alright we are back passionate profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay fun conversation we have in store for all of you today this is fun because i was just on today's guest show now he's on my show doing the collaboration that we do so often in the hobby today i am joined by jeremy lee who is the host of sports cards live also author of pops and comps truth insights and psychology behind the numbers that drive the sports card market and the creator of the hobby spectrum this guy does a lot you all know him excited to dig into just the way he thinks about building his business you know passion for collecting and everything in between but without further ado jeremy welcome how are you good brett it's a pleasure to be back with you on the stacking slabs network and after having you on my show this past saturday it's i i i feel very fortunate to be able to spend so much time with you in such a short amount of time it's always a pleasure you asked me this i think on sports cards live and or we got talking about it but i i'm just curious just out of the gates you are the guy typically in the driver's seat facilitating all your guests responding to chat doing all of the the steering and now you're on the other side of the table like receiving the questions like when you think about those two roles and just content like are you more comfortable you know as the host or do you like kinda sitting on this side a little better like how do you think about it you know great question it doesn't come down to comfort for me i'm comfortable on both sides it comes down to relaxation i am much more relaxed sitting here talking to you where where where you're you are in charge and this is your show and i just get to sit back and and and respond and talk to you versus running the live streams that i that i do it's a lot more it's a lot less relaxing so i'm i love doing this and i'm looking forward to our conversation yeah you've got a lot going on i think about you know we're in the same space and we both create content the way we approach it is a little bit different but when i was sitting there just watching you before i went on i'm just like this guy's got a lot of responsibility here making sure everyone's on time bringing in people making sure the chat is heard so you're a master of multitasking and keeping it on and i'm sure we'll dig into all of that in this chat but let's maybe just out of the gates right we we work in this awesome industry that is sports cards you are not only a bill business builder or a creator in this space but i you're a a big time collector and so many of these chats start with kind of the origin story of collecting but i would just i would love for you to maybe share with the audience like your your start in cards and just how this space pulled you in not only to be a collector for life but someone who's kinda building his business in in it well you know my hobby origin story starts in nineteen eighty i i'm i'm older than i look brett so i started collecting in nineteen eighty and you know i was doing sets i would collect the opg hockey sets the topps baseball sets i even did the nineteen eighty topps basketball the triple panel cards i remember opening packs of that so in the eighties it was all about collecting sets i had an lcs during the junk wax era from nineteen ninety one till nineteen ninety four the second half of the nineties was my slowest involvement my my least my lowest level of involvement in the hobby i never was out of it i was still collecting and buying but not as much two thousand came around i moved to a new city i got a new job i was out of a university making some money and i and i really dove in with two feet and i haven't looked back really since about the year two thousand as far as being fully immersed in the hobby i was always involved in the social aspect of it i was a member of the beckett boards in the early two thousands when it disbanded i joined hobby insider which is where a lot of the hockey collectors went you know other guys went to freedom cardboard like basketball baseball football guys went to sports card forum later on blowout became the the the the hub i actually acquired hobby insider in two thousand and twelve i just sold it last year and in owning hobby insider that that opened up a lot of connections for me it it really helped build my network so when when twenty twenty came around and this was just just pre or the early parts of of covid i decided to start sports cards live and i was able to attract interview guests because i already had a great network of industry people insiders the hobby and i kicked that i kicked off my content by interviewing carvin chung you know the architect the inventor of exquisite the cup immaculate black all these landmark brands and i really just went from there to get a and here we are today you know i'm over six years of creating content i gotta be coming up on nine hundred live streams now and that's where we're at and like you said i've taken on a few additional projects along the way and and then we can talk more about how i've kind of gone into this more professionally so i i wanna dig into sports cards live and just the the start and what you said regarding relationships a little more but maybe like before we do that going back to you as the collector you know i listen to your content i listen to you talk about cards what you have i know you as you know someone who is a big hockey collector you also you know dabble in vintage and you you kinda spread your wings you you spread your wings across a lot of different categories like when you're when you think about your collection and what you're building like how do you think about or how would you describe all of the different components of what makes up jeremy lee's collection oh man you know i mean i am all over the place like i'm i'm on a five lane highway and i've got wheels in all five lanes you know i have probably thirty different focuses in my collecting call them different lanes or different pcs within my overall collection hockey certainly is the is the sport that i have the most cards of but it's it it and it i guess it's sort of like my first love but i i'm all over base vintage baseball i love vintage baseball i love baseball memorabilia cards that's sort of a newer thing i'm getting into it's a newish lane i mean i'm expanding that highway without the sit without city approval you know like i'm i'm i'm all over the place man my but my collection is very highly curated there it's all in my opinion even though i could pull in thirty cards from my collection and you'd be like there's there's no rhyme or reason to this but trust me there is rhyme or reason everything has a spot and most of these cards have company for them within that sub pc so you know i i don't collect sets anymore i a couple have been grandfathered in but i don't believe for me in collecting a set i don't wanna have to be beholden to adding cards of players that i don't really care about so i really prefer to customize a checklist for myself hundred cards on a checklist i'm gonna pick four or five i call it flight collecting you know like a flight of beers at a pub you get the sample i like to take say a forty eight leaf baseball set and build a flight of four cards from there i don't need all of them i just don't wanna have to put money into players that i don't really love when i can buy cards of players i do love so while it might not look organized my collection is highly curated and very specific we all have our own method to our madness and i enjoy hearing you talk about the cards that you pick up you mentioned in talking about sports cards live you mentioned in its origin story you mentioned carvin and you had this relationship and you interviewed carvin on maybe your first episode and i i'm not sure many people understand this who aren't in the business of creating content the importance of relationships in in this space and relationships to curate the right guests and also guests that become relationships when you think about just the people in your network that you have collaborated with you have told stories with you've you've highlighted auctions you've talked about cards like how do you think about that network and the importance of maybe that network to the growth and the brand building of sports cards live over its history i mean i wanna say it's everything but it's it's it's maybe half or three quarters of the formula the rest is just my genuine passion and authenticity for sports cards i just love these things the network is is huge though because you know when i so carvin and i you know i i said i i called him up one day in april of twenty twenty i said hey bro i'm gonna i'm starting this new youtube thing called sports cards live i'm i'm i'm gonna go live on saturday do you wanna come on i'll interview you we'll just have a conversation like yeah why not let's do it now that's twenty twenty he he and i had been friends since about well we knew each other since around two thousand five but in two thousand and nine we we did some traveling together we got we spent a lot of time together in the course of about eight or nine days i went to the pack out for for for the cup that year i was only the second i think i'm the last non upper deck employee to ever be in the room and and help out with a pack out i went to photograph all the patches to protect against future patch faking that was in two thousand and nine and and it was really my the the whole my stance against patch faking helped me helped increase my status in amongst some of the industry i guess you could say and that got me to the pack out that was what facilitated my friendship with carvin and really that's what brought him on to the show but bringing him on only led to more people willing being willing to come on so that network it might only start with one core contact but you can leverage that into other people by saying hey i just had carvin chung on my show how would you like to come on oh you had carvin well that's impressive maybe i'm willing to come on this guy's show as well now mean that was six years ago now there's many people doing the same sort of content that i do but that was that was incredibly important to launch sports cards live into what it's now shaped into being over the past six years you know and i think it's shaped into being you know i'll say it's been an institution a hobby institution i mean if individuals which is a great time and i'm sure this is by design but a lot of us are resting on saturday nights we're away from work kids are asleep we but we still wanna connect with the hobby and other collectors and you've really been that stage to bring everyone together every saturday night since you started it and as it's someone who creates i i admire your consistency in showing up and if someone wants a place to turn on saturday nights they know where to go you mentioned you know hey i to carve in i'm gonna do this thing i want you to be involved with it was it as simple as that or did you have kind of some sort of why behind sportscardslive and did you think it would be what it is today well okay there is a bit more to it but it was as simple it it was as simple as just like of being hey carv like i said i'm going live if wanna come we'll have a conversation but here's what really happened i gotta go back a couple months in twenty twenty to february justin six ten sportscards held an instagram card show and i'm like oh i'll do that so i let him know i wanna go on sunday at one o'clock and i'll just show some cards and maybe i'll sell some cards and i did that and that was my very first time ever going live anywhere and it was fun sold a few cards couple weeks later maybe a month later i've got all these vintage hockey slabs graded cards that i wanted to sell and i reach and i didn't know i didn't wanna go through the whole like i didn't wanna scan them and and do all that stuff that that you know consignment companies make easier for us now so i reached out to a facebook group moderator for a vintage hockey facebook group and i said hey do you mind if i livestream into your facebook group and it was when i think it was right around when facebook started enabling livestreaming into into their onto their platform i said i just wanna sell some vintage cards is that okay he said the guy goes yeah that's no problem just don't show anything after nineteen eighty nine i said no problem couple nights later i go live i'm hey i got this card three hundred dollars this card eighty bucks i'm just showing cards and i sold a whole bunch and after that experience i had like six or seven people dm me saying that was awesome you should do that again basically whatnot fanatics live ebay live before those things were a thing so i had the idea well hey that was great maybe there's an a need for a new facebook group called sports cards live where you just come in a new live cell instead of posting pictures and coining them and all that and now while i never really got off the ground doing that i managed to i thought to myself well maybe i'll go to youtube and see if the name sports cards live is available i got the i had the facebook group i got that didn't really do much with it posted a few rule documents got the got the youtube name and then i sat on it for a few weeks and then i was like hey carvin do you wanna come on we'll do this chat and i had no sight set on what sports cards live would become on youtube once that interview was over i thought i told myself well that was fun i guess i better find somebody to interview next time and and i did and and i was doing it the in twenty twenty i was doing episodes every wednesday and saturday especially as covid kicked in and we weren't going out as much anymore and that you talked about saturday night that's why saturday night kinda worked early and became a bit of that institution that you mentioned and i've never gone away i ended up stopping the wednesday night show it just became too much i took on some other pieces of content instead and and saturday night lives on for sportscarslive how do you think about your content and where it sits in this ecosystem of content back in twenty twenty i mean i'm sure we could sit here and name the six or seven hobby podcasts that existed there were some videos on youtube there wasn't anybody i can think of of doing a sports cards live type format obviously fast forward into today i mean there's podcast on top of podcast youtube channels on top of youtube channels card show content quick hit videos you know flipping video there it's there's a flavor for everyone but through all of this you know you've consistently stood up there and delivered you know your style of content to the hobby since you know twenty twenty like how do you think about where you kinda sit in with in this con content ecosystem that's constantly evolving well i'm just another another content creator like you said amongst a jungle of them and some are swinging from the vines and some are you know four legged creatures on on on the ground and not to put one above the other i just mean we're we there's so many different styles and flavors of it so i i don't know man that's an interesting question where where i fit in or sportscarslive fits in but i what i will what i i guess what comes to mind is that i consider myself to be a professional content creator this is what i do for a living very similar to brett from stacking slabs which i think you and i have a kinship because of that and i think we we have a a connection we're both doing this together separately but you know in parallel and i think you and i are part of a very small fraternity of people who consider this a profession other there are lots of people that are out there doing content invoicing various partners and sponsors but for me i take this very seriously i love doing it and so i consider myself to be a professional content creator and i have a response my number one responsibility is to the audience to be passionate and authentic in in what i'm delivering i'm not perfect brett i have my opinions and views on things and they might change they can change from one day to the next just like i fall in and out of love with cards sometimes my i reserve the right to retract retract ideas i've i've had or i also am very open to a thought or a theory that i've presented being challenged and if it makes sense to me i'm open minded enough to say oh yeah that that's that's better than my previous theory i'm gonna adopt that as my own and you know that's it i i i like to hold myself accountable but i also give myself the freedom to evolve as a collector as a as a thinker in the hobby and and as a content creator that's that's good i i tend to agree with you on just the you know when you're public and you share your thoughts and opinions you're gonna get a lot of feedback and thoughts and opinions back and this hobby will hold you accountable through those takes and so sometimes through conversations things evolve and i've had that shift before too you mentioned professional obviously you are doing this full time i want to maybe understand what gives you the confidence and conviction to do this full time and i don't know if because we're in this unique spot in this space i've never really had the opportunity to talk with anyone on here about like people asking me question well how do you do this like how how are you able to become a professional content creator in this hobby so i'd i'd love to maybe like get some feedback from you on just like the decision and your confidence to to do this full time and also like how are you able to do this full time well i mean i got really lucky brett again starting this in april twenty twenty i was working full time i'm a cpa by trade i've i've had cfo and director finance roles and in in twenty twenty when i started it i was in a vp finance position for i went in ended up well hold on i'll get to that and i started this so it was it was a side project and it was it was for fun it was totally for fun you know i'm getting mail days i'm opening my cards i'm doing this i'm interviewing carvin chung or whomever but what happened was pretty early on in my content journey i was approached to be sponsored by by actually one of your most recent guests karn rai now of slab sharks this was a couple years before slab sharks was even a a kernel of an idea in his brain and that kinda flipped the switch for me or opened my mind to like oh this is this is interesting maybe i can have a side maybe this can be a side hustle this can be an additional revenue stream for me what ended up happening was and that kept on growing as that happened you know a a key moment for me was i and this must have been twenty twenty one probably march twenty twenty one about a year into content i was i was going down my stairs into my old house where i used to do the show to watch the hockey cards end on ebay on one of the big selling accounts who used to sell their hockey cards on thursdays and as i'm walking down the stairs i'm thinking to myself i'm about to sit at my computer for two hours i'm gonna have eighty tabs open and i'm gonna watch these cards and throw in the odd bid but know the the hobby was hot i was just excited by the values and all that and as i'm walking down the stairs think to myself wait a second why don't i livestream myself watching these auctions i have an audience by now it might be fun i did that and that ended up becoming something that turned into what i do now these auction an auction ending watch parties at the national later that year that that company approached me and said we love what you're doing we should formalize something i said oh great you wanna pay me money to do this why not sounds sounds pretty cool to me well it just so happened that that summer we also we sold the company i was working for we sold to a public we sold to a nasdaq traded public company and and so my job changed a little bit you know i stayed on with the company our ceo who was a good buddy of mine he left he left as soon as we got bought out but i didn't i could he could i couldn't so much and and i i stayed in my job but it was it was it was a lot different it was i was marginalized there were more senior a lot of senior finance people so i stick i stuck it out for a year and then and then i'm like you know what i've got some partners sponsors clients i'm working with in the content world i think i think i can probably just retire from this finance career and and go into this and so you asked about how did i have the confidence to do it well i had already been generating an income before i needed to from this and so when i converted into it full time i had some recurring revenue and i thought okay i just need to build on that now and do it very carefully and and i did one of the coolest things that ever happened to me was and this didn't end well but the company called collectible was the was the fractional interest company they approached me i think in that think at that that same in twenty twenty one they approached me and said we love what you do we'd like to pay you to do a show for us just like you do sports cards live but call it collectible live and and talk about cards and stuff and i said well that sound that's pretty cool i was i was super like flattered and i i remember going upstairs and talking to my wife after and be like i kinda feel like i've been auditioning for something for a tv show without knowing i was auditioning and i got recognized these guys wanna pay me to do this and that was a that was a good gig so i'd had some like i said i had the revenue coming in i was able to i didn't just take the leap without any certainty i had some certainty so that's where i got that confidence from brett did you did you you know it's hard to leave you mentioned cpa background working for good companies you know you bigger upper management titles it is you know you've got that comfortable income coming in through those jobs you know what to expect it becomes routine paychecks every couple weeks you know what you're gonna make for the year you obviously you're probably pretty good at taxes based on you know your background but then you make this decision to go all in on the hobby where it's less certain the maybe the the income is less reoccurring you're working with a lot of different companies the money's coming in a lot of different ways sometimes maybe it's a quarter where it's like oh damn look at how much money we're making in the next quarter it might be a little light like that like and maybe i'm speaking a little bit of about myself like at the time it it you know leaving my job career in tech it it felt a little risky but there was something about this space that was interesting and i love doing it and i felt like if i spent more time on it you know better things would happen for the brand and i i've observed just the way you operate in in your role with your business like did you did you like how do you think about that like on the money side just like the the riskiness as opposed to just having a steady stream of income like how did you get over that hump to just do what you're doing now i'm still not over it brett it it it's challenging right there's no income certainty any of my partners sponsors could turf me at any moment and that would be challenging you know it's strange man like i remember when i had three partners or sponsors now i mean the list is has gotten so big and it's not just the current list i probably have twenty entities that i'm involved with right now and but i have several that i'm no longer involved with either some companies didn't survive some just you know went in a different direction some i decided to sever ties with it it happens it feels like the pipeline of potential partners is pretty deep especially right now you know but but there is no certainty and i'm somebody who likes certainty so it the challenge is there but i think my my defense against that or the strength that i have is that like man probably just like you and we both have young families brett like i have my family and i have the hobby that's my whole life like that's my that's my whole life right i don't know what i don't know what who i would be without the hobby or my family for that matter what i'm getting at is that i'm work i'm always working seven days a week with wake wake to sleep i am doing something that is moving the needle like i i i don't know where i got this bit of advice from maybe it was like an elon musk or something like that but basically that whole like signal versus noise thing like if you are if you can no matter what you're do oh no it's it i think it might have been steve jobs i jobs or jobs or or or musk basically saying like always be doing something that is moving the needle for you even if it's if that is a small contribution to any of the of the things you have on the go whether it's creating a thumbnail having a meet and greet with a potential guest doing a piece of a a post on instagram for of my collection whatever it is i'm always working on the hobby and my involvement in it and and i feel like as long as that's happening and i remain as passionate about it as i am that good things will happen i kinda just believe in that i was fortunate too in that after the covid run i was you know i had the i i had a great collection i have a great collection i don't need to be shy about that and i move i i was able to from a financial perspective brett because the stress can be there right but many people's biggest financial requirement every month is is their living the home the house you know your mortgage your rent i i made the decision a difficult decision i sold some cards and i paid off my house so i don't have a mortgage that's a big financial release on me that that kinda helps me like because that amount of money i would have needed to replace and and you know i don't know would i need another sponsor another partner create another piece of content every week or would i need a real full time job and i have nightmares about having to go back to work because because even though i say i'm working all the time brett the reason i work all the time is because i don't feel like i'm working ever i never feel like i'm working and that i think i'm you know that way i'm kinda living the dream agree with you a lot of what you just said resonates with me before we kind of move on to the next topic i wanna hit this auction style content that you were referencing you know every type of content has there's different flavors of hobby content but certainly this coverage of current auctions is a bedrock of this space it's something that when i think about it i associate with you and i associate adam with that as individuals who are talking about cards at auction you know this hobby is more and more be becoming a space built on moments not only the cards but just these big auctions or big breaks big shows whatever it is maybe like you've been doing it for a while like shed some perspective i think we you've mentioned like you sixty one auctions you've covered maybe talk a little bit about just like that style or that brand of content that you produce and why you think it's important to this industry well i mean it's all marketing for the cards themselves and the auction companies it's putting attention it's getting brands out there that's why i think it's important to the industry but when i started doing it for for the the first company that i started doing it for who's no longer around actually that was kind of the building my resume if you will and then other auction companies started approaching me and saying hey we see what you do would you consider doing something like that for us and okay yeah absolutely i will so i've got i think half a dozen auction companies that i work with now some of them like i some of them i do a i do four shows a month there's one company i do three shows a year for but they're you know that's it that's all it needs one i do four shows a year for it just depends on how how many times they do auctions so i think it's like i it it's it's it's important because it's getting the word out and you know you mentioned adam adam does a great job doing those reels that he does on instagram and youtube and tiktok where he focuses on one card at a time for the most part i'm sitting there doing a show for an hour or like tonight we're recording a show it's gonna be a six hour show and that that's a a long it's a it's a long show but we are focusing and i focus on many of the cards now it only works because number one i love the cards i i know the cards many of them i don't know all the cards of course but i i know a lot of the cards i know the nuances about many of the cards i know how to assess condition especially on vintage i do these live condition assessments which are a lot of fun people seem to really enjoy that so it's i look at these auction shows as yes they are marketing for my partner my client who's the auction company but i have to focus on the audience and the value i bring the audience isn't trying to shove something down their throat it's educating them on what these cards are how to look at them on on the one show i'm doing tonight with adam he provides his perspective i provide mine but most of the shows i do myself and it's really just educating the audience about the cards to the extent that i'm able to that's good i you know i the the more education the better in this space especially about specific cards and products and manufacturers i think that's my favorite type of content i wanna maybe dig into consistency a little bit i consider you a pretty consistent guy i always know when you're producing content when i can listen to content from you you know there are a lot of people that have come and gone since you've been doing content in this space and i've always viewed for me like consistency is a superpower maybe like what have you learned about being consistent as a creator in this space as opposed to maybe some other creators over time who have kinda come and gone how do you think about consistency you know honestly i don't think about it that much brett but what i what i do notice is that the community that that i've built and there's so many communities in in the world of content and the hobby but the sports cards live community comes to rely on me to to show up and they built it just as much as it's become a part of my routine it becomes a part of their routine and that's something that you don't know unless they tell you or you see them showing up and it's you know i don't take that for granted at all it's such an honor that people want to come back and and listen and and then because i'm a consumer of content as well i i know how important it is like if if stacking slabs were to go off the air there would be a void in my life iowa dave the shallow end just recently announced the last episode of the shallow end is coming up and i sent him a message the other day and i said i said hey hey dave you know i was talking to a couple other people i i've set the over under on your return to podcasting as at the national this year you just lol'd me back right so but iowa dave leaving the space of that's a void that's one less piece of content that i enjoy so i think consistency is you know it's not hard to do if you love what you're doing the but on the on the other side of that i will say brett that i don't i don't make it incumbent upon myself to deliver a saturday night livestream every saturday a year fifty two saturdays a year i do need a couple of saturday nights off i there are podcasters out there that when they take a saturday night off or they take their usual slot off they will prerecord or they'll do the podcast from wherever they are they don't wanna they wanna be able to say we've done it every single you know saturday for ten years i don't need to do that i sorry i don't feel the the need to do that i don't like leaving my audience without anything but i also need to have a break once in a while whether i'm going on family vacation or we have community event with our our other friends on a saturday night to do something i will take i probably take off or if i'm traveling to a card show i don't when i'm at the national or the expo i don't do a show from my hotel room i take it off so i probably you know fifty two saturdays a year i probably do forty five of them and i'm totally okay with that myself however i will say that a few months back i actually it's about a year ago i started i started taking the saturday night livestream and dividing it up into five podcasts so i do drop a podcast five days a week so now i don't wanna leave those people without anything so i have prepared some prerecorded like alternative type podcast more of the stacking slab style where it's just me and the microphone and loaded those up at least trying to get out like four of those five days so i recognize its importance and and i i i just wanna i just wanna you know deliver consistently and consistent and and good content to the audience absolutely i'm glad you mentioned dave shout out dave i will say what i really enjoyed about dave or i i don't enjoy the fact that the shallow end is exiting because i much like you it was a part of my weekly routine but i do appreciate the fact that because we don't get this too often dave did an episode to explain why sometimes the the the hobby podcast that we were listening to just vanished and you're like what happened so i appreciate that but maybe just talking about media in this space for a moment there's a lot of voices there are a lot of people on a lot of different platforms sharing their opinions having takes you know and it's hard to know like who what you should believe or who you should trust obviously like when you've been doing this for a while you've established this level of trust with your audience and i often say trust is like the most important asset we can have as creators in this space but like how do you evaluate the current state of hobby media and how you think about like who to trust who to listen to like there's a lot going on like you you mentioned you're not just a creator you're a consumer like how do you navigate it well first of all the current state of it is that it's evolving and it's it's come a long way since since really the the the the major growth phase which really was that twenty twenty to twenty twenty two like there were there's been hobby content going back to the early to the you know late o o's and through the twenty tens but in twenty twenty to twenty twenty two i think i think covid kicked off a lot of it and so i i believe that you know you how do i view it or look at it again it's evolving and it's not gonna stop evolving i think there is so much opportunity to grow hobby content to go there is opportunity to go more mainstream as the hobby goes more mainstream i mean tom brady with the the card vault you got lewis hamilton about to open up a chain of of stores internationally i think you know i was listening to a recent i don't if it was the crossover it might have it might have actually been crossover confidential or card ladder confidential sorry here on your network just about what you know the whole what inning are we in discussion and was it you talking about this and it's not a new inning it's a new game was that on your show or was that on i'm i'm i'm sure it was it jeremy it's like a content hamster wheel sometimes it's like i know you do one of these things and you're already onto the next one it's like you you could relate to that it's like i know people ask me oh you know the episode like three days ago i'm like i can't remember what i had for breakfast today yeah you know i this whole talk of innings i i like to oh it it was cage it was actually cage that was talking about that my thing is there are no innings there there are no innings and if there are it's more like what i think cage was alluding to that he heard on the on the crossover which was that like okay you know maybe covid was like game one we're in a different game the innings are starting over again there is no start or finish here the you know i believe that as long as there are people there will be sports and as long as there are sports there will be sports cards so the hobby is never going away there are no innings it's just it's just a bunch of cycles that are going to come at us and when we most or least expect them and so back to you know the state of hobby content i think as a consumer of content and a producers it's a bit easier because you do what you want to do you create the content you want to create that you would enjoy that's what i do and i've always done but it's so important to curate the content that you listen to because not every creator is gonna speak to you hey it comes about my my hobby spectrum project you know are you a purist are you a nostalgic a precisionist a hybrid a builder an operator or a tycoon wherever you fall on that hobby spectrum i love that you often refer to builders and operators and probably purists too but wherever you fall on that hobby spectrum or wherever you fall dominantly on that hobby spectrum is gonna determine the type of content that's gonna resonate most with you that you're gonna find most useful and most enjoyable to your own vision for your own hobby so i think curating content is probably the most important thing for somebody in the hobby who is open to content who does want to immerse himself in the hobby beyond just the cards themselves and there are so many options out there it's really about finding the best content for you so that's how i look at it let's hit hobby spectrum i one of my observations in this space from a business perspective because i psychoanalyze all of this stuff based on just my skill set and background is i feel at times a majority of this industry is trying to communicate to the hobby like it is one person but that is not the case there are many different flavors of this space there are many different types of people and personas that encompass this space obviously like i i believe you agree with that based on just your attack of bringing the hobby spectrum to life i think that when you show up and you are acting like you're for everyone you end up being for no one and so my mindset and mentality is i'm very specific with who i'm talking to when i'm creating my content i sense based on your style and what you're building like do something similar but maybe share some perspective for the audience who might not know like what is the hobby spectrum and like why did you think it was important enough to to build this yeah appreciate it it's a very important i'm very passionate about the hobby spectrum project what what happened was so you know for years now on sportscards live we often with me and my fellow panelists whoever i'm interviewing or one of or my regulars we get into the discussion and it's not just us a lot of people like to talk about the collector versus investor it's a very fun topic to talk about and i would often put up my hands like this brett i got my hands facing each other you got collectors over here investors over here we all fall somewhere on that collector investor spectrum and i've done that so many times and one night after doing the show i'm out walking my mind's racing and i think to myself i wonder if i could take this sort of abstract concept and build it into a framework how would i how would how would we go about putting somebody on that collector investor spectrum that i'm always like describing with my hands and my words and so that was the that was the the catalyst for the whole thing i came back from the walk and i got to work on you know what questions would you ask somebody to find out where they fell so you know fast forward after a few months i built this fifty question diagnostic assessment that is rooted in consumer behavior psychology and the hobby to to to figure out where someone would land and so you know building like your passion to profession series in a way you know i started thinking about building this out so i i reached out to a survey platform and they were they could build a survey for me online but it was just gonna live as a tab on the sports cards live dot com website and then i realized no this is bigger than sports cards live this is something that that is like the anybody in the hobby could use this no one's done it before i can make it free so why don't we build this into its own thing i go to the national twenty twenty five and i'm asking a few other you know hobbypreneurs who they used to build their their hobby hockey checklist dot com by the hockey cards gong show fell i i asked josh madigan from there mark hill from mycardpost i asked him who built your websites and both these guys told me that they were use and not a knock against them at all these are both friends and i and i i support what they're all doing they were using like these offshore services i thought i don't wanna do that i wanna use i wanna i wanna talk to them on my in my time zone or at least close to it i want i wanna talk to them in english not through a translating app and so i i went i approached tim getsch who owns commsi or not owns it but is a well owns a is a founder i said hey tim who's a friend of mine i go tim do you wanna build a website for me knowing full well he wouldn't he's got he doesn't have time for that he said but let me think about it couple hours later or the next day at the show i i hear jeremy jeremy i oh what's up tim he goes i got i got somebody i wanna introduce you to i'm gonna send you an email they're called inferno red technologies little nice little coincidence that you're also a partner with them and and so he did that a couple weeks later that we had a we had a meeting me and them and they took on the project to build this as its own to build the hobby spectrum as its own website sort of web based app to build the the the survey platform to score the survey and to deliver a result to people and so that was that was really the the phase one of the hobby spectrum but then i realized well okay you take the survey then what so we had the idea or i had the idea to create this directory where once you take the survey you can opt into a directory so people could see who you are and how you what your hobby identity was now the hobby spectrum it it score it gives you like a score i rather call it a placement because score implies that more is better or in golf less is better it's it's not about the score it's simply a placement ninety five is no better or worse than five it's where are you on the spectrum are you more collector or more investor and so by opting into the directory you can display that people can find like minded collectors there's seven archetypes that each take up about fourteen points on the spectrum right fourteen times seven is about a hundred and it's fourteen point two eight but i i know i know well enough that there aren't only seven ways to approach a hobby there's more like an infinite amount of ways to approach the hobbies the hobby spectrum doesn't go out there to paint you into a box or put you in a bucket it basically identifies your core archetype but you have secondary third and fourth like you you fall we can dip our toes into all the archetypes so in upcoming evolutions of it it's gonna more us it's gonna do a better job of illustrating those identity profiles but it also allows in their profile along with your score your archetype it allows you to add all your links so for the for brett on the profile you can have links to all your socials all your podcasts your youtubes your your ebay store your commsi portfolio maybe your card ladder showcase and really anything you want and so it becomes about discovery and connectivity the hobby spectrum is about all those things now we've released the ability to add up to ten players you collect to your profile seven teams and seven sports that you collect so that helps people find like minded collectors with similar interests that's where we're at right now inferno red is currently developing one or two other features that i'm hoping to have at least one of them launchable by by the national and to me that's gonna be a major turning point for the hobby spectrum so i invite all your listeners and community brett hobby spectrum dot com it's free take the assessment opt in to the directory add all your links add who and what you collect and it's just starting there's a lot more to come incredible you are producing content you are creating resources you also have put out a fit a physic content in physical form which we don't see too often but you release pops and comps at the beginning of the year which is available on amazon for anyone who wants to check it out what what was the what was the method to to the madness behind pops and comps like why did you put out this book yeah so i'm glad you asked it ties into the hobby spectrum and i'm glad that we did hobby spectrum first and now we're talking about pops and comps because that's the order that this happened so okay i'm going on my nightly walks i'm listening to stacking slabs i'm listening to doctor beckett i'm listening to iowa dave you know i'm listening to cage i'm listening to the crossover and my mind is spinning and one night i'm out walking the hobby spectrum is in development it's in concept development and i started thinking about comps because on sports cards live we talked about comps and i started thinking to myself how you know comps exist on a spectrum just like collectors do there are there are comps that we can rely on and there are comps that are complete garbage that mean nothing for various reasons so i started thinking to myself i wonder how i would integrate that spectrum onto the hobby spectrum and i quickly realized that well this is different the hobby spectrum is about looking inward and discovering like minded people whereas comps are external data that you really have no control over so i didn't see the i didn't really see the marriage between the hobby spectrum and a comp spectrum and that's when i realized okay i have a lot to say about this maybe this is an opportunity to write a book about comps and what makes a good comp and what makes a bad comp there's so much talk about it but i don't know that anybody had written a book about it yet so i thought about that and then as the idea started to grow and blossom i thought okay well comps is really what i consider to be the demand side of the hobby what about the supply side well that's when i had the idea for pops populations print runs supply so pop comps developed into pops and i put pops first because it just kinda to me that's a logical order and and then i i i was i had the i had a twenty two thousand word manuscript in its earliest draft sent it to a couple of people i really trust in the hobby who would keep my sort of secret and look at it those two people were doctor beckett and chris mcgill and and chris came back to me with what was a a real important piece of feedback he said you know this is this is a this is first of he's like this is great but this is also an opportunity to get more into the world of grading because you talk about it a lot on your show and i thought okay he's right and that's where i expanded it to become again more than my point is it went from twenty two thousand words to ninety thousand words so it went from whatever it was to you know here's a copy of it right here in my hands i'm showing like it's it's four hundred pages brad you know it's eighty one chapters seven appendices it goes through pops which goes into the the nuances of grading a lot of stuff you don't people don't talk about publicly it talks about comps what they are it gets it it gets into bridge bringing them together integration then there's a part on what is called demand drivers all the different things that drive demand in the hobby and there's psychology the psychology behind the hobby so it's really six parts eighty one chapters seven appendices and it was a passion project man twenty twenty five was an incredible year for me creatively with this hobby spectrum writing the book and you know i was inspired by victor roman senior who wrote his book true rcs by by you and you writing your book your digital book i mean these are all very inspiring things and i i credit so many people with helping me just get to where i've gotten to with these projects and i'm so grateful for all my fellow content creators authors we the space i think it's still very immature you know i think i think there's still so much potential back to that inning discussion there are no innings there's just a never ending flow of information and and thinkers out there and i am all you know i'm always looking and excited for the next great mind to present themselves for me to consume their content i am with you i love people contributing sharing their passion sharing their creativity you're doing that at scale before i let you get out of here jeremy there is we're we're entering show season there's a lot going on big cards a lot of content our own projects right now as we sit here and have this conversation what what excites you most about this hobby this industry what you're working on what you're doing the future man listen i i just i just love the space you know right i love the community i love like man my life is so much better with the hobby i don't know what i would be doing without this hobby the friendships i've made around the world you know we all have different family situations we all cheer for different sports teams we all maybe have different backgrounds different religions different political views but the hobby is where we can put that all aside we don't some people don't i wish they would but we can put that all aside and just enjoy some commonality and so i am just really always so inspired and excited by going to the next show having conversations further developing the relationships i already have getting to know people better you're somebody brett that yeah we've crossed paths but like i want to be friends with you i want to text you randomly and say hey bro did you see this like like that that excites me building my relationships but then there's the cards man i love the cards i love cards i love the shape of them i love the size of them i love how they stack i love how they look i love how i can carry them i love that i can like you know here's a box i have this box right here this is one of my pc boxes like you know there's there's one of my boxes of cards i just love how compact they are i can travel with them they shine or they or they or they or the vintage i me me and a couple we call them dusty i love the dust i love the new shine man i just love it and i love creating content and i love collaborating and man i will never stop like i will be doing this until the day i die hopefully so you know god willing this man is the real deal before we hit record he i think i i think i woulda let coulda let you talk for an hour about a specific wayne gretzky rookie card and what you were seeing through it so you're very detail oriented opinionated guy who loves cards jeremy always a pleasure really fun having this chat learning more about background what you're building everyone obviously sports cards live every saturday night except for a few when jeremy's at the national and on vacation check out pops and comps and the hobby spectrum looking forward to doing this again soon i appreciate you brett thank you so much for having me always a pleasure