welcome back we're here card ladder confidential time everybody's favorite time of the month and we i don't know if we've done a just chris episode and that's what we're getting today maybe we have maybe we haven't we've done twenty one of these but i'm excited we are going to talk about how the market keeps growing and asking the question are collectors keeping up with it i've been enjoying content on the hostcast talking or listening to chris talk about his experience of buying cards and making decisions so we'll get into some of that but without further ado chris welcome how are you doing well great to be back since it is only the two of us i can throw more questions back at you i'll take them yeah get a little more back and forth going it's great to be back are is there still gonna be a cold open question there is there is you've you've done this enough where you know it's it's coming your way yep and it's actually influenced from your most recent episode of the hosch cast which was episode thirty eight the collector as an artist and it's a subtle note you made in that but i thought this is a good amount of time that you have had and i think it'd be interesting for you to share with the audience kind of a moment in that time and that was when you stated i just celebrated my ten year anniversary back into the hobby which i thought that is a lot and it's that's a good chunk of time and you can make a lot of decisions and buy a lot of cards sell a lot of cards during that time frame and first of all congratulations on a decade back that's very impressive but i wanted to know and this is gonna be a very overwhelming question in that ten year time what is the moment that you think is the most significant on you as a collector that you've had that's been the most significant whether it's at the beginning in the middle maybe present day like what moment stands out to you if you could remember one thing or the most important lesson like it would be that moment man what a question what's your timeline at now you're i definitely remember sagging slabs in the twenty twenties i remember us twenty nineteen i first started getting back into it yep nineteen yeah so we're on a similar timeline here i was sixteen you were nineteen like that that gap felt way bigger when it was like twenty twenty one or twenty twenty two and now there's twenty twenty six like oh you came back in nineteen somebody else in twelve somebody else in sick like we're all products of the twenty tens now mhmm so this is this question has a million answers recency bias says just one just one just recency bias says that the the most pivotal moments of my collecting experience was when brian cajun cardboard asked me to come on his youtube channel along with a panel of michael jordan collectors and help critique and inform his hierarchy project and i thought that what he had already done was so good i i really had nothing to add i was like maybe i could argue with you that the one of a kind should bump up a tier but it it was already very accurate comprehensive and complete and so that forced me to get really creative because i i didn't wanna you know come to the show empty handed and so like the day of the recording i said i know what i'll do you know he's excluded michael jordan one of ones from this project and he excluded autograph cards and patch autograph cards and and so i said well i like one of ones i collect multi modder players with one of ones and i've never thought about michael jordan's one of ones so i'm gonna make a spreadsheet and i'm gonna try and like real quick in these hours before the show i'll like make a quick spreadsheet of at least you know his one of ones from the nineties that fit into the window of time that cajun was specializing in for his hierarchy and i made that spreadsheet i did that homework come to come into a show this was i think this was in twenty twenty three and i made that spreadsheet did the research looked into it and suffice it to say i think doing that research getting that nudge to look into this and sort of without realizing what was happening that i was blending a lot of things that i learned over the course of my collecting career blending my passion for michael jordan cards blending my passion for content creation my passion for research my understanding of how important one of ones have become but weren't for the nineties but are for people who collect today and that moment was like a catalyst for what would follow over the next coming years so i i i think it maybe it's that moment that that that day i think that moment was probably pretty influential not only for you but for a lot of other people and this is why i love content so much not that you have been trying to influence anyone in their decision making but you are sharing your story and naturally dots are connecting in people's brains which is really fun to see and i can tell you and i've been a late adopter on this but i've been trying to give him as much credit as possible because i always enjoy this type of content format but been listening to card boss a lot we'll have to give him a cool cool because i listen to it all the time and he's always shout say cool cool i i feel like i wanna just do a whole episode with him which we maybe will do at another date but it seems to me that every guest he has on over the last month or so he's been bringing up this you your example has been the example and so many amazing collectors have just and brian being one of them has said yeah i wish i would have thought of that or i i wish my instincts would have told me to do that and now like chris has just been on this rampage building it and it'd be really hard to catch up with him at this point so i'm i'm interested when you hear other people talk about the impact the collecting decision you made has been on them like what is that like how does that make you feel like and i'm sure you've been in hundreds of conversations with people on this topic of people trying to make their own decisions hell i i even chatted with you before we hit record about a decision i'm working on right now that's similar jason but like what does that make you feel like well it's really fun when it runs in parallel like jeff dinged corners was his most recent guest and he has lanes that he focuses in and the stuff that he really likes and so there's some things in common with how i'm approaching it and there's some things that are different from the way i i approach things and so i can learn from him and i can learn from you and i and you know it's a two way street and and there's not a competitive pressure where you know you're like well i i better not tell chris about this or you know i'm like i can't let brett know what you know when when there's when we're not in the same like lane but we're riding next to each other yeah in lanes that's like almost perfect so yeah it's a lot of fun to like that like comparing notes like sharing and comparing notes is is really helpful and it and it pays dividends continuously you know because like you'll say something about something that made a card special and important to you and you'll share something about your decision making process and that will that might that there might be just like one little thing you say that i'm like oh gosh i completely forgot that that is how this works and that is how i think too and like okay let me think about this whole thing again from scratch like that's why it's like so helpful when people are just willing to be brutally honest about something and just be like know gosh i'm glad you shared all this but this isn't landing with me or you know for whatever reason or like this just doesn't quite make sense to be like that those little moments are so helpful and they i think they have to be like nurtured and embraced not because like one person's right and one person's wrong at that second but because that that honesty can tell us something about how the collector's brain how the market works that is like really really helpful it's like try to like latch on to that like it's so funny that you latched on to the the the offhanded remark i made about ten years back in the hobby like that's something that actually stuck with you like though it's those little off the cuff remarks that you don't even know if anybody hears that actually turn into fodder for content that's really cool one more on this one before we move on because we have a full agenda i'm i'm interested in not that it matters because i tend to i consult with trusted resources when big decisions are made and i just find that helpful that's so much of my life when i'm not with my family is in isolation working on building my business making decisions on cards and i'm curious do you do you feel has there been an an outpouring of reaction or or emotion from let's just say michael jordan collectors and like that maybe they've there's a people feel threatened in a way that they're they're not adopting your approach or what you're doing because they have built a collection full of pmg rubies all of the would be in cajun cardboard's hierarchy cards like has there been like any sentiment of where p you've sensed that people feel threatened by you being a maverick in a way and kind of carving out this your own path with jordan one of ones very very little i think the overwhelming sentiment is that i'm glad i don't have to compete against him he's he's one guy who's like out from the the race to sort of like compile the hierarchy of michael jordan's most iconic cards so because like there's i don't like there i don't think there's much concern in michael jordan collecting right now about oh man if we lose one guy from the collecting pool it could really depress the market yeah it's it's the opposite concern it's like get that get good get somebody else out of here because that can actually maybe give me a shot at getting something sooner so i think there i think there's a relief that they're not competing against me and that i'm over here doing something else and then i but i've also been careful to express my genuine belief that this isn't a zero sum game and that the approach that i'm taking to collecting michael jordan is gonna resonate more with like the ultra modern style of collecting and it brings a value set from what different eras considered to be apex cards and it graphs it onto a nineties collecting mentality that is is more so like charting new territory rather than trying to rewrite an old map mhmm so i it it i'm not trying to displace or dislodge what currently exists i'm just seeing if there's room at the table for another chair and i and i think people understand it that way and i think and i think that you know there's there's so much energy and things going on elsewhere that in in the michael jordan market and and in the more traditional approaches to the michael jordan market that there's just really nothing there's nothing to there's there's nothing that's gonna derail that there's just it's it's an it's an unstoppable force and so you know i i think it's just it's kind of like most michael jordan collectors just kind of see it as something cute you know they pat me on the head and say oh this is interesting what you're doing here and off you go like i got out of my way now i have i have these other cards to mow down so i i haven't gotten that but i could see how it could happen it could it could be taken that way but but i also try to make sure to take care to express that i'm not trying to denigrate any other cards or markets for cards that exist that's not what i'm about i'm i'm just on my own journey over here and if you find it interesting great i love that let's jump in so i wanna talk about what the data is actually saying and like there's so many directions we can go with this but just like setting the stage like undeniably everyone including myself has been talking about the industry tab and the volume and sales data that cardladder provides and it continuing to go up i am anxiously waiting by the time this goes live it will be the first of the month so we'll see more data and see where we're at i find myself being fascinated by kind of running my own special reports and comparing and contrasting them with kind of last year's data one of the ones that i did recently was just like prism black finite i put that in the card ladder right ten thousand dollars or more and noticed that last year there were sixty six sales in twenty twenty five and there's i just ran it right before we recorded there's fifty seven already this year so like any way you cut it i feel like everything is going up for the most part and i think everyone knows that and that's not really an exciting story but i don't know i'm interested more in like the impact and the different things and observations you might be seeing as someone who's like reporting on data and so i figure like let's start with like maybe you sharing like what are some trends or things you're seeing in the data that like stand out to you and then maybe we'll remark since there was a big golden auction and i'm i've got the instagram up where i'm just looking through the record sales we'll like talk about maybe some of the monster cards that sold at golden and see if it kind of overlaps with some of these observations yeah a quick note on the prism black finite stuff which is a great search and a great comparison tool is that last year there were still like an onslaught of new black finites coming out of packs and usually the person who pulls the card isn't the one who ultimately ends up buying it so like there's a there's a pressure to create more sales when the product is new versus now these sales are all i think naturally gonna be they're they're all else equal there will be fewer prism black finite sales even if the market was exactly the same because there's less immediate turnover happening because there's no more black finites coming out of pacs anymore so i think like that actually speaks even more to the momentum of this year and it is a huge momentum and like you'd mentioned the industry tab and so the most recent month that we have in the industry tab is may of twenty twenty six which we can round that up to six hundred and eighty million in volume that was tracked and the volume that was tracked in may of twenty twenty five it was two hundred and eighty two million and that's a huge gap and then the gap is doesn't feel as pronounced maybe in sports cards because a lot of it actually is not sports cards it's pokemon and tcgs and ccgs so i think maybe we do have a pretty accurate perception that yeah like sports cards are are quite strong maybe historically strong right now but maybe not as strong as that dataset says just because a lot of that is coming from the adjacent category and then same thing for grading like if you look at the if you look at the the numbers on what categories are being graded that like this this logjam that we have right now is largely a product of tcg related stuff not so much sports cards so it was just like that's that's like a confounding variable here that sometimes doesn't really totally make it to the surface like there's two things going on at once like sports cards are red hot but also there's this category right next to us that sort of gets lumped in with us of trading cards from the pokemon and the and the one piece and all that stuff and that stuff's even hotter and so it it that's always worth bearing in mind the the other thing i think about too though is like we are really really close like on the card letter fifty index we are getting closer and closer by the day basically to matching or i guess we're not really that close but we're but we're we're like we're we're approaching that peak price again of march of twenty twenty one like so the car line fifty is a price index rather than a volume measure so march of twenty twenty one was when that index topped off at a value of thirty five thousand today it's at twenty three thousand so that's the highest it's been since that peak and there are other like player price indexes and stuff that are sort of approaching the thing that's interesting is that the c l fifty isn't capturing everything it's capturing like a particular segment of cards like the nineteen eighty flir michael jordan the nineteen fifty two topps mantle and cards like that which like they were later they are late arriving guests to this current bull market run but they're arriving and like if we're gonna go over like some of the golden results i'm pretty sure a psa ten nineteen eighty six flir michael jordan without any sort of a sticker or eye appeal designation sold for about four hundred thousand last night that was a two hundred thousand dollar card in recent memory so you know there's there's i i point out those trends to sort of i put an eye towards the the temperature getting really really hot even for the cards that we thought maybe wouldn't ever get that hot again and you know as i just kind of anecdotally browse the facebook groups and twitter and stuff and i see a lot of energy around like this is why you should be investing in cards and these things can't go wrong and you know like like those are usually warning signs that a top may be near and and you know just like sort of the rapid escalation of prices in some cases is like well if people are buying because they're expecting prices to keep going up like that we're we're probably reaching a termination point soon and then once that's reached then usually the people who were in it just to see the appreciation start shuffling out so there's some warning signs in the data i'd say brett there is and i think one of these fascinating discussions and i don't know how deep we go into it here but is this twenty twenty one versus twenty twenty six and i've been thinking a lot about that and honestly been trying to prepare for maybe some content pieces on the differences because there's been so many people out there saying kind of what you've been suggesting like hey these are these might be warning signs based on the data and i'm not up here to argue that they're they're wrong or that someone's right because i haven't gone and done the work myself and most of my observations have just been anecdotal just looking around seeing sales trying to piece things together through my lens of creating content on a regular basis and i think like two observations and i'd love your feedback on this that i are really important and like signal to me that they're different are the the first one i think is the most obvious in that the infrastructure across our industry is a lot stronger from a business perspective from an operations perspective and then i'll just like throw fanatics in there like it's undeniable what fanatics is doing from a marketing perspective in bringing new eyeballs in converting those eyeballs into interest in the hobby and then also like manufacturing new moments and new cards that are selling for millions of dollars they're fully invested and we just didn't have that kind of structure or strategy in place before they stepped in the room so like that wasn't here in twenty one the other second observation is the cards people are paying for seem to me like the right cards like we're and we'll talk about some of these maybe from the golden results but like it just seems like people are and i'm not saying people are are not are spending there are people spending money probably in the wrong direction non serial number psa ten stuff where there's you look at the pop report and there's two hundred and fifty copies and people are spending thousands tens of thousands of dollars that doesn't make any sense but just seems like because the market is hot people are letting go of pieces that they've had one of ones masterpieces gym master like all these cards finite and so there's people stepping up to the plate and they just make sense to them there's only one copy so those are the two things that like without doing much research or homework on it that stand out to me on like why i strongly believe like the era we're in right now although it might feel like a bubble at times it it it looks and feels to me a lot different than it did in twenty one it does i'll add a third point there was good evidence to support the idea that there was a pretty strong correlation during that early twenty twenties bull market with other quote unquote alternative assets mhmm in particular bitcoin that sort of you could map even bitcoin doing well with the card letter fifty price index and then bitcoin stepping back you could map that with the card letter prices well they have completely split trajectories here over the last year so there the decoupling of sports cards and bitcoin as an example is interesting it's it's another thing that makes this time quite different like i think bitcoin is fifty percent off of its peak from six months ago and cards are the opposite i think prices in a lot of cases i don't know exactly what the c l fifty would say let's see the c l fifty over the last six months is up twenty seven percent whereas like bitcoin over the last six months is down about fifty percent so there's there those are go those moving in opposite directions is a is interesting too like almost like the card cards and crypto are have become their own separate things and there's not so much correlation between them anymore so that's the third thing that i'd throw in there i it's it's certainly different this time it is different this time but but what but what it what what is the same is the sort of the the mindset of people who are treating this as like you know maybe like a sure thing or you know sort of speaking the language of like you you know you better buy now and that's just where when when there's when there's a lack of perspective and of humility you know it i get a little bit worried that you know that that that that that's usually one of the one of the warning signs and i and i do see it i see i see it i see it around social media more now than ever but we'll see i i thought we were i thought we were gonna get ready to cool off at the end of last year nope that was that wasn't even close was like that was yeah the the the we have talked about this i think privately though just like the back in twenty one if you were you know you ran into a buddy and the buddy was like hey i was just in the card shop and they're like card shop what were you doing at the card shop you know like buying some packs ripping them it's fun like i'm chasing zion like his you know if i psa ten this you know i i could get three hundred dollars for this and then just like this opening up the door and to all these people and then they go online and then they search and then then they're presented with information like i think this is what i could say confidently that back then like if you were that person that went online and searched to learn more about sports cards it it was probably not guiding you in the best direction it was probably sending you down a path where you were just gonna fall off the cliff i think now if the same thing happens obviously subjects are different and this and that but if people are being introduced in the the lunchroom at work to cards and then they go try to find the experience themselves like there's tools like cardladder there's content there's feel like we're we've up leveled a little bit that i don't necessarily feel like that person who's entering now is going to just fall off the cliff but there's enough there where they can actually learn and like find their own true path to collecting and be here for a while yeah it's an amazing point actually that was something that used to disturb me a lot four or five years ago was like what is the entry level content and experience that people are greeted with when they discover this for the first time and i think you're exactly dude uplevel is an understatement i think we've evolved to a much more helpful durable sustainable mindset and education process that people receive when they start jumping into content and i think a lot of people do jump into content i think where else are you gonna go to like you know where where are you gonna turn to learn and navigate and figure out how to how to operate in this space like you turn to social media and you turn to content so up leveling there which we certainly have i think is like that's a massive point let's talk about the dunkin' before we move on to the next topic because i feel like this is a card that you've got some energy for the ninety seven flair showcase legacy collection tim duncan row one masterpiece one of one psa seven sold on golden for four hundred and twenty seven thousand dollars which man back to twenty one i can think people saying oh you don't don't buy dunkin' cards like what do you mean he's got five tier well it doesn't matter like no one's buying dunkin' cards and obviously like that has shifted quite dramatically it's it's shifted so much that people are spending almost a half a million dollars to acquire a tim duncan card so like in the context maybe of what we've been talking about here like what do you have to say about that sale yeah i love the tim duncan example i've i first of i like where you started the discussion which is with the player tim duncan long has been the player pointed to as the example of it's not enough to be great at your sport you know if people think that you're boring or you don't have the most dazzling highlight reels or you're not visible in the public eye and you don't have this folklore surrounding you and instead you were just you know you're the perception of you is this workmanlike bring my lunch pail get my job done and then retreat into into the quietude that that was like the ultimate indictment of of a toxic player to collect and in fairness there was speculation on psa ten tim duncan cards during that i forgot about that pandemic era that went really poorly so like that there is like there are people having a lot of hesitation and suspicion is warranted especially if like they had you know ninety seven tops tim duncan that was like worth ten times more than than it is now but but i i i think like tim duncan from a resume point of view has two regular season mvps and three finals mvps and five championships and the delta between the three finals mvps and the five championships is instructive because it speaks to the fact that he was on great teams and that his greatness was was was a a product of his environment to some extent too so it's like it's a it's a complicated greatness and that greatness ran up against and and coexisted with the kobe and shaq dynasty and then kobe's subsequent titles with gasol and it ran up against lebron and the heatles and like it coexists with all these things and it has the mono ginobili and the tony parker and the kawhi leonard flavors to it also so it's such an interesting difficult legacy to like fully process i think the simplest top line thing we can say about tim duncan is that he's more or less a consensus top ten player of all time when it's all said and done according to the most influential voices in nba media and so that's a that's a great accolade to have but you know there's always been this he's boring and he's this and he's that and then you know but but but he logged a massive sale with with golden so like but that's good so like i'll i'll pause there i just wanted to embellish on the player and sort of say that tim duncan has almost been the poster boy for don't collect the boring center who was always less popular than kobe and shaq and lebron and allen iverson and all the other guys he played with he is the example and i think the i don't know if it was the last sale but it was almost like he started to become undeniable when you have the like you have the green pmg sale and you have iconic set iconic parallel and rookie elements all tied together and it's like we can't deny him anymore because you pair that up with all the accolades you said and it felt like that is what really started to open up people's eyes originally yeah also something that i think is opening up people's eyes which we're seeing through the ascent of like great athletes like i think to draw a comparison barry bonds has gathered new hobby attention because of ohtani in particular because ohtani is chasing down bonds as mvp's title and i think tim duncan is one of several players in basketball along with hakim elijron and kareem abdul jabbar and several others who is gaining recognition and prominence because of the ascent of victor wenbanyama and that's people are looking at victor wenbanyama they're looking at him in the spurs uniform and they're thinking what could he accomplish and then what is the measuring stick for what's doable in particular in a spurs uniform and tim duncan is the peak of that right so like there's a very natural connection to say well before i spend a bunch of money on a wenbanyama card or alongside taking a shot on wenbanyama maybe i should also pair that with the guy who's already climbed that mountain yes no no doubt about it now this card being a one of one obviously fits within kind of the talk track and what you've been collecting on the michael jordan front and before we completely move off this topic i'd be be silly for me not to gather any feedback from you on like does this like what does this sale tell you about not only dunkin' but about one of ones particularly one of ones coming from the nineties yeah totally so so even after i said all those flowery complimentary things about tim duncan he is not a player that i would collect just because like he he doesn't match the profile that i like which is sort of like this un like i love players who have some or multiple statistical attributes that are just like undeniable right like that's what i love and he doesn't have that he's he's never going to be at the top of any of these statistical even when he won mvps he wasn't at the top of any of the advanced metrics except for win shares like the cumulative ones love him because he was so durable he played so many minutes and stuff but like on a per minute efficiency basis he was never quite the top of of of his class so he's just not his his he doesn't resonate with me but for a different reason why he doesn't resonate with other people with that said his last night as i was watching and preparing for this golden spring one hundred to end and i was keeping an eye on this card because i was hoping that this card maybe would stay really low and i could have a shot at it and i was keeping an eye on it and then all of a sudden i just saw it start to run on the final day and as soon and and the card in question is his ninety seven flair showcase row one masterpiece and duncan has four masterpieces four different masterpieces in ninety seven flair showcase and they actually are subsequent to his ninety seven ultra masterpiece which be his first one of one so these came after as a matter of chronology and there's four but they are stunning amazing cards i really love them and as soon as the card got to a bid of i think around two hundred and forty thousand i've i made a tweet i wrote a tweet that that before the auction ended i said keep an eye on this because this just became when it ends it will become the highest selling tim duncan card solo tim duncan card of all time assuming that it doesn't get another bid and the card that it is replacing that previously held the record is a b g s eight p m g green of tim duncan which sold for two hundred and twenty eight thousand in august of twenty twenty five so once it eclipsed that two hundred and twenty eight thousand benchmark of the pmg green bgs eight from last year i was like oh this is interesting like it's not so often in fact it's almost it's it it in itself is noteworthy if any player who has a pmg green sale in the twenty twenties let's say if they have a different sale that eclipses it that's a big deal that is an unexpected market defining result that's that's happening here because the pmg green is the ultimate trophy card of the nineties so first for anything to eclipse a tim duncan pmg green is a big that's a that's a that's that's that's momentous that's that's significant and so once that once his flare showcase one of one row one went beyond it i i chronicled it and i just said something historic just happened here whether anybody cares or not and then it kept going and it got to three hundred thousand it got to three hundred and fifty thousand it got to four hundred thousand and it ended up closing at four hundred and twenty seven thousand it nearly doubled his pmg green sale from last year that's that's a real significant thing and it's it's significant coming from flair showcase too because that's a that's a complicated set and it has four tiers and and i don't think tim duncan had any sales on the public record of any of his flare showcase one of one so there was there was nothing to go off of like the bidders are really sort of bidding without any data to anchor them and so let me i wanna share and i'll wrap up here a response that my tweet got after i shared that the that the dunkin' had been eclipsed from cards max who's very influential especially in the twitter space and i and on other platforms too and he's always very respectful very intelligent and he writes back to me he goes i hate to sound too young head because he's a young guy and i love how you mentioned on a podcast one of the best things about collecting is when a player's hierarchy changes but i have as much this is the important part i have as much care for learning about flare showcase one of ones as i do about learning about dizzy dean and mickey cochran and then he goes on the allure of the pmgs is obvious and it stays obvious even if the case hitification of cards never happened but these cards the pmgs are just bland and their lore isn't easily digestible when explaining so he sort of comes in with the new perspective and he sort of says like dude i don't congrats on this like one off flair showcase one of one sale but dude i don't this is like pulling teeth having to learn about this set i this is like trying to force me to learn about these vintage baseball players like i had to go look up who dizzy dean and mickey cochran were to his points and so i replied back and i was like this is good because i really like that was very helpful feedback i think when somebody's just able to say something bluntly and honestly it's so helpful and i and so i said back i said well the p m g green is polar polarizing my vintage friends groan at them as overdecorated my ultramodern buddies yawn because they're deteriorated and not rare enough but the nineties guys worship them as trophies and i said flare is an old head card that's not worth learning yet question mark is helpful and it is amusing blunt honesty so like this is the discussion right this is the discussion about the discussion it's so interesting things are definitely in things are like influx a little bit right now and i think this tim duncan sale is is much more significant than it might seem right now because it's tim duncan and because maybe not a lot of eyes are on it but anyway also that the point to to wrap up the point about tim duncan the player you know he had he just had a card approach nearly five hundred thousand dollars from a set that isn't really a huge deal yeah that's good also an ironic point because i interviewed cards max not too long ago wake forest guy so you have a wake forest guy talking about a card of another wake forest guy so a little ironic but worth noting alright i wanna i wanna hit the something i've been talking a lot about in content is just like the validation trap and it just what i appreciate about you chris and so many of my favorite collectors is that people don't wait to see people aren't reliant on comps or other people's decisions not saying we don't consult each other but if i ask you opinion on a card which i did earlier like your feedback was more context building for me it wasn't like approval like it or don't do it but i feel like so much of this hobby at times is so reliant on one person to make a move and then everyone else follows and i don't think that's a good way to operate in the hobby for so many different reasons but tim duncan could be an example like of this as well like so many things could be an example but i don't know through your observations your own collecting you building out collections you trying to kinda carve out your own path why do you think so many collectors wait for proof before acting and not just acting on a car that they're gonna be they're gonna resell but like like i know i've heard so many stories about collectors who see a card and love a card and have done all the research but like there's not there's like two to three thousand dollars separating what they have to pay for that in a sale price of a comparable card and they just can't bring themselves to do it so i find that fascinating because if i want something enough i just i tend to just go because i've done the work and it there's meaning there but i don't know it seems like so much of this hobby at times waits like what's your feedback on like why it is that way yeah just just because we're humans and we've evolved to be social creatures and connection to the group is important and following taboos and adhering to norms is something that pleases itself i think is a byproduct of how we exist like i think it's i in other words i think it's to be expected and it's it's normal and it's and it's probably is serving a a really useful function that people want for the most part to go go with the herd to go with the group but just because that's true and it's normal and it's natural for people to do that that doesn't that that that that can create the space for you know forward thinkers open minded people entrepreneurial people to you know lead step out and lead the group to somewhere new and and or at least take a chance try to try to lead the group somewhere and that doesn't mean but there's that doesn't mean they'll follow and and so and and so anybody like sort of undertaking a task like that should keep that in mind and it but and it's also just sort of part of how i think we're we're trained by throughout all of our lives is to sort of wait for something to happen and then analyze it after the fact and come to our own conclusion once the thing has already happened and once it's done it's like just think about the scientific method that we're taught from grade school right which is like okay well you know come up with a hypothesis then run your experiments observe what happens collect the data come back to the table and then evaluate what happened and the key part there is like we are sort of sitting back and waiting for the thing to happen we're waiting for the experiment to happen we're waiting for the data to happen then then the data comes in and then we process it and then we think about it and then we make a decision from there so there's something about how we've been cultured that says you know step back wait process analyze and then go forward from there which means you know unless and until somebody actually strikes out and does the experiment and tries it you know the there's a there's a gonna be a strong tendency to sit back and wait and watch and wait for it to happen and then and then only once it's happened and we've collected the data can we then start analyzing thinking about it thinking about it discussing it seeing how it applies and works for us those are two of my answers to that question i wonder what your answer is to sort of why you know collectors wait for wait for the social proof i have been so fascinated with this topic that i am like on a quest to try to get an answer and i don't think i i feel like it's one of those things like building out our collection like we're on this quest to build out this awesome awesome collection by any means and we've got this vision for what that is but it's never going to be it's it's it's it's infinite like the building process is infinite and it'll never stop no matter how good it is so i feel like no matter how hard i research no matter how hard i explore and ask and investigate i'm never really going to get an answer and so i've been turning to like research on psychology on collecting and trying to whatever i find stuff i try to share it on the flagship episodes and i keep like turning the wheel because it just keeps it keeps spinning around and i can't really get anywhere but like what i can do is i can try to analyze things that i've observed and some of my favorite things that i like to do and this is gonna sound really absurd and nerdy but i dude i could spend i could spend all day literally i could wake up drop my kids off at school and if you told me all all you have to do today is go get on blowout and go all the way back all the way back and just read through the threads dude i could spend all day every day doing that because it's so informative and it's such a pain in the ass to navigate and to find what you're looking for but when you can strike gold it's freaking gold and i like the old threads on pmgs for an example and learning about like nat's you know kerry kittles and why he started collecting that and being on this quest and paying for these cards and seeing the old prices of these pmgs and people saying that's crazy you would pay you know someone would pay like fifteen thousand dollars for a michael jordan greene pmg and just seeing all this historical evidence and all it goes and says to me is that people are in this position where they want to doubt and they want to not believe especially when they are not a part of it and they're they're they're on the outside looking in it's easier to question than to act on it and i think in those forums there is so much great commentary that can help guide maybe not exactly what to buy next or where your head is at but just like collector consensus in this position where most of the hobby takes on the internet is when you buy something yeah you might get some likes you might get a lot of likes but in the background in the in the chat there are people saying i can't believe he spent this much on this card and so you us as collectors we have to just embrace the negativity we have to let that be our fuel because we have an intuition and we've got this we've done the work and so because we've done the work and because we have the intuition and because there's meaning behind wrapped all in it then we say fuck it like i don't give a shit what they say they're not seeing what i'm seeing but the hobby is so reliant on the consensus of other people in order to make those decisions so i don't have an answer man i don't and i'm but i'm searching for it but i can tell you like there's some pretty cool evidence back in the bowels of the message board era that i found pretty helpful in trying to form these thoughts that's great there's a quote for this that gets attributed to like a million different people it gets attributed to gandhi a lot but it but it wasn't gandhi but it's i love this quote for this situation and it's the quote is this first they ignore you then they laugh at you then they fight you then you win and it's it's the cycle that i think a lot of collectors who strike out on their own or who take a big swing can wreck can can recognize like that those four steps first they ignore you then they laugh at you then they fight you and then you win and so you can almost use that as like a a playbook to be like okay well they're ignoring me so i'm just i'm in phase one right now okay they're mocking me alright well we've we've moved past the ignoring phase oh and then when they're actively fighting you like oh now this has gotten really interesting now we're now we're like on the precipice of like something meaningfully changing in the consensus and then finally last step is you win it doesn't always work this way though right like plenty of times a a project never gets past being ignored but what do you think about that quote i i love the quote and i think it is so challenging as as human beings to not let those comments and commentary ruffle our feathers especially when we just made or are about to make a big buying decision and it's like this is not always true but like there's this line that like i remember when i was i got my first vice president role when i was in software and there was a cto in the company that i could not stand i thought he was bad for business he built the initial product but i i just through my current state assessment and being a vice president of marketing i just didn't think he was contributing i thought he was negative on the culture just very bad vibes all the way around and i'll never forget we're in a board meeting and he said something that triggered me and i got very emotional and i used some choice words and i think i told him i was gonna kick his ass and this is in a business setting and i'll never forget my ceo having a conversation with me i had a very nice lunch the next day trying to get me out of the office talking to me he's just like dude you just you can't let the emotion you can't bring emotion like that in here it's that's not good for anyone and so like that hit that experience has stuck with me for some time like and you hear it all the time like don't make don't make business an emotional emotional thing like try to separate the two and i know collecting is emotional but there are these moments where i think we have to try to make it less emotional and just trust our instincts and by saying being it being less emotional that's like not letting what other people on the internet say and have that in any give us any impact or provide a roadblock to what we believe in and what we do and so i have like one of my strongest messages on this platform is just like be an independent thinker and just go like do it because when more people are doing that like we all get inspired and it's not like inspire being like oh because chris went to collect michael jordan one of ones i'm gonna go collect michael jordan one of ones but it it lets you in on how other people process and consider and make these big buying decisions and so i don't know i'm i to the point where i'm just like i'm trying to cut as much emotion out of all of this as possible until like i get the card and then i can like sit and i can hold it tight and you know be be very happy and be celebrate but that's that experience kind of sticks with me and i think about that a lot when i'm navigating you know buying big cards more time you spend the more money you're gonna spend and the come more comfortable you get on the decisions you make totally man they're the like the one philosopher who has seminal work on this topic is quine who put forth the idea that humans have humans like belief systems can be sort of thought of as fields and within that field the beliefs that are closest to the core are gonna be the ones that are the most difficult to penetrate or even move somebody off of and there's a there's actually there's a there's a really important sociological function that defenders of the status quo provide they are it's it's actually amazing that people will come out of the woodworks to defend the status quo but it's it's but if you think about it functionally like durkheim would think about it so there's another thinker to like that we can go prompt our llms with tell me about what klein and durkheim would have to say about how functionally useful it is for people to preserve and fight for the beliefs that are closest and most central to their to the core of their field of beliefs given llm that prompt let's see what it says back to you so but but there's there's actually something really it's it's it serves a purpose even if the individuals who are participating in it don't see it that the the total ecosystem is sustained and has stability because so many people if they do feel like the status quo or their core beliefs are being challenged that they will speak out against it but that's not the end of the game either the thing that can mean like so if somebody's just like arbitrarily challenging the closely held beliefs then the people rallying to defend the status quo are protecting truth and it's useful that they do that but if people are challenging the status quo with something that can meaningfully improve it or or at least consider adjacent to it and complicate the picture in a way that isn't inconsistent with truth or that actually helps truth emerge more clearly or that refines a mode of thinking that's useful and productive well in that case then the defenders of the status quo you know they're they are they're they're probably in for a long battle that they're probably gonna lose so like i i think those are i don't know there's a that's like a book that could be written on that but anyway i'll stop there no no it's good and i know we i there's we're gonna there's pretty plenty of topics i'm in a parking lot for the next episode because this is typically what happens but i will also say like chris recommended some philosophers to consider in their thoughts like this this might sound crazy to many people but i tend to find complete joy and satisfaction and i learn a lot about why i do what i do and decisions i make by understanding the work of these thinkers and how it applies to me as a collector you have people paying tens of thousands of dollars to attend university to get listen to some professor share information about these people and then people go take exams literally right now all we have to do is go to our chatbot and direct the right prompts and you could sit there and get educated in school then at least have some understanding about why you're making the decisions it's not gonna be black and white there's gonna be some gray area but i we've got crazy tools right now that can help us consider kind of the decisions we make and i know we're we're coming up on time but i one of the things i wanted to ask you because it's adjacent to all of this what do you think right now in the hobby the most underrated skill a collector can have or like if you were thinking about maybe going back to that initial ten years right when you started like what do you wish you possessed that you might possess now that might have changed kinda your trajectory early yeah that's a really tough one you know things were so different then we'd like you've made the point about infrastructure like ten years ago in the infrastructure we have today was completely absent like ten years ago if you had an auction company that meant you were running auctions on ebay you know like like the fanatics collect as an auction its its auction branch was originally pwcc which was on its own website but originally it ran auctions on ebay and then got ejected from ebay and ebay sends an email to everybody that said they were doing untoward things or individuals associated with pwcc were shield bidding or something to that effect so there's a very complicated messy history there but even and then even before pwcc became one of the largest sellers on ebay it was just a small ebay account that was selling cards on ebay so during that early period right like the infrastructure was really just as simple as like you know there's auction houses that schedule their auctions and if they're really organized then they'll be doing them on thursday nights and that was it and now this the picture is complicated substantially you know you have heritage ending on this night and golden ending on this night and robert edward ending on this night and fanatics collects having the weekly this night and the and the premier once a month and there's the alt weekly and like you know there there's there's so many platforms and different people are loyal to different ones and like the way that they work better and then of course there's the there's the monster the the elephant in the room ebay which you know continues to increase its influence and its and and the ability for people to buy and sell on confidence there like the introduction of the guarantee program i think quietly has been incredibly effective at increasing confidence and also in removing sort of some of the ability that used to exist to game the system and to buy and then return if the immediate outcome that they were hoping for didn't happen there's just there's been so many wrinkles that have been ironed out over the last few years that we just kind of take for granted now but you know so the the the point i just wanna make there is that like the skills that were needed in twenty sixteen to navigate that ecosystem are so different than the skills that are needed today so it's not like i can say oh i wish i knew something in twenty sixteen because like it was just a totally different world and environment but the skill that i think that we've actually mastered quite well in the over the last five years or so is learning how to interpret utilize and leverage price histories and i think people have gotten really good at evaluating them and throwing out the junk and identifying the ones that are suspicious or bogus people are trying to manipulate the market people are trying to print phony prices people are even paying for things that aren't in arm's length transactions and so wisdom experience knowledge and common sense are gonna be weapons to use against those tactics that will that always have been and will continue to be employed and so that's why so i i think we've done a great job at learning about price histories i think the skill the most underrated skill is the ability to identify the the the near substitute card that's the phrase that i use for that the near substitute the close substitute so if if i'm watching sales happen and i see some sale happen of some card and it goes for this exorbitant amount the skill that can help like yeah i can look at the price history of that card and can say oh this has doubled or tripled in the last year that's that feels unusual that feels like that that might be that might be natural or it might not be and that's a good skill and that's a skill that should be developed and i think we've we've done a pretty nice job of developing it we're still with room for improvement obviously but but the other skill that can help tame the market especially when it starts running away from us is knowing what the what the near the close substitute to that card is so if like one card starts selling for a really high amount like like this is something we talked about in the last card lider confidential okay there's a josh allen that sold for over a million bucks mhmm and i sort of posited as a close substitute to it a flare showcase one of one of john elwit now though there that's not a super close substitute okay it's a different player it's their cards are separated by almost thirty years one of them is a game worn mvp shield autograph card and the other one is you know one of the very first one of one sets so they're very different cards but they're close substitutes in the sense that the players are pretty close this you can make a case for the significance of both of those those cards as being sort of first and early in different genres but the thing that even if you say well they're really not that similar but the thing that makes the comparison profound is that the john elway was a card worth around twenty thousand bucks and the josh allen was worth over a million and so if you can identify close substitutes that check a lot of the same boxes especially for you or what you think matters what you think is important that can that's the skill that can discipline our approach to the markets and can prevent us from getting swept up in a runaway market or even a manipulated market because we know that there are other things that are quite similar maybe even more preferable to us that sit right next to it that isn't having this market this runaway market so being able to identify the close substitute is is the skill of the next five years think it's being able to truly know what the full options are even if they're not right in front of our face even if they're not available in this auction or they're not available on ebay at this time but knowing that they exist knowing that patients will be helpful here that that's that's the skill of the next the next decade honestly i think a whole lot jam packed in this episode we are up on time chris it was fun we've got next card ladder confidential might be easier to put together because there's several more topics i wanna explore and we'll have josh back this time so appreciate the time man yep shout out to josh we miss you buddy we'll see you on the next one great show brett