Episode 264: Using data to predict Hobby trends: Ryan from @Gemrate

Gemrate’s Wild 12-Month Run, Steph Curry Prediction Nails It, Market Cap Made Simple & Mr. Wonderful Eyes the Hobby 

Ryan from Gemrate is back for his 5th appearance (first since December 2024)! 

We dive deep into: 

• The full 12-month recap: grading trends, Gemrate’s biggest achievements, and eBay sales volume explosions 
• That legendary Steph Curry prediction from episode 65 — the exact stats behind it and why it’s been scarily accurate 
• Market cap explained in plain English (no finance degree required) so every collector can actually use it 
• A brand-new Gemrate feature that’s changing how collectors build and track their PCs

Link to live sales trends: https://www.gemrate.com/sales-trends  

Plus we touch on Kevin O’Leary (Mr. Wonderful) stepping into the card world and what it could mean for the hobby. 

Link to live sales trends: https://www.gemrate.com/sales-trends

Transcript

Welcome everybody to this week's show.
 0:2424 seconds This is the You can't comp this MBA trading card podcast. I am your host Russell Gibson and this week we are joined by Ryan from Gemrate. Ryan,
 0:3535 seconds welcome to the show. How are you today?
 0:3737 seconds Doing well. Thank you for having me back. It's been far too long. Always It has absolutely been too long. We're just talking about that off air. It's actually been more than 12 months now.
 0:4646 seconds So, we need to um maybe we should book in the next episode like straight away after this for 12 months, you know. Probably not a bad idea.
 0:5555 seconds Uh we've got a time zone difference going on here. So, what day and what time is it over there?
 1:001 minute we are Monday, March 16th at 7:30 p.m. Yeah.
 1:041 minute, 4 seconds. Yeah. This is the 17th at 10:25 a.m. over. It's like um a useless piece of hobby information, isn't it?
 1:121 minute, 12 seconds It's all right. Just showing what we have to do to make this work. All righty. So, in the run sheet today,
 1:181 minute, 18 seconds we've got a whole bunch of stuff. We're going to talk about obviously gem rate.
 1:211 minute, 21 seconds We’re going to talk about market cap because this is something we've talked about before, but I feel like we didn't explain it well
 1:281 minute, 28 seconds’ enough last time. So, this time I really want to like get you to teach us all about that. Uh we're going to go through some of the new features that you've
 1:371 minute, 37 seconds built into Generate. We're going to talk about Wema just because that's my current fascination and your your Cleveland Cavaliers. That's your
 1:441 minute, 44 seconds hometown team. We were going to do a Genesis story, but I think the easiest thing to do for everyone and also to save a little bit of time today. If you'd like to hear Ryan's Genesis story,
 1:541 minute, 54 seconds which is actually very interesting, go back and listen to episode 65 because that's the first time that you actually came on to the pod and uh gave us your time very generously.
 2:042 minutes, 4 seconds Let’s talk about the last 12 months of Gem Rate. What have been your successes?
 2:102 minutes, 10 seconds What have been your challenges? What's been going on? Yeah,
 2:142 minutes, 14 seconds I think um just big picture like we've been doing the grading stuff now for you know just sort of keeping everybody up to speed on hobby trends as it relates
 2:232 minutes, 23 seconds to grading activity for the last I know we've almost been doing it for five full years now uh and last year was more the same. You know obviously the big news towards the end of the year was the
 2:312 minutes, 31 seconds Becket acquisition uh and sort of SGC falling off of people's options or sort of you know outside of vintage baseball.
 2:392 minutes, 39 seconds They’re not really doing much on that front anymore. So, a lot of the hobby news was oriented around PSA. Um, and we were just sort of keeping people up to
 2:472 minutes, 47 seconds speed on that. And do you want to pass comment on the acquisition of Beckett and SGC by PSA? I Yeah, I mean it's um, you know,
 2:552 minutes, 55 seconds obviously people get frustrated because there's a lack of options out there. It seems like I don't know if it's because they got scared because of all the noise that was happening shortly after the
 3:023 minutes, 2 seconds acquisition and sort of legal uh hurdles that started to sort of maybe become a potential threat but the reality of it is it seems now that they're
 3:103 minutes, 10 seconds investing in Beckett or at least sort of painting that picture they're going to invest in Beckett. So if they invested in Becket that's a good thing you know if Beckett would have become would
 3:173 minutes, 17 seconds have been scooped up by some private equity firm or something like that they would have just sort of been sucking cash out of it and not really reinvesting. And so there's a world
 3:233 minutes, 23 seconds where PSA, you know, invests in Beckett and sort of makes it a viable brand and and sort of reshapes what they look like because they have not been, you know, um
 3:323 minutes, 32 seconds there’s not been a lot of energy put behind it. They've just been really restricted.
 3:363 minutes, 36 seconds. The investment you're referring to is they're apparently putting more stuff on. They're training this staff up more and apparently also they're trying to
 3:433 minutes, 43 seconds improve their backend processes which I think has been a general criticism of Beckett for a long time is that they've been using old redundant systems and not even
 3:523 minutes, 52 seconds using a computer system allegedly you know like I don't know how true that is but yeah that's exactly right I mean they're still doing a lot of stuff by paper you
 4:004 minutes know there's just they've never really scaled and they've never really been interested they haven't been incentivized to scale so they didn't do it so you know the idea that PSA can take some of the learnings that they
 4:084 minutes, 8 seconds applied when they were taken private when Natt Turner and his group took over that they could apply some sort of smaller scale version of that to Becca is a is a positive for the hobby just if
 4:164 minutes, 16 seconds they started taking images you know if they improved the order tracking if they gave you know just made it a lot more streamlined and seamless that would be really nice um
 4:254 minutes, 25 seconds you know but in general too increasing the presence of Becket telling more stories about Becket you know they've been really limited there so anyways I think it's positive I also think that
 4:334 minutes, 33 seconds Becket has some other assets that are interesting from the media standpoint but it was it's good if Becket doesn't go away if Becket goes away and sort of people are forced really just, you know,
 4:414 minutes, 41 seconds or continue to be limited with their options. People are frustrated by PSA because they are sort of the liquidity engine for a lot of the hobby. When you can't grade your cards and get them back
 4:494 minutes, 49 seconds quickly, your money is sort of stuck in limbo and you can't grade new releases, you know,
 4:544 minutes, 54 seconds pools from from breaks or from, you know, wax that you're opening. And so that limits people and that makes them pretty frustrating. It's just not the
 5:015 minutes, 1 second prices have gone up. So I think people are excited for there to be options. I think people would love to see PSA just continue to invest in hiring more and
 5:105 minutes, 10 seconds you know being more consistent and speeding their turnaround times up.
 5:135 minutes, 13 seconds They’ve done a lot of other stuff which is nice with eBay integrations and stuff like that but its still people are frustrated. You know their core users not really benefiting from it a lot. The power users are benefiting to a degree.
 5:235 minutes, 23 seconds I think the price going up is the right thing to do. I think it Yeah. Because I think if you increase the price on specifically PSA grading,
 5:345 minutes, 34 seconds people are less likely to send in smaller cards that have lesser value.
 5:385 minutes, 38 seconds and if you want to use the word impact on the hobby. MH.
 5:435 minutes, 43 seconds Then I also think that makes other grading companies more viable. So for example, what I mean by that is you'll send your cheaper cards to SGC or you'll send them to Beckett and then there's
 5:525 minutes, 52 seconds some financial equation where that sort of works out for everybody and then hopefully also too that would reduce the
 5:595 minutes, 59 seconds input that's being sent to PSA and then reduce the weight the turnaround time.
 6:036 minutes, 3 seconds But that never seems to be well received by collectors. All they see is just another price hike and and that's kind of it. Yeah.
 6:116 minutes, 11 seconds. Yeah, I mean it long term it's good for them to sort of have fewer, you know, marginal cards being graded and even like I think you talked about it
 6:196 minutes, 19 seconds recently, but their posts are getting better. I talked to the PSA team about this a week or two ago about I love that they're starting to bring more transparency about where there's, you
 6:276 minutes, 27 seconds know, what people are missing when they're grading cards. Like that's good.
 6:296 minutes, 29 seconds That’s the type of education the hobby needs. This is the stuff we need 100%. Why?
 6:336 minutes, 33 seconds, I could not agree more. And they've actually just released another one two we did a highlight of that post.
 6:386 minutes, 38 seconds I think it was a week ago. There was another one out just two days ago which I think is like this is the stuff we need and essentially, they're the gurus of this particular field. Why aren't they leading that area? Yeah,
 6:506 minutes, 50 seconds totally. And you know they're finally sort of I think for a long time they were nervous that there was you know just um
 6:576 minutes, 57 seconds there was a little bit of a bubble I think for people internally. I think they were sort of nervous that if the demand would pull back how quickly it would impact them. And now I think they
 7:067 minutes, 6 seconds understand that they have a backlog that's pretty significant. And so they're willing to sort of be more forward, but they should have always been doing this or at least recently
 7:137 minutes, 13 seconds been doing this. I mean, more recently than sorry, they should have extended it further back, you know, when things started to pick up on their end. And I
 7:207 minutes, 20 seconds don’t know what sort of made the um you know, the the alarm go off there, but they the fact that they're bringing that to the market is really
 7:287 minutes, 28 seconds useful. And so I hope they lean into that and continue to do so. And it seems like they're going, but that's really positive. So anyways, there's the PSA stuff. I agree the slowdown is a net
 7:367 minutes, 36 seconds positive in sort of the long run, but people are frustrated and so they're going to have to deal with the backlash.
 7:427 minutes, 42 seconds So we've segued so hard now. We're actually talking about you and your your successes. Where have you what have you done the last 12 months that you want to share with us?
 7:517 minutes, 51 seconds, I mean honestly we've been heads down on the most interesting thing we've done is probably start to bring transaction data into the gem rate world. We're not trying to become like a pricing engine or anything like that,
 8:018 minutes, 1 second but we are sort of just trying to have a different point of view on ways to make use of data that's pretty commonly referenced in the hobby, but sort of looking at it through a different lens.
 8:088 minutes, 8 seconds And so this is very similar to the market cap concept, but we brought to we brought to market a report that we're just doing monthly and some data that's on the generate site. I don't really
 8:168 minutes, 16 seconds promote it that actively yet because I haven't figured out this exact story I want to tell, but we're promoting summary data of transactions on eBay by
 8:248 minutes, 24 seconds players each month. And the idea is to sort of help people bring a frame of reference to market of how much money is being spent on a given player in a given
 8:328 minutes, 32 seconds period of time. You know, there's 2025 data there. There's a breakdown by month there. We have 2026 data on site now.
 8:388 minutes, 38 seconds But the idea is again like how how do you get a sense for how much money is being spent on and you have it up on screen here, but our late our Instagram post in January was showing how much
 8:468 minutes, 46 seconds money is being spent on somebody like show Otani versus Jordan versus a Drake May who is thriving, right? And the idea is right now most people comp things to
 8:548 minutes, 54 seconds sort of you know it's really like active players like they're going to compare uh you know Luca and Tatum. They're going to compare Flag and Wemb. They're going
 9:029 minutes, 2 seconds to compare compare these different these different players of sort of the same cut. And this is more of a what if we started to extend it across generations.
 9:109 minutes, 10 seconds What if we were to compare somebody like in baseball you know you're comparing like Otani versus Ken Griffy Jr. versus Mickey Mantle. In basketball, it's like comparing somebody like,
 9:209 minutes, 20 seconds you know, Kareem verse, you know, Jordan verse LeBron verse Luca, you know,
 9:269 minutes, 26 seconds versus women. It's like giving people a different frame of reference and letting people how much money know how much money is being spent. And why that matters is in totality it gives you a sense for just like how how collectible is this player, which really matters.
 9:369 minutes, 36 seconds That’s there's not a lot of great data points out there. There some of the companies like card ladder and stuff like that do great work with indices.
 9:429 minutes, 42 seconds Those are really useful to help you understand like momentum behind a player. and they also do; I referenced it a year and a half ago. The market cap data on their site's really valuable,
 9:519 minutes, 51 seconds but this is just a little bit of a different take on it. And so it's just sort of to add value behind that. And so we brought that to market at the end of last year. It's been well received, but I
 10:0010 minutes need to push it a bit harder in the sense of just making people aware of not only are we publishing and not only can you see the people that show up in our Instagram post, but we have 5,000
 10:0910 minutes, 9 seconds players on our website and you can go through and look at all the basketball players and it allows you to do what you know things that are interesting like comparing how much money is spent on you
 10:1710 minutes, 17 seconds know I don't know just like modern-day you know like Khan CA nipple versus who do people compare them to that's an old-timer and like
 10:2410 minutes, 24 seconds can I interrupt you there for a second please ju just a second ago you said it's so important. Can you just explain
 10:3110 minutes, 31 seconds that because I think sometimes um you forget for the mere mortals for people who have not heard Ryan
 10:3910 minutes, 39 seconds speak before. This guy is like uber intelligent. So Ryan, break it down for someone like myself who doesn't understand why this is so important.
 10:4510 minutes, 45 second sum just explain that to us. Yeah. And then the second thing is can we do a walk through? So, we'll go to your website, you tell me what to click on,
 10:5210 minutes, 52 seconds and then we can actually do this as like a demo for people because this is the perfect um example of how we can run this through. Yeah.
 10:5810 minutes, 58 seconds, that's perfect. So, I mean, you know, uh the idea here is again it's just to sort of set the stage for how much money is being spent in the hobby
 11:0611 minutes, 6 seconds on certain players, how collectible are they? And it's the main thing that I like it for is like, for example, the Cooper flag market was has been blowing
 11:1411 minutes, 14 seconds up. And it's supposed to give people a sense for like how much money is actually being thrown at him in a given period of time because then it gets you
 11:2211 minutes, 22 seconds sense for like how much is that being spent towards some of the all-time great like more money in 2026 50% more money has been thrown at Cooper Flag than LeBron and like it doesn't necessarily
 11:3011 minutes, 30 seconds mean that you people think Cooper Flag is going to be better than LeBron but you kind of have to think about what does that mean people are baking into his pricing you know or is there sort of
 11:3911 minutes, 39 seconds are people overvaluing sort of the new Tops cards that are coming to market because they're the first year of tops coming back to the market and people are
 11:4611 minutes, 46 seconds sort of overwing that like it's 2012 Prism or something like that and so it's just sort of trying to give a sense for like if we take a step back does the
 11:5411 minutes, 54 seconds market make sense and that's what this is trying to do is sort of just let you compare and contrast players month by month across different players across across different sports and that's the
 12:0312 minutes, 3 seconds big picture of it and that's kind of like the point that we're trying to bring to market but also one of the things when we go through the
 12:1012 minutes, 10 seconds demo I'll speak to is pretty different about what we're doing Um, if you go to the top Yeah. and you go to the sales trends up top there and then you go to sports. Yep.
 12:2312 minutes, 23 seconds One of the things that's sort of most differentiated behind Oh, here we go.
 12:2912 minutes, 29 seconds One of the things that's most differentiated behind this data set is we're trying to show you the change from month to month. And what I mean by that is so if you go to January 2026 on the
 12:3712 minutes, 37 seconds and there's a monthly dollar change there. Actually, do me a Favor, Russell.
 12:4112 minutes, 41 seconds Do you mind going to the top and clicking basketball? Yeah, just filter to basketball. Can you go to monthly change? Yep. And click that. Yep. And
 12:4912 minutes, 49 seconds sort by that. And sort the other way. So it's descending. Yep. So what you'll see here, which is I think really interesting, is that okay. So right now we're sorting on the site by the amount
 12:5812 minutes, 58 seconds the amount of money that moved into a player's market in January compared to December. So it's telling you, okay, for example, if there was $5 million spent
 13:0613 minutes, 6 seconds on Jordan in December 2026, there was 7 million spent on Jordan in January of 20 I'm sorry. December 2025, there was five
 13:1513 minutes, 15 seconds million. In Deke in January 2026, there was 7 million. I'm making these numbers up, but there's a $2 million increase in Jordan in this hypothetical. What I'm
 13:2313 minutes, 23 seconds trying to do is say like here's money that sort of moved into that player because usually that comes at the expense of another player. Right now,
 13:2913 minutes, 29 seconds the market's booming, so a lot of money is actually just new money's going in, but usually it's an exchange. Usually,
 13:3513 minutes, 35 seconds people are moving out of something into something else. And so what we're trying to highlight here is if you actually look at that data there, what you see is
 13:4113 minutes, 41 seconds most the players that went up in January went down in February. And what I mean by that is like you see momentum is really impactful here. And so an example
 13:4913 minutes, 49 seconds that we're looking at is like n Kobe Bryant had a $940,000 increase in spend in January compared to the prior month.
 13:5613 minutes, 56 seconds but then in February he had a $615,000 decrease in spend. And what that usually means is it's not it's not automatic,
 14:0414 minutes, 4 seconds but the same thing happened with Steph Curry. The same thing happened with Wemba. On the flip side, players that kept going up were Khan Kipple went up,
 14:1014 minutes, 10 seconds Michael Jordan went up, Cooper Flag went up. Um, but most of the players went down. And so what you see here is a lot
 14:1714 minutes, 17 seconds of this burst or jumps in spend can be really short-lived. And so what it happens is this is a little bit of a leading indicator that prices may drop
 14:2614 minutes, 26 seconds because when even though cards may not have transacted, fewer cards are transacting in this instance. And so what that means is the next time your
 14:3314 minutes, 33 seconds card for a player that's on the decline moves to market, it's probably going to move for less unless something substantial has changed. And so the idea
 14:4014 minutes, 40 seconds with this data, this is I haven't really gone into this in detail. So I apologize if this is too high level or I don't want to say
 14:4914 minutes, 49 seconds too nuanced, but it's trying to become a little bit more of a predictive variable or predictive data set and allowing people to say like you can't necessarily there's may not be
 14:5714 minutes, 57 seconds comp for the card, but you should know that the market for that play player has turned a little less favourable. And so when it does move and you wait for that comp, you're going
 15:0515 minutes, 5 seconds to be waiting you're going to be getting less than you expect most likely. So you better off often times if you want to move it just move it before the market continues to move against where you
 15:1315 minutes, 13 seconds would like it to go. So anyways that's sort of the big picture. It's a lot it's a big comparison tool but it's also sort of trying to pro provide a frame of a frame of reference around how where money is being spent.
 15:2315 minutes, 23 seconds So can you just spell that out a little bit clearer? I'll ask you two questions and then I think this will explain itself pretty well. So for
 15:3015 minutes, 30 seconds example, if you look at Kobe Bryant um January to February, he's minus $300,000.
 15:3615 minutes, 36 seconds What does that mean to what does that data mean to you in this example?
 15:4115 minutes, 41 seconds So he's actually so he's plus 300. So he's 9 plus 940 in January minus 600 in February, right? And so that's saying that
 15:4915 minutes, 49 seconds in total this year he's up 300,000 through the first two months of the year. So net he's still up on the year compared to prior month in the last
 15:5915 minutes, 59 seconds month of in 2025. So December. But the idea here is to sort of say, oh, but the most important thing is he's the third most spend on this list when you
 16:0816 minutes, 8 seconds look at basketball and you know, so this would this would probably fire up,
 16:1216 minutes, 12 seconds you know, the LeBron crowd in a sense of like there's more money moving in and out of Kobe right now where LeBron's a little less like there's a lot the
 16:2116 minutes, 21 seconds fluctuation is not as significant or the significant or the variance is isn't as significant. And all that means to you is it's kind of like in the stock market there's beta, there's volatility. The
 16:3016 minutes, 30 seconds Kobe market's right now more volatile than the LeBron market. And net, if you look at the totals for 2026 there, 7
 16:3816 minutes, 38 seconds million has been spent on LeBron and seven million has been spent on Kobe.
 16:4016 minutes, 40 seconds But they're very two different ways that they got there. Even though the total volume has is the same. You've seen a
 16:4816 minutes, 48 seconds lot bigger swings with the Kobe market than the LeBron market. I can't explain why that's the case, but it's at least trying to tell people a little bit of a different story than in if you're
 16:5516 minutes, 55 seconds looking at in, you know, indexes on Card or something like that. It's just trying to provide a little bit more context behind it. I can't tell you the why, but it's at least like these markets don't move the exact same.
 17:0517 minutes, 5 seconds No, I'm just trying to I suppose just maybe give practical examples of what you might be able to take out this data.
 17:1017 minutes, 10 seconds and then the second question was the couple. So January he's plus 800,000.
 17:1517 minutes, 15 seconds February he's plus 292. What would that show to you or what does that mean to you in that instance?
 17:2217 minutes, 22 seconds. So with Khan I think the idea is that just people are continuing to invest, right? like he's seeing incremental, you know, from December to
 17:3017 minutes, 30 seconds January, he saw almost $900,000 more spent on him than the prior month. And then he saw another $300,000 on that
 17:3817 minutes, 38 seconds increase from January. So anyways, he's seeing continue build in his market,
 17:4417 minutes, 44 seconds which basically means, you know, it's a very favourable, it's not, this is not necessarily a surprise, but it's trying to contextualize it a little bit to say like it seems like there's some
 17:5117 minutes, 51 seconds sustained momentum as opposed to like if you would see a huge burst, like for example, VJ had a big bump in January,
 17:5817 minutes, 58 seconds but then it pulled back pretty significantly in February. VJ prices have probably adjusted or they're probably still adjusting candidly if
 18:0718 minutes, 7 seconds that’s the case because not everything's going to move immediately after the market sort of softens for him. So the idea is just to say like the con market feels pretty strong. you can probably
 18:1518 minutes, 15 seconds sort of participate there knowing that you're either going to overpay or that there's at least like a pretty active buyer market there where like the VJ market has softened and so if you're
 18:2418 minutes, 24 seconds buying there it might be a good time to take a look at them or if you're expecting to move something the idea is that like you know you may not get as favourable prices the last composite just
 18:3218 minutes, 32 seconds because the market's pulled back a little bit not as many people are looking to buy VJ cards as they were a month ago.
 18:3618 minutes, 36 seconds. So I think my feedback to you in the past is that you've been building this absolute monster, but it's like how
 18:4418 minutes, 44 seconds do you consume this data and how do you use it?
 18:4718 minutes, 47 seconds And like my feedback to you today is like this is years ahead of where you were the last time we had a chat. Like
 18:5518 minutes, 55 seconds this is like I still think you need to know what you're looking at, but in terms of like the usability of the data, like honestly congratulations to you.
 19:0419 minutes, 4 seconds Like kudos to you is what I should be saying cut this is just so much easier to look at and you know what I mean? It's easy to get your head around. It's easier to consume. Yeah.
 19:1319 minutes, 13 seconds Thank you. I appreciate that. One thing you'll like too and sorry I didn't mean to cut you off there, but I did want to get So there's your boy eager right there. He's uh he actually saw a little
 19:2219 minutes, 22 seconds bit of a decrease in in February. Um you're scrolling past him. Go back up just a little bit. He had there he is. Thank you. Yeah.
 19:2919 minutes, 29 seconds Right. So he's had you know but this is important. So, like he's had only 250k spent on him in on eBay the first two
 19:3719 minutes, 37 seconds months of the year. What this helps you do versus like Dylan Harper who's right next to him has had four times that amount. So, it starts to help you think about like what would it take for
 19:4519 minutes, 45 seconds the Egor market to start moving. It's like not that much money has been thrown at him. So, if he goes out and throws out, you know, throws up a big game out of nowhere, that market could move
 19:5319 minutes, 53 seconds pretty quickly. It's just trying to help you think about too like again how collectible has that person been, how much money has been invested in that player's market. If you go back up to
 20:0120 minutes, 1 second the top and you if you hit that sort by 2026 summary at the top and do descending there. Yep. If you hit that and scroll down. One of the things hit
 20:0920 minutes, 9 seconds it one more time please. Just so we're descending.
 20:1220 minutes, 12 seconds If one of the things I love about this is you were talking about Elijah a recently and like what you can see here is 6.8 million has been spent on Victor
 20:2020 minutes, 20 seconds through the first two months of the year. Now, if you want to go down and you want to look at a Keem, he's not that he's not as far down as you might think given how little people talk about
 20:2920 minutes, 29 seconds him in the hobby. So, he's usually around Kevin Garnett. Yes. Okay. So,
 20:3320 minutes, 33 seconds330,000 has been spent on Hakee, which again is kind of interesting in the sense of what does that mean? And what I use this to say is like, okay, same amount of money has been spent on Durk,
 20:4320 minutes, 43 seconds on Barkley, on Garnett, on Kareem, on Rodman. You know, if you think about like the all-time greats, it's really
 20:5220 minutes, 52 seconds interesting to think about like where he stands because he gets a lot of,
 20:5520 minutes, 55 seconds you know, the big guys in that generation, while there are some that get a lot of love, they do not sort of they're not as respected in the sense of like being as collectible because again,
 21:0321 minutes, 3 seconds they’re bags and so that just hasn't sort of stood the test of time for the most part. However, it's interesting to think about like who who's he compared to and then it's funny to look at like
 21:1021 minutes, 10 seconds the next the modern players and it's like looking at Kanti George is right up there. Um, you know, some of these players like Ahmed Thompson's there,
 21:1821 minutes, 18 seconds Derek Queen is there. These are players who are in the same conversation. Why I think it's interesting and funny is just to think about like, okay, there's that much money being spent into these
 21:2521 minutes, 25 seconds prospects and then you look at the Hakee market and you're like, I get it, we're not projecting that he's going to be the next Hakee, but it's just kind of funny to be like, okay, prospecting is really
 21:3421 minutes, 34 seconds meaningful. No surprise there, but like this is how it sort of takes shape. And then it's interesting to take a step back and be like, where does somebody like Hakee sit relative to some of his
 21:4221 minutes, 42 seconds all-time greats? where does he sit next to some of the emerging prospects? But it's just again providing a lens to let people sort of contextualize like hobby collectability.
 21:5221 minutes, 52 seconds Now you've touched on I want to run this card past you actually. Let's do it.
 21:5821 minutes, 58 seconds He’s 8.5 84 star currently trading at 2,000 bucks.
 22:1022 minutes, 10 seconds I think that is an absolute bargain. Total popular.
 22:1822 minutes, 18 seconds So interesting, too, because he stayed relevant by becoming, you know, he's teaching all the young guys the moves that he did so well, right? I mean, you
 22:2722 minutes, 27 seconds know, there's the footage of him teaching WBY that and stuff and he's always sort of teaching the next generation, you know, just some of his key um,
 22:3522 minutes, 35 seconds you know, key moves that he had sort of made iconic. But anyways, Ke's interesting because he's quiet. He's not as relatable, but he's obviously
 22:4322 minutes, 43 seconds incredibly meaningful in the significance of basketball.
 22:4622 minutes, 46 seconds Putting my own bias aside, how would you rate that card as a purchase?
 22:5122 minutes, 51 seconds OH man, that's hard to say on the fly. I mean, I think, look, I think that Star is still getting some energy as it relates to just like people becoming comfortable with it becoming, you know,
 23:0023 minutes real rookie cards for players or cards of significance. And so, I would say I feel like that argument is done. I feel like Star is now considered to be
 23:0823 minutes, 8 seconds the rookie card. Like I don't see which is great, right? Because I disagree. But that's the thing. That's the beauty of it. So like you feel really confident about that. I feel like
 23:1623 minutes, 16 seconds lot of people are still trying to build up tolerance.
 23:1823 minutes, 18 seconds No, I don't feel passionate for it. I just feel like objectively like you can't say that the star. Okay. So let's
 23:2523 minutes, 25 seconds just make this is how I rationalize it in my head. The Jordan rookie card, it was either Fleer, which was actually not his rookie card, but somehow people
 23:3323 minutes, 33 seconds considered it to be. And then the star which is now uh comprise is much higher than the fleer. That's where I
 23:4123 minutes, 41 seconds sort of that's how I rationalize it and that's how I sit with it. Why do you disagree?
 23:4723 minutes, 47 seconds Well, I just think not everybody's sort of on that same page yet. I think the market's still sort of figuring out how serious to take Star because there was a lot of, you know, theories around pump
 23:5623 minutes, 56 seconds and dumps and shilling and all these things that sort of emerged or as Star was sort of having its moment. You know,
 24:0124 minutes, 1 second there’s also there's just a lot of unclear agendas and Star has start started to sort of settle back in, which
 24:0824 minutes, 8 seconds I think is good, but it's had some pretty significant variance in its movement. And I think that makes people sceptical of, you know, how authentic or
 24:1624 minutes, 16 seconds organic that behaviour is. And so that said, I think people are giving it a real look these days compared to where they were compared to what they were.
 24:2324 minutes, 23 seconds But I don't know that it's by default considered anything where, you know,
 24:2724 minutes, 27 seconds people are going to lean if they push game to shove. I still think they're going to give the more iconic 86 flare a much more significant look. And the thing that, you know, we always talk
 24:3524 minutes, 35 seconds about market caps, the 86 Flare market cap is orders of magnitude larger than the 84 stars still, right? So if you go
 24:4224 minutes, 42 seconds to like, you know, okay, yes, this is great. So we're looking at PSA 9.
 24:5224 minutes, 52 seconds. So the population on that is 17,000 nearly 18.
 24:5624 minutes, 56 seconds Can you click into the PSA 10 down there? that yeah just I'm curious what that shows. Okay. Right. So if you look at the market cap for this card
 25:0325 minutes, 3 seconds it’s 1.47 million on the towards the right-hand side there for the we're looking at the 86 Hakee PSA 10 and it
 25:1225 minutes, 12 seconds says 1.47 million. Right. If you go look at one of those star cards in the highest grade which might be the BGS9 or I don't know that there's can't imagine there's a PSA 10 with the Hakee.
 25:2525 minutes, 25 seconds Let’s just see where this lands. But I'm going to guess that it's still significantly lower than the 86 players.
 25:3225 minutes, 32 seconds and my point with that is just even though the comp is higher, the total spend and the total people invested in.
 25:4025 minutes, 40 seconds Okay, let's see. So it's 219,000 for what is this? The BGS85. That's the 8.5. Yep.
 25:4625 minutes, 46 seconds Which there's 102 of it's not insignificant. So that's pretty good.
 25:4925 minutes, 49 seconds Okay. So that's interesting. um you know, but it's still it was like a third of what we're looking at for the
 25:5525 minutes, 55 seconds86 fleer in a in a PSA 10.
 26:0026 minutes So my point is that there's the market still has to move like there's an opportunity if you're my point with this whole thing is that if you're a star collector, there's room for more growth
 26:0926 minutes, 9 seconds there because the market may continue to shift and slowly move out of 86 Fleer as being the you know the default rookie card for a huge group of iconic players.
 26:1926 minutes, 19 seconds And so there's an opportunity. You know,
 26:2126 minutes, 21 seconds you’re looking at the star card that's 2,000 bucks. Yeah. It's not like a if you believe in the player and then you also believe in the set story. There's a
 26:2926 minutes, 29 seconds really good argument to say that's an interesting purchase. As usual, we've segued super hard here.
 26:3526 minutes, 35 seconds Did you want to talk about any other any other features that you've been developing the last 12 months?
 26:4126 minutes, 41 seconds Not really. I mean, we're going to launch a Chrome extension sometime in the next couple months. We'll start testing that, which I think will be really cool. Uh, I put a lot of thought
 26:4826 minutes, 48 seconds into that. I've got a great designer helping build out what I think should be a really intuitive u way for people to get more interesting information as they're sort of looking
 26:5626 minutes, 56 seconds at marketplace listings. That'll be really cool. Um,
 26:5926 minutes, 59 seconds but no, that's it. I mean, we're going to we're going to bring a lot of new thoughts to market as it relates to just like different products and different concepts this year. So, just keep
 27:0727 minutes, 7 seconds staying tuned. Follow us at social for the most part.
 27:1027 minutes, 10 seconds. Did you want to talk more about your eBay sales volume or you've ticked that off pretty good? Yeah, I think that's it. I mean, that's, you know,
 27:1827 minutes, 18 seconds it’s hard when if you haven't gotten accustomed to what we're doing there,
 27:2127 minutes, 21 seconds it’s a little hard maybe to make sense of it. And I would just say it's worth taking a look at because it's just a different perspective on it's starting to gain momentum, you know, now that
 27:2927 minutes, 29 seconds we’ve published it four or five months and people are starting to understand like what stories we're trying to tell with this data. And so, I just say give it a give it a look. It's different than
 27:3627 minutes, 36 seconds comp sales. It's different than indices or indexes, right? It's just trying to tell a little bit of a different story. And if you're somebody who looks at, you know, you want to understand
 27:4427 minutes, 44 seconds like what's the penny Hardway market look like relative to some of the other all-time rates or how much money is going into a penny compared to, you know, who's an emerging, you know,
 27:5327 minutes, 53 seconds shooting guard out there that's or point guard, whatever. You know, it's interesting just to sort of compare and contrast.
 28:0028 minutes think you need to do PSA type education post around this.
 28:0528 minutes, 5 seconds You’re right. I should and I don't. It's not because I'm lazy, although maybe that's part of it. I'm just not as good at designing social posts and so but
 28:1428 minutes, 14 seconds there is an opportunity to educate better for sure on what we're doing, why we're doing it, and I appreciate that because I don't I don't take it for granted, but I just it's a lot of work
 28:2228 minutes, 22 seconds and I don't know exactly the story I want to tell, but yes, there's an opportunity to bring more people up to speed on what we're trying to accomplish.
 28:2828 minutes, 28 seconds As a D-grade content creator, my advice would you is just sit in like do a screen grab and just sit there and just talk about it for 10 minutes.
 28:3828 minutes, 38 seconds That’s probably right. Yeah. And then all you do after that, you get the transcript from the video, put it into AI, it'll tell you the bit that you need
 28:4528 minutes, 45 seconds to do into a one-minute video, and then you just clip it down. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, don't sort of overthink it. Just kind of just do it,
 28:5228 minutes, 52 second’s man. Because honestly, like this stuff is so valuable, and what you're doing,
 28:5628 minutes, 56 seconds like so many people could and would benefit from it. Do you know what I mean? But I think like even for myself, you know, my hurdle
 29:0329 minutes, 3 seconds with your product is just how do I use it, you know? Right. Yeah.
 29:0729 minutes, 7 seconds Right. It's I don't I don't think you realize how good the stuff you do is. It's just like, you know, like how like what do you do?
 29:1629 minutes, 16 seconds.
 29:1729 minutes, 17 second sum this is the next thing we've got in your in the run sheet is the sales trend. Did you want to talk about this a bit more or have we we've done that?
 29:2429 minutes, 24 seconds No, I think we're okay there. I think that's sort of the gist of what I wanted to sort of just, you know, bring people up to speed on some interesting data that we're taking a look at. All right, great. So the next thing,
 29:3229 minutes, 32 seconds this is what I wanted to talk to you about. Uh on your previous appearances on the show, you were saying that Steph Curry
 29:4029 minutes, 40 seconds is undervalued and you used your own data to,
 29:4429 minutes, 44 seconds you know, to predict that, I suppose. So can you please walk us through and use whichever tools that you want? You tell me what to go to. I'll bring it up onto
 29:5329 minutes, 53 seconds the screen. Um how did you know that Steph Curry was undervalued? And because you've called this so accurately, it's almost like Nostradamus type stuff.
 30:0530 minutes, 5 seconds Well, my thesis on Steph, if you want to go to card ladder and go to their players tab, this is what we were doing at that
 30:1230 minutes, 12 seconds’ time. Um, you know, and their players tab does a nice job of sort of doing something similar to what I'm doing with the eBay data. It's a different way of
 30:2030 minutes, 20 seconds doing it, but they're trying to roll up a bunch of activity for a player so you know how much money has been invested in his cards over time. I'm looking at eBay
 30:2830 minutes, 28 seconds data for a certain period of time. I'm just looking at monthly data or yearly data. They're saying all the cards of all, you know, all the
 30:3630 minutes, 36 seconds cards in the catalo that we are following on card ladder that are verified, which varies depending on players. Like Jordan has thousands of cards, WBY has hundreds of cards, but
 30:4530 minutes, 45 seconds ultimately there's a select selection of cards that they evaluate and they're just rolling them up and saying, "Here's what all the prices are for these cards across the different grades for a
 30:5330 minutes, 53 seconds player." And what they do is it just helps you know like with Steph Curry when we talked about this in 2024 the Steph Curry market cap was like 80
 31:0131 minutes, 1 second million and the reason I brought it up was and I can't do it say anything about the market cap there? Oh go back to the go back one screen
 31:1031 minutes, 10 seconds and if you go okay yes so if you see the total market cap there so Steph Mark Steph's market cap is now 188 million on card ladder. Yep.
 31:1631 minutes, 16 seconds or 187 million. When we had that conversation in 2024, it was 80 million.
 31:2031 minutes, 20 seconds and the reason I brought it up was Luca was also about 80 million. And my point was Steph had already proven himself. He had already won that championship. He'd
 31:2931 minutes, 29 seconds already gotten his MVP. You know, the thing that was sort of keeping him from that elite, you know, all-time top 10 list, was now secured. And my point with
 31:3731 minutes, 37 seconds him is just that he's got a very fragmented unusual market because in 2009, people weren't collecting the same
 31:4331 minutes, 43 seconds way they were they are today. And also cards weren't being produced the same where same way they are today. And so it's not as obvious to know where to put
 31:5231 minutes, 52 seconds your money if you're a Steph lover if you're coming into the market fresh from the 2020 boom verse some of the
 31:5931 minutes, 59 seconds more, you know, recent players like a Luca or a Tatum or even a Jokic at this stage. And so my theory was just that the market's still trying to figure
 32:0832 minutes, 8 seconds out how to value stuff and that they were sort of giving him a little bit too much I don't know they take him for granted where he sits relative to other players and he's got a great catalo of
 32:1732 minutes, 17 seconds cards but you have to sort of find out those cards that are worth investing in that aren't necessarily all his rookie cards and we started to see that with a
 32:2432 minutes, 24 seconds lot of his you know a lot of his um case hits have obviously moved but a lot of the cases have moved in general but the step ones have moved a disproportionate rate
 32:3232 minutes, 32 seconds his gold kabooms to 10 have been doing very well lately. Yeah,
 32:3632 minutes, 36 seconds for sure. Yeah, those things I mean people are now using those as sort of like high standing cards of significance for
 32:4432 minutes, 44 seconds you know people like Kim, LeBron, Kobe if they exist, right? And so those cards have moved pretty again disproportionately relative to it. But
 32:5232 minutes, 52 seconds the thing I was looking at the stats to compare and not to prove that I was right but just to see how interesting it was that it played out was that Curry market's up 121% since we had that
 33:0033 minutes conversation. And that's pretty that's pretty meaningful. And the way that I sort of can contextualize that is basketball index as a high as a whole
 33:0833 minutes, 8 seconds was up 52%. So Curry's up more than two times the basketball index. The high-end markets up 63% according to car ladder over that time. And then to qualify it,
 33:1833 minutes, 18 seconds LeBron’s up 41%, Luca's up 15% and Kobe's up 106%. I don't remember if I said Jordan, but Jordan's up 93%. So
 33:2633 minutes, 26 seconds anyways, Curry's grown the most out of all those players and those are all C players with big established followings and I think people just came to realize
 33:3433 minutes, 34 seconds over the last couple years that like the Curry market's undervalued and we can start to put a little bit more weight into some of his Panini era cards or you
 33:4233 minutes, 42 seconds know again they started to some of his top stuff has started has moved quite a bit as well but that was sort of the thesis. is just there's the supply is not as obvious as far as where
 33:5133 minutes, 51 seconds to invest if you're a Steph believer and the sort of the long-term story and sort of the potential appreciation and just again the fact that he's so iconic but
 34:0034 minutes also so relatable is what makes him stand out relative to some of the other players we've talked about in the past.
 34:0434 minutes, 4 seconds So that was my thesis there. And the tool that we're using though again that I think is helpful to tell the story is the card ladder player values of market
 34:1234 minutes, 12 seconds caps because that is a very significant and unique view of how much money is invested in a player. And again, it's not perfect, but as far as data goes,
 34:2034 minutes, 20 seconds it’s about as good as it gets for a lot of these stories we're trying to tell. So it's really interesting, you know,
 34:2534 minutes, 25 seconds and I think like you have WBY up on the screen for example and like if you look at WBY
 34:3334 minutes, 33 seconds which is also hilarious by the way this would be a good example to look at WBY versus Kareem through this I mean sorry versus Hakee. So like the WBY markets 25 million. But here's the challenge. The
 34:4234 minutes, 42 seconds card ladder market cap for this is very limited. They only track 39 cards. For Steph they track 230. For Jordan they track thousands. Right. This is where the card letter market
 34:5034 minutes, 50 seconds. Yeah. And even putting people into card letter the actual ladder itself like there are some really big player
 34:5834 minutes, 58 seconds emissions let alone card emissions. So yeah, you're right. There are some flaws with this data. Yeah.
 35:0235 minutes, 2 seconds Like the fact that Hakee has 75 cards where WBY only has, you know, 39. It just shows you that they're still building some of this stuff up. It's not
 35:1035 minutes, 10 seconds focus for them right now and that's fine. We have limited resources. Uh but it's just helping you understand the story of again there's five more there's
 35:1835 minutes, 18 seconds5x the amount of money in WBY verse Hakee right and like doesn't necessarily mean that that's wrong but it just sort of trying to help you is WBY does WBY
 35:2735 minutes, 27 seconds have to be and that's again a fraction of the actual cards that exist in the WBY market. probably much more like 50 or 75 million that's
 35:3435 minutes, 34 seconds actually invested in Wiki if this were sort of be were brought up to speed. And so does that mean that he's going to be a 20x player over Hakee? I don't know.
 35:4235 minutes, 42 seconds but that's sort of what the market's suggesting to some degree or at least you don't have to be a better player,
 35:4735 minutes, 47 seconds but you have to be relevant in a way that's significantly more u meaningful and then you know just the basketball
 35:5535 minutes, 55 seconds’ story. And so you know potentially Webby could be that. But again, that's just saying like there's a lot priced into players markets that are newer or
 36:0236 minutes, 2 seconds emerging or prospects and you really need to think about like what has to happen for this to actually hold or you're going to be holding the bag at the end of the day.
 36:0936 minutes, 9 seconds, 100%. I think the last 12 months or so, that's where my head has definitely gone. It's like you've got X
 36:1736 minutes, 17 seconds amount of dollars and you can spend it on whatever you want and whatever makes you happy. And so I'm not trying to convince people to buy into breaks or
 36:2436 minutes, 24 seconds not buy into brakes, but I think that's also where my head is going. It's like,
 36:2736 minutes, 27 seconds well, should I be spending my money on the newest rookie that's coming out when we've seen time and time again the graph goes up, the graph goes down? Like it's MH.
 36:3736 minutes, 37 seconds Like, how many times do we need to see that data set before we sort of, you know, fix that problem or, you know,
 36:4336 minutes, 43 seconds address that issue? Like, whichever way you want to say it. And then the thing that I think particularly into your Steph Curry prediction, I think my
 36:5136 minutes, 51 seconds personal one was You-kick and Yoicks has spiked so hard since I've been looking to buy a boggish You-kick card and I just
 36:5936 minutes, 59 seconds feel that in my particular situation, I just missed that train and now I feel like I can't hop on. Do you know what I mean? And so MH.
 37:0737 minutes, 7 seconds that’s this is where my heads at. So my secondary or my follow-up question to you is so I've got the screen sorted out. I've filtered it down to
 37:1537 minutes, 15 seconds basketball. Um, it's sorted by total market cap. Can you just walk us through a couple of examples here of if you look at these numbers, do you say, "Okay,
 37:2537 minutes, 25 seconds this is under, this is over." How do you use that data to guide yourself by market cap right now? I mean, I think it's interesting.
 37:3337 minutes, 33 seconds Again, this is sort of where I'm just like looking at somebody like um, okay, this is a good We can't really do Wiki because his catalo is just not the
 37:4137 minutes, 41 seconds same. Edwards is maybe a little bit better. Like, you know, I like to look at like Edwards versus um you know, like Shay versus Edwards is actually pretty
 37:4937 minutes, 49 seconds interesting. So, we're looking right now at Shay has 31 million according to the card ladder in his market cap. Yeah.
 37:5637 minutes, 56 seconds You know, from his 163 cards that are captured. Again, that's just a fraction of the Shay market. Edwards has 216.
 38:0238 minutes, 2 seconds Obviously, Shay should in theory have more cards than Edwards because he was, he was a rookie two years prior. But point being is the AdWords market is at
 38:1138 minutes, 11 seconds23 million and the Sha markets at 31 million. And the question is again like who do you think is ultimately going to become like maybe potentially the face
 38:1938 minutes, 19 seconds of basketball or already is the face of basketball through uh the basketball lens purely? Shay has outperformed. But from like a charisma standpoint, there's
 38:2738 minutes, 27 seconds an argument that Edwards is sort of like shaping up to be the face of the league.
 38:3038 minutes, 30 seconds And so it's interesting to think about like you know what does Edwards need to do? If Edwards were to win a championship year, does he move up to the Sha level? does he start to move,
 38:3838 minutes, 38 seconds you know, does his market go up by 40%
 38:4138 minutes, 41 seconds or more than that? Probably more than that realistically. But it's again trying to help you understand like how collectible was a player and what should you expect if certain things
 38:4938 minutes, 49 seconds happen for a player or don't happen for a player like if Edward, you know, Luca is a perfect example. Luca has not moved in the past year and a half since we last talked about it, right? Luca is
 38:5838 minutes, 58 seconds still around 80 million or something like that. Lucas at 80 million. Yeah.
 39:0139 minutes, 1 seconds he's still roughly the same as what he was I don't know a year and a half ago. And that's actually he moved to the Lakers since
 39:0839 minutes, 8 seconds I actually think there's an argument to be made. He's actually gone down because if you think about it, more cards would have been added to his collection.
 39:1739 minutes, 17 seconds That’s true. Yeah, that's true. They probably have and some of his really big RPA in the last 12 months have actually crashed pretty hard. Um I might actually have
 39:2539 minutes, 25 seconds bookmarked this particular post because it was a it was like a postcode
 39:3239 minutes, 32 seconds here we go. the worst co bias and Luca was in that and I actually don't particularly think this is like I think
 39:4039 minutes, 40 seconds that at $180,000 that's amazing and I think that's the type of thing that you put that away and that's it
 39:4839 minutes, 48 seconds right but I also think that neg like that is going to affect his numbers for sure and that that does affect
 39:5539 minutes, 55 seconds you’re right so that the market cap probably does overstate the actual true impact which is good that's a great observation it's not perfect in the sense of there's more cars that might be
 40:0340 minutes, 3 seconds added to it. Um, but his index is up, I think, over the last year and a half.
 40:0740 minutes, 7 seconds Whatever. What that probably means is I actually don't know how to rationalize that or sort of speak to it because if his higher end stuff's moving down so dramatically what's sort of sustaining,
 40:1640 minutes, 16 seconds but you know, Luca may have become more collectible to the average player or the average, you know, hobbyist because he's now in the Lakers. There's sort of people and, you know, it's just
 40:2540 minutes, 25 seconds interesting to think about. But my big story with the Luca is that there's 80 million invested in Luca and that's putting him ahead of Magic at Magic
 40:3340 minutes, 33 seconds Johnson at 70 million. Kareem at 35. You know, let's just say he doesn't go on to do anything. He doesn't win an MVP. He doesn't win a title. You know, his market is going
 40:4140 minutes, 41 seconds to work its way down to these players that are in the 20 million range. Yeah.
 40:4440 minutes, 44 seconds Which is still, you know, very respectable players, but realistically, he probably moves even lower than that. And so, yeah,
 40:4940 minutes, 49 seconds the point is just saying like Luca still has a lot baked into his card prices. Yeah.
 40:5340 minutes, 53 seconds the market doesn't fully reflect it. And so if he doesn't start to materialize some of these wins or MVPs, his market's going to pull back quite significantly.
 41:0241 minutes, 2 seconds Like they can only sort of hold for a long time. We saw this with Trey. Trey Young's sort of sort of withtood the test of time for a while as he was
 41:1041 minutes, 10 seconds sort of people were wondering if he was ever going to sort of reach his sort of potential and then it sort of the last couple years it became pretty obvious that he was not going to be a
 41:1941 minutes, 19 seconds winning player and reach his potential the way that people thought and his markets pulled back significantly. You know, not saying Luke is going to do the same thing, but again, point being is
 41:2641 minutes, 26 seconds like people need to be aware of how he's not even in this list, man. Like,
 41:3141 minutes, 31 seconds, here he is here under Oh my god. Yeah. 2 million. Yeah. So,
 41:3541 minutes, 35 seconds that’s crashed hard. Hey, um, just going back to Edwards, though, my problem with Edwards and where I'm very like I'm not buying into Edwards at all.
 41:4441 minutes, 44 seconds He has to go through Yukich and he has to go through SGA just to make it to the finals. And then he's got at least Tatum, maybe the Knicks, maybe the Pistons waiting for him. So,
 41:5541 minutes, 55 seconds you know, the other thing to factor into is the Minnesota ownership.
 42:0042 minutes I’m not actually that convinced that all the moves they're making are to win basketball and they're actually trying to just balance their books a little bit. Like, they've gone through
 42:0742 minutes, 7 seconds ownership change and they can say all they want about wanting to win games,
 42:1142 minutes, 11 seconds but nothing they've actually done the last 12 months. Like, they gave up in Dillingham already.
 42:1642 minutes, 16 seconds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where did they end up moving him? To the bulls.
 42:2142 minutes, 21 seconds OH, yeah. Okay, that's right. That was part of the IO trade. Um,
 42:2542 minutes, 25 seconds. I mean, look, the thing but the thing that's important about what you're saying is you're not alone and a lot of people have factored that. So, the nice the thing that you'll see with Edwards is that if he does achieve his goal, his
 42:3442 minutes, 34 seconds market will move more than like what Shay would move. If Shay goes on to win a title again this year, it's already priced into his market.
 42:4042 minutes, 40 seconds There’s people still believe Joice has a better chance than Edward. So, you know,
 42:4342 minutes, 43 seconds if Jokic goes on and wins a title this year, his market's going to move, but it's not going to If Edwards goes on to win and beats all the teams that are
 42:5142 minutes, 51 seconds ahead of him that you just stated or sort of teams that are in his way, his market will jump significantly more because it's holding a little bit steady right now given sort of like what people
 42:5942 minutes, 59 seconds see as the obstacles in his way. But if he does it, he starts to become this new face of the league, which sort of changes the story, the narrative for.
 43:0743 minutes, 7 seconds and that's what has to happen in our hobby. you have to sort of do something unexpected and that sort of has to level up how you're appreciated in the hobby.
 43:1543 minutes, 15 seconds And so anyways, point being is with Edwards there's more risk but then maybe the floor isn't like you know the floor is maybe higher with him to some degree
 43:2343 minutes, 23 seconds so the risk might not be that significant but point is he may jump pretty significantly if he does actually get to the finals.
 43:2943 minutes, 29 seconds, I think um my two Favorite buyers at the moment in the league is Tatum. I'm actually just working on a video at the moment. Hopefully that'll
 43:3843 minutes, 38 seconds come out tomorrow or the day after. But I think the other one too is Yoki. And looking at his market cap, there's nothing in my mind that's really changed
 43:4543 minutes, 45 seconds after looking at this. Like he's still 3 million less than Durant at the moment.
 43:5143 minutes, 51 seconds Can you click into Yukich really quick? I'm curious to see where he was the last and even looking at Tatum. I think Tatum is a fantastic buyer at the
 43:5843 minutes, 58 seconds moment. Like he's actually gone up since being injured. Like can you believe that?
 44:0344 minutes, 3 seconds I believe it because people are Can you go to the two-year on him? Um, you know,
 44:0744 minutes, 7 seconds the part of the thing that's been interesting because I had a Tatum card that I sold a couple months ago that I was pretty happy with how it where it ended up. Okay, so Jokic was at like 42,000. Okay, so Yukich is up like 50%
 44:1744 minutes, 17 seconds over the last year and a half. So he would actually be which is fascinating.
 44:2044 minutes, 20 seconds He would have been on the lower end of all those players I mentioned and it just shows goes to show you how much the high end of the market's moved over the last year and a half, which is yeah,
 44:2744 minutes, 27 seconds he would be below Curry, he'd be below Kobe, he'd be below Jordan, he'd be right around LeBron. But the point is people are more willing to invest in Jokish now. I think like people have
 44:3644 minutes, 36 seconds accepted that Jokic is really special and so I think that's fascinating but he still has not moved.
 44:4144 minutes, 41 seconds This has just this has just happened in the last 24 hours and I actually think this is going to be a really important
 44:4844 minutes, 48 seconds sale moving forward because that is a lot more than I would have expected to happen.
 44:5444 minutes, 54 seconds Wow. Where did I just Oh y gold sold on golden for,000.
 45:0245 minutes, 2 seconds It’s been years since this sold. So obviously a lot's happened in between these sales. So that line is a little bit deceptive in some ways, but at the same time too those numbers don't lie
 45:1245 minutes, 12 seconds and what you're seeing is like a true reflection of now sort of where we're at with this guy. So I think in terms
 45:2145 minutes, 21 seconds of a buy for me that's like an absolute A+.
 45:2445 minutes, 24 seconds What’s your um who's your next player to be looking for? So the last time you came on to the show your prediction was Steph Curry. What what's your next 12-month prediction?
 45:3445 minutes, 34 seconds OH man, I don't have a good player.
 45:3645 minutes, 36 seconds And I'm not letting you off the hook on this one either. Like I genuinely want to um to make your life hard at this point.
 45:4545 minutes, 45 second sum well, I to distract from this for a second, I did like your Tatum comment. I do think like, you know, it's interesting to see somebody who has this severe injury come back ahead of
 45:5345 minutes, 53 seconds schedule, right? Like that's what's been interesting is like the Tatum market's not necessarily moving because Tatum is better. It's just that Tatum came back so much sooner and could impact the
 46:0246 minutes, 2 seconds Celtics title run again this year that the market's reacting really favourably.
 46:0546 minutes, 5 seconds He also had a big setback like his car prices took a big hit, but I think that's super interesting. I um
 46:1146 minutes, 11 seconds I don't know. I mean, I I'm I have a really hard time thinking about any of the prospects because it's really hard to make sense of the stuff we were talking about pre-show and then earlier,
 46:2046 minutes, 20 seconds which is like the TOPS phenomenon is really hard to gauge how significant that is. Like people are still figuring out what that means. And I don't necessarily think people are wrong for
 46:2846 minutes, 28 seconds overpaying for first year top stuff again or first year back because I think there are some dynamics that are different like the onward autos and stuff like that and chrome. Um but I
 46:3746 minutes, 37 seconds would shy away from most the rookies and you know younger guys at this stage. I the person I actually don't think he Sorry man just
 46:4546 minutes, 45 seconds to interrupt you. I don't think he took that bad of a battering. So this is the last 12 months.
 46:5046 minutes, 50 seconds Like look at that. It's I have never seen anything like this from a player having an injury like a
 46:5746 minutes, 57 seconds 12-month injury and he went down to eight from 800 through to you know 600 550 I mean like you know meaningfully in the sense that he was
 47:0547 minutes, 5 seconds down you know 30% 20% and now he's picked back up. So, it's not, you know,
 47:1047 minutes, 10 seconds his market didn't crash and he's obviously proven enough where he's got a floor,
 47:1447 minutes, 14 seconds but he's I don't know how Halliburton did by comparison, you know, same same kind of injury obviously.
 47:2247 minutes, 22 second sum, I have Okay, so I have an answer to your question while we're looking up Halliburton. Thank you.
 47:2847 minutes, 28 seconds, where's the silver prism? Oh, nice. Look at you.
 47:3847 minutes, 38 seconds We’re just looking at the Hallebert Silver Prism here. Like his car price is probably at Oh,
 47:4447 minutes, 44 seconds his have adjusted more than I would have guessed, too. So, he's at 340 at the moment. Back though, which fing,000.
 47:5347 minutes, 53 seconds I would argue that people are excited about the Pacers next year because they're going to have a top pick and it's great draft and so maybe that's part of why his prices have recovered.
 48:0048 minutes But, the Hallebert markets recovered way better than I would have expected,
 48:0248 minutes, 2 seconds especially because he's had a couple setbacks. Um, okay. Okay. So, the player that I would give a look at, and this is not going to be a favourable case, but I
 48:1048 minutes, 10 seconds just think is worth it is KD. And the reason is he's been playing really well.
 48:1748 minutes, 17 seconds and people are nobody's talking about the Rockets anymore. You know, Sheun’s been out. I can't remember how long he's been out or why he's been out. I think he has a back injury, but they are still
 48:2648 minutes, 26 seconds formidable um you know, player in the West right now. And I do think like if KD can take
 48:3348 minutes, 33 seconds that team to the next level and he is the big addition for them this year,
 48:3848 minutes, 38 seconds that will do a lot for his legacy. And my point with that is like I don't believe in KD necessarily as being dramatically undervalued long term,
 48:4548 minutes, 45 seconds although there's a good case for that to be made. But he's again a player that nobody's talking about that if he makes a run, his market could move pretty significantly. He's always going to be
 48:5348 minutes, 53 seconds this he doesn't have a home player which makes it a little bit tough for him which is he just doesn't have a team that people identify for him. I mean,
 48:5948 minutes, 59 seconds maybe the most or obviously his Warriors run, but like he's been so um
 49:0549 minutes, 5 seconds you know, just such a player on the move and sort of not a just somebody that was super relatable
 49:1349 minutes, 13 seconds and people sort of he brought a lot of negative goodwill towards him over the past few years. there's not as much enthusiasm for him. But yeah, I feel like if he actually made a brought Houston to the next level,
 49:2349 minutes, 23 seconds that’s a player who I like would give a deep look at just in a sense of like it's very viable and he's been playing really well and he's obviously the leader there.
 49:3349 minutes, 33 seconds.
 49:3449 minutes, 34 seconds. I actually hate that you hate that take.
 49:3749 minutes, 37 seconds No, no, it's totally fine. I think what you said about Durant is he's a very um he's an enigma. I think that's the
 49:4549 minutes, 45 seconds best way to tell him. and even in his sort of personal life with like the multiple Twitter accounts and the burner accounts and now that's sort of coming
 49:5349 minutes, 53 seconds like the whole thing is just a bit strange, right? And so I think there's that part and then I think you're right about him changing teams. I think at the
 50:0050 minutes end of the day people are purists when it comes to basketball and they don't like the idea of sort of being guns for hire. But I think my take on Durant is
 50:0950 minutes, 9 seconds that I think you're 100% right. This guy's undervalued. like the fact that he's what was he lower than Edwards on the
 50:1750 minutes, 17 seconds on the market cap like that is just absolutely it's diabolical to me. I think for me though, it's in 20 years’ time. That's when you're actually
 50:2450 minutes, 24 seconds going to when all of the social media dust is settled, then people start to look back and think, what's an undervalued asset? Who is somebody that
 50:3250 minutes, 32 seconds no one's buying up? And like the star rookie cards, I think it's going to be the same thing with that. At one point,
 50:3750 minutes, 37 seconds someone’s going to be like, "Hang on a second. Like,
 50:4050 minutes, 40 seconds this doesn't make sense. These are so cheap compared to actually what they should be."
 50:4450 minutes, 44 seconds I think that's where you're going to see it there. That's my personal take. Yeah.
 50:4850 minutes, 48 seconds So, I suppose what I'm trying to say is it's going to be a very long hold. You have to wait for everything to transpire, you know, before it comes back. And
 50:5750 minutes, 57 seconds the other thing with him I think is interesting like so I would say Edwards is probably the player that I'm still investing the most in, but his like just cut I'm mostly intrigued by what he
 51:0551 minutes, 5 seconds could do for the league and what his Oh, so is that your almost disclaimer?
 51:0851 minutes, 8 seconds Is it I didn't realize you were buying into Edwards invested in Edwards. Not a lot,
 51:1251 minutes, 12 seconds but okay. Yeah. But I do have some invest in Edwards just because I just think he can really become the face of the league and people enjoy watching him
 51:2151 minutes, 21 seconds and sort of just following him. He's and he's just an interesting player. He's charisma.
 51:2651 minutes, 26 seconds Okay. So the question is why didn't you buy KD instead of Edwards then?
 51:3151 minutes, 31 seconds Why didn't I uh I just don't believe in KD's story in the long run? Like I think he's going to I think exactly what you suggested like I'm not in it for the 20-year hold. That's not how I do this.
 51:3951 minutes, 39 seconds I don't I don't have the patience for that. Like I don't have the money for it. I don't I can't just tuck away money for 20 years and sort of let it appreciate when I'm building a company
 51:4751 minutes, 47 seconds that I need liquidity for. And so it's too challenging. The KD story is too tricky. The Edwards one is
 51:5451 minutes, 54 seconds interesting because like that means something to sort of say you were either early on Edwards or you have really rare cards of Edwards. The KD sort of story
 52:0252 minutes, 2 seconds is different and it just doesn't showcase the same way. Like if you go to a show, people aren't going to get excited about a really rare KD card the way they're going to get excited about a really rare Edward’s card.
 52:1052 minutes, 10 seconds Absolutely. That's my ultimate argument is that Edwards has cache. If you bring around, I always joke around about this. I'm like if you had to
 52:1752 minutes, 17 seconds showcase one card you had to wear your hobby necklace to a show like people aren't going to be wearing KD cards around but people are going to be
 52:2452 minutes, 24 seconds wearing a you know Edwards cards Ant-Man cards around and things like that. And so that's part of this whole thing that people forget is that
 52:3252 minutes, 32 seconds prospecting looks abnormal because it is. It's fashion for people. It's sort of showcasing here's things that I believe in that the market's still trying to figure out and I'm putting my
 52:4052 minutes, 40 seconds foot forward saying like this is my player. This is my card. And so people overpay. People overinvest in those markets and they correct for sure. But
 52:4852 minutes, 48 seconds it’s definitely like an identity thing where it's like you can always buy an older card of KD or LeBron or somebody Jordan and that's like that's interesting but it doesn't always it's
 52:5752 minutes, 57 seconds not going to be as exciting for people initially. No.
 53:0153 minutes, 1 secondo we're actually pretty much at the end of the show, man. So, why don't we do one more topic?
 53:0653 minutes, 6 seconds and the headline for this topic is current pop culture stories.
 53:1153 minutes, 11 seconds Pick one of the three. Kevin Olirri aka Mr. Wonderful,
 53:1653 minutes, 16 seconds Steven Aayoki, Card Shopping with Kim Kardashian, or the Logan Paul Pikachu illustrator selling for 16.49 million.
 53:2553 minutes, 25 seconds So, I won't go quickly on this one because I already just touched on it unintentionally, which is, you know, I don't know if you watched the Oscars at all yesterday, but Kevin Oly, who is in
 53:3353 minutes, 33 seconds Marty Supreme, was there and he was wearing the triple logo man. Yeah.
 53:3953 minutes, 39 seconds Around his neck at the Oscars and catching a ton of heat for it. Nobody liked it, right? But card people liked it, of course, because it's very interesting and obviously they
 53:4753 minutes, 47 seconds understand why he's doing it. Um, I think that is interesting. I mean, he does make it a little look pretty
 53:5453 minutes, 54 seconds cringe to the average person, and that's not going to probably play out the exact way he wants, but I do think this idea
 54:0254 minutes, 2 seconds like again, he's doing exactly what I just said, which is showcasing sort of like what matters at a really large scale. I mean, a significant scale at
 54:1054 minutes, 10 seconds the at the Oscars, right? To all these people who don't even understand that cards are significant again or that they have ever even had their moment. Every
 54:1754 minutes, 17 seconds single collector out there should be kissing this guy's feet.
 54:2154 minutes, 21 seconds The trick the trickle down the trickle down is going to be real.
 54:2554 minutes, 25 seconds. Fanatics I look I actually wonder if like someone like Fanatics is propping this guy up. Like you can't buy this type of you can't buy this type of advertising.
 54:3554 minutes, 35 seconds Totally. I mean he obviously now has enough invested in it where he benefits from making it more significant, right? Like the care about cards.
 54:4354 minutes, 43 seconds He only cares about money. He doesn't care about the hobby. like just let's preface that. Yeah. Yeah.
 54:4854 minutes, 48 seconds Totally does not care one bit. It's an asset and he's just trying to bring shed light on this is something of value and more people might research it. But
 54:5654 minutes, 56 seconds yes, so anyways, I think for the purposes of what we're talking about and sort of just to close out that story like he that is
 55:0355 minutes, 3 seconds fascinating and will have a trickle down for sure. Not all will be positive but in general people will be aware of it and that ultimately sort of will spill
 55:1155 minutes, 11 seconds over into more people participating whether it's slow or you know accelerated. I don't know, but there's certainly going to be more people understanding that this is a thing that they should at least be looking at. So,
 55:2055 minutes, 20 seconds I thought that was fascinating. I do think um their index or sort of their portfolio of assets is
 55:2855 minutes, 28 seconds interesting. I don't know how reflective it is of reality of pricing, but ultimately, I do think like they're they have a very significant point of view
 55:3555 minutes, 35 seconds that these extremely rare cards are going to mean something in the long run and are going to be highly desirable and
 55:4255 minutes, 42 seconds that’s probably at the right view. uh it may not always be right like their card the card market may sort of correct pretty meaningfully at some point in time and that's going to look pretty
 55:5055 minutes, 50 seconds foolish but over again this 20-year cycle there's probably a good chance that that means something and so I think it's I think it's very interesting I think it's fascinating
 55:5855 minutes, 58 seconds but it's not relatable to the average person it just makes it look like people are making up numbers and that's hard to sort of you know fathom
 56:0656 minutes, 6 seconds or you know make sense of I think there's levels to this game and I think there's the Kevin Olirri shine
 56:1356 minutes, 13 seconds gang that trade in million-dollar cards. And then there's people that dabble in the thousand
 56:2156 minutes, 21 seconds cards. And then there's people that dabble in the $1 boxes and hunt through the $5 boxes to try and find a $10 card. And
 56:3056 minutes, 30 seconds like I'm not judging anyone of those particular three groups, but I personally sit in the $5 to $10 box.
 56:3856 minutes, 38 seconds That’s where I like find my love and find my joy. And
 56:4556 minutes, 45 seconds like I find that very hard to see those prices. Like even that Yoki card that we were talking about today, I think that's
 56:5256 minutes, 52 seconds one of the best buys that we've seen for a very long time. But at the same time too,
 56:5956 minutes, 59 seconds you know what I mean? I find that hard to digest. Like it's a crazy number,
 57:0357 minutes, 3 seconds, right? So when you see like a 15 or a $20 million card, it's I think that's probably like where you know my problem
 57:1057 minutes, 10 seconds is. It's like I think if his content is going to be meaningful for a long time is how is he
 57:1857 minutes, 18 seconds going to relate to a common to a common collector to an average collector maybe that's the right word to say.
 57:2357 minutes, 23 seconds So I think that's where I'm I think in the immediate like today he's fantastic for the hobby. He's bringing more eyes into it. He's going to bring a
 57:3157 minutes, 31 seconds lot more money into it. But at some point, we're going to tune this guy out because what has he got to offer, you know, for the thousands of people out
 57:4057 minutes, 40 seconds there that want to listen to a free podcast? Do you know what I mean?
 57:4457 minutes, 44 seconds. Yeah. He has an interesting sort of representative for the hobby though because his show, you know, Shark Tank is sort of like the new, you know,
 57:5257 minutes, 52 seconds American dream show of just like these are people who were just average Joe's and then all of a sudden, you know, they're on TV pitching this big idea.
 58:0058 minutes And so he has an interesting audience. I do think he's a pretty interesting just like spokesperson, but yes, it's definitely again not relatable for most.
 58:1158 minutes, 11 seconds So, it'll be fascinating to see sort of what his role is ultimately. And to your point, he doesn't care about cards, so who knows how long he'll do this.
 58:1658 minutes, 16 seconds No, definitely. That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah, he might be in and out in two seconds. All right, closing thoughts. What do you get for me, man?
 58:2458 minutes, 24 seconds That’s it. I'm spent. This was always great. Thank you for letting me talk a little bit about what Gem Ray's been up to. I'm always, as I always sort of leave this as my partying message. I'm always open to feedback, always open to ideas,
 58:3358 minutes, 33 seconds there’s things we can be doing better.
 58:3458 minutes, 34 seconds I’m always out there, you know, thinking sort of where we can extend, but I love to sort of have input whenever I can get it. So, um, that's kind of the story on my end.
 58:4458 minutes, 44 seconds. Thank you so much for your time today. It's been absolutely wonderful to catch up with you. I love what you're
 58:5158 minutes, 51 seconds doing. I really appreciate everything that you do for the hobby and I think that you've made such huge strides on
 58:5958 minutes, 59 seconds your website and I can't wait to see what the next 12 months bring. So, thank you so much, mate. Yeah,
 59:0559 minutes, 5 seconds I appreciate it. This is uh episode number five for me and it's always a pleasure. Thank you for having me on.
 59:1059 minutes, 10 seconds. Thanks everyone at home for listening. Really hope you enjoyed today's episode and we'll catch you next week. Bye-bye.
 59:2059 minutes, 20 second Shey mate, I'm going to end the stream,
 59:2159 minutes, 21 seconds but you just have to stick around in the room afterwards. Yeah.