The Barcelona Messi Rookie Treasure Hunt

sourcing at the nucleus, grading for ROI, and dodging fakes.

I unpack the full playbook from my Barcelona trip to find Messi rookies: why Campió (Catalan) issues matter vs Campeón (Spanish), the true 71 Bis story (third-edition BIS replacement → lower print + set-builder demand), and how Europe’s historic grading friction (pre-PSA EU) created today’s raw opportunity. I walk through Facebook ad targeting (40–55 men), peñas/outreach, euro/Bizum constraints, Spain-specific negotiation dynamics, and a fake-spotting checklist (stock, color, honeycomb, album lines). Final haul: 30 Messi rookies; 21 submitted to PSA with conservative grade bands and clear ROI math. Four raws sold in 24 hours—why liquidity + velocity matter more than perfection.

What you’ll learn

• Messi rookie taxonomy: Campió vs Campeón, Mundicromo, Mega Cracks 71 Bis
• Why 71 Bis commands a premium (edition logic + set behavior)
• Field-tested fake detection & condition cheats (71 Bis vertical lines, Mundicromo centering, Barca edge flaking)
• PSA EU tailwinds & raw-to-graded arbitrage math
• Facebook customer-gen for vintage holders (copy, images, ranges)
• Negotiating in Spain: firm anchoring, when to walk, bulk structuring
• Cash, euros & Bizum realities for high-ticket deals
• Results: what I bought, what I passed on, expected grades, grading cost stack, quick flips

Timestamps
00:00 Thesis & timing
06:05 Rookie map (Campió/Campeón/Mundicromo/71 Bis)
13:10 Grading friction → opportunity
16:20 Lead gen (FB ads, peñas, kiosks, radio)
22:28 Payments, euros, Bizum limits
29:40 Negotiations that work in Spain
34:18 Fake-spotting checklist
43:15 Purchase breakdown & PSA plan
49:30 Fast flips, velocity, and next steps

Links / Mentions
– Shoutouts: Albert Pastor, Sebas (@gradingclub), Hooked on Soccer Cards, Sacc Cards
– Follow: @slabnomics • eBay: The_Canary_Cards

 Messi rookie, Mega Cracks 71 Bis, Campió, Campeón, Mundicromo, PSA grading, soccer cards, Barcelona, sports card investing, raw to graded, card flipping, population counts, fake detection, Facebook ads, World Cup 2026.

Hashtags
#Messi #SoccerCards #MegaCracks #PSA #CardInvesting #Barcelona #Slabnomics

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:13

Right, everyone. Hello. Welcome to a special episode of Slabnomics. This is something that I am very, very excited to bring you guys. And today, with the view of helping my listeners and viewers make better financial decisions when it comes to sports cars, I'm going to be going over my trip to Barcelona, Spain to hunt down messy rookies. So I'm going to lead you through the conception of that idea, how I decided that it was worthwhile, risk assessment that I made, then the trip preparations, some fun stuff that happened over there. Then we'll get into the nitty-gritty, the meat and the potatoes, talking about challenges that I had, finding the messy rookies, talking to people, going through the bartering process, a little bit different over there, and then finally coming back here and what we expect from the results. So, all that being said, the idea to hunt down messy rookies started a little bit over a month ago. So it was September 27th. I went over to the All Soccer and Collectibles card show in New Jersey, hosted by Hooked On Soccer Cards and Sack Cards, two friends of mine. And this was all new. I was going over there to support them. It was an all-soccer card show. We didn't really know what to expect. I believe they had 50 to 60 tables there. All soccer, a lot of energy, a lot of buzz. And it was only for six hours, I believe. People wanted more. So they're going to be doing it again in December. A mixture to follow Sach Cards. I know he'll be putting out more info as that comes along. But I was there and I was just walking the show. And this was, of course, after this big run-up that we've had, primarily starting in Messi and moving into Ronaldo and others. But at the time, Messi was very much on everyone's mind. And when we got in the day before, we all got together and we had a trade night that happened in the hotel. And those are always a blast. So if you've never been to a trade night, get out there. Um, it's just really fun to talk to everybody, see what they have, and just shoot the shit with everybody, to be honest. Uh, a lot of deals were done during trade night. We also got a little bit of the itch on the way over there. I wanted to bust some wax. I told Anthony, I'm starting to feel it. And he's like, and yes, we were able to hunt down some 2006 Germany World Cup. We were able to both pull a Messi and a Ronaldo. I pulled a Messi on the last pack of that 2006 uh World Cup Germany set. Really exciting stuff. And we were up until two, three o'clock in the morning just going through everything and just a buzz with excitement. And I think that's what really kicked it off because the next day I'm just seeing all the messy, I'm seeing the sales, and I just had the idea pop into my head. And I shared it with Anthony, I shared it with Gio at PMP, and I said, guys, what if we went to Barcelona and hunted down messy rookies? And of course, they're like excited, they're all for it. We're talking about it. But yeah, we do this and we do that. But this is tough stuff, you know? It's really just a concept that you're kind of exploring and just having fun with. But it stuck with me. And as I came back from that show two days later on Monday, I've been thinking about it the entire plane ride. What is keeping me from doing that? What is the reward that we might have from going and doing that? What are the obstacles that I can anticipate? And as one does, I ran it by the ultimate risk assessor, my partner, my girlfriend, Nidda. And I let her ask me the questions to quantify and to qualify the idea. And very surprising to me, she was on board within about 10, 15 minutes. And for her to acquiesce to the idea is a big green flag for me because there have been many ideas that I've had that she wasn't as excited about, to put it that way. Now, it of course helped that I sold it with a little bit of you're going to be able to go to Spain and eat the grilled octopus and all the delicious food out there. So, you know, you gotta know your woman if you're gonna be able to make a play. So we ended up making it a little bit of a vacation. The idea was at the end of the day, if I find nothing, we will go over there, we will spend five to seven thousand dollars, but we will learn things, we will make connections, and who knows what other opportunities might arise. If we don't go, it'll be a constant what if. And to me, and this is really important because timing is everything, this was a window that we have within the market. Now, I'm speaking specifically about the soccer market. The soccer market has experienced a huge run up in the past three, four months. I think everyone knows this has been happening. It started with La Maigne Mall, it moved into Messi. I think it's splashed over into Ronaldo and showing a lot of really strong signals of continuing with Ronaldo, but we're also getting a little bit of a lull. This is normal, right? When you have a massive run up in something, it's not going to go on forever. Demand starts to stifle a little bit as people start selling everything. People get excited that Messi's up 2x. They start putting all their cards out. Everybody that wants Messi then goes and buys it. At some point, you get a little bit of fatigue. So I think that's where we are right now. And the reason that this plays so much into the messy market itself and why I decided to go to Spain, let's talk about what the actual messy rookies are, and that'll help explain one of the reasons why I went over there. So within the messy rookies, you have two major qualifiers. You have the Campio, which is the Catalan version of three of them, or the Campeon, which is the overall Spanish version. They're printed in either Catalan or in Spanish. Those are for the Barca sets in 2004. So that's 62, 35, and 89. The Axio, the autograph, and the profile. So those are the three Barça sets in either the Catalan or the Campion. So six total of those. You also have the Mundi Chromo, which was the first rookie card put out for Messi. And you have the, of course, the 71 bis, the granddaddy of them all. And I learned a lot about that. So I'll get into that a little bit later so I don't just sit here and pepper you guys with too much stuff. But this is all to say that there are many messy rookies floating around. Those catalan versions of those three, the 35, 2, and the 89, were put out in Barcelona. They're put out in little magazine stands, okay, selling newspapers. And they would put out these cards and they would be put in the Barca team sets, knowing that this was the nucleus of these Campios, and those Campios are a little bit rarer than the Campions, because they were only put out in Barcelona, was a big deciding factor for me. So I know this is where they started. And why do I think they are still there? Well, if you know much about grading, which I'm sure a lot of you do listening to this podcast, you know that in Europe it's been very difficult to grade sports cards. That's because you had to send them in through an aggregator, that they didn't have locations in the EU. So you had to pay import custom VAT, you had to pay exorbitant fees, you had to pay big shipping. So it made grading cards very, very difficult. And whenever you have friction as someone that's doing anything, it makes it less likely to send things in. Add to that, most people that bought these cards in 2004 were people that were completing sets over there in Spain. They make binders. So all of these guys that were maybe in their 20s, maybe in the 30s, 40s at that time completed these sets, put them into binders, threw them into their attic. So as I learned about this, I understood that this to me was going to be like people finding Mickey Mantles in their attic in the 90s. There's a big run-up. All of a sudden, those cards that people just kind of grabbed, put into their bicycle spokes, or just threw into a book became worth exponentially more all at once. And people started going around. They started hunting them out of people's attics. So you have shows like Chasing Cardboard, where he kind of still has that aspect of his business of finding collections. So in my mind, I'm like, why don't we have the opportunity to go do that in Barcelona? These cards haven't been graded. And if you look at all the population counts, especially for the Catalan versions, those Campios, not a lot out there. You look at the 71 bis, even in lower grades, not a big population out there. So to me, we had this window where cards haven't been able to be graded very easily, but now that's about to change because PSA opened up an office over there. It's not going to happen all at once, but people are going to get more comfortable grading. It's going to be easier process. The first wave of adventurers are going to go out there. They're going to figure out the process. They're going to tell their friends about it. And then soon everyone is going to be grading similar to how we have in the States. Now, that's an assumption, okay? I don't know that that's going to be the case. I'm sure that they adopt things at different time periods than we do in America. They have different culture, different ways of life. But it stands to reason that at some level of rapidity, these guys are going to get more and more comfortable with it. And all of these raw cards are going to get graded. It's hard to find raw messy cards here in the States. If you try and go around, it's very, very difficult to find. So, all that being said, I believe there's going to be a concentration of raw cards out there for the messy rookies. Why is that important? Well, graded cards already have their value to some extent locked in. It is an agreed upon price. Now, I will also qualify that, as I'm qualifying most things here, by saying that you should be buying the card, not the label. Otherwise, as Jeremy Lee says, you're collecting labels. I 100% agree with that, but also there is the case that a PSA is considered the same as another PSA 8 to most people, and most people make up the market. So if you're just doing it the easy way and going by what the label says, a PSA 8 is going to be at this price that people saw the comps for. Now you can negotiate around that a little bit, but that is the guiding star for figuring out what kind of price range you're going to be, somewhere around that last comp, however you make it. But with raw cards, as we all know, that is, I believe, one of the biggest leverages for value is being able to ascertain the condition of a raw card. So all of these messy rookies that haven't been graded yet have the opportunity to be within this range of grades and range of values. And if one can go and find opportunities that allow you to slice off that value and buy them at grades that they end up being higher than, that's where you're really going to be able to make money very quickly. Now, added to that is the fact that I believe that the messy market is going to continue to go up because I believe we haven't gone into the true crossover yet. I think there's a lot of people out there in other sports cards, in basketball, in football, in baseball, that haven't yet started dipping their toes into the soccer market. And I do believe they will come online when those other sports are over. So you have the ability to leverage with grading, and you also have the added insulation of favorable market dynamics for a climbing price point. So within two days of clearing the idea with NITA, tickets were booked and we started the preparations for the journey. Now, to back up a little bit, one of the great things about being a host of a podcast is that people hear your voice and they know who you are. They reach out to you about things they find interesting and you can connect with them. So a few months back, a fellow named Albert Pestor reached out to me via email and we started chatting. And he said, I'm a very analytical guy. I love the message that you bring forward. Here's some questions that I have. Would you mind answering them? We went over some things about autographs, some prospects that he was excited about, and just general market conversations. I really enjoyed the conversations with Albert. We kept going kind of back and forth every week or two. Now he had said, if you're ever in Barcelona, look me up. Of course, I was like, yeah, at some point I'll come to Barcelona. I love Spain, the food there, and my girlfriend really loves it as well. So I'm sure we'll get there. A week later, I reach out and say, hey, about that coming to Barcelona. I explain what I'm doing. Not only does Albert offer to help me kind of understand the city a little bit more and plug me into the local network, but he proceeds to help me for the next few days figure out what kind of strategies we can employ to get to these cards because that's really the difficulty, right? The people that know what the value is of the cards are not the ones that you really want to buy from. To put that another way, if I'm going to buy cards from someone who pulls out his card ladder and shows me the last sale of it, it's going to be very difficult to find good purchases that are going to allow me, to allow me to bake in a profit margin. But if we're able to find those fellows that threw cards into a shoebox, they open up a paper and see messy rookies are on the climb and now they can sell them for much more than they ever dreamed. Those are the kind of guys we want to get in touch with. So what kind of strategies are we talking about, right? I start out with Facebook ads. And I'm sure most of you have gone on Facebook Marketplace and bought cards. The reason that Facebook ads work for this specific thing is because of the demographic that I'm specifically looking for. I want 40 to 55-year-old men, basically. And those are the guys that are on Facebook. And those are the guys that you can reach through those ads very easily. So I do an ad, I put, I'm buying messy rookies, put it all in Spanish. Thank you, Google Translate. Buying messy rookies, you know, buy now before all of the run-up in Hullabaloo is over. I'm going to pay good prices for you. Put a nice little picture of all the messy rookies so that they can see it. And I put it out there, maybe 20 bucks a day on the ad spend. And I specifically targeted Barcelona. I also put a few out to neighboring cities like Seville. So I didn't know how much that was going to work, but that was my one strategy that I started with. Albert also gave some really good ideas about speaking with the clubs of the people that are very involved with FC Barcelona. They have seasoned ticket holders, but they also have subsequent clubs that are under those kind of on a wait list to become seasoned ticket holders. That's how big FC Barcelona is for their fans. 100,000 people can get seasoned tickets, and they probably have a million people on those wait lists. So all of these guys form their little clubs and they're able to get together and chat with each other. So his idea was to get in touch with them, try and get some data from the leaders of those, or just to make those acquaintances and see if they might put out some information that I was looking to buy things. We also had some thoughts about going around to newspaper stands. Now, those don't really have any central authority. So it becomes hard to scale trying to do that. But that was an idea we had. Also, some great ideas around doing some promotions for something like radio. All of these people that listen to these FC Barcelona games, they watch them on TV, but they also listen to them on the radio, I learned. So very interesting dynamic, but you can have a radio ad going and you can feel very confident that you're going to get to the right people through that. That turned out to be very expensive, as did newspaper ads themselves. And then lastly, and this proved to be one of the most important things, he connected me with Sevas, who is the big PSA grader in pretty much all of Spain. Like I touched on before, it's very difficult to grade these cards. So most people will go to a trusted person to do it. And this one person, Sevas, built the reputation as the PSA card grader. So I had a conversation with Albert and Savas before I even left here. We discussed pricing. We discussed how the market is over there. He let me know that people do have card ladder and things like that, so they know roughly where the market is. He kind of gave me an idea of the general hum of what's going on with the messy rookies. A lot of people over there are trying to wait for him to retire. Now, of course, we've seen him re-sign with Enter, so that's they're going to be waiting a little bit longer, but they believe he's going to retire very soon, and then they're going to be able to sell at even higher. But generally speaking, we also looked at some of the local marketplaces and we talked about those. And I eyeballed those as well. Total Collection. Prices were very high. People were even higher than the marketplaces, similar to how people do on eBay, but less willing to work out deals. So we're doing all of these things to prep. I'm also trying to get a European bank account because I need to get a good amount of euros over there. There is one of my first logistical problems that I realized. I can go over there with dollars, then I'm beholden to who's going to accept dollars. If they do take it, they're probably going to shave off more for that currency exchange rate and for their trouble. So I need to get Euros so that I can go over there and purchase. And it's very difficult to get Euros in large numbers. You know, some of these cards that I'm looking at buying guys are 5,000, 10,000, right? So you can't get 5k out of your citibank over there. You have limits. And those limits are usually 1,000, maybe 2,000 euros per day. So they're incredibly restrictive. And then my next thought was well, maybe they have electronic payments that they do, the Venmo, the PayPal, et cetera. Well, they do. They have something called Bissun over there, but that's something that also has small limits,$6,000 per month. Even if you do get everything set up, you get everything in the back end with your bank account. Now you're at$6K. Okay. Well, I could use an exchange service that uh you wire money to, and then they wire Euros, but now I got to get bank accounts for everybody that I do deals with. So that's probably not going to work. So I decided I was going to open a Spanish bank account. I reached out to the embassy in Houston, sent them a message in Spanish, said, Hey, you guys open these bank accounts for travelers over there that do business. I'd like to open one. Here are the things that you need. Please help me with this. Now that didn't work out. They pretty much came over and said, we're not going to do that without too much rationale. So that sucks. So I go over there, I have 10,000 US in cash, and I'm like, I'm going to figure out how to get Euros at some point. In the meantime, I'm going to make this connection with the PSA Greater Savas. He already has some cards that he wants me to look at on behalf of his clients. So I'll go do that and we'll just wing it. So I'm now traveling over there and I'm also chatting with everyone that's come from my Facebook ad. This ad got about 800 likes on it. Comments were flying fast and furious, and people were hitting me up in the messages. I have to translate everything because my Spanish isn't what I used to be. So I'm Google translating what they said, Google translating it back to them, saying, send me pictures. You know, they're trying to get me to give them a price before they even send pictures. I'm trying to do all this while trying to coordinate how I can get to the people I need to get to and organize meeting places. And do I just sit there and let them come to me? Do I meet them where they are? You know, how do I prioritize all these messages coming in? So definitely a pretty big task. But what I found was you start winnowing things down. So with that, that issue of having too many things going on, I started to prioritize a little bit heavier. I had to qualify them a little bit harder. So the first thing they do when they send me is they ask for a price. How much are you going to pay for me? I have this. Look, I'm not able to give you that until I see the cards. Here's the range that I'm comfortable paying. And that range was about a PSA one to a PSA six. I wasn't going to go over really paying a PSA six because if I'm paying that out, then I really don't have much more ceiling that I can get to. I also am not really anticipating someone to pop with a PSA 8, PSA 9. Or PSA 10. And if they do, then it leaves me a little bit more room to negotiate. If the PSA 10 is 50K and the PSA 1 is 500 bucks, I can't really give them the range of 500 to 50K. I just have no real negotiating power if I do that. So it's better, I found, to be like, hey, typically I'm going to pay 500 to 1500 euros. If there is an exception and we have a beautiful card, then I might be able to pay a little bit more. So that's the messaging that I gave people. And the crazy thing that I found, y'all. So not to give away too much of the results, but the crazy thing that I found, I turned down five times the amount of cards that I ended up purchasing. Now, some of these were just not messy rookies, but some of them were just not the kind of condition that I really wanted to even take a look at. Wasn't even really worth the time being able to get in touch with them, go there, negotiate, haggle. So there's a lot out there. And there's a lot that people are willing to negotiate about, but it takes extra work. One of the lessons that I learned very quickly over there is some of them have watched the card shows, the content put out like King of Cards and other creators, and they've seen how we negotiate in the States. And one person actually said to me multiple times, I'm not going to negotiate like you Americans negotiate. And I was like, okay. I was like, but this is where I'm comfortable being. And he's like, no, no, I'm not going to negotiate like Americans negotiate. I'm like, well, I kind of just turned it back over to him. Well, tell me where you want to be. And then he goes, this and this and this. And now I have to do a little bit of legwork, but you know, I can't do that because of this and this and this. So I found that really funny that uh they didn't want to negotiate like Americans. Because what I found that we do is if you're selling, you're going to go higher than what the market is. If I'm trying to buy, I'm going to go, I'm going to go lower than where I'm willing to actually come up to. And then we're going to meet somewhere in the middle. And we all kind of realize this. I used to try and sell just by being like, hey, this is my price, and I'm sticking to it. People in America like to have a deal, even if it's 10%, they just want to feel like they made a deal. It was different in Spain. Much more taking a hard line on something and either letting them come to you or being willing to walk away. The negotiations were very tough over there. And I found that because I tried to be very fair from the outset. I tried to just say, look, from my estimation of this, this is where I'm at because of a cash discount. You know, I need to be here. I need to be able to make a money on this as well. I know you think it's a PSA 7. I can't pay you as a PSA 7. Otherwise, it wouldn't make any sense for us to do this. Tried to explain I'm taking on the risk. But what it really came down to is I say, look, man, I can literally pay you this. And then you wait. And then a lot of times they will respect that. They'll kind of dance around and they'll try and negotiate and they'll keep trying to go this way and that way. But I found that the Spanish people that I spoke with who were looking to sell these things, they would come to that price if it was reasonable and if you made it clear why it was reasonable. Because at the end of the day, as a buyer, you really are taking on all of the risk. You are handing over the liquid cash currency to them that they can do anything they want with. And they are giving you a piece of cardboard that you are hoping either today or tomorrow will be worth more. That's the long and the short of the thing that you're doing. And you're doing that over and over and over. Some of these cards that I found, like the BIS, especially, right? The 71 bis, let me go into that a little bit with you guys because what I found over in Barcelona was a new appreciation for what the 71 bis is. Before I did this trip, and before I really learned a lot about the messy rookies, I looked at all the other ones and compared them to the BIS, and I was like, why is the BIS so much more expensive? I mean, sure, the photo looks, I don't know, I guess a little bit more lifelike, a little bit better photo, but it it it doesn't strike me that much harder. I kind of like the autograph one with the 89. That's a little personal preference, a little bit of bias, because that was the first one that I bought. What I learned about the beasts in talking to people is that the mega crack set comes out in three editions. It comes out in the first edition, the second, the third. The first edition comes out with the team as it is at that time, in June or July, usually. And a lot of new signings and a lot of new maneuvers happen in the next six months during that first transfer window. So the team isn't really settled until, say, November or so. So they have a second edition where they have some of the new signings in there who are taking place of the old first edition people who got moved out. So if you remember back when I first started talking about Spaniards and how they collect, they have the album and they want to fill the album with all of the players of their team. So when someone gets moved out, you have to get the new player to fill your album, right? And so this is called the beasts, the two. So that player gets put into the back of the album usually, and they're the ones that replaced the other player. Messi was a beast, meaning he replaced another player as a late signing. So these cards are a lot more rare because only the people that are truly trying to finish their sets are going to be the ones that hunt after these beasts. They're just kind of like afterthoughts for the team. The team was already settled. They were already good to go. People were getting comfortable with it. Now these new guys come in. They don't know if they're going to be any good or not. Messi's Beast was only in the Mega Cracks 2004-2005 third edition. It wasn't in the other two. So it was very difficult to find this card, and further, very difficult to hold condition. These weren't very high quality cards on the print stock. People really forgot about them or they got chewed up or they didn't really care about them. Messi wasn't really that ballyhood back then, and Barcelona was a bad team. So the Beast has almost this allure in that it was kept and printed the least of all of the Messi rookies. People kept the Barca sets, right? The 89, the 35, and the 62s, because they wanted those as part of the team sets, right? And because they printed a lot of those, Panini printed a lot of those team sets for them because they knew the demand was high. But the Beast for the Mega Cracks, like that was much less on the print run. It shows in the pop counts, guys. If you check the beast pop counts, they're super low. Like I said, even on lower grades. So trying to buy raw beasts over there brings me to my next big problem. Fakes. When you go over there, people will instantly tell you, and very helpful people, very kind people, there's a lot of fakes out there. Be careful. I went to a marketplace one time. They have a Sunday marketplace where everyone gets together. Mostly they're selling books and things like that, but table or two sells some cards. And a friend that I made there called me. I had just left him and he called me. And I'm like, hey, what's going on? And he's like, hey, I just want you to be careful. I heard someone talking about how they're going to sell you fakes right there at that table. And I just want you to have a heads up. That's how prevalent it is over there. People are trying to pass the turd, as it were. And there's a lot of fake cards running around. So this is a huge risk. And it's very possible that some of the cards I have could be fake. That's absolutely a risk that I'm aware of. The things you have to look for are coloring, shading. You need to look at the honeycomb print lines. You want to be able to see that. And then you want to also feel the card and make sure that it's the same stock as another one. Rule of thumb, if you're ever going to do this, and if I were to had have more time to prepare for this, I would have had a graded copy with me so that I could compare and contrast every single one. And secondly, second piece of advice, always do deals when you have full light. Some of the deals I made were on a terrace, and I'm out there with like a phone light trying to shine it on. I did myself a disservice by doing that, not being able to see the condition as clearly in the dark and also putting you on higher risk. If you're afraid of not being able to make any mistakes, it's going to keep you from being able to see some opportunities. That being said, the third challenge I kind of want to bring up here walking around with a bunch of cash in a place where you don't really know everyone and where you're at risk, right? So to minimize that risk, I tried to keep as low a profile as possible. I tried not to let people know where I was going to be unless it was a public place and unless it was in the daylight. At first, I thought I was going to go over there and just sit on a chair and let people come to me. I realized that that would be a little bit higher of a risk for some bad actors being able to know my location at all times. I did a lot of deals in the hotel that I was at. I was at the Hotel Diagonal Mar, the Hilton, um, and very beautiful place, great hotel lobby. People could come there very safe, plenty of supervision and security. So those are pretty much the three main challenges that I found. And I talked a little bit about how the negotiations went. Like I said, a lot of them ended up not panning out, but that's a good thing. I've found more and more in my life that I like when not everything goes through. Sometimes we need almost an enforced discipline, cultivating a feeling of I'm glad that didn't work out. Maybe this doesn't make a lot of sense to other people, and maybe I'm doing a poor job explaining it, but I've been trying to learn how to talk myself into a deal instead of talk myself out of a deal. So how do I qualify the deal to myself almost as I'm my own accountant? Like, okay, Matt, sell me on why you're going to be buying this. You know, what's your investment thesis for this? What's your timeline? Why is it this card instead of another card? What's what's the liquidity on this? Are you being influenced to buy this card by another factor that's outside of yourself or by some emotion? So the more I turned down deals when I was in Barcelona, the better deals I made. Because a lot of times people would come with pretty poor condition cards. And it can be uncomfortable when they've traveled an hour to see you. And, you know, you've told them a range of pricing. And at the end of the day, you're like, hey, I'm sorry, but I'm I'm just not interested in these, in these conditions. I apologize. I really respect your time. But because of the condition that these were in that I couldn't see in the photos that you provided, I'm just not able to make an offer to you at all. And that can be hard for them. Maybe it's a little bit of a guilt that we have, a little bit of a people pleasing. But at the same time, you're trying to do the best that you can for yourself. And as long as you're not leading people on or making false promises, that's just part of the game as well. You should never feel that you need to buy something. So the more I exercised that and the more I was able to hone in on what I really wanted, the better my deals got. And at first, people were bringing me rookies that were already graded. And again, going back to that point, I don't really want graded cards unless I can get a good discount on them. So say some of the cards, say a Moundie Chromo 7, reached a lot higher of a level and we're in a nice dip, right? To where I was looking at, well, this is$1,000 under where it was two weeks ago. I talk a lot about floor and ceiling. If the ceiling I've seen two weeks ago was$1,000 more, and the floor to me is held up by the World Cup hype and by the fact that we're going to get an on rush of people, in my opinion, into the market, that still makes that a really good deal. But if they're trying to get the top of the market, the highest comp, sure, you might be able to make money on that if the market goes up. But now you've lost an out. In poker, the best hands have outs that you can grab on the turn in the river. Same thing here. If my outs are both the card could go back up in value because I've already seen it do that, and the overall market can lift that boat. I have multiple outs, which means that it's much more likely statistically that I'm going to win that deal. So I did end up buying five graded cards. One of them was a beast. TSA4, nothing crazy. We went back and forth on that one, but I ended up doing a bulk deal on that. So I bought two cards from him, and I was able to knock off some of the value for both of those. And the Beast is another one that had higher highs when I bought it. So I was able to get it on a little bit of a downturn. And like I told you guys with that story, I think the Beast has a lot more educational value as people learn about it. I think everyone's going to want that card at some point, even if it's a three or four. Uh the other cards I ended up getting that were graded were a PSA 7 Moundie Chromo, PSA 8 Moondichromo, and then two PSA 9s in the 89 and 62 Campio versions. So some nice cards. It was great to get those nines. Um, I told everyone that I really only wanted to get eights and higher, except for the beasts, which I wanted to get five or higher, but I ended up taking a little bit lower on the Mundi Chromo, wanted to buy from Sivas and start a relationship there with him. So was happy to do that. And that brings me to another thing that I've learned. Maybe not learned, but deepened in the understanding of. Sometimes you do want to do a deal just to start a relationship. And I've I do this a lot as well on eBay here in the States or on Instagram, because the more you do those deals, the more you're building your network of trust. Because at the end of the day, people buy from who they like and who they trust. So to be able to do a deal with someone and just kind of kick off the relationship is a little bit of highlighting the fact that you guys can work together because you've already done so. You have to be careful with that because people will try and push you into first deals that you don't really want to, that are maybe poor for you. So you have to be able to navigate through that and be able to turn people down. But there's a lot of value in doing a first deal. So that was my process, pretty much. I talked to Sivas. Being plugged into the local network, having Albert kind of be my guide, be my translator sometimes was so, so helpful. I owe a debt of gratitude to Albert, and he's just an amazing individual, very kind, very generous, very hospitable. Also, starting that relationship with Sivas was super important and is super important. I think I'm going to have more travel into Spain. I would love to deepen connections over there and meet more people. I also met the people that run some of the card shows. So would love to go over there at some point and who knows, set up a booth at some point, just be the white guy pedaling guards in Seville. I think that would be a ton of fun. So we'll see how that happens. But just good to have people out there spreading the word about what you're trying to do. They're genuinely helpful. And there were some times where I was like, well, maybe I shouldn't be spreading the word so much. I don't want too many people. Tell people. Tell people what you're trying to do because they will help you. And if you think that people are going to try and hurt you because of what you're trying to do, there might be people like that, but I guarantee you there will be more people who are genuinely good human beings that want to help you. There was a man named Joan over there who I bought some cards from. He's a world-class handball player. And I just got to learn a little bit about him, his history, and he talked to a lot of his friends for me. And the poor guy was sitting there brokering all these deals. I just am so grateful for the people that do that out of the kindness of their hearts. Just really shows the kind of people that they are. And I always want to pay that back. So then you get a cool come to Austin, you know, I'd love to take you to the card shows around here and come see a World Cup game and all of that things. So just making those new friends and connections was the biggest positive thing, I think, from this. Secondly, and this is something that a few of you know, okay, but I'm gonna let you guys in a little bit of a personal thing here. When I was over there, a day before we left, I was doing all of these preparations, right? I was sending a Compsie order of 400 cards in because then it's kind of working while I'm working. I also sent in a grading order, same deal, you know, make advantage of the time. I'm also coordinating, I'm figuring out where we're gonna stay, I'm figuring out how to get a car, I'm figuring out who I'm gonna talk to. I also decided to propose to my girlfriend. We've been together for two years and nine months, and we've been to Barcelona before. We have some history over there. I'm a man of timing, and some call me an opportunistic hermit, but this was the perfect opportunity to express during this time of craziness and doing wild stuff together that this is the person that I want to be with. Spring the day before, I had her sister come and meet us there and surprise her. And then while I'm figuring all this crazy stuff, I figured out how to propose to her where I wanted to go and got all that sorted. And just life is good. You know, life is good when you take the risks and decide that it's not about being ready, it's about making yourself ready. So, but just wanted to share that fun news with you guys. So, all of these things, we got it wrapped up in pretty much a week. Now, there's still leads trickling in, there's still people that hit me up, but at the end of the day, I got what I wanted over there in that time span. 30 messy rookies are what I ended up coming back with. Now, five of those are already graded. Told you guys the grades seven, eight, nine, nine, and a four on the beast. And then four of them I kept raw. So 21 messy rookies have been sent into PSA to grade. One beast, two Mundichromos, and then the rest were the other sets, as well as one foil and then one top league uh base. So do I know what they're going to come out? Obviously not. But what I do when I get into this situation, I have 21 cards that I'm gonna send in. It's gonna be a big cost. Like, guys, it's probably gonna be 2,500 bucks in grading costs, and that's if we don't get a bunch of upcharges. That's if I do a bad job, is$2,500 on the grading costs. But how do we maximize the process in order to make it replicable and to learn from it and become better in our skills? To me, you have to be able to track the things. So I made a spreadsheet, I put all of the cards in there, and I went through and I analyzed each one of the cards and I put what I expect the grade to be. And I gave myself a little bit of a range. I'm not perfect when it comes to grading. I've only been doing this for a year. But I've also sent in probably 800 cards. So I've certainly gotten a lot better than I used to be, and I'm by nature conservative. So when I'm going through, there's certain things to look out for. So I'll tell you those first. When you're looking at messy rookies, on the beast right by his face to the to the, if you're looking at the card to the right of the face, there are normally two print lines going vertical north-south, right next to his face going all the way down the card. If those print lines are there, and they're very tough to see, you gotta do a lot of shaking in the hand there. If they're there, you have a six at the most. There are also some album lines that you get with a lot of the Barca sets because they're shoved into those plastic lines and the bottom gets a little bit crimped. And that can really affect the grade as well. I can pop it down into the sevens just based off of that. So those are things to look out for. So I think it's important to know the common condition errors that you have on a card. Kind of helps you as a cheat code. The BIS is usually the corners as well as those two vertical print lines. Pretty low quality paper, so hard to keep the corners nice. The Moonie Chromo is going to be centering. If you've seen Moonie Chromos, you've seen the centering is usually very off. Uh, it also has some scuffing. A lot of the times on the front because that gloss is pretty temperamental. I found that most of the other stuff on the Mundich Romo, like the corners, are usually pretty sharp, but it's the centering and the scuffing. On the sets, the Barca sets with the 89, 62, and 35, those usually have flaking. So if you look on the edges, there's usually a lot of scoring, and then a lot of times that kicks off into the corners as well. You could of course have scratches on any of these things, but that's kind of depending on how you kept the condition of the card. And that's pretty much it. Some pock marks, maybe I I had an axion that had a lot of pock marks in it, so you have to look out for dimples. Not really sure if that guy dropped it on a bunch of gravel or ran it over on gravel or what, but yeah, those are the things to look out for as far as condition on the rookies. Uh we already went over some of the risks involved with fakes, and then yeah, I had 21. I told you guys that I got graded. Five were already graded, four were raw. So four I decided I'll try and sell them on eBay. If I'm not able to sell them, then I will get them graded and just kind of stomach the loss play by ear. Those all sold within 24 hours. Every single one. And I can tell you guys that I paid usually about 300 euros for each, depending on how it kind of baked in. A lot of them were bulk because I didn't go and buy like these cards that I thought were going to be a three. They got lumped into deals with cards that I was actually after. Uh so normally let's say they're 300 euros. I sold them for 900, 900, 600, 800. So the market demand for these messy rookies is enormous. And there just aren't a lot of them. So it validated my idea a little bit. Very excited, very pleased to see that. All that being said, you guys kind of know the breakdown of what I ended up coming home with. I told you a little bit about the condition things to look for. I told you that I went through and I kind of vetted and gave myself grades for what I think they could be. So I'll share with you guys a few. Do I think there are any tens? That's the first question I'm sure you guys are gonna ask. Think one has a shot. I do not put it down as a 10 in my little chart because I'd rather underpromise over deliver, but I truly do believe it has a shot at a 10. We'll see what happens. I just with grading, you never know. And with these things, there's no way you can decide that it's going to be a 10. There's too many factors. Greater having a bad day, something you didn't see, and you don't want to be disappointed like that. I did have multiple cards that I believed were nines. Of course, none of those were a beast. The beast I got is a lower grade, hoping for four on that one. But I had three cards that I believed were nines. If we get those nines, that pretty much makes everything worth it, because that raises the values so significantly that they pretty much pay for what we need them to pay for. So very hopeful about that. The majority of the cards, if I had to average out, probably eight to seven. But if you take the cards that I didn't get graded, that probably pulls it down to a seven. So somewhere between seven to eight, tried to be very discerning when I purchased my cards. That was pretty much it, guys. That's what I came back with. The cards are with PSA right now. A lot of them are in the two-week tier. So I'm gonna start getting them back pretty soon. When I have enough back, maybe I'll wait for all of them because I believe it's all at 20 days. So maybe in a month, I'll come back and I'll share with you guys all of the results. We can see how bad of a greater Slapnomics is. But to recap from this experience, some of the takeaways that I want to have for you guys. One, trust your gut, because the more you listen to your gut, the more you can take these kind of calculated risks, which I think is how you're able to achieve great things. Two, let people help you. The more that you do things with people and put yourself out there, the more your human power grows. I'm sure there's a better way to put that. But I think you get unlocked a little bit the more that you do projects with people and you challenge yourself like that. Number three, I'll say test your limits, guys. I'm fortunate in that I was able to just drop everything and do this. I'm not saying that everyone is able to do that. I'm very grateful that I have that ability, but we all have limits that we come up to really daily. And the more we can test those limits within reason, the more we can push ourselves into new echelons of growth. So make sure to test those. Make sure that you're challenging yourself and challenging those around you. So those are my three takeaways for you guys. I hope you enjoyed this recounting of things. This is just the beginning. I hope that this project is going to expand more and more now that I've started it. I will come back to you guys as more things develop. Please let me know any questions that you have. If there's anything that I didn't really touch on, and you guys are like, why is he not talking about this? Pop in to the DMs, shoot me a comment on any of the posts, and just let me know. Start the conversation. The only thing that I ask you to do for me, if you enjoyed this, if you thought this was cool, share it with two friends of yours. Please help this channel to grow. I am happy to provide content for you guys, and I want to make it better and better. It helps if we get more and more people involved. So share it with some friends. Make sure to like and subscribe. And as always, keep building, and I will talk to you later.