Speaker 1: Good morning, sportscard fans, and welcome back to Hobby Hotline
on four Collectors. My name is Dan. I'm going to
be your host this week, and I am joined by
two esteemed colleagues. Good morning, Victor, how are you.
Speaker 2: I'm doing good, guys, thanks for having me on today.
Good morning to the chat and let's do it.
Speaker 1: And of course Rich uncle Rich Klein, how are you, sir?
Speaker 3: I am fine. Our central air conditioning unit or something
within it decided not to work last night, so that
was a whole that was a first world problem. Thankfully,
it's not super It's not summer yet here in Texas,
so it wasn't too bad and we're not going to
be too hot for a while so until it gets
fixed and at least I can get through. But the
hobby is hotter than our house.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, you're down in Texas. This
could be a really serious problem. That's okay. So we
have some topics to cover today and some stuff we
can we can do a little, uh little improval. So
but I guess the topics. I was thinking that since
Victor and I were both attendees of Strongsville and there
have not been definitely not been enough Strongsville videos on
YouTube and say that.
Speaker 3: No, no, there's nothing about Strong'sville. Nobody posted anything. It
was the most under the radar show I've ever seen
in my life.
Speaker 1: And you know, I also had a topic about vintage
card prices going right up and how that affects us,
and it affects the chat because the chat, you know,
we get a lot of vintage people here and at
you know, four Collectors and Hobby Hotline, so we can
talk a little bit about that. Also wanted to talk
about what else do we have, oh oh with eBay
eBay canceling cancelations, I think is kind of important and
the ramifications of that. And then Uncle Rich you had
another topic that I thoughk that I think we we.
Speaker 3: Have a couple of topics. One thing that opened this
week and it opened to prices beyond anybody's expectations or control,
was the return of Hops Chrome. And if you think
vintage card prices are going up, look at the prices
of unopened Tops Chrome Football twenty twenty five. As an example,
one of my friends I was handing out flyers for
my small show that I do it Memorial Day weekend,
and I have a couple of friends who are nice
enough to let me have who let me hand out flyers,
and one of my friends says, yeah, opening day, he
was selling packs, not jumbo packs, regular old packs of
tops chrome football at one hundred and ninety dollars a pack,
Wow and gold some to me it was a jumpoa,
which was just like what planet am I on? Yeah,
I mean, if I'm going to spend one hundred and
ninety dollars for a pack, I might as well buy
a pack from the sixties if I can find with
that price.
Speaker 1: Well, you can find. You can find the seventies. That
the other thing we were going to cover if we
get to it. I'm a lawyer, so I like Lostuff
is a gentleman in uh. He's from Arizona, but he
sued in California. He sued Collectors Universe under the anti
Trust statutes, and that is an issue to discussed. I'm
not sure how much of an effect it's going to
have on the hobby, but I think it's interesting. But
before we begin and get into the weeds a little bit,
let me say hello to members of the chat. Good
morning Stuke, Sir Scott uh YouTube Sports Card Hall of
Famer and a regular contributor here. Thank you, sir. I
thought that was oh yank me card Steve Okay confluenced
sports card. That is Rubens Mad City Brute. Good morning, sir.
Peter b is here. This Philly Joe Dave Peacemaker cards
another one of our friends from Strongsville, as was of
course the great Mookie Chilson, who I hope to see
tomorrow at the Garfield Show. We've got foul Ball is here.
Good morning, sir. That is Frank Gastella. I hope I
got that right, Sir. Abe in Vegas is here. Laura
is here as his baseball card curmudgeon who was up
late with me in the Carlos stream hanging out. And yes,
the busiest man on you too. So I was on
with Carlos for four hours last night, I'm hosting Hobby Hotline,
and tomorrow night eight o'clock I am on Bowman fifty
three's channel for the first time in a couple of years.
Alex invited me back on unbelievably all right, d I
don't know hello. Person whose name.
Speaker 2: Is too long for me, let's just call him Dean.
Speaker 1: Mike, Jay Hawker, Mike, I I put this up on
ig today. Thank you, sir. I purchased this from Mike
at Strongsville at a pre arranged nineteen forty nine leave
rookie card of Ted Kazuski. This wonderful card. The great
Bob Boozl is here, Phil Negro fan Billy how are you, sir?
And the great Gouger leb is here. Let's see hip
hop Brian, how are you? I watched your video in
your car. Mike Canadian Cars, who is also a Strongville
and one of the people hanging out with us at
many of the events. And of course the great Mike
Cam is here this morning. Mike, I hope you're feeling better.
He wasn't feeling so great last night. But Victor Strong,
I watched your video. A couple of things. Do not
ever go to Ramada's ever again?
Speaker 2: Correct?
Speaker 1: And apparently Bonefish was a good place and it was
right next to my hotel and I never.
Speaker 2: Went, so wow.
Speaker 1: But more seriously, sir, I think you had a good time,
and I'm glad to hear. And what are your thoughts
about strongsmol? I think you're gonna be going back next year,
which is great news.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: It was my first Strongsville show. Ironically, such a popular
show that's been going on for so many years and
I'm only a five hour drive away and finally got
to them. But just just to show the power of
marketing here, I mean, what what drew me to Strongsville was,
you know, the the the marketing that YouTubers are doing.
A lot of us in the community constantly talking about Strongsville,
and I'm like, well, let me check it out, you know,
and I'm glad I did. A wife and I we
were been really busy with a lot of different things
and we haven't done anything for quite some time, and
it was like, let's just get away for the weekend.
Took my wife to the first card show she's ever
been to and and she absolutely had a blast with
me to show and overall, you know, my my my
big takeaways is number one is I don't I don't
think if we keep marketing this the way we are,
and we keep in the YouTube space, we're going to
make this like a destination show where we meet. I really,
They're they're going to outgrow that building pretty quick. And
I believe I heard Mike moynihan mention this in one
of his videos. But I absolutely agree because I was
having the exact same thoughts halfway through the show on
a Saturday. I'm like, this is the first time they're
putting on this combo show, and I'm like, they're going
to outgrow this building, like within the next year or two.
So that was a big takeaway. Also, really, I don't
think I've ever seen that much raw vintage in one show,
at least not at a regional show. There was a
lot of vintage, a lot of raw vintage. You typically
see venus like at the National, but it's like most
of it is graded in high end grades. But here
we had stuff at every price range and a lot
of raw stuff if you're wanting to put I was
kind of motivating it now to put together the nineteen
seventy set because that was the year I was born,
and I used to have this set.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I used to whole lot of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like, I think I want to put this
set together now now that I found Strongsville, you know.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, interesting comment because I completed two sets
at Strongsville, and because of the number of rock cards,
and I knew which dealers to go to, and I
knew them all personally, so it was a good scenario.
And so obviously everybody was busy, so it wasn't like
they were hanging out with me and chatting. But I
was able to complete two sets. And Uncle Rich, you
just did a podcast with doctor Jim about set completion,
and I can tell you right now, we're out there.
We're still around, and it was tough to get to
some of these tables, like JD. Heckerthorne had set out
a huge platform so that people could pull up chairs
one by one by one, and you had to wait
for the chair. It was like you couldn't just sit
down and go, You had to wait for the chair
until somebody was done. So I think in your podcast
you talked about this and the question is our set
builders still around? And I think the answer is yes, yeah, and.
Speaker 3: One of the things in the podcast they are still around.
It's just that when doctor Jim and I started, he
started obviously before I did, but when we both started,
almost everybody, even the dealers at the shows, were collectors,
and because we have less sets, we all completed our sets. Yes,
the difference is we're still a little bit older than
a lot of collectors coming in nowadays. I mean, Victor
is a young pupp He's only fifty five. He's a
young one, and you're young too, And but not a
lot of younger collectors are going to enjoy the chase
of getting all the sixty nine commons in a set
or a seven, you know, any of these sets.
Speaker 1: It's such a thing as a common This is a
common card, right right, common card Andy Messersmith nineteen sixty nine,
comic card.
Speaker 3: Ninety six, if I remember somewhere around there, if I
remember correctly, that.
Speaker 1: Is to ninety six. You, sir, are an encyclopedia. But
here's my point, and I.
Speaker 3: Wrote that I kind of you know, muscle memory on that.
But that's a difference.
Speaker 1: First, he's the first free agent in the history of baseball.
Everything the kirk Flood did to get the contract to
be changed, they then went to court, they went to
an not to court, they went to an arbitrator, and
they got free agency. And Andy mesher Smith was the person.
And that's not a common cards. This is a very
uncommon about the series.
Speaker 3: It's it's a good it's a good card. I mean,
it's an under It actually truly is in baseball history
an undervalued card because it's not even that easy. It's easy,
but not super easy. I mean, I'm with you, but
you know there's there's not gonna be a lot of
video of Andy Messersmith even twenty years from now. You'll
have to be somebody like I am in Saber to
really dig into who who's Andy s Mesrosmith. People won't
remember and that's wrong, it's sad, but that's part of
what it is.
Speaker 1: So this comment is interesting, and you know we're getting
off topic a little bit, and I want to get
back to Victor what you talked about with it, because
it was a comment from David Chase about the size
of the show. David Chase is another person who was
at this show. This is a good comment from kudu Lev.
Set collecting is much tougher because dealers don't bring inventory
of comments, and this is true, but you have to
know which dealers to go to. And I was fortunate
because I've been to Strungsfeld now three times in a row,
and I knew these particular deal lists would in fact
have the inventory, and that's how I was able to
complete the sets. And I should mention Billy that Phil
nicro Fan did complete the sixty four sent and he
commented on that, and he and I were going from
the show to the to the room to figure out
which ones we still needed, back into the show get
some cards. It was fun. It was like back and forth,
and it was fun to hang out with him. But
most dealers only bring showcase items of the goats, and
I think that's correct, and to a certain extent, you know,
that is an issue that we have to deal with.
But Victor, you had mentioned be fair.
Speaker 3: As a person who has set up at a lot
of shows, your ROI, your return on investment for the
table space you're paying, is not always going to be
you know, it's a lot easier if you have showcases
to sell one or two expensive cards, then there is
a whole bulk of common cards. You know, when you
have a reputation for selling cards, like Uncle Dick de Corsi,
who's retiring, I think finally for the second time. You know,
at the National one he'd have these setups, and then
the Philly when he had the setups back in the
day of Willow Grove and all these places. When you
have a reputation for bringing commons, you can you can
bring a lot more commons than somebody just coming and
new too. You have to build up that reputation for
having common comments.
Speaker 1: So Victor, this is a this is a good comment.
Strongsvill went from an ice rink to a school gym,
which is true, and it was only in the ice
rink for two years before it grew outgrew it. If
a tendance keeps increasing, we'll be at the local mall
and the time. I think that's a joke, but the
reality is, what your point is is that they're already
busting at the seams. And my thinking was this is
a combined card show. The best way to do this
would probably be to do Strongsville Vintage on one day
because you got a whole nother part of the gym
and Greene's show on another day when he could take over.
So I think that the issue of them outgrowing the
location might be just to make it Strongfield only, thoughts Victor, Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's a that's a possibility. That's definitely gonna thin out
the crowd or or better managed the crowd. I kind
of I've never seen a show do that. I don't
know how good of an idea that would be, but yeah,
they definitely. They definitely need to rethink their location. I
don't know what's out there, but if if they were
to go into a bigger location and partner with with
collectors and double down on the marketing and that sort
of thing, I think I think we can pack out
the next location as well.
Speaker 3: We have a promoter here in Texas. This weekend, he's
doing a show in Fort Worth that actually is both
sports cards and TCG because it's a big room. It's
four hundred tables, maybe even five hundred tables. The other
shows he does is in a slightly smorral location. It's
for me, it's an easy straight drive basically down one street,
so I love going to that show. And what he
does is the even the even months February, April, et
cetera are sports card shows, January, March May, et cetera.
Are TCG shows, So you could instead of one day
and the other day. Because he tried that originally with
Saturday being sports cards than Sunday being TCG, he realized
for his audience it was better to split the shows
into sports and then you know, obviously will be some
tc There are a few TCG people there, you know
that have that as part of their side gig and TCG,
and I think there's probably one or two sports cards
that drift into the TCG world, And I think that's
a better way of doing it. Instead of one day
and the other day. The Strongs Will Show went for
several days. What was it, two or three days?
Speaker 1: It was three parts part of Friday, Friday, afternoonday Sunday.
Speaker 3: Okay, so it's a three day show. So I would
do I would do one one show, one big show vintage,
one big show modern, and you can kind of intersperse.
And what I mean by that is back in the
nineties there were vintage shows, and the rule for the
vintage shows were really simple. You really weren't supposed to
bring in anything modern but your show. If you had showcases,
you couldn't have modern cards in the showcase. The only
part you could have in your showcase were vintage cards.
You know.
Speaker 1: The Strongs Will Show has those kinds of restrictions. Although
you can't, I mean you can have some, you could
have some. It's not like entirely, but you was supposed
to have a certain amount of vintage. And this is
good news. Orlando will be attending throws every year.
Speaker 2: I think a bad take that I might have, and
maybe the chat can chime in those who were there,
But in my opinion, I don't I didn't see the
TCG tables as busy as the sports card tables, and
I don't know does that area have a market for
filling up a TCG show. I don't even think there
was that many TCG dealers there as opposed to sports
card dealers.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think that's a bad dank.
Speaker 3: To be honest. Once your show has a reputation as
a vented show the TCG people, that's not a TCG show,
you know. Bo I saw a Bose comment and for
him it works. Well. He doesn't have, you know, three
hundred tables. He has a fire remember one hundred and
seventy five tables at the Madison Call card show. And
I think he and I think he does something very
similar when he uses i'll call up the arena or
the bigger location he uses where he splits the sports
card park and the TCG part. If I remember his
podcast correctly on that everybody does it differently, but strong
Will has such a reputation. I was at Strongeville in
nineteen ninety two. It was a vintage show in nineteen
ninety two, twenty twenty six, it's still a vintage show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been going on sinceineteen seventy nine, and I've
been going on for longer than that. But yeah, So
Orlando's point here is that, yeah, there were there were
vintage dealers on the modern side, and some of them
were because they were late getting in. Some of it
was just you know, there wasn't enough room for it.
So if you really took all the vintage guys, it's
more than half of the gym. That being said, I
don't know how you do it unless you do two
different shows. But you know, I don't know if that
if that's what's going to happen, but we'll see. I mean,
these guys have the Expo guys, you know, Steve menzi
and and Mikey Singer who you know, major shout out
to them for organizing this and having it come out
like as well as it did. You know. They they're
guys with ideas and their ideas, guys who have made
it a really successful up in Canada and they've made
it successful Strongsfield. So I feel like they'll they'll figure
it out and then we'll figure it out.
Speaker 3: I'm with you. I just you know, And they'll figure
out whether it's the Bow the Bow Spencer Thompson way
of doing one day and one day, or splitting the
room up, or just doing two separate shows like Dan
here does at the nt X shows here in the
DFW area. So they'll figure out what they're most comfortable with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh man, Mookie Chilsen is a very funny person.
I hope to see Mookie tomorrow. I think I already
said this at Garfield Rich I'm going to Tallas today.
Speaker 3: By the way, I love the I love the Garfield
cart Show. I went to that shows off and back
in the day. It's a wonderful show. Gary's a good
friend of mine. I know I still know many of
the vendors in that room. It's it's a really it's
an inexpensive fun show that He's raised a ton of
money for the Boys and Girls Club that way, So
I'm glad Gary keeps battling through his health issues.
Speaker 1: That's tomorrow. But today I'm going to Dallas. Okay, albeit
it's in New Jersey, but I'm going to the card show.
Speaker 3: Gotcha, that's okay. We'd love to have you Dallas. I could,
I could send it to this fourth fourth worst show.
I think he'd enjoy it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I would, but I'm not. I'm making a
joke about that. Is a Dallas show in New Jersey today?
Speaker 3: Yes? Yes? Yes? Have you ever been?
Speaker 1: Have you ever been in New Jersey?
Speaker 3: Have you?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: And one of the things, and that's correct, it's a
Dallas card show in New Jersey. And one of the
things is that Kyle Robertson and his team, and We've
talked about this on Doctor Beckett's podcast, Excuse Me, they
have an arrangement with an autograph show. People have been
autographed show promoters, but they weren't getting enough sports card people.
So they bring a lot of good autograph guests to
the Dallas card Show. In return, Kyle and his team
bring a lot of sports card people and they are
a good sports card conduit to go to these people
shows in the Cincinnati area, in the Chicago area, and
now the Dallas Card Show at Raretson Center.
Speaker 1: So I'll I'm going because I not because I'm I'm
burned out on card shows. I just spent a week
in Ohio, but I need content. So there you go,
I'm curious. Let me You know when you post, it's
curiosity too. Yeah, yeah, it's curiosity. And you know who knows.
I'm working a card show next weekend. I need a
little bit inventory, so we'll see what happens. But anyway,
so next topic. People have mentioned this in the chat.
It's it's I don't think a topic we're going to
spend that much time on, but it is something to
discuss and that's that. This week a lawsuit came out
filed in I think it was the Central District of
California federal court. An individual who seeks to have him
have his case classified as a class action, is suing
Collector's Universe for anti trust violations. The complaint is very thorough.
The complaint is written by a law firm, a good
law firm, and it's thorough because it goes over the
different reasons why and the different things that have happened
that make the allegation of an anti trust violation realistic,
which is that a big conglomerate bought smaller grading companies
and are now under one umbrella, and it creates what
is called an illegal restraint of trade. You don't have
to have a monopoly. It has to be an illegal
restraint of trade, and that's the lawsuit. And I think
that that it was played well. I have some issues
legally with it that I'm not going to get into
the weeds on it. But I'm just wondering your thoughts
on this, Victor. I know that you have I think
you have talked about it. Well, possibly you'll talk about
it in your in your weekly video tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I noticed that your head is chopped off again
like last night on Carlos Channel.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Dan, I was really wanting to hear your your take
on it most because of course your your background. I
don't have a lot of background, although lawsuits do interest me,
this one in particular. There you go, this one.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: My my only thought on it is, I don't I
don't see it to have a lot of teeth. That's
I'm just me speculating. However, when you take when you
start to add these accusations or actual lawsuits, when you
start stacking these things up and you and then you
add the one from the one Congressman pat Ryan already
has their eye on them, right, and uh, this all
these lawsuits and complaints start to compound and eventually, I
think the rubber band snaps that. That's kind of my
view on it. At the moment.
Speaker 1: I totally agree with you. But let's let's hear from
from Uncle Rich first.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, and I think Victor nailed it. You you're
a lawyer. I'm not, even though I stated a holiday
and holiday and express lesson. But Victor, I think nailed
it in terms of maybe not individually any of these work,
but the grand totality of stuff going on in the
hobby that's always been somewhat a little bit interesting may change.
You know, you saw Paul LESCo and what Nott's already
made some changes based on the arbitration cases. Lesco's lost
law thing has law firm, has posted about it, and
he's adding people. And someday hopefully he'll come on the
channel again when this is when that is closer to completion,
and I'd love to hear his take on this as well.
But when stuff starts happening, that's when maybe not one,
it may be the twentieth one down the line, but
then the damn may break. And that's and that's why
I think Victor nailed it. This may not be the
right case there will be one that gets everything going. Look,
Live Nation just just got found guilty in court of
some antitrust violation and supposedly they're gonna have to pay
a lot of money. I haven't gone to a concert
in so many years that it doesn't affect me. But
the people who spent all that money on the tickets,
they may very well get some money back, which is
great for them. Right now. You know, there are pros
and costs that have a very regulated market. We're in
a very unregulated market, and there's a lot of cons
to that, but there's also some pros to that that
we can do what we want to some extent. Unfortunately,
when you do what you want, sometimes you don't always
do it perfectly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I agree with Victor that the more this happens,
the more eventually somebody will say something and something will
will the damn will break essentially. So what we have here, though,
is we have an individual, a single individual, who, if
it is not classified as a class action, will probably
fail because of something called standing. So pay attention to
the word standing. That's all. I'm not going to get
into it. It's a legal thing. I don't want to
I don't want to lecture people on the law. But
the problem is, generally speaking, that he only has a
small amount of damage and he's asking for a very
large reward and a very large set of things for
the court to do. Break up the company just because
you paid a little extra for for you know, some
grading which was probably wrong and gave you worse numbers
than you would have gotten otherwise, that doesn't give you
the right to break up the company. So that's kind
of the problem. But if you get a class action
and you have four hundred people saying this happened to us,
that gives more power to the court to do the
kind of remedies that that person is seeking. But again,
we'll see what happens. I think standing's gonna be a problem.
I did. I did a little bit of background on
it afterwards, but we'll see. I also would love to
have Paul on here. Paul was on my channel a
couple of years ago. Uh, great, great knowledge of not
only the law, but also a great hobby knowledge. So
really would be a trufic guest.
Speaker 3: So Paul is definitely a dedicated hobbyist, So yes, that's
what makes him. So you just like you, Dan, that's
what's that, you know, And that's why I'd love to
hear the two of you chatigan, because two lawyers can
explain things and layman terms is something we need in
the hobby.
Speaker 1: Well, we spent that time talking about cards.
Speaker 3: It was funny they had a down time for suits
in the hobby at that point.
Speaker 1: Well, the concept was we're going through the history. You know,
I'm the history guy, I'm also a card guy, and
I'm also a lawyer. So it was perfect to have
Paul on to talk about how different lawsuits had affected
the hobby. So we went all the way back to
like the Double Play in nineteen forty one. We talked
about the Burke Ross thing, we talked about some of
the issues between Flear and Tops and so you know,
it was kind of like historical and legal and also cards.
So I thought that was a fun show. But you know,
it was very early in the history of my channel,
so not that many I remember.
Speaker 3: It doesn't Paul collect items related.
Speaker 1: To all those lawsuits exactly, yep, So we show a
lot of cards. So, uh, speaking of legal stuff, eBay
recently made a change which I think is important. I
don't know what the effect is going to be but
they eliminated and it's not not yet, it's I think
it becomes effective like May thirteenth or something. And it's
only as to auctions, and it's only in the in
the United States, and it eliminates the ability of the
buyer who wins the auction to cancel without permission of
the seller. And I think that's important because it was
something that was probably abused. Victor thoughts on this sigh.
Speaker 2: Of relief And the only thing that came to my
mind when I read this headline was it's about time.
You're only a decade or two but late, but I'll
take it. Good move.
Speaker 1: So what do you think the effect is going to be?
I mean, what are they what are they actually helping
to take place for sellers who people say are not
protect as much as they should be uneven? What do
you think that what do you think this is going
to do for sellers?
Speaker 3: Well, I know bo is in the chat and he's
on eBay Live, and I'd love to hit for Tim
just to say how often has stuff been canceled on
him after he is after he had made his you know,
his sales, because those are technically auctions, right, So i'd
love to, you know, and he doesn't have to go
through details. I'm just curious about how often that happens
to him. And I think it's better because I think
that's better because you don't and there's always a legitimate
you know, and in life, there's always a legitimate reason
that sometimes does pop up. And I get that, you know.
Speaker 2: But they still left that window open if.
Speaker 3: The most of the most of the reasons are not
legitimate that I've seen over the years, but there are
legitimate reasons.
Speaker 2: It's putting regulation on the on the speculators and the
flippers who want to like purchase something during the game
because of certain players doing really good and and then
the player fails to accomplish whatever, and then they canceled
a bid. And there's a lot of that here type
of stuff going on.
Speaker 3: Here's your example, Drake May before the Super Bowl. If
you have bought a Drake May card on aud auction
on Saturday, thinking he's going to have a great game
on the Super Bowl on Sunday, and he played terrible
and he didn't play real well. I think he played terribly,
but the Seahawks defense certainly had a lot to do
with that. But he did not play well, and then
on Monday you get that note I'm canceling for whatever reason.
That's really what they're trying to advent. Thank you both
for answering the question. Thank you. I appreciate you you
answering the question. And yeah, so he's so he's getting
about one to two percent. It looks like cancelations and
that's you know, one to two percent isn't bad, you know,
as he says, most of eBay Live is auto pay immediately.
But one to two percent if that's If it's higher
than that, then this is a great rule. But if
it's to two percent, and it's just going to make
maybe make it a half a percent, and anything that
cuts this down is great, and it'll prevent the Drake
May things or Bam bam on the Miami Heat who
got tripped up and got hurt. You know, if you
were gambling that the Heat was going to go deeper
in the playoffs and after LaMelo ball tripped him and
he got hurt and all that, right, all of this,
and then you canceled. Oh, well you know what I
screwed up? Well, yeah, you screwed up because he got hurt.
And that's really where I think a lot of the problem.
Speaker 1: Is I think he means the buyer doing something to
the card and saying the card was damage and the
mailing process. Yeah, I mean the problem, the problem for
eBay is that you're never really going to eliminate scummy
and scammy people from the you know, platform, the commerce.
So it's going to happen. And it's just a question
of trying to do whatever they can do in you know,
in their processes to eliminate a certain small percent of it.
And you know, Auto pay probably helps or helped or
continues to help certainly, and this is something that I
think is going to help also, you know, but guys
are still going to do the thing you can always
still ask Sellers are still going to get the my
son clicked this at two am, you know, by mistake
thing or you know, there's always going to be somebody
asking for but now it's it's not automatic and they
can say no and send the car down. So you know,
it's something that at least adds more protection for sellers,
which as people have you know, sitt in the chat
and I said earlier, sellers are not necessarily the high
priority of eBay. eBay makes money, generally speaking, off of
the buyers, so you know that's what that uh, you know,
they have competing interests and but ultimately, you know, it's
it's something I think that in the long run is
probably good.
Speaker 3: And we had a legitimate case a couple of months ago.
Sues the Fate you know, works at Seed. You see
a very well known Derek Cheater collector and she posted
her son, actually her son actually went through the process
and bought a card on honey eBay and she honored
the purchase. It was like five or ten dollars, so
she honored the purchase. But she goes, it actually happened
to me where my son actually bought a card, you know,
at the age of five and knew how to do
it from watching how mommy did it. And so it
does happen legitimately.
Speaker 1: Too Well, they say, you know, uncle Rich, we need
new blood in the hobby. So even if a great
job of that, ah well, we raced through all the topics.
Oh oh, there was one other thing we wanted to
talk about, which was that, uh was it hops Chrome
football came out this week?
Speaker 3: Boy did it?
Speaker 1: It was really cheap and it was a great value, right,
is that my wrong about that?
Speaker 3: It it let's just say it hit flaming and got
hotter from there. You know. I was, as I said,
I was handing out flyers at some of my friend's stores,
and I had heard, you know, from reading some of
the stuff about what was going on. So the first
store I went to on Thursday, walked in. The owner,
the person who helps him opening the store wasn't there,
so he was actually there. And we usually chat at
the big shows, but he was actually there. So we
were chatting and I bought some cards from his two
dollars bin. The best best card I bought, I'm not
going to make any money on it, but the best
card I bought. It was damaged on the back, but
a fifty four Johnson Braves Joe Adcott. I was happier.
I was happy with that card than any of the
other cards are going to make money on. So that
was good stuff. I was like, hey, this is cool.
I don't care if I make any money on this card.
I mean, I could see the back was obviously damaged,
but it's like, I don't care. This is fine, this
is this is a win. And he was telling me
the packs. You know, we discussed what the prices were doing,
and he says he actually sold some pats you one
hundred and ninety dollars a pack because people wanted to
be involved in the opening day of Tops Chrome Football.
You know, fanatics sent people clock countdown clocks for the
release of Tops Chrome Flipball. They did a lot of stuff.
They sent swag to a lot of their store owners.
You know, they did a really good job promoting it.
But even I don't think even they thought it would
explode the way it did on the secondary mark and
and Neo did a great video explaining I don't know
who to you know, there's no blame. It's just we
have to accept this because everybody's doing what they have
to do to get through. You know, the store owners,
if they sell it too cheaply, somebody's gonna buy it
out and flip it so they can't sell it too cheaply.
You know, the customers have the right to say I
buy it or I don't buy it. You know, everybody's
got the right to say yes or no. And I
think that's one of the things in the business where
everybody's got the right to say yes or no to anything.
You know, you bought your fifty you finished your fifty
two Bowman set, which is a great set, and there's
seventy two top set, which is another great set at
at Strongsville, and you know, finishing those sets are great.
But if some somebody was charging twenty dollars instead of
ten dollars for a raw seventy two high number, you
have every right to say that's double what it should be.
Speaker 1: I don't want I did. I turned away from some people,
I went to other you know, I had choices. But
that's the problem with this, and this is a good point.
The breakers got the allocation. I mean when Neo said
that Burbank Cards in the first wave of allocation got
three boxes, I mean that's insane. The biggest and maybe
the best card shop in the country and they get
such poor allocation first round. That to me, that's a problem.
Speaker 3: And yes, and in fact Rob even posted how what
if his friends in the New England area got nothing?
So you know, we definitely want to have the stores
getting the problem. Another store I went into on Friday
and there are some political reasons involved. Nothing with him personally,
just where the store is located and what's around him.
He's working around on the edges to get Top. He
worked around the edges to get tops Chrome football into
the store to make one hundred dollars a box, because
he does he is not direct with fanatics, but he
knows his customers want things in. As a matter of fact,
he's doing something innovative to compete with the stores that
get direct. Is that even though he's making us, he's
kind of reducing his profit even more. But if you
open the box in the store and you pull something
decent or something you want, he will send it to
PSA free, so you don't you know, and you don't
have to pay for it. He is sending it to
PSA free.
Speaker 1: This comment is fantastic. Reasonably price retail wax is what
built the loyalty to and nostalgia for the hobby. And
I agree with that. What experience is the hobby building?
Now from the retail side, if everybody is getting burned,
if you're paying too much money and you're not getting
any return, I mean, this is the You could say, yeah,
everybody has the choice to buy or not buy, but
this is a problem. And I think that this is
a point.
Speaker 3: And here's the thing I want to say this I
think fanatics knows that intuitively, but it's really hard when
you're a business. You know, if I watched a lot
of the content that came out of the TOPS Industry Conference,
even though I liked to say I don't watch much
hobby stuff that I actually paid a lot of attention to,
and a lot of the material that came out of
the TOPS Hobby Conference was about the joy of collecting,
and all people that you know that gave the speeches
talked about buying the cards. Early nineties, mid nineties. Your
barrier to entry in those days was a lot cheaper.
You know, if you joined the hoteen ninety one and
we had thirty thousand accounts at Beckett at the time
there was Top Stadium Club exploded. But for most of
the products, you could spend twenty or thirty dollars and
get five hundred and forty cards. Chris Harris, as I
see he's in the chat, he's probably salivating. Oh, I'd
love to go back and get those five hundred and
forty cards.
Speaker 1: You know. But the problem is you can say love
of collecting all you want at this get together, and
you could throw out all the corporate you know, happy
speak you want, but the reality is if you don't,
if your actions, you know, defy what you're saying, this
is a problem. If Fanatics thinks that they can do collets.
Speaker 3: I want to collect a little bit on this. Fanatics
has been doing something for the stores that is, in
my opinion, a very underrated part. They do understand that
not everybody can afford even one hundred and ninety dollars packs,
and a lot of the material you see at the Walmarts,
at the targets, at the big box stores you can
now also pick up if you're lucky enough to have
a card store the area and they have a direct account,
you can get the retail type boxes at your local
card store. And they understand that everybody has to have
a price point they can come in on. So I
want to give them some credit for that. But it
is a dichotomy that I don't think you and I
or Victor or anybody even in our chat can really fix,
because this is been going on forever, but now it's
just hyper hyper escalate and I don't you know, and
it you know, and that's and that's something where and
we talked about the other things with the lawsuits. If
the damn ever breaks, well, then then things will calm down.
The question is does the dam ever break?
Speaker 1: In This comment from from bo is that you know
he went to Dixon, they had tons of products. The
why is Dix getting mountains of boxes and Burbank is
getting three? How does that serve the hobby? I don't
understand that, Victor thoughts.
Speaker 2: I, you know, there's I've been hearing a lot of
videos on the topic, and there's a lot of complaints,
And I don't blame people for complaining. It's it's definitely ridiculous,
and there's a lot of we're like Nick, pick every
single thing that fanatics is doing again with with cause.
I just think that what is not talked about and
and probably not looked at completely is the demand that
is out there, and none of this would be happening
if the demand was not so high. I think demand
is so high that fanatics themselves are having challenges and
difficulty meeting that demand. And yes, there is imbalances with distribution,
but I do think in time, because they're completely new
to having all three licenses, it's fairly new for them,
but I think in time they're going to make small
adjustments and try to balance the scale on all sides,
and they'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: That's what we do.
Speaker 3: And there was a great quote saying they copy the
Panini playbook. I mean, it's the Panini Prism football. Because
of downtowns and kaboons and all these hobby things. The
boxes were thousand dollars because they were all chasing that
great insert and people were paying it. You know, you know,
I watched the shows people paying money for these boxes
that seem absolutely same as I said. I sit with
one of my friends for a couple for an hour
or two every Dallas card show just we chat about
the hobby. But I also watch what goes on, and
it's fascinating to sit and watch the new card world
at one of the biggest and best card shows in
the country.
Speaker 1: Wait. Wait, so I did get a question here, and
I think it's a fair question, and I don't and
I am happy to answer it. Yes, I use the
term inventory for vintage cards, and yes, I plead guilty
said it because sometimes I have to go out and
I have boxes, boxes, boxes and boxes filled with uncommons
because I go to card shows and I set up
and I have huge boxes of of you know, three
thousand count boxes, five thousand count boxes of commons of
extras cards that I already own already in my sets
down on the here, and I sell them at very
reasonable rates, I might add, and then I use that
money to buy fancy cards for me. So's that's what
I'm doing, and that way I don't have to go
into my own personal funds that are you know, my
wife and I have so that we can live our
lives and help our children and pay our rent and
all that other stuff. I have hobby money that I
make at shows to do hobby things. And to me,
I think that's that's what I mean by inventories.
Speaker 2: Card collectors have been doing that for decades.
Speaker 3: Dan to defend Dan on that, We've talked a lot
about this on Doctor Beckett's podcast. He was a collector.
Most of the people in the seventies when he was
doing shows before he became the price guy Guru, were collectors.
They would go to the shows and they would buy
these large collections, you know, from people locally where they
lived or whatever, and they would go to the shows.
They would sell cards to people so they could buy
cards for their own collection. And yes, they had an
inventory that Dan is really a nineteen seventies baseball card,
you know, that's really what he is. He's a seven
BT card dealer. He could be back in the seventies
and be happy.
Speaker 2: And the prices keep going up the way they are,
We're all going to become dealers.
Speaker 1: This is inventory, this is collection. That's the difference.
Speaker 3: And there's nothing wrong. And you know this, and you
know I'm going to defend Dan. This is what we
did fifty forty fifty years ago. Yeah, the world has changed,
but that's that's fairly common in the seventies and even
into the eighties, where the people setting up at the
shows had jobs. It was a weekend business for them.
They were collectors and they would use the money they
made at the shows to buy items for their collection.
That was a normal course of the event. The hobby
has evolved, and Dan, to his credit, because he's able
to do that, is able to set up at shows
and sell material that he purchases to fund items so
he can finish. You know, notice how proud he is
that he finished his fifty two Boonemen set. That's not
an easy set to finish, those last thirty six cards
two seventeen to two fifty two are no joy. There
is a Willie Mason there that's really not a joy
to find.
Speaker 2: I thought we were going to do a segment about
rising vintage prices. Did we do that?
Speaker 1: Do that or any Now, by the way, you as
as I say that I do have a job. It
might not be the greatest job, and people might not
be a big fan of it, but I do have
a job. So I'm that money is for my family
and my life and for my rent and to buy
clothes and all different kinds of stuff. But the reality
is that the hobby pays for the hobby is exactly
what Uncle Rich was saying. It's been going on for
years and that's what it is. But I do a
real job. So yes, vintage card prices, this is one
of my bug a boos because Victor, you just came
from the show. You saw it. Was there some museum pricing,
sure there was? Was there decent pricing, sure there was.
It was a big show, so there was all different.
It's a whole spectrum of prices. But generally speaking, vintage
cards are very expensively. And you brought it up, and
we brought it up in the in the pre planning
of the show, So why don't you take it away victory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been noticing I noticed specifically at at Strongsville.
I've been noticing a lot of complaints on social media.
Even using looking at card Ladder indexes, you can see
the vintage market. And and here's what I've been noticing
is a trend, and that is, Uh, some of these
dealers they do not care about comps and and and
they're blowing way past the comps. Why is that happening. Well,
it's happening because they're going way past comps and it's selling.
So there is a sect of people, whether they be novices,
whether they be don't I don't know what the deal is,
whether they need repack merchandise, I don't know why they're
paying those higher prices, but it's happening. So it's making
me kind of reconsider my strategy. And and I'm really
needing to kind of take a step back. I know
you spoke about this in a recent video, but I'm
not going to pay these inflated prices. I will wait
for a market correction, and I think the wise collector
is should take the same approach. Unless I'm missing something, Guys.
Speaker 3: One thing about vintage prices also, and I do want
to ask you we're talking about graded car graded card
prices or raw prices?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Graded? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Okay, So I will point you know, you also talked
about about raw cards, you know, And I don't think
from what I see, and granted it's a Dallas card show,
which is a big show, but not really a super
vintage based show, I don't see vintage comments exploding in
raw the way they are for graded, for higher condition graded.
And the world is there aren't that many high grade
vintage cards available and you are competing with other people
who want to buy certain cards. I don't, you know,
it depends what you're looking for. I think there's always,
as Victory is pointing out, there's always ways around everything,
and you have to figure out what lane to be
in and what you're comfortable with. I was looking up
a guy named Mimo Luna the other day, who's a
fifty four bowman. He never played a Major league game.
He's got a great.
Speaker 1: Name, Memo Memo Luna. I think he did actually play
one game. He played one game, played in fifty three,
and then they put him in the back of the
fifty four set. He's like one of the last cards
in the set.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, the second series, thankfully, in fifty four Bowmen
is not super tough. It's tougher, but not super tough.
But it's a little tougher than the first series.
Speaker 1: And fantastic question memo.
Speaker 3: I remember and this is nineteen eighty five at one
of my friends stores, my friends Henry and Hunt, Henry
Davis and Hans jew Belt at HNH Hobby and Garfield
and Garfield is a you're going to Garfield later. But
Garfield is a middle lower middle class town. It is
not a high christ area.
Speaker 1: Ed.
Speaker 3: When this guy could not buy fifty four bowmens anymore
at a quarter each, he stopped working on the set.
That was the price, you know. When he started, he
could buy them at a quarter, and once it got
past the quarter, he didn't want to buy anymore. And
so everybody always has a price limit to what they
want to do. And speaking of speaking of guests, Oh,
my dog has decided she may want to go out,
So if you forgive me for a minute, so I'm
going to let miss Charlie.
Speaker 1: Out, all right, so you can let her out.
Speaker 3: Okay, my wife is letting her.
Speaker 1: Out Okay, there you go.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, hey, it's good to get help. But
I'm always happy to let miss Charlie go out.
Speaker 1: It's a team. It's a team you got going on there,
and it's a team we have more so.
Speaker 3: But the point is that everybody has a price point
at some point where they just say no, right. I
paid two dollars each for a bunch. I bought some
vintage cards after a couple of my friend's stores, and
they were two dollars each. And and I picked cards
because I don't I've had my collection. I don't collect it.
Everything I buy is designed to be sold at some point.
But I know what I can do. But I enjoy
looking at the old cards more than I enjoy looking
at I'm going through some inventory right now, I was pricing.
I enjoy that more than I enjoy this rookie year.
Josh Allen honestly gotta get the right one. Rookie year.
Josh Allen Panini illusions him and Jim Kelly card. I
prefer ventage. But though you know, if I can make
money on a modern card, guess what, it's good enough.
Speaker 2: We got to show cards, so we'll get criticized.
Speaker 1: I show cards.
Speaker 3: Damn you did like to finish your second or something similar.
Speaker 2: My point is taking a pivot from the market. I've
decided to revisit an old project that I have or
Sammy Sosa nineties inserts and having a blast at five
ten twenty dollars range, and I'm picking up fabulous cards
from that era.
Speaker 3: So eventually Sammy will make the Hall of Fame, by
the way, those numbers will eventually put him into the Hall.
Speaker 1: I hope I had an effect on you, Victor when
I did that video. All right, So I love this question.
I love this question, and there is an answer to it,
which is a smart answer. Do you think some of
the bigger dealers put a premium on their cards due
to the traffic they get at shows? And I think
what what Mike may be talking about are some of
these dealers that Ruben later on pointed out that some
of us on YouTube and I'm responsible for this. I
name the dealers that I get cards from, and I
get a lot of cards from the same dealers. Did
we make them celebrities and therefore they think they can
charge more and get away with it. I think that's
a great point, both of both Mike and Rubin with
some really good points on this, and I think the
problem is that it might be it might be the
case that if you go to a certain guy and
I'm not going to name them because we're not talking
about them in a positive way this at this point.
But if you go to a certain guy and you've
got ten fifteen YouTubers telling you this guy's great, he's
got great inventory, you should go to him and then
you'll be able to show and you can do a
little thing on it and you can get content out
of it. Is that going to increase the price you're
willing to pay because this guy's great, we all know him, right,
I mean? Is that something that is that a real issue? Victor?
Did you feel any of that at Strongsville? Like you
knew who these guys were from YouTube?
Speaker 2: I can't say I did. The only one, Texas Snowman,
I had to sit down in conversation with him. Right,
He's one that we've kind of made into a celebrity. Right,
he sponsors a lot of channels here on YouTube. But
you know, I don't know his prices are fair in
my opinion, so I can't really critique him in that way.
I do think that these some dealers, they're going to
know the market probably a lot more than the common
collector because they're in it. They're in the trenches, like
weekend after a weekend, and I think they know what
they've got, and they also know and see and since
the demand, and I think that's why they're you know,
going higher than comps to help with comps. I'm sorry
to cuss there. I know it's a family show, but
trying to make my point here is what could possibly
be why the prices are going up the way they are.
Speaker 3: Well, I've actually sacked with Jeremy at the Dallas card
show just to watch how he does things. He's actually
also set up at my synagogues at my now smaller
synagogue show. He did really well that he was there
one day, did really well, says I don't need to
come back tomorrow, paid me for the tables. I said, wonderful.
And then the other guy and then his buddy name
of James, took all three tables in that area the
next day and did five thousand dollars at my little
twenty table shows. So I mean, there's money that comes
into my show. But that's a different subject. For a
different day. But I've you know, Jeremy is a very
fair person. He enjoyed and he enjoys the interaction, and
he wants to be fair on both ends. He wants
to be fair as a buyer and he wants to
be fair as a seller. And you know that's what
we want. As I said, I watched him in the
interaction with these people because we had a chat about
something else. We never got to our chat, but I
pay attention and watch the interactions. You know, we talk
a lot about in Doctor Beckett's podcast about the value boxes.
We go to the Dallas card Show. There are four
or five vendors we both go to and and there's
a coterie of people that go to those boxes just
like we do. And some shows I do better than others.
But the point is we know who these people are.
But most of these people the value boxes are not
the people you find on YouTube videos because they don't
have flashy showcase stuff. They have stuff that is the
we'll call it nickel and dime. Even though comms, sixties, commons,
seventies commons, fifties comments aren't nickel and dime there, but
they're they're selling the Nickel and dimes stuff, not the
fifty two Mantle or the fifty two Bowman Maze or
a fifty three New zeal or something like that, or
some hot shot Aaron Judge rookie or Mike Trout rookie
you know who put on Homer shows at Yankee Stadium
this week, you know, or Paul Stein's or Connor Griffa
when he starts getting Rocky cards.
Speaker 2: That's good stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was good stuff. But the point is those
aren't the people that are going to get on the
YouTube videos. You know. You know, if you have a
guy with a lot of common cards, you might get
the the thing about people just digging through his table,
but you're not going to get the individual showcase cards
from his table.
Speaker 1: So Victor brought up a great point, and that's that
the that some of these dealers know the cards so
well that they can set the prices and they can
and they can get the prices because people are willing
to pay for them. The problem with comping a card
like this, I got this card at like four times
the comp number because the comp means nothing because it
hasn't sold you know, in like eight years, you know,
and this one there are literally five of these in
the world. So if you if you have if you
own three of them, it's the nineteen twenty one Oxford Confectionery,
Grover Cleveland. There are five of these, and so if
you own three of them, you can set the price.
So that happens. And I don't think it's wrong. It's
not great because I spend a lot of money on
some of these cards, but I don't think it's necessarily wrong.
And in that sense, when you have very very low
pop rare stuff, pre war stuff, and you know it,
and you know what you have and you know what
is out there, you can set the price. And the
price is really comps are a way to come to
a price, but the price really is what you said before.
It's what somebody is willing to pay. And if they're selling,
they're going to keep putting those numbers up.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: Well, if you have a really scarce card, I mean, yeah,
you can set your price. I once wrote a long
time ago when I was writing for Sports collect Sports
Collectors Daily, there's a nineteen twenty set, nineteen twenty set
called the Fan. I think there may be four total
cards known from that set. If I found a Babe
Ruth from that, and it was deemed legitimate, and that
one I would obviously grade it. I could put whatever
price I wanted on that card and guess what, who's
gonna argue? You can argue, and I'll say, find me
another one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. But even even the common stuff, for more
iconic cards, the eights, nines, and tens are just it's
like the last comp means nothing. When you talk about
Hank Aaron PSA nine, it's going up and up and up.
Speaker 3: And I think that's really my point, going circling back
to what we talked about earlier. Today, there are still
set collectors, and it's wonderful they're a set, but a
younger coterie of collectors or certain collectors, and I don't
even know if collector is the right word. They're not
going to try to finish. If it's a sixty tops
Hank Aaron and PSA nine, they may not care about
whether they get their Frank Bowling card, or they're even
a Jim Cott Rookie or Julio Navarro or whomver, George Miranda,
you know, whoever common you want. They're just going to
want the Aaron card in that really nice shape and
saying thank you, that's what I really want. That's where
I'm collecting, and you know, and that's okay, But that's
part of what that's part of what we talked about
is not everybody collects sets. The great thing with Strongsville
and Dan, You're in New York, so you see this more.
I grew up in the New York area. There's a
lot of raw vintage up and down the Megalopolis. Strongsville
is near enough to Megalopolis. You see a lot of
you see a lot of vintage. It'd be a lot
harder to do a vintage show here in Dallas. I
would might I might be able to do a fifty
table vintage show. I might not be maybe even a hundred,
but I couldn't fill up a Gymnasiumly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Victor's loving the Chat. I can tell you that
collect screenshots. Booseol has had a good day. I can
tell you that, oh my goodness, Bob has had one
of his best contributing to the Chat days.
Speaker 3: And can afford you can afford Mickey Tuttleton, I can
afford Mickey mailor.
Speaker 1: Well, gentlemen, we have gone over. We're over an hour
one oh four. Some of us have to go to Dallas.
I'm sorry, New Jersey. Dallas show in New Jersey. Some
of us have to go there. So I'm gonna log off.
It has been a fantastic show, Uncle Rich. As always,
it is wonderful to hear you, your wisdom, your knowledge,
all that stuff. Victor. I wish you would have talked more.
Next time. I'm gonna make you talk more. You, sir,
are a absolute treasure in the Hobby and it was
wonderful to shake your hand and meet your wife and
and hang out with you a little bit of strong villain.
Speaker 3: You do not staying in a hotel anywhere as bad
as the George Washington motor Lodge. Well, girl, I can
assure you of that.
Speaker 1: The chat was awesome. So good show, gentlemen. We're gonna
log We're gonna log off, and I'm gonna go get
in my car and drive it to Edison and uh,
look at more cards, because what do we do on weekends,
That's all we do. We look at anyway, take care
of folks. Oops, got to run the stream.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to this episode of Hobby Hotline.
Just want to remind everyone we are a live show
every Saturday morning, eleven am eastern eight am Pacific on
the four Collectors channel on YouTube. That's the number four,
the word Collector's channel on YouTube. We hope to see
many of you live on a future Saturday. We have
a great interactive chat room and we always provide a
link for anyone that wants to come on the show
and chop it up with us. So that's a reminder.
Every Saturday, eleven am eastern eight am Pacific only four
Collectors channel on YouTube. Hope to see you on the show.