Sports Cards Live

The conversation goes back to a simple truth: the hobby can be enjoyable at any price point, and if modern collecting is stressing you out, you’re allowed to pivot and find a lane that actually fits you. Kyle flips the script and asks the question everyone hates: “What’s your favorite card in your collection?” That leads to a real conversation about how cards aren’t just cardboard. They carry stor...

We get into the simplest truth in the hobby: if you don’t like how someone does business, don’t reward it. Whether it’s grading fees, breakers, platforms, or companies making decisions you disagree with, your real vote is your wallet. Complaining without changing behavior is pointless. From there, Kyle explains why he’s never graded a card and why he prefers cards in one touches over slabs, plus h...

Jeremy reveals that the West Coast Card Show sparked the start of a brand-new sub-PC, and explains why today’s hobby environment often pushes collectors toward personal themes instead of traditional set building. Leighton Sheldon joins to talk about the real advantage of attending shows in person, where eye appeal, overlooked cards, and fresh inventory can still create opportunities for collectors...

We’re back for Episode 302, and Part 1 sets the table for the whole night. Jeremy and Joe Poirot kick things off with a West Coast Card Show recap, what it’s like seeing the hobby in person again, and why the best parts of collecting rarely show up in comment sections. Then it’s time for a live moment: the Shields Family T206 Honus Wagner ends during the show and the final price catches us off gua...

In this solo episode, I take a step back and look at the hobby through a different lens. Sometimes the best way to understand how something works is to look at the system as a whole rather than focusing on individual opinions or trends. This episode is more of a thought exercise than a hot take. It is about how different parts of the hobby interact, why movement matters, and what keeps everything...

A trading card just sold for $16.5 million. Public record. Headlines everywhere. Attention across the hobby. But this episode isn’t about celebrating a sale. It’s about what reflecting on that sale made me realize. On a walk in Arizona last week, I started thinking about price sensitivity, constraint, and where markets actually move. At the lowest levels, money often doesn’t matter. At the highest...

This episode picks up right where the last one left off. Only this time the book is no longer an idea on a screen. It is sitting in my hands. About thirty minutes after Amazon dropped off the very first physical copy of POPs and COMPs, I jumped onto a live stream and hit record. No script, no planning, just raw reaction to seeing months of work turn into an actual finished object with my name on t...

This is a special solo episode, and it’s a personal one. I’m looking back on 2025 as a year that quietly changed my life. Not because one huge thing happened overnight, but because a few small decisions snowballed into momentum I didn’t see coming. In this episode, I take you behind the scenes on what shifted for me, how my routine changed, and why that change ended up fueling my biggest creative...

This solo episode digs into a question that sits underneath so many hobby arguments. Is the sports card market actually an efficient market? We start with the basics and define what market efficiency really means. Not the casual version people throw around, but the economic definition used for stocks and commodities. Then we look at the ideas of market equilibrium and rational behavior and ask a s...

In this solo episode, I slow things down and explore a question that sits at the center of how many of us collect: do you like cards because they’re expensive, or do you like cards that are expensive? I talk about price as a signal, price as validation, and why using value as a scoreboard can quietly shape our preferences without us realizing it. I also dig into the difference between owning a one...

In this solo episode, I slow things down and talk through my personal collection policies, or PC policies, and why I’ve chosen to put certain boundaries in place around what I collect and what I don’t. These aren’t rules meant for anyone else. They’re filters I’ve developed over time to help me stay focused, intentional, and aligned with my own taste in a hobby where it’s very easy to drift or ove...

In this solo episode, I slow things down and explore an idea I’ve been thinking about for a long time: the hobby either chooses you, or you choose it. How you enter the sports card hobby shapes how you experience it, how you relate to other collectors, and why certain tensions keep resurfacing year after year. Some of us come to cards organically, through curiosity, nostalgia, and connection. Othe...

This is another solo episode recorded while I’m away from the live show. No Saturday night Sports Cards Live this week. No panel. No chat. Just me, the microphone, and a collecting idea that’s been on my mind for a long time. In this episode, I step back and talk about how I think about value, meaning, and enjoyment in the hobby, and how those ideas have changed for me over the years. It’s a perso...

With no Saturday night live Sports Cards Live this week, I wanted to make sure the podcast feed didn’t go quiet. This is a solo episode recorded while I’m away, just me, the microphone, and a topic that deserves more space than a fast-moving live panel can always give it. The conversation is sparked by a thoughtful email I received from a longtime listener following a recent Sports Cards Live epis...

In Part 5, we get into the real reason cards hit so hard for so many of us. Not just value, not just the chase, but the actual emotional and even physical reaction collectors can have to certain cards. We talk about what creates that feeling, what separates cards from other collectibles, and how the hobby’s structure, history, and shared “language” shape the way we collect. The chat brings strong...

Part 4 shifts from “what annoys us” to the deeper stuff: what becomes iconic, what makes us anxious, and what actually fires us up as collectors. Chris McGill lays out what might be the biggest collector question of the next decade: you can’t reliably predict which cards will transcend their peers, but you can study how it happens. His take is that a card needs to hit the “main stage” of the hobby...

Part 3 is where the panel expands. Chris McGill from Card Ladder and hobby lawyer Josh Adams jump in with Jason Masherah, and we get into the kind of hobby conversation everyone relates to: the stuff that drives collectors nuts. We start with the “Top 5 hobby annoyances” trend (with a hat tip to Sports Illustrated) and then Jason adds a couple of his own. His first one is simple and needed: online...

Jason Masherah, President of Upper Deck, and moves from hobby momentum into the business mechanics behind what collectors are feeling right now. We start with a straight question: how real is the US hockey card market, and where is the growth coming from? Jason explains why Upper Deck is focused on expanding hockey’s footprint in the United States, how the Certified Diamond Dealer ecosystem helps...

This week on Sports Cards Live, we’re joined for an extended conversation by Jason Masherah, President of Upper Deck, covering what’s changing in hockey, what’s driving current momentum, and what collectors should understand about new product innovations. We start with quick show and community updates, including where things stand with POPs & COMPs as it moves through the Amazon review process, pl...

Part 5 is the back half of the episode where the chat drives the direction, the panel ties bows on the biggest themes, and the show lands the plane on a classic Episode 300 sendoff. We start by reacting to the comment stream and a surprisingly useful debate: what percentage of card show purchases are actually planned vs pure impulse. The answer matters more than people think, especially if you’re...

Part 4 shifts from card alteration to the everyday reality that actually shapes most collections: buying behavior in the moment. We break down the two main modes of acquiring cards. The long-planned hunt where you research, budget, and wait. And the lightning-strike buy, whether it’s a card show table surprise or an auction ending in 14 minutes that suddenly feels like fate. The panel debates whic...

Part 3 goes straight into the messiest debate in the hobby right now: card “work” that gets cards into PSA slabs, then quietly back onto the market. A Facebook thread shows collectors openly soaking and pressing Gretzky rookies using Kurt’s Card Care, talking about submitting to PSA, and selling afterward. We walk through why that should scare buyers, even when the card ends up in a straight numer...

Part 2 of Episode 300 brings Leighton Sheldon into the mix and the conversation immediately jumps into rare territory. Two T206 Honus Wagner cards are set to hit the auction market at the same time, something most collectors will never see in their lifetime. We break down how that happens, why one will almost certainly outsell the other, and whether simultaneous offerings actually hurt or help the...

We kick off Episode 300 of Sports Cards Live with a milestone check-in, a quick run through key updates, and a hobby conversation that goes deeper than most collectors ever think to look. We share progress on POPs & COMPs, a behind-the-scenes update on Hobby Spectrum, and a real discussion about the “invisible layer” behind many online auction houses: third-party platforms, data access, and why un...

We finish the public vs private collector debate with real, grounded examples. Jeremy frames the personal side of it: imposter syndrome, introvert vs extrovert energy, security paranoia, social anxiety, and even simple friction like not wanting to be around crowds. Joe explains what changed once he stopped collecting in “incognito mode” and went more public: better conversations, better informatio...