we are back new episode of passion of profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay this conversation is going to be a whole lot of fun i always appreciate it when i can talk with another collector another person working in the industry that is local to me and that's what we're doing today today's guest is shane he's the lead buyer at indycard exchange also a prolific collector of all things indianapolis sports you can follow him at indycardcollector on instagram we're gonna get into a lot his career history and collecting but without further ado shane welcome man how are you i am good brett thank you so much for having me on your very successful show i longtime follower longtime listener so to be on the show is an absolute honor so thank you yeah i and it honestly man it clicked after we we had an interaction or i would say more than interaction a deal being made in indycar exchange and i was driving my daughter home and i was like man i need to have shane on the show because i know he's got a cool story to tell so it's fun to to to talk with you you know i've talked with andy over the years so got nothing but love for indycard exchange it's it's fun just to watch that brand grow not only locally but nationally it feels like whenever anyone's talking about modeling a hobby shop after someone else like andy indycard exchange team is always like the first or the second after burbank that people talk about and i don't know like you're you're inside the operation and we're gonna talk about kinda how you got there but like what's that like working at a space that is has such a strong brand locally and nationally what's it like just to go into work every day in that environment the amount of pride i take to represent the shop is is is unmatched i and we'll talk about this i worked for gamestop for almost sixteen years and i can't remember moments where the night before i was excited to go to work i've been working for three and a half years at indycard exchange every night before i go back to work like there's this i don't know almost like goosebumps like i'm excited and it has not let down it's it's it's this pride to represent not only andy and andy card exchange but indianapolis as a whole just seeing the passionate customers and and friendships that we've created all throughout indianapolis indiana ohio kentucky illinois michigan we got people driving two three hours just to come to our shop it's it's something i don't take lightly and you know i wanna exceed expectations of every customer that walks through that front door that's awesome you can feel it when you're inside the four walls and you mentioned gamestop so i know you spent a lot of your career working at gamestop in a variety of roles like maybe talk about that experience and then when you kinda called it quits and then how you ended up getting connected and working for any card exchange wow that's a that's a a loaded question so you know as everyone probably knows games video games just nobody wanted physical copies anymore everything started going digital so we got towards so this is what five years ago it was right after covid so twenty twenty one ish there was just a lot of pressure a lot of pressure a lot of micromanaging from the the higher ups within the gamestop organization and i you know i was i was getting older and i'm a i feel like i'm a smart guy so i i i saw the writing on the wall and the way the the company was going and you know i'd built this amazing relationship with andy back in two thousand twelve and we had just became not only was i a good customer of the shop but i was really great friends with andy and here here's here's a good one andy so back in the day tom brady was not liked in indianapolis as you probably know yeah so i decided to start buying all the rare tom brady cards in indianapolis whenever they were hit whenever they were at j and j fisher's card show like i bought them all i didn't hesitate so i started to be known as the brady guy did i collect him was i passionate about him absolutely not but i just saw where this could go from a financial standpoint for me to flip cards and then buy use that money to buy reggie miller and and other stuff so andy was doing a live show back at the old shop back in the day he pulled the one of one two thousand sixteen select black finite tom brady card he immediately calls me and says sugar i know you like to buy this stuff do you wanna buy this i'm like yeah you know they usually go for four five hundred i'll give you four hundred he's like i need six hundred i said okay i bought it fast forward to covid as you know everything exploded during covid i started to see the tom brady prices go bananas and this is also when i'm thinking should i get out of gamestop so i grade the brady it gets a nine five everybody's like dude you gotta throw it on i think it was pwcc back then i don't think it was fanatics collect excuse me so i throw it on there brett i kid you not i i paid six hundred dollars for the card it sold for ninety six thousand dollars that i could not believe it i i mine exploded head exploded i still owe andy a lot of dinners at ruth's chris but with that being said when that happened it was like a perfect perfect storm for me i said okay you know what i and not to go too deep into my history but i just went through a really really tough divorce and i just needed to reset my life so i was like you know what i'm gonna make this leap of faith i'm going to put in my my notice at gamestop i have this nice little lottery ticket that i just won with the ninety six thousand dollars i need to reset not only my my my profession but just a reset of who i am so i took that money and i took a year off and traveled and and did what everybody wants to do in their mid forties i just took a year off and just enjoyed life oh man that is quite the story i love the mindset that you had regarding like buying brady in indianapolis because he's public enemy number one and so that afforded you tremendous opportunities to probably buy locally and sell from a far from afar and obviously like the ninety six k in one fell swoop is is quite the come up like that a lot of people have those types of stories with cards where like they're they've sat on something for a while and then they sell it like it sounds like you got access to it graded it and then flipped it and it provided you enough runway to gain some clarity around kind of what you wanted to do with your life like do you ever think about the fact that like a football card allowed you that opportunity and like did that make you want to pursue the like chase the next brady that's was going to do that or the next card like once you do it once i felt i feel like it probably sunk its teeth in you oh you brett you nailed the oh you nailed it so i was always trying to go where everybody else wasn't going and i think there's opportunities right now where everybody's trying to go one way and there's there's definitely some some other stuff out there so what i did is i started researching marvel cards so right after the brady i was like you know what pmgs there's a market here and i discovered that two thousand fifteen two thousand seventeen that they made pmgs of spider man and and all those guys incredible hulk so on and so forth and i decided to go for the two thousand fifteen red pmg of spider man so i bought it raw graded it got an eight it was the highest graded one ever brett i kid you not i ran that on pwcc it sold for fifty four thousand dollars it it it was it was unreal and not to mention this is when i was kinda growing my instagram following i had i had also done the same thing with soccer cards in two thousand nineteen i started buying i couldn't afford basketball cards anymore mhmm it was things had really taken off when you know luca two thousand eighteen two thousand seventeen was tatum that's when basketball cards really started to get expensive to open excuse me and i looked at just something else to buy so i started buying soccer cards so at the same time i was doing buying two thousand seventeen topps chrome soccer which is probably one of the greatest sets ever i bought eleven cases of it and had tons of ronaldo messi golds i graded them all they all got psa tens mbappe rookies and so at the same time i'm building my instagram following through that i then sell a brady for ninety six thousand then a spider man card for fifty four thousand now everybody's thinking that wow shane knows what he's kinda knows what he's doing here will i say that i got lucky i did i got lucky you know i i've made some some educated smart decisions during the covid hype and it paid off but then you got a lot of i got a lot of other stories that i can tell you that where i've done really really bad of course of course but yeah that's so yeah it definitely inspired me to start looking elsewhere and try different avenues to do that to get that flip again so i think what's interesting about this and oftentimes like collectors who make these buys and then have successful sales from them there's instinct and intuition that comes into play and collectors don't necessarily give themselves enough credit for those and that usually comes with experience i know you've been a collector for a very very long time maybe like take us back to the early days of shane as the collector and just how like your obsession or jab session with cards kind of maybe helped you understand product understand like where the market goes like how did those early days inspire kind of those the the reasons you were able to kind of make the leap and make those buys which obviously ended up with some life changing money for you it's crazy not to not to make this a long winded story but i think of starting with my dad in the eighties taking that long break that i took because i was passionate about it i loved it in the eighties i loved collecting with my dad but then you you you turn into a teenager you go to high school you go to college i went to ball state and then this little thing called ebay i was like what's ebay i gotta check this out and i started looking at ebay and i find all these cards i've been looking for in card shops and i'm like oh my gosh these are marvin harrison autograph cards and i can buy these online and they'll ship them to my house this is incredible so i started that you know back in the two thousands and i think what happened for me i got into two thousand five is the year where i really uptick what i was doing and i'm i i hate to say this out loud this could lead down another avenue for us with addiction but i had just started getting credit cards and i was buying every danny granger card you could think of i love danny granger before i was indie card collector i was on forums where i was called granger collector and i had his logo men i had his super fracture rookies i had all of it but i did i've maxed out credit cards to do it i went into some pretty pretty deep credit card debt back then which scares me in the in the environment they're in right now with a lot of folks putting credit cards on whatnot so on and so forth that's a whole another show but i think what happened was the marvin harrison collection the peyton collection the reggie miller collection and then the danny granger collection as the market started getting bigger i'm like should i sell some of this stuff like this stuff is selling for big money so that's when i started going to show i hadn't set up at shows but i started going to shows and back then brett i'd go to the atm and get five hundred out and take that to a show and that was a lot of money to me and i could i could do some damage with five hundred dollars five hundred dollars does nothing at a show anymore but man that's that's kinda what i think started it all for me i bought all that stuff cheap and then as the two thousands we got into the early two thousand tens i'm like man i'm sitting on some pretty good money i could probably flip some of this stuff so i love like following your page and like what you buy and what you're picking up because most of it is stuff that's like super nostalgic to me as a pacers or colts fan like you have talked about you know buying into brady buying into soccer cards like how have you organized maybe your personal buying around like finding opportunities on stuff you see based on your experience versus like going out and spending your money out of your paycheck on like these reggie miller cards that you absolutely love it sounds like you have kind of created a system to be instinctual on buying stuff that you might not necessarily care deeply about but you know that based on your experience it'll probably fetch you a nice return where then you could spend that money on those reggie miller cards like how it how did you get to the point where you've kinda organized yourself around that i think it all goes back although i had the brady and the spider man sale i think it goes back to the soccer piece so there was there was probably five six seven of us across the country that was doing was going heavy on soccer and my goal and i did this with jake he's our gm at the shop we just started buying the highest end soccer that we could and we were gonna hold it until the world cup was here in the united states and brett i ended up selling almost all of my soccer i still have some nice stuff left but i ended up selling most of my soccer and i bought this house that i'm in now with that which is just blows my mind and the reason i bring that up is there's just something that clicks with me that knows what the next move is so for example earlier this year it was probably february march i started buying kobe's and jordan's left and right i was just like i have expendable cash right now sold all these soccer cards bought the house have money left over i feel like there's a mark something's about to explode with this i can't tell you what it is brett it maybe it's just customer interactions and hearing people talk and mhmm and watching the markets i mean you're probably a creature of habit like me every morning i have coffee i have peanut butter toast i i go for a walk and then i jump on comc and then ebay every morning i do it every morning and i just look for what new has popped up overnight while i was asleep and i just started noticing jordan and kobe jordan and kobe so i just started going all in and then right before the national probably should've held a little longer but i sold it all i sold all of my jordans all of my kobes and i probably i mean i probably doubled my money of what i invested into it and then it we get back from the national and everybody's like so what's the next play and i'm like guys we're looking at goats right now all goats so everybody's priced out of jordan and kobe so they're gonna move on to the next one who's next shaq who's next tim duncan griffey bonds i mean we're seeing bonds cards going bananas right now so i don't know that's just kinda how my mind thinks of you know what could be next and i'm telling you like right now i've really been looking at hockey i've really been looking at it i just feel like i know wwe has kind of exploded over the past few months we're seeing insane numbers with disney cards right now just blowing my mind i just feel like hockey might be the next big thing yeah i think that's not a a bad instinct especially based on your track record there's a whole country where that's basically not all they collect but it's their that's the primary collection so i don't think i think you're probably more right than wrong there i wanna get back to this kinda year hiatus like where you had these sales you let you leave gamestop and you're traveling gaining some clarity like how you had this relationship with andy like when in that year like did you start thinking about like the opportunity to work in cards and specifically work for andy has this been like a long had this been a long time coming a a long conversation or was it something like you just woke up one day and like had an epiphany saying like maybe i should try to work at indycar exchange man that's a great question i so taking a year off from work has its pros and its cons the biggest con is you don't have a revenue stream coming in at all and when you're trying to live in fishers because i was still living in fishers for my son to go to hamilton southeastern so apartments i had to sell my house after my divorce so apartments are not cheap in fishers so that money does go pretty quick especially when you're traveling and going to colorado and hiking mountains and doing whatever i was doing it had always been in the back of my mind i would love to join andy and jake at indycard exchange it that had always been in the back of my mind and when i started getting bigger with my instagram following and then going to you know setting up at card shows every month and i was i was one of andy's one of their better customers in the shop so i'd create like created this amazing relationship with them specifically andy and it had gotten to the point where i was about seven eight months into my year of of not working and i'm talking to andy and he's like sugar if you ever wanna work for me you know you know i got a job for you so we finally i was just like you know what i think i'm gonna do this at least part time and just see how i feel about it so he hired me on part time i obviously fell in love with it it was incredible from day one and then every time they had somebody call off sick or whatever i'm like i'm there count me in i'm there i'm there and then we finally got to the point to where andy he obviously had trusted me for for knowing me for all of these years he's like you know what i think we're looking for a management position i wanna give it to you but we gotta go through through the formalities of interviewing and so on and so forth make it you know fair for everyone so i interviewed and everything went great and yeah the rest is kinda history so it's the best i'd say that's probably one of the best decisions talk about leap of faith i quit a job a very nice job of sixteen years i quit that job and then took the leap of faith to work at indycard exchange i had friends i had other i i'm on linkedin i had other people trying to recruit me after i quit and just something told me don't do it stick to this with indiecard exchange and i oh my gosh i'm so glad i did i love the story and i think there's a lot of this going on right now across the industry where there's people with just unique professional skill sets that are looking at what's happening across the industry and are wanting in and it's fun and that's part of the reason why i like to have these sorts of conversations to to show people that there are people who've actually done this and they're loving it when you jumped in and you started working at indycard exchange was there anything different from like okay i've been a collector who's had a lot of success flipping cards building out this collection to like actually showing up every day working for a job having structure was there anything like different or anything that stood out to you once you were like in the saddle in any card exchange kind of working full time i think here's the difference between work and like in retail a corporate position versus working in a i don't wanna call it a mom and pop shop because we're a business as well but the two differences so you have expectations to hit specific sales goal numbers and reports and holding people accountable and and and all of that right in this corporate world and there was no genuine bonds or friendships or relationships being built amongst employees which was what i didn't build it i didn't foster that environment at all for my store managers at at gamestop so that was hard for me to understand why my boss or the my boss's boss was was creating that that environment for me when that's not what my expectation was for my managers flip it over to indie card exchange i i already loved andy like like he's a brother to me before i even started working there and like like literally brett we tell each other we love each other all the time so it was like going in working with my brother right off the bat and that's how we all are at the shop all of us are are incredible friends and and we create a an environment a safe environment not only for our customers but for us as employees we're having fun we love each other and we want the best for each other and that's what i was longing for at gamestop and it that i never got and that's what we what i have now i i've i have a lot of these conversations obviously just a lot of people a lot of conversations all the time and i don't even try to bring up any card exchange people bring up any card exchange to me all the time and whenever people are talking about an example so many times like people just bring up andy albert they say like he's the og like he i learned so much from him like he has gone out of his way to help me and share all this and it's just like to me that's like the makings of building an incredible brand is when you serve and you help others trying to do similar adjacent things you know any car exchange has been an institution here locally and continues to be like every time i see my nephews they wanna talk cards with me they wanna talk about what they ripped at any car exchange and they wanna talk about the experience and it's fantastic what what do you think like as a member of the squad what do you think it's been over kind of the last thirty years that any card exchange has been able to understand about the collector that maybe some other businesses that have come and go gone over the years have not you used one of our key phrases that we use all the time at the shop is is serving the customer you know i think i think one thing that we do really well is we it's not you walk in we greet you what are you looking for here you go bye bye thank you it's it's those those open ended questions those we want to get to know you as a person and as a collector i don't care if you buy anything in the shop i really don't at the end of the day creating that relationship and that friendship and learning more about you as to why you came into our shop and what we can do to serve you to educate you and to help you be it sell a card it doesn't even have to be to us brett it could be we can help you get the most money by sending it to fanatics collect or our consignor on ebay or whatever that is our goal at the end of the day or hey we wanna help you complete this nineteen sixty two top set let me go in the back and grab out this binder so that you can complete the set that you've been working on for a year it it our kids club i mean we got over two thousand members that are coming in with their parents the weekends are out of control in the shop and it doesn't matter to us if you're spending ten grand which we have folks that do that or if you're buying three dollars worth of cards we treat every we want that's our goal is treating everyone the exact same no matter what you're spending or if you don't spend anything in the shop just having that creating that memorable experience that they're gonna remember two three four five years down the road the you know experience online often gets kind of the the headlines or the story and it feels like because we enter interact on instagram when we buy from these marketplaces and it's we're behind the keyboard like there are some pros to that it's you know efficient we're able to make quick decisions but then there's also a bunch of negative components to it like we there's a lot of noise in our feeds there's individuals that we don't wanna interact with that we end up interacting with and it creates bad experiences like that's only intensified since covid just like the online nature of of the hobby experience like how is it how would you describe like you're in those two worlds you have like an established instagram account you're buying online but then you're also like working at any card exchange and you are a part of the conversations and interacting with the community like how are those two worlds kinda different or how do you observe those two worlds that's a really good question i think i think for me it's about separating the two like i represent the indycard exchange on my instagram account like everything i do i think through what am i gonna post how am i gonna post it because this i'm a direct reflection of the indycard exchange but with that being said i still have my own wants and needs for my for my personal collection so separating the two is is is you know it's a big deal for me so for example like if i buy something at the shop as a collection and there is a cool reggie miller or there is a cool tyrese halliburton it goes to andy or jake and then i ask hey is this something that i can buy afterwards there there should be no gray area no no blurred lines when it comes to that because of course i want to continue to grow my collection but on the flip side there's a phrase that we started using recently we want to be we before me so we should be looking at this as a whole as a shop versus trying to benefit myself if that makes sense and that's something that i've gotta really look at when i'm trying to collect for myself versus trying to buy for the shop but then also just looking at what people see from the outside too you know they gotta be able to not only trust me as a buyer or trust me as the manager of the shop versus like what's actually going on in the card world because like you said there's a lot of negativity going on actually all the time in our in our industry and i think that's one thing that we definitely try to strive to stay away from is staying away from that negativity and really trying to just provide a positive experience be it in the shop be it online be it on our whatnot channel our whatnot channel has blown up recently as well we just try to be different from the the normal standard or the just what everybody thinks about the hobby how is everybody in the shop so upbeat and excited to be there i mean that's you know we've all walked into plenty of shops that it's like everyone like people just looking miserable and i'm just like this is cards everyone like let's be excited but i don't know like where does that come from it like there's a certain feel to it where everyone wants to help everyone is super positive it's just like the jolt in the arm that like you need when you're busy professional and you have like a small fraction out of your day where you can like enjoy yourself and enjoy time away from life's priorities and like you're met when you walk in with just like uplifting positive mindset like where where does that all come from i mean it it's doesn't feel manufactured it feels very organic which i think is makes it unique that man that's another good question brett so here here's what i think when i became a manager of the front of the shop andy told me he's like you know shane with your experience through gamestop and hiring i really want you to build a team that is passionate about what they do that that can talk to people is genuine and just wants to come to work every day so that was kind of my mindset when i started to hire in some of the folks that work there and here's a here's a fun fact i believe out of our twenty three twenty four employees we have twenty two out of the twenty three were former customers which that's crazy right but i think with that being said that just shows those guys we have one female that works for us too they all collect they all collected and shopped with us and they wanted to be a part of our experience and our brand and i think that's kinda what what what you see when you walk in is they are grateful just like i said when i first started they're grateful they're proud to work for indycard exchange and to and to wear the shirt to work every single day it's like it's almost like i we went out to dinner the other night me and my fiance and i didn't even change my shirt she was like you're not gonna change i was like no i i like wearing this shirt out yeah i'm i'm proud to work there and and to go back on that brett at gamestop as soon as i was done with gamestop i wanted out of the shirt i didn't i it's almost like i didn't want people to know i worked there andy carter change i want you to know i worked there i love absolutely love what i do for a living that's amazing i wanna get into your role and just like the role of the buyer and i i knew we were chatting today i was like you know what i'm not sure i've really spoken to anyone who does what shane does at a place like indycard exchange and i wanna dig into it because there's a lot that goes on right it's a lot of cards money like there's you're trying to make an offer you're looking for opportunities there's just a ton to dig into but yeah let's start with just like someone sets an appointment and they don't tell you what they have but they're just like hey i'm i wanna come into the shop and i've got some stuff that i think you might be interested in buying like what's your process like with that like help help us all understand like how a buyer at a successful hobby shop thinks of buying and and and what makes the most sense for the the shop when you're going through that sure so we have a weekly newsletter that a lot of folks are signed up for and we put in there that we buy collections so there's a link where you can click on it and then you set it it basically is an email that is sent to me and then i get to go through thirty fifty emails a week of people trying to sell collections and basically i just have a script like copy and paste and respond to him hey this is what we're looking for we we basically don't buy stuff from the late seventies eighties early nineties unless you've got jordan you know joe montana rookies you know you know the the drill and that usually weeds out a lot because we have a lot of folks that are looking to sell their nineteen eighty nine topps baseball set you know stuff like that so that that is one thing that we we we have to be kind about it because a lot of this is their childhoods that they're finding that they're discovering they're seeing card news all over it's on national news now our our industry so they're seeing this they're going to their attics they're going back to their mom and dad's they're finding their old collections and and they think that they're sitting on a gold mine right and then i have to be the dream crusher that lets them know well unfortunately your your nineteen eighty nine frank viola top star is not worth you know fifty bucks so that happens a lot so that's one part of it is identifying what folks have via email having them shoot over some pictures to see if it's gonna make sense because i don't wanna waste a customer's time either they don't wanna have a customer come in with you know five totes ten white boxes and it's all nineteen eighty nine ninety tops baseball cards no offense tops from that time era but so with that being said once we've kind of weeded through that then we just kind of look for what what do we need to carry in the shop for cut for our customers what they're looking for so obviously we're always looking to buy colts pacers fever we buy cubs cards reds cards just because they're kind of local pirates cards you know skeen sells very well in indianapolis so we're kind of looking at stuff that we can fill our glass cases with not only the glass cases but we have boxes on top of our glass cases that we we have to fill and then we have the whole middle section the pit and that's our kids section that's where a lot of the kids sit and we wanna have those dollar cards two dollar cards five dollar cards to fit what those children are trying to buy right not most children i save most children because i've seen children spend five hundred dollars on a card but most children are their budget is in that ten to fifteen dollar range so we gotta make sure that we have enough of that product in the middle too so that's kinda how i narrow things down via email now you get two walk ins people that just hey i read about indycard exchange i saw them on tiktok i just drove from illinois i've got this whole carload full of cards is there any way that you could look through them and especially if it's like on a weekend and they drove hour two hours i have to i have to go through it you know and it we we've had a few funny stories recently we've had we've had boxes where the whole thing was just mass produced cards and then we find a a red pmg it's like wow and and the customer had no clue and our first instinct is not to well let's let's offer them lowball them and give them a a a terrible offer our first goal is how can we get you the most money let's take you to our grading center next door let's get this thing slabbed up for you which is probably gonna double triple the value of the card and then we can make an offer if you don't like our offer then we can go ahead and help you get it on fanatics or a consignment on ebay so but that's kind of the the the gist of it i mean we we have a whatnot channel so it's funny brett i i buy for the shop i buy for the kids in the middle i buy for card shows that we set up at we just got back from shipshewana and i buy for whatnot so if you ever come into the shop and it looks like i'm really busy in my little corner it's because i'm i'm buying and and and trying to get all this set up that's why i've hired so many incredible employees to have that great customer service because sometimes if i don't stay focused we won't have the inventory for the shop yeah it's a it's a big job and it's like the light lifeblood of the business to make sure that you're continuing to buy cards that you can sell across multiple platforms the i wanna talk about comps a little bit when i came to you with the colts cards you said something and it was like i felt like we were in the new era you were like do you use card ladder value and i was just like do i use card ladder but yeah like card ladder like it was so cool to see like that was like the first thing that was like the resource or the platform that you were digging into so i don't know like we're in this like comp culture where it's like last comp and you just see so much reaction where people are saying like well a car that doesn't sell this often like you shouldn't look at the last comp if the last comp is like five years ago and there's just this whole debate online like how do you as the individual who's buying like make the decisions on like when you're offering money on a card like does last comp matter does card letter value matter like how do you think through all those dynamics i think that comping a card is a starting point i don't think the people that so we get a lot of repackers that come into the shop or that come to the shows and wanna buy stuff and they're you know vintage is a great example not p all psa ones not all psa fours are created equal when you're looking at a nineteen fifty six mickey mantle card you've gotta look at centering you gotta look at the the color of the card so you could have a a psa three fifty six mantle could outsell an off centered psa four just because of the eye appeal but we see a lot of repackers that are using the apps on their phone you know they're scanning the card and they're saying well this is the last comp and i'm like there's so much more that goes into this buddy yeah we're not gonna sell it at that price thank you for asking but yeah when i'm buying especially lately with some of the like shaq is a good example because shaq has really blown up over the past two weeks i think you gotta take card ladder value especially if it's a card that hasn't sold for a year or two you gotta take that into consideration not only as a buyer but also as a seller like so many folks right now that don't have the knowledge of the hobby or how to sell a card they're losing lots of money if they've had a card that hasn't sold in two years and they don't know how to comp they so i i know we're using comp and maybe some people don't like that word but if they don't know how to comp the card they could be losing out on hundreds or thousands of dollars because the card hasn't sold in two years that's why i love the card ladder value because it's it's showing trends that are happening in the the specific sport or with that specific player so i don't use any other apps i i eat sleep breathe card ladder so shout out to card ladder andy does as well that's just something that that that that's our our measuring stick when it comes to buying and selling cards when when i you and i were talking in the store like one of the things you mentioned you were just like oh man like i'm so glad like this is this is cool stuff that i get to like look through and enjoy it while i'm going through my process and you may i think you said something about like you know it's like every other card is like a downtown or a pokemon card so it was like seeing something new and fresh like how how like do you feel like you have a pulse on like what might be oversupplied based on the seat you said i know it's not like you don't get a full view of like everything happening in the hobby but like you're in a pretty big spot in a central location in a major city where people bring their cards like do you feel like you've got a pulse on like what's happening with maybe cards that are overprinted or cards that maybe should be lower in value but are hyped up by characters online like what's that experience like for you man that's another good question i use this phrase a lot especially with the friendships that i've created with some of the customers in the shop i asked them are do you are are you satisfied playing checkers or do you wanna play chess and everybody always gives me this weird look and i'm like i feel like uptowns downtowns color blast all that stuff it just seems like checkers to me it really does and you know i i feel like i've i've been a kind of a mentor to some of our our high spenders in the in the shop that's wanting to get into the hobby and and get out of that that that checkers category and get into chess pieces and man you nailed it uptowns downtowns i know it's hot i know it's popular i see them all the time psa tens every single day every single day brett people are bringing this stuff in to sell so when i so for example when i got to see yours your gold's out of ten that i never ever get to see i don't see that stuff that's the cool stuff that i think those are those are chess pieces to me those are things that go deep in the player collector's collections pcs to never be seen again mhmm until they wanna move on to something different like you wanted to move on to so that's the stuff that gets me excited that's that's the things that that that i think that's the difference between a true collector in this hobby versus a flipper that's why i'm so proud of the collection that i've cultivated with with my reggie stuff you just don't see this stuff very often that's why i like to show it off on instagram too yes and just have interactions with other folks emerging photographer too your photos are always on point man i gotta compliment you on that appreciate it thank you you you do the same you inspire me so i gotta get a story from you just on the buying side like what is a what is a crazy like walk up or appointment something that you weren't expecting but like when you think about you sitting in that seat for the last three and a half years or however long it's been like a very memorable experience what's something that stands out there's a lot there's i've had people walk in with kansas city chiefs super bowl ring new york yankees world series ring the murderers row psa authenticated all of the murderers row autographed baseball we've seen a couple of different fifty two mantle's walk in one that happened recently a a guy came in his grandpa was a dan marino super collector this literally just happened last week on friday i spent three hours with him he had no clue what he had no clue brett he had pmgs he had spx radiances he had cards numbered to ten from like nineteen ninety eight of marino and i'm like oh my gosh this is blowing my mind and he had two four row zion they weren't zion cases but another brand four rows full of all high end dan marino's and he didn't even know where to start so i had to go through pick out the stuff we wanted to grade for him help him grade it and just go down that road but i didn't expect to see that i didn't expect to see a eleven thousand dollar raw dan marino card just splattered within you know three thousand dan marino cards it was unreal so you know that's one thing and i say this at card shows too you never know what's coming through the front door you never know what's in somebody's backpack and so all of you out there at card shows that are setting up and ignore people that walk up to your table you never know how much money they wanna spend how much money they have with them and that that drives me crazy when i get ignored the the do you do you find yourself as like in this educational role in a way because like you're in it deep like i'm in it not only just like professionally but then just as a collector where it's like we probably spend way too much time online trying to find these cards like i have the same routine as you like when i drop my kids off it's like alright let me scan ebay real quick go through everything make sure i don't miss anything that that that like experience brings like a level of expertise based on just all the information we've acquired over the years like do you with your knowledge and you've been in it for so long and then you've got individuals who are just getting in it or maybe just spending frivolously and they they don't really know what they're buying like do you feel like in a way although like you're you're buying cards do you feel like you there's like an educational component to your role especially under the umbrella of like we're we're here to like serve the customer one thousand percent it's so funny the amount of people that like for example i think the what's it called the golden touch on netflix yeah they've watched the show and they're like sucked into it so they'll come in and just randomly ask for hey do you guys have a flawless basketball box i could buy and we're like you sure about that so you know how much that is and it it's the fun part to me is those folks come in they they buy boxes they buy packs they realize that it's usually not a winning experience and then but we we create those relationships with them and then teach them about the hobby that it's not about always ripping packs or ripping boxes sure that's fun it's expensive but sure it's fun but there's other ways that you can collect for yourself the real my realtor that sold me this house his name is drew keller shout out keller real estate he what a plug right drew was is exactly the person i just said he came in he bought a box of i can't remember what it was bankero's rookie year he pulled a on card blue auto of him grayed it got a psa ten he thought that's how it worked i come in buy boxes and i pull massive cards then he went on this cold streak and then that's when he came to us and was like teach me about this hobby teach me what what am i doing wrong what do i need to do to be successful and and that happens gosh we got consistent customers that come in every single day looking for help education and what they can do to protect themselves from from losing a lot of money but also how can they protect what they've already bought that's awesome as we round out this conversation shane there's a lot of people that right now in this space are in this space doing it you know maybe weekend warrior running around the shows spending every waking moment when they're not working working on maybe as as a kind of side hustle as a dealer or doing content i don't know man i've often said if you're like thinking about working in sports cars this is a wonderful time to do it there's just so many options and opportunities so many smart people that you can get connected with and learn from what what sort of advice do you have as an individual who built this whole career and then you know took some time away and then pivoted to working at one of the premier hobby shops in the country and as it sounds like it's the happiest kind of you've ever been like what sort of advice do you have for people who who wanna make the leap i yeah i think it's not as easy as people think i you know for me i yes i was working at gamestop i was doing this on the side actually it and i wrote this in my little notes that i had at one point especially towards the end of gamestop i was doing more with cards than i was doing in my real job i really was i was more passionate about that but when i gave it gave gamestop up went all in on cards it is a job it really is it's although you're passionate about it you gotta put a lot of work in you gotta create a lot of relationships and to be successful in this hobby you have to have relationships if you have a stigma or a stereotype of that guy's a jerk to work with he's not genuine you're probably not gonna go very far i won't say who the name but we had one younger customer that came into our shop and that's kinda how he was he was very pushy with me he always wanted really good deals and i'm like man i'm i i wanna hook you up but i'm also not here to help you make money we have an overhead that we're trying to pay for as well and i think over the months he started to figure that out and i watched him grow and i told him recently actually up at the national i was like you're doing everything right you're doing it right now and i'm really proud of you you've kind of entered my inner circle now that you've learned what to do what to say and build that relationship not only with me but other folks you're going to card shows every weekend you're you're traveling across the country if you come off as a jerk it's it's gonna be hard to be successful in this hobby luckily when you step foot in any card exchange you do not get a feeling like you're talking to a bunch of jerks you're talking to a bunch of individuals who are collectors creating awesome experiences for the customers that they serve this was shane walls lead buyer at indycard exchange you can follow him at indycardcollector on instagram shane this was a blast we will have to do it again down the road love it brett thank you so much seriously man when i say this what you're doing is is absolutely incredible it was an absolute honor to be on the show and just just thank you so much