← Collector Nation
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- [00:00]
Ryan Szczynski
People had cards that were being devalued day by day that were sitting in an office month on month, and by the time they sort of got them back, they were pretty much worthless. In a category where a lack of information has been a feature for the most part, we are trying to sort of democratize data in a way that allows buyers to feel like they're as informed as possible.
- [00:16]
Ryan Alford
You know what I don't like? This isn't necessarily PSA's fault. It's like PSA 10 or bus with everything. We devalue every other number.
- [00:24]
Ryan Szczynski
Welcome to the Collector Nation podcast. Here on the Collector Nation Network, whether you're chasing grails or calling bluffs, we take you inside the hobby. Here's your host, Ryan Alford.
- [00:42]
Ryan Alford
Grading is one of the most talked about forces in the hobby today. Everyone's talking about it, but not everyone has the data they need. It's incomplete. Until now. Ryan Szczynski, the founder of Gym Rate, built a platform that helps bring more transparency to grading data, population trends, and what collectors are actually submitting across the market. In this episode, we get into why hobby data has been so fragmented, how grading behavior is changing, and what PSAs, backlog and pause means for collectors. Why being formed matters, whether you're buying, selling, grading, or just trying to enjoy the hobby. What's up, Brian? Welcome to Collector Nation, Brian.
- [01:26]
Ryan Szczynski
Thank you for having me.
- [01:27]
Ryan Alford
Yeah, man, pleasure. I, I feel like I, you know, I got it on a call, full transparency with Ryan and his team with Jim Rate, and really down to earth. I don't know, I think you sort of start putting things on pedestals because, like, I see Jim, right, I get the newsletter, I'm in there, and I'm, you know, getting deeper in the hobby, and I'm like, man, this guy's really nice and approachable and easy to, to talk to. And like, I, I'm expecting something completely different and not because I thought it would be bad. Just didn't expect you to be so approachable and like, down to earth. And I was like, yeah, I got to talk to this guy. I love what you've done with Jim Ray. It's just, it's simple, but it's effective and it's helpful. That's the best. Those are the biggest compliments I can give you.
- [02:12]
Ryan Szczynski
I appreciate. That's how I like to be in person. And I'm glad the, the company represents that as well. Yeah, we try to keep a low profile, add value where we can, but we're not trying to draw too Much attention to ourselves.
- [02:22]
Ryan Alford
Anyways, listening. I'm going to let Ryan describe, you know, how and what gym rate is. If you don't know it, you need to know it if you're a serious collector or even just, even if you just like I'm kind of a data junkie so that's why I'm, that's why I've been digesting it. So very helpful. But Ryan, let's give everybody over here. What is Jim Rate?
- [02:42]
Ryan Szczynski
Yeah, so we started five and a half years ago and what we first became known for was just putting out monthly reports on grading activity. You know, this was, you know, it's, we're sort of revisiting the past here because PSA had a backlog and was just opening back up and people were wondering what kind of grading volume they were doing where other great, you know, where people were grading when PSA was shut down. And we were just providing some high level overview of you know, what does grading activity look like. And those reports did really well. And so that kind of is how people became aware of what generate was back then. And then over the years we've launched a website. We've got a bunch of different tools and we've got newsletters and other sort of content that we publish. But we're basically trying to inform, you know, collectors, investors and make them feel as sort of savvy as possible as they're sort of transacting in the space. And so, you know, for the most part we're bringing supply data to market. We've started to do a little bit more on sales trends data in a differentiated way. Sort of trying to help people understand collectibility a little bit differently than sort of you might across the hobby. But yeah, we're just trying to make people feel informed and in a category where a lack of information has been a feature for the most part to sort of get sellers the highest prices, we are trying to sort of democratize data in a way that allows buyers to feel like they're fully informed or as informed as possible so they stay persist in the hobby and feel confident over the long run.
- [04:00]
Ryan Alford
Yeah man. One of the few actually doing that lot. There's very simply stated but a lot to unpack. You know, coming back into the hobby last couple of years has been the biggest eye opener is like we have more data than we know what to do with in every other industry. And here it's like there's no, there's a, there's a lot of data but there's a lot of ambiguity. And no centralization. And like you said, it's almost like it's intentional. I don't know. Have you don't name any names. But do we think that's intentional?
- [04:35]
Ryan Szczynski
You know, I do think it's been intentional. I also think it's just been. This has not been a growth category for a long time. You know, it was. I had worked on a Tops project back in 2010 and it was feeling like Tops was sort of on its way out, like cards were sort of, you know, basically becoming a thing of, you know, of ancient history. And then, you know, 10 years later, Covid hits and obviously it skyrocketed, but people weren't prepared for that. And so, you know, the data sort of reflects a hobby that was, you know, at the tail end of its life. And so people just didn't prioritize it. And so the data reflects that. And we've been slow to catch up. You know, despite all the momentum in the hobby, it's not been sort of, it's a long, you know, it's a long term play and a lot of players in the hobby are sort of skating towards where the easy money is or the quick money. And so despite the fact that the hobby's seen this great growth, data's sort of still been moving much slower than a lot of the hobby in general. And so I would say it was just deprioritized, probably not super intentional, but certainly not prioritized and sort of a point of focus, unfortunately. And we're sort of struggling to sort of recoup, know, or sort of recover from that. And you know, we're trying to add value and sort of bring, paint some of that picture. But I mean, man, it's, it is a struggle on many different fronts, you know, and it still is, you know, to a degree. When you look at the manufacturer sites today, you can't even get it, you know, and this is not really trying to throw a ton of shade at anybody in particular here, but I'm appreciative that we get odds and things like that. But it looks different from set to set. You know, the format, you know, checklists are harder to come by, you know, still. And so anyways, even some of the basics you think would be sort of normalized today are still a challenge at times.
- [06:14]
Ryan Alford
Yeah, just a normal identification layer like that's been. And I know you do some of that with yours, with, you know, you guys are doing, you know, getting the ID numbers from certification from the grading and all that. But God, I mean, I'VE been just building tools for my own store that may or may not be broader than that. We'll see. We'll see. They help us enough. We'll. We'll make them broader. But if. I think we might. But we'll see. The. But it's been fascinating. Like, God, wait, checklist is so funny. Like, there's so many variants, so many parallels. You know, Teapot and I talked about this from Cards hq and like, it's. It's impossible for anyone to sort of wrap their head around it. I've got. I don't know if it's a man thing or whatever. I think us men, like, we're like the worst memories in the world, but for some reason we remember, like, movie quotes and parallels of sports cars. We're wired in weird ways. Maybe, but if you're new to the hobby, like I was a couple years ago, re emerging, you know, when I was in the hobby, we didn't have 400 parallels. We didn't have autographs, I think. Right. Late 80s.
- [07:25]
Ryan Szczynski
Right.
- [07:25]
Ryan Alford
Barely had autographs unless you got it your yourself. But no identification, no serial number, no barcode. We've had QR codes for what, 15 years. We've had NFC chips for how long? And we just gotta hope that we know that that's a gold shimmer. Yeah. And I'm color.
- [07:44]
Ryan Szczynski
I'm colorblind, so I can't even get the gold part of it down. Oh, you know, I'm guessing.
- [07:47]
Ryan Alford
I know. I mean, why is it. And again, I don't. I didn't think it was intentional, but then I'm like, these are sophisticated companies pulling off logistically amazing feats, printing stuff. They want to put a little code on there. They could have, but they intentionally decided not to.
- [08:09]
Ryan Szczynski
Right. I mean, there's definitely. I would say. Yeah. I mean, I don't think they love people backing into print runs, you know, across every product that they release. And, you know, now they become slightly more willing, I think. But that's been something that's been masked forever. And so that's something, you know, or at least not. Not forever. I mean, you know, back in the 90s, odds were pretty available. And that was not an uncommon thing. But yeah, over time, it's just become less and less available. Tops is sort of doing their thing to bring it back again. But yes, definitely unfortunate because I would say the biggest consequence of not. Of not having great data is that the education barrier is pretty significant in our hobby. And, you know, a lot of people find that to be part of the beauty of it. It's a treasure hunt, you know, that they feel like they've got their unique perspective and unique angle on that they could take advantage of, and they want to hold onto that. And so not everybody wants more data out there. But when you're new to the hobby, like you were, you know, or you know, re entering the hobby like we both have been over the last five years, you know, I've spent five and a half years working on nothing but this, and I still only know a fraction of what I could as it relates to just how the hobby's evolved over the years. And, you know, imagine somebody coming in who's excited about the category today, trying to figure out, where do I start? And, you know, Teapot did mention some of this on, you know, with. During your conversation. And I think it's extremely correct that it's just, it's a massive hurdle and people don't really know where to go and where to turn and what to. Where to put their money or where to put their time. You know, it's so tired. If you really want this hobby to grow in the long run, better data will hopefully bring, you know, a more educated audience to market to so that they, again, can participate, but also sort of sustain and not feel like they're being taken every time they're transacting in this. In this hobby.
- [09:45]
Ryan Alford
Yeah. And I mean, I'm fine. Like, I understand the odds part of it maybe, you know, don't want everybody counting every. I'd like to know, like, I get it, but I mean, I think people are going to do it anyway. People play the damn lottery with everything. I mean, they, you know, they play the stuff that you don't actually get. Things either get all or nothing. So I don't think it's going to change how much product they buy. It would just help with identification and, you know, in the secondary market. But, you know, we'll keep fighting the good fight, Ryan. Stick together in the good fight of data. And talking with the founder of Gym Rate. We'll call them Ryan Daily Dimes. I need. I create names for everybody. I gotta get money.
- [10:25]
Ryan Szczynski
I'm gonna get a name for you.
- [10:27]
Ryan Alford
Talk to me. What's it been like building this company? Like what? Talk to me through that evolution of problem you solved, you know, or saw where you, you know, you've talked about some of the new things you're getting into. But I'd love to just kind of know that company ecosystem, you know, growth, you know, like, okay, how do I translate this data into usable, practical information.
- [10:50]
Ryan Szczynski
Yeah, so I, prior to starting gemrid, I worked, I worked in banking for a bit and then I worked in analytics and data for some venture backed startups. And so this was sort of my. I had an opportunity where I had a couple of years where I could kind of kick the tires and something that was of great interest to me, you know, a passion project and getting back into cards. Obviously at the beginning of the pandemic, again you walk in and you get excited, but you don't know where to start. Same problem we still have today. And for me, I was just starting to solve my own problem. I was thinking like, wow, this supply data is so interesting. If I could figure out. And grading was new to me, reentering the market, I didn't realize sort of how much leverage there was on your time and your dollars to sort of find a raw card and grade it and sort of get value from that process. And so I was so fascinated with like expected value and trying to understand where should I grade cards, what's available to grade and you know, what does sort of velocity look like for cards that are being graded. So anyways, I started just thinking if I could pull in the data from the different companies, the different POP reports. And it was painstaking, but something that I was sort of so excited to do that I put in the time to do it. And that was sort of the impetus for us building a data tool which is, could we at least acquire the data which is public? Right. All the POP data is public, which is a big part of why we were willing to sort of move forward down this path. And then how could we sort of synthesize it in a way that again, the companies were not sort of incentivized to reimagine POP reports. That was sort of a long tail thing that worked for them well enough that they didn't want to sort of reimagine it or revisit it. And so we figured we could sort of do POP reports on steroids, bring a little bit more information to market, consolidate it. You know, a lot of our value is around helping people understand that same card across the different grading companies. You know, we were sort of the first ones to bring a universal POP report to market. Alt had done a little bit of that prior to that and we were sort of trying to do it at an even larger scale. But again, that's sort of just painting the full picture for people. And so for me it was mostly oriented around just how could I build for myself and so you see the site today, it still looks like an Excel junkie built the site. And that's what really, you know, it's for better or worse, that's kind of the person it's serving best or servicing best. But we actually hired an engineer to sort of reimagine a lot of that. So that's starting to be rolled out. But for us, you know, it was a slow grind, you know, because it was not making money for a couple years, it was all investment in data. And again, that's another challenge that most people sort of wouldn't go down this path, which is like I was losing money sort of left and right, acquiring data, fully believing that when I did sort of bring something to market, people would value it. And so I had a lot of trust in the process of just imagining this is valuable data. It's different than a product. When you launch a product, you get pretty quick feedback. If you're launching a SaaS company or something like that, you get pretty quick feedback. Feedback. When you're doing a data business, you have to sort of build up a big asset or a meaningful asset before people sort of really understand how to make sense of it. And so, you know, we did data collection for a year and a half before we even launched our first product, which was an API that we launched to some of the larger auction houses. But it's, it was a lot of work. I mean, it's definitely, I tell people because they're like, you know, why is Jem Ray sort of the only one that does what we do on the supply side? And it's because it's not, not sexy. It's not like a business where everybody's sort of, you know, can't wait to get into it because it's just a lot of, it's a lot of brute force work and then it's, you know, you have to be a little bit patient. So anyways, that was sort of our path to monetizing and sort of getting to a point where at least we have some scale and that we've been able to hire and sort of expand. But you know, we don't really have a B2C offering. Everything on our site's free. It's part of what people really like about the Gem Rate brand is we're sort of trying to make data as available as possible. So we sort of use the B2B relationships to subsidize making sure consumers get a good experience. But it's definitely come with some hurdles or sort of, you know, just challenges. In the sense of the data sort of evolves. This is again the same things we talked about 10 minutes ago, five minutes ago. The, the data on the grading side has improved, but it's still just messy data left and right. And so, you know, we have to sort of adapt as the grading companies adapt and we see that quite frequently. So anyways, it's, it's still a challenge even though we're five and a half years into it. But it's one of these things that I just love. So I continue to push forward on it. But again, I don't know that a lot of people would enjoy it as much as I do.
- [14:53]
Ryan Alford
I think brute force is going to be in your name somewhere, Ryan. Brute Force Data Builder, you know, lifting some data. How much data did you put up today? £9,000. And I thought you were going somewhere else with that big ass at big ass data. I was like, yes, he's really loosening up.
- [15:19]
Ryan Szczynski
Oh man.
- [15:20]
Ryan Alford
Yeah, I mean, crunching number. Look, data visualization matters because a lot of people don't have the time, energy, don't have the, you know, tools to sort of put all those numbers together. And then it's like how you make it meaningful. That's what I love about what you do. And like the, the nuggets you uncover in the newsletter if you're not subscribed. Go subscribe. Jim Rates. Thank me later. The, the talk to me about what users and feedback you get people find the most interesting and most useful.
- [15:56]
Ryan Szczynski
Yeah, so there's sort of like two use cases that we've sort of built the company on the back of which is we're sort of like the diligence layer that people use. So when they're about to transact, they just want to make sure they're not missing anything. And that depends. Like again, you take for granted today how dominant PSA was. That is not the story. Six, ten years ago when Beckett was actually getting a lot of high end basketball cards, he was getting way more basketball cards. Bowman. All the autographs were going through Becket A stuff was going through Beckett that today is sort of now taking a backseat to PSA in a major way. But if you're buying cards that are not. In the last few years, the population landscape was very different. And so, you know, that is that diligence layer just helps people who are trying to, you know, especially with auction houses spending big chunks of money want to make sure they're not missing the story. And so we're sort of like that last pass of just Making sure, hey, you know, I need to make sure. I'm, I'm, I'm, I've got my ducks in a row here. And that we're sort of not missing any key piece of information. So that's kind of one of the main use cases. And we have this universal search tool which allows people to very quick look up any card in our database and understand the population. And then the other side of it is the discovery side. And it's like all of a sudden you're like, okay, Wemby's obviously been around, but it's like, what does the Wemby card catalog look like? What does supply look like? And so we're also an entry point for this is we do service sort of like the newer collector or the newer investor who's trying to figure out where do I start? And we just have a different opinion or different perspective than the pricing tools. You know, we're sort of bringing you the lens of scarcity to some degree versus, you know, the last trend. The last comp is oftentimes what you see with the pricing tools. And so we're sort of giving people a different angle of if I want something interesting that's sort of, you know, somewhat meaningful through the lens of GEM rate and I can understand supply, people use us for that discovery layer too. So they'll use us and they'll look at the Wemby catalog or they'll look through sets. A lot of people, the, the more emerging theme the last 18 months, and I spoke to this a little bit ago, is that people really are becoming hyper aware of how much money there is to be made in grading cards. And obviously not a surprise, there's a 10 million card backlog at PSA and that's growing tremendously as we currently, as
- [17:55]
Ryan Alford
we speak, literally growing today that we're recording this on, which I want to get into, that's a whole other topic channel, but we'll come to that.
- [18:04]
Ryan Szczynski
Yeah, but people definitely understand the leverage of grading cards. And I think of leverage as either return on your time or return on your dollars. And it's a little bit of both of those things. And people really sort of have figured out that there is this arbitrage game. And so we're seeing a lot of participants who are using GEM rate to sort of figure out where can we, where do we find our niche? Where can we sort of pick up cards that are sort of being dismissed as raw cards and can be turned into something of significantly more value? And you know, everybody knows there's certain. The beauty of cards is you can find a great raw card because it's somebody who spends $10,000 in a break, doesn't want to waste time sitting around and just wants to unload and recoup some of their cash. And somebody will, you know, throw a couple thousand dollar card raw in decent condition on ebay or another marketplace and you could turn that around and if it's in decent enough condition, obviously do pretty well with it. Or you're just, you know, you're sort of doing things in the $50 or $25, even the dollar space. You know, TCG is riding a ton of low value cards raw to being, you know, graded at incredible volume. So anyways, people have found a lot of different lanes and so it's the diligence layer is sort of how we became established. But a lot of the research and discovery has sort of been how we've grown over the last couple of years. And those are the main use cases primarily. And we don't offer anything, we kind of link out, we're very integrated but we don't provide pricing data or anything like that. You know, we're strictly supply. And so it's just a very different POV on what matters in the hobby.
- [19:25]
Ryan Alford
I'll add a word to that. I'd call it a smart intelligent layer to, you know, the availability. Because comps you and I had this discussion on that call like, you know, those lies more than a seven day comp, you know, or last comp, it's like, okay, I mean that's great but did somebody, you know, squeak in and steal it at a late night auction or did, you know, like. Or they got it at a certain price and you lay another car down at that same price. But then you go look at availability in the market and how many times it's sold and what's it graded for. Adding that smart intelligence to your decision making and knowledge base is what creates an informed collector. And you know, I think if I want to stick a flag in the ground for anything, let's inform people, you know, especially they want to be informed. Some people you don't have to over inform. Let's have fun. I mean I'm not about like taking all the fun out of it, but let's at least be informed because honestly I find it paralyzing Ryan, like a little bit like that. I'm now hyper over informed with all the data I've been absorbing. Like, I'm sure you feel that way too sometimes. Okay, Analysis paralysis. It's but if I'm that informed and the person in front of me is not, and we don't have a universal source of truth or a universal source of jurisdiction, it doesn't help me necessarily in that transaction to make that deal.
- [21:06]
Ryan Szczynski
No, for sure. I mean that was, that was the, the sort of thing that I imagined. It hasn't really taken off the way that I thought it would, but I mean I thought it would be more chimney would become more of a storytelling tool. Like just like here's these great cards that I found and people just didn't fully understand sort of like the history of a set over time. And sort of, you know, perfect example of this is like the all All Aces ohtani, which in 2023 was a high print card. You know, tens of thousands of those have been printed and then it's become a short print card over the next the following. And you've seen the card still transact at tens of thousands of dollars, you know, tens of thousands of print run. I don't know if it's 100,000 or what it was, I think it was maybe 80,000. But anyways, that card's moving, you know, in, in sort of the, a reasonable adjacency to an SSP card. It's because not everybody understands sort of the lay of the land there. And they just to some degree that's not the full story too. Some people see it as like a status card. It just shows that they have a great Ohtani card that people appreciate and sometimes people are willing to overpay and that's a liquid card as well. But yeah, I mean it is a challenge to transact when people sort of are operating under different assumptions. And that's, that's part of the reason candidly BGS fell off the map is because their subgrades were viewed as a submitter sort of feature that became a hindrance for transacting because people felt certain ways about different subgrades and what a, you know, what a true gem looked like versus GEM plus. It just added nuance that people weren't really. When time was money, back when sort of the market really started to heat up, people just didn't care. They wanted a 10 and they wanted it simple. And so that speaks to just. That's a very sort of real world scenario of how people not sort of operating in the same lanes has created a friction and people have gone in a different route as a result of that. But yeah, definitely to the degree that they're sort of speaking the same language, that's a benefit. And it's just there's still a lot of opportunity to establish what those languages are.
- [22:57]
Ryan Alford
And you don't you fret about storytelling with data.
- [23:02]
Ryan Szczynski
There we go.
- [23:03]
Ryan Alford
Yeah, there we go. Powered by Jim Rate on some level.
- [23:07]
Ryan Szczynski
I love it.
- [23:07]
Ryan Alford
We'll talk more about that offline. But yeah, man, there's a lot of stories that need to be told and data will. Will tell it, but you got to narrate it and build it in the right way. And it helps when you have good data, which Jim Ray does. Talk with the father of Jim Rams. We'll settle on one name, Ryan, before it's all said and done. We'll figure it out.
- [23:33]
Ryan Szczynski
I'm good with those so far.
- [23:34]
Ryan Alford
Brute force Daily Y Daily Dimes Brute brute force. All right, we gotta look. It's the elephant in the room. So let's, let's go there. You know, some people might argue it took us 15, 20 minutes to even get here. All right, you're doing gym rate. All right, it's all about grading, percentages, grading. There's a king on the top of the hill. It's buying every one of his competitors and now it's shutting down because it can't keep up. 10 million in the backlog. And look, I like Nat. I like what, I got a problem. Look, I'm an equal opportunity guy. I'm a business guy. I respect the hell out of what Nat's built, you know, you kidding me? If I could build Monopoly, I might build it too. But, but, but now, I mean, they raised prices a little bit. You know, they try to soften, you know, you know, the orders coming in and everybody's now gangbusters. It's a really broad question. I'm going to let you just respond to general, I mean, reactions to what's happening, that I got a couple follow ups.
- [24:42]
Ryan Szczynski
Yeah. I mean, look, as a consumer, I'm frustrated. You know, I, I haven't graded any. I love grading cards. It's fun. It's like another part of the experience that I haven't been able to participate in. And I'm a collectors club member and you know, I've been one since it, you know, since they started to sort of expand what it meant to be a collector's club member. Basically. It wasn't just about the deals, but it's, it's frustrating. As a consumer, I will say, just as somebody who would like, it's built towards where the category is thriving. It's built towards repacks and it's built toward breaking right now. And unfortunately a lot of the longer term hobbyists of, aren't participating to the same degree. So from a, from a Collector standpoint, it's frustrating. You can understand, you know, when I throw on my sort of equity research hat, you sort of can understand what Collectors is doing from a business standpoint pretty clearly. I mean, this is a company that, you know, was, I've spoken to this over the years a few times, but a lot of the companies in 2021 raised cash and were quickly sort of devalued. You know, they were raising at sort of this idea that this pandemic market was going to persist for a long period of time and it didn't, it fell off pretty quickly. But companies had these valuations that sort of didn't meet expectations of where the market was actually heading. And so a lot of people were sort of trying to figure out where can they put their time and energy to, you know, just sort of prove that they were worth that investment. And a lot of companies have struggled to sort of still to this day do that. Collectors was in that camp to some degree. You know, they had raised a lot of money right at the peak and then they were sort of, you know, I would say treading water for a little bit, but now they've sort of taken off and they, you know, through their partnerships with Gamestop, through their partnership with ebay, they clearly are on like an extremely aggressive path now. And it's not, it's not obvious sort of what their exit plan is, I don't think. But you know, an IPO is very realistic for them at this stage. So, you know, when you're, when you're a public company, you want predictable revenues to some degree. And so building a backlog is to their advantage to be able to say, look, this is sort of the picture we can paint of we've got a ton of demand and we've got demand for a while locked up and so they can kind of use that as a piece of their sort of investment story. And they've also got companies that sort of can participate along. So like we just released the May results yesterday and Beckett had its best month ever. And you know, I still can't exactly figure out how they got there, but they did and it's great. And I think a lot of people are excited to see that because people have wanted to see Beckett sort of rejuvenated and over communicating or just communicating. And now they're doing a little bit of both those things, which is great. So it's been, it's been fascinating, but I think it is very frustrating, it is intentional and it is risky because I do think that was the biggest sort of. I don't know if they would ever admit this, but I think collectors shutting down, PSA shutting down at the peak of the pandemic and sort of when the hobby was thriving, that really did create a massive liquidity crunch. I mean, people had cards that were being devalued day by day that were sitting in an office month on month and by the time they sort of got them back, they were pretty much worthless because people weren't great, the hobby had evolved and people weren't creating base cards anymore. And so risk of momentum changing again and all these cards sitting and people's money. You know, the only thing that PSA does, I should say the only thing a major thing that PSA does that's really nice is that they don't charge you till your cards are graded. So it's not. Your cash is technically, yeah, you know, paying up front, which you have to do with some companies, but you're still, your asset is tied up for, you know, an unclear amount of time and that's risky. You're sort of banking on, I mean, let's just say, for example, regulation hits and all these people are grading on the idea that repacks are going to continue to sort of thrive and they're going to carry the market. And all of a sudden, six months from now, that story's changed. You've got millions and millions of cars sitting there waiting to be graded with the idea of servicing repacks and sort of on the back of breaks and things like that that maybe may look different when they're actually returned to the customer. So anyways, I hate it because I think PSA actually could scale the business accordingly and sort of meet demand. But that sort of puts them, that exposes them from an overinvested standpoint. It challenges their investment story if they do go public. And so they're sort of playing towards the broader thesis rather than sort of the bigger picture of the hobby to some degree. And I think that they can correct for it and that's probably something that they think can happen, but it's risky. And so sorry, long winded way of saying like it's complicated. But I do think there's a lot of pieces to it and not a lot of discussion will happen about sort of the investment side of it. But I think that's sort of the, the IPO side of it is a big Part of it. And I think they want to hold on to as much demand as they can. I don't think they ever really want pricing to sort of just move back to where it was. And I don't think they ever want return times to move back to where they were because then it's a race to the bottom across the grading companies and they're not excited for any of that. They feel like they have a very different value prop today and they want to lean into that. And this plays right into that sweet spot. Yeah.
- [29:11]
Ryan Alford
Very well summarized there, Ryan, like a true investment banker. Yeah. Hey, I'll give you the Cliff Notes if you're listening. Any of that one over your head. Nat wants to sell that company for a billion dollars and he wants that value to hold until he can get his cash. And then they might fix some problems.
- [29:34]
Ryan Szczynski
Pretty much. And it's not just Nat. It's his investor. That's Stevie Cohen.
- [29:38]
Ryan Alford
You know, he can't, he can't let
- [29:40]
Ryan Szczynski
those Mets continue to sort of struggle with all that cash he's pumping into them. So, you know, he might need to be recouping some of that investment. But yeah, and billions and billions of dollars is what they want. No doubt.
- [29:50]
Ryan Alford
Exactly. And I. It is just bad for him. I mean, look, one small got back in the hobby with boys. We ripped probably a hundred thousand dollars in. In facts. Like the first year I have four boys like.
- [30:04]
Ryan Szczynski
Right?
- [30:04]
Ryan Alford
Yeah, four teenage or even younger boys. And we're, you know, five people ripping packs. Ryan, you know that, that goes quick. You know, especially once you get on that hobby taste, you know, we didn't like that cheap wine. They didn't store bought wine. We didn't want that retail wine. The Cabernet 7 on the Hobby 19, the 2001 Cabernet from Caymas. You know, we were in the hobby box deep. Man, this thing was expensive. So we finally get our stack over, you know, like a year's time we didn't grade anything. Finally send it off and it was all the 20, 24 rookie class quarterbacks, you know, hot year. Rated one of the greatest ever. You know where this is going, man, Those cards were worth a lot. In six months later, we lost about 10 grand in value with them sitting in, you know, professor, you know, Plum's office at PSA over there, you know, I wanted candlestick. And if you get the clue reference, depending on how old you are, that's what that is. Intentional. Yeah. Yeah, there was a clue. The clue was we were going to wait a long Time and all the value was going to fall out.
- [31:19]
Ryan Szczynski
Yeah.
- [31:19]
Ryan Alford
And it did. So I experienced that firsthand and it sucked. And then now, good God, I'm out in a store. I'm sitting in the store where I'm here surrounded by cards and people and stuff. And you know, nobody's gonna consider anything to the PSA unless you want to wait eight months or however long it is. And I, I don't know, it's just frustrating more than anything. And I understand, look, I'm in big business, I, I get it, I understand it. But at the same time, it doesn't make any less frustrating.
- [31:49]
Ryan Szczynski
Yeah, I mean, I would say the challenge too is they're just. And again, PSA has done a lot of great things to get to where they are today. And I give them a lot of credit. Right. And it's, it's fantastic, like having images, you know, it should be, should have been cost of entry a long time ago. But there's a lot of things that they're doing. The integrations that they've done with ebay, really nice. But ultimately they're servicing the liquidity side of the market and that's sort of where they want to play and they're not servicing the longer term collectors. And you know, that's, it's fine, that's a business decision by them. But there's a lot of people who have been loyal over the years that sort of feel like they've been, you know, dismissed. And you know, it's as simple as the set registry, which built PSA to be what it is. They've done nothing and you know, they've spoken to trying to sort of revisit that and that's on their roadmap and we'll see how that sort of looks, you know, a year from now. And it'd be nice because those people are desperate for somebody to pay attention to them. They're the vintage collectors that were grading cards and overpaying for, you know, PSA 10s for years before breaking existed or before repacks existed. And they've effectively been ignored. And so there's a lot of people like that that just feel like, you know, they've been marginalized over the years. And so yes, it's a, it's a. And it's a large chunk of the hobby. I mean, if you're not sitting in one of those breaking seats or sitting as a repacker, which again, credit to them for being, and building their brands and doing what they're doing, you know, it's Hard for you to sort of rationalize spending and waiting because there's so much uncertainty that comes with that. And like you just said, it's easy to sort of play that game and hope, you know, that your cards are going to get back to you in great condition. But again, grading is itself is sort of unpredictable to a degree that standards have sort of been re. I don't want to say they've been adjusted, but reapplied or strong, more strongly held over the years. And so, you know, that's been a challenge. And it's just, it's one of those things where pricing is pretty dynamic in our world. And so it's just a lot of risk. And yeah, a lot of people I feel are like, it's not really well understood. But I would imagine sort of the approval rating for PSA is still pretty modest given sort of how well they're doing. Like, I imagine their customer satisfaction is not nearly as high as they would like given how well they're doing. But they're just printing money and so they're probably okay with it right now. But I'm sure they would love to do more stuff that's customer and collector friendly. They're just not willing to make that trade off at this stage yet.
- [33:55]
Ryan Alford
I get it and I do, I do, I respect it. But, you know, as the collector in me and, you know, my customers and my friends and my family, I'm like, all right, yeah, you know, you're going to wait eight months or cost too much or all those things. But what I, you know what I don't like, this isn't necessarily PSA's fault. Maybe you'll, you're so smart, you'll. You'll back your way and do it with data or something. But, you know, it's like PSA 10 or bus with everything. And when we devalue every other number and I get on vintage, people get it lower. But like anything modern, the last 10 years, those five years, it's like 10 or bust. And I. There needs to be some education that a 9 is way more valuable than raw, even though it says it, because look, you've got it authenticated right there in the slab. That alone has a lot of value. But we've completely devalued everything but a 10.
- [34:51]
Ryan Szczynski
Yeah, it's. Candidly, it's. People are just playing the odds that a raw card is a better. You know, they know. I mean, granted, you could crack a nine and resub it, but you kind of know your point. Your odds are slightly Lower there. People would rather take the chance and overpay for a card that maybe hasn't been, you know, fully treated yet and handing that off and playing that game. Right. And that's why I get it. I'm in the same camp. I actually look for sets that are specifically like over indexed towards PSA nines because I think those will appreciate over time as people start to understand like that's actually the best grade you can get. Like they just don't gem like there's the 20, 23 kabooms or whatever that are all PSA eights. People are finally, you know, I should say finally, but that's the Wemby class. So people are paying attention to. But people are paying $30,000 for a PSA 8, which they wouldn't have done unless they realized there's no such thing as a PSA 10 in that set. And there's a ton of those sets out there that don't jam like people. I love to collect things like noir and stuff like that which people can't grade. It's actually like it's a black set with you know, a thick set with horrible corners and everything shows up on those cards. So it never works its way into sort of the, the funnel of breakers or into the repacks or to the grading world because it just doesn't grade well. But those are things that I can't wait for people to actually start to either purchase raw or start to evaluate is like a PSA 8 and pay a decent price for it. But yeah, everything gets dismissive. It's not a 10 like you said. And I'd like to think the market will correct 10, 15 years from now. But yeah, we're not living in that world for a while. People just don't care unfortunately. Like that's still far removed from where we're at.
- [36:17]
Ryan Alford
I know. And I mean but there is value in knowing that things authenticated because you know, the counterfeits are getting better. Like there's a lot of fake stuff out there. So I mean if you got it in a slab, you know, it's been put through professionals hands to authenticate. And then there's been enough videos. A T pod talked about that too about the same card getting five different grades. I don't know what you do about that until the AI does it all, which is scary in its own right. But it's, you know, you're going to have these variances I think from human to human, but it is a little sketchy. Same card.
- [36:52]
Ryan Szczynski
Yeah, it's Unfortunate too that these, it's unfortunate that the companies haven't leaned more into transparency. I, you know, I wish people would push PSA harder on graders. Note should be an automatic. Like, they're, they're, they're printing cash, they have time, they're on backlog. You have time to sort of figure things out and sort of. It's not a, it's not. The graders are still cataloging the condition of the card. They've just not done in a way that they can make it public as seamlessly as they'd like. It's a software problem to the degree that I understand it. And so, like, I would love for transparency to sort of benefit or be a side effect of all this grading activity. The fact that people are regrading so much, you know, give people again, PSA to their credit again, is slowly creeping into this. They've started to do more on social explaining. Hey, don't be grading this 2025 prism, you know, Jackson Dart, because they're all trash, basically. They've printed poorly. And you're not going to see a gem here. So don't waste your time, don't waste your dollar. But it's so few and far between, you know, when you're grading 2 million cards of how many of those instances actually exist. So I would love for there to be more cataloging of. Here's some, here's some things that will make you more informed so that you don't feel like, again, people just don't feel like PSA is transparent. And it's too, it's a, it's. There's so much variance that's not going to variance doesn't build trust in that market. It's only the pricing. And so until they can sort of make people feel more confident that there's some predictability to what's happening there, they're going to sort of be battling this challenge. People just don't trust psa. They use it because it's a, it's a necessary evil in many ways, the way ebay was for a long time. Ebay's obviously still doing really well too, but people don't love where ebay's been and where eBay's gone over the years, but they still use it because it's king. And PSA is king in the grading front. But, you know, that sort of leaves you exposed and vulnerable to new entrants doing things differently. And so if you take for granted that you're always going to be king, you're going to be you're going to pay the price at some point. Just not clear one.
- [38:43]
Ryan Alford
My good friend Mike Baker might have something to say about that.
- [38:46]
Ryan Szczynski
There you go.
- [38:48]
Ryan Alford
He's a regular on this show and was their lead grader and in many circles, the greatest grader on the planet. All three of the, I think Mickey Mantle PSA 10s went through his hands. And universally respected in the industry. Mike Baker authenticated. Obviously a tough road to hoe startup as a startup company, but he's doing exactly the things you're talking about. Transparency gives you a heat map on every card. Link back to it. It can be done. You know, Mike, on a startup budget is doing things PSA should already be doing. And I'm just, these are just facts. I'm not even, I'm probably sounding like I'm, I am biased because I like Mike and consider him a friend. But it's interesting, you know, that a startup can figure that out. But PSA has it.
- [39:37]
Ryan Szczynski
I mean, here's the thing. They figured it out. They just haven't wanted to take, you know, go down that path because they know once they do it, they can't pull it back. It's going to be really hard for them. And, you know, this is a company that's had a lot of skeletons in the, in the closet over the years. And, you know, so there's a reason certain data doesn't exist. You know, people have asked for all the search to exist and all these different things. Why is it so hard to find, you know, tell a full story or sort of understand the provenance of a card and how it's been graded over the years and things like that. It's just that's, that's again, another feature, not a mistake. And so, you know, I would love for them to sort of step into this by doing things like making them the notes available or like you said, providing some of this thing that startups are doing. But it's a big leap for them because they just know they're sort of exposed in a way that they haven't been. People want to take their shots. When people are frustrated like they are, there's a reason why there's a, you know, a boycott PSA in May. There's a lot of people that are frustrated. Obviously it doesn't, doesn't work to the degree that people want, but at least people are sort of talking about it. And so, you know, there's a lot of people that want to take shots when they feel frustrated. And there's a lot of people that are frustrated.
- [40:43]
Ryan Alford
How do we get, you know, the other players, how do they get footing? I mean, look, I'm a marketing guy. I mean, it's brand demand, it's all those things. So I think I can ask myself that question. I've got ideas, I mean, and. But you know, whether it's NBA, whether it's other, there's many, you know, we can name five or six others and they're doing well. I mean, everybody seems to be. Everybody in Grady's doing well now. It's relative. All relative to the psa. What, what starts to crack in to that armor a little bit.
- [41:16]
Ryan Szczynski
I think you have to be very narrow. Like people are sort of frustrated with TAG because TAG sort of entered the market as a sports player, but they've leaned into tcg, which is very favorable. TCG is a much more exciting market to be a newer entrant in because the data is much more structured, the catalog is significantly smaller, and you could argue the participants are significantly more participants at the end of the day, or at least the addressable market's significant. And so that is very, very beneficial. But yeah, on the sports side of it, it's a challenge. I mean. Oh, shoot, I lost my train of thought there.
- [41:50]
Ryan Alford
No, yeah, just how New entrants, new grading company.
- [41:53]
Ryan Szczynski
Thank you, thank you. Yeah, I blame that on the late night last I put out the report. But I think you have to find a niche within the hobby and in sports. You know, you would be advantage to just teach people how to grade 2026 tops chrome. Bring out a few graders that understand what tops, what 2026 tops Chrome looks like and lean into that. Be somebody that's going to have fast turnaround times and predictable outcomes for specific categories or specific sets. SGC did this to a degree and that's kind of how they sort of scaled from being a, you know, a historically vintage company, pre war company in a lot of ways, to one that was really working with Tops to say, hey, we're going to run these promotions. And they were very aggressive and people were sending them a lot of cards that they knew they could flip pretty quickly. And people then started seeing more SGC slabs on the market. People saw more SGC slabs on the show floors. You need to see people transacting grading. And people like CGC does grade a decent amount of cards. It's a lot of PC cards though, that never make their way into the Internet or never make their way under the floor of shows. And so people are grading things because they collect them and they care about them, not necessarily because they're going to move them. And that's sort of just a slow long play that might work work and it's shown obviously some traction in the long run. But if you want to sort of be a newer entrant and sort of make headway, you have to take some chances. And I would say being a little bit narrow can play out pretty well for you. But it's kind of, you have to position marketing is a big part of it. Positioning matters a ton and how you tell that story and sort of how you go to market and sort of make people understand that's what your sort of strength is. That's why you can believe in it. And then you start to see the cards transacting and you hope that there's a reasonable, you know, comparison to the PSA slabs or to a beck and slab or an SGC slab. And so, you know, you need people to pay up for it for one reason or another. Maybe you work with repack companies, you've seen sgc, I mean, sorry, you've seen CDC try to do that to a degree but you need to find footprints where the cards are moving and people are transacting and the comps are reasonable. And that's a hard, I just said a lot. A few things are really quickly, those are hard things to establish. But I think if you did it on the heels of what fanatics is doing, all the money they're pumping into the market to sort of around these new releases and what they're doing in football and what they're doing in basketball, I think you can lean into that and ride the wave for a while. If you're just sort of, you know, narrow the catalog, do some promotions around it and get cards that people are moving when you know that nothing could be sent to psa.
- [44:05]
Ryan Alford
Yeah, smart. I like the narrow, you know, like get it in the final lane and you know, run right through it. And I think that is a big one because you know, now, now's the time to rise up baby. I mean, because the king is on the sidelines, you know, by self selection so who can take advantage. And I think you're right on that sort of narrow focus of, you know, whether just ultra modern, like stuff that's coming out and just being quick and you know, it's, it's interesting because I think you could go down the lane of where do people find value in the authentication side of it and the slab side of it, regardless of name. But when it gets back to value, that's the hardest thing to sort of cheek away. Right? Like, everybody's playing, okay, well, PSA is this. Beckett is this, CGC is this. You know, and you know, companies like Mike's are, you know, just on, barely on the radar because they're just so few. Comparatively, when somebody's grading 3 million a month and you're doing 20,000, like, it's like, you know, dropping the bucket. So it's kind of like same thing with ads, like running ads, I mean, because every cert in the market is essentially like an impression for an ad. You know, it's you know, awareness. And so the big get bigger.
- [45:23]
Ryan Szczynski
Yeah, and I think you need to see a comp sort of repeated too, to believe in it. You know, like we spoke about half hour ago, there's that. You just. There's so much context that is sort of stripped away from the last comp that people don't factor, but that really matters. And so people aren't going to trust, you know, the first time they see a card, a new slab transact, they're going to sort of be very cautious about it. And so that's another thing the narrow sort of concept brings to market is you just see a lot of cards sort of becoming more established and you understand what the floor is or sort of the ceiling for a reasonable comp for a different company, that's not psa. And that does. If you're sort of very sparsely sort of grading cards across a very broad catalog, that's hard to sort of understand sort of where a company stands for sort of how they're being valued. But if you do it more narrowly, at least you have a lane that people understand it and are willing to sort of participate in. And so I definitely think that that matters. And the other thing is, we didn't really talk about this. There's going to be a lot of collateral damage with PSA shutting down because all the other grading companies had to raise prices and are effectively going to be slammed as well, and they're going to have to shut down. They're not going to do it immediately, but it's going to happen. It's sort of inevitable and it's going to be very similar to what we saw four or five years ago. And that's going to cause a lot of headaches. People are literally not going to know where to turn. And so again, if you're sitting there sort of with some capacity and some strengths and you're able to create guards, you're going to have an opportunity. I don't know how much you can scale that. But I mean, it's certainly like you said, there's a. This is the. Now's the time.
- [46:46]
Ryan Alford
Yeah, now is the time. It's time to gym rate. That's what time it is. Ryan, you've been so gracious with your time and your knowledge. How about a little rapid fire? It probably isn't one word questions, but it is meant to be sort of rapid fire.
- [47:01]
Ryan Szczynski
I did my best.
- [47:05]
Ryan Alford
Most over graded category.
- [47:10]
Ryan Szczynski
I mean,
- [47:12]
Ryan Alford
okay, yeah, I mean that's,
- [47:14]
Ryan Szczynski
that's, that's really the reality of it. I mean, TCG in general is being graded like crazy. I mean, I do believe that there's an end user for it, but it's hard to imagine all these cards sort of landing in a real collector's, you know, homes at some point in time. So I would just say TCD right now feels like it's being over graded at this stage.
- [47:33]
Ryan Alford
Pokemon, specifically, what's the most underappreciated grading trend?
- [47:43]
Ryan Szczynski
So one of the things we're trying to bring to market is I don't like that people look at an aggregate gem rate, which they use us for, which is great as sort of the current view of the market. Meaning, you know, if you're looking at a 2018 Ohtani card and you're looking at, let's just say you're looking at like a Bowman rookie card and there's thousands of those that have been graded, the gem rate might be 45% for that, but that doesn't tell you how it's been jamming the last 30 days or even the last year. And I think one of the things that we're trying to bring and sort of make people aware of is that you can't sort of, when people are doing all these different building all these different processes to sort of understand the expected value of what degrade or sort of how to think about what supply might look like. You need to sort of factor in current trends. And so I think that's sort of an underappreciated thing that the, and we see that left and right across the data that there's all these cards that did have a high gem rate at one point that are now, you know, significantly worse than what they were because again, the quality's degraded, the standards have been adjusted to some degree or reapplied in a more meaningful way. So I think that's one that we're trying to bring to market. That's sort of not really. We're not doing a great job of Marketing that candidly, but I think that's sort of underappreciated and something we want to make sure people do think about more frequently. Not to, you know, speak to our, speak to my own, the product we're building. But I do think there's an opportunity for that to become more significant in the hobby.
- [48:58]
Ryan Alford
What's a data point collectors misuse.
- [49:04]
Ryan Szczynski
We just spoke to it. I think last comp is brutal.
- [49:08]
Ryan Alford
Yeah, I think it's brutal.
- [49:10]
Ryan Szczynski
I think it's brutal and it's weaponized and unfortunately that's probably the biggest point of where people get taken advantage of today. It's if you're new or entered to the hobby. I would also say the data point is looking at ebay and looking at cards that are sitting on best offer and new entrants coming in and thinking that's what something's worth. Those two are equally evil in my mind as it relates to sort of just like people not fully factoring enough information and operating as if that's the truth. And you see a lot of not, not bad behavior but just ill informed people transacting as a result of it.
- [49:42]
Ryan Alford
Yeah, well, I see the videos of people buying at shows and it's the first thing they quote the last comp, you know, against somebody that they're trying to buy from. But if you go and flip that around when they're selling, they don't show those videos. I guarantee you there's more logic applied to why their price is what it is. Not naming anyone, just stating the obvious. One card type you'd be cautious buying or player or you know, we can open that broader than just card type, player, set, etc. Who do you think's gonna tank besides Pikachu?
- [50:22]
Ryan Szczynski
I, I would be very careful. I actually like what people are doing there, but I'm super cautious and nervous about how much money is going into this new fanatic. The new Tops releases that are getting treated as if they're sort of, you know, they're obviously bringing the market Chrome and Tops for the different sports for the first time in a long time. And people are sort of treating these there like they're going to be the 2012 prisms of the world again or you know, the 2003 exquis of the world where these are going to be defining sets for the next era. And they could be, but the prices sort of are really hard to rationalize when you compare it to sort of what the opportunity cost is. And so I would just say I kind of like the energy there. I like that people are willing to spend. I'm cautious about sort of how that plays out as the catalog becomes more and more established and there's alternatives for people to sort of like when Dynasty starts to come out and all these higher end sets come out, or is it really worth paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for, you know, to 50 autograph of somebody and you know, people are willing to do that right now. And so it's hard to sort of understand if that's gonna, or know if that's gonna sort of last. But I, I'm cautious. I mean, obviously don't participate in that. But for somebody who is, I'm, I'm sort of nervous on their behalf of how that plays out in the long run.
- [51:29]
Ryan Alford
Spoken like a true banker. Yes. Which is. It's wise sage, one might say. One. I mean where, where does, where do you land on just, just the hobby as a whole as we close out, Ryan, you know, like we've talked about it in droves here, different layers and all that, but maybe stepping back because we've been real specific. Where are we as a hobby and what's your, what's your crystal ball tell you? What's your data crystal ball tell you?
- [52:04]
Ryan Szczynski
I can only feel really good about it. I felt cautious about it a number of times and this is probably the best, best I felt despite all the positive momentum because we are seeing different ways for people to participate. As much as people want to throw shade at repacks and breaks and new releases and the prices of wax and all these things, people are participating in sort of at a volume we've never seen before. And partially due to how fanatics has sort of reframed the hobby. And that's to their credit. You know, they've positioned it with athletes as something that's cool again. You know, they led with people that are, people care about, you know, are trendsetters or tastemakers in the market. And so I feel like that actually takes a long time for people to really appreciate. But when you see athletes buying cards on store or at stores or on show floors and participating at Fanatics fest or talking about, I watched on ESPN a whole conversation with Jacob Mizorowski talk about Pokemon cards. Like that stuff really makes people feel like it's acceptable. And so I feel like the market is finally like reasonably saying like cards. I don't want to say cards are cool because it's pretty cliche, but I just feel like people are more willing to say like cards are a thing again and actually may become a bigger thing in the future. So I think, think that's the thing I rally most about is actually sort of the brand side of it and sort of like the sort of essence of what cards mean today in the hobby, but beyond the hobby and sort of what they stand for. So the data doesn't really support this necessarily. I mean, the data says all sorts of different things. I just think, like we're sort of on a different trajectory because cards mean something more so than they did years ago. Obviously it still stands for money quite a bit. And that's the challenge is the gambling side of it sort of at the forefront of that to some degree and sort of the. The hit culture. But I do think, I feel just generally positive about the momentum because I think cards are sort of evaluated through a different lens than they were. And I think that actually increases participation in the addressable market for the hobby for the foreseeable future, at least for a few years.
- [53:55]
Ryan Alford
I like it, man. And I, you know, I just think it's a pastime and it's entertainment, you know. Yeah. It's collecting and it's investing. It can be all the it, you know, depending on what side you're on. But, you know, like, our store is just about having fun. Fun, you know, like come in and have fun.
- [54:09]
Ryan Szczynski
Community.
- [54:11]
Ryan Alford
Yeah, community. And there is a community. I mean, it's. And it's definitely alive and well. And whether it's for the chase or for the collection. Yeah, it can be exciting. And you know, Jim Rates is right there. Talk, talk to our audience about where they can learn more about gym rights.
- [54:32]
Ryan Szczynski
Yeah, I would say the easiest way is on social. If you just want to see sort of bigger picture trends, you can follow us on. On Instagram at Gemrate or on Xemrate and then sign up for our newsletter. We only put out a couple newsletters a month, but they're pretty useful. And then the website is continuing to evolve. We're going to make a big push on the website this year. I didn't really talk about the ebay data much, but we've done a little bit more about collectibility. We're going to try to sort of paint different pictures and sort of just, you know, again, paint a fuller picture, candidly. And so I would say just check out the website, keep an eye on that. We'll try to do our best to sort of communicate when new things are out there to pay attention to. But. But yeah, keep an eye out. We're going to be doing a lot this year.
- [55:07]
Ryan Alford
Ryan, I really appreciate you for coming on.
- [55:09]
Ryan Szczynski
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.
- [55:11]
Ryan Alford
Hey guys, informed is what you want to be. That's what we're trying to do on this shore. It's about information. It's about being informed on the decisions that you make in collecting or having fun. Jim Rate is right there. I'm telling you, the newsletter is gold every month. I'm a card carrying member. I don't just talk about it, I carry it. It's in the, it's in the email box and their data is first rate. We're using some of their API stuff and Ryan couldn't be more gracious and adding value to the hobby every day. We appreciate you for keeping us top five in sports on Apple podcasts. Keep listening, keep watching. We'll see you next time. Collect your nation.
- [55:53]
Ryan Szczynski
Thanks for tuning in to the show. Be sure to follow us on your go to podcast platform and catch the full video episode over on YouTube. Visit us@collectornation.com and follow Ryan on Instagram at Ryan Alford now get out there and collect yours.