Adam Gray (@the27guy on Twitter/X and @thereal27guy on Instagram) Makes the Best Short-Form Sports Card Videos! On today's Meet A Content Creator Episode 1, I got to know Adam a little.
Find Adam here:
https://www.instagram.com/thereal27guy/?hl=en
https://x.com/the27guy
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hey everybody, it is Mike Junk Wax Hero and this is the first
episode of the new podcast series Meet a Content Creator,
and I am introducing it with my first guest, Adam Gray, also
known as the 27 Guy. Is that right, Adam?
That's right. Yeah, Sometimes people say the
real guy 27 emphasis on real rather than on 27.
(00:24):
But yeah, 27's the lucky number.And that's and that's what it
comes from the 27 guy on Twitterand the real 27 guy on Instagram
and most other places. And what is the?
What does the username come from?
27 was my lucky number when I was growing up and there's a
couple of card related things that it has to do with that are
(00:45):
both long stories. One, it resulted in the greatest
pull in the card shop that I worked for in the 1990s and
early 2000s, which was a MichaelJordan jersey autograph out of
$100 box of cards that sold thatweek for seven grand back in
1999 is crazy. And then the other reason is
after years of putting together the 8687 set, I finally was able
(01:07):
to buy a Michael Jordan 86 clear.
It had a bunch of creases in it.I still have it to this day and
I paid $27.00 for it. So all of these things sort of
happened. Those are the two big card
related parts of the of the 27. That's awesome.
And that's, I have a couple of questions just from that, but
I'm going to give you a chance to introduce yourself, who you
(01:29):
are because I have always seen you.
I, I don't open Instagram much, but when I do, there you are.
And I always have it on mute, not because of you, but just
because that's the way I open Instagram.
And it wasn't until I started seeing you on Twitter in the
past year or so that I started really watching what you do.
And, and I was like, man, this guy is good.
I really, I'm a big basketball guy, love basketball.
(01:51):
And you do almost exclusively basketball cards, right?
As far as my collection, yeah, it is just exclusively
basketball cards. But for, for what I did, you
want me to talk about like a little bit about my, my, myself,
or was there anything else that you wanted to ask?
For yeah, I'd love for you to just go through you as a content
creator and a collector would begreat.
(02:13):
Yeah, awesome. So like a lot of people, I
collected when I was a kid back in the late 80s and early 90s.
And but unlike a lot of people, I never stopped collecting.
And so I've just always collected cards and worked for a
card shop for a number of years and then paid for my college
education through flipping cards.
(02:33):
Back before we use the word flipping, flipping, flipping was
actually like this word that I think I heard years later.
At least I'd never thought of itlike that, but buying and
selling and helping people move collections and things like
that. So I paid for both of my
degrees, which were in accounting and then was able to
put the large portion of the down payment on my house by
(02:54):
selling my collection back in 2010.
And then since then, I've just basically like been building my
collection from an original investment of a couple $1000.
And that leads me to the collection that I have today,
which is just the best basketball card collection that
I can that I can put together. And it's sort of centered around
(03:15):
just the history of basketball cards.
I've got stuff from the 1930s, got a 48 mic in all the way,
lots of stuff from the 70s, a lot of rare 90s inserts all the
way up until more modern. I don't really have anything
from like the last 8 to 10 yearsin my collection.
Not very many of those types of cards.
But, but really throughout the history of basketball cards is,
(03:37):
is what I've what I've collected.
And if I have a chance to ever acquire something that's like
really what I would say is important or meaningful to the
history of basketball cards. And I'm able to sell something
else from my collection that I believe is, is less important
than I do that. So that's how I'm always like
changing my collection. I don't have the good fortune of
(03:59):
having a whole lot of money outside of my collection.
So whenever I have to buy something, I have to sell
something to do that. But yeah, that's, that's my
history as a card collector. And then as far as content
creator, I started the first basketball card podcast
affectionately called the Basketball Card Podcast.
I started the magazine behind methat you can see called
Basketball Card Fanatic, which alot of people haven't heard of,
(04:21):
but we had about 500 subscribersduring our almost five year run,
printed the magazine and had a great experience with that.
And that led me to really a fulltime content career which
started at PWCC and then when PWCC changed and became Fanatics
Collect, I had the chance to go out and do it for others.
And so now I make content for all, for all sorts of different
(04:45):
card companies. I love it.
It's the best thing ever. I get to do awesome stories
about cards that are at auction and other other cool things that
they're exciting. And I try to always bring a, the
collector's mindset, a mindset of like, why is this an
(05:05):
interesting thing from the perspective of the collector and
where I think the community is like 9010, they focus on price
and 10% on everything else. I try to flip it.
I'm sort of 9010 in the other direction.
I want to think about all the other stuff and think about
price just that 10% of the time.So I try to keep that short.
But that's that's me in a in a nutshell.
No, that was great. And one of the things that I
(05:27):
really admire about the videos that I watch of yours is the
pacing. You, you have perfect pacing of,
you know, here's this item, here's why it's important and
here's the end. It's kind of the, you know, the,
the sandwich of a, a video and you do it perfectly, probably
because you've been doing it forso long.
And I just, every time I watch you, I feel like it's just, it's
(05:49):
almost like comfort food, you know, and it's going to be short
and it's, I know exactly what the format is going to be and
you're going to nail it every time.
Well, thank you for saying that.I, I wish everybody liked them.
I know that a lot of people are like, why is Adam's face on
everything? And I, I, I hear that the reason
I put my face on everything, by the way, might surprise people,
but it's all about engagement. And when you look at a, a real
(06:13):
like where you're talking about a card, people might not want to
see people's face every time. They may think that, but the
data sort of suggests to us thatthat people are more likely to
watch if you're on there and if it's your face and your voice
and you're speaking more as a real person.
But the the real, the real secret to it is it just takes
these things take forever. People see a 45 second video and
(06:36):
they're like, oh, that probably took you like 15 minutes.
And it's like, I wish that took me 15 minutes.
It takes an incredible amount oftime.
I have reels that have taken me several days to make a 62nd
video. And that's because of the
research that's involved in all of the things.
And so when I tell people my average reel gets about 40,000
views across the different channels, that sounds incredible
(06:57):
and I know that and I appreciatethat.
But it also like if they knew what went into it, they might
not quite feel quite, quite the way they do.
They take they take a long time to get them right.
And is this a side gig for you or are you full time content
creator? No, I'm full time.
I've been full time now for the last 2 1/2 or actually if you
include the Europe, the Europe PWCC about three 3 1/2 years.
(07:19):
I've been full time in this now.Wow, that's fascinating.
You had mentioned the card that you sold for $7000 in the late
90s. Oh no, no, I didn't pull that.
Somebody else in our shop pulledthat.
I wish do. You know what that card is worth
now? Oh yeah, I mean it's certainly
A6 figure card. It's like it's, I mean I, I
(07:39):
shouldn't say certainly it's it's either really low or really
high 5 figures up into dependingon condition it could be a
couple $100,000 card. That sounds right.
That's yeah. So you also mentioned the 86th
Fleer Jordan. What is Jordan's rookie card?
Well, I am a student of Beckett and so I when I had the chance
(08:02):
to interview Doctor Beckett a few years ago, it's probably
been five years ago now, I askedhim the same question and I and
it was before things got really exciting with Star being graded
by, by PSA and stuff. And I liked his answer because
he talked about how it was important that the card was
available to a lot of a lot of the world when it came out that
(08:23):
it was distributed in sort of a more normal way where everybody
had a chance at it. And I thought, oh, that's
interesting. And 86 flair to me is the 86
flair. Jordan is pretty clearly a top
three most iconic card in the history of a hobby.
It's easily the most iconic basketball card ever.
So to me, it will always be the rookie card.
But there is no way around the fact that the star predates it.
There's no way around the fact that it is NBA licensed.
(08:45):
There's no way around the fact that it is older, that it comes
first, that it is from a regularset that we sort of view as a
mainstream set now. And we don't think about how
they were distributed anymore. We don't mean we can still see
the unopened bag of star. We can still see the unopened
box of 86 Flare that comes up for auction every couple of
months, but to me it's easy to just say they're both rookie
cards, but that's sort of how I think about it.
(09:08):
I think that's very well said. It's all you covered all the
things that the arguments are. And for me it's just that the 86
flare looks so much better. It's infinitely better image
and, and and iconic too. So here's my question, here's my
question for you. There's two of them.
You're you go to a card show. I don't know how often you go to
(09:30):
card shows. I almost never go.
I try to go to one a year. I go to the national every year.
I'd like to go to more, but 5A year, 4 or five a year.
So they're both on a table. They're in, they're in similar
condition. Which one?
If you had the chance, which onewould you want to get for your
collection? I think that if you are
considering value and potential upside, it's got to be the star,
(09:53):
but for my collection I would rather have the 86 flare.
So how's, how's this for not how, how, how would I put this?
I have had that same 86 flare Jordan in my collection since I
was 14 years old. So I'm 42 now.
So we're talking about almost 30years I've owned, I've never
even owned a star before, but I love how much rarer it is.
(10:16):
So today, which one would be more appealing to me?
It's the star by a long shot. But as soon as you said the 86
Claire is way better looking, myhead started nod because it's
just not even close. It's it's such a good looking
card. It's so iconic.
It's so, it's so all of those things, but the rarity of the
star speaks to me as I, as I've gotten older, am I collecting?
And if I had that, I'm not. I'm not like knocking down any
(10:38):
doors to go get it because it's still a card that is in almost
every major auction, but it's somuch more rare.
I'd probably steer steer myself to that at this stage of my
collecting dream. So that brings me to the next
question. As a basketball, I assume you're
a basketball expert. You certainly know a lot about
basketball. Who is the GOAT of basketball?
(11:02):
Oh, it's Jordan. It's not even a I don't even
like the The conversations aboutLeBron are fun because it is
longevity, but longevity does not make you, I mean, growing
up, I was a huge fan of the UtahJazz, right?
And John Stockton has the most assists and steals ever and
caramel and for a long time havethe second most points ever.
(11:22):
But being being around a long time and accumulating these
great amounts of statistics overyour career, they, they put you
in the conversation, but they don't make you the greatest of
all time. And that's about championships
and about how much impact you had on the sport.
And that's Jordan and it's Jordan by a lot, by a mile.
I don't personally have LeBron and is the number two player of
(11:43):
all time either. And I'm not a LeBron hater.
People would say that I am. I like LeBron in a lot of ways.
I do. But he's not.
I don't think he's. I don't.
What do you, what do you think? What's your answer to that
question? It's it's Jordan and it's not
even close. And I have LeBron at four or
five. And I am a LeBron hater, but
only because I'm a Celtics fan and I'm legally required to hate
(12:05):
LeBron. As a Who are the other guys that
you have ahead of him? Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Kobe and
Curry. Oh, Steph, I like that.
The impact on the game. Another thing that I think is
underrated is the coolness factor of the athlete.
And LeBron just doesn't have coolness that Steph Curry and
(12:26):
Jordan has in spades. He is the coolest athlete of all
time. So here's a here's a fun LeBron
question for you. What was the coolest version of
LeBron? Wow, do you mean which era?
Yeah. I would say his second time in
Cleveland. Oh cool cuz that cuz that
(12:48):
championship is one of the all time great championships.
The chase down block, yeah, yeah.
They couldn't they couldn't score at the end of that game
and he sure had a lot of chances, but the chase down
block is an all timer moment. I so I love his It's kind of
like when Hulk Hogan goes to theto the NWO with in WCWI love it
when when LeBron becomes the badguy after the decision, he goes
(13:12):
to Miami. He wins two of his four
championships there. He has the the decision and it's
just it's so bad, right? It's such a bad moment, but
like, and he had some moments inthere in in Miami that were just
so bad. He almost he almost chokes away
the opportunity at A championship that the
championship against the Heat, his second championship there,
he almost loses it for him, has a couple of terrible turnovers,
(13:35):
but they win in the end. He was unbelievably elite as far
as how athletic he was. But but I like your answer too,
because that that Cavs championship was awesome, man.
It was. Even if you don't like him, and
I know you've already proclaimedyou're not a lover of him, like
that was a great championship. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
(13:55):
So when you're doing a video, itsounds like most of your videos
are are, I don't know if most ofthem are, but are a lot of your
videos hired out by like an auction house?
Yeah, most of them are not. I would, I would say probably,
gosh, I should look at this. It's probably somewhere between
70 and 85% of them. I'm doing that content for the
(14:17):
auction house and for most of them, you either see them tagged
in the the real or, or I'm collaborating with the auction
house. Yeah.
So the the vast majority of themare yes.
So how many, what percentage of the requests you get from
auction houses would you say youreject?
And why do you reject those, if any?
(14:39):
So you mean like if they were toask about like, hey, will you do
this video on this specific card?
Is that what you're? Saying so, I get sponsorship
requests frequently from companies that I would never do
business with. And I also get sponsorship
requests on companies I would dobusiness with that just doesn't
interest me in doing the kinds of things that they want me to
(15:01):
do. And so I'm just kind of
wondering if that if you have anything similar?
So with the auction houses, there are times where people
will come to me and they'll say,hey, do you have a good story on
this card? And I think most cards, if you
take the time, there's like a really great story out there.
Again, they just take forever toproduce and to to think through.
(15:22):
So there are sometimes though where I'm like, this is really a
bad thing. Like I don't this is not going
to this is not going to be good either.
Because it is a card that I sortof feel like is being collected
just because it's sort of something that were somebody
speculating on the the player like like they're just like,
(15:43):
well, this guy's this card's cool because this guy is hot.
That generally is not super appealing to me.
Or there's there are times wherepeople will have a card that I
feel like has suspicious elements to it where I'm like, I
don't like that. I don't like how that feels.
And in those situations I'll just tell people no.
So that happens. But for the most part, for the
(16:04):
most, I'll say this like this issort of like, let me see behind
the curtain a little bit. But like for the most part, an
auction comes out. And when the auction comes out,
I look through the whole of the auction and I'll give the
auction house like a number of things where I'm like, these are
great stories. And in a lot of cases, the
auction house will be like, how do I say this?
In a lot of cases, the auction house is like, Adam, just do
(16:25):
whatever you think is great, right?
Because because I've done enoughof this content for the auction
houses that most of them are sort of like, we know that you,
you do a good job and you have agood sense of which stories are
the are the most interesting stories.
And so, you know, if I feel likethere's a really good story out
there, then I'll do it. But if there's something like
like where they are hoping that I'll do something and I don't
(16:47):
like it to get back to your question, I just tell them like,
sorry, I'm not going to do that.And I haven't had anybody
really. I've had a few places sort of
like a couple times. You'd be like, come on, we
really need this. Like the client requested it and
it's a little bit awkward because sometimes, sometimes the
auction house has sort of said, yes, we'll have Adam do a video
(17:08):
for you if you'll do this. And then sometimes Adam, me, I
said, no, I'm not going to do that.
So that's a little awkward. But that's those times have been
very few. That doesn't usually happen.
Interesting. Tell me about your magazine,
because I didn't. I wasn't aware of it until
probably two years ago, and I think by then it was long gone.
You had ended it. It we actually, we only, we only
(17:30):
ended it about a year ago. So it was never, I would say
this it it's like, so I've got acopy of it right here.
I was looking at something I waslooking up something earlier
this week in in this magazine. It was.
It was definitely the greatest passion project I've ever had.
You. Know we, we put so much time
(17:52):
into this knowing full well thatin 2020 and after that it was
never going to be something thatwe were going to be able to sell
for a lot of money knowing, knowing that it was never going
to be some massive revenue generator.
It actually made pretty good money though, like we had a
number of sponsors and like I said, like 500 paying
(18:12):
subscribers is not like, I felt like it was tremendous success.
And when we stopped, it was awesome.
The, the, the reaction that we got from so many people, which
was like so many people were like, man, you guys put so much
into that. Thank you for that.
And then there are other people were like, man, like I'm really
going to miss this. This became a really important
(18:34):
part of, of how I, you know, like how I conducted myself in
the hobby because once a month, you know, if you were paying 10
bucks a month, you were getting a high quality 32 to 36 page
magazine every, you know, every month, like we never missed a
month and it was well designed and the stories were awesome.
(18:56):
And so I like, I love to do it. I still miss it, but you know, I
just got to the point where I had so many things that I was
able to do that like, I was like, I had so much, so many.
And you, you know, this like being a dad and, you know,
having the life that you have, like there's, there's so many
demands on your time. You don't always get to do
everything that you want. And although I think BCF could
(19:18):
still be productive, awesome, you know, asset in our, in our
industry, we would spend dozens of hours putting this together
and then 500 people would see it.
I can put together a reel in five or six hours and 40,000
people see it. And that's sort of what it came
(19:38):
down to in the end is that I could, felt like I could sort
of, I could touch more, like I could influence more and be seen
by more and like educate more. And all of those things that
you're trying to do with the, with the, the, the online
content, I could just do so manyof those things so much better
than I could in a written way, which is sort of sad, but also
sort of just the reality of it. Yeah, it's one of those things
(20:02):
where you can look back and say I did that.
And I always tell my kids, you're never going to regret
trying something, even if you itdoesn't work out the way you
want it to. Or after a long time, you say I
need to move on to something else.
But you may look back and say I regret not doing that.
And it feels like one of those things.
(20:22):
Yeah, I think that's right. Tell me about the book you
You're writing a book, right? Yeah, so when I so starting with
Basketball Card fanatic, actually I produced a really
cool crowdsourcing project and the idea was what what episode
(20:43):
or what issue was it? I think it was an issue 2
basketball card fanatic. I asked like 20-5 really big
basketball collectors. I said, just tell me, what do
you think? The I can't remember what the
number was, but I think it was like the top 10 most iconic
basketball cards are ever. And people came back with all
these questions like what what does iconic mean for this?
(21:04):
And I'm like, what does iconic mean for you?
Whatever you think. And then I just left it open and
said, you know, rank them one through 10.
And then the, the, the real magic is with the system because
if a card received a vote, then it received certain number of
points and then it depending on where it, where it finished in
the top ten, it received more orless points, right.
(21:25):
And so everybody's like lists were so different.
And then I just in Excel standardized all the lists, gave
each card sort of an identifier and then and then applied the
numeric, the numeric sort of settings that we applied at the
beginning and said, what is thisyield?
And so another part of that, by the way, was a card had to show
up on a certain number of lists to make the final list.
(21:49):
So even if somebody put, even iflike a couple people put a card
number one all time, if it wasn't on a certain percentage
of the list, it just couldn't qualify.
So that sort of prevented a small group of people from
manipulating the final results. And so we were sort of aware of
all of that sort of stuff. And as part of it, we came up
with a list of like the 12 or 15most iconic basketball cards of
(22:11):
all time. And I looked at it and I was
like, gosh, this is so interesting.
And so then I did it another time for BCF.
And then when I started PWCCI, did the same thing for PWCCI.
Like I remember trying to convince my boss, Chris
Callahan, and I was like, dude, this is going to be the coolest
project ever. Like we did this for BCF.
Let's do it, but let's do for the whole of the hobby.
We didn't even limit it to sports cards.
(22:32):
We did non sports cards too, which I think was a mistake in
retrospect, because it's hard tofind voters that can opine in a
really good way, in a really accurate way on both sports and
non sports. But we did it and we and we
interviewed. We're not interviewed.
We, we sent the, the survey out to it like it was like 150
people and it created this list called the iconic 100 that that
(22:56):
we did for PWCC. And it was awesome, dude.
Like the, the, the content that came out of it was so good.
And so after I, after I left PWCCI was like, I want to take
the same thing that I started back at BCF and let's do it
again. Let's just do it for the 1st 25
years of the 2000s. And this time, based on all of
(23:17):
the learnings from the other times, I said, let's do it in a
way so that in the end it's going to be like the very best
version of this that we can. And part of those learnings, by
the way, this is incredibly important.
The iconic 100, it ended up being too basketball heavy and I
knew it did because a lot of theexperts had a basketball
background. And so this time we said no one
(23:38):
who is an expert can just be a basketball expert.
They have to have expertise in different things and we have to
ask not just my audience, but a bigger audience, a more diverse
audience. And so I went on sports cards
and nonsense a couple times. And that's where a huge
percentage of our of our voters came from was from sports cards,
(24:00):
nonsense. So we had both an expert pool of
made-up of people who work in the industry, people who I know
through, through all of my dealings in the industry, and
not only people I know, but but other people who other, other
people who worked on this with me because Gem Rate and I
partnered together on this. And so we have this expert pool
of about 40 experts. And then we left it open to the
(24:22):
community and almost 460 community members filled it out.
We took the two polls and we said we'd do this in the
beginning. We, we, we gave them each and
equal weight. So the 40 over here did have a
lot more impact than the, than the 460.
But kind of like the NBA All Star game, you've got two
different voting pools. And then we did the same thing
(24:42):
where we applied the point values to it.
And after we did that, it created a list, an average list
of the 25 most iconic cards across the 1st 2000 or excuse
me, across the, all of the 2000s.
And it was, it was awesome, dude.
Like the, the, the list that fell out was awesome.
(25:03):
And then now you know, I know there's a long description, but
the purpose of the book is to sort of commemorate, commemorate
those 25 cards, commemorate all the cards that ended up on the
survey, which came from various experts within each sport.
So like there was a baseball group, a baseball group of
experts who put together a list of 30 cards that went on the
(25:23):
survey. So we didn't miss anything.
No one's accusing us of, oh, youmissed this card.
No one's going to accuse us of that.
Some people are going to a question very much how people
voted, but everything was on thesurvey.
Every card that you could possibly want, I think it was
100 and it's like 140 cards total that people had to vote
for or vote from and they went through and they ranked their
(25:45):
top 25 using the software, the survey that we put together and
and yeah, now it's like time to unveil that in book form.
It's already been unveiled. If you look at my Instagram or
my YouTube, you can find that. But but yeah, I think people are
gonna really like it. That's awesome.
I'm looking forward to it. I'll definitely be buying one.
(26:07):
You reminded me of your iconic 100 list because a couple of
years ago, just about two years ago now, I guess I wanted to
start up my own 100 most iconic sports cards of all time.
And I googled to see if anybody else had done that before.
And sure enough, there's this PWCC list of 100.
And I remember reading through it and thinking there is so much
basketball in here and there's alot of Kobe and LeBron in here.
(26:30):
I thought if I were to start my own list, it would be all sports
and I would limit it to 1 card of each athlete.
So I did that 100 cards and I have like track and field
athletes in there. It's all over the place.
No lacrosse. That was the one thing I
couldn't find any cards of, but 100 most iconic cards of they.
(26:55):
Plus, they also have to be attainable for under $5000.
Oh, so that yeah, you put some real cool filters on that.
What did, what was your what wasyour findings in the end?
I'm super interested to hear this.
I, I haven't released the top 25yet.
I'm going to start a, a weekly. I, I did, I was doing them one
at a time for about 10 weeks andI was like, this is crazy.
(27:16):
And then I started doing them inchunks of five to 10 and I'm
down to the top 25. I took a break for the summer
and I haven't gotten back to it yet.
But yeah, it's, you know, you'vegot, I'm heavy on vintage, of
course, but then you've got the 89 Griffey upper deck is really
high in the list. I had that when I filled out my
(27:37):
survey for the Iconic 100. I had the graffiti #4 and I
still feel like it's #4 but the community, if I remember right,
I could just look at the book because we did a book for that
too. I think the community had it
number like #9 and or #10 I justthink maybe it was even like 7
or 8. Either way, that's too low.
The 89 graffiti to me is a higher.
It's a higher card than that. I'll tell you.
(28:00):
I'll tell you as well. I'll tell you as well then.
Now this is going to break your list, but number one was the
Mantle, 52 #2 was the 86 Fleer Jordan, which again, I just
think it's too high. I think that I think that card's
number three and then #3 was theWagner.
I personally, I think that the T2O6 Wagner is the most iconic
card ever made. I do that's what I think.
(28:22):
But again, that's not how the voters voted and that's how this
that's how we set it up. I would probably have it if I
had the the same before the lackof restrictions that I have.
I would probably go Mantle and then Wagner.
OK, I have in my list I have Griffey at number six.
Spoiler alert for anybody. You have you have the Gretzky
head of it, I'll bet. The Gretzky is #4.
(28:44):
Yeah, yeah. And then is your number.
Let me see, is your #5 goodness,who would you have #5?
It's not, It's not the Ruth. And no, it's not the Ruth
because it's under 5 grand. No, there is a Ruth.
So remember I created this two years ago.
The Ruth out priced this now along with my #1 which is the
494849 leaf Jackie Robinson. At the time those were both
(29:08):
borderline and I think they may have out priced this.
I'll have to check before I do those.
Yeah, that's true. But then I'm just going to
choose different cards for both those guys because what I'm
trying to do is take the most iconic athletes of all time and
and do the best cards I can get for under $5000.
Awesome. I love that.
Jackie has to be #1 followed by Ruth spoiling things here.
(29:32):
Ruth and then Jordan, Gretzky, Mantle and then I've got
Griffey. What?
What mantle? What mantle are you gonna have?
53 tops. OK, that makes sense.
Cool, that's probably my next big purchase and I'm a low
budget guy. Like the most I've ever spent on
a card is $1100. That's great.
So. It's awesome.
(29:53):
So yeah. And that was my 41 play ball,
Ted Williams. But yeah.
I used to have a Sorry, go ahead.
The mantle's probably my next big purchase, maybe this fall.
I used to have a rule, it'll, I sort of like laugh about it now,
but I used to have a rule that Ishouldn't spend over $100 on a
(30:14):
card. And then at some point I
extended it to like, I'll never spend more than $1000.
And then I remember when I brokemy $3000 rules, when I bought my
autographed copy of my 61 flareable Chamberlain.
And then I, I've like, I don't even want to tell you what I've
spent on cards at this point. So I, but I, but I, I said this
to somebody the other day and he, he balked at it.
(30:34):
He, he disagreed with me. But I've always felt this way.
The more you spend on cards doesnot, does not correlate with the
joy that you get from being a card collector at all in any
way. And I think people sort of like
they look at how I collect and they're like, well, you probably
think, think that like, you know, that like you have like
this elitist view of I don't at all in any way.
(30:57):
I don't, I don't have like any sort of view that like you have
to be buying like the some of mybest friends in the hobby are
guys that have never spent even $100 on cards.
And that's what that's the greatest part about our hobby.
I always say this is like one ofmy favorite sayings.
It doesn't matter whether you have $1,000,000 a week budget or
a dollar a week budget. It's the best hobby out there.
(31:19):
And I know that people disagree with that, but put, put together
a set, you know, go work on a set that's like a really tough
set and learn about the history of the set.
Let learn about the history of the players.
And, you know, put it put together a set that's 100 cards
and cost you, you know, 50 buckstotal.
It can be the most fun that you ever have.
And I know other people disagreewith that, but I really feel
(31:41):
strongly that that's true. Yeah, agreed.
And that's very well said. So we've talked about the
Jordan, which is probably the most iconic basketball card.
But what's the grail card in your opinion?
And you've already mentioned it,in my opinion.
You've mentioned what I think isthe grail card for basketball,
for like all of basketball, all time NBA.
(32:06):
Well, it's interesting. So I historically have said that
the 97 game jersey autograph of Michael Jordan #23 is the the
card that I would want more thanany other basketball card.
But I don't know if I still, I don't know if I if I still feel
(32:27):
that's true. I mean, I still feel like it's
probably true for me. But when you say grail, you
know, you might be talking aboutwhat other people think.
I I think what that card represents for its era, the way
that the hobby changed at that point, the fact that it was the
first game jersey, NBA licensed game jersey set and then it then
it was autographed. I think that's the, I think
(32:49):
that's the greatest basketball card ever made.
That's what I think. But what I'm really interested
to hear which card you're thinking about right now.
The. Micon.
Oh, the Miken. Yeah, I love the Miken.
I love. It yeah, I love the 97 Jordan
too. Jordan was my guy as a kid.
I the Celtics were not good. I don't remember the the Celtics
being good in the 80s 'cause I was I was too young and by the
(33:10):
time I was really a fan, Byrd was laying on his back on the
sidelines and Jordan was up and coming.
I, I went to Bowden basketball camp six straight years, Bowden
College, which is near where I live and where I grew up.
And we, the breaks that we wouldtake, we would go into a film
room and just watch Jordan highlights, you know, 45 minute
(33:30):
break, go watch Jordan highlights.
And that was the best. And, but the, the Miken is such
a great card and he was an underrated athlete because most
people our age and younger, I'venever heard of George Miken.
When I was a kid, I was doing the Miken drill at basketball
camp all the time. Yes, Mike and drill.
(33:52):
I loved of Mike and drill, but Ididn't know who George Mikan was
until I was a little bit older, probably teenager to maybe even
college. So yeah, that brings me to my
next question because I have beef with you.
I was at the National. I was at the National and
somebody said, oh, Adam Gray is over there.
He's taller than you. And I was like, no, he cannot
possibly be taller than me. I'm offended by this because I'm
(34:14):
6 foot two. There aren't many, very many
people who are taller than me. And I turn around and sure
enough, you you're like 4 inchestaller than I expected to be at
least, maybe even 6 inches. How tall are you?
I'm not that tall. It's it's over.
I, I'm, I am 6 foot 4, so I am, I'm definitely taught most
people. I bet you've had this experience
(34:36):
too, where people assume becauseyou're nice that you're going to
be short. I don't know why people have
this assumption. I think everybody's like, yeah,
Adam's a really nice person. He's probably a really short
guy. And I have every time I meet
somebody in person who hasn't seen me before, they're like,
what? I have no idea.
And I'm like, how do you, why doyou think I'm going to be a
short guy? So anyway, but yeah, so you're
(34:58):
6/2 though. But you're a, you're like a post
basketball player, right? Like well.
I wasn't until I was 30, and so when I was a kid, I was a
shooting guard. I just shot, shot, shot, shot,
shot. I was point guard and then I
became a shooting guard and I was short until I was 11th grade
or 12th grade and then I got to be 6 foot 2 pretty quickly over
(35:21):
the course of a handful of months when I was like 17 ish
years old. Then I went to college and I
played. I didn't play on the team in
college, but I played with the team a lot, played in a lot of
intramurals and I was always, always, always, always around
basketball players. And I've always felt like I was
short, even when I was 6 foot 2 in college because I was always
(35:43):
with much taller basketball players.
And it wasn't until I got into corporate America at the age of
23, but I started looking around, like I'd be walking down
the hall and there were hundredsof people walking by and I'm
like, I'm tall. I had no idea I was tall.
I, you know, it's funny, I stillhave those moments.
I, I had one last night. I was at my, my kids in like
(36:05):
this technology association thing at school and I was there
just with like, there's a bunch of, there's a bunch of kids,
there's a bunch of parents too. And I sort of like, I had this
moment last night where I lookedaround.
I was like, I'm like way bigger than every other human in this
place. And I wonder like, so I think
some kids see me, they're scaredbecause I'm a big guy and I'm
always like, oh, don't be scaredof me.
Like you can't be scared of me, be scared of anybody but me.
(36:27):
I'm not a scary guy. But yeah, that's it's funny the
way that you said that because alot of tall people don't realize
it until like they get older. I go wait a second, I guess I'm
big now. What happened?
Yeah, yeah. You know, when you hang out with
basketball players until you're 23 and then you're all of a
sudden around no basketball players, kind of makes you go,
huh? I guess I am tall.
(36:49):
Hey, I got to, I got to ask you,I know we we're getting away
from it now, but I got to ask you about the mic in because you
mentioned your $1100 thing and then you mentioned the mic in.
So there was a time not that long ago in, in the history of
our car, of the, of the world ofcardboard, where you could buy a
mic in for under $1100. It would just have to be pretty
beat up. I think those days, last time I
(37:10):
looked, I think those days are probably gone now at at this
point, if it's a real mic and it's probably going to cost you
more than that. Is that an aspiration at some
point that card or is that like or, or or why would and if it is
like, why would it be? What is it about the mic?
And it makes you go, Oh, I love that card.
That's a really good question. First of all, the colors, the,
(37:31):
the, the deep blue and the, the history of the card and the
history of him with the championships on the Lakers
before they moved. Just, I don't know, it's a, it's
a fantastic card. I love it.
How much it has to do with? I'm picking up a Beckett right
(37:53):
now. How much does it have to do with
the fact that in the beginning of all of the Gray pages when we
were a kid, you would get this card?
So here it is 1948 Bowman card number 69 George Mike and rookie
3000 low, 4500 high. How much of like it's, it's like
how much we we know it has to dowith how it was priced as we
(38:16):
were growing up in the fact thatmost of us never saw it when we
were a kid. Zero.
Because you can see I've got, I've got Beckett, the first
Beckett basketball behind me andthe first Beckett baseball, both
autographed by Doctor Beckett here.
I was a Beckett kid, grew up in the 80s, started like started
reading Beckett baseball card monthly in the, I don't know,
(38:37):
maybe 8788 and then started reading Beckett basketball
around 1990. But I had zero interest in
vintage basketball cards. 1989 and later was all I was
interested in 'cause I I startedcollecting basketball in 89
hoops Fleer and so I would neverlook at the vintage cards and
(38:59):
Beckett basketball card. I looked at some vintage and
basket Beckett baseball but had no interest in those either.
I always wanted to look up the 52 mantle.
OK. Every month.
I, I've loved the mic and almostexclusively for that reason.
So it's interesting that we comeat it from a different, from a,
from a different perspective. And then I interrupted myself.
Do you think you'll ever Do you think you'll ever try to get
(39:22):
one? It depends on I'm a big eye
appeal guy I love like apsa 1.5 or an SGC 1.5 with good eye
appeal but it's I don't know what you're looking at but are
they 10,000 for low grade now? I think so.
I I have one that's very low grade.
I actually probably have the copy that I don't.
(39:42):
I'm not trying to sell you on it.
I'm not going to sell the card, to be clear, but mine is is is
clean of a 1948 Bowman that you'll ever see.
It is gorgeous. Centering's fantastic.
It looks amazing, but on one of the corners it curves just a
little bit in a way that PSA hasdeemed to be trimmed.
Now, I bet other people look at it to say I don't believe that
(40:04):
it's trimmed, but PSA believes it's trimmed and that's what
matters to the value in a lot, in a lot of these cases.
The other thing that PSA picked up on is that it's missing one
of the colors. I think it says no red ink.
Which I didn't notice. I don't part part of that might
be that I'm color blind, but I don't think so.
I think it's just not very a noticeable thing.
And so the card I'll I'll send you an image right when when the
(40:26):
episode's over, the card just looks exactly like I think you
want it to look at like like youwant it to look.
But I don't think it's worth. I mean, it's still a very
valuable card, right? I think it's like 4 or $5000.
And to me that just is such a good buy in this in this world
does have that important of a basketball card that's as rare
as it is, that looks as good as it does.
(40:47):
And because it says altered on it, it's and because it's, you
know, missing the color or whatever, it's valued at
something so low. I again, I think that's insane.
But but everybody has different feelings on these things.
Yeah, the mic in ended up at #19on my list.
So at the time when I started this two years ago, it was
definitely under $5000. It was attainable.
(41:12):
And you might, you might, I think you'll still get one at,
at some point for under 5 grand.I I think.
But it's not going to be a, it'snot going to be APSA 6, right?
It's not going to be a APSA 2 even probably.
It's going to be an altered copyor a copy that's really, it's
really beat up. Yeah.
And to get back to seeing you atthe National, I wasn't avoiding
(41:32):
you. I actually planned on going and
introducing myself because we haven't met in person, in case
anybody listening is wondering. But you were talking to somebody
and I went back to having my conversation.
When I turned back, you were gone.
And I was like, well, I'm sure I'll see him again, but I.
Didn't next. Are you going next year?
Yes. That's the one I always try to
go to the the National for me isI don't know what it's like for
(41:54):
you. I mean, some people are there
exclusively for the cards. The cards to me are like, very
much like a secondary thing. It's all about and yeah.
And like, and I remember. So it's, it's, it's funny
because everybody's different, right?
I've already mentioned Doctor Beckett a couple times on this
episode, but I went one year to the National like with my main
goal being to find him because Ijust I look up to him so much.
(42:18):
You know, he's he is largely responsible for a lot of this
and I don't think he gets the love that he that he deserves.
And I think he's just so measured and his approach to so
many things. He's the GOAT.
He's and it's not close, right when people say this person or
that person or like the greatestcollectors, the greatest people
in the hobby ever. Jim Beckett is in just my
opinion, my two cents. I think he's number one by a
mile. And I.
Could not agree more. And so I wanted to see him so
(42:40):
bad. I didn't see him all year.
And I even messaged like a few people like, hey, can you help
me find Doctor Beckett? But then two years ago, I just
walked past the dollar place with dollar boxes.
And I'd had people tell me that he would be there, like it in,
you know, at dollar boxes. And so I saw him and I just
like, stopped. And I was like Jim.
(43:03):
And he looked up and he saw me. And he's like one of the great
moments of my life. And I mean that like, outside of
like the birth of my kids and myfamily stuff.
Doctor Beckett looks at me like he smiles real big.
And he goes Adam Gray and he shakes my hand.
And I was like, oh man, this is it, this is it.
And I know he's like super personable and he would do that
to a lot of people. I'm not saying anything special
about myself, but like he is thegreatest and he still loves the
(43:28):
dollar box stuff. I know how he loves using like
comp C and like moving stuff. He and he's always like, I'm
just trying to sell stuff. But you know, he loves buying
stuff too. He just loves the cards and so
at least don't say that or don'tthink that.
I'm just saying like it's just all about the people.
It is about the cards too. There is this element that's
great, but at, at national, I feel like it really is about
(43:49):
seeing for me, it's more about seeing people that it is, you
know, about, about trying to find cards because cards are
always available. But seeing you in person would
be like, would be way more interesting to me than like
going around and looking for, totry to, you know, find something
for my collection. I I think that's probably not
going to be as as fruitful for me as just talking to people.
(44:11):
Yeah, my best experience in the National was actually walking
around with Greg from Midlife Cards, who's actually a co-owner
of this podcasting network who And we just spent like an hour
trying to find a 1961 Fleer basketball card rapper that I
had seen the day before. And I was like, I gotta go find
that. And he's like, I'll go help you.
(44:32):
And we spent an hour and a half trying to find it.
And that was the best experienceat the National this year for
me. It was so much fun.
Did you find it? No, but then I ended up going
out and buying one. After it, What did that cost
you? A. 110 a hundred.
And $20, that's a great buy. I on that same note, I think it
was Robert Edwards had a they'renot Robert Edwards anymore.
(44:55):
They're Rea collects or collect Rea.
I'd always forget, but they postit.
They had a a 48 Bowman rapper like a couple years ago at
auction and when I saw it, I went, I've never seen one of
these before. Like this is really rare and
it's sold for, I think it's soldfor like $5100.
(45:18):
And I remember going and I put, I, I put one of my like when I
was trying to do these like thought provoking questions on
my Instagram. And I, I think if this is a good
question to me, I think it'll bea good question to the
community. And I put one up.
It was like, what would you rather have, the rapper or a
Miken? And it's actually a really great
question because everybody's like, well, I'd rather have the
mic until you realize, like, themicon's a rare card, but that
(45:41):
rapper, you may never get another chance at it.
And so who knew in 1948 it wasn't just getting the right
card. The best thing that you possibly
could have kept out of that packwas the rapper itself.
Yeah, that felt like one of yourvideos right there.
It might be the perfect way to wrap this up.
Maybe I would just say like everything that I do is like,
(46:04):
hopefully you can feel it like it's all from the perspective of
like, like I've collected for 30for, you know, I'm 42.
I've collected since I was like a little kid.
My first memory is being a collector, right?
And so if I find something is interesting in collecting, I was
just sort of say, I wonder if other people will find this
interesting too. And for the most part, if you
(46:24):
think something's interesting incollecting, I think other people
are going to find that it's interesting as well.
So I really appreciate you giving me a set to talk about
things, including like the book that was really kind of you to
ask about that. I know not a lot of people are
thinking about it, but but yeah,thank you for and because you
plugged it on your channel, sendme your address afterwards.
We'll just we'll send you a freecopy.
(46:45):
Oh, that's very kind of you. Where can people find you and
your book? Instagram the real 27 guy.
Twitter the 27 guy and yeah if you follow me on my Instagram,
you're going to see links to to buy the book the book is not
currently available for for purchase, but it probably will
when does this episode go up It'll.
(47:06):
Probably be podcast on Monday OKI think and then Wednesday on
YouTube. So shortly after this comes out,
like in the in the next week after this comes out, it'll be
available for sale. Great, awesome Adam, this was
fantastic. I could talk for hours about
this stuff but and we both have part end times so thank you very
(47:27):
much for coming on. Thank you, Mike.
It was really a lot of fun. Bye everybody, thanks for
watching and listening.
Hey everybody, it is Mike Junk Wax Hero and this is the first
episode of the new podcast series Meet a Content Creator,
and I am introducing it with my first guest, Adam Gray, also
known as the 27 Guy. Is that right, Adam?
That's right. Yeah, Sometimes people say the
real guy 27 emphasis on real rather than on 27.
(00:24):
But yeah, 27's the lucky number.And that's and that's what it
comes from the 27 guy on Twitterand the real 27 guy on Instagram
and most other places. And what is the?
What does the username come from?
27 was my lucky number when I was growing up and there's a
couple of card related things that it has to do with that are
(00:45):
both long stories. One, it resulted in the greatest
pull in the card shop that I worked for in the 1990s and
early 2000s, which was a MichaelJordan jersey autograph out of
$100 box of cards that sold thatweek for seven grand back in
1999 is crazy. And then the other reason is
after years of putting together the 8687 set, I finally was able
(01:07):
to buy a Michael Jordan 86 clear.
It had a bunch of creases in it.I still have it to this day and
I paid $27.00 for it. So all of these things sort of
happened. Those are the two big card
related parts of the of the 27. That's awesome.
And that's, I have a couple of questions just from that, but
I'm going to give you a chance to introduce yourself, who you
(01:29):
are because I have always seen you.
I, I don't open Instagram much, but when I do, there you are.
And I always have it on mute, not because of you, but just
because that's the way I open Instagram.
And it wasn't until I started seeing you on Twitter in the
past year or so that I started really watching what you do.
And, and I was like, man, this guy is good.
I really, I'm a big basketball guy, love basketball.
(01:51):
And you do almost exclusively basketball cards, right?
As far as my collection, yeah, it is just exclusively
basketball cards. But for, for what I did, you
want me to talk about like a little bit about my, my, myself,
or was there anything else that you wanted to ask?
For yeah, I'd love for you to just go through you as a content
creator and a collector would begreat.
(02:13):
Yeah, awesome. So like a lot of people, I
collected when I was a kid back in the late 80s and early 90s.
And but unlike a lot of people, I never stopped collecting.
And so I've just always collected cards and worked for a
card shop for a number of years and then paid for my college
education through flipping cards.
(02:33):
Back before we use the word flipping, flipping, flipping was
actually like this word that I think I heard years later.
At least I'd never thought of itlike that, but buying and
selling and helping people move collections and things like
that. So I paid for both of my
degrees, which were in accounting and then was able to
put the large portion of the down payment on my house by
(02:54):
selling my collection back in 2010.
And then since then, I've just basically like been building my
collection from an original investment of a couple $1000.
And that leads me to the collection that I have today,
which is just the best basketball card collection that
I can that I can put together. And it's sort of centered around
(03:15):
just the history of basketball cards.
I've got stuff from the 1930s, got a 48 mic in all the way,
lots of stuff from the 70s, a lot of rare 90s inserts all the
way up until more modern. I don't really have anything
from like the last 8 to 10 yearsin my collection.
Not very many of those types of cards.
But, but really throughout the history of basketball cards is,
(03:37):
is what I've what I've collected.
And if I have a chance to ever acquire something that's like
really what I would say is important or meaningful to the
history of basketball cards. And I'm able to sell something
else from my collection that I believe is, is less important
than I do that. So that's how I'm always like
changing my collection. I don't have the good fortune of
(03:59):
having a whole lot of money outside of my collection.
So whenever I have to buy something, I have to sell
something to do that. But yeah, that's, that's my
history as a card collector. And then as far as content
creator, I started the first basketball card podcast
affectionately called the Basketball Card Podcast.
I started the magazine behind methat you can see called
Basketball Card Fanatic, which alot of people haven't heard of,
(04:21):
but we had about 500 subscribersduring our almost five year run,
printed the magazine and had a great experience with that.
And that led me to really a fulltime content career which
started at PWCC and then when PWCC changed and became Fanatics
Collect, I had the chance to go out and do it for others.
And so now I make content for all, for all sorts of different
(04:45):
card companies. I love it.
It's the best thing ever. I get to do awesome stories
about cards that are at auction and other other cool things that
they're exciting. And I try to always bring a, the
collector's mindset, a mindset of like, why is this an
(05:05):
interesting thing from the perspective of the collector and
where I think the community is like 9010, they focus on price
and 10% on everything else. I try to flip it.
I'm sort of 9010 in the other direction.
I want to think about all the other stuff and think about
price just that 10% of the time.So I try to keep that short.
But that's that's me in a in a nutshell.
No, that was great. And one of the things that I
(05:27):
really admire about the videos that I watch of yours is the
pacing. You, you have perfect pacing of,
you know, here's this item, here's why it's important and
here's the end. It's kind of the, you know, the,
the sandwich of a, a video and you do it perfectly, probably
because you've been doing it forso long.
And I just, every time I watch you, I feel like it's just, it's
(05:49):
almost like comfort food, you know, and it's going to be short
and it's, I know exactly what the format is going to be and
you're going to nail it every time.
Well, thank you for saying that.I, I wish everybody liked them.
I know that a lot of people are like, why is Adam's face on
everything? And I, I, I hear that the reason
I put my face on everything, by the way, might surprise people,
but it's all about engagement. And when you look at a, a real
(06:13):
like where you're talking about a card, people might not want to
see people's face every time. They may think that, but the
data sort of suggests to us thatthat people are more likely to
watch if you're on there and if it's your face and your voice
and you're speaking more as a real person.
But the the real, the real secret to it is it just takes
these things take forever. People see a 45 second video and
(06:36):
they're like, oh, that probably took you like 15 minutes.
And it's like, I wish that took me 15 minutes.
It takes an incredible amount oftime.
I have reels that have taken me several days to make a 62nd
video. And that's because of the
research that's involved in all of the things.
And so when I tell people my average reel gets about 40,000
views across the different channels, that sounds incredible
(06:57):
and I know that and I appreciatethat.
But it also like if they knew what went into it, they might
not quite feel quite, quite the way they do.
They take they take a long time to get them right.
And is this a side gig for you or are you full time content
creator? No, I'm full time.
I've been full time now for the last 2 1/2 or actually if you
include the Europe, the Europe PWCC about three 3 1/2 years.
(07:19):
I've been full time in this now.Wow, that's fascinating.
You had mentioned the card that you sold for $7000 in the late
90s. Oh no, no, I didn't pull that.
Somebody else in our shop pulledthat.
I wish do. You know what that card is worth
now? Oh yeah, I mean it's certainly
A6 figure card. It's like it's, I mean I, I
(07:39):
shouldn't say certainly it's it's either really low or really
high 5 figures up into dependingon condition it could be a
couple $100,000 card. That sounds right.
That's yeah. So you also mentioned the 86th
Fleer Jordan. What is Jordan's rookie card?
Well, I am a student of Beckett and so I when I had the chance
(08:02):
to interview Doctor Beckett a few years ago, it's probably
been five years ago now, I askedhim the same question and I and
it was before things got really exciting with Star being graded
by, by PSA and stuff. And I liked his answer because
he talked about how it was important that the card was
available to a lot of a lot of the world when it came out that
(08:23):
it was distributed in sort of a more normal way where everybody
had a chance at it. And I thought, oh, that's
interesting. And 86 flair to me is the 86
flair. Jordan is pretty clearly a top
three most iconic card in the history of a hobby.
It's easily the most iconic basketball card ever.
So to me, it will always be the rookie card.
But there is no way around the fact that the star predates it.
There's no way around the fact that it is NBA licensed.
(08:45):
There's no way around the fact that it is older, that it comes
first, that it is from a regularset that we sort of view as a
mainstream set now. And we don't think about how
they were distributed anymore. We don't mean we can still see
the unopened bag of star. We can still see the unopened
box of 86 Flare that comes up for auction every couple of
months, but to me it's easy to just say they're both rookie
cards, but that's sort of how I think about it.
(09:08):
I think that's very well said. It's all you covered all the
things that the arguments are. And for me it's just that the 86
flare looks so much better. It's infinitely better image
and, and and iconic too. So here's my question, here's my
question for you. There's two of them.
You're you go to a card show. I don't know how often you go to
(09:30):
card shows. I almost never go.
I try to go to one a year. I go to the national every year.
I'd like to go to more, but 5A year, 4 or five a year.
So they're both on a table. They're in, they're in similar
condition. Which one?
If you had the chance, which onewould you want to get for your
collection? I think that if you are
considering value and potential upside, it's got to be the star,
(09:53):
but for my collection I would rather have the 86 flare.
So how's, how's this for not how, how, how would I put this?
I have had that same 86 flare Jordan in my collection since I
was 14 years old. So I'm 42 now.
So we're talking about almost 30years I've owned, I've never
even owned a star before, but I love how much rarer it is.
(10:16):
So today, which one would be more appealing to me?
It's the star by a long shot. But as soon as you said the 86
Claire is way better looking, myhead started nod because it's
just not even close. It's it's such a good looking
card. It's so iconic.
It's so, it's so all of those things, but the rarity of the
star speaks to me as I, as I've gotten older, am I collecting?
And if I had that, I'm not. I'm not like knocking down any
(10:38):
doors to go get it because it's still a card that is in almost
every major auction, but it's somuch more rare.
I'd probably steer steer myself to that at this stage of my
collecting dream. So that brings me to the next
question. As a basketball, I assume you're
a basketball expert. You certainly know a lot about
basketball. Who is the GOAT of basketball?
(11:02):
Oh, it's Jordan. It's not even a I don't even
like the The conversations aboutLeBron are fun because it is
longevity, but longevity does not make you, I mean, growing
up, I was a huge fan of the UtahJazz, right?
And John Stockton has the most assists and steals ever and
caramel and for a long time havethe second most points ever.
(11:22):
But being being around a long time and accumulating these
great amounts of statistics overyour career, they, they put you
in the conversation, but they don't make you the greatest of
all time. And that's about championships
and about how much impact you had on the sport.
And that's Jordan and it's Jordan by a lot, by a mile.
I don't personally have LeBron and is the number two player of
(11:43):
all time either. And I'm not a LeBron hater.
People would say that I am. I like LeBron in a lot of ways.
I do. But he's not.
I don't think he's. I don't.
What do you, what do you think? What's your answer to that
question? It's it's Jordan and it's not
even close. And I have LeBron at four or
five. And I am a LeBron hater, but
only because I'm a Celtics fan and I'm legally required to hate
(12:05):
LeBron. As a Who are the other guys that
you have ahead of him? Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Kobe and
Curry. Oh, Steph, I like that.
The impact on the game. Another thing that I think is
underrated is the coolness factor of the athlete.
And LeBron just doesn't have coolness that Steph Curry and
(12:26):
Jordan has in spades. He is the coolest athlete of all
time. So here's a here's a fun LeBron
question for you. What was the coolest version of
LeBron? Wow, do you mean which era?
Yeah. I would say his second time in
Cleveland. Oh cool cuz that cuz that
(12:48):
championship is one of the all time great championships.
The chase down block, yeah, yeah.
They couldn't they couldn't score at the end of that game
and he sure had a lot of chances, but the chase down
block is an all timer moment. I so I love his It's kind of
like when Hulk Hogan goes to theto the NWO with in WCWI love it
when when LeBron becomes the badguy after the decision, he goes
(13:12):
to Miami. He wins two of his four
championships there. He has the the decision and it's
just it's so bad, right? It's such a bad moment, but
like, and he had some moments inthere in in Miami that were just
so bad. He almost he almost chokes away
the opportunity at A championship that the
championship against the Heat, his second championship there,
he almost loses it for him, has a couple of terrible turnovers,
(13:35):
but they win in the end. He was unbelievably elite as far
as how athletic he was. But but I like your answer too,
because that that Cavs championship was awesome, man.
It was. Even if you don't like him, and
I know you've already proclaimedyou're not a lover of him, like
that was a great championship. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
(13:55):
So when you're doing a video, itsounds like most of your videos
are are, I don't know if most ofthem are, but are a lot of your
videos hired out by like an auction house?
Yeah, most of them are not. I would, I would say probably,
gosh, I should look at this. It's probably somewhere between
70 and 85% of them. I'm doing that content for the
(14:17):
auction house and for most of them, you either see them tagged
in the the real or, or I'm collaborating with the auction
house. Yeah.
So the the vast majority of themare yes.
So how many, what percentage of the requests you get from
auction houses would you say youreject?
And why do you reject those, if any?
(14:39):
So you mean like if they were toask about like, hey, will you do
this video on this specific card?
Is that what you're? Saying so, I get sponsorship
requests frequently from companies that I would never do
business with. And I also get sponsorship
requests on companies I would dobusiness with that just doesn't
interest me in doing the kinds of things that they want me to
(15:01):
do. And so I'm just kind of
wondering if that if you have anything similar?
So with the auction houses, there are times where people
will come to me and they'll say,hey, do you have a good story on
this card? And I think most cards, if you
take the time, there's like a really great story out there.
Again, they just take forever toproduce and to to think through.
(15:22):
So there are sometimes though where I'm like, this is really a
bad thing. Like I don't this is not going
to this is not going to be good either.
Because it is a card that I sortof feel like is being collected
just because it's sort of something that were somebody
speculating on the the player like like they're just like,
(15:43):
well, this guy's this card's cool because this guy is hot.
That generally is not super appealing to me.
Or there's there are times wherepeople will have a card that I
feel like has suspicious elements to it where I'm like, I
don't like that. I don't like how that feels.
And in those situations I'll just tell people no.
So that happens. But for the most part, for the
(16:04):
most, I'll say this like this issort of like, let me see behind
the curtain a little bit. But like for the most part, an
auction comes out. And when the auction comes out,
I look through the whole of the auction and I'll give the
auction house like a number of things where I'm like, these are
great stories. And in a lot of cases, the
auction house will be like, how do I say this?
In a lot of cases, the auction house is like, Adam, just do
(16:25):
whatever you think is great, right?
Because because I've done enoughof this content for the auction
houses that most of them are sort of like, we know that you,
you do a good job and you have agood sense of which stories are
the are the most interesting stories.
And so, you know, if I feel likethere's a really good story out
there, then I'll do it. But if there's something like
like where they are hoping that I'll do something and I don't
(16:47):
like it to get back to your question, I just tell them like,
sorry, I'm not going to do that.And I haven't had anybody
really. I've had a few places sort of
like a couple times. You'd be like, come on, we
really need this. Like the client requested it and
it's a little bit awkward because sometimes, sometimes the
auction house has sort of said, yes, we'll have Adam do a video
(17:08):
for you if you'll do this. And then sometimes Adam, me, I
said, no, I'm not going to do that.
So that's a little awkward. But that's those times have been
very few. That doesn't usually happen.
Interesting. Tell me about your magazine,
because I didn't. I wasn't aware of it until
probably two years ago, and I think by then it was long gone.
You had ended it. It we actually, we only, we only
(17:30):
ended it about a year ago. So it was never, I would say
this it it's like, so I've got acopy of it right here.
I was looking at something I waslooking up something earlier
this week in in this magazine. It was.
It was definitely the greatest passion project I've ever had.
You. Know we, we put so much time
(17:52):
into this knowing full well thatin 2020 and after that it was
never going to be something thatwe were going to be able to sell
for a lot of money knowing, knowing that it was never going
to be some massive revenue generator.
It actually made pretty good money though, like we had a
number of sponsors and like I said, like 500 paying
(18:12):
subscribers is not like, I felt like it was tremendous success.
And when we stopped, it was awesome.
The, the, the reaction that we got from so many people, which
was like so many people were like, man, you guys put so much
into that. Thank you for that.
And then there are other people were like, man, like I'm really
going to miss this. This became a really important
(18:34):
part of, of how I, you know, like how I conducted myself in
the hobby because once a month, you know, if you were paying 10
bucks a month, you were getting a high quality 32 to 36 page
magazine every, you know, every month, like we never missed a
month and it was well designed and the stories were awesome.
(18:56):
And so I like, I love to do it. I still miss it, but you know, I
just got to the point where I had so many things that I was
able to do that like, I was like, I had so much, so many.
And you, you know, this like being a dad and, you know,
having the life that you have, like there's, there's so many
demands on your time. You don't always get to do
everything that you want. And although I think BCF could
(19:18):
still be productive, awesome, you know, asset in our, in our
industry, we would spend dozens of hours putting this together
and then 500 people would see it.
I can put together a reel in five or six hours and 40,000
people see it. And that's sort of what it came
(19:38):
down to in the end is that I could, felt like I could sort
of, I could touch more, like I could influence more and be seen
by more and like educate more. And all of those things that
you're trying to do with the, with the, the, the online
content, I could just do so manyof those things so much better
than I could in a written way, which is sort of sad, but also
sort of just the reality of it. Yeah, it's one of those things
(20:02):
where you can look back and say I did that.
And I always tell my kids, you're never going to regret
trying something, even if you itdoesn't work out the way you
want it to. Or after a long time, you say I
need to move on to something else.
But you may look back and say I regret not doing that.
And it feels like one of those things.
(20:22):
Yeah, I think that's right. Tell me about the book you
You're writing a book, right? Yeah, so when I so starting with
Basketball Card fanatic, actually I produced a really
cool crowdsourcing project and the idea was what what episode
(20:43):
or what issue was it? I think it was an issue 2
basketball card fanatic. I asked like 20-5 really big
basketball collectors. I said, just tell me, what do
you think? The I can't remember what the
number was, but I think it was like the top 10 most iconic
basketball cards are ever. And people came back with all
these questions like what what does iconic mean for this?
(21:04):
And I'm like, what does iconic mean for you?
Whatever you think. And then I just left it open and
said, you know, rank them one through 10.
And then the, the, the real magic is with the system because
if a card received a vote, then it received certain number of
points and then it depending on where it, where it finished in
the top ten, it received more orless points, right.
(21:25):
And so everybody's like lists were so different.
And then I just in Excel standardized all the lists, gave
each card sort of an identifier and then and then applied the
numeric, the numeric sort of settings that we applied at the
beginning and said, what is thisyield?
And so another part of that, by the way, was a card had to show
up on a certain number of lists to make the final list.
(21:49):
So even if somebody put, even iflike a couple people put a card
number one all time, if it wasn't on a certain percentage
of the list, it just couldn't qualify.
So that sort of prevented a small group of people from
manipulating the final results. And so we were sort of aware of
all of that sort of stuff. And as part of it, we came up
with a list of like the 12 or 15most iconic basketball cards of
(22:11):
all time. And I looked at it and I was
like, gosh, this is so interesting.
And so then I did it another time for BCF.
And then when I started PWCCI, did the same thing for PWCCI.
Like I remember trying to convince my boss, Chris
Callahan, and I was like, dude, this is going to be the coolest
project ever. Like we did this for BCF.
Let's do it, but let's do for the whole of the hobby.
We didn't even limit it to sports cards.
(22:32):
We did non sports cards too, which I think was a mistake in
retrospect, because it's hard tofind voters that can opine in a
really good way, in a really accurate way on both sports and
non sports. But we did it and we and we
interviewed. We're not interviewed.
We, we sent the, the survey out to it like it was like 150
people and it created this list called the iconic 100 that that
(22:56):
we did for PWCC. And it was awesome, dude.
Like the, the, the content that came out of it was so good.
And so after I, after I left PWCCI was like, I want to take
the same thing that I started back at BCF and let's do it
again. Let's just do it for the 1st 25
years of the 2000s. And this time, based on all of
(23:17):
the learnings from the other times, I said, let's do it in a
way so that in the end it's going to be like the very best
version of this that we can. And part of those learnings, by
the way, this is incredibly important.
The iconic 100, it ended up being too basketball heavy and I
knew it did because a lot of theexperts had a basketball
background. And so this time we said no one
(23:38):
who is an expert can just be a basketball expert.
They have to have expertise in different things and we have to
ask not just my audience, but a bigger audience, a more diverse
audience. And so I went on sports cards
and nonsense a couple times. And that's where a huge
percentage of our of our voters came from was from sports cards,
(24:00):
nonsense. So we had both an expert pool of
made-up of people who work in the industry, people who I know
through, through all of my dealings in the industry, and
not only people I know, but but other people who other, other
people who worked on this with me because Gem Rate and I
partnered together on this. And so we have this expert pool
of about 40 experts. And then we left it open to the
(24:22):
community and almost 460 community members filled it out.
We took the two polls and we said we'd do this in the
beginning. We, we, we gave them each and
equal weight. So the 40 over here did have a
lot more impact than the, than the 460.
But kind of like the NBA All Star game, you've got two
different voting pools. And then we did the same thing
(24:42):
where we applied the point values to it.
And after we did that, it created a list, an average list
of the 25 most iconic cards across the 1st 2000 or excuse
me, across the, all of the 2000s.
And it was, it was awesome, dude.
Like the, the, the list that fell out was awesome.
(25:03):
And then now you know, I know there's a long description, but
the purpose of the book is to sort of commemorate, commemorate
those 25 cards, commemorate all the cards that ended up on the
survey, which came from various experts within each sport.
So like there was a baseball group, a baseball group of
experts who put together a list of 30 cards that went on the
(25:23):
survey. So we didn't miss anything.
No one's accusing us of, oh, youmissed this card.
No one's going to accuse us of that.
Some people are going to a question very much how people
voted, but everything was on thesurvey.
Every card that you could possibly want, I think it was
100 and it's like 140 cards total that people had to vote
for or vote from and they went through and they ranked their
(25:45):
top 25 using the software, the survey that we put together and
and yeah, now it's like time to unveil that in book form.
It's already been unveiled. If you look at my Instagram or
my YouTube, you can find that. But but yeah, I think people are
gonna really like it. That's awesome.
I'm looking forward to it. I'll definitely be buying one.
(26:07):
You reminded me of your iconic 100 list because a couple of
years ago, just about two years ago now, I guess I wanted to
start up my own 100 most iconic sports cards of all time.
And I googled to see if anybody else had done that before.
And sure enough, there's this PWCC list of 100.
And I remember reading through it and thinking there is so much
basketball in here and there's alot of Kobe and LeBron in here.
(26:30):
I thought if I were to start my own list, it would be all sports
and I would limit it to 1 card of each athlete.
So I did that 100 cards and I have like track and field
athletes in there. It's all over the place.
No lacrosse. That was the one thing I
couldn't find any cards of, but 100 most iconic cards of they.
(26:55):
Plus, they also have to be attainable for under $5000.
Oh, so that yeah, you put some real cool filters on that.
What did, what was your what wasyour findings in the end?
I'm super interested to hear this.
I, I haven't released the top 25yet.
I'm going to start a, a weekly. I, I did, I was doing them one
at a time for about 10 weeks andI was like, this is crazy.
(27:16):
And then I started doing them inchunks of five to 10 and I'm
down to the top 25. I took a break for the summer
and I haven't gotten back to it yet.
But yeah, it's, you know, you'vegot, I'm heavy on vintage, of
course, but then you've got the 89 Griffey upper deck is really
high in the list. I had that when I filled out my
(27:37):
survey for the Iconic 100. I had the graffiti #4 and I
still feel like it's #4 but the community, if I remember right,
I could just look at the book because we did a book for that
too. I think the community had it
number like #9 and or #10 I justthink maybe it was even like 7
or 8. Either way, that's too low.
The 89 graffiti to me is a higher.
It's a higher card than that. I'll tell you.
(28:00):
I'll tell you as well. I'll tell you as well then.
Now this is going to break your list, but number one was the
Mantle, 52 #2 was the 86 Fleer Jordan, which again, I just
think it's too high. I think that I think that card's
number three and then #3 was theWagner.
I personally, I think that the T2O6 Wagner is the most iconic
card ever made. I do that's what I think.
(28:22):
But again, that's not how the voters voted and that's how this
that's how we set it up. I would probably have it if I
had the the same before the lackof restrictions that I have.
I would probably go Mantle and then Wagner.
OK, I have in my list I have Griffey at number six.
Spoiler alert for anybody. You have you have the Gretzky
head of it, I'll bet. The Gretzky is #4.
(28:44):
Yeah, yeah. And then is your number.
Let me see, is your #5 goodness,who would you have #5?
It's not, It's not the Ruth. And no, it's not the Ruth
because it's under 5 grand. No, there is a Ruth.
So remember I created this two years ago.
The Ruth out priced this now along with my #1 which is the
494849 leaf Jackie Robinson. At the time those were both
(29:08):
borderline and I think they may have out priced this.
I'll have to check before I do those.
Yeah, that's true. But then I'm just going to
choose different cards for both those guys because what I'm
trying to do is take the most iconic athletes of all time and
and do the best cards I can get for under $5000.
Awesome. I love that.
Jackie has to be #1 followed by Ruth spoiling things here.
(29:32):
Ruth and then Jordan, Gretzky, Mantle and then I've got
Griffey. What?
What mantle? What mantle are you gonna have?
53 tops. OK, that makes sense.
Cool, that's probably my next big purchase and I'm a low
budget guy. Like the most I've ever spent on
a card is $1100. That's great.
So. It's awesome.
(29:53):
So yeah. And that was my 41 play ball,
Ted Williams. But yeah.
I used to have a Sorry, go ahead.
The mantle's probably my next big purchase, maybe this fall.
I used to have a rule, it'll, I sort of like laugh about it now,
but I used to have a rule that Ishouldn't spend over $100 on a
(30:14):
card. And then at some point I
extended it to like, I'll never spend more than $1000.
And then I remember when I brokemy $3000 rules, when I bought my
autographed copy of my 61 flareable Chamberlain.
And then I, I've like, I don't even want to tell you what I've
spent on cards at this point. So I, but I, but I, I said this
to somebody the other day and he, he balked at it.
(30:34):
He, he disagreed with me. But I've always felt this way.
The more you spend on cards doesnot, does not correlate with the
joy that you get from being a card collector at all in any
way. And I think people sort of like
they look at how I collect and they're like, well, you probably
think, think that like, you know, that like you have like
this elitist view of I don't at all in any way.
(30:57):
I don't, I don't have like any sort of view that like you have
to be buying like the some of mybest friends in the hobby are
guys that have never spent even $100 on cards.
And that's what that's the greatest part about our hobby.
I always say this is like one ofmy favorite sayings.
It doesn't matter whether you have $1,000,000 a week budget or
a dollar a week budget. It's the best hobby out there.
(31:19):
And I know that people disagree with that, but put, put together
a set, you know, go work on a set that's like a really tough
set and learn about the history of the set.
Let learn about the history of the players.
And, you know, put it put together a set that's 100 cards
and cost you, you know, 50 buckstotal.
It can be the most fun that you ever have.
And I know other people disagreewith that, but I really feel
(31:41):
strongly that that's true. Yeah, agreed.
And that's very well said. So we've talked about the
Jordan, which is probably the most iconic basketball card.
But what's the grail card in your opinion?
And you've already mentioned it,in my opinion.
You've mentioned what I think isthe grail card for basketball,
for like all of basketball, all time NBA.
(32:06):
Well, it's interesting. So I historically have said that
the 97 game jersey autograph of Michael Jordan #23 is the the
card that I would want more thanany other basketball card.
But I don't know if I still, I don't know if I if I still feel
(32:27):
that's true. I mean, I still feel like it's
probably true for me. But when you say grail, you
know, you might be talking aboutwhat other people think.
I I think what that card represents for its era, the way
that the hobby changed at that point, the fact that it was the
first game jersey, NBA licensed game jersey set and then it then
it was autographed. I think that's the, I think
(32:49):
that's the greatest basketball card ever made.
That's what I think. But what I'm really interested
to hear which card you're thinking about right now.
The. Micon.
Oh, the Miken. Yeah, I love the Miken.
I love. It yeah, I love the 97 Jordan
too. Jordan was my guy as a kid.
I the Celtics were not good. I don't remember the the Celtics
being good in the 80s 'cause I was I was too young and by the
(33:10):
time I was really a fan, Byrd was laying on his back on the
sidelines and Jordan was up and coming.
I, I went to Bowden basketball camp six straight years, Bowden
College, which is near where I live and where I grew up.
And we, the breaks that we wouldtake, we would go into a film
room and just watch Jordan highlights, you know, 45 minute
(33:30):
break, go watch Jordan highlights.
And that was the best. And, but the, the Miken is such
a great card and he was an underrated athlete because most
people our age and younger, I'venever heard of George Miken.
When I was a kid, I was doing the Miken drill at basketball
camp all the time. Yes, Mike and drill.
(33:52):
I loved of Mike and drill, but Ididn't know who George Mikan was
until I was a little bit older, probably teenager to maybe even
college. So yeah, that brings me to my
next question because I have beef with you.
I was at the National. I was at the National and
somebody said, oh, Adam Gray is over there.
He's taller than you. And I was like, no, he cannot
possibly be taller than me. I'm offended by this because I'm
(34:14):
6 foot two. There aren't many, very many
people who are taller than me. And I turn around and sure
enough, you you're like 4 inchestaller than I expected to be at
least, maybe even 6 inches. How tall are you?
I'm not that tall. It's it's over.
I, I'm, I am 6 foot 4, so I am, I'm definitely taught most
people. I bet you've had this experience
(34:36):
too, where people assume becauseyou're nice that you're going to
be short. I don't know why people have
this assumption. I think everybody's like, yeah,
Adam's a really nice person. He's probably a really short
guy. And I have every time I meet
somebody in person who hasn't seen me before, they're like,
what? I have no idea.
And I'm like, how do you, why doyou think I'm going to be a
short guy? So anyway, but yeah, so you're
(34:58):
6/2 though. But you're a, you're like a post
basketball player, right? Like well.
I wasn't until I was 30, and so when I was a kid, I was a
shooting guard. I just shot, shot, shot, shot,
shot. I was point guard and then I
became a shooting guard and I was short until I was 11th grade
or 12th grade and then I got to be 6 foot 2 pretty quickly over
(35:21):
the course of a handful of months when I was like 17 ish
years old. Then I went to college and I
played. I didn't play on the team in
college, but I played with the team a lot, played in a lot of
intramurals and I was always, always, always, always around
basketball players. And I've always felt like I was
short, even when I was 6 foot 2 in college because I was always
(35:43):
with much taller basketball players.
And it wasn't until I got into corporate America at the age of
23, but I started looking around, like I'd be walking down
the hall and there were hundredsof people walking by and I'm
like, I'm tall. I had no idea I was tall.
I, you know, it's funny, I stillhave those moments.
I, I had one last night. I was at my, my kids in like
(36:05):
this technology association thing at school and I was there
just with like, there's a bunch of, there's a bunch of kids,
there's a bunch of parents too. And I sort of like, I had this
moment last night where I lookedaround.
I was like, I'm like way bigger than every other human in this
place. And I wonder like, so I think
some kids see me, they're scaredbecause I'm a big guy and I'm
always like, oh, don't be scaredof me.
Like you can't be scared of me, be scared of anybody but me.
(36:27):
I'm not a scary guy. But yeah, that's it's funny the
way that you said that because alot of tall people don't realize
it until like they get older. I go wait a second, I guess I'm
big now. What happened?
Yeah, yeah. You know, when you hang out with
basketball players until you're 23 and then you're all of a
sudden around no basketball players, kind of makes you go,
huh? I guess I am tall.
(36:49):
Hey, I got to, I got to ask you,I know we we're getting away
from it now, but I got to ask you about the mic in because you
mentioned your $1100 thing and then you mentioned the mic in.
So there was a time not that long ago in, in the history of
our car, of the, of the world ofcardboard, where you could buy a
mic in for under $1100. It would just have to be pretty
beat up. I think those days, last time I
(37:10):
looked, I think those days are probably gone now at at this
point, if it's a real mic and it's probably going to cost you
more than that. Is that an aspiration at some
point that card or is that like or, or or why would and if it is
like, why would it be? What is it about the mic?
And it makes you go, Oh, I love that card.
That's a really good question. First of all, the colors, the,
(37:31):
the, the deep blue and the, the history of the card and the
history of him with the championships on the Lakers
before they moved. Just, I don't know, it's a, it's
a fantastic card. I love it.
How much it has to do with? I'm picking up a Beckett right
(37:53):
now. How much does it have to do with
the fact that in the beginning of all of the Gray pages when we
were a kid, you would get this card?
So here it is 1948 Bowman card number 69 George Mike and rookie
3000 low, 4500 high. How much of like it's, it's like
how much we we know it has to dowith how it was priced as we
(38:16):
were growing up in the fact thatmost of us never saw it when we
were a kid. Zero.
Because you can see I've got, I've got Beckett, the first
Beckett basketball behind me andthe first Beckett baseball, both
autographed by Doctor Beckett here.
I was a Beckett kid, grew up in the 80s, started like started
reading Beckett baseball card monthly in the, I don't know,
(38:37):
maybe 8788 and then started reading Beckett basketball
around 1990. But I had zero interest in
vintage basketball cards. 1989 and later was all I was
interested in 'cause I I startedcollecting basketball in 89
hoops Fleer and so I would neverlook at the vintage cards and
(38:59):
Beckett basketball card. I looked at some vintage and
basket Beckett baseball but had no interest in those either.
I always wanted to look up the 52 mantle.
OK. Every month.
I, I've loved the mic and almostexclusively for that reason.
So it's interesting that we comeat it from a different, from a,
from a different perspective. And then I interrupted myself.
Do you think you'll ever Do you think you'll ever try to get
(39:22):
one? It depends on I'm a big eye
appeal guy I love like apsa 1.5 or an SGC 1.5 with good eye
appeal but it's I don't know what you're looking at but are
they 10,000 for low grade now? I think so.
I I have one that's very low grade.
I actually probably have the copy that I don't.
(39:42):
I'm not trying to sell you on it.
I'm not going to sell the card, to be clear, but mine is is is
clean of a 1948 Bowman that you'll ever see.
It is gorgeous. Centering's fantastic.
It looks amazing, but on one of the corners it curves just a
little bit in a way that PSA hasdeemed to be trimmed.
Now, I bet other people look at it to say I don't believe that
(40:04):
it's trimmed, but PSA believes it's trimmed and that's what
matters to the value in a lot, in a lot of these cases.
The other thing that PSA picked up on is that it's missing one
of the colors. I think it says no red ink.
Which I didn't notice. I don't part part of that might
be that I'm color blind, but I don't think so.
I think it's just not very a noticeable thing.
And so the card I'll I'll send you an image right when when the
(40:26):
episode's over, the card just looks exactly like I think you
want it to look at like like youwant it to look.
But I don't think it's worth. I mean, it's still a very
valuable card, right? I think it's like 4 or $5000.
And to me that just is such a good buy in this in this world
does have that important of a basketball card that's as rare
as it is, that looks as good as it does.
(40:47):
And because it says altered on it, it's and because it's, you
know, missing the color or whatever, it's valued at
something so low. I again, I think that's insane.
But but everybody has different feelings on these things.
Yeah, the mic in ended up at #19on my list.
So at the time when I started this two years ago, it was
definitely under $5000. It was attainable.
(41:12):
And you might, you might, I think you'll still get one at,
at some point for under 5 grand.I I think.
But it's not going to be a, it'snot going to be APSA 6, right?
It's not going to be a APSA 2 even probably.
It's going to be an altered copyor a copy that's really, it's
really beat up. Yeah.
And to get back to seeing you atthe National, I wasn't avoiding
(41:32):
you. I actually planned on going and
introducing myself because we haven't met in person, in case
anybody listening is wondering. But you were talking to somebody
and I went back to having my conversation.
When I turned back, you were gone.
And I was like, well, I'm sure I'll see him again, but I.
Didn't next. Are you going next year?
Yes. That's the one I always try to
go to the the National for me isI don't know what it's like for
(41:54):
you. I mean, some people are there
exclusively for the cards. The cards to me are like, very
much like a secondary thing. It's all about and yeah.
And like, and I remember. So it's, it's, it's funny
because everybody's different, right?
I've already mentioned Doctor Beckett a couple times on this
episode, but I went one year to the National like with my main
goal being to find him because Ijust I look up to him so much.
(42:18):
You know, he's he is largely responsible for a lot of this
and I don't think he gets the love that he that he deserves.
And I think he's just so measured and his approach to so
many things. He's the GOAT.
He's and it's not close, right when people say this person or
that person or like the greatestcollectors, the greatest people
in the hobby ever. Jim Beckett is in just my
opinion, my two cents. I think he's number one by a
mile. And I.
Could not agree more. And so I wanted to see him so
(42:40):
bad. I didn't see him all year.
And I even messaged like a few people like, hey, can you help
me find Doctor Beckett? But then two years ago, I just
walked past the dollar place with dollar boxes.
And I'd had people tell me that he would be there, like it in,
you know, at dollar boxes. And so I saw him and I just
like, stopped. And I was like Jim.
(43:03):
And he looked up and he saw me. And he's like one of the great
moments of my life. And I mean that like, outside of
like the birth of my kids and myfamily stuff.
Doctor Beckett looks at me like he smiles real big.
And he goes Adam Gray and he shakes my hand.
And I was like, oh man, this is it, this is it.
And I know he's like super personable and he would do that
to a lot of people. I'm not saying anything special
about myself, but like he is thegreatest and he still loves the
(43:28):
dollar box stuff. I know how he loves using like
comp C and like moving stuff. He and he's always like, I'm
just trying to sell stuff. But you know, he loves buying
stuff too. He just loves the cards and so
at least don't say that or don'tthink that.
I'm just saying like it's just all about the people.
It is about the cards too. There is this element that's
great, but at, at national, I feel like it really is about
(43:49):
seeing for me, it's more about seeing people that it is, you
know, about, about trying to find cards because cards are
always available. But seeing you in person would
be like, would be way more interesting to me than like
going around and looking for, totry to, you know, find something
for my collection. I I think that's probably not
going to be as as fruitful for me as just talking to people.
(44:11):
Yeah, my best experience in the National was actually walking
around with Greg from Midlife Cards, who's actually a co-owner
of this podcasting network who And we just spent like an hour
trying to find a 1961 Fleer basketball card rapper that I
had seen the day before. And I was like, I gotta go find
that. And he's like, I'll go help you.
(44:32):
And we spent an hour and a half trying to find it.
And that was the best experienceat the National this year for
me. It was so much fun.
Did you find it? No, but then I ended up going
out and buying one. After it, What did that cost
you? A. 110 a hundred.
And $20, that's a great buy. I on that same note, I think it
was Robert Edwards had a they'renot Robert Edwards anymore.
(44:55):
They're Rea collects or collect Rea.
I'd always forget, but they postit.
They had a a 48 Bowman rapper like a couple years ago at
auction and when I saw it, I went, I've never seen one of
these before. Like this is really rare and
it's sold for, I think it's soldfor like $5100.
(45:18):
And I remember going and I put, I, I put one of my like when I
was trying to do these like thought provoking questions on
my Instagram. And I, I think if this is a good
question to me, I think it'll bea good question to the
community. And I put one up.
It was like, what would you rather have, the rapper or a
Miken? And it's actually a really great
question because everybody's like, well, I'd rather have the
mic until you realize, like, themicon's a rare card, but that
(45:41):
rapper, you may never get another chance at it.
And so who knew in 1948 it wasn't just getting the right
card. The best thing that you possibly
could have kept out of that packwas the rapper itself.
Yeah, that felt like one of yourvideos right there.
It might be the perfect way to wrap this up.
Maybe I would just say like everything that I do is like,
(46:04):
hopefully you can feel it like it's all from the perspective of
like, like I've collected for 30for, you know, I'm 42.
I've collected since I was like a little kid.
My first memory is being a collector, right?
And so if I find something is interesting in collecting, I was
just sort of say, I wonder if other people will find this
interesting too. And for the most part, if you
(46:24):
think something's interesting incollecting, I think other people
are going to find that it's interesting as well.
So I really appreciate you giving me a set to talk about
things, including like the book that was really kind of you to
ask about that. I know not a lot of people are
thinking about it, but but yeah,thank you for and because you
plugged it on your channel, sendme your address afterwards.
We'll just we'll send you a freecopy.
(46:45):
Oh, that's very kind of you. Where can people find you and
your book? Instagram the real 27 guy.
Twitter the 27 guy and yeah if you follow me on my Instagram,
you're going to see links to to buy the book the book is not
currently available for for purchase, but it probably will
when does this episode go up It'll.
(47:06):
Probably be podcast on Monday OKI think and then Wednesday on
YouTube. So shortly after this comes out,
like in the in the next week after this comes out, it'll be
available for sale. Great, awesome Adam, this was
fantastic. I could talk for hours about
this stuff but and we both have part end times so thank you very
(47:27):
much for coming on. Thank you, Mike.
It was really a lot of fun. Bye everybody, thanks for
watching and listening.
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