I'm pumped about this episode.

We're gonna be talking about, building a business. Obviously, that's what we do on Passion and Profession, but we're gonna focus in on F1, which is a category that I'm not sure we've spent enough time on.

I am joined by Mike at Leahy. He is one of the biggest and best F1, sellers on eBay. He sells all sports, but has a footprint here in F 1. And so excited to dig in. But without further ado, Mike, welcome.

How are you? Hey, Brett. Thanks for having us, and thanks for giving us the chance to explain to everybody, the beauty that we saw in F1 a few years ago when Topps came out is that's generational opportunity.

I am thrilled to explain it to your audience today. Awesome.

So maybe let's start maybe at just with the I know you just got back from the West Coast card show, and I think maybe that'd be, topical just to dig into and just, what's with a show like that, it's a big show, a precursor to what's gonna be happening at the national.

But, what was your experience like at that show? Anything when you left to go home you were thinking about maybe let's start there.

Yeah. I mean, it it's, it's it's a big change of pace from the national. I think the national, you have this big broad audience that's just rushing in, rushing out, looking for the traditional sports.

I think at the West Coast Guard show, we see, it, you know, it's a lot better you know, we see a ton of great conversations out there.

A lot of people stopping by, wanting to learn, wanting to see what's out there, wanting to, really just spend time at every single table and make a make a ton of deals or just hear some great thoughts and ideas.

So I definitely did feel this time. Same as always with that show. Ton of great conversations. And, yeah, it's it's, we're based out in Hawaii. So anytime we can get out for a card show, it it's an experience for us.

What what is the, card, scene like in Hawaii? We have a few local shops. We have, monthly card shows at at at a local mall, but it it's a pretty strong collecting base.

It goes back, decades and decades. Card collecting culture has always been big in Hawaii, through the boom, the bust, the market going up and down, it's it's always survived here.

And it's it's pretty I'd say it's pretty strong. You know, talk to a friend at a party, a neighbor, everybody has somebody that collects cards, whether it's Pokemon or baseball, basketball, football.

It's all over the place. That's all. I've I've definitely met a bunch of through my time doing this, a bunch of collectors from Hawaii, and everyone is passionate, and it seems like a very, strong community.

Let's before we get into your story, I wanna maybe set the stage with F1 and just I I can remember I I've often tell the story, but I remember, talking with my brother about F1 cards before it launched.

And I remember seeing the price of, like, a case of Topps Chrome F1 in the first this is, like, pre prerelease.

And I remember be talking to my brother about racing cards and how cool it would be, and we talked talked about maybe splitting a case.

And I can't even remember what it was, but it was nothing compared to what you can resell one of those for now, and we ended up we didn't.

And then the product dropped, and then I just remember the craze and of people jumping in and everything that's happened since.

And so maybe give us all some sort of background on just F1, what it's meant to your business, just like current state, anything you want to as we open up this chat. Sure. So I'll start with this, and I'm gonna be 100% honest.

Anybody who knows me, privately, I've been doing this for a while. I love to be very upfront with information. When the product first came out, I didn't know who Lewis Hamilton was. I'm I'm a trading card guy by nature.

I've loved I've loved sports cards for forever. I didn't know who Lewis Hamilton was. I didn't know how Lewis Hamilton looked, actually. I knew he was famous. But when Topps drops the products, I start to pay attention.

I started to hear things about it. The moment you're talking about there is through the Montgomery Club. I believe Topps offered boxes of their sapphire for $90. The hobby boxes were offered for $1.

25. I did not pay much attention to it, but on the secondary market, I started to see this incredible behavior. And the main thing I tell everybody, Brett, my specific job is to know what I don't know. You know?

Understand that there's there's there's great things that that have happened in sports card history if you're just willing to learn and listen. So first thing, Lewis Hamilton, I thought he was a, full Caucasian, British British dude.

And when I saw the card come out, I realized, oh my god. I've heard the name so much. What else don't I know? And it started this journey into this sport. The thing you're pointing out there is actually what we first noticed.

He had a Tops Now card that came out, and everybody knows Tops Now now, you know, because of all these that are coming out. But that card, Tops offered it for $4 on their website. They sold, I believe, a little bit around a thousand.

Immediately, they started reselling the secondary market for hundreds of dollars. I think at one point, they hit about $800 raw. And so on my side, what I'd like to pay attention to is consumer behavior.

And that is one of the most astronomical things I've ever seen. It started turning this question. Who is Lewis Hamilton, and why are these guys doing this? Is this a pump and dump job, or is this actual consumer behavior?

You know, that type of price jump, it lines up with let's just say Michael Jordan never had a card or Messi never had a card before and Topps came out with their first Topps card of Messi, Jordan, or maybe even a Sydney Crosby.

I think that type of behavior would happen.

And so that was the first sign on my side that, hey. This is something that I need to pay a little bit more attention to. I led into this deep dive that I'll share with with your audience today.

We've been we've been promoting this because we feel it's it's the right thing to do in a market that I think I I love the sports card market, and I think the main thing is long term sustainability of this market.

I I I say it all the time, buy responsibly, buy you know, try to approach it a little bit once in a while as a hobby, and then a small portion of it approach it as a profession.

If you do that, you'll probably be able to sustainably collect, enjoy, and benefit from all the great long term benefits that sports cards have always had.

So I'm sorry. No. We're we're we're gonna get into a a lot of it through just hearing your story, but I wanna just follow-up before we dive in on consumer behavior.

I love that that's a focus of your business and just monitoring the trends and monitoring what different, individuals in the space are doing.

What have you noticed about the consumer behavior happening within the F1 space since, like, the first, Topps Chrome product dropped till till, like, today?

What what sort of things have you observed? Brett, I've so the the point of why we're making such a strong push is I'm gonna say something, and I've run this by some huge sports guard veterans.

Nobody has had anything to say back to me. We're talking about some of the guys that have been around for forever. 1952 tops, 1986 FLIR, '99 Pokemon. The 2020 F1 sets, I believe, align very, very well with them.

And it it's a outlandish statement. I've already made the statement. In my lifetime, I've never seen anything like this, and this spans thirty years. I've never seen anything like this specific opportunity.

Just like those sets, in 1957, if somebody said that this is gonna become an iconic set, nobody would have listened. Ninety one, already the market was booming. The Jordan was expensive card.

If you said today would happen, I guess some people would think because the card market was booming. The key one is 02/2004. If there was a guy out there saying, hey. Buy Pokemon cards, and there actually was.

And I was in the TCG business at the time. We would make jokes about a PSA ten Charizard card. I think it was 3 to $400 at the time. You know? I think when it happens, people don't really realize it in the moments.

Hopefully, through this podcast or through our our educational things that we're offering, through our Instagram and everything else we're doing, we can start to educate people that, hey.

There actually might be a generational win here because the perfect storm occurred. And this sport, the tops making their first ever official cards in it, it's absolutely fascinating.

I'm gonna start you off with this one fact. Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes are two most famous football players ever. You know, if you go and look at their online followers in Instagram too, they're they're the two biggest.

In baseball, we have Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout. Those are our two most followed baseball players. You can add up all four of them, their Instagram followers.

Lewis Hamilton alone has more than all four of them, but that's not the most amazing one. Charles Leclerc, the Ferrari driver, he's younger than all of them, and he has more followers than them too.

And And so when you look at this, we're we're talking about, what I started to first notice is you asked me what I noticed with the products here, consumer behavior.

Now everybody can invest. Right? It, everybody can say, hey. This is a great idea. I think a few years ago, we had it's gonna be this.

It's gonna be this. We're we're in a Disney phase right now. You know? It's it's hitting new levels. I like to get a good idea, get a good thought, and responsibly, ask myself over and over again why it's not going to work.

I try to poke holes in it and understand, well, if it can survive all these different tests, then maybe it's actually a legitimate good idea that will stand the test of time.

With the Formula one, the very first thing I noticed, the 2020 set I paid attention to because the Hamilton cards were off the chart expensive when they came out.

More importantly, we followed them. We didn't come public with our idea of, hey. Formula one is gonna be amazing until 2023. And the main thing we're studying in the meantime was the consumer behavior.

What we found, and it this information is still relevant to today is when you start to see second and third year cards start to sell for astronomical values, It tells you what you have here is not just an investor mentality because me and you both know this, all the sports card veterans know this.

If you're investing, you buy the first year set. Right? If you're buying comic books, if you're buying Pokemon cards, Magic the Gathering cards, you're gonna buy the first year sets.

And that's normally what should be the most expensive, but we were seeing some incredible behaviors on second year autograph cards, second year refractor cards. It's lasting till today.

And the the biggest thing that that tells me is it's actually not investors. We're actually seeing a legitimate collector base surrounding this sport, and it's fitting the supply demand model like nothing I've ever seen.

We'll tell you these numbers, Brett. If you wanna ask me anything in between, go ahead. Yeah. No. Let me let me ask you this, because I'm fascinated by this.

When you're talking about the follower numbers, I think even, like, tops at the highest level right there, marketing all of their products right now and trying to get it in as many big spaces as possible, attach the products to, the athletes, in store events, that sort of thing, which is great great exposure.

But I think one of the things that I've observed that's challenging is that just because someone likes a certain player doesn't mean that they're just gonna start collecting cards if you put it in their face.

But I'm just curious, like, this growth. Like, there's so many people follow these, athletes and you the follower accounts, these drivers.

How do you like, how has it gone from following Lewis Hamilton on Instagram to being even aware that these cards exist to then going and collecting them?

Like, how has that how has that all transpired in that time frame? So the most amazing thing is, those people haven't even started venturing into sports cards yet.

And I I when I say we've called the 2020 F1 sets the sleeping giant, in fact, when we're at the West Coast card show, we had a flyer and it said y F1 on it. And we have some literature on on, online about this.

And the bottom says the sleeping giant because I really do feel just like those previous iconic sets that I mentioned in other sports and, non sports, TCG. This thing fits a supply demand model, first of all.

And secondly, the sport itself, I, I'm gonna go over some numbers here, and it's it's fascinating. And I'm gonna compare it to some of our biggest stars we have domestically and their secondary market values.

But the biggest thing is a lot of these guys are national celebrities. Literally, Sergio Perez, if you've heard of him, he's from Mexico. I've heard if you go down to Mexico City, it's just billboards of him all over the place.

And he's basically their most famous athlete for an entire country. You have the Formula One grid, the grid, which is basically just their their team rosters.

It can only consist of 20 drivers every single year. So you have kinda simplicity there instead of having 30 teams with 15 players apiece and having to study 450 players and then study the minor leagues.

I've done the baseball prospecting to, you know, Bowling Chrome makes 50 autographs every single year, all first.

Chrome's not so much to study. I think the the simplicity that the sport brings to the table, it creates certain type of fanfare, most importantly, the consumer behavior of heroes all throughout.

Let me give you these numbers, Brent. So the new dynasty set just came out. Most importantly, it's it's not the new dynasty numbers for F1.

This is the 2024 dynasty just came out. But I'm gonna give you some numbers from the 2023 set, the 2022 set. These are not investor sets. It would be the 2020 set that's the investor set. Lewis Hamilton sells for $1,800 on average.

Just a random on card auto of his third or fourth year. Max Verstappen, about $1,700. Oscar Piastri, a thousand dollars. Charlotte Claire, 7 hundred dollars. Lando Norris, 7 hundred dollars. You go down and down the line.

When we get to number 10, it's Daniel Ricardo. Daniel Ricardo is in he's from Australia. He's very popular in The States because of his personality. He sells for $400 on average. We're not talking about rookies again.

Just talking about a random year, third or fourth year. These are not investor cards. Something for $400. If you transition that by the way, Daniel Ricardo just lost his job too last year, and he's basically done.

He's not gonna be racing anymore. If you transitioned that to baseball, Oltani is $2,000. Trout, seven hundred dollars. Aaron Judge, eight hundred.

Bryce Harper, five hundred. Acuna, five hundred. Freddie Freeman, two hundred fifty. Albert Pujols, four hundred, Juan So to $3. 50. We're talking about some of the greatest players in baseball history on card patch autos.

The tenth guy in F1, and even the twelfth and thirteenth guy, they're still hitting $300 here. And so we're talking about you, you're talking about guys that rarely even score points in F1, rarely even win races.

There's still national celebrities around the world. And the key thing I tell everybody is this is, if you go back in sports car history, there was a period in the mid two thousands where you could have an Emmitt Smith one oF1.

Emmitt Smith, one of the greatest football players of all time, the Russian king at the time, it would sell for $500. Now at the same exact time, you had guys in basketball.

You had guys like Vince Carter and Jason Williams and famously Reggie Miller and Anthony Hardaway. They're one oF1s which sell for thousands. And you have to ask yourself, what is happening here?

Now you'd have the same behavior with autograph cards too. In the mid two thousands, you had Griffey, Ripken, and Nolan Ryan, the best, most famous baseball players of that generation.

The autographs are selling for 40 and $50 apiece. But when you went to basketball, you had these patch autographs of Reggie Miller selling for 3 to $500 when the market bumped and nobody should have been buying cards.

What that is is it's collector behavior. What you're seeing there is not an investor because the market's bombing, sports cards are gonna be worth nothing.

What you're actually seeing there is true consumer behavior. And so my job, what I look for specifically is not exactly, not exactly who to buy.

I look for when and what to buy and why to buy them. And what I'm looking for is literally, is this gonna be long lasting? Is it gonna be the basis that creates long term, long term demand?

And is supply limited enough to to fulfill that to give it the upside it needs? So, again, what we're seeing here, and I'm gonna have a few other things that hopefully your audience can appreciate.

But when we grab the twelfth best guy in Formula One, who everybody, even in the sport itself, doesn't really appreciate, and it's more than our eighth best baseball player, I think it's something to pay attention to.

I'm a little biased, but I, I I think that the role of content and the role of education in our hobby is more important now than ever before. And I hear those numbers in a category like F1 that's emerging.

Right? It's not been here forever with and I think about, wow, how is this even possible? How is there so many collectors that are gravitating to this stuff at this point?

How how big of a role has education been, and how has that education been, kinda distributed to existing collectors and new collectors in the space who are just trying to learn for the first time?

Yeah. It's, it's been useful. I think we've definitely seen a lot of market movement even within the market.

At the West Coast Card Show, I saw some people for the third and fourth time, and I've been mentioning to them since we started our more public thing about explaining to people why this is a generational buying opportunity, why everybody can win with this specific set.

I think first of all, when you start to say these things, people do associate it with NASCAR, and we've had NASCAR carts for quite a while. I think, it it would be what you'd imagine.

I there's a lot of people who kinda snickered at it at first. What's this guy doing? Why are they doing these things? But there are specific things that I recommended to them because I'm I I view sports cards as a long term thing.

You know, I go for long term wins. I mentioned to them years ago, year and a half ago, hey. Go buy Lewis Hamilton red refractors.

Not his base card, the subset cards in the first year first year. They they are available for about $5,600. Lewis Hamilton and Verstappen's. Well, now those cards, they're not available anywhere, Brett.

You can look everywhere for them. They I can openly buy them for $1,500. So I literally told the guys, hey. If you had those cards I told you to buy, you know, those specific F1 cards, there's there's more market movement.

And I think that type of behavior, it does help to educate, to let people know that, hey. There's actually these very, very incredible, you know, I view cards as, a long term thing. So I I use the word assets a lot.

There's a lot of great assets out there in this market if you just take the time to listen or go out there and read some material, listen to a good podcast that has very, very educated people coming on and talking about the history of the market, there's so much great information out there.

But I will say this. That's my big caveat. It's a long caveat, but, I don't think we've had to do much.

I don't think we've need needed to have much of an impact for the market to reflect the way it does. I think what we're seeing here is actually pure consumer behavior, and we're not talking about traditional card collectors.

That's the thing that has excited me from day one. The behavior we're seeing, this is not investment behavior. This is purely card collecting. When I say that these guys are national celebrities, we see all the orders that come in.

We see the names that are attached to these orders. And once in a while, I click into the feedback. I I I do a lot of consumer research. We're seeing people that have never bought sports cards before.

We're seeing people and, you know, the names. You know, we're not seeing a Brett Brett McGrath. We're not even seeing a person with with my type of name. We're seeing a lot of international collectors.

And I'm gonna go back to that basketball thing because basketball has been our most successful sport, and this sport from day one when I started to do my research started to remind me of basketball because it creates heroes.

It creates international heroes. And when you start to dip outside of that pool, you you're creating a different type of consumer base.

We have noticed it increasing a lot in Asia, actually, the last twelve to eighteen months, the amount of consumers that are coming out of that area. It's obviously huge in Europe and South America.

It's huge up north in Canada too. It's just The US that we're waiting for here. But I think sports cards are globalizing. That's one thing we can play out in the next ten to twenty years. Sports cards should globalize a little bit more.

The international collectors should start to get more used to the American culture. And number two, I think the difference and the education of Formula One in America, I think it's gonna be remarkable.

You've made this space, your business for thirty years, which is remarkable. Let's let's go back. Let's rewind the tape.

Let's go back. What got you involved? Were you collector? Like, talk a little bit about the early days. Sure. So my dad had a, sports card shop, and I would be able to help him during the summers when I was little.

When I was 11, and we already passed the statute of limitation on this, I I, I remember school school would end. I would run to the bus stop, jump onto a bus, ride a bus for thirty minutes, get to my dad's shop after school.

And I started my first part time job when I was 11 years old, but I I would be in the card shop all the time. And I still remember the first product that got me attached.

It was a 1993 Skybox Impact. Me and my brother, we would earn a few bucks by helping my my father, and we would open those packs. And I remember the excitement when we got our first Jubeldso card.

Famously, if my brother's listening, Jerome Bettis, we called him, but Jerome Bettis, the hall of famer. You know, we we didn't even know how to pronounce these guys' names. We were learning the sport at that time.

But, yeah, we gravitated towards it right away. We were into comic books and the Marvel cards before that, but the very first second I opened that back, I just felt it it it just felt different for me.

And it it's been a since then, it it there's been this attachment to it. I still remember at my dad's shop, they used to call me the human Beckett because I used to memorize the Beckett from back back to front, all the numbers.

I could tell you if a Charles Barkley went up that month or a Derek Coleman went up.

It it it became this this this hobby for me, basically. How important is how important has the family component been? You mentioned your dad and your brother just having family involved in the same similar or same passion as you.

Oh, I mean, I I don't learn about this beautiful thing and all the beautiful benefits it's given my current family, my wife and daughter, without that introduction to it.

So it's it's, it's special. It's a connection with my father, that I will always have.

And when I turn on a game or when I'm looking through cards here and there when I'm sitting in this office late at night, I remind myself of of that day with the with the, Drew Bledsoe card. I still remember I had it in a snap it.

This is for your older audience, you know, snap it. It did be a thing in the nineties. All all these memories, I think it it's actually what spurs still card values today. I think there's a lot of collectors like yourself out there.

There's a lot of famous collectors out there too. I think they go back to those very, very humble beginnings when we didn't have these astronomical modern marvels, you know, these half a million dollar cards.

I think those are the basis of it. So when when in your journey did you realize that you weren't going to go pursue maybe, like, the traditional path and go get a desk job somewhere, but this is what you were going to do full time?

So I luckily enough, at 12 years old, I had my first, meeting with my boss, and my boss is telling me, that I may not be able to work there much longer if I don't change my work ethic.

And so at 12 years old, I took it very, very seriously.

And since then, I guess I've excelled in that environment. As far as the desk job, it's it's something that I've always, tried to pursue, but I think I've always been just pulled back to the trading card area.

So, actually, when I was a high school junior, me, my brother, and, one of our very, very good friends, who's basically like an older brother to me, We started our own company, and we dealt with a lot of import and export with Pokemon.

You know these famous Pokemon cards that go around right now? You've heard of, like, a birthday Pikachu.

I remember us being in Japan, buying those original calendars, removing those birthday Pikachus, literally hundreds of them just to bring them back to The States because Pokemon was such a big thing in the late nineties, early '2 thousands.

And we built a TCG business. It still exists today. Ideal eight zero eight, shout out to you guys. Love you all. Everybody check out Ideal eight zero eight.

Those guys are amazing. And so we ran that business, out of Hawaii. We mail order everything. It's a website. They they're also on eBay too, by the way. Shout out to them again. Over a hundred thousand feedback.

They they're very, very well established in the TCG market. But, we did that we did that for a good decade together. After that, I actually, I actually pursued, some more personal goals, I guess, after working for so many years.

I took a little bit of a sabbatical, spent some time with my girlfriend, now wife, and I decided to actually pursue some some things out of outside of a professional career.

So I got a little bit more into, I guess well, I I'd love to explain this part about my background too. My my grandparents, came over from Tokyo as missionaries.

And so I took a little bit of a break to pursue or walk in the footsteps of my grandparents, basically, and see their daily struggles, to see, all the efforts that they tried to push forward. Basically, try to, create a better world.

I gave it a little bit of a shot, but one way or another, sports cards always pull you back in. And at a certain point, after getting a little bit more serious about things, ended up doing sports cards a little bit more fully.

I will say, you know, you've been talking with a lot of, these eBay entrepreneurs about the genesis of their business and everything.

If I'm to give everybody a little bit of hope out there, I created my eBay ID currently in 02/2008. It was just a casual buying ID that I had on the side that I was just messing around with.

And, eventually, in 02/2013, I started to, after leaving the previous company, IDEO eight zero eight, I started to, sell a little bit more. And at that point, I needed to create a more serious ID.

So I changed my ID. I changed it to Leahy five one five one three. And it it was literally I was living with my girlfriend at the time, and we had a second second room. So 90 square feet I was working out of.

And what I decided to do is I named it Leahy. If if anybody wants to know how these things are named, there's a small park out here in, right around Diamond Head, and it's called Leahy Park. There's no parking there.

The only way to get there is you have to kind of run to get there. But I proposed to my wife there. And very simply, '5 is May, '1 '5 is fifteenth, and 01/03 is 2013. So after that moment happened, I figured, hey.

I have to get you know, start to generate some income, and I have this background that I gained when I was very young, that maybe I can start to do this a little bit more seriously. So since then, 2034, started doing this.

All the feedback you see generated there, everything we have in our ID started from roughly 90 square feet and just applying all the things, all the experience that we have with this market to to to sports cars.

I actually worked by myself for, I would say, until about 2019. Single man operation. So I was my my next question after this, and I love the the symbolism and just the meaning behind everything. I think that's super cool.

When you were this this this this last time around, when you started back up, you're working by yourself, I would imagine just the obstacles and just being a one man operation having to do everything was very, very time consuming.

But maybe talk about just those hurdles and, like, when you realize, like, okay.

Things are growing at a pace right now that if I just do this for myself this entire time, I'm gonna eventually break. Talk about just that experience and those decisions that you had to make to help scale the business.

Sure. And, again, I'm just gonna be honest here. It you know, it, the beauty with eBay and, I guess, what it provides is I I don't need to open a storefront. I can work whenever I want to.

And that's one of the beauties that that that I loved about this is that I could go into that 90 square foot, retail front anytime I wanted to. You know? I could work late at night. I could work in the morning.

I could exercise. I could go for that diamond hit rut. You know? I could do everything at my pace as long as I was consistent with it and I could, provide a living for myself and and for my my soon to be wife.

It it it gave me the flexibility that I think you don't normally get in the working world. You know?

As much as I haven't had the experience of a desk job and all these different things, but, you know, you talk to people. I love to socialize quite a bit, and you get a feel of what every what what what everybody has to go through.

And I think if you have the luxury and if you have the tools, if Evia can afford it to you and you can reach a worldwide market at your pace, you can go at whatever pace you want.

And, you know, this is not saying that I didn't work, eighty hour weeks at the time.

There's definitely those weeks and and there's definitely those times, but I got to choose when I worked those hours, and that's kind of the beauty of it.

I could choose when I processed and shipped out orders. I could choose when I, wanted to grow the business or when I needed to just take a break to spend more family time because we did you know?

Everything we've done up until about six months ago has actually all been privately. All our inventory, all our sales, you you'll see a hundred thousand sales on eBay. It's just all been with private inventory.

We we had you know? Because of the Formula one market, we have opened up consignments recently, and it it it's been beautiful for people, but we've actually done everything privately up until six months ago.

What was the decision, to open it up, publicly six months ago?

Like, how did you come, to that decision to expand and, you know, take on other, collector's cards? Sure. For the for the good of the market, to provide a service, and, most importantly, I guess, just the demand.

We've this is gonna be our third F1 eBay feature auction. We ran one in twenty twenty three September, '20 '20 '4 September. Anyone who wants any material on that, check out our Instagram.

Lot of record setting sales inside there. It's everything we spoke on with this market. We went strictly PSA graded because we believe in long term winners, and I wanted to build the strongest.

That that first auction was special to us because I'm a long term minded guy, and I wanted to have people reflect back on and say, wow.

That was amazing. You know, the in the sports card and collectible history has been loaded with those types of auctions, and I think that first auction will definitely create that.

But we had a demand immediately after we went public with that auction. That first auction had, 1,206 PSA graded F1 cards, and it went off amazingly.

It showcased the buying demographic that I've been talking about, this worldwide audience that most people weren't familiar with. We knew from our research it existed. And immediately, we started getting people asking us, hey.

Can we do this? And I I I will say this. I've refrained from taking in consignments for so long specifically, and I've refrained from this F1 market too specifically because of my background.

And I I you know, I've been a long time eBay user. There are good and bad things that come with any auction platform, and I I love doing a great job.

My guys here too, they they we prioritize literally everything as wholesome as as we can be with things. And so I've refrained from taking in outside consignments because I love to honestly tell customers, hey.

Whatever it sells for, that's open market. There's nothing happening on the back end. You know? Just hang around me long enough, and and you'll get the gist of this.

We just want to come in, do a good job. If we do great, great. If we don't, so be it. That's just the market. You know? It means we have to go and find desk jobs and go and do other things if we can't do this thing properly.

But I'd rather do that properly than do the other things that you know, so many times the sports card market is associated with certain things.

If you've been around thirty years, you you know, you're gonna observe a lot of different things that happen in this market.

So, yeah, as far as opening it up, there was a huge demand for this. And I at a certain point, we started to notice all the other different options that other consumers have out there when they want to liquidate or sell their cards.

And we understood that we could probably do a much better job, servicing that specific demographic. I will say this. If you actually take a look at our auctions in general, we do carry a premium here and there.

We we we pride ourselves in quality from from the very beginning, to the very, very end of an experience, and I think our results do speak for themselves over a long period of time.

So, we do have a bit of a demand from that Formula One demographic. And through the years, I've always had a demand from the general sports card audience too because our auctions do tend to, luckily, produce great results.

How, it seems like there's a movement towards more focused curated auctions of maybe one specific category.

Obviously, you're doing that with F1. How important do you think that is for, like, the the monthly, the quarterly, whatever it is, the auctions to be completely centered and focused around maybe one specific category.

Do you feel like that's what the consumers want right now in regardless if if it's F1 football, basketball, baseball, or whatever?

Maybe talk a little bit about that. Yeah. So I believe in other sports, there's such a huge amount of inventory available anyways.

I'm not so sure how that would flow, but specifically the F1 auction. The reason why we decided to do this is it is a respect for the consumer's time, specifically this demographic.

Now those numbers I've talked about before, I'm gonna drop some other numbers on you right now that hopefully this is as simplistic as it gets.

There's a Lando Norris card that just sold for $18,000. It's a dynasty patch. You can, anybody who wants to look it up. It's a private sale. It was on Instagram, Paddock Pools. At Paddock Pools. Shout out to you guys.

But it's sold it for $18,000. Now the reason why that number is amazing, it's a 2024 card. That's his fifth year card. Again, not investment behavior. In baseball, for 2024, the only player to sell higher than that was Ohtani.

Ohtani had a few cards so higher than that. Other than that, Aaron Judge, his highest selling 2024 card is $12,000. Mike Trout is $4,900. Bryce Harper, 50 5 hundred dollars. Acuna, 30 3. Freeman, 20 8 hundred.

Juan So to, four 4,100. You're talking about a guy who, on the previous list I mentioned, he's about the fourth or fifth most valuable formula one racer, and his one oF1 card just sold for double everybody but Judge and Ohtani.

And so, there's also a Lewis Hamilton, card that just sold for $40,000, which means that he will eclipse all those names besides Ohtani. And I believe Ohtani only has five cards 2024 that will still hire than that Lewis Hamilton card.

That Hamilton card is numbered to two, by the way, not a one oF1. The last one I'll give you is this. The Michael Schumacher, one oF1, there's three of them that actually exist.

Two of them just got hit recently. These these booklet cut autos. Michael Schumacher is still alive, but he's unable to sign cards at this at this very moment, so it has to cut signatures.

There from what I understand, there's already been a 6 figure offer, over a hundred thousand dollar offer put out for one of them.

If you go through baseball card history, there are only two Babe Ruth cut autos to ever sell from more than 6 figures.

If you go through football history, I think the name would be Jim Thorpe. I don't think there's been any documented sales over $50 for Jim Thorpe.

And we're talking about guys that haven't been able to sign for forever. What you're seeing with this demographic and why we do these focused auctions is respect for these specific types of consumers.

What we found is that, stereotypically, they might not have that much time. They might not have that much time to go and monitor, you know, we this isn't eBay.

It's sponsored podcast, but, you know, there's eBay. There's, Fanatics Life. There is Golden. There is, Alt. There is MySlabs. There is, all these other different platforms.

There's Instagram. There's Facebook groups. There's so many different things out there that they probably don't have the bandwidth to treat it like a professional, like like like I do or like you do.

And so this type of demographic that has the ability to spend $18,000 on a Landau Norris twenty twenty four one zero one because it hits their heart properly, They're gonna buy what they want, when they want, and we wanted to curate that specifically to them.

Grab their attention.

Say, hey. Not all year. Four days, three days. We're gonna have this fireworks show one minute apart, all these PSA auctions. Come and spend some time with us, then go back and enjoy your life. I wanted to make it simple for you.

When you think about operating Laihi today and just the current market conditions, the industry itself, What what what really excites you about what's going on in the industry, and maybe what's something that's, not so, glamorous or something that doesn't really get you excited?

Sure. So, oh, I try to stay positive with these things, Greg.

There's always a little bit too much negativity all over. Yeah. I hear you. You can keep it positive. You can keep it positive. You know, there's so much good that sports cards bring. I will say this.

I'm gonna jump back to why we're doing this. And I get asked all the time, at the West Coast Card Show. I passed out a flyer to a dealer, and he says, why are you doing this? And it is a good question. Why am I promoting F1?

He asked me, I I don't get it. Are you paid by fanatics? Are you paid by cops? I said, I believe in doing good work, you know, if if you can. You know? They have the Spider Man saying, with great power comes great responsibility.

You know? If we've been around for a while, I I I think it's everybody's responsibility to try to nurture, educate, give everybody a little bit better platform to to better than they had.

You know? Pay things forward, basically. If we're to talk about the good about the hobby, now we've I've just been a private sports card investment company for since since I started doing this again in 2014.

And all of our private sales has have come off of those maturing over the years or us moving off of certain things that we feel that there's gonna be better opportunity cost out there.

My first Mainland we're based out in Hawaii. My first Mainland card show, since the early two thousands was the twenty twenty two national in in Atlantic City.

And, we had, I went up there with some friends. They they told me come and check it out. So I was sitting behind the booth. You know, I was, doing my thing.

I would socialize. So I would go up in Atlantic City, so I'd hit the casino, have a few drinks. I would show up late to the show, pick up everybody breakfast and drinks because I was just, an accessory to it.

And what I noticed there is the sports card market was booming. You know, I saw the sales in EV. Obviously, I was benefiting from it too.

I was expecting to see all these guys with these Zion cases and these kids running around, slinging cards, everything everything you see on social media. I was surprised to see the sincerity that they had.

You know? It wasn't just a money thing. I saw these small little kids walking around. It reminded me of 11 year old me, you know, trying to get his Drew Bledsoe card, and there's some sincerity to it.

I I I for me, it was a it was a bit of a changing moment. I remember speaking to this one one little kid. He could 10, 11 years old.

He pointed out a Mac Jones card in our showcase. At the time, rookie of the year, Mac Jones. He pointed to it and said, can you do any better? It was priced at $1. 50. I think it was like a Prism Auto. And I said, I asked my friend.

He he said, hundred $25. And this kid made the the saddest face in the world. I looked at him and said, okay. I'm gonna do this. Now I have private research on my side, and I'm not supposed to give these things away.

I looked at him and said, hey. Here's what you do. How much money do you have? He says $40. And I said, okay. Go around this show. I don't have anything to sell you here.

Go around this show. Go buy two to three Corbin Carroll autographs. You know? He's a minor league player at the time. I think he was just coming off of an injury, and I said, buy two to three Corbin Carroll autographs.

He looked at me and he frowned even more, and he turned away. And at that moment, when we came back to Hawaii, I sat with my guys in in our office, and I said, hey.

We need to do something about this. You know? I think the education process, if all they're looking for is Mac Jones, the pre the year after that, what I told people at Chicago when we started to make our F1 push is, hey.

If you're gonna buy a Justin Fields PSA 10 for $75, buy a Lewis Hamilton also because he's a seven time champion or, you know, buy Messi if anything.

You know? You you you're not gonna you you get risk reward with both sides. But we came back to this office, that little boy in mind, and the question was, how can we do something?

How How can we create something? Or is there something that is not as small as a specific player player? Like, say, hey, Corbin, Cal, once you do that, the cat's out of the bag, you ruin the market.

Is there something overarching that exists that can actually benefit everybody? And conveniently during that time, we were researching F1 for quite a while.

And we started to expand it, look at the the supply situation of it, and realize this is actually a generational opportunity that can keep people around for longer.

You know? When you see those kids walking around, I wanna imagine them not never exiting the market.

I wanna imagine them benefiting the same way I have by just listening and getting smarter ideas. Buy some Mac Jones. Buy some Justin Fields. Buy some Caleb Williams. Buy CJ Shroud. Buy Wen Banyama.

But in the meantime, if there are things like this, if there's people out there that'll show up on your podcast, you know, it's a great educational moment that I hope through doing what we're doing, promoting this thing that, you know, we wholeheartedly believe is gonna be this incredible long term winner because of all the things that stack up with it.

Hopefully, we can teach people to collect in a little bit different manner.

You collect what you want. But if you wanna do sports cards and if you want the other benefit of it too and you just wanna do it your specific way, there's a lot, you know, that that's actually not a great way to live life in general.

Right? There there has to be a give and take. And the give part about it is, yeah, approach it a little bit professionally.

Approach it a little bit taking in great information and carving out a little bit. One of the benefits I had with my background was specifically, going there after school.

My mathematical skills went off the charts because I had to calculate cards, I had to sort cards, I had to develop a work ethic. And these are great things that the sports card market has always created.

I think famously, Mark Cuban, Gary Vaynerchuk, they have a sports card background. And when you observe them and the way that they operate, those are the benefits that I think the sports card market can produce broadly for everybody.

You know? And they say team sports, everybody wins if you approach it the right way. I believe sports cards can have it too as long as the right things are grabbed from it and not necessarily the quick money.

It's more the, what are the long term benefits of this. I love that. I wanna dig into maybe some card specific stuff. Is there you shared some cards with me that we're gonna talk about, but maybe before we do that, I'm curious.

Is there a specific card that sold through you maybe over the last year or so that is the most memorable, whether it's the card itself, the price it's sold for?

Maybe what is one of the that one card that stands out in your mind? Yeah. I got one. Yeah. So, it just happened. I talked about it at the West Coast Card Show. There's a there's a Chinese F1 driver.

He's actually the first in F1 history. He just lost his job. He just lost his job after racing in F1 for three years. His name is Guang Yu Zhou. He had a rookie card in 2022, and he had a rookie subset.

So it's not even the base card. It's it's a freshest card. Does it his orange refractor. We put up a raw copy, and it was off centered, open auction starting at 99¢, and it ended right before the West Coast card show.

It ended for $429. Now the reason why that's astounding is if you look into card ladder, that's the highest sale ever.

Most importantly, just a month ago on January 26, raw copy that was centered sold for $66. When I say that our our listings tend to do good here and there, you know, there are these examples.

Our our listings are actually littered with these things. I think it comes with, when you have a personal touch and you you you prioritize certain things. But that still is remarkable to me because we see the internal data here.

We saw the bidding activity. But it takes two people for that to happen. And so what makes that happen? The thing that excites me about that is it's it can't be a card collector.

It can't be somebody who has card ladder because in the history of it, they'll see the last sale of 66. They'll see a last sale of hundred dollars. The winning the winning bidder was a six feedback bidder, and they had a Chinese name.

You know, it could be an American. It shipped to an American mailbox, but it shipped to that address. And if you examine consumer behavior, you know, you can deep that thing and think about it. How did that happen?

You know, does it does it eBay seller? Our ID has 49,000 feedback rating. You know, we have one one negative, two neutrals in the last calendar year. How did that happen? I think it's consumer confidence in a seller.

That's number one. But number two, I think it's attracting, and this is the benefit of eBay. It's a worldwide audience we're talking about here. You have people that will buy trading cards who don't even care about trading cards.

They're gonna buy it because that's a national hero. That's a guy in a country with 2,000,000,000 people who many people drive cars there. He's the most famous car driver in that entire country.

And that there's some prospecting probably going along with this. The key thing that excites me about this sale, though, is it actually does align with that mid to late two thousands basketball behavior.

And I was around for it. I've seen the aftermaths of it, and it's remarkable. So that's not our highest sale, obviously, everybody.

We have higher sales than $429 in the last month. But as far as relative to market and what it what it potentially means to me, when I study the the buying demographics, it's amazing.

But I'm gonna interrupt it, and I'm gonna Yeah. I just spoke to my nineties basketball. I'm gonna show you this card here. If you know what this card is here, it's a grand finale Jordan. It belongs to my friend.

I believe the most recent sale is a PSA eight for $52,000. And when we talk about that basketball period, when cards went down and they should have been worth anything financial crisis, I remember that very, very vividly.

Everybody said cards will eventually be worth nothing. You know? It was a huge, huge panic, 02/2008.

Now this card, I remember we were working in that TCG office, and he was buying cards in America and shipping it to us. It was our friend out in Asia. I remember this card coming in. I remember how much it was in the nineties.

This is a very expensive card in the nineties. I believe it was about 1,500 or $2,000 for this card. When market bombed in 02/2008, I remember this coming into our office because I told him congratulations.

He bought it for $500. 5 hundred dollars. And so when I say that market was strong for basketball, that's what I mean. Even when all everything was worth nothing, this card is numbered to 50, a Michael Jordan nonautograph card.

And even in 02/2008, when cards shouldn't have been worth anything, people wanted to buy because you have people that didn't invest in cards at that time.

You have people that collected, and it's that true nature of supply. Most importantly, demand. That demand thing that we're seeing with this F1 demographic, it is very interesting. And you can ask yourself in all sports.

What is the real demand? How many people are actually buying these cards specifically because it doesn't matter what's worth. They just want it for their collection. They're not focusing on any monetary value.

I will say that it existed in basketball early on, and we're noticing it here. You know, these these fourth, fifth year cards selling for these prices, they're unfathomable to a person that does what I do.

I invest in sports cards. I look for assets, but it's beautiful. Amazing. I love the story. Let's get into some of these cards that you sent over.

I'm gonna put them up on the screen. We'll go one by one. The first one up, you've you've mentioned his name quite a bit. We've got the 2018 Topps Chrome, Shohei Ohtani, red jersey, super fracture, one oF1 PSA 10 to boot.

This guy's pretty popular. People like Ohtani. He's pretty good at baseball. Talk talk about this card. Yeah. So, you know, I wanted to show some receipts.

I think everybody can talk and, you know, I think this a lot of people have huge wins. Now what I look to do is outpace market. So this Ohtani, specifically, we bought it for under $1,500 in 2019.

Till today, it is still the only Ohtani TOPS chrome base card in PSA 10. The other all BGS nine point fives. So this is the only Superfractor Ohtani tops chrome base card in PSA 10.

I know that, well, before the season started, we turned down a pretty significant offer on it. I think if we have to put a market price on it today, we're we're probably talking about somewhere between 3 to 450,000.

And when I say we try to outpace market and look within a market, within a even a player to buy the right type of asset for that player, if you will, this is this is one of the receipts.

I think it's one of the biggest Ohtani wins out there if you go by percentages. I mean, we're talking about a two to 300 x on the initial buy in. But, you know, you can look at other Ohtanis.

I think a lot of them are up fifty, sixty x, maybe even have a hundred x here and there. This one is I would say, you know, it may be one of the biggest wins ever for Otani at this point, and we are very, very proud to have bought it.

It it it actually belongs to my good friend. I I I I sold it to him in 2019, and he does not want to move the card, but I wanted to let him show me the let let him let me use it to show the receipts.

So so when a a someone approaches before last season on this card and saying, you know, I've got a pretty strong offer for this, how like, obviously, he can't forecast what happened this season, but, like, how do you make the decision to walk away and stand strong and and hold tight?

Like, talk a little bit about that that mindset and mentality. Yeah. So my friend, shout out to Mike. My friend Mike, he's he's he's very he's done very, very good in in life, and sure he was his guy.

And we keep on making the joke, and these are the benefits of sports cards that, you know, he has two kids. And they'll probably laugh at daddy collecting sports cards for a long, long time, collecting trading cards.

But it's about the last laugh. Right? So one day right now, I guess, his $1,500 purchase, it's now worth a very, very nice sports car or maybe a, a condo in Hawaii, a one bedroom condo.

IF1 day down the line, and this is not outlandish at this point, if they can buy a house, I I think dad wins. Right?

And well, and it's not just dad wins. Son and daughter can win too because they get the lesson about what investing looks like and what patience looks like over time. And these are the long term benefits of sports because I just love.

I love it. Alright. Next one. We we see one here, a local guy, who I'm actually, as believe it or not, as, tonight as we record this, I actually get to sit in a room and listen to Peyton Manning talk.

They're doing a Super Bowl, deal, remembering the Super Bowl team. Peyton's in town, Dungey.

So I'm I'm I'm really excited to get to that, but you're showing Peyton. So, I I had to share this. Yeah. Yeah. Peyton, so he came to the Hawaii Pro Bowl in 1998, for the the they they had a, rookie skills competition.

Famously, if everybody remembers, that's the competition that Robert Edwards, the New England running back, he got hurt at throughout his career. But Manning came in, and I was just a kid, at the time.

But I I still remember him till today because he was as gracious as it gets. You know? And when you talk about why we do trading cards, these two cards I selected because these are my two favorite athletes, maybe of all time.

Manning, it's the work ethic. Brett, you you selected your team well, I guess. But Manning, I've always studied him for forever.

The work ethic, you know, when you go back to him at Tennessee, when you go, all all the anecdotes about this guy, him knowing more of the playbook than his offensive coordinator before he even got coach training camp his rookie season.

I mean, you talk about dedication to craft. I got to meet him, at the nineteen ninety eight Pro Bowl, and I was just this little scrawny kid, awkward looking kid, but he was as nice and kind as you can ever imagine.

He signed this card, and it is a it's a PC card. The other is, a guy that actually reminds me of painting quite a bit when you talk about that work ethic, the personality, the graciousness, the ability to just connect to people, Corbin.

And, we, through some friends, were put in contact with Corbin, because he was one of our you know, we do investments. At one point, I had over a thousand Corbin Carroll autograph cards.

This is, before he really, really took off. And we got put in contact with him. Every now and then, I'd get still texting here and there. But, this one's special because, two of my guys here, Cam, Nicole, shout out to them.

They got to meet up with Corbin in spring training last year right around this time. They got to hang with him, and he signed this card, And he signed it the wizard. I've never had a nickname, but I He got one now.

That's amazing. Cool cards. Alright. Well, we talked about, this guy a little bit. What car are we looking at? This is a Lewis Hamilton Dynasty on card patch auto. It is, this one's number 10.

Now for me, when I recommend formula one trading cards, it's because of what I see in other sports. And I've said this over and over again. I think this specific card is the key to the entire entire formula one trading cards.

I think this is probably the grail card. I think when you look at it, it hits everything you need to for an iconic card. I've seen a bunch of them. You know? LeBron Exquisite, Brady, kind of kind of just tickets.

This one, it takes the cake for me. If you if anybody researches Lewis, you'll find out exactly why he is so worldwide popular. He has all the aspects of all of our favorite superstars here.

Tiger Woods, LeBron, you combine them and you give him a great personality, that's what Lewis is. He's he's the greatest racer in formula one history, seven time champion, which is a record.

He's still the only black driver ever in Formula one history. Most importantly, though, when we talk about the card aspect, they only made 48 of these single patches. There's three different poses.

There's the base version number to 10. There's a red number to five, and there's a one oF1. 40 eight total. In total, he only has a 21 on card first year autographs in the 2020 dynasty set, and that's it.

And so when you talk about supply demand, when you talk about a worldwide popular athlete where his fourth year I'm sorry. His fifth year card number to two is sum for $40.

This that's very early Messi Jordan behavior we're seeing there. What if Jordan and Messi had an on card rookie patch auto? You know? This product It would do pretty well. It would do pretty well.

Right? You would think. Right? And so this card right now, it's actually it's none available in our auction, but I did wanna showcase it for what we're seeing in formula one and why I believe it's a generational play.

Because when you see a card like this, I don't know how to see it. I feel like these types of cards eventually do hit that priceless area where they don't circulate.

You can go and look at card ladder and see how many times these types of cards show up for sale compared to the other drivers in the set or just other athletes.

These cards don't show up very often. There's a lot of savvy buyers that have been buying them.

I can't recommend this card more to anybody out there. There's two available right now, but the price tags are pretty high. I think when we look at it historically, I don't think those prices are high.

And this comes from a guy who has seen the evolution of the LeBron RPA. Everybody, just do your research on Lewis. You guys you guys will love him. Awesome card.

Alright. Next one. This one is in our auction similar to the Lewis. Fernando Alonso is a two time world champion. He did not have a card in the 2020 set, so his 2021 dynasty becomes his first ever top certified autograph cards.

This is probably, to me, there are different other patches out there. But for me, this is probably the best Fernando Alonso card ever made, and it is in this auction.

It's the centerpiece of the auction. It'll be the last item ending on March 12. It's gonna cap our auction. I can't recommend this card enough. You talk about an iconic formula one card.

It's a two time world champion, one of the most famous drivers in formula one history. It's a it's his rookie card. There's a one oF1 it it's a one oF1 on card patch auto, and then you have the patch.

And if you wanna talk about a broad audience, even if you don't collect Formula One cards, that's cool. You know? It literally says Formula One on the car.

The Alonzo, has has run the Indy five hundred. So local fans here of racing are who maybe not have followed, F1 got familiarized with Alonzo when he came here in May to prepare for the Indy five hundred.

So this this one definitely resonates with me as Yeah. In May, it's all racing here in Indianapolis. Yeah. And, you know, you hit something important there, Brett.

If I can talk about the popularity of these guys worldwide. So the one other number besides that Brady Mahomes, Otani, Trout thing that I can say is I grew up with Fox, you know, Sunday football and everything.

And I was told over and over again, the world's premier racing, NASCAR, Jeff Gordon, Darren Hart, all these different things.

When we were doing our research in that research phase, discovery phase, if you will, I looked at Jeff Gordon's Instagram followers.

I looked at Darren Hart Junior, his Instagram followers. It totaled 1,500,000. Now them two combined. And, you know, I've been told so many times, why are you buying NASCAR carts?

I've had to do the research. 1,500,000. Every single F1 driver has more followers than that. Right now, every single driver that has raced in the last two, three years, even the ones that no longer race.

But more important, Lewis Hamilton has 25 times. So he has 37,000,000 Instagram followers. So I think what we've been seeing for quite a while is the rest of the world looking at America and saying, oh, you guys have a domestic sport.

And they've been trying to tell us this for a long time. And it for me, it took tops actually producing trading cards to really understand the grasp and the level of celebrity around this.

Fernando Alonso, if people don't know, before the Travis Kelce thing, there were rumors about him dating Taylor Swift.

Lewis Hamilton and all these other guys, they're very, very connected to a celebrity worldwide culture that is almost unlike anything we've ever seen.

Literally, when I talk about basketball, the key reason why basketball that I've diagnosed, the reason why basketball cards still have value and why those exquisite cards sell for more than anything else is because these guys are actually world famous.

They they are collectors that worship these guys and treat them like heroes. If you take your time to just watch a few formula one races, I think you'll see exactly how these guys are hailed at every single venue they show up to.

There's 20 of them. Even the worst of them that people make fun of, these are huge megastars around the world. And I hope that maybe some people are listening to this and they reach out and talk to their friends at, like, F1.

I think they'll see what we're seeing on our side. I love it. One more card we're gonna talk about here. Go ahead and share.

This is a, 2020 TOPS CHROME sapphire Max Verstappen red. Now he has a few subset cards in these in these sets. These are some of our highest market these are some of our highest recommendations at current market values.

Now these are the cards I was talking about that were $500 just a year ago. Now they're up to about 1,500, and it doesn't exist all in formula one. It's literally what we've been telling everybody for a while.

When you can buy Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton first year tops chrome red refractors number to five, buy them. You know? It just makes too much sense. I think something like this in the auction, it may go for as low as 1,500.

It may go as high as 25 or 3,000. Now the key thing with this set is, it's a PSA nine, and they made a red refractor, a red wave, and a red sapphire, all numbered to five.

This is actually the only PSA nine or PSA 10 that exists. It's a pop one. The rest of the cards, all grade eight.

And so this last dynamic I would throw onto your audience, Brett, the the coolest thing about the 2020 Topps Chrome set is it actually functions as a modern vintage set, and that's a hard concept with that.

I get it. I get it. Yeah. Is it because the, the way these a lot of these came out, they it's really hard to get a PSA 10 or a PSA nine just the way stuff is cut.

So, you know, when I remember when this product dropped originally, people were getting excited about PSA sevens because a lot of the stuff there just wasn't great quality control on.

Is that accurate or no? It it's exactly it. And the aftermath of it or the long term effects of it is we are now four years after the product has released. This is the this is the highest rated red refractory you can get.

There's actually it creates a king of the hill. And I'm literally saying king of the hill in the sense of it can function like modern vintage, where you don't have four PSA 10 reds.

You only have one PSA nine. Perfection doesn't exist. Whoever owns the PMG PSA nines out there, they're king of the hill.

Right? They can ask whatever they want whenever they want to. They don't wanna let it go. In the 2020 TOPS chrome red refractor set, the true red refractors, there have been a ton of them graded.

There are only five PSA 10 red refractors that exist, and I don't know how to say this. That's an iconic set. When you talk about PMGs or or gold prism 20 twelves, that twenty twenty red refractors set, so many of them have been graded.

So much of the product has been opened. People are searching for these PSA tens. They command the current market premium.

But there are only five cards out of the 200 card set where PSA tens exist. And so I you know, this has already created value in PSA nines. It's already sustaining sustaining the value in PSA eights.

And so if you wanna have fun and something that can attract everybody that's relatable, the twenty twenty sets when you dig into it, the dynasty with the on card patch autos because it's perfection, and the twenty twenty tops chrome sets because of imperfection.

You know? There's so many things going around, and I can't explain it.

When we come back to those tops now Lewis Hamiltons, what we're looking at here is, just play the dominoes out. F1 will have its its moments, you know, the sport itself. They can't go back and make the 2020 set again.

You can't go back and make 99 Pokemon. You You can't go back and make 52 tops. They made the sets. It was produced in the manner it was. It was produced with the amount of supply out there, and it's beautiful what it created.

I know I'm running along, Brett. I'm gonna leave everybody with this. The 2020 TOPS Dynasty is probably the most limited sports card product ever made.

I've I've searched up and down for it. They only made 3,746 total cards in that first year on card auto set. And those are the only on card auto set on card autos that exist for 2020.

They only made 3,746 of them. And you're talking about this is a worldwide popular sport. This is a a sport where the third and fourth year cards are selling for a lot of money. Hamilton only has a 21 cards in there.

But most importantly, the guys who buy this, that demographic that I was speaking about before, these are the same guys that are buying these sports cars. These are the same guys that are buying these watches. And we've seen it.

You know, they they we see the Instagrams and everything. You're talking about, you know, 6 figure watches, 7 figure watches. There's there's a lot of growth potential, and a lot of these guys haven't even tapped into sports cars yet.

But they're hearing about it. When let everyone know when the F1 auction ends. Sure. It's gonna be they start launching I'm sorry. It's still all over. They're gonna start ending March. It's gonna be on eBay, the worldwide platform.

35,000,000 users, everybody. I can't end it enough. If you're looking to sell anything, especially something as worldwide popular as Formula One that you wanna hit other demographics, there's there's really no debate with this.

But it's gonna start ending on Sunday, March 9, and it's been called, a fireworks show because they end one minute apart, and it's gonna be a four day event.

Nobody can stick around for the whole thing, but tune in, tune out. If anybody has any questions, feel free to hit us up. We love to educate with this. I love privately to give sports card advice.

Doesn't need to one. If you guys like other background, if you guys have questions about what card to buy of a player, that's what I specialize in. We will put the link in the show notes, so you can go check it out.

Mike, before I let you go, maybe the question that I like to end these with, so many listeners out there, go to shows, buy, sell, trade, have aspirations for maybe starting their own business in the hobby.

What sort of advice do you have to anyone out there who's looking to kinda take their passion for sports cards and make it into their own profession?

Yeah. Take it easy. Listen, learn, make mistakes. And the key thing is is those mistakes are are the turning point for everybody.

I think in every single part, especially in sports cards, it's about making those mistakes, making them not so big. And even if they are big, every single one, learn from them.

You know? I I think patience is the most important thing. There's a lot of examples that we just had this past week that I think can definitely have everybody go more towards patience and enjoy.

You know? I I think it's a very, very big part about it. You don't need to win big today. Everybody out there look. I started with a Drew Bledsoe card.

Is that card isn't worth much right now. And I didn't really fully develop this until 2015, '20 '16. I hit my stride big time in 2017 and 2018. These things take a lot of time, especially if you wanna do it the specifically right way.

And so, you know, take your time. And if it takes you a long time to make that big jump, my advice is better. You know? It means that you're taking the exact right jump. You you it's not the formal thing.

You're buying the exact right card because you've looked at 10 of them, and you're buying the best out of the one. Instead of buying the best out of the two or the best out of the the one thing that's in front of you.

Here's Mike. Leahy is his business. Great F1 auction coming up. I feel a lot more educated. I'm sure everyone out there does too on the F1 front.

Mike, really appreciate the time, man. We'll have to do this again. Brett, appreciate you so much. Keep doing your thing. Anything we can do to help support you down the road, just let me know. Appreciate it, dude.