we are back passion to profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay excited for this conversation it's not often i get a chance to meet in person with the guest before we record one of these and had the opportunity to meet today's guests in columbus during card collector two's columbus card fest which was awesome there's been a lot of content out from the stacking slabs network i am joined by one of the newest team members of the card collector two team gabe goes by gaby card stacks on all social media he has been putting out awesome college football content and that hit he's parlayed that into a career in sports cards so this is all fresh there's a lot going on we're recording this before the national after fanatics fest we're getting the wheels spinning but without further ado gabe welcome how are you man yeah no thank you for having me it was great to get connected with you at columbus card fest and yeah it's just been been quite a whirlwind just you know moving states i'm sure we'll get to all of this but moving states to to be here and yeah go go through all the chaos of of all this you know the peak of the card market and and all the shows that are happening so excited to be here chad and and discuss everything let's start with maybe before we get into the work and the content and college football maybe just cards and your your history with cards like what were you have cards always been a part of your life like what were you doing with cards before you started sharing online yeah so i'd say they were always kind of a part of it started very early in pokemon i'm the youngest in in my family on both sides so i just kinda got you know in intertwined with the pokemon game you know started getting into sports cards actually did yu gi oh as a kid as well kinda kinda dropped that i would say like i think tops two thousand seven was probably the last like set that i vividly remember seeing probably up until college i went to the university of arizona and was friends with a couple of members on the team and i remember like seeing them sign panini contenders and all their stickers and all of that so i had picked up a couple of autos wasn't like deep in the hobby at all just like oh i see you know scooby wright and paul maglor were signing and you know they're promoting it on their facebook so picked up some singles on ebay and then really wasn't until twenty twenty where i i really got back in phoenix is is a great market for cards there are shows every single week so that really helped just kind of you know escalate you know the interest and and growth in in the hobby for me personally and yeah just kinda not looked back ever since it's really been something that i think about every single day now and you know has has led to a full time career in cards well i wanna spend a lot of time talking about college football cards which is your forte and i've even heard ryan refer to you as the mel kuiper of college cards so that is that is awesome but let's let's let's learn a little bit about kind of what you were doing before you joined the card collector two team i think so many people listening wanna work in cards but feel like it's impossible and think that there's some like linear career path into cards when there's not but maybe kinda share your story of of what you're up to yeah yeah so really i think you know i i was pretty casual i think in the hobby at the beginning in the first year but it really was bowman university twenty twenty one which really i think that's that's kind of the genesis of this all where i saw the product and i just i love college football i just grew up with college football my whole life my dad had season tickets to arizona state so we would go every single week we would tailgate so just something that we just always you know did together and and as a family so that's really just kinda where the love from for college football came from compared to i guess nfl but it's always been a huge part of our life and just watching it so when that came out it was finally something where i was like oh like this is something that it's just cool to me wasn't super into the like modern prism stuff i love the old tops chrome stuff picking up stuff kind of from the gap when i left in two thousand seven to like the twenty fifteen where it's like hey the chris johnsons and you know all of those types of guys you know being able to go back and collect those in their tops chrome form so until then that was like you know the big piece for me was was twenty twenty one bowman university and just seeing that you're able to one collect college guys which arizona didn't have any guys in that product but i still thought that was cool it was just something new it was the first year of of this product and just kinda quickly saw the prospecting side of things and you know potential for the nfl draft i thought was huge where bryce young and cj stroud were you know gonna be two big names in the following year's draft so yeah just kind of really started to dive in with that and i think you know as nil and you know all of this plays into the college football world the product as it continues to grow as well has only become more popular for bowman university and college cards in general you're seeing a lot more brands come in so it's been awesome for for the college market to see the growth and really from the beginning i've just been buying and selling and eventually you know just started posting about it on social media here and there started kinda building a small following started making youtube videos and those seem to do well that was mostly you know i would say like flipping from card shows like hey i spent you know eighty dollars in the value box and i think that's how a good portion of my audience came to be and then i think you know probably bowman twenty twenty three was kind of the big instrumental piece to all of this where it's just a a massive checklist one of the best checklist in bowman university has so many big names so many superstars that i think that's when the product really started becoming mainstream and chasing i think shader and travis definitely played a big role in that but yeah it's just since from then i i decided you know i'm going all all in on college football and you know here we are now at a card collector two studio so i i i love this because i think oftentimes when there seems to be a collecting lane that is scarce people are afraid to jump in and people are afraid to take initiative because there's a connection and not only take start buying the cards but then creating content around it i guess when you started in this space and i've always viewed collegiate collecting collectors as some of the most passionate collectors in the space but there's really not much infrastructure to support them they're very isolated you'll have conversations they're looking for more people to do what they're doing or to connect with other team collectors who are collecting in a similar way like for you did you even think about the fact that there wasn't there wasn't much love college football and so that it makes sense for you to be the one to start creating content around this space like what was your mindset when you started yeah yeah i think it's a mix of both i think i just love college football and it's just something that i want to talk about and then it was kind of like you know be the voice that you know you you just like i would love if we had a bunch of college football creators and i just love talking college football so it's kinda like well i don't see anyone else doing it i might as well be the one to to try to do it so yeah it was truly kind of a mix of both for sure and you know i think just in terms of my content and just the style and just the types of videos it's just always been the the stuff that i like i like going to card shows going to value bins and showing people what i what i got and i like seeing other people's pickups and just their thought process of like oh like why did you buy you know all of these cards you know and and i just like knowing you know their thought process i like learning just like oh this is a a new prospect you know it could be bowman baseball for all i care about like oh like i'll keep an eye out next time i'm at that value bin and and now it's a name to know so i like the education piece of it as well and then yeah it was just kind of you know what i think you know at that point i i feel like i had some decent momentum where i was like okay i feel like i could be kind of a you know a a mascot of the college football card market so to speak when you think about those early days when you started creating content and then individuals in your audience started to respond and then new people came in like how did you think about the content you were creating was it more just like alright let me just turn on my camera here's what i'm picking up let me do a selfie and talk about what i'm excited about what i'm buying like did you have any strategy or method to your madness or were you just creating content because you thought that there was like a a complete void in the space yeah i i think it was definitely just more of the void and it was just again i i just feel like you know there wasn't anybody out there talking about college cards and i'm just again i like showing you know what am i picking up and why what are other people picking up and why so it's like hey you know i'm going to buy you know all of the you know low end travis hunter and shuder sanders and and see if that's gradable or whatever the case may be and this is my approach you know i was i feel like i was pretty big on travis hunter like he's kinda like the shohei ohtani of college football going both ways he was you know colorado was gonna be on espn every single week that season where it just i just feel like it made sense and so that was i i think a big boost as well for for the brand just that season going really in at that point probably the biggest prospect that i had i had invested in was travis hunter just i figured he was gonna be on tv a lot i saw what they did in year one again kind of the show hey he's just gonna be on espn making top ten plays all season so it's just like those types of i guess strategies or thought process where it's like alright this is my mail that i picked up and you know i'd say ninety percent of all my pickups are always you know a college product so from there yeah i think it just became a place where people who enjoy college football can you know express their thoughts in the comments or kinda learn something so again i'm just very big on you know information sharing knowledge sharing and and just providing value to people i'm like oh i didn't know you know this prospect could be a a sneaky five dollar auto and so just anything like that that i can create i'm i'm always for how important has that the messaging been in terms of trying to get a point across about a specific player or card to your audience like you just mentioned hunter and ohtani and that draws a connection where no matter if the audience has seen the player or not like you throw out a name like ohtani it's gonna get their attention i think i remember you maybe talking about lenore sellers and like there was a conversation the debate was like is is sellers like more like what anthony richardson's going to be or is or does does he have more potential and i think in college sports like comparison is something that drives like the media because we're always looking for potential and whether they're drafted what we can expect during the year and now like with your content this is kind of trickling down into cards which i think is cool but do you think about those comparisons a lot and communicating those comparisons to try to convey your point or your opinion or your position about specific players when you're building content yeah i think that's what kind of helps me gain comfort as well like i'm not just like spewing just you know nonsense it it kinda keeps me grounded and and have that comp per se for from a player or a team or like hey like this guy is just as productive at half the price you know of of x player so i think that always helps for sure and just having that that relativity to always compare you know and i think you're you you if if you are are in the the the college prospecting you know game you can kinda start to see trends where it's like you know i feel like a lot of like first round potential wide receivers are in that like twenty to thirty dollar base auto range and it's like well you know i'm super high on reed harris and that's a nine dollar auto or so you know so it's like i'm gonna start buying those up so i think having those types of comparisons again like just along the checklist of of college players and just yeah comparing to former teammates or or someone within the conference i think that always gives me you know again just the rationale in the background to you know feel comfortable you know attaching my name to being like yeah like reid harris is a guy that you know i believe in and then i think could be a great play for the season so that's always something that that i think i i always try to lean on as much as possible for sure what i love about college football and why i think it's gained a lot of momentum college football collecting is that you're talking prospecting essentially but you're talking like twenty dollars for an auto thirty dollars for an auto it's it's not like nfl where you know people are paying five thousand a thousand two thousand for like a jackson dart when we when we don't know like what his next step really is gonna be in the nfl and so like the risk is very low i think and but it's the upside is very very high there's just a lot of fun like everybody on saturday is glued to their television even if they're primarily an nfl fan everyone who loves the nfl for the most part is paying attention to what's happening in college football like do you think like the cost of entry to participate and to have fun is maybe one of the reasons why the college football market is kind of growing year over year yeah i i i do definitely think that that is a big part of it because it is such low risk and it's like you know i i get a lot of comments all the time it's like oh you got me in the culture like it's cool to know like these guys before they hit the draft and you know there's you know i i would say you know when a team isn't doing when an nfl team isn't doing so well and someone's like oh it's mock draft season like my team's not making the playoffs and it's like they're getting a jump start on their prospects and so you know it's cool that that people are wanting to learn about the prospects and yeah like you said it is it is very you know a much lower risk for sure compared to you know your jackson dart where it's like yeah you're you're kinda you're really projecting out on on this guy being you know the real deal here where you know jackson dart auto is at one time in in bowman where you know ten twelve dollars and and that was you know pretty pretty much the norm no one was really talking much about him so yeah that's always something that i i do enjoy as well and and i think you know you can always look ahead there's all i feel like there's so much information with college prospecting i think of a guy like ruben bain two years ago i guess you know he was a freshman sensation injured his sophomore year and then his autos were like five dollars at that point and you know again kinda to the to the comparison piece it's like well you know he he if he can stay held like five dollars and this guy is still getting mocked as a first round top ten pick despite having you know quote unquote down year with like calf injuries like i'm willing to take a chance there and so you know to to the low risk you know high upside those autos were touching fifty sixty dollars you know peak market so you know anything that that you know you can you can relay just that type of information and and provide that value to the community and and the followers i think always kinda help for sure ruben bain is such a fun example it's like this guy no matter what has some sort of adversity against him i'm like did you watch this guy play college football he's like going into the draft it's like well his arms are too short so yeah possibly be a good pro and i'm like this is this is ludicrous but i don't know that's it's fun i've learned that like being interested in kinda your content and college football content it just it it makes me more interested in just the market in general i guess like for anyone who hasn't collected in this space and is trying to understand the landscape like you mentioned bowman you mentioned panini we just talked with evan park parker from onnit like how do you assess the landscape of current offerings for people who wanna collect like what's your mindset like what's the hierarchy like how do you think about it yeah i mean i i love that you know you'll look at like a social media post and it's like you know top ten wide receivers heading into twenty twenty six and i would say there's a good shot that like nine out of ten of them have trading cards available which is awesome because two years ago it'd be like oh you get like three out of ten or four out of ten so you know the fact that we are able to see a lot of different products now is is great you you know bowman university to me is just like the flagship product i do i do love just i don't know something about it and just the bowman first i think carries significant weight you know when you go to when you go to prism the the interesting or just panini in general the interesting thing is like they've got a lot of the big names and they are exclusive so and and i think they do a really good job at at at securing the the top of that checklist for sure and then love on it and just the you know they've got a bunch of teams and a lot of guys who wouldn't have cards in general and i know they're they're going into you know they got volleyball and soccer and women's sports so you know to be able to have all those teams available on guys who wouldn't have cards like cam cook right now is a running back in his cards he's at tcu now he'll be at west virginia but he'll be a top ten running back and that's his only card to have so from a prospecting perspective you know it's just always it's always fun to find those types of nuggets from from other products as well and you get into to leaf and even onyx onyx has your guy cj carr in there so you know it's it's fun to have that mix of products for sure and it is always interesting to see i think there's pulse as well who's i don't think trinidad chambliss has autos but he has a base card or parallels of sorts so you know just always having that mix of of players and products and you know it's it's we're getting to a point where you know a lot of guys have cards now and that's just something that we didn't have you know two three years ago so there's a lot of opportunity a lot of you know players to to look into and learn and always deep dive in very interested in getting a little bit nerdy here but just trying to figure out like the like from your lens looking into the college football market like the shelf life of these cards and for anyone who's just thinking about it like how do how do you think about the bowman first of a player and the time to hold obviously there's these moments of you've got you know the the season starting you've got the playoffs starting you got nfl draft you've got like they're on a team like does that mean that people don't want their cards at college cards anymore like how i'm sure there's like very nuanced scenarios for every situation and every card but like how do you think about the kind of what goes in and what goes out in terms of like your collection and your inventory yeah yeah that's a great question and i think it's kind of evolved over the years at the beginning i was always like oh i gotta be out of it by the draft and that's just you know i don't know why i thought that way but you know how i learned that that wasn't probably the best approach was dorian thompson robinson dpr at ucla he was one of my you know biggest buys in that bowman twenty two product love the way that he played at ucla and went pretty heavy on him and after the draft didn't really sell a whole lot so i just started auctioning and selling fire selling discounting and then he went crazy in the hall of fame game and you know autos that i was buying for thirteen dollars were in a hundred and twenty dollars the next day after the game so i was like okay i think like you can hold this into the pre like preseason is a big thing now it's like that's still their only card and you know it was just again a relatively new product at the time where i was just kinda learning myself so over the years i definitely become more lenient on like hey you know i would love to sell by like late july with rookie mini camps and all that stuff and it's like well now you got you know all this preseason there's always somebody you know who who seems to pop off there were carson steele i think he was in sage autos for kansas city he was doing two hundred and fifty dollars and that was you know a easy one dollar card before then so i'm i'm very open to always you know hey let's just wait till preseason see what happens see who gets buzzed and that's you know always i i think just you know maybe to a fault sometimes you're like hey you know i think i think it could it it could go even higher into the preseason so that that i think now i'm starting to to get a little bit more patient into the preseason however brett you bring up an interesting point now because now topps is coming out you know with flagship football pretty early now where it's like hey now now you've got the choice of like a topps paper card or their bowman first and so it will be interesting to see what the new dynamic is with that and are people going to be you know leaning more into that first pro paper card are they gonna wait for topps chrome how much you know does the bowman first hold in its value so i'm very interested to see how that works out but again you could look at a lot of different guys like you know a bijon robinson bowman first they'll probably holds a pretty significant weight and then you even get into like the cj stroud and and those types of guys who didn't have autos you know and that was their only tops auto so i think you know they still hold a a a fair amount of weight i would say but i do think tops now coming out with product early is going to definitely change the landscape a little bit and and maybe have have a different approach but i've definitely gotten more comfortable holding into the preseason just seeing what happens and it's not so much like a alright you know here's my hard stop i'm gonna fire sale everything now just because it hasn't sold now if it hasn't sold now you know it won't sell so i'm definitely more more willing to hold so when bowman u came out it instantly made sense to me because of the bowman first of it all because i instantly thought about that from the perspective of bowman baseball in the first and yeah in baseball they're in their professional uniforms but there's this dynamic where it's like you've got their first card and then it's versus their rookie card and then it's like it has this whole debate it's like which one would you rather have and i think especially in these exceptional situations i know we're talking about college football but you think about like women's basketball and think about caitlin clark and think about her cards like having her bowman first chrome card right now still means an awful lot because of her profile when you when you think about just like the first of a the bowman first versus like the rookie card like how do you measure and stack rank kind of those things together like does the the profile of the player matter does it not matter like how do you consider those yeah yeah that's that's a a a good talking point that i've always kind of you know wavered on where you know it's like and and especially now because one of the big things before where it was like i was until you know some of the the like draft cards before bowman came out and it was you know one thing that i would always say is like you know their their college like a juju smith usc card like he's not changing teams and like you can get do you want the pittsburgh steelers card or wherever he goes after that right so there's a lot of options there but it's like his his college team doesn't change now with the portal it it always changes and now to your point it's like you know the profile is so important where you know you're starting to see guys like dante moore his oregon card is outselling his bowman first now and that's maybe how people will remember him more even you know cam ward miami is doing more than his washington state first so i think you know definitely the impact that that player will have at that school another one will be will howard ohio state now that i'm in columbus here over his his kansas state jersey so i think it's it it is kind of the the impact that they provide on the school and just and the fans and then also i think i guess a common thing would be you know the school that they were before and how much they contributed there again dante moore maybe started five games at ucla so not a lot of people would really know that cam ward as well wasn't a huge name until he really hit the portal bo net oregon is kind of a common theme theme bo nix bowman first and his auburn in twenty twenty one versus i mean he had two years of of oregon and those i would imagine are are selling better michael penick's at washington as well you know leading the washington to the college world playoffs so yeah i i think it is kind of case by case and just kind of you know how how how big the fan base is and how much of an impact they had i think that'll always kinda carry that that amount of weight on the bowman first it always has you know the college collector base wanting that card so you have you know such a large fan base and then you're kind of opening it up to other people who are like you know what i believe in the bowman first long term and i do think you know i i never i guess have any i don't know what the word is any you know complaint like oh bowman university needs to be you know on the same scale as bowman baseball like a lot of refractors you can get from bowman u for under two or three dollars maybe a big name does five or six and you know you look at bowman baseball and some of those can do sixty dollars on a bowman first refractor but i'm sure there are some people who are like man i you know believe in the college game and and the bowman first and it being a big piece of you know the history of cards and and everything that goes into it and you know the significance of somebody's first card you know we'll see how that goes down the line but i definitely you know see that angle for sure you can tell gabe has a lot of thoughts and perspectives and is well versed out all things college collecting you'd been sharing your content out you know on social and i know they reached a point where you decided okay well i'm i'm pouring all of this energy and passion into creating like i'm gonna i'm gonna open up a patreon group and i'm gonna put out more content in the patreon group like what was your mindset there and like how did you decide like what goes in the patreon group what gets put out publicly like how did you organize kinda your your content design across like free and paid yeah yeah yeah that that's a good question and honestly you know to answer kind of the first part of the question you know i don't think i've really told a whole lot of people like what made me do it but i was just scrolling on twitter and i think there's just discourse on like you know what's you know who who's winning in the card space and like how to grow and what's like the most sustainable way and i was reading the replies and there were a couple of of i guess strings of replies where it was like you know people who have like a paid membership group a patreon like you know i think let let's talk wax i think is a big one for bowman baseball and it's people like that who have you know a a a a hardcore community you know on a on a subscription basis to where you provide the value that's kind of you know probably not a bad way to go in in terms of you know the monetization piece of things and i kinda thought about it on yeah you know what like i might as well try it and then see and i really didn't have much of a plan i think i created it like in a couple days and just launched it in a way i'm gonna just gonna make videos you know talking college football and for for the content that i put there i think it is a lot more of a deeper it was a great video to start with i think one of my first videos was it was like the top one hundred fifty players in college football by cbs and i went through all one hundred fifty names hey we're gonna google search every single one make sure like hey does this guy have a an on it auto or a sage auto that i just missed and then it's just kind of again kind of going back to the comparisons where it's like hey like caleb downs i think that was his year where it's like this guy's projected been projected a number one pick since he was a freshman they're like this guy number one safety he's gonna start as a true freshman at alabama and he used to all the benchmarks along the way he lived up to the hype truly all along the way and it's like i don't think his base auto should be like fifteen dollars the way they've talked about him you know for this long so i think you know it's kind of just the deep dives of that any sort of information that we receive you know just from you know the off season or you know i i think the off season is a little bit more of a grind just because you don't have the actual season to talk about you know once you're in the season it's talking recaps and big performances and hey you know mark fletcher just went crazy as bowman autos are thirty dollars now and that was you know a five dollar auto a week ago so just providing those types of insights and such you know is is usually what i'll provide to the patreon and as well as like any deep dives like hey this is a sneaky auto reid harris is a guy that i really like and this is why so those are the types of things that i'll do and then in terms of you know public it just depends like i think you know i guess it it's kind of honestly like depends on my mood or you know how much i'm picking up in the mail or if i buy a huge lot at a show or something and then i'll kinda you know throw some nuggets here and there but i think like the deeper analysis and like my deep thought process and and research and kinda my comps along the way with prices and players that will all go on the patreon did you find that your patreon starting it up and giving obviously yourself a place to share more and people coming in to consume more did you find that a something as simple as a patreon group started to kind of build and develop like a space and a community for and those individuals that i referenced earlier who have been collecting college cards and that's their primary lane but they just have never really had anywhere to turn to like did you get a sense that this was something that college collectors have been looking for yeah i think so and and i think it it does go back to like you know there there isn't to my knowledge like anyone else who who does it or you know there's always facebook groups and such and and group chats here and there i'm sure but i do have a a discord channel for all those members as well and they're just you know always it's people who are just as passionate as me and just you know what do we think of you know this how are we handling a mod hardy situation right now and you know just things like that where it's just like they just wanna bounce ideas off of each other and talk and you know they just they just love college football and that's you know it's college football is just such a a huge loyal passionate fan base where you know it's just you know still so early in the product there there i don't think there were a ton of of creators or or places to talk about it and you know luckily just consistency and and putting the work in over the time has definitely built it to what it is now okay so i didn't prep you at all on this but i just i think this would be fun just in talking through this and giving the audience some sort of mindset on like what is possible with buying into a specific player's card at a specific point in you all your years of covering college football cards and seeing the highs and lows and seeing kind of rocket ships on put on be on someone's back and then being like someone no one's even talking about to then all of a sudden being like someone who's just like a constant part of the conversation is there a specific player in card that you that has been like one of the biggest stories just in your coverage like gone from like very little attention to all of a sudden it's like the headline or he's the guy everyone's talking about is there a specific player you can think of so i think there's two one of them would be jackson dart i do think like not a i i actually faded jackson dart originally so in twenty twenty two he was in bowman university and then they brought in spencer sanders transferred from oklahoma state and the way that jackson dart had ended the season i didn't love it and i'm like well i don't think lane kiffin would bring in another quarterback you know if he didn't have an like the intention to start him over dart i just i was a little over or underwhelmed by dart and i really like spencer sanders i'm like okay you know i'm gonna buy some spencer sanders little did i know that's just kinda how lane kiffin operates in the portal and he's just gonna somehow he just convinces all these guy like he'll he'll get five starting running backs from across the country and you know it's like wow this is a loaded running back room and he only plays like two or three of them but so i was kind of out on jackson dart and then he had a really good season and still nobody really cared i think they played penn state in their bowl game and i was like man just something about you know the lane kiffin system price you know autos were about ten dollars they were down in the dumps like just not a lot of people really cared so i really did ride the jackson dart train for for quite some time just something that i i i bought into believe in i like the price again probably comparing to other quarterbacks in that class you know just just felt right to me but i think the big one and not even like a kind of a sleeper name so maybe it doesn't answer your question but your guy jeremiah love was a guy that i just there were a lot of again comparisons that made sense to me cam scataboo coming off the college football playoff run was like a hundred and twenty bowman first ashton genti was around a hundred and forty dollars and he was the sensation of that year but jeremiah lovell was like forty dollars and i'm like like it just doesn't make sense to me like i think this guy's equally as good he didn't have bowman best autos which i thought was very important like if you want a jeremiah love autograph you're you have to buy a bowman first it's not like a lot of guys who are in bowman university and the bowman best so i really like that appeal as well and i just kept buying them up buying them up buying them up and then i would say he's been one of the gosh maybe top seven most expensive guys in in the product if not one of the top three which is some of his sales and you know there were times where you know i i had a a psa ten ten green auto i think i got an offer at like four hundred i'm like yes this is like cool and that that's probably you know up a couple hundred since then so definitely jeremiah love was just one that you know talent just looked unreal and when you see scatterboo and genti in the in the year before at those prices it just didn't make sense so felt really good about the room there and then of course you add you know noter i one thing that i really didn't factor a whole lot was like it just the notre dame fan base compared to an arizona state and boise state as well it was strictly like talent to price not even factoring in you know all the notre dame fans who would passionately buy his cards as well so that was one that like i just i felt really strongly about you know where he was priced in the market i'm like i just i i don't think that this is right so that was that was i think definitely one of my big ones for sure you mentioned notre dame i think about ohio state i think about texas michigan like these these blue bloods like massive fan base across the country like you you alluded to the fact that with like jeremiah love not only was he just an insane player and he continued to elevate the price of his cards but when a player is doing that on one of these historic college football programs like even probably non collectors are gonna wanna jump in just to get a piece of those cards to support their the university and support their their players like how big of a like how do you think about those tier one programs and when i'm i i'm not necessarily classifying tier one as like the winningest but like tier one from like a fan base and demand perspective like how do you think about that during kind of thinking about prices evaluation where things might go yeah yeah i think i think that helps give me like some comfort for sure where it's like there's you know a lot of eyeballs on this specific team and you know it's a it's a team that historically would probably sell pretty well and one there's two guys actually that that kinda make me think that way nebraska there's jacory barney and naziah hunter they're both in twenty twenty five bowman university and two guys that i think are elite dynamic playmakers and their bowman first are under ten dollars and when i feel like there's some pretty good upside there you know probably not in like the the first round maybe not even top fifty conversation but some hype around nebraska it is a power program they've had all these consecutive sellouts for decades and decades you know i think that's something that makes me maybe a little bit more bullish on on guys like that where it's like hey anything under ten dollars i'll probably scoop up and you know i'll stash it so yeah i think that always gives me comfort compared to you know a guy like i would say jaden vergen morgan he's a defensive end at boise state i love him as a player i think he's super productive boise state is passionate but probably not like the huge numbers that you know all these big powers would have so you know i think that does give me a little bit more hesitation compared to buying a mateo out of oregon where it's like okay mateo's got first round grades he's backed by oregon fans like i feel a lot better about that even though it is a fifteen dollar auto compared to jaden vergen morgan at you know seven or eight dollars still buying jaden vergen morgan just because i like him as a player and i think it's a fun dart throw lottery ticket that you know i'd i'd love to i'd love to play but yeah i'll always kind of now a consideration for sure and and i think gives me that comfort to you know when i'm trying to make a play i was at the notre dame boise state game last year and i was actually very impressed by the turnout from boise state nation i was like alright like they're traveling in there's actually a lot of blue blue and orange jerseys in the crowd like respect so i think that's i think the your breakdown and just the way you look at things is is certainly helpful and undeniably like you're you're sharing a deep level of intelligence a deep level of passion when it comes to a specific lane and category and i wanna get into like how you and ryan connected and how you met and how this became an opportunity obviously anyone which most everyone knows who ryan is and knows the card collector to brandon everyone knows ryan as like a passionate deeply passionate ohio state fan just by following his content i mean it's ohio state or nothing so i'm knowing ryan and knowing just how much he loves his school and loves collecting those cards like when did that intersection between what you were doing and ryan noticing what you were doing like when did that take place yeah so that you know and now now thinking about it i'm trying to remember the year but i'm pretty sure it was bowman university twenty twenty three so like i said i think that was just a it it was such a massive class and i remember when the checklist was being dropped it's like wow carson beck michael panix caleb williams jj mccarthy bo nix like you had the the colorado guys in there like that was a massive checklist boxes have you know doubled in price and and you know that was just i think a big attention grab for a lot of people i'm like woah this you know bowman university and college football it has a lot of legs in the card space and so i'd always you know ever since i joined the hobby or rejoined had been a fan of ryan but it really wasn't until i think it was like december twenty twenty three and i got a notification that card collector two had mentioned me in a tweet and it was a shout out and and it was like you know been following gaby card stacks for a while and i am very impressed with his college football knowledge and you know commitment to to grinding cards you know as a college collector i i appreciate it and just wanna give him a shout out like wow like i didn't even know like he knew me and you know just yeah it was it it was it was really really special to to kinda see that and then i think bowman best had just come out and he had dm'd me and he was like man bowman best this is an awesome product and then we just kind of exchanged numbers from there and started talking and you know was pretty casual just in conversation like oh like what do you think about this guy or he'd be at a show and like oh like is this guy any good or you know what's your thought here and then i guess gosh i guess over the last like year or so i'd say we got pretty close you know i i think the time difference phoenix to ohio helped you know when he's leaving the office late i'm like getting started in cards i had a full time corporate job so he would just call me on his drive home and just be like oh like you know we talked about college football games that week who do you like this week you know and then you know just just talking college football and just talking cards and we just developed that relationship over the last few years which has been awesome and yeah ultimately led here which i'm i'm sure we're about to to dive deep into yeah so like french mutual interest turned into regular communication turned into friendship and this happens all of the time like very rare does this happen turn into career opportunity and not only a career opportunity but like a career opportunity in a space that you've been creating around so maybe take us into the like when did this start becoming a reality around there might be a job opportunity here this might be a opportunity for me to move my family from one side of the country to the other like take us into kind of these moments when this opportunity was emerging and you were in like the consideration phase for like do i leave my corporate job and go do this yeah yeah so i'd say probably over like the last two years or so we we'd kind of been just in in communication or just like oh like you know some of it joking like oh like you know wish wish you could just price all these cards for later like you know go through all these cards and like tell me who to pick out and all this stuff and he'd you know show me the piles of of cards on his desk i'm like dude that looks like so much fun i would do that in a heartbeat so it was just like you know joking like that and you know eventually yeah i would help kinda price some of his stuff so i i would work for him i guess occasionally on the side whether that's you know comm c or you know send telling him you know which sending him lists of like hey who to grade who does who to hold sell all of that so we'd kind of had that kinda dynamic but i and then again just always joking like oh like you know hey i'll fly you out right now if you wanna organize my desk and all my college are going oh dude that would sound amazing right now i i love organization and just cleaning and just you know sorting piles of cards and stuff so that was always a conversation and then i would say you know things got probably most or started to get really serious along the lines of this last bowman drop and he's like hey we'd love to like have you out for bowman university release week and like we could do a lot of content on it you could help with breaks and like just talk college and you know we could just also hang out as friends so i think i ended up going like a week or two after release and we had kinda talked about it i'm like yeah like i don't know if i would ever move to columbus realistically and my wife and all that like she's never been that was my first time in ohio and there was still kind of in the back of both of our minds i would say leading up to this year but i think honestly what what honestly kind of really helped push me and my wife over the edge was the birth of our second son so we have a six month old and that really changed our perspective just over the last you know six i guess the five months leading up to you know us getting really serious about this and you know just changes your perspective you know i'm i'm working a corporate job she's working you know some some odd shifts she works in the the medical field so just you know when your kids are that young and and you know time is precious and such and you know just those types of considerations our house you know where hey we're kind of outgrowing our starter home that we had and there's a lot of things that go into into you know the thought of of it and coincidentally i was on ten weeks of paid parental leave with my corporate job and ryan had called me on my first day back and he was like hey you know how was your first day back like you know was it was it stressful how do you feel like oh don't you wish you were in grove city and i was like yeah kind of and then honestly like the next day like it just kinda turned into you know a job offer of like yeah like what would this look like and you know he's like well how soon do you think you could come out and it it just happened really quick from from that week on and again i think just our our second son just really kinda changed our perspective of you know it'd be something fun new you know my job i i i loved my job i was a a campus recruiter for a consulting firm so i would travel to to colleges and and find interns and consultants but i always knew in the back of my mind like i would never leave my job at that point for another recruiting job like i liked where i was there were there was no complaints but i knew my next job wouldn't be in recruiting i knew it would be something else a career change of sorts i'd already done a career change i was in accounting when i first left college then did campus recruiting so always knew something would be calling i just didn't know when that would happen but yeah it happened all in in about a week my wife and i talked about it we felt pretty okay with it called our realtor i was like hey how fast could we sell a house because again just the timing of it all you know the interns our internship started like june eighteenth or nineteenth these are kids that i recruited for you know the the past fall and but then we also had columbus card fest the following week we had fanatics fest we have the national coming up we've got shipshewana two weeks after that and i just felt like you know originally me and my wife like yeah like we'd go out and visit in in october november when my busy season is is slow my busy season for for my corporate job would have been like june to october or so so it'd be like ryan let's you know fly out there we can check it out but yeah my wife just said yeah let's do it sight unseen for her i've been out to columbus at least twice but yeah it was it was just kind of a quick move and i think it just me and my wife were just yeah in a space where you know what it makes sense let's just try this out you know i think yeah i think we should just just hear it out try it out and you know we just don't wanna regret the opportunity or turning down the opportunity and wondering oh should we have or what if we what if we did this and and move so yeah my wife is awesome and super supportive of all of that and again just a lot of different factors just kinda went into it but made it a quick decision a sad one for for me to leave home for sure that's i've lived in arizona my entire life but again i think just the comfort that i had and and the friendship with ryan really made a lot of sense and and just something that you know again just our second son really kinda changed our perspective for sure how important was the number one trust that had been developed between you and ryan through your relationship paired with the current state of the industry side of sports cards where i mean we're we're bursting at the seams it seems like the infrastructure is still forming the money is coming in like how did those two things how did you take those into consideration when kinda making the jump yeah for sure i i think you know i just had an immense amount of trust in ryan i know you know it's it's a big decision for him also to to say hey you know move move your family across the country and and you know trust in me and and you know yeah i just i just had that trust in him i think from i mean we've we've worked a lot you know we've had stockwatch which is our college football podcast and so you know we've worked closely together and and you know yeah we just become super close or like you know what i feel i feel good about this and and with the market and the industry and and everything that changes you know so quickly you know something as as as as like psa shutting down you know could significantly change you know a business and something just outside of his control or anything so yeah i just feel like i i've always had that trust in him from the beginning we've worked super closely together and you know i think we've really started to to both see the opportunity in the in the college football market specifically as well where you know that's where i'll be spending a lot of my time on content creation and such so yeah i i just feel like everything kinda lined up it was you know there weren't really a lot of nerves to be honest in making the move and i think maybe that's just a sign that it feels like it's the right move but yeah i i just i feel like we're both on the same page with with where we wanna be and what we wanna do that i think it it was just worth a shot you started at a awesome time feet to the fire all the shows everything going on i'm thinking about just like the your story and where it started and where it's at now and i guess maybe as we're kinda round on the corner on this conversation would would you say like the reason you are where you're at right now was because one day you decided you know what i really like college football i like college football cards i'm gonna start creating content around it yeah no definitely cards changed my life i i would have never have guessed even you know two months ago that we would have been in columbus ohio and and moving and you know having a full time job in in trading cards so yeah i i think you know it it is it is interesting just to to kinda look back on it and just the connections that i made the relationship that i've built with ryan and again i think just the amount of trust we have in each other that it's led to this and it's yeah it's super fun and just something that again i don't think i ever would've would've imagined you know i just remember making a a twitter account one day when when the world was shut down and you know just discovering you know card twitter and you know yeah it is it is just insane to think about kind of the progression and where we are and and where we wanna go alright as we close this out there are a lot of people listening that are working their nine to five corporate jobs who wanna be working in sports cards trying to figure it out like what what piece of advice would you give to anyone out there who wants to be doing what you're doing or have a similar path but doesn't really know how to get started yeah for sure i think first off just finding your passion what what you're passionate about it doesn't have to be you know you know something specific within you know a a type of card like college football it could be about anything but i think finding that passion of of what you enjoy talking about the most and just i think feeling comfortable i think a lot of people you know what what holds them back with that barrier is like oh they're uncomfortable you know on on camera or whatever the case may be it doesn't have to be content either you know maybe it's just in graphic design or something or editing so finding that passion and just following it all along the way trusting yourself i just i can't emphasize it enough you can follow him at gabey card stacks check out card collector two's channel there you'll find gabe appear in a lot of the new content gabe man it was great doing this hopefully get some time at the national yes of course thanks for having me