alright we are back with another episode of passion to profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay excited for today's conversation we have dave from DT Sportscards a long time business builder and participant in the hobby we are going to be talking about his business grading collecting everything in between dave we both just got back not too long ago for from the national it was madness has the dust settled at all for you yet slowly but surely come back to a madhouse and it's just like the show never stops so what what were your maybe primary takeaways outside of like the show definitely felt bigger than ever before i'm not sure how much more expansion can take place i think it felt organized even though it was very chaotic those were kinda my observations but any any observations or takeaways from you being at the show i mean it just keeps getting bigger bigger and bigger and more people i think based off of like the the upper level i mean it seems like they could expand even more right they it doesn't seem like that they take utilize that upper level to the full extent but i mean how much more do you wanna just keep adding and adding and adding before it's overload but it it seems like they can certainly handle it right now yeah i i it felt it always feels like the i wouldn't i don't wanna just say the only the good cards are upstairs because that's pretty generic but it feels like there's some dealers up there that we we know have good cards and can have consistently have good cards and it's almost like you have to wait in line to get through the aisles because they're all jammed up and yeah that's a good observation you look over to the right a little bit and it's like there's there's some more space but there must be some sort of method to the madness of of how they're constructing everything upstairs in the second floor yeah it's there were times when you moved from one floor to the other and the upstairs felt like a different show completely i suppose that's what you have when you know you kinda give the older the older priorities first crack it's gonna be it's gonna basically gonna go from from old vintage to the newer modern it's spread out throughout so yeah yeah it's crazy alright well let's jump into you and your story i was kinda digging in doing some research before we spoke saw that you know maybe i saw an old picture that was posted somewhere of you as a kid so as i understand you've been a collector someone passionate about cards essentially your whole life maybe share some perspective before we get into your business about dave as the collector and how long cards have been a part of your life yeah i you're right cards have basically been a part of my life forever i nineteen eighty seven is when i first started into it i know that because the very first card that i ever wanted was a nineteen eighty seven topps mark mcguire that that bright green jersey just pulled me right and so i started in nineteen eighty seven and just dove right in cards were an obsession with me immediately so much so that at thirteen i actually opened my own card shop so ran that for a few years until i started getting through high school then you know college and girls and sports and all that starts taking over your life so there was there was about a nine to ten year period there when i went off to college where i was kind of out of cards a little bit i i still collected a little bit of memorabilia but then in like two thousand nine steven strasberg and that hype pulled me right back in and i've been in it nonstop ever since then you gotta well let's rewind the tape a little bit how does a thirteen year old open a card store right so like my family on both sides like they're all small business owners which kinda plays into i feel like where it led me down in my direction of life's in direction of life but so they are all small business owners they all got all sorts of business one of the things that my grandparents actually they owned like in my hometown it was like a half city block and it was all like retail retail stores and stuff like that and they they approached me one time when they saw how heavy i was into it and they're just like you know we have a space available if you wanted to give this a shot i was like let's do it so they offered a spot and that's where i started learning a lot of the business aspect of cards for sure do you think like the entrepreneurial mindset that you had maybe then and had today was a direct result from seeing like your family members around you building businesses was that some some sort of an inspiration for you in that moment and then later on in your life yeah it it certainly helped right because then i could have some guidance maybe not necessarily in the card world but in the business at the business aspect of it if i had any questions or concerns or whatever like on how to do something business wise of course i had a lot of help that i could turn to for sure another part of it i would say is that i kind of always use the business aspect of it to fund my collection so it it wasn't like i had like a corporate job or you know a nine to five job that i would use that paycheck to fund my collection it was always kind of like in the in the in the hobby in the industry the ways i could make money in that to fund my collection was what i found that i like doing so you mentioned getting back in o nine strasburg and it's there are these like milestones moments that i've been doing this long enough and i talked to enough people building businesses and there's that is certainly one of like that moment is certainly a moment where i find a lot of people get have gotten more serious about cards but i also feel like like that era isn't necessarily like talked about a ton like people talk about like o three with lebron and people talk about twenty twelve and then obviously people talk about twenty eighteen twenty nineteen like right before the pandemic when kind of there was this reemergence of mainstream sports cards and culture and mainstream society what what was it about two thousand nine that kind of sunk its teeth in you well when i first started getting back in with the whole strasbourg news you know it's not like i just shut off cards for that kind of gap that that i was out of it but when he kinda hit the radar i started looking around i was like look you know let me look at ebay and stuff like that i bought a it was like his two thousand nine usa stars and stripes auto for like a hundred and seventy five bucks and i was just like well you know put this away for a little bit well it was i probably like a month later maybe not even a month later i i sold it for like six fifty and and from that point i was just hooked i was just back in i was like oh my gosh things are much different now because the decade that i missed one time in college i went to a card show and when i was when i was first went to college was ninety nine so grading was just starting but and relic cards were just starting but there was no autographs and then i went to a card show and during college and literally everything was like autographs relics graded and i was like what the heck happened so then when i jumped back in in two thousand nine it's almost like i had to get caught up on the past decade and things were much different but once i sold that strasbourg card then things were off and i just started learning again what what all what all happened in the decade that i missed so you you you jumped back in in o nine and then when did you when did you identify an opportunity to start DT Sportscards and work on psa submissions i we have not i don't think we've ever in the history of this show talked with someone who does what you do so i think it'd be interesting to understand kind of the why behind it and just the timing and then we'll get into like you know the grading and the operations behind your business but like maybe talk a little bit about that yeah when i first got in i thought that a good way and fun way to to make money would be to open product right open product flip the cards and it was fun don't get me wrong i love to open product but i quickly found out that ripping product is not gonna be the way to make a lot of money and in fact it was gonna cost a lot of money i started piling up a little bit of debt and i was just like you know i gotta figure out a way to satisfy my itch of ripping and but make money and that's when i jumped into group breaks i was like well why don't i just do some group breaks so that's when i got into the group breaking world i did group breaks through like blowout cards i had a when i still have a good relationship with blowout but that's where a lot of like my relationship started through blowout cards but so i started breaking through blowout cards i just one thing led to another you know over the course gradually growing the breaks bigger and bigger and that's how i started being able to make money instead of instead of losing money but i did brakes from probably two thousand eleven twelve ish solely breaks until probably it was two thousand nineteen ish by that point i had moved to arizona being in arizona you have all sorts of access to you know spring training stuff like that i like to go get autographs so that was fun around that time i discovered that hey i could take some of these cards that i was getting autographed get them graded by psa and sell them for as much or more as like some of these pack pulled cards we're getting at the time so i was doing that i was grading friends of mine that were getting autographs were seeing what i was doing and they're like hey can you grade mine for me too so i did and i was and then so i started getting more business grading that way and at that same time then i was also like well i'm doing all these group breaks it only makes sense if people wanna grade their cards that i'm opening for them to offer that as a service post break so people started having me hold the card back send them in for them and that's when the grading business really kinda started growing as well it was i would say leading up to covid it was probably like eighty percent breaking seventy five eighty percent breaking you know twenty twenty five percent grading covid hit shut everything down the price of product just exploded and for what i like to do break wise the cost of the product basically made breaking not feasible for me i mean i know breaking is huge and where it is nowadays but for me so that's kinda when i went all in on the grading part of it and that's when i really started growing the grading part of it and eventually just like a year or two after that then it was a hundred percent grading and no more breaks for me we're gonna dig into the the grading of it all but you mentioned blowout days and i would love for you because with all the ogs people go back and they talk about like that culture in that time frame which i think a lot of people who are newer or i can even say newer like myself getting back in twenty nineteen like blowout existed but maybe not at the level where it was like the spot where everyone in the space interacted whether you're a collector or a business builder but what is is there anything different outside of like you know the platforms like we all use instagram now to communicate and socialize but like during that time like was there was there any big differences during that time or is it still kind of just the same everyone's doing the same thing but the platform's just different maybe talk about the blowout days that everyone always goes back and and talk about yeah i mean that's like before instagram right before instagram before twitter before all the all the new social media platform forums were the way people communicated and and showed off and transacted so blow up forms at the time had built this massive community that was the most popular at the time so that's that's where a lot of people i think got started when you so you were part of kind of that group of people connecting on blowout you obviously probably built a following through breaks and then you had people reach out to you about submitting cards to psa which then you lasered in on like that's the opportunity for me was was there a bunch of people doing what you were doing at this the time were you were you kind of on an island like what was the group submitter landscape what did that look like when you kind of went all in on it there were definitely group submitters out there there were definitely group submitters out there in fact one of like when i was first getting started actually in growing it one of the big things that happened was mark's cards i don't know if you remember them yes i do when they took everybody's money and just split so there were definitely others out there i honestly i like i mean i didn't really pay that much attention just because as i i was getting going i already had this kinda kind of community i guess that were going directly to me anyways but then when i started going all grading that's when i of course i went out i would start going out and advertising and stuff like that so they're definitely out there and there's definitely a lot more now but yeah it it's definitely grown when i think about your business and you mentioned the marks cards example i think about like the most important element is like trust like people are you know sending you kind of their prized possessions to then get encapsulated and there's money transfer like how do you think about the trust element and building those relationships with people so that they feel comfortable sending you their cards and knowing that although you can control the grades you're gonna get them their cards back and the money exchange is gonna go smoothly like how do you think about trust as kind of a central force in your business yeah it's i mean so basically transparency i would say is the biggest thing the way i kinda try to build trust is transparency i try to give anybody that gives me cards to send in for grading i try to give them as much transparency throughout the whole process as humanly possible i want them to be able to see basically anything that they could see if they were to submit on their own from psa i want them to be able to see so i give them all that information oftentimes at shows when i'm taken in submission you know i'll get the question like well why you know why should i trust you and i'm just like you know that's a good question why should you trust me because you don't know me so all i can tell him is you know all i can do is give you full transparency as much information as i can and reputation right i have a lot of people locally here i would say the majority of my businesses in arizona have said you know i ask around about grading and everybody just recommends you so clearly you have a good reputation which is awesome because reputation is almost anything in this business but reputation and transparency for sure can you maybe shed some light on for anyone who maybe hasn't used someone like dc sports cards before like maybe talk about like why individuals use a service like dc sports cards instead of like doing it on their own like what what are some of the reasons that you get from your customers what what do they not wanna do that you do if you are experienced in it you know people will feel comfortable just doing it on their own but there are far more inexperienced people dealing with grading out there than we could ever imagine every single day people will come to me the i know psa tries to do their best to not make the process intimidating but it can be intimidating for people not knowing what their cards are so it can be intimidating just trying to get the whole the forms figured out submission submitted and how do i how do i package it how do i mail it off you know all that kind of stuff what if i'm gonna get upcharged so going through somebody like me you don't have to pay for a membership to psa there's no membership fees you basically can just give me the cards and i'm gonna do all the work for you you don't have to go through the process of trying to figure out their submission process throughout that process like i said i'm gonna give you all the information that you would see on psas site so you can feel comfortable on where they're at in each step post grading since i am submitting such a large amount i can save you on like return shipping from psa like if you send in like a five card order on your own they're probably gonna charge you thirty thirty five dollars in return shipping or you know i can get that down to like a quarter per card so then once that comes back get the cards back to you one thing that i do offer in addition is a like a prep and review service and i think a lot of people find value in my review my review part of that just because of the accuracy that i'm no grader by all means but i grade so many cards and see so many cards and when things come you know like i'll i'll look at cards when they come back especially when i see grades that kinda catch me off catch me by surprise i'll i'll try to take a look at it and see why it graded what it did i'm always learning i always equate it to like a cat chasing its tail because psa doesn't they're they're not the most consistent bunch so i always feel like i'm kinda chasing their grading standards but so a lot of people find review or find value in the review process of it so so if they give me cards to prep and review and i already have them i might as well send them in as well right so so how the obviously any business wants to grow and i would imagine like a signal for growth for you is the more packages coming your way the better for business how over the years as DT Sportscards has grown like how have you had to refine or build the right operations in place so you're not losing people's cards and you're able to do your job as efficient as possible to best serve your customer like how do you think about the operations behind your business extreme attention to detail for sure i mean when you're dealing with that many cards and people's cards like you have to stay organized right so just like i try to build in fail safes at each step every single step is is like a check right like get the cards in verify it against the submission moves on to the next step verify it again to make sure the previous step was also correct and just as it moves from each step you just gotta keep checking to so you don't run into big issues extreme attention to detail for sure on that what you've been doing this for a while obviously there's so much discourse regarding grading you know from at the national before the national and even now like from your point of view what has changed most about the grading business since you start started submitting cards at scale i mean as far as like a group submitter goes i just think volume it seems like everybody wants to grade their cards now whether it's worth it or not but psa you know they're doing a good job of implementing implementing things for people to make grading easier hoping to alleviate those fears and stuff like that but i would just say like the volume how and then how do you manage through i guess just being a main line of communication from to your customers from psa when there's changes that take place like pausing certain levels or managing the backlog like how do how do those sorts of in updates from psa kinda impact what you do and the relations you have with your customers when i first started obviously it was really small and it was easy to just go in log in to psa when somebody said you know where's my stuff at it was easy to just log in and say that as i grew a little bit it got to it started getting to a point where it wasn't so easy just to be able to log in and see where somebody's stuff was at so i came up with like a google sheet a database where i just i told people you know you can click your or you can go to this tab here find your name and click on the submission and then it'll tell you like the status eventually it got to a point where that became too much not only that but then there's of course there's privacy concerns where i had everybody's you know you could see everybody's name on there and stuff like that so that's when i built where i had a web developer build a website for me and you can go in and you have an order tracker section in your account you have an account to fill out a submission form and all that but then you also have an order tracker section which will attach your submission to the submission at psa so at that point then you can be updated as it moves throughout the process and you can get all the information like i said before like the estimated due date and all that kind of stuff as you grew as i grew and had to implement stuff like that it's just you know it's because i i'm am one person of course my wife now helps me and and works for me a bit but it like i just i wouldn't i couldn't answer every single question so i had to get it more of an automated way for people to be able to or to communicate all that information to somebody without having to do it one on one the yeah i'm i can't imagine i'm always like whether it's a business like yours or consignment it's just absolute madness just the keeping the organization and i always admire and appreciate those individuals running those businesses because i'm not sure i could operate with the same level of attention or detail but i think one of the cool things about a business like yours is you get to see a lot of cards and i'd be curious as i'm sure the listeners would be too like what are the moments in time that you recall when you get a submission and when you're you know opening up a box and looking through cards that you know you're prepping and then are maybe sending off to to psa what are maybe some stories or cards that are just like the ones you think about are you you can't stop thinking about today that stand out yeah i like i mean i've seen so many we so what i mail off well pre shutdown we were going through about twelve hundred cards a week submitting which means i'm also looking at probably fifteen hundred you know to two thousand a week so i've seen a lot a lot of comes across my desk and it's almost at the point where like so i see it like i mean it's always cool to see like these in person jordan signed cards or like rare like jackie robinson you know first year cards and like a brady finite or something like that you know comes across my desk like that's always cool but the thing that kinda like stops me in my tracks is when like the oddities come across like like for instance like fake cards when when i'm prepping and reviewing and like a fake card will come up and be like what is this what on earth you know and then i have to of course make sure that it is fake and and i'm just like man people are faking this stuff now so like stuff like fake cards or like when like a whatnot streamer sends me a box of literally like six hundred downtowns and kaboom's and stuff like that i open a box and just like holy cow the puddles won't even accumulate all these right you know stuff like that or like like names that come across my desk that i'm like wait a minute i know that name so like i'll just kinda do a quick google search sure enough it's a professional athlete right so those are kind of the cool things that you see that come across that makes me really stop and and look so maybe thinking about you getting let's just say out of some of these examples you getting a brady finite and opening that up do you do you feel like any different knowing the magnitude of that card like do you feel maybe an overwhelming responsibility that the the card needs to be taken care of in a special way just based on the value and the significance or is it just like these are all cards for my customers and i need to manage them all the same i guess does it change when the value of a card is significant yes and no i mean if something like that's coming across my desk i'll know about it beforehand yeah nobody's gonna just mail me a a brand new finite without giving me a heads up right but like for the most part it's kind of all just because i handle so many cards it's all it's it's just kind of another card per se the times that i do get a little bit nervous is when somebody wants me to like crack something out of like a bgs slab that's on that level because that's that's when i'm like oh my gosh i can really mess this up yeah i that is that is one bridge i have not crossed yet i'm too big of a i'm i'm sure like there's a once you have your process in place it's it's pretty straightforward but on the cracking side i've i've not gotten myself to feel comfortable enough yet although there are cards that are in my collection that i'm like i need to get this in a psa slab or this and that but i'm i'm too big of a scaredy cat to do that yeah it's it's almost just safer just to send it in as a crossover and let them deal with it for sure where do you see maybe just in your experience and understanding the changing landscape of grading like where do you see the biggest opportunities for you as a business owner of DT Sportscards kinda in the next you know two to three years automation i think which also plays into the growth of it you know i had to go back to my web developer and say that i'm just spending so much time you know updating everything that that i need more automation on this so she's hopefully very close to having my site fully automated which will hopefully free up a ton of my time obviously but just along those automation lines like psa keeps implementing you know like psa offers you know the the partner buyback program stuff like that there's so many little things that like they offer that then people come to me and ask if i can help them out with that if i can accept the offers for them and stuff like that so there's everything that psa kinda throws out makes me have to step back and evaluate and and see if if it's something that i can also offer to my customers as well what what does maybe kind of the growth trajectory look like for you just in terms of submissions obviously the industry is expanding there are more people grading cards than ever before like how do you think about earning the business of some of those people that are grading cards for the first time and then not only when you earn their business making sure that you're able to continue to maintain kind of the same standards and communication that you you would have had if you you know you just started the business and you had that one to one direct communication with all your customers like how do you think about that like scale the growth but also maintaining your standards i am definitely at a max point being able to do things myself i that's probably my biggest downfall and i'm willing to admit it i you know i have a friend who he he has a shop and does streaming stuff like that and he'll hire anybody and everybody he'll hire person to do this he'll hire a person to do that so he doesn't really have to do anything right and and i get it and it's nice whereas i have a tough time giving up that control because i'm very worried about quality control and mistakes and stuff like that i feel like the more people i add the more likely something could happen and go wrong and so i am definitely like at a max where it of of what i can do myself and i have a tough time as far as scaling goes ripping off that band aid to be like you know you know do i need to hire somebody to do this or that or whatever so knowing that i'm there i it takes me a long time to make that make those decisions and jump in and rip the band aid off so it probably limits my scalability which again i'm totally willing to admit but i also i want it it it also to me means that when i'm ready to make that next step that i'm fully ready to go i i have the processes in place because i don't wanna give up that quality control so much of what you said resonates with me and although we do different things in this space i feel that and maybe this can be a a dave and brett therapy session here but why why do you think it's so difficult and so challenging to like let the reins go of something that you've built and developed a certain way even though you know that if you did make the investment you had the perfect person to bring in and you gave up the control you it would help you specialize your time on like growing the business like why is that like decision point to make that move so challenging right i i so my wife she's an optometrist and she opened up her own practice a few years ago so she in opening up your own practice of course you don't you don't just jump in and you know you're making all sorts of money so we've actually been relying on my income to support my family and we've been doing it for for a few years now so it's almost like i know i can do it but i need to rip that band aid off i wonder if we're just if i'm just scared but you know obviously i we can do it and because i've been doing it but it's yeah it i don't know it's a good question i think i may an answer from you on that one yeah you're you're not you're not you're not alone man it's it's yeah people ask me like how are you doing all this and i'm like i i'm i'm just doing it because i love it but i i know that like it's like a hamster wheel sometimes and it's like maintaining kind of a certain level but yeah if i'm i'm hoping that eventually one morning i wake up and i have this huge like moment and breakthrough where i'm like alright let's change it all up let's bring in people but i haven't quite gotten to that point yet and i do like to have control over kind of the business in each and every situation but i don't know it's part of being an entrepreneur it's growth and you you you gotta figure it out maybe as we're kinda like round in the corner on this chat like you've been building this business in the space for a while you've been a collector nearly your whole life i think like oftentimes we as builders in this space we you know also are collectors and we don't wanna lose sight of that we don't wanna lose the love of we have for cards so we're constantly surrounded by cards whether it's professionally or for a hobby like how have you found just over the years as a business builder to kinda like maintain the same joy and satisfaction that you you've had just as a participant in the hobby who was previously doing work whether it was buy sell trade to fund your own collection because you love the cards my wife and daughter always say to me i don't know how you can work so many hours in a day and to me like it's never once throughout my whole life ever felt like work i get to look at and play with baseball cards for a living right so like it it like i still get giddy thinking about that and i think once that it may once it feels like work i'm probably in trouble so the fact that it just it it doesn't feel like work ever to me is i think what a true collector feels like right yes can totally relate with that and is a really good time to run a business in this space and it's also a really good time to collect cards in this space dave really appreciate the time the insights about building DT Sportscards this was a fun chat looking forward to do it again down the road absolutely