How Dugout Mugs Built a $55 Million Collectibles Brand (Kris Dehnert Interview)

We got a whole thing going on, but yeah, we're over $55 million in sales. That was something that I think kind of caught me off guard as the collectability of these. Welcome to the Trading Cards and Collectibles Podcast on the Radcast Network. From Chasing Grails to Colin Bluffs, I'm going inside the hobby. Are you ready to collect? Let's get at it. Here is your host, Ryan Alford. What's up guys? Welcome to Trading Cards and Collectibles here on the Radcast Network. You know, I don't always get like shock and awe anymore. I don't always go surprise or go. I haven't seen that before and this next guest has been around. His company's been around. They're doing pretty well. You're going to hear that in a second and be ready to fall on the floor like I did a minute ago when Chris and I are talking. But I got sent a little gift and this means why you got to watch the show. If you're listening, you need to watch. If you're watching, you need to listen. But I got a beautiful baseball bat that's been carved into a mug. It's got our logo on it. And my name, handcrafted for Ryan Alford. Who doesn't like that? Swig for the fences. We've got Chris dinner. He is the CEO and just bad MFR of dugout mugs. What's up brother? What's happening? What's happening? Thanks for having me. Yeah, man. This is fun. I love these. You know, you had me, you had me at the mug. It's cool. I mean, what the hell, man? It's like, I'm all so simple, but so fun. And who the hell wouldn't want, you know, your favorite team player, whatever, on a damn baseball bat. Just people with bad tastes, I guess. That's what we're talking about. We tell him to send me when you grab our wood, man, you're going to fall in love. So get ready. I knew I liked you. Yes. A lot of ways we can go with that. But Chris, man, I mean, where did this idea come from? And what kind of bat did we talk about here? So the one you got right there is Birch. And where the idea came from, I will always show love to Randall, my ex-partner. He took the bear, he took a bearable baseball bat and he hollowed it out and turned it into probably one of the coolest mugs on the planet. And he had the idea, right? And he started jam and with it. And I have a long background in business. And at the time, I was looking for something just fun. I needed fun. I needed, you know, I said some prayers up about it. I said, send me somebody who needs my skill set to just run with something. And I've had some successes and failures. You know, learn more about yourself and the failures. But this guy came out of nowhere and I was like, this was it. And this was the guy and this was the thing. And you know, I was like, you handled logistics. I'll handle the promotion. And I just started digging into my, I have a pretty cool network of people and business and otherwise. And yeah, man, we hit the ground run in 2017. But he's the one that came up with the idea. And now it's kind of like the rocket fuel. And you know, we ran it for, you know, a handful of years together. And then he ended up retiring. Yeah, he's significantly younger than I am. And he's having a family and all of a sudden I was like, dude, rock and roll. I'm having too much fun. I'm not going to wear. So yeah, we've been jamming ever since, man. I don't know how are you comfortable sharing shale's numbers on the show? I don't care. I'm an open boy, man. How many, what are we selling in bats? We're doing how many mill on this thing? Well, to date. And it's not just the mug, right? So we make, you know, we have, we turn bat slices into key chains and ornaments. And we have, yeah, this is one of my favorites, a baseball cut and half turned into a bottle opener and home plate shaped coasters. And we got a whole, we got a whole thing going on. But yeah, we're over $55 million in sales, which tells us. And you know what? So that, you know what metric or what, what number is more impressive to me? 60,000 reviews online. That's what's more impressive to me. Because what means is that one equals the other people. Yeah, right. Right. Right. Feed each other, right? It's probably key. But if you don't put a good quality product out there and you don't back it up with a good experience. So like, you know, our whole motto was to celebrate and serve the heroes of the baseball community by creating like next level stuff, right? And that's what we've done. And the reviews and the, the people that we work with, you know, it speaks for itself. Collectibles.show is where you'll find all of the channels and learn more about what we're doing. And ultimately, hey, we want to hear from you. You do case hits at collectibles.show. What's you to send in your favorite pulls of the week? And here's the difference. This isn't about just value. Hey, we want to see some $10,000 hits. I had a couple of those myself a few months but it's not just about the values about what you're collecting. What means something to you? Share a story, share a video of you holding up the card that you hit last week. That was your favorite player and you nailed it. So case hits at collectibles.show. Send in those videos. I want to know the stories. We're going to bring into life here on the show. We're going to do a segment each week once we get rolling and get some videos in where we share that on the show with us. We'll feature you on collectibles show. Talk to me about this process because it seems like obvious once you see it. It kind of goes things you're like, well, I did not think of that. Or with that really work. But yet, I'm holding, I think, my own custom. This just holds 12 ounces. That's 12 ounce mug here at the end of the bat. And you literally, what the house is etched on here? What's talking about the process of making these? So that piece of wood was destined to be a baseball bat. So what we do is we get to the billet before they laid it into a bat and we turn it into three barrels instead. We're not wasting the wood. Originally we were chopping craft bats in half, turning the handles into bottle openers, turning the tops in the mugs. That's what was going on. Not scalable, by the way, and pretty wasteful. So we get to the billet before it becomes a bat and we turn it into three barrels. And then we have a custom equipment that punch the hole all the way down goes down about right there. And then there's a ceiling process, a curing process. And then like this one right here, because we're collectibles. I'm a big and the collectible space. And that's why we got this conversation started. So this is one that launches tomorrow that we did for Pete Rose. It's his commemorative mug going into the cornfield. All this is, oh, dude, it's sick. So I've been working with the family and we're releasing this tomorrow. That's why it's on my desk. Is it limited release? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of limited stuff, man. You're only going to send me four. I mean, he needs some. I know a guy. I know a guy. Pete actually was one of the coolest dudes I met. He and I commentated game three of a world series together for like two hours. And man, like some of the stories, I'm happy to share any of the stories you want. But like, I want to just go there, brother. Let's talk so Pete. So brilliant. Like he's so smart. And he remembered things from so far back. And the count, when this happened and that happened and what the count was and who was on second, like it's crazy. His recollection all the way there towards the end. That was incredible. You know, another one of the collabs I love was the Sandlot. We all love the Sandlot. So my buddy, David Mickey Evans was the writer and narrator and director of the Sandlot. And I hit him up on Twitter. I said, hey, dude, I'm the guy running dug out mugs. He's like, oh, my God, I've seen these things. And we launched a collaboration or I appear on my shelf. It's the legends never die collection. And we have a legends never die hat that underneath the bill. It's the Sandlot boys on the backstop. I'll do it sick. And then we have almost wrapped all the way around the mug. And it comes with an autograph photo inside because what we do and the collectible world, because I'm big in the hobby, right? So the collectible world and dug out mugs just overlaps so well. I get to do it all and call it work, right? And the thing I did with the Sandlot. And I mean, back here, it's Miggy and Big Poppy and Mariano and Johnny Damon and Peter Lonzo is a great dude that we work with a lot. And it's just so cool. The things that we've gotten to do, you know, Reggie Jackson's of the, you know, it's, it's wild. You know, there's a story here. And you know, what I'm trying to do with this show is have conversations like this that around the hobby. But also there's a, there's a great American theme here of Dreaming Big and, you know, turning your passion into profit and turning, you know, like doing what you want to do. And like collecting is like one of the great American pastimes, you know, and, but it can become the full time when you dream big and you go big. And I mean, I think that's what your story is about. You know, you almost, you know, you had life changing experience. You, you go to work and you start doing what you love and you turn it into a multi million dollar business. You take over the whole company. And now you're making things that people cherish and they collect and making a pretty damn good life for yourself. It sounds like, well, two things come to mind very different things. Number one, I built a lifestyle by design, right? I built it around the things that I, I love to do. And that came after that experience that I had, you know, my priorities changed. And I think my, my metrics changed. Because a lot of people chase the dollar, I was chasing the happy. Like what makes me happy and how often can I do that every day? And if it's baseball cards or if it's celebrity events or if it's, you know, making people just incredibly happy with something we made for them, I'm going to share a story that happened two days ago. I'm in a big Astros fan page online. I work with those guys. We raised some money when the hurricanes go through there and I work with a lot of the players on the Astros. And there was a lady that posted something and it was a her father's jersey. All right, a jersey with her father's name over one of the seats that they were supposed to go to be passed recently. And they buried him in his Yankees jersey and all the Paul Bears carried a award in Yankees jersey. So I saw that and I said, you know what? I'm going to do something special for this lady. I reached out to her and I said, some of your favorite picture of your father. And I'm going to turn it into a custom mug with Yankees on the front side commemorating his life and I sent it to her. Actually, I sent her four of them because she had a couple siblings. And she's like, why'd you do that? And I said, why not? Is the right thing to do? You know, I saw that you were hurting and you needed to know that there's good things that are coming your way and that people, you know, you know what I mean? You know, I'm saying like just putting good into the world. And I've created a business that I get to do that. And I impacted this lady so profoundly. And it's just the way the world works, right? You got to go first. I just did a post about it on LinkedIn today about just going first in relationships. And guess what? At the end of the conversation, she's like, hey, my father had about a hundred thousand baseball cards, Mickey Mantles and Babe Ruth's and all this stuff like that. And she's like, when it comes time, I'd like to give you one of those and you can help me, you know, direct where to, you know, how to how to honor this collection. And I'm like, you gotta be kidding me, right? I just did it to be good to somebody who did a post and who was hurting. And as it turns out, now I'm going to get a cool piece. At some point, I don't care when, that I'm going to have in my collection that has a story behind it because all we got is our stories, right? And I think that's what collecting does for a lot of people brings us back to that story when we were a kid, that first 89 griffy that we pulled, like you name it, right? Like it always back to some kind of feeling. And I think that's what a lot of people are missing, you know, is is and that's what collecting does it brings you back to a feeling. It is a feeling, nostalgia, you know, and it's always it's a little hard to, you know, like to encapsulate everything that it is, but it ever it definitely isn't feeling. And I love what you said there, like I really hung on to like you go first. Oh, yeah. Like that could be a slogan in the self, like our monster for people, like take the first step in building that relationship or creating that bridge, right? You know, a bridge is like from one thing to the other, but the only way that gets there is for someone to lay the bridge down to connect it. Yes, start building, start building it. And a lot of lessons to be learned there. And it translates to the hobby too, you create these relationships and connections, you know, for trading or for business or life or all those things, there's so many parallels that come to life, talking with Chris dinner. He is the CEO of dugout mugs back to the business man. So how many different products are we making? We have a 12 ounce mug, the dugout mug. And again, you'll appreciate the names and we have the shortstop, which is a nine ounce like a whiskey mug. We have the wind up, which is a wine mug, hold six ounces. This is called the cutter and honor my boy Mariano where we cut the baseball and half and turn it into this. Then we got the season opener, which is a baseball bat handle, bottle opener. We got a knob shot, which is a shot glass made out of a bat handle. Then we have a metal mug called the dinger. It's a 20 ounce spielproof tumbler that looks like an old East and Green machine. Remember those things. So yeah. And then we then we started with the, you know, we started making the bat slice key chains that double as like an ornament. Those are cool coasters. We actually, these, we haven't even launched these, these launched next week. We started making these stone coasters. Dude, they're sick. Like, oh, wow. Yeah, they look so cool. Yeah, we have stone coasters in a plan. This is something else that I haven't launched yet, but I don't mind sharing it. So we started first release on the trading cards and collectible stuff here. So we started playing around with the idea of mounting a bottle opener in the bottom of the mug. Genius. Right. So it's like, dude, crap. Crack it. Go. So yeah, man, we're always innovating. I would turn on how much fun can we have because funds are very real currency in my life and and we had my company. And so how much everything made here with you? Like is everything made in house for the most part? Yeah. Like New York, Ohio, Quebec, you know, we get the wood from different places, the products from different places. There's a couple of the components that come in from like overseas, but we don't, I don't like playing that game to be honest with you, but like key chain pieces and like different stuff like that. But if I can do 100% made in America, North America, that's what you're getting because it's better quality in my opinion. I can turn it faster like that mug. So let me put an order in for, you know, we did like Pepsi and Coke and Miller and Cours and Budweiser. We make mugs for these guys. So if they put an order into day for a thousand mugs, I'll have it in their hands in two weeks. Right. So our ability to just crank these things out. Now, we're really built for DTC, you know, direct to consumer. So somebody orders a mug, you know, Uncle Frank with a Yankees logo on the front. We have that thing ripped out in like 48 hours, which is really, I can speak to that on this. Yeah, exactly. We messaged on IG and I don't know, two to three days less than my mobile. It's in your hand. I know it's crazy. My team's, my team's one of our, that's our superpower is our ability to do that and do it quickly and do it accurately and do it at a very high quality. What's the percentage of sales with like the mugs versus everything else? Well, that's the OG, man. Like that's the, that's the the name stake product, the dugout mug. So we've obviously done a significant amount with just that product line, but I think the fortunes and the development and the excitement and the development of the product line, right? We have baseball board games that are 100% made America rolling dice and moving little pegs around their sick. Baseball material, drawstring bags like we just keep developing because I have, you know, I probably have over a million customers between my email and SMS and we got a few million on social media. So we got access to a lot of people. So we need to keep developing the products that that we're offering out there to them. So it keeps it fresh and new, but what we've seen, which as a businessman, you can appreciate this, about 20% of our orders are return customers, which is wow, that's a high number. But what's happened is people buy them as a gift and the recipient is so fired up, the gift givers like, okay, every time there's a gift to be given, I'm going back to this well. And I think that's why we've had so much success is the the quality, the accuracy, the the turn times, everything. And people just have a good experience and they keep coming back. But I'd say 40% is going to be the the dugout mug the one in your hand right there. That's why see, I like to give gifts for my guests on the show. Oh, yeah. I think we start sending, we'll have our logo on one side than the guest name, like a message to them. Thanks for coming on and we send them out. Yeah, we knocked it out of the park or yeah, like yeah, we started doing it for realtors. There's no place like home and they're leaving us clothes and gifts. Yeah, it's cool. It is cool. I think we should do that. We're going to talk about that offline. I know a guy. Yeah. So Chris, if I'm collecting, you know, all this about collectibles, I mean, you could see naturally like it goes on the shelf. A lot of people collecting these like different variations. I mean, I and obviously like the p-roes thing. I imagine that's a low print run or manufacturer or whatever you want to call it. Talk to me about the collectibility of these. That was something that I think kind of caught me off guard is the collectibility of these. Not if somebody has the mug and they want to add the the opener and they want to add the coasters and they want to add the baseball opener and they want to one guy, he's a little OCD, but he bought all 30 teams for all products and they line his entire man cave. I'm like, I mean, this guy went in man. He's got thousands of dollars invested in what we're doing, but he that was his. He loved it so much. So there's a there's a there's a real affinity towards our products and the customization ability these products like people get every time they go to a new stadium. They'll take one of our mugs and they'll grave the date that them and their dad went to the stadium. So like there's so much like personalization options with our stuff. I think that's what's really done it and it's it's not overly priced. I mean, we listen, I buy, I rip, I do, you know, breaks, whatever. Our stuff is not that expensive in comparison. You're selling a finest box for $600, you know, 25 finest, whatever it is. Come on now. Yeah, our stuff you can get you guaranteed to win and get a hit for a hundred bucks, 80 bucks, 70 bucks, you know, you get something that. So I think from a pricing standpoint, especially in the hobby, which surrounding people in the hobby, I think, but the price points there, I think the personalizations there and that's why people have been collecting it. Now, when I work with players, so I've done a I call it a signature series. We did a Jose Canseco, Pudra, Rodriguez, Pete Rose, I think Tuck or Wade Boggs is a good friend, you know, Boggs, he did some stuff with us. So we'll work with some of these players in the autograph mugs and then we'll sell those. I mean, we'll sell them for like a hundred bucks, right? We're not trying to make a bunch of cash on anybody, but it's so cool and so unique that people will buy it. The other thing we did, and I've done this with a few occasions, we do numbered because because we individually laser each mug. So the the rays had a 25th anniversary and they wanted a number one to 125 and it was at 125 available and they were all individually numbered. That was pretty cool. It's not easy, but it's certainly doable and we've certainly done it. That's cool. That's what we need on these though. Well, I have their name 101 from the bottom. Right, 101. Yeah. The number part was pretty cool. And I did something for the Memphis Miracle League where we took that old bow Jackson, you know, the the future star. Yeah. And we replicated that card, but we changed some parts of it. And I did it for tops as well. And I just I was just at leaf the other day in Texas. I made some leaf mugs and a whole collection that they're going to be using. So hopefully in the very short, maybe we could to we're going to see some influence or stuff with leaf, but we're able to take a card and put it on a mug. Right. The lasers are that accurate. That's crazy. I mean, that I mean, that process now, I mean, crazy. Like it's all laser inscribed. Yeah. Yeah. We use a rotary device that like sits on the thing like this and just turns it. But I mean, the the the laser, the wood is so hard. The lasers can get in there and create so much detail. It's wild. It is wild. When you work with these individual players, so like Wade Boggs, Pete Rose, you go out and approach them direct and just kind of like iron out a deal. Like, okay, sign this mini. We'll print this mini. We'll share in revenue. Like how do that? How do those deals play out? I'm a bigger fan of relationships. If I want a fewer, bigger, better, fewer people, bigger deals, better relationships. That's what I live by. And the relationships that I have with these people allow me to get the deals. So, fortunately, we have a very reputable name, incredible reputation in the in the baseball industry and with and with other people and other players. Right. So it's an easy ask. I'm like, hey, man, I know you got your thing coming up. Like we just did last week. Mariano's got his event coming up in five days up in New York show for his tournament. And I reached out and I said, hey, man, I got your trophies. We made the trophies for the tournament. First place, second place, third place, longest drive plus the pen, whatever, the golf tournaments. And I said, but I also connected one of my buddy's own, you know, a poker depot and whatever. And I said, so I ripped you out 150 packs of custom logo playing cards, a couple hundred poker chips that you can give to everybody for ball markers. Like just be somebody that somebody wants to know. Like I think you haven't put it in the post this morning or the other day, it's not, you know, somebody else's job to remember you, it's your job to be unforgettable. So what I do is I try to bring enough value to somebody else that they're like, oh, yeah, that's Chris. Like, yeah, what do you need, buddy? Right. Do people pick up the phone when you call? Right. That's a pretty good indicator if you actually know them or not. As if they know you. And so that's what I do, man. I focus on the relationship. And like bogs, I was at his house. We sat in his incredible man cave surrounded by deer heads and hog heads and marlins and all this shit. And we just sat there, just jamming, having a beer, of course, and signing mugs and talking about it and taking pictures. And it was just so cool. And, and yeah, we do a revshare like, but it's nothing. Like, hey, man, it took me like 20 bucks a signature. I'll sign 200 cut him a check for a couple thousand. You know, it's not a money thing. It's a make something fun thing. And that turns into a money thing, even with our customers, man, it's relationships. A lot to be learned, a big business lesson right there for anyone paying attention is in business. It's about relationships. And I love the, hey, it's not so much job to remember you. It's your job to be unforgettable. I love that. I love that. And that's what, hey, same thing with collectibles, you know, yeah, unforgettable. And what's your thoughts on the state of the hobby right now? I know you're a collector and you're going to show us some of your badass cards. Yeah, shortly. But what do you think about what the hobby is today and how it's booming and we're gonna see going? It's really wild. You know, I knew Gary Vee briefly back in the day. And I've always followed him. And I like his mentality on things. And he was talking about it, you know, five, six, seven years ago, you know, it's coming, it's coming, it's coming. Load up, get the big ones, the Jordan rookies, all this. So it's really cool to see it doing what it's doing. I think, unfortunately, it's a junk wax era 2.0, which is the overprinting. It's like 47 different parallels. It's not a one-of-one if there's 12 parallels. There's 12 one-of-ones. Now it's one-of-twelf, right? Like, but again, you know, people are sheep in a lot of ways. And that's what it is. You're not changing it. We're not changing it today. I had that exact discussion. Yeah, we're not changing that shit today. But what we can say is that things are being overprinted. I think the valuations on prospects are out of control. Sometimes you get a skeens or something like that that really shows up and does it. Remember when everybody was chasing Julio and Bobby, it was like a secondary conversation. And now look how quick that changed. You know, so JB Greer, he's their agent, both those guys. And I remember trying to get in touch with him about Julio. And he's like, oh, we can't, we're all, you know, Julio Julio. And then Bobby was cool to say, he signed like 10 cards for me because we were doing some giveaways and stuff. And Bobby's just so cool and down to earth. And then the flip, the script flip. And I think so that my point is is chasing the prospects is very risky. So, you know, so again, but I think that's the overprinting and the overhyping of things. I'm a big collector. Like, I like guys that are proven themselves to air and judge. The Alonzo, you know, Aton is on that list. So, so the, the hobby is a little wonky. I think just like a pendulum, right? Like, it's overcompensation of stuff. I think that's what's happening with it. But that's okay. Like the one thing I think they're missing the most is they're pricing it out of the ability for kids to get involved and stay involved. It's price so ridiculously high. And I think that's going to come back down to earth a little bit of the prices are going to, you know, be impacted from that. But overall, I think it's good to see this much, all this activity again because it's going to have a long tail to it. Yeah. And I mean, there's a lot of people that have never been in the hobby, a lot of big money and a lot of bigger names in business, you know, they're treating it like an asset class now and agree. I think I think it's always been that to a degree. I don't know if it's been viewed that way holistically. But I think you're seeing more and more. I mean, Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank coming, Larry, buy another $12 million card. I mean, you know, it's like, I'm knee deep in this thing now and, you know, had my little hiatus until my kids got back into it and now enjoying it with the lens of them and, you know, nostalgia and mild collection. But it's not lost on me that, you know, these pieces of cardboard, you know, it's worth 12. You have to kind of stop for a second and still kind of remind yourself of that. But at the same time, you know, what makes something valuable is what you know, the bill is printed on a piece of paper that's not even attached to nothing. Exactly. The whole, I don't know, perspective and perception, you know, drive value. And it is crazy that piece of cardboard could be worth 12,000. 100 percent. What do you think of that purchase? It doesn't even phase me because you see it over and over again. Like, or more importantly, like you see some of these rookie quarterbacks or some of these prospect cars are one of ones $130, $150,000. Damn. Like what? But you can get a Miguel Cabrera, you know, Jim Mint 10, or Albert Poole Holes, Jim Mint 10, rookie card for $1,000. I think it's a first ballot hall, the fame or 700 plus home runs kind of thing. You know, that's crazy, dude. It doesn't make any sense. So that's the part that I think doesn't make a lot of sense. But yeah, it wasn't even shocking to me, you know, to see one of those old, old cards do that because they're so rare. They're actually rare. Dollar bills are not rare. We just print them. They're not even attached to nothing. Like turn on the machine, you know, that's a whole nother podcast, but yeah, exactly. But yeah, what do you collect? I know you got some stuff you're going to show. I want to see some of it, but what do you collect? I like guns, you know, old guns, unfired stuff. I have some really cool pocket knives and my dad, you know, he's into that and you know, that's a crazy like a dozen of them or something. But from a traditional sports collecting mugs, like I probably have 70 mugs up here signed. Some of them are like the Miguel Cabrera. We got a Mickey 500 home run. There's only three of them that are signed and two of them are on my shelf. Nolan Ryan, Pudge, Miguel Cabrera, Poppy, Mariano for sure, Johnny Damon for sure, Boggs. So like I like these, but I mean, what a cool background, right? Like this is what I do and it is cool and it is worth a story. But so what I try to do is like any of the guys that I'm, you know, I do a deal with or I'm, you know, I collaborate with I try to get him to sign a rookie card. I grabbed a few of them because I didn't know if we were going to be showing a boy here. But like in some of these will bring you back to like, we'll start with my boy Moe like this one right here. Oh, yeah, straight off the boat with the khakis, right? The old school bummin. So we had a mariononic that one of my favorite people, super quiet kid, hell of a player, finally getting some respect in the hobby. Yeah, I'll Tucker. I'll Tucker. Well, it's yeah. Rod. Rod. Rod. Yeah, that's his rookie cup card. Oh, that's sweet. This guy was so fun. We're at his tournament and up in Baltimore's golf tournament and he's cruising around. Yeah, drinking out of a dugout mug. How's he? What's he like? He's down to Erie's biggest hell. I didn't know it's like six foot, like two 90, right? And I'm standing next to this guy and I look like a dwarf. He's way bigger than you think he is, man. I understand why he made it 2100 plus 2131 or whatever it was. I can see why. Now, this dude right here, just down to earth as you get. Remember that old school chipper, prospect card, shipper Jones. Yeah, yeah. This is, I mean, I mean, meeting in Greenville, Atlanta was my team. We still my team. Yeah, the braves were like two hours from the braves. Yeah. So we work at the braves a ton and that's what opened the door to that. There's one I'm going to save till the end. I'm going to show you that because the condition, the cards next level, Pete Alonzo, you know, just down to earth. Just he's done videos for us. You know, I drink beer out of my dugout mug and super smart. We did polar bear trivia one time with him and it was just all this trivia. That dude is sharp. Like Pete is super sharp, by the way, side note. Chris sale. He's a local guy here here in Lakeland. Crazy seeing him do a comeback. Miggy, you know, we did the deal. Oh, yeah. That's just a classic classic card. Visio. Listen to me. You got to be watching, folks. If you're listening, you need to be watching to see these. Craig, was that Craig? Yeah, this is a video. Oh, yeah. And then one with the absolute killer golfer. Great dude. I give him a hug every time I see him. I drawed regas. That's a rookie cut. Pudge. I got a couple older ones here. So the rocket. Wow. Yeah, that's it. That's a cool card. Memorings back memory. It's good condition too. It does look great. So I try to get, I try to get the best condition. It looks good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So some of these, so here, I'll tell you why they're all in these and not graded or anything. So what I'm doing is behind me. You can't see it, but I'm going to have the entire, because there's probably 20 other cards back here, that not in this stack, but I'm going to have it all flat on my desk and we'll get a piece of glass over top of it. And it's going to kind of be the desktop. So underneath the desktop is going to be all these autographed rookie or rookie cup cards. Yeah, bogs. Oh, yeah. One of my favorites. He's such a good dude. At one point, we even talked about him being in the company, because when you talk about beer and baseball, like bogs, he's at the top of the list. Yeah, that was iconic. If he's in your career, yeah, I have the upper deck graded, but that right there, I like the in-person ones. As you're talking about Bobby, you know, oh, yeah. That's a more newer version, right? Obviously, can say, go, I got that card right here at that end of the Bojack's in a series. What does it say? 86, I think? Yeah, 86, uh, uh, Alps or whatever, like the secondary series, the name. Yeah, update. Yeah. One of my dude, Johnny Damon, Johnny, classic love, Johnny, uh, he's a central Florida guy that we got out to. That was a cool card. I actually pulled the retail blue of that. It's being graded right now. I think it's going to jump. Yeah. Sheffield 509 home runs, not in the hall of fame. Cooper's down. I don't know what the hell you're doing. I know. I'm chasing him, bro. He's so good. Such a good person. So good. I'll tell you a story about, uh, I'll tell you a couple stories about Reggie Jackson. Speak of Reggie Jackson. Hmm. Here you go. There he is. I got two of these. That's feeding. So he's like, what can I do for you? And I said, you know what, Reggie? I said, because he buy, he gets our mugs for his event every year, uh, as the VIP gift to his attendees. And let me tell you, there is, I've never been in a room like this before. And I've been in some rooms like, I'll tell you a story in a second. But this one here is one of my favorites. It's the, the, the Pete Rose rookie cup. Uh, yeah, just, but I mean, check the condition on this thing. Dang. What's a 64? I think I have to look, but that's clean, right? Damn. Very clean. This is one of the ones that I kind of wanted to get graded. But I mean, the back of it, no, I mean, this thing's just clean. Hang. Yeah, 64. Yeah, I would take that one. Great machine. So it's the greatest hitter of all time. Yeah. Again, travesties, not in the hall. Travesties, not in the hall. I'm the stupidest. Yeah. Give me a break. I mean, you know, I can play some bets on hard rock. Everybody can bet on everything now, but, but he can bet on his own team to win. That's another story. So, so like, yeah, some of these are really cool. And so Reggie Jackson, I'll tell you a cool event. I'll just tell you a story the other day. So Reggie has a hell of a network, like next level. And Jim Crane owns the Astros. And Jim has a golf course here in Florida. And Reggie does the Mr. October foundation event there. And I go down there, you know, each year in the third year, they're like, hey, bring some guests and you can golf the next day and blah, blah, blah. I was like, okay. So I go down there in the night before, you know, my wife went with me and a couple of my friends. And we're just cutting it up. And I'm sitting at a table with, it was me, Ozzy Smith, Mike Schmidt, and Andre Dawson, we're just sitting at a table, just talking over a cocktail. And they're arguing over who knew about dugout mugs first. Right. So it's like kind of a fun moment. And, you know, Pudge was in the corner and he came, you know, and said, what's up? And so just surrounded by these incredible people. And Andre Dawson's like, well, my nephew's keeps stealing them from my house. I need to get some more. And Ozzy's like, I knew about these guys before they blew up. And Mike Schmidt's like, oh, my God. I don't even heard of it. What's, you know, felt like he was having FOMO. And, you know, me just being a fly on the wall watching this. I was like, this shit's crazy. But the next morning is what it was really crazy. So my wife went off to a spa or something. And I went there to the event and I had breakfast. So I got there, you know, breakfast, a couple hours for the golf, you know, starts. And Emmett Smith was sitting at a table and I said, hey, Emmett, I'm gonna jump in with you. And he's like, okay, so I sat down with Emmett Smith. And then up walks Urban Meyer and Tim Teebo. And they sit down and they're like, can we join you guys? Well, yeah, certainly. You're like, and then Urban grabs the mug. He's like, Tim, if you've seen these and Tim's like, yeah, yeah, he's a Florida guy. And because, you know, we had had conversations before about it. And then next to me sits, and they were across from me. And then next to me sits John Smolts on the left side. And John's like, I remember these. And he was actually the first guy in the Mugs back here somewhere. John was the first guy to see a dugout mug and sign one. Wow, like eight years ago, or maybe even nine years ago. And then on the other side of me sits down Barry Bonds. And I'm having breakfast with this group of people. And Emmett's telling me how he started to, you know, he said, oh, this big corn fed white guy put me to the ground one day. And that's when I started to learn how to duck and bob. And then Smolts and Bonds are like getting all fired up about some old rivalry. How one through with the other one and walked him and then he hit a home run. They went and got on the team bus and was talking shit to him afterwards. I was like, do this is crazy. But yeah, so like to me, man, back to business, like that's currency, experiential living, stories, network. My network is extremely valuable to me. And this is kind of that thing that allowed my passion for the hobby, sports, business to all just kind of lock together. Oh, man, it's been, it's been a very special last, you know, four or five years, especially. No, man, hey, they say live in the dream. I mean, yeah, you're living it, but I'm trying to make it. Trying. I'm just in your mad at sitting at that table too. And these things, everybody, these legends are all sitting down. And it's like, okay, what's happening here? I mean, even if you've been around it, I mean, I've been around celebrity. I have celebrities on my show, like I'm not like starstruck, but it's like, I don't know, sometimes just the, but that type of moment is, you know, how many people can say that's happened? And that's just an example. So we were outside. It was, I have a picture of this, what the cameraman captured it on accident, but it was me and then Dave Chappelle and then my wife standing in a row, just like next to each, like bumping shoulders next to each other. And we're watching 50 cent neo and flow rider all do a performance while Reggie Jackson's up on stage dancing, like 15 feet away, Kyle Tucker and his wife are in front of me, berries behind us, bonds, Jeremy Payne is there and I mean, dude, it's, it's, it's wild. We're out on the chip and green and Nick Sabin's over there. And then of course, DJ Khalid rolls up in his, you know, Maybach or whatever, he's got going on. 50 cents pouring people drinks because he owns a champagne line. I'm like, dude, if I could do this, just, no, I'm not greedy every 90 days for the rest of my life. Dude, I'm in a good place, man. I'm having fun. And I get to bring people with me like this is perfect. Are you getting to it every 90 days? About every six months or something really bad, ask going on and I'll tell you, man, it's, it's cool. It's cool. Yeah. What do you have? What's coming up? What's on the horizon? I know you shared a few products coming out, different things like that. What's the, what's the future hold? The future for dugouts pretty cool. Now that I have full control of it, I'm looking at additional products and additional companies. So there's a couple companies that I'm talking to right now, possibly rolling under the umbrella. So that's fun. You know, kind of diversifying or offering and from, from that standpoint, international distribution. Currently our products have been sold in seven different countries. But doing it more purposefully, I think Canada makes a lot of sense. A lot of baseball going on up there right next door. So that's certainly part of it. But event-wise, we have the, a Mariano Rivera event come right here next to me. Mariano is just coming up. Big poppies is November 13th down in South Florida. And then we have, we have an event out in Vegas next week that we're doing. Because we're, you know what, you know, it, two areas of the business that we really didn't factor at first that are starting to develop. Corporate gifting is one of them. So I think our first, like, real shot of corporate gifting was a casino did, like, a $50,000 order. Like, wow, and the hell is that about? And of course, that got my attention. But it's like, okay, so they're getting it for their high rollers, their whales, whatever. This recognition gift, the concept of something fully customizable, logo branded, but still personalized, still MLB licensed. And at volume, you're getting these things for under 50 bucks, right? Like, fully decked out. And that's a big play for a lot of companies. So we did, we did cores and miller, bud, fox, hard rock, Celsius, a lot of private companies. And then I think we were, so I've been on fox and friends live in New York three times. I was on world news tonight with David Muir twice, three weeks ago. I was on Good Morning America. That's the third time on there. The today show twice, CBS Morning Ampholotimes, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine. Like, it's crazy, right? This kind of publicity has now started getting us in front of companies. And the companies are really resonating with what we're doing because it's not just another chachki, right? The promotional product industry, just the shit that comes in that. This is one of those things where it's like unique and thoughtful and quality and something that people want to put on their desk. So that really started to pop. And then the retail industry. So we got picked up by hallmark, dicks and rallyhouse, shields and fanatics and groups like that. We didn't do it. My background's e-commerce, so I thought it was DTC. That's what I was doing. But really, these, I kind of reverse engineered it because in retail, and anybody who's trying to get in retail knows, oh, this won't sell. I need buybacks. I want terms. It is recu. So in this case, we kind of reverse engineered it to where I already have proof of concept. I have 60,000 reviews. I have hundreds of celebrities and athletes. I have the credibility. I have three million followers on social media. You can't tell me that it doesn't work. And they want 30, 60, 90 day terms. I'm like, no, you get to pay up front. How do you like it? Because they can't go around me because I have all the intellectual property locked up. So they can't circumvent me either. So it's a really unique way to go into retail. It's a level playing field. Like, I'm not an idiot. I'll give net 30 to dick sporting goods. Okay? Sure. Sure. Of course, or net 60 if they did, but whatever. But my point is it's not so lopsided because a lot of companies go into retail and it's lopsided and you just get taken. And in our situation, we don't have to worry about that, which has been kind of cool. So watching that, that's a show in Vegas. We got to go to it's a souvenir show with some sort. And that, that kind of stuff, we're really trying to develop that area of the business as well. Retail. That's smart. Hey, I need to be a sponsor on my business show, brother. I got all the executives. You got myself now. Like, yeah, me. I'll be getting ideas. No. Yeah. How do other build on the relationship? I don't need to tell you that. Always. I just want some mugs. We've got to. Yes. I have to take you to one of these events with me. You'll really enjoy that. Let's do that, man. We're going to have to like, consummate this friendship. You know, we had to get get out there. Drop the website, man. Drop where they can find all the stuff you guys are doing, all those call it actions. Yeah. So I mean, dugoutmugs.com. You can't miss this. We're the only one out there. Find us on social. I also have a golf company. It's called Big Golf. So I do custom logo golf balls. We turn golf balls into bottle openers and cigar holders and stuff like that. So it's just, I'm trying to bring fun quality stuff to people in and around sports and like having fun. Right. It's not like a boring industry that I, you know, so dugout mugs, big golf, and the only public social media I have is on LinkedIn. And that's obviously more of a business side of things. Everything else I kept private, man. I don't need that celebrity anymore. I used to, the old me did, but now it's like, man, I want to be famous to the people that matter. A wife, my kids, my friends, my family, you know, that's what really matters. And then, but I'm also an open book and I don't mind being the face of, of dugout and big golf and other things because, you know, I'm proud. Like you touched on a long earlier in the show where I got really sick. I ruptured my appendix, not uncommon, but, you know, what was uncommon is I took a week to get my ass into the hospital and I almost died over it at a young girl, a little girl at home six months old when all this happened. So it really kind of shook up my, my psyche a bit and it's like, okay, I came out the other side of change, man. And the check boxes that I look, that I have to check before I move in any direction are, can I play with my friends, can I leverage my network? Will my kids be proud of me? Right? Does it take time? I'm, this is my home office, does it take time away from my family? Right? The reason it took us so long to get this scheduled is because I dropped my kids off and pick them up every day from school, right? We had to find something that fit this middle of the day thing. So my point is, is like, I feel like I'm living in alignment now. The business side of me is very business. You know, I, um, a network side of me is very, very powerful. And I still do deals, take deals, work on that kind of stuff in the business. But yeah, it's just on a, on a topical level, dug out mugs and big golf and we're doing some cool stuff. And if you ever want to talk shop about collectibles, like, man, I love that stuff. You know, I, one of my, let me see, this is, this is one of my more favorite ones too right here, is Tom Brady, one of one play auto. Yeah, that's a cool piece to go. And the others over there, those are PS810 Otani's the 2018 Chrome 150. So I love those, you know, again, so like, I'm surrounded by collectibles. I love to collect things. I love to talk about it because it's fun. You know what I mean? Oh, dude, you are living the dream. And you know, the alignment thing makes a lot of sense and it's clear. This guy's living in preaching. He's preaching it, but he's living it because again, I mean, he could have been more real reaching out to me. Hit, we hit it off. He sent me a mug. I'm like, I mean, no, you know, I drank a beer in your honor. You didn't even know it, you know, first relationships, man, go first. I love it, brother. I really appreciate you for coming on. I can't wait to grow this relationship. Yeah. And here to help any way I can and just add value to you. Anything you're doing. I love supporting what you're doing too, man. The, the, the, you know, I'm on a lot of podcasts. That's great. But when I saw trading cards and collectibles and I know you do some business stuff, I was like, okay, this is this is where I'm supposed to be walking off the schedule because I don't get to share it like some of these cool cards. And there's a ton of other stuff over there, right? I don't get to share that stuff enough. Well, we'll get a regular. We'll do like quarterly check-ins with Doug out. Yeah, man, love it. Hey, guys, you know, to find us collectibles show. You can find that on Instagram, YouTube, look up trading cards and collectibles, podcast anywhere and everywhere. We're out there. We're thankful for guys like Chris for making the hobby great, making the collectible space as a place where we can all be proud for our kids to collect, to learn, to understand business, to understand. Again, there's human side to all of these things. And we appreciate you for listening. See you next time. 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 www.collectibles.show or follow Ryan on Instagram at Ryan Ulford. Now get out there and collect yours.