SPEAKER_01 0:14

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

SPEAKER_00 0:23

I'm doing good, Juice. I'm doing good. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:25

I'm good. Thank you. And yeah, there's nothing really crazy to talk about this week. Uh, there are some like new pre-orders. There's Topps Chrome Disney. There's some basketball stuff. Let's just, but we're taking a step back this week. We're just gonna do some fun stuff. We're gonna do another couple of top five lists. And yeah, I guess we'll get right into it. What do you think? All right. Well, the first list, we're gonna do two. And these were made by mate. So if anything is wrong or everything is wrong, you know, just let me know and yell at me. I can take it. But our first list is gonna be the top five best improvements Topps has made. So Fanatics has made since the acquisition. Yeah, I think it all falls under that time period. And if you think that we are being more recent, like the best changes in the last couple of years. You know, just as I look back in the hobby of where we were at from where I started. Okay, these are just the things that I want to be recognized as hey, Tops has really made a good job improving this. Uh, you know, we're not gonna go back like hey, Tops like Since Fifty Two mantle, like these cards, like they added chrome. This is beautiful. That really changed the game. Numbered cards, and oh my god, you can get on card autos now. Um, no, but after this of being like, hey, tops, good job. We're gonna come back with a more negative list for tops. So constructive criticism. Yes, so we will not be total top shills. Um, anyway, let's get started. The number five best improvement I've seen lately, and this goes a little against what we said last time, but I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt here. Number five is redemptions. We have seen way, way less of them. They have done a really good job of actually getting these autos into the boxes. Yeah, it's just it's been so much better. Um, if you weren't in the hobby just a couple years ago, it was so much worse. And then if if you're someone that does things with Panini and you ever have to do a redemption with them, good luck. Ups is so much better. Um, a lot of the things that people say about redemptions are now wrong. And then the other half of redemptions actually getting us the cars, they've been much better about that. They've been much more timing. Turn around times. Yep. And when they're not, they do have a couple of solutions. The 200% after six months has been awesome. I've only really seen good things and really great value returned to people on that. So I gotta give tops their props for that. And then if you're someone that's able to get to Fnatic's Live or the National and you can do that redemption program where you can turn in $200 redemptions for one of those redemption boxes, I was able to buy one. It's now off of eBay for pretty cheap one of those boxes, and I hit my only Iron Judge auto. So those boxes are awesome, at least in my eyes. And the other stuff, it's not all iron judge autos, but it's it's definitely nice.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Let me ask you this though. As somebody who um I obviously appreciate seeing as many live autos as possible, but I I also don't mind redemptions for a number of reasons. But why is it important to you? Like, what would it, as a collector, as as somebody that's joined in a lot of breaks, ripping a lot of product, like how did how would it make you feel if we reverted back to where we were in the past where we had a lot more redemptions?

SPEAKER_01 3:26

If they had a quick turnaround time on that, I wouldn't mind if it meant like less product delays and stuff. That there just has to be a reason for it, um, pretty much. But if if it didn't, if it made it possible for some of my favorite players and for some like rookies and stuff to be represented, let's say for tops update, um, so many rookies like that we want to see got called up. And I guess we could talk about this another time, but a lot of these top rookies are just getting call-up cards, which means like we're not gonna be seeing them with a rookie card this year. A lot of people think they're holding them back because of the lockout that's probably coming up, but that's for another time to talk about. Yeah. But if it means being able to get those rookies, because obviously they're playing ball right now, uh, it's gonna be tough for tops to be able to get them all on the product and we're gonna see redemptions. Then I I don't mind if for something like that dual player autos, triple player autos, if they're on card, great. I'd rather get a redemption with a quick turnaround. Even, you know, if it is a few months, I'm okay with that. But I'd rather get that than a sticker auto 90% of the time. You know, I understand if like you're someone that's looking to flip their cards, you know, redemptions aren't ideal.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Well, I I think there's two sides of that coin too, right? Because it's like, yes, you want a live auto so that you can send it to PSA as quickly as possible, especially if your join and release date breaks and you want to get it while it's still low pop. You want to get it graded, hopefully a gem while it's still low pop. You can't do that with the redemption. You got to wait for it to get fulfilled, and there's all that, all the market dynamics on that particular player can change, you know, and the time that you're waiting for your redemption to be fulfilled. But at the same time, I'd almost kind of rather get a redemption than get like a PSA 8 conditioned card. Because it's really hard to sell a PSA 8 conditioned card raw and you don't want to grade it, you don't want to authenticate it because then everybody thinks it's like worse than a PSA 8. You know what I mean? Like I kind of like if I want to sell it raw, I almost like selling redemptions a little bit better. I'll let somebody else take on the risk of the card coming back in bad condition. You don't have to worry about calling out excellent or near mint or better condition on eBay on a redemption car, they're all the same condition.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

You know what's going to be interesting? Um, you've heard about that Topps is making the move where redemptions are gonna go to Fanatics Collect and you'd be able to trade and sell that card directly from there. So that's gonna change the redemption market entirely too. Because, you know, a lot of the time people are like, Do I redeem this? But if I do, I'm stuck with it. If Topps doesn't redeem it and I can't sell it while it's just sitting there, but now you you can when, well, not now, but hypothetically in the future, if Tops does what they say, if Fanatics does what they say, then you'll be able to. So it'll be interesting to see that. And if Topps doesn't mind redemptions as much, and we start seeing more again. But right now, with the way that Tops made with redemptions, with the exception of 2026 Bowman, I really think they made a really nice improvement there. So that's number five on my list. Okay, right on. Number four, we talked about this with Slab Squatch, but odds. Uh, they have this is tough to really call improvement because I feel like it was a lot better than it was, and then it really went down and now it's kind of going back to the right place again. But uh an improvement from where it has been most recently, I would say they've been steadily getting back to having odds available before product comes available, which has been great, especially for people like us that like to digest that info that Slab Squatch puts out. So yeah, they they've been steadily, steadily getting better with that. So I do want to give them some props on the yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

I mean, I think the past couple of years where the pack odds haven't been getting published on time, like a lot of it is, you know, the acquisition is still fairly new. They haven't really gotten into a consistent operational rhythm. They have all these new licenses coming out, they're printing more and more products and more and more different types of products. I feel like with that, there's been a lot of rushing to the finish line. There's been a lot of last-minute changes, and it makes it difficult to post accurate pack odds on time. But lately, as they've gotten more time, it seems like it's gotten better. So I'm hopeful that they continue to post them. I'm very grateful that TOPS posts pack odds. I think it's one of the best gifts that they can give collectors. It's one of the most customer-centric things that you can do as a card manufacturer. They don't have to do it. Panini's gotten away with not doing it for a long time. So I hope that TOPS continues to do it. I hope as they get more and more consistent with their operational rhythm, their release schedule for products, they start to post them more consistently on time, prior to pre-sale, because it's a really important tool and indicator of how a product could be for folks when they're making purchasing decisions.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

So that's my number four. Number three is the Fanatics app. It's introduction and the improvements within the app itself. I think it has been really great for the hobby in a number of ways. There are definitely some negatives. But first of all, a lot of people are gonna feel differently about breakers. Not everyone just likes breaking in general. They think that it's ruining the hobby for one reason or another. People are all gonna have their opinions, but they did create a safe environment, or at least a much safer and more controlled environment for people and more common collectors to be able to get on there and to be able to take part in the hobby that so many people do love. And then the app, it's just it's so accessible. You know that all the breakers are vetted, they have to adhere to certain controls. Like pretty much everything is videoed. People don't might not know this, but even when they're sorting and packing, they have to video all that, and they want to stay in tops fanatics good graces. So if you ever have an issue, it's usually resolved. Um, there's a reason why when you see people complaining about issues, it's not very common to see it on fanatics. You see whatnot, things like that, you know, when people are complaining about issues. Obviously, this is as a collector, as as a friend to you, you know. I wish that they did allow more people on it, you know, make made it more accessible to breakers we will get on that are trusted within the community. But overall, the fanatics app, I think, has been it's been a great addition to the hobby, I think.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Yeah, man, it's been really cool to see how it's the whole ecosystem has kind of evolved. I still feel like it's a little bit more decentralized than they want it to be and they foresee it to be in the near future, right? Because you have all these different apps from Fanatics. You have like the base fanatics app, you have the Fanatics Collect app, and then you also have Fanatics Live, and they're three separate apps, and it's kind of a little bit confusing when it comes to product launches on which one you go to for which thing. It seems to me, and what they kind of shared out at at the recent conference, is that they want to bring it all together. Like Fanatics Live will eventually be on Fanatics Collect, and it'll be a one-stop shop for everything that you want. Really interesting to see how that how that all comes together. But yeah, I totally agree with you. Like Fanatics Live has been awesome, and they they did a really good job at vetting sellers and making sure that the experience that you get on Fanatics Live is elevated from what you get on other apps.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

It feels like it's also kind of so going on a to a bit of a tangent, like the movie history of like movies and video games, like movies didn't always have like a rating system. Vide games didn't want to be controlled by a rating rating system. So they made their own, all like the top video game companies came together and said, okay, we're gonna start rating games ever mature, so that we don't have like the government stepping in to be able to do that. That's what I feel like they did with the fanatics app. They're like, okay, before someone else tries to regulate us, let's regulate ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

There's gonna be a little bit more of that too coming. Another thing that they kind of talked about at the conference, too, is there's gonna be a little bit more of the customer feedback, user ratings, star ratings, you know, your Uber style, you get your writer rating and you get your driver rating. Or like on eBay, of course, in the card world, like everybody's got their out of 100% positive feedback. And in that whole equation, like it seems like they're gonna make a lot of those metrics customer-facing and allow customers to kind of really chime in about how good they think a breaker is, for example, at all the different things that are important to running a good braking operation: entertainment, quality of packaging and shipping, price fairness, price accuracy, availability of product, availability of time, like all the different things, extra services. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

So that was my number three. Number two, one of my favorite things that I've seen that TOPS is done. So introducing debut patches. The reason why it's not number one, I think it's the coolest thing that they've done in the hobby since I've started watching it, just because this is it's just it's it's a piece of history in a card, which I just think is really cool. You can't get another way. Like obviously, you have rookie super tractor, topp's chrome. You have their first Bowman, which is it's pretty much their first time signing a card, but their first time stepping onto a baseball field to be able to get that in a card, and uh it's just awesome. The only reason why it's not number one is because 99.99% of the hobby will never touch one, will never, you know, unless they go to Dick's Sporting Goods and uh I forgot where and see the Paul Schienes, you know. But most people will never hit one for themselves. That's why I can't make it number one because it is such a small part of the hobby, but it's such a fun chase. Like when Yamamoto was having his incredible World Series and playoff run, and everyone knew, hey, his debut patch still hasn't been hit. And then all of a sudden the update box prices started going through the roof, and everyone was just once again chasing them. The hobby came together to search for it, they still haven't found it. Uh, it's just such a cool thing that they did overall. I just love it for the hobby.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Yeah, I love it too. I think, especially now with the NBA and NFL licenses and them doing kind of the same thing. Like the rookie debut patch auto is gonna be that one milestone relic auto that will be probably a player's most desirable card, at least for rookie cards, and will probably always be that way. It's gonna be really interesting to see how the market evolves, like, you know, to see how that schemes appreciates, let's say he ends up being the best pitcher of all time. Could be. Like, what does that card look like in terms of prices? Like, and how does that stack up versus like a mantle, you know, PSA 10? Because there's only one of them. I don't know. But I also love like I also love this concept of milestone relics. Like nobody wants to see just a player-worn napkin in a relic. You know, you want to see a piece of history, like you said. And it's not just the rookie debut patch auto, it's stuff that they're putting into tops now. It's interesting milestone relics like you've seen pop up in products like Top Inception, Tops Inception with like the first hit game used base autos that are not just one of ones, but they there's like a full parallel rainbow. It's other stuff like the first batting gloves that you've started to see pop up. Gold logo man. I know that's not necessarily from a specific game or anything, but it seems to follow that concept of like And it's a perfect synergy for fanatics and their apparel business and all the stuff that they already have set up to be able to like make awesome relics and awesome milestone relics. So I think they've only started to tap the, you know, it it's it's really tip of the iceberg.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Yeah, and like in wrestling too, you know, they have like the WrestleMania patches, and I think they have like their own debut patches. So yeah, everywhere that tops can get their hands on can I think that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

It'll be interesting to see how audacious they get with that, right? Because yes, they did come to the agreements to put the patch on the jersey, and that's a new thing, and there hasn't always been a rookie debut patch on folks' jerseys. So that's people know that that's meant to go in a card. But I've always thought about like how far will they go in getting very sought-after milestone merch. Say, like, I don't know, take Cal Raleigh's 60th home run ball. Like, what if they took that and chopped it up and put it into a card? A lot of people would be really pissed off about that. But like, can you imagine the how expensive those cards would be? So it'd be interesting to see like how they tow that line.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Because it is a you got you got the team looking for it, you got the play, you got Cooper's Town, like you got everyone looking to get a piece of it.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

People don't want something like that to be chopped into pieces, you know. So uh, and I totally get that. Yeah, people hate the fact that there's roof relics and mantle relics, like um yeah, you chop the day it's a roof bat, a game used roof bat, you chop why would you why would you break that?

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Yeah, but it's the only way I'm ever gonna have a piece of babe roof's history, right? So, you know, there's an argument both ways on that. I get it. All right, and that brings us to number one. Uh, my favorite thing that Topps has done that I really think has taken improvement that has gone from pretty much an afterthought of when I first got into the hobby to now it's something that I really look for. The case hits, the SSPs, the inserts, they have not only closed that got with Panini, but I think in some ways they've surpassed them. Used to be Panini for the case hits and inserts, hops for whatever else for design overall, like the base cards and whatever. Um, but yeah, we've seen it. Um, you know, all aces, all kings, spotlight we love, anime, the garbage pale kids, home field advantage, and then celebracion, yeah, fanatical. I love yeah, you know, the HFA and tops chrome black, along with the Death of Darkness, which this year I think Death of Darkness actually took a setback from where it was, but whatever. And then their golden mirror cards. Image variations used to be so much easier to find, it feels like. And now not only are they harder to find, which is there, they seem to be rarer, but they just they have such a better cachet to them, those golden mirror image variations compared to just the SP image variations. They they just look so much I I don't know what it is. They could just be the rarity.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Without thinking too much about it, I just want you to give me your initial gut reaction here. Top three SSP sets.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Go. Spotlight, all kings, and GPK. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I love spotlight. Yeah. I never had an all kings, all aces go together, obviously. The the new ones, not the base, easy-to-hit inserts. And the black ones with that like gold trim. Like, if I could ever hit like a Griffy one, like that would forever PC card.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

For sure.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

And yeah, that that last one I'm not so sure about. GPK I like, but they they can be very hit or miss too. You know, anime also could be up there. I like, I don't know. I I'm trying to think of others that I'm sure I'm leaving out. HFA, not my favorite, although Tops Chrome Black, those ones are just those those look fantastic. I'm trying to think of other tops ones besides uh because I'm thinking of a lot of Bowman right now because Bowman has been on my mind. What about you? What are your top ones?

SPEAKER_00 17:48

You know what I'm I even feel bad asking this question because I feel dumb. But what was the big new SSP and Tops Chrome update this past year? I'm blanking on it, but it was really popular and it was really short printed. It was it was so good too. What was it?

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Um, let's see. 2025. I'm gonna feel silly too.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Extremely short printed. I don't think I pulled one in you know 30 cases or something.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Oh, those pack factor cards are pretty cool too.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

You know what? I think you're right. This one's gonna be up there. Oh, two of them I like. The Alter Egos.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Alter egos. Yeah. Those are awesome. Those are sick. Those are sick.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

And I'm a I'm a big Disney person and I love the um the Disney cards that they put in update. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the alter egos that I was thinking of. That I'd honestly give alter egos a one. Like, yeah, you know what? I that Shohei is crazy. That Ricky Henderson is crazy.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

Helix, I'm not crazy about. No. Radiating rookies, I like. I feel like they don't get the credit they deserve. Expose is nice.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

I'm gonna go alter egos one, and then I'm gonna go Planetary Pursuit 2. I just love Planetary Pursuit. Love me some Pluto, even though it's not a planet.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Yeah, it's messed up, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:03

And then GPK. I love GPK.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

You know what's so cool about Planetary Pursuit is it's such a fun like rainbow to be able to go for. Because I know it's not colors, but you don't have to worry about not getting the only Pluto because there's a couple of Pluto's. I I know there's not a ton, but it's definitely you know a multiple easier than getting a rainbow of any other set. Like to be able to really solar system.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Really hoping that Cal Raleigh gets his first planetary pursuit in 26 Cosmic Chrome, and uh I will definitely be going after that full solar system rainbow.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

I'll let you know, Annie, because I'm usually I like to take uh mariners and a lot of stuff, so you know.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Yeah, I've I know I've noticed that about you, yeah. That's all right, you can just admit they're they're your AL team.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Well, you know, I grew up playing Ken Griffey baseball.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Yep. Naturally.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

And that that 90s team was so much I loved Randy Johnson.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Obviously, I love Griffey. You know, when I was a kid, I had the shoes.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

I'm not like a sneakerhead or anything, but there's only ever been one player whose shoes I wanted, and that was Ken Griffey Junior. Yeah, I just so I'm always like chasing like whatever I can of them. Edgar Martinez, I was a fan of. I never even cared for Me neither. And then yeah, they're just they're a fun scene to watch. They never really like competed with the Mets or anything. Ichiro, yeah, yeah, Ichiro I love too. So, you know, I got big cards for all those guys. I got like my Ichiro PSA 10 over there and like my card thing. I got my Griffey Auto PSA 10, and I've got my Randy Johnson Superfractor. So yeah. So I was able to hit all those guys for myself. Yeah. All right, now we've chilled for Topps enough. We're gonna go on the other end of the spectrum, and we are gonna bash on them for a little bit. I'm gonna call this either you can look at this at top five or bottom five. This is the top, my five ways that Topps has been failing the hobby lately. So people have a lot of complaints, a lot of things to say, some unfair, some unfair. But yeah, these are the things that I think 95% of people will agree with. And yeah, well, let's get right into it. Number five, Topps has really been screwing up just with their product screw-ups lately. We've seen it with Stadium Club with their Chrome Fiasco on the X Fractors, the silver X Fractors and Blue X Fractors. And again, they're not going to take ownership of this, but the black and white pre-orders where whoever pre-ordered did not have a chance of the hits that people that got the regular release day orders, they couldn't hit those od card autos or their golden hour, which I can't prove it. But anyone who has pre-orders, I've yet to see someone hit one of those cards and just I'm sure I can talk to Slab Squash to break down the odds of that actually happening. But yeah, I think the math is on my side for that one.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Yeah, definitely. I think one thing I'd like to see on that front too is just like a little bit. If I could make a wish list, you know, you know, mistakes are gonna happen. It's a big company, there's lots of different folks involved with it. Not everybody can be talking. Totally on the same page, especially when things are ever evolving and changing up to release date. But when there are mistakes made, it'd be nice to see them take some ownership of it, make a quick, you know, make a quick public press release, you know, post on their Twitter even just or what whatever it might be and own up to the mistakes and come up with some type of a fair resolution for collectors.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Which we have seen them do. Um, like the silver blue axe fractors, obviously they fixed that. The stadium club chrome stuff they got ahead of them, but I'm still not happy about it. And then there was that big screw up a few years ago where they accidentally had two super fractors of every player in a product, and then they offered literally cash for whoever claimed it first, and it was a healthy amount of cash too.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

Yeah, it was, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

So that was nice. Number four, I really don't like that they did this. I understand why they did it, but they got rid of the tops rewards and they changed it just to fan cash. Um, yeah, I'm not happy about that. The rewards were so much better, especially for people that like tops now. It was a limited amount of products that you could use it for. It was mostly tops now or tops on-demand products, if not exclusively those. But your rewards went a lot further with those than the fan cash. And I don't even think you get fan cash for pre-orders. Um, so yeah, it's just much worse. The rewards, it's just not as good. And I just remember, I think back to rewards, how I used to be able to get so much stuff. So if you don't remember, you can trade in your rewards points for $10 coupon, $20 off coupon, or $40 off coupon. Um you can only use one per order, but when black and white came out back when they were the small boxes, it was like $50 a box or something. And I had a ton of rewards points. So I ended up getting like 10 boxes for 10 bucks a piece. So that was awesome. And then tops now I'm not super into, but when I had those rewards points, you know, I would go ahead and get myself like a bunch and hope that I could hit some sort of cool parallel. And now Tops Now for me is an afterthought. I just think it's a much worse direction that they took. Okay, why they did it? They're consoling everything into fanatics, fanatics one, fanatics collect, but I I don't like it.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Yeah, I think overall, like the lack of a strong loyalty and rewards program is somewhere that they're a little bit behind right now. I think especially with the elimination of the Montgomery Club, too. And, you know, not you're not getting as many points on on some of the purchases, at least not like getting as much in return for that, not the credits that you can actually use to buy meaningful stuff. It feels like they're in the lab and they're trying to figure that out. I hope they come up with something soon because it's, you know, people are putting a lot of money into this stuff and it feels like a nice loyalty or rewards program would go a long way.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

So I did not have it on here, but you just reminded me that should have been. So we'll give it an honorable elementary quick. Getting rid of Montgomery Club. Man, that one hurts. Yeah, I'm not happy about that.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Yeah, I hope they bring it back in some form or fashion.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

I'm afraid that makes Montgomery Club better, but yeah, I'm afraid that phenatics credit card is going to be their version of saying, hey, you still have a way to get access to Tom's products. I think you're right.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Yeah, yeah. I think you're right. They've mentioned like exclusive access and uh pre-order availability for folks that have the credit card, and that will definitely be a meaningful perk if they if they include that.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Number three is their pricing. I understand that businesses, inflation, whatever, you're going to have prices go up. That that's just the nature of the beast nature of business. As people want product, you know, one way to create to deal with all these people demanding products is increased price, but it's been increasing at a rate that is just not sustainable, I feel like. I think they're trying to pretty much price it where they're almost matching the secondary market on a lot of these things. We're seeing now, this might be a bad example, but how much is uh sapphire basketball on Friday? Is it 1500? Sapphire football, 1500. Football. 1500. Now, that product is probably if you buy it, you could probably sell it for like a few thousand, I'm sure. But still, like, um, and I know sapphire, that's probably a bad example, also, because it's just not a product for everyone. Although it used to be something that everyone could afford, but it's something that not everyone was able to get their hands on just because it was so scarce. But yeah, these price increases have not been really justified. Like, I get year over year you're gonna do it a bit, but not to the extent that it has been. They're really starting to outprice people in the hobby, forcing them to go retail only. And with the exception of Bowman Baseball, you know, retail just does not hit the same way.

unknown 26:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

It's frustrating for the everyday collector, man. I I, you know, there's people that look forward to opening a box of stadium club or a box of black and white or a box of tops chrome, or you know, like people look forward to to that opportunity, and prices have just got to a point where a lot of everyday collectors can't manage it. So it is it's extremely frustrating.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Yeah, and I get like a lot of their model is moving towards breaks, and like there are breaks to make things more affordable for people to be able to try to PC and find like their team. But you know, I want to be able to get a box of a Bowman and have a chance at Florentino or Ethan Holley without having to buy the Rockies or something in a break or hopefully I got back.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

The secondary price is gonna be the secondary price. Once the product floods the market, there's only so much the tops can do about it, right? It's just free market economy, really. Like you look at DealerNet, and you know, there's plenty of folks on there willing to pay top dollar for these products and selling them at a margin, like, and people are buying them. So I don't know. It's a it's a complicated equation. One of the things that they talked about at that conference was making more making product more affordable and available to true collectors. So hopefully that's the case.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

All right, so this brings us pretty much straight into number two. So Topps is claiming, Fanatics is claiming they are working on it, but product release availability, and this goes hands in hand with their website issues. So pretty much every release day is deja vu. Be ready at whatever time it is for your local noon, one o'clock, 10 a.m. I don't know. But you're ready on the website to go, you're about to hit it to cart already show showing sold out. It doesn't show sold out, you need to add to cart, you're in queue. By the time Q finishes, you can't check out. You try to check out, tells you address invalid, and then all of a sudden it's not in stock anymore. You go back, you try to add a cart, and sold out. It's just over and over and over again. Seems like every other week when there's a new product you want to get, and it's just so tough. It seems like everything just sells out super quick, and then everyone sees these products that are even going back to Sapphire, something that's supposed to be super limited. Okay, I get why it ain't gonna be, but then you see a breaker with 80 cases, uh, and you just don't understand. Okay, well, maybe that's why it ain't gonna eat because it all went to these three top breakers that uh they favor. So this is where Toss has really been screwing up. Um, and it's not even a thing with just Sapphire, it's across the board for pretty much every release we see lately, with the exception of maybe like flagship, where it's just printed to the moon. But you want something like Tops Chrome Black should not be impossible to get a box up on release day. You should have a bit of a window to be able to get in there. I'm not saying that, I'm not saying you should be able to get it like within like three days. I'm saying like if you're ready to go on the tops website at release time when they say it's available, you should be able to check out with the box.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

Yeah. I totally agree. And I think there's two separate things there, and they do go hand in hand, but one is like product availability. What percentage of the print run is available to purchase by customers direct from tops? And then the second is how easy is it for a customer? How attainable is it? How accessible is it for a customer to actually make the purchase and beat all the bots and the flippers and the breakers who are buying all this product in volume, right? And it's it's frustrating too, because I think a lot of customers are really starting to get pissed off that they're having to waste all this time to go and, you know, they they publicize these releases, you know, 9 a.m., this product is gonna release at this price. People go on at 855 and they start clicking refresh and they're doing everything that they physically can without having a bot, and they're still not able to get product. That's extremely frustrating. It's a waste of people's time. In a boom economy, that's okay, but I just think about like it's not always going to be like this. And when it's not always like this, what are you gonna do to customer growth and customer retention if you're wasting people's time that consistently? So, yeah, they need to fix it. It seems like it should be right. Like, I think that you see them trying to make changes and tweaks to it, at least on like the actual purchase process, purchasing from tops.com, but there's also like just the simple product availability piece, too. They need to make more product available direct to customer because there's like takes take Topps Chrome Sapphire basketball, for example, with the EQL. There was hardly any winners on the EQL. Why make people waste that much time if you're only gonna make 20 boxes available EQL and you're gonna have tens of thousands of people entering that lottery? It's just it's just a lottery.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

And this brings us to number one. And number one's a weird one because I feel like we haven't really seen it failing us yet, but it has the potential to be the most damaging. That's why I have it at number one. So the number one biggest issue right now is that Topps has pretty much a complete monopoly on all the major licenses. I always liked Topps better than Panini, but I think it was healthy for them to have to compete with them, even though it wasn't on a license by license level. And I think as we move into the future, that's will become more and more apparent. The prices that we're seeing, the increases, and a lot of the things that I've already talked about could be because they have this pretty much monopoly on all the major sports, with the exception of hockey, I guess. I don't know where that license is going, but yeah, they have, you know, the three, the three big ones that you're gonna want to have. Just with zero competition, pretty much, like any real competition, there's no motivation to innovate or to decrease prices. I'm glad that they have been innovating as far as some of the stuff that we talked about in the improvements, like the cases and the redemptions haven't been a problem like they have been. But this has the potential for tops failing the hobby in ways where if they fail the hobby, then the hobby fails. That's pretty much what it comes down to.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Monopoly power, it feels like in full effect. It's gonna be really interesting to see from a legal standpoint what type of antitrust lawsuits start to pop up. But you'd think with the amount of money that's going into the hobby that you will start to see some of those things pop up. I think a lot of it, though, does come down to the customer. It's not that there's a lack of ability, lack of availability of competing products. Take baseball, for example, like there's plenty of folks. Panini is putting out unlicensed baseball, Leaf is putting out unlicensed baseball, heather up and commerce pulse comes to mind is putting out unlicensed baseball, but it's the customers that dictate the market. And until the singles actually carry value, you know, uh there's not going to be any real competition for those licensed cards. So I feel like a lot of that is like a paradigm shift that needs to happen with collectors. And it reminds me a lot of like the PSA thing, right? Like, why would anybody buy unlicensed cards when, you know, the rate of return is lower than you get on the licensed cards that you're opening and everybody wants them and they're super liquid and easy to sell? It's like, why would you ever grade your cards with C, I don't know. They're all owned by PSA now.

SPEAKER_01 33:11

Tag.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

Why would you ever grade your cards with tag when they don't command the same value on the market and you're paying the same amount, right? It takes a major paradigm shift and those things don't happen quickly, and it feels like they're actually kind of going, it's going the opposite direction to competitive parity. But there's a lot of people out there that are, you know, I think of uh my good friend RGL. He's always been a proponent of unlicensed cards, and there's some really awesome unlicensed products out there. Um I think people need to give a little bit more value and weight to those types of things, especially as they the product, the the prices continue to go up on the license stuff. You hope that would happen naturally.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

My light was off this whole time. That's all right. I'm like, it looks really dark on my side. Um all right. Well, those are my top or bottom five.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

I like it, Juice.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

I like your lists. Yeah. Thank you. All right, next week we are gonna go back to Bowman a little bit. We're gonna do a revisit and just talk about what we've seen and what surprised us, what was right in line with what we thought, and what maybe you can look forward to take advantage in the future. Thank you so much, of course, Bert, for being here with me again. Likewise, thanks, Juice. All right, this is the Talking Cards podcast with Grand Salami and the Juice. Thank you, everyone. Have a good night or a good day.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

Thanks, everybody.