alright welcome back to another episode of passion to profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay excited for another conversation with someone new someone we have not spoken to on this series before we're unlocking a new character and we're gonna be talking about building a scalable consignment business in the modern hobby with anthony from top notch sports club without further ado anthony welcome how are you good how are you appreciate you having me yeah i appreciate your flexibility maybe peek behind the curtain i got caught up with the the baby and luckily anthony is a very patient guest and was waiting in the room for me to return so anthony i appreciate your flexibility in having this conversation today absolutely i was looking forward to it i wasn't gonna give up on this so let's maybe learn a little bit about you you know before we get into the business let's learn about just kinda your history in collecting and in the hobby like when does this when does this start for you and and what does that journey look like so it all started back in the day my dad used to own a little convenience store and used to sell cards out of that and as a kid growing up i was around it my whole life so as i was younger he would always bring me to stores buy packs buy boxes christmas that's when i would get cards so it all started from there and it kinda stemmed up into when i was sixteen i got back into it like a little a little more hardcore than i was when i was a kid and i started opening packs live on on youtube and then that turned into being a breaker on youtube and doing through the mail payments back when it all started and took some time off and then got back into it in twenty fifteen and kinda made some steps into the breaking field again and then that led into consignment and then that led into grading and then now four other employees later here we are that's incredible let's go back to maybe that moment of your dad's store i think for many of us who are kind of thinking about that our first exposure to cards was in that moment right we go to the store with our moms and dads and we get a little bit of an allowance and we can see the old you know hobby boxes flir ultra you know upper deck you name it and you know get a pack for like ninety nine cents was the best thing of all time maybe talk to to us about that experience for you and just like what what kinda what kinda hobby boxes was your dad bringing in and how often did you kinda sneak in there and and get some box to rip so so what i do remember is early nineties stuff he always had so i mean i was very young when he was running that business out of the convenience store but i don't really remember a lot of it but what i do remember is as time went on and he started getting me into the hobby that's when pokemon was really really really big so that's i was into sports but he would always buy me pokemon packs or he'd always buy me old school baseball packs basically when the when autographs and relics well relics was was the hottest thing in the world so i don't remember really a lot of the the convenience store type stuff but i do remember you know stories here and there that led into what he got me into so he used to we used to have like three stores by us and we would go there all the time and we would always buy a box or always bring home packs yeah i mean i felt spoiled because he was around it his whole life so the opportunity that i got at that time being able to afford it back then we used to do chores for it i used to cut the you used to say alright it was me and my buddy if you cut the lawn i'll go i'll go buy you guys each couple packs so we'd go to local store after we were done cutting lawn boom and and it just grew from there we took those cards and and moved it into something else and then it's i it's so i wish i can go back to those days really wish i could i'm with you i'd probably be buying a lot more rare and scarce nineties parallels that's right so you you mentioned when you were kinda doing the flyby of like you know breaking consignment and then you now you got four employees like when when you first started this like what was your goal or intention like did you think that this was going to be something that could be your career was this something that you were just doing on the side because you were passionate maybe talk about that like from early days to where you're at now where you're not only managing a a company but you're managing people so back in back in in two thousand and seven when i was doing it on youtube it was it was a total different atmosphere a total different feel of everything i mean we had to collect payments through the mail money orders checks so at that time as a collector it was a lot different than what it is now at the time i was doing it for fun we had a a a group of people which some of them are still in the industry today that i still talk to times then versus now are are completely different but when i got back into it in twenty fifteen i was still working a normal job i i know exactly what i bought too it was twenty fifteen strata football and baseball and i'm like you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna continue to work my job but i'm gonna have fun like i did back then started running breaks started growing it twenty sixteen with dak and zeke things kind of exploded i mean relic cards were selling for hundreds of dollars relic cards and it and it was just it blew my mind so i did that for a while until it got to covid times where we know everything exploded things got crazy and i started questioning myself every day as i was at my real job and i'm like why am why am i doing this this is my passion this is what i grew up around this is what i love i know everything about it i'm a great people person on the camera i know i used to do it all the time so i just need to just take that leap of faith i had a couple big breakers in industry in the industry message me and say hey i'm telling you you're gonna wanna you're gonna wanna quit your job and just do this full time it's well worth it so i did that and yeah now it's just it's it's in it's it's crazy it's not it's not like covid times but we were able to scale it and be ahead of the curve when one area slows down we knew to be in the consignment when the consignment slowed down we knew to be in the grading and now they all just work hand in hand and it's it's crazy what it turned out to be i i never expected to quit my job and do this full time but anybody could do it honestly it's there's enough people in this industry and the hobby that there's still room to grow and i i think the future's bright for this industry that i love it the i think a lot of individuals out there listening there are people who are out there that were in your situation or are in your situation now and they're debating they're debating should this this doesn't feel safe but this is what i love should i leave this stable income and go try this on my own i've been testing this and it feels right but they're uncertain i think to take that leap of faith and and do what you do it it takes some you know courage and it takes some also uncertainty do you remember specifically the moment you had where you like had enough energy and you had enough courage around kinda putting in your two weeks notice and then going off and building what you where you're working today yes so honestly it got to the point where my my boss at my at my old job knew the time was coming already they knew my passion they knew how good i was doing and they were questioning why i was even still working but obviously i'm very loyal when it comes to to work and and everything i do so i didn't wanna leave them straggling but it came to the point where i had a bad day as soon as i got into to my job and i'm like you know what this is it like my wife my i still remember it to this day we had an issue a leak at the office and and my wife i texted my wife i'm like i cannot and i i she's like you know what i i'm i'm done hearing the complaining you i know you could do it so just do it so i talked to my boss gave her my keys and they let me walk that day and and the rest is history that that's incredible you you were talking about these different service lines with your business and you know and the times and changing breaking grading consignment maybe talk about your like how you think about each of those sides of your business how they maybe work together how maybe they work independently like how do you staff each of those groups maybe talk about right state of your business so when we when i started just breaking i actually i invested very so when i was working a normal job i would never use a penny of what i made breaking i always stored it off to the side in case a day like this came where i i wanted to quit so i took all my money and invested in some cards and i end up selling it and i used the consignment service i used dc sports i used zach zach is someone i i've known for a long time i've looked up to him i model my business around him and they used to own a breaking company and they got out of that and strictly did consignment and i started seeing what opportunity there was to have everything work hand in hand under one roof and when i noticed that people that hit stuff wanted to sell it right away that's what made me think like alright we have something here for to start us off to get going on this we're gonna start whenever we open that day for a new release we're gonna offer to sell it for them so they can maximize their money so once that happened and those items sold and the people were happy with it they're like oh we'll just keep the money and i'll can i just use it in another break so i'm start i started like alright this makes more sense so that's why we started going heavy in in the consignment because it helped us fill our breaks it gave people more money more opportunities to to not dig in their pockets as much and use stuff that they hit to pay for their breaks for a a future break then it then i started expanding and and people are like oh can i just mail you these cards and put leave money with you and i can just use it for you lay use it with you later and i'm like absolutely so then i started thinking alright well this is now we just need to take anything we can get sell their stuff and let them use that money as credit so we we evolved that's where i'm like alright well i had somebody helping me part time sorting stuff now i need someone to take pictures and then i need someone to pull it then so it it it was like a snowball effect and i knew people we had people in place i had somebody working remotely with me doing breaks in another state so it's like i had all the moving pieces i just needed to just execute and it got to the point where we we we got it under we had a system going it was good but it needed to be better and then that's when i invested all my money and and got a site built it's everybody has their own account they could track their sales they could use all that money for breaks they could request a cash out so now over the time we've evolved in the in the steps and and basically built this empire where we could offer anything so yeah it's it's crazy when when you were kind of in those early days and you're figuring this out and you come to this realization you i'm sure you have a a big under a a deep understanding of the re the time and resource allocation that you as the owner and individual can put into consignment or put into breaking or put into grading and realizing like this is this is where i this is my limit where i'm gonna stretch myself thin like maybe talk to us about like the like on the employee side hiring and investing in people like how do you think about those moments where you realize that if i really wanna take this to the next level it just can't be me and i need to actually pay people who i know and trust to help me build this so i was very fortunate obviously not everybody can can be in in these shoes that i'm in but like at the time of when i when i started to really expand while working my normal job i was actually going through a separation so like i had a lot of time i invested a lot of there's times i would i would get off of work at three thirty and i'd be breaking from four o'clock until four o'clock in the morning and i would i would have everything packed up hit the gym and i'd be at work the next day at seven o'clock in the morning i'd be running on three hours of sleep i'd be doing this seven days a week unless i had my kids so i was very fortunate to have time to be able to understand it be able to basically wear myself out once it got to the point of alright i found somebody i'm with i'm i'm getting married now it's like i can't do this by myself i can't i i it was great while it lasted but if i wanna continue to do this i i have to hire people and that's when i realized like i'm very driven and very i like to have my eyes on every aspect of the business because i don't wanna screw anything up so it it was very hard at first to open up and allow people to take over roles to to do what i did but as time went on and i saw how easy it was to allow these employees to do it it allowed me to feel comfortable in the future to expand and and and prioritize and and and basically allow other people to do my job where it got to the point where i was able to just to break and everybody else do what they had to do to run this business so i'm very fortunate it took a lot of time and a lot of a lot of energy and a lot of missed time with my family to understand what i had to do to get to the next level but i'm fortunate now that i have the people in place and i'm actually getting to that point again where i'm i'm hitting my limits because now we're we're starting with ebay live and that's just a whole another beast added on so i have the employees in place but i'm always willing to to expand and and and get other people and have other people do more things to make sure that this works because i don't every the biggest fear is failure obviously nobody wants to fail i i i think the early experience and and and knowing what i had to go through and versus how easy it is now i i i'm at the point now where i'm okay with letting everyone else do everything that needs to be done because everybody know i'm very fortunate to have people here that work here that know the industry that's the the most important thing is having people that you could trust and having people that know this industry the i wanna get into the kinda your thoughts on just live selling the model like how you're thinking about it at your business but i i wanna maybe dig a little further on just like this the investment side and we talked a little bit about people and scale but you know as a small business that's growing like i'm sure you have to make a lot of different decisions regularly that involves you know money and it's i'm going to buy into more product i'm going to invest in technology how do you think about allocating kind of the money that's coming into certain items knowing that like every decision you make that involves money is not gonna be a home run like you're gonna have some misses but like how do you get comfortable with making those investments with the goal of trying to kinda grow to the next level with your with your company so my honest opinion and i've always i've always said this if it's something i believe in i just go full force and i spend whatever i was very like i said earlier on i was very fortunate enough to put all my money away that i made which led into investments which end up selling i sold a massive collection during covid at at the peak and i reinvested that in the properties reinvested in other cards reinvested in my business we're to the point now where i don't i obviously things are expensive now allocations are a thing of the past product is expensive everything that you just named is is expensive my website is expensive but i believe in it i believe in the industry i believe in our our whole business and i i used to worry about financials but now we're to the point where i know if i spend the money what we have to offer and what we do will make the money so i'm not really scared per se into investing it is a lot of money people don't understand the the what we have to do to to to buy product and what we have to do to make this thing work but i've always believed that if you go full force if you believe in it it's gonna work out so i don't really worry about it too much anymore with this space with the money with the sales i mean it's crazy following kind of total monthly sales volume and card ladder and it's just it's been insane but it also feels a little more sustainable than it did in twenty twenty one which i think is encouraging for anyone building a business in this space you what you're working on there are a lot of other companies that exist and probably new ones popping up today that are trying to be what you are how do you think about just kinda like your advantage or your your opportunity for differentiation as you grow and the market continues to get more crowded with other businesses doing similar stuff yeah honestly we we've noticed once we once i started offering consignment i felt like i was behind obviously because zach was doing it and there was a couple other smaller people that were doing obviously protein and all of them so i already i already felt a little disadvantage there but my main goal was to just focus on my customers i wasn't worried about focusing on other new customers that we don't have so that's why i scaled to just the current customers we had on facebook now the new people coming in i feel like it's growing every day there's people that are wanting to sell items there's people that obviously are breaking so it's like i always used to focus on other people and other things because i wanted to see where we stand with other people but it got to the point where i need to just focus ahead i i know what we have i know what we're capable of doing and i can't worry about other people there's enough there's enough people out there in this industry where everybody could eat you can't be greedy i'm not greedy by any means i think it's good that other breakers are are wanting to sell their customer cards it's people come to me all the time asking me hey you know i don't want you to take this the wrong way i'm trying to do this and at first when you know years ago i used to like oh of course they're copying now i'm like no this is good like if they need my help i'm very fortunate in in in where we're at today i don't mind helping other people i don't mind helping people build their consignment program or whatever so i'm not really worried about other other people a lot of people look up to our model and how we do things so i'm i'm i'm appreciative of that so yeah i'm not really worried about any other breaker or any other person trying to get in this field there's there's plenty of there's plenty of people out there where we all can do the same thing and there's always gonna be people that there's always gonna be people doing it i'm not worried about it so the customer of top notch sports club that comes in uses your services obviously like your goal is to have them have an excellent experience and you build trust with them and then they keep coming back and they use you for breaking or consignment or whatever it may be how do you think about like the retention of those customers that are coming in like what are some of the things you think about putting in place in order for them to keep coming back and then how are you how are you find like what are ways that you are finding new people are finding you like what are some growth strategies or tactics or things that you're leaning into that that have worked honestly the biggest the biggest thing is obviously our customers have to trust us our my name's been out there in the industry for a long time so people people know us from years ago people have recommended us but honestly the new people coming in are honestly references like people referring us to to them and our biggest advantage right now is we're not big enough to where we can't take on a lot of new customers we we we find ways to make it work a lot of consignment companies right now you have to wait two to three weeks before they list a card our biggest model our motto is send stuff in you send in twenty items we'll those twenty items will drop the next day now if you send us five hundred items we'll get like fifty up the next day we try to do it within one business day at least a small batch and that's what kind of like gravitates people to us because they're like alright i have to wait three weeks over here you might be a little bit higher on the fees but i get to talk to the owner understand everything that's going on and you can get started right away now obviously if we get busier things would have to change but like i would adapt i would get another employee so that we can offer the same exact thing so people will say hey alright i wanna send in twenty items when would when when will those get up i'll say the next business day so that's one huge advantage and that's why a lot of people started switching over the biggest thing was a lot of times people feel more comfortable when they're dealing with the person that owns the company and i and i and i firmly believe i know i don't have a lot of time i have a family but my my phone's always in my hand i'm always working i don't even if it's eleven or twelve o'clock at night i'm laying in bed and people are messaging me i'm answering is that great business wise yes so i've always thought that was one advantage that i offer to customers you get to talk to the owner if you have questions at any time unless i'm sleeping you're gonna get a response right away i just take i take a lot of pride in this industry i take pride in our work and i and i and i love cards it's not just a job to me i love it i've been around it my whole life so any advantage i can get i'll i'll i i'm just being me and i think a lot of people appreciate that and they feel that connection and that's why a lot of people have left other places and come to us you know and and honestly there's there's people that come to us and say hey i'm still gonna use this other company but i know you guys can get things done right away so i'm gonna send you stuff that i just hit today i'm gonna over like i just had a customer before we hopped on this call he owns a braking company he tried to do consigning he just doesn't have the time to do it he goes hey i just hit these cards for my customer if i overnight them to you when can you get them up i go tomorrow for you it's a new product we're gonna get it up tomorrow so a lot of people appreciate that and that fast response time is everything to them that's awesome let's get over and chat a little bit about ebay obviously you sell through ebay maybe talk about like the why behind that and the infrastructure of ebay and how it supports your business and then i'd love to hear just your thoughts and how you're thinking or if you've already incorporated kind of the live selling piece so yeah we haven't done any of the live yet we're we were just actually i just had two meetings today with the live team and and getting the ball rolling on that that's of course another another thing to be added to my plate which we're very grateful for because in my opinion ebay has been around forever it's in my opinion the best tool the best way to to sell something i've used it my whole life and i and i truly believe in everything that they do and our website that we have for consignment works hand in hand with ebay and not with any other company now i did have a little bit of i i worried a little bit when these new platforms came out because i'm like great we just invested all this money into ebay we just invested all this money in our website that only talks to ebay so i was a little bit worried in my opinion everything is on ebay you don't need to you don't need to have a an approval like a auction house where you can you you know you have to be approved you have to there's too many steps in that stuff and people i i feel like everybody just gravitates towards ebay and i i i think i i got i know i lost track on that question but we haven't started ebay live yet we're we're gonna be starting soon but everything that we do is is with ebay and i think that long term this thing will still be standing where other places may come and go yeah it's it's it's hard to deny that and when i think about maybe just like or we dig into a little bit about your system and process and maybe the use of ebay like as you've kinda tinkered with consignment and over the years and tried to build you mentioned earlier about like you had a system in place but you're trying to build a better system like what are the types of things that you have maybe evolved and changed over the year whether it's like how you've it can be something as simple as like how you facilitate payment to your customer or anything else just wanna dig a little bit into kinda the way you think about your systems so my original system which is this you're gonna laugh at this one people laugh at this when i tell them i used to have an excel spreadsheet and manually have each tab as a customer code and i knew what customer it was and i would no lie every day when i go to print labels i would use the i would use the sheet that they give you and i would copy and paste to every customer manually the totals what our fee was and the payout and i would have a google doc sheet that our customers could access and i would update those every day and i would mainly do all of that every single day three two to three item two to three hundred items a day uh-huh seven days a week i did it so the amount of time that i i invested in that at some point i had to change because i just didn't have the time or the energy anymore so we evolved into the website thankfully we had someone that we found locally here we sat down with them we came up with a plan and it took about a year about six months to a year and we we slowly let this thing out and everybody's now able to just sign up on our website create an account we apply their customer code to their account and everything that we list on ebay has a two to three digit code at the end of the title and our website talks to ebay and within milliseconds pulls all the data in live time and it's come a long way because we we we it it got to the point where it would update you know two two to three times a day now we're as of last year we got everything in lifetime people's money go in there they it goes in their accounts within seconds of it being paid for so we've evolved over time we invested the money into it and honestly very proud of of what we've built we've come a long way from the start and we're we're we're we're advancing and and looking at at ways to make it better honestly every day how many years did you you do the the copy and paste thing in the two years two years every day in my basement i i would i would i would i would be taking the pictures for consignment and my and john that works for me now he he'd been working with me since twenty seventeen he would be in downstairs sorting a break and i'd be over here taking pictures printing out labels listing and then at the end like every so often as things got paid for i'd be i'd be putting it in the system for two years i i felt i think it was at least two years what what kept what kept you going doing that not just thinking that you're going crazy like how what motivated you during that time the money because i i was very fortunate to be at it was covid times where we fully launched everything and we couldn't keep any product on hand we couldn't i i mean we were filling breaks within seconds we would and we would list a break it would be full like we wouldn't even have time to breathe my my biggest passion is opening cards i i i love it as a kid i i i tell this story all the time and i'll keep it very short my grandfather passed away and left left me money and my dad always he always believed in everything that i did and he always i felt like now looking back he always let me do stuff to let me learn my own mistakes and i opened stuff as a kid when i was you know fifth it was two thousand and two where i i was buying cases because i my grandfather left me money and my passion is just opening cards i love it and a lot of people nowadays are like oh breakers did everything oh why why do they get excited when it's not their stuff i love it i like that's my biggest passion in this industry i love collecting but opening stuff is my so us being able to fill stuff and and continuously open stuff i love it that's what drive if i could break all day and and and delegate all the other part of the business to everyone else i would open stuff and be live twenty four hours a day i love it so that's what helped motivate me because we're at the point during covid where making good money everything was fast and i'm the type of person where everything has to be done right and aft it has to be done when i do it so like i would ship the same day or if not the next day all the breaks out we were crazy so it just one thing fed each other and it motivated me more and more and more because i saw what we were building so the excel sheets seemed pretty difficult it seemed extensive but i i always work a hundred miles a minute so it's like i i never until now when you asked me that question i never really thought about how much time i really invested into those excel sheets that's amazing you gotta you gotta since you've probably opened a lot of product whether it was in those early days from the funding from your grandfather or just in your business what are maybe do you have any memorable pulls any cards that stand out to you or moments yeah so there's a couple and again i'll be short with it because i could talk about this for days so john that works for me he act before he started working for me he was local and he found i don't know how he found my facebook room but we were opening twenty seventeen national treasures and he end up taking the chiefs and nobody knew who patrick mahomes was we i pulled him a number to twenty five rpa true rpa to twenty five he end up getting rid of it for like two thousand dollars and some change twice actually because he sold it on ebay and they returned it because they thought it was damaged so i feel bad for whoever returned it but that card end up hitting at at during the peak like two hundred and fifty plus thousand dollars at the time we didn't know nobody knew and he asked me my advice i'm like oh just get rid of it we we still joke around about it all the time at the office we pulled that we pull i pulled out of twenty eighteen national treasures the one of one tom brady game use tag auto that sold for over a hundred thousand at golden we pull a lot of big cards i mean you know memorable stuff couple years ago we pulled the mantle bat knob out of five star one of one we pulled we we do i'm very i i love doing old school breaks in my room so like time there's times where i'll go out and find some o three o four stuff because i grew up around the lebron era lebron's from my area mhmm we love that i collected lebron and pulled a rpa out of spx back five four or five years ago so like i still buy products to this day to to to do those older products we pull a lot of big cards jordan supreme hardcore one of one logo tags some autos we pulled a bunch of jordan autos so like over the years we pulled super fractures out of draft we like so there's so many some that pan out some that were big at the time that are absolutely nothing now so yeah there's there's there's been a lot of a lot of big pulls that's amazing and while i got you thinking of cards is there any like card on the consignment side that came through your shop that you maybe were expecting it to sell well but kind of overexceeded your expectations and blew you away anything stand out to you yeah i mean there's times where we had luca rookies come in and i'm like i didn't think i i knew the market but it changed so frequently that by the time we sold it i'm like holy crap like it it just went from twenty grand last week and we end up selling a blue prism i don't remember why that was hit for forty six thousand dollars that we sold it for and i'm like that far exceeds what the last one sold for i mean for instance last night i personally listed some pokemon stuff that i bought two weeks ago at a show and just the difference of two weeks or maybe it may be about a month now but just the difference of a month the cards went you know went from i i was expecting to get you know eight thousand for this this set and it ended up going for thirteen thousand so it's like there's things that are the opposite effect though where i think hey i i someone asked me what my opinion is and i'm thinking like five thousand and it sells for two thousand so it's like we see it all the time and it happens more frequent than than not where i i i'm like hey i think this is gonna go for this it goes for less but then there's times where the last one sold for this i expect this and it sells for a hundred and ten percent or a hundred and thirty percent of what it it did last it changes so often that it's so hard to predict anymore that's incredible anthony you can you can feel the passion behind what you're building and as we maybe round this out what's what's the what's your vision for for your company like what what are you gonna be doing you know five ten years from now like what what are you what's your goal i'll be honest with you because i love this industry so much i'll i'll talk about it real quick i truly hope that we get to a point in time where multiple companies could have licensing agreements because i think that's just gonna build out what we already have and just make it better i think i think down the road we're gonna get to that point where they will have it and i think the hobby will grow even more and and i don't i don't see breaking going away i think that's a a huge part of this industry i think it's the most important part of this industry ten years from now i think we're i'm still gonna be doing the same thing i still think because i have passion of opening things i still think we're gonna be here doing that i i i i no matter what we no matter what happens i'm gonna be in the industry if it's as a collector and retired at that point i don't know but i hope i hope i can just continue it and it be a point where i don't care about the money side of it anymore and i just do it for fun i could see that in the future ten years from now what what what advice do you have for anyone who's listening who might be thinking about starting a business in this space in twenty twenty six do it take the leap of faith don't hesitate on it if if you're if you're already thinking it you already have the right mindset to do it just do it you you you have every advantage out there the internet is full of every resource that you could ever need and as long as you put the time into it you're gonna succeed there's no way that you cannot in this industry anthony from top notch sports club anthony great conversation man it was nice to get your feedback learn a little bit about your passion and excited to see what's next for you guys i appreciate you having me