Collector Nation - A $69K Car Inside a Trading Card Pack?! | Alladan Flinn, Based Trading Cards

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

Ryan Alford sits down with Alladan Flinn, founder and CEO of Based Trading Cards, to talk about what happens when a card maker puts transparency and the collector first. Every series of Based's Orange Pill in a Pack has a finite run of 21,000 packs, a published hit list and a promise never to reprint. They dig into how many packs Pokémon really prints each year and why the sports card parallel pyramid has grown too tall. They also get into what scarcity actually means for numbered cards, and why a card numbered /210 with no parallels can beat a /10 parallel. The episode also covers the Series 1 box that went from $500 to more than $20,000 and the day one was traded for a Kubota tractor. Alladan explains the Experience Box and its Golden Key pack with a 1-in-420 shot at a Dodge Challenger, and he previews Cardboard Kings, his upcoming history of trading cards. Topics Covered Alladan Flinn's path from collector to card maker Lessons from the '90s overproduction era How many packs Pokémon prints each year The parallel pyramid in modern sports cards Finite print runs and published hit lists Serialized cards and true scarcity Partnering with RRD Hobby shop distribution The $500 box now worth $20,000 Bitcoin Tractor Day Why the secondary market matters to card makers Community as a marketing engine The Experience Box and Golden Key chase Cardboard Kings: The History of Trading Cards 🔗 Links Mentioned in This Episode Collector Nation Website: https://thecollectornation.com App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/collector-nation/id6795562084 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecollectornation_ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thecollectornation YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thecollectornation Alladan Flinn / Based Trading Cards Website: https://basedtradingcards.com Socials: @BasedCards Collector Station Website: https://thecollectorstation.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecollectorstation Ryan Alford Website: https://www.ryanalford.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanalford ⭐ If you enjoyed this episode, follow Collector Nation, leave a 5-star review, download the Collector Nation app, and share it with another collector.

One in 420 chance to literally win the car. It's a golden key like a Willy Wonka. This is a scavenger hunt in a box. I love it. We've got creativity, originality, and a real chase. My goal is to be the best trading card manufacturer out there. When it comes to the quality of what I'm producing, the stories we're telling in these cards,

I'm just going to go and do what I think is best. This is the kind of stuff that we need to talk to about. I'm Ryan Alford. And I'm Bella Schaefer. And this is Collector Nation. content in the hobby just for you all in one place. All the videos, all the podcasts, all the reels, all those drops you want right here, right now. What's up, Aladdin? Welcome to Collect your Nation.

Hey, thanks for having me, Ryan Stoke. CEO of Based Trading Cards. Ambitious, I love it. I love ambitious people. And I love, but I do love the whole space. Obviously, I'm in at Need Eat Eat, and really admire. the premise of where you're coming from with Baste. What the hell got you into trading cards, brother? I mean, I would say third grade going to my buddy's dad's house

and him pulling out that cardboard box from underneath his bed. It was on at that point. I mean, from Mickey Mantles to Babe Ruth. I don't know where this guy is at today, but hopefully he held on to those cards because he's in a very pretty, pretty position. And yeah, I was I was hooked at that point. I love sports growing up. And then I've always been into art, always been an artist.

And I used to go with my dad to this apartment complex. He was a maintenance man. And there's this guy, Troy. Troy had this little apartment. And he'd always be hanging out front and reading his comic books. So I would just hang out with Troy. And man, this guy had the collection of all collections when it came to comic books, but really got me when he pulled out the marble.

comic cards back in the early 90s. And just checking those cards out and diving in, I was just beyond hooked at that point. As a young kid, I mean, sports cards are definitely something when you're a kid, but Marvel Comics is on a whole other level, especially when you have that itch and sight of you to create and be an artist. So that was my major hook right there. Yeah, never tuned back. Yeah, man.

I had a lot of the same experiences growing up. I don't remember that the first moment, but I think I just bought a pack or something. The store was like eight years old. Like, you know, had the baseball, tops baseball, like age myself here. I think it was like 87, 86. Topps pack. And literally, you know, and the rest is history. I put it on the shelf.

But it just, I don't know what. And I know, and I like the fact that it's opening up. I mean, I have boys, but the whole industry is opening up to, so many different segments. But I don't know, it was an eight-year-old boy. There was nothing better than having, like,

your favorite players on that piece of cardboard. Absolutely. Talk to me, Aladdin. What were we doing before we did BASED? There's usually an origin story. I think it would be important probably to kind of get that background, and then we'll focus a lot on what's going on with BASED.

Yeah, I've been a serial entrepreneur in my entire life. I grew up in a tiny little town, graduated class of like 15. kids. So definitely like the movies you watch, I can't wait to get out of here. It was surrounded by mountains.

And all I could ever think is the moment I can get out of this town or get out of this town looking back, I'm like, holy crap, I had the most amazing childhood you never imagined. But like most of us when we're kids, we always dream of the grass is greener on the other side. So just being an entrepreneur, I was

into art, I was writing, I was drawing, painting. I mean, as long as I was creating, I was happy, live through the 0-8-09 financial crisis. We got into real estate really early and definitely lived that one the hard way. So that's what kind of got me triggered into economics and living it was definitely huge for me to understand how a lot of this works and how crazy it is. The biggest thing that woke me up was finally just understanding economics and how money works. That was the life changer for me.

All relationships in my life changed the moment I understood truly that I'm exchanging my time and energy for this currency that we use. And yeah, that was my biggest moment. It's interesting. I have to get too philosophical, but it's like that I don't know that enough people realize it's like it's the most finite resource on the planet is our time. It's like, yeah, there's some rare things, but I don't know if you realize just how rare it is. Trading cards are interesting. I mean, I'm a firm believer part of why we have this show. I mean, we're a collectibles country and there's something in aid in us that we like to collect and we like to have built community around it.

It's so crystal clear. and clearly the hobby as a whole, as one large encompassing word, is certainly in, you know, a boom time of sorts. But I think it still has been in our society for a long time, this collector nation, this collector mentality, this, you know, building and observing, I think not just possessions, but things that have. have meaning and value to us. And it's a fascinating thing. And I think you're seeing, you know, I came through the 90s where you had all these

movie, you know, they made one billion of like everything. They were produced everything. And they made like every franchise had a card. There wasn't a lot of thoughtfulness put into it, I think. It was just literally the most obvious thing. Like every movie poster had a, had cards and

one picture, you know, nothing unique, really. What's different about today and what kind of guides you with what you're doing with base? Yeah, I mean, you hit it right there. We just slap IP on just about anything and everything and expect it to sell because there's people that really love that. That's printed on paper or whatever. So I think that we're starting to see a few companies come out and I'd like to consider myself one of those that's really, really paying attention to the story and collectors first.

I think this is one thing that really needs to be focused on. And this is where I really put my energy in is how can I take a piece of culture? So trading cards are literally just pop culture printed on cardboard. How do we create a story behind this cardboard, the way we lay it out, the way we tell the story in a way that is more important than the one chase card, the super limited card you're looking for, whether it's a one-of-one or a certain refractor, how do we make every card in that pack something worth collecting?

And obviously, if you get a duplicate, well, then you want to pass that on. But when it comes to breakers, it's a really good evidence right there of how fast we're flipping through these cards and just tossing them. And if we don't get a hit, then where do those cards go?

We're going to donate them. We're going to give them away. My team's not on there and I'm not interested. I understand a lot of that, but I think more focus needs to go into how do we make these packs more of an experience than the chase for that one card. And that's my ultimate focus with what I'm doing. Bringing transparency into the hobby, I think, is one of the biggest ones. I understand coming out and being completely transparent on major pack runs is difficult. I go to card shows just about every weekend, and I'll ask people at their booth,

how many packs you think? And they're sitting on $150,000 with a Pokemon in these playcases. And I'm like, well, this is all great. I play dumb. I'm old. So I come up and I'm like, how many of these packs you think they produce a year? And they're like, well, no one's ever asked me that. I'm like, well, you have a guess?

I mean, I'm trying to figure it out. And they're like, maybe 100,000? And I'm like, Pokemon, 100,000 packs a year. Yeah. Yeah. right and I did 100,000 packs a day

I might get them to that like 10 million point allowing them to kind of really think it through but when I actually kick it out and I'm like actually it's around a billion packs a year minimum their jaw drops

and this is where the education of what I'm trying to produce is just kick some critical thinking skills in it may not change anything about the way you collect, but an educated collector is

a successful collector. And that's the biggest thing that I think we need to start kind of triggering out there. If we want the health of the hobby to continue to grow and continue to just flourish, well, education's everything. And that's a lot of what I'm trying to put behind what I'm doing here.

Is, let's define based. Like, what are we doing on the cards? What's the, you know, you've talked about some of the meaning, but what exactly is the IP, for lack of better words, or the, you know, graphics or the nature, what are we talking about? Yeah, based, first, the definition of base for anyone that doesn't know, it's to have an opinion and stand in that opinion with conviction, regardless of what any of what else thinks. So as we're going through this like crazy inflation with all of our money, I'm more worried about

the content inflation. This is something that is literally gearing our brains into making decisions without us really even having the time to think it through. So what I'm trying to produce here with BASC, I've been at it for about five years now, is never to be the biggest trading card manufacturer. I have no goals of doing that. My goal is to be the best trading card manufacturer out there. When it comes to the quality of what I'm producing, the stories we're telling in these cards, the thought that goes behind the IP that we're working, working with and what we come out with. I really wanted to resonate with the collectors,

but I wanted to start resonating with other brands. Lead by example. I'm not out here to talk any crap on any brands. Been in the hobby my entire life. I love these brands. Where I come from are holding memories of these brands, but you've got to lead by example. Lots of people can be a keyboard warrior and talk all the smack about what needs to be done,

but very few people stand up and say, I'm just going to do it. I'm not going to talk bad about anyone. I'm just going to go and do what I think is best. And if it starts to resonate enough to where other brands start doing it, then there's success right there. And that's really my ultimate goal with BASED. We're bringing on some incredible IP.

We create a lot of our own IP. And we want to produce trading cards that, again, like when you open a pack, every single card has some type of value to you. And if it doesn't have value to you, there's probably someone in your life that you want to give this card to because it has a lot of meaning. behind everything we produce. Yeah. And it's,

it, I love that. I mean, because I, unpopular opinion, probably, but true opinion. You know,

I wrote a piece for Quick Nation, uh, yesterday talking about 2026 flagship football. And, you know, on one hand, you've got everybody says, the hobby's too expensive.

Yeah. Everybody's spending too much to chase something. And, Then you just have the overall, and you mentioned this earlier, desirability of the product. And, you know, I've watched multiple kids come in our shop. I ripped one box. And it's fine, but it's, like, very underwhelming experience.

And I love football. And it didn't have the chase or the sizzle of the, like, it was like, and you want to blame it on the rookie class. Well, you can't control the rookie. class. You can control how interesting the product is. And I just was overwhelmed. I was just kind of, and I think a place of what you're talking about is like making the experience of the pack and the cards worthy of the time, the effort, the energy. And yeah, there's multiple guys that are still collecting and they're putting together their sets. But what percent is that? I don't

know what percent that really is. And there can be room for everyone, but this goes right at the heart of what I was saying in that article. And I feel like it's time that we have alternatives. Yeah, I agree with you there. We need to be producing at a level that still remains nostalgic. If you water something down too far, then you're taken away a lot of that. that chance to find the cards you want.

If you got 25 of the same card you were looking for, now that card just isn't as special anymore. And parallel pyramids, that's something that has grown too tall in my opinion. I think there's a lot of people out there that feel the same. But now, I think it's time right now while the hobby is booming in a way that's never boomed like this before.

I don't know if there's much of any end. Quite booming. And it seems we're going to, continue going up. And I have a lot of confidence. This is when you fix it. You don't fix it when it takes a downturn. You fix it when the boom times, right? Exactly. Because then you, the conviction for doing the right thing when you're building it in the boom, it means something. If you wait for the crash and then you're like, oh shit, we broke it, let's fix it. It doesn't mean the same to the collectors. It doesn't mean the same to the hobby in general. So the more we can do

right now while we are pumping shows that we're in it for the right reasons and we're not trying to fix it because oh crap we needed to pump back up what's the IP we're working with with based i mean i saw the the one card you showed you can hold that up i know that was before the show uh maybe show me that one card you were you held up a second before maybe before we even started rolling yeah so this right here is inflation versus deflation this comes from orange pill in a pack so this is my flagship series that I've been making for about five years now. It's economics education. At the end of the day, everything we're doing in trading cards is economics. So some great lessons. This is from series four.

Every series is only 21,000 packs, finite supply, total transparency all the way down to your base card. It'll tell you how many of those base cards were printed. This particular series is called The Simulation. A lot of people that may agree with me right now of like the way the world is being going. after the last like five, six, seven years. It's been a little strange. So I like to throw, again, it's critical thinking. My favorites right here.

This is deprogramming. That's cool. And my ethos and slogan for Baste is open a pack, not an app. I've got three kids at home. And the more we can get off the devices, not just kids, adults in general. Get back to the dinner table. We've got a lot of values behind what we're building. here. Freedom is a very

important one. So this, all of our cards are done by hand by artists. We tell you exactly who painted the cards. Hand sketched. We work with comic book artists. I love that. And this is really cool. And this is a literary. You pull this one, you have something really special.

You can see it's a little X. This is an artist proof. That's gorgeous. This is called a block reward COA. So this is a certificate of authenticity. to this artwork right here. And it's a one line.

So if you pull this card, Ryan, what you're going to get in the mail after you rip that coat off in the back is you're going to get the original hand-eated artwork from the that the card was created. Now, there's an idea. Okay. And in 15 minutes, 20 minutes. All right, we've got creativity, originality, and a real chase.

Holy shit. Aladdin, you did it. Yes. I mean, it's like, where have you been? Right. I've partnered strategic partnership with the largest trading card manufacturer on Earth. And I am their case study. So if anyone doesn't know who RRD is, they are legends in printing and manufacturing.

And I'm a very small brand, but go to RRD.com. And they are literally right now, I think second largest printer manufacturer on the face of the earth, go to their website and RRD.com and you're going to scroll down just maybe two or three panels and you're going to see us because the envelope. They are 50% of success in any brand that's out there, especially if you're producing trading cards. We want those cards to be as mint as possible. We want the collation to be as evenly distributed as possible.

And I mean, if we don't pay homage to the guys and grud gals behind the scenes that are bringing our dreams to life, then we're not doing it right. And that's, again, back to why it's taking me so long. I mean, build the relationships, build the connections, preach with work and everything you can do so that when you are ready, I mean, I've been on the tarmac for about four years now. And we're fighting ready for that plane to lift its wheels off and start to take flight. and I needed to take the time to make sure all my T's were crossed and all my eyes were dotted. And I think we're there at this point. Collector Nation is not just a podcast. We are your one-stop shop for all things, a hobby.

All the best creators, all the best reels, all the best content curated for you every day. And if you're interested in learning more, go to thecollectornation.com or download our app on iOS or Android. We'll see you there. What's our distribution path for everything with BASED? IP is key, right? So I've been building my own IP. Everything I've been doing is original artwork, me and my team and some amazing artists around the world that I've been working with.

But in order for a trading card manufacturing brand to really take off, you need to capture an IP that is highly recognizable. and you need to knock it out of the park. And like you were saying in the 90s, every single IP was done. I've felt multiple times. So same way I'm being a case study for the printing and manufacturing side. I'm building myself up to be a case study for a couple IPs I'm working on right now that have been done a few times. And they were not done very successfully.

So if I can come out and prove that it wasn't the IP's fault, it was the, the design and the idea and on the execution by the actual manufacturer that produced that in the first place. I'm able to knock this out of the park. Now I've just solidified my brand as case study out there that it can still be done. Where are we going to be bought and sold? Right now I'm working with an absolutely amazing distributor. So I'm really hoping that we are starting out more in the mom and pops. I don't plan on producing hundreds of millions of packs, probably not even come out with

tens of millions of packs out the gate. Our finite supply, meaning we will never reprint, ever, anything. A lot of what we're seeing, I mean, a little behind the scenes, education for anyone out there, we're in a little bit of a print on demand world right. And a lot of the way these manufacturers work is we're going to put out the set, what particular set it is. If it sells really well, we're going to trip more and we're going to keep going until the sales slow down. If it doesn't sell really well, then that's done and we kind of let it go. And this is why we don't have a lot of transparency in the pack routes. Well, at the same time, it's really hard to guarantee your pack odds when you could potentially be producing more. So where the particular

the cards go if they were meant to be in this first set or we reprinted more. Okay, are there more of those particular cards? Are we going to get a new hit list, a breakdown of what cards are out there? So these are the things that I will be leading by example. And when I produce my cards, hit list. We produce everything all at once, one series, one set. Once it's done, we will never reproduce those cards again. So with that being said, where are we going to go when it comes to distribution. I would imagine a lot of hobby shops is where we

really want to be. What we're good? What's the you know, you mentioned secondary market. It's a, that's a fascinating you know, part of the hobby in general and what does or doesn't set it. Rating,

all the things. For someone like yourself, you know, a creator of these cars, I mean, you want your stuff to have value. Like, it matters. But how do you weigh that with what you print and how you design? Like, where does that all fall together? I mean, when I first started, I didn't think that there would be much of a secondary market to anything I was doing specifically with the topics, education, economics, Bitcoin education. I really wasn't expecting a secondary market to take off,

but immediately it just blew up. And looking back, I'm like, holy crap, if I only would have known, my series one box, I've got one behind me, the mics in the way. It's that orange box back there. That was $500 retail out the gate, sold out in about two and a half months, and I had about 20 boxes left at that time and was not expecting it to sell out like that. So, well, I don't, I'm transparent. I don't want to say that.

I'm sold out, so I've got 20 boxes left. I'm just going to put the price up at $2,100 a box. That'll hold people off. No one's going to buy it about that. About two and a half weeks later, they're all gone at $2,100 a box. I was not expecting that.

Now, boxes, if you can find one under $20,000, you're hell of a deal that you found. Wow. In this series, so this is Series 4 right here, we have a card in here called Bitcoin Tractor Day. There's Pizza Day, and Bitcoin Pizza Day was like the first transaction between Bitcoin and actually buying something.

So Bitcoin Tractor Day was where in my community group, there was someone that's like, I'm trying to sell this series one box. I want $30,000 for it. At the time, everyone's like, no, I'm not interested, not interested. And there's this guy, a major legend of the community. He goes, what would you take a $30,000 cabote a tractor? The guy's like, actually, I really want to fix my property right now. I might actually do that.

So the guy with the tractor, Tobias, amazing guy. He literally blodged himself packing that tractor up from North Carolina and throwing it on the truck and driving it all the way up to Pennsylvania, dropping it off. These guys meeting, the hug, the embrace, the transaction. I turned it into a trading card. And it's actually in this series. So if you are ripping a pack, you could potentially pull these two guys holding the legendary box together with the tractor in the background, Sunny. I love it. And it tells the story about Bitcoin Tractor Day.

And that's where the secondary market is incredible. And without it, are we really going to be in the culture, the community side, the community building? I mean, being able to throw these values back and forth, what are you chasing without that value to the cards? It doesn't have to be astronomical, but there needs to be some value to it. That's what hikes us up. And I think some people go, oh, you know, the secretary of market is not everything. No, it's not everything. But it's for creators like yourself and people that are doing things, though, it is justification.

And so for any company, there's been a couple companies that have, You've been on our show, I think. I've been like, yeah, we're not worried about the secondary mark. And I'm like, well, you don't have to be, but it is, it's your customers. It's the community you're building, and you're either building it and they care and there's, and you know, you don't want to make it for something? You know, we'll spend their time and money on it. And if it, and so, you know you've done, and $20,000 is unbelievable, by the way.

Oh, my God. Where was that when those came out? My ultimate thesis with what I'm building here is if I can create something and every set that I produce that is specifically created for the collector, not for my brand and my pocketbook. That'll come over time with a successful community that loves my product. So why don't I just continue to feed my community what they love, keep them happy. Alex Hermosey, a thousand rating fans. That is the key right there. Keep your fans happy and your brand will continue to grow and they will end up being the biggest marketing arm for your company.

And you want some margins. If you don't have to pay for the marketing or at least you don't have to pay all of you. You come for marketing. If you could save some money on that end, you don't need to rake it up on the other end. So why don't we just give that love to the community? The community helps become that marketing arm. And instead of paying a massive marketing team, I'm just going to give it to my community. It's a major win-win that way.

And I'd like to see other companies starting to embrace this, because especially in the collectibles, whether it's comic books, trading cards, anything collectibles, treat your customers like gold and produce products that they will love. I mean, you're going to absolutely kill it. And there's not a whole lot of competition right now. I just, I think they've got a real opportunity to keep pushing. And they've done some things really well. and then I just was a little man on the latest stuff.

And that's why I love talking with guys like you. I love what you're doing with Baste. And I need some of those cards here in the store. We got a big one for you. Have you heard of the experience, Bats, Rand? I caught wind of it, but I don't know what it even means. I just was reading enough. So after many years of watching breaks over and over

and sadly seeing people just rip through a three-hand, $400, $400, whatever price range. They're picking these up at Hobby Box, and it's taken 10 to 15 minutes to rip through it. I'm just mind-blown that we would spend that much money and energy for 10 to 15. So I created the Experience Box, and this was created for breakers. It is, we work with Dave and Adams. They first brought on the experience box. And they were expecting a three-minute break.

I think they were on for about two and a half, almost three hours for one hobby box. Yeah. Every week to every other week. They're ripping one of these experience boxes. And it's an average of an hour, the bare minimum. And this is after doing like seven or eight of these things a row. So it's an experience. And that's the whole point of it is going all the way back to the beginning what we were talking about.

Let's create packs and product that you want to take your time. time and enjoy whether it was $10 for that pack or $100 to that pack. Like, we need to sit down together and enjoy this experience and it shouldn't be short-lived. It's like you just ate a bite of Wagyu steak and that was a $20 bite right there. And that exists for people that don't know, there's $20 a bite waggo steak at some of these restaurants and you should see like my son and he takes a bite and he swallows it and I'm like, No, son. Take your time.

Come on, man. Save this thing. That's a lot of what I'm trying to deal with everything, and that's the experience box. I like this. It's behind me right there. It's a 15-pound box, and I can take it for you if you want. I'm going to make it short on time. We don't have to.

No, I'll do it. I want to see that thing. I don't think we're going to have two hours, but we can definitely at least take you up on seeing what we're talking about. This is unlike anything that's ever been built in the hobby before. Okay. So that's the experience box. There's only 400. If you're listening, you need to be watching on YouTube.

We're going to have all these in the highlight clips. But we're seeing a very large box. Bill is zooming in for me. Yes. Okay. Wow. There's a car in there. You are really a wizard.

Yes. So every one of these boxes is serialized. There's only 420 of these boxes that will ever exist. that is box number 365. That's sweet. And see if I can pull back far enough. So it's an experience. This is a scavenger hunt in a box.

I love it. Yes. So you literally have a glove compartment and inside the glove compartment or custom gloves. You have a handmade binder. Everything limited at 420. There are four different parallels to the series four set. So there's a parallel custom leverage. parallel box for every one of your parallels.

You have a guaranteed one-of-one printing plate from series four. You don't know which one you're going to get. So there's, it's a chase within a chase, within a chase. Uh, you get a series four box in here. So that's where a lot of the value for this is. Series four boxes are sold out. So the only way you get through this experience box. And I will work through all of this really quick for you.

No, this is awesome. You have posters of some of the best art, that I did out of the series, five different posters, each limited out of 63, and they're all serialized on soil board, and then there is a 21 club version of them.

There's a decent secondary market value to all the posters alone. You've got to cut your packs open because they're so beautiful and you want to take your time. So this is a custom-browned. Out of 420 scissors, you have a golden key,

for the car. And here is the best part of it all. I had the printer create a little miniature of the car. And when you're chasing for the car, 2021 Dodge Challenger, Scat Pack, 6 speed manual, that is in a separate pack. And that separate pack lives inside this car. Oh, my God. So the pack is not in here because I don't have any of the packs. They all go, oh, shit, this one does have. pat. Oh, wow. Hey, I mean, is that the special pack? Hey, look at there. Yeah. So that is a golden key

pack. There are only 420 of these packs. I think that means you got to send that one to us. Yeah. Yeah. You have one in 420 chance to literally win the car. It's a golden key like a Willy Wonka.

If you pull the golden key card, the car is yours or 45,000. And the funest part about this, me and my daughter, we play red light, green light. All the time, I literally gamified the chase, and it's red light green light. So the first card will be your playground rules, and you're going to read the rules, and then you're either going to pull a red light out the gig, or you're going to pull a green light. If you pull a red light, bwomp, you could not be in the car, but you have three cards that are each out of 150 with no parallels.

So, wops. If you pull a green light, well, even if you don't get the car, you know that you're getting a bigger hit. So you're guaranteed two separate pieces of art out of 50 and they're one-off. So no parallels whatsoever. Only 50 of this. Every time you pull a green light, your hits are getting that much better. So two green lights and you're guaranteed a one of one or an out of 13. If you pull three green lights in a row, the car is yours.

Ah. How's the response to this? It's been a lot of fun. So the temptation of the excitement when you're opening that one specific pack is incredible. And that's really what I wanted to build it for. I mean, watching everyone doing these breaks all the time. And again, just ripping through boxes and packs so quickly, I wanted something that would take a lot of time for that one pack.

I guarantee you this one pack takes. takes anybody that's breaking it more time than almost any other pack in the hobby right now. It's your emotions, your heart, you've got to read the rules right out the gate. And that's a lot of fun just on its own. But the moment you pull that first card, if it's a red card out the gate, well, then, yeah, the pack gets, you go through it a little bit quicker. But if you pull a green card, you've got to set the pack down and breathe for a second. It's one of those where it's just building the anticipation. You pull a second green card.

your heart is definitely pumping whether you're ripping it for someone else or ripping it for yourself and that's the whole point it's the experience box something to experience with friends and family on a break with the community not something to just go home tear through real quick i got her i didn't get it if you open this alone i feel sad all right everyone you just heard a little bit about this box that is right in front of me from aladdin and ryan so Aladdin was gracious enough to send us one of the base trading card experience boxes. This is the one that he was just talking about that could have a car in it. Unfortunately, he took the chance to win a car out of this box, understandably. So got to save it for the customers. But Aladdin was so amazing to send us this experience box. It has been sitting here waiting for us to open it. and I'm so excited to open it with you all here.

He showed us a little bit about it on the recording, but this definitely looks like so much fun. So let's get into it. All right. So this feels like a very premium experience. We got box number 82. So let's see what is inside. Wow.

This is definitely an experience. Let's start at the glove compartment. Oh my gosh, we have some base trading card gloves. Look how cool those are. These are going to be my new card opening gloves, I think. So let's put these bad boys on. Oh, now, now we're in business. Look at that.

We got some fancy, schmancy little gloves, a premium experience now. Let's see. the unapologetically based. Let's see what this is. Without ripping it. I'm going to guess this is a collection binder. Let's see what is inside here. This is the Golden Key set.

So it comes with some little set booklets and guide booklets. that tells you all about the cards you can get in here. And then simulation guide booklet, also a really helpful resource. Really nice that they give that to you. You know, a lot of card companies, you have to go look that up yourself.

So, and just a little card binder here. We can throw some of our cards that I'm assuming we'll get in here into this little binder. And we got our first card here. here. This is a numbered out of 500 number 486. And on the back of all of their cards, like he just said in the episode, they have a little description, some education, if you will. So on the back of this one, it says, what if reality is only a carefully painted illusion. Each layer, another story hiding the code beneath the simulation challenges us to see beyond appearances to strip away history's wallpaper until only truth remains the pattern behind the word itself. So definitely a little bit different than your average trading card. Let's see.

There's hidden compartments everywhere. So yep. All right. We got the orange pill in a pack series for the simulation box. So I think we should open up a pack or two here. All right. We have a Genesis pack. It says your Bitcoin journey starts here.

So let's see what we get. I'm doing a terrible job at opening this. Oh, that's cool. So their whole thing is blending art, education, and fun. So this gives you resources on Bitcoin and, you know, how to get involved in that if you're interested. Really nice paper product here. These gloves are making it hard to grab these cards.

And like Aladdin said, all of this is actual art. None of it is AI. Like, that is really awesome. Really cool art we got here. And these are just some of them. See if we got any numbered in here. I don't believe we did, but that is all right. We got our Genesis pack.

Let's see if I can get these out. Oh, look at that. So these are little cards. holders. That is a really nice touch, a premium touch there. You will definitely be using these in the shop. Okay, I believe

this is the car, so we'll skip that for a second. I use my nails. Okay, what do we get here? And this is another set list so you can kind of check off what cards you've gotten. Again, just

a really intentional touch because you really don't see that with any their IPs and it makes you kind of want to collect all of them and build the actual set. Okay, the moment I have been waiting for and I know you've been waiting for the car. I guess I should grab this with my white glove. So, I mean, this thing is like 15 pounds. Maybe not actually that much like at least 10 pounds of this thing is heavy. Definitely the weight of the box here are really cool.

branded car. And I believe if we were to have the actual car, the keys would be in here. And let's see. Yep, we

just got our pack. Look how cool that is. Again, a very premium experience. Everything is very intentionally thought out. and I think what we'll do is we will actually give this away to a kid so they can experience it and get a little economics education and this car will now be some decoration in our studio.

Like how cool that is. And let's see if there's anything else hiding under. Oh, yep, okay. So it's the golden key set. Got a little golden key here. This is also pretty, pretty hefty, a good little paperwork. And, oh, a fancy, fancy pair of scissors. I almost like hair cutting scissors.

That's so funny. Yeah. Well, Aladdin over at base training cards, thank you again so much for sending us this. We are super appreciative. Go check them out seriously. if you like more experiential card openings, pack openings, this would be a great gift that I would love to receive. It definitely makes it more than just the cards and makes it a fun and interactive experience that you really don't get with any other IP. And you get, you know, all the things you might need

to become an actual collector right off the bat, get all the accessories, and you get a numbered card off that as well. So go check out base trading cards and see what else they might have up their sleeves. We want to just educate and gift this hobby flourishing even more than it is. I think a lot of people are afraid of investing period right now. Stock market, all-time highs. It's been there for a while. What's going to happen? Real estate, good luck.

If you don't already own your home, it's a sad opportunity for a lot of people to even consider buying a home someday. Trading cards is that investment that we can enjoy while we're doing it. We can build friendships, relationships, spend time with our family. and invests at the same time. And it's far, the pop culture, the culture that we've created over centuries,

it's far more important than the majority of these stocks that are out there that are really overvalued in many, many ways. If we're going to invest, we might as well invest in something that we love and get a lot of enjoyment out of it. And that's what I want to see continue to happen. Based on a solid foundation, he is Aladin,

Aladdin, Aladdin. I want to change your name. I want to make you something different. What he is is he's a creator and an innovator. We appreciate you, brother. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you, Ryan.

Hey, guys, you know to find us. Thecollecter nation.com. You're going to find highlight clips. We're going to do a slow-mo on that experience box. You know, come in. We're going to build it. You never know what's going to come in that thing. That's for sure.

A lot of fun. Go check them out. I want, I'm going to get Alan, Aladdin to drop the website name really quickly, all the links to social before we close out of here. Yeah. Based trading cards.com. Based cards across all the socials that are out there.

And last little show I got to throw in, we just finished writing Cardboard Kings, the history of trading cards, the first ever definitive history of trading cards book ever written. There's always, there's been a lot of little bits and pieces. specifically, but me and Nick Jarman, founder of the CTCA, we came together and literally wrote the history of trading cards going all the way back to the 1800s, where we are today. TCC sports, the unsung heroes, it's all in there. It's quite a massive book. And that should be dropping at the end of the year. Where will be, would that be on all like the major publications

and stuff? That, yeah, we're going to, we're self-publishing because I don't want to wait three years to get it out. Now, I'm not kidding. But it will be on. Amazon and then we have a collector's version coming out that is going to be one insane chase to that. That's going to be very special. Nothing ever produced like this before. We hope to have those and hobby shops around the country. How about you promised me you at least consider coming for a live interview when that launches and we'll do it here in the studio. We'll get you in South Carolina.

Beautiful. Yeah, because there's going to be a case to this collector's version. So I'll have to bring you one and we'll let you chase right there. Hey, we'll look a live audience. We'll invite the customer here. We're in the old of the store, baby. This is true organic hobby, you know, ring it to the people. We'll do book signings and all that stuff.

Beautiful. All right. Cool, man. I appreciate you. We appreciate everyone for listening. Check us out on YouTube if you have. You've got to see some of this stuff. You've got to see our work online.

We'll have, in all the B-roll, the team will put together on top of this, too. We'll be grabbing some of the high-res images from base and showing you everything we're up to. Look, let's support something different. Let's support something new. Let's get out there. Start collecting. We'll see you next time on Kletcher Nation. Thanks for tuning in to the show.

Be sure to follow us on your go-to podcast platform and catch the full video episode over on YouTube. Visit us at collector-nation.com and follow Ryan on Instagram at Ryan Alford. Now get out there and collect yours.