What's up? Everybody? Welcomed episode two hundred and fifty two WOW of Hobby
Hotline. My name of course is Drew or the d H and joining me
today, we've got the man himself, Uncle Rich Klan. How you doing
that morning? Looking forward? We have some really good topics that we do
that we do and then also join us the Man, Brody t k Not
the Kid, Brody the Man. What's up dude? What's up guys for
mord morning. Good to see you guys, and thanks everybody that is tuning
in. Please of course dropped any comments or any questions that you have.
Going to post the link to the show right now so you can pop on
in ask any questions anything that you'd like all day as we discuss some of
the crazy topics in the Hobby that are going on right now. But first
off, happy Bobby Bani a day, because of course July first Bobby Bania
Day. I think nobody has a better day than him. But happy Bobby
Bani a day. Another one point I don't know whatever it is, one
point something million dollars every year he gets so happy Bobby Bani a day.
You know, it's amazing. Bobby Bania gets his one point, But have
you seen some of these NBA contracts and some of the potential effects on the
sports card market where they're going. Oh I know. Oh, Desmond Baine,
a guy that I've been preaching since since he was drafted all over my
show. I love him, He's one of my favorites. He just signed
a two hundred million dollar contract. Now I think that's way too much for
him, But I think there's a lot of people that are getting paid a
whole lot of money and way too much. Morning Ziggy Hammer forty four,
Mad City grew. What's going on? Everybody? Three? B what's good?
Hope everybody is having a good one today. So Rich Brody, let's
diging into it. Like you said, We've got a lot of topics today,
a whole lot of stuff going on. But last week, obviously the
big news was Fanatics and their terms of service and kind of what it was
going to do for breaking everything like that. And then well, after a
little backlash and after everybody got a chance to read that, they had a
town hall and kind of a round two on this change to cut round two
if you will. If this is a boxing match, we're game two.
Whatever you want to call up between them, the shops, the breakers and
everything like that. But looks like they may be walking back some of the
some of the restrictions that we're going to do. But what do you guys
think about this? Bro? Do you want to lead off? Well,
the first ones obviously were I mean a little devastating at first, but I
mean, yeah, I mean, we'll see how these go. I mean,
they obviously fanatics obviously saw that they shops weren't happy, and shops didn't
seem too thrilled about some of these, especially new shops, because there were
a lot of new restrictions going out there. So they shouldn't have been happy.
They shouldn't have been happy. The stuff that they were putting in that
original contract was absolutely absurd. Now I haven't seen the update. If there
isn't updated terms yet, I have not seen it anybody in the chat.
I know we have a lot of people that own shops. You haven't you
let us know if they've sent out an updated and amended part of this.
But you know, I'm glad they did because the Collector's dream goes right where
I was going with this. But I zink fan ads went way too far.
Way too controlling. And that's really we talked about it on let me
get that potograph this week. You know, they say they want to do
all this marketing, they want to do all this and bringing new people into
the hobby and do this massive marketing campaign and be closer to the collector and
all this than ever before. But putting out terms like this and making it
so controlling, none of that marketing is going to work at all because people
are going to have one option and one way to do things when it comes
to something like breaking. If we're going to have breaking, you've got to
have multiple outlets for people to do it. And because if you give them
only one option, well all that marketing in the world can be amazing and
look great, but if it's not exactly what that person wants, they don't
have another option. So, I mean, it was ridiculous in my opinion.
One of the things I've learned in my short time in the hobby store
owners don't like being told what to do. Of course not, it's their
story. And even though some of the guidelines I'm not just talking about the
breaking guidelines, some of the guidelines are actually reasonable to some extent. You
know, There's always been an argument as long as I've been in the hobby
to be more professional. A lot of this seemed to be, let's make
the stores more professional, more of a standard, I don't want to say
cut cookie cutter, but more of a standard way to do things. Yeah,
and most stores want to do things a little bit their way. And
so your problem is that you're trying to do various rules for various stores out
for example, the things about how many hours a store can be open.
Yes, our friend Rich Mueller in Sports Collectors Daily did an article about a
couple of weeks ago about a working couple opening a store in Hot Springs,
Arkansas, where they're getting there after work. You know, they want to
try to transition to full time. Well, eventually they may get there,
but right now they can only do like a four And I'm just going to
make these hours up. Forty eight Monday to Friday, ten to six Saturday,
ten to five Sunday. That's not the forty hours fanatics want you to
be open. No, and I absolutely agree with Ziggy here. They went
way too far away, too early. You've gotta if you're gonna if your
ultimate goal is to do that, Rich and to make you know them kind
of all the stores that are under the Fanatics umbrella kind of have the same
field, the same kind, you know, the same generalized cookie cutter type
of store. You've got to do that at an incremental base. You can't
come in and just change everything about stores and everything that you know, everything
that people have loved about them forever in a day. It's not going to
go over well, especially in a hobby like this, and especially at a
time like this where there is so much change going on. The last thing
people want to see is a massive overhaul. And you know, Ziggy had
mentioned earlier that this U didn't include just online breakers was but Whisper Direct,
you know. But the thing is, there's also a lot of people that
have big breaking companies that have brick and mortar stores. I mean, some
of the biggest breaking companies all do. And so it's a it's a very
interesting time. But there's actually some at least breaking news to me. I
don't know if anyone else had seen it, but Steele City DW says the
eBay just announced effective July eighteenth, my brother's birthday case box and pat breaks
may only be sold by pre approved sellers. That was actually announced a couple
of weeks ago. Oh god, they sent out letters to the people who
were breaking saying, you know that they weren't on their pre approved listening after
you can't break anymore on eBay. I missed that. I missed that completely.
So that I like that. I absolutely love that part of it.
I don't know what you think, Brodie, but I love I just at
the eBay stuff. There's way too many people on their that those breaks were
total scams. Now I could I could see them and you know, see
them from a mile away and figure out who was just trying to fill a
couple of spots and who was trying to, you know, just run a
junk campaign. But a lot of people in the hobby can't. And so
if you notice, and fanats was also talking about breaking, and I don't
know how many people in the audience saw, and I believe I posted into
our group check that ESPN article about breaking. Yeah, yes they did.
Yeah. Oh And that was that was let's let's go on and say it
right now. That was one thousand percent planted by fanatics with this and that
had a because you know, fanatics and ESPN have a very close relationship to
begin with. That was one planted by Fanatics. With the new terms of
service with stores and everything going on, this article was meant to shine light
on Breaking as they started to promote the Fanatics Live platform and all that type
of stuff. It absolutely was a coordinated effort with them. Actually, when
you look at some of the people that they interviewed for the article, Um,
but I thought that was interesting to see. Um it's all. I
mean, hey, it got a lot of people talking about it. I
had a lot of people that don't know anything about cards that sent me a
DM on Facebook or something that said, hey, I finally saw something about
you know what I see you talking about all the time on social media.
My point is, once you see an article on ESPN, yes it's big
time. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, And so that brought more attention to
it, along with the eBay rules, along with the Fanatics letter that tells
you that they're everybody. Once you see that puts money in breaking. And
you know, I'm not talking about whether the rules are good or not.
I'm just saying that that's a sign that you know that Breaking has really hit
the hobby consciousness big time and it's and it's not for everybody, right.
It doesn't have to be right. This is a hobby. That's the that's
the beautiful thing about it. Can do it anyway you want. You can
collect any way you want. You can buy boxes, you can buy singles,
you can buy packs, you can do anything. You can do only
card shows, you can do no social media whatsoever. You can do only
social media. And there's a million ways to collect. It's it's where we
get into thinking there's only one way, which is when you know, problems
arise, at least in my opinion, now, I do agree with a
couple of comments in here the article itself. I'm not going to get into
the actual details of the article because I do think it was It could have
been better. It could have shined a better light on it, I think,
and they could have talked about a little bit more and gone a little
bit more in depth. But this was intended to be a quick piece to
just grab people's attention, and like I said, it was definitely a coordinated
effort with some major companies involved here of putting it out at the right time,
right near the national lot of a lot of stuff involved in having that
article come out with it when it did. But in terms of the content,
you know, hey, it is what it is. Like Dan says
he can collect carry collins if he wants to. Hey, I got some
colins up here too, Buddy, more than him Dan. But but yeah,
so I mean it is what it is. But Steele City DW has
a question here and I Brody, I'll let you start off here. Do
you guys see federal and state law changing soon on breaks as it pertains to
gambling. We saw something similar with DFS a couple of years ago. So
obviously all this attention and we've actually in the hobby been talking a lot about
oversight lately and needing oversight. What do you guys think in terms of we're
going to see some you know, government interaction, intervention when it comes to
this. I mean, I know our hobby is big, but I don't
know if it's that big to get government intervention into it. But I think
isn't opening a pack gambling? Isn't opening a box gambling? And you're drinking
by yourself, you're not doing you don't have to do a break to gamble.
You could just go buy a box or buy a pack from your LCS.
You could buy a box at targeting, you can buy a box from
Walmart, buyer wherever. I don't I don't think it's necessary. One thing
I've always been amazed at is, unlike stamps and coins, and we're still
a developing hobby business industry, whatever term you want to say, we've never
had an Americans American Sports, American Stampfielders Association, or American Numismatic Association.
We've never had a national group that basically I don't want to say overseas,
but would settle a lot of these things. Yeah, and stamps and coins,
there are long established groups. You know, we talked sometimes. I
don't think we talked very much. But in England there's a really long established
cardiphiliac history and they had collector groups and collector clubs and some stuff going back
one hundred years. And that's something where self regulation done right helps. Yeah,
but it takes somebody to accept. And this is this is actually part
of the whole fanatics letter thing. Again, We've always been very independent and
we've tried a few times to have national organizations. We tried in the seventies,
we tried in the nineties, we tried in the eighties, we tried
locally various collectors clubs. Some of the collectors clubs are still somewhat around.
Yeah, but we've never really been able to get any sort of a national
association off the ground, right, And that would take care of a lot
of it, because then you would have self regulation, which and there's a
way, there's a way to do that. It's just it's going to have
to take some of like like breaking for instance, of breaking wanting to be
regulated, some of the biggest breakers coming together and putting together a list that,
you know of stuff that hey will abide by this, and then hopefully
other people agree and say, hey will abide by this too. You make
it too specific things like that that only that makes it look like you're trying
to benefit yourself. It's not going to go over well if you make it
like you're trying to benefit the hobby. I think it's something smaller breakers would
latch onto things like that. Maybe you could get some type of self oversight
things like that. Otherwise, I don't know if I see I see the
government coming in eventually in some way, shape or form. I don't.
I don't think there's gonna be some massive like you know, just big all
the sudden overhaul that's coming out of nowhere or anything like that. I don't
see that. And I don't think the way breaks is set up that we
see gambling laws, I don't think. Maybe certain states North Carolina likes to
do a lot of dumb stuff. I wouldn't imagine if they might do it
just because of the stupidity we have out here. But you know, some
states possibly, I just don't see it as some big thing where the better
government comes in or anything like that. Maybe possibly some states sometimes, But
like it was mentioned in the comments earlier, it is election season, so
I don't see anything like that happening at least for a little while, because
you know, it's it's not something I would elatch onto at this point in
time, at least in my opinion. And I see we have Rex in
the chat, and you know, without him having to go into too much
specifics, i'd love to hear his reactions to the fanatics issues of the last
couple of weeks. Yes, yeah, absolutely, yeah, Rex, please
let us know. And also Rex, i'd like to know, since you
do ownership as well, if you've gotten an updated terms yet. Have they
sent out anything updated since they at least since the conference call that that a
couple of friends of mine were on when with tops when they had this.
Have they sent anything out that's been updated yet. That's one thing that I
was quite curious about, you knows, as they should make cards with zero
hits just like they did in the eighties and see if it sells. Hey,
I'd love to. I mean, they're praying enough. They never turned
the machines off. They might as well crank another set out, but you
know that'd be interested. That's the only way we would ever be gambling with
cards ever again. Yeah, yeah, we'll all say something that I want
to get your opinion on, Brodie, because I disagree just because of what
I saw at the National last year and what I see when I perused some
of these breaking sites. But it says that kids don't buy into breaks,
I actually know a ton of kids that buy into breaks, and there's a
massive amount of people, Like at the National last year when Whatnot had that
huge, long, massive booth, I'm gonna be interested to see their footprint
this year. On that note, but they had that long area. I
saw so many kids that were regulars and that their dads were like, I'm
not I don't even break cards. I'm just hearing my son who buys into
this stuff. I mean, what do you see I mean in terms of
kids in breaking, Yeah, for me, it's honestly surprising how many kids
buying the breaks. But yeah, tons of kids brian breaks And it might
not be like some of the breakers you would think, but like backyard breaks,
And I'm just using that like as example, but like breakers like that
that like intrigue, kids like those are the breakers that kids like because they
see the fun in it. And I do tons of breaks too, and
I'm a kid, so yeah, I have kids do a ton of breaks.
I mean. And also what the like you said, backyard breaks is
a prime example. They do have a lot of young kids in their breaks.
In one thing that that you notice on that they're loud, they're brash,
stuff like that. Well, I have an eight year old son who's
almost nine. I watched the video. I hear the videos. I don't
watch them if I can help it, but I hear the videos that he
watches. It's loud, brash people playing games. So they're catering exactly to
that audience that grew up watching that stuff. So, I mean there are
tons of kids that get into breaks, absolutely, and let's see we do
have an update, so from Rex doesn't impact us as much as other shops.
We've never done breaks and don't intend to. We can still sell on
our website and other social media, just not on third party sites. And
there has been no updated turns from tops, just a conference car clarifying and
telling us we'll be receiving an update and an faqube well looking forward to that
update, yea. And I want to point out that thirty years ago when
this conversation about gambling began with insert cards, I believe it was the state
of California required the ads to be put on either boxes or the packs and
started all that because you didn't know how the odds were and they weren't public,
and so that I think that helped a lot, because if you knew
that a card was one out of thirty six packs, you know it was
a better card than a card that's every two packs. Right, even though
with the amount they published of some of those packs, one out of thirty
six packs it turns out to be a quarter card. Nowadays, Yeah,
no, and Zie, it has a one right, but only on one
thing, and I will have to preface only on one side of things.
If you're buying in to chase a hit and not just buying in because you
are collecting, I agree that it is gambling if you're just opening packs of
cards for fun, because you want every card in that pack and you want
every card in the collection, and it is something you're having fun for.
I mean, yeah, you're it's a gamble of what's inside, but are
you truly gambling. No, you're just buying something that you want. But
I do agree that if it has odds, it is gambling. And you
know, modern sports cards and packs, it is a gamble. It's just
how you use that word and how the govern pernament language and stuff that's in
writing, and everything is written differently, you know what I mean, it's
not it's not written and just vague terms like we're discussing here. So that's
where that's where the big changes are. But I completely agree that, you
know, if you're opening for chasing the hits and chasing something like that,
then yes, everything's a gamble and not. And there are some people who
don't participate in the breaks. They wait for other people to break the packs
and then buy the single cards they want or their team collectors, and they
will buy breaks if they think a price point for example, Cubs works well,
right, and then that's fine. They get they get the team they
want to collect, and on their way to a million one million Cubs cards,
they've they've gotten a whole bunch more cards on the way. And so
that's one example of how to me breaks the right helps people. If you
know, if you're Brody's wearing a White Sox shirt, if he wants to
go to a White Sox break because he wants all the tops two White Sox
cards and the person ships everything including bass. He knows he's going to get
the base and he'll get some hits and he's a happy person and the White
Sox. I mean, by the way, what the heck is going on
with Louis Scrobert otherwise known as lou Bob in the hobby? When did he
start hitting a homer every day? I don't know. I mean he was
struggling. I mean he last year, I mean he wasn't even hitting for
power and now this year, I mean that's all he hits for his average,
I mean his average is okay. I think he's around two seventy and
now he's just hitting bombs right behind. It's awesome. Yeah, I mean
to day and he's twenty five homers. Yeah yeah, I know, I
know. Yeah. His card markets reflecting it too. People that like myself
that held on this stuff way too long are finally able to see a little
bit better return on some of that stuff at least. So that's nice and
I see rich. Yeah, if you do want a skum Gunner break,
I'm like white Sox or you get something, just pick East Carolina. You
won't find nothing. But you know I found that through my collecting career.
But yeah, so Fanatics, it's been interest. Let's see steel City.
Dw says. This Fanatics decision opened a small window for Panini, specifically for
the breakers that aren't designated by Fanatics. Panini should jump at this. I
don't. If I'm Panini, I'd kind of just continue. I focus more
on my product and making my product better and figuring out how to navigate the
upcoming loss of all these licenses and put more of a focus on the UFC,
the WWE, the stuff that well they're losing WWE, but UFC and
some of the soccer licenses that they're going to actually have in a couple of
years. I would focus on cards and personally stay out of this if I
was Panini, especially while they're scrambling to really they're they're still trying to fix
a lot of things. Plus they've hired a whole bunch of new employees.
Yes, even if they have a lot of how the experience, they're still
new to doing products. So there's a lot of people they hired have not
been in products before. Some have been, but most have not been,
and as such you've got to also bring them up to speed on that.
Yeah, yep. And Rex says that Fanatics will eventually require tops products done
all on Fanatics Live mark my words. I actually agree with that. I
don't think it's going to be immediate, but I do think and probably five
ten years, I think it'll probably be along those lines. I don't think.
I don't think by any means what it'll be immediate, but eventually it'll
probably get there. Does that mean the breaking pavilion from the National goes away?
Well, I guess it depends on what Panini leaf and let's see if
other companies come around what they do. Once one company has. We haven't
seen one company have all these instances and things like that in eons, so
it's gonna be weird when only one company has it. What these companies do
and the how the hobby community reacts to all of the products that they are
able to put out, you know what I mean. One positive note.
I don't know, Brody, if you've gotten a chance to open any or
anything, but I've seen a very positive reaction to Don Russ Baseball by Panini
this year. I've seen a huge positive reaction which is all prospects and retired
players, which is quite a departure, you know, from what they had
before when they could actually use the players. They can't now, so it's
all prospects and retired players. And I've actually heard nothing but good things about
it. Yeah, I've meant to buy a box, but I've been buying
so much wrestling that I kind of forgot too. But next time I'm going
to get a box, I'm going to remember. But yeah, I've heard
so many good things. Because there are so many numbered cards you get re
hits, and it's about one hundred dollar bucks, so you can go and
sell each of the number cards you get for two bucks, three bucks,
and then the lower number ones for five, six, seven bucks and the
autos for ten fifteen bucks. You could take your money back and more easily
for every box you buy, like easily, yeah, even if big time
hits like easily. Yeah, no, I agree, But it's been interesting
to see. I've seen a lot of people with a positive response. So
I think it'll just depend on how that stuff looks and what's it looks like
and it recks. It seems like people in the shop like it as well,
which that's good. So I mean, I think that's a positive sign
because that's what we need to really be looking at when it comes to things
like that. Rich if if people in the hobby actually still gravitate towards these
products once the licenses are gone, I think that will determine if we have
a Breakers Pavilion or the tops Fanatics Breakers area. Well. One thing to
remember too with a product like the once you have, yes, you don't
have the active players. The people love prospects, but people also love the
retired players, and you know both of those people are not under yet.
I mean there are players now in the minor league. There is now a
union. Could there be soon a licensing agreement as there is for the major
league players, right. I mean, I know there's already tops pro debut
and they can do bowmen and they put them in major league uniforms. But
there's now a minor league players union, and you know, licensing is the
next step. I'm glad, and I'm glad they're getting paid, and I'm
glad that they're going to have much better living accommodations than they previously had.
That's all a positive. And then the next positive get them paid. You
know, all for all these years, all these team sets were done by
grandstand in choice, and I'm glad they did them, but how must did
the players get paid for that? And if they can get paid to be
in the team sets, to me, that's a win, even if it
boosts the price of the set from ten dollars to fifteen or twenty dollars at
the concession stands, It's okay, yeah, because the players are getting paid,
and then you know, and then yes, it will be like everything
else. Most of them won't make it, but allow them end up with
Hey, their families want their cards or the local people of their cards.
So I'm in favor of that, and i'd like and to me, that's
something we haven't discussed yet, and that's something I just thought about. We
don't know where that's going. Yeah, No, that's very true. As
someone goes as someone that has about fifteen minor league teams about an hour and
a half away and is a is a season take it older and a regular
Hickory Crawdat games. You know, I like to see it. I like
to see what's going on in the minor league level and stuff like that.
So there are some major leaguers that they're able to sneak in too, because
I don't know why or what the rules are for the exact system that they
use. But I know Massa Taka Yoshida from the Red Sox is on there,
and somehow this is the one that surprises me. But Bobby Wood Juniors
and this set, I'm sure there's more that have been called up as well.
Right, But if you're if you're called up after the cards are produced,
you're not. You're not as things that happens all the time with pro
debut or heritage miners, you are not yet in the majors when the card
is produced. Yeah, I agree with you, But the other people.
It's like they weren't in the majors at that time. So I get that.
Yeah. And by the way, Ziggy, I agree with the charity
thing as a person who has read the show for his synagogues nonprofit for many
years. Right now, I gotta in fact that it's one of the things.
And we'll go back to the Fanatics chat with this. I gotta DM
the other last week, can you come to the store and pick up we
have a donation for you? And I went my good friend Raymond, and
we picked it up and pour Raymond to two loads of stuff into the office
and it's really good. I've even seen some cards that had my price stickers
on them, so that was kind of humorous. Nice. Yes, But
so I asked him because we got there before the store opened, right and
I asked him and he and he told me, a, I'm getting stuff
from distributors. So the Fanatics letter really didn't affect me that way. But
he had spoken to a bunch of other store owners and he had said not
one store owner who was one hundred percent with the Fanatics letter. Everyone had
some major objection to it. Going back to my point that it's hard to
tell store owners what to do. Yeah, oh yeah, no, definitely,
definitely. It's not something that they that they like to be told.
Like I said, it's their store. There's never been this type of stuff.
There's a lot of change happening, so well, I guess we'll see
what happens on that end. I'm sure probably by next week those terms of
service will be out and hopefully everyone next we can provide an update or something
along those lines on this. But we'll move on to a couple other topics
that we've got today that we're talking about earlier. One big one that's going
around right now, and this was a rumor from upper Deck's website, and
we'll see what happens with it if it's true or not. But upper Deck
removing Lebron James from their Exclusive Athletes. He has been removed from their Exclusive
Athletes page and is listed only as an upper Deck athlete and no longer as
an exclusive I mean, leading many people to believe that he is no longer
an exclusive now. If he me personally, if this was a website mistake,
I would have thought it was already fixed as up an hour ago.
It was not, So he's still not on there. Even after all the
confusion. But this has a pretty big impact on the hobby in general,
especially his market, because if he's no longer an exclusive, it changes everything.
Once he's retired, licensed cards can still be made, things like that,
All right, what can still be done? So what do you guys
think about Lebron possibly being, you know, no longer an upper deck exclusive
athlete. Everybody's ready for those Lebron James and Brownie James dual autograph cards that
they are, that they are and interesting. Note a Clutch employee, he
did which Clutch Management helps Brownie and Lebron. It's Lebron's company, Clutch Management.
One of their executives just left and went to work in athlete relations at
Fanatics. So there is a Clutch Management and Fanatics connection already, as he's
literally working in athlete management. So at one million cups, I completely agree.
I thought it was a twenty year deal as well. I think if
anyone can get out of it, it's probably Lebron. Those deals are normally
pretty ironclad. They're you know, normally considered almost lifetime deals in a way,
and it was gonna really change his market forever. But what I mean,
it's going to be interesting because this is if this is able to happen,
he'll be able to sign his tops chrome rookie for example. He can't
do that right now. There's a lot of stuff that he'll be able to
do. So I don't know, quite interesting. I don't know. You
know, what do you think rich about these exclusives where after they retire,
you know you can't produce the cards because it's affected a lot of people before.
Well, it's interesting, and I want to just go on a different
point before I talk about that, is that Max just pointed about Upper Deck
without Jordan, they have nothing. Well that's not really true. They have
hockey. There's actually a big article that if you read yah who News this
week talked about how Upper Deck works with the NHL and they signed I believe
they're gonna have the NHL contract for several more years. But how they work
with the NHL T get various artifacts from the draft and from other places.
And if somebody says this is going to the Hall of Fame, Upper deext
says, go right ahead, it goes right to the Hall of Fame.
Yeah, yeah, so Jordan, just as just so you know, Michael
Jordan's brother worked. I don't know if he's still there, but he worked
for Upper Deck for many years. Yes, and he was actually, from
what I was told, a really really good at his job. And his
job was not being Michael Jordan's brother. His job was a job, and
he was a very good you know, he was a very good upper level
and a very good upper level employee. So let's so this is so if
Lebron, if that is a move to get Lebron to fanatics slash tops,
that makes that is part of a historical part in the hobby. I mean,
yeah, I live in Dallas, Mavericks. We lost Jayleen Brunson to
the Knicks this year down here, brutal last year. Jaylen Brunson's dad is
a Knick's assistant coach. Tell me how that wasn't planned? Right? Yeah,
you know. Danny Manning, Danny and the Miracles led Kansas to the
eighty eight NCAA Championship. One of the greatest games you'll ever see. It's
yeah, you can still watch it on YouTube. It is an amazing game.
Ye gee, amazingly. Ed Manning was the assistant coach for I believe
it was Larry Brown. You know, edge, how does Danny get there
without Ed beating there? I mean, it's it's it's normal business things.
So that makes a lot of sense. And I'm a big fan of Hey,
if they can get us Lebron James signed Cavaliers cards, signed Heat cards,
signed Laker cards, Hey Lebron James relic cards. You know, even
if they're just number two his uniform number whatever it was at the time,
or fifty or twenty five, it's something that could almost become a chase.
I mean, then you could have really the logo man card of Lebron with
the real with real jerseys and real patches. Yeah. No, absolutely,
Matt says hockey is and enough to sustain their business. I would agree with
that. But they have a ton of other amazing exclusive athletes outside of Jordan
that they can do, and they have their hands and quite a few other
things. But hockey is a pretty strong market. It's a very it's it's
much more of a collectible and much more of a true collector's hobby, I
would say, than most sports. But it is a strong market and it's
been one of the big things that's been supporting them for a long time.
Outside of their work with exclusive athletes that they have, you know in their
lineup, which unfortunately or unfortunately for them, fortunate for us as I would
absolutely love to see the Hobby with Lebron James having some tops Chrome cards again
Lebron James, like you said, having some relics that the Brownie Lebron duels.
I would be interested. I wouldn't be chasing them, but I would
love the entertainment of watching the Hobby chase them. So I hope they get
there. But Upper Decks, as the chat is mentioning, Upper Deck,
you know, has been in the news a little bit lately. They posted
it again on LinkedIn the other day that the upcoming Lord Khanna set. They
have a lawsuit going on right now and are suing the producers of Lord Kana
and one of their former employees, saying that they pretty much took the design't
win over to these guys. Forget their name, I'll pull it up right
now, and then decided to release the game under a different name, so
it'll be interesting to see. I don't know if there's been in an announcement,
if that's been pulled or anything. I know it comes out late August.
I think the twenty third of August that comes out. Um, but
I don't know what do you guys think? Do you think that Lorcana game?
What happens with that? Upper Deck? I will tell you feels very
I did not find it on a quick search, but upper Deck must feel
very comfortable because Jason posted on LinkedIn all of it. That's where That's where
I saw it. That's where I saw it was on linked you're posting about
it, you feel comfortable. Yeah, that's something to remember. You know
again, I do not know any of the details, so I'm not going
to get into any weeds on it. Yeah, yeah, I just know
that if you're posting that you've got a suit and you want to publicize that
you've got a suit against them, but you probably feel you have one heck
of a good case. No, I completely agree, especially if you're posting
on somewhere like LinkedIn and stuff like that where it's like more business people than
anything are going to be seeing it. Because that's where I saw it.
Rich A multiple posts about it for multiple different people. So, like Zigga
says, I think they do have a good case against them, I'm gonna
be interested to see it. Would take it would take a very strong case
for a judge or a judge that's just a little trigger happy to halt the
release. I think, I think it would be very tough to do that,
But maybe they've got a strong enough case with that Lorcana. I'll tell
you from someone that that works. Every single collecticon, that Lorkana set has
been massively hyped and people have been excited about it for a very very long
time. At every collecticon we go to, I see the promos, I
see tons of people talking about it, like that's a set that a lot
of people were anticipating. Brodie, how do I wanted to ask you along
those lines, how does you know the younger generation look at stuff like Kako
Hour or however do you say it more comments and sets like that? You
know what I mean? Are they are they into that type of stuff?
Or is that more geared towards some of the nostalgia collectors right now? Do
you think I would think more towards the nostalgia collectors? Um, I think
a lot of upper deck stuff maybe more towards the nostalgia collectors. I think.
I mean, there are some kids that like hockey. I'm not saying
our kids that like hockey. But I mean, um, when you have
hockey and you have good win champions, I think a lot of kids might
uh you know collect as much Upper Deck. Yeah, no, yeah,
I completely agree. ZIGGYO says will probably settle up, a deck, could
get paid, will kind of go forward, maybe a revenue share, vintage
car collector, basically saying the exact same thing that that's what I could see
happening as well. I don't think it's it's halted. Um, I mean
unless less upper Decker really wants to try and fight something. But I think
a settlement's probably what's going to happen with that. But quite interesting and shows
you the value of that ip that companies have. Right when Panini was just
broken into a lot of intellectual property, a lot of product designs, things
like that are probably on those hard drives. That's that's valuable Stoffe. I
mean, that's the future of a hobby. So I just want to point
out I saw young John Broschi post in the chat, and since we always
like to talk about the National, maybe not for the whole show, but
since you know his family has been running The National for more than twenty five
years. Yes, we We're honored. We have whatever your official term is,
Brodie, but we have we have you in our in our cast today.
So as one of our hosts. So tell us what your National role
is right now and what you're looking forward to. So I am one of
National's official correspondence and I am going to be helping him this year with the
auction, and I have some tickets to give away. I'm super excited for
the National this year. It's in my backyard. I'll be posting about it
all year, super excited. National is gonna be awesome, super excited,
were posting about it. Yeah, it's gonna be awesome, super excited.
Nice. Yeah, We've actually also got some tickets to give away as well.
They're up on let me get that potograph socials right now. So if
you want to go to the National, jump on in. That's awesome.
And are you're going to be set up with him again? Yeah, I
Wonder's ambassador for the National YEP and they're the YEP, the sponsors and everybody
like that. Tim Signatures for soldiers always fun. I always love going to
that booth because I get to see you and Tim all at once. I
get to see how much taller you've gotten and how much bigger you are than
me. Our share, it's going to be a lot bigger this year.
But going forward to it. And you know, and I always Tim always
made sure when I was doing prizes and giveaways and cards at my synagogue show.
Now that we have a smaller show, I don't have to do that
anywhere. But Tim was always very nice and always gave us some very nice
prizes to as a donation. So he was not only taking stuff in,
but he also was very giving and I always thank him for that. Yeah,
that now, I'm definitely looking forward to it. So guys, if
we wrap everything up, of course, guys, if you'd like to call
in and join the show, please, we've got the link. I'll put
it again in the comments right here for you if you'd like to call in,
if there's anything that you'd like to ask, come safe please, we'd
love to have you join. But guys, before we wrap everything up,
there's one thing that's been kind of at least captivating a lot of the hobby.
He not necessarily the sports card market, even though I've seen a lot
of sports card shops and breakers buying a lot of this product up but the
Lord of the Rings Magic the Gathering set that came out had the one of
one Magic one Ring to Rule them All card that everyone was looking for that
had a bounty put out on it, a million dollar bounty put out on
it. Beckett had an absolutely insane package if you pulled it with a really
cool custom label. I was hoping to see. But the one of One
was pulled, it was graded by PSA and the chase is over now.
But what do you guys think about, you know, not necessarily the card
itself, I'd like to know, you know, which you know, what
you guys think about the set and everything like that, But what do you
guys think about bounties because we're seeing a lot of them pop up now on
just about every big card. You know that the Drew Jones, for example,
was one of the recent ones, and then you had the Nash Cards
bounty for the card that was that had Nash Cards written on it and stuff
like that. What do you guys think about bounties in the hobby and the
attention that this card has gotten because it's it's everywhere. In a sense,
everything is a bounty and we're publicized. You know, some people think it's
gambling. It is like winning the lottery, but done right, it's like
winning. It's like when I and I remember when I was in beck in
the nineteen eighty nineteen ninety eight, I got a ton of phone calls,
and in those days, it was phone calls about the McGuire Sosa home run
Chase. A matter of fact, there was like two weeks where I couldn't
get any work done not having so many phone calls. I was like,
guys, cover me for these two weeks. I'm literally giving phone calls after
phone calls because I'm one of the three people who can talk about things officially
for Beckham. And my point at the time was that the home run chase
and these home run balls were literally something that were fan available. We get
a ball into the stands, you caught the ball, you catch the ball,
you make the money. At nineteen sixty one, and met a fan
by the name massal Gurante caught Roger Marris's sixty first home run ball and got
all the five thousand dollars because a restaurant owner named Sam Gordon in California who
understood put a five thousand dollar bounty on that ball. There was one guy.
He ended up with McGuire's seventieth homer ball and Todd McFarland overpaid, and
he told you at the time he overpaid, but he had. But he
had a business reason to overpaid, because he wanted to be, you know,
get a license for his McFarland stuff to be licensed by all the sports
people, and he wanted to show he was a serious sports person, not
just a comic book artist. So he paid three million dollars. In a
sense that bounty two. This is a different type of bounty, but it
gets interest. And anything that gets interest is to me something that helps the
hobby. And yeah, is it a former gambling, Yes, but it's
something done right everybody can get. Yeah. Ziggy No asked the question in
regards magic and be interesting to see if boxes go down in price. Why
didn't they use Beckett? I think probably. I mean the Beckett package was
amazing. The custom label looked beautiful. You gotta one of the big custom
one card like super Protector Zion cases with a gorgeous decorated front, airplane tickets
boxes, all this stuff. I think it was just pulled by a dedicated
PSA collect someone that was a PSA grade or probably through and through. I
think it is probably who pulled it, because there's no video of it being
pulled, so obviously it was a personal box that no one was recording,
or at least they haven't released a video of it, so unless you know,
maybe they have shops security cams if it was opened up in a shop,
but doesn't look like there's a big video on it, seems like it
was just pulled. David Adams was actually the ones that announced that it had
been found, so apparently they didn't even post it to social media. They
went right to the people putting out the bounties. But I don't know why
they did. I would have loved to have seen it in the Beckett slab
because the mock up looked really cool. But at least we have, you
know, the mock up to look at. But I like dufex Is of
Life's idea. We need a reality TV show on card bounty hunters. I
love it. And throw out some some bounties on some stuff that's out there,
whether it's cards, memorabilia or whatever it is, and uh go chase
them down. And in a sense, we've been chasing bounties for a long
time. Yeah, we don't know where Bobby Thompson's home rumble. We've never
actually that was, you know, the giants when the pennant, the giants
when the pennant. If you haven't seen that, then you're young. Then
you're much younger than me, and probably even much younger than Brody Um.
But nobody Leland's put a million dollar bounty on that ball a few years ago.
They never paid, and it wasn't that they wouldn't have paid it never
nobody can conclusively proof that is the ball, you know, and baseball has
done some very smart things in recent years. You know, when you know
there's going to be event, they put special markings now on certain balls so
you can make throve that certain balls are from certain Oh and that's and that's
very smart. No big time, Zak, you real fast. I'm pretty
sure. And I know for a fact, dealing working with Jim meant that
when it comes to big cards like that PSA a lot of times doesn't cost
as much degrade as um as you would think at all. That they make
exceptions on cards like that all the time in terms of pricing talk the card
hunter, as Logan says, there you go. Um, I completely agree.
But yeah, so it's uh, it's gonna be interesting. Drewe.
I think you also wanted to talk about the new tops Chrome Baseball product.
Yes I did, Yeah, I did, absolutely, Um, and I
wanted to know your guys opinion on this. Tops Chrome came out, they
well didn't come out, but they finally dropped the cell sheet and Brody,
I know you're somebody that loves tops Chrome Baseball two. I want to know
your your opinion on this. Um Uh, Dan Rich as well obviously,
but they dropped the autos down from two to one and from five to three
for Jumbo, yet they're leaving in the veteran autos. What do you think?
What do you think about the new tops Chrome announcement here? Well,
it's a very debatable situation. But I go back to I think it was
twenty twenty prison Football. They dropped from three autos to two autos and those
boxes. People still buy prison Football. They buy it like crazy, and
it's a pretty good product. It's still a pretty good product. And I
think that the main thing here is that Tops Chrome. I see so many
relief picture rookie autos and as long as you have a better quality checklist on
the autos. This will be fine if you leave veterans in okay, but
we gotta get rid of some of the pictures. Yeah, there's gonna be
something. There's gonna be some pictures. There's gonna be some starters. But
the rookie relief pitchers have the goal. Rookie relief pitchers have the goal.
You gotta shorten the checklist a little bit. The prices are going to probably
stay the same. That's kind of how hobby's always been. They don't like,
really, it's never been like we're gonna drop autos, so the price
is gonna go down. No, that's not how it works, but it's
never it's worked so well. And also, hey, guys, don't forget
we've got the amazing and unknown taco fractor to chase. My god, we
have no idea what it is. It's not listed with the regular parallels.
It's listed as a separate card with only five copies, so no one knows
if it's a parallel, or if it's an insert, or what it's going
to be. But I don't know, a little underwhelming teas with a taco
fractor. I don't know. I do want to point out that they're also
continuing the MVP promotion. Yes they are, and there's I believe five cards
from the MVP buy back in this year's set that are signed by Judge and
Goldschman. Hopefully they chose some of the low numbered cards that were sent in,
you know, like the people that sent a golden or something to really
get some money on a hobby box. Hopefully they use five cards like that,
not five base but there are some of that. And yeah, so
don't throw away of those bass cards because well at least of the guys that
might win MVP, maybe a Rayas and a couple other people I would keep.
But yeah, they are doing the MVP buy back again. But this
just tells me that they're overprinting it like crazy. Last year, I had
bought some tops blaster boxes and it was wonderful. I went to my local
cards store Triple Cards. They were participating in it, and I handed them
three Judge and Goldsment cards and got sixty dollars a store crape. It was
awesome, and it was wonderful because they were doing a secret Santa trade and
I'm happy to participate in that because I'm a big fan of Secret Santa,
which is a different subject, and I'm going to give them a little pub
In addition to the Dallas Card Show in a couple of weeks, the Triple
Card Families Stores is doing a Christmas in July thing next week, and I'm
excited about that. And they have some some prizes. I'm told that are
thousands of dollars. So I'm all in on that. And I was happy
to talk about that, you know, in promoting that along with the Dallas
Card Show, you know, in my mailing list, and but I wanted
to point out that all of a sudden, it was like, Hey,
I know who I'm getting is my Secret Santa person. He's actually given me
a couple of donations in the past. So they said, try to go
over if you Kenna said, okay, I'm gonna go over. I found
out later that the box I got him had he opened it with his son
on Christmas Day and got the case sit. So let me talk about things
working out well. But that, you know, that was exciting. You
know, I didn't have to pay for that box. I gave him.
Yes, these redemption cards so to speak, I'll called redemption card. I
know it's not a redemption exchange cards. They paid for his secret Santa,
so I was a big fan. No. I love the buyback programs and
I hope they continue to implement stuff like that into future things and not limited
to just the MVPs and things like that. But I do think that they're
this is just showing that they're printing a whole lot of this and I was
really hoping, you know, with Bowman Sapphire this year they cut the print
run. The boxes were you know, a lot more loaded. The print
run was cut quite a bit. And tops Chrome is iconic, gets legendary
in any sport, and I don't want to see it get too watered down.
I don't want to see the sonic, the cosmic and all that stuff.
I want to see it hold its recognition and you know, stuff that
it deserves. But it feels like it's being printed now to the point a
Series one or Series two where it used to be a lot different. But
um, Brodie, what do you are You still excited about tops Chrome?
You're still you know, looking forward to it. I know there's a lot
of cool new inserts, autographs and things like that in it too. Yeah,
I'll be excited to do some packs, so the day will we rip
And I also saw that if there was I don't think this is gonna happen
this year, but hopefully going forward they do this again. Um that if
back to back MVP. So if Judge won the MVP, a goat or
gold, which I don't think either, those are gonna happen sadly, but
hopefully in the future. Otani, you could definitely do this. It would
be forty dollars for the bass card, which would be really awesome. That
that'd be awesome to go. Tani is definitely one that could do that for
sure, so that would be really cool. Would double all the values,
so that'd be cool. Yeah, No, I completely agree. And like
I said, it gives you another another thing to chase in the cards,
something that's readily available, and it it gets you in with a card show,
a card shop. It gets you to where you're going into the shops
as opposed to doing everything online. So I think that that is, you
know, a great thing for the hobby. I love these MVP buybacks,
but you know, it is what it is. You know, it's something
interesting. But yeah, it was a disappointment to see them drop the autos.
I agree with you, Brodie a thousand percent. Get their gunna drop
the autos. They need to also cut the checklist some or at least beef
to checklists up. I haven't seen a lot of trout in in tops Chromeme
lately, you know what I mean. I haven't seeing get some of these
better players, get people like a right Luisa Rayez, some of the better
players to sign and get some of these relief pitchers and you know obvious just
filler album. Let's see before we go. Thanks Matt City Brew. Yes
you have a good weekend as well, and a happy Fourth of July.
Ziggy asking why not pizza sushi fractors? Hey, maybe don't give away their
seat Christopher twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five. Zikky, but we'll see
what a taco fractor is here soon. But all in for the sushi fractor
now, I am. Hey, I'm if we're going taco fractor, I'm
in for the sushi fractor. I don't even know what it is yet.
We speculated on let me get that photograph. Maybe it's literal and it's a
card that you could actually fold like a taco and then you could pull a
chrome Mini out from the inside. I'd love it, it'd be fun,
but sadly I don't think they had near the engine for that. So the
top of the hours or anything else we want to talk about or done,
I think we're probably good to wrap up on there. I'm going to celebrate
a fun time with my son this afternoon. Um. I hope everybody has
a good Fourth of July. Anybody got it in good fourth of July plans?
Uh, stay safe, have a lot of fun. Um. Brodie
had a baseball end up. I meant to ask you or did you finish
up baseball or are you still playing? Oh? Yeah, I finished up
high school on the travel ball halfway, so I still got four tournaments left.
So yeah, we got We got about four or five travel ball for
us as well for Jude. Um. So well, good job on it,
Good luck with all those. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Of course
you can catch us every single Saturday at eleven am Eastern. We will be
back next weekend with We're actually true, we're on Tuesday night as the first
Tuesday of the month. Yes, as Rich said, first Tuesday of the
month, so we will be on on Tuesday. Since yes, It is
July first today, so we will be on Tuesday as well. Make sure
to check that out Tuesday evening and then we'll be on of course our regular
Saturday shows, always on Benchlar Media and the Hobby Hotline channels. If you'd
win national tickets, I know a lot of us here have a lot of
giveaways for them. We've got some up on our socials now, so make
sure to check them all out. But thank you guys so much for tuning
in, and we will see you guys next week. See you later.