Alright. We are back with another episode of the staging area with DC Sports eighty seven. As always, I'm joined by Tory. I'm excited to dig into today's conversation. We're gonna be talking about, the rookie royalty of it all.

There's a pretty nice, Caitlin Clark card up for auction now. That drop just sent the hobby in a tizzy, and I figured be good to revisit that, talk about that, especially since there's a card up for auction.

We're gonna talk about extended bidding, and then also dig into kinda the sweet spot of collecting, which we're viewing as the 20 to a $100 range.

We're gonna spend a lot of time on that. So it's a full action packed episode. Tory, how's it going? How are you since the last time we spoke?

Excellent. Doing well. Thanks. It's, you know, it's that crazy time of year. I feel like we bring up the national every time we talk, but it's like, wow. We were six weeks away, and then you blink and you're six days away or something.

But, no. Just three weeks to go. So super excited to get up there. You know, things have been hectic and crazy for us. It's kind of, you know, list, list, list.

You know, throw as much as we can on eBay to get as caught up as we can before we pull a bunch of us out of the office. But, yeah, excited to talk about everything today. I think hitting it from all angles.

This royalty thing is nuts. Huge eBay news, obviously, which is, which is our whole world here. And then, yeah, getting into some of the the meat of that whole sweet spot, which will be exciting to talk about for sure.

I think it's okay we keep talking about the national because it's it's like the road all roads lead to the national at this point.

And, it it's crazy. I feel like just yesterday, I was like, ninety days until the national, and then it's like, oh my gosh.

It's in a couple weeks. Maybe on the road to the national for you all, obviously, I'm sure, like, we've talked about, you know, the the way you're you're planning for it, preparing. I think that the national's great.

It's disruptive to everyone, though. It's disruptive to businesses, people leaving their families. Those are all this. Like, maybe with a couple weeks out, kind of what is what's top of mind for you right now with the national?

Like, what's your primary focus right now? Yeah. So it's, it it almost is kinda backwards. At the national, we really work from everything else, and then we end on the cards.

Right? So, like, first, it's, alright, the plane tickets and who's driving the van and getting the booth set up and getting all our banners and all that.

So, I'm excited that we're finally focused on cards. So, we announced what our same day listing will be. So this year, we're doing, any national exclusive product.

And by that, I don't mean necessarily national, like, branded product, but silver and gold packs from tops. You know, anybody who does, like, the white or black boxes from Panini for redemptions, anything that is national exclusive.

I know, you know, a ton of manufacturers have special things, packs, releases there. So, all that stuff, we're gonna be offering same day listings. So, you know, come by our booth.

It goes up that night. So, that's kind of what we've been focused on is planning around that workflow and, you know, being sure we're ready to list a couple thousand things if they show up, you know, same day there at the show.

So, yeah, it's been exciting to get away from the, logistics and travel and planning and stuff that's no fun for anybody and then to what kind of cool cards can we see and what are some of those little, you know, value add things we can do over there.

So, super excited. Like you said, it's kinda always the, the Christmas of our business year for us.

So, you know, it and with Fanatics Fest really coming along fast. I think those two are really blossoming into into exciting times. So, yeah, very excited that we're now three weeks away.

That's crazy. So the the national packs, so much of your business is the the new products come out, these new products get open, cards get sent to you, they get listed, and you see those auctions start going right out of the gates.

It's a great measuring stick on the performance of new players, new products.

And for anyone who doesn't know, right, there are these opportunities for collectors who attend the national to, you know, get redemptions, get these white black boxes, get national packs, and it all is happening in real life, and we're all there in person.

Is anything changed maybe from the digital side to the in person side?

Obviously, you're you have a, you know, you're messaging. We're gonna get these cards up same day. You want people to come to DC Sports eighty seven's booth to, you know, bring these cards for you to list them.

Is anything different on your end ex aside from the fact that you're getting an opportunity to meet face to face with an individual who might have just opened a pack or two and wants to list the cards?

How how how is that experience maybe different than kind of what you go through on a day to day basis? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's it's really the same.

You know, the big difference is just accessibility. Like, in most cases, someone opens a pack, let's say, a product comes out on Wednesday, they open a pack at their local shop. There's a process there. Right?

It's okay. I gotta gotta get this stuff home. I gotta mail it to DC Sports. I gotta decide, you know, what service level I wanna use, get it up quick. And we try to make that as easy as possible, but it's a whole different animal.

And then, you know, you've been at the national a number of times as I have. You go and it's like, okay, tops is saying you'll get this many silver packs if you buy this many cases or whatever it is.

And when people walk out with those silver packs to know they can just walk a few booths down, you know, and just sell them right then.

It's just a very different you know, having that spur of the moment, doing it in real time is just so different, than our standard, which is just like you said, it's very digital.

It's a little bit removed. So that's the exciting thing for us. And I think it's you know, I know we're gonna talk about the the sweet spot, some different value factors later with cards.

But a lot of times these packs come out, and, of course, they're only available at the national. And so when these things hit eBay, we're putting them up same day. The cards haven't really sold before.

So those cards that might as the market gets flooded and more and more people open them might run down to being a 2 or $3 card. We plenty often see those, you know, Bowman Chrome packs that topless will have out at $10.

15, $20 for some of the bigger names up front. And so it's just that idea of, hey. You're at the show. You've got opportunity to do this without any shipping. Just hand it off and be done.

And so, yeah, it's very fun for us to be doing things so quickly. And, you know, it's a big reason we try to make it as flexible and make our processes as quick as we can so that we can offer stuff like that.

So, yeah, very excited. And we always get those people who come along and, just don't really know what they wanna do with the card.

And so it's nice to be able to say, hey. We'll have it up for you on eBay tonight and explain why. Those are those are good interactions too.

One more on this, and, this would not be me because if I'm waiting in line to get the packs, once I get the packs in my hand, I'm I'm busting those things open, and and I wanna see, like, what if I got any hits, what players I got.

Is there do do you anticipate seeing individuals come up to DC Sports with just packs, and will will you just be selling the packs if that opportunity presents itself?

Yeah. I mean, we we would sell the packs if that's what people wanna do. I think to your point, people get the itch too much.

I know in past years, we've had a handful of people that wanna sell a pack, but, you know, I think the the draw of being the first to sell a card often outweighs the draw of being the first to sell the pack.

Plus, like you said, you've waited there. You've already got your case of your product you're gonna open. You just got these bonus packs and just they burn a hole in your pocket faster than cash does.

Like, it's just it's so hard to keep your hands off them. So people tend to open them. And and on the side of that, you've got maybe somebody's got a player they're chasing.

They you know, something like that. So there's a lot of reasons they get opened, but far more, I anticipate what we'll see is somebody got a dozen of them.

They ripped them all. They got a card or two they wanna grade. They got a card or two they wanna keep, and we're gonna get everything else because it's, hey.

Let me give you some money back so I can free roll at least part of this case I just bought to get these things. Awesome. Definitely, if you're busting packs, go go run over and say hi to Tory, at the national.

Let's get into rookie royalty. You've there's a card we're gonna spotlight, and I'm excited to talk about this card. But before we bring it up on the screen, we're talking before we hit record.

I'm not sure I can ever remember. And granted, my the hobby moves so fast and stuff last week, I can hardly remember, but I it just seemed like when rookie royalty was presented, by Panini, Dutch auctions happened.

People started breaking. People started getting cards. Like, it just completely took over, Instagram, x, social media. And it there was a lot of different threads about this product, and the dollar values were high.

And some people really liked it, other people didn't really like it. What what what has been your assessment on rookie royalty and just, like, the response in the last week?

It seems like it's been out for a month, but it's only really been, like, a week and maybe ten days to two weeks by the time this goes live. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the the first thought I had was if I had a time machine.

Right? And and you and I could go back to 02/2019, and we could tell people in the hobby, look, guys. We can take you to a place where you can buy that PSA 10 Zion Prism rookie for $20.

And at the same place, we're gonna Dutch auction WNBA cards at 30,000 for a starting price. I'm not sure which they'd be less likely to believe, but it's it's cool.

I think anything that creates buzz in the hobby has positives. Yeah, there was a lot of sticker shock when I heard 30,000 for starting Dutch auction price by Panini.

But you look at some of these sales, and they're doing really well. It I I think to your point, it's kind of a polarizing product because, wow, on the on the price of entry here, like, it is crazy high. Yeah.

You're chasing Caitlin Clark, and it's, to some extent, maybe a one outer and you've gotta hit well there to really for the ROI to be justified, but, you know, we're seeing the the kabooms and the downtowns of plenty of the names that are not the top two or three names doing $3.

04, $5,600. You're seeing a lot of these RPA's do well. Like, it's not just Clark. I mean, obviously, that's where the big money is.

But it's it's amazing what's happened kind of with her ascension and the the rise of the popularity of the WNBA both in, you know, culture and in collectibles, to see what it's gotten to.

So it's, yeah, I know we're gonna talk more about a couple cards in particular, but it's just it is crazy how this went from, I I feel like, a product nobody even really knew was coming to everybody talking about it, like, kinda overnight here in the last couple weeks.

The, we're gonna pull up the card really quickly.

But before we do that, you said something there that I'd like, you have a a viewpoint on what's happening with new products probably that a lot of people don't where when new products come in, they're all coming to DC to be listed.

And so you can over, you know, a week, a month, a few months period of time, you can kinda analyze, like, a new product's performance, how it's doing.

Is it sustaining, or is it just, like, really get shooting up right out of the gates, and then people wanna forget about it and move on to the next one.

Obviously, with a product like this, like, there is some very high end cards that the hobby loves and is are these bigger cards, and they're all coming at us at once because they're all in the same product.

And, obviously, Caitlin Clark is kind of the big talking point with this product. But is there been anything just in you assessing kind of the kaboom sales, other products, or other, parallels and products within this set?

Has there been anything I know it's, like, still really early to give you any indication on, like, what performance of this product might do, like, in the next month or post national.

Do you have any, indication so far? Yeah. It I think it's hard to say because you are talking about a product that is so high end.

And so, you you know, any movement in price as far as what those singles are doing relative to what people are paying to get access to these boxes starts to mean a lot.

You know? It's not like we're talking about a, you know, Topps flagship baseball box where it's a $150 and, you know, it's a whole different animal. So, I think the sales are really strong early. That's really good.

I think, it has things going for it. You know? I think we look at things like, kabooms in downtowns being kind of an anchor that give you a lot of value outside that big auto of Caitlin Clark or Angel Reese or one of those players.

And so, having those in there, I think Panini's proven nobody's getting sick of kabooms in downtowns. There's a lot of those things produced and look at how they continue to do year over year.

Every time a new one comes out, it kills it. And so now we're talking about such a popular insert set, several of them, with players who have never had those cards before.

And so there's kind of that first nature to it. So I think there's a lot of things that give it staying power.

It's just gonna be a question of, you know, when we look at this in ninety days or in six months, is this kind of thing that really holds that value and how much does the buzz of this release that we've just experienced for the last week or two carry forward?

I think that's a lot harder to guess because we've never seen this product before. We've never really seen something like it before.

So it's a lot harder than I think sometimes we could look at, okay, National Treasures Basketball comes out. And just based on that first week or two, it's kinda easy to get a vibe check on how does this feel compared to past years.

And does that make me bullish or bearish on it for the next coming months? That's a little harder here. But, you know, very, very exciting, and anytime there's a buzz about something, it's good.

We're we're seeing a lot of them come in the last couple days and very curious to see how those perform, and we'll certainly watch those trends, you know, over the next couple weeks coming up.

I'd say the card we're gonna talk about here definitely is buzzworthy. I'm looking at the number of bids, time left, and dollar value, and it's like, oh, boy.

And so the card that is, listed, this will actually end right before this episode goes live, but it'll be fun to do some kinda, like, backtracking on performance.

But this is the 2024 rookie royalty Caitlin Clark immaculate patch auto bronze out of '25. And looking at the card, just you're getting the on card auto. No stickers, which is important to collectors.

The other interesting thing I noticed here, Tory, is, although they're not game worn patches, the, logo here that you're getting on the card, it almost which I believe is kind of the AT and T logo.

It almost bleeds into the design of the card, which makes it interesting in a in a in a way. But as we record this, there's 31 bids on this card, and it is currently at $5,322, which is no small chunk of change.

Let's talk about this card. What is going through your mind initially on the card itself, and then how it's performing right now?

Yeah. So, obviously, we're talking about royalty, and royalty is the Caitlin Clark Chase. So, yeah, just a cool card to look at because for one, it's not super often that we put a card up.

As of recording this, the card's been live for, I think, about thirteen hours, and we're already at, you know, over $5 with a ton of bids.

So, obviously, there are people in the market looking for these. It'll be very interesting. We did we had one that ended already.

So we sold one that sold for just over 13,000. I think it was 13,100. So it will be very interesting to see that was also an immaculate RPA from that one to this one ending, you know, five days apart.

Do we see a steady value? Is there any increase, decrease? So, we'll certainly be watching that to the trends we were just talking about. But, yeah, I mean, obviously, this is who you're after.

So, definitely a nice card. It's a nice patch. It's on card like you said. It's, you know, a MacBook RPAs are a big chase. So, yeah, very, very interested to see where this one winds up, because, yeah, this is what everybody's after.

And I think more than just this card on its own, it's just kind of gonna be interesting to watch, like, we're just talking about what this product does as a whole, and how values trend over time.

And do we see this again? You know, do we see this happening, you know, more and more in the future?

It you know, if you look on the reverse of this card at the bottom, one thing we found interesting was that, the way Panini has it indicated, I think it just says Panini instant.

So it's, it's interesting. It it kind of makes you feel like, are we gonna see a progression from, like, what we've seen with Panini and tops with all the tops now and Panini instant that is a card concept.

Right? You know, a guy hits a major milestone in baseball and his tops now card is available the next day. Are we gonna start to see a pivot where maybe we see sets with that nature to them?

It feels like as the buzz around Clark grew and WNBA has gotten so many more eyes on it, this set kind of came around as a a high end offering to appease that.

And so it makes me wonder as the hobby evolves and things happen faster, do we start to see releases like this in other sports?

Do we see it where a huge name is drafted or a huge milestone is reached or a player gets hot and do we start to see this kind of you know, the whole sport is in there, but you're chasing a few big names, so you're looking at a very small but higher end hit heavy big name checklist.

You know, some of the things I'm thinking about looking at set, but, yeah.

I I wanna hit on that the instant in the tops now and maybe the change in moving forward in the hobby. Obviously, like, we're we don't work for the manufacturers. We don't know. I'm curious, though.

Like, I I think about that Curry, the big Curry sale, the night night, the tops now, super, And just it it it made me think that while a lot of us might have said no to this, the instance in the tops now of it all, if seeing some of those sales might signal a change throughout the industry where you've got big collectors who have big bank roles who are spending willing to spend a lot on those cards, and they're willing to look past the the now or the instant, nature of it.

And I think this maybe post that Curry sale is a good way to analyze if this continues.

Do you think that the collectors, even, like, the hobbies change so much over the last three years, like, groups of collectors don't even care about that anymore.

They're just chasing kind of what's hot or what's limited and scarce, and they don't care if it's pack pulled or if it's coming directly from the manufacturer.

Maybe what how are you kinda thinking about the placement of these types of sets and just the the future of collector behavior?

I think to an extent. I think as the world consumes news faster and events reach us quicker and moments get attention more rapidly on social media and everywhere else, there's an urgency to everything.

I think, like you said, maybe in the beginning days, it was tops now and Panini instant feels so like I don't know, you're flooding us with too many things. But then within those, there are these ones that are great.

Just the other day, we sold a pope Leo PSA 10 with $1,300. Now if you would have told me a while ago that was gonna happen, I probably wouldn't have believed you. But again, it's it's a huge moment in the world.

That one's not even sports. But tops has a vehicle in tops now to produce a collectible around that. And I like the fact that we have that vehicle to offer a collectible that maybe brings people into the hobby who aren't now.

So yeah, it's very appealing. Yeah, if if I'm collecting, the first thing I'm thinking is not I want to get a tops now with my PC guy or a Panini instant.

But I tell you what, if my guy hits, I'm a big Orioles fan. If I've got a, you know, gunner hits a game winning home run-in the world series one year, that's a card I'm gonna wanna own.

And so I think there's there's something to be said for seeing what's hot, what's buzzy, what are people demanding, where is there not enough supply of, and the manufacturers reacting to that that I think is gonna lead to a lot more of this happening.

And and we see it all the time. We see, you know, people buying tops now and paying instant cards, and they're getting us three and four days after the release. So you know it's buy and sell it straight off to be that first sale.

And, you know, for some people, that's all the game is gonna be. It's gonna be I can get quick access to something that's hot in the moment, try to flip it, make a quick buck, go spend that somewhere else.

Maybe to other people, it's just fun to collect them because you can get them straight from the manufacturer.

You know, they're out all the time. There's lots of different versions of them. So, yeah, I mean, I'm very, very curious to see what the long term is on this stuff, but, right now, I think it's it's good for the hobby.

No complaints. If you don't like it, walk away from it. Leave it alone. If you love it, it's there to buy. So, you know, I think it's a good thing.

Alright. So we moved from one hot topic, which is rookie royalty, to another hot topic, which has been, part of public discourse ever since the news dropped and felt like this is probably the best place to have that conversation.

Obviously, eBay is a partner of stacking slabs. EBay is a partner of DC Sports eighty seven, and we are gonna talk about extended bidding.

And I had been waiting to talk about extended bidding until I was talking with Tory again because I felt like this be the best place to to dig into it.

So let's let's just start with extended bidding. There's been a ton of discourse online, Tory. What is top of mind for you?

I know you've kind of been up in the know and a part of these discussions that this was eventually going to be a thing, but maybe share some perspective, that might help give the audience maybe some further context on what's happening with extended bidding and then also how it will impact kind of, a business like DC Sports.

Yeah. So I think for any who don't know, what eBay announced is that they're going to be beginning to test extended bidding. What extended bidding means on eBay's platform is if a bid is placed in the last two minutes of an auction.

So if I have an auction scheduled to end tonight at 10PM and at 09:59 a bid gets placed, the end time pushes back by two additional minutes.

And that continues until there's no more bids placed. So there's a lot of things you have people talking about here. I think you really have to kinda break the conversation into two pieces.

What does this mean for buyers? What does this mean for sellers? I'll say on the whole, what I am excited about is I know eBay is going into this with a let's test it, let's find the right way to execute it.

There are still things to learn from, you know, look at some with and without extended bidding auctions, understand the difference, you know, study from and learn the buyer behavior, the seller behavior, things like that.

So, just, you know, all of this with that grain of salt of there's a lot of things that haven't been finalized on their end yet, and they're gonna kinda test their way into this.

A lot of people may know this is not a new thing in the marketplace. We see this on Golden. We see this on Fanatics.

We see this on some of the auction houses like a Sotheby's and others. So, the concept has been out there. I think what I really like about it the most is from a seller standpoint, and, you know, we're a consignment operation.

So when I say sellers, I mean, what's in the best interest of people entrusting us to sell their cards, is that this allows for additional time for bids to be placed, particularly on higher end items.

I think that's a a healthy thing where you get a little more of a window where if you get a lot of momentum on an item you're selling near the end, give those buyers more time to make a decision on what incremental bids they wanna place.

And that's a win for everybody.

I think on the buyer's side, what I like the most is, you know, let's I I'm trying to think of which of the one of the years you don't have, but let's say there's a an Andrew Luck Black Finite you wanna own and it goes up for auction.

I imagine your current process is probably something like okay. I know it ends at 9PM. So at 08:59 and forty seconds, I'm gonna place an outrageous bid in the assumption that I'm gonna beat whoever was up next me.

Is that something like what you would do? That's it's it's probably right. If it's too late, though, I'm afraid I'm gonna fall asleep on the couch with the phone in my hand.

It's too late. I might put it in, earlier. But, yes, traditionally, I'm a sniper, especially if I'm trying to land a card. Yeah. Right. Right. And I think what's nice about this is I think that's what most people do.

Whether it's in the closing seconds or it's not, if it's a card you absolutely have to have or if it's a higher end card where maybe you don't see it all the time, it's a one zero one, it's a super of a prospect you're collecting, it's a NFL shield, NTRPA, something like that, there's not really a defined price all the time.

And so I think what you get is a lot of buyers who wait until the end and throw down this massive number in kind of a I gotta beat the next guy, but I don't know where the next guy is gonna be.

What I like about this is this is more control back in the hands of buyers placing bids.

I don't have to go into the last ten seconds on a $500 card that I've just gotta own, and I don't have to throw a $2,500 bid down just because I just can't tolerate letting myself possibly lose this because I'll be heartbroken.

I can bid $5. 50 with a minute left and it extends.

And if the other guy goes to 6, it extends. And you get a natural course there that these auctions are gonna follow where the buyers have the opportunity to have more control over where the final price lands. And I think that's healthy.

I think we hear a lot about people saying, what about people who don't pay and what about snipers? I get it. But at the end of the day, I'll tell you, we we're probably gonna sell close to 3,000,000 items on eBay this year.

There are more people who don't pay because two buyers dropped the massive bid at the last second and ended up winning it for more than they wanted than there are people who put in a realistic number at the end they were willing to pay and won it.

And I think this model lends itself to the ladder of people being able to control what they are willing to spend on something.

Then those kind of weird edge cases where you got two guys who go crazy on a card and goes, oh, it's too much.

I didn't wanna win it for that much and then not pay. So, I think there's a lot of benefits. Obviously, there's, like I said, different angles, buyers and sellers.

It'll be interesting to see how this goes. And I think a lot of this will depend on the value of the item. I think this is a huge win and a super impactful needle mover kind of thing for the higher end items.

I don't see this making a huge change on your 5 to $20 cards. You know? So with with the the way it's been, positioned, you know, testing, you're talking about testing or you're talking about extended bidding mostly from the higher end.

Do you have any idea or context regarding, like, the rollout and the testing of it?

I would imagine if it's if it's a card I need for my binder, they're probably not going to be putting extended bidding on, you know, a a parallel out of a 125 or whatever it is.

But do do you have any context around, like, what cards or the profile of cards that will be getting kind of the extended bidding treatment out of the gates?

Yeah. I think it's gonna be tested across the board, but we don't have all those details yet. I know this is something that was presented to some of the higher volume sellers, something you could opt into to take part in.

So and then within that, there's gonna be some level of AB testing where it's, let's run auctions with and without incomparable ranges so that there's that opportunity to study the impact of it and, you know, what's learned from that to find the best way to do this moving forward.

But a lot of that is still not all the way defined yet. We're still so early in this process.

It's exciting to know that eBay's innovating and offering something new and, you know, for as long as they've been the place in the market for buying singles and buying all kinds of collectibles, to see new things like this introduced to try to, you know, get a more robust offering that's good for buyers and sellers is great.

So, you know, kudos to them for doing that, but I don't wanna get ahead of ourselves and make assumptions about the exact logistics and execution of all the testing because that's something that's still being worked on between, you know, larger eBay sellers and and them as this testing goes forward.

So, certainly more to come as we learn more, but don't wanna put put things out there that are more assumptions at this point until we've really gotten the learnings from some of the testing.

Cool. I wanna hit the one thing you said and before we move on to the next topic, and that is this might be, Tori, a topic for a a bigger episode, and maybe we spend all of our time talking about it.

But you mentioned the non payers, and I think anyone who who has sent you cards or have listed cards themselves go through that seven days, and they go through the process card ends, and they're waiting for their money, and then they don't get their money because they're they fall victim to a non payer based on whatever circumstances.

I know, like, there's always this initiative to try to, like, combat that the best way possible.

I'm I'm just imagining that no matter how hard you try on your side at DC Sports to make sure that, like, all auctions that close get paid for, it's maybe one of those tasks that's almost impossible to completely tackle all the time.

Maybe in light of this addition, extended bidding, like, maybe talk about non payers and, like, if you think this might help that.

And then also just like your philosophy on non payers and having a business around, you know, consigning, you know, millions of items a year.

Like, how do you think about or how do you work with your clients on the non payer front? Yeah. It it is the single most frustrating issue we face, and and that's because we just get it from so many angles.

Right? We we know that our customers are let down when you count on something selling and it doesn't happen. I think there are so there's a lot of ways this factors into our business.

You know, one is this the simple answer, which is we have our process set up where something doesn't get paid, it automatically gets relisted, goes back to auction, and try to find a buyer with some integrity the second time.

I also know that on eBay's end, a lot of conversations we've had with them are about kind of the buyer vetting process. You know, a lot of this is really certain places where this happens.

We'll see people you know, you see a bunch of zero feedback accounts. They're trying to drive up the market on a certain player and just bidding things up with no intention to pay.

It's super frustrating. We get that. We try to work with our customers the best we can. Again, it's not our inventory, so we almost have to take it even more seriously because it's not just a matter of, we didn't get paid for this one.

We can go sell it again next week. Somebody was counting on that sale. So if it happens, we'll offer things like buy it nows because, you know, with a buy it now, you can require immediate payment for the buyer to hit the card on eBay.

EBay is doing a lot of testing for those who don't know or maybe don't spend as much time on eBay or don't sell with an autopay feature. That's something we really like. I'm glad they've taken that step.

So for buyers who have less than 10 feedback, they're required to have a payment method on file. And so when the auction closes, I think it's like within an hour, you have that automatically charged to your card.

There's then for those who get past that and not just, you know, considered a new account, there's further, you know, steps with the autopay where you have multiple cards won.

You can see right there on your account, hey, this is gonna automatically charge at this day and time.

And so anything you buy up until then will all be charged then. So I think more automation is good there, require payment methods to be entered, require people to automatically have payments charged.

They're the things you've gotta combat with somebody puts in bogus credit card info or, you know, somebody has a bad account and things like that.

And so I know, you know, I mentioned buyer vetting and that's something we've talked to eBay about, you know, something they do, for example, in, like, their automotive categories where it's you have to have a little more, validation done of your account upfront before you purchase, and bringing some of that to their platform is something I know they're exploring.

You know, we talk about UPI's with them, unpaid items, constantly. And I know they've got a lot of resources behind working on it. So, I think a lot of these things kinda work in tandem.

And as we look at extended bidding and we look at, you know, more validation of buyer accounts and as they roll out more of the autopay features, it's it's all moving in the right direction.

It's just when you've got a marketplace that big with that many different verticals, that many different categories, that many different types of buyers, you know, it is gonna take time to find the solution that can be applied appropriately to each category and to each account type and for each seller and things like that.

So, have every confidence that they're putting the right amount of, eyes on it and effort into it.

And I think it's just a matter of, you know, unfortunately, there has to be some patience while that process plays out to get to the point that it's less of an issue than it is today.

But, yeah, we we understand it is incredibly frustrating. When you hit big, you get it up on eBay, you see a great sale price, and then not one of those dollars shows up in your bank.

So, we absolutely sympathize with people who go through that because we go through it probably more than anyone.

I just wanted the listeners to know that they aren't aren't alone. We've all been there. We've all been through that. And at least everyone recognizes it's an issue, and it's a big issue.

And, there are very smart operators out there trying to work towards it. Anything beef anything else on just extended bidding front that's top of mind for you before we kinda take it on the home stretch to our primary topic?

No. Not really. I think, you know, I I imagine in a couple months here, we'll have another conversation that'll be what have we learned, where we at, what's the future hold for it.

Until we get some some hard data and some experience with seeing how it plays out, on the platform, I don't wanna say too much more that's just gonna be me making, you know, educated slash wild guesses.

So I'll I'll I'll let us close it there, but, absolutely put a pin in this one to, to come back to in the future once we've had some time to work with it. Alright.

So we're moving from extended bidding, which typically in our minds goes into kinda higher end, higher dollar value cards, and we're, segueing into a lower dollar, lower range, card, which I'm we're calling the sweet spot, which is not lost on me, kind of the irony of this transition.

But I think this will be fun. I wanted to talk with Tory about just volume, and I've listened to so many, of you who've given me feedback over the years on, like, I love this content.

I love talking about these cards, but, like, when are you gonna spend more time talking about cards that are lower end and maybe from the 20 to a $100 range?

And I feel like that's the foundation of the hobby. It's that's the majority of the sales. That's where a lot of collectors are spending their attention.

So when I saw that card ladder tracked in June, they hit an all time high for online recorded sales selling 306 or tracking $306,000,000 in online sales, I which was the highest month ever I thought, well, there this would be fun to, like, dig into and peel back a little bit.

So let's let's start there. I know while that number's big, our mind might might go to well, this is because this million dollar sale happened and all these, you know, 6 figure sales happen.

But I think one thing that gets lost is the fact that there's a lot more lower end sales happening, and I feel like that's kind of a sweet spot at DC Sports.

So when you see that number, the kind of that $306,000,000, and you see all the transactions and everything that's going on on a daily basis, like, where where does your mind go?

Obviously, it's like, this is a great like, this is positive. We're we're trending up. That means more sales, more collectors, cards are getting in the hands of more people.

But when we're thinking about kind of this range from 20 to a $100, like, how big of a role do you think those lower end cards, play in this kind of macro number?

Yeah. It it's it's a huge part. You know, we can all look back at the COVID boom that those of us who were in the hobby then lived through and cards were doing astronomical prices.

Maybe some of that has eased back a bit, but the market as a whole is transacting even more, and and that's how we get to a number like this.

I think it's driven more by more transactions, more sellers, more buyers, more cards. It's not always driven by we need more 10 and 20 and $100,000 cards. You know, just to kind of put that in a number sense, like here's $3.

00 $6,000,000 in June. We did just under $8,000,000 in June. Less than one percent of our cards go for over $500, every single month. So will we sell high end cards? Absolutely. We do. They do great on eBay.

We've got a good, relationship. A lot of people would deal on the higher end, and they sell through us. But our average sale right now is just over $34 a card. So, you know, at this point, we've, we've recently upped our volume.

We're doing 60,000 auctions a week, and those 60,000 auctions a week are at $34 a card on average. So we are living at an insanely high volume in the spot you're talking about here.

There's a lot of reasons for it. I know we'll get into, but, yeah I absolutely think the health of the card market should be more defined by the overall volume like this $3. 00 $6,000,000 number and by how regularly it's transacting.

How is each marketplace doing? Are we seeing more transactions take place? Are there new buyers we didn't see before? You know, we'll look a lot at our eBay metrics at how many unique buyers bought a card from us.

And that's an interesting one to look at is, you know, month over month, what does that look like? Because more people making purchases is what we need.

You know, that's the look at the the card hobby as a whole. It's like a huge triangle. Right? The the bottom is what it's built on. It's not gonna be built on that million dollar Kobe MJ LeBron up top.

Is gonna be built on the cards that are accessible to everybody that are trading hands every single day that and in a lot of different ways. Right? It's how people get their money back after breaks or opening a box.

It's how people sell cards to save money for a huge PC chase for them. So, I absolutely think that layer is what the market is really built on, and that's something that is absolutely true of the business that we've built here.

I think when most people think of consignment, they think of, maybe higher end, the marketplace or, you know, the consignment shop is looking for your biggest and best cards, and then they'll go promote those cards via a video, and they'll send them out to all of their subscribers on their email list and try to give as much visibility as possible so that when these auctions in, all the attention is on these cards, and hopefully, they sell for enough money that makes the kind of the auction house along with the, individual selling the card, happy.

Now what I just heard from you and just like the way you break down the numbers of your business, like, that's not the model you're you're you're you're working from.

Like, you're working from this angle of, like, a lot of volume coming in. And in order to maybe get the cards at every place it needs to be listed, sold, shipped, all this, and keep this train rolling.

It it takes, like, an intentional operation to be able to to to to operate at this level, or if you don't have that, it probably crashes on its face.

I think it'd be interesting based on the the the total numbers, that three zero six number and based on kind of your breakdown and monthly sales, like, how do you think about the operation that you have built to make sure that you are satisfying the needs of the majority of the hobby?

And the majority of the hobby likely are the individuals who are sending you 20 to a $100 cards on a regular basis.

Yeah. So there's a there's a couple angles here. You know, one is, I think you're right. I think for a long time, a lot of people thought consignment was, I've got a huge card and, you know, we're saying 5 figures and up.

And I I don't think I can get top dollar for it. So I gotta go to an auction house. I gotta go to a consignor. I think we kinda looked at it the other way.

And as we have built the business, it was we don't wanna price or, disqualify anybody out of working with us. And so, when we started doing this, you know, we looked at it and said, okay, what are other people doing?

And and a lot of the other consignors were, hey, we'll consign any card $50 and up or we'll consign graded cards only, or we'll consign $50 and up, but you can send us below that, but it's a $5 per card listing fee or something like that.

And so, you know, our intent along with build a model where we can offer rates that are attractive to people. So, like, if you send us a, let's say, 25 to $500 card, that's one of our price tiers, you get 85% of the sale.

For your average person, you're probably paying eBay 13% or so per sale anyway. But at our size and at our scale, we can do better than that and pass some of that on.

And so, we wanted to offer that, which is why we happily take $5. 08, $12 cards from people every day, and it and it's a huge portion of what we do. You know, if if I were to ask you, hey.

You sell 20 cards tonight. How long is it gonna take you tomorrow to package each one of those up in a bubble mailer, print a shipping label, get them to the post office? You know, that's I mean, how long would that take you?

Wait. What do you think? It would so it would take me for sure an entire evening. And my entire my evening is, like, two hours where I don't have kids or I'm not doing content or I'm not working.

And those two hours are typically time where I just wanna, like, turn my brain off and watch something silly on TV until while I fall asleep. Right. So and I'm protecting that time.

Exactly. So we're both trying to find a way that we can put money back into your pocket. And when you find a great show you wanna binge, you can get that last episode in without losing that little free time you have at night.

And most of our customers, right, they're not doing cards full time as a business all day every day.

So a lot of the reason that this is also a sweet spot from a consignment standpoint is that if you've got you're gonna have the most cards in this bucket.

You know, if we looked at, say, we're talking 20 to a 100 here or even say, like, five to 50, that's where most of the cards somebody owns are.

You know, if you're not a dealer and you're not dealing singles all the time, you're not sitting on a huge pile on the edge of your desk of thousand dollar plus cards.

So if you want to move those, be it for another purchase, just to get money for something else, pay bills, whatever your personal situation is, it takes work to do that.

And so the big thing we're trying to do too is not just give people money, but, like, if you send us 20 cards, we can list them and we've got a team that handles that stuff.

And so it flows a lot easier here. You know, on a given any given day, we've probably got 2,500 or so packages going out the front door, and we could just fit it into that flow.

And as a consignor, the other advantage is if I sell ten $5 cards, a lot of the times like, let's say you saw 10 I know Anthony Richardson's where all your money's going these days.

You know, let's say you saw 10 AR cards you wanted to buy. If you buy them all from us because we have fifty, sixty thousand auctions up at a time, you're not paying 4 or $5 of shipping on every single card.

And so what works for our model too is a lot of times people can do really well on those five to fifty dollar cards because people are buying multiple, combining shipping, saving, and kinda justifying an extra bid.

So anyway, there's there's a lot of reasons we can dive into, but it it absolutely works that we've built it to where we can scale it and it doesn't really hurt us, where your average person is not gonna sit at home on a Thursday night and pack up a 100 things to take to the post office the next morning just because, you know, their time is worth something too.

And and that's part of what consignment's about is putting time back in your pocket just like money.

I was thinking about this topic, and I thought, you know what? There'd be a this be good to, like, talk about some myths, and maybe we can bust some myths or confirm them.

And I I do it from the lens of, like, asking myself these questions. And I'm I'm spending less time these days in the 20 to 100 range, but that's that's where I started. You know? That's where I I found my footing in collecting.

And I can recall, like, transitioning kind of my collecting insight mentality from this range to moving up a little bit, which is a natural progression for a lot of different collectors who put equity into the hobby.

That that's kinda like the the context I was giving myself as I was thinking of some of these preconceived notions that I I've had in the past.

And one of those is is, like, okay. This this 20 to a $100 range, like, these these aren't worth selling now. So instead of, like, me going through the process of sending them to DC Sports, I'll just sit on them.

And, you know, the the thought is that, you know, these 20 to a $100 cards will eventually go up. Is is is that, like, mindset or mentality something that you have heard or talked with other clients of yours in the past?

And if so, like, what's your overall perspective on just, like, that mindset? Yeah. I think it's, it happens a lot. You know, probably the most common one I hear is from people who get into a lot of breaks.

You know, you'll get people who buy into breaks just as a hobby. It's it's a break or two, couple nights a week, something like that. And we've had customers who will come to us and say, hey, can you get me started?

We get them started consigning. They say, you know, I've been buying into breaks in a box at my local shop here and there for the last year or so. And I just it's taken up room in my kitchen.

And to them, it's almost not even about the money. It's about I got all these boxes and they're in the way I want them gone. So they start working with us and then, you know, a month or two go by and they've sold everything.

Like, oh my gosh. Where did $29,000 come from? And it's one of those things where I think people are so drawn to the one card worth $29,000 that you can kind of forget that a thousand $29 cards is the same amount of money.

It's like the, you know, if I got two $10 bills and ask you to trade for a 20, like neither of us are winning or losing there.

It's the same amount of money. And so I think they are easy to forget about. I think more often people are doing it not out of laziness, but just out of indifference.

It's none of the cards are really big. When I hit it in the break or when I got it in a trade, I wasn't immediately thinking what can I sell this for?

And so it kinda gets forgotten until they accumulate. But at the end of the day, like, if you have those, if they're not PC, if they're not a player you're specifically investing in for the future, why not turn that into money?

Why not be liquid on those card assets and then turn around and put those in something that is a PC card for you or a player you wanna invest in?

Or even just look at it like, hey. I don't have to come out of my pocket for the next break I wanna buy in or next box I wanna buy myself.

So, I think just everything in your collection, if you're a collector, you're in the hobby, it needs to have kind of a status in your mind. And I'm holding it, but not for any reason, probably isn't a good one.

You know, it's it's I'm holding this to sell later or I'm holding this because I'm collecting it or it's, hey, this is the stuff I have available to trade with or the things I'm gonna sell.

I think that'll you'll find that you're much more responsibly managing your collection and your budget when you look at it that way.

I this is probably gonna be as we're kinda rounding this out, but I just wanna, like, maybe paint a picture for, in anyone's mind who's sitting there with stacks of cards so they can, like, understand that there's value in those stacks of cards and value in getting rid of them, and it can probably lead to a bigger card that you're chasing.

You don't even realize that. But, like, when you think about that range, and I know this is gonna be really overwhelming, Tory, because she sees a wide range of cards from all different sports regularly.

But, like, that sweet spot, like, what are, like, popular regular cards that, you see, like, from a volume perspective that people have that send to you that, like, hit that sweet spot just so individuals know, like, oh, I can turn to, like, this product or this parallel or this player if I if I've got stacks of them around me, and chances are I might be able to turn that into a bigger card.

Yeah. I I think it's more about that kind of card maybe than it's about the set, but I would say that the two most common things that we see a ton of come in are, you know, numbered parallels and relics.

And maybe it's just that, you know, twenty years ago or so now, jeez, twenty five years, maybe more, we've been doing relics. What was it? Like, 97 upper deck, those things first got introduced.

So we're at twenty eight years now, but I think, you know, you're opening Topps series one and you get one of those major league material, you know, baseball jersey relics, and that's not an exciting card.

Or you're opening Prism Basketball and you get one of those spectacular swatches jersey pieces.

That that's one good example. The other is people opening Optic, Select, Prism, sets like that that have a lot of parallels, have a lot of numbered inserts.

And I think both of those categories can kinda get forgotten because you open the box and your mind goes to what's the big hit.

It's the guaranteed auto or what's the huge rookie we're chasing, and it's what did I get of him in this box.

That kind of becomes pile one. You know, pile three is these are all VET based cards. Okay. We're not consigning those. You know, there's no reason to send those anywhere.

But there's that middle pile of the cards we're talking about here. $5. 10, $20. 50 dollars that, they're not super sexy or exciting, but you add those things up, you accumulate those, it does create a lot of value.

And so I think those are kind of the categories I think of when I think of things people sit on, forget about, but have a ton of value.

And maybe you don't wanna spend the time to sell a 100 of those, but that's kind of what we are here for.

And so, you know, that's the stuff we like working with people on. We covered rookie royalty, extended bidding, and the sweet spot of 20 to a $100 cards, which I know all of you out there are sitting on piles of it.

Definitely, hit up Tory in DC Sports eighty seven if you're looking to get rid of those and put them up on eBay.

Tory, we've we've done it. A lot of, conversation, a lot of context. I'm sure next time we get up on here, there'll be a whole new myriad of other topics to dig into. But, as always, appreciate your time and perspective.

Likewise. Yeah. The the hobby is certainly never calm, quiet, or boring these days. So I I have no idea what we'll be talking about, but I know we'll have plenty of choices. No doubt.