Latest / Sports Card Clubhouse / T-Pott on Being Accused of Shill Bidding, His Role at Sports Card Investor, Thumbnails, and More!

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T-Pott on Being Accused of Shill Bidding, His Role at Sports Card Investor, Thumbnails, and More! · Sports Card Clubhouse

0:00
Hey everybody. It is Mike and I am joined by
0:03
Teapot. Teapot has had a crazy couple of
0:06
weeks. I'm going to summarize it here
0:07
in a minute. But first of all, Teapot, thanks
0:08
for joining me. Absolutely.
0:09
Thanks, Mike. Happy to be here.
0:11
Yeah, so a couple weeks ago, 3 weeks ago now, I guess just to
0:15
summarize for anybody who somehow hasn't been paying
0:17
attention, Patrick Ryan posted an image on his his Instagram of
0:24
a card that he was selling, and it showed that he had also bid
0:26
on it. People accused him of shill
0:28
bidding. He went on Doctor Beckett's
0:30
podcast and seemed to acknowledge maybe that shill
0:34
bidding was very common and maybe he does it too.
0:38
And then that created a firestorm of activity.
0:41
And then he had a little bit of a crash out where he also
0:44
accused you of shill bidding $20 Pistons Carts.
0:49
Yeah. Now he has come out and
0:51
apologized and acknowledged that that was not true.
0:54
It sounds like he had a some serious family issue going on at
0:57
the time. And yeah, I mean, tough
1:01
situation for him, but pretty tough situation for you to tell
1:05
me how you handled that so. Initially I found out on the
1:09
Wednesday that he had done the interview with Doctor Beckett.
1:13
And I saw it, I saw a Neo's video on it and then I saw it
1:17
and I sort of had this jaw-dropping reaction, largely
1:21
because Doctor Beckett was talking and about and justifying
1:23
defensive SHIELD bidding. And that just surprised me a
1:26
lot. And I know it did you as well.
1:28
I watched the, you know, the the previous video that you did.
1:31
I forget the other gentleman's name, but I did.
1:34
Yeah, I did watch that and thought you guys did a good job
1:37
covering it kind of soup to nuts and it just caught all of us off
1:41
guard. It's it's something that I
1:42
thought was really black and white and apparently isn't in
1:45
the minds of a number of people. So I saw it and Jeff, my boss at
1:50
SCI had been traveling a lot, has been traveling a lot in
1:53
general for different work reasons.
1:55
And I, he was coming back the Thursday morning so that we
1:58
could record the show that we call cards on the Table on
2:01
Sports Card Investor, which goes out every Thursday night and
2:04
normally record that on Wednesday afternoons.
2:06
And it was coming in, we got to record it quick edit, turn
2:09
around and it goes out that evening.
2:11
And I, we kind of had our slate of topics.
2:14
And I said, Jeff, I think this one needs to be #1 like kind of
2:17
late ad. And he saw it and, and he said,
2:21
well, I haven't had a chance to talk to Patrick.
2:24
I haven't had a chance to talk to Doctor Beckett.
2:25
I don't know if it's makes sense to do this.
2:27
And I just said, everyone's talking about it.
2:29
We, we need to comment if we don't, you know what that's
2:32
going to start a firestorm that we're like trying to cover it up
2:34
or somehow implicitly agreeing with it.
2:37
And so he, you know, we talked about it and he said, well,
2:39
let's, let's stick to the facts. Exactly what's said in the
2:42
video. You know, I don't want to get
2:43
engaged in any like attack on character or anything like that.
2:47
Let's talk about how shield bidding is wrong.
2:49
And so that was kind of the setup is just to discuss what
2:52
was said, what happened. And then it turned out there was
2:54
some even controversy around that because Patrick later came
2:57
out and said that he was like some part of the audio clipped
3:00
out where he said that he and his friends bid on cards and to
3:03
save, you know, prevent other idiots, quote UN quote from
3:05
getting deals. He later said, no, what I was
3:08
saying is people DM me saying that, but the sound didn't come
3:11
through. Long story short, I, I tried to
3:15
be reasonable. I know a lot of people had
3:16
commentary on it of different degrees of vigor.
3:20
And Sunday night I'm sitting down to watch a video with my
3:24
wife and like a movie and I've got my friends blowing me up on
3:28
my phone saying like Patrick's like on a vendor in his
3:31
Instagram stories, accusing you and Jeff of SHIELD bidding.
3:34
So I get in there and I'm like, what the heck?
3:37
And I took a couple of days, you know, to really think about it.
3:41
I try not to do anything too knee jerk or too just flying
3:45
from the seat of my pants on the passions.
3:47
So I woke up, I got a night's sleep.
3:50
I'll be at, you know, lying if I said I wasn't really chewing on
3:53
it on Sunday night, like, you know what, what's going on?
3:56
And so a couple days later, I, I issued a like audio response
4:03
basically on my Instagram that was, you know, kind of a
4:05
screenshot of what he had posted.
4:07
And it was about a 1415 minute audio, which I won't get in all
4:10
the details here, but if anybody wants to listen to that, they
4:13
can. And then I found out that a
4:16
couple of different, you know, Youtubers were doing live
4:18
streams that night, notably among them sports card radio.
4:21
So I got into the chat, you know, kind of just tried to say,
4:24
like one of the two was saying, like, is this even a thing?
4:28
Is this even a thing to show bid low end, you know, $20 Pistons
4:31
cards? Like, is there a market for
4:32
that? And so I was kind of chiming in
4:36
in the chat like, no, it's not. And that's why it's ridiculous.
4:40
And they were like jump in the stream.
4:42
So I accepted their invite into the stream yard, into the Wolves
4:46
Den and, and talked to them for about 1/2 hour.
4:50
It was my first time talking to those guys and they've obviously
4:52
got strong opinions and strong personalities, but I thought
4:56
they were very reasonable to me. I was appreciative of the fact
4:58
that they they kind of chilled, chilled down a little bit.
5:01
They were listening, they asked some good questions and I had a
5:04
chance to sort of just explain my side of the story, which
5:07
seemed to resonate at the time a lot with the the chat as well.
5:10
Who kind of did a 180 in many cases.
5:13
And we're saying like, hey, thanks for coming in here.
5:15
That that takes some moxie and some courage.
5:17
Yeah, and you know, I think it's tough to go on Sports Card Radio
5:20
and come out looking better. And you did.
5:24
I've, I don't think I've ever watched sports card radio live
5:26
stream, but I woke up the next morning.
5:28
I'm always asleep before they start.
5:29
But I woke up the next morning and I'm in a chat, a text chat
5:32
with a group of other Youtubers and there was like this frantic
5:37
teapot is in the stream, teapot is in the stream part of the the
5:41
text chat. And I was like, oh boy, I gotta
5:42
watch this. And so I actually listened to it
5:45
on my drive to work And I thought you did great.
5:50
It was, I'm sure it's very stressful to go into an SCR live
5:55
stream. Are you watching the comments as
5:57
they put them on the screen? No, 'cause they, they move
6:00
pretty fast, you know, with like they just kind of pop
6:03
everybody's comments up there as they go.
6:04
So one's typically asking questions as far as I can tell,
6:06
and the others, you know, handling the comments and vice
6:09
versa. But I was not watching the
6:11
comments as they were coming in. But I did watch it back and it
6:15
was pretty interesting to see some of the early comments and
6:19
then the shift into some of the later comments just in that
6:22
little 30 minute stretch. And yeah, I mean, I, I, I didn't
6:28
know what to do. You know, at first I was just
6:29
like, do I comment at all in the chat?
6:31
Do I just sort of let them do their thing?
6:33
And, and but when, you know, you're innocent about something,
6:36
you know, I, I think I have a right to my good name, to my
6:39
reputation and to defend that in a respectful manner and try to
6:43
show some sympathy too. Like I said on that, on that
6:46
interview, I didn't you could tell Patrick's going through it
6:49
maybe in a number of different ways.
6:51
And I've had a lot of friends who go through a lot of
6:54
different things. I myself, we're all human.
6:56
I think pretty much everybody goes through tough times in
6:58
life, even though it's with great wealth.
7:00
Honestly, I I think people kind of put that to the side too and
7:03
just assume you don't have problems if you've got a lot of
7:05
money. But so I don't wish any harm on
7:08
him. And I just wanted to get in
7:09
there and tell those guys like, hey, look, here's here's who I
7:12
am. One of them said before they
7:15
said, like, is this a thing to show bid low end Pistons cards?
7:18
They said, you know, I don't really know teapot.
7:22
And so that was very revealing and a little bit of a light bulb
7:26
has since gone off in the last week or so in that regard.
7:29
Sort of to say most people know Jeff, right?
7:33
And they know of Jeff. They don't know Jeff.
7:34
They know of Jeff. They know of the on screen
7:37
showman who is Jeff. And then most of those people
7:40
have never even interacted with him personally at a show or at
7:43
Cards HQ or certainly not in his personal life.
7:46
I have. I know the different versions of
7:49
Jeff. I know the showman, the camera
7:51
guy. I know the entrepreneur and the
7:53
astute business thinker. I know the guy who's a husband
7:57
and a father. I know the guy who's a just a
7:59
big sports fan and an everyday guy.
8:00
Like there's different versions of him and most people don't
8:05
know that version. So they just equate teapot as
8:07
being his like henchman, his right hand man, his must be cut
8:10
from the same claw, same person as as Jeff the showman.
8:14
And Jeff and I would both say that's definitely not the case.
8:18
We're, you know, we're very different, but I think we work
8:20
really well. Together, yeah, I would say that
8:22
you're you 2 are very different and it's obvious like I I watch
8:25
cards on the table most weeks, I would say usually on a Saturday
8:28
morning. I I enjoy it and I've talked
8:30
about this on my channel before and I get hate in my comments,
8:33
but that's OK. Cards on the table.
8:37
First of all, I want to talk about that cards on the table
8:39
that you mentioned a few minutes ago.
8:40
But yeah, cards on the table to me is Jeff saying wild things
8:46
and then you being like, hang on Jeff, don't be so crazy.
8:49
And then you are the very logical, I don't want to say
8:52
intelligent because Jeff's obviously intelligent too, but
8:55
you bring the logic and that's what I respect.
8:57
And I don't remember the guy next to you what his name is,
8:59
but he's pretty good too. Yeah.
9:01
Well, we have different, different people now.
9:03
It's kind of on a rotation. Doug was typically the guy.
9:07
He's not at SCI anymore. So so we have we're we're kind
9:12
of rotating Ryan and Carter and some of the Cards HQ employees
9:15
and Breakers and Parker from my data team has been on there a
9:18
few times. So now it's more of like a
9:20
rotating voice in that third chair.
9:21
Got you. So on that cards in the table
9:24
where you talked about that, I think some people had some
9:27
problem with the fact that you turn shield bidding into a
9:29
debate like is shield bidding OK?
9:32
Could it be OK instead of just saying instead of Jeff just
9:36
saying no, Jeff was more like, it's kind of icky.
9:39
It doesn't feel good to me. Instead of saying actually it's
9:41
illegal and shouldn't be done at all.
9:42
And then he had to release a statement I think the next day
9:45
saying, let me be clear, shill bidding is never OK.
9:49
That's interesting. I I'd have to go back and
9:52
rewatch it, which I didn't do you know, I was there live for
9:55
the conversation, I guess in my mind, he said.
9:58
I remember him saying, I thought this was a very black and white
10:02
topic, but it appears to some people it's not.
10:05
So I think he the setup was like in his mind, this is wrong.
10:10
But maybe the way the conversation veered, it was more
10:13
like, I think both of us, like just going back to the the
10:15
interview with Doctor Beckett were just like, what am I
10:18
missing here? That two of these guys who are
10:20
so entrenched in the hobby, one of them who like again most of
10:24
us, Revere as like a grandfather, if not the
10:26
grandfather of the hobby. I have two Beckett magazines.
10:29
On there I know I saw you say that exactly.
10:31
So like when I, when you hear somebody whose opinion you
10:35
respect, who's got more experience and wisdom within a
10:38
space, in this case the hobby, than you do, maybe people would
10:42
disagree with this on something like show bidding, but it just
10:44
makes me go like, do I not? What?
10:48
Like do I not understand this? Like, why?
10:50
Why would somebody like that who I I in previous years sort of
10:54
lobbied to start like a hobby ethics council.
10:56
Like I thought we need this. We need a clear voice on every
11:00
like controversial or even non controversial topic.
11:03
We need like the 10 commandments of the sports card hobby.
11:06
And I thought Doctor Beckett would be like the perfect
11:08
figurehead for that. And now I don't know if anybody
11:13
is because maybe opinions vary on everything, but I would agree
11:16
with you. Like I don't think there's any
11:17
black and white to it. You know, the, the interview
11:21
that Carlos, because I'm Carlos did with Dan's vintage cards or
11:25
PC or whatever, you know, he, he just said like thou shall not
11:29
bid on your own cards, you know, and that's a pretty
11:33
straightforward commandment, I think as far as, you know, bids
11:36
go, just don't do it. I think I said, you know, once
11:39
that card is gone, it's no longer yours.
11:42
Once it's with the auction house or on eBay for auction or
11:45
whatever it might be, for all intents and purposes it's no
11:48
longer yours to touch, to interact with, you put it up.
11:52
Unless it goes unpaid by somebody else trying to do some
11:55
funny business, you should just consider that it's moved on and
12:00
you're hoping for the best payout.
12:01
Obviously all of us are, but if it happens to go low, you don't
12:05
have a right to go in and monkey with it.
12:07
Yeah. So you what is your title with
12:09
market movers? My title at at SCI is Senior
12:13
Vice President of Product. OK.
12:15
So you're you're developing market, you're in charge of
12:17
developing market movers. Yeah, I joined from day one.
12:20
I, I actually first met Jeff through the Internet.
12:23
Like I was probably subscriber within the 1st 50 to SC is
12:27
YouTube channel. I found it and then I got into
12:29
the Discord and was a moderator and then I started working for
12:32
him part time during like beta testing for market movers when
12:35
he first was building it. And I, I was the first person in
12:39
there adding cards to the database to be tracked on the
12:41
charts and writing the queries and setting those up.
12:44
And then I did that for about 6 months.
12:48
And then I went, I ended up getting laid off because of
12:51
COVID impact at my last company where I was almost nine years.
12:55
And Jeff was kind enough to offer me a, a job at SCI.
12:59
And we've just been growing things ever since then.
13:01
So I've I've been almost six years between part time and full
13:05
time working for Jeff and. What were you doing before SCI?
13:08
What was your type of job? Do you have?
13:10
Yeah. So I started my career in
13:12
banking doing like small business loan analysis.
13:15
And then I switched over to 1st food service distribution
13:19
company, Gordon Food Service. And I started out in credit and
13:23
finance and moved into a management role in Kentucky for
13:28
a few years. And then I basically went back
13:29
to Michigan, to Grand Rapids, to the headquarters where I'm from.
13:32
And I did a bunch of different like project management.
13:35
We had kind of an internal innovation hub that I worked on
13:38
for a few years. I did change management and then
13:41
my final role there was on a huge ERPSAP integration project
13:47
to take all of our legacy systems and applications and
13:50
move them over to SAP. So I was the customer data lead
13:54
for entire North American business to do that.
13:57
And we did a huge ETL project and mapped data to from one
14:02
database to the other and had a very successful transition and
14:05
then COVID hit and then I was out so.
14:09
Sounds remarkably similar to my career, which is interesting.
14:12
I've been working in data for 1516 years.
14:16
So yeah, I mean, anyway, so Market Movers is an app that,
14:22
well, why don't you describe Market Movers for me because I
14:24
have AI. Have a couple questions about
14:25
how these tie together. Yeah, sure.
14:27
So market movers. So basically when Jeff was
14:29
making like videos early on SEI, he was manually creating Excel
14:33
charts from like data points that he was pulling down from
14:36
eBay. And at the time PWCC had a lot
14:39
of soul history on their website too.
14:41
So he was basically like, oh, I want to analyze Lucas Prism base
14:44
card or silver putting stuff into a spreadsheet, creating a
14:48
chart, putting into a slide deck and making videos.
14:50
So in December of 19/20/19, IDM D him and said, you know, if you
14:53
have a software agency, which he did, why aren't why don't you
14:56
just build an app, you know, that'll do this for you?
14:59
And that's when he told me he was working on it.
15:01
So what it started out as at its core was literally just that, an
15:05
app to track card prices and to be able to chart them and then
15:10
to see some like basic stats in terms of percentage change and
15:12
sales volume and things. And then it evolved into a
15:16
collection tracking tool, you know, a tool to have favourites.
15:20
We added an additional functionality like intelligence
15:24
reports and having like ratios to be able to compare PSA 10s to
15:27
nines across the whole database or different sets and different
15:30
players to one another and things of that nature.
15:32
So that's kind of what it turned into over time.
15:36
So we've just continued to evolve the product.
15:38
At first it was web only. We added a mobile app and then
15:42
we actually have a free app called the Sports Card Investor
15:44
app that is more lightweight. It's very visual.
15:48
It scrolls like Instagram. You can tap and get like limited
15:50
data favorite cards. It's meant to be like an entry
15:55
level app for people who don't want something as convoluted or
15:57
complicated as market movers. They just want simplicity to
16:00
know what cards are hot and trending and then obviously to
16:03
be able to like shop within the app how it which is how it's
16:05
monetized through, you know, affiliate revenue to eBay.
16:08
So with everything that's happened in the last few weeks
16:10
and the the new knowledge that maybe shield bidding is more
16:14
prevalent than we than we anybody could have known before,
16:18
you have some auction houses that are coming out and saying
16:20
we absolutely do not allow shield bidding.
16:23
Some auction houses do in their terms, they have some language
16:26
that says we allow shield bidding up to a certain level.
16:29
Yeah. Will you make any changes in
16:31
market movers after these last couple weeks?
16:35
It's a really fair question. The one thing I'm kind of
16:37
waiting on is that Jeremy Lee is working on a book and he's been
16:42
doing a really in depth analysis of the terms and service of like
16:45
30 different auction houses for sports cards, I think is the
16:48
number he said. And so he's going to have this
16:50
Appendix F, it'll actually go, he's going to talk about it
16:53
tonight on his live stream the day that we're recording this.
16:56
And I'm looking forward to that. I've had a couple conversations
17:00
with Jeremy kind of on his book and on this topic a little bit.
17:03
And I, I think it's really worth putting potentially some kind of
17:08
a disclaimer, some kind of a little exclamation point, some
17:13
indicator within our app and our products to say, you know, these
17:17
prices, you know, could be just, I don't know, do do your own
17:21
research. The other end to that though, I
17:24
think is I've done a lot of videos too, kind of talking on
17:27
the market movers channel, talking about how comps aren't
17:30
the be all end all. And, you know, obviously Chris
17:33
Hoge and I have competing apps. But one thing that he and I both
17:37
really agree on is when it comes to auctions, especially on high
17:41
end cards, but you know, to some extent across the board, the
17:45
price of the card really is like what the second highest person
17:49
was able to was willing to pay for it because the next bid
17:52
increment up was the one who holds it.
17:53
So the theoretical vacuum, you throw it back on the auction the
17:56
next day. Now you're out of the mix.
17:59
Unless some other bidder comes in and emerges with FOMO or that
18:02
didn't know about the auction previously, it's only going to
18:05
go up, maybe not even to the next to the previous increment
18:08
because there has to be somebody below them, right?
18:10
So we operate within this space where comps are kind of the best
18:14
we've got. We don't have a, you know,
18:18
monthly published Beckett price guide that all of us just buy
18:21
into and subscribe to the prices.
18:24
And in reality, you know, many of those were not really the
18:27
price back then. It was just kind of what we
18:29
operated off of. But so comps are tricky and in
18:32
this space where you can have all of this manipulation and in
18:36
many cases no discernible ability to determine whether or
18:39
not the card really was paid for or really was purchased by a
18:43
third party who didn't previously own it or doesn't
18:46
have some affiliation with the seller, it's really difficult.
18:49
So I I think what's probably more important than like a
18:51
little exclamation in the app is just continued education.
18:54
Yeah. And you have the chance here.
18:56
You have the opportunity to really change the industry in
19:00
that. If you do, let's say you do end
19:02
up putting an exclamation mark there for a certain auction
19:04
house and they see that and they don't like being the only one or
19:08
one of two that has that. They could change their terms
19:11
because of it and ban Shield betting.
19:14
I think that's what Jeremy's ultimate goal is with his book
19:17
too, is to see some change affected across the board
19:20
holistically. If you start to shine a
19:22
spotlight. And and here's what I imagine, I
19:26
think even among those auction houses that may have terms that
19:29
are ambiguous or maybe even explicitly say that they allow
19:32
it in some cases, those could be legacy terms that they haven't
19:36
really scrutinized. Many companies update their
19:38
terms regularly. Others do not.
19:40
Some may be newer auction houses that just sort of took some
19:43
boilerplate terms and said, let's just roll this out, you
19:46
know, without doing, you know, their due diligence.
19:48
I don't know. But I think you have a good
19:51
point and trying to effect that change and say you guys just
19:54
should have a wholesale 0 tolerance policy for this.
19:58
Jeremy said there's an auction house that he, what was it
20:01
called? Collectors, CIA.
20:04
Collector, Investor Auctions, yeah, they're a sponsor of of my
20:07
channel. Yeah, so he was talking about
20:09
how like if an item goes unpaid, they won't even relist that item
20:12
for six months. That's an interesting policy.
20:15
I, I think that would certainly impact the shield bidding, you
20:18
know, space. It's also tough if you're a
20:21
seller that's consigning with them and for some reason some
20:25
person just decides they can't, they don't want to pay for it.
20:28
And then your auctions kind of cooked.
20:29
You got to figure out what you're going to do with it from
20:30
there. But seeing varying degrees of
20:33
tough love on that I think is something there's a huge amount
20:37
of room to improve on. Yeah, CIA also says I have 9
20:42
cards consigned with them right now and when they when you can
20:44
sign with them, they ask you for your username with them, your
20:47
e-mail address and you are unable to bid on your own items.
20:53
Now you could always create a separate auction profile I'm
20:57
sure, but you just can't bid on your own items.
21:01
It's not physically possible or technically possible.
21:05
You talked about Chris Hoge and Card Ladder a little bit.
21:09
I found it interesting. Flip and Steve took a picture of
21:12
somebody at Cards HQ Company with Card Ladder.
21:17
Why? Under what circumstances would
21:20
Cards HQ be comping with the competition?
21:23
So actually what people don't know is they actually use all
21:26
the different apps because when people are at card shows, people
21:30
will walk up with market movers, people will walk up with 130
21:33
point, people will walk up with card ladder, people will walk up
21:36
with alt, people will walk up with eBay sold.
21:39
So Ryan, for example, from Cards HQ has all 5 open in tabs
21:43
because at the end of the day, he wants to be apples to apples
21:46
with what the other person is seeing.
21:48
Now in theory, you should have the same data between market
21:53
movers and card ladder. They have a couple more auction
21:56
houses that they source data from that we don't right now and
22:00
we plan to, but the volume is low and it's not as critical in
22:04
most cases. So that's the main reason.
22:08
Like they'll just use everything.
22:09
They were like, you know, when that when we first opened HQ,
22:12
they were like, hey, we're trying to use market movers, but
22:16
there's stigma around it. Back to the guilty by
22:19
association. It's a double edged sword.
22:22
Jeff has a ton of fans. Jeff has a bunch of cynics and
22:24
haters for the people who don't like him.
22:27
They walk up to a booth and they're like, I don't use market
22:30
movers. I don't trust it.
22:31
I don't trust Jeff. I don't trust the pricing.
22:33
And it's like, OK, you know, the price is the same across the
22:37
board. So they just sort of found it's
22:38
easier to start from scratch apples to apples with whatever
22:42
app that they're using, which is the main reason.
22:44
And then the other thing is, you know, sometimes they have, there
22:47
are older transactions card letter has data that goes back
22:52
farther in, you know, in eBay that if it's like an obscure
22:55
card, I've told Ryan, I think it's odd to refer to a sale from
23:00
prior to 2020 and have put any credence to it as a comp.
23:04
But people will do it, whether it's the people walking up or
23:07
otherwise. Well, I got this rare, one of
23:09
one Drew Brees that sold last in 2016, you know, for this amount
23:13
of money and card ladder value says it's this much, which is,
23:17
you know, with without throwing, you know, too much shade, not
23:21
always the most accurate number or the most reliable.
23:24
And so they have to just operate within that space to talk about,
23:27
you know, to the to the person who wants to potentially sell
23:29
them the cards like what they're both seeing.
23:31
Yeah, you call that reminds me on a cards on the table, I don't
23:35
know, a month ago or so you said that card ladder comps or card
23:40
letter values are wildly inaccurate and Jeff agreed with
23:43
you, but you didn't go into any detail.
23:45
I assume you got a call from Chris saying what the heck, man?
23:49
No, I mean, if you go on their dashboard, it'll say like it,
23:52
they like publish the number and it'll say like card letter
23:55
value, accuracy today, 68 percent, 72%.
23:58
It's like right on the dashboard, like they must have
24:00
something that compares what their value was saying it was to
24:04
the sale that came in yesterday. I don't know how they calculate
24:06
it, but they even have an integration with Fanatics
24:09
Collect that they that Fanatics is now using for like fair price
24:14
valuation to determine what's this card worth because they're
24:18
trying to encourage people on their fixed price marketplace
24:20
not to list, not to have a bunch of stale inventory that they
24:23
overpriced, right. So they incentivize you with
24:26
lower fee structure to price your cards within a certain
24:29
percentage of whatever the card ladder value is.
24:33
Anybody could go do their due diligence and look on there and
24:36
see that the card letter value is showing a price that like the
24:39
the same card could have sold yesterday on the premier auction
24:42
or on the, you know, weekly auction.
24:45
And now it's listed on fixed price marketplace.
24:47
And somehow the card letter value is way different than what
24:49
it sold for yesterday. Like it's just, you know, go
24:53
look up some cards and compare and, and see what that is.
24:55
So I know over there methodology, we've obviously
24:58
studied it. You know our approach when we're
25:00
talking about like our road map and our development efforts for
25:03
Market Movers and our products, one of those things is obviously
25:06
competitive parity and competitive differentiation and
25:09
just our overall brand and app identity.
25:11
How do we want to approach that? So you know, you study your
25:13
competition, whether it's them or other apps and try to figure
25:16
out where do they, where are they beating us?
25:18
What are they doing? Since they launched their app
25:21
six months or so after Market Movers was launched and back in
25:24
2020, they've had a card ladder value.
25:29
And we've found that to be controversial.
25:32
Alt has the value too. And it's, it's polarizing
25:35
because some people buy into it because they're coming from a
25:40
space where they collected in the 90s or 80s and they were
25:42
used to a Beckett price guide telling them what a card is
25:44
worth. And so they look at it and they
25:46
go, oh, here's this very reputable app and this must be
25:49
the price. And I think it's dangerous.
25:51
I think people need to be able to make those decisions for
25:54
themselves, not have an algorithm which no matter how
25:58
refined it might be, is still never going to be accurate, true
26:01
to the market and what people would pay because the sports
26:04
card market and all the pricing is highly illogical.
26:06
And that's I think the the kind of slippery slope with it.
26:10
I think that was really interesting and I, I would have
26:12
loved to have heard that, you know, back then when you said
26:14
that I was like, why is it wildly inaccurate?
26:16
I don't have a subscription to any of the pricing apps because
26:19
I just, I don't really sell anything and I don't track my
26:23
collection really in any way. I have a hard hitting question
26:27
for you. Your name, your name is Tyler
26:29
Nethercott, right? Yeah.
26:31
How do you get Teapot out of Tyler Nethercott?
26:34
Hard hitting. I've had a lot of nicknames over
26:38
the years. In fact, rarely has anybody
26:41
other than my parents ever called me Tyler Tyler.
26:44
It's just seems like I've always had nicknames.
26:47
And when I started at the bank that I worked at in 2009, I,
26:56
they started calling me Tea Cot. So that made sense, right?
26:59
Like my last name is Nether Cot. So they were calling me Tea Cot.
27:02
Everybody started calling me Tea.
27:04
The bank president was calling me Tea Cot.
27:05
Like it just kind of stuck. And when I joined Gordon Food
27:10
Service, I started out on a small team of four and we were
27:13
in like a cubicle. So we all had kind of our backs
27:15
to each other in corners and we're in a cubicle hub in a
27:18
building with low ceilings and everything.
27:20
And there was another Tyler on the team.
27:24
And so this guy Matt says, hey, like, we can't have two Tylers.
27:28
Like even calling you Ty isn't, you know, isn't going to work.
27:31
Like, you know, it's just going to be confusion.
27:33
Like, hey, Tyler, you're both going to like wheel around.
27:35
What are we going to call you? And I said, no, you can call me
27:37
teacot. And this guy Jason on the other
27:40
side of the cubicle wall pops up, you know, like a Prairie dog
27:43
and goes teapot. What about teapot?
27:46
And I said absolutely not. And he goes teapot It is.
27:49
And then everybody at that company started calling me
27:53
teapot. This funny lady Kim put like a
27:56
little teapot thing up on her like pin board and would like
27:59
walk me around and introduce me to, you know, people saying this
28:02
is teapot. He works on our team now and
28:04
it's stuck. And they even made me sing I'm a
28:06
little teapot in a company meeting and I just so you know,
28:11
I tried to at least lean into like playing off of my last name
28:14
with the POTT instead of like just straight up teapot how it's
28:17
spelled. But when I came to SCII was on a
28:20
team of four and there was a Tyler.
28:23
They said, what are we going to call you?
28:24
And I just said, call me teapot. They were like, what?
28:27
And it just it just stuck. So the Raptor piece that you see
28:31
on the screen comes from spitballing cards, which is a
28:34
baseball card podcast that I do with Filmington Scotty B cards
28:38
and then Jeff and Chris from blabbing about slabbing.
28:41
And I was in a blabbing live stream on their channel one
28:45
Thursday night and Chris's wife tried to type like what's up
28:49
Teapot and her cell phone auto corrected to Raptor.
28:52
And everybody in the comments started saying Raptor's such a
28:56
better nickname. Stop.
28:58
You know, let's stop calling you Teapot, which is dumb and weird.
29:00
Let's call you Raptor. And there's some irony to that
29:04
because I used to like, take dares when I was in college to
29:06
like, run around campus like a velociraptor.
29:08
So somehow it just been full circle.
29:10
That's funny. That reminds me when I was my
29:14
first job out of college, was also at a bank, and we had a guy
29:17
on the team named Peter Boulette.
29:19
And somebody pointed out that Boulette in another language may
29:22
be French, or maybe it's Boulet means Meatball.
29:25
And so we just called him Meatball.
29:26
From then on, everybody said his name is Meatball now.
29:30
And so, for years, he went by Meatball.
29:32
That's pretty funny. Let's talk about Arena Club for
29:36
a minute, because a lot of people have some big problems
29:40
with Repacks and Arena Club and the gambling aspect of the
29:44
hobby. And I think it was the first
29:46
time Cards on the Table did Arena Club.
29:49
You had this kind of terrified frozen look on your face during
29:53
that. What is I know you have to have
29:56
your corporate response, but to the best of your ability, what
29:59
is your take on Repacks and Arena Club and what's happening
30:02
in the industry with that? Yeah, it's a great question and
30:05
a fair 1 repacks in general when they just show up at card shows
30:11
or on eBay or in other places with no verification into them
30:17
whatsoever on what not we have some random seller are
30:21
dangerous. And I talked about that a number
30:22
of times over the years and personal conversations on my
30:25
Instagram story. I feel like I did a video on,
30:28
you know, that within the context of a bunch of, you know,
30:31
potential scams and danger and you know, things to watch out
30:34
for in the hobby. When it comes to digital
30:36
repacks, Obviously there's still a lot of controversy around it.
30:40
At the end of the day, what you have is a company that's for
30:43
profit business and so they're going to get their cut right
30:47
structure it in such a way that the odds are spread out and
30:50
there's a million different ways you can do that.
30:52
If you are running a repack in terms of like floor and ceiling.
30:55
And I'll pivot, I'm going to pivot to the side and come back
30:59
to that because cards HQ started working on a repack product
31:04
that's PSA certified, meaning it actually goes independently to
31:07
PSA. They do the whole pack out
31:10
process. They make sure all the cards are
31:12
there. It's basically an audit and a
31:14
randomization. And then the boxes come back to
31:17
HQ and they sell them in store and as part of their whatnot
31:20
streams and things like that. When when Jeff came and said he
31:24
wanted to do that, you know, we had a lot of conversation around
31:29
ethics and the value proposition and making comparisons to sealed
31:33
product, you know, from the manufacturers versus other
31:35
things. And we talked about like, OK,
31:38
what, what are people looking for when they buy a repack?
31:42
Do they want to repack that? Let's say it's $200 where the
31:45
floor is 150 and the ceiling IS300.
31:48
Do they want to repack where the, you know, floor is $80.00
31:52
and the ceiling is 2000? How do they want that
31:54
distribution curve to look like? Because at the end of the day,
31:57
if you've got 100 of those items in that series for a single
32:01
card, you know, just do the math on how much money total that
32:04
costs. And you're just trying to look
32:07
for a fixed margin above and beyond that, right?
32:09
So you're trying to like cater to an audience that has a desire
32:11
for this thing. Digital repacks are serving that
32:14
same market, but in a much more like quick tick, quick twitch,
32:17
like fast response time, which can be dangerous.
32:22
It can it you know, if you if you don't have self-control,
32:25
it's just like anything else. It's like the online slots and
32:28
the online blackjack and the online, you know, other things
32:30
where you're just clicking a button hoping for the best in
32:36
favor of repacks. I would say that if you like to
32:39
get your fix by going for a chase most of the time you're
32:43
going to be much better off buying a vetted audited repack
32:48
than you would opening a sealed box.
32:50
And because you have an instant buy back option from both Arena
32:55
club and Courtyard who sponsors market movers videos, you can
33:00
get your money back faster if you don't get something you
33:02
want. That whole concept just, you
33:05
know, facts on the table is controversial, controversial.
33:09
Like people just say like you shouldn't be doing that.
33:11
You call it a lottery ticket, call it whatever.
33:13
It's a chance algorithm. If you open a sealed box of
33:18
cards, even the ones that show up as a dollar on eBay, like a
33:23
lot of card shops don't want to buy them.
33:25
They already have a ton of them or they just they're just much
33:27
more difficult and time consuming and labor intensive to
33:29
sell. So that's sort of like an aspect
33:33
of the hobby. Hey, I like to go for the chase.
33:35
I like the thrill of the hunt. My message has always been just
33:40
be fiscally smart about it. Don't get addicted.
33:43
Don't, you know, spend money that you don't have, don't rack
33:46
it up on a credit card that you don't pay off at the end of
33:48
every month. You know, working with a
33:51
background in finance and and and data, like you just kind of
33:55
understand those things and you see the good and the bad.
33:58
So that's sort of my general sense of it.
34:00
There's bigger controversy with Arena Club to where, you know,
34:05
people have concerns about whether or not it's truly
34:08
random. How is that done?
34:10
You know, how do you make sure that we're not getting like
34:13
loaded influencer repacks and things?
34:16
And to that end, it's pretty fascinating because essentially
34:20
anytime we hit anything good amongst the three of us, the
34:23
comments just light up like, Oh my gosh, you got the thing.
34:27
There was all that. The biggest controversy was when
34:29
Jim Rome hit the grail with the Jordan.
34:31
I think it was like ABGS 9 Jordan rookie card.
34:34
And but like if you were to put it in into a line and show every
34:41
single person that Arena Club has sponsored across all these
34:44
different channels and spaces and every single thing they've
34:48
hit, what you would really see is that it's all evening out.
34:52
It's not like every influencer is hitting the grail card every
34:55
single time. And even for me and opening
34:57
those almost every week, I've hit cards that are, you know,
35:00
$250 on a $500 repack and I've hit, I think the most expensive
35:05
one I hit was like, Oh yeah, it was like 9 something.
35:09
So like, it's not like I am getting loaded packs.
35:14
If anything, I'd just say like be aware.
35:16
Be aware of what the odds are and which they publish.
35:19
So if you trust the odds, they publish the odds and they show
35:21
you exactly what's in them. That's how you want to spend
35:25
your hobby budget. I don't have an issue with it, I
35:27
just think people should be aware of what what it is and how
35:29
it works. But isn't the argument though
35:31
that when Jim Rome is on and pulling, those are much more
35:34
likely to be packed for? That's what people are saying,
35:38
Yeah. And that's what here's what I
35:40
would say it's. Is that impossible?
35:45
No, we've seen you and I, you probably studied like business
35:48
case studies in college and everything.
35:50
And since then, right? There's scandal, controversy,
35:54
scammery in all corners, in every sector of business in the
35:58
world and anywhere where there's money involved.
36:00
But here you have a business that has become so popular and
36:05
such a huge part of the hobby right now, putting a side
36:09
opinion of anybody, it's just a a reality.
36:11
Repacks are huge right now. They're in many ways propping up
36:15
certain parts of the secondary market with certain cards and
36:17
they're just massive. Derek Jeter's got his name
36:20
behind this, behind Arena Club and was a big investor, as are a
36:24
number of other people. It's essentially by, by outward
36:27
appearances, a money printer. Like, it's very successful right
36:31
now as a for profit business. Very successful.
36:35
Why would you risk the entire enterprise of a company by
36:39
ostensibly having some employee at the very least write
36:43
something into the code where an admin or a senior manager could
36:48
tweak a flag in the algorithm that would say make sure Jim
36:51
Rome gets a hit this week or do something.
36:54
The way it works is I login. That's the only aspect of it
36:57
that they can trace, right? Is my authentication of my user
37:00
ID, my user token. So I login and then I pick
37:03
whichever pack I want. They don't tell me like, oh, do
37:06
football this week, you know, like that.
37:08
Like they just, I just log in and pick one.
37:10
They tell me what to do every week and I screen record and it
37:13
comes out. Maybe they tell other people
37:15
with some I'm not Jim Rome. I don't have Jim Rome's
37:17
following. Even Jeff doesn't have Jim
37:19
Rome's following. So like, is it a possibility?
37:22
Sure, like what it blew up in their face like it was it didn't
37:27
go well. Like most people were like, of
37:29
course he hit the hit the grail. It wasn't like, wow, this is
37:32
really good for our brand that somebody who's already got a lot
37:34
of money and fame hit the biggest Chase card in the, you
37:37
know, in the particular repack. You said don't get addicted.
37:41
Isn't that kind of like giving somebody heroin and saying don't
37:45
get addicted, just do a little bit?
37:47
Maybe more like alcohol, which I don't have an issue with.
37:52
I myself enjoy to a little imbibing from time to time.
37:57
Look I I look on the surface of things and try to assess whether
38:00
or not they are inherently and intrinsically good or evil or
38:04
neither. The Internet has a ton of really
38:07
really bad stuff on. It has facilitated all kinds of
38:10
unspeakable evils. It's also changed the way we
38:13
live and breathe and operate and has created all kinds of life
38:16
saving things. I'm not saying Arena Club is
38:18
creating life saving things. Like I don't want to get that
38:20
conflated, but when you do a moral assessment of something, I
38:24
tend to try to take a what we call tennistic lens through it
38:27
and analyze it the same way in kind of a dialectical manner
38:31
that Saint Thomas Aquinas would look at it and write out this,
38:35
this, you know, here's I say to this, here's all the opposing
38:39
things and like, let's boil it down and distill it soup to
38:41
nuts. And just like whether you know
38:45
if you want to use the G word and call it gambling or you know
38:48
whatever lottery tickets are legal playing, you know casinos
38:51
are legal. Other things are legal, sports
38:53
betting, fantasy sports. And again, just to bring it back
38:56
to the simplest form, opening sealed boxes from the
38:59
manufacturer is legal. So all of those things can be
39:03
very addicting. There are a ton of people
39:04
addicted to ripping wax and coming in.
39:06
And that's also, you know, dangerous.
39:08
But I wouldn't, I wouldn't compare it to heroin.
39:11
I've never done heroin, so I can't compare the addictive
39:13
nature to ripping a repack, but I'm not addicted to ripping
39:17
repacks. So, you know, I'll give a shout
39:20
out, you know, to to collector's MD who are trying to help people
39:24
who do have addiction problems or have had struggles within the
39:28
hobby in different capacities. And I know the the founder of
39:31
that has been very vocal against repacks.
39:36
You know, I would say, I just say be careful.
39:38
And I, I know a lot of people at Arena Club and Courtyard both
39:41
who have the same message. They don't want to see people's
39:43
lives ruined. Yeah, a few months ago, you you
39:48
had a very derisive message about vintage Youtubers saying
39:52
that they're sitting in their mother's basement with bad
39:55
lighting and terrible audio. And Dan's Vintage Baseball PC,
39:58
who you mentioned earlier, would love an apology on that.
40:03
I will be happy to offer an apology on that.
40:05
And in fact, there was definitely a firestorm lit and I
40:11
talked to our head of video, Charles, who works at SCI about
40:17
that video and like how I would have redone it with a bunch of
40:23
disclaimers, the first of which being I really like vintage
40:27
cards. My motivation for that video was
40:30
not to anger and rage and incite strong reaction and click bait
40:34
from a very, very dedicated, arguably the most a passionate
40:40
and convicted segment of the hobby which is the vintage
40:44
community. It was to actually try to point
40:47
out, I'm worried legitimately that a huge section of these
40:51
vintage cards which are historical artifacts are going
40:55
to potentially be completely forgotten by a generation now
40:59
and moving forward. That is quick twitch, no focus,
41:04
ADHD riddled and not particularly interested in
41:08
history. And you know, some people said,
41:10
hey, that applies. Like this is always been the
41:13
dynamic people who are young, you know, they get a little
41:16
older and they start to get more interested in vintage.
41:18
And that may continue to be the case.
41:19
That's certainly true historically.
41:22
But there's something just very different about like this
41:24
generation and interacting with teenagers who don't know who
41:30
Benjamin Franklin was, like they just do not care and they're not
41:33
going to care. You know who a lot of these like
41:36
vintage people were they, they're they're not going to
41:38
care about even like Satchel Paige.
41:40
And you would think, wow, his card should be, you know,
41:42
revered for a long time. So it was more to talk about
41:45
that. And there were a lot of
41:47
redirects and other things. Well, what about modern?
41:49
Yes, I've made similar videos about modern, but it's
41:52
different. And I would re, I would re
41:57
sequence some of the things that I said in that video.
41:59
And after the backlash and after several quite acerbic responses
42:07
from a number of people, I got frustrated.
42:12
And I got frustrated with Dan because I know Dan's opinion of
42:16
my boss too, and therefore of me.
42:18
And I see the types of comments left on mine in his videos and
42:22
things. And I got into it a little bit
42:24
with him on, on one of Mangini's, you know, common
42:27
threads and other things. And I, I actually asked John
42:30
Mangini to have me on his channel so we could talk about
42:34
it. And he said OK, but he never
42:36
reached out to me. So I don't know, maybe something
42:38
got lost in the stream there. But Dan, I am sorry.
42:41
I, I talked to a number of people and to be totally honest,
42:47
the beautiful thing about it is when I look at a channel like
42:50
Dan's or John's or others, they'll get 1300 views or
42:56
something, right? And they have like 600 comments.
42:59
Like it's a community, it's not transactional.
43:02
And, and it like, so the engagement rate and the
43:05
community expanded around that. The respect that their viewers
43:09
have for both of them when they watch their videos, they're
43:11
like, they're like friends. You know, it's, it's a different
43:15
dynamic than like the transactional nature of a lot of
43:17
the ultra modern space. And I think that says something.
43:21
It says something that you can just turn on your camera and
43:24
talk like you're talking to your friends and sharing your
43:26
collection and saying like, check out this sweet type one
43:30
photo or whatever it is they might have picked up last week.
43:32
It doesn't even have to be a card.
43:33
And you have that many people who are just gravitating toward
43:37
that production value. Be danged.
43:39
You know, so I, I, I don't think there's an issue with it.
43:44
I do think there could be more done to try to engage the youth
43:47
with vintage and to try to help make a connection to it.
43:50
And so that's something I'd love to see grow.
43:54
The greatest thing about these vintage guys and, and I'm one of
43:57
them to some extent is that there and I'm, I'm obviously not
44:00
making this, but most of the vast majority of them are making
44:03
under $100 a month doing this. They are only doing it for the
44:07
love of cards and connecting with other card collectors.
44:12
Yeah, I, I've actually distinguished over the years
44:17
between a phrase I see a lot of people say I'm a true collector
44:22
or you're not a true collector. And the phrase that I prefer is
44:26
nuanced, is pure collector. I'm a pure collector.
44:30
I'm a, you're a pure collector. And you know, to call to tell
44:33
somebody they're not a true collector to me is telling, is
44:36
telling them you're not doing it right.
44:38
And I don't, I sort of take umbrage with that, but for
44:41
people who don't sell, they just buy and they grow their
44:45
collections and it's rare that they let something go.
44:48
Or if they do let it go, it's because they're funding
44:51
something else. Like that is the purity of the
44:54
hobby. It's the backbone of the hobby.
44:55
It's what has sustained the hobby over time and even led to
44:59
a hobby that could make a comeback the way that it has in
45:02
the last five, 6-7 years for people who never left, they just
45:05
stayed the whole while. And in that way, I sort of
45:09
understand why a lot of them today are pretty frustrated
45:12
because the hobby has changed a lot.
45:14
It's become a lot more expensive things that maybe they couldn't
45:18
do that they used to be able to do regularly, they can't afford
45:20
to do as often or ever anymore. And it's kind of like somebody
45:24
just came in and took the, you know, church you grew up in as a
45:29
child and recavated it and changed everything.
45:32
And you're like, I, I, this meant something to me.
45:34
And now it's just destroyed or changed or infiltrated or
45:39
whatever. Yeah, another thing that I don't
45:42
know, frustrates the right word, but that a lot of vintage
45:45
Youtubers talk about is the O face thumbnails.
45:49
And Jeff is famous for them, of course.
45:50
But all the big Youtubers are. And Jeff has talked about it on
45:53
Twitter where he says I do it because they perform much better
45:56
and I want to get more clicks, which makes a lot of sense.
45:59
Yours your thumbnails on the Market Movers app aren't as
46:03
egregious. I assume there's some AB testing
46:06
that you've done that say they they perform 3X better when you
46:11
have the crazy O face thumbnail, right?
46:14
It's insane how much of a difference or an impact a
46:18
thumbnail and a title make on a YouTube video.
46:21
Because I mean, in a way it is. In a way.
46:24
It's not like it's just marketing.
46:26
It's marketing one O 1. It's advertising one O 1, right?
46:29
You're like trying to get somebody to click on something.
46:31
So even just to look at Instagram ads that come through
46:35
and I'll find myself like looking at 1:00 and just sort of
46:39
pausing. Like why, why did I just watch
46:41
20 seconds of this? Like what about it made me pause
46:43
and not just keep going? Because normally the ads drive
46:45
me nuts. And when I when I look at a lot
46:49
of videos too, it must be something about actually
46:53
equating our mind to saying, oh, this is a professional video.
46:57
Like this is this is somebody who's taken time or something,
47:02
you know, when you see a certain thumbnail because you're used to
47:05
it on the bigger channels with high production value that it
47:08
would be like a mismatch. I don't know.
47:11
I don't understand the psychology of why like, you
47:14
know, something like that on The thing is like so appealing to
47:17
people. To be totally honest, I have
47:20
sort of the same cynical attitude about it.
47:23
I think it's ridiculous. Our video team was like, hey,
47:29
make this reaction, make this expression, you know, and taking
47:32
headshots. And I'm literally standing in a
47:34
glass studio in our card shop, you know, with people behind me,
47:39
like being told like dance, monkey dance, you know, like
47:43
it's just, it doesn't, I don't like it.
47:47
But it, you know, it does work and it's sort of part of the
47:50
job. And a really catchy title
47:53
matters to, you know, get people in and make them want to see
47:56
what, what the heck it is you're saying.
47:59
I don't, I don't write the titles for my videos.
48:03
Our video team does and they choose and design the
48:06
thumbnails. So I brainstorm with our head of
48:09
video every week on videos. And then I, I write the video
48:12
and I come up with everything in it, whatever it might be.
48:16
And then they do the thumbnails and the titles.
48:18
Every once in a while I will tell them in advance, like I
48:23
don't want the title to be this or to use this word.
48:27
The thing I'm most like strongly opinioned on is I do videos that
48:35
I we call like a data dive while where I review like prices and
48:38
charts and, you know, use market movers to show kind of like
48:41
what's a segment been doing or football seasons coming up, you
48:44
know, here, which players are people looking at?
48:47
And I try to give all the disclaimers and I tell them do
48:51
not use the word will in terms of will go up or will go down
48:56
like in the title, keep it conditional, could, might,
49:00
whatever you want to do. But I don't put that.
49:04
And then people literally click and go to the comments and miss
49:08
the disclaimer that I say, you know, 30 seconds into the show,
49:10
like this is not financial advice.
49:12
These are my opinions. I welcome yours.
49:15
Tell me what an idiot I am. I don't care.
49:18
So. Great.
49:20
Well teapot, I appreciate you coming on.
49:23
This is very interesting. I thought you had some good
49:25
answers. Any last thoughts?
49:28
I thought you had some good questions and important topics.
49:31
And you know, one thing I'll just say is like this last
49:35
couple of weeks has been, I think actually really good for
49:38
me. And maybe that sounds weird
49:39
having been accused of SHIELD bidding and then having a week
49:42
of people talking about it before Patrick issued that
49:44
apology. But the reason it's been good
49:47
for me is probably four or five years ago.
49:51
I just, I couldn't really handle the stress of all the
49:54
accusations and hate and everything toward my boss and
49:57
indirectly to me to some extent. But I just kind of like blocked
50:01
a bunch of people on Instagram and was like, I don't want to
50:03
deal with this, this, I don't have time for this.
50:06
Like I have 5 kids and a life and a wife and a job and a hobby
50:10
and faith and all these things and it just, I don't care.
50:15
I've since unblocked everybody that I can remember.
50:18
I've talked to a few of them directly.
50:20
I've had voice message exchanges on Instagram.
50:22
I went on SCR for Pete's sake. Like I think it's better to talk
50:27
to people and to have the just try to make that a priority.
50:31
It can't, it won't. And it can't become a time suck
50:33
for me, you know, to like become everybody's like point of
50:35
contact or like reach out for comment or whatever.
50:38
But I will to whatever extent I can afford the time.
50:41
And, you know, transparency too, because the minute you can just
50:44
give somebody honest, authentic feedback, you know, I think you
50:48
build a relationship too, Like they start to trust you more and
50:50
say, oh, this guy is a real person.
50:53
He's not trying to like pull A1 over or scam us or things along
50:56
those lines. So that's been really good for
50:58
me. I'm grateful that a number of
51:00
people have reached out, yourself included, to just say,
51:03
Hey, let's chat. Let's give a chance for you to
51:05
for people to hear what you have to say on these different
51:07
topics. And I look forward to doing more
51:09
of it going forward. Cool.
51:12
All right, we'll stick around after the end and I'll see you
51:15
all soon. All the people who are watching,
51:17
thanks for watching. I appreciate it.