From Plastic Slabs to Fine Art: How M1nt is Revolutionizing Trading Cards | Brian Pirrip

It's amazing how many people have forgotten that this actually is a hobby or that it's fun and people that just become so obsessed over judging other people on how they collect or you're doing it wrong, we're doing it right or the value of the card is the entire purpose of being in. Welcome to the Collector Nation podcast on the Radcast Network. From chasing Grails to Colin Bluffs, we're going inside the hobby. Are you ready to collect? Let's get at it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hello and welcome to Collector Nation here on the Collector Nation podcast network. I hope everyone is doing well wherever, whenever, however you're listening, we really appreciate it. We know you got options, but I saw that we were number seven in all of sports on Apple podcast rankings. We right up there with the Kelsey brothers. We're coming for you. Travel, you know, I don't care if you're retiring or not, but ultimately we're here to talk some cards today. How do we make them sexy and cool displaying them? I was at the national and met this guy and I'm like, come on, my baker who does NBA grading, what's, you know, had him over, they were talking and I remember meeting him and I was like with my boys and I go and things grab him, you know, I'm an innovator and like, I think I'm coming into the space at the right time. And I was like, what is that? Well, he's going to tell us what it is, his name is Brian. He's, yeah, he rips. Brian rips. He's the founder of Mint. What's up, brother? Hey, thanks for having me on here. Ryan, a real honor, real pleasure. Yeah, man. Likewise, I enjoyed meeting you at the national. You're even your guys and dude, I just remember going, I walk around, you know, the nationals, like, you know, a fire hose. Oh, you know, like, wonderfulness. And also just like overwhelming, as you know, like everything going on, always overwhelming. And it's just similar with a sea of sameness. And that's kind of a little bit like the hobby is like, okay, you know, like a PSA stool grade and stuff. And there's this going on. And that's why I like Mike, my baker's doing something different. You know, head grader, but bring some innovation to it, bring some transparency to it. I love it. I gravitated to Mike and had him on the show. And then I saw what was the most beautiful case I'd ever seen for how a card should look. I was like, man, these things are pieces of art. We should treat it that way. And sure enough, damn, you guys are doing it, man. Thank you, man. Yeah. Mike Baker, like, what a guy. Not only, so, you know, foundational to the hobby as far as grading, there's nobody better in the grading space. But he's actually a really cool guy. It's actually, like, I had a friend introduce me to him. And I was like, okay, it's, you know, there's, I don't really find, you know, it's hard to find people in the hobby that I actually truly respect or go, hey, I really want to hang out with this guy. And Mike Baker was one of those people where I'm like, you know, an hour goes by talking to him. And I'm like, hey, let's, you know, let's come down to Huntington Beach. Let's hang out. He's from here originally. Let's go surfing, whatever, right? And so, but yeah, we, I remember the moments we met you because we had just given Mike Baker a Babe Ruth card. It put into one of our Mint G1 cases. And it was fun to see his reaction because the reaction is always the same. Like, it's these, in same cases made out of steel and glass. And he think, oh, it's just, you know, it's another slaver. It's like rare edition. It's nothing like rare edition. It's actually, everyone's reaction is always the same. It's like, oh, that's really heavy. It's cold. It has a real heft. It feels like jewelry for dudes, you know. And so this is a, this is a piece of art. It's giving cards the dignity they deserve because why is a $40 million Mickey Manel PSA 10 in the same 99 centa plastic piece that's a $1 card is? And so that's, that's really why I started Mint and why, you know, got a chance to meet you at the national and walking around with all these, you know, people that you're right. There's a lot of sameness. And I've been collecting for like 15 years seriously. I mean, I collected as a kid and then got distracted by, you know, my 20s. And then when I rediscovered the hobby, it was like, why, you know, I'm buying these really expensive cards and I'm buying these very beautiful cards that to me are my fine arts. That's my version of fine arts. And I can't put them on my wall or you have these really tacky displays that you get from Hobby Lobby or Michaels. And, you know, and I remember going to like a frame shop and seeing if I could like take all my favorite cards, put them into a frame and they're like, well, we're going to destroy your cards in order to do it the way you want with like glass and, you know, various finer materials. And I was like, no, I don't want my great cards destroyed. And so it was one of those things that every year for the next like 15 or 10 years, I would just Google is somebody making a better display or a better case and it never happened. And, you know, COVID comes along and boom, all of a sudden shakes up your life and you have a chance to do something different. And I'm like, I'm going to be the guy. I'm going to go out and hire material engineers, industrial designers, mechanical engineers and do whatever it takes to make cases and displays that I would actually buy myself and that I would display them in my home. That's how it all kind of started. And, you know, I'm a little angry that I'll have one in my hand for this. We're going to have to fix that. That is upsetting. That's upsetting. We're going to have to, you're going to send me one. You've had to pay full, like, I'll pay over price. You know, whatever it is to get one, you know, right on the house, man, on the house. And we'll do whatever your favorite card is and let's get it done. Yes. And we'll do a follow-up because let me tell you, came back in the hobby. The first thing I did was, okay, there's got to be an app. There's got to be an app. Beckett Candy, right? Yes. There's got to be an app. That's when I met Brian Ludd and doing Ludics and who's become a good friend and there's multiple apps and lots of great apps. So I was, oh, yes, we have apps. Okay. Still people using spreadsheets at the show. But I'm like, we have apps. If you want to use apps. And then I'm like, okay, PSA is still grading. That's not surprised. That's fine. This case is still a little like crap, but that's fine. I'm going to go on the ground and I'm like, all right, nice acrylic, hobby lobby, a good, good reference point. And I'm like, okay, I've got some old cards. I'm pulling out that I'd love to display and, you know, me and the boys, this is a couple of years ago, getting back into it with my boys who, you know, have come of age. And I was like, uh, nothing. And I've been searching and then, you know, saw you at the show. I mean, there's just been no innovation and no, like you said, I mean, I'm not a, I mean, I think my friends would probably say, I am a little bougie, but not a lot bougie for a dude. I just like my stuff to be nice. And to be like, I like to display things are like, I don't throw up, you know, a crappy poster, or like, even in college, I didn't have the crappy wall art that, you know, it was from Walmart or whatever. I would at least have something that someone painted for me in a nice, you know, that I would take the time to do, you know, like I appreciated the display of the blue sheet college poster like everybody else. No, I was like, you know, it was Jordan. It was a painted day match. He's banned all ripped up. Definitely a day match. He's banned. Uh, but it was a nice poster that like, you know, autographs and like, you know, I preserve. Yeah, no, it's nice. Yeah. So this is overdue in the, in the hobby. And what I do, yeah, you really can't get a, a feel for what this thing is until you hold it. Like you said, cold brick, and it is a, it is a site to behold. It's something, it's a site. It's a, it's really a, to hold, to be hold and hold literally. Yeah. It really is. I mean, every single person that's held this, uh, it always is shocking to them. And, and that was it. I built this for myself at the end of the day. I, I thought if nobody ever uses these, I'm still going to have them in my own home. And also, I did things like, you know, I added like the most hardcore UV protection in the world. Like we hired special material engineers just to do the UV protection of these. And so now I can spill away them. I've had them in the sunlight the whole year just to be able to test and prove that autographs don't fade, you know. And so I've, uh, I've kind of fallen on my own sword to make sure that we're, you know, developing products that are actually legit. But, uh, but it's the kind of thing that like every time I've, I like, I actually, uh, it's kind of funny. I went to Derek Geter's golf international, uh, a while ago. And I brought a couple cases and I met up with King Griffey Jr. And I was showing him a couple of different parts I made. That's my favorite. That's it. Oh, man, this isn't as beautiful. That's stunning, right? And it's got the mic, mic baker logo and grade on the side. So, uh, but, uh, so these are all, you know, they're graded cards and they can also be raw cards as well. So we do both. But, uh, I ended up taking a couple cases and I had made one that had Mariners colors on it with, uh, kind of a gold outline, uh, using kind of a gold bezel like this one. Oh, and, uh, and I took it to Ken Griffey and I, and I was showing it to him. And he, he took one of them put in his pocket. He's like, this is mine. I'm taking this now. And, uh, and what was funny about that is, uh, no, I also showed him our wall display. Like, uh, we've been doing a bit with Ken over the last few years. But, uh, he ended up, um, saying, you know, Brian, I've had my own card. I have like 10,000 of these, like, sitting in a box in my house in, you know, and he goes, but I've never liked the card as much because I don't like the display and I don't like the pieces of plastic. He goes, you finally made a case that actually makes my card look like fine art. And I told him, and this was, uh, one of my points of pride in life is I said, you know, Ken, the card that you actually selected, uh, out of the two that I had brought, I actually pulled that card when I was a kid. And, uh, and so we encapsulated the card I pulled as a kid. And now Ken Griffey Jr. has, uh, his favorite version of this card is the one I pulled when I was a kid that's in one of the Mint G1 cases. How cool is that? And, uh, according to, uh, last I talked to is a manager or his agent, uh, he goes, you know, Ken takes that case with him everywhere now. And it's just like this source of pride thinking that moment that I pulled that card as a kid and now Ken's walking around with it in his pocket when he travels. And that's just a, uh, and, uh, to solve the mystery, this is Ken's favorite card of all time as well. His own 89 upper deck rookie. He just loves it. So, you know, I don't get, I'm not a jealous guy, Brian. Like, I'm, I'm just not, I'm more of, I'm more of a kind of like, uh, there's so much to go around. There's like, I never really get jealous of things or people or whatever. Uh, there's plenty of money to be made. There's plenty of, you know, if you're single girls to be had, there's put like, I'm just not jealous but I'm jealous of that. That is cool. Cause that's my concern. That was the taster, man. That was me growing up. So I probably shouldn't tell you what it's like, so I probably shouldn't tell you what it's like to sit down and can griffy's, uh, man cave, ripping packs, needing barbecue. Absolutely not. No, if you're going to invite me next time, you know, they'll get there to go. You know, you know, yeah, it's actually a point of watching the hobby wants to do a feature on you. There you go. There you go. There you go. The case. Maybe that you can make it like that. That sounds like something that needs to happen. Yeah. I'll bring this on the road, baby. We'll do it. We'll do it if we have to, you know, Florida's not too far away from South Carolina, from South Carolina. Yeah. Uh, I'll pick up the tab. You just make it happen. Yeah. Well, that's the thing, man. Uh, one of the things that also that we haven't really revealed about this, we've only talked about it briefly on, um, any of our content. We've been teasing these for a long time. Yeah. And part of the reason why I've teasing for a long time is once we built them, uh, like we had a working prototype two years ago. But when I held it in my hand, I was like, hmm, this, this isn't it. It's not even though it had all the mechanical engineering correct and it was secure and fully counterfeit proof like these completely kill counterfeiting, you cannot counterfeit these cases. We're in fact, we're probably going to do some contest where we say, if you can counterfeit one, we'll give you like five million dollars or something at that, just to kind of prove the point. But like, uh, but when I held it, I was like, it wasn't special enough for me. And so we spent a whole other year of industrial design to be able to create this very specialized glass that actually amplifies the card, like the colors on the card are actually brighter than if you actually held the card right in front of your face. It actually shows the details of the card a lot stronger. And then we're, you know, we had finished that and we made that perfect. And then I met a gentleman who, um, we knew there needed to be a tech component to this, uh, because there's space on the inside. And I wanted to make it so that it was more than just a case. And so I met a gentleman who, uh, runs this, uh, AI blockchain and we started working together on, uh, putting a chip on the inside. And so every single one of our Mint G1 cases has a, uh, the most sophisticated, uh, NFC tag currently in, in the market. And so what you do when you're getting one of these cases is you're not just getting the case, you're also able to store all the details, the provenance on the blockchain. And where you know, like you can hover your phone over the case and know who owns it. So we're killing theft. So if somebody cannot go and steal this because if you're trying to sell one of these out in the open at a card show or wherever and somebody just hovers the phone over, they know who the owner is and it's immutable. You cannot change it unless there's an ownership transfer. And so we're doing things like full blockchain integration. We're doing, um, uh, things like where you scan over the phone and you can watch highlights of the player. You can see a cameo of the, of the player talking to you. How cool would it be if you, like, pulled a Griffey card and Griffey himself, uh, on the, on your phone is saying, Hey, congratulations. You pulled my whatever, you know, rookie card and, uh, the, you know, let me tell you a little bit about it. So we're integrating a lot of tech into this. So it's more than just a case. It's entirely secure, totally counterfeit proof, um, impossible to, steal without, uh, having to do things on the black market. And, uh, and then there's a lot of fun gamification and things. So like what you're saying about apps, it's kind of like the, you know, sky's the limit. It's essentially, and it's in every way possible. It's a true NFT of a digital, of a physical and digital tokenization, which has never been done before. So, um, I'm glad you got to that. Really sick stuff. Yeah. That's, that was, it was like one thing to behold and to hold and to all of the beauty that it did. I mean, it's the only case that really, I've ever gone was additive to the card. Like it's always like subtracting from the card, or at best, like a necessary evil. And that case is, you know, to the value because of how, of its beauty, it's heft. And then the digital component was always what fascinated me. And I'm glad you got into that because, you know, that's always, it's always like a mate. That was the one thing I was amazed with. I was like, if we not come along where like these cards aren't, you know, something like trackable or like there's a QR code or there's probably some madness, you know, method to that madness with why they don't do that. But, uh, but to be able to preserve it that way, like you said, the provenance and everything, you know, to be able to scan it and know from a security standpoint, but then the story behind the story of like where it came from. And all of that, I mean, that that's really adding to the hobby, like adding to the collecting, you know, like it's it truly, because you can't document all of that, like if you got a collection. So if it's it's living with the card, because like, why would you ever want to take it out of that case? You know, it will live there forever. I mean, you will take it out. If you want us to take it out, we can take it out. In fact, it's a very sophisticated process. That's why we know nobody can counterfeit it. In fact, if you open it, it just zeros the data on the chip. And so there's some really cool stuff like that. And so if my maker's already given a grade on a card and all that, can I send that to you and that become what gets sort of, uh, because my, I get, yeah, I need to send you. So like this show here, Tony, I sent it in a 9.5 Beckett case to Mike Baker. And he goes, he comes back and he says, nope, that's a perfect 10. Wow. And so it's got the Mike Baker grade of a 10. And it's got his diamond logo. All the details are laser etched on the side. And, but on the flip side, I sent him my Kobe Bryant refractor and he goes, sorry, Brian, it's not a nine. It's an eight. And so it's a give it them take it away. No, I didn't love that Mike Baker is. He's honest. He has integrity and he actually gives the cards the proper grades. But it's nice that I know the provenance. You can upload videos of the moment you pulled that card. So if there's a break that happens and somebody, you know, finds whatever card and they gets put on into a case, uh, the owner 20 years from now can see who owned it previously where it was pulled. And they can watch the video of the very moment that card was pulled. So other than my store collector station, other than my store collector station, where are these going to be available? And how are like the process for getting them and promote, you know, all that. I know there's a process. It's not something you just like walk in and throw it in a slab like whatever else. But what's the, what's the, what's the, what's the sort of, you know, hierarchy of all of that? Yeah, we're going to be selling these a few different ways. Um, we're going to be doing auctions. So I'm one of the big things that I'm doing that we haven't also talked about yet is we're going to be putting all of the tops rookie cards of Hall of Famers directly into G1s have, you know, they're all graded, uh, into these cases. And then we're just doing a huge auction of the 100 most important kind of tops cards of Hall of Famers. So that's one way people can get G1s. We're going to be selling them directly on our website on it's minterverse.com. And so we're going to be encapsulating like pre encapsulating cards and cases like, for instance, I'm going to be, you know, selling the Kobe Bryant on the website. I'll be selling, uh, you know, Mike Trout, a rookie card. We're going to be encapsulating a lot of cards and just making them available there. But, uh, for, because we want to keep this, uh, very niche for a while, we want to keep it scarce. And it's also a huge lift. These are very complex pieces. It's not, uh, it's not a, you know, simple, just putting two pieces of that top load acrylic together in the hypersonic. Yeah, it's not a top loader. Yeah. And so we're, but so we're going to release, uh, certain numbers to the public. We're doing a first release to public to people on our wait list, uh, first and, uh, in small numbers. And so what's going to happen is people are going to send us, uh, their, their card. We're going to, you know, full insurance and tracking and, you know, the whole, the whole nine yards and then, uh, they can decide if they want to have Mike Baker grade it or if they want to have, you know, uh, the raw version. A lot of people have asked us for the raw, uh, version. I have, I know a guy that has a 1969 white letter Mickey Manor with an autograph that really wants to have his card in the case, but he doesn't want a grading service to tell him what his card means to him. And so he just wants to keep it raw, but he wants it in the case so he can put it up on his wall. And so people will send it to us and we'll track it. High-res photographs. We're going to video the process and store all that on the blockchain as well. So people can actually see how it's done. And, uh, and, and that, that sort of thing. So we're going to be rolling this out over, we call admit 2026 is the year of the G1. So this is the year we release and we're going to be spending the whole year doing a lot of really cool, uh, various kinds of launches so that people get their hands on them. But for, you know, for, uh, you know, friends of men's, there's an easy access to, uh, to, you know, if somebody needs to get their Ken Griffey Jr. card in one round, uh, there's when I give you, but I'm actually going to see you in that, uh, my Caleb Williams color blast that Mike already graded. He graded at 9.5. There you go. With, uh, one of his markups, I forget like, it was a bonus. It was like 9.5 and a half, you know, like, because it got like, it went something. It had a diamond or one of his marks or whatever. So it was that love. He's already graded. He's done. Yeah. That would probably be doable because it got all his off the indication. So I might send that one to you. Yeah. Yeah. Send it across and I'll put in a G1 and send it back to you. I love it, brother. And, uh, so talk to me about these other, you've got other things going on. You talked about collaborations with one, one of the retailers. So you've obviously got other things happening. Talk, talk to me there. Yeah. Yeah. We, um, uh, you know, a lot of my content that I've been making over the last five years has been very, you know, salted the earth, man, of the people. Like, I go around the country to card shop to card shop. Uh, initially, like, I wanted to get market testing of everything I was doing. I wanted to get to know people across the country and what everyone was thinking about the hobby. So like, my chief of staff and I, we went on like a four month road trip where we during COVID, where we drove from Los Angeles to Key West up to New York, all, you know, under the guise of finding a jeeter rookie card out of a box. And we documented it in high resolution. Like, we've drone shots. Like, we went hardcore. Like, because my background is all entertainment. And so, uh, and my chief of staff was my, you know, my original location scout on my first TV show, you know, 15 years ago. And so, we're cruising across the country, drones, high-res footage. We're rip and packs at like, AZZ top concert in Nashville at the Grand Old Opera. We're doing it at the Bayou in New Orleans. We were, you know, scuba diving off Key West. Always, you know, rip and packs everywhere we are going to find jeeter's rookie card and trash rookie card. And, uh, and what we discovered is, you know, we were prepping for making these G1s. We were starting the process already. We'd already launched the company six months before very quietly. And we realized that it would be unfair to create all this content and just have a very high end expensive product as the only option. And we realized, you know, we wanted to have something that anyone could afford at least one. And so, we ended up, uh, taking the same form factor and built these cases that we call Mint Hobby Cases, which are meant for raw cards. And they're a much nicer way to display cards than any other option that's out there. And it's very secure. You can't like shake your card around and, you know, have the inside falling out. There's like eight different magnets that hold it in there. But these are beautiful. And we ended up, uh, launching these this year, early in the year. And, uh, two great acclaimals. And we had Walmart reaching out and saying, we want to partner with you on this. And we ended up doing it with Amazon. We ended up, uh, you know, shipping these all across the world this year. And now we have like a 4.95 rating on Amazon and Walmart. We were told by both companies that we're the number one seller of of any product on the collectibles section. Like the number one top seller on both platforms. In fact, on Amazon, we were one of their top sellers just in the whole of Amazon. And so these are like very unique products that, uh, you know, we decided instead of just, you know, making another one touch or making something a little bit thicker, have we wanted to reengineer the entire experience. And so we added a bunch of magnets. We recessed the, uh, the insert acrylic past the bezel so that you're not scratching your acrylic on tables anymore and having a bunch of scratches. So it keeps your card scratch free. We made it so that you could ship these and you're not going to have your card with all sorts of dents and dings when it arrives. And then we're also building a display just for the hobby case, uh, so that people are going to have really cool LEDs and, and uh, for their most treasured cards that they don't want graded. These are for, you know, for raw cards. And so we've been building these. We've been building a, a number, a whole host of other products that I think are going to shock a lot of people over the next couple of years as we release. But we're not going away. We're not, we're not a rare edition. We're, uh, you know, we have great partners to this company and we've been building this over five years. And what we did our homework, you know, a lot of companies is easy to just throw something out there quickly. I wanted to make sure that anything we sold, I would have to be able to want it myself to purchase. And that's what we did. And so now we, we have these products and we have the ones that are that are coming in the later this year and next year and as well as the tech side. And we also have some really sick plans for content more in the kind of the television world that those three kind of pieces together, the platform, the, the content and the product, all working together to kind of build this company into something special. And everything is fully crazy patented. And we built like a patent mine filled around everything. So that, uh, you know, this is mint is coming. It's, uh, it's on its way. And we're excited to get these in people's hands because everybody that seems to buy our products loves them. And so it's, it's pretty fun stuff. And I've got great team, a phenomenal team. I've been hand picking these guys over the last 15 years. Um, two of the guys on my team, I've worked with them for, yeah, uh, 14 years now. And they were on my first TV show together with me. And I've kept them because they're amazing guys. And we're trying to add more people as we go along. So it's a really fun experience here in Huntington Beach with the mint team. I definitely need some of those in the store. The, that's slick. I saw one video, I think before I was looking through your content. I was like, I didn't see this because you didn't have those at the, uh, in national. Yeah, yeah, we didn't have that. Yeah. And like that, that, that's slick. That, that's a good, you know, those could be in store. I could see those on the shelf. Uh, absolutely. Yeah. We, we're piloting them right now with about, I think we have five, five card shops that, uh, that we've been friends with for the last few years that are piloting with us. Right here, collector station in South Carolina. You know, we're going to do collector station. But you know, what's kind of fun is that, uh, a lot of people know about this. We, we do quests with these where, um, every number, certain number of hobby cases that we ship, we put a golden ticket inside the case and it's redeemable for, like, like, like, mass surprises, like, some guy that we, in Cleveland, found one of our golden tickets and it was a, uh, $15,000, it got redeemed for $15,000, a griffy, uh, mantle dual autograph, you know, that card from 1994 that everybody wants. You know, we did another one that was in 1957, PSA 8, uh, in a G1 that, uh, we gave way to a guy, I think he was in Ohio, uh, that, uh, another town, no, he was in Illinois because he found a golden ticket in one of our cases and we're doing that with all the hobby shops too. So that as people are buying their, their hobby case, we, we have, we put a card in every single case, like, whether it's a common, or a $2 card, or a $10 card, there's always a card as an example, like a picture frame, right? Like, if you go to the store, you go to Wal-Mart, and you buy a picture frame, there's always some sort of picture in there. And so I wanted every single product that we ever shipped to have at least a card, and there's an example of how the thing works. And so we inserted these, these golden tickets, like Willy Wonka, and, because, you know, love the movie when I was a kid. And I thought it would be more fun. Like, who wants to just buy a supply? It's boring. And so I thought it'd be a lot more fun if we put cards in there. And I threw actually all, most of the autographs of my whole collection, you know, all the foam and chrome ones that you just, you know, have sitting in the, you know, in a box somewhere, and I put all those ones in, we put in, you know, a lot of special cards, a few like $1,000 cards, we spread them out, shipped them out. But these guys that are finding these, these, you know, $5,000, $10,000 cards as golden tickets, it's made the whole experience a lot more fun for everyone. And so anybody that's been following my content the last year, I just, I love, you know, given stuff away and given away these prizes. And so people aren't just getting a hobby case. They're always giving, getting at least a chance that they might find something like crazy as a lifelong mark. Surprise and delight. It works every time. Surprise and delight. That is. I love it. And Brian, for me, it's just fun, dude. Yeah, man. But, you know, I just have fun, Ryan. You know, life's too short to do boring stuff. You know, I don't like doing boring things. In fact, I like doing things where I'm working with cool people and I'm having a great time. If I'm not having a great time, why am I doing it? And so, you know, every time we find somebody finds one of our golden tickets, I actually call them and tell them they won. And then we always post the phone call so that people can see that there's people winning these things. And I just have a great time. Yeah, it's fun. It's only perfect when it's only mint. I'm thinking of tagline for our Eddie man. That's why my brain works. They did. I love it. It's like, there's a play on words there somewhere because of like the additive nature to this of the cards and the experience. It's sorely needed. That's why I was so pumped to have you on the show and see in what you're doing. Like, this is the stuff that's kind of like, yes, like, how do we take these things a little further? We've had top loaders. We've had penny sleeves. Yes, we had the one touch. But like, how can we like, advance the ball here for how we display and carry do the like, there's so many opportunities that it's exciting to see you guys innovating like with this stuff. And look, people pay for like, it's a premium thing. Like collecting is premium. And people will pay for premium additive experiential things that bring and make their hobby better. Yeah, people want that. You know, it's kind of like, when I first started sharing some of these cases around the hobby, it like, I would just very quietly at card shows be like, hey, what do you think of this? And anybody that was like, no, I love my PSA case. And I'm like, well, that doesn't make any sense to me. But there's a couple guys that are like, truly, I know I love my PSA. I love the flip at the top. And I'm like, no, it looks like a Dewey decimal system. It looks like a power catalog from 1985. And I'm like, that's not for me. And it kind of reminded me of back in the day in 2007, I had bought this, you know, everybody's walking around with their Motorola razors and their crazers and the Nokia's or whatever. And I remember showing up to my job, I was working at Disney at the time at the corporate offices in Burbank. And I walked in with this thing called an iPhone. And I remember walking around the office and these are pretty sophisticated people. It's the record labels of the Disney company. And I was walking around showing people and people were like, no, I like my blackberry. I like my Nokia. I like my flip phone. And it just really, and I was like, no, but there's this thing called multitouch. I was always like an early adopter on technology, particularly I was always an Apple fanboy during the Steve Jobs years. But I was the Steve Jobs team in New York launching the first iPhone. Can you hear me now? Thanks for your phone, man. I really appreciate it. And Steve Jobs brilliance. But yes, I appreciate it, man. Thank you for the phone. Very grateful. Well done, Ryan. But yeah, I went out and picked it up. I would always watch the Macworld keynotes. And as soon as he announced it, I'm like, that's mine. And so I'm walking around the Disney studio showing off to my friends this new product. And people are like, that's ridiculous. Why would we use that? I want to, I need to have a quality keyboard that a tactile feeling on my fingers. And I was like, no, this is the way of the future. In fact, I ended up investing every dollar I had into Apple stock about two weeks later. And I put it all into Apple options with a very high strike price. And about three weeks later, I quit my job because I was a multi-millionaire. Because the stock had risen that fast, that high. And so that's actually how I made my initial money was from that moment at Apple. I mean, at Disney, when I realized the iPhone was something special. And but and I feel like that's the same thing with these cases is that is that people that are like cleaning onto their PSA case or their Beckett case or even their SGC case, which is probably my favorite out of the three. But still, that's like, okay, I'd prefer a Motorola Razor over Nokia, whatever. They're essentially the same things. And so and they're easy to crack. Extremely easy to counterfeit. You can buy a hypersonic welding machine from China like a month and start building my own SGC and PSA cases. It's so easy to counterfeit. And so I'm like, I don't understand why people don't want something better. So it's taken several years to be able to change hearts and minds to put these in people's hands to how people go, oh, I get it now. I get it now. And now I really want one. And now our wait list will never be able to satisfy our wait list in 2026 because there's so many people on the wait list. That's why we're going to release these in maybe even the lottery kind of format. But this is the way the future. It's the it's the mix of technology and and aesthetics and protection. It's like presentation, preservation, all in the same piece. And so this stuff's coming, you know, whether people like it or not. This is the way the future. And and I'm excited to get one in your hands, right? I know. It's time you have one. I know I'm here to see it. And I want to sell those other cases too. Don't let Walmart have them all, you know? So you're going to get a kick out of this. Yeah. My store. Let's just say I was painting gold yesterday. And I'll tell you why. I'm going to have the first drive through in trading card hobby shop. I have a drive through that I paid gold yesterday. Like literally, I have this I bought this old building that was a dry cleaners at one time. And it has like it actually has a mid century modern kind of look and I've remodeled it. And it hasn't a little like offshoot aluminum. And it's actually done well. It's got glass and aluminum. And it offshoots because it was the pickup window. And I'm turning it into the collector station express lane. And it's gold. I painted gold inside and out the little booth. It is solid gold. It had to be gold. And so from the street now, you see the gold side of our building, just that one spot. And it's the express lane. It's the only drive through that kind of thing that exists in the hobby. So please tell me you're going to also sell like, you know, you can get a McFlurry or something. Maybe some coffee at the same time. You know, coffee cards or energy drinks. You know, I'm an energy drink guy. But yeah, it's so sad when I walked into a shop called cards and coffee. And I walked in and I said, where's the, where's the coffee? And they're like, no, we only do cards. It's part of the name. And I was like, that doesn't make sense. That isn't making any sense. I also have a pack bar. I have a bar that's literally a pack bar. So I got the pack bar, the drive-through. No, it's innovating. So I love it. Yeah, see, no, I very much want to see your golden drive through. That's innovation right there. That's going to be a lot of fun to pull up. Yes, I told you before, it gets used once a month. And even if it does, it's just market. Well, you know, after going to like me and my guy, Sam, we've been to probably three or four hundred card shops over the last four years or five years. I don't know how many we've been to. And we don't always post from every card shop we go to because some of them are just terrible. Just truly terrible. And I don't want to do the portnoy thing of like rating them on the spot. I want to kind of remain in more of the positive space and talking about the nice things about each one of these film at. And it's amazing how little innovation there is. It's shocking even the ones that think they're innovating aren't innovating. There's only a few that I've ever seen where I'm like, okay, you guys are doing it right. Yeah. And it's it's pretty rare. And so I love the ones that have, you know, other things special about the card shop rather than just, oh, we sell cards. Yeah, yeah, you know, fifty percent. You got to make it fun. You know, the fit's on the hobby. It's fun. It's entertainment. Like you got to leave it to people forget about that. Yeah. It's amazing how many people have forgotten that this actually is a hobby or that it's fun. You know, and people that just become so obsessed over, you know, you know, judging other people on how they collect or you're doing it wrong, we're doing it right or the value of the card is the entire purpose of being in. And I get it. I get the financial side of it. I always have. I mean, when I was a kid, I was tracking on the Beckett, the ups and downs of my Kevin Moss card. You know, I was good retire after my Kevin Moss cards went through the roof. Yeah. But, you know, I think people sometimes forget it's fun. You know, so like I went to a card shop in Chicago a couple weeks ago or maybe a couple months ago, geez. And a card shop called Trade Oak and the guy that owns the spot, he's just he made it fun. He's got like a bunch of games, you know, like a air hockey table kind of plays with, you know, basketball hoop shooting. And he's got little wind wheel that you can spin and win prizes. He hosts a lot of kid events there. And what he's doing is he's built like a community. And so all the community they they show up because not just because there's cards there, but because they all have a lot of fun there and the owner actually cares about cards, actually loves it still. You know, I've been into some card shops where you can tell that the owner just doesn't care at all about cards anymore. Some of them don't even never collect it and don't know you're anything about the cards. Yeah. And so, you know, there's there's guys to do it right and guys that don't. And one of these days we talked about making a coffee table book of all the card shops we've been to over the last five years and just being like, here's our top, you know, the top. You got to visit Clayton Station before you before you officially put that book together to see if we make the cut. And you can be absolutely. It's matter time, Ryan. Yeah. I have to come to South Carolina. Which is where it's big. We've got I've got a theater, a movie theater built in. I've got like like literally like a it's a man caveman. It's a I got a huge table. I just want people to trade at and sit at and hang out. And then I got my podcast studio built in. And it's a you have a batting cage. I do have bougie ball though. That's going to have to get moved. My dad got moved. I got a gold frame. It's a basketball goal, but it's actually a gold frame around it with a gold rim. So we call it bougie ball. Nice. So yes. Nice. We got the we're getting there, man. It's going to we see you got me sold man. So you got me. Oh wait, you're a grand opening too soft opening in two weeks. I'm going to do a grand opening like first or second weekend in March. So maybe we can get on that. I know. I want to I'm blind. I might have to be there. That's my kind of thing, man. Yeah. I'd love to have you, man. And Brian Ludden from LudEx is coming down. I'm talking to some of Gary Vs guys. Gary's he's tough to get out of the house, but not he goes everywhere, but like maybe some of the guys from V friends and maybe an athlete or two. So for the grand opening. Absolutely. We'll talk about that's the way to do it, man. Yeah, man. Yeah, I'm excited. Let's make it happen, man. So what's as we wrap up here, Brian, what what's the next six, 12 months? I mean, it's the year of the case, man. It's the year of the G1, but what a year of the G1. Where are we going to be at? What's going to be going on and how can everybody fall along? Well, what I have going on is I'm going to be doing a lot with players this year. That's another thing. We're going to be filming a lot with players. One of my favorite things I've done over the last several years is ripping packs with major league players or veterans and getting them to find their own cards. Like I had this moment with Eric Davis, where we ripped a rack pack of 85 tops and he found his own rookie card in there. And I always tell people, if you rip it, you keep it. So I'm like, I'll be very nervous. His own 85. Yeah. I'm trying to give him his own rookie card. And he's like, no, Brian, no, he goes, no, no, this one's for you. And so he signed it and said, okay, I want you to keep this one. And it's funny to see Eric Davis kind of, you know, lighting up like a Christmas tree. And while he's ripping his own cards, you know, and or, you know, my favorite one ever, oh, griffy one, but Mark Grace, Mark Grace was my favorite player when I was like a kid in like 1989, 1999, 1997 or 88. That's right. And, you know, went to his house and he, I brought a box of 88 on Russ. And he's ripping through the packs and the problem is, is he doesn't know, he's not a hobbyist, right? And so a hobby guy would be flipping through them super fast to try to find the rookie card or the Roberto Alamar that's in that set. Yeah. And he, he goes literally card by card. It takes him like, you know, 20 minutes to go through one pack because every single dude in there is, it's like a yearbook for him. And every single person in there is like, he's got a story about them. You know, he, oh, Cecil Fielder slid into me in, you know, first base and this happened. And, you know, this guy was really funny because of this. And so when I posted that video, Mark and I ripping his packs, oh, yeah, this is kind of funny. I, we didn't actually find, because he was too slow in opening packs. And so I just was like, you know, he had to go and I had to go. And so I gave him the rest of the box of cards and said, find your own rookie card. And then I pulled out of my pocket the 88 FLIR, FLIR update card that I had since I was also a kid. And I handed it to him. I said, if you don't find the one in the box, here's at least the 88 FLIR update. I said, do you have your own rookie card? And he's like, no, I don't think I do. And I was like, well, now you do. And so that was such a special experience. And then I realized I could do a lot of that. And so I'm going to be doing a ton of player ripping with players and kind of cruising around the country. The goal is to like eat food, incredible food across the country, rip packs with players, and visit card shops, go to card shows, and just kind of, you know, cruise around, I'm going to be spend more time on the road, even though, you know, you know, a nice thing is I just got engaged to my director of marketing. And so I'm going to be taking her with me. And we're going to travel the country with our chief of staff and our social media team and go city to city across the country while we socialize our products and go have a lot of fun, rip packs for players. That's kind of the goal for the year. Hey, that's not here, right? This is like this is like playing around for a quick nation to hit the road on one of those. And let us you document it as well behind the scene. That'd be awesome. Yeah. In fact, the last time I was in South Carolina, Sam and I went to home team in Sullivan's Island. And we're literally we ordered the barbecue. But before we did, before we started eating, we ripped a few packs of 93 SP. And so there we are, a Sullivan's Island, ripping packs in South Carolina. But yeah, next time we're in the area, remotely in the area, we're going to be rolling by Ryan and ripping some packs. I love the food with you. Hey, man, working everybody, we're the socials, the website, all that stuff for keeping up with everything. Yeah, yeah. Thanks. The website for our company is Mintiverse. That's M1NTC. It's Mint is that's a one not an eye. It turns out there's also a nightclub in Shanghai, China. It's called Mint. So that's our, but it's kind of funny. I'll have to take the whole team out there sometime and go to the nightclub there and take some photos. But it's Mintiverse.com, M1NTC.com. That's our, our company's website where people can learn about, you know, the wall display or the cases. But all of my channels are, they're all at Brian Perip. So whether you're on Facebook or Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, TikTok is actually my main platform by a mile. We ran TikTok for a couple of years before we did placement on anything else. And so TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. It's all at Brian Perip. V-R-I-A-N-P-I-R-R-I-P, a little palindrum there. And so yeah, we'd love to, you know, meet more people as we go along. Every time I go to a city across the country, I'm going to tell people ahead of time this year. And we hope to have people meet up with us at Card Shops. In fact, I'm going to be in Nashville, Tennessee, at Grand Slam Sports Cards, which is one of the great card shops in the country on the 21st of January. I don't know when the show's going to air, but there we go after that. But we hope to meet people as we go around the country. So like when we come to your shop, Ryan, we'll tell people in advance and get as many of our followers to come and support you and your card shop as we can. I love it, brother. And I really, really do respect and love what you guys are doing. I mean, it's much needed in the hobby and the way you're going about it is the right way with modern content and positivity, but innovation. And I'm here to support it anyway. Any way I can, brother. Thank you so much. Well, send me your card you want. Was it Caleb Williams? Whatever. Yes, I got a Caleb. It's already in my way. I got Michael. Mike Baker's is already graded it. So that might be a good one just to, you know, be able to get it because he's already, you know, done that might be an easy one. Yeah. And I think it would be beautiful. Send it my way. Yeah. And we'll all send that back to you ASAP. And I think you're going to love having that case in your hand, man. I will. Hey guys, you need to find us the collector nation.com. You'll find the full episode highlight clips links to all the Brian's info. And of course, meant one. You've got it. The link there everything. You got to follow this guy. All the content they're doing. It's fun. It's professional. This guy's a pro. And you'll see it in man. The innovation is needed in the hobby. That's why we're here to bring it to you because we got guys like this change in the game. We'll see you next time on collector nation. Thanks for tuning into the show. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast platform. And don't miss the full video version on YouTube. You can find us at collector nation.com or follow Ryan on Instagram at Ryan Alfred. Now get out there and collect yours.