Latest / Sports Card Clubhouse / He Makes the Best Short-Form Sports Card Videos! Talking w/Adam Gray @the27guy and @thereal27guy for Meet A Content Creator Episode 1

Transcript

He Makes the Best Short-Form Sports Card Videos! Talking w/Adam Gray @the27guy and @thereal27guy for Meet A Content Creator Episode 1 · Sports Card Clubhouse

0:01
Hey everybody, it is Mike Junk Wax Hero and this is the first
0:04
episode of the new podcast series Meet a Content Creator,
0:08
and I am introducing it with my first guest, Adam Gray, also
0:12
known as the 27 Guy. Is that right, Adam?
0:17
That's right. Yeah, Sometimes people say the
0:20
real guy 27 emphasis on real rather than on 27.
0:24
But yeah, 27's the lucky number. And that's and that's what it
0:28
comes from the 27 guy on Twitter and the real 27 guy on Instagram
0:33
and most other places. And what is the?
0:35
What does the username come from?
0:38
27 was my lucky number when I was growing up and there's a
0:40
couple of card related things that it has to do with that are
0:45
both long stories. One, it resulted in the greatest
0:49
pull in the card shop that I worked for in the 1990s and
0:52
early 2000s, which was a Michael Jordan jersey autograph out of
0:56
$100 box of cards that sold that week for seven grand back in
1:01
1999 is crazy. And then the other reason is
1:04
after years of putting together the 8687 set, I finally was able
1:07
to buy a Michael Jordan 86 clear.
1:11
It had a bunch of creases in it. I still have it to this day and
1:13
I paid $27.00 for it. So all of these things sort of
1:17
happened. Those are the two big card
1:19
related parts of the of the 27. That's awesome.
1:22
And that's, I have a couple of questions just from that, but
1:26
I'm going to give you a chance to introduce yourself, who you
1:29
are because I have always seen you.
1:32
I, I don't open Instagram much, but when I do, there you are.
1:35
And I always have it on mute, not because of you, but just
1:38
because that's the way I open Instagram.
1:40
And it wasn't until I started seeing you on Twitter in the
1:44
past year or so that I started really watching what you do.
1:46
And, and I was like, man, this guy is good.
1:48
I really, I'm a big basketball guy, love basketball.
1:51
And you do almost exclusively basketball cards, right?
1:56
As far as my collection, yeah, it is just exclusively
1:59
basketball cards. But for, for what I did, you
2:02
want me to talk about like a little bit about my, my, myself,
2:06
or was there anything else that you wanted to ask?
2:07
For yeah, I'd love for you to just go through you as a content
2:11
creator and a collector would be great.
2:13
Yeah, awesome. So like a lot of people, I
2:16
collected when I was a kid back in the late 80s and early 90s.
2:20
And but unlike a lot of people, I never stopped collecting.
2:23
And so I've just always collected cards and worked for a
2:27
card shop for a number of years and then paid for my college
2:32
education through flipping cards.
2:33
Back before we use the word flipping, flipping, flipping was
2:36
actually like this word that I think I heard years later.
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At least I'd never thought of it like that, but buying and
2:42
selling and helping people move collections and things like
2:45
that. So I paid for both of my
2:46
degrees, which were in accounting and then was able to
2:51
put the large portion of the down payment on my house by
2:54
selling my collection back in 2010.
2:57
And then since then, I've just basically like been building my
3:00
collection from an original investment of a couple $1000.
3:04
And that leads me to the collection that I have today,
3:07
which is just the best basketball card collection that
3:11
I can that I can put together. And it's sort of centered around
3:15
just the history of basketball cards.
3:16
I've got stuff from the 1930s, got a 48 mic in all the way,
3:22
lots of stuff from the 70s, a lot of rare 90s inserts all the
3:25
way up until more modern. I don't really have anything
3:28
from like the last 8 to 10 years in my collection.
3:31
Not very many of those types of cards.
3:34
But, but really throughout the history of basketball cards is,
3:37
is what I've what I've collected.
3:38
And if I have a chance to ever acquire something that's like
3:43
really what I would say is important or meaningful to the
3:47
history of basketball cards. And I'm able to sell something
3:51
else from my collection that I believe is, is less important
3:53
than I do that. So that's how I'm always like
3:56
changing my collection. I don't have the good fortune of
3:59
having a whole lot of money outside of my collection.
4:01
So whenever I have to buy something, I have to sell
4:04
something to do that. But yeah, that's, that's my
4:07
history as a card collector. And then as far as content
4:10
creator, I started the first basketball card podcast
4:13
affectionately called the Basketball Card Podcast.
4:16
I started the magazine behind me that you can see called
4:18
Basketball Card Fanatic, which a lot of people haven't heard of,
4:21
but we had about 500 subscribers during our almost five year run,
4:27
printed the magazine and had a great experience with that.
4:30
And that led me to really a full time content career which
4:34
started at PWCC and then when PWCC changed and became Fanatics
4:39
Collect, I had the chance to go out and do it for others.
4:41
And so now I make content for all, for all sorts of different
4:45
card companies. I love it.
4:47
It's the best thing ever. I get to do awesome stories
4:51
about cards that are at auction and other other cool things that
4:55
they're exciting. And I try to always bring a, the
5:01
collector's mindset, a mindset of like, why is this an
5:05
interesting thing from the perspective of the collector and
5:08
where I think the community is like 9010, they focus on price
5:12
and 10% on everything else. I try to flip it.
5:15
I'm sort of 9010 in the other direction.
5:16
I want to think about all the other stuff and think about
5:18
price just that 10% of the time. So I try to keep that short.
5:22
But that's that's me in a in a nutshell.
5:24
No, that was great. And one of the things that I
5:27
really admire about the videos that I watch of yours is the
5:29
pacing. You, you have perfect pacing of,
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you know, here's this item, here's why it's important and
5:36
here's the end. It's kind of the, you know, the,
5:39
the sandwich of a, a video and you do it perfectly, probably
5:44
because you've been doing it for so long.
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And I just, every time I watch you, I feel like it's just, it's
5:49
almost like comfort food, you know, and it's going to be short
5:53
and it's, I know exactly what the format is going to be and
5:56
you're going to nail it every time.
5:57
Well, thank you for saying that. I, I wish everybody liked them.
6:01
I know that a lot of people are like, why is Adam's face on
6:04
everything? And I, I, I hear that the reason
6:06
I put my face on everything, by the way, might surprise people,
6:08
but it's all about engagement. And when you look at a, a real
6:13
like where you're talking about a card, people might not want to
6:17
see people's face every time. They may think that, but the
6:20
data sort of suggests to us that that people are more likely to
6:23
watch if you're on there and if it's your face and your voice
6:27
and you're speaking more as a real person.
6:29
But the the real, the real secret to it is it just takes
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these things take forever. People see a 45 second video and
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they're like, oh, that probably took you like 15 minutes.
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And it's like, I wish that took me 15 minutes.
6:40
It takes an incredible amount of time.
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I have reels that have taken me several days to make a 62nd
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video. And that's because of the
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research that's involved in all of the things.
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And so when I tell people my average reel gets about 40,000
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views across the different channels, that sounds incredible
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and I know that and I appreciate that.
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But it also like if they knew what went into it, they might
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not quite feel quite, quite the way they do.
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They take they take a long time to get them right.
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And is this a side gig for you or are you full time content
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creator? No, I'm full time.
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I've been full time now for the last 2 1/2 or actually if you
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include the Europe, the Europe PWCC about three 3 1/2 years.
7:19
I've been full time in this now. Wow, that's fascinating.
7:24
You had mentioned the card that you sold for $7000 in the late
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90s. Oh no, no, I didn't pull that.
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Somebody else in our shop pulled that.
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I wish do. You know what that card is worth
7:34
now? Oh yeah, I mean it's certainly
7:37
A6 figure card. It's like it's, I mean I, I
7:39
shouldn't say certainly it's it's either really low or really
7:43
high 5 figures up into depending on condition it could be a
7:46
couple $100,000 card. That sounds right.
7:49
That's yeah. So you also mentioned the 86th
7:52
Fleer Jordan. What is Jordan's rookie card?
7:56
Well, I am a student of Beckett and so I when I had the chance
8:02
to interview Doctor Beckett a few years ago, it's probably
8:05
been five years ago now, I asked him the same question and I and
8:09
it was before things got really exciting with Star being graded
8:12
by, by PSA and stuff. And I liked his answer because
8:15
he talked about how it was important that the card was
8:18
available to a lot of a lot of the world when it came out that
8:23
it was distributed in sort of a more normal way where everybody
8:25
had a chance at it. And I thought, oh, that's
8:27
interesting. And 86 flair to me is the 86
8:31
flair. Jordan is pretty clearly a top
8:32
three most iconic card in the history of a hobby.
8:34
It's easily the most iconic basketball card ever.
8:37
So to me, it will always be the rookie card.
8:39
But there is no way around the fact that the star predates it.
8:43
There's no way around the fact that it is NBA licensed.
8:45
There's no way around the fact that it is older, that it comes
8:48
first, that it is from a regular set that we sort of view as a
8:51
mainstream set now. And we don't think about how
8:52
they were distributed anymore. We don't mean we can still see
8:55
the unopened bag of star. We can still see the unopened
8:58
box of 86 Flare that comes up for auction every couple of
9:00
months, but to me it's easy to just say they're both rookie
9:05
cards, but that's sort of how I think about it.
9:08
I think that's very well said. It's all you covered all the
9:10
things that the arguments are. And for me it's just that the 86
9:15
flare looks so much better. It's infinitely better image
9:19
and, and and iconic too. So here's my question, here's my
9:24
question for you. There's two of them.
9:27
You're you go to a card show. I don't know how often you go to
9:30
card shows. I almost never go.
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I try to go to one a year. I go to the national every year.
9:33
I'd like to go to more, but 5A year, 4 or five a year.
9:36
So they're both on a table. They're in, they're in similar
9:38
condition. Which one?
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If you had the chance, which one would you want to get for your
9:44
collection? I think that if you are
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considering value and potential upside, it's got to be the star,
9:53
but for my collection I would rather have the 86 flare.
9:56
So how's, how's this for not how, how, how would I put this?
10:01
I have had that same 86 flare Jordan in my collection since I
10:05
was 14 years old. So I'm 42 now.
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So we're talking about almost 30 years I've owned, I've never
10:11
even owned a star before, but I love how much rarer it is.
10:16
So today, which one would be more appealing to me?
10:19
It's the star by a long shot. But as soon as you said the 86
10:23
Claire is way better looking, my head started nod because it's
10:25
just not even close. It's it's such a good looking
10:28
card. It's so iconic.
10:29
It's so, it's so all of those things, but the rarity of the
10:32
star speaks to me as I, as I've gotten older, am I collecting?
10:35
And if I had that, I'm not. I'm not like knocking down any
10:38
doors to go get it because it's still a card that is in almost
10:42
every major auction, but it's so much more rare.
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I'd probably steer steer myself to that at this stage of my
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collecting dream. So that brings me to the next
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question. As a basketball, I assume you're
10:56
a basketball expert. You certainly know a lot about
10:58
basketball. Who is the GOAT of basketball?
11:02
Oh, it's Jordan. It's not even a I don't even
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like the The conversations about LeBron are fun because it is
11:08
longevity, but longevity does not make you, I mean, growing
11:15
up, I was a huge fan of the Utah Jazz, right?
11:17
And John Stockton has the most assists and steals ever and
11:19
caramel and for a long time have the second most points ever.
11:22
But being being around a long time and accumulating these
11:25
great amounts of statistics over your career, they, they put you
11:29
in the conversation, but they don't make you the greatest of
11:31
all time. And that's about championships
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and about how much impact you had on the sport.
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And that's Jordan and it's Jordan by a lot, by a mile.
11:40
I don't personally have LeBron and is the number two player of
11:43
all time either. And I'm not a LeBron hater.
11:45
People would say that I am. I like LeBron in a lot of ways.
11:49
I do. But he's not.
11:50
I don't think he's. I don't.
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What do you, what do you think? What's your answer to that
11:53
question? It's it's Jordan and it's not
11:56
even close. And I have LeBron at four or
11:59
five. And I am a LeBron hater, but
12:02
only because I'm a Celtics fan and I'm legally required to hate
12:05
LeBron. As a Who are the other guys that
12:08
you have ahead of him? Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Kobe and
12:11
Curry. Oh, Steph, I like that.
12:16
The impact on the game. Another thing that I think is
12:18
underrated is the coolness factor of the athlete.
12:21
And LeBron just doesn't have coolness that Steph Curry and
12:26
Jordan has in spades. He is the coolest athlete of all
12:29
time. So here's a here's a fun LeBron
12:31
question for you. What was the coolest version of
12:34
LeBron? Wow, do you mean which era?
12:41
Yeah. I would say his second time in
12:45
Cleveland. Oh cool cuz that cuz that
12:48
championship is one of the all time great championships.
12:51
The chase down block, yeah, yeah.
12:54
They couldn't they couldn't score at the end of that game
12:55
and he sure had a lot of chances, but the chase down
12:59
block is an all timer moment. I so I love his It's kind of
13:03
like when Hulk Hogan goes to the to the NWO with in WCWI love it
13:08
when when LeBron becomes the bad guy after the decision, he goes
13:12
to Miami. He wins two of his four
13:14
championships there. He has the the decision and it's
13:17
just it's so bad, right? It's such a bad moment, but
13:20
like, and he had some moments in there in in Miami that were just
13:24
so bad. He almost he almost chokes away
13:26
the opportunity at A championship that the
13:29
championship against the Heat, his second championship there,
13:31
he almost loses it for him, has a couple of terrible turnovers,
13:35
but they win in the end. He was unbelievably elite as far
13:39
as how athletic he was. But but I like your answer too,
13:43
because that that Cavs championship was awesome, man.
13:46
It was. Even if you don't like him, and
13:47
I know you've already proclaimed you're not a lover of him, like
13:50
that was a great championship. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
13:55
So when you're doing a video, it sounds like most of your videos
13:59
are are, I don't know if most of them are, but are a lot of your
14:02
videos hired out by like an auction house?
14:05
Yeah, most of them are not. I would, I would say probably,
14:09
gosh, I should look at this. It's probably somewhere between
14:12
70 and 85% of them. I'm doing that content for the
14:17
auction house and for most of them, you either see them tagged
14:21
in the the real or, or I'm collaborating with the auction
14:24
house. Yeah.
14:27
So the the vast majority of them are yes.
14:30
So how many, what percentage of the requests you get from
14:34
auction houses would you say you reject?
14:35
And why do you reject those, if any?
14:39
So you mean like if they were to ask about like, hey, will you do
14:42
this video on this specific card?
14:45
Is that what you're? Saying so, I get sponsorship
14:47
requests frequently from companies that I would never do
14:51
business with. And I also get sponsorship
14:55
requests on companies I would do business with that just doesn't
14:58
interest me in doing the kinds of things that they want me to
15:01
do. And so I'm just kind of
15:02
wondering if that if you have anything similar?
15:04
So with the auction houses, there are times where people
15:07
will come to me and they'll say, hey, do you have a good story on
15:10
this card? And I think most cards, if you
15:14
take the time, there's like a really great story out there.
15:17
Again, they just take forever to produce and to to think through.
15:22
So there are sometimes though where I'm like, this is really a
15:26
bad thing. Like I don't this is not going
15:28
to this is not going to be good either.
15:31
Because it is a card that I sort of feel like is being collected
15:36
just because it's sort of something that were somebody
15:39
speculating on the the player like like they're just like,
15:43
well, this guy's this card's cool because this guy is hot.
15:45
That generally is not super appealing to me.
15:49
Or there's there are times where people will have a card that I
15:52
feel like has suspicious elements to it where I'm like, I
15:55
don't like that. I don't like how that feels.
15:57
And in those situations I'll just tell people no.
16:01
So that happens. But for the most part, for the
16:04
most, I'll say this like this is sort of like, let me see behind
16:07
the curtain a little bit. But like for the most part, an
16:09
auction comes out. And when the auction comes out,
16:11
I look through the whole of the auction and I'll give the
16:13
auction house like a number of things where I'm like, these are
16:16
great stories. And in a lot of cases, the
16:19
auction house will be like, how do I say this?
16:23
In a lot of cases, the auction house is like, Adam, just do
16:25
whatever you think is great, right?
16:27
Because because I've done enough of this content for the auction
16:30
houses that most of them are sort of like, we know that you,
16:33
you do a good job and you have a good sense of which stories are
16:35
the are the most interesting stories.
16:38
And so, you know, if I feel like there's a really good story out
16:40
there, then I'll do it. But if there's something like
16:45
like where they are hoping that I'll do something and I don't
16:47
like it to get back to your question, I just tell them like,
16:51
sorry, I'm not going to do that. And I haven't had anybody
16:54
really. I've had a few places sort of
16:56
like a couple times. You'd be like, come on, we
16:58
really need this. Like the client requested it and
17:01
it's a little bit awkward because sometimes, sometimes the
17:04
auction house has sort of said, yes, we'll have Adam do a video
17:08
for you if you'll do this. And then sometimes Adam, me, I
17:11
said, no, I'm not going to do that.
17:12
So that's a little awkward. But that's those times have been
17:15
very few. That doesn't usually happen.
17:18
Interesting. Tell me about your magazine,
17:22
because I didn't. I wasn't aware of it until
17:24
probably two years ago, and I think by then it was long gone.
17:27
You had ended it. It we actually, we only, we only
17:30
ended it about a year ago. So it was never, I would say
17:34
this it it's like, so I've got a copy of it right here.
17:36
I was looking at something I was looking up something earlier
17:40
this week in in this magazine. It was.
17:44
It was definitely the greatest passion project I've ever had.
17:48
You. Know we, we put so much time
17:52
into this knowing full well that in 2020 and after that it was
17:57
never going to be something that we were going to be able to sell
18:01
for a lot of money knowing, knowing that it was never going
18:04
to be some massive revenue generator.
18:06
It actually made pretty good money though, like we had a
18:09
number of sponsors and like I said, like 500 paying
18:12
subscribers is not like, I felt like it was tremendous success.
18:17
And when we stopped, it was awesome.
18:20
The, the, the reaction that we got from so many people, which
18:22
was like so many people were like, man, you guys put so much
18:28
into that. Thank you for that.
18:29
And then there are other people were like, man, like I'm really
18:32
going to miss this. This became a really important
18:34
part of, of how I, you know, like how I conducted myself in
18:39
the hobby because once a month, you know, if you were paying 10
18:41
bucks a month, you were getting a high quality 32 to 36 page
18:47
magazine every, you know, every month, like we never missed a
18:53
month and it was well designed and the stories were awesome.
18:56
And so I like, I love to do it. I still miss it, but you know, I
19:01
just got to the point where I had so many things that I was
19:04
able to do that like, I was like, I had so much, so many.
19:07
And you, you know, this like being a dad and, you know,
19:10
having the life that you have, like there's, there's so many
19:12
demands on your time. You don't always get to do
19:14
everything that you want. And although I think BCF could
19:18
still be productive, awesome, you know, asset in our, in our
19:23
industry, we would spend dozens of hours putting this together
19:28
and then 500 people would see it.
19:31
I can put together a reel in five or six hours and 40,000
19:35
people see it. And that's sort of what it came
19:38
down to in the end is that I could, felt like I could sort
19:41
of, I could touch more, like I could influence more and be seen
19:45
by more and like educate more. And all of those things that
19:49
you're trying to do with the, with the, the, the online
19:52
content, I could just do so many of those things so much better
19:54
than I could in a written way, which is sort of sad, but also
19:58
sort of just the reality of it. Yeah, it's one of those things
20:02
where you can look back and say I did that.
20:03
And I always tell my kids, you're never going to regret
20:07
trying something, even if you it doesn't work out the way you
20:11
want it to. Or after a long time, you say I
20:14
need to move on to something else.
20:16
But you may look back and say I regret not doing that.
20:20
And it feels like one of those things.
20:22
Yeah, I think that's right. Tell me about the book you
20:26
You're writing a book, right? Yeah, so when I so starting with
20:32
Basketball Card fanatic, actually I produced a really
20:37
cool crowdsourcing project and the idea was what what episode
20:43
or what issue was it? I think it was an issue 2
20:45
basketball card fanatic. I asked like 20-5 really big
20:50
basketball collectors. I said, just tell me, what do
20:53
you think? The I can't remember what the
20:54
number was, but I think it was like the top 10 most iconic
20:58
basketball cards are ever. And people came back with all
21:00
these questions like what what does iconic mean for this?
21:04
And I'm like, what does iconic mean for you?
21:06
Whatever you think. And then I just left it open and
21:10
said, you know, rank them one through 10.
21:12
And then the, the, the real magic is with the system because
21:16
if a card received a vote, then it received certain number of
21:19
points and then it depending on where it, where it finished in
21:21
the top ten, it received more or less points, right.
21:25
And so everybody's like lists were so different.
21:28
And then I just in Excel standardized all the lists, gave
21:32
each card sort of an identifier and then and then applied the
21:37
numeric, the numeric sort of settings that we applied at the
21:39
beginning and said, what is this yield?
21:41
And so another part of that, by the way, was a card had to show
21:45
up on a certain number of lists to make the final list.
21:49
So even if somebody put, even if like a couple people put a card
21:52
number one all time, if it wasn't on a certain percentage
21:56
of the list, it just couldn't qualify.
21:58
So that sort of prevented a small group of people from
22:01
manipulating the final results. And so we were sort of aware of
22:05
all of that sort of stuff. And as part of it, we came up
22:08
with a list of like the 12 or 15 most iconic basketball cards of
22:11
all time. And I looked at it and I was
22:13
like, gosh, this is so interesting.
22:15
And so then I did it another time for BCF.
22:17
And then when I started PWCCI, did the same thing for PWCCI.
22:22
Like I remember trying to convince my boss, Chris
22:24
Callahan, and I was like, dude, this is going to be the coolest
22:26
project ever. Like we did this for BCF.
22:29
Let's do it, but let's do for the whole of the hobby.
22:30
We didn't even limit it to sports cards.
22:32
We did non sports cards too, which I think was a mistake in
22:35
retrospect, because it's hard to find voters that can opine in a
22:39
really good way, in a really accurate way on both sports and
22:43
non sports. But we did it and we and we
22:47
interviewed. We're not interviewed.
22:48
We, we sent the, the survey out to it like it was like 150
22:52
people and it created this list called the iconic 100 that that
22:56
we did for PWCC. And it was awesome, dude.
22:59
Like the, the, the content that came out of it was so good.
23:03
And so after I, after I left PWCCI was like, I want to take
23:07
the same thing that I started back at BCF and let's do it
23:10
again. Let's just do it for the 1st 25
23:13
years of the 2000s. And this time, based on all of
23:17
the learnings from the other times, I said, let's do it in a
23:20
way so that in the end it's going to be like the very best
23:23
version of this that we can. And part of those learnings, by
23:26
the way, this is incredibly important.
23:28
The iconic 100, it ended up being too basketball heavy and I
23:32
knew it did because a lot of the experts had a basketball
23:35
background. And so this time we said no one
23:38
who is an expert can just be a basketball expert.
23:43
They have to have expertise in different things and we have to
23:46
ask not just my audience, but a bigger audience, a more diverse
23:52
audience. And so I went on sports cards
23:53
and nonsense a couple times. And that's where a huge
23:55
percentage of our of our voters came from was from sports cards,
24:00
nonsense. So we had both an expert pool of
24:02
made-up of people who work in the industry, people who I know
24:06
through, through all of my dealings in the industry, and
24:09
not only people I know, but but other people who other, other
24:12
people who worked on this with me because Gem Rate and I
24:16
partnered together on this. And so we have this expert pool
24:19
of about 40 experts. And then we left it open to the
24:22
community and almost 460 community members filled it out.
24:27
We took the two polls and we said we'd do this in the
24:29
beginning. We, we, we gave them each and
24:32
equal weight. So the 40 over here did have a
24:35
lot more impact than the, than the 460.
24:37
But kind of like the NBA All Star game, you've got two
24:39
different voting pools. And then we did the same thing
24:42
where we applied the point values to it.
24:45
And after we did that, it created a list, an average list
24:49
of the 25 most iconic cards across the 1st 2000 or excuse
24:56
me, across the, all of the 2000s.
24:59
And it was, it was awesome, dude.
25:01
Like the, the, the list that fell out was awesome.
25:03
And then now you know, I know there's a long description, but
25:06
the purpose of the book is to sort of commemorate, commemorate
25:09
those 25 cards, commemorate all the cards that ended up on the
25:12
survey, which came from various experts within each sport.
25:18
So like there was a baseball group, a baseball group of
25:20
experts who put together a list of 30 cards that went on the
25:23
survey. So we didn't miss anything.
25:25
No one's accusing us of, oh, you missed this card.
25:27
No one's going to accuse us of that.
25:29
Some people are going to a question very much how people
25:31
voted, but everything was on the survey.
25:35
Every card that you could possibly want, I think it was
25:37
100 and it's like 140 cards total that people had to vote
25:42
for or vote from and they went through and they ranked their
25:45
top 25 using the software, the survey that we put together and
25:51
and yeah, now it's like time to unveil that in book form.
25:53
It's already been unveiled. If you look at my Instagram or
25:56
my YouTube, you can find that. But but yeah, I think people are
25:59
gonna really like it. That's awesome.
26:03
I'm looking forward to it. I'll definitely be buying one.
26:07
You reminded me of your iconic 100 list because a couple of
26:11
years ago, just about two years ago now, I guess I wanted to
26:14
start up my own 100 most iconic sports cards of all time.
26:18
And I googled to see if anybody else had done that before.
26:20
And sure enough, there's this PWCC list of 100.
26:23
And I remember reading through it and thinking there is so much
26:26
basketball in here and there's a lot of Kobe and LeBron in here.
26:30
I thought if I were to start my own list, it would be all sports
26:36
and I would limit it to 1 card of each athlete.
26:40
So I did that 100 cards and I have like track and field
26:45
athletes in there. It's all over the place.
26:47
No lacrosse. That was the one thing I
26:49
couldn't find any cards of, but 100 most iconic cards of they.
26:55
Plus, they also have to be attainable for under $5000.
26:59
Oh, so that yeah, you put some real cool filters on that.
27:02
What did, what was your what was your findings in the end?
27:04
I'm super interested to hear this.
27:06
I, I haven't released the top 25 yet.
27:08
I'm going to start a, a weekly. I, I did, I was doing them one
27:12
at a time for about 10 weeks and I was like, this is crazy.
27:16
And then I started doing them in chunks of five to 10 and I'm
27:19
down to the top 25. I took a break for the summer
27:21
and I haven't gotten back to it yet.
27:23
But yeah, it's, you know, you've got, I'm heavy on vintage, of
27:30
course, but then you've got the 89 Griffey upper deck is really
27:34
high in the list. I had that when I filled out my
27:37
survey for the Iconic 100. I had the graffiti #4 and I
27:41
still feel like it's #4 but the community, if I remember right,
27:44
I could just look at the book because we did a book for that
27:46
too. I think the community had it
27:47
number like #9 and or #10 I just think maybe it was even like 7
27:53
or 8. Either way, that's too low.
27:55
The 89 graffiti to me is a higher.
27:57
It's a higher card than that. I'll tell you.
28:00
I'll tell you as well. I'll tell you as well then.
28:01
Now this is going to break your list, but number one was the
28:06
Mantle, 52 #2 was the 86 Fleer Jordan, which again, I just
28:11
think it's too high. I think that I think that card's
28:13
number three and then #3 was the Wagner.
28:16
I personally, I think that the T2O6 Wagner is the most iconic
28:19
card ever made. I do that's what I think.
28:22
But again, that's not how the voters voted and that's how this
28:25
that's how we set it up. I would probably have it if I
28:28
had the the same before the lack of restrictions that I have.
28:31
I would probably go Mantle and then Wagner.
28:34
OK, I have in my list I have Griffey at number six.
28:38
Spoiler alert for anybody. You have you have the Gretzky
28:41
head of it, I'll bet. The Gretzky is #4.
28:44
Yeah, yeah. And then is your number.
28:46
Let me see, is your #5 goodness, who would you have #5?
28:52
It's not, It's not the Ruth. And no, it's not the Ruth
28:54
because it's under 5 grand. No, there is a Ruth.
28:57
So remember I created this two years ago.
28:59
The Ruth out priced this now along with my #1 which is the
29:04
494849 leaf Jackie Robinson. At the time those were both
29:08
borderline and I think they may have out priced this.
29:11
I'll have to check before I do those.
29:13
Yeah, that's true. But then I'm just going to
29:15
choose different cards for both those guys because what I'm
29:18
trying to do is take the most iconic athletes of all time and
29:22
and do the best cards I can get for under $5000.
29:26
Awesome. I love that.
29:27
Jackie has to be #1 followed by Ruth spoiling things here.
29:32
Ruth and then Jordan, Gretzky, Mantle and then I've got
29:37
Griffey. What?
29:39
What mantle? What mantle are you gonna have?
29:41
53 tops. OK, that makes sense.
29:44
Cool, that's probably my next big purchase and I'm a low
29:47
budget guy. Like the most I've ever spent on
29:50
a card is $1100. That's great.
29:52
So. It's awesome.
29:53
So yeah. And that was my 41 play ball,
29:57
Ted Williams. But yeah.
30:02
I used to have a Sorry, go ahead.
30:04
The mantle's probably my next big purchase, maybe this fall.
30:07
I used to have a rule, it'll, I sort of like laugh about it now,
30:10
but I used to have a rule that I shouldn't spend over $100 on a
30:14
card. And then at some point I
30:15
extended it to like, I'll never spend more than $1000.
30:18
And then I remember when I broke my $3000 rules, when I bought my
30:23
autographed copy of my 61 flareable Chamberlain.
30:27
And then I, I've like, I don't even want to tell you what I've
30:29
spent on cards at this point. So I, but I, but I, I said this
30:33
to somebody the other day and he, he balked at it.
30:34
He, he disagreed with me. But I've always felt this way.
30:37
The more you spend on cards does not, does not correlate with the
30:43
joy that you get from being a card collector at all in any
30:46
way. And I think people sort of like
30:48
they look at how I collect and they're like, well, you probably
30:51
think, think that like, you know, that like you have like
30:53
this elitist view of I don't at all in any way.
30:57
I don't, I don't have like any sort of view that like you have
31:00
to be buying like the some of my best friends in the hobby are
31:04
guys that have never spent even $100 on cards.
31:07
And that's what that's the greatest part about our hobby.
31:10
I always say this is like one of my favorite sayings.
31:12
It doesn't matter whether you have $1,000,000 a week budget or
31:15
a dollar a week budget. It's the best hobby out there.
31:19
And I know that people disagree with that, but put, put together
31:22
a set, you know, go work on a set that's like a really tough
31:25
set and learn about the history of the set.
31:28
Let learn about the history of the players.
31:30
And, you know, put it put together a set that's 100 cards
31:33
and cost you, you know, 50 bucks total.
31:36
It can be the most fun that you ever have.
31:38
And I know other people disagree with that, but I really feel
31:41
strongly that that's true. Yeah, agreed.
31:44
And that's very well said. So we've talked about the
31:46
Jordan, which is probably the most iconic basketball card.
31:51
But what's the grail card in your opinion?
31:53
And you've already mentioned it, in my opinion.
31:55
You've mentioned what I think is the grail card for basketball,
31:59
for like all of basketball, all time NBA.
32:06
Well, it's interesting. So I historically have said that
32:13
the 97 game jersey autograph of Michael Jordan #23 is the the
32:20
card that I would want more than any other basketball card.
32:25
But I don't know if I still, I don't know if I if I still feel
32:27
that's true. I mean, I still feel like it's
32:29
probably true for me. But when you say grail, you
32:33
know, you might be talking about what other people think.
32:36
I I think what that card represents for its era, the way
32:40
that the hobby changed at that point, the fact that it was the
32:43
first game jersey, NBA licensed game jersey set and then it then
32:46
it was autographed. I think that's the, I think
32:49
that's the greatest basketball card ever made.
32:52
That's what I think. But what I'm really interested
32:54
to hear which card you're thinking about right now.
32:55
The. Micon.
32:57
Oh, the Miken. Yeah, I love the Miken.
32:58
I love. It yeah, I love the 97 Jordan
33:00
too. Jordan was my guy as a kid.
33:02
I the Celtics were not good. I don't remember the the Celtics
33:06
being good in the 80s 'cause I was I was too young and by the
33:10
time I was really a fan, Byrd was laying on his back on the
33:13
sidelines and Jordan was up and coming.
33:17
I, I went to Bowden basketball camp six straight years, Bowden
33:20
College, which is near where I live and where I grew up.
33:23
And we, the breaks that we would take, we would go into a film
33:26
room and just watch Jordan highlights, you know, 45 minute
33:30
break, go watch Jordan highlights.
33:32
And that was the best. And, but the, the Miken is such
33:37
a great card and he was an underrated athlete because most
33:42
people our age and younger, I've never heard of George Miken.
33:45
When I was a kid, I was doing the Miken drill at basketball
33:48
camp all the time. Yes, Mike and drill.
33:52
I loved of Mike and drill, but I didn't know who George Mikan was
33:54
until I was a little bit older, probably teenager to maybe even
33:57
college. So yeah, that brings me to my
34:00
next question because I have beef with you.
34:04
I was at the National. I was at the National and
34:06
somebody said, oh, Adam Gray is over there.
34:09
He's taller than you. And I was like, no, he cannot
34:11
possibly be taller than me. I'm offended by this because I'm
34:14
6 foot two. There aren't many, very many
34:16
people who are taller than me. And I turn around and sure
34:20
enough, you you're like 4 inches taller than I expected to be at
34:23
least, maybe even 6 inches. How tall are you?
34:27
I'm not that tall. It's it's over.
34:29
I, I'm, I am 6 foot 4, so I am, I'm definitely taught most
34:34
people. I bet you've had this experience
34:36
too, where people assume because you're nice that you're going to
34:39
be short. I don't know why people have
34:41
this assumption. I think everybody's like, yeah,
34:43
Adam's a really nice person. He's probably a really short
34:46
guy. And I have every time I meet
34:48
somebody in person who hasn't seen me before, they're like,
34:51
what? I have no idea.
34:53
And I'm like, how do you, why do you think I'm going to be a
34:56
short guy? So anyway, but yeah, so you're
34:58
6/2 though. But you're a, you're like a post
35:01
basketball player, right? Like well.
35:03
I wasn't until I was 30, and so when I was a kid, I was a
35:07
shooting guard. I just shot, shot, shot, shot,
35:10
shot. I was point guard and then I
35:12
became a shooting guard and I was short until I was 11th grade
35:16
or 12th grade and then I got to be 6 foot 2 pretty quickly over
35:21
the course of a handful of months when I was like 17 ish
35:25
years old. Then I went to college and I
35:28
played. I didn't play on the team in
35:30
college, but I played with the team a lot, played in a lot of
35:33
intramurals and I was always, always, always, always around
35:36
basketball players. And I've always felt like I was
35:39
short, even when I was 6 foot 2 in college because I was always
35:43
with much taller basketball players.
35:45
And it wasn't until I got into corporate America at the age of
35:47
23, but I started looking around, like I'd be walking down
35:50
the hall and there were hundreds of people walking by and I'm
35:52
like, I'm tall. I had no idea I was tall.
35:59
I, you know, it's funny, I still have those moments.
36:01
I, I had one last night. I was at my, my kids in like
36:05
this technology association thing at school and I was there
36:09
just with like, there's a bunch of, there's a bunch of kids,
36:11
there's a bunch of parents too. And I sort of like, I had this
36:13
moment last night where I looked around.
36:14
I was like, I'm like way bigger than every other human in this
36:18
place. And I wonder like, so I think
36:20
some kids see me, they're scared because I'm a big guy and I'm
36:23
always like, oh, don't be scared of me.
36:24
Like you can't be scared of me, be scared of anybody but me.
36:27
I'm not a scary guy. But yeah, that's it's funny the
36:30
way that you said that because a lot of tall people don't realize
36:33
it until like they get older. I go wait a second, I guess I'm
36:37
big now. What happened?
36:38
Yeah, yeah. You know, when you hang out with
36:40
basketball players until you're 23 and then you're all of a
36:43
sudden around no basketball players, kind of makes you go,
36:46
huh? I guess I am tall.
36:49
Hey, I got to, I got to ask you, I know we we're getting away
36:51
from it now, but I got to ask you about the mic in because you
36:53
mentioned your $1100 thing and then you mentioned the mic in.
36:57
So there was a time not that long ago in, in the history of
37:01
our car, of the, of the world of cardboard, where you could buy a
37:05
mic in for under $1100. It would just have to be pretty
37:07
beat up. I think those days, last time I
37:10
looked, I think those days are probably gone now at at this
37:12
point, if it's a real mic and it's probably going to cost you
37:15
more than that. Is that an aspiration at some
37:19
point that card or is that like or, or or why would and if it is
37:23
like, why would it be? What is it about the mic?
37:25
And it makes you go, Oh, I love that card.
37:28
That's a really good question. First of all, the colors, the,
37:31
the, the deep blue and the, the history of the card and the
37:38
history of him with the championships on the Lakers
37:41
before they moved. Just, I don't know, it's a, it's
37:47
a fantastic card. I love it.
37:49
How much it has to do with? I'm picking up a Beckett right
37:53
now. How much does it have to do with
37:55
the fact that in the beginning of all of the Gray pages when we
37:59
were a kid, you would get this card?
38:01
So here it is 1948 Bowman card number 69 George Mike and rookie
38:07
3000 low, 4500 high. How much of like it's, it's like
38:12
how much we we know it has to do with how it was priced as we
38:16
were growing up in the fact that most of us never saw it when we
38:19
were a kid. Zero.
38:20
Because you can see I've got, I've got Beckett, the first
38:25
Beckett basketball behind me and the first Beckett baseball, both
38:28
autographed by Doctor Beckett here.
38:31
I was a Beckett kid, grew up in the 80s, started like started
38:34
reading Beckett baseball card monthly in the, I don't know,
38:37
maybe 8788 and then started reading Beckett basketball
38:42
around 1990. But I had zero interest in
38:45
vintage basketball cards. 1989 and later was all I was
38:49
interested in 'cause I I started collecting basketball in 89
38:53
hoops Fleer and so I would never look at the vintage cards and
38:59
Beckett basketball card. I looked at some vintage and
39:02
basket Beckett baseball but had no interest in those either.
39:05
I always wanted to look up the 52 mantle.
39:08
OK. Every month.
39:10
I, I've loved the mic and almost exclusively for that reason.
39:14
So it's interesting that we come at it from a different, from a,
39:17
from a different perspective. And then I interrupted myself.
39:19
Do you think you'll ever Do you think you'll ever try to get
39:22
one? It depends on I'm a big eye
39:25
appeal guy I love like apsa 1.5 or an SGC 1.5 with good eye
39:30
appeal but it's I don't know what you're looking at but are
39:35
they 10,000 for low grade now? I think so.
39:38
I I have one that's very low grade.
39:40
I actually probably have the copy that I don't.
39:42
I'm not trying to sell you on it.
39:44
I'm not going to sell the card, to be clear, but mine is is is
39:48
clean of a 1948 Bowman that you'll ever see.
39:51
It is gorgeous. Centering's fantastic.
39:53
It looks amazing, but on one of the corners it curves just a
39:58
little bit in a way that PSA has deemed to be trimmed.
40:02
Now, I bet other people look at it to say I don't believe that
40:04
it's trimmed, but PSA believes it's trimmed and that's what
40:07
matters to the value in a lot, in a lot of these cases.
40:10
The other thing that PSA picked up on is that it's missing one
40:12
of the colors. I think it says no red ink.
40:15
Which I didn't notice. I don't part part of that might
40:18
be that I'm color blind, but I don't think so.
40:19
I think it's just not very a noticeable thing.
40:23
And so the card I'll I'll send you an image right when when the
40:26
episode's over, the card just looks exactly like I think you
40:29
want it to look at like like you want it to look.
40:32
But I don't think it's worth. I mean, it's still a very
40:34
valuable card, right? I think it's like 4 or $5000.
40:37
And to me that just is such a good buy in this in this world
40:41
does have that important of a basketball card that's as rare
40:44
as it is, that looks as good as it does.
40:47
And because it says altered on it, it's and because it's, you
40:51
know, missing the color or whatever, it's valued at
40:53
something so low. I again, I think that's insane.
40:56
But but everybody has different feelings on these things.
41:00
Yeah, the mic in ended up at #19 on my list.
41:04
So at the time when I started this two years ago, it was
41:06
definitely under $5000. It was attainable.
41:12
And you might, you might, I think you'll still get one at,
41:14
at some point for under 5 grand. I I think.
41:17
But it's not going to be a, it's not going to be APSA 6, right?
41:20
It's not going to be a APSA 2 even probably.
41:25
It's going to be an altered copy or a copy that's really, it's
41:28
really beat up. Yeah.
41:30
And to get back to seeing you at the National, I wasn't avoiding
41:32
you. I actually planned on going and
41:34
introducing myself because we haven't met in person, in case
41:36
anybody listening is wondering. But you were talking to somebody
41:40
and I went back to having my conversation.
41:42
When I turned back, you were gone.
41:44
And I was like, well, I'm sure I'll see him again, but I.
41:45
Didn't next. Are you going next year?
41:48
Yes. That's the one I always try to
41:50
go to the the National for me is I don't know what it's like for
41:54
you. I mean, some people are there
41:55
exclusively for the cards. The cards to me are like, very
41:59
much like a secondary thing. It's all about and yeah.
42:02
And like, and I remember. So it's, it's, it's funny
42:06
because everybody's different, right?
42:07
I've already mentioned Doctor Beckett a couple times on this
42:09
episode, but I went one year to the National like with my main
42:13
goal being to find him because I just I look up to him so much.
42:18
You know, he's he is largely responsible for a lot of this
42:21
and I don't think he gets the love that he that he deserves.
42:23
And I think he's just so measured and his approach to so
42:26
many things. He's the GOAT.
42:27
He's and it's not close, right when people say this person or
42:30
that person or like the greatest collectors, the greatest people
42:32
in the hobby ever. Jim Beckett is in just my
42:34
opinion, my two cents. I think he's number one by a
42:36
mile. And I.
42:37
Could not agree more. And so I wanted to see him so
42:40
bad. I didn't see him all year.
42:42
And I even messaged like a few people like, hey, can you help
42:44
me find Doctor Beckett? But then two years ago, I just
42:49
walked past the dollar place with dollar boxes.
42:52
And I'd had people tell me that he would be there, like it in,
42:56
you know, at dollar boxes. And so I saw him and I just
43:00
like, stopped. And I was like Jim.
43:03
And he looked up and he saw me. And he's like one of the great
43:05
moments of my life. And I mean that like, outside of
43:07
like the birth of my kids and my family stuff.
43:10
Doctor Beckett looks at me like he smiles real big.
43:12
And he goes Adam Gray and he shakes my hand.
43:14
And I was like, oh man, this is it, this is it.
43:18
And I know he's like super personable and he would do that
43:20
to a lot of people. I'm not saying anything special
43:22
about myself, but like he is the greatest and he still loves the
43:28
dollar box stuff. I know how he loves using like
43:30
comp C and like moving stuff. He and he's always like, I'm
43:33
just trying to sell stuff. But you know, he loves buying
43:36
stuff too. He just loves the cards and so
43:39
at least don't say that or don't think that.
43:40
I'm just saying like it's just all about the people.
43:43
It is about the cards too. There is this element that's
43:45
great, but at, at national, I feel like it really is about
43:49
seeing for me, it's more about seeing people that it is, you
43:53
know, about, about trying to find cards because cards are
43:56
always available. But seeing you in person would
43:58
be like, would be way more interesting to me than like
44:01
going around and looking for, to try to, you know, find something
44:04
for my collection. I I think that's probably not
44:07
going to be as as fruitful for me as just talking to people.
44:11
Yeah, my best experience in the National was actually walking
44:14
around with Greg from Midlife Cards, who's actually a co-owner
44:18
of this podcasting network who And we just spent like an hour
44:23
trying to find a 1961 Fleer basketball card rapper that I
44:28
had seen the day before. And I was like, I gotta go find
44:30
that. And he's like, I'll go help you.
44:32
And we spent an hour and a half trying to find it.
44:34
And that was the best experience at the National this year for
44:36
me. It was so much fun.
44:37
Did you find it? No, but then I ended up going
44:40
out and buying one. After it, What did that cost
44:43
you? A. 110 a hundred.
44:46
And $20, that's a great buy. I on that same note, I think it
44:51
was Robert Edwards had a they're not Robert Edwards anymore.
44:55
They're Rea collects or collect Rea.
44:57
I'd always forget, but they post it.
45:00
They had a a 48 Bowman rapper like a couple years ago at
45:05
auction and when I saw it, I went, I've never seen one of
45:09
these before. Like this is really rare and
45:12
it's sold for, I think it's sold for like $5100.
45:18
And I remember going and I put, I, I put one of my like when I
45:21
was trying to do these like thought provoking questions on
45:23
my Instagram. And I, I think if this is a good
45:26
question to me, I think it'll be a good question to the
45:27
community. And I put one up.
45:29
It was like, what would you rather have, the rapper or a
45:33
Miken? And it's actually a really great
45:35
question because everybody's like, well, I'd rather have the
45:37
mic until you realize, like, the micon's a rare card, but that
45:41
rapper, you may never get another chance at it.
45:43
And so who knew in 1948 it wasn't just getting the right
45:47
card. The best thing that you possibly
45:49
could have kept out of that pack was the rapper itself.
45:53
Yeah, that felt like one of your videos right there.
45:57
It might be the perfect way to wrap this up.
46:00
Maybe I would just say like everything that I do is like,
46:04
hopefully you can feel it like it's all from the perspective of
46:06
like, like I've collected for 30 for, you know, I'm 42.
46:10
I've collected since I was like a little kid.
46:12
My first memory is being a collector, right?
46:15
And so if I find something is interesting in collecting, I was
46:19
just sort of say, I wonder if other people will find this
46:22
interesting too. And for the most part, if you
46:24
think something's interesting in collecting, I think other people
46:27
are going to find that it's interesting as well.
46:28
So I really appreciate you giving me a set to talk about
46:32
things, including like the book that was really kind of you to
46:34
ask about that. I know not a lot of people are
46:36
thinking about it, but but yeah, thank you for and because you
46:40
plugged it on your channel, send me your address afterwards.
46:43
We'll just we'll send you a free copy.
46:45
Oh, that's very kind of you. Where can people find you and
46:49
your book? Instagram the real 27 guy.
46:53
Twitter the 27 guy and yeah if you follow me on my Instagram,
46:59
you're going to see links to to buy the book the book is not
47:01
currently available for for purchase, but it probably will
47:04
when does this episode go up It'll.
47:06
Probably be podcast on Monday OK I think and then Wednesday on
47:11
YouTube. So shortly after this comes out,
47:14
like in the in the next week after this comes out, it'll be
47:17
available for sale. Great, awesome Adam, this was
47:20
fantastic. I could talk for hours about
47:23
this stuff but and we both have part end times so thank you very
47:27
much for coming on. Thank you, Mike.
47:29
It was really a lot of fun. Bye everybody, thanks for
47:32
watching and listening.