alright welcome back to another episode of passion to profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay very excited for today's conversation first time i'm getting the chance to meet today's guest and talk but is an individual whose name is regularly coming up in conversations and content that i listen to today i'm joined by chris sewell of sewell sports cards also cohost of the collector investor podcast we're gonna talk about his journey you know building a career in sports cards we'll probably talk some cards content everything in between but without further ado chris welcome man how are you yeah thanks thanks for having me i'm i'm doing great and yeah happy excited to be here nice to nice to be here on here for the first time so that's cool yeah let's maybe since this is passion to profession i think kind of your story fits the bill for that i'm curious just out of the gates i know you had left a previous career in film in around like twenty eleven to pursue kind of a full time career in cards and on the dealer front and i know like in consuming your content you've been collecting cards forever but i'm curious just like in that moment in time like what was going on in your life like why did you make that decision yeah so i i wanted to be a filmmaker i wanted to be a writer and a director but but and i and we i joined a team we had like a three three man team that made a company and we were we were doing alright but we weren't making much money and it was a struggle and and as i was in there a long time i realized i didn't really love the industry that much and i was my passion was going going down in in film and meanwhile i was doing cards on the side and having really fun with that and so it just sorta kinda like went like this and then at some point you know at some point the struggle just got too much with film and and i had sort of a falling out with a partner and i was like you know what i'm just gonna i'm gonna make the switch and switched over to cards full time never looked back and yeah best best best of you know career decision i ever made there are a lot of people who i would i would probably say your your career path is unique i've i talked to hundreds of business owners over the last year and i've never heard anyone pivoting from filmmaking to sports cards but people people move from like corporate job to sports cards or owning some sort of other business to sports cards when you made that move knowing that just the way like selling cards works like what did you need to did you need to prove anything to yourself to know that like what you were do what you were doing or what you were going to do would be sufficient enough to like at least keep the lights on in your house no i was sorta i was sorta lucky in the sense that like i i i i i i say like there was a switch it it really wasn't like a big switch it it really was kinda this and so i don't know that there was like a there was a moment where i quit film but i i'd already sort of built and established okay i i can i'm i'm making money doing cards on the side i do it twenty five hours a week already so i'm just gonna now do it forty hours a week you're you know for and so it it was actually a fairly smooth transition there so which i think was actually how i would recommend it for most people like if you were trying to get into cards i would say do it part time see if you can make a few bucks and you know then and then and then multiply it over time and then yeah so experience yeah experience is everything especially when you're dealing and selling just you know understanding product understanding like what sets and players would be in demand when it is when it is time to sell like how important was it for you to like have some sort of system in place with when it comes to like you know knowing that you would have like an a collection to buy or forecasting cards in your current collection before you know moving on to like the next thing like did did you have that all mapped out or were were you just kind of or in the early days flying by the seat of your pants just looking for kind of the right opportunities to come your way yeah i think early days it was definitely flying by the suit of my pants which i probably would not recommend to you know i recommend have a have a better plan but yeah the early days were was a hustle like yeah i was i was hustling i was hustling you know running around buying any collection i could for the smallest of margins just to keep things moving but at some point it snowballs to the point where you've made enough connections and you have enough repeat business and and that the hustle can kinda chill out a little bit but yeah early on it was it was it was tough but i loved it so it wasn't i didn't it didn't feel like a struggle even though i guess probably it was on paper so there are so many people trying doing to do this professionally doing this professionally successfully and individuals that have scaled like their small operation into like pretty significant sized companies opening up shops doing you know online things and it's hard because it's a c there's so many people doing it and it's hard to stand out i mean you've invested in the content side and building a substantial youtube channel with a sizable audience who knows who you are understands what you're about and probably i would imagine just knowing content and how it works like i'm sure there have been individuals who watch your stuff who know what you like to buy over the years and that's become kind of a lead source for you to say hey man i i need some liquidity here this is the type of stuff i know you like to buy would you make a would you wanna make a deal like from your business building perspective like how important was establishing your content and building that channel kind of in the early days to being able to do what you're doing now yeah so i i stumbled onto the content thing i was i was not doing any content for the first ten ish years of of being a full time dealer and i guess you know i guess there wasn't really much content to do back in like two thousand fifteen i don't know like did youtube was youtube a thing youtube was obviously a thing but like was that it wasn't a big piece of like the hobby i don't think and then i i moved to europe for a couple years my wife got a job there and we decided to go move there and i couldn't do any cards from over there and i just decided to start a channel i have no i have no desire to be a content creator or a or youtube you know star or youtube whatever you wanna say no desire but i was doing it because i had nothing else to do in the card world while i was there and then it kinda it kinda stuck and now it's like a critical piece of my business like it it it generates a lot of leads i think it gives me you know a lot of credibility and so yeah i i still do it even though it's not it's not something i would sorta choose to do if i know it's not that i don't like it it's just i would rather i'd rather play with cards than make a video so i think that's so interesting because now and even when i started this there wasn't many sports cards podcast there were there were some but there weren't a ton now there's like they're they're they're they're everywhere yeah and you know individuals who maybe don't have the product knowledge or expertise are creating channels which is great everyone should create a channel but a lot of people are like really trying to make it on like a platform like youtube like you're sound like you're quite the opposite it's just something like you did and like you gained credibility and you gained gained an audience and you just kept creating and sharing your experience i don't know i find that interesting fact that like this is something that like you're not try you weren't ever trying to like push people and there were never like big hooks but just like through your authenticity and storytelling like you over time and doing it consistently over time like built this audience and it was like the right type of audience of people that you wanted to know about sewell sports cards and what you're doing i think i yeah i think i also kinda got lucky on youtube a little bit it kinda started at randomly the perfect time which was like right as covid hit i don't know i don't know your experience on youtube but like when covid hit there was just a bunch of you know go buy this rookie you know hype hype machines and and there wasn't and and and there wasn't a lot of just like and and there was a lot of people who would like show cards like hey these are my cards but there wasn't a lot of like i don't know you know evaluating the mark yeah i don't know there there there was just wasn't a lot so i sorta just kinda did that i originally was gonna do like a a super boring like library so i was gonna do a like a a video about nineteen eighty five top set and a video about the nineteen ninety one stadium club set and a video about and then that quickly nobody watched that nobody cared so i abandoned that and started sort of you know doing my thing and it just sort of caught on i think i was sort of lucky in that was right when youtube took off and the youtube sports card world took off and like everyone was stuck at home watching youtube and i sort of had you know fairly original content for the time so i think i got you know a combination of of lucky and and calculating that out i i find it interesting especially in the like your approach and your style and doing it during covid when everyone who was starting a new channel was talking about investments and talking about money and you're sitting there talking about like specific cards and you know sets and collection buying do do like through like your growth while people were creating in the same category but creating different styles than you did you do you do you feel like you maybe represent an underserved segment of the hobby which this is crazy but that underserved segment in many ways and in many cases on youtube or not is collectors yeah that's a great way that's a great way to put it i would i would like to i would like to think that i yeah i remember i i didn't i never watched youtube sports cards content before i started but when i started i i figured i'd watch you know i should check out some channels just to get the sense for what the landscape was and kinda what you're saying like there wasn't a channel that i for me like there there wasn't a channel for like an ex i don't know an experienced collector for sorry my cat's gonna briefly there wasn't a a a channel for like an experienced collector who who who who who wasn't you know wasn't looking to buy the next hot prospect but yeah and i don't know how to put it better than that which you kind of put it that way which is i appreciate that yeah no doubt that's i'm glad you confirmed it and just through my discovery of watching your videos that's the vibe that i've got maybe just moving over from like the content side to like your business and operations like yeah what what is what is the what is the bread and butter of sewell sports cards right now like what what are you focused on like what what do you do that is able to kind of generate enough revenue so that you can pour it back into the business and keep growing so yeah my my bread and butter is buying private collections it's what it's it's also my favorite thing to do like in the in the whole process my favorite thing to do is to buy a large private collection and it doesn't have to be large it can be small and and then you know take it home and sort it and distribute it efficiently to to to make some money off it so that's that's what i think i i i do i think i provide like to people who are selling that stuff a very good option you you can always make more selling it yourself any collection yourself but you know a lot of people don't wanna have put in the time or don't have the expertise to sell you know a hundred thousand cards one at a time so you know i provide them an option where yeah you're gonna gonna get a a strong percentage and i'm leaving enough for me to make a profit too but it's gonna be a win win thing and i i think i that that's what i would call my bread and butter i i love buying i love sorting and i hate selling so that's you know but those are like the three pillars of what what you gotta do here do do you consider yourself a patient person i find i've always found i've never been a collection buyer or but i've talked to enough of them and i've the things about buying a collection i'm like i would never be suited for it because i would consider myself an an impatient person but in order to like sort through all that stuff like you i feel like you have to have a certain trait about you like would you say you're patient as you kind of approach your day to day when it comes to collection buying i i yeah i think you have to what i'm curious why do you say you you wouldn't it wouldn't be able to manage a large collection i i just in in the buying process like this the the going through the inventory the sorting it's just low attention span for me and it's just like easily distracted so i i've never gone about buying a collection like that but i can't imagine myself being quite good at it what's the what's the most number of cards you've like bought at one time so you had a show or have a yard sale or whatever have you ever bought thousand a thousand or more or not so i'm a i'm a i'm i'm in indianapolis and i i'm i'm a i love andrew luck and i'm a big andrew luck collector and if you as you can imagine like a lot of people around here had some of his best stuff and wanted to get out of it once he retired and i saw that as an opportunity so i talk about this in my content a lot i've met an individual in a casino parking lot in shelbyville indiana and he i mean he didn't just have andrew luck cards he had like the best of the best and i had like the opportunity to buy a lot of them and i that's probably the biggest collect i probably bought up around a hundred cards from from him so that's probably the biggest purchase i've made in one fell swoop okay so you could manage a hundred cards at a time yeah i can do a hundred one subject oh one subject oh one subject okay it has to be it has to be yeah by the way that just reminded me of a funny story i hadn't i've never told on the channel it's it was like ten ish years i don't know probably ten ish years ago i met a guy at a parking lot of a casino which is why you which is why i brought it up which is a funny place to do a transaction but i mean it's actually it's actually pretty safe i don't remember it was it was i don't remember the value it was thousands of dollars we'll call it five thousand dollars and i bought it and left and he and it was cool and he said he was gonna go gamble with with the with the money like as we left and he called me the next day the very next day and said he had another batch to sell me because he had lost all his money at the casino that you know what what the irony of you sharing that with me after i made the deal for what i thought was very fair and reasonable yeah and i was getting cards that i loved and i i told the guy and this was like a two year long thing like i was trying to get a hold of him for two years and finally we we decided to meet and he let me buy his cards but i told him as he was leaving my car car i just jokingly said like don't go spend that money in the casino and he said oh i i'm going in there i i never found out if he lost everything but i guess the the lesson here is if you are selling cards and you're getting a bunch of cash don't do it in a casino parking lot yeah or take like you know one percent of it and go go and blow that at the at the craps table but save the rest so talk to talk to us about like like what makes up a good collection for you to buy obviously i'm sure you get a lot of leads probably a lot of those leads are you know people who have junk wax cards i'm sure you have your own process for disqualifying that sort of stuff but like maybe like how do you evaluate a collection and it being a collection that you might get in the car and travel to go look through yeah so so it it it a big there's like a a bunch of factors beyond just are the cards good are the cards obviously their cards have to be worthwhile especially if you're traveling to it but you know the the second factor is how far if it's like next door i'll go look at a junk wax collection if it's you know across the country there better be some you know there needs to be some obvious value to make it worth it so you gotta evaluate that and then also it's important to evaluate the the seller and just make sure that they're they don't have like unreasonable expectations because they a lot of people have amazing cards and they're looking to sell but they're looking to sell for a hundred percent of value and there there's not you know that's not gonna be something i can do so you sort of have to evaluate those three things are the cards is the cards worth the travel you know how far of a trip is it and then is the seller reasonable to the point where we're likely to come to terms and you know and you sort of pre predo as much as that as you need and at some point you get a sense for yeah this is likely to work so at that point you go or no how are you able to upfront understand from the individual or the owner if their expectations on what they have and what they're looking for are within striking distance or not and making sure that you protect your most valuable asset which i would imagine is your time it is definitely the time yeah it's it's hard it's well sometimes it's really easy sometimes it's hard i mean usually just having a phone call you can sort of get a sense from the person some people are like you know some collections are like this was this was my brother's and i don't know anything about cards just give me whatever is fair that's that's easy but other other people you know you have to sort of make sure you're on the same page and you you can pick out individual cards okay like in terms of you you have a hundred thousand cards but let's take the these five and price them out and in terms of like the big overall deal i would pay these you know this much for these five do you agree and and if we're on the same page there then we sort of move forward if we're way off then you know we probably have to bail so i gotta hear i gotta hear like when you think about a collection that you purchased that was pivotal to your business and helped you level up because you know the right cards right price what was what's the story about that collection buy and what are some of the cards that you're able to acquire yeah interesting i don't know that i've never had like a home run i don't know like a home run buy that i can think of i mean i i i pride myself in paying fair so i'm i'm never like getting i i wouldn't i won't say never but i'm i'm very rarely getting like a super bargain so so i don't know that i have like one or two collection that have like really launched me for there's lots of collections that are memorable i bought a a t two zero six complete set minus minus the four minus the four big cards so no wagner but this was like ten ish years ago and that was super exciting we we we and i paid it with i did it with a partner we paid up on it like we paid strong actually looking back on it now like we paid a fraction of what it's worth today but at the time we paid strong so that was exciting there's been ones like that that were very exciting but i don't know that there was ones that like leaped me forward in terms of the business it's been it's more of like a i'm more of a like you know crank out a bunch of base hits and you know score that way how how many at any given time how many of these collection buying pursuits do you have whether it's like you are actively going out and buying a collection you just bought one and you need to sort through and process and then maybe on another collection you need a list or figure out how you're selling like how many of these projects are going on at one time in your world yeah i probably go look at a collection twice a week locally and then i would say if i go at it i fly i fly or or drive far to a collection once some once or twice a month maybe yeah something like that most of the local ones are small so you know don't give it really you know but yeah roughly that like i'm not yeah go to look at a collection tomorrow for example awesome what is what is what excites you about like a collection like based on just you as a collector and what you're interested in like if someone emails you or texts you and says hey i i want you to look at this collection it has x in it like what would what would that be yeah i'm i'm i'm pretty easily entertained i like a lot of stuff i i like raw i like graded i like i like vintage i like modern i mean you know i'm i'm i guess i'm sort of into the nineties right now as i guess everybody is so i'm sort of following the herd on that but cal ripken was my favorite player growing up so anytime there's like rare ripken stuff i love that i love raw vintage that always gets exciting because there's a lot of upside in raw vintage but yeah no basically everything i'm and even even like vintage non sports i'm getting into which has never been my thing but yeah i'm i'm very easily easy to to to please when it comes to collections to be to be good at like selling and building a business around what you're doing i feel like you have to have some sort of understanding on like what you're buying the specific market market and the demand that individual cards in that market have and so like i'm i'm curious like how you evaluate that like if you're buying vintage baseball like do you have an understanding of kind of the vintage baseball like not just like the prices but like the community and how it operates as opposed to like the ninety side like do do you feel like you have to like context switch back and forth and and continue to learn how things are moving or are you just buying it and just kinda processing and and moving on to the next like how do you think about those sorts of eras of cards yeah there's a lot there's a lot to there's a lot to consider i like it's it's almost more about value like the more valuable a card is the easier it is to sell for especially if it's like a a vintage card like it's just there's just so many options and they're all good when it's when you get into like cheap stuff that you need to really be careful because you can quickly over you know you you somebody might have ten thousand dollar cards and you're thinking well that's ten thousand dollars i could pay five thousand for that no no you can't you will go to business quickly doing paying fifty percent on dollar cards but on a very expensive card you can pay eighty percent or whatever you know you can pay up so it's it's more about value the the more the more valuable a card is the the more the higher you can pay and the easier it is to sell if that sort of answers your question yeah it does i would imagine just through kind of your consistent content creation you know network and connections like you've prioritized you know building and developing trust and that has helped you you know make deals in the past like how do you think about building trust in this space which for for good or bad like this space can be considered a very untrustworthy space and that's like the bad actors but like how do you think about like the trust building process in in your operations i mean i think it's like it's not not number one but it's like almost number one like it's the most it's like what they say all you have is your reputation or whatever yeah this is a small this is a small community the card world if you start screwing people over you're gonna that's gonna get around quick so super super important to build trust i think do you do you do you how do you think about the individuals who you're working with who have been there and and done that and been in cards forever versus like do you have much interaction with individuals who are newer to the space and you know maybe not as well versed on how the history of the hobby has worked i'm i'm curious just like in those types of you know the the the age or the experience brackets like are you having to do anything differently to maybe educate as you're interacting with specific groups of people in this space and trying to do business yeah you mean like when i'm buying a collection from from someone yes yeah there's a there's there's a lot of educating that needs sometimes people don't care other times they wanna know everything and so you just adjust to what what they want you know some people they just what what's the number for everything and let's move on other people wanna know why are you paying this for this you know why what's the stuff you don't care about what's the stuff you do care about what's the stuff you're paying high on what's the stuff you're paying and you can break it down as much as needed for them and i and i and i that's another thing i sort of pride myself on is being willing and you know open to doing that so that they can have as much or as you know or as little information as they want because if i was selling my if i was selling my collection i'd wanna know so you know maybe if i was selling maybe i was selling my sister's stamp collection i wouldn't care but if i you know if i was selling my own personal card collection i'd wanna know why why are you paying this for that no doubt how how have you or has it has like the work you do or how you've done how you've done it has that changed or shifted any way since this since we've been in this era of the hobby and industry that where we're seeing you know higher prices than ever before we're seeing infrastructure being built new companies performing yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the flag sale like has anything changed for you or is it business as usual yeah no really it's hasn't changed much my model is essentially the same as it was ten years ago buy private collections and break them up and and resell them it's it's what i again what i love to do and what i enjoy doing and i think i i think i'm you know good at it and provide for provide i i i see myself as providing a service to to people who are selling collections i'm not just like buying the collection i'm providing a service i'm i'm gonna basically sell this on your behalf and take my cut as sort of as the way i see it so yeah i i no it hasn't changed much which is weird i mean obviously like little things like okay so tiny refractor you know is worth you know a thousand dollars instead of a hundred dollars like it would have been ten years ago or whatever but things like that but no otherwise the basic model hasn't changed i guess i i added youtube which is a big big piece but otherwise no is there i know you talked about this that t t o six collection but i'm i'm curious like through all of your collection buying like if if if you think about like one card that stands out to you in terms of like got you the most excited like this is a card when you looked at it you're like man i i think i kinda just wanna keep this for myself like what would what would that card be yeah it's it's it's a fifty two man so i i've i've owned two fifty two mantles in my life and it's the first one and i remember it was probably like two thousand fifteen or so and we paid we it was me and a partner and we paid like i don't remember we paid about thirteen thousand for it and it was raw and it was it was like vg condition or a little a little little less and i remember when when we got that i was like i own a nineteen fifty two tops mint like it was it was an amount of money that was above our pay grade so we had to sell it like we couldn't keep it it was it was too much money for us to sit on we we didn't we weren't we weren't able to you know float that much money so we had to sell it quick but i remember in the moment being like i own a nineteen fifty two topps mail i can't like i'm a real i'm a card guy like i'm a real you know player in the space here you know it was very very powerful we only owned it for a week or so and we flipped it we sold it for fifteen thousand so we made a small profit on it but i was it was so exciting to own one and yeah i've only owned one other since so how did how did this is a this is something i i would love for your perspective and it's especially individuals who love cards who try to build this career around selling cards yeah how did you like that card specifically obviously iconic top of the mountain card for many collectors a card that obviously just in hearing you talk about it like meant something to you like how how did you get good at being able to although it was a piece that you probably wanted to keep and would love to stash away for a while but like that example or other examples like how did you get good at just like moving cool cards that you really loved when you had them and ownership of them no it's a it's it's a it's a transition that i imagine is very hard i i would ask you if you found we would find that you know it's a transition that's very hard like when you're a collector you just wanna keep everything when you're when you're making a living and you're paying your bills you can't you can't keep much you you just can't and then that was a good example like if we had kept that mantle we'd go we would have we've not been able to pay our bills the next month so that's not an option that's a hard transition for me i think it was easier than most because i love i love the again i love the buy and i love sorting but i don't actually love the hoarding like i don't need to keep stuff like i i like putting sets together but once i had the set i didn't really need to keep it anymore i was happy to move on so i think it was easier for me than most but i see a lot of people really struggle with that transition like you become yeah if you buy a cool collection with tons of cool cards you can't i mean you might be able to keep a card here or there but you gotta no you gotta my son's gotta go to college in a few years yeah yeah no i i totally empathize with that where it's like i wish i could keep everything but the fact of the matter is it's like when you're running a business sometimes you know you can look at your cards that you love and be you can just say man there's ten grand right there and i could go put that into the business and then probably make my money back doing whatever so yeah it's it's i'm i'm trying to open up that conversation a little bit because for individuals who are are building in this space like sometimes like we need liquidity in cards we love and yeah talk i feel like it's good to talk about that more in public how many how many cards do you own roughly right now yeah or i guess right now and at the and at the and the max what was maxing right now yeah or is right now max no no right now is not the max because so i i made this decision probably four or five years ago where i was i said to myself you know what i'm going to try to collect every prism gold card of an indianapolis colts player so you're thinking twenty twelve through twenty twenty five wow the whole history and i made a tough run yeah yeah it's very tough and i made like i probably got seventy five percent there and then i came to this realization like you know this i am the i am the guy who's the all time high on all these because i'm a collector and i also wasn't having fun like spending paying up for cards that i didn't really care about just to finish this project so six months over the last six months i kind of pieced that out and sold it most of it and so like that was probably my high and my peak where i was i don't know like three hundred four hundred cards now i'm probably at my lowest that i've been but it's i'm being i'm trying to be more intentional so i think i probably have i don't know if i had to guess right now maybe like sixty seventy cards somewhere in there oh so you've never been out of control then you're you're yeah i i'm not yeah i try not to like spend a lot of money on bricks or rip hobby boxes and get a bunch of stuff that i don't like like that's not my that's not how i operate i'm super curious like a a a cults you know common guy who player who had a gold prism out of ten i assume you mean yeah that you bought five years ago is it was it worth more or whenever you bought it was it worth more when you sold it because it probably went up right like a common yeah probably i would probably get a card of some let me try to think of tie here's a guy he play really odd he he was taekwon lewis he played for the colts had a short window he was like a backup lineman yeah out of ohio state and for us i never understood this some for some reason twenty sixteen was his rookie year so we had a twenty sixteen rookie gold prism and then they put him back in twenty twenty four prism i was like why why is he in twenty twenty four prism and not deforest buckner but that's neither here nor there starting well did he start that year or something no he didn't start it was weird oh that's weird they just kept putting him out so i i don't know like i was able to buy those cards for you know i don't know probably twenty five bucks and maybe sell those cards for fifty bucks when the time came which yeah wasn't wasn't bad but i always view it as like i was at the end of the day i probably broke even or maybe lost a little bit just because you know there are those cards of those players that like i'm willing to spend a lot on so but anyways it's i learned that set building and project building on something like that while trying to buy cards and collect and run a business wasn't sustainable so i was like i gotta wash my hands for this and operate in a much smaller scale yeah yeah no yeah yeah i i keep a very small percentage of what i buy because you just you just can't otherwise but what's your personal collection look like now like how many cards like what is it what's the makeup yeah it's about it's probably about three hundred cards and it's mostly hall of fame rookies and and and rick get the calrick and nineties inserts and i have a couple a couple like small side projects but they're they're they're they're not expensive stuff like i'm a big i'm a star wars fan so i try to get like the rookie card is that the term of of all the all the original star wars characters and i'm a i'm a us women's national team fan so i try to get one cool soccer card of all the us women's national team players of note so but these are you know these are small projects and i don't put a lot of money into them so what is i guess who is the based on that like who is who is your favorite star wars character and card and then who is your favorite women's national player and card that you own yeah so the star the star wars i don't know yoda they're all good what do you think about the chrome stuff and that stuff going bonkers these days that's i mean that's that's not for me but yeah that's it's i i i like that that stuff's taken off but it's it's not something i'm interested in personally i like the i like the the vintage star wars stuff really just the seventy seven set to be to to to narrow it down to that little but yeah yoda yoda is not in that actually but yeah yoda yoda is probably my favorite star wars character r two d two big one luke leia all of them are good yeah it's it's a great movie it is it is a great it it is a great set of movies that's for sure so i wanna kinda i wanna talk a little bit more about just like your your team operation and makeup like oh wait wait before that real quick let me just say my favorite basketball player growing up was reggie miller let's go let's go oh that was i don't know why because there's no reason i would have liked him but you know washington team sucked and i don't know i just i i was drawn to him i thought he was awesome we love reggie here was that was he was he your guy growing up oh yeah i mean being a kid nineties kid and everyone had the thirty one i had a moment when i was probably ten or eleven like heyday of nineties pacers and there was a grocery store by my house and where i grew up reggie lived probably he lived in like on the reservoir and lived in this house everyone knew where he lived in this just gated community but he lived like probably like ten minutes from me okay and i was i'll never forget like i was at this grocery store and i was with my mom and i was like walking in the front door and as i was like walking in like reggie is just like by himself like walking like just like paying for his groceries walking out and i was just like processing like reggie miller goes to marsh and then i was just like and i was like he's gonna walk right by me and yeah dude i was i couldn't even say anything i was like speechless so yeah reggie reggie's a legend here for sure okay those pacer teams because in the the last dance documentary jordan said that that's the toughest team they ever faced that that chris mullen mark jackson rick smith's who else they have antonio dale davis yeah yeah they had a they had a team they had a team they had a team they had a team they had no like top five player i mean reggie was never a top ten player i guess even right probably not but they but they were just kinda like everybody was well above that you know well above average player they were a very team oriented basketball that's for sure yeah and it sucks because as a pacers fan it's like you know we you hit the the jordan wall then you hit the lebron wall it's just it as so it goes and it just reminds me of how hard it is to actually win win a championship maybe switching gears back before we close this out and talking about your operation like you're doing a lot like i i know you've you know when did you reach the point where you're like i i need some support i need some people here alongside me to help me process and do what i'm doing yeah so i'm i'm i'm very much a a a i've always been a lone wolf i'm an introvert you know introvert not that i like don't like being around people i actually love being around people and i'm not shy at all but i get i get i just get very tired when i'm around people i get exhausted i need i need a lot of alone time so i've always been on my own at some point i was i was had too much shipping to do and i hate shipping so i hired i i was working out of my basement and i hired somebody to come help me ship and that turned out he was really great then i hired another guy to come help sort some cards like put things in the sleeves and things and that was really great and at some point i had like two people in my basement all day long and so i was like i gotta i gotta i gotta become an adult here so we got i got an office and i hired hired danny black who i know you who obviously put us in touch and he is yeah he's basically running operations there and he's he's that's that's been a life life changer yeah just the the the ability the how many more options you have when you have multiple you know people on your team who can do lots of different things and being run by a very you know exceptionally competent person is is a huge huge huge eye opener for the for the business potential so yeah it's been great i think a challenge many of us have and i struggle with this challenge a lot is just like how do you feel how do you feel comfortable taking money away from like investing in a collection and keep doing what you're doing and invest it in people which you know will likely alleviate things but then there's training with those people and doing having them do what they like you want them to do but also giving them the space like hiring is challenging especially when you're like doing it for the first time like how did you get comfortable with adding people to the squad yeah no i i that's definitely not something i was comfortable with i've i think we've kinda gotten pretty lucky with our hires they've they've been all been quite quite good and danny definitely has a big plays a big part in that i it it is harder than you would think to find someone who is you know very card knowledgeable and trustworthy or you know both both of those things which you know obviously would sort of be a baseline for anyone you would hire but yeah that that's it's it's tricky but i'm still learning it's weird i just started so ask me again in a year we'll we'll have that we'll do that we'll do the annual check-in yeah this has been a lot of fun kinda hearing your story learning about kinda your operation and and how you think about it before we let you get out of here chris i'd love to maybe understand like a piece of advice like a lot of people listen to the show who are working in the industry or aspire to work in the industry you've been doing it for quite a while like what's a what's one like piece of advice you'd share with anyone who's looking to get started building a business in sports cards i would i would say unless you can't and it's it's you you might not be able to but if you can take a always take a long term approach to everything long term approach means you know with whoever you're doing a deal with the point is not to get to win the deal the point is to make a good relationship you're gonna you're gonna pay more that way but you're gonna it's gonna benefit you in the long run and always think in in these terms versus everything the the the the goal should be to make a long term relationship over anything else yeah i would say because in in the long run that'll that'll really snowball your business much more than much more than getting a a super bargain today on a deal playing the long game is something we talk a lot about on here chris it was very nice to meet you learn about how you think about your business and cards we'll have to do this again maybe sooner than a year but we'll have to do this again soon yeah yeah no it's very fun that was i appreciate you having me on