October 15, 2025 • 43 mins
4 Collectors enters the Sports Card Clubhouse and welcomes respected hobby voice and collectibles philosopher Chris McGill.
Dan and Chris discuss and share tales about how each card in our collection has a backstory that can genuinely create nostalgia and positive feelings.
Whether from childhood or even recently acquired, a collection piece can be a “signpost” to great moments in our lives, people we befriend along the way and events that shape our hobby experience.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Good afternoon, baseball fans, and welcome back to I was going
to say dance Vintage baseball PC, but no, this is for
collectors. And what's exciting about this
particular show is that this will be the first simulcast that
goes from for collectors onto the Sports card Clubhouse
(00:21):
Podcast Network, where this willbe a regular podcast feature
coming from for collectors to that particular network.
And we're really happy to be part of it.
And so I figured for the first podcast episode, I would get who
I think to be maybe the hobbies best podcast person.
(00:46):
And so that would be Chris McGill, otherwise known as Chris
Hoge or House of Jordan. Good afternoon, Sir.
How are you? Doing well, I'm reminded of a
joke by a comedian I like named Ari Mati, who says he is the
best comedian in Estonia out of four.
(01:07):
So I, I, I believe the population of hobby podcast
guests might just be one, but that is me, Sir, and I
appreciate the kind words and I also appreciate the four
collectors network and the sports card, the the blossoming
sports card clubhouse network. I just think there's a there's a
little renaissance of content that's going on.
(01:29):
Most of it surrounds vintage andpre war baseball and I just, you
know, I don't collect either those categories, but I consume
hours of this content that you find folks make every day.
So I just, I love what's going on.
Well, I, I actually was the behind the scenes producer of
(01:50):
the Hobby Palooza podcast that you were on with stacking slabs.
What's his name? I'm sorry, Shane Brett was
talking slabs. And it was one of those things
where you guys were basically breaking down that like, we're
all collectors, whether it's hot, whether it's modern,
whether it's basketball, baseball, vintage, whatever it
(02:12):
is. When you're a collector, you're
a collector and we have more things in common than we have
things that are different. And so that to me was like a
little bit of a revelation. And so you know that that's a
tribute to you. And you know, you, you've been
somebody I've watched in in a number of different arenas, one
(02:34):
being the crossover, your show with your partner, obviously a
sports card live, which I watch every week when it's on And you
know, obviously card ladder. So you know, it's it's I, I, I
consider you one of the most thoughtful, incisive,
contemplative types of people inthe hobby.
(02:56):
And I figured podcast, this is the guy we need for number 1.
So there you go. Very kind.
It's it's great to be with you, Dan.
I've I'm a big admirer of your content as well.
In fact, you had a recent one that I really enjoyed about
collecting obscure players that stuck with me days after I took
(03:18):
it in. And I just think I, I actually
think there's, there's two things I love about hobby
content. First of all, the landscape is
so ripe for picking. It's, it's almost all uncharted
territory. We, we, almost any direction we
want to go and we can create, wecan contribute something novel.
And that's just like, you know, I have a brief, very brief legal
(03:42):
background only to the extent that I went to law school and I
worked for firms as a clerk for a period of time and I externed
at a summer court. I'd I'd never became a lawyer.
I never passed the bar, never took the bar.
But but in my brief time in the law, I was always struck really
by how much of it is, is so anchored to precedent into
(04:04):
things that had previously happened and that arguments must
be made from what previous holdings had already occurred.
And in hobby content, it's, it'sso different.
It's it there, what are the previous holdings?
What's, what's the textbook? What's that guidebook with
there's there's nothing you knowthere's it's it's we are
creating this body of knowledge as we go yourself Mangini sports
(04:30):
cards live. There are there are so many
thoughtful creators. It's I the word I use for it.
Dan is a renaissance. I there it is a renaissance of
hobby content and it's it's a pretty special thing to watch
unfold. Well, you and I do have that in
common as I many, many years before you did go to law school
(04:53):
and, and they did have two children actually, who went to
law school much more recently than you did.
So, you know, it's, it's in my blood, it's in my family, it's
my wife is a lawyer. So you know, the, the sort of
the, the being able to speak in public, being able to formulate
an argument, being able to, you know, the Socratic method is
(05:15):
always an, an issue and you should hear some of our home
discussions. But that being as it may, we, we
decided I, I, you know, I sent you some, some e-mail back and
forth and we decided to talk about one of my 5 reasons for
collecting that came out of that, you know, obscure why I
clicked obscure video, which is nostalgia.
(05:36):
And you know, when you talk about nostalgia for baseball
card collectors, particularly vintage collectors, a lot of it
is going back to your childhood,getting cards that you had as a
child or in, or in my case, whenI started collecting vintage as
an adolescent, going back and getting, you know, better
examples of the cards you had asan adolescent.
(05:57):
And, you know, and then there's inherited nostalgia, which, you
know, it's like, I collect Warren Spahn because my dad was
a Warren Spahn fan. I collect the Boston Braves
because my uncle was a big Braves fan.
My, you know, I, I told this before, but the reality is it's
a lot of family connections can give you an inherited nostalgia
(06:17):
that that affects your collection.
But what I wanted to talk about,and this was a sort of a
phenomenon that came to me recently, and it has to do with
Card Ladder. I don't want to make this an
advertisement for Card Ladder, but as a Card ladder owner of a
subscription, I decided to put my entire collection into the
(06:39):
database and give myself essentially a, a complete
inventory of what I had because my record keeping is terrible.
My, you know, my knowledge of what I had was, was, was pretty
terrible, to be honest with you.But Cardliner has given me the
opportunity to do that. And as I've done this, it's been
(06:59):
amazing that each time I look ata card and I input the data,
where I got it, how much it paidfor it, it gives me a flashback
to a period of time in my adulthood where I have nostalgia
for it. So I coined the phrase to you,
adult nostalgia. And so this is a conversation
(07:20):
that I would love to have because I feel like it's
something no one's really ever talked about.
Like five years ago, I bought card and now I have such great
memories of the person I bought it from, how much it paid for,
where I was, what I was doing that day, all that stuff.
And cart ladder. The is just the mechanism by
which I've been able to put the data and go back and get all
(07:42):
those memories beat from personal messages, text
messages, emails, invoices, pictures from card shows things
that that were on my channel, you know, from three years ago.
So that's kind of what I wanted to talk about.
And it's, it's, it's been something that I've been living
with now for a few weeks. And I know that I gave you this
(08:04):
a couple of days ago, but I feellike you, you're kind of you're
kind of starting to get think about this a little bit
yourself. So let me hear what you have to
say about this concept that I think I've come up with for a
adult nostalgia. Love the concept as soon as you
introduced it, it was something I thought about every day since
because it adequately and accurately described something
(08:27):
that I, that I, that I certainlyexperience as a collector a lot.
And one of the things I started thinking about, maybe this is
what I'll throw out there first is, is what is the mechanism
that connects collecting and nostalgia?
In other words, maybe different way of phrasing.
That is, why does collecting cards trigger nostalgia or, or,
(08:49):
or, or why are nostalgia and collecting cards, the things
that we bring together just because we're nostalgic, that it
doesn't necessarily follow that we would continue to, you know,
collect cards? There's, there's, there's,
there's, there's a little bit more there.
And I, and I think that the mechanism is this.
And I want to show how this mechanism, I think, adequately
(09:09):
explains both normal nostalgia and adult nostalgia.
So I think normal nostalgia or the feelings of nostalgia for
for things from childhood. The reason why there's such a
strong bridge between that and collecting cards is that is that
the nostalgia specifically conjures up a much simpler time
(09:31):
in our lives. When, you know, if I think to
myself as a kid, just sort of, you know, maybe I had gone
garage saling with my mom and I,I got like a $0.25, you know,
team, team bag that held all theChicago Bulls players or
something. And I would just go home and I
would put those, you know, I'd get out my binder pages and I'd
put them in the binder. And then I'd say, OK, well, I
(09:53):
still need card 17, you know, I still need Jason Caffey or
something, or I still need the checklist or something.
And, you know, that was the the simplicity of that time, the
simplicity of childhood of no stresses or concerns from the
adult world, no financial pressure, just, you know, no
bills due, no complicated relationships with bosses and
(10:16):
colleagues and family, just a kid playing with cards.
You know, the simplicity of thatis, is something that I think it
is, is a, it is part of the, of the appeal of nostalgia is that
the cards can put us back into that mind state.
And so, you know, one, I, I, I think to myself, OK, so that's,
(10:38):
that's something unique to childhood.
That childhood offered us that simplicity.
And then we collect cards. It sort of transports us back to
that mindset, to that carefree mindset.
And we as adults, we probably shouldn't want to be in that
mindset all the time, but it's nice as an escape that these
items are, are they, they transport us to a simpler time
and, and it's nice to visit thattime every once in a while.
(10:59):
But then I think about adult nostalgia.
So how could it be? If the mechanism of nostalgia is
transporting us to a similar time of childhood, then how
could an adult nostalgia do thattoo?
Because now we're adults. Life is complicated and messy
and confusing and stressful. But I think the mechanism still
is there. I, I think still when we, even
when we're adults, when we're adding cards to our digital
(11:21):
inventories or when we're chatting with friends or when
we're at a show, you know, eyeing dealer showcases or
taking stock of what's in our collection and how we might want
to change it, that, that once again, we are sort of escaping
to a simpler time, a simpler mindset, even though it's
happening contemporaneously. And I think that's how adult
(11:42):
nostalgia works too. I think not.
It's in other words, we don't need to be transported back to
childhood cards to get the sense, the sensation of
nostalgia. We can That is a way to do.
It's like for me, it's cards from the 90s that they would
give me childhood nostalgia. But but I can get nostalgia from
from 90s cards but but that I didn't know about until 5 or 6
(12:05):
years ago. Or I can get nostalgia from
cards that were made very recently.
Or I can get nostalgia from cards from the pre war era that
I that I only discovered within the last 10 years.
I can still have nostalgic adultnostalgia for those because the
mechanisms same because when I go into my collector mindset
that that that escapism, it still exists for me even as an
(12:28):
adult too. And so I am still sort of
animating those neural pathways of the carefree simplicity of
maybe childhood or maybe just myescape as a collector.
What do you think about that, Dan?
I think you hit it right on the nose because in many respects,
the hobby itself exists in our lives as an escape.
(12:51):
It's the world that's outside ofall of those problems that you
talk about paying the bills and,and, and, you know, for me,
dealing with dealing with legal cases, you know, all the things
that you have to deal with stresses, you know, and, and,
and in many respects, the card show is for me, a little Oasis
(13:14):
of peace, which is why like an event like Strongsville where I
go for multiple days and all I do is hang out with card friends
and look at cards and talk aboutcards and occasionally drink a
beer. That's an escape.
And to me that there's a nostalgia for that because
that's something that makes me feel good because it gives me
(13:36):
that feeling that like, OK, I'm with friends, I'm in a safe
place, I'm enjoying what I'm doing and I'm, I'm, I'm free of
stress. So this week after we had
already spoken about this via e-mail, I had an experience I
think it was like 2 days ago, I pulled out my 1940 Hank
(13:56):
Greenberg play ball card, a wonderful card and thought to
myself, well let me put it up and I put in card ladder cuz it
was the next one to go up. So it comes up as it does with
no information about the sale because there was no public sale
in this card. And so I remember now OK, I know
where I got this from. I got it from my friend Jim
(14:17):
Ector. And so I say well how did Jim
and I do this? It was it was a Facebook
personal message or direct message, whatever they call
them. And so I go back in, I open up
my phone, I go into there, I, I put Greenberg in the search
engine. And what comes up is the
conversation I had with Jim about this card where he shows
(14:40):
me pictures of it. He says I got to move this.
Are you interested? Of course, we, we negotiate.
And this is a guy who in 2021 sold me this Greenberg card.
But in the 4 1/2 years since then, we have become better
friends. In fact, he's, he's been on my
channel, you know, we, we message every once in a while.
So I am there on my phone going through 4 1/2 year old messages
(15:04):
and smiling and remembering a good time, a good person, a
person that makes me feel like, you know, it's, it's the hobby.
So we're, we're, we're stress free and there's a nostalgia for
having purchase the card from this guy.
And, and that makes me feel good.
And to me, that's part of the hobby.
That's, that's important is understanding that it's not just
(15:27):
owning the card, it's the circumstances, it's the people
involved, it's the whole experience.
And it all gives you what you talked about getting away from
the stresses of real life. So that to me was kind of a
perfect example of the adult nostalgia that I was trying to
to convey to you when we originally started this
discussion. It's outstanding and like a good
(15:48):
hobby story will do. When I hear you tell yours, it
immediately makes me start thinking about mine.
And that, that the, the, so likethe first thing I was thinking
here is, is you were talking about that is that there's,
there's really almost two parts to the story of any card that's
in our collection. One part is the part that's true
for everybody, which is this is what this card means to the
(16:11):
hobby. And it's just, it's a, it's a
general, you know, thing like this is Mickey Mantle's first
card or something. And that's just something that's
true and it's true for everybody.
That's one part of the card story.
The other part of the card storyis what does it mean?
What's, what's my connection to it?
What's my personal story? How did I get it, like you were
saying, or who did I get it fromor what was the environment and
(16:33):
what, what, what fruit did that bear afterwards, making this
relationship with this person, making this connection or
picking up this card? And it reminded me.
I so like over the years, I've told my pickup stories, like at
various points, like, yeah, I have stories of I, I got AII
came into Chicago and got a cardfrom a guy and we met in like
the parking lot of a police station.
(16:55):
You know, it was very memorable 'cause it was just so, so
strange that we had that we did that, you know, like, or you
know why there was another time when I got a card from a guy we
met at a car dealership and he took, I, I gave him cash.
He took the proceeds and bought a car that he then converted
into an Uber that he would driveas, as because he was a
(17:15):
professional poker player who was supplementing his, his poker
income by by driving for Uber onthe side.
I mean, these like these, these personal anecdotes are make,
they make for like very strong connections.
But I found that even if it's not something like really an
outlier event like that, I stillwhen I when I take out a card
for my collection, I go through both stories.
(17:38):
I think about what this card means to the hobby or I think
about how much I like the way itlooks or how much it gives me a
certain memory about the player.And those are things, those are
properties that are true of the card itself.
But then I always think about the story too, you know, like,
like who did I get it from? And even if it was something as
mundane as like buying it from eBay, there's, there's still
(18:00):
always an emotion that came withit.
Like when I first saw it come upfor sale, I was like, oh man, I
need to move quickly to get this.
Or, you know, or, or it just so happens that the seller that I
got it from, after I got it, I said, do you have any more?
And then we built a relationshipor something.
And like the card that comes to mind for me for some reason
right now, I don't know why it is, but I'm not going to fight
it either. I'm just going to tell the story
(18:20):
of this one because it's, it's the one that's coming to mind is
I have Michael Jordan's 199899 Fleer Tradition Classic 61
parallel. And it's, it pays homage to the
1961 Fleer design. But it's like an update, you
know, 'cause Jordan obviously wasn't playing then, but but
(18:42):
this, this card, I had it on my want list for years.
And a friend of mine named Mike was the guy who had it or had a
copy of it. And he was sort of flirty with
the idea of making his available.
And so I pounced and I said, hey, man, like, really want this
card. What can we do?
And it was actually quite a complicated dance that he and I
did in order to settle on makingthe transaction.
(19:06):
So he really like a different card of a card called the Flare
Hotshots insert of Michael Jordan.
He really wanted one of those. And so he sort of was like,
well, if, if you can go get one of those, then maybe I'll trade
some cash in that card for my Classic 61.
So that sent me on a, on, on a, a wild goose chase to try and
(19:26):
track 1 down. And I then I sort of did track 1
down and then he was like, yeah,but that's not really the copy
that I want. And we just kind of kept going
back and forth and finally settled, you know, I found a
copy that he found acceptable. And then we kind of went back
and forth on how much cash needsto be added to make the deal.
And I just, it gives me memorieslike while we were negotiating
(19:48):
in the final stage of the deal, I was actually on a train in Los
Angeles going to watch a Clippers Mavericks game from
Luka Doncic's rookie season. I mean, I, I probably wouldn't
remember that moment except for the fact that it that I, while I
was on that train, I was going back and forth with Mike trying
to finalize the deal. And and then we did finalize it
(20:08):
and we made the swap and he he got the card he wanted, which
was the Hotshots censored. I took back the classic 61.
I still have it, you know, and like I, I track all my stuff as
well in my card ladder collection and I put like a
little note set, like the note section.
I used to jot down any notes that, that I might remember that
might help me remember date, youknow, date acquired April 10th,
(20:29):
2019. You know, like that just that I,
that whole era of my life, that,that, that moment in my life,
that the experience that takes me back to it and makes it most
vivid is this card is the acquisition of this card.
And all of a sudden I can sort of hear the train and I can sort
of, I feel like I at that time Iwas, I suppose I was in my 4th
(20:53):
semester of law school and I just, it was just such a
different point of my life. And it, it's just it there
really is, there's, there's something unmistakable about
not, not just what the card is itself, which I'm, which I love.
I'm, I'm actually, as a collector, I'm very excited
about that other part of the story right now that the, the
(21:13):
discovery in the research phase and sort of uncovering
connections among cards and, andin placing cards into their
historical context. I'm very excited about that.
But that's only half the story. The other half of the story of
this card is, is my personal connection to it and the person
who brought it to me. And then as a result of that,
like I knew Mike from before, weformed a stronger relationship
(21:34):
after this. And now, for example, Dan Mike
works at a company called Homageand the company Homage are the
ones who made our Card Ladder merch.
So those Card Ladder hoodies were made by Mike's company.
And Mike has relationship with Christina at Card Ladder, who
you know, obviously is my significance other, but also is,
(21:56):
is a very valuable contributing member to to the Card Ladder
team. And so Mike and Christina make
these arrangements so that Mike's company produces Card
Ladder's merch. I mean, it all sort of grew out
of that, that experience. You know, I'm like, I probably
could trace more personal connections that I've
established just just from, justfrom trading, trading basketball
(22:18):
cards. Yep, yeah, and I do have a card
letter T-shirt and it's very comfortable, so MMM makes a good
product. Thank you, Mike and Homage.
A A at shirt that you gave to meat the National.
Thank you for that. Yes Sir.
Which you know the National was only what, 5 months ago?
(22:40):
So you know, I'm really not nostalgic for it yet, but I will
be. But a good example of what we're
talking about is a few years agoat the Philly show, I got up to
Stanlock's table. Stanlock is a very, very well
known vintage dealer who is justgot crazy inventory.
Every time you see him, he can in you when you don't know him
(23:04):
that well, be a little sort of like he's not warm and fuzzy.
Let's put it that way. His wife, who is his partner in
the table is wonderful. People say deal with her, don't
deal with him. But now that I know him and now
that I'm friends with him, I deal with him all the time.
But that that being is amazing. I didn't know him that well when
I did this deal for two cards. It was the 1934 Delong Lefty
(23:27):
Grove along with 1952 high number Joe Black and he got, you
know, it was a good deal and I still have both those cars.
I probably will have until till I I leave this earth.
But what was great about it was not that I remember it from
Stan, but that while I was buying those two cards from him,
I was standing next to Tony, TJ online, who you may know who's
(23:52):
been who's been on on on Jeremy's show and has a channel.
And he's he's, he's such a good guy and he's such a energetic
guy. And he's there with his
daughter, who then takes a picture of the two of us.
And so and Stan is in the background, not even being
trying to be part of the picture.
But it's kind of like there's this picture, these two cards,
(24:14):
there's a friendship that I've had with Tony.
And now there's like a better friendship that I have with Stan
and all of that. And when I see that card or both
of those cards, I think about all of that at once.
And to me, again, that to me is like one of those things where I
don't even know when it was. I mean, I have to go back and
card letter and get the date. But but it was the Philly show
(24:36):
is like a few years ago. And I feel like that's one of
those things where I look at this card and I remember all of
that. It's not like being on the train
and going to the Clippers, but it's a good one.
It's like, you know, it's remembering people,
circumstances, the cards themselves, where you were.
And you know, that to me is all good feeling.
(24:57):
There's no, there's no negativity.
It's all good nostalgia. And to me, that's kind of like
what I another example of what Iwas trying to, to stress there.
And that, you know, that's like,I talked to you before, like
card shows are an escape. They're a little cocoon of just
fun and nothing else. And to me, that's like what the
hobby really should be about. It's it's a way to get away from
(25:19):
all the other things. Now here's a a specific question
that I wonder, I'm not sure I haven't thought about how it
works for me. And I wonder if it works this
way for you. If a card has a particularly
meaningful or deep connection, like it has a a really memorable
story that goes with it. And let's say that you've got
(25:40):
your eye on a new card and you need to sell a few to get that
new card, which I think many of us find ourselves in that
position from time to time. Does the personal connection to
a specific copy of a specific card, does that actually make it
more valuable to you that like, even if maybe, you know, you
could sell that card and that could maybe most effectively
(26:01):
help you get to the new card youwant, That's that that card's
going to be at the bottom of your cell pile.
It's going to be the last one you sell because you have a
specific personal connection to it.
Or, or do you say I'm, I'm goingto forge a new connection when I
get this new card And, and I'm excited about this new card.
So I'll always have the memory. I don't need the card just to
keep the memory. So I'm, I don't really care.
I'm I'm going to sell it and I'mgoing to move on to the new
(26:22):
card. A good question.
I I feel pretty strongly that myanswer to that is no, that those
the cards with the strongest personal and, you know, memories
to it. You know, I got a card that I
buy off of eBay with not much ofa memory to it that's just kind
of a filler of something that I need that's easy for me to move
(26:45):
on from a card that I have a direct connection to and a
memory that has to do with people and places and times and,
you know, the five WS who, what,where, when and why.
That to me is a card that is really hard to sell.
And I have a lot, I I have this issue because I know now that I
have too many cards because I'm not even done putting them in
(27:09):
them into card ladder. And I'm already at a number that
I didn't even think that I had. I'm at like 540 slabs and I'm
not even half. I'm not probably not even 2/3 of
the way done at this point. And having like close to 8900
graded cards is too much. But that being as it may, I'm
trying to whittle down and, and come up with cards that I can
(27:31):
get rid of and I keep going through them and I'm like, I
can't, I can't let go. And so maybe nostalgia at that
point is a bit of is a bit of a crutch, you know, so.
I, I think, Dan, I think nostalgia is actually something
that, that particular phenomenonbecause it's, I, I certainly
know it's true for me too that, that I now to be clear, even
(27:54):
this past summer, I have let go of cards that I had my
collection for 6-7 years that had great stories, so great
personal connections. And I let them go because I was
very excited about a new collection category.
And I'm not without regrets thatI hate to lose any card, but
especially one that has a, a personal connection.
But, but I did, but, but I, I was thinking just about sort of
(28:15):
how sort of the glue of the market that that sort of makes
it so that, you know, cards thathave many copies, but they, but
they're not, they, they're not all available.
I, I think part of the glue of the market, so to speak, is that
we have emotional, visceral, nostalgic connections to cards
(28:37):
that trump their near term market value.
That or is a different way of putting it that the nostalgia
sort of bakes this extra layer in that sort of any card that I
have a real nostalgia connectionto whatever its market value is.
My, my, the way I personally value it is higher.
I, I value it more because it has that, that extra nostalgia
(28:58):
premium baked in. And I, and I, and then I almost
sort of wonder, I'm almost sort of strategizing to myself here
as I sort of think about, you know, I'm always thinking about
procuring a new card for my collection.
Or I've always have cards in my mind where like I know where
they are and I know that the seller won't sell it.
And I start thinking like, what,how much more do I need to offer
over markets to get that nostalgia premium to, to fully
(29:21):
pay the nostalgia premium to getit out?
You know, I'm always, I'm alwaysthinking about that.
But I but I think nostalgia is one of the things that that
keeps cards in collections even when the market is going up,
even when competitive aggressiveoffers are made, that the cards
stay in the collections because we do genuinely value them and
we we have human connections that arise out of them that the
(29:43):
market price just simply doesn'treflect.
I, you know, it, it's one of those things, though, that I, I
think nostalgia has been baked into cards, particularly vintage
cards from the very beginning. And if you think about it, part
of the reason Mickey Mantle, even though he may not be the
greatest player of all time, is maybe the greatest card,
(30:03):
certainly in the golden golden era, you know, the greatest
character in cards is because hebrings out nostalgia in a
certain, you know, group of people from, you know, post war
people who grew up in the 50s, that kind of thing.
And and that's always been the case in the hobby going back to
when I was involved in it as a teenager in the 1970s.
(30:23):
But let me tell you a story thatI don't think I've never told
this one before. And it is, it is a inherited
nostalgia kind of thing, but I think it's also a relationship
thing. When I was a teenager, I
collected vintage cards. And it's one thing I had in
common with my father. And my father and I, he would
drive me to shows, I would show him cards.
And it's something that we, you know, we had a complicated
(30:46):
relationship, but this was the one of the points in our
relationship where we were really strong.
And when I got to be about 1617,I think that I think I needed
money and I wanted to do things and I wanted to, you know, do
things that 16 and 17 year olds do.
So I went to a card show by myself to sell my cards and I
(31:07):
told my mother this and I think my father overheard me and I
come home from the card show andI haven't been able to sell
anything because all the dealersback then there, you know, the
data wasn't there. You didn't have the, you didn't
have the numbers in your hand. And a lot of these guys wanted
to pay you pennies on the dollar.
So I didn't never ended up selling anything.
(31:29):
But when I came home, my mother's gets me in the room.
She says, you know, I'm glad youdidn't sell your cards because
your father was really upset when he heard that you were
going to sell your cards. And I thought to myself, wow,
OK. Like, he has nostalgia, in a
way, for these cards. And they also mean something
more than just the cards. They mean something that's
positive about the relationship between he and I.
(31:51):
And so like, I feel like a lot of it is the inability to give
up is also related to issues beyond nostalgia.
You know, and, and to a certain extent, you know, building a set
has not only, you know, the, the, the nostalgia part of the
cards themselves, but also, you know, there's a, there's a
(32:11):
whole, there's a like a story that you're creating for
yourself when you go about building the set.
And if you were to give up the set, you're almost like pushing
away the story, saying, OK, thatthat whole saga, that whole like
trip, that whole sort of, you know, the journey wasn't as
important because now I've givenit up.
(32:33):
And so I, I don't know, I feel like it, it's a lot of it is
emotional and, and the value does in fact have emotional
elements to it. But besides value, it's part of
the reason that we do what we dowhen we collect cards and when
we talk about it, when we make friends and when we go to all
these places and, and have experiences.
So I think I'd rambled a little bit there.
(32:54):
Sorry about that, but that's those are my thoughts and I told
you that dad story. I've never told that before.
It's just one of those things I never brought up before.
It's a terrific story. It, it makes me think back to,
you know, like I, I have turned over significant parts of my
collection at various times and I've, you know, I, there's,
(33:15):
there's a recharge or a reboot that happens that I, that I do
like. So when I came back to
collecting, I collected as a kidin the 90s, fell out of it
towards the late 90s and, and I came back in 2016.
And one of the things I did whenI came back to collecting and,
and interestingly, the year thatI came back to collecting was my
gap year. So I was a non traditional
(33:36):
student. I went back to university at an
older age, like in my mid 20s. And then I went to law school in
my early 30s and there was a gapyear in between my undergrad and
my law school. And during that gap year, that's
when I rediscovered collecting cards was, was that gap year
when I was supposed to be studying for the LSAT and stuff.
(33:57):
But, but I found my old collection and I just, I went
all the way down the rabbit hole.
I was just, I, it was, I had, I stood no chance against the
nostalgia and the invigoration of collecting that once I
rediscovered that, you know, here we are nine years later and
I just get more and more excitedabout it every day still.
(34:17):
But, but I remember that time and I remember discovering all
my old cards and then discovering lots of new cards
and discovering eBay and marketplaces and just everything
was new. Grading was new.
I'd never graded a card before. Everything was just so new and
exciting. But I needed some funds, you
know, to be able to participate.I had, I was starting from
nothing, just this old collection.
(34:38):
So I sold big chunks of that oldcollection and one of the cards
that I sold that that man, I really wish I still had it right
now because like I probably got 20 bucks for it or something.
And it's meaning to me is just infinitely more important to
that. But one of the cards that I sold
was my Chris Webber 1993 ultra power in the key insert.
(34:59):
And this card had lived in a screw down.
I think I had maybe one screw down plastic holder as a kid
because those cost a couple of bucks and like that was the
price of a pack. So I wasn't buying supplies over
cards. So I think I had one screw down
and I kept the Chris Webber in that screw down because it was
my most prized card. He had the same first name as
(35:20):
me. You know, I really liked him
and, and the card I had taken itin and out of the screw down so
many times that his condition was awful.
You know, it was just, it was worn.
I mean, I think it I, I, I was so excited to discover grading
that I was like, I want to gradethis and got like a B GS7 or
something. And, and I, I put together AII
(35:40):
recreated later on, you know, in2016, I recreated the power and
the key set and the Weber was one of the cards that made the
set. And then, you know, I tired of
the set and I, there was other stuff I was excited about.
I needed, you know, I needed anycopy funds I could raise.
And so I sold that set, which had my original Chris Weber card
in it. Now I'm not, I'm not super
regretful over that. I, you know, I, I, I still have
(36:04):
all the memories. It's still, I'm still very happy
about that time and how collecting has unfolded for me
and everything. But but, but I sure wish that I
still had that copy and I wish I'd never graded it and I wish
I'd never done any of that stuff.
I wish I just kept it in that same screw down and I wish I
just had it here. And so maybe that's a cautionary
tale or something for others to think about if they're just
(36:25):
coming back in, discovering their old cards, is that, you
know, there's there, there can be, you know, you can end up
like me where where you're like,you know, I was moving.
I was, I was moving and shaking and I was having fun and I was
making deals on eBay and it was all very exciting and
invigorating. And I needed some inventory to
sell. So that's what I had.
But now looking back and having patience and the experience of
(36:47):
of, of of all this collecting that I've done since that that
that yeah, I would, I would, I would pay 100 times that carts
market value if I could get backof that exact card and put it
back into that that old screw down.
I mean, I well, one of the things I got back into the hobby
in 2018, really in 12, but more sort of, you know, heavy into it
(37:12):
18. And one of the things I did was
I went back and bought all of the cards that I can remember
were like my cornerstone cards in my collection in the late
70s, early 80s when I was a teenager.
And so I got I didn't obviously I didn't get the examples that I
had back then, but I got better examples.
But still, that was one of the things that I did.
But let me tell you one one other thing.
(37:34):
It's totally unrelated. I have had when buying large
collections of cards and you know, large lots of cards found
cards with names written on them, somebody's name written on
them. So what I do is I go onto the
Internet where you can find anything, put the person's name
in and if it's original enough, try to figure out if this is the
(37:57):
right person who owned this cardbased upon his age, his
location, all that stuff. And twice now I have mailed out
cards to people. It's totally out of the blue and
it's there's no, there's no happy ending to this story.
By the way, totally out of the blue.
Just mailed it out with a lettersaying I think this was your
baseball card when you was a kid, when you were a kid.
(38:17):
I hope you remember. Here it is.
And I've done that twice now. And neither time have I heard
back from the person. There's no happy, there's no
happy ending to it. I should say, though, that one
of the things I still do have inmy collection are my original
cards from 1970 with my name written in pencil on the top
(38:38):
border. I have about 10 of them left.
So my entire, my, my entire collection from when I was a
tiny little kid is probably about 10 cards with my name
written, Danny Lynch on the top.And so I, I will never get rid
of those. So those, those examples are,
are in my collection forever. Not going to get them graded
though, I'll tell you that one. Well, that's the thing.
(38:59):
But I still do have some cards from childhood collecting, but
they're all the ones that wouldn't have brought any, any
value on eBay, which is, which is fine, you know, like I used
to, my dad and I used to go to short track racing.
That was something we both became a fan of in the 90s.
And there was a race car driver named John Knaus who raced at
(39:20):
the local quarter mile track And, and after the races and the
pits, you could go meet all the drivers and their crew and they
would give out trading cards of themselves.
Sometimes, a lot of times they'dbe big oversized cars.
I still have those cards. Those cards give a great memory.
I wouldn't even think of that memory from my life, but for the
fact that I have cards to sort of commemorate it.
And, and so by virtue of those cards being worthless, they, I
(39:45):
still have them and they're invaluable to me, which is,
which is a bit of an irony. And, and The funny thing about
John Canals, just about all this, you know, the, the, the
way that these things unfold. His son was a guy named Chad
Canals who would go on to becomethe crew chief for Jimmie
Johnson as he rattled off all those championships in NASCAR.
So there's all these, you know, these connections and these
(40:06):
little stories that give, give rise to other stories.
And I, I also really like what you did on, you know, your the,
the, the male it, it makes me think about athletes.
Who would like, I had a buddy when we were in in middle school
who would get cards of athletes and then send a letter with the
card to the athlete. And then a lot of times they
(40:26):
would sign it and send it back. And it, it just, you know,
there's, there's an extra thoughtfulness that comes with
an athlete, like taking the timeto send it back.
Now, maybe their secretary signed it.
I mean, I'm sure a lot of that was going on, but, but there's
a, there's a level of thoughtfulness that comes with
like, Hey, I'm going to just like mail something to somebody.
And you know what, just 'cause you didn't hear back, that
doesn't mean that, that it didn't land in the right place.
(40:49):
It, it might just mean that theygot it and it meant something to
them. And that was it, you know, and
they and they didn't they they didn't take they didn't consider
that maybe maybe the person who sent this with like a little
confirmation one way or the other.
But but I love I love to show mail stories.
Like we still have mail. We the hobby probably is a big
portion of USPS annual business is the hobby.
(41:12):
I love. I still love that that the
tangible ass the male aspect of everything is is quite nice in
an increasingly digital world. Well, there is one happy story
with that. There was I think on Facebook,
somebody had a card, it was a Sandy Koufax card and a kids
name was written on it and someone knew the guy's name and
(41:33):
then got in contact with them. So that has happened.
That was kind of the thing that gave me the idea to send these
cards off to people. But I think you're right and I
think I'm going to take it that way.
I'm going to say yes, they got it.
They felt good about it. I made somebody's day and they
didn't feel like it was necessary to get back in touch
with me and tell me thanks. You genuinely may have.
And Dan, I know a lot of people I can think of a lot of people I
(41:55):
know who would receive it, that gesture and they'd be like, this
is awesome. But they would just leave it
there. You know, they wouldn't, they
wouldn't take the time to like continue it further.
They would just, you know, it's like, it's like when, when the
after the wedding, when the, thecouple has to send the thank you
letters and it, it might take them a year to send them, you
know, like, you know, it's just,it's just that for, for whatever
(42:17):
reason, the follow through isn'talways our strong suit as human
beings. Well, I think we're, we're at
that time. I, I have to say though, that I
am am grateful not just that youcame on to do this podcast,
which will be, as I said, the first crossover for collectors
(42:38):
towards, you know, sports card clubhouse, but also everything
that you do. And I watch a lot of your
content and listen to a lot of your content because I think you
have a lot of important things to say.
And I think you're an incredibleasset to, to the hobby.
And so I really thank you not just for coming on today, but
also thank you for what you do for the hobby.
(42:58):
Thank you, Dan. It's it's an honor to to join
you on this and I hope we get many opportunities to
collaborate in the coming years.I'm 100% behind that.
So folks, hope you enjoyed. And this is going to be on the
sports card Clubhouse on Spotifyand other places where you get
(43:20):
your podcast, but it's also going to be on for collectors as
a video. And so we will see you soon.
I'm going to end the recording and hopefully you'll you'll
enjoy what we had to say today. So thank you.
Good afternoon, baseball fans, and welcome back to I was going
to say dance Vintage baseball PC, but no, this is for
collectors. And what's exciting about this
particular show is that this will be the first simulcast that
goes from for collectors onto the Sports card Clubhouse
(00:21):
Podcast Network, where this willbe a regular podcast feature
coming from for collectors to that particular network.
And we're really happy to be part of it.
And so I figured for the first podcast episode, I would get who
I think to be maybe the hobbies best podcast person.
(00:46):
And so that would be Chris McGill, otherwise known as Chris
Hoge or House of Jordan. Good afternoon, Sir.
How are you? Doing well, I'm reminded of a
joke by a comedian I like named Ari Mati, who says he is the
best comedian in Estonia out of four.
(01:07):
So I, I, I believe the population of hobby podcast
guests might just be one, but that is me, Sir, and I
appreciate the kind words and I also appreciate the four
collectors network and the sports card, the the blossoming
sports card clubhouse network. I just think there's a there's a
little renaissance of content that's going on.
(01:29):
Most of it surrounds vintage andpre war baseball and I just, you
know, I don't collect either those categories, but I consume
hours of this content that you find folks make every day.
So I just, I love what's going on.
Well, I, I actually was the behind the scenes producer of
(01:50):
the Hobby Palooza podcast that you were on with stacking slabs.
What's his name? I'm sorry, Shane Brett was
talking slabs. And it was one of those things
where you guys were basically breaking down that like, we're
all collectors, whether it's hot, whether it's modern,
whether it's basketball, baseball, vintage, whatever it
(02:12):
is. When you're a collector, you're
a collector and we have more things in common than we have
things that are different. And so that to me was like a
little bit of a revelation. And so you know that that's a
tribute to you. And you know, you, you've been
somebody I've watched in in a number of different arenas, one
(02:34):
being the crossover, your show with your partner, obviously a
sports card live, which I watch every week when it's on And you
know, obviously card ladder. So you know, it's it's I, I, I
consider you one of the most thoughtful, incisive,
contemplative types of people inthe hobby.
(02:56):
And I figured podcast, this is the guy we need for number 1.
So there you go. Very kind.
It's it's great to be with you, Dan.
I've I'm a big admirer of your content as well.
In fact, you had a recent one that I really enjoyed about
collecting obscure players that stuck with me days after I took
(03:18):
it in. And I just think I, I actually
think there's, there's two things I love about hobby
content. First of all, the landscape is
so ripe for picking. It's, it's almost all uncharted
territory. We, we, almost any direction we
want to go and we can create, wecan contribute something novel.
And that's just like, you know, I have a brief, very brief legal
(03:42):
background only to the extent that I went to law school and I
worked for firms as a clerk for a period of time and I externed
at a summer court. I'd I'd never became a lawyer.
I never passed the bar, never took the bar.
But but in my brief time in the law, I was always struck really
by how much of it is, is so anchored to precedent into
(04:04):
things that had previously happened and that arguments must
be made from what previous holdings had already occurred.
And in hobby content, it's, it'sso different.
It's it there, what are the previous holdings?
What's, what's the textbook? What's that guidebook with
there's there's nothing you knowthere's it's it's we are
creating this body of knowledge as we go yourself Mangini sports
(04:30):
cards live. There are there are so many
thoughtful creators. It's I the word I use for it.
Dan is a renaissance. I there it is a renaissance of
hobby content and it's it's a pretty special thing to watch
unfold. Well, you and I do have that in
common as I many, many years before you did go to law school
(04:53):
and, and they did have two children actually, who went to
law school much more recently than you did.
So, you know, it's, it's in my blood, it's in my family, it's
my wife is a lawyer. So you know, the, the sort of
the, the being able to speak in public, being able to formulate
an argument, being able to, you know, the Socratic method is
(05:15):
always an, an issue and you should hear some of our home
discussions. But that being as it may, we, we
decided I, I, you know, I sent you some, some e-mail back and
forth and we decided to talk about one of my 5 reasons for
collecting that came out of that, you know, obscure why I
clicked obscure video, which is nostalgia.
(05:36):
And you know, when you talk about nostalgia for baseball
card collectors, particularly vintage collectors, a lot of it
is going back to your childhood,getting cards that you had as a
child or in, or in my case, whenI started collecting vintage as
an adolescent, going back and getting, you know, better
examples of the cards you had asan adolescent.
(05:57):
And, you know, and then there's inherited nostalgia, which, you
know, it's like, I collect Warren Spahn because my dad was
a Warren Spahn fan. I collect the Boston Braves
because my uncle was a big Braves fan.
My, you know, I, I told this before, but the reality is it's
a lot of family connections can give you an inherited nostalgia
(06:17):
that that affects your collection.
But what I wanted to talk about,and this was a sort of a
phenomenon that came to me recently, and it has to do with
Card Ladder. I don't want to make this an
advertisement for Card Ladder, but as a Card ladder owner of a
subscription, I decided to put my entire collection into the
(06:39):
database and give myself essentially a, a complete
inventory of what I had because my record keeping is terrible.
My, you know, my knowledge of what I had was, was, was pretty
terrible, to be honest with you.But Cardliner has given me the
opportunity to do that. And as I've done this, it's been
(06:59):
amazing that each time I look ata card and I input the data,
where I got it, how much it paidfor it, it gives me a flashback
to a period of time in my adulthood where I have nostalgia
for it. So I coined the phrase to you,
adult nostalgia. And so this is a conversation
(07:20):
that I would love to have because I feel like it's
something no one's really ever talked about.
Like five years ago, I bought card and now I have such great
memories of the person I bought it from, how much it paid for,
where I was, what I was doing that day, all that stuff.
And cart ladder. The is just the mechanism by
which I've been able to put the data and go back and get all
(07:42):
those memories beat from personal messages, text
messages, emails, invoices, pictures from card shows things
that that were on my channel, you know, from three years ago.
So that's kind of what I wanted to talk about.
And it's, it's, it's been something that I've been living
with now for a few weeks. And I know that I gave you this
(08:04):
a couple of days ago, but I feellike you, you're kind of you're
kind of starting to get think about this a little bit
yourself. So let me hear what you have to
say about this concept that I think I've come up with for a
adult nostalgia. Love the concept as soon as you
introduced it, it was something I thought about every day since
because it adequately and accurately described something
(08:27):
that I, that I, that I certainlyexperience as a collector a lot.
And one of the things I started thinking about, maybe this is
what I'll throw out there first is, is what is the mechanism
that connects collecting and nostalgia?
In other words, maybe different way of phrasing.
That is, why does collecting cards trigger nostalgia or, or,
(08:49):
or, or why are nostalgia and collecting cards, the things
that we bring together just because we're nostalgic, that it
doesn't necessarily follow that we would continue to, you know,
collect cards? There's, there's, there's,
there's, there's a little bit more there.
And I, and I think that the mechanism is this.
And I want to show how this mechanism, I think, adequately
(09:09):
explains both normal nostalgia and adult nostalgia.
So I think normal nostalgia or the feelings of nostalgia for
for things from childhood. The reason why there's such a
strong bridge between that and collecting cards is that is that
the nostalgia specifically conjures up a much simpler time
(09:31):
in our lives. When, you know, if I think to
myself as a kid, just sort of, you know, maybe I had gone
garage saling with my mom and I,I got like a $0.25, you know,
team, team bag that held all theChicago Bulls players or
something. And I would just go home and I
would put those, you know, I'd get out my binder pages and I'd
put them in the binder. And then I'd say, OK, well, I
(09:53):
still need card 17, you know, I still need Jason Caffey or
something, or I still need the checklist or something.
And, you know, that was the the simplicity of that time, the
simplicity of childhood of no stresses or concerns from the
adult world, no financial pressure, just, you know, no
bills due, no complicated relationships with bosses and
(10:16):
colleagues and family, just a kid playing with cards.
You know, the simplicity of thatis, is something that I think it
is, is a, it is part of the, of the appeal of nostalgia is that
the cards can put us back into that mind state.
And so, you know, one, I, I, I think to myself, OK, so that's,
(10:38):
that's something unique to childhood.
That childhood offered us that simplicity.
And then we collect cards. It sort of transports us back to
that mindset, to that carefree mindset.
And we as adults, we probably shouldn't want to be in that
mindset all the time, but it's nice as an escape that these
items are, are they, they transport us to a simpler time
and, and it's nice to visit thattime every once in a while.
(10:59):
But then I think about adult nostalgia.
So how could it be? If the mechanism of nostalgia is
transporting us to a similar time of childhood, then how
could an adult nostalgia do thattoo?
Because now we're adults. Life is complicated and messy
and confusing and stressful. But I think the mechanism still
is there. I, I think still when we, even
when we're adults, when we're adding cards to our digital
(11:21):
inventories or when we're chatting with friends or when
we're at a show, you know, eyeing dealer showcases or
taking stock of what's in our collection and how we might want
to change it, that, that once again, we are sort of escaping
to a simpler time, a simpler mindset, even though it's
happening contemporaneously. And I think that's how adult
(11:42):
nostalgia works too. I think not.
It's in other words, we don't need to be transported back to
childhood cards to get the sense, the sensation of
nostalgia. We can That is a way to do.
It's like for me, it's cards from the 90s that they would
give me childhood nostalgia. But but I can get nostalgia from
from 90s cards but but that I didn't know about until 5 or 6
(12:05):
years ago. Or I can get nostalgia from
cards that were made very recently.
Or I can get nostalgia from cards from the pre war era that
I that I only discovered within the last 10 years.
I can still have nostalgic adultnostalgia for those because the
mechanisms same because when I go into my collector mindset
that that that escapism, it still exists for me even as an
(12:28):
adult too. And so I am still sort of
animating those neural pathways of the carefree simplicity of
maybe childhood or maybe just myescape as a collector.
What do you think about that, Dan?
I think you hit it right on the nose because in many respects,
the hobby itself exists in our lives as an escape.
(12:51):
It's the world that's outside ofall of those problems that you
talk about paying the bills and,and, and, you know, for me,
dealing with dealing with legal cases, you know, all the things
that you have to deal with stresses, you know, and, and,
and in many respects, the card show is for me, a little Oasis
(13:14):
of peace, which is why like an event like Strongsville where I
go for multiple days and all I do is hang out with card friends
and look at cards and talk aboutcards and occasionally drink a
beer. That's an escape.
And to me that there's a nostalgia for that because
that's something that makes me feel good because it gives me
(13:36):
that feeling that like, OK, I'm with friends, I'm in a safe
place, I'm enjoying what I'm doing and I'm, I'm, I'm free of
stress. So this week after we had
already spoken about this via e-mail, I had an experience I
think it was like 2 days ago, I pulled out my 1940 Hank
(13:56):
Greenberg play ball card, a wonderful card and thought to
myself, well let me put it up and I put in card ladder cuz it
was the next one to go up. So it comes up as it does with
no information about the sale because there was no public sale
in this card. And so I remember now OK, I know
where I got this from. I got it from my friend Jim
(14:17):
Ector. And so I say well how did Jim
and I do this? It was it was a Facebook
personal message or direct message, whatever they call
them. And so I go back in, I open up
my phone, I go into there, I, I put Greenberg in the search
engine. And what comes up is the
conversation I had with Jim about this card where he shows
(14:40):
me pictures of it. He says I got to move this.
Are you interested? Of course, we, we negotiate.
And this is a guy who in 2021 sold me this Greenberg card.
But in the 4 1/2 years since then, we have become better
friends. In fact, he's, he's been on my
channel, you know, we, we message every once in a while.
So I am there on my phone going through 4 1/2 year old messages
(15:04):
and smiling and remembering a good time, a good person, a
person that makes me feel like, you know, it's, it's the hobby.
So we're, we're, we're stress free and there's a nostalgia for
having purchase the card from this guy.
And, and that makes me feel good.
And to me, that's part of the hobby.
That's, that's important is understanding that it's not just
(15:27):
owning the card, it's the circumstances, it's the people
involved, it's the whole experience.
And it all gives you what you talked about getting away from
the stresses of real life. So that to me was kind of a
perfect example of the adult nostalgia that I was trying to
to convey to you when we originally started this
discussion. It's outstanding and like a good
(15:48):
hobby story will do. When I hear you tell yours, it
immediately makes me start thinking about mine.
And that, that the, the, so likethe first thing I was thinking
here is, is you were talking about that is that there's,
there's really almost two parts to the story of any card that's
in our collection. One part is the part that's true
for everybody, which is this is what this card means to the
(16:11):
hobby. And it's just, it's a, it's a
general, you know, thing like this is Mickey Mantle's first
card or something. And that's just something that's
true and it's true for everybody.
That's one part of the card story.
The other part of the card storyis what does it mean?
What's, what's my connection to it?
What's my personal story? How did I get it, like you were
saying, or who did I get it fromor what was the environment and
(16:33):
what, what, what fruit did that bear afterwards, making this
relationship with this person, making this connection or
picking up this card? And it reminded me.
I so like over the years, I've told my pickup stories, like at
various points, like, yeah, I have stories of I, I got AII
came into Chicago and got a cardfrom a guy and we met in like
the parking lot of a police station.
(16:55):
You know, it was very memorable 'cause it was just so, so
strange that we had that we did that, you know, like, or you
know why there was another time when I got a card from a guy we
met at a car dealership and he took, I, I gave him cash.
He took the proceeds and bought a car that he then converted
into an Uber that he would driveas, as because he was a
(17:15):
professional poker player who was supplementing his, his poker
income by by driving for Uber onthe side.
I mean, these like these, these personal anecdotes are make,
they make for like very strong connections.
But I found that even if it's not something like really an
outlier event like that, I stillwhen I when I take out a card
for my collection, I go through both stories.
(17:38):
I think about what this card means to the hobby or I think
about how much I like the way itlooks or how much it gives me a
certain memory about the player.And those are things, those are
properties that are true of the card itself.
But then I always think about the story too, you know, like,
like who did I get it from? And even if it was something as
mundane as like buying it from eBay, there's, there's still
(18:00):
always an emotion that came withit.
Like when I first saw it come upfor sale, I was like, oh man, I
need to move quickly to get this.
Or, you know, or, or it just so happens that the seller that I
got it from, after I got it, I said, do you have any more?
And then we built a relationshipor something.
And like the card that comes to mind for me for some reason
right now, I don't know why it is, but I'm not going to fight
it either. I'm just going to tell the story
(18:20):
of this one because it's, it's the one that's coming to mind is
I have Michael Jordan's 199899 Fleer Tradition Classic 61
parallel. And it's, it pays homage to the
1961 Fleer design. But it's like an update, you
know, 'cause Jordan obviously wasn't playing then, but but
(18:42):
this, this card, I had it on my want list for years.
And a friend of mine named Mike was the guy who had it or had a
copy of it. And he was sort of flirty with
the idea of making his available.
And so I pounced and I said, hey, man, like, really want this
card. What can we do?
And it was actually quite a complicated dance that he and I
did in order to settle on makingthe transaction.
(19:06):
So he really like a different card of a card called the Flare
Hotshots insert of Michael Jordan.
He really wanted one of those. And so he sort of was like,
well, if, if you can go get one of those, then maybe I'll trade
some cash in that card for my Classic 61.
So that sent me on a, on, on a, a wild goose chase to try and
(19:26):
track 1 down. And I then I sort of did track 1
down and then he was like, yeah,but that's not really the copy
that I want. And we just kind of kept going
back and forth and finally settled, you know, I found a
copy that he found acceptable. And then we kind of went back
and forth on how much cash needsto be added to make the deal.
And I just, it gives me memorieslike while we were negotiating
(19:48):
in the final stage of the deal, I was actually on a train in Los
Angeles going to watch a Clippers Mavericks game from
Luka Doncic's rookie season. I mean, I, I probably wouldn't
remember that moment except for the fact that it that I, while I
was on that train, I was going back and forth with Mike trying
to finalize the deal. And and then we did finalize it
(20:08):
and we made the swap and he he got the card he wanted, which
was the Hotshots censored. I took back the classic 61.
I still have it, you know, and like I, I track all my stuff as
well in my card ladder collection and I put like a
little note set, like the note section.
I used to jot down any notes that, that I might remember that
might help me remember date, youknow, date acquired April 10th,
(20:29):
2019. You know, like that just that I,
that whole era of my life, that,that, that moment in my life,
that the experience that takes me back to it and makes it most
vivid is this card is the acquisition of this card.
And all of a sudden I can sort of hear the train and I can sort
of, I feel like I at that time Iwas, I suppose I was in my 4th
(20:53):
semester of law school and I just, it was just such a
different point of my life. And it, it's just it there
really is, there's, there's something unmistakable about
not, not just what the card is itself, which I'm, which I love.
I'm, I'm actually, as a collector, I'm very excited
about that other part of the story right now that the, the
(21:13):
discovery in the research phase and sort of uncovering
connections among cards and, andin placing cards into their
historical context. I'm very excited about that.
But that's only half the story. The other half of the story of
this card is, is my personal connection to it and the person
who brought it to me. And then as a result of that,
like I knew Mike from before, weformed a stronger relationship
(21:34):
after this. And now, for example, Dan Mike
works at a company called Homageand the company Homage are the
ones who made our Card Ladder merch.
So those Card Ladder hoodies were made by Mike's company.
And Mike has relationship with Christina at Card Ladder, who
you know, obviously is my significance other, but also is,
(21:56):
is a very valuable contributing member to to the Card Ladder
team. And so Mike and Christina make
these arrangements so that Mike's company produces Card
Ladder's merch. I mean, it all sort of grew out
of that, that experience. You know, I'm like, I probably
could trace more personal connections that I've
established just just from, justfrom trading, trading basketball
(22:18):
cards. Yep, yeah, and I do have a card
letter T-shirt and it's very comfortable, so MMM makes a good
product. Thank you, Mike and Homage.
A A at shirt that you gave to meat the National.
Thank you for that. Yes Sir.
Which you know the National was only what, 5 months ago?
(22:40):
So you know, I'm really not nostalgic for it yet, but I will
be. But a good example of what we're
talking about is a few years agoat the Philly show, I got up to
Stanlock's table. Stanlock is a very, very well
known vintage dealer who is justgot crazy inventory.
Every time you see him, he can in you when you don't know him
(23:04):
that well, be a little sort of like he's not warm and fuzzy.
Let's put it that way. His wife, who is his partner in
the table is wonderful. People say deal with her, don't
deal with him. But now that I know him and now
that I'm friends with him, I deal with him all the time.
But that that being is amazing. I didn't know him that well when
I did this deal for two cards. It was the 1934 Delong Lefty
(23:27):
Grove along with 1952 high number Joe Black and he got, you
know, it was a good deal and I still have both those cars.
I probably will have until till I I leave this earth.
But what was great about it was not that I remember it from
Stan, but that while I was buying those two cards from him,
I was standing next to Tony, TJ online, who you may know who's
(23:52):
been who's been on on on Jeremy's show and has a channel.
And he's he's, he's such a good guy and he's such a energetic
guy. And he's there with his
daughter, who then takes a picture of the two of us.
And so and Stan is in the background, not even being
trying to be part of the picture.
But it's kind of like there's this picture, these two cards,
(24:14):
there's a friendship that I've had with Tony.
And now there's like a better friendship that I have with Stan
and all of that. And when I see that card or both
of those cards, I think about all of that at once.
And to me, again, that to me is like one of those things where I
don't even know when it was. I mean, I have to go back and
card letter and get the date. But but it was the Philly show
(24:36):
is like a few years ago. And I feel like that's one of
those things where I look at this card and I remember all of
that. It's not like being on the train
and going to the Clippers, but it's a good one.
It's like, you know, it's remembering people,
circumstances, the cards themselves, where you were.
And you know, that to me is all good feeling.
(24:57):
There's no, there's no negativity.
It's all good nostalgia. And to me, that's kind of like
what I another example of what Iwas trying to, to stress there.
And that, you know, that's like,I talked to you before, like
card shows are an escape. They're a little cocoon of just
fun and nothing else. And to me, that's like what the
hobby really should be about. It's it's a way to get away from
(25:19):
all the other things. Now here's a a specific question
that I wonder, I'm not sure I haven't thought about how it
works for me. And I wonder if it works this
way for you. If a card has a particularly
meaningful or deep connection, like it has a a really memorable
story that goes with it. And let's say that you've got
(25:40):
your eye on a new card and you need to sell a few to get that
new card, which I think many of us find ourselves in that
position from time to time. Does the personal connection to
a specific copy of a specific card, does that actually make it
more valuable to you that like, even if maybe, you know, you
could sell that card and that could maybe most effectively
(26:01):
help you get to the new card youwant, That's that that card's
going to be at the bottom of your cell pile.
It's going to be the last one you sell because you have a
specific personal connection to it.
Or, or do you say I'm, I'm goingto forge a new connection when I
get this new card And, and I'm excited about this new card.
So I'll always have the memory. I don't need the card just to
keep the memory. So I'm, I don't really care.
I'm I'm going to sell it and I'mgoing to move on to the new
(26:22):
card. A good question.
I I feel pretty strongly that myanswer to that is no, that those
the cards with the strongest personal and, you know, memories
to it. You know, I got a card that I
buy off of eBay with not much ofa memory to it that's just kind
of a filler of something that I need that's easy for me to move
(26:45):
on from a card that I have a direct connection to and a
memory that has to do with people and places and times and,
you know, the five WS who, what,where, when and why.
That to me is a card that is really hard to sell.
And I have a lot, I I have this issue because I know now that I
have too many cards because I'm not even done putting them in
(27:09):
them into card ladder. And I'm already at a number that
I didn't even think that I had. I'm at like 540 slabs and I'm
not even half. I'm not probably not even 2/3 of
the way done at this point. And having like close to 8900
graded cards is too much. But that being as it may, I'm
trying to whittle down and, and come up with cards that I can
(27:31):
get rid of and I keep going through them and I'm like, I
can't, I can't let go. And so maybe nostalgia at that
point is a bit of is a bit of a crutch, you know, so.
I, I think, Dan, I think nostalgia is actually something
that, that particular phenomenonbecause it's, I, I certainly
know it's true for me too that, that I now to be clear, even
(27:54):
this past summer, I have let go of cards that I had my
collection for 6-7 years that had great stories, so great
personal connections. And I let them go because I was
very excited about a new collection category.
And I'm not without regrets thatI hate to lose any card, but
especially one that has a, a personal connection.
But, but I did, but, but I, I was thinking just about sort of
(28:15):
how sort of the glue of the market that that sort of makes
it so that, you know, cards thathave many copies, but they, but
they're not, they, they're not all available.
I, I think part of the glue of the market, so to speak, is that
we have emotional, visceral, nostalgic connections to cards
(28:37):
that trump their near term market value.
That or is a different way of putting it that the nostalgia
sort of bakes this extra layer in that sort of any card that I
have a real nostalgia connectionto whatever its market value is.
My, my, the way I personally value it is higher.
I, I value it more because it has that, that extra nostalgia
(28:58):
premium baked in. And I, and I, and then I almost
sort of wonder, I'm almost sort of strategizing to myself here
as I sort of think about, you know, I'm always thinking about
procuring a new card for my collection.
Or I've always have cards in my mind where like I know where
they are and I know that the seller won't sell it.
And I start thinking like, what,how much more do I need to offer
over markets to get that nostalgia premium to, to fully
(29:21):
pay the nostalgia premium to getit out?
You know, I'm always, I'm alwaysthinking about that.
But I but I think nostalgia is one of the things that that
keeps cards in collections even when the market is going up,
even when competitive aggressiveoffers are made, that the cards
stay in the collections because we do genuinely value them and
we we have human connections that arise out of them that the
(29:43):
market price just simply doesn'treflect.
I, you know, it, it's one of those things, though, that I, I
think nostalgia has been baked into cards, particularly vintage
cards from the very beginning. And if you think about it, part
of the reason Mickey Mantle, even though he may not be the
greatest player of all time, is maybe the greatest card,
(30:03):
certainly in the golden golden era, you know, the greatest
character in cards is because hebrings out nostalgia in a
certain, you know, group of people from, you know, post war
people who grew up in the 50s, that kind of thing.
And and that's always been the case in the hobby going back to
when I was involved in it as a teenager in the 1970s.
(30:23):
But let me tell you a story thatI don't think I've never told
this one before. And it is, it is a inherited
nostalgia kind of thing, but I think it's also a relationship
thing. When I was a teenager, I
collected vintage cards. And it's one thing I had in
common with my father. And my father and I, he would
drive me to shows, I would show him cards.
And it's something that we, you know, we had a complicated
(30:46):
relationship, but this was the one of the points in our
relationship where we were really strong.
And when I got to be about 1617,I think that I think I needed
money and I wanted to do things and I wanted to, you know, do
things that 16 and 17 year olds do.
So I went to a card show by myself to sell my cards and I
(31:07):
told my mother this and I think my father overheard me and I
come home from the card show andI haven't been able to sell
anything because all the dealersback then there, you know, the
data wasn't there. You didn't have the, you didn't
have the numbers in your hand. And a lot of these guys wanted
to pay you pennies on the dollar.
So I didn't never ended up selling anything.
(31:29):
But when I came home, my mother's gets me in the room.
She says, you know, I'm glad youdidn't sell your cards because
your father was really upset when he heard that you were
going to sell your cards. And I thought to myself, wow,
OK. Like, he has nostalgia, in a
way, for these cards. And they also mean something
more than just the cards. They mean something that's
positive about the relationship between he and I.
(31:51):
And so like, I feel like a lot of it is the inability to give
up is also related to issues beyond nostalgia.
You know, and, and to a certain extent, you know, building a set
has not only, you know, the, the, the nostalgia part of the
cards themselves, but also, you know, there's a, there's a
(32:11):
whole, there's a like a story that you're creating for
yourself when you go about building the set.
And if you were to give up the set, you're almost like pushing
away the story, saying, OK, thatthat whole saga, that whole like
trip, that whole sort of, you know, the journey wasn't as
important because now I've givenit up.
(32:33):
And so I, I don't know, I feel like it, it's a lot of it is
emotional and, and the value does in fact have emotional
elements to it. But besides value, it's part of
the reason that we do what we dowhen we collect cards and when
we talk about it, when we make friends and when we go to all
these places and, and have experiences.
So I think I'd rambled a little bit there.
(32:54):
Sorry about that, but that's those are my thoughts and I told
you that dad story. I've never told that before.
It's just one of those things I never brought up before.
It's a terrific story. It, it makes me think back to,
you know, like I, I have turned over significant parts of my
collection at various times and I've, you know, I, there's,
(33:15):
there's a recharge or a reboot that happens that I, that I do
like. So when I came back to
collecting, I collected as a kidin the 90s, fell out of it
towards the late 90s and, and I came back in 2016.
And one of the things I did whenI came back to collecting and,
and interestingly, the year thatI came back to collecting was my
gap year. So I was a non traditional
(33:36):
student. I went back to university at an
older age, like in my mid 20s. And then I went to law school in
my early 30s and there was a gapyear in between my undergrad and
my law school. And during that gap year, that's
when I rediscovered collecting cards was, was that gap year
when I was supposed to be studying for the LSAT and stuff.
(33:57):
But, but I found my old collection and I just, I went
all the way down the rabbit hole.
I was just, I, it was, I had, I stood no chance against the
nostalgia and the invigoration of collecting that once I
rediscovered that, you know, here we are nine years later and
I just get more and more excitedabout it every day still.
(34:17):
But, but I remember that time and I remember discovering all
my old cards and then discovering lots of new cards
and discovering eBay and marketplaces and just everything
was new. Grading was new.
I'd never graded a card before. Everything was just so new and
exciting. But I needed some funds, you
know, to be able to participate.I had, I was starting from
nothing, just this old collection.
(34:38):
So I sold big chunks of that oldcollection and one of the cards
that I sold that that man, I really wish I still had it right
now because like I probably got 20 bucks for it or something.
And it's meaning to me is just infinitely more important to
that. But one of the cards that I sold
was my Chris Webber 1993 ultra power in the key insert.
(34:59):
And this card had lived in a screw down.
I think I had maybe one screw down plastic holder as a kid
because those cost a couple of bucks and like that was the
price of a pack. So I wasn't buying supplies over
cards. So I think I had one screw down
and I kept the Chris Webber in that screw down because it was
my most prized card. He had the same first name as
(35:20):
me. You know, I really liked him
and, and the card I had taken itin and out of the screw down so
many times that his condition was awful.
You know, it was just, it was worn.
I mean, I think it I, I, I was so excited to discover grading
that I was like, I want to gradethis and got like a B GS7 or
something. And, and I, I put together AII
(35:40):
recreated later on, you know, in2016, I recreated the power and
the key set and the Weber was one of the cards that made the
set. And then, you know, I tired of
the set and I, there was other stuff I was excited about.
I needed, you know, I needed anycopy funds I could raise.
And so I sold that set, which had my original Chris Weber card
in it. Now I'm not, I'm not super
regretful over that. I, you know, I, I, I still have
(36:04):
all the memories. It's still, I'm still very happy
about that time and how collecting has unfolded for me
and everything. But but, but I sure wish that I
still had that copy and I wish I'd never graded it and I wish
I'd never done any of that stuff.
I wish I just kept it in that same screw down and I wish I
just had it here. And so maybe that's a cautionary
tale or something for others to think about if they're just
(36:25):
coming back in, discovering their old cards, is that, you
know, there's there, there can be, you know, you can end up
like me where where you're like,you know, I was moving.
I was, I was moving and shaking and I was having fun and I was
making deals on eBay and it was all very exciting and
invigorating. And I needed some inventory to
sell. So that's what I had.
But now looking back and having patience and the experience of
(36:47):
of, of of all this collecting that I've done since that that
that yeah, I would, I would, I would pay 100 times that carts
market value if I could get backof that exact card and put it
back into that that old screw down.
I mean, I well, one of the things I got back into the hobby
in 2018, really in 12, but more sort of, you know, heavy into it
(37:12):
18. And one of the things I did was
I went back and bought all of the cards that I can remember
were like my cornerstone cards in my collection in the late
70s, early 80s when I was a teenager.
And so I got I didn't obviously I didn't get the examples that I
had back then, but I got better examples.
But still, that was one of the things that I did.
But let me tell you one one other thing.
(37:34):
It's totally unrelated. I have had when buying large
collections of cards and you know, large lots of cards found
cards with names written on them, somebody's name written on
them. So what I do is I go onto the
Internet where you can find anything, put the person's name
in and if it's original enough, try to figure out if this is the
(37:57):
right person who owned this cardbased upon his age, his
location, all that stuff. And twice now I have mailed out
cards to people. It's totally out of the blue and
it's there's no, there's no happy ending to this story.
By the way, totally out of the blue.
Just mailed it out with a lettersaying I think this was your
baseball card when you was a kid, when you were a kid.
(38:17):
I hope you remember. Here it is.
And I've done that twice now. And neither time have I heard
back from the person. There's no happy, there's no
happy ending to it. I should say, though, that one
of the things I still do have inmy collection are my original
cards from 1970 with my name written in pencil on the top
(38:38):
border. I have about 10 of them left.
So my entire, my, my entire collection from when I was a
tiny little kid is probably about 10 cards with my name
written, Danny Lynch on the top.And so I, I will never get rid
of those. So those, those examples are,
are in my collection forever. Not going to get them graded
though, I'll tell you that one. Well, that's the thing.
(38:59):
But I still do have some cards from childhood collecting, but
they're all the ones that wouldn't have brought any, any
value on eBay, which is, which is fine, you know, like I used
to, my dad and I used to go to short track racing.
That was something we both became a fan of in the 90s.
And there was a race car driver named John Knaus who raced at
(39:20):
the local quarter mile track And, and after the races and the
pits, you could go meet all the drivers and their crew and they
would give out trading cards of themselves.
Sometimes, a lot of times they'dbe big oversized cars.
I still have those cards. Those cards give a great memory.
I wouldn't even think of that memory from my life, but for the
fact that I have cards to sort of commemorate it.
And, and so by virtue of those cards being worthless, they, I
(39:45):
still have them and they're invaluable to me, which is,
which is a bit of an irony. And, and The funny thing about
John Canals, just about all this, you know, the, the, the
way that these things unfold. His son was a guy named Chad
Canals who would go on to becomethe crew chief for Jimmie
Johnson as he rattled off all those championships in NASCAR.
So there's all these, you know, these connections and these
(40:06):
little stories that give, give rise to other stories.
And I, I also really like what you did on, you know, your the,
the, the male it, it makes me think about athletes.
Who would like, I had a buddy when we were in in middle school
who would get cards of athletes and then send a letter with the
card to the athlete. And then a lot of times they
(40:26):
would sign it and send it back. And it, it just, you know,
there's, there's an extra thoughtfulness that comes with
an athlete, like taking the timeto send it back.
Now, maybe their secretary signed it.
I mean, I'm sure a lot of that was going on, but, but there's
a, there's a level of thoughtfulness that comes with
like, Hey, I'm going to just like mail something to somebody.
And you know what, just 'cause you didn't hear back, that
doesn't mean that, that it didn't land in the right place.
(40:49):
It, it might just mean that theygot it and it meant something to
them. And that was it, you know, and
they and they didn't they they didn't take they didn't consider
that maybe maybe the person who sent this with like a little
confirmation one way or the other.
But but I love I love to show mail stories.
Like we still have mail. We the hobby probably is a big
portion of USPS annual business is the hobby.
(41:12):
I love. I still love that that the
tangible ass the male aspect of everything is is quite nice in
an increasingly digital world. Well, there is one happy story
with that. There was I think on Facebook,
somebody had a card, it was a Sandy Koufax card and a kids
name was written on it and someone knew the guy's name and
(41:33):
then got in contact with them. So that has happened.
That was kind of the thing that gave me the idea to send these
cards off to people. But I think you're right and I
think I'm going to take it that way.
I'm going to say yes, they got it.
They felt good about it. I made somebody's day and they
didn't feel like it was necessary to get back in touch
with me and tell me thanks. You genuinely may have.
And Dan, I know a lot of people I can think of a lot of people I
(41:55):
know who would receive it, that gesture and they'd be like, this
is awesome. But they would just leave it
there. You know, they wouldn't, they
wouldn't take the time to like continue it further.
They would just, you know, it's like, it's like when, when the
after the wedding, when the, thecouple has to send the thank you
letters and it, it might take them a year to send them, you
know, like, you know, it's just,it's just that for, for whatever
(42:17):
reason, the follow through isn'talways our strong suit as human
beings. Well, I think we're, we're at
that time. I, I have to say though, that I
am am grateful not just that youcame on to do this podcast,
which will be, as I said, the first crossover for collectors
(42:38):
towards, you know, sports card clubhouse, but also everything
that you do. And I watch a lot of your
content and listen to a lot of your content because I think you
have a lot of important things to say.
And I think you're an incredibleasset to, to the hobby.
And so I really thank you not just for coming on today, but
also thank you for what you do for the hobby.
(42:58):
Thank you, Dan. It's it's an honor to to join
you on this and I hope we get many opportunities to
collaborate in the coming years.I'm 100% behind that.
So folks, hope you enjoyed. And this is going to be on the
sports card Clubhouse on Spotifyand other places where you get
(43:20):
your podcast, but it's also going to be on for collectors as
a video. And so we will see you soon.
I'm going to end the recording and hopefully you'll you'll
enjoy what we had to say today. So thank you.
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