NOTE: These transcripts are generated automatically, so there are plenty of mistakes.
Oliver: [00:00:00] Hey guys today I am joined by Gray Thompson. He goes by TCG Buyers Club on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Really great conversation, really. thoughtful person when it comes to Pokémon cards. He adds and brings a lot of value to the podcast today talking about product design and the market with Pokémon cards.
We talk about the downfall of MetaZoo, what they did wrong, we talk about what Pokémon’s doing right, and we’re talking about that really tough time in 2020 when we’re all trying to get our hands on Pokémon products. So it was an awesome conversation and I hope you enjoyed this episode. So how are you doing today?
I’m good, Oliver. How are you? I’m doing good. I’m doing good. So how has your, how’s your TikTok journey been? I know you said off, off pod that you’re not really into TikTok. Yeah, that is how I found you. So I want to start with that.
Grey: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it, it’s been, [00:01:00] it’s been kind of mixed. I would say I, I started creating content almost three years ago, but exclusively on Instagram and I was just doing little like one minute Instagram videos.
And then Instagram started releasing reels and changing their video format eventually. Now, all Instagram videos are reels, as I’m sure you’re aware. So as I started switching my, my video production to reels, I was already doing vertical formats at that point. I thought, well, there’s no reason I shouldn’t repost this on TikTok.
So I started making videos or reels for Instagram and reposting them to TikTok. And at first it was really fun because I was growing a lot faster on tick tock than I was on Instagram, but I don’t know. The engagement was never very good. I didn’t see a lot of like repeat people. It didn’t, I didn’t get a sense that I was building a community.
I was getting some exposure. It was a little more consistent and reliable than Instagram, which I felt like they would just sort of [00:02:00] spin a roulette and occasionally say like your video gets distributed now. And it would go, you know, a couple thousand people instead of like tens to a couple hundred. So it was really fun when it was growing faster.
It passed my Instagram numbers eventually, but then slowly kind of plateaued. And I have never put a lot of effort into the kind of content that works well in those formats, I don’t think. And so after about two years, two and a half years, maybe of exclusively doing short form content on those platforms, I switched to focusing on YouTube in the last year, and it’s been like, Complete 180.
I still have a small following of just past 400 subscribers recently, which was really exciting. The, the type of content I want to do, I think is less hype driven and less entertaining and more try to be kind of thoughtful and considerate and dive into topics, and I haven’t figured out how to do that on those short form formats in a way that seems to.
Satisfy those audiences were on YouTube, you know, at eight to 12 minute [00:03:00] video of me sharing some thoughts on things seems to do quite well by comparison. And I’ve been really enjoying the engagement and the very small community that I’ve seen emerge from doing that. And so that’s, that’s kind of my tick tock journey is I’ve done it.
I’ve never really liked it or felt like I I’ve hit my stride there. And now it’s extremely. And I, I’m trying not to forget about it, but I think I posted my first video to tick tock and like six months, just in the last couple of weeks, which was maybe what you saw when you reached out.
Oliver: Yeah. So that’s interesting.
Thoughtful is exactly how I would describe your YouTube content, by the way. I really liked that about it and I’m kind of. It sounds like we have a very similar journey in content creation, but switch TikTok and Instagram for me. Instagram is like completely, every time I get on there, like stuff is popping up and I don’t know what, I feel like a boomer.
Yeah. I’m like, what is [00:04:00] happening?
Grey: I mean, obviously me being on Instagram is first is the boomer move, but let’s be clear.
Oliver: That’s funny. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe, Hey, TikTok is really, it’s like Gen Z dominant, isn’t it?
Grey: It’s definitely where. I still aspire to figuring out short form because I think, and when I say short form, I do kind of mean Tik Toks.
Like I, I mainly do short form on Instagram has been my focus, but really that short form format I think has the same properties and same success metrics that drive it, whether it’s on Tik Tok or Instagram reels, or I’m sure YouTube, excuse me, YouTube shorts as well, probably has very similar kind of mechanisms that they’re evaluating and using to inform their distribution.
But I want to do better at it. Like, I don’t think not finding my stride in it yet, not naturally being inclined to the content as well, there is really an excuse. It’s just something that I’ve put a decent amount of effort in [00:05:00] and struggled to figure out, and I’ve now found something that I’m enjoying a lot that works better, but it’s like, there’s no reason I can’t figure out content that works on those platforms as well.
It just hasn’t clicked yet. So it’s still, still on my, my roadmap, I suppose, is to learn that better.
Oliver: So it’s, it’s really easy for us because we can film something for one platform and then repost it to other platforms. But if you had to pick one for Pokemon card content, which do you think would be best for a beginner?
Grey: That’s an interesting question actually, because the, and maybe you can relate to this, like the path that I took, ultimately I would say YouTube is the best. Like I’ve found that by far my favorite. I think YouTube seems. To have the best sense of like different types of content and different audiences.
So I, I know there’s obviously people on Instagram who want more thoughtful content. It was really [00:06:00] hard for me to figure out how to discover those people there. Whereas on YouTube, they seem to understand that and get it in front of the right people a lot more effectively. So in that respect, I think it’s the best.
However, I I’m only on YouTube because I spent two years learning how to make videos. On shorts and I picked shorts because it was a lower barrier. Like it was really intimidating to think like, I’ll just make one minute videos. I started being like, I think I make a one minute video a day. I was like, I’ll open a pack, have a video of the pack opening a day.
A lot of people do that where they literally like film and post the video each day. I would. Open in batch and then film videos in batch and release them on a daily cycle because I wanted to learn how to edit. Like I wasn’t interested in just posting videos. I wanted to learn how to create videos, how to use the software.
So it was kind of my, my stepping stone for doing a little bit more. And the confidence I gained doing the shorts, which was sort of the low barrier, [00:07:00] easy to get started step. Then led to attempting long form, which has had a whole new slew of challenges, but I’ve at least got. Some momentum. I’ve learned to really enjoy parts of the process and editing and things like that.
And so it’s, it’s helped me, I think, come into YouTube with a bunch of experience versus if I was just getting started. Now, I don’t know that, if that matters. Like, if I just started on YouTube, maybe I would have been better off. I, I, I will never know, you know?
Oliver: Yeah, no, I feel, I feel the exact same way about that.
And I was going back on some of your older TikTok content where you were opening some, man, I can’t remember which, which said it was, I think I went through a few actually. Yeah. So the way you did it was you open the booster pack and you post that, or sorry, you open the booster box and you post that you open two packs, you post that.
If you get a hit. You post that hit and as I was going through it, I was like, holy [00:08:00] crap. This is actually such a great element in storytelling Because the approach I’ve taken is open up a booster box and then edit out Everything but the hits and yeah, I mean that that’s a different approach But I think I like yours better because it was like a journey.
It was actual like storytelling through this booster box You
Grey: Yeah, thank you. That is kind of what I was going for. I will admit though, there’s an aspect of convenience to it. I was like, you know what? I, I like opening booster boxes, but I’m not like a mass ripper. I’m not a completionist in any sense of the word.
I, I just enjoy the experience of opening packs from each set to kind of feel out the set and the cards and hopefully pull something great. And I was already like opening a booster box of every set. So I thought, okay, I’m just going to start filming it. And trying to turn it into content. And I would [00:09:00] say a, a pet peeve of mine within the Pokemon community is the overemphasis of the hits in particular.
So it was actually really important to me to open the packs, show every card, talk about the cards, like try to find things to talk about the cards. Which The reality with most cards is that it’s going to end up being artwork or like playable factors. The average common or uncommon card. You, there’s only so much you can say about it.
I found that those were things that I could really anchor on, but those were also things that I’m really interested in and enjoy about the card. So it was really easy for me to do that. And I’m glad you enjoyed it. I think, I think there was, I was really proud of things I was doing with those videos.
They just never quite found their, they found their audience really slowly. And. They got very little distribution. Like they weren’t things, they weren’t videos that people would like share with their friends to be like, yo, you got to see this, which I think is one of the metrics that really [00:10:00] triggers the, the Instagram and, and Tik TOK algorithms to distribute it to more people.
I think it’s content that people would find in their feeds. And for some people, it was kind of like soothing, relaxing, learn about the cards, see what’s pulled to your point. If you’re following along, you can kind of see what’s pulled each week, each day. And kind of work through it that way. I think that, that, that was kind of a, that was sort of the idea.
It just never, never triggered the distribution in a way that got in front of the people who would like that. So it was just really like painfully slow growth. And yeah, I was always shocked how many people would unfollow too. Like, I was like, I can’t imagine what I’m doing that triggers an unfollow and less just people not interested in Pokemon cards anymore.
But I was like, Causey, like adding a couple of followers a week. And then while losing a follower or two and. I, I eventually shifted to doing giveaways. I found that, you know, usually you open a booster box and you, I love what I pull, but I rarely pull anything that I’m like, [00:11:00] so emotionally invested in that I really care.
So I started trying to lean into that storyline angle of let’s open the box, talk about the set a little, then open the packs, see what cards we pull, but to tie it all together was also why might you want to follow along in that journey was that someone is going to win all of the hits at the end of this.
And that fueled a little more growth once I started doing that, but it was still like, it just felt like I was buying followers at that point and still not discovering a mechanism that actually led to like true organic discovery and engagement from people. And so that was after doing a couple of those giveaways is when I paused and was like, well, what am I, what am I doing here?
Like I’m throwing tons of hours and energy at making these videos and trying really hard to do something that I thought was a little different and engaging and it just wasn’t clicking. So at some point, you gotta say, Alright, well maybe, if I really wanna reach Pokemon fans, then I I’ve gotta try something else.
And that was when I thought [00:12:00] the switch to YouTube kinda came up.
Oliver: Yeah, yeah. Okay. So something I wanted to ask you, or something I’ve observed in creators is that I think if you start out, or maybe if you find it later on, if you have a vision of what you want your channel to be, what you want your brand to be, what you want to represent, and what kind of audience you want to watch you, those creators tend to be more successful if you’re Thank you.
Constantly switching directions, directions and trying to figure out like who you are as a channel, then that growth is going to be really hard to come by. So I want to ask you, what is your grand vision or your end goal for TCG Buyers Club? I guess specifically YouTube, because that’s what you’re focused on now.
What do you want to be known as? So that’s a
Grey: great question. I’m actually very curious what your answer is going to be to that as well. So maybe once I’ve answered, I’ll shoot that back your way. I guess [00:13:00] the, the truth is that I, I haven’t quite nailed in on that, like, direction or vision yet. There is a path that I’m, I’m starting to move towards, and I don’t know how it’s going to do, but it definitely lines up a lot more with my specific interests and expertise, which is a little bit more business minded.
And so, I I try to make as much very thoughtful content about Pokemon cards. I do have an affinity for like sealed investing in particular. I’ve got quite a bit of like hoarded sealed product. Most of the stuff in my display is sealed product and I don’t know where that comes from. I really, I really like owning sealed products.
And I, I’ve always had a bit of an investing lean. Like when I was a kid, I was super into the idea of the stock market and was like, In my like stock market clubs when I was a, you know, a 12 year old and 13 year old, like fake, you know, you fake investing, like picking stocks and like fake investing. And I [00:14:00] specialized in finance when I went to school.
So it was kind of a piece of me that was always inclined in that direction. And so Pokemon somehow tied some of my, you know, nerdy video game fandom from my childhood with this kind of investing business lens. And so I do speak a lot about the Pokemon investing space. I just, I find that Investing itself is so kind of boring.
Like I will never, I hopefully will never make content that is like, here’s the products you should buy. Here’s the products you don’t buy. And so where that lens has shifted is starting to look at, I guess, my more recent career experience, which is in like product design, because I work in software products, but I spend a lot of time thinking about as a business, what do we want people to do?
How can we help those people and try to like bring those things together? And so I find myself. Looking a lot of Pokemon products through the same lens and evaluating products from the lens of this sort of product [00:15:00] design and business motivations of the companies behind them. And then from that, now I, I kind of want to get more into the business side of Pokemon and specifically the way that collectors and I’ve said primarily collectors who then maybe evolve into businesses, but the way people make money in Pokemon and how they do it.
Uh, just really interesting to me. So looking at like, what does it mean to be like a sealed investor? I want to try like buying a collection and seeing if I can like grade and flip the cards and stuff like that. Like basically segmenting out the different business models that I see people talk about or carry out in the hobby and try to get more experience and understanding of them, communicate them, demonstrate them to people and things like that.
So I guess the vision is, I kind of want to be like the business guy in the Pokemon space, but. I, I don’t have a Pokemon business, I haven’t really made money in Pokemon, so it’s kind of the journey of learning how people do that, trying some things, and trying to kind of document it and present it for people [00:16:00] in a way that’s educative and, like, educational and informative.
Oliver: Very good answer. I, hopefully I remember, but try to remind me to recommend you a channel after this. Sure. On that note. Yeah, I’d love to. Yeah, Pokemon Business is It’s fun because I’m super envious of those people who, who can make a full time income off of this hobby.
Grey: Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s, I think it’s really interesting and I think there is, there’s some really obvious paths, which is sort of where I want to start exploring.
So stuff like investing, trying to like grade and flip cards and stuff like that. But I’m sure there’s like endlessly, like there’s other businesses that are adjacent to it, that are really interesting that I want to look at. And I particularly love like I love product design. I think it’s really interesting to look at the pandemic.
I shouldn’t say I love product design. Obviously I love physical products or businesses that create products that support the community versus like the obvious [00:17:00] things like being a market maker and in a collectible is a very like predictable, obvious business model. Not, not easy by any stretch, but you see it everywhere.
And a lot of people do it, but an interesting note from the pandemic pandemic. When everything boomed is that people, some people were saying how, you know, the, the best investment during the pandemic was not any specific card, like Pokemon card or product. It was like, you know, semi rigid sleeves and stuff like that.
Like the other products that everyone in the hobby needed to grade cards and stuff like that. Like just getting penny sleeves is kind of expensive at times. And those were the cardboard gold, like semi rigids that are sort of the recommended. I guess protector for PSA, like those just disappeared. You couldn’t find them anywhere.
They’re selling for like eight times as much as they used to after being widespread, always available and affordable before suddenly kind of premium. And so products like that are just really interesting and easy to [00:18:00] miss, I suppose. So I don’t know what that’ll look like, but I’m, I’m keeping my eye out more for people who are making like new types of sleeves.
You’ve got like Vault X, which is doing some really great and creative things with binders. And. They’re literally just sitting down and saying, people put their collections and binders, like people like building master sets. Like, how can we support that? And they’re like, let’s create a theme binder for every set.
And it’s like, brilliant. It’s amazing. It matches the set. It’s got the name of the set on the spine. So when you set it up on a display, you can see here’s my scarlet violet one versus two versus three binders. It’s baffling to me that companies like, you know, I don’t know, ultra pro and like the established players, nobody sat down and said, this might make sense.
Maybe, maybe we could support these hobbies a little bit better. Like, I don’t know. So when a company does that, I get really excited and fired up about little things like that, that are just. Thoughtful enhancements to an obvious product and whether it’s like a startup trying to [00:19:00] mix things up with a slight twist on something or just a well designed product for a more established player.
I just, I get really fired up about that stuff. So that’s where I’m hoping to go into.
Oliver: Yeah. I feel the same way. I’m always trying to like, I was like, man, I got to think of something because like, there’s so much, you know, a product comes out and it’s just so baffling that It’s here now, and it wasn’t here last year.
People hadn’t done
Grey: it before that. And why didn’t I
Oliver: think of it? For sure. A hundred percent. Um, so, so I hope this isn’t too much of a shift, and I’m actually deviating from, from my plan. But wait, before
Grey: we go too far, I did want to hear your, your vision and, and direction for your content creation journey as well.
Because I also think it’ll, since this is the first time we’ve chatted, it’s like, you know what? I’d, I’d love to know what your, where your head’s at with your channel as well. Awesome. Obviously I’m speaking to your audience right now.
Oliver: Thank you for asking. Yeah. It’s, it’s better if a podcast isn’t one sided.[00:20:00]
So a couple of years ago I built sleeve, no card behind. com, which started out as a tiny little blog. Me writing like, Oh, this is how you properly sleeve your cards. That really grew and it’s mostly educational content. And I found that that really filled a niche. On at least on Google search that other people were either doing a really poor job of or it was just non existent at all Because people especially after 2020 people are searching like how do I pre grade my cards?
You know, what is a top loader and like do I have to use this, you know, just all these questions. So totally so then I started shifting to YouTube because I thought, Hey, these blog posts should have a video on them because let’s be honest, no one wants to read these. You know, even the short [00:21:00] articles, people skim it.
So I made a few YouTube videos. They were like, okay, , looking back on them now, my, my videos from a year ago, man, they are cringe. Yeah. But I, I do have a focus now that I want to be the. Educational Pokemon TCG channel on YouTube and specifically like how to handle your cards, how to properly store your cards, etc.
Because I think that’s actually a niche that needs to be filled. That’s awesome. I’m just poking around your
Grey: website right now. Thanks. That’s awesome. That’s really funny because I haven’t done it yet, but I own TCGBuyersClub. com
Variations of the domain and the SEO play is something that I’ve had in mind is just making useful content and in a very similar vein to what you’ve already done, which is [00:22:00] awesome. It’s like, there’s like, what about better online resources for just basic stuff around participating in a collectible space, which is sort of the, yeah, the premise, I guess, behind the name is just.
The club idea is sort of the community of collectors and people who bought literally who buy cards, obviously, like my hat says, I buy cardboard,
Oliver: spend all my money on cardboard.
Grey: Yeah. I was like, how could I like, just anything that you could do to support those, the people that you’re going after makes a lot of sense.
So that educational content is awesome.
Oliver: Yeah. SEO is incredibly
Grey: stressful.
Oliver: Yeah. Be prepared for
Grey: that. Yeah. I’ve got, I’ve never pursued any SEO strategies and any like personal hobbies or, or businesses, but I have a lot of experience with it in my career as well. So I know it’s, it can be tough.
Oliver: It can be tough for most of 2020, probably most of 2023.[00:23:00]
I was doing extremely well. On Google search. And then there was a Google algorithm update, really big one. I don’t know if you know about it in September, Ed, maybe you’ve noticed just before we recorded here, if you were Googling anything, Reddit’s usually at the top now, Oh, interesting. It wasn’t like that before.
So my traffic got cut down to by 90%. Interesting. And so I was like, okay, well, you know what? It’s time to just shift to YouTube. Yeah. So. That’s when I started like taking YouTube seriously was in like November last year. And I still have this carryover of SEO. Like I just can’t help it. So I think that’s where the, the entertainment, sorry, educational content comes from because people are using YouTube as a search engine.
It’s the second largest search engine in the world. So people are asking [00:24:00] how to sleeve your cards. How do you fix? You know, warped cards that are starting to bend, et cetera.
Grey: I think it’s, this is just speaking from personal experience more than anything, but there was definitely a turning point in my life where I realized that for like how to content, like written how to content, which is generally what you would find like text based search, Google just nowhere near as good as, as video, how to content for like so many different topics.
So I started. If I was looking for how to do something, YouTube was my starting point for my search versus Google. So it makes a ton of sense for your content as well.
Oliver: Yeah, that, that was a big. Big lesson for me big tough lesson because you know as Google’s evolving It’s pushing YouTube to the top of the search results now.
Mm hmm and and read it apparently and read it And I’m like, hey, I got to be honest with myself here Like if I’m searching something I go to YouTube almost every time and if it’s [00:25:00] not YouTube, it’s tick tock I don’t read articles on Google. So why am I writing them? And it’s like, man, that was such a hard pill to swallow for me.
Yeah. After all that time too. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Grey: There is. So a strategy that, that I’ve seen work in my, my job is like, you’ve got a ton of articles, so like very, like it’s a, it’s a blog, I guess, functionally. Right. One of the things that we focused on was not necessarily like more content, but But just like hyper focusing on content that was targeting specific keywords we wanted to pursue and like iterating on that content to just try to make it like better and better and better, which is mainly an exercise of making it as like useful as possible for the given query that we were going after.
I feel like historically, you know, the SEO play was like writing lots of new articles. And I I’m not an SEO expert, so I can’t comment definitively, but I, my instinct is that there’s a shift. [00:26:00] To instead iterating on updating and expanding on content to make it as much of like the single destination that solves every problem you might have around a given keyword and like really focusing on building quality, like smaller number of quality pages over quantity in the event that there’s like some well, good performing pages that you have, you could still like go back and try to improve them and keep kind of lifting them up.
Oliver: Yeah, that’s something you got to do. Like I’m constantly, I’m trying to focus on YouTube. I’m like, Oh, I got to update this article. Like, it’s just, that’s a lot. It is a lot. I had, I had a team before that, that big Google hit by to let everyone go losing essentially 90 percent of the site’s revenue. Oh, Jesus.
That’s wild, man.
Grey: Well, I hope it goes better on YouTube because I suppose like. We’re not safe on YouTube either, you know, but at least you have your subscribers who will come back in your [00:27:00] audience I suppose is the difference.
Oliver: Yeah. Yeah, and I think on YouTube you’re only I don’t know I think your only big risk is like a big Demonetization ban or something like that.
I know that just seems to come out of the blue for some people
Grey: don’t swear too much Yeah, yeah,
Oliver: I guess so So I did want to shift the conversation to MediZoo for a little bit. Hopefully that’s not too jarring.
Grey: No, not at all. I mean, I, I hadn’t made a single piece of MediZoo content until the recent news and I’ve done two videos on it that for the time being will probably stay the only two videos I do, unless something like new comes up or I don’t know, in the future I want to revisit it, but there are some of my top performing videos.
So it’s trending
Oliver: right now, right? should be. So I’m wondering from a product design perspective, how do you feel about MediZoo and, and to [00:28:00] follow that up, do you feel like their product design foreshadowed this, this downfall at all?
Grey: I think I could spin the narrative either way. There are things that I genuinely thought were really cool about MediZoo.
I bought a couple of boxes eventually. So I made a video about how. I resisted it for a long time because I think the, the such blatant copycatting of, of the Pokemon formula just was a bit of a red flag. Some of the behaviors I’d heard about, you know, Mike, the creator of MetaZoo and the discord is a red flag.
Like there’s a lot of things that just rubbed me the wrong way, but. There’s also just so much content, like people really into it. Like the next big thing. It’s exciting. And there were things that I also liked about it that were kind of tugging at me over time. So I picked up a couple of boxes, nothing crazy.
And now they’re, they’re in my display, looking over at them with a little, they’re, they’re in my display [00:29:00] accompanied by this guy. Yeah. Nice. Perfect. Bit of a reminder for me, but in terms of whether the, The product design would have signaled the death. Not necessarily. I think the biggest issue that gave me pause with the entire game was It didn’t actually seem like there was much of a game behind the trading card game.
And I never played it. It’s a big caveat. I did do some research in how it’s played. And It just seems so gimmicky and, like, poorly thought out and didn’t make a lot of sense. The whole, like, fourth wall mechanic was, like, really, a really big question mark for a game. If you want, like, a fun game, maybe, but if you want it to be, like, have a sort of a competitive community, there’s already so much, like, randomness inherent in playing a trading card.
Like, the idea that, like, In a specific weather, like you’re, it’s a [00:30:00] tournament and the weather is what it is, like that might manipulate how your deck performs, was just like a really strange feature. I assumed over time that feature would get like phased out or changed because it just didn’t make a lot of sense.
But there was one other thing that really irked me, which is that supposedly, like, once you play a card into your battlefield, like, you can’t move it. It’s like, you put it down and that’s the only place. You can’t, like, reorganize your play space as you play. So, like, you lay things down and then I guess you could tap them or do whatever.
They have to, like, turn to indicate different effects or whatever. But you couldn’t move them or reorganize them. Like, that, that just seemed To me, this, this is obviously not a signal of anything, but that was like the biggest red flag. I thought that makes no sense in the context of a game design. That’s just a pure gimmick for some reason to, I don’t know, make it fun.
And it just rubbed me the wrong way. And now what I think we see with the trading card game [00:31:00] with MetaZoo is there was a game. I know there’s people who played it and loved it. I’ve heard many people say that they thought it was a great game and they loved it. So. My thoughts on it being kind of gimmicky and silly aside, I know there’s people who did love the game, but there weren’t enough, and, and so they, MetaZoo tried to skip over the foundation of establishing a trading card game, because they tried to get, like, the hype and the volume without actually establishing a core game.
Like fan base and player base and collector base behind the product that could sustain it. And so they had this huge audience of people who are all hoping that it would be worth more and doing everything in their power to kind of fuel this community in this sense of it being more. It was very much, I think, a classic bubble.
It’s a bunch of people buying it because they thought that someone else would buy it for more later just because that’s what it had been doing. And without any actual foundation underneath that to support it, which to me is the [00:32:00] actual core kind of player base fan base. It, it, it’s just a really fickle foundation.
I was like, so the moment things start turning people bail because they’re only in it for the money. And I think you just see people flee that now suddenly they’ve made way too much of the product and it gets flooded to the market. And we kind of see what we saw. I was surprised though. I thought I thought the foundation was actually a little stronger than that.
And I thought that the business would be able to reset to a smaller size and build off of that. And I don’t think it was inevitable that it collapses, but I think the business opted to risk the future of the business and the product on growth instead of capitalizing on the growth that they experienced and trying to establish that foundation out of it.
I think clearly they just pushed themselves too hard to grow and, and. Sunk the business because of it. So that’s pretty like rambly long winded answer. So I guess my too long didn’t read summary would [00:33:00] be the copycatting is definitely a red flag, but because of the copycatting, there were things that I really liked about it that were kind of nostalgic and cool.
And I think it had some potential personally, but the game, the game mechanics seemed to be rushed and put together just to like justify creating the collectible. It’s sort of how it felt. And probably as a combination of that and the overinvestment in growth strategies versus establishing their sort of core fan base, collector base and distribution base, they kind of risk too much trying to push the product up too much and printing too much that ultimately destabilized it.
Oliver: Fantastic answer. Yeah, I think those points are really hard to argue with. I think I think he nailed it. Yeah, it’s really too bad, you know, because I never played it. I actually didn’t even purchase any MetaZoo myself. Smart. I thought they were cool. I didn’t know anything about MetaZoo, but they popped off and I was like, Oh, those look [00:34:00] rad.
I actually really liked the, the art style and everything too.
Grey: Yeah. That that’s the thing is it, what I, what I imagined their trajectory was because I focus a lot on Pokemon card art. I really like the artists. I have certain artists that I. After I’ve opened enough sets and I’ve seen cards, I realize it’s the same, like, similar styles and the same person.
Or in the case of Oswaldo Cato, he has like two distinct styles that he deploys at different times, which is super cool. You start to kind of develop an affinity for them. I start paying attention to the names and start kind of collecting my favorites. I’m really into that. I think one of the weaknesses of MetaZoo is that the directions seem to be to take all the artists and tell them to make the same style of art.
It doesn’t look like they had much room for their own personal expression, at least in, in the style of art that they were creating for the game. But the trade off of that was that they were creating a bunch of art with a nostalgic style that, you know, [00:35:00] everyone associates with Ken Sugimori’s art for Pokemon.
And in the beginning I thought, you know what, it probably makes sense to do that because that’s capturing my attention. That’s capturing other people’s attention and use that initial copycatting To build the core fan base. And then over time, as MetaZoo establishes itself and builds that core fan base, then you can start deviating and having like, let’s see Mothman done in different styles.
It doesn’t have to always look like what we associate with Pokemon, because when we look at Pokemon now, it doesn’t look anything like Ken Sugimori’s art. Like there’s so many different artists representing these characters in all these unique ways. So I thought that was maybe the plan. And I didn’t think that that was a bad plan.
That was going to be a really hard plan. I definitely didn’t buy the idea. Like I struggled with the idea that the cryptids have anywhere near the ability to establish this fandom as Pokemon does. Like I know people love these characters all over the world, but [00:36:00] turning that into like a Pokemon level IP, that was a big stretch, but it was, I definitely thought that it was possible to build a fan base, just not like a huge fan base.
And people were acting like it was going to be the next Pokemon. It’s like, obviously it’s not going to be the next Pokemon is Pokemon. There isn’t a next Pokemon. It could be another IP and like monster collecting universe that people like, but it was, it was going to, it was always going to be hard because as I said, that is like another monster collecting universe that people like.
Like now we’re seeing with pal world, people already like pals. I haven’t played the game myself. I do want to check it out. But it’s example of like hardcore copycatting, but bringing some new ideas and things into the mix in a way that like, yes, people look at it and go, these pals, like this pal looks like this Pokemon, and I know nothing about the legalities around this.
So I can’t comment on that, but obviously they took a lot of inspiration from [00:37:00] Pokemon and yet people are playing that game and they’re starting to build relationships to the pals and they’re starting to like these characters just like they like Pokemon. So. There’s no, I totally believe MetaZoo could and was beginning to do that.
They just needed way more time. Like people acted like they could turn MetaZoo into a Pokemon level IP, or at least a long term sustainable IP. And just like a couple of years when really you may not be introducing the world to Bigfoot, but you’re introducing the world to Bigfoot in this universe in a way that they’re actually going to care about over the longterm, like that.
That’s going to take so much. Time. And in hindsight, I think it’s clear you can’t rush that. They tried to like sprint people to that point. And really they just needed to build a sustainable business that could continue giving people reasons to care about these characters over years and years. And, you know, another 10 years, we could be saying a very different [00:38:00] thing about like Medizu Bigfoot, like top tier, love that guy, like, Oh, some of the card arts, so cool, et cetera, but they didn’t let themselves get there.
Oliver: Yeah, I kind of want to compare and contrast to universes. I don’t know if you collect any universes. It’s no,
Grey: I don’t. Oh man, I, I know I’ve heard of it, but wow, I’m totally blanking on universes.
Oliver: Uh, that’s, that’s my point. Actually, it’s very well established and yet it’s still struggling. And. Universe is, it’s a great game.
They rebranded. It used to be UFS, Universal Fighting System. The whole idea is to bring in multiple IPs and have your favorite anime characters from like My Hero or like Cowboy Bebop fight each other. Right. But they, they were really hot. I think like 2006 to 2008 people loved universes or UFS at the time.
And [00:39:00] they’ve kind of been. Struggling for years now. And that’s now when I bring up universes, people are like, Oh yeah, that card game. That’s like having a really hard time keeping their head above the water and to see Meta Zoo spike, and then just totally bomb like that, it makes me reflect on universes in a way that’s like, I hope these guys are doing okay because they’re doing the opposite of what Meta Zoo did.
Hmm. Like they’re working really hard to build community and they don’t have like public domain characters, right? It’s all, it’s all licensed IPs from, from animes. And it’s just like, I don’t even know what my point is anymore, but no, I know what you’re getting
Grey: at. Like it is, there is a comparison there, which is that they’ve at least sustained themselves over a long period of time now.
Even if they’ve, they have struggled [00:40:00] because they, so this is maybe where I heard about it. The was, or maybe it’s just a separate game that my hero academia game that came out, like the new game that came out a couple years ago, like recently, there was a little bit of like hype and excitement around that when it came out.
Was that part of the universes or was that like a separate IP spinoff? Do you know?
Oliver: Yeah. So this is sort of another issue they’re having is their. Their PR and their marketing. It’s confusing. They’re not good at it, unfortunately. And so Universe is what it is is it’s a Card game that’s built up of multiple IPs and when they brought in my hero as an IP They I think they really wanted to leverage my hero because yeah was and still is really hot It’s a it’s a trending anime.
And so they created a new a new format You Of universes. We’re like, yeah, you can go ahead and you can throw [00:41:00] in Trigon, Cowboy Bebop and My Hero into a single deck, or you can play just My Hero decks. Like it’s a whole format. So it is part of universes, but there’s a lot of people who just collect and just play the My Hero format of universes.
Grey: Right. Interesting. So that’s definitely where I heard about it. Was when that was coming out. Because I love My Hero Academia so I was curious about it, but I don’t know where it comes from. I’ve been so skeptical of other card games and I’m so glad that I have that instinct. It would be so easy to get carried away in all these new releases.
And I’ve managed to avoid getting burned. Yeah. Thanks to that skepticism. So I was equally skeptical about this. And I think I’m looking at some of the cards. I think one of the criticisms I remember hearing about, which I do agree with is looks like, I think it’s a lot of [00:42:00] just art taken from the anime, like scenes from the anime or, yeah.
Screencaps. Yeah. Which is a, it makes sense, but no one likes that. No, and I, so much of, so growing up, I remember, you know, in the late 90s, early 2000s, collecting Pokemon cards and, you know, there’s like the tops Pokemon cards, which are all art from like the anime Pokemon. I don’t know exactly how those work, but I was just never into that.
Like, because I guess Pokemon, I played the games and I had. pixel art that looked one way in the game and then that incredible like trainer’s handbook booklet that came with the games That was full of Ken Sugimori’s artwork all in like full color That already I think it established this sense of you’ve got Pokemon in the game and then you have like artists depictions of Pokemon in other places and Then the trading card game went further by bringing new artists in [00:43:00] and and a few other styles That’s just so, that idea of like, I love the way this art depicts this Pokemon is so foundational to how I approach Pokemon.
That, I just, I struggled with the top stuff, like anything that depicts art, like, scenes and art from the animes or the movies, just printed onto cardboard. It just, it’s never done it for me. Which is too bad, because I love my hero. I think there could be So much potential there. And now I think we are seeing that the flip side of that with like one piece, which I also haven’t collected, haven’t bought, haven’t really followed.
And I’ve never watched or like never read the mag. I never watched the anime either. I’ve solely watched the live action Netflix. So some of my friends give me shit for that, but I don’t have any real relationship with one piece. So it’s easy for me to avoid it for now. But if I can tell awesome art on the cards, depicting the characters, like It is a manga.
It is an [00:44:00] anime. There’s tons of visual material representing these characters that they could draw from, but instead they’re commissioning talented artists to do new, unique works that I’ve drawn tons of inspiration from all those sources, I’m sure, but at least makes it something unique, which I think could be so important in giving people a justification for buying the collectible, I guess.
If it’s just a printing of something that’s existed for another purpose, it feels very secondary. But I think when someone creates something special for this new format, it helps convey some idea of value. Like, why would you care about the cards when you could watch the anime if all the card art is just the anime?
Oliver: Yeah, I know universe this is They are going away from that they are listening to that. Yeah, and a lot of the new cards coming out like right now are Not screen caps from the anime and that’s cool. [00:45:00] They’ve secured attack on Titan as their next IP No, it’s coming out later this year And as a huge fan, I’m like, you guys better, you better step it up, you know?
Because those, those I will buy and collect because that’s one of the, that’s something that MetaZoo couldn’t do. Right. It’s like, Oh, public domain, like Bigfoot. Yay. You know, you can’t bring in this huge demographic of Bigfoot fans the same way that you can bring an attack on Titan fans.
Grey: For sure. Well, I mean, it’s interesting because Universes is, you know, doing what Weiss Schwarz has done.
And it seems like Weiss has done a better job of nailing the formula and figuring it all out. But I’ve never collected Weiss. I do have, I have this box of Weiss Schwarz Adventure Time. Oh, no way. That’s really cool.
Oliver: Yeah.
Grey: That’s really cool. So I, I love Adventure Time.
Oliver: [00:46:00] Me too. Me too.
Grey: And so I just bought it because I love this is exactly you were saying I just love adventure time I love trading cards heard there were trading cards of adventure time.
I said, ah screw it I’m just gonna build a small section of my display. That is my adventure time section and put that box there But I was gonna say that the art on the cards when I’ve seen online does kind of look like Screen cappy from the show. Like I don’t know if they actually commissioned artists for it And I know it wasn’t a popular set when it came out But like a lot of Weiss, it’s kind of scarce now.
So I think that box is worth a couple of hundred bucks or something like that. Now, damn, that’s cool. I mean, that’s assuming you can find a buyer to be clear. I don’t think there’s a lot of people buying adventure time, white Schwartz boxes, but, but that’s like totally it is like, I think there’s so much value in harnessing some of these IPs into trading card games.
And that is something like. Meta zoo was, they were taking the bet that they could turn. These, you [00:47:00] know, copyright free ideas into an IP that people cared about, which basically hasn’t been done by anyone except Pokemon and Pokemon did off the back of the success of the games. Like that was the seed. So that was a huge, that was a huge move.
Like I do think that Weiss’s approach and universe’s approach are really smart and interesting. So yeah, I’m curious. I’ll, I’ll keep my eye on universes. I’ll, I’ll check your site from time to time, see if I can learn more about them.
Oliver: How do you feel about the, the tops cards now? Because like you, I didn’t, I wasn’t really into them when I was a kid, but now I want them.
Grey: Oh yeah.
Oliver: Yeah.
Grey: I still don’t, I don’t desire them in any way, but I like them more now than I did as a kid. Because those early anime references now feel more meaningful and. Yeah, they’re definitely no now it’s nostalgic. At the time, it felt cheap. [00:48:00] So, I don’t blame people for for liking them though, but it it’s still I’m still not there.
Oliver: Are there any non TCG Pokémon cards you do collect?
Grey: Mmm
Oliver: No. Just strictly TCG? Just strictly TCG,
Grey: yeah. Like most
Oliver: like most people, I guess.
Grey: Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn’t say never, but that’s definitely where I’ve I’ve focused and what interests me the most. Yeah.
Oliver: Yeah. It’s hard to, uh, lately I’ve been into the top son and Bandai cards of 96, 97, but it’s mostly TCG for me as well.
I did notice that you, do you primarily collect Japanese? I would say so. Yeah.
Grey: I, I think like a lot of people, I was really getting back into Pokemon the end of 2020. Yeah. Into 2021 and like English became impossible to find and I saw some content about Japanese cards and they were a little cheaper. So I started [00:49:00] buying some and very quickly found that there’s so much I like about Japanese cards starts with just some of the qualities you hear people talk about like print quality and quality controls a lot better, which I would say I definitely seem to be true.
A lot of the effects that we get like if you look at a like a radiant card. In North America. Like they’re, they’re kind of just underwhelming, but in, in the Japanese versions, they just pop like crazy. They’re really, they really feel and look quite special. So there’s something to the Japanese manufacturing process where they, they can get a lot more out of the effects they’re going for, it seems than what the English printers seem to be capable of.
So those things are all true. But what really drew me to the Japanese product was. I just liked the Japanese business so much more, and I don’t know, I, I’ve never been to Japan. I want to go, but haven’t made it there yet. I don’t know much about Japanese culture, so I can’t really say like what it is. I think I’ve heard people [00:50:00] argue.
It’s like the way that Japanese people do business and their values are a little different, which shapes how they approach some of these things. But I like the set design. I like smaller sets with tighter themes. I really came to appreciate that. But on top of that, the way that the Japanese business seems to operate is they try their damnedest to meet demand and get a lot of boxes out there and get the prices as cheap as possible.
But then they just like, stop, they just stop making them. And they’re like, you had your chance. We tried to make them. If you got them, you got them. If you didn’t, you didn’t. And as a sealed collector primarily and investor, I find that ultimately so respectful of the collector. Now. My perspective is very shaped by a market where Japanese product became hotter and more valuable than it probably has been in the history of the TCG.
But you know, I, I master set at shining fates, for example, it’s the only set that I’ve master set it other than evolutions, which is what got me back into the hobby. [00:51:00] And man, it was, it was expensive. It was such a grind. I’m up here in Canada, like there are no deals in Canada. Like you, you can’t, you go to TCG player, you can get some prices, but the only people who ship to Canada aren’t the cheapest.
So you’re always paying like a couple dollars more just to get someone who will ship to Canada. Then we get dinged with duties on entries. So you get, you know, an extra like 20 percent at least usually on top of what you already paid for it. Like there’s no deals anywhere. So it’s a lot of just like 5 cards, like 5 shinies dishing it out.
It ends up being like. It was a lot of money to master set that, but I was newer to the hobby. Then I wanted to try master setting because people really like it. And I don’t know. I, I get, I, I waited prices got a lot cheaper and I’ve tried to buy when it was more affordable to do so. And the point of this story is that Pokemon in North America just kept printing more shining fates.
They should have moved on, but they just kept printing it. [00:52:00] And releasing it and prices kept going down, down, down, down, down, down, down. And some people will say, that’s great. That’s what they should do. But as someone who like waited a year for prices to get lower and then thought I was buying and building my master set at a time when it seemed like now was the, it was certainly at that point, the best time to do it.
And then watch them, like, keep printing it, and prices keep going down more and more and more. I just felt stupid in the end. I was like, I spent so much money on this worthless master set. And, as much as it is nice to have the set in flip through, I found that experience really off putting. So I haven’t tried master setting anything since.
And by comparison, I find You I find so far, when I buy Japanese stuff, A year or two later, it’s a little more valuable than it was. Like, I don’t feel stupid for having bought it because they do, whether intentionally or just as a circumstance of the current market conditions, they seem to be more predictable in their print runs and more willing [00:53:00] to stop printing stuff, even though they know they could sell it because it’s actually important that collectors maintain the value of what they’ve purchased.
So I, I came to really appreciate how they approach those things. And how they approach the business on top of just some of the other qualities that I liked. So yeah, primarily Japanese collector that has shifted lately. Now that English is kind of cheap again, and I like playing the game, I’m buying an opening way more English.
I’m basically like buying one booster box of every set in Japanese. Cause I like to have, I started out with sword and shield. I have one of every booster box. I like to have at least one of everything. So I’m continuing to do that with Scarlet and Violet in Japanese. But I actually haven’t opened any Japanese since, I think I just opened Scarlet and Violet, maybe.
Oliver: Uh
Grey: huh, okay. Yeah. But, that’ll come, I, that, now Japanese is getting cheap again too, so I’ll probably start opening it again. I just don’t like, [00:54:00] When, when sealed stuff gets too expensive. I just, I don’t like open it. I’d rather keep it sealed.
Oliver: Yeah. Yeah. That’s tough for sure. One thing I noticed with the, I think like you, most people shifted to Japanese in 2020 when they’re like, Oh sweet, Pokemon’s hot.
I’m going to go buy some packs. There’s none, any, especially like in Canada here. I’m in a small town in BC and there were no Pokemon cards, dude. Yeah. So you get it, man.
Grey: Like It’s when I see people like, even MetaZoo, like people are talking about how cheap MetaZoo is right now, it’s not cheap in Canada.
Like, it’s never been cheap in Canada. When people are talking about like 50 boxes before the business went under and that was dirt cheap for a box of Wilderness. Like, there were eventually a price that got down there, but you were paying still like 100 Canadian at least for booster boxes of MetaZoo for so much longer than you should.
Cause. The companies that had it [00:55:00] just knew like they’re not in a rush to sell it. They’re not, it’s not making or breaking their business. They don’t care. And they just, they were happy to just keep prices high. It was
Oliver: crazy. And, uh, one thing I noticed was the Japanese sets is they do tend to like on release they’re hot as hell and then they drop fast and it’s scary.
Grey: Yeah. That’s, that’s kind of been it, but that’s true of like all sets. Like Japanese was a little bit more concentrated, but now it’s, it’s like Jap, the latest Japanese says like instantly cheap. I haven’t bought it yet, but man, it’s so nice to not be like constantly trying to find, like, where can I get an okay deal, like sweet spot.
Just like, let stuff come and be like, I’ll just buy this when I feel like it, because it’s not mooning overnight. Like, it’s not going crazy. 151 was like that. I have very little of that [00:56:00] product, but a lot of the new stuff now is, is not as crazy out of the gates as it has been. So it’s, it’s a nice change of pace.
Honestly, I got really, I got so sick of that, like scrambling to just find a decent deal during the hype and like waiting for these drops and navigating like crashing websites because everyone’s trying to buy it. Like that whole process, man, just so not my jam. Yeah. I’m much, much happier. Just. Going into a store, going to an online website and paying a reasonable price for something and moving on and having the certainty that it’s available and it’s affordable.
I don’t feel stupid for buying it.
Oliver: I hear you, but I do see a celebration CPC behind you. I did not get one of those and I tried really hard.
Grey: Yeah, I got one from the Pokemon Center in Canada. Really? Yeah, I got another one. I pre ordered one for 300 Canadian from a store here in [00:57:00] Toronto, which Ended up being brilliant because it never went below that So I only have two because I couldn’t bring myself to pay the prices that they got to since then but yeah I am I’m proud of that one that that was That Pokemon Center find as much as I hate that if you when you get it, you feel great
Oliver: Yeah, that’s really lucky.
Like I really Like I Drove to neighboring cities and still did not get one. No, man, I’m sorry. I was looking on eBay cause I’m, I’m pretty frugal. And I was like, I, I want to pay MSRP for this and yeah, I could have gotten one and I could get one now if I wanted to pay the price, but that’s one of the products that is unique in the market because it just, it started going up and it never came down.
It now it’s just on a straight path, straight up. And yeah, I’m envious of people like you who got one or two. That’s pretty cool. I only got
Grey: one at retail. I paid double [00:58:00] for the other one. It’s just wild that it was a product that went for double and then more than that. It has been flat for a while now.
People don’t seem to like paying more than double. And we’re both speaking in similar currencies or like that five hundred five fifty price point It’s kind of been around Canadian dollars hasn’t hasn’t moved off that as far as I know for a long time But that’s just I don’t blame you for not picking one up at that price that that’s hard to stomach.
Oliver: I Wish I did though. I do I did purchase the the metal Charizard separately And I I really should be getting that Pikachu before it gets away on me. Mm hmm. But yeah, I think You They, they did not print that product enough. No, they absolutely did not. And I think being the first metal cards they manufactured, I think that must be a factor.
And I think them coming damaged in the, in the product is evident of that. Yeah. [00:59:00]
Grey: Yeah. I think, I think you’re right. And there’s a phenomenon that I’ve observed. I spoke about in a video recently. With respect to the Pokemon trading card game classic, which is, you know, absurdly expensive is there’s been this huge shift in the market for Pokemon trading card game products where in the past, everyone wanted like the normal, normally priced stuff and premium products, people really struggled to justify buying premium products.
But in the post pandemic world, and especially as I think a result of the relative scarcity of those premium products, they’ve all gone, like the prices have gone crazy for them. And now everyone believes that premium products are a good buy and more likely to appreciate. So the demand for them is higher than ever.
And, and following the UPC, the Pokemon company has clearly understood the assignment. And they’ve been print, like, they make these crazy expensive products, like, like [01:00:00] the Charizard UPC. Certainly, historically, one of the more expensive products they’ve ever made. And it is just everywhere. It’s like a, just a huge tsunami wave of that Charizard product.
And Pokemon Trading Card Game Classic, another example. They make a, you know, Canadian dollars, over 500 product. And it’s like everywhere. Everyone has it. They’re all discounted. Still expensive product, but. It’s crazy how much of that they made, because it is a very niche product. Yeah. But, I think the appetite for premium in the space is just so high now, and a little bit unreasonably so.
Like, I think it’s so high due to the previous market factors, which was that they used to be scarce. They’re relatively scarce, I should say. They are definitely not scarce. They seem, like, I think the Mew UPC and the Charizard UPC seem to be, like, the most highly produced products that Pokemon’s put out in years.
Like, there’s so many of them and they’re at that like [01:01:00] 155 Canadian price point, you know?
Oliver: Yeah, I don’t know how you felt about the Charizard UPC. When those three Charizards got leaked, I was like, I was like cocaine buzzy. I was like, Oh my God, I need, I need, I need these Charizard cards so bad. And I pre ordered two and I was like at my door waiting for the post, right?
Yeah. And then. I ended up overpaying on both of them, and Pokemon just prints this thing into oblivion. And now you can just, like, even now, you can just go get one. And I’m like, well at least, at least I got one, right? Because I’m still bitter about the celebrations, UPC, and I’m glad they printed so many.
We all did
Grey: the exact same thing. We all saw Celebrations UPC, freaked out, saw those Charizard cards, knew [01:02:00] that everyone was going to want them, and we had no demonstration that Pokemon was prepared to meet that demand. And it turns out that they were so ready with that product. It was crazy. Yeah, I bought one for 300, you know.
A couple for 250, 200, and I think I pre ordered or bought one for retail from the Pokemon Center. But, on average, I probably paid at least 200 a box for the ones that I have. Because I’m, I don’t know, stuff gets expensive, I have trouble opening. I didn’t open a single one, but I have a bunch of them. And, uh That was like the flip side.
It was like, when I bought the celebrations, UPC, I felt like a genius. I was like, ah, 300 for the UPC seems crazy, but I just got to know that I have one for sure. I need to have at least one. So I locked it in, scored the second one at retail. I was like, I’m a, I’m a genius. This is incredible. And go into the [01:03:00] Charizard UPC and I, I bought more and I overpaid on all of them because even the Pokemon setter one wasn’t the deal, right?
Like, yeah. They were selling for like 125 Canadian pretty widely then not too long ago. I think they’re starting to just recover a little bit, but yeah, that was, that was a funny product. So I decided I’ve opened two MUU PCs cause I really like opening the 151 cards, but I don’t have any sealed and I have no plans of, of buying those for sort of sealed collection or investing.
I’m just kind of staying clear.
Oliver: Yeah, we’re getting pretty. I want to talk to you about one more thing. Sure. Yeah. I guess we have been going for a little while now, if you have the time. Yeah, I can do one more topic for sure. Those Charizards that came out of the UPC that, that one, like really bad ass one.
You know, the VMAX one, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. It was, yeah, it was the VMAX. I got that graded with a Canadian grading company [01:04:00] named Koba. They’re really new. They’re based out of Edmonton. But since I have a Canadian on today, I was wondering. How you feel about our domestic grading companies, if you’ve used them or, or if you’ve just seen their slabs.
So
Grey: I have, I’ve not, I actually haven’t graded a single card myself, but I own a couple graded cards. And that’s something that I’d, I’d like to get more familiar with just as part of my, like how people make money in Pokemon cards kind of exploration is I will definitely do some grading. I do own one graded card from Mint Grading, it’s another Canadian grading company and it was a special delivery Pikachu.
I thought special delivery Pikachu kind of represented or was a promotion in response to the launching of Pokemon Center in Canada, which is awesome. So it’s kind of got, cards got a Canadian tie. It’s like buying one that was graded by the Canadian grading company seemed kind of appropriate. [01:05:00] And. I didn’t scrutinize the card on eBay before I bought it, but I kind of took the grading to heart and there’s just like a ding around one of the edges.
It was like a relatively highly graded card. I forget if it might have been a 9. 5 from Mint, which Mint was supposed to be known for having pretty strict grading, but there’s one pretty visible bit of like kind of indent a little. It’s a small indent, but it’s like no one would grade this a 9. 5. It’s like.
A seven at best kind of thing. And that just left a really sour taste in my mouth. And that was my only experience with any Canadian graders. So I, I’m very skeptical. I do think almost in a similar way where MetaZoo tried to like fast track themselves and didn’t have sort of the history and track record and established operations.
I think consistency is really important in the realm of grading. And the only way to demonstrate consistency is a long track record of [01:06:00] consistency. So it just takes time. So I’m with CGC, for example, and they’re grading, I’ve been really unimpressed with how much they’ve changed things like they started and they set a certain standard and then they seem to change that standard.
Then they officially like renumbered and actually made changes and then they rebranded and did it again. And I was like, every time they make one of these changes, you’re just restarting your 10 year cycle of proving that you can do this. Like we need to see consistency over the long term. So I just feel the same about any other kind of grading company and grading operation in Canada, as I think it just, you need a lot of time to demonstrate that you know what you’re doing.
You’re doing it consistently that you can stand by the standards you’ve established. And so I would, I would love for a local grading company, like a Canadian grading company to start clearing that bar, but I, I don’t know how many of them have been around mint is relatively new for sure. So I, I will definitely check out Koba and
Oliver: kind of keep my eye on it.[01:07:00]
I think, I think Mint was established 2016, if I’m not mistaken. Koba is like, yeah, Koba is like a year old, like brand new. And then there’s KSA and I think they’re actually like 20 years old or something. Like they rival PSA, but I never heard of KSA. I know. Right. It’s weird. Like Personally, I’m not a fan.
I got a KSA slab and it, and I’m sorry KSA, but it feels like it came from the dollar store. Like, it’s just, I was just frowning when I opened it.
Grey: Yeah. That’s too bad.
Oliver: Yeah. It’s, you know, I think they are way more focused on coins. Or like currency and some sports memorabilia. I don’t think trading cards is there that, you know, I don’t think they push it as hard.
But yeah, it’s, I think it sucks to be a grading company right now. That’s not [01:08:00] PSA. It’s got to be tough.
Grey: Seems that way.
Oliver: And to, to go off of your point of consistency, we look at PSA now and people, people are like, Hey, we want sub grades. You know, we want thicker slabs in some cases, we want different labels and PSA is like, no, yeah, no, this is what you get.
And that’s, that’s their strength too. Right. People will defend PSA with their life for some reason, but that’s like, it’s such a strong, strong brand in the industry. It’s really cool. I think, you know, one
Grey: of the challenges that. Curious to see how PSA navigates it. And the answer might be, and probably is to not do anything differently, but in the context of modern cards, like I think the black label idea of like this like super premium top tier condition rarity or condition grade has a lot of merits and the [01:09:00] issue with PSA.
Which PSA would be my choice. I don’t like the look of the slabs. I’d be happy if they wanted to change how the slabs look and the level is look, but they’re, they’re the one that does have the demonstrated history of how they grade. And I’m sure things have changed, but subtly enough that it’s not obvious, but the 10 is just not good enough anymore.
Like that’s not a high enough grade is the interesting piece. It’s great for the history of trading card games. And most of their grading, it is a great bar to clear. But. With the, the just volume of modern cards being graded now, I do think like sub grades or like sub grades that allow you to recognize the like particularly pristine variations within that category have a lot of value, but there’s constant, like there’s consequences to trying to incorporate that into their business because I’ve already raved about how their consistency is their strength.
They have a history of doing this [01:10:00] and they’ve been. More consistent than anyone else from what I can tell and how they do this. And that is, that’s the value they bring. They’re the ones that give you the most assurance and certainty that they know what they’re doing and are doing it right.
Oliver: Yeah, yeah, I feel that for sure.
PSA has done great. I like to support The Canadian grading companies, but it’s hard when, like, when KSA shows up with this, with this slab with sharp edges and like visible burrs to, I’m like, what’s going on here? I like to compare it to our telecommunications issue in Canada, right? It’s a duopoly. You have to choose between TELUS or Shaw slash Rogers.
And that’s kind of how I feel about the grading industry right now. Like people are, they have such diehard brand loyalty for PSA Beckett CGC. And then [01:11:00] they basically gatekeep the hobby or they’re defending these three. And it’s like, guys, come on, do you really want these three companies to own the entire industry?
But the, the inverse of that, it’s like, well, you know, I send my cards to Koba who just opened up. It doesn’t add any value. They don’t have, yeah, it’s, it’s a really tough position to be in as a consumer who wants to change the industry.
Grey: Yeah, I, I know what you mean. Like I would love for, you know, a local alternative to emerge that can compete with the established brands.
But. It definitely, it’s not neat. It’s not an easy thing to do. And I do think it just kind of takes, you have to do it well, and you have to do it well for a long time. So the business needs to somehow find a way of sustaining itself while you build that, that track record and [01:12:00] reputation. And that’s a difficult thing to do.
Your point, but one of the points you made that I think is really well made is that if we, as the consumers want alternatives, like viable alternatives, It does kind of, it does mean that you have to be willing to then support and do business with the alternatives, at least to help give them a chance.
It’s on up. Yeah. Which is, it’s just a very good point and it’s definitely something
Oliver: to keep an eye on for sure. Yeah. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t take a bullet for TELUS, you know? No.
Grey: Yeah. Anyone watching this outside of Canada, I I, I don’t know. I mean, I hear bad things about the United States telecommunications providers as well, but man, we, Canada being so big, we have a tendency to create like one or two big businesses that dominate an industry and everyone has to work with them.
And they just, they take advantage of that privileged situation. They are not fun to work with.
Oliver: Yeah. It’s hard to [01:13:00] innovate when there’s no competition. Totally. And then they just
Grey: rinse everything they can out of there. Captive audience and market.
Oliver: Anyways, we are past an hour here, so we should be wrapping up.
Cool. I could keep going all day, I think, as long as I had something to eat. Yeah, I think I could too. This is a lot of fun, Oliver. Cool. So let my audience know where they can find you, where they can follow you.
Grey: Totally. So main place for me now, TCG Buyers Club on YouTube. You can find me by, I guess, putting youtube.
com slash at. TCG Buyers Club, and then that handle is the same across my other socials. So I’m also on Instagram and TikTok with the at TCG Buyers Club social or my Twitter x. com is at Gray Thompson. That’s not really, it’s more my personal, but it is something that I use to communicate as well. So if you want to reach out to me there, you’re more than welcome to.[01:14:00]
Oliver: Awesome, dude. And for anyone who wants to follow this guy, link is into the description. Gray, you’ve been awesome. Thank you so much for coming on today. I’m open to doing this again. If you’re into it.
Grey: Yeah, this is a lot of fun. I’d definitely be open to kind of check back in and have another conversation another time.
For sure, man. Awesome. I’ll see you later. All right. See you later, Oliver. Cheers.