Alright. Excited for this episode of Passion to Profession. Today, I'm joined by Josh, Josh at PC Sports Cards. We're gonna be digging into his story, kinda leaving his corporate job, building PC sports cards, and everything in between.

But without further ado, Josh, man, welcome. How are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me, Brett. Happy to be on a podcast again. It's been a while. Well, hopefully, we'll make this as easy as possible. I'm I'm I will say this, though.

It's fun to, like, connect with, business owners like you. Definitely as someone who maybe considers themselves a little bit of an eBay degenerate going through all the listings and seeing, who the the sellers are.

And I've definitely, bought cards from PC sports cards. And then also to just seeing, Instagram and people I follow who have cards for consignment, listed.

Like, you've got a good audience because a lot of good people that I'm connected with, I regularly see kinda posting their cards for sale through PC sports cards.

So they, like, we'll just start like, what's what's that like to maybe build that community of customers and relationships you have?

I I noticed just on your website, that's a big emphasis you all have is just building those relationships. Well, it's always important to get to know your customers and to really connect with them.

Like, I love going to the national and seeing people. I don't go to we don't go to a lot of shows. Right? Like like we're talking about before the show started.

I have a seven year old. My partner, Zach, has two kids that are, I think, the same age as your kids. And our weekends are for our family. So, like, we don't go to as many shows. We start sending some of our guys to shows.

But connecting with our customers outside of even the Instagrams and the Facebook conversations and the late night text message groups that you have with people, it's, it's the most important part of the hobby because it's the most important part of all of it because if you don't connect with them, they're gonna disappear anyway.

So for forget about from a friendship standpoint, from a business standpoint, you need those connections.

So I I you touched on something there that I've never really talked about, but I think is is interesting where there is so much of the hobby can get up and get out and be weekend warriors and just, like, attack the card show scene, new businesses popping up, face to face interactions.

But, like, there's also a segment of business owners in this hobby like us who are, you know, specialize our time.

Right? We have set hours for when we're doing our work, and then that that time away from our work is 100% fully focused on our our family. Right? And a lot of that comes to the weekend.

So as as you, you know, maybe, you know, are a parent and have evolved your schedule, how do you make sure that you continue to kinda keep that touch point with your customers and connections outside of, you know, seeing them face to face, which is certainly more challenging when you've got, you know, family priorities to take care of?

A lot of it for us, I could speak for myself. I have a handful of people that I talk to every single day. I can count on probably might take me both hands to count on those people, but I talk to them every single day.

And they've they're more than just, customers at this point. They're friends. They come to they came to my kid's birthday party. We traveled together, things like that.

But it's also as a business owner, it's important to hire the right people that can continue those conversations and that you trust to be the face of your business because we have customers that reach out to them every single day.

We have people that message us every single day, and I can say that my guys answer Instagram messages. They answer emails.

They do every possible thing to make sure they are always talking to our customers, which, I mean, to be as straightforward as possible, like, in 02/2018 when I built our first website part of the reason I built the first website is to just answer all those questions from our customers instead of having my phone dinging twenty four seven.

Yes. Bill Bill, it's important to as a business owner to build the infrastructure, and I'm sure we're gonna talk about that.

But maybe we talk about just, like, your, story with cards, maybe pre PC sports cards. Have have you always had an interest in sports cards, always been a collector?

And if so, kinda what have you collected over the years? So I was always a collector. I was always into sports. I I remember watching Duke win national championships when I was, like, seven or eight years old.

I was always a David Robinson fan. So I, I always wore number 50 when I played basketball, and I always collected their cards in the in the nineties.

I remember going to the store and buying a pack of cards, like, vividly going there with my brother and fighting over what cards we would get.

That sort of took a back seat once I started going to college, graduating, working. And then in 02/2013, I got back into cards.

My buddy Brett called me, and he's like, I hit this Byron Buxton purple auto out of 02/2013 Bowman Chrome, and I sold it for $1,800. I'm like, oh my god. That's awesome. So that's what sort of reignited me getting into the hobby.

So you, the the passion is lit. You're back in. I know we were chatting a little bit before about kind of our journey within tech before we jumped in doing sports cards full time.

But maybe talk about kind of the road from, like, what you were doing professionally and then how that transitioned into the origin story of PC sports cards.

Sure. So 02/2013, I was getting into it. I was getting married at the time. I was buying and selling deals, and I realized that I had capital to buy deals in bulk, and I started learning about grading.

All those things sorta happened in, like, a three or four month period. It was crazy how fast it all happened. I opened the box. I hit a hydro barris gold auto. I don't know if you know even know who he is.

I don't. He was like Jason Dominguez in 02/2013, like the 17 year old super prospect on the Rangers. And I remember posting the card and trying to sell it for $250, which is what it was worth, and I couldn't get it.

People are like, oh, this is wrong with the card. This is wrong with the card. This is wrong with the card. Brought it up to White Plains, got a graded RCR by Beckett, and it got a RCR ten ten, and I sold it for $750 cash.

So I'm like, oh, so there's something that's great. So I'm like, I have economies of scale. I'm just gonna buy in bulk. I could do this grading thing. Let me see how this sort of starts going. Right?

So I actually, by the way, wanted to show you. I bought the Hyrule Baris back in a 10/10 for $50 10 years later. Oh, I see. Bought the Byron Bucks in purple. Oh. So I have the two cards that started my whole journey back into this.

So this is pre PC sports cards. Right? PC sports cards started when Zach and I partnered at the national in New Jersey two thousand seventeen or 02/2016, whenever that was. But I realized that grading was a thing.

So I started becoming friends with my rep, and he started saying if you get I won't say crazy numbers right now that people that are listening to this that were not in the hobby in that time will be like, are you kidding me?

Like, my my price went for twenty day guaranteed orders from Beckett from $7 to $5. Right? It was like a no slab price of a dollar if it didn't get the grade you wanted.

Right? So and he didn't care where I got the cards from, so I started getting cards from other people, and I started submitting them. And that's how the the first part of what became PC sports cards started.

Right? That's how the grading started. So I started getting 300, four hundred, five hundred, eight hundred, a thousand cards from other people, send them into Beckett, and get them back.

I was one of the first group submitters out there. With with with so there's a lot here where you are realizing the economies at scale.

You're understanding grading. There are other people who are noticing grading. You're becoming the central point where people are sending your cards to submit for grading.

How did you manage to as you're learning and wrapping your head around this, how did you manage to, like, bring organization around everything you're doing?

So not only you were kind of building the stages of a profitable business, but then also, like, on the customer service side, you're making sure that the people who are sending you cards understand the timelines when they're gonna get it back and that sort of thing.

First of all, one benefit was it was twenty days guaranteed. Right? There was no, like, four month wait. This is before grading really took off. I did everything on blowout cards.

Everything was on the blowout forms at first. Right? Also, Beckett used to offer what they called aggregate grading. So I could send in seven cards for customer one, and they'd come back in that exact order.

Then I like, so I could send in all the cards and have them separated, and they always came back in the same order, which is something that ended up disappearing in 02/2017, '2 thousand '18, which is a big push a big reason why we ended up actually transitioning to PSA because they made it they made it easy to partner.

Right? I I went to school for entrepreneurship. I went to school to start my own business, and what I always realized is that I wanted to build a business similar to successful people during the gold rush.

I wanted to be the supplier of the picks and axes. I wanted to be the the guy that I can help you get started.

I can help you when you grow. I could help no matter whatever you need to do, I wanted to position my company as the company that somebody can come to for that help. Right? So then when people come into the hobby, I can help them.

When people are growing in the hobby, I can help them. And just I'll take my couple dollars every single time, and I'll just do it over and over and over again. And, you know, during the boom, we were submitting 12,000 cards a week.

We're selling 5,000 cards a week. It's just it's a lot of picks and axes. I I've never heard anyone frame up the way they're building their business like that, but it totally makes sense.

Did you have a did you just, like, make the leap? You made the leap and you're you're you said, okay. PC sports cards is is what I'm doing.

Like, you had this moment, or was it just a gradual progression of, like, exiting what you were doing professionally and then moving over to PC? How did that shake out? So I actually started PC well, I didn't start PC.

I started J Trading Card, which was the first rendition of it. PC started, like I said, in 02/2016, '2 thousand '17. When I started my business, I started another business that didn't really take off.

It was pretty cool. That was a college pet kind of business selling dog toys in college collars, which I should still do again, but it didn't have the it didn't have the capital for it.

But I worked for, like, six, seven months, and I realized I could buy, grade, and sell enough to cover my necessary costs, and then I can grow everything else as it was going forward.

So I took the leap in February I got I did it right after. I got February 2014 was my first year full time.

That's when I started going full time and was not getting a paycheck from anybody else. You went to so you went to school, for entrepreneurship. You obviously worked for corporate America then decided that wasn't for you.

I need to go build my own own thing. At this point in your journey, are you, like, 100%, like, this I gotta work for myself full time because this is the way I'm wired?

Yes. Or have you or have you had thoughts of maybe at some point I could go work for someone else again? The only way I could ever work for somebody else is if I had complete autonomy. Right?

Like, if I had complete autonomy, I could work for somebody else. As long as, like, hey. Just check-in once in a blue moon. Fine. Let me do what I'm gonna do because I know I could do it. I so there there were a lot of just to be clear.

Right? There were a lot of failures along the way. Right? Like, I got into right out of college, I got into insurance and investments. I had my series seven. I worked as a waiter. I was a manager of a restaurant.

I owned an ice cream store. You know? I I I had two businesses in corporate corporate America. I was to the point, like and I'm just, like, I'm I'm open about everything in my in my past because I think my past made my future.

In 02/2007, my car was repossessed. I couldn't afford Dunkin' Donuts. Like, I went from the the bottom of the bottom, and I'm proud of every single thing that I have accomplished and that we've accomplished as a business.

In in your early days at PC Sports Cards and building the business, maybe what were some of those hurdles that you had to overcome, and how'd you overcome them? That's a really good question.

So the hardest thing to overcome in the beginning, especially when it went from just, like, buying, flipping, and selling, that kind of stuff. Because to me, that's not a business. That's just a side thing no matter what.

When it came to growing the business, earning trust was the hardest thing to do. Right? Like, blowout gave you some, but still, people are sending you valuable things and need to know that they're gonna come back.

And then as this forget about, like, the first few years. That was the hardest thing in the for, like, how can I trust that I'm gonna send you my card and get my card back?

If you're sending in seven of the same 2,017 Topps Aaron Judge cards, how do I know that mine is the one that I sent you? How do I know you're not doing this? Right? And then you have especially in this hobby, you have the bad players.

Right? The bad players make it even harder for the good players. If if one person is bad, it makes it puts a bad taste in everybody's mouth, and that gets so publicized that everybody's like, oh, everybody's doing this.

Right? I mean, we we still have people that send us messages on eBay. I can't believe you how there's no way this is the second time you accidentally sold this card.

I see that it's sold for $28 and mine was $25, so that's why you canceled it because it cost you $3. It's like you just said you saw the other one. Like, it's the same numbered card.

Like, why would I why would I risk my business over like, I don't I mean, I want all my customers' cards to do as well as possible, but, like, if it's nobody's risking business for a $3 I guess it's just, like, it's wild, and that's because it's happened in the past.

Right? It it's happened, so people think everybody's that bad player. Trust is definitely the maybe most important currency for businesses or just individuals in the hobby.

What are what are some ways that you found in the early days, and maybe that's even to today and what you do today, that you are able to build and develop trust with not only your existing audience of customers, but maybe new customers that come through?

I think this comes back to the first thing we were talking about where it comes back to relationships.

Right? If you have those relationships and you're getting referrals from people instead of trying to earn new business, trust comes along with it.

And then when you start when you start sending in 10,000, 12 thousand, 15 thousand cards for people, you start selling three, four, five, six thousand cards a week on eBay, and people see these things.

And there's no, like, drama around our business. There's so many there's so many different, so many different crises that came up and so many different scams that people ran, and, you know, we're not part of them.

Right? So, like, we're we're we're clean. Right? Like, and that really over time, it's like nobody can really say a bad thing about us.

We treat our customers with respect. We do everything we possibly can for them. And if some if something goes wrong, we just take responsibility for it and say, hey. We screwed this up. We're gonna pay you for it.

We're gonna do this. What whatever it is, we don't we don't we're not penny rich and dollar poor. You know what I'm saying? For sure. I think, you know, and especially in doing what you're doing, consignment, grading, selling.

There's it seems like there's new players that pop up all the time, and the space is, very crowded. How do you I you've been doing this for a while, and the I feel like tenure helps, gain that trust.

But maybe what are some ways that you've been able to differentiate, in the market to maybe stand out as opposed to everybody else who's trying to do what you're doing?

Sure. I love this question. Right? So as you can see in my shirt, I went to Arizona State, and I'm proud to say Arizona State is a dynasty in one thing and one thing only, and that's innovation.

We're number one in innovation for, like, eleven years running ahead of MIT, ahead of every other school.

I don't know what it means, but we're number one in innovation. And that's what we do. We innovate. We were the first one of the first group submitters. We were behind probe steaming and a couple others.

We were one of the first consignors. We were the first non major corporation to have a website for people to submit their cards, track their orders, get get at least daily updates via APIs.

We were the first one. I I built the website. I sat there for two months learning how to build the website. It was wild.

We were the first company to come up with grading consignment where customers can send us their cards for grading, and then we'll sell them for them on eBay, and we'll take the proceeds from the sale to pay for the grading so you could take $0 out of your pocket and just keep on using that money to buy and buy and buy to keep your business going and get that snowball effect going.

And then every other major company, PWCC, Golden, other group submitters copied that.

So which is great. Right? It it it makes me feel good that they're they're trying to do what we're that we already and we started. Right? We're always trying to be the forefront of the hobby. Right?

I know we're a little late to the party, but we're one of the first big consignors that's on eBay live now. We're doing about five to six shows a night. Five to six shows a week, we're doing 12 to two most most weeks, most days, I mean.

And we're actually, we're running some at night now. So That's amazing. I I love this idea of being the first or one of the first, and I think which is great because it affords you the opportunity to maybe do things that others can't.

But I think maybe one of the challenges when you're starting something new or offering a new service line is just, like, the education around it.

Right? It's trying to get the your customer to understand why what you're offering matters and matters to them.

While you just mentioned you're kinda, like, the first at a lot of different things or one of the first, how much of a role did, like, education play in just making your audience understand what you were offering and how that would help them in their the collections that they're trying to build?

It's an endless task to educate.

Right? We started we did we we did we had a lot of content on YouTube couple years ago. We're probably gonna start doing it again. Educating customers on how to find cards to grade, how how pop report and the the math behind grading.

Right? And then we had stuff about how to use our website because our website will track everything for you, and you could basically run all the accounting from your business through our website.

Right? So it was showing them that they could do all of this, and it actually does exist.

Right? Like, it's not like this unicorn. Like, no. There's no way this happens. Right? So it's always talking to them. It's sending out emails about what's going on.

It's answering endless questions. It's developing the website so you don't have to answer the same question. Like, if we got a question three or four times, pop an answer on the website. Pop an answer into an auto chat responder.

We do we that that's how we do it because, you know, there's a reason that people are asking the question. We're obviously missing something. We're not we're not communicating properly enough if all of these people are missing it.

So we try to find a way where we can send them somewhere to get that information because each question probably leads to another one. You mentioned, you mentioned eBay, eBay live.

Obviously, eBay is sponsoring this series. Maybe talk a little bit about what role eBay in their platform has played in the growth and scale of PC sports cars. I mean, our consignment business wouldn't be what it is without eBay.

Right? I think eBay gets a really bad rap from a lot of people. They are the marketing. They are the biggest marketing tool in the entire industry for sports cards. Right?

Like, you throw a car on eBay, more people see it than you put it anywhere else. And people don't wanna pay for that, and they don't wanna pay for the protection. But then if they get scammed, they get upset that they get scammed.

Right? So I think eBay does a a great job communicating with their sellers, especially at our level, to find out what the hobby wants, what the hobby needs, what our customers are saying, and then bring it back to them.

Stuff like authentication.

Stuff like, automatic payments. You know? We've been working with eBay on that kind of stuff for a couple years now. They have some other stuff in the pipeline that I can't talk about that is gonna be really cool that everybody wants.

And the the problem with eBay is their eBay. Right? They're the they have to make it fit for every vertical, not just collectibles, not just sports cards.

So it's sort of like every time you want something to happen, it's moving a mountain. It's not just pick like, we're very agile. We could just make a change.

Right? EBay can't do that. It's it's a much bigger process, but they are always working to improve, which is nice. How has your experience been, with, you mentioned you have some e eBay lives, the live selling component.

It seems like that's where the industry is moving towards. And and I don't think it'll ever be completely just that, but it seems like that's kind of an an industry trend that's going up.

I'm curious to hear about your experience. EBay Live, we started early February. We were gonna do two or three shows a week, and now we're doing five or six shows a week.

That's how much we like it. That's really a community builder. We have people that come in there all the time every week, every day. We're running a lot of promotions around eBay Live to get more people returning.

So, like, in March, we ran a promotion where if you bought in any 10 lives of ours, you got $25 credit on our website that you can use for eBay purchase, you can use for grading, you can use for whatever you want.

This month, we're running one that's if you buy in three shows in a week, you get a $10 credit. You can do that every single week so you can get up to $40.

We're probably gonna extend that into May. We're trying to bring people back to build that community because it's it's fun to come in and talk to the same people over and over again.

And we've seen that with all the other platforms that do it. It's just eBay has the most customers. They have the most eyes, and the platform is there for people to use.

They just don't even know it exists. Right? So we gotta work with eBay to market it better. When you look at the hobby and look at what's happening in the industry, it every year has its story.

Right? We we remember the the pandemic, the boom. We remember the crash. And then it seems like the industry as a whole is doing very well, very strong sales.

I I think, I don't think I know just based on just card ladder tracking and data. They reported on $295,000,000 in sale online sales, in March, which I think that number is even higher based on some, data that came in later.

So we're we're in a pretty good spot right now, it seems like, from an industry perspective. I'm curious in just the business that you're building and the landscape.

Like, what excites you the most about what's happening with cards right now? I get excited when at this point. Right? Because, like, my day to day is very different than than a lot of other people.

I get excited when we get new people in live. That's really what excites me now. Like, my guys are running it in the office next to me, and I'm like, how many new buyers do we have?

How many new heads do we have in there? I have analytics on, like, how many new viewers we have in every show, how many concurrent viewers we have in every show.

And when that's growing, it's great. Because that the I I was listening to somebody talk earlier about these high end cards and these multiple five figure cards that are selling. To me, that's not what what's important to the hobby.

To me, what's important is everything that goes between, like, $10 and a hundred dollars because everybody plays in that range. There's so many transactions in that range, and that's how you know the hobby's growing.

So, like, I could tell you that our sales are up. Not not dollars, it's up more than this, but, like, we our quantity sold is up 15% this month, which means that more people are more people are sending us cards.

Right? It means that the the the velocity is faster, and we haven't really changed much. So it's other than live and we did some rate changes that were very, very aggressive, but we're we're growing.

And us growing and seeing the hobby grow and seeing all these products come out and all these people that are getting involved, it's fun to see.

Going to card shows when I go to them, like, when I go to the national, people come up and, like, you see these kids coming up.

It's amazing. I'll tell you that this is, like, not even card related. This is my son related. I picked my son up from boys and girls club because he's off of school this week.

I picked him up yesterday. He goes, daddy, daddy, daddy. This is the first time he's ever done this. He's like, can I bring my Pokemon behind there to boys and girls club?

Sure. He's like, daddy, I made seven trades at at boys and girls club today. You know that metal Mew card that we have? I traded that to my friend Will for these EXs, but he doesn't know that I have two of those metal cards.

So he didn't know that I already still had an extra one. And, like, that excitement like, my kid, when he gets in the car, how's your day?

Can I have my iPad? But yesterday, he got in the car, and he was, like, just super pumped about trading Pokemon cards at boys and girls club. And that excitement is what really, like, gets me going. You know? I love I love that.

The, you cut you said something there that I I felt like has needed to be said for some time, and it's like, you know, it's so easy to shine a light and report on these 6 figure sales that happen in these big auction houses.

But, like, the buying pool of those cards is so small, but we treat it like this is, like, the way we should be going about, and that those should be our goals when in all reality, it's the, you know, 10 to a hundred dollar cards that are selling in droves because that's what a majority of people can afford.

And thinking like that and understanding that's how the hobby works, like, have you maybe optimize your business in a way to make sure that you are supporting the base of collectors out there and the majority which are selling in that pool as opposed to trying to bring in people to try to sell 5 and 6 figure cards on the regular, which probably isn't a easy reality to make.

100% have gone after that market. Right?

We started we we we're we're working with a, AI grading company called Shoebox AI, to to preevaluate cards before you send them in for grading. And we're working with them because they also agree that that's the best part of the market.

Right? Because it's it's it's it's a flow. Right? There there's everybody out there that's buying cards will get cards that are in that price range.

And if you're trying to like, we we like to work with people that of course, collectors and, of course, everybody. Our real main niche is working with people that are buying and selling cards to make money.

Right? That's our real main niche. That's great if you consignment is completely. Right? So those people that can get a a $7 card spend 6 spend $20 to get it graded and sell it for $40.

50 dollars over and over again, that's like the ideal customer for us. Right? So we're working on ways to help facilitate that to happen. Right?

I would love I would love to learn just on that because there's a lot of people listening that would love to learn, like, those think about, like, your ideal customer, those individuals that are doing that in at at volume and at scale and are making money.

Like, what are maybe some characteristics of those individuals? Like, what are things you see them doing in order to keep that repetition? So this I could tell you that we have a lot of stuff on this on, like, you on our YouTube.

I started a series two years ago that was a thousand dollar challenge where I took a thousand dollars and I started buying singles on eBay, and I would grade them, and then I would resell them. I would evaluate them.

I would grade them. I had videos of the entire process. I only did it for, like, three months. I stopped because other stuff was going on in my life that took priority. But I didn't use any of my economies of scale to my advantage.

So I paid the same rates that a customer would pay using our consignment, and I paid the same rates that a customer would pay using our grading and showed people what types of cards I would buy to do something like this.

Right? And the the two rules that I have in doing this are you're not buying a card that you like.

You're buying a card that somebody else will pay a premium for graded. Right? Which sounds very obvious, but it's not. Right? Somebody's like, oh, but this card is numbered to five.

I'm like, it sells for $30. It's numbered to five because it's somebody that nobody cares about. So nobody out there is paying you a premium for that being in a PSA 10 holder. Give me, like, just cards laying around.

Right? Like, give me this Trout 1983 update. Right? So couple dollar card, PSA 10 is probably $40. Right? It's get the key players, get, like, a refractor of them, and then it's also learning how to look over a card.

You don't need a microscope. You don't need like, I see pictures of people that are looking, like, a hundred time microscope to look at a card.

Like, PSA uses their eyes in a magnifying glass. That's it. They they wipe they'll also, by the way, they wipe cards down.

And I'm not telling you that because it's breaking news. Like, you'll hear people from PSA say they take a microfiber and wipe it down because they don't wanna grade a card that has crap on it.

So if you get your card back that has a fingerprint on it, whoever slid your card put their fingerprint on it. That's the only way. It wasn't you. It wasn't the grader. It was the person that slid That's the only way that happens.

But then it's learning what cards have high gem rates. Right? Like, I could tell you that, Luis Roberts, Topps Chrome rookie, had a 91 or nine had a 97% gem rate or a ninety seven nine or better rate.

But the card went for $3 and the PSA 10 sold for $30. I'm gonna buy that over and over again because the math makes sense.

So it's a lot of educating on how that math works and your odds, and you only increase your odds by how learning how to look over cards or using this this like a third party AI grading tool if it's priced appropriately.

I also will tell people that if you're learning how to grade cards, buy PSA nines, buy PSA eights for $3 and crack them out and look at the card and say this is what's wrong with the card.

You don't have to look over a card and spend money to send it in.

You could spend less than grading costs, crack it out, and look at it, and it accomplishes the same thing. And now you're not waiting sixty five days plus twenty days to intake the card.

So there's a lot of things that we talk about that sort of educate customers on how to grow it as a business rather than just, like, buying and selling a sports car or telling you who the hot name is today.

Because if I tell you who the hot name is today, in three months when that car comes back rated as a PSA 10, they might have a broken leg. Right?

The the thing you said there, and I you shared so much gold there, but the looking at cards and changing the mindset from this is a card that I think is cool, and here are the attributes, and this is what I like, so I'm gonna go buy it.

Like, suspending that and and focusing in on what the market wants and what other collectors want, like, that is a dramatic change and a dramatic shift.

And there's a lot of people that are probably listening being like, alright. This is really good information. I'm taking notes.

Some people might have struggle to get over that hurdle. Like, do you have any advice for anyone who's trying to think to that? Like, how do I stop buying cards that I just like and end up keeping and they stay in my case?

And then when I do have to sell them for something, like, I'm losing money because I kept it too too long when in all actuality, I should just be buying with the market once. Like, how do you how do you, like, get over that hurdle?

I got over it by making mistakes. Right? Like, I got over it by saying, I really think Anthony Rizzo is undervalued. Let me go buy all these Anthony Rizzo cards. Right? He's a hall of famer not a hall of famer.

He's an all star multiyear all star. I love his story because he's a cancer survivor. If his cards came out today, they'd be worth a lot more than when they came out years ago. But it's okay to be an Indian.

You don't always have to be a chief. Right? It's okay to be the sheep that's following the herd. To me, it's go pick out the best names that you know. It's not about prospecting. Prospecting is great, but you're taking a risk.

Right? You're not taking a risk buying a lot of Ohtani cards for 50¢ to $2 a card. You're not taking a risk by buying a lot of Aaron Judge cards for 50¢ to $2 a card, especially if your goal is to grade them. Right?

When it comes to evaluating cards for grading, I also especially if you're buying on eBay, write down what you're getting from the sellers. Take notes of who you're buying from and what those things come back as when you grade them.

Right? You have to you have to invest. It's not just like fire in the dark. Awesome. Awesome feedback and advice. And I wanna get into maybe some cards that will be live at PC sports cards when this episode goes live.

But maybe before we do that, is there a card over the last, like, you know, twelve to eighteen months that you all sold that is memorable.

And it could be memorable because it was a card you really appreciated. It could be memorable because it the price sold for way more than you were expecting.

Maybe share any examples that you might have. The last twelve months have been really tough twelve months for me. I have I wasn't I wasn't really involved a lot last year.

I think the most memorable memorable thing for me in the hobby, forget about, like, an individual card. Mhmm. I'm gonna I'm gonna politician your question by answering the question I wanna answer.

I I love it. Do it. Go for it. The coolest thing for me is, like, we start when we started doing the lives, we were getting, like, four or 500 people at a show.

And then we did our first push notification with eBay, and we had 6,000 people in a two hour show and 400 concurrent people.

I'm like, holy shit. That's nuts. There's, like, there's people that really wanna be here that just don't know it exists.

And that's what got me excited. Right? Like, I've been we've been working really hard here to grow this thing with live to the point where I was going to the masters last week.

I went on Wednesday, Thursday. And, like, on Tuesday before I left, I told my girlfriend. I'm like, I don't wanna leave. I just wanna be in the office and push this thing. It's so exciting right now. And that's crazy for me. Right?

I look forward to going there. And it's just like that that the the it's exciting to me to see what's going on with that. That's incredible. Wow. That's one push notification can bring a lot of people to the party, it sounds like.

If it's done right. If it's done right. Alright. Let's talk maybe about just some cards that might be going up. Anything sitting around you that's cool that you wanna talk about. So, yes, I I we have some cool stuff here.

We always get cool cards in. Last week would have been a really good one because we had, like, a Tatis orange auto. We had a Shaq logo, man. Oh, wow. So we had some really cool stuff. First one, I'll I'll pull out.

We have a Trout refractor BGS nine. I just always think Trout his market just keeps going down. I still think he's a first ballot hall of famer, and I'm okay to dollar cost average down on somebody like Mike Trout.

So I just think that's a cool card, and you don't see a ton of them coming in because everybody's into them from so much. From the boom. So, like, people, like, don't really get rid of them.

Right? Let me ask you. Let me Trout is you know, when when I got back into this, it was Mike Trout everything. Then, you know, he went through some injuries and, you know, there's a whole story behind it.

But what, I guess, is what would have to happen or what is possible or likely that could happen that maybe would move Trout back up to kind of in that same conversation where, like, Judge and Ohtani is right now.

He stays healthy for a 62 games. Okay. That's it. He's talented enough. Right?

He's just gotta stay healthy. And who knows if it's gonna happen? Because if he stays healthy, he's gonna put up crazy numbers. No doubt. Another card that I have that I think is a good time to start buying, Ja'Marr Chase gloves RPA.

I think football right now, if you're if you're buying with the national in mind, buy football. Find quarterbacks, buy them. They're gonna be up in a couple months. It's clockwork. Right? Complete clockwork.

How that seems like it just the cycle of, people putting money into football cards to sell football cards, that is that has changed pretty dramatically over the last, like, you know, three or so years or, I guess, since, like, the time frame of, like, Brady Mahomes Super Bowl, it seems like everything that happened after that, there was just more interest in football.

Do you think it was just, like, kind of long overdue or something else that has moved it to being, like, one of the most talked about categories and transacted categories when it comes to national time?

I think it's well, it comes it comes up in national because you're right before the season starts. Right? And every the key to every sport is right before the season starts because everybody could be the MVP.

Nobody's lost it yet. Nobody's gotten hurt. Nobody's gotten arrested. Nobody's gotten and none of that stuff has happened yet. Right? Any sport. So everybody's buying the guy they think.

My strategy is to buy usually, what if I if I'm focusing on buying stuff for the national, it's usually to buy case hit PSA tens of rookie or second year quarterbacks that made the playoffs the prior year.

Right? We know the list. You know? Because they're gonna go up.

Because people are gonna be like, he's gonna take a step forward. Mhmm. He's he's the one that's gonna take the step forward. It was CJ Stroud last year. You know, I bought some Bryce Young. I did well on that.

I did well on CJ Stroud. This year, obviously, Jaden, Jordan Love again. You know, those kinds of guys that could take a step forward are who I would be focused on buying if I was buying stuff specifically for the national.

Awesome. Any other cards you wanna highlight? I have two gold. It's tough to see because I have my screen blurred, and there's air there's light coming in.

Caitlin Clark and Cooper Flagg. So The talks of the town The talks of the town. Cooper Flagg Gold Auto. Caitlin Clark Gold Fearless. They're the ones that everybody's chasing right now.

Like, I listened to a couple podcast this week, and people were talking about how Caitlin Clark when you go to a car show, every dealer they hear says, you know, all I want is more Caitlin Clark.

Right? Like and Cooper Flagg, he's gonna get drafted. Duke, go number one. He's gonna you know, it's just that that's that's what people are going after right now.

I would also say, like, I'm not holding a Cooper flag card personally until he's in a pro uniform. I am very and, again, I'll reference the YouTube stuff.

You'll see me anti everything college uniform. I have I have a college uniform collection, like, an ASU. Like, I have Kalynn Bellaj RPAs, like, collegiate RPAs, which are cheap now.

But if you're long term, unless you're a Duke fan, get it get the pro uniform. You're just gonna lose money on other stuff. I'll man, you there's been a a lot of, good information, good nuggets, cool cards, everything in between.

Maybe before I let you get out of here, I'd love in just your build of TC sports cards and just analyzing kinda what others are doing around you.

Maybe what are your thoughts on what separates successful businesses in the hobby from just everybody else?

Successful businesses care about their customers more than anything. And they care especially in this hobby, I my feeling is there's enough to go around.

I'm not trying to knock anybody out. I wanna work with every single person that wants to work with me and partner to create a better experience for anybody that is getting involved.

And I wanna give the education so people learn the right way instead of people learning the wrong thing from the wrong person that has the wrong the wrong motivation to give them that information.

I don't I will never try to take advantage of anybody, and I think that there's a lot of people out there that have big voices that do that.

Before I let you get out of here, maybe there's a lot of listeners that are those weekend warriors going to card shows, having fun, making some cash on the side, but maybe have aspirations to starting something like a PC sports cards or maybe something in a a different category.

What what advice would you have for anyone out there who's trying to turn their passion that they have for the hobby in into a business? Figure out what is missing and fill the hole.

And remember that nothing is below you. Right? You have to be willing to do the dirty work. You have to be willing to take the time, and you have to be willing to do every single bit of it in order to grow the business.

Just there there's no shortcut to doing it. You just have to grind. And there's gonna be days where you wake up and you won't wanna do it, and you still have to do it.

Great advice. So many good nuggets in this one. Josh from PC sports cards. This was a lot of fun, man. Appreciate you coming on Passion Profession and sharing some knowledge and insight. Thanks, Brett. It was great being here.