Unexpected Card Price Surges Shake Up The Hobby This Week

We actually just scanned our millionth V-Friends card. That's awesome. Congrats Gary Vee and team, you made it. Gary's Gary and, you know, people that try to hate on him is just so annoying. Have you seen the market for this guy? Well, we were just talking about that in the office. Like, pandemic, 6 grand. Went back to like 2,500 as of six months ago. And now suddenly it's back up to like 5, 6 grand again. The King Griffey Jr. upper deck rookie. When you style them though? I wouldn't because of nostalgia probably. Yes, network, Ryan and Brian coming to you for our weekly Friday edition of the show What's Up, Ryan. Oh, you know nothing. You know, just a normal week of converting to a C-Corp movie, you know, among holidays. So it's just really just pretty normal around here. How about you? I wasn't going near it. You know, just relaxing, remodeling still a little bit, unwinding two companies, starting three others, sharing, you know, four other ideas with you, filing paperwork for the end of the year for taxes. And I feel like that's about a third of it. Yeah, that's what you can remember. That's what I can remember. No, man, hey, thankful. It's been a good year. A weird, it's been a strange year in some ways, but it's, it's, it's all good. Happy, healthy, family's good. Most of the cards have water up. So that's all that it was good. I thought it really matters at the end of the day. I mean, kids are great. You could always have another one, you know, mm-hmm, exactly. Um, what, seek, I mean, talk a little bit about the business. Like, you know, we talk about the functional things that LudEx, and I know you do some of the behind the scenes. But, you know, running a company of your scale in the hobby, with all the players you're talking with and partnerships, I mean, what's happening behind the scenes? I mean, it's like, it's, it's, it's one of those things where every day you come in here and there's always something different. And there's always a challenge, but there's always, you know, there's good things. You get some wins once in a while. But my day is meetings and meetings and then partnership meetings and then more meetings. I think last week I was in meetings for 31 hours. And I don't, I don't, I don't waste time in meetings. I'm like, all right, guys, what do you got for me? But it's marketing. It's, it's branding. It's customer acquisition, metrics. I mean, it's, it's a, it's really just a date, big data company. And that data comes to me. Can I process it as good as I can? And then I make a decision, but yeah, it's a, it's a little bit of everything, man. Yes. And then just tracking all the card movement, you know, and like all that. Have you done anything with the storage units? No, I was there last weekend though. And I found two, um, inserts, 90 inserts. One was Jordan beam team. And then one was Chipper Jones out of 98. And each of those cards are worth like raw, three, four hundred. Chipper, I'm a brace fan, dude. Chipper, I mean, I got, I got a freaking runner to Kenya, a junior behind me. You know, at least he could do this to me to get for Jones, you know. Yeah, it just make me an offer. I'll get you. I'll do what's here. Oh, I get to get this. Have you seen the market for this guy? That's weird. It was talking about that in the office. Yeah. It's like, it was like, you know, a couple, like pandemic six grand. Went back to like 2,500 as of, I don't know, six months ago. And now suddenly it's back up to like, five, six grand again. The King Griffey, junior, upper deck, rookie. This one's only a seven. Yeah. But the 10, the 10s are going for you. Oh, yeah. I mean, would you sell them though? The 10? I wouldn't. Because of nostalgia, probably. In the storage unit, I found 30 of those. King Griffey, juniors. 10s are just ungraded. Ungraded raw. Did they look good? No, I looked at, I took like five. And this was a while ago. This is last year when I found them. And it was $2,500. And I was like, you know, I doubt there's a 10 here. So I have to go back there and pull them back out. There's a whole binder of every rookie card. 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. Had a couple of those myself a few months back. But it's not just about the value. It's 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. It 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 want to feature you on collectibles.show. Dude, I want to come up there and see you. Actually, I want to just see the storage unit. And have fun with the road trip and check it out on location. That's what I'm talking about. I'm not bringing the crew and just come up there and make an excuse for it. I don't want to wait till the national, though. No, I do it in the spring when it gets a little nicer. Yeah, we're going to play in that out. I mean, if you haven't been following along, Brian bought storage units. Is it two storage units or three? Three. Three. Would you call these? I mean, what are those things called? The tractor trailer containers? Yeah, smaller. Like, the storage units are smaller. Yeah. But I would say that it, it fills up probably a half of a semi-trailer or three quarters. It's like five million cards. What's five million amongst friends? It's a lot of cards and Brian just, you know, ever now and then stumbles in there and pulls out, you know, a couple of inserts worth $1,000 between the two of them. You get 20 Higurvy Jr. rookies in various conditions. And who knows what else is in there? Well, you know, it's interesting. You talk about, like, Vasco, I was not that popular back then. No. But now it's interesting, because we have 330 million scans. What percent do you think are baseball? I know it's high. In 1986, if we could transpose it back to that, it had been 92 percent, 93 percent. This sort of tells me it's close to half still. But I'm just guessing. It is. It's 45 percent are baseball. So I don't want to do the math on that, but it's a lot. And then it's football and basketball kind of like going between and then Pokemon sometimes sneaks up there. But those are like 10 to 15 percent. That we just never more than 20 percent. You know, if there's a good like a quarterback class, it gets up to probably like 25, 30, 25. That's it. And the fun thing is it's grow. And I'm a football card guy. Like I'm football cards, then basketball, then baseball. Like I know baseball. Yes, don't collect it as much. There's just someone that like the legacy collections. There's just so many baseball cards, right? And yeah. And so it's almost impossible for it to ever flip. Now, it could flip on a, you know, maybe, but it hasn't flipped in three years. And it's pretty much like filed in where it always kind of hits. We actually just scanned our millionth V friends card. That's awesome. Hey, congrats. Congrats. Gary V and team. One million scans. Hey, you made it. We're going to give a, we're going to find out who that person was who scanned the millionth card. And I have a couple of V friend cards that Gary gave me that I'll give it to. Like, yeah, that's cool. Andy Cranick. Is it Cranick? Cranick. Yeah, like this is the president. Good guy. You had him on the show. Yeah, I like those guys. I mean, you know, Gary's Gary and I kind of, you know, like, yeah, I think you're just looking for a fight for a fight. Like if you're like to just be disgruntled, like, if you really dislike Gary, like, it's in my cup of tea every day. Like, no, but I respect the hell out of them. Like, and have no problems with them. It's more just if I, you know, it's kind of like, if I were to turn that program on, it's not always. You know, I don't need Gary to remind me some, shit, I probably should have been doing. Like, it's more of that than anything. It's more of me than Gary. But, but people that try to hate on him, it was just so annoying. And like, I get why he's easy to, like, when you're successful and you talk and you've been in front of the camera for 10 years, you get, you will get fatigued. But don't get it confused. Dude's running through a ball around people. He's ballin big time. He's authentic. He's exactly who he shows. That's the thing. It's like, he's not, it's, I can't stand fake. You know, like, I can, we're all made different and have different personalities. And people like get more, you know, but shit, he's not exactly what he says he is. It's harder to be authentic in today's world than it is to be someone else you're not. Exactly. What's going on this week? Well, we got some movers. I'm sure in the weekly hard market and the ludic scans. What's happening? I think, yeah, he don't surprise me. Let's see. Let's see. I mean, finally, Drake May is not in there. Yep. He was like four, four weeks in a row. He was a top guy. Okay. There's two of these guys that kind of surprised me. One that should not after his week, last week, his first breakout game. So. Should do or should do. So his downtown PSA 10 was traded 1200 bucks end of November and now are the traded $2,000. Now and scans have increased by 34%. The second one is so situational because Daniel Jones went down and they got to go find a quarterback and they find Philip. I'm going to tell you something, Brian. Google like search results are an inflection of what's happening in the environment, right? Like I used to a lot more but still do with some clients because we do Google ads and all that stuff. I look at the search trends and they tell you like literally the sentiment of what's happening because search volume one different things. LudEx is absolutely the sentiment meter of the hobby because it is 100% reflective of the hottest news. Okay. Should or big game number one. Philip Rivers. What? Hitting the scans. It's so topical. Yeah. And it's crazy because if you think about it, like that shows how big this industry is because the only way you can have efficient pricing like this is if there's a lot of there's so many people, so much volume. So there's people that's like should or standards buy it. And then the followers, there's a reason why they fell. And people are smart in this industry. And do you buy this followers when they fall? Do you sell the risers when they rise? That's the question. But I mean, Philip Rivers comes back and he's a 41% scan rate. His PSA is 22004 tops. PSA 10 is up from 160 to 210. And then this last one, I mean, I don't even want to put you on the spot. This is hard. I would not have gotten this guy. I have no idea, but I bet it's someone that's underrated. Let's put this. It was five years after Philip Rivers started. And he's still playing at a high level. Yet, Stafford, 31%. Okay. And then on the followers, we have one follower. And it's the marriage of Philip Rivers. So yeah, the other Daniel, the other side of the coin, I feel bad for Daniel Jones. I'm just going to go ahead and let's just circle this. Do's had resurgent year. I didn't like the fact he was playing with the broken fibula or whatever. That was like, you're always putting more, even when you think you're not, you're putting more pressure or something on that other leg. It did not surprise me. I was watching that game live when it happened. And I said, he's done. That's the killings. I can just tell. And the way he pounded the ground immediately, you knew he knew. I mean, he had to deal with the giants in that incompetency. And then you get with an organization that's got a team put together. And you show with why you were a top pick in the draft. And, you know, not the number one, but a first round pick. And I hate it for him. Yeah, it's tough. Yeah, I mean, his stuff's almost down 50 per cent. 50 per cent worldwide. Yeah, from a 250, 2019, it's Penini, Silver Prism, PSA 10, 250 to 132. I mean, at 100, he got to buy it. Yes. I would agree. I'll be a buyer. Shit, how long it takes just to get PSA to do something? I mean, buying a PSA 10 for 100 bucks for a legit quarterback, you know. You're already 25 bucks ahead. Yeah. I just go out buy some nines and maybe haven't re-graded. Maybe I'll get tens. I don't know if anybody ever does that. That would never happen. Oh, let's crack some nines, baby. You know, I mean, I know how it is. You go to the bar back when you were single. You crack some nines hoping they'd go home and be a 10. You know, but you didn't, you just, but you didn't have, you weren't judge jury and executioner. You know, you get to make the grade. Oh, man. Just saying, I don't know, allegations or allegations, but damn. I mean, it's just like, what do we do? This industry has had a sort of a cloud a bit, you know, always a bit and not looks not hurting sales, but just a little slimy, right? So it's the, I mean, when I was in 80s and I said, every dealer was slimy. It's gotten better. It's a lot better than it was then. I can tell you that. But it's always had a little bit of this over it. Like everybody's trying to get over on everybody. And it's like, I finally, you get something and it's still like, everybody's trying to get over on somebody. Well, I mean, and look, in a central proven guilty, but they have either smoke. There's fire. You, yeah. And it's, I don't know, man. Like, don't you make a, I don't know. Where do you drive? There is no, I mean, it's almost like they're above the law in a sense. Whoever in this industry of market leader, because I've never seen news that takes people down. Like, PWCC, that, I mean, that went out of business. But that was just, that was just debt. They just had too much debt in a shrinking market. And they were giving 80% or 90% of the money, loaning it to you on the all-time high of cards. Like, that was a disaster waiting to happen. But beyond that, like, any time there's a grading issue, any kind of like, it's fine. Hey, there's, they didn't print a one-on-one. Okay, whatever. They'll keep buying it. They'll keep grading it. But if this industry is very resilient, I mean, people love to talk about it. It just shows you the category is so strong that it carries even the bad players. Like, because the category can overcome, because again, all of us degenerates. You know, it's still going to be our pastime. You know, like, keep it up card collecting and doing stuff. And we're willing to sort of turn the other way. You know, I don't know. Like, is it, what if it says something? Because look, as much as I want it to be less dominated by males and all that, is it say something about the population of the audience that we kind of are willing to sort of overlook these things? I mean, there's, well, there's so many nuances, right? Like, did this industry. So like, if that offends you as a grader or a customer, the issue that's happening with grading companies is that the big three, three and a half with SGC, this is like perfect material for an AI grading company to come on me. Like, see, we're going to do this differently. And you got to trust us. The issue with that is it doesn't matter if you're better. What's the secondary market going to do? And how long is it going to take for your slabs to be worth what these, you know, leapfrog CGC and Beckett and PSA? I mean, you run out of money. You're a tech company. You will run out of money. And there's a lot of carnage on that. Now, are they better than other graders? Probably at this point. But yeah, there's, it's the business models really rough, really rough. I love Mike Baker's doing that. I mean, I know he's got an uphill battle and scaling and all that. I'm realistic, but I still like what he's doing. And, you know, he's bringing a little bit of evolution to it with being able to see why your card graded and have an online serial code to that. And I mean, I know that they have codes with the cards at PSA too. But you can't, you sure can't on every card go to a site and see why it graded what it did. That's for sure. Yeah, the tag does a good job. Mike Baker is amazing. Yeah, there's great, great people. And I don't know, I hope that what we've heard will be just proven absolutely false. But it's a lot of power under one company, you know? Yeah, I mean, I like, I mean, I like the guys on me that he's acting a problem like personally with PSA. But I can acknowledge the sort of position they're in that allows them certain rights of playing all sides of the fence. Right? Yeah, like in the financial world when I was trading derivatives with my company, like Goldman Sachs just played by different rules. And I had to trade with Goldman Sachs against them every single trade. And they just had different rules. And they're like, whatever. Take me to court. I'm like, I'm not going to take you to court. I'm worth like nothing and you're worth like a trillion dollars. So, but they would just back out of trades and they're just like the credibility. They don't care because they're so big and they're not going to get hit. I'll say this. And we'll see open invitation. I have gotten a lot of yeses. And I've got some of the, we've, we've had some big names that are willing to come on. I've got, we've got them scheduled. PSA has been the most. What do you call it? Dodge dodging like it's, we got a top 10 sports show in the US. One of the, you know, biggest tech players in the hobby. Credibility. I got a number one show in business. You know, we're not doing this in a basement somewhere down in a van by the river, you know, like, it's so, but it's what it is. It's a little dodgy dodging. You know, we'll see, we'll see, we'll try getting that on here. You know, I know I like that. I like that. I like all those guys. I like everyone. Yeah, me too. There's no one I don't like, but I'm, we're still going to call a spade a spader. At least go like this real. Somebody come on here and tell us that didn't happen. Well, the best thing in corporate America is if they send the letter saying it didn't happen, then it, then it happened. Absolutely happened. Oh, so, uh, Otani one of one logo man is already at over a million bucks on auction is it now it's going to set the record for highest ultra modern card sale. Wow. A million bucks for a single card out of like 20 to 2025 tops, I think. That's amazing. Good for that person. I mean, it's crazy that I guess in theory, I don't know. I'd like to know sometimes what, what these carts came out of. I mean, a lot of times they're breaks out of, you know, expensive hobby boxes. But sometimes, sometimes you go to Asheville, Brian Asheville North Carolina on a couples retreat. And you go into the shittiest card shop you've ever seen. And you buy five packs of Don Russ. And you go back to the room and everybody goes to sleep. And you start going through the second pack in your boxers, your wife snoring. And the fourth, fifth, sixth card is gold. It's Josh Allen out of five. Come on. Yeah. $5,000 Josh Allen. This was exactly a, uh, it's it'll be your go in January that I did that. That's why going to marriage. That's why going to marriage weekends that works. Everybody just sleep. And I was like doing a the silent yellow dance going no way of like unbelieveable gold. Downtown Josh Allen out of five out of a crack. The moral story is go to marriage counseling weekends and just buy a bunch of stuff and your marriage is perfect. Yes, uh, and, uh, and he's my favorite player. Oh, no, chances. I mean, unbelievable. It's a good story and it's true. Uh, it's like car work now. It's for it's, I think it's 5 to 10. I mean, I get it's, it's so rare. It's like, what's what somebody want to pay? Yeah, making offer someone out there. Yeah, you won't sell it. No, you don't sell shit. Hmm, uh, well, uh, not stuff I like. I mean, I got it. Yeah, you guys need to come to the store. You're going to see some fun stuff. Then I'm going to put some of my collection out. It's not for sale. It's fun to look at. You know, you can hold it. You don't mind me holding my going. Just kidding. This is okay. It's the same. Museum pieces, museum pieces. But that's a good story there. Dude, the biggest hole in the wall. A little card shop, whatever you're seeing. That's crazy. Oh, it might say which freaks go great. If that look, right, I got to tell the rest of the story. Literally, I go in there. And I was kind of downtown hunting a little bit. No, I, no, of course, I'm realistic. No way I'm getting it, right? But the guy in front of me bought everything with the last five packs out of this box. And I was going to buy everything that was left the box. He bought like 15 packs. And I'm like counting as he's going through it. I'm like, all I did was come here to buy the rest of that hobby box. It was a hobby box. And he goes, he bought 15 ahead of me. And I bought the last five. Query, you guys' life never turned around. He's probably, he is probably in a van down by the river. No one in the shop. I didn't go back to the shop. I mean, like I went back to Greenwood. It's an hour and a half away. Like I didn't go back and go, look what I found on your shop. Maybe I should have, but it was more just. And I think I actually negotiated the packs here. Like I didn't pay full price. You should have given him a rebate. You should have given him a rebate. I think they were, he had him like at like $24 a pack or something. I think I got him down to 15. $75 bucks for $5,000 Josh Allen. Yeah, that's just probably out of business, you know? I am, you know, nice, they were nice people, but it was just dumb. I'm just gonna stop and I'm not gonna name any names. I don't even remember the name. That was, you know. But then we'd had, you know, the afternoon cocktails with all the couples. It was couples retreat, you know? Getting away, you know? That was awesome. Don't worry about my work here about that. When I take her on a couple's retreat, she won't know the real reason why I'm doing it. It's to buy packs and break up because it works. Yes. I heard about this L.A. sports car burglary. $100,000 worth of Pokemon a sports car. It's stolen from a Burbank, California shop. How does it like a smashing grab, do you know? I don't know all the details. All I know is there's, I've heard of about four or five of these stories, a lot of increasing theft. I'm like, surely in its terrible. I mean, I don't, you don't want this to happen. Surely you've got insurance covering. You're merchandise. You would hope. I mean, all right, tell me, I mean, I'm new to this, but I mean, I keep you in church on what I, like, it could be so much. Most of shops, most of shops don't have it. Like, at least the ones that I know, they did. But, I mean, it's not that bad, I mean, it's it. Yeah, first of all, it's very hard to find a, uh, I mean, it's not that bad, it's not that bad. It's not that bad, it's not that bad, it's not that bad, it's not that bad. First of all, it's very hard to find a, uh, a real company, a carrier that does it. And when they do do it, you have to make sure that your inventory is up to exactly what it is if you want the money back, right? Also, it goes under like this umbrella. But at some point, that's why we're a lot, I went to talk to a chub insurance. And I said, why don't you use our technology? And so when you go into these shops or these collectors, you can have a digital receipt. And then those guys, if they sell the car, could take it out. And you have a, you have your value. And they like the idea, but, um, I got business, I don't know. Like, they didn't get back to me, but I still like the idea. Brian, I have insurance and I have inventory. And the reason I have both of these is because I scanned every one of them through the eggs. And I have my digital collection and I had a spreadsheet. So there you have it. That's it. Yeah. So I'm a living case example of exactly what you described. The, um, but it is tough. Like I have, I'm not doing everyday business yet. I haven't even opened the doors, but I can imagine, won't you in and out, in and out, in and out. But look, if you're going to have like a Shopify or something, which we will, you got to do it. You got to keep up with it. So you've got your inventory. So you know what's available and not. So, you know, it's more, I think, a reflection, and I have no idea. We might be talking this, this company, they might have perfect insurance and everything else. We don't know if it's this specific story. But it's more, I think, a reflection of kind of a little bit of how behind some of the industry is, I think, with the digital aspect of, I don't know, and shopifying everything, right? Yeah. I mean, the one good thing, we get the shop in Texas. We just found out who our neighbors were. And it's Arlington Police Department is moving in. Yes. That's perfect, man. You give them a 10% discount, and they're there anyway. So, yeah. I'm hopefully sitting here. Hey, if you're listening and easily, stop by, men in blue or fire department, military, police, 10% off every day, all day, and free coffee and drinks from me. So, yeah, serve the ones that protect us every day. That's awesome. It's good for business, and it's just good for life. Cool, man. Any final thoughts? Anything else happening? I know we've got a few announcements. Don't we? Then we have a new, you know, there's so many updates to Ludux every day. There might be a piece of hardware that may or may not be in pre-sale mode. Yeah. It's the Ludux Lightbox, and we created it. I started it a year ago, and it's probably an iteration 20. But it's a Lightbox that takes perfect pictures. You can do penny sleeves. You can do top loaders. And then there's a stand from our partners at IPVO. And it just takes the best pictures. You can go to our website, www.lux.com to check it out. We are doing pre-orders, delivery by January 15th. But I invented this with a guy from Canada, because I just saw the need for having something at this caliber. And hopefully people like it. But, yeah, I used your pre-yodemo like at the national. And it worked pretty damn good. I think that was the pre-model, whatever you want to call it. And the concept, though, it was getting pretty damn good for a demo model. So I'm sure the final, it makes it super fast. It's like scanning them in with full slide. Kind of fun, too. There's something like, I don't know, it's like, like sliding the cards in. It's a cool sound if you do top loaders like, yeah, I think that's what it was. Yeah, it's like, so I get so happy when I do it. Yeah, exactly. I think it's the cash register, like going to team, to team. You should have added a sound effect to the side, you know, like when it goes through. To team, to team, to team. I'm going to get my order. Oh, you know, get the store up and going. You know, I think we'll announce next week some stuff that you and I have been talking about with the collectibles media and all that. So we'll say that for next week. But got the store, you know, my wife held an event in my store last night before I'd even opened. Yeah, she had her Christmas party here. That's cool. So it went well, no cards seemed to have walked off. The, and so yeah, man, it's starting to look like a legitimate spot around here. I'm going to do some B-roll film for that. Probably over this week, we'll have it for next week and talk about some exciting things Brian and I are talking about in the media space for where and when and how you can watch this show and other shows in the hobby. So we'll tease that and leave it there. Other than that, hoping to Jaguars stay hot in, you know, and Josh Allen keeps kicking it. And the bears need to come back. They need to come back week. They have to be Cleveland. Got to be Cleveland bounce back. You know, at the high temperatures going to be on Sunday. I don't want to know. I remember six. The high. That score might be six to three. Two good defenses and that's a frozen ball is what that is. That's honestly like almost too cold for me to go. Almost, almost. I just had to drink more beer. Exactly. Cool, man. Appreciate you as always. You know where to find us. Collectibles.show. You can watch the full episode. You can download content from there. We got the full episodes. We got links to all of LudEx's stuff. And want to send a shout out to Jason and Matthew who are here today. Jason's one of my biggest fans from the business show. Jason Center is dad Matthews here. We want to thank them for stopping in the studio. We'll always love it. Hey, they might have got some special stuff. So hey, give us a shout. We'll come and see us in the studio. And of course, you know where to go. Go to the App Store type LUDX. You're going to get the greatest. It's gang, trading, digital collection management, everything right there in the App Store, no matter where you're at. LUDX, changing the game in the hobby tech. We're always changing the game right here. Ryan and Brian are always here for you in the hobby. And we appreciate everyone for listening. And we'll see you next time. I'll try to go. Thank you, buddy. Thank you, buddy. 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.collectables.show or follow Ryan on Instagram at RyanAlford. Now get out there and collect yours.