Alright. We are back. Hobby jobs sponsored by my good friends at BCW Supplies. I'm excited for today's conversation. We have been playing telephone tag, I guess.

Maybe that's what we would call we would call it, back when we were growing up. But, today, I'm joined by Bert Ryan of Grand Salami Sports Cards. Been excited to have this conversation, dig into, his story and the business that he's building. But without further ado, Bert, welcome, man. How are you?

I'm doing great, Brett. How are you? I can't complain. It's unseasonably, 75 here in Indianapolis. Alright.

I'm I'm playing the, do do I turn the AC on? Do I keep it off? I'm playing that game over here, but I'm excited, man. This is the best part of my week is to talk with builders and operators in the industry Yeah. Like you.

Awesome. Yeah. I'm, I went to Monday night football last night, so it's not quite that warm in Seattle. It was a cold one, and it was a it was a rough game. The bears took care of us pretty good.

But What what was... I I was watch... I watched the whole game. My condolences. It could be worse.

I mean, you're coming off of a Super Bowl, celebration, and you've still got a very, very good team. And you have one of my old players as a Colts fan. You got Quintin Nelson on your front line. He's beast too. He was fun to watch yesterday.

Yeah. So, yeah, maybe, like, I wasn't expecting to to to get into it, but let's, like, maybe set the stage in terms of fandom. Obviously, like, Seattle is such a, passionate sports city. I think there's still people on corners, you know, trying to protest the the Sonics not being there anymore. Oh, yeah.

I'm with the Yeah. Let... Maybe talk about a little bit about your fandom. Obviously, it's been a fun year with the the Hawks winning the Super Bowl. Yeah.

Definitely. I'm a Seattle lifer. I grew up just, East Of Lace... Lake Washington just, in a suburb of Seattle called Kirkland. But, yeah, huge, huge Mariners fan.

That's... If I'm gonna see any team win a championship in my life, it would be the Mariners. Also was a huge Sonix fan growing up until they got stolen from us. Huge Hawks fan and also a Washington Huskies fan. So all my allegiances are definitely Seattle based.

Kraken too, I've I've really enjoyed getting... Like, learning hockey because I didn't grow up with it, but it's been fun to, as an adult, learn a new sport. Maybe maybe explain. You you you hear... I mean, the Pacific Northwest, it's it's its own entity in a way.

Like, there's Yeah. Very unique identity. And then when you, like, go layers below that, there... This... The descriptor that always comes up is, like, passionate fan base.

Like, some of the best fans in in the, world. Obviously, like, you've... That's all you know. You've grown up there. But, like, why do people say that?

Like, what's your reaction to that? Oh, I think it's a pretty sports crazy town in general. I think there are, like, a very large portion of sports fans in our community. I think a lot of it probably has to do with the weather. We like being able to get that energy out.

You could see it at the Seahawks games, right, with all the crowd noise and things like that. Washington... Husky Stadium has been set some records in the past for crowd noise. We like to let some of that angst out, when we go to games. Definitely allowed.

I think Seattle, you know, how good is the fan base? I think we could be a little bit fair weather at times, and you see it happen, but I think all fan bases kind of are. But, yeah, I'm I'm a proud Seattle sports fan. I think that it's a pretty awesome group of of fans in general. I love it.

I'm a big music guy too, and we won't go Oh, yeah. Like, obviously, Seattle's music scene is unstoppable. Yeah. So let's get into you and just building your business. We'll start with maybe, like, origin story.

I know you and your partner were college baseball players. Like, how did how did that relationship turn into you building a business in the sports card industry? Yeah. Crazy. My partner, Max, I actually...

I... He's a friend... Well, he's a family of a friend. And when I got back into card collecting, like a lot of people did around COVID, he was one of the first people that I was introduced to because he's a long time collector himself. I collected as a kid.

I... One of my prizes for doing anything right was always going to Kirkland Sports Cars, and my dad would pick me out a pack or a box like a lot of kids did. And then in my teenage years, in my college years, in my twenties, I kind of got out of it a little bit, and then that passion resurfaced again around COVID. When we were all looking for a new hobby and something to do, I I jumped back in headfirst big time. And, of course, breaks were getting really popular around that time.

I I... My friends introduced me to these... To breaks. I started joining them. I started buying my own boxes again.

I started buying my own singles again. And, but the breaking part to me was really fun, so I decided I wanted to start doing it myself on the side. And at the time, I was still working in the corporate world, you know, full time job there. And, I was living with my buddies, and we started doing it on the side, just running breaks with friends and things like that. Max, my business partner, was one of the first people to actually join into my breaks.

And from there, like, it became an awesome partnership. We just... We decided that we wanted to... Kind of... Things were going in a good direction with the breaking, and I was really enjoying it.

It was taking up more and more of my time. And after about two years of doing it just on the side, we decided that we were gonna, rip the Band Aid and go full time. So I've been going full time, with Grant Salami Sports Cards for coming up on three years now. Congratulations on the run. That's awesome.

I love hearing kind of the, jumping in from a passion to let's make this our profession perspective, and it sounds like that's what, you know, kinda is is your story. Like, when you're in that moment, obviously, I think the point of contention is, like, you've got a corporate job that is paying your bills and supporting your hobby or supporting your, emerging breaking business. Like, how did you get confident and comfortable knowing that, like, I can quit this corporate job and say goodbye to this consistent salary, and I just believe in what I'm doing over here and believe in the upside a lot more. Like, what what made you feel comfortable and confident making that decision? It was certainly a leap of faith.

My wife and I had just had a a child, actually, and I was coming off of parental leave. And that was when I made the decision to go full time into cards and to not go back to the corporate world. Of course, like anybody that works in the corporate world, I did have my grievances and stress associated with that kind of lifestyle. And so for me to think about doing cards, something that I love full time was was just a dream. I'm also in, like, a very privileged position because my wife, who also works, she worked at the same place that I...

That's how we met. She still has that corporate job. So, you know, in terms of being able to actually start something from the ground up and maybe not be super profitable at the very beginning, like, I was in a very lucky position, thanks to her, that our family would be okay, while I built this thing out. So that was that was very reassuring in itself and allowed me to make that leap of faith. I don't think this gets talked about enough.

And maybe one of this topic in general, I think, is a very good one. I'm able to do what I'm able to do because my wife works in medicine, and she's able to get health benefits and do those things. And so it allows me to do this. And I just... I never really hear hear, industry professionals in this space talk about just, like, everything that needs to take place in order to successfully take that leap of faith.

And I think one of those is, like, having a partner that believes in you and can help provide benefits for you and your family. No. Definitely. And that belief in me is a huge thing. Right?

She she encouraged me to to pull the plug and to try to do this thing full time. And, having that belief is something that's really driven me and made this as seamless of a transition as it can be. You asked the question about how how did I know I was ready, and it certainly wasn't a dollars and cents standpoint that I was ready to pull the plug. You know, this was gonna be a major pay cut from my previous world to start with, and we really... For the...

Doing this thing, kind of as a side hustle for the first couple years, we were not making a whole lot of money. I think a lot of people think that breakers are making money hand over fist. For us, especially, we found a place in this ecosystem where we were trying to go higher volume, lower margin. And, yeah, the margins can be quite slim, depending on how you decide to price things out too. So especially for year one and year two, like, we were not very profitable, and we're we're finally starting to turn that a little bit around.

But it's it's definitely a pay cut from my previous life. I I think I think some people have a hard time understanding, and I think it's part of it is, like, everyone wants instant gratification, wants more everything instantly. But, like, having that perspective where, you know, you're gonna take a pay cut, and it might not be profitable for the, you know, first couple years. Like, how did you... How have you continued to kind of ensure confidence in you and with your partner that, like, the ends will justify the means?

Like, what you're building now will lead to kind of a better future, not only for the business, but for yourselves. Like, what do you have to tell yourself every day, especially when, like, maybe a break doesn't go your way or a product you were... Had a big bet on, didn't end up working out? Like, how do you keep restoring that confidence? Yeah.

And I think for for for us at Grand Slammy, the end goal is not to be a big breaker. I've always approached this thing, you know, looking at the end goal of having a community shop. And Seattle is a place that's, in my opinion, in dire need of an awesome, ultra modern community shop experience. You kind of have to get out to the burbs. There's some really good shops out in the burbs, in Seattle, but there's not anything in Seattle where collectors can kind of gather together, meet people, trade, share their love of the hobby together.

So for us, that's the that's the end goal is to eventually have a brick and mortar shop to open up and kind of create a place for sports fans, collectors of all kinds to be able to come out there and and share this love over cardboard. We've always looked at the breaking as being kind of the foundation for that in this new hobby economy. I think... And especially given Seattle rent and the cost associated with that and the labor pool and everything there, like, you need to have a really, really strong foundation to be able to take that jump into opening up a brick and mortar shop in Seattle. And for us, we've always looked at that online, that breaking business as being that foundation so that even if things go south or at a, like, a macro level in the hobby, if things go south, at least we still have that as kind of a foundation that we could lean on.

How important has that vision been that you just described of kind of why you do what you do? How important has that been during the ups and downs of building your business? Super important. I think, you know, for me, I've gotten so much from sports in my life, playing youth sports, coaching youth sports. I can't wait to start coaching my son who's three, and he's gonna be entering T ball for the first time.

I love taking my family to sporting events. I love going to Huskies games, Seahawks games, Mariners games, cracking games, all over the board. I can't wait to eventually go to the Sonics again. Seattle is a sports crazy town. I believe that we build community.

I believe that we build camaraderie. I believe that we are able to break down political barriers and share something over sports that's really special. And I think cards is a really awesome way to foment and grow that love for sports and community. And for me, that's what it's all about. Like, that's the dream to be able to open up something like that where sports fans from Seattle can congregate, come together, share experiences, talk about stories, make friends, make trades, you know, all these kind of things that...

Because I think card collecting is... There's no better way to, like, go deep into sports fandom than card collecting. And No doubt. It's a beautiful thing. Yeah.

No doubt. I think something that I'm picking up on that I think is interesting and maybe counter to what a lot of people in your position or people who run breaking companies, how they think. I think one thing that is clear that I picked up on from you is you're very focused, and you're very focused around a specific, probably, demographic of participant in this space. Like, I don't sense that you are, looking to cast the widest net possible and play the the volume game of we need more of this or we need more of that when it feels like a lot of the big players in the space are just trying to, you know, land grab. So you're, like, very focused, and you've...

You mentioned your city a lot. You've mentioned wanting to put a shop in there. Like, when you have this focus and you have this vision for what you wanna build and what you wanna become, like, how has that impacted kind of the decisions you've made as the operator on the the front end? Yeah. I think, you know, a community first mindset.

It's interesting because we do wanna have this, like, hyper localized Seattle oriented shop as the dream. But right now, a lot of my customers and friends that join our breaks are scattered around the country. We don't even have that many customers that are in the Seattle area. But that in itself has been a beautiful thing, making friends from all around the country, all around the world in some cases, people that come in and we we share that love over sports and and and cards with. I think that, for us, it's always people first.

We have a very tight knit community. We are not trying to cast a wide net. We're trying to do what we do really well. You know, for years and years and years, we we broke exclusively on YouTube. We list our breaks on Twitter slash x, and, like, we've kind of built our social media presence there without building social media presence in other places, TikTok, Instagram, things like that.

We're trying to play catch up there, but we, like, we have a very tight knit, I'd say smaller than average, but, like, small but mighty group of people that enjoy joining our breaks and sharing the community with other people that do join our breaks. And we try to do what we do in a really good way. And, yes, we've started to, like... In the spirit of growth, I I think it's been a real a real challenge because we have had to start looking at other avenues, right, other platforms. We've started to break on eBay live.

We've started to break on TikTok a little bit and trying to tap into new customer bases in the spirit of growth and trying to make this thing real and working. But the more and more trials that we've had in those different places, I think the more it's brought me back to, like, what we have, our core is really strong, and we have to keep that going. Oh my god. So much of what you just said resonates with me in a completely different way, and I wanna dig into it. I'll give you the example on my end.

There are a lot of people come up to me and ask me questions about my content and ask me why why don't I focus on video production and and building out this robust YouTube channel. And I always, like, give some answer that I don't really don't really have much substance to, but it's just like, I don't know type of an answer. But, like, I... The more I reflect on it, it's because, like, I have built my whole platform on, the audio medium, and my listener is on the go. They're chasing kids.

They're listening, but they don't have time to sit in front of a screen. And so that's my excuse. So what you said about, like, the YouTube to Twitter, while that's not conventional, that's afforded you the opportunity to probably get a lot of people's attention who... That's primarily how the platforms that they're using, and you're always showing up. So I don't know.

Like, what what is conventional right now is to break on eBay live, whatnot, Fanatics Live. That is, like, the conventional thing to do. And so the way you are approaching it or have approached it in the past is more unconventional, but the unconventional approach has worked for you so far. So maybe, like, talk a little bit about, like, the... What you're going through and experiencing.

And, obviously, you wanna grow more, so you wanna be on... In more places. But I'm guessing maybe those experiments haven't garnered the same results as just doing your standard, like, break on YouTube, promote on Twitter. Yeah. Definitely.

I think that, you know, there's a lot of spaces where you see breakers kind of veer into that are have enabled success for them, and I think a lot of that is around content creation. So you see a lot of Breakers that spend a lot of time on video production, content creation, trying to get ad revenue, trying to expand their social media clout, you know, coming up with highlight reels or top polls or, product review videos and things like that. For us, we run a really lean operation here. My... We talked about Max, my business partner, who's kind of our CFO, but, my friend Nick here, Nick Flugrath, we call him Flu.

He's our head of logistics, and he also shares this dream of opening up a Seattle shop with with me. We have been, Flu and I, have been hyper focused on delivering the best possible customer experience in breaks. You see me wearing the Haystack hat, that's something that we've done to, like, everything that we do is not so much around, like, let's let's, like, build content and create cool videos that people enjoy watching. It's literally, like, if you join a break, how can we make this the best possible break experience from you from start to finish? Is the price good?

Do you feel like you're getting value out of it? Do you feel like the breaker knows the product? Do you feel like the breaker has spent the time on the pricing to make sure that it's efficient and you're not gouging customers? Once the break actually happens, is it entertaining but not over the top? Does it feel authentic and genuine and not, not a lot of the negative things, I think, negative connotation that comes on with some of the breakers about just being loud and annoying and overreacting and over exaggerating trying to create this production.

But have it feel like, you know, it's a it's a collector that's opening those cards and, like, somebody that's invested themselves in the hobby and that likes to join breaks themselves. Like, that aspect of it, of that watching the break and feeling like you have somebody there, like your buddy there with you opening the cards. But then after the fact, the haystack thing. Right? Like, how can we make the value proposition better for customers?

We know, especially with everything going on at a macro level, even since I started doing this fairly recent in 2020, 2020, 2021, the value proposition in joining breaks has become harder and harder. The return on the price that you get, if you look at it that way, strictly from a monetary standpoint, if you're looking at the value of the cards compared to how much you pay for the spot, the RO... The return has gone down, I think, significantly. Wax prices have gone up, and, yes, we're in a boom economy when it comes to singles. But still, like, compared to 2020 and 2021, you're not getting as much juice out of that break spot that you might buy as as you are now.

So for us, like, we're constantly trying to figure out ways to make the juice worth more of this... You know? Like... And and part of that is haystack. Right?

For new releases, we know that we wanna... Like, if customers plan on selling any of the cards that they pull from a break, we wanna make sure that they get those cards sold as quickly as possible because we know that there's such a release day, release week bump. Oftentimes, when you join a break, you have to wait, you know, especially if it's like a 25 case break. You have to wait two weeks for your cards to come, and then you have to do all the work to image them, describe them, get them up on eBay. And by that time, the cards have lost, in some cases, 50, 75% of their value, especially in something like Bowman that's highly volatile with prospects.

So with Haystack, we're able to get those images into customer hands right away. We offer consignment service at at a really low rate. We offer free grading evaluation. If anybody wants to send their cards off the PSA right away, they could be one of the first ones to get their card graded and have that low pop card to work with. And then, of course, like, the last leg is the shipping, like, taking care of people's cards.

We we are hyper focused on card care. Like, from the time it comes out of the pack all the way through its life cycle till it gets to the customer, we wanna make sure things are sleeved, top loaded, well protected, can survive all of the handling things that we know happen with USPS, UPS, etcetera, and they get to a customer's doorstep in good condition. So Alright. There's a lot I wanna dig into there. You...

Like, at the beginning of this, you reference, like, the hobby economy, and I love that positioning of, like, what's going on, because I think of it that way. And my perspective on the current hobby economy from a business perspective is that the industry is really good at... Businesses in the industry as a whole is really good at getting attention and converting that attention into new business. And then Yeah. That's the focus.

It's continuing that, over and over again. But I don't think it's as good as at the customer, management or customer retention side. And, like, what what I heard you talk about through all of this is, like, you're just... You're you're, like, radically obsessed with, like, delivering a customer experience that is going to make the people who come in and break with you feel good. You're gonna give them opportunities to move cards quickly.

So speed is important through platforms like Haystack. And you talk about the card care, making sure that there's no issues, and you're giving kind of that white glove service to the cards that people are using. How do you think, like, having that customer obsessed mindset, how do you think that has benefited kind of your business and maybe, like, the growth of your business to this point? Well, I think, you know, a big part of running a successful breaking company is that return customer and customer loyalty. And you want somebody that joins your break for the first time to wanna come back and join more.

And you want that to be for all the reasons I described. Right? There's so many different elements that make somebody come back to the... To that same breaker. And, I think with...

Especially with how saturated the market is with breakers new and old, like, there's so many different options for people to break anywhere. You know, if it's a new release, especially, you're gonna you're gonna have hundreds, thousands of different options, formats, breakers, styles to to jump into, and we just wanna be able to find ways that we can differentiate ourselves and our services. And I think Haystack is probably the biggest one that we do, but shipping times, fair pricing, entertainment value, community, bringing community to people's doorsteps and giving people like, even if you're new, like, you're gonna get a shout out in the chat, and you're gonna feel like you're part of the community, and you're gonna get added to a group chat if you wanna be part of it. Like, that's that's it for me. How much...

Obviously, I think when people think about breaking, obviously, they think about, like, going into the chat, seeing cards be ripped, the chat com... Comradery conversation going, on. But, like, behind the scenes, there's so much work. Right? You're you're sourcing inventory.

You're probably trying to figure out if your operations need, to improve. How can you improve them? Where can you find the edge? Tech... Not use of technology or what we're using.

Is this what we should be using? You're probably... You know, you've got the books to be kept. You've got Yeah. Growth, ambitious growth that you're trying to figure out.

Where can we experiment? Mhmm. Like, when you think about your day, or your week, however you wanna break it up, like, how much time is in... Spent being in front of the camera breaking cards, and how much time is spent doing all the other things that no one really talks about? Oh my gosh.

That's a great question. I mean, it's evolved for me. We started this thing as being kind of a one man operation where it was just me doing everything. And now here at our salami shack, we call it our little office space, 400 square foot cave down here in South Lake Union right next to the Amazon campus. There's now six of us.

So we have three folks that are breaking and three folks that are more focused on logistics, sorting, shipping, imaging, all of those things. For me, in my role, I've definitely had to dial back the amount of time that I'm on camera opening cards, whereas I was doing it thirty, forty hours a week. Previously, now I probably only get to do it about ten to fifteen hours a week. Luckily, the way that we operate is we don't do a whole lot of live selling. We're not sitting there on an eBay live and trying to live sell spots.

It might take three, four hours to fill a break, and then you run the break and it might take a half hour. We do a lot of our selling on just Twitter and x, and we prefill and we break when it's... When the break fills. And so there's a lot of work that goes into getting a break full, but a lot of that happens off camera. And then we rip, and then there's a lot of work that happens after that too.

So, I would say I probably spend ten to fifteen hours of my work week breaking at the moment. I probably spend five to ten hours on product procurement. We have to be very scrappy and kind of a little bit of that hustler mindset because we don't have allocation. With anybody, we don't have tops allocation. We don't have any of the big distributor allocation on the Panini side.

So we're we're on Dealernet. We're on social media trying to find good deals on wax. We're working with people trying to, to find product as cheap as we could possibly find it. But without allocation, we have to be real smart about that. So I do spend a lot of time on that product procurement side.

And then a lot of it too is, like, the ideation and the creation of the breaks themselves. Right? Coming up with fun unique formats that people might find interesting, pricing them out. You know, if you're pricing out a fixed price, pick your player for Topps Chrome. There might be 600 spots in the break.

So trying to price that in a way where we can come in at not a ridiculous number, but also not have to give so many significant discounts to be able to fill the break. That in itself is an art in somewhere where I actually really enjoy that aspect of it, trying to figure out the best way to price a particular player or a particular team in a break. I I love, yeah, I love this, you know, building a business without, you know, direct allocation from, like, the major manufacturers and having to be scrappy and nimble and getting on Dealernet and finding products a good price that you believe in. Maybe take us into, like, one of those procurement stories where, like, walk us through, like, you spotting something and having the instincts to say, like, this is something that I believe in. It's at a good price, and I believe based on the format that I'm going to create, it's going to be great for our customers, and, also, it has a chance to be profitable for us as a business.

Is there a specific example that comes to mind? Yeah. It's a product that actually has been obsoleted. But if you know me, you know that this is my favorite product of all time, and that's twenty twenty two finest flashbacks. We we have ripped thousands of boxes of twenty twenty two finest flashbacks from the very beginning all the way from release until...

I mean, I think our last twenty twenty two finest flashbacks break was probably, like, three months ago. And we are responsible for ripping, like, about 5% of the entire print run. Because when you do the math on pack odds, I think there's only, like, 16,000 boxes or so printed. And from the very beginning, I've always been a huge fan of flashbacks. It's a...

It's an awesome checklist. You get the 2022 rookie class. Right? So you had Julio with... At the time, it was Wander.

Then, of course, you have the Ohtani and Judge. Both those guys have autos. Kyle Raleigh came onto the scene last year, and his his card started jumping. CJ Abrams is in there. He had a great year this year.

Like, I love the 2022 rookie class, and I love the fact that Finest Flashbacks has an abbreviated auto checklist that even though you don't hit an auto per box, you're usually gonna get one and one per five or six boxes. And when you do hit an auto, it's going to be numbered and it's going to be a really good name. There's very few misses in that auto checklist. And, the ceiling, of course, is really high with the Ohtani and the Judge autos and Whit and Julio. That in itself, like, I've been a huge advocate of that product that was picking up as much as I possibly could.

That was an online exclusive release, so it's not something that was allocated to breakers. So that's a place where we could be... We can stand out to because there's no edge that the folks with direct accounts are getting. We're all sourcing from the same place. It's either from the tops website or from one of these, you know, dealer net trading marketplaces, b to b trading marketplaces or, really anywhere that people can source product from.

But we... We've been pretty consistently buying buying that product just because we feel like our customers love it. It's pretty good return. There's massive chases that you always need if you're gonna fill a break. And, like, it's something that you can run whether you're running a one box format, a two box format.

I think the biggest one that we ever ran was, like, a 100 boxes. Yeah. And now you look at it, that product, I think, MSRP was $200, something like that, maybe, like, $1.80 back at the time it came out. But now on the secondary market, it's up over $4.50, and the supply has really dwindled. There's hardly...

You could hardly find any boxes. But, yeah, that's been a place where, like, we stocked up. We made a move on it really aggressive. I think at one point, we probably had, you know, $70,000 worth of inventory that we were sitting on. So it was a big move for a company that has not a whole lot of cash to work with without having to take out debt.

And it ended up being a success story for us, I think. That's amazing. Better breaks that we ever did. Yeah. Yeah.

I was not expecting that, response, but you walking through all of it made it... They all make sense to me. Whether it's Later, I think, like, lately, 2026, the... I would go Logo Fracture. Logo Fracture was great.

I, the pack odds came out, and we did the... Of course, like, I love... I don't know if you follow Waxmetrics or Slapsquatch on Twitter or on Instagram or Reddit or anything like that. He does the pack odds analysis, and he's a good friend of mine. When it came out that logo factor, the print run wasn't drastically higher than it was in previous years.

I knew that it was gonna be great with how awesome the 2026 rookie class is, and those boxes hit the shelves at the MLB store at a 120. And now on on d learn it, I I don't don't think you can find them for less than 200. So we... That was another one where we made a big move in in getting as much as we could at, you know, $1.50. And, that has been also another great product to break for our customers because it's not super expensive, but there's also...

You know, the average return, I would say, is a lot higher than with something like Topps Chrome Hobby or Topps Chrome Jumbo. 100%. I'm a a wrestling card collector is one of my main... So logo fracture, I'd buy into the logo fracture breaks, and I was like, I'd buy the John Cena spot. And Yeah.

I would do... I was just... It was like nothing compared to Hobby, and I was just crushing it. I was like, these cards are incredible. And then you start to listen to content, and everyone starts saying, oh, this is the...

One of the best products to buy into this and that. So, that that resonates with me in a big way. We could go back to where LogoFractor was in 2022 and 2023 when it was in year one and year two. But Yes. You know, it's...

That's just not realistic to go back to that low of a print run given the demand and everything that's going on with the hobby. But that was an all time product. 2022 logo factor was also an all time b. And '23 was really good. Yeah.

I'm not surprised you being a big '22 rookie class guy. Yeah. I... I'd love to know, like, unrelated to this or not, like, what is the most memorable pull that you have had? Like, what stands out?

The most memorable poll for me, is actually non sports, which is funny because I would say, like, 98% of the product that we open is sports and, you know, of that, you know, 90% is baseball. But the biggest pull that we've ever had was a Disney card. It was 2023 Topps Chrome Disney, hundredth anniversary. Of course, we know that that product is... And and especially in the last year has gone to the moon.

But I did a one box break, and I pulled a a one of one Mickey Mouse. You're kidding me. Yeah. It was the platinum Mickey Mouse, the one of one. So it was an insert.

Yeah. But there's only the one of one. It's like that silver Mickey Mouse, and it was a one box break, I think. Wow. That card now is probably worth upwards of 200, $300,000.

Yeah. Oh, man. It's Pretty crazy. Yeah. And what I think is crazy is the fact that, like, you can say I pulled a 2023 Mickey Mouse one of one, and, like, it gave me that reaction, and that's where we're at.

But it's the hobby economy. Things are growing, expanding, new lanes are, opening up. And maybe, like, that's where we close it out. I'd be curious to know just, like, with the rapid expansion across licenses, product lines. Obviously, I...

I'm not in your position, but there's probably a lot of distractions just like there's a lot of distractions for collectors on what break to buy in or what card to put a bid on or hit buy it now on. Like, how do you how do you manage the distractions and make sure that you continue to stay hyper focused on the business that you're building and that vision that you have set? Well, you know, I think that... Especially, like, thinking about Topps baseball products, Fanatics has done a really good job at adding these crazy Easter egg massive chases. Right?

The debut patch thing is a is a really good example. But even in a lot of other products, they've added these needle in a haystack massive super chases in pretty much every product from flagship to the to the Ultra Premium. But I think that can be misleading to customers. You know? Not everybody is in tune with the pack odds and understands just how rare it is to pull a card like that.

And so being able to price a break, looking at the checklist holistically, and understanding that those big chases are not... Are probably not going to come out, like, that's a place where I feel like I've spent a lot of time and effort, and especially on, like, the product procurement side, finding stuff that outside of those big hits still has good value. Because, you know, you look at Topps Chrome update and people talk about the debut patch tax, it's a real thing. And, you know, even though you have an infinitesimally small chance of getting a debut patch, you know, 50% of the the price for that spot that you're buying might be linked to that to that chase in itself. So that's a product to me that without those big chases, probably the value of the product drops off quite a bit.

I'm... I spend a lot of my time in product procurement trying to find products that... As a whole, you know, your typical case or your typical five cases is gonna return some pretty awesome cards in itself. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Bert Ryan, Grand salami sports cards and breaks.

Go check out their breaks. We'll have to do this again down the road. I felt like there was a lot more that I could have gotten into, but love how you're thinking about the business that you're building. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate you reaching out.

I would... This was a lot of fun.