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Collector Nation
Inside the Sports Card Market with Jason Koonce | Collecting, Grading & Card Shows
00:39:50
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- [00:00]
Jason Koontz
Grading is, like, just almost mandatory now. Late 90s, there's three or four people doing that. I was this younger guy who just like. I was like, this is gonna be big. Now. There's 3,000 people doing it. And that was really what kind of put me into a different level of financially, like, early on.
- [00:18]
Podcast Narrator
Welcome to the trading cards and collectibles podcast on the Radcast Network. From chasing grails to calling bluffs and going inside the hobby. Are you ready to collect? Let's get at. Here is your host, Ryan Alford.
- [00:36]
Ryan Alford
What's up, guys? Welcome.
- [00:37]
Jason Koontz
Hey.
- [00:38]
Ryan Alford
I got introduced to Jason, our next guest, through a mutual friend, and we had a conversation that was supposed to be, you know, like, five minutes. Ended up being, like, 55 or two hours. I don't even know. Now I'm gonna just call him a brother from another. He is Jason Koontz. He is the founder and CEO of otia. I'm gonna let him give that acronym and what it all means. He just a sports card. Past, present, future junkie. What's up, Jason?
- [01:04]
Jason Koontz
What's up, man? So happy to be with you today, Ryan.
- [01:06]
Ryan Alford
Hey, I appreciate it. I. I loved our convo a few weeks ago, and Darren Prince, a mutual friend, was like, you got to talk to Jason. You got to go to the expert. I'm like, well, we'll get him on. Get on the phone. Like, we're just gonna shoot the shit, talk about maybe what we could talk about. Next thing I know, I don't know, we're talking about our kids and traveling and sports cards, and.
- [01:33]
Jason Koontz
Two hours later.
- [01:33]
Ryan Alford
Yeah, exactly, man. Where's home?
- [01:37]
Jason Koontz
Michigan. We're just north. Big Michigan Wolverine fan. So we're about 10 minutes north of Ann Arbor here in Michigan. Go Blue.
- [01:44]
Ryan Alford
Go blue. MAN 1 Team International Agency, Otia. We're gonna dig into it. Let's set the table on the past a little bit. Jason's in the trading hobby. Sports, entertainment, a little bit of everything. Maybe tell us a little bit about OSHA and your legacy in the cards.
- [02:02]
Jason Koontz
Well, I mean, this kind of started as a kid, you know, like, most people when they're 9, 10 years old, they're collecting cards, they're going to their shop. You know, like, I was pretty into business from a young age, you know, like nine, ten years old. I'm going out shoveling snow seven, eight hours a day, building up a couple hundred bucks. So I had that part down in the making money. And then the unfortunate part was I would end up at the card shop blowing all my money on packs and, you know, know, at the end of the day, kind of leaving with, you know, just a bunch of stories of, you know, open packs all day and back at it the next day. And in the summer, mowing lawns, in the winter, shoveling snow. So, yeah, I mean, literally, for the last 30 some years, this is kind of all I've done is sports cards, autographs, memorabilia. You know, the big thing kind of changed for me, especially at a very young age is, you know, 30 years ago, when you went into a card shop, there wasn't the Internet. There wasn't, you know, they kind of had you. They were under control. Like, they set the prices. It was. It is what it is. It's a lot. We'll get into it. But it's a lot different with card shops today. Like, they need to be much more on point and follow, you know, the pricing and everything. But so, yeah, for first year or two, starting off like, I'm stuck in these card shops and there's not a lot of negotiating. What really caught my eye was when I discovered card shows, when it was more of, like, the negotiating the bulk deals and going from table to table, the flipping, the hustling. And I started doing this really young, like 9, 10, you know, 11 years old. And, you know, I haven't looked back since. So, yeah, from. From starting off there to where we are today, it's been pretty wild to see, you know, this grow over the past 30 years.
- [03:30]
Ryan Alford
Collectibles show is where you'll find all of the channels and learn more about what we're doing. And ultimately, hey, we want to hear from you. You do Case hitsollectibles show. We want you to send in your favorite pulls of the week. And here's the difference. This isn't about just value. Hey, we want to see some $10,000 hits. Had a couple of those myself a few months back. But it's not just about the value. It's about what you're collecting, what means something to you. Share a story, share a video of you holding up the card that you hit last week. That was your favorite player and you nailed it. So Case hitsollectables show, send in those videos. I want to know the stories. We're going to bring them to life here on the show. We're going to do a segment each week once we get rolling and get some videos in where we share that on the show with us. We want to feature you on collectibles show. You bring up a great point, and it's kind of has some meta connotations. And I don't mean like the company. I just mean like the way the Internet and information and knowledge has empowered so many industries and so much change. Because I remember growing up and going to the. God, how big a were the card shop owners of the 80s? I mean, I. I hate to sort of put everybody in the bucket, but they. Everyone in my. My town in South Carolina were jerks. You go in there, like you said, they're not. They didn't negotiate. They hold all the cards, literally. And they just all seem like they didn't give two shits if you were there or not.
- [04:56]
Jason Koontz
Yeah. You can't. Yeah. And that's basically it. It's like they had a monopoly. Like whatever prices they said is if you wanted it and you had nowhere else to go, you know, the next card shop's probably a few hours away. So if you wanted to buy cards or no Internet. I mean, early, early on for me, like, you know, like AOL message boards in like 95, 96, I started to dabble on the Internet. But it was like, you know, just so new compared to what, what we have today.
- [05:20]
Ryan Alford
Yeah. And, you know, trying to get a value on something. I remember going to the Beckett book, you know, page 78, going to find the value of my 87 tops. Cal Ripken. It was $0.87 today. It's $0.91 next month maybe.
- [05:36]
Jason Koontz
Yeah. Yeah. And everyone's going off the Beckett. And honestly, like, I haven't used the Beckett in 20 years. So that just shows if anybody's like tuning in that, you know, collected cards as a kid, like, Beckett was like the Bible, you know, everybody went off of Beckett and now, you know, everyone's got real time pricing apps with all the, all the technology that's come to life with, with market. Yeah. Beckett is long gone as far as pricing goes.
- [05:57]
Ryan Alford
It opened it up, but it did change. I'm glad. It forced the, the local trade, you know, trade shops or card shops to be, you know, more consumer friendly. And we're. We're blessed. We had the largest dealer here in South Carolina in upstate in Greenville. Matty Rich, awesome guy, salt of the earth guy, and runs a beautiful shop that, you know and takes care of his customers. And I don't know if he represents every single person. I'm sure you still have your. Your some you like, some you don't. But it does. It has sort of leveled the playing field from between consumer and shop owner because everyone's. I've had it. We've been having These card shows, like at my space here, you know, we've got 5,000 square feet. We've been doing little trade nights and stuff like that. And even my 9 year old, you ain't getting nothing by my 9 year old. Like he's over here, they're all walking around informed they got their apps out. It's like everybody knows exactly what the cards are selling for the last 24 hours, right?
- [07:01]
Jason Koontz
That's one of the cool things. Like the, the big advantage I had kind of in the 90s was like right now, like you said, everyone's got pricing data in front of them, but really back then it was really like who had the best memory of what stuff was worth in real time. You could buy a deal at one booth and walk, you know, walk 15 booths over and flip the deal and make money. It's just, it's such a different world. I mean it's literally. And another thing we'll talk about is in the, you know, mid-90s, and this is kind of where I got lucky, you know, the Internet coming into play. Grading. Grading is like just almost mandatory now. And I remember being at shows in the mid-90s and the head guy at PSA, which is the main grading company at the time, was a guy named Steve Rocky. And he would come booth to booth and try to convince you on why you should grade your cards with psa. And you have a lot of these old time dealers that are like, fuck you, I don't need, I don't need your opinion, I don't need you. And nobody really got it.
- [07:58]
Ryan Alford
Yeah.
- [07:59]
Jason Koontz
And I was this younger guy who just like, I was like, this is gonna be big. And I just kind of bought in. And I started grading at like 15 years old, really young, and just eventually became one of PSA's. I was PSA's biggest submitter for several years. But timing, I mean, I worked my ass off, but like I have to put some of the, you know, the timing, you know, it's like if I was coming big into the market right when grading was taken off, right when the Internet boom was taken off, like this was the perfect storm for, for cards in that era for me.
- [08:33]
Ryan Alford
How was money made then for you? And sort of, you know, the arms and legs that where you made money in the industry, you know, and maybe as the industry as a whole versus today.
- [08:48]
Jason Koontz
Yeah. So it's a massive difference. I mean, I've always shifted my business to kind of go with what's hot at the time. And it, you know, grading was so New, but the margins were so. And you know, they're still today. I mean, perfect example. We'll take, you know, Michael Jordan rookie card today. In an eight that's like a seven, eight thousand dollar card and a nine, that's twenty thousand and in a ten that's two hundred thousand. So the same multipliers, you know, took place in the late 90s. We weren't dealing with higher, as high a dollar figure cards, but the multipliers were there. So you know, to buy cards ungraded and grade them, you know, you could 10 to 100 extra money. So it almost didn't matter. Like if you found stuff and had a good eye that was not graded and were able to get it graded in high grade. We were working on like dream margins.
- [09:32]
Ryan Alford
Yeah.
- [09:32]
Jason Koontz
And it didn't even matter when you messed up because when you made it.
- [09:36]
Ryan Alford
Up on five other deals that did.
- [09:38]
Jason Koontz
Yeah, just kind of born into like a gambling family, I guess. So I've always been a degenerate, but this was a way to like early on channel my degenerate gambling ness into something that was like heads I win really big tails I break even or lose a little bit. So I kind of just went all in. And there wasn't a lot of competition. Like there was only a few people doing this. You know, it was so new. And now like you go to a show, 10,000 people, everyone's trying to find stuff to grade. And the reality is, especially when it comes to like vintage cards, you know, back then high grade stuff was everywhere on, you know, that you could buy. Now it's all dried up, it's all graded. So that was my first big money making was just straight grading. And after a few years, the next level was okay, how can we put fuel on this fire? And it was everybody's thought once the card was graded like it is what it is. Everybody saw a 9 and a holder and they just assume, okay, like that's a nine. They didn't realize the human element of this that, you know, on a Tuesday the grader made a get made giving it a nine. But now on Friday he's in a better mood. It's off the weekend, it's close, maybe it's a 10. So now I kind of took a different approach to like walking around these shows looking at stuff that was already graded and like high grade. And I'm analyzing like all these nines in real time and I'm accumulating just like massive quantities of nines that I thought were on the fence. You crack Them. So I'm like, crap, I'm cracking it. And like, Jordan, for example, like, I've hit a lot of 10 Jordans, but, I mean, I've cracked out hundreds and hundreds of nines. So you have cards that are, like, right there on the bubble. They're like 9.7, 9.8, and you crack out 15 or 20 of those, you get 110. You know, you just. You killed it. So like I said, same time, like, late 90s, there's three or four people doing that. Now there's 3,000 people doing it. And that was really what kind of put me into a different level of financially, like, early on, the whole grading.
- [11:28]
Ryan Alford
Is that still doable today?
- [11:30]
Jason Koontz
Yes and no. Like, you could probably still do it.
- [11:32]
Ryan Alford
But the multiplier is not as high, probably.
- [11:34]
Jason Koontz
So you got to remember, like, if you come across like a Jordan rookie, unless it was freshly discovered from a new collection, there's a good chance that things already been looked at 10 times. Like, if it's a nice nine, there's a reason it's in a. A nine. People that like me and then everybody else in, like, the last 25 years, they've all looked at that car and, like, you know, like, they're like, can this nine go to a ten? Or, like. So, like, the game's already been played, so there's just no inventory out there. So I would say it's. I guess it's there technically, but when you take the competition and also add in the fact that, I mean, I. I don't do it anymore. Let's put that. So, like, but what about newer cars?
- [12:10]
Ryan Alford
Do you still have the Delta? I mean, like, in a. Well, here's.
- [12:14]
Jason Koontz
Here's the other thing is the grading fees. When I was grading cards in the late 90s, like, I was paying, like, five, six bucks. And now if you go to grade a high dollar card with PSA, you might spend 10,000, because they're basing it off of value now. So it's just all the fun has been taken out of the game is, you know, so I probably, since 2017, haven't really, you know, I went from grading 25 to 50,000 cards a month and being PSA's biggest submitter for several years to maybe grade like 2,000 cards a year now, if. If that.
- [12:45]
Ryan Alford
I mean, I'm looking at it a little bit that way, but also just having fun with my boys. So trying to find both. I think we're finding the line we have. We're having more fun than making money. I'll say that so far. But yeah, I do see a clear path with what I do know and the people I know, like Jason Co, that there could be money to be made, you know, so it's, it's. But. And it's okay with it. That's fine. It's more just. It's a lot of work, like at these shows, man. Like, holy shit. With every kid and every person. Like you said, it's not like that. I don't want anyone to be informed so I can take advantage of someone that man. It's almost exhausting, the constant deal making. Like, it's because everybody thinks they know exactly what something's worth and, and they do. But I don't know. When everybody's a pro, it's a little annoying.
- [13:39]
Jason Koontz
You know, it's different now. I mean, it was so easy for so like almost too easy to the point where when Covid hit, you know, everybody kind of had time to like, pull out their old cards and get back into it. I think a lot of smart people realized, you know, a lot of business minds like yourself, they, they all came in and they're like, this business is like, it was so unprofessional and you know, and everybody saw these opportunities. So like within the last couple years, we've seen so many apps come out, so many business, you know, nothing changed from pre, from 2019 back, like it was basically the same. And now there's just so much innovation, which is, it's good, but it's brought in a lot, a lot more smart people. A lot of business people that have come in, they've, They've, you know, added fees to different stuff and like you said, taken some of the fun away and. But it's turning into. It was already a real asset class. One of the major things for Covid was I've always been bullish on cards. Probably 70% of my net worth is in cards and memorabilia. But there was always in the back of my mind, like, am I crazy having this type of money invested in this? And I was confident. But really when Covid hit like, the confidence boost for me went from like 70 to 100% when if you ask me what could tear down our business is if you took away sports, you know, off tv, basically everything that happened to begin, if you took all that away, I'm like, the card market's gonna crash 99%. And there was like this six week gap where I guess not just cars, but the whole world was kind of in limbo.
- [15:08]
Ryan Alford
Yeah.
- [15:08]
Jason Koontz
And I was Panicking, you know, I had a lot of money, but all on paper and in inventory. And then out of nowhere, like you just see the market just like go like this and then just take off. And that for me was, it was good on multiple levels financially, but also just like the feeling of knowing, okay, like this has been cemented as a real asset class and nothing's gonna, I don't wanna say nothing, but like, this is. It is what it is. Like people, this is now, you know, watches, gold coin, I mean this is like a real asset, you know. And you see people shifting money out of the stock market into some of these massive like million dollar cards because they believe in sports cards more than they do the stock market or some of the other, you know, bullshit going around. So that's been really exciting for me to see. Just being in it from the very beginning to where we're at now is pretty awesome. Just to, you know, kind of can get confirmation that we're here to stay.
- [16:06]
Ryan Alford
Watching now. And this is me like with the kids and kind of looking at the industry, the YouTube factor. You've got these influencers and guys opening packs. Not talking about like selling and whatnot, about just the opening packs. On YouTube you got King of Cards. Kyle kind of building his little brand up. This is not unique to trading cards. This is the smart people in any industry have figured out, you know, that attention is money. And you, hey, the Internet is your oyster and the social media is your oyster. What's your take on all of that and the impact on the industry?
- [16:40]
Jason Koontz
So two things. One to me personally, it's so wild to think that like going back to the early 2000s, we didn't have cameras at shows, we didn't have iPhones obviously. But like the thought of filming at a card show was so like it was when people ask you what you did for a living, like it was embarrassing to tell them you bought and sold sports cards.
- [17:02]
Ryan Alford
Yeah.
- [17:03]
Jason Koontz
Usually they would hear sports cars and then you wouldn't correct them because like that's cool. And so it's like it's completely shifted. And you know, people say, I can't believe you don't have. Content from the show is like, dude, we were not in a content world to begin with. And then on top of it, we didn't want people no, you know, no transparency, no secret.
- [17:26]
Ryan Alford
All you see, you weren't letting those trade tickets out.
- [17:28]
Jason Koontz
Yeah, like, well, the secrets and just like, you know, it's like you're not going to pick up chicks telling, you know, Telling people you buy and sell baseball cards. So, you know, fast forward 20 years. Everybody's doing it now. It's cool. So to me, that's just such a shift to see it go from, like 0 to 100 as far as the cool factor goes. So that's part one. The second part of your question is what do I think about it? And, like, a lot of these guys are newer too. Like, they saw the. You know, there's a chance to make authors content. There's clickbait, you know, there's stuff. There's. There's ways to make money through the content, obviously. So, you know, a lot of these guys, they're not experts. They've come into the hobby in 2018, 2017, 2019. So they don't know a lot. They know enough to kind of talk about it. So some of the information is just the blind leading the blind as far as, like, these are new people talking about cards. With that being said, I think the guys that have good intentions gets good. It's all positive. The guys that are negative, like, whatever. Like, you know, it's. It's clickbait, you know, it's whatever. I don't think that someone's, you know, if someone's new to the hobby, like, that's their first experience. It's not good. So all the guys that are putting out good content, I think it's growing the hobby. I like seeing it. I know a lot of those guys, they're. They're good. They're good people. So I think it's a net positive overall. I think it gets watered down a little bit when you got guys who don't know what the hell they're talking about. But I think the really big guys at least have an idea of the hobby and stuff. So it's just mind blowing to me. I'd rather watch some new Guy's video for 15 minutes just to kind of. I'm always trying to stay in the loop. Like, even with the new guys that work for me, I'm always picking their brain because I don't keep up on them. There's so much new stuff coming out daily. Like, it's crazy. I know the vintage better than most. Some of the newer stuff, it's hard to keep up with. So I'm trying to sponge all this in.
- [19:11]
Ryan Alford
Yeah, it's different. Especially coming up when you did, like you said, it was just the last. Last thing you think of wanting to amplify is either by reputation or by, like, giving your, I don't know, competitors Your you're kind of like behind the.
- [19:30]
Jason Koontz
Scenes speaking of crazy stories so that like, here's a perfect example. 1986 floor basketball, you know, like the holy grail of basketball. 80, you know, Jordan's rookie in the early 2000s, boxes of that were about 12 to 15,000, and now they're like 150,000. We were buying those and cracking them and the people that were selling them to us or me and you know, people I was working with is they thought we were just getting smoked. They felt bad. They'd sell us these boxes. We were opening them and they kind of felt like we were just these young guys getting screwed. They didn't realize how clean 86 floor basketball came out of the packs. And we were grading this stuff and making a fortune and we just played, we just played the dumb role for like two or three years of like, yeah, I just really like opening this product. But like a box that I paid 12,000 for, like, worst case scenario, the ROI was about seven grand. A good box ROI was about 200 grand.
- [20:26]
Ryan Alford
Holy shit.
- [20:27]
Jason Koontz
Yeah. So like, and I opened three or 400 boxes of 86 FLIR basketball and nobody would pay more. So like they would buy them and we would just, you know, so some of the David Adams card, world baseball car, all these guys would sell us, they'd get 86 floor basketball, they'd sell it to us. We would kind of show the image of like, hey, we're these dumb guys cracking 86 floor basketball. And you know, Jordan wasn't even the most expensive card in the set. Like a lot of people were building sets and some of these commons were like 10 or 15,000. In a PSA 10, you could get one common in high grade and it would cover the entire box.
- [21:02]
Ryan Alford
Geez. Crazy. What you're saying is you guys are taking some collection of cards and repacking them into, you know, 4, 8, 12, 20, whatever, whatever it is, into a different rebranded name. And you have a higher percent chance of ROI than you did maybe from manufacturer and maybe even a larger hit rate or something. You know, like with the better cards. I, I'm trying to short phrase that, but is that.
- [21:26]
Jason Koontz
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, and liquidity. I mean like, so generally, like, let's just say the, the repack is, you know, each repack is one graded card. And you know, like, let's say the, the repack cost $200. And you know, like over the, over the span of the repack, like the lowest card in there is going to be 40, which you have to have $40 cards in there. Because in that same repack, you want to put cards in there that are, you know, a thousand fifteen hundred. So but you're, you're pulling something that's instantly liquid, you know, or there's instant liquidity versus out of a traditional pack, you know, half, 99% of the cards are all commons that are just going to get chucked. And then let's just say you do pull a good card, then it needs to go off for grading. There's the waiting. Repacks are quicker. There's generally like a floor and a ceiling. So you, you kind of know, like, what's my minimum, what's my lot, you know, what's my max? But the only thing with traditional packs is you do have that lottery ticket which has kind of been the game the last couple years. You know, like every, every so often they're going to have a, you know, I'm sure you saw the Paul Skeens card, you know, debut sold for 1.3 million. Yeah. Like that's one person that hits that. Yeah. So for one person that hits that, like million dollar lottery ticket, there's all the other stuff that just, you know. Yeah.
- [22:41]
Ryan Alford
You only hear the good news.
- [22:43]
Jason Koontz
You only hear the good news. That's the stuff that doesn't get talked about. So I just think that. And you do see it like the repack is just getting a lot more money. A lot of these guys would like to spend money on high dollar. They still open some packs. Like I still open packs. For me, it's just pure entertainment though. Like if I, me and my son, me and my kids sit down and we open a box or a couple boxes and spend a thousand bucks, I'm not planning to get any of that money back. I'm just like entertainment donation, having fun and you know, give them the cards and let them do it. So I think when you go in with that mindset, it's okay because it's the same as, you know, going to a sporting event or going to whatever you're.
- [23:21]
Ryan Alford
Yeah.
- [23:22]
Jason Koontz
So, but the problem is, is you got people that they don't look at as entertainment. They're looking at it as like making money opening packs and during a long haul, that's just not going to be sustainable.
- [23:32]
Ryan Alford
No, don't, don't do that. Go buy singles and resell them or put them in your collection, but don't, don't. I do the same thing with my kids. We open, I mean, three nights a week, you know, but I'm looking at it purely as time with my kids where they actually want to hang out with me and we have fun and it's a surprise and delight moment if we get something great. And if we don't, I'm, I'm not, you know, forfeiting their future. You know, like, it's like, it's like it been nice to have gotten something out of that, but I had fun either way. And that's, that's, that's part of, you know, why I'm doing this series is to remind people this is a lot of fun. It has a lot of great attributes for fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, whoever's into it doesn't matter because there's a trading card and a hobby, you know, variation for everyone. But at the same time, it is an asset class now and needs to be, I don't know, put on the pedestal that it's earned through a lot of the, you know, time that you've put in. Jason. I mean, you know, being one of the pioneers and people that have been through it all, you know, it sort of deserves its moment in time. You know, you guys are selling on whatnot more than anything else. That's what I'm hearing. That's what I'm assuming. This technology and live selling thing, you know, being in marketing and business, I've been preaching that for about seven years and telling people that it was coming. It was before COVID by the way. I was at a FedEx event. People looked at me sideways and I'm like, you just wait. Sure enough, it's a fascinating part of the industry, this industry, other industries. Where do you, what, what say you about live shopping?
- [25:16]
Jason Koontz
Well, I wish I would have met you five years because I was on the initial call with Grant, the guy who started Whatnot, and he, he. I still have the email that I look at like once a month because it's ridiculous, basically saying, hey, I got this idea for a live selling platform called Whatnot. I want to talk to you, like, you know, investor. So I had a chance at like, you know, pre.
- [25:37]
Ryan Alford
Jason, I wish I had known you, man, I would have. If you'd have gotten that call, I would have gone with you.
- [25:43]
Jason Koontz
Yeah, I just, I just, I was still like, I think if I was younger, I would have understood it more at the time. My question to him was I said, I go, so you want to run a 32nd auction at one in the afternoon on a Tuesday? And they said, yeah. And I said, just, that sucked. That was ridiculous to me. But I didn't really process it. The way now obviously I'm one of their, I think they're number two seller on the entire platform. But at the time if I would have stopped and thought like, you know, even on ebay all the bidding is in the last few hours and even sniping the last second like the first six days of a seven day eBay auction is irrelevant. So this was just like, I mean I've had plenty of hits, I've had plenty of misses. This was a miss for me. So it's just kind of funny now looking back when I was just so anti or bearish on just not, not bearish. I didn't understand live streaming and now I think we're still really early. I think live streaming is like the fourth or fifth biggest thing in my lifetime to come about. Like the Internet, crypto, you know, bitcoin, you know, it's like social media. Live shopping, like to me live shopping is like the third or fourth biggest thing where people are going to get really wealthy and in the next couple years, AI obviously but like you're going to see everybody like Walmart, Costco, like they're all going to have lives. Either they're going to be pushing stuff through other platforms or they're just going to create their own. And I'm very bullish on live shopping. It's. And it's still early. I mean I still think is as far as it is, like 95% of people still don't know anything about live shopping.
- [27:19]
Ryan Alford
So yeah, I think the trading cards and the hobby is well, a lot further down that like conversion path, you know, for their target audience. But it's going to meet this professionalism that you talked about earlier. That's where I see it. That's where I kind of have my brain thinking is like as the business as a whole where I think about, okay, well if Ryan Alford is going to get in on this thing, it's going to be in this professionalism, marketing content. But there's a delivery with the live shopping which you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. So it's not that it has to be over complicated or too sophisticated, but I do think there's rooms and dials to be turned with all of that experience.
- [28:11]
Jason Koontz
Oh, it's huge. We have seven studios that we've built out and we're constantly making them better. But like a lot of the people live selling like they're still live streaming like out of their garage.
- [28:21]
Ryan Alford
Yeah.
- [28:21]
Jason Koontz
You know like so we have, we're kind of A little bit ahead of that. But we also, you know, we don't. We have. It's really hard to. To find good live streamers. I mean, I think live streamers are going to become famous, like, personalities and, you know, people are going to hire them and. Because if you can sell, you're going to be, you know, it's like the late 90s, you know, sports cards on TV, the shop at home days.
- [28:43]
Ryan Alford
Oh, my God.
- [28:43]
Jason Koontz
I don't know if you know, the.
- [28:46]
Ryan Alford
Don, I've got some videos that we play that I've am actually having cut up right now that are more spoof stuff, but for our. The Breaking Rad Instagram channel. But it's. But it is that, though. But he was great. But it's like, he's in the video. He's like, if you don't buy this, how are you gonna wake up in the morning the next day? You're not even gonna be able to look in the mirror. He's like, he was the greatest salesman of all time.
- [29:18]
Jason Koontz
He was amazing. So that was the part. I mean, we could talk for 10 hours. So I did a ton of Sal selling on the. The main two guys that were selling on tv, I. I was providing them with a ton of inventory and they were buying with Reckless, you know, because they were selling on TV and killing it. But. So, yeah, Don was hilarious. But the TV days were. Were wild, man.
- [29:39]
Ryan Alford
Like, you walk into that bar, they'd be like, there's Rick. He knows how to make a decision. He goes all in.
- [29:48]
Jason Koontz
If you miss out on this, you're not gonna.
- [29:51]
Ryan Alford
You might be able to look yourself in the mirror tomorrow. I was like. And I was watching, going, I don't want to miss out. And then I'm like, oh, shit. I'm like. I was like. He was awesome. He was so good at it. But I. I'm learning from him. Getting serious over there with my kids, they would do.
- [30:07]
Jason Koontz
They would do like, limit five per caller. And then, like, you'd have people calling in and like, have their mom calling for them and. Yeah, hey, can we. Can we. Can we order? You know, just. But have them shipped to the same address, but it's a different person trying to get more, you know.
- [30:21]
Ryan Alford
Yeah, exactly. Fomo, man. That's what it is. Fear of missing out. That's what live shopping is, though. It's like every great marketing characteristic, like, built into one. You've got the. The last 10 seconds. So FOMO, you got. You're racing against the clock. You don't want to Miss out you. It's just everything kind of coming together.
- [30:41]
Jason Koontz
The thrill of getting the deal. I mean, when we watch and stuff, like I said, like, sometimes, like stuff goes over market. Yeah, stuff goes over market. A lot of times stuff goes under market. So like there, there are plenty of times where I see you, I'm like, holy shit. Like, that was a hundred dollar card that just sold for 40 bucks. Like that guy's, you know, which is good. Like, that guy's gonna come back and keep buying like crazy, you know, that's.
- [31:05]
Ryan Alford
Arbitrage today because I get in there and I've done both, you know, Like, I tend to not be the guy that goes over just to win. But like, sometimes I've got a wrong number on a card because there's so many damn cars. I'm like, oh, that's probably $20 over marketer, you know, but that's arbitrage. Getting there and stealing some, you know, our cars for 40.
- [31:24]
Jason Koontz
Knowing the market. I mean, this is, this is where in real time, when you're running a 30 second auction, you need to make those gut calls. And if you do know the market and something selling for 80%, like, you know, and he's spending a lot of money, and I mean a lot. We do that too. I go in there and pick stuff off. Sometimes the collector in me comes out and then I end up overpay for some stuff that I just want for my person. But that's kind of the fun in it. Like, you know, what am I going to see this again? But there's a. Yeah, there's, there's definitely a. Just a ton of money to be made. You, you just have to just spend the time and just get educated and really, you know, don't jump all in and just, you know, spend a ton of money. Like, just put a lot of hours in understanding everything before you, you know, go go big.
- [32:10]
Ryan Alford
Yeah. And that's sort of my superpower. Like, I'm the most curious person on the planet. I go down the rabbit hole, like, and I'm down the rabbit hole in this business. Like, I'm way down it right now. Like, just observing, watching and curious. Don't know it all. Learning from guys like you watching the market and stuff like that. Because there is stuff to be made. It's just like anything else, though. It's not immediate $12,000 to $200,000 boxes like it used to be. But like anything else, he who goes the furthest often wins. Jason, where's it all headed for you, brother? I Mean, you're relaxing, you know, got great people working for you. You're taking care of them, they're taking care of you. When Jason looks down the road and goes, man, you know, you're taking care of your kids, your family. I mean, like, where are we headed with all this?
- [33:01]
Jason Koontz
Yeah, I mean, this where my kids are all like, Yeah, I think our kids are in the similar age, you know, I'm like 10, 10, 8, 7, 6. So it's like I am trying to pull back a little bit, you know, like, and when I say pull back a little bit, it's like going from 80 hours a week to, you know, 50 hours a week. I enjoy this. Like, I enjoy business. So, yeah, when I try, like, I don't know about you. When I go on vacation after day three, I'm jonesing to get home. It really takes. It's hard. So I see me doing this forever. It'll. It'll keep. I'll keep shifting with it. And I think, you know, talk with a lot of these younger guys and just molding. I've always done that, but I just love it so much that it doesn't feel like work. And so, yeah, I think we're going to be doing this for a while, man. It's just. I'm blessed to be in a spot where I have good managers underneath me. So when I do want to, you know, I'm like, hey, today's. I got kids sporting, you know, I got soccer games, I got basketball. Like, I'm not doing anything right now. I'm going to go do that. So that's. I do feel like I set myself up for that, you know, the 15 years leading up to where we're at today. I do get a lot of hate when people, they think, like, they see where I'm at now, and it's like they think this happened in the last year or two. Not the case at all. And it's. It's, you know, it's just the world we live in today. You know, everybody wants, you know, money overnight, and it's just. It's not the reality. And, you know, even, like, even in the middle, like, going. Going broke in the middle of this, like, you know, really, really learned to put me in a different mindset. So, yeah, I mean, I'm gonna be doing this for a while. Keep. Keep growing. Obviously, if you're not growing, it's not fun. It's. It's. It's exciting to. To watch. I. I love, you know, playing the next three to six months out and then I email it to myself. And then six months, you know, like, kind of seeing how far we made it, if we surpassed it. And a lot of times, like, and I keep all these emails and I'm just like, I'm looking back at goals from, like, 2022, and it's like, holy shit. Like, not only did we hit that goal, you know, it's like, like 100 million in sales in a year was like, a big deal for us. And, like, and we hit that, and this year we're gonna surpass that, hopefully by a decent amount. But that was something that seemed crazy. And now we're there, so it's like, now I gotta set new goals and keep. Keep moving. I think people that are wired in this weird sickness entrepreneur that we all have, you're always. You're always moving the goal post. And for better or worse, it's a blessing and a curse, I think, because I think there's some people, they get to the goal post and they're happy and they can just chill. I think someone like, you know, who's really dialed in, they get to the goal, they enjoy it for about 10 minutes, and they say, okay, let's move that goal post back again and see. See what else we can do. So that's kind of where I'm at right now. Just, I'm trying to enjoy life a little more and. And work a little less. But like I said, even. Even less for me is still. It's a lot of damn hours.
- [35:58]
Ryan Alford
They say the journey is everything now. And I think, you know, the longer I do what I do, it proves to be true. And it's in almost everything. Because even, like you said, like, my kids get excited about opening a box. We get excited, and you open the packs and you get it, you might get the Jaden Daniels best card ever Auto. Ten minutes later, it's what's next, you know, like, and it's not because they can't get enough, but it's just. It's more. I look at it more, like you said, it's that the journey, the excitement of, oh, you know, building up to wanting that card or wanting that goal in business or all those things. I think the true, the truly motivated are just looking for the next journey and the next challenge.
- [36:42]
Jason Koontz
100%. 100%.
- [36:45]
Ryan Alford
Hey, man, where can everybody keep up with everything you guys are doing, where to find you, the company, et cetera, et cetera.
- [36:53]
Jason Koontz
Yeah, so the website's just four letters ota.com on social media, Otis Sports on whatnot. Otis Otia rips. Yeah, I mean those are. It's pretty much all under one umbrella. If you Google OTA Sports or ota, you'll, you'll find us and you'll join some of our live streams, you know, and enjoy the shows and have fun and, and bid responsibly.
- [37:18]
Ryan Alford
Yes. Gotta put that disclaimer on there. Jason, really appreciate you for coming on the show and it's been great. I consider you a friend now and look forward to future opportunities.
- [37:31]
Jason Koontz
Ryan, thank you so much for having me on. It was a lot of fun.
- [37:33]
Ryan Alford
Hey guys, you know, to find us Ryan is right. Dot com. Hey, we're number one for a reason. It's because you're here. Go check us out on YouTube. We got a fast growing page over there. Watch all the content. You'll find links to all of Jason's stuff, Otia rips, all the stuff they're doing over on whatnot and on the website. We appreciate Jason for coming on and we appreciate you. We'll see you next time. All right about now.
- [37:57]
Podcast Narrator
Thanks for tuning into the show. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast platform and don't miss the full video version on YouTube. You can find us at www. Collectibles show or follow Ryan on Instagram at ryanolford. Now get out there and collect your.