Post Office ARREST… Are Cards Safe to Mail Anymore?
A postal worker in Nebraska was arrested for stealing $46,000 in sports cards from the mail, including a rare Victor Wembanyama and Tom Brady Kaboom. In this episode, we debate whether it's still safe to mail high-end cards, react to SGC tripling its grading prices, and discuss the mind-blowing $20,000 sale of a Seattle Mariners promotional raccoon card. SHOP CARDS & SUPPLIES Shop CardsHQ MARKET MOVERS Track card prices & your collection JOIN US ON WHATNOT CardsHQ Breaks CardsHQ Shop CardsHQ Blitz CardsHQ Hoops CardsHQ Poke DOWNLOAD THE SCI APP Apple Google Play FOLLOW SPORTS CARD INVESTOR Instagram X / Twitter Facebook MORE FROM OUR NETWORK Geoff Wilson Instagram Geoff Wilson YouTube Card Crew YouTube Market Movers YouTube Chapters: 00:00 Are Cards Safe in the Mail Anymore? 16:05 SGC Triples Pricing and Increases Turnaround Times 22:06 Topps Debuts Digital Packs 28:56 The Raccoon Card that Sold for $20,000
Video Transcript
A post office worker arrested for stealing cards out of the mail of Victor Wembanyama, Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, and more.
And now it begs the question, is it even safe to send cards through the mail anymore?
We'll debate that now.
Hello, sports card investors, and welcome to another episode of Cards on the Table from the Arena Club studio here inside Cards HQ.
TPOT, good to see you.
Parker, good to see you, too.
Good to see you as well.
Been a little while.
Welcome back to the set.
Thank you.
We got a lot to talk about today, gentlemen.
We got SGC tripling the price of some of their grading tiers, slowing down turnaround times.
Eh, we've heard this type of thing before.
We got Topps selling digital packs, and we got post office workers up to no good.
And let me, let me ask you guys a question.
What is Nebraska known for?
What comes to mind, TPOT?
Corn.
Okay.
What comes to mind for you, TPOT?
Someone- Or Parker who went to college there, yeah, corn.
Corn.
Not a lot- Beef?
Not a lot going on there.
Sure.
Beef.
A prairie, prairie activities.
Steak.
Steak.
Yeah.
Kool-Aid?
Do you know that Kool-Aid was invented in Nebraska?
Didn't know that.
I did not know that.
Makes sense.
TV dinners?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, Swanson- Makes sense Swanson TV dinners.
You know, that, that came from Invented in Nebraska.
All right.
That's what Google tells me.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
And you know what else Nebraska's known for?
No.
Theft.
Post office workers- getting taken out of the post office in handcuffs, getting busted for stealing sports cards, because that's what just happened last week.
We've got a postal service worker in Lincoln, Nebraska, who allegedly stole $46,000 in sports cards from the mail through that post office in downtown Lincoln, so that's where these cards were going through.
So apparently what happened, this guy, I, I don't quite fully understand the story, but apparently in the back of the post office, there was a open box where these cards were.
I don't know why the box would've been opened.
I don't know if it came opened in the mail or, or this guy first pried it open and then it was in the back.
And this post wo- this postal worker went to the open box and removed its contents, which included a Victor Wembanyama card that was valued at between 20 to $25,000, an orange Mojo autograph from last year's Bowman Chrome Basketball.
He also got a Quinshon Judkins Uptown card, white sparkle.
He got a Patrick Mahomes Tom Kaboom, a Tom Brady Kaboom, a Drew Brees Cracked Ice, and a Tom Brady, a sepia refractor from 2014 Topps Chrome, so a lot of different cards.
Now, what he does is apparently the same day he sell, he steals them, he decides to sell them.
And some, police officers, fresh off the news that these cards had been stolen because the person who was supposed to get them actually got a notification that their package had been delivered.
Mm-hmm.
Which they, they were like, "Oh, great, all my cards are here."
Oh, wow.
And there was no package.
So they're like, "Wait, wait.
I just got a notification from the po- from the postal service saying my package was delivered.
There's no package."
So they actually immediately apparently contacted the postal service, contacted police.
Police got involved, and then they quickly determined that this guy had taken them.
This guy was apparently out trying to sell the cards, so that night they arranged a meetup with the guy.
They offered him $20,000 for the Victor Wembanyama and the Quinshon Judkins card, which the guy agreed to, and s- they scheduled to meet at 11:15 PM at a local casino called the War House Casino, where he was taken into custody by plainclothes police officers who were posing as sports card buyers.
He was willing to lose all that money he just stole.
That's right.
The War Horse Casino, the Trojan It's like a Trojan horse.
Like, they tricked him into buying the, the cards.
There you go.
It's all, it's all fitting.
It's poetic, isn't it?
It is.
Absolutely poetic.
By the way, they, they recovered the, the Wembanyama card.
They recovered the Judkins card.
The other cards were already gone.
Apparently, the guy had moved them earlier that day at the Omaha, Nebraska sports card show.
So there you go.
They had already been dealt.
Who knows where those are today, but we've got this postal service worker busted.
You might remember, it was only about two months ago on this show- Yep that we had a postal service worker, in similar fashion, arrested down in Texas.
Yep.
Tens of thousands of dollars of cards, same deal.
Police set up a sting and bought the s- you know, offered to buy the stolen cards off of the postal service worker, arrested them.
So this is two very similar arrests now in the course of a couple of months.
Of course, we constantly see social media messages about packages gone missing and deliveries that never actually occurred.
So TPOT, as more stories like this emerge, does it make you rethink sending cards through the mail?
I get terrified now sending cards in the mail.
I get terrified having cards sent to me in the mail if they are rare and irreplaceable or one of ones.
I'm always like, "Is it gonna get here?
Is it gonna just not show up?"
And then you gotta deal with all the hassle of it.
I think it's pretty freaky, and I think the way you deal with it scales with the value of the cards, too.
There's a lot of different considerations we've talked about in the past.
I would not make this ex- explicitly, like, a USPS issue.
We've seen issues with UPS.
We've seen issues with FedEx.
Everybody has their strongly held opinions about which one is better, and most of the time I think that's purely anecdotal and based on their own experience.
It's easy if you had a bad experience with FedEx to go, "Well, I always do UPS now," but other people will say the exact opposite.
We've talked about tips in the past, such as packaging your stuff in, like, much bigger packages, put multiple boxes inside of boxes, create that Russian doll effect so it's difficult to get inside and slice open and all of that.
And it also just doesn't The, the more you can make it not look like cards, the better.
Obviously, don't put anything on it.
Like, I've had people sell, you know, send to me and their shipping labels get printed, and it's like the It's coming from Sharp Cards LLC, and I'm like, "That, it's, you're putting a target.
You might as well write 'steal me' on the package."
So that's dangerous.
Once you start getting into, like, the five-figure territory- Where you're thinking about what it would cost to insure a package like that, if you can even get insurance, that's where I start going, like, if you can swing it, like, get a flight or drive it.
Like, Scotty B's done so many drives and flights to go make big deals for big cards, 'cause it's like, I can't afford to lose this, you know?
I've, I, I had one big package that I sent, and it was, I sent it to Fanatics Collect, and I sent it registered mail, and I did all the different things like you said, and I had tracking all along the way, single chain of custody all the way.
That's another thing you can do.
I think the craziest part of this story, like you said, is that this was just, like, sitting in a back room.
Like, there just sounds like a process failure there that the post office needs to be held accountable for, too, on top of, on top of this guy who actually stole the cards.
So document everything.
Always have pictures of If you have graded cards, always have pictures of them so you have the cert numbers and everything available so PSA can deactivate those.
But I, I wouldn't say stop mailing cards, just make sure you take the right precautions, and if it gets to the point where it's truly money you can't afford to lose, then consider taking it physically in person somehow.
We can't really stop mailing cards, can we, Parker?
No.
I mean, the entire, the entire industry, in many ways, is dependent upon cards going through the mail.
Yeah.
But it seems more and more like a dangerous thing.
I mean, I think that these kinda stories that blow up, it can, like, if you see one every couple months, you know, it can kinda plant that seed in your head, when these are kinda purely, like, anecdotal, like, worst case scenario cases.
And then what doesn't get talked about is just the 99-point-something percent of packages that, that get mailed without a hitch, you know?
Like, we get packages all the time, I get them every week, of cards, and I, you know, doesn't even cross my mind.
I'm like, "Oh, there's my card."
When something does go wrong, then we kinda get this reaction.
But in general, I, I think it's One thing I will point out, though, is that personally, the, the, the eBay, the guaranteed authentic packages, those are very easy to spot now.
Yeah, major target.
Like, I know, right?
Yeah.
Like, it's always in the same exact size box.
You know, it's got the same kinda feel to it.
Yeah.
The same, you know, nameless address.
Card's always hanging out of the semi-rigid inside the box.
Sorry, continue.
That does happen.
No, you're not wrong.
But, oh, yeah, I would say, eh, could be a little concerned around that because you know it's at least, you know, 200, $250 card is what the card's worth.
The floor.
Yeah, if, if some post office worker, yeah, knows, oh, that's that sh- same, same shape of package, you know.
Yeah.
Maybe they could mix it up.
Who knows?
Yeah, that's not ideal.
I, you know, I will say, and I, I do agree with what you're saying, Parker.
Obviously, we come on shows like this, we've got this salacious headline about the postal office worker arrested, and it's good to talk about.
And, and by the way, I'm very glad- Yeah they actually made an arrest here.
They actually- How about that the postal inspectors did their job.
How about- The police did their job.
Yeah.
They got the guy.
They even recovered a couple of the cards.
How about the police?
So, yeah.
That night?
That, that- That's insane good work.
Good work, yeah.
Good work, Lincoln, Nebraska.
Good work here getting the bad apple outta here.
But you are right, it's definitely, you know, not all the time.
I will tell you guys, I have, you know, over the course of the last several years, I have pro I, I have definitely shipped well over 1,000 cards, well over 1,000, either ones that I've received or shipped, probably a few thousand.
I have never once had a single card ever lost in the mail, never once.
And I've, I've had some very, very valuable cards that I have bought and sold.
So I, you know, maybe I've gotten lucky, maybe I've defied the odds in the other direction.
But yeah, it's not as prevalent as, as, as, you know, you would think by reading a headline like this, but it does happen.
Mm-hmm.
And I definitely, the, the best suggestion I can give, and I've said it on this show before, is take a cue from how the top auction houses ship.
Because Goldin, Fanatics Collect, Heritage, Sotheby's, they're all shipping very high value packages with cards in them and other memorabilia every day.
And what I've seen them do, 'cause I've ordered a bunch of stuff from them before, is they do the double boxing m- most of the time, as you said, where they put the cards inside a smaller box, and, and then they pack that inside a larger box.
That's, that's the standard with a lot of them if you're buying expensive cards.
And then the second thing they often do is I see them most often, for expensive stuff, ship FedEx Priority Overnight.
And I was told once by somebody who works at Fanatics Collect that FedEx Priority Overnight has the lowest incident percentage out of all the different methods by which you can ship.
And I say all of that, and the one time when I had an almost near heart attack with shipping was when I shipped about $100,000 worth of cards to Fanatics Collect to sell at their auction, this was about six months ago, and I shipped them FedEx Priority Overnight, and the package got completely lost and went off the radar in FedEx's system.
Disappeared with no tracking for three weeks.
What the heck?
I filed a claim.
FedEx said, "We, it just disappeared from our system.
We, we don't know where..." And it was Priority Overnight, and dis- and, and then all of a sudden it shows up at a random FedEx facility, and, and then gets delivered the next day, three weeks later, but gets delivered the next day after it pops online in one of their FedEx facilities.
So, you know, even FedEx Priority Overnight, things can happen.
I thought for sure that was gonna be the first time that I had cards just stolen by somebody, and I was really not happy about it because, like, of all the shipments, I had, like, literally $100,000 worth of cards in that shipment.
Air Tags.
Yeah, I, I didn't do the Air Tag thing.
Put the Air Tag in.
I didn't do the Air Tag thing.
I mean, these companies should- I, I- honestly sell Air Tags- Yeah and say, "Would you like to add- Yeah an Air Tag to your package?"
Yeah.
I have, well, you know, Joe Davis got baseball cards.
He says that the, the safest method is USPS registered mail.
Yeah.
Registered, that's- That's what I did to- Yeah to Fanatics.
But it's slow.
It's- It's very slow.
Mine went a lot faster than it was supposed to.
Yeah.
I don't know, I might've gotten lucky with that, too.
But mine was, like, over Halloween last year, and they, they had it estimated at, like- It was still only estimated at, like, a week, and it got there in, like, three days.
It was weird.
Okay And it was all the way up to, all the way up to- I've heard sometimes that takes a few weeks- Yeah to go across the country, so I, I don't know.
It was fast.
But apparently that's the safest.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, be careful out there, everybody.
Hopefully, hopefully this story is not one that we have to repeat on this show every couple of months.
But the way that the- Yeah the way the card market's going, and the way cards are becoming more and more valuable, this is more of a reality.
So please protect yourself, people.
Yep.
Let's rip a couple of packs.
You guys wanna rip a couple of packs?
We're gonna talk about SGC next- Let's do it.
Indeed and all that stuff, but let's rip a couple of packs.
Let's do it.
Let's do it.
All right.
Let's do some Arena Club.
Parker, you know, are you ripping on behalf of Scotty today here?
That's what he's doing.
I am.
Okay.
All right.
Because normally Scotty B's over there.
We got a new contest starting this week.
Yep.
Because Scotty, or because you- I won the last one won the last 12 weeks- Yeah of having the most valuable cards in these, er- I did so, so you're gonna rip a special pack here in a minute to celebrate.
I've got a diamond football pack.
Okay.
But we're restarting the contest today.
Parker's gonna lead us off, ripping for Scotty.
All right.
All right, what did you rip, Parker?
I did the emerald basketball.
Emerald basketball.
Ooh.
$500 basketball pack, and?
Mm-hmm.
Ooh.
Alter Ego.
Alter- Okay.
The, the, the Panini version.
Yeah.
I know.
Oh, it's the Panini version.
You know what that made me think?
Okay.
I was like, the Slim Reaper- Probably, yeah the Slim Reaper animation that they have now on the top promo update- In a 10, that would've been You, what is this, what was this worth here?
363, I believe.
$363.
Yeah.
Well, that was your offer.
That's what I asked for.
Estimated card value is $404.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
All right, TPOT, beat that.
What did you rip?
Emerald football.
Emerald football.
Let's go.
Here we go, TPOT.
Football.
Yep.
Oh, I did basketball.
Well, I would assume you did basketball.
Yeah, I did basketball.
I would assume you did basketball.
Yeah, I was trying to get diamond football.
Oh.
I probably did basketball.
Upper Deck Michael Jordan NBA.
Right.
Unless something, unless something changed here.
I've never seen that.
I, to be honest- I haven't seen that one either, actually I've never seen that card never seen that card.
I've never seen that card.
Okay, what is this one worth?
Interesting.
This one is worth- All right Oh $318.
Okay.
So it's a- Good not as good.
Parker beat Yep.
Parker right now is in the lead.
Yep.
Okay.
All right.
I did football this week as well.
Okay, you did football.
Well, I did football.
You did football.
You didn't do I actually did football.
There you go.
You both did, but let's see what I got for football.
Emerald football.
Hey.
Okay, Mahomes in the nine.
I've hit one of those.
2017 Donruss.
Hit one of those before.
Did I beat Park- I don't think so.
I think Parker probably won.
No.
Oh.
Oh, I beat Parker by a dollar.
Yes.
$405, baby, I got the first win.
Sorry, Scotty.
That's cool.
There you go.
Parker did this.
There you go.
Let's see if that's for real.
Sorry, Scotty.
Beat him by a dollar.
Take that.
Whoo.
And that's important, because as we're doing this, over the next 12 weeks, whoever gets the most valuable cards- Yeah between me, you, and Scotty, gets a diamond pack.
You just ripped a diamond pack for winning the last 12 weeks.
I did.
What sport?
That was football.
Let's, let's see what you got.
This is- That was football this is a diamond, this is high-end right here.
How much are these packs?
Let's go.
The thousand dollar pack.
Thousand dollar diamond pack.
Bonus, bonus pack.
Diamond football.
What do we get?
Nice.
Oh, a Brady rookie in an eight.
Oh, Ghost Rising.
Yeah.
2000 Upper Deck Brady.
Yeah, this has been rising.
Okay.
As have all of his rookies.
I like it.
Those ones also haven't done this like the Bowman ones did- Yeah, yeah after the National.
These ones, I think, have been on a steady rise.
Yeah.
Bam.
Oh, that is $1,050 card.
I'll take it.
So you're up on that.
I'll take it.
You're up on that, even Well, I mean- Yeah you're completely up on that- 'cause that was totally free to you.
Yeah, that was free to me.
Okay.
It was amazing.
There you go.
Thank you very much.
There you go, ladies and gentlemen.
Here's the best part.
If you wanna rip a slab pack, we got a promo code.
It's SCI.
And at your first checkout on Arena Club, that gets you 20% off.
So if you wanna rip one of those thousand dollar diamond packs like TPOT just did, it's only 800 bucks.
Not bad if you pull a $1,050 card like TPOT just did.
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Download the Arena Club app, promo code SCI at checkout for 20% off your first Arena Club purchase.
Okay, let's jump into SGC.
Tell me if you've heard this story before, gentlemen.
A grading company is raising prices and slowing turnaround times.
I feel like that's been a, the story of the last couple of years here.
Yeah.
No surprise.
Mm-hmm.
SGC just announced that they are going to be doing the same.
Their, their cheapest tier, which is their tier for cards with a max declared value of $1,500, the service fee of that tier, as of yesterday, is now $50 per card.
Oof.
Which is, I think, about triple what it used to be.
And they're now saying that the turnaround time is 40-plus days.
So they are significantly increasing cost, significantly increasing turnaround time.
I guess it's better than shutting down, like, value submissions altogether.
Obviously, PSA has value submissions completely shut down.
Beckett right now also has value submissions completely shut down.
So in the case of SGC, they're keeping value submissions open, but they're just making them a lot more expensive and a lot slower.
But I guess it's not all bad news.
SGC says they're aggressively hiring to grow their team, substantially expanding their operational square footage, and investing in new technology and infrastructure, which is kind of interesting, because PSA actually took a lot of SGC's graders over to PSA, and I think they even took some of SGC's office space over to reallocate that to PSA when collectors first bought SGC.
But now apparently SGC is trying to get some graders back, and trying to get some office space back by, you know, by expanding and hiring.
So I guess they're gonna be on the come-up in the future.
We'll see.
By the way, PSA, who I mentioned has their value services shut down, we got a backlog tracker update recently.
Their backlog is now 10.9 million cards as of the last update, but that is down substantially from two weeks prior, when they had 11.85 million cards in their backlog.
So TPOT, is this just more of the same?
Is this how we expect grading companies to be for the next year?
We talk about leading and lagging indicators with cards all the time, and this is not surprising.
We, we suspected this would happen, with SGC being the lagging indicator now, near the bottom of the Gem Rate data.
I think for all intents and purposes, this is the equivalent of shutting down their value service.
Nobody's sending cards to SGC at $50.
You're better off sending for $80 to PSA and waiting, the extended turnaround time that they just advanced.
By the way, the, the turnaround time of 40-plus days is well over 40 days right now.
We've had some people on our team who sent cards previously at the $15 turnaround, and it was months, many months, to get back at that level.
So I- I think there's something interesting here that goes back to the, antitrust stuff that Representative Pat Ryan was trying to push through to the FTC.
And I don't know if this is true, I'm not an antitrust lawyer, but I did look into this a little bit, and I'm wondering if there's People are asking why doesn't PSA just shut them down?
At this point, that infamous quote from, Ryan Hogue about they're gonna be more of a niche grading company now.
They're barely grading any cards.
Now they're struggling.
They And, and having to, you know, try to hire apparently.
Why not just shut them down?
There may be something to keeping them on life support that if the FTC ever came after them and said, "Now you The most likely thing would you have to divest one of these companies.
You also bought Beckett."
And they'd be like, "Okay, well, let SGC go.
And now we only own two companies, and they have the opportunity to rebuild their brand and come back to life and try to challenge us in the market."
I don't know if that's their motivation or not.
I don't know if that's even really legitimate.
But it is something that came into my mind as I was thinking about this, and from what I've read, that could be one of the things that could happen.
You know, if, if the If there were actually things that came, you know, that they said, "You've got a monopoly, you gotta do something about it," better to let SGC go than be forced to let Beckett go- Interesting or something along those lines.
So- Okay who knows?
So maybe that's why SGC's- Yeah got some life.
I don't know.
Yeah.
What, what are your thoughts on all this, Parker?
I mean, in Well, so in 2023, SGC was grading, like, 100,000 cards a month.
And then, of course, you know, 2024, they get bought by PSA.
Today, they're grading about 2% as many cards.
So it went from 10% as many cards as PSA was, and now they're grading about 2% as many cards as PSA was.
So- So basically, their percentage of market share has dropped by- Yeah 80%- Yes over the course- And they're not growing of the last couple of years.
Yeah.
And as, you know, PSA, like, over the last year, so in September 2025, says PSA did one and a half million cards per month.
This past month, it's at 2.2 million.
A year ago, SGC was doing 60,000 a month, now they're doing 42,000 a month.
So while- In the sports card boom So while PSA is dramatically- Yeah increasing their capacity and their, their throughput, SGC- Mm-hmm is completely falling off.
Yeah, everyone else, yeah, going up, and somehow- Yeah they're going down.
I don't You know.
Yeah.
It's gotta be on purpose, so I like, I like Teapot's idea.
Maybe it's just to appease, you know- Who knows some kind of antitrust stuff.
I don't know.
I don't know, but certainly, increasing prices to $50 a card is not gonna help bolster their submissions in the, in the interim, I don't think.
I think that will probably move them further back down the ladder, but good luck to them if they're gonna hire and try to expand and revive themselves.
There was a time when I felt like SGC served an important part in the grading card spectrum a few years ago, right?
Mm-hmm.
Peter was running the company, and they were aggressive about growth and doing all kinds of specials and good customer service, and they had, they had found a niche.
Mm-hmm.
And, and now today it's a little bit of a sad state of affairs compared to where it used to be, so Their niche was they just filled the void when PSA shut down grading the first time around.
Yeah.
Then they swooped right in.
Yep.
And then PSA was like, "Oh, okay, you're getting You get 10% of the volume as us.
All right, we'll buy you out, size you down a bit."
Yep.
"Stay away."
It's big business, boys.
It's big business.
Okay, let's jump to Speaking of another company, big player in this space making big waves, how about Topps coming out with digital packs?
But these are digital packs of physical cards.
Now, we of course, we rip Arena Clubs lab packs on this show, so we know what it is like to rip digital packs of physical cards.
Well, Topps said, you know, if Arena Club's having all this success with what they're doing, maybe we should be doing it, but maybe we should be doing it with our new product releases.
And that's a twist that we haven't seen, at least from Topps.
Upper Deck actually does this- Mm-hmm with their ePack program.
But in Upper Deck's case with ePack, normally the products come to ePack a long time after they've been released to hobby shops.
In this case, Topps put the 2025-26 Topps Chrome Black basketball into a digital pack format and put that out as a leading way of this product release, not, like, months after the product had come out.
And so these went live last week.
They were up for a limited time on Fanatics Collects website, where you could rip digital packs of 2025-26 Topps Chrome Black.
It was a special pack configuration that was different than the hobby boxes that you would get inside Cards HQ.
I ripped six.
To be quite honest, I got smoked.
N- I didn't get anything great out of any of them.
$600 go bye-bye.
600 It was $100 a pack.
Mm-hmm.
That's right.
Each, each pack had four cards.
You were supposed to get an auto on average one out of every three packs.
Apparently, I got very unlucky because I think I went six packs.
I don't think I got an auto.
I think I went six packs without an auto.
So, not ideal.
But when you But, but you know, it's f- I was telling the team, the team was saying, "Should we buy to rip some of these?"
I'm like, "Man, I didn't do good."
But then of course, r- right after I say that, somebody posts a link to Instagram where someone's just pulled- Yeah a super fractor, and you know, it's Okay.
So I mean, you can get good stuff out of them as well.
I just didn't.
I got unlucky.
When you rip them, the cards go direct into your Fanatics Collect vault, where you can then send them off for grading or sell them or have them shipped back to you.
So Teapot, is this the future of card collecting?
So Upper Deck has done these.
Mm-hmm.
They call them ePacks.
Yep.
And you could do these.
I think it's interesting.
It's probably another really smart business move.
Put, put yourself in a vacuum and put your own opinions about what this could mean for the hobby aside, and if you're just there trying to run a business, a for-profit business, this is a absolute no-brainer.
Simon466 did a great video where he pointed out a really big problem with this format.
And one of the things you can do, you rip them, and then you can send them to Fanatics Collect to auction the cards off.
Mm-hmm.
So you look at that and you're like, "Wow, that really removes the friction," you know?
I, I, I don't have to deal with it.
I don't have to ship the cards in the mail and risk they get lost.
I, you know, I, I can just send them right to auction if I don't If I'm not happy with what I got for my PC.
The problem is, and this has happened- It absolutely floods a whole bunch of supply of the same exact cards onto the same exact Fanatics Collect auction.
So when we look in other marketplaces, like something like Comsi.
Comsi's great for a lot of different kinds of cards, but Comsi actually also puts a ceiling in place on a lot of cards, because you'll wind up with five, 10, 20 copies of the exact same card available on Comsi, whereas on eBay at any given point in time, there might only be one, two, or three of them or something.
So if you Normally, you see these as people are ripping, buying into breaks, other things.
You see kind of a slow drip of, like, I'm talking parallels, right?
Stuff that's numbered to 50.
These things sold out, which meant all 50 copies of a given player's parallel were in somebody's hands, and if it wasn't somebody they were interested in, they probably were like, "Send to Fanatics Collect."
That brings the price down, and it really negatively impacts the value proposition of what you're ripping out of these packs.
I'm curious if we'll ever see a buyback option on these, if Topps would actually figure out, "Well, we have the physical cards and they're printed.
The base cards don't have a stated print run.
We could print base cards on demand, so we could make somebody an offer for some percentage back with an algorithm about what we think they're worth, and just put them back into another digital pack and print more base cards."
I'm not saying they should do that.
That would actually kind of concern me.
I don't know if they can legally do that.
They probably can, and if they can, that seems like another instant money printer thing like Topps Now cards and so many other things.
So I think this is really sneaky.
Consumers should probably check their tendencies about how dangerous this might be for them.
Some people are very in control of those things and are just like, "Hey, I want, wanna roll the dice here and see what I get.
I like the design of the cards.
I think the experience is really well executed."
Other people, it's just, it's very easy to just put, buy another, buy another, buy another.
So one thing that might be cool with this is if they tried something else where you, you obviously get the cards, but maybe you could get some kind of a bonus fan experience or apparel or memorabilia or something, 'cause they obviously have the broader network of Fanatics as a whole.
And they don't do a ton of that today with, you know, physical packs.
This seems like it would be much easier to execute that.
Like, you just, "Bonus, you got your four cards and maybe you got an auto.
Bam, you also got, you know, tickets to the Knicks game next week," or something like that.
You know, I don't Might be something cool worth trying to juice it up.
If these were cheaper- Yeah and I liked the product- and I liked the checklist, like, if these were, like, 20 bucks a pack, they, it would definitely tempt me.
I would think it would be something I'd try.
They're gonna try it with more products.
Yeah.
They said in very limited supply, but they're gonna try it with more releases.
Are you a buyer on this, Parker?
What are your thoughts?
No, I'm not.
I'll be, I'll be very blunt.
I think it's, it's You know, if you're trying to make money, it's, it's definitely capitalizing on this kind of second sports card boom we've seen in the last decade.
But yeah, I think if, you know, if you're just out there, if you're buying into, you know, too many breaks and you see this is there, you know, 100 bucks, cool.
I'll just buy.
You know, I think it's not the best use of $100 that I've seen from the packs that have been opened.
But I think it, it, it does kinda just fly in the face a bit of what cards really are, which it's a tactile, you know, in-person, you know, physical hobby.
And I think, I think as, you know, as the world gets more kind of, you know, digitized and, like, pushing us away from, like, personal ownership, everything's subscriptions, video games are getting rid of discs, all this kinda stuff, I think that what cards are, it's just a physical way, It- it's just, they're physical in nature, and I think that getting rid of that kind of goes away from what the hobby's about.
I think it's fair.
I think there's a lot of collectors out there that would agree with you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So- The game is always changing, Jeff.
It is.
And, yeah.
I mean, it's, it's inter- I wonder if this does catch on and becomes, like, really common, if that then h- helps normalize the actual existence of digital cards, period.
Oh, boy.
Back to NFTs now.
I don't know.
We're back to NFTs, TPOT.
That's literally NFTs.
I don't know.
Back to the blockchain.
I don't know.
I don't know.
blockchain's actually been hot.
Panini Blockchain.
I don't know what to do with a JPEG.
It looks like- It's been a little hot.
It's been a little hot.
Okay.
We got, we gotta talk about a raccoon card- that sold for $20,000.
I'm not joking.
I'm not, I'm not making this up.
We're gonna talk about that next.
That's hilarious.
But first, let me tell the people real quick, guys, you know what I got here?
I got a whole pile of hobby boxes of different things, all the way from Prism basketball to Bowman draft baseball.
I got Disney mint.
Ooh, that's a nice little box.
Look at this.
I got stacks of these.
I got affordable stuff like Hoops.
We got Magic: The Gathering, if you're into TCG.
And we got Leaf Pop Century, and we got What is this?
Little S- little Superman.
Superman.
Look at that.
We got Super.
We got all kinds of stuff here.
And you know why I'm showing you all these things, gentlemen?
You know why I'm showing you- Does that open?
All these boxes?
You gonna give them to us?
No.
Some Star Wars Carbonite?
No.
No.
Okay.
No.
No.
It's not so you can open them.
No.
It's because all these boxes are 10% off for our special Labor Day sale on cardsHQ.com starting tomorrow.
Starting Friday, Friday through Monday, these boxes plus a bunch more, 10% off in our CardsHQ store and on cardsHQ.com for anybody out there watching.
Sweet.
There you go.
Right on.
Right on.
All right.
Let's move on.
Let's talk about raccoons.
I guess we should.
So here's what happened, here's what happened, gentlemen.
So on August the 5th, the Seattle Mariners celebrated Jimothy Night, which honored a raccoon with a spinal condition.
I, I'm, I'm just r- I don't I, I'm just reading this.
This is We got, we got a raccoon with a spinal condition that was roaming around a Seattle neighborhood, got filmed, and went viral.
Okay?
Jimothy.
It is truly 2026.
A J- I mean, I- I- This is truly a 2026- You can't make this up.
I mean, literally a spinal raccoon viral- in Seattle- Spinal raccoon named Jimothy.
Spinal raccoon.
All these things are true.
Spinal tap.
And to make the story even crazier, the Seattle Mariners decided to honor Jimothy by giving away Jimothy rookie cards.
They gave away 20,000 Jimothy rookie cards, during their August 5th game One of the 20,000 cards was a one-of-one gold, golden variation.
The one-of-one golden variation Jimothy card.
The person who got that card at the game was a 13-year-old girl named Abby.
The card then goes onto eBay.
I don't know if Abby sold it or what, but the card goes on eBay and gets sold for $20,100.
The free market.
The free market.
This is, of course, not the first popular stadium promo we've seen.
We've seen the, the, you know, TCG brand One Piece- Yep doing promos with the Dodgers, and I think they tried doing Duke Basketball.
But they All these promos, the cards have gone berserk.
People are lining up for hours.
There's fights outside of stadiums.
There's, you know, you got bobblehead promos, of course, which can get very, very popular.
Various trading card promos at different ballparks that have gotten very, very popular.
So this is just in, in a long line of popular promos.
This one might be the most unusual.
Teapot, your thoughts on Jimothy and his $20,100 card sale?
Do you know who Rocket Raccoon is?
I don't.
Rocket is from Guardians of the Galaxy.
Oh, I do know that.
Famous- I went on that ride at Epcot.
Yes you know, got all the big- That's right rockets and everything.
His most expensive sale is $8,500- Wow.
Ooh for the Rocket Raccoon Topps ma- Chrome Marvel superfractor.
You could, in fact, have bought, like, five different Rocket superfractors plus an auto from the voice actor, which is Bradley Cooper, and still have had money left over from what people paid for Jimothy.
This to me seems like the ultimate, like, "I got money that I can just do whatever with and I wanna buy this raccoon card."
That's pretty wild.
I was scrolling through, like, our sales history just from the last week.
There's been, I don't know, like- Billion views 200 sales between 18 and $23,000 tracked by Market Movers.
You could get a Topps Tiffany, a PSA 10 NBA Silver Diamond, Barry Bonds.
You could get a Contenders Tom Brady, rookie ticket auto.
It is altered, but auto for 21,000.
You could get a PSA 8 Jordan.
There's a lot of stuff in the card market.
Or Jimothy.
Or you can get Jimothy's gold- His one-of-one one-of-one, the iconic raccoon.
You know what, Jeff?
I got a spinal condition.
My back hurts a lot.
I'm gonna make a card of myself- circulate them, and let's throw them up on eBay, see what the one-of-one does, and maybe we can all, rip some- Yeah, let's do that of these nice discounted products from Cards HQ.
I like that.
I like that.
Partner- Or one-of-one teapot were you the buyer?
Were you the buyer of this card?
Shockingly, I was not.
But it's a decent looking card for being produced by, you know, like, a stadium.
They probably just threw this together, like, in a couple weeks.
I think it's great.
I love it.
I think it's fun, you know.
Like, how many packs did they give out?
Was it, like- 20,000 yeah, 20,000.
You know, you go to a Mariners game, you get a pack.
You know, did it just have Jimothy in the packs?
Do we know?
J- there were apparently different parallels.
I think it was just Jimothy.
It was just Jimothy.
Yes, it was just Jimothy, but there were different parallels you could get, so, you know.
Gold variation, a foil.
I saw- Some, someone out there is trying to build the Jimothy rainbow right now.
Oh.
That's what they're trying to do.
I saw this and all I could hear was Ron Burgundy going, "His name is Nutty and he's a squirrel who water-skis."
That's just, like- That might be the next one let's make cards of everything.
There's always, like, rodents and things running around on the field during- Yeah the baseball season.
We all love those moments, so.
Uh-huh.
There you go.
I love it.
I think it's fun.
Yeah.
Most of these do not go for 20K.
Let's get Jimothy's cards in Market Movers.
I- Let's track them.
We will.
I wanna add Jimothy to my collection.
Teapot, you have to.
I'm not kidding.
The Jimothy.
There we go.
All right.
There we go.
All right, guys, good work today.
Good work to you, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for watching today's show.
Don't forget about the weekend sale at cardsHQ.com, and don't forget to get an Arena Club slab pack, promo code SCI for 20% off your first purchase on Arena Club.
Thanks for watching.
We'll see you soon with the next one.
Take care.
Yeah
