Alright. Welcome back to another episode of Passion to Profession brought to you by our good friends at eBay. We have a fun conversation here, and I love these chats when we have family members that are working together to build a business in this industry. And today, I am joined by Steve and Nick Summers. They are a combo family, father, son, doing it at sports cards, grading, selling on eBay.

We're gonna get into kind of building a business, selling cards, working with, your dad and your son, and what's that like. But without further ado, Steve, Nick, welcome. How are you guys? Thank you, Brett. Appreciate the opportunity today.

Yeah. Doing great. Thanks for having us on. Let's let's start way back maybe with the origin story of collecting. And Steve, I'm gonna...

Since since you are you are the father here, I'm I'm interested to understand, have you always been a collector? Did you introduce Nick into collecting? Like, what's the story in your relationship with sports cards over the years? Yeah. Absolutely.

So I, as a child, I had a pretty typical story. I would spend my entire allowance on sports cards. My brother, Andy, is two years younger than myself, and we would get on our bikes. We lived out in the country. We'd ride our bikes into town with our allowance.

We'd spend it all on packs. He loved the Cowboys back then. I love the Steelers. I love the Brewers. We would trade cards.

We'd bring them home. We'd have no allowance money left. We did a bunch of cards in our hand. And so, basically, for about a five year period of time from, like, 1980 to nineteen eighty five ish in there, basically, we just bought every card we could possibly find and, brought them home and just stored them. And, it was just a passion of ours.

My dad was a collector back in the fifties. Unfortunately, familiar story, my dad's cars got tossed out when he went to college. So, my dad has been rebuilding his collection over the years, and it's been fun to be a part of that. But my dad would take us to card shows in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, my brother and I, when we were younger to help us fill our sets, and that really just started the passion for cards. When I had children, it was important to me to, give them the opportunity to have that same type of enjoyment I did when I was a child.

And one of my favorite things, with both Nick and my daughter, Hannah, was to buy packs that I felt were gonna have relic cards or hits in them just to see in their face the excitement when they would open up a pack of cards and get a relic card in it or an autograph. It didn't even matter if the player was good or not. The excitement and energy in, like, a seven year old's face when they rip open a pack of cards and get something cool, it's just an experience that I loved as a dad being able to do that with my kids. And Nick loves ripping. And to this day, when you put a pack in front of him, he's ready to get after it.

I'm excited to, learn a little bit about kinda your experience growing up around cards, Nick, but I'd be remiss not to ask, about the Brewers. Like, are you still riding high off of what just happened, I guess, a week or so ago? Yeah. Absolutely. So I will...

As a child in 1982, I was very devastated when the Brewers lost game seven to the St. Louis Cardinals. My favorite player of all time is Robin Yount on the Brewers. Huge Robin Yount fan. I...

It took me a long time to get over the fact that he never made it back to another World Series, and then the brewers had a long period of time where they were not very good. And for many, many years, let's say the last decade, they were good. They just weren't great. And we always wondered if they were gonna cross over the finish line. And Nick has been a big believer in the brewers, and he just kept saying this is the year, dad.

I don't know if you wanna talk about the tickets you bought. But Yeah. So I bought season tickets for the 2027 season in hopes that they would, reach the World Series this year because the Brewers guarantee World Series tickets if you buy the following season's tickets, Stubb. And so it guaranteed us World Series tickets, so we were able to go together, thankfully, which is pretty cool. So, we got to experience that in person, which was just a a great memory for us.

So That's, incredible. Nick, what was it like growing up in an environment where your dad's a collector, not only a collector, but trying to introduce the hobby to you? What are some of the memories and moments that you have? Yeah. So it was just a lot of fun, honestly.

So as he mentioned, just ripping packs is just a great time, and things have changed over time over the years. Hobby packs didn't used to cost all that much. You could rip hobby packs, and it wasn't gonna, you know, break your wallet very much back in the day. And like you said, you can get autos, you can get relics, and it was a blast to open those packs. And he still to this day, he has, like, displays hanging up on the wall of, like, former brewers, like Hank Aaron cars, all Mickey Mantle, all kinds of stuff.

And I always thought, man, that is so cool. Signed baseballs, he's always had sitting around in bobbleheads. I just always thought this stuff was so cool, and I was like, I want all of that stuff someday. And so, ripping packs was kind of the introductions. Okay.

Here's what the hobby kind of economy looks like. So you rip a pack, you get a card, you can keep it, you can sell it, whatever you decide to do with it. You can use it towards your next purchase for your collection. So it's kind of a fun way to get involved in things with ripping packs and kind of understanding where cards come from, how that process works. And just looking back at how that's changed over time and how there wasn't always autographs.

And... Yeah. So just seeing all of that memorabilia and everything has always been super cool and kind of, what helped me get into it for sure. Just seeing it every day, I was like, man, I I want this someday. So So it sounds like the hobby sunk its teeth in both of you very early and has never really left, and you two are now working on a business inside of the industry.

What was the origin story of starting a business? Like, what were you both doing at the time? When and why did you decide to start sports cards grading? And, yeah, let's open it up there. Alright, Brett.

I'm gonna date myself here. So eBay as a brand went live in late, 1997. My eBay account is from early nineteen ninety eight. So when I call in the eBay customer service, I oftentimes get the, woah. Is that right with your account from 1998?

I'm like, yes. That is correct. I mean, it was about maybe six months, into eBay as a brand. When I was buying and selling on eBay, I primarily started with more of a personal collection perspective. You know, what Robin Younts did I need or what cards that I find that were undervalued that I thought I could turn around and make a profit on and then ultimately buy more, complete sets.

I've always been a complete set person and obviously a Robin Yount fan. So I tried to use eBay as a way to fund my hobby. I did not wanna use, funds from my work. So I was basically buying and selling my way to my personal collection. And, as the kids got older, I kind of increased my volume in the buying and selling.

And back in 2016, all of a sudden, I received a ten ninety nine form in the mail from PayPal, and I was like, oops. I guess I went a little too far with the buying and selling. And that caused me to say, you know what the heck? I'm gonna form an LLC, and I'm gonna go for it. And ever since then, it's just been a trajectory of growth.

I have maintained my full time professional career as a school district administrator, but my involvement in the hobby only continues to escalate as time goes on, as the business, ends up becoming larger and larger as we're trying to grow it. And so it really started with just way back in the day with eBay when the dial up Internet and you would mail a paper check and hope the cards would arrive. I mean, it was really the wild, wild west back then and, to grow to where it is today has just been a long journey for me of, you know, focusing first on being a collector and then evolving into, more of a of a business approach. Now I know being a school district administrator is, a lot of work, and there are a lot of crazy hours involved in that profession. How how are you able to kind of maintain and grow your, presence on eBay while working a full time job?

Is this where, Nick comes into the picture a little bit? Talk a little bit about that. Yeah. This is exactly where Nick comes into the picture and other members of our team, including my wife. Few years ago, as things really started taking off during COVID, my wife wife made the decision to leave her nursing career, to really manage our daily shipping.

And so, Sarah always on a daily basis owns the shipping of the majority of what we do. We have had other members of our, team join us to assist, with shipping. So my role has always been I wake up very early in the morning, and I prepare a lot of the labels, for the eBay live show. I'll get the show prepared. I do the computer work, starting at, like, 5AM before I typically head off to work.

I put a couple hours in, make sure everything's good for the day, and then the team takes it from there. As we really got more and more into eBay live, I'll let Nick talk about that. But, ultimately, we knew we needed to make a different decision with Nick in order to continue to grow it. Nick, do you wanna talk a little bit about that? Yeah.

For sure. So, I had worked a few jobs. I graduated with a degree in finance out of college back in 2022. I worked until, I left my job in, what was it, like, April of this year? Yep.

So I'd worked a few different jobs over this, the years, and I kinda decided, you know, if I'm gonna take a chance at this thing, the time is really now. Why not take a chance now while I'm still relatively young and just doing these things that I love to do, which is sports cards? And I thought why not give it a shot, and we're continuing to grow. We felt like the hobby was getting bigger and bigger, continuing to expand and reach, new people all the time. So I figured why not do it now?

And if it works out, it works out. If it doesn't, there's always a job waiting for me that I can go back to. And, that's kinda how, we got started, and we've kind of taken off since then. He didn't give you the full truth in his last answer. I wanna point this out.

How he does it... So you do a lot of hours with your first job. I do. Yep. How he does it is a nap every single day the second he gets home.

So True. It's it's about a thirty to forty five minute nap every single night instantly when he gets home. So that's that's how he does it. Yep. And then I'm energized for the eBay live.

So I do need a little bit... You're right about that. Do need a little bit of a nap, and then I'm ready to roll. Yep. So, yeah, I've kind of, taken over the role of, helping with our shipping team if necessary when they're on vacation, whatever that might be.

I ship some of our orders, eBay, our other platforms as well. So I kind of do that day to day and then kind of get singles ready for our live shows. And then, yeah, that's kind of the role I've taken on and just kind of whatever is necessary on a day to day is kind of, where I'm at right now with what we're up to. So Nick, I I wanna ask because I think you kind of... You talked about it, but I think this is an important note where you had worked other jobs and you decided to leave your last job and spend your...

All your energy on the... A business in the sports card industry. And it was a business that you're working with alongside family members. Was was for you, I know you mentioned, like, I can get another job any other time, but a lot of individuals, like, are scared to go make that leap because of just the uncertainty. Right?

A normal job gives you a paycheck every couple weeks, and that's consistent. And you know that money's coming in when you're working on your own business. There's a lot of uncertainty, especially from a revenue perspective, how I can pay myself, that sort of thing. Like, maybe talk through, like, how you thought about those things that are become very routine and normal for anyone working in the workforce and just, like, maybe sacrificing the consistency of that reoccurring paycheck to go all in and spend all of your energy working on this business. For sure.

Yeah. I think there's a big difference, first of all, leaving the kind of the nine to five route and jumping into the business because I would say you probably agree with this. It's it's honestly a lot more work than some people realize because it's, you know, we're not doing this five days a week. This is seven days a week, and we have to ship every day. We have to prepare every day.

We have to do everything every day. So I would say it's definitely a lot more work, than you would maybe expect it to be at times if you want to be successful in that. So there's definitely a lot more that you need to put into it. But I would say the reward is you can kind of set your own schedule. You can kind of enjoy your day as you want to.

You know, if I wanna go grab lunch with one of my friends, that's the benefits to doing your own thing is you might work more hours in total, but you have more flexibility, which is a really nice benefit to doing this. And like you said, so you're not necessarily always guaranteed, that same pay every single, paycheck. So every other week, whatever that might look like for you. But, I think that pushes us to become better at what we do, and we don't get necessarily stuck in our ways. We push ourselves to try different things.

So we're not always trying to, you know, be repetitive and do the same thing. I would say it really is a good opportunity for us to to see what we're capable of doing. Would you agree with that? Absolutely. So the, business or the the the storefront...

Digital storefront has been around for a long time, Steve. And it wasn't always eBay Live. Right? EBay Live is a newer platform, and I definitely wanna get into how you all are thinking about eBay Live, what's working for you. But maybe talk to us about, like, the history of kind of the storefront.

Like, what... Where did it start? What did it look like? What did you sell? And when did you make that pivot to, you know, experiment with the live platform?

Yeah. Absolutely. One of my favorite parts about the hobby has always been the grading process, and I always enjoyed, breaking down product to try to find those cards, those gems that could be sent in, to PSA for grading. And so I sold a lot of singles, and a lot of those singles were cards that were quality cards, but, economically, they didn't make sense to send in for grading. They're popular players, but not popular enough to spend the money to get them graded.

So I would have large quantities of cards of, players, we'll say, like, Jim Tomei, hall of famer. But the grading values aren't there for him, so I would sell his singles. But in those products, like, there's a product that isn't... He he has his rookie and there's Pedro Martinez as rookie, that one's worth grading. So I would break those products down.

Nick was always my eyes, to tell me whether or not a card is worth grading or not. So he'd pick out the the best ones to send in, and the rest we would sell on eBay as singles, and then we would sell the graded cards when they would come back. So a lot of it had to do with really breaking down different products, trying to find different opportunities to find cards to sell as singles or graded cards. And in fact, I I started doing so much business with PSA that I reached their thresholds to become a PSA authorized dealer somewhere about ten, twelve years ago. And so I've kept that ever since, and that's really been a big driver of what we do is the grading part of it, and then really the remaining singles finding an outlet.

And we were really big into the eBay standard envelope process on the eBay marketplace and would sell probably several 100 of them a day. And there were... We had so many customers, you know, that would look for us to buy the Jim Tomei cards from or their Paul Molitor cards from because we probably had 50 to 75 of each of those players. You might wanna call us, like, a very mini version of Burbank sports cars. Obviously, they're huge, but we only had a fraction of what they had, but it was...

It's a similar idea where where we had a lot of singles of those players. And then we mix that in with a very extensive graded card inventory, and that really formed the basis of our business prior to eBay Live. How do you stay... Okay. Even a mini version of Burbank.

Right? You have to be very, very organized. If you're not organized, you're probably spending half your day searching and wondering and looking. So, like, the operations around the business, especially a business doing what you do, I would imagine is critical. Like, how do you think about the inventory management, the operations, building the right processes?

Like, is that something that you have built a long time ago and you apply it to... And it's existed to what happens today? Or is this something that is continually changing and you're kind of working to try to make it as efficient as possible? I would say it's a continual process for us. When we were more marketplace focused, we had our cards organized differently than we do now for eBay Live.

We've had to make a huge transition with our organizational process, But we went from on the marketplace where we organized our cards by year and by card numbers so they were easier to find to now on the live, we have them organized by team and then by player. Because the type of selling that we do has completely changed from someone buying, let's say, 1991 upper deck Jim Tome to instead what happens is someone comes in our show and says, I would like Cleveland Guardians cards. Can you put together six of them for me? And so in order to do that efficiently, we need Cleveland Guardians together in order... In alphabetical order by player name.

That's, that's interesting, and I would imagine the live business kind of changed everything for you. What what was the introduction to eBay Live? Was there trepidation? Were... Was it immediately something that you were interested in participating?

Talk about just getting started, on the streaming side. Yeah. Absolutely. So I have always spent my professional career on camera at school board meetings. So it's just natural to me, to be able to communicate whether it's to our school board members or the public in general at our board meetings.

So being on camera was just a natural for me, and we were experimenting with Nick being on camera from some other platforms we sell on, and he was quite popular. We were finding that, like... So I did the recording, and he was always on camera. And he resonated being a younger person with a lot of the audiences. And so I just said to him, you know what?

I'm used to this, and and you're good at this. You know? So why don't we try this together, you know, and see how it goes? And the combination of the two of us together has just resonated with a lot of our, you know, viewers on eBay live, and they found us to be a fun combo, to spend their time with. And so I think jumping into it, I was not concerned about it.

I wasn't really afraid of it. It was more just learning how to do it and then quickly realizing, wow. This is very different than selling on the eBay marketplace, and we're gonna have to switch the way we organize our cards pretty quickly because we... As we started doing shows, people just came in hot. I want angels.

I want brewers. I want Dodgers. And we're like, woah. We gotta get ready for this. So we just had to very quickly adjust our thinking, and be able to meet the requests of the people that were spending their time with us.

Yeah. I wanna dig into a little bit... That a little bit more, but I'd love to hear from Nick just in terms of, you know, streaming, your evolution in being in front of the camera running these shows. I talked to a lot of owners of businesses, and everyone is always looking for a new streamer. It feels like it's probably the number one most needed role across the entire industry right now.

And you're, Nick, you're doing it. You're doing it with your dad. Like, what's your experience been? Like, what, what what... Do you feel like you've gone through some sort of professional growth being in the role that you're you're in right now?

Yeah. Definitely. I would say he he said I was good at when we first started, but I was terrified to be on camera. Like, I was not a huge fan of it, honestly. You know, we'd we'd go to one of our rooms, record a video, and, you know, sell our products and this and that.

I was like, man, I don't know if I can do this. And then sure enough, one day, he's like, let's try streaming. And I was like, oh, man. Alright. If you if you say so.

And I think, just from a perspective of where we start to where we are now is a huge, huge difference. I think just what we've learned in that time period is unbelievable because we... You know, it's more than just putting a card up and saying, here you go. Bid on it. It's so much different than the eBay store where you don't have to communicate with anyone.

You just... They buy the card, you ship it, and you move on. You have to provide value for them. You have to provide entertainment. You wanna give people a reason to come back.

You know? You wanna put on a good show, and give them something to look forward to. So I think we've learned a good balance back and forth together of how to get to that point. We like to joke a lot, have fun, give people a reason to come back for sure. So I would say, we've definitely learned how to how to meet people's needs as far as what they're looking for.

And I think just overall, like, how far we've both come from when we first went on camera to today, it's it's quite the difference. Mhmm. Thankfully, we can't look back at all of our early eBay livestreams because it it would probably be a mess. Hey, Edgar. I'm I'm right there with you with my old content.

It's like, no thanks. I don't wanna go back. If you saw our first ever eBay livestream, fun fact, we were upstairs in our porch doing it, and my dad... We... I owned a tripod.

We made the decision not to use a tripod. Huge mistake. He's literally sitting there with his phone holding it up like this, be it for two hours, holding up his phone recording. Yeah. And I just...

I'm trying not to laugh because it's so funny as he's sitting there, and he's like... By the end of it, he's like, man, my arms are sore. Yeah. And we had no clue what we were doing. But, so we've come a long ways.

It's not just, you know, how we act on camera. It's the technology side. It's the people learning how to work with people. So there's a lot that goes into it truthfully besides just, you know, putting a card in the stand and saying, alright. Bid on this.

You know? No no doubt. Steve, you made mention. You you gave that, Jim Tomei and Guardian's example. Like, you are probably based on your consistency and what you're selling attracted, you know, a audience of people that is coming each and every show.

They're having a good time. They're buying cards. They're telling their friends. Your business is growing because your audience on eBay Live is growing, which is great. These are all the things that should happen.

With growth, there's, you know, issues. There's problems. There's more demand, which causes more friction, more pain points for any business owner and operator. How have you been able to kinda meet that demand in real time? Like, how have you organized to make sure that you have the right cards for the individuals that are coming in your room to spend time and their money with you?

Yeah. Great question. So we had to pivot away from the single selling on the eBay marketplace and selling the singles through eBay Live. I had a day where I did a mass delisting, taking cards off of eBay, and we made the commitment to move them over to eBay Live. For a while, I was trying to do both, where I had graded cards that were listed on the marketplace, but yet someone would want it on the live show.

And I'd be like, oh, shoot. I've got it listed now, you know, on the marketplace, and I'm selling it on the live. And we finally made the decision that, we're not big enough to keep both things going the way we wanted to. So we just went all in on the live, and we chose to go that route. We do typically 200 auctions a night.

We've hit 50,000 auctions in 2026. So we've now gone over, 50,000, which is a pretty impressive milestone for us, again, being a smaller company. And we made the pivot, but in order to be successful with live, we did have to move away from selling those singles on the eBay marketplace because we just were not gonna be able to do both successfully. Do you have a... And I would love to hear this from both of you, and it might be the same answer.

But this is some of the fun that I have trying to explore and ask these types of questions and understand experiences and moments, like, for each of you and Nick will start with you, like, selling on a live platform. Right? There's a chat. There's a lot of people. There's excitement.

And I think maybe part of the fun is, like, you're you're you're going to be auctioning cards, and you're not gonna know the demand in the room and what the price is for. And that's what I think we all love about auctions, whether it's just traditional style or, through a live perspective. Like, is there any memorable moments for you? Like, what is the most memorable moment of, like, a specific card and, like, what is the card and the reaction that you got from that card that, like, kinda stunned you and surprised you a little bit? Yeah.

Yeah. I think we might both have the same answer on this one like you mentioned. But, yeah, we we did sell a Michael Jordan flair rookie. How long ago would that have been? Yeah.

Like, four or five months. Yeah. Like, four or five months ago, and it was just a very cool moment, to be able to acquire something like that and put it up there. We like to try to offer a wide variety, whether it be low end, mid end, etcetera, of cards. And I think that's just one one of those moments where it's like, wow.

You've kind... You've kinda made it. You know? You you've got the Jordan rookie. It's like this is this is the moment.

You know? And I think all those people who've been with us for a long time in our community just hanging out with us, they were they were excited. They loved it. It's like, wow. This is a super cool thing that you guys are able to do.

They appreciate us trying to go out and acquire something like that. I think, to be able to share that moment, I'm a LeBron fan myself, but it's still very cool moment to put up a Michael Jordan rookie card and share that with everyone else. There's just a lot of excitement around that. We had a lot of people in the room. We did a whole show surrounding it.

We did kind of a nicer show, and I think that was one of the probably more fun moments we've had on eBay Live that I can remember. Yeah. And I'm gonna go in a little different direction. I'm not gonna focus on a card, but I'm gonna focus on some moments. So as an example, one of my best memories on eBay Live is we were watching live.

We were, watching the Packer Bears playoff game for last fall, and it was a wild roller coaster. And Nick is more emotional, including on stream. Right now, he's very calm, but on stream, he can get very excited. And when he's watching his favorite teams or favorite players, he's going to let everyone know what he's thinking and what's going on and the ups and downs of that game that we really shared with our eBay live audience. Like, they were...

It was like they were in our living room with us watching the game. And another example is the World Series. We had people in our chat that were saying, you know, brewers are up three to one. They're up two to one. They were constantly helping us, or they would say, like, look up.

Watch the TV. You're gonna like this. And so to me, we've been able to experience moments with the people that are in our chat that really truly makes it feel like to me, they're sitting right next to us in our living room, and we're all sitting around the TV talking cards and really watching these moments unfold right in front of our eyes. I'm much calmer. I just typically have a pretty calm demeanor.

But one of the reasons why we work is Nick is always very excited about these moments, and so it makes a nice tandem where I'm still trying to keep the auctions going, and Nick's getting very excited about what's happening in the game. But to me, eBay live is about way more than the cards or what we're selling. It's the sense of community where I actually am excited when there's a big sports moment on TV like the Super Bowl, a playoff game, a world series where I can say, oh, that's amazing. I can't wait to watch that while we have a stream going and experience it with 40 to 50 or however many people in our room. It's just a special moment for me, because it just feels like I've got a huge group of friends sitting around watching the game.

That's incredible. Do you find there to be more interest in activity from the audience perspective? When we have a big game going on or tonight as we're recording this, there's Thursday night football. So there'll be football on like does does there being live sports on help drive any specific activity for you as you're running these live streams? Oh, absolutely.

A great example would be now that LeBron is on the Sixers. We've watched more sixer games in the last week than we watched all last year, And Nick has this ongoing dialogue with with multiple people in the chat. You know, they're like, of course, you're watching the Sixers now. You know? And are you the biggest sixer fan now, Nick?

And then Nick's saying, I'm going to Philadelphia this year. I can't wait to go to a game. And so the energy in our room when there is a game on that we're watching and yet we're finding half the people in our room are watching it as well, It really truly drives that sense of community where they're engaged as much as we are, and it just provides an added level of excitement. I prefer that over, let's just say, it's a Tuesday night and there really isn't anything on that we can experience with them. We're still gonna put on the best show that we can, but I will say there's always a little bit of an added benefit to our show when we can all, as a group, be all watching something together just in variously different parts of the country, but all experiencing the same thing.

So I really truly... For me, that's my favorite part of this. That's awesome. I wanna maybe revisit, Nick, with you the selling of the 86 Flair Jordan on eBay live. Like, that's not a traditional thing to do.

Like, most people who have a card like that and have it for sale either either have it listed for a buy it now price that aligns with the market for that card based on the grade. Or, you know, if it's in a high grade, it'll enter some premier auction on another platform. Regardless, like, it's a big card, it attracts a lot of attention. Was there any... Did you hesitate at all, like, selling a card like that in a live platform?

Was there uncertainty? Were you fearful that you might not get the value for the card? Or, like, what was your perspective? Talk us... Talk to us about, like, the decision to list it.

Yes. That's a good question. So we'd actually bought at a local card show. We do lots of card shows whenever we can, so we can always try to provide new products for our eBay live shows. And so we did buy that.

We sent it off to PSA. We graded it ourselves. And for the price that we're into it for, we kind of set a starting price on that one. On on occasions, we set starting prices on bigger cards like that. And we set it at a price where we felt comfortable where if we sold it for that price, we would have been okay with it.

Mhmm. So we were obviously into it for a certain price. And, you know, if we made just a little bit, lost just a little bit, that's kind of where we're comfortable, letting it go. And it's just one of those rare opportunities to provide something super cool, for the people in our community in our eBay livestream. So I think, we knew it wouldn't be a big loss, so we were comfortable with starting at a certain price.

And we knew... We kind of advertised the show a little bit, so we have a Facebook group. We have places where we can advertise, for eBay live, and we kind of let people know ahead of time. So there's a little bit, less risk associated with that, hopefully. So, we did a lot of promotion for that to the point where we felt comfortable letting it go.

And we have a lot of regular buyers. I would say most people in our room are probably Jordan fans, would you say? Mhmm. So a lot of people in our room are Jordan fans already, which does help quite a bit. And so we just got to the point where we're like, alright.

You know, we've we've advertised this plenty, and we're just gonna let it go on whatever happens happens because, definitely a big risk to take, but, I think it's worth taking the risk and just seeing how it goes for sure. I love that. Steve, you obviously... When you're in front of a camera, when you're building these live streams, you're seeing the crowd coming in. Just like with anything, I'm sure there's the regulars.

You've got people that you see every night or every other night, then you get new people coming in. Like, how how do you think about your business and the growth of your business by just seeing the chat and seeing the names coming in? Like, how are you understanding how people are finding you? Why they're showing up? Like, maybe help us understand, like, what you've learned about the growth since, you know, moving fully into the eBay live platform.

Yeah. Absolutely. So we do, do find that there's a solid group of folks who tend to jump in our show within five to ten minutes of us going live. We are consistent at 7PM Central Standard Time, so folks aren't guessing, you know, when they need to find us. And we welcome folks into the room.

We know, as an example, the names of the children of many of the people that are in the room. We know where they work. We know what teams they love. We we see them come in, and we're like, oh, we need to get some Cleveland Brown cards ready, or whoever else we see jumps in the chat. We we have a very good idea of what they're looking for.

We know where some of them work because they're happy to tell us about where they work. The big thing for me is I wanna get to know the people in our chat as much as they are willing. I do understand that there are people that are in the chat that they don't wanna make a comment. They just wanna be there. I see them bidding, but I I I will welcome them in.

I'll say you're welcome to chat if you would like. But if you're not comfortable, that's totally fine. So there are definitely buyers who we don't hear from in the chat. They're just bidding. They're doing their thing.

We just wanna make sure they know they're welcome. But I really do wanna get to know the people that are in the room and as comfortable as they are sharing information about themselves, then we'll just get to know them better. The bottom line is I want people to feel welcome. I want them to feel comfortable. And whatever they are willing to share about their collection, their favorite teams, where they work, what they did last weekend.

I don't know. Our topics range from rock and roll concerts to how their day was at work to, just pretty much anything folks wanna talk about, we'll engage in that discussion with them. But to me, it's all about creating a community. Nick mentioned our Facebook page. We've created a private Facebook page that we call sports cards grading community, and it really comes down to the word community because in there, everyone's treated like family.

They can trade. They can sell. We provide information on our shows, but it really is getting to know each other. We have people that trade with each other all the time now in our groups. I trade with people from our chat.

It's just about creating that environment where people feel welcome, and it's somewhere that they want to hang out, you know, on a nightly basis. So it's just all about creating that environment. That's awesome. And as we kinda round the corner on this conversation, Nick, I'd love to learn from you about just, like, what's it been like working with your dad, working on something that you love, building something? Like, what has this experience been like for you as you've gone kind of full time in building this business around eBay Live?

Yeah. No. It's... That's a good question. It's been great.

I think we're very like minded. Generally speaking, we both agree on a lot of things, so that helps kind of the relationship. We're not ever really at odds. You know, I wanna do it this way. He wants to do it that way.

I think we both generally agree the best way to do things. We're pretty similar in that aspect. I would say, we're both willing to take risks, and if we lose, we lose, and we just kinda move on. And, that's just something we're both comfortable with. So I think, we both have that similar, let's just say a thought process with how that goes.

And I just think, that really helps us work together. And opportunity wise, we see opportunities. We, go to lots of local card shows together on our weekends when we have time. We go to the national together when we have time. We set goals ahead of time for what we're looking for, when we're doing buying and selling.

So we know where we feel comfortable. We know our price ranges we feel comfortable. And he was talking about the community. I'll just briefly touch on that. But something we've discussed is not every single time we buy those Cleveland cards or those brewers cards, we're looking to make money.

We're just looking to get those cards in the hands of other collectors. So... And sometimes it is a risk. We might lose on that, but we're willing to do that to build those relationships. And I think we're very similar in that sense where, we're happy to help fellow collectors, even if it means not necessarily, you know, winning on that particular card.

Steve, you mentioned introducing the hobby at an early age to Nick through opening packs and trying to find relics and autographs. Did you have any idea that, you know, however many years later that you would be building a business alongside him? Was that your expectation, or is that just the hobby doing, special things along the way? You know, honestly, I always hope so. Nick always had a unique talent to identify players that were gonna turn out and be excellent players.

He's very dialed into the modern sports scene. And so even when he was young, he would always seem to collect the right players. I was always shocked at how someone his age was, like, could know. I'm collecting Lebron's and Kobe's and in baseball. I'm collecting Ohtanis.

And I always would go to him and say, well, how do you know that player's good? And you'd always... You would just say, well, I just know he's gonna be good. So he just has always had a knack with, like, who's good, who's playing well, who to try to buy, who to try to grade. And I always hoped after college, there might be a point where he would pivot in his career, to see if he could join us.

I needed to let that happen on its own. And it just seemed like eBay Live was the moment where as we really started, running more and more shows when Nick kinda came to that realization on his own where he said, I like this better. This is something I think I can make a run with, and that's where we were ready to say we're happy to have you. But it had to be his decision. I was just always hoping at some point he would make that decision on his own.

This has been an awesome story. Great to hear the business that you're building, father and son combination. Make sure everyone go check out their live streams on eBay, sports cards grading. Steve and Nick, awesome conversation. Hopefully, we can do this again sometime down the road.

Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate us having us on today.