April 9, 2025 • 48 mins
In this episode of the What Sold Podcast, hosts Brandon and Matt (aka Rusty the Reseller) delve into the complex and exciting world of sports card collecting. They discuss how the condition and rarity of cards affect value, the grading process, and the timing for selling cards based on events in sports history. Matt shares his personal collection, including valuable rookie cards of Kobe Bryant, Bo Jackson, and Larry Bird. The duo also touches on the challenges and considerations of buying and selling sports memorabilia, emphasizing the importance of authentication. Listen in for valuable insights and a teaser for next week's big stories: a bad experience and an exciting success in the reselling world.
00:00 Introduction and Hosts
02:02 The YouTube Channel and Consistency
03:00 Content Creation Challenges
05:13 Reselling Stories and Personal Anecdotes
11:11 Sports Cards and Memorabilia
26:00 Understanding Card Grading Costs
26:36 The Grading Process Explained
26:56 Card Value and Collector Preferences
27:34 Finding Valuable Cards
29:11 The Importance of Card Condition
30:57 Kobe Bryant Rookie Cards
32:14 Hunting for Cards in Thrift Stores
33:13 Mass Production and Card Rarity
35:04 Strategies for Selling Cards
41:20 Sports Memorabilia and Authentication
44:15 Teaser for the Next Show
47:23 Closing Remarks and Viewer Engagement
The What Sold Podcast Subreddit
#sportsmemorabilia #ebayauctions #baseballcards #sportscards #sportscollectables #rookiecards #sellingonebay #vintage #whatsoldpodcast #rustythereseller #whatsold #reselling #ebaystore #thewhatsoldpodcast
Rusty the reseller:
https://www.youtube.com/@RustyTheReseller What Sold: https://www.youtube.com/@whatsold Postcard Planet: https://www.youtube.com/@postcardplanet What Sold Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc513e2aPbloS20mTwuv8bAMark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:38):
Welcome back to the What Sold Podcast,our Daily Journey into the Madness
that is the aftermarket merchant world.
My name is Brandon.
I am here with my good friend Matt.
Some of you know himas Rusty, the reseller.
People always say to me when I say, yeah,I'm doing this show with my friend Matt.
He has a YouTube channel.
They all refer to you as Rusty.
(00:59):
None of them refer to you asMatt, you're rusty to them.
Everybody at my wife Flo at her work also.
'cause sometimes they get little goodiesfrom me, like little cha little things
to put on the bookshelf for whatever.
Sure.
They get little gifts from Rusty from timeto time and some of them watch the video.
(01:20):
Some of 'em listen to the podcast.
So it's funny.
I was out with some friends theother night and we were just out
hanging out and met some strangers.
And of course they want to tellhim, I don't, it's not really
something I care people knowingabout, like in my personal life.
And yet they're like, oh, he's got thisYouTube channel and all this stuff, and
then here comes this barrage of questionsthat I don't particularly care to.
(01:42):
Yeah.
To answer.
It's just well, it's just this thing.
And for a famous media guy, youdefinitely don't like the spotlight.
You would be perfectly happy tonot be in the spotlight ever.
Yeah.
And I don't think, again I'm not famous.
It'd be one thing if I wasmaking a living at this thing.
Yeah.
Which, who knows someday?
Who knows?
You can't predict the future.
Your famous adjacent, that'swhat we wanna say here.
Yeah, exactly.
(02:02):
I'll tell you this, when the YouTubechannel subscribers grew to larger than
the population of the town I grew up in,which was small, it's not saying a lot.
Beautiful South southwest, Missouri.
Missouri.
Yeah exactly.
My grandpa would call it Missouri.
But yeah, listen, it's it's, theYouTube fan base, I say fan base,
(02:23):
subscribers means nothing really.
You have to have a certain number inorder to get monetized on YouTube.
Right.
But it has everything to do withhow many people are actually.
Viewing and consuming your content.
Right.
And whether or not they're doingthat has to do with a lot of factors.
One being how consistent are you?
And right now, I'm not consistent.
I've been really bad since the beginningof this year, putting out content.
(02:46):
I got out of the habit of itand it's just been difficult
for me to get back into that.
The good news is there's lots ofcontent being posted on the what sold.
That's right.
YouTube.
That's right.
Keeping that bad boy rolling.
I do think it's really, I still amfascinated by the fact that some
people consume the podcast throughthe webpage or through the YouTube
(03:07):
channel, and yeah, plenty of peoplekeep, listening to downloads.
We have lots of subscribers now thatsort of, you, I can always tell, I can
see where the metrics are on the showand it's, it's really interesting.
I just, I've been doing this for along time and I'm still amazed at how
there's so many ways to get content.
It's like an ever moving target ifyou are a content creator, unless
(03:31):
you're just like super massive.
It is a challenge.
If people are out there and they'relike doing a YouTube channel maybe
they're a reseller and they just wannashow what they're selling or whatever
and trying to drive business that way.
I'd say don't get discouraged.
Just remind yourselfthat it's a slow build.
It's probably not gonna happenovernight and the word influencer
(03:51):
is one of the most irritating wordsin the English dictionary now.
So you do the best you can.
I don't consider us influencers.
I think that influencers, it seemslike they're trying to sell a product.
They're sponsored or they'rethings, and that's, not saying
we'll never do that, but.
What we've been all about.
Oh, we wanna be influencers.
Sure.
(04:11):
But we've, we've just, we'vebeen giving out information.
Listen, this is I've been doing theYouTube channel for over four years.
We've been doing this podcast for overa year, and thus far I, we have required
nothing monetarily, nothing from people.
It's just giving out that informationbecause I think it helps people.
The information that was providedand out there when I needed
(04:34):
it was super helpful for me.
There's a lot to learn.
I find it interesting and fascinating tolearn about different types of things.
Sure.
The whole purpose of learning that isto, in this context is so that I can
know a thing and know the value andthen, and turn that into some money
that I can use to support my family.
(04:54):
But everybody has needs and.
Whether you have a lot of money or not.
People always, they either needsomething to fill their extra time.
It's fun, it's a hobby, or theyreally could use some extra money
and I think that this informationcan be useful to just about anybody.
That's why we still do it.
Yeah I've mentioned my brotheron this show several times.
(05:15):
He runs this little Golf SECreseller and he basically sells
golf equipment to people verynick, and it's perfect for him.
He makes enough, his whole goal.
Money to pay for his fees does six.
And he sells it.
That's good.
It's good to have a goal.
Yeah.
I like that idea.
(05:35):
Yeah.
It's hard for me.
It's a moving target.
The goal is always tomake enough to pay bills.
How much is enough, Matt?
How much is enough when you're Elon Musk?
I could tell you, I could tellyou exactly what our monthly
costs are, an approximate range.
No, it's more than it sh it, it probablyneeds to be, we can certainly scale
back, but it's different for everybody.
If we stop doing it, but it isone of those things where you.
(05:57):
If you're gonna ever make moneydoing it this way or try to,
you're gonna have to invest.
That's just the way it's, and mm-hmm.
Unless you get just flat out lucky and youhave somehow built a following somewhere
else, you're just gonna have to invest.
Yeah.
And as we found, and if you do anyresearch from other people who produce
content on various platforms, they'llall tell you roughly the same thing.
(06:18):
Hey, if you want to build anaudience, you need to have a podcast.
You need to.
Ah, or multiple YouTube channels.
You gotta have stuff on TikTok.
Yeah.
And you gotta have stuff on Instagramand you gotta have stuff on Facebook,
and you gotta have stuff on whatnot andall of these things, and you're pumping
stuff out because one particular typeof person, maybe the person listening
(06:38):
right now, they consume through podcasts.
They don't have time to sit and accept.
Maybe that's just too irritating.
It's better to do that betweenon a commute or whatever else.
Other people, a way of decompressingfrom the day in the evening is
going through and watching somereels or some YouTube videos.
Mm-hmm.
And those may be twodifferent types of consumers.
(06:59):
So really you need to have your contentin all of these different platforms so
that you can reach people where they wantto be, not where you want them to be.
Yeah.
And as much as we like to complainabout some of this stuff, ultimately
our reach is so much greaterthan it ever would've been as two
dudes living in Western Carolina.
Being resellers and or creating apodcast, two middle aged, normal looking
(07:20):
guys, normal guys that I'm incrediblyhandsome and that's one of the draws
to the show, but it is a reach thatyou're not gonna get in any other way.
Keep doing it.
Anyway, enough about that.
I did have a reselling moment thisweek that I haven't even shared
with you because we haven't even,we've been two ships in the night.
We've been just so busy.
I want to hear it.
I bought I bought, let me tellyou, I don't buy anything my wife
(07:42):
buys and I go support the ventureand it's always, I would say 90%
of the time it's for our daughter.
It's like one of those things.
All the things that go into the lifeof a kid and the things you need,
and it just, it's just whatever.
It's, so we had to getmy daughter a new bed.
We had her kind of young girl bed and nowwe've moved her into a middle school bed.
(08:05):
And it was a ridiculouslyoverpriced, expensive pottery barn
bed that would be normally probably$2,500 if you bought brand new.
So we, oh my gosh.
We, my wife found this bed.
She's like, Hey, can you go pick upthis new bed for our daughter Maple?
And I said, Hmm, okay, sure.
(08:26):
So I grabbed my truck and Idrive down to Mills River, which
is, that's by 30 minutes away.
Mm-hmm.
And I get there and when they saidit was a big bed, I had no idea.
And by the way, this isFacebook marketplace.
So it's that whole weirdness of Facebook
this into my truck.
I had to.
(08:49):
$900 bed that we bought.
Like bed and frame on aseparate chip or No, no, no.
There's no frame, Matt.
It's just a giant bed.
Like a loft bed.
Mm-hmm.
That it's gonna be coolwhen it's all done.
But I was thinking to myself whatit would be like to be a person
that was selling furniture.
(09:09):
We've talked a lot aboutkeeping things small.
Mm-hmm.
And it really struck me in thatvery moment as I don't think I
would ever wanna sell furniture.
It is.
Big and bulky and heavy and I don'tknow how much the ROI is on, I was just
thinking, it's funny, when I was drivingI was thinking about the ROI is zero.
I'm lying back For your kids.
Yeah.
(09:29):
Your bag, if that's true, your bag of goldthat got you $1,400 that you collected
over a year or whatever, like thatwas like a tiny little bag of mm-hmm.
Pieces that.
What, anyway, my whole point is I wasthinking about Matt is really onto
something about this selling small.
That was, that's my story, but, oh man.
(09:50):
Listen, you clearly care a lot morefor your child than I do for mine,
because I also get stuff on Facebookmarketplace, but mine is more like,
oh, someone's selling a bed for $15.
Take a look at it like,okay, I have a couple things.
There's a couple of tears.
Do you think that Icould sew those back up?
Yeah, sure.
Okay, great.
A couple of stains there.
Is that blood?
It looks like a large urine stain,and they're like, I'm not sure.
(10:12):
I'm like, okay, it's good enough for me.
Will you take 10?
Did anyone die on this mattress?
Yeah, exactly.
And if so, did youclean it up with bleach?
Because if you did, that's fine.
Does it smell now?
It doesn't smell.
All right, great.
When are you available?
I, that would probably bemore like me if I wasn't if I
didn't have a wife that cared.
So I believe that flow might saysomething about you buying beds that
(10:34):
have been used for a murder case.
That's why what she don't know don't hurt.
You keep flow in the dark.
'cause that's the way it ought to be.
Oh man.
Anyways.
We are this week.
So shifting in you guys, those peoplethat are listening on the podcast, I've
been playing around with some bridges todo some demarcation points in our show.
(10:57):
So you may notice the littledrum roll before Matt sold.
We're gonna introduce those things.
So the music you just heard is part ofthis sort of introducing into the segment
of what we're gonna be talking abouttoday and what we're talking about today.
We've talked about this a fairamount on this show, but we're really
gonna dive deep into it today, whichis sports cards and memorabilia.
(11:17):
Because even though that can bevery specific, there are shops for
it and there are people that doit in high-end things, and all the
things that we've talked about here.
You as a reseller, if you're doingit the way that Matt is doing it, are
gonna run into sports and memorabilia.
Recognize what you need to buy andwhat you don't need to buy, and
(11:40):
also how you can make money on it.
So, Matt, sports cards, what's the deal?
So the sports card and memorabiliaworld, and when we say memorabilia,
it could be anything related toa sport or particular player.
So we're talking about thingslike balls, baseballs, footballs,
soccer balls, maybe their sign.
(12:02):
We're talking about jerseys.
We can talk about photographs.
Maybe there's a signature on aphotograph and then sports cards.
Back a long time ago, they'vebeen making sports cards since
the late 18 hundreds, early 19hundreds, particularly for baseball.
Although there's some really old hockeystuff out there as well and also football.
(12:22):
But baseball tends to bein America especially.
There's a lot of that stuff.
Some of the most valuable things inbaseball are, you can look this up.
It's very obvious are some ofthese Hall of Famers that you
know of Babe Ruth and Ted Williamsand Lou Gehrig and these people.
But even older than that, you'vegot Ty Cobb and Hoes Wagner from
(12:43):
these sets of baseball cardsthat came in Cigarette packages.
Yeah, that's how they got these cards.
Or coffee cans.
Or coffee cans.
Yep.
They're a cracker Jack.
Things that, cards that cameoutta, there's all kinds of
stuff and those are really old.
So to have something in decentcondition these days is quite rare.
So what is, what's thedeal with this whole thing?
(13:04):
Sports cards and memorabilia isa gigantic, a multi-million, if
not multi-billion dollar industry.
Not just the buying of new cardsthat are produced every year
all the time, but the collectingmarket of these types of things.
And just about any sport has playersor participants that they have some
things that have been produced aboutthem that are collectible, but not
(13:27):
surprisingly, the ones that are gonnabe the most valuable are the big names.
The ones you know, inbasketball, it's gonna be people
like Michael Jordan, right?
It's gonna be people like LeBronJames and Steph Curry and Kobe Bryant.
Or even a long time ago, Julius Irving,magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and even before
that, Pete Merovich you may or may notknow these names, it's not important.
(13:50):
But if you go to look on sites likeeBay and you look up these names
and you can look at sold items andthe highest, you'll see some trends.
You'll see the types of playersthat tend to be that items of
theirs are selling more than others.
That means it's morecollectible typically.
Mm-hmm.
You're gonna see ones that aregetting higher prices than others.
(14:11):
It can be a very murky world becausewhen you look at sold items, you
might see two, which appear to youas identical cards, and one sells
for $3,000 and one's selling for $25.
And you're like, I got that card at home.
So what is it?
Is it a $3,000 card or is it $25 card?
What determines valuefor sports cards is not.
(14:34):
That much different at all than the wayyou would evaluate collectibility or
value of any other type of collectible?
It comes down to a few variables.
One of which being how rare is it?
Okay, so rarity usually has to do withscarcity or how much is available.
So if there aren't many available, thatwould make it rare if only a few were
(15:00):
produced, like certain sets of cards.
They'll put out only 10.
So instead of producing thousands ofthese, or multiple thousands, they produce
10 and they say two of 10 or five of 10.
So you know, you, if you have that,you have one of only 10 ever made.
So if it happens to be a verywell-known sports star, then you
(15:20):
could potentially have a very valuablepart because it's limited, right?
The other thing is condition,and this might even be the most
important thing, is the condition.
There are grading companies for all kindsof sports cards and trading cards for
that matter, not even sports related.
There are cards for sports card,or there are cards like game cards
(15:42):
like Pokemon Yugi, o even oldStar Wars cards, things like that.
But then there aretraditional sports cards.
The condition of them iswhat's gonna determine value.
And as this collectible market started.
Getting more and more popular.
At one point, and I don't know whenit began, but somebody got the idea,
(16:04):
Hey, I should create a business wherewe evaluate these cards and give
them a grade on some sort of scale,one to 10 or whatever else they do.
That points, you can grade points,you can grade all kinds of collectible
things, but in the sports card market,there are a handful of different
companies that will grade them.
(16:26):
And they issue a number andthey put it in like a hard case,
a plastic case to protect it.
And they give you a serial number,stuff that you can look up on
their website to make sure that youknow what you have is valuable and
legitimate, that it's not been faked.
So you with me so far on all of this?
Yeah.
If I was to, I was thinking aboutlike how do these old cards stay in?
(16:49):
Good.
There's one comic book collect.
Basically plastic, or theycalled it visqueen, these
kind of heavy plastic bags.
You would put in a cardboard backingand then you would put the, you
would carefully put the comic book.
Mm-hmm.
Ideally, you would've nevertouched the comic book.
Right.
Ideally, you wouldn't have read itor anything 'cause there's no oil.
Or if you did it with latex gloves on,you put it into the backing, whatever.
(17:12):
That's one way.
You do that with cards or whatever,but I've always heard these apocryphal
tales and I wonder if they're true.
So way back when in, I think it was1976, right around the bicentennial,
there was this thing where youwould bury like a tin or something.
Like a lot of schools would do these,bury the thing and you put time capsule.
(17:33):
Time.
Capsule.
Capsule, exactly.
And I remember bury this tin.
And I don't remember what was in it,but what would happen if I had put in my
1977 Millennium Falcon card and my LukeSkywalker card carefully in plastic?
I sealed it up at a Ziploc.
And so let's assume there's no damage.
There's no moisture.
Mm-hmm.
There's no whatever in it.
(17:54):
It's in this tin that'sburied in the ground, and then
somebody digs it up today.
Is that where we find thesecards that are in good shape?
Is that kind of how that stuff happens?
I.
Doubt that's what'shappening all that often.
What it could have happened, listen, ifI say yes, if I say yes, what's gonna
happen is there's gonna be all of thesemetal detector enthusiasts going to
(18:15):
elementary schools and walking around,digging stuff up out of their school yard.
Which we don't want, but I didthis actually under the porch
of my house okay, fair enough.
So I don't know where it ended up, butI mean it, my point is, someone could
do something like that or in an attic.
If they put it like hit it in an atticor whatever that happened, I think
that the majority of people who arebuying cards that are in really good
(18:36):
condition that are graded are ones that.
Already somebody had, they had greetedand then they've had it for a long
time, and then they decided they neededthe money or they don't care about it
anymore, or they inherited it and it wasnot an interest of theirs in the first
place, but they recognize it has value.
Then there's people whodo this for a living.
All they do is buy theseexpensive boxes of cards.
(18:59):
This premium elite.
Whatever, limited thing of rookiesof 2025 basketball and that
box is gonna cost you $20,000.
Whoa.
And it only has fivecards in it, for example.
Wow.
And then they buy thisand they pull it out.
They know that every one ofthose cards is gonna be valuable.
Maybe every one of them isgonna have a signature too.
(19:20):
And they know that they're, based onlooking at the previous sales and kind
of the trends, they're, they standto make money on it pretty easily.
Provided they take it out.
They don't touch it and they sendit off immediately to get graded.
There are people whose their entire jobis that's what they do and they have
big money and they put it in there.
There are people who every yearwhen there is a draft, and this
(19:43):
could be in baseball and basketball,football, they have a draft.
So let's just take football for example.
Every year they're gonna be ahandful of quarterbacks that get
drafted into the FL and they'regonna become starting quarterbacks.
Professional players, you haveno idea how they're gonna, if
they're gonna pan out or not.
Let's say there are 10 rookie quarterbacksthat are drafted each year and that
(20:08):
year someone's gonna buy several setsof certain brands, whether it be ops or
whatever the brand is of that particularcard, or they're gonna get online after
other people have done it and they'regonna buy 50 cards, identical card.
Of that same player, and they'regonna do that for 10 players, so
(20:30):
they're gonna have 500 cards orwhatever it is they're gonna bank on.
One of those 10 is gonnabecome a very good player.
Rookie of the year.
MVP, something like that.
Mm-hmm.
They're gonna go down and itdoesn't matter that the 450 cards
of the other nine players don'tpan out because they're not paying
hardly anything for these cards.
(20:51):
Couple bucks a card.
Because it's almost like speculative.
Mm-hmm.
But based on, again, historical evidencewill show that e in each draft class,
there's a really good chance thatsomebody's gonna be a very good player
and maybe become a hall of famer someday.
They're not putting a wholelot of money into these.
They're gonna get 'em all graded.
They should all grade out at itbetween an eight and 10 outta 10,
(21:14):
and they're just gonna sit on andthen five, 10 years down the road.
They're gonna have 50 rookie cards ofthis really well-known, very accomplished
player, and they're gonna cash out.
There are people who do that.
I know somebody personallylocally that does that, and
he does very well for himself.
Mm-hmm.
So like he bought a bunch of Joe Burrow,rookie cards when he was drafted.
(21:38):
At some point he's gonna cash out on thatbecause he's been a very good player.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Like he bought a JaydenDaniels last year or something.
Exactly.
But the most valuable ones are gonna bethe ones that are rookie cards typically,
or very limited cards of the superstars.
So what are the most valuable sportscards that are selling right now?
Anybody who has really old good conditioncards from the 1915, like the T 2 0 9
(22:03):
or 2 0 5, whatever that set is, that'sthe one that the Hoes Wagner, mm-hmm.
Is from, there are only, a hundred,200 some cards from that set or.
If you have a Babe Ruth rookie card or youhave a Mickey Mantle rookie card that's
in good condition and graded, those arethe things that are gonna sell the most.
If you have a Michael Jordan rookiecard that's graded and is graded
high, those are the gonna be the ones.
(22:24):
Where are people actuallyfinding packs of those today and
pulling out mint condition cards?
It's really not happening.
If you wanna buy a box of smallpacks, like 20 or 30 packs.
From the set that Jordan, rookie Jordan'srookie card comes from, you're gonna pay
tens of thousands of dollars without evenknowing if that card's in there, simply
(22:47):
because it's like a lottery ticket.
People will do that.
There are ones available to buy a singlepack, like a single, like what they
call like booster packs or blaster packsthat maybe only has 20 cards in it.
You're gonna pay multiple hundreds, ifnot thousands of dollars for that pack.
It's unopened.
Wow.
Even if there's a Jordan card in there,it's unlikely that's gonna be a high
grade, but it doesn't matter becauseanybody who has that card of any decent
(23:11):
condition is gonna have good value.
So I think people who have thecards are people who've been
doing this regularly or people whocollected back before the internet.
Was a thing.
Mm-hmm.
So they would go to Sports card,traveling shows at the fairgrounds or
whatever in their town or in the bigtown near them, and they would buy these.
(23:33):
There are people who have held onto thoseand then they pass 'em down to their kids.
Oh, dad liked to collect, oh, grandpa.
Or Great Grandpapa collected thesecards, and they'd just come down the
line and everyone's kept them until now.
And maybe I want to get 'em graded,maybe they're already graded.
It's time for me to cash out.
That kind of thing.
Then there's people like me.
And in a moment we'll talk about, I'veactually pulled some of my own cards
(23:54):
out here to talk about I, buying andselling things would buy lots of stuff.
It would've cards here and there, andover time I've accumulated stuff, but
this has been years of full-time work.
Mm-hmm.
And I've accumulated stuff until I gota decent amount that I wanted to grade.
So I'm pause there for a second and say.
(24:15):
If you are interested in this world ofbuying and selling, you're gonna do best
at selling and optimizing your value ofwhat you have if your part is graded.
So the company PSA is consideredthe most reputable today part.
(24:38):
It works.
You can get onto their website.
You get a, it's free to get an accountand if you wanna submit cards to be
graded, you go in and you have tosearch for the card in their database
based on what you're looking at.
You find it.
You basically say, I have this card,and based on what you think the grade
will be and what you think the valueof that card would be after it's
(25:00):
graded, will determine how much youhave to pay them to grade that card.
So it can range, but depending onwhether or not you pay a subscription
fee to the site or not, but it canbe as low as 14 or $15 for a card.
For one card, that's thecheapest, but it can be up over
a thousand dollars for a card.
If, say you have a card that youthink is gonna sell for multiples of
(25:22):
thousands of dollars, it's still makessense for you to pay that because
you're gonna make a good return onyour investment once it's graded.
So you put all those in and then there'sa method of how you have to actually
package them up, like what sleeves youhave to put them in, how you package them.
You ship 'em off to them andthen they will grade them.
(25:44):
It's usually a month to monthand a half turnaround time.
You don't have to pay until they emailyou back and say, they're completed,
we're about to ship them off.
Then you pay, but you'll knowhow much you're gonna in the.
It can be stressful if you don'tknow how to do it in the beginning.
What determines the cost of the grading?
The quality of the card.
(26:05):
Yes.
So if I have a card that I, for example,I'm gonna show you a very valuable
some valuable cards here in a moment.
That if your card is, there are tiersand it's clearly marked on there.
It tells you if this is like a $200or less value card, it's gonna be $14.
If it's 500 to a thousanddollars, it's gonna be this much.
If it's a thousand dollars or more, or upto this point, it's gonna be this much.
(26:28):
And so you won't know, and theywon't charge you really until they,
the grade comes out and all of that.
But it's a little bit ofa complicated process.
But there are YouTube videos wherepeople do it, tell you exactly how
they're doing it and why, and thatthey're following the guidelines since
you can see a step by step process.
It's not that bad.
Once you watch somebody do it and doit once, then you know how it works.
(26:52):
But you send it off, it gets graded, itcomes back, and then it'll have a grade.
Let's say I have this card and it'sgraded out an eight out of a 10.
That's pretty good.
But collectors who are gonnaspend the most money on a card
are really wanting a 10, outta 10.
They're wanting a mint condition card.
Mm-hmm.
If they can afford it.
If they can't, they're gonna gofor a nine, can't afford that.
They're gonna go for an eight, or they'rejust gonna wait and save their money up
(27:14):
until they can get her a nine or a 10.
So if you have cards that you think willbe graded from an eight to a 10, in my
opinion, it makes sense to ship it offand get graded unless it happens to be a
card that is so rare that even in a poorcondition, like a four or a five, it could
still sell for several hundred dollars.
So something like a Babe Ruth rookie cardor something like one of these old cards.
(27:37):
But if you have a Ken Griffey Jrrookie card, that's awesome, but
if it only grades out at a six.
It may not even be worth, even thoughit's popular player, it's a rookie card.
If it's not graded well enough,it's probably not gonna be worth
paying the money to send it off.
And if you have cards that you're notgoing to grade, it's gonna be very
(27:59):
difficult to get very good money for thembecause the collectors want graded cards.
And a trend I've noticed lately is notonly do they want graded cards, but
I've seen in the last year, especiallya big move towards grade high graded.
Cards that also are signed on them,like hand signed by a player, meaning
(28:20):
it had been in front of the player, theysigned it, so it's maybe mint condition
and it has a signature that's gonna beselling for more than a mint condition
card with no signature, which is gonna beselling more than a card that's greater
than nine instead of a 10 and so on.
So that's how it works.
There is big money out there tobe made in sports cards, but it's.
(28:44):
One of those that you needto do a lot of research.
If you want to test out gradinga card, I would just send one
to five cart to begin with.
Don't put a lot of money into it.
Familiarize yourself with the process.
Mm-hmm.
See how long it takes, determine how,what kind of a grade you got based on
what you thought it was gonna be, sothat you know well, like I didn't do a
(29:05):
very good job of determining that myself.
'cause I thought it was likea nine that came back a six.
Why is that?
Just so you know, the people thatgrade these cards, it's not just
about, okay, I'm looking at a card.
It looks pretty good.
There's no dented corner,so it must be a 10 outta 10.
No, no, no.
There's a lot of things.
The color quality, is it faded?
Is it bright?
(29:26):
Is it centered?
Up and down, left to right.
Are there any splotches on it?
Is there any sort of rub?
Has it been.
Has anything happened to it?
Are there oils on it?
They put it under a magnifyingglass or like a microscope.
There's all kinds of things.
So you might think you have a10, comes back like a seven.
So there were things that you couldn'tsee just with your, the naked eye.
(29:49):
So if you're buying a brand new packthat's not bent today of Pokemon
cards and you open it up and you'reusing gloves or you're not touching
it, and you find a really good card.
There's a good chance that'llbe like an eight outta 10.
'cause it's not really been,it's not been handled a lot.
It's fresh out of a pack, you're fine.
But if you're to buy a pack that'snever been opened of baseball cards
(30:11):
from like 1981 that has the rock hardpiece of gum that's at this point
stuck on the back of the back card.
So good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't suggest tryingto chew that by now.
By the way but if you get that,there's almost no chance that's
gonna be graded at a 10, outta 10.
It's just sat in that pack for so long.
It's deteriorated, it's faded.
(30:31):
It's probably not goingto grade out really well.
The ones that are gonna grade well, theones that were pulled out of a pack back
in 1981 and immediately put in a sleeve.
Have been graded since then and passed on.
Those are the ones, so I'm not sayingdon't go to your closet and pull out all
the tubs of sports cards that you have,because you may have some decent ones.
If somebody put 'em insleeves, for example.
(30:53):
I have here 10 cards.
They are all differentKobe Bryant rookie cards.
Now why is that important?
It's important because Kobe Bryant was avery popular, very accomplished basketball
player who sadly tragically died ina helicopter crash a few years ago.
And when that happened, the value and thecollectibility of his cards skyrocketed
(31:17):
because it was a super tragic situation.
No more cards of his are ever goingto be produced while he's alive and.
These are his rookie cardsto the year that he started.
I've got 10 of them and these came outof a lot of cards that I bought that
were just random cards from like theeighties and nineties, and it just
(31:38):
so happened some of 'em were in hardplastic cases, and these were among them.
They didn't realize maybethat they had value that.
So these do exist.
There are things out there in people'sattics and in their closets and tubs.
Maybe you still have stuff that yourkid who's now an adult, but you still
got his cards at your house, therecould be some good value in there,
(31:59):
especially if they collected older cards.
Mm-hmm.
What about going to, like for theaverage listener that's going out
to the different thrift shops and.
Whatever, Goodwills, whatever.
Are there, they find those kindsof cards there, or is it just
an absolute Easter egg hunt?
If you're gonna it, it'smostly an Easter egg hunt.
If you're gonna find cards at likethrift stores, for example, almost
(32:20):
always they're in like plastic bagsor they're in boxes or little tubs
and they're just all strewn out.
They're not really taken care of.
They're dumped in.
Somebody didn't care, right?
They donated 'em, theydidn't care about them.
So they just gave 'em away, right?
You will find them at, say, antique storesand estate sales and things like that.
And oftentimes you can find themor even online auctions and stuff.
(32:42):
You can find graded cards, you can findothers that are in a stack and maybe
based on what you see in the stack, youthink, okay, there's probably some value
here, but it is, it's a lottery ticket.
Maybe there's a really goodcard in there you don't see.
Maybe there isn't.
Most of the time there isn'tbecause people have sorted through.
Like you can even get a box thatsays complete set, and it might
be a complete set, or it mightbe 399 out of the 400 cards.
(33:05):
And guess what?
That one card that's not in there,that was the most valuable card.
That's the only card in there thatreally has much value anymore.
Because the other thing I wannamention is that cards produced
from 1985 up until now, right?
Right around 19 85, 86 is when the sportscard company started just mass producing
(33:26):
by the hundreds of thousands of cards.
King Griffey Jr. RickyCard is an awesome card.
The problem is there are likethousands of them out there
that are graded nines and tens.
It's not as valuable anymorebecause there are thousands and
thousands of them out there, right?
Again, it's about rarity andlike how many of them are there.
So if you have a card that'sreally good condition, really
(33:50):
rare and of a player who's reallypopular and collectible, then.
That's the best case scenario.
It's graded.
It's a popular player that's stillcollectible and it's in good condition.
That's what you want.
The other stuff I wouldn't mess with,and I certainly would not suggest people
going out to your local Walmart orTarget and buying packs and expecting
(34:10):
to pull out multi-thousand dollar cards.
These cards that you see on eBay thatare selling for tons of money, those are
almost always the cards that are comingout of those premier boxes and packages.
That costs thousands andthousands of dollars.
Only 1% of the sports cardcollecting group of the world
are actually buying those packs.
(34:32):
Mm-hmm.
The people who have, those arepeople who own sports card.
Stores and or those are peoplewho collect for a living.
They're not hobbyists.
So I'm not saying don't, it's fun,it's interesting if you like it and you
like to buy and sell just for a hobbyor you like to collect a certain card
of your favorite player from when youwere a kid, I think all that is great.
But it is such a rabbit hole.
(34:55):
It takes a lot of time.
It takes money 'cause you have to sendit off to get it graded if you really
wanna make good money on selling it.
And because of all of those factors.
A big part of my business, although I'mabout to turn that on his head 'cause I'm
gonna really quick show and talk aboutsome cards I have that in the next month
(35:15):
I'm actually gonna send off to have gradedbecause I think that it, these, all these
cards match what I described, that they'regood condition tend to be valuable and
especially so if they're graded well.
So here are examples of, once Ialready talked about the Kobe Bryant
rookie cards, some Kobe Bryantrookie cards that are graded very
(35:35):
well, sell for thousands of dollars.
So if I have a card that costs mevery little, it's in good condition.
Even if I think it can getan eight, I'm willing to pay.
$14 for that.
Wait a month and a half tosell it for two or $300.
To me, that makes sense financially.
Mm-hmm.
I have a Bo Jackson Footballrookie card in good condition.
(35:56):
So that was from, back in the ninetiesaround when I was collecting cards.
I've got an Andre Dawson rookie card.
Oh, I've got Tony Gwen,the Hawk rookie card.
I've got a ReggieJackson rookie card here.
Here's my King Griffey Jr. Rookie card.
I've got 10 of them.
Wow.
This one is the one in the best condition.
So that's one, one I'm to getwhere, get, oh, I've collected.
(36:17):
Here's another one.
I've collected 'em over time.
Some of these are things I'veheld onto since I was a kid.
Okay.
Other things I've boughtand sold over time.
Here's a Bo Jackson.
Baseball Rookie card.
Here's another King Griffey Rick card.
Here's a Frank Thomas rookie card.
The big hurt.
And this is this is my box right here.
I have about 300 more that are all ones.
(36:38):
I've got women, Yama,is that his last name?
Victor Wembenyama.
He's one of the most popular I'vegot French Center for the Spurs.
Yeah.
I got seven or eight rookie cards of histhat came out in the last year or two.
I've got a bunch of Reggie Jackson cards.
I've got two or threeNolan Ryan rookie cards.
And then the most valuableone is this one right here.
This is a Larry Bird rookiecard from 19 80, 19 81.
(37:00):
It features Larry Bird, Julius Irving,and Magic Johnson, and I believe it's
at least an eight, probably a nine.
The last card of this card thatsold on eBay, that was a nine out
of 10 sold for $16,000 on eBay.
Wow.
And I wouldn't be surprised if this close.
(37:22):
It's very sharp.
It doesn't really have oils on it.
It does have a little bit of colorkind of splotching if you look at it.
So my guess is it would be more of aneight or a nine, but there aren't a
whole lot of this card that are a 10.
And the other thing about PSA is Ibelieve, and somebody correct me if I'm
wrong on this, but I believe that you canget on and any particular card, it will
(37:43):
give a list of the number of them thatthey have given a particular grade to.
You could get on and I need to do this.
How many Larry Bird Ricky cards havebeen given a 10 out of 10 on the
out of the grading scale for PSA?
How many have a nine?
And then if I get on eBay, let's say thatthere are 1510s that have ever been given
(38:04):
a 10 and I get a 10, so I'm one of the 15.
If I get on eBay and there's onlyone or two available for sale.
Then I'm one of only three peoplethat have one available for sale
on eBay, at least maybe one of theonly people that have one for sale.
And so all of a sudden I have a rare, highvaluable, highly collectible card, and I
(38:24):
can essentially put any price I want onit just to see if anybody's gonna buy.
But the good thing about a card like this,a really valuable card, or even like a
Nolan Ryan rookie card that might give methree or $4,000 if it grades out well, is
that I could send one card off, sell that.
The proceeds from that one cardcan pay for my cost to grade
(38:45):
five or 600 other good cards.
And then when those comeback, I have no money in that.
It's already been paid for.
Right.
And then it's just profit.
And that's actually mystrategy with these.
I'm only gonna send offabout 20 cards to begin with.
When I get those back and sellthem, I'm gonna send another 300.
And when I get those back andget them listed, I'm gonna
(39:06):
sell, send another 300 in.
And I've got somewhere around 200to 300 Michael Jordan cards over
here that I need to get graded.
Several of 'em aren't worth a ton.
Wait, what?
How many?
Oh, probably two or 300.
Holy cow.
Yeah.
And I've got a bunch from the,from the from the eighties around
that late eighties, early nineties.
Mm-hmm.
(39:27):
I don't have I do have some that are,technically rookie cards, but not the one
that tends to be the one that everyonewants, that sells for a ton of money.
But who knows?
Maybe I'll sell some of these and tryto find myself one another thing I wanna
mention really fast is about these cards.
Is that the best time to try to sellthese is when there is some sort of
event that has to do with this player.
(39:49):
The best time to sell these KobeBryant cards would've been within
a couple of weeks of when he died.
I hate.
I didn't create that situation.
But naturally speaking, the increase ininterest happens when a thing happens.
When they put out some sort of specialdocumentary on a particular hall of
fame player, that might be a good time.
(40:09):
'cause now people are looking at it again.
Oh yeah, I wanna go seewhat their card costs.
Put that card out there.
It's just like selling postcard.
Right before that particular holiday.
You sell a Valentine card.
A week or two before Valentine's Day,you sell your Halloween cards a week or
two before h Halloween, because that'swhen the interest, so when Michael
Jordan dies someday, that's gonna bethe spike in the value of his cards.
(40:34):
It's a bummer.
Sometimes people feel like they'retaking advantage somehow of a
bad situation and I understandthat, but things happen in life.
That you can't control.
What you can control though, isknowing when values are gonna be
high or low or whatever you have.
So mm-hmm.
Be paying attention to pop culture.
(40:54):
I hate to say it, but I foundout this morning, Val Kilmer
just passed away, right?
So if you have a signed picture of ValKilmer right now is when you're gonna get
the best price you'll ever get for that.
Photograph probably things like that.
If you know what's going on aroundyou and it relates to an item that
you have, that's the time to try toget your money out of it, if that's
(41:15):
something that you want to do.
What about you we're runninga little bit tight on time.
What about like sports memorabilia,like signed baseballs or basketballs
or, I don't know, hockey stick,whatever it is that a puck that
someone got in the game Yeah.
And got signed.
Is there a grading system forthat or is that more speculative?
There is.
Okay.
Yeah, so those grading companies willcreate all of those types of things.
(41:36):
Okay.
All types of things.
I would say that I would bevery cautious about buying.
Items like that.
Let's say it has a signature orsomething, and that's the big
reason why it should have the value.
Supposedly, if you arebuying it and it has not been
authenticated, I would be very.
Cautious.
If you don't know a whole lot aboutthat, you don't have a way of if you
don't know it really well, I wouldn'trecommend doing that unless it's
(41:59):
something that's been handed down,something you personally had signed
or a family member and you trust them,where it came from, that kind of thing.
Because signatures can be forged, right.
Don't buy the Babe Ruth.
His first home run ball from somebody onFacebook marketplace locally for 50 bucks.
That's not, it ain't what it is.
Okay.
What I shouldn't, no, Idon't think you should.
(42:21):
But if you find something thatyou want and for a decent deal
and you can see it's already beenauthenticated and you can look up
serial number online and validate that.
Sure.
But if you have things Yeah.
Some people like to collect a certainperson, so my last name is Brock Lube,
and my team, I grew up in Missouri.
The team that I grew up followingwas the St. Louis Cardinals.
(42:45):
That's always been, whatever my team.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, it's fun to get Lou Brockcards 'cause he was a sweet Lou.
He was a great hall of Famerplayer for the St. Louis Cardinals
and he has the same last name.
So that may be something like you,maybe Jones is your last name and
you elected Chipper Jones stuff.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
(43:05):
Or just your favorite team.
And so it may be that a familymember collected a bunch of stuff
because there was some sort ofconnection to your family or just.
And they have a ball that's signedand they've got all these photographs
and maybe they have all thesesports cards or jerseys and stuff.
Yeah.
All that stuff can have value.
If you have a really nicejersey from Michael Jordan.
(43:26):
In that short period of time whenhe had, he wasn't wearing 23,
he was wearing what was a 45?
Something like that right then?
Yeah, that could be.
'cause it was a short livedperiod of time, so there weren't.
All that many produced.
I had a jersey in middle school, JordanJersey, where he had that other number.
I don't have it anymore.
I think I, we gave it away or sold it.
(43:48):
I wish I still had it because Right.
It would be of some decent value today.
Or his rookie baseball card becausehe played minor league baseball.
I'm sure there's a card out there for him.
Oh sure.
In his, I think he played for theBirmingham stallions or something,
but he played both exactly.
We're gonna keep aneye out for that stuff.
I agree with you.
I think it is a challenge to makesure that it is authenticated because
there are scammers everywhere.
(44:09):
So be aware of that.
How about this?
So we've gone so long.
I have other things I wanted to do.
So here's the teaser, if you'llallow me for our next show.
Sure.
We may not have a big story like topiclike this that we discussed, but I'll
have multiple other things I wannashow and talk about that I sold and
then I've got a really bad story.
(44:30):
To share and a really exciting story.
Oh, I like when you give a teaser andI'll let you tell me which order you want
those in next time, but Oh, like it's,you want the good news or the bad news?
That's, I like it.
Exactly.
We'll do that and I'll havesome other really good stuff.
And you know what?
For anyone who cares, in a few monthswhen I get these cards back that I sent
to have graded, I'll give you an update.
(44:52):
What came back matching what I thought itwould be, what was lower than I thought.
What's higher and what do I. The process.
Would I recommend it?
Would I not?
How am I doing on thesales of these things?
We should come back to this.
Yeah, for sure.
It's funny, I was thinking when youwere talking about grading, I have a
friend, more of an acquaintance backfrom when I lived in San Francisco.
(45:14):
He was a lawyer, a successful lawyerwho actually sadly passed away.
He had an incredible sports memorabiliacollection and what I mean incredible.
I. A thousand signedbaseballs all authenticated.
Wow.
Jerseys.
He, his whole house was a monument,sports memorabilia, and I gotta
imagine that when he passed away,that there was an estate sale.
(45:37):
Those things happen.
Yeah.
And it's like you said, it's sad,but it's the reality of the world.
If you're in an area where you knowsomebody is a collector, keep an
eye on not for them to die, but theymight wanna sell some of that stuff.
It's like any other commodity.
If you know that you can make.
Two x on it, it might be worthit if you could make a grand on,
you invest a grand and then yousell it and make a grand mm-hmm.
(45:59):
Probably keep an eye on that kind ofstuff on eBay or other places where
that's traded, and that way if youdo collect the stuff, you could sell
it and make some money off of it.
Exactly.
On the last episode, you mentioneda particular type of comic book
that you enjoyed collectingthe most, and what was that?
X-Men.
I have an X-Men 2099 number one.
(46:23):
And that's coming your way, my man.
What?
Wait, what?
What year is that?
It's in the eighties, I'm sure.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
So not like super old, in fact.
Here.
Lemme see here.
Oh, actually it's 93.
It's 93.
But still.
Yeah, so they did.
So I actually did some researchon that after we got off the air.
They did, the first original X-Mencame out in the sixties, actually.
(46:43):
Okay.
I thought it was in the earlyseventies, but it was the sixties.
And they've done these, andthat's another thing which is
similar to this whole thing.
So as we go out, it actually is somethingto be aware of that, that they will
re-release these different things.
So you gotta be aware of that.
X-Men right there, that was.
Yeah, really 35 years after, it wasprobably like, the 30 anniversary
(47:04):
or something, and it could be.
An amazing story, but that kind of stuff.
They're trying to make money offof the notoriety of the deals.
Of course.
Oh, I will enjoy that.
X-Men.
That was wonderful.
Up in my, that will go up in my office.
I will be framing that.
So someday my daughtercan go, what's this?
X-Men number one here.
That's right.
Alright, that is allthe time that we have.
It has been.
(47:24):
We have, as we are out again, apt todo, we have gone a little bit long, but
we really appreciate you guys takingthe time to spend an hour with us.
Hopefully you picks up something,hopefully you find that Jonas Wagner Yeah.
In that coffee can, that I buriedunder the house and that grade
it out of the nine or a 10 andthen you can retire on that.
Wonderful.
But if you can't come back and join us,remember to write a review, follow, like,
(47:47):
and subscribe, all those fun things.
Check out our YouTube channel.
We've got lots ofdifferent things out there.
We really appreciate you guys.
Keep the comments coming,we're getting lots of 'em.
But otherwise, that is allthe time we have for today.
So have a great week, everybody.
We will be back next weekwith a brand new show.
Take care.
Welcome back to the What Sold Podcast,our Daily Journey into the Madness
that is the aftermarket merchant world.
My name is Brandon.
I am here with my good friend Matt.
Some of you know himas Rusty, the reseller.
People always say to me when I say, yeah,I'm doing this show with my friend Matt.
He has a YouTube channel.
They all refer to you as Rusty.
(00:59):
None of them refer to you asMatt, you're rusty to them.
Everybody at my wife Flo at her work also.
'cause sometimes they get little goodiesfrom me, like little cha little things
to put on the bookshelf for whatever.
Sure.
They get little gifts from Rusty from timeto time and some of them watch the video.
(01:20):
Some of 'em listen to the podcast.
So it's funny.
I was out with some friends theother night and we were just out
hanging out and met some strangers.
And of course they want to tellhim, I don't, it's not really
something I care people knowingabout, like in my personal life.
And yet they're like, oh, he's got thisYouTube channel and all this stuff, and
then here comes this barrage of questionsthat I don't particularly care to.
(01:42):
Yeah.
To answer.
It's just well, it's just this thing.
And for a famous media guy, youdefinitely don't like the spotlight.
You would be perfectly happy tonot be in the spotlight ever.
Yeah.
And I don't think, again I'm not famous.
It'd be one thing if I wasmaking a living at this thing.
Yeah.
Which, who knows someday?
Who knows?
You can't predict the future.
Your famous adjacent, that'swhat we wanna say here.
Yeah, exactly.
(02:02):
I'll tell you this, when the YouTubechannel subscribers grew to larger than
the population of the town I grew up in,which was small, it's not saying a lot.
Beautiful South southwest, Missouri.
Missouri.
Yeah exactly.
My grandpa would call it Missouri.
But yeah, listen, it's it's, theYouTube fan base, I say fan base,
(02:23):
subscribers means nothing really.
You have to have a certain number inorder to get monetized on YouTube.
Right.
But it has everything to do withhow many people are actually.
Viewing and consuming your content.
Right.
And whether or not they're doingthat has to do with a lot of factors.
One being how consistent are you?
And right now, I'm not consistent.
I've been really bad since the beginningof this year, putting out content.
(02:46):
I got out of the habit of itand it's just been difficult
for me to get back into that.
The good news is there's lots ofcontent being posted on the what sold.
That's right.
YouTube.
That's right.
Keeping that bad boy rolling.
I do think it's really, I still amfascinated by the fact that some
people consume the podcast throughthe webpage or through the YouTube
(03:07):
channel, and yeah, plenty of peoplekeep, listening to downloads.
We have lots of subscribers now thatsort of, you, I can always tell, I can
see where the metrics are on the showand it's, it's really interesting.
I just, I've been doing this for along time and I'm still amazed at how
there's so many ways to get content.
It's like an ever moving target ifyou are a content creator, unless
(03:31):
you're just like super massive.
It is a challenge.
If people are out there and they'relike doing a YouTube channel maybe
they're a reseller and they just wannashow what they're selling or whatever
and trying to drive business that way.
I'd say don't get discouraged.
Just remind yourselfthat it's a slow build.
It's probably not gonna happenovernight and the word influencer
(03:51):
is one of the most irritating wordsin the English dictionary now.
So you do the best you can.
I don't consider us influencers.
I think that influencers, it seemslike they're trying to sell a product.
They're sponsored or they'rethings, and that's, not saying
we'll never do that, but.
What we've been all about.
Oh, we wanna be influencers.
Sure.
(04:11):
But we've, we've just, we'vebeen giving out information.
Listen, this is I've been doing theYouTube channel for over four years.
We've been doing this podcast for overa year, and thus far I, we have required
nothing monetarily, nothing from people.
It's just giving out that informationbecause I think it helps people.
The information that was providedand out there when I needed
(04:34):
it was super helpful for me.
There's a lot to learn.
I find it interesting and fascinating tolearn about different types of things.
Sure.
The whole purpose of learning that isto, in this context is so that I can
know a thing and know the value andthen, and turn that into some money
that I can use to support my family.
(04:54):
But everybody has needs and.
Whether you have a lot of money or not.
People always, they either needsomething to fill their extra time.
It's fun, it's a hobby, or theyreally could use some extra money
and I think that this informationcan be useful to just about anybody.
That's why we still do it.
Yeah I've mentioned my brotheron this show several times.
(05:15):
He runs this little Golf SECreseller and he basically sells
golf equipment to people verynick, and it's perfect for him.
He makes enough, his whole goal.
Money to pay for his fees does six.
And he sells it.
That's good.
It's good to have a goal.
Yeah.
I like that idea.
(05:35):
Yeah.
It's hard for me.
It's a moving target.
The goal is always tomake enough to pay bills.
How much is enough, Matt?
How much is enough when you're Elon Musk?
I could tell you, I could tellyou exactly what our monthly
costs are, an approximate range.
No, it's more than it sh it, it probablyneeds to be, we can certainly scale
back, but it's different for everybody.
If we stop doing it, but it isone of those things where you.
(05:57):
If you're gonna ever make moneydoing it this way or try to,
you're gonna have to invest.
That's just the way it's, and mm-hmm.
Unless you get just flat out lucky and youhave somehow built a following somewhere
else, you're just gonna have to invest.
Yeah.
And as we found, and if you do anyresearch from other people who produce
content on various platforms, they'llall tell you roughly the same thing.
(06:18):
Hey, if you want to build anaudience, you need to have a podcast.
You need to.
Ah, or multiple YouTube channels.
You gotta have stuff on TikTok.
Yeah.
And you gotta have stuff on Instagramand you gotta have stuff on Facebook,
and you gotta have stuff on whatnot andall of these things, and you're pumping
stuff out because one particular typeof person, maybe the person listening
(06:38):
right now, they consume through podcasts.
They don't have time to sit and accept.
Maybe that's just too irritating.
It's better to do that betweenon a commute or whatever else.
Other people, a way of decompressingfrom the day in the evening is
going through and watching somereels or some YouTube videos.
Mm-hmm.
And those may be twodifferent types of consumers.
(06:59):
So really you need to have your contentin all of these different platforms so
that you can reach people where they wantto be, not where you want them to be.
Yeah.
And as much as we like to complainabout some of this stuff, ultimately
our reach is so much greaterthan it ever would've been as two
dudes living in Western Carolina.
Being resellers and or creating apodcast, two middle aged, normal looking
(07:20):
guys, normal guys that I'm incrediblyhandsome and that's one of the draws
to the show, but it is a reach thatyou're not gonna get in any other way.
Keep doing it.
Anyway, enough about that.
I did have a reselling moment thisweek that I haven't even shared
with you because we haven't even,we've been two ships in the night.
We've been just so busy.
I want to hear it.
I bought I bought, let me tellyou, I don't buy anything my wife
(07:42):
buys and I go support the ventureand it's always, I would say 90%
of the time it's for our daughter.
It's like one of those things.
All the things that go into the lifeof a kid and the things you need,
and it just, it's just whatever.
It's, so we had to getmy daughter a new bed.
We had her kind of young girl bed and nowwe've moved her into a middle school bed.
(08:05):
And it was a ridiculouslyoverpriced, expensive pottery barn
bed that would be normally probably$2,500 if you bought brand new.
So we, oh my gosh.
We, my wife found this bed.
She's like, Hey, can you go pick upthis new bed for our daughter Maple?
And I said, Hmm, okay, sure.
(08:26):
So I grabbed my truck and Idrive down to Mills River, which
is, that's by 30 minutes away.
Mm-hmm.
And I get there and when they saidit was a big bed, I had no idea.
And by the way, this isFacebook marketplace.
So it's that whole weirdness of Facebook
this into my truck.
I had to.
(08:49):
$900 bed that we bought.
Like bed and frame on aseparate chip or No, no, no.
There's no frame, Matt.
It's just a giant bed.
Like a loft bed.
Mm-hmm.
That it's gonna be coolwhen it's all done.
But I was thinking to myself whatit would be like to be a person
that was selling furniture.
(09:09):
We've talked a lot aboutkeeping things small.
Mm-hmm.
And it really struck me in thatvery moment as I don't think I
would ever wanna sell furniture.
It is.
Big and bulky and heavy and I don'tknow how much the ROI is on, I was just
thinking, it's funny, when I was drivingI was thinking about the ROI is zero.
I'm lying back For your kids.
Yeah.
(09:29):
Your bag, if that's true, your bag of goldthat got you $1,400 that you collected
over a year or whatever, like thatwas like a tiny little bag of mm-hmm.
Pieces that.
What, anyway, my whole point is I wasthinking about Matt is really onto
something about this selling small.
That was, that's my story, but, oh man.
(09:50):
Listen, you clearly care a lot morefor your child than I do for mine,
because I also get stuff on Facebookmarketplace, but mine is more like,
oh, someone's selling a bed for $15.
Take a look at it like,okay, I have a couple things.
There's a couple of tears.
Do you think that Icould sew those back up?
Yeah, sure.
Okay, great.
A couple of stains there.
Is that blood?
It looks like a large urine stain,and they're like, I'm not sure.
(10:12):
I'm like, okay, it's good enough for me.
Will you take 10?
Did anyone die on this mattress?
Yeah, exactly.
And if so, did youclean it up with bleach?
Because if you did, that's fine.
Does it smell now?
It doesn't smell.
All right, great.
When are you available?
I, that would probably bemore like me if I wasn't if I
didn't have a wife that cared.
So I believe that flow might saysomething about you buying beds that
(10:34):
have been used for a murder case.
That's why what she don't know don't hurt.
You keep flow in the dark.
'cause that's the way it ought to be.
Oh man.
Anyways.
We are this week.
So shifting in you guys, those peoplethat are listening on the podcast, I've
been playing around with some bridges todo some demarcation points in our show.
(10:57):
So you may notice the littledrum roll before Matt sold.
We're gonna introduce those things.
So the music you just heard is part ofthis sort of introducing into the segment
of what we're gonna be talking abouttoday and what we're talking about today.
We've talked about this a fairamount on this show, but we're really
gonna dive deep into it today, whichis sports cards and memorabilia.
(11:17):
Because even though that can bevery specific, there are shops for
it and there are people that doit in high-end things, and all the
things that we've talked about here.
You as a reseller, if you're doingit the way that Matt is doing it, are
gonna run into sports and memorabilia.
Recognize what you need to buy andwhat you don't need to buy, and
(11:40):
also how you can make money on it.
So, Matt, sports cards, what's the deal?
So the sports card and memorabiliaworld, and when we say memorabilia,
it could be anything related toa sport or particular player.
So we're talking about thingslike balls, baseballs, footballs,
soccer balls, maybe their sign.
(12:02):
We're talking about jerseys.
We can talk about photographs.
Maybe there's a signature on aphotograph and then sports cards.
Back a long time ago, they'vebeen making sports cards since
the late 18 hundreds, early 19hundreds, particularly for baseball.
Although there's some really old hockeystuff out there as well and also football.
(12:22):
But baseball tends to bein America especially.
There's a lot of that stuff.
Some of the most valuable things inbaseball are, you can look this up.
It's very obvious are some ofthese Hall of Famers that you
know of Babe Ruth and Ted Williamsand Lou Gehrig and these people.
But even older than that, you'vegot Ty Cobb and Hoes Wagner from
(12:43):
these sets of baseball cardsthat came in Cigarette packages.
Yeah, that's how they got these cards.
Or coffee cans.
Or coffee cans.
Yep.
They're a cracker Jack.
Things that, cards that cameoutta, there's all kinds of
stuff and those are really old.
So to have something in decentcondition these days is quite rare.
So what is, what's thedeal with this whole thing?
(13:04):
Sports cards and memorabilia isa gigantic, a multi-million, if
not multi-billion dollar industry.
Not just the buying of new cardsthat are produced every year
all the time, but the collectingmarket of these types of things.
And just about any sport has playersor participants that they have some
things that have been produced aboutthem that are collectible, but not
(13:27):
surprisingly, the ones that are gonnabe the most valuable are the big names.
The ones you know, inbasketball, it's gonna be people
like Michael Jordan, right?
It's gonna be people like LeBronJames and Steph Curry and Kobe Bryant.
Or even a long time ago, Julius Irving,magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and even before
that, Pete Merovich you may or may notknow these names, it's not important.
(13:50):
But if you go to look on sites likeeBay and you look up these names
and you can look at sold items andthe highest, you'll see some trends.
You'll see the types of playersthat tend to be that items of
theirs are selling more than others.
That means it's morecollectible typically.
Mm-hmm.
You're gonna see ones that aregetting higher prices than others.
(14:11):
It can be a very murky world becausewhen you look at sold items, you
might see two, which appear to youas identical cards, and one sells
for $3,000 and one's selling for $25.
And you're like, I got that card at home.
So what is it?
Is it a $3,000 card or is it $25 card?
What determines valuefor sports cards is not.
(14:34):
That much different at all than the wayyou would evaluate collectibility or
value of any other type of collectible?
It comes down to a few variables.
One of which being how rare is it?
Okay, so rarity usually has to do withscarcity or how much is available.
So if there aren't many available, thatwould make it rare if only a few were
(15:00):
produced, like certain sets of cards.
They'll put out only 10.
So instead of producing thousands ofthese, or multiple thousands, they produce
10 and they say two of 10 or five of 10.
So you know, you, if you have that,you have one of only 10 ever made.
So if it happens to be a verywell-known sports star, then you
(15:20):
could potentially have a very valuablepart because it's limited, right?
The other thing is condition,and this might even be the most
important thing, is the condition.
There are grading companies for all kindsof sports cards and trading cards for
that matter, not even sports related.
There are cards for sports card,or there are cards like game cards
(15:42):
like Pokemon Yugi, o even oldStar Wars cards, things like that.
But then there aretraditional sports cards.
The condition of them iswhat's gonna determine value.
And as this collectible market started.
Getting more and more popular.
At one point, and I don't know whenit began, but somebody got the idea,
(16:04):
Hey, I should create a business wherewe evaluate these cards and give
them a grade on some sort of scale,one to 10 or whatever else they do.
That points, you can grade points,you can grade all kinds of collectible
things, but in the sports card market,there are a handful of different
companies that will grade them.
(16:26):
And they issue a number andthey put it in like a hard case,
a plastic case to protect it.
And they give you a serial number,stuff that you can look up on
their website to make sure that youknow what you have is valuable and
legitimate, that it's not been faked.
So you with me so far on all of this?
Yeah.
If I was to, I was thinking aboutlike how do these old cards stay in?
(16:49):
Good.
There's one comic book collect.
Basically plastic, or theycalled it visqueen, these
kind of heavy plastic bags.
You would put in a cardboard backingand then you would put the, you
would carefully put the comic book.
Mm-hmm.
Ideally, you would've nevertouched the comic book.
Right.
Ideally, you wouldn't have read itor anything 'cause there's no oil.
Or if you did it with latex gloves on,you put it into the backing, whatever.
(17:12):
That's one way.
You do that with cards or whatever,but I've always heard these apocryphal
tales and I wonder if they're true.
So way back when in, I think it was1976, right around the bicentennial,
there was this thing where youwould bury like a tin or something.
Like a lot of schools would do these,bury the thing and you put time capsule.
(17:33):
Time.
Capsule.
Capsule, exactly.
And I remember bury this tin.
And I don't remember what was in it,but what would happen if I had put in my
1977 Millennium Falcon card and my LukeSkywalker card carefully in plastic?
I sealed it up at a Ziploc.
And so let's assume there's no damage.
There's no moisture.
Mm-hmm.
There's no whatever in it.
(17:54):
It's in this tin that'sburied in the ground, and then
somebody digs it up today.
Is that where we find thesecards that are in good shape?
Is that kind of how that stuff happens?
I.
Doubt that's what'shappening all that often.
What it could have happened, listen, ifI say yes, if I say yes, what's gonna
happen is there's gonna be all of thesemetal detector enthusiasts going to
(18:15):
elementary schools and walking around,digging stuff up out of their school yard.
Which we don't want, but I didthis actually under the porch
of my house okay, fair enough.
So I don't know where it ended up, butI mean it, my point is, someone could
do something like that or in an attic.
If they put it like hit it in an atticor whatever that happened, I think
that the majority of people who arebuying cards that are in really good
(18:36):
condition that are graded are ones that.
Already somebody had, they had greetedand then they've had it for a long
time, and then they decided they neededthe money or they don't care about it
anymore, or they inherited it and it wasnot an interest of theirs in the first
place, but they recognize it has value.
Then there's people whodo this for a living.
All they do is buy theseexpensive boxes of cards.
(18:59):
This premium elite.
Whatever, limited thing of rookiesof 2025 basketball and that
box is gonna cost you $20,000.
Whoa.
And it only has fivecards in it, for example.
Wow.
And then they buy thisand they pull it out.
They know that every one ofthose cards is gonna be valuable.
Maybe every one of them isgonna have a signature too.
(19:20):
And they know that they're, based onlooking at the previous sales and kind
of the trends, they're, they standto make money on it pretty easily.
Provided they take it out.
They don't touch it and they sendit off immediately to get graded.
There are people whose their entire jobis that's what they do and they have
big money and they put it in there.
There are people who every yearwhen there is a draft, and this
(19:43):
could be in baseball and basketball,football, they have a draft.
So let's just take football for example.
Every year they're gonna be ahandful of quarterbacks that get
drafted into the FL and they'regonna become starting quarterbacks.
Professional players, you haveno idea how they're gonna, if
they're gonna pan out or not.
Let's say there are 10 rookie quarterbacksthat are drafted each year and that
(20:08):
year someone's gonna buy several setsof certain brands, whether it be ops or
whatever the brand is of that particularcard, or they're gonna get online after
other people have done it and they'regonna buy 50 cards, identical card.
Of that same player, and they'regonna do that for 10 players, so
(20:30):
they're gonna have 500 cards orwhatever it is they're gonna bank on.
One of those 10 is gonnabecome a very good player.
Rookie of the year.
MVP, something like that.
Mm-hmm.
They're gonna go down and itdoesn't matter that the 450 cards
of the other nine players don'tpan out because they're not paying
hardly anything for these cards.
(20:51):
Couple bucks a card.
Because it's almost like speculative.
Mm-hmm.
But based on, again, historical evidencewill show that e in each draft class,
there's a really good chance thatsomebody's gonna be a very good player
and maybe become a hall of famer someday.
They're not putting a wholelot of money into these.
They're gonna get 'em all graded.
They should all grade out at itbetween an eight and 10 outta 10,
(21:14):
and they're just gonna sit on andthen five, 10 years down the road.
They're gonna have 50 rookie cards ofthis really well-known, very accomplished
player, and they're gonna cash out.
There are people who do that.
I know somebody personallylocally that does that, and
he does very well for himself.
Mm-hmm.
So like he bought a bunch of Joe Burrow,rookie cards when he was drafted.
(21:38):
At some point he's gonna cash out on thatbecause he's been a very good player.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Like he bought a JaydenDaniels last year or something.
Exactly.
But the most valuable ones are gonna bethe ones that are rookie cards typically,
or very limited cards of the superstars.
So what are the most valuable sportscards that are selling right now?
Anybody who has really old good conditioncards from the 1915, like the T 2 0 9
(22:03):
or 2 0 5, whatever that set is, that'sthe one that the Hoes Wagner, mm-hmm.
Is from, there are only, a hundred,200 some cards from that set or.
If you have a Babe Ruth rookie card or youhave a Mickey Mantle rookie card that's
in good condition and graded, those arethe things that are gonna sell the most.
If you have a Michael Jordan rookiecard that's graded and is graded
high, those are the gonna be the ones.
(22:24):
Where are people actuallyfinding packs of those today and
pulling out mint condition cards?
It's really not happening.
If you wanna buy a box of smallpacks, like 20 or 30 packs.
From the set that Jordan, rookie Jordan'srookie card comes from, you're gonna pay
tens of thousands of dollars without evenknowing if that card's in there, simply
(22:47):
because it's like a lottery ticket.
People will do that.
There are ones available to buy a singlepack, like a single, like what they
call like booster packs or blaster packsthat maybe only has 20 cards in it.
You're gonna pay multiple hundreds, ifnot thousands of dollars for that pack.
It's unopened.
Wow.
Even if there's a Jordan card in there,it's unlikely that's gonna be a high
grade, but it doesn't matter becauseanybody who has that card of any decent
(23:11):
condition is gonna have good value.
So I think people who have thecards are people who've been
doing this regularly or people whocollected back before the internet.
Was a thing.
Mm-hmm.
So they would go to Sports card,traveling shows at the fairgrounds or
whatever in their town or in the bigtown near them, and they would buy these.
(23:33):
There are people who have held onto thoseand then they pass 'em down to their kids.
Oh, dad liked to collect, oh, grandpa.
Or Great Grandpapa collected thesecards, and they'd just come down the
line and everyone's kept them until now.
And maybe I want to get 'em graded,maybe they're already graded.
It's time for me to cash out.
That kind of thing.
Then there's people like me.
And in a moment we'll talk about, I'veactually pulled some of my own cards
(23:54):
out here to talk about I, buying andselling things would buy lots of stuff.
It would've cards here and there, andover time I've accumulated stuff, but
this has been years of full-time work.
Mm-hmm.
And I've accumulated stuff until I gota decent amount that I wanted to grade.
So I'm pause there for a second and say.
(24:15):
If you are interested in this world ofbuying and selling, you're gonna do best
at selling and optimizing your value ofwhat you have if your part is graded.
So the company PSA is consideredthe most reputable today part.
(24:38):
It works.
You can get onto their website.
You get a, it's free to get an accountand if you wanna submit cards to be
graded, you go in and you have tosearch for the card in their database
based on what you're looking at.
You find it.
You basically say, I have this card,and based on what you think the grade
will be and what you think the valueof that card would be after it's
(25:00):
graded, will determine how much youhave to pay them to grade that card.
So it can range, but depending onwhether or not you pay a subscription
fee to the site or not, but it canbe as low as 14 or $15 for a card.
For one card, that's thecheapest, but it can be up over
a thousand dollars for a card.
If, say you have a card that youthink is gonna sell for multiples of
(25:22):
thousands of dollars, it's still makessense for you to pay that because
you're gonna make a good return onyour investment once it's graded.
So you put all those in and then there'sa method of how you have to actually
package them up, like what sleeves youhave to put them in, how you package them.
You ship 'em off to them andthen they will grade them.
(25:44):
It's usually a month to monthand a half turnaround time.
You don't have to pay until they emailyou back and say, they're completed,
we're about to ship them off.
Then you pay, but you'll knowhow much you're gonna in the.
It can be stressful if you don'tknow how to do it in the beginning.
What determines the cost of the grading?
The quality of the card.
(26:05):
Yes.
So if I have a card that I, for example,I'm gonna show you a very valuable
some valuable cards here in a moment.
That if your card is, there are tiersand it's clearly marked on there.
It tells you if this is like a $200or less value card, it's gonna be $14.
If it's 500 to a thousanddollars, it's gonna be this much.
If it's a thousand dollars or more, or upto this point, it's gonna be this much.
(26:28):
And so you won't know, and theywon't charge you really until they,
the grade comes out and all of that.
But it's a little bit ofa complicated process.
But there are YouTube videos wherepeople do it, tell you exactly how
they're doing it and why, and thatthey're following the guidelines since
you can see a step by step process.
It's not that bad.
Once you watch somebody do it and doit once, then you know how it works.
(26:52):
But you send it off, it gets graded, itcomes back, and then it'll have a grade.
Let's say I have this card and it'sgraded out an eight out of a 10.
That's pretty good.
But collectors who are gonnaspend the most money on a card
are really wanting a 10, outta 10.
They're wanting a mint condition card.
Mm-hmm.
If they can afford it.
If they can't, they're gonna gofor a nine, can't afford that.
They're gonna go for an eight, or they'rejust gonna wait and save their money up
(27:14):
until they can get her a nine or a 10.
So if you have cards that you think willbe graded from an eight to a 10, in my
opinion, it makes sense to ship it offand get graded unless it happens to be a
card that is so rare that even in a poorcondition, like a four or a five, it could
still sell for several hundred dollars.
So something like a Babe Ruth rookie cardor something like one of these old cards.
(27:37):
But if you have a Ken Griffey Jrrookie card, that's awesome, but
if it only grades out at a six.
It may not even be worth, even thoughit's popular player, it's a rookie card.
If it's not graded well enough,it's probably not gonna be worth
paying the money to send it off.
And if you have cards that you're notgoing to grade, it's gonna be very
(27:59):
difficult to get very good money for thembecause the collectors want graded cards.
And a trend I've noticed lately is notonly do they want graded cards, but
I've seen in the last year, especiallya big move towards grade high graded.
Cards that also are signed on them,like hand signed by a player, meaning
(28:20):
it had been in front of the player, theysigned it, so it's maybe mint condition
and it has a signature that's gonna beselling for more than a mint condition
card with no signature, which is gonna beselling more than a card that's greater
than nine instead of a 10 and so on.
So that's how it works.
There is big money out there tobe made in sports cards, but it's.
(28:44):
One of those that you needto do a lot of research.
If you want to test out gradinga card, I would just send one
to five cart to begin with.
Don't put a lot of money into it.
Familiarize yourself with the process.
Mm-hmm.
See how long it takes, determine how,what kind of a grade you got based on
what you thought it was gonna be, sothat you know well, like I didn't do a
(29:05):
very good job of determining that myself.
'cause I thought it was likea nine that came back a six.
Why is that?
Just so you know, the people thatgrade these cards, it's not just
about, okay, I'm looking at a card.
It looks pretty good.
There's no dented corner,so it must be a 10 outta 10.
No, no, no.
There's a lot of things.
The color quality, is it faded?
Is it bright?
(29:26):
Is it centered?
Up and down, left to right.
Are there any splotches on it?
Is there any sort of rub?
Has it been.
Has anything happened to it?
Are there oils on it?
They put it under a magnifyingglass or like a microscope.
There's all kinds of things.
So you might think you have a10, comes back like a seven.
So there were things that you couldn'tsee just with your, the naked eye.
(29:49):
So if you're buying a brand new packthat's not bent today of Pokemon
cards and you open it up and you'reusing gloves or you're not touching
it, and you find a really good card.
There's a good chance that'llbe like an eight outta 10.
'cause it's not really been,it's not been handled a lot.
It's fresh out of a pack, you're fine.
But if you're to buy a pack that'snever been opened of baseball cards
(30:11):
from like 1981 that has the rock hardpiece of gum that's at this point
stuck on the back of the back card.
So good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't suggest tryingto chew that by now.
By the way but if you get that,there's almost no chance that's
gonna be graded at a 10, outta 10.
It's just sat in that pack for so long.
It's deteriorated, it's faded.
(30:31):
It's probably not goingto grade out really well.
The ones that are gonna grade well, theones that were pulled out of a pack back
in 1981 and immediately put in a sleeve.
Have been graded since then and passed on.
Those are the ones, so I'm not sayingdon't go to your closet and pull out all
the tubs of sports cards that you have,because you may have some decent ones.
If somebody put 'em insleeves, for example.
(30:53):
I have here 10 cards.
They are all differentKobe Bryant rookie cards.
Now why is that important?
It's important because Kobe Bryant was avery popular, very accomplished basketball
player who sadly tragically died ina helicopter crash a few years ago.
And when that happened, the value and thecollectibility of his cards skyrocketed
(31:17):
because it was a super tragic situation.
No more cards of his are ever goingto be produced while he's alive and.
These are his rookie cardsto the year that he started.
I've got 10 of them and these came outof a lot of cards that I bought that
were just random cards from like theeighties and nineties, and it just
(31:38):
so happened some of 'em were in hardplastic cases, and these were among them.
They didn't realize maybethat they had value that.
So these do exist.
There are things out there in people'sattics and in their closets and tubs.
Maybe you still have stuff that yourkid who's now an adult, but you still
got his cards at your house, therecould be some good value in there,
(31:59):
especially if they collected older cards.
Mm-hmm.
What about going to, like for theaverage listener that's going out
to the different thrift shops and.
Whatever, Goodwills, whatever.
Are there, they find those kindsof cards there, or is it just
an absolute Easter egg hunt?
If you're gonna it, it'smostly an Easter egg hunt.
If you're gonna find cards at likethrift stores, for example, almost
(32:20):
always they're in like plastic bagsor they're in boxes or little tubs
and they're just all strewn out.
They're not really taken care of.
They're dumped in.
Somebody didn't care, right?
They donated 'em, theydidn't care about them.
So they just gave 'em away, right?
You will find them at, say, antique storesand estate sales and things like that.
And oftentimes you can find themor even online auctions and stuff.
(32:42):
You can find graded cards, you can findothers that are in a stack and maybe
based on what you see in the stack, youthink, okay, there's probably some value
here, but it is, it's a lottery ticket.
Maybe there's a really goodcard in there you don't see.
Maybe there isn't.
Most of the time there isn'tbecause people have sorted through.
Like you can even get a box thatsays complete set, and it might
be a complete set, or it mightbe 399 out of the 400 cards.
(33:05):
And guess what?
That one card that's not in there,that was the most valuable card.
That's the only card in there thatreally has much value anymore.
Because the other thing I wannamention is that cards produced
from 1985 up until now, right?
Right around 19 85, 86 is when the sportscard company started just mass producing
(33:26):
by the hundreds of thousands of cards.
King Griffey Jr. RickyCard is an awesome card.
The problem is there are likethousands of them out there
that are graded nines and tens.
It's not as valuable anymorebecause there are thousands and
thousands of them out there, right?
Again, it's about rarity andlike how many of them are there.
So if you have a card that'sreally good condition, really
(33:50):
rare and of a player who's reallypopular and collectible, then.
That's the best case scenario.
It's graded.
It's a popular player that's stillcollectible and it's in good condition.
That's what you want.
The other stuff I wouldn't mess with,and I certainly would not suggest people
going out to your local Walmart orTarget and buying packs and expecting
(34:10):
to pull out multi-thousand dollar cards.
These cards that you see on eBay thatare selling for tons of money, those are
almost always the cards that are comingout of those premier boxes and packages.
That costs thousands andthousands of dollars.
Only 1% of the sports cardcollecting group of the world
are actually buying those packs.
(34:32):
Mm-hmm.
The people who have, those arepeople who own sports card.
Stores and or those are peoplewho collect for a living.
They're not hobbyists.
So I'm not saying don't, it's fun,it's interesting if you like it and you
like to buy and sell just for a hobbyor you like to collect a certain card
of your favorite player from when youwere a kid, I think all that is great.
But it is such a rabbit hole.
(34:55):
It takes a lot of time.
It takes money 'cause you have to sendit off to get it graded if you really
wanna make good money on selling it.
And because of all of those factors.
A big part of my business, although I'mabout to turn that on his head 'cause I'm
gonna really quick show and talk aboutsome cards I have that in the next month
(35:15):
I'm actually gonna send off to have gradedbecause I think that it, these, all these
cards match what I described, that they'regood condition tend to be valuable and
especially so if they're graded well.
So here are examples of, once Ialready talked about the Kobe Bryant
rookie cards, some Kobe Bryantrookie cards that are graded very
(35:35):
well, sell for thousands of dollars.
So if I have a card that costs mevery little, it's in good condition.
Even if I think it can getan eight, I'm willing to pay.
$14 for that.
Wait a month and a half tosell it for two or $300.
To me, that makes sense financially.
Mm-hmm.
I have a Bo Jackson Footballrookie card in good condition.
(35:56):
So that was from, back in the ninetiesaround when I was collecting cards.
I've got an Andre Dawson rookie card.
Oh, I've got Tony Gwen,the Hawk rookie card.
I've got a ReggieJackson rookie card here.
Here's my King Griffey Jr. Rookie card.
I've got 10 of them.
Wow.
This one is the one in the best condition.
So that's one, one I'm to getwhere, get, oh, I've collected.
(36:17):
Here's another one.
I've collected 'em over time.
Some of these are things I'veheld onto since I was a kid.
Okay.
Other things I've boughtand sold over time.
Here's a Bo Jackson.
Baseball Rookie card.
Here's another King Griffey Rick card.
Here's a Frank Thomas rookie card.
The big hurt.
And this is this is my box right here.
I have about 300 more that are all ones.
(36:38):
I've got women, Yama,is that his last name?
Victor Wembenyama.
He's one of the most popular I'vegot French Center for the Spurs.
Yeah.
I got seven or eight rookie cards of histhat came out in the last year or two.
I've got a bunch of Reggie Jackson cards.
I've got two or threeNolan Ryan rookie cards.
And then the most valuableone is this one right here.
This is a Larry Bird rookiecard from 19 80, 19 81.
(37:00):
It features Larry Bird, Julius Irving,and Magic Johnson, and I believe it's
at least an eight, probably a nine.
The last card of this card thatsold on eBay, that was a nine out
of 10 sold for $16,000 on eBay.
Wow.
And I wouldn't be surprised if this close.
(37:22):
It's very sharp.
It doesn't really have oils on it.
It does have a little bit of colorkind of splotching if you look at it.
So my guess is it would be more of aneight or a nine, but there aren't a
whole lot of this card that are a 10.
And the other thing about PSA is Ibelieve, and somebody correct me if I'm
wrong on this, but I believe that you canget on and any particular card, it will
(37:43):
give a list of the number of them thatthey have given a particular grade to.
You could get on and I need to do this.
How many Larry Bird Ricky cards havebeen given a 10 out of 10 on the
out of the grading scale for PSA?
How many have a nine?
And then if I get on eBay, let's say thatthere are 1510s that have ever been given
(38:04):
a 10 and I get a 10, so I'm one of the 15.
If I get on eBay and there's onlyone or two available for sale.
Then I'm one of only three peoplethat have one available for sale
on eBay, at least maybe one of theonly people that have one for sale.
And so all of a sudden I have a rare, highvaluable, highly collectible card, and I
(38:24):
can essentially put any price I want onit just to see if anybody's gonna buy.
But the good thing about a card like this,a really valuable card, or even like a
Nolan Ryan rookie card that might give methree or $4,000 if it grades out well, is
that I could send one card off, sell that.
The proceeds from that one cardcan pay for my cost to grade
(38:45):
five or 600 other good cards.
And then when those comeback, I have no money in that.
It's already been paid for.
Right.
And then it's just profit.
And that's actually mystrategy with these.
I'm only gonna send offabout 20 cards to begin with.
When I get those back and sellthem, I'm gonna send another 300.
And when I get those back andget them listed, I'm gonna
(39:06):
sell, send another 300 in.
And I've got somewhere around 200to 300 Michael Jordan cards over
here that I need to get graded.
Several of 'em aren't worth a ton.
Wait, what?
How many?
Oh, probably two or 300.
Holy cow.
Yeah.
And I've got a bunch from the,from the from the eighties around
that late eighties, early nineties.
Mm-hmm.
(39:27):
I don't have I do have some that are,technically rookie cards, but not the one
that tends to be the one that everyonewants, that sells for a ton of money.
But who knows?
Maybe I'll sell some of these and tryto find myself one another thing I wanna
mention really fast is about these cards.
Is that the best time to try to sellthese is when there is some sort of
event that has to do with this player.
(39:49):
The best time to sell these KobeBryant cards would've been within
a couple of weeks of when he died.
I hate.
I didn't create that situation.
But naturally speaking, the increase ininterest happens when a thing happens.
When they put out some sort of specialdocumentary on a particular hall of
fame player, that might be a good time.
(40:09):
'cause now people are looking at it again.
Oh yeah, I wanna go seewhat their card costs.
Put that card out there.
It's just like selling postcard.
Right before that particular holiday.
You sell a Valentine card.
A week or two before Valentine's Day,you sell your Halloween cards a week or
two before h Halloween, because that'swhen the interest, so when Michael
Jordan dies someday, that's gonna bethe spike in the value of his cards.
(40:34):
It's a bummer.
Sometimes people feel like they'retaking advantage somehow of a
bad situation and I understandthat, but things happen in life.
That you can't control.
What you can control though, isknowing when values are gonna be
high or low or whatever you have.
So mm-hmm.
Be paying attention to pop culture.
(40:54):
I hate to say it, but I foundout this morning, Val Kilmer
just passed away, right?
So if you have a signed picture of ValKilmer right now is when you're gonna get
the best price you'll ever get for that.
Photograph probably things like that.
If you know what's going on aroundyou and it relates to an item that
you have, that's the time to try toget your money out of it, if that's
(41:15):
something that you want to do.
What about you we're runninga little bit tight on time.
What about like sports memorabilia,like signed baseballs or basketballs
or, I don't know, hockey stick,whatever it is that a puck that
someone got in the game Yeah.
And got signed.
Is there a grading system forthat or is that more speculative?
There is.
Okay.
Yeah, so those grading companies willcreate all of those types of things.
(41:36):
Okay.
All types of things.
I would say that I would bevery cautious about buying.
Items like that.
Let's say it has a signature orsomething, and that's the big
reason why it should have the value.
Supposedly, if you arebuying it and it has not been
authenticated, I would be very.
Cautious.
If you don't know a whole lot aboutthat, you don't have a way of if you
don't know it really well, I wouldn'trecommend doing that unless it's
(41:59):
something that's been handed down,something you personally had signed
or a family member and you trust them,where it came from, that kind of thing.
Because signatures can be forged, right.
Don't buy the Babe Ruth.
His first home run ball from somebody onFacebook marketplace locally for 50 bucks.
That's not, it ain't what it is.
Okay.
What I shouldn't, no, Idon't think you should.
(42:21):
But if you find something thatyou want and for a decent deal
and you can see it's already beenauthenticated and you can look up
serial number online and validate that.
Sure.
But if you have things Yeah.
Some people like to collect a certainperson, so my last name is Brock Lube,
and my team, I grew up in Missouri.
The team that I grew up followingwas the St. Louis Cardinals.
(42:45):
That's always been, whatever my team.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, it's fun to get Lou Brockcards 'cause he was a sweet Lou.
He was a great hall of Famerplayer for the St. Louis Cardinals
and he has the same last name.
So that may be something like you,maybe Jones is your last name and
you elected Chipper Jones stuff.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
(43:05):
Or just your favorite team.
And so it may be that a familymember collected a bunch of stuff
because there was some sort ofconnection to your family or just.
And they have a ball that's signedand they've got all these photographs
and maybe they have all thesesports cards or jerseys and stuff.
Yeah.
All that stuff can have value.
If you have a really nicejersey from Michael Jordan.
(43:26):
In that short period of time whenhe had, he wasn't wearing 23,
he was wearing what was a 45?
Something like that right then?
Yeah, that could be.
'cause it was a short livedperiod of time, so there weren't.
All that many produced.
I had a jersey in middle school, JordanJersey, where he had that other number.
I don't have it anymore.
I think I, we gave it away or sold it.
(43:48):
I wish I still had it because Right.
It would be of some decent value today.
Or his rookie baseball card becausehe played minor league baseball.
I'm sure there's a card out there for him.
Oh sure.
In his, I think he played for theBirmingham stallions or something,
but he played both exactly.
We're gonna keep aneye out for that stuff.
I agree with you.
I think it is a challenge to makesure that it is authenticated because
there are scammers everywhere.
(44:09):
So be aware of that.
How about this?
So we've gone so long.
I have other things I wanted to do.
So here's the teaser, if you'llallow me for our next show.
Sure.
We may not have a big story like topiclike this that we discussed, but I'll
have multiple other things I wannashow and talk about that I sold and
then I've got a really bad story.
(44:30):
To share and a really exciting story.
Oh, I like when you give a teaser andI'll let you tell me which order you want
those in next time, but Oh, like it's,you want the good news or the bad news?
That's, I like it.
Exactly.
We'll do that and I'll havesome other really good stuff.
And you know what?
For anyone who cares, in a few monthswhen I get these cards back that I sent
to have graded, I'll give you an update.
(44:52):
What came back matching what I thought itwould be, what was lower than I thought.
What's higher and what do I. The process.
Would I recommend it?
Would I not?
How am I doing on thesales of these things?
We should come back to this.
Yeah, for sure.
It's funny, I was thinking when youwere talking about grading, I have a
friend, more of an acquaintance backfrom when I lived in San Francisco.
(45:14):
He was a lawyer, a successful lawyerwho actually sadly passed away.
He had an incredible sports memorabiliacollection and what I mean incredible.
I. A thousand signedbaseballs all authenticated.
Wow.
Jerseys.
He, his whole house was a monument,sports memorabilia, and I gotta
imagine that when he passed away,that there was an estate sale.
(45:37):
Those things happen.
Yeah.
And it's like you said, it's sad,but it's the reality of the world.
If you're in an area where you knowsomebody is a collector, keep an
eye on not for them to die, but theymight wanna sell some of that stuff.
It's like any other commodity.
If you know that you can make.
Two x on it, it might be worthit if you could make a grand on,
you invest a grand and then yousell it and make a grand mm-hmm.
(45:59):
Probably keep an eye on that kind ofstuff on eBay or other places where
that's traded, and that way if youdo collect the stuff, you could sell
it and make some money off of it.
Exactly.
On the last episode, you mentioneda particular type of comic book
that you enjoyed collectingthe most, and what was that?
X-Men.
I have an X-Men 2099 number one.
(46:23):
And that's coming your way, my man.
What?
Wait, what?
What year is that?
It's in the eighties, I'm sure.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
So not like super old, in fact.
Here.
Lemme see here.
Oh, actually it's 93.
It's 93.
But still.
Yeah, so they did.
So I actually did some researchon that after we got off the air.
They did, the first original X-Mencame out in the sixties, actually.
(46:43):
Okay.
I thought it was in the earlyseventies, but it was the sixties.
And they've done these, andthat's another thing which is
similar to this whole thing.
So as we go out, it actually is somethingto be aware of that, that they will
re-release these different things.
So you gotta be aware of that.
X-Men right there, that was.
Yeah, really 35 years after, it wasprobably like, the 30 anniversary
(47:04):
or something, and it could be.
An amazing story, but that kind of stuff.
They're trying to make money offof the notoriety of the deals.
Of course.
Oh, I will enjoy that.
X-Men.
That was wonderful.
Up in my, that will go up in my office.
I will be framing that.
So someday my daughtercan go, what's this?
X-Men number one here.
That's right.
Alright, that is allthe time that we have.
It has been.
(47:24):
We have, as we are out again, apt todo, we have gone a little bit long, but
we really appreciate you guys takingthe time to spend an hour with us.
Hopefully you picks up something,hopefully you find that Jonas Wagner Yeah.
In that coffee can, that I buriedunder the house and that grade
it out of the nine or a 10 andthen you can retire on that.
Wonderful.
But if you can't come back and join us,remember to write a review, follow, like,
(47:47):
and subscribe, all those fun things.
Check out our YouTube channel.
We've got lots ofdifferent things out there.
We really appreciate you guys.
Keep the comments coming,we're getting lots of 'em.
But otherwise, that is allthe time we have for today.
So have a great week, everybody.
We will be back next weekwith a brand new show.
Take care.
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