we are back with another episode of the staging area with dc sports eighty seven this conversation is going to be about speed we're gonna talk about some cards some some news and updates from dc sports and kinda some information we've been reading on the tea leaves a little bit we'll dive into that tori is freshly back from vacation i am just i apologize in advance for our audience i sunday i stepped out of the house and it was like whatever is out there from grass and pollen is just destroying me right now my allergies i woke up my throat was like swollen my wife is luckily in health care she's like take some naproxen we'll we'll start doing some nasal spray so i'm playing a little injured tonight or today but without further ado tory welcome back how's it going man thank you it's going great yeah it was it was nice to be on a boat in the middle of the ocean where we were on vacation where there was less pollen unlike or after every morning i go outside and my truck window is freshly greenish yellow we've been the same way the whole family wakes up and everybody's a little congested and it's like alright lot of water little dayquil maybe an advil with lunch and you kinda get through the day but i'm i'm here to behold the stacking slabs flu game that you're about to put on for us so no excited to be back and talk yeah i feel like there's been a a lot happened so but then again these days there's all like there's no seven day period in the hobby anymore where a lot doesn't happen so yeah the a few of these just had a little closer to home when you were away and i know you were on a cruise ship my question is and this is maybe for any of us who are working professionals or just avid collectors which i would imagine everyone is and we're tied to our phones were you unplugged were you kinda plugged in did you or do you just like stash the phone like what was your protocol yeah so i'll say in the past i've worked a lot on vacation you can as a married man yourself you can imagine how much my wife loves that when i was very poor man we've taken a lot of steps to automate a lot more like of our processes and we've got an awesome team here that handled ninety nine percent of the things i used to have to do when i was out of the office so i was plugged in with the occasional text or message that i would get email i i was still looking but very little required my immediate involvement so it was great to functionally disconnect even if i was kind of watching from afar yeah and i know you know functionally disconnecting you probably still caught wind of just some rumor and news going around and i just i'll just throw the fifty six billion dollar number your way and we and i will preface this by saying tory and i know absolutely nothing but i figured you might be someone to have some perspective on some of the news that's shaken up in the or rumors or whatever we wanna call it the the sports card hobby yeah no i mean it's fascinating and like we were we were chatting before we started this like we can't record a podcast between you and your platform and us and selling you know couple hundred million on ebay this year and not talk about this but yeah gamestop making a fifty six billion dollar offer for ebay i think the most common comment i saw everywhere was like i didn't know smaller companies could buy bigger companies and it's like well that's what td bank is doing in the middle of this thing so you know it it can be done and yeah i i have not even spoken to anybody at ebay even with like a sarcastic hey like hi to latest gamestop employee text just to just to make light of it but yeah i'm very curious to see how it plays out i mean obviously we've seen gamestop make an aggressive push and you know if we wanna just be kind of bullish and optimistic on the whole thing it's like i don't know how it will shake out if it does i don't know what it means for ebay buyers sellers the buying experience on the site i don't know what gamestop would change or if they just see it as a a monster acquisition that positions them well for the future but hey somebody wanting to invest fifty six billion dollars into a company where their primary vertical and fastest growing one is sports and nonsports trading cards and card games you know it's cool to see so anything that brings some buzz i'm along for the ride even if i'm just watching it so very curious to see how this plays out over the next week or two or however long it may be but yeah i i know nothing and have nothing insightful to share other than i'm interested and i'm watching with great great intent as this plays out this industry is there's a lot of speculation all of the time and i i find myself looking at what we've just observed with fanatics and fanatics and tops and pwcc and the the whole takeover on that side and how it's really changed the trajectory of you know how we do live events and how we do launches for cards new product releases and it's it's been quite fascinating to see and it's been exciting but i've also thought on the other side well what else is out there what else is going on do you do you think and although like we won't speculate on these rumors and we have no idea what's going on do you think that we are entering this phase especially with all these you know online sales numbers that continue to get reported where we might see some more consolidation and companies brought together like what's what's your perspective there yeah i mean maybe i know that's a great answer it's it's so weird because it's like you know i i i agree with kinda your point and your take there in calling out like consolidation is actively happening throughout multiple components of the industry but you know if you asked me a decade ago hey do i see a world where psa owns bgs sgc and psa i'd go well that doesn't sound like that would happen like you wouldn't see those things combined but i also don't think we ever thought hey all the licensing would shift so aggressively but you know psa by a mile the market leader in grading so they're bringing all those resources and all the assets under one roof and you know fanatics and tops with what they've achieved and growing the hobby and marketing it and acquiring these licenses we see more coming under them and so know i'm i'm almost indifferent to the consolidation i think it's more just a you know you mentioned reading tea leaves like what do we think that means for pricing what does that mean for accessibility of product what does it mean for you know is the competition across different auction houses or grading companies or card manufacturers like is that healthy or not and obviously there's a a way in a world where you could spin those positive or negative and so i'm more just curious to see as we see each of these like big corporate mergers or acquisitions happen kind of what is the fallout what is the impact and i feel like this is a lot of things in politics and economics and everything where and we should probably care but at the end of the day a lot of it probably won't affect your everyday collector but if it changes pricing and you know being able to to acquire stuff like absolutely does so yeah a lot of wait and see involved which i know again offers no insight other than i'm as curious as everybody else to see where this goes yeah it's the cure the curiosity fuels the hobby and we're gonna get into a lot of a lot more conversation around speed and then i'm kind of coining it the acceleration era here in this space but i i had i think nineteen cards up for auction last night and i i love it when they all end on sunday i don't know why it's like long weekend put my kids to bed just get open up the dc sports eighty seven app check everything out so i was like glued to my phone and i was very thrilled with how everything ended which was good but in the middle of my auctions ending i got hit with an email from d c sports eighty seven i was like uh-oh i hope like something didn't go awry but it was just like a standard communication to your customers regarding some updates on your end and figured if you haven't used the services you might not have gotten the email if you're thinking about the services it'd probably be good to get the update right from the horse's mouth so maybe share like what you're doing why the changes are being made yeah so it's you know it's always tough anytime you're changing things with the services that are offered because we get a lot of positive and negative feedback and honestly we welcome all of it we we got a long message this morning from somebody about what i'm about to talk about and it was actually like really insightful and well thought out and we have a lot of customers we appreciate because it's not how dare you or i hate this or i love this it's just hey i see this angle but here's what i see and what you think but anyway the changes we made you know you and i have talked probably every time we've done this about volume and our volume is just wild right now you know we are probably right now at about we've probably dropped the numbers before but you know a hundred and twenty a hundred and thirty thousand cards a week coming in the door for consignment and you know we've been listing just shy of a hundred thousand so obviously you can do the math there and that says hey wait time's gonna go up because for as long as one twenty one thirty come in and one hundred go out that backs it up and we know that's too long like we're self aware enough and we're honest enough with our customers to say if you have to wait five weeks for your standard bulk submissions to go on ebay with us that is too long i know we do offer the other services right we offer premium when they go up next day so you got high value stuff it's liquid you want your money out you've got a way to do that we've got express for the twenty cards or less it's up in three days you can do that so those are still there but the wait is just getting too long and so we looked at what we were doing and said okay lots problem number one we have a ridiculous amount of lots come in the door and generally what those are are lots of ten fifteen twenty or more of the same card where each card is worth seventy cents a buck twenty two dollars and so it is so much more labor intensive just the imaging and titling of thirty forty fifty card lots and the amount of money our customers were making so we charge more we charge three dollars per lot they take longer to get processed so we're suspending that service for now and that is again just to shift all the resources that work on that because you can go about twenty times faster on singles and so if that means instead of putting up four hundred lots today we can put up eight thousand standard singles that cut into that wait time that's a huge win for us and our customers the second is memorabilia we're not touching our wax service so sealed wax we're still selling as we always have but we get so much obscure memorabilia right now it's funko pops bobbleheads golf clubs golf flags baseball bats full size football helmets posters uncut sheets like it's just it's everything and it's we loved being able to offer a service where people could send basically anything that were collectible and we would get it listed on ebay for them but the shipping intricacies there and having the time to photograph those things and list them in a exponentially higher number of categories like it just takes just like lots a hundred times longer than your average card does and so we're also suspending that and the goal of this is really just take as many resources we can and at the same time we are hiring aggressively right now we've probably added a dozen people of the team in the last two weeks so that we could cut into that wait we wanna get that standard bulk submission wait time down to about two to two and a half weeks that's where we think that should sit then you gotta express it three days and premium it one day and that's a great suite of offerings for people and down the road as we achieve that goal and we have more resources here in house we may bring back some of these other services but for now it just makes sense to cut those so those were the big changes the only other change is we are charging an additional dollar on the express ones went back and forth on that but ultimately what it is is that's probably our most commonly used service because it's twenty cards or less and they're guaranteed to go up in three days so people tend to do it on their new releases their higher value cards where a dollar per isn't a huge deal but having to expedite that many cards because we're getting three four thousand of those a day right now we have to be sure it's only quality and what's happened is a lot of people just sending two three packages a day of two three and five dollar cards through that service just to try to expedite it so we need there to be that extra dollar say if you're gonna use it we we're not getting rid of it we never will but we need it to be sure it's worth it for them and for us and so those are all the changes and we'll have a lot of dialogue with our customers i know in the coming days and weeks to to explain that and go over that and that'll all kick in on monday the eleventh so yeah that's that's about it but again the goal is five weeks is too long let's get that down to two or three and these are things that levers we can pull to help us get there and just you know want people to be understanding of that because i think that really does matter and i don't think anybody would argue with me that five weeks is too long i am certainly fascinated by businesses growing scaling organizing themselves to fit the market needs and demand and undeniably just based on the numbers you've shared that dc sports is doing month over month it's crazy and if you i don't i'm not sure a lot of people realize that and this is i i draw these comparisons with your business and kind of with psa and graders it like it takes bodies and more bodies in order to help do the work and make sure things are up to speed and it sounds like right now dc sports eighty seven is in this position where growth is crazy you understand changes need to be made and you also understand that you need to bring in people and hire good people and put them into the operation to help alleviate some of these stresses that are happening right now in the business as interest continues to grow yep for for as much as you would like to share maybe i think because i just think this is fascinating like you you mentioned you had like twelve new people coming on like what does that what does that look like like i would imagine like you obviously there's a process for hiring there's a process for them starting onboarding getting them and then eventually getting them into a place where some of these numbers go down so maybe you just take let us have a little peek behind the curtain on just what that process looks like yeah i mean we've you know the process is honestly pretty simple the the the good thing and the thing i'm glad we did is we've spent the last number of years trying to build out our operations in a way that it's as turnkey as possible and so when we look for help fortunately we don't have to look for card experts i don't have to look for somebody who understands you you you or i probably we could be opening a pack and you come across a card you're like i just know that's an image variation i've never seen it before but something about it it just looks different right and so we have obviously a team of those people here because they're needed in certain ways but most of what we do is people who are hardworking and trustworthy and so when we bring people in it's you know day one is kinda like your hr onboarding paperwork meet the team kinda get established and then we just kinda go through each functional area and so taking photos it's we've got a couple processes for that right we've got scanners we use for like our bulk top loaded cards we've got the haystack ones like this one you can see over my shoulder we use for our slabs and thicker non scannable cards so it's going through and having them sit with someone and learn that process how to handle any little edge case you know when do you need to take the top off something when do you need to cover up a qr code like there's just so many of those little things out there then they'll move on and they'll learn how we sort incoming mail and what are the service levels we offer and how do people indicate that in their package then they'll move on and they'll do shipping and so it's really just kinda going through the life cycle of a card and if you think at each stop it makes in our building that's kind of like a functional training session but every area is designed where we're working off mini ipads we carry around with us and screens they have at shipping stations and things that really present you everything where you could have never seen a card before in your life and it kind of navigates our team through it so that we're not relying on everybody knowing that it's just relying on kind of learning our process and so that's what's made it so that when the growth happens as fantastically fast as it has while we can not always keep up and hey going from a two week to a five week wait is why we're making some of these changes but it makes it a lot easier for us to bring quality people in the building and not have this crazy like niche profile the kind of person we need and so yeah so very excited i think the combination of trimming some of these services down and adding all these people will get us where we wanna be in no time even though yeah i mean we're we're gonna hit last year's sale numb sales number in two weeks so it's may fourth and i can tell you that by the end of next week we will have tied what we sold in all of twenty twenty five so yeah it's it's wild the volume and i know it's everywhere across the hobby it's not just us and you know for us the name of the game right now is just getting everything in house that we need to get caught back up and continue to keep up because we don't think it's gonna slow down that's insane appreciate the the kind of look behind the curtain about what you're doing in order to continue to make sure cards are getting put up and listed as soon as possible the number that i just saw from cardladder was continues to go up six hundred and fourteen million dollars in online sales in the month of april four hundred and sixty two million of those came from ebay which obviously dc sports eighty seven is one of the largest sellers if not the largest seller on ebay so you're a big chunk of the pie and obviously speed is the name of the game you're listing cards as quick as possible mail's coming in probably as quick as possible and you're just trying to keep up i don't know like what in this that like what you just said the fact that you're hitting kinda last year's total like even before the midway point of the year is insane i like i don't know like speed stuff is coming fast like what how are you all reacting to it as a as a business obviously you're you're you're making some moves hiring and trying to and then like what what about collectors like how how do you see speed impacting collectors like it's all around us like stuff's coming at us so so fast like what's your perspective on just like this acceleration era we're in right now in the hobby yeah yeah i mean we're absolutely there you know for us for dc sports specifically the name of the game is just being sure we continue to offer services that align with people wanting to move fast so you know that's why we have the premium service is it five dollars extra per card yes but it means your card comes in to us today it's live on ebay tomorrow and sunday you're paid monday and so it's we have to offer things that follow this pattern of urgency and speed and instant demand that exists in the hobby hobby you know i will forever beat the drum of when a new product comes out the best time to sell is right away like get stuff listed on release day run it for a three day auction be one of the first sales if you have the first slabs coming out of psa for new new products be one of the first to sell that first psa ten you know those things really do matter there are so many i's and supply and demand is kind of the name of the game and the thing is once the market gets saturated with something the supply skyrockets and i think we've all learned even on things that have decent supply we've talked about things like kabooms and downtowns before if there's enough demand the prices will just soar we know how that works but on new releases the supply only goes up you know post post release and so be sure to leverage that capitalize on that and for collectors i think it just means you have to understand with cards the way things work you have to understand seasonality of the sports and when demand ebbs and flows you have to understand the demand right after release to sell when things peak and you just have to make decisions for yourself on are you gonna send it to psa and chase that first psa ten are you gonna play the conservative route and sell it immediately do you try to go sell you know to your point we're not just in the world of ebay fanatics and gold at auctions anymore you know there's you know people posting on facebook to sell things there's whatnot in ebay live livestreams to buy things and so familiarize yourself with all those marketplaces because hey if you wanna be the first sale yeah you can run a three day auction on release day on wednesday and have it end saturday night but you could also throw it into an ebay livestream and sell it wednesday afternoon and so just understand what options are out there and i think a lot of people you know kinda get stuck in tradition or or maybe the old ways and you just gotta be open to to learning and exploring everything like we've talked about before you know with like live selling we learned a lot in doing it we're gonna keep doing it you just gotta kinda find where the where the right fits are i'm not sure there's ever been a time where i've had a box of cards that i've sent to you all where the proceeds of that wasn't going to be used to either buy another card or pay off a card that i have already bought i mean it's just this sick cycle we are as collectors and i i i just obviously like you know we're here we're talking like i'm a fan of what you all are doing but just like i i wanna highlight this for the listeners because speed is everything to me especially because i'm always trying to make that move but i sent nineteen cards premium service sent them in a box it was a friday ago and they were listed live listed on tuesday of the next week and then the auctions ended on sunday and now monday i'm sitting here and i've got my app and i'm able to see or here's the total that i got and here's what's been paid and i like what's already been paid in less than twenty four hours i can if i needed it i can transfer it to my bank account right now typically i like to wait and have everything yeah kind of be paid for at once before i have to do that usually i'm luckily not in that dire need of any funds but but i don't know like for me as a as a collector the speed is everything like i don't have to talk to anybody i can just send my box stuff gets paid for i i have an app that i can just look at and see what's happening and i just i know for me as a collector who's got i've got my own business i got three kids i've got a wife i've got other responsibilities like speed is everything so i just wanted to like highlight that as like my use case with what you all are doing and so i say all that to say is like i pay for the premium service every time just because i wanna cut the line even though you said it maybe i'm still in some sort of line with three thousand other people yeah who are sending their stuff every day yeah and and i'll say you know to your initial point when you started that i was i was peeping your account here while you were talking and the way i know that you're shifting the money from something you bought one day to something now you want more is because when i go down the list here i know you are a colts fan and here's what i see michael pittman junior daniel jones the forrest buckner ty hilton ty hilton jonathan taylor it's like well somebody's shifting some capital from some pc cards into some new pc cards but yeah to to your point on speed i mean that you know i think the single biggest the most impactful change we ever made other than you know getting our app and our website out was huge because to your point like people need the transparency where you're sending your cards to somebody else they're selling them for you you need to be able to log in and see all the cards listed out see exactly what you got what we charge you all that but the automation of your balance updating and of payouts i i think are really what we are proudest of because i think they're the most unique for some of consignors so many consignors are hey we pay out there's one big consignor you know they run numbers on thursday pay out on friday there's a couple guys where it's twice a week there's a a couple guys where it's once a day even you know with us like as soon as it gets paid on ebay it automatically posts to available in your account and you can just click a payout and the ach is run twenty four seven automated like we're not having to do those manually and so we've got people who are hopping on at three in the morning requesting an ach and it's in their account five seconds later and like that's that's the way it should be so no i appreciate the the positive feedback and and glad the experience went well for you and hope whatever all these cards summed up to is going towards some great pc initiative you've got your eyes on somewhere yeah i shout out all the people this is this is my life as a collector i had people sending me my own listings to make sure that i saw them and i just i just the most they were all dupes they were i just got i i this is a i'm just such a sicko i i just i i found copies of higher grades so that that's basically what it what it happened but i don't know it's just so fun like shout out the community for making sure that i didn't lose sight of those auctions even though that they were mine so yeah and thank you for not bidding on them yes yes none of that oh goodness alright i wanna hit a card which i think would be yeah cool to talk about this is a card that's sold through dc sports eighty seven i forget the total oh seven thousand six hundred and fifty eight dollars so it's a a nice sale this is the twenty eighteen topps dynasty autograph special event leather gold of chris bryant one of one in a bgs nine point five it's got an autograph and what is most notable about this card is it has a piece of a baseball you can see the stitches on it and everything and it's from the cubs world series victory in twenty sixteen so this card obviously is super unique but cubs fans this is their moment and so obviously you see a sale like that but i wanna talk about moments and cards and collecting but what's your what are your thoughts on just this piece in general and your reaction to the sale price yeah you know it's such an interesting card so i think it's a great sale and i think to what we're gonna talk about more here it's a testament to how much moments in history and key games and things that make a card feel more than just a card but like tied to the event really matter because i mean man i remember when that two thousand thirteen bohm chrome chris bryant came out and like at the time thousand dollar prospect autos wasn't a thing i remember his car just going wild and obviously from there to the rockies and the moves he's made and he hasn't stayed healthy like it's kinda one of those what could have been careers but you know from nineteen o eight to to the world series in twenty sixteen when they won like the cubs curse and all that like or the you know all the things they had going on like it was just such a thing so yeah i i think awesome card and just such nowadays relics feel kinda watered down when you get this no specific game event player series sport whatever on the card and so to see one like this that's world series game use you can almost see where like maybe a bat hit between the r and the i right there yeah super cool piece to be a one zero one and coming out of a set like dynasty i think awesome sale on one those cards i imagine you won't see for years because it's probably gonna get tucked away in somebody's chris bryant or cubs pc and not see the light of day again for another decade but yeah amazing piece so i think one of my observations and maybe it's just my own behavior what i'm starting to pick up on is the importance of moments and moments in collecting and obviously this is maybe the most for anyone alive who's a cubs fan you know around our age this this represents probably the the mountaintop moment as a cubs fan so hence the price maybe it's the activation around tops now and that program and just them spotlighting moments and how important moments are i think about the steph curry olympic night night card which is went nuclear because of that moment there's so many others i'm starting to pick up on the importance of like specific inscription autographs because they represent a moment so i don't know like do you do you feel do you find that we're moving from the shift of just like purely like player or team collecting to a desire to collect based on the moment itself within the hobby right now yeah i mean i think you you already hit it but like the biggest example i would have gone to is the you know topsnow panini instant the fact that we see you know just like the other week or week ago losing track of dates already but like you saw the fernando mendoza and it was like my first nfl auto right and so like seeing that stuff come out i think is cool because it it is gonna be the first in a lot of ways in highlighting moments you know i think we've actually seen this for years like i think it's the reason you'll see the the timeless moments cards that do so well out of like panini one or one and one i think it's those sets that usually have them and it's cool because it is photography of such a memorable or like career highlighting moment for a player and putting that on a card and it was kind of like where i first start to see that and now as you see it with the debut patches so that obviously ties to a lot more than just a game worn patch or even a game worn logo patch it's from their debut now we have the gold logo man patches for guys who win mvp and cy young and defensive player of the year and things like that and so i am all for and think we will continue to see more of and increased demand for these ultra rare pieces that tie to specific moments that highlight something in a player or a team's career history so yeah i agree with everything you said and and i think directionally we'll see it in the hobby more and more i'm seeing if i can pull this up i have another example that as as we are talking came top of mind for me let me stop here and see if i can share my screen let's see here we'll do this so we don't wanna see my text messages maybe i should've worked this on the fly oh well let's see here yeah this is this is fun in real time this is why i'm not a streamer we'll just cut it the card though it was gonna be hilarious if you have like a text from your wife pop up then yeah won't right on top we don't want that the card that i wanted to highlight was a card that got pulled this weekend wwe royalty came out which is a high end set from tops the first ever set i might or might not have participated in some breaks just don't tell my wife the cody rhodes wrestlemania patch got pulled from breaks intakes paradise and it actually went to a buddy of mine jameson who i know who won that card now these cards are as being a longtime wrestling collector these cards are are really going to take wrestling cards into a whole another stratosphere where you have a patch that was worn by cody rhodes in the main event against john cena in wrestlemania forty one i was actually in the building but this was on cody rhodes when he dropped the title to john cena and now it is shown up in a card from a product and these are the ultimate chase cool card i love these cards i love the concept but a question i have for you is like what are your thoughts around this the manufacturing these moments into cards because tops fanatics are having an athlete like cody rhodes wear the patch when he's in the ring you have with mld mlb debut patches the same thing and basketball the same thing it's this alignment between manufacturer and athlete and the manufacturer having them wear these things because they know they're gonna end up putting it in cards which obviously will raise the the price of the packs the boxes whatever but i don't know i've never really heard anyone like dig in and talk about that side of it but like what are your thoughts on like the manufactured side of it all yeah i i think it's interesting you know i've heard stories from you know secondhand or even from some guys on podcasts and interviews and things talking about like their debut patches or you know things like that or a bat they were wearing or gloves they were wearing and how it's like you know you've got a fanatics guy right there in the dugout as you come off the field he's grabbing the stuff and so like more than anything i'm just fascinated by it like just that coordination to deliver a specific patch or just i guess you know properly equipped and patched version of a jersey or something to a player to have the representative there to ensure you get it immediately after the game protecting you know chain of custody and then from there passing that in manufacturing and it's really just fascinating i i think you know we've talked before about like the fanatics and tops push to really broaden the marketing of the hobby and i do think it's cool because i guarantee you there's more people in the world who care about a player's debut or a critical moment or a cubs world series win like we just looked at with the chris bryant card than there are who collect chris bryant cards and i think it's a nice way to kinda bridge that gap to make something that appeals to both so no the manufacturing side is fascinating i i feel like it would be really cool sometime to see like a little five minute youtube video or something that's like here's a player from them producing the patch to the patch going on to jersey jersey to the player player entering the game for the first time in his career coming off the field like chain of custody all the way to being packed out in a box so yeah it's it is fascinating to me and and obviously something we're only seeing more and more of now that we see it with you know it went from debut patches now it's the batting gloves during this home run or the bat during this game here for the cycle or you know all of these other things that may happen so yeah very very interesting across the board i i wasn't quite sure and i the other moment i'm thinking about recently is just like the main stage at the nfl draft it's like once these guys shake goodell's hand they hold up new jersey their next move is stopping by like two people setting up a card and them signing it and it's like the whole operation behind making that happen i'm sure is just insane in and of itself but i don't i wanna get your feedback on this because i feel like it really started with the tops chrome basketball launch which we've talked about it enough on here but then you parlay it into tops chrome football and then i'm i'm because i'm deep in the weeds i'm watching what's happening on the wwe side and i think at first i was just i don't know if it was skeptical but i was like unsure of like how i would feel about this new era of promotion and tops involvement and and how it all shook out but now like the more and more i see it the more and more i see the promotion the marketing and just like cards in this space that i don't think we've ever seen cards before i am excited about the prospects of not only being a collector but building a business in this space where cards don't look anything like they did when i was a kid they don't even look anything like they did when i got back in the hobby six seven years ago so i don't know like as as you're a business builder in this space like what have your observations been regarding how tops has gone to market and if you think it's a a good approach yeah no i think it's good i i'm curious to see like when you kind of mentioned it like where else it goes you know it started with a mlb debut patch and now we've got other sports and now you've got the wrestling thing you talked about and it's like it makes you wonder if before you know it like are we gonna have nonsports sets that are like i i don't know it's the grammys worn this or something like because it it really does it's you're now taking collectibles and saying we can take the physical actual moment and put it onto something people can hold that we can then produce demand for and you know a scarcity exists and and so like i'm just curious to see you you know said parlaying it in other things just how far down this path we go because it seems like people of course always wanna chase and you know i think we look at like tops chrome update and it's like imagine the price difference if you took debut patches out of tops chrome update and what it does to the demand and so how that gets applied to other products and offerings i doubt it stops unless anybody gives tops a reason to stop and for as long as singles are in the demand they are and people are want the thrill of the chase with the wax like i don't see any reason it would go anywhere so it sure feels like it's here to stay yeah and maybe like as we i was there's a lot of different areas that we could have gone with this conversation but maybe i was thinking about like my experience this weekend i feel like this is something you can speak to just regarding your relationships that you all have with breakers in this space and breakers that are sending you cards that get listed quickly i honestly i am i wouldn't say brand new to breaking but there becomes this moment where i am wanting the entertainment where i i have disposable income where i can say okay i can buy into a break and pick my favorite wrestler and tops royalty and see what happens and i think it is a it is a lot of fun obviously i think there you definitely have to have some self control and one of the ways that i think you have to have self control is just to see the pricing of each of the wrestlers on each of these breaks and obviously if they have a wrestlemania patch those are gonna be more expensive but then i think it's this mentality of your expectation shouldn't be like if you buy a spot that is has an has a specific price because that you could win a wrestlemania patch then you're actually get the wrestlemania patch like chances are slim to none but i think like all of these dynamics and processing and figuring out like i think it's interesting and i've always been like i've never been anti breaking i've always been like i like the different flavors just be responsible and you should own that responsibility yourself but i'm curious because i'm just so fat it's like i'm stepping into this other world with the the the live selling live selling and jumping in and watching just the the the the flood of activity and the breaks going and then the next breaks and there's all these cards and then these these breakers are you know either sending cards to their people who want them or maybe they're getting consigned i i i would love for you to like talk about just like your observations with breaking and what you've seen and then how like dc got plugged into working with specific breakers and becoming partners because i just think like like streamlined approach from somebody sitting on their couch on a friday night buying into a break hitting a card that card going to consignment then that person getting paid out for that i just think i find it really fascinating and it it all involves a lot of speed and a lot of technology and a lot of communication between people and companies so maybe share some perspective there and just how you think about that and how you're plugged into that ecosystem yeah so you know the the funny thing is that the very first breaker relationship we ever had was technically ourselves when the business was only zach and myself in the in its very infancy you know zach had a facebook facebook group where he used facebook live kind of in the early days of facebook live for breaking and you know at the time this was a little over a decade ago now so it was two thousand fifteen tops chrome football and we had all kinds of guys getting in and whether it was player breaks or team breaks and obviously this is like any other this hasn't changed about breaking yet your guys who know maybe they they pc colts so they buy the colts at every single break because they just wanted to keep them they didn't really care about the base but they were chasing colors and parallels and and all that but then you had your guys who were just gambling and some of them responsibly some probably irresponsibly but what we found was we started offering like hey if you're just gonna sell these like we'll do it for you we've got an ebay account we'll charge you a little bit it's a nice you know additional side business for us it's a great service to offer our customers and so we would have probably eight to ten guys a night who what after the break say hey sell these cards from me so you got thirty teams ten of those just go straight to ebay and it was great and so that was really what led us into okay how do we make scaling consignment better and how do we build this up to a business and obviously over years that happened and then once we kinda got established and we had the manpower for it we started reaching out to breakers and saying hey like there's an obvious fit here you you guys aren't gonna necessarily do all of it but a lot of your customers just want the money back and so the way it worked was just kind of piloting that we would work with breakers and just do their handful of top spenders or customers they knew really well and so what they do is basically if a product comes out on a wednesday and they break it they're breaking it they're offering to whatever customers they want to consignment with us they typically overnight us the package we get it we guarantee next day listing on breaks just like we do premiums but at no additional charge to the customer and so to the customer it's hey if i'm not gonna grade this card if i don't see this as a long term hold and i know some guys do especially you get into your you know crazy bowman prospecting guys or something like that they might wanna hold for a while they might wanna grade they would just send us everything the everything that was worth selling right your your lower number parallels your hits autos relics all that and so we did it and it's worked out phenomenally well and just added breaker after breaker after breaker over time and it's just grown because there are so many people and you kinda mentioned this who aren't always in breaking because they want a card i agree you've gotta be smart with breaking right if if you're getting in a top scrum update break or a wrestling break like you said not a sport by the way not to trick you fair enough fair enough fair enough like if there's one single card and it's a one of one and that's why you're buying a wrestler don't be disappointed when you don't hit it and honestly don't be disappointed when you buy into a hundred and twenty seven breaks at forty two bucks a spot and you never hit it like that's just that's stat statistics here like you gotta know that but you know for us it's been great because what it does is for the breaker is they have a portal with us where they can see every customer whose cards we've processed for them the customer of theirs can see it and they can see it they see all the credit and with most breakers we just pay that back out to the customer as break credit with the breaker now if the breaker opts to allow direct payouts that's totally up to them but the idea is the customer is not paying anything extra to have their new release cards go up within one day there is so much value to that that you know that's huge and so for the breaker to offer that for our customers without having to be the ones who are listing everything on ebay and sorting through them and imaging and all that and fortunately you know partnering with great companies ebay has you know been very supportive of that and kinda helped us grow that program out haystack's been phenomenal because they're having the checklist loaded into their system by day of release so that we have all the accurate parallel names and new subsets and identifying variations early and so over time it's just you know it's just grown incredibly fast to the point that now it's it's not uncommon for in one day us to have a thousand cards show up from breakers that were just hit over the last forty eight hours now they're here and they're going up it's just fun for those customers to watch because it adds that longer tail of enjoyment onto your break where now you get to buy in you get the community and social aspect of a hobby watching a break and now you get to hop on ebay and pull up your dc sports eighty seven account with a link you can click and go straight to ebay and see your twenty seven cards from you know your chrome break last week or whatever it was that you're now seeing live so it's been super cool to see and it's something we're definitely gonna keep growing over time obviously speed has been the theme of this conversation and as we round this out tore i'm curious like do you i'm sure you're an observer of everything that's happening in the hobby with every different facet every cons consignment how consignment companies work how grading companies work how breakers work like you have a pretty good pulse on just the activity you obviously realize that speed is super valuable to customers do you feel like where dc sports eighty seven is right now like you are you are on the front lines and you're kind of leading the charge in terms of like velocity and helping make sure like stuff gets moving how it should get moved you feel like you still have some work to do like where where where are you at right now in terms of like how you are all set up to make sure that speed is something that can be offered to anyone who wants to move as fast as they want yeah yeah i i think we are you know i'm i'm never gonna say i think it's irresponsible as somebody running a business to say that you're exactly where you need to be and you can't do any better that's that's naive and ignorant to say but i i do think we're at the front of that i think offering to breakers being able to do this and we don't care if one thousand cards or ten thousand cards show up tomorrow they're going up the next day and we know we can back that up that's a big thing and we can do that without sacrificing our you know express and premium services we offer like i we talked about at the top of this we know our standard wait is too long and so we need to be sure enough resources go there so that that doesn't become something that suffers but even to the point that we've established this is a newer thing but with breakers having the haystack imaging devices on-site at the breaker where they can image a card day of and get it listed on ebay using haystack's tech using our system leveraging our portal and so on the larger hits there's not any way at all for the customer you can hit it on wednesday and have it live that night and so we're always gonna look for ways that how do we make things happen faster you know it's the reason we automated payouts it's the reason we offer a next day service that's the reason we made breaks a next day service and so as the hobby evolves that's gonna mean there are more places for us to do that and for us a lot of that is just looking at what are all the environments people are working in you know i think a good example is i'd love to get us at more shows you know we do the national every year and that's like our big show we do a lot of signage and promotion there we've got a big booth we interact with people we take drop offs we'd love to do that at more shows because then we could also offer listing from shows day of and and little things like that and so i think we're on the front kinda leading edge as far as speed and technology it's now just how do we continue to grow our presence to apply what we can offer in the more environments of the hobby as things kinda scale up speed kills was what the the ad said back in the day but you could not speed but yes yeah good point of clarification always enjoy talking about business and cards and everything else appreciate everyone for tuning in to the staging area absolutely thanks