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Welcome to the Stacking Slabs, a podcast for sports cards collectors. There's been a tremendous amount of change to our Hobby over the last few years and the one constant has been the passion from the collecting community. Stacking Slabs is built by the collector and lives to tell stories for the collector.
Alright. We are back with another episode of the staging area with DC Sports eighty seven.
We're going to dig into some year end stuff, which, Tori, it blows my mind. We're already here. It's been it's been the year has gone by really do you feel like this year has just flown by?
Yeah. I mean, you always hear the thing, like, you know, time flies as you get older. And I turned 40 this past year, and I feel like time about doubled in how fast it passes.
So maybe that's just true. But, yeah, it's like we were just talking about how the summer was going in the national. We blinked that it's December.
So, yeah. It goes a little too quick. It does. It there's a lot of topics and a lot on my mind. And so I wanted to spend this episode with kinda digging into maybe some of your thoughts as we close out the year.
I've we're we'll have one more of these. I looked at I think there'll be one more that airs before we officially close it out. Maybe we'll do a look forward, but this one is kind of a look back on the year.
But I I'll also say, because we were just talking about it, having an experience where I put some cards out, DC Sports eighty seven, and it has been I've been having fun with the app, seeing the sales come through and the ticker, going up.
And I just haven't experienced that on the consignment side in the hobby.
And so as a fan of technology, I Yeah. Enjoyed the app experience, which we've talked about and shared with everyone on here. But I wanted I'm going to be a case study for, DC Sports eighty seven on it.
It's it's cool tech. Yeah. No. It it was probably our most, maybe not our most impactful, like, thing for us operationally, of course, but probably our biggest, you know, tech advancement this year.
And, yeah, it's, it's interesting. We were just talking and kinda joking about, like, when people buy cards and how long it takes them to pay on eBay sometimes.
And we were having a little fun at the expense of those people who buy a card on, like, a Tuesday, and they don't get paid till next Friday and how long it takes them to pay.
So anyway, not to not to make light of, like, card addictions or people who get a little too far in the hobby, but, to your point, what we've heard from a lot of people is, like, just the process of consignment is so fun.
We think of it a lot of times. It's just, like, it's what we do. It's just, like, it's operational. It's logistics. It's day to day.
But, like, so many people get so excited at, like, hey. I gotta ping on my app that you got my package, and the estimated upload date is two days from now. Hey. I saw them go up, and I saw my active listings count go from zero to 50.
That was so fun. And they're, like, pulling down to refresh their homepage on the app like it's a slot machine almost, like zero inactive cards. $84 inactive. 200 inactive. And so, yeah.
Like, just being able to watch it from afar without having to do the hands on work is probably more fun for people than I, than I ever realized, but the app has helped us see that. So very exciting, and we've been really happy with it.
I I think one of the things you mentioned, the automated messages, which I appreciate. I am a I'm on team over communication when I'm working with a Yeah. Another person or business. It's like you you cannot communicate enough.
And to me, I feel like that's been a big differentiator for businesses in this space that are leveling up is just like this intention and this mindfulness to make sure you're communicating regularly and clearly, whatever your service or product is in this space.
But have you found just through kind of some of these tech updates? It it feels like for me just as a user, like, communication has been, one of the big pillars of kind of what you're doing or what you're trying to accomplish.
Yeah. For sure. I mean, one of the biggest reasons for the app was that we really did not like the, the support messaging on our website. It it worked.
It was functional, but it wasn't super easy. It didn't display as clean as we wanted it to in, like, a mobile browser kind of setting, and we knew we could do it so much better through an app where it just feels like kind of texting.
So, yeah, communication definitely important. It's a it's a careful balance because, like, if we wanted to, we get through a push notification to your device every time a bid gets placed on one of your items.
But at the same time, you don't really wanna spam people because at some point, you water it down a little bit. But, yeah. You know, the most common questions are things like, hey. Did my package get there yet?
Do you guys have it? When is it going up on eBay? So being able to use the app to just drop a quick push that's got your package, here's the date we're gonna upload it, you're good to go. Like, that that has helped a lot. So yeah.
Agreed. Transparency is important. Communication is important. There's probably such a thing as overdoing it, but, better to air on the side of too much. And I agree with you. We're gonna get off this topic and move into the episode.
But, the by as I'm thinking about this in the conversation we had beforehand and and, certainly, I'm not asking you to to to out or name anybody, but, we give the listeners a look.
Like, I was asking Tory about a card that, sold, and we are digging into it a little bit at the level for which he can as the, you know, business operator.
Have have you ever, like, in investigating a something that sold or didn't sell or wasn't unpaid, have you ever, like, come across, like, that the person that was responsible or not responsible was somebody, in fact, that, like, you knew of based on just, like, the the hobby being the hobby?
Like, is that a interesting part about your job is that you have, like, access to, like, what people, like, are doing in terms of buying or selling. Is that is that something you see? You're like, oh, I know this person.
Yeah. I mean, it it definitely happens just because if you've been in the hobby long enough, like, I've been around for a long time, you see names you know, you see screen names and usernames and things that are familiar.
We we don't dig into that a lot, honestly, just because to us, it's more how much did it sell for and did it get paid, and let's be sure we're sending payment reminders, and something need to be relisted and wasn't relisted on time, like, you know, short of, hey.
Something's solved higher than it should have, and we're gonna dig into bid history to be sure there's none of the shenanigans that have clouded the the media face of the hobby lately.
Outside of those investigations, there's not a lot of who won it, what else are they buying right now, things like that.
Yeah. We see a ton of names of, you know, big brand repackers and people who I know are huge single dealers and things like that. You see their names all the time, a package going out the door, a transaction on eBay.
But, yeah, nothing that we dive into too much. As long as you're paying for yourself on time and you're doing it the right way on eBay, I really don't care what you buy and nor am I all that priority, really.
Awesome. As we kinda kick this off, I'm always curious end of the year, what are obviously, the holidays are around the corner.
But Yeah. What terms of the business and, like, what you're looking to get done or priorities that you're thinking about at the beginning of 2026?
Like, what what's top of mind for you right now? Yeah. Just, and we talked about this a lot of these things this year, just kinda bringing them all together.
So, finding more big brands and big players and people in the space to work with, and then just leaning more into engagement and social and things like that.
So, you know, working with Breakers has been great, you know, working with the Mama Breaks team, working with SCN, Filth Bomb, Clubhouse, a handful of Breakers we're working with.
They've all been great. And for us, that's a really cool platform because we get exposure to a lot of people who haven't consigned with us before.
We get to be right on that front end of consigning things right as these products are coming out, you know, as early as on release day. We've got four different breakers now who are, listing cards with us.
They hit in their breaks the day of the product release with devices we have at their location where they can transfer things to us and then overnight the cards and a whole whole setup that's really exciting.
So doing more of that and then, you know, leading into things like eBay Live, perhaps attending a few more shows next year than we have in the past, things like that.
So, yeah, just just brand is number one. Getting out there, being in more places, and and interacting with more new people is really the first thing for us. Yeah.
You I have definitely seen a ton of collaborations from you and, obviously, opportunities, like, with other entities in the in the hobby, what are the types of things because I think part of the reason why I like working in this space is collaborations are, like, fundamental.
Like, everyone's doing it. But, like, is there any like, what are you looking at when when you're getting into a collaboration? Like, is there anything specifically you're evaluating?
Yeah. I mean, it depends. But in in most cases, you know, number one is is it the kind of brand we want to work with? Not gonna throw names out there, but people can probably guess.
You can look at, like, the way some breaking operations run and the way people behave. We're not gonna work with them, like, zero interest. So that's not gonna happen. But it's just yeah.
People who have a good audience that gives us the opportunity to reach people kind of organically because it's a it's a lot more impactful to go from DC sports and we partner with a brand and then we can hang out in their rooms and talk during their streams and offer service to our customers.
That's, a healthier more organic kind of growth than us just, you know, spamming emails out there saying, hey. Here's a deal. Come work with us. It feels very commercial and salesy.
You know, we we don't wanna do that. And also just looking at what brands are doing unique things because we learn from it too. You know, it's it's not just about us growing and us getting new customers.
It's also about what brands are doing stuff that we don't do a lot of. You know, I think, like, working with the Mama Briggs team has been cool because they do a ton of non sports.
And some of those categories, we don't see quite as often. And getting to work with some of those cards and people who collect that stuff that maybe didn't see themselves as a natural fit with us in the past has been cool.
And then, you know, obviously working with, like, the SDN team, you know, with Mike and Jesse has been great.
Having Mike out here to do eBay live shows, and they're really good at that, you know, hosting and engagement, you know, space on those events.
So doing some of that event driven stuff. So, yeah, it's just where can we learn? Where can we branch out? And what are the brands kinda stand for?
Is that aligned with us? And from there, just, you know, put on the gas, and let's go. Always appreciate getting that update and that feedback, and I wanna hit some cards that sold at DC Sports eighty seven.
The first one, I saw this card, and I haven't seen it in a while, but it's a card you regularly see, or there's a period of time where you saw this card a lot. To me, this is, like, very symbolic of the pandemic era.
It's like the the sale of the 2003, 2004 Topps Chrome, refractor, LeBron James. And one of the more wrecking this is a BGS nine sold for 8,600 on December 8 at DC Sports eighty seven.
One of the more recognizable basketball cards of this era, but I remember it being elevated to this position that was absolutely insane, when new participants were getting back in the hobby.
Now, obviously, the the value and the price based on the supply and demand isn't where it was in 2020.
But to me, this card is still very significant and meaningful just based on James, what is his one rookie card, and the fact that this is the parallel of that rookie card.
So, yeah, when you see this card, like, what what comes to your mind?
Oh, my back? Yes. Oh, I lost you right before your question, and then I just came All good. We'll get it cleaned up. My question was is when you see this card, kind of what comes to your mind?
Yeah. I mean, you know, if I'm thinking about basketball cards, you kinda go by arrows. It's like in the eighties, it was the Jordan flair rookie. In the nineties, to me, it's the Kobe Topps Chrome rookie.
In the February, it's this LeBron. So it's kind of the iconic card of a generation of players. You know, LeBron, a little bit unique because he's spanned, like, multiple generations of players at this point.
I mean, we're on year, what, 23. So, you know, but yeah, I mean, we, you know, we always kinda joke and, like, say if it's basketball, if it's shiny, if it's Chromie and it's a rookie, like, it's gonna stand out.
So, you know, you take a guy of LeBron standing, and obviously, everybody kinda anchors this card for his rookie year.
So, yeah, like you said, it's it's interesting because of the crazy bubble we saw during the pandemic and what happened in the hobby, but certainly feels like some of these, grail pieces of the all time players have started kind of a new ascent in the hobby as all the new money and new people come in.
So, yeah, I don't think it's ever gonna lose its standing though. You know, we'll see kind of over time what the appreciation's like as his career winds down and everything goes from there.
But, yeah. Definitely definitely, you know, this is kind of the card of that of that decade for me. This feels like the first year, since doing these podcasts that I didn't regularly bring up.
Like, do you remember in the pandemic this sale and this happening this year? Like, I rarely did that, and that's probably because it's been a crazy year in and of itself.
But maybe if we do that for a second, as someone who was working in a business in this space who's was a collector, what was what was going on in your mind based on your knowledge of how cards work, supply, demand, when you were seeing, you know, these cards sell for 6 figures regularly?
Like, how did you absorb it? Yeah. I mean, I think we all knew it wasn't gonna last.
You can say whatever factors people thought at the time. It's like, oh, we're all working from home, and it's more people getting into a hobby or people who are not working their full hours and are online buying sports cards.
It's people using stimulus checks on collectibles. Who who knows what it was? But, yeah, I've never these weren't it's kinda interesting because proportionally, it's maybe a little different, but I didn't think it was sustainable.
I don't think any of us did. I think there were a ton of people who had these cards carrying into that era of the hobby that cashed in and good for them.
What really was the red flag for me wasn't these. Obviously, the price wasn't sustainable if this card was doing 6 figures or anything close to it.
I think we all know that. It was when we started seeing, like, those two thousand nineteen, twenty Prizm Xions that were PSA tens selling for thousand dollars or whatever it was.
And the the base Jordan first year as a Laker cards where he's in a Laker uniform in that twenty nineteen twenty Prizm card and PSA 10 is going off for 4 or $500 And we all we all saw the pop counts.
We all knew how much of that product was printed. There were a million different SKUs across retail and hobby and everything else.
And yet to batch that up fetch that amount, it just, you know, there was no way it was gonna continue. And and hopefully people were sharp enough to take advantage of the time and kind of play the the ebbs and flows of the market.
But, yeah, it's it's a little crazy that we were talking about, you know, I think of it as like Jordan rookie, Kobe rookie, LeBron rookie by the decades, then you get to the 20.
And, like, the first part I think of is the Zion rookie just because of the craze that happened around COVID, When now it's like, alright.
Well, sure. Here's $20. I'll take a PSA 10. Thanks. So yeah. You know? Just have to ride the wave sometimes.
Thanks for stepping in back inside the bubble with me, and it's in bringing up Zion. It feels weirdly therapeutic in a way, and not much change with Zion's, track record in terms of what he's done or mostly what he hasn't done.
Another basketball card here is the 6162 Chamberlain rookie, flair 6162 Chamberlain rookie selling for this is a a PSA nine, but it's a miscut.
And so this sold for $5,850. And the reason why I wanted to bring this up, obviously, this is one of those cards that is, very, symbolic, and you you can use the word iconic in this hobby.
We saw an SGC 10, I think, sell for a million plus, recently. But I I'm so fascinated by a card like this that is so recognizable, and there's so much variance based on, like, its vintage nature and the gray.
Right. And then also, like, miscut and all these factors that you can get a card that is a million dollar in one area, and then in another area is $5,800.
And there's examples in way less condition that are much more affordable than this. So I, as an a non vintage collector, I can't even keep up with how people buy and why people buy and spend money.
But, like, how do you process, like, this category of cards and kinda just like the sale price and and what stuff goes for based on the condition? Yeah. Yeah. And I think we've seen, you know, vintage. The market's appreciated for sure.
You know, if you look at a lot of the older I'm a baseball guy, so, like, I'm an anchor to, like, the Mays, Mantle, Aaron, Ruth, like, all those kind of guys. And and we've seen those prices go up over time.
And I think it's just, you know, you brought up supply and demand earlier, and I think of vintage the same way where it's like, you can look at the pop counts. They're not gonna swing quite as wildly.
Like, I might look at a pop on a prism card from the last two or three years. If that player gets hot or goes off or or honestly, if we're just in the middle of a PSA backlog, I might see that pop double in the next six months.
You don't see that with vintage. So I think there's way more set, values by grade. Obviously, vintage is different. We've talked about this before, you know, the color on a card, the centering on a card, the eye appeal of a card.
So it's way beyond the grade. And then this one's unique because it's got a qualifier. In in my mind, qualifiers minus two. So a PSA nine qualifier, I'm looking at, like, a really nice PSA seven.
That's just kind of always my my mentality with it. Depending on what the qualifier is and how it looks and stuff, you know, you can you can change that up and and look at it different ways.
But, yeah, I think there's just there's only so many of them. And, and when you look at things, I think there's a time that people look back and there are these iconic cards, and they're gonna be iconic forever.
You might look at a modern day player, and there's gonna be some volatility and markets can be changes.
We're not gonna see anything significant swing Wilt Chamberlain's value other than the supply dries up as more people are interested in these and acquire one and wanna hold on to it, so one less available.
And there aren't five more coming out of the PSA shop that are gonna replenish that in the pop.
So, yeah, just a very, very different approach for sure in how you apply grades to values because it's beyond the grade, how you understand supply and demand, so there's gonna be less supply coming, and then how people value them because there is more of kind of that blue chip stock element to, to iconic vintage than there is the modern day stuff that's a lot more volatile.
Would you rather have a PSA nine with a qualifier or a PSA seven? It depends. I'm gonna say it depends what the seven looks like.
I mean, if you if you said the seven was, like, color was phenomenal, like, you know, top 10% for that level of grading color and it was perfectly centered, I'm probably taking the seven.
But it that might be equally my OCD that I just hate seeing qualifiers.
Yeah. And and just I would always rather have a a true to me, like, asking me a PSA nine with a qualifier of seven is almost like, would I rather have, like, a gold shimmer refractor or a true gold?
You know? Like, that's the way I think about it.
Oh, that's great. I love that. And then that one that resonates with me in a big way. Last card I wanna hit is the O506 SP authentic Alexander Ovechkin Futura watch auto rookie out of September. Nice big bold autograph on card.
This is a raw copy that sold for $3,875. One of the more, important, players of the last few eras. It's funny. Like, I just this card stopped me in my tracks just based on what I what I envision Ovechkin looking like now.
Very grizzled, and, we're old guy. We're considering ourselves all guys, so I feel like it's a little bit relatable, but he's like a kid on this card.
You you got Crosby and Ovechkin who just kinda carried the hockey market for so long, and it's so fun to see kind of one of the rookie cards, pop up and sell.
But we don't talk too much about hockey, but, obviously, Ovechkin is an important character in that sport. What what what goes on in your head when you see a sale like this?
Yeah. And and definitely agree that you look at this picture and it's like, alright. We're missing a lot of gray, and we have a couple too many teeth. Like, that's kind of the change you have to make to fit what he looks like now.
Yeah. I mean, hey. Best best player in the hobby from the o five zero six hockey rookie class. Of course, it has nothing to do with me living near DC or being a DC sports fan, but obviously, he's better than Crosby.
So, you know, maybe only at scoring goals and if they were to fight. If they were to fight, I don't think Crosby wants anything to do with that.
But, but no. I mean, like, I think it it was cool because, growing up near DC, like, everybody loved Ovi, and he's been here his entire career. I think it's kinda cool nowadays.
Maybe you see it a little bit more in hockey than some other sports, but it's, you know, a guy to play his entire career with one franchise just feels rare these days. And so, that's one of the things I think with him.
It's cool to look at a 20 year old rookie card and see the same team name that you see on his jersey today. And, you know, the whole chasing down of Gretzky's record for goals and passing that.
And now it's like, how much longer is the guy gonna keep playing? I mean, I think he's, like, 90 goals from a thousand. Like, do we see him keep going?
But, yeah, like you said, just kinda cool to look back and see a guy who's been relevant and dominant in the league for two decades, and he's still playing. So, yeah, really cool. Like you said, hockey doesn't get talked about a ton.
I think the whole chase of Gretzky definitely got some more eyes on it than we had before. But, yeah, just one of those one of those years, and I think every sport has a few of those.
You know, we look at you know, you could probably look at, like, 18 in football a little bit with, like, the Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson coming in, you know, in basketball, like, the o three when we have, like, Bosh, Wade, LeBron, some other guys.
So you look at some of those sets, so I think, you know, o five is up to kind of that year for hockey. But, yeah, super cool card, And I think one of those again where he's not enough at this point.
There's not a whole lot. It's gonna tarnish his value over time. So good one to pick up and stash away. That's amazing. Something about loyalty being on one team for an entire career is very rare these days.
And when you're talking about 2018 football, sadly enough, when you said Josh, I was like, Rosen? And I was like, no. No. Come on. Yeah. Twenty eighteen is a pretty good football class.
Yeah. It is. And it's one of those where it's like it's it's maybe not as good. I I feel like around when it came out, maybe there was more hype than there is now. So, like, in my mind, that was a great class.
But, like, you know, there have been some ups and downs, but, like, Darnold kinda come back around. Baker's playing really well now. There's Lamar and Josh Allen. There's the, you know, Nick Chubb and Saquon Barkley.
And there were just a lot of guys that year, but, yeah, I guess it it does vary. And then, you know, your your current quarterback and the the famous o four squad of, you know, big Ben Rivers and Eli. So, hey, bring bring Rivers back.
Let him cook. Let's hope he doesn't get killed. We'll see. I I will say just a quick aside. The, you know, so down in the dumps and just after last week and everything that transpired and won't even get into it.
And you're like, you know, texting friends, it's like, it's over. Of course, it ends this way. Yeah. This is the way this work we should get used to it at this point. And then you're just like, what?
And then, like, no way. And then Yeah. Seeing him on the practice field that it's just like, this is this actually even though this seems so ridiculous, we had nothing, and at least now there's just, like, some small sliver.
That's how I process process it. Yeah. You can be like Mike Holt's and their hall of fame quarterback and just, you know, just go go with that if if that happens.
I love it. Alright. Let's get into the main discussion, which is year end review. We're We're gonna talk about DC Sports eighty seven.
We're gonna talk about the industry, and then we're gonna get out of here. But we'll start here, Tory. When you look back at 2025, what is the defining theme of your business at DC Sports eighty seven? Volume and how to do more of it.
You know, I think we just, you know, we we just grew so much this year, which is exciting. It was so cool to be a part of. But, for us, it was finding and adding people, but more than anything, just like finding and adding technology.
I mean, that that was number one for us this year. Our our partnership with Haystack, you know, continuing to build on our relationship with eBay, having our mobile app.
Like, that was really it for us this year. It was just kinda we have the groundwork for where we were and, there were so many new people coming in.
I mean, our our count of, like, new customers we added were just crazy. So, just keeping up with a ton of new people and trying to find how to communicate and effectively deliver the same service to them without them waiting longer.
Operationally, it was the biggest thing for us this year, you know, by a mile.
The, growth and scaling is a fun topic that I always love to talk about, and we talked a little bit about, like, collaborations and, like, exposure to new audiences.
When you think about just the growth that's happened, obviously, like, there's collaborations, there's, you know, big activations at big events like the national.
And then there's also, like, customers having a great experience in telling your friends, like, telling their friends how how do you that growth?
Like, is it just a combination of every all the activities and tactics that have resulted in that? Or is it something else? Like, how how are you attributing kind of the growth in 2025?
Yeah. I mean, we talked about a little bit before. A lot of it's just partnerships, you know, just having your your name and being present and more breaking streams and in more shows and in more websites.
And, you know, at the national, we you know, you you probably saw we had our logo everywhere. It was kind of a, you know, here we're here and here's who we are and trying to get to interact with people. And it and it worked.
I mean, you know, we've talked a lot about how much more we have invested into just being present in different channels in the hobby, you know, be that breaking or eBay or shows or just, you know, social media, things like that.
If you look at our numbers in, like, q one, for each of the three months in q one, we averaged, like a 120 or so first time customers a month.
So, you know, people we got a consignment submission from who had never sold us before. That number in q four was pushing 450 a month. So I mean, we're looking at a quarter where we had 1,300 new people start selling with us.
So, and a lot of that does just come from a lot is word-of-mouth. You know, a lot of it is somebody who's at a show and pulls out their phone and did what you're talking about.
They open their DC app and they look how much is available, and they see the numbers spin and their buddies standing next to them.
And so that's kinda cool. I wanna try it. A lot of it is, you know, the great breakers we work with. We're kinda helping promote and and share our service with their streams and customers. So, it comes from a lot of different places.
It helps that we're sending, you know, fifteen, seventeen thousand eBay packages out the door every day, and that's a lot of collectors in the community who see our name and get a little business card and might check out our website.
So, the content like what you and I are doing.
I mean, there's there's all kinds of ways we're hitting it. But, yeah, I think the biggest theme has just been getting our brand name in more places, making it easier for people to interact with us.
And as a result, that's yielded a ton of people we never had a chance to work with before. That's probably the most exciting win this year for us on top of just the the volume numbers shooting up.
Growth growth is fun, but scaling is a it's very challenging. And I would imagine throughout this process, there's been a bunch of roadblocks along the way.
Maybe just talk about, like, the mindset mentality when you're trying to scale. And I don't know if there's any examples or things that, like, got in the way that you had to just figure out how to remove.
But I think we we dream of scaling our collection or our business, and it's just it seems like it's this phrase that's so, like, pie in the sky and, you know, it rainbows and butterflies, but it's it's really hard.
And may I'd love to hear just and especially in this year, it sounds like you've gone through a lot, like, maybe how you've overcome some adversity along the way.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I've probably said some of this before, but, you know, we're never afraid to spend money.
You know, there's there's been months where, you know, our our number at the end of the month is in red. It's not in black, because we just have to invest in stuff.
And we we doubled our spend on, on development engineering. So our development shop that we work with who builds out our app and all the features on our website, we two x that. We added a lot of people.
And, yeah, like you said, I think everybody wants to get in this and it's like it's a side hustle and it's cool, but I love the hobby and I love the space and now it's all about scaling and I wanna grow the business.
I'm like, yes, that's true. You know, for us, it was just always getting out ahead of it. If if you're ever reacting to it, you're gonna be in trouble. And I don't think I need to, give examples, but here's an example.
PSA, eBay, there's a lot of people who have suffered from this. Right? It's we've kinda wait until the backlog is so bad that we now have to up prices and up wait times just to get things back, you know, get our heads above water.
You know, I think eBay is starting to do better with this, but, like, we had a lot of people who suffered through the growth of the authenticity guarantee program where PSA and their authenticators were bombarded with the amount of business happening on eBay and people were waiting extra days or extra weeks to get their cards.
That's challenging. They're addressing that now with more people, more resources, more efficient processes.
But, you know, the thing that helped us be successful through it was focus on that stuff first in anticipation of volume. And then when the volume hits you, you know, you're in an okay spot.
Again, we're kinda year end, so the all these numbers are top of mind for me, but I mentioned our new customers. But, like, in the first quarter of this year, if you look at our, like, rolling seven day submission count.
So what I look at for, like, how much mail is coming in the door, it was, like, seven to 900 submissions coming in over the course of a given week.
In q four, that number is north of 2,000. So it just it's it's just hockey sticking. And, you know, for us, it's just the fact that we went out and hired additional people.
We, the partnership with Haystack was a huge win for us this year. That made titling more efficient. That made imaging faster. And for us, just all those little wins, it's accepting that one thing is not gonna put you over the edge.
But investing in a number of things, it'll get every element of your business and saying, would this work if my volume doubled tomorrow?
Anywhere that you say no, go figure something out. And, and honestly, a lot of this is not my idea or anyone's idea here at DC Sports.
A lot of it is, but it's going to people who have been great partners of ours. Be that, you know, we work with Rico on our scanning of cards. We work with Haystack on the imaging and the software.
We work with Inferno Red, who I know, you know, you work with as well on the back end build out of our app on our website and, just leaning on experts in all different areas and finding things that work for us.
So, yeah. Long winded answer, some of it may be repetitive on things I said before, but that's just been the model for us and it's worked really well.
That growth is nuts. Yeah. I mean, we were you know, early in the year, like, if you look at, like, January, February, we were doing, like, 4. 2 to $4,400,000 a month in sales. And at the time, I felt fantastic about it.
This was coming off last year when, you know, 3 or 4,000,000 was a good month, and we were trying to get to 60,000,000 for the year. And, you know, we're on our third straight month north of 10.
And we'll and we're already, you know, we're gonna crack 11 easily, probably push 12 in December. So, yeah, it's been nuts. We're we're super grateful. We don't take any of it for granted.
It's been so cool working with everybody from, you know, people who just rip one box a week of their LCS and ship us the couple cards they're not keeping to guys who are dealers who are unloading, you know, 5,000 cards at a time on us.
But, yeah, it's really fun to work with people at literally every level of the hobby right now.
I think many of us, especially many of us who are in business, dream of that experiencing that sort of growth. Like, you're living in it right now.
Like, how does that make you feel? Yeah. It's rewarding. I mean, you know, it's gonna be it's a lie if I say it's not. It makes you feel good because it makes us feel like we made the right choices. Right?
Like, there were a lot of years that we would have loved to grow faster, but we did not invest in, like, any kind of marketing or outreach or paid social media stuff or, sponsored signs at the national or any of that because it was we're not ready.
Like, until the people in the processes are here to keep up, don't, you know, overpromise, under deliver by opening the floodgates on volume and then it it cripples you.
We waited and waited and waited and built and built and built, and it was really just early this year that's like, okay, we're ready, you know.
Put on the gas now. Let's go. And because we've been successful in building everything out in advance, it's been great. And, you know, it's not to say that there's not hiccups.
Over the course of time, you figure out that when you go from listing 4,000 things a night to listing 19,000 things a night, there's things you got to address. And, and we've had to fix some of those.
We've, you know, made mistakes and learned from them along the way, and our customers have been great about just communicating with us and, you know, we always take care of them for mistakes made.
But, yeah, it it just gives you a lot of validation for the choices you made.
But more so, you know, we wouldn't be good at this if we weren't, really aggressive. So, like, I can put those numbers out there. I'm sure to some people, it's like, oh, that's amazing. And it is amazing, but it's like, it's not enough.
You know, it's just it just never is. And until you can take that and double it again, we're not gonna feel good. And then at that point, we're just gonna go for more. So, just never being complacent.
Right? You know, if if you are, you're gonna fall behind. Challenge to, double it in a year. Go do it, Corey. Thanks. Thanks. It's it's real easy. I'll just you know, it it'll be I'll I'll have to work on that at all.
Okay. Let's hit some market behavior and industry trends. I'm curious. What is the biggest storyline in the hobby that you think sellers aren't talking about enough in 2025?
Anything come to your mind? No. I mean, the only thing that comes to mind when you ask this, I'm not sure how much I really have to say on it that everybody hasn't heard a 100 times, but is is repackers.
Like, I just I think when you look at where do people sell, how do they sell, and why do they sell, it's just that is probably been the single most dramatic shift since the, you know, since the explosion of grading.
That's probably the biggest factor in the hobby. And, I find that we, as we work with, like, really large dealers or companies in the space that aren't just your everyday collector, we see more and more of the low and mid end.
And some of that we still get a lot of the high end just because we had so many eyes on auctions that we're at, you know, a 130, a 135,000 followers on a eBay store that gets you exposure.
You're not gonna get a lot of places. But just like you go to a show and you see these, like, 20 year old kids walking around with, like, a fanny pack with $50 in it.
And it's like, well, I know what I was doing when I was 20 and it wasn't that. And a lot of these guys are just, you know, it's it's the boots on the ground for acquiring inventory for repackers.
And the way repacks have exploded be it on, you know, whatnot, Fanatics Live, where we see it happening, you see it happening all the time.
So that element of it and then breaks are I feel like I see fewer and fewer PYTs and random teams and it's wheel spins.
And so, there's always been an element of gambling in the hobby. Like, we know that even just you invest in a player. That's like investing in a stock.
It's speculative. But I think just the ways that people interact with cards are so different because there's so much more chase and based on how people are buying into repacks or, you know, these wheels spin breaks and things.
It really does influence where things sell because people can sell a card at 95% to somebody if that person can turn around and put it in a repack at 110% and things like that.
So, just a lot of the behavior that revolves around that, that segment of the business is one of the things that just this year I'll walk away and think that really had a huge impact.
Yeah. Repackers, if there's, like, a list of five things, that has to be on the list at some level. But thinking about Yeah. What you just described in the buying repacks, buying into breaks, collecting, investing.
Like, I've I've always viewed maybe more now than ever before as just a business owner in the space that the the more types of ways to participate in the space and the more diversity likely means really good thing for the industry.
Everyone has different interests. How do you think about that from, like, the buying side?
And, like, do do you find that the more things to do and the more ways buyers can engage is better for the hobby at the whole? Or, like, how do you process that? Oh, yes and no. Yeah. I I think, yes.
The more ways to engage, the better. But at the same like, you have to know what you're doing. Like, you just you can't just drop into a room on a stream that's doing repacks with a, you know, $10,000 ceiling on the cars.
You just start dropping $500, a thousand bucks, whatever it is on Teams and just not know what you're doing. There's a place for that.
And if you enjoy that, you know, that chase and interact with a hobby and kind of going after cars that way, the community element and the other guys in the room and all the things you can go after, totally get it.
Chase a grail, have fun, but, like, you just have to understand what you're getting into.
I think it's the same with wax. I mean, look at the way wax prices have just skyrocketed this year, and it's just insane where you look at some of these and it's like, okay.
I I remember the first one that really caught me off guard was Inception Baseball. I think it was in 2024 and it was like so it came out late in the year and it was alright. It's like $350 for a box with one hit or something.
It's like okay. So if I get a Paul Skeens patch auto, I get my money back. Otherwise, I'm probably in trouble. And it's just there's just so many cases like that where it's supply and demand is the rule.
And for as long as the manufacturers could sell it to distributors and the breakers and the LCS is at that price point, as long as people keep buying, that's capitalism for you.
Knock yourself out. Like, I I would never wanna stand in the way of that, but I think anybody new to this space has to understand. Like, you can't just blindly go, I like the Braves, so I'm gonna buy them no matter what the price is.
Or I like the Mavericks, so I wanna chase Cooper Flagg no matter what the price is. Like, you just have to know do a little homework, know what's in the product, know what the odds are.
If you're getting into a repack or a break, just think of that as lost money right up front. And If you get something back, it's great.
Think of it no different than if you threw that money on a hand of blackjack at a casino. And if people understand that, it's fine. I think it's good that we've got a lot of different channels and things we didn't have in the past.
You know, I remember when, like, Breakers TV was first a thing, and it was like, oh my gosh. This is, like, radical innovation. And now that's just the everyday of the hobby. So, you know, it's it's good.
It's evolving, but you you have to be smart too. I know there's so much volume, going through DC Sports 87 that it's really hard to stop and, like, smell the roses in a way and just, like, look at the cards.
But I look at the sales as, you know, in preparation for this, and, I'm just interested in markets generally.
But and it's it my perception is that there has been more more high profile, bigger cards that not only are sold through eBay, but specifically is being sold through DC Sports 87.
Is that an observation you have made just in terms of, like, the the profile of card or the status of card that's being collectors or sellers are feeling comfortable selling through eBay and DC sports as opposed to maybe another major platform or mark or auction house?
Yeah. Yeah. We're we're seeing a lot more. And and to your point, it's kinda hard because our volume has grown so much everywhere that while we do index more on high end stuff and we're not talking about high end for consignments.
I'm just meaning like a thousand dollar enough cards. That's kind of my arbitrary line line for that. But, we're seeing way more than we used to see, but we're seeing way more of everything we used to see.
And, you know, there have been so many Propene left eBay. Propene had a handful of really ugly issues after he left eBay. That's a lot of customers that came to us.
We've increased our payout rates on the higher end of of the, you know, price tier. So that's brought a lot more to us. We've offered things like the app that make it easier to track and follow along.
So, it's hard for me to say, you know, the exact cause. I can point to a number of things and say I feel like that was contributing to why we've seen so much high end, but we absolutely have.
And, you know, it's just it's just hard to pinpoint why, but, yes. The short answer is yes. We have, and no. I don't fully know the why.
I just know a lot of, contributing factors. Maybe hitting the from from your end as, you know, business operator and collector, I'm sure you make these observations of what's happening in different segments of the market.
I'm interested in, like, this year, what area or category have you looked at and then, like, that is really strong right now?
And then maybe conversely, like, what's another area that you think maybe is is overlooked, but maybe there's potential value more value down the road?
Yeah. I think we've definitely started to see, at least for us, a lot more of the non sports stuff.
So I know, you know, Pokemon's been huge this year. We've seen a lot of growth in, like, the amount and the value of Pokemon in one piece and then your marbles and Disneys and, Star Wars and everything else.
So for us, a lot more of that. I think some of that is just as more and more people get into the hobby, you've got people who are not just doing sports, but dabbling in non sports or the other way around.
So just kinda collectors cross pollinating and other kind of verticals in the space. So we've also seen a lot more vintage.
I know I mentioned we've seen the pricing going up on that. So that's one. I think one of the things that I have heard a couple of people say this and I agree with them on is like more unique pieces.
So by unique pieces, I'm talking about things like, like ticket stubs from meaningful games or events, signed rookie cards that are, like, vintage, you know, like, at least, like, pre nineties, you know, hall of famers.
We've had some stuff come through that's really cool, like, 5060, seventies rookies across all the major sports that are signed.
And, like, just pieces you don't see that much of. A lot of those players not with us anymore, things like that.
So, I feel like a lot of that, the game used, memorabilia, signed vintage, like, just ticket stub. Some of those one offs, we could see a lot more growth in still. And I do think non sports will continue to go.
It's it's certainly not my primary thing as a collector myself, but, as a place that transacts hundreds of thousands of these things all the time, we see a whole lot more than we used to, and we see a lot of people starting to buy in bulk from us who are not just baseball and football anymore, but it's baseball, football, and throwing Disney and stuff like that in there.
That's awesome. Yeah. I've made a similar observation, especially just in on Instagram watching different profiles, and then all of a sudden, there'll be a, Disney card or there'll be a wrestling club. Oh, that's interesting.
Maybe as we round this as we're rounding the corner of this episode, I can't even begin, like and this would probably take an entire episode just sit there and document all the craziness that's happened, across the industry, whether it's, you know, acquisitions, manufacturers, scandals.
Like, it's been crazy. There's been a lot of lot of noise. Is there what is maybe, like, from this year when you think about 2025?
Is there a signal out there amidst the noise that you kind of look at and you're like, okay. That's meaningful. That's something I, I either learned something from or am thinking about as we head in into 2026.
Yeah. I mean, to your point, there's you know, scandal, I feel like, is a is a tricky word in the hobby because everybody wants everything to be a scandal even when it's not.
So, you know, that that makes things a little tricky. But It's the likes, man. I know. You gotta chase those likes. I I can't tell you how many times we've been there with, you know, all the topics we've talked about.
But, yeah. No. I you know, the the biggest thing I look at are are the things that are just relevant to our business. I think you can take those and kinda zoom out and say they're relevant to the market.
But even as our brand has grown, like, the number of submissions and new customers we're seeing is crazy. Like, that that kind of growth means there's a lot new people getting involved.
If I look at our eBay number, it's up about 35% year over year in the number of unique buyers buying from us. And so that's a big deal. Like, there's more people buying on eBay, more people sending things into us.
When we go to, like, the national and we interact with people, there's more and more first time conversations. And so it's, it's maybe not like a hard metric that I can point out a piece of paper and say, look, that number says 18% up.
But I can say anecdotally, but yet with full confidence that there are a ton of new people. They're engaging across a lot of different platforms, be it buying on eBay, selling through us, at shows, breaks, everywhere else.
And so, I just take it as it's healthy that there's more transactions, there's more people, and there's more products.
And so as we just kind of, you know, do the math and push that forward, as long as everybody stays right and we don't get too crazy with, like, wax pricing or things like that, I think it just it it makes you very bullish on where the hobby's going.
Yes. Definitely does. And that was a fun little look, at kinda what's going on in your head as we head in in 2026. We'll be doing, I think, one more of these before the year is over with.
I'll just say as and I'll say this, you know, because, you know, we're friends and we work together. I have been genuinely very, very impressed with the entire process of sending my cards through DC Sports eighty seven.
And knowing what I know based on what you share with all of us about the numbers, the volumes, the pictures, I'm like, there's no way this is going to be listed on time, and and it is.
So, I could sign my sports cards with DC Sports eighty seven on eBay. So, that's a plug. I think everyone else should do, man.
Yeah. And if anybody isn't isn't using the app yet, go download it. I promise you it's a lot simpler. I know some people don't like change. We've got people still on the on the old website, but it really is so much better.
And yeah. No. Appreciate the plug and kudos to the team of about forty, forty five people making sure we keep up so that we don't fall behind. And, yeah, excited to record in two weeks.
Now two weeks from our normal recording day is Christmas day. So let's revisit our schedule before we before we lock that in. But, yeah, excited to get one more in for the end of the year. Thanks, everyone, for listening.