Digital Social Hour - CBlez On Running a $10M Sports Card Company, Getting Scammed & Most Expensive Sports Card | DSH #172

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

On today's episode of Digital Social Hour, CBlez reveals the most expensive sports card he's ever pulled, celebrities he's came across in the industry & his dream sports card to own. BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] APPLY TO BE ON THE POD: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH HelloFresh: https://www.hellofresh.com/50dsh Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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who's your goat nba my goat is not jordan whoa it's lebron for me it's just i gotta see it with my own two eyes i'm 27 i didn't really see jordan in his prime and i just don't know how you could be better than lebron Welcome back to the show, guys. Digital Social Hour. I'm your host, Sean Kelly, here with an awesome guest today, sports card legend, C. Blez. What's going on? I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me on, Sean. I'm excited for today. Man, I can't wait to dive into sports cards. It's a pretty lucrative industry from what I've heard. The hobby, there's a lot of money to be made in the hobby if you know what you're doing of course and i i think it's the most fun industry in the world yeah i love sports cards i love everything about it yeah you get to open up packs of sports cards all day and make money doing it

yeah it's honestly i've been doing sports cards my whole life and it's a family thing my brothers have been in it and we're kind of just living out what we did as kids as adults and you can't ask for anything more than that yeah what was that breaking point for you where you decided this is a business like how did you make that first million so honestly i was my brother started a breaking company called Bles Sports Cards in 2016. I was still in college. I was in Penn State. And I was always in the hobby. They were always in the hobby.

And the industry wasn't that hot back in 2016. It's not like it is today. But we were growing a little bit as the months went on. And I just knew that I was always going to come right in even if the business wasn't like so big like it is today we were small at the time but i knew that i could provide good value to the company just because i've been in sports cards my whole life so i didn't even like look for jobs really i kind of knew that i was going to go into cards and yeah i just once 2017 hit they actually moved the business from new york to vegas i came out

here and i just pretty much i've been working with my brothers the whole the whole time it's been like seven years and we've been growing every ever since and if you ask how i made my first million back in 2017 2018 all the cards were so underpriced because you look at it the hype wasn't there gary v he was talking about cards he was he was bringing the hype with them yeah so pretty much in 2017 2018 2019 i bought as many cards as i possibly could it was a quantity game i wasn't really looking at the high-end stuff i was looking to buy like prism base cards grade them i would buy the cards for like anywhere from 10 to 25 bucks grade them for 10 and then try to sell them for let's say like 70 80 wow but the thing was the industry was peaking every day so the cards were actually going up so basically it's like oh i was going to sell

them for 70 80 and then i was getting the cards back and all of a sudden they're worth 250 and then a week later all of a sudden they're worth 350 and it just kept on going and going and going so i kind of i didn't know this was going to happen but i kind of had a good feeling that a lot of people were going to come into the industry so I bought as many cards as I could specifically Luka Doncic because he was the third pick he came in and a lot of people didn't know much about him because he was in Europe yeah but he was he was the MVP of the league and I had a hunch that he was going to be maybe not as good as he is now but I thought he was going to be one of the best players in the league. So I bought all the Luka cards I could. I graded them all. And honestly, I made millions with Luka Doncic by himself. Because if you had the right cards, they went up 30x in about a year. It wasn't

that long of a time frame. So all the Luka cards, I bought them and I did a quantity game as many as I could. And I made a few million just in Luka Doncic. So you bought them before he even played a single game? I mean, if you remember his rookie year, he wasn't that great. He was like he wasn't what he is today. I bought them like throughout the rookie year. OK. Yeah.

Wow. And he went off his second year, right? His second year, he came out of the gate averaging like 30, 10 and 10. Yeah, I remember that. That was crazy. his second year he came out of the gate averaging like 30 10 and 10 yeah i remember that that was crazy and it was like right out of the gate yeah and everyone was just going crazy about him and he also like as he played well the industry kept getting more hype because we don't see young players play that well like so often right and he kind of started the trend and now a lot of young players are superstars at a young age but he was like fueling the hobby to get bigger so how much does a major sporting event like if you win the championship affect the price of sports cards it used to be massive but now everyone

thinks if you win a championship it's going to go up so it actually goes down now really yeah it's insane wow it basically it's all supply and demand just with anything in life it's going to go up so it actually goes down now really yeah it's insane wow it basically it's all supply and demand just with anything in life it's like when they win the championship in the modern day like today everyone's thinking oh i want to sell him when he wins the championship but that you actually want to sell him a month before when the hypes at peak because that's when people are buying to speculate if they will win the championship or not once they actually win no one's selling i mean no one's buying at that time because they think he's hot everyone's selling and then it makes the market go down wow that's interesting but two three

years ago no one like they didn't really know if like the public didn't know if they win or what happens what makes the car goes up so it actually did go up like two three years ago but now it's gonna flip-flop again winning championships in two three years will probably make your card values go up once everyone thinks it doesn't but right now they think it does so it's actually bad interesting now you did 50 mil last year your business has done 100 million million in sales in the past three years. Can you explain your business model for people that don't know what sports breaking is? So we take a box, let's say Prism, Topps Chrome, and we sell it in a different way where we divide it up by the team. So every league pretty much has 30 teams so we'll price each team let's say it's baseball the

yankees will be 100 the angels will be 50 depending on what you could get out of that specific box so basically 30 people are pooling their money together to get whatever comes out of the box and then usually there's like 100 or 200 cards in a box whatever team comes out we take the cards we divide it up who bought each team we ship them out and then the customer is free to do whatever they want from there and what's the most expensive card you've pulled on stream honestly a lot of the times we pull cards and then they go up tremendously over time because a lot of this business is driven off rookies and when you pull a big rookie card, it's their first year. So usually it's like you got to wait until they become superstars.

But I pulled a Kobe Logo Man card from the last time he was ever in the highest end product called Flawless. It was a 101 Logo Man autograph. I pulled it in 2018. And the guy sold it for $50,000 at the time. And it's probably worth like $2-3 million today. What? Yeah. One card is worth $2 million? Yeah. And it's a modern card.

A lot of the times you see cards selling for $5 million, it's like from the 50s, the 40s, the old baseball stuff. Yeah. It's rare you see like a card from like 2019 going for millions. Wait. There's cards that sell for over $5 million, you said? Yes. A Mickey Mantle, not even a PSA 10. It was an SGC 9.

I think it just sold for $12.5 million. Holy crap. So people got to look through their attics and find those cards. That's the thing. A lot of the cards were thrown away, but that's actually why the cards are worth so much, because the supply is low. But if you're out there at home and thinking oh i might have some cards it's definitely worth it to look through your stuff and see what you have because you might have something you don't know is worth it yeah bro every time i see those those pokemon card prices i i get so mad i used to have all those cards those charizards and stuff you had

first edition i might have i don't know that's like where the real money is right i definitely had the holographic charizard and bulbasaur or whatever all those cards and they're like over 100 g's now pokemon's it's massive now yeah it's come up a lot in the last couple years so what's the most expensive card you personally have owned for me the most expensive card i've owned i i flipped a card for like a 40k profit it was a luca 101 rookie card from mosaic but honestly like i think i lost a lot because i bought the card for 20 000 i sold it for like 69 000 after fees i made 40 but this was like in 2020 and luca wasn't what he was like today obviously so i honestly think i could have sold the card for like two

two or three hundred thousand but i sold it for 70 which i'm happy with obviously but sometimes you got to look at like opportunity costs it's like if i held on to the card for another year i probably would have made another 50 to a hundred thousand. So I didn't actually technically lose money, but I didn't make as much as I could have. Wow. Now I know you're one of the biggest sports card companies in the world. What impact has social media had on your business? Social media is massive. It's massive. If you look at a lot of people in cards, social media is something that they didn't really do four or five years ago. The industry was dead with social. So to me, that means there's so much opportunity. And I've been doing a lot of social

media stuff since 2017, 2018. And it's been amazing. You up customers you just get you stay relevant right staying relevant is the most important thing especially in the modern day because if you don't do it someone else will and then you're going to lose market cap on those people because you post every day on instagram tiktok youtube whatever people want to see that stuff they want to be engaged it's not just it's it's about the stories the drama to see that stuff. They want to be engaged. It's about the stories, the drama. People love that stuff. They don't just want to see the cards being open. They want the stories that go with it. Nice. I noticed a few years ago when I was in the space, there seemed to be a divide with the older people and the people using social media.

Is there still a divide? Yeah, there definitely is. They don't like it there definitely is they don't like it right they don't like the way the new industry is heading they the older people i mean i'm an old school guy at heart i'm young but i align with with the young people and the old people because i've been in the hobby for 20 years yeah but the old people they don't they don't like the brash loud they just don't understand social media as much i would say and they think that it's like kids running around and it's bad for the hobby and all this stuff but it's actually good because you want any when you're getting more eyeballs on something they might not buy today but you're in their head and then eventually it's like they're going to make a purchase with you and then if they like the experience they're going to stay with you and a lot of that's driven through social media yeah i remember when the jordan documentary came out his card skyrocketed

and that was through social media basically exactly it's like card shows too like the nationals coming up card shows people want to see hype on social media or else they're probably they're less likely to go it's the same thing with anything in life it's like the content is i wouldn't say it's the most important thing but it's definitely up there in terms of the most important yeah so what goes down at these card shows because i see them in vegas and in atlantic city i think yeah last year was atlantic city yeah like what actually goes on it depends on the show but a lot of the time there's just a ton of deal making it's like if you want to go into a show and spend 50 100 000 and just buy a ton of stuff you can easily but a lot of people are buying them to make

products themselves when you were in i don't think a lot of people were doing repack products no they'll buy a ton of singles they'll package it up and sell it on their channel just like the singles but that's what a lot of people are doing at shows they're going to buy those cards and then a lot of the shows is just hanging out with people that like are in the hobby like your friends you just want to hang out like the national coming up i'm just i'm not going to do that many deals i'm going to mostly just like hang out there's business meetings because everyone's going to be there that's like on the business side of it so yeah i mean the show the men collective that's one of the biggest they have it

it's in vegas here that one's like the national it's more about like meeting people networking stuff like that it's just you could you could kind of make the show whatever experience you want depending on on what you're in the mood to do yeah like recently i haven't been doing much like flipping because it's become more difficult i'm more holding so it's like there's less reason for me to go to a show right now because i'm not flipping as much i'm more just like holding stuff right um now i've been scammed before in the card space so i'm curious if you've been scammed because i know it's like a small world and you have a good

name so i'm wondering if anyone's dumb enough to have tried to scam you i've definitely been scammed a bunch the thing with me is in 2018 2019 i was buying so much quantity that i didn't even know if i got scammed like i could have been scammed like 20 30 times but like you know when you buy a card on ebay it's like you check to see who it came from you leave feedback all this stuff i would buy open all my mail and not even like check it's like oh i bought 50 cards i might have bought like 70 cards but like i don't even know i got scammed because i just, it was like, whatever I had, I was just wrong. Cause I knew the money was so good.

Right. That's the thing. It was like, it was so easy. So it's like, even if I got scammed for 10, 20% back in the day, I was making two, 300%. So I just looked at it. It's a waste of time to even check and leave feedback. It was a waste of time for me because I knew if I was spending time buying more cards, I was actually making way more money. So back in the day, I didn't really check. But in terms of recent scams, I mean, people think that it's way more common than it is. I would say it does happen in the card space, but it happens in any space. Yeah. I honestly thought that people would be scamming less

in the modern day because I thought with social media and stuff, it'd be harder. Yeah. But it seems like the scams have been ramping up. I think because of the economy and the recession. That's a good point. Yeah.

I mean, I got scammed, but it was definitely my fault. I fronted some guys some cases and stuff, and he just never paid me. it's i put blame on myself you were big in the wax game right huge in the wax game that was my game just wax you could you could do really well in wax you can if you got the connections you could just make five ten percent a case and just drop ship them flip them that's the thing yeah you don't even really have to hold on to it if you know a good source yeah that you could get wax ship it to the other person make a quick five percent you just got to sell volume at that point yeah that's what i was doing um all right so let's get into some

goat debate here who's your goat nba my goat is not jordan whoa it's lebron oh you're gonna get some hate first i say what brandon miller said it's Paul George. It's Paul George. I saw that clip. Why do you have LeBron over MJ? For me, it's just I got to see it with my own two eyes. I'm 27. I didn't really see Jordan in his prime. And I just don't know how you could be better than LeBron. I get the instinct fact of it, but LeBron, he's the best athlete. He's 6'8", 250. He improved his shooting throughout his career. And I think, I don't know, there's multiple ways to play a good brand of basketball. I don't think he does it the same as the Warriors used to do it, but the way that he, him by himself, I just think that you can't really be better than him. Yeah.

Do you think he'll catch up to rings with Jordan? He needs two more. Two more to tie him. No. Yeah, he's getting old. But this is my argument. I think Jordan played in a soft era in terms of talent. Look at the talent that was in the league. I think it was Dre drexler hakeem bird magic i i honestly don't know like

who played at the exact timing but all i do know is lebron played against golden state every single year and that was the best team of all time so when you're playing against the warriors i think they play what like three four times four times i think yeah it's the same thing with james harden people say james harden's not a winner but look who he had to play when you're playing against Golden State every year you're you look at the lines on the on the finals when the Cavs played Golden State I think one of them Golden State was like minus 700 it's like LeBron ended up winning one out of the four, or they might have played three. But I just think you look at guys like Durant, Giannis, Kyrie, Steph,

all these guys, I think like the seventh or eighth best player in the league today would be like the second best player in the league back in the day. Like Jokic, Embiid. People think, oh, the league's soft today. They wouldn't be able to survive. but I think it's the opposite. I think the league back in the day just didn't have as much talent. When you don't have as much talent, you have to make the game ugly. You've got to play rugged. You can't play how the Warriors play because you don't have the talent to do it.

So I think LeBron's playing against a tougher field, and that's why I think he's better because he almost has the same resume in terms of championships he's got the most points so I think it's he just played against tougher competition that's why I think he's better I agree man I mean we'll get some hate for this but it just seems like when you watch the game today compared to the 80s or 90s it's like they don't look as athletic almost. Exactly, yeah. Every four man in the league can shoot the three. Every five could shoot a mid-range jumper today. Back in the day, it was back down to the post

and just try to get a hook shot or whatever. Yeah, for sure. It's weird. So why do guys like Mike Trout, Michael Rubin, and Steve Aoki follow you? Honestly, they want the hobby expertise. I'm looked at as a guy who is towards the top of the hobby. I don't really like to brag or whatever, but I post a lot about sports cards. I also do some sports betting stuff, but I like to spread the knowledge. I like to educate people because my philosophy at the core is if everybody knows more

about sports cards, they're going to make more educated purchases and they're going to stick around. I don't like when people get burned because people come in. A guy like Mike Trout, for example, if he's going to come in and spend $400,000 or $500,000, I want him to get good value. I want him to learn. I want him to not lose a lot of his money. So when I post these card videos, they're perfect for a guy like him to not lose a lot of his money so when i post these card videos they're

perfect for a guy like him to understand oh you might want to do this you might not want to do this because if you do this you're going to lose a lot so a lot of the bigger people out there they're trying to learn about cards and there's not that much knowledge a lot of the people are just putting out content to sell yeah I put out content to educate, to entertain. So it's a little bit different. I'm talking specifically in sports cards. Yeah. Most people, they just, they want to sell their boxes.

They want to sell their cards. For me, I do that with, with Blez, but personally, I'm just more looking to educate and show people that you can actually make money in sports cards. You could do well if you know what you're doing. Yeah. Because a lot of people probably just try to offload stuff on them and they get a terrible deal. Well, the thing is not that many people are educated. It's tough to learn. Yeah. I'm sure you know this. When you come in, it's like there's no handbook of like rules of what to do in sports cards. You have to like learn yourself. It was tough. Yeah. Made a lot of took a lot of L's at first for sure that's the thing most people take l's that's actually

normal but i'm trying to save people from taking those original l's by telling them yeah like just what it is yeah what other celebrities and athletes have you seen in the space honestly there's a ton there's i went live with with a ton of guys two three yannis is in there yeah lebron's in there yannis posted something showing a lot of his 101 cards so he's the one buying those i think he just keeps them because panini sends him the cards to have signed and they have to send him back and he doesn't send them back i think janice he keeps some of his bigger cards it's actually so funny i shouldn't be allowed it's not honestly i think he posted it and then like four or five hours later he took it down because i don't think he's allowed to do it yeah because people are opening these packs expecting a chance at least

to get it and you couldn't even pull his one it's so funny but other than that you got guys like lebron he's actually said in an interview that he has one of his cards confirmed um there's a lot of like mid-level baseball guys who collect yeah carlos rodan he collects seth curry i went live with him he collects nice there's a ton honestly it's hard to just think of them all that's cool that's cool to see that the actual athletes like are getting into it and i think in the future they're going to get more into it because fanatics is coming into the industry and they're they're like tight with the leagues yeah so i think that there's a chance that this becomes like even bigger wow it's not a chance like it should happen yeah so you think fanatics is going to do more damage than panini did they're going to do

it a different way i think that they're going to try and with panini was more about like the products like prism flawless nationallawless National Treasures. It's like they knew they had that, so let's just pump that out. With Fanatics, I think they're going to take more of the approach of getting the athletes involved, changing the landscape of card shows potentially. I think that overall, it's going to be great. Yeah, I wouldn't bet against Fanatics. I mean, they just dominate every industry they touch. That the thing it's it's like they're they're doing sports betting they're

doing sports straight up yeah they're pretty much the biggest in the whole sports landscape yeah they're massive one of the things i like about you is you post your sports bets but even when you're wrong you keep it up yeah that's the thing i i'm i'm very real with everything yeah most people they're my sports picks if i lose i lose i i gotta tell the truth bro i read the comments and it's so funny because a lot of people they don't want me to post betting content because they're so deep in the cards yeah and they're like oh like please like please we beg you like more cards and it's like i'm not done with cards i've been in cards for 20 straight years and i'm not going anywhere but it's like sometimes i want to do sports

betting too so it's like yeah the comments are insane no they're too funny man what's your win percentage are you profitable on sports betting in my lifetime i'm not up but in the last like two three years i've been winning okay so at least you're honest yeah but i i'm i i kind of learned i learned things not to do i sharp sharpened up in certain spots and yeah i'm down overall but in the last few years it's been good what's your best sport to bet on nfl nfl yeah now do you believe any sports leagues or teams are rigged because i see theories online that's the best question i think it's all rigged all of it not all of it but i think i think with sports betting getting so mainstream these days

there's no choice but it to be a little bit rigged and by that i mean i don't know if it's vegas or the leagues, but I think certain outcomes are better than others. So I think that when you look at sports betting, for example, when there's billions of dollars on a game, it's like you would think that someone's making a phone call somewhere, especially in football and basketball, when it's like so subjective, a lot of the the calls like pass interference or a foul call or a travel you could call it or you could not call it right so i think that when there's a lot of money on a certain side i think it's the refs getting a call from someone maybe

not during the game but i think maybe pre-game they're like oh you want a favorite one way it's like if you look at the nba playoffs when the celtics were down 3-0 the nba doesn't want the celtics to lose that next game look at the outcome that happened and how good that was for the league it went to seven so it's like you get three more you get four more full games to sell whatever they're gonna sell they're making millions of dollars it's like why wouldn't the nba want the celtics at that point yeah you know what i'm saying yeah so they don't like sweeps and i saw you bet when they were down three oh you bet on them to win it all right i bet on miami hard every game i bet on them after game three i double down i triple down i quadruple down and i thought the series had a chance to go six or seven, but I knew the Heat weren't going to win because it was 150-0.

A team has never come back from 3-0 in the final or in any round. They've come back from 3-1. LeBron did it against Golden State, but a team's never come back from 3-0, so I knew I was going to win that, so I just kept betting it. But the overarching factor of the NBA wanting it to go more games did kind of hurt me but i don't know i i think that especially in football too it's like we can't see if there's a holding or a pass interference every time yeah and it's or roughing the passer why does it feel

like in the fourth quarter when a team's down they're getting more roughing the passers more penalties that's true they like to make those games when a team's down, they're getting more roughing the passers, more penalties? That's true. They like to make those games close. That's what they're going for. Yeah. It's like WWE. They admit that it's staged, and people love it, and they admit it.

But I think there's a chance, especially football and basketball, I think there's a chance that before the game, refs are getting calls. Oh, we want to lean a certain way and give them give them some calls yeah i think it's possible when there's that much money on the line i mean you said billions on certain games yeah yeah there i don't know if it's billions but sports betting is a billion dollar industry and then over the past like two three years it's gotten way bigger i don't know the exact numbers but I know that you could take like a random 50, 60 year old guy or woman and there's a chance that they're betting on sports. It's probably like a 20, 30% chance as opposed to like two, three years ago. Those, a person like that,

a person like that would hate it. They wouldn't be sports betting. But now if you go to the sports book, you're going to see, you could see anyone. For for sure what sports do you think are overrated to watch in person and you'd rather watch at home on the couch i think that i think the best sport at home is probably football also because there's so much going on at once it's like i don't really want to watch one game i want to watch like red zone and see more of the games yeah so i i like to watch football at home, but I think hockey's the best in person for sure I go into the Knights games. Have you been there insane? It's it's lip and I don't even like watching it like at home Yeah hockey like it's my fourth favorite but going to the game is amazing Yeah, yeah for real like I went to a Rangers game when I lived in Jersey and it was like the best time of

God, it's it's it's great. But yeah, you you're from you went you're from jersey yeah oh nice you you too or i'm from new york oh okay yeah east coasters got to stick together man for sure yeah no hate to west coasters but they'd be acting different like their mentality is different you know how long have you been in vegas uh two and a half years oh nice yeah what about you seven i'm like a west coaster now yeah you pretty much are you gonna stay here forever i think i'm always gonna have like a home base here vegas is great it's cheap here a lot of people are moving here yeah and the lifestyle you have everything here like i'm i'm in summerlin where it's like quiet yeah it feels like it's like the suburbs and then you got the whole strip.

You got all the action. You got all sports teams coming. Basketball's coming. You got the Sphere. The Sphere is wild. Have you done any content there? No, but I saw they did a basketball on it the other day. Things like that are so good for Vegas.

I love stuff like that. Yeah, Vegas you never run out of stuff to do, man. That's the beauty. Yeah, in Jersey you get bored. It's just not much to do honestly at least you were in new york where you had manhattan like jersey was nothing no i agree especially when it gets like late at night it's like vegas is a 24-hour city yeah you could you could always find something to do here you a night owl i'm like both is that possible like recently i've been a morning person but usually i'm a night person okay i didn't know you could be both but

do you sleep like four hours sometimes yeah like i'm like a binger like sometimes i'll like sometimes i'll just like stay up all night and sometimes i'll just like be up in the morning you're wired yeah no i need my beauty sleep, man. I get grumpy. What do you sleep like? Seven, eight hours. That's pretty solid. Yeah, I'm pretty tall,

so I feel like my body needs a little extra time to recover. I don't know. It could be weird. What are you, 6'7"? 6'6". Yeah, with the fro. Should be in the league. I know.

We got a hoop, bro. Yeah, we do. You nice, sir? Probably not like you, bro. I'm decent. I'm decent. what are you working on next man and where can people find you you could find me on every social media see blez blez sports cards on everything i'm just trying to grow the hobby just trying to break with blez and

sports cards is my number one thing but i'm also looking for opportunities if anything arises to do anything big i'm more of i chase passion over money so if i if i really am into something if i fall in love with something i'm gonna put my life into it and so far my life's been sports cards and sports and and that's what i want but if opportunities come up where i i see some passion that i could carry out and do well with it i'm gonna chase my passion absolutely love that man well thanks for watching guys it was a great episode i'll see you next time peace