alright what's going on everybody excited for today's conversation i have james at mad city collector back on the podcast first time in a long time james has started his own podcast soccer card collective i've been really enjoying the conversations he's having and just the structure around his show and obviously soccer cards are there's a lot of conversation with them world cup's around the corner but james is really digging into all these different angles with him and his guests to talk about soccer cards and i am learning a ton and i think there's something to be said about listening to content in a category that you don't collect in and still being interested in it so wanted to bring james back on to talk about what he's doing with the pod his own collecting and we'll just see where this conversation goes james welcome back man how are doing yeah thanks for having me doing great you know excited to talk about collecting and you know it's been a fun journey kind of seeing i've i've started to appreciate what what you do behind the curtain you know thinking about content all the time and what am i gonna talk about next so it's it's starting to see things from your your side of the the microphone yes it's a it's a scary place if you don't be careful it'll grab ahold of you and never let go we've we're we're gonna talk about hopefully we get the opportunity and this is weird before i hit record to talk about some of these older guys but so much of the soccer content that comes our way is soccer card content is like you got messy then you got like the flavor of the now which is yamal but what i've been really enjoying is like digging back in time and you talking about some of these players that i was following at a different point in my life and then there are players that i've even like even thought about oh well they probably have cards what do those cards look like and i just feel like i'm not in the community but as an outsider looking in it feels like those players like azadon their their cards really haven't been covered too much like i don't know about them so i'm having fun learning about those from from your show but i don't know maybe let's just like jump there like what what is your we're we're gonna talk about kinda you and soccer cards but maybe just to open things up like what is your observations of just like the dynamics between this history of soccer play players who played the game and the cards associated with them and where like the attention is in this space like what is your observation if you're analyzing kinda soccer cards and the the market and the category around it yeah when i look at the space i cover it on my show as far as there is a modern era that began kind of two thousand fourteen and there was a very slow build i think until around two thousand eighteen or nineteen where people slowly were paying attention to the fact that soccer cards existed i think and then starting about twenty eighteen twenty nineteen there were that that just just huge interest that popped in started and so i think in a lot of people's minds the the players that a lot of people pay attention to are the rookies that were coming around in that two thousand eighteen nineteen range i think the the first like big chase in soccer was mbappe and so a lot of the players from around that time point on are the ones that are you see posted a lot talked about a lot people posting prices for obviously so you know holland was maybe the next one yamal is kind of the current flavor of the month in terms of what a lot of people are paying attention to obviously messi and cristiano ronaldo because they had cards you know and were still active during those years they've as you know being the you know two of the greatest players of all time in soccer obviously they i mean people go collecting is a is it just a huge thing in every sport so clearly you know they have have huge markets especially messi but what i explore i guess in my podcast is you know even going back further so that the players who maybe stopped playing before two thousand fourteen even or even before two thousand eighteen these those are players that i remember i my consciousness of soccer really started in the as far as the european sport started in maybe the mid nineties and so the players like zidane ronaldinho david beckham paul scholes wayne rooney were a lot of the players that i you know have some of the fondest memories of just when i my inception as a soccer fan and so they're you know about the peep the people who really kind of became aware of you know the sport or the card collecting really it takes a little extra energy to look back further and so it's it's kind of been a really fun fun lane for me to look back at you know the stickers which are bigger culturally in soccer collecting than even cards looking back at the stickers and the cards from that era and what i wanna collect and how you collect them and that's you know a lot of what i've explored in some of the early episodes and some of the early conversations i've had as far as that goes so it's just it's really fun looking back at those players that really were were there at my inception as a fan and still you know the nostalgia that you talk about in a lot of your episodes that's that's where a lot of my nostalgia lies for being a fan of the sport so i know you're a fan of not just soccer you're a fan of a lot of different other sports and i would imagine that the mbappe craze or the holland craze or the yamal craze wasn't the reason why you decided to collect soccer cards what what was the reason based on all of your interests all these eras and all these categories that you focused in on collecting soccer cards the way you collect them like what sort of things did you see that were attractive to you as someone who wants to buy into a category and obviously hopefully like the cards you buy don't go down in value but they they're cards that maybe have a good chances have a good storage of value and you also as an individual connect with those players in that sport like what were you seeing that made you make the jump into collecting soccer cards the way that you do it was i guess twofold or a couple things the i being a fan of soccer i i was it was probably one of my you know favorite just like my attention was almost focused more on any of the other sports it had kinda shifted that way like in the nineties i was i was a baseball fan like early on and then basketball i i'm from durham north carolina and i was a big duke fan growing up so basketball was a huge thing as a fan and especially in the nineties when duke was winning so much but and so you know when i i i initially came in i was i was looking for you know duke players to collect and things like that and i'd been a john elwyth collector as a kid and roger clemons and i i kind of you know i i know there are lots of late nineties cards of them that are you know really cool and i i looked into collecting those but the entry point for prices for those cards i didn't really understand were so high that i just you know i was looking for something that i could you know collect sustainably without just you know just taking on a lot of risk just you know completely depleting my bank account it was like i wanted to you know be engaged in the process of collecting in soccer there was a lot less consensus around what you should be collecting in soccer around that time and so i saw that that freedom and just flexibility to kind of chart my own path as a as a as a big reason why you know that it'd be a fun niche to ex explore and so yeah it was the when when once i dived in i just you know doing the research learning about you know some of the history of the players and you know the the lineage of soccer and even panini like you know it what you know panini was much you know everyone talks about the panini era and you know nba nfl but the panini era started in the sixties in you know in italy so just even even go even that sort of kind of the history of the panini as a company was interesting to me so that was just once i dove in i was like this is gonna be you know this is my niche i i'd rather be become skilled in in collecting this than you know spread myself too thin financially and attention wise with you know all the sports even though i you know love watching players like you know steph stephen curry it's that's probably the type of player i would i would wanna collect but you have better deep pockets if you wanna collect a lot of his best stuff and so i was like i can collect the best stuff for a lot of other people you know for some other people at just such a fraction of the cost and and even even in it was in the soccer niche and that's what i kinda made by collecting wayne rooney that's as opposed to leonel messi it's the same kind of decision like i you know i can build a much cooler varied rooney pc as opposed to just buying just a few leonel messi cards and just completely depleting my bank account so the way you collect or the approach you collect in is fascinating and you so you see this opportunity with soccer cards a a category that you connect with and think many people know you for your collection your twenty seventeen tops chrome uefa you've got the golds and the reds and we've talked about those on the podcast but i think in listening to your podcast it's been interesting to understand kind of the other areas that you explore obviously wayne rooney you mentioned being one of them which brings a lot of nostalgia to me and time and place when i was following soccer at the at the the peak for me it was like during that wayne rooney david beckham era but how in this it's like a canvas like in this on this canvas you've like you're you're painting you got like twenty seventeen you got your player like what are all the different areas that you are you're kind of carving out or areas that you're exploring and is it are there new areas based on your research and your process that you kinda go down in rabbit holes that you go down maybe like broadly like what is everything within soccer cards that you currently are interested in in collecting yeah the so for with the gold and the red two thousand fifteen chrome which i've collected i knew that i would get to a sticking point where you know my mail days would be much you know few and far between as far as that so i i constantly and kinda scanning other people's pages just try to even look at sets and there's certain collectors that are barely instrumental in me you know discovering different things and and having collected you know tops two thousand seventeen tops twenty seventeen i was like i it really i piqued my interest on what is the lineage of tops in in soccer and and that that was that was kind of a a research rabbit hole i went down and tops had they've actually produced sets for the premier league in the nineteen seventies which i've i kind of i i'd seen them cards in the past but i didn't even realize you know i i think i i said that the first year they made tops was like in nineteen ninety two i think on one of my podcasts and one collector's like oh actually in the seventies they made a couple couple years of sets and tops had collaborated with a different brand even in in the fifties and sixties so it was i was like and so you know the podcast is even a platform for people to kind of you know correct me or you know feed knowledge to me about some of the lineage but so and so that was that was one kind of you know one thread i've been going now that i'm still kind of going down because they they start like i i think one of my episodes i talked about ninety two they actually made a stadium club set has a ryan giggs rookie which is another player from that era so that's a cool one i i remember picking up a long time ago and then there's a brand in soccer called merlin which has been making things since the late eighties i'm pretty sure the tops ended up buying that brand and they were producing cards under the merlin kind of name until i think the early two thousands and so i went back being a manchester united fan of that era i picked up you know the whole run of tops premier gold or merlin premier gold and then they became tops premier gold to david beckham so it's you know in this kind of booming market it's like a very low you know low low stakes just fun collection to follow lineage of you know base cards but they're they've you know the photography on those you know you talk about in some of your episodes of photography on some of the modern tops you're less than impressed by it but the photo photography on all these sets kinda carry the cards and so it's just you know just being a holding a card seeing that photography is is great just following that lineage and then you know two thousand seventeen chrome the being a manchester united fan their checklist on that is not my you know not not necessarily the players i'm nostalgic for so going back and collecting the players i'm nostalgic for and then there's a a collector who i hope to have on my podcast in the near future same damian at retro soccer cards and he has been collecting tops premier league cards since he was a kid in the two thousands and he was he may he he wrote a book about like all the checklists of all the tops cards through then and that was that like absolutely supercharged my kind of appreciation for tops during that whole run and and so tops actually produced started producing parallels for soccer in two thousand thirteen fourteen for tops premier gold set and so i i i that's so when i found that out that was kind of a sweet spot it's like i could collect with the modern mentality where you have depreciation of the beauty of the colors foils you know the rarity of the of the serial numbers and so that was a real sweet spot because that had a lot of players that were on the last premier league champions from manchester united from two thousand twelve thirteen so rooney's in that set giggs rio ferdinand nemanja vidic just to name a few of just kind of they were the whole legends through that whole kind of two thousands early two thousand tens era and so that was like a a sweet spot that i've i'm trying to collect the whole team set in that and it's only i think it's only if two one of one parallels a platinum and a kind of a gold and then the orange out of eleven and green out of ninety nine so it's everyone loves you know looking back at the old sets that have that very kind of limited parallel structure because it it's not you know you know all these all the different geometric patterns and whatnot but and i and i've kind of actually appreciating kind of the foil on a lot of those cards too like everyone talks about chromium you know shine but some cards have a great foil shine and you know you you know a lot of the nineties cards are based off kind of foil designs and so that that was cool to kind of look back at that set for the foil design so i've been doing that but then but tops from your gold had some really cool sets from two thousand thirteen fourteen all the way to i think they they made it all the way two thousand seventeen eighteen but they didn't actually have but but through two thousand sixteen seventeen they had the you know parallel structures and what i think is really cool is that all four of those years the design is unique and it's you know you're never gonna confuse one year for other i think in some brands you kinda you know all the designs kind of blend together and they're not they're not different enough for maybe even a casual collector to be like is this two thousand fifteen or is this sixteen and i think sometimes prism goes into that realm you're like which year of prism is this i mean you you've gotten such the weeds in it you can immediately tell but i think i i you're not offending me at all i understand no but but yeah so i thought that was a cool so i for united players for rooney two thousand thirteen fourteen two thousand sixteen seventeen are the cards i i've really loved to pick up over the last like year year and a half so i don't know it's kinda long winded answer but that's like that's kinda what i've been looking at just picking up unique tops cards that maybe they just and they don't show up very often even then out of ninety nine parallels you just look back in card ladder and it's like two or three sales over the his you know the history of you know since they're released so it's it's not you know one of one serial number rarity but as far as finding these cards it's it might as well be i guess in some sense but i i it's funny you bring brought up merlin i haven't thought about it but there that there was a wwf set that came out merlin i think it might have been like undertaker rookie card era but as you were talking about that i was envisioning that in my brain and i hadn't even thought about those cards in forever but it's just interesting like categories from the past that have crossover potential and i'll have to i'm inspired to go dig up and look for some merlin soccer cards after this but you were one that you were mentioning like feedback you got from your show from collectors and just someone this happens to me all the time someone will say like oh that what you said on the pod is like actually not true this is what it actually is i'm like oh thanks like maybe if i remember next time i'll try to like say i made a mistake and here we go but i think when you build content for a specific category of people or collectors like i think really cool things start to happen and i think about like this this side of soccer cards from like before twenty fourteen or whatever the the time block is of these players that you're nostalgic for it's like i'm sure there are podcasts of people from the history of who have talked about these cards and sets but i haven't heard them they've never entered my ecosystem so when i listen to a podcast like yours and i hear people talking about these players and these sets and these players i haven't even thought about in forever i get a lot of nostalgia for them and so i think like i'm kinda biased here but i think having like content and passionate collectors talk through these sets like bring awareness to these sets and i'm not saying like your intention is to drive up the price of these but like gradually like people are gonna be educated by what you're saying or your guests are saying and they're gonna explore so i guess like with that in mind like you mentioned the feedback but like what have you learned about the community of soccer card collectors from the episodes and the runs you've done so far like what sort of feedback have you gotten like can are you getting any signals like can you tell this is resonating with group that maybe has been underserved in the past or if they have been served it has been served up by messi yamal mbappe content like what have you learned so far yeah i think there is just just an appetite to just hear about collecting and cards that are just not you know not in the instagram posts oh this is a fifty oh fifty thousand dollar sale it's tripled in the last you know two years you know that and just shows a card it shows no context for the card it just shows that the card is increased in price so i think people just talking about sets that especially cards and eras that they collect i and just kind of hearing someone talk about them just in general just people there's an appetite for it and that that's why i started this i it's i i'm just doing it purely to connect with people and so i i was trying to pick topics that i knew collect you know connected with the people that i you know have been dn conversations with for you know years now and so it's it's almost kind of like bringing my dm world you know to life you know to the light of day is kind of what i was you know trying to do with this and it and it's you it's a connection thing it's like these are people i just i i dm with but i was like i'd like to have a conversation with you as a as a person and and so and you know you know somewhat you know the majority of my episodes so far have been like have been you know solo just kind of kind of bringing my soccer worldview to light and types of things and but but yeah even those even those solo conversations people you know the it's it's interesting some people say oh i like this one and other people say i like this one and so it's you know i i think i'm doing what i want so i'm know striking chords you know with the difference with the niches within the niche and kind of bringing you know showing appreciation for what other people have had appreciation for and i think people respond to it's it's validating to people i think if someone's talking about the things they're interested in so i think that is by producing content talking about it i think it brings validation to yeah just the peep the way the way people have collected and things like that so i think that's what a lot of people respond to and i think hopefully it'll bring curiosity just to people finding lanes that you know they can go down and enjoy and i mean that's that's the goal i think chris hoge i think was the first person i remember talking about that it's like this if if your life is better collecting that's that's the whole point like you know the money side of it is you know it can be intoxicating for people but i if if if your life is better more enjoyable like you find diversion out of it and so that's like kind of what i'm hoping to bring with this and it's not like know people if if if the byproduct of me talking about these if things go up you know that's fine but it's not the value part of it is not it's it's more just the appreciation of like the the cards and the lineage and the the players and the sport in general that you know i'm trying to highlight and give people some perspective on what's out there if if they get fed up with just the huge influx of new cards that are being produced now and you can look back like if you're frustrated with what's happening now in the in in the new releases you can you can go back there's lots of lots of different things to explore and the exploration is as much fun as you know buying the cards sometimes you said something there that resonates with me where it's of course like i know the types of cards you buy you're spending a good amount of money on these cards because you love these cards i i've also i've reached this point in my life where it's it's weird but you've just been doing it for so long where you spend you know four figures on a card and you don't even you don't even blink about it it's like oh this is just what i do because i really enjoy it and when you make those purchases it's not like your intention is for the cards to go down but the sole reason you're buying the cards isn't because you want the cards you think the cards are gonna three x in a year so i don't know like i wasn't planning to like dig into this with you but i i i i like ask myself these questions of like why do i do this and whatever and you mentioned the chris hoge thing it makes makes it like life better and i think that's really important but i don't know like do like do do you feel like being established with your life like you know having a job having a family having kids and like being comfortable with your current position in life like affords you the opportunity to like feel comfortable buying these cards and feeling good about buying these cards i i think like for me it's sometimes i'll be like i i've worked my butt off like we we are doing okay we're the kids are fed house lights are on and like sometimes i just wanna like reward myself and be like you know what now it's there's this card that i've been looking at and i just wanna buy it because i'm i i owe it to myself but i would love to know like your position because you spent a lot of money on building your sets like how do you think about that from a monetary perspective because you don't make your show about the money you say you know like it's not about the money because and i believe that knowing you but like i don't know like that like some people might look at that and say like yeah right like really like but it is real but how do you describe like that like based on kind of your collecting your life your management of finances like how do you justify it yeah no i mean it's something i i i i definitely thought about that whole side of it a lot and it is as you said i i came into this established i had a career you know i knew i knew how much money i'm comfortable spending and you know there's there's another you know collector i follow who says this you know you know we buy soccer cards but we take care of our family like nothing in my family's financial situation i'm not pulling anything money out of five twenty nines even if it's a card that's you know quote unquote grail i'm not pulling money out of investment or retirement accounts to buy cards ever i would that would that'd be a hard stop anytime if a card ever got that expensive so i keep you know whatever i spend firmly in you know completely disposable income i do i i did bring it up with brian dennis in cajun cardboards on episode with him you know you you know when you do feel fomo when you feel like you know desire to buy these expensive cards it's you have you have there there's certain guardrails you put up not to be reckless you don't ever wanna be reckless with it and i i'm very cognizant of that when i'm spending the money at you know if it's a card i don't wanna just spend you know tons of money on something knowing that if i needed to sell it or what for whatever reason it's gonna sell for half the price i you don't wanna be reckless in that sense and so i i over time as you as you understand the space you you're you're confident that if you if if you know you're paying for something for a card there are certain fundamentals you know that collectors are gonna want this going into the future and that and this is not something that's just gonna absolutely just have no value to it in the future and more experience you get the more comfortable you are with the fact that i know there are collectors out there i know the collectors who want these cards i know they're i know what they're willing to pay for i know they're willing to you know pay what i paid or close to what i paid and so there's a certain confidence you have that other people appreciate things enough that the money kinda takes care of itself in a sense it's you're aware of it because you don't wanna be reckless but you know there are fundamentals behind it that other collectors who are established who are kind of in the same position you are where they're doing it for fun and they're willing to spend their disposable income on it it just makes you comfortable spending that money and i think that's kind of what you're getting at so it's yeah but i think i think my my whole financial philosophy is is is rooted in the fact that like this is everything i'm spending is purely disposable income and maybe it's a lot of money but it's purely disposable and it's it's a luxury of being an established in my life and career and things like that i think that's a healthy place to be you know some people you see them make big purchases and then like within you know a couple months know it's in their story sale because it's like this card's too valuable for me to have in my collection because i haven't gotten paid bills and i was like oh it's kind of a danger it's kind of a dangerous place to be especially if you're in a if you're spending money in a speculative market but that's that's always like i'm always just like oh gosh like really it's like you need to pay you need to sell this card to pay your mortgage or buy a house i'm like oh you probably shouldn't have spent that money to begin with yeah so i i but i know it's a thrill for people and you know it's it's a high to like buy these expensive cards and make money on them and things like that and it's some people that's their enjoyment from it so it's you know it but i my my risk tolerance isn't isn't that isn't that point i don't wanna be spending a million dollars and pulling money out of retirement accounts to to to buy a card that's a million dollar card so it's all about it it's levels i wanna hit the the what i've learned from your show in on this topic and i feel like i'm learning about the way you think about collecting and buying and to me one of the things that i gather that you've really enjoy is like the questioning of you've got player alignment with you you you and nostalgia like i watch these guys i'm a fan of these guys and then the exploration of sets and then there are it feels like to me that there's so many soccer card sets that i don't know if undiscovered is the right word but just it's not like other sports where every football basketball baseball where every set and parallel has been beat up over time and it just seems like there's just a lot of sets that maybe haven't gotten attention so you're maybe buying cards because you like them and you're spending money but maybe it's not as much money as it would be in another category because those have been picked apart like like what is that dynamic for you like when you're it's i wouldn't say placing a bet but in a way you're spending money so maybe there's a little bit of bet but you're you're you're starting to buy cards from areas that maybe aren't being talked about on podcasts or might not be common in the soccer collecting community like what what does that do for you as a collector it's yeah i mean it's it's well it's exciting one thing owning something that maybe other people haven't even aren't even aware of a lot of these cards i'm buying have certain characteristics that firmly fit into the narratives for why you know the more modern soccer cards are available and so that's kind of fun it's just like these cards existed and just they don't show up on auction very often they don't show up on people's pages very often so you're not aware of them so it's i'm getting the same you know thrill of buying modern cards with the same modern fundamentals as people are getting excited about now it's yeah so it's it's it seems like a no brainer to me i guess in a sense that eventually you know when people see these cards and aware of them you know there's gonna be more demand for them just and so it's i like you know it it there's there's a certain thrill to being you know earlier first or to to things whether it's a band or whether it's you know anything it's because then you know once you hold it and everyone else is appreciating it it's it's validating and i you know i think i think validation is know when when things that you like become popular there's it feels good it's like yeah my taste was you know was right and so that that is something that you know when i look at my reflection that's kind of i the types of things that's you know i i i kind of you know see in myself that i you know i want from collecting and i think what your recent episode that posted about you know your reflection that it's those are things i think about you you definitely put a framework behind something that i feel like i do all the time it's like why am i doing this like what is this saying about me like and so i i try to be conscious when i post things and how i frame things in my podcast or my instagram page and be self aware about it what am i you know sometimes if i if i get that full mo like oh should i be buying the kaboom or should i be buying the yamal rookie like is it does that fit into the reflection of what i wanna show about myself and it's like you know it it's not i don't i don't i don't buy yamal i don't buy kabooms and the reflection i wanna show is is you know the era of soccer cards is you know the lineage you know the the tops cards i appreciate and things like that tell the story behind all those even if it's like i said the low stakes base cards from the nineties they don't have any you know serial numbers that kind of whole lineage storyline i think is i i really enjoy that you know telling that story on my instagram or podcast is that's kind of what i wanna show about how i how i connect to soccer as you know in this in sports and the the art the artistic you know elements of cards that i appreciate and and that's something you've brought up with your you know your gold prism cults or and collection is that at a certain point if you appreciate the cards and the lineages and things like that it ceases almost to be about the player on the card it's yeah the artwork of the design of the set almost supersedes and that's definitely a place where i've gotten to with the sets i collect almost that you know with the two thousand seventeen chrome there's players i'm not even that aware of at the time that i'm only aware of as part of the set but i appreciate the like the art of design of the set and the lineage of the set and things like that that's isn't it crazy isn't it crazy how many how many reds are you away from the set i have eighteen yeah eighteen eighty one of ninety nine is what yeah i would imagine that in that population of cards that you don't have there's probably what would be considered like there might be a common in there or a lesser known guy but if the if we got off this this recording and you hopped up on ebay and that lesser known player was on ebay right now and you don't might not even know much about him and his career yeah but if that card was available you would likely try to do whatever you could to get it done regardless of the price and that's what i think that's in it's i don't know if it's insane i don't know if it's cool but like that's that's part of the fun for me where it's like the subject on the card is not the primary it might be like the fifth thing and there's like four things in front of it that you're buying into yeah because of the connection of something bigger than the individual card itself yeah and the thing i i love about soccer as a sport too is i mean the champions league is a huge event it's like the playoffs these are the best clubs from their countries and even for the smaller players if if you're a fan of that club these are the important players in that you know that champions league run and so there are even though i haven't heard of these players a lot of you know you you if you if you find a collector of that team on their page these are the grail cards for them like red crow red refractors are and so it's it's even though it's a lesser known player you think it may not have appeal for the masses there is that segment of diehard potential collectors who this is their absolute grail and and i get dms occasionally it's like oh do you have any of your reds available for this team or for this player from this team that's not you know it's not barcelona not manchester united it's not real madrid it's not you know messi ronaldo type of thing it's it's yeah it's just this you know benfica from from portugal or roma from italy it's like these aren't household names to casual soccer fans i mean any if you're if you're aware of the sport you should know who those clubs are but but yeah it's not for to the to the average you know maybe casual soccer collector now those aren't the teams that you're chasing but those diehard fans i mean these red refractors from the set or or super fractures or whatever can be grail cards and so that's a cool that's a cool and learning about these clubs and you know their you know these players is kinda cool from my perspective so that's the kind of yeah the the one thing that i have like learned from kinda toggling back between categories like let's say it's know i'm i'm buying cold school prism in one minute and then the next minute i'm buying a tyrese halliburton card and then the next minute i'm like buying a wrestling card like dig i wanna like be ingrained in those lanes and those pockets and what i've understood and picked up on like those categories and those audiences like they all operate very very different like you you threw the nuance in there of like the club element and then there's the international element and there's different collectors converging on those zones where a player who you might not think is very important there are people that that's like their goat because that's the team that they follow and i think in soccer it's probably more nuanced than any other sport but i don't know like what have you picked up on from you being ingrained in the soccer card community like the do you feel like it's different than other areas that you've collected in the past like have you do you try to be adaptable do you try to understand the nuance just in or to better inform like the pricing and what you need to pay like how do you think about just like the soccer card collector and your approach to you building out your collection oh yeah that's a huge part of what i do especially with the set collecting where i'm collecting different i'm dipping into the different lanes you know of team collecting and things like that because sometimes sometimes things don't make sense in terms of what you have to pay for certain things and i i i've i don't know if i've talked about i i i i i do i have talked about this before but i can't remember what format it was but so liverpool so i there was i mean one of the reds i've gotten in the last like six or a year or so is trent alexander arnold for liverpool so he's a popular player for liverpool i mean he's not he didn't win any bulleyn doors i mean liverpool had success you know champions league and premier league during his time there so he had success in the team but compare his the price of what i had to pay for his card from two thousand seventeen chrome with other players who i think any reasonable soccer fan would think were better players just go for fractions of the price and it's doesn't really make sense but i you know understood it and i was able to legitimize paying the price just knowing that for whatever reason liverpool collectors in this community are are willing to go deeper in terms of what they're willing to pay for some of the really notable cards and so knowing yeah if there's a player a team national team or even a even a parallel or whatnot knowing who the collectors are and and you know what kind of what things have gone for in the past or just you know what what your competition is that really informs kind of the confidence you have in terms of what you're paying for these and not feeling like you're getting shield or ripped off or something and and in the past i probably have been shielded in the past you know on certain of these things if it's it's such a it's a whole different topic but there's certain cards i've missed out on because i thought they were getting chilled and maybe they didn't get chilled and so it's but but that's so so like just all those dynamics in terms of what you your reasonable expectation for what something will go for is is just you have to have done deep in the weeds follow different collectors on instagram follow that niche of collecting to kinda see what those what the dynamics are have been you know in the long term short term for a lot of those cards so yeah it's understanding who the collectors are and what what kind of niche within a niche you're going into is is invaluable in terms of making sure you acquire the cards that are important for your collection type of thing so it's yeah it's what i constantly think about constantly check cardladder your your sponsor you're trying to fit you know like digging into cardladder prior sales is that's part of my entertainment just seeing what's happening it's it's that's one of my favorite things to do in the hobby just oh yeah it's educate it's educational i'm with you i wanna make sure so i was listening i can't remember what episode this was i remember vividly i was i was getting out of the house on a saturday and i was meeting a friend for lunch and i was listening to your podcast driving and you were talking about all these twenty fourteen one of one sales that were i think being sold through golden prism yeah and i was just like what is because i was like what is going on because i was like if this were in if this were like the category that i collect in it i would be salivating like watching all these things go down which i thought in and of itself like i loved like you walking through the those sales and just a lot of it was nostalgia like a lot of these players were people that i hadn't thought of in a while but i don't know like with something like that where you've got like one of one cards from a very important set like what did you learn about where the market was at this very point with all of those sales going down yeah i well i am i am i i hope you know some of that some of those episodes were probably putting people to sleep but i was like i have to give you the context of how rare it is for these cards to sell yeah and the fact that we're seeing like thirty or forty i don't know or fifty or sixty or a hundred i don't know how many we're up to now of these one of ones for two thousand fourteen come out this is you know five times the number of total sales of one of ones for two thousand fourteen publicly that have you know like prior to this and it was yeah i so i just was like you know and when all the you know i i dealt with this like whole bunch of two thousand seventeen's chromes i mean it went for auction a few years ago when i bought a bunch of them i navigated kind of like what do you pay for these cards that like you can't trust any of the prior comps all you can kinda do is look at the overall landscape and be like what like what am i willing to pay for these and so it's interesting just the brand of prism and the parallel the black for some of the sales you know blew the prior highest sale of the of the of a player and so clearly people just a chance to own like this iconic parallel from you know arguably the most iconic set in you know definitely modern soccer probably you know people can make arguments for other things i guess but just seeing that demand and you know it it's it's crazy to see it it's just i you know i'd like to hear you know people who are paying these prices it's interesting to hear like what who who are they like that's i i would love to know you know who paid forty eight thousand dollars for a black bastion swine steiger i i that was a name that stood out that was a name that's i was like man i haven't heard bastion's fine stagger for a long time i was like eat that one up who's who's paying twenty thousand for vincent company like just yeah i mean these are legendary cards if you're collectors of these teams players like yeah i'm super super excited for you to own these cards but there was one specific card that i think i i highlighted it was a a dual auto the samba parallel which was kind of like the it's the it's the two thousand fourteen prism version of pylen where they like sold them via auction or whatnot but it was like a dual auto with cristiano ronaldo and pepe someone bought that at one of the early auctions and it showed up two months later and i mean i guess to the credit of the guy who bought it was very honest about what he thought was gonna happen he thought he was gonna buy it and then he was gonna take it from golden to fanatics and he thought it would go for you know more money and he ended up taking a eighteen thousand dollar haircut on the auction and so that just kind of proved the points you know if you're buying these cards to collect them yeah you know and you want to pay that money great like that's awesome i i these are amazing cards but if you're buying these at these prices thinking that you're gonna flip them around in a couple months or six months a year it's a risky proposition so i i it's it's it's just an interesting dynamic in that respect because people see some people see these as an investment opportunity that you know short term or you know maybe you know longer short term investment proposition but i think buying it at a booming time in the market is that's always a risky proposition if you're looking to sell it six months or twelve months in advance but i mean the guy who bought these originally people probably thought he was crazy at the time i think he bought a bunch of them in two thousand fourteen but he saw this boom now and he saw the world cup in the us and he's like you know i've i'm ready to you know reap the benefits of these so he but his strategy was twelve years mhmm you know you know ten more or ten plus years however long i i don't know what a long time horizon too long time horizon but you know he's yeah i mean i from a financial standpoint he's gonna definitely benefit from this but to think of forty thousand cards is gonna go up another ten or a hundred x in some cases in the next ten years you know you're not probably gonna get that much but it it it's interesting it's an interesting dynamic you know if one if if a car if one of those comes up that i wanna pay i'm gonna have to you know if the bruny black comes up for sale i'm gonna have to be like oh my god what am i you know how far am i willing to go for that type of thing so i'm gonna have to go through that exercise of i've i've just been i've been that's partially why i've i've paid you know dug into these sales it's like the rooney comes up what what am i what am i gonna be up against here what what am i gonna have to be prepared to pay to get it and and think you gotta win that card if it if it shows up it needs to be in your collection i know that's the type of thing it's like do not wanna see someone else buy it and be like just you know show back up on whatever auction again or someone other's collection who i'm just like oh gosh i and you know it's like i you you run into that too if you so go so deep into a player or a stat and it's just like you just i can't let someone i i can't see this as one else's collection it would be too painful to see it in someone else's collection oh man well there's so much to talk about we've covered so much ground and there's still some we might need to do a part two to do this eventually but before i let you get out of here like just what excites you most about soccer card collecting and the content you're making right now before i let you get out of here as far as my you know content i'm making i just it's great to share something with the community and engage the community you know start conversations that maybe aren't in aren't widely you know spread you talk about topics that just aren't you aren't seeing on your feed every day that's that's the one thing i'm excited about and you know exploring all the all these lanes that are you know haven't been you know trodden by collectors is is is fun for me and that's you know you kinda pivot when when the market's really hot you kinda pivot away from things that are just you feel are ultra supercharged and luckily haven't had to haven't had to compete for my some of my core sets in this like really boom period but but yeah you you kind of you kind of search for those lanes that you can collect with low low stakes low pressure and that's kind of what i've been you know has been really what's centered what i've been doing for the last like six you know six to nine months ever since kind of certain markets have doubled tripled contoupled i kind of i kind of recenter myself and in soccer i think there's a huge opportunity of for things out there to kind of recenter find a new lane that isn't isn't part of this hype beast that's kind of feels like it's happening right now so those are you know and you know with the world cup coming up i you know i i'll probably do an episode on like what player you know who are the players to watch and like what are their cool cards that's something an episode don't think are really fun making like dig into what do i actually think the best yamal cards are what do i think the best mbappe cards are or who are these other players that are you know maybe have aren't aren't kind of their level of you know notoriety that's that's what i want i want the tier or tier two below the coverage because it'll make me more invested when i'm watching these guys so that's what exactly casual that's what i want yeah and that's and that's like an episode i really wanna dig into just even for my own just entertainment purposes just go i mean go through a bunch of the teams like these are the players to watch these are their coolest cards in my opinion or or some of their coolest cards and dig into those players and just you know even the yeah the for the second tier guys this is what you i mean this is this is what you can you know get for your money type of thing and you know there's collectors out there who've done that with players who you know have belatedly now like whether it's antoine griezmann or harry kane there's like a belated appreciation for these guys as being really really fun players to collect in the in in the soccer card hobby and so i think that's the most fun is like digging digging to that second tier player and just finding really cool cards of theirs so that's what i'm that's kind of excited about awesome you can follow him on instagram at mad city collector soccer card collective find it hit the follow button james always fun catching up we got it we'll we we will do this again before the world cup because there's more i wanna talk about but appreciate it man yeah appreciate you having me on