Collector Nation - VeeFriends Comic + Trading Cards Market Update | Collectibles News You Need

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

SUMMARY In this episode of the Trading Cards and Collectibles Podcast, Ryan Alford and Brian Ludden dive into the biggest headlines and hobby updates shaping the trading card market. The spotlight is on a major announcement: VeeFriends is teaming up with Walmart for exclusive comic releases, in-store events, and special collectibles drops. Andy Krainak, President of VeeFriends, joins the show to share insights on the brand’s mission of positivity, cultural relevance, and long-term impact on the hobby. They also break down data-driven collecting trends, highlight which players and cards are heating up, and discuss how new releases are influencing scanning activity and market behavior. Listeners will also hear about upcoming giveaways, a brand-new card store project, and community-driven stories that reflect both the excitement and the challenges of collecting. Whether you’re a seasoned collector or new to the hobby, this episode offers valuable insights, insider news, and interactive opportunities—making it a must-listen for trading card enthusiasts, sports card investors, and collectibles fans. TAKEAWAYS Breaking news and announcements in the trading card and collectibles hobby Details on the VeeFriends x Walmart partnership and exclusive releases The role of positive messaging in modern collectibles brands Insights into trading card culture and market trends How new releases are driving scanning activity and shaping demand Discussion of hot players and their popularity among collectors Interactive audience engagement with contests and giveaways Real stories and challenges from the collecting community Updates on new card store projects and upcoming hobby events Encouragement for listeners to share their personal collecting journeys

Welcome to the Trading Cards and Collectibles podcast on the Radcast Network. From chasing Grails to Colin Bluffs and going inside the hobby. Are you ready to collect? Let's get at it. Here is your host, Ryan Alford. Welcome to Trading Cards and Collectibles. Today is a loaded episode, jam packed. We've got a special announcement, special interview here on Trading Cards and Collectibles.

Friends has a huge announcement. Just telling you, one of the biggest names in retail is picking them up. Got a great collaboration. Talk to Andy Kranak, the president of V Friends. Talked all about that announcement. It's a big one. Then, of course, Brian and Ryan. Ludden, yes, LuddX.

The Loddx segment of the week, Brian and I break it down. Got into all the hot cards, Major League Baseball, huge announcements and giveaways. You don't want to miss that one bit on today's trading cards and collectibles. All right, guys, what's up? We're breaking in here. Hey, we've got a special release if you want to call it. I didn't know we were going to get into late breaking news here on trading cards and collectibles, but you know what? We got friends in good places, and we like to support good people doing good things. Hey, don't worry, V happy. We got the

president of V friends, Andy Granac. What's up, brother? How you doing, all right? Happy to be here. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, man. Hey, we get, if I get a, if I get a email says, hey, exclusive announcement. You won't in? I'm in. I'm in. I love the, you know, I've got four boys. Gary's been on my show a couple times, the business show and this show and a few other, you know, running into him. And I love what he's done with these friends, what you guys are doing. You know, your leadership, his creativity. What, hey, Matt's made in heaven. And it's just the messages of positivity and there's so much negative shit out there that I love what you guys are doing. and having four boys, getting positive messages.

And you know what? The big boys are paying attention, it sounds like. Absolutely. And I love that you mentioned your four boys, too. I think D.Friends has been really successful today because of the authenticity. And I think the authenticity comes from Gary. It's a combination of everything he loves. You know, we have the messages and values of these characters and what they represent,

whether it's empathy, yellow fan or balanced beetle or flexing fox, but also it's culture, it's collectibles, it's storytelling, and we're doing it in really fun and innovative ways. And I think our partners and our exclusive partners at New York Comic-Con this year, I recognize that. Yeah, man. You know, you can feel, it's interesting when there's momentum behind a brand and something, and you've got, so you've got a few grounds,

you've got the whole hobby momentum that's going on right now. And then you've got Vee friends who's sort of, yeah, you're taking advantage of that, but you have your own momentum and energy that are just ground swell. And it's funny how you see it because I know it when it's hitting my feed. People that maybe don't normally talk about it,

bring it up. They're going, this V friends, or I see somebody opening a pack at a store. And I'm like, you can just almost, I don't know, it's so funny how momentum you feel. I'm sure it's feeling that way internally. Yeah, I mean, and we say brick by brick at V friends, because that's how we think about building this IP long term every day. You know, the announcement with Walmart today is just another stepping stone

into creating what we want, what we aspire to be with this IP. But with the release of our Tops Chrome V-Friends product in May, I think we've really caught people by surprise. Because there's a lot of people in the hobby. That might be familiar with Gary, but I've never really tapped in on your SOTV-B-Friends or were familiar with the brand at all. But outside of the hobby, we've been building a very, and a very, very passionate community of collectors and fans that really love this IP and these characters.

And I think that came to life come made when our first ever Chrome product was released, which is really exciting. It's been extremely successful. And I think we're just continuing to build off of that element. Yeah, man. We got manga's at the house. I'm just saying. The fast follow from Chrome to our super sticker product that includes autographs by Seth Curry's.

I'm super proud of that. And I think when I look back, I have my time. I'd be friends that unsealed box. I have Mongo Super Stickers featuring the greatest shooter of all time. Well, I always have a special place. Yeah, man. So I want to put a big, like, exclamation point on this announcement because it's a big freaking deal.

And I want to, you know, spell it out for our listeners. So we launched Topps Chrome, you know, sold out everything. Nobody can get enough. Like, I know deal. I'm on the ground floor with like dealers locally nationally talking to them. They're like, yeah, can you get any? I'm like, they're like, Gary's on your side. Can you get?

I'm like, no, Gary can't even get. I mean, Gary's got his, you know, coffers stuff with his own, but he's like, I can't, you know. He's like, I told him to make more. It's like, well, hey, scarcity isn't, isn't a terrible thing if you leverage it right. But then, you know, you get the stickers. The greatest shooter on earth, like you said, my kids love Steph Curry. have the sticker collection at the house. And now, Walmart distribution,

let's spell that for everyone exactly what it is, what that means. Yeah, so at New York Comic Con next week, at the Walmart booth, booth, 2821, Walmart is going to be giving a free bundle, a V-Friends comic, which is almost sort of like a prequel. It's a special story edition A we're calling it,

which is the lead-up story to the first ever, V-Friends comic book. And inside of that comic book is a V-Friends mini-sticker. It's a smaller sticker of the Super Sticker, which we first released actually in collaboration with the restaurant. You could get that sticker in the Happy Meals of purchases. It's going to be at the Walmart booth. We're also going to be doing a live stream with Gary,

where those non-in-attentants are going to be able to join Gary and the V-Friends team on Walmart Live and try to snack. one of 300 CGC-grade comic books. And really exciting. I think this is the first phase of what will hopefully be a long-term partnership with beat friends. As we bring a wider audience and awareness to our characters and our IP and hopefully for Walmart, bringing a lot of innovation and excitement and excitement and fan of around the collectibles. And generally, our business acubes is how we think about onboarding new collectors into the space and hobby.

A lot to unpack there. I love the blending. comics need a little revival in my mind, like in the mainstream? I mean, I'm thinking everyone's mind. Yeah. I've been going to comic folks. I attended San Diego Promocon for the first year this year. I think everyone is ready for innovation and taking more contemporary takes on storytelling

within comics because it has the history of really being the cornerstone of collectibles for a very, very long time. So I'm going to first give like our listeners the, the Cliffs notes. What Annie just described, I'm going to tell you the hidden meaning and the real meaning, hidden meaning, go buy more V-Friends products because Walmart's and they're about to get that much more demand. So anything you have or you can get your hands on, go get your hands on it and put it in the

collection and tell, and thank me and Andy later. Now, number two, okay, it's still a big deal, but I love the integration of cards, the stickers into the comics, leaning into things that are working, the scarcity, the parallels, like all that sort of thing into the comics. That's where we need to see it go. And I think, look, there's a huge gap in storytelling, you know, like happening right now. It seems like a huge opportunity. So much so few printed materials these days that are worth, you know, getting your hands on.

Absolutely. You know, it's really fun and interesting for me fronts. For a lot of reasons, we're very unique. But our characters really have this built-in collectibility. The first time IEP was ever created or seen to the world. world was as an NFT, a digital collectible. So I think from the onset, collectibility was built into the brand, but we have yet to really tell the stories of these characters. And that has always been the goal and aspirations of Gary, the founder and creator, he has very specific

vision for who motivated monster is and motivated monsters. The origin story in comic, the ADU, is also coming out at your Comic-Con. But I think we are going to turn some of our biggest fans into character maxis, as we call them, of different characters because they're going to learn for the first time ever where optimistic otters coming from once he's about and who the villain is. And I think we're going to see some shake-ups, not just in a new fandom, but existing fandom around who's everyone's favorite defenseist.

Yeah, I love it, the storytelling. And the funny thing is you had wild success without, you know, other cards, people have stories around the players because they watch them play. They know them, you know, like person, on someone. Beference took off without anybody really having those backstories. Now you get a story in there.

Hello. And I don't know, man. It's, you can look at this a lot of ways. It's just how can you argue with, number one, the creativity that's here, the art,

the thought and care that's gone into the design. But the positive, I mean, like, you know, let's have some positivity in this world. My favorite thing, probably on earth at VeeFriends

is seeing tweets of parents that have not been in the hobby for decades. Basically, and they last open a padded car cards when they were 14. And now they're not just reconnecting with the hobby by opening BFriends first, but they're reconnecting with their kids. And they're talking about these traits and values that the BFriends

represent with their kids while collecting cards and getting affirmations of positive. sentiment from either new fans or collectors or people that are old in the hobby. And honestly, people that might have feelings about Gary and his provado, looking a script a little bit and recognizing that, like, we are, have been extremely thoughtful and we're thinking about building this IP and the collectibility of our characters and cars and products for a very long time. And it's just exciting to see.

And as you said, I think now more than ever, I don't know, more than ever. I don't know more than a matter, but positivity, accountability, happiness, balance. These are the things that each other represents and I think the world could definitely use some of that. 100%. And I told Gary this when I talked to him. I was like, you know, if you've been paying attention, obviously to Gary, just content for 10 years, like you've seen it and maybe, and I always could see what Gary was building and doing. Because I mean, I'm a marketer and my guy. But at the same time, I always. always like, his heart's in the right place. You know, and then this is the, this brand is the manifestation of what I felt like I knew

about Gary. Like, it brought it to life. There's a character called cynical cat in defense. And I think cynicism is a, is not a good trait. And I actually think it's very easy. It's easier to be cynical, especially around someone like Gary who was trying to do. two things at once, which is, and at times, and I think in the world, we've been told that they're contradictory, which is building big businesses, being an entrepreneur, being

a mobile, while also doing the right thing about people, while trying to be a good leader, watch while trying to teach values, and Gary believes and I believe, and it's what me represents that you both at the same time, you know. You can be a kind warrior, and you can also be, you know, practical teacock and optimistic utter. Yeah. There's a lot of broken people out there doing broken shit, you know, like, and it's, they point the fingers at the wrong direction and they focus outward instead of inward. And that's what I love about D-Friends is it's really about inward, like making yourself

inwardly better because you're taken from these characteristics. And it's not like pointing outward. all of these characters are talking about themselves, but not because they're self-centered, but because these are the attributes that we should all strive to have inside of us. Trillion percent. Accountability is the unlocked to happiness. And a fun thing, with over 250 characters at V-Ferance,

a lot of people just joining, I always want to know who's the most popular one, how do I think about collecting them? Obviously, our logo character, the very, very, very, very lucky black hat is the Holy Grail of the most collectible character in all of the V-fronts. But aside from that, it's really related to the trait in that shrew. You know, accountability from Gary's content and generally is such a big and important

word, I think, society. And it's why accountable Ant is one of the most popular and selectable defense characters. Because as you said, accountability really starts with pointing the thumb back at yourself and recognizing that you have a lot of control over your future and pointing fingers, blaming others. Ultimately, it's just going to meet you

your place. Yeah. The irony of accountability is it's about counting, but there's really only one. And it's you. I like that. And it's just so true.

Andy, I know you're a busy man. We got the big release. Talk to me. Let's talk to the audience. Okay, next week's release. What does it mean for the audience? What can they,

you know, get their hands on? Where is it going to be? Any of the logistical things? I like that. Yeah. Well, if you are, Coming to New York Comic Con, good news.

We have a lot of event exclusives outside of just what we're releasing with Walmart. A lot of them, honestly, they're free giveaways. You can come to our booth. We're going to be right by Funkco's booth. We're having a Funko Pop again for the second year. Or come by Walmart's booth. Gary's going to do a signing of this giveaway, which will be awesome. Besides that, if you're not going to New York Comic Con,

hit someone else up who is so that you can make sure you get some of these exclusive beef friends collectibles. Otherwise, too much Walmart Live. I think Walmart recognizes again, the industry of not just collectibles, but retail is really evolving. And it is coming in the form of live shopping. And we're going to be going live on Walmart Lives with Gary, which I believe is going to be Thursday, October 9th at 1 p.m. on Walmart Live, which should be available to anyone who wants to check in on the live. We're going to have 300 of those created exclusive comics available. And honestly, they're going to be a really good time to just hang out, learn more about the product, see Gary.

in his album at Newark on the lab stream, should be a good time. We'll have all of that in the show notes that will be linked here. We'll link it this week and next week's release. We really support what Andy, Gary, and the whole V Friends team is doing. Positive message. He nailed it, man.

It's about business. But look, we can do it in a positive way, and we could share what matters in this world in ways that collects. And brings great values, both inside and maybe to your wallet. I'm going to make sure I try to get you a newer Comic-Con comic bundle. So we're releasing comic book.

I need it. That's all I'm going to say, Andy. It will sit right here every week. We're going to be a bundle to South Carolina for you because I think you and boys will like it. And we'll give you a taste of the future of our storytelling and IP and our characters shut on it. Andy, brilliance.

I love what you're doing. I really appreciate you for stopping in. I know you're busy. This is an important announcement. It's big news for you guys. Congratulations. I appreciate it so much. Thank you for the opportunity.

I really appreciate support. Hey, guys. You know where to find us. You know where it is. Collectibles. We'll have all the links to everything Andy mentioned. Of course, more in today's episode. Collecting's Americana.

Honestly, getting in this industry. People collect something. It's just part of our culture. It could be like freaking stickers or stamps or whatever it is, but everyone has something they like. I remember you talking about the Brady lover that's got like 39,000 different cards or something like that? His collection is almost like a million bucks. He walked up to meet the National.

He looks like he jumped off a bus. He's like, hey, I'm so-and-so. I got 39,000 Tom Brady cards. And here's my collection. I'm like, oh, like, crap. You got like somebody that's got 40,000 of them. And he keeps re-scanning them or something because he's like, It's got to be worked more than that.

And I've done that myself. I've re-scaned a few cards on Luddics. Like, maybe the valuation would go higher if I scan it more. That's funny. Yeah. What's up, guys? Welcome to trading cards and collectibles powered by Loddx. Brian, what's up, brother?

How you doing, my man? Week two. I know. Week two. Brian and Ryan coming to you. Look, we're sporting our hats. Brian's got the jerseys. in the background. He's got the White Sox jersey. He's got Earl Locker. I mean, he's got the winners

behind him. I don't know what I call on your jersey, man. I mean, I don't hate the White Sox or anything, man, but that's a tough road to hove. Yeah, I guess it's like one of those things where I get excited for playoff baseball. And I have no rooting interest ever. But this is a, you know, the old White Sox jersey, no big whoop, World Series 05. So with playoff baseball, I like, I have no Baseball, I like to represent the White Sox. Put it away for next year. No. But the White Sox did have a bad year, though, right?

They actually were the number right behind the Blue Jays. The Blue Jays had 20 wins differential from 24 to 25. The White Sox had 19. Now, the White Sox went from 40 to, or 41 to 60. So you got saved. Baby steps. The White Sox fans, all white, Do you have to hate the Cubs if you're a Sox fan?

I mean, some would say yes, absolutely. I mean, I'm from the South side. So, like, I had no choice. I'm a White Sox fan. But the Cubs fans don't hate the White Sox as much as the White Sox fans hate the Cubs. It's jealousy. It's like, you know, they got a great stadium. They keep winning.

It's, I mean, all I think about with the White Sox is it brings me back to the nostalgia of Frank Thomas. When his cards were the hottest thing on, on leaf Frank Thomas when I was a kid was like the hottest card you know right after I think it was right after Griffey Jr. Yeah. Yeah. It's like Frank Thomas hot.

You know, dude reminds me like Aaron Judge now. Big dude. Looks like kind of almost like you swear belong on a football field or a baseball field. And he was so hot. And that leaf card as a kid, I was open. I don't know how many packs of leaves never opened a damn one. If that in a minute, though. That's what I think the white talks.

That's what I think of. the big hurt. He's actually got an interesting air card. So his tops has a no name. I think it's his picture from Auburn University and it's a no name. And it's a very valuable card. Obviously really rare. But yeah, the big hurts amazing. In person, he's even like, you're like, wow, that dude's a beast. And imagine if he took steroids. Exactly. You know, I did live in New York. I've got my Yankees hat on. I want to put an asterisk. I'm a Southern guy.

I grew up a Braves fan and still am. But, you know, lived in Manhattan for six years and, you know, adopted the Yankees because I'm not that guy that's like the Cowboys, Yankees, and whatever else guy. You know, it's more, I lived there. I lived in Manhattan, went to the games, embraced them. And, yeah, it's not a hard living because they win a lot. But they lost last night, though. Damn, they blow them.

They bullpen sucks. Yeah. That was, I mean, it's a crazy, I mean, you got division rivals and they all playing each other with Cleveland, Detroit. It's weird a little bit. I mean, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like a World Series almost because it's just so energized. It's just like, I'm like, I kind of need like ease my way into the playoffs. And it's like, I don't know, the energy last night was crazy, but it, they blew it. You got to get your playoff mojo on, dude.

I know. So, yes, but it's 0-1. We'll see where it goes. They can have to get more out of the bullpen. And you don't have to worry about it with the white talks. No, there's no pressure. I mean, there's no energy here that I have to worry about and manage. Collectibles.

Show is where you'll find all of the channels and learn more about what we're doing. And ultimately, hey, we want to hear from you. You do case hits at collectibles. dot show. I want you to send in your favorite pulls of the week. And here's the difference. This isn't about just value. Hey, we want to see some $10,000 hits. Had a couple of those myself a few months back. But it's not just about the value. It's about what you're collecting. What means something to you? Share a story. Share a video of you holding up the card that you hit last week. That was your favorite player and you nailed it.

So case hits at collectibles.com. Send in those videos. I want to know the stories. We're going to bring into life here on the show. We're going to do a segment each week. Once we get rolling and get some videos in where we share that on the show with us. We'll feature you on collectibles show. We had a lot of big releases though this week, you know, being in the card game with the boys in the opening side and selling. We've gone through our fair share of Bowman Chrome, which came out. And then, you know, I got to go there. This isn't all collectibles, Brian. And I know how much this gets play in the Lutex app. But Pokemon, mega evolution came out. I got a variation of each of The packs here.

That's been hot. I mean, it's just funny when you see, like, at least around here, you go to a Walmart, good luck finding any product, any retail product of Pokemon or something. But it's like, you know, grown men fighting one another. Yeah. Yeah. Now that said is, it's crazy because we'll be like Pokemon will sit here like this. And then the release comes out and you just see it pop by 20% scans.

You all have seen it pop the last few days or weekend or whatever. Yeah. In a month. the month when there's a release, we'll scan about 3,000, 3 million Pokemon. And that's a release month. Without that or release,

it's about 2.2 million. So a month. So it's definitely a big, big bump. Does Lodax like your scanning, do you have to train it on every new set that comes out? Or is it like y'all have AI or something? Like, is it everything new if it comes out, you got to retrain it?

No. I mean, we have some proprietary models. that kind of take a lot of left out. It would just be too hard to keep up with them. But that's a big, it was a big piece of technology that we had to build to get relevant cards in. And that's the thing. I'll say this.

So plug for our team here. But I'm just saying, all the scanning card apps struggle with certain things. And none of them are perfect, but Lodex is the best. but Pokemon, they are absolutely undoubtedly the world champion. Like, it's, I get like 9.5 out of 10 with Pokemon with you guys. I love it.

Thank you. I know what it is, but y'all, y'all've got the Pokemon down. There's not as many parallels. I mean, honestly, that's the big thing. The parallels in baseball, if you could figure out baseball parallels, you've got everything else. Yeah. What's hot at this? I mean, you know, you got the playoffs, you've got these releases going on.

What's popping on the, um, on the, uh, charts. Well, I think just on some interesting data that we like to bring every week to you guys, the number one in the last five days is Chapman. Chapman scans are up almost 100% from week to week. And then you have a cub, Nico Horner, and these are all, we take the rookie cards and you know, in PSA 10. Nico Horner is up 86%. And then, I mean, like an autonomous. He's like, Otani's already high, so he's not going to like, he's only up for 4%. But yeah, I mean, those are the, those are the big ones. And Jose Ramirez is up 41%, which is kind of weird, but maybe someone just really has a liking to Jose Ramirez.

But those are the three big ones for sure. You got like somebody that's got like 40,000 of them and he's, he keeps re-scanning them or something, like, because he's like, it's got to be worth more than that. Denial scans. Like, I've done that myself. Like, I've re-scaned a few cards on Luddoy's like, I want that. Maybe the valuation would go higher if I scan it more. That's funny. Yeah, I mean, there's, I'll get you, next week I'm going to get you like the guys who had the most of certain player.

Like, maybe we'll do Otani and see like of the Luddux members, who's in the top five for how may they have. I'm talking about Brady's, the Brady lover that's got like 39,000 different. cards or something like that? Yeah, and he's got his collection's worth almost like a million bucks. I was about to say, he's got to be if he's got that many very. He walked off to meet the national and he's got, I mean, he looks like he

jumped off a bus. Like, I mean, and also he's like, hey, I'm so and so I got 39,000 Tom Brady cards and here's my collection. I'm like, oh, like, oh, crap. That's what's so funny about the hobby. You know, got to have a million dollar case in his hands and, you know,

shower, maybe not. Case, autograph, PSA 10. Yeah, absolutely. Got it. He got it. That's priority in order. You know, we all do. We're all junkies in some way or shape or form.

Just some live it out and smell it out more than others. Yeah, I mean, collecties Americana. Like, honestly, like being in getting in this industry, people collect something. Like, it's just part of our culture. And it could be like freaking stickers or like, I don't know, stamps or, whatever it is, but everyone has something they like. Yeah. And I mean, the boys and I rip a lot of packs and I'm up late at night working.

And I'll be working on something. And, you know, we sell a lot of cards and move a lot of stuff. The Rad Collective looks up on eBay and or Lodex soon. The, it's, I'll be saying, I'll be working. And I'll have, like, random packs that didn't sell or like a box that's like torn. I can't sell it. I'll just start as like my little like 15 minute like personal break from like working on a deck or a report or something. I'm sitting there just ripping packs of like some random.

You know, I call it. Hey, call it spillage. You know, it's kind of like breakage in the bar. You know, like I'm not going to be able to sell that box. It's too dint it up. Give me that thing. As you drop it on the floor. Yeah, exactly.

I kicked it a couple times before I did it. But, you know, it was an accident. That's a lot. It's a lot. I was thinking about something to engage the audience with as we were talking about scans. So talking to my talented team over here, it came up with an idea that I think could be pretty cool. So what I want to do is I want to bracket out the playoffs. And then starting next series, we'll see which team has more scans and they move on in the Luddox bracket.

So it necessarily won't be winners or losers. It might predict the winners or losers. We'll find out. But at the end, it'll be really interesting to see what teams end up with it. So next week to week. The next year. We'll be at the SB's next year. Yes, I love it.

No, it's interactive. I love it. The funnest part is it correlate to the winners. Are you heavy? scanners predictive of actual on field. I don't know. It'd be hard to, I don't know the predict. I could go either way on the prediction.

And also I think there's going to be interesting data because like if you have, if you have Aaron judge cards, you've probably scanned a lot of your Yankees in. But if you have a team that's up and come like the brewers and you're like, holy crap, I got a lot of brewer stuff here. I'm going to start scanning those in. So you're going to see like things that anomalies that I don't think are going to make a lot of sense to people. Obviously, there's a population. in New York or the Dodgers.

But week to week, I don't know if that's going to show. But we'll find out. Yeah, it will be. What's happening in Texas? Talk to me about any updates with the trading card store there or anything you can talk about. Yeah, so I'm going to head down there in a couple of weeks. And we're going to start the series of filming it and getting you guys in to see what it's all about. And it'll be a weekly, definitely a weekly update.

right now it's just kind of vacant and they're cleaning it and ripping stuff apart. So we start with a 5,000 square foot open cube. That's what it is. It's a blank slate.

Blank slate. Yeah. But the renderings I've seen look amazing. I know that's going to be fun bringing your baby to life. I got a proposal for you. All right. I want to do a giveaway, our first giveaway. We talked about it last week about giving some Luddock swag away.

So what I did is I called my friend Clint Anderson at Zion Cases. He's an Illinois guy. I like where this is headed. And I said, can you make a Lutox branded Ziont case? And he's like, sure, and he sent a bunch up. And I said, I'm going to give it away to, members of whoever watched the podcast. So then I'm

thinking, what's a cool thing to do for the giveaway? And if we're going to use the Luttex ecosystem, what I think I want to do is every card that's scanned from today to the final game of the World Series,

how many baseball cards were scanned into Luttex during that time? And whoever is the closest wins the Loddx and Zion. case. Look at that beauty.

Shiny, beautiful. Look how I said. Love Zion. What do you think? The best cases and that Lodix logo is slick. We already know that. What I think is you better start counting. Whoever's listening.

We need to start counting because you want that case. And I'm trying to even do the math in my head. You guys get so many freaking scans. Like, I mean, that's a month and a half. And then, I mean, it's two months. How long is the playoffs? They go all the through October, November. I would say they're probably six, seven weeks.

And at that point, I mean, there's some cues in here on these. Like, I've given numbers out. You know, I think you can probably start adding it up, get close. So it's the closest to the total scans that have them from now in baseball only or in or just the baseball only scans. We're going to get these notes. notes down and we'll have it in the notes of the show episode. We'll have it on the screen as well. Lodex Zion case. Are you kidding me? Yes. I kind of want this one, though. I know. It's hard to get away shit that you want. We'll have all details of that in the show notes.

Each week as we lead up to that, we'll bring it up during this segment. And of course, you got to be counting it and be ready. And then we'll do, I guess, some form. of a submission of everyone's guesses once the playoffs to end and we'll good luck to you. It's a big number. It's a big number. Think bigger than you're thinking. Yes. A lot ofx employees are exempt.

Yeah, no Luttex employees. Give us some feedback. What do you want to see? What do you want to learn? We're going to make it fun around here, letting our hair down. And look, this is all about collecting. and what we collect. I mean, you hear Brian's got $5 million sitting in a, you know,

some of these stole out of some old man's house that he's now. I've ripped someone off and got him. You know what happened, though? This is, I know we're running out of time, but I want to tell one story about it because it was. So these cards were sitting in this guy's basement for 30 years, right? It's January in Chicago. We're moving these things out.

I get them to the storage unit. And one unit is all basketball, one's all football. And the other ones like non-sports like Marvel, you know, hockey and baseball. Two days later, my guys are there and they're like, Brian, you got to see this. This is not good. He goes, there's been a leak. The sprinklers froze. I get there and I walk in and I'm like, holy crap.

I'm like, I pick up a binder. Like I said, I don't know what's in here. I pick up a binder, 61 tops set. The whole set, just leaking with water. And I'm like, man, I guess that wasn't meant to ever come out of that basement. But I lost probably, I would say I lost 25% of my baseball and, you know, hockey. But hockey, you know, it's not like an OPEC, Gretzky's. But I lost 25% of baseball.

And I stopped looking through it because I'm like, it is what it is. Like, you know, let's just get it cleaned up. But that was, that was not a fun, fun day. No. you have to get insurance. Yeah. We had 10,000. We maxed it out at $10,000.

We had 10,000. We had 20,000 top loaders. Yeah, that's saying. Yeah. I want to see that policy get ridden. You know? Do I take us to court? And I'm like, well, for 10 grand, no one's going to take you to court.

And that's kind of how they do it. So self-insure. Self-insure. for sure is uh yeah god it hurts my feelings thinking on that wet oh geez any other news of the week brian before we get out of here no man i think i have some homework um i'm gonna get you guys a peek at the uh at the storage unit um i'm gonna get you guys um we're gonna get that bracket going and i think uh well yeah i think we're ready to rock and roll yeah start counting start counting and all those scans, just take it.

Hey, pay attention. Go back, listen to last week. We talked to a lot of numbers, and every week we'll be bringing up. So you can start to formulate your best guesses at the end of the world series. Brian, brother, always fun. Can't wait until next week.

Yeah, man, appreciate it. This is great. And we got some good things coming up. So let's rock and roll. Hey, guys, collectibles. That's where you find, Brian and I, all the recaps, all the info. and of course go to that app store, look for Lodex.

You'll thank me later. We appreciate you. Brian Ryan, Ryan here on TCC. We've got to get an acronym. TCC sounds cool. TCC. You know me? You done with TCC?

Yeah, you know me. We'll see y'all next week. Out. Thanks for tuning into the show. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast platform and don't miss the full video version on YouTube. You can find us at www. collectibles.

Show or follow Ryan on Instagram at Ryan Oldford. Now get out there and collect yours.