we are back card letter confidential time we are on a time restriction today so we're gonna hit the ground running we're gonna move fast we're gonna move furious we're gonna talk about the national and talk about it from a collecting card perspective what changed what remained the same we do things one way here on card letter confidential we always start with a cold open question so i'm gonna put up a card on the screen here for the the boys we've got a twenty thirteen brady finite prism one of one and a psa ten that at the time of recording will be it's seventeen days it'll be fifteen days when this drops this card is at nine hundred and six thousand seven hundred and thirty three dollars with fifteen bids on alt and there's all this time left and this card jumped all the way up to this point almost a million dollars and this was a card when it hit i got so many dms up from people that were like hey have you seen this have you seen this and i haven't had time to like talk about it so i figured yeah let's throw it to chris and josh to just get some perspective in the cold open question how did we get to this point where we've got a tom brady card jumping to almost a million dollars with nearly two weeks to to go in this auction chris what's your reaction to this very exciting to see that card come forth to the auction setting but it has been dare i say vortexing for a little while they get he stole my take give the take josh because mine i was just i was gonna get the vortex no it's the vortex yeah this is i'm not excited anymore it's the third time it's sold in two months so for if were were these and i i thought i knew that this card had changed hands but has this sold publicly has this been private transactions what what has gone on with this card so far it's not super private it's been with a dealer then to a flipper now it's at auction so my guess is the flipper bought it thinking he could make more money sending it straight to auction because i don't think he had it for more than two weeks okay so no knowing that and that aside is there is this just like the era we're in in collecting in the industry post the national with just all of this excitement and exuberance and we've never seen the twenty twelve is there anything else that you can chalk up to the fact that this card is almost a million dollars with a couple weeks left any any perspective there it's probably still got considerably higher to go i would think the ceiling on this card isn't the desire for the card i think this is something i've been thinking about a lot lately it might be a little bit misunderstood the the ceiling on this card is very very high i i think there's people who want this card as much as they want anything or nearly anything in life the ceiling is the budget the ceiling is how much money can people actually allocate to buying a card like this and this is where i always find the multiplier so interesting to something like the gold so the gold b g s ten which is a pop one granted twenty thirteen prism true gold sold for a hundred and eighty three thousand in april and the brady market is certainly up more since then it's up like double digit percentage points since then so that card might even be worth more today and when that card is worth hundred and eighty three thousand or or whatever that might be worth today this card takes on a whole different complexion there's there's ten of those golds granted this is the highest graded one but this is the black finite one of one and brady's second base set prism black finite one of one so you know i've i i'm i'm keeping an eye on the multiple because i i think that that there it's it's tough to put a ceiling on a card like this from a desire point of view or from a demand point of view the the ceiling comes from the fact that people right now as currently capitalized only have so much money to allocate towards a card like this but i think there's there's many people out there who would if they could they would love to pay much much more than what it's currently at before we move off this josh to you i know you have been in a mode where you've been buying a ton of one of one football cards over the last you know twelve to eighteen months when you see us like a card that is going to sell like this card is gonna sell we we've seen two million dollar josh allen sales do do do those things operate kind of independently of like the general football card market or do you think like sales like the allens and and sales like this pulls the rest of the football card market forward and when i'm what i wanna maybe speak specifically of the type of stuff that you're buying like notable players one of ones premium products yeah i think it's probably a a bit of give and take on that i don't think that people are waiting for a sale like this to pay more for other similar type cards of different players i think i think we're just seeing i said this to chris the other day i just think we're seeing prices go up on literally everything minus like some players who are struggling or like players falling out of popularity like in general every card is just going up so much that it's really hard to say this card going up is causing that one to go up etcetera it seems like people just have the appetite and the money or whatever to just keep paying more and more this is i mean this is obviously i was critical of the card because of the vortex with obviously this is an insane card you know it's brady's second prism black finite it's a psa ten it's obviously gonna do a huge number as it should it's an amazing card so you know no shade to the card itself i would love to own something like this but it's it's obviously way out of my range at this point i would say it's way out of most of our ranges but yeah get get your popcorn out wanted to dig into the national and have a little bit of a post mortem the i've been on this train that there's still so much value that you can get from the national experience when it's sunset and it's behind us and i'm hoping that conversations like this can help kinda elevate this monster event that kinda comes and goes so what i wanna kinda dig into obviously card ladder tracks the online sales data we were all together in one room it was crazy it came and went but i don't know let's start here from that experience that we all just had at the national what can like that in person like people coming up to the card ladder booth sharing their cards talking about things that they bought like what can people gleam from that like in person event like the national that that online sales alone can't tell them maybe chris we'll start with you yeah i think it puts an oversized emphasis appropriately because of the setting on what story does a card tell when you're in a face to face moment it's so different from browsing ebay listings it's so different from even walking around the show and looking at showcases when you're actually face to face with another collector when you're showing your cards and they're showing you theirs very quickly the cards that stand out are the ones that have a great story behind them the ones that have meaning that can be readily made legible by the collector who's sharing it with with friends and counterparts that's one of my big takeaways from the national experience that i've always felt and noticed but it really became concrete for me this year especially as i was sort of looking for it is the conversation piece of a card the con the the way a card can be an icebreaker it can be something to start a discussion it can be a way to connect with somebody but in in in the in person setting it's so different because you have to really compress an elevator pitch and deliver it to make the card's meaning stand out to somebody within their very short attention span of a loud room and people talking back and forth so the cards that would stand out to me when i would talk to somebody when i would see what their collection looks like are the ones that readily present a story or that the collector could quickly tell me the story about them and and all of a sudden they take on a meaning that really makes them stand out from the rest of the room the storytelling component i think has been something you've been hitting on a lot just within the hoshcast that you have talking about yeah you bought this card but like you're giving context and the reasons for you purchasing those cards and i think that obviously bled over into the national right people know you guys they know they use card ladder they know you appreciate cards they come to the card ladder booth and they want to share off either what they bought or just what they came with i guess josh like through that storytelling component you being at the kinda epicenter of the national with all these people coming through like do you do you feel like there was maybe a special connection with people that you've been following online and interacting with regarding like understanding the cards that they have and like people actually like sharing some passion and some stories behind that do you feel like that exchange was happening for you at the show yeah absolutely i always greatly enjoy the national just because you know the shared connection over specific types of cards or players and then you get into actually like communicate that in person it's it's just so much better of an experience than it is online and i have two thoughts about that are related to this about the national one is that the national has a great way of like bringing about deals that may not have occurred online all four of my pickups were from collectors i knew they had the card i could've made them offers at any point but the forcing function of being in person and talking about the cards and the energy of like maybe i'm willing to pay more maybe them seeing me they're willing to sell it or whatever and so i got a lot of deals done at the national that i wouldn't have done at home which is great the other thing is i feel like you know people always say if it's if you can't find it at the national you can't find anywhere i actually find it to be quite the opposite i find the national to be a much more limited set of what you can see and it kinda makes it feel like you you gotta buy something you know but your your choices are very limited when i'm at home i can see all of ebay i could see every premier auction every weekly auction every alt auction there's thousands and thousands of options and there's so many options that i you know hit this point where i'll just save my money for the next weekly auction because there'll be something that i like more but the at the national it's like this is the best card i've seen this whole week i have to buy this i've only seen five thousand cards this is the best one i gotta buy this so i actually feel that national kinda shrinks things down a bit this is this is a great topic and i'm gonna i wanna expand on it a little bit i'm glad you mentioned it and then speaking of which i was i was there at the card letter booth when you bought one of your cards from someone and i'm not gonna share it because i don't know if you've shared it but the it was like the individual came by and he's like showed you the card gave you the price and you were like sure and like just like i think you'd sell them or venmo or whatever like right on the spot and it's just like man like look at that like that's how easy it can be to buy a card sometimes so i thought that was pretty a pretty fun moment that i hadn't thought about up until you talking about some of your purchases but yeah there's this narrative that is like if it's not at the national there's no way you can find that and i agree with you both or not you chris because you haven't said it but i wanted your reaction but i agree with you josh because i feel like we're all picky and we're very like there's we're very very focused and yeah we might there might we might collect a player and there might be thousands and thousands of of their cards but there's not that one or two cards that we want so i don't know like chris did you find that like when you were sourcing based on your like zone that you're in in your collecting era did you find that there might have been some cards but it's just not as not as prolific as like these narratives that are said before we go to the show may made it out to be for you absolutely so i'll gladly receive the credit for the forcing function idea even though josh literally just said it but we can pile that up on my resume thank you i like the four i love the forcing function idea i love this question because it certainly happened to me the one card that i did pick up was largely driven by the fact that it was being made available in the context at this show and i wanted some action and i think that's a microcosm for what the show is on a larger scale like yeah on an individual basis it gives us a lot of encouragement and and energy to do things that we might not have the total motivation energy to do when we're just sort of slouched over in our computer chair before we're about to fall asleep looking at the last few ebay safe searches that we still have to clear it's a totally different energy and that's sort of what the national is as a whole it it brief you constantly hear people saying it refreshes their energy it reboots their battery pack to be among all these people to to to sort of share in the the the excitement of the room and then you take that back with you and that tied you over really doesn't last a whole year unfortunately but it it'll it'll at least give you some hangover energy for months i think weeks or up to months to come after the show so i i think the forcing function happens in this in the room and then it happens outside of the room too as a byproduct of being in the room what what is it about the fact is it just because we are in proximity to cards that are similar adjacent to existing cards in our collection and we want action so we feel like we need to buy those cards right in that moment versus like that same card could be sitting on our watch list and we just continue to watch it and don't do anything about it and we don't make the offer or whatever like is there something to be said about like knowing the individual who has the card and then that card being available right there in the moment that makes it easier to just acquire the card josh well two of them that i bought i just assumed they're from chad blackhat cards great great collector i just assumed they wouldn't be for sale and then he's like walk up and he's like hey i know you really want these let's make a deal i was like of course i would've i i just don't i just don't like to bother people you know like i don't wanna like go through my instagram and my ebay save searches and literally message every person every day like is it for sale today is it for sale you know when you're at the national it's like i'm i'm literally forced to negotiate this deal with chad because he just asked me or we just he brought the card out and it's like okay now we're looking at him and we're talking about a deal so it's just the whole premise of the show is that you're going there to literally only talk about cards with other people who collect cards whereas when you're at home you got family stuff you got other stuff going on you're on your computer you know scrolling x or whatever you're doing other stuff you're kinda distracted at the show the focus just really hones now on like cards and what cards am i after and you start to like rethink what your current collection is and it just you just like reboot like chris said you're just you're always focused on what am what's my next part of my collecting journey yeah i love this and i wanna talk before we get off of this topic i wanna talk about price and cards in the room and what your both of your perspectives were on just like overall pricing obviously we we're gonna probably keep it very general but just to get like a state of the state chris i'm like i think thirty minutes through your first your most recent host cast and you're talking about a jordan one of one that was offered to you and you went back and forth on like if you should or not and you thought maybe like this card is certainly great but it's a lot higher than it was last year and maybe it's not a right time for me because i you know have only so many resources and so then that card ended up selling but like that was one example that i thought about as i was thinking through this but like what it was your general perspective on just like the room in the prices like i know you're both very aggressive when it comes to like there being cards that you want and paying up for those cards but like chris like what was your perspective of the environment and like the stickers and willingness to negotiate yeah prices were very high on certain things and were being paid like so yeah the the moral of that story that i told is that i hesitated and then the card was sold an hour later so you know that's that's that's a good recap of how the show went as a whole i wanted to backtrack to that last topic and just give one last little thought on it which is this it's it's i i think there's a there's a really subtle distinction between saying that like the show sort of gets us to do things that we otherwise wouldn't have done versus saying the show environment brings out something that already was latent and already was there and already was something that we wanted to do but whether because of fear or hesitation or lays or just a lack of energy in a different environment we don't do it and in this environment we do it's the it's the it's the nature of the environment it's it's not like it's it's not like the environment is creating something that wasn't already there it was always there the environment just produces the right context for it to come to light you know it's like it's like you know somebody who like becomes a a great per like a great comedian who like when they they might be funny backstage but when they get on the stage and the lights are bright and the audience is there the energy just comes out of them and they actually are performing at their highest level something about the the context and the environment brings out the what's already naturally latent sitting underneath the surface you just need the context to bring it out and i think the national brings out something that we all want to tap into something that we all want to do but it's easy to procrastinate or push it to the side or not activate that energy when we're just sort of sitting there and there's a million things going on in our lives but when we're in that box of the called the donald e stevens center or whatever it's called when we're there that's when the energy in gets it's it it just gets activated but it was always there i think mostly and then yeah prices prices were very high brett and it was tough to pay any that's why i only came away with one card that's why i didn't even grade any cards even grading feels exorbitantly expensive to me and granted part of that is because you know there's these backlogs and service levels are shut down and stuff so i even brought a pile of cards to grade that i didn't grade and i just i i made one relatively small pickup at the show and that was it but such so that's that's the behavioral testament to outside of just my opinion well quite literally my behavior matched the idea that cards were just a a pry the stuff i was looking at was pricey based on what i think i'd be comfortable paying no doubt about it it's great perspective i wanna get into like the scarcity illusion of it all i think there's no other environment that i can think of or that i'm in where you can go and spend about four or five days in a space and just see incredible card after incredible card rare card one of ones jordan's the best football cards ever it's just like that's all you're seeing because people you know come up to you and talk to you and it's like you don't need to go around and like go try to find these cards anywhere they're everywhere and so like i think i've had a little bit of a a a comedown off of that where it's like dude i'm like scrolling through like all these marketplaces i'm just like these cards suck man like i just saw all these like incredible cards like they're not as cool as what i saw so i don't know like that environment does it do anything for you maybe josh like going from a a space where you're just like only see your cards at home when and they're your collection and obviously you can look at your showcase and card ladder but then you're in this space where like all all the best of the best cards and these are cards mostly not for sale just like that people have they bring and they showed is that like like what does that do for you like after the show is that like does it become normal again that like those cards aren't probably gonna be listed and available like how do you come down off of like that regular seeing just the best of the best cards for nearly a week straight it gives me hope in this this space it gives me faith that the stuff that i see at these shows this is kinda what you're hinting at i think the stuff that i see at the shows are with friends with collectors who bring them to our booth and we share them and i know i won't see them for sale because they're they're like very personal items for these people they've spent a lot of time building up their collections there's cards that i'll like you know i haven't seen this card in a year and it was when you showed it to me last year it's like this they keep the same cards a lot of times and the cards we see for sale on on the auctions over and over are a very different set of cards than what we see know walking around in people's backpacks at the shows the auction cards are more similar to what you see at the booths at the shows and it's a it's a it's a cliche but the best cards are the ones that people don't wanna sell at the national they're walking around in backpacks or they're literally behind the dealer tables like in their backpacks behind where they they have them because they wanna show them off but they don't wanna sell them because they know they're trying to sell the stuff that they wanna sell right and so that that always gives me hope that like the noise we see from instagram the noise that we get as a flood of sales and auctions and card ladder sales history isn't necessarily a true representation of the hobby it's what sells in the hobby and what you know is pushed by a lot of people in the hobby and the influencer influencers and such but the real hobby to me is kinda what's walking around like there's a collector i won't name his name who came up to our booth the most unassuming person at the national and he has the best collection that i came across the entire show and he would never know it because he wasn't he's not on instagram showing them off all the time or he's not auctioning them we just we don't even know that he has all these things right we know we had some of them but then it's like oh he's showing us all these extra cards that we didn't know about and that sort of lane in the hobby is my favorite part of it where there are like a lot of genuine private collectors out there that just go about their business and this is like their one show of the year where they get to kinda really enjoy their collection and we get to enjoy it with them josh used the word hope when he's talking about this chris and i think this is just a very interesting thing to dig into and i would love i feel like this is a host topic and i would love for you to maybe just like share some perspective where it's the mainstream of the hobby is reporting on the big auction we started this freaking show off with one of those that's what everyone's talking about the cards that are selling but for collectors most of the time the story is the cards that are locked away in the collection and if we can get access to the person to not try to sell us the card but to share what that card means to them and why it's been in the collection for so long and why it's so special like that's the stuff like we salivate towards but that's not what like the broader market is talking about they're talking about the big sales the record breaking sales at card ladders reporting the biggest cards at the auction like is do you think there's more opportunity for those stories to be told or is it better that they're left untold and maybe just shared in these one to one conversations once once a year at shows like the national well how's this for a formulation price is an opinion on the importance of a card and as opinions go it might be right and it might be wildly wrong and if the total context window for understanding a price is only being able to look at other prices of other cards that have that people have been willing to sell then i think it's going to end up missing a tremendous bulk of what matters exactly for the reasons that josh laid out which is that people are much happier to sell or or you know when when like think about it brett from the consolidation point of view when you're consolidating into a grail and you have judgment day mhmm and you there's a list of cards that will get sacrificed first and you can sort of think of the national as like this giant judgment day of cards being willing that are that are the first to get sacrificed and those are largely what populate display cases and what are dangled as trade bait and what are made available and then like as josh pointed out the the stuff that's that's not set out that maybe if you're really friendly with the dealer you can sort of request hey what else do you have back there and maybe they'll show you you probably won't be able to offer on it but they'll show you those are the cards of great interest and great consequence to the most seasoned collectors generally i think and a lot of times there's the only way you can even fully appreciate and understand them is by understanding card collecting on a much deeper level and if your only reference point is just price history is you're you're going to just breeze right by some of the most special and meaningful cards just because you don't you don't have the context to know what they are this is a fascinating topic and it it's actually a segue into this topic of price discovery that i wanna dig into and there is this movement and maybe it's movement's an aggressive word but i try to surround myself with collectors that i feel like i can learn from and understand the way they move and the way they operate because at the end of the day like we're trying to all land cards that are meaningful to us but then there's also this like the part of the game is like we wanna find value we don't wanna spend overspend on a card and then be pissed at ourselves because we move too fast and there is this movement i'm gonna use the word movement there's this movement from savvy collectors that are attracted to rare and scarce cards that have significance and meaning and don't have sales history and card ladder it's like if you don't have a sales history and card ladder it gives you like a hundred bonus points because that there's opportunity there to like dig in and negotiate and it's fun because you can spend ten thousand dollars on a card but that has no sales history and feel like man i got the deal of the century and i just think it's fun and then not a lot of people are talking about it maybe they are privately but i don't feel like anyone's talking about it from a podcast perspective josh when you're like thinking of like this no recent comps like rare and scarce no sales history we've already started this episode by saying like we don't like the flippers vortex like because we've seen a card too many times it makes the card less appealing like how do you think about kind of the no clean comps and no sales history when you all you have are left to your own devices where you're like i gotta make an offer and i'm just gonna make an offer on this card because of my intuition and what i've seen or how i piece data together like how are you thinking about kind of this no sales history buying in your collecting operation yeah the initial reaction is i think that you prefer that because then it kinda gives you a clean slate to figure out the price as opposed to just like following the comps and just blindly just paying exactly what the last one was plus or minus you know however the dealer works but i think of it in terms of how easy or hard it is to find a card and acquire it because as a seasoned collector someone that's been in this a long time the cards that i don't want are the ones that i can get at any time and so if those have a a large sales history then i'm just not gonna be interest interested in it if it has no sales history that means the card is hard to find and it's you know it doesn't sell because there's not that many of them or it hasn't been a card that's been pushed by a lot of people and i haven't seen it on instagram five thousand times so those are i just think of it in terms of that like as a collector i just want stuff that other people don't know about or hasn't been unearthed or it's been sitting with a private collector for ten years nobody knew they had it those are those are the cards we're all sort of like actually chasing and then sometimes they do pop up on auction and you know you just sorta have to like suck it up and outbid the person and then now you've got this public comp that you have in your in your collection and sometimes that's just the way it works chris when you were off you know let's say twelve months ago like on this like mj one of one quest a lot you know we you've been very public about the fact that like no one was really talking about it these cards existed they were in collections maybe there wasn't sales history you were just like you're a jordan collector you collect one of ones but then there's this like uncertainty of value like did did was that attractive to you during this like the fact that like a lot of these cards didn't have comps and if they did maybe it was from like two thousand and eight or something like how did you consider like how do you consider making an offer on a card that's not going to that's going to get the person not to run away but get them to respond when there isn't any clean comps around the card are you familiar with the idea of dynamic pricing i am yes okay basically the nature of that being like different customers get a different price depending upon their particular situation or like in the setting of like or maybe a better example of dynamic pricing is like in certain urban settings the toll or the fee to use the road fluctuates based on how many people are using it at that time if it's if there's more demand for the road it costs more if there's less then it costs less also that this works for like uber like you'll have to pay more if you're trying to get an uber and it is it's supply and demand economics but i i thought about dynamic pricing as the metaphor when you were talking there because that's how it works when trying to procure cards that don't have a cleanly legible price and even if there was recent sales history it still might be difficult so instead my tactic as a buyer has to be tailored towards what is the price that's the lowest price that i can pay that will still induce them to sell me the card so i have to sort of treat instead of just this being totally transactional like woah the last one was this and they're the the average of last five is this and that means i'll give you ninety percent of that and then i can maybe sell it to somebody else for a hundred and ten percent of that which is fine but this is a very different art than that this this is the art of understanding who owns the card understanding what it would take for them to separate from it understanding if that price is above what i should be paying for it or if it falls within the range of what i should be paying for it and then finding a way to reach an agreement where we land on a number that makes sense for them and makes sense for me and it's tailored to their situation so it's you have to when you're playing this game you really have to understand the owner of the card you have to understand the collector you have to meet them at their level you have to understand what it would take for that card to get pride out of their collection oh baby this is such a fun topic it's this it's so completely opposite of the way where the hobby is promoted in this just transactional mindset of buy sell trade quick volume move move move where it's you want the card bad enough that you're willing to get a deep understanding of not just the card but the individual who owns the card to understand their motivations desires and what makes them tick we can figure this out through discovery asking questions and they could not be like buying questions it's just questions about like what they collect how long they've owned this car it's just all this data we can get from these people and then using that to our advantage josh i know you have been a part of like some massive private deals both on the buying and the selling side over the course of your collecting career like how important is that like customization like getting to deeply understand like what makes the person on the other end tick in order to get a card to move in your direction or you to sell a card in another direction like how important has that been to your like buying and selling success when there isn't clear data and it's not on a platform oh man it's like everything to the success or failure of the deal earlier chris was saying something like you know you're talking to that private collector the camp comes over to the booth and you're like trying to figure out details about the car and you're asking them about them the one thing you do not wanna ask that person is what's this worth because that's gonna immediately put them on their heels and potentially offend them to that all of that you're thinking about when this person's showing you this card is either you're trying to like buy it to make money or you just you wanna like put this person in a box of how much they're worth so what's this card worth how you know how much is this what did you pay for this etcetera when the real question is like when did you buy this card why did you buy this card how does this fit inside of your collection so i think this topic and those types of questions are very important when you're first trying to navigate this space we're talking about which is not the high volume transactional space this is more of like the collector to collector space of communication and understanding each other's collections so i think a lot of it is like avoiding the price for a while and trying to figure out you know why does this person have this card you can pretty much tell i think the three of us could tell just by looking at someone's collection whether you should be asking them about prices and values they'll even have like stickers on a lot of them with the prices or you should be asking like how long have you had this would you trade this a lot of it is trying to figure out whether you need to figure out that bottom or that price that will get them interested and it's like the lowest that you think will get them interested but it's something you're comfortable with but also like you'll probably figure out this person will never actually just sell this for cash because they they want something similar to come back to them so now you have to start moving into trade mode and that's where you know lately we've become more willing to take on cards that we might not have forever because you need the trade bait especially like really nice rare scarce pieces are great for trade bait so i think a lot of it's like figuring out am i trying to navigate some sort of price that gets them excited or a a trade a card i might have that we can go back and forth on and you know share the commonalities of our collection so i think a big part of it is not minimizing that person's collection down to like how much it's worth i think that's a big part of it those are great thoughts before we move off of this topic i wanted to ask you chris about just the the offer price on cards and like the buyer's price or or their seller's price even if they don't have it like in their head and like how do we find like common ground like when you are making an offer on a card and you don't want to them to not respond or them to run away like what are the things that you do obviously you mentioned like i'm trying to get this card for the lowest possible amount that you can afford and you're trying to land in if if they agree to it then you feel good about it but like is there anything you're doing outside of like your own research before you make that offer because i feel like the the offer in us getting to the point where we need a card we're always intimidated by like making that offer price when the car the offer on the card when it's not available because one we don't want them to like negatively impact them where they don't respond to us two we don't want them to accept it right away because then we're like fuck like did we offer too much like how you've done a lot of these like is there any feedback that you can share just based on like what has worked or what has been successful for you in the past josh said it which is when you're dealing in cards like these money usually isn't going to be the lubricant that facilitates the deal and you can even make very generous cash offers and the person still will come back to you and say no thanks but if you can find this card that i really really want and it even might be worth less than the cash offer if you can find that card then we can then we can transact and that's totally different from cards that have a regularity in terms of how often they appear for for sale publicly that also will influence how cash liquid they'll be privately too like if a car if if so if i have a card that i know is gonna sell at least once every few months and somebody makes a cash offer over the last comp why wouldn't i take it because then i can go i can always just go buy another one the cash lubricates those types of deals but when you're dealing with one of ones when you're dealing with like historic cards that come from very important pieces of the hobby's history that are just loaded with stories that give the owner so much more than a number on a screen to be proud of at that point the thing that facilitates those deals is is is really giving them something that they really really want that they quite haven't been able to find or haven't had the time to go out and find or just don't have you know for for whatever reason they they haven't been able to find it and so i was thinking to myself what percent did i've accumulated about forty michael jordan one of ones what percentage of those were cash transactions versus what percentage of those were facilitated facilitated by trade i think at least seventy five to eighty percent are trade where i just happen to have the card or i was able to go out and locate a card that the person on the other end of the deal had really wanted for a long time i i think it's it's it's at least seventy five to eighty percent was that and then the rest which were cash deals almost all of those were situations where i was giving somebody a a cash payments that either was just very strong very generous for what the perceived market value might have been at that time and or because that person was gonna take that cash and then just use that cash to go get a different card that they really really wanted so it's a very different transactional landscape josh any closing remarks before we move on to the next topic oh chris was saying he's picked up forty mj one of ones i think we're just gonna gloss over that part which is insane but like i think he he could correct me if i'm wrong but i think it slowed down since he's lost some of those other things to trade for them and now he's hitting a point where it's only cash that he can and he or he's having to trade some of those one on ones which is which is like a really fun thing to watch and i'm listening to his latest episode as well and he's sorta like weaving through like how do i get more of these without giving up what i've already built and it's just like i just love this hobby it's just so great watching just watching like the collection completely turn over and like trying to figure out how to navigate it it's just like this constant forever marathon of trying to improve your collection like all we're trying to do literally is just make our collection better every day that's all it is it is all it is and that is actually like since you're at this pivotal point and chris will will put push it back to you where it's like i think like you've been very apparent i don't know if it's apples to apples on this but i feel like you had this mission of taking your very very strong michael jordan collection that had the types of cards that anyone who knows jordan desire it was you had a collection of that and you turned that collection into a michael jordan one of one of collection and my thoughts are probably like people are like trading how's he able to do this it was probably because chris had like some of the most desirable jordan cards and was able to turn that for cards that no one was really talking about but chris had conviction on so you you've you've run those plays and you've the defense knows it now and you can't run that again because you're you're out of luck so like your your your desire to acquire more of these jordans has not gone down i would imagine it's intensified like this is your this is where you're cooking you love this stuff like how are knowing that these cards are expensive and your money doesn't grow on trees like how are you thinking about it and maybe i should just listen to the rest of the host cast but how how are you thinking about making sure you're not saying no to opportunities on cards that you really want just because you don't have stuff to trade yeah that's that's definitely i i ran out of the things that were above the fold on judgment day and now everything is below the fold so that's tough i'm i'm still making trades right now and actually having jordan one of ones makes it i think on balance easier to get other jordan one of ones when you can make that type of swap but you know but but also you'd be surprised at what people might actually want so there is a collector who's tucked away in the mountains of the netherlands who had and has several great michael jordan one of ones some of which that have been traded to me for other michael jordan one of ones this is a guy who would only trade so i actually employed a concierge to fly over there to make a swap and he had to like drive up mountains for hours to get to these guy this guy's house just crazy stuff but i've been very cool and i'm very grateful that he was able to do this with me from across the globe to make these deals but one of the cards that he was looking for so most most of the time he was like for for one of the first deals we did he was like you have to go if you could go get these jordan one of ones i'd be willing to trade them for these other ones that you want and that's what we did but for for a different deal which was like very close we we were almost to a deal there was one more card that i wanted and we were just trying to figure out how to make it work and he was like here's what i want i want pad i won't say what the card is but he said i want a patrick mahomes card and he told me what the card is i was like oh i was like it it it it wasn't even a numbered card it's it's an expensive card but it wasn't a numbered one and he was like if we can add that to the deal that will get this deal done so i just went out and i bought that card and then i had it hand delivered to him and that's what he wanted so like i would i would just say you don't assume that that that we know what the other side of the deal wants sometimes it can be just a patrick mahomes card that that he really wanted that he just wasn't able to find near him and that he and that that that's that that's something interesting dealing with the international trade counterpart is that they don't have nearly the same confidence and ease of access to cards that we do because domestic shipping and just our experience we can go to these local shows we can do in person deals it's much easier for us to transact all the time but people who are overseas you know who have to sort of rely on the shipping system and honestly many of them i found are distrustful of it and they really want the white glove service they if they're gonna do a trade they need somebody to come meet them and do the swap i've had that happen three four five times so when when that's the case you know sometimes sometimes it'll be a card that that might surprise you oh that's that's the one alright i can go get that one hos just employing people to pick up cards in the mountains of the netherlands nothing ceases to amaze me with you good sir i wanna round out the conversation by just talking about like influence and going to a show like the national and not necessarily like seeing brand activations or like walking the floor and seeing what's in dealer showcases or watching people create content and share stuff i'm not talking about like influence from that perspective but it's mostly like these one to one conversations with people we know and respect from the internet who are sharing their collections and we're having dialogue and we're excited about what they're doing we're telling them about what we're doing and there's just it's like a great marriage of just card conversation and it only really happens at the national i find i'm curious like did anything kind of change your perspective of like what you're collecting how you're collecting quantity of collecting cards specifically through the experience at the national josh like maybe share a little perspective on just like if anything changed or not for you after that week probably just once again that i'm not aggressive enough i'm not buying enough cards i'm not getting i'm not getting all the ones that i want quick enough because every time every year they just get more expensive and harder to get so you know i i wish i would have bought more five nationals ago and so each national that comes up i'm like i need to go home and like get more of this type of card or whatever that card that's been that i haven't dm'd this person but i need to go back and do it so it's always like a reminder to like kick start and get my get me going to like add more to the pc or sell the car that i've been trying to sell to get the cash to buy another one etcetera it's just a a good like kick to get me going on this buying more you know do you have any cards specifically in your history of the national that you think still think about today where you're just like i should have bought this card not like at the national specifically other than like just every card in the every dealer case and i'd just be like the richest person ever you know if i just like cleaned out twenty nineteen national then i would just be super rich and i could buy any card i want rose colored glasses chris what about you anything change for you at the show like desire to do more of what you're doing or change moving in another direction just based on people having conversations with you that you know and trust no not really but i think that we we're seeing right now something that did sort of stand out to me as i happened to find out who a few buyers were of rather high profile cards that sold was that i was like oh i know these people these aren't like some mysterious shadowy new figures with infinite bank accounts who are suddenly buying all the cards like no these are people who have built up large equities in their collections or as people operating hobby businesses and this timing this energy this season this peak or part of the cycle has induced these same people to pay much more money now for these same cards that might have been available two or three years ago and they might have had the money on hand to buy them then but they didn't so i that's one thing that i took away is that that the you know it it's just it's interesting to me to see that it's the same players but playing to kind of like joshua but playing the game more aggressively right now absolutely alright before we get out of here i wanna give you both the space if there's any recent cards whether you acquired them at the national or not any pickups that you wanna share and add any context to why you bought the card josh we'll start with you well i'll keep this specific to national since that's the main topic and these are my three like graded pickups i had another one but i cracked it out because i like i'm a psycho and i i like a lot of there's certain cards i prefer raw and i cracked it out and now it's hidden away this is a twenty twenty todd gurley black he's on the falcons i may have like shied away from this before because he's not in the rams jersey but i'm so deep in the gurley cards that chad was nice enough to sell me that i'm like well i have to i might as well just get them all this is the one you were talking about brett this is the twenty twenty one optic gold vinyl tyreke i now have five tyreke optic vinyls and it's mostly just it's just random that it turned out that way they just they just keep coming up and i just keep buying them and that was a fun deal like the seller you mentioned was like off to the side and i was like in another conversation he's like thousand bucks or whatever i can't remember what it was and i was like oh three thousand i remember and then i was like i'll venmo you in a minute let me finish this other day and then also from chad twenty sixteen select black number three in the set so this is the first appearing in a set todd gurley one zero one and he won this at auction and i like backed off the auction because we sort of like go back and forth and then he was feeling generous that day and sold it to me so now i gotta sell him something cool awesome it's always good to do deals with pals good good true of cards congrats chris what about you well it wasn't too long ago that i showed a pc player that would resonate very or a a pickup of a that i picked up of a pc player of the other half of the football card podcast that being a priest holmes ultra masterpiece i picked up also now this one's for the other host yeah alright this is the nineteen ninety nine fleer focus masterpiece one of one of peyton manning and then i got that pretty recently and then i got this pretty recently too which is the emmitt smith from the same set that that is the i have never seen that before that's the best i love that yep very excited about these the design is very subtle but it has that purple masterpiece one of one foil that fleer used in the late nineties and the early two thousands is it the exact same like purple it's the purple i don't know it's it's i don't i i didn't like drop it into photoshop and say like what's the color gradient here about it it's like it's like royal purple yes yes i would describe it as like a royal color it's not like a flat like sun's color purple it's more royally blue purple nice yeah so with those those deals at the national no no though both those i got before the national awesome well this you know what i felt like i wasn't quite done talking about the national i knew you both were going to be here joining me today i felt like there's a lot lot of good conversation and dialogue from that and hopefully the listeners got some good perspective here this was card ladder confidential episode number twenty two appreciate everyone tuning in talk to you next month