alright we are back with another episode of passionate profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay excited for this conversation i love making deals with individuals in this hobby especially individuals who are building their career in this hobby and i've made deals with today's guest and this is really our first time chatting so today i'm joined by brian he goes by t h z sports cards everywhere we're gonna be talking about kinda his career path in cards talking about kinda how he's making dealing cards sustainable we're gonna probably talk a little bit about wrestling cards because we're both big wrestling fans but without further ado brian welcome man how are you good thank you very much for having me on today i appreciate it no doubt let's talk about maybe your just career in the the hobby like i know you're a collector i know you buy sell trade but when did you start kinda getting serious about making dealing cards kind of your professional path so i've been collecting since i was a little kid i was born in eighty six and shaq was a rookie in orlando that's when i kinda got into it a lot of my friends were collecting cards in the early nineties and so i started collecting basketball was always my favorite sport so started collecting then and then as a teenager the the catalyst for realizing like oh this is fun you can make money you can have fun and collect and still have this be profitable i was i wanna say fifteen or sixteen years old and i bought a box of tomb raider trading cards from inkworks the angelina jolie movie and i pulled her autograph and was like wow this is amazing and then i went and looked early ebay days what it was worth saw it was worth like seven hundred dollars which to a fifteen or sixteen year old that wants to go to movies and out with his friends and stuff that's a ridiculous amount of money so i created a fake ebay account said i was eighteen because you needed to be eighteen at the time put in a false birthday sold that card and it's kinda just been from there on i've been collecting and buying selling trading since i was a teenager that's the just through all of that and through just the history of you being in and all of the cycles certainly there's been some ebbs and flows in just like the demand the market what people are interested in how how have you navigated or maybe adapted to those conditions during your run so i've always done the sports cards for the longest time especially like when i was a teenager i was doing a lot of nonsports just because i learned that market and it was it was hot at the time but not like it is now it was just hot as in in demand but there was everything was available so for the longest time i did that i did a lot of non sports inkworks rittenhouse archives artbox if anybody that used to do nonsports they're gonna know those those companies one of them is still around the other two are out of business but i did a lot of that and i just kinda went with it and there's definitely been times when i kinda stopped jumped back in a lot of times it would have to do with just what was going on in different leagues i got excited the year that russell wilson was a quarter was drafted and i bought a bunch of his stuff really early on a lot of his college stuff i just thought that he had the possibility of of being a good quarterback in the nfl so i bought a bunch of his stuff cheap and waited till he won rookie of the year if i'm not mistaken and then sold it then did the same thing with sam bradford so it's just kind of jumping back in when you it's always been for me doing something that i know and that i collecting or buying and selling somebody that i like and that was the case like with those two guys or with the nonsports i know it i like it i'm a nerd i love star wars i like all that kind of stuff so i know it it's it's easy i already know that that space anyways have you have you always been kind of buy sell trade at the level you're at now or have you been navigating kind of dealing sports cards and working another job like maybe talk about just like how you've the mix up of and the makeup of like you know dealing cards and just other work on the side and how it's all shook out over the years yeah it's definitely i'm nowhere nowhere close to where i am now i i've always done it but it's always been and it still is purely a hobby i come from a commercial real estate background it's a family business my father bought up a lot of really good land where we live in florida and he kind of saw what the main drag was gonna be into our town bought a lot of that land and now that land is all built out and that's where my background really is and it's always just kind of been a hobby but like a lot of people when covid happened and we were all stuck at home and looking for things to do i i was already doing cards anyways but then everything's kind of started getting crazy and once everything opened back up that's when i said you know what i've never really done a show i wanna start doing a show every once in a while i i think the first show i did was i i was able to get into dallas a card show into the terrell hall the main hall there and i wanna say that was late twenty one or early twenty two so it was still kind of like coming out of the the pandemic and ever since then i've been doing been doing the shows it's just been enjoyable to like really put more time and effort into something that was just a hobby take it a little bit more serious and step away a little bit from the main job it's just nice to be able to kind of have a change of pace at this point in my life so you mentioned the show obviously like there are cards that pop up at on shows that don't pop up on ebay mhmm or online you you know you're constantly trying to generate inventory for you and your business like how do you think about that how do you think about like the online and the offline world in terms of like making sure that you're securing cards that not only you love and you wanna collect but you know that collectors like me might be interested in if you present them or they become available yeah both markets online and offline are incredibly important the amount of walk ups of stuff that i've never seen that that happens at shows it always blows my mind what might walk up to the table and that that's not just wwe that's back when i was doing more heavily into nba and some of the the major leagues the amount of stuff that walks up is is wild you just you you just never know you know a lot of people will walk up and it's stuff that for me i can't use and then there's stuff that you didn't even know had ever been pulled and it might walk up and that happens online too but i feel like it happens more at shows you have more of that wow i was not expecting to see this show up at a show than it happens online if it happens online the sharks myself included everybody smells blood in the water if one person posts it everybody knows about it yes so how how do you think about buying versus selling like what's your mindset when it comes to those two worlds so i try to work in there's there's two kind of mindsets and this is what i really love about wwe compared to nba and a lot of the other major leagues wwe is crazy accessible you think back over the last thirty years four years forty years of wwe there's really only thirty twenty five thirty people that really really matter there's not this there's not two rounds of draft classes that people care about that are not gonna pan out you know you go back to the nineties and the early two thousands and there's fifteen guys that it really breaks down to or women that it breaks down to that people care about and what's great about the wwe hobby is that every single one of those people current and past are super accessible and they're very accessible at different levels of of value you can get stone cold and undertaker and roman reigns and centimeters punk and john cena you can get their autos fairly inexpensive you can get their autos for a hundred and fifty two hundred bucks if you want to be a super collector or have one really really nice piece there are five figure and six figure cards out there of some of those guys but you can enter the space and collect the ends of the sport at a very inexpensive price you can't go get a jordan auto for two hundred dollars you can't go get a tiger woods auto for two hundred dollars you can get a hulk hogan auto for you can get a hulk hogan sticker auto for a hundred and fifty bucks and he's by many considered the greatest of all time when it comes to wwe there's also six figure hulk hogan's that are out there and that's what i really like about the wwe market is that it no matter what you are able to spend there's gonna be something for you and so when i'm buying i i personally focus more on the mid to high end and there's tons of guys that do the low to mid end and they do it really really well a lot of the streamers especially that do the whatnot the fanatics they kill it on the like yeah so there's the people that sell the low to mid end and they do an amazing job a lot of them are streamers and they do single shows and they kill it i try to have what i want is that when people walk up to my table at a show or find my instagram or you know look at it when they haven't looked at it in a couple months i want to have stuff that you don't see everywhere so i kind of have like a minimum amount for the market value of what i'll buy i i want four to five hundred dollar and up cards and that's it up to any amount but i i want people to walk up to my booth and say oh you don't see that card or that card or that card or that card you don't see that everywhere i i enjoy the one of ones and the inscriptions and that's what i try to kind of focus on every once in a while i'll buy collections that have some of the lower end in it and and stuff but it's just more fun to go and uncover and have the the grails all in one point one spot so that's kind of where i'm at at least right now i like having just i like having that booth i love it when somebody walks up and says wow i've never seen this before that's awesome yeah and just by going to your page you can see a lot of those cards and i wanna maybe talk about like how you're how you think about getting access to those cards but you said something when you're talking about why you like wwe and you mentioned like there's you know only you know after all this all these years in that wwe has existed there's there's probably about you know thirty or so performers that people like buy into who are all time greats you look at what is happening on the front end of the market and i we are at like a fever pitch fever pitch of just the amount of money that is being put into prospecting young talent which is fun that's what we like to do in the hobby and you see it across every sport but it really feels like it's getting warmed up here in the wwe side i just it's fun especially because how the the company is structured with nxt and you get people exposed to these talent and then they're on the main roster but obviously it it doesn't always work out for each of those talent just based on creative decisions their own missteps all these things but i don't know like when you when you see that happening when you see individuals like and i'm caught up in this because i think she's great but like you see what people are paying for kendall gray who's yeah on n x t on x nxt and she looks like the real deal but we we won't know until she joins the main roster like how do you think about that just in terms of your position and what's happening in the market yeah so i i definitely in the last couple of years have gotten more into the prospecting side of wwe kendall is amazing she she won the number one contender last night against kehlani jordan zarya also won the belt last night that was exciting on nxt kendall looks phenomenal she looks like she's got it all she's tiny which scares me because there's a lot of tinier women who have gone on to wwe and they just have not been used properly more recently roxanne perez she's great in the judgment day but i feel like roxanne could do a lot more in wwe than she's been allowed to so far ivy nile phenomenal small wrestler incredible her strength is unreal but she's small so when she goes up against somebody that's bigger like a charlotte flair or faster and more athletic as far as movement goes like solruca it's tough to imagine ivy nile winning and i worry that they're gonna fumble the kendall gray ball when she eventually does get called up as well but she's so green she's only been there for less than a year if i'm not mistaken she's got a long ways to go and but she looks great so far the the prospects that have that have come been coming out of nxt over the last year especially have just been phenomenal though oba femi julia stephanie vacair javon evans solruka recently there's been shawn michaels has been cooking in nxt they've been they've been really pumping out some some great future superstars into the main roster so how are you thinking about just like those sorts of buying opportunities because i would imagine and i know you have some of his cards but i would imagine like if you rewind the tape back to a year maybe a little bit longer ago you probably would have made the decision to buy every obafemi rare and scarce card you possibly could but like how like once you see that cycle and you see obafemi at wrestlemania doing what he did to brock lesnar and probably being the maybe we can call it outside of like maybe a kevin owens one of the the better nxt call ups to main roster debuts of all time like does that make you reset kind of your buying strategy or do you are you still cautious just based on all of the missteps that have happened with the this talent at in nxt who then get brought up and maybe don't hit that full potential definitely still somewhat cautious you could tell with oba and i will i'll i'll go on in the side in a minute but you could tell with oba that he had it man you know i i didn't get into nxt until a little bit too late and what the aside is is my biggest regret so far since i've really gone kind of all in on wwe versus the other sports is last year at the national the obafemi rookie black prism walked up to my table oh and i passed on and i i know boz sports i know he picked it up in dallas this past show which i skipped i was that dallas show i'd like to think that if i was there i would have had a shot at it but yeah boz sports picked it up that was the first time that it surfaced that i know of since national last year but yeah i passed on that i wanna say the ask was like thirty five hundred dollars maybe four thousand and i just wasn't i didn't have that mindset yet that prospecting mindset i loved nxt as a product but i didn't think of it in terms of yeah these guys are going to be maybe the next roman reigns maybe in twenty five years obafemi could be looked back on as a john cena level of with with a john cena level of love depending on you know what he does in the sport so yeah but yeah oba man oba's got it all he really does he's got the look he's incredible on the mic he's got the walkout he's can he's huge he looks the part he's a great wrestler we haven't really get gotten to seen him really wrestle they've almost everything has kind of been a squash match or a quicker match i'm hopeful that with king of the ring happening it'd be nice if we could see him and jevon evans in the final and maybe get a a replay of that nxt match that i think a lot of people probably have never seen but to be able to see that match again on a main card even if the results are the same man both him oba and javon that would really just kind of send them off into the stratosphere even more so than they both already are i totally agree i wanna get back to the kind of what you're buying in terms of one of ones and the access you have to them obviously like many of us like i'm sure when we get off this call we're gonna get on ebay and check our check our wwe one zero one save searches and yep see what's out there but like you you're get you are you are you have stuff that no one has seen before like it you just go to your page and you just see all these cards that i'm thinking specifically of like your spread of flawless stuff like it's this is stuff that i'm seeing for the first time through your page so i'm sure you're buying cards off of ebay too i know you're listing cards on ebay but how how do you think about how do you how are you getting access to some of these incredible cards like what can you share without maybe giving up your trade secrets i don't really have a a trade see i've made great relationships with people in the when i was doing more of the nba and high end basketball and and those people have passed along some stuff because they don't know or really care too much about wwe so it's great that for you know about four years i did predominantly high end five six figure mba and a lot of those people have you know returned some favors and sent some stuff my way i'm very appreciative of that but the majority of what i'm able to find what i purchase ebay instagram every once in a while some great people will tag me if something is pulled and i get in there and try to see if i can make a fair offer on it it's really just kind of always having your phone at your side because you never know what's gonna be available the other day i missed out by just a few minutes the the finn balor wrestlemania patch auto santiago sports yeah posted it and i responded to his post probably about nine ten minutes after he posted it and it was already gone so it's just about being quick right place right time yes you know it's it's great that over the years i don't have a crazy amount of instagram followers i think i'm at like fifty five or fifty six hundred but i will say that all of those are purely organic i've never paid for a follower in my life so that is fifty six hundred people that know that i do wrestling and they can come to me with questions if they pull something and so that's that's definitely helped me just having the having the the relationships that i've built and then having the social media presence really is a big deal because you just never know what somebody's gonna bring you on instagram or somewhere else even if they're not necessarily looking to sell but then at least you know kind of where something is at and when they are ready to sell you can let them know that you're you know you're interested down the line it's it's it's good to make all those relationships and keep them going i wanna talk more about the relationships but i'm curious just on your move from nba to wrestling which is very unique you're the only guy i've ever met who has done that like what is the reason like what is your big why behind that and how did you make that happen okay so my my big why is kind of twofold one is that i was just getting burnt out on the whole nba market it's you know this it's insane just what that market has done since twenty twenty twenty nineteen what that market has done the crazy up with covid then it kinda came back down and now it's again gone pretty parabolic there's some crazy swings and i always tried to focus when i was doing nba i tried to focus the the best i could on legends i tried not to do much of the prospecting i didn't wanna get caught up too much in that because you can make a ton of money and you can lose a lot of money if you're doing that but even the legends you know i see i see a a pretty entry level ish jordan auto relic that i sold for i wanna say fifteen thousand dollars about a year and a half ago two years ago i saw it just move for forty that's insane to me because i thought fifteen thousand was insane so the swings were getting too wild with nba for me to wanna continue doing it i was just kinda getting burnt out and then the to be honest the real catalyst for me really making the move to wwe i watched it as a kid i watched it into middle school you know the the rock stone cold that era and then i stopped but when netflix took over for raw last year my wife it was a monday night we didn't have anything else to watch and i was like hey you wanna put this on it's probably gonna be like cool maybe the rock will come out they're gonna make a big deal out of it it's the first it's a big deal it's the first raw on netflix and we put that on we really enjoyed it that was a great three hours of of television and then friday night rolled around and we didn't have any plans that night either and i was like well you wanna check out smackdown just to like see what that's like too and she was like yeah yeah she enjoyed raw she and so then we watched smackdown and then i think a week later we did it again and there happened to be a ple that weekend too and i was like well you wanna watch the ple and it's been nice because i think it just kind of unlocked something that brought me back to my childhood a little bit it's just a big fun goofy soap opera and i love it and my wife loves it too which is great and we watch we watch at a minimum now six hours of wrestling every week between raw and smackdown but we try to tune in to aew every once in a while and nxt when there's a big match and we watch all the ples we we went to our first mania this past year so really it just kind of unlocked something in me it kinda gave me that nostalgia feeling being young being a kid again and just kind of enjoying these goofy storylines and we both got hooked and i real i i started looking into the cards and realized just how inexpensive everything is compared to mba and this like i mentioned this isn't my main job my main job is commercial real estate so if i can do something that i'm enjoying after being kinda burnt out on the nba side of things if i can if i can move into a space that i'm really enjoying both in the card aspect of it and the actual wwe product that's where i wanna be that's that's kind of how i started with cards really was like i said a tomb raider box i loved the movie i had a teenage crush you know celebrity crush on angelina jolie bought the box hit her auto sold it made money and i i was a nerd and i knew all of the non sports stuff so i just doing that now i'm a wwe nerd it's it's just brought me back to my to my childhood when i really enjoyed wwe and it's been it's been fun to kinda find a love for the hobby again because it was definitely waning there a little bit with with nba i still watch nba i'm a orlando magic season ticket holder i love it to go off on a side that game last night was unreal not a knicks fan was definitely rooting for san antonio i i know i think my father and my wife's father both turned the game off before halftime and didn't realize what had happened we watched it all the way through and i watched through through my through my fingers at the end because it was just brutal to watch as somebody who was rooting for san antonio but yeah it's been it's just been really fun to get back into the hobby doing something that i enjoy more than anything else i love it the yeah the game last night i knew in the second quarter when the spurs were flame throwing in the commentary was talking about biggest comebacks ever i was like this is a bad omen and i'm a pacers fan so i'm i'm with you on on that but yeah i couldn't believe it and then also to the you talk about the watching of the wrestling and it's like i think there was a it was maybe like double or nothing weekend and there might have been a saturday night main event then you have the aew wwe television i'm like doing inventory on how much wrestling i've watched for the week and it's like out of control but i think that's fun and it's we're all so passionate about watching the product it just makes sense to be collecting and buying and selling and trading the cards what yeah back to relationships like what have you found just in terms of building and developing relationships with people in the space like how is it maybe different than your experience on the nba side it's definitely different nba you just you don't necessarily there's they're very few and far between the like really really hardcore pc guys and a lot of times with the nba when you do find a pc guy it's much more of a role player somebody that super collects bill ambeer chris mullen you know some guy from the nineties that they just loved it you're not dealing with people that are super collecting so much steph curry and jordan in wwe you have true super collectors that have twenty thirty forty fifty sixty one of ones inscriptions they're prism golds they're prism blacks chrome reds psa ten pop ones and you have people that really have dedicated a lot of time into these into these wrestlers you just didn't see that very much in the nba side of things the nba side of things is very it's very money driven obviously the whole hobby is there's no question about that but you definitely have way more collectors in the space in wwe than i would say any other part of the hobby they're very passionate and making relationships with those collectors is important there's people that have brought me solaruca cards knowing that i pc pc her i've brought drew mcintyre card that walked up to my table i brought it to a friend in florida at my cost i have sent ria ripley cards to sam wwe i've sent gellman and bannister cards orton and and becky's you know when they pop up if i see him somewhere so it's nice it it feels like a a good amount of people kind of have each other's back and that's that's nice there's of course some some bad actors in the space but there's bad actors in every space but yeah it's it's very important to kind of it's such a small community right now mhmm compared to any other sport that it's kind of it's important to know where those super collectors are and get to know them and kind of know their collecting habits and let them know your collecting habits as well so that hopefully it can be kind of a give and take relationship where you can help each other out yeah i think it is certainly a definitely small where it feels like i know if i see a card who i can shoot it to because i know they collect that wrestler which is good and then there's it's also expanding at the same time there's you know through the through the license change and the promotion of the product there's new people entering entering in gray selling cards on ebay all the time i guess maybe like and i'm just in my damns talking to people who are stepping into wrestling cards for the first time and i'm just answering questions and trying to be helpful maybe based on it being small and growing but also maybe some things to look out for to make sure individuals don't get stuck buying something or selling something too low like what what are some of your observations and maybe what advice would you give to anyone out there who is listening who who might be interested in stepping into the wwe or wrestling card market so numb number one and this goes for any hobby whether it be cards or anything else only spend what you can afford to spend it's a hobby this look at it look at it like the good thing with wwe is that like if you go buy a stone cold steve austin auto more than likely nothing's gonna happen that value is gonna hold but cards are cards the markets are gonna move up and down it's a stock market it's a much more steady stock market wwe than anything else but treat it like you're going into a casino if you're gonna spend two hundred bucks on a card kiss that two hundred dollars goodbye enjoy the two hundred dollar card that you have and hopefully down the line it accrues some value and when you do wanna move it hopefully it's worth more than you paid for it but know that you're gonna have to take losses occasionally i've taken huge losses in the nba space but that's that's what i and that like i said that goes for any hobby it goes for when you walk into a casino only bring what you can afford to lose you know doesn't matter what your hobby is just don't get carried away and like like i mentioned earlier the good thing about wwe is that there's all those different levels you can you can buy a two hundred dollar hundred and fifty dollar hulk hogan auto and if you wanna go higher you can buy a thousand dollar on card immaculate auto and if you wanna go higher than that you can buy a high graded rookie of them that sells for six figures there's all those entry points that don't exist in a lot of the other sports and that that's what is nice about wwe as far as selling my biggest thing and i've this on my story numerous times is shop the card that includes to me okay i'm i've seen people get taken advantage of and sell stuff way too cheap because they didn't put it up where people could see it i've seen people lose five figures by not putting the card up on their instagram for people to see as the whole and be able to make offers on because it was pulled late at night and maybe only one or two people that could buy that card were alerted to it and yeah then people get taken advantage of unfortunately and that that happens in every sport but it sucks to see in wrestling it sucks to see especially when it's like newer people that are coming into the hobby they sell something for x amount and multiple people then say man it's it's worth at least this amount and then they kind of you know that's a bummer to them right out the gate to be kind of taken advantage of so when you're coming in if you're coming in with the intention of breaking and opening and trying to get hit that scratch off and get lucky and pull a big card well when you pull that big card take the take your time you don't need to take the first offer and if somebody if somebody tries to pull that oh you know this offer expires you know i don't want you showing it to people there's a reason for that and that takes that's across all hobbies all sports all cards there's a reason that somebody's trying to pressure you into a sale there's a reason for it so shop your cards let people see them let the the the big collectors or the big buyers come and make offers before you commit to something i there's there's something i wanna toss your way that i have don't know if i've ever asked anyone just regarding this topic and i think sometimes there's this like anchoring on price and intimidation from buyers but i am always an advocate like if you land a big card that you don't wanna keep like listing it on ebay for a high price and having best offers turned on just to see what you get and you'll you like i just landed a card recently that was listed very high and i offered half of the list price and i acquired the card and i couldn't believe that that but sometimes i'll get scared and be like oh this card's out of my league but i think just it's protection from a seller perspective that at least you can understand like the get some feedback get some feedback outside of one person giving you that feedback or making you one offer like what is your mindset on that like listing cards on ebay for a and it doesn't need be crazy price but a high price with offers on just to get some perspective on where the card is at ebay right now in my opinion is the best market for high end wwe there there are a handful of cards that do need to go to a an auction house a golden or fanatics you know the cena mania patch when it gets hit i don't think any of the bounties should should matter let all those people that have the bounties fight it out when it's publicly you know at auction but ebay without a doubt right now and i've told this to numerous people put it on ebay if you can afford to just sit on the card and you don't like need the money put it on ebay let it sit and just forget about it mhmm i just had a story like that kind of the as a seller you were the buyer but as a seller i had a card just a month ago that i had on ebay for i think i had it on there for nine thousand or ten thousand dollars and obviously that was a high number and i got a sixty five hundred dollar offer and i had to go look at my sheets and see what i paid for it and i pulled it out and the last time i had it at a show which i haven't done a show in a while it's been a few months last time i had it at a show i had a forty five hundred dollar sticker on it i got a sixty five hundred dollar ebay offer of course i took it i didn't even counter the guy you know they made a incredibly strong offer they caught that at a show five four months earlier they could have gotten a discount on it but i hadn't redone any of my stickers and i haven't redone any of them since i did that last show but yeah ebay is like somebody just posted the the tiffany stratton wrestlemania patch on ebay i think for sixty thousand and just got just got discounted to fifty got we're all we're all watching it i got the email i saw the ten thousand discount email this morning i don't think that that ask honestly is crazy no i think it's closer i personally think it's closer to fifty than it is to twenty five i think it's i think it's the third some people have said otherwise i think it's the third or fourth best probably the i'm sorry like the fourth or fifth best mania patch in the whole set yep it was a great match it's a memorable match it had a lot of good storyline buildup to it with her and charlotte and you know a lot of people have seen her kind of maybe take a step down now that she's doing the whole us championship mid card kind of run but i think she'll be back in the the main event titled picture soon but yeah i personally think that ebay is the way to go like there's a there's a juso patch right now on fanatics hopefully people see this and they go to fanatics because i don't know if a lot of people know that it's there i don't know i don't think i know the seller maybe i do and i'm just blanking on it but i don't think the j that that was the right place for the jay uso patch i think just parking that thing on ebay if you don't need the money you park that thing selling jay uso right now his storyline is the worst it's been in a few years if they are truly doing the whole bloodline story again jay uso is gonna turn on roman and he'll be relevant again for a little while that's when you would wanna sell that thing that's when you would want it just parked on ebay and you get somebody that's excited with the storyline happening and seeing maybe big maybe obviously but seeing him you know in the main event picture again that's that's when you want that card to sell that's when you want eyes on it not when he's you know roman's lackey like he is right now especially not in an auction house where it's not really getting the publicity that it needs so i hope it does well i think it i think jay should be like a fifteen to twenty thousand dollar card and i hope it gets that just because that kind of helps everybody put a value on those kind of like mid tier mania patch autos but to go back ebay right now in my opinion is the best place to buy and sell and i try to put the majority of my inventory on ebay because you're you're gonna get more eyes there than anywhere else like no matter how many instagram followers i get i will have more eyes on that card on ebay than anywhere else no doubt i love that i i'm curious maybe just as a round of the corner on this conversation just someone in your position doing what you're doing the hobby's evolving so rapidly like we just spent basically the whole episode talking about the changes in the wrestling card space yeah like what what's like i think about communication a lot but like what skills do you think are really important for people who are dealing sports cards in this space right now to have and to possess patience good luck yeah which myself included that's one of my not not one of my best traits but patience i mean both in waiting for things that you want to pop up to pop up at a price that you want to pay or can afford to pay patience in dealing with certain sellers or or buyers patience in like you said the wwe hobby is very much changing right now a lot of people thought that maybe this would happen when prism came out prism boxes twenty twenty two prism wwe were insane and people thought oh my god like we're gonna get the run up on wwe that we got on soccer no it didn't happen towards the end of the panini era the the you know twenty twenty four products it did start to happen with flawless and three count you know the downtowns hitting kabooms came out the year before you were starting to get a lot of those crossover inserts and products that a lot of the other sport people would kinda gravitate towards but now that topps has taken back over it's being marketed to a level that panini could never i mean even just topps getting the athletes to show up at the rick nights is huge that's huge i mean an hour away from me in orlando jacob fatu was there joe hendrie was there i alexa bliss was there i think tiffany stratton may have been there there was like five or six big names that were there and that was just in orlando they were all over the country they're tops getting these athletes to come out to card stores and athletes themselves getting involved in the hobby for better or for worse i think it's for better you know karl anthony towns is buying wwe right now that's crazy the man the man's playing in the finals up three one and i saw him buying into breaks on his night off i i i i went and looked and saw that he had spots that and he didn't prebuy them he bought them live like when the spots went up i was there as the spots were going up and maybe it wasn't him maybe he you know i'm sure he has somebody that he says hey i want this person this person this person but the fact that a guy that is potentially about to win a ring in the nba finals is even thinking about wwe cards during his finals run is crazy it's insane the hobby is definitely evolving i think we're i think we're seeing it get to a a place where a lot of people thought twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty two prism would kind of get the hobby get the the wwe market too i think it has a lot of ways to go i think topps is doing a good job with with some things there's some things i you know i don't like how they're doing but i think they're doing overall a good job and to swing it back that's you know you that's where the patience comes in you you have to you have to you have to wait until that entry point gets there for you it could drop the entry point could be too expensive right now to get in even on some of these you know lower guys i think that tops is doing a great job of for lack of a better word flooding the market with the entry level availability not so much the sealed product but the singles zaria just became the champion you can go pick up a zaria chrome on card auto for fifteen twenty bucks she could be the next sol ruka she could be the next stephanie vacair she could be the next big call up you don't know where her story is gonna take her in nxt and then maybe into the main roster but some of these younger up and comers you can get in incredibly inexpensive and i think topps is doing a good job at making that entry level point a little bit lower and lower every set because stone cold is signing in every set even the rock the rock is now signing in every set triple h has on card autos in every set those were guys the rock had nothing whatsoever other than i think it's nineteen ninety eight raw set that he had the on card autos he had no wwe autos until tops took over triple h had zero on card autos with panini he was now we have him in every set he's he's got unnumbered days autos in cosmic so they're doing a great job at continuing to bring down that entry level for collectors to get in with their favorite wrestler be it a prospect or a legend while also having chases like the mania patches that are there for the high end collector i think they're doing a good job kind of balancing that and commend them for that it's been fun to watch it change and it was really fun to get your perspective as someone who has moved kind of from nba to wrestling card buying selling trading brian this was a really fun conversation lot of insight and information shared looking forward to another one down the road thank you thank you so much for having me it was it's always fun to talk cards and wrestling with anyone