Alright. We are back with the staging area with Tory, DC Sports eighty seven.

Got a chance before we hit record to talk about baseball playoffs, which you probably haven't heard me talk about much on the stacking sides properties, but Tory's a big baseball fan.

So, Tory, like, are you watching, like, all the games when you're at home?

What's your mindset as a consumer and fan of baseball? I wish. I wish. If if my Orioles were in it, which, you know, six, seven months ago, we were sure the Orioles were gonna be in the playoffs.

And then this year was just an absolute train wreck, and Adley got hurt, and Grayson Rodriguez was hurt, and bats didn't perform. It it was this year was ugly. So, we still hope for the future.

We're still young, but when it comes to playoffs, I wish I could. I absolutely love playoff baseball. I know, like, we were talking about for a lot of people who won't deal with the 162 game grind from, you know, April to October.

I totally get it, but at least the playoffs, there's more meaning in every inning and every game. I just don't have time, you know, four kids at home and time with my family and work and all the things going on outside of here.

I'm way more of the constantly checking box scores on my phone than I'm tuning into every game. I usually catch at least, like, the back half of any competitive elimination game.

Mhmm. You know, that's at least like, okay. I can I can say I'm gonna give it half an hour because, you know, this matters for the eighth and ninth innings of a close game?

So, you know, if Yankees, Red Sox is close tonight, I'll certainly tune in for the end. But, yeah, I just I just don't have the time to catch them all.

I wish there were more hours on the day, but tragically, there are not. I'm gonna I'm gonna put your feet to the fire here. Give me give me the prediction. Who's who's winning the World Series this year?

So I think the Yankees get by the Red Sox, and I actually think the Yankees, as much as I don't like them, get out of the AL. I just don't really trust, like, the Tigers or, you know, Guardians or anybody to get it done.

So, I'm gonna say it's Yankees, Dodgers again, and I think Dodgers win again. I feel like that's such a cliche, chalky answer, but that's what I think happens.

I was telling you, I've been watching the Dodgers and, very impressive, club, in LA. What's so let's maybe take this to cards. And we know that Ohtani, he's, like, unprecedented. His market's on fire. Everyone wants a piece of Ohtani.

I was, like, sitting watching baseball with my wife, which is an atypical situation. But I was, like, trying to explain to her, like, the impact Ohtani has on baseball culture and, most importantly, sports cards.

And it was a fun conversation, like, digging into it. But, like, if if in fact the Dodgers win again, like, what what's possible with Ohtani and his cards?

Yeah. I mean, he's one of those guys where it's tricky because there's not really it feels like a lot at this point that could bring him down ever, you know, barring a career ending injury or something absolutely crazy happening.

He's about to win his fourth MVP, and that puts him second to only Bonds who has seven.

And the trajectory is on. It's like, who knows? He could get to seven. So I think he's just at that point where the market is so established and so set. And he's got so many cards, but everything just keeps appreciating.

It's just in the next, you know, five years, which is probably what's left of his, you know, super impactful prime, how many more big boxes can he check? Right? Like, how many more world series titles are there?

How many more MVPs are there? When does he hit his five hundredth home run, like, is there another forty forty or fifty fifty season? So I think at this point, it's the floor is so obscenely high.

The question is just every time one of those things happens, we're gonna see that next tick up, a little more acutely than the just gradual appreciation we've seen with him staying so consistent. So, it's coming for sure.

And I think when you look at the playoffs, the storylines tend to be the two that I follow hobby wise the most are guys like him. I put Judge in the same camp here where it's established superstar constantly performing.

Year over year, he does it. It's does he show up in the playoffs and do they win the World Series? Like, those are huge things that can happen for the superstars.

And the other guys I'm watching are, like, you know, if the Yankees have Cam Schlittler go out, who just had his first auto in 2025 Bowman Chrome or it's Connolly early for the Red Sox, you've got this, like, young rookie pitcher who has a big game or a big bat on any of these teams.

Those are the other guys where it's like the coming out moment even more so than just a solid rookie campaign. So you're kinda watching the extremes.

You know, you wanna watch the rookies. You wanna watch the superstar vets and, see how it plays out. But I think we've got a a good mix, good matchups, and very excited to keep tuning in here for the next month.

I was gonna ask you a different card related question to kinda kick off today's chat. And today, we're gonna talk about a a myriad of topics. Most specifically, we're gonna dig into live selling.

But just while we're on this Ohtani topic, I was thinking about this as I was watching the game. And I was thinking about this from this perspective of if I decided to go buy an Ohtani card, obviously, I would do some research.

But because of the supply of different types and profiles of Otani cards, there's a lot of different lanes you can go down.

I would love you as a baseball card collector. Like, we've got rookies. We've got autos. We've got rookies and autos.

We've got patches. We've got just Dodgers cards, first year Dodgers cards. Based on everything you know and all the cards you see and how you think about markets and, obviously, these cards are really expensive.

But which, like, slice of the Ohtani, card category in the card categories is the most intriguing for you as a baseball card collector?

Yeah. So to me, I I still say rookie stuff with him. You know, Ohtani is super unique in the hobby because with most guys, you could have the debate of, do I go after the first chrome or do I go go after the rookie?

Well, with Ohtani, they're one and the same, because in 02/2018, there wasn't a prospect card prior to him having the rookie card. He came in. This wasn't a guy who's gonna go through the minors or anything.

So, you know, your budget matters a lot with that to me because you can spend a lot of money really fast, but I'm still looking at, you know, 2018 Topps Chrome parallels, his 2018 Bowman rookies.

Like, I think those are just such staples, and they're easy to find. But I also think that there's a way to maybe look at some of the shorter print stuff with him.

You know, look at the SP inserts from a Topps chrome black or planetary pursuits out of cosmic or some of those releases have been out there. I think that's another way to go where there's always gonna be less supply.

As much as rookies and prospects are the foundation of the baseball card market, you know, I don't know the numbers, but the pop count's gotta be obscene on all 2,018 Topps and Bowman Ohtani cards.

And so, you know, another way you could go is there, and I think if you look at there, it also gives you a channel to acquire cards with a lower supply in the market that are gonna be Dodgers uniform, because you can go after the last few years.

And if he proceeds to win a couple more MVPs and a couple more titles, there's definitely some weight that's gonna be carried because you've got the Dodgers fans chasing those cards, not just the hobby guy saying I've gotta have a rookie because that's what I go after all the time.

So, yeah, I'm looking at the rookie staples, and I'm looking at shorter printed inserts, low numbered parallels from, you know, the last few years and going forward as new stuff comes out in a Dodgers uniform.

Tori, I wanna just chat you out because every time I have a conversation with you, I can just lean on you to offer the baseball card perspective that's so sorely, desired by the loyal listeners of stacking slabs.

So anytime we could talk baseball and baseball cards, especially playoff time, I'm gonna take advantage of that.

I I'm more than happy. It's much better to play into my strengths than you ask me. Hey. Give me a a sleeper rookie on the Colts, and I sit here bubbling over trying to give you an answer. So it's good. We can complement each other here.

Let's let's talk about maybe the probe speed of it all. I've, I haven't obviously saw the news, but I was curious just as a, like, high volume seller as DC Sports eighty seven is on eBay. Like, what what was your reaction to that?

Like, based on, Rick Probstein leaving do is it doing his own thing? Like, does it make you think about what you're doing any differently in terms of, like, trying to service your customers or get more customers?

Like, how are you thinking about his exit? Yeah. And I just wanted us to talk about it because I think it's one of those things that, you know, everybody hears PropeC and they know huge consignor.

I mean, they've been kind of the the foundation, I mean, until us and a couple others came around really of, like, the eBay sellers for two decades now.

I mean, it's been forever. You know, for us, we kinda knew this was coming. So I think it was about a year ago, Rick announced they were launching Snipe, this new auction platform that they built in house.

It was gonna be their own thing, and, I think anybody who's operating a business at his scale or our scale, you can't live with, you know, one foot and two camps all the time.

Like, that just doesn't happen. And so as soon as he announced, say, he's building his own thing, the writing was on the wall. You're not gonna stay with eBay forever.

You know, for us, we're full in on eBay. We've kinda pushed all our chips in and, all our investments in technology and our systems and the customers we work with is all built to sell on eBay's platform.

We think they have the most eyes and it also has a ton of value and we're staying there.

So, you know, for us, the the thing is I think anytime you go try something new, there's gonna be pros and cons. You know, Prosean is gonna have full control of this new platform.

They can customize it exactly how they want and do what they think is best by their customers, but there's gonna be a lot fewer eyes on something that just launches versus eBay, which is where we all go for singles first.

You know, even in the world now of, you know, Whatnot and other live selling platforms of Fanatics Collect, ComC, all these other marketplaces out there, eBay is number one.

Like, they have more eyes than anybody, and so, that's what we're we gravitate towards.

And, you know, our hope is if there are people who aren't gonna make that move with, team, we're absolutely here to service those customers and, you know, best of luck to them and start their own thing, but I think there will be people looking for somewhere else and another partner to work with.

And, we're absolutely gonna try to put ourselves at the front of that list to to work with people who just are more comfortable, you know, staying on eBay.

That's awesome. No. And, obviously, I know we both work with eBay, so it's it's nice to to hear, like, your focus, and I wouldn't have expected anything different. But, yeah, like, I don't know.

Like, you plan a lot and you're working on a platform like eBay. Like, what sort of topics for you outside of, you know, Probstien leaving and you trying to maybe get a customer or two that's not making the the migration?

What what sorts of things are on your mind just in terms of, like, your going into 2025, 2026 relationship and what you're working on on eBay?

Yeah. I mean, you know, that's one of the things that that's great is there's always a lot going on.

You You know, sometimes that's trying to make things better, and sometimes that's trying to find things to fix, which I guess is also making things better.

But, you know, our focus with eBay kinda going into the fourth quarter here and then into next year, it's always gonna be growth.

That's number one. We'll have our app out next week, so that's super exciting for us. So by the time this podcast is released, we'll be a day or two from launching our app, which is super exciting.

Also built, obviously, around everything we do with eBay, and really just finding ways to grow channels we don't do as much in.

So how do we service better the non sports and TCG, memorabilia, comics, things that we sell, but obviously on a much a much lower scale, and working with different teams at eBay to be sure we work with those product teams to understand how to kinda optimize those verticals.

So that's big for us. The other big thing for us is just looking at things that are pain points for our customers and continuing to work with eBay and how we address those.

So, you know, we've talked before about things like show bidding and unpaid items and just getting all the eyes we can on that.

What can we do internally and what can we share with eBay to continue to push forward for for improvement there?

And another big one that's gotten a lot of pressure on us lately, and I've seen a lot of social media posts and things is on the authenticity program with eBay.

So, you know, a lot of values offered there because both as a seller, we're protected that if we deliver an item as described, we don't have to worry about a return.

And for a buyer, they're protected in that they're getting what they pay for in the condition they were told it's in. So that should be there. The pain point lately has been time.

So it's taking a lot longer for these to be processed as received at the authenticator. So we'll hear complaints of, hey. Do they have my card? I'm getting worried. It's taking longer to process there.

We've had a couple of great meetings, conversations with eBay, and it's just a matter of volume. It's just as you know, you've seen all the record numbers lately of how much the hobby is transacting and selling.

Well, that's skyrocketing the volume that's going to them. And so this is really coming down to PSA being able to add shifts, add hours, add people, and they're actively doing that to meet the timelines they've committed to with eBay.

And so we know they're gonna deliver on that. It's just kinda getting through that hurdle. But I know we've seen a lot lately of people online asking, what's going on?

It's a huge problem. It's a mess. I absolutely can sympathize with the frustration, and I think it's just a matter of sellers like us who are pushing a ton of volume through there, talking to them and being sure to communicate that.

So, I'm confident improvement is coming, but I know lately that's been a a sore spot that we've heard a lot about from our customer base by Money Bank.

I, would love your perspective on this because as a high volume seller who is very focused on operations, very focused on technology, highly focused on making sure you're creating great experiences for your customers.

I had a conversation, recently that was on the podcast with Ryan Hogue, PSA president, and it was it was we were talking about turnaround times, and it and it's it's kind of increasing, the price point to kinda slow down the demand because it's so insane right now.

And he got into talking about how they're he's talking to his demand and his marketing team and how they're having to not create demand because the demand is so crazy, which is, like, such a unique position as a career marketer where your your boss is saying, like, slow it down.

Yeah. So undeniably, it's like all of these forces, momentum, things that are happening in our hobby that are causing excitement, but it also causes an influx of a lot more, customers who want to use products and services.

Obviously, authentication is falling victim to this too because there's more ads, more authentication.

So how like, I'm not asking you to solve the the PSA or the eBay authentication problem, but, like, you you you you live in this world of, like, crazy numbers, crazy mail.

Like, you've got employees. You're trying to, like, constantly tweak things in order to, like, make sure you're being as efficient as possible. Like, what it like, what goes off in your brain, like, from an operations perspective?

Or how do you think about this when you hear the demand is so high and it's slowing everything down? Yeah. I mean, I think this is kind of the the rule that applies to a lot of businesses, which is control what you can control.

You know, what what we can control is get the packages shipped on time. So ship them right after they're paid, Ship it overnight. Get it in to the authenticator's hands so that they can start their process.

If we're asked about it or someone sees a delay, immediately respond to that person. Be transparent enough to tell them here's when we shipped it. Here's when they got it. We know things are running behind. Keep an eye on it.

It's gonna update. Like, communication and delivery on our side is all we can control. We're absolutely aware of the fact that particularly the hobby these days, and we've talked about this too, the market changes daily.

And so part of the the stress point with the AG program, authentication at eBay, is that if a card sells on Monday, a lot of people bought it because they want it on Wednesday or Thursday because they're buying for a guy who's got a game on Sunday and they expect them to go off and they wanna sell it.

And so it is tricky when you add days to the lead time between purchase and delivery in a market that is reacting, turning on a dime. You know, I leave here Friday afternoon. There's college football game Saturday.

There's playoff baseball games Friday, Saturday, Sunday night, and the NFL happens Sunday. We come in Monday morning. We live in a very different world than we did on Friday afternoon. And so anytime you add days there, it's a problem.

And so I'm glad that with adding shifts and adding man hours, eBay and PSA are working together to solve that. But that really is the the crux of what's going on here and why there's so much frustration.

And like I said, all we can do is be sure we're communicating well and getting our delivery to the authenticator as quick as we can because those are the things within our control that we can do to mitigate as much of the delay as we possibly can.

That makes sense. There's always gonna be something and an an issue that we're all trying to work on or work towards, so glad we could cover off on that.

Before we get into live selling, I definitely wanna hear about I know I saw some pic posts on Instagram with, mama breaks, DC sports eighty seven, and Haystack.

What was going on? Maybe explain kind of that collaboration, to the rest of us.

Yeah. Yeah. So, Stephanie of Mama Breaks was kind enough to to let me come out and spend some time with their team last week. And Steve Sloan and one of his guys from Haystack came out and joined us.

Haystack's a company we work with. They've got a great imaging device. You'll usually see it sitting right over my shoulder here on my desk. And then their software is for card recognition.

So, you know, as soon as release day or day before, they've got all the checklists built in from the manufacturers so they can scan a card, automatically crop it, resize it, put it online, and identify what it is.

So we use that to be a lot quicker in our listing process, But what we were doing last week was just being there for day of release listing.

So got into town Tuesday when Bowman Chrome came out. So all the hits from people on Bowman Chrome Day, they wanted released or listed right away.

We had a Tuesday night, and then we were there Wednesday for the Disney Chrome release, listed all those on eBay Wednesday night, all three day auctions, so people were getting some of the first auction sales to close on eBay.

So, as we just get out there as a company, and we've talked about this, just showing face more, building community, producing content, these are just great opportunities. We'll definitely do that more.

Trying to go on-site with breakers to do day of release listing because it's prime values realized for their customers. It's great for us to kinda build our network and get to know some of the good people in the hobby.

And, Stephanie or her team were awesome to work with and spend some time with and get to know some of them and watch kinda how their operation runs.

So, very unique experience. Really cool. We'll definitely do it again, and that's kind of what we were up to last week with that, that little trio of of companies pairing up out there in California last week.

Love to see it. What are your thoughts on the Disney chrome product? Yeah. So Disney's interesting to me. I think the price point's a little high, but I really like the product.

I will say it's kinda shocking. I was talking to Zach here about this the other day. If you look at, like, Disney 100 when it first came out, it was such a, like, thick stock premium material product.

And it was the debut release of it in 2023. I know how kinda unique that first set can be. There's not that same feel to it, so it's not that super thick stock and everything.

So it's definitely a a lesser, and and I get that. I know every year is not gonna be the debut coming out party that 2023 Disney 100 was, but, I like that tops is doing things to keep kind of pushing it forward, though.

So you're not gonna have everybody's first card like we had in 2023, but we have sketches now. We have more autographs incorporated now. We have I love that insert set, reflections.

We had one that was like Buzz Lightyear and Zerg reflected on each other. And so, you know, good for them to find new things introduced to keep giving you a chase all the time, but it is crazy to me what these products do.

I think, you know, 2023 Disney a 100 is at, like, $2,200 a box now. Oh, god. Last year, I think, is, like, 800 a box, and it's probably, like, $55,600 for this year.

So it's one of those that's super cool, but you're kind of living in the extremes. You've got these sketches and autographs and low numbered color up top. And then as the years go by, you've got a lot of risk in the middle.

So good looking set, but, you gotta have an appetite for a little risk if you're gonna be ripping. I tend to overthink a lot of this stuff, but I was you know, I'm a content consumer.

I listen to Ryan, card collector too, and he's a big Disney fan, celebrates Disney with his family. And I just think about, like, a product like Disney Chrome where it's like a chromium based product, like, shiny.

We love it. And then you layer in the Disney element, which is a connection point probably with your spouse or with your kids who might not be into cards.

Do you think a product like this could, I don't know, get get more people who aren't collecting sports cards to eventually collect sports cards?

Absolutely. And I think even if it's not necessarily sports cards, it's more people into the hobby in general.

Like, I know, I think Gary v has been saying this for years, and he's he's usually right with a lot of his predictions. But it's just so much more accessible because it's so much more relatable.

So you'll see people chasing the first cards that were produced of Superman, of Batman, Disney, different characters that that pop culture with collectability overlap creates an entry point that's really great.

And even if those people stay in the non sports vertical, that's new people in the hobby and that's healthy for it. If they branch into sports, that's great.

But, like, I know my my wife actually ripped the box at Disney the other day and, you know, she's got all her color and her nice stuff she set aside, what she's gonna keep, maybe sell to buy the next box.

And then the base cards, like, our five year old's just looking at it because he loves it. He knows the characters. And so, as far as getting another generation of people into the hobby, I agree with you.

I think it's great. It's a it's a good way to do it. And, you know, it shocked me yesterday, the SpongeBob product came out and how many people were jumping on it.

And I'm not not a big SpongeBob guy, but it's that same thing. You've got a pop culture element that people love and have ties to, and it does bring them into cards.

And that that's good for all of us. You know, we we've got no place to judge or try to cut things out of hobby because they're not cool enough for us.

You know, they're all healthy things to have. Yeah. I think SpongeBob is a a little bit after us, but I think SpongeBob is the goat to a specific generation.

So I would is. Yeah. I was I was stunned by the response. Yep. Yeah. Agree. I was, you know, trying to remember. I guess, I was more like Looney Tunes and some of the the old Disney stuff, but I'm, I'm a little older.

So, you know, I guess I'm a I'm a era before. But yeah. For sure. Alright. So I before we get off of the Disney topic, I saw you, post this on Instagram on the DC Sports eighty seven, Instagram account.

But this one kinda stopped me in my tracks because I hadn't seen anything like this. And I this is I'm showing up on the screen for everyone listening.

The 25 Topscrum Walt Disney, the one and only Superfractor. And this this card will have ended by the time this episode goes live. But right now, it has 20 227 people who like it. There's three days left in the auction.

It is currently at $6,433 with 21 bids selling to DC Sports eighty seven. Like, what's what's your reaction to this card? What's happening with this card now? And I don't know. Like, where where's this gonna stop at the end?

Yeah. So this got hit by Jesse Gibson of, Sports Cars Nonsense. We work with Jesse on his, hobby nonsense pod with him and and Mike Geo on the Sports Cars Nonsense pod with them as Breakers.

So super happy for him. He actually kind of predicted it, like, said he was gonna hit it, then it happened. So, it's such a cool card, and I'll be honest, I didn't even realize at first that these were the one and only for a reason.

You know, to me, I see this card and my first reaction is, oh, it's a super factor. That's awesome. I'll go see what a red sold for to see what it's worth. There's no red. There's no orange. There's no gold.

Like, it is the one and only. This is Walt's only card in the product, same as it was last year. I think last year's did about $8,000 or maybe just over. I think this one's gonna end up if I'm guessing, I'm gonna say, like, 12.

I just think there's way more eyes and way more people after the Disney cards. I think it's accumulated a lot more followers, and so, we're super excited to have it up.

Obviously, a picture of Walt Disney on a card is, you know, maybe not the bread and butter when you hear DC sports, in our name, but, I mean, we do. We we sell thousands and thousands of non sports and TCG cards every week.

So we do see a lot of cool stuff come through, but this one, like you said, definitely stops you a bit more just because it's such a unique piece, to have a an entire product produced after the the company and creations that this one guy is behind, and it's his sole card in the entire product.

So super excited it got hit. Super excited we have it in house. Very curious to see where it ends up.

We've had a lot of people asking about it, ton of people watching it. So it'll be a it'll be a fun one to watch play out over the next few days and see where it ends at Sunday night. We talk a lot about goats in the hobby.

Is there a more goat goat than Walt Disney himself? I'm trying to, like, measure this to, like, the Babe Ruth and the Michael Jordans, but I'm like, god. Walt Disney kinda just stands on his own, doesn't he? Yeah.

I mean, when you get outside sports, I guess it's gotta be because, yeah, like, you know, even if you get into other non sports cards, like, just Disney kind of predates a lot of the other things we deal with in non sports and pop culture these days.

And then you get into, like, the historical figures, and it's like, well, you know, you can look at music and movies and presidents and everything, but I I'm not sure there's a gap as big as, like, for a person that's not a character or an athlete, in his space, maybe even with athletes.

Yeah. I mean, Walt's Walt's gotta be up there.

That it's a good mental exercise if you're trying to rank, you know, the the goats of their categories, but he's certainly near the top. No doubt. Awesome. Well, I I can't wait to talk about that one once it concludes.

But let's get into the primary topic, which is live selling. And you expressed an interest a while back to hit live selling and talk about it on the pod, and I was like, that's great. Like, we haven't done much of that, if any of that.

And, honestly, Tory, like, my first real exposure to live selling was, like, at the national. Like, seeing it in person and seeing, individuals go into the eBay booth, eBay live, and do it.

And then, obviously, you're seeing whatnot do it on stage. So I guess, first, before we get into it, like, what is it about the live selling topic just out of the gates that, why'd you wanna, like, spend some time on it?

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's just an interesting thing to talk about because it is such a change from what we're kinda used to historically.

You know, we're all very conditioned to you know, you could call them async auctions if you wanna get all technical.

But just your standard auction running online where you watch it and bid and everything, I think it very much leans itself to what we see a lot in the market and the content world and the Internet and the urgency of the day where everything is live, live, live.

You know, we love breaks. We want our news right away off social media. We want, you know, prices react overnight to things happening.

And so, I can understand that where the the initiation of an auction or selling an item to a conclusion can be, you know, at least some of these sudden deaths. It's five or ten seconds sometimes.

Like, it's so short. And so, I just think the dynamic of that compared to the other platforms and methods of selling is a really interesting thing to look at. So, particularly for us, I think this does vary a lot based on who you are.

If you're a casual seller who wants to do, you know, one stream a week on an eBay live or whatnot or something like that versus somebody like us where we've already have sixty, seventy thousand auctions running every week, the the pros and cons and how you kinda weigh the right fit for different items, and different verticals is definitely gonna gonna vary a lot, but I think just digging into all that is interesting.

And, you know, we just had our first live show.

We worked with Mike Gio from Sports Cards Nonsense, hosted it here out of our office, did it on eBay, football heavy Monday night, did it during the Monday night games, which were atrocious games.

So good time because people didn't have to pay attention to anything else.

And it was just really interesting. You know, we we ended up going through about 90 items, did about $40,000 in sales. So, you know, kinda sat in that 4 or $500 average sale.

We have some above, some below. So, yeah, learning experience for us and just, an interesting thing as we see more and more and more of it happening just to kinda dive in and and talk about the different angles of.

Yeah. So how obviously, this is a megatrend that's happening. I can't go anywhere without it coming up into some some conversation or some topic.

How long have you been following the topic of live selling and then also, like, pondering if this is something DC Sports eighty seven is going to get into or not?

Yeah. Sure. So, really, the the reason that I ever gave it any consideration I mean, it's been on our radar for a long time, but, really, that's because we get courted by the whatnot.

And, you know, in places like that of the world, because we're a big seller, we're a huge in the collectible space.

You know, right now we sell between two and two and a half million dollars a week in cards on eBay, and so people are gonna come to us both for, you know, business reasons.

They wanna work with us, and we're just, you know, someone who's got a lot of good insights and and feedback and things like that.

So those conversations of people kinda reaching out to us is what first put it on our radar, and that was probably three, four years ago at this point.

You know, places like the National and kind of those cold calls through emails and things like that. What really kinda got us interested in it was as we and we've talked about this a lot, you and I have.

Over the last year, leaning more into content, engaging with customers, connecting with our customers both who sell through us and buy from us and things like that.

And, obviously, the one big perk of live selling is it does that. You know, I think a lot of other things we can do faster, cheaper, easier, listing just our standard auctions on eBay and running them all the time.

But those unique elements are kinda what drew us to have an interest and, led us to kinda doing this, you know, pilot premier event.

And from here, kinda do a lot of analysis on our side to say, when do we wanna do this? What makes sense? What doesn't make sense?

And kinda go from there. Well, first, congrats on the timing because, my wife walked in downstairs before the Bengals and Broncos game started because I was gonna switch over. Like, that wouldn't have done any better.

They both were stinkers. But, like, my wife came down and she she looked at the screen and it was Dolphins Jets, and she said, why are two o and three teams playing each other on Monday night football?

Yeah. And I tried to I tried to explain to her that this just always happens. But so you've got these bad games going on and you're testing live selling with Mike for the first time.

You mentioned $40,000 in sales. What were your takeaways from that event? Like, what did you what did you learn? Was it did it meet your expectations? What did you learn something that you didn't like?

Maybe get into that. Yeah. So I was, I was pleasantly surprised by the engagement and the audience size we had. So for our first hour, we were sitting, like, 460 to 480 people in the room at once.

So great turnout to have that many buyers in there. Chat was super active, and for us, it was great. It was everything from, hey. I see you have this card in the show for tonight. Can you run this one next?

Or, hey. I'm looking for Jordan Love. I'm looking from Holmes. I'm looking for, Herbert, whoever people were after. So, it was very lively there, but we also got a lot of people just asking, like, are you gonna do more of these?

How do I submit my cards for them? Hey. I don't know how to sell with you guys. Hey. Do you guys do buy it now? It's like a lot of the FAQ questions that are already answered on our website, but just the people in the room.

And while Mike was doing his thing selling, Kyle from our team and myself were there, and we could just answer those questions just live on the mic right there.

Just give people an answer. So, that engagement was something we definitely learned we can do really effectively there, which was really great.

I think we definitely learned that you have to curate your item mix very carefully. You know, we kind of went football heavy on the mid to high end. At one point during it, we thought, okay.

Maybe we mix in a little bit of baseball. Some people had asked about it, but it's like that's not what our event was marketed to be. And so those cards did did fine, but the results weren't as strong on those as we saw in other things.

And so, for us, I think we've learned, you know, build the show out early, get the inventory out there and in front of people so they know what you're gonna be selling, have a theme you're going with, because then you kinda get the right audience.

It's great to have a massive turnout, have a lot of engagement, conversation back and forth, but, obviously, you need the people who are there to buy the right things.

And so that's really an opportunity there for us. And I think we also learned probably go with a smaller set of items picked very specifically and marketed very heavily.

So some of what I was just saying, but find ways to do it where you get a lot of eyes on them in advance, leverage social media and content and things, get eBay's team to support us in marketing those, just so that people know exactly what they're coming in for because you kinda have to know what's the buying power of the room, what are people looking for.

And when you do that, you at least know you've got the right crowd, and then also how to use all the tools we have.

So our store newsletter on eBay, emailing our customers, give them the opportunity to send in, using our social media, things like that.

So, there's definitely a lot more moving parts and kind of nuance to the strategy of how to execute on a live show than there are I've got 10,000 cards.

I want them all to end on Sunday night. Throw them up on Tuesday, five day auction, walk away. And so, you know, to kind of our bread and butter and core business we've had, it's definitely a departure from that.

But that doesn't that's not a good or bad thing. It's just something that's got a lot of different, nuance to it. So my observations with live selling and my impression and I I have zero zero data, zero backing.

These are just what I'm assuming is that I'm assuming and this is gonna sound very get off my lawn take for me, but it's I I feel like an old man thinking about this, but it's like, I I see it.

I see how it's marketed. I see what cards show up, and it's very much for me as a collector. I'm just like, you know what? I'm not sure that's for me. I don't have a desire to go buy cards that way.

You've only, like, done one of these, but, like, I don't know. My impression is that it's like a it skews towards a much younger generation than me as a middle aged guy who's been collecting for quite a bit.

Did you get any sense just in terms of, like, the demographic of people who are participating in your live auction?

Is is it younger, or was it a mix? Definitely a mix. I mean, it's so so it's challenging. Right? Because same as you said, I don't have the data. I don't have the demographic profiles of everybody that was in that room.

So so it's hard to answer that with hard facts, but I'll say that we knew a lot of the people in the room, whether they're customers or breakers we work with, people who have bought from us on eBay, people who sold through us on eBay.

And so it was very broad based on that.

I mean, guys I know who are, you know, middle middle aged guys with families in their forties and fifties and people who are late teens, early twenties, who I know are just young content guys in the space that sell through us on the side.

So it was kind of all over the board. I get the get off my lawn take. I think, you know, some of that is probably just those of us who've been in the hobby a long time, especially if it's core to what we do.

So, like, for you and me, right, this is a hobby and a passion on the side, and it's a business we're passionate about, and we've used the same tools for so long.

There can be some resistance to change. But I think it's one of those things for us that it's becoming so core to the industry. At the very least, you have to understand it.

You have to know how is it being used, where is it being leveraged, what are the positives and negatives, where are places that this is gonna be really effective for me, where are places that it's not.

And in doing that, I think you'll kind of find out along the way because I think it's also very different.

If you're running a 50 card event where the average card is north of a thousand dollars, the demographic there is likely to be very different than if you're gonna hop on for four hours one afternoon and do a 5 to $10, you know, value box live sale.

And so, I think that demographic stuff is interesting, but I don't think it's a single answer you can apply across the board to live selling.

I think it's what which platform, what mix of inventory, what time of day, what value, and all those things kinda matrix you into, okay, here's who we're targeting. Maybe hitting on, like, the entertainment portion of it.

Like, you hear people buying the brakes, new brakes for entertainment, and they want, like, you know, a personality behind the brake, and they they're feeling it. And if they hit cards, you know, whatever.

Like, do you does does live selling fall into that same kinda kinda breath where it's like you need people are coming to be entertained and then they might buy cards secondary, or are people buying, like, there to buy specific cards?

Yeah. I mean, if you have a specific card that you promote in an event, you're gonna get some people for it. But there's a reason that I asked Mike to come do it because Mike's very entertaining.

And, as much as I may try to be, he's more entertaining than I'm gonna be. So it was great to have a very colorful personality kinda emceeing the whole thing for us.

Because, yeah, I I think if you go to a break room, a lot of the reason people stick with a certain breaker and build a lot of loyalty is not because they somehow know that the odds say that breaker will hit them a better card.

It doesn't work that way.

It's they trust the breaker and they're entertained by the breaker. This is the same thing. We wanna leverage our brand because we should be trustworthy that we will deliver what you buy, and we want it to be entertaining.

And that's why we had three of us there even with only one on camera. So somebody asked a question, like I said, we can answer it right there live. We were giving each other a hard time.

There were people singing along with the music we had playing. Like, we get some of that going on, and you need some of that because not everybody is gonna hop in and the first card you run is a card they want.

You know, if I search on eBay, I can search, you know, Andrew Jones, my favorite baseball player to collect, and I only see his cards.

If I go into a live event, it's not just one player. And if I don't wanna wait five or 10 cards to get to the card I want, you've gotta hold my interest somehow.

And so being engaging, being entertaining, having some humor, having some music, having some atmosphere that holds your attention is certainly vital to have a successful event.

Otherwise, you're gonna have those people who pop in there for five seconds, they're gone, you don't get them back.

Are there I know you've just done one of these, but just thinking about, like, it from a selling perspective and then also from a buying perspective.

Are there in the live selling format, is there any advantage from, like, the selling perspective that you observed or any advantage from the buyer perspective as opposed to traditional buy it now or, you know, seven day auctions?

You know, it's it it's tricky because I think it can go both ways.

You know, obviously, you're you're pinching the time frame to so condensed that, you know, we are running thirty second auctions with or twenty second with five second extensions.

So you have enough time, but it's a lot different because the perk as a seller can be you get a a really hot card up of a player who's doing great.

You got a couple guys who want it, and you're almost bidding based off a projected market value. It's a little different because this is a card running right now.

So maybe if something's gone really well for this athlete over the last few days, it's no longer fair to the comp four or five days ago, and there's been some appreciation.

And you don't really know what it's appreciated to, and so we saw a lot of those where two or three guys would really want the same card.

You get that last second flurry of bidding. And if the comp is $200, it ends up going for $2. 40 because there's just so much interest. You don't wanna miss out. You've gotta make a decision in a split second.

So there's absolutely that advantage. I think if you're not careful with what you offer or you, you know, you go too long, the energy of the room is dying off, you know, you could have something that goes a little bit under.

But from what we saw, you know, on the the net result of the whole thing was at or a hair above comps on most, which was really promising.

And it just means for us, we have to look at how do we cater that to the right, you know, consignments in the future and find ways to make that work.

And I think for us, that also means probably more things like break events. So look at what we did with the live event. Add that on top of what we talked about last week with mama breaks, and that's kind of an ideal pairing for us.

Let's get, you know, with the breaker who's breaking a product came out that day, and then let's run a live selling event for the singles as consignments that night. So you're not even waiting three days.

You're the first sales on release day, and you can just blend a lot of that. And that's, to me, the biggest perk of live selling is being able to time it to sell in the moment, and there is no waiting.

There is no somebody not paying or anything like that. So, those are kind of the perks, but it it definitely has its ways it can be used.

You just have to be smart about it, and and it can definitely make sense for you. I've asked a lot of different business leaders in this space. Like, what's causing the growth right now?

And you'll get a lot of different answers. But, like, sprinkled in a lot of those, conversations and answers all here live selling. And so I, like, jotted that down as a mental note knowing that we are gonna be talking about it.

And I'm gonna ask you, like, an impossible question because that's what I love to do. I love to ask my guests impossible questions. But Fair.

Do do you see live selling as expanding the hobby pie, like bringing new people in, or is it just shifting attention and focus from, like, traditional, you know, buying on marketplaces like eBay to instead of doing that, their their collectors are now just preferring to buy via live selling?

Yeah.

I think it brings new people in just because I think when you're brand new, the engaging aspects of, like, we just talked about being entertained by a breaker or a live seller help you build some relationships with the person hosting the event as well as with other people in the room that you're kinda hanging out with, and those are very healthy to get people to really buy in to the hobby both as a community and a marketplace that's fun, not just a dollars and cents transactional thing.

So in that sense, yes.

I think that live breaking is gonna continue to skyrocket, and I think that's really the big entry point for a lot of people is the thrill of the chase and seeing new products, and that's where people really have the most fun with it, picking their team and everything.

I think live selling will keep growing. I just you know, I look at it from the number standpoint on our side and say, okay. We how many concurrent streams would we have to run? For how many hours to sell that many cards?

And so to me, it's more of a tool in the tool bag to apply strategically to certain events and promotions, like, you know, a certain sport high end one night or a brand new product comes out and new release consignments of those singles.

Those kind of things we've talked about.

Mhmm. Because ton of value there, and I think it'll continue to grow in the rest, but some of that is just the platform that different people want and some want that, you know, really engaging live in a highly interactive atmosphere.

And there's good reasons for it, but I don't know that it's gonna be like the bread and butter what brings people in.

I think that's still opening a box on your own for a first time, getting into a break, going to a show. Like, those are kind of the immersive experiences that will really bring people in more so than anything else, I think.

So what I what I've kinda picked up from you, and you tell me if I'm right or wrong, but, DC Sports eighty seven is not going to veer away from your bread and butter of being, you know, a high volume seller on eBay through, you know, auctions.

But you will look at live selling not necessarily as, like, a massive revenue driver, but more as a, like, this is a branding and awareness opportunity for us to be able to get in front of new audiences with partners like Mike and hopefully maybe gets get the brand in front of, new set of eyeballs.

Yeah. Realistically, just it could never be a needle mover for us revenue wise. That's just that's not practical, at our volume.

Now I think there are other people who are obviously not to our scale where maybe that is, and and they can get a lot more traction with their buyers that way and absolutely understand that.

For us, the value in it comes from partnerships in the hobby with other great people and organizations and companies, breakers, podcasters, whoever that we wanna work with, and then having the opportunity for more engagement with our customers during the live event.

And that's where I see us mixing that in in some element in the future. And so, I could see us continuing to do some of that, but, it would never be more than a, you know, an alternative strategy to target that kind of result.

It would never really be a primary or or honestly even secondary for us in terms of, hey. This is how we really scale the business from a dollars and cents bottom line standpoint.

I wanna hit, like obviously, it seems like each and every platform has some live selling component at this point. We talked about, like, the investment.

Just from a sheer, like, marketing perspective, I can't even imagine from, like, a product and tech perspective that eBay is putting into eBay live. And, obviously, there's the built in audience of people going every day.

There's, you know, whatnot. FedEx has got one. Like, do do you think this is only there's and there's the standalones. There's standalones that have been out there like Loop.

And do you think this is, like, the live selling platform? Like, is it like an arms race at this point, or are we just gonna continue to see these platforms and existing platforms innovate on live selling?

Or do you think this is maybe something that we're still trying to figure out if it's sustainable and something people want?

Yeah. I don't think it's going anywhere. I I think live breaking, if you go back to it, is always gonna be the the king of live selling.

So I understand everybody wanting to get access to that. So when you look at, you know, the loops and others you mentioned that are smaller, the the big ones. Right? The fanatics, whatnot, and now eBay live. So, it's gonna stick around.

I don't think we'll ever see a future where live selling is all of a sudden, you know, a third or half or any or even a quarter of the singles transactions that are publicly occurring when we look at, you know, card sales data and things like that.

Those are gonna continue to be on the eBay standard auctions and, yeah, you know, Fanatics Collect and Comseas and other places that those cards change hands.

But because breaking is so big and just keeps growing and because you can complement that with live selling, live platforms, not just live single selling, but live platforms, I think, will keep growing.

EBay will keep investing. They'll be racing with the whatnots and the other guys.

And so, it'll just be a matter of who can really get the most customers on board, but they've gotta find the way to do it right. And I think that's kind of what eBay is going through right now. Right?

Is they're putting tons of resources into this, but they're kind of late to the party a little bit because we have the whatnots and those guys doing so much of this already. And they've absolutely got the resources to accomplish it.

It's just continuing to build that up, get a bigger user base, get more of their sellers to give it a shot and transfer over, and then, you know, see how that plays out as a long term strategy.

I I know we only got a little bit of time left, but all of this conversation has made me want to put live selling on the side and ask you a specific question that is adjacent to live selling.

But I think about what you were talking about of individuals wanting to go to certain places because they know exactly the type of cards that are there to buy.

And I think about auctions and auctions as a format and the curation of sports player specific, sport specific, like, auctions running on a platform like eBay.

So it's like Tuesday night with DC Sports eighty seven, you are going to get football. And I know, like, from an ops perspective, that's probably very complicated to pull off.

But do you think, like, we're gonna eventually move to this point where we can get more specific on, well curated auctions from, you know, sellers like DC Sports eighty seven, and that would indicate or signal to buyers that, oh, I can go to this, eBay, seller on this night because I know they're gonna be selling this type of card.

Like, is that a thought that ever runs through your your mind in terms of, like, curation and just trying to get get more attention in a space like eBay? Yeah. You know, we we've never really thought of it that way.

I can see what you mean, and I I think maybe there's some merit to that concept. But, you know, for us, it's been about we have to build the brand out and the the integrity and trust we have with our customer base globally.

We have to make DC Sports eighty seven known and in front of people and available in social media and all the kind of things we've talked about.

So content and inventory and everything like that. And then from there, I think the technology of 2025 kinda takes over.

Right? So if we're a trusted seller and we have enough inventory, there's saved searches. There's people sharing listings on Instagram and TikTok and everywhere else. There's people sharing links to their auctions with friends.

There's people who are just browsing every night who wanna buy. And so I think there's so many paths to finding cards that I almost look at it the opposite way where I think you almost have to do less curation and careful timing.

I remember years ago, everybody said you gotta enter auctions on Sunday night. You won't promote every individual card. Well, I can tell you we have stuff every night. It all does within 2% of each other.

Like, it's not a huge difference, and people are finding them because they have saved searches. They've saved us as a seller. Their friends are telling them when the card hits. The hobby community grows and grows and grows.

I mean, word spreads faster and faster and faster. And so I look at it that way where it's kind of like a lot of that technology and accessibility of the day makes things easier to find so you don't have to do quite as much of that.

I think just doing it maybe helps you amplify the effectiveness of a live event because you bring the right people into the room.

I I absolutely love the response and just it this is a completely overthinking things that I just needed to be sobered up from someone who's living and breathing this stuff every day.

Yeah. This yeah. We we all get too many thoughts these days. It's like, you know, we gotta do it.

It's it's funny because we all, you know, say we wanna be successful by, like, executing on the fundamentals of everything, and yet we're also trying to, like, predict where the hobby's going in three days, three months, three years at the same time, and so you kinda get caught in this odd paradox of, like, trying to do both at the same time.

So, yeah, we've overthought it too. I'm as guilty of it as you are. So, yeah, we're we're all gonna keep doing it, but that's okay as long as we still reach other up sometimes.

Appreciate everyone out there, tuning in to the staging area. Hopefully, you learned something new about live selling. We will be back, and we'll talk to you soon.