Welcome back to the staging area with my good friends at dcsports87. This is gonna be a fun episode. We're catching Tory. We're recording this a little early behind the scenes. Tory is going to be in the mix here in for the Super Bowl festivities.

We're gonna get more into that. We're gonna talk about a big tiger sale through dcsports87. But without further ado, Tory, I know you got a lot going on right now. You're about ready to jet set. You're trying to run and manage a business.

The hobby is putting up record prices on sales. I'm imagining dcsports87 is being impacted by all of that demand. How are you staying sane right now? You doing alright? Yeah.

Sane sane enough. You know, that's we we never go for sane. You you know, you gotta have realistic expectations. So I'm just targeting sane enough. And, and, yeah, that that I'm achieving ish.

So, yeah, very excited for the Super Bowl stuff with eBay out there this week in California. Not excited about flying coast to coast, but, you know, that's the the cost of doing business sometimes. But, but, yeah, it'd be a super cool show out there. Excited to talk about this, this Tiger auction. And, yeah, I mean, January was nuts for us.

So, yeah, huge month to start the year. So we've hit the ground running and not slowed down. So I I have seen the the record breaking number put out by CardLadder, and, I'm I'm just curious. Like, I'm I'm pulling it up right now just to make sure I get it accurate. So there was nearly now it's at four hundred and forty five million dollars in online sales in January, which is an all time high by a lot.

Did did you just going down to dcsports87 being, you know, one of the largest, if not the largest seller on eBay, do do you feel that impact of that number based on what just happened in January? Yeah. A 100%. Yeah. I mean, we were way, way up.

You know? And I know we talked about this a little bit in the fourth quarter how usually for us, we kinda get near the holidays and Thanksgiving and Christmas. You see a little lag. Everybody kinda steps away. And this year, it was just firing on all cylinders.

And, obviously, that was, you know, a lot of catalysts in there of Hops Chrome coming out, and we just had Bowman draft come out and all these things. But, yeah. I mean, we did 14,000,000 on eBay just in January. So for us, that is a that is a big, big month. And our growth has just, you know, not slowed down.

I mean, we did 54,000,000 in 2024. We did 92,000,000 last year, and now here we are, you know, 14,000,000 in just one month. So, you know, that puts us at a run rate of pushing one seventy this year, and, it's it's everything for us. You know? We're seeing record setting volume coming in the door.

But also for us, we're seeing way more high end and a lot of just huge sales that we haven't in the past. So our, you know, our average sale is up significantly over where we normally have been, and we just had a auction closed last night that another another massive Cooper flag card. I know he's kind of been all over the place lately. It was one of the mid you know, Midnight came out recently. Midnight RPA to five, did $27,600 and got paid about 2 and a half minutes after the auction closed.

So, just crazy, the numbers across the hobby. You know, the the numbers the high end singles are hitting, the number of cars changing hands, it's just like things are on fire everywhere. So, you know, and then stay bullish on it and enjoy riding the bull right now, I guess. That's just kinda where we're all at. I have to ask you this because this card is on my watch list.

Not that I'm bidding. It's more out of curiosity, but I I've noticed that it's selling through dcsports87, and it'll end the night this recording happens. So the sale will already be finalized by the time this episode goes live. But I wanna get your prediction on this Shadir Sanders gold prism. It is dude, this card is at a 136 watchers, 30 bids, three 235.

It ends in nine hours from this recording. It's the the market is hot. Shneur Sanders, say what you want. Cultural impact is crazy. What like, what do you think this card does?

I mean, especially now that he's a pro bowler. Right? Like, we gotta we gotta we gotta hop on that hype train now. So it's gonna do more than I thought it was gonna do because if you would've asked me when we first got it in, I probably would've floated a number, like, 2,500 to $3. So as as I have been ready to openly admit in the past, I was very wrong.

And now I don't know because, you know, there's been so many of these cards coming through that are higher end, and I'll get one number in mind. It'll get there and pass it and just keep going. And, you know, the the items are getting paid. We're seeing a lot of high end buyers coming back and back, you know, time and time again for these cards. And, you know, there's something to be said for this one where I think this was the first one.

I saw it at eBay, so it's gonna be one of those for sales. Whether it's a PC thing or an investment, somebody wants to own one. There's only been so many. And, you know, Prism is kind of the gold standard. We'll obviously see what happens as the the future, you know, gets tops into licensing and everything.

But, yeah, I mean, I feel like Shudoor is just such a polarizing guy. She's got the people that seem to love him and hate him, and that goes to your, you know, cultural comment there. I think everybody's got an opinion. But, hey. He's a quarterback on a Prism card.

It's gold, and he's in the news. So that's kind of all it takes sometimes. That's right. Before we get into the kind of the main substance, you said something just regarding the growth that you've seen this month, and you kinda did a nice flyby of year over year. Going into January, I'm imagining you thought, like, if it's gonna be a big month.

I don't know if it you thought it would be as big as it is, but, like, are you having to think about based on the growth and the volume and everything that's coming in, are you thinking about maybe different decisions with the business that you might not have been thinking about going into January, or is it still, like, we're we we've got it set up. We're gonna ride the wave, like, different areas of investment, different ideas. Like, is there anything that's Yeah. Top of mind for you? Honestly, for us, it's hiring right now.

Like, you know, we've we've kinda got our processes are what they are, and our services are what they are, and they're all it's been great. You know, a lot of great, results for customers, and we knew the volume was coming. So it's really just we've kinda got the machine build, and now it's just keep adding resources to keep running it. So, yeah, it's crazy. And and it's interesting how it's kind of been all over the place.

You know? Obviously, with that kind of year over year change, like, everything is way up. But, like, even things like TCG, I know we usually talk heavily about sports, but, like, man, the Pokemon one piece Yu Gi Oh world, like, last January, we did just under we did $248,000 in in total sales in TCG. We did 1,700,000.0 in January. So, I mean, we're talking, you know, north of a six, seven x year over year, and it's just it's just insane.

And it's both just like I mentioned with sports, it's a combination of the volume of cards we have coming in the door and just what those high end pieces are are realizing from a sales standpoint on eBay. So, you know, we've we've felt a lot better with some of the stuff eBay's added with autopay and, you know, obviously, we're offering and trying to lead a little bit more to that premium higher end of the market. We've talked about our rates. We changed that where all these cards were paying out, you know, 96, 97%. So, we're getting a lot more of it than we used to because we're paying out a lot more aggressively.

But, yeah, it's just it's just wild. So, no, the big things for us are continue. There's a lot of technology we're working on right now for later this year, but that stuff's kind of a more, you know, slow development over time. There's lot of testing. There's a lot of POC and r and d and all that stuff going into it.

But, yeah, just getting enough people on board to keep, keep things running here because we you know, you can have growth, and that's great. But we can't have growth and then make people wait longer for cars their to be listed because then that's kind of shoot yourself in the foot. And so for us, it's all about being sure we don't end up there right now. I'm actually glad you brought up the TCG of it all. And I have noticed just based on my digging into the data, the volume and the price of, like, one piece sales, for instance.

This time last year, was just Pokemon. Now one piece is entering the mix. I'm curious. Like, your brand is dcsports87. So if people see the brand name, they think of sports cards.

But you just said, like, you know, we we sold a million doll north of a million dollars of this stuff. Like, have p have have people always been sending you TCG cards? Is it just like this environment is so crazy? People know you and have TCG cards, so they're they're confident in what you're doing. Like, I'm interested in, like, how you think about that because I I think about DC Sports a seven.

Think of sports cards. I don't think of TCG. Like, how are you seeing that all play out as that that market is growing? Yeah. It's it's definitely grown, and you're right.

You hear our name, and it sounds sports focused. And I think it's just over time as the brand has grown, people are more, understanding or kind of assume that we do everything, but it's because you have so many buyers who see us selling those big TCG cards all the time. People who see our name and, you know, our logo on an eBay listing and things like that. So that's helped a lot, but, it used to be, you know, people would reach out to us in the early days and say, do you guys sell raw and graded? Or will you guys sell lots?

Or will sell wax? And we've kinda gotten over that, and now it's, the same thing with TCG. So, we've also put a lot more time into trying to work with those people. So as we've talked to, key customers of ours now, it's networking through them to reach TCG dealers and TCG collectors and people out there flipping. We are doing a a partnership with AJ Dillon, the eagle's running back who has a page called Dillon's deals on Instagram, which is great, and TikTok and everywhere else.

He's gotten really heavy into the space, and so he's helping us put on a lot of content just about his experience working with us and promoting flips and how he kinda navigates that market. And so just like we did last year and just trying to show face more, it's just doing that but in a more targeted way towards TCG because there may be people out there who don't know we do that, and, obviously, we do quite a bit of it. So, yeah, just leaning into it big time right now. That's awesome. We're gonna talk about a Tiger Woods card.

But one final in your Super Bowl prep, you're what like, when you're flying coast to coast, do you have a strategy? Like, are you taking a nap? Are you trying to fake it and be like, I'm on this time zone now? Like, how are you prepping for this? Oh, I'm a plane sleeper.

So I I can sleep anywhere. I mean, you tell me right now you want me to sleep in the next five minutes. I could probably just take a nap at my desk here. I I've got all the energy. I'm good.

But, like, if I'm ready to, I can. So I frequently am not awake for planes taking off. That's just the way I kinda go. I get on, put the the AirPods in, turn on podcast or music or something, and I'm out. Granted a flight this far.

I'm gonna wake up halfway through, you know, have snack, probably check email, maybe work a little on the plane. So, yeah, long flights. I'm like a half nap, half work strategy. Dude, I'm I'm with you. I'm not sure I've been awake for a takeoff in the last ten decades.

Yeah. Right. Right. Alright. Let's talk about this card.

This is a there's so much I'm so excited to talk about it because there's so much to talk about. It is the twenty twenty six upper deck Tiger Woods Tiger Party exclusive. Yep. It's rare that we can't just say the title of a card and everybody knows what we mean. It's like, this requires, like, a whole backstory.

Like, there's so much narrative to go along with. So so for those who don't know and I didn't know about this until I saw, I think, a post on, like, Yahoo Sports or Collecting on SI or one of those kind of, like, mainstream channels. So Tiger had the artist Jim Lee, who I know does a lot. I think it's, like, DC Comics art and stuff. He worked with Upper Deck, and they he did the art of Tiger.

It's kind of a throwback to one of his early days Upper Deck cards. They produced 415 of them. Tiger signed all of them, and then, you know, they're certified by upper deck. And then there was a party that was for, I guess, kind of both Tiger's fiftieth birthday and the TGR Foundation, which is a, like, a charitable foundation Tiger runs. It was the thirtieth anniversary of that foundation, and all the people who were invited received one of these.

And then, like, a week after, we're sorting mail out there. We're going through mail in this, like, kind of big black box that had, like, some special writing on the outside and open it up, and there's one of them. And and so, of course, I posted on Instagram. So what else are you gonna do? Like, you wanna share those really interesting pieces that we have to sell, and that was when the floodgate opened the comments of, you know, is this unethical?

Should you not be flipping something Tiger gave you? Hey. This is kinda sleazy, and other people saying, hey. Like, it's a collectible. You do what you want with it.

And so then the card came to us. So that's for many who weren't in the know on what's going on here, that's the card we're talking about. I love the context. And I'll also like, as we're talking about the card, the autograph, it's in gold, like, pen. And Yeah.

The present like, we've talked about art cards and if they're for us or not us before. But Yep. I would say that the presentation of this card itself to me is so strong, and I think it has something to do with just Tiger took his time with these autographs. They Right. It looks clean.

I also saw this card was covered by, Sports Illustrated collectibles. And, like, to me, this is something because of the questions you got. There's a lot that we can talk about. And I did we have even mentioned the sale price yet? We we have not, which was $27,600 and paid because I feel like I have to say that all the big sales just to be sure everybody knows.

But yeah. So $27. Not not cheap. So I let's maybe start here. So first of all, I also feel, like, obligated to recognize this.

My my daughter, is five weeks old, shares a birthday with Tiger Woods. I wish we could have, like, maybe gotten an invitation because of that, and, I would have gotten these cards. I could I could use 27 k for something that In lieu in lieu of invitation, if anybody didn't show up and Tiger's got a few extras sitting around, I'm sure you would take one of those, and you'd be okay with it. That's that's exactly right. So, like, I'm just thinking about this, and we know we'll get into exclusive, and upper deck has done exclusive in the past.

And whether it's, like, for employees, this is a kind of a unique scenario. But I guess what I'm interested in most and maybe, like, to me, I see this, and I'm like, man, this is a great thing for the DC sports 87 brand. But the fact that there's four and fifteen of these. Somebody got this at this party, and I can't even imagine the profile of all the types of people at this party. I'm thinking of celebrities.

I'm thinking of people who probably don't collect cards, who just maybe just threw it on their desk or whatever. But Yeah. Someone knew enough to not try to sell it themselves, but they sent it to you. Like, what is what is how does that make you feel? Yeah.

It it's great. You know? And, honestly, to your point, this is exciting for our brand because I think if you told if you, you know, kinda took everything out of this and just in a vacuum said, hey. Tiger had a party. He he made a really cool card, and I agree.

This card looks sharp. Tiger's autograph is already a great signature anyway, and he gave it out. You know, the first thought is, okay. If somebody doesn't wanna hold on to theirs, they don't care about cards or whatever, they're gonna go to, a big auction house. Right?

This is gonna be like a REA or a a Golden or a Sotheby's or something like that. And so it's really cool to us that they chose to work with us, and it's a exciting piece because we wanna be that. And and that's why we offer. Like, on this card, we paid out 97% of the sales. So they did really well on this.

And, yeah, it's exciting because, you know, you kind of, for so long, can kinda get in that rut of, like, you see the same cards all the time and those kinda, like, one of one pieces. And this kind of is that weird, like, all these different circles, and this is that little fine point in the center of, like, it's sports cards, it's art, it's pop culture. It's, like, a little bit of everything. So getting to play in that space is a lot of fun because, obviously, this card speaks for itself, but it's a kind of collectible you don't see every day, week, month, year. You know?

So it was really cool and and definitely appreciative that they chose to work with us to get this one sold. It is the first public sale. We've talked a lot about with with Shadiri, you referenced that, which the importance of the first public sale, especially of a card that like, the out of 10, I'm imagining that first sale is going to be very, very strong. This card is out of four fifteen. Now you can't just get these at packs.

They're not being they're not going through breaks. I don't it's the question is, like, when I don't know when we're gonna see the next one. I would imagine if you're holding one of these cards, maybe by now, you've you've you've heard about a 27 k sale. Maybe you haven't. But maybe talk about, like, the the first to market in this instance.

Like, what do you think that tells us, and maybe what doesn't it tell us? Yeah. And it's tricky because I think the same thing that you would say first sale or first public sale informs you of, it can sometimes be misleading with. Right? So one of the things is we all love comps.

We we love to be able to reference something, say, hey. Here's a hard data point of the value of something. And so in one way, this is cool because it's okay. One sold. It was public.

Every other shot at it. It was on eBay. It sold for $27,600. And you're gonna get half the world that says, okay. We now know these cards are worth $27.

And you get the other half that say, it was the first one. It was the first chance people had. They don't know if I have a shot at another, so people are gonna reach and overpay and be really aggressive. And, you know, that's why I think there's a lot of value often to being first to market. We say it all the time in sports cards with new releases.

Right? New releases come out. You wanna have those first sales because that card that's a $20 insert day one because we haven't seen it yet might be $3, you know, a month from now. Obviously, this is playing in a whole other stratosphere from that. But I think the rule does apply where I think this went for more than we may see future ones sell for because it was the first sale, but it does give you the only kind of guide you have to at least some idea of of value on one.

So, there's definitely a bit of a a bit of a paradox in there somewhere, but, you know, that that's how I look at it when we say, what does a first sale tell us? So these cards, I would imagine everyone got some sort of, like, packet or something, you know, pleasantries, a hell of a gift bag. This this card's in it, and the individual who sold it decided, you know what? Like, I'm gonna test this, see what I can get from it. You mentioned, like, you got some comments on, like, is this should people be doing this?

Is this something we wanna have happening? Like, my position is always in, like, this happens. Like, we give gifts. We give gifts as cards to friends and stuff. And we didn't and some when they're gifts, like, you don't ask for them, but sometimes it's just like, well, this is a gift, and I'll keep the gift, or it's maybe I'll just move move this and see if I can take the proceeds and put it into something else.

Like, when you were getting some of that sentiment and questions, like, what was going on in your head just in terms of, like, what you would do or what you wouldn't do if maybe you were in the position to be at the party and get a gift bag with this card? Yeah. And and, you know, you try to withhold judgment a bit because you don't know the person's situation. Right? There could be somebody who just hey.

They needed the cash, and they've got other things going on in their life more than they cared about a collectible. I get, you know, a lot of the comments and DMs we got were about he invited you to his party and to this foundation's event, and then he made you this really cool item. And this is a slap in the face to turn around and sell it. We got DMs and comments about, I hope Tiger kept track of the serial numbers and which guest was assigned with serial number in the print run so that you could turn the card over and see that this was numbered out of four fifteen. But if it was number 123, you know, that went to Joe Schmo from Texas, and now we know who did it.

I just don't care that much. To me, this is not all that different from if you get an in person autograph. If I go to a baseball game and Mike Trout signs a baseball for me and I choose to sell it on eBay, it's kind of the same thing. You know? A guy gave you their time and their signature, and you chose what was worth more to you.

You know? And, again, I guess if you if you knew the person, you knew the situation, and we have the full picture of it, maybe there's more to say. But, you know, I think it's if you were invited to this, you're either a friend of Tiger's. You've done something for this foundation. I feel like you, in some way, earned your spot on that invite list.

And in doing so, you earned the right to do what you want with you know, I I don't wanna call it swag or a freebie or a gift bag because it's a $27,000 card now, but, you know, I you get the point. It's like, I think that's kinda up to the owner. But it was it was just interesting how many people were just asking the you know, the first couple comments, if you look at the Instagram post, it's at tiger woods, at t g r foundation, at tiger woods. Just they're tagging them. They're trying to go full sleuth mode on this to detective, figure out who did it.

So, yeah, very, very interesting, honestly kinda entertaining to me, but, very happy for the owner. Glad they did well in the car. Glad they got paid out, and, you know, just kinda onto the next at this point, but definitely was a lot more engaging and interesting for our, you know, broader community and the hobby than your average card is. Do you do you think we see more of these come out? Probably eventually.

I I know I know others have changed hands privately. So Okay. You know, I I yeah. So at some point, I wouldn't be shocked. But when others are made available and on what marketplace and for how much, your guess is as good as mine there.

But, hey, they've got one comp to go off now. I would pay a lot of money to get Tiger's reaction when he found out. I would imagine he knows about this sale. I would hope he knows about this sale, but that to me would be a blast to get his, like, raw reaction on this. I would love to think that Tiger's just watching the DC sports 87 circles.

You know, while I know that's not true, I do agree with you. I imagine there's probably somebody in Tiger Circle somewhere that say, hey. Did you see one of the cards from the party sold? You know what? That probably was in one ear out the other, and the last he cared about it.

But I am you're right. It would be interesting to know what he thinks, you know, given everything and how it all played out. I guess before we move off of this, I know I'm thinking about when I did some research on this and realized it was a party exclusive and usually, like, I upper deck is involved in these. I think about they did the PMG set for employ employees that has, like, the Michael Phelps, Tyson, and Hogan. And, like, those command big prices, and you occasionally see them change hands.

But they were given to employees, which I imagine, like, there's probably a lot of employees, especially if they've long moved on from upper deck, might sell those cards and take the proceeds. But I think there is something highly collectible about these cards that are only while there's four fifteen, it was only given to a very small group of people and wasn't distributed in packs. Obviously, no breaks, that sort of thing. Like, what is your like, are are these exclusive cards, like, intriguing to you? Like, how do you think about cards like this?

Yeah. It's it's always just because I think we can get so caught up in the we know what everything's worth, and we know comps, and we can get into the game of just this is that card, here's what it's sold for that like I said, because this has some of that, elements of its pop culture, it's got the party story, it got given a guess, it got it just it just more interesting. It's like the more angles there are to say what's desirable about a card and what feeds into its worth and its value and are they or are they not made available. Like, it's just fun to dig into those because it just feels way less commodity like so many cards do these days, and it's way more of that kind of super unique artsy collectible piece. So, yeah, I believe that.

I wish we had stuff like this rolling through the door every day because it's just fun to look at and talk about and sparks great conversation for us just here around the office and you and I doing this. So, yeah, I wish it was an everyday thing, but, you know, that's also not not exactly reasonable. Awesome card. Glad that that gave us something definitely to talk about in this episode. Let's move over to the Super Bowl activation you all are doing and will have been done by the time this goes live.

But before before we do that, I gotta ask you, like, what what who are going with? What's your what's your Super Bowl prediction? So I think I think when we spoke last time, I think I said Rams Patriots. So maybe we both said that, and I think we were both half right. So, you know, we we kinda got there.

I I don't know. I I think the Seahawks win. I that team is just so good. And, like, as good as Drake May has looked and so many, you know, so many parts of the Patriot season has been great, it's like, I know Sam Darnold kinda maybe feels like an underwhelming name after eight years or however long it's been now, but he's playing well. You know, their running game has been phenomenal.

Their defense has been phenomenal. The team's even is usually firing. So I'm I'm going seahawks. I think for the hobby, Eileen Patriots is a better outcome. But I will say by a mile, if you just look at our submissions, people consigning, JSN and Drake May.

Like, high end in the door every day in big numbers right now. So definitely the two biggest names, I think, from the hobby. Because I think if you look at Seattle's roster, you know, with almost any team, it's the QB. I think after the season he had, JSN is clearly, like, the guy in the hobby right now for Seattle, and it's obviously Drake May for the Patriots. So not a surprise that it's those two guys, but, yeah, definitely curious to see what happens because, you know, I'm as we know, I'm baseball over football.

So when it comes to the Super Bowl, I'm first thinking about what are the hobby implications and then the actually, who wins the game is kinda secondary for me. It will be fun to, see it all shake out. I agree. Seattle's ridiculous deep roster. I something about the Patriots being back in the Super Bowl.

I'm having a hard time not picking the Patriots and crowning Drake May as the Right. The next guy. So I'll I'll take the contrarian side, and we'll we'll one of us will be right. I'll pick the Patriots. There you go.

Yeah. Right. Right. Alright. So let's talk about this activation you're doing.

What's the the nuts and bolts? Like, how did this come up? What's going on? And then we'll talk about maybe some of the items. And then, also, I wanna dig into, like, the implications of a brand like dcsports87, like and eBay being featured during a Super Bowl and, like, what this possibly could mean for just the broader hobby and just the exposure.

Yeah. For sure. So we are gonna be on Friday, and eBay's got events going on, you know, the next couple days out there in San Francisco. They've got a spot set up that is just, you know, kinda like the eBay live spot downtown San Francisco. They've got athletes appearing.

A lot of their big featured sellers are gonna be there, including us, and just events with the game. So, you know, I think what's cool about this is this is kind of where that live selling can really be cool because it's unique is it's not, hey. We're selling cards to end the day of the Super Bowl or, hey. You've got JSNs and Drake Mays. We can end them for you the day of, the day before, the day after based on what you think will happen in the game.

This is we're there. Like, on-site, there's athletes there. There's big sellers there. We can have the streams running the day before the game, you know, things like that. So, that's what's exciting about this for us is just, you know, as a brand that's growing as fast as we are, it's great to be, like, right in there in the thick of it, being able to engage with people and just kinda be in a place where, obviously, Super Bowl week is its own, you know, media just frenzy out there.

And so being able to take part of that is super exciting. So for us, Friday is when we'll be doing this. We'll be there and live pretty much all day Friday. It runs from, like, ten to six out there in California, so one to 9PM eastern. Really from, like, five to 8PM eastern, two to five PM out there on the West Coast is when our main selling will be in.

So we've got a 120 just really cool, unique, some some mid end, mostly higher end NFL singles we're gonna be selling. And just it'll be myself, Mike Gio from Sports Cars Nonsense, and then we will have an athlete with us to be named later. So it'll be a really cool experience, and we'll be, you know, featured on eBay live. We've got a lot of exciting items going. So, yeah, it's just kind of a cool way that with the live selling experience, you can just throw, like, all that into one big event, and you just have way more you can do from, like, an activation standpoint than you can with just, hey.

We're running auctions, you know, Tuesday to Sunday night. Go check them out. How does how does the kinda inventory that's being sold, through this event, how does that all get determined? Like, what is the duration process look like? Yeah.

So it's it's super selective. You know, we get those questions a lot. We haven't know, you obviously, we're still in kind of our first six months or so here of really getting in with eBay live. EBay is putting a ton of resources into growing that, selling platform for them, and that's something we are gonna stay on board with. So to date, it's really been going to some of our large customers, people we've got really good relationships with that we know have the right kind of inventory.

And, obviously, for this, it's Super Bowl week, so it goes without saying. We're going NFL here. It's not the time for baseball quite yet. We'll get there. And so, yeah, just reaching out to those people and saying, hey.

Here we here's the kind of value ranges we wanna cover. We obviously wanna have a few of those kind of feature items, so we can talk about those in a minute. We've got, like, a couple really exciting ones because that's kind of what you want, I think, is if you're gonna do a lot of promoting and marketing, you want something that's, like, interesting. You want cards with a story or cards that you don't see auctioned every day. So, that's cool.

And then just the experience of it, we're doing everything starting at a dollar. So this is not, hey. There's a high end card, and it's 50,000 or best offer, and I gotta offer high if I wanna get it. It's we've got a 2,017 NT Mahomes RPA, and we're starting it live auction at a dollar, one minute auction, extended bidding if people keep bidding. But, like, you know, let's let's see what the market says it's worth right now.

And we've got a handful of those kinda key items and then a lot of just unique pieces you don't see every day. So I don't think any exciting cults, really, you know, to speak of for you, but, you know Lomer. Couple couple Peyton Manning autos. So there you go. There's there's something.

So how do you, I guess, this is what I wanna know. I wanna hear those, like, key pieces, but I'm thinking about, like, if I'm the owner of the cards and I'm going through this process to be featured in an auction like this and it's a little bit different with eBay live and we're starting every card at a dollar, like, I would imagine, like, there's some insurance there where it's like, they're eBay and everybody in responsible for this is putting their best foot forward in terms of promotion or making sure eyeballs get on this. Like, what have you seen in terms of, like, the machine promoting something like this, and what does that promotion look like to make sure, like, it has as most as much exposure as possible. Yeah. And, you know, when we did our last few lives, it really did go well, because you do get that.

Right? Like, the last time we did a live event, we did baseball, football, and basketball. We kinda broke them into different events. But, you know, eBay featured us on their homepage. So if you open the eBay app, there we were.

Like, you didn't have to click anywhere to find us. We were right there. If you got on your computer and went to ebay.com, we were right there on the homepage. Obviously, a store of our size, we have about a 150,000 store followers right now. So we send a newsletter out to all those people.

Hey. Here's some of the items coming up in the auction. Here's some images of them. Here's links. All these items are already live on eBay.

You just can't bid on them yet, so everybody can see them. So, you know, we've got a 150,000 people getting an email from us. Here's some items coming up. You know? Let's save this event so they can save the link and be notified.

Like I said, we've got the items already live. What we do is we put the items live ten days in advance of the live selling event. So they're on eBay. You if you search for any of them, you're gonna find them. If you're just shopping for paid manning cards, you're gonna find the autos we have in the live event.

You can choose to watch the item, and then when it comes up for it to sell during the live event, you get notified. So some of these cards have six, seven, 800 watchers already. So there's all those eyes who are gonna get ping notifications. And so it it's really a mix of what eBay has to offer from just being the biggest marketplace out there and what we have to offer from being a brand with so, so many followers that when you pair eBay's promotion and kinda amplification strategies with us doing all these little things like having the listings live early and emailing our followers, you just get so many eyes. You know, our last live, we were running with, you know, four, five, 600 people in the room at a time bidding, and this one's gonna be bigger because we've just done more of it.

It's more heavily promoted. It's at the Super Bowl. And so, to your point, yeah, if if you're the owner, one could say, hey. I've got a little anxiety with taking a $40,000 card, starting at a buck, giving it sixty seconds, and watching those seconds tick away. But between everything we're doing with eBay and and that partnership with their live team has just been phenomenal so far for us, we just feel incredibly confident in it.

And we've got, you know, two, three live events under our belt already where we've seen the results be really good, and so there's not that stress for us. It's it's we know the eyes are there. We know collectors are out there. And at the end of the day, if you wanna buy some of these cards, like, you've got safe searches. You've already seen them.

You know they're coming up. Our event tells you when they're live, and so the people will be there. That's that's not a concern for us. Live is undeniably a push across the entire industry focusing in on eBay. You can't go anywhere on the eBay app without live being put front and center of The National.

It was a huge part of eBay's activation. We've talked about live on here. This is obviously a trend that's not slowing down. It's we're con continue to push forward on it. I'm a brand like dcsports87 who's done traditional eBay auctions throughout your life cycle as a business.

That's how you've done business. How like, you're now stepping into this new lane because of the tools and the technology and the trends, and you see the opportunity, I guess, for collectors and I would imagine there are collectors, adopting live selling, and they probably have a bunch of different apps. But there's probably a lot of collectors that, you know, I don't know, don't wanna put ages out there, but older, we'll say, that might not be in tune with this or might not want to do that. Like, I'm curious, like, as you think about just DC Sports 87 and just, like, the future of selling cards and consignment, how do you think about the layering in of the live component? And do you think over time, there'll be more adoption and it's just now still maybe a little early?

Yeah. Yeah. And it's a little interesting for us because, like, with a lot of things, there's a little wrinkle for our business because we don't own the cards. Right? And it's a little different if if this is just you and you've got cards building up on your desk because I wanna go sell them.

It's cool that you don't have to wait for a five day auction to run. And this is true for our customers too. You don't have to wait for a seven day auction to run. It's yeah. I know it's running on this day.

So, like, we can time this right in line with Super Bowl, and there's a lot of value there. But because they're not our cards, we don't have the freedom to just go make those decisions on our customer's behalf. And so for us, the real, like, heavy lean into live selling at least to start this year is kind of these, like, flagpole events and these things that are really make a lot of sense. And so we're going, you know, heavy with high end NFL cars at the Super Bowl now. In a month or two, we'll probably have a live event that's a big baseball kickoff.

Do a couple 100, you know, mid end baseball cards heavy on Bohman Chrome prospects and, you know, things you don't see all the time. And so for us, it's just about how do we leverage that extra audience and the way that there's so much investment in live across all platforms, not just eBay, but eBay is going heavy heavy on it. And that really has brought us results. So it's kind of aligning the extra eyes with that, but some of it is also testing your way into it. You know?

Like you said, we know we can throw five day auctions up on traditional eBay core auctions all the time. We're never gonna stop doing that. But a lot of people like the live experience because they like knowing it'll start and end the same day. I can watch the entire sale take place. It gets paid right away.

Like, there's just something to that. And so, for us, it's gonna be a lot about looking at the calendar and saying, okay. NFL draft, opening weekend of the baseball season, the Super Bowl, the NBA finals, March madness, and how do we cake? Okay. Gonna do, like, a Bowman U heavy live event for March Madness, and then we're gonna do NFL for the Super Bowl.

And I think just kind of that's where you get that benefit because you've got people already tuning in and kind of browsing social media and different selling marketplaces for things related to those events, and you can capture a bit of audience that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. And that's really our strategy for now. And then as we continue to evolve over time, it'll be okay. How do we work that into a regular cadence where it's something happening every week or every month or every other week? But right now, it's just going heavy heavy on these kinda key events for us.

Alright. What are some of the heavy hitters that are going? Like, what are the cards you wanna talk about? So yeah. So the Mahomes will be cool.

2,017 Mahomes NTRPA. I should have brought like, have the cards sitting here with me to show them off. We're pop them on screen, but that's okay. We have a Tom Brady shield from 2002 Skybox EX, which is, like, one of the first shields. I believe it's the first set that ever had a Brady shield in it.

When you, you know, you go back to o two, it's like, okay. I mean, we were kinda just re we didn't even know what Brady was yet at the time. So that'll be super exciting. And then we've got a lot of, like, a Josh Allen PSA 09/2018 NTRPA with, like, a full buffalo on the logo. It's a really cool looking card.

We've got a Christian McCaffrey gold vinyl 2017 Prism Rookie Auto. It's a nine five ten. There's a lot of just cool, cool, really unique pieces. One of the ones we are most interested about coming into this event was we have a 2024 eminence. It's a quad rookie NFL shield.

Caleb Williams, Drake May, Jaden Daniels, Boenix. So, you know, when we were kinda planning the inventory for this, it was like, alright. Just tell me at least one of those guys is gonna make it because we have three of them in the playoffs. Right? And so, of course, I was, you know, salivating at the idea of, like, a Caleb Williams versus Drake May Super Bowl, and we've got a quad shield with both of them on it.

So that card will be super fun to run. Very curious to see what that does. So, yeah, those and then just all the rest is everything from, you know, big rookies from the last few years to one on ones you you rarely see. We've got, like, a Joe Nemeth printing plate, like, tag patch auto from NT. And so it it's a little bit everything.

It it really is. But, yeah, some of the exciting ones will be the Brady Shield, the Holmes and Josh Allen, and we have Lamar Jackson two and t r p a, and then that that Quad Shield. I just you know, don't know. It's like that's the fun thing about live too is you get a bunch of people in the room who are interested in this card and wanna go after it, and it's kinda hard to comp something like that. And Drake May is there in the Super Bowl, and so, just getting caught up, and it's gonna be gonna be super fun.

But, yeah, those are some of the ones that are the, you know, 500 plus watchers already and got a lot of people asking about and, will be really fun. We'll be doing those from, we have an hour on the main stage with an athlete at the eBay live event, then and we'll have, like, an hour on each end of it that we'll be doing additional singles just kinda from our branded seller booth there at the event. But, yeah, really fun to see how they do. I'm excited to see some of those results, some monster cards based on what you just described. Are you are you excited?

Are you happy that you got at least a few of these under your belt before you're stepping on the the main stage kind of at the Super Bowl? Yeah. I mean, that stuff doesn't bother me. Like, I you know, I I I'm not like I dislike the camera or just like talking or people make me uncomfortable. Like, the the last time we did one of these, it was funny because, you know, Mike Gio has been great.

We've been working with SCN a lot at some of these live events. He's kinda been our, like, host MC guy, and then he got, like, nasty, bad sick for the second night of it, so I had to do it. And, no. It was fine. It's, like, it's kinda cool because just they're not there with you, but, like, the chat's up, and it's kinda just you're in a room with a bunch of collectors.

We've got all the items that are gonna be available already posted. It's just people in the chat saying, hey. When are we gonna run the Drake May? When can I get the Peyton Manning up? And so it's fun.

It's it's a cool opportunity for us when things are often so transactional for us where it's people send us an email, we get back with an answer to their question, or people send in a card, then we sell it. We pay them. And so, it's fun for me. It's not stressful. I I didn't need a couple under my belt first.

Like, I'm so excited to do it again. But, obviously, getting, like, the brighter lights and the buzz of the Super Bowl means we get, yeah, we get more out of it. Our sellers get more out of it. So, yeah, very much looking forward to it. I think it'll be awesome.

I'm excited for you. I'm excited to talk about some of those results the next time we speak. And definitely, for every anyone listening, pay attention to dcsports87 events that they will be hosting in the future. Tory, I know you've got a lot to get done, before you get out of here. So glad we could get this one in the can, man, and have a great Super Bowl, run.

That should be a lot of fun. I will. No doubt. And, yeah, the just the next time we talk, it's just set up for us. We've got results from the live event.

We've got results from the Super Bowl. And most importantly, we've got pivoting into baseball season. So, yeah, plenty to talk about. I I need you to educate me. I need you to school me on who are the prospects, who should I be looking at.

If I wanna put some money in baseball, where do I go? You're gonna be my guide, Tory. Hey. There we go. We'll have, like, a full prospect MLB season preview one of these times, and we'll just nerd out of her baseball for an hour, and I will just be yeah.

I'll be loving it. Cloud9. Absolutely. Safe travels. Thanks everyone for listening.

Thanks.