what's going on everybody welcome back to another episode of passionate profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay this conversation is gonna be a lot of fun i have been a longtime follower of today's guests he has been in business for quite some time wealth of knowledge a lot of insight and information i would assume might come from the vintage side of the hobby knowing what he primarily buys and collects today i am joined by leighton sheldon who is the owner at just collect leighton welcome man how are you excellent thanks brett i'm also the cofounder of auction wire cofounder of auction wire very was put plug it out of the gates auction wire has definitely been something that i have heard come up in conversations throughout the the hobby a lot on jeremy show sports cards live maybe give a snapshot of getting into kind of the the tech space and creating a solution for the hobby like what was the catalyst where'd that come from sure well that was really simple that was from my own anguish so you know literally on a given day i started to just keep track at first very loosely brett in other words i started working at this time i i ended at this time what did i do for the last two and a half hours and like you're telling me the only thing i did for the last two and a half hours was just surf various websites trying to find various players sets and different cards and keep in mind i'm not a a tech guy by trade but my first business partner in just collect scott was a tech guy and i've always utilized it and been able to leverage it in my business i think fairly well and so fast forward from there i saw the need and the problem i didn't have the solution i had an idea of it and i talked about it on my very own podcast and then what happened was kind of like a mutual friend slash acquaintance reached out and said you know i've been thinking about doing something tech related but i'm a collector let me talk to you more about your idea and what your vision is at this point that's now over a year ago enter another party his name is ryan hotchkiss who's not only a collector but he's an investor in auctionwire and we feel that we are the largest virtual online card show in the world and that's really exciting brett because when we were leaving the national many of us myself included as great as that high was being there you're kinda like oh well fanatics fest is you know eleven months in the future right meaning the next one the next national is not for three hundred fifty five days and even though there's plenty plenty of wonderful shows across the country shout out to a couple of them right burbank and the philly show and and many in between it's still not necessarily what i'm looking for as an experience right because i can't head to every show and so what i found over let's say my couple decades of being in the space that there was this professional side of me that wanted to have a better experience but then there was the personal side because as much as i love the stuff if i could tell you you could shrink down the amount of the heavy lifting to find your card from i'm making it up three hours a week to five minutes well like i would personally really like that and so that's the lens i was looking at initially auction wire before it even was auction wire and i'm really grateful to where we are today but even more excited about where we're going in the future what do you think it is it is it about this space obviously like you there's you have to be very entrepreneurial in order to run the business that you've been running at justcollect and then obviously like there's you meet a lot of people along the way and you have a specific skill set and you meet other people's with skills and then you've got an idea and something like auction wire pops up and you decided to decide to go all in and and build it and make it happen like in your years of building in this space whether it's you know software or your business like what do you think it is about the sports card industry that makes it just like such a great breeding ground for entrepreneurs sure so first in the scheme of things it's very young it's a very young industry and may look like we're an accelerated growth happening right now because of the fanatics effect and that's wonderful in most people's eyes it's wonderful however there is no doubt that if you looked at medical supplies automobiles meaning these are industries that are far more mature they've been around for longer they've embraced technology decades before and so for us candidly right we i think we're similar age brett we've been collectors for so long that we remember collecting when there was no internet i hate to date us right but there there was a time albeit i was very young and i remember hearing about a place called america online there was message boards and it was so exciting to go from the englishtown auction or the howell flea market or the steinbeck mall show and then go onto these chat boards and say well i have this ninety three finance refractor for eighty two dollars and you have something i want well maybe we could do a cash trade and so that really helped springboard where we are today but as far as entrepreneurship i really think it's a function of passion meaning on my part the space itself being right for innovation and i think that our space meaning the hobby whatever we believe that is today is right for it but partly because of what i had just talked about we're still kind of youngish in that journey right we've not been around for hundreds of years or or longer you know in some cases for some industries i love the aol call out i was just catching up with a buddy yesterday we haven't spoken in like twenty years but when we were kids and aol came out and the message boards hit we set up a little llc for our sports cards and collectibles business and he reminded me of it and he was asking me about what i'm doing today and we are talking through it but it there's been a lot of iterations and a lot of eras and a lot of ways to kinda buy sell trade online in person and it's just a a ton of fun maybe take us back to kinda like the moment that sports cards and collectibles kinda sunk its teeth in yeah i know on your side it says you know you set up at your first card show you know in eighty nine and you've kinda been off to the races ever since what is it about sports cards that you're attracted to sure i think it's the way that it makes me feel i feel very energized even if i'm just looking at cards for myself to pursue just for the sheer enjoyment of looking at them i do absolutely can center myself to be an entrepreneur and i've always enjoyed how i believed at a very young age that you have this wonderful these little collectibles i felt like we were very lucky to be able to handle them meaning like some of these rarities should all be in a museum locked up and we're able to not only handle them some cases collect them and hang on to them for a long time and other cases like wait a minute i'm allowed to buy this babe ruth card and then sell it for more i could use the profit to build the business and i'm like you're kidding me right so really that's the way i looked at it ever since the beginning and of course as you said many iterations brett a lot of mistakes you know it's nothing is straight up but i would say that once i realized like many of us most of us in fact that are passionate about sports at a young age but realize we likely won't be taking that professional route i felt for me it was a really great way to stay involved with sports even if it was on the fringe because i didn't know i do this for a living when i was super young and i think that all of that coupled with how strong nostalgia is so right keep in mind that i'm lucky i get to do this for a living there's other people brett they would love to be in your spot maybe like your buddy maybe he's in a corporate job he just doesn't like it anymore and to be fair twenty years ago you and i were probably looked at as we were crazy to get a full time job in this because you couldn't really get a good full time job in this space and so that may you know have come full circle now and even though my son is eleven or your daughters were younger may never seek employment in the space i'm really proud that if they want to they can and that's that's something that's very exciting to me so you didn't you you started off in this industry i don't we're we'll both just caveat and say we're old guys talking about this or perceived old guys maybe based on some of the instagram reels that populate our algorithm but you know they're the infrastructure back when you got going wasn't there the opportunities probably weren't as out in the open less like blueprint for this is how you get started and kind of post college like i i'm curious like how did you end up pursuing a path in sports cards and collectibles as opposed to kind of taking the the traditional path that many of us take where we graduate then we get some entry level job at some corporate entity like maybe share your story on how you got up and running sure i'll try to do it succinctly for you and your audience brett when i was graduating college i graduated rutgers college in two thousand and if i remember correctly at the time the job market was very hot meaning you could get a fair number of entry level jobs i had a degree in i think marketing from the rutgers school of business so it just meant that i could at least get call it a forty or fifty thousand dollar entry level job and they were happy to hire me for it and although i was excited for it i also worked at johnson and johnson when i was in college for a couple years and had a great experience and i used a lot of that money that i earned there to parlay that into buying baseball cards i'm sure you're shocked and so all the while i decided to go to a state school because it was more economical and so when i graduated rutgers i'm sure this day and age is probably a little more challenging because of pricing and inflation but i graduated with with no debt and so that didn't mean i had money to get a place that didn't mean i had really any money at all but i didn't have anyone i owed money to and it was a strange feeling meaning you know your whole life right people are telling you you gotta do this you gotta do that do your homework right finish your dinner before you get dessert those kinds of things so i decided to do the on campus interviewing and it was a very popular thing at at many major universities and so i think it was like anderson consulting at the time was a big six accounting firm i wanted to go into business consulting and i remember one of the questions that they asked me or we were discussing was hey you know how do you feel if we gave you twenty five hundred dollars as a signing bonus for suits and i remember thinking wow that's a lot of money for suits what if i just didn't wanna wear a suit and i just save the money as like for down payment for an apartment i'm making it up right and of course this is where some of the cracks started to show on the pavement brett they're like oh no silly that money so that you can buy the suits and wear them to work and of course i'm thinking i'm not an idiot i figure you want me to wear the suits to work so my next question is how many days a week do i have to wear a suit and they're like well you know definitely monday through thursday and friday is dress down day and of course they're starting to have caveats for dress down day i'm like wait a minute you're telling me on dress down day there's still rules and so needless to say i wasn't really playing games i was not feeling that great about the opportunity and to be fair brett if they were paying a hundred fifty thousand dollars maybe i would have been thrilled to get some suits and so what dawned on me kind of early on meaning in the recruitment process of getting that first corporate job plus it was already a j and j i'm like i don't really like the sound of this so on a whim i decided to reach out to a few different people in the space keep in mind it looked vastly different then brett than it does today there was no fanatics to ask or or anything like that and i contacted a few folks including mark murphy the baseball card kid who's no longer in business and also i just told the story at the national this past year i also called kit young and i remember telling kit over the phone i mean it was a precocious young kid very confident i'm like kit i got this degree i'm ready to move to san diego he's ready to have me brett and i'm like great you know how much does it pay he's like well i think we could start you at fourteen fifty an hour i'm like no no you didn't hear me kit i have a college degree like i'm screaming as if you can't hear me and of course all the joking aside brett i realized that it was gonna be challenging to potentially get a job in this space meaning a hobby for any decent amount of money and then i got a little bit of a break this guy named mark murphy the baseball card kid who was really the unopened specialist before steve hart was willing to give me a chance to effectively run his day to day operations and believe it or not he offered me what i was going to be earning for anderson consulting and so the icing on the cap for me the or the icing on the cake for me was i had asked him because he specialized in unopened if it was okay if i dabbled and bought and sold single carts because if i could do that in my own brain brett even if i can only make five thousand bucks extra or ten thousand dollars extra i'll now be making more in my first year than i would be at this corporate job which i didn't really want and then of course if it doesn't work out in a year or two i'm just gonna go back and get a regular job in corporate america that's quite the story i think so much of this is about timing and opportunities and obviously like you had to have left some sort of impression on mark for him to you know pay you a the salary that you know a consulting firm was going to pay you and take the chance on you a young college kid at the time what what do you think he saw in you to take that risk for bringing you in and run the operations and you know buy and sell singles like what what do you think it was what was the thing that stood out it's a great question brett certainly the enthusiasm absolutely the enthusiasm and the energy i was very very excited to do something short of playing second base for the yankees i i made him know at the time the yankees come calling the jets who by the way which is insane brett twenty years later are still struggling at quarterback which is completely disgusting but i did say at the time i said if there's any tryouts or anything like that like and i can go like i'm gonna go and of course you know we had the gentleman's agreement sure bud you know you could do that great i think that he was excited by that and i to be fair i guess a little bit of it was i showed tremendous business acumen in school meaning i bought and sold cards my way through college i didn't have any debt and then i used johnson and johnson as a springboard to not only start to accumulate some wealth i e the capital i needed to start making some more money but i did figure out because he asked me he said why don't you just work at johnson and johnson and i said oh well that's where i'm gonna go if this job doesn't work out i mean i was very confident like i wanna try this if you don't wanna try this with me totally okay but i think i'm a good bet for you and i don't think that many people are gonna call you willing to work as hard as i do have as much experience already and you know put forth the effort so getting into that seat and working in this space when did you identify for yourself that this was something that you could eventually go out and pursue on your own and build a company around like what were those moments during that run that gave you the confidence to kinda start just collect sure so i would say more of it happened when i went to leland's so i'll try to be brief i was working for mark for about two years you know post graduation of college and at some point in the second year and once again if mark's listening i'm forever grateful i don't think he is listening but i realized at some point in my second year brett my growth was gonna be stymied there meaning he was a small organization there really wasn't anywhere to go other than to take over his business that didn't seem to be a logical step for me and so at the same time you're talking about timing and it being fortuitous so a company an auction house by the name of leland's head headed by josh evans may he rest in peace and mike hefner apparently were looking for quote a card guy that's literally how the job was described to me and so a common friend that we had his name was rich albersheim who was both friends with josh and heff and him and i became friends through mark this gentleman named rich had referred me to leland's and said you should give this kid an interview see if you know it's a good spot for him and so i didn't have the experience they were looking for but i also didn't cost maybe as much as you know some of the other more experienced people they were meeting and you know once again i think that the energy i was showing how excited i was and that's really where i would say not only did i cut my teeth big time but i realized there brett i'm like oh my god this industry is so exciting beyond just cards i got to experience firsthand babe ruth flannel jerseys that now sell for ten or twenty million dollars got incredible educations with some negro league and puerto rican baseball memorabilia that now sounds that now sells for like a small fortune compared to what it sold for twenty years ago i was like the if you ever saw the movie short circuit the robot i was like more data more input i loved it all i mean i was this person brett i took once again per the advisement of josh and hef my first auction catalog i remember the auction's over you know you help build these auctions and i'm like oh that was great and they're like you know you think all your work's done for this auction i said yeah you know stuff's sold they said you know what leighton this is what we want you to do we want you to go through the catalog and for every single lot we want you to write down what it's sold for like that sounds insane like a punishment they're like yeah why don't you go through and see if you learn more or less about what's going on other than cards after you do it and lo and behold they probably did it for four or five catalogs in a row very arduous very tedious not fun but you know what i made it fun when i'm like oh my god this sold for this and then i started to recognize like wait a minute this might be a deal and so i learned so much just through my own hard work but to be clear amazing mentors in my corner i love that maybe like the expectations for cards in that era i would imagine just like the sale the attention grabbing headlines probably you know maybe a a couple of times a few times a year as opposed to now where they're like almost daily it feels like do you feel in a way that you your career path like you are kind of been riding the wave in the come up of sports cards and collectibles and like do you think of like this is something that i've i've kind of been a part of on the ground floor and i just i feel like i owe it to myself to continue to ride this way for as long as possible like is it do you have that sort of mindset since you've been working professionally in this space when cards were sure they were popular but nowhere near to where the heights of where they are today well it's interesting the way you put it i don't necessarily know that i feel i owe it to myself i feel very grateful i mean without exaggeration brett we could be talking today about a podcast about how i became the number one paperclip seller in the country and you know you could be someone who was in charge of office supplies and you found paperclips to be really interesting for whatever crazy reason or not and i know that i would not be as excited even if i was amazing at buying and selling paperclips brett i do not think i'd have that same passion and so i really feel is that although i've been very fortunate to ride the coattails as this industry has exploded i feel very grateful and candidly lucky because i really love what i do but just because you love what you do that doesn't mean you get to earn a fair living at it right there's plenty of people that never take their passion and they're able to earn any money from it and so there was a little bit of course of the right time and the right place also creating your own luck and working hard that contributed a lot and to be clear taking a lot of chances i mean you know i left leland's to start a company which i didn't know at the time i turned twenty years old this year i left a really good job they paid me really well i was a director act the director of acquisitions when i left there in my twenties you know i was very proud but i also knew i had more to do and more to experience and more life to live we think about like a lot of the content we see today and there are people you know at card shows you know spending a lot of money selling cards buying cards and there's this like viewpoint on the buy sell trade through the proliferation of content that we get fed in our algorithm i don't think like a lot gets discussed and talked about about just like the buying process and someone who's building a business around you know cards and collectibles like the buy is everything i would imagine it's the identification of opportunity the understanding of the materials the price point and striking and buying i would imagine through your experience at leland's and going through the catalogs and putting the price like you probably that started to get your muscle memory going on like what things are valued like what where there's deals that sort of thing maybe like share some perspective on just like the the skill set and the elements that that you bring kind of to the table when you're thinking about buying inventory when someone like calls just collect and they say like i have a collection it's got some willie mays some jackies some babe ruths like i want you to come take a look at it i'm sure there's some sort of skills that you've kinda build over time to just look at something and understand like where there's opportunity maybe talk a little bit about just like how you view like buying sure great set of questions brett i'll try to do the best i can to answer one of the things i would say that i did early meaning when i first left leland's and i was just scrambling i i was doing some consignment i was buying and selling i mean brett if i could buy a lot out of an auction or an estate sale i'm making it up if i could pay a thousand and i could sell it for eighteen hundred i didn't even care how much work it took i'm like oh i think there's a possible profit there of course i've now learned our time is really valuable who's on our team that can help us and so forth and so i've come a long way in terms of just starting there recognizing an opportunity for what it is versus i'll give a perfect example and maybe this will help some of your listeners out there even if they don't do this full time but there are someone like you who is aspiring to do it let's say more like of the buying and selling but they don't exactly know what to do not every deal has to be for you and i know that might be hard but if there's someone locally in your town and says they have a basement full of stuff let's start there you know like wow you know you can kinda feel your you're you're getting a little excited right in your fingertips you're getting like maybe maybe there's a deal here meaning you know i can identify what they have i can pay them fairly i could break it up and i could sell it for a profit so where i like to start brett is i ask people what are some of your favorite items in your collection are you more valuable and if you get an answer like this oh i have a joe dimaggio such and such i have a cy young blah blah blah that sounds really cool tell me more versus i have so much stuff i don't even know where to begin well let me help you just name one or two items and then you kind of look at them and you can see the steam coming out of their head because they don't really know and that's okay brett but what's not okay is to just run and jump and go across town and go into someone's basement just because they have stuff for sale and so i've learned not just for myself but to help my team to prequalify people to the best of our ability and that goes a long way in terms of us being more efficient as we decide what collections we either might investigate or we just may not go any further does that make sense it does what i hear from that is the importance and i think about this all the time in my role i just think about the importance of asking questions and when you ask the right questions you discover information and it is interesting and i've always found this and i'd love to get your perspective as someone who interacts with a lot of different types of people over a long period of time in the the industry it feels like it always stands out to me when i the smartest people or the most successful people that i've meet in this space are the ones who are always the most curious and ask the right questions it right it it cut gives them information it it saves them time it it cuts to the chase and they're able to build a stronger connection with the other subject or whatever they're trying to do so i don't know like do you think that curiosity that you you have and that kinda paired with the passion has made you a better buyer and business builder over the twenty years you've been in business yeah so shout out to my friend chris hodge from you know card ladder fame and michael jordan super collector you know he said it to me several times over the last couple years he goes layton you're a very curious individual and i am but about what i'm interested in and so it's never been a problem for me to read an auction catalog from cover to cover or wanna read a really long thread on net fifty four about something as innocuous as wait there's a new rare back in t two o sixes it can't be true right and so that kind of stuff to me is enjoyable but i also understand it is making me better at what i do and as i sit here brett and i know as i ask my own questions on a podcast and i know what makes a good podcast or so i think i believe it probably what it's what also makes me really good at my job talking to people because when i'm talking to people about their collections they're not just hearing me say to them how much stuff do you have and how much is it worth because if it was really that cut and dry and black and white i don't think i'd be as successful i'm like wait a minute you started a thirty two us caramel set you didn't finish you lunatic you know what i mean and this is how i talk to people but i'm still finding out information brett and i'm finding out that they're not gonna sell me their partially completed thirty two us caramel but they know i'm interested if they ever do yeah the i i think we get like in this space there's a lot of tunnel vision and it's like it's a lot of me me me like a lot of people try to pursue collections for themselves like get the best deal like try to shortcuts and build it building businesses but then like i like it's the curious people that to me are always always prevail and always like are playing the long game and always kind of win more down the road do you find that that curiosity that you know chris said you have and i i would agree you know i've listened to you enough on your own podcast and jeremy show that you you ask a lot of questions do you do you find that to be a kind of a differentiator in this space with against maybe other people doing similar adjacent things as you i didn't think about it in such black and white terms before right now if i'm being candid but i always say this it's like the bagel store experiment right if you go into the bagel store and you're wearing a smile and you ask for extra napkins or extra jelly they're gonna be bringing it to your table like sit down i gotcha meanwhile if you go up there and you're a dick mhmm and you act very righteous and you're owed more napkins and you're owed this jelly you're gonna get a different type of attitude and so even though i didn't really understand i was quite doing it so consciously i absolutely believe it helps our business because people know i am genuinely and generally interested in not just what they have but how did they get it how did their journey come to be as it stands today and how did they get here after you know the last thirty seven years give me a story that stands out to you it could be your your bear moment as a business builder like when someone asks you the question like what is the most memorable buy but like what is a time where you approach someone and through your discovery and questions like you were presented with a some cards some memorabilia something that stood out and was so significant to you that you could hardly believe you had the opportunity to acquire it sure i think what comes to mind i forgot what we called it but it might have been called like you know arizona the desert heat collection but i bought almost a thousand thirties gaudi cards several years ago in arizona and i walk into the home and i can send you some of these images that if you wanna edit them in it'll make for make i love it yeah good you know for people to see and brett it was so i don't know how else to say obnoxious that i say to the folks i'm like where's the babe ruth cards so we go to the babe ruth area brett there was eighteen raw babe ruth cards just stacked raw nothing is graded and the way it's all organized i'm like do you guys have candy camera here like what the f is actually going on and long story short they left me upfront to my own devices to appraise this for like hours to the point of like i felt like i was being watched and maybe to be fair i was you know rightfully so stuff's worth a lot so i get all my notes together i'm feeling really good and i'm thinking this is gonna be an easy peasy deal to buy because they have it all laid out they're thrilled to see me i've come from the other side of the country and all of a sudden he starts in with well you know sonny i saw ruth sell for thirty seven thousand dollars i'm like oh shit that's not good because this roof's not worth thirty seven thousand dollars right and i mean literally i feel like for that deal where i was in the beginning to where they knocked me down at some point like i'm like oh if i leave here with a bottle of water and nothing else brett i'll be very grateful because i literally had to reexplain to them the whole process the whole industry and i wish we were taking video at the time was i nervous of course i was because basically they could have just sent me home completely empty handed and it would have been well within their rights to do so but i was able to very calmly explain to them what they had to take all the time that they had in the world you know to research it and if i had to come back i would i don't normally say that but for this kind of gaudi collection i was willing to and then as you can imagine almost like the way i'm describing it there's like two of the big brothers are there like very burly type figures there's a petite type woman she's the sister there might be a friend and you can like literally cut the tension in the air like are they gonna sell me these cards are they gonna kick me out of my butt you know i don't know what's gonna happen so fast forward we reach a deal which i'm so grateful to be able to do and you know not all the time but sometimes folks either want cash or they wanna wire so we went together to the bank so i could wire them the money but i'm not kidding brett i'm holding this six figure collection in like a pink shoe box everything's raw i haven't even put in a card savers nothing so when we're done with the deal i paid them and they're like yeah it's great to meet leighton they're like so which direction are you going i'm like well i'm going there they're like yeah we're going that way so you know call an uber really wish you luck peace and love it's it's very nice meeting you and i'm like oh and so i was very happy then but i was that much more happy when i securely got back to my hotel and i could celebrate in my room i'm like are you serious i'm holding no more than like a forty cent shoebox on the streets of arizona i'm disguising it as obviously not to be something special i look like i just won the lottery and of course i'm trying to act straight faced when i get to the hotel like hey mister shell welcome back i'm like i go to the room so i go to the room and like literally i spread the cards out on the bed and i was very happy and and you know that wasn't the biggest deal i ever bought and certainly not the best but i have such a great recollection of the visual nature of seeing literally in an l shaped fashion almost a thousand gaudi cards spread out it was visually stunning physically it was like almost overwhelming and you know listen let's be honest right if everything was just so easy in life it wouldn't be as fun so i think that because part of me knew that there was no guarantee with it it was like i stayed in this highly acute state of awareness and made sure that i did every single possible thing i could to give ourselves the best chance to get that collection and i'm glad we did what a story the a few things stand out to me and i think one thing that we're so used to seeing in these moments where the pressure cooker is turned up is that the individual uses tactics to try to get whether they're buying or selling to get the person to move now and move as quickly as possible and use words that say like it's now or never that sort of thing but like it sounds like in this opportunity like you kinda took a step back came from a place of abundance and the individuals or the crew there that kinda helps you get to the next stage and i think this is with buying and selling like there's stages in all of this and a lot of through those stages you're just trying to build rapport you're trying to build trust like is is that something like you coming from a place of abundance is that something that you've just naturally always had when you're deal making or is this something that has come from just like a lot of deals over a long period of time i'd love to tell you i had it from day one but i think it's just got better over time and you can see that even though i'm a twenty year veteran plus i mean i've been doing this for much longer my company formally turns twenty years old this year just collect that i operate not just my business but i operate my life in abundance right whether it be it's with my family whether it be it's with friends or dating or anything and everything in between so i do feel very fortunate that when people come to me i'm no longer just buying physical goods i'm becoming the caretaker for their story mhmm and i don't wanna sound all you know holistic and holier than now because i'm certainly not but i am a good storyteller and i enjoy thoroughly producing videos albeit you know as my son will say i'm a b youtube star he understands that i'm doing it out of the love for sharing the story and to be fair in some cases someone's lost or a family's lost a loved one it really is an amazing way for them to not only of course financially help their family but then i can tell you i call it the tie goes to the runner rule in baseball this is a little secret in the industry but if you make people feel good about doing business with you they're gonna choose you time and time again over the same people that may give you the same amount of money but they don't show any you know i guess self awareness or emotion or any genuine or general interest in your story or who you are where you come from that's that is a a good nugget and couldn't agree more so much of this industry has moved online we're behind logos and avatars we're messaging like there's you know there's it's it's harder to get to know people and build and develop that trust you do a lot of business you know online but in person too i'm curious like you sound like you're a guy who you know isn't transactional right like you're looking you might get a deal buy a collection or buy some cards or buy some memorabilia but you're probably thinking like there might be more here if i'm able to manage and nurture this relationship like how do you think about the not being transactional and and and being someone who's building relationships and those relationships are things that can you know if you pour some water on it over time you can get more opportunities like how do you think about that just across like all of the deals all of the people you're interacting with on a regular basis sure great question brett and i would say first is with sincerity and genuine genuinely being interested in someone so if someone's working on a set or what they're collecting it may not be anything that i could ever help them with but especially if i don't know anything about it kind of what i was alluding to you know earlier about being curious i do like learning about other parts of the hobby i don't know about even i think those might be records behind you and i collect records because i love music i don't know that i'll ever get into grading records but i'm gonna have a conversation with my buddy jim who owns an awesome record shop about grading records maybe i'll never grade a record but i'm interested in learning about why people are grading records and what records are they gonna be grading and these are some of my favorite records of all time meaning it's it's the genuine interest in what i'm doing and the dollars either come a little bit later maybe at the same time but i don't lead with that and i would also say that on the flip side it is important brett that when you're dealing with folks that they know you're an expert so i don't necessarily tout who i am and what i do i just do what i do and if someone has a question i'm smart enough to not just you know keep talking and be a buzz saw i'll pause and say you know hey does this make sense or i know this is another tip i would offer folks i know as you were alluding to some pressures that other people put on people selling them things i've had a lot of people say you know if i decide in the end to maybe cake take one or two of these items back like will you penalize me and i say what do you mean by penalize like put you in the penalty box they're like no will you not buy my deal and i said no that's why i have a spreadsheet if i take off two items if it's something that's really near and dear to my heart i might tell you or ask you would you consider selling me one of them but i'm not gonna be one of those people who stomps on the counter and says nope if you don't give me this the whole deal's off meaning i just try to be real with them brett i try to be down to earth and i find it gets me really far i i wanna spend a moment talking about content just you have been someone who's been public whether your own podcast trading card therapy jeremy show just other outlets being a voice for vintage vintage cards and collectibles when i think there when i think of people who collect vintage like there are you know a few people that stand out in my mind i think about you just based on all the content i've consumed from conversations you've had over the years like how how important has content been to the growth of just collect's brand leighton shelton's brand personal brand like all those things like how important has just being regular in content been for you vital it's been vital you know i can elaborate as much as you like but i know i can talk what's happened surely just by mistake is in the beginning i really was just doing it because i like telling the stories and i like sharing and i was hoping maybe just maybe if one in a hundred one in a thousand people like it maybe they're gonna hit me back and say you know i'd like to buy that item or you know what one day late and when i have something to sell i might reach out to you awesome that was really my intention certainly didn't envision where it would take me today and i would share with others out there that if you can produce content and this is something that someone said to me recently i didn't realize i was even doing it but if you produce content for the sake of producing content it will be very obvious if you have real value to offer folks and you're producing content it's actually gonna be very obvious to people that you should be producing more content that's how good it is and i'm not suggesting that my content's amazing it's not what i'm saying but i know the value of what i'm bringing people i have people regularly tell me through messaging in conventions at person leighton i really liked your appearance in such and such i wish you would do more of x you know if you only heard it once in a while you'd say yeah it's a really nice compliment but i don't really know if that's actually true mhmm when you start to hear it and it's reinforced brett that's how you know it's working for you that is the truth you are a busy guy there's a lot going on you know there's shows there's content there's software there's buying consign there's just there's a million lines to kind of the work that you're sinking your teeth in on a day to day basis like when you wake up and you go to work like i'm sure there's no typical day but like what does it look like like what where where are you how do you organize yourself around everything that you're doing from like a services perspective the first thing i do candidly is i look at my calendar and i know what my responsibility my responsibilities are as a father mhmm so you know i have my son half the time and so if i have my son on that day i i know i won't be able to work as late and i know that my day will stop a little bit earlier i might even have to take my son or participate with my son as an assistant baseball coach or his tennis lesson so i'm sure you could imagine right that day has a different feeling to me than a day where i could maybe work till midnight if i need it right and as a fellow father i know you can appreciate this mhmm just wanna keep it real but on a day where i don't have croz and the whole landscape is wide open i could tell you it's probably just a matter of minutes certainly less than an hour or even though i have my day planned like this all of a sudden i'll get a call but an exciting one usually exciting from the office layton did you see the lead that just came in i'm like no i'm still brushing my teeth you know or layton that guy got back to me from yesterday do you know what layton i'm talking about nope could you tell me what's going on i'm really excited to hear about it and so what happens is you have this call it run of the mill or regular activities that you have to take care of but then if you have a deal or a collection come in i don't mean physically come in it could just be the information comes in but then i have to talk with someone or i need to look at data or i need to look at information and it just goes for it's actually why we couldn't do the podcast tomorrow so i have to go out of town so you never know is the point but i like it like that i really do do you where do you think in today's market with your experience where where do you find that you have maybe an edge or an advantage in what you do like is are you i'm sure you're constantly evaluating the landscape evaluating what things are selling what what what people are buying obviously you've got you know auction wire where you can see these items across platforms like where do you think today just based on your experience in this market that's probably gonna look diff completely different in the next month because that's those are the cycles we're on right now like where where do you where do you lean into your an advantage you might have sure so i think to start with i'm very good at understanding what someone has and what it's worth and i'm also not afraid to tell them most other people i've found if we're being candid here brett my edge and i'm probably letting a little bit of the cat out of the bag i've seen i cannot believe how many dealers on deals of sometimes even six figures i will pay you a hundred and thirty one thousand dollars sounds very impressive what if those items are worth three hundred thirty one thousand dollars brett would you feel as good probably not right so what i've identified is a process that i've taught my team that you try to build trust in a way you're being authentic you're letting people know what they have and you never start with i want i want i want it's wow that's great that's something that we might be interested in but before we even talk about that did you ever think about what it might be worth and of course the more commoditized an item is right i don't have to have this whole back and forth oh you have a graded group of mantles layton i've heard of your company can you do me a favor i'd like you to tell me if you're interested yes we're interested when you get a moment could you let me know what you would pay for these so with that then when i do very well i think with my team brett is we set expectations so we tell people if we give them five days or two days we explain to them that we're not only gonna make you an offer but we're gonna do better than that we're gonna tell you what we think it's worth and we're gonna give you a consultation that we're not gonna charge you anything for but make no mistake if you have a thousand graded cards we won't value all thousand graded cards we're gonna value twenty graded cards because we wanna see if we're on the same page so i talk to people and not at them and i think that it works really really well and i always leave room for people to be inquisitive have questions be unsure ask questions about the data and that's another thing that i preach here if you have a data if you have a data point you have a value it's okay to be wrong it's not okay to bs people and not have where you think that information has come from and why you think it's worth what it's worth it's okay to differ in opinion it's not okay to make up the information that's good candid feedback and appreciate you sharing that you have been building you've been working in this space for a long time you've been building your business you said for the last twenty years you've seen a lot of things change you've seen a lot of people come and go there are a lot of people listening to this who work in the industry or aspire to work in the industry i'm curious like what are those traits that you've identified that others who have staying power who have been able to remain doing what they're doing for the long haul what do you think you observe that those individuals have like i think about covid the last time the the the boom happened there are a lot of people there but then a lot of people left right away after prices went down i'm curious just in all these cycles like what are some of those key traits that you observe about other professionals doing this that kind of gives them staying power sure great question brett i think that the first one is being genuinely curious wanting to learn more not just about what you might be trying to buy or sell but about the process about what's going on with the platform what's going on across the space with education with podcasts meaning actually caring about the space you're operating in i think that's a big edge make no mistake everyone has access to card ladder or other type pricing you know services so i feel as though communication is another thing that is really important and i can tell you just based on the ebay messages i get probably many others listening can appreciate this we will always write to people hi tony thanks for reaching out unfortunately we can't sell it for that we can do this and the response is three letters or or two words and so i just believe that you get out of life what you give not just in our business but in life right so kinda like that bagel shop analogy i was talking about earlier so i think that you can generally identify someone who's a sharp in the space because of their personality and how bubbly they are and how interested but make no mistake there are probably plenty of people who can make money in this space they don't care so much about collecting and they don't care so much necessarily about what the hobby's gonna look like in ten or twenty years but per your point will they be here in the next cycle only time will tell you've been doing this for a while do you wake up and go to work with kind of these what has changed over the years like is it do you still have the same hunger desire are you still trying to figure out new problems to tackle new opportunities to identify like that's a long cycle of running your own business and it's it's admirable and it's not easy to do like what has changed the most maybe for you over that run like how you looked at it when you started to kinda how you look at it today sure so i wrote down two t's team and tech so technology has advanced wildly and once again i don't wanna make this to be an infomercial for auction wire but i would encourage you folks there really is not another tool in the hobby that if you are simply looking to discover something new or if you're a jackie robinson collector and you wanna know like my buddy tony from southern collector the next time a signed jackie becomes for sale whether it be in an auction house or like your friends from ebay were sponsoring this it could be at auction or at fixed price it's a really amazing tool for discovery and so that is something that i'm very proud of and getting back to the two t's i believe that the only reason why i was able to see auctionwire to what it is today and hopefully well beyond is not just because of mark and ryan and and our dev team but also because i'm a hobbyist at heart i love what i do but i also want it to be done as efficiently as possible even if i don't do it for a living as i've described it to people let's just say you had tons of money in your house steinbrenner from the yankees you think he wants to be on platforms for an extra three hours if he doesn't need to be he would love it to deliver the unopened stuff he's interested in really succinctly and efficiently and then as far as team i would tell you when i first started brett was really really hard to trust in my team can they do an evaluation will they talk to a client properly but you know i have a few people who've been with me for almost twenty years so shout out to john and robert but i have other people who've been with me for many years as well and so i know for me as an owner an operator and as someone who's an aspiring entrepreneur in the space if i didn't have good people i'd be very limited to how high i could go i don't just mean financially i just mean in whatever goals i'm trying to accomplish sure it's a good perspective you've shared a lot of wisdom and insights in this time maybe leighton as we close this out i'm curious what what sort of advice would you have based on your experience for any individual out there who is just getting up and running working full time in the sports card industry whether that's for themselves or for their plugging into a company like based on what you've learned like what's one key piece of advice you'd share with them try to keep that fire and passion alive it's gonna carry you really far well well beyond your wildest dreams and don't let a bump in the road or that proverbial downslope of the roller coaster deter you from continuing to move forward because make no mistake it's not gonna all be smooth sailing but if you love it if you're passionate about it and you really love the space you're gonna treat it you're gonna treat it well and i think it will treat you well also this was an absolute pleasure layton sheldon from auction wire just collect really appreciate the chat looking forward to doing this again down the road absolutely brett i'd love to have you on my podcast as well i love what you're doing and you're bringing such as the wonderful perspective to folks out there that maybe trying to get involved in the hobby but didn't realize that there's all these different angles and ways that they can do that so kudos to you thanks a lot shit thanks a lot leighton you got it