It's time to talks for It's time for the show. You hear this song on the radio fast, Let me get that potograph? Sports Talk Radio starting now. What's up everybody? And welcomed episode one hundred and ninety of let me get that potograph. My name, of course, is the d H and joining me in my awesome co host, Miss Fair Scott Rappapor. What's
up, dude, dude, I'm just riding the Domingo Germaine train. Yea perfect tonight through a perfect game last night, and you know, cards are popping, and I'm sitting on a boatload of twenty seventeen Update and Chrome Update, which was one of the final years that it was not mass produced and like huge quantities, um so, and when you were up opening the most, well know that wasn't even the most. Twenty nineteen is when I was
really probably um yeah, I've been riding with Gavin Williams train man. Uh my ecu alum there you go by the Guardians through a one hitter and a second uh second big league start. So not that I know, well, I mean, how long you think does Domingo Germaine thing is gonna last? It's probably gonna be like it's it's probably gonna be like a week. Yeah, and you know they we're gonna roll now. I think I have a gold paper, uh from update. I just don't know where it is.
You better find it, well, yeah, because the problem is that's not one that I pulled aside, you know, at the time, and it's like crap. The way I see it is, I got like twelve hours to find it, yep about yeah, and if I don't find it by that, I'm like, I'm not even gonna bother looking. Yeah. I don't blame you. I don't blame you on that one. But welcome everybody to the show. We've got a jam jam Pack show for you today.
A lot of interesting stuff going on in the hobby. But before we dive into it, man, I want to talk about something that really pissed me, like got on my nerve yesterday during a baseball game. So you're supposed to open that up with saying, I want to talk about something that really grinds my gears. Yeah, yeah, here's something that grinds my gears. All right. So I took you to a Hickory Crawdads game yesterday and this ties into a lot of how athlete to relate with collectors and people in the
hobby, And it was a really odd situation. We were there getting autographs, tons of people signing everything like that. I got my picture taken with a couple of people. Everybody was acting really cool. Then Maximo Acosta comes strolling around the corner, the only person on Hickory outside of Kumar Rocker who's injured down there, that really is you know, he's got the potential. I mean, he's been up in the bigs before and has the potential to
be there again. So obviously someone that a lot of people want his autograph of. There's maybe five of us there right, all autograph hounds, and then me and my son with a baseball. He walks one baseball, one baseball, one baseball. That's it. I didn't ask for anything myself, No, So he signs probably the four, you know autograph hounds who have binders, and you know, Big Tens signs about you know, about fifteen
or twenty for all of them, signs tons of stuff for them. Walks straight up to Jude and you know, Jude puts his ball out, said get your autograph, says yeah, yeah, yeah, let me let me go, set my gear back down and I'll be right back, runs over, sets his gear down, walks back out to warm up, turn and waves to my son. Oh god. Yeah. Like dude, First of all, I'm just gonna say it right here. I know you're not listening
to maximum, but fuck you. But like, just if you're gonna be a pro athlete, man, you get I don't know it so usually, So here's my thoughts on this. And a lot of guys do it the right way. The other guys that were the autograph hounds, were they adults all right? Yes, one was a teenager. All of the other adults all right. So here's here's what I've seen with a lot of athletes, Um, the good ones and what they do. Yeah, they will go
to the youngest looking kid first sign this thing. So he should have gone straight to judee signed his ball, yeah, and then moved on to the teenager and then the adults and just going up and if there's time, you know, you just you know the as yeah exactly, that's that's the thing. You signed one thing for each and if there's time you can go back through the line or whatever and sign it again. Um, that's what the good guys do, right, that's what you see, you know, Mike
Trout, Yeah, that's what he does. That's um. You know, you had a couple of the couple other guys that you had met, you know, yesterday and gotten pictures with it. I saw some cool stuff, including one of one of my boys, one of us right here in Chicago. He you know those guys, they'll start with the kids exactly, and that's that's the way to do it. Yeah. The walking back out and waving thing kind of like rubbing it in an eight year old's face was really
like, I don't know, it just got me. And as an athlete, I think, you know, obviously autograph signings annoying and all that blah blah blah, but you're an athlete that comes with the territory and if you're going to sign some people take a second to sign a kid's ball, but don't rub it in his face or tell him you're gonna do something. Because he's sitting there all excited, you know, it's the big guy on the roster, and then he trolls him and my son was legitimately like hurt by
that. I mean, he might as well have just gone out there instead of waving, just grabs crotch right going at him. That's basically the same thing. But here's the here's like, what is he doing on a High A team? That? Yeah, exactly, Maybe that's why it's so bitter.
I'd be bitter too if i'd, you know, if i made the show and then all sudden, I've fallen so far down to High A and it's not and it's not a rehab assignment and was not one of the better players in a six two win, you know, Like I understand, Look, I understand some of the some of the guys they get sent down to like High A for rehab assignment due to like where the team is at the time, what the game schedule is, you know, and things like that.
That's not to day, that's not the case. So and I don't I don't, you know, I don't hit those guys about old made You're all the way done High you know, huh huh. No, you're down there on a rehab assignment. You're gonna you know, play a couple of games and then you're going straight back to the big leagues. Yeah, obviously not the case here. No, Well, this dude's attitude just like his
game. It's a piece of shit in my eyes. But anyway, just a little story I wanted to share yesterday, and a big fu to Maximo because just the wrong way to conduct yourself as a pro. And speaking of I'm gonna tell you though, Drew, speaking of big fus. Yes, there's one guy out there who has got a giant fu to Panini. Who's that? That is the guy that originally paid a ridiculous amount of money from the twenty eighteen National Treasures Horizontal Shield auto of Lamar Jackson. Oh my god,
the one of one, Yes, the one of one. Oh sorry, let me rephrase that, the one of two. Yeah, well yeah, now it's a one of two. Yes, absolutely insane guys, if you've not heard um, like Scott just said, this card was sold. It's already been graded BGS eight point five, I believe, and sold on the PWCC marketplace. Yet this week pull bangers pulled it out of a box, pulled another one out of a box. All right, So I don't
even know. Here's my thought. I took a look at the pictures of both cards, and you can tell that they are two completely different cards. Oh, absolutely there's no, there's no question. You look at the alignment on the shields. Yeah, it's all they are. They are two separate cards. Yep. So what I think happened, and I'm gonna give, I'll give at this point, I'm gonnaive Panini the benefit them down on one, I think. But we all know the Panini makes duplicate cards of a
lot of those high value cards. In the case that one gets damaged and they, you know, they can they can then apply the one of one's stamp to it and replace the card that that's there. And if for some reason they do not have to replace that card, usually that gets a white box one of one sticker or a black box one of one sticker, and it goes in the black box or a white box. Fine, no issues
with that. Somewhere along the line, though, the second backup copy must have gotten the real one of one's stamp and made its way into the product, because I don't think you know, my initial thought was, holy crap, somebody cracked this out, put it into a resealed box or whatever, you know, But it's not. It's two completely separate cards. And you can tell by looking at you know, if you compare are the two images.
They're two completely separate cards. But the question is why would anybody crack an eight five look eight five on a National Treasure's card, especially from twenty eighteen. Is Yes, that is it actually had some strong subgrades too, and once again that's why it's created by BGS as well, those thicker cards. Getting an eight five on it, I'd be I'd be happy as hell. Yes, it's rarer to get that nine to five from you know, from BGS on the on the thicker stuff, especially hand packed, so your
premium, especially on NT. Yeah, but my question is how did this happen? Oh, especially in this is very important for listeners that maybe don't understand the box out process of cards. This is one one of only a couple of products that's also hand collated. Right, This isn't a collating machine. This isn't where something was dumped twice accidentally. These are hand packed here. We're not talking about the regular standard machine type of stuff. This is
human. This is actual human beings watching over this being done and it still happens. Yeah, And I'm trying to figure out how they let that happen because it's such a big card. It was not like Lamar Jackson in twenty eighteen was a nobody you knew when when you had your one of one NT shields that you were hand packing into boxes. This is one of the ones
that was top of your list. Yeah, I mean, let's be honest, it's not like it's not like it would have been in twenty seventeen with Patrick Mahomes right where you know, he didn't play the entire season, so you didn't know, you know, yeah he was a first round pick, but it's still one of yeah you didn't you didn't know because he didn't play, So okay, that's fine, you know that whatever, nobody's paying attention to it. But in this case, Lamar Jackson was one of the biggest
names in the freaking product for the entire season. Yes, and this is one of his biggest rookies period. Yeah, there's this and this and Flawless. Yeah, you know those are the two big ones, right, So it boggles the mind. And this, Look, this isn't a recent mistake. This isn't something that you know, or we'll do to you know, not hiring good people or not having good staff or anything like that. We're talking about. This is something that happened in twenty eighteen. Yeah, it's
pre pandemic. You know, Staffing levels were fine, everything, you know, production was fine. There were no delays, there were no hurries to get out product or anything like that. They were This is when they were in the middle of really there the beginning of their most thriving period before it
got out of control. Yeah, exactly. So my question is due to the fact that the guy you know who bought the BGS eight five paid a ridiculous amount of money for it, and now there is a second copy out, what is Panini gonna do to make it right with the guy who had
the original one of one? And obviously we you know, you can always we will always know which one was the original, of course, but the reality is this box that just got opened could very easily have been opened in twenty eighteen, and this could have been the first one, right, Yeah, you know, it's all chance. Yep, you know, it's it's
just luck as to who opens what and when and where it goes. And we don't know that, you know, we don't know the history of the case that it came out of, and you know where it was sitting for you know, for five years. But it just with a card like that, especially the one of ones. Yes, I could see it. You know, Hey, there's a duplicate of you know, one of the ones out of forty nine or whatever. It's not going to watch as much.
But this is the This is was probably the biggest card out of that entire product that year, because I don't I don't remember any rookies bigger than Lamar Jackson in twenty eighteen at the time. I really don't think so. I mean, he was being compared to I mean, really what he is Cam Newton, but a whole lot better, you know, and like he had all the hype in the world. That's what I'm saying. This card, you would think, of all the stuff in the hand collating area, this
is the one that's being paid most attention to, if well. But I also want to know how the backup copy even got into the stamping machine, because that's right that they should have waited. Yeah, like they do with all the other ones. They sit there, unnumbered, unstamped, and wait until it either until the you know, the one that's in the product has to get replaced, or they slap that white box sticker on it and use
it as a you know, as a white box card. Yeah, well, you know, you nailed one thing big time, and that's that Pannini needs to do something for the person who you know, initially paid all this money for this card. And they also need to start addressing this stuff. Look, these companies get away with these issues and they never address them anymore.
And recently, you know, this week, there's been a lot of talk on buy some influencers and some other videos about Obvious with the ESPN article on breaking and everything, there's been a lot of talk on regulation and oversight and all this type of stuff in the industry. This is we let these companies get away with this stuff too much. Now, do I think this is some terrible thing on Panini's you know part that they did maliciously blah blah, and it makes them a bad company. Of course not. But you
need to address the mistakes. You need to fix the mistakes as best you can, and you need to explain to people how they can make sure that this doesn't happen again. Now, obviously this was twenty eighteen, so it's a long time ago, and it's easy to say we've already made these improvements, but you know, I think we let these companies get away with Oh they fucked up again, you know. But here's the other thing. I think this is going to be the telling fact on how it plays out,
especially for the guy that bought the eight five. There is a friend of ours who I'm not going to name because I know he wants to keep it private, who is in the middle of a lawsuit with Panini over a Panini Honors car, yes by the Brady, that he paid a six figure sum for because it was the Honors one of one contenders lawsuit on this show, right, and that is still playing out, and that is a situation.
It turned out the card had been trimmed, yes, even though Panini cracked it out of an eight five bgs slab and look, they missed it. It happens. Yeah, it was greated a long time ago. It wasn't like a recent thing. They bought it back, cracked it out of the slab, put it into one touch to put in the product, and it turned out to be trimmed. Now, depending on how that lawsuit plays out. And I'm gonna have to get an update on that because I have not
asked this friend about this in a long time. I want to see how this plays out, because that is going to set a precedent as far as Panini compensating somebody for their mistake. Ye, and that you know that right there will either open the door for the guy who bought the eight five to go after Panini for a chunk of money, or it'll close the door on
that person being able to go after Panini for that chunk of money. But this, this is not a situation because that that lawsuit, it was cracked out of an eight five slab, so it really wasn't Panini's fault that it was trimmed. Right. However, this issue is one Panini was one avoidable and we shouldn't we shouldn't even be having this conversation because it never should have
happened. I absolutely agree, and it's unfortunate that this did happen, especially with such, like I said, such an important card and one of the biggest cards out there for twenty eighteen now apparently has two. Yeah, it's a one of two. Yeah, So we'll see what happens. We'll keep tracking that one and uh, you know, kind of go down that road. We'll get you some updates when you know, when they become available on it but drew speaking of speaking illegal. Yes, So a couple of big
things popped in the last week or so. And this does not involve Panini, No, No, involves Tops and Fanatics. Joe Fanatics decided that they were going to revamp the dealer program for stores, and they sent out a
new dealer agreement. And you know, I was able to get a copy of that from somebody, and it's long, and it's full of legal jargon, and it's full of a lot of confusing things, and it's also full of weird things that contradict themselves in the same freaking paragraph, like the one about how you know, Tops Fanatics reserve you know, will tell you what prices to sell the products at and for the MSRP and then like you must
stick to that and not sell below it. But then further down in that same paragraph, it says, well, you can set whatever price you want on it, yeah, based on It's like it's like, okay, wait a minute, um, something's yeah, something doesn't seem right. YEAHPT confused on that one, yeah, um. And that that's one of those things. But the biggest, biggest thing, the biggest issue that anybody ever had, and it's not it's not the fact that the dealer agreement requires a dedicated
Tops section in the store. Yeah, so like all the stores that usually separate by sport, yeah, you know, now have to set you know, now if if that's still going to be in there, have to separate by tops, you know, by the manufacturers, which do you know, don't get me wrong, you can separate because tops to you know, it's baseball, you know, and then you know, some soccer and you know,
things like that. So there's a way to do it. Tops isn't really doing football, they're not really doing basketball, Panini is not doing a lot of the other So there's a way to do it so that one's not as big. But the biggest one is that the initial version of the agreement did not allow stores to break product and sell spots in the break online. Yeah, they were restricted to selling spots in their breaks for people that walk
in the door and that's it and the sales nothing. Yeah. Um, they're also they're also restricting selling to other dealers, which I don't know how the big and maybe maybe the big distributors have a set have a separate agreement. Maybe you know, blowout. David Adams, uh, Steel City, Chicagoland. You know those guys. Maybe they have a completely separate agreement.
But I got a note yesterday from the guy that sent me the copy of the agreement, right and he said he was currently on a call with Topsy and they are making changes to the breaking section of the agreement and they are
now after bad because of the backlash. They're now going to allow stores to sell spots and breaks on their own platform, whether it's you know, could be Facebook, it could be their website to you know, we'll see when I when it's funny you mentioned that and they're going back on that because I think that the reason that they put that in there, and they made this stuff so strict, which was absurd, by the way, if you've not
read this contract, some of the caveats and little things in there just hilarious to me. But I thought this was definitely a ploy to Okay, you can either choose to break this way, or you can sign up for our new breaking platform, you know, and then if you want to sell it online, then you can sell it through the Fanatics breaking platform that they're going to have. Because well, but I didn't see any I didn't see any
language in there that allowed them to even use the Fanatics breaking platform. Well, I didn't either, and I think that's why that this was a way for them to probably say, Okay, if you're a store, you can either host them in store or you can host them on here. And that's pretty much like an ultimatum form without writing. Well but they yeah, but they didn't put it in the in the writing. They just they restricted it
period. And I know that. Look, there's a lot of the large breakers out there that are both a store and a monster, you know, and then like a huge break, you know, huge breaking Layton. Layton's got a store and he you know, and he's a huge breaker, monster monster breaks. They have a huge store and they're also a large breaker Badger breaks, same thing. So how would it affect those guys? And what I haven't seen was do they have a separate agreement for breakers right which I
haven't seen. I haven't. I haven't either. If they do, I've not seen it or heard a break or talk about it at this moment. No, And uh, I will say that I have not done my due diligence and reached out to some of the larger breakers that I know to ask, I will yea. But yeah, I think it's all going to be
it's it sounds like it's all going to be changing. It sounds like it that what the terms that they put out this week, sounds like they're going to be putting some out next week that they're going to be updated, And it's going to be interesting to see what they update, if you know, if it's more than just being able to host your own breaks, and how many restrictions are they going to put on that, you know, how much control are they going to try and have over it when they pretty much just
put out a terms of service where they controlled it almost to the t. Well, I think they're gonna put out as much control as they you know, they're going to try to control it as much as they think that they can, right, you know, the whole you know, the whole aspect of it is they're they're trying to control as much of the market as humanly possible. Yeah, and this was this was one of those things like launch
your own breaking platform. Cool, got that, but at some point you have to let the market decide, you know, kind of what's going on. If people want to you know, use that platform. Fine, if people want to continue, you know, working with the other breakers on all the other platforms and you know things like that, fine, Yeah, if you want to you know, run promotions to you know, promote your platform instead of others and try to draw people in and things like that. Okay,
cool, that's your product. You can do whatever you want. Yeah. If you want to sell spots and breaks for cheaper than the competition, because you're dealing with the wholesale cost, I'm sorry, let me rephrase that the manufacturing costs, not even the wholesale cost. So in theory, the product is cheaper for you than it is for everybody else, and you want to take advantage. Okay, that's fine. You make the cards, you've got the contracts, but you still have to let the market decide what they
want to do. Yeah, definitely, And you know they say that they want to they're going to start these advertising campaigns and bringing more people than effort into the hobby and things like that. Well, in order to do that, and in order to be successful at that, you have to let the market have some freedom, you know what I mean. Yeah, if you try and tight knit control it so much, then no matter how much advertising, marketing promotion you do, if it's not exactly what people like, they're
gonna walk away. You're giving them one option as opposed to hundreds, and so the exact marketing is completely counterintuitive to what you're trying to produce. It just makes no sense to me. No, exactly. Now, there is there's one part in there that doesn't make sense. And they have the if you violate you know, any terms conditions, they can't sue you, they can't come after you and like that. But what they can do is pull your agreements. Yep, and you don't have access to direct product anymore.
Now, in a lot of cases, I don't like that, but in some cases I do because there's a Look, it's when it comes to breakers. There's a lot of shady guys out there. Oh yeah, that you pulled you know some crap. You know, don't send a card that's a big value card. You know, you're you know, you obviously got caught
on videos swapping you know something back and forth or whatever. Now there's a mechanism to pull yeah products, yes, which is fine, which is great because if we can eliminate Look, there's a lot of really really good solid breakers out there. Yeah, guys that have been doing this for a long time. Even some of the newer guys are really good. But there's there's enough shady bastards out there that, you know, given something can finally be
done about it. Yeah, exactly. So that's that's the one thing that I like about this, YEP, is that you know, fanatics will now have the power to, you know, tell the guys that are scamming people or you know, swapping cards out being really shady that hey, sorry, you're not getting product from us anymore. No. I do like that, And you know, like I said, I have a feeling we'll see you know, and updated terms and services here very soon, at least from what
it sounds like talking to you. It'll be interesting to see what those exactly are. But Tops definitely uh putting out some interesting new terms that are that definitely got a lot of people angry when they dropped them. We'll see how the update goes. But speaking of breaking and products that are going to be broken a lot soon, Scott, we've got a big release that we finally got the cell sheet and got the announcement for and talk about disappointment. Tops
Chrome yep, swinging a miss. Yeah, so big changes the tops Chrome this year, so in pay in the past, Tops Chrome has always been two autos in the hobby boxes, five autos and the jumbos yep. Simple Bowman has always been one auto in the hobby box and three autos in the jumbos, and then in the case of a super Jumbo, obviously there's five. But they made the change the tops Chrome. It's now going to be
one auto in a hobby box and three autos in the trouble box. So aside from the disappointment of probably spending the same amount of money on a box, if not more, you know, because depending on who's going to be in it, it's actually a decent rookie class. This year you are getting two less autos in a jumbo, one less auto in a hobby box.
And not to mention if there's a repeat of last year where certain kurds forget to be you know, put in the product and you know they have to make up for it with things like silver packs because but forget about that, because that hasn't happened yet. But this tells me a lot, Yeah, this tells me a lot. Yeah. And what this tells me, is
that they are significantly overprinting products. Oh yes, because I don't think the athletes are saying, oh, well, hey, we want to double our print runs and so we need twice as many autographs out of you guys, right yeah, yeah, No, I can't see the guys agreeing to that. So instead we're just going to cut down on the number of autographs that we put in the products. And they're probably going to put veterans in again
this year too. Yeah. Now here's the thing. So I would have been okay with veteran autos being in the twenty twenty one product because that was a that was a terrible rookie class, right, yeah, But twenty twenty two was good enough, right where you didn't really need it. No unless look, unless, of course the veterans you were throwing in there are trout Jeter, you know, which was not the case. No, not the case. Um, although I did hit a really nice orange Casey Mize auto.
No, No, not even not even remotely cool. Yeah, but it's you know, I'm saying that sarcastically. Yeah, but it's just like it's swells, like, guys, come on, I know, especially with something that's a staple like tops Chrome. Um, you that's the one product. And and I kind of had hope when you saw Sapphire this year they cut the print run, you know, and made it to where you were
getting more autos and more color per boxes and things like that. I was kind of getting the idea that maybe they figured out that, yeah, we can mass produce the Series one, the Series two, maybe make Inception a little bigger, maybe make some of these other products a little bigger, but some of the staples, maybe they were going to pull back a little bit on to kind of preserve that legacy and that strength and the value of that
product. But absolutely not with a showing like this. And I haven't even got to my favorite part of the set yet, which I'm saving till the end. But no, absolutely, just ridiculous going down to one auto, especially when the box price is going to be at least what it was last year, if not quite a bit more. Yeah, exactly. Now.
The good news is, if you like last year's product, the prices have come down, yes, quite a bit, And there's still a ton of it's sitting out there, and a lot of hobby shops that sold the silver packs left and things like that, so they did do. They are bringing back the MVP program too, which I think is cool. So it gives people keep your base cards everybody because whoever or gets announced MVP, they're going
to do the MVP buyback program again. And I do like one thing that they're doing this year with it. And they took five of the cards that were bought back from the hobby shops and they had Judge and Goldschmidt sign them and they're putting those in this year's set. Hopefully hopefully it was the Hopefully it was the five lower numbered color auto I hope instead of instead of just five bas cards because that would suck. That would but it's still pretty cool
to see him do something with it. I hope they do more than that, because they said they were going to be doing some really cool things with those cards. I still say, hire Tim Carroll to make an awesome piece out of them with those but you know that's just me trying to get my man Tim some cool work. But they are bringing back the MVP program, but yeah, dropping the autographs, man, you're there. They're already doing
it with Cosmic and Sonic and all these ridiculous offshoots. I was cool with sapphire, but the solution of the chrome brand is it's saddening to me because my favorite thing since it's been invented, since nineteen ninety six, football like tops, chrome has been my thing. I love it, everybody loves everybody loves chrome. Yeah, and I just I hate seeing the delution of it. But there is one thing I do have to say before we move on from this mess right here, that I cannot well, I can wait to
see a fucking taco fractor. Bro Ide. I saw that the fractor. This is not Panini with emojis no, or the toilet paper or what do they what do they call the toilet paper or the crisis, something like the taco fractor. Oh my god, I don't know what to think about that. Me neither me neither. Now the thing is is not listed on the regular parallels list. There's all the parallels, and then they say there is also a new Taco fractor number to five. So maybe no information, no
photo, no information, no no, no, not get that. But maybe it's a card that folds in half, not a traditional not a traditional book card. Yeah, but maybe it folds in half and in between you know in the middle of the card is a chrome mini. Hey, Nazi, that would be cool. I would still say, don't you every name at Taco fractor again? But that's pretty cool. Where I mean, how
am I supposed to take you seriously with everything? Look? With everything away it is in society and you know, cancel culture being what it is and everything's racist these days? Yeah, how has there not been backlash on this? But like I said, I would be cool. A look if it's folded in half and there was a mini you know, the of that card or whatever in the middle, that would be cool. I would actually like to see that on chrome stock. Guys. I know you people from product
development are listening. Let's get it on that. If that's not what this taco fractor is, because well, it is interesting that it's not listed with the base parallels, so we don't know if it's an insert that's out of five or just a you know, is it a regular parallel. We have no clue what it is yet, but they're teasing everybody with the Taco fractor. Yeah, and we know that they can make chrome minis because they do it with ellen Ginter chrome, so you know they have the printing press set
up to make chrome minis. Yeah, let's see it happened. I think that would be a really cool idea of the card just folds in half as a mini inside and then just called the taco fractor. There you go. Well, yep, so guys tops Chrome. If you haven't seen, they dropped the autos, They've got a couple of new inserts, a couple of new cool little autograph sets, and then of course the question of the taco
fractor. And I'm just curious, Scott and I have a feeling that these taco fractors are probably gonna cost a pretty penny, well, especially if they're number to five. Yeah, and let's be honest, who doesn't like tacos? Right? And speaking of tacos, you know what, Drew, I'm hungry all right too. Let's take a break. I'm gonna go grab a taco. We'll be right back and welcome back to everybody, two, Episode one hundred and ninety. The tacos are on our belly. We're all full,
while it's still empty. But hey, there you go. We got tacos, so that's good. We got tacos, so everything is good. And apparently taco fractors soon. But guys, we're gonna move on now to a big well. It could be a big story, but it's a developing story. It dropped about about twelve hours before we recorded today Thursday. I gotta give kret to Jeff Wilson and the guys over at Sports Card Investor and Blowout Forums who initially you know, the Blowout detectives. They do their thing.
Well, they were scounding the internet, yes the other day and found something quite interesting. I could have massive, massive hobby implications, Scott, and that is that Lebron James could possibly be leaving upper Deck as an exclusive athlete. On their website, upper Deck has a list of their exclusive athletes, it always went Michael Jordan, Lebron James, and then the rest of the guy Tugger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, Patrick Waw, things like that.
Yeah, Lebron is gone from the exclusives area, but is still listed as an upper Deck athlete, which obviously has led to tons of speculation as to is his exclusive going. Did he find a way out of this lifetime exclusive that he signed with upper Deck? That would be huge, huge, And if that is the case, you know, we know that you know Brawnie
is signing the Tops chrome McDonald McDonald's all American style. But if Lebron is no longer exclusive to upper Deck does but he's still an upper Deck athlete, which means that it's now a non exclusive agreement, and that also means that he's not going to be signing an exclusive agreement with anybody else. But that
also opens the door for him signing an agreement with somebody else. So, if this is indeed the case and not, you know, not just some error that somebody pulled him off the exclusive jos on the website, is it possible that we see Lebron autos for the next year or two in Panini products? And following that with the acquisition of the NBA license by Fanatics, do
we see him in tops products? Well that that certainly sounds like a and you know something that gives me, or at least leads me to think that this does hold some weight. Is we're right at that time where we're pushing to the national, We're under thirty days away till the National, where we know some of the biggest news worthy events in the hobby are always announced. What bigger thing for Fanatics Panini anyone to be able to announce than to say,
Lebron James autographs are coming. I mean that that would literally take over the National in terms of buzz for multiple days, if not the entire week. Oh absolutely, And you know what, dude, But here's the thing, we have an even bigger announcement regarding the National than that we do. We're gonna share with you at the end of the show. Yes, we do. So. Yeah, keep an eye on that. But back to
Lebron. Yeah, this has major hobby ramifications if he does wind up being able to sign a contract with either Panini or Fanatics, and I think Fanatics is the most likely one because they also have a massive memorabilia you know operation. And this is very key for people to know. This went very very under the radar as it was just a normal signing. But Clutch Management,
which manages Brawny and it's Lebron James company. One of their higher up employees a few months ago left Clutch for Fanatics and is now working in athlete relations. So there is a Clutch, a literal Clutch and Fanatics connection already in place. That's already there. Yeah, I'm curious as to how that is going to play out. But I think I think if it is under the radar now, I think that there they are holding the announcement until the national
Yes website screw up or something like that. I would have thought with over twelve hours since you know, Sports Card Investor and some other major influencers have started posting about this, that they would have fixed it. It's literally a simple go onto the web design page and click the tile and click the picture and then he's right back there. It's not like they deleted massive amounts of pages. It's literally a list of photos that scroll in in a slide show.
All you have to do is add the picture back to the slide show. And the fact that it hasn't been done but yet he still remains on the athlete area, but no change has been made since all this buzz came out. Maybe they're just liking the website impressions. Who knows, But the fact that they haven't fixed it also really leads me to believe that we might
be getting a big announcement at the National. We might see Brawnie Lebron James Dual Autos, we might You know that the possibilities are endless right now,
here's the here's the other question. So if it's the if it's true that Lebron is no longer an exclusive athlete with the Upper Deck, Yeah, and speculating that Fanatics is going to make a major announcement about them signing him coming up at the National and then obviously, you know, having at their booth a whole bunch of Lebron James autograph stuff to sell, right, you know,
basketballs and jerseys and all that kind of stuff. Does Upper Deck come out with their own announcement stating that he is no longer and he is still an upper Deck athlete, but no longer exclusive to Upper Deck, just to force Fanatics into making an announcement ahead of time. Hey, that's that would be That would be slick then, And that'd be something that I would do.
I mean, if it's me, if I'm upper Deck and I know that that they're going to try and capture attention at the National or field that they are because they haven't announced it or anything like that, I absolutely would. Especially if I'm upper Deck and I have announcements of my own that I want people to be paying attention to it, then yeah, force that announcement to happen sooner, right, you know, like next week or something like
that. And that way, the buzz on it, you know, has died down a bit at the national and it frees up other companies to make a bigger announcement where now all of a sudden, that's the one that's getting talked about for yeah, no, hey, And it's a nice little jab at him for obviously stealing Lebron away. There's no way they didn't want him to be an exclusive forever. I mean, that's why they sign him to
these deals. But one of the biggest things about this man is if he does leave as an exclusive athlete, it changes the entire Lebron hobby landscape because all buyers, especially of high end Lebron stuff and especially the autographs, have known that, Okay, well after he retires, they can't even make cards of him in his pro uniform anymore, you know, like it like,
and they're done. And so there was this finite area where they knew where they assumed that, Okay, well, once they're done, so are all
of his licensed cards and all that stuff. Well that won't be the case anymore, and it would change the entire market and I would be curious to see, which we won't know for a long time if this happens to be true, the effect it has on some of his early stuff that goes for insane amounts of money, because I tell people all the time, outside of you know, the cards, that it is they doesn't have a ton of stuff. There's a lot of reasons as rookies and early year stuff commands so
much value. Was also because there was that finite time period where it was going to end, and yeah it was going to be gone, but now that door might be wide open forever. Well. But it also throws another piece to the puzzle too. If he is not exclusive with Upper Deck any longer, that opens the door for him to be able to sign things like his TOPS Chrome Rookie card. Yes, and you know for people getting an
IP auto as an Upper exclusive, he cannot. He'd be able to sign an Upper Deck card, uh, you know, in person, but not tops or trying to think who else was out there Panini, you know who's out there making making cards back then. But now if he's not exclusive,
he can. So the question is does somebody you know approach him and say, hey, we'd like to have you do a signing and here's you know, fifty tops chrome rookie cards, right, and now all of a sudden they get signed, they get sent off to get started and slabbed and things like that, and they are now, all of a sudden they're worth a significantly larger amount of money because they're the only ones that are on the market because he was never able to sign him in the you know, in the
past. Ye, so does that happen? I know, No, This is much more than just Willie have some autographs in a fanatics product or something like that. This really does change a lot because those upper deck exclusive lifetime deals that they put together really are very specific on, like you said, in person's signings everything. And if that's taken off the table, man, what could happen? Who knows, but it's it is going to be quite
interesting, and watching his market is going to be quite interesting. I still think he's someone that's smart enough to control it a little more than some people would. But you know, they also don't sign those just random people to lifetime exclusives exactly. Yeah, But speaking of exclusives, wrap up the show. Switch over brands here, we jump over to Panini. We've got a couple of questions going on and a couple of issues, and they keep contradicting
each other. And obviously Select has a little bit to do with this, But dude, what is going on with the top quarterbacks in this year's class? You know, a week ago or two weeks ago, we would have thought we would have known the answer, But with all that's transpired in the last you know, week and a half or so, the only answer that we can give at this point is I don't know, right right, I don't know. Everything looked like it was going to be those you know,
those top quarterbacks were fanatic. We're gonna end up being fanatics exclusives. They showed up at the Panini's Rookie premiere, but only posed for photographs yep, you know, for the cards. They didn't sign anything exactly. And then all of a sudden, Panini pops up on their website, you know, a limited availability of autographed cards after no Yeah, they so Panini inst has those up. But that's after announcing the Select XRC autos, which conveniently left
all of them out. Yep. The autographs were Anthony Richardson, Jean Robinson, Jamar Gibbs, Jackson, Smith, New Joshiba, and Quinton Johnson. That's it. So they left those quarterbacks out of the XRC autographs which people were chasing putting in tons of money for. Then they throw Panini Instant autos up of these guys a very limited amount. I think the base was three forty eight, and then a couple of small parallels of Bryce Young's c J. Stroud will leave us. But it makes no sense. So are these
left? Are these going to be stickers? And they were left over from the draft stuff that maybe they were able to sneak in before exclusives were signed, because obviously the select ones they're not getting signed. But what I mean, they're contradicting in themselves and it's it's having a major effect on their market. Yeah, but I think. But here's the thing with with those exclusive
agreements. I was always under the impression that autographs that were you know and stuff like that, in cards that were signed and produced prior to the exclusive, even though they hadn't been released yet. Yes, we're okay, they
are, yes, But in this case the cards were produced after. Yeah, Panini Instant, I mean that those are literally go about to be produced right, the cards themselves have not been produced yet, even though they you know, they're probably sticker autos, and the stickers were most likely signed prior to that. So this is an interesting an interesting one because even though the sticker was signed, the cards weren't made. Cards were not made, yeah,
nor announced or you know, anything like that. So if they did sign an exclusive with that acts like we you know, like everybody speculated, just given the fact that they didn't sign anything in the Rookie premiere, they didn't sign anything, they didn't mention any of their names. Draft Night social media and tops had autographs of those three quarterbacks up the next day, and
Panini did not so well. But here's the but here's the thing that maybe that leads me to believe that, you know, if there are sticker autos for these they weren't if they didn't get mentioned in the Draft night media, that they didn't sign them at the draft either right now, which which would have meant that they you know, would have had to approach them to sign them prior to the draft, which look, you know, these guys are going to get drafted and things like that, and that's you know, it's
one thing, but the cards haven't been produced yet exactly. And that's the thing that that kind of perplexes me. Yeah, Like I said, if they had produced the cards prior to the exclusive greem getting signed, then they can still be released. Yeah, but that's not the case here. Nope. And maybe that's maybe that has something to do with and I don't know the wording of these agreements, but maybe it is actually boxed out cards and
that's why the xrcs are unable to have them. But Panini Instant and a non boxed out platform, they're able to skirt some of these rules to get rid of inventory that they had. I mean, I don't know. It doesn't make sense because you had to know that announcing this select XRC Auto checklist was going to be the biggest kick in the gut. Cards that were selling for literally eight to nine hundred dollars are now selling for like one hundred and
fifty. It was that it's that big of a drop off, if not more, on some of these, So you had to know that was going to be a massive disappointment. Yet you put out the Panini Instant stuff. Maybe you're putting out the Panini Instant because that's the only way you can skirt the you know, the legal ease in these contracts. I don't know, But don't you think don't you think that Fanatics would still go after Panini for you would Look, you've got to you've got to assume that, you know,
because again, Panini's going after Fanatics right now for stealing employees. The lasting Panini needs right now is Fanatics going after them for anything. Yeah, So you would assume that the people at Panini would be smart enough to say, hey, we want to do this, but maybe we should run it by the lawyers first, right, and who knows, maybe they did, maybe they didn't, you know, I mean, who knows what I mean? Fanatics can really go after them for the dollar amount of the sales,
yeah, and you know, and that's pretty much it. So maybe they're anticipating Fanatics to say, yeah, you can't release those because we have an exclusive agreement with these guys. The cards were produced after the agreement was signed, and you have to give us. You know, we're going to sue you for the proceeds of the cards. And the reality is that's a drop
in the bucket for Panini. But now, all of a sudden, you know, now, all of a sudden, the cards are out there though, right the ship assume well they can also Fanatics couldn't theory file for an injunction to stop them from shipping the cards, yeah, or even producing the cards. And if that were the case, they'd have to refund everybody. But they'd have to announce the exclusives first. I mean, my god,
Like, this is what's driving me crazy. Is it's holding up the whole hobby like no one like it's it's causing certain people like these Well, there's nothing to say. There's nothing to say that, you know, if they are, if they do have an exclusive agreement with Fanatics, there's nothing to say. The Fanatics needs to put out an announcement saying that hey, these are our new exclusive athletes, welcome them to the family. They don't have
to do that. Now. I feel that's another national type announcement. I feel like that's that's a national type thing because it garners attention. Yeah, but it's one of those. But it happens so far in advance of the national that I don't see it. I don't see it garnering that kind of you know, that type of really depends on the presence they're gonna have there, you know, I mean, we don't know and how big they want
of a splash and how many big announcements are they going to make? It's what is what It's going to come down to, how they want the show to go, DoD they want to focus around one major announcement or do they want to focus around because I mean, let's face it, they've got a lot of things going on heading into the National. A lot of this is an interesting National because it's a very transitional one. This is a transitional point
in the hobby. No, that's true, Um, but I can't I can only see him making an announcement like that in relation to the National if those guys were going to be signing at the National. But they're not going to be signing at the National because training camp is going to be going on.
So that's not going to happen, right, And given that the speculation is already out there and has been talked about for well over a month now, that these guys are exclusive to fanatics by the time you get to the National, if all of a sudden the announced oh well, you know, hey, Stroud and Levis and all these got there there, you were announcing that they're exclusive fanatics athletes. Well, okay, great, we knew that months ago, right, Yeah, you know that's the reaction that it's gonna
get. Yes, No, I agree with you, there, I do. But it is interesting because it's I've never seen a football hobby or a higby time period where the biggest names in the hobby there's so much question over them and what products are we gonna see. And you know, when you look at price points on boxes things like that, those Select boxes were very very high because of those xrcs. When those XRC price xrcs were announced, go look at the prices of Select, it's dropped significantly. So, no,
that is true. Now there's nothing stopping Panini from doing the non auto xrcs for those guys. No, well, no, they've got those. They're in the non auto they've already exactly on that. Yeah, but it's the autograph, you know pieces. So I mean there's still guys chasing the low numbered you know, non auto xrcs of these guys time and that that's keeping the product high. But hey, I will say, at least they did one thing right with Select Football this year. It's no more retail blue.
Yes, that's actually a parallel as opposed to the base. I know when I was, I was all excited and I talked about it when we talked about selected Premier League and La Liga and FIFA. Is that the retail cards were the same cards that you found in the hobby boxes, which is
awesome. So guys that build the sets, you know, aren't out there like, oh well I have to get hobby or I'm only doing the blue retail variation of A. No, they're back to the way that it used to be, yeah, where it's not a different you know, the base retail is not a different color from the base hobby and I do like also, you know, they yes, they added in the fifth tier, which I hate, but they kept field level out of retail, making it hobby
only and I like that as well, bringing the field levels back to more of a super short print type of field yep, as opposed to blasters as well. So they did a couple of things right, but re the release of the XRC autograph checklist and then the Panini instant announcement where within about forty eight hours of each other and just caused more confusion than ever over are these guys going to be signing this year. Are we getting National Treasures rpas?
Are we getting optic on card rated rookie autos or are we going to be getting some fanatic stuff. Who knows. Well, we'll find out as the you know, as the year goes on and products come out, and yeah, you know it's got to find out soon. I mean we're going to be dropping soon, so I know, all right, speaking of dropping. Yes, So that's all we got from a topic standpoint today. However,
we've got something I teased a little bit earlier. Yeah, and as we have a massive announcements in relation to the national that we do, mister Rappaport, guys, make sure you are following our Instagram and Facebook them and you get that potograph LGTP podcast on any of the platforms. As we are going to be giving away two sets of two tickets to the Nationals, so four tickets total, two sets of two. There will be two different giveaways.
One is up right now and goes through July fourth. The next one will start on the fourth and go for a couple of days as well, and then we'll announce those winners. All the information you'll be able to find on the social media on how you can win those These are gonna be in groups of two. They are gonna be day passes, So you can win two tickets to the National, and you have two opportunities to do it. I like it. And in addition to that, I think we got Ray coming
up next week. Going yes, Ray from Ray Shelty from Selectible Media and one of the men responsible for making the National what it is. Without Ray, the National would be complete and total chaos. Mister Ray Shelty will be joining the show here either are next week tenatively schedule DA or next week or the week after, but he will be joining us here very soon to talk all things National. But thank you to the National and Collectible Media of course
for giving us these awesome tickets to give away to you guys. So if you'd like to check out the National, you've got your chances. Make sure to check the socials and get your entries in. We will be announcing those giveaways on the proper day, but you've got two different chances to win two
tickets to the National. I like it. Red is gonna wrap up episode one hundred and ninety before we go, I do want to thank our awesome sponsored game Time cards silent cases, show your slaps, slap strown, Denver card shows, stand up displays, and of course Treasure Hunter sports cards and of course wax pag Nation. Guys, we've got a lot of cool stuff on our road to the National. As I said, we've got the giveaways
up now Hobby Hotline every single Saturday. I'll be on this Saturday, the first, and may have a surprise show coming up here in a couple of days, so be on the lookout. As me and Scott got a couple of reasons to celebrate, we might celebrate with you, but another great show as always my friend. Of course, I got a couple more before you get your foot after Chicago for a week and get to have a little bit fun have you know for a couple of days. Can't wait for that one.
But until next week, guys, you know the deal. Keep ripping those packs, pulling those hits and we'll talk to you. Then He's