Sports Cards Live

Why do we actually collect cards?

Chris McGill brings a deceptively simple question to the Sports Cards Live panel: At what point in the collecting process do you feel most fulfilled?

Is it the research and discovery of something you never knew existed? Is it the chase and the hunt for a card that might take years to find? Is it finally owning the card? Is it curating, displaying and expressing your collection? Or is there actually something satisfying about selling a card and moving on?

Jeremy, Joe Poirot, Joshua Adams and Chris all give very different answers, and the conversation turns into a fascinating look at the psychology behind why we collect.

What is the difference between fulfillment and fun? Why can finally owning a long-sought-after card sometimes feel less exciting than pursuing it? Why can simply knowing that a card belongs to you provide a sense of satisfaction even when you rarely physically look at it? And how much of our collection is really an expression of our own hobby identity?

Then David Chase joins the panel and adds another dimension to the conversation: sometimes you finally acquire the card, set or collecting lane you have been pursuing and realize you don't actually love it anymore.

That leads us into curation, changing our minds as collectors, falling out of love with cards, the occasional relief of selling, sharing collections on social media and the community that develops when collectors discover and chase cards together.

There may not be one correct answer, but there is a good chance you'll find yourself answering the question while listening.

Check out The Hobby Spectrum at thehobbyspectrum.com and take the assessment to discover where you fit in the hobby.

Try AuctionWire at auctionwire.ai and use promo code SCL to receive two free months.

Check out Card Ladder and use promo code SCL.

Buy Pops and Comps: Truths, Insights, and Psychology Behind the Numbers That Drive the Sports Card Market, available now on Amazon.

And, as always, subscribe to Sports Cards Live on YouTube, turn on notifications, and if you enjoy the podcast, follow, rate and review Sports Cards Live on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
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A hockey card just sold for $1.281 million, and the Sports Cards Live panel has some very different opinions about it.

Chris McGill and Joshua Adams join Jeremy and Clark Kim just after the Macklin Celebrini Gold Outburst 1/1 Young Guns becomes one of the most expensive hockey cards ever sold.

Chris sees a potentially defining trophy card of a young superstar whose collector now gets to follow his career while owning one of his very best cards.

Josh has a slightly different reaction:

“This is so stupid.”

And that is where the fun begins.

We compare Celebrini’s sale with the biggest cards of Wayne Gretzky, Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin and other established hockey legends. Then we pose a fascinating question: for roughly the same $1.3 million, would you rather own the Celebrini 1/1 or the heavily restored T206 Honus Wagner that recently sold for almost exactly the same amount?

But the conversation quickly becomes about something much larger than one hockey card.

There appears to be a different level of wealth entering the hobby. Whatnot has raised hundreds of millions of dollars at a massive valuation. CardVault by Tom Brady is planning major expansion with a high-profile group of investors. And individual collectors with extraordinary financial resources can potentially pay prices that would have seemed impossible only a few years ago.

So does Macklin Celebrini actually need to become Sidney Crosby for today's price to make sense? Does Cooper Flagg need to become LeBron James? Does Victor Wembanyama need to become one of the greatest players ever?

Or has the hobby grown enough, and attracted enough new money, that the old rules for valuing cards and players are beginning to change?

We get into speculation versus proven greatness, the experience of owning the ultimate card of a young superstar, generational prospects, cultural relevance, Wemby and Cooper Flagg, and whether today's collectors will ultimately care as much about the legends of previous generations as they do about the athletes they actually grew up watching.

Check out The Hobby Spectrum at thehobbyspectrum.com and take the assessment to discover where you fit in the hobby.

Try AuctionWire at auctionwire.ai and use promo code SCL to receive two free months.

Check out Card Ladder and use promo code SCL.

Buy Pops and Comps: Truths, Insights, and Psychology Behind the Numbers That Drive the Sports Card Market, available now on Amazon.

And, as always, subscribe to Sports Cards Live on YouTube, turn on notifications, and if you enjoy the podcast, follow, rate and review Sports Cards Live on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Macklin Celebrini just made hockey card history.

We watch the final moments of the Gold Outburst 1/1 Young Guns auction live as the card sells for an astonishing $1.281 million with buyer’s premium, immediately putting it among the most expensive hockey cards ever sold.

But the heart of this episode is grading.

Clark Kim of the Cards To The Moon podcast joins Jeremy for a deep conversation about the current state of the grading industry and a basic question that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: is the way we grade millions upon millions of cards actually sustainable?

PSA has an enormous backlog, lower-priced submission tiers have been restricted, grading costs have risen, and millions of cards continue to flow through the system. So what happens when PSA eventually catches up? Could that supply affect the market? And with PSA dramatically increasing its grading capacity, what happens after the backlog is gone and all of that capacity needs to be filled?

Clark also proposes a completely different approach involving technology and pre-grading, leading to a broader discussion about whether there is a better way to determine which cards are actually worth submitting.

Then there is the strange economics of modern grading itself. Why can a raw card sometimes sell for more than a PSA 9? Why are collectors willing to pay enormous premiums for a PSA 10 when the physical difference between a 9 and a 10 can be virtually impossible to see? And are collectors simply grading far too many cards?

We also get into undergraded vintage cards, buying the card instead of the number on the holder, the opportunities created by inconsistent grading, and why Jeremy would much rather find a gorgeous card trapped inside a low-grade slab than gamble on submitting it himself.

Plus, what exactly does “vintage” mean anymore, and where should the vintage era actually end?

Check out The Hobby Spectrum at thehobbyspectrum.com and take the assessment to discover where you fit in the hobby.

Try AuctionWire at auctionwire.ai and use promo code SCL to receive two free months.

Check out Card Ladder and use promo code SCL.

Buy Pops and Comps: Truths, Insights, and Psychology Behind the Numbers That Drive the Sports Card Market, available now on Amazon.

And, as always, subscribe to Sports Cards Live on YouTube, turn on notifications, and if you enjoy the podcast, follow, rate and review Sports Cards Live on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The hobby doesn’t stand still for long, and in this episode we watch one of the biggest hockey card auctions ever unfold live as the Macklin Celebrini Gold Outburst 1/1 Young Guns pushes past $1 million with buyer’s premium.

What does a sale like this mean for modern hockey cards? How does a 20-year-old superstar-in-the-making command this kind of money before his career has really even begun? And does the history and brand equity behind Young Guns make this one of the true defining cards of the ultra-modern hockey era?

Jeremy and Joe also discuss some other hobby stories making noise, including the unusual situation involving Alt and the Cooper Flagg 1/1, raising an interesting question: how would you feel if an auction platform started taking bids on a card you owned without actually having the card?

Then Clark Kim of the Cards To The Moon podcast joins the show.

Clark shares his hobby and content-creation origin story, how Cards To The Moon grew into a six-year podcast, and why a longtime modern collector suddenly found himself falling down the vintage rabbit hole.

His first major vintage pickup? A beautifully centered 1949 Bowman Jackie Robinson from The National.

That leads to a much bigger conversation about modern versus vintage, organic versus manufactured scarcity, the history embedded in old cardboard, and why collectors who once walked straight past vintage tables can suddenly find themselves unable to leave them.

Check out The Hobby Spectrum at thehobbyspectrum.com and take the assessment to discover where you fit in the hobby.

Try AuctionWire at auctionwire.ai and use promo code SCL to receive two free months.

Check out Card Ladder and use promo code SCL.

Buy Pops and Comps: Truths, Insights, and Psychology Behind the Numbers That Drive the Sports Card Market, available now on Amazon.

And, as always, subscribe to Sports Cards Live on YouTube, turn on notifications, and if you enjoy the podcast, follow, rate and review Sports Cards Live on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joe Poirot is back from his very first National, and after a couple of weeks to process the experience, he joins Jeremy Lee to break down what surprised him, what overwhelmed him, how the show changed his collecting eye and, of course, what he brought home.

We take a look at Joe’s National pickups, including everything from modern game-used pieces to beautiful pre-war cardboard, culminating in a pair of major vintage additions that might officially put the old “Beater Joe” nickname to rest.

That leads us into a bigger conversation about vintage, eye appeal, buying the card instead of the grade, and an interesting question: with so much money pouring into other areas of the hobby, have collectors actually lost sight of just how important Babe Ruth is?

And then Mother Nature decides to become part of Sports Cards Live.

A massive Calgary thunderstorm knocks Jeremy completely offline in the middle of the livestream, leaving Joe unexpectedly in charge of the show while Jeremy tries to get his internet, modem and computer back from the dead.

Another night of cards, collecting and completely unscripted Sports Cards Live.

Check out The Hobby Spectrum at thehobbyspectrum.com and take the assessment to discover where you fit in the hobby.

Try AuctionWire at auctionwire.ai and use promo code SCL to receive two free months.

Check out Card Ladder and use promo code SCL.

Buy Pops and Comps: Truths, Insights, and Psychology Behind the Numbers That Drive the Sports Card Market, available now on Amazon.

And, as always, subscribe to Sports Cards Live on YouTube, turn on notifications, and if you enjoy the podcast, follow, rate and review Sports Cards Live on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices