Both. We'll put we'll put the one, the video on, I have a Patreon group. I'll throw it in there, but mostly will be, audio. So Okay.

Cool. Alright. Let's hit it. I'm excited for today's chat. Another episode of Passion Profession. I am joined by Mark at Paradise Breaks. Paradise Breaks is located in Las Vegas. Although I, we're catching up before I hit record.

Sounds like there's some exciting expansion going on. We're gonna just dig into his story, the business, and what he's up to. But without further ado, Mark, welcome, man. How are you? Yeah. I'm I'm great. I appreciate you having me.

Heard a lot about the podcast, so excited that to be here. Let's start with, as we record this or when this goes live, this week is WrestleMania week, and you're right in the, epicenter of WrestleMania activity in Las Vegas.

I'm excited to get out, later this week, but let's talk about it. Let's talk about just WrestleMania, Vegas.

I'm not sure there's a better host city, which is fun, but maybe talk a little bit about, what you're up to WrestleMania week at Paradise Breaks. Well, first and foremost, I can tell you the buzz is already starting.

You know, from people I've talked to just around the city, it's it rivals, if not bigger than f one week. And I think it's great for the city. It's great for the experience of people that are gonna have when they come here.

And, you know, it's WWE. It's so exciting. And it I I think it's it's something that the people here in Vegas are accustomed to seeing entertainment. So I think what better to have WrestleMania here. And I think we're gonna do it big.

I mean, I I don't know how many other cities could could host it the way we're gonna host it here as far as all the appearances everywhere, all the exciting activities that are that are gonna be going down.

I know we're all excited. All the, there's so many events going down. All all the employees, all the breakers here in the shop are, like, begging to be a part of this.

And I'm like, guys, we still gotta run the shop. You know, you have your screens to run. I I only take so many of you. So now everybody's super excited about it.

It's it's gonna be awesome. Can't wait. So I was doing some research ahead of this, and I was digging in. You gotta anytime that maybe I can talk about big papa pump Scott Steiner to, like, kick off a a episode, I I would love to.

So maybe, talk a little bit about what's going on with Big Papa Pump and how Paradise Breaks is involved. Yeah. For sure.

So, I recently got in touch with, Big Papa Pump Scott Steiner, his agent, and he is super excited to get, Scott more involved in the hobby. And they wanted to have sports cards be a part of their bicep bash, this Tuesday here in Vegas.

So big WrestleMania week kinda kicking everything off that Tuesday at the Vegas space here in Vegas. And it's really it's an arm wrestling tournament, featuring Scott as well.

He's gonna wrestle some people arm wrestle some people. I'm sure I don't know if he'll be in the full big pop of pump garb or anything, but, you know, Scott Scott loves that.

He's starting to get into social media. This is the big this is their first event they've ever done, so they wanna do it big. We're gonna be partnering with hip parade at the event.

So we'll be doing, hip parade repacks with wrestling memorabilia, wrestling cards, and then we're also gonna be filling some live breaks as well. So that is this Tuesday from six to 10PM.

And there from what I've heard, there's gonna be some special, guest appearances there as well, since there's gonna be some WWE guys in town for that, you know, that big event called WrestleMania.

So, again, I mean, it's to have the arm wrestling world, I think, matches right up with WWE.

It's the same guys. I've heard some UFC guys may also be appearing. So, you know, it's gonna be a great event. I'm not sure I can think of a better, name to put on an event like bicep bash and big papa pump.

Scott Steiner. But maybe before we get into Paradise Breaks and just your story, I I would love to make for you to maybe touch on, like, you mentioned Big Papa Pump coming on your your streams and wanting to get more involved in cards.

And I think just across the hobby, we've seen so many activations, in hobby stores, rip nights with celebrities, and it seems like it's helping kinda, bring in new eyeballs, bring in new buyers.

Maybe talk about just that as a overall strategy within the hobby, just the placement of, celebrities into the hobby and just what that might do for exposure. Yeah. I mean, you've seen it already.

Fanatics is since they've jumped on board with the licenses, with WWE and even all the other sports they're they're getting involved in. They're doing these things like hobby rip night where they're getting athletes into the store.

So that's now transitioned, in addition to the buyback program that they have with Topps Chrome, having the athletes come to the shops as well with WWE.

So, we're actually having DIY, the tag team, partnership, former NXT guys. They're gonna be in the shop, on Thursday. So, again, it's like it's madness.

It's it's WrestleMania week. It's there for the average collector, the average fan of WWE, you don't get to experience that. And to mix that with cards, I mean, how it it I can't see how it doesn't succeed.

So, you know, we've only had one WWE release so far. That's Topps Chrome. I'm excited to see what they're gonna do with the rest of the, the flagship brands.

So I think the more and more they do that, I think we start with some of these, up and coming guys, but I can't see why, you know, The Rock will show up in the future and John Cena and things like that.

And they've been able to get Tom Brady to show up for Hobby Ripnight. I think as that world from the WWE guys, they see that. I think they're gonna wanna be more and more a part of it. They're already doing it at Fanatics Fest.

I think once they get the vision a little bit more at this year's Fanatics Fest, we'll see more of it. And I think it'll continue to grow. The hobby and the interest in WWE because it all lines together.

So I'm in Indy, and the Royal Rumble was here, and DIY hit, IndyCard Exchange. So they're doing the hobby, shop circuit, which is awesome. And just love to hear that's not a one and done, but it's continuing on.

And it's funny that that you say that too, that they're hitting the circuit, but because, like, before the I wanna say a couple days ago, Champa actually, messaged me and said, hey.

I'm a I'm a big sports card collector. Do you think we'll have some times for me to drop off some cards for PSA while I'm there? And I'm like, if we if you can find time, absolutely.

We'll hook you up. So he was wondering about pricing and what we can do. And, you know, so you these guys, they appreciate the hobby. They're collectors just like us. I love to hear that.

And it's just, before this kind of all boomed, I I know when you're looking at, like, one of one's inscriptions, like, Johnny Gargano is a collector, and he always has just done a, bang up job on, like, detailing one of one inscriptions and making those special.

So it's so great to just see, like, the athletes embrace the hobby and also recognize how important doing certain things, like showing up in a store or maybe adding a couple line an inscription on an autograph, what that can do, for collectors who are chasing their stuff.

And And that's what's gonna grow the hobby. The more exposure they have, the more, you know, interest they show.

I mean, people feel the passion. You know, if if you have passion as a collector or a store owner, people are gonna feel that. So, yeah, it's it's it's great. Let's talk about what you were up to before Paradise card breaks.

Maybe talk about maybe your career journey, like, what you were up to and then how this all started. Yeah. For sure. It's been quite the journey and an unexpected journey, to be honest.

I never thought I'd be sitting here if you went back in time, you know, five to six years ago. I never would have thought this would be what I was doing. But I I just like everyone else, I had a regular nine to five job.

I actually worked in the convention business, and that's what brought me out to Vegas. I grew up in Maryland my entire life, but I moved out to Vegas, about eight years ago now.

And, one day so I was in the convention business. One day, I was on the convention floor in Orlando, and I got the call that everything needs to be stopped, shut down because of that thing called COVID.

And, I flew home. I didn't know what I was gonna do. I just knew that businesses were shutting down and we were in the work from home mode.

So this little thing that I had as a hobby of doing breaks, you know, once a week, I said, well, maybe I should start focusing a little bit more on this because I have a little more time on my hands.

So I just put all my passion and energy into that, while I was stuck at home.

And just so happens that the business started booming. So, as I work through that, I just put the put the pedal to metal and kept working and growing my inventory. I didn't have any big capital or anything like that or tons of cards.

I just had a love for the hobby. The business just intrigued me like crazy. The idea of breaks, really intrigued me and on the business side of things. And, you know, it just kept growing from there. I started on Facebook of all places.

That's where a lot of breaks used to happen. If you are an old school breaker, you remember Facebook, Breakers TV, and YouTube. That was really the only places you could go get into a break. So that's where I started.

I, wanted to eventually have a shop, but I I I couldn't picture it, until, we opened up the shop here in, Town Square in Vegas about three years ago now. I started with one employee, and we were on the loop app as well.

So we did Facebook and loop. And I always had the envisionment that there will be a card shop where you also did breaks in in the studio, in the shop, where you could walk up, someone coming into the shop.

Because being the convention business for me, I always wanted, my customers to have a story to tell within their booth space.

So I took that mindset with creating a shop. And when someone walks into the shop, they see the excitement of a break happening.

I just as a person new into the hobby, I want to experience that myself. So that's how we built the shop. We started with a little break desk in the corner of the shop. And now three years later, we have five studios in that same spot.

I'm actually in one of the studios right now. And, you know, the excitement is it's electric when we have a trade night in here and, you know, people are breaking high end products.

The the the people that are here for trade night get to kinda pierce through the glass and see what's going on. It's just a great atmosphere. So, I started with one employee, and now three years later, we have 22 employees.

Like I said, we break on six platforms. And, you know, eBay eBay Live is is our our number one platform that we break on about, I'd say, about eighteen hours a day. We're live. I, there's so much that I wanna dig into there.

I think one of the things that you probably can help all of us understand, which there's these preconceived notions that we have is just people who wanna get more involved in the hobby that you have to have this big stack of capital in order to start a new business in the hobby, but you just said, like, I didn't have that, but I made it happen.

And I went from just having one employee to now 20 plus employees. Mhmm.

May talk a little bit about, like, the starting from nothing to growing it to where it is today and some of those steps and decisions that you had to make and maybe some sacrifice you had to make along the way in order to make Paradise Breaks to what it is today.

And that's probably the number one thing I love talking about because a lot of people in our hobby, they don't they they see the tall hill to climb, and they don't understand how they can ever have the capital, like you said, to get there.

And I can tell you it's completely possible. I started with, I think I had probably, like, $20 worth of cards in my collection, but no credit card debt. And that was the big thing.

Having no credit card debt is huge because if you're always paying a creditor, you're never gonna dig out of that hole. So your number one goal should always be get out of credit card debt and start your business credit line.

For me, I sold all those $20,000 worth of cards. I just started doing breaks and reinvesting all the money that I had earned in breaks back into the business, back into more inventory.

Because without the inventory and inventory management, you know, knowing when to get out of a product, if it's gonna tank.

Because the last thing you wanna do is buy a product and it's sink in price, and then you're underwater, and then you're battling uphill from there. So, a business credit line is different than your personal credit credit cards.

Once I started adding business credit cards and learning that you could make, cash back on your business credit cards, that changed everything for me. Because, you know, as you know with buying product for breaks, it's very liquid.

You can buy a case, one day and it's gone the next day. So why not make added percentage points off of that, those those credit card purchases? So I started doing that and our margins are super small as as it is.

For those of you that are not familiar with, margins and sports cards, if you've been in the business for a really long time, you have crazy allocations, yeah, your margins are great.

You're making 30% on, on your margins. But if you're new starting like me, it's more like five to 10.

So if you can make your money back on the cashback from credit cards, which can sometimes be up to 3%, you can actually start making that business, closer and more profitable to the people that have been in the business for so long.

So I saw that. I just grinded.

I did volume in order to make up for those low, percentage margin wins. And before I knew it, I got where I needed to be as far as, my allocations go with my distributors. I networked my butt off at every single live event that I could.

I harassed tops. I made sure that they knew who I was. I wasn't going anywhere. I I think I was one of the few people that started wearing, like, branded t shirts like this, loud.

Our first colors were purple, and no one could miss us on the on the floor. When we went to the national, I always made sure, like, you know, we have our QR code on our sleeves.

I didn't see any reason why we shouldn't promote ourselves to, like I said, make sure people always saw us, always remembered us. It was point out, oh, hey.

The Paradise guys are here. And I did that on purpose because I knew we had a huge uphill battle to climb, but I wasn't gonna let the numbers stop me. I was gonna make sure that I talked to everybody everyone I could.

People saw us, and, I wasn't gonna take note for an answer. So every week, I'd email my tops reps. I make sure I set up meetings. I wasn't worried about going to the national and buying and selling cards.

Every single day, I was there talking to distributors, talking to suppliers, talking to, all the big manufacturers because you you have to you have to run your business.

You know, you can't think small of how how am I gonna buy a card and flip it for, you know, a 10 profit to a repack seller.

It's if you're trying to grow your business, it's all about networking and understanding your finances Because without that foundation, you're you're really just a hustler at that point, which is fine.

People, if that's your business model, that's the way you wanna go, you can make some good money.

But if you wanna long be a long standing, staple in the business, it's all about the hard work and the and the grind on that side of things. There oh, gosh. There's so many, good things that I wanna dig into on this.

Let's start with the differentiation. Right? You prioritize the brand, prioritize loud shirts. At this time, I can only imagine there's new breakers popping up every day because their people are seeing what's happening in the space.

Maybe people who are not even involved in cards, getting in cards, starting breaking business, competition is rising.

Talk about some of the ways that you not only thought about differentiating yourself from everyone else, but making sure that if someone came into Paradise card breaks to buy into their first break, they didn't have a reason to go find someone else after that.

And I would say the big thing with that, it it's it goes together with my business model. Not only do we break on eBay live, we break on six other platform five other platforms.

So and every app is different. If it's a younger crowd, maybe we direct them to TikTok, you know. If it's a, you know, a person that loves, team breaks, we direct them to, Fanatics Live. If it's, The Gambler, whatnot.

Whatnot's a great platform for that. So when a customer comes into our shop, we ask them a lot of questions. We find out how long they've been in the hobby for, what their goals are, what they're trying to get out of it.

And if it's to make a quick buck, hey. There's a certain app for that. If it's, hey, I'm really looking for a community for me and my son to watch breaks at night, there's a community for that.

And there's different types of breakers on each app right now. So we try to dissect that, see, what the, what the why is for them of why they're into this hobby.

And then, I think for me, directing them to the right app, is what makes the most sense because that customer's gonna stay with us long term.

I wouldn't wanna direct, you know, I wouldn't wanna lead them to the wrong direction because that's not how we're gonna keep them as a as a customer for us.

When you think about, hurdles and roadblocks in the in the climb of growing the business, one of the things that I latched on to was, like, you know, you're you're networking.

You're trying to build those relationships with distributors. Like, you really don't have a lot of control in the early days of the allocations and what's coming your way.

When mark when you had margins that were so small, like, how did you survive maybe getting a bunch of product that wasn't, the what the market wanted in in managing through that?

Like, can you talk to us a little bit about just, like, navigating what was coming your way and making sure that even if, like, someone didn't buy a couple cases of a certain product, in a certain sport, you are able to recover from that by doing whatever you did to keep the business rolling.

Yeah. I mean, it that's the big thing that inventory. If you start to see a product going down, you've gotta understand the market's probably not gonna come back on it.

And it's better to just get rid of it at that time and use that capital then to, when there is that big that big win of a product, dump your money into that big win.

If it's a first off the line product, you know, you have Don Rest optic Football coming out at the end of the month.

If you think that is the one where you're gonna put all your money in, do it. But you you you don't have the capital if it's sitting on a basketball product, prison basketball for this year as an example.

If you if you, purchase that at, like, the $700 mark, now it's at, like, 500 a box retail. If you purchased it for that high, it's not gonna come back.

And maybe it does come back in a year or two, but you could cash that out right now for a loss and reinvest that money right now in a first off the line product that's gonna make your money back seven fold what it would in a year from now.

So you can't sit on that. You can't you you gotta move on. I actually learned that from, Jared Bleznick and Blez, sports cards early on.

I asked him a ton of questions. He's also here in Vegas. A lot of people love or hate Blez, but he is a very smart man. I would tell you that, a lot of the business strategies I learned, come from Jared.

And, one of them being get out of product if you don't think it's gonna make you money. Get off of it as quick as possible. So, that that will be number one as as far as that goes.

But otherwise, you know, you gotta use your market research. You know, how did the product perform last year? How are statistically, how are first off the line products doing right now?

Are is basketball in general down right now? Is it great? Where's the baseball market? And just following all the trends. And, using your instincts. At the end of the day, it's just like the stock market. You have to use your instincts.

If you don't think it's you're not gonna win on everything, but you're also not gonna lose on everything. So you just gotta use all that data that you have and your instincts together to to make the right decision.

If you're thinking about a new product coming in, and and it could be in any sport or any category, like, if you were to stack rank, like, attributes on a new product and saying, like, this product will be successful or it won't be successful, like, how important is, like, the brand, the rookie class, like, if it's paper or chromium based, if it has autos or not?

Like, how how do you, like, process that when you're trying to, like, figure out what's going to kinda give you the biggest return as a business owner?

Yeah. I mean, right now, you can't lose on any product that has big time k sits. Absolute Football, Obsidian. Absolution Football has kabooms.

Obsidian has the color blast. Don Ross with the downtowns. You cannot go wrong with that stuff because people are always going to chase those case hits because they can in turn sell them very quickly, to get their cash back.

It's all about putting money back into your customer's pocket, and the customer needs to be able to have an outlet to get their money back.

If they're constantly just buying a product like Encore, which did not perform very well, Encore, football, a lot of people are disappointed with it.

You're that that's not the direction to go. You know, you've gotta make sure you're getting products that, people love to chase, so they love the fact they can at least get some money back.

And then I think moving forward, any product that's on the release schedule that you see has those big hits, that big hit potential, that's what keeps people around.

That's what keeps people buying those products. So, investing in the lower tier products that don't have big hit rates, I I wouldn't recommend at all.

How do you deal with a product like the the new Prism Basketball, which, you know, historically, Prism Basketball, you know, the year prior, you had Wimby, and it was just like, you can people are gonna buy it at whatever cost because they're chasing Wimby.

But with this year, you've got this tried and true brand, but maybe a down rookie class.

How does a a business owner like you, like, deal with demand or lack of demand on a popular product year over year like prison basketball is this year?

Things like that, you really have to rely on your networking. You know, the community that's been built, you know, within the hobby, people know.

Like, I I swear, like, a lot of the a lot of the shop owners, they know. If all of a sudden you start getting hit with a lot of people that say, hey. Do you wanna take this product? Product?

There's usually a reason that there's smoke, there's fire, and it's too good to be true, to be honest. Like, I took on a couple extra cases of the Prism Basketball thinking that, hey. You know, this is you can't beat this price.

But I knew that there was, some there's some smoke there. So I knew there's a little bit of fire. So I didn't go as hard as I would have, and thank God because I would have been underwater on all those cases. Now we moved all of it.

We didn't make a whole lot of money on it, but it didn't break us. If I would have taken 20 cases of it, maybe we'd be talking a different story. But I knew that there was, you know, I only took what I could handle.

And just like a, customer, you know, getting into breaks, as business owners, we've gotta make sure that we don't gamble, too much because, you only you only take what you can afford.

You only take what's whatever's within your comfort range because you don't wanna sell on that product that's not gonna move.

Obviously, you mentioned you have, you've grown your employees, right, from, one to 20 plus. How else maybe has Paradise Breaks evolved or scaled over the course of from COVID to now?

Yeah. PSA has been a huge, thing for us, both offering, PSA grading in the store and also on our breaking apps. If a customer hits a big card, they wanna get it graded.

We instead of shipping it to them, we literally evaluate it on the spot within forty eight hours, and then we get it shipped out to PSA that week. So again, our our philosophy is putting money back in our customer's pockets.

We don't make a lot of money off of PSA. Nobody does. But it's a value added service to make sure we keep the ecosystem moving. So adding PSA was a big thing for me. We have the front row card show here in Vegas Four times a year or so.

We always set up for PSA drop offs. It's getting more and more popular every time we set up. We're getting we're in increasing our submissions every time we set up. So there is a need for it.

It it's it's, you know, it creates more liquidity with your cards if they're graded. So for us to be able to evaluate and let a customer know, hey, this is worth it. It's not worth it. It's very valuable to the business.

So I'd say PSA has been very, very big. Our in store presence has grown from the time we opened the store. You know, I had I didn't have a lot of products on the walls. I didn't have a full retail inventory.

I didn't have all the supplies. But that goes back. You can't do everything, especially if you're an owner, a sole owner. You can't just snap your fingers and have a built to, a made made to order card shop.

It takes time and that's okay. You know, you might get some bad reviews that say, hey, this card shop didn't have, you know, value bins of every single sport or they didn't have all the retail product I wanted.

It it's okay, you know. It takes time to build that and we're we've been here for almost three years.

And then I still see improvements that we can make, on the retail side of things. But over time, we've improved the, the atmosphere in here. We've added additional seating for trade nights. We've added more product.

We've added more value bins for people. So, you know, the retail side of things, you know, that that's grown. And then also our breakers, they've evolved from just order takers to salesmen to people that can create a community.

You know, we've we've tightened our standards with, the breakers that we have. So it's really really important that our breakers that we have understand it's not just a one and done sale.

The we're trying to build communities on these apps, and we're trying to make everyone a family and put money back get let them get some money back.

You know, whether it's us buying their cards, helping them with grading, or directing them to the right right types of breaks that fit their needs.

How do you make sure that the breakers you're bringing in, you're hiring, they're becoming part of the Paradise Brakes team, serve as an extension of the brand that you are building?

Yeah. We whenever we interview people, we make sure, if we feel feel like they're a good fit, we wanna make sure they're comfortable, with, everything as well.

So not only do they do a shadowing phase where they come in and shadow breakers for, two days, But they also when they start with us, they start in the back doing sorting and shipping.

Every single breaker we bring in, we make sure that, they don't just start breaking. They have to be in the back.

They have to learn the whole process from start to finish. Some of those guys may be back there a week. Some maybe be back there for months. It just depends how quickly they pick up that because it's a very detail oriented job.

You know, you've gotta make sure that all the users are wrote down correctly. You have to be very good at Excel because we track our margins on every single break. Every break, has to be categorized differently.

You know, when you're sorting and shipping, you know, there's a lot of teams that look very similar. So you've gotta make sure that you have a fine attention to detail on that, you know, when you're going through that process.

And, yeah. I mean, also when you're sorting and shipping and you eventually become a breaker, you appreciate that as a breaker, how much hard work is goes into sorting and shipping.

Before we started the shop, me and my wife sorted and shipped all of our brakes.

So those, Bowman draft, baseball breaks of doing, like, three case breaks in a night, and then you're sorting shipping for, like, the next twenty four hours are, like, mind numbing.

So you gotta have some intestinal fortitude and some, some attention to detail.

So I'll it's like it's like hard knocks, you know, putting them back there, making sure they understand the value of that. Because you gotta appreciate it as a breaker.

And if you're a breaker that doesn't appreciate that and you run you beat your own drum, it doesn't work here at paradise. You gotta we're a family here. We're we're a team, and, everybody, appreciates, everyone's role here.

Built building a business isn't always the sexiest thing. That's for sure. It's not. But it it that's why you have to do that to appreciate it. You know what I mean? It's it's you don't appreciate if you don't put that hard work in.

And there's, it's sports cards. You know? We're not, like, we're not outside in the sun digging a hole or anything like that. You sort sports cards. You we get to open packs.

It's it's fun. I I mean, I can't imagine a better job out there. So, I make sure the guys appreciate it, but, hey, you gotta remind them that it we're not, we're not doing rocket science here, but you gotta focus.

The the hobby changes so much, you know, month over month and especially year over year.

I'd love to learn just on the breaking side in terms of demand and consumer interest. Maybe talk about what you're seeing people buying into breaks, gravitating to.

Like, what categories are emerging? What are growing? Maybe what's retracting? Talk a little bit about just where interest had in has shifted over the last year or so.

For sure. I would say the number one the most popular style of break right now is probably in football, pick your division. Same thing for baseball.

You know, the the the random team break is kind of dying, because a lot of people have have gambled and lost. You know, they put their $50 in and they hope to get, you know, they're they're not gonna get the team that they want.

So their their hit rate has dropped. So but if you can maybe do a smaller divisional draft where you have six or eight spots, they just tend to fill quicker.

And that's the thing. It's people want instant gratification. So they want a break to fill quick. If your break room does not fill quickly, you know, you're gonna lose your room.

So it's important to have smaller breaks that that we always have action happening, to keep everyone's interest, because, you know, people's attention span are not the greatest anymore nowadays.

So it's it's important to make sure that you're opening packs. So those those 30 to 32 spot breaks are kinda going away and more of a focus on we have more of a folk focus on personal box rips and divisional breaks.

Just tends to keep, keep the action going. So that's that's what we've seen. More than ever, we've seen more people treat us like an online our break room is more like an online card shop where we're just ripping personals.

You know? You may have, someone that wants to go through a whole case. They start and they wanna finish the whole thing.

And, man, there's nothing like the adrenaline of of watching that, you know, whether it's you're in the room and you're living vicariously through that person that's that's going for that big hit, and you can be a fly on the wall or, hey.

You're you're trying to have some fun and do it yourself.

So Is there is there any, sports, that are surprising you just in terms of, collectors or people buying into breaks that maybe it's growing or emerging and it's it's surprising you in a good way?

So I'd say, like, football, basketball our football and baseball are always maintained. They're like the tried and true categories.

Basketball is always up and down. The the highs of basketball are great. The lows of basketball you're sitting here right now. But the ones that are surprising right now are Disney breaks, UFC, WWE.

Those are crushing it right now compared to what they used to be. WNBA. I mean, look at Caitlin Clark. The WNBA prism is selling for more than double, of men's w, NBA.

So that tells you all you need to know. I mean, it's I never I never could imagine that WNBA will be selling from double what prism was. I mean, we're talking about prism twenty nineteen twenty when everything the hobby boomed again.

Those boxes were, like, 3 k, 4 k a box. Now I have them on my shelf for, like, $700. And a WNBA twenty twenty four product is selling for about $1,100 a box, which is wild.

But, hey, the hype is there. I mean, Angel Reese, Caitlin Clark, the whole WNBA class, amazing. UFC, the products that Finax is putting out with UFC are seeing greatly improved from what we have with Panini, so that's encouraging.

And then WWE is just getting started. So having those alternative sports are just bringing more people into the card collecting category.

And then, I think overall, it'll be great for the hobby in general. Those people that maybe are WWE fans or UFC fans wanna start to venture out into, other sports. So, it's been great.

It's been a big surprise. I I didn't think it would be this drastic, but it's it's taken off. We've got a audience of definitely WNBA fans who listen to this show and definitely have an audience of WWE fans who listen to this show.

Have you do you have do you have any member and it is WrestleMania week, so I gotta ask the question. Do you have any memorable pulls on any WWE cards or product on the Paradise side over the last, you know, few years?

Well, with WWE, it's been pretty, well, actually, no. I will tell you. One big WWE the last, Panini WWE product of the year was flawless.

Mhmm. And I wanna say on day two of release, one of our breakers actually, called a shot. He actually said, hey. Let's pull a John Cena one zero one, and it was there. He pulled a 101 John Cena out of, flawless, with the diamond on it.

I actually, I actually bought it from the customer, and it went right into my safe. So it's it's it's in the PC. It's not for resales. Just one of those cards that, like, you know, you see it, man, that is a thing of beauty.

And, I had to pocket that thing. So, so we've had that. Going back, probably one of my more favorite sets was, revolution WWE, which I think in 2023, they did the kabooms.

We opened so much of that product when it came out, and I realized how short printed those kabooms were as far as, like, the the stars, The Rock, John Cena, Hulk Hogan, they never came out at all.

So personally, I'm collecting the PSA 10 set of all the kabooms. So I have I wanna say of the 25, the set of 25, I currently have about 14 of them.

So whenever I go to a card show, if I see one, I get it every single time. So I'm not, like, actively, like, searching for them on eBay or anything, but whenever I see them, I just grab them.

It's just like a little side quest for me, like, when I'm at shows. I just think, like, all of their the population on all of those, I think none are more than, like, 15 or 20 pop, pop report for a PSA 10.

So I think that set will be a big premium set down the road. That's amazing. Let's talk a little bit about you mentioned a lot of different platforms.

This show is obviously sponsored by eBay. I'd love to maybe get your perspective on just eBay Live. You you said you're on there for eighteen hours a day. Maybe talk a little bit about your experience using eBay Live.

Yeah. I mean, eBay Live, it's it's we are one of the first sports car breakers on there. We started about two years ago or so on eBay Live. And from what it's grown to now, the community that it's grown to, it's been phenomenal.

Our the quality of buyers are next level compared to some of these other apps where you have a lot of other people. On other apps that a lot of, fly by night customers that are just there for the gamble.

I feel like the community that we've built on eBay live is more of, more of that, a community and a place where, you know, our customers spend the afternoon, spend the night, hanging out and chatting with the breakers.

We had, two of our customers actually come in the shop last week and, you know, big time customers of ours, big supporters, first time in our shop.

And, they said, yeah. It's like you guys are family to us. You know? We we we almost like to look after the boys. They're like our adopted boys on the street because when when haters come in to chat, the people trolls wanna come in.

They felt like, hey. We wanna protect you guys. So it and that's great to hear. It's great to hear that we built that, from eBay when two years ago, it was just a little side, little breaking desk for us.

We had probably five people coming live. And now, you know, we every time we go on, there's the the same supporters coming through. It's been it's been it's been great.

What what excites you the most right now about what's going on in the industry, and maybe where do you see opportunities for improvement? So, with the breaking industry, I'm going back to what we were just talking about eBay live.

I am beyond excited. We had the CEO of eBay actually come to our shop, about three weeks ago, and he is super passionate about improving the app.

We myself and my eBay manager, Jason, here at Paradise, we flew out to the eBay headquarters, last week and met with about a 50 engineers, regarding how to improve eBay Live.

So they are super passionate about it. I'm really excited to with the platform that eBay has, how eBay Live is gonna integrate and improve that customer experience.

And I I honestly feel like eBay live could take over, a lot of the market share, with breaks. So I'm super excited about that and, excited where eBay is gonna go.

With the whole fanatics taking over the licenses, at the end of the year, they're getting basketball. So having Cooper flag cards, with what with with whatever team drafts him, probably by January 1.

I have a feeling they're just gonna skip over this whole, the next gonna skip over the, '24, '20 '5, basketball class. They're just gonna go right to Cooper flag starting January 1 when they get the license.

That's super exciting to bring back all the flagship products like Topps Chrome and having that license. I think that's gonna be big time. So that'll the basketball market will get a huge boost.

And then same type of thing in a year from now, a year and a half from now with football. We'll get that with all the flagship, Topps brands when they get the football license. So that's super exciting.

And then, like, just more and more athletes being involved. You know? I'm excited about that. Topps is gonna be doing a, little league program where they're potentially having athletes come out to little league games.

I've been my son's eight years old, turning nine. So to kinda talk with him about that, to see the excitement on his face, you know, that that's nothing beats that.

What let's hear I know I asked you a WWE poll, but maybe since the business has been open, what is, like, the number one pull that when you close your eyes and think about just cards that have come out of your shop, it's the one that you that sits on the the or is it in the George Washington spot of your Mount Rushmore?

So recently, we pull a lot. But recently within, I wanna say, like, two months ago, we pulled the, Bo Nix one zero one out of, Prism. So that was a big deal. We pulled the Which one? Which one? This was the black shimmer out of Prism.

Okay. So the black shimmer, out of Prism, that was massive. We pulled a handful of CJ Strouds last year, one zero one shields. We just pulled the Michael Penix black shimmer one zero one out of the the deca prism, so that's big.

Not sure what the price point is on that. But as far as the Mount Rushmore goes, I'm not sure. It's like the the hits keep coming all the time. We pulled the Mbappe one zero one, year and a half ago out of La Liga.

It was just only 01/2001 in the entire product, and that got a PSA 10. So that was that was a huge card at the time. I think they valued that at, like, a hundred and 25 k at the time.

The Bow Nicks, you know, 75 k or so. Just crazy cards, life changing cards for some of these customers that pull these cards. And we get to live vicariously through them, you know. So it's it's it's it's awesome.

Such such a great, job. So so we see that, like, when when we see these big pulls, right, we see the reels hit Instagram and Mhmm. You know you know, the breakers are all excited and you see the chat go nuts.

On the other side, like, on the other side of the camera, when when it when they're being pulled and there's recognition of what's about to come or what's coming, like, maybe take us all into those moments and, like, how that makes you feel as a business owner when you're able to bring that card to market and then, you know, obviously deliver it to your customer.

I would say just seeing the passion, number one. When the breaker pulls it, it's not fake.

Like, people get so, like, bent out of shape about how does these breakers have to get so excited? Are you kidding me? If that was you, you're not gonna, like you needed to get an energy drink or something.

If if you're that doesn't move the needle for you, you're in the wrong hobby. So I I don't know what it is. Like, there's so many people that get upset when breakers are getting excited.

Like, it's not their card. Why are they excited? Well, because we care. We actually legitimately care. We wanna see our customers hit that. And it my breakers are fans of the hobby, you know. They they really, really enjoy what they do.

They'll tell you the same thing. This is this is the greatest profession they could ever imagine doing. And, you know, whenever they they pull something and we have multiple apps going on, they'll they'll they'll get excited.

They'll say, we have a black shimmer. And like there everyone in the shop, all the other this is late night. All the other breakers kinda pick their head up around their their studio. They all get up.

They all run over and kinda watch the pull. The customer only gets to see what's, you know, the the the car being pulled. But behind them, they don't know that all the other breakers are are kinda eagerly waiting what what's coming out.

So that atmosphere, it's like none other. So when we have a trade night and that's going on as well, it's it's such a cool feeling.

So, and then actually getting to, talk to the customer afterwards and kinda break down how much they actually hit and what it's worth, trying to help them either grade it or put it to market and list it for them.

You know, just the excitement in their voice, the replay from their end, because they always wanna tell us, hey.

I was I was eating dinner. I spit out my food, or I had to run outside and yell. That there's nothing like that. It's it's great.

As we round the corner on this chat, I'm interested, Mark, in what you think as a business owner and operator, what do you think separates, successful businesses from the rest in the hobby? It's gotta be passion for what you do.

You know, if you're if you're a hands off owner, you don't like, if you're a card shop owner and you wanna start breaking in your shop and you don't enjoy breaking yourself, you're gonna have a problem.

You've gotta be passionate about what you do. You've gotta enjoy it. And that's that's in any profession. If you don't enjoy what you do, then just go find do something else.

There's plenty of there's plenty of career paths you can go make. You know, there's no reason to be miserable or, just in it for the money. There's for me, I love this business. I I love coming to the shop every day.

Some it's funny. Someone told me the other day, it's like the more, you know, your company gets out there, you're supposed to be doing less work. I don't know what that is. I don't know what you're talking about.

Like, that's I I don't feel like I made it at all. I feel like we've gotta keep putting the foot on the gas. This is a very competitive industry, and we're just getting started. So, and I love doing this. I don't wanna sit on my couch.

I wanna be in the shop. I wanna be in the atmosphere where everyone's ripping cards, talking shop, talking about the latest releases, talking about these new appearances we have, or, you know, just talking with the community.

And the the the community that we built here in Vegas and online, you know, they're friends.

They're not just customers. They're they're friends of ours now. And it's great to have them come visit when they're app customers or the local Vegas customers. We love, you know, catching up with them when they come in the shop.

So I wouldn't trade that for anything. So I am opening up a shop on the East Coast, so my time will be split back and forth. I'm not moving to so it's gonna be we're opening up in Maryland.

We're not moving to Maryland, but that's where I'm from. A lot of my family's from there. So we will be kinda going back and forth. But I'm excited to start the whole process and journey over again. It's kind of a new chapter for us.

The challenging part for me with that is just finding like minded people that are passionate about the hobby in that area Because we don't have a community built yet out there, we're gonna have to start from scratch.

There is a lot of people listening to this show who have or hit hit the show circuit on the weekends, maybe have aspirations starting their own business within the hobby.

Maybe what is one piece of feedback that you leave the audience with, on just how to get going?

Ask questions. You know? And there's no stupid questions. And when you find, someone that's willing to give you the keys to success, don't argue with them.

Take it all in. You know, I've had a lot of people that have asked me questions, but they, like, they they're fighting me. It's like you can't change their mind. Why are you asking questions to begin with?

You know? My my path might not be your path, but at least listen, you know, and and hear that out and make your own decisions. It's everyone has their own path. It may be flipping singles for the rest of your life.

It may be buying a sealed product. It might be something else. And I I think ultimately, you just have to be a listener and not argumentative when it comes to information you're seeking out.

And just be open minded, you know. And when you get those people that are willing to help you, latch onto them. But also have your guard up.

There's a lot of people, you know, we're in an industry where there's a lot of hustlers, a lot of people that don't have your best interests. And because you're a hard worker, they latch onto you and they can take advantage of you.

So always, have your guard up when it comes to, people that either wanna invest in your time or or your money, or say, hey. This is the best thing you should be doing.

But, you know, listen, but then make your decision objectively afterwards, and consult the right people. Consult your family members. If you're married, consult your wife. Don't make decisions on your own. I learned that the hard way.

You don't wanna just go on a whim. And sure, yeah, that gut of yours is great, but every once in a while, we do make mistakes. We're not perfect. So especially with dealing with partners and things like that.

So, always involve your significant other in some of your business decisions, and happy wife, happy life. He is Mark. Paradise car breaks. Go check out what they're doing, which is a lot, man. Had a ton of fun.

Thanks for sharing your story. We'll have to do it again. I feel like this hour went by super fast. I could we could talk for hours. So let me know when you wanna do it again, Brett. Awesome. Take care. Cool. See you later.