$5K LeBron Pull… Then a Jordan Rookie Walked Into the Shop

So I pull a 2003 pristine LeBron James refractor PSA-10 last count 5,100. Wow. This is how you become a degenerate right here. This is the path because let me tell you that is ridiculous. Would you sell that card for an equivalent $5,000 Jordan card or a $5,000 Colby card? What card do you think has the most upside? One is fandom. It would be Jordan. Number two is an investor Jordan because cards are older, a little more rare and all that stuff's going up. If you're trading and collecting, we all hit Facebook Marketplace case. Basically saw it. Full 86 flea set with stickers with Jordans looking for offers. Made the guy an offer and yours truly has a full set of 86 flea here. 86 Jordan rookie and the star. That's what makes this industry so awesome. There are stories all the time everywhere and so I love that story. Welcome to the Collector Nation podcast here on the Collector Nation Network. Whether you're chasing trails or calling bluffs, you take you inside the hobby. Here are your hosts, Ryan Alford and Brian Lut. What's up guys? Welcome to Collector Nation. Your top five sports show on Apple Podcasts. We appreciate you for the velocity. That's what it's about, velocity of growth. Hey, that's what we're doing. That's what Linux is always doing. It's about about the growth of everything. What's up, Brian? What's up, my man? How you doing? I'm good, man. I was a little concerned with you if you would make it through snowmageddon down there. I thought I was going to get a phone call of you like in a closet curled up. You know, I was one of the few people, we have a Range Rover and those things can go underwater. It handled it. I actually went to work. I always thought it was crazy, but let me just tell you, the only thing you don't handle is all the craziness of people that don't know how to drive, that take all the things off the shelf because they think it's going to, you know, we create scarcity around here. It's not real scarcity. We create it because everybody thinks they're going to be locked in for two weeks. And we did have back to back storms, but it was, I don't know. It's annoying. I'll just say that. Well, you made it. We made it. The kids had fun. The kids had been out of school like five days, you know, and I was thinking how I think about you. I was like, Chicago kids shut down. Like for what we had, like imagine Chicago is shutting down and the male man not delivering like because that a lot of stuff will be the shop opening. I got cards coming every other day. Boxes and stuff. It just stops. It stops. They don't deliver. They don't. Nothing comes. Nothing. Nothing. And I'm like, in a big city, does the world just stop if two inches of snow comes? No. It takes, honestly, like a foot of snow. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we didn't have that. We did we buy it four or five inches, but you know, yeah. It's a lot of foot. It's a lot for here. We don't have those salt trucks or anything else, but we made it through all speaking of ripping packs. So this week, Duke, Chong, a friend of mine started a company called Hay Shop. And it's a digital instant pack digital. You get the physical if you want. Everyone knows it's arena club courtyard, whatever. But this is the kind of a cool, it's kind of a cool vibe. So he asked me to get on there. Is it an H-E-Y? H-H-H-H-Y. H-E-Y shop. Hey shop. Okay. Hey shop. Yep. Yeah. And so I get on there. And I think one's like, I think I did the $450 new and all in on that. I lost that change for guy like you. I lost. I lost on that one. I got like a $300 card and I think I sold it back down for $250. Okay. So that means I'm in for $200 and I do it again. So I'm in for $450 and $200. I'm in for $650. I pull a 2003 pristine LeBron James refractor, I believe, PSA 10. And the last 50. Last comp, $5100. Wow. Hey guys, this is how you become a degenerate right here. This is where this is the path because let me tell you that is ridiculous. So you 10x that in that essentially you could get 500 in and 10x that with a $5,000 LeBron James PSA 10.03. Is that a rookie year? Yep. So what was it? Oh yeah. Yeah. And if you're watching it, you should be. If you're listening, we appreciate you. We love our listeners. But you should be watching this on YouTube. You'll have the card up. I have it in view while Brian's talking and nice card. Hey shop is the link. We'll give them some free pub. You know, they'll have to pay for it after we're Brian. But we'll give them free pubs right now because that's a everybody's going. I took you two hits to get that. Mm-hmm. There on the keyboard is tapping. That's it. So I have a question for you because I'm not a big LeBron fan and I don't know why. It's just he's not not my guy. So would you would you sell that card for an equivalent $5,000 Jordan card or a $5,000 Coby card? What card do you think has the most upside? Jordan. I in them won't look. We've we've been if you've been paying attention and listening, I grew up in South Carolina, boy, grew up Chicago. My whole room littered with Chicago. So one is fandom. It would be Jordan. And number two is an investor Jordan because card your older, a little more rare and all that stuff's going up. And so I do think it putting to get aside what I'm going to say, which is actually going to agree with where you started on this. I'm not a LeBron guy. So I would do it anyway because I'm not a LeBron guy, even if it was like comparable. But if I'm giving investment advice, I think the Jordan's the way to go because they're just more it's older cards fewer printed. You can make the argument that some of the bronze stuff came up in a decent time when they learned what they had to learn in the 90s, which is the over printing and no rare cards and no one-on-ones or like refractors and things like that. So I do think he's got some great cards that benefited from the technology and printing and some of the things that make things more scarce now. So you could make that argument, but I just think Jordan as long-term vintage in the near five to 10 years, all bets are all 30 years from now, but like five to 10, I think Jordan's stuff. And Kobe, Kobe's kind of the same as Bryant. I think Kobe and LeBron are comparable, probably trade-outs. Kobe has different things that prop him up and fandom and all that is a different player, but similar time periods as far as card overlaps. So I think that becomes a tomato tomato discussion. I think you'd have a hard time falling on an argument that makes complete sense on one of those of the other, but Jordan for me for both desire and investment, but that'd be my take. I'm curious to see what the audience says, but the one thing, if I ranked them, it would be Jordan, Kobe, LeBron, because Kobe's not signing anymore cards. So it's a RIP, you know. He was a guy, so I mean, there's that nostalgic part of him where LeBron could be signing cards for the next 30 years. But I think a lot of people would, whether it's just memory or not, put LeBron above Kobe longevity, like as far as a player as the player goes. I'm not saying I do necessarily. I'm just saying, but I think I would bet he's like Jordan and him fighting out the top. And then you get into that Kobe and then others and magic bird, like I don't know, like like I don't know, Chamberlain, like I don't know, Russell, like we get a lot of different things. I think it seems like Jordan and LeBron are kind of, I don't think there should be a debate, but maybe debate of all time, great. Yeah, I see that. Well, I'd like to see in the in the messages, what is that called? Message DM. Yeah, DMs, DMs sort of drop comments on traffic. I love to get some feedback on that. And make me an offer. If you have a Jordan card or a code card that's equivalent, I'm, I'm all ears. Dude, here we go. We already had people and we appreciate you. Look, when you listen and you comment and you pay attention, you win. We gave away some Lutics, we're giving away some Lutics VIP passes to the national already from people to comment it. So we put our money where our mouths are. If you pay attention, you comment, we want your engagement. And look, make Brian an offer. They can't refuse. Yeah, at least, you might have something. Yeah, it's funny that we're talking about Jordan's. I didn't, we were a day of from even getting the store open. And I did, a lot of you probably could relate to this story. If you're trading and collecting, we all hit Facebook Marketplace occasionally, right? That's where all good deeds happen, right? It's Facebook Marketplace. You know what I'm talking about. So basically, he had a post he said, full 86 flea set with stickers with Jordan's looking for offers. Well, yours truly is always looking for that card and those that set. Now they'll have a shop, especially, but even before that. And I'll take the bait. Hey, I'm not going to forget scam. I ain't sending any money down to China. I'm not like paypiling you. I'm not been mowing you. I'm not cash tapping you before I see something. So you can't scam me with just, if I waste five seconds sending a message, nobody deal. I said in the message and I say what I always say to people, cash buyer, no drama. Here's my cell phone number. If you ask me to bet on that, like the chances that I was going to get any response from that whatsoever, I would have put it at 2%. Sure enough, about 30 minutes later, I get a text. It's a North Carolina number. I'm in South Carolina. North Carolina number and says, this is X Day. I won't mention his name. I got the Jordan in the 86 flea sets. It's like, give me a call and I go, hmm, the plot thickens. So I call them sounds like a normal person. But, you know, AI's gotten pretty good, Brian, the voice of characters and all that stuff. I'm still on the edge of this is, this is gone to 10% chance of even materializing to like a legitimate meeting right even look at a card. You know, I mean, 90% chance is still bullshit and coordinated whatever. And we threw around some numbers. He shared some details. I have pictures, but don't seem physical. You know, I'm not guaranteeing anything, but we kind of did a little bit of a gentleman's agreement of where we would be at. And he's about an hour up the road. And he says he would come to me and I'm at the shop. And sure enough, after about seven delays and enough things to make me think it was never going to happen, he walked into my card shop at about 8, 15 p.m. Him and a buddy and laid it all out in the crappiest Pokemon box I've ever seen. He had 86 flea. You can't make this stuff up. I was like, when he pulled the Pokemon box out, it was like a, it's like a ETB box or something. I'm like, it's, it's either been kicked down the road. I'm like, what, what are we doing? What is this? What is in this box? Is it gone and it's going to shoot me? No. Proceeds to pull out exactly what he said he had a pretty damn good condition. Full set of 86 flea all stickers, all Jordan and an 84 star Jordan on top of that graded by a crappy grading company. But clear enough to know that it wasn't counterfeit and hadn't been cut and went through it all. And the Jordan was my good friend Mike Baker. I actually hit him some pictures and text. He was a lead grader, Mike Baker. Authenticated. Good guy goes and gives him some love. Mike's going to be coming on the show pretty regularly. Actually talk about the landscape. But Mike sent Mike detailed pictures and look, if the lead grader PSA can't tell me something then, you know, he told me, yeah, Mike's the man. So he told me what he thought, like best case worst case made the guy an offer. He went outside of smoke seven cigarettes and came back in and yours truly as a full set of 86 flea. 86 Jordan rookie and the star. And I would say anywhere from the whole set, I would say four to nine range. Yeah. Worst no crease cards, no like bubblegum stuck to the front. No like nothing that you'd go like complete mismanagement. That's what makes this industry. So, you know, it's awesome. There's stories all the time everywhere. And then people want to tell them people about it. And so I love that story. What we got this well. So we got here. We got Super Bowl. Yes. Super Bowl. It is. Is it a weird Super Bowl? Is it because I just don't root free the one of these teams and like that it's weird or it's just weird because media's weird that these are on your radar or off of your radar. I mean, I haven't like, I mean, I guess I'm rooting for Seattle. But like give me a frickin break. I mean, the Patriots are like the rebuilding. You know, and like I'm so sick of them. But one of my best friends is for them to be the underdog, right? It's like, yeah, it's hard to be able to all, you know, the Patriots of the underdog. They had too many. It's too fast. I like when I want to hate a team, I think about one of my good buddies or someone I care about that is a fan of that team. And then I can be like, well, I'm happy for Carlton. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But I don't have any friends that are big Patriots fans actually. Do you have any traditions for? Look, here you know what my own traditions are eating a lot of food, drinking some beer and watching the commercials like everyone else does. But I'll say this, I'm an ad guy. I've been in marketing. It's kind of like the Super Bowl of ads. So I get a kick out of watching them and dissecting them from most strategy side of going, well, they overspit or that was a stupid like, I don't know. So I kind of geek out of the ads. More than like, yeah, they entertain. But I kind of geek out of the ads. That's lame. Well, yeah, that's what you do though. That's great. Yeah. My tradition is I go to bed before the halftime show. Because my team's never in it. I hate that it's on a Sunday. It should be on a Saturday. Yeah. I mean, and those games are like five hours long. I guess shit, I guess shit to do, man. I know. You're CEO. I mean, it's like. What's, um, talked to me about the Linux card shop and what's coming up? I know that you guys are close here. You're moving along. What's on the radar? So I decided with my partner that we're going to open the shop February 20th and 21st for sneak peak. So just like we kind of run that VIP party at the national, we're going to have like open from 12 to 7, 4 to 7 is the rip night. And then after 7, it'll be invite only DJ, food, drink, all that, um, and then close. Then we're like closing for, you know, a couple weeks. And then what's the date of that? That's uh, the February 21st is the, uh, yeah, that's right. You're going to have the, I had to go on the couples retreat. God, I might, I can't be telling you. I'd rather, I'd rather go on a couples retreat. All right. Hot tub and no mountains. That's awesome. Yeah. So it's offered, you know, I'm just saying. Yeah. So we'll have some people there. I think we'll, we'll have a fanatics and Beckett and V friends, uh, just little companies you never heard of. Just little companies helping us out. Yeah. Yeah. We just don't, it's like, it's probably going to be like 75% kind of done, but good enough to have a party. Yeah. I'm looking forward to that, but hey, you got to catch up, man. I mean, clutch station is, is open for business officially. We sold our first stuff yesterday. Like, I'm going to, I'm going to exaggerate a little bit, but it's close enough. I mean, we, we always did like a thousand bucks first, like three hours. Wow. It's like a little shot of four or five customers. And then, um, that was kind of it, but we haven't really, but I, we have it marketed. I'm a marketing guy, but I haven't market it. I just turned our website on on yesterday. I didn't want people coming in while we were in the middle of remodeling and doing it. I wanted it to sort of be ready, like at least for the soft opening, still working out the tech stuff. I got some cool little add on apps I've done just for the store that are, uh, sort of showing on a lot of monitors and stuff. Yeah. I'm real fucking dangerous right now, Brian. No one tech and marketing and the store, like getting like, uh, well, hold them down to earth, man. He's going to get, he's going to be floating up there. It's really hard. I've just saying like, what I get to play with, like, because, you know, having your own retail space, I always did this for other people, you know, like the actual selling of things, you know, and, and was pretty good at it. So now, like bringing it to life and being able to like visualize it within your own retail space is, it's fun. It's less about, uh, bragging that I'm going to sell one billion dollars or something. It's more like, you know, dangerous with how many toys I get, it's like, implement. I would say how much, how much, how dangerous my, with my own budget. That's why I was going to war what I bit. Still don't drug dealers, don't do your own drugs. How do you make it mine? $9000 sales, but $900,000 are you? Yes. On the app I built, who, uh, you know, like, open a pack for me. That's awesome. Hey guys, L U D E X, go to the app store. Yeah, I don't know. I'd love to ask. Let me just tell you, collection management, values, linkage with the eBay. You want to sell, look, we all like to collect, but let's be honest. No one has more in depth than me in this hobby. Like the last couple of years with my kids, way to make it back is to push those cards eBay. You know how you don't lose your mind and your time. It's L U D E X. You got to link it there. Sell those cards you don't want so you can buy some more and rip them like I do. Believe me. You'll trust me. You, you will thank me later. It is the best scanning card app. And if you're a Pokemon person, let me just tell you, there's no better. It scans one and done every time. L U D E X, Brian. I love you, brother. Appreciate you. Love you, my man. I always appreciate it, brother. Hey, guys, thecollectorNation.com, full highlight clips, all the episodes, and go to the iOS store. Didn't talk about this because but I'm going to go ahead and leak it out right now. Search for the collector nation. We're working out the kinks. I'm going to keep it on the deal. I'm not going to tell you how great it is. Wonderful it is, but it's going to be you want to go take a peek under the hood. You'll see everything there and a lot more coming. ThecollectorNation in the app store. We appreciate you. We'll see you next time on CollectorNation. Thanks for tuning into the show. Be sure to follow us on your go-to podcast platform and catch the full video episode over on YouTube. Visit us at collectornation.com and follow Ryan on Instagram at Ryanalford. Now get out there and collect yours.