took more shots and our goalie still blocked more like the all of those as well except one so stop it just sit down like i'm i love this this is the the first of all this is probably the the most energy ever on stacking slabs about hockey cards and i i wanna thank all of the loyal listeners who are primarily hockey card collectors who put up with me on a regular basis but you know maybe christina we're gonna start a hockey card podcast you're gonna be the host so congratulations on the new gig i don't know if my schedule will allow that i have some hockey podcasts that i can recommend but yeah i would love to but i just one i don't know enough i'm still learning and then two i ain't got that time right fair fair enough shout out hockey collectors let's talk a little bit about research and can research win in a scroll economy you know we obviously cardladder is a extensive research tool it it is part of the cardladder dna just research as a pillar i enjoy research i know it's not sexy but i feel like this is how you uncover gems it feels like the hobby though doesn't prioritize research and i'm talking about the hobby as a whole so it's about transactions things moving quick and i'm curious like opening this up a little bit like is the hobby rewarding speed over understanding and that kinda understanding that we gathered through research josh let's get your perspective i take this question as like speed in figuring out what i'm gonna buy and like what's the best purchase for me to make and then the opposite of that in the research phase would be like let me just like really take my time and make sure i buy the right thing but not only take your timing on the research but also on like the enjoying of the card and keeping it and like not falling into the hype and selling it because it went up a little bit quickly like it's it's exciting sometimes to like buy something and then see it go up and then sell it quickly but i've just always traditionally done better when i like wait through a couple cycles and just like hold cards longer i think it's better for the overall market when people are holding cards longer so the more research the more like patience and just like lack of speed that you that you go into it i think it's like good for you and then also like the overall hobby so i'm a big fan of like not doing the fast thing because this dude this happened to me where like i'm watching the suns and mikhail bridges makes a shot now i have this like super expensive fifteen that i don't want you know it's like i've fallen into that trap many times and i just always end up enjoying it more when it's i take two weeks to figure out what i'm gonna buy versus like seeing a social media post or a video christina do you think like in your research of your collection do you think do you find that the more you research the more you investigate as opposed to like maybe impulse buying do you feel like that creates maybe a stronger attachment with the example or the card that you're end up buying or end up chasing like how does how does kind of research measure with like your overall collecting i'm all about research what i'm collecting i have like checklists like i have excel sheets of checklists of all of the checklists that i'm interested in for the player that i collect for basketball and i will make that very clear i will impulse buy though and i mean who doesn't let's let's all like take a moment and be honest with ourselves even you listener i know you do even if you say you don't we all do it and it just it kinda depends on the card because like there are times where you'll research the heck out of a card and then you finally get it in hand it's mail day and you're so excited and then you look at it and you're just like it doesn't speak to me in hand and you're like oh no like i've just wasted six months of my life tracking this down making offers finally getting it in the mail and i'm like literally about to post the dreaded like incoming and available like like kind of post because i i literally am staring at it and i'm just like should i sleep on this like i don't really like this card and then you have a card that you're walking through a show floor and you see in a display case and you're just like what is that i need that and you like do research after the fact and you're just like this is the perfect card for my pc so i i think it totally is card dependent on that front i i love this too and i think it's so true like you can spend a ton of time in on the front end do research that can get you to want the card more but then also like you see a card and you just have to have it and then when you research it on the back end it makes you love the card even more so i think there are definitely two sides of it i think when we talk about research it could be overwhelming because research means a lot of different things to a lot of different people maybe josh like when i'm thinking about like the the the when there's a card that you're interested in that shows up for auction or might hit a marketplace buy it now like what is like to help like listeners understand like what is your like what are the minimal steps that you go through in order to like make sure that you're doing some sort of research just so we can ground the listeners on exactly kind of what we're we're getting at tactically yeah i think it's it's probably the obvious things of sales history and i'm looking for like a lack of sales history importantly like right now i really like optical vinyls they because they just like don't sell as much as some of these other popular cards and i'm like either they're not expensive enough for people to sell them or they're harder to get or whatever the reason so i like looking at a lack of sales history and then obviously checklist stuff you know especially in the modern game where you need to know is this the one of one of one or is there seven one of ones like you really gotta know because like i came up across a select card at the west coast show that i liked upon research it was like the third tier of select in the newest year and it wasn't even like i don't know it was it was like the premier level and i just didn't know you know like this isn't the right one whatever so there's like the checklist research and knowing like how many exist those are probably the two main ones the third one is just like i kinda just go off of like you know my gut how the card looks what i feel about this the year that i'm looking at if it's twenty twenty four or twenty twenty three like do i like the design of this one more than others etcetera so those are like the three that i usually do i wanna hit the select example with you because there's not like a rule book of saying like this is the right one this is the wrong one but you have you have formulated that based on your own history with cards and collecting like help us understand that process that you went through to disqualify it and like the reason why you disqualified the card based on your own research and interpretation of that card so like there's one black finite in prism there's other one o ones but there's one black finite and then there's one like base optic gold vinyl there's other one of ones there's like a black but there's only one base optic gold vinyl and i like that i'm going after the one parallel to the true base set of multiplayer i like i i like knowing that there's just the one if there's six black six black prisms of a football player like it's not that there's like you know one prism finite in select and then there's like other one on ones there's like six of that variation color and so knowing that like six other people could have essentially the same card as me turns me off of it so that's why i just like select is cool and if if i was doing like lebron basketball select would be more appealing to me because it's a better entry point price wise but because like i'm narrowed in on the price that i that my range of price like i i can be more picky with football that's why like i need to know that there's six of that same variation i love the clarity christina before we move off of research is there anything specifically based on your process how you research that you think would be good for listeners to understand i think everyone researches their own way right like i am a color coding year like year by year like ocd kind of person that literally josh can attest i have a spreadsheet for everything in life literally everything like i had a spreadsheet for our drive home like where we could stop and how long it would be like i i'm insane okay like i'm not all there or too much there like i have to think everything out so like don't be like me would be my response there i would say like how you research is totally personal i know that some people go off sales history some people go off of checklists some people go off like what they see in like show floors or on instagram like you do it your way is what i would say like yeah i love it i the color coding that's just next level stuff oh which i can i can i can manage that at all it's elite i will i will admit yeah i bet alright before this has been fun before we close this out we gotta take all this whether it's you know buying research all this stuff and we gotta talk about a specific card that each of you picked up you know we're we're going to do the ladies first thing christina especially because you're you know you're this is your first appearance on card ladder confidential what is a card that you recently picked up and why are you excited about it yeah i picked up a card at the west coast card show the way that this card came to me was i did not see it in display case as you guys know i am often chained to the booth and so jeremy lee was actually walking through the show floor saw this card and was like to the dealer hey can i take that card over to my friend to show her and the person said yes which he's kinda recognizable and tall and he's he's hard to yes yeah i guess so then what he just like comes and shows me is the twenty twenty four sp authentic limited auto material of jake ottinger it's numbered out of a hundred auto and memorabilia it is a beautiful patch of the like starz logo oh here wait that yeah that's there you go and what's nice about this is upper deck is saying it was used in an nhl game i don't know necessarily what year it was or if it was a home game but we had season tickets during this time and the years year before it so i'm kind of hopeful that it was a home game and i actually got to like see otter like play in this jersey like who knows if that's true it's probably not but that's the story that i'm making up in my mind about this card and i'm so excited so what happened was jeremy lee brought it over and i was like staring at it and i was like i don't know like i'm not like i don't i haven't done my research on hockey like i don't really know what i should be picking up like i have a couple young guns and of like my players but nothing crazy and he was like it's not that expensive and this is the card you'd want if it was out of a hundred so i just like went with i love this card it's beautiful and then like i was talking about earlier it spoke to me after because i could be like oh this was during the years that i had stars tickets and like he's my favorite player of the stars and and then i like went with the authority jeremy lee knows hockey telling me that this is a good buy so i was like screw it and i like grabbed my wallet and i ran over and i was just like i need that card and the guy was like i'm firm on the price and i was like take my money sir so so yeah so that's that's my new pickup upper deck which is you know an amazing manufacturer like a we talk a lot about football and basketball cards what what's it like having some upper deck in in the pc well i mean so we have some upper deck from like nineties jordans that we're buying yeah that's right yeah you know the vintage i guess at this time it's vintage upper deck hose is like cringing somewhere he doesn't know why but but like i just you know they put so much care into their design i and they just put so much care into everything that they do at upper deck that i'm just excited that i get to own a piece of that legacy through this otter card and yeah i mean it's it's great i just i've been looking at it like literally it sits like upside down on my desk like all day but then like i'll pull it out like in between meetings and i'll just stare at it and it's been here for the last week and i just can't stop staring at it like i i took out my case like my hockey case to put it away when i got home and i was just like no and then like it landed on my desk and it's been here for this week and i don't see it moving to be honest i i love it congratulations on the pickup awesome story josh close this out what have you picked up that excites you that you wanna talk about man so this was a trade it was a collector who really wanted my julio jones super factor that i got a few months ago he just kept asking about it and i was like well i need something awesome in return so i ended up getting this back this is twenty twenty three prism black friday at ja'marr chase so this is my second nonrookie i also have the twenty twenty two in a psa ten i obviously ja'marr chase is awesome he made the first team all pro and his team was a hot garbage mess and their quarterback was out most of the year so that's usually a sign like justin jefferson's on that same tier where it's like they're gonna be close to first team all pro even when their quarterbacks hurt or bad so excited to get that one another black finite how okay talk me through so how i don't know like values was it a straight up trade no no he he added a little bit i won't say much but yeah he added a little bit because it was like the twenty eleven super factor so i think we're just kinda going off like those older super factors are pretty expensive they are awesome pickups awesome conversation we did hey we did it without hoge although we do miss hoge this was a awesome christina shaking her head wait but you can't end it like do you have a pickup you wanna share i actually don't have it in hand but i will mention it because i this actually goes into research so this is going to have me supporting cardladder in real time while i do this but i was in a conversation well the a tyler warren who's a colts tied in rookie tied in his gold vinyl was made its way available on ebay it was listed for four grand which was way too much money i said absolutely not but i want this card and i saw that the other rookie tied in first round colson loveland had his gold vinyl a checked in card ladder he his gold vinyl went off the board for two k and so i kept like offering with no notes and the i kept getting declined and then finally i get or there was countering and then finally i pulled up cardladder i said hey i don't know what comps you're going off of but the colson loveland sold for two k i will give you two thousand and one dollars for this card and this is my final deal deal or offer and it was accepted and i got a message actually back by the seller who was like you know i was going off of the brock bauer sale from last year was a rookie tight end and i shouldn't have been doing that and i didn't see the loveland sale so i saw the loveland sale after you shared it to me and like i'm happy this is going home to a colts collector because this guy was a colts fan too so i was pumped i haven't gotten the card yet i would be showing it off but i'm i'm pretty excited about that card and i literally would probably still be sitting there if it wasn't like for the data that i got from cardladder where it wasn't the card but it was about as comparable of another player like rookie tight end who was drafted like a few spots who's also had a really good year so excited about that pickup and now i gotta do the whole thing where i get it and it's like i'm excited about it then i'm like worrying i'm like i gotta get this graded and now i'm gonna go through that whole rigmarole but i've got like forty cards i gotta send away so i tend to get this stash and then national follow-up wait till national yeah wait till i've got a few wait till nationals that i just don't wanna i'm not sure i wanna send in the mail so i've never done this but i know you could you all talk about it all the time grading at the national i'm gonna so it's like it's like an event dude then we can like watch you submit them and then we can worry with you and then we can look at your results with you yeah i i i love it i'm gonna that is the that is the slow burn that i'm gonna want this year and we'll do the reveal may there's some content for you right at at the card ladder review booth the the reveal of these cards maybe we can build a program out of that but that's i'm excited to sweat with you all and grade our expensive cards at the show it'll be fun yeah one hundred percent congratulations thank you very much great great time shout out all the listeners thank you for supporting card ladder stacking slabs awesome conversation we'll be back with another card ladder confidential later this month thanks everybody