Inside the Sports Card Market with Jason Koonce | Collecting, Grading & Card Shows

Greetings is like just almost a mandatory now late 90s. There's three or four people doing that I was this younger guy who just like I was like this is gonna be Big now. There's three thousand people doing that and that was really what kind of put me into a different level of Financially like early on 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. Hey, I got introduced to Jason our next guest through a mutual friend and We had a conversation that was supposed to be you know like five minutes end up being like 55 or two hours I don't even know now. I'm gonna just call him a brother from another he is Jason Coot he is a founder and CEO of O T I a I'm gonna let him give that acronym and what it all means He just a sports card past present future junkie. What's up Jason? What's up, man? So happy to be with you today, Ryan. Hey, I appreciate it. I I loved our combo a few weeks ago and Darren Prince and mutual friends like you gotta talk to Jason. You gotta go to the expert. I'm like, well shit We'll get him on You know the phone are like we're just gonna shoot the shit talk about maybe what we could talk about next thing I know I don't even we're talking about our kids and Traveling and sports cards and Exactly man, where's home Michigan? We're just not a big Michigan Wolverine fan So we're about 10 minutes north of Ann Arbor here in the Michigan go blue go blue man one team International agency O T I a we're gonna dig into it. Let's set the table in the past a little bit Jason's in the trading hobby Sports entertainment a little bit of everything maybe tell us a little bit about OSHA and Your legacy in the cards. Well, I mean this kind of started as a kid, you know like most people when they're 910 years old they're collecting cards are going to their shop You know like I was pretty into business from a young age, you know like 910 years old I'm going out shovel and snow seven eight hours a day building up a couple hundred bucks So I had that part down in the making money and then the unfortunate part was I would end up at the card shop Blowing all my money on packs and you know at the end of the day kind of leaving with you know Just a bunch of stories of you know open packs all day and back at it the next day and in the summer Mullen lawns in the winter shovel and snow so yeah, I mean literally for the last 30 some years this is kind of all I've done is sports cards autographs memorabilia You know the big thing kind of change for me especially at a very young age is you know 30 years ago and you went into a card shop There wasn't the internet. There wasn't you know They kind of had you you they were under control like they set the prices. It was it is what it is It's a lot that we'll get into it But it's a lot different with card shops today like they need to be much more on point and and fall You know the the pricing and everything but so yeah for first year or two starting off like I'm stuck in these card shops And there's not a lot of negotiating what really caught my was when I discovered card shows when it was more of like the Negotiating the bulk deals and going from table to table to flippy and the hustling and I started doing this really on like 9 10 you know 11 years old and you know I haven't looked back since so yeah from from starting off there to where we are today It's been a pretty wild to see you know this girl over the past 30 years 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 dot show What you to send in your favorite pulls of the week and here's the difference is isn't about just value Hey, we want to see some $10,000 hits had a couple of those myself a few months back But it's not just about the values about what you're collecting what means something to you share stories You're 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 that collectibles dot show send in those videos I want to know the stories. We're going to bring it to 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 You bring up a great point and it's kind of some meta connotations and I don't mean like the company And it's mean like the way the internet and Information and knowledge has empowered so many industries and so much change because I remember growing up and going To the guy how big a dickheads were the card shop owners of the 80s I mean, I hate to sort of put everybody in the bucket But they were everyone in my my town in South Carolina were jerks you go in there like you said they're not they didn't Negotiate they hold all the cards literally and it is all seemed like they didn't give two shits if you were there or not Yeah, you can't yeah, and that's basically it's like they had a monopoly like whatever prices they said is if you wanted it And you had nowhere else to go, you know the next card shops probably a few hours away So if you wanted no internet. I mean early early on for me like you know like AOL message boards and like 95 96 I started to dabble on the internet, but it was like you know just so new compared to what we have today Yeah, and you know trying to get a value on something. I remember going to the Beckett book, you know Page 78 going to find the value of my 87 tops cow ripkin It was 87 says today. It's 91 since next month Maybe yeah, yeah, and everyone's going off the Beckett and honestly like I haven't used the Beckett in 20 years So that just shows if anybody's like tuning in that you know collect the cards as a kid like the Beckett was like the Bible You know everybody went off a Beckett and now you know everyone's got real-time pricing apps with all the technology That's come to life with with market. Yeah Beckett is long gone as far as pricing goes it opened it up It did change. I'm glad it forced the the local trades you know trade shops their car card shops to be you know More consumer friendly, and we're look we're blessed. We had the largest dealer here in South Carolina and upstate in Greenville Maddie rich awesome guy Salted to the earth guy and runs a beautiful little shop that you know and takes care of his customers and I don't know if he Represents every single person. I'm sure you still have your Your some you like some you don't but it does it has sort of leveled the playing field from between consumer And shop owner because everyone's I've had I mean we've been having these cartridges like at my space year You know, we got 5,000 square feet. We've been doing little trade nights and stuff like that Yeah, and even my nine-year-old You ain't getting nothing by my nine-year-old like he's over here They're all walking around informed. They got their abs out. It's like everybody knows exactly what the cards are selling for the last 24 hours Right that's one of the cool things like the the big advantage I had kind of in the 90s was like right now like you said Everyone's got pricing dad in front of them But really back then it was really like who had the best memory of what stuff was worth in real time You could buy a deal at one booth and walk you know walk 15 booths over and flip the deal and make money It's just it's such a different world. I mean, it's literally And another thing we'll talk about is in that you know mid mid 90s and this is kind of where I got lucky You know the internet coming into play grading grading is like Just almost a mandatory now and I remember being at shows in the mid 90s and the head guy at PSA Which is the main grading company at the time Uh, it was a guy named Steve Rocky and he would come boot the booth and try to convince you On why you should grade your card with PSA and you have a lot of these old time dealers that are like fuck you I don't need I don't need your opinion. I don't need you and and nobody really got it. Yeah, and I was this younger guy who just like I was like this is gonna be Big and I just kind of bought in and um I started grading it like 15 years old really young and just Eventually became one of PSA's I was PSA's biggest submitter for several years, but um I mean, I mean I worked my ass off, but like I have to put some of the you know The timing, you know, it's like if I was coming big into the market rate when grading was taken off Rate when the internet boom was taken off like this was the perfect storm for for cards in that era for me How was money made then for you and sort of you know The arms and legs that where you made money in the industry, you know And maybe as the industry as a whole versus today Yeah, so it's a massive difference. I mean, I've always shifted my business to kind of go with what's hot at the time And you know grading was so new, but the margins were so and you know, they're still today I mean perfect example will take a you know Michael Jordan rookie card today and an eight that's like a Seven eight thousand our card and a nine that's twenty thousand and in a ten that's two hundred thousand So the same multipliers, you know, took place in the late nineties We weren't dealing with hired as high a dollar of figure cards, but the multipliers were there So, you know to buy cards ungraded and grade them, you know, you could tend to a hundred extra money So it almost didn't matter like if you found stuff and had a good eye that was not graded and we're able to get a graded and high grade We were working on like dream margins Yeah, and it didn't even matter when you messed up because we made up both father deals it did Yeah, just kind of born into like a gambling family, I guess so I've always been a degenerate But this was a way to like early on Channel my degenerate gambliness into something that was like Heads I win really big tails. I break even or lose a little bit So I kind of just went all in and there wasn't a lot of competition like there was only a few people doing this You know, so it was so new and now like you go to show Ten thousand people everyone's trying to find stuff to grade and the reality is especially when it comes to like vintage cards You know back then high grade stuff was everywhere. I'm you know that you could buy now. It's all dried up It's all graded. So that was my first big money making was just straight grading and after a few years the next level was Okay, how can we put feel on this fire and it was everybody's spot once the car was graded Like it is what it is everybody saw a nine and a older and they just assume okay like that's a nine They didn't realize the human element of this that you know on a Tuesday the grader made a get may given it a nine But now on Friday is in a better mood. It's off the weekend. It's close. Maybe it's a ten So now I kind of took a different approach to like walking around these shows Looking at stuff that was already graded and like high grade and I'm analyzing like all these nines in real time And I'm accumulating just like massive quantities of nines that I thought were on the fence you crack I'm like crap. I'm cracking it and I like Jordan for example like I've had a lot of ten Jordans But I may have cracked out hundreds and hundreds of nines So you have cards that are like right there on the bubble They're like 9.7 9.8 and you crack out 15 or 20 of those you get 110 You know, you just you kill it. So like I said same time like late 90s There's three or four people doing that now. There's three thousand people doing it and that was really what kind of put me into a different level of financially like early on the whole grading. Is that still doable today? Yes, and no like Do it but the multiplier is not as high probably so you got to remember like if you come across like a Jordan rookie Unless it was in Freshly discovered from a new collection There's a good chance that things already been looked at 10 times like if it's a nice nine There's a reason it's in a nine people that like me and then everybody else in like the last 25 years They've all looked at that card and like you know like they're like can this nine go to a 10 or like so like the games Already been played so there's just no inventory out there So I would say it's I guess it's there technically, but when you take the competition and also add in the fact that I mean, I don't do it anymore. Let's put that so like the one about newer cars Do you still have the Delta? I mean like In a well, but here's the other thing is the grading fees What I was grading cards in the late 90s like I was paying like five six bucks and now If you go to grade a high dollar card with PSA you might spend 10,000 because they're based enough of value now So it's just all the fun has been taken out of the game is you know, so I probably Since 2017 haven't really you know, I went from grading 25 to 50,000 cards a month from being PSA's biggest submitter for several years to maybe grade like 2,000 cards a year now. It's if that I mean, I'm looking at it a little bit that way, but also just Having fallen my boys so trying to find both I think we're finding the line We have we're having more fun than making money. I'll say that so far But yeah, I do see a clear path with what I do know in the people I know like Jason Coons That there could be money to be made, you know, so it's yeah, and they're so okay with it. That's fine It's more just It's a lot of work like at these shows man like Holy shit with every kid and every person like you said It's not like that. I don't want anyone to be informed so I can take advantage of someone that man. It's it's almost exhausting the Constant deal making like it's because everybody thinks they know exactly what something's worth And and they do but I don't know when everybody's a pro. It's a little annoying, you know, it's different now I mean it was so easy for so like almost too easy to the point where When COVID hit, you know, everybody kind of had time to like fall out their old cards and get back into it I think a lot of smart people realized, you know, a lot of business minds like yourself They all came in and they're like this business is like it was so unprofessional and You know, and everybody saw these opportunities So like within the last couple years you've seen so many apps come out so many business check You know nothing changed from pre from 2019 back like it was basically the same and now there's just so much innovation Which is it's good But it's brought in a lot a lot more smart people a lot of business people that have come in they've you know added fees to different stuff and like you said taken some of the fun away and but it's turning into It was already a real asset class one of the major things for COVID was I've always been bullish and cards probably 70% of my net worth is in cards in memorabilia But there's always in the back of my mind like am I crazy having this type of money invested in this and I was confident but really when COVID hit like the confidence boost for me went from like 70 to 100% when If you ask me what could tear down our business is if you took away sports, you know off TV Basically everything that happened at the beginning if you took all it away I'm like the card market's gonna crash 99% and There was like this six-week gap where I guess not just card the whole world was kind of in limbo Yeah, and I was panicking, you know I had a lot of money, but all on paper and in inventory and then I don't know where like you just see the market Just like go like this and then just take off and That for me was it was good on multiple levels financially But also just like the feeling of knowing okay like this has been cemented as a real asset class and Nothing's gonna I don't say nothing, but like this is it is what it is like people this is now You know will watch this gold coin. I mean this is like a real asset, you know You see people shifting money out of the stock market into some of these massive like million dollar cards because they believe in Sports cards more than they do the stock market or some of the other you know bullshit going around So that's been really exciting for me to see just being in it from the very beginning to where we're at now It's pretty awesome just to you know kind of can get confirmation that we're here to stay Watching now and this is me like with the kids and kind of looking at the industry the YouTube factor You've got these influencers and guys open and packs not talking about like selling and whatnot Come out just the opening packs on YouTube you got king of cards Kyle kind of building his little brand up This is not unique to trading cards This is the smart people in any industry have figured out you know the detention is money and you Hey the the internet is your oyster and the social media is your oyster What's your take on all of that and the impact on the industry? So two things one to me Uh Personally It's so wild to think that like going back to the early 2000s We didn't have cameras at shows we never we didn't have iPhones obviously But like the thought of filming at a card show was so like it was in when people asked you what you did for a living It was like it was embarrassing to tell them about some sports cards. Yeah Usually they would hear sports cars and then you wouldn't correct them because like that cool and So it's like it's completely shifted and To you know people say I can't believe you don't have content from the show is like did we were not in a content world to begin with and then on top of it We didn't want people. No, you know, no transparency. No secret. You wouldn't let those trade secrets out Yeah, like well the secrets and just like you know, it's like you're not gonna pick up chicks telling you know Tell them people you you buy in slow baseball cards So, you know fast forward 20 years everybody's doing it now. It's cool So to me that's just such a shift to see it go from like zero to a hundred as far as a cool factor goes So that's part one the second part of your question is what do I think about it and like a lot of these guys are newer too like they saw the You know, there's a chance to make authors content. There's clickbait. You know, there's stuff There's there's ways to make money through the content obviously so You know, a lot of these guys they're not experts. They've come into the hobby in 2018 2017 2019 so they don't know a lot they know enough to kind of talk about it So some of the information is just the blind leading the blind as far as like these are new people talking about cards With that being said, I think the guys that have good intentions gets good. It's all positive The guys that are negative like whatever like you know, it's it's clickbait, you know, it's whatever I don't think that someone's you know, if someone's new to the hobby like that's their first experience. It's not good So all the guys that are putting out good content. I think it's growing the hobby. I like seeing it I know a lot of those guys. They're good. They're good people So I think it's a net positive overall I think it gets watered down a little bit when you got guys you don't know what the hell they're talking about But I think they're really big guys at least have an idea of the hobby and stuff So it's just mind blowing to me. I'd rather watch some new guys video for 15 minutes Just to kind of I'm always trying to stay in the loop like even with the new guys that work for me I'm always picking their brain because I don't keep up on them. There's so much new stuff coming out daily like it's crazy You know, I know the vintage better than most some of the newer stuff. It's hard to keep up with so I'm trying to sponge all this in Yeah, it's different especially coming up when you did like you said it was just the last last thing you think of wanting to amplify is Either by reputation or by like giving your uh, I don't know competitors You're you kind of like behind the scenes speaking of crazy stories So that like here's a perfect example Basketball you know like the holy grail of basketball 80 you know Jordan's rookie in the early 2000s boxes of that We're about 12 to 15 thousand and now they're like a hundred and fifty thousand We were buying those and cracking them and the people that were selling them to us or me and you know people I was working with is they thought we were just Getting smoked they felt bad they saw us these boxes. We were open in them And they kind of felt like we were just these young guys getting screwed They didn't realize how clean 86th floor basketball came out of the packs and we were grading this stuff and making a fortune And we just played we just played the dumb role for like two or three years of like Yeah, I just really like open in this product But like a box that I paid 12,000 for like worst case scenario The ROI was about seven grand a good box ROI was about 200 grand holy shit Yeah, so like and I I open three or four hundred boxes of 86th floor basketball and nobody would pay more so like they would buy them and we would just You know, so some of the David Adams car world baseball car all these guys would sell us they'd get 86th floor basketball It's all to us. We would kind of show the image of like hey were these dumb guys cracking 86th floor basketball and You know Jordan wasn't even the most expensive car in the set like a lot of people were building sets and some of these commons were Like 10 or 15,000 in a PSA 10 you could get one common and high grade and it would cover the entire box Jeez crazy what you're saying is you guys are taking some collection of cards and repacking them into you know for a 12 20 whatever it is Into a different rebranded name and you have a higher percent chance of ROI then you did maybe from manufacturer and maybe even a larger hit rate or something You know like put the better cards in my mind. I'm trying to sort phrase that but is that exactly well and liquidity I mean like so generally like let's just say the the repack is you know each repack is one graded card And you know like let's say the the repack costs two hundred dollars and you know like Over the over the span of the repack like the lowest card and there's gonna be 40 which you have to have $40 cards in there because in that same repack you want to put cards in there that are you know a thousand fifteen hundred so But you're you're pulling something that's instantly liquidity you know or there's instant liquidity versus Out of a traditional pack you know half 99% of the cards are all commons that are just gonna get chucked And then let's just say you do pull a good card then it needs to go out for grading There's the weightings repacks are quicker There's generally like a floor and a ceiling so you you kind of know like what's my minimum what's my law You know, what's my max but the only thing with traditional packs is you do have that lottery ticket Which has kind of been the the game the last couple years, you know like every every so often they're gonna have a you know I'm sure you saw the Paul skiing's card, you know debut So for 1.3 million yeah, like that's one person that hits that yeah, so for one person that hits that like million dollar lottery ticket There's all the other stuff that just you know Yeah, you only hear the good news You only hear the good news the stuff doesn't get talked about so I just think that And you do see it like the repack is just getting a lot more money A lot of these guys is like to spend money on on high dollar. They still open some packs like I still open packs for me It's just pure entertainment though like if I me and my son me and my kids sit down and we open a box There are a couple boxes and spend a thousand bucks I'm not planning to get any of that money back Like I'm just like entertainment donation having fun And you know give them the cards and and let them do it So I think when you go in with that mindset it's okay because it's the same as you know Going to a sporting event or going to whatever your yeah, so but the problem is is you got people that They don't look at his entertainment. They're looking at as like making money opening packs and during a long haul That's just not gonna be sustainable. No Don't don't do that go buy singles and resell them or put them in your collection but Don't don't I do the same thing with my kids we open. I mean three nights a week You know, but I'm looking at it purely as time with my kids where they actually want to hang out with me and We have fun and it's a surprise and delight moment if we get something great and if we don't I'm I'm not You know forfeiting their future, you know I It's like Nice to have gotten something out of that, but I had fun either way and that's that's that's part of You know why I'm doing this series is to remind people this is a lot of fun It has a lot of great attributes for father's sons mother's dollars whoever's into it doesn't matter because there's a trading card in a hobby You know variation for everyone, but at the same time it is an asset class And now and needs to be I don't know put on the pedestal that it's earned Through a lot of the you know time that you've put in Jason I mean, you know being one of the pioneers and people that have been through it all You know, it sort of deserves its moment in time, you know You guys are selling on what not more than anything else. That's what I'm hearing. That's what I'm assuming This technology and live-selling thing, you know being in marketing and business I've been preaching that for about seven years and telling people that it was coming It was before COVID by the way. I was at a FedEx event People looked at me sideways and I'm like you just wait sure enough It's a fascinating part of the industry this industry other industries. Where do you what what say you about live shopping? Well, I wish I would have met you five years ago because I was on the initial call with grant The guy started what not and he he I still have the email that I look at like once a month because it's ridiculous The basically saying hey, I got this idea for a live-selling platform called what not I want to talk to you like you know investor. So I had a chance at like, you know Oh Jason, I wish I had known you man I would have if you'd have gotten that call I would have gone with you I just I was still like I think if I was younger I would have understood it more at the time I my question to him was I say I go so you want to run A 30-second auction at one in the afternoon on a Tuesday and they said yeah And I said just that saw that was ridiculous to me But I didn't really process it the way now obviously and I'm one of their I think they're number two seller on the entire platform But at the time if I wouldn't stop and thought like you know even on eBay all the bidding is in the last few hours And even sniping the last second like the first six days of a of a 70 eBay auction is irrelevant So this was just like I mean, I've had plenty of hits. I've had plenty of misses This was a miss for me. So it's just kind of funny now looking back when I was just so Anti-air bearish on just not not bearish. I didn't understand live streaming and now I think we're still really early I think Livestreaming is like the fourth or fifth biggest thing in my lifetime to come about like the internet Crypto, you know Bitcoin, you know, it's like social media Life's live shopping like to me live shopping is like the third or fourth biggest thing where people are gonna get really wealthy And in the next couple of years AI obviously, but like you're gonna see everybody like Walmart Costco Like they're all gonna have lives either they're gonna be pushing stuff through other platforms or they're just gonna create their own And yeah, I'm very bullish on live shopping. It's in it's still early I mean, I still think is as far as it is like 95% of people still don't know anything about live shopping. So Yeah, I think You know trading cards and the hobby is well a lot further down that like conversion path, you know for their I don't know target audience but it It's gonna meet this professionalism that you talked about earlier That's where I see it. That's where I'm I kind of have my brain thinking is like Yeah, as the business as a whole where I think about okay, well Ryan are all for it's gonna get in on this thing it's gonna be in this professionalism marketing content, but There's a delivery With the live shopping which you don't want to throw the baby out of the bathwater So it's not that it has to be over complicated or too sophisticated, but I do think there's Rooms and dials to be turned with all of that experience. Oh, it's you We have seven studios that we've built out and we're constantly making them better But like a lot of the people live sound like they're still live streaming like out of their garage Yeah, you know like so we have we're kind of a little bit ahead of that But we also, you know, we don't we have it's really hard to Define good live streamers. I mean, I think live streamers are gonna become famous like personalities and you know people are gonna hire them And because if you can sell you're gonna be you know, it's like the the late 90s, you know sports cards on TV The shop at home days. Oh my god. I don't know if you know the Oh, yeah, what's it they've done? I've got some videos that we play that I've uh I'm actually having cut up right now that are more spoof stuff but for our The breaking rad Instagram channel But it's but it is that no, but look he's he was great, but it's like Yeah, she's in the video. He's like if you don't buy this You're how are you gonna wake up in the morning the next day? You're not even gonna be able to look in the mirror He was the greatest salesman of all time He was amazing So that was the part we mean we could talk for 10 hours. So I we did I did a I did a ton of selling on the the main two guys They were selling on TV. I I was providing them with a ton of inventory and they were buying with reckless You know because they were selling on TV and killing it, but so yeah down was hilarious, but the 80 days were We're wild, man You're walking to that barley like there's Rick. He knows how to make a decision. He goes all in Ha You miss out on this you're not gonna do miss out on you don't look yourself in the mirror tomorrow That's like and I was watching going I don't want to miss out. No, I'm like oh shit. I'm like. I was like he was awesome He was so good at it, but I I'm learning from him get serious over there with my kids They would do it they would do like limit five per caller and then like you'd have people calling in like have their mom calling for him Yeah, oh my god. Hey, can we or can we order uh, you know, just but have him shipped to the same address But it's a different person trying to get more, you know, yeah, exactly Phomo man, that's what it is for you're missing out That's what live shop in is though. It's like every great marketing characteristic like built into one You've got the the last 10 seconds. So phomo you got your racing and gets the clock you don't want to miss out you It's just Everything kind of coming together and the the thrill of getting the deal. I mean, we have some stuff like I said like sometimes like Stuffy's over market. Yeah, stuff goes over market a lot of times stuff goes under market. So like they're they're pretty times right See, I'm like holy shit like that was a hundred dollar card that just sold for 40 bucks like that guy's you know Which is good like that guy's going to come back and keep buying like crazy? Um You know that's arbitrage today that's arbitrage today because I get in there and I've done both You know like I tend to not be the guy that goes over just to win But like sometimes I've got a wrong number on a card because there's so many damn cars I'm like, uh, that's probably $20 over marketer, you know, but that's arbitrage to getting there and stealing Some you know hunt our cars for 40 knowing the market. I mean, this is this is where in real time When you're running a 30 second option You need to make those gut calls and if you do know the market and something selling for 80% like You know, and he's spending a lot of money and I mean a lot we do that too I go in there and pick stuff off sometimes the collector and me comes out and then I end up over paying for some stuff That I just want for my person, but that's kind of the fun in it like, you know, when am I going to see this again? But there's a yeah, there's there's definitely a just a ton of money to be made You just you just have to just spend the time and just get educated and really you know, don't jump all in and just You know spend a ton of money like just put a lot of hours and understanding everything before you uh, you know Go go big. Yeah, and that's sort of my superpower like I'm the most curious person on the planet I go down the rabbit hole Like and I'm down the rabbit hole in this business like I'm way down it right now like just observing watching and Curious don't know it all learning from guys like you watching the market and stuff like that because there is stuff to be made It's just like anything else though. It's not a media at 12,000 dollars to 200,000 dollar boxes like it used to be But like anything else he who goes the furthest often wins Jason, where's all headed for your brother? I mean you're relaxing you can you know Got great people working for you. You're taking care of them. They're taking care of you When Jason looks down the road and goes man, you know, you're taking care of your kids your family I mean like where we headed with all this yeah, I'm in this where my kids are all I'm like Yeah, I think our kids are in the similar age, you know, I'm like 10 10 8 7 6 so it's like I am trying to pull back a little bit, you know like and when I say pull back a little bit It's like going from 80 hours a week to you know 50 hours a week I enjoy this like I enjoy business. So yeah when I try it like I don't know about you when I go on vacation After day three I'm Jones and to get home. It really takes it's it's hard. So I see me doing This forever I it'll it'll keep she I'll keep shifting with it and I think you know talk with a lot of these younger guys And just molding I've always done that But I just love it so much that it doesn't feel like work and so yeah, I think we're gonna be doing this for a while man It's just I'm blessed to be in a spot where I have good managers underneath me So when I do want to you know, I'm like hey today's I got kids sporting, you know, I got soccer games. I got basketball like I'm not doing anything right now. I'm gonna go do that. So that's I do feel like I set myself up for that you know the 15 years leading up to where we're at today I do get a lot of hate when people they think like they see where I'm at now and it's like they think this happened in the last year or two Not the case at all and it's for it's you know, and it's just the world we live in today You know everybody wants you know money overnight and it's just it's not the reality and you know Even like even in the middle like going going broke in the middle of this like you know really really learned to put me in a Different mindset. So yeah, I mean, I'm gonna be doing this for a while keep keep growing. Obviously if you're not growing It's not fun. It's it's it's exciting to to watch I love you know playing playing the next three to six months out and then I email it to myself and then Six month you know like kind of seeing how far we made it if we surpassed it and a lot of times like and I keep all these emails And I'm just like I'm looking back at goals from like 2022 and it's like holy shit Like not only do we hit that goal You know, it's like like a hundred million in sales in a year was it was like a big deal for us and like And we hit that in this year. We're gonna surpass that. I hopefully by a decent amount, but that was something that seemed crazy Um and now we're there. So it's like now I gotta set new goals and Keep keep moving. I think people that are wired In this weird sickness entrepreneur that we all have you're always you're always moving the goalpost Yeah, and for it for better or worse. It's it's a blessing and a curse I think because I think there's some people they get to the goalposts and they're happy and they can just chill I think someone like You know who's really dialed in they they get to the goal they enjoy it for about 10 minutes and they say okay Let's move that goalpost back again and see uh see what else we can do. So That's kind of our matter right now. Just uh, I'm trying to enjoy life a little more And and work a little less, but like I said even even less for me is still A lot of damn hours. They say the journey is everything now and I think Yeah, the longer I do what I do It proves to be true and it's an almost everything because even like you said like My kids get excited about opening a box. We get excited And you open the packs and you get it you might get the jaden Daniels best card ever auto 10 minutes later It's what's next you know like and it's not because I can't get enough But it's just it's more I look at it more like you said is that the journey the excitement of oh, you know building up to Wanting that card or wanting that goal in business or all those things. I think the true The truly motivated are just looking for the next journey and the next challenge 100% 100% Hey, man, working here by keep up with Everything you guys are doing where to find you the company Etc. Etc. Yeah, so the website just for four letters OTA.com on Social media OTS sports on what not OTS OTA rips. Yeah, I mean those are So it's pretty much all under one umbrella. Oh, if you google the OTS sports or OTS You'll you'll find us and you'll join some of our live streams, you know and Enjoy the shows and have fun and and bid responsibly Yes, gotta put that disclaimer on there Jason really appreciate you for coming on the show and it's been great I consider you a friend now and look forward to future opportunities Ryan. Thank you so much for having me on it. There's a lot of fun. Hey guys You need to find us Ryan is right.com. Hey, we're number one for reasons because you're here Go check us out on youtube. We got a fast growing page over there watch all the content You'll find links to all of Jason stuff OTA rips all the stuff they're doing over on what not and on the website We appreciate Jason for coming on and we appreciate you. We'll see you next time. All right about now Thanks for tuning into the show Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast platform and don't miss the Video version on youtube you can find us at www.collectables.show or follow Ryan on Instagram at Ryan Ulford Now get out there and collect yours