right we are back i have a returning guest it has been a minute but always really really enjoy these conversations i enjoy the content coming out from our guest i think it is unique helpful and we're gonna get into content kind of as the subject in how building trust by showing your work can really begin to elevate your business and brand and today i'm joined once again by mike atlaiahi in a new space i've been listening to the mar modern marvels podcast understood there was some moving going on and now without further ado mike welcome back how are you i'm doing great brett how's everything going on your side i i have zero complaints it's it's show season over here so i'm trying to do the regular work of content business development and then now i have okay how do i show up to shows and be thoughtful and strategic and not just wander around aimlessly so more work on the plate but it's all good i i i can only imagine we're only gonna be making it up to chicago this year but you know show season it's it's spectacular again this year the fanatics fest right in new york city during the world cup the west coast card show going on at the same time and then grand day give them all hopefully i'm i'm i'm catching you in chicago yes i you know i was thinking about that before we hit record i was like we need an in person chat for the first time so i will be there and would love to get some time will you will you all be setting up just wandering around like what's your plan yeah thanks to the national we will officially have a section for f one this time they are looking towards expansion and they are welcoming more international guests they actually just posted on their instagram yesterday in partnership with us and a few other people that they will be having more international tables this is for your soccer fans or your tennis fans and for what we love and really promote formula one fans and so there will be a section with a bunch of dealers internationally and we're considered amongst them because we deal with an international product but there will be at least five f one tables so everybody out there that's looking for f one the footprint is growing and we're very very happy that the national is helping everybody to get what they want you know everybody's coming for different reasons and hopefully there's something for everyone i know this is maybe a little beside the point from what we're talking about today but since we're talking about the national and hitting on it you know me and adam gellman and ryan bannister are we have the opportunity to put together a event for wrestling card collectors and traders and it is being supported by the national and so i think hearing you say f one and having something focused we're doing something for wrestling card collectors it feels like the infrastructure and the supporting bodies are now looking at the hobby not just as the hobby but just this the many pockets and categories and giving owners and operators the opportunity to bring in community around those specific categories which i find super interesting i've always looked at this space as a many many different neighborhoods where a lot of people are doing a lot of different things and i don't know i just i'm very motivated and excited about just the different lanes and spaces that are being created and i'm sure you are too as someone who when i'm wanna hear about f one content and how you're thinking about in category like you're the guy i turn to so i don't know like i just wanted to remark on that i think that's a good step in the right direction for our industry yeah you know i think when you go to the national everybody said it for years and years i just started going again in twenty twenty two and it was in it was in atlantic city at that time and i think the comment is always a lot of baseball a lot of football basketball has a growing footprint and it's taken a while for basketball to get established but you know there's there's not much variety and i think them opening this up really paying attention to everybody that's coming it's not just a baseball card collector he's bringing his family and his family isn't necessarily into baseball or football they may be into pokemon we have noticed with the younger demo they are into different sports you know soccer is a very very big growing thing the world cup is showcasing this right now and if you do the research on it and it gets us one of the most excited you know i love baseball basketball football i grew up playing it i say this so many times but it's really obvious formula one the its effect on the younger demo it is just off the charts at this point and if you wanna talk about the biggest growth opportunity the things that we were trying to really really broadcast out to the market saying hey i get it i bought corbin carroll i bought acuna i bought otani i you know i bought shadi rogers alexander and giannis their rookie years if you wanna prospect you know growth just look at this market just pay attention to what the young people are doing it has a lot of early footprints of nineties basketball yeah no doubt and i know we're not here to talk about basketball cards but just to give you the tool which one let's do it tip of the cap i this was months ago you're talking about that first darren peterson card and now everyone's watching him play summer league and be like holy cow like this guy could be the next guy so there's i'm i'm saying that to give you a little bit of validation for your work you're not coming late to the party on most of this stuff most of this stuff you're doing the work in advance and sharing it pretty early so i i find i find that interesting and certainly helpful yeah no i i know your audience is not they don't want f one like i i get it man we've been doing this for years i get nobody wants to do certain things they didn't want to do pokemon you know if you asked them in the eighties they probably didn't want to do basketball either you know it it just is what it is and we'll talk about it later right mhmm you know this is passion to profession you know if you wanna be a professional in an industry you may want to cook a certain type of food but if all your customers just want something else and you know they want it you gotta serve that up you know no doubt so let's just jump into it so i'm curious and the moment happened for me where i was like i need to reach back out to mike was i was listening to one of your most recent episodes and just listening to the way you and cameron talk about what you're seeing in your research and i started to think about content and content as a driver for business a content as a driver for audience and i wanna start with your i think about you and you've you're a sports card business but you're also a content business so when did you realize that sharing your thinking and what was going on in your brain could help grow the business at leahy yeah great great question and this one's gonna take just a bit brett it's it's layered and you know everybody has a story and i think we're gonna have a story here so look i've been doing this privately for a long time i think i've told you some of the wins in the past and the modern marvels podcast has highlighted some of those but you know world cup is going on right now everybody's seeing again mbappe you know he if without if messi wasn't there he would have the goals record in the shortest amount of time at the age of twenty seven he'd have the world cup goals record but long before all that started you know i i was buying mbappe rookies for like two to three dollars a piece his tops chrome cards i had three hundred of them i bought a blue refractor for eighteen dollars that card eventually sold for eighteen grand you know and this is this is yeah there's some pandemic involved in this too and you know it's one win and there was all these other plays i've mentioned shae yojis alexander giannis we've done some other plays here and there you know my first podcast with you i showcased a shohei ohtani superfractor topps chrome base card psa ten and you know i know people don't remember these things i i don't expect them to that card there was a similar card that just sold on golden for two point five million dollars there's an argument that the card that i showcased is a better card than that and i know gordon's promotion is gonna say that that was a better card there's actually two of those cards that that that exist of that golden card the white jersey super fracture and they're both bgs nine point fives this is from the same sets and it's a psa ten and there's only one of them out there and so my message to everybody and i think what we've been doing privately has been very very beneficial to us and the people around us and i think that's a very very good thing to do you know if you have the talent the knowledge the database it makes a ton of sense but to highlight that card brett so it's arguably a two point five to three point five million dollar card if it's actually better than those two super factors my guy bought the card for under fifteen hundred dollars and i i see this all the time and i think it goes over people's heads it's probably the biggest win in all of ohtani's market i don't think there's anything that exists like that when the card was sold in twenty nineteen everybody can look this up on card ladder there were a hundred thirty one ohtani cards in twenty nineteen that sold higher than that card so at the time in twenty nineteen within ohtani's market it still wasn't even his best card and so the reason why we specifically targeted it because we thought it was a value at the time you know there was a ton of ohtanis available in twenty nineteen the idea is yeah we all know otani's gonna be good but who's gonna win this entire battle you know if you bought one card and a ten x and you bought one card and a thousand x and at this point that card is close to fifteen fifteen hundred x one thousand five hundred x you know when otani's market is twenty to fifty x you know that's literally a thirty multiple of even otani's market and so what i've been doing this for a while we did the twenty twenty two national in atlantic city and i've told this story to aaron at slab stocks and he actually laughed at it because there's a there's a very very interesting point he brought up now at the atlantic city national i was just helping some buddies out there and i was there partying brett i was there to drink and just enjoy the weekend it's atlantic city and i was just sitting behind a booth and helping and one of the days there was a kid that came up and he pointed at a mac jones card and at the time twenty twenty two the summertime mac jones was hot you know everybody he just won the rookie of the year everybody wanted his cards it was just a base rookie autograph card and i think i told the kid like the kid couldn't have been more than ten years old i told him that the card is hundred seventy five dollars and he frowned and you know cute kid so i i felt really bad for him kinda reminded me of of myself when i was little and i i turned to my friend and said hey what's the best you can do in this and he said hi you know one fifty so i turned back to the kid said one fifty i i can do this for you right and so the kid still frowned and i i looked at him i like to problem solve brett so i said how much money do you have and then he looked up at me and he said fifty dollars and he started to get a little bit hopeful and and i i i looked at him i thought and i think he expected maybe a gift you know hey maybe i'll make this happen for him but i looked at him and i said hey here's what you can do go around this card show right now and go and ask everybody for corbin caroll cards this is before he made his major league debut at the time i believe he was a top thirty prospect and i said go around and look for autograph cards buy two or three of them if you can at the time they were ten to twenty dollars apiece and honestly brett privately i'm not supposed to say those things it's a it's a private play but i saw the kid and i said you know what let's let's give this a shot the kid acted like a normal kid you know he he looked at me he frowned because he understood that he wasn't gonna get his mac jones card that day and so he he looked down he's like like this older guy who doesn't wanna help me today and i i took that experience took it back with me to hawaii and literally sat with our team and said hey we we we're good at what we do and we are probably going to win in the end when we make the right calls but is there something we can do that can help to change this just a little bit you know i think the the big thing is everybody wants answers everybody wants instant gratification what i was trying to give that kid is essentially what it takes to survive in sports cards you know and what aaron eventually pointed out when i mentioned this story to him when he asked hey how did how did you guys first start on instagram and doing all these things you guys were private before i always say this story because you know that kid if he had listened to that advice that day aaron's joke was he could literally buy any mac jones cards he wants right now he could literally buy a one of one mac jones rookie right now with the same amount that that those two corbans would have produced for him you know he could have bought those two cards he probably would have sold them during corbin carroll's rookie of the year season when he took the diamondbacks to the world series took the world by storm he would have like three four hundred bucks mac jones market went down he could buy literally ntrp if he wanted not just that prism sticker auto that was in our in our showcase at at that moment and so what we really wanted to do is take a look at the landscape take a look at what people are looking at all the information that's out there and there are influencers you know that's definitely a thing that everybody knows polarizing topics some people love them some people think that they're for the wrong reason and i think looking at that landscape we understood well there's not very many people that are doing specifically what we do privately you know and there's a specific reason for that if you start telling people what you're buying you'll probably ruin your long term goals there so what we decided to do is is there anything unique that we can help people with can we start to really look at the landscape and start to give people things that they can use that everybody can use you know is there anything that is more long lasting and and there's one real important point with this that i think every influencer every person who does has the ability to move markets can always should always look at it as a guiding light now gary vaynerchuk gary v he he's been one of the best guys for the sports card market i know at a certain point there was a you know when the sports card market took off in with the pandemic a lot is accredited to him and i think one of the biggest things that happened in the pullback we had at that time is people take advice out of hand right like gary v famously said the lebron twenty twenty his two thousand and three topps chrome rookie card he said it was a good value when it was about a thousand dollars well the market took that card to two thousand and then twenty five hundred and that's a great investment but what happened eventually is market got out of hand you know they didn't follow gary's advice they didn't check back in with gary and said hey it's twenty five gary what should i do nope they took it to five ten fifteen twenty and then we got like a twenty x in in a year on a guy who really didn't accomplish much his legacy didn't change much it's just literally people getting a little bit too enthusiastic maybe a little bit too greedy and not having perspective and so i think one of the big things looking at what gary did there that really it can be if we're if we're studying the sports card market you know if you're gonna go out there with advice you wanna go out there with advice that can really help not just one or two people in your small circle but is really a the domino effect can have long lasting long lasting effects and you know you can give something that can help a bunch of people not just one or two or a hundred people if you can give advice that can help a thousand let's go in that direction so i have this like visual of what i think mike is doing behind the scenes and i just imagine you as kinda like this mad scientist with all of these reports and you're just crunching all this data and smoke is going up everywhere and you're coming to these conclusions and you're having these conversations with your clients and then some of the conversations and what you're working on make it into the public on your podcast modern marvels i'm curious like how do you make the decision on what you decide to share publicly and maybe what you decide to just like keep privately maybe in caution of those moments that you just talked about with the o three tops chrome lebron and having you know people just continue to elevate the price there's some level of responsibility i think we all have when we're creating content i'm curious like how do you decide what stays private and then what makes it into the public stage yeah great question now first of all i wanna dispel that first part you know i i know you've said it and other people have said this be before too i have one of the most flattering nicknames i've received is somebody called me and you know i am i i'm totally fine with these words i'm of asian american descent they called me mister miyagi and i i i love it you know great movie and it's one of the biggest compliments you can get and i i i love when people really look at it and say hey you know that that's awesome and that that's the good end of the spectrum you know people that understand what we're doing here what we're aiming for that life isn't a movie you know it's not we don't have a data system and a computer my brain my brain functions like everybody else it just you know we put a lot of effort into what we do we we we try our best but in the end i think it's a little bit more simple you know it's literally taking your time looking at everything i think the keyword is patience you know if in in an industry that can excite you every single turn you take you know you turn on your tv right now you get the world cup you get the nba summer league otani hits a home run jordan alvarez hits two you know minor leaguer hits three home runs this guy pitches a no hitter so much excitement around you and i think being able to breathe calm down and take a look at all that information and be very very patient with it it's the most important thing now i think most people when they initially see us they paint us as a movie too you know whether it's on the flattering side hey you guys are you guys are like a computer i don't have your data systems everything that's one dramatic end of the spectrum the other end is well why are these guys doing this what is their agenda are they trying to pump are they trying to artificially inflate markets you know is he trying to be an influencer and you know create a a a meme coin and then just dump it all you know and these are things that we have to deal with as just normal people that are just loving a hobby that really wanna get good information out there now i think the big thing that we try to do with everything that we send out there is literally try to understand that not everybody's gonna pick up the information you know and what we get to do on this side is i don't have ten million dollars to work with brett you know i don't have even if you gave me a hundred million dollars i i really i i i could spend it through you know and those are things that can definitely happen but in reality us and everybody else out there we're working on different budgets so we can't go and buy and just say hey shohei otani is gonna be great i'm gonna buy his market that's an incredible luxury a few people in the world can do that what me and everybody else has to do is we have to be able to buy a small percentage of shohei ohtani and within that percentage if i only get to spend ten thousand dollars on shohei ohtani i wanted to be the best ten thousand dollars so what i'll do on my side is i'll take my time and i'll narrow it down to first out of all the major league baseball players shohei ohtani that's not even one percent that's a third of a percent of major league baseball players then in his market if he has ten thousand skews i'll try to narrow that down to just ten or five cards and i think a lot of people do this already and then in that market you start to analyze what is this grade what is this thing everything and that's how we come up with a suggestion you know and so for anybody out there who always thinks and rightfully so that people are just trying to pump cards there are actually guys out there that are literally taking their time before they open their mouth before they get out there and say hey i think this is something that people should be paying attention to and so on our side we try to really stick to that process before we start to broadcast things out you know with our first modern marvels podcast and you know talking about otani because he he kinda is the guy we just naturally he ended up as being the guy that we showcased on that first episode we talked about a card that i believe at the time was something around twelve to fifteen thousand dollars and it is a high end ohtani his his his dynasty rpa the last one just sold on golden auctions at psa nine two hundred and seven thousand and that's in a period of i think the last first time we talked was about sixteen months ago brett and that's that's great gain you know it's reason why we called that card and by the way i think that card is gonna be his his grail you know i think that card literally you look at the lebron rpa you look at the shohei dynasty they're very similar and that shohei arguably should eventually be more than that lebron and when that happens yep yeah so i love this and this is where i wanted to go is because what i observe from you is you are someone who doesn't just get up on a microphone and say go buy shohei ohtani but you say if i were buying a shohei ohtani card and i have this budget this is the card i would look be looking to and here are the twenty reasons why i think this is the winner which it's not just you're not you're not just being transactional but you're layering in context and i think that context no matter what like if someone's listening or watching you you it's undeniable that you can't leave a conversation with you or listening to you and say that it's just there's no work involved like you're sharing a lot of data a lot of details and you're show sharing your work in public which i think builds credibility and it kind of removes someone from just being someone who's gonna pump and dump to someone who's trying to be helpful do you feel like because the hobby has such a history of pump and dump and people just saying pick this and you should do this now and do it quickly because people are so jaded by that do you feel like you are maybe fighting an uphill battle when you're just delivering your content even though you're putting in a lot of work like what's your mindset and how do you kinda handle like preexisting notion when it comes to like picking a player or picking a card with what you are trying to do and accomplish one hundred percent brett i mean i can't i i i can't emphasize it enough i i hate that i have to deal with it you know on this side that you know trust is such a big thing and everybody i work with privately all the guys that i've been working with for years you know it it takes a while to really really build trust especially nowadays you know like we are i don't wanna go into too much philosophy on the world brett but there's so much bad news i think positivity is just incredible when you find good people when you find the right things out there look sometimes people need to open up their hearts just a little bit faster a little bit easier i think there's actually rewards for that but make good decisions you know find the people out there that you know are genuine that you know have your best interest in mind and when when you're there appreciate them you know go out there tell them a thanks give them the time of the day that they need stop focusing your energy on the wrong things you know don't worry about the bad things in the world it's it's there for a reason be be special yourself you know and start to pay attention to to the good information out there the good people giving things but to answer your question it's made my job extremely difficult i i can't say it enough you know we we see our see the style that everybody else does it there's a lot of velocity to it and definitely wanna take a different approach an approach that we thought that the market would love and at the same time going through it we've found a bit of resistance you know but there's been there's been a i always thought we would just go out there and literally just say something and our tracker could would speak for itself and people would say well if anyone's gonna be wrong i'll i'll trust this guy you know i'll trust these guys this tracker could make sense they actually literally have receipts you know i've posted literally paypal payments in the past before when everybody used to pay through paypal to really show that yeah this sounds unbelievable but we've actually done these things these are the actual receipts and even with that you know the amount of dms messages the amount of times that we have to literally repeat advice and convince people over the phone that called us you know they called us literally because they wanted an opinion and giving the opinion and still hearing the same question again and again it really tells you what landscape we're dealing with you know both and and it it's it's it's it's unfortunate it's that way specifically because you know i challenge anybody to do this you can go on our instagram profile we don't post that often you know we've been active for almost three four years now and go and check take a look at everything you know we try to have long term approaches to things take a look at any bit of advice we've ever given i think we're batting a thousand still now that's really hard to do just by pure pure luck but there's some blessings in there too and we hopefully try to let real information speak for itself yeah but as far as that little bit there you know no matter take a look at our modern marvels brett we've been on a few of these i'm sure if people go back and look at the past episodes we're you know we are batting at a hall of fame level for sure and even with that i think it it it doesn't matter you know if i come on and i say formula one i people say well he's he's doing this because he owns the cards yes yes i own the cards it's a smart thing to do you know and people want to be skeptical they want to really really just say that no this is wrong when literally there are really good people out there who are trying to do the right thing and we may be in the minority but i think it's important to give those things a little bit more attention brett i know this is supposed to be on sports cards but i've been telling this to people privately and i think this one does hit home you know let's talk about life right now in your normal circle everybody has that person right that could be a friend an auntie a cousin or even a sibling even a parent who everybody knows in the family they cause a little bit of chaos right they they they talk about people behind their backs they talk bad left and right and they get all the attention you know everybody talks about them everybody's frustrated they always have phone calls about that person what are we gonna do with auntie all these different things in the meantime i think there are people that are that are always there and the normal standard is there are there's a good brother who helps you with auntie there's a good your mom has always supported you through every single time your cousin has done these things you know and i i really like to take the approach and tell people hey don't worry about auntie she's always gonna be that way instead every single second you would have spent on auntie every single time you catch yourself there go and call your cousin you know go and call your brother or your sister that supported you through it give them the attention those people they do it out of the good of their heart and they deserve more attention you know instead of you can talk about auntie all day people love to talk about auntie you know it it it fulfills a certain need that i think people have right now but that but auntie doesn't fix the world you know auntie doesn't fix the world auntie doesn't build buildings i think the things that have built buildings has been that positive energy that looks towards hey let's go and find somebody and let's go ahead and make them let's give them more energy you know if if i have a good cousin that helps the family i hope everybody goes to the cousin more often i hope that that cousin everybody understands what they are that person gets their flowers while there's still time you know and that cousin gets to lead the family more give auntie way less attention so maybe she'll start eventually behaving well too you know maybe she'll look at the family that's all loving because of that one cousin that led them to the right direction and she'll look she'll look at it and say well i wanna be part of that instead of because she has no attention anymore you know and that's that's kind of that's kind of the unrealistic approach that we take to sports cards here you know on our side i think we get asked very often why do you do this mike you know it's not like we we're selling advertising dollars or anything like that i literally do this because i love sports cards that kid in atlantic city it really drives everything we do us releasing these plays out to the public i look at that i think about that kid constantly and that kid is now fifteen years old but there are other ten year old kids there are ten year old kids at heart right now that are in their forties that maybe they could they can use a little bit of this where what they really need to understand is there's a process that if you actually don't try to be lucky doing sports cards and instead you try to be good at sports cards like you are in your profession or in the sport you play that that there's actually more rewards for that for you as your hobby and for also you in your collection also i love that i wanna get your perspective on something i've been talking a lot about is just like this desire for more independent thinkers in the hobby this industry is so look over your shoulder and see what the person next to you is doing and then everyone copycats like that lebron rookie chrome example is like a perfect indication of that and i find that doing the work following a a passion digging into data and research like to me and finding an opportunity that no one else sees and it's just staring you in the face and i'm sure you know that feeling in that moment where you finally come to your conclusion and you said i cannot believe no one else sees this right now like this is this has taken me a bunch of time energy and resource but this is it and undeniably like your perspective of like when you see an example of that cardigan or you see another one you're just like i need to get this because this is the steal of the century and like those moments come from like being an independent thinker and doing the work and obviously like the nature of your work is like you are doing the work and then you're sharing kind of your process and your methodology and then obviously there are people who aren't going to do the work but then follow your examples and try to get some information from you and take that and i think that's that's awesome and you're educating and you're educating people on how to go about you know finding the next play that doesn't come from you like do you do you find like that's like a ripple effect of the work that you're doing is that like you're leading people to better understand how to build a process and approach when they're not just listening to you but doing it on their own so that then they can reach that moment that we all love when we see that card sitting there after we've done all the work and say oh my gosh i can't smash buy it now quick enough on this because this card is it and i believe in it like do you find that happening with your audience yeah first of all congratulations brett i've helped a few people get through to these moments where they start to tell me hey mike i think it's this win by yama card and i do my research and i get back to them and i tell them yeah you you hit it square that's exactly the card i would have picked that wembanyama rookie card and the joy that they get when they when literally they know that they went through the same process and that pride that you have being talented at sports cards if you will and being able to find it on your own i think it's just so beautiful you know and so we get asked this often and i i i i always subscribe to the the big thing you can you can give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day or you can teach that man to fish and he can eat for a lifetime you know and it's it's a very very broad approach we do give out individual calls if you want me to give one today brett i'll give one to your audience but you know the most important thing really yeah the most important really thing really is you know sustainability on this side the more people that stick around the better train of thoughts we have the less mistakes that happen again and again the the better we cycle up this entire market you know this now billion dollar market yeah what's stopping it from being ten ten billion hundred billion a trillion just better behavior you know and if we can scale it properly i think it makes a ton of sense you know you hit on something brett and i think it will answer a lot of maybe some of the questions that i get to you know agenda what are we doing this for initially it started off as hey let's find a way to alleviate you know people would call for private advice and i figured if there's a way that we can broadcast that advice through a podcast and answer almost all those questions or the more typical questions we get then it can save some of the time so maybe instead of working sixteen hours one day it's fifteen you know and so that was initially it but one of the things that i think i did wanna showcase and i think is going to be very important for the sports card market going forward is literally what you are talking about there what you displayed brett is sports card talent and you know it's it's for me i think it's the next frontier i think it's definitely something that we look forward to people identifying with us and with other people anybody can say i love the look of this card and it it should be worth more you know and that's fine you know you're basically saying you have an eye for art which is cool and you know that is a factor that's paying attention to consumer behavior because you're a consumer and maybe you have a good eye i think it takes a different level of depth to get to that emotion that you just talked about it's not one checkpoint you're talking about twenty checkpoints and then you're talking about historically you're comparing it to you're comparing darren peterson to kobe and jordan and you're trying to figure out which peterson to buy and i think that is where literally it's a craft you know you have to have a little bit more talent to get it done and so i i think one of the biggest untapped things in the sports card market is literally i do think there's gonna be a time where whether it's us or somebody else you bring on your podcast there's going to be somebody that everybody identifies and says wow this isn't this is different this is just different the hit rate is off the charts this is literally it's not it's not this is not kirk cousins at quarterback this is brady you know and if you can put brady behind what you're doing you'd follow brady every single time you know it or in your case peyton manning you know he puts you put something you put a guy out there who is gonna be working those seventeen eighteen hours a day yeah man he's gonna be able to throw the ball in the web because he's ready for every single thing out there and so i think it hopefully just takes a little bit more time i think people hopefully start to gravitate towards better information better process as as they start to understand that they don't wanna do this just for entertainment they see the benefits of sports cards long term and they want that benefit also so grand scale of things brett my job is to play everything out i think there is a world where this thing does keep on scaling and it scales responsibly amazing spider man number one it is it says ten cents on the cover you know people could have caught up a pump and dump every single decade every single time the book ran up to a thousand ten thousand hundred thousand people could have called it a pump and dump but guess what everybody who bought one every single period they all did good because they bought something that was actually great and it's a great collectible it's worth more than money because it is it it means something to people and so i think the big challenge right now is looking at sports cards understanding that there are things that mean more than just a hundred copies that are printed to a lot of people and what will they mean to them in the future and why will it be important it won't be every card you know we're talking about the one percent but going out there finding that one percent and finding a way to hold it so that you don't sell amazing spider man when it's a thousand you don't sell it when it's ten thousand today you're showing it to your kid because it's a million dollars and it's in great condition and you bought that for a hundred bucks you know i love this idea of sports card talent if you are hiring today and you're hiring for sports card talent what are the traits what are the what's the skill set what are the attributes that you would look for as a business owner to bring in more people to lehi who have sports card talent yeah this is a really interesting topic so i i know that everybody wants to scale sports cards in a certain way and i do think somebody will get it done i'm more old school you know i just i i i've built my business a certain way and i found that i've as i've tried to scale also it's not actually something that you you can really scale at at that type of level and i think it's more about finding the like let me put it this way so i said corbin cowell right and we've called earlier this year kevin mcgonigal you you know and mcgonigal may be having the best rookie season ever in baseball history according to war and if you took those two guys and you said i'm gonna hire corbin carroll and kevin mcgonigal because i'm going to build a baseball team everyone would look and laugh because it doesn't make sense in that industry you're trying to grab somebody who has worked their entire life on a skill set and you're trying to put them into a company and scale their eye and their skill set and their their muscle structure their muscle memory and their database everything that's in their head that's why you don't draft their family you draft them right and literally they bring them into the system they put them into a part of a bigger system that makes the engine go for those teams and so i think when you say the word talent i think it's meant to be a few individuals you know that have built up those skills over a period of time and so that that puts me in a good light today just saying this out loud brett it feels super bad to broadcast this on a podcast but i i like to say this because i think about that fifteen year old kid and i think about all these people that show that will show up in chicago and they're not showing up all of them to make money they're showing up because they love cards and i encourage them to love them you know get a hobby go work in the real world for five or ten years gain some skill sets keep your hobby watch tv you know when when today in just a just a bit when mbappe scores two more goals grab that card that you bought the card that you know now this is the greatest world cup player of all time get that benefit too and keep it part of your life get the great benefits that collectibles bring let it complement your life and when you get to the point where you know this is it then go for it you know i actually think it's closer to real life sports than it actually is a an industry real life sports everybody you know if you just look at it as a win or lose if you can do that that as a profession for the rest of your life there's a lot of people who lose because literally one in ten thousand become professional athletes that's the accepted rate there because everybody would become a baseball player if they could everybody would become a football player if they could and i think there there needs to be a more realistic approach and look to this where literally people still play baseball they love it they love the things they learn from it and there's great things that they learn from that hobby and i think sports cards can be the same the lucrative part about it it normally happens over time i think what we've been seeing recently is this behavior where everybody wants to be their fathers and their grandfathers they want amazing spider man not over fifty years they want it in fifty days at this point you know like it is it is monstrous and they're just cycling out and and they're creating a bit of harm here and there literally and so what i would like to see in the end brett is when we talk about sports car talent it is responsible people out there saying k don't listen to that that's actually a little bit dangerous what you guys should be doing right now is look what let's pick corbin or let's pick shohei or let's pick aaron judge buy these cards you know and if enough people buy them if they buy the right if they buy amazing spider man one if we recommend that if ten thousand people buy it guess what in the future a million people will want it and so each of those ten thousand people will have a hundred suitors because they bought the right item they can ask whatever they want for it and they can help their families and they can buy the actual right assets instead we're left with a playing field today where people are telling you to not buy amazing spider man number one they're telling you to buy this off comic book and this because it's in their best self interest and i think there's a better way to do it where everybody ends up with better collectibles and if you wanna go financial they end up with better assets for the future i'd be remiss not to talk a little bit about f one in your approach and i think one of the interesting things and we talked about this at the beginning is the emergence of other categories outside the primary you know baseball football and basketball you're talking f one i'm talking wrestling soccer's emerging in the us and for me i'm always of the mindset like if the individual behind the microphone or behind the camera has a engaging die has engaging dialogue and has passion and has data and has narrative to support what they're saying in these emerging lanes like that's really good and i don't even need to collect this stuff but i'll listen because i'm interested and i find that all of these categories they're they're growing because i i think most of these pockets have individuals who are passionate and they're delivering content on a regular basis and people consume the content people get excited and then they go out and start purchasing in that category and we're starting to see kind of these categories that seemed like the red that's headed stepchild in the past now become more mature and have all of them have monster card selling on a regular basis i'm curious just in terms of content like how important do you think content has been to the growth of the f one market and like how do you think about that because i know you're someone who's deeply in it and you care deeply about the category maybe just share some perspective on just like content's role in f one and how it's helped it become not only a legitimate category but a category that has a long term sustainability i'm gonna answer that question specifically how you i i think everybody needs to hear it but i i do wanna say this and we get i'm an f one enthusiast because that twenty twenty card situation brett when we talked about for the masses it's it it was the easiest and it's the most obvious thing i've ever seen in my life at this point like literally it's ninety nine pokemon it's fifty two tops and people think i'm joking i've been saying this for years it look look at the way it's behaving already and it's still going in that direction it it made my job really really easy like i don't like to be wrong and it it is by far the most obvious thing we've already seen what's happened with the sport and with that specific year and i don't think it's over still infancy stage so to answer your question i think content is very very important you know i i think having having a a community a place that people can go in a hobby that they can enjoy that they can hear and listen to you know i i've watched game of thrones i listen to game of thrones podcast i watch baseball and basketball i listen to bill simmons you know and these things they enhance my experience and i think the more support you have out there the better you know game of thrones i'll watch an episode and i'll i'll if it's a really good episode i'll listen to two different podcasters yeah because it's just it's more content you know it's about something i love again if mbappe scores two goals today i'm turning on espn and i'm looking for the soccer highlights because i wanna hear more about these things that's why they have sportscenter i think content is and and having a backing forward is so important i love what fanatics is doing right now they are creating more content you know they're trying to very much back the the the market when we talk about bigger companies to fanatics ebay everything that they're doing for the market they're starting to really understand that this is actually a hobby and people they can you know there's financial goals to these things but they can actually create community they can create a place where people feel happy about themselves and associate it with these bigger companies and i think it's a great great thing that's happening you know when you talk about wrestling it's it's it's great what's happening in that space also right now it's having a resurgence it's they've made the right partnership deals f one did this a few years ago too and it is it is coming through to the fore if i can update your audience on f one i would love to give this important important update there are some very important things that we've been broadcasting from years ago that are playing out and again everybody in your private circles just ask around go go and ask a a younger person in their twenties what sports they like see how often somebody says f one i think you'll you'll be pleasantly surprised but i was watching a youtube recently and it was a group of four guys that traditionally do with american sports and a teapot from a sports card investor was on there and he flashed a card and said hey guys like i got wanna get you updated on f one and he said there's this kimmy anthony card that sold recently what do you guys think it sold for it's a one of one dynasty autograph patch auto you know it wasn't like an f one logo or anything really nice logo and he had them all guessed they guessed forty nine thousand fifty thousand fifty one thousand the card sold for two hundred thousand dollars and they were shocked they've never heard of the guy and so for those of you who don't know kimi antonelli is a nineteen year old and he's in formula one he you know he doesn't have much heritage you could say he's the number one prospect in the entire sport he's a sports bemban yamal or lamina mall but there's a reason why if you go on instagram right now look up kimi antonelli he has eight million followers to put that into perspective aaron judge has two million kimi antonelli is nineteen years old aaron judge i believe is thirty four years old and so judge has fifteen years on him and kimi antoni has four times more followers and he's just getting started and so we've said this time and time again that doesn't mean cards will sell but that also means that there's probably three point nine nine million people out there who don't even know about trading cards yet you know this is not an an this is formula one just started in twenty twenty and this is really in its infancy stage the last bit i'll give you is this because i think it relates more to your crowd the goats right so the goat in football is peyton manning but we'll we'll stay we'll stay for everybody else to say we'll say tom brady because everybody the host i love it that's why i keep inviting you back mike so so peyton peyton is my goat man i'm a i'm a process guy so tom brady's a goat right in football shohei ohtani is at least the most popular baseball player we've ever had you could call him the baseball goat at this point those are our two biggest domestic sports baseball and football let's go international rich man's sport let's go tennis and golf the goat's there roger federer and tiger woods tiger woods not debatable roger federer okay djokovic nadal you pick your flavor but federer is the generally broadly most famous lewis hamilton is the f one goat as far as status and all these different things now brady ohtani federer and nadal you can add up all their instagram followers those are all in f one's demo lewis has as many as all four of those goats combined it it really is something that i keep on telling people because it i i think it's gonna matter we've already seen these huge sales in f one and people are wondering exactly what's happening i encourage them to keep on asking what's happening what's happening there are amazing things happening in the space and when i say infancy stage it's like somebody telling you in two thousand and five about pokemon wow love it love all the examples and the context and definitely had a hit f one maybe you know mike you're the type of guy i could talk to for three four four hours but unfortunately we don't have that kind of time but i wanna maybe hit this before we get out of here make sure we hit this like idea of responsibility and just like the responsibility of influence in content and online like undeniably like you're getting up on your platform and and this platform and sharing like the reasons why you're coming to the conclusions that you're doing and there are individuals your customers your members your audience who are enjoying that and might make a play themselves based on that like how do you and i know you have a good hit rate i i've listened to the podcast i follow the content i i i it resonates and i appreciate it down the road and yeah i mean you've got the you've got the receipts but how do you think about just like whether it's you or just anybody in this space like the level of responsibility that you have as someone who's producing content and building a business like how do you think about that in terms of your own kind of building and content creation process yeah i mean our our material is is i i wish it was more often but it's sparse it's because i want to i don't like making mistakes brett on my side you know it's it's almost a flaw at this point when we do media creation and everything and we're doing these things but i just want to be responsible i i think on ours it's to be digested in short bits you know if we make a call i hope it lasts for a couple months you know and people can focus in on those things i think sometimes simplification is the best you know if if you're gonna collect wrestling you're not gonna have that ten million dollar budget to go and buy ohtani and all these different things too you know like if you had a kid and and you were telling and here's the thing dad i wanna do this this this this this you would say hey man simplify it and so i i i think literally putting out that type of material i think it's an important thing for us to do also because we are not necessarily entertainment on our side we're more information and that information if we tell you every single week you know we're gonna bleed everybody dry literally if we if if right if i went once a week and i told everybody spend thousand here thousand here thousand here market goes broke you know all all of our followers they don't then it's it's not really sustainable so that's a natural convenient excuse brett but honestly it's it's the time constraints you know like literally we are looking at all these markets my job is one it it's it's a it's a passion to get information out there to help the market but my main focus is to make sure that we're doing enough research that literally it's the top one percent of the one percent is what we're recommending i don't wanna be labeled a pumper or a person that manipulates markets it's more to just focus on look let's broadcast the one that we can and let's give that to the market let's create winners and let's have them hopefully you know brett just like you and everybody else let's have more people follow along with us especially if we're deserving and we are giving the right information and we have the receipts the maybe we close it out with this one i love this delineation between informational and entertainment i don't know that consumers of content in the industry often think about that delineation i obsess over it i i would consider what we're doing over here more informational than anything sure like if there's opportunities to sprinkle in some entertainment we'll do that but we wanna share information we wanna share perspective we wanna share psychology all the things that fascinate us as collectors that's what we're doing here on stacking slabs i sense the same thing from you just to listen to your content and that's why it resonates with me it's like more informational it it it feels like the hot that the industry is oh i would say maybe over index slightly on the entertainment side of content which isn't bad right we're trying to attract new people in we're in its people are scrolling through reels and we're trying to get people to stop and whatever content's gonna perform well on social people are building for but that content isn't often informational but it might have some sort of information in it so that's why i am a big advocate for long form content like this like this is a little podcast podcast inception because i'm commenting on our own conversation we're having here but i think it's important i think the more we can get individuals to share in long form on podcast on video helpful perspective like this is what's going to drive education and this is what's going to drive retention in this space a lot of people are thinking about growth i'm constantly thinking about retention how do we keep people here how do we get people here to stay to build out bigger collections to invest more to make this a part of their everyday life like that's a good one yeah how do we get the more wins too yep and more win like how do you think about just like as we close this out just like the role of the conversation the role of the long form content do you think it's a a dying breed do you think we need more do you think we're in a good spot like how do you think of long form content right now i think you're amazing brett and i think you should be more amazing to everybody else out there i think everybody listening to this deep into this podcast should really appreciate brett a whole bunch more and grab that love and that example i gave earlier spread that love you know and i think that's the way that this eventually wins literally more thought more effort gets rewarded when more people start to win and share those wins and i think if by everybody being more enriched listening to your content instead of the other content you know those things it may take some time we have to go through your lumps to get there but i think building that and having that audience win and then accredit that win to you i think it's an important thing and i think people need to start doing that i think we need to start creating more winners and have those winners come back and teach the people who are out there who don't understand what's going on you know actually have success in the sports card market actual tangible success and then credit it where it belongs if that grows organically over time and people start to digest long form content more because of that because there's just this is this is a hobby this it's way more complex you know if they start to win that way then we get that long term goal and i think we are getting closer i think this is why we keep put making our our social media push also understanding that we know what's out there you i i could feel it in your voice brett too you know and i think the thing is hopefully in the end there's rewards for this hopefully the good i i don't wanna say the good guys hopefully the well intentioned and and the literally genuine heart wins in the end i mean we can only hope you know if it if it takes something else i'm out brett i i i don't know how to say this i'm out i'd rather i'd rather be more authentic and stick to the things that hopefully can work and people gravitate more towards because i do know it creates success you know these are the things these are the ingredients that i look for in athletes thought process all these different things and it leads to long term success and that's really what i'm interested in here i do wanna if it's okay i do wanna yeah send a small shout out we just finished another ebay f one feature auction with ebay and for those of you out there who are in f one or in an international sport you know wrestling right now is growing like crazy soccer is having its incredible moment i do wanna shout out and my job is to pay attention to prices and where value is i can't recommend ebay more for anybody out there that's dealing with an international sport if you're dealing with soccer especially formula one we've seen this the data is off the charts if you're gonna sell an f one card first of all sell it through us you know we we do command a premium through ebay and we recently opened up a partnership with ebay's partner golden also where we can handle your high end too but more important if you're gonna sell on your own we want you to win and so please pay attention it's a small growing sport there are sergio perez fans out there and max verstappen fans out there who do not know about these outside platforms and we do see that information play out very big but they'll look on ebay and they don't even collect trading cards yet but they'll bid on your cards and we've seen this behavior again and again so shout out to ebay they are they've been nothing but supportive to our push to grow this f one market the education process and also they've been helping everybody maximize their value so if you're gonna be selling sports cards not only do we know that they're responsive of your show so i wanna properly shout them out but it actually is responsible behavior we talk about this on our instagram and we actually have data points there if anybody wants to look it up we shout out ebay because it's the most responsible thing to do there the last little bit i do wanna say is for those of you in the formula one section and i know you guys have been tuning into this too i wanted to drop this here because we will cross promote we have very very exciting news to announce and i wanted to do this here brett so we first three years ago we came out with the f one feature auction on ebay i think the effects have been very dramatic for the f one market we were going on a downturn and i think that f one feature auction it was a brainchild of mine that i thought long term would have these huge benefits and we've since continued it we just had another one just end last week it's had great effects for the market and so that was number one number two we hit with the grid we opened up a website to really help the f one market have a stronger secondary market and i think the effects of that have been off the charts for formula one instead of people dumping inventory we we're able to now find the right homes for these cards at at at a customer space instead of the market space and so we've established a place where people can house their treasures and people can when they're ready to buy they can buy these cards instead of having to approach sports cards as a profession literally there's this f one demo isn't around to bid three hundred sixty five days a year maybe they're not even around to bid twelve months a year so the grid is there to create better selling and buying behavior but the thing that i wanted to say is i think we found another one we know people love entertainment and with that comes breaks and all these different things there's been a project that i've been pursuing since that atlantic city national four years ago there was a a foundational person that helped the formula one market start he was a a a early influencer he had people like like shine in the f one market you know he literally had everybody coming to him and he's been away from the market for a bit but we are opening up something called d reserve d rsrv and it is to provide a little bit more entertainment back out to the f one market we know we do information and we do the parts that are more for the long term nature of the sport but we wanted to open up something that could complement the people who are looking for a little bit more entertainment a home run swing and so his name is jupesta and he has been around in the f one circle everyone's been asking him to come back but after three years of persistence on this we will be working with jupsta to provide a little bit more entertainment to the f one market we've heard a lot of demand for this too over the years they've asked us to do it also you know whether it's to provide more entertainment and on our side it's just sporadic information so i wanted to shout him out this guy is you know he's went on succeeded at regular life he will be coming back and brett i look for talent all over the place sports card talent you know it's why i love exactly what you do there's other influencers out there that i'm huge fans of you know i i think as human beings they're amazing athletes i think i look at a guy like corbin and we look at these athletes and we start to judge their character and i am very very proud because finally i have one that i can work with here and so we will be opening up something our f one crowd stay tuned for it jupe is back guys and so really really excited to announce this brett if you're wondering who this guy is he's basically a legend in f one circle people have been asking for him for a bit so i i sense that i sense that congratulations just based on your build up awesome mike is just such an advocate for the f one space and always enjoy your content before i let you get out of here the national's gonna be crazy busy you alluded to it earlier where can people stop by and see at this show if they wanna say hi or learn more about f one yeah we're gonna be in the international section that the national has created it we are gonna be in booth seven zero zero two zero and seven zero zero one eight once you start to see a bunch of soccer you'll see our f one banners there drop by i love to talk sports cards if you guys aren't into f one let me let me tell you guys why you guys should be into it especially those twenty twenty sets if you guys wanna just chat normal sports cards let's do that also i like to create winners brett and you know i like to have a good time too so looking forward to seeing everybody there brett is in in the cutting room floor but i wanted to throw something to your audience here too today and so my job is to give sports card calls and i've been holding this one too but i wanted to take just about a few more minutes to throw one for it yeah yeah and so he's injured right now but we've been definitely paying attention to this and this might be the right time to buy this card i know a lot of them exist in smaller collections you can find them around aaron judge and so i was gonna save this for an episode of modern marvels but i'll do this here instead i love it aaron judge you know so he his top end it's gonna be that dynasty card just like otani easy call but on the low end there is a card that i love brett and i think it has a chance to be a foundational sports card so if you take a look at his psa pop reports for his rookie cards his twenty seventeen topps chrome he has over eight thousand his bowling chrome he has over three thousand his topps flagship he has over sixty four hundred and even his tops chrome update cards he has an all star card and the rookie debut they have right around two thousand five hundred of each and these are all psa ten pop reports that's a lot of rookie cards aaron judge in the end his twenty seventeen rookie logos there's going to be because of where he debuted and because of how impactful he was that rookie year that he set the home run rookie record there's gonna be what hundred thousand two hundred thousand psa tens in the end serial number base cards patches and everything and it creates this supply that is so off the charts that everybody has to wonder what's going to win what's going to win and judge conveniently for me has one of the most beautiful cards i've ever seen and it's unique and i think it actually might start something eventually because everybody's kind of made fun of it over the years and i've mentioned it here and there now imagine judge becomes bonds and ruth and that's not unrealistic you know when you look at his numbers it's off the charts if shohei didn't exist this guy would be hailed as best hitter since ted williams basically imagine babe ruth though made his debut with the yankees and he hit a home run a monster home run-in in in his first major league baseball game the very next day if they made a trading card saying yankee debut this slugger that came from from the red sox and he's he's a rookie and that became his first ever major league baseball trading card that would be awesome right like in today's day if that happened if connor griffin did that they'd make like eighty thousand copies so that actually did happen for aaron judge aaron judge hit a home run a four hundred fifty seven foot home run and he wasn't a heralded prospect at the time you know he was i believe on the prospect charts he wasn't even in the top twenty five and so topps now offered for a twenty four hour period you could order aaron judge cards and so people ordered the end print run ended up being two thousand five hundred thirty seven copies now the cool thing is it was in twenty sixteen so there were no parallels that year they only made base cards there's not a one of one there's nothing there's only two thousand five hundred thirty seven copies of that card that will ever exist of aaron judge's major league debut and of his first home run that that in itself would be awesome right and so i'm gonna show you a picture of the card this is the picture of the card right it's really really basic it doesn't even have a rookie logo it just says column if you take a look at the text on this card and you take a look at the back just a random card number in a card set and it talks about the home run it talks about this guy and they're not calling him the next babe ruth the next barry bonds or anything like that it was when he was an unheralded prospect kind of when we like to discover things so this specific card if you look at what it represents it's a little bit unique right you don't have to pick amongst a hundred thousand rookie cards and cards with high pops that you have to really really share with everybody else instead you have something here that is extremely unique extremely special and it's a it captures a moment that is literally the beginning of one of the biggest most famous baseball players of all time the biggest thing to stack onto that brett is that twenty sixteen was actually the first year of tops now and so not only are you converging this rare unique rookie card situation of a relatively unheralded prospect that everybody thought was too old to ever succeed in major league baseball famously this guy literally debuted when he was twenty four years old and he wouldn't set the home run record till he was twenty five for as a rookie he was a twenty five year rookie in twenty seventeen and so he was an afterthought in the investing market but look at how it's played out like he literally proved the investment market wrong because he said age doesn't matter and he's the exception and not the rule so you have a card that only less than three thousand people can own ever and that'll you know it's controlled right they cannot be five thousand psa tens of this card like those other cards i mentioned before it already has a leg up on them now everybody can go and look at the prices of a tops chrome or a bowman chrome aaron judge rookie card and you'll see that this tops now is priced recently there's been market movement on it but before that it was actually priced at half the price of those cards now when they show up they go for right around the same price so the question is is all the value off the table because it's now increased relative in the judge market it's increased by a hundred percent on the other cards it's doubled up and now it's worth the same amount my guess is that i think this is gonna be his card i think this is gonna be the card that when his career is done people will look back to and say hey do you have that twenty sixteen judge card number three fifty three and that'll be the card you know they say one zero one jordan a lot of times card numbers have a lot of significance to people i think for judge it's gonna be this specific card he has too many other options the supply is too high on his twenty seventeens and i think this specific card is just so cool when you look at exactly what it represents this is what tops now was made to do and we will not get this type of print run again for this type of player and so i think if your audience sees it out there you see it at a card show raw two hundred fifty three hundred even five hundred dollars raw go for it if you see a psa ten the last one i think sold for four to six hundred bucks if you see one for seven or eight hundred bucks that's what a topps chrome rookie would cost you and there's eight thousand of them out there that's how you play a player's market and just ride it you're gonna be one of less than two thousand six hundred people that can ever own a copy of one of the most famous baseball players of a generation look at the pop reports of cal ripken tony gwynn wade boggs and imagine what this card could be felt like we were just inside an episode of modern marvels there mike i appreciate the insight the the i you're very good at what you do when you hit the first year of tops now i was like okay i'm i'm buying into this methodology but if you wanna listen to more go check out the next episode make sure you subscribe to modern marvels and i always get excited because i never know when the new episode's gonna drop when i see it in my feed so mike really appreciate it always enjoy our conversations and looking forward to connecting in a few weeks here at the national yeah yeah let let's let's let's have a coffee take care man we'll talk to you yeah alright brett take care