Sports Card Investor: Everything That Went RIGHT and WRONG at The National!

It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. The 2026 National has wrapped up and there was a lot of good but some bad as well. And as we recap this year's National and look towards the future, what did this past week mean for the future of the sports card hobby and markets? We're going to debate that right now. Hello sports card investors and welcome to a special edition episode of Cards on the Table. Normally, we say we're in the Arena Club Studio inside Cards HQ. Today, we're in the Arena Club Studio inside the National. We're filming this on the final day of the National right before the National closes. Of course, you guys out there watching this a few days later. But the show floor of the National, we've seen the energy, we've seen the excitement, we've seen the five days of mayhem and craziness which is coming to an end right now. We got a lot to talk about because there's a lot that happened at this show. There's a lot of takeaways from what we saw at this show. And there's a lot of questions about the future. The future of this show, the future of the sports card market, the future of the sports card hobby. And we're going to dive into that right now. Are you gentlemen ready? Let's go. Okay. I want to start by talking about this year's National. You guys both experienced it with me for the last five days. I want to hear the good. I want to hear the bad. I want to hear the ugly. And there were some major things that happened this year. So we don't have numbers yet on the crowd totals, but all of us have surmised this was the biggest crowd from National ever. It was such a big crowd that on Saturday, there were rumors that they were going to have to shut down entrance because of reaching fire marshal capacity. Now that never quite happened. I think in part because of the rain. Saturday was raining. And so I think that actually maybe hurt the people lining up in the morning and everything a little bit. So we didn't hit quite that level of chaos, but we were close. And so I think we have now, I think we have record crowds. And I think that that will, you know, play out in the weeks to come as we hear more statistics. We had a bigger corporate presence than ever. Certainly you had, you know, you had big groups, you had whatnot and arena club here. And, you know, a lot of the other corporate vendors, eBay and tops and do more grander, bigger things than they've ever done before. We even had a fake protest that fanatics did out, you know, out on the street. I mean, we fake protests going on. Of course, during all of this, we had that Otani dual logo man get pulled, not at the national, but at a card shop in South Florida. But it's sold during the national for $11 million. We're going to talk about that a little separately as we go. Crazy trade nights, crazy events, big stunts, big athletes and celebrities all over the floor. Gronkowski pulling a Tom Brady rookie ticket auto. I don't know if you guys saw that. I heard that. Yeah. I got to see Mike Tyson and Bo Jackson. I mean, it was just the whole week was like a movie in many good ways and some bad ways, including the grading companies being so overwhelmed that orders that were dropped off to PSA on the first day are still not back in people's hands yet. Not all of them are. People are freaking out about, but it wasn't just PSA, CGC, BGS having to shut down submissions way early. I heard Mike Baker authenticated with all of his little stickers that you love Teapot, all those little stuff. I heard he's backed up. Everybody's backed up. The grading companies can't keep up with it. Nobody can keep up with it. It seems like the demand continues to be at an all time high. Everybody's scrambling. So you had that happen. It's just, you know, there was some theft issues on the floor again, as we've seen in the past. A lot of good, a lot of bad, a little bit of ugly. But Teapot, as you look back on this year's national, what do you most take away? This is so massive now, even relative to two years ago. I wasn't here last year because of sickness. And now I'm back. And I feel like just when I keep thinking it can't get any crazier, any more hectic, any more insane overall, this was next level. Absolutely next level. I mean, yesterday I was like, you couldn't even move. Scott and I went to go walk around for a little bit. And you just, you couldn't even get up to a showcase. There were parts of people rubbing on you that you never wanted to encounter. It was just a lot of stuff going on. This is a family show, Teapot. I don't need to know about. It was, it was real. It was getting real close. It was all over. Oh my goodness. So it's really exciting. The feedback coming up to our booth, our activation's awesome at the sports card investor, market movers, card crew trade zone. It's been amazing. So many, so many people coming up and saying how much they appreciate the content, the education, the entertainment. The number one takeaway was the educational piece. They're like the 101 video you guys do, all the market movers, tutorials, everything. People really, really, really appreciate that. And that was kind of overwhelming. This is, this has been next level of people seeing that the growth of all of our channels. Hey, I just got in four months ago. Hey, I just got in a year ago. And I have watched every single one of your, you know, group's videos because how much it, you know, it means to help get people up to speed. So as we think about how much things are growing, we've brought this up to some of our contacts at Tops, at other places saying this education piece is paramount. And closing the gap to help people learn and sort what's what was a big, that was like the number one theme for me for the whole week. Overall, I've been pretty impressed with the air conditioning. That's been pretty nice. The air conditioning's been good this year. I'm cold right now actually. Good job National on the air conditioning. They pumped it like early. By the end of the day, it starts to catch up a little bit. It's probably helping that it's only like 77 degrees out or something. But overall, I know that sounds like a trivial thing. It's not, it's really good. Wi-Fi's still bad though. Yeah, the Wi-Fi can't keep up. The Wi-Fi has been abysmal. That's a real challenge. And they've got to figure out a way to solve for that because everybody's standing there just with their phones spinning and spinning and spinning. They can't figure out. And there's a lot of overpriced inventory, just like at every card show. But probably nowhere more so than at the National. Sometimes it leaves me scratching my head. I'm like, hey, Anthony Edwards Prism Silver PSA10 selling for like $950, $975 right now. And every booth, $1,300, $1,400. I'm like, how are you making any sales? That's the part I can't wrap my head around. So that can be a little frustrating when you'd like to be able to, in good faith, walk up and go, I feel like this should be close. I can't get a connection. Let me negotiate a little bit. Oh, then you finally get back to your hotel room and you're like, oh, I got cooked if you take that leap of faith. So there have been some dealers who have been very reasonable. It's not everywhere, but that's one of the things that kind of makes me scratch my head. Food is still pretty sparse. It's a little bit tough to find good food. The Starbucks line here is an absolute zoo. So some of those things that we saw that I thought Fanatics Fest did a little bit better just with the number of vendors. When you have that big of a crowd, you got to make sure you can get people satiated that way. But I've been at our booth a lot, but I've seen so many cards you just don't see anywhere. I thought a lot of the corporate activations, the auction house has absolutely killed it with kind of taking their displays. True, true, like historical pieces of art, you know, cards, the most important ones on display. So I'm still processing. That's what I feel like. I'm still processing. And by the time we get closed down and get back to Atlanta, maybe some other things will start to catch up with me a little bit more. Yeah, we're still in the moment. We're still in the moment. The number of new collectors, you mentioned the education. People coming up and saying how they appreciate the educational videos we do. The reason why I think you heard so much of that is there are so many first timers here. I heard, I met so many people that said, this is my first time ever to the National. I met a lot of people that said, this is my first time ever at a card show. Yes, yeah, I did too. I was like, oh, what an overwhelming, what do I start with? You know, maybe you could have maybe started with like a little local 40 table show instead of going to the Superbowl for your first football game. It's like, I want to go to a football game. I'm going to go to the Superbowl. It's like, oh, maybe you could just go to like the little high school game, you know, on a Friday night first and work your way up to the Superbowl. Nope, people came here. They want to be here. This is the Superbowl. A lot of first timers. It was cool to see. Scott, your takeaways. This is my fourth National because I grew up in Idaho. We didn't have the opportunity, but it's amazing how much bigger it is from the first time I came here in Chicago. And I will say they did a lot of really great things this year. The way they separated people into kind of groups, there's like some soccer sections. Upstairs is still kind of a mess. Tyler didn't get up there. Teapot, I walked over here. Tyler's like, I'm done with this. But upstairs, it's like a sardine can. It's crazy. I don't know why they didn't make the aisles wider. There's a lot more booths up there. Why didn't they use more of the room upstairs? Yeah, there's so much space. What are we doing? But I will say overall, I've seen a lot of really fun cards and I was trying to decide, like, is this worth coming to if I wasn't going to spend money? And the answer I landed on is yes, it is worth it because while a lot of these cards are on eBay and they can be found, you're not looking for them on eBay. You can come here and you can say, I like that. And it helps expand like what you're targeting and what you want to collect. And that's been the most fun thing for me. There's new cards I want. I'm going to buy some hockey cards when I get home and I never would have done that if I hadn't seen those here and been interested in them. And so it's been a good event. The crowds have been kind of tough. My least favorite thing of the National are all the carts and suitcases. Everybody has a giant backpack and everybody has a Zion case rolling around. It's like Tyson, you're trying to get up to a case. You're only fighting like people's bodies, but they turn and it hit you and knock you over. And it's kind of been a mess that way, but it's expected and it's a fun mess. It's a fun thing. The energy is there for sure. Yeah, I think the word maybe to describe what you're talking about, Scott, is discovery. Yes. We talk about that a lot with our digital apps. Like how do we help people discover new cards? Well, a great way to discover new cards is to come to a show like this and to walk around and take it all in. There's a lot of discovery and I think that's what makes events like this so special. A lot of 90s cards are really cool, but you don't notice them in hand. You're like, oh, that pops, I want that now. Yeah, probably my biggest, maybe one of the things that'll stick with me the most, one of my college roommates, who I haven't seen in years and years and years, he brought his three boys down and they never been to a show either. I think this was their first show, kind of getting back into cards. He like saw me on YouTube like two years ago and was like, what the heck? And that kind of got the spark. And they just drove down for the day from up in Grand Rapids and they came back toward the end of the day and he was like, somebody gave us this and this and this and his kids, his boys were just glowing. And then we gave them something and then they got a box of Bowman for free and they were just like, they were like totally ecstatic. And that's kind of the pure joy that for some of these even young guys that have been doing it a little while, it's a very different thing. It's just that sort of neophyte experience. It's like, it's really edifying. I do want to say, also, you're mentioning like the youth here. I have never seen this many youth interested in sports cards. So we were, you and I were kind of talking like, where are we at in regards to like, are we at the bubble, the peak right now? We are so many kids here. Even if we're at the current bubble, I'm very confident in the future of the hobby, mainly because so many kids are having so much fun, more so than four years ago. It was mainly adults. And now it's like a 50-50 split. 100% agree. Three takeaways for me. And I feel like all three of these are a big, big, big thing. Number one, from a card perspective, unquestionably, it was the cards of the goats that were receiving all the attention, all the offers. The price is going up like crazy. Just a war. It was a war to get Kobe cards and Steph Curry cards and LeBron cards and Jordan cards and Tom Brady cards and Ken Griffey Jr. cards. That's where all the attention was going. That's where all the money was going. Ultra Modern, I heard, was not really moving particularly well outside of maybe Shohei Otani and a couple of other players. Cooper Plagg, I heard, was pretty hot too. But outside of that, what was hot at the National, I feel like two or three years ago, was your Drake Mays and your C.J. Strouds. That wasn't hot at the National this year. It was not. It seemed like all the money that previously would have gone into buying a C.J. Stroud or Drake May, Rookie Kaboom is now going into buying a late 90s insert of Kobe or Shaq or Tim Duncan. That's what it felt like. Yes, yeah. Lots of consolidating. I had that sit with kids too. Yeah, with kids, with kids. I bumped into a kid yesterday. I said, what, you pick up anything good? And he's like, yeah. And then he was like, oh, I bought a, I don't know, he was like, I bought a 1956 Willie Mays or something. I was like, what? And then he's like, oh yeah, I also bought some, you know, a Jordan gold medallion. And I was like, he's like 11. Kids are showing me their Duncan Donuts cards. They're showing me their Jambalikes. I'm like, what do you, you know, Reeves bought an Essential Credentials, Future Now, Akeem Olajuwon. I mean, it's, you know, it's the star rubies. Like, it's like kids are walking around with this stuff. I'm like, how do you even know what that card is? Yeah. They know, they now know, they're learning. They know. And by the way, I think that's tremendously helpful. Yeah. Because 90% of the time, that money spent two years ago, three years ago on all those rookie quarterbacks, 90% of the time, that money went poof. Six months later, a year later, those people ended up kind of having a bad experience as those cards nosedive and it'll be up and down. And that doesn't mean that nobody's speculating. Some are, but I much prefer seeing the cards being hot as the ones that I'm like, you know what? Stick that card in your safe, kid. Stick that card under your, under your pillow at night and hold on that thing for 10 or 20 years. You're gonna be real happy. Yeah. And those are the cards now that it seems like people are more driving to it. So that was one big takeaway. Second takeaway for me, international influence. There was multiple times more people internationally here than I've ever seen before. Yeah. Asia, Australia, New Zealand. Yeah. Europe. Europe, all over. England, Ireland at our market movers dinner, meeting the other night with all our customers. Yes. Tons of international, way more than ever before. And I think that speaks to the global growth in the market. Third thing, and I'm gonna go on a rant on this in a minute. We're gonna pause for a minute because I gotta get warmed up for my rant. I gotta get my tea to get my voice back. Why are we not ready? And we, I mean, collective. I mean, it's not just the national. It's not just the graders. It's not just, it's we as a hobby community. Why are we never ready for the growth? Every, okay, actually, you know what? I'm gonna save my, I'm gonna save my rant. We're gonna get back to what I wanna do. All right. I wanna, before we get to my rant, I wanna rip a couple of arena club slab hacks because we're here at the arena club booth. We're gonna go big today. Yeah. I wanna rip some $2,500 legendary slab hacks. We're gonna start though. We're gonna start with, we've got a special sports card investor $100 slab hack. We're gonna rip these first. The sports card investor $100 slab hacks. Do we know what the score is on who's at what? I wasn't here the last two weeks. We're gonna have to go back and officially count. I think it's close. I'm pretty sure it's three, three, two right now. Something, it's tight right now. It's tight. Okay. Scott, you wanna go first? I would love to. All right. We're gonna do $100 arena club slab hack here for Scott. This is the SCI pack. Let's go, Scott. I love doing this a lot. Look at this. This is exciting. Look at this. Oh, okay. There you go. I'll take a Steph Curry PSA 10. The SCI packs have all really good players a la Steph Curry. Great. Nice little Steph Curry insert in a 10. Nice. Very nice right there. Okay. $65 estimated value. So that's where you're at. Let's go with Teapot next. Let's rip $100 SCI pack for Teapot. Let's do it. You think you can beat that? I know I'm going to. You can probably beat it. Yeah. I think one of us can beat it. All right. We're gonna get Teapot's pack up here. All right. Good luck, Ty. Here we go, Teapot. Let's go. This is Teapot. Multisport. $100 SCI pack. That's better. I think Teapot won so far. That's legit. Teapot won so far. That's legit. Oh, barely. $70 for the PSA 10. I think Tox Now is underrated. I really do. Now let me show you guys how it's done. I'm down to Scoobles there. I have to keep that. Tyler's now a Dodgers fan. I don't know. Why is Scooble? We'll have to debate that later. That is unbelievable. I'm going to bring him up later. Skybull won the Dodgers. What is going on in this world, man? God, that does not help the argument for the Players Association against the Sour Cat. Yeah, that does not help the argument. All right. Here's my pack. Let's go. Oh, man. That's how it's done, ladies and gentlemen. I think he might have won, Jeff. Tim Duncan, PSA 10. I should win this thing. $103. Let's go on $100 slab pack. There you go. By the way, and we're about to rip some legendaries. $2,500 slab packs. By the way, if you haven't bought a slab pack before, promo code SCI gets you 20% off your first purchase at Arena Club. Promo code SCI at checkout. 20% off. So the $100 sports card investor pack can become $80. You pull a $103 card, you're loving life. Or the $2,500 legendary pack. Becomes $2,000. You ready to rip a legendary? Yep, I'm doing baseball. Okay, let's do it right now. We're gonna do Scott's legendary baseball. We got a legendary baseball dialing up here. Legendary baseball for Scott. $2,500 slab pack right here. Or $2,000 with promo code SCI for first time Arena Club user. We need to get one of these in our studio, Jeff. This is fun. This screen's good. Here we go. Come on, Scott. Nice. I got an NBA gold. NBA silver. Refractor. Refractor on the show. Hey, in a 10. There we go. $800, okay. All right. That's pretty good, Scott. I think you guys might be good. You're gonna do basketball? Yeah. All right, T-Pot's going basketball. T-Pot's going basketball. Basketball's hot right now. I'm hoping there's Kobe or something. That's right. Basketball's hot as can be right now. Yeah. And you're right. It's been the hottest thing. I asked so many dealers. Can I expect them to say, you know, somebody, Jaden Daniels or somebody, you know, young quarterbacks. Everybody was like, no, it's flag. It's Wemby. It's basketball. I tried to buy basketball today. And that's abnormal for me. There was a John Stockton grand finale over there. I didn't even see a Cade Cunningham card anywhere. That's how I thought. I think it was. I traded for one the other day. Check it out. All right, Ty. Good luck. Here we go, T-Pot. This is T-Pot's $2,500 legendary basketball pack. All right, let's go. Let's go. I'm getting ready to jump up. Look at this guy. That's a gold. Jalen Williams on the Panini one and one. Rookie goal to 10. He's coming back from injury. That could be pretty good. He might have dipped a bit. Get them back. $1,500. Okay, he's dipped a bit. He's dipped a bit. But that's actually not a bad hold. That's a hold. All right, I'm going to do basketball too. Give me basketball as well. All right. T-Pot didn't get the Kobe or Jordan's place, so I'm going to get the Kobe or Jordan. Let's go right now. Maybe LeBron. Maybe Shaq. Maybe. We're going to talk about LeBron. Maybe Andre Drummond. I got stuff to say about LeBron going to Philly. I got stuff to say about LeBron. We're going to talk about that in a minute. Okay, all right. Maybe I get a big LeBron card. Legendary slab pack basketball. They're getting it dialed up. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to rip slab packs on Arena Club, promo code SCI for 20% off your first purchase. All right, here we go. It makes it all worthwhile. Here we go. Let's go big. Let's go big right now. Let's see it. Let's go big right now. Tatum. Okay. It's his team now for sure. Hey, another guy who probably a hold at the moment. Probably a hold on the moment. A come up for next season. 1750. So I won that one. You won that one. You won that one, Scott. Plus I got Otani. None of us hit any of the grails on that one. On the legendaries, we didn't do as well. That means that anyone out there who rips. Still there. They're going to get the Kobys and the Jordans that we didn't get. They're going to get the Kobys. Let's shift attention to focus on the future. And this is what I wanted to say last fall. This is what I wanted to say. Teapot, it feels like deja vu. It doesn't need to feel like deja vu, but it feels like deja vu. Because every year it's the end of the national. And we sit here in these very chairs. And we say, why was nobody running? Why was nobody ready? And nobody was ready. The national wasn't ready. The grading companies weren't ready. And this is not to call them out. Because there's stuff we could have done at Cards HQ to be more ready. We had a massive buying line. We're trying to pay people out with digital payments via Stripe. But the damn internet's not working. So we can't get any of our digital payments to go out. So our whole system of scan and digital and all this. Can't even get it to work on Friday. We're not ready. Nobody's ready. Wi-Fi's not ready. Restrooms aren't ready. Lines out the door. Everything's clogged up in there. Nothing's, nothing is ready. The AC was kind of ready. That was good. But like, why? Why, why, why? Why is everybody so surprised that every year we're setting records. And it's growing and it's busier. And everybody's like, oh my God. I can't believe, you know, can't believe it. We got more, you know, grading submissions are good. Grading companies are like, oh, we never had it. We never knew we'd get this. It's crazy. The nationals are like, we never knew we'd have this many people come to get the tour. There's a car show. We never knew we'd have these meetings. Why don't we just know, T-Pod? Come on. Like, yes. Guess what is going to happen? Next year, it's going to set records again. Without a doubt. The year after that, it'll probably set records again. So let's just, let's just get ready. Let's just get ready. Let's make the aisles wider upstairs. Can we do that? Let's, let's just take over more of the convention center. Because there's space that's not being used. There is a lot. Why? Yeah. Why are we not using the whole show floor? Yeah. Why? Why not just open up the rest of the show floor and put more dealers and widen the aisles? Yeah. Why? Like what? Why? Why can't we have the grading companies be more realistic about when you're going to, you know, how many orders they can take and what their volume is and when they have to cut things off? Or just bring an entire additional army of graders on trucks and put them all in semis outside the center and... Why? Why aren't we ready? Why? Why is nobody ready? Ourselves included. Ourself. And I don't want to blame anybody because it's, it's a collective. Yeah. The dealers aren't all ready. No one's ready. Why aren't we ready, T-Bot? One person was ready. Your voice came ready. Hey! It's still here. My voice is better than it has ever been. You have figured it out. You know why? Because my... But it took you seven years. Because my TA, Sarah, came ready. Yes. You got tea, honey, drops. We basically have a Walgreens inside of our booth. That is correct. Yeah. I mean, look, I think you're being a little hyperbolic. Like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of readiness that goes into this. Scale is not easy. It, you know, PSA had to know. They had to know. They've been closed. People are going to come here. I think probably the most frustrating part about that is it's, it's a similar dynamic to just when you would send your cards in and it says 20-day turnaround and it's 75 days. There's people who came here from Ireland, from London, from places. They're like, I did guaranteed end of show. One guy was like, I did guaranteed end of day. And they're saying they're going to have to mail it across the ocean to me. That's very disappointing and frustrating. There is, there is sort of a readiness aspect to it. I don't know. We're going to be here next year. The venue is what it is. There is more space. There's a lot more space. Where do the financials, you know, flush out for the national, you know, committee to say we're going to, you know, they're set up as a not-for-profit supposedly. So like, hey, can we, you know, pony up and get some more, you know, allocate some more real estate within the show floor. I'm really excited to see what Detroit looks like. I haven't been to that venue to be totally honest. Are they going to be more prepared, less prepared? We've been to multiple different cities now. And we've seen some of the kind of pros and cons. Like when we were Atlantic City, like everything was carpeted and it was kind of, it had a little bit of a nicer feel inside of the venue, but there was no internet at all when we were in Atlantic City. In Cleveland, the internet was actually pretty good. They managed to figure that piece out in spite of it being like a bomb shelter for the military. In the middle of nowhere. They had in the middle of nowhere, they had internet. So there seems to be pros and cons to both. I know you and I would all would both like to see it come down to Atlanta as well. Maybe we try to host it there. So there's a venue component to it. But man, you just, the internet component can't be understated. The internet's a big deal. Why is the wifi not ready? It just like ruins everything. I'm not, I'm really not trying to pick on anybody. Like this, we're all a victim of the growth of this, which is wonderful. These are good problems to have. Getting crushed with the crowds, you know, the grading companies getting crushed with orders, the national, like the wifi getting crushed. They're all good problems because it's all demand-based issues. It's all like, wow, more people came in than we thought they would more people. But it does seem to happen to everyone. Everybody is surprised every year. And so I'm just saying, why are we all surprised? We saw the line a mile wrapped around down the street. Now I will say at first, my first reaction to that was what a disaster. Like you gotta be more efficient. But then everybody I talked to were like, actually the line moved really fast. They just was a lot of people. So I'll give them some credit there. I think they coordinated that well. I do think the national did a good job with line management. I agree. They had a very organized system for getting into trade nights. I saw that as well. The line for trade night was super long, but they had an efficient system, wristbands, people queuing. They had a whole queue. I saw more police and security here this year. They had that more locked down. So yeah, I don't want to be too hard. They have made a lot of, the nationals made incremental improvements. The grading companies have clearly brought more people than they ever brought. But it's just demand keeps crushing. Demand just is going quick. It's wild. What do you think, Scott? So in comparing this to Fanatics Fest, and obviously this is a different event entirely than Fanatics Fest, but I did not feel a lot of these pain points at Fanatics Fest, even in the card areas. It does feel like a lot of it is self-inflicted and that's okay. We already talked about it. You guys already hit on it. I don't need to rehash all that. I'm more disappointed in companies like PSA in the sense, like why did they not expect more after they shut everything off for so long? It felt like a very obvious thing to all of us when they closed down the very first day on Wednesday, because they had double the submissions on Wednesday than they had all the last year. They really should have planned better. That's the one that kind of gets me and irks me a little bit more. But overall, we already hit on everything negative. But it's good problems. That means that we're growing. It means people want to be here. That's happening. It'd be better to underestimate than overestimate. That's happening big time. And hopefully all of us, ourselves included, ourselves included, hopefully we all go back and we iterate and we figure out next year how to handle bigger crowds and bigger and better and the whole thing. Every dealer and company here does it because I think this thing's going to continue. And I think it's going to get, this whole center is going to get crushed next year, even more than it got crushed this year. Next year, we're going to build an app. I'm going to put an air tag in your pocket. We're going to put it on the screen. So there's a Jeff tracker so that every time these kids and everybody that comes up wants to know, there's got to be a live dynamic schedule and tracker of where Jeff's every move. That's the last thing Jeff needs. Occasionally I need a hop. I tried to cross the floor with Jeff quickly. It was a challenge. It's a little tough, but you know what? I love it because the fans that are here, the people who watch all the content, it is an honor to meet all of them. I wish I had more time to spend with all of them because it is just awesome seeing them all. People thought I was T-Pod this trip. Yeah, Scott took his hat off. If I take my hat off, I wear the hat on purpose. Grow your beard out a little bit, Scott, and it starts to get kind of gross. People think we're brothers. Maybe we are, Ty. Long lost brothers. Okay. There's a couple more things I want to talk about before we wrap up. Okay. This Otani Dual Logo Meme. That all happened while we were here. The card got pulled from a card shop in South Florida. We had a $6.5 million bounty go out from Shine. Then we had a $10 million bounty go out from a collector group in Asia. Very high-end collector group based in Hong Kong, grade 10. I talked to them. That was a totally legit $10 million offer. Then there were other bounty offers that went out that I'm not sure were legit. Then the card gets pulled. Then Shine immediately comes over the top with an $11 million offer. Same day, card gets accepted. Offer gets taken. Shine gets the card, $11 million. All of that happened live during the National, even though it happened in South Florida and everything. But all that literally happened as the show was going on. Can you believe $11 million for that card? Yes, I actually can. I actually, when we talked about it now, I think it's one of the best cards, if not the best card I've ever seen, just overall. People mistake that for like, oh, you're compared to the Honest Wagoner or the Mantle. No, but just like the overall qualities of the card and what they did with that is sensational. And it does not surprise me. It is a true piece of history in every sense. And it's really well designed. And it's for a guy that has been the number one hottest athlete on planet Earth for the last few years and will be for many decades to come, I think. So it doesn't surprise me at all. Once you start getting into that level, especially now we have these funds that are putting these cards in there, that does not surprise me. And I imagine, according to O'Leary and Shine, they're going to keep a lot of those cards in there for a long time. But man, if that one were to hit the market in 15 years or something, I think it's going to continue to appreciate really, really well. You're a big Otani guy. I like Otani. You've got huge Otani cards in your own PC. Did it surprise you? No, I mean, bounties bother me. I like to see things go to auction. It's fun. You know, this card was announced and it was pulled really quick and it sold really quick. So it would have been fun to kind of drag it out a little bit. We can talk about it a little bit more, speculate what we think. But I will say the bounty itself, it being sold for $11 million is not surprising. I think this card is justifiably so selling for that price. I don't think Otani is winning another MVP this year. I don't think we'll see a triple logo man next year. I think Pete Crowe has a really good opportunity to pass him. The fact that the Dodgers traded for Tarek Skubal, not trying to spoil anything. This will come out later. People should know. But now that that's happening, I think Otani is done pitching. His knee's been bothering him. He's not hitting as much. He's taking rest days. So I think his MVP run might come to a close here. We had three, four in a row, three in a row. And because of that, I think this card is going to have more significance because it'll be his only dual logo man MVP card. One kanji, one regular autograph. So I think it makes sense. I just wish it would have gone to open market just for the fun of it. But I don't like the bounties. Maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm lame. You had a bounty at one point on the triple autograph. And he had to keep increasing it. Yeah, I did. I have a bounty on a Billy Butler Super Fracture. I'll give you a thousand dollars. Thousand dollar bounty right here. Any of them. You heard it first, ladies and gentlemen. Two thousand dollar bounty breaking news live from the show floor of The National. Okay, final topic. Also this week, as if not enough news happened, we had the announcement about LeBron going to Philadelphia. You know, this guy doesn't like me. You know, I'm going to say something right now. I'm going to say something right now. I love this. Okay. And I want to talk about what this means to his card market. I'll tell you what it means to his card market. When LeBron wins the title in Philly, he will be the GOAT. He will be the GOAT. Four titles with titles at that point. Four teams. He brought four franchises. He will be the greatest of all time. And his card market will respect that. I own a lot of LeBron. I'm thrilled that he went to Philly so he can win the title there. Just like Obuse's story. Just like Phoenix. You better be careful. You're in Chicago right now. Just like the Knicks this year. Quiet down. You're putting us at risk. The Knicks this year. The great story. They hadn't won in forever. And Brunson, the team, gets it done next year or the year after. It's going to be Philly hasn't won in forever. LeBron. Maxi and the gang. They get it done. LeBron's the GOAT. His cards will go through the moon. That's my take. T-POP wishes. Look, I mean, if you just go purely on accolades, I said it does make it really interesting. If he manages, this feels very Brady-esque. Like all of a sudden you put the bookend to your career and you grab a few one or two more titles. They have a very loaded team. A very loaded team. I wish I could say my Pistons did something in the offseason to get better. They didn't. So what a like total donk move by the Celtics who just won a championship a few years ago and played great last year in spite of not having Tatum for most of the season. And then they're just like, oh, we don't like Jalen Brown playing, you know, doing podcasts. So like, let's let him go. He goes to Philly and then Philly's like, ha ha, now we're going to seduce the ring chaser over to our squad. So, you know, we go back and think about. I said, that's a bad thing. Let's go think about Michael Jordan. At the end of Michael Jordan's career, if he had been, you know, had this mindset like LeBron, he would have played with Shaq and Kobe. He would have gone and joined Duncan and David Robinson. Instead he decided to go to the Wizards. How did that turn out? He could have gone to the Pistons, the bad boys and gone to play with them if he was so desperate about it. He should have done any of those things rather than go to the Wizards. He did great. He stayed with one organization. No, he didn't go to the Wizards. Yeah, I understand. I understand. But he didn't go chase a ring. So he chased a horrible end to his career. LeBron is very polarizing. He will never be the GOAT for many of us, no matter what. And I wasn't a Jordan fan growing up. But if you put me in a vacuum and said, which two of those guys do you want on your team? It is Jordan every day. Where are you on this, Scott? I think it hurts LeBron's legacy a lot if he loses there. If he can not go in there and they're dysfunctional, like it can do with Joel Embiid and whatever happens with Jalen Brown and LeBron. It will hurt his legacy a lot. I mean, LeBron's Laker tenure was fine. He won a COVID championship. A lot of Laker fans do not like it. Yeah, it didn't work out. Like he's burning bridges of all the fandom. Like Michael Jordan had hardcore Chicago Bulls fans and like the whole generation. Well, LeBron, he kind of screwed over the Cavs a little bit. Went to Miami. That brought people the wrong way. Went back to Cleveland. But it's one of those things where I think if he doesn't win, he's going to be in a lot worse spot than if he would have just retired this year. If we're being completely honest. But if he wins, Jeff, he brings what? More than 10% of the teams in the NBA championships in his career. That will resonate well with collectors in the long run. So these next two years... The stakes are high. No, really. The stakes are high. It's literally career-defining or career-breaking. Because we have such recency bias that we'll look at this and be like, man, that guy was a bum. Or we'll be like, that guy's the GOAT. Like it's really what he does. Quick question related. Just 20 seconds or less answer. Do you think Maxie's a buy or a sell right now based on the addition of Brown and LeBron? Gosh, that's probably a buy. But how many shots can go around? That's the problem. By the way, you got VJ Edgecombe on that team too. They're like six man deep. I would be scared about VJ Edgecombe cards right now. I'm more nervous about his for sure. They're so expensive. It's tough. It'll be fun to watch. You know what I love? I love the drama of it. How's it going to turn out? None of us know. But it's going to be fun to talk about. It is going to be fun to watch. I love it. Guys, thank you so much for watching. Hope you guys enjoyed the show. Let us know your thoughts about The National below. And don't forget to get one of those Arena Club slapbacks. They're fun. Download the Arena Club app or go to arenaclub.com and promo code SCI for 20% off your first purchase. See you in the next one. Take care.