A-Xii
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A-Xii
Episode #002: Connor Schissler
Collectible cards have seen a resurgence over the last few years, but what does it really take to navigate the world of card breaking? In our latest podcast episode, we had the pleasure of hosting Connor Schissler, a professional card breaker with We The Hobby, who shared his journey into this thrilling and rapidly changing industry. From the highs of opening rare packs to the lows of missed opportunities, Connor's insights provide listeners with a comprehensive understanding of what's happening in the card-collecting community today.
The episode kicks off with Connor discussing his unexpected transition from a wrestling background to a career in card breaking. While many young athletes dream of one day playing professionally, Connor had his sights set on becoming a stockbroker after watching "The Wolf of Wall Street" as a teen. However, life had different plans, and he soon found himself immersed in the vibrant and often unpredictable world of collectible cards.
For Connor, the timing of his plunge into card breaking couldn't have been more fortuitous. The pandemic led to an unprecedented boom in the card collecting industry as people turned to nostalgic hobbies to escape the uncertainties of their everyday lives. In late 2019, during a friend’s lacrosse trip, Connor was introduced to card breaking—a form of collective investment where enthusiasts buy into a slot for a chance to acquire prized cards without purchasing entire boxes individually. The boom turned a small Facebook group into a massive community in just months.
One of the most exciting aspects of card breaking is the thrill it provides to participants when they open packs live. Listeners will appreciate Connor explaining the allure of this market and how it resembles a casino setup. The notion that a participant could spend very little but win a highly valuable card adds an exciting element to the break. Connor reveals that it’s not about gambling in the traditional sense; rather, it's about creating a communal experience where collectors both young and old come together to celebrate their shared passion.
Entering into the investment landscape, the conversation meanders into how card collecting mirrors the stock market. Connor shares several insightful strategies for collectors that include identifying valuable rookies, understanding market trends, and recognizing when to hold or sell cards based on performance. The rising prices of select cards caught many collectors off guard, but as Connor highlights, many of these price hikes reflect a larger cultural shift towards viewing collectibles as viable investment assets.
As the episode progresses, we dive deep into the workings of We The Hobby. Connor shares the excitement of joining a rapidly growing company that’s held up not only by the love for cards but also by a commitment to creating a high-quality customer experience. The path from occasional breaks to professional streams has been a wild ride, one that he's embraced full-heartedly. Opportunities for expansion are on the horizon, with exciting developments including a new podcast and additional products being unveiled.
In conclusion, Connor Schisler’s journey reflects the industry's dynamics as well as the cultural relevance of card collecting today. It’s not just that collectible cards are back—they're evolving into an entirely new realm of interest that combines nostalgia, investment potential, and community. For listeners intrigued by the intersection of collectibles and culture, the current climate creates a perfect storm for engagement and investment alike.
Listen to our episode to dive deeper into the captivating world of card breaking and what it means to be at the forefront of this movement, and prepare for insights that could set you on a path to discovering your next prized collectible or understanding the bigger picture of collectible, card-based investments today.
this is the axi podcast, episode two bailey. We have a special uber special guest right now introduce him.
Speaker 2:We're gonna have to do something with the. I can't hear anything over the music. There you go. How's that?
Speaker 3:music is bumping. There's the music on now no, it's off now.
Speaker 2:I can't hear you talking when you have to go.
Speaker 1:Enough all right, something we'll learn. So that was good for the audience only and now introduce our guest awesome, yeah, so we got uh, connor schisler, my brother-in-law, here.
Speaker 2:What?
Speaker 3:weird to say that now, isn't it?
Speaker 2:I know, right, it's really really we're joking about that earlier. Super awesome. Connor is a professional card breaker, works for we the hobby, and that's how he spends most of your late night evenings.
Speaker 3:Right, you're on stream opening packs well yep, yep, 7 pm to 4 am thursday through sunday. I'll tell you what it's a blessing it's. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:It's definitely different, but it's a lot of fun connor, when you were wrestling in high school, did you think you'd eventually have your resume in the first line say on air talent, nope yeah, that was.
Speaker 3:uh, that was definitely not the plan of attack. I was always kind of like a business-minded kid. I would say and my goal? It's funny, I was kind of thinking back to it the other day my goal was to be, I remember watching Wolf of Wall Street. I don't know if you guys have ever seen the movie.
Speaker 1:I wanted to be a stockbroker.
Speaker 3:So bad since that day on. So I was the weirdest kid. Everybody wanted to be a professional football player, wanted to be a astronaut. I wanted to be a stockbroker.
Speaker 1:That was my goal daniel, would you watch that movie when you were like 16 years old? Yeah, probably, probably. I have one other idea why you might have wanted to be the wolf of wall street after watching that movie.
Speaker 1:But but it's not that. No, and again I a mom. This kind of goes out to our vibes audience and we've got a little you know crew here in town through the magazine. But just the thing that we always like to do, connor, slow, roll it back a little bit. Like you again, watertown, kind of like you have your life as a kid. You go off to college Is it a Reese's peanut butter chocolate kind of peanut butter thing? How do you find yourself into what you do for a living right now?
Speaker 3:You know that's a great question. So kind of just like an overview of like myself. I mean Bailey, you guys probably know most of the story, but somebody that doesn't.
Speaker 3:So I grew up in Watertown, loved it there, but I was ready to kind of, you know, start something over, and I was Ken. My sister, bailey's wife, really got me into fashion as a kid and I really wanted to do something within that field. So I ended up doing two years in community college, at Genesee Community College, which is a well-known fashion school. Shoot lost you. I'm back.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 3:Well-known fashion school, but I also played lacrosse too, so they were really good at lacrosse. It was kind of hand in hand there. No brainer for me learned that it really wasn't my passion and ended up transferring. After my two years graduated, my associates transferring to Roberts Wesleyan, a small Catholic school in Rochester, did my undergrad in business admin during my COVID year. I graduated during COVID in 2020 and I was blessed to have also still played lacrosse. And my coach approached me and said hey, because COVID happened, you're granted an extra year of eligibility. So if you want to apply that to your master's for your scholarship, then you're more than welcome. And I was like, hey, that's perfect. So I rolled it over.
Speaker 3:I got my MBA at Roberts, stayed there two years and it was funny because one of my really good buddies how it, kind of got into card breaking 19 we were. We were on a trip, a lacrosse trip down in Long Island and he was getting in these card breaks and I was like I don't even know what the heck that is. I know what football cards are, but I didn't yeah, I didn't really know what it was. So I started watching and he's like, basically, they take a really expensive box and instead of you buying that box, you can buy a team within the box. Let's say you're a huge like for you guys example. I know that everybody's a Niners fan over there, so you can just buy the Niners within that product for like. Let's say it's a $5,000 box, you can buy them for $100 and any 49er that comes out of that product would get shipped to you. I just thought that was a really cool breakdown for it. You know as somebody that, like I said, business minded, you set your margins going into it For the consumer. You're buying either A the players that you like, b the players that you think are going to go up in value, or just see what the best value is going into the break.
Speaker 3:So I really got taken away by it after that night and I decided you want to know something. I'm going to start doing that myself. So I did it on the side with my buddy in 2019. And we were doing it on Facebook with a group of maybe you know a thousand 2000 people, and they were two other what's called breakers the people that buy the product and open it. There were two other breakers on it. Now when COVID happened, it was. It's kind of crazy to say it's an oxymoron, but it was a perfect storm for the card industry because, first off, you have a great, you had a great draft class, because your rookies are really what sells. So 2020 for football. You have Justin Herbert, you have Joe Burrow Tua was a big name Jordan Love list goes on. Jalen Hurts just won the Superbowl right.
Speaker 1:And then huge, huge quarterback classes came out, like the yeah right.
Speaker 3:Right, and on top of that, I mean, even then, you have Jerry Judy, you have Henry R ruggs I know it's kind of a weird subject now, but at 20 2020 is a huge name coming out of alabama, um. And then you also had basketball. You had zion williamson and you had you had tyrese max or, uh, excuse me, tyrese halberton, and then john moran. You know they were huge names and the biggest thing is, uh, you know, brian, you could probably attest to this back in the you know late, they were huge names and the biggest thing is, uh, you know, brian, you could probably attest to this back in the you know, late eighties, early nineties, everybody collected cards.
Speaker 3:It was a huge boom, and companies like companies like tops, like Fleer and Don Russ, what they did was, instead of you know, really hone in and make it more exclusive. They pumped out as many cards as they possibly could. For example, your Ken Griffey Jr I mean, one of the biggest baseball names ever. His rookie cards aren't really worth it because there's a million of them and that's what really collapsed the market going into the mid-90s Now fast forward into 2020, the market was murdered. I mean it was terrible. Then 2020 came along. Everybody wasn't working, they were at home, and all those kids from the 80s and the 90s are now adults and they have kids that were their age when they were collecting. They pulled out their own collections.
Speaker 3:They got their stimulus checks and all of a sudden it exploded. So we got in at the perfect time because we went from that group being a thousand to two thousand people with only two breakers in it. We still only had two breakers in it. We were in it in 2019, november of 2019. There was about a thousand to two thousand members by May. There was about fifty four thousand members in our group and I was just we were just pumping out breaks, um, and it was a lot of fun, you know Um no, it's amazing and what you know what makes me think about Connors?
Speaker 1:it makes me think about how these small economies are created and, like you know, what you're talking about there is very interesting because at that same time, you know, you had uh, it makes me think of the stimulus checks and a lot of people started getting into some day trading, some crypto trading, and then it sort of like squeezes what squeezes out of the people that are either sort of like playing around the game and then the people that actually monetize the game, and now it's like a real life. You know, for me, I've always looked at it that way, whether it be star wars, trading cards, whatever. Maybe bailey will tell you this. I think my brother's the classic one he hates me telling it, but he's got a $2 million comic book collection in Mylar and so the thing about. And then it's got this market economy. It reminds me so much of the stock market, which is a lot of times, if a market's down, it's a time to hold and or buy, exactly, and then you sort of wait for a pickup. But I think the companies, like you said, have gotten very sophisticated with it now and I think, like everything else, just like I'll use the crypto example again is the reason that you know, bitcoin is so basically kind of the leader because there's a limited supply right, and they've gotten really smart.
Speaker 1:We used to Connor. We used to get so many cards and I'll give you one example of like a Joe Montana rookie card. I had so many of those in my room that we would eventually get them, put two of them together and get a paper, you know, a clothesline clip and put them on our bikes to make it sound like a muffler. And these are rookie cards. That because I mean, how many Joe Montana rookie cards does a human need in 1979? And the answer is like not 30, you know, and so, but I do think they got really smart with it. I'm fascinated by it and I think it's funny that you know I always look at COVID and COVID for your generation in particular. I think it's this historically.
Speaker 1:I think you're going to look back on it and it really was kind of an amazing time where kids your age two things happen. One of them is I think they got disillusioned with the opportunities that was going to be there for them. That wasn't. You know. The whole classic thing is like do better than your parents did. And you guys are looking around at one point going like how the fuck do we do that? You know, the opportunity is just not there. And I'm not saying it's in in, you know, you know. But the science of what you're talking about makes sense to me, even that one. I had no clue, till you said it, that you could invest in boxes that way, because then within, let's say, I'm a 49ers guy, because that's where my passion is. Well, within that, like the, the, that's the, the macro is the 49ers, within the micro, you're looking for that hologram rookie card of that dude and now you basically put in your 500 bucks to be part of a big set or whatever it is, and maybe you pop a $7,000 card or whatever.
Speaker 3:That's the game right 100%. I mean, that's right on the money and that's what really sucked me into it. I like the way that you compared it to like Bitcoin and stock trading. That's why I fell in love with it, because I not only you can look at it three different ways, and that's how I say it, and none of them are wrong. All of them are the right way. You can look at it as a collector, you can look at it as an investor and you can look at it as both. You know and I picture it as both, and it's my lifestyle now, so it absorbs my life, but I love it.
Speaker 3:I mean, for example I'll give you a prime example Jalen Hurts gold RPA. I picked it up at the National, which is a huge card show in Cleveland. About 100,000 people show up to it every year. I picked up his gold Prism RPA at the National rookie patch autograph numbered to 10. So it was only 10 of this card. I picked that up. I only 10 of this card. I picked that up. I'm not a huge believer in Jalen Hurts, but at the time he was so cheap in comparison to Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert I thought it was a no brainer. I had picked that card up for $3,500 and last week I had sold it for $9,600. So just like that.
Speaker 1:I mean, I flip it Super Bowl.
Speaker 3:MVP helps right, exactly. And then I take, take that, I take that and I can either a reinvest it, I can be, turn it into something that I personally like, or, you know, see, I just I have that money to play with, so it's it's a really neat concept, especially on a bigger level and and there are so many different variations too.
Speaker 3:Like you have your, you have your penny stocks. Like your, your lesser rookie cards of that same player. Like they're super Jalen Hurts rookie in a PSA 10, maybe at the point was $50. You can sell it now for $100. You know, I mean, it's just it's really it's a neat way to go about investing in something that you can get a very, very solid return on really quick if you're smart with the game and you can have it physically in your hand where, like stocks, you don't. You know that's. It's like a bore, it's like a more fun way to invest in stock.
Speaker 1:That's how I look yeah, it is, it is. And then the trippy thing, bailey, do you still? Did you? I, I? I'm a terrible father, but I know that over a period of time we collected enough cards that we were given pokemon cards out for halloween because we had so many sitting around us. Do you remember that? Or were you too young?
Speaker 2:I remember we had taylor's big collection of pokemon cards and then you would help me collect. Uh yugioh is the big thing when I was into it, yeah did you keep any of those?
Speaker 1:are those in our stores or do you have any clue?
Speaker 2:I don't have any of them. I remember looking through them in the store because there's a bunch of baseball cards that I had Connor go through to see if there's anything worth it. Yeah, it was funny and that's right.
Speaker 3:That's the kind of stuff that I love too is like every, every era, like you had brought up Joe Montana, it's, it's, yeah. Sport cards are goofy and luckily, like I would feel as if I'm kind of an expert in it. From 87 is the 86,. 87 is your start to the junk wax era. Anything prior I mean it definitely be big money.
Speaker 1:So I mean you have Ricky Henderson in 78 because it wasn't mass produced and it wasn't heavily and at that time I'm going to have some shit for you to look at, because I've got some in storage that are again. Here's the thing. My tragic story is very similar to bailey's uh silk road story with bitcoin have you ever heard that? Story connor I have yes, it's, it's like there's. It reminds me there's a dude, I think, that just bought. Have you heard about that guy that bought the landfill bailey? No, he um. Did you hear that, connor, that story?
Speaker 1:a little bit that when he had the.
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, I'll let you explain it, but yes, no, he lost, he lost his uh his girlfriend threw it away.
Speaker 1:He had like a dude like we, like all dudes, clean up their room. He had it in a garbage bag, all of his important shit in a garbage bag she throws it away. They imagine, they locate the, they locate the landfill and like finally he's like fuck it, and he just bought the landfill, like it's an 800 million dollar hard drive exactly somewhere, and now he knows it's in one spot but that that's.
Speaker 1:That's bailey's silk road story and I think, uh, yugioh. The funny thing with yugioh is we had a really good collection because I would go down there when the stores opened and I'm as bad about it as bailey. But the thing that, uh, the thing, um, I'm also, I have too much of myself in me, so a lot of my brother's collection, connor, was sold. Like I had Incredible Hulk, a comic book series I had like $117 through $250, which now tens of thousands of dollars mint condition sold on a Friday night for $40 in beer money, because that was my priority.
Speaker 3:I mean, you just don't know, Like that's. I hear those.
Speaker 2:So I mean it's like stupid. You regret it for a lifetime.
Speaker 3:Like a similar story. My grandfather right. He obviously knows I do this for a living and he was a huge baseball collector back in the 50s.
Speaker 3:Right and big Yankees fan, so you probably know where I'm going with this. I know where you're going. Last last the owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks had bought the second. Only two copies exist. Second PSA 10 Mickey Mantle Topps rookie for $15 million and my grandpa sent me the article and he's like I used to have a bunch and I would do the same thing what you said he did with your, john. Excuse me, joe Montanis, he'd put them in the bike spokes and run them around.
Speaker 3:I was like that makes me sick to my stomach.
Speaker 1:Did you? Are you guys? Did they ever in any incarnation of you? Or do they even? Do they retro anymore? Do you get? This is so old of me, but they don't do bubble gum anymore, do they? Do they do any bubble gum in the?
Speaker 3:It's a totally different game now, no, no, it comes in the. It's a totally different game now, no, no, it comes. I mean especially in the product that we rip very high end. You know our average, I would say our low tier, that you know, nick, and I ripped. I love series one. This was still my favorite stuff. I don't rip enough, is that?
Speaker 1:so I don't get hockey here's the thing, and while I'm opening this, because I told bailey, I said we're having this fucker on I said we've got to open up some cards, while he's on, I know. But here's the thing is that that, Connor, everything is sold out. I went to my comic book store.
Speaker 1:I went to target, I went to best buy, no one had anything and then eventually I think this was like in a CBS and it was kicked to the side by, like somebody had sat it there with, like some laundry detergent and so I think, people, just people well, I think I figure it's hockey and I don't even know these.
Speaker 1:These are um. So you guys keep talking, I got it, I got a ton. So, for instance, in this what am I what? Like, if I rifle through, what am I looking for? If there's any? Am I looking for a hologram? Am I looking for what? So hockey's a little bit like looking for a hologram?
Speaker 3:Am I looking for what? So hockey's a little bit like I said I don't rip too much hockey, but you're looking for your young guns. I mean, that's your biggest chase and Conor Bedard is the biggest chase in that product.
Speaker 3:Okay, For the Chicago White Sox. He's like I think he's the only guy that I know in that class and those sell pretty well, I mean well over a thousand, but I'm I am not a hundred percent sure about hockey at all. Like I said, my, my bread butter is baseball, basketball and football and that's all. Well, it's funny, oh. So, going back to kind of how I found this company, after we um, me and my partner had kind of blown up and we were just ripping, um, yeah, we had gone through a lot and I was just running this through Venmo, paypal and Cash App on Facebook oh, end of year comes around in 2022. And I'm working at a pizzeria making $30,000 a year.
Speaker 3:But, yeah, the IRS thought it was funny that I brought in almost $200,000 in revenue and I didn't know how to explain myself. So I explained, I explained to them I was, I was terrified, I was absolutely terrified. But I explained to them that you know I'm, I'm running this, blah, blah, blah, and they were like, okay, well, you need to go get an LLC, you need to file it under that and we'll go from there.
Speaker 3:It's fine, this year We'll figure it out, but this upcoming year, if you're going to take this seriously, you got to lock in. So I had an option, you know to. Really I was getting my master's. Still, I was just finishing it up. I had an option to kind of call it quits or run with it, and that's what I did. I ran with it and I quit the pizza shop and I was doing that full time. You know, I was coaching at night and breaking during the day and we just do the same cycle every day. So, fast forward to April, and I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was finishing my master's um and it was funny because I got a job in pharmaceutical sales down near Kenzie and Bailey in um in St Pete's and I was like that's honestly like a perfect fit, like.
Speaker 3:I, I would love that same night I got that job offer. Um, I, me and my buddy were still doing breaks and he was like hey, this company called we, the hobby, which is their district distributor of product. Um, because, like you said, so you can go to there are a couple of tiers of sport cards. You have your retail product, which you're ripping right now, that you can get at Target, you can get at Walmart, all that other places, and then you have your hobby boxes which are, you're guaranteed your autographs much, much more expensive, but that's where you get your really big chases.
Speaker 3:That's what we were buying is, and you can only really buy it on a couple of certain sites you're not buying from tops.
Speaker 2:Is it like?
Speaker 3:is it being resold or only I think it's only from like steel city, only only on, you know, online.
Speaker 3:You can only get it from those type of places interesting okay so, or like your card shops, you can go to card shops, yeah, but you're paying a little more. So my buddy had told me hey, I'm scrolling Instagram and I see this ad for a company called we the Hobby. It's here in Rochester and they're selling products. And I was like perfect, I can just drive, pick up the product, come back and break it the next day. So that's what I did. I set up an account with them. This was in, this was in April, and we did that for a month and it was great. And then the owner of we the Hobby approached me and was like hey, like and reminder, I was not breaking, I had never been behind the camera, I was just backing, I was just paying for it Wow I was doing all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:I was having my buddy break for me Okay. So the owner, zach Stanley, he approached me and he's like hey, you've got. You're a young kid.
Speaker 2:You've got a good.
Speaker 3:And I, you know, I thought to myself I'm like, if I, I don't even care what this guy offers me. If I take this, my mom is going to kill me. I just got my master's and she thinks I'm going to be opening cards for a living. So he shot me the offer and you know I just I looked at my future and I'm like I'm so young, I love it here in Rochester, let's do it. So I signed up and here we are now. I went. I went from the ninth employee to the. I think we're at about 150. In this past year we did a little over a hundred million in revenue. So I'm going to try to share something here I was trying to show, just to get a sense of this.
Speaker 1:I think this might give us a little sense of I know it's not you, but I think this is we the hobby, and I don't know if this is pulling up, but hopefully is that sharing.
Speaker 2:No, I don't see it yet. No, I don't share it.
Speaker 1:I'll share it. Hold on, oh boy, you're sharing the screen. Wait, is that sharing? That is yeah, we're seeing it now. Is this it?
Speaker 3:Right on. This is a while back, okay.
Speaker 1:And it gives people a good sense. Right, it does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just that high energy Fun.
Speaker 1:What's a double unicorn?
Speaker 3:I want to find out, yeah, so if you guys want to finish it for sure.
Speaker 2:I'll let you guys hold on. I want to see this I want to see this.
Speaker 3:It's an older video, okay, I'm not like this all the time. I haven't seen this in so long. This is. This is probably a year or a year or two old, right right and I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:I just kind of like scrambled for anything off of it, I think it was uh, it's fine, I love it. I love it dude's, so it's so intense.
Speaker 2:It's so cringy.
Speaker 1:That's so good, that is so good.
Speaker 3:So those big boxes, that is our own product, that we make in house.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's called.
Speaker 3:Pantheon. So so basically, you have your sealed wax like what you just ripped. So basically, you have your sealed wax like what you just ripped and then, after you pull like a really nice card, you can send it off for grading. You know how it is with comics you send it off to grading to this company called PSA or BGS. There's also SGC, but they grade it on a scale of one to 10, depending on condition. So those are like guaranteed hits. Oh, my goodness, those are your guaranteed hits.
Speaker 1:My favorite part of the podcast is that thing falling every time are your guaranteed hits.
Speaker 3:My favorite part of the podcast is that thing falling every time it's, every time it's. You want to know what? I'm going to take this off the charts. That's going to be better. It's not going to fall anymore. So, yeah, that, that, yeah. Those are all of their guaranteed hits. Your floor is meaning the cheapest card you're going to find in that is 500.
Speaker 3:Your guaranteed ceiling is like 3 000 from their 5 000 box and they go from there and we have different tiers. So, like other nights, you know we'll run what's our chase card, which is called a unicorn. We also have super corns, which range from range from 8,000 to 20,000. And so it's pretty cool. It makes it a lot more enjoyable for our, our consumers, knowing that there's at least going to be something that really good that comes out of um something exciting there's no doubt and
Speaker 2:I'll give credit, I'll go ahead babe let's just say, when you guys are opening those packs right there in that your chat, you guys are selling those cards live at the same time. Or did they just go onto your site later, or is there? No, it's already refilled so.
Speaker 3:So we break on an app called yep. So we break on two apps, or, yeah, two apps. Right now we have our fanatics side, which is mainly baseball, but we also have a football channel on that, a little lower end stuff. And then we have our whatnot side, our main channel, which nick and I nick is the one with the really long beard, he's been with me since day one, nice, nice. But every single break at auction, for a single dollar, um, and it's a random team. So I have a team deck of cards, 32 cards representing the 32 nfl teams. Um, after you win an auction, you give me a number, one through 32 or one through 30. How many are left? I flip the card and whatever team is on it, they get within all of the product that's shown in front of them very cool I think that's I think it does.
Speaker 1:It totally makes sense and I'll you know, and I'll give credit, like even watching you there, clearly it's got it's, it's all dopamine. And then it is because the thing you watch, these unboxings, we all watch them and they have different levels of it, but that that one is, I'll give you credit, it's highly produced. You've got the personality for it. I appreciate it. Because it's one thing, there's an unboxing and then there's that sort of showmanship right, because clearly you guys are. Are you still the same team right now? Are you still together?
Speaker 3:Yes, we are Yep Same guy for almost three years now.
Speaker 1:Amazing chemistry, and so you guys are. You're building this thing, and it's got a little wwe in.
Speaker 2:There too, it's got a little bit.
Speaker 1:It's clearly a character that's not like how you're ordering movie tickets when you go well, that's, that's the biggest thing within this.
Speaker 3:Like I said, I mean we're it's taboo to talk about within the breaking industry, but it's gambling, I mean it's it. We're a casino, we're a live live casino that people go to, because there are a lot of times where people I've had people spend 20, 30,000 in a night and not get a single card back.
Speaker 3:I've had people spend $50 in a night and hit a $50,000 card. So it's gambling at the end of the day. But you're right, one thing that we going into this, that we tried to represent, is how can we differentiate ourselves from everybody else that's on this platform, for example, there's already, there is, I want to say it's 3500 different channels on whatnot that break at all times. How can?
Speaker 3:we how can we as a company separate ourselves from them? And that goes into our production, it goes into our entertainment value like it goes into our customer interaction and it goes into our product for the most part. Like I have very good dialogue with a lot of people across the app and that's why, you know, I we try and hold ourselves to the highest standard on that and not trying to boost ourself, but we are the number one seller on that platform for a reason because we hold ourselves to that standard. We're family, very family friendly, no swearing, we hold ourselves to that standard. We're family, very family friendly, no swearing.
Speaker 3:We play a lot of music that you know tend to represent our demographic, which would be our main target audience, which is mainly, you know, late twenties, mid fifties, and I know that's a big range more higher, higher income people that you know they hang out and they watch with our kids. You know we've got a lot of professional athletes that come into our channel and buy a lot. It's just, it's an amazing atmosphere and never in a million years would I ever think that I would be a part in a staple within an industry so big like this. Like it's so cool to have connections like this.
Speaker 1:I love it. And then the question I have is from a business standpoint, like even with the magazine and you know, whatever you're doing, you're kind of like have that moment now, but theoretically you're setting the groundwork for sort of like, I guess. I guess, in a word, weird would be diversifying, your platforms, diversifying so you have this production, you have this company and again we talked about it earlier there likely will be possibly ebbs and flows in markets. How do you see stability One? I think this is truly because you're speaking to your generation. I love that demographic because that means that demographic will be with you for a 20, 30, 40 year period if you play the cards right. How do you see the future of the industry? What's the kind of next, next, right now?
Speaker 3:Well, so, in terms of cards, panini is the top producer of mainly sport cards and they just got there's a takeover with Fanatics. So Mark Rubin, Mike Rubin, whatever his name is he's going through the process of getting all the licensing for licensed actual sport product. So baseball is already taken over, like Topps Chrome and Bowman Chrome that's all Fanatic product and they're in the process of taking over football and basketball. So it's really, you know, it's a good question and I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I know a lot of people don't like Fanatics.
Speaker 3:I know a lot of people that love Fanatics, so it's going to make an interesting concept In terms of our company as a whole as I see it in. You know, you know one, one, three, five year plans. Um, we are expanding another location I don't even know if I'm allowed to say it, but I don't care. We are going to be expanding to another location, um, hopefully down South, and entertainment is going to be our main priority. We already know that we're locked in on this and that's one thing I love about zach is that he's always progressive and taking steps forward to um to do, to do fun things and just different things. So, podcast, yeah, it's coming up. Um, we have connections that one of our newest hirees, serena. She's come from actually the los angeles, los angeles area. Like she was the um head reporter for the los angeles rams. She's now on board with us and she works here and she's got a lot of connections with a lot of professional athletes.
Speaker 2:Our.
Speaker 3:VIP program that we have for customers that spend, you know, seven figures a year with us. He comes from, he was an executive at DraftKings and he's got a lot of big connection with these big names that we can really get in with. You know, the sky's the limit. I truly don't know exactly, but I'm excited and I took this leap because I trust Zach, our owner, and I believe he's going to put us in a spot to be successful for a very long time.
Speaker 1:And I think you nailed it also. I think one of the things that's really interesting is that the right people are interested in what you're doing, and then we'll kind of finish out your segment here with something that I think is kind of, you know, super relevant to this conversation, which is the, you know, is lifting sports right now and a little bit of this market we just spent a half hour talking about. It supports these professional sports in a huge way, and the other one's fantasy football, you know, and fantasy baseball, and so that's in the sort of ether and the ecosystem that you're living in, and I think this, hopefully, this won't be the last time we have you on. I think what we'll do is possibly on this, because we're in an area out here the Axie podcast is sort of divided into three things we can want to talk about. One would be sports, and that would be slash fantasy kind of like sports. The other one is movies, video games, and so we kind of hit it on this one because in the Silicon Valley, through the magazine, we got really good like over the hill contacts with game developers and things like that.
Speaker 1:But staying on point with this is that I think you mentioned some of these owners and these people that are involved in it. They're smart people and they kind of understand that the old days of running a 17-game schedule or whatever you do, running playoffs and hoping it all works out for you is over. And these are international brands. Now there's international interest in what we're doing, and so when you said that seven figures and some VIPs is this big in the international market?
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean massive, Huge.
Speaker 3:It is figures and some some vips. Is this big in the international market? Yes, I mean massive, huge. I have. I have customers from name a country, they're from there. I've got them everywhere and it's it's. It's so cool to see it and you want to know. What's even more funny is that we in sports especially football, not so much basketball pokemon pokemon is it blows sport cards out of the market. It's actually insane. That's what I'm saying. I mean it's it's Do you collect? Do you collect them? I don't, I don't. I was a big Yu-Gi-Oh kid too. I'll tell you what. Drew, my twin brother Drew. He was a huge Yu-Gi-Oh fan growing up, and I was too, and we had all of our cards saved away and I decided to break them out and I got on TCG and I've I started selling them one by one. It's kind of something I do on the off days. I make you know three or four cents a card.
Speaker 3:But it's a lot of fun and it adds up after a while and I got to pay for Drew to come home for Christmas last year, so it was fun. Did Drew keep his cards? He didn't. He gave them to me to sell and then, so I sold everything. He got a good chunk of change out of it, though. I think he made like $2,000 or $3,000. Oh that's incredible.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, kind of cool. A little childhood, I don't know.
Speaker 3:It's funny, my old roommate. He is a Pokemon connoisseur. I have no idea anything about it?
Speaker 1:I don't either. I just know like sometimes when it kind of looks like that.
Speaker 2:I think that's what you're looking for.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna set that one to the side, and so that's the only thing I know with these is, you know, but I think the one thing I want to do because there is a I have this affinity for yugioh, a huge affinity for pokemon is that bailey, I think, on a regular basis. I think the, um, the we'll have sports when we have Connor on. But I think, and I do, my instincts are still back. I know what's bullshit, but then every once in a while one pops in here and it does kind of make you wonder, you know. It does kind of make you wonder these, these little ones, are the ones that are worth, um, you know you know they that kind of artificial scarcity and so like these companies that.
Speaker 2:But with sports it works where they end up being attached to the important mvps to get the best players. Pokemon is so abstract and not attached to anything. It's truly just whatever if someone decides this is a valuable card. That's the valuable card and that's exactly. Everyone chases it and so, like you can't, there's no predicting it.
Speaker 1:It's such a different beast it's like carl's art's never going to tear his acl, so his value's not going down, you know I would tell you right now, though, if you saw this, the reason I know I'm in the right industry right now is I've got nothing, but it looks like I'm an eight-year-old. I've got cards spread all over. I got my new comic book from Atlantis, bug Wars.
Speaker 2:Bug Wars. I love it.
Speaker 1:That's great and that just came in, and so that'll be part of it too. And then, before we let you go, connor, I think we're not going to spend a ton more time. We're going to do. I wanted to talk. Today was kind of closing out the NFL season, but I think you know, for me, bailey and I are both in a dynasty keeper league. You know, it's just basically sort of rookie redraft. You know we do a four round redraft of rookies only 21 on our rosters, kind of that classic keep everybody kind of thing, and you pare it down and eventually it's 21. But you're fully invested in it. Do you do any dynasty right now? Now, are you doing any dynasty or no?
Speaker 3:you know, I don't I do a lot of snake um ppr, full, ppr, half ppr. I've been asked to do a dynasty and I want to. I know I know about it but I've never played. I've never played, but I do have a lot of information on it.
Speaker 1:So take my brain, I'm ready to rock well, I think what I think the thing where it's more like the. The only thing right now that we're talking about is sort of like the overall general. There's a weird lull right now and for me, in like dynasty football, super Bowl ends, and it's kind of like if you hadn't done your kind of homework in college last year. Now is the time to spend two or three months and you get on YouTube and you kind of start doing mock drafts or what they are. It gives you a sense of like where you know where you're picking in the draft. But mostly right now is my time to kind of start going through. And for me and this is Bailey's in my fucking league, I shouldn't be telling him all my secrets but what I start doing now is I kind of start and you do this in snake drafts so there will be a comparable.
Speaker 1:I start doing my sort of foreseen mock drafts and then I kind of reverse engineer where are these guys going to land? And then I start looking at coaching changes, offensive coordinator systems, you know. So it doesn't matter if you have a. I'm sitting at four and I'm looking at a running back. I want no-transcript in philadelphia, but you can start looking for those kind of scenarios because I'm not throwing anything on anybody, but those running backs get hurt. And so I started looking at like like where am I on the draft? Who might be there? And then the other one is like, who are they playing for? How do you, what's your strategies? Usually? Do you kind of look at it that way, or how do you look at it?
Speaker 3:I mean it's like. It's like you said. I mean you, you really have to start your research early and that's that's what I wanted to focus on this year going forward. I got bounced in the first round of playoffs and we run some really big leagues and I just I made mistakes going into it where I wasn't prepared during the draft. In my draft spot, I was focused on, you know, that five, six, seven spot because that's where I thought it was going to land and I'm picking two and it put me in a tough spot. So but now that I'm trying to play Dynasty and I finally am in my first dynasty league this upcoming year, I think you hit it on the nose with knowing where players are going to be going.
Speaker 3:I already know that Ashton Gentry is the biggest hype right now in the game and he's an absolute monster. But he's going to go to the Dallas Cowboys and that scares me. That scares me. With Jerry Jones there, I understand he's taken running backs in the past and they've done well. Their offensive line isn't getting better. Tyrone Smith seems like he might not be coming back. Zach Martin I don't know what's going to happen with him.
Speaker 3:I mean, I don't even know if he's still there. The Cowboys are just a tailwind and they've got the Eagles defense that they're playing against. Washington is going to load up on their defense, especially on their defensive front, with Fedarian Mathis and this whole awesome defensive line. Like Ashton Gentry, I think he might go 1-1 in this year's dynasty and I don't love it. I would rather and I know this sounds crazy, but taking somebody safer, like a tight end, like Loveland, who might go to the Chargers or might go to the Bengals with Joe Burrow and you utilize that one too with Jamar Chase, like that's what those quarterbacks need, and I think those are a longevity hold that you can play out in the future. Those are going to be some guys like Travis Kelsey or like the Penn State kid I can't remember his name, he had a winning knee.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, shit, I'm spacing his name right now too, but I think you're on to something there and that's something I do in our last two or three years in our dynasty league. Is that, um, there's, there's huge opportunities because one the tight end position's down for a little bit. But I kind of see myself in our league as tight end university. I've even gone back to back tight ends. But then I'm sitting there with last year at one point I had kelsey mcbr, laporta and so, and that was mid season, and so I, because I just invested, I went back to back, you know, knowing that Kelsey from the year before, and then kind of invested in Laporta and then week one had a really good feeling about it, didn't draft McBride to pick them up after week one, but by week 12, you're sitting there with three of the top four tight ends. So I moved Laporta.
Speaker 3:Right 12,. You're sitting there with three of the top four tight ends, so I moved Laporta. Right, it's great trade equity, you know, I mean, that's exactly it for something that you need moving forward, and that's something I never thought about. I always just said all right, starting my lineup, here I go wide receiver, wide receiver, running back tight end quarterback. That's how I've always ran and I'm going to take a different approach this year. I really am trying to hone in on some players, corner the market and use that as trade equity.
Speaker 1:And then there's the lesson. Though, connor, the lesson is like a Bailey Bailey is what I think you call in the business he kind of drafts chalk. He basically is chalk and that happens, people win, like that.
Speaker 1:He's done it twice. It's so annoying. And Well, he's done it twice and it means it means like guys like us are sitting here talking all the smart things you know, backup linemen for the Dallas Cowboys, right, and? And the reality is is because what here's what happens sometimes, and this has changed so much when we first started fantasy football is that the chalk right now, with the way that fantasy pros and Yahoo and all of these, basically the, the, the information they're delivering you on draft day and the way they're ranking players and putting players in front of you is so sophisticated. It's not like it used to be.
Speaker 1:I used to have friends that tried to do it that way and they'd be drafting guys that got hurt the day before because nothing was updated. But right now you can kind of basically show up, even in Dynasty, Bailey has a team like that Like Bayley ends up, he's sitting there with Saquon, and so you know he's got a team that kind of puts him out in front and then eventually it's not even like Bayley. Don't you feel like that, bayley? Sometimes you don't even come knocking. People come knocking on your door.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've never initiated in my life for a trade.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but he but he cashes, but he cashes checks. There's a. There's a. There's a lesson in there. There's a lesson in there where, um, you know, I think you can do your homework, but I think, but you know, but also there's sort of a yeah, you can't over complicate a little bit. That was awesome. Hey, we're gonna let you boogie so we can get to our couple little reviews. But if you're cool with it, we'll have you back on again. Be a little more organized. Uh, I would love it.
Speaker 2:This was awesome. This was awesome. Thank you, guys. Yeah, thanks for having us.
Speaker 1:This was so great, and so you can bail out. And then, bailey, we're going to move into our, unless you. Connor, have you seen that movie Flow?
Speaker 3:I don't think. Oh, is that the wrestling movie? No.
Speaker 1:The Flow. It's completely different if you're, everyone is zen out, um, you know, basically it's, it's a hour and 35 minute movie, 40 minute movie, no words, animated, I think they did the whole thing with. It's an animated movie about like a, like a. It's kind of what would you call it bailey, like a dystopian kind of future where the world kind of almost post-apocalyptic maybe.
Speaker 2:But uh, I'll just kind of just like the about a little involuntary adventure of a cat, basically.
Speaker 1:Here Connor stay on. Connor. I'm Connor, Stay on. I'm going to show you the trailer, Cause that's how we got started. I think you're going to. I think you're going to dig this Hold on let's see Share and then I'm going to share. Look at me, I'm like a real life producer here. Let's share. Nice see, if this goes bailey, I think I read something that this was all done with ai. I might be bullshitting right now. It might have been, it might have been, but I think they did a lot of this.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'd have to check that out feeding the script into artificial, you know, so that the ai animated it. Oh, interesting. And so, connor's like this dystopian kind of future where we've lost our gravitational pull with the moon and only animals have survived, like with the tides going up and down. Wow, it's amazing, interesting. It's actually kind of like this weird emotional movie.
Speaker 2:You know you're watching it, you're like well, yeah, there's no dialogue, so it tells its story by just kind of making you feel these emotions and it's got cute dogs in it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, do you go to the movies a lot, connor, every week, every tuesday, we have half uh half half price tickets oh, awesome, my girlfriend go every tuesday. We skipped last tuesday because the thing or um because of um valentine's day. But sir, we went, we saw nosferatu and I can't remember the other one, uh, what'd you think of note what? It was okay. I thought it was good. Yeah, the, the cinema was phenomenal, but I couldn't understand what I was saying the whole time yeah but it was, but it was good.
Speaker 3:It was good. Um, the other one we watched was actually a lot better and it was a lot more action in it. It was it was about. It was have you ever seen the show? The boys? Yeah, of course. Yeah, the main actor in that, he, he's the like, the boyfriend, he's yeah, he played, he's the star actor in this movie and he basically bought, uh, he bought this robot companion.
Speaker 2:That's what it's called yeah, yeah, yeah, we just saw it a couple days ago too it was.
Speaker 1:How was it big? Yeah it was good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like just like a kind of action thriller, like connor said. Yeah, it's a fun. It's like a ai kind of horror story, to some extent a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's fun I'll tell you what I thought. We saw a shockingly good movie. Uh, we stayed home on friday. We watched a show called Better man and it's a documentary of a singer called Robbie Williams. He was in a boy band in the 90s. His life went to complete shit and then he rose back up. It's a classic sort of like documentary, but he wrote the whole thing. He stars in it, but he decided the only best way to tell the story was the. The main character is him, robbie Williams, as a chimp.
Speaker 2:It's a man.
Speaker 1:I'm telling you, watch that movie.
Speaker 2:It's. Yeah, I kind of wrote it off when I saw that trailer, but I'll go check it out.
Speaker 1:You're realizing when you're watching it, because sometimes he's so raw and emotional with the whole thing. The only way you can tell the story is the fact that that can only go so far with the way he wanted to tell it, especially with his drug abuse and all these things was through. You know, not being an actor, it's unreal, really worth watching.
Speaker 3:I do remember that. I do remember that, yep.
Speaker 1:All right, you're out of here.
Speaker 3:Awesome that I do remember that coming out. Yep, all right, you're out of here coming awesome.
Speaker 1:Thank you guys so much. It was good great talking to you guys. We'll talk to you soon. See you, brother, we'll see you later bailey, um what do you think? Let's get him. Oh, he's gone. That was awesome. Yeah, he's gonna be the best. I can't remember I feel like I met him one time at their house in passing. It would have been like when. It would have been that kind of one where it's like I don't even know if you guys are going to last.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to invest too much in this. Weird people in our family right now so yeah, I was just wondering, that's funny.
Speaker 1:We kind of watched, we can. Let's say let's save this, because I think we're already at 50 minutes. Let's save the review for the game Perfect.
Speaker 2:For the next one, because I we just got so much more out of Connor that that was that was that was incredible.
Speaker 1:I mean, it was such a good interview and we got, but we can finish up talking about, so we can put it in the captions and stuff Flow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a weird movie for me. I would say like when the credits rolled I wasn't fully into it. It was one that after I kind of sat with me for a little bit and then I was kind of processing it, processing I all kind of I started to respect everything that happened a lot more. I was, and I didn't do any research beforehand. So I was shocked five minutes into it when I realized they weren't gonna say there's a no dialogue type movie yeah and so then I've really had to kind of just readjust my perspective of what I was watching.
Speaker 2:But then it just it really it's just kind of a nonstop adventure. I thought it was really awesome Like it ended up, I think, kind of giving me like a good amount of like anxiety. It's just event one after the next nonstop. I mean, if you're, if you're going to get invested at all, you're rooting for that cat and he's almost dying a pretty horrific death every 10 minutes cat and he's almost dying a pretty horrific death every 10 minutes.
Speaker 1:No, and I think I think the thing about it like, as far as I'm going to go back quietly to the flow trailer here, so we can kind of see it as we're I don't know, is that sharing I'm, is that pulling it up again or is I'm doing?
Speaker 1:it wrong I'll be better full screen. Let me see if I go full screen. Hold on, yeah, there you go. Now it's good there it is, and so and we'll talk about as we kind of finish this one up a little bit. But I think I know what you're saying and I would say this that I think you have to be for that movie huge high marks for me but I do think you have to be like in a certain mood when you go to it. You have to be.
Speaker 2:It's a meditation yep, no, and I think that's why it wasn't landing for me when I was first watching it and, like I said, I just kind of had to readjust what I thought I was watching. Um, and it starts to come together more and it's. It's super interesting, like I spent the first half hour wondering even like, just, is this earth or not? And then they pretty plainly tell you with that big alien whale that don't expect these animals to be animals, because this isn't. Isn't the world, you know, at least it's always super interesting to watch those kind of animal behavior.
Speaker 2:I thought was so interesting where, like in that trail, just a cat being a cat climbing a pole, but then the next moment it's steering the boat and they're going to a very specific destination and so the animals all having very human behavior at some moments and then going right back to just the how a pet would act was super interesting and at some moments I think that was kind of like the jarring stuff that took me out of the narrative and I was trying to spend too much time trying to figure out what was going on rather than I wonder if letting it happen to me.
Speaker 1:I wonder if there's some truth to it. I gotta got to find out what I should do better when I do my homework on these. But if there is some truth to the fact that that was possibly like co-directed with AI, that is, it could be. Some of the maddening parts of when I work with AI, or we do, is that you can't quite communicate all the way what you're trying to get done and maybe you felt a little bit out on the other side of the screen, which is that part where I can't quite connect those dots a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think that would explain a lot. It'd be super interesting. Yeah, I'm definitely going to research that, but it's cool, it's beautiful. I'm super interested to see what the AI involvement was, because I was obsessed with the art style. It's such a fun Totally was because I was obsessed with the art style it's such a fun totally. I mean inspired by realism but with enough just kind of artistic kind of touch on it that made all of it just work really, really well it was a super cool movie beautiful shots I totally agree yeah and again.
Speaker 2:It just has to be like there's no success in that movie if they can't do visual storytelling.
Speaker 1:And they nailed it all of the what was that other one you guys were talking about called companion?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah. There's no success in that movie if they can't do visual storytelling. And they nailed it. What was that other one you guys were talking about called Companion?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that was with oh, what's his name? Something Quaid, but yeah, from Jack Quaid, from the Boys. Yeah, the dark-haired guy, the kind of like the younger dude, that's Dennis Quaid's kid. Right, yeah, exactly the old guy, dennis Quaid's kid.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly, no, I know. Yeah, yeah, but it's cool. It's like a probably near future world, um, where, like these kind of robot companions are the norm and he's got a robot as his girlfriend, basically, and they're like on a weekend trip, and then it kind of starts to I don't want to spoil the movie, but it kind of starts to devolve and you find out that he's messed with her programming and has some shady ulterior motives, and then she kind of becomes a littleolve and you find out that he's messed with her programming and has some shady ulterior motives, and then she kind of becomes a little more sentient than she should be and it gets a little graphic and violent and it's fun, I love those movies.
Speaker 1:I I'm telling you that that story has been told before but it's still really entertaining, yeah. I, at this point right now in my life, I can't get enough of it All right, enough of it, all right.
Speaker 2:Well, let's get out of here.
Speaker 1:I think that was um, can you hear that a little bit? Yeah, we gotta figure that part out. So it's like so there was one part where you're saying like you couldn't, I'll play around so the beginning you just it's just playing so much louder than your own audio is all, I don't know yeah yeah, I can hardly hear you over the music how's that?
Speaker 1:same, but it balances. You still can't. So I've got the volume all the way down here. So I'm going to get rid of that shit and then we're going to call this episode, then I'm going to figure that out. Hey, this was awesome, and then that's it, and so we'll see everybody. I don't know what this will try to. Usually I can fade this out on the back end, but if not, we're just going to say peace out and let the AI edit this episode, see you next time Bye.
