we return to everybody's favorite program here on the stacking slabs network it is card ladder confidential and guys i'm not just blowing smoke this is authentic everybody tells me this is their favorite the numbers prove it too this will get people out of the woodwork listening to the stacking slabs network that haven't listened in a long time so appreciate you guys being here and of course i'm joined by chris and josh and we always start this off with a cold open question and i'm going to rip through this and i can't wait to hear this reaction because this is a topic that we have not talked about collectively or individually and i i know you all saw this because if you're you the only way you missed it is if you've been living under a rock but last week in the same day alt acquired the nineteen ninety seven kobe bryant metal universe pmg green psa five for three point one five million from their card fund we saw grant slaton with the pick up the two thousand five and two thousand six ultimate collection mj logoman one of one autos then we saw golden in a private sale with the ninety seven ninety eight upper deck game jersey michael jordan auto out of twenty three sell for four point two five million this all happened all at the same time when you saw these reports because we saw the reports from everybody who covers this stuff it all came through what was going on in your head when you saw all of this action chris let's start with you okay i have a big long take on this i actually like i take a walk before we record this and i just like think to myself some of the stuff i might wanna say i look at the show notes and i think do i have anything to say on this stuff or am i just gonna try and make it up when it comes up on the show and say it goes fifty fifty but i was thinking how can i work my opinion on these and on particularly on two of the sales which is the kobe and the jordan gamers autograph how can i work my opinion on this into the one of these questions anyway so i have a long thing on this so i might actually step back and let you and josh say anything you wanna say so that you guys don't have to just sit there and wait while i ramble on because i have like a few minutes on this i can't wait i will just say this josh and then pass it to you i received a couple messages and more than a couple from individuals that were asking me they're like what do you make of this and i looked at the content from a couple different sources and then i just literally stashed it away into this cold open question because i knew we were going to be chatting so i figured it would be fun to just kind of riff back and forth but yeah you know everyone wants to say like there's some manufacturing going on here based on it all happening at once that's the kind of that's just the hobby perspective that's how it happens but it's nothing surprises me at this point with the way this industry and the hobby moves and what card ladder tracks and just everything is going up and it seems like there's new stories every day now three of these sales all at once that's a little unicorn oh a unicorn situation away but yeah i don't know that's why i i wanted to source you guys josh what do you think so i just pulled up sales history and card letter and i filtered by private sales that have been reported to us or we've logged in the system that are over one million dollars there are forty one in the entire history of cardladder there's been three in the last four days and that does not count the two logoman mjs that grant acquired that's the kobe green the mj game jersey auto and also twenty seventeen topps dynasty autograph logoman blue aaron judge so three million dollar private sales this says to me it's gone parabolic again we're we've gone insane again just like in twenty twenty two so that's what it says to me understood makes sense chris what do you got yeah the timing there's actually two layers to the timing of it it all got reported or like released like within twenty four hours or less even but i'm pretty sure that none of these transactions all happened like yesterday or the day before or whatever i'm i'm pretty sure these transactions have been ongoing or facilitated over a period of months so maybe the which doesn't change the fact that it all got reported on the same day and created headlines on the same day although i bet if you asked each one of them they would have wished that the other headline hadn't sort of stepped on theirs so i don't know if the if coordination is what anybody wanted i think each one of those would have liked to have their own day in the sun although maybe there's a force multiplier but all happening at once too i don't know but i think i don't think all those transactions happen like at the same time think i think it's worth inquiring directly with each of the people involved in them and if if people are curious and say hey when did this happen and i bet i think you'd find that there was a big range there of dates when that stuff happened alright and now to my take alright so the kobe pmg green question first yes yes so we take like grants and you're the mj guy so i would love your opinion on this we take the the grants acquisitions of these two just historic and obviously very important michael jordan cards and you see him post you see the sales you you or you see the reaction everything else and i you know it's it's fun when these cards get uncovered and you get to see them but i think i was kind of left like like i wanted to hear grant right away like on a podcast talking about the cards themselves and of course the story of acquisition all that would be fun but like why these cards mattered so much to him and his collection and highlighting where they have been and all that and so this is where like and this is no fault to grant and any of the all or any of the owners of these cards but to me it's like when you've got cards that matter this much in this space and especially on the basketball collector side like all these are premium basketball cards that you know would would be the number one card at any you know premium auction or elite auction whatever it's i felt like the hobby moves so quickly it's so transactional it's like can we just slow can we just slow down for a minute and and share some perspective but i i guess it wasn't really a question but that's just how i've that's how i felt after seeing the flood especially with those jordan cards because i just wanted to learn more about them totally man somebody should get him on a podcast to talk about that if he's willing and maybe he's not ready to right now maybe he just wanted to sort of unveil that they exist and then he'll be positioned to tell the story at a later time or who knows who knows what's going on with that but yeah i agree and and slowing down here is is wise because it can feel like oh well if four huge cards were announced as moving on the same day then that's a trend that's going to continue and it's not you know you might not see four cards of that magnitude move for the next four years so it's definitely worth slowing down and and like telling the story of each of those and that's something that content creators i think are like very well positioned to do and understand better than even the collecting community sort of understands why it's important to like tell the story of this stuff too okay so here goes my take alright so we had the kobe pmg green for three point one five million and we had the michael jordan game jersey autograph for four point two five million so i am going to zag against both of these but let me preface it by first saying telling the other side of the story which is that there's there is a world where you know okay if if so kobe pmg green that's nineteen ninety seven that's kobe's second season that's the first season of the precious metal gems and it has both the green and the red and the green are the first ten and there is a a completely valid collecting perspective that says that the pmg green is the most desirable card of any player who's in that set and so if you sort of take this point of view that this is kobe's most desirable card or one of the very few most desirable because of how early it is because of how rare it is because of the prestige of the pmg brand and and and because of kobe and and you can start saying so kobe's most desirable card was only three point one five million dollars that's it you know you could sort of start thinking like you know part of the reason why like quote unquote apex cards are still low is because even the most well capitalized people who participate in cards they they they tighten the purse strings they're like how much how much of my portfolio do i wanna allocate to this and it's usually very small it's usually tiny know there are billionaires collecting cards and they're saying i i don't wanna have more than just a few million in cards or whatever so like there's a world where like if those guys if if the of the highest highest end of buyers and that side of the market ever got more confident and more bullish that you can see a card like you can see a day when we say kobe's best most desired card was three million dollars i can't believe it went for that low you and you can you can say that same thing about a jordan game jersey autograph card too you can say this is the first jersey autograph set it's got this very iconic identifiable michael jordan all star jersey the jersey that he's pictured on in the card photo is the same jersey that these pieces were taken from there's only twenty three there's not a rare version of this it's the only jersey autograph card from that first year of jersey autograph cards and it's hand numbered and it's got this and some of them have these great michael jordan autographs some of them have napkin patches some of them have colorful patches from the screen printing and they're not patches technically they're jersey pieces so sorry for the technical slip up there but you know you could you you all of a sudden can start saying so the so this card has a claim to be one of michael jordan's most desirable cards i certainly know michael jordan collectors who think that that's his most desirable card i know some who would say that this particular copy that's sold because of the quality of the jersey piece and the colors and stuff that this is maybe one of michael jordan's very best most desirable cards and again you can perform that exercise and say you can certainly imagine a day when four point two five million feels like a really low price for something that's a consensus best card like these are these are mount rushmore athletes these are mount rushmore cards of those athletes and it's just a few million bucks like there wasn't any other rich guy out there who was willing to spend more than a few million bucks for the apex cards or the apex players okay so that's like my positive pro case for those and i think i did it justice in a short amount of time here's my zag when i came back to the hobby in twenty sixteen these cards were the apex cards then also mhmm it's about the pmg green and it's about the game jersey autograph and i was doing beckett research beckett magazine basketball issues a deep dive this weekend and i came across the infamous blurb in one of them that said sign of the times the apocalypse is near michael jordan's pmg green has a beckett value of nine thousand dollars i can't believe this because even then the pmg green was sort of seen as the apex card and was so expensive for the time so you know argue and and like you can see that that the game jersey card was always very highly ranked in the hot list and stuff too so even then you can sort of say you know for for thirty years these have been the apex cards and at one at what point does that become stagnant at what point does that start to sort of become overly predictable and the vitality and the dynamism of the market is lost and you know activity and and and energy these are lifeblood things like dynamism change in perspectives new perspectives enlightenment this breathes life into into anything into a market and stagnation and predictability and the same thing over and over again that is death that that can really slow things down i think and so you know i'd like to sort of make an example out of this i used to work with somebody who would sort of point out that i don't i don't understand why prices go up for or down for retired players their legacy is set i i get it for active players they can have a big game they can win a championship but i don't it doesn't make sense that prices would go up or down for retired players and it the the in my perspective is that that couldn't be further from the truth that the so take michael jordan for example there there's a hundred people collecting michael jordan in two thousand six then a bunch of nineties kids pour back in and by twenty sixteen there's a thousand people collecting michael jordan now there's ten times as many people competing for the same cards of the same player whose legacy hasn't changed at all and so just by it's it's about the market participants as much as it is about the player on the card and so if there's ten times as many market participants why wouldn't the price go up there's ten times as much competition focusing on that player's cards and if the size of a market for a player shrinks what if the what if the michael jordan collector base goes from a thousand people buying his cards back down to one hundred then the price should go down so that's how we can get dynamism in markets for retired players or for old players or for old sets and stuff that's how that can happen and you know what else can happen though perspective can change too so even if the even if we say okay michael jordan's market has a thousand buyers but those thousand buyers are like me and we collect michael jordan for like five years after coming back and then we say this has gotten too expensive and or the cards have gotten predictable a little bit boring so i'm going to go look at other players i'm gonna go start a jokic pc and i'm gonna start a patrick mahomes pc and i learn about collecting from that era and then i come back and i look at the michael jordan era and i say i have fresh eyes and i say gosh he has he has one of ones that that nobody has ever really talked to me about before i'm gonna go back and i'm gonna look at these all of a sudden this whole new life has been injected into a market that hasn't changed it's still same cards nobody's making new cards nobody's going back in a time machine and producing new cards but all of a sudden the market is so fresh it's so vibrant it's so new because i've taken a new perspective and if of those thousand participants if one hundred are like me where we sort of learn we get a new perspective we come back and change it that will change the market again too and it's not even the number of participants changing it's just perspective changing and that is the light that's like sort of the thesis the point here the lifeblood of the hobby is that these markets can change because of changes in perspective because of changes in taste because of changes in preference because of research because of learning so like think about this right brett not to open up a scab okay pacers versus thunder last year in the finals the thunder were favored in every single game home game huge favorites road game they were still favorites so this is an old trope in sports why even play the games why even play the games if we know that the thunder are big favorites to win and you play the games because all of a sudden the pacers win three all of a sudden we're in a game seven even though the pacers were not projected to win a single one of those games they win half of them they get to a game seven and then they have a lead when their best player is achilles pops like they very likely could have won that championship that's why you play the games that's the that's the truism in sports they say oh this team's so much better than the other why even roll the ball out just forfeit and move on that's why you play the games same thing in the hobby right why even think about the market why even research cards why even look into it at all these are the best cards it's settled it's done but the hobby is even more dynamic than a basketball game because in a basketball game we do sort of have a way of deciding what's best at the end who had the most points in in collecting in the hobby perspectives can change people's tastes and preferences can change and they can ebb and flow and they can go this way and then they can go that way and then they can go this way so i looked at to bring this back home here i looked at the p m g green sale i looked at the game jersey autograph sale and i simultaneously held the thoughts in my mind that these are apex cards to these players that these prices might look cheap one day while also holding the thought in my mind that these have been the apex cards for these players for ten twenty thirty years and it's a bit stale and it's a bit stagnant and it feels a little bit like death and i'm looking for and and seeking out life and energy and dynamism and new approaches and new perspectives and a balance and energy and i wanna see the pacers win three games when some when they said they couldn't do it and i wanna see them take that lead in game seven on the road that's why we play the games that's why we collect the cards we need dynamism to breathe life into these markets whether it's new market participants coming in or it's a change in per it's a change in perspective of the current market market participants who are currently in it the the dynamism is the lifeblood of things and we see this happening all across the hobby we see a change of perspective on in person autographs and how those are now being used to sort of add rarity add real rarity to vintage and pre war cards or we see the stars surpass the flir in its desirability because it is nba license and it did get issued in conjunction with this rookie season and it is a much shorter supply etcetera etcetera markets change opinions change tastes change perspectives change it happens all the time so even the pmgs the golden boss refractor at release was priced higher than the pmg red and now that has completely flipped us up these things preferences tastes change and that was sort of my takeaway brett when i was looking at those two sales was like this is the same song and dance for the last thirty years these are the apex cards when is a tastemaker when is when is one of these most well capitalized buyers going to come in and bring a new perspective and shake the snow globe a little bit and bring some new taste and new point of view to this market specifically kobe and mj and nineties i think this is gonna be a good setup this is a good setup for the topic of discovery that we're going to get into i wanna get josh your reaction to all of this my my thought process is just this is personally no matter how big or how revered certain cards are like the jordan example and the kobe example that we just talked about like and there'll always be important cards but for me is it the more time i spend in this space what becomes more and more interesting to me are the cards that i don't even know exist or the cards that have never been sold or seen when when one of those cards presents itself that's when my when i get excited because i wanna learn i wanna inquire i wanna understand where the card was why it matters why it's important and yeah there's you know you that typically this plays out from the perspective of oh it it's up on a big auction and we're learning about it for the first time but it doesn't need to be it could just simply be a collector posting it on instagram for the first time so that the unseen portion of it and the unseen being entering the kind of the limelight and then maybe putting its elbows out and entering the conversation as one of the best cards of that player that is interesting to me and so like from everything you described there that's what just kept racing on in my head but josh like what's your reaction on chris's take do have anything i don't know i'd just be interested in your response to that yeah i'd probably just synthesize it as like we're we've been in the hobby for ten years and we're kind of bored seeing the same you know apex cards because they're supposed to sell for a lot continue to keep selling for more and more whereas i'd be more interested in seeing like a one on one kobe that was unearthed or those two like mj logo mans that grant found like those are more interesting to me and yes i find those sales more interesting like there we have three kobe green pmg sales and on card letter we've got a bunch of those mj game jerseys and it's like we have to keep retelling the story of why this card is the best card every year that it sells and it's like oh this one's the patch is better or this one's a psa copy the last one was bgs this is better versus like you know yokich's like best logo man autos at auction right now we don't need to like have all these stories about it this is gonna be his highest selling card publicly ever because it's his one of one logo man rookie auto you know yes there's a certain element of hobby fatigue that's a hell of a way to start the the show but let's just dive into discovery really quick so i've been talking about discovery a lot because i think it's a fun topic i find that it feels very individual at first where you start going down a trail and you're like oh i like these things i like these elements and no one else is posting about this this seems affordable i'm finding myself right now in this era of i'm just i'm look i'm like looking for value in cards because everything's so expensive and i'm just like i i want those things to line up where it's like the subject of the card is something i'm captivated by it's less discovered and the price point seems good and it's the feeling i have and i use this as a barometer a lot where it's i don't even need to look at cardladder i just buy it because it feels right to me i don't need to see any comps it just feels good because most of the times it's stuff i've never seen before so this is playing out in my life as a collector but then inevitably it i go meet other people and you if you think you're the only one finding something i i hate to tell you you're you're not there's other people doing it you just have to find the people and likely there's someone who's been collecting stuff you're looking for for three years four years five years and to me you could be threatened by that but to me i always get excited by it because i wanna learn and i wanna ask questions and i wanna understand their mindset and you're not gonna line up on everything but you're gonna line up on a few things and that connection point with someone else who feels what you feel and you know you build the relationship because maybe you can get some cards down the road that sort of a thing so this idea of discovery and self discovery through collecting i think is really important but i'm curious on your end when do you when do you think exploring new lanes like where does the knowledge come from on your ends like josh i know you spent so much time like not exclusively but your all your focus was about around lebron like you were collecting and stuff and then you ventured off into some football stuff so you're doing some discovery on your own like during that process of opening up a loo new lane or maybe trying to figure out if it's a new lane that you wanna open up for you josh like what is the point where you gain enough knowledge or you you find information that excites you enough to kinda make that next move and start building out a collection in that idea that became a new collecting lane for you yeah i mean it starts with you know finding what i can that's available for sale that's sold in the past in our sales history it's perusing checklist but eventually you know you find your way to the inner circles of that new lane on instagram and that's usually when it kicks in for me is like i'll meet five or six people it's like oh they've already they've already blazed this trail and they they almost like don't know what what lane they're in yet because they're they're so embedded into it so like having me come into it and ask them questions about it it's almost like they're they're like relearning how they got this far you know so it's kinda like fun for both of us and then then it's like trying to pry it away from private collectors because like the ebay stuff that's on ebay is usually like it's almost too easy to get some of those you know like you find it it's like what am i gonna do just like bin three hundred listings on ebay just because it's all here i'd rather i'd rather go find the ones that nobody wants to sell so it's usually that point where it's like i find the instagram post that's three years old from somebody that they they posted it three years ago and nobody's messaged them about it they just have this thing and that's usually where i start finding conviction yeah it's it's wild that what's accessible especially when we get to this mode becomes less attractive and so it's doing the work and trying to uncover and learning from other people is makes it more compelling chris what's your mindset when it comes to opening up a new lane because you've documented like you have documented through your content like here is what i'm collecting here's how i'm collecting it here's the structure i'm building but like brock purdy for instance and it doesn't need to be purdy but like any of those examples like i'm sure during that process you've met other collectors who've been doing it longer than you like is that do you do you get excited from those connections and learning from it what are your other sources of information like how do you treat discovery yeah it's a real weakness of mine because i have a very much a lone wolf tendency where i just wanna go out i wanna do it all myself i don't wanna ask for help but the reality is that every card is owned by somebody right now so somebody got to it before me it's all like somebody know knew about this before i did somebody bought somebody went out of their way to acquire that card before i did and they had reasons for doing it so i'm coming after somebody else there oftentimes is plenty to learn from that person although i think with purdy i might be one of the very few people on this planet who is like actively looking for his first appearing base rookie one of ones as a category i might be i actually might be the only person who's ever like had that thought but for like it's like one of the things that happens is that you can learn a lot from research you know you can and you you can look at sales history and you can sort of see the frequency of sales and sort of what these things have sold for and how they compare to what other things have sold for you can look at population reports and see how many are in circulation not not just for that player but others you can look at checklists though that could be very helpful to figure out print runs and sort of lineages and sequences of things but there's also you know knowledge that you can't get from that that you can get from thirty seconds of talking to somebody like if i just approach somebody you know about a particular category that i'm collecting and they and they they can tell me immediately like yeah like the you know for what for whatever reason the the optic gold vinyls of jokic like nobody wants to sell those you you if you're looking for like cool one of ones of jokic you you can find a lot but you're never gonna pry the optic gold vinyls out like only two of these have ever publicly surfaced and some of them are in china and they just never you'll never see one at a card show you'll whether you're in macau or you're at the national you just you will never see those and that's something that you can't learn from a checklist website or a sales history i mean sort of you're gonna infer it but you know you you you can only know that if you talk to the people who've already been participating socially in that space they can tell you that and they can actually save you a bunch of time so that you don't have to like bump your head and learn that yourself but instead you know people can teach you that because they've already been doing it for a long time and there's that's just one little example they they can they can tell you the human side that just isn't transcribed anywhere it isn't there is there's no website that writes down like the the sentiment check on a particular card for a particular player you just you have to jump into that community get to know those people and and there's there's just a wealth of knowledge to learn and then also you can only really zag i think we talked about this last time too you can only really zag against the status quo once you understand what the status quo is you you can only find your own lane once you know what all the other lanes are so so it's really helpful to learn how everybody before me has approached this and then all the learnings that they had and then i can properly diagnose where i might be able to bring something new or creative to this or maybe i don't want to maybe i wanna follow in somebody else's footsteps but until i fully understand the history of what came before me i'm never gonna be able to zag against it or find a new lane in it i appreciate those thoughts talking about entering new lanes and kinda discovering new ways to collect inevitably like you run into people who've been building and collecting long before you have there's like this interest this came out in a private conversation last week but i can't this like this this kinda fits within this topic but private conversation i had last week about a card that someone had and because the another collector thought that did they collect this player they felt like that they should have access to this card and so i don't know like through discovery you meet a lot of really cool people and like minded people but there's this also this like element that i've observed through my own experience and through conversations with others where there are collectors who feel entitled to specific cards because they've been collecting the player ten years longer than you when we know this is an open market you've got auctions running private sales all this stuff but i don't know like do you guys run into do you ever feel like there is a certain level of entitlement in this community with specific collectors just because they have been collecting in a lane that you might just be discovering now and getting into i'm curious like is that something that you've experienced just in your pursuits over your career josh we'll start with you yes and oftentimes i feel it's deserved on their end you know like i have to kinda put my put the shoe on the other foot and think if someone came into lebron exquisite lane for example or or like gold refractors and they just started like low balling me offers or telling me this is what they're after this is what they need and i'm i'm just sorta like that's usually like the number one thing that i'm like alright you're i'm just like immediately gonna ignore this person so when i come into a space that's new for me i'm usually reticent of like okay this person has put in the time they probably have the connections the network it's it's incumbent on me to like prove to them that i'm you know willing to like organically and and genuinely join this space with them and not just like come in and bulldoze over them so for example like one thing i'll do is you know i don't just like come in and like offer on all their one on ones they've ever owned and just give me all these cards you know it's almost like you wanna like help them source a one on one that they may that maybe they've been after or like you're sort of sharing this pot of like a a global set of one on ones where it's i'm not gonna just come in and have all of them so let me figure out a way to maybe piece out like three or four that i want for myself and then like you know understand that this person may be looking to add or or like maybe they wanna take a couple out but they wanna add a new one in etcetera so i'm usually thinking in terms of that of like how do i navigate this space where i'm not the you know i'm not the original founder of this so i i should actually like treat it with some respect that's a very responsible thinking i've seen a lot of people not doing that and i think that's hard for people people view this as a competition a lot of times where i don't know i feel like the more collaborative you are in the building the right relationships usually like that means the cards end up in your collection quicker than maybe a win right now makes you feel but chris entitlement do you feel it yeah i have the same stake that he had which is that i don't begrudge seniority either i i respect it and and they those people are quite literally holding all the cards so me as a as a rational actor coming into this space i think to myself like how can i be the most pleasant enjoyable helpful value add person so that these people might give me a shot one day that's that's my take on that's this is everything he just said completely agree do you guys think about this happens to this has happened to me more recently than ever before we'll all be connected into the right person with the card and we'll be having conversations and i want the card so bad but there is this i don't know if this is maturity but i will feel this i will i i find myself not asking like would you ever sell this or making an offer but just letting it be and at least i know where it's at and yeah there might be a signal a a a signal of you know if you ever let me know type of a thing just so i can have like my paw on it at some level but i don't know like i find myself and this is the hardest thing because the hobby's so transactional it's so in your face and it's we need this right now like i'm feeling at peace a little bit with this new approach of just being a being more back to the word of last week being more patient and just trying to build relationships like just creating a network of people i don't know if you've experienced that at all or if you just go straight to the jugular when you see a card you want but i don't know i'm finding that it's it's nice it's peaceful like i i don't need to deplete my bank account it's like i can work for it josh i don't know what do you does that resonate at all well i usually think what would i want someone to message me if it was the other way around and i i always think about it from that perspective and there's two things that i want people to message me because most of the messages i get are pretty similar and what i would prefer is someone messages me hey i found this absolute grail you've been looking for forever i found it at half price here it is message this guy it's yours that never obviously never ever happens so one is just like message this person and offer them something first because everybody that dms wants something right it's always like hey how are you doing how's your day by the way here's what i need you know it's it's always like some fake intro of like i'm we're friends but i technically just messaging you because i want something so if you can genuinely message something somebody and offer them up something the second approach is the jugular which is this card is clearly worth x let's say ten thousand dollars offer them fifteen thousand dollars immediately just go in and say i will give you fifteen thousand dollars for this card you don't know my name we've never met i'm not gonna just you know i'm just gonna go straight to it fifteen thousand if someone messaged me that i'd be like great we now have a i can at least like acknowledge this response i'm getting something out of this which is overpricing the card that i own and if they say no they say no but if they say yes great you've made a deal those are the two ways that i think about it dude i love that yes the small no we no more small talk we know what's going on especially if it's not big facts not not somewhat not something not someone we're used to talking about or talking to chris in reaction to that before we move on to the topic no that's that's exactly right alright i wanna go back to patience because we talked about it all episode but it felt i feel compelled to based on just the tops chrome football a little bit all we saw the the basketball release football release like i you know we didn't need to spend time talking about how outrageous like these sales are we've covered them on last week on the football card podcast but like the machine is in place like the activation with the athletes the breakers you know tops fanatics it's in full force i know like you guys probably saw cards that you through this you know release and launch that you might be interested in or you saw a car that you didn't even think you're interested in but maybe it was like oh this is cool but actually i don't know if you've pulled the trigger or not so maybe that's where we start like have you guys bought any tops chrome football if not like what what what has been your approach just as it is here it is the new era it is the new wave it the system is pushing it very hard aggressive and fast prices are very high not sustainable but how are you looking at this at from like a collector lens like as this stuff is coming at us chris we'll start with you well it's a great example of shaking the snow globe because i was really feeling towards the tail end of the panini football era that all of the cards that i was looking to collect or the players that i collect like i'll take christian mccaffrey as an example i felt like all his stuff had just become way too expensive and i had lost interest and it was too much was priced into it and i was just like i completed this the runs that i wanted to complete and now i'm good and now i'm seeing what his tops chrome stuff is coming out on the market for like one of his super fracture inserts was listed for twenty five k obo for like a day on ebay and then it went away i don't know if somebody bought it or whatever but you know his his prism his equivalent prism one of one insert would be like seven hundred fifty bucks so like it end up but but in football and in basketball these new tops products are realizing prices that are completely changing the way that i look at the stuff from the panini era so that's introduced energy to how i look at things it's it's it no longer does the panini stuff feel high and stagnant it feels fresh with opportunity so you know that's that's one of the things that i've taken away from but the other thing is that i i definitely have the the perspective to know that whether it was like my one of my favorite examples is the clyde edwards hilaire when his i think it was his don russ paper card came out and it was like a hundred bucks and then you could just watch it tick down just like a skier going down a slope that that graph just just bottoms out and now you know it's a fifty cent card or whatever and and so as with one player the same with the new product and there's just a few fanatics manufactured tops branded football products and basketball products right now but there will be more there will be full full seasons worth of issues and stuff and inevitably i think the supply is gonna flatten out pricing i that would be my guess but that that's my takeaway from it is that i i've i've it it's it's made me look at other eras with a whole new set of eyes seeing how the market is playing out for these things are you convinced right now well i guess here's a question and then we'll josh get your reaction like what do you think of the product itself the cards like outside of price like what do you think of the product well i've never had any in hand any of the cards in hand i haven't looked that closely the only time that the product even comes up is if i'm on one of my you know ebay safe searches or something and like like that mccaffrey insert super factor trickles in from twenty twenty six top scrum foot or i guess twenty twenty five top scrum football other than that i don't really have much exposure to it has any has anyone sent you cards yet like in your dms okay no no i i do i do own some yo i own the jokic black season tip-off one of one from the flagship tops i have that so but that's about that's i think that's everything i have from from the fanatics era so far nothing has ever since i've been back in to cards nothing has felt more like the dawn of a new era than than right now like it it it feels like you can make this decision to step into the new world or just find opportunities in the old world that's what my experience has been like but josh what what is your reaction been it's it's a lot to take in because it is quite different from panini there's a lot more emphasis on the inserts to chris' point like the mccaffrey being a seven hundred dollar black finite insert versus the top scrum super fracture inserts seem to sell like almost the same and i don't know if that's just like a frenzy of people just wanting to buy any super factor because they've heard on podcasts that one on ones are good that's kind of the sense that i get and i've been like trying to get a scataboo superfractor one zero one or like i you know i missed out on the black finite because it's sold for like twenty grand or whatever the hell and it's just like i you know i have enough experience in this hobby to know like i just shouldn't touch any of this stuff for like two years it just doesn't make any sense like it's just so expensive and you know there's some like advice out there that's like oh just like buy all this awesome tops chrome stuff there's so much of a frenzy you can flip it but like i just have no interest in like trying to dive into something where it's short term and i'm trying to flip it and so for me it's cool to watch it from afar i'm i pulled up like topschrome super vector sales over ten grand on sales history and there's a kevin garnett autograph there's like some cool stuff but it's like it's just too much for me to fully understand there's like so many there's a wenminioma top scrum super factor but it's like an insert i've never heard of there's like a rockstar's jason tatum i don't even know what these inserts are you know there's so many and they sell for like i said similarly to the base and then there's like variation ones and i know that panini has a of this stuff but you know it's it'll take some time to sort of weed all this stuff out over time and i don't really wanna be a part of figuring that out and getting crushed what blows my mind through all of this is i'm more confident than ever before to sit back on the sidelines and be patient and just watch the activity it just continues to blow my mind the volume of people it takes to support these prices at this rate it's it's insane like that's all i kept i keep thinking about is like holy cow like how many of these people exist that are paying these prices but yeah i guess that's the fun part of it so i wanted to kinda round this out by talking about just the topic that i did a flagship episode on and just i just like had this moment recently where i was like looking at my cards and i was like you know what like i'm really happy with my collection but then i asked myself this question it's like well what does this say about me and like and then i got into this episode i put out about like your collection is a reflection and i just think as these eras move and cycles happen like there's a lot we can learn from the decisions we make on the cards whether it's like risk tolerance maybe you buy a card because you see other people you respect with those cards it gives you some sort of validation it helps tell your identity as a collector i'm curious just like from what you've seen just with market activity stuff in cardladder like what types of collectors do you think show up in like cycles like we're in right now like what is the reflection of that individual with the activity and what's happening in the market chris do you have any reaction to this yeah so so yeah like the that it's so unusual i think to get reflective at a moment of a hot market because hot markets usually induce like a very short term or a very one-sided long term perspective where the idea is like wow dopamine hit every day things are going up this is great things will never go the other way or even if you're thinking long term you're like man i better get it now or i'm never gonna be able to get it again it's always very bullish and optimistic and really the pensive moment is saved for the trough or the valley that eventually comes and then when things are in a correction then we say man you know now we now sort of like our foot is off the gas pedal everybody's taking a break everybody's sort of thinking and so it's interesting to to start thinking about this now sort of like you know because like the first thing that the to to your last part the first thing that comes to my mind is that like if you think about twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four we were exiting a boom that had happened in twenty twenty one twenty two and twenty three and twenty four was a declining or a flat market and during that time i think lot of new collecting philosophies were created because people were just put their heads down and like the great cards weren't showing up we weren't getting these headlines and like all the the really exciting cards were tucked away and like there that that was a time when at least for me personally i was forging a whole new collecting philosophy that would then blossom and and take flights in twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six because like what's interesting about a a hot market is that it brings out everything it even brings out obscure things that may might have been sitting in a collection because you have consignment directors and auction houses and marketplace that are going out there like convincing people like what do you have in your shoebox let's see let's get it graded you you even if a card is obscure or really not known that's there's still this market can still bring it out i've seen that happen a lot like that's why last episode it was so funny it was like yeah i've actually been doing the most buying of my collecting career over the last year because like the cards are starting to circulate so to to this idea so that's kind of like it's just interesting to be reflective right now i think it's a really good exercise to reflect in this moment and not in the moment that comes in a year or two when eventually things will very likely cool off and we'll have a a correction again and the and the cycle will continue and i think like with the collector that shows up in a in an upward like if somebody who's been here from like most most of their collecting era is twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six they feel like they have the midas touch they feel like anything they buy turns to gold and that breeds a lot of confidence and optimism and they're probably willing to take some risks and or they're probably willing to dabble in things that they know better because they still just think everything's up and away and to the contrary from people from twenty three and twenty four they're probably a little bit overly cautious maybe a little overly patient maybe a little overly cerebral you know so on and so forth and so to this side the the reflection idea so as collectors we're we're changing and if our pc is a reflection of our identity and i think it is then as we change and evolve as people and our preferences and and ideas change and to some extent the composition of our collection will change too and it does and the metaphor for this is the ship of theseus which is a paradox that asks the question let's say a ship leaves port goes into the sea and then the ship stays at sea for years and years and years and slowly every panel every floorboard every piece of the structure of that ship is replaced while at sea i hope hope this this board sprung a leak we have to replace it this part of the deck and eventually the ship is one hundred percent new material is it still the same ship that's the paradox that's the that is the ship of thesis is that the same ship or is it a new ship it's completely one hundred percent new materials but at the same time the it still has the same captain the same crew same passengers for the most part probably i don't know you you can decide how you wanna tailor the example exactly but is it the same ship or not same with the collection like i look at my michael jordan collection i have three cards left over the last ten months i have turned over that entire collection save for three cards and let me tell you this right now those three are going too and so within maybe a period of a few months from now to a year from now my michael jordan collection will be the ship of theseus it will be one hundred percent new materials is it still the same collection is it still chris hosges michael jordan collection i don't know oh i love that this is i'm writing this down because that topic of what you're doing with your mj collection is that needs to be a centerpiece for the next conversation because this same thought process has gone in my head as i've made moves josh i wanna get your take on this and i feel like you're to compliment you i i listening to you and your content i feel like this is something i've probably learned from you over the years where you've got these market cycles going there's stuff that's always moving and you collect a specific profile of card or player and they're raging out of control and instead of like chasing it you kinda pause and then go collect something else maybe share some perspective on like when you learn to change your behaviors as the market cycles reach a point where you look at it and it just like doesn't make any sense to you like what got you to be able to realize that and not only realize it but just like continue doing what you're doing but doing it in another zone well before you give me too much credit just imagine the scenario that exists where there is a teenager out there that his parents gave him ten thousand dollars in twenty twenty two and said go invest in pokemon cards kid and he bought like ten mario pikachu psa tens and now he's on a yacht and i'm still sitting here fighting over two thousand dollar cdlam cards with random people on the internet so you know i think like there is this this idea of oh patience is so awesome and you know like when the market's hot you should sell and when it's cold you should buy but just like there's just been so much heat on some of these sections that it's like do i should i really be in a position to be giving people advice i'm like oh don't buy this don't do that it really just comes down to a you know personal preference of this is what i've done you know i can't really like tell you don't go buy pokemon because it's up a hundred and seventy five percent over the last year i was on record a month ago being like this is insane and it's up five percent since then so i i don't know anything and every pokemon card ever that ever existed is now worth ten thousand dollars in a psa ten so i don't know anything that's the caveat all i can tell you is what i do usually is like when things get super hot i just like lose the appetite to keep buying it's just what it's i don't know it's just a a personal thing i don't know what it is there there's not like a great explanation i think you know i just i can't afford as much stuff you know it's everything is double in price i can my dollar the strength of my dollar is cut in half so i just i've i sort of like lose the the excitement to like go and spend all my money on stuff that i know is just keeps going up and then when the market's down and everybody hates it everybody's like oh you guys i told you that sports cars are stupid you're buying pieces of paper the more that people just start jumping on and trashing it's like then i wanna go the other way and start buying it's way more than i could ever afford and it's like i'm leveraging future things so you know i don't i don't know that listening to my exact advice is is great maybe just like pick and choose what works best for you you know lot of great insights here in this chat i've really enjoyed it i wanna close it out do you guys have any pickups you wanna talk about anything that you've grabbed over the last month or so that excites you chris we'll start with you yeah i don't know if i've ever gotten a chance to talk about this card on this show i got it last september but i'm going to talk about it because i made a breakthrough breakthrough research discovery on it that i'm very excited about the card is jordan's nineteen ninety seven ninety eight power deck one of one and the research breakthrough that i had for the card is this i always wanted to go back and look at the back of magazines and figure out release dates and jordan has seven one of ones from the first year of basketball one of ones and so i knew that there was a first seven and that's a clean sandbox those seven from the first year but i never knew what order they came out in except that i knew that his ultra base set from series one which i call the platinum masterpiece because it looks just like the platinum medallion but it's a masterpiece that was the first i always knew that but i didn't know anything further and so when i was in arizona and really think no i think when i was in california before that at some point months ago i ordered a bunch of beckett magazines i basically went on ebay and i found as many beckett basketball monthlies as i could and i ordered them all and then they were all just waiting for me when i got here and i was able to get enough from ninety seven and ninety eight to figure out the release dates for all four products that had michael jordan one of ones in them from the first year because the four products are ultra series one ultra series two upper deck series two and flare showcase those are the only four products to have one of ones from the first year basketball one of ones and so i went into them and i did confirm that ultra series one was first but the breakthrough discovery was that i also was able to pinpoint that upper deck series two was the second so and then the third was ultra series two which has the ninety eight greats one of one for jordan and then the final was the flare showcase which has four one of ones for jordan that's how you get to the seventh okay so the so the breakthrough is that this card is michael jordan's second one of one ever made and that breathed a whole new life into what that card means to me and to my collection and so i don't think i ever got the chance to show that card off on this show so that's what i'm excited about and that's that's the deal who says that you can't continue to get excited about cards that you have in your collection case in point josh what about you you got any new cards i wasn't kidding i haven't bought a card in two months i don't i don't need to hide anything dude i when i buy cards i'll show you when i'm not buying cards i will tell you you know it's like everybody's buying cards it's great we should all we feel the urge to like continue to have mail days i just haven't had any that's the reality it's it's quite alright hope i could still join the show is it i don't even like yeah there's there's clips of me being like you shouldn't be allowed to speak on x because you have none of x and now i'm in that category is is as long as you don't start spending ten thousand dollars on p s a ten pokemon cards we'll let you come back josh i'd be a millionaire if i did i'd be like i'd be on a yacht right now you guys we we join you on the yacht or definitely i'd love to do an episode and you're on the yacht and showing us how sweet your life is that would be pretty cool but i think we brought some fun topics to the table and you brought some good perspective thank you everyone for checking out card ladder confidential looking forward to doing it again soon thanks brett