we're back card ladder confidential we got the old crew back shout out christina for filling in last episode thought it was awesome to get her perspective we've got chris back in the saddle josh here as always we start things with the cold open question and i was trying to like think of something community oriented for this and i've never asked you this and i'm just very fascinated and this is maybe a chance to like give someone flowers that you follow on instagram or any other platform i want to know who is someone online right now in the sports card space that is sharing whether it's content or their cards that you're really enjoying when you see their posts we'll start with you chris i wasn't in the mood to be nice today this is like a hot open question i was trying to come with some cold vibes let's see i'm gonna give a shout out there's a there's a few that come to i'm gonna give a tie i'm gonna give a shout out to two youtube creators who are not necessarily names that like show up in our circles every day like the you know the the three of us have a lot of overlap you know we collect the the football stuff and we listen to a lot of the same content a lot of the same you know we like the same era of cards and everything so i'm gonna give a shout out to two guys who aren't really of our era so like this is not this should not be construed as me like overlooking all the people that all of us know because like there's lots of really great people who would easily qualify to be mentioned here so i'm just gonna zag away from that and i'm going to give a shout out to to two guys one is victor the rookie card specialist on youtube i love the man's rigorous approach and his thoughtful approach he's also a published hobby author just like you brett and i really respect anybody who sits down and writes a book and then the other one i'm gonna give a shout out to is shane of shoebox legends on youtube who's more focused on baseball and hockey but makes great youtube videos loves to go into depth about the history of cards the history of sports and those two guys anytime a drop comes out from those two guys i'm in there victor resides in the hoosier state so enjoy his content i was i'm unfamiliar with shoebox legends and shane but i have written it down and excited to check out his content josh content creator collector anybody who who do you wanna shout out well i'll go the i'll go the collector route since chris might creator i'm always terrible at this so i have to pull up my dms and just look at who i chat with because i like their cards i've got two names i've got travis big face cards mhmm like a lot of the same stuff that i do he likes the same kind of receivers he's got like some cool michael thomas stuff that i always always pestering him about i just sold him a couple cards he'll trade me stuff here and there we've always like crossed paths a lot he likes antonio brown and julio jones and like some of these like names so we chat a lot as well i always like seeing when he he picks up stuff that i'm just like i feel like i'm pretty in tune with like where this stuff comes from and he just like finds it and i'm like how the heck did you do that and so i like collectors like that the other one is chad black hat cards mhmm same kind of deal both of those guys just have like he just picked up a twenty sixteen antonio brown gold prism i've never even seen that card it's really hard to find a lot of the antonio brown stuff because the steelers collectors have a lot of it unlocked i only have one black prism of him of his and i'd love to get more and it's in a bucks jersey and i don't even have any of his gold prisms so like to see that pick up and he has like i think he has all of them except like twenty fourteen he has twenty twelve twenty thirteen twenty sixteen twenty fifteen yeah he's he's got like most of them so there's two shout out chad and travis both great collectors i have made deals with travis and i asked the same questions i i think he's responsible for either twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen reggie wayne gold prism in my collection prying that out of his hands to get that but i had the same question he's just like where is he getting all of this stuff and he's got some method to his madness but we need these people in order to continue doing crease our collection so i wanted to start this out on a positive note because it sounds like chris is going full heel mode today which is completely acceptable but everyone go check out those creators and collectors i'm not sure how much you all have seen this i'm sure a little bit did you did you all hear that february was a record breaking online sales number according to cardladder have you have you guys seen this was it four hundred and eighty one million are you guys familiar with this data point at all i'd heard a little bit about that yep well i wanna talk about it today but i think this is cool too like the fact that you all are producing a industry number that gets picked up everywhere like i've seen that number everywhere in articles people posting in stories and content which is cool and maybe before we get into this and this isn't on the script but i'm curious are can you for forecast or do you have the visibility like i don't need a number or anything but what what's march looking like are we are we going to be in a same exuberant state is it going to be maybe a little lower do you have any forecast on where we're heading next here once the march once march wraps up i did not prepare and pull the number a trillion dollars brett okay two billion or a trillion my guess is around the same or higher honestly it just keeps trending up i don't know what else to say that's that's that's all that's okay that's all we wanted and i i did not prep you and so i just on the spot i felt spontaneous to ask but undeniably like the market is very very strong right now and everyone has their own narratives like what this means so i wanna start this conversation because we're gonna dig into the market and observations we're gonna talk about some examples of cards you're picking up but i wanna know what is the data telling us about the current state of the market what are you seeing general themes that are are being picked up chris maybe we'll we'll kick off with you yeah i'll just give you some numbers from right inside the cardladder app the monthly volume like you pointed out was four hundred and eighty one million in february and that's the highest month of all time and february is ten percent shorter than the other months so that even lends a little more heft to it if you look at the card ladder category indexes and you just set it to like year to date i mean you know all of them except for two are green and most of them are double digit growth year to date remember that hasn't been that long it's it's only a little under three months so you know stuff like golf is up twenty two percent you know the gong show one hundred from the hockey gong show guys their index is up almost thirteen percent the bowman one hundred index is up a hundred and twenty five percent the pokemon index is up forty four percent i mean you know you can just that you can you can look at that there's there's data and then you know you go over to the players and if you wanna like kinda filter to players that have more robust datasets maybe set it to indexes that have cards you know greater than with with more than ten copies and then you know filter to the sports that you want so like i said it's like basketball baseball football hockey soccer and you know you just i don't know like khan knieppel is up a hundred and ten percent year to date alex bregman you know like aaron judge is up eighty three percent you know i mean you you you you actually have to scroll quite a ways before you get to ohtani who's at like fifty percent like but lamine yamal sixty one percent etcetera so that's that's that's a combination there of the the industry number is volume and then this is price so both both are are going up josh just areas of maybe strength that you're seeing that maybe is something that you actually think is like justified like where are these different sales and we see the headlines we see the card ladder all time sales graphics that get put out is there any category or specific era or type of card where you're seeing kind of elevation but when you look at it you're like you know what this this kinda makes sense to me i don't you know i don't know that we like deserve any of this you know i think it's like does does any like one category deserve it because they've been underrated infinitely i don't think so there's not like like pokemon is obviously like blowing everybody else out of the water right now and we're just getting like so many requests from people to to just like try to answer the pokemon question in tcg like why is this happening and we don't really have a good answer you know it's just like you know peep this is the age people are at this is what's happening and i just like you know everything when when everything is up so much and you know really have a good explanation i just i have a hard time being like oh this one is the one that deserves it this is undervalued still etcetera etcetera obviously i have my biases of like football so i guess i could say like football has long been a fraction of basketball and baseball and so you could potentially argue football's maybe the area where i'm like okay this makes sense but that's just like that's what i've been buying and that's what i'm hyper focused on so like it's easy for me to say that is it is it in for the both of you like is is it concerning to you based on the exuberance in this market that there isn't any straightforward explanation or answer to say this is why things are happening this way does that concern you at all as collectors in this space yes because the reason for the prices jumping in a lot of cases is not necessarily collectors actually wanting the cards it's that they're jumping in because everyone else is doing it and this is something we've seen over and over you know pandemic twenty and then twenty twenty four to now it's like people are just jumping in because they either see it on the headlines or whatever the re the repack stuff or you know breaking whatever the reason is that they jump in a lot of times we're seeing it's not for the reason of like i wanna buy this card and build a collection out of it so that always concerns me chris what do you think i agree i think it's almost taken for granted that we've had probably you know hundreds of thousands of new people come in since the market kinda bottomed out in twenty twenty three and they've just there's there's been more of a trickle and but but now you know it's happening more rapidly again and now there's a lot of media spotlight again and that sends people coming in at a faster clip and you know there's that there's and and a lot of this is happening like on the non sports stuff the ccgs and and and there's some sports guys that i think who have gone over to that but also there's just a lot of people coming into that and yeah i mean it's just it's it's worrisome that that you know people come in and they have a budget and they have a finite budget and they have a finite amount of attention and a finite amount of interest and a finite amount of energy and eventually those things get spent and and they get and and and especially when they sort of get spent quickly and rapidly and then you know what happens when it runs out right like is there just gonna be this steady flow of new people pouring in pouring in pouring in and paying more than the last guy and then more than the last guy and then more than the last guy you know that that the concern is always the rate the it's it's great that people get more people get a chance to enjoy this hobby it's that's great if that's how it's this is shaking out but the the concern is always the rates the rate of the rate of prices increasing you know like there's ohtani cars that are doubling every week right now and the the the thing that is worrisome about that is that can't last for very long and then what happens when that stops the you know you you all have been at this for a while collecting cards and have seen the ebbs and flows and you have built these awesome collections around players that you really really love and you the cards are a part of your daily life it is your business and i think about this a lot like what are the things that need to be true if you are a new member that are are entering the hobby today because you saw some mainstream headline that pulled you in to go to a hobby shop to get you involved in this space and you hadn't been in this space for so long when you think about like the new people that are entering and maybe have a lot of disposable income and are competing at these auctions and have very little education or just throwing money because they think these cards are the cards that you should get like i don't know like what what do you think in twenty twenty six when someone comes in new is the most important thing for them to either possess or adopt in that first year in order to not have the hobby be a terrible experience where they just pick up their ball and go home like so many collectors we saw during the when the the covid bubble burst like what what do you think is essential for those people to have during this time just to to stay and then continuing to enjoy their experience patience it's a marathon not a sprint all the ones that we see they come in guns blazing that make youtube channels that start ripping boxes online on their youtube streams and they just like do all the things all at once and then you they just completely burn out three months later and then they have to panic sell everything because they overspend it's always the same story so the big thing is like you know assuming you're coming into it with good intention of like i wanna build a collection you have to go at it like i'm gonna be i i would think that any reasonable person can understand that building a collection in a collectible space where there's rarity and competition at hand you have to understand it's gonna take a long time so you just have to be patient you like there's no even we've said this before but even like musk or bezos they come in with a billion dollars they are not going to have the best collections overnight it's not gonna happen they can they can strong-arm people as much as they want but you're still fighting people who have one on ones that do not wanna sell so you have to go at it with like patience and the long game so i love this perspective because it's very true and chris i wanna get your reaction based on this idea of patience and this whole entire hobby is organized in this transactional mindset just think about the apps we use everything is quick dopamine hits look at these big sale prices oh we are excited about a card purchase we made and made a lot of sacrifices and even before it comes in the mail we're like we gotta go get the next one and so it just feels like everyone's just constantly chasing and no one is patient maybe not no one like the i feel like the the most impressive collectors are patient but alongside like how do we be patient in this environment that's so focused on the next thing maybe by thinking on longer time horizons so maybe by by by not getting sucked into the rat race of you know trying to pick that next overnight success but think of success even something that appears like an overnight success as something that was built up over a long time and the patience thing is is great because like i think that's a specific example of a general philosophy that i and the best i can do is just testify to what has worked for me and that is optimizing the way i spend my time collecting into ways that make it enjoyable for me and i and that's that sounds really great but it's it's actually it might be tough to figure out you know i i think a lot of it just worked out naturally for me the the reward of searching to find things the reward of accumulating the fact that i just really enjoy how the cards look and feel in hand the fact that i love sports the fact that it all plays together that i'm fascinated by markets that i love data and all these things are just naturally present in this space is great you can also zoom out and take an anthropological approach and kind of think like what is my biology what is our hardware optimized for how do what are the things that we are evolved to to chase like what are how do we hack our psychological reward system you know you can really start thinking like on that level and and there's a problem there's in in in in the field of like evolutionary biology there's like this idea of the mismatch theory which is that we have this ancient hardware that's adapted to survive among scarce resources and competition and like living in caves and but now we have this problem of abundance and so everything that we're sort of optimized to want to do like our survival instincts don't really match the way the society is organized today and so we we were carrying around these ancient instincts that sort of have to get channeled into things somehow and so like the hobby actually is a great channeling mechanism for a lot of them know like the search for possessing things that are rare that used to signal things that could help with survival belonging to a community used to not just be something that was fun but it it was something that was necessary to make sure everybody communicated and worked together to fight off potential threats to our survival and like there's lots of anthropological and archaeological dimensions to why we evolved into valuing and and having reward systems that work the way that we the way that they do and so we can sort of if we can gear the hobby to mimic or to simulate those old ancient environments but with the stakes much lower you know the searching for scarce things signaling status by you know this is what i like this is what i've accumulated this is how i've done it developing identity communicating and and sharing a sense of community with each other the hobby really provides a fertile ground for a lot of those things that end up might that might actually end up being great vessels for our ancient hardware so maybe that's you know that's kind of the big broad answer is that you know if if the hobby is is facilitating our our nature then then that's that's the peak of the hobby that's that's that's when it's probably when we probably find it the most fun and enjoyable and then when you take that view all of a sudden it's like who cares what this card sold for or who cares that this market is up this or that like the game that's being played here is something completely different this is this is some this is much bigger than than just a card price on a screen we're getting deep we're getting philosophical that's this is what i expect out of this conversation and i wanna we're gonna have this set up chris and josh talking about some of their recent purchases i wanted to have them talk about some of their recent purchases because something that i'm sensing in this community when we're at this all time highs that this the the long term and savvy collectors i i sense some hesitation i sense some i don't wanna pay these prices this feels off this feels funny and there's patience with those individuals where they're not just jumping at what's available or what's being run-in a weekly auction or what gets listed on ebay but they're holding out and they're they're holding out for cards that they actually want so we're gonna talk up a little bit about that hesitation but i know you all are kind of operating and buying cards and i figured it might be helpful to just have you walk through some of the recent purchases that you picked up and maybe we can run through a few cards apiece and just talk about like what i'm i'm assuming with the cards and the types of cards that you purchased like the fact that you had some access to them in this moment probably led to you buying them but i wanna maybe dig into like why you're buying these cards now and the confidence that you have in buying these cards so josh maybe let's like let's kick it off with you like what are maybe a a few cards that you have recently picked up and maybe you can debrief with all of us on like the reasons why like why it was a good time and just you know what they mean to you well i'm a good example for your pattern that you've noticed of the longtime collectors slowing down and purchasing less right now because i haven't really bought much lately and that's just because of what you described where it's like i generally know what i'm comfortable paying for specific types of cards and what i've traditionally paid and when i feel like it's you know two or three x in a short amount of time i i usually just like swallow my pride and just wait wait it out if i have to or depending on who i'm competing with for the cards if i feel like they're gonna be keeping it long term or putting it back in the market i'll make like smaller decisions so the last card i picked up was can i ask you a question first josh josh because i think something you said there is powerful and i've picked up on a lot of these chats with you but you tend to analyze who's holding the card yep and based on you showing up online and understanding maybe a pattern of behavior with that individual whether it's through the way they communicate on their posts the collection that they've built you have some understanding like okay this card is like going to be impossible to pry out of here but i gotta keep trying and if it does come available then maybe i make the move even if it's a little more than i wanna pay yep versus the individual who holds the card where you're just like you know what like i can be really patient because they don't really want the card they're it it'll eventually be available they're just trying to squeeze every penny out of me right now like how like that i think that's a really important part of buying cards and i've never really heard anyone talk about it but like why is that process and strategy like important to you and your the way you collect because i have finite resources and i can't buy everything i want immediately for the full price i have to like strategically go about it for example i think i made it pretty well known that i really want the camscataboo black finite mhmm the true you know the true base and it found its way to someone that i know is just gonna sell it and now it's at all auction and so it's already at like ten grand or whatever someone's gonna buy that you know he's gonna get hurt next year and someone's gonna get bored of that and they'll sell it for five and then eventually you know it'll find its way around to like you know three years from now people will completely forget about him and i'm not because he was my favorite player at the college where i have season tickets so like i'll always have more of an affinity to him as a player than any of these other people i'm competing with so it's just i and i'll just i'll wait i'll just wait them out you know i don't care i'll be buying cards ten years from now they won't so i don't care so a lot of it is like that's my strategy and you know i just i'll just like wait it out i'll wait i'll i'll wait people and i haven't you know you'll see examples of that with what i buy twenty twenty so the thing i was gonna bring up is twenty twenty four donris optic cooper cup gold vinyl one zero one i just like the prism stuff has gone up so much in football that i'm like this is cool these these cards are really fun when they come up i'll grab them but the optic vinyls haven't moved an inch so i'll just keep buying them i i paid six hundred dollars for that card and this was like after he won the super bowl so you know cooper kupp has like the second first or second greatest fantasy season of all time i'll just keep buying his gold vinyls for six hundred dollars i don't care another one twenty twenty three jamar chase black finite that that was in like a trade down i i traded the rookie i traded out of the rookie the twenty twenty one and now i have the twenty two and twenty three it was just like a matter of like again the market's really hot this stuff is moving and i just kinda wanted to have like two non rookies versus a rookie it's just a strategic decision of the fact that i can't be chris and have every christian mccaffrey blackfinite i know that's not possible so i'm sorta like doing the brett thing where i'm like deciding do i want the rookie or the not rookie and where do i like stack rank those and depending on like how old or young the player is if the older players i prefer the rookies because i like know it's established the younger players i kinda prefer the not rookie and i can kinda move back into the rookies later if i feel like it and then the last one was twenty sixteen michael thomas nt shield rpa one of one and that was one that holds to your example that you brought up a minute ago which is that it went to auction and i knew who i was competing against and i went i'm just gonna stop bidding now because then i'll be able to get it from that person a year from now or two years from now i ended up waiting like a year and a half i think and i i got it back for like half of what the auction went so the the awareness around prism and the price and understanding that that might be the chromium brand of this era right but right now in this moment at these prices this is not for me is it just it's just just easy like comparative analysis with like optic or with select with the other stuff where you're just like the gap between these two products is is too much for me to go pay prism for prism right now i'll i'll just buy this other stuff is it is it as simple as that yeah i don't think it's a i think this one's undervalued and in the future it's gonna be worth more so i'm gonna make this like genius flipper strategy finance decision it's more like i like both cards sort of like in a vacuum i like them equally and i like the brands almost equally the optic versus prism obviously prism is better you know generally like it's seen as like the the better brand and i tend to agree but i treat them similarly and when prism goes up five x and the optic stays exactly the same like i just can stomach buying more cards more frequently at the price that i'm comfortable with with optic so it's not really it's not really like a think i'm gonna get rich in the future from this it's more like i can just get more cards this way i can build my collection more efficiently i think there's some really good insights there for anyone listening who who are buying something i've never thought about but you illustrated this idea of the not necessarily tying yourself to a young unproven rookie card and rather maybe buying their second or third year card i i find myself doing that same thing and i've never really thought about it so i think that's awesome insight chris let's move over to you your pickups purchases that you're making like dive into those yeah well this got called out so we'll start with this this is the final piece of the mccaffrey finite run infinity stone the infinity stone and so we'll start with that and yeah the black finites have gotten really tough if i didn't have eight of the nine and the need of that ninth i don't know if i'd still be looking at his black finites but it was worth paying the premium i mean i've i've i've paid what i paid for that was you know eight times what i've paid for some of the other ones so it just got to a point where you know those the blackline has become very very valuable and i've been gentrified off of collecting them but but i still wanted to make that move and get that one but you know i think about i wanted to make this little like real estate analogy going off of what you guys are talking about which is that suppose like i'm a surfer in santa cruz california and i've been surf my family surfed there before me and their father's before them and so like we just have this like little like bungalow thing that's just but it but it's actually like on like ten thousand square feet like right on the coast it's just like this sick property right but like people started to realize california has this sick climate and people start moving in they start coming in and they start buying up all the the lots surrounding us and all of a sudden my lot is worth way more than i could afford to pay for it but i love surfing i love like being right there but like if the price gets to a certain point where it's like well what if i sold this and let somebody demolish my bungalow and build their mansion there and then i just and i just moved in like five blocks you know and like maybe i'll get like something that's like because like california has this beautiful like bluffs and then these hills what if i like moved in like five blocks what if i moved in like fifteen blocks but like i got something perched on the hill and it'll cost me five percent of what my bungalow lot sold for and i'll still be able to walk my surfboard down and go surf whenever i want and i'll get a different view and then and then i do that and then like i end up you know blocks away from the ocean and i have to walk my surfboard down every day but after i've been there for a long i'm i actually kinda like the view from right here i'm up a little bit higher i can see more i actually like looking at the architecture and the different structures that people are building and you know i'm not sitting on to something that's worth more than i feel comfortable owning and i i kinda think cards have kinda done that right now too i i think that's kinda the optical vinyl situation but but that's but that's one example there's lots of examples you know where that works like my second card that i'll show is what's that that was like the best analogy i've ever heard okay right it helps it helps okay before we move on to your second card it reminded me and i i think i saw it in my feed because you commented or liked it but there was a a jordan collector who had just purchased a one of one and i the the collector escapes me but the post was about like having maybe like the the ug the ugliest house in the neighborhood but as long as you're in the neighborhood and i i i maybe you can help with who that was or whatever but that like when you were describing that analogy it reminded me of that post i don't remember who that was i that does sound familiar i don't but yeah that's a good way to think about it too like there's there's a lot of ways to kinda none of these metaphors are perfect because honestly somebody could take my metaphor and say well why is the prism black finite actually the one that's oceanfront like i actually think the optical vinyl looks better i i think the optical vinyl is not only the value but it's also a better property too like people could even argue that like i tried to be i tried to like stay within the sandbox of how the market treats things right now but you could take it even further if you wanted to but okay so the second card i have brett is this twenty fifteen sixteen panini replay jokic base set one of one it's one of just a handful of his rookie year one of ones and it's a very obscure brand panini replay was only issued for one season and it was that season and that's that's my house that's fifteen blocks in we're like it's a rookie year it's a one of one it's one of my pc players but it's not you know the prism it's not the immaculate logo man autograph it's not the nt auto you know but i've i love it and it had and it and it checks all the boxes for me and it's something that costs less than one percent of those of those big fancy cards and so i just i love to live right there it it checks all the same boxes for me it's it's it's just as rare it's just as beautiful it's the same player same rookie season so you know to the point of discovery that you know that this this is where discovery is so satisfying is that if you kind of like sit back and look at the market as like a thought experiment you say like what is it that made this card so special and in so in in so much demand for the market and you say well okay it's a rookie year it's a one of one it's this player it's this brand it's in this condition and then you think to yourself well what else out there might check those boxes can i go find other cards that or check many of those boxes that are the same player same season same rarity beautiful design but maybe not the same brand but are all these other boxes checked and and maybe it even ends up offering things that that that the most premium brand doesn't have like a lot of most premium brands for example don't have the longest legacy you know jokic has rookie year cards that have have lineages that go back to the nineties like he's totally certified and even go back to the eighties like his don russ and some of the more premium brands don't have that type of lineage even so there's it just that discovery is so exciting and fun i wanna hit jokic for a second while we're we're on him what has it been like huge if you hit him get back what what is it what are your observe i like it feels in a way and i know there were collectors that predate you collecting jokic but what is it like at this point when you see the sales of his rare and scarce rookie cards that are happening right now in the industry for six figures like how does that make you feel because these are the types of cards that you want to have in your collection but they're selling for you know multiples of likely what they would have been selling for when you started collecting him it drove me it jokic prices got so silly that it drove me back to collecting michael jordan one of ones there it is boom there there it is yeah i i like i i think he's probably market wise he's gonna have a giannis arc at some point where it's like okay the fling is over the ringer already bumped him down their list to number two player in the world eventually it happens eventually that happens like you can't be the best player in the world forever that's gonna stop and if and even if it doesn't stop now even if it stops five years from now or ten years from now it happens and then there's a twilight and then there's a swoon and then the next shiny new thing comes about and then we move on it's just funny though that like you started doing the ochish thing like six years ago or whatever and you're like you're like all i'm doing is looking at his stats i swore him that he's the best player in the world and i've been telling you guys this well he's a sinner and he's boring or whatever and he like has scratches on his arms and i'll buy his prism black for x amount of dollars and then like five years later everyone's like duh of course his prices are the best he's the best player why didn't you guys get this and you're like yeah i said that six years ago alright right exactly well now i wanna i wanna see if that can work again so the and and the guy who is jumping out at me now who is that from five or six years ago and this is so funny because it's people are gonna be listening on a podcast or everybody who hears is just gonna groan okay you're just gonna freaking groan when you hear it are we allowed to guess yeah you can guess is this basketball no football football oh okay i don't wanna guess do you wanna have a guess bret brock purdy it's brock purdy he has the highest passer rating of all time his passer rating is higher than aaron rodgers it's higher than lamar jackson you i was looking at the the i was looking at the running backs no matter website which has like the all the epa stuff his epa per play is higher than mahomes like this guy is just the analytics darling of football but you know it's oh my god it's probably you know football is different right because football can be very context dependent what would this guy look like if he was outside of the shanahan system what does he look like if he doesn't have mccaffrey what does he look like if he doesn't have trent williams you know like football is different so maybe it's not gonna work in football but like literally the closest thing to the jokic thing where every where like i follow football very closely and every single number that i look at the same guy's at the top of it and everybody thinks he sucks and everybody thinks he's unathletic and everybody thinks it's a fluke it's literally this guy again what's what's unreal about this comparison and i've never i've listened to your content i've and i know you collect both these guys but what's crazy about them is the fact their draft position both of these guys like well that's like you need it all you need the perfect storm you need them to be drafted late you need them to look like they shouldn't be this good you need them to like right take every you know it it all has to like work out that way so but we'll see like purdy maybe is a flop and then you know i mean how many times can a lottery ticket produce a winner so we'll see but but literally like he is the closest thing to that so we'll see it's funny though that people in media they always talk about how the quarterback is like the most important position in any sport and like they have the most say over wins and losses but this last year we had the seahawks which were like the obviously most dominant team all around and like purdy doesn't have as much say over how the niners do as jokic does with the nuggets he's one of five guys and he's got the ball thirty percent of the time and he's the one making the passing and the scoring and the defense he plays both sides i would argue basketball players in today's game have way more say over their own destiny in terms of you know at least card values hundred percent hey and basketball players are on the floor for offense and defense like yeah at at best you know the quarterback gets to control every offensive play but really they don't there's a lot of handoffs and plays that don't involve them so maybe they control sixty to seventy percent of half of the plays right and then even in their their cogs you know they're they're not most of them are not calling their plays and right so you know yeah the the impact any one player can have in football is much much smaller i i would have probably been against the grain of this argument this time last year but i've sat through an entire season of watching the indiana pacers without tyrese halliburton and i i couldn't be more convinced of this after one season in the league to the worst they literally went from first to worst with one how about how about we have this like highly contested mvp race right now is it wemby is it sga is it lucas kate cunningham is it jaylen brown is it jokic how about we give it to halliburton he is clearly the most valuable boy dude that's crazy how how about that how about that to like break this tie yeah let's let's not talk it up too much because i'm having a lot of fun buying his cards right now with this back back to what you were saying with the jokic example it's like okay people are so focused on the flawless the prism all this stuff but it's like there are other one of one rookie cards of this player in different brands and sets and when you do what you've you've done and like overanalyze build out the checklist build out the google sheets you start to see that there's not many of these and if these base set one of ones become available like does anyone have saved search like you're you're filtering out the crowd of flippers with with those cards and it's becoming just straight collector on that stuff and that's where i think like there's a great opportunity to to buy cards at a price and it might not be a premium brand but when you're like talking about your favorite players and one of ones from their rookie year like does it need to be your favorite brand so like i don't those are the things i'm weighing right now as i'm buying cards when the market's like way down let's say in a couple years because of whatever factors then that's the time where you jump and just get the best of the best and you just like you just keep zagging away because then everyone's leaving or whatever or they're trying to save money and they're selling their cards that's when you zag and you buy the absolute best card you can find of your favorite player and the best brand and just go all in and then when the market's hot like right now and everybody's falling over themselves to buy base ohtani cards psa ten worth more than jokic one zero one rookies that's when you go back to your roots and you just start to like find avenues and find ways to like zag everybody do you wanna see the third one yes third and final one okay so this one is a michael jordan plate this is a printing plate but it's it's also a card they've attached all the identifying information to it and placed it in a checklist and it's from two thousand six zero seven e x flir e x and so that card actually just says a credentials parallel which is out of four and i think there's another one that's out of seventy seven and then there's a base version but these are the only things that are one of ones that are related to that card but the thing that gravitated me so there's four plates obviously and the thing that and i have two of them now but this one this is one of my three most recent pickups and the re the and the reason why i went for this one is because i'd love to complete all four plates given that these are the first plates of michael jordan to ever be recognized as one of ones he has plates that come before it he has plates from nineteen ninety seven ninety eight stadium club from nineteen ninety eight ninety nine stadium club and then he has some like hybrid plate slash autograph cards but in terms of pure plates these are the first ones to ever actually be marked as one of ones and like that this is a different like sort of arc of my collecting and this is like the furthest i'll probably go into this direction is like doing some michael jordan plates because i'll be honest don't really love the plates i don't really love what they look like they don't really dazzle me i don't find myself reaching into my collection to pull them out and look at them but i really like them conceptually and i really like these as being the first one of one place of michael jordan because like this is sort of like my museum arc where like there's there's lots of different arcs know there's like the investor arc there's the dealer and the flipper arc there's the collector arc this is the museum arc where it's like i want pieces that might not ever be worth much but that have undeniable historical significance that have some sort of like like i like i sort of treat every card in my collection as like what would its museum placard say if i had to write the label that was gonna go on to a a placard that sat next to this in a card museum of my collection or whatever what would it say and that placard would be really cool it would say these are the first plates of michael jordan to ever be numbered one of one i love it it it makes a lot of sense to me i you've shared a lot of knowledge and insight on just how you're approaching the market i'm curious based on your observations and what you've seen from other collectors and i sense this and this is my this is my sense i'm not saying this is what is happening but i sense there are a lot of other collectors like you josh who is looking at the price of a brand of prism and saying you know what this is absurd right now i'm hesitating i'm not gonna participate i'm gonna be patient i'm gonna wait and then i sense and this is just me picking up little breadcrumbs i think collectors are aren't aren't not buying cards i think they're buying more obscure or cards that they're just trying to discover for themselves and see if they like it or not and maybe like take that that scent and go on a whole new trail but i sense some hesitation with the core group of people like us who are buying cards to build out this collection i'm curious josh we'll maybe start with you like what are you sensing are you sensing this hesitation from other collectors in the community of course of course i mean those people i named for the shout out they're they're pivoting you know we're all chatting this stuff so they're pivoting into like gold prisms or they're pivoting into different players like we're always constantly like trying to stay involved in the hobby as best we can but you know realistically figuring out where we can fit in financially and it's always like it's a daily daily change especially when you're like as experienced as some of us are and you you understand like the daily movement of some of these cards like we're just able to kind of you know adapt very quickly and understand like okay this this pokemon thing is crazy this ohtani thing is crazy we're just gonna not touch those entirely just completely stay away from it and just keep moving away from it or do our own lane or if we feel like jokic prices are stabilizing maybe now we we go in and pick something up or if we think it's too high then we'll go to mjplates like you just you're constantly like trying to expand what you're willing and able to acquire but then like figuring out when you focus on certain aspects of it and right now you know for me it's optic gold vinyl football for chris it's mj plates or whatever it is so like there's always a change i'll i'll bring it back to brock purdy and i i can't believe we're talking about brock purdy this much chris and it's not even oh i guess it'll might be april by the time this goes live he's got mike evans by the way he does have by the way i wanna say this a little football chatter i there are there are a lot of 49ers collectors in this hobby lot of great ones a lot of passionate ones great collector base great fan base and it just in conversations with so many of them i was excited i felt like i was more excited than they were about landing mike evans i'm like have you not seen what mike mike evans has done and i understand his age plays a factor but you you give put mike evans on my team and i'm i'm doing backflips but that's besides the point you did something a long time ago that and you were discussing it on your content when you're approaching brock purdy and it resonated with me in a big way where i was like you know what like this approach and strategy makes a whole lot of sense to me and i'm gonna start doing it because i think it it's fun it's interesting it makes you more invested in card opportunities that pop up but you just basically were like okay like you know he wasn't a hot rookie he's only has so many base set one on ones like i can take the time to document these cards and they're probably going to come from most of them are probably gonna come from brands that aren't mainstream brands in the hobby but maybe have some sort of significance but at the end of the day like your approach was like if these cards are available anywhere like i'm buying them because i'm trying to build out this awesome brock purdy collection so i i i sense like as we've prepared ourselves for this moment where the market is ripping and we are trying to find shelter in our own way like have prepared yourself in a way because you've done the work done the research how much of that work and research plays a factor in this moment where cards are selling for an all time high and you know directions you would have went if the the market was a little less hot as it is now like it it gives you the confidence because you have like the checklist of cards and you've done the research like how big of a role does that research play into you maybe not being hesitant or having some sort of direction on when cards pop up or become available of players at upc it's everything it's my starting place it's my framework it lets me know what's out there what i'm looking for and then you know i have to trust my instinct like you know if i if i'm not excited you know if i don't feel the energy like i'm not just gonna kinda sit there and buy it because i have to you know like there needs to be the genuine passion and the genuine excitement that has to be there too but the framework really helps me channel it properly and you know to to to the point that you and josh were talking about just a second ago that this idea that sort of our collectors sort of in a discovery mode right now because the market is essentially forcing them to be i think they are but but i think it's really difficult i saw a the wilt one of one collector mhmm on instagram had a nice series of story posts tapping into this but it's it's really hard to do discovery properly and it's really hard to zag in a way that is that in a way that makes sense and the reason why is because before you can zag you have to understand what you're zagging against before you can do that before you can get to discovery you have to understand the status quo so it's the learning curve requires understanding first and foremost what the market is today why the market is the way that it is today and only once like we have a grasp of of the fundamentals of how it works only then can we build on top of that but we need the foundation first i think that's very good perspective i wanna maybe dig into like the data of it all you know we based on cardladder like we have more access to data and comps than ever before i know i've got my saved searches i just look through them all the time i run so many different reports for content that i'm doing on a regular basis like i was i was having a conversation today about just like ebay data in and of itself and just like what is being sold and it's like there are like crazy cards selling on tuesdays that no one ever talks about so it's just like crazy sales all the time and i'm just curious like from like a user perspective like users of cardladder and then what you see just in sentiment on apps like instagram like how do you think data in cardladder is playing a role in like how collectors are behaving right now like do you think it's it's it's helping collectors make sure they don't overextend themselves do you think it's giving collectors more confidence to buy during this point like based on just like conversations like the use of the app like what are some of those observations you're you're you're seeing and is it is it an evolution of how people have used the platform before in this time i'm i'm really curious on that i'm not sure man it's really hard to say if it's like the balance between is it giving people confidence to buy more or is it giving them the data to realize prices are too high and they should buy less i'm not sure it's probably a bit of both i would say like the industry tab is probably giving a lot of excitement to the you know general repack breaking community of like okay there's like real money in industry there's real backing from from actual you know people that have the funds to get into this so they they feel more confident about it and they feel like oh i can just keep buying these ohtanis or whatever and i don't have to hold it too long but like i feel confident because the the overall industry keeps going up but like maybe the more the more like specific collectors like ourselves are looking for specific items are using like the sales history and their saved searches of exactly what they're looking for and they're saying like okay this is probably too expensive for me now so it's probably like depending on what category of participant you are it's the tool is kind of like either making you double down or you become hesitant chris have you since you have been back into the hobby since you have been building card ladder is there anything that you have seen that resembles or describes what we've seen on the otani front over the last you know twelve to eighteen months no because ohtani you have to think about all of the variables that have to line up for that to happen and i don't think you get this if you don't if you're missing any of these so first of all there's the international component here there's the japan component there's the asia components there's the fact that baseball is a sport that is fairly popular over there that you basically have a whole nation watching and rooting for this guy and that he is just he is breathing all of the oxygen of japanese international sports stardom like i don't know how many japanese athletes who are sort of playing overseas are can can hold a candle to what he means to that nation and then there's what he means to our nation and there's what he means to the international community all those things like you need that that you need that wide and broad of a fan base as but that's just one that's just one variable the next variable that you need is you need just a singular irreplaceable sports talent so the guy who plays both sides of the baseball diamond the the guy who's doing that at the highest level since babe ruth and the guy who has won the war crown in baseball twice and and some people might think it's more than that but that's he's got according to baseball reference he's got two war titles and that has translated into four mvps granted in baseball to give away two mvps every year not just one and it's translated into choosing a great free agency destination and then two world series and i don't know how many more you've got the moments at the world baseball class and everything so you need a player of a talent level that is just phenomenal and that has led some people to probably get a little bit hyperbolic but like yeah remember last year when like pete crowe armstrong was like leading him in war and like there was this mvps debate going on there were literally writers like new york times athletic tier writers who were saying we should give it to ohtani anyway just because he's that special like yeah sure we really like this metric and maybe some some other people are playing a little bit better than him but we should still give it to him anyways like when you have like that type of momentum and energy for a player where it's like we don't even care that technically none of our metrics say he's the best we still want him to win anyway like that's just this sort of environment and pandemonium that you really you need that too you need a guy who can't do any wrong for for to have that bulletproof confidence now ohtani did end up winning the war crown anyway but for the nl but but but but that's sort of the point you need that too and then you need hobby wise like the appetite for the post trout the appetite for the next guy who could be the culmination of every dream of prospecting that's ever existed in baseball they're like we have the guy who fulfills it you know and and so and you can like now zooming into the hobbies specifics side of things we've had players go on these really really hot streaks in terms of pricing ja morant did it luka doncic did it jalen hurts had that moment patrick mahomes had that moments you know trae young had moments like this zion williamson had moments like this victor wimenauma lots and lots of guys have they've had moments like that but how many of them fulfill the promise and then exceed it and that number is so small you could argue mahomes has done it and you could argue some guys have been really really good and have and the the the flame of hope is still burning but there's there's the ohtani thing has just genuinely exceeded even the wildest expectations that you have a guy in his prime with this crazy international fan base with these crazy incredible statistics and accolades and accomplishments who's like genuinely making a real goat arguments not one of the goats he's making a genuine goat argument as we watch it unfold in real time you need all of that okay just like the it's the perfect storm it's a hurricane of variables that have all formed this epicenter but we have it and so no i there is nothing like this that i've we've seen pieces of it show up in different areas but to for it to happen in this environment in this market and it's actually coinciding with people pouring into collectibles and into the hobby it's coinciding with the fanatics licensing it's coinciding with so many things it's just all that had to happen together for it to play out this way and it did it's a great breakdown i wanna pitch it over to you josh and from a card perspective and chris touched on this but this the otani of it all has reminded me something and it has reminded me that the broader mainstream hobby if there is one thing that the hobby loves to do is to put money down put money down stacks of money on players that are unproven and watch those players continue to rise and elevate and the rocket ship that ohtani is on is like it's out of this world like what he is doing like the another player like i think about in this vein obviously not as accomplished as ohtani but certainly accomplished enough and it's wild i'm like shortchanging him but i think about a giannis like if you if you were buying giannis rookie cards from the jump at the prices when no one knew who he was like you'd probably being do pretty good so it's like this thought of like this feeling of hope this feeling of potential this feeling of like placing a bet on someone and watching it watching them sore like there are these moments and mahomes could be one of them but there are these moments that they haven't been like every year but they've been cross sport and they've been kind of trickled out over the course of this this modern age of hobby like how important do you think those athletes are to the sustainability i know it sounds crazy saying sustainability when we're seeing what ohtani's cards are doing right now but like sustainability in terms of like keeping the hobby excited exuberant more people coming in like how important are these kind of superstar athletes that just continue to rise prospects that are now you know all time greats how important is that in this era of collecting it's super important man last time this happened in twenty nineteen we had this exuberance around ja morant and zion williams and then they didn't live up to it and then people freaking left and they dumped those cards and you know you always hear like the confidence in the rookie class really drives the product and the set and the year and like the value of the cards and it's true for the same for the same reason here with ohtani like people feel confident jumping into baseball because they know there's like this one stalwart that they can trust and like the dodger brand and the yankees and aaron judge like they're gonna keep seeing these big names that they feel confident seeing them on tv and like the energy behind baseball is like increasing partly because of the confidence in these guys and you could see those in the numbers with the the values of their sports cards as well and like you know basketball is always talking about who's gonna be like the next guy to take it over from lebron or whatever and it's like people just want to know you know if i put x amount of money down is it gonna be still x amount a year from now two years from now do i feel pretty decent about that the ohtani one is like it's the thing that i'll point out is that his cl index has never gone down ever like everybody else it kinda went down in twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two like a little bit like everybody else has like at least some sort of like up and down wave to it even michael jordan but ohtani is just like keeps stepping in in the last year it's just like it's just ridiculous so that's like the caveat i would give here it's like yeah it's exciting he's winning world series he's winning the m v mvps he's pitching he's doing it all but like there comes a point where if something never ever goes down that's just like seems unsustainable especially given the act the volume of like cards that he has like how many rookie how many different rookie cards he has and variations and the populations of the psa tens are are pretty high for some of these cards so that'd be my only like caveat to the you know let's just like feel so good about baseball investing because ohtani's there no doubt as we wrap up this conversation i think there's been a lot shared i wanna maybe revisit this idea of hesitation and just like get your each of your thoughts on think there's a feeling too when we are hesitating when we see cards that are exploding but we need for our collection but we're like we i just can't bring myself to doing that right now it just feels too high like this is going on across the collecting it's happening to me every week someone shares like a colts prism black finite card that i would love to have in my collection but i'm not spending ten thousand dollars on so i have to like say god i love that card but i i i have to change my love of that card it just be like i love it but i don't love you like that like so i i almost have to like men in black like erase the fact that i like saw it or someone shared it to me so that's what i'm going through and i'm just like trying to be good at like forgetting about cards that people are sending me that i would love to have in my collection like what advice do you have like that maybe you've experienced or seen other experience and josh you mentioned patience earlier but like maybe if we build off of this that saying no to cards because it's hard right now like how do we get comfortable as collectors who are obsessed with landing cards in the moment is there like the card is available and i can get it but the price is just way too high like what sort of advice do you have for collectors patience the theme of the episode it's a marathon i don't know it's like if a card costs ten thousand dollars and your paycheck was six i would not recommend that you buy that card for ten thousand dollars it's just like a matter of dollars and cents and how much you're willing to absorb you know i feel like this topic i always bring it up and i don't hear people talk about it how much money you make from your paycheck mhmm how much money you have in your bank account that you feel comfortable saving and whatever like percentage of your paycheck you wanna put towards it some of us are more radical than others but like and i guess there's we just live in a world of forty trillion dollars in debt and everybody just like hopes it works out in the future and i'll just like borrow money and spend it to the moon and hopefully it works out i don't work that way i i spend the money that i have so that's that's my advice good sound advice chris take us home i think the patience theme of this episode is the gym and i haven't heard it on content i don't think ever so this is the patience episode and i just think that's it i i genuinely think that's like a gem of an episode the fact that that and the the it's the through line that has come up at every like benchmark of discussions it's just like well i think patience is actually the answer and like yeah i makes too much sense to me but i'll tell you this like i i don't i try my very hardest to never give advice but what i will do is i'll say what i'm doing and then you know you can evaluate if it makes sense for you or not but but you know if what i'm doing is is constrained by my context by my situation by my circumstances and obviously nobody else has the same circumstances as me so they can make of it whatever they like and i and and so and that's why like i'm gonna have a a weird answer to this question because i haven't been hesitating like i i have i've certainly hesitated on buying things that maybe would have been more interesting or something that would have bought you know a few years ago from like brands that i was much more strongly interested in in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four but the the honest truth and then maybe this is smart maybe this is stupid you know we'll find out years from now but i've i've spent almost by far more money on cards in the last three hundred sixty five days than any other one year period of my life so i you know i'm i just i honestly haven't been you could say i'm hesitating in the sense that i'm not buying the same cards that i once would have been buying but i'm certainly not hesitating if the question is like are you buying cards right now or not like no i've the last three hundred sixty five days or so has been by far the most buying and moving stuff around activity that i've that i've ever had by a mile so you know that's that's the truth is that you know for me personally i haven't been hesitant i understand other people hesitating of course i understand that i get it but but the but the initial hesitation actually led to discovery and that discovery actually led to more passion than i can ever remember having as a collector this is what card radicals do and chris you're certainly one of them fun conversation hopefully you all took several points home with you chris josh always a pleasure thanks brett thanks buddy