Episode 178: Ryan from GemRate, Market Cap, Top Graded Cards, 2024 Recap, Cavs

 Adam is on the beach in Hawaii enjoying cocktails on the beach, so Russell is joined by the master of spreadsheets, the wizard of Fantasy, the Warlock of Pop Reports Ryan from Gem Rate.
In this weeks episode we go through a huge amount of hobby related content including

- Most important sale of 2024?
- What was the top trend of 2024?
- Did the hobby improve in 2024?
- BGS sale.
- PSA top graded:
- Market Cap:

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Transcript

00:00:11.30
Russell Gibson
Welcome everybody to Episode 178 of the You Can't Comp This and NBA Trading Card Podcast. My name is Russell Gibson and Adam is away on holidays, hopefully drinking Pina coladas on the beach somewhere and must I add, very, very well deserved. So Adam, hope you're having a wonderful holiday mate. We definitely miss you and we can't wait to get you back. In Adam's seat today, we do have a very special guest from Do I say Brooklyn, New York?

00:00:43.08
Ryan - GemRate
Currently Brooklyn. Yes, you got it.

00:00:44.48
Russell Gibson
Yeah, great. We've got Ryan from Gemrate. Good morning, good afternoon, Ryan. I hope you're really well.

00:00:51.95
Ryan - GemRate
Russell, good morning. Thank you again for having me. I appreciate it. Adam, hope you're enjoying your time away. Thank you again.

00:00:59.45
Russell Gibson
All right, let's just get straight into it. talk to us about the last time you came on the podcast was episode 138. In the last 40 weeks or so, what have you been up to mate? Tell us about GEM rate and your achievements from from this year.

00:01:14.70
Russell Gibson
yeah

00:01:15.14
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah. So I mean, the highlights, I think just quickly, and then we can kind of jump more into the meat and potatoes of this is just, um, you know, we've been really focused on bringing more context via like the universal data that we've been working on. So universal search is one of the most important things that we're released and is doing really well, which just allows you to look up population for a card across all grading companies. Uh, we now have like a little over 200 cards, a full universal pop reports, which not only include the cards that have been graded, but also the checklist.

00:01:42.97
Ryan - GemRate
which has been important for us as well that we just released. Not only we're doing like the ones that you'd expect to see like 2023 prism basketball, but we just did the 2023 tops Chrome release to give people some context of just like what's being graded from that through that lens, um which has been really interesting to see because that's obviously got a lot of veterans in there and retired players that sort of just, you know, have a different look and feel.

00:02:06.43
Ryan - GemRate
than what you might see out of like a 2023 prism. And so that's been big. And then candidly, one of the things we've been working at most is this is all I do full time. And so trying to make money from this business has also been a bit ah focus of mine this year, less relevant to the audience, but ah just trying to do things to sort of tighten up how we operate and sort of how we sort of work within this hobby to you know make sure that we are supported in a number of different ways and also prepared to sort of continue to do this in the future.

00:02:18.17
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:02:30.91
Ryan - GemRate
you know this is ah This is a long run activity for us. and so A lot of the year was focused on just like blocking and tackling. So having great data, good quality, great quality, really. And then um just having great partnerships in place too. And so that's been a lot of our focus this year.

00:02:44.98
Russell Gibson
Can you discuss partnerships that you've made this year, like who you're working with and.

00:02:50.46
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah, I mean, big picture. It's most, we're at a stage now where we're working with the majority of the auction houses and collection management tools. You know, you're one of the ones that most often, uh, references our work and we work really closely with this card letter.

00:02:57.76
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:03:03.05
Ryan - GemRate
We work really closely with, they've been a great partner to us.

00:03:04.69
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:03:05.73
Ryan - GemRate
They, uh, they're also very, you know, leading edges or relates to like how they think about data, which I really appreciate. And so they're always fun to just, you know, uh, workshop where we could go with this data and they're always sort of pushing the boundaries there.

00:03:17.19
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:03:18.99
Ryan - GemRate
you know auction houses, you'll see us at the start of the year launch with a couple of new auction houses.

00:03:19.13
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:03:23.23
Ryan - GemRate
it Not due to us from a partnership standpoint, but you know long-standing auction houses in the space. But we've had a long relationship with like fanatics. We supply that data where you see you know how many cards have been graded in a certain grade and how many are higher.

00:03:37.24
Ryan - GemRate
That's one of the main data points that we provide them.

00:03:37.23
Russell Gibson
yeah

00:03:41.11
Ryan - GemRate
Hopefully, in the not so distant future, you'll see more data that they're going to release from us in that and sort of their expansion as well. So we know we're doing a lot of different, um we have a lot of different sort of strategies, depending on who the partner is, but that's, those are a couple of the bigger ones that we work with as well.

00:03:57.10
Ryan - GemRate
And then, you know, there's, there's room for sort of expansion of that too, and sort of like the different data.

00:03:57.27
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:04:01.54
Ryan - GemRate
And we could touch on that later in the pod, but you know, most of what we've done to date is just, you know, big picture population data and then aggregating it across the grading companies.

00:04:11.09
Russell Gibson
yeah Yeah. So you did that pretty big report recently, and it was more focused on top's Chrome. And I have to admit, I was a little bit like, why did you choose to do that before Prism? But then when you just talk about the big picture about making sure your company's profitable and moving it forward, partnering with Fanatics, delivering product for them. That actually makes a whole lot of sense when you say it like that. I think, like that's one thing I really observed in the last 12 months, how people's, even though Panini is still here, it seems to me like the marketing focus and the partnership focus has gone from almost like, even though Panini is still here, I want to be in bed with Fanatics. Do you know what I mean? Like that's, I sort of noticed that a lot with like card shows,

00:04:56.72
Russell Gibson
hobby shops, breakers, that whole thing of it's more about people, you know, being a fanatics breaker or, a you know, a fanatics card shop. Like that to me is like almost like really funny.

00:05:05.53
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah.

00:05:06.67
Russell Gibson
It's like, yeah.

00:05:08.94
Ryan - GemRate
No, I think youre I think you're spot on.

00:05:08.89
Russell Gibson
Anyway.

00:05:10.30
Ryan - GemRate
I mean, that was not really the impetus for why we did tops Chrome. But I mean, that is certainly like a pretty, pretty meaningful trend in the hobby. The reason we did tops Chrome is just in composite.

00:05:18.04
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:05:20.81
Ryan - GemRate
We also did for football, which is those were new sets. So when we the thing is, those are new reports that we're releasing on social. And so it's just something that after I we had actually done prism for the universal pop report earlier this year, I just hadn't

00:05:33.66
Russell Gibson
Oh, did you? Okay.

00:05:34.72
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah, I hadn't come sort of um to some sort of conclusion of like how I wanted to present the data yet.

00:05:34.77
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:05:40.72
Ryan - GemRate
And so it's something that we could always do.

00:05:41.05
Russell Gibson
Yeah, right. Yeah.

00:05:43.34
Ryan - GemRate
It's just those were newer sets that I'd finished.

00:05:43.92
Russell Gibson
100% man.

00:05:45.47
Ryan - GemRate
But yeah, so anyways.

00:05:45.46
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:05:46.85
Ryan - GemRate
But yes, I mean, it does help though. I think in particular, because those are new products bring product to market too, I think it's interesting just to highlight some context around like, what are what are people caring about with these new sets?

00:05:52.31
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:05:56.46
Ryan - GemRate
Or how much do they care about these new sets? Because there's a lot of discussion around you know the license and unlicensed you know ah you know sort of behemoth in the hobby right now. of just like There's a lot of considerations and you know question marks around what's going to matter 10 years from now, let alone you know next month.

00:06:13.23
Russell Gibson
Yeah. All right. I think we should just plug two things really quickly. So where do we find your, your website and do you have an app?

00:06:21.20
Ryan - GemRate
So it's generate.com and then generate on socials.

00:06:23.08
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:06:24.68
Ryan - GemRate
We're primarily still on just Instagram and X. um Maybe I'll start to do more on Facebook this year. And people have pushed us to try to get on to TikTok. I'm still completely uncomfortable in that space. So that's not something we're on yet.

00:06:36.13
Ryan - GemRate
But I do want to start to produce more content.

00:06:37.59
Russell Gibson
They're going to ban TikTok soon, aren't they anyway? Aren't they?

00:06:40.57
Ryan - GemRate
They might, I don't know. That's ah that's been up for discussion for a couple of years now. So we'll see. Um, but I do want to do some sort of like, you know, we're just, usually we're just sort of making the data available and letting people run with it.

00:06:51.61
Ryan - GemRate
We might try to do some more summary data, like just some like highlights of like, here's the monthly data.

00:06:54.22
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:06:55.25
Ryan - GemRate
So anyways, that's the easiest way to find us though, generally.com and then also on social.

00:06:56.05
Russell Gibson
Yeah. Yeah. And I think other thing just to really quickly plug too is if you want to listen to Ryan's origin story, that's episode 138. So we're not going to go like a deep dive into Ryan's past, but um if you do want to listen to more about how Ryan got to this point, yeah, definitely check out his previous episode.

00:07:16.29
Russell Gibson
All righty, let's get into our first topic of today. So recently you were invited to contribute to a collect article, which unfortunately was left on the cutting room floor. So let's just really quick quickly, quickly hit this. What was the most important sale of 2024?

00:07:37.35
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah, so I tried to take this in a different direction. So if you do check out this article, Collect is sort of just updating it as we speak, and they're releasing it in like a series of five or six posts or articles.

00:07:46.91
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:07:48.04
Ryan - GemRate
i you know Everybody I thought would go with a card, and mostly if you read back, almost everybody did, with the exception of Mike, who's content creator.

00:07:58.09
Ryan - GemRate
And he also said that SGC was sort of the most impactful sale. And what's interesting about that is, Not a lot of that is sort of materialized yet in the market. like Nothing really changed if you sort of look at just how PSA and SGC operated this year.

00:08:11.81
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:08:12.19
Ryan - GemRate
but I just think it's one that's going to be very interesting to watch over the next couple of years. and so you know It may not have been like a short-term you know ah swing in the market and the perception of the different grading companies, but it's going to be interesting to see how those companies interact and engage, given that they're under the same parent company, if they have different strategies.

00:08:29.68
Ryan - GemRate
I personally just in general, I'm excited to see like, you know, are there ways to continue to push the, um like if, if BGS slash Beckett continues to sort of like, you know, stays kind of dormant as it relates to sort of like innovation in the hobby and sort of like, um, you know, ways to sort of push the envelope.

00:08:47.68
Ryan - GemRate
I like to think about how PSA can operate, not only just through the... And collectors can sort of push PSA forward, but like you know rein reimagine SGC2 to make them relevant. Maybe on like a little bit of a lower end scale or a little bit more of like a volume-based scale, but I just think that's really interesting.

00:08:58.18
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:09:00.99
Ryan - GemRate
So SGC and PSA and collectors was the thing that I highlighted from a most meaningful or impactful sales standpoint.

00:09:09.23
Russell Gibson
So I think let's just hold that list for two seconds. I think we just segue now into the BGS sale because that's something I wanted to talk to you about too, because I think if I get to choose something, if I answer this question, I think that's what I'm going to answer because for me, the the timing of the sale is really like an interesting one because Like clearly it's a distressed asset.

00:09:29.31
Ryan - GemRate
Mm hmm.

00:09:29.90
Russell Gibson
So if you know your assets distressed, it seems to me like a very unusual time to be selling off. And then the other part of it too is that they also sold other parts of the company too.

00:09:42.59
Russell Gibson
So there's the the Southern hobby component, and we touched on this really quickly last week, but essentially they're like a distribution and and um wholesaling company that focuses on trading cards.

00:09:54.23
Ryan - GemRate
Mm hmm.

00:09:55.21
Russell Gibson
And so, I sort of look at that a two way. So the first way I look at it is, okay, is BGS actually now playing chess when everyone else is playing checkers, knowing that fanatics is going to be controlling distribution and most likely going to be trying to cut out Southern hobby GDS and every other you know middleman that's you know currently sitting in the space, right?

00:10:16.41
Ryan - GemRate
Mmhmm.

00:10:16.91
Russell Gibson
So now they've actually flipped that over for some cash now when maybe in 12 months time or two years time, it's going to be worth one tenth of what it currently is. And then moving back to BGS part, you're talking about innovation and you're talking about like the grading lands grading landscape. The really The part that I thought was interesting of your response about SGC is that I actually don't think there's really much room for SGC to grow. I kind of think they are what they are. And actually, there's nothing wrong with being in third place. They're probably a very profitable company. um They're a genuine company. You know, they don't need all the bells and whistles. They kind of are what they are. and I think that's OK. But the one to me that has got the most upside, if you want to use that word, is is actually BGS because

00:11:07.95
Russell Gibson
they previously working, is there that chance that they could actually rebound back and flip around? and And with that sort of mindset, the sale of it and the timing of it, this is the part that I'm i'm really curious about. So I'd love to hear your thoughts about this actually. Yeah.

00:11:25.75
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah, I mean, I'll try to keep it short just because I think we could have a whole podcast on this and a whole conversation about it. But, um you know, I think it's there's a couple of things. One, you know, a lot of this is sort of just like technical work that's happening to allow BGS and some of these other, you know, Southern Hobby and Dragon Shield to have more flexibility and a little bit more individual accountability.

00:11:46.66
Ryan - GemRate
ah being under that sort of larger umbrella was really a constraint, it seems, from everything that you read publicly about what's been happening there. So I think, one, it just gives them a little bit more flexibility. Two, it sounds like it gives them a direct line of...

00:11:57.19
Russell Gibson
But that's, to me, that's a mindset thing though, Ryan. Like I see when I read about that stuff too, to me, I'm just kind of like imagining all these old heads just saying, saying no to innovation.

00:12:07.88
Russell Gibson
Like we've all been in those meetings when you bring forward ideas and the answer is no.

00:12:08.23
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah.

00:12:12.59
Russell Gibson
With that conversation, right?

00:12:13.07
Ryan - GemRate
Mm-hmm.

00:12:13.82
Russell Gibson
Like I kind of imagine that's what that sort of board meetings were like.

00:12:14.62
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah.

00:12:19.84
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:12:20.80
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah. Yeah. And the thing that's tricky about it is nothing has really changed there, right? So they now have a little bit more or a lot more of a direct line to cash, but they're still it's still the same people that are running the company.

00:12:32.56
Ryan - GemRate
And so if there what it does is allows more people to kick the tires on, hey, it'd be a little bit easier for us to consume what this holding company slash Beckett is doing now, this collective this is doing, and not have all the baggage that comes with

00:12:44.39
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:12:47.24
Ryan - GemRate
you know, what it looked like a month ago. And so it does open the door for somebody else to bring them on board and have a lot more freedom and they'll just like, you know, yeah just ah flexibility to do it without a lot of the headaches that would come with ah an acquisition a month ago.

00:12:49.94
Russell Gibson
yeah

00:13:01.36
Ryan - GemRate
And so to your point, it will allow for that. It's not going to happen yet because nothing has changed there. You know, everybody in that press release was still the same team that was there a month ago. Now they just have the window to sort of be more aggressive with who they partner with and how they partner or just how they spend their money.

00:13:09.73
Russell Gibson
yeah

00:13:16.60
Ryan - GemRate
So I think it will push them to, uh, push them forward as it relates to like, or as we think about innovation in the sense of like, they can probably try more things, but until they actually have what you suggested, you know, a more material swapping of, I don't, I didn't even want to suggest they have to swap the team, but just swapping of sort of like, uh, motivations and then, you know, it's going to be more of the same.

00:13:16.85
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:13:38.48
Ryan - GemRate
But if somebody sort of incentivizes that team differently to say, Hey, you're actually going to be rewarded for, you know, pushing the agenda forward rather than just like, not breaking things. That will be a very different story hopefully for the hobby because I'm a firm believer of like one of the things that's not really often discussed is there are 15 million slabs that people own that Beckett have slabbed over the last 25 years and that's material and it's kind of like a prospect that people went big on.

00:13:46.63
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:14:05.12
Ryan - GemRate
you know Let's just throw Zion out there as somebody who you know people want to protect the floor.

00:14:08.00
Russell Gibson
How many PSA slabs are there?

00:14:10.61
Ryan - GemRate
It's something like 80 million slabs, maybe 85 million at this stage. so

00:14:14.97
Russell Gibson
Right.

00:14:15.70
Ryan - GemRate
It's much larger, but you know not not as big of a delta as you'd get from looking at the generate reports that we put out every month.

00:14:15.70
Russell Gibson
Okay. Yeah.

00:14:23.26
Ryan - GemRate
right you know they're They're significantly smaller now versus what they used to be, but they were much more, especially when you think of the value of what's slabbed in these cases, which is you know there was a lot of high-end cards that were going through the BGS doors for a long time, specifically basketball cards.

00:14:37.12
Ryan - GemRate
you know there's A lot of people who have ah a vested interest in making sure BGS sort of stays relevant and or will have to do something to you know recoup that, whether that's re-slabbing or...

00:14:42.85
Russell Gibson
Yeah. 100%. Yeah.

00:14:48.73
Russell Gibson
Reslab. Yeah. And that's what people will do.

00:14:49.85
Ryan - GemRate
exactly Right?

00:14:50.37
Russell Gibson
Yeah. Yeah.

00:14:51.63
Ryan - GemRate
And so I still think there's an opportunity because people do care and it's a brand that people have been loyal to. I just think right now there's not a great reason for people to use Beckett in the sense of it's still the same grading company in the sense of not a lot has changed.

00:15:05.14
Ryan - GemRate
They still grade pretty tough relative to how people consider some of the other grading companies with the sub grades. There's a lot of nuance to grading with Beckett that might you might not see as it's perceived by other grading companies with specific sets. and so you know and The pricing has taken a hit. i mean There's just been a degradation in the pricing. and so you know There's just not as much motivation. so They need to challenge sort of like what innovation means, but also just in general, be much more transparent and public in the market. and That might mean spending marketing dollars, but that might mean having more conversations with people like us around like what they're doing and why they're doing it and what we can help for and expecting the future.

00:15:38.01
Ryan - GemRate
But ultimately, I'm just excited because it's an opportunity and you know that window is shrinking for them to sort of take advantage of this before they completely get disregarded and dismissed in the hobby.

00:15:46.98
Russell Gibson
Yeah, yeah.

00:15:47.94
Ryan - GemRate
The last thing I'll say on it and then I'll kick it back to you is just the one thing people also take for granted and don't really think about with this is you know They're only going to be down, I don't know, I think um I don't have the numbers in front of me, but they're going to be down like 15% this year versus last year.

00:15:59.54
Ryan - GemRate
they It seems like they're materially worse than they were, but they're probably still a pretty solid company as it relates to their financials.

00:16:06.34
Russell Gibson
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:16:09.96
Ryan - GemRate
We want a lot more from them than we're getting, but internally, again, this is why I said they've probably have been trying not to break it because that's how they've been incentivized and sort of motivated.

00:16:12.05
Russell Gibson
yeah

00:16:19.95
Ryan - GemRate
It's just don't break it because it's fine. But everybody has wanted them to sort of move at the pace of innovation and the pace that the market has, which is like, Hey, everything's changed in the last five years, but you have not.

00:16:30.45
Ryan - GemRate
And that's frustrating for a lot of people. And so, you know, if they can get a little bit of a perspective or sort of a mind shift there, as it relates to like what it means for them to be successful from a perception standpoint in the hobby, that would be a really welcome change for a lot of people.

00:16:42.46
Ryan - GemRate
It's just been, you know, that's not been the case, but ultimately I think they've still been fairly productive from what their expectations were.

00:16:47.95
Russell Gibson
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. but I think probably my closing thought on this is that it's really important to have competition within the market because I think if PSA is the only grading company that's viable, I think that's really dangerous. And, you know, people talk about unreliable grading and that you can send it in one day and it gets to seven one day and, you know, attend another day.

00:17:13.08
Russell Gibson
and And I think that there is some truth to that and particularly when there's nothing else to sort of hold it accountable. So I think that's where I sort of see like the power of BGS and to a lesser extent SGC too, because I think, you know, if there is those other viable options there, I think that really keeps PSA on their game.

00:17:26.60
Ryan - GemRate
Mm hmm.

00:17:30.92
Russell Gibson
And so that's probably where I'm, you know, most interested to see them succeeding, I suppose. Yeah. Alrighty. It's time to go to our first ad break and our first ad break is actually going to be brought to you by.

00:17:54.24
Russell Gibson
So Ryan, please ah use this advertising space to spruce something that you've been working on in the last 12 months.

00:18:02.76
Ryan - GemRate
Well, so I think the thing that people will will hopefully be most excited about, and there's nothing really to do about it today, but just to pay attention to, and like I said, we've talked about earlier, is if you follow us on social, that'll probably be the first place we start to window this. but We're going to start to bring out or release an advanced stats pop report. and The main thing that I'm excited to bring to market is pop reports that if for something like 20-20 tall prism has been graded now for 12 years. and so What I want to do is sort of let people see what a pop report has looked like over the past month or the past year or you know what players are trending up. you know Who was the first pick matter back when people were grading 2015, 2016 prison, but who are people actually grading today? And so it's just a way to allow people to contextualize like what's actually happening through the lens of a pop report, but as it relates to like recent trends. And so we're going to release that.

00:18:49.01
Ryan - GemRate
in mid-January. And I think that'll be exciting for a lot of people in the hobby. We just want to know like, okay, I get it. This is sort of the history of the pop report for what's been happening more recently. And it'll allow people to react to just like, how might that impact pricing?

00:18:58.25
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:19:01.76
Ryan - GemRate
What players are sort of trending up or sort of irrelevant as it relates to the hobby today versus like how the pop report might paint that picture when you look at it in total. So that's probably the most exciting thing.

00:19:11.58
Russell Gibson
Great. Thank you very much. And we are back. ah Alrighty, Ryan, how are you doing?

00:19:20.39
Ryan - GemRate
Great, great. Thank you for letting me sponsor the pod and hopefully people enjoy sort of that little window of ah of a feature we're we're looking to release soon. I'm looking for feedback once we do get that out in market.

00:19:28.88
Russell Gibson
Alrighty. What was the top trend of 2024?

00:19:35.05
Ryan - GemRate
What was the top trend? so I think two things that I'm most interested in, again, you know this you have to mind you, I'm biased through the lines of grading. Obviously, that's how I think about a lot of this world. I'm paying a lot of attention to just like PSA from an innovation standpoint and also just how they're thinking about partnerships and so I'm really fascinated by like what they're doing with eBay. There's a lot of incentive for eBay to work with PSA too and collectors in general and so I think that's fascinating just think about what they're doing to remove friction especially as you know fanatics is really you know, a massive competitor in this hobby to them and in some ways a partner to them, but also a competitor.

00:20:08.87
Ryan - GemRate
And so I think that's fascinating. And then the GameStop thing is wild to me. I'm somebody, you know, I was a financial analyst for many years of my career and you know, they've been highlighted as this meme stock, but GameStop has a lot of capital and a lot of resources available to, you know, be a really productive partner for somebody like PSA.

00:20:26.19
Russell Gibson
And a very loyal fan base too, right?

00:20:26.66
Ryan - GemRate
So.

00:20:28.03
Russell Gibson
like Can we really just quickly explain their share buyout, how that played out?

00:20:28.12
Ryan - GemRate
Mm-hmm.

00:20:32.02
Russell Gibson
Because I maybe think not everyone is aware of that.

00:20:36.39
Ryan - GemRate
Honestly, I don't even know it off the top of my head as it relates to, they basically when, so if you're talking about, well, one thing, do you want to, is you speaking to like the game stop element of it and just like what's happened and why they have so much cash or are you thinking?

00:20:49.00
Russell Gibson
just how the the stocks were optioned and then basically their own fan base brought the company back from the brink of extinction.

00:20:53.85
Ryan - GemRate
Yes.

00:20:55.82
Russell Gibson
I think I think that is relevant, particularly when you're now talking about crossing that over into the hobby field.

00:20:57.06
Ryan - GemRate
Yep.

00:21:02.08
Russell Gibson
And we're talking about um people loving a brand. And I think that's a really good segue back to BGS, where it's like, I think BGS sort of needs that loyalty to sort of, you know, to keep succeeding, I suppose.

00:21:14.41
Ryan - GemRate
Mm-hmm Yeah, I mean and with the game stuff thing yes, I think exactly right I mean just took sort of close a closed loop on that I mean they basically yeah a lot of momentum around the meme stock era There's people on reddit, you know in particular that were just hyping up sort of like what this and I'm really hyping it up just saying like hey watch what we can do and That took on you know a lot of momentum and then they were able to issue more shares But they're very cash-rich now and that they have, you know four billion dollars in cash

00:21:15.82
Russell Gibson
Yeah. So that to me is ah like, that's a nice little segue. Yeah.

00:21:34.33
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:21:42.56
Ryan - GemRate
cash that they raised with still sort of the same business, which is which is why it's fascinating.

00:21:43.95
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:21:47.26
Ryan - GemRate
That's the most important part is which they have a lot of money and usually you have a lot of money when your business is doing really well. They have a lot of money because there was just a lot of momentum behind like what the company yeah kind of stood for, which sort of meant like ah being the sort of zagger in the market, which is like, hey, we're not sort of like what people would expect.

00:21:52.31
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:22:05.37
Ryan - GemRate
And so they're looking still to sort of innovate and push forward on it. So PSA is a really interesting opportunity for them to

00:22:11.39
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:22:12.33
Ryan - GemRate
Get exposure to a very important potential you know business model. And for PSA slash collectors, it's an opportunity for them to you know distribute their product in a very meaningful and different way.

00:22:24.25
Ryan - GemRate
And the incentives are pretty aligned there.

00:22:24.46
Russell Gibson
yeah

00:22:25.63
Ryan - GemRate
So anyways, I think those are both really fascinating trends that in 2025, we're going to have to keep a close eye on because very different in how they impact the hobby, especially if you're like TCG focused, GameStop is going to make a lot more sense to you.

00:22:32.54
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:22:37.13
Ryan - GemRate
But like from an eBay standpoint, there's a lot of really important potential there. And I think that's going to be fascinating just for like more generally the sports collector, but in general, tea I mean, TCG also applies.

00:22:48.40
Russell Gibson
Just for two quick add-ons to that though. so talking to people who are actually active in the hobby and aren't so much married to one thing, TCG is like exponentially bigger than basketball in the last 12 months. So I think that's the first thing. And then the second thing to talk about is you're talking about marriages or partnerships. So grading isn't just exclusive to sports cards anymore. So we now know about the sales of like the Zelda games. So for example, people are now grading, you know, video games and CDs and magazines, all that type of stuff. So I actually wonder if that sort of grading element is then brought across to the greater populace or the general populace. And that's done via GameStop. And that kind of makes sense to me where you're making something a bit more mainstream, acceptable and accessible to people because I think that's one thing about the hobby is that

00:23:41.25
Russell Gibson
It's kind of like a bit of a nook and a cranny of people don't really know where to start. Who do you talk to to get this done? And maybe that's, you know, what GameStop will actually will deliver to people is that sort of mass education and mass accessibility.

00:23:56.42
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah, I agree.

00:23:56.64
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:23:57.34
Ryan - GemRate
I think there's a lot of exposure that can come from that. One thing that I haven't really heard discussed, and even as you just said, it sort of came to mind is this could be a door opening for PSA to sort of bring their comic book ah plans to market in a way that they hadn't been thinking about a year ago, which is, you know, you mentioned the magazine side of it, which if you walk into GameStop, you'll see a lot of those.

00:24:10.51
Russell Gibson
Yeah. 100%.

00:24:16.21
Ryan - GemRate
But just thinking about, again, bringing more accessibility and sort of more availability to you know the grading side from the lens of, you know, not the sort of

00:24:23.57
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:24:26.32
Ryan - GemRate
you know diehard enthusiasts like ourselves, but more casuals who sort of are interested in intrigue.

00:24:29.47
Russell Gibson
Yeah, absolutely.

00:24:31.38
Ryan - GemRate
I definitely think there's a ton of potential for that.

00:24:31.72
Russell Gibson
Yeah. Yeah. Did the hobby improve in 2024?

00:24:37.59
Ryan - GemRate
I say yes. so I and just think in general, like you know people are going to always you know have their reasonable complaints about what's not working in the hobby, but in general, I'm more excited about things that we're seeing from fanatics, from a marketing standpoint, from an innovation standpoint.

00:24:57.05
Ryan - GemRate
you know Panini could have mailed it in. In some regards, I think people are still frustrated with Panini, but yeah know they're still getting product out there. They're still you know ah they're releasing new product. you know Phoenix did not have to be released.

00:25:08.26
Ryan - GemRate
There's interesting ways that they're still trying to make money, which is still bringing new cards to market.

00:25:12.50
Russell Gibson
So my low key opinion of Phoenix, actually that was one of the better releases of the year. I almost sounds like a dirty word of what to say, but it actually reminds me of like Prism from five years ago.

00:25:24.03
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah, it's a nice looking i mean it's a nice looking set.

00:25:24.78
Russell Gibson
I don't know. Yeah.

00:25:27.36
Ryan - GemRate
It's not a set that has a lot of value behind it and people don't really know what to do with it.

00:25:30.47
Russell Gibson
No, that's, that's the catch.

00:25:31.49
Ryan - GemRate
especially yeah and so you know It's one of these ones which is going to be great for collectors because you'll be able to pick up some really great cards for your PC at a very affordable price.

00:25:32.05
Russell Gibson
Yeah. The resale is yeah.

00:25:40.42
Russell Gibson
cheap singles cheap yeah cheap boxes to rip yeah yeah yeah yeah sorry i interrupted you yeah

00:25:41.92
Ryan - GemRate
yeah but It looks nice. you know it looks nice and I'm a big fan of sort of like the second tier sets. that could hold value in the future, but like I can pick up at a discount to you know what everybody's sort of chasing today. The ultimate thing I was going for with that is though, I think in general, the hobby's pushing... No, no, no. i but the The hobby's been pushing forward despite you know all the noise you hear about, you know are people leaving the hobby and you know or it's not as active as it used to be. and I still think like we're we're seeing a lot of new entrants. The thing that I mentioned in my notes to collect and that I think is most intriguing to me is you're seeing more athletes, you're seeing more people being willing to talk about this publicly, which sort of has like a long tail impact of like

00:26:19.27
Ryan - GemRate
Okay. Like cards are a little bit more relevant or like, you know, the the debut patches, which are only available in baseball and soccer are something that are going to be available no doubt in a year and year or two, whenever it comes to the basketball and NFL releases.

00:26:33.63
Ryan - GemRate
And so I think that's going to be fascinating because those cards are still early and sort of like with a perceived importance.

00:26:34.19
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:26:41.23
Ryan - GemRate
And that's going to have a massive impact on how people think about, you know, with the role that this new fanatics Uh, the new fanatics products are going to have in the market. And so i'm I'm intrigued by that.

00:26:52.33
Ryan - GemRate
But in general, I'm just happy that people like athletes care a bit more because you're going to see them. One of the things I've been most frustrated with over the past five years is like autographs have really sucked over the last five years in the sense of like, they don't look like they used to look like, and now there might be just like on the margins, more people signing cards, the way that we'd hope that they'd sign cards.

00:27:01.11
Russell Gibson
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:27:09.82
Ryan - GemRate
And you know, that's going to be something that maybe is like a slow trend.

00:27:10.29
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:27:12.72
Ryan - GemRate
It's something that doesn't change quickly. But in general, I just think that there's a lot of momentum towards. the ball sort of moving in the right direction. And it's not necessarily like this massive tidal wave of momentum, but just like a lot of good blocking and tackling that's going to help the hobby in the long run. And not just all these short term, which, you know, there's a lot of short term profit taking in the, in the hobby too, which is all these, the cause can for certain, but I just think there's a lot of positive blocking, tackling happening happening in this hobby.

00:27:39.43
Russell Gibson
Yeah. So I think my really quick answer to this is that it's more about the culture around it and the participation.

00:27:45.14
Ryan - GemRate
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:27:46.20
Russell Gibson
And I think that's the thing that I've really noticed in the last 12 months is that as many people are online saying how bad the hobby is and it's in a downfall and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, you go to a hobby show and you see the, the vibrancy there and you see people interacting with each other.

00:28:02.76
Russell Gibson
And and I just don't, I just don't see it. And I think sometimes, ah the negative narratives can often overtake the positive ones. And then more so than that, it's really interesting because we're being trying to look at our social media numbers. And so you look at the posts that engage really well for us and you look at the posts that, you know, get less engagement. And it's often the ones that are a bit controversial or a little bit negative that actually do a little bit better. And then you sort of reflect that across, you know, bigger Instagram and bigger YouTube channels.

00:28:36.24
Russell Gibson
Like Jeff Wilson, Dan, the card man, like often it's, it's quite that really negative connotation stuff that engages people, you know, really well. So I think you do need to consider that a little bit when you talk about, you know, the hobby, you know, and how it's going, I suppose.

00:28:51.20
Russell Gibson
Yeah. Um, next thing on the.

00:28:52.93
Ryan - GemRate
No, I think you nailed it though. I do think just to sort of like you know um close loop on that is that culturally, yes, I think there's momentum. I still think there's an opportunity from a product standpoint to really push forward and also just from like a

00:29:02.85
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:29:10.64
Ryan - GemRate
ah Tooling standpoint to push the hobby forward much more than we have over the past few years But culturally I do think there's a lot of momentum and I agree like you the negative stuff is always going to drive more clicks Unfortunately, and so, you know, you kind of have to just understand that's the dynamic at play and sort of Mm-hmm Yeah

00:29:21.15
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:29:24.85
Russell Gibson
I think that's its just a fact, isn't it? Yeah. You have to accept that with social media. Yeah. It's like, yeah. Yeah. One plus one equals two, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Hey, um, we don't need to talk about the BGS sale. Do we have already covered that? We had that in the run sheet. Do you want to do more on that? Oh, we're done.

00:29:42.75
Ryan - GemRate
no that's good

00:29:43.75
Russell Gibson
Yeah, great. All right. I think now's the perfect time to go to our second break and we'll come back and we'll talk about Ryan's PSA top graded cards from 2024.

00:29:53.54
Ryan - GemRate
perfect

00:30:06.46
Ryan - GemRate
yeah

00:30:08.88
Ryan - GemRate
No, that's good.

00:30:10.07
Russell Gibson
All righty, we are back. Ryan, what delicious beverage are you downing there?

00:30:14.89
Ryan - GemRate
yeah

00:30:17.59
Ryan - GemRate
Spindrift, I have a little bit of a cough. I'm hanging around my five, seven, and nine-year-old niece and nephews, and so just a little spindrift.

00:30:23.25
Russell Gibson
Oh man, they're just germ machines, kids. yeah So for the Australians that don't know what that is, what what is that?

00:30:26.17
Ryan - GemRate
yep yep

00:30:30.25
Ryan - GemRate
It's just flavored water, just like slightly carbonated water, um and it's a grapefruit.

00:30:33.23
Russell Gibson
Yeah, right.

00:30:34.65
Ryan - GemRate
so Anyways, good enough for me. i'm not ah I'm somebody that needs more water in my routine, and so this is like one of the few ways I can sneak it in.

00:30:41.76
Russell Gibson
Yeah, that's one thing that we just don't have, that you guys have is like just the choice of beverages and like the choice of chocolate bars.

00:30:50.04
Ryan - GemRate
Oh, yeah.

00:30:50.84
Russell Gibson
I missed that, like, from the States for sure. Alrighty, talk to us about your PSA top graded from 2024. Run us through this, mate. I can't wait for this.

00:31:01.24
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah, so two things. So one, ah you know, we have not released any of this data yet, but we will next week. And so this is a little bit of a first look at data, and it might slightly change, but this is pretty much what the picture looks like now. There's only a couple days left in the year. So one thing I wanted to sort of very high level is just speak to is that there's Basketball is the sort of number three category this year, which is going to be which is important because it's up 55%, just where it wasn't one step back. This is just PSA data, as you mentioned, and you know but similar trends that are occurring with the other grading companies, um in particular when we're talking about sports with SGC and then also Beckett. CGC is also relevant, but they're still much smaller from a sports standpoint.

00:31:46.69
Ryan - GemRate
Um, so anyways, 2.3 million basketball cards graded up 55% in 2024. Why that matters is so again, it's up 55%. It's only 1.5 million were graded last year. That's dropped down dramatically from where we were at the peak from pandemic times when I think we saw 2.7 million basketball cards graded in 2021 2.5 million in 2022. So we're not quite back to the levels we were at like the the peak of the hype cycle. And you got to remember.

00:32:14.79
Ryan - GemRate
those numbers when were when PSA was only doing you know a few hundred thousand cards a month. Now they're doing 1.3 million, 1.4 million cards a month. And so grading activity has really changed.

00:32:23.08
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:32:24.49
Ryan - GemRate
So basketball kind of had this real challenging, everybody cared about it. And then they were so frustrated by what happened in that market that they kind of faded from it for a bit. Now, Wembley has sort of just rebuilt a ton of energy and sort of you know just created this whole new hype cycle.

00:32:39.93
Ryan - GemRate
And so And you also have sort of this back and forth around what matters when you think about you know fanatics having and tops having releases in the market that didn't exist a couple of years ago. So there's a lot of interesting sort of things in play there.

00:32:51.87
Ryan - GemRate
But most importantly, it's just that basketball has become increasingly more relevant to get in the hobby from a grading standpoint.

00:32:56.38
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:32:57.26
Ryan - GemRate
And so you know that matters. Uh, and if you want, if you have any commentary, feel free to jump in, but I can then, if you, if you don't, I'll jump into the top players, but that's kind of the big picture thing I wanted to paint was just, you know, basketball, seeing a lot of momentum, which is not a kind of surprise people, but I wanted to sort of frame it through the lines of it's not where it was a few years ago, but it's definitely on the path back towards that, which will be interesting.

00:33:14.36
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:33:17.66
Russell Gibson
Yeah, I got, okay, so I got three points of that. Number one, too much crap was graded a few years ago. So for me to see less cards graded now, I actually don't think that's a bad thing.

00:33:23.00
Ryan - GemRate
Yep.

00:33:27.84
Russell Gibson
And, you know, we talk about the hobby progressing and all this type of stuff. We don't need to see 15,000 Ty Jerome PSA graded cards, right?

00:33:37.98
Ryan - GemRate
I like Jerome right now.

00:33:38.09
Russell Gibson
And I love him too.

00:33:41.22
Ryan - GemRate
He's a Cavs player.

00:33:42.03
Russell Gibson
But, uh, I think he's a really good basketball player. And that's part of the joke, right? He's a good basketball player, but we don't also need to see him graded, right? Like he's not collectible.

00:33:50.24
Ryan - GemRate
No, you're totally right. Yeah, I'm just messing with you.

00:33:51.41
Russell Gibson
Yeah. And then so, you know, flipping that forward, you know, I think people are probably choosing to grade more appropriate cards. Whereas I think previously what was happening was people were just sending in every base card they could get their hands on and, and you could flip it over and make a profit.

00:34:04.48
Ryan - GemRate
Yep. Yep.

00:34:06.94
Russell Gibson
You know, I think that's something we need to acknowledge. And then the second thing is, um We're talking about the choice and the and the right cards to be graded. There's not a wrong wimpy card that you can grade at the moment because I think, so when I watched this guy play, I actually think he's almost redesigning basketball, the angles that he plays from the height, the athleticism and the skill.

00:34:30.18
Russell Gibson
It's just like, have we actually seen anything you know like this guy before? And like just even simple things of like where he catches lobs from

00:34:38.65
Ryan - GemRate
Mm hmm.

00:34:40.14
Russell Gibson
and the trajectory that he throws it down and then how he can take one step from the three point line and be reaching to the, but you know what I mean? Like it actually hurts my head a little bit to sort of to describe it.

00:34:50.23
Ryan - GemRate
Yep.

00:34:52.49
Russell Gibson
So it's almost like a more athletic Kareem. And we kind of knew, we know how Kareem ended out. I actually, I don't know the right comp for Wembley.

00:35:02.80
Russell Gibson
Where are you at with comping Wembley?

00:35:05.25
Ryan - GemRate
Oh, I don't know. I mean, I think people, the thing that's sort of from my, through the lens of sort of like how I think about the hobby in particular and basketball players have actually watched is like, I think this is what people wanted Porzingis to be when he was first sort of labeled.

00:35:19.72
Ryan - GemRate
And then, you know, just was so injured, you know, written that it was not ever relevant. That's complete undersell of where Wembley stands. But my point is, is like, I think there was a lot of hype and sort of um projecting around like somebody like Porzingis could sort of fall as it relates to like the standing and um in the, in the hobby, but also in the league.

00:35:40.17
Russell Gibson
So I think Paul Zinkis is like a top 100 player. I actually think Wembley is somewhere between top five and top 10 at the league, like right now.

00:35:49.23
Ryan - GemRate
Totally. No, I agree.

00:35:49.44
Russell Gibson
Like from both ends of the court, like defensively, he is insanely dominant and offensively.

00:35:50.07
Ryan - GemRate
I agree. But that's what

00:35:55.22
Russell Gibson
There's not that, what, how many, there's five players in the league who you can't defend.

00:36:02.14
Russell Gibson
Wembley's one.

00:36:03.72
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah.

00:36:04.16
Russell Gibson
Lucas another one. LeBron. Okay. yeah He's getting older now, but

00:36:08.30
Ryan - GemRate
When he wants to be.

00:36:09.85
Russell Gibson
When he's on a good day, who's another two players who are unguardable?

00:36:11.18
Ryan - GemRate
Uh huh.

00:36:15.12
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah, I mean, Jokic is his own sort of beast.

00:36:16.49
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:36:18.91
Ryan - GemRate
But you know the reason the reason I said Porzingis is I just don't think there's a great comp because that's the beauty of him.

00:36:19.13
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:36:24.75
Ryan - GemRate
And that's why he's doing so well is that we don't have a lot of great comps. He's something that we haven't seen before. And he creates this sort of like he sort of expands our imagination of like what it means to be a super relevant player in the league today.

00:36:29.74
Russell Gibson
yeah

00:36:36.22
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:36:36.32
Ryan - GemRate
And in a league that looks very similar and everybody's complaining about like why is everybody shooting threes and you know everything sort of looks and feels the same and it's impacting ratings, right?

00:36:43.02
Russell Gibson
I hate that narrative so much.

00:36:44.61
Ryan - GemRate
right

00:36:45.12
Russell Gibson
I hate that narrative so much.

00:36:45.60
Ryan - GemRate
But that's that's why I think Wembley is so fascinating because he doesn't fit that mold.

00:36:46.52
Russell Gibson
yeah

00:36:49.61
Ryan - GemRate
And people are frustrated with him because he's shooting so many threes.

00:36:50.12
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:36:52.05
Ryan - GemRate
But it's like, yeah, that's what's sort of on trend now. But he can morph into a lot of different things that could be relevant. And that's sort of the beauty of what he brings to the table.

00:37:00.77
Russell Gibson
But I hate that narrative, but hang on a second.

00:37:01.86
Ryan - GemRate
And he's super effective.

00:37:02.80
Russell Gibson
I hate that narrative too, right? Because if you look at his shot chart, it's just the right shot chart. He's at the rim and he's at the three point line and he's not shooting long twos. Like, do you know what I mean?

00:37:11.89
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah, no, I agree.

00:37:12.66
Russell Gibson
It's like, hang on a second.

00:37:13.16
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah.

00:37:14.47
Russell Gibson
People need to like actually look at the the stats and the analytics on that, you know? Yeah.

00:37:20.58
Ryan - GemRate
Totally. No, I agree.

00:37:21.48
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:37:21.74
Ryan - GemRate
I mean, that's why I think he's got permission to do it is that it's so effective, you know, for them today. And, you know, they're still early and sort of like where they want to get. So anyways, I am fascinated by the Wembley sort of just like hype cycle that we're in, but also seeing him materialize it finally. because you know If I listened to the crossover and you know they were talking about it in a recent episode, of just like yeah it was kind of quiet for a little bit. or so no Actually, maybe it was Neo Cards and Comics on YouTube was talking about this with plenty of mind. He was basically saying like you know it was quiet after sort of the season started around Wembley because he got up to a little bit of like ah you know just like a not noteworthy start. It was a little sluggish.

00:37:57.25
Ryan - GemRate
But now he's, you know, getting hyped.

00:37:57.46
Russell Gibson
Sure.

00:37:58.49
Ryan - GemRate
If you look at you get the NBA dot.com emails, you know, is when be in the top five of, you know, the, the MVP conversation now. So clearly he's got a lot of momentum um and he should be right.

00:38:06.05
Russell Gibson
And he should be. Yeah. Yeah.

00:38:08.12
Ryan - GemRate
And so he's fascinating.

00:38:08.63
Russell Gibson
yeah

00:38:10.66
Ryan - GemRate
And I don't think he has a fair comp. I do like you bringing up somebody like Kareem. I think it's interesting because obviously like Kareem had a lot of different dynamics in play, uh, being dominant, but also having the duration, which is really unique for somebody of that, you know, that caliber and that size.

00:38:24.13
Russell Gibson
Yeah. That's us. Yeah.

00:38:26.50
Ryan - GemRate
Exactly. So I think like, you know, that's part of the risk with wendy is sort of can he sustain this overall longevity of it? But you know his playing styles flexible, which is what we were just talking about. So there's certainly potential there Well,

00:38:36.27
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:38:38.56
Russell Gibson
Man, we segwayed hard here. you All right, we're talking about your top grader. Let's, let's get back to that.

00:38:42.39
Ryan - GemRate
no The last thing i'll say on it that just I think is super relevant is that's such a high that we're seeing now Which is up 55 which is you know, the next closest category is i'm looking at the list from

00:38:42.98
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:38:52.58
Ryan - GemRate
twenty twenty four And, you know, football's up 19%, baseball's up 15%. But what's going to be fascinating, and I was just talking, I popped into a hobby shop yesterday, um and back when I was in Cleveland, and I was saying, you know, what ah what's going to happen with 2020, you know, this new 2024 class, because nobody cares at this stage.

00:39:07.74
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:39:09.26
Ryan - GemRate
And so, like, what's going to, what is sort of the flip side of this, when we have this, you know, gen generational

00:39:09.90
Russell Gibson
No.

00:39:16.37
Ryan - GemRate
Prospect that's now showcasing that potential or sort of highlight Highlighting sort of what we were hoping which is like this massive potential and what happens when you sort of have these understated Prospects from the 2024 class in the market.

00:39:29.20
Ryan - GemRate
And so I think that's gonna be really interesting especially in this transitionary period of like this is the last year from Panini having the pool You know pool licensing and so I think that's gonna be really fascinating so I just took Right, right, right so I mean well

00:39:30.05
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:39:40.65
Russell Gibson
Full licensing but no autographs. Yeah, in a bad draft class, yeah.

00:39:46.81
Ryan - GemRate
Will it be a complete dud? I don't think so because that's what sort of the breaking side of this hobby has brought to you know the market, which is like people still participate because there's a lot of ah elements of breaking. Part of it is just like the adrenaline and sort of like the rush. Part of it is sort of like people just like to gamble a bit. Also, it's just like you know maybe when be and you know the the Brandon Miller's of the world you know, carry more weight as it relates to like second year cards than traditionally we've seen.

00:40:13.96
Ryan - GemRate
I don't even know, but my point was just like, it was a really good year in 2024 with grading. I'm going to be fascinated to see what happens in 2025 once Benini starts releasing 2024 sets, because it's going to be a very completely different story as it relates to like who people are grading and why they're grading them.

00:40:21.48
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:40:26.80
Ryan - GemRate
So we'll see. But that's, that's my closing on the 2024 stuff. I have the top players, which I can touch on real quick, but I just wanted to speak to like the bigger macro trends.

00:40:36.94
Russell Gibson
Yeah. So, so, so my, my take on that is that, and I put this into the sheet pretty much at the bottom, but I'm going to segue into it now. So this is from MBA at MBA on Instagram.

00:40:50.56
Russell Gibson
and NBA app Kia Rookie Ladder, number one, Stefan Castle. Number two, Eves Messi.

00:40:54.45
Ryan - GemRate
Yep.

00:40:55.82
Russell Gibson
We spoke about Messi a couple of weeks ago on the show, so I'm kind of happy that he's like number two on their ranking. Number three is Jalen Wells. like If you want to talk about a bad draft class, I think that is how you summarize it right there.

00:41:10.01
Russell Gibson
And so the other thing I've been like talking about the last couple of weeks is, okay, so you don't prospect on this year's draft. You go back and you prospect on the last couple of years. And if you're talking about opening products, you know, ripping packs, Prism from Cade's draft year is like one third of the price of Wembley's year and half the price of Banchero. Like to me, it's an absolute bargain and actually that draft year is pretty good. so I'd be advocating for people to be going back and submitting some of that older stuff.

00:41:38.15
Russell Gibson
Cause also the pop count on Kade rookie stuff is is pretty low. Scotty Barnes is pretty low. So yeah.

00:41:44.78
Ryan - GemRate
It's crazy low. I was looking at it before we actually jumped on because I was just trying to contextualize some of the players who were not on the top 50 list that we published in October and just being like, where are they?

00:41:55.20
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:41:55.96
Ryan - GemRate
Like, are they close or not? And I think, yeah, like Cade had like across just a sort of like. paint this picture really quickly. I think the lowest player on the top 50 list that I published was like 175,000 cards graded across all the grading companies.

00:42:09.59
Ryan - GemRate
You know, Cade's at like 65,000.

00:42:12.49
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:42:12.86
Ryan - GemRate
Mobley's at 31,000. Jalen Green, I'm like, oh, maybe Jalen Green's higher. Nope. Jalen Green was at like 51,000. Scotty's somewhere in between Mobley and Jalen Green probably.

00:42:18.19
Russell Gibson
Yeah. Yeah.

00:42:20.88
Ryan - GemRate
And then I looked at like Paulo.

00:42:21.32
Russell Gibson
yeah

00:42:22.22
Ryan - GemRate
Paulo's at like 64,000. Chet was at like 55,000. You know, so trying to look at like 2021 and 2022. So yeah, I mean, they're, they're,

00:42:28.75
Russell Gibson
Yeah. Yeah.

00:42:30.00
Ryan - GemRate
far removed from being on, I mean, they're years away from being on that list, or they need something dramatic, like all of a sudden they entered the MVP conversation, right, for somebody to make a run on it. But I mean, Jokic only has 55,000 cards graded, and he's a three time MVP with, you know, a ton of relevance as it relates to the league, not as much when it comes to the hobby as it relates to just how many people collect what

00:42:42.37
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:42:52.02
Ryan - GemRate
You know, just cause he was from a different era of collecting. And so it's fascinating to think about, but I do agree. I'm a Homer because I'm a love, I love 2021 prison because my two biggest PCs are Mobley and Trey Murphy.

00:43:03.04
Ryan - GemRate
And so I pay a ton of attention to that. And I agree. Like it's definitely a value, but in general, just doesn't get a lot of attention.

00:43:05.16
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:43:09.13
Ryan - GemRate
And you know, it's going to be interesting to see what happens if one of those players sort of breaks through or breaks out.

00:43:13.50
Russell Gibson
Can you just, what you spoke about then with Yo-Kik, can you just explain that in detail to people? Because, um, if I talk to my friends about my podcast, one of the things they say is we just don't understand what you're talking about. So can you please explain to my mum or my best friend who knows nothing about cards, what that means by Yo-Kik and his low grading numbers? Just sort of like really flesh it out at a base level. Yeah.

00:43:39.39
Ryan - GemRate
So there's there's three things that I would say are a factor to it. One is he was not a prospect that had a lot of ah hype.

00:43:47.39
Russell Gibson
He was a second round pick.

00:43:47.51
Ryan - GemRate
He was a late draft pick, but didn't even play I think his first year.

00:43:48.86
Russell Gibson
Yeah. Yeah.

00:43:51.99
Ryan - GemRate
And so you know he was sort of thrown into the tail end of the release cycle. He doesn't have a lot of high profile cards. right So there just was not a lot of momentum. And that matters in this hobby more than people realize, which is like if you don't have people buying into the hype early on, it's really hard to create energy or momentum for a player like them. So anyways, he just did not have a lot of energy early on, which is a hurdle for somebody, even of his caliber. um The second thing is he was in the era of what like the quiet period of the hobby, which like not that much outside of the Ben Simmons, you know, period where there was a lot of chatter.

00:44:24.92
Ryan - GemRate
people didn't pay a lot of attention to the 2013, 2014, 2015 draft classes. And so there just wasn't like a lot of chatter.

00:44:30.03
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:44:31.60
Ryan - GemRate
And so again, it just keeps this like floor lower than you would expect to see. Um, and and then in general, the big thing is, you know, he only has 50,000 cards graded across all the grading companies and he's still miles away from, you know, or at least 130,000 away from being on that top 50 list.

00:44:49.04
Ryan - GemRate
And he's well behind players. Like I'm trying to think of who would be sort of, and where I mean, the players that are on this top 50 list are generational talents, with the exception of Zion and maybe Ja potentially getting there.

00:45:02.37
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:45:02.85
Ryan - GemRate
yeah know But he's he's just completely different ballpark. I mean, Anthony Edwards is also on the top 50 list, and he's probably maybe the most relevant of like somebody who's ascending right now. And he has 207,000 cards that have been graded across all the graded companies.

00:45:14.12
Ryan - GemRate
So he's got 25% of Anthony Edwards, despite you know Edwards being un...

00:45:17.36
Russell Gibson
Could, could you share this link with me and I can put into the podcast description so people can look at it as we're talking about it.

00:45:21.93
Ryan - GemRate
Yep. Yep, and yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00:45:23.50
Russell Gibson
That'd be awesome. Yeah. Sorry, man. I interrupted you. Please keep going. Yeah.

00:45:26.72
Ryan - GemRate
No, I was just sharing. So just to close it out, though, in sort of explaining it to the to the layman or somebody who was sort of new to it, you know, he has significantly less cards greater than somebody like Anthony Edwards. And Anthony Edwards, rightfully so, is somebody that people are really excited about and has a ton of potential.

00:45:35.53
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:45:40.59
Ryan - GemRate
But, you know, Jokic has proven he just sort of fits a different mold. And oh, the other thing I was gonna say, he's a big, he's a big. And so like, you know, they're sort of, that's the third thing that I was gonna say as relates to like hurdles he faces was like, not necessarily the right time, not necessarily like the right sort of, um,

00:45:56.72
Ryan - GemRate
selection of cards that would get people excited. And he's also sort of this big that just doesn't fit the profile of somebody that people have historically collected. And so what that's done is it's left him sort of like far behind a lot of, you know, other marquee players in this industry and then this hobby.

00:46:04.06
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:46:11.13
Ryan - GemRate
And so he just sort of, oh, Trey's another great example. Trey's got 200,000 graded and like Trey was one of these guys obviously was super hyped and has sort of fallen off as a really like relevance. And so anyways,

00:46:22.05
Ryan - GemRate
So Jokic is fascinating and what that what I think is most exciting about that though is like, what could that mean for him? one it's like there's not but Given there's not as much of his sort of like high profile cards to rookie cards to sort of invest in, are there other cards that might emerge for him?

00:46:36.49
Ryan - GemRate
that are from later releases that could be relevant? Or is there just an opportunity to sort of just hope, you know, yoga is just something that you might hope where we might just have a greater appreciation from but when the hobby trends today might not be the hobby trends 10 years from now. And maybe people look back and say like, I don't care that he was a big,

00:46:53.12
Ryan - GemRate
and maybe not as relatable from like how I play the game of basketball. you know like That's why people love Steph, it's because he was so relatable and just like has changed the game.

00:46:59.21
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:47:01.32
Ryan - GemRate
Jokic is changing a lot of the way people think about this game too, but maybe people will appreciate it more 10 years, 15 years from now when he's in the top 10 players of all time and people are start to look back and be like, wow, this guy, not only is he an all-time great, there's not a lot of his cards out there that matter.

00:47:16.29
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:47:16.49
Ryan - GemRate
And so you start to see his prices rise over time. So he's just a fascinating player, but like one that you kind of have to just believe in. and sort of, you know, be a little bit more patient with, even though the the results prove it. He's the other thing that you hear, like somebody like Adam Gray say often is like, performance doesn't always translate.

00:47:31.95
Ryan - GemRate
And he's a player that maybe speaks to that more than anybody right now, which is like, he's not somebody you hear talking off the court and barely wants to talk when he's on the court or after the games.

00:47:41.02
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:47:42.10
Ryan - GemRate
And so he's kind of considered to be somebody who just does this for a living, even though he's phenomenal at it.

00:47:42.20
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:47:46.75
Ryan - GemRate
And, you know, he's not going to be relevant when he steps away from the game and people are, I think perhaps rightfully concerned about that. And so there's also that factor, which is really fascinating too, which is just like, you know, that is culturally relevant in the sense of how people collect and what matters to them from like, uh, this is who I collect and why I collect them standpoint.

00:47:52.66
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:48:04.29
Russell Gibson
I do agree with that, but at some point too, you have to say, look, his career resume is top 10 all time, top five all time.

00:48:11.55
Ryan - GemRate
Totally.

00:48:12.64
Russell Gibson
And then you look at his hobby price and you compare that to other people.

00:48:12.88
Ryan - GemRate
Right.

00:48:15.20
Russell Gibson
I think at some point that equation, you know, is is too far out of whack and people start to collect him again. So, look, I personally think he's the best buy in basketball at the moment. and something dramatic has to change for me to alter my opinion of that. Look, I've probably taken a couple of years to get to this point, but I'm actually almost obsessed with, with your kit cards at the moment. I just think it's such an interesting paradigm in comparison to everything else that's happening in the hobby in terms of ah pricing and also population of his graded cards. Yeah.

00:48:49.80
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah, I think we have just to sort of like one last point on this and my points are never short. So I apologize. But you know, we have a really great three year period of like kind of players that don't fit the mold with three very different outcomes, which is you have Giannis in 2013, you have Embiid in 2014, and you have Jokic in 2015.

00:49:08.38
Ryan - GemRate
these incredible bigs who all have very different styles of play and sort of are been relevant for different reasons. But Janus has 208,000 cards graded and I think a beat has like 30,000 cards graded.

00:49:19.18
Ryan - GemRate
And like, you know, he's he's even, so he's almost half of what Jokic has graded. But Janus, if you look at his

00:49:23.06
Russell Gibson
Yeah. Embiid's tricky though, man. Yeah.

00:49:25.38
Ryan - GemRate
And Bead's totally tricky, right? But he kind of fits this, like, he doesn't have the results.

00:49:27.21
Russell Gibson
He's injured. People hate him. Yeah.

00:49:29.60
Ryan - GemRate
He has, you know, one MVP and doesn't have any sort of playoff success that sort of would warrant people caring about it at this stage. And he's just, you know, levels removed from where Jokic is from like a resume standpoint at this stage, right?

00:49:39.98
Russell Gibson
Levels. Yeah.

00:49:41.21
Ryan - GemRate
And so, but you on the flip side, you have Giannis, who has 208,000 cards and has the sort of market cap that we've talked about historically, like, that shows that he's sort of broken through.

00:49:42.01
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:49:50.11
Ryan - GemRate
But why that matters and what I was just going to say to close this point is just He had a lot of hype that came from influencers, that came from being sort of somebody that was sort of exploding at the right time when all the eyeballs were on basketball in 2020 and 2021.

00:50:03.29
Ryan - GemRate
And like the Gary V.

00:50:04.28
Russell Gibson
He's freakish in the same way that when be is athletically right I get why there's hype around Giannis I've got no troubles with that yeah.

00:50:04.63
Ryan - GemRate
Hype Cycle could never be.

00:50:11.36
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah, but I mean, he he doesn't do, he's freakish, but he doesn't have the same range in the sense of, and I don't even mean shooting range, like his, he's narrow or that like he's a great defender. And he sort of could take the ball, you know, pull court and sort of just like, you know, bully people in a way that we've not seen historically.

00:50:24.44
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:50:28.85
Ryan - GemRate
Right. And that's sort of new to us. Um, but he's somebody who may not translate as the game sort of evolves over the, like he stopped shooting. One of the reasons people are speculating the bucks had been winning recently is cause Yana stopped shooting threes.

00:50:40.31
Ryan - GemRate
And like there, she's just sticking to sort of like what he does best and he stopped trying to, uh, evolve there. And i will we'll see if that holds, but anyways, it's just fascinating to see three players of the sort of similar sort of like this.

00:50:45.86
Russell Gibson
Which is a good idea.

00:50:52.36
Ryan - GemRate
Taller players don't matter. um You know, hurdle and, you know, Giannis has sort of surpassed that. Jokic that yo just sort of one that people would like to see surpassed that, but sort of faces a lot of hurdles and then Embiid sort of more the classic, like, yeah, that's kind of what we've expected.

00:51:06.50
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:51:06.66
Ryan - GemRate
Like, he's doing what we expect to see there.

00:51:09.85
Russell Gibson
Alrighty. Let's go to a break. And when we come back. um I've moved the sheet around while you're talking then. I really wanna talk to you about market cap. And if you could teach us about market cap, that'd be awesome. And then if we got time, we can we should talk about some Cavaliers.

00:51:24.07
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00:51:25.62
Russell Gibson
And I think that'll finish off the show.

00:51:27.90
Ryan - GemRate
Cool.

00:51:34.77
Russell Gibson
All righty, Ryan, we're back. This is gonna be the last segment of this week's show. It's gone really quickly. I've had an absolute ball. Thank you so much for joining us today. Market cap.

00:51:44.78
Ryan - GemRate
but

00:51:45.15
Russell Gibson
This is something that you talk about and it's one of those things where I kind of understand it a little bit, but I'd like to you to please explain market cap to us. And then also to your Steph Curry market cap theory, because if you're willing to share this with us, I actually think this is something really, uh, important for hobbyists to understand.

00:52:09.27
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:52:10.57
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah, so just a couple quick points, again, quick with air quotes from me. um

00:52:15.64
Russell Gibson
It's fine. We got, we got 10 minutes. It's all good. Pat it out, mate.

00:52:18.79
Ryan - GemRate
No, but why it matters is, and you know, look I just touched or sort of circle back on something I touched on earlier, which is like part of the reason companies pay, generate rate for data is the supply of a card matters you know and in addition to the price. Price, without an understanding, supply is sort of not very useful. MarketCap is taking those two factors and combining them to help you just understand what is an investment in a player's card or a player's market look like. MarketCap most narrowly is around a card. You might look at you know um

00:52:50.04
Ryan - GemRate
Anthony Edwards 2020 Prism Silver and take his PSA10 price times the PSA10 supply and that would be the market cap in the instance for that card. You might want to expand that and say like let's actually look at the market cap for Anthony Edwards 2020 Prism in total as it relates to all across all grades there and you would combine

00:52:59.33
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:53:09.05
Ryan - GemRate
the PSA 9 price times the PSA 9 supply, PSA 8 price times the PSA 8 supply, right? And if you add those things up, you would understand like, hey, that's Anthony Edwards silver prism market cap in total across all grades for PSA.

00:53:23.19
Russell Gibson
ye Yeah.

00:53:24.80
Ryan - GemRate
And that's just a single grader, right? And so what happens is you have players like we were talking about before, like Jokic just came in during a different era of this hobby. And so like you cannot look at Jokic's prism silver price Compare that to somebody ultra modern and sort of paint the same picture just looking at price alone You have to understand sort of the dynamics of like the supply how that sort of was different back then versus what it looks like now Where it might go in the future if all of a sudden that player took off for example, like let's say um Just as an example Trey Murphy is somebody I mentioned I collected so take keep that in mind But like, you know, he's still sort of you know, he's just now sort of emerging in the last year

00:54:03.84
Ryan - GemRate
three weeks is somebody who's looking like maybe potentially like a top one or two player on his team. He's already been kind of considered like a bench player, a six man. Point being is not a lot of his stuff has been graded yet because he's sort of been considered like you know a marginal player. But if he emerges as somebody that becomes like potentially all NBA or something like that, you might start to see more of his cards graded. So you have to consider that the price of what his price is today, but how much supply might be on the market and where that might take his market cap. so anyway Market cap matters and often is discussed through the lens of a card.

00:54:33.89
Ryan - GemRate
I actually like to think about it more broadly through the lens of like what that looks like if you added up all their cards or cards that are sort of a flagship for that player because then you're looking at like a player's market cap as opposed to a card's market cap.

00:54:44.41
Ryan - GemRate
And so it's still early in the sense of like tooling doesn't really permit you to do that super well. There's sort of ways to sort of get a picture.

00:54:51.43
Russell Gibson
Yeah. So how do you use that when you're buying a card? I suppose that's like the the practical question, isn't it? So how do you translate that?

00:54:57.25
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah.

00:54:58.53
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:54:59.59
Ryan - GemRate
Not well, I mean that's the thing right now I mean, you know I'm building a tool in this hobby to help people paint that picture and it's still a massive struggle Right like hard ladder. I mentioned earlier does some things to help paint that picture but it tends to skew towards players that were that they've already had on their on their on their ladder, which is you know something that is a

00:55:12.50
Russell Gibson
Yeah, it does. Yeah.

00:55:20.88
Ryan - GemRate
still a focus for them, but doesn't always, it's not something that gets as much focus for like the more ultra modern the last few years of releases. And so like you can paint a pretty good picture for somebody like LeBron or Kobe or Jordan or Curry.

00:55:33.59
Ryan - GemRate
First, it's really hard to paint the market cap picture for somebody like Wembley, where there's like a lot of cards out there. Or like if you were talking about Paulo or you're talking about Kate, it's just harder to do that today because they've shifted focus a little bit. and so That is something that's still pretty hard to do with the tooling that we have today. It's something that I think everybody's mindful of, but it's hard to answer your question. It's still a really hard thing. do what And my mind is still an opportunity, but I would like to get to a place where the tooling makes it easier for people who are not like us who live and breathe this.

00:56:00.82
Ryan - GemRate
And you're somebody who's like, Hey, I just went to a game and I want to start building up a collection of a player that I care about. What is their market cap look like overall compared to somebody who's more established from that draft class or somebody where you think.

00:56:09.30
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:56:13.11
Ryan - GemRate
Hey, maybe this player looks like they could become the next yoga chair. They could become the next Luca. What does that mean? What is their market gap today and where could that go if things went right? And so it's still pretty hard to paint that. So to answer questions, hard to do today.

00:56:24.77
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:56:25.54
Ryan - GemRate
Possible, but more through the lens of like, you have to put in the work and it's hours of work. It's not minutes of work. It's days of work potentially. And so a lot of people won't do it. And so, you know, it's still a hard question to answer.

00:56:34.15
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:56:37.52
Russell Gibson
So how do you, so then why were you, because previous conversations with me, you've mentioned Steph Curry and his market cap. So, okay, explain that to us in that case then. Yeah. So why is Steph Curry interesting to you from a market cap perspective then?

00:56:56.82
Ryan - GemRate
Well he's just, he comes from ah another, he's another player from a different era. So if you think about like Durant, you think of Durant's different, but like Durant, I'm just thinking about like 2007, 2009 era of like, this is the end of the tops era. There are some small selection of Panini cards available back then before they were sort of even acquired. They're under Panini's ownership now. They weren't under Panini's ownership then. Like playoff and stuff like that was national treasures. um But anyway, if you think about what mattered, there was not a lot of supply available for like 2009 cards at that time.

00:57:32.02
Ryan - GemRate
And there's not a lot of like um aesthetically pleasing cards that exist for Steph from that era. And so what happened is people started collecting a lot of Panini era cards for Steph Curry.

00:57:39.18
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:57:43.44
Ryan - GemRate
And if you look at just his rookie year stuff and you think about what that means for his market cap, it's going to look understated to some degree where people think Steph stands and sort of the, you know, the hierarchy of all time greats.

00:57:54.51
Ryan - GemRate
And he's going to look a little less relevant But Steph has this long tail of cards that has you know emerged in the Panini era. He's one of the most collectible players from the Panini era because he didn't have a lot when tops was winding down and upper deck were winding down their licenses. And then as Panini sort of became the go-to in the hobby, it was no longer his rookie stuff you were collecting, but they did start to you know obviously expand and bring all this different supply to market. So it's really hard to understand how much money is actually Invest in stuff unless you go to a tool like card ladder and you look at his player index Which will then help you at least understand to some degree like how many cards are out there?

00:58:31.94
Ryan - GemRate
What does the full market cap look like but I can't remember off the top of my head I apologize.

00:58:32.07
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:58:35.48
Ryan - GemRate
I don't have this handy, but like, you know, he's still significantly less than you'd expect. Oh, here it is. Okay, so like Give me one sec here system Yeah, so if you

00:58:46.19
Russell Gibson
So just walk us through what you're doing at the moment, sort of click by click. So you've gone to card letter.

00:58:51.73
Ryan - GemRate
Yep, if you go to card ladder, they have a player's tab that you can select or sort of a player's page you can go to.

00:58:53.25
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:58:57.47
Ryan - GemRate
And what it does is it it has basketball players there with their sort of, again, this is through the lens of cards that have only been added to their ladder.

00:58:57.84
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:59:00.87
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

00:59:05.52
Ryan - GemRate
It's not all their cards. So it's a big qualifier of just like these cards must be approved. Card ladder has a very thorough approach to approving cards and making sure they're vetted. And if it's a vetted card on the card letter list, it shows up in this players list.

00:59:19.84
Ryan - GemRate
And they use that to help paint the picture of a total market cap.

00:59:19.87
Russell Gibson
Yep.

00:59:22.87
Ryan - GemRate
And so, for example, there's a...

00:59:23.11
Russell Gibson
So you've gone to card ladder, you've clicked players, you've searched for Steph Curry or just Curry and that'll bring it up.

00:59:25.08
Ryan - GemRate
Yep.

00:59:29.07
Russell Gibson
Yep.

00:59:29.51
Ryan - GemRate
If you search for players and you can filter by basketball, I think there's 419 players that show up in the results. Not surprisingly, Jordan's number one. And there's 1,800 cards that are included in his index as it relates to like his player market cap. And his total market cap is 811 million.

00:59:45.29
Ryan - GemRate
And just ah two other quick notes, I'll say is LeBron has 1,100 cards and a $280 million dollars market cap. So less than a third, or about or sorry, about a third of what Jordan is. And Kobe's about half of LeBron.

00:59:56.51
Ryan - GemRate
He's got about 1,050 cards in there and $150 million market cap.

01:00:02.12
Russell Gibson
Yep.

01:00:02.29
Ryan - GemRate
Curry has 267 cards in there, which is not doing justice to the Curry market in the sense of like Curry has so many cards that have mattered over the last 12 years that probably are still you know working their way towards that list, but maybe not as high profile.

01:00:17.76
Ryan - GemRate
But his market cap is only 76 million. So only he only has a quarter of the cards on that list as it relates to like, he only has 250 cards that are in the card letter index for his total player market cap. And as a result, his market cap is 76 million, which is half of Kobe's. And I think you'd get a lot of people who would argue that like, you know, Steph may be a longer term, more collectible player than Kobe in many ways, just for what he's meant for this generation, as people think about like, what he's done for the game and the role. And honestly, Steph's probably gonna have a pretty relevant career after he plays.

01:00:45.44
Ryan - GemRate
just from like what he's done in the market and thinks he's are sort of continuing to pursue, are going to pursue.

01:00:50.53
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

01:00:50.73
Ryan - GemRate
Luca, the last thing I'll say is Luca's at 65 million. So like, if you think about it, like Steph's resume compared to Luca's, it's just very interesting. Luca has 730 cards on that index and a $64 million dollars market cap.

01:01:02.19
Ryan - GemRate
And so why I say that is Luca's almost like neck and neck with Steph there. And I think most people would tell you, like, there's a lot of work Luca's got ahead of him to even sort of, you know, sniff what Steph has done, right?

01:01:11.52
Russell Gibson
Adam would agree with you. Yeah. Yeah.

01:01:14.42
Ryan - GemRate
And so, I just think it's important to think about like not just individual cards, who learns what are their price, but think about supply. I'm biased, obviously, because i I have a tool built around helping people understand supply, but I don't think I'm biased to a fault in the sense of like I think it matters. Part of the reason I spent the last four years working on this full-time is you can't just have prices without thinking about how many of these cards exist or how many of these cards, what could supply look like if this player became increasingly more relevant, and what could that do for pricing, positive and negative? And so MarketCap just helped paint that picture of like how collectible is that player as a whole and how is their their momentum looking over time?

01:01:48.94
Ryan - GemRate
And like the last thing I'll say with Steph is like, Jokic isn't anywhere on this list.

01:01:48.99
Russell Gibson
yeah

01:01:52.81
Ryan - GemRate
He's like so much further down, he's 10 million, right? And so like he's so small just to sort of like close the loop on and circle back on what we were saying earlier of like he's just a whole different level away from all these other players we just talked about.

01:02:05.68
Ryan - GemRate
Yet the guys won three MVPs in the last four years. A title is the favorite to win the fourth MVP and like it's not even

01:02:11.90
Russell Gibson
Yeah. Yeah,

01:02:13.64
Ryan - GemRate
remotely close to these other players we talked about.

01:02:15.39
Russell Gibson
yeah yeah. All right, I feel like you, that last minute, I'm gonna like make a ah short out of that. I just feel like in that last minute, you just summarize it absolutely perfectly.

01:02:28.07
Russell Gibson
So thank you so much. I feel like almost like the light bulb like switched on then for me then. So that's beautiful. Yeah, I think this page is the best page to look at to have sort of help get your head around this. um where at the We're at the one hour time, mate.

01:02:40.16
Ryan - GemRate
Good, good.

01:02:42.84
Russell Gibson
So why don't we finish off with some love for your cavaliers because Let's do the anti ESPN and let's talk about the real deal that's happening at the moment. All right. Cavalier's a 24 and four.

01:02:55.02
Russell Gibson
Is that right?

01:02:56.37
Ryan - GemRate
They're now, so they're now 27 of four and they've won six in a row.

01:02:58.80
Russell Gibson
27 and four. Right.

01:03:01.78
Ryan - GemRate
They,

01:03:01.85
Russell Gibson
Why are they so successful?

01:03:05.16
Ryan - GemRate
very different style of play. And, you know, so Kenny Atkinson's come in and just like, you know, he brought in a lot of that Golden State sort of, you know, that sort of mojo in the sense of just like they moved the ball a around a lot.

01:03:16.12
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

01:03:16.32
Ryan - GemRate
They have held on to, fortunately, a lot of the JB Vicker staff, sort of like defensive mentality that had been built in the last few years. So there's they're strong on both ends of the court ultimately is why it matters.

01:03:25.56
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

01:03:26.48
Ryan - GemRate
And they have four players who are, you know, ah Jared Allen probably sort of the most debatable there, but like, you know, can sort of. I don't want anyone else to take over a game, but matter in the sense of like they can sort of step up when they need to.

01:03:38.12
Ryan - GemRate
And Darius Garland has sort of revisited what he looked like three years ago, which has been massively important.

01:03:38.60
Russell Gibson
Yeah. Yeah.

01:03:43.23
Ryan - GemRate
Evan Mobley has sort of taken a next step, which has been important.

01:03:45.41
Russell Gibson
yeah

01:03:45.97
Ryan - GemRate
And Donovan Mitchell is not trying to prove himself. Donovan Mitchell last year was trying to prove himself as he was sort of having a lot of discussion around like where he was going to go and how much he was going to get paid. And so they're all sort of like, I'm Caviatting or cautioning this with like it's still early obviously in the season in the sense of like we're just a third of the way through And they have the easiest strength of schedule this far But they look like a completely different team which has been fascinating to see and they're much more enjoyable to watch as somebody who is a Cleveland Homer and cares about this stuff So they're just they they're doing a lot of the right things.

01:04:14.04
Russell Gibson
Yeah. Yeah.

01:04:15.62
Ryan - GemRate
They also have a lot of depth You know, they have players coming off the bench or I was making that joke about the tie Jerome stuff But he when he plays when somebody's out and he has to step in he looks great, you know, and they've got guys like levert they've got guys

01:04:25.44
Russell Gibson
He's a professional basketball player. Yeah.

01:04:27.81
Ryan - GemRate
Yeah, the guys like Lavert and Strews and things like that that can step up.

01:04:28.03
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

01:04:30.53
Ryan - GemRate
So anyways, they're just doing a lot of the right things. It'll be interesting to see, right now I feel like the NBA is very similar to last year in the sense of like, there's no, you know, Boston obviously sort of coasted through the playoffs last year and sort of emerged as like the outstanding team.

01:04:45.24
Ryan - GemRate
And, you know, when they have Porzingis at full strength, I think they're still the team to beat, but right now I still feel like there's a lot of programs. I think people, obviously when Chet comes back to Thunder is going to have to continue to sort of like,

01:04:54.92
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

01:04:55.66
Ryan - GemRate
You know, they're doing well and they're going to continue to do well. And Chet's sort of another one of these enigmas as it relates to like what they're capable of doing and where he might go in the future. But it's but fun to see. And I just, I like the idea of finally shifting from like, yeah, the Cavs are whatever, they're an easy second round exit to maybe they can actually do something and create, you know, do some damage in the playoffs, which has been fun to see.

01:05:11.47
Russell Gibson
Yeah. Yeah. Look, so my observation of the calves is that they take advantage of mismatches at the appropriate times. And I think that's something that is a little bit understated in the NBA. And when you've got four guys in your starting lineups that can take advantage of a mismatch, actually it makes production of points like consistent and you know, relatively easy. So I think that's one thing you spoke about the defensive part. I think their frontline is defensively excellent. And I think their backcourt is okay at defending, but

01:05:47.53
Russell Gibson
You don't have to be outstanding when you've got two guys like cleaning up the mess like what they've got. And I think that's a little bit underrated. um you so You touched on OKC. To me, do you know what's actually scary about OKC is that they're injured.

01:06:01.05
Russell Gibson
They're young and they still have, what, 30 more first round draft picks coming in.

01:06:02.84
Ryan - GemRate
and

01:06:05.83
Ryan - GemRate
I know, I know, terrifying.

01:06:06.11
Russell Gibson
like

01:06:08.74
Russell Gibson
ah To me, that's like something that's that narrative hasn't really been touched on enough. but where What are they going to be like in two more years?

01:06:17.33
Ryan - GemRate
Well, yeah, I mean, that's what's going to be so interesting, is that they almost have, you know, they might be paralyzed with so many options in this day stage, which is like,

01:06:26.15
Russell Gibson
Yeah, with too many assets. That's right. Yeah.

01:06:28.27
Ryan - GemRate
right and so it you know and They've been very conservative as it relates to using those assets.

01:06:35.85
Ryan - GemRate
It's going to be something to watch obviously, but just in general, the chemistry matters, which is why it's tricky.

01:06:35.84
Russell Gibson
Something.

01:06:38.82
Russell Gibson
They got to pull the trigger on something. Yeah. Yeah.

01:06:42.91
Ryan - GemRate
right you can You can upgrade talent, but that might come at the expense of chemistry. and That's one of the things I didn't touch up with the Cavs that I think helps.

01:06:47.08
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

01:06:49.41
Ryan - GemRate
In general, like i for example, Celtics are awesome. I do not think that's a team that has a great Chemistry and energy like I don't ever watch itself does it be like yeah, Jalen Brown and Tatum love playing together like they look like they're vibing in a way that you expect to see where like Stefan Clay did years ago and like I could see okay see sort of like being wise about like maybe we'll use these assets to sort of extend our timetable or the duration of what we're doing here as opposed to like let's bring in another tier one player who might go like a Jimmy Butler or something like that ah Jimmy Butler maybe arguably and obviously

01:07:06.93
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

01:07:20.06
Russell Gibson
Yeah, that would be bad. I think Butler would not be good for the chemistry. Yeah.

01:07:23.78
Ryan - GemRate
Agreed. so so But they're fascinating.

01:07:24.68
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

01:07:25.22
Ryan - GemRate
I love the idea of this team though having all those assets. and you know It's much more of the modern MBA of just like this analytics-driven world.

01:07:28.12
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

01:07:32.42
Ryan - GemRate
So they're they're really interesting.

01:07:32.56
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

01:07:33.83
Ryan - GemRate
But just like adding hard Isaiah Hardenstein and Caruso was interesting. But like that's a big move for them.

01:07:38.30
Russell Gibson
Caruso.

01:07:39.61
Ryan - GemRate
right And that's not a massive move as we think about it.

01:07:39.93
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

01:07:43.19
Russell Gibson
Yeah. All right, mate. Final thought. What do you got for us?

01:07:48.25
Ryan - GemRate
nothing It's always a pleasure. I appreciate it. I love going deep on this stuff.

01:07:49.93
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

01:07:51.13
Ryan - GemRate
you know I apologize for going so deep on some of this stuff, but I'm passionate about it. and It's still early in where I want to take generate. And I do want to be able to answer that question you asked about like things like the market cap more definitively in the future.

01:08:03.42
Ryan - GemRate
So, you know, I would just say like, if people have feedback, I'm always open to it.

01:08:04.20
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

01:08:07.01
Ryan - GemRate
You know, we're still early in sort of what the journey that we're on with generate and where we want to take it. Um, but I always enjoy the conversation. I love going deep on hoops and I just appreciate the opportunity to jump in here and, you know, weigh in a few of these topics.

01:08:14.68
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

01:08:18.49
Ryan - GemRate
And I always appreciate just the different angles you take in the stories that we're telling here.

01:08:23.30
Russell Gibson
Thanks, man. Look, I'm so glad to see you too. And it has been a minute since we've caught up and I don't want to put public pressure on you, but I will be in the States next year. So hopefully we can um cross paths again.

01:08:34.10
Ryan - GemRate
Love it.

01:08:34.62
Russell Gibson
That'll be awesome, man.

01:08:35.30
Ryan - GemRate
ah Well, it's my my turn to treat for the game.

01:08:35.45
Russell Gibson
Yeah.

01:08:38.10
Ryan - GemRate
you You took me to the last one, so I'm buying when we when we make that happen.

01:08:39.54
Russell Gibson
All right, man. That sounds good. Thank you everyone for listening today and we'll catch you all soon.

01:08:44.93
Ryan - GemRate
All right.

01:08:47.97
Russell Gibson
Thank you so much.