The Luxury Upgrade Cards Have Been Missing | Brian Pirrip & M1nt

Once people hold them and see them, it's really hard to go back to plastic. There's nothing quite like handing an athlete, like a Hall of Fame athlete, a card, their card in a G1 case with a grade by my paper. Those kind of moments are just priceless to me. Welcome to the Collector Nation podcast here on the Collector Nation Network. Whether you're chasing rails or calling bluffs, you take you inside the hobby. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Today, Brian Pirip is back with us and this one's a little different. We talked about the mint before his company, Mint. Now the G1 is out and he's actually launching it across the nation in a way you wouldn't expect. He's going out, talking with people, putting in the hands of celebrities and athletes and really organically growing the brand. Today, we're getting into what that process has been like. All the feedback he's getting from collectors, how it fits in the hobby and hey, just remind everybody how nice a guy he is. Brian, what's up, man? Pump to have you. Welcome to Collector Nation. It is great to be here. Ryan, thanks for having me again. Real pleasure to be here. How are things? I'm good, man. I'm glad to have you back. I feel like we're brothers from another in some way being entrepreneurs. You came to my shop. I appreciated that. I love watching the content and I do have a beautiful case next to me with your indirectly your name on it. Dang that looks good, man. Love to see it there. That's actually a special color way that we did just for the people in the 100 club. There's only about 105 people that have that ability to have that color way. It's good to see a special and it feels special, man. I think it feels like a million dollars. The mint doesn't it? It does. I mean, it's the first thing that's ever done that car justice. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, it actually, a car like that deserves a lot better than a piece of plastic. I'm sitting here with some of my cards and plastic. It just feels like, oh, these are like five dollar items. You got a thousand dollar card and some noteworthy cards here. It just doesn't feel like that once I've held a G1 case. You're entirely right. It feels like a million bucks the second you hold your G1. You know, we had you on a fully comfortable circle. We talked about the mint case and now you've been on the road with a real product in hand. You hand-delivered this one to me, which I'm so appreciative of. What's it like, man? I mean, it's clearly the case speaks for itself, but what's the process been like for you? Well, yeah, it really does speak for itself. Every time I show the case and pictures of videos or on social media, people go, oh, what is that? A glorified one touch? Is that a some sort of an iPhone? You know, these kinds of things. And then and people never really understand it while they're seeing it on on camera. But as soon as I show people the case in person, instantly everybody understands. It's just an instant impact every single time. And so it's been really fun to travel the country. And then just in the last three weeks I've been in Atlanta, Toronto, Dallas, San Francisco. And everywhere I go, I put the I that's one of the reasons I wrote so much is I want people to hold them. You really have to hold them and see them in person to understand. And the second that somebody puts it on their hand and holds it, they go, okay, now I get it. And then the next question is Brian, can you hook me up? How do I get one? You know, so it's been it's been really fun because that's what I'm trying to do is I'm changing hearts and minds here. I'm I'm putting them out there in the world, getting people to hold them and see them. And once people hold them and see them, it's really hard to go back to plastic. You know, I always see people with their they have their PSA slab. And then they've got it inside of a slab mag. And it's so it's like plastic inside of plastic inside of plastic. And and it's just holding a G1 in person versus holding like a slab mag with a PSA. It's just not even comparable. It's it really is the difference between holding like a a Nokia flip phone from the you know late 90s and an iPhone 16 Pro. It just is an order of magnitude kind of difference. Yeah, I mean, it's funny to bring the iPhone. Yeah, I'm sure you hear it. It reminds me of that sort of yeah, the original iPhone bezel, you know, and but what you can't always see and we'll have this in some of our B-roll and stuff. So again, if you're listening, this is the episode you got to go to YouTube and watch. You know, Brian's all over it anyway. But you got to see this thing. And we're going to have some B-roll some images, different things. We've been doing a lot of videos with it to really get an appreciation of the colorway on the case. And you know, my good friend, you're a good friend, Mike Baker authentication here. That just puts the you know, the bow, the icing, whatever you want to call it right on top. Yeah, no, it's it's a real joy to have Mike grating these initial cases like having his eyeballs on these cards to verify, authenticate and to put an accurate grade there has been nothing short of special. I mean, I've known about Mike Bakerson, you know, for the last like 20 years. I've heard his name and and it's weird to, you know, get to know him and to discover, wow, this is a really cool guy. This is a guy you want to hang out with. And then you realize, wow, this guy is the guy that kind of started it all. He's the guy that you know, came up with the PSA grading guidelines all those years ago. And he's the guy that's graded some of the biggest cards in the industry. And and now he's grading these massive cards that are going into our G1 cases. And so it's been a real honor to have Mike a part of the mint story now, you know, it's it's been it's been really special. There's nothing quite like handing an athlete like a Hall of Fame athlete, a card, their card in a G1 case with a grade by Mike Baker. Those kind of moments are just priceless to me. That's, you know, when I started doing this five years ago, I didn't think I was going to be having those kinds of moments. And now those are becoming kind of regular moments. And kind of too good to be true kind of things. So Brian, we're very blessed for you. Yeah, man, where do you get? When I hear you talk, I don't think I asked you this last time. And I love it. When I hear you talk and I the positive energy, the sort of eloquent, like, you remind me of like, and there were a lot of jerks, but the nicest, the coolest, the ones that I wanted to hang out with, like, creative strategic directors at ad agencies that I really liked and respected. I don't know. I don't know where that comes from for you, but like it is it's the highest compliment I can give you because it's like not only it's like the intelligence, but it's like the nice factor. And it's like, is that where does that come from? Is that nature, nurture? Like, you know, like, have you always been that guy? I've always been that guy, you know, like I was that guy in elementary school. I'm that guy now and I've been through some pretty gnarly, you know, tragedies in my life. I've been through some pretty, you know, people have heard my whole story. They'd be like, damn, that's that's pretty rough stuff. And yet I've just, I've never let those things bring me down. So it's just who I've always been. I always had a goal in life was to show people that you can be successful, that you can be a just badass, you know, entrepreneur, businessman without losing your soul and without being coming a jerk. You don't have to, it's not mutually exclusive. You can be a good human, a nice person and also be extraordinarily successful. It's possible to push hard, you know, hold your team and the people in your world, you know, to accountability, but also be kind and and generous without being also someone who's walked over. So it's a fine line. And I would say it's be, it's become a bit in my superpower in my career. And I don't ever, and I always figure if I haven't lost all that by now in career, then that's not going away any time soon. So as you see, who I am is what you get. People are say, oh, are you putting on a character on your social media? And I'm like, no, that's exactly who I am. Or people on the other side will go, oh, Brian, you're such a, you know, you're a really nice guy. You're opening all this junk wax and you're giving away all this free stuff. But now you're charging for a $500 case. You know, maybe you're a grifter all along. And I'm like, no, I actually said day one of doing my social media that I was, you know, talking about cards I love, which tend to be, you know, junk wax and cards for my childhood. But I also, from day one, always said that I was going to be building, you know, displays and cases that would make, you know, that were the kind that James Bond would want to have on his wall if he collected. And so it's just, you can be a good person, a kind person, a nice person, and also have huge lofty goals and dreams and push hard to all those things and do what it takes to get those across the finish line. So it's a, it's a real rare combo. But thanks for, uh, for saying that man, I really appreciate the man. I just now that spent time with you, I can tell you a friend and, uh, and having dinner and like going out and hanging, I'm like, you are exactly who you are. Like, I know that sounds like a really, really smart or really stupid, but like to your point of like the videos and all that can easy to get caught up in the persona. But like, no, that's not nice Brian on camera. That's just nice Brian, who's also built one of the most premium cases that has ever walked the planet, who's also hanging out with athletes and celebrities and doing the coolest shit you could imagine. And it couldn't be happening to a better guy. And, uh, you know, I had to take time to say that. We'll get back to the regularly programs, uh, outside of the broadcast here, but, but I did want to say that. And I really appreciate that. I really appreciate that's a super kind of you, Ryan. And I, you know, I do count you as a friend and, and I think that it's actually one of my team members called that out actually a couple days ago because we were in Doc Goodin's hotel room and, you know, Dwight Goodin was always one of my, you know, guys that I collected when I was a kid. And there were our sitting in his hotel room. And initially the guy who sent me over and said, okay, you can go meet up with him. He said, you know, bring some, bring a, you know, stack of bills to give him as kind of a courtesy, you know, and he would appreciate that. And Doc was kind of asking for like, hey, maybe you could kind of grease the wheels here. And I go over there and we, me and my guy Sam, the guy who films all my content, we go up to Doc's hotel room and we sit there. We're open in the box of, uh, FLIR update. And, you know, next thing, you know, we're telling stories. We're in his room for like an hour. There's one moment where he got choked up. He started telling these like personal stories of his father and his no hitter and the world series and his son and grandson joined us on a, on a FaceTime call. And I'm just talking to him kind of, uh, you know, just being real with him, but also being, you know, uh, myself with him. And then by the time we finished and we were the ones that were like, hey, you know, we're going to take off now. We actually have to get back to Dallas. Uh, he goes, hey, man, uh, because I told him about how much, you know, I love ribs and barbecue and he goes Brian, when you're next in Florida, let me know. He goes, I'm taking you out for ribs and then I go to hand him the cash and he goes, no, man, we're good. I don't, uh, I'm not taking your money. This was a real absolute joy to do this. And so I think that, uh, you know, this, who I've always been just kind of can open a lot of these athletes who are used to a lot of, you know, jackass is coming to them and just saying, hey, where's my out of graphs? Where's my, uh, whatever they want out of there. And so I always make sure that every time I go to like an athlete, I'm giving them something rather than taking away something. And so, um, I know it kind of went a little long there on that topic. No, but it's, but you, but you, you probably, you know, man, you're living what you preach and you, and that's why you've been successful and you will be successful moving forward. Um, you know, on the G one side, like, obviously you're getting in front of athletes. I, I mean, I love, like, when I get in these discussions with you, Brian, and I watch what you do and I watch what you talk in the first, I see, like, you know, a master artist and like, you know, marketer, um, yeah, playing the, the, the, the long game of brand, um, um, I, this, this term always sometimes it won't, it won't, you, you sometimes catch us people's like, is that a negative, the borrowed interest of celebrity and athlete and like, because of how powerful that is and because of how they appreciate the product and the intelligence that you have in doing that, um, it's fascinating to watch. Uh, I really would love to, you know, dig into like the rollout for G one and like, what you're doing now, we've got the national coming up. What, what's sort of the roadmap for G one, the rest of this year? Um, fantastic question. Um, I always have like a master plan. Like, my master plan is actually, I have a five year plan in place of where all this is going. So it's, it's funny when people compare us to like rare edition or they're like, oh, you're selling these expensive cases, you guys going to be out of business soon. I'm like, no, there's a, there's a pretty master plan here and did it, uh, it's actually, it's kind of fun. I find it, I, but I see it as this giant game of chess and, um, and I enjoy playing chess and I enjoy strat, I love strategy. I love thinking, okay, here are my assets, here are all of my resources. Here's my team. This is where we're going to go with it. And, and I love, there's nothing I love more than somebody saying that's not going to work. It's like a, I love people going, not, not going to work. That's never going to happen. And I'm like, yeah, just, uh, just watch. You're going to see what's going to happen. And so, uh, the rollout is, so we did the first 100 G ones, um, and we called it the 100 club. Um, and we ended up shipping all those and incidentally, nearly everybody that's on the 100 club have now bought a second one or a third one. I've got some guys that are now addicted to them and are wanting to turn over their entire collections into them. And so, what I'm really doing is I'm trying to keep the G one niche and special. I'm trying to put it into really big cards. We're getting a lot of, uh, whales that are reaching out saying, this is the future. We know it's the future. And so, we want to buy, you know, get the, uh, the, there's a microchip on the inside of each one. And so, we want to be able to kind of be early adopters into this program. So I'm really focusing on athletes, whales. I'm going in person to a lot of these people talking them through it. I'm playing to San Francisco. Um, uh, today, later today, again, to go show it to a guy who's, uh, quite big in the, in the, in the Pokemon space. And so the, the goal is to kind of roll this out, keep it special, keep it unique. Not, I don't want to make this a pedestrian item. I want to make this a, a very specialized, something very special, uh, and keep it in that space. And then, later this year, we're coming out with our wall display, uh, we call it the frame. And the frame is just stunning. Uh, some people have seen one of our wall displays that we featured in a lot of our videos. But the new frame is actually better than what people have seen. If it features LEDs, it features magnets, it's, uh, and it's just stunning for people's homes, offices, card shops, or whatever. So I think a lot of people aren't going to understand what the G1 is until they see it with, uh, cases in, uh, on the wall. And when they see that they can put both our hobby cases, which are our entry, um, entry kind of point forward the mint line, which is our card case for, uh, for raw cards as well as the G1s. And then the end of the year, we also have another case coming out. We call the hybrid case, which is far more of a, a approachable kind of price point. It's in the kind of $100 price. And that's, uh, instead of the G1, which uses steel and glass, the hybrid case features, uh, aluminum, which will be the, the key differentiator. So it's a lightweight construction. The price comes down a bit, but it still has the microchip on the inside. And so all of these things kind of feed into the mint, uh, ecosystem, which all goes back to our tech platform that we haven't officially released yet. And so, you know, we're also going to be rolling out, uh, the mint line with, uh, a couple more graders. Uh, Mike Baker is still, I believe, is the premium, uh, one, but we're going to, uh, bring on a couple other graders to give people more options. And then, uh, I'm going to be taking these to, I'm never going to be a guy with a booth. I'm not a guy with a booth at a card show. It's not, it's just not my thing. We're going to be more of, uh, having like events here in Southern California, where we're going to invite, uh, certain people have like more of a party atmosphere, have, uh, uh, kind of a specialty event tonight to roll out our new products. And, uh, so we're going to keep ourselves kind of small and contained, bring out the tech platform. So people see, oh, if I buy a mint case, this is how it works. I'm actually, oh, I can watch a, a cameo frame Frank Thomas talking about his no name on front, uh, card by scanning it. And it all links to my tech platform. And now I can see my cards also on the wall display. So we're, we're building this ecosystem, slow rolling it out through the end of kind of the end of the year. And then we're going to be doing a monster PR and marketing push, not just in the hobby, but outside the hobby to the sports world, the crypto market, the, uh, and doing it in a much uh, bigger way to people outside the hobby. For instance, we're going to be marketing very heavily, uh, to women because, uh, women are kind of tired of buying whiskey tumblers and golf clubs and, uh, you know, socks and ties for their husbands. So we are pre encapsulating a lot of cards of favorite players where the women can buy the G1 cases or our hybrid cases for the man who has everything or the guy who they don't know who to buy the Christmas gift for. So we're going to be marketing a lot to women outside the hobby where if somebody's like, oh, I'm a, you know, King Griffey junior fan, but I'm not a card collector. Well, then we're targeting that person's wife to say, here's a King Griffey junior rookie card inside of a mint case, uh, that you can buy is just a single one off. And now you have a beautiful piece of art, uh, at your house that has nothing to do with cardboard boxes and penny sleeves and submissions and all this, the stuff. And so we're, we're going about the mint ecosystem and the mint plan is, is, it's very unorthodox. I didn't want to kind of do things the way that other card companies do things. I don't want to roll out things slowly. The whole idea is to kind of do it's all, this is all planned. It's all been kind of finessed. And the nice thing is we know the athletes love our, our cases and our products. We know the celebrities love our products. And we're going to kind of target that as a start at the high end. And then we'll trickle down with the rest of our ecosystem to everyone else. This is not meant to be kind of a, a small company over a short amount of time. This is meant to be a very robust business plan. And, uh, and the funny thing is Ryan, compared to my last business plan that I did over the last 10 years, this is a cakewalk. Talking with Brian, Purup, you know, I'm in, I'm in, Purup on Instagram. This is my son. Ryan, this is just, uh, uh, uh, uh, met, uh, extraordinaire, uh, entrepreneur extraordinaire and, uh, building empires by the moment. Uh, yes. You know, if you don't want anything else, you're gonna have five new ideas. I know, I know that that's the funny thing is people listen to me and then like, Brian, you're so full of it, you know, and, uh, and I'm like, no, compared to what I did before, this, this really is, uh, much simpler. Like, my last company was, uh, that I did, uh, the whole of my 30s and into my 40s was I built, uh, a television production company and a tourism company. And my television production company was based in the Hollywood Hills, uh, had a hundred people work in there. And we created the first television series for filming content across the United States for broadcast into China and India. And then we had a tourism components where people that watched the show in China could live the show personally in the United States. Now that was really hard. That was really, really hard. A lot of logistics there. Uh, what's the, uh, education process, but, you know, like with the product and talking to people, I mean, I know you, you enjoy talking about and explaining it. I mean, do we feel, is it harder in the hobby, you know, to sort of break ground on new things? I mean, it feels like, you know, me coming back into it, it's gotten better, but there's a lot of just like same, same old, same old. Yeah. It's, it's funny. You know, like Beckett released their new case and it's, frankly, it's laughable because it, you can see the picture of the Beckett old case and the Beckett new case, and they're the same case. There's minor differences. Okay. The flip has a QR code now. And it's a little bit cleaner of fonts and, and whatever. And, but it's, to me, it's laughable because it's the same thing. PSA did the same thing as well. They spent like three years and millions of dollars to switch from their slab from three years ago to their current slab. It's the same thing. It's slightly, uh, sturdier acrylic, but at the end of the day, it's the same thing. And so I just, I just never liked those kind of things. I thought if you're going to do something right, do it, go all out, do it, you know, really analyze what it takes to make, to protect a card, to display a card, to make it so people can crack out a card. Like PSA has a problem where people crack out cards, resubmit them or crack out a Beckett card, resubmit it. And so I wanted to solve that problem. Nobody can crack out our cases to go and resubmit. It's impossible. And so we solve that problem. And so it's just, I really enjoy the education element. I enjoy talking to people because when you know you have a winning formula and you, it would be one thing if I was trying to wrap something up that was, that was terrible and trying to sell it. That would be very hard. Is if we had a subpar product and we were trying to push it, I couldn't do that. I've never been able to sell something that I don't believe in. It's impossible. I'm, I'm just a passionate person. And so I have to really, really believe in something. In fact, we had a working prototype of the G1 three years ago, three years ago, summer of 2023, I had a working G1 in my hand. And I looked at it and I kept saying, guys, I'm sorry, I wouldn't, I'm not, I wouldn't buy this myself. I can't sell this thing. It's just not good enough. And so I went back to our engineers and designers and said, we got to, we got to kind of start this thing over until, you know, we got to make sure this thing is better in every possible way. And so we went back to the, the drawing board and restarted. And we made it that much better. So when I go and take a case around to show people, I actually really believe in it. So the education process is very simple because all I have to do is show the product to somebody and 90% of the time they already understand it. They already get it just by, by holding it. So that's, that's the educational piece is just here. Hold it, see what it looks like. And it becomes very obvious just immediately as to why we've done what we've done. What's, what do you consider the state of the hobby? I mean, you made some points there that probably tie into it, you know, with the lack of innovation. I've noticed that people kind of move the ball as far as they feel like they have to, you know, but no further. But maybe on a broader sense, you know, tops is taking over all the licenses for the most part, it doesn't matter. You got PSA rule in the world. And I don't, I bring these things up less because I'm suggesting I have a problem with it. I actually like some of the things tops is doing. But I guess on the broader sense of the hobby, what's the state of the state from Brian's perspective? Yeah, I actually really do like, I like a lot of what fanatics is doing. I like a lot of what tops is doing. I think I'm always against monopoly behavior. I don't like monopolies. But it's not even that I don't like monopolies. I don't like it when monopolies actively try to crush other people coming into the space. If the company is great and they're just building and they're monopoly by virtue of they make great stuff, fantastic. But if they're actively trying to shut down everyone else that has some sort of a thing to say against it, then I have a serious problem with it. So I really do like tops and fanatics. I think they're doing such a great job with cards and art and getting players more involved. That's probably my favorite thing that tops is doing is involving players. Players never had connection to cards and now players with signing like MLB debut patches and the other debut patches across all the different licenses. I think it really cool. I think making cards for F1 and tennis and UFC and Star Wars SpongeBob and V friends, I think it's really special that there's kind of something for everything. And during the top's industry event, the fanatics leadership talked about understanding and wanting to make sure that they wanted to have entry level product so that kids could afford and not be priced out. And so I believe they're going to be rolling out a bunch of product for that's entry level. And sure, it's not going to be having patch autos and that kind of stuff. And that's fine because I didn't have patch autos back in the 80s. You're just looking for basic cards of players you love, right? So I think fanatics, I think they're trying to do the right thing in a lot of ways. Not just because it is makes them a bunch of money, which it's going to, but because it's also cleaning up the hobby and making things better. I like that some of the pressure they're putting on card shops to provide a better experience. And I know it must be extraordinarily challenging to have every card shop on the planet blowing them up about allotments because everybody wants allotments and then the breakers have any allotments and then you're having huge amounts of allotments going to the Chinese and so a card shop in Tuscaloosa, Alabama might be like, hey, what's happening? And so I've talked to one of the guys kind of in charge of hobby shops and he helped me understand that they do want to keep hobby shops, the core of the industry. That was always my biggest fear with tops consolidating building the empires that they would squeeze out the little guys or the mom and pop shops and that it would only be kind of these franchise, Tom Brady card vault kind of places. But I believe the hobbies and good hands with the people that are currently running it because I do believe they do want to keep the mom and pop card shop culture alive, which I believe is central to keeping this going long term. But the state of the hobby, I don't like the grading kind of world always bugs me from about a dozen different places. I don't like that kids feel like if you don't have a $10,000 graded 10 PSA case that somehow you're a lesser person. That's the thing that probably bothers me. There's actually a bunch of things that bother me, but probably the number one thing is the culture of if you do not have some super auto graded in a PSA 10 that somehow you are a lesser person. And so I don't like that element of the culture, but I like where everything I do overall love where the hobbies headed. I think it's got longevity. I think we pulled out of the 2000s and the 2010s where it looks like the hobby might you know, disappear entirely. And there's a race surgeons, a lot of people and money are coming in. I have people all day, every day tell me that they saw like a video of mine and now they went to the card shop, they bought some junk wax, they saw some of the new product, bought that and now they're ripping with their sons and grand sons. So I think it's in a pretty good space and I can't wait to see where it's headed over the next decade. But I'm pretty happy with the health of the hobby overall. Yeah, it's definitely healthy. And I agree with the top thing. I like what I've seen. I always say we'd have just bought Panini quite frankly and I know they tried to and I know it got messy and all that and there's a lot of things. But I still like some of those classic Don Ross Panini cards that wanted just to see maintain the license. So maybe I still hold out that then might still end up happening. And I need to get on that allotment list myself. I'm not even on it. My store's booming without allocation. Yeah, well that's because you have honestly Ryan, your card shop, it was such a pleasure to come to your store and see the community that was there that day that I was there. And I got a lot of messages from people after the week or two afterwards going, wow, thanks for highlighting that shop. I went by and it was a real pleasure to go and see it. It was fun having the train go by. It's just such a cool part of town. There's so many card shops that are just like in a strip mall or that sort of thing. And I love how you have this standalone store, you know, and this small town in South Carolina. It's just there's something really special about it. And it has such a cool vibe when you walk in and your team are just such great people. You know, one of the things that makes the card shop greatest, who is in the card shop? Who's running the card shop? And I think that, you know, yourself and your boys and the people that you brought in like Bella and I think it was Cole. Yeah. Yeah. And so you have great people at your shop. And I think that's what makes a successful shop. So even without an allotment and getting great prices on the top product and first releases, your card shop I think is a great beacon of how things should be. And there's a handful of shops that I would say are in that space for me. Yeah. So we just got to get the tops people here. They do need to go there. Yeah. Matter time. I know. We'll have what those talks are the national. Yeah. I'll be giving hand out plane tickets to South Carolina. There you go, man. Yeah. All can be achieved with the right amount of moxie. You'll get it. What's what's something? You know, I know you're going out. You'll be the national on this media tour. What's something fun or exciting that's coming up. For me, it is, I've got to actually something cool I'm doing in two weeks because I'm going to city field in, you know, the Met Stadium. Yeah. And I'm going to be playing in a poker tournament with Marcus, Marcus Simeon and Hank Azaria and a bunch of the Met's. And so that's part of the media tour. Are you a big man? I've heard poker a few times on this call today and this, are you a big poker player, Ryan? I used to be. I do love poker because I love all thing strategy and I love that poker requires skill and luck and analysis. And I used to play a lot of poker when 15 years ago, I was at grad school in England at the University of Cambridge and the whole of this school was very into the business school particularly had a kind of a crew of poker players. And so that's where I really kind of got into it because it was a social part of the university kind of after hours. And I remember playing with these people and going, wow, I'm really holding my own. These are the smartest people in the world right here and I'm keeping up and having a great time. And so that's where I caught the bug. And so I played for, played for the next couple of years, had a blast and then kind of lost it for all these years. Mainly because I got a lot of the same kicks out of ripping packs. And so I like to jump mean, right? And so I like to get my, my jump mean from somewhere. And so I think the poker disappeared when the cards kind of re-emerged. But the poker tournament with the Hankas area and Marcus as city field is completely, that'll be my first poker game in like five years. So we'll see how it goes. I can see you on the world series of poker, man. Like sunglasses on. Ryan looks like a rock star or movie star anyway. And I can see you at the world series poker, like some sunglasses on. He's at the last table. I do have a lot of fun. I kind of, I either go out fast right away or get it to win. I think that's how it always is. Let's meet the blackjack table. Yeah. So I love it. I love, you know, I've, I've had a couple, I actually in a 10 month putting together kind of a group of people here in Huntington Beach and having a poker night. I'm also putting together now as, you know, a baseball team or a softball team for my company and a couple of the local card shops. We're going to form our own kind of team and start playing in one of the Huntington Beach leagues. So I just, I love people. I love hanging out with people and finding excuses to, to do something fun and interesting. What's the plan? So you'll be at the national. We talked about that. I mean, you're not a booth guy. So I guess no booth guy. Yeah. And I thought about you last year. I was at Baker's. Baker was doing grading. And I go, that was a lot of fun. Yeah. We had just dropped off Mike Baker asked us to, he had a Babe Ruth card that he wanted to have put in a G1. Yeah. So we were dropping that off for him and the timing was cool to have met you and your boys. So yeah, I'm actually bringing the whole team this time. This is the first time I'll bring the entire mint team to one event. I just want to give everyone kind of this baptism that hasn't had the opportunity yet. And I'm bringing, you know, my fiance with me and I know Sam's bringing his girl with him. And so we're going to have this crew just rolling around and are most likely in our black mint hats and just going to roll around, say hi to everyone because it's kind of like I was saying to Bella earlier. It's kind of like going to the national is going to like a high school reunion. You see all these friends, you know, from different parts of the industry. And after you've been in the industry for a while, you started going, wow, I actually like a lot of these people. And I can't wait to see them. And so we're going to probably just every, what I've done with the team is every single person on the team now has their own personal G1. There goes the train that's cool to hear. Oh yeah. So everyone on the team has their own personal G1 with their favorite card in it. And so all that we're going to do is everybody's going to just walk around the national, say hi to people, shake hands, take pictures, put the G1 into as many hands as possible. And then go up, say what's up to Mike Baker, high five him at his booth, you know, leave maybe a G1 with him at his booth. So if anybody wants to see one, they can go and roll by, say hi to Mike and grab the G1. It's going to be fun though. I'm not going to bring mine. It's fun. You're part of a small club right now, man. Dude, yeah, now I'm a card, get card carrying one of 100 members. That's entirely correct. Brian has dropped the details. I does, man. It's hot. Let's drop some deeds where can everybody learn more about men, learn more about Brian, Brian Rips. Also, there's Europe. It looks like Rips. He's got the perfect last thing for the hobby. Be Rips. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So my, I mean, our website for the company is Mintiverse.com. It should be mint.com, but there's a nightclub in China that has my, has our domain. So I'm going to roll into China maybe in the next year and see if I can go and buy the domain. But we're Mintiverse. It was kind of a, you know, there's a moment where we're sitting around going, well, we can't have mint.com. So what do we call ourselves? And I think Metiverse was kind of having some real traction at the time. And one of the, my team members call them goes, we should call it Mintiverse. And so that's Mintiverse with a one instead of in the eye. And so that's our, that's our website. All my channels are all at Brian Peerup, you know, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok. And then the Mint Mint has its own kind of Instagram and all these kinds of things. It's all Mintiverse. Anybody just Google's Mintiverse, you're going to find us. But yeah, we are, we are Mint. And I put the one instead of an eye because every single case we make, every single product we make, there's unique identifiers. And so it's all, every piece has a one of one kind of nature to it, which I think is cool. That's what we call it. N-T-M-1-N-T-Mint, the Mintiverse. Hey, and one hell of a nice guy behind it. Brian, I appreciate you, brother. Hey, thank you so much, Ryan. And congratulations on the Shotman. I love seeing it. Love seeing the studio, the shoes, the Pepsi machine. People should just go to South Carolina to go just check out your incredible doorway that say Pepsi machine. And the people should also go and say, what's up to Bella? Bella is like a sunshine in your office every day. And so she also makes the place a better place. And so it's a, you're doing it right, Ryan. I love what you've done with the shop and look forward to on some future road trip rolling through town and seeing what you've done with the place. But I mean, the world's in the world has their own golden drive-through. So nobody has that. And the author is now the Chase Lounge. Sick, sick. I can't wait to check it out, man. Hey, guys, you don't have to find us. ThecollectorNation.com will have all the links to Brian and all that he's doing with M1NT Mint and the Mintiverse, all the links, the YouTube videos. You got to go follow him. It's, it's a fun. I've had more comments from people about the videos that Brian did than about anyone. And I've been doing this for 10 years with a lot of celebrities everyone else. And he makes it fun. He's got a good eye for it. And more than anything, you're supporting one hell of a guy. We appreciate Brian. We appreciate you. We'll see you next time. Clicker Nation. Thanks for tuning into the show. Be sure to follow us on your go-to podcast platform and catch the full video episode over on YouTube. Visit us at collectornation.com and follow Ryan on Instagram at RyanAlford. Now get out there and collect yours.