Alright. We are back with another episode of Passion to Profession brought to you by my good friends at eBay. I am excited to explore, today's topic with today's guest. I am joined by Matt, who owns and runs Five Star Cards.

We're gonna talk about his journey building out the business in the industry, in the card space. But without further ado, Matt, welcome. How are you? Great. How are you doing today, Brett? I I'm well.

Although, as I'm recording this, it's, you know, every day I've been recording here in Indianapolis, and I know you're in the Midwest. It's been very nice, and I've gotten used to it. And today, it feels like Gotham City outside.

So I'm trying to, like, drink some coffee, get my spirits, up, and hopefully, we get some good weather over here. How about you? It's been okay. We're close enough to Canada where we we get a lot of the wildfire smoke and and that.

So it's it's been fun on some of the sinuses, but me and my team push through because customers customers want their cards sold and grades in and everything that goes along with, my business.

How how how much of I didn't realize that you were as close as you were, to Canada. How big of an influence does hockey card collecting and hockey cards have on your business based on your geo?

So locally, not as much, but, just through years being in the years in the industry, I've made few friends in that in the Canadian region and that. So they just, they love my personal touch when it comes to business. I and and that.

So I've kinda worked with a few of them and seen just a real big explosion, in the hockey market, through them. And all the times, he's like, man, you're just helping you know, just just the love and the passion that, they have.

They're, like, setting record sales on cards. No way. I can't I can't believe you helped me sell that card for that much and kinda things like that.

Just always open your eyes. But, yeah, in Wisconsin, it's a small hockey is smaller. Granted, we are close to Chicago or the Blackhawks, close to Minnesota with the wild, but, not so much of an active market.

We have a, like, a minor league slash feeder, IHL, AHL, whatever it is, the the Milwaukee Admirals, but, kind of a smaller market for hockey.

The Bucks have been huge, the Brewers, the Packers. So, I mean, the three other main sports really dominate here in the Milwaukee area.

You said something as you were talking about that in personal touch that you offer just in your service, and there's a lot of different businesses out there that do what you do.

Maybe, like, how do you think about, kind of, that white glove personal touch treatment, as you have, you know, started run your business and the importance and the priority you put on that as you kinda build day day by day?

So building this and being in this industry, you can have one or two ways.

Set up a customer service team and handle various things yourself or be the customer service team and allow your team to handle the day to days of listing, looking, sorting, this and that.

And so what I do is being the face, being the owner, I I'm out there responding to questions daily, take phone calls and that, and it's, I mean, I won't name names of of competitors in the industry, but, like, I you know, it's just like, wow.

You're the owner, and and you answered my call. I was like, well, yeah. That's that's what I do. Because if if they can't get a hold of me, I've always felt then I'm doing something wrong.

And granted, we're all related to technology. One of the dumbest things ever is and because utilize a lot of Internet, for business is Facebook Messenger.

Well, all of a sudden, Facebook Messenger enabled this end to end encryption. So I use, like, six different devices. I have my home computer. I have my phone.

I have my travel laptop. I have my work computer. I have my backup work computer. So with all of those, sometimes I don't have the history of messages, and then sometimes I don't even like, this device will show a message from you.

This device won't. This device will show three other messages. So it's been fun balancing that aspect.

So I set up backups here. If I don't answer, email us. Here's how to, you know, here's how to follow-up and make sure just because any given day, I could get a 100 to 200, individual, messages from different people.

So as business owners, you have one of your maybe toughest jobs is the specialization of your time.

You have decided that as you've grown your business, you as the business owner aren't going to outsource or, you know, pass over to another team the customer service element you are going to be focusing on being at some level on the front end of that.

What what maybe, like, what is the primary reason why you're so focused on you being the individual who's out in front responding to customer interest and inquiries?

So even though all there's a lot of us in the industry, that do sports cards, finding available people to work that have that knowledge is difficult.

So to be able to answer questions, troubleshoot, you know, why didn't you know, why don't I see this card or and that one of the things is 20 of knowledge.

Now I get to I can usually figure out and problem solve things in a of the time as one of my team members who maybe just learned about sports cards a year ago. That's awesome. And you mentioned twenty years.

Maybe take us into how collecting how you got involved with collecting and collecting sports cards. So 1987, for Christmas, me and my three brothers got the 1987 Topps football set. Reggie White, Jim Kelly, and that.

So we're going through, like, what's now the junk era. I grew up in the junk era of of wax. Didn't know any better. You know? It's like, oh, yeah. Save these cards in my binder because they're gonna they're worth $50 now.

They're gonna be worth a thousand dollars when I'm older, and nope. Outside of a handful of cards, most of them aren't, even worth the the paper that they were printed on, but, that's where it was.

And, you know, collected from so, I mean, I was, what, 87, so, like, eight years old at the time. And then riding my bike down to the local card shop, grew up in the Milwaukee area.

So, in the suburbs, plenty of small card shops that you could still go to, and that grew into a larger passion. And then I I kinda took a pause in, like, my teenage years for a few years, you know, getting ready to go to college.

And then probably when I was about 20, the that epic '19, '99 class, Culpepper, and, McNabb, that Tory Holt, all these great it was probably one of the most epic rookie classes of all time as far as players that had an influential impact on on the league and brought me back into it.

Unfortunately, I focused on '99 and not February, so I didn't have many, if any, Tom Brady cards, hidden away.

But, man, I had thousands of Ricky Williams, and and the Edgar and James. I mean, Champ Bailey. I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

You haven't mentioned Tim Couch yet. Maybe you're Tim Couch. Achilles Tim Couch, Achilles Smith. I mean does does anyone mention any Cleveland quarterback after the third year of being with the team?

No. No. No. Cleveland's catching some strays here, but, that that's okay. So, you you know, in the collecting, getting back into it, when did when did the kinda idea of five star cards start in your mind?

Like, were you working a you know, I always say, like, a normal person job, and you were doing this on the side.

Like, maybe tell tell us that story. So Five Star Cards was an evolution, and I got back into the industry in like, I started I got into the industry as a business in 2014.

So eleven years ago because my wife is I married a woman, a lady, beautiful, young lady from Poland, and her whole family was there.

So we had kids. Kids started getting older, and airfare was crazy expensive just to fly coach to Poland, where she's from, would have been almost $5,000, for the four of us to fly once they got past, two years old.

So I was like, airline miles, what can I do? And all of a sudden, oh, there's this fun thing called case breaks.

So I was back on in 2014 with in Breakers TV with, a bunch of guys, and I utilized eBay mostly for that aspect of the business. And I was under a different name, seller sports cards, back then.

And started doing online breaks through Facebook as the transition as Breakers TV got taken down because of, the proliferation of razzing, and they had, cease and desist orders and whole bunch of other things, which we don't necessarily have to get into.

But the transition so doing getting airline miles while doing something that I loved, and met a bunch of great people, and they're like, hey. Can you help me get this graded?

So then I actually started off the next iteration was grading, and that's when five star cards in about 2018 came 2017 came to fruition for grading because I wanted to offer a five star service and looking at names and that, and that's one that just stuck out and took grading.

And then they're like, well, hey. What do I can you help me sell this card? So then that naturally turned into consignment service and looked around the industry. There were people that I admired that did various things.

So I took what I liked and what I didn't what I liked from this company, what I didn't like from that company, and kinda melded it all together and tried to create what I thought was a bigger, better service.

One of the things I liked was called grade to consign. So send me your cards. We'll get them graded. I won't even charge you for the grading fees.

When they come back from grading, you can consign one, some, none, or all of your cards, and then I'll deduct the grading fees or we'll settle up. I'll pay you out, and that's what really launched, five star cards into the next level.

And that and caught the attention of eBay. They loved what I was doing, the volume. I went from, like, $5,000 in sales in, like, 2019 to 500,000 in 2020 to 1,200,000.

0 in, '21 and then 3,000,000 in '22 and have grown a little bit since then, but it's it's a really cutthroat and that market. And I actually one of the biggest things I did was I invested my own money to pay for my staff.

And, actually, I financed my eBay rates because I had to match with these global power warehouses, Probes team, DC Sports, PC Sports, and that that, all had better rates than I can even than I even could, was paying in that.

So over time, through growth in that, just, turned into this next best thing as as far as I go. And people go to a card show, and they're like, oh, yeah. I heard from you.

Or, man, I, I got, you know, your card. Your packaging is unbelievable. I bought cards from other places. You guys actually take time and care, And that's another thing that's brought customers my way is how I develop my packaging.

Piece of cardboard top, piece of cardboard on the bottom, wrapped in bubble wrapped, then packed into a bubble mailer.

Just trying to you know, people are even if they're spending $5 or $5,000, we try to package everything with care, and it's and it it shows because I, at times, sell cards for a lot more than other companies.

Yes. We have a few times where auctions miss and because it's an auction where, you you can't control who's bidding at that time and that. Some people utilize, put out a max bid. Some people don't.

So it's and it's funny. Customers message you at at, say, 7PM. Hey. This card is only at $500. Comps are at a thousand. And then fifteen seconds into the auction, so I bring it up, and it goes from 500, 700, 800, 900, 1,200.

It's like, I told you. Don't worry. So snipers. Yeah. So amazing. Like, I love you walking through the different turns and iterations and the evolutions that you've gone through.

Each of those moments and each of those points, I'm sure served as, like, an inflection point where you had to make decisions. You know, money was involved, you're offering new service lines.

How how did you, like, have that conviction or that belief that, like, those moves that you were making in the right time were the right moves to not only keep your business afloat and growing, but also in turn, going to lead to, you know, you servicing your customers better and then also potentially gaining new customers through some of those decisions?

I'm I'm stubborn. Like, the biggest shock was, in March of twenty one.

I'm on vacation with my family for spring break and get a text message from my team. PSA just and, like, all of a sudden, like, within 30 minutes, I had 275 unread messages. PSA shut down operations, which was half of my business.

And, I mean, we had noticed, like, December, January, all of a sudden, we are getting almost no cards back from PSA, and the number of cards at PSA kept growing and growing and growing and growing.

Went from a 100,000 cards in a backlog at PSA to, I think, at the time of their shutdown, we had something like 350,000 cards at PSA for customers and myself.

Not not that many for myself, maybe a few thousand, but just, you know, submitting and submitting and submitting.

It was amazing. Like, literally 10% of that came in. Everyone knew at January, February, PSA was raising their prices. We submitted 37,000 cards to PSA the January before their price increase.

We were working twenty hours a day, my entire staff. I mean, I had high school couple of high school kids that were working for me that, were, you know, working going to school and then working till 10PM, 11PM at night.

And at the time, PSA's website wasn't working and things were snail's pace, and we're just doing whatever we could to thunder through.

It was insane. And then came all the cards from back from PSA, which is why I had that meteoric rise with eBay from '22 to '23 was when the floodgates opened and all the cards started coming back.

Everyone's like, well, I've got 2,000 cards. I don't have I don't have $30,000 to to send you help me sell them. So that's really, really, really what launched my business.

And all the time, my credit cards are melted because I've got, you know, all this, you know, PSA charges coming through, and it was a juggling act, a balancing act, and we survived.

Few people waved a white flag and, you know, part of the business, try not to, and there's, means of figuring out how you get your money out of people at times.

But for the most part, made a lot of happy customers whole and took care of a lot of people, and and that's while other people, like, crumbled at the time because peep cards that you submitted back in '21 and were worth $300, we're now worth $30 in that.

So it's just like a lot of people struggle with it, and we did our best to help everyone.

What obviously, going through a period like that is, stressful. It can, you know, be a strain financially, but it can also lead to big opportunity if you're able to weather it.

Like, how were you in those moments where you're you're going through the the waiting game and, you know, getting charged and having to pay employees?

Like, how did you how did you have the belief that, like, you were gonna be right on the other side and you didn't just, like, fold and crumble like some of the others, that you were talking about? Like I said, stubbornness.

I just had a will and a personal determination. And I had employees, I had staff, people whose families relied on my business. So, and because I was a small business and that, and a bunch of some people work temporarily for me.

I didn't have a large enough staff in order to get financial assistance from the government. So it was it was from loans and my own, you know, from and I was working at the time full time.

So I had a sixty hour job plus grading and consignments. So I was working anywhere from 2020 through '22 when I left, my full time job. I was working a hundred to a hundred and twenty hours a week.

Just conviction to conviction that I I wanted something bigger, and I wanted the ultimate goal was I wanted a card shop. And last year, I finally was able to do that. So it's just building blocks and end game and end goal.

I wanna turn this over maybe to my kids, turn it over to employees and that to run and to manage and then build the next thing. Open more card shops potentially or, you know, open a division in another state.

My kids are almost out of high school, so it's it's, coming up to an interesting time and just it's it's been great. Like, some of my I have remote employees for helping with listings.

So one of the guys one guy who's been working for me for three years part time is a school teacher. I helped him pay off his mortgage five years early through provide well, I didn't help him. My customers technically helped him. Mhmm.

But he paid off his mortgage five years early working part time for me listing cards on eBay. So it's just small little things. The the gratitude for my employees, the gratitude for my customers, just I've gotta stick through this.

I've gotta do it because in the end game, I'm I'm providing for people and people's families, and and that's a strong conviction in in in me is to grow.

So you you've you've sold your cards. You've, done grading. You've done consignment. You're you've opened up a shop. So you're you've got the digital and the in person approach to the hybrid model.

You've you're you've done you've done the breaking. I didn't even mention that. You've touched everything in this industry, every type of, service or product line that you could offer, and and now you've got your own shop.

Maybe talk about, like, what has that road in picking up those different, skills and, you know, experiences, what has that done for for you now that you actually have that established storefront that has kind of been your your goal all along?

Oh, that's I it's it's tough to say. It's just, you know, as the kid at heart going into a card shop, everyone wanted the I want a card shop on my own, and it was the these things funded that passion, funded that, inner child in me.

Like, I spoke with, you, like, yesterday. So or I've spoken with people in the past.

It's, in 2022, my lease was either renewing or I could find a new space. And I've been looking all this time because I was off renting two different office spaces, in the same building, but on opposite ends.

And it's just like I can move into one location, and have a storefront, so I was looking for something like that.

And finally, in Downtown Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, the space became available, and I'm like, random numbers. It's a couple $100 extra a month to have a small storefront. I'm doing it.

And, again, the personal investment. There were some trials and tribulations in there, in between moving into the new location and find which I did actually in August of twenty three and opened up my card shop in August of twenty four.

So a lot of things happen. When you're a small business owner, and one of the reason gets back to why I do the customer service.

Everyone expects answers from you as being the business owner. So if you have good news or bad news or no news, being able to relay that to a customer yourself is paramount in in my eyes.

So I had trials and tribulations. One of my, I had to let go, my best friend and best man at my wedding because it wasn't working. So finding the replacement to and he helped. He did a lot of the eBay shipping for me, so replacing him.

And then as I was trying to grow, hiring new employees to fill roles, figuring out how to work in this new location. And then in January of twenty four, one of my full time employees blows out his knee, has knee surgery.

So he's out for three months. So all of a sudden, forty hours of work fall back onto my shoulders because you have to continue while he's going through surgery and rehab and all that.

And then life is getting good. March, I'm set up. I've had all of the equipments. I'm on spring break again with my family. I I I have to learn. Don't go on spring break.

My wife falls down a flight of steps, breaks your tibia, breaks your fibula while my family is helping me get my storefront set up, all the setting up all the display cases, putting out the cards, the product, and all that while I'm on vacation, which is my family has been a huge help to me throughout this whole time and and that which is great.

So I'm dealing with that. Now all of a sudden, she's immobile for almost two months.

So I'm I live close enough, so I'm running back and two to three times a day to take care of her and her needs while running my small business and running my kids who none of them could drive at the time back and from school, from events and that, and just had a great support structure.

So it's like put store opening again on hold.

So that's one of the reasons I was like, you know, let's get through summer. Let's get through the national, and then opened up in the August. So Oconomowoc is somewhat known for being one of the places to premiere the Wizard of Oz.

And Cohen's and it coincided my store opening with the hundredth anniversary of I or ninety fifth, something like that, of the Wizard of Oz, being premiered in Oconomowoc.

So they had a big event. There was, like, 5,000 people outside my storefront, and here I am.

So it was a it was a good day and a fun one. Wow. Once we finally got there. Yeah. I I love it how, Wizard of Oz, you can bring that bring that into the story to round it all out.

What what have you learned about these having the storefront and how the storefront helps, the the kinda eBay digital side and maybe how the digital side helps the storefront.

Is there like, what's the connection points? Is there any correlation between kind of the two, areas where you're you're you're selling into?

So it's it's two front. One of the things I did once I opened up my storefront is activated eBay local pickup, and it helps drive people into the shop.

A, they save on shipping, and, b, they have the opportunity then to potentially buy more and then come into my shop and buy things.

And then they see, oh, you do grading. Oh, you do consignments. Oh, you have this. So it just gets more of the five star name out there because word-of-mouth is probably the biggest driver for business in sports cards.

I mean, you can dump a million dollars in advertising or or, just go out there and try to provide the best service possible. One of the things I try to make sure is listings up within two to three business days.

Other services, you may have to pay for that expedited service or other businesses. You're just waiting two to three weeks for them to list the card. So getting things up on eBay and that's faster.

So it allows me then to, you know, smaller shops still new. So my cashier slash, front of the house is multitasking, scanning cards for eBay, utilizing you know, getting thing this ready, that ready.

So utilize cross utilizing, team members. And then I hired two people who were customers of mine, so it's helped me, bring in employees and that who know the more employees who know the industry.

Pokemon you know, talk about sports cards, but Pokemon is massive. I do about 85% of Pokemon sales in my shop.

Ask me a year ago when I opened, what would the sales mix be? 85% sports, 15% Pokemon would have been my response. And just totally blown away, how big, the gaming Pokemon industry has has gotten.

Yes. It seems like every conversation, not even intentionally, Pokemon comes up and how crazy that market is. So it's, awesome to hear that you're benefit benefiting from it.

Maybe, like, digging in that you mentioned, like, there's a lot of players in the space, a lot of companies who do similar adjacent stuff than you. I wanna maybe dig into how you think about standing out and, differentiating yourself.

You mentioned the the bubble mailer, and no matter the the cost of the card, making sure everybody who buys a card from you has a similar experience when they're getting the card. That stood out to me.

Are there other things you think about in order to make sure that whether it's customer service, the shipping, you're making sure that, you know, five star stands out when when, collectors are buying their cards from you?

So customer service, whether it's a five or 500, giving each customer the same level of respect, the same level of attention is also how I try to differentiate myself.

Again, you submit one card, you can talk to me. You submit a thousand cards, you can talk to me.

I I mean, my store phone is right here on on my desk right now. Email, chiming, messages chiming. I mean, I'm here, and I'm available whether you're you're a million dollar customer or a $10 customer.

To me, I give everyone the same level of attention and and that that I feel everyone deserves because you never know when that small person is going to become a big person.

You never know when that big person is going to become a small person in the mix of your business. So it's just good to be, upfront, open, and honest and take care of every customer equally.

And then differentiating myself a lot of places, don't allow, consignment customers to use fixed price slash buy it now listings. I, I'm as flexible as possible when it comes to that.

Granted, I try not from a storage and organizational standpoint. Graded cards are so much easier than ungraded cards, for a multitude of reasons and how I set up our organization system internally to make it easier on us.

Granted, I started off small, so it's really easy to build a system when you're small than trying to backwards.

Okay. I've got this massive business. How do I organize it? So always improving as steps. Listening to customers. Hey. Any literally asking, what do you like? What don't you like? What can I, you know, what can I do better?

Or what should I continue to do? Like, one building out a website, integrating with a eBay's API. Last week, eBay updated their API and crashed out, a lot of people's systems, like one thirty, alt.

All of a sudden, you can't check comps and and that trying to buy stuff in the store granted, look up through eBay, which is a lot more difficult than looking at a slab, clicking a button, and it brings up population count and all that.

It's it's great. Especially at shows, but makes it difficult when systems that talk to each other all of a sudden stop.

So and then explaining getting a 100 messages, hey. My account isn't updating on the website. Give me this API. We're working on fixing it.

And the little things that go in the background, you know, $20,000 on a website, and then all of a sudden, you have this little hiccup, and it costs you another thousand because you need to make sure the developer, gets it done as fast as possible.

So How it it sounds so much in, like, all of these changes and shifts that has have happened with your business over the years.

There's constant, like, refreshing of building out processes that align with kinda your strategy and what you're doing.

How how have you been able to, during all of the the shifts and evolutions, making sure that what you're building is is scalable?

And I just think about, like, the Pokemon example you just talked about. It's, like, 15%. I was hoping now it's, like, 85%.

So it's, like, how how did how the infrastructure you put in place, how have you build it in a way that can help you scale as five star grows? So one of the so the easiest way I can say how it's it's keeping it simple.

Forced you know, it's a was a campaign phrase, you know, KISS. Keep it simple stupid. But because it it just if you make things easy enough that in that anyone can do it, anyone can do it.

So it's e can make things as complicated as you want, but if you make it easier. So, like, people come into my office, and I have a pile here, pile there, and and then it's how do you keep things organized?

And it's granted they fall off, but, at times, but Post it notes. And it's it's the easiest way. But, you know, detailing everything, coding, and and that everything is organized by date that it ends on an auction.

So in that way, more than one person can pull. One of the more person can pack. So when you, I mean, it's easy for us to to, pack out 200 cards in a day, but now next level, let's go to 400 cards.

Now you need two people pulling, two people packing, and that's working with your post office to get every package scanned when you're dropping off a 150 packages on a weekday or 500 packages on a on a Monday.

The best was, when Monday's a holiday or, you know, federal holiday, so the post office is closed.

Also, you have four days of mail. You're bringing in five, six hundred packages. And and, one of the things I learned the hard way is the USPS, you can use the scan form that combine all your packages into one scan.

But the post office doesn't recognize that as a legitimate dropping off of the package. It just makes it easier on your mail carrier or the office clerk.

So working with my local post office saying, I need every single package scanned as, delivered because it's, you know, it's insurance. So if USPS loses it, I need to be able to, claim a refund in that.

So it's it's little odd things, trying to develop for auctions under, $20 because eBay has eBay standard envelope where it's plain white envelope shipping competing with that.

So I'm actually, working on a eBay account that deals specifically in low value on graded items so that can compete in that market.

I think somebody wants is, well, your my end didn't sell. And then trying to tell them, well, upfront, you know, you need to make sure your card value is of x because my shipping is $5.

And you start an I start all my auctions off at $2. 99 because I have a $3 minimum fee that I charge Because have to pay a person to scan, have to pay a person to list, have to pay eBay the list.

So it's all these things that add up, and it's just like we're a you know, everything takes time.

Time take costs money. It's either and we offer, convenience for you. So people are like, you know, oh, well, it's easier for me to just, you know, ship.

And I was like, sure. You can do it on your own. And then takes you five hours, and then that lost package, who's you're out $200. Would you much rather get $200 from me? And now it becomes my problem.

So it's that's one of the conveniences of utilizing a consignment service. Lay the problems off on another person. Once you're paid out, your problems are over when it comes to us, unless you did something nefarious.

One of the adaptability, Matt. That's a key theme about you that I'm picking up on just from this conversation. I'd love to maybe learn I always like to spend a little time talking about cards, specifically.

I'd love to know, like, is it can be anything that's available, that you're selling right now on eBay or anywhere or cards that you've sold in the past that have stories associated with them.

What are some what are some cards that you you wanna talk about that are coming through five star cards right now?

I received on consignment a Babe Ruth tops I think it was yeah. Tops Transcendent. It was from '22, Cut Signature Auto for from a customer of mine.

All of a sudden, I'm getting messages. It's blowing up on Instagram. Somebody's saying I'm selling fake cards. So the story behind that card is it was supposedly a secretarial auto.

Topps passed it as authentic. Somebody who was interested in buying it originally before it came through my hands went through PSA's, like, quick opinion, and they said, no.

Not good. You know? So then I take so I sell it. Auction ends is the guy doesn't wanna pay, and he messages me.

Here's why. F and it's like, well, why did you bid on it then? And he goes, well, I wanted the ability to inform you that the whole story behind it because the card had sold a year ago, actually, when my customer had bought it.

And that's when originally all this background work happened. Fast forward to we sell it.

So I reach out to Tops without you know, there are people that go out there and they tag and they blow up Tops saying, oh, how could you do this, that? And I took the low key. Hey. Here's the issue that I have.

How can you help me? Took about a month. Topps issued a full replacement card for the for my customer. Ironically enough, you decided to keep it at that point, but, you know, just sent a thank you letter to Topps, and he was happy.

I let my customer, you know, say, hey. He's, you know, a great guy. Here's what happened, and here's what he did.

And then he sent me a a nice big, massive consignment package where we both did really well on it after that, and that's one of the things. You know? I'm out here to service and take care of my customers. However, I can.

If I can't do something or it doesn't fit into my business model, I'll send them down like, I don't have tops direct yet. I'll send customers who are looking for tops products down the road to another card shop where they can.

Just I'd much rather service customers, service the industry, lift the hobby than look at things just for myself as well. I'm customer focused 100%. That's an incredible story.

Appreciate you sharing it. Maybe as we kinda round out this conversation, I'd love for you to you've been through a lot. Your your ability to manage stressful situations and be adaptable, those are some things that stand out.

Gray hair. Yeah. Well, I guess, like, for anyone out there, and I think, you know, there's a lot of people listening who, you know, go to shows, aspire to build businesses in this space, leave their full time job.

Maybe what sort of advice would you give based on your experience and all the kinda twists and turns that have happened with you and your career at five star cards?

What sort of advice could you, leave anyone aspiring to build something in the hobby with? Start off small.

Man, keep it within your means. If you want to turn this into a full time job, make sure you are setting aside income for the rainy day when, you know, PSA goes from turning around cards in four to six weeks to ten to thirteen weeks.

And all of a sudden, you have no cards coming back from gradings, which is your income stream then to sell them, and you have $20,000 out there in purchase cards, and you're waiting for them.

So now you can't sell them. Just make sure, stay within your means.

Lay yourself out a business road map. Here's here's what I can afford because hiccups happen. Wanda Franco happens. And, you know, for every you know, there's Wanda Franco's Brock Purdy where his cards explode and and that.

So and, like, one of the biggest things is, like, the industry, Do we hold cards for the beginning of the season when the biggest type is there, or do we sell now?

And if you're doing it, like, to create income and investment, my my thought process is this, buy, grade, sell, don't hold.

Because for every card you hold that might increase twenty, thirty, a 100% in value, there's that same exact card that's going to drop twenty, thirty, a 100% in value.

So turn and burn. So much good is Yeah. Unless you're keeping it for personal collection, which can happen. And ironically enough, when people send me cards, especially at shows, they wanna get great.

And I always ask, what is what is your end goal here? Are you looking to sell this card for profit? Are you looking to grade it for personal collection? I've turned people away from grading cards because of there's no value in it.

The card's damaged or this and that. And I said, well, here, go buy a magnetic and it displays beautifully in that. Zion has those new looks like, graded cards in that.

UltraPro, BCW, all of them make great, magnetic cases. Store it that way and protect it that way then instead of investing $20 and because some cards, you lose value if you grade them depending upon what the grade happens.

And yeah. I mean, and we're all human too. Miss something here or, BGS, SGC, PSA, they all can miss things too, when it comes to grading. So just again, customer focused. That is the theme. Customer focus.

So many good nuggets in here. We'll drop the links for five star cards in the show notes. Matt, this was a ton of fun learning about you and your business. Thanks for coming on and sharing your story. Appreciate you, Brett.