Episode 263: @shaqfoo32 Collection Buying, Tanking Truths & Rookie Class Fire

This week Joe Foo (@ShaqFoo32) joins the show and we go deep: 

• Bam Adebayo’s manufactured 83-point explosion – intentional fouling, stat-padding, and why the boos in LA were actually kinda hilarious 
• Buying collections, buying and selling tips. 
• Why this 2025 rookie class is surprisingly strong: Kon Knueppel stealing ROY, VJ Edgecombe, Dylan Harper, Derek Queen + Hornets actually competing 
• Joe’s future NBA team plan: Vegas expansion baby (logo + fresh start + betting angle)

We also touch on sports betting side hustle truths, and why the mid-season doldrums need moments like this. 

Absolute vibe chat – enjoy! 

Transcript

 "Welcome everybody to this week's show. This is the You can't comp this NBA trading card podcast. I am your host Russell Gibson. This is episode 263 and we are with Joe Fu aka Shak Fu32. Mr. Fu, how are you today, sir? Hey, Ross. Lovely to have lovely to be back on the show. Awesome day, man. Had a really, really great day today. Fantastic. Did you see the highlights from the Miami Wizards game? I could not avoid it because I was watching the show. It was everywhere, wasn't it? Yeah. Absolutely everywhere. And then you watch and jump over to the LA game and no joke they announced like bam out of bio has scored 83 points and you just hear the booze because it's LA because you know because Kobe's Kobe's record is 81, you know, so they were just like boo, which was hilarious. Um, Tyson Beck was not too happy about it. He basically was saying that um, it was like disrespectful towards Kobe Bryant's point scoring. I genuinely thought they were going to sub him off at 81. Yeah, right. You know, like I thought they were done. I thought they were like, "Oh, 81 great." And like, you know, they'll finally bring him off. And then like he went back and shot two more free throws. I was like, "What? He broke it?" It's disrespectful apparently when someone in the NBA gets a late basket as time expires when the game is over. But it's not disrespectful that a team can extend a game up 27 to manufacture an extra dozen possessions by fouling and creating an extra 15 points for a player. Yeah, 100%. Tyson, look, I'm sort of in two minds about this to be honest with you. Like I get what Tyson's saying about the end of game stuff, but I actually think he's more talking about Kobe's legacy. Yes. than anything else. Um, but I got to tell you, I I didn't watch the highlights. Like, so for people at home that don't know, I watch a little bit of live basketball, but most of the stuff I watch is um after the fact cuz I like to watch the a bridge version game. So, you can watch possessions only and you can get through a whole game in about 354 minutes. It's fantastic. I got through about halfway through that game and I couldn't watch anymore. Like, it was it's that's not basketball. It was over. like Bam had he had like 31 points in the first quarter which is kind of what kicked it off in the first place. That's like that I I respect but all the rest they did in terms of like intentional fouling, letting him letting him shoot everything like you know whatever. I mean this is not the first time it's happened in NBA history though. The one that you'll probably remember is when David Robinson needed 71 to get the scoring title, right? That's it's the same thing. Like it's not about basketball or winning basketball. you're just feeding someone to get them their stats. So, yeah. And I like and that's the thing like I watch a lot of games live because as you know on the side I dabble in sports sports betting and like most of the time I actually didn't know that. So like I I dabble in it and like and I because of all the all the picks that I do on a daily basis it's you watch a lot of these games and a lot of these athletes they finish. So like they'll they get the lead, the team gets their lead and they check out by the third or fourth quarter because they want to save their legs, right? Most often than not, BAM should have been done by the third quarter, you know, and and let some other yells shoot some baskets for Christ's sake, you I mean I suppose when you've got that many points so like and this at this point in the season where it is getting to be the doldrums of the season like this is the really tough part of the season sort of you know 60 game game 60 to game 82 this is it's rough maybe that's what they wanted is a bit of excitement and see how many points you could get but well anyway and this this kind of bridges over to you know the talks about tanking and how do they fix it and I really really like the idea for like a lot of these bottoms teams for like basically it gets to like halfway through the season or a third of the like you know one last oneird of the season and then every win by these bottoms teams gets them closer towards a top draft pick. So then it like it flips over. There was like there was I think it was Bill Simmons or someone said it where they either basically they get a um they get like instead of tanking to the bottom and trying to finish dead last, right? There'll be there'll be a stage where these teams no longer qualify for the playoffs. They can't qualify like you know and so once you've gotten your like I don't know eight teams or 10 teams or 12 teams that can't qualify for the playoffs anymore that's when these bottoms teams it flips over. So the remaining games of the season for every win they get they get like a higher percentage towards their their their draft pick. But I think what would happen then is the remember the Philadelphia process. Yes. Teams would implement that from game one. Yeah. And then at the end of the season when the odds are in then they would start to win games. Do you know what I mean? Like I think that's that's just problem shifting. I don't think it actually does anything at all. No. What's your idea to fix tanking? Is that is that your favorite idea? Yeah, look, I didn't mind that one, but like honestly like it gets to a stage where you can kind of go like look, there's 30 balls, 30 teams, and we just roll them out every year, you know, because like that's the only way to kind of just go like, you know what, 30 teams, everyone gets equal share. There's none of this, you know, there's no protection, there's no defense. Yeah. I I actually feel like you could ask me this question 10 times and I'll give you 10 different answers. But right now, how I feel is like I I actually like what they've done in terms of flattening out the hobby odds. And I think they just need to do that, but extend it out further. So make it instead of the top three, make it the top five. So then there's no real need to tank too badly. So that all all it means is the tanking will go from instead of one, two, and three, it'll be six and seven, you know, may tank like and that's it. I think because like there was the I liked I like the one which was floated out which is like a bottom finals. You know how like when you used to play like recreation league and like the top teams so the top eight teams will play a top finals then and they will win the NBA grand finals and then the bottom eight teams would play like a bottom wooden spoon final and like but the problem is that you'd have the process again, right? You'd have these teams who deliberately go hey next year's Koopa flag we will tank and play in the bottom final so that we can win that and get Cooper flag. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. You know, so yeah, look. All right. I'm not I'm not envious of the people who have to try and fix this problem. No, definitely not. We've segueed hard already here. We were talking about BAM at a buy you buy, hold, or sell BAM at the moment cuz I think heaps and heaps of BAM is going to be flooded to the market in the next day. And we've already seen it happen already with Facebook posts and Facebook groups. People are listing them up hard. On screen here, I've got an eBay listing where someone basically were trying to sell it for $13 and then he's taken it down because of the 83 point game. So, yeah. Yep. You know what they it it I think it's not really going to it's not really going to give it that much of a boost. Honestly, Bam was not that exciting before. He's he's got the 83 points. He's got the record, but rest of the season he's a, you know, he's a he's a 20 and 10 guy. Yeah, I I put him into the category of his talent is more than his hobby value. So, I'm kind of hoping at one point actually this is going to turn around because his his stuff is really cheap. I think he's a fantastic player. He's cerebral. I like watching him play. Well, except for today that sucked. But yeah. Um, so maybe actually this will give him a little bit of boost along and people might give him a bit more respect. Well, he'll get some sales. Like he'll get some sales. It's not a bad time. If you've been holding on to your bam bio, this is probably your best excuse to sell it now and maybe make a few extra bucks than you would have before. I mean, even sell it at comps. I mean, who cares? If you want to get rid of your BAM stuff, like, take this opportunity to get it out. Honestly, you had no chance to sell it before. Like, So now use your opportunity to sell it now. um but don't expect it to shoot to the moon. um that's what I advise people. Don't expect it to go like you know 500x or a 1000x like yes he got a record. He didn't really do it in the most exciting fashion either. Like you know what was it 36 free throws like you know if he went out and freaking went all guns blazing and he could not be stopped like teams deliberately tried to stop him and it was a close game. Yeah. Fair enough. fair game. You know, you could not stop this guy. He was a monster. But it was like game was already over from like the third quarter onwards. And they didn't even rest him. Didn't even sit him. They just kind of kept him chugging along. Yeah. So, it was not a sexy 83 points. Was not. Do you want to talk about your Steph Curry mail day and your Tyson Beck mail day or do you want to talk about a temperature check of the hobby? I really look, you know, like since we already brought up the um the Tyson Beck and we mentioned him before, we might as well show off what he's been working with. Sure, man. Yeah. Um I actually haven't been able to chase down any of his cards for the last three years. That's how hot his drops have been. um you log online and they just get they're just gone in 60 seconds. I was quite fortunate, however, that while I was driving, I remembered that he had an auction on and I was able to pick up one of these. It actually comes in a beautiful box now. So, he's actually got it inside one of these Tyson Becks boxes, which is a nice um but the card itself is this, which is a MVP Allstar, which he dropped as a surprise drop, which is probably part of the reason why I was able to get it was because um it was a surprise drop and I don't think a lot of people were able to set their bots to go get it. Yeah. Right. Interesting. cuz cuz I had a heap of time. Like I had time to browse. I probably maybe would have even gotten two had I not been in such a panic. Is that your first Steph Curry autograph? This is my fifth actually. Okay. Okay. So, I've actually gotten I've actually gotten four other um Tyson Beck um Steph Curry autos as well. Yeah. Nice, man. Um in the back back in the day. So like I pretty much when he was just starting out and he basically started dropping Spider Mitchell and and you know and and getting all the other guys into the game. Kuzma was a drop as well. I remember um you know so like like but those are the early days of Tyson Beck and like you know I was quite lucky when he started dropping Giannis Allen Iverson Shaq Curry that I was able to nab pretty much all of those cards when he first dropped them. Sick man. That's Need to do a um like a card summary and post it up on Instagram. Tag us in man. I'll share that for you. Yeah. No, I'll do that for you. What is your temperature check on the hobby at the moment? Tell us about that. I think since the changeover it's still pretty hot, you know, like there've been some big splashes, you know, as as you've reported, you know, there've been some very big splashes in terms of, you know, like Pokemon doing some big drops, you know, card like, you know, NBA cards are still hot as ever. There have been some very good rookies as well, which has really helped the league and the hobby keep going because I reckon if you have like too many bad rookie years, people aren't excited. No one's really buying, you know, product. But when the changeover happens at the right time, which is now, they switched it over and you got Cooper Flag, you've got VJ Edgecom, you've got Kon Canop, you know, like you've got some great rookies taking over now. Yeah. But what about just generally in the hobby though? Like how are you feeling since the change over from Topsson Fanatics? Like where are you at with sort of all that's been going on? To be frank, I actually haven't been jumping on board for a lot of the breaks as of yet because I'm still trying to wrap my head around what, you know, what am I chasing? What products do I want? you know, like I'm still kind of re re reconfiguring, you know, which products I want to chase. And I think I'm still stuck in the Patini age because the last the last thing I was chasing was the Rainbow Chase, the Revolution Rainbow Chase, which was a Panini product. And I'm still kind of still trying to chase a lot of those Panini products like your kabooms, your downtowns, you know, these color like the color blast, like stuff that I know are gone and I can't get them anymore. Yeah. Like do you think the hobby is healthy at the moment? Do you think it's like it's unhealthy? Like where are you at with just sort of general like trends that's happening? I suppose. Yeah. I think look the hobby is still healthy, you know, like it's still going strong. There's still plenty of money flowing and coming and going in the hobby. You know, I'm still meeting a lot of like, you know, beautiful, happy people who are just coming on board. And, you know, like a lot of them, you know, that I meet online, they're just like dads just like their kids want to get into the hobby and they're buying these cheap dollar cards and you know, $2 cards and, you know, trying to build their PCs for them. You know, some of them some of them probably spend a hell of a lot more than I would expect for for for their kids, but you know what? To each their own. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think I need to do more work into this what I'm about to say, but I'm actually worried that we're almost in like a bubble at the moment. So, I would not be surprised. Yeah. And I want to be I want to be more specific about the bubble that we're in. I think that we're in a TOPS Chrome or Topps flagship or new Topps bubble. So, again, very very small sample size. I need to do a lot more work on this. But for example, we hit this card in a break I did one or two weeks ago. Yep. Um out of a mega box. I think the total buying for the box was let's call it $250 or $280, right? So pretty small. When this card came out of the the break initially when I looked at it, I was like, "Oh, it's a gold card. Okay, that's great. So put my panini brain. Okay, this is number to 10. Okay, this is number to 50. Okay, like that's a, you know, it's a really nice card. It's an oncard autograph. Look, I like this kid. And to be honest with you, I've had him in my run sheet. I like the way he plays. He's good to watch. I've got no problems with him. He's a good prospect. But at this point, he is a C-grade LaMelo ball. Yep. In my opinion, that's like a pretty nice assessment. Check out the sales. Check out the sales on this guy, though. He is not a C-grade. Okay. Exclude the one of one. Like that's that's way out. Um, I want to try and find the one that's numbered to 50 to 50. Like, this stuff is not prospecting prices. This is Okay, this is number to five. That's 2,500 USD. That number to 50, I I can't find the comp for it, but you just have to trust me on this. It's sold for about $1,000 Aussie. So, smokes. And that's numbered to 50. And so, like it really I'm not I'm not worried about it. I'm not trying to create like doom and gloom. Like, fantastic. People are excited. 25. Here's the 25. All right. That's that's a,000 US, man. Which is approximately 1,500 um dollars. Yeah. So my estimate number to 50 of 1500 is probably about right. Yeah. So that's huge. And you know, this is a pretty low-end prospect that is on a team that's not very exciting. Traditionally, people aren't collecting him. So, like if you're asking me about, you know, the hobby health at the moment, that's probably my two cents and like where my head is like going to at the moment. I think I was talking to Tyson on Sunday just to say like actually for me it's been a really good reset and I've actually sort of stepped out of doing a couple of things I had been doing and now I'm sort of getting back in now that I sort of understand what Topps is doing. And and look, tops three, I don't have the testicular fortitude to go and buy an entire box of it. Like, and the prices on that are spiking, too. And that probably furthers my thing about a bubble, but um I like it actually. I think it's nice. I think if you hit one of those cards in a break, whatever you got, I think you'd be really happy. So, it's kind of a fun product. Well, like Tops I was I've seen a lot of that Tops Midnight come out and the designs from that are really really eye-catching, really spectacular. Yeah. You know, really nice theme. Like I mean look, I I'm I'm I'm an 80s kid, you know, like and the same with you. Like we grew up with Tops. We grew up with Upper Deck, Fleer, Skybox, you know? So, like seeing, you know, seeing Topps originally reach back and kind of do a kind of a call back, but now they're bringing in the other products now, it's really nice to see these other products come out and to see that they're actually very welldesigned as we expected. Um, and because they now got licensing, the cards look a thousand times better. 100%. Yeah. It's actually really hard to get around the unlicensed stuff, isn't it? Except for Tyson, which is why I've always loved Tyson's work because like he's he's worked out a beautiful way to kind of redesign the card and avoid the whole like like this is like there's no you can't even see, you know, like you see the Allstar, you see Steph Curry, but he's really just kind of designed it and jigged it in a way that you can really you you actually don't really notice that there's a missing logo, you know, or anything, right? Well, the artwork is so good. Oh, it's just Yeah, he just does a beautiful job, you know. Yeah. Um, tell us about your rainbow chase that's going on at the moment that you're So, I think last time I talked with you guys, I had just started the rainbow chase. So, I started the one of one. So, most people try to finish with the one and I always advise like if you're trying to chase a rainbow and you're like me and you must finish it, you know, like like I I got to finish this thing now. like I you know so like I started with the 101 because it would just drive me absolutely insane knowing that the set is incomplete if I had everything else but the one of one and you know and knowing that the person who holds the one of one would therefore be able to hold a ransom on me or they wouldn't even want to let it go you know so like what started it all was actually somebody advis somebody somebody came to me um with an offer to buy to sell this um which is the Kido from Revolutions one of one as you can see from the little the little one of one badge on the bottom there. But what started the chase was this. So I was offered the one of one to begin with and then I was like you know what I have never done a rainbow chase like a proper panini rainbow chase. I've bought cards and then I've just kind of just mashed them all together, but I've never chased a set from start to finish. Um, and so I started chasing it and started with the legends one of one and then just worked my way through and it's been probably about I want to say about a year now. Yeah. Um, and I'm down to one last card. Yes. Which how many is in the set? And um yeah, it is a C now. So that's that's nine 18 18 24 cards in the whole set. That's actually a pretty decent chase. Very doable. Very doable chase. So like, you know, started with the one of one. I'm missing the out of five. um the one of five, which is the purple swirl. um, and I've got everything else, but I've got two other I've got a few of the other cards sitting in America that are going to get posted over pretty soon. Um, then I can add it to my folder. Um, but I started with the 101. I gave myself an estimated budget of about $1,500 to finish the chase. And I have to say it was been pretty accurate. Um, I built a little Excel spreadsheet and just, you know, marked everything in whenever I bought it. And yeah, every time I added a card, I deducted from my my budget and yeah, I pretty much landed with one last card to chase and about uh you know, a good enough money to fund it. Tell us about your love of spreadsheets. Um, look, I think I've always done them. It was always been and it's because of my partner. Uh, she's a she's a CFO. Um, and so she's a she's also a certified accountant as well. Um, and she just made me do spreadsheets to keep track of my my cards cuz I told her, you know, like I dabble in the hobby and I sell buy and sell cards. And she's just like, "Is it profitable?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I mean, I always have money." And she's like, "No, no, no. Have you looked at how much profit you get when you buy and sell your cards?" And I was just like, never thought of it that way. And she goes, "You might be surprised. You know, you might surprise yourself. You might be able to, you know, because she'd known me a while." She's like, "You do this very well. Why don't you do this as a proper thing? You know, and she goes, "The only way you could figure out whether you could make cards a job is if you can if it's profitable enough to sustain." So, she made me do a spreadsheet and I track my buys and sells and Yeah. So, without disclosing too much information about your personal life, you don't do it full-time though, do you? So, why don't you do it full-time? Because I think that's a really interesting question. I think I think look for life for for basically like in terms of like yes it is very glamorous to do cards fulltime but like I got a family I need weekends you know like hey what glamorous what what are you talking about? I mean look look a lot of people look a lot of people fantasize about like doing cards full time you know a lot hang fantasy is one thing reality is like something else right exactly exactly so let's you know so it is very a lot of people think oh yeah doing cards full-time would be the dream you know like you know and a lot of and I've always been warned about you know and but this was by my dad too he goes look never turn your hobby into your passion into your job because you'll kill your passion. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, so like I said, like, you know, he's always had a truth to it. Like I, you know, I love snowboarding, became an instructor, did it for five years, and then I was like, "Yeah, you know what? I'm done snowboarding." Yeah. You know, um, so like, look, I don't do it full-time. I do it to kind of I kind of took it I gave it a try, took a look at it, but to really make it work, you got to attend a lot of shows. You got to do, you know, a lot of live selling as well to keep it going, you know, and it's a 247 job. You got to keep lining up. If you don't have a license from Tops, you're like, how are you getting product? How are you getting stuff to sell, you know? And then if you've got like product, you got to sell it to the recommended retail price. You can't just like, you know, go and sell it at the, you know, the shill price on eBay, you know, because if you get caught out by tops, guess what? Your license getting pulled, you know? So, like, and there goes your there goes your income. because I just hate the way they did that that R and the way that their uniform looked. I love that logo. I missed the 90s logo with the freaking rocket coming around the coming around the planet. Um so I guess look, good logo, a good logo helps, but I think for me it it's going to have to be look, new team, new expansion, fresh um fresh team. Um and and I can follow them from the start. Um, and because of my little side passion of of, you know, of punting, um, it makes sense that Vegas is my team. Thank you so much, Joe, for coming on tonight. This has gone so fast for me. It just feels like it's been a 15-minute chat. So, that's Thank you so much. No, absolute pleasure, my friend. Absolute pleasure. Thanks everyone out there for listening. We'll catch you guys next..."