The Dailey Edge Podcast
Join hosts Trent, TJ, and Todd Dailey as they explore the intersections of technology, culture, fitness, and personal growth. Through engaging discussions and personal anecdotes, the trio dives into topics ranging from childhood gaming nostalgia and cutting-edge fitness tech to the pursuit of happiness and lifestyle choices. Whether reminiscing about epic gaming marathons, sharing tips for staying on the forefront of fitness trends, or unraveling the complexities of modern life, The Dailey Edge delivers thoughtful insights, lively debates, and relatable stories for listeners of all walks of life.
The Dailey Edge Podcast
Episode 51: You Want To Go Rip Some Packs?
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A $1,500 pack with 10 cards. A live-stream “break” where you might spend $200 and get nothing. An 8-year-old who learns in real time that a cool pull only feels cool until you check eBay. That’s the collectibles world right now, and we wanted to talk about it honestly.
We get into the modern sports card market and Pokemon card craze, how scarcity and resellers create constant pressure, and why platforms like Whatnot can turn collecting into something that feels a lot like gambling. We compare the old days of riding bikes to buy 99-cent packs with gum to today’s hobby boxes, breaker boxes, case hits, parallels, autos, and the nonstop release cycle designed to keep you chasing the next “hit.”
We also zoom out and ask the bigger questions: why do we collect at all, who decides what a piece of cardboard is worth, and where grading companies fit into the value machine. Along the way we talk sneakers, Lego investing, watches, whiskey, and even infamous scams in other collectible markets. If you collect with your family, or you’re tempted by the hype, we share practical ways to keep it fun, set limits, and avoid letting the price become the point.
If this sparked something for you, subscribe, share it with a friend who rips packs, and leave a review. What’s the one collectible you’ll never pay over retail for?
Why Collectibles Feel Everywhere
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to the Daily Edge here with my brothers TJ and Todd Daily. And today we're going to talk about collectibles. I mean, you can collect anything. There's the Pokemon Craze, there's sports card craze, um, anything that there's a supply demand. There, you know, I think there's collectibles, but there's also a lot of things like, and I think back to like the PlayStation 3, or what are we on five, the PlayStation 5? Couldn't get it for a year, right? Because everyone bought everything up and then they sold it at a higher amount. Um, so Legos, Legos, yeah. I mean, anything that's at demand that you can get that's gonna go out of stock. Um, resellers have created this unbelievable, you know, gotta have last one kind of mentality, and people are going crazy. And, you know, what I'd like to start with is like I saw this meme the other day, and it was like, you know, Pokemon, you know, the quickest way to, you know, being evicted from your house is to start collecting Pokemon, like the the financial drain on um, and this is not the kids, these are adults that are really diving in, and I've got plenty of stories that I'll definitely share throughout, but you know, how has collecting cards as a kid or anything? I mean, it could be beanie babies, you know, back in the day. I if we could remember, it'd be fun to go back and to think of the things that we collected back and what what we do now, but it's a craze right now. And uh, so I I would love to get get your guys' take, your your experience. So if you guys are currently collecting anything as a family or an individual, um, what are your thoughts?
SPEAKER_00I'd
Nostalgia Versus The Thrill
SPEAKER_00like to pose it, I'd like to look at it philosophically because I think we all know, I'd love to just explore this, unpack it really quickly. Um, I don't know about you guys, but I have one or two friends, one person I think of in particular who is like a career collector. And, you know, like like from a philosophical standpoint, why do we do it? Is it cataloging history and like keeping that nostalgia? Is that, you know, we associate certain feelings with certain moments in time and then we try to recapture that moment in time through collecting. Um, there's certain people that are, you know, I have a buddy who I believe at one time um had one of the top five largest record collections in the world. Um, but he also collected sports memorabilia, but like very specific things and just cataloging that. So like there, it's really interesting, right? Because I think on one side of it, there's that. And then, like you referred to, the other side of it is taking advantage of um humans like animals, um, desire for an opportunity at chance, right? Like they they tell you that like you only need to give a dog a treat one out of every seven times, because that one time keeps them coming back. Same thing. I think we uh uh exhibit that behavior as humans, where um, you know, so you see it, we've we've we've had an episode on gambling, and so I'd I I'd like to unpack that. And I guess maybe before we get into what we're doing right now, uh, from an execution or tactical standpoint, like where is it for you? Do you lean one more like a particular way? Are you doing it for a particular are you doing it for nostalgia? Are you doing it for the thrill? Are you doing it for both? Or is there a third reason, like, hey, this is uh this is, you know, like we talked about with gambling, it's entertainment for my family?
SPEAKER_01To me, it's a product of boredom, and there's very, very little good that comes out of it, and I'm self-incriminated in that because I've done it. And I think it's there's one good that I've found to come out of it, and the reason I have done it is bonding with the boys. The boys enjoy it, I you know, enjoy it, um, and that's generally why I do it. But otherwise, I think it promotes uh false idols, I think it promotes spending money that you may or may not have. I think it promotes gambling. I think like I just like philosophically, and maybe a little bit theologically here. I don't think it's a healthy thing, and I think it's a product of boredom of the human race. And I honestly think our ancestors would be completely disgusted by the way we're passing time with collecting cards, and that is includes includes myself. I mean, I'm right in the square of it. It's uh so I didn't collect cards since we were kids, and then one of my friends got me back into when Wimbanyana, Victor Wimbinana was a rookie. It's like probably the the next phenom, the next Michael Jordan, big year, gotta start collecting. And so um, I had a little disposable money and started doing it with the kids and I started to learn the whole system. And I was like, you know, you you go to Walmart or Meyer or wherever and you buy the the hanger boxes for $40.
SPEAKER_00Well, hold on, let's pause. Why don't you talk? But let's talk about let's let's let's rewind and start. We did collect just kids, so talk
The Childhood Card Era Compared
SPEAKER_00about the evolution from collecting the 1989 hoop series to what it is today, and then include that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I mean, back in the day, you we rode our bike to Village Pantry and bought a pack for 99 cents or 89 cents, right? We bought a pack of cards, 20, 30 cards, yeah. It had pack pack of had a piece of gum in it, which I hated because I gum, but like, yeah, you would collect it and you know, you would try to build the series. And I mean, it back then we were Case and Jordans and things like that, but yeah, we were collecting, but and dad, he would go to like uh the local place and buy like full boxes, Casey Sports Cards, KPK, sports shout outs shout outs, and then he would go to Coverlease, who was a distributor of like of gas stations, like they distributed candy and stuff almost like a Sam's Club. Um, and he would buy boxes and keep them, you know, until later periods of time. But back then it was like there wasn't a lot of variety. I mean, you had just the card. Now it's like everything, it's just like video games. Used to play Mario Brothers or Mario Bros. 3. You were either a fireball, you had a tail, or you were a regular person. Now these characters have infinite, you know, capabilities, infinite custom, you know, stats. And so it's a similar with cards. They've made, they make so many sets each year, it's insane. I mean, Pokemon's got to come out with a new set every like eight weeks, it seems like. Yeah, there's always a new set, there's always special inserts and basketball cards. There's always one of one. There's autographs, there's patches, there's jersey. I mean, they have taken this market, and now, you know, there's really two major card companies. It's it's Topps, which is owned by Fanatics now, and then there's Panini. I'm sorry, in the sports world. Obviously, Pokemon's its its own animal. Um, and Panini, well, Panini had the NBA rights and just lost it, and Topps now has it. So now Panini can only they can do cards, but they can't have the name of the jersey on it and stuff. So it's gonna be
Modern Card Economics And Box Prices
SPEAKER_01really interesting. But I wanted to read a fact to you because part of what I you know enjoy about it is the collecting, but it's the it's the slot machine hit. It's like, man, do I get I mean, I sent you guys a video the other day, and I was beyond, but I think there's good and bad in that. And I'll tell I'll tell you a story. So for Easter, both of my sons got a small box, $30 box of Pokemon. And um, my youngest eight-year-old opens his box up and he's got this card. It's got the trainer and the Pokemon, which is like supposed to be good. And he shows it to my oldest, and my oldest was like, Oh, that's my favorite card. That's the one that I wanted so bad. And my oldest didn't get any hits, and so he's kind of like, you know, it left him feeling a little jealous. My youngest is like, I bet it's worth $150 or $200. Dad, look it up, dad, look it up. And I'm like, I don't have card ladder anymore. He's like, look it up, look it up. And I'm like, all right, I look it up and I was like, um, it looks like one sold on eBay for $14.50. And he went from, oh, uh, are you are you sure? Like, it sucked everything out of it. The collecting part, the it's a neat card part, it all became about the money, and this is an eight-year-old. And so I'm like, I saw that and I'm like, this is not good. So for the the slot machine pull side of it, where it's like, I want to hit a card, but then there's the collectible factor of like I want to collect a whole set of something, and I think that becomes fun to just collect things, but I'll go back to you know, disposable income, I think's important, but there's one stat I want to read you. Pokemon cards have seen the largest long-term increase in value of all cards, it's up 3,261% over 20 years, and um it's increasing at nearly 46% a year, far exceeding the SP 500 and Nvidia, which is an average of 12%. Um, and even in the last five years, it's gone up 350%. Sports cards is a $33.6 billion industry that they're anticipating to be a $271 billion industry by 2034. So recently I collect basketball cards, so I was kind of given that evolution. You could only buy a certain pack, it was a dollar, you get anywhere you want, but it was just really a standard pack. Well, now you got the hanger boxes, which are standard packs, you have the mega boxes, which are just above standard packs, which are in that 60 to 70 range. But if you want to get the good hits, you got to buy hobby box or higher. Hobby boxes are anywhere from $400 to I've seen them as high as $1,800, depending on the set. So Topps comes out with their initial set, there, and then they come out, their tops regular, and then that's like in December. Then they come out with their Tops Chrome. Now they have NBA Fanatics, they're getting ready to come out with a Tops Chrome supercharge that has all the rookie patches on them. You cannot go, so you can only buy hobby boxes or breaker boxes or national treasure boxes, all these at a card store. So you're going to physical card stores like in indie, the indie card exchange. Right now, you can't find them. You cannot go in and buy your standard hobby boxes in there, and you haven't been like they come in, they sell out. And we're talking thousand-dollar boxes. Yeah, the breaker box, fifteen hundred and fifty dollars. How many cards in it? The breaker box has one pack and it has 10 carts for $1,500. $1,550. One pack, but it has three autographs. So you're guaranteed three autos. The hobby box, which is running about nine hundred and eighty dollars now, has two autos, but it has six packs. And so that's the new topps finest that just came out, and you cannot find them, you cannot buy them. And so it tells you the type of people that are getting into the
Whatnot Breaks And Hype Traps
SPEAKER_01games. Part of it, I think, is the whole whatnot phenomenon. If you don't know what whatnot is, it's an app. It's basically you can go on and buy any card. Um, and they have these people that go on and sell individual cards, but a lot of these guys have started, it's basically an industry where they'll do these box breaks where they sell teams. So, like, let's say it's NBA, they'll say, okay, I'm selling 32 slots, and you are bidding, and you're gonna get randomly assigned a team, and then the spots, and so then you just swipe and you bid and say, Okay, you spent $80 for a spot, and the next guy may spend $100, and then so like you may get, let's say you get the Spurs by chance, right? So you spent $80 to $100 to and you randomly got to sign the Spurs, then he opens the box on screen, and any card that you that he gets that's a spur, you get. So, like, well, will he get a Wimby? I don't know. Probably one of the best cards, or like a Dylan Harper rookie. But if you don't, if he doesn't hit any Spurs, then you don't get anything. So, like, there's this, like, so a lot of that's happening, and a lot of people are buying boxes, and um the similar to like trying to get Taylor Swift tickets, like the top's finest box were released at $480 hobby boxes, and now they're $980 and they're impossible to find. And so the internet has also made all the resellers just kind of run up. So um it's it's basically high stakes, and it is no joke that it is putting financial pressure on a lot of people that want to be collectors. Um, and it's and so there's goods, there's bad, it it feels like gambling. Going back to your question, what drives it? I think it's like I'm gonna win, I'm gonna hit big, I'm gonna get the one-on-one. I mean, there's cards that sell for a million bucks.
SPEAKER_00It's so interesting. You watch something to kind of paint the picture a little bit more granularly as it relates to whatnot for people who have never experienced that. Just imagine like a real or a YouTube live stream where somebody is opening packs of cards and showing you what they get, and you can either, like he said, uh bid and bid on and or buy something that would um allow you to gain access for them to ship you that card physically or buy the actual card itself. But it's crazy because what seems to be happening is like man, the people who got in, and it's always this right, or the people that have been in for a little bit are just shredding the new people that are new to the market that are jumping into the hype. I remember getting in, you know, again, my reference point was kids like 10 cards a bot a pack, 20 cards a pack. Um, just that in and of itself, the quantity. And I remember, again, I mentioned in prior podcasts we were into F1. So I'm like, oh, you know, I wonder if they have F1 cards because for me, uh because my daughter's super into it, it's like, okay, well, there's there's a secondary piece here. We're not collecting stuff we don't understand about just to collect it that we won't care about in a week. Um, so we get on, he's like, Oh, yeah, I'm doing, I'm breaking half a case. I'll do half a case of Topps Chrome F1. I'm like, you hear, I mean, you think about back when we were kids, if somebody had a case of cards, that was thousands and thousands of cards, because you're talking a case was like 20 boxes, 20 boxes of hundreds of cards a box, right? 120, 200 cards a box. And so I'm like, oh hell yeah. And so I bid on one of the drivers. Um, and it's like the dude. Uh, it's I think it was Kimmy Antonelli, who is uh a rookie. He's super well, second year, um, but he's super young, and he's won the first two race, two of the first three races this year. He's like, it's like huge. And then he breaks the first box in in this case of half case of six boxes, and he he takes out the first pack, and there's six cards. Six cards per pack, and there's six packs per box, so there's like 30 cards a box, and I'm like, there's only 180 cards, and what they've done, like a lot of the other brands out there, is like there's a lot of historical cards in there, right? Like older drivers and people who've retired. And I was exactly what what you talked about. But if you look at it economically, he probably bought those boxes for 600 bucks a piece. And like um, you know, there were some of the drivers. There were 22 spots, but the cheapest spot was like 100 bucks, yeah, you know, and some of them go as high as 300. Um, so you're, you know, I again I don't know what what they bought them for, but like if it was if it was 400 per box, like you were talking about, it was $2,400 and he made $5,000. Um, but then you got these people that are spending $100 or $200 or $300 for a slot to get absolutely nothing. And man, um, it's it's pretty nuts.
SPEAKER_01So before I think cards is probably the biggest thing now, but before that it was it was shoes, Jordans, and Jordans are still hard to get. And part of it is is like you know, they go in the vault, they stop making them, and then they do a release and a drop. And I would say what maybe 10 years ago, the ultimate collectible was Jordans. Is that fair? Yeah. To that, and that's kind of cycled. So it's gonna be interesting because Pokemon up 3,000 some percent, like when will it hit its precipice? Like, when will people not be able to spend fifteen hundred dollars on a box of cards? Like, you would think if the if it they're charging something for that, that there's gonna be inventory out there because that's pretty stinking high. Um what what kills a cycle? What you know, I know Pokemon's done a lot to try to limit the the customer ability to buy multiple of them, right? Yeah, because that's been a challenge, and they've they've probably done better than most because everyone else is like, you can buy as much as you want and and go. Like, how how do you think we come out of this, or do we never come? And it just I know a lot of them NBA players are buying their own cards, like they're buying a lot of stuff. I mean, I think look, humans are gonna gamble. Humans have been gambling for hundreds of years and probably thousands of years. If we were to go back, there are probably aspects of people who got thrill out of pulling the the handle, and this is a different way to do it. And I mean, people have been collecting sports cards for well over a hundred years, yeah. I mean, well over a hundred years, and I think even sports cards have been huge for well over 30. I mean, the the value of the Jordan rookie, you know, didn't really I think part of that was because at that time it wasn't as big, right? But by the by the early 90s, sports cards was massive and Pokemon's massive, and I think anytime that I I think the more steam those things build, the longer it takes for them to kind of fade out because and I
Do These Booms Ever End
SPEAKER_01think in a world that's getting more and more digital, people are liking the physical experience of uh I can't speak to whatnot, but physical experience of opening packs. I mean, I think you're more likely to see the types of cards shifting to different things that people are interested in, whether it's F1 or it's Pokemon or it's sports or it's something else that becomes really popular at some point. Um, there could there seem to be cards here. There's Disney cards now, there would be actors, uh you know, and golf, Marvel, Disney. Um you can buy a card for just about anything. So I I think it's going to be an extremely long time. And again, you may have a certain sport that goes up and down or a certain area of interest, but I think it's such an industry now that anytime there's a societal interest in something, you're going to see is it is it though, is it the con is it the confluence of nostalgia and um the income disparity and disposable income, meaning like right now, like Pokemon over the last six months, year has gone like and maybe it was just out outside of my purview.
SPEAKER_00I mean, there's always been, it's always had a really loyal following. People that play TCG, people that play the games, right? That that have, you know, played every version of every Game Boy game, Game Boy Advanced game, Nintendo DS game, Switch game that's come out, they've played them all. You know, people that play Pokemon Go and that are out, you know, catch like there's always been a loyal following uh as it relates to that particular fandom. But it seems like over the last six months to the last to year, it's off the charts. Um, and I wonder, is it, you know, we're now getting to the point where the people who, you know, we're were what is it? Maybe 30. So that were like 10 in the in the mid-90s when Pokemon kind of hit, they're now 40. And the way income is kind of shifted, where there's a disparity and there's a lot of um haves and a lot of have nots, and not a lot in the middle, it's like, oh, there's the nostalgia factor, and oh, I have a thousand bucks to spend on a box. Like, is that why it's it's taking off like it's taking off right now? And and when because I I think you're right, like with the the shoe cycle, um is is it because we're so close in proximity to those exact people that they're maybe five, six, seven years younger than we are, that we we feel that undercurrent of this like excitement around Pokemon, and there's another demographic of people who maybe they're in their 20s right now and they don't care and and they're further away from it. Like, do we just feel it because of our proximity to it? Um, or is it really, really, really real? And um, there's gonna be maybe maybe if we have it, we hit another recession like we did in 08, maybe the bot, maybe that's one of the first things the bottom drops out on. I don't know. So I just just kind of posing that for you two.
SPEAKER_01I think you're right. I mean, I think the the demand, the increases that you've seen is generally an entrance of significant amounts of money into the system. And so you have companies andor people andor other entities that are injecting large as large amounts of gas into the system, and that's driving the price. Prices up considerably now. There are a lot of people that can't afford it that are still you know uh uh playing it uh for sure. I it's it's it's fascinating. The one thing I wanted to point out about it that I think is interesting and why it's gonna be here for a long time, it does promote human interaction, it promotes human interaction in trading the cards amongst friends.
Community Bonding And Storage Problems
SPEAKER_01It promotes human interaction if you're doing the whatnot and ripping packs or poxes, and I think people are I think that's a draw, whether it's conscious or subconscious. I think people enjoy that human interaction. We're getting less and less of it naturally, and it's a way to connect. There's nothing like ripping packs. I mean, pulling a slot machine is pretty close. It's pretty close, but like for kids, especially. We had Christmas, and one of the things I did is is or we did is we bought we played this, you know, bingo game, and they got to come up and they either got a pack of cards or they could punch a hole and get up to twenty dollars. And it was like the 20, it's like the board didn't even exist, and that was even for the adults too. They had Disney packs, um, they had hobby packs of regular tops, and it was like they're freaking out, you know. Uh just opening the packs, it was like, oh, am I gonna hit? Is this gonna hit? So um they get really, I mean, it's just really exciting to rip packs with when we get a box and we decide to do it, you know, you get the kids around, um, and then you, you know, you got the cases. And um, I gotta tell you though, so I've been collecting for a couple years now, and it becomes a storage issue at some point, right? It's like, you know, I've organized by teams, I've got way too much because I'm not actually selling any of the inventory at this moment, but there there is, at least in the sporting world, there there is timing, right? Like NBA finals are coming up, you you follow teams, you're like, if it ends up being Shea in the in the finals, or if Spurs get like those cards are gonna be hotter. You know, Khan Kanipple right now is super hot. He set the record for three pointers, he's a rookie. Um, they're not gonna do well, but like he had an unbelievable season. He's probably one of the top two, three rookies. He probably won't get rookie of the year. I think Coop had a 50-point game, is probably still gonna get it. So, but if you got like Cooper flag cards that are like any type of rarity at all, like just a baseline Cooper is like 50 bucks. That's the those are the people that I think there are some people that have gotten into it, have mastered it, have really calculated it, and they're doing to make a living. And that I'm okay with. Like, I feel like if there's any, if you're gonna, you know, if you're gonna, if you're there to make a living at it and you take your time to master the craft, like I think there's uh there's a place for that. Um I just wish I personally and all of us weren't as susceptible to the what I think is just there's I'm always one that can find the good in just about anything. And there's certainly with the human interaction, the ability to bond with kids and things, but the dopamine.
SPEAKER_00I think there's a couple different real classifications of people that are into this
FOMO Buyers And Retail Flippers
SPEAKER_00this hobby. You know, to your point about the masters, I was I my wife is shout out Terra Daly, um, extremely into Pokemon. Uh it is I've never watched her.
SPEAKER_01How long has she been into this?
SPEAKER_00It really, probably like four months.
SPEAKER_01And and why did she start? I'm curious. Like, what what was the trigger?
SPEAKER_00I think it was Miles. Like, you know, I mean, that's her that's her boy, and it's our only son, and we have two daughters, and so like that's her boy, and and he was kind of in it adjacent, right? His friends would have cards and they'd show him cards, and we know how competitive our kids can be, and they wanted he wanted better cards and he wanted to open packs, and so then she got into it. Um, and then the the rush of it, and then her friends, she has a couple friends. Her, her, my sister-in-law's husband is into it, and one of Tara's best friends and her husband are into it. So, like, then she's got this kind of community, they're all doing it together, and then she actually, like, you know, I was really negative, kind of like you at the beginning. I'm like, look, dude, I collected cards as a kid, and they were really, really cool then. And I haven't cared about cards in 30 years. Um, you know, I I've I've gotten excited about collecting things, and then I know they end up like, you know, for me, they don't bring any value. Um, but yeah, she she now she has almost completed an entire set. She has everything digitally cataloged. She is, you know, you talked earlier about uh Pokemon restricting opportunities to buy. So they have these Pokemon machines in different areas, and we have one in our local Kroger. And the way it works is it it's stocked, but it only shows in stocked during certain timed intervals. So they could have a hundred boxes in this Pokemon machine, but you just can't walk up and buy a hundred boxes. You have to wait, it'll do a reset, and they'll be like, hey, this box is now in stock, and you can buy two or three of them and then gone. And then you come back a half hour later and maybe it pops up. So there's even a slot machine aspect to them limiting retail access to these boxes, and she will go and stand in Kroger. But that leads me to At least she's dedicated. She's dedicated, she really likes it, and so I love that she's passionate about it, but um, we've got to be realistic as well. And I I appreciated the other day when she was on the phone with you and she was like, Oh, I can't buy those, those are double retail. Like, I think there's something to that. You see that with shoe collectors, where like real shoe collectors won't pay much over retail. Like they will figure out a way to do that. So I like that. Um, but I think that also I was talking about the different types of people in this industry. Um, so you have you have the people that are just, it's all FOMO, right? They're just doing it to do it. They have no idea what they're doing. I think Miles honestly would probably fall into that category. It's fun, it's exciting, but there's nothing else to it. Then you got the people that are kind of new into it. Um you're kind of still newish into it compared to like the lifers. Um new into it, but they're passionate about it. They get it, they understand it, and it's something they want to pursue because it gives them joy. Then you have what I would uh equate to the drug dealers. And I think these are the people that are trying to make a living, but in the most like grimy way possible. And these are the guys Tara tells me about that are our age that will stand in Kroger for five or six hours next to this machine and just wait. And just whenever it resets, and they'll take them and they'll probably go to whatnot, right? And they'll spend $160 on in booster packs or ETB or whatever, and they'll get on whatnot and they'll flip them for six, seven hundred bucks. You know, decent amount of money.
SPEAKER_01If they hit.
SPEAKER_00If they hit, well, if they're doing whatnot and they're like selling the packs, selling the packs, because that's what the Pokemon do. They'll be like, hey, here's the pack, we're raffling this pack off. Yeah, you get a chance to open this pack for $30, and they pay $30 for six packs.
SPEAKER_01Because they're buying it at retail, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So they're paying, so they're making, you know, that they're they're spending 40 bucks retail on a box, then they get six packs. So, you know, maybe they're making eighty dollars per one of those. I mean, you could be making two 250 bucks a day. Really hard to make a living off of it, but it's a grind. And then, you know, because of Terra, I've been getting served more card content. Um, then you've got the guys that are like next level, and one of them was showing me this dude who lived in like Missouri and drove to the Noblesville Moose Lodge right there on like Field Drive, right by Forest Park. And I'm like, and and in there were all of these you know, guys and girls, probably 30 to 60, just like we remember it, the giant boxes of cards, and he's picking them up, like looking very specifically for the gems. Oh, these are 90 cents apiece. Let me find the card in here that's that either I need to complete the set or that's two bucks, and let me spend four hours in here doing that exact thing. And those are the you know, Kyle Haases of the world, and like the people that I mean, one of our good friends on whatnot does that.
SPEAKER_01And I mean, he spends a ton of his time, so he's given his time to do it, but he buys all these cards between 10 or 2 and 12, and he gets them, he knows what they're worth and turns around and sells them for 20 or 30. Yeah, and I mean, you if you have enough time, there's people that have enough cards out there that like eBay, they'll forget to like set a minimum and then it'll be an auction and you can get it really low, or you get on whatnot and you swipe really fast, and you know, you may get one while someone's sleeping, you may get a steal. And so if they're willing to put that five to ten hours in, people can turn it into a profitable hobby if you are doing something like that. But if you're if you're a a pack ripper and you're not and you don't have a platform to sell, it's gambling. There's no question about it.
SPEAKER_00I feel like it'd be such a grind in a lot of instances. Like, I guess if you're going to bigger card shows and you're able to move a lot of quantity at once.
SPEAKER_01Most people aren't doing it for the for the money. I think most people do it initially for the hit.
SPEAKER_00Sure.
SPEAKER_01Like, I mean, the money might be like at some point, you're like, oh my gosh, like I can't keep doing this. I mean, what what type of money do you have to make to spend a thousand or two thousand dollars a month net?
SPEAKER_00Half a million a year, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like, at what point does it make sense to say, like, yeah, I'm gonna go buy a box of cards for a thousand
The Money Math For Families
SPEAKER_01dollars today? And so because the collecting has moved into the 30s, 40s, and 50 year olds, it's like you've I've been trying to instill that in my kids. And so, like, they all have we use green light, they all have credit cards, same, and they have spending allowances, and they're like, Dad, let's go rip some packs. I'm like, You want to go buy? You want to go to Walmart and buy a box? And Isaiah really quickly learned that a hanger box is with tax is $63.84, and I've got to wait four more weeks before I have enough money to buy another one. So when they see dad buy a box, which again, I'm a little impulsive, just in our nature. I'm like, do you realize that if I buy a hobby box for $800, that in order to do that, and I actually do some of the math, I'm like, let's say you work and you make $20 an hour, and that's like this is the math behind it. Like, I want you to think about this, isn't normal, and I don't do it very often. Even I don't do it very often, and so it's like there's this um there's this tug and pull because you always want the next card. I mean, I I took for for Lent, I got off whatnot,
Big Hits And Dopamine Stories
SPEAKER_01and I got off buying cars. Now he's back on, and then Lent is over, and the pressure mounted and the channel. I bought a couple, and I mean, and going back to your community statement, I mean, I bought I I'll come clean a little bit. I bought a breaker box and I bought one hobby box. Um, and so I told the prices of those earlier, but I'll make you go back and see what they are. But the the hobby box, I got a card, um, a Shea Gilgis Aura, which is a one and nine hundred and sixty-two-pack hit out of a hobby box. A breaker box is double the hobby box, and that aura is still a one in 161 out of a breaker box. It was the card that it's sold on eBay for over a thousand bucks, right?
SPEAKER_00So you could hypothetically spend 200 grand on breaker boxes, and that's what it would cost to like ensure you hit that card.
SPEAKER_01Correct. Yeah, so I hit so the breaker, so the hobby box I hit an aura. It in the hobby box had two um guaranteed autos in it, but the autos were one in 900. Is that basically one per case? Yeah, that's a case hit. So I bought a hobby box, I get a case hit. My autographs in there were kind of trash. I had a couple of numbered cards, whatever. I was in Indy. Their last box they had was a breaker box, and I'm like, last one. I've been in there two times. I happen to be in Indy every now and then. I'm like, all right, I'll take the breaker box. And uh I'm with my son and and I videoed it, and like I can't tell you the joy we had opening it up and sending the video to you and James and TJ and like like it three autos, and the two other autos were just okay, but I got a I hit. I hit a Dylan Harper rookie, red and black. Um in the new top's finest, they have their uh their signature cards. Uh they have green, so they have the green level like geo, the green parallel signature cards, which is your most common. So those are generally out of I think a hundred. They're numbered out of a hundred. You have your orange, which I think are out of 75. You have um another color, you have your black, which is out of 25, and your red and black is out of 10. And then your final one is red, which is out of five. So I've got a Dylan Harper red and black rookie auto signature out of 10 that's arguably worth two grand, maybe three. Like it's super rare. There's 10 of them in the world. It's it was a it was another case hit. Um, those are one in 41 pack hits just to get one of those, but to get Dylan Harper, who is arguably one of the three best rookies in the league right now, he's starting for the Spurs, is even rare. So, like the excitement when that poll came out, I mean, it felt like I just hit the lottery. Like, we were super excited about it. Here's the thing I thought of the other day. I don't know if you guys have seen the video of like they do these different videos, and it's about valuing your worth and how you can take something to a pawn shop and it's worth this, and you take it somewhere else, it's worth this. You take this amount of lead and you make this with it, and it's worth you know hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? And Noah made a comment to me the other day when we were in China about the fact that these companies are taking
How Card Companies Manufacture Value
SPEAKER_01paper and think about the amount of money. Like, I'm so I'm just thinking about this from a like a business perspective. Let's take Topps and Panini, right? Clearly, it hinges, they're paying the MBA. That's probably one of their biggest outflows of expenses is paying the leagues for the right licensing, licensing. But I'm just trying to figure out how you do that. You're just kind of making up these cards, right? And you're making up, you know, you can have a million one-of-ones, right? But like there's got to be this art to how many you're putting out there and how many different types of inserts you're putting out there, and how limited each insert is. And they've mastered this art of taking paper and putting pictures or designs on it, or maybe adding a little reflection, and they these things are coming out of these boxes worth thousands of dollars, and they're they cost probably pennies to make.
SPEAKER_00It's well, I mean, it's like it's like there's I think about it two ways. First of all, you know, like I guess first of all, if you talk about that, like how much did the oil paints and the canvas cost to paint the Mona Lisa? Um, you know, or or or even more abstract art. Right? We've all seen art. It's like, what in the hell is it? Art's a really good comparison. Yeah, like, yeah. Some of these different things. Um and so that all of that said, is it is it, does it become I mean, you see a lot of that, and it's just a mechanism to for investment, just to park money. Like, hey, you know, you see a lot of these ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra wealthy people that have 200 million dollar art collections. Because like, where else do I put it?
SPEAKER_01Um watches is another big one. It's another one, right? People collect watches spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.
SPEAKER_00I mean, they they they hold their value, but I watched a really good one a really good one on oh gosh, I can't think of it, but I watched a documentary on one of the guys on the tip of my tongue because it's an F it's a big F1 sponsor. I'll get there. But they make watches that cost about 10 grand to make, and they're selling them for a quarter million dollars. Yeah. Um, and so it's like it is I I to your point, I kind of wonder is it something where okay, we've got to find a community of people, and we have to make this an accepted place, like they they have to support this initiative to make to from a val like like a currency in the US. You had to have people they're like, okay, we're not trading gold anymore. This has value, and like I that's so interesting to me. Who are the people that validate that these are now worth something? And then when does it become and then who it's it's funny, I sound like a freaking conspiracy theorist. They um, but like how does that happen? That is such a fascinating it is, it's remarkable.
SPEAKER_01I mean, you see, think about okay, what if we decided, okay, we're gonna create uh we're gonna create a third. You got tops and panini, and then we're gonna create a third company that sells cards, and we're gonna have inserts and one of ones and one of tens, and we just go out on whatnot and we start slinging brand that people haven't heard of, but it's like you've got harpers and flags and like names of people. Like, what would prevent us? Bo Jackson did that. Yeah, Bo Jackson has a set that it's not there, but to your point, some people have done that, they've created their kind of owner.
SPEAKER_00He's got that techmo one right now where he his new he's they he's done a collab because Bo Jackson, everybody knows Tecmo Super Bowl or Tecmo Bowl, either way, and so it's like Bo's card, whatever that you're talking about, but like he just did a collab with Tecmo Super Bowl where it's a picture of you know, it's an eight-bit image of him scoring a touchdown in Tecmo Super Bowl, and then he signed it, and it's this it's it's his grail card.
SPEAKER_01He's created a set, yeah. Like you can go out and buy packs of it. The other part we haven't talked about all this is the grading.
Grading Power And Market Scandals
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the grading companies are popping up like that. You got PSA that and I saw this thing, and it's like every card company in March graded like PSA was up 18%. They graded 417,000 cards in a month. Then you got like TCG and you got Beckett's, you know, remember the Beckett guide? You used to have to get the monthly guidance to the Beckett pressure. Oh, what's it worth, you know? And then and so like there was all of these companies, so now you send these come these cards away and you wait 90, 120 days sometimes to get the card back from a grading, and they don't just charge you a per car grade, they charge you a percent of what they think it's worth. So you send in a like a 101, you may pay three, four hundred dollars for the grading, and the difference between a nine and a ten is 10x because a nine is considered like standard, that's considered out of the box standard. But if you get a 10, if you get a PSA PSA specific 10, off charts. You getting the Dylan Harper, the SGA graded. I I have I need to make a trip to so you can go to places, IndyCarter Exchange being one of them, where you can sit down with them and they'll tell you the ones that you should probably get graded. I have a con knipple rookie out of 75 that is worth uh five, six hundred bucks, but I really, really like it. I may get that graded too. So um, and I got some wimbies that are pretty awesome on the rookie side. You still have is it the clay, the one of one you still have? I got the clay, I'll probably get the clay. It's a it's a die cut. And so we were talking about this a good example. So I got a clay a few years ago when he was still one of the Splash brothers. One of one arguably would have been worth more that year. Um, but we were looking up and I was talking to James, and it was like, you know, he in what they're saying, he's a first ballot Hall of Famer. Oh, for sure. I mean, just because of you wait until you get so he goes to the Hall of Fame, and so I do think there is a spike in peaks, and when people are looking for different cards, and then there's the you know, you got to be in the right crowds of people. Like if I go on whatnot, I'm looking for pacers and Colts. And you know, I went out and bought an auto of just about every I have an Andrew Nimhard, I have a Tyrese Halliburton, I have Aaron Neesmith, and I got all their rookies, even if they weren't a Pacers. And the irony is is some of those second, third tier players you can get for 10, 15, 20 bucks on eBay, they don't even care, like a Zach Edy. I mean, you can go out and find auto rookie cards for near near nothing. Um, so there is timing to all of this, and I don't understand the timing as well, but I know when people are hot and I just choose to hold because my thought is is like 10 years from now it should be worth more, but I could be completely wrong. You guys may. Find this interesting. Were you gonna add something to that?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I was gonna uh you go first. I'm gonna talk about grading real quick.
SPEAKER_01Uh we'll just do that. I actually just looked up, just out of interest, the top 10 collectible markets in the world.
SPEAKER_00Just to add to your grading, I think I've talked about this maybe once on a prior podcast, but there was a big scandal that happened in that regard in the video game industry. That's one that bottomed out. That's one where at one point, I think it was pandemic, everybody was home, everybody had free money because they were all getting their stimulus checks and unopened Nest games, like sealed, originally factory sealed Nest games, started going for a 10, 20x, what they normally were. And there was this big conspiracy because one of the grading, at least seemingly, one of the allegedly, one of the grading companies that was grading these games had a backdoor relationship with one of the auction houses. Right? So they're like grading them and then like kind of hinting at the value and creating this like inflation that was
Other Collectibles And Final Takeaways
SPEAKER_00completely not real. And so there were games that went for $20,000, $30,000 that are worth like two grand. Um but that was an interesting, like, you know, you get the wrong relationship between a grading company and an auction house. It can go wrong.
SPEAKER_01Everything's worth what people are willing to pay for. Shame on them. Art and antiques, $57 billion. Number two, classic cars, $37 billion, fine wine, $35 billion, sports memorabilia, $25 billion, toy collectibles, $24.9 billion, coins, numismatics. Numismatics? It's numismatics. Okay, yeah, N-U-M-I-S, $21 billion, comic books, I hadn't thought about, $16.8 billion, trading cards, $15.8 billion, collectible sneakers, Jordan's 9.8 billion, and stamps, 8.5 billion.
SPEAKER_00So you mentioned one that's crazy to me. Great book I recommend. Again, shout out John Fowls for recommending this to me. Um it's something vinegar. It's like the something vinegar. But, anyways, it it kind of uh dovetails nicely into the comment I just made about um billionaire's vinegar, I think is something. Um, but it dovetails nicely into kind of the scam I was just talking about, where there was a guy, and then again, like you said, it's so crazy what people will pay for. And I think this ties into our conversation about like who's determining this value. But there was this really famous wine reseller um who had made a name for himself over years and years and years in the rare wine industry, and had worked his way up into this like super top echelon, and had essentially fabricated that there was this um cellar that Thomas Jefferson had kept in France with all of these bottles of wine that were hundreds of years old from a particular vineyard at a particular vintage, just completely um uh like unbelievable fine, right? Like this is the rarest thing of rare. We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars for bottles. You know, if you want to read the book, great, fine. Um sorry for spoiling it, but here it comes. Uh as you go through the book and as it gets to the very end, it was all a lie. He was he was dusting the bottles, he was making the labels in his basement. Um and true story. Yeah, and creating these bottles to make them look like they were a couple hundred years old. But people were like calling him into question because he always seemed to have more. And they're like, well, how many bottles did Thomas? Like, you know, first there were only three, and then there were four. I the most expensive bottle ever made, and it was bought by one of the the huge um, I feel like one of the big media magnets bought it and like put it in uh the the the foyer of like their New York office. Um but like it was phenomenal. I mean, we're talking, I think one of the bottles went for seven figures and it was all bullshit. Why? I mean, maybe though, you know, and it because people were like, well, and then he'd crack a bottle and it would taste perfect. And they're like, there's, you know, the the the real Somaliers, like, there's no way. Like it just doesn't make sense. There's no way this could be. Um, but it goes back to like, what will people pay for? And he was in the right rooms with the right people. He had he knew how to produce the right proceed the right provenance, he knew what to say, and you know, probably fleeced that community for tens of millions of dollars. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_01It's impressive.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, I when you read that list, it's really interesting. It's like people have been collecting, and you're billionaires and people who make millions and millions of dollars. I remember uh one of my wife's dad's best friend, he collected Corvettes and he got the Corvette that the Indy 500 every year. He got one, he had all he had all 25 of them in an air-conditioned showroom when he passed away. Like there's different levels of this, and maybe part of this is the phenomenon of what's going on with Pokemon, but part of it is we're getting to the collector age because we maybe we have a little more disposable income, so we're seeing it a little more. Um when you're raising kids, they're really little and you're just trying to build your career. There people were still collecting that whole time. Uh, and I have friends that collect watches, and you know, I'm like, man, if I had a $10,000 hobby of buying watches, I don't know how I would support that. So I would say, even after this whole conversation, it's like I mean, I still think the aggressiveness of those card markets has taken off, but it looks like it's going to continue to grow into the near future, especially in the sporting world with what they're predicting almost the 10x growth in the next 10 10 years. It'll be interesting. When you look at all the other categories and how long many of those have been being collected for, it dwarfs the duration of which, yeah. I mean, cars. And here's the other interesting thing we haven't talked about at all is if you're a true collector and you're collecting and you're doing it for the, you know, a lot of people collect their own players or whatever, the best way to collect is to buy individual cards. Yeah. And I think that's when you look at cars, that's less, much less gambling, right? Because cars and cards and a lot of these collectibles, they hold their values pretty well, or there's certain categories that hold your value well. And if you're making a bet on a certain player and you, you know, or you just like that player and you're doing it for fun, I think there's a way to do it that isn't so risky or gambling. And we haven't really hit on that. When you said the cars, the 25 cars, uh he, you know, that's just a place to put your money that you'll be able to get your money out of it, right? When you when you're done. In the in the case of most cases, some some things pop, some bubbles burst. Um I was just looking on here about the fastest growing uh the fastest growing of those collectible sneakers is actually still the fastest growing, um, as is collector cars, coins, and then collectibles. Trading cards is like sixth on the list in terms of which which uh LLM are you using? I'm using chat for this. So it's interesting because you said cards were 15 billion and Claude said 33.6 billion. Interesting. So almost double. So it's a little AI differentiation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think I think what ultimately though, the engine that has to drive this is the real collectors, right? They're the ones, the people that are, and again, are is it cataloging things from a nostalgic perspective? Um, you know, and I I I and I think those people that drive that, they probably have the evolution like we talked about in prior podcasts, from a professional perspective, where in your 20s and 30s, you are learning the marketplace. I had a good friend of mine who was in the car game, and he he worked his way up from a you know Honda Accord to a Lamborghini because he understood, okay, I can buy this car, I can take this off of it, and this off of it. I'll part these things out, you know, if it had a turbo on it or something else, and I'll sell these and then I can resell the car actually for the same price I paid it because I got a great deal, and then I'll buy this car and then I'll do the same thing. And he worked his way up. So now he knows the market extremely well. And he's built a bankroll. So now he can start collecting cars because you know, a toilet or cameraman's not going to hold its value. But when you get into that extra, now I can start collecting cars that are appreciating in value. And then when I'm in my 50s and 60s, um I'm not only cataloging history, but I can also afford to go buy a car that's just special to me because I've made so much extra money. And I, and that that's here for my own personal enjoyment, like a Jay Lino. But I think there's something to be being able to, I mean, there's a reason that we have the Louvre and we have museums all over the world that people spend hard-earned money and or or free to go walk around and explore in Jay Leno's garage with all these beautiful cars. That it there's there's something we're drawn to it for some reason. I think that's the basis that drives all of this, and then you have everything else layered on top and it's exploding.
SPEAKER_01You know, one we didn't talk about that was actually really big, especially during COVID, was whiskey.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, people were I mean, going for I mean, bottles were going for hundreds and they were hard to find, and um and it's still the alcohol sector is you know, it's gone back a little bit. Um but there's still people doing it. And then another one that was really um there was one on here that I thought was NFTs, baby. Yeah, when we used to buy the NFTs, but like Legos is another one they said is appreciated more than gold um over a 10 10 year period, the cost of Legos, like I bought all four of the big Star Wars sets: the Death Star, the Millennium Falcon, the Defender, and there's one other one that just came out, and they're all unopened. And I think those four, because they some of them have gone out of circulation, but if you have all four of their thousand or ten ten thousand plus set uh builds, that I bet you in a decade they'll be worth a fortune, you know. So I think there's value in history, I think is what what what we're saying, and um the more rare something is uh probably it's gonna continue to drive value, real realizing that there is the possibility for anything to take a step back, depending on where we're at as a society. Any final thoughts?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You want to go rip some packs? No. Well, um, a lot of fun stuff. I think collectibles can be fun. Um, it is something great to do with your kids, uh, but it can easily turn into uh a wild habit if you let it. So uh enjoy talking to you guys on this one and uh look forward to seeing you guys next time. Thanks.