Brian Pirrip is Back! E410

0:00 Sports Card Nation. The hobby is the people. Weekly news and interviews. It's your number one source. Sports Card Nation. The hobby is the people. Sports Card Nation. What is up everybody? I'm John Newman. It is time for another episode of Sports Card Nation 410. To be exact. And it is part two, a conclusion of our great conversation with Brian Perip of Mint Universe. And great guy. You know, sometimes you go into something, you already know they're a good person, and then it's above your expectations.

0:47 And Brian, that would definitely describe Brian. And really enjoyed the conversation. And on today's episode, we're going to learn more about his company, and what he does and what he's offering you and provides the hobby. I want to thank our great sponsors, SGC, Iron Sports Cards, Sports Collectors Digest, Hobby Hotline, Upper Deck, Cards Ladder, and Certified Trading Card Association. So with that being said, and without further ado, let's get to the episode. 5, 4, 3, 2.

1:30 1, 0. Real quick, and then we're going to get into mint and stuff. We're seeing a lot more celebrities get into the hobby space, whether it's buying into a card store franchise, doing breaks, whatever. You know, you ask 10 people, five people will say it's awesome for the hobby. The other five maybe will say, are they really? Are they doing it for the right reasons? Is it just an investment for them of many investments? You know, and you've interacted with with with some of these folks like kind of where do you like?

2:18 How do you see that? Yeah. I think those kind of the purest hobbyist guys, it's just their little special club and they don't want anybody else to be in their club. They want things to be how it was. Man, I'm such of a belief that whatever you want to do in this space, whatever you love, whatever you like, to each his own, live and let live. And so with celebrities coming in and buying shares on things or you know, even Wall Street investing, I'm like, there's only like, how is this hobby still not fun? You know, I can still go to a card shop today and rummage through a dollar bin box and find something I like, you know, that's what I always feel sad. Actually, I'll have these kids that will write me and they're like, you know, they're showing, you know, sending some pictures of their favorite cards.

3:05 And then they always make an apology about it. Like, oh, sorry, it's only like a, it's only a PSA five. And, you know, and they're making apologies. And I'm like, why are you making an apology for your card? Love the card, man. If you love the card, you love the card. That's one of the things I've had a problem with grading over the years is it's like all these people make apologies for like, oh, my Sandy Koufax, I love this card so much. My rookie card is, but it's only a five, you know? And they always say it in this negative kind of way. And it just, I'm like, dude, you got a Sandy Koufax rookie card. That's freaking rad. That's cool. I like that. And so I don't care if I actually think. It's really cool that celebrities are coming in. I love that athlete. I really love that athletes are doing this now. It's pretty fun.

3:46 Now I can go to, you know, a lot of games now and, uh, and I'll be able to rip packs with some athletes. I'm going to Yankees game, uh, this next week, and I'm going to be ripping packs with a couple of the players on, on each team. And I think that's really fun. And the more you know, my goal is to try to get more of that on camera so that people can participate in it, you know, rather than some of them don't want, you know, necessarily to be filmed or, but the one, whenever I get a chance to film with an athlete and post it, like I just, you know, this one I did with Steve Garvey recently and, and people. See Steve Garvey. We can, There you go. There you go. He's got a separate podcast about who. Should be in the hall.

4:26 Yeah. Yeah. No, but it was fun because I filmed this bit with Steve Garvey and he just, you know, I was telling this incredible story of him, you know, fanboying over his, you know, the athletes that he was really into as a kid with it, with his dad. And after I put up that post, what I really get excited about is how many people out there, you know, that's the power of the internet. where all these like super fans of Steve's over the years that never got a chance to see some content like that are now having a chance to hear Steve talking about his 71 Tops card or 72 or these kinds of things. And so I think any athlete, celebrity bringing in money, bringing in clout, it just, it puts.

5:08 Eyeballs on the whole thing. It's not like, it's not a religion, right? It's not like we're trying to grow it in a religious kind of standpoint. Like, oh, we've got to bring in as many people into the church of the hobby as we possibly can for some unknown reason. I just like that it's a mainstream thing now. It's, you know, when I collected in the 2000s, I thought of it as this weird, dirty secret of mine. You know, I'd slink into a card shop. I'd grab a few packs, put them, they put them in a black plastic bag and I would walk out of the, and get into my car and sit in my car and open a couple. And I just, it always felt kind of, you know, I never told girlfriends. I never told, you know, even my family that, you know, they knew a little bit. But it was never something I talked about. And something I love now is it's kind of like this. It's kind of cool now, right?

5:52 It's cool now to talk about cards. I think it's almost uncool not to be somewhat involved. In the house, like a whole 180. Yeah. And I've seen it where like, you know, friends or family will like be like, oh yeah, this is Brian. You know? And they're like, oh yeah, you rip packs. And I can see my family or friends kind of beaming. And they're like, wow, that's really cool that that's what happens, you know? And so I think having the hobby is a bigger thing. It kind of vindicates and validates it. And, you know, the more the merrier, right? There's Topps is going to figure things out. So are the other card making companies. They'll find a way to keep kids able to buy packs. And if kids can't buy.

6:35 Packs, go to the dollar bins. That's where I would have been, you know, hanging out if I were a kid is like Burbank sports cards, for instance. And you could spend all day there just rummaging through boxes of cards looking for You know, you can still get Otani cards for a buck if you're okay with, you know, Bowman paper, you know, which is cool. If you're an eight or nine year old, that's still really cool stuff. You know, that's the thing I think is funny is that people somehow feel like they have to have the 52. Mantle in their collection today. Right. And I'm just like this. One of the things I love. About the hobby is it's aspirational. You don't like, I really want to have a, you know, an Aston Martin V12 Vanquish.

7:17 I can't have one right now. I would really like to have one. I saw one a few months ago. And when I saw it, I was like, that's the car for me. That's the only car in the world I want. But I'm not prepared to slap down 500 grand for a car today. And so it's aspirational. There's something nice about delayed gratification. It took me like 10 years of being in the hobby as an adult before I was able to buy my first tattered 1961 Mickey Mantle. And as soon as I got that, I was the happiest kid, a 35-year-old or whatever on the block. I was walking around with a kind of a. Tattered $ 50 Mickey Mantle. I just didn't have a lot of money. And so this Mickey Mantle meant so much to me that I can have it. And I wish that people had this kind of more of an atmosphere of like, it doesn't matter if you have a bajillion-dollar collection or you have a $ 5 collection and it's stuff you really like. Let's aspire to have the nice stuff.

8:13 Like I see what's on behind you right now. I see you got the, you know, Jackie Robinson, the Hank Aaron, the Pete Rose. Like I don't, I actually don't have those three cards. And I would love to have those cards. And so it's aspirational. And so I think more, the more, the merrier in this hobby, bring everybody in. Let's, let's all rip packs together. Well said, Brandon, too. It took me years. Like I've been in the hobby 40 years and those have been acquired in probably the last seven or eight. Right. So, you know, yeah, you know, patience. You got to have patience as you improve your lot in life and maybe have a little more discretionary income. Right. I know it's cliche, but Rome wasn't built in a day.

8:53 And for me, my baseball, my sports card Rome is 40. I started as a seven-year-old kid of 53, so it's 46 years of Rome, right? Yeah. But some people are more patient than others. I get it. And like you said, to each their own. You mentioned the grading space. I kind of want to talk about we're not breaking news here. The turnaround times are longer. The price to sub is higher. It's a weird business model where these grading card companies really don't want cards to send in because they got to catch up on the backlog.

9:36 So they raise their prices. And we're going to talk about what you do, but kind of your thoughts, you know, as a person in the hobby, like when you see this, you know, we've seen that in COVID as well. This happened and now it's happening. You know, history is repeating itself. Well, I could probably speak for three hours straight about my thoughts on the grading industry. And I mean, the first things that come to mind is the first thought is a lot of people are getting cards graded that they probably shouldn't get graded. There's so many people I've met where they say, oh, I got this card. Should I get it graded?

10:16 And I'm like, why are you asking me that? Like, Why is that the topic that we're having? Why isn't it, hey, I got this really cool card. What do you think of it? Let's talk about the card itself. There's just this crazy, ridiculous obsession with grading across this. It's kind of like, oh, you have a card. Is it graded? Why is that the very first thing that people turn to? And so I think there's a lot of people out there, especially kind of new people into the industry, where they just think that their card isn't good or it's not actually a real card until it's been graded. And so that's kind of a ludicrous kind of concept to me. I think, you know, the grading companies, man, there's just, what a wild west, right? They're just, those guys are printing money like maniacs. And, you know, and there's no oversight, right?

11:03 There's no governing body of this hobby. There's no FCC or whatever, SEC of the card industry. So whatever's going on is going on, right? And, you know, props to certain, you know, people out there who are kind of calling out grading companies on some of their things. But I just think one of the real reason I started Mint was genuinely because I thought the grading was out of control and too front and center. In fact, I never got a card graded ever until recently because I'm doing some business with the graders. But I never got my cards graded, not because I didn't want to have the card graded. It's because I thought their.

11:47 Slabs were ludicrous. I thought it would. I'm calling a spade a spade, the emperor's new clothes kind of situation. Slabs are ugly. I've said it. They're hideous. I'm sorry. The cards are beautiful. The slabs are an afterthought. The grading companies, they sell grades. That's what they sell. The slabs are an afterthought. They don't put a lot of time and effort into that. They never have. Like even, you know, PSA, they've got their giant, you know, headquarters now. They're onboarding all this new staff. It's all about, let's get, you know, and Beckett says the same, SGC says the same, let's get really good graders in. Let's hire, train good graders, teach them how to do things and do that. Nobody thinks about the case. You know, there's like PSA, they spent like three years updating their case and announced like, we have an all new case we're going to show off.

12:39 And then they showed it off and it's the same. Same with Beckett. Beckett announced their new case like last year. It's the same case. It's maybe 5% different in some kind of ways. We have a new little QR code on the back, or we got some new foil on the front that shows that it's not counterfeit. But there's been zero innovation in the space. And so for me, what I really didn't like about the graders is they were charging an arm and a leg, and then you weren't getting anything out of it other than an arbitrary number that if you crack out and send it back to them, you might get a difference. So with all that being said, I'm not anti-grader. I'm actually pro-grader if it's done right and with the right intentions and there's actual due diligence and time spent. One of my issues I have with graders is they grade too quickly. The numbers of cards that I have definitely 100% know are happening at graders, the sheer volume makes it so that you're going to be prone to errors.

13:40 And I think that's a real tragedy. I think the graders, sorry, slow down, do it right. You know, get these things as right as possible. You owe it to the people. You're making money hands over fists. Give the people a better product and a better service. And that is why I started Mint is I wanted to, more than anything, I wanted better customer service and I wanted a better product. And so my thought with Mint was instead of becoming a grader myself, I'm going to partner with the graders and I'm going to make my cases and displays available. For work any of the graders that want to make use of them. And I partnered first with Mike Baker. He's not just the most experienced grader in the industry, but he's also a friend of mine. And I've gotten to know him over the last couple of years. And I've gotten to know him as a really good dude. And I actually enjoy spending time with him. And I've learned a lot about the industry from him. And so his grades as the most experienced grader, plus my cases, which are above and away the best cases by orders of magnitude, those things kind of coming together, we have just exceptionally happy customers with what we've built and where we're going with this.

14:49 I've seen your cases, Brian. They are sharp. And like you said, when you compare them to, you know, and I like the card in that one. I had to show you that one, man. I know you're a Jackie Robinson guy. And I don't know, like just the case itself looks better than the case that my Jackie's in. There's a trial update. This thing. Oh man. They're beautiful, man. Yeah. They pop. What now are they, are they sealed? Like no one can, should be able to open them with like little effort. Right. Yeah, nobody's going to be able to open these. We use steel, stainless steel, H16 steel, Gorilla Glass. There's 20 different pieces that make up the inside of these cases.

15:37 They're extraordinarily sophisticated. I hired former Apple engineers to build these because I said, if we're going to do this, to be honest, I didn't expect the Mint case to turn out as good as it did. When I set out to do this, I wanted to use glass, I wanted to use steel, but I didn't realize how much technical specifications went in to protecting a card. Like there's an actual gasket on the inside, an O-ring made out of Viton on the inside for, you know, moisture and gas and this sort of thing. And so we kept improving on them and improving on them and finally did a pencils down moment when I realized I wanted them myself for my own collection. That was kind of the moment where I said, this is not just some minimal viable product. This is a piece of artwork that, Anybody that holds it, the very first reaction to everyone is always, wow, this is nicer than I thought it was. This is heavier than I thought it was. But every single time, 100% of the time, someone holds the case. They go, I get it now, Brian. I get the high price point.

16:39 I get what you're doing here. And how do I order one? And so I built these for my own collection. Mike Trout means a lot to me. I pulled this at a ZZ Top concert four or five years ago. There's a cool story attached to it. And I was able to take the video of the moment I pulled this card and it's now stored on the chip on the inside. There's a microchip in all of these cases. And so all I have to do is scan this case with my phone and I can watch the very moment that I pulled this out of a pack at that concert. And so nobody can, you cannot crack these open. If somebody were to crack it, it's going to be very obvious because the glass will have to be shattered. The NFC chip is destroyed if somebody opens the case.

17:20 And if somebody does want us to open the case and get their card out and give it back to them raw, I'll do it for free. It's a very specialized process. It's our secret sauce, but we can open these. It's just that if we open it, it gets logged onto the chip that the case has been opened. So think of it, the chip is like a Carfax, where you can see what happened to the card, where it was pulled, how it got into the case, what it looked like before, and all of those what it looked like in its PSA or Beckett case or SGC case ahead of time, we take those photos, embed those on the chip. And so now you have a full provenance of your card, of the history. And then you also have the security because if somebody were to steal this and try to sell it at a card show in London or whatever, somebody scans it, it's going to come up and say that it's stolen. So there's some cool counterfeiting and theft deterrent aspects I built into the case.

18:18 And I thought it would be great to start with, uh, doing these with Mike Baker. So, you know, here is, uh, here's my Damien Lillard, uh, silver prism rookie card I pulled. And it is, uh, it's got the Mike Baker, uh, logo on the top, and this is a graded case that is a nine, you know, so it's, uh, and we'll put in cards that are either, you know, uh, we do graded cards and then we also do raw cards. And so if people send us in, uh, you know, a Beckett case or a PSA case. We remove the card from the case. We film everything. Also embed that on the chip. We remove the card from the case, film it all for total transparency, have the card is treated as raw at that point. Mike Baker grades it.

19:00 We put it into the case, seal it up, and then it goes back to the customer with the full provenance. And it's really cool stuff. We're way ahead of the curve on this stuff. And everyone that's bought one so far is very happy with their purchase. Yeah, you mentioned like Gorilla Glass. Here's one question I just thought of while you were explaining it too, right? Gorilla Glass, much like our smartphones, it's strong glass, right? And we've all dropped our phones and we're nervous and we go to pick it up to see did the screen survive? And nine times out of 10, they do. But I've broken, you know, once I've broken my screen on my phone, it's not, 100% foolproof. If someone was to legitimately, hey, I dropped my card, the glass broke, how does that process work? Like, do you have a process in place for you? Hope it, you know, you hope it's few and far between, but yeah.

19:56 Yeah, no, it's happened. I've done it myself, man. One of my cards slipped out of my hands and, and, you know, it cracks the glass. Right. The good news is that it's double pained. There's actually an insert pane so that there's no risk to the card if somebody were to drop it. And if somebody does break their case, you know, send it back to us and we'll put new glass on and send it back to you. It's a pretty easy process for us to do it. It's impossibly challenging for someone else to do it. Yeah. And like you said, like everything, the provenance is there, your video and everything. So whatever the grade was, that's still obviously attached to the card.

20:37 Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back. Follow us on socials at. Hobby Hotline. Thanks for sticking with us. Let's return to the show.

21:17 Now, you just had a gentleman. His name escapes me. I apologize for that. But he just did his whole main collection of his 50 favorite cards and switched them over from mostly PSA. I'm not going to lie. I'm a very honest guy, Brian. I know the hobby. really kind of attack that or maybe that's too strong a word but question that i scratch my head a little bit too with with with that kind of like you know what do you say to those folks including myself they're like man that's you know that's uh that's kind of gutsy if for lack of a better word. It is gutsy you know that jackie robinson i showed you that's actually uh one of his cases Um, I'm taking that Jackie out to him, uh, in, in Nebraska to go and drop it off with him. Um, I've already, uh, we've dropped off about 20 cards. We have another 10 that we're doing. There's some irregular sized cards that we're waiting for, uh, slabs, but I really appreciated him doing this because there was a guinea pig, you know, element.

22:22 He was kind of the, the, the first, uh, penguin to drop into the jump off into the water. And, uh, How I could tell that it was a win was by the reaction he had when I showed them to him after they were encapsulated. He was holding, you know, his 1951 Mickey Mantle that was, you know, 1951 Bowman Mantle rookie card. And he was just holding it. And as he was walking around his house, he couldn't let it go. It's really hard to, you know, for people to hear and watch, you know, videos or pictures of it doesn't have the impact. Nobody will really understand what. A G1 is until you've helped them. So it's amazing how many people I've shown them to people and they go, now I get it.

23:09 Yes, I want to do this. Can I send a card in? And in fact, I'm going to offer that to you, John. Send me any card of yours that you love. That's the only caveat. Send me a card that you love and I will put it into a G1 free of charge for you. Send it back to you and you'll instantly know what that experience is. And it has to be felt in order to be truly understood. I've tried to explain it to people over the last year. And I'm starting to kind of almost give up because I'm like, the only way people get it is they have to hold it. And so we haven't had a single regret yet from a single customer. I saw your G1 case at this year's National. And I'm not saying this because you're on the show. and I'm talking to you or whatever, what you just offered, I would have said that regardless, right? Before not seeing it in person, you know, just seeing pictures, if you will, on social media or online, and then seeing it in person, completely blown away, completely different reaction from both sides of that aisle. So, and you listen, like I said already, right?

24:21 It's a very attractive case. It's heavy duty, like you said. You've got gaskets inside, double-pane glass. It is sharp. Even if someone isn't a fan or doesn't like it, if they're on it, they're most likely going to say, it is cool looking, man. It may not be my thing, but it is sharp. If you don't, I mean, again, everyone has different things they like or don't like, but maybe you're just sort of prejudging and just holding the lines. Well, I, I wasn't, I didn't want to take over the world in four months, right? We released this product four months ago, you know, and it's kind of funny. I was talking to Mike Baker about this and he goes, you know, it took us five years at PSA when he goes, when I first joined PSA 1991 or whatever, he goes, it took me five years of going from show to show to show around the country before people started going to, oh, that's actually really cool.

25:19 I'm going to get a card graded by PSA. Five years, right? And he said for the, up to that point, he goes, all the dealers, they would show the graded cases too. And everyone would just kind of poo-poo it and tell them that it was ludicrous and it was stupid and they shouldn't do this. But he persevered and him and the other founders of PSA, five years later, people started adopting it. And so I kind of feel the same way with this. For some reason, a lot of people somehow expect that we're in this kind of make it or break it phase in our first like, six months of business when I know that there's a huge educational component to this. That's why I'm not trying to like, you know, I'm not trying to change all hearts and minds in six months. I'm trying to, I have a five-year plan for how this is going to go. This isn't rare edition. This isn't a fly-by-nick company that tried to be a great grader and a great case maker and kind of failed at both. This is a company that we've already put in five years of true R & D with real professionals in the design and engineering space and And we've created something beautiful and also technically just brilliant on the inside. But it's going to take us a couple of years before we can really show people what these things are and why they're better in every way. And we also have other cases coming out.

26:31 A lot of people think, oh, it's a $ 500 case. And I said, well, it is. But this is our Ferrari. I've got the. The BMW is going to be a version of this case that's coming out in early 2027. Then we're going to come out with the Honda Accord version. So there's going to be a price point for everybody. It's just we can't roll this thing out in, you know, in four months. You can't kind of put out your whole business plan. It's going to take some time. But, you know, one of the tests I did to kind of prove that this was moving the needle is I put up two of my favorite cards to auction, you know, last month. I put my Otani, the one that you saw at Heritage Auctions, and it did extremely well. It sold for $ 158, 600.

27:17 If this was a fly-by-night thing, it wouldn't have cracked 100. And with the Kobe, it actually doubled the comps in PSA. Kobe was a PSA 8 that Mike Baker transferred into a Mike Baker 8, and it sold for, I think, $ 28, 000. which was significantly more than the last PSA comps. And so that's why I'm like, okay, the people that kind of get it right now get it because we also have a 60% returning rate for customers. So 60% of everyone that's buying a G1 comes back to us within like two weeks and orders another. In fact, some of them have ordered a lot of G1s. We're having a hard time now keeping up with our manufacturing to be able to satisfy customers. especially the demand in Asia, because these are flying off the shelf with people that are submitting a lot of Pokemon TCG kind of cards to us because they look amazing. So that's why my business plan, I couldn't care less if people, if people don't get this for another two years, it doesn't really bother me because I'm in this for the long haul. And I started this out of a labor of love. The whole reason I started this is I wanted it for my own collection. This was never meant to be just like, Oh, I just want to cash grab. I had a really cool career. I just thought this would be something that I wanted for my own cards. And when they turned out better than expected, I thought, man, we have a real business here. Let's release all the rest of our product line over the next year and a half, show

28:47 everyone what we're really working on, which is really cool. What's coming. So this, the G one's kind of like, you know, phase two of a very much longer business plan. And anyone we sit down with and kind of show the larger business plan, they're like mint is, is the future. And I really believe it is. Yeah. And, Listen, Brian, you're a business guy. History shows us some of the best inventions and innovations come from people who the thing was designed for them. They liked it. If you're going to design something for yourself, you want to do it right. Those kind of ideas, I want one of those. I know that's your thing, but I want one. That stuff you know, it just gets bigger from there. So the fact that you said like, this was really for me. and it just kind of, you know, springboarded into, you know, a business. Hearing you talk about it, I've thought of other businesses that are kind of the same storyline. Maybe a different product, but some of the best things that are still around today are were inventions that were just for the designers.

30:01 Yeah. And then it just, because they did so good job, such a great job with it. I, you know, everyone wants the same thing, right? Why human nature, we, we like nice things. And yeah, you know, you made a great point about what, you know, everyone wants the nine or the 10 and, but people like the grading to the case itself, right. Of, of what it's in, like the design, like, So let me give an example, you know, not to throw them under the bus, but it's history. We got to talk about, you probably remember HGA came along some years back and they had all the color coded labels. They didn't know how to spell players' names right or teams right.

30:46 And that's the whole show, right? But people loved the way it popped, right? People bought into that company, at least initially, because of what that case looked like. But they made mistakes, whether it be spelling and other things, and they're not here any longer, right? They've been sold a couple times, and then I think they're gone. But if someone just says, like, it doesn't matter what the graded card case looks like, I'll point to HGH some years back and say, no, you're wrong. No, people do care. They do care. There's this guy named Dave. He has, like, the best collection of Star Jordan cards in the world.

31:27 And he set up at Fanatics Fest and at the National. And he had two Mint Case G1s with the 101 Jordans in them. And he told me when I met up with him the last day of the National, he had the G1 sitting there in and amongst all of the PSA and Beckett slabs. And he goes, Brian, every day, people just, they move past all of the things and go, what is that and how do I get one? And he goes, now what you need to do is you need to build me this really cool display where I can have the whole thing covered in G1s because it's the showstopper. And the same happened with Heritage Auctions. They put my Otani card front and center in their glass case.

32:10 And I said, how's it doing? And they said, people are walking by and moving right past the Jordans, the Babe Ruths, the Mickey Mantles, and they're going straight to that because they're the eye appeal of it is so powerful. And one of the things I did is over the last five years, a difference between like what we did in HGAs, we really did our homework. I think there was this gold rush mentality with some of these card companies. I only use that, I'm not comparing their case to the G1. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, totally understand. I use that as an example of, because people do care about the aesthetics. Of what they do holding their card. That's just, yeah, no, I, I, yeah, you know, I totally get.

32:55 It, but, but we actually, what we did is we went one of the secondary benefits of doing all this content is that I've gotten a chance to kind of show prototypes over the last five years. So I had a working, you know, our very first prototype I had in August of 2021. And I took it to my friend Cassius Marsh, uh, in, the valley and took it to the guys at his card shop. And I was like, what do you guys think about this? Are we on the right track? And then every city across the country, I would go to the card shops. I would ask anyone I met, what do you think of this? What would you change? What do you like? And so we ended up getting, you know, years worth of data from real collectors from, you know, every, you know, walk of life. And so the G1 isn't just from my brain. It's not just from my engineer's brains. It's we've actually taken the feedback, of everyone across the country. We held focus groups, surveys, interviews, and we collected all this data, even the price point.

33:51 That price point didn't come from nowhere. We didn't just pick a number. We actually interviewed a lot of collectors and said, would you be willing to pay on this range if you had something better, if you had better materials? If we were using steel instead of plastic, where would that land? And my margins aren't as high as people are thinking they are because we're putting so much into it. We're packing so much in. And it really reminds me of back in 2007, I worked at Disney. And in 2007, I bought this thing. Everyone at Disney in 2007 was obsessed with their blackberries. They called them crackberries because everyone was addicted to them. And you didn't see any Disney executive without one. And I walked into the office the day that the iPhone was announced. And I walked into the office the second I had one. Cause I watched, you know, Mac world is Steve jobs announcing. And I immediately pre-ordered one and picked one up, took it into the office. And I walked around and showed people because people like check out, check out Brian's new phone. And, and I was showing people and the reaction was, well, that's kind of lame.

34:55 You know, that's, that's stupid. There's no, there's no QWERTY keyboard on there. They're like, how are you going to type an email without a, you know, a tactile QWERTY email, you know, with a keyboard. And I, I just got, I kind of got, you know, attacked that day. I thought people were going to think it was cool, this multi-touch thing and the app store and things. And people were hassling me about the iPhone not having as good of a keyboard as the BlackBerry. And so I think about that all the time with this company. You know, I did the same thing in college. I bought the very first iPod, you know, in 2001, I think it was. As soon as they came out and I took it to college and I walked around and I showed people my iPod. I was like, you have 5,000 songs in your pocket kind of stuff. And everyone's like, yeah, but I got my CD collection. I got all my CDs and look at this giant binder with all my CDs in it. And so I really go back to those two memories a lot because that's why I don't really care what the adoption rate is of the G1. We're actually selling a ton of them right now. But I don't need the industry to kind of give me a big bear hug right now because that will come. Because I saw it happen with other products. If you make something that's significantly better than what's out there, the cream rises to the top and it's just inevitable. It's inevitable.

36:15 And it's one of those interesting things where I was leaving a bunch of G1s at a table in West Hollywood. And this table next to me with a bunch of women, one of them was like a senior vice president at Neiman Marcus. She leans over. She's like, what are those? And I said, oh, these are the, and I had a like Michael Jordan rookie card and I handed it to her. And she goes, these are the coolest thing ever. I would buy this for my husband. And these are people that don't like cards in their, you know, men's lives, but they love the. Aesthetics of the G1. So it actually opens up the product to an entire, you know, people even outside the industry, outside the hobby because of the aesthetics. Because my chief designer that created the final piece of glass was a woman who I brought in to make sure that they were a wife and girlfriend approved. And so this is something that people are going to want to have in their homes front and center, which I think really changes the game.

37:05 Yeah. And I think, you know, by human nature, Brian, sometimes we're, you know, we don't like change all the time. Even if it's for the better. Yeah. Yeah. Just sort of resistant. You know, I'm in the teaching industry. I see that with kids. It's not even a kid thing. I think it's just a human thing. It's human, man. It's we're scared of change. So, I think once we get past that hump or over that hump, right? Like I said, I had my own thoughts and then seeing it in person, completely different. Thoughts, right? You know, as long as you're open-minded. Yeah, yeah. You know, give everything the benefit of the doubt. And times change, right? You know, the BlackBerry was cool.

37:46 I had one. But, like, think about it today. With all the innovation we have today with phones, they fold, they roll, they flip. Like... You know, BlackBerry today, that's like caveman. That's like a Neanderthal in the evolution, like, you know, comparing it to human evolution, right? It was cool back in its time. And we have the phones we have now because of that. You know, I got to give. proper credit, but very few people, I know a lot of people probably still love it, but comparatively speaking, like if they released that phone today and said, you want to go back? They wouldn't have, they'd have some sales. Yeah, they would.

38:28 They would. Yeah. But they'd probably lose money with the production cause even, even exactly. So, I get people resistance to it, but as long as you see the big picture, like you said, that you have, I think it's, again, seeing it in person, they're definitely attention-grabbing. You don't have to even say anything. I have to give credit also to those companies. I have to give credit to Rare Edition and HGA and all of the, you know, in 2020 and 2021, 22, there were so many companies entering the space trying to innovate. You know, there was a lot of backlogs with PSA.

39:09 And so all these companies are like, well, let's, let's build a company and try to innovate, whether it was on price or, you know, like tag with a better kind plastic, you know, or, you know, CGC coming out with different slabs. And so I have to, I really do respect every company that's come along with the goal of let's innovate. Let's make things happen. Better. I hope that we continue to innovate. I hope there's somebody out there listening to this right now that has some sort of an idea that they think, oh, I'm going to invent a new way of doing binders that makes them safer and better. And more aesthetically pleasing. I would buy that tomorrow if somebody had it, you know? And so there's, I do respect the innovators that helped get the industry to where it is. And I also, I do respect the graders for trying to, you know, as long as it comes from a place of doing what's right for the customers and for the industry, then I respect every attempt to try to improve things as long as that is the goal. And the goal isn't just, you know, fill in the coffers.

40:10 So that's kind of. My, And you pointed out, man, you put in the R & D, right? This wasn't, you didn't think of this yesterday and made it today. And you went to people in the hobby, like you said, at all levels, not just corporate or LCS, but collector, all levels, right? And it's a four or five year process. You know, with all due respect to maybe a couple of the companies you mentioned, I don't think it was a four or five year process. Process. Even the ones that made an impact, they may not have put the time and effort into the R & D. This took me way longer. It was a long process, John.

40:51 There's something to be said about that. I think it shows you care. You care not only about the product you're going to put out there, but the people who the product is designed for. The end user. I think a lot of companies should probably think more about that than, than they probably do. So, so I wish that was the case. Yeah. Yeah. We've talked about it. So, well, listen, I appreciate your time. I know you're a busy guy. I love what you're doing. A great ambassador and advocate to this great hobby, right? The best hobby in the world is Dr. Amen.

41:33 Listen, take your time, give out where people can get, get what you're doing. Watch your content, whatever you want to share. Now's your chance to put it out there. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, my name, Brian Pirip. All my social media channels are pretty much that. I'm on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. And my company's channels are all at Mintiverse. I know it's a weird word. It's spelled M1 instead of an I. So M1, N-T-A-V-E-R-S-E. And our website is exactly that. It's Mintiverse.com. People can learn more about the G1, our hobby case, which is our entry-level product for raw cards, can be found.

42:17 We're going to be announcing our wall display later this year. And we got a bunch of other products in the pipeline. So go to Mintiverse.com, join our mailing list. And we do a lot of fun giveaways. We do these golden tickets that we put into our hobby cases. It's a $ 25 case. And, you know, we give out $ 10, 000 cards, $ 5, 000 cards, because like it's what you said, John, this for me is a lot of fun. I didn't think it would be fun to sell supplies, right? If I have a case like our entry level, you know, hobby case for raw cards, I thought it was going to be stupid if I just sold, you know, cases like that. So I can't help myself. I want it to be more fun.

42:58 So I started putting a single, you know, like a card, like a picture frame at At Target or Walmart or something, I put a card into every single case that we sold. And then I thought, well, let's make this more fun. Let's put some chases in there. So I stuck, you know, the first one we did is I put a $ 15, 000 card into one. As a redemption. And some guy, you know, a guy from Cleveland found it. And now we've had a whole host of people finding our golden tickets. And it's been fun. I call everyone that wins one and congratulate them. So it's just been, you know, I love this industry. My goal is just to make things better, more fun, more approachable, and also more aspirational, strangely, at the very same time. So that's how to get a hold of me and get a hold of Mintiverse.

43:41 Well, you're doing a terrific job. You don't need me to tell you that, but I will just the same. For anyone that missed that, I'll put that in the show notes. So if you go to the show notes, there'll be links to Mintiverse and Brian's social media. So, you know, either way, if you catch it, what he said, or you don't, go to the show notes and go that route. Either way, get there, check out. And your videos, you know, there's a million videos, Brian. And again, I'm not trying to be like of deals going down at tables, some more than others. Like, I've been a dealer since 1987 at 15 years old. That kind of stuff, like, doesn't do much for me. But seeing what you do, again, this is not just bringing a hobby, whether it be to a stadium or an event or an LCS and ripping packs with kids and adults alike. And even with the kids who get to rip, like you said, an 88 or 89 Topps pack.

44:39 They weren't around then. And it's cool to see that, right? They get to experience our hobby, but in current times, you know, our past hobby in current times. You can't put a price on that. No, you can't. It's priceless. And to see, like you said, the looks on the kids' faces, the enjoyment. And in some cases, right, it advances the hobby with that person saying, hey, I love this. I want to do more of this. Yeah. You know, it's good to see. I love it. You can't. Anyone that doesn't see that and doesn't think that's good, I don't know what to say. There's nothing I can say at that point. But listen, again, love what you're doing.

45:25 Keep up the great work. And thanks for making some time for us here. Oh, thank you so much, John. Really appreciate your time and your energy today. Thank you so much. Awesome having Brian on. Great guy, right? Again, double A words, right? Ambassador. an advocate, and he checks both those boxes. Passionate, loves the hobby. If you can't tell that by watching him or listening to him, I don't know what else would convince you. So, glad to have him on. We're going to have him back on sometime down the line as well. Check out Mintiverse and what he's doing there as well. And I want to thank him. He's a busy dude and he made some time for us. So, Some closing thoughts, and then we'll wrap up this week's episode.

46:15 Attention Sports Card Nation viewers. What up, kids? It's your boy Scott Hanson from NFL Red Zone. Oh, we're back. Ball is back. The hobby never ends. And before you know it, I'm going to be on your screen again, rocking that octobox, knocking the bottom out of the witching hour, and announcing seven hours of Red Zone football. But as you watch Red Zone, just save some time. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, to check out John. and Sports Card Nation. Let's have a great season, people. Time for our Hobby is the People announcer of the week.

46:59 This is Card Killer. Remember, the hobby is the people. If you'd like to be the Hobby is the People announcer of the week, do a WAV or MP3 file and send it to sportscardnationpc at gmail.com.