alright we have a guest back on the program it's been quite a long time and i think about the early days of stacking slabs and some of the early conversations i had with today's guest max putnam cards he just launched a new podcast hoops collectors he's been a podcaster in the past and yeah it's been bringing me back max it's given me some nostalgia thinking about some of our conversations regarding you know dallas card show when kevin durant was at its peak and just a whole bunch of other topics but i'm excited to have you on and kinda talk about what you're working on talk about basketball cards and more how's it going dude it's awesome it's going great brett thanks for having me on again honored to be on the show think you just crossed like nine hundred episodes and we're going on to a thousand now so quite the accomplishment so happy to be here for sure and this should this should be fun i have to ask you and i didn't prep prepare you for this but i know you're a big basketball fan you your your nba team is the first in the east right now and your college team is the number one seed in the ncaa tournament are you excited are you nervous how are you feeling as a basketball fan of the detroit pistons and the michigan wolverines right now so really glad you asked you asked me about this because i have i have some thoughts like maybe two months ago i was really excited about both of these teams like oh man pistons like clear number one in the east right now and michigan was number one in the country as well and you heard it you heard it here first both these teams are certified frauds certified frauds the pistons are not doing anything of subs we are not making the finals we're not we're not winning the finals and michigan basketball we just lost to purdue and i mean we have this center who's like a piece of linguine he's i mean he's he's skilled like just gets pushed around down there so i mean it'll be interesting to see what happens with pistons and the wolverines but i my expectations are very low but i'm i'm happy to be along for the ride very sound hopefully they surprise you i get i guess my question on the pistons front is what is why do you feel this way about the pistons right now yeah well we got a lot of like there's literally a sub there's a group of the pistons called the dog pound which would be jalen dern isaiah stewart ron hall and asar thompson and i mean they're defensively we're one of the best teams in basketball offensively completely different story we were one of the worst three point shooting teams in basketball which very important obviously as we get to the playoffs and it's more of a half court game and then we didn't really address any of the shooting needs at the deadline we got kevin herder who plays a you know a little a few minutes every game but and then cade's our number one facilitator number one option and when he's not out there the offense kinda falls apart a little bit and jason tatum at it or sorry boston out of tatum just in the middle of the season as we're here down the home stretch cleveland added harden and so both these teams added you know a top arguably forty fifty all time player to their teams and we're adding kevin herder so i don't feel great about it so most of this conversation we're gonna be circling around maybe the less familiar undiscovered cards i wanna hit cade first of all which he is not undiscovered and his cards are very popular maybe just from a collector perspective do you even look at cade cards because it it seems like you know last year he kind of leveled off a little bit and this year it's just like back to gangbusters everyone wants a piece of cade so like as a pistons fan and cade being the guy like do you have cade cards do you have a safe search are you looking for it or is it just too much i own one cade cunningham card right now and drum roll please it's a hoops base card so like two years ago it looked like cade was not gonna be the guy and obviously we're in the hobby where and fans in general were very impatient with our our young guys you know we see cooper flagg we see wemby we see a lot of these guys come out and you know they're kinda playing at all an all star level their first year cade that was not the case neither really for anthony edwards and sometimes it takes a few years to to really get somewhere with these guys where you see the vision but yeah so i wasn't buying kade cards a few years ago which now we know that was a mistake also we had one of the worst records of any team in nba history so it was kinda hard to see the the potential there but i right now cade prices are just at a point where if i don't think they're gonna make the finals or win the finals it's it just doesn't make sense to buy at current some some k cards in the off season for sure yeah i think that makes a lot of sense and it's it's hard sometimes especially if we get excited about our teams but it sounds like even though you're the number one seed right now you're you're not very excited about the pistons prospects which makes it easier probably to defer and not buy kade cards right now yeah for sure if there's one piston i was gonna buy right now it'd be isaiah stewart just because his cards are still cheap and he's he's just fun he's a fun pistons player he is whenever i see him and obviously as a pacers fan there's been scuffles and stew stewart's always involved it was in a hotel room and it was like a rare trip by myself i was do doing something work related and i had like a hotel room for a night and i was just like in my bed i was exhausted from the drive and i watched an old thirty for thirty or document documentary i can't even remember what it was but it was on the hotel tv and it was all about the the pistons and the bad boys in that era and it just i hadn't been served up content on them in a while and you're just watching like you know bill ambeer and rodman just beat the living shit out of people and like it just doesn't look like what you see now but then i watch a player like isaiah stewart and it's like he has so many remnants of that old bad boys era i would imagine like there's a lot of conversation around the fact that if he were playing during that era he probably would have fit right in yeah i mean he's more of an mma fighter than a basketball player at times so i mean i mean you really think about the eighties and early nineties in basketball he probably shoulda had a cage around the the court so but yeah yeah now he's out of three suspensions there so he's gotta be a bit careful he's but yeah love me some beef stew alright let's talk about the podcast so i felt like my first exposure to hoops collectors was probably you know reel you put out on instagram or tiktok and i was like oh this is great and i just thought it at first i thought it was just like you were producing short form content and then realized that maybe after your first couple episodes dropped that you launched the podcast so maybe for anyone who is unfamiliar with hoops collectors it's relatively new but i have been really enjoying it i've been enjoying your perspective i know you're just you've always been very passionate about basketball cards so maybe what inspired kinda this era of your podcasting journey yeah well thank you brad i appreciate that hoops collectors was kinda born because i have done podcasts in the past number one number two i'm very excited about cards again which it's not like i ever stopped collecting over the last few years i have been but i was just less active on on social media and for me unfortunately it takes a lot of times it takes something i need some i need to see something happen two times for me to really believe it for the long run and so you know obviously the the card bubble during covid twenty twenty twenty twenty one you know lebron based chrome psa tens were selling for forty fifty k and then at the time you know when that ended it was like are we gonna see anything like that again i don't think we're gonna see lebron based from psa ten selling for forty fifty k again but as far as the hobby in general and collecting and people being passionate about sports cards that you know we've surpassed the levels of of covid right now in my opinion and so now this has happened twice where sports cards have had a moment and i think it's safe to say based on the energy based on the hobby based on the people contributing to the hobby really everything that this this if you wanna call it an industry if you wanna call it a hobby whatever this is here for the long run now this is like a real thing that's gonna be around and so that really led me to kinda start hoops collectors i wanna i wanna be in this i wanna participate in it and now we have hoops collectors which the tagline is a podcast for basketball card collectors you know i look at the landscape of content basketball card content and there's a lot of great basketball card content out there think of adam gray think of wax museum kyle his podcast awesome he's he's really on youtube now he's got some fun videos out there i mean the i can i don't wanna leave anyone out i can go down the list but i really wanna make this a destination for basketball card collectors every week weekly they know that there's a a fun piece of basketball card content to to tune into so hoops collectors the thing that i think jumped out at me out of the gates and this is where i find content in the hobby so stale is when it gets approached from the may big headlines and the splashy sale like i pulled up cardladder ahead of us chatting and like it would be a i'm putting gonna pull up a card here because i feel like this might be a good launching off point but it would be really really boring i think of us to just spend this entire conversation talking about the twenty twenty four national treasures stephen curry logo men autograph one of one and the reason why we're talking about it is because it sold at golden for over a million dollars but i feel like that's kind of the default for a lot of content it's just like let's skim and see what's sold for the most and talk about it but you're not doing that like you're actually doing the reverse like you are trying to look from the bottom up and explore opportunities that you're seeing in terms of cards that you like based on the aesthetics the design the rarity and scarcity and there there's in basketball in panini specifically there is so much of this stuff and you are just going through your process and experience and sharing it on your on your podcast which i think is is certainly helpful i guess why why did you decide to choose that approach as opposed to kind of the the normal approach which is like let's let's talk thirty minutes on this this curry card yeah well let's take the curry card for an example shall we it's a curry twenty twenty four national treasures logo man on card auto one zero one game worn i'm i'm pretty positive you know psa ten ten incredible card not sure what more i have to say on it other than it's sold for a million dollars and you know like it's a great card okay moving on so for a million i'm not sure if that kind of you know analysis of this card really adds much or adds value to people or you know we see tons of great cards selling all the times in these auctions now for six figures even seven figures sometimes you know you see a lebron gold refractor topps chrome rookie you see jordan exquisite auto you know there's all these great cards but you know we can talk about the sales prices of the cards why people like the cards but for me that's not really that's not really how i think i can add value and also from someone who consumes a lot of sports card content i do like you know being in the know of what some of the cards are selling for but that's not the area which i play in the hobby and so i just thought there was an opportunity to kinda go in the other direction which is a lot of let's go lower end let's talk hundred dollars two hundred dollars thousand dollar type cards of course i cover some of the bigger sales as well on the podcast but you know most people are playing in in the the lower end zone i mean a thousand bucks to someone might not be lowering at all that might be on the higher end of the spectrum but just felt like there was an opportunity to to kinda talk about the cards that that most people are buying and selling and that's really the inspiration there do you think there's a perception issue i guess in terms of the way the hobby is promoted and marketed like this curry card or the jordan pmg red like i think about who can afford these cards and the buying pool is so small but we spend so much of our the news cycle and hobby instagram talking about these sales but then i think about like the buying pool it's super small but then it's the rest of the stuff that i think is the interesting stuff that doesn't get talked about enough but i feel like this has like some jedi mind tricks on especially maybe like newer participants when they see stuff like this it's like the the the desire is i gotta go chase and gotta go build up to be able to try to acquire these bigger and better cards because that's what that the the the price tag is what drives kind of success in the hobby i guess that's the perception i gather what what like how do you think about that like how do you think about other collectors in this space like chasing kind of these record prices and like how does that maybe differ from just like the way you think about building out your collection or even producing content yeah there's this saying that i've heard a few times now it's kinda going around the collecting world and the hobby which is you got gotta buy apex cards of of apex players and you know there's truth to that on the higher end of the market but you know if if you're a newer collector or entrant in the sports card space and you hear that you're like well i can't do that you know is there is it worth getting into this if i can't you know buy the apex cards of apex players or if i can't buy the highest than this or the number one ranked card of this and that i think that's there's there's definitely some truth to that that you know some people might log on and see you know the sales of that magnitude and be like okay well i have fifty bucks a hundred bucks two hundred bucks to spend on sports cards you know is it even worth it and so i totally get that now i there's also a ton of people i know who are buying fifty dollar cards a hundred dollar cards twenty dollar cards and few years later those cards are two hundred bucks three hundred bucks four hundred bucks and so and they're also awesome cards and sometimes you buy a card for fifty bucks and it appreciates and you're like well it's only a hundred fifty bucks i still love this card i'm i don't wanna sell this card that happens to to i'm sure a lot of us and so i just think you know probably one less than one percent of the people in the hobby can afford many of the cards that we see on instagram when ninety percent of the content is covering those cards and so there's just an opportunity here to to really dive into some of the hidden gems as we like to call them so you are doing that with the panini air and you've been very transparent about why you're selecting the panini air and it's coming at a perfect time right the baton has been passed from panini to topps and the license is with topps the launch of topps chrome basketball was just insane and like my my head spins just looking at the price of some of the cards that have sold during that launch but this is what happens right something new and shiny comes out and everyone migrates to it and then what's left in the dust is just like this entire history and catalog before as you've called out it this is even before twenty twelve when most people think like the basketball license was picked up this is before twenty twelve and what you're doing is you're kind of exploring that and you're sharing your findings like maybe why why panini and like what sort of or like what kind of opportunities do you are you beginning to maybe uncover enough that you want to create content around and start this podcast yeah first off with topps so when topps got the license right they started making basketball cards again that came out with twenty twenty five twenty six tops basketball tops chrome basketball and we a lot of people are very excited from a marketing perspective from a hobby awareness perspective i think tops done a phenomenal job more people are talking about these cards than than pretty much ever before for any product release now unfortunately i'm for a number of reasons i'm not quite sure people are in love with many of the cards themselves for instance when i saw the the black geometric breaker deluxe breaker delight parallel i said i don't know i don't know about that one and so it had me thinking about panini and i you know you know love them or hate them but gary v put out a great piece of content he was talking about panini and topps and the whole transition between the two eras of cards and he said you know when panini stops making cards people are gonna stop saying i hate panini and they're gonna go oh wait now let me take a second look i actually like some of the stuff they put out you know things tend to age well like that and that really connected with me and i grew up in the early panini era that was when i was a kid collecting cards like the peak years of collecting as a kid for me two thousand nine ten eleven twelve and even thirteen and so like those are my when i remember collecting cards as a kid a lot of those cards are the cards that i grew up with and and many people think the panini era started you know if they trace back the roots of it oh it started twenty twelve prism that was on the you know because prism and panini are kinda synonymous but there were there was three or four release years before twenty twelve prism even came out that's kind of like this little lost era of basketball cards i was talking with summertime cards good friend of mine we were at the dallas card show this past week i was talking with him and he was like yeah well who's who actually like collects those cards like no one even knows about those cards and i'm just like putting my hand in there being like i do like those are the cards i grew up with but we we tend to in the hobby rationalize or explain the popular the hobby these days by saying oh well people in their late thirties forties early fifties are going back and they're buying all the cards that they collected or wanted to have as a kid and so i'm doing that same thing now but for me it's two thousand nine ten eleven twelve panini cards kinda going back and and revisiting and remembering the cards that i you know pulled out of boxes as a kid and so that was that's kind of the reason why i chose to kinda start with that with hoops collectors and and go back and do the deep dives of of those release years so there's an opportunity for you which i think is very fun and important where you are going back on the less discovered stuff and you're also pairing that with nostalgia because that's what you were collecting and there's also value in those cards too because no one's talking about it so i don't know like from from you from a collector perspective as you're kind of revisiting this lane that nobody talks about but is sentimental to you based on what you grew up ripping packs or you know looking at or studying like what what has that and the the best part about this is like these cards aren't like six figures like what what has that experience been like for you reconnecting with your past and there's value there as well yeah it's it's been a ton of fun one you know i've been going back and and looking at at all these sets all these releases all these different parallels and and stuff and i for instance i'll i'll be looking at a checklist and be like oh yeah i remember that from when i opened two thousand nine ten certified basketball i remember that card let you know let me think about the value of this card now compared to some other cards and and then you just i've been falling in love with the card again and i'm like oh i actually need to have this card now that i remember from way back in the day and so that's been a ton of fun and you know i own a few of yeah maybe ten to fifteen cards from this area right now that i really like really passionate about but almost for all of these cards i'm like oh i need another one i need i need to collect you know all the hall of famers of a certain set or i'd you know it just i'm going down a bunch of different roads in terms of the cards in this era and it's reminding me why i liked opening the the products back in the day and i think i i really want to collect this era of cards and even more than i already have and so it's kinda like just rediscovering lost treasure almost before we move on to your kind of research process i've never really talked to anyone about this topic but it's on my mind and you mentioned it in one of your shows or you reiterated the fact but maybe looking at twenty twelve prism which is obviously not not less discovered and is very popular like the on the basketball side there is no one of one parallel it's just the the goals are kind of the top of the mountain as you look back on it now you know decade plus later from like a collectibility perspective do you like the fact that there's no one of one because there's one of one two one of ones in on on the football football side but do you like the fact that there's no one of one in basketball and like maybe just share some of your thoughts on just like how you consider that product which is certainly legendary and will likely be a part of the conversation for the rest of time like how do you think about the no one of one in that product personally i think it would've been cool if there was a one of one because those cards would i think undoubtedly be the cards of the panini basketball era now the golds are kind of in my opinion undoubtedly the default cards of the panini basketball era but if there was a one on one it would just would have been next next level it's funny though because i remember as a kid when twenty twelve prison came out people weren't super excited about it i was like oh this is panini's chrome product you know it's like a topps chrome rip off it's cool but you know not that excited about it and i'm i don't know if we've seen a product age better over time than twenty twelve prism that definitely would've been cool if there was that one zero one but the golds are in my opinion i mean you can say the twenty thirteen prism black one zero one but for me i want that og first year twenty twelve prism prism gold now that might be a hot take but that's where i'm at do you if okay so let like and i promise you we're not gonna go down the whole history of prism but this type of conversation piques my curiosity so if if we look at twenty thirteen are you are you siding with the the the black are you siding with the mosaic in terms of like first appearance of a one of one card in prism and of course it's they can't make it easy on us there's two different options like which which one are you siding with if you're kind of saying like the best one of one in the basketball category of prism like where are you going there that's a that's a great question i've never even thought of to to choose one or the other but i suppose and i i really don't know where most people stand on this but i suppose if i was gonna pick one i would go with the mosaic black because it's just a better looking card like it's just it it looks cooler it's got the mosaic finite effect to it and you know matches the the football one from the first year and so yeah i i'd have to go with the black mosaic but people might come at me with pitchforks for that one so i i really don't know where the majority stands well we have to highlight the december fourteenth twenty twenty sale of the giannis prism black mosaic rookie and you say what you want to about the sale price which i don't know like i'd love your opinion on that sale price it's crazy that was six years ago or five and some change but like i think about most important cards from this era and i try to think about them from the lens of like brand and athlete and undoubtedly like mahomes is that for football because he's just born through the prism era giannis is that for basketball and i look at this card and i'm just like this this has to be like one of the if you have tiers of cards in this era and athletes like it it really to me first year for one and done like rookie one of the all time great it literally checks all those boxes so like we just talked about the black mosaic obviously this is giannis' one of his best card i would argue this is his best card i know the logoman crowd would say another thing but i don't know like what do you think about this card like five years and some change later yeah i i mean i agree with you it's gotta be one of the most important panini basketball cards i ever made first year prism black you know what first prism one on one parallel of a hall of fame top arguably top twenty player ever which panini kinda lucked out there with having a player of that magnitude in the set for that year i'm actually coming out with a hoops collectors episode soon which is if you were to put ten basketball cards in a museum to cover the whole span of the hobby which ten would you pick and this unfortunately the the giannis black here is an honorable mention they cracked the top ten but it's in the honorable mentions for like top ten basketball cards that you have to put in a museum because the it's just so important being from that first that prism black one zero one release yeah i'm excited for that and as you were talking to it i was like how could you like based on like my infatuation with prism but then i'm like really thinking about it it's like okay well let let's just let's think of the athlete let the basketball players first and obviously there's some more important players ahead of giannis so i'm excited to see how that list unfolds let's let's talk about i wanna spend some time talking about research because i feel like what i like about your show is that it's very research focused and it's not just you presenting the data but it's kinda you talking to the audience of like how you got there so when you're exploring cards whether it's new cards or maybe it's for content for the podcast like maybe talk i think one of the most underrated things in this hobby is research maybe talk about like what what is your research process like how do you approach it so it's twofold one is trading card database cardboard connection those two are are my go tos for looking through old checklists old products doing the nitty gritty research and then the other part is just looking on ebay for cards and you discover a whole lot of cards when you just type in stephen curry on ebay and you just look through you know those two ways are pretty much how i do all my research just looking through auctions looking through listings and then diving into the the checklist now i dream of trading card database i i see the checklist in my dreams now so that's maybe a little unhealthy but i spent a lot of time on there it this is the impression i get and i would love for you to either like confirm or deny this it it's like this thing i think about all the time in life it's the harder you work and the more you're consistent the more opportunities come but you can't necessarily control like it's not transactional like if i bust my ass for like three years in a job it doesn't necessarily mean on that year three like i'm going to get the higher paying job but if i just keep doing what i'm doing like good things will eventually happen i i tend to think a very similar thing in the hobby with research like the more we spend time immersing ourselves in the checklist the pop reports all that stuff the information like you're going to have the instincts or you'll be validated to go buy a basketball card because not only you love it but there's a bunch of supporting evidence and just because you buy that card in that moment for a hundred and fifty dollars doesn't mean it's going to be three hundred dollars the next year but if all the things are lined up and your theories are accurate and you've done the work and you wanna hold the card forever your chances of that card increasing in value in the long term likely go up like do you do you think of like the process of research in that way at all like i i think one you have to really enjoy the process but like how how do you think about that in terms of like what might be possible with cards that you discover based on your research that you end up keeping in your collection yeah i mean the the research is probably it's probably tied between getting a card in the mail and then discovering a card through research probably the two most joyous occasions in in the hobby now in order to really i feel like in order to fully be a research not expert but just like a research monkey like someone who's like in the checklist look finding stuff looking at comps looking to see how many people are collecting these cards like you have to kinda be a nerd loser with way too much hand on your times and i fit that to a t so like i'm on these checklists and i discover a card and i look at it and i look at the sales and i i'm like sometimes you find a card you're like do more than ten people know about this card because if not how does the value justify like how is the value justified because this card's awesome and so personally i've been picking up a lot of cards like this where i see a card i'm like that that's one of the coolest cards i've ever seen of a certain player doesn't have to be the most valuable it doesn't have to be the most rare but just aesthetically the coolest card i've ever seen and it's selling for seventy five dollars like that that doesn't make sense to me and so there's just a ton of moments like that recently that i have had and it it's it's so much fun and it's it's bringing me a lot of joy so the this has inspired this thought as you talk talking through this and i've never talked about this this has been a a deep in my brain and i'm gonna bring it out because it feels appropriate for this conversation and i wanna get your opinion on this i have listened to your show and then gone and looked up some of the cards you're talking about and been like max has got a point this is pretty damn cool and in some of those instances i think about the cards and this delineation that we have in the hobby where it feels like if the card isn't chromium based like no investor or nobody wants that card but if you look at the history of cards like cards haven't always been chromium based and i have found through my own discovery that in in not just basketball but other categories there are some pretty damn cool cards that are paper based but it it seems like there's the hobby has moved so far in this chromium based direction and don't get me wrong i love shiny cards majority of my collection are shiny cards but if someone was listening to this and they're just like looking to jump in and start researching basketball cards and trying to find value do you think like that might be a good delineation it's like if it is not chromium based like go explore that because there's like droves of hidden treasures that you might be able to find now that you say it i've never really thought about that but i might be i i think that's a great point there's there's just so much value to be had in the non chromium stuff that people don't look at because it's not topps chrome prism optic select mosaic and so yeah i think if you're a new entrant in the space who you know wants to buy something you know with some upside but also that's a super cool card i think that's certainly a place to look is is start with the nonchromium stuff okay let's maybe hit some of these i'd love just to illustrate for the audience who maybe hasn't tuned into your pod like some of these types of cards that you dig into or maybe since you've been doing this and then this doesn't even need to necessarily be cards you've talked about on the podcast could be other cards something you researched last night maybe highlight some cards that you have found like the sets why they're interesting to you like types of things that you're seeing with those cards that you like like i'll just let you go like share some some of those cards for sure so one so downtowns we know downtowns the hobby seems to like downtowns they seem to be quite popular you have these pop seventy pop eighty pop a hundred downtowns that sell for thousands of dollars in psa ten grades for instance there's a i think a twenty twenty four downtown of curry that has a pop ninety psa ten grade that sold that's been selling for around five thousand dollars so let's say it's pop let's i think it's pop ninety something let's say you round up to a hundred and you know basically what the hobby is saying what the market's saying if there was just one curry downtown psa ten that card would be worth an excess of five hundred thousand dollars from a a market cap math perspective seems a little wonky to me but downtowns are super popular so what do we like about town downtowns we like downtowns because they have you know an illustration an an animated you know drawing in the background that you know relates to the player in some way that represents a player's city a player's hometown something of that nature and we think that's cool right we think about the nineteen ninety seven pmg championship of of bass for basketball cards right where for instance for jordan there's a picture of the chicago skyline in the background and that card's awesome for obvious reasons if you've ever seen it and so i think about this i'm thinking about the psychology here okay the hobby likes cards where there's something that relates to the player and so i'm doing a a lot of the research here finding cards of specific players where the card design or there's something in the background relates to that player or the team they play for or the city that they play in and this is a lot of fun to to do the research here now i found there there's tons of cards like this there's a for instance i believe this is from twenty eighteen hoops there's a a set an insert set called archaeologists where there's fifteen three point shooters in the set there's a stephen curry in the set it's indiana jones themed it's awesome for curry obviously archaeologists it's a three point themed card so that's just one example i mean i could list off ten to twenty of these types of cards that are super cheap super affordable and that i'd say from a aesthetics perspective and sometimes or really oftentimes from a rarity perspective they're more rare than downtowns they look better than downtowns and they're you know one one hundredth the price of what a downtown psa ten is selling for another example sorry i feel like this is a long long answer here but another example this is a card i bought recently it's from twenty twenty three select it's an insert set called thunder lane so this is a shea gilgitsa alexander thunder lane insert gold prism out of ten and it's got a huge lightning bolt in the background with all over the card it's thunder themed and that card this card is less than one tenth the price of a downtown psa ten and there's only ten of them whereas there's eighty six i think psa tens of twenty twenty four sga downtown so i mean this is just like it's crazy to me that these cards are out there at these prices and you just have to put a little bit of research in to find them so that's just one area that i'm looking kind of like the off brand downtowns so the like that's interesting the sga that's a cool card max is holding it up definitely shiny the i think about a player like sga where you know he did something last year that few players do did have ever done he is on this trajectory where he is kind of certify kind of solidifying himself as you know one of the league's best and probably for a very long time especially with the current makeup of the roster and you know team he's playing with you know collectors who watch sga this playoffs might say you know what now it's time for me to go buy some sga cards and they maybe they do the default towards the rookie stuff which you know he's in clippers but then maybe they go to and we'll get reminded oh wait he's in clippers i don't want this so let me maybe go buy a prism gold of him and his thunder and spend you know i don't even know what those go for probably a lot regardless of the year and few like get to this level where they're exploring kind of this space where there's cool card aesthetic design maybe something that nears something that already exists for relatability you know might have a print run that is you know not of a downtown and is actually something you can feel like few people hold like how how do more like obviously you're gonna have people who are gonna listen to your show and they'll be inspired to kinda take your approach but do you think like we're just in this spot where it's like we can't save everybody we can share what we've learned and the hobby is always gonna hobby the way the hobby hobbies and those who kinda take that their hobby experience to the next level then enter this nerd phase where they just go and they find these cards is that just like is it is it kind of just like survival of the fittest in a way like some will graduate to this level where they're able to buy these cool cards for prices that aren't gonna cost them an arm and a leg while everyone else you know just does what everyone else does like is that just how it is that forever is that just how it's going to be i think i think there's a little bit of that this could certainly be the case first of all i do wanna get hashtag nerd mode trending in the hobby for the checklist loose but that there's certainly a little bit of that that's true i i also think just naturally i remember listening to the crossover in during covid and chris and josh were talking i mean these guys are are are some of the big experience in the hobby as you know shout out cardboard confidential but these guys are you know they they know their stuff and when they were talking during covid a lot of the points they were making i was i find i found myself disagreeing with about you know you know rarity of cards about the cards that they like the most you know various topics like that where i disagreed with them at the time and now i look back on it and i say oh no no now i'm where they were during covid we all go through these natural trajectories in the hobby where we start out we want the thing that we see the most that everyone else wants the most and then we end at a place and you know this best where you know actually we just wanna have a car that no one else can have and so a lot of people make that journey and it takes time in a hobby for me i mean i've been collecting since i was eight nine years old i've been through the waves of it in terms of how much time i'm spending in the hobby but right now i'm at the point where i want cool cards that not a ton of people have seen before that i really like and so that's where i'm at and everyone goes through their own journey but you know i'm not i'm not so sure it's kind of a lie a lifeboat situation where it's like if you're not you know doing the research and and and spending a lot of time finding cool rare cards that you're gonna get left behind per se i just think everyone's at different stage a lot of people you know the hobby's more popular than ever right now more new entrants than ever and they're seeing kabooms downtowns this that and so that's what they're collecting who knows three four years from now they'll be doing kind of what we do which is finding really cool rare scarce cards and so i think it's just a natural trajectory of the collecting experience have you learned anything new about yourself where you're collecting through your the research that you are performing for your podcast like has there been anything that's illuminated for you just in terms of like your preferences or interests in basketball cards for sure i mean part of it is me wanting to own cards that i remember from back in the day you know the nostalgia you know the power of nostalgia is is is unmatched so there's that there's also like the joy of going to a show or a trade night at a card shop and pulling out a a card and showing it to someone they'd be like oh my god i have never seen that card before that card is awesome and that's just so much fun to me i mean to be able to share cards really cool cards with people that they've never seen and that they they then can go out and get those cards themselves and and hunt for them that's that's really fun and so right now i'm i'm focused on again like buying really cool cards that i really like and that most people maybe haven't necessarily seen before and a lot of that is piston stuff like two thousand three zero four piston stuff a lot of that's kobe stuff and a lot of that's modern day you know stars whether that's sga or curry or you know giannis or there there's awesome cards of all these guys that not a ton of people have laid their eyes on and i will just add one more thing for sga which is if the thunder do win this year and they they're probably my pick at this point to to win just based on their depth based on you know they've done it before and if they do win an sga win finals mvp is gonna be the third guy ever to win regulars likely regular season mvp and finals mvp the third guy ever doing back to back seasons along with jordan and lebron which gets him in a really interesting spot and so it's not like i love the foul baiting merchant that sga is but you know it kinda some of the some cards i'm buying has a little insurance just in the scenario in which that does happen and if not i'm if he doesn't win any of those things i'm still left with a a really good card that i that i like so that's that's kinda how i'm approaching sga at the moment maybe a second on sga i definitely view him as one of the best players in the league i i gotta you know put jokic just at number one and then shay's at number two for me it's it's close though but you know sga going through last year as a fan and going through the finals experience like foul baiting merchant like i wanted to like you know you're you're playing the stakes are really high and i wanted to trash him and then i just watched his performance just his consistent performance and he doesn't let a lot get to him he just goes out and does his job and does it really well and then you know after the tragedy of halliburton going down and just having that feeling as a fan watching that game in that moment and i'll never forget it you know just gutted and devastated after this just heroic run i find out that sga like as the confetti is falling he's back in the locker room checking on halliburton and i'm like how can i hate this guy like he's doing all the right things so i it's the internet is very loud and the internet casts their opinions on these players and guys but i don't know like i have had to because i did this with brady in football i have had to like look at things from my own lens and the more i tend to look at sga the more i tend to be like you know what like this guy really has potential to be one of the all time greats and if you're buying his cards right now it's it's probably a pretty good decision even though in some areas they're really high but as you've alluded to like there's there's a lot of good opportunities because he's got a lot of cards yeah yeah i mean sga he's one of those players that is is statistically a next level and when you watch him on the court the impact he has on the games i mean it just feels like every game you look at the box scores like oh it's like thirty five ten and ten thirty five eight and six i was like oh just another sga game you know we don't really process it how incredible that is to do that on a nightly basis and yeah i mean he from all accounts i mean i don't i feel like there's never been any any drama with him really it's just he's a steady eddie guy by the book great human being and so that's you know that's what we see and if you're the nba if you're adam silver you're like yeah i like this guy being a face of the league he you know him wemby and you know those guys up and coming are i mean actually he's not really up and coming he's getting i don't wanna call him a grandpa in three years four years but he's you know entering you know the early to mid thirties but yeah he's a great face for the nba wanna hit just get before we kinda round the corner on this wanna get i wasn't planning on asking but you were just at the dallas card show what were your observations just in terms of like volume of people what people were doing you know basketball card wise anything that stood out to you from your experience at one of the biggest shows that our our country has on a regular basis yeah this is my first time at the dallas card show in i think since twenty twenty two or twenty twenty three and i went there on a friday got there around noon at noonish and stayed until four thirty five and that was kind of enough time for me to to see almost all the tables and scan almost all the tables i talked about this in my first episode of hoops collections which is when you're at these card shows and you're at these tables most of the time you can scan the table in a few seconds and ninety five percent of it's like oh that's at the other table so still a lot of you see so much of the same types of cards when you're at these shows but on the other hand there's a lot of you know a lot of cards sitting in these booths where you're like oh look at that that's interesting that's rare that's cool and many of those times that i see a card like that that i'm interested in at this dallas card show i would ask the dealer i would say hey what's you know the price on this what what are you thinking and you know unlike all the other cards the cut the the off the prices that they're giving me for the cards i actually want are market price or higher than market price which makes sense because those are the cards that people really want and so i think what we're seeing at least my experience at the dallas card show was for a lot of the mass produced cards cards you see all the time you know dealers are are pretty will will work with you on a on a good price you know at comps both than below comps but on some of the more rare cards cards that really stand out in a showcase you know it's quite evident that people are are far less likely at the at the moment where the market's at to sell those cards for a good deal or you know below market price and so that i guess it makes sense to me but dallas card show was very busy on friday and i i after friday you know there was room to walk around through the tables and stuff but on saturday i was like i'm not going to the show on saturday that's gonna be insanity there's gonna be no room to walk and so i didn't go saturday but i i guess that kinda tells tells you how the show was it it was crazy just on friday so what was the if you think about all the cards you saw and you could just highlight one cool basketball card that you know stopped you in your tracks that was in a showcase was there one card that stands out to you you know a few days removed from that experience i have to pick one it's tough brett that's a tough question but if i had to go with the one card that i really wanted that i didn't walk away from the show with it was two thousand nine ten panini certified kobe bryant gold mirror parallel out of twenty five beautiful card i think it's pop one highest graded it might not be pop one i i believe it's the highest graded and i've never seen that card in person but it's a card i remember from i was collecting as a kid you know kobe awesome rainbow finish kinda gold parallel auto twenty five p s a nine and the dealer wanted i think he wanted eight hundred for it or nine hundred for it and you know it was just above more most of the two thousand nine panini kobe gold base at parallels are going for now but they're all going for like four hundred five hundred bucks on on open open auctions and so you know i don't know it's interesting interesting place to look if you're a kobe collector but that was the one card where i would've loved to have but just just didn't make sense i love that you've been talking about the certified and totally certified stuff again paper based product with a nice little glow to it for the most part alright man let's before we get out of here maybe just share some advice obviously i want pointing listeners to check out your podcast hoops collectors what what would you suggest to anyone out there who's listened to our conversation and chat and like wanting to think more about discovery and research like what is based on the way you operate what is one piece of feedback you'd leave collectors with on just new approaches or things that they should be doing in order to like get into the nerd mode phase yeah one trading card database that's one i mean i'm sure many people already already know but i mean that's just such a good resource it's like every checklist of every product you could ever think of is on there so that's one two now love card ladder gotta go on card ladder and whatever player you like curry sga kobe lebron giannis halliburton you name it just type in the name in the search bar filter the price level you know for under five hundred or something and just browse through the daily sales see if there's anything in there that's interesting that you've never seen before that stands out to you it it's it's a lot of fun kinda checking out those sales daily and and what pops up you and you know you find some really cool stuff that's a great piece of feedback and it's something i certainly do and it educates me but max it also pisses me off because i'm like i missed this how did i miss this sale i would have paid five hundred dollars for this card so yeah you're gonna have to lick your wounds a little bit but good advice max great catching up man everyone check out hoops collector podcast it's streaming across you know apple spotify you're also publishing on youtube so i'd encourage everyone to check it out max we'll have to do this again soon thanks so much but really appreciate it and really happy for you with all the success and everything with stacking slabs it's it's certainly the first place i look you know in my podcast for you to see what popped up every morning so thanks so much for having me on hi