If I Were You - 476: Pokémon Cards

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

In this episode we discuss vaccinations, NBA Top Shots, and operating on a hunch. We're also having a live show this Wednesday night! Tickets still available at JakeAndAmir.com.Advertise on If I Were You via Gumball.fm.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum original. New Year, same extra value meals at McDonald's. Now get a savory sausage-mic muffin with egg, plus hash browns, and a small coffee for just $5. For limited time only, prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California, and for delivery. Some good advice. Okay. Epic.

I'm feeling this. I was actually feeling it. Like Tom Dolong style. Huh? Oh. Why are you whispering? I'll be tells asleep. So I'm trying to keep it down.

But I'm feeling it. Try not to be shy and amped at the same time. I'm trying to be considerate. I'm feeling it. I don't like the energy you're emanating right now. You're like fucking stoked and reserved. I'm trying to like, I'm trying to keep it down. I'm feeling this.

Yeah, it doesn't. Okay. Sorry, I am. It's loud in my headphones too. Yeah. Well, she can't, if she's loud in your headphones, she can't hear me. She's stirring. She's stirring now.

She's stirring because you're yelling a little bit. Not me. I'm in your headphones. You keep on saying, I'm feeling this, which is like, it's almost like that's, that's like a level designed to wake someone up from a nap, like a high whisper. Okay. I know. Okay, you do know. I should go to a different room.

Why is she napping in your room? office. Because I said, she's like, are you recording? You have, you shouldn't have to go to another room. You have a standing desk and your microphone's mounted on it. She should not, you have other rooms. She's like, are you recording? I was like, no, I'm not recording. Why did you laugh? It's fine. Because I wanted to be like a good guy to her. Yeah, well, like, now you're being inconsiderate. It's starting to backfire. She's waking up. Stop singing the song. Yeah, there she goes. She left. She left the room or she like left the relationship out.

Yeah, I just saw in her car peeling out. Oh my God. In my Audi. She took your Audi. I got an Audi not two days ago and it's gone. It was a TT 2002. Oh, geez. The TT?

She took the TT too? She tats his at Tata on the TTI. She texted me. I'm Audi 5,000 and she crashed it. No way. She should be texting and driving. Jesus what I'm saying. Is she all right?

Oh shit. My dog's still asleep. The low priority at this point. Welcome to If I Were You, the only advice podcast on the web hosted by us. I'm Amir. I am Jake. So this is coming out Monday 222. Kind of a fun date.

2-2-2. Cool. Nice. Two fun landmarks coming up. One, our live show on Wednesday, 2-24. That's in just a few days. 224-21. That's right. Usually we can say, this show's going to sell out.

You've got to get tickets. But let's face it, it's a virtual show. It's going to be fun, but we literally cannot sell out. We can't sell enough tickets to this. So there's no real rush except for the fact that the show is happening in two days. And we are not releasing it as a podcast. So this is kind of like a one and done type deal. Yeah, it's a live video stream of us recording a special long, exciting version of

this year podcast. And this is the last one before that show. So if you've been delaying and waiting, now's the time, you can get tickets at jakeandamir.com. Jake andamere.com. Do it. The other thing is that it's 222. Oh, exactly a week before, do you know what it is, 228 or 229, your last flight from L.A. to New York. That's the one-year anniversary of your last flight. Whoa. It's been almost a year since you've been on an airplane. Jesus Christ. I don't. didn't think it would happen. And you made it. Yeah.

I mean, what was the last year you weren't on an airplane? Like, I don't know. When you were a child or something. Yeah, maybe. I, honest, I feel like I've taken a flight at least once a year since I was like a teenager. And not only that, but I would say the year before that, you probably took the most flights of your life. You were flying hither and thither almost too much.

Delta Diamond that year. I basically had like a month to use my Delta Diamond status. Yeah, you ramped up to get this status and then you promptly quit the reason that you needed the status. Do they hold it on for you? Is there like a pandemic policy? They're like, I know you flew a lot and we're not just going to take it away. Or did they take it away? I haven't logged into my Delta in a really long time either.

I remember like when the pandemic first hit, they were like, you're like, the miles never expire, so I got the miles. And I do remember them being like, your status is going to carry over into the next year. So I think I should still be diamond. But also, I can kind of imagine them not doing that because sort of all bets are off. Yeah, they've lost a lot of money. They've lost a lot of cash. They don't want you then to cash in on a first class flight.

Your first flight in a year and you want it for free. That's not necessarily good for business. No, they don't want. want that to happen. But I do still use the Delta credit card for, I guess, you know, I should definitely change that. I should get a cash back thing at this point. Yeah, well, not even cash. You need whatever the future of currency is. You need a Bitcoin rewards card. Good news. It is 2021 and I am still diamond. Here's the issue, though. If I'm going to keep diamond, if I'm going to keep diamond in 2022, I have to have already logged like 12,000 miles.

And that's not happening. I'm not flying anytime soon. So it's guaranteed while I still have Diamond to enjoy in 2021. I'm not going to be able to enjoy it because I'm not flying. So then I'm really, it should be carrying over to 2022, which is when I'm going to start flying again. But they're not going to do that. Not two years. I can't accrue the miles. I want to be fucking, I'm going to be gold like a goddamn slub by the end of this here. Yeah. And you know, it's going to get upgraded. Are all the crazy people that have been flying in 2020? They're like, yeah, I just still fucking, you know, went for it. It was a $13 round trip to New Orleans. What am I supposed to do? No, that's upgrade. Yeah, so I remember let me be penalized. I'm penalized for not for being responsible and not flying.

But would you say you took, would you say in the 52 weeks prior to that, you took 100 flights? So you went from like roughly to a week, maybe, like, roughly. eight a month, would you say? Does that sound about right? Back and forth, eight a month? I don't know if I did eight a month. Well, every round trip is two. Right. And I think I probably I think it was closer to six, six a month versus eight a month. So like roughly 75 flights one year, and then February 29th hit and you went from 75 to zero flights. It probably was close to 100 because there were times when we'd be on tour and flying like every other day for a little bit. Right.

Plus layovers potentially, that's two flights technically. Yeah. Yeah, that's for real. Yeah, that's going to be a weird moment, right? When you, you, for the first time in however long, take off and land again. Yeah, I thought about flying the other day because I'm bidding for this director job. Oh. A little commercial gig.

Whoa. Yeah. No big deal. I won't get it. Okay. I said I would not fly. So that puts me at the end of the list. But yeah, like, I realized that if I got it, I would have to do like the COVID flight, the stay in a hotel. And it made me frightened after I submitted.

Even though I was like, upon hearing it at first, I was cool. But now I'm a little more skittish. A six-hour flight and a mask, too. Have you ever worn a mask for six hours straight? Not necessarily, probably, right? The longest I wore a mask for, like, straight was I had to take the train from Connecticut to New York one time in, like, the early fall, like October. And that was a mask for an hour and a half or so. It was probably like three hours.

But yeah, because I had to take the subway when I got to New York. Oh, wow, the subway in COVID time. I guess the subway is still running, right? Yeah, yeah, people have to take it. The subway, the subways seemed less scary than Metro North because like Metro North is just like everyone's on there for two hours. No one's like really leaving. It feels like breathing the same man. Yeah.

The subway, like, I guess it was definitely less packed than Metro North and also people are like coming and going. So maybe it's more people, but it feels like you're sharing space a little less. Mm-hmm. Well, either way, you survived both of those trips. So good on you. The mask must have helped. But even like being afraid from getting COVID aside, I'm just like, it will be so emotionally jarring to do something that's like outside of my comfort zone or like outside of my bubble of which has been like basically the same thing for the last year. Yeah.

I figured out, I think I slept in the same bed every night for a year. You're like occasionally going home. Right. But imagine that. 300 is like my first night in a different bed. That's going to be jarring as well. I mean, you haven't done that for a very long time. All 365 nights in the same bed.

Right. Because even when I was a kid, I would sleep with mommy and daddy like twice a week. That's right. And if you did it too much, they made you sleep out in the garage, right? Oh, yes. bounce around the house. They said I had to sleep over my friend Raj, and that just meant sleep in the garage, basically underneath the ping pong table.

And I would spend weekends with Raj, which is just by myself in the garage. And I would cry and he would laugh. The Raj, because my parents were on the other side of the door laughing. So it sort of convinced me that the garage itself was cackling at me, my friend Raj. Yeah, right. But what was I going to ask you about, oh, yeah, have you started? at hearing stories about like, I've heard, I've started to hear some wacky vaccine stories. Like a buddy of mine was at CVS and they're like, hey, we have eight leftover vaccinations

if anybody wants. And so he just got the vaccine. Whoa. Yeah. Isn't, wait. So like, if you do that, if you get the rando vaccine, like, if it's a surprise, do they then schedule your follow up? Because he has to get two, right? I think he's like grandfathered into the system where like now he has the golden ticket. Wow. So I get access to the second shot. Have you heard anything like that? I heard of a friend whose mom is like a doctor or a nurse and is administering vaccines.

And they said at the end of the day, like if they have left over, she goes into the parking lot and just like asks people if they want it. So that's, you need to tell me that name. because that's illegal. Yes. And I, what I want to do is get that person fired for what they're doing

for trying to... They're actually... They're sort of ruining the integrity of the program and that can't be the case. So that nurse basically just... There's no program.

There's no... She worked the last day of a lot. It's all insane. And I'm not going to give you a name. I'm not going to give you a name. Obviously. Obviously. You played your hand.

You played your hand. And it was actually a bluff. It was, there was no cards. It was too low. How's that for fucking. I'm starting to work. I folded basically. And now I'm worried I'll never be able to.

You folded card side up, which was sort of like playing the worst hand you could have had. Yeah. I mucked my hand. And then I sort of exposed what I had and it ruined the hand for the rest of the players. There was a Joker card and a rule of the card games card. Yeah. Which is not supposed to be in the deck. But this is some sort of weird, quote unquote, COVID safe casino we're in.

So I'll bet. are off. So would you... I feel like everybody's going to be getting their vaccine. How... How... How... How... Like, I'm definitely hearing

a lot of people, like, who know somebody who has extra vaccines who are, like, they're going to waste and, like, somebody who's, uh, like, if not eligible, then, like, eligible adjacent, like, you can come get it. That's okay. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. I was thinking, like, if I was at a CVS picking up milk and they're like, we have a

an extra vaccine, do you want it? I'd be like, oh, well, I mean, shouldn't I talk to my doctor about it? And then by the time I do that, eight other people are like, no, I'll take it, just give it to me, stick me. What, like, would you, what lengths would you go to to get a vaccine at this point? I'm not super eager because the vaccine doesn't do much for you until everybody has it. So, like, I'm okay waiting until March versus cutting the line in February. but if it was like, you know, you might not get it until next year, then I would probably loiter around pharmacies waiting for them to, you know, dump their day-old vaccines in a garbage gang. Yeah, the real priority, like my mom got her vaccine because she's a teacher. And that's like, I, that should have been yours.

I'd love the, I would, no, you're an entertainer. I want the vaccine. No, I don't want to take my mother's vaccine. You need to be able to go on the, yeah, you should have given her a dummy arm. I should have given her a dummy arm. Actually, if I win this fucking directing gig, I'll be really pissed at her for taking my vax. That's your vax. That should be my backs.

She should fax that. Now I have to fucking, because if I did, if I had been vaxed, I would have been maskless on the plane even if they said I couldn't be. You can't, you know, you can't do that. I would be like, because you're trying to watch Van Wilder here. All right. Yeah. I can't exactly eat Doritos. and watch Van Wilder

if I have a mask on, can I? You just have a loose handkerchief. If I have a jacking diet. It's 8.42 a.m. sir. We're about to land. We don't have alcohol on this flight. You took Spirit Airlines and you're flying more than commercial.

You're in the last row. It's a non-reclimacy. Just give me 11 bags of peanuts and fuck off. I said somebody in first class actually is allergic to peanuts so he can't hand them out. for fear that they. What is that?

I had brought my own, is all? Is there a doctor on the flight? This man just murdered my wife. Is there a doctor? Because I only got one shot, actually. I need another vacs. I'm in the system, is all. Grandfathered in.

Well, they say 33 to 50% of Angelinos have gotten the virus, so hopefully between that and the 25% to 33% that will get the vaccine soon. We'll have hurt immunity by, I don't know, Thanksgiving. Yeah, if you had to guess, when do you think the world is average again? I don't think there'll be like a date where it's like, all right, Fourth of July weekend, all things are lifted. I think it'll be like a gradual, like, all right, now I'm going to eat outdoor dining.

All right, now I'm going to eat with my parents indoor. All right, now we're going to go to small restaurants. And then, like, the last step is like, go to a concert. which is 50,000 people in a mud puddle sort of coughing and breathing onto each other. I don't know when that last step is going to happen. I wasn't barely interested in that before. Right. But will you be more interested now that it's been so long?

You just have to like get your pent-out aggression out in a music festival. I feel like I'm, and I still crave the things that I always like. Like I just, I would love to travel and I'd love to like eat and get drunk with my friends at a dive bar or a cocktail lounge. That sounds nice. That seems like doable in this calendar year. Yeah, I mean, I did it on the street in the summer. That was fine. Yeah, that was good enough.

And we were sort of scared the whole time because we didn't know whether we could give it to one another. But if you're fairly certain, if everyone's vaxed up. Yeah, if everyone is, if everybody's been maxed and we're drinking outside, I will have, I mean, I'll have no anxiety at all. Oh, yeah, if you're outside in addition to the Vax, then you'll be like, yeah. I mean, I loved the outside stuff. It's just like, it's just the masks and like the servers being sad. That's not fun, you know? Yeah.

They're ruining my vibe, actually. The double, the double mask, plastic glove people serving you is not, and it's, it's not a joy. It's sad that they have to do it. You're wearing a garbage bag for some reason. So you're wearing this plastic sort of vest situation, like you're about to get x-rayed. Yeah. And then you're out and about. either inside or outdoors.

We need the vax. We need the vax. Anyway, if anybody out there knows anybody who's like handing out the vax or can spare some extra vax, I mean, I'll stick myself. It doesn't need to be a, it seems like it's a pretty, it's pretty cut and dry, right? You just stick the needle into your eye and then just sort of pump the die into the eye. That's it. So someone sent it mirror a needle.

That's all. Yeah. I tried to, yeah, I even tried to do that the other day, but it wasn't the vass. I was just sort of practicing, as it were. So there's that. All right, we got some questions to get to, but let's take a break. We'll thank some sponsors and then answer some questions on the other side of these messages. Let's do it.

The HeadGum podcast is coming to San Francisco Sketch Fest. January 18th, Amir's birthday, hosted by Jeffrey James, with special guest, Jake Hurwitz, Amir Blumenfeld, Riley Anspa, Ali Khan, and of course, Anya Zero. Go ahead and get your ticket. it's over at sf sketchfest.com. We'll see you out there. Stay classy San Francisco. Kind of like an anchorman.

Stay classy. I said your name twice. Yeah, Ron Burgundy says, stay classy. San Diego, I think. Yeah. But it's kind of like, I don't know,

I did my own little spin on your own. Because it's just plagiarizing the movie, but then quoting you wrong. Yeah. Right. Well, I'm curious. There's something there for. This is it. This is the final ad.

Okay. And we're back. Unsolicited advice is to get tickets to our live show, jacadamir.com. It's going to be a fun show. Special guests abound longer than you're used to and live video feed. So come on by. And I think it'll be able to have the opportunity to chat with people who are also watching and then also submit questions of your own.

So we'll try to do some level of interaction as much as possible. We also may have some special. IRL guests, like for instance, my wife's going to just come into the room. That's right. Without her knowing, too, right? You'll sort of lure her into the room. She does not know yet that I promised that she'd be a guest. Interesting.

She's unaware. Because I told Avital, if we found any good relationship questions, maybe she could join and like, I gave her that heads up, that courtesy. So that when she comes into the show, it'll be like she's fully aware and ready and prepared. That's awesome. I would do the same thing if Jill was returning my calls. I texted her, but she didn't respond.

So it's a different issue entirely. That sucks, man. I'm sorry about that. Let's see if we can get to some of these questions. I was just going to say that when I texted her, because I wasn't sure about this. When I don't know if you want to say this, yeah. You can cut it out if it sounds like fucking desperate or anything. It's going to sound bad already because, yeah, you're talking about.

I'm just casual. What I'm trying to say is when I texted her, I texted her at the old number that I always had forever. Your phone number. It was... I texted her number that I've had for a long time and it was green

and is usually blue like I message delivered and it was just green. I see. Yeah. And now I feel now I feel like I'm sort of colluding with her

because I was on... Do you know she got a new phone? We really, really, really do not have this conversation right now. We can get a question in. Why don't we get a question in? And it'll be a question from me. Do you know if my wife

got a new phone she she replaced her same card on her phone she has the same phone she has a she has a new number that's all I wanted to know

so she didn't get a new phone just a new number and she's not responding to me I thought you were on this group chat email's the same as it ever was is the email the same as it ever was email is the email is the same but

I really thought you were on these group texts and these group emails she's changing some stuff up she's going back to her email and phone number from, yeah, before Jake, she calls it BJ era. Oh, okay. That shouldn't be hard to track down. You don't have to track it.

Just have a, try to have a... I just want her to guest on the podcast as all. I think it'd be pretty neat if she was on the live show. No, not that I'm realizing what's going on. I don't think you should trap her, trick her into coming on the live show. You should definitely not have the first conversation with her. If you have her number, you let her know to come on the live show. And that'll be, it'll be like we're having another meat cute.

I don't think so. I don't think it's going to be a meat cute, man. She's with Jackson, actually, this weekend. Jackson? Oh, no. Her fucking, what, her spinning instructor? Yeah, right. Yeah.

I guess she's been using the Peloton. You got her for Christmas a lot, right? So she, that's right. You got her Pelotoc for Christmas. Yeah. She loves Jackson's classes. She does love, she loves Jackson's classes. That's for sure.

That is actually. They've been, is she doing like studio classes when they're hanging out? Is that what you mean? Like she's going to do live classes in the studio. Here's a question from somebody who wants to know about his wife's cousin. So he's in-law. That's kind of funny.

Why don't we call this guy? Does Jill have a cousin? Maybe we can name this guy after her. She has a cousin, but the only name I could think of off the top of my head right now is Jackson. It's fucking Jackson. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm just looking at this fucker's Instagram stories.

He obviously should have gone private because he's obviously with my wife. They are in a Biza. That's fucking insane. I thought you knew. logging my Delta account and it looks like Jill flew with him using my miles. Yeah, I guess your diamond status was transferable and she took a pill in a visa, if you can believe it. Holy shit. All right, Jackson, let's call this guy Jackson writes.

My wife's cousin has been having a hard time finding her soulmate, but she finally found him. Unfortunately, when we met him, my wife and I both picked up on some serious pedophile vibes. He's a middle school teacher, a youth. leader and a Boy Scout leader. He also really liked playing with our girls. My question is, do I tell her cousin about these vibes and risk making fools of ourselves, or go with the flow and hope she has er, and realize she will have a rude awakening down the line? Anyway, thanks for reading this email. I met you both in Seattle. So how strong of a vibe do you have to have to just go for it and say

I'm picking up vibes I think it has to be stronger than that because that vibe is at least according to the email based on just like his job yeah his job and his hobbies and the fact that he was enjoying playing with this guy's kids

it's a really low bar like anybody anybody that becomes a teacher because they're like they care about children's education like I don't know I feel weird being like the don't worry this guy is not a pedophile guy because, you know, I can easily be on the wrong side of history. Yeah. High risk is hopefully a higher reward.

But you can't also accuse someone of that on a hunch. Yeah, you don't have enough information yet. You definitely don't have enough information to like confront your cousin. Yeah, if you go for that swing and you miss, that's almost. as bad as being the pedophile is the guy that accused this guy who's just a teacher of being a pedophile. Right. And then he's just like this nice teacher.

Why would you want to hang out with all the kids if you didn't want to fuck them? I can't imagine any reason. I can't imagine any reason. I think you actually sound like the pedophile. All right. Forget I said anything. Happy wedding day. This is you giving the toast at the wedding.

To Jackson. Yeah. Oh, that's tough. And I don't think it should come from you. It has to come from your wife who's this person's cousin. but then that's it's not like a sibling, it's a cousin. So like, I don't know, that seems kind of intense too. Yeah, I would stay out of it.

I would not. I wouldn't touch it. I think it's wife's cousin, yeah. That's not your jurisdiction, I don't think. No, no, it's not. And all you can really do is be prepared if the cousin ever comes to you and is like, is it weird that my boyfriend is a teacher? Yes.

You're talking about the pedophile thing? Oh, no, I was saying, do you think he's a good teacher? Oh, no, for sure. Ah, shit. I don't know what I'm talking about anymore. There would have to be different vibes that you did not include in this email for me to be concerned. Right. Or more widespread vibes.

Like, are the vibes just yours or are there vibes that belong to other people too? Yeah. We need to know more. We can't answer. this question. But neither can you. That's right. So don't start accusing people based on a hunch when the accusation is so serious.

Anyway, Q is posted, I guess. Definitely. We got another email from a guy who's getting into trading cards, and he says, since Amir has gotten into basketball cards, I thought you guys could help out. All right. We'll call this guy. let's call him Chris Paul because that's the last basketball card I bought.

I got the fucking goat. Chris? I got the goat. Oh, that's right. We never said. We never talked about it. I never had my unboxing. So you had, you won the Super Bowl bet.

You said Tom Brady, Tampa Bay Bucks, who would win the Super Bowl. The stakes were, I had to send you a trading card of $50 or less. And I found you that PSA 10, that's Gem Mint, highest-graded possible, LeBron James card from. the 2015-16 or 1617 17-17 the year he won the championship. Wow. Caves card.

Yeah, 2016-2017. That's it. That's the year. That's the Cavs Championship year. Oh, that's incredible. The hope here is that you hold on to that card. LeBron one day wins another MVP, maybe another championship or two, becomes the goat. And you have his highest-rated card from the year he won his most important championship.

That $50 card is worth what? $51, $52 in 10 years? You can't get that kind of return anywhere else right now. Honestly. And I really just, I love the way the card, I don't even care about the cash. I mean, the cash is good. I'm glad that it's going to get me rich, but I love the way it feels. I love the way it looks.

I love the way it tasted. I took it out of the package. Don't take it out of the vacuum. What is a DSA sort of vacuum seals it like that so that it stays in gem-ment condition. So do not take it out. But I had to make sure that this was a legit. paper card because it looks so plastic. You don't have to

do anything because it's PSA authenticated and graded. They made sure. What I was concerned about is that this wasn't even a basketball card at all because it looks more like a fucking wafer. Yeah. Yeah, it's clear. It's heavy. It's plastic. I opened it up and I was

able to feel that it is paper. To verify that it's a card. Throw it away. To verify that it's a card. The card is worthless now. You ruin the card. I was able to open it up and I snipped the edge

right here. And I tasted the ink on the back which makes me know that it's actually legit. This was printed on paper. That's now a PSA zero. It's not even an authentic card anymore. I gave you a $50 bill

and you set it on fire basically. It's still the goat. Now that you hold the card, do you understand a little bit more of the hobby of, oh, I want to look and start adding to the collection of cards that look like this?

Yeah, I could definitely see that. If this was of interest to me, like, the thing is I have, I could imagine if you had sent me like a, I'm trying to think of like my other favorite basketball player, JJ Reddick. Uh-huh, a JJ Reddick rookie. Yeah, if you sent me like an, like a non-goat card, I could see myself wanting LeBron James. But having this card, I feel like I've got everything I could possibly need. But I understand your compulsion for it. Right. The idea to add to my list, my ever-growing collection.

It checks so many boxes for you because it's like, it's kind of like a cryptocurrency type thing. Exactly. But with the thing that you like the most, with the players that you like the most, which your favorite sport, which you have like an insane knowledge for already. It really, it's a blending of all your passions. I've even told you about Top Shot, which is like, and even more blending of the passion. It's not just physical paper cards like this. It's literal blockchain technology.

It's digital cards where every moment is serialized and you, quote, unquote, own it like you would at Bitcoin. No. Yeah. So if you think this is up my speed, imagine literal cryptocurrency as digital basketball moments that you can buy and sell in a marketplace. How much is the chase down? So, thanks for asking. The most expensive play was actually a Zion dunk because they don't have every play in NBA history. They're being very methodical about it.

So they released most highlights from last year and then they're slowly releasing ones from this year. The most expensive purchase was a Zion dunk, which was serial number one, like quote unquote, the first one that they made, minted, even though it's literally a YouTube video for $100,000. Somebody bought it for. Someone owns a... How long is the video? It's like a three second clip played like four or five times from different angles. So maybe 15 seconds total. And like what makes owning that better than watching that and like having it and seeing it?

Like you can watch this guy's cash, right? Yes, you can watch his cash and you can also see the page that says Zion Williamson, Dunk, number one of 100 or something. And then it goes owned by this person. So that guy's like, this is mine. And then he can sell it for whatever he wants. Maybe list it for 150,000. So like this next, the next millionaire that wants to invest will buy it from him and he'll make a profit.

So this is like closer to art, owning art than it is like cash or stocks, I think. Yeah, well, cards is like art. This is like what people do. You like buy it. Yeah, yeah, but you like buy. I think that this, this is like digital art. That's like, I mean, having the website display your name is like totally more about collecting the art than investing in the stock.

Yeah, it's, yeah. And people are doing digital art now too. Like you can start buying like, like CryptoKitties was the first thing where it was like, not the first thing, but one of the first use cases of these non fungible tokens, which is like sort of digitizing art and putting a finite amount to it. and like people are starting to sell artwork that, quote, only one person can own. This is just the NBA version of that. And it started like sometime last year.

It blew up in like October, November and since then has skyrocketed. Like NBA players are now tweeting about it, opening their packs online. And like every day in the last five days has been the most transactions and the most sale dollars on this marketplace. Is there any? Would you buy one? Are there any that are in your budget? Oh, Jacob, how much time do you have? Would I buy one or have I bought many and sold many in the last four weeks?

You have no idea how deep this rabbit hole goes. We don't talk anymore. We don't talk anymore. Yes, I purchased many. I have sold some and I'm sitting on dozens of others. I am full, fully deep, whole hog, 100% invested in this top shot marketplace. Did you take your money like out of your 401k? No, I couldn't. First of all, I can't take money out of my 401k unless I claim some sort of medical exemption, which I wasn't able to do.

So what I was able to do after talking to Schwab and trust me, I pled to case. You actually talked to Chuck? You talked to Chuck? I talked to Chuck. I did talk to Chuck. I ended up having to use Bitcoin, crypto money that I had, and I moved it over to this marketplace and started using that as my means of currency. So it's sort of fake money to buy fake cards. It felt like a fun adventure that I was about to go on. Have you made cash on the transactions that you made? On the transactions that I've made, yes, but I've also, I have a bunch of cards that I haven't sold yet. So overall, I'm, quote, down until I sell the cards that I do have. And I shouldn't even call them cards. There are moments. Right. Are the moments that you have? Are they increasing in value?

Are they staying still? Great question. Some are increasing and some are staying still. Okay. If I wanted to buy a moment. What's the lowest they go for? Two bucks. Three bucks. You can get a two. Okay. Yeah. You can get a Reggie Bullock steel who was on the Nix serial number 14,860 for like two or three bucks and either hold it, have it in your collection or try to list it for sale and make a few bucks. I see. Okay. To get my card, my fucking Nicola Yokic turnover, that'll cost you $38,000.

Whoa. Oh, shit. Somebody actually, I guess they built hijacking. into the system. Somebody was able to... That's the thing that scares me. Like, my moment was ganked from under me. I can't believe this.

Yeah, they could easily do that. They could easily steal your moments. They took my money and ran, if you can believe it. I owned Jokic for this. I had a fucking... He dribbled it off his foot. It was a bloopers series. What if you just showed up in your house and he was like, you can't own my moment.

You have to give it back. Well, that's what NBA players are doing that. They're like, wait a minute. I'm on this website and I'm not making any money. And then some are like buying their own moments and selling them at a profit, which is pretty funny. Jesus. Are they allowed? Are, is the site allowed to, how do they own the moments?

So it's a, it's a company that partnered with the NBA Players Association. So they have a licensing deal. So all the money that they make, they give the NBA cut of it. So it's all official above the board legal website. Wow. Yeah. Check it out. NBA topshot.com.

Very. Very cool. Very intriguing. I did a whole Buckets episode with Billy. So if you want an even deeper dive, check out my last episode of Buckets with Billy, where we talk all about trading cards and then we get into the top shot of it all. Is Billy invested as well? He's dabbling as well.

We're starting to get into it. The thing is, like, we recorded that like two or three weeks ago and we were like, wow, this is really blowing up, but who knows? And like since then, all the prices have, like, quadrupled and, like, quintupled since then. So we're like, oh, shit, we should have bought a lot more cards back then. and just sold them for five times what we bought in for. God. So hopefully it keeps going up and up.

You're not too late. It's still technically in beta, so there are still some bugs and difficulties associated with it. There's also packs that they release. Every once in a while, they'll be like, there's 5,000 packs available where you can buy a set of three to five digital moments. And then you wait in line, but it's all online.

And then if you make it to the top whatever, 5,000, 10,000, 50,000, of this digital line, then you can buy a pack for like $9,000, and that'll give you three moments as well. And do you know what's in the pack? Like, could you not? So you could spend $9 and then like, oh, is it actually random? Or do they like control, like, they're not going to put anything that's worth like $20,000 in the pack? It's not like a lottery.

Lottery or anything. It is like a lottery. And they do, they can't make it, they can't make every card worth $20,000, but they are incentivized to put some like rare cards out there because. they make a portion of every sale. So they want people to get like a $10,000 moment and sell it. Right, I see. Because they'll make $500 off of it.

And you are the person that told me to buy Bitcoin, and you also told me to buy Tron. And you're right about one of those things. Is this more of a Bitcoin where you hold and it just keeps going up and up and up? Or is this more of a Tron, a bubble where it's like it's flying really high right now. And then in a month, everyone will sell all their moments and the entire market will crash. What happened at GameStop? What's GameStop trading at? I think it's slowly trickling down to where it was before all this nonsense.

That makes sense. It went from like 10 to 500 and now it's what? In the 40s? I don't have the, I just don't have the stomach for all the day trading for the fast turnaround. I'm a steady as she goes type of guy. It's definitely more stressful to put more money into it. The higher the reward, it literally is like the risk reward thing. where you're like, now I'm nervous that this moment is not going to go up and I'm going to have lost my capital.

When I think about having a ton of cash, I think about like buying land. Right. Then I'll just like hang on to forever. That's what I, that's like my level of investing. Yeah. And that's like how a lot of people start and then they they sort of get into this hyperactive moment. And you're like, okay, now I need that quick return. shit. This didn't double over the last 10 days. What else is doubling even faster than that?

More, faster, better. And like, these digital cards don't take up any space at all. I don't have to visit land or make sure nobody's setting fire to my land or stealing my cards or keeping my cards in a safe. This is all digital. You don't have to get them graded. You don't have to make sure that your dog doesn't bite into it because it's completely online and you could transfer it instantly and for free. So there's some pros and cons to Topshot versus physical cards. I think it's just all over my head. Like, maybe I would get into actually buying art. I could, I would have like a painting that I liked to see. Like, imagine that, a fucking painting. Yeah, but then how do you know? How do you know if that painting is good and will

appreciate over time? I don't understand art like I do basketball. Yeah, that's, that's fair. And, you know, I wouldn't expect you to understand art as well as I do, but that's for another episode. What's a, what's an artist that you think is going to, I was, we haven't even even reached the second question, let alone the break. I think we have to go on to a break and come back. Why do we just leave it as, let's just leave it at that. Name three artists and then we'll go to break and then we'll come back. Just because I want to look into it too. I'm, I want to educate myself. I just think that we should say, let's just, name one artist ever. For posterity. I know more. I'll go, I'll start. Picasso. You name any artist. Okay. I will.

Picassi, when you said, I'll also take that. Oh my God. You know even less about art than you do about basketball, and you know nothing about basketball. You don't know James is an artist on the court, so that's two. Facassi, LeBron. And did I mention me? Look what my four-year-old did. I drew a horsey. Huh?

How much would you pay for this? That's a swastika, dude. Put that away. The fuck is the matter with you. All right, let's take a break, and then we'll actually answer this guy's question, not about basketball cards, but about Pokemon cards. That's right. That's having a moment, too.

Good Lord. And we're back. Okay, here's this guy's question. Okay. So, did we get this guy a name? LeBron James, Picasso. Picasso James writes. My friend and I,

Picasso is the goat artist. LeBron is the golf. Basketball player. Got it. Picasso. I think, by the way, it is Picasso. I think you misheard it and you keep repeating. You're doubling.

down on how wrong you are. If you said it once, people would think you mispoke, the fact that you keep saying it makes it clear he doesn't know of us. I think he's the greatest artist that ever lived. That's all I wanted to say. That's all I wanted to say. And if that makes me have a good take, then fucking so be it. I think that's pretty neat.

If people hear me say that, that he's the best artist of all time and they're like, oh, Jake actually knows what he's talking about, then maybe, you know, that's a pretty solid upshot for me. I know what you think. Arguably, I fucking wanted that. Oh, my God. You are a loser today. You're a loser today.

For sure, you're a loser. You know nothing and you've overplayed your hand. You said exactly why you wanted to. You said Picasso was a loser too. Here's the situation, right? It's Picasso. My friends and I are into Pokemon cards. Kind of dorky, I know, but stay with me.

About a week ago, my friend found some decently priced packs at our local card store, and he asked me if I wanted any. I said, sure, give me two packs, and I've venmoed him the $15 that he spent. We opened our cards together over Discord, and miraculously, I pulled an absolute beast, the hyper-rare charizard GX. For the layman, this card is pretty much the holy grail of modern Pokemon cards. It's hundreds of dollars ungrated, and even in the thousands of range, thousands of dollars range, if you get a good grade on it. Like yours is a PSA 10. If this guy grades his card and it's a 10, it's worth thousands of dollars. Herein lies the problem.

He's freaking pissed at me. After I pulled, I obviously went crazy, but he sat there stone-faced. After I come down, he said, I kind of feel like I deserve that card since I bought it at all. And now, like a week later, he's still barely talked to me. So what do I do? I don't feel like I'm in the wrong here, but am I? Do I give him the freaking card? Do I sell it and give him some of the money?

Amir, if you bought someone a pack of basketball cards and they pulled a crazy expensive cards card would you be pissed? How do you make amends with this guy? Thank you for all your help. And shout out to Nadpod. Hey, thank you. I mean, no, this dude, this is all, he's in the clear. You paid for the cards. I could see this if it, if the cards were a gift. Like, and even then, I think it's, it's egregious to be like, I got you that gift. You should give me the card back. I meant to get it for you when it was worthless. That's like you gave you. You gave you. You gave someone scratchers for their birthday, and it's like, now he won $10,000. You don't get the cash.

Otherwise, it's not a gift. There's no reward. It's like, hey, well, you do this work for scratching this shit for me. And if you win money, it's mine now. If you get them scratches, it's really showing your hand. Like, I meant to just get you a dollar birthday gift. I didn't mean to get you a $10,000 birthday gift. I'm sad now.

You're not worth anything to me. No upside at all. Like if that card that I gave you ends up being worth $2,000 one day you'll give me $2,000, I'm sure. No. I will not. You won it.

What are you talking about? You can't threaten me over Zoom. Okay. I'll kick your ass. Yeah. Try. I'll choke you to death. Oh my God.

Oh, my God. How'd you do that? You punched me in the nose. I have a voodoo of you. I do. I really do. I think at the very, at the very most, if you want to like try to, I think that your friend's not going to stop being pissed at you. Whether or not I think you're right is almost irrelevant.

I think you are in the right, but your friend is resolute and stubborn, and I don't think he's going to come around to your point of view. So if you want to make things right, I think the path of slightly less resistant, is to be like, I'll split this with you. You had the idea. You picked the card up. I did pay you for it. And they are technical. Like, after that transaction, I owned the card.

You know, like, that's how it would work. But if you're going to be a little dickling, I will split this with you so you don't get all pissy about it. Okay? That's kind of the vibe. Yeah. This guy definitely should have had a deal in place. before, like there's no use saying, oh, actually, I got these cards for you, but under the

pretense that I'll owe you the profit. The fact that you guys didn't discuss that at all means that he doesn't have a like to stand on legally. If you want to be nice to him, you can give him some of the profit. Right. But again, legally and morally, he owe him. Yeah, he's got nothing. Do you feel like it's more palatable or less to be like if this card was graded low and it's only worth like 300 bucks versus if it was a PS10 and it was worth $100,000. I would think if the more money you get, the more you can get,

like if it was worth $100,000, I would probably give the guy that bought the pack that came up with the idea that gave me the pack like $10,000, $15,000. That way he's excited, but I still have $85,000. But if it's like $300,000, I think I'm keeping the cash. What is, am I going to give him another $10 for his efforts?

Oh, I was, I was sort of imagining like, if it's worth $200, it's like pretty fun. And you could just be like, let's split it. We each have $100. What a joy. But if it's like $50,000, that, like, cutting it in half really starts to hurt. It's a big old chunk. Half is, that's like almost the most you can do. I guess the most you can do is give them the entire card.

That's crazy. I mean, no one should do that. Yeah. Yeah. I think you say, I'm going to get it graded. I'm going to, don't worry, I'm going to, I'll give you some of the money. And then that's- I actually, I did this.

I bought a case of basketball cards and I sold off the boxes to friends. So I bought 20 boxes of basketball cards and I just sold them to my friends for what I paid for them because I didn't want to open 20 boxes. And if they should pull a Michael Jordan card and it gets graded a 10, that's worth 800 bucks. But I'm not like, do all that work, get it graded. sell it and then give me the money. It's like you paid me, you paid me for the lotto ticket.

You won. Mazel, and now you can do whatever you want with it. Yeah, so there is work, like to get it. How do you get it graded? Do you, you mail it? You, yes, there's several companies. It could, yeah. You have to put it in a, like a sleeve and then a top loader, like a card holder,

and then wrap it up really nice and send it off to PSA or wherever you want to get it graded. but these companies, because the trading card business has blown up over the last year, these companies have a line right now of over a million cards waiting to be graded, and they literally have to do it by hand. So there's a six, eight, ten-month waiting list for me to send a raw Michael Jordan card to them and get it back. And I have to pay $20, literally wait six to eight months and get it back.

And it could be worth a PSA 7 because there was a corner bent. And I paid them $20 and the card's worth like $15. Are you, wait, do you have one? Are you going to send it to them? I do have cards and I don't know if I'm going to get them graded yet. I might wait like a year or two since I'm not eager to sell them right now anyway or, and then maybe they'll like hire more people, get some more graders and speed up the line. But don't they like as you, as they sit in your house, don't they get more? Like, isn't there more chance that they'll be a lower grade?

Like, isn't it better to just like go? Because when they grade them, do they vacuum, seal them, put them in like something nice when they send them back? too. They put them in exactly this, the thing that you got. Every PSA graded card comes in this vacuum sealed plastic that you can't open up. This isn't like open up a bowl. It's not. Sealed with a QR code and a serial number that says it's authentic and it's a tent. I think I can open mine up. Give me one fucking second. You guess you can crack it open, but then it would really ruin the integrity of the hold on. I have a hammer. Oh God, he's eating it. He's eating the card again. Don't eat the card again. So yeah, it takes a while. It takes a while to grade it and it's a lot of work and it's annoying. So if you do all

network and it comes back at 10 in a year, I think that money belongs to you. Right. Fair. Fair and squared. My God, can you imagine pulling a fucking Charazard GX? You're shitting me with that. That's what non-basketball fans feel like when I talk to them about these cards. I always feel like I'm talking to like about a pokey.

Like if I say Dario Sarich or Charizard GX, it's all gibberish and stupid to you, right? I mean, I knew what. Charzard is and I don't know the other thing. So yeah, this is what my parents must think if I ever told them I bought a trading card, which I would never do. Are you kidding me? I spent my money on this plastic or a waste of time. I think that this is just going to be an ongoing trend as like millennials and kids that

grew up in the 90s start having money. The things that are like worthwhile to us are nostalgia and like weird shit like that. So, yeah. Trading cards have been around for. over a hundred years so in theory i used to go to this yeah i used to go to the store and get them we should just try to predict the next thing yeah well the next thing is like creating your own marketplace like if we created uh instead of trying to buy a fucking lucca donchich three and sell it for two x why don't we make the marketplace that we get 5% of every person who's buying and selling anything

jake and ameer moments so like the three seconds of you shitting your cations in the hygiene. That's a one of one. That's right. That's a rare pull. That's an amazing pull if you can get that one. And there's 15,000 of them. So you flood the marketplace. That's good. You doing the Henry dance? That's worth a fucking Bitcoin now. $58,000 for a fucking gift of me doing the dance. All right. That's actually really good. Now we just have to figure out someone who's smart enough to build this marketplace for us. but it kind of exists already. I'm telling you, Topshots is just an iteration of something else,

and I'm sure the NFL will start doing their own situation soon, and any TV or movie can get in on it as well. It's really crazy. Sign up, I'll gift you a card. I guess I would. There's probably TV shows or movies that I would do it for. Yeah, like a Game of Thrones moment or something. Right, if I could own.

It's so dumb. It makes no sense. Yeah, because it's not owning. It's not owning. I don't actually own the moment. I just own this website's portrayal of the moment. That's right. It's not like you're buying a sell from an animated movie that was actually used.

It's like you're buying a reenactment of it. Wild. All right. A lot to talk about. A lot to discuss. I'm sure we'll talk about it more as I slip even deeper into a depressed bankruptcy, buying and selling these digital cards. And we can talk about it more during the live show.

Yes. which again is in a few days. Tickets still available at jacadamir.com. You're going to be watching a live stream of us and some friends and some family, answering some questions. It's going to be a very fun time, a fun show. You'll be able to ask questions of your own as well. And again, it's a podcast episode that won't exist in the feed.

So this is your one opportunity to have fun at a Wednesday night in this crazy pandemic. What else do you got going on on a Wednesday at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern? That's right. And if you have your own questions or theme song, send them on down to if I were you show at gmail.com, and we're still making videos on our Patreon, which is patreon.com slash J.A. That's right.

Opening theme song was the, I'm feeling this. Oh, wait, did we ever say who it was? I think we started talking about whispering and never got back to it. Yep, we sure did. I hope they listened until the end. That was, this is better because it's like in your ears

right before you stop listening to the show. So it's a This is the third Blink 182 song that this guy did. The last one was first date. And the lyrics I wrote were Jake and Amir seemed to last forever. Jake and Amir will last forever. Seem to upset you slash you found threatening.

So I apologize for that. And he wants to give a shout out to his TikTok at Alexander Lanzi, L-A-N-Z-I, which would be cool. So check out Alexander Lanzi's TikTok. I'm still on TikTok as well. I can check that out. I deleted it, but everyone else should check it out. This closing theme song is a little ditty that Slundee made when he was bored.

And if you end up using it, I didn't realize Slundee threw this one R.A. That's awesome. Thanks, Slundi. Yeah, shout out his EP, which is called Cocaine Lemonade. Great title. Whoa, two of my favorite things. Which is available pretty much everywhere. No comment on the theme song We're all thinking it, whatever that means.

So thank you, Slundy. Check out his EP cocaine lemonade. And thanks Alexander for the opening theme song. Thanks to you guys for listening. We'll be back as soon as possible. Bye. Ciao for now. Two friends, a world apart.

A change of feeling, a change of art. That we love or smile They hide their feelings away A sudden gesture A mere style A box of nuggets can go Check it a me It's checking to me

That was a money That was a hit dumb original