Morning Brew Daily - Postal Services Stop US Shipping & Keurig Dr Pepper Spends $18B on Coffee

Starting point is 00:00:01 Consider this comparison. PWC data found the percentage of CEOs who report revenue gains or cost reductions from AI is almost equal to the percentage who say they're still stuck. What separates these two groups? PWC points to a clarity issue. Even for CEOs, it's hard to tell what's AI hype, what's reality, and where this tuck can make a tangible difference. Learn where AI can actually make an impact and what successful adoption looks like at pwc.com slash U.S.

Starting point is 00:00:28 slash brew AI. That's pwc.com slash us slash brew AI. Good morning brew daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today President Trump said he'll remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook, but can he do that? Then why are dining

Starting point is 00:00:49 rooms disappearing from homes? It's Tuesday, August 26th. Let's ride. If you fire it up Netflix this week, you might have seen their new method for helping you find a new show to watch your astrological sign. Last Thursday, the streamer launched an astrology hub called Your Zodiac Watch List,

Starting point is 00:01:12 which matches the different Zodiac signs to content those people may like because of their particular character traits. For example, I'm a Leo with, quote, main character energy, so Netflix suggests I would enjoy Emily and Paris or The Crown, which, yeah, sure. Toby would love to have been in the room where they came up with this idea. Someone definitely floated it as a joke, and then everyone else was like, wait, that's secret.

Starting point is 00:01:35 incredibly incredible. It's an incredible idea, but I do want to go through. Who got the best recommendations and who got the worst? Let's start with the worst. Definitely Aquarius. Who Netflix considers oddballs, quirky, and outsiders, and then pitch them content about aliens in sci-fi, including Venom the last stand. So not only are Aquarians assumed to be weird, but Netflix also thinks they have awful taste in movies. I think the best is either Sagittarians who get adventure content like Lost, The Witcher, and Jurassic Park, or the total other side. out of the spectrum. Cancers get more emotional recommendations like Gilmore Girls,

Starting point is 00:02:09 Ginny and Georgia, and Grace Anatomy. I'm a Pisces, which apparently means I'm a dreamer and hopeless romantic. So I got a Star is Born, X-O-Kitty, and Groundhog Day. But yes, these hyper-personalized and specific collections are clearly part of Netflix's strategy. They've made a hope they don't end up on the Kiss Cam collection, which are filmed with, you know, steamy dramas based on the cold play kiss cam incident. and then also can I pull you for a chat collection inspired by Love Island. So maybe let's have a little movie marathon, Neil.

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Starting point is 00:03:24 You can target by job title, industry, company, and more. They can link you with the right audience for your brand. So make the right choice and check out LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it for yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars.

Starting point is 00:03:53 Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock. of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Must be 21 to enter. President Trump reached into the toolkit from his apprentice days, saying he was firing Fed Governor Lisa Cook in his biggest attack yet on the central bank's independence. In a letter to Cook last night, who was appointed by Biden in 2021, Trump said he had sufficient cause to remove you

Starting point is 00:04:31 from your position, citing allegations that Cook submitted fraudulent info on two mortgage applications. The letter added that, quote, the American people must be able to have full confidence in the honesty of the members entrusted with setting policy and overseeing the Federal Reserve. In light of your deceitful and possibly criminal conduct in a financial matter, they cannot, and I do not have such confidence in your integrity. Cook, who insists she did nothing wrong, responded, you can't fire me, I'm not quitting. In a statement late Monday, she wrote, President Trump purported to fire me, quote, For cause, when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so, I will not resign.

Starting point is 00:05:08 Toby, this sets up a massive legal showdown that could change the course of the economy and impact the wallet of everyone listening. If Trump successfully removes Cook and fills her role with someone who's more sympathetic to cutting rates, economists warn of another spike in inflation. Yeah, the big question here, can he fire her? And the answer is definitely legally murky. Congress severely curbed the president's authority to unilaterally fire a Fed official back in 1913. They, the law states that you can only do so for cause.

Starting point is 00:05:41 But what cause is is kind of up for debate. It has historically been understood to mean malfeasance or dereliction of duty for Trump. That cause is the potential mortgage fraud. But then you actually have to go out and say, why does Trump want to fire cook here? He definitely wants to shape the Fed in kind of. his own image because a new opening on the Fed board would give Trump a lot of leverage to shape its makeup. Remember, Powell's term ends in May, and then he also almost has a majority at this point. He appointed two current Fed governors, Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller, in his first term.

Starting point is 00:06:17 This past month, Trump nominated Stephen Moran to fill a open seat that was created by a resignation of a Biden appointee. And then if Cook's seat is open, then he has a majority of on that board. So he's definitely trying to, you know, push for monetary policy that he can shape. Talking about the Fed composition as, you know, having a majority Republican, conservative, or having a majority leaning Democrat or left is unprecedented because since it was created in 1913, Central Bank has had this independence that economists and bank CEOs like Jamie Diamond have said form the bedrock of the stable American financial markets. And if that doesn't happen, you could lead to a spike in inflation because when you're president, you want low interest rates

Starting point is 00:07:03 because during your term, which only lasts four or eight years, you want lower interest rates because that stimulates the economy. More people have jobs. More people have money to spend. It's all good. But that could be very harmful in the long run if inflation goes too high and then the Fed has to hike rates down the line in order to bring it down. This has happened in other countries. It hasn't happened in the United States. You know, we should stress that this is unprecedented for a president to remove or to try to remove a Federal Reserve official. Right now I'm looking at the inflation rate overtime in Turkey where President Erdogan has installed a loyalist as the Central Bank governor.

Starting point is 00:07:40 He did that in 2021. It was pretty, the inflation rate was pretty low, but below 20% until 2021. And then you see a vertical line the next year going to 86% inflation. No one's saying that the United States will ever have 86% inflation. but when you install someone who is a loyalist to you, there's political considerations that will keep rates artificially low, and that leads to a spike in inflation. And looking at the markets, they are not reacting super well to this. All three major stock indexes are down this morning. And the biggest move was actually in the U.S. dollar, which lost 0.3% rapidly overnight as this news was breaking. So we'll

Starting point is 00:08:20 pay attention to how the markets continue to react to this today. If you were planning to order chocolate from Belgium, wine from New Zealand, or a suit from Italy, you might need to think more local. In the past few days, more than a dozen international postal services have suspended business shipping to the United States over a new tariff rule going into effect on Friday. Postal services from Germany to Singapore say they were caught by surprise and need more time and clarity from U.S. authorities so they can adjust their systems accordingly. What's happening on Friday is that the de minimis exemption is ending. This exemption had allowed packages worth less than $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free, paving the way for ultra-bargain Chinese retailers like

Starting point is 00:09:00 Sheean and Teamu to flood America with cheap goods. In May, the Trump administration ended the de minimis exemption for China and Hong Kong, a major blow to Sheen and Teammu, which were forced to raise prices. And on Friday, the exemption will go away for the rest of the world, which is what all these postal services are responding to. Going forward, shipments from businesses under $800 will be subject to country-specific tariffs. For instance, that's 15% for the east. EU and 20% for Vietnam. How long these suspension lasts? We don't know.

Starting point is 00:09:30 But it shows how tariffs aren't just affecting huge companies importing cargo on container ships, but mom and pop businesses all over the world sending smaller parcels. And those smaller parcels make up the bulk of stuff arriving in the U.S. De minimis shipments account for over 90% of all cargo that enters the country. Yeah, there is a massive amount of these smaller packages entering the U.S. 1.36 billion shipments annually. that adds up to 4 million packages a day. So this is not just affecting Sheehan and Tamu halls. It's affecting everyone because it's literally 90% of packages that are arriving on your doorstep.

Starting point is 00:10:05 Small retailers are kind of just throwing their hands up in the air and saying, hey, we cannot figure out how to add duties directly at checkout. We're just going to suspend U.S. shipments. And so that's going to affect a lot of sellers on these smaller sites like Etsy who say that they'll basically just be shut out from U.S. buyers because they're just going to suspend U. just don't have the infrastructure to navigate or can't eat the cost like a larger retailer would. So maybe one of the longer term effects of this is that the big boys can figure out how to consolidate and figure out how to navigate the situation. But the longer tail of knee-shellers might get kind of hollowed out. And so these Chotchkes that you might pick up from

Starting point is 00:10:44 Etsy, you're not going to get them anymore. Now, there are a few exemptions to this exemption being ended. And if you're listening to this thinking, wow, I have a few cousins. My grandma lives in Amsterdam and I have all these relatives abroad. And my birthday is coming up and, you know, am I going to get their letters? Well, the answer is yes, because these do not apply to letters or gifts that are worth less than $100 and sent from a person to a person rather than from a business to a customer. So these postal services will still deliver small gifts and letters to you to the United States, but it's just those bigger items between $100 and $800 that are being suspended for now because companies like DHL, which is one of the biggest logistics delivery

Starting point is 00:11:27 companies in the world, are saying we can't do this paperwork. Essentially, it's not that the costs are too high. It's just that there's too much paperwork, and they can't figure out how to work it out in their back-end Excel systems. And I do think that you will see some loopholes start to emerge, maybe mislabeling some shipments as gifts. That's one thing that industry watches. Mislabeling.

Starting point is 00:11:45 Right, exactly. Or you just start smuggling or there's just a gray area of imports or maybe you do start to see Shian and TAMU start to set up fulfillment centers in the U.S. Tammu has already said they are doing that, that if you order in the U.S. you will get goods from U.S. sellers, which again, they can do, but maybe a smaller business absolutely cannot do. And then the final thing that is going to shake out here is that it does put a lot of inflationary pressure on the bottom of the market. Wealthy consumers probably won't feel this because they're not shopping as much at Shian in Tammu. But, low in the middle income Americans who did rely on Shian and Tamu will definitely feel this. So in that case, it's almost a regressive tax because these tariffs are going to fall the hardest on the people less likely to be able to absorb higher costs. So that's just from the consumer perspective, another reason why this is going to be very impactful. Okay, I'm going to need everyone to pour themselves a big cup of Joe before hearing this next piece of news because it's about a massive coffee deal. Yesterday, American drinks giant Kyrig Dr. Pepper said it would buy Amsterdam-based coffee company J.D.E. Peets for a latte of money, more than $18 billion, the latest shakeup in a rapidly consolidating food industry. Let's talk about the main characters here. K. Pepper, no surprise here, is the company that slings K-KK cups and cold drinks like Dr. Pepper 7-Up Snapple and Hawaiian Punch. It's a conglomerate formed by a mega merger in 2018 between Kyrig Green Mountain and Dr. Pepper Snapple.

Starting point is 00:13:13 The company it's acquiring, J.D.E. Peets, is a globe-spanding hot drinks behemoth, owning nearly 50 coffee and tea brands around the world, including Pete's coffee. The acquisition is just the start of a bigger transformation. Once the deal is completed, Curing Dr. Pepper is going to split its business in two. One is going to be focused on refreshment beverages like sodas, juices, energy drinks, and the other on coffee. The coffee business will be the world's second largest behind Nestle and will actually become the number one pure play coffee company anywhere on the globe.

Starting point is 00:13:43 And that brings opportunities and challenges. Coffee is a huge industry, especially in the United States, where we drink 516 million cups of coffee a day. At the same time, prices for coffee beans are rising dramatically due to U.S. tariffs on Brazil, making it a super tricky market to navigate. Toby, you've poured over this deal. What are the takeaways? I think the takeaway is that coffee is certainly an attractive long-term investment because it does have pretty resilient demand. Everyone wants to start the day with a cup of coffee. But in the near charm a ton of volatility because of these tariffs, because of climate change and because of just rising costs in general. So this just gives a little bit of clarity to investors. Either

Starting point is 00:14:24 you want to bet on coffee or you want to bet on soda. It got a little murky when you tried to bet on both. So I do think that maybe coffee has that long tail effect. Soda has a very steady demand in the United States. So I think the biggest thing here is that you just figured out, separate the bubbles from the caffeine, although I guess there's caffeine in soda as well. Just give some clarity around this. Well, if you look in the past few years, I know you said coffee is maybe the better long-term investment, but over, since this mega merger was completed in 2018, the Dr. Pepper part of this company was doing a lot better than the curing part of this company.

Starting point is 00:15:00 Just look at these earnings last quarter. This company said its U.S. beverage sales were up nearly 11% from a year earlier. and that's because Dr. Pepper has rolled out all these new types of flavors like Dr. Pepper Blackberry and cherry and people are loving it. And then in terms of coffee sales, well, they were completely flat in Q2. There was higher prices for K-cups and that, and there was less demand for that. So this company is now, once they acquire Pets, is going to separate out its coffee business from its beverage business. And typically you might think that coffee would grow faster than soda, which people are shying away from.

Starting point is 00:15:36 but Dr. Pepper is just a behemoth. It's the number two most popular soda in the United States after Coke. It's a head of Pepsi. It's confusing because the company's name is cured Dr. Pepper, but Dr. Pepper itself is absolutely killing it. But we should zoom out to the entire food industry where more breakups are happening than on Love Island. Not the only major food company going through a breakoff.

Starting point is 00:15:58 Kellogg spin off its snack company, Kelanova, from its cereal branch, WK Kellogg in 2023. Then last year, Mars bought Kelanova, and then in July, Ferrarobot, says it intends to buy WK Kellogg's. Craft-Hein's also reportedly planning a similar separation. So everywhere you look are mergers and then demurgers and then re-mergers. People are just trying to slice and dice up the food industry because so many different factors are changing. You have OZempic being brought into play and how GLP1 drugs are affecting things. So certainly not the only company that is breaking up in merging.

Starting point is 00:16:34 All right. let's take a quick break and come back with another feud between Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice.

Starting point is 00:17:00 Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak. Got that right. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill 3-burner gas grill. Or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor to your backyard. Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together. Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot.

Starting point is 00:17:33 Now through May 6th. Exclusion supplies to homedipo.com slash price match for details. Death, taxes, and Elon Musk suing Sam Altman. The feud that's been running longer than Gray's Anatomy added another twist to its saga, with Elon Musk filing a lawsuit against Apple and Open AI yesterday. This time, Musk is accusing the two companies of illegally colluding against his company, XAI, a crusade he first vented about in a social media rant last week, calling out Apple's alleged refusal to feature Grock or X in its app store.

Starting point is 00:18:03 According to Musk's attorney, the suit is intended to, quote, defendants from perpetrating their anti-competitive scheme and to recover billions in damages related to their alleged collusion. Remember, Apple reached a deal with OpenAI last year to integrate ChatGBT into its iPhones. Must thinks that deal is preventing customers from being able to access other competitors' chatbots like his own. Open AI pushed back in a statement to the New York Post saying this latest filing is consistent with Mr. Musk's ongoing pattern of harassment. The pattern they are referring to is that Elon really likes to. taking legal action against Open AI, the company he co-founded alongside Altman in 2016.

Starting point is 00:18:42 Last year, he sued both Altman and Open AI, accusing them of putting profits ahead of the company's original mission, not to mention the variety of Barb's the two CEOs have traded on social media. As for Musk's case, Apple thinks he doesn't have one. A spokesperson responded to Elon's initial accusatory posts by saying its app store is designed to be fair and free of bias and that the company features thousands of apps using a variety of different metrics. Neil, I hope we all find something we love as much as Elon loves suing his rivals.

Starting point is 00:19:12 And Elon's lawyers have been doing their homework because this lawsuit against OpenEi and Apple is very similar to the DOJ's successful antitrust case against Google. And during that case, which we're going to find out what Google's penalty is in just a few days, a federal judge found that Google was illegally monopolizing the market for search

Starting point is 00:19:33 by locking up distribution through iPhones. Remember, Google is paying Apple more than $20 billion of the year to be the default search provider on Safari. And Elon's lawyers and Elon himself say that this is very similar to what OpenAI is doing with Apple. It really homes in on the fact that Apple is such a powerful distribution mechanism, specifically through its iPhones. Billions of them are in people's pockets.

Starting point is 00:19:56 And if you can be the default on Apple or have a first-party integration like ChatGBTGPT does with any iPhone, then you're going to be locked into so many people and you're going to get so many eyeballs to your products at the expense of competitors. That's their allegation. Yeah, at the one hand, that decision to integrate it could inhibit rivalry, could inhibit innovation in the AI industry. But then if you look at how people reacted to this, a lot of people pointed out the fact that, Elon, you're wrong in the sense that no app can reach the top of the app store. That was his main gripe. That was the initial thrust of the lawsuit because a lot of them said that,

Starting point is 00:20:32 that, hey, Deep Seek, remember your rival AI company, that made it to number one on the App Store. Perplexity, another AI company made it to number one on the App Store after Apple announced their Open AI partnership. So in that case, a lot of people, in community notes, even, under the posts that Elon was putting out on his own social media platform X, were saying, buddy, you're wrong here. That being said, though, this does mirror a Justice Department case

Starting point is 00:20:56 that they did bring against Apple. They sued the iPhone. They sued Apple in the New Jersey Federal Court in March, Apple lost a bid to dismiss that case. So there's almost two things going on here where you're saying, definitely wrong, Elon. Someone else has made it to the top of the app store, but you actually may have an anti-competitive case here

Starting point is 00:21:14 according to the Justice Department. Moving on, welcome back to another edition of Toby's Trends, the segment where I spulunk into the business world to find a trend you can impress your aloof teenage children with. And today's trend is all about disappearing dining rooms. No, that's not a horrible escape room spin-off concept. nearly 80% of designers for new home communities say formal dining rooms are less important than they were last year, according to a report analyzed by Axios. And according to Realtor.com,

Starting point is 00:21:43 only 25% of listings even mention a dining room these days. It's not that OZempic has made everyone stop eating. Buyers are instead looking for more versatile ways to use their precious square footage. Formal dining rooms have almost been eliminated from our design vocabulary, said the report by John Burns Research and Consulting and Proceding. Builder magazine. What's taking their place are flex rooms that can serve multiple purposes like being converted to an office or an extra bedroom. Dining rooms aren't going away everywhere, homes in the southeast, might still have them because buyers still value formal dining where it fits, according to the report. But for the most part, every square foot space is being optimized

Starting point is 00:22:23 for multifunctionality rather than for grubbin. Neil, all I'm hearing is I could have avoided a lot of dining room table grillings from my parents if we never had a dining. room. I say good riddance to the dining room because in my home, when we got a nicer dining room, the playroom was the thing that went, and I had very fond memories of playing in that particular

Starting point is 00:22:44 room, and now it's just this place where we eat on very few occasions, and I think in this time of unaffordable housing, you want to maximize every single square foot in your home, and a dining room is seen as maybe one of the more expendable parts of the home where you're not going in there every

Starting point is 00:23:00 single day. You're going in there for a special occasions. And when you can't afford a huge house and you can afford a smaller house, every square inch counts. And that's why I think we're seeing the decline of the dining room. Now, you did mention the southeast. I was looking at Southern Living Magazine. And they also were mentioning that they were talking about the dining room, but they had a different spin. They said that the dining room is having a moment again. And across the South, homeowners and designers are falling back in love with this classic room. So it might be a little bit of a regional variation here. There's definitely a pendulum when it comes to home design where certain things

Starting point is 00:23:36 come into play and then certain things go out of stydle. But I do think that the kitchen is becoming a more of a central place. Super-sized kitchens are both a meeting place and an eating place, but also a status symbol. It's not so much a fancy chandelier hanging over table. It's more if you have a giant island or just a big stove range or something like that, open shelving kitchen decor. That is a bigger part of your house and what you want to invest in more so than the dining room, which, again, may be a trend. It may switch back. And then potentially generational differences, a lot of younger people are living alone these days. So there's not starting families as quickly. So why do you need a full dining room? You could convert it into an extra office or something like that because

Starting point is 00:24:21 you don't have a family yet. So maybe that is just younger people are entering the housing market. They don't have family. So a lot of different regional and generational differences here. But fascinating to see that dining rooms are kind of being erased from a lot of designer's vocabulary. Let's spread to the finish with some final headlines. Furniture stocks tumbled yesterday after President Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he would slap a tariff on furniture imports within 50 days when the government completes a review. Restoration, hardware, and Wayfair were the hardest hit, each falling more than 5%. They're the companies that bring in the most furniture from Asia compared to Lazy Boy and Ethan Allen,

Starting point is 00:24:57 who shares actually were fine yesterday because they make most of their products in the U.S. And that's exactly what Trump wants more of. He wrote on true social that the tariffs will quote, bring the furniture business back to North Carolina, South Carolina, Michigan, and states all across the union. But until that happens, if it happens, you should probably brace for price hikes or just go all in on Facebook marketplace. Yeah, definitely go all in on Facebook marketplace. A lot of good finds there. But a lot of kind of supply chain watchers, furniture watchers are dubious about the American market making a resurgence. Jason Miller, who's a professor of supply chain management at Michigan State.

Starting point is 00:25:30 said in a LinkedIn post, I can't think of one person who would want to rush out and invest in making generic furniture in the USA when those investments would be rendered worthless by a change in tariff policy. Again, it's almost the criticism that a lot of people have against these tariffs is that once Trump leaves office, do you really want to invest in a massive furniture home store in North Carolina when you will immediately get undercut on price again if those tariffs go away. So that is one of the major pushbacks to this. And then also, I feel bad for anyone who just moved into a new apartment, aka myself, because furniture prices are rising. They had been kind of falling once the supply chain snarls of the pandemic had been worked out. And then immediately tariffs got

Starting point is 00:26:14 lumped on him. So prices were up 1.5% in May, 1.6% in June, 1.5% in July. So. And that's without like specific furniture tariffs. Those are just those broad-based tariffs against all of the countries, especially Southeast Asia, which makes these, and then if they complete this review in 50 days and say, okay, furniture specifically is getting a big tear if you could still see those prices continue to increase. Yeah, if anyone's got a bedside table, sent it my way. Moving on, Southwest is making another controversial move that involves its seating. Starting the same day it ditches its open seating for assigned seats, the airline will also require plus-size travelers who need more than one seat to purchase it up front with refunds no longer guaranteed. Before the

Starting point is 00:26:55 policy change, those passengers could request an extra seat for free at the airport. It's the latest in a string of major shakeups at the beleaguered airline. The carrier ended its longstanding bags fly free, Perkin May, announced new changes for extra legroom and is rolling out red-eye flights as it scrambles to appease investors. It is looking less like the quirky budget airline people loved and more like every other nickel and diamond carrier and customers aren't happy about it, Neil. Southwest seems to be shredding any remaining goodwill it has. with its customers because it just needs to make money to please these investors. And it put itself

Starting point is 00:27:31 in this position through just having bad business performance for a few years where it has to make these sacrifices for sales. And it reminds you of another company that's been going through it recently. Cracker Barrel, Cracker Barrel changed its logo. It also upset a lot of long time. Customers like Southwest has done. And there was a lot of outrage this past week. It has responded for the first time. The company wrote that if the last few days have showed us anything, it's how deeply people care about Cracker Barrel. We're truly grateful for your heartfelt voices. You've also shown us that we could have done a better job sharing who we are and who will always will be. They said that Uncle Herschel, you know, that old guy who they removed from the logo,

Starting point is 00:28:10 will stick around. He's going to be a part of the family. He'll appear on road signs and inside the store as well. I wonder if Southwest is watching Cracker Barrow's PR team to see how they should respond. Finally, Mr. Wonderful found a deal he really, really likes, and he didn't even ask for royalties. Over the weekend, Shark Tank investor Kevin O'Leary linked up with two others to buy a Kobe Bryant-Michael Jordan sports card for $12.9 million, making it the most expensive trading cards sold at auction in history. The previous record holder, a 1952-tops Mickey Mantle card, sold for $12.6 million in August 2022. O'Leary told CNBC that he views trading cards as no different than any other investment asset class like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and gold.

Starting point is 00:28:54 It's going to be a part of an index that I'm going to continue to grow along with my partners, he said. And others feel similarly. Trading cards from Pokemon to sports have been surging in interest alongside other collectibles like Bobbleheads and Labubu's. Target recently said that trading card sales are up 70% this year and will be a billion dollar business by the end of 2025. Yeah, it's not just Target. Walmart marketplace said trading card sales sort 200% between February of last year and June of this year. Pokemon's card sales specifically grew 10x year over year. eBay said that trading card sales have searched for 10 straight quarters now.

Starting point is 00:29:30 So, I mean, knock Kevin O'Leary, knock Mr. Wonderful, all you want. But he definitely is looking at this as an asset class and saying, holy moly, it's no different from something like real estate or my Bitcoin holdings. I see it appreciating over time. Might as well buy these one-of-one cards, which is why that specific card just fetch such a high price so God I gotta dig through my basement see if I got any Pokea card Pokemon cards left over that is all the time we have thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday if you have any thoughts or

Starting point is 00:30:00 feedback on today's show send a note to morning brew daily at morning brew.com let's roll the credits Emily Milliron is our executive producer Raven Lou is our producer our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake hair and makeup is snagging a PSL which is officially being released this morning Devon Emory is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Wireless can feel like a world of traps, but not with Visible. It's one-line wireless with unlimited data and hotspot. Powered by Verizon for $25 a month, taxes and fees included. Plus, for a limited time, new members pay just $20 a month

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Morning Brew Daily - Postal Services Stop US Shipping & Keurig Dr Pepper Spends $18B on Coffee

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