alright welcome back to card letter confidential we have a conversation today where we are going to be talking about one of ones i know we talk about one of ones a lot i know if you listen to chris and josh's stuff they talk about one of ones but we've never had a dedicated episode to fully immersing ourselves in the one of one category and that is what we're going to do here today the way we start all these conversations is with the cold open question so my cold open question as we set the stage for this conversation around one of ones is what is the biggest misconception around collecting one of ones and we'll start with you mister josh johnson cardboard chronicles the biggest misconception about collecting one of ones that's a hard question you might have stumped me with like not being prepared i don't know i wanna see if chris has something i don't have anything off the top of my head really i need i need some like inspiration chris inspire us yeah well we're gonna say a lot of nice things about one of ones probably on this episode and everywhere else so like i was like let i i this is a great cold open question let me give the preface that that collecting in no way shape or form needs to be about one of wands and that there are many many great items great cards great non card items that don't have a one of one stamp on them or that aren't the original or that aren't the masterpiece that are just as every bit as desirable and collectible like let me show you so i i brought this out just in case i needed to do this bit mhmm okay so i've taken an a a slight interest in art history and this is a print okay this is a this is a print of jackson pollock's the deep it's in a museum somewhere and it's never going to be privately owned and even if it could be it would cost tens or maybe hundreds of millions so it's impossible to own that so i bought a print of it for eighty bucks here i am i'm enjoying something that probably has been reproduced infinitely and i paid good money for it just because i like the way it looks i i want to think about it more i want it to sit on a wall somewhere and it's just a print so like that to you know a print doesn't even really have a a place in the canon of art the way that copies of cards have a real meaningful place in the canon of sports cards so even there a print is something lower i would say than a sports card but but still i'm collecting that too so like i just or i wouldn't really call that a collection that's just a thing that's gonna go on my wall but why the point i wanna make is that that collecting rarity is a variable in collecting and it's not a binary variable where it has to be completely rare one of one or it's not rare at all nope there are scales of rarity and something can be rare for its era it can be rare organically it can be rare from a manufactured intentionality point of view so anyway just to say that we're going to say a lot of kind things about one of ones here but that doesn't come at the exclusion of being able to say kind things about other collectibles and other cards too alright so so the biggest misconception to me and it's one that i hear from people from time to time is that if you own one of ones that you that you can't own them in common with other people that if if you have a one of one of matt ryan that you can't own that card in common with anybody else that that you're you're very lonely with your one copy item that nobody else can have and on one level that's true that's that's quite specifically the only copy of that card i i have matt ryan in mind because i was just on ebay this morning and i bought i think his twenty twenty one absolute black spectrum one of one for like ninety bucks so yeah nobody else can buy that card although there is a black galaxy that's quite similar that's also one of one so sort of you could you could already sort of if you loosen up the definition of what it means to own something in common you could say well there's two people who can own a twenty twenty one absolute base at matt ryan black one of one because there's two of those but why but why why did why can't we listen in further why can't we say that every person who owns a one of one for matt ryan from the year twenty twenty one can form a community why can't why can't there be a community of matt ryan owners of twenty twenty one one of ones and then why can't we take it further why can't there be a community of anybody who owns a matt ryan one of one from any season and then why do we have to stop there why can't there be a community of owners who own quarterback one of ones why can't there be a community of owners of people who own nfl one of ones and why stop there why can't there be a community of people who just own one of ones at all and so any one of one can gain you access to that network whether it's a twenty dollar one or a grotesquely expensive one so it's sort of all about how we define what it the parameters of membership to a group are because even if we're talking about a card that has fifty copies or one hundred copies even then the one that's number twenty two of fifty is a different physically distinct copy from the one that's twenty three of fifty which is different from twenty four of fifty and so on those are not identical items either and even if we're talking about something like the nineteen fifty two topps mickey mantle even there from copy to copy there will be differences even if microscopic so it's it's just a continuum it's and it's and it's partially arbitrary of how do we define what forms a a group of the same thing versus something that doesn't belong to that group and i think that that that that there's a big misconception that if you own a one of one or if you only focus on collecting one of ones that there's no community component to that and it's just not true very good i appreciate your disclaimer upfront which i hadn't thought about up until you were talking but i think it's a very strong disclaimer because we are going to be saying a lot of nice things about one of ones but it is also the intention of this conversation is not to make individuals feel like one of one collecting is the only path or avenue that they can explore so appreciate that upfront josh have you had time to consider a misconception about one of ones before we get into it yes it's fairly similar but it it did spark an idea where there's a misconception that people who collect one of ones maybe like look down upon others who don't collect one of ones or that collecting one of ones is the only way to collect and this is obviously not true you know anyone can choose to collect however they want some people want to collect cards out of ten or a hundred or or even not serial number because maybe they have more of a nostalgic feel for some of those types of card is how they collect it when they're kids they wanna be able to share with the community that they have a card in common with them kind of piggybacking off of chris's idea and also the other thought here is that if it weren't for those other cards there would not be the contrast to the one on one so i my me collecting one on ones would be less enjoyable if it weren't for the other ways of collecting it so it kinda gives me like a way to enjoy it more knowing that you know there's other ways to do it other because if everyone's only collecting one on ones then every card is a one on one and then no cards are one on this is great i'm i'm liking where this conversation is going wanna start by kinda getting some perspective on your personal experiences collecting i have known you as collectors for many years and have watched kind of the evolution of how you approach your collection i want to maybe zero in on if there was a specific moment or a specific card that got you more serious about pursuing this one of one path that both of you are on and i'm on this path as well so i'll throw my hand up but chris we'll start with you here is there was there a moment or a card that got you kind of looking at your collection or the way you wanna approach your collection a little bit differently yeah my story starts with the fact that i always enjoyed serial numbering because my focus when i came back was nineties and also when i came back it was the mid twenty tens so we really hadn't had the proliferation of one of ones that would happen in the later half of the twenty tens and through the twenty twenties so one of ones were far less visible when i came back and they were almost impossible from the point of view of a nineties collector so i i just i i just i my my interest was just like serial numbering i just thought that like i remember one of the first serial numbered cards i got was a michael jordan high voltage out of five hundred and i would just turn the card over and look at the serial number and enjoy it and i just thought it was so cool that there were only five hundred of these and it was stamped on the surface and the copy i actually had was number five hundred of five hundred which was pretty cool too so serial numbering is where my interest started and then the one of one is sort of the termination points of that it's the ultimate logical extension of serial numbering is the one copy item that is numbered as such so i it it it wasn't surprising that eventually that is where i would ultimately end up focusing but my first one of ones came maybe around twenty eighteen or twenty nineteen when i began collecting ultramodern and not exclusively nineties and so my first one of ones were a few different lukas that i got there maybe around the end of twenty eighteen or coming into the beginning of twenty nineteen at some point over that winter and definitely was was hooked as soon as i as soon as i got a few of those it it it was just a very special feeling to to claim or to find a card serial number to one one follow-up here before we get to josh do you think you would have accelerated your path to one of ones if you didn't start your collecting in the nineties and you just came back to the hobby and you're fully focused on luca and the ultra modern do you think you would have gotten there quicker because the proliferation of one of ones were taking place while in real time while you were collecting or do you think that wouldn't have changed anything yes it would have for two reasons for for one reason yeah it's just it was much easier to find them you could see them on social media you might even see an ultra modern one of one if you walk into a card shop like the things that i was doing when i was acclimating myself and learning about the hobby again you know they they would actually be accessible even to someone at an entry level so i think they they would have been more accessible and more in reach and that would have been a factor in me focusing on them earlier and then the other thing is the community aspect that the nineties collecting community doesn't discuss one of ones they don't focus on it it's out of sight not of mind and i was very much influenced by that and i was learning from them i was taking the taking cues from them and inheriting the tastes that they created and that they were that they had inherited i acquired them too and i my preferences were very much molded by the people i was learning from especially that very impressionable part of the early return of my of my collecting ambition so that was a that was a factor too is that the nineties culture just wasn't focused on or discussing or sharing one of ones at all but had i instead started collecting ultra modern even then in the twenty sixteen seventeen eighteen time frame one of ones were much more discussed focused on and and revered in a way that they just they just weren't in nineties collecting culture josh when i first met you i knew you as a lebron collector i knew you as a penny collector i would imagine in those in that era of your collecting it was probably very challenging to go out and pursue a one of one lebron or penny collection based on just the demand and scarcity when was the moment for you that you started to see things differently or you began to see opportunities in buying one of ones and then getting those one of ones in your collection and that being kind of a approach that you began to take with building out your collection well collecting penny and lebron i never really had much exposure to one on ones and for two different reasons one penny was in the nineties and i just those one on ones like weren't even on my radar because they were just so hard to find and most of those were like in china at the time i think i knew of like one showcase masterpiece penny that was like floating around but it was never available so that was sorta like you know you go for the rubies and the pmgs and that's just sort of what you're exposed to and then for lebron it was always like just way too expensive and at that time you know when you come into the hobby you're really hyper focused on like the brands and like specific types of cards that you sort of like should be going after so like the other one zero one lebron's that were out there were never really like on my radar and so again like i just i never really was exposed to it it wasn't until about i think in twenty eighteen i had built up like a small todd gurley side pc and it was like oh dude i could get one of ones of todd gurley for like one percent of the price of any lebron so that's kind of interesting to like actually get a one of one card and it was sort of like this side quest of like oh i can get like a contenders rookie one zero one or i can get like a black you know prism one of one girly so i it was sort of like a i was like cheating on the other pcs because it's like i can get any card i want i can literally get his best cards this is so unfair you know he's the offensive player of the year i shouldn't this shouldn't be happening and then you start to get exposed to like other different types of sets and you you realize like okay there are there are like cheaper one on ones of penny and lebron relative to other brands that are not one on ones and you just sort of like evolve into it the the main moment though that you're looking for i think was a couple years ago i won't say the seller of the instagram but i think you could probably figure it out he posted aaron donald's black finite rookie and he put the price on the story and i just thought like that is that seems just like really reasonable i just don't understand this is like a one of one of the biggest brand of the best defensive player of the era you know the most he's got three defensive player of the year awards a time first like his his numbers are kind of just insane i just thought why is this price why is it this way like the jj mccarthy cards that were out of ninety nine were more expensive you know it's it's just doesn't make much sense to me so i just kinda like bought that card just on like a just off vibes basically and then it was like wow they're all like this i should just keep going and then you know here we are so you have this pivotal moment of acquiring an incredible one of one and you still have like this existing collection that you have built while this like trans collecting transformation is taking place and you're beginning to see the light in a new way what like as you have gotten on the train is on the tracks of the one on one train like what have you decided to stop doing or left behind or like what is not attractive to you that maybe was attractive before now that you're pursuing this path of getting cards that no one else can buy but but you well my big thing always has been i have to really enjoy the look of the card and i was never really willing to compromise on that and so what that means for me is not i i know i was not willing to take on one of ones of brands that i felt didn't look aesthetically appealing and like the black finites and the super factors always like stuck out but the more you look into it there are like a lot of really cool looking one on ones of lesser tier brands for the football cards i'm after and lebron cards there's there's like a lot more than you would think and even like the black finite pattern i'm finding that pattern itself has been reused in other brands like for example the mosaic black one of one they also have the nebula one zero one and the black but the black is the same pattern as the black finite and they also integrate like team color so in my opinion it's like it it could even be seen as like aesthetically a superior card so once you sort of like cross that threshold of like being willing to accept that you don't have to only have two or three brands or it doesn't have to be national treasures then then you sort of like open up your world to well i guess like if i'm gonna get black black mosaics i might as well start researching every single product they have and then you you find that there's like actually quite a bit of good looking sets especially from panini i i've said this many times on this show i just think they knocked it out of the park and they are the actual primary innovators of one on ones in my opinion so like the panini one on one era is gonna be looked back on very fondly and i think it's going to occur for a lot of different brands as people start to discover more of those sets now that they've finalized everything we know how many sets each of them stop at we can kinda like now categorize them catalog them properly and really like tie the bow on on the panini sets chris this is something i've observed in your collecting and what you've been picking up and maybe this started back with some of these more controversial trades you've made controversial to the community you know there have been these reels created and you're buying these one of ones and giving up these jordan grills and people are all like how how could you and so it is from my observation you have maybe traded a more recognizable brand or card for something less known or less desirable to the masses but it is a one of one and you've been sharing some of your football pickups too which are like one of ones of great players but are from sets and brands that no one is talking about so i don't know like what has been going on like to me that seems to be like what you're doing now and what you're really excited about i don't know like just talk about that like talk about like kind of changes you've made with the way you think about the cards that you're acquiring and bringing into your collection yeah i love what josh said about doing it off of vibes because it it's very true especially in the one of one world where there might not be a single direct comp and there might never be one and so use you have to take the leap of faith that or have the courage of your conviction to acquire a card that might never have a price history and that might be very difficult to triangulate a value for especially if it's not coming to auction like there there is very much a a a vibes elements to one of one collecting which is very ironic because the before you get to the vibes part of one of one collecting it's actually very rational and analytical to arrive at one of one collecting because you sort of are considering carefully all of the different variables you're weighing aesthetics you're weighing rarity you're wearing you're weighing brand premium you're considering history you're considering placements you're considering how rare the card is relative to other parallels in its run how rare it is compared to other players' catalogs and so on and so forth so like you do all of this analytical work just to ultimately get to making a leap of faith based on vibes but that is that is very much how it works and and that's where i'm at right now i'm just browsing ebay relentlessly and one of the cards that i shared recently was the twenty fifteen rookies and stars antonio brown black one of one and i also have the arian foster and i really like to get a few from these sets because i think they you can really get more of an appreciation for the design if you've if you see it in a few different iterations and i like to enjoy them that way so i have the ab and the arian foster and foster earns a place in my pc because he has an rb one finish in fantasy and antonio brown's got the first teams and one of the one of the great wide receivers of the last however many years so the players fit what i seek to collect and the the cards you know i didn't know how nice they would look at hand i just i i was vibing there i was just guessing that these might look cool they might not a lot of times when you're dealing with these bargain bin one of ones the photographs are terrible they're packaged in like the the photographs taken through like three there's like a penny sleeve and a one touch and it's just like someone just kind of threw it on a table and took a quick picture and threw it up on ebay so i really don't even know what it's gonna look like and when it arrived i thought it was fantastic it was a standout because it the name plates and the bottom portion of the card is in this deep black foil that you can't really even decipher unless you subject it to some pretty direct light but once you do all the information that's written there the nameplate the team it all comes into view with this rainbow foil background and then the nfl logo is tiled across the background and i love when team logos or the nfl logo is used in that fashion in the background i used to love how the bgs white label would tile the name beckett's on it i i i used to i just loved the way that looked and so that that had this tile effect also had great action shots and just a a really deep rainbow foil surface that when you put it under the light and you have like the those the all those design elements and then you sort of let the the rainbow finish come out at different angles as you tilt the card i just thought it was gorgeous and and these cards were sitting on ebay for a hundred and fifty bucks for the ab and maybe like a hundred bucks for the arian foster and so i was i was listening actually to a a lecture by a curator at some university who was explaining how they wanted to get a painting of of george morrison i i i can't remember exactly who it was and so he was just kind of saying how well they just decided they wanted to have a work of art from him represented in an exhibit and to keep and to to store and to bring out as needed and i just thought that that was a good comparison to kind of what i'm doing as a collector right now that i i want to have represented all of these cool different one of ones but i want it to be of certain athletes of certain calibers that have certain legacies certain statistical achievements certain resumes but i want to have them and i want to display them at times and at other times they're gonna go into storage and you might not see them for years just like plenty of works that are held in storage at museums and by curators but then sometimes it's appropriate to bring them out and show them a bit and then put them away again and so that's kind of where i'm at with it i saw those cards that you posted to your story and i was like those cards look cool and i had never seen them before so love that i wanna dig into maybe this isn't happening just with you me or josh this is happening a lot within collecting circles i know people that are moving more towards one of ones i'm sure you know collectors doing the same thing we have talked a lot about just the over the years in the weekly auctions seeing the same subjects in the same types of cards selling over and over again and it just gets boring and i think what is not boring is note regardless of the brand or the subject seeing cards that are one of a kind that other collectors are posting that we've never seen before i'm curious based on this frontier that is forming what i don't know what are some of the observations you're making regarding collectors and their habits towards one of ones like we're in a lot of different chats we talk to a lot of different people we sit spend time on our phone just observing josh like what sort of things i guess outside of you and your collecting or just what you and chris are talking about with one of one collecting like what sorts of things are catching your attention and things you're observing regarding kind of one of one collecting across the hobby well it's probably a bit of an echo chamber because i'm so focused on it that's kinda like what i consume and what i hear so i i would imagine that before i we you know i was like knee deep in the one on one game there was definitely people out there doing this before me you know we've found plenty of instagram accounts where they've been posting going back years like some really sick lebron one on ones bob amtrak for example kobe one on ones there's a few collectors that i speak to that have insane kobe one on ones that like never even would have been on my radar until the last couple years and now that i've i've seen how this works you know i've i've more appreciate i more appreciate what they've been able to put together over the years but as far as like the trends i mean yeah it's hard to distinguish the prices of these and the and the popularity of these going up because kind of everything's going up so i don't it's really hard for me to like piece that variable out of it and say oh yeah one on ones are like more popular i would say like it's probably definitely more popular with like the collector type content creators it's becoming more and more mainstream it's it's coming up more i i haven't noticed it as much with the like dealer stuff because it's just harder for them to be able to source some of that stuff so i don't think that's they're not really incentivized to like only do one on ones for example but like in my group chats my friends people that i consider peers in the space like there's definitely a sort of rush to like get all the one on ones like we're all sort of looking at each other in a circle like oh crap we're all doing the same thing we better hurry so there's i can definitely sense that sort of like i don't wanna say panic but like yeah there's only so many of these one on ones like we better fight for these right now because this is kind of like a land grab it's like a gold rush in in california or something it's like this is the only chance to get a lot of these specific cards you know especially i'm more focused on football right now and so like there's a few football guys like i'm thinking of black hat cards chad him and i are just like texting every day like is this one yours is this one mine type of stuff so there's a lot of that going on that's awesome the i wanna chris i wanna maybe get back to the vibes we're gonna keep the vibes going a little bit and talk about this is just swirling around in my head in this topic around like vibes based buying especially on the one of one front you know we are in a community where everyone wants to comp and look at card letter sales history and get justification on list prices and sometimes it's just like one of ones right there's no data or sales history and you can kind of spend all this time piecing together comparable sales and seeing if this is actually worth it or you can just like have the vibes and trust the gut and be like this card's cool it fits around the zone of what i buy these types of cards for so i'm just gonna buy it how like how much of what you're doing is vibes based versus like having to try to figure out how much something is worth in this moment and deciding whether you wanna buy it for what it's listed at or walk away because of just data to support it or not well it's very much like a musician you can imagine somebody who maybe just picked up a guitar very recently trying to play off of vibes and it's it they might do do a few things very well because there's just a lack of inhibition and just sort of a fresh set of eyes and but for the most part they're going to really struggle like they won't be able to jam with the band very well they're not going to make very good creations on their own they they need to learn and they need to immerse themselves over a long period of time in how things work they need to study it directly they also just need to sleep on it and let their unconscious mind become acclimated to the logics of music composition and performance and then after a sufficient amount of time has passed after many many many hundreds of hours have passed then they can do vibes but now when they're now when they're vibing they are they're there's they're not activating that rational part of the brain they're going off of something else off of a conviction or just taking the leap of faith but now it's rooted in a great education and cultivation of habits and styles of thinking and approaches that the the novice just doesn't have access to so vibes is very it it varies quite a bit somebody who's very experienced going off of vibes is very different than somebody who's brand new going off of vibes but but both could have success in different ways but the but the person's experiences their their vibes are gonna be very different and and so that i apply that to cards to a card collector that that's somebody who's you know been deep in buying selling trading cards studying the market studying sets studying card history participating with the community attending shows so on and so on if that person going off of vibes actually has this whole repository of experience to draw on whereas somebody new going off of vibes could make colossal mistakes because it's if they're what they're doing is quite random whereas the other person it's it's it's a it's an informed vibing an informed vibe session and then brent i wanna turn back to you quickly too and just say what was your answer to the question a few ago about what was the card that maybe got you hooked on one of one collecting yeah i think that would have been as i am thinking through this right now it certainly was the first andrew luck finite that i got and that was the twenty fourteen finite that grant slaton found in nashville and texted me and i ended up buying it and i remember it coming in the mail and it it was raw it came in the mail and when i got it i remember just like like my stomach dropping i remember turning it around and you know seeing the one of one and it was just beautiful and this was coming at a time where i was like trying to finish completing my luck gold run and the luck gold vinyl run which i was very much enjoying but like getting that card it like unlocked like a whole new chamber in my collecting brain and it wasn't like a what am i doing like with this other stuff but it was mostly like there's more important things i can be doing right now with my time and money and it is the challenge of trying to do what i was doing with the gold vinyl and the gold with the finites was invigorating like i feel like as collectors we want things to be challenging and we want to be able to shake trees and we want new pursuits that get our critical thinking and reasoning parts of our brain going so it was that card which ironically like a lot of people ask like what's your favorite card in your collection and it's that card and i never really thought about it from that perspective but yeah man i think a lot of us get these moments and it just reshapes the way we think about our collection and i think it was that card that did it for me yeah i i thought about that as you were telling the story too was that the the the the experience that we have getting a card can make it more memorable and more meaningful as to meaningful to us also and and sometimes i can struggle struggle to separate that from like what would this card mean to somebody who encounters it on a neutral playing field versus what does it mean to me as it was like a memorable turning point collection altering type of item so we've talked a lot about vibes we we're gonna pivot to some cold hard data that i found in a platform you guys work on and that's card ladder so i just was curious as i was preparing for this episode i was just interested in like one of one's demand sales and so yesterday i think it was i pulled the rep a report and i just did two different things i just did sale price ten thousand dollars or more one of one in the description and wanted to do a year over year in twenty twenty five how many one of ones ten k or more sold in twenty twenty six obviously we're not a full year how many had sold up into this point and then i did the same thing for a a a sales threshold one tier below which five thousand to nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine and i think i was a little surprised by i i was a little surprised by the kind of the the separation and so i'll share the the the numbers with the listeners and then i wanna get your reaction on kind of what your takeaways are so ten thousand dollars or more one of one sales in twenty twenty five there was two thousand two hundred and twenty five cards that sold according to guardladder in twenty twenty six obviously we're not done with the year there is four thousand three hundred and seventy lot of different factors can contribute to that but that's a pretty substantial increase over what has happened on the one of one front in twenty twenty five now five thousand and nine nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine in twenty twenty five three thousand one hundred and twenty one one of one sales and this year it's already surpassed that four thousand four hundred and twenty one sales so there are more one of ones being produced there are more one of ones being bought by big dollar for by collectors for big money josh like what is your like is this surprising to you is this about what you expected like what is your reaction to this dataset you're ready for a zag i read this differently than you i see this as that these are purchased less because in just bear with me in september of twenty twenty five our industry tab is tracking three hundred and eighty eight million dollars worth of total volume in sales and for september of twenty twenty six it's nine hundred and forty eight so basically like almost three x and this thing is showing not even two x so the ratio of total volume of cards is on a relative basis on a one on ones is actually lower than the overall market increase so i think less one on ones are being purchased here if i'm reading this that way this is this is why you talk to the pros chris what's your reaction it's a good zag that's on as an absolute number that's like the ten k and up one of ones had about two thousand last year and about four thousand this year i'm rounding but to keep the numbers really simple but as a share of the total market they might actually be smaller might actually be a smaller share of the total market so that's a good complicating feature and i i was gonna complicate it in a couple different ways also there there are definitely more one of ones like there's been a whole year of producing more of them so and and so they're they're they're just will be a bigger pie of one of ones even going from one year to the next and one of ones aren't that old they began in the mid to late nineties for most sports so you know they've been around they're coming up on thirty year anniversaries technically i think the first football cards i have one of ones were these phone cards from nineteen ninety six that were not nfl licensed that were college cards and you can find like one historical sale of an eddie george but like the the pro licensed first one of ones i think mostly and and by one of one i mean a card that is stamped one of one i think those began in ninety seven so i guess next year is kind of the thirty year anniversary of the one of ones in the in the major sport so it's just not that it's it's not that long of a period and so you know any any new like like how many as a percentage of the total of one of ones how how much did that increase by just from twenty twenty five as compared to twenty twenty six i don't know it might have increased by five percent or or or ten percent so that that doesn't account for basically the doubling but but it but it does account for something the other take i have as i look at this is that those are pretty big numbers two thousand one of ones sold in twenty twenty five and four thousand sold in twenty twenty six and that's just ten thousand and up ten thousand bucks and up i mean that's a lot of one on ones and that's a lot of five figure plus one on ones that's another thought that i had as i looked at that yeah those are very that you both those responses have me looking at the dataset a little differently and that's what i like i wanna talk about owning something no one else can buy i think the attraction for many collectors in purchasing one of ones is being able to buy something that no one else has and being able to hold something that you believe in for as long as you can as long as it makes sense for your collection not always but probably giving yourself the best chance at it if it is time to sell that card you're not going to lose a lot of money the other thing i wanna mention is that i don't know about you guys but would love to get your reaction this seeing cards that aren't one of ones that are maybe high end commodity cards sell or maybe case hits sell for what they're selling for and then you can look at one of ones and see those cards of similar adjacent players sell for much less to me just seems screams opportunity so i just wanna get kind of your perspective as josh the collector and as chris the collector like is there something about owning a card that no one else can own that is attractive to you josh we'll start with you yeah i like the the way you teed it up those are good thoughts i am obviously very interested in the comparable side of things i post to my stories a lot where you'll see like oh this quarterback that hasn't done anything sells for this and then a quarterback who's very established in a hall of famer sells for much less with like comparable timelines and comparable cards so i'm i think that's a big part of this where like the you know a gold prism for example will sell for fifty times some like rookie and stars one zero one for example so there is like a a little bit of that comparison that i like to look at and and think oh this like this jackson dart you know out of ninety nine card is selling for x and i can just get like peyton manning one on one rookie for less you know what i mean there's so there's a lot of that going on and that's a big part of it the biggest factor for me on this is like i got really sick of seeing cards that i own come up for auction over and over and i a lot of it would be like someone would message me and be like hey i know you own one of these give me your take on it i'm thinking of buying it and i would do this little like pitch to them like oh it's a great card you know great brand and you know it's a great player it'd be great for your pc and then they'd buy it and then like two months later it would be at alt auction and i'm like why did i spend any amount of time guiding you or giving you any sort of like advice on this card if you're just gonna sell it two months later and that just like kept happening and so there is like a big push for me to get away from just like i don't even wanna have any exposure to anyone else owning a single one of my cards anymore and the only way to do that is one on one so i i was definitely motivated by that and then like seeing sort of the same cards over and over in premier the vortex topic that we always bring up and joke about like those are real motivators when you keep seeing the same card especially ones either you've owned that copy or you've like helped a friend source the card and you just keep like seeing it move around over and over you just basically have none of that if you only do one on ones now of course there is like oh i have the one on one of this player from the set you have a different player there is like some relationship between those two and so you could still like conceivably make that same argument for one on ones but it's just like true but i definitely only have this one of this exact cards and you i i will never see it sell unless i'm the one that sells it so like controlling your own destiny to us in a sense is like a big motivator for me this isn't getting me to just smile because i would consider myself a control freak you kinda have to be especially when you're working and doing the stuff that you know we do to keep these businesses rolling and i've never really thought about it from that context but i think part of the reason why i like collecting one of one so much is that i feel like i have control and can control my destiny in a way that's not subject to outside influence or someone else's decision making chris what is control attractive to you in the one of one collecting process do you enjoy owning pieces of cardboard that no one else can own because you have the one copy what are your thoughts yeah i do i i certainly like that but the i the control thing sent me in a slightly different direction i like to be able to control and manage all the variables so and what i mean by that is with if i've if i've shrunk the sandbox to only one of ones i can if i'm really staying on top of it i can stay on top of every one of one that comes to market and that sells every single one and i can't i'm not always on top of that but you know it takes a couple hours a day but but usually i've i've got eyes on it and so i've got like my sales history saved searches and card ladder that i sort of break up by era that i check every night to see what's been selling and and and and and so like because this sandbox is only one of ones i get to see nhl one of ones mlb one of ones nba soccer you know nonsports i just i see all of them come in and i get to see all the different brands and all the different designs and all the different styles and it and then also coming to sale like you know i've got various safe searches set up on marketplaces to make sure that that i'm constantly checking and monitoring and seeing what becomes available and every day i see ones that i think are are very appealing at the price so i'm able to like more or less keep tabs on the whole ecosystem of one of ones which is really cool because now i get to like once i put the parameter of of of one of ones once i've filtered to just those now i get to see a diversity of designs and sports and athletes and price levels and everything else and i feel like i'm actually getting to see everything that i that i'm that there's not things happening in the background that i'm just not aware of they're that that i just have to kind of put the blinders on but that i i feel like i can kinda wrap my arms around that market or at least i can keep eyes on it i can i can sort of keep keep tabs on what's going on and it's and it's actually like it's almost like right now it's almost the perfect size where it's like mhmm it's so big that you have to be really ambitious to keep tabs on one of one the one of one market but you can do it if you want to invest the time and the knowledge into doing it so i like i like that control i like i i like being able to see everything i love the having systems and process around kind of the categories you collect and i think that's a we could do an entire episode on that and i think it's so important i think when a lot of collectors think about one of ones like they think about super fractures they think about finites all these popular one of ones and i think the the fun part about this conversation is the we're trying to open the doors up to you know there are a lot of different one of ones there are a lot of cool one of ones that no one talks about and i want to kinda get your perspective on like what is it outside of like it being one of a kind that interests you about the exploration of the one of one process and i'll give you i was like i was just thinking about this as you guys were talking and there's an example that i don't know if i'm gonna buy this card yet but it's on my mind and i'm gonna share the card it's it's live it's in a marketplace right now but i'm gonna tell you even if i don't buy this card what i have liked about it because it's a one of one to the card right now and as a matter of fact i opened up my ebay and i got an offer on it so maybe that's telling me i should buy this card the card is a two thousand and five topps turkey red philip rivers wood border one of one okay so why do i like this card i like the card because it caught my attention it did one thing and then i spent last night researching topps' turkey red and i learned that this is the very there's two years of it this is the first year this is the rivers' second year so he's playing behind drew brees as this card is being produced and you look at this card and you look at him standing there and it's unique with the wood borders and river standing there with the young rivers with his helmet off probably five less kids maybe when this photo was taken and i just look at the card and i'm like man there's something about learning that this this this set that was influenced by the past and they brought it to football and it never really caught on in football but they did it for two years but this is the first year of it and it's rivers the second year and i'm like that to me like going through the process of learning something about a card that i wouldn't have known about unless it got my attention on a marketplace and then i spent the time to research it so that that's why i like the one of one collecting is because i feel like i'm very curious person and it's causing me to learn and it's opening up my mind to a lot of different things so i'm curious on your side like what is it about kind of the one of one process outside of right having super factors or finites which are great like what is it about this category that kinda gets your juices flowing or wakes you up and gets you excited josh i just been that card so thanks that's the only problem with one of ones two two acts yeah well hopefully if hopefully maybe having a con i'm bringing it to this because this is the betting i know i know you are but this is this is i'm bringing it up because this is where i i understand this is the next stage like do i really want this card i'm bringing it up publicly but go ahead well i will say if i've been that i would not be upset at all i just like i see the price i won't say the price for just in case you need to wait or whatever i won't say the price but it's very very fair so you should feel good i think it's similar to yours versus like you're just sort of like it's sort of forcing you to to discover things you didn't know about or it's giving you this new lane to research and and dig into things one of my favorite things is like when i know i need to buy something new or like a new phone or something and then i get to like sit down and spend hours researching it and watching youtube videos that's always like a a passion of mine is to like find the best of something and that and for this it's like this is just a a bit of uncharted territory for a few of us and being able to discover like oh like for example black mosaic one zero one looks a lot like black finite but it integrates team colors and it's cheaper and when did they start doing that when did they add the nebulas mosaic was actually the first one to have nebulas in football not not prism so like learning things like that looking at websites figuring out checklists like your example of oh they only did two years of turkey red and this is the first year you know previously we might have scoffed at like oh this brand only existed for one year therefore it's not a good brand and we shouldn't go after it the inverse is like there's only one of one of the one year they made this card this card's even rarer and better than all the other ones you know like you could sort of make that counterargument and so this this feeling of like mapping out the new world of one on ones it's it's forcing you to you know move around and maneuver within all the different brands you didn't know about and i'm doing that just with panini right now and i haven't even thought about doing it with the new tops because the competition is too high and it's i feel like it gets too expensive i'll i'll eventually get there when things cool down but panini is keeping me plenty busy right now as it is chris reactions yeah i love that research is so dangerous once once you like start finding the angles and the stories that the card tells and it's not long after that that ben gets smashed alright so i i want i wasn't sure if i could get to do this my rodchenko bit and this is the perfect place to do it and it's a perfect place in the show to do it so just buckle in for a few minutes here's your question is about i i i heard in your question building on top of the answers that you guys gave also the question of like well what is it actually is it just a stamp on a card or what is it that the one of one stands for here like is this just a rarity thing or is there what's what are what other stories can the one of one tell and like within the sports card category the fact that it's relatively new the fact that it's coming up on roughly a thirty year anniversary you know those are parts of its story too but the one of one also has something to say to the history of manufacturing and art that i think makes it compelling also so you have to put yourself in the mindset of sort of pre industrial age creativity when art largely happened in the studio and the masterpieces that were painted were then acquired and either displayed in very fancy museums or owned by aristocrats or by royalty and art was very much this exclusive high end private domain that took place in studios but the advent of mechanical reproduction the advent of the machine the advent of the photograph all of these things made art suddenly much more accessible through widespread distribution and mechanical reproduction and so as that was confronting art and obviously it was confronting artists in a direct way and the artists could look back and see how the printing press had impacted the the distribution of knowledge and written information and they were sort of seeing that this is a predicate for what this is going to do for art and creativity that you know color printing and and anyway there was a there was an artist from russia who was working in the early twentieth century rodchenko who was a leader of the constructivist school and he was of the philosophy he was both an artist and an engineer and he was of the philosophy that art because now of the possibilities of mechanical reproduction really needs to leave the studio and stop being these private masterpieces that nobody gets to enjoy except for a few people and instead art should be democratized it should be distributed far and wide that the methods of art should inhabit every corner of life that architecture should reflect art furniture design should reflect art political propaganda should be artistically designed and incorporated and and that was very topical there in russia during during the twentieth century it's like what will our pamphlets look like that will have just wide widespread distribution and these artists were coming up with designs and things that suddenly didn't just live on an easel in their studio and eventually you know make it onto a canvas and then hang on a wall somewhere but instead they were being seen by thousands maybe even millions of people and part of mechanical rip reproduction as as a device for distributing art was the sports card the sports card is a mass produced item of culture it's part of americana and so you had this era of cards first as promotional items and then as stand alone sets and then the junk wax era and you just have like millions and millions and millions of copies of these things being produced and it's on the one hand especially to somebody like rodchenko it would be very exciting to see art being reproduced and distributed as it pertains to the design of sports cards as it pertains to photography which is used on sports cards as it pertains to the construction of sets rodchenko was very interested in art and systems he liked the idea that you could sort of algorithm algorithmically program art if you just gave somebody instructions for how to make a piece somebody else could follow it and they could reproduce the piece that come kinda comes back to the reproducibility point sports cards sets the way that sets reproduce the same design but vary it slightly with the player and with the statistics on the back there's something very systematic about that that the engineering mind would appreciate and enjoy but the the eventually after decades of mass reproduction and after decades of the sports card there was a reversal there was a return not taking away mass reproduction but instead complementing it or augmenting it by a desire to actually now go back to the studio now that we have infinite reproduction and distribution of images and art and design now the people who are consuming it suddenly said well what if we made these rare again what if what if we limited what what if we actually did go back to the studio what if we went back to masterpieces and so the concept of rarity which already was being developed in collectors through the notions of organic rarity of or of of vintage and pre war cards that were rare not because they were manufactured to be rare but because so few survived and the market was sending signals that people wanted and would pay premiums for these very limited items that weren't made to be limited but were naturally limited because of the accidents of history and so there was this convergence of collector and manufacturer that really started to take place in the nineties which was what if we intentionally limit the production of these cards what if we actually made fewer on purpose even though we have machines that can make infinite amounts what if we went away from that and right from our vantage point today it seems obvious but from their vantage point back then it was actually revolutionary let's intentionally limit how much the machine can make let's intentionally short print these things and then that logic continued from being short prints to being serial numbered cards so you can actually know the exact distribution and quantity of the print run and then it reaches its termination point which is the one of one the one of one is the total and complete inversion it completes the cycle from rodchenko and the constructivist saying let's take art out of the studio to the instruments of mass production making it infinitely available to then taking the machine which can make an infinite amount of things but instructing it you can only make one you have infinite capacity but you are disciplined into only making one copy of something and then we will mark it as such by putting the one of one stamp on it and now you have turned the logic of mass reproduction against itself and returned the art so to speak to the studio that's the story that the one of one item and the one of one sports card contributes to the history of art man some an art history lesson to just cap off this discussion before that was awesome chris before before we get out of here i want some self reflection one more just note back and forth just trying to get some understanding josh we'll start with you what has buying one of ones and building a one of one collection taught you about what you want out of collecting in twenty twenty six and beyond well i used to be a big proponent of consolidating buying you know good cards and then eventually like consolidating those into better cards etcetera etcetera in the last few months and going into twenty twenty seven i'm doing the exact opposite and buying every flipping one of one i could find of every good player of every good brand and i think i've bought like you know a couple hundred or whatever it's just it's getting it's getting out of control and now it's to the point where you know i i feel like it's a different story a different chapter where i can tell it's like i have this museum of one of ones of all these great athletes as opposed to you know i'm this sort of like investor guy who just has like five high end museum pieces it's like a different way to think about it and i still think you can do that you just kinda have a blend of like okay this one's worth more because you know there's more sales history of this brand or whatever and it's it's a this one's a rookie it's more expensive but in general like it sort of does like put a lot of these cards on like more of an equal playing field and i just have tons and tons of them and i have a pretty quick reaction to what i think the price should be when i see it just because i've i've seen so much data and card letters seen so many of these items i know the players by heart i know all the sets so like it is a vibes game which is funny coming from me given that i've always been sort of the opposite and like spending years researching the exact card of how much i wanna pay and when and what auction and such but now it's just like been tops turkey philip rivers why not he's he'll probably make the hall of fame and it's his for one on one of his second year let's do it you know i i already did it oh good wait let me let me verify it make sure you're not lying on the air oh he bought it this listing sold this listing sold seven minutes ago alright with with when the new vibes based guy my my instinct on the price is like i was like i feel like this is a good price and i just got an offer and you that was the first words out of your mouth it's like this is this is a good price i was like yeah i should probably probably buy it before this episode goes live right chris close this out what was the question you probably need a remind i need a reminder good goodbye on the turkey red i there was a tony gonzalez turkey red that was there was i i yes i know and goodbye whoever got the drew brees someone just recently bought the drew brees the same seller by the way this this guy must have been loading up on them so maybe before this episode goes live chris and josh you should check out his ebay store and see if there's anything you like but yeah those are cool cards man i'm excited to get that card in hand it's raw which is that's the way i want it right now but let's close it out with you what has buying one of ones taught you about what you want from your collecting in twenty twenty six and beyond yeah so after you gave that number that in twenty twenty five there were about two thousand sales there were twenty two hundred sales of one of ones ten k and up and then i wanted to go look and see how many sales of michael jordan happened in twenty twenty five that were ten k and up and it was about twenty eight hundred and forty five of them were one of ones so very very tiny fraction which is how it works with michael jordan he has very few one of ones so i i was thinking about those numbers and i was thinking okay so michael jordan as a player has more over ten k sales than one of ones is an is an entire category does and that's interesting to me because one of the things i really like about the one of one is that it gets me away from michael jordan centricness and it even gets me away from jokic centricness and mahomes' focus and just the little like ten pc players i have it even like gets me away from that and instead it develops alongside my research inclinations that we all love researching one on ones it also develops my appreciation for all of the great players all the good and great players or all of the memorable players of a particular sport too so now that i'm looking at this category of one of ones like all of a sudden like i've got four arian foster cards who like i would have always loved to collect he has like i said he has an rb one finish as the top running back in fantasy for a season which means quite a bit to me i think that's very impressive when a player does that so you know if i've i all of a sudden like i'm i'm developing the muscle of sports history knowledge which this new collecting approach incentivizes me to do and i think that's one of the fun cool takeaways is that i get away from being overly player centric and instead i i have a different approach like i have an exhibit that has a season in my collections museum that is dedicated to michael jordan cards and when that happens i'll trot those out for a while but then when it goes into the season of like hey i just wanna find the coolest looking panini one of ones and michael jordan isn't even in panini one of ones so i have to look elsewhere and then where are where does the value proposition lie and there are hall of fame football players who have one of ones that are sitting on ebay right now for one hundred bucks and man that sounds pretty cool and that and that's also kind of like a low stakes way to experiment with which designs and card styles that i like too so i guess that's that's kind of like that's kind of where i'm at with it right now brett is that i i really like there's there's sort of three prongs to sports card collecting there's knowledge of the sets and the cards there's knowledge of the athletes and the history and there's knowledge of the market and the prices and this project this one of one project really puts the emphasis on the knowledge of the history and the athletes and the players and knowledge of the sets and the cards but maybe not so much on prices because there should it's it's difficult to find prices on this the knowledge of the sets and the cards is what interests me the most out of anything and it's unlocking that and taking the time you gotta be a little bit of a nerd and you gotta really enjoy the learning process but i think that's what makes it the most interesting for me right now but everyone this was an entire episode from a bunch of collectors who are pursuing one of ones i think this was a very good conversation chris josh appreciate your perspective as always and looking forward to doing this again soon sounds good buddy see you