SPEAKER_01 0:09

Hello and welcome to the Talking Cards Podcast with Grand Salami and the Juice. I am the Juice, along here with Bert, who's fresh off his vacation. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 0:20

I'm doing good, man. I'm happy to be back in 40 degree Seattle and not in the 90 degree, 90% humidity. It's not my bag, baby. That's not my bag.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Well, not only are you back, but baseball is officially back. And we're rolling. We are rolling. We got a few games in under our belt. We're ready to get the overreactions going. We'll talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

We love overreacting. We love nothing more than overreacting to four-game sample sizes. It's what the hobby revolves around.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

It's what everything revolves around in baseball.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

You can totally tell what a 162-game season is going to look like after four games, and we will tell you the exact breakdown of which teams are going to go 162-0, who's on pace for 82 homers. We'll get into all of that. But the first thing we're going to talk about is a release that is coming out today as of the episode's release date. The ultra premium product that goes for over$20,000 a box. 2025 tops transcendent. So I'll let you talk about um how you feel about it in like previous years. Uh, because there's not a lot of info on this year. There's no checklist that I see available. But when you think of Transcendent, what do you think about?

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Well, first thing I think about when I think about Transcendent was getting back into the hobby and joining joining those Houdini random hit breaks. Did you ever join any of those? Yeah. That was like 2020, I think 2020 Tops Transcendent, 2021 Tops Transcendent. It was around the time that he pulled that Abraham Lincoln cut auto. That was pretty sick.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

I remember I would join those, and um after so what he would do is he would he would rip the whole case, and then there'd be like he know how many cards there were in there. And then after he reveals all the cards, then he would randomize them to everyone. So as you're watching, you don't know before what you hit, you know after. So you see these and you're like, oh man, I have a chance at this a blinking autograph or this or that. So I'd be looking at it and I'd look at the whole list and I'd say, All right, so two out of every three cards are cards that I really like and that I would be glad that I paid the spot price for. And I joined multiple ones. I never ever hit those two out of three cards. The odds always worked against me on that. But then I think I mentioned before one year I did get the one-on-one Jared Kellenick rookie auto back when he was hyped guy. That was that that made up for a lot of it. Did you sell it at the right time, at least? I think I told the story of when I did the blind trade with Tom from Real Breaks from Real Sports Cards, and he sent me a bunch of stuff. Yeah, that's great. That's right. That's right. Yeah, and it and it worked out very nicely for me and not so nicely for him, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Yeah. Anyways, that's where my head goes when I think about Transcendent and kind of of course Transcendent back then was a lot different back in 2020, 2021. And then it changed for the first time, really, last year, into this new configuration. Kind of a completely different product in a lot of ways. But yeah, one box per case. Your box is gonna have eight to nine autos. Pre-sale price right now on a lot of secondary sites is like upwards of$20,000,$22 to$25,000. I've been seeing, but no checklist. You will get a super fractor in each one of your boxes. You're gonna get eight to nine autos. There's gonna be some massive hits. I think a lot of the a lot of the preview images that Tops has shared are pretty cool. You just kind of wonder like, is the juice worth the squeeze?

SPEAKER_01 3:37

I'm uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

Yeah, is the squeeze?

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Oops. I that was totally unintentional.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Anyway, yeah, so this product, obviously, to buy a box, not for everyone to get into a break, not for everyone. This is the highest budget of the highest budget to get into, but it's just it's fun to watch. You know, if you like just watching rips and seeing cool stuff, you know, this isn't like watching series one where you're watching cases in cases, hoping to see like something remotely cool. Like you're gonna see a box, and yeah, it's like it's like watching national treasures for Panini, but 10 times that in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

I know you've been looking at some of the breaks, even though there's no checklist, but there's breaks being sold on Fnatic's Live, of course, and other places. What are you seeing in terms of prices on on some of these?

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Uh Leyden, I've seen the best prices for so far. I've seen teams for as low as 100 to a few hundred bucks. I don't know how these guys are pricing them out without an actual checklist, or if they have some info I don't, because I've even seen player breaks.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

So nothing makes sense to me. It says the set size 100 cards. I think I've seen the player breaks with over 250 spots or over 200 spots. So I don't understand. I I know that there's cards outside of the main set, but to more than double that, I don't get where where they're getting these uh names from. But yeah, if you look in the right places, you can always find a decent price and you have a decent chance to hit something cool. The singer prices.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

The Houdinis, those those random random hit breaks were like$500 a spot, but the configuration was a lot different.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Now if you think about it, it's what 32 cards in a box slash case. And if you're pricing that out at secondary at$25,000, you're looking at what$800,$900 a spot at minimum for one car if you do that style of break. Of course, not a lot of breakers on Fanatics Live are gonna run stuff like that anymore. It is a great product for a post-break random. Because you're right, it's like um it's kind of like sitting on a at a crap's table when the table gets hot. Like it's cool when everybody's rooting for it. It's that same style when you're in a break and uh the case is super hot and everyone's rooting for it because you don't know what what you're gonna get yet.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Yeah, the Houdini breaks. He also had the format where the VIP spot, the VIP invitation, he would not include it because he would resell to help the um break price get lower. So he was able to get them down to like 350. I remember that. So this year, different from last year, but like the years before that, the VIP invitation is guaranteed. So if you're in a break, make sure you're finding out if they're renting it all, if it's going to the non-team spot or what's going on, because that is at least a$5,000 item. As far as I've seen, I don't remember where I've seen it, but I thought it said that there were a hundred VIP invitations and there are 10 transcended tier invites with that that are just a tier above. So as far as I know, that makes it 110 cases. It doesn't really make sense with the number of cases and breaks I've seen available, but that's just the info that I can't go off of. But yeah, it looks like there's a lot of fun stuff. If you look at just the pictures, everything is ultra premium and nice. Singles market is always gonna be better for this. You can find some really cheap singles of this stuff because a lot of people just like to move this stuff and move off of it because they join these breaks and they're not necessarily teams or players looking to get hits on, especially if it's a random hit break. So you can get singles for a decent price on this. It's not like they don't resell like Topps Chrome or anything like that, of course, or Bowman or any of those. It's definitely a uh side product in that sense, but the the cards are still you see some of the nicest looking cards out of this.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

Yeah, it's a it's awesome stuff. I just I think it's so sad that we've gotten to this level of precedent where it's like we're selling all of these hundreds of thousands of dollars of break spots without a checklist, without pack odds, without any information. It's like, how on earth? How on earth are people willing to fork out these kind of dollar figures without knowing any of that information? You know, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

All right, so I'm looking it up right now. We the hobby has a five case transcendent, 269 spots, only nine spots left. Um, Iron Judge is fifteen thousand dollars. The Otani spot, I'm looking it up right now. I believe it was like$26,000. You can buy a case of that for that amount, but unlike other products, Otani should not be short printed in this. Right. Yeah. Oh, he's$28,999. He's$29,000 for Otani. You can just use your knowledge of past releases for 2025 to judge whether or not somebody's going to have an auto in this product, unless it's a unless it's a cut auto, you should assume that if they're under contract for the other products that they're going to be signing here, especially for those ultra premium players. You know, you know Judge is gonna have an auto, you know Latani is gonna have an auto. Uh, we see the only ones that I can guarantee Soto, Jita, Reggie Jackson, Johan Santana, Anthony Volpe, because those are the ones that they released the uh promo pictures for. That Santana card looks sick, though.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

Oh man, I wish. Saw the duel of Ichiro and Griffey, I think.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

That's a pretty amazing card. Yeah. Uh such a good dual auto to have, too. All right. Well, there's another thing that happened this week in the car world that we can move on to. I don't want to spend too much time in Transcended because it's not like any of us are really gonna be buying a box or a case of that. And there's no checklist to go off of. Um, so Topps Chrome Black had their pre-order this week. And a lot of people noticed that on the Topps website they had a new captcha for when you were putting in the order. And I've actually heard some positive things. What have you heard?

SPEAKER_02 9:09

Yeah, I think the bots still did pretty well, but not nearly as well as the Bowman basketball pre-order, which was just an absolute bot fest and a fiasco in every way. So it sounds like a lot of, you know, a lot of collectors who are just trying to get boxes or cases were able to be successful without having any kind of bot to help them or anything like that. I think a lot of the bots got broken by that capture. So it's encouraging seeing tops putting in some kind of anti-bot technology, although it's just frustrating knowing that they absolutely have the capability to do it and they haven't made that a priority, nor have they said anything about it publicly.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

So, with the amount of people having success, the pre-order quantities are obviously going to be limited. I think that this is definitely a step in the right direction for for Topps. It seems like people that really wanted it, most of the people that I know were able to get it, as long as you were ready to go at at noon or when whatever time it was for you to try to get it. So, and this obviously wasn't as in demand as Bowman, but the print run should have been shorter. They were both pre-orders. So just something to think about. A Bowman, I would definitely give it another shot when it's release time because I'm sure the quantity will be a lot more than just the limited quantity for pre-orders. I'm assuming I don't have any scientific information to go off of, but I'm assuming that pre-orders that they have a much more limited quantity than the actual release day boxes.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

Yeah, that's an interesting one. I don't know. I don't know what the um what we found out on that front, like what a typical ratio is between pre-order quantity made available versus actual release day quantity made available. But um Yeah, I don't know. They've also been raising the prices just a tad between pre-sale and day of release. And I'm sure with the way that secondary is on Bowman Basketball, they'll definitely do the same thing for that. And they'll probably do the same thing for Topps Chrome Black, because I think they I've been seeing early sales on cases of like$4,000 a case. Prices were only what$20, probably six, twenty, seven hundred after tax for most people.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

That makes sense. Yeah. I think it was the pre-sale was$200. Now I'm excited for this product. I'm excited for us to do our deep dive and breakdown closer to release. We are gonna see some of the rookies that we have not seen yet. I know for one Murakami, we're gonna see, which has raised his stock. He doesn't really have a hobby stock right now, because he doesn't really have a lot of cards. All of his cards were from, as far as I know, like Japanese releases. So I'm excited about the set. I love this set, it's not worth the price tag to me from just one box. I think that this is fun to get with other boxes because it's just such a quick rip. It's hard to hit something nice. I've had great luck with it, but I can't rely on that luck for everything.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

Yeah, I think Capture Black typically is pretty tough. You could have some pretty dusty cases of that stuff. You know what I mean? Like I'm I'm very hesitant as a breaker to be buying up cases at the clip that they're going for right now because I just really don't think the juice is worth the squeeze.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

But yeah, there's there's a lot of cool stuff that's in here. They've added some new inserts, and a big piece of news for this too is they added the home field advantage.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

For top scroll. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Yeah, I love the I'm looking at 2025 right now. So I'm looking at the wrong checklist anyway. Um, but so my my calculations, I'll just get rid of that for the uh print run. Definitely all. I was wondering why they had the odds already. I was surprised, but yeah, they added home field advantage. I love Depth of Darkness, that is one of my favorite inserts. I love those shadow box inserts. I'm a sucker for those. I really need to get myself a planetarium of cosmic for something. Yeah, it's just I'm a big fan of this set, but singles is really the route to go. Breaks can definitely be fun, especially because now it's two packs. They started that last year, I think. So you do have more base cards to go around, and even the base cards are beautiful in this. But yeah, it should definitely be definitely be a fun set to watch.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

But I wouldn't look forward to uh getting into it in a little bit more depth when we do our our product review. When's it supposed to come out? April, end of April, right? The 30th or something? April 29th. Yeah. Okay. So it's kind of a little serious right now for baseball products. You know, we've just had obviously series one Heritage, but nothing else. 2026 coming out until probably tops chrome black.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Because everyone's taking their monthly$20,000 baseball card budget and putting a torch transcendent. They don't have enough for four products this month. Because I guess that's so affordable.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

It's so odd to me that of all months, March is one of the quietest months so far that we've had in the last 12 for baseball releases. Um, and then you look at a month like November or December, and it's just like release a week or two releases a week sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yeah. People are spending all their money on those tops now cards for the first home run of this player or whatever. Um, yeah, I don't know why they would do that, not try to take advantage of baseball opening and all the buzz that goes around with it.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

We should do an episode on Tops Now at some point, because it's just to talk about like the overall direction of the program and what we're seeing and stuff like that. Because I think that'd be an interesting study. It seems like Topps is really trying to invest in Tops now.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Yeah, that would definitely be a lot of talking points on that. Yeah, they had the Damascus now. Yeah, the uh home field. They got 20 players on it. That should be a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Those are cool. I wonder how rare how rare they'll be. Well, those are gonna be stupid rare, I think.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Like the Death of Darkness, well, one out of like every five cases or so. I think they are gonna be right up there with that, or even more so. Because I'm just thinking of Topps Chrome, how rare the Chrome home field advantages were. Let's see if there's anyone. It's it's a good checklist, too. Not not many stinkers on it. How many names? 20.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

Okay, nice. Yeah, that Otani's gonna go crazy. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

Yeah, you could say that for anything. You can literally say that for a base inter from three years ago. That Otani is gonna go crazy and did well. All right, so let's get into opening week of baseball. And I'm going to call this segment small sample, big reactions. We're gonna talk about a few vets and a few rookies. I don't really want to talk about the guys that are like 0 for 12. You know, let's stay on the positive side for this one. Just these small sample sizes of guys that have made an impact and have made a feeling, really good energy from them right away. First one I want to talk about, Mike Trout. He is hitting currently 353. He's got two home runs, OPS of 1248. So Trout is back. That is the sentiment I'm hearing right now. Get ready. Trout, only a year older than Aaron Judge. Everyone's reminding us of that. I'm seeing everywhere. How are you feeling, Mike Trout, on the reaction to how his season has started?

SPEAKER_02 15:39

I love what I'm seeing. It looks like he's playing with a level of energy that, I don't know, it seems like that he hasn't had for a while. That youthful energy that he had when he came up and lit the world on fire with a bunch of back-to-back to back 10 war seasons. Yeah, I just fingers crossed, knock on wood, hope he can stay healthy. From a hobby perspective, it'll be really interesting to see how well he has to play to move the needle on his card prices, because we have seen a pretty steady decline in line with his decline in performance. Mike Trout, of course, is one of the most sold baseball players in in modern sports cards. So a lot of the data that you can see on card ladder and things like that, that trend trout have so many data points that you can really kind of rely on that. And when you when you put the trout prices against his performance, it's actually quite correlated. Um Yeah, I don't know. Is it like if he played a full season and you know, hit 50 bombs, how much would his prices go up? I think we kind of talked about that hypothetical in one of the last episodes, but you know, what would it take for him to really move the needle? Like, could he do anything this year to get back up to to peak trout prices? Peak, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

I do not think so, but I think he can really, really get his car prices way back up there. But peak, uh peak was crazy.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Let me ask you this, Juice. If he if he hit 60 bombs this year, would his cards be what are you supposed to call 60? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

That's so hard to say because he was at he was the otani level before Otani was Otani level. And I think that there could always only really be one guy at that level, because I think that for whatever reason the hobby swarms to that one guy and really makes him like that god tier status. 60 bombs, though. I don't think unless Otani really, for whatever reason, takes a backseat and like he just becomes he he was never the face, like everyone always said that about Trout. Like, as great as he as he was, and everyone who loves baseball appreciated what he did. He was never like the face, like the marketing face to like bring baseball to that next level, too. I think that also hurts him a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

But just such a hockey darling, like in the media and stuff like that, and how Major League Baseball and the media machine around it thought about Trout was always different than the the way the hobby thought about Trout.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

You know what? I think yes, if this is the big if that I put last time, if the Angels as a team can get to the playoffs, because that is something that we don't see from Trout. His team never got to the playoffs. That's the story.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

But that's that might be one of the only outcomes where they make the playoffs.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

But we've never seen what a playoff run Trout can do in terms of hobby. That is Uncharted Waters. I would be so excited to see that. Everyone, everyone would be. That's what I think it would take. I I would not be shocked because I go back to this pretty much like every week or so. Playoffs can do so much for players' card prices, even the elite players. Like when everyone said tiny prices can't go any higher, it just took the playoffs to just shut everyone up and put the wild.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

Bryce Harper, I don't remember what year it was. Gosh, it would have been like the in the last five years. Probably more like, I don't know, I didn't even want to try to say what year it was, but Harper had a really good playoff performance one year and his prices jumped significantly, like more than I would have thought at the time. Baseball, especially, is great when the great players do great things on the biggest stages. You know what I mean? Like it's always nice in a sport where the outcomes are so kind of random and streaky when something like that happens in the biggest moments. Um yeah, and then a guy like Jeremy Payne, remember when he won the uh World Series MVP? Obviously, not like a superstar at the time, but he was one of the top seven or eight rookies in that 2022 class. Then he goes and wins World Series MVP, and all of a sudden he's right up there with Julio and Bobby for a little while.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Yeah, though it could just it could reset your market in just such a positive direction. All right. Next up, let's talk about this guy. He is coming out hot. He did the same thing last year. He came out really hot right off the bat for the Red Sox. He's hitting 500, two home runs, OPS 1563. Williar or Brayu of the Red Sox. So this hot start, he did this last year. What are you thinking about this year?

SPEAKER_02 19:55

He also had a nice little WBC, too, which I think helped get him on the right direction. It seems like the WBC has been more helpful for the hitters than it has been for the pitchers, the way some of the pitchers have thrown. Anyways, yeah, Brayu, I don't know. He can be a streaky player. He, like you said, last year had a really good start to his season, but then he really sputtered out and kind of by the by the second half of the season, I don't think he was even an everyday starter anymore. We'll see what happens in Boston. It seems he's got like he's got the path to playing time. I don't know how high his ceiling is, though. Like I don't I don't ever see him being truly hobby relevant.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

He does play for a good market, the Red Sox. It's just that that's really gonna help him. Um, but yeah, he did the same thing last year, so I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

I like the way he I like the way when he when he turns on a pitch inside, I like the way he kind of leans back on it. It's uh he's got like a really good looking finish, really good looking uppercut swing.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Yeah, so after seeing the same thing from him last year, maybe he just he's ahead of the pitching curve a little bit at the beginning of the year. But I'm I'm a wait and see on him. I'm not like gonna all of a sudden start buying his stuff up just because of this start.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

It is pretty cheap, I think, for the most part, though, you know. But uh that's fair. Probably not the right time to buy.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

All right, the last one I'm excited about for our vets. This guy's hitting 417 OPS of 1200 in one very clutch three-run walk-off home run. We're talking Lubob for the D Love. How are you feeling so far? I've been a fan of him for a while. I've just been waiting for him to turn that corner. He has a special place because he was the rookie of like when I really got into collecting. What was that, 2020?

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

So him along with Bob Bachet. And now I got both of them on my Mets.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

Gavin Lux, Aristid Sakino, that 2020 Topps rookie class, Elon Alvarez.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Yeah, I got I got nice cards of all those guys now. Um, but yeah, Lubob, I was just looking. I have a nice um Diamond Icons out of five auto of him. But shadow got some nice stuff. I got a blue gold label auto, and then I actually bought off my brother. He was selling it on on eBay, and he's like, I got this offer. Uh, should I take? I'm like, I'll just give you that.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

All right, that was a fun product. I really enjoyed gold label. I wish that they didn't get rid of it.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Gold label, I miss it so much. I remember I got a few boxes. My brother got like two boxes one year, and my boxes were hitting nothing, nothing, nothing. And I was jealous because my brother hit a David Wright auto out of five. And then in my last box, I hit a blue David Wright auto out of 10. So we just coincidentally, you know, his favorite player growing up, one of my top players ever. So we both coincidentally both had like these beautiful David Wright autos out of nowhere. And that's always remained such like a favorite product of mine, and that's a card I would never sell.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

I like they took the gold label concept and they kind of threw that into finest a little bit with the tiering of the checklist, like the class one, class two, class three, I think is what we called it.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

That I never liked. I never liked the different like tiers of the different like rarities. That I was never a fan of. Kind of I don't know. It just didn't do it for me.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

Way too many parallels. That none of them, none of them would hold value because there was too many of them.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Yeah, definitely too confusing for the average collector.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

It was a confusing product to break for sure.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Let's talk about some of our hot rookies. So first we'll talk about hitting 283. He's only got four hits. His OPS though, 1373. Three out of his four hits have been for home runs.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

We talked we spoke about him in the last week. Munitekamorikami. We said if the home runs could come, then he's gonna be a really fun guy to watch. We spoke about him earlier in the episode. Is this hot start legit?

SPEAKER_02 23:29

I mean, he's probably gonna carry series too, huh? He's gonna be that guy. Yeah, I think so. I mean, especially with the Japan market and how they buy some of their star players, even how they were buying, like uh oh, what's a good example? Trying to think.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

A Japan player.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

Um like not like a superstar player, like the prices at which those those players were going for were pretty crazy. But Muniteka Murakami is a is a a big name. Yeah, he's uh he's a beast. I'm buying his stock, both in fantasy and in the hobby. Like you said, there's not that many cards of him. But I think, yeah, how much do we want for it? Is it clean?

SPEAKER_01 24:01

I think there's literally one. If you go on eBay, I almost bought it. I think there's one for like$50 right now. Um, and I would I might just go on and buy that after unless you want it.

SPEAKER_02 24:10

Are there any dimples or are there any edge marks or on this?

SPEAKER_01 24:13

I don't know. I literally, like I said, when when we started, I was literally looking at my cards and I was like, oh, and then you came on. I was like, look what I found.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

Well, so they did it, they posted a promo for 26 Bowman, and of course, Murakami kanji variation 55 Bowman anime is going to be. I mean, that's gonna be a big card even for the non-kanji version.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

He's gonna be in top scroll black. He's gonna be a chase in that, which is gonna be before series two. So that should be his first cards. Did he sign?

SPEAKER_02 24:41

Yeah. Oh, good. Okay, nice. Yeah, I haven't really looked into black yet.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

Yeah, so that's definitely gonna be a chase if if he can keep up anywhere near this start, he's gonna be a lot of fun to watch. He's all or nothing, it seems, which is what we expected. We said that in our player preview episode. But as long as those home runs are coming, you know, it doesn't matter. That 283 average for a home run hitter, take it. Take it all day.

SPEAKER_02 25:05

Yeah, I don't know if he can maintain 286, but he's gonna hit some bombs. You know, I I think he'll hit if he stays healthy. I think he can easily hit 40 bombs as rookie year. And with that, he could be looking at the rookie of the year. Yeah. Mooney moonshots. Mooney moonshots.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

I like that. Did you see that first uh home run of his?

SPEAKER_02 25:21

When you say Mooney, it makes me think of Moononori Kawasaki. Do you remember him?

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Nope.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

Oh my god. Cole hero in Seattle was fantastic. Just a little slap hitter, played great defense, but just had this the funniest personality. Always said funny stuff in interviews, and you could see him messing around with his teammates. Yeah, he was he was a cool dude. Cool hero. Mooney.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

So, next up on our rookies, another guy who's starting off exactly in a way that we thought he might. Kevin McGonagall, average of 357, OPS 971. Home runs. He was robbed of one by Jackson Merrill, though. He was so close, pretty much tipped his hat to him. But yeah, he started an opening day with four hits. You talked about his hit tool and what you were expecting out of him. It seems like he is hitting those expectations, no pun intended. So I have a feeling I know what you're gonna say, but how are you feeling about this uh mechanical start?

SPEAKER_02 26:13

And it's certainly encouraging, right? I mean, just the quality of that bats this guy grinds out. He's wise beyond his years, you know. He's he's a rookie, but he's playing like he's in year 10. He's just so far above all the other guys at his age that are coming up, in my opinion. And he's shown that consistently in his somewhat short minor league career so far. And he's definitely shown it at the major league level so far. Pretty, pretty amazing. The question there is always gonna be the power. Does he have the power? You know, that's a good the fact that his uh his one almost home run was robbed, I think, is a perfect like analogy for how people look at him from a hobby perspective. Like, does he have the power? Is he close enough? He's close, but is he close enough? Is he gonna be a guy that could eventually hit 30, maybe 40 home runs in a year? I'm not sure. And how good of a hitter do you have to be if you're only hitting 20 home runs a year to be a hobby star? And that is the answer to that question is an insanely good hitter. Like, can you think of any big hitters in the last 20 years that have only hit 20 home runs a year and are like big, have huge hobby value? It's almost like you'd have to go back to somebody like Ricky Henderson. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Yeah, unless you have like another big tool to hang your hat on, like stolen is yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:23

Ichiro would be one, but yeah. He's got more pop than Ichiro. I think he wants to hit the ball. I mean, it's a different game, too, than when Ichiro came up. I think he's gonna like the Tigers are gonna want him to hit the ball out of the ballpark, and I think he's gaining power as he gets older, too, like most guys do. And he's he's far away from his peak power potential usually that you see when guys turn 27, 28, 29.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Yeah, he's well off his prime. He's got plenty of time to grow into that power. And hopefully we're gonna get a big deal.

SPEAKER_02 27:51

He's a beast, though. Like, is there any question that he's gonna be like right away just like a an a way above average hitter at the major league level? It's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Yeah, everyone is expecting big things from this guy. His cards are gonna be really, really at a premium. This is really such a fun rookie class this year. It's gonna be one of the best rookie classes we've seen hobby-wise in a while. And yeah, I'm just that there's so many, there's so many guys with so much potential. And I think it's great for so many reasons. You know, when you see like that, those years where there's just like a couple of guys, their prices are such a premium because the box prices stay the same usually. Well, or as you know, they go up every year. But now with it spread out, like especially for like breaks and stuff, you know, breakers can really spread out that price a lot more and not have to focus on, okay, well, this is the team, you know, outside of the Dodgers with Otani, it should really be able to spread out the prices quite a bit. So that that should be really healthy and fun for the hobby, unless tops fanatics get even greedier and just say, Oh, this is such a fantastic rookie class, just raising prices.

SPEAKER_02 28:56

I'm gonna ask you a question, and I before I do, I'm gonna say I think we should make this a topic in a future episode. But I want your gut reaction, Juice. Pick one rookie class that will be better in let's call it five years from now, 2024, 2026, including not just series one, but also series two. An update, guys. Anybody that eventually is a rookie in that class, because it's not 25.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

You know what? I I gotta go 2026 just because I know 2024 had schemes, but when we were first talking about this year, we were talking about all the great pitchers, and now we haven't even talked about these rookie pitchers today. We're talking about all hitters, and we still haven't seen Conic Riffin, who is the guy that is pretty much the big shadow looming over all these other guys. He's gonna be the benchmark as far as we know. But yeah, so just with all the great pitching and all the great hitting, I've never seen like it's 10 guys that that we could probably rattle off really quick of perennial all-star potential that that could be future hobby darlings and guys that could be talked about in MVP raises. I don't think I've ever seen more than like five in a year.

SPEAKER_02 30:02

I mean like top five versus top five from each class looking at the top, because so much of the price of a product is going to be driven by the top guys, but yeah. 24 in in no particular order, it's gonna be what, Skeens, Ellie, maybe a Jackson Churio, Yamamoto, who else? I mean, there's Jackson Holiday, there's Jackson Merrill, there's Wyatt Langford, a lot of people think could have a big year. Who am I missing from 24? Who else would you throw in there? One of those guys probably.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

I was thinking of the Jacksons. Um, and then you Caminero.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

Caminero is probably the one actually I'd put in there.

SPEAKER_01 30:31

Yeah, and he's still somehow into the radar.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

So you got Skeens, Ellie, Churio, Caminero, Yamamoto versus Roman, Jack, Connor.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

McGonagall, Mark. I like that. You can swap out so many names. That's the thing.

SPEAKER_02 30:44

McGonagall, Weatherhole, Emerson. And then we haven't talked about Mizerowski, Schlitler.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

It's McClean. I think you've already made 10 and we can keep going. Like I've never seen a rookie class like that for the hobby.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

So that's pretty deep. Yeah. But it always starts deep, you know. Yeah. It's it won't be as deep when we're talking about 2026 and 2028.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

Yeah. Well, these guys, though, they're they're so good. And I think the hot starts are definitely helping, uh, are definitely skewing our reactions, you know. At the end of the day, these are such at the end of the day, these are really small sample sizes. There's really nothing to really say. It's just, you know, hope, be optimistic, look at the promise. But yeah, that there's really not much that that we can go off of. It's just, can they actually do it on a big stage? Yeah. All right. So let's talk about the last guy. You just mentioned his name, his numbers aren't as eye-popping, but you know, he did have that really impressive Homer day one. JJ Weatherholt. He's gonna be 250 right now, one home run, 753 OPS. But he just looks solid. He looks like he he belongs. How are you feeling about him?

SPEAKER_02 31:50

Have you cooled on him with or definitely not cooled on him? He looks the part. I love the fact that he's hitting leadoff. I think St. Louis is an awesome baseball town. JJ Weatherholt seems like an awesome baseball person. Yeah, I'm I'm still very bullish on JJ Weatherholt. And, you know, even though most of the time when a guy gets the call, I'd say sell, especially with given the way that he's had a good start to his career. I think JJ is one of the few guys that I'd say hold at this point.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

That's fair. I'm feeling the same way. You know, nothing crazy has popped out, but he's he's done what's been asked of him so far, and he should continue. Hopefully he has a good year, turns into a good career. But yeah, I would not be I don't know. I I can't blame you for selling right now.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

I still am unbelievably high on 2025 Bowman as as a checklist. I just think it's it's gone up a lot. Like you can't find a jumbo box for less than about 700 bucks now. You know, at one point you could find them for around 500 once the market cooled after release, but that checklist is just unbelievable. The first Bowman checklist is just so good compared to a typical Bowman flagship release. And it's it's a good mix of guys that are already doing it. Weatherholt, McGonagall, guys that are already up in the big leagues, and guys that have huge prospect hype. Mate, Pena, Quintero, Thomas White, those guys. I I could go on on on about 2025 Bowman. Connor Griffin has autos.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

And most of those guys we can see this year as well. You mentioned them.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

But yeah, so for all we know, this rookie class, who knows if like that they'll make the cutoff or update, but it could become even stronger for the hobby.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

Well, that about does it for today, I think. It's been a very exciting first week of baseball. And yeah, any parting words, Bert?

SPEAKER_02 33:35

It has been a very first, uh, exciting first week of baseball. Looking forward to more of it. Go, Mariners. I'm really looking forward to us beating the Yankees again tonight. It's gonna be it's gonna be phenomenal. We can share that you and I juice as the season goes along. Joining the Yankees, watching the Yankees lose.

SPEAKER_01 33:51

Yeah, and the Mariners have always been like one of like the other teams that I would enjoy watching, just because you know I grew up with Griffey and then since then just rooting for that jersey all the time. But yeah, rooting against the Yankees, that's never difficult to do. Uh only thing is they they play so late for me. So I'm uh I'm pretty much out.

SPEAKER_02 34:08

It's tough. Yeah. Well, good luck on your transcendent breaks. I know you'll be showing out, you'll be liquidating your 401k, taking out a second mortgage on your house. It's an investment. Go to that or two for a personal rip. See if you could find one of those golden tickets.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

All right. Well, thank you so much, everyone, for listening to the Talking Cards podcast with Grant Slami and the juice. I am the juice. Everyone, enjoy baseball being back. We do have a link in our description now if you want to send us. It says like mail. It's obviously not physical mail, but you can send us a message if you have any questions or comments. And uh maybe we'll mention you or your comments on the show. All right. Well, thank you so much for listening, everyone. Have a good day.

SPEAKER_02 34:47

Awesome. Thank you.