Alright. We are back with our next episode of Cards in Hand brought to you by my good friends at eBay.

Doing this live at the card ladder booth here at the National. I'm excited to get into this episode. It is with a collector. I've been having fun doing content with having conversations.

And every time I have a conversation with him, it makes me think, and I think this episode will do the same. I I am joined by Joe Lo pop Poppy on Instagram, and we are gonna be talking about some Panini inserts.

And I know that's maybe not something we talk about a lot, but I think Joe is very passionate about it, and he's got a lot of thoughts around his collection and why they matter.

We're gonna talk specifically about Steph Curry, but it's gonna be a lot of fun.

Joe, welcome. Happy national. How's it going? Oh, it's going great, Brett. Great to be here with you at the, at the car ladder booth, a little bit away from the craziness of the action.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of people here, and you feel it in the aisles and trying to get any sort of conversations or have any get any deals done.

But happy to be sitting with you. Happy to be, a part of what you're doing here.

So I yeah. I I'm I'm very fortunate with this space because, there's not people screaming, and we can actually record an episode. What I wanna talk about let's let's start with maybe inserts from the nineties.

And at when I got back into collecting, nineties basketball inserts were such a big topic. They're still such a big topic, and you you see collectors posting their cards regularly.

You see collections of nineties inserts. And then we've transitioned eras, and then we're in this Panini era. And I don't ever really hear anyone talk about inserts.

And when I do hear people talk about Panini non flagship based brands, they're talking about the lack of innovation and the lack of design and always comparing it with the nineties.

But I saw your box of cards, and you are educating me about the '9 or Panini era inserts and why these cards why we should maybe think a little bit differently of them.

But do you can think about these in relation to the nineties basketball inserts at all?

Or, like, what's your point of view on Panini era inserts? That's a great question and great framing, Brad, in a way to think about it. I do. I do collect, some Jordan, inserts specifically.

Of course, you can only collect so so much of that stuff before all the funds run out, before you have a chance to do anything else. But I think that era was actually more defined fundamentally, by the inserts.

The inserts and parallels are the best cards from the players if you collect players from the nineties. That's those are the chase cards. Those are the most expensive ones.

And I think what happened was, as that era transitioned over into, let's call it, like, the Topps, chrome finest era, inserts are not, let's just call it what it is, not the bread and butter of a chrome and a finest, sort of led decade.

There are some great ones, you know, know, that kind of go fly a little bit under the radar because I like inserts of all shapes and sizes. But I think that era took us into chrome, chromium, golds, these parallels.

And I think that then began to carry over into Panini when Panini took over, was people sort of saw Panini as a continuation on some level, especially when you got into the mid twenty tens, as sort of carrying that torch of Topps Chrome and forward.

And didn't because silvers, you know, think about, like, the Luca silver, the Zion silver, because prism gold and even select gold just dominates our brain so much, I think we assume that the inserts aren't as interesting.

So I think it just it I I do feel like we're on a almost a two decade, journey since the nineties that has said, like, well, this decade's different. And it's about the gold, and it's about those parallels.

So one thing that I see about these cards, and we're gonna I'm we're gonna call them out specifically, but what what I see in these is we've got three Currys, and we'll identify them.

They're all inserts, but then they're all parallel. They're all one of ones. Ones.

Now if we go back to the nineties, and I'm there might be a set that I'm just not thinking about, but there you don't really think of inserts in the nineties in one of ones, but that's something that in this era, Panini is, present.

Is is that part of your approach when you're evaluating these inserts is that you cannot only collect inserts that appeal to you aesthetically, but then you can go and chase rare and scarce inserts that nobody else has but you?

Oh, absolute yeah. That's a great question, Brett. I think there's a piece of it where if there were inserts that had no parallels, I would also be interested in those.

But because inserts do come with the Panini parallel, sort of obsession, it leads you naturally to the ones, okay, let me see what the golds look like. Let me see if there is a one of one.

And when you get your hands on those cards and they add in a vinyl effect or a black effect or, or a nebula effect, you all of a sudden, I think, create an insert that now has another level of appeal.

Because not only is it aesthetically interesting because of the branding and design, but now we're gonna give it that one of one feel. And to me, that makes it even more attractive.

And if you compare it to base cards that are blacks or nebulas or vinyl, this is a way cheaper way to collect that stuff than trying to chase any of the block any of the base, you know, of those parallels.

So let's talk about Curry. Yeah. And Curry's catalog, you know, carries over several different eras. He's got a lot of different cards.

We did a little we had a little chat about what we are gonna talk about ahead of this. But one thing you talked about which was interesting, is, like, this has been a way for you to maybe shrink the sea of Curry collecting.

Talk a little bit about that with a player with a catalog as big as Curry collecting in this manner allows you to be more focused.

Talk about that experience. Yeah. So also do a little bit of, you know, LeBron and Kobe just for reference.

They have the multiple decades to go from. They have you can go back into their chrome into the finest. With Curry, it's just Panini. You know, Curry equals Panini. Panini equals Curry. Best of, best of.

But when you look at that, then see a Panini cards, if you're a shiny card collector, like I know you are, Brad, you love the shiny stuff as as well. Love it. So let's just pretend for a second we love shiny and we love Curry.

Look at the corpus of cards that's available. Look at that total compendium. And what you'll find is the best stuff is the Prism Golds, the Early Years Select Golds, the early, you know, 2016 onward of the of the Optical.

These are those are beautiful cards that rarely sell. The Blacks. Can you ever find one? No.

You cannot find a Curry, you know, Prism Black. Black. They are in the diamond hands of collectors all over the world. What I found in also is Curry collectors to me seem even more passionate in in a way and even more diamond hand ish.

I don't know if that's a word, Brett, but we'll just we'll just go around. We're making it out. We're than LeBron collectors do.

I see a lot more LeBron golds hit auction than I do Curry Golds, and I'm following the markets for all. And I'm like, you start to wonder why that is. Because when you want shiny stuff, you only have so much to choose from.

So why wouldn't we naturally then look beyond those kind of base sets into things like inserts, into what are some really amazingly designed inserts that I just don't think get a lot of credit and love because there's so much of attention on base parallels, I think, in today's world.

And so I love to look at those because I feel like it's a zag, a little bit of a zag against kind of that mainstream discussion. And then I find beauty, I find aesthetics.

I find branding, like, powerful names and brand concepts in those parallels. And then if I can go get a gold or, you know, even better, be fortunate enough to land a one of one, then I'm I'm in.

I'm in because I feel like I have found a shiny lane that is more accessible than all the base stuff is. I'm sure we can spend and do a research project in car ladder and do some digging and validate this statement.

You're in it. You know collecting LeBron and Curry. Maybe share why do you think the Curry cards aren't as available as the LeBron cards. Is there any, ingredients to that? Like, talk about why you think that is the way it is.

Yeah. I I often get asked this question of, like, oh, well, do you, you know, do you really believe that Curry is more collected than LeBron? And oftentimes people ask me that assuming that he's not. My answer is I don't know.

But what I will tell you is because Kobe and LeBron and these other players have just so many more cards to choose from that go back into multiple decades and because Curry has a smaller supply let's just do supply and demand.

The supply is smaller.

That means the fervent collectors of curry now are all fighting for a much smaller pond of fish. You know, you talk a lot about shrinking the pond and thinking about that as as a way of of of collecting or focusing your collecting.

I think you've got you might not have as many Curry collectors as LeBron collectors, but the ones who do collect are passionate, are in it for the long term, like, deeply love him as a player, like, deeply love him as a player.

And then they have no plans on selling, and then what we're fighting over is basically two to 300 cards. Let's call it what it is. Like, add up all the golds. Add up all the prism golds, and the select golds, and the optic golds.

Don't do shimmers. Don't do those, but just add up all those base and add the blacks in there. It's what? Four to 500 cards total. And you think about global demand for somebody like Curry who changed the game.

I'm not gonna give you my Curry speech, but I I do have one. But you think about that kind of level of of passion for a player and then put the supply against it.

To me, it kinda makes sense. Okay. Let's dive into the cards. We've got three cards in this episode. I wanna start with we've got two that are the same inserts.

They're both gold vinyl one of ones. This comes from Optic. Joe has the 2019 stargazing gold vinyl one of one Curry and the 2021, 2022 stargazing gold vinyl one of one Steph Curry. Same parallel, same product.

They look very, very different in terms of the the design. Let's talk about stargazing from Optic. What draws you to this insert? So I'm a big believer that inserts, first and foremost, need to capture core branding elements.

You're, you're a marketing content guy by training and trade. You know the importance of a name concept to go along with a visual and design concept. And I've always sort of appreciated that about stargazing.

It had this it's always coming from a place of, you know, space, stars, sun, lighting effects and sun like, sun like effects either emanating from the player or surrounding the player.

So I do look for inserts where the brand name and the visual concept not only are integrated, but also, like, speak to me on some level.

And when you add a gold effect into it, or a a vinyl effect into it, to me, it's an even greater sort of accent point on that concept.

I now have star gazing in a vinyl with all vinyl y goodness around it. And, I don't know, it just works. There's something about it that just feels like it's right when I see it.

So let's talk about the 2019 specifically. Curry, looks like he is, you can't it's just Curry in the card, but it looks like he's maybe avoiding contact to go lay the ball up and take it to the rim.

He's in the classic white warriors uniform. Joe, maybe talk a little bit about the design of this card, the way Curry is captured, And what appeals to you about it? Yeah.

So, in this card, sort of the if you wanna think about the center point of the card, it's actually towards the top where you see what would be the center of a whole bunch of concentric circles with a whole bunch of different levels of vinyl to them.

Almost like, you know, like we're looking at a plant, like a series of planets, right, from a distance, where you'd see the sun in the middle and the planets all around.

So kind of having him emerge through that, and then almost different, levels and quality of vinyl to each of the circles, I love.

Like, if it was all the same exact, like, thickness and resolution of vinyl all the way around, I might not like it as much as you see all the different sort of thicknesses and all that.

I it just winds up having a lot more intricacy as a card. And when you put it under the light and move it around, you get more from it.

You can spend more time with it. That's always something I look for in these cards as well. Okay. We move over to the twenty one twenty two stargazing. And you wanna talk about a gold a a car that's just plated with gold vinyl.

This thing is stunning and the curry is even rocked out in gold vinyl. It's like everything is completely gold, and you've got this teal stargazing, branding right through the center of it.

And you've got Steph Curry, Golden State Warriors, copy going, vertically. This like, you can tell that they're connected in some way, but they also look very different. Talking talk about the '21, '22 and what this does for you.

Yeah. Well, I wish I wish the '20 was in between the '19 and the '20. Somebody help out Joe. But, but, yeah, I'm I love it when, insert brand when when a card brand takes inserts and then they either do one of two things.

They either take consistent design elements and do completely different expressions of them over years, or when they just take the name and they do a completely different insert off that name.

Right? So the nineties was great at that. The nineties was great at taking a name and giving you a completely different expression of that name. Panini is a little bit more, they like to live in the design boundaries of something.

So they'll create this kind of atmospheric solar system circle thing in the '19, and then they'll just zoom out slightly differently for '22 and wind up with those same design elements creating a completely different looking card to your point.

And then they'll say, well, how much vinyl?

Too much vinyl? Never. Never too much vinyl. Like, the designer of this card was probably, like, love vinyl as much as we do. And now you see you have something that is basically like a full frame to frame kind of vinyl piece with him.

Still heroic in the middle, but to me, this is much more about this is this is a vinyl card as much as it is a stargazing card, which is just interesting to me, just to see the way that the designs evolve year to year.

You are way deep in the weeds on the inserts.

How would you rate optic and optic inserts in the grand scheme? Do you think, like, this might be a area where years later, we're looking back on optic and we're saying to ourselves, why weren't we paying more attention?

Because I know optic produces a lot of different inserts. That's a little bit of a leading question.

Right? I It's what we're here for. I a 100% completely agree, and I do so a little bit at the with some trepidation of, like, I really hope not everybody chases these as hard as as as, as I am at the moment.

But, if you're an insert if you're interested in inserts and you appreciate inserts, I would actually start with Optic.

I think that they've done a tremendous I think they've done a better job with the inserts in Optic than than they have with a lot of the bass sets.

A lot of people may not agree with that. That's fine. Like, but I think where the the creativity in Optic, to me, is going towards all the inserts.

And then the variations on them year on year. Look, not every year is perfect. You might start to look at some of these and be like, well, I don't like this year, but I do like that.

That's the beauty of them. Because they do change. And then they have lots of different sub brands with their own unique concepts that you can find.

And then, oh, by the way, they've got the gold vinyls. They've got now nebulas. They've got these ways that you can collect them that have this obvious scarcity, rarity built in them, but also make them beautiful cards.

And when you think of optic, you think of vinyl. Right? And so so I just that space to me is something that I think a lot of people should pay a lot more attention to.

I gotta be honest, Joe. Before we hit record or before I saw you today, I wasn't expecting to talk about Prism Deca, but here we are.

What and I told you, you showed this card with me, which if I didn't even look at the label, the PSA label, I would have looked at this and just said this is a a a Prism insert.

I didn't even know Deca had inserts, but the card I have in my hand now is the 23 Prism Deca Steph Curry MVP black Prism one of one in a PSA nine holder.

I gotta I gotta be honest. This card's got a nice shine to it. It's another one of one, and it looks pretty good. I love the black background.

And it's like you're getting the mix of prism black and then also an, a tribute to the prism silver in the corners, which is cool. But how did you get here with the Prism Deca, which is a set many collectors avoid?

Talk about it. Yeah. I was actually a little, hesitant about bringing out this card in the card letter booth. We might get the card letter ejection button hit on us for actually having Deca and talking about Deka here.

But, the look, when Deka came out as a set, I had the immediate collector reaction that I think a lot of people had, which is, wait a second, we're just gonna recycle, you know, twenty, twenty twelve and twenty thirteen.

We're gonna recycle these designs.

Why can't we keep it fresh? But the one reason why I was excited about them doing it was actually some of the inserts that were inserts back in the original Prism 2012 release, many of which they didn't continue.

One of those was 2012 had an MVP set that was made up of all the historical MVPs prior to 2012. So it had some current players, it had some old players. Obviously, the current players were LeBron.

Right? Derrick Rose. They'll play like, they were you have playing days, player image. Now I happen to be a proud owner of the LeBron. I always thought if there was a equivalent card for Curry, I would want it.

So when DECA came out, I was like, finally, we're gonna get that MVP insert. We're gonna get it updated ten plus years later. It's now gonna include all the MVPs that have come since 2012.

What a checklist. Let me go check it out. Now you're gonna get Jokic, and you're gonna get Giannis, and you're gonna get Curry. And add to the fact that beyond that, 2012 didn't have black.

2013 was the first year of blacks. So now we get them, not only the MVP inserts, but we get it in a black one of one. And I just I literally started I was on eBay. I'm asking people, do you know if this has been hitting breaks?

I I had to get this card. And it popped. And, you know, feel lucky to be able to sort of grab it when it did. What what, like, the it's very surface level of us, and we do this not just with DECA.

We do this with everything, is we, like, make up our minds. We see something initially and say, this isn't for me. And then when you say it's not for me, you don't even go to explore the whole set.

And if there is opportunities, we just write it off. And so many collectors wrote off DECA because of they thought that it was, you know, too similar to, Prism and it's a tribute.

And I don't want a tribute. It's not the main set. To be honest with you, Joe, and I said it, I didn't even know Deka had inserts. You mentioned, like, you had that initial reaction.

Like, what caused you to dive deeper? Was it just exposure to this set and you decided, okay. This is a card I've been wanting and waiting for, and now it's it's here. I don't care if it's Deka. I did.

So I think one of the things that happened with this set was because it got an immediate, I think, focus of attention by some flipper types and because the prices for the golds on the base were so high, that plus the fact that it felt like a mimicry of the of the old stuff.

Those factors combined, I think, people made made people dislike it more.

It's like, okay, it's not new design, and it feels like it's being hyped and pumped by people. And the price is, like, why would I pay that much for gold from DECA when I could put that money into other things?

It just, the cognitive dissonance there, I think, just sort of made people reject it. For me, I do like to look at full sets. I am interested because I'm in more, interested in inserts overall.

Whenever there there are new sets, I will look at the inserts because I'm gonna I'm trying to figure out if there's something new that's popped that does have that branding element that is an interesting name, that is an interesting construct.

So maybe I'm a little bit more open to it.

But I I saw in the product release that they had some of those original 2012, inserts. I I I wasn't immediately hooked, though, until I started to see them. When I saw the way the black looked, then I was hooked.

But I, I, I think you're right. I think we have this natural thing of we reject things that kind of fall in to tropes. Oh, that's just a rehash. Oh, that's, you know, caught up in the whole downtown flipper game. You know what I mean?

Like, let's reject that when maybe there is some stuff to see that's under the surface. So as we round this conversation out, Joe, you collect a lot of different stuff. You were showing me some of your collection, a lot of nineties.

You got some football stuff across the board. What has diving into the Panini inserts meant for you as a collector when you're I think the whole thing has just made me love all inserts even more.

Like, I don't so so much so that I've actually inserts even more. Like, I don't so so much so that I've actually started to dive back into the two I know I said that the the the 2 thousands was kind of like the dearth of inside Yeah.

Where but, there's I'll give you an example. Have you ever seen the full flight team, two thousand four flight team?

Yes. A product have you seen them all together? Have you seen the Onyxes? Have you seen the red? Those are gorgeous. So there is a few different gems in the in the kind of February that I'm now in.

So to me, if anything, the the whole connection between nineties inserts into now Panini, I think, doing actually a pretty good job on inserts and across a number of brands has just had me maybe even a little bit more passionate about inserts as a total thread and makes me wanna go spend a little bit more time in those 2,000 sets too.

I told you every one of these conversations, it caused me to think a little bit differently. Joe, I think I'm thinking a little bit differently about, in or inserts in the Panini era.

It's always fun catching up. Great to catch up with you in person about some of your Curry inserts. You too, Brett. It's always a pleasure to to talk to you about cards anytime.