PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - The Collector's Edition

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

On this episode, Derek is joined by collecting aficionado Michael Velasco aka Roknowledge to discuss the current trading card craze, what caused it, and how digital collecting could change the game. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to the PHNX D-Backs podcast right here on PHNX. My name is Derek Montia, occasionally known as your mayor of PHNX. Maybe not so much so when I'm not with my vice mayor. But of course, this show is brought to you by the fine folks over at the Draft King's Sportsbook app. Go download the Draft King Sportsbook app. Now use our code of PHNX. And simply for betting $1 on any team to score, you can win $100 in free bets. It's that simple.

You just get that $100 in free. bets and then you can recoup some of these lost funds from your holiday season. But I am, of course, like I said, without my vice mayor, he is off watching family members get married, and I wish him the best and his family. But I did replace him, and it might be permanent, so we'll see what happens here. I am joined by one of my best friends in the whole wide world. His government name is Michael Velasco, but he won't have me calling him that. Tonight, we are joined by the one and only Rock Knowledge.

Rock, what is up, my man? man it is good to be here good to be vice mayor for the evening yes yeah you're interim interim vice mayor yeah right you know so we'll see what happens yeah exactly i mean sometimes it's like it's like sports sometimes that interim manager title goes on to work out into the manager right you just stick it would be one of those cases absolutely and i needed to have you on this episode for a very particular reason uh the reason is i wanted to talk this week a little bit about the sports card craze that has kind of taken America by storm a bit during the pandemic. And the reason I wanted to talk with you is because not only are you my right-hand band when it comes to acquiring baseball

cards, actually, I'm your right-hand man. You acquire them for me. I just I just funnel you money. But we also have a very similar passion for this kind of stuff, right? Like you and I have both been collecting cards since we were kids. And we fall right into this category of the, nostalgic. I'm not going to call us millennials, but that's the category they said card collecting is. But I'm just going to say, we're hooked on that nostalgic narcotic. And we enjoy definitely much collecting cards now again as adults. Yes, absolutely.

When did you get started? When did you get started? Late 80s, me and my dad, 87 tops, wood grain, the classic wood grain set. Yes, yes. Yeah, so we started collecting those. God, those are beautiful cards. When Costco was Price Club, and you can go into Price Club, and they had, you could actually buy wax boxes.

Yes. You could buy wax boxes, complete sets at Costco. Right. And we had friends that actually ran a baseball card shop. I was playing Little League with one of the kids and just had a love for baseball even before the cards. And then my dad introduced me because my dad called. collected a little bit when he was a kid.

And I, yeah, it was 87, man. I was a huge Oakland A's fan. Jose Canseco was life at that point for me. Oh, yeah. I will never forget being at Valley West Mall and getting a pack of 87 tops out of a vending machine and going home and opening that pack up and I pulled my first ever Jose Konseco card. I will never forget that day.

I was so stoked. That is. That card is worth a whopping 32 cents today. But it doesn't matter. It is nostalgia. Baseball is nostalgic to me. Baseball cards is tied to that. So it's very,

very much a thing that I love growing up that I kind of got out of in my late teens, kind of crawled back in my early 20s. And then just over the course of a pandemic, you know, being home, bored, you know, what can I waste my money on since I'm not growing out? Right, right, right. So I started buying baseball cards. on Amazon. Yeah.

Yep. There it is. I will tell you, okay, like, so for me, I loved all sorts of cards when I was a kid, right? And I think one of the things I remember about it was kind of like, I don't know. It was one of those weird things, kind of like comic books where, but I'll even say cards were more like this than comic books where I would go

into a shop and there was as many adults in there shopping as there were kids, right? Yeah. It was, it was that true, uh, point on the then diagram where boys and men, you know, actually, you know, had that same legitimate interest, it seemed in, in this thing, right? Like, sports and especially cards, because I don't know. I mean, for me, I often credit cards and such with being why I got into sports more than the other way around. Like, I didn't like sports first and then got into cards. I almost remember collecting cards and being into cards more first than I was into sports. I grew up here.

You know, you grew up here, right? In Phoenix. And we grew up, we grew up without a baseball team, right? Like a lot of people who grew up here. So that was, I think that was one thing was the sport for me was the Phoenix Suns, right? Like basketball was the sport. But then like baseball kind of was this thing where you could, especially not having a team, you could pick and choose which team you like.

you could pick and choose which players you liked and were into, you know, like, yeah, it was, it was kind of a wide open world. And I mean, it, it sucks not having a team, but it is kind of free. It's nice and freeing to, like, be without the confines of needing to root for your local sports team, you know, like that, that guilt of not rooting for your team and your town, you know. Yeah, I was an Oakland Ace fan at the time because we didn't have a team here. Yeah. And I like the Giants because there was a, the Bay Area fan. You know, the closest thing that we had to a baseball team in Arizona was the Firebirds.

Yes. Which at the time was the farm team, AAA affiliate for the San Francisco Giants. And I remember spending countless nights at Phoenix Muni watching Matt Williams, Tony Pettus Chica, you know, who hopefully one day, through the help of the good folks at PHS, I can get an actual meeting with him as an adult. Oh, my God. I met him as a kid. When I was like eight, he signed, somewhere at my dad says, I have the autograph that he signed for me. He was my favorite player on the firebirds. So to see Tony Petitschika now being a coach for the dynamback, it's crazy. We need to make this happen. We need to make this meeting happen.

Yeah. So let me, I'll say this about Tony, by the way, just not to interrupt you. Yeah. He's my favorite guy to listen to banter with players during spring training, especially, right? because during spring training, everything's kind of laid back and cool. So he'll literally, like, the opposing players come up and they'll just be like, what's up, Tony? And they're like, how's your kids, man? Like, I remember Drod Dyson and him having like a full-odd, what felt like a 20-minute conversation while he was on base during a spring training game.

That's awesome. Oh, man, he's loved by the players. Absolutely. Yeah, man, that was, it was so much fun, you know, being a kid, you know, at least having some form. And then the cool part about that was when the players were rehased, having you would get the stars. They'd be in town for two days. Yeah. Yeah. Those were big games. Those were everybody came out for those. You know, and it was cool. They used to give

out as one of the giveaways. They would give you like a team set of the firebirds. And there was always a vendor at the game. That sold packs of baseball cards. And yeah, man, it's, it's, it's crazy, man. Like they call it the junk, the junk wax era is what they refer to that as, because it was just wax packs and just a lot of junk based on cards. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not a lot of value to them. They were mass produced, but, you know. But that was part of the fun.

The fun was that you knew you were going to get the same cards over and over. You never knew what you were going to get. That's why they were trading cards, right? You know, like, that's the moment that you, you're like, all right, well, here's, if, if you were a good card collector, you had, you had your one binder. with your good cards in it and then you Absolutely. The other ones either

in a shoebox or something or in another binder maybe to make them look a little bit more impressive to your friends when you wanted to trade them. I always used to pull that stick. I'd like put the ones

I wanted to trade in a binder and be like, well, I don't know. What are you going to give me for that one? They were like, I had five of them, but that's how I ran. I mean, on top of the trading card aspect at that point in time, you would also get your baseball cards

and a stick of bubble gum. Yes. Yes. As a kid, kids love bubblegum. Yeah, there's, uh, it was, it was like, I'm, I'm already, I'm already in for the bubblegum. You had me at the card. Right. You're going to give me bubble gum.

Uh, I will say this though. They, you talked about, you know, kind of the ups and downs of it. And that, I think that is something that was the most surprising about the resurgence of, of, of trading cards, right? Because we, we came from a generation where everything was collectible. Shit, my grandma used to, my nana. used to hang on to TV guides because she thought they were going to be valuable one day. She was the one that made us keep our Star Wars toys pristine because she knew that they were

like this big deal and would always tell us all the time what a big deal the Star Wars toys were. Little did we know. Little did we know. If my Nana had her way, them shits would have stayed in boxes in our attic and I would have been I'd be a millionaire right now. But it's it is. It's these ups and downs. It's never knowing what is going to keep.

catch on what's going to be the next big wave right and i think i was very very surprised like there's been a lot of talk about everything collectible going digital which we'll talk about and i just don't believe in right but yeah um you know there i you know what my low point was i was watching the kevin smith show comic book men and i don't know if you're familiar with it but's on that point right okay so there's an episode and like typically on the show it's about people coming in and having their comic books evaluated. And in one episode, this guy brings in his Marvel cards. And you and I are big Marvel fans.

And of course, collecting trading cards, once we got into like garbage pale kids and other stuff, I was in on everything. Like, it didn't matter what it was. But I will tell you, the one thing I wanted every single card of was the Marvel trading cards that they had in like the mid-90s. And I mean, I mean it. Like I went to swap meat tonning shit down. I overpaid for holograms.

I did it all, right? But I was watching an episode of comic bookmen and a guy brings in his set of marble cards to see if he could sell them to the shop. And here was the most disheartening moment in my card collecting lifetime. Is watching this show on Netflix, knowing that I have a full,

set of that in a binder in my office right now that I could easily access. Right. And I couldn't wait. I was sitting in front of the TV rubbing my hands. Not only were these cards worthless, but he offered to let him go through some boxes he had in the basement and just take the ones he was missing in his set for free. Now, that's something could be worthless, but that is a different level of worthless when a shop that makes money on selling those is willing just to give you the ones you're missing

from your set for free because they know how worthless those are. Right. Now, yeah, that's the reason sometimes why stuff ends up becoming valuable again, right? It's because everybody deems it to be worthless. People throw their stuff away. They trash them. They don't treat them with the same respect because they're not worth any money. And next thing you know, somehow, you know, this guy over here, Cat and Cave Band is sitting on a, uh, uh, uh, uh, one of the last full sets of marble cards somehow, some way, during a time where marble movies and television shows are an all-time high.

Who knows, right? That's the reason why we hang on to this shit, but cards were just so much fun, you know? And again, it was surprising that they had the resurgence that they did. What was, I mean, you talked about buying, and you and I both bought during the pandemic. That's when we both started getting into cards again. But what, when did you know,

When did you find out that, like, trading cards were popular again? Honestly, when I started seeing a lot of YouTube channels that were ran by baseball card shops that would do live breaks. And what that is, is say there's a blaster box of baseball cards, there's 10 packs. 10 people will buy one of the packs at random they'll break the cards live online whatever's in that pack is what you get and I started seeing more and more of these videos

and then you would notice when you would go to your Target your Walmarts where they would normally have like walls full of every type of baseball, basketball, football, Pokemon, whatever cards. Yeah, magic the gathering, they still had all those.

Those walls were wiped out. Yeah. no matter when you win. And just honestly, and then just doing, you know, just research and stuff online, just see what's going on? Like, what is behind all of this?

And that was my moment, by the way, too. When I walked into a random target one day, and there was a sign on the door saying that they were no longer going to stock cards because of, like, it said something on there due to, the increase in violence or something? Yeah, there was people that were, like, fighting over baseball cards, like, you would see

people who were fighting over the next Jordan release. Like, can you imagine going to Target to get, like, some t-shirts, some towels, some dish soap? Yeah. And you look over to the left. You see two grown men fighting over a pack of baseball cards. Like, I love, I love baseball. I love baseball cards.

I don't, I hope I never. get to the point where I'm fighting somebody over a pack of a big of baseball cards. Hey, and it's not just that. I mean, the world is transitioning to this collectible world, right? I went to Target

one day, not too long ago. And I was just there because I was on my way to the office and I thought I needed to grab just a couple of quick items and Target was literally on my way. So I thought I'd stop. And I was like five minutes early before

they opened. And I got there. And there were a bunch of people kind of waiting out front, but it wasn't your typical group of people, right? Like it wasn't, it was a bunch of guys, kind of my age, kind of all grouped up in front of the door. And I'm not exaggerating about this because they were joking about it themselves. They were like stretching. They were stretching. They were getting their hammy's loose. Yeah. Right. And like I said, they were joking about it. I don't know if they knew each other or what, right? Doors open. Boom. Guys take off. Not all of them because some of them were older dudes who just weren't, they weren't about that life. They weren't about the running life, right? But, you know,

of the, I'd say, let's say just for argument's sake, there was about 10 dudes, about half of them took off running. The other dudes went, you know, kind of quick walking quick stepping nobody grabbed a cart everybody went to the same department that department was the toy section so as i watched them all kind of get over there i thought i was like what what is going on like what dropped is this a video game thing like what is this about and the target uh you know person that like opened the doors and i kind of calmly walk past like was just shaking his head and i go what's that all about and he goes hot wheels and i go are you shit me? I was like, are you, wait, Hot Wheels?

That's about Hot Wheels. He's like, yep, every Wednesday. And I was like, every fucking Wednesday? What? It's like, I couldn't believe it. And apparently there is this thing where like, again, there's certain very valuable Hot Wheels. And for the most part, Hot Wheels are a mass produced toy. A majority of them, majority of them are worthless, right? They're not even worth the 50 cents. costs once you open up the box. But apparently there are like Chase

Hot Wheels and there are auctions where these things can go for tens of thousands of dollars for really a hot wheel because they made like five of them and put them out throughout the country almost like a Willy Wonka golden ticket kind of

situation like I'm not very familiar with it but I have a toy collector friend who kind of inform me the rest of the way I because I ask That's about right, though. What's the guy told me about the actual? They have the chase editions of the, or Funko Pops. And I guess when it comes to the card realm, you know, these guys are all trying to get there.

They're trying to get the autographs, the memorabilia cards. Like, some of these insert cards that they're doing these days, like, it blows my mind, like, what they're doing. Well, and that's part of it, right? It's really, the cards themselves are cooler than ever. They, they're not the cards that. we grew up with where they had to put gum in them, right? The, the, the, the, the, the, now they will literally have a piece of a historic jersey from a game, like, oh, this, this is a piece of his jersey from game six of, you know,

the World Series or something ridiculous like that, you know, but, uh, before we get on, I wanted to remind you guys all once again, uh, go over a draft King's sports book app, uh, use our code of pHMX. And for just betting $1 in any team to score, you will get $100 in free bets instantly. Turn around. Bet your free bets. Don't listen to me and anything I do. Rock will definitely laugh in my face for telling you to bet on the Cardinals. And obviously, that didn't go well today. I wasn't going to say anything. No, I know. I appreciate. You're a good guy. You're a better guy than that.

But go to a draft king sports book right now and get a same game parlay for maybe Monday night football, whatever you want to get. But combine multiple bets from the same game or multiple games for bigger payout. The more legs you add, the more money you win. Draft Kings is safe, secure, and reliable. Best of all, you can deposit when draw your cash whenever you want. And our code again was PHNX, which will get you $100 in free bets for betting $1.00 on any NFL team should they score. Remember 21 and over only, Arizona only, gambling problem, dial $1,800 next step. New customers only, eligibility restrictions apply.

See draftkings.com slash sportsbook for details. Rock. Yes. So we get into this modern time. And again, part of it, you know, people, I read an article that said part of it kind of went back to the last dance documentary and people kind of being stuck at home. You know, then, you know, they started remembering a lot of these scenarios that was described in documentary. You start thinking about these players again. Sure.

Start going to the, start going to the attic or the closet busting out that shootbox you still have. A lot of us still have those cards just based on the fact that, again, like you said, They really weren't worth a lot. You weren't going to get much for them. But you also didn't want to be that guy that threw away the box of comic books that were all number ones for Spider-Man and Captain America and such, right? Yeah. That's the story we all heard in, like, late 80s and 90s. We all have a friend.

We held on to all of our shit because of that. His parents just one day just, oh, he hasn't touched these in 10 years. Oh, it's gone now. It's gone now. Yeah. totally but um yeah man i mean some of these cards that they started putting out uh like you said the the special edition cards uh the some of the value you know when you see a show hey otani rookie card that's worth like 75 000 yeah or there's you know someone if you're a football

fan or patty mahomes rookie cards that are worth like eight to a hundred thousand dollars for a card like so it's very much you know you're a football fan or there's patty mahomes rookie cards that are worth like eight to a hundred thousand dollars for a card like so it's very much I mean, you can consider it a form of currency at that point. Because there is a market, there is a market for all of this. There are collectors that want to get their hands on these. There are people who are going to buy these packs, buy these boxes, with the hopes of pulling something on that level of epicness.

And I mean, and then the other side of things is this is definitely not the baseball card pricing that we grew up with as far as what they cost per pack. Yeah. You're not going to find dollar packs. Some of these packs are $100, $500. It might be like two cards per pack. It's crazy. And some of these ones come in like breedcases like case, sealed with three separate boxes.

And if you see any of these videos of these cards being broken online, it is insane. Like these cards are gorgeous. Yeah. And the presentation is gorgeous, everything about it. Yeah. It might not warrant paying a. $100 for a pack, but at the same time, it definitely makes you feel like you got something special, right? And that's a big thing about baseball cards is that not knowing what you're going to get when you buy that pack.

Oh, yeah. That's why it's exciting. Yeah. But then what you had, especially last year, as part of that whole thing, right, was these auctions where these cards were going for just ridiculous amounts of money. It seemed like when we were in 2020 and even the start of 2021, there was just one. record being broken after the next as far as, like this Mickey Malle card being sold for five, like

five and a half million. And the bigger thing was a Michael Jordan rookie card sold at auction for $738,000. And that's the 85 Flair Edition one. Yeah. Two weeks earlier the same card sold for $215,000. It was a 243% value increase in 14

days. It's crazy, right? It's out of control. and downs. And you have all these celebrities and people that have money. That's the bigger thing is there's a lot more people that just have ridiculous amounts of money that are willing to spend it on things like this that like you said,

kind of become a form of currency when they're this value. You know? But yeah, Bill Simmons, I know that's one guy that really got a lot of people interested in cards again. So again, having people that have some reach, you know, talk about doing again is all exciting.

But for me, Personally, it was you with the Project 70 cards. Oh, man, Tops knocked it out the park with that. Yeah, talk a little bit about what Tops Project 70 are. Yeah, so I honestly just stumbled upon it randomly going to the Tops website. I don't even know why I went to the Tops website. Probably to find something. We know why.

We know why. You were trying to find something regarding my man crush who was Fernando Tatees Jr. Sure, sure. And they had this series called Project 70 where they gathered artists, content creators, you know, people who are creatives in mind. And they would design a baseball card of a current player, former player. And this range from, you know, from your players in the 50s and the 60s to the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s to present.

And they would just do, they would do a card. Like an artist would design a Tati's card. Like, an artist would, like Snoop Dogg did a card. DJ Ski did a satchel page, Nause, Elmatic card. It's just, it was a really cool series that spanned. It's actually still going. It's ran. If they're still making, not as, because they were doing like four every day.

Now it's like once every week. I think they do it. Yeah, there was, it was kind of out of hand there for a minute. They needed to stop because I was, I only had. Well, because I was always messaging you like, hey, I'm not to order this, Randy Johnson, hitting the bird card. Do you want one? That's literally what it constantly was.

And almost every time it was Randy Johnson hitting a bird. The Nintendo, Randy Johnson, like, design card is so dope with a duck hunt and the bird and the ball. And, you know, there's some really cool designs that got done. And the thing about it is, like, they range in price from $20 to right now. There are some on there that cost from them up to $170. These cards are available for a limited time. once they are sold. That's it.

Yeah, it's like four days. Yeah. Is each the life of you, you can buy them for up to four days. And the more expensive ones that he's referring to, those are typically like the artist proof. So those are like limited to like 10 or 20. They also do like a signed artist proof,

but those typically are sold out immediately. Yeah. And like, and the cost point's not that bad is 20 bucks. All the cards are 20 bucks that you're going to buy. Sure. So 20 bucks isn't bad. It's a cool card.

Unless you're going on with one of those you're talking. talking about yeah like the presentation is though yeah um you know you can it's i have i think i bought probably 20 or 30 well and i've noticed the value on them kind of instantly goes up i've looked at some of the cards i bought on ebay and see them selling uh for easily double of 20 dollars once they've gone away and they're no longer available and i mean it's fun too it is fun it is fun and we are kind of living in a time now where that is kind of part of our shopping culture, right? Is you kind of have to have to make a decision. Things aren't available for a long period of time.

And it's kind of a smart marketing move. They make you make a decision. And you don't have a lot of time. And when you make, when you don't make the decision, but you want that card and you missed out on it, oh, that's a terrible feeling. It's happened to me a couple times where I woke up too late, thought I had more time. Yeah. I thought there was more time.

A little more. And another good thing about the whole series, I think the fact that they have, they're having so many different creatives design these cards. It's bringing, they're trying to expand baseball and baseball cards to different areas, different markets,

different groups of people who may not normally care about baseball cards. Like Snoop Dogg did a handful. You know, he did a handful of cards. Like you don't necessarily, think about baseball cards and snoop dog together but it works right like it's really cool like and and some of these younger players you know they're they're fun they're exciting and their fans are

going to gravitate towards these because these are not your typical baseball cards you know very true it's very true and and it's good cross-marketing because it like you said it's it's it's just a way to get your your superstar young players out there a little bit more yeah and you know honestly i like I was realizing the other day, because I'm a big fan of hockey, but I was realizing how few of, like, hockey players I actually know are superstars, right? Like the good, I'm familiar with names, and I've played fantasy hockey, so that always kind of makes you a bit more familiar with the sport. But, like, baseball and hockey are two sports where I feel like both need to market their players better. and if they did, it would lead to more popularity in the sport,

just marketing the players with nicknames and commercials and shit like that that makes you familiar with them, right? And like for me, again, going back to my point when I was a kid, this is how I knew who guys were in baseball. This is because, I mean, here in Phoenix, if it wasn't a Chicago-based team, good luck or the Braves, good luck seeing them, right? So it wasn't always easy to watch or be familiar with teams

that weren't one of those three teams. and I don't know, I just really enjoyed learning more about the sport through that, you know. And like, I don't know, it was another point you made, it was a connection with my dad. You know, we had some good times and it was like, it was that moment that you kind of go from being like a child to being kind of like your dad's friend a bit, right? Where now we have something we can talk about. Now we have something we can. Yeah, I mean, same here. I mean, there was a lot of my good memories around being a kid.

with me and my dad, we would be going to baseball card shops or when they actually had like the actual baseball card shows at Valley West Mall, Chris Town Mall, or they would set up in like the conference rooms at big hotels and it would be vendors from around the country and it's just cards. You know, you go in there and kid in a candy store, man. Kid in a candy store. There's stuff everywhere. And it was that and spring training getting to go. go see the guys and have to sign your cards. And, you know, again, we were lucky here in Arizona for that factor because we got an entire array of teams that came here that we got to go.

I got so many autographs outside of Phoenix Municipal Stadium because, one, we were always there for spring training. And two, the way it was set up, the way the players had to walk out, they had to walk past you. They had to. And most of the time, the majority of the guys were pretty cool, you know, the handful of guys that were just absolutely terrible. Jose Cansego for one,

lock the wire for another. But that's you need to be there. Yeah. You know, it was fun, man. It's something that brings back a lot of good memories when I think about, you know, trading cards in baseball and things are so much simpler when all I cared about was getting my next pack of cards

or my next wax box. Man, you aren't lying. It's crazy to think how far things have come now to the state of the game, where baseball's at. And I think baseball is slowly starting to realize that they need to do better when it comes to marketing towards the younger people. And I think they currently have the best group of young stars to make that happen. Yeah.

No, you're right. They're very exciting right now. If this stupid, I swear to God, does labor dispute better be resolved? They cannot afford to do this again. Don't worry. According to Jesse Friedman, it will be over January 28th. And he is so dead positive on that that I could. I'm starting to believe it. I'm starting to believe it. Look, I said it on Twitter and I'll say it again. Stereids are not going to save baseball again like they did in 98. Yep, yep. You ain't going to hit a strike and see what happens. Don't go on strike.

You're not going to hit 100 home runs. Well, that's the thing was the, the lockout was kind of like supposedly the owner's move to make sure a strike didn't happen. But as far as reports were, like, the baseball players weren't going to go on strike. So it was just, I don't know what the posturing is all about. But hopefully we can get it resolved sooner than later because this sport cannot take. Like you said, cannot take another work stoppage or a delay because not only did we have that one back then, but it's people did not forget what happened during the pandemic when they had such a hard time getting baseball going again. So you can't, you can't forget it. about that. And that goes for any, that goes for any sport. Like, I don't, I don't ever want to have to

deal with billionaires fighting with millionaires. There you go. Like, you guys are disgusting. Well, when we get back on track, I do have an article right now up on go phnx.com about the top five prospects, MLB lists drop their 100, top 100 draft prospects. And the debacks right now have the number two pick. There could be some change based on what happens with the CBA and the draft because it would affect the 20, 22 draft, but we'll see what happens with that. As of now, the Diamondbacks pretty much guaranteed to get one of those top five guys. So I wrote an article on that. Guys, go check that out over at go phnx.com.

If you're not a member already, sign up to become a member. You can get annual membership and it'll get your free t-shirt over at the PHNX locker. And there's some wonderful t-shirts over there. Let me tell you. But also, you can get our month-to-month option and you'll get your first month for just 50 cents. And again, that's over at go-PHNX.com.

I have a member, I'm a family member, rocks my family member. You can be a family member too. Get us on the members-only Discord. And there's also all sorts of members-only discounts that you can get for the PHNX Locker.com. So join us over here, please. But I brought it up earlier. And I know there's kind of one form that I enjoy, but this whole digital trend is very strange and weird to us.

We're very caveman-like when it comes to the whole non-fungible tokens thing. and the idea of like digital pictures and videos and even sound clips being worth money and being traded for, right? Like the other day I got an offer from MLB shop.com and it was to spend $99 or more and you'd get a free NFT jersey. And all I could think was like,

what the hell do I want that for? Like how does that entice me in any way? right but it's because I'm not into this thing right I don't care about it I don't collect them I'm not interested in collecting it I like physical stuff I don't I don't need to have like digital media and such that I would go to an app or a website to collect I've I've kind of gotten hooked on that stuff before in video games and whatnot and I've I've kind of gotten over it right like I will say this as far as NFTs and things go because I know like the NBA one, the NBA NFT one, NBA Top Shot,

they do like cards and stuff. So like you buy packs and you open it up and then the NFTs are like cards. So it reminds me of like MLB the show. And I love that shit. NLB, MLB the show and NBA 2K22. They have me hooked on the whole earning cards and opening. I try, I don't spend actual money on it. I just try to earn it based on the rewards in the game and such. That's how I am. Yeah, right. I like, try my best not to actually, like, spend my money after I've already bought the game like I did. But

it's addictive and it's fun and I, as stupid as it seemed the first time I did it, now, like, man, I love ripping the cards open. Like, I don't even flip them all at once. I do it one by one just so I could individually, you know, take a look at them and do all that shit. Like, so

as much as I mock digital currency, or digital collecting, I will say that in the games, it kind of has me a little bit. Yeah, it's, it's, I fall into the same area that you do. Like, I don't fully understand it.

I don't see the value, I guess, in having a digital this or a digital that. One person said, here's one, here's what one person said to me that made sense more than anything else. They were like, don't you collect stuff

that you don't really do anything with, and all it does is take up space in your house. And I said, yeah, I got a lot of that shit. And they were like, well, if it was digital, it would still be the same thing where you own something that's gaining value and you can sell it for more than you bought it for, but you just don't have it physically taking up space in your house. And I hated how much that logic appealed to me,

especially in my office right now that's like completely overloaded, but not only my collectibles, there's toys. a bunch of shit up there. Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff in here, right? But yeah, no, I mean, that kind of made sense to me, but that's about it. Don't you enjoy? Like, I enjoy having the stuff in my house, though.

Like, even if it is action figures, I don't open that I hang on a peg on my wall, I still like looking at it and having it be a physical thing I own. Every once in a while, I'll open up a door or open up a closet. I'm like, oh, here's this box of figures. Let me just see what's in there again because I kind of forgot. Yeah. Like, like, a little treasure hunt in your own.

But I mean, yeah, the description that that person gave that does make a lot of sense. You can have all these digital collectibles and they're not taking up space in your physical world. But I'm like, I don't know. Like I guess I just need to do more research to better understand. Because it seems like everybody's,

and that's the thing too. Everybody's doing NFTs now. Yeah. Like I'm waiting for like, I'm waiting for, it's going to invade every aspect of life. I just, I don't, I want my friends coming up to me with an app and being like, hey, check out my, check out my NFTs. I'm going to be like, I don't give a shit. Get your NFTs out of my face. Like, that's exactly what I see happening. You know, is, oh,

I got, I got my phone on me and I can always show you by NFTs. I don't give a damn about your NFTs. Let's have some drinks and talk about sports. I want to look at it. I agree. But I agree. You know, I don't know. Maybe get to the point where you have a badass app where you have some 3D ass digital, you know, trading cards on you all time that you don't have to be carrying around a brick of your cards. Uh, I like change my tune. Like I said, the, the one thing that did kind of make me feel differently about that was MLB the show.

Yeah. Yeah. I was all about those packs. Oh, all about them. Oh, not enough to buy them just yet. Nope. Didn't spend my money. Didn't spend my money.

Free. As long as you, look, we, we, we come from a different age, right? We're not young people. If you give us an opportunity to earn the things instead of buying them with real money, we're going to earn them. Yeah, we're going to, we'll look at your Facebook page, we'll share it with our friends, we'll do whatever you want us to do. Especially when a big part of earning those packs in that game is just actually playing the game.

Yeah, just playing the game. Yeah, like, oh, twist my arm. Oh, oh, I've seen play video games. It's the worst. Yes. My man, Rock, I appreciate you as always joining me. Yes, sir. This is the first time we've had you on this podcast, though,

And we're going to definitely need to have you back to talk about best baseball, especially when baseball gets its act in gear and gets back to playing. But you can get rock on Twitter at rock knowledge. That's R-O-K-N-W-L-E-D-G-E. You can get me on at cap underscore K-man with a K. This show, of course, is at P-N-X underscore D-Bax. But of course, all roads lead to at P-H-N-X underscore sports. And that is on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. If you're listening right now in your favorite audio podcasting app,

please make sure to subscribe to us there. Drop us a five-star review. I know. I know Jesse's not here, and he's typically the five-star man. But look, with the rock knowledge that knowledge, the knowledge that rock knowledge dropped tonight, he's a five-star man. So leave us a five-star review.

And make sure to jump over to YouTube and subscribe to us there. Sign up for notification so you don't miss any of our Arizona sports content that's coming out at all times. We're always coming out. I know there's going to be some sad Arizona Cardinals podcast coming out and Rocks who is not an Arizona Cardinals fan is going to listen to them and laugh and drink beers and then laugh some more while it goes on but hopefully that doesn't bother you guys too much. Rock I appreciate you joining me my man like I said

we need to have you back for sure on behalf of Rock and myself and myself we thank you guys so much for joining us and remember kids baseball is fun but it's so much more fun when you collect the cards