SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello and welcome to Talking Cards with Grand Salami and the Juice. I am your host, The Juice, along here with Grand Salami Bert. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 0:17

I'm doing good, man. I'm doing good. It's a crazy week in the hobby right now. I'm feeling a lot of different things. I uh it's just crazy. I mean, to go from tops chrome football into Bowman basketball, it's just like a total feeding frenzy.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Yes, yes, it is. And these aren't just like offshoot products, these are main line products and people all want a piece.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Definitely. I feel like there's so much overlap between basketball and football collectors. A lot of that, I think, to do with the licensing and stuff like that and the history, but it's been a very quiet time for baseball and a very, very hot time for basketball and football.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

I'm trying to use that quiet time to try to save some funds. For bowling. Yeah, we'll try around the corner. Yeah. We got Topps Chrome Black 2 coming up next week.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

Next Wednesday, 429. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Not on a box-by-box basis for that, but that can be really fun for breaks.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

Yeah, multi-case brakes. If you can find a player at a decent price, I think Tops Chrome Black is okay. Problem is, dude, secondary price on Tops Chrome Black right now is pretty insane. If people are going to be pricing these brakes at current secondary market, it's going to be tough. It's going to be tough for a lot of folks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Yeah. So we will see. Uh, we'll talk about that next week, probably, but for today, we will talk about this week's big release you just mentioned. Bowman Basketball. First Bowman basketball product with the new top licensing. Released today for us.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Here's LeBron.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Yeah. Hobby boxes on the website were $360. You get 20 box 20 packs per box, eight cars per pack, two autos per box. There is also Jumbo available, which is four autos, and breakers to light. And then, of course, you have retail. I was recommending to avoid mega boxes as I always do with Bowman products, but this is kind of a bit of an outlier because the first aren't really the absolute focus for this.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

And the reason why you want to avoid Bowman Megas and baseball is because they're missing that first designation. And yeah, that is not the well, while that could still be the case, it does not matter as much, I don't think, because you're really looking for the rookies in there.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Yeah, definitely different fundamentally than the baseball side of things. I think fanatics to their credit actually did a really good job at combining the two and making the split between uh rookies vets and prospects a little bit more even than it is in Bowman baseball, where it's 90-10 prospects to rookies and vets.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

It makes sense for the dynamics of the market.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

It does. And also baseball, you have so many more prospects than basketball and stuff, and so many guys that you got to wait on for a long time. Basketball, there's like five to ten guys that you're gonna care about for any given year. Uh that's in a good year.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Yeah, definitely. I do miss a Bowman University pour some out, pour some out for Bowman University standalone Chrome. It was a great product. We had a good run. I'm very happy to see that Bowman University best returns so that college collectors are gonna have an approachable price point product that they can rip if they want to, without the flag mania and the con mania and the Wemby LeBron mania being baked into the pricing of the box. That at least I think is a very good thing. I hope they do the same thing for football, but we'll see.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Another thing to know about hobby, so two autos, you're gonna get one NBA and one college player. Jumbos, it's four autos again, even split. Breaker's delight is two NBA and one prospect. So for the most part, you're getting an even split. The sorry, I'm still recovering from the flu, everyone. So it's sorry if last week's episode wasn't the best. It turned out I had the flu, which I found out the very next day after the episode, and I'm still just trying to battle through just uh lingering.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

So we have for the base card set, it's a 200 card base set. Um that is for NBA players and a 100 card prospect, so college-based set. So 300 cards, which is nothing crazy for Bowman, especially including all the prospects and the vets rookies like we have. The big thing is we're continuing to see the mass amount of parallels, 50 parallels for the chrome cards. How do you feel about that?

SPEAKER_02 4:15

Uh it seems like par for the course, it doesn't even really bother me very much anymore. I feel like it's the new normal. I think that tops with this first kind of new edition of Bowman basketball that they're putting out, they they want it to feel loaded. And they've been doing that by doing the lots of different parallels, higher hit frequency than previous years. And I I think that's a fine thing. I don't think it, I don't think it dilutes anything too much.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

I don't mind the more parallel. I don't mind the more parallels. Definitely not. I've said this before. If you are someone that really only likes the true color stuff, then that's fine. It's still there for you. And it will be a premium, which is nice. So if you do hit a true color, you're still gonna get a premium for that. But this really just allows, as the hobby grows, there are hits to still be able to find in each box. Um, so I really, I really don't mind the increase in in parallels. So of course we're gonna see a ton of prospects, but we discuss how the rookies are the big chase. Who are the rookies that you're looking for in tops chrome basketball or bowling chrome basketball?

SPEAKER_02 5:17

In terms of the rookies, I mean, it's all about flag and con right now. I mean, there's some other there's some other places that you can you can go in and and pick out some other top rookies. A lot of people like the Rutgers guys, Ace Bailey, Dylan Harper. Um, there's some more under under the radar kind of guys, but it's all about those big two at this point. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

I agree. For a red rookie, is there a favorite for rookie of the year between the two?

SPEAKER_02 5:38

I believe the favorite has actually swung in favor of Khan the last time I looked, but it's been about a week since I looked at the odds.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

I'm just so afraid about red rookie redemption. So for those that don't know, and they introduced this last year in Bowman Baseball, some of the rookies will have a red rookie logo, and with fanatics, you could trade that in and it's on a step-by-step system. So, first, if they win rookie of the year, you can get a hundred dollar credit from from fanatics. If you hold on to it, you can get more credit for things like MVP, Hall of Fame, things like that. And that credit can increase quite a bit. But in baseball, I was burned and a few other people were burned last year because we all felt like Cade Horden was gonna win win rookie of the year, which turned out not to be the case. So yeah, I'm still a little bit about that. So just buyer beware on that. You can certainly come out quite a bit ahead if you guess right, or you just happen to know which way things were leading.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

But just something about by the way, Cooper's like minus 175 and Khan's like plus 150, plus 200-ish. Yeah. So I don't know. It's interesting. It was the first time they did the red rookie program, it was always interesting looking at the rookie of the year odds and then comparing that to like what would your return on investment need to be to make money by taking advantage of the red rookie program? Like a lot of people were thinking about how much at the time that Bowman came out, how much do I want to pay of for a Jacob Wilson? You know, he was the odds-on favorite when the product came out back in May. I think it was he was probably like minus 400 or something by the time that the product came out. So people were willing to pay about 60, 70 bucks for a Jacob Wilson, a red rookie, just for the chance to make that little 30 in profit. And unfortunately, a lot of people ended up losing on that because his teammate came over and just started crushing.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Yeah, it was through not much fault of his own that he lost that. It's more that Nick Kurtz was insane.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

The big reason why people are always looking to rip with a product that has guaranteed autos is for those guaranteed autos. So what we are seeing is again a pretty nice split here, especially because you're gonna get one of each in a hobby. Chrome prospect autos, 101 cards, 26 parallels, and chrome autos, so for the NBA players, 98 cards, 27 parallels.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

One big thing to know is that super fractors are in hobby SKUs only.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Superfractors cannot be just the base superfractors, autos and non-autos.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Wow. So definitely good information to have. If you're ripping retail, czar, you're not expecting any sort of a super, but if you're ripping anything, you shouldn't really have that expectation. But just something to know, especially because superfractors can drices. We've really seen that with the most recent thing I could think of. Not technically a super fracture, but a one-on-one. Remember when um Topps update prices went crazy when Yamamoto started going off and everyone was looking for his uh his debut patch? So if there is the rookie that superfractor has not been pulled, the hobby and stuff, the hobby box prices and stuff could really go crazy down the line. But again, that that's a big if. Uh but yeah, definitely, definitely something to take note of. How do you feel about that about not including superfractors in retail?

SPEAKER_02 8:45

I don't know. I I think it's a good thing, honestly. I think um if people are going to be spending the amount of money that they are to join the hobby SKUs, Hobby Jumbo and Delight, those are the folks that should be hitting those big chase cards. I have no issue with big chase cards being excluded from retail. In fact, I think Topps has kind of veered a little bit too much in the wrong way in including too many of those chase cards in retail in the past. So I I think it's good that they're swinging back.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

The thing is, I would agree if it was easier for a regular person to be able to get these hobby skews at the regular price. Because if you want to buy basketball and basketball right now, it's not like you're paying the $360 per box. No. That you should be able to get it at.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

Yeah. Current secondary on hobby is like $5.50 a box. Uh Jumbo's over a thousand now.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Which honestly isn't too absurd. Um, it really isn't.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

I don't think.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah. But yeah, if if it was just easier to get the hobby stuff at retail, I would be like, okay, yes, because now pretty much serious collectors and everyone really has a chance. But to be to have to pay those secondary prices to be able to have a shot at those or be forced to join breaks. I do like breaks, of course, as everyone knows, but I don't believe anyone should be forced to do it to participate in a part of the hobby. But if you have to do it in order to have any sort of realistic chance at a super cracker, I don't think that's right. I I don't know how to how to solve it though.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

You know, the other interesting thing too is the case hits. You know, Panini's always gotten away with keeping their retail hayek because they include those retail case hits and a lot of retail skews. But of course the Panini case hits tend to be a lot more successful and valuable than what Topps and Bowman have been able to put together. Although I think Bowman is getting in a spot where people are going to really start appreciating these case hit SPs a lot more. Spotlights, anime, GPK, crystallized. It's interesting though, because they decided to exclude a couple of those from retail SKUs.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

I do think Topps is closing the gap on the case hits as far as the desirability compared to Capanini. And I think as we see a lot of those Panini collectors come over craving those case hits, I think that could help the value as well. Because they have expectations for things like downtown kabooms and then holding value. So if they hit those, they're gonna have expectations to be able to sell those for a premium price.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

And we will have a big influx of those people, of course, because they they don't have anywhere else to go if they want that licensed product.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, first eBay sale of a base Cooper Flag anime was 13,000 today. It is release day, release night. You're not ever gonna see anything like that in Bowman baseball. Like, who has been there's nothing even comparable to that, uh, just for a base anime. Like Shohei, even Shohei. Like, he's not he's not anywhere close to that stratosphere for a base anime.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Such a different animal with basketball and football. It's so hard. I mean, with basketball football compared to baseball, it's so hard to compare, even when you got a guy like Shohei. But one big thing to point out is LeBron has autos, so he is the guy to look for, of course. Probably more short printed than Shohei to find one of his autos, though.

SPEAKER_02 11:42

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's the way it's been.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Yeah, but yeah, you hit one of those, and yeah, you've got you've got a car pretty much. Retrofractor autos are back as well, but we just have Shaq for that with LSU. So if you have the Lakers spotting a break, don't expect to get that Shaq auto. At least I would not expect it. Wouldn't it make any sense? And I'm a big Shaq fan. I have a Shaq signed ball somewhere in my house. Love Shaq.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Yeah, Shaq.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Let's go.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

I grew up during those prime Shaq years.

SPEAKER_02 12:12

Oh, me too. There was nothing like it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Any big names or anything that you wanted to point out for the different base autos for Chroman prospect?

SPEAKER_02 12:21

I mean, AJ DeBonsa, I think, is an excellent prospect. I'd be surprised. I mean, he's definitely gonna be a top three pick. There is a really good class going into the NBA draft this year, but I think DeBonsa's got that skill set where a lot of people drool over like he could be a future superstar. So it'd be interesting to see, now that they've merged the two together, how the first Bowman autos in basketball perform on the market compared to previous years. I think if anything, combining the two is gonna elevate the first Bowman auto for guys. And I know that they're not in pro uniform, they can't be. That's a pre-draft card, but I think people will gain an appreciation for those and that the power of the mighty first logo goes a long, long way. I think the the farther that we get down the line, Topps is very committed to this Bowman concept. I think they're gonna appreciate quite a bit. There's only one first. There's a lot of different rookie cards, but there's only one first.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

And then on the NBA side, you have all the big rookies. You got Cooper Flag, you got Khan, and you got all the big vets. Like we said, you got LeBron. I saw an SGA pulled out of 10 auto today by Deep Fry. That was pretty awesome. That's putting it lightly. Um, you got Wemby, Jalen Brunson. Um, again, all these big names, very much short printed, is the best assumption. Unless you're getting into multi-cases looking for these specific players, it's gonna be tough. Very, very tough. Next up, we had the future script autos. So these are for prospect college players only. They're also hobby only. You're gonna see that as a common theme here. Hobby only for a lot of these insert autos. This is just 25 cards. I don't know anything about basketball product prospects, I'm not gonna lie. But yeah, it looks like a pretty standard checklist, followed by the buzz fracture autographs. Again, prospects only, 25 cards, exclusive to hobby. Both of these have just five different parallels, so definitely tough hits.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Next up for the auto side, we have opening statement signatures. This is NBA only and hobby only. And this is where you can find a lot of your rookie's big insert autos.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

These are how do you like the looks of these?

SPEAKER_00 14:34

I like them. I saw them today. Yeah, I believe it is sticker though, which the con looks like it's on card. It is?

SPEAKER_02 14:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Okay. I say corrected. Yeah. I like it. It's different. Having the auto up top is always most of them are sticker.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Con Kanipples is sticker.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

Man, I wonder how much Topps pay Cooper Flag has signed a lot of autos for Topps on card now since his since his first release, I guess, with Bowman University. Or even before that, McDonald's McDonald's All-American game.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

We just locked him in a dungeon. Not to mention all the uh Topps now cards every time he puts up 50 points.

SPEAKER_02 15:07

Seems like everything that he signs is on card, even when it other players are sticker, Cooper's on card. I'm sure he made an absolute fortune on that deal.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Yeah.

unknown 15:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Next up we have the timeless touch signatures. This is again 25 cards. Once again, NBA player only and exclusive to hobby. So we are seeing a theme here. This is a so-so checklist of some vets and stuff. Nothing, no one really stands out to me. It's one of the lesser insert autos I think that you get.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Yeah. This is how this is a very underwhelming card design to me. I don't love it. Um, it also doesn't look very much like Bowman to me.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

You have uh Wemby on here. That's the only auto that really stands out to me as one to really get excited about.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Yeah, like it doesn't those don't look like Bowman to me. I don't know. It looks like something it looks more tops chrome or even like something different, like going to a panini. It looks like a like like a crown royal or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

I'm gonna try something different. I can't hate them on it. And it's not, like I said, that great of a checklist. So it'd be a mad card no matter what, unless you hit that Wemby.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Yeah, you don't want that to be one of your autos, I don't think.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

On the retail side of thing, we do have prospect um paper autographs and paperworking event autographs. I believe same checklist as their Chrome counterparts. These will sell for a fraction of what the Chromes will, but still a nice chase. I believe um Slash Squatch, I might be misquoting this. I think he said like 70% of the autos in retail will be paper, the 30% chrome. I think that was a number that he came up with. Unless I'm there's so many releases, I could be confusing it with something.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

Another interesting one to follow. We know what the kind of the how they do in Bowman baseball, the paper autos, and they do not do well. Be interesting to see in basketball what the spread is like between a paper auto and a chrome auto. Like baseball is significant. Like I think if you hit like an orange paper auto, it's probably gonna be less than that same player's base chrome, which is insane.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

And then we have Bowman dual autos. So once again, it's exclusive to hobby, and these are prospect only, also, which I think is missed opportunity. You can get some really creative with these dual autos, but yeah, it's not even like school by school. That's what I would expect. It goes across wool, I think, for all of them.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

And these are very, very rare.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

Yeah. That's when I think about the Bowman University duels, triple squads, I'd definitely go straight to Best. I know they had them in in Chrome, but uh, they're probably saving a lot of that for best. It is interesting though that they didn't take advantage of the opportunity to do some like some crossover between the NBA and the NIL. Like a dual auto of two guys, one that's still in school and one guy that graduated from that program would have been a really cool crossover idea.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

It just it feels like it's just two separate product lines released in one box. It's very odd in that way, because they literally do separate checklists for so many things in this. And again, I like that there are a lot of positives about it. I'm not really complaining, but it just there's just something weird about it to me.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

Um it would be cool if like if they did like a Cooper Flag uh boozer dual auto, like one Duke alum and and one guy that's still there. That kind of thing would be awesome.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Yeah, I don't know why they didn't do that. The only player I can think of that is a crossover between the two is the retrofractors for Shaquille O'Neal. And then they have a retrofractor for someone else as well that I can't remember.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

Maybe next year when they have a little bit more time to plan, they'll explore some of that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

Bill Russell.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

Yeah, Bill Russell, yeah, USF.

unknown 18:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Next up, we have the inserts, and I did we did talk about this in our initial preview, and the inserts are fun. I just want to talk about the SSP inserts because the other ones are pretty much take them or leave them. There's definitely common stuff. You know, you got like the die-cut rookie of the year favorites and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Greatness loading, rockstar rookies. First up is Bowman Spotlights. So we've seen this in baseball. One of my favorite insert cards there is this has a short checklist, just 10 cards, and just two parallels, red and super factor. Yeah. This is just 10 for the NBA, and it is five cards for college. So 15 players total. And they did a good job, I think, on the checklist. You got LeBron, you got Cooper Flag, you got Khan, Dylan Harper, Webby, Curry. Yeah, I think it's a nice checklist, and nothing I can complain about on that.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

Yeah, definitely. The print runs on all these is really interesting. But yeah, the most rare, it seems like, are the GPK and the most printed are the spotlights across the four.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Sounds about right compared to previous Bowman releases.

SPEAKER_02 19:49

Yeah. Then we have Chris Anime comes in at what? Like uh, according to Slap Squats, 140 copies each for NBA, 195 for NIO. Crystallized is 300 and 300, GPK is 100 and 100, and spotlights is 360 and 360. Those are gonna be very sought after, because I mean, compared to like Panini SPs too, that's a very small print run.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

Yeah, people started accusing Panini of really overblowing those uh case case hit uh print runs, so that won't be the case anymore.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Crystallized. So although I really like this one, it is probably my least favorite of the case hits. It makes for such a beautiful card, though. So it it sucks saying that. It's just it's such a sick looking card. But we have 10 MBA and we have five prospect college players. This goes with four different parallels: gold, orange, red, and superfractor. You got Steph Curry, Giannis, Anthony Edwards, Wemby, Cooper Flag, Dylan Harper, Khan. On the NIL side, you have Darren Peterson, Sienna Bet, Juju, and Nate Armant, AJ DeBanza. That's what we're looking at for those. Then we have our anime. So 25 cards for the NBA, five for the NIL, and these cards look sick. My second favorite in this product as far as the case hits go. You got Giannis, you got Brunson, who I am looking for. You got SGA, Steph Curry, Luca, LeBron, of course, Wemby, Cooper Flag, and then lastly, we got RGPK, which is, I believe, the case hit. It's definitely not for everyone, though, the GPK.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

No, not for everybody, not for everybody. Did they do autos? I did not see them listed. I just looked on each other. Yeah, yeah. I remember when they first put them out in 25 Bowman Chrome, it was a late announcement, but I haven't seen any announcements and it's already released day. So I'd be I'd be surprised if they included on this time. Maybe they'll wait for year two for those.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

It's such a short list. Cooper Flag, Ace Bailey, Dylan Harper, Khan, Anthony Edwards, NIL. You got Sienna Betts, Sourstrong, AJ, Discovery. Debonsa and Darren Peterson. So really not much. Uh you're really not going to see those GPK popping up very often at all. I'd be surprised. I don't know what the odds show, but I would expect about one every 10 cases or so. Just blindly guessing.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

I'm not sure. Just because not only are they super rare to hit, but the checklist is so short. So they're just hard to come by. I had I did see a couple come up on breaks today. But yeah, these are gonna be so, so tough.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

And then of course we do have, I failed to mention it, the etched and glass variations. So those are another case hit that you can look for. That is 10 cards. And let's see. I don't know if they have any NIL.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

One interesting thing, too, if you're looking to join breaks between Hobby Jumbo and Breaker's Delight, if you're looking for those four big case hit SSPs, it's Breaker's Delight that's gonna be the hardest to hit. It's also gonna be the Breaker's Delight boxes are also going to be appreciating in price because of the scarcity. Looks like Hobby is actually your best bet. It's one poor one per 1.32 cases in Hobby, one per 1.44 cases in jumbo, and one per 1.52 cases in Delight. That's there are they're pretty in line, but if you're looking strictly for those case hit SSPs, Hobby might be the way to go. And that feels consistent with the way that it's been on the baseball side too.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

I like those odds. Not stupidly rare, but you know, is not gonna be in any given case.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

And that's to get one of those four, right? Like I there's other case hits that you could find too. The etched in glass, the retrofractors, etc.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

All right, let's get into some of our final thoughts here. Rip it, flip it, or break it. Do you want to take this first?

SPEAKER_02 23:40

I would take it first. Honestly, I think it's a break it for me. I've been joining breaks probably a little bit too much on this one, but I've been really looking forward to it. I think that the value equation is pretty good, especially for a lot of the breakers that have been using more of the allocation cost and not the current secondary cost. I think, you know, the secondary cost right now is about double what it was on tops.com. So you could flip and take that. I don't know. If the way forward is probably to flip half and then take the profit and um either rip or join some breaks if you want to jump into. Because I think it is a very fun product and it has a really, really high ceiling. When you already have that Cooper Flag $15,000 sale for a base anime, we're gonna start to see more and more crazy sales pop up over the next few days. But I'm sure the LeBrons and the Stephs and the Wemby's, in addition to the rookies, are also gonna do pretty big numbers on some of these.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

For me, I would not rip unless you genuinely like college basketball as well. Otherwise, half of the product could end up being irrelevant to you.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

So that that's a big thing to think about before you rip it. You should be able to do decent flipping. It's hard to say will the mark where the market will ultimately settle on this, though. It's the first of its kind being, as far as I know, in modern collecting, being half NBA, half college. So we'll see how the market responds. Right now, it seems like people are plenty excited for this product. We'll see how that continues, especially with the other NBA products coming from from tops to flood the market. But I think breaking is a good call overall with both NBA and college. It makes it there's a lot of spots, so it kind of evens out the playing field as far as what the prices are. You're still gonna be paying a premium for those bigger teams, but because it can be distributed to the lesser teams a little more, you could find some deals to be had for sure. Again, half the cards can be relevant to you, but you know, it's just it's not for your team. But remember when seeing a break that is 12 hobby boxes, for example, and 24 autos, if you just have NBA teams, you're really looking at only 12 autos.

SPEAKER_02 25:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Just something to keep in mind as you get into breaking up.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

There's gonna be a lot of dud uh prospect autos. It's interesting looking at the break pricing to see when you look at the aggregate price for a case break, what percentage of the price is NBA teams versus schools? And it feels like it's about 80-20, which is about what I kind of thought that it would be. But the hit rate is 50-50. Oh I don't know. It's interesting. You're gonna get a lot of dud first Powman autos, I think. For sure.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Yeah, it's just there's a hundred players and only about 10 of them are gonna end up being any sort of high relevant. Um, which compared to baseball is a much smaller number. And baseball, those guys in the bottom like 90%, there's still so many of them that can advance and just their body can build out. And you don't see that in basketball as much.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

Yeah, it's a known, it's more of a known quantity situation, even for these college guys. Yeah. You don't see how many rounds are there in the NBA draft. Two.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Two. In the second round, no one even cares.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Baseball, you could have a 10th rounder pop off, and all of a sudden, yeah, not the same in the NBA.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Let's get into our rankings. First up, visual. I'm gonna give this a seven out of ten. It's it's Bowman. The the card that they're nice to look at, not doing anything crazy, they're not reinventing the wheel, they're nothing special, but it doesn't also do anything to take away from the card itself. The SSPs, visually, the SSPs are what really counter this product, but they are extremely rare. You know, I can't give too much of a bump for something that you know 95% of collectors are never even gonna hit. But we're not seeing anything out of these SSPs that we haven't seen before. Everything is just stuff that we've seen in the past, which is okay. They're keeping it safe for the postponement release, and it's based off of last year's designs. I get it. So seven out of ten, I feel like it's it's a safe spot for it.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

Yeah. I'll go seven, I'll go seven slash eight. We'll go seven point five. I think uh Bowman is great, and they really took the design. They really took kind of what they've been doing in baseball, innovating in baseball, and just applied it to basketball. And for that reason, the case hit SPs, I think, are all great. Those they picked the right four. They all look great. I think the animes look fantastic, especially. And the base design on Bowman for this release is also great for me. I think it, I think the refractors look nice. I think there's a lot of TBD there on quality control. One of the things I don't like is the the frequency of sticker autos, but just visually, I think they did a really good job design-wise. The photography, too. I think um, I like a lot of the bigger player shots that they use.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

Next up, we have short-term value. For short-term value, I'm giving this an eight out of 10. People are very hyped for this being the next major basketball release, and we are seeing that reflected on the market. I think you'll be able to do well flipping for the NBA spots, the prospect spots. I don't know. That's such an unknown for me. And I think for a lot of people, I think if there's money to be had there, definitely go forward and take it. But yeah, eight, eight out of ten, I think that you could do really well in the short term on this. Uh, you hit some big players, and there's gonna be so much top space ball coming out. I I think that now is the time to strike with this because eventually we're gonna start to see a ton of these different autos come out from tops and they're not gonna be as hot as they were.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

Yeah. I'm gonna go seven on short-term value. I think my answer would be even higher if Tops Chrome football release wasn't last week. I think that there's a little bit of a lure gone away from this release because of topps chrome football and how crazy that went. But I do think whether you're ripping, flipping, breaking, it's a it's still a pretty good value proposition at the current prices. You're gonna make money if you flip. If you break, I think the return on your break costs is gonna be better than average in the basketball world, especially if you're smart about when you sell the cards. And if you rip it too, I like the way that they have two autos in a hobby and they have four autos in a jumbo. It gives you a little bit higher of a floor, a chance to, a chance to make up for a really stinky auto like you have in a in a one-auto Bowman baseball box.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

For sure. Long-term value, I'm giving this a six out of ten. I am being very cautious with this uh because it is so unlike past products, and I don't know how much of that college stuff is either gonna impact it, if impacted at all, in a positive or negative way. The thing is that right now it looks like a really strong rookie class. So as with any Bowman or Topps product, it's gonna go as far as the rookies go. It does have the additional benefit of being the Bowman topp's licensed product that we're seeing in this generation. So that is that that is definitely a a plus on it, but I'm just hesitant because I just it's so hard to know with such a new product like this and with so many different things going on and all the tops basketball coming out. I I know I just said it before, but once that starts flooding the market, I don't know if it's gonna get washed out among it or if it's gonna stand out as one of the top products. And if it stands out as one of the top guys and flows to the top, then you can really see this be like an eight or a nine out of ten for a long-term value.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

Yeah, and that's um that's where I'm at, actually. I'm I'm extremely bullish on this product. I think long-term value even more so. It's a nine for me, long-term value. First Bowman release of its kind, first Bowman release for NBA guys in years. Uh, this is gonna be your first for all of these guys, rookies and vets, it's gonna be their first of these big Bowman case hit SSPs. And I for me, my nine rating, a lot of it is linked to that. Like I'm very bullish on Bowman case hit SSPs. I think they're going to age very well. I think the LeBrons and the Stephs and the Wembees and not just the rookie class, but those legend guys are gonna be what carry it in the long run. Cause I think those cards are gonna be extremely valuable.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

I'm excited for hopefully next year they can get this out before March Madness starts or right around then, because then those college cards, I think they can start generating a lot of hype around them, like just during release. So hopefully they can figure that out in the future. Cause just those singles, it'll be like any sort of playoffs where in March Madness, everyone's watching, whether or not you like college basketball. You know, you everyone's doing a bracket. So just to see those individual player performances, I'd be interested to see it in the future they could try to time it out a little better. I think that could help drive the prices for sure.

SPEAKER_02 31:49

Yeah, I mean, release day hype and what we've seen for new releases is the price spikes to the highest it's been for sealed wax on the day of release, and then it cools off actually fairly quickly and continues to kind of go slowly down until it starts to rebound, and then you see it sometimes go back up again. Top Scrum football is a great example. I think for me, the long-term value of Tops Chrome football versus Bowman basketball is is way less, and it's also a way more risky product to invest in. If you're thinking about investing in a case and putting it on a shelf and sitting on it for three years, I think at current prices, Bowman basketball is a way, way better investment than Topscrum.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

I think that's fair. I'm gonna give this a seven out of ten. Value-wise, we're really solid. But if, like me, though, you're not into college, this can actually end up being a really slow break because half the hits are gonna be irrelevant to you. If you only watch for your hits anyway, that doesn't really matter. But if you watch for the enjoyment of the break as a whole, that can impact things a bit. As always with Bowman, I do want to mention check to see if paper ships or not, if it's something that you care about or don't, see if they are, if it has its own spot, if it's impacting the price. Just know your breaker, know what's going on, see if any you just want that information because if they're hiding it, that's not someone you really want to deal with because what else are they hiding? But you just want someone that's up front about it. I'm not saying it it's wrong or right to not ship paper. I frankly don't care. I just want to know the information. But yeah, seven out of ten. I think it's definitely solid value. The I think it's one of the better breaking products on the market right now, as far as value goes. So if you are looking to do something, you know, have a little fun, maybe get some hits. I think that this right now is where you should be leaning towards if you're looking to break some sort of product.

SPEAKER_02 33:29

Yeah, I agree. I'm kind of like an eight there. I think the floor is higher than a typical basketball product because of the nature of the way that it's made. But I think the ceiling is also extremely high, like a lot of basketball products are. And right now there's only been, you know, by the time that all of these 24, 25, 26 tops basketball releases are done, we're gonna have what, like 25 different products probably with Cooper Flag rookies in them. Right now, there's only been five or six releases thus far. So I think from a breaking perspective, these these cards are like they're still very valuable on the singles market. And if you're smart about it, you flip the stuff that you don't think's gonna retain value and you hold the stuff and or you grade the stuff that you think will retain value. I think it's a pretty good, pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

For a checklist. Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 34:13

Do you have another thought? Relatively, always relatively, because I've yet to uh see a product in 2026 or 2025 where I feel like the expected return on a break is positive.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

Yes. Very rare. The only times that we really see that anymore is for a brand new product that does way better and people are way more hyped about than tops expected, like a cosmic or Bob Ross for the first time, black and white, things like that. The checklist, I'm gonna go with an eight out of 10. They did a really good job of splitting the NBA and college. I think that the rookies and the stars are represented really well here. The thing that I'm most happy about with this checklist that I did not think was gonna be the case is that we are seeing one NBA auto and one college auto per box. And I thought it was gonna lean way more heavily towards college. So once I heard that, I was way more in on this product. Yeah, I'm very happy with the checklist and what they did here. I do wish that there were some more new wrinkles that that we could have seen. It is pretty standard Bowman stuff, but I guess if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yeah. Eight out of ten.

SPEAKER_02 35:18

Yeah. I concur. I'm gonna I'm gonna stick with you on the eight. Kind of just want to echo what you said around um, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Like I think props to fanatics for doing something completely different, but keeping the right elements of what um what makes Bowman Bowman. Like it feels like a really true Bowman product. Um and I think if they I think if they would have made the decision to kind of switch things up or add new SPK sets and things like that, like it would have it would have been a very weird thing. I think had a negative effect on the Bowman brand. One of the reasons why I'm so excited about what they've done with basketball is because I think it's gonna uplift baseball. I really do. And especially when they start putting they're gonna probably do the same thing with Bowman football. Yeah. I like it.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

That'll be interesting when it's time for that. I'm sure we'll have quite a few things to say on that side of it. But yeah, that's about what we've got for today. Coming up, what we're gonna have. This should be in the next couple weeks or so. We're gonna start recording. For Bowman baseball, we are going to have how many episodes did I say? Eight episodes. We are going to do an episode on each division for the players and the prospects of who you should be hyped about and why, and who you should maybe settle expectations on. So each division is getting its own episode, plenty of things to talk about. We are going to have an episode on just the odds and a breakdown on that. And then we are going to have our final breakdown episode where we look at the product as a whole. Kind of similar to our product breakdowns that we do for every product, but we won't have to get into the individual players as much because we would have already done that. We do have three very special guests lined up to be able to discuss these, to be able to discuss these things, and not quite time to announce who they are yet, but we are very excited.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

Oh, yeah. I am so excited for the Bowman stuff. So if you like Bowman, you like baseball products, baseball prospects, this is gonna be the upcoming slate of episodes, is what you're gonna be wanting to listening to. Because you're gonna have the insight info on who to target before these player breaks start going live. And that can really, really help you out. Maybe find some deals, maybe find some sleeper guys that you can find for cheap. And yeah, hopefully we'll really be able to give you all that information here very soon.

SPEAKER_02 37:37

Yep. Christmas is right around the corner, it feels like. Anything else to say, Bert? No. Thanks for hosting us as always, leading the charge for us to appreciate.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

Thank you, everyone, for listening. Sorry for the slow slate of episodes lately, but like I said, we're about to ramp it up.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

All right. Have a good day, everyone. Have a good day, Bert. Peace, everybody.