alright we are back episode of passion to profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay this is a conversation i've been very very excited about all week i think a lot of people listening have heard of grant or seen waldorf stories his account or perhaps met him or done a deal with him at the show i think grant is probably the number one individual in my hobby ecosystem that has the ability to find rare and scarce cards bring them out of the woodwork and surface them and i wanna talk about it i wanna talk about how grant got started kinda his mindset on the current market and everything in between but without further ado grant welcome man how are you doing great brett thank you for having me on it's been two years and i've also been looking forward to this one it's it's about a once every nine month thing to do a podcast so i'm i was really happy when you reached out i appreciate it i was thinking about this in prep and i know we've got a doc and we're gonna get into a bunch of the the content there but when i was thinking about you and i was thinking about like your name and how it always comes up as someone finding cards i'm wondering if you recall a card you unearth for me do you remember finding a andrew luck card in nashville three or four years ago i know i found a card for you i don't and it was obviously luck i don't remember which one wait is it a black finite yes so you people i was just on someone's podcast and they were asking my collection and whenever i'm asked that question my my wheels start spinning and it always goes back to my twenty fourteen andrew luck black finite which you found in a showcase in nashville and you could have just bought the card and then probably charged me four times whatever you paid for it but you didn't instead you took the picture and you're like hey let me connect you to the dealer and i got that deal done and then sent it to psa and somehow got a psa ten on it and that card's been just sitting in the collection ever since so i wanna use that story to just illustrate your ability to find cards and just bring them to collector so thank you i don't know if i've ever like face to face formally thank you for that but thank you my favorite card just kidding you you you've all you've brought it up a few times man and i'm always happy to help people like yourself that have genuine real passion now if you were also a michael jordan collector i might have bought the card and tried to trade with you but i i'm beyond happy i've done a lot with serious collectors like yourself to connect them get the card and people like you remember it and and i'm sure you've helped me along the way many times connecting me with people or sending people my way so that's that's the machine that i run i wanna talk about that machine but what what is it like when you and we're gonna get through your process and like how you go and do go about your business but when you like find that card and let's say you throw it in your story after a big collection buy or whatever and somebody's like oh my god i've been looking for this card forever and then you go and you either know them or you look through their page and you're like wow this person collects this player like heavy like what is it like for you as someone you know building a business around this getting those cards to kind of their end destination so yeah it's i can't even imagine i wish i would have kept track with a little any type of system of like how many times i've connected someone to their ultimate grail and it's it's just been a it been been a buildup over the years and the the connections that come from it and the reputation i've gotten from it has just been it's been everything to my business when when did you realize that this wasn't just like something you were kinda doing in your free time or on the side but was really capable of being your business and being that being something that supported you and your life yeah so i've told the story a few times i was running owning a bar here in town and it was successful boom we we were killing it party spot nonstop and i kept coming home from work and like looking on ebay at stuff that i had only dreamt of buying and i just noticed like where my energy was like focused where my my thoughts were what was on cards and i also was buying stuff and having people six months later offer thirty forty a hundred percent more and i was like okay you're not just throwing your money at something you know without return like this is real and more and more people kept coming in and it just like all these signs point to one i'm good at it two it's growing three i enjoy it which is probably number one right and it just it it really made sense for me with how much i enjoyed it to pursue it how did you get to the point where you realize like yeah i had a few wins here and you realize that like maybe it wasn't just the wins carrying you forward but it was like your process and your consistency i think there's so many people especially now where the market's insane card ladder just reported nine hundred and eleven million dollars in online sales across all on online marketplaces and so it's like really easy to feel like anyone can come in here and make a lot of money doing cards full time but like well obviously you had big wins and those wins kinda gave you momentum but like when did you kinda come to the point that you realize okay like this wasn't just a few wins that could give you runway but this was like sustainable based on the way you are constructing your business so it came down to especially back then i had people say wait you'll only trade the card you'll only trade that what are you talking about like no one wants to trade everyone just wants money especially twenty fourteen fifteen that era that i enjoyed trading so much and and being like okay okay these two cards that he's offering to get his card they can be used elsewhere because i know someone needs that for their set and and i was really like just zoned in and good at it right away i i didn't come to the realization until somewhat recently my friends were getting ready for fantasy football which i've retired from and in two thousand eight two thousand nine era when i first started doing fantasy football i was obsessed with the trading aspect the draft party's great but the trading and convincing someone this is what you need more than what you have and it was like i loved it and and i and i really think having a few years of like just of of that type of brain i i i was really ready to jump into this hobby and be like okay i am going to trade you this but i need to get this and it it worked immediately now today's today's you know marketplace allows someone to come in and buy heavy and sell and do well and there's there's a we're in that moment right now i don't think a lot of the people that are in it today could survive with just trading right but that's in my opinion if you want to get extremely successful in this hobby that is the road let's let's dig into that a little bit because there's not a ton of documentation on mastering the trade and going about it and this will segue into kind of what i wanted to talk about about how you create relationships and how you you know manage relationships and build kind of those relationships more than just one transaction but build them into multiple transactions like when you think about a trade like what is your mindset what are you looking for like what makes a great trade for you all depends on the card i'll bring up one that we were talking about beforehand this ken griffey junior i just got that's jersey numbered one of the best parallels from the nineties molten metal fusion it's a special card and it's you you could put it in the top ten of all of his releases so if i'm gonna trade that card i better be seeing some really heavy grail type pieces i'm gonna get the same reaction as the griffey i'm not gonna trade that card down for a few random high dollar cards just because they're high dollar cards and show up often if if i have a really niche piece an eddie jones let's say rare rare card there's not a lot of outlets for eddie jones so if someone's coming after it and they don't have a lot to trade me as as far as like grail type or just stuff you never find then let's open the doors and see what i'll now let's value play it let let's let's win but if if i have a piece and i have a that's very special and a collector comes to me they need it i'm going to try to get special pieces back that i can keep growing off of one trade and that's all it's the playbook i feel like a lot of collectors avoid the trade because they're it makes them uncomfortable or they feel like they're getting fleece but to me it seems like it always comes down to great communication i i view your activity i view the way you operate and coming from the technology sphere before i jumped into sports cards full time i would study these enterprise salespeople and it wasn't about like their positioning and how they pitch the product it was more about how they treated people and how they communicated to their customer and built and developed that trust i feel like to me viewing you and the way you operate you're the closest thing i've seen to someone selling enterprise software in a completely different industry maybe talk about just like communication and just studying people and understanding like when you're in that mode and you're getting to the table and you're trying to listen and you're trying to ask questions like how important is communication to you in order to get that deal done well so a lot of the people i work with right now it's long term relationships but there's always gonna be new people someone's gonna find something every month i'll be dealing with someone completely new or every week and you need to be respectful you need to open up with clear intentions and like i will not respond to a dm that says how much i've pulled up to people on podcast before like if you're gonna reach out to someone and posted something without a price or they're just showing it off and and you're kind of just blunt and rude about the card it's very off putting for me so i know when i reach out to someone i am going to be introduce myself i'll probably finish it with my name maybe a phone number it's it's gonna it's gonna read well and it's gonna be warm and somewhat trustworthy right off the the you know the get go of of you you know i've taken more than two seconds to write you a message that's a start you figure out most deals are are easy it's not available or it is available here's my price but but if it is a trade situation and here's here's what i look for well i've done this so long and inventory's big and connections are big that i can pretty quickly give a few options out and and see if there's something to be done how often are you having conversations that on deals whether it's to buy whether it's to sell whether that it's to trade that don't get anywhere in that moment but you feel like there is an opportunity down the road and a lot of times i think we just move past that in this space like we just move on to the next one but i feel like you're someone who takes some a mental note and i wanna understand maybe how you kind of organize all of these conversations where even if you don't get a deal done right then and there like it's someone who is potentially in your pipeline that you're gonna go back to whether you get the card eventually that they want or it's a card you just can't stop thinking about like you're interacting with a lot of people who want a lot of cards they wanna sell you cards like how are you organizing all of this i i wish i was more organized with all this to be honest i i mainly go by memory and okay like i know it sounds crazy but also i i have a mantra that if it's if it's not meant to be you you know it's it's not happening right now wait for it it will come back to you if it's meant to be but that comes from owning all these things time and time again now you know like a lot of your listeners know there's some that are transcend that rule right that a gold refractor is not the same as a super fracture super fracture and i recently had someone that has a piece like that where i can't stop thinking about it so i i and that's rare it's really rare for me at this stage so i'm just you just have to be respectful and and write and send a reminder hopefully it's someone that you've dealt with in the past and and hopefully it's someone that actually has declared what they want and if they've done that then you have conversation to to keep bringing up to them it doesn't even have to be really real it could be hey did you see that card on auction is that is that something in your wheelhouse like you just keep keep it going keep talking to them checking in some people if you check-in so fast and so often with them i mean you can really shut the door fast and some other people get worn down i don't do the check-in often mode but a lot of people do and there's you you really have to assess each situation uniquely as they are the you've gotten a lot of attention over the last couple years just based on a lot of the activity that you have performed a lot of the grails that you've picked up and you you're not someone who just like beats people over the head with like cards you're getting like you might throw it in your story you might have a post about it but like everyone's paying attention like you're someone if you're posting something people are taking note of it because likely you're putting some cool reel together about a collection you just bought and you're sharing cards that people have never seen before yeah has that sort of attention over the last few years where you've maybe been a little more public with your activity has that changed your business changed kinda the perception of you and kind of what you're capable of from your seat yeah it i mean it it's definitely given me the reputation the stronghold reputation of finding the unfindable and and just and consistently doing it i mean it's one thing to find it once i've been blessed with numerous fines and wonderful connections where i keep finding what they need and they keep sending me stuff these are people that don't want to post they don't wanna go out and sell with auctions and and i've met a a new numerous people that have deep collections that really make it fun now i will say this there's parts of me that wish i wouldn't post a lot of these things i really i really do because they're like why you didn't have to move that and then so i got a collection in this week three hundred cards and all like all unique all very cool just stuff you never see and i'm i posted yesterday a few of the credentials cards from it and and just the college ones well yeah the bill russell i'd never seen that before yeah out of five and then the right was number to two and the bird was number to two so you know it's you almost with with how with how intense the market is right now like i i just have to in the past i'd do a video of everything and it'd be on it'd be like woah what what in the world how did it how is this a mail day this is a a lifetime collection but now it's it's harder but it's also a really hot market so i'm i'm gonna be a little quieter about some things moving forward so how much of your business is net new individual who you're buying a collection like that from versus existing relationship that you've built the trust and you're just kinda going back to the well because the individual is ready to sell and you're the first person they call yeah i think the majority of it is existing where on a random tuesday someone will hit me up and say hey i got six seven cards for sale that are all awesome and i'm in the position to get it done quick and so i have a lot of that last week we were down in houston though with a new client with a new seller and bought his entire collection it's a mix of both but but mainly mainly the connections over the years the going back to that collection we were just talking about with the credentials and yeah the college stuff now this is stuff that i i had never seen it before i had never thought about it i saw your post but immediately i saw the subject i saw the the the brand and the parallel and instantly thought man these cards are something these cards are important look at how rare and scarce they are but these aren't the cards that you know big hobby platforms are talking about they're not in the auctions they yeah they're kinda hidden and they're waiting for the story to be told about them how much of finding those cards that haven't been circulating in the auctions over and over but you know have the ingredients to be great how much time do you spend trying to like find stuff that just hasn't been given the stage yet sure i i recently have been trying to pick up a lot of basketball from the two thousands i mean in i had looked at this ten years ago but right now with certain nineties prices just being out of reach totally out of reach i have been looking at the two thousand sets and so yes what am i doing there's saved ebay searches that's a boring but i mean that's the worldwide mark that's the biggest marketing card still then your all your auctions you're hoping to catch some stuff at the end that no one's paying attention to right now i'm in a i'm in an era of like feeling like collecting again and not necessarily looking at what what the market is crazy about right now and again with those credentials that i posted yesterday they're not that valuable but they are beyond cool and they are literally next to impossible to get and i'll i'll i'll keep grabbing stuff like that and and be much happier than if i spent forty grand on on a jordan noise boys that when i go to dallas next week at a show there'll be four of them you know the the market the market is right and wrong you know at all times right it's it's right that there's a demand for these things but it's wrong to put that much value into some of this so people don't maybe talk to you enough or i haven't heard enough about like grant is the collector but like you everybody who's doing business and cards and transacting at the level you are is a collector as well it's just shifting a focus and priority and you just made mention like now is the time where you're trying to collect stuff acquire stuff because it's fun because it's meaningful how like right now in this era like how are you thinking about like adding to your collection like getting car is it is it mostly like trying to get access to cards that you think are really cool and you love and aren't forty to sixty thousand dollars is it a player you love that you're going after like how are you thinking about building your collection right now it's still mostly player driven mj and kobe have always been my go tos but when mj and kobe pmgs and rubies are the prices of small homes or in some cases mansions like i there's no collecting of that at this point it's that's a huge financial decision to jump into one so for at at this moment in time those are out and what am i looking at you know some mj parallels number to twenty five number to ten from from two thousand three to o nine that's my that's one of my favorite things right now and aaron rodgers my guy like your your andrew luck for you for me is aaron rodgers i've been buying up one of ones of his and rare parallels of his in rookies and i have a pretty deep collection of his already i i did collect him in twenty sixteen abandoned that for basketball after just a short period and i'm i just feel like reinvigorated to jump back in with with player collecting jokic as well i have been adding some huge pieces of of his so it's fun let's talk let's talk about rodgers for a minute so yeah rodgers is an interesting subject i have talked about how obviously like being in indianapolis and watching peyton manning my whole life like i still like there's no no i've never watched another quarterback perform at the manning level that consistently and obviously i'm biased but he was pretty special now i after you know manning retired you look for other players that captivate you and i just remember like watching watching rodgers and watching what he was doing and how easy he made it look how efficient he was like how he never turned the ball over and it was like the brilliance from the manning era then now there was brilliance in the rodgers era and then you get into cards and you study the landscape and you realize like why why isn't why aren't more people onto aaron rodgers is it like a personality thing like what what is it about this guy then you look at his rookie year and you're like yeah maybe not the best rookie year for cards but like rookie year doesn't always matter like i'm interested to know as i know you're a rogers guy and you collect his stuff like what's going on with the rogers market like is the interest there like is it something is it not there like what are you seeing okay so this is for me collecting aaron rodgers i'm here in wisconsin watched him like crazy drafted him in all the fantasy football leagues loved the guy i got to meet him when i was younger it's it's a collect it's a collector mindset first and i love that it's pure mhmm but what am i seeing that your audience might wanna know about is i am seeing like really serious people stashing aaron rodgers cards i'm not gonna name them but like i'm seeing the right people that i've you know i i look up to and respect buying his stuff that's that's enough for me to wanna jump in and his price delta to mahomes and even bigger to brady is is just crazy aaron rodgers pissed off half the country during covid so yeah knock off whatever percentage of buyers out there if if they don't like him for me like what what you mentioned the guy never turned the ball over it's just so smooth everything about him on the field he was just that guy four interceptions on a season couple time you know it's like amazing coming from like brett favre as a kid to him was a totally two two alzheimer's but a completely different scenario favre was throwing a game game ending interception like every game it felt like yeah we we share in that favre rogers and i had manning to luck i'd i would just wish luck would have played a little bit longer but beggars can't be choosers i wanna get back into kinda the the deal making you you know everyone sees the posts like sees the crazy deals you're making but like they don't necessarily understand all of the work that goes on in the background like what are those things that maybe people don't see or hear from you but like is actual work and takes up time and takes up reps and sets from you like what are those things that you have to undertake and undergo in order to get these big deals over the line sure what i have jumped into in the last couple years each year escalating it is travel i don't you know a lot of the high profile collectors in instagram pages that i follow i don't see them at a lot of the shows but i'm i'm going to as many shows as we can do i'm probably probably gonna do fifteen to twenty this year which is you know you're hopping on an airplane you're going somewhere it's i got other responsibilities at home so it it does take a lot to to do this and the more i travel the better things are happening because it might not it doesn't necessarily have to happen at the host city but i i'm talking to someone i make a deal with someone and there is a dividend later on and since i'm just doing my high end in rare unique pieces at a show and i'm not just flipping and and running inventory like a lot of dealers i do get to meet certain people that are in the same mindset of me of of what they're collecting so i i do get to meet and and then later on do business with other people that a regular dealer might not so that that has been a huge thing for me i mean in twenty twenty two twenty three like we didn't travel at all and now it's it's sometimes twice a month hopping on a plane going somewhere and i couldn't be happier though how important is that obviously you're probably tracking and measuring like the cards you sell or the cards you buy when you get on a plane and go to a show but you alluded to like you you're getting insight you're getting information i don't think a lot of dealers necessarily i don't hear a lot of dealers talk about that where it's like if they didn't sell the amount of cards they want the show was a failure but they're not thinking about like the information that they received at the show that then could lead to something outside of the show like how important is like being in market to gathering information that then can snowball into your next big deal sure it's it's very important it's we call it the butterfly effect when we do the shows of like okay that wasn't the greatest show but you know it this happened and then later on this happened and we like i have a small crew and so we talk about it a lot like how great this is i had a i had a show in pittsburgh earlier this year and pittsburgh it was a first time show for them nfl draft weekend it wasn't crazy but it it was solid but that's how what you expect with a first time show and at the show a friend of mine brought a jordan jambalaya to my booth i got the deal done and i paid like thirty percent over accounts which i the i i just five months had gone by since when it sold and i was like this card's undervalued even at the old comp i feel great about it well one of the one of the flipper kids you know these young guys watched the whole deal calls me three days later and he says i found another jordan jambalaya would you like it at fifty thousand you you paid for the other and he's happy because it's thirty percent above comp and i knew that that card was trending right into the hundred k range so it's just the more i do these shows it just feels like the more opportunity comes to me in many different forms so sometimes i would imagine like the opportunity might be somebody actually i'm i'm curious about how you manage and handle this like being known as someone who's able to unearth these grails and have your tentacles in a lot of different places how often does someone come up to you and say hey grant i'm looking for this card is there any way you can help me find it like i'll make sure it's worth your while like how much does that happen and how often do you like take that on as like something that is worth your time to go out and find those cards for those individuals sure so without sounding lazy or anything i have done this for a long time where every lead i got like that was ran through and gone through now if if i've worked with someone for considerable period and we've done a lot yeah let's go let's let's find your card and i i do that every day but if someone just randomly hits me off of it i'm looking for this card please help me unless it's in inventory like it's it's it's not something i i can alter my day or or you know start rifling through with exceptions of course if if someone's gonna say i have this to trade and they they send over something that i need then yeah let's pursue it but i've done brett i've done so much of of the search and finding specific pieces that that nowadays if someone says i'm looking for a thousand dollar card of you know mike piazza help me find it it's like okay i unless i know exactly where it's at i'm probably gonna just keep keep going about my business but there there's guys that i've i've worked with for years that then that search like we send the search party out how how interested are other people in the dealer sphere how interested are they in sourcing you for understanding on how you go about your business and how like will how open are you to those individuals i would have to imagine like in order for you to even like have a conversation with someone about how you you go about your business there has to be like a relationship and trust established i just imagine like people see you on reels or in videos or see your pickup and they they want access to you and they wanna know like exactly like how you're able to do this like maybe talk to me about like how often that happens and like how do you go about like managing those requests and those that sort of information well yeah it's it's been surreal this whole this whole journey in the now now i've had a lot of recent interviews and and reels and all that done at shows and the more i travel the more i pop up on reels and yeah people are recognizing me it's kind of cool but i'm also i'm also the type of person that just wants to like day one at the national i wore a a little disguise and i you know so i literally walked the whole floor no one recognized me but i was just wearing i was just wearing glasses and a hat it was it was very very fun for me so when when they it it's been interesting i've had i've had it happen where people really wanna work with me really wanna do a deal with me and then post it to their reels and there's also like sometimes an intimidation factor too where they're they're a little bit like okay dealing with someone who's been doing this for a while and they they can lock up a little bit tighten up a little bit but overall it's it's been it's been really really positive so when i it's been absolutely humbling to have some of the nice things that people tell me or you know about what i do it's rewarding i feel like you're you have to be a very curious person and ask a lot of questions to get into the position that you're in do you are there people who have been doing this doing what you're doing or doing something similar for a while in this space that you look to for i don't know like inspiration or just to like trade notes like do you have a network of people outside of your team and yourself that you kind of look to as an example of like this person's doing business the way that like i aspire to do business so i'm gonna try to gather information or you just kind of hunkered down in your silo i i i go through stretches where i feel like it's a one man band here where it's just me and but when i truly need some help and sometimes i i will look i will ask someone that i know is is usually long on cards and very positive about where we're all going and and i i wanna hear their opinion i then i'll listen to someone who is in this hobby but also has real world that's that's their job you know something in the real world and and i wanna hear their opinion because they have three kids and they you know you you i i do have a few people that i've known for many years that i i rely on yeah that's awesome i'm gonna get into some acquisition stories so i feel like anytime i talk with you it's like i need to hear some stories about cool cards and things you picked up maybe let's start with like a deal that took you the longest to complete like when you think about like trudging along all the exchanges maybe travel and just something that just took forever but finally closed like what's what's a deal that comes to mind well i've talked i've definitely talked on this one before longest start to finish was five and a half to six years on the mj platinum one of one masterpiece the first ever mj masterpiece that that deal i first reached out in twenty eighteen and i know in late twenty three i got it done so but what was interesting with that deal was i never thought it was gonna get done but we just we just kept exchanging emails about family and sometimes about cards and and it was just like a every three to four month thing where we'd communicate he was off the grid completely and at one point he did offer up a card and thankfully it was an awesome card but it could have been anything and i would have bought it because i wanted to show that i am someone reliable and trustworthy to to buy from you like you don't have to you know i'd like to you know meet face to face and and and get that relationship solidified with a deal but yeah that that was five and a half years what what year jordan was that the ninety seven ultra platinum medallion one of one masterpiece it sold like six months ago in heritage for two million plus that's insane alright let's talk about the d a deal that maybe required the most creativity from you like can you think about something you had to do whether it was trade cash like get creative like what's something that comes to mind i had a pretty crazy one it was last year i had acquired a bgs eight mj red pmg from a collector who had it since around two thousand ten this guy had no intention of moving that red pmg and for it took forever it took forever to get that thing but and i and i put out so many different scenarios and i kept i kept thinking you know he wants game used not he wanted game used cards mj but he also loves nineties inserts so i was packaging different auto jordans with different nineties grails nothing was working and it it felt it felt like i think a year went into it and a friend of mine wanted the pmg eventually the the red that this this guy owned and he said listen if you get that red i will give you he sends me a spreadsheet there's three hundred michael jordan psa ten cards on it and from from monsters to small ones to pop ones to pop hundreds but there was three hundred psa ten mjs on there plus some other high end trade mj exquisite pieces and and it it was like okay that's that's a big win at the time those things have gone crazy since but i was then i was able to go back to the guy with the red and i offered him my red altered pmg jordan plus a bunch of other things and it finally broke the deal open and the guy was able to keep a red mj pmg and then and then get a ton of like really awesome mj cards with it and it just it it at that point it made sense i literally said to him if i'm on your end of the deal i am taking this every time and it it so then then i got to go to work on three hundred psa ten mjs plus other high end pieces involved and that's the pmg red has gone at that time worth five hundred k or whatever to now one point five million yeah so like it feels like all my work that i went for was in vain but i'm you know if if it didn't if it didn't play out that way what i did was very beneficial and and it kept me going and i just always am looking for ways to keep moving i wanted to i would as you're you brought up the the red pmg jordan i i would be remiss to not ask you about it eclipsing the one million dollar mark like what what is your like how do you think about that card now that has reached a million like you are someone who plays in this space a lot you have a deep understanding of this category the people who are buying these cards these cards like now that that card which is like very iconic and i don't use i try never to throw the word iconic around when we're talking about cards because people use it too much but i think it's safe to say like that card is iconic but there's a lot of copies but there's also a lot of demand for that card so like how do you think about that card now that it's a million dollar card like is that sustainable well right now it looks very sustainable in the market we're in apparently there are people out there just waiting on the opportunity to be able to get one at that level i i yeah i know it's crazy it is crazy to me it is iconic and they are easily the most beautiful like or one of you know easily the most one of the most beautiful cards made but i i a million dollars is is just a ton and i always look at it as what else could i get for that what type of cards i can get for that there was a an mj mike michael jordan and isaiah thomas logo man that sold on heritage recently dual logo man game used of like the greatest rivalry dual ever and it sold for eight hundred and seventy thousand that's you know sixty percent of what the mj red just did so what else could you get for for the same price is how i've looked at cars a lot and and i know that owning the best of the best usually appreciates higher faster so for me i i always will take wins and and just get similar things so i i have to follow-up by asking you now that that red is a million dollar card what what happens if a greens is surfaces well and wants to be or enter the market there is not a card over the last i don't know seven or eight years that i have heard seen collectors covet more than that card i can't imagine what that card does in the open market right now i know those cards are held close to the vest at this point they feel almost mythical in a way as all this activity is going on and those cards are just nowhere to be seen like what do you think this does to the green well traditional thought is okay the red just clipped a million the green's gotta be worth x equals this and y equals this right i don't know and i the you have to remember at values this high who's out there with the checkbook waiting and i don't know the answer to that but what i what i would feel comfortable saying is it's it's ten million dollars that that's not notre dame is there but like that's a and that's a really big number i think the highest selling basketball card on record right now is fourteen million around there with the duo logo man last year but you know what card is what i i think would actually blow them blow that out of the water is like that curry chrome super fracture rook oh yeah oh yeah at this point after all the conversation about it and the mystery about it and it's curry it's curry and it's unseen and which which i trust me i'd rather have a green jordan but i think if if it was just money like that curry actually does a higher number but we're gonna we're about to see cooper flag uh-huh for what five million dollars fanatics they did not take that on auction if it's not going for five million right no and so we're in a really crazy space but i i feel like the any new money or investment money will gladly put it into new stuff at a higher level versus what the old stuff should be comparatively i wanna get your perspective on the unseen and the cards that don't transact regularly and the cards that almost have a mystery around them like how do you as a buyer and as a seller how do you think about that especially when you have access to it like you find a card and you look at it and you're like it has all the elements and then you understand it has like little to no sales history like how much value do you put in that as someone taking on that card yeah if it has the right elements of of its look its the player being collectible or the set being collectible it's almost like go time get the card buy it and figure it out later that's how i've always looked at it so if you do have those opportunities like you know try try to grab those you'll be wrong sometimes who cares yeah you'll you'll be right more often than not and that's that's investing in one zero one right so if if i if i do see those types of pieces i'm jumping in how about an andrew luck superfractor like four months ago there we go what year was it twenty fifteen i think it was a mini it's a mini though oh the minis okay but it's still cool because super factor is like any super factor you you wanna grab it if it's a decent price yeah you you know what you if if i was gonna make a request to you grant i would say can you can you help me find the twenty twelve prism finite non auto andrew luck you gotta think about this man you have this first year product that comes out andrew luck is the chase and this card is nowhere to be seen it's not no pop reports how can this would never happen in this era no god no i didn't know this was not in a pop report that's fascinating auto is but non auto the non auto is what you want yeah i i have the kirk cousins non auto that's a nice card yeah i i was really happy to grab that it popped in auction numerous times and i i grabbed it the last time it ran if you know if i found that card i'd be i'd be reaching out to well you paul doesn't collect andrew luck anymore does he i that he he he's the one who sold me my prism gold at the national that i i still have and yeah man you it's that's the best it's the best part about collecting it's like i could never sell these cards because whatever i put them up for an auction they they would never that the money i'd rather have the cards and that that to me that's when you know like you're collecting something that's right for you yeah and that's how i feel with the aaron rodgers collection going right now and where it's like why would i ever sell that i've got the tipping point happening happening with so many of my basketball cards mhmm of saying okay it's time for it to go and the cards that i love and that i dreamed of having and that i didn't wanna sell but the tipping point hits and you go this is almost foolish not to sell we've seen the market go down and i don't think it's i actually don't think it's gonna happen right now or in in the immediate future but you just you have to be smart and you can't time the market perfect on everything but it feels so good like you said to collect things like that where it's not worth it to sell it and and you just get to enjoy it what are the what are those signals to you is it the price you got into a card now has far surpassed what the market value is and that's a trigger for you to say i love this card but it's the the demand is too high in this moment so i need to move it so i can get into my next deal like yeah or is it something different what what is that signal for you it's it's usually for me seeing what else can be bought with that money and and just seeing what that all would look like compared to the one card and saying i would never not want the pile of new inventory mhmm so thankfully i get a lot of opportunity or i you know i know where certain cards are where i'm like i could do this really quick and then immediately with half the money spend it like tomorrow and have e like similar type cards so i feel good about getting rid of a kobe bryant here because i got this kobe over here that's really similar to that but it's worth ten percent like it there's maybe thirty more copies of that card and it it it when i see that i can really get some new inventory that's just as cool if not cooler that's a really easy decision that's awesome we're almost up on time but i wanna ask you this before we leave this conversation and this is the part where it's like grand offers wisdom to the other individuals who are doing what you're doing similar adjacent to what you're doing or want to be doing kind of what you're doing and i wanna caveat this by saying like you you have been doing this for a long time like this is not something that happened overnight you've been in cards for a long time you see the ups and the downs but like individuals right now that like are opening up their phones or seeing the deal making videos of like kyle kravitz or roth and they're like this is really cool i wanna be like them i wanna do what they're doing like what advice do you have for those aspiring entrepreneurs in this space there's more money than ever there's more demand than ever but there's more competition like if someone wanted to leave their job they've had a little success doing cards on the the side like what's your advice to them sure i wrote down a quote for this and yeah you can have everything in life you want if you help enough other people get what they want by zig ziglar that's a that is i stumbled upon it on just by how i was working with trading the more people like and i'm not talking like a dealer that's just gonna take your inventory and sell it i'm telling people that go quid pro quo with you that give back when when they go win an auction they need to sell some stuff when you help people find a lot of cards that they need you have the relationship and you you get an opportunity to buy inventory from them or trade with them and you don't wanna just be selling to repackers you don't wanna just be selling to a big dealer or a big personality online that is only flipping you need to work with people that have great big inventories that will trade back with you so you're not gonna they're they're not people like this aren't growing on trees they're not everywhere like flippers you're gonna have to like find who those people are they're but you can they're they're they're on instagram and eventually you find the right pieces you'll get connected with others that you really can people have big inventories out there that just sit and they go okay i'm tired of that card so my that would be my recommendation obviously there's a lot of kids out there young guys that are are going out and making money they're making real money by running up the tables or running online and doing sales and and that's fine but i don't think we'll see a lot of them if the market goes down and they won't be having as much fun but guys like me when the market goes down it everything's fine it's you're you're getting more buying opportunities and and you're and i did i did great during twenty three twenty four my recommendation is focus on the rare and focus on working with people who have way more huge collections and and finding them what they need because they'll eventually reciprocate ton of wisdom shared in this episode always fun to talk with you grant you can find him at waldorf stories on instagram or probably the next big card show you will be attending grant always enjoy our chats really appreciate the time thank you brett you're the man appreciate it