Amen.

They were the first te- they were the first team out.

Um, they deserve to be in.

Obviously with the expansion of the tournament with more teams, that certainly bodes well, especially for a team that I think, uh, is gonna be really, really good, and putting themselves in a position where they will be an NCAA tournament team this year.

Um, they are certainly guard heavy.

Um, they, their, their one real big that got most of the time, um, was, was Lada Rokel from last year.

She moved on.

How would you describe the season thus far, and what are your expectations for the back end of the season?

Jesse was strike, strobing out there for a second.

But, um, so I'm friends with the guys over at RSA, which a lot of people don't even know is in Nashville.

So RSA is Rochester Sports.

They're a wholesale memorabilia company.

Um, not a walk-in shop, it's a warehouse, but they bring in a lot of people to do signings for wholesales, mystery jerseys.

You know, they're selling to, to everybody.

And so a lot of times we're just fortunate enough we can piggyback off of some of those kinds of things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Guys, you cannot undervalue, in the growth of this, this hobby, you cannot, in my opinion, undervalue the local card shop.

Guys, I get it.

Dick's, you can put all the money you want to in marketing them and creating a wall and a, a house of cards.

You can put all kinds of stuff that you want to in redoing the aisles at Target.

You can do all that.

But guys, if you're listening, the hobby shop is the heart and soul of this whole thing.

Agreed, yep.

Nice

...

but he said, "Man, we haven't even really gotten to the basketball yet." There's a little bit mixed in, but he said, uh, over the weekend, which was this last weekend, "I'll try to gather up some other stuff." So, uh, it's fun, you know? And that's what really makes having a shop fun for me is the, um...

I love the discovery part.

You know, you never know what's gonna walk in.

That's why I don't mind digging through people's stuff.

We dig through...

It's fair

The retail

stuff? The retail reserve.

So for anybody listening that doesn't know what that...

So as a shop owner, here's what that means.

That there will be a... a retail reserve, which they would like to get rid of the term retail versus hobby.

And they talked about that where it's value boxes, it's mega boxes, not retail quote unquote product.

Sure.

But it's certainly not just dependent on one thing like that anymore.

That seemed like a big success.

Rip Night was awesome.

Okay, good.

And so big, big, big shout out to Topps for putting all that together.

I know they put a lot of work into that, especially on really outfitting us as a shop with promos, packs, giveaways, et cetera.

Oh, they did? Yeah, so this year they did two different silver packs, and everybody – they sent us enough to where really everybody, at least every kid, got one of each.

So there was an NBA and a Major League Baseball silver pack.

Deal.

I want to just kind of start with a quick minute elevator pitch of kind of where you came from in the hobby and where you're at now, if you could, just so the people can get to know you.

Gary and I collected through our childhood like a lot of people.

Gary stayed more involved in the flip hustle side of this through the early 2000s, clear up till pre-COVID.

Pre-COVID, I started taking it a little more seriously to fund the hobby.

And at the time, Gary and I were both working on garage doors at the same company.

So we were sales guys.

We would finish the day.

I,

I didn't have to take this.

But I do because I understand the ramifications and the implications of if I don't.

I just think there's also a misunderstanding – I think there's a misunderstanding on there.

Again, if you read through comments, which don't, you shouldn't, because like I said, it just kind of discourages a lot of things.

But I think there's a misunderstanding of how easy people think it is to run a card shop.

I believe that.

They think it's just a matter of picking up the phone and calling and getting product.

But I don't know if it's, It hopefully won't always be that way because if they continue to grow the hobby, if the hobby does get bigger, then they will need at least some more product, hopefully not like 90s amounts of production, but more product.