TRANSCRIPTION 🔗
Alright. We are back. Passion profession brought to you by my good friends at eBay. Have a familiar face and voice joining me on today's episode. Today, I'm joined by Brian Dennison at Cajun Cardboard.
You have seen him on YouTube creating content. You have seen him stream live on eBay. He's constantly in my, Instagram feed. He's doing something right over here. So he is kinda taking his brand to the next level, you know, doing this full time, and we're gonna dig into his story, kinda his process strategy, and everything in between.
Without further ado, Brian, welcome, man. How are you? I am fantastic. It's always a privilege to come on here. I think this is my second time coming on with you, Brett.
And, gosh, a lot has changed since the last time I came on here for you and for me. The one thing that hasn't changed is, bro, your audio is phenomenal. You're... I'm so jealous. Your mic is superior.
You know? And I've just bought this new mic trying to keep up with you, but your your voice is like butter, man. I'm just trying to keep up with you. So, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
Yeah, man. I've been a big fan of you ever since we've met and ever since we spoke last. And like I mentioned, I'm always seeing you work and hustle and work hard, and maybe we start there with just, like, over the last, like, few months, I've seen you, put a lot more energy into what you're doing. You've got new people involved. You've got new office space.
You've got a lot of different ideas and things that you're pursuing. What... When was that moment for you that you decided, like, this is what I should be doing and what I'm gonna invest my time in moving forward building this brand out? Yeah. Like a like a lot of people in the hobby, you know, the hobby, was my side hustle.
I've been, licensed, you know, real estate attorney since the year 2000. So going on 20... Almost a quarter century, all I've known is go to work, you know, do your job, which most attorneys say, I hate my job. I loved my job. I'll say that.
My job was an eight out of 10. Right? I considered myself lucky to be a real estate attorney. I had my own title company. And, with two great law partners, an incredible group of people around me.
And, so The Happy was my side hustle for, oh, about eight years until about, let's say sixteen weeks ago, maybe four months ago, I decided that the real estate law was actually interfering with my ability to make more money. And so that's not to dummy it down to just dollars and cents, but I love cards more than I like my job as an attorney, and I certainly would rather do something I love than I like. And if I can make more money doing what I love, then what am I waiting for? I'm 52 years old, Brett. And, I figured let's give it a 10 run and just see if I can thrive.
You know? I'm a one person show for about eight years now until four... We, four months ago, and now I think there's nine or 10 of us, strong. A lot of us are thinking about kind of leaving corporate job, corporate careers, and making the leap and doing what you're doing. And I think it's important for people to understand this.
It's... You did not one day just say, I wanna try something new. I wanna leave my law profession and go do sports cards full time. Like, it was undeniable. Like, you spent the time creating content.
You spent the time building the audience, and it afforded you the decision to say this is actually more attractive, and it's more lucrative than me continuing to do what I'm doing. And I think that's very, very important for people to understand, about Brian's story or what I picked up, from you. Were you... Like, how confident were you that that was the the right decision for you in the moment? Was it a series of events, evidence you've, as a lawyer, kind of pieced together over a long period of time?
Like, what really gave you the confidence to go all in? I was BGS black label confident. That's how confident I was. Like, I I don't... Listen, Brett.
I don't, carefully plan stuff out very much. Sometimes I speak, then think. Sometimes I act, then think. And, you know, again, like you just, you know, said, it wasn't like I just decided, you know what? I think I'm gonna go full time in the hobby.
Man, I've been I've been cranking out more than one YouTube video per day for seven years. And so I put in the sweat equity. You know, I built it into something I can monetize and, and pay bills with. And, I just felt like I got to the stage where I was like, man, I am I am not capable of of achieving my potential in the hobby until I let go of the the twenty five years worth of practicing law. And it was just time, man.
I mean, it was it was just time. You know, the inventory, I just kept buying these collections, right? That's kind of what started it. I kept buying collections, buying collections. I started telling everybody, you know what?
My favorite thing to do is to buy huge, raw card collections. Not just Jordan, but basketball, baseball, football. And and it was working, and people were sending me more and more and more. And I looked over one day in my law office, and I had a quarter million cards in boxes, Brett, that I haven't opened yet because I haven't had time to get to them because I've got a full time job as an attorney. And I was like, oh, let's just go, man.
I've got the inventory to do what I wanna do, and the eBay live auctions were a big part, an additional income stream, decision that I had to make. And, I was like, you know what? I walked into my my law partner's office, who's one of my very good friends. I've known him for forty years. And, and I said, man, I know you know this was coming at some point.
I was like, it's time. I gotta roll. You know? It's, I'm going full time. And so, 48 later came over, bought a new office space, and the rest is history.
I'm excited to learn more about your operations and how you run your business, but you said something there that I don't
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wanna gloss over. You made mention of creating a new YouTube video every day for seven years. That is consistency. And, Brian, I think that's what I appreciate about you as someone who shows up every day and is consistent, and you know this better than anyone else. Like, this is what you have to do in this space, create value and do it consistently in order for you to have an opportunity like this to do it on your own.
Maybe talk a little bit about consistency and how you think about that when you're thinking about the Cajun Cardboard brand. Yeah. I I had to tell my 18 year old this. Right? He wants to start, like, 11 different businesses.
And I said, why don't you become great at something before you move on to the next thing? And so, you know, what I've done with the YouTube stuff is I sort of... I didn't know anything about Michael Jordan cards, Brett. So I started to learn about Michael Jordan cards, and then I started thinking to myself, well, if if there's no there's no central place to go to get educated, to learn, what card do I buy? Why?
What what card's the most rare? What card's the most valuable? What's which... I don't even know what the buffet of cards out there is. And as I was learning this myself, I was like, you know what?
There's gotta be other dudes out here just like me. They wanna know what's out there. They wanna know what to buy, when to buy it. Is it too much? Is it...
You know, what's the pop that... And so I just started making Michael Jordan videos, And I started just banging on the door. I wasn't monetizing anything. I mean, I did it for three years. I probably made a thousand videos before I made a dollar on YouTube.
And so I just started banging out, Michael Jordan video after Michael Jordan video. And it was very authentic, and it was very organic because every day when I went into my law office, all I wanted to do was figure out what the next Michael Jordan card to buy is. And so it just started to build, and I built a little library out there. And it did resonate with people, and I was right. There's a bunch of dudes out there that didn't...
They didn't want me to tell them what to buy, but they wanted to know what was out there to buy. What was the buffet? What are my choices? And so, that kind of led to the Michael Jordan hierarchy. And, you know, like I said, consistency, consistency, consistency.
My tagline for my YouTube channel, if you... I don't know how many videos you've seen, but I say it quite often, I am not the best content creator. I am not as good as Brett. I am not as good as Jeremy. I'm not as good as some of these guys out there.
But, damn, I'm consistent, man. I am the most consistent. I will say that. If it comes to volume, I'm good. You know?
That... I I could cosign to that. Let's talk about just like... This is your business. This is what you do.
When you wake up in the morning and you head to the office, take us to, like, walking into the office to the end of the day. Like, what
are you focused on? Like, what are you working on? I'll give you my day today. So...
And and, you know, we're, like, six hours into it. So I wake up around 05:30. I'm an early riser. I used to be early to bed. You gave me live auctions that are affecting me a couple nights a week, but usually, I'm early to rise, early to bed.
You know, I watch sci fi episodes with my wife around the 09:30 mark, and then I'm out. Right? Then I wake up 05:30, six, come to the office. So this morning woke up around 05:45, came to the office, got here around 06:45. I opened up.
I was the first one here. I'm always the first one here because I'm the early guy, right. So I pop in there. I get into my, my new office at this at this new location, and I start, going through raw collections, looking at the cards with the jeweler's loop, figuring out where does this card go. So I'm putting them into mags, putting cage of cardboard branded stickers on them, moving them into, you know, this section over here.
These cards need to go into a future, you know, Michael Jordan eBay live auction. These cards need to go into a future baseball card eBay live auction, etcetera, etcetera. Maybe this card's got three bad white corners, boom, into the dollar box. You know, maybe we'll sell it, you know, let let some kids come through, give it to kids at a hospital or something. I don't know.
I've got dollar boxes full of tens of thousands of cards that I've just kind of put out of sight, out of mind. And so that's what I did for about an hour. Then my son, Cameron, who's about... He's 26, he walks in, and he's like, what are we doing today? And I was like, we're magging cards.
I was like, we're gonna buff up this inventory because we had started to get low. We're running six shows a week now. So we're we're running, you know, any maybe 800 to a thousand cards a week through eBay Lab auctions. Raw cards, graded cards, big boy cards, little, you know, $7 cards. It doesn't matter.
And so the inventories, we're constantly churning. Right? So we magged cards and listened to, you know, Future and Eminem and some hip hop. And then he put on some of his, you know, The Fray and whatever. We're listening to music and just rocking out for about two hours, and we did that.
And then I'm a little ashamed to say we popped onto this TV here. We played two games of NBA two k before I got on with you. He busted my ass. He's... I don't know what's going on.
I used to never lose, and now I cannot beat him, and it's driving me crazy. So I'm gonna have to get on chat GPT or something. And now I'm here... On here with you. After this, I will go, pick up a couple more collections that just came in in the mail and then kind of rinse and repeat, figure out what to do with those cards.
I wanted to get on PSA and send an order under this new $40 deal. The first card I typed in, boy, that wheel just was spinning, Brett. It was like, man, I think everybody in the hobby's trying to send their cards in. I was
like, I couldn't find a Jaylen Brown, you know, 2016 prism silver. And I'm like, oh my god.
Forget this. I'll wait till tomorrow. I think everybody's trying to send their cards in, which everybody's excited about. So, and then tonight, I've got a... An all eras eBay live basketball auction at, 07:00 central.
So today will be a 06:00 in the morning to 11:00 at night day. I do that twice a week. So Wow. The, there's a lot going on there. I I want you to get into the weeds on...
Because you make... Made it sound like this is just normal, and it's like you getting a piece of mail in your mailbox. But, like, the collection buying process is not for the faint of heart. And to have, like, leads come in and to have people that are willing to sell you a collection that you can buy, and then you understand that. Like, I know I can make up what I paid, and then here's more over here, which will allow me to, continue to grow.
Like, that's... There's there's strategy there. There's process there. Like, you have to have an understanding of what you're looking at. Like, talk about your collection buying because that's obviously the fuel for the business that you're running.
Like Sure. How are you able to secure these collections that will then power these live streams that, you're doing on a six nights a week basis? Yeah. You nailed it. The issue that prevents most people from truly, you know, exploding on live auction platforms, whether it's Fanatics or eBay or whatnot, is access to inventory.
That is the furthest thing from my problem. And it... It's from the consistent hard work we talked about. So my YouTube channel has, we went over the 5,000,000 view mark. I've got, obviously, thousands and thousands of videos out there, and I've got a big mouth.
And so I built a website. I have hired... About a year and a half ago, hired a really smart young kid here in town who's become my brand manager slash IT guru. He's actually got an office here in my new space with me. And he built a website, cageacardboard.com.
And on cageacardboard.com, you know, you can buy cageacardboard merchandise. You can buy, you know, you can look at my cards. You can read blogs to articles. You can watch videos. You can, you know, the Michael Jordan hierarchy is on there, and it's free, and it's a digital dashboard.
You can use it. And after he built it, he's like, you know what, Brian? I think you should put a connect button at the top of your website on the top bar. That way, if somebody wants to message you or email you, you can hit that connect button. It'll send you a message.
And I was like, you know what? But go ahead and do it. You know, whatever. It doesn't sound like it's gonna be a lot of work. And, once we put that connect button on there, Brett, the floodgates open.
Because you know me, I've got a big mouth, and I'm always looking for cards. My favorite thing to do is to look through collections, and I offer very fair. I close about 90% of the deals of people that
send cards to me that I'm interested in. And so damn near every video I make, you're gonna hear me very obnoxiously say, hey. If you're looking to get a deal done, if you're looking at the reset button, if you want to move your collection, you want to just cash out and get out of the hobby, or you want to just start over.
Right? And you've got some unwanted cards, hit the connect button on cajuncardboard.com. Let's get a deal done. And that's what happens. And so now, you know, when I walk in in the mornings, I check that Cajun Cardboard email through that connect button, and there's usually six to eight inquiries from people saying, hey.
I got a collection. Hey. I've got a collection. Are you buying football? Are you buying...
You know, whatever. And so I am struggling right now to keep up with that. That is hard for me to keep up with. So bringing in inventory is not the issue. The issue is processing the inventory I bring in so I can turn the inventory into dollars and cents.
How have you, sounds like it's a work in progress, especially when you have so many collections and cards coming in. And I'm sure, like, you don't wanna say no to, like, good stuff from an individual who it could be not just a one time deal, but they could come back. So you're trying to build that relationship. What have you learned? What...
I guess, what do you need to get better at when it comes to, like, the processing side? Like, as you evaluate your own business, and we all need areas of improvement. Like, what are you focused in on right now to make sure that you can turn inventory maybe, a few days quicker than you're doing it now? Like, what's on your mind? A way to price it quicker.
You know, when I know there's ways that people are like, dummy, just use AI. AI is not perfect. AI is not really helpful on a 100,000 raw card collection. It doesn't really move the needle for me. I don't even know if there's a way to implement it.
If there was a way to get, the inquiry from my, cajuncardboard.com website, you know, into a spreadsheet, and then get prices for the cards on the spreadsheet more efficiently, that's what I need. And right... I think, well, right now, only intelligent, educated veteran hobbyists would be able to price raw collections like that. You know? And here's the other problem.
I'll get a person that wants to sell me, you know, 700 football cards. Brett, I don't know a damn thing about football cards. But I do have people on my team that know a lot about football cards, and so now I bring them involved. But, ultimately, the conversion of inquiries into actual tangible deals getting done, that's number one. That is number one.
It hasn't affected my business because I've got so much inventory to begin with. But I can see one day in the future, maybe I'll run through the quarter million cards that I have, and I, you know, need to get that process more streamlined. Essentially, I need to clone myself or find somebody else who really loves cards.
You know, I I think of guys like, you know, Chris and Frankie and Josh Dawson and and and you and Jeremy. These people have got so much information in their head.
I need another person like that. And while I have tremendous teammates here on, you know, with the KJ cardboard brand, those guys aren't there. Their learning curve is is quick, but they've got a long way to go. So I can't just hand those emails over. I don't have anybody here to hand it over to, so that's me.
So that's kinda my primary job. The other stuff, I can hand off. That, I cannot. What's it been like bringing people in and people that you're, you know, paying that are a part of the team? Like, this is what I find about myself, Brian, is that, like, I'm very type a.
I want things to be a certain way, and I think most entrepreneurs, operators are in a similar way. Like, we we know what we like. We know the presentation we wanna put out. Like, how have you been able to coach your team up on, like, the way things should be or how you should, approach, like, a live stream? Like, how do you make sure that the brand is extending not just through Brian who everyone knows, but through the rest of the team?
Trial and error. Well, the good news is you start with the right people. You know? And that... Sometimes that's a guessing game.
You know? I mean, if I was, you know, reading resumes on paper, this would have been very difficult for me to trust someone who I've never met. And I'm just looking at what... Who are you? Where are you?
What's... You know, I brought in one of my best friends that I've known since fourth grade. And for old people, that's like forty five years or forty years. I brought in my son. Okay?
I brought in somebody I've known for five years who had five years in the, livestream breaking business. Now he's gotta undo some some bad habits that he's learned from breaking, right, because we're only singles. We're only selling singles. And so he's had to kind of rewire his brain, but he's had a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience, and he really helped me build out the studio. Hey, don't buy this.
Hey, put this light here. Buy this mic. You know, this camera, you don't need that. Wire it here. Nail it in.
You know, so he built out the studio, and it was... He was an invaluable resource. He's my right hand man. I've got two full time people. My son and then him, Aaron, who they call double.
His his nickname is a a because it's Aaron a, you know. So, Aaron and Cameron are full time, and then I've got, my best... One of my very best friends from childhood who runs the books, which is where I really need the help. Right? He's running reports.
Hey. You gotta stop selling these cards on these nights or this did better on... You know, he's looking at the analytics of it and putting together reports so we can... Are we making money? I mean, I know we might see revenue, but we need to know profit.
So, oh, you gotta take out, you know, eBay's fee. You gotta take out the cost of the mags. You gotta take out the cost of the stickers. You gotta take out the cost of the studio, the manpower, the labor. People forget.
They think it's really easy to go sell stuff on livestream, and it is. What's the problem? Well, when you sell a 150 things, what do you gotta do the next morning, Brett? You gotta ship and take them things. Yeah.
That that petrified me. When we got into the eBay livestream stuff, I was petrified because I am just like you. I don't trust anybody to do anything. I'm always trying to do it myself. And so taking a step back and kinda trusting people to do things, you have to do it or you'll never scale.
You have to do it. How did you know that based on the vision and what you had had planned in leaving your career and going all in on this, how did you know that you needed to have people and resources alongside you and not just go all in and figure it out yourself from the get? Because the biggest question around this is, like, the money. Like, there's an investment in people, and that could be money that you're using on an... On inventory or something else in the business.
Like, how did you come to that decision that, like, I can't just do this alone out of the gates. I need some people alongside me. Oh, it's just simple. There's... I already didn't have enough time.
You know? It was kinda funny because, you know, I was a full time real estate attorney, right, running a law firm, one of three owners. And then I was doing the hobby as a side hustle, but I was spending much more time on the hobby while I was running the law firm. And I was like, I can no longer do this. I am sprinting and I'm going to hit a wall at some point.
I am going to crash. There's no way I can juggle these two things at this pace. So I dropped the law and I came over here and I was like, oh, I'm going to have so much more time now. I'm going to have so much more time. You know?
I'm gonna get to take walks with my wife at 1PM. You know? I'm gonna sleep in later. I don't... Oh my gosh, Brett.
Since I've gotten here, my wife is like, you told me that you were gonna have more time. And I'm working significantly more. But I've told her, and I know for sure, that it won't always be this way. Right? It's just this way with start up companies.
We don't know what we're doing. We're just figuring it out. We're trying stuff that works. Oh, that doesn't work. Now forget that.
Don't do that. You know, these sticker... We bought these cage of cardboard stickers. Oh, the stickers are too small. Scrap them.
Buy the right size. Boom. We got those. Here's how we're going to keep our inventory in, you know, the on deck circle for the shows. Nope.
Nope. That was the wrong way. Let's do it by player. Wait. Let's do it by sport.
And so we're just doing it trial and error. We don't know what the hell we're doing, man. I've never done this. But, you know, we stay consistent to the brand, which is tell the truth, be transparent,
which is sort of the same thing, but do the right thing the right way all the time on time. Period.
There is no corners cut. No matter what... I don't care if it makes more money. It'll always come back to bite you. If you're not sure if a card is good enough to go in a mag for a show, it does not go in the mag for a show.
And the first meeting I had with these guys is never guess. If there's anything that doesn't seem right, do not do it. Don't do it. Just throw it in a box. I'll look at it later.
We'll just get rid of it. It doesn't matter. Nothing's as important as our reputation. And so that's one thing that I've tried to stand out. You know, as a content creator, I've always told the truth for better or worse.
Even if I'm talking about my affiliate partners, I tell the truth. Right? And people sort of come to appreciate that. And I want them to come to expect the exact same sort of standards when they, see our eBay livestreams. You took the words out of my mouth.
I was gonna ask you about just, like, the importance of having standards. I think we... This industry, it provides so many opportunities for so many people. And I'm I'm a cheerleader on the sideline because if this person or this company or this segment or this category is doing well, it typically means good things for a small business owner like myself. But what I see I see right now, and I'd love your opinion on this.
There's this professionalization across the in in... Industry. Right? There's infrastructure being bought... Built new tech.
Obviously, fanatics has played a a critical role in this. But what I don't see in it... You see, like, the professionalized side of the industry or where we could go based on standards individual companies have and even enterprise type companies have. But then you've got kind of wild wild west mentality where it's like there's no standards. It's just people trying to make money over and over again.
And it's these two worlds that are happening across the industry, and it's it's interesting to understand, like, how operators operate and how certain groups do certain things. I I wanna take that back to, like, you having standards. I think, obviously, like, that's really important in order to, like, grow, scale, and sustain. Like, why was that such a big part for you to have standards and make sure that the people that were working under your umbrella understood those standards, you know, from the jump? Yeah.
I mean, the one thing that scared me the most about about doing these eBay live auctions was, Brett, I never sell raw cards because I'm scared. Because, you know, what you think is, you know, a a quality raw card may not match up with what I think, may not match up with what mister x thinks. And so I've always been... And my my collection is hon... Well, 99.999% graded cards.
Okay? So I've always wanted the certainty. Even though I might not agree with the grades, I collect graded basketball cards. And, again, we probably buried the
lead here. First and foremost, all I care about is building the greatest Michael Jordan collection in the world.
I'm never gonna have it. I don't have it now, but I'm constantly pushing forward in that. That will always supersede all of this business stuff that we're talking about. I know where... It's called passion to profession.
Well, the passion is first. That's the first p. My Michael Jordan collection is always number one. But, yeah, you know, I lost my track. But there's no, it doesn't make any sense to kind of try to slip one past the goalie when it comes to an auction or a quality of a card or to overly embellish the importance of a card.
Because it's always going to come back to bite you. Right? And for seven years, I've been talking on YouTube. If I really wanted to pump and dump cards, dude, I've got a pretty good platform to do that, if I really wanted to do that. But that's just not what I do.
Like, I'll be... You know, I've been telling people I've been telling people for, like, six weeks, hey. The market's about to reset. Michael Jordan scoring Kings PSA eights, they're gonna get freaking murdered. They're gonna get crushed.
All these beam teams, all the warp speeds, these are cards that I love. These are cards that brought me into the Michael Jordan world. You're going to get smashed. And I've been telling everybody, and they're like, you're crazy. You're crazy.
And I'm like, okay. Just watch. This is my industry. This is what I am selling, and I'm telling people this. And so hopefully, I...
I've got a little bit of credibility built up over the last six, seven years, you know, from the YouTube content and whatnot. So, yeah, that was the scariest thing about doing eBay Live Auctions, Brett, is, you know, putting a card in a mag, I put stickies on, like, 40% of my cards. And it says, front bottom left corner, not perfect. You know, slight bend in bottom right, you know, edge wear on bottom middle center. And people, when they're watching my EBA livestreams, they're like, holy moly.
What are you doing? Like, why... You know, I've never had anybody tell us that. I'm like, no. I've got a sticky right here.
I gotta make sure that you are buying what you think you're buying. There's gotta be a meeting of the minds on this. And so, so far so good. So far so good. One out of 500 cards we sell, somebody says, Hey, take it back.
And probably 99 of a 100 times, I'll take it back. Either I missed it, or I'll just take it back anyway. Just because it's not worth the hassle. Just bring... Send it back to me.
Mail it back. You're good. I'll give you money back. I wanna take a slight, walk on the path of the Jordan market because when you're a Jordan fanatic, talk a little bit about what's happening with Jordan's coverage and wasn't planning for this. But I think it's interesting because you're honest about, like, the PSA eight scoring kings.
Like Yep. Undeniable. Anybody in the hobby, like, we all know it starts to stop with MJ. So
it, like, whether you like it or not, like, forced to pay attention to what's happening with Jordan cards and the heater that Jordan's card has been on over the last, you know The third. Yeah.
Crazy. It's... But but it's fun, and it's exciting. And even if you get into the data and looking at the pop reports and how many copies of these cards are, like, you can have collectors justify certain things because you can say it's Jordan. You know?
It's Jordan. But I wanna get your perspective. Like, what are as a guy who owns, like, some of Jordan's biggest cards and someone who knows more about Jordan cards than most people, like, what what has happened with Jordan's market and what's currently happening, and, like, how do you see it? Like, from high end, top of the mountain to, like, lower end, like, how are you seeing this this market shake out? It's real simple.
I just think it's June 2021. Again, that's it. That's where we are. Like, we just got past the COVID bubbles top. And what's gonna happen?
The exact same thing that happened last time. And I know there's different factors. The demand's higher. Fanatics is here. You know, there's no PPP money.
There's no COVID. People aren't in their parents' house. Look at the... I get all that. I get all that.
But if you just look at numbers on paper and you look at graphs, you know, we saw an explosion of cards up into, you know, March 2021. And then what happened? We saw some people will call it a a flattening of the curve, for lack of a better term, or a reset or a crash. Right? Some people would say that some cards did crash.
Right? And I ran into the burning building. I put my entire life savings into Michael Jordan car. I spent every single dollar to my name almost to the point of being reckless. Even as a father of seven kids and a husband to a wife for thirty years, I put every single dollar to my name into Michael Jordan basketball cards from 2022 until 2025.
And I'm still doing the exact same thing. If you ask me what I think is going to happen over the next six months, I think 95% of Michael Jordan cards are gonna be worth less 6 months from now. But if you ask me what I think about five or six years from now, I think 100% of Michael Jordan cards are gonna be worth more than they are six months from now. So, long term, snorting, slobbering, raging bull market. That's the way I feel about it.
Next six months, not so much. But I'm very excited. Why? Because what do we start with? Passion over profession.
I am going to combine those two. I can't wait to go back and buy a bunch of PSA eights and PSA nine Jordan inserts in parallels that I sold, the last time around into this market. Right? I can't wait to go back and buy those again as I watch them come down on card ladder. You know, we're looking at card ladder graphs and indexes, Brett.
And you know what? If that scoring king's PSA eight gets to the point where, hey, man. I think that's too low. I know it needed to correct. I agree.
It
did. But when it gets to a point where it's too low, hell, yeah. I'd love to put one of those back in my collection. Maybe it's an eight. Maybe it's a seven.
Shit. I don't know, Brett. But I'm very much looking forward to hitting the buy now, buy now, buy now, buy now, and bid on Fanatics Weeklies and eBay and, and buy back into some of the Jordan cards that I sold along the way in order to build, you know, the real high end tier one type Michael Jordan collection that I've kinda focused on. Obviously, we have data platforms like card ladder that help us inform, but there's this thing. It's gut feel and instinct, and that only comes from time spent through the trials and tribulations of buy, sell, trade.
Like, how do you... How are you able to evaluate when you see example of a Jordan card? Maybe that's in your collection where you're like, now's a good time to sell it because there's no way it's gonna go up. And then on the flip side, like, how do you realize, like, when it's... The trigger goes off and it's like, okay.
This is at a great point. Yeah. Time to buy. Like, how are you going through that? Yeah.
Well, the first thing you gotta do is you don't... You can't have paralysis, by analysis. Right? You can't think for one second. You are gonna perfectly time the top or perfectly time the bottom.
Right? But you can make an educated guess. Like, I think most of us who've been in the hobby, you know, like like you and me, you know, six, seven, eight, twelve, fifteen years, whatever, sort of felt uneasy about, you know, let's stay with Michael Jordan cards, about where Jordan card prices for certain cards were going over the last eighteen months. I'll be honest with you. I've got both hands raised.
I completely missed the mark. This peak that we've just now started to see the down side from... And what are we? Almost Halloween. So 10/31/2026, if anybody's watching this at a later date.
We've just now started to see what I think is gonna be a pretty relevant reset for the Michael Jordan card market. I thought this was gonna happen in, late January, so I was off. I I sold my cards too early. Some would say, hey, man. You sold all those PSA tens.
It's worth three times as much now. I'm like, yeah. I did. But guess what I bought with my money? I bought Rubies.
I bought a PMG. I bought another Rubies. I bought a second copy of A Grand finale. I bought three Playmakers Theater. The money's going right back in.
So I'm not... I don't have any remorse. And I know a lot of people who cashed out on certain Michael Jordan cards on the way up, put that money right back into Michael Jordan cards. You know? It's not like I went and, you know, bought cars and houses and lake houses and crap like that, man.
My whole collection is still sitting in my fanatics' fault. So, I don't... Have a very, what's the word I'm looking for, aggressive approach, to collecting cards, and it is gut instinct. It's not a perfect science, but it's treating me very well. And, again, it does help to have the indexes from card ladder and just word-of-mouth and getting on the phone with folks in the hobby who, you know, maybe be looking at a different segment than you are.
But, yeah, man. I don't I don't know. I mean, everybody's guessing. Nobody's got a crystal ball. I just suspect over the next six months, it's gonna be a little rocky time for Jordan cards.
But I am foaming at the mouth. Can't wait to go buy hundreds and hundreds of PSA eights, warp speeds, and bean teams, and and all that stuff that goes with it. Just all that stuff. I can't wait to get back into it. So you've got this amazing Jordan collection, and the last time we were on, we talked about it.
I'm curious, like, how... And I always like to dig dig into this with business owners in the space. I don't know if I've ever interviewed a business owner in the space that's not a collector and has a badass collection. I'm curious, like, how how do you think about that Jordan collection alongside the business that you're building with Cajun cardboard? Like, is there an opportunity to say, okay.
This is going so well with the company that I need more resources, and so I dip into my Jordan collection and sell something. Do you separate them? Like, how do you think about it? It's... Well, I don't separate them.
They ain't together. Like, there's... That's never an option. Like, at no point ever did I think... Now have I sold cards to buy this microphone in this studio and pay these people?
Of course. Mhmm. But none of them were the Michael Jordan cards that are in my Keeper collection. None of them were the cards that I care the most about. You know, I've been blessed enough to make...
My timing was very good, and I've made some very good decisions, you know, on which Michael Jordan cards to buy. Those are untouchable. And I'm not the take it to the grave guy. You know, I know some people will be like, oh, those cards are going to my kids. No.
Those cards are not going to my kids. I am selling my Michael Jordan collection. But no time in the near future, I get messages from brokers every day saying, hey. Is your... What?
Pick pick one. It doesn't matter. You're Red PMG? You're Champion PMG? You're Ruby?
No. It's not for sale. No. I don't ask how much are they offering. I just say no.
And so that's never been, an option. It was hard enough to consolidate, you know, from 1,300 cards to, like, 30. Brett, that was an adventure, dude. I mean, you know? It's like I put my money where my mouth is.
I thought that PSA 10 label meant too much, and people were giving too much value to it. Bro, I pushed all my chips in. I sold all those PSA tens and bought the rarest cards in the world that were not PSA tens. And so it... Maybe it'll turn out great.
Maybe it won't. It's worked out so far. I wanna go back to kind of collection buying and see if you have any moments or stories and specific cards. Like, you're sitting on a ton of inventory, a lot's coming in.
Like, take us into one of those collection buys.
Like, you dig in and you pull out what card, and you're like, oh my god. This is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Like, take us into one of those moments. Sure. You know, I've had a a great playlist.
It's over a 100 videos long from one collection. A gentleman named Bob lives in Connecticut, older fella. He said, I've collected Michael Jordan cards all my life. You know, are you interested in my collection? We got on the phone one day.
I said, yes. You know, weeks go by. We've gone back and forth. I'm like... He's like, I have 400,500 thousand cards.
He's like, how how do you wanna do this? And I was like, he had spreadsheets of Brett. When I tell you, he probably had 3,000 Michael Jordan cards in spreadsheets, like, with perfect descriptions. He he had the grades for the ones that were graded. 99% of his collection was raw, but it, at the time, was the biggest Michael Jordan collection I'd ever stumbled upon in my life.
And, and so we called it the cross country collection because it's pretty much cross country to get from Baton Rouge, Louisiana to freaking Connecticut. And so I was gonna fly up there with my son, who's the one that's working with me now. We were gonna go up there. We were gonna get this collection. We got a deal done, right, for six figures plus.
And, and I was like, well, I'm just gonna box it up, and we're gonna ship it back. And, and then we'll fly back, and then it'll, you know, it'll be here, and then we'll start looking at the collection. Brett, we got up there, and this guy... First of all, salt of the earth, greatest people in the world. This guy had so many cars.
I don't know what I was thinking that I could ship 400,000. Cars. It was the dumbest thing I've ever thought of. So we ate the cost of the flight back. I didn't even cancel it.
We just ate it. I rented an SUV. My son and I jumped in there, and we came back down to Baton Rouge. But the crown jewel of that collection was... It was the 1997 Skybox, Team Skybox Star Ruby, serial number 50, and it was raw.
And so, of course, I popped it off the PSA instantly, immediately. Right? And, I made sure they babysat it, and, and it came back in PSA eights. And let's just leave it that it's worth significantly more today as a PSA eight than it was, you know, six years ago as a raw. So that would be the the crown jewel pickup, from one of these raw collections.
And I paid the guy for it. I paid a market value at the time. It was a huge number. In fact, it was almost 40 percent of the price of the collection. But, it worked out great for me.
It worked out good for him. Obviously, he put a lot of money in his pocket, and it worked out great for me because he came back to the SAA. That's incredible. Love this story. I wanna...
And it it might not be this collection, this cross country collection that feeds a live stream. Maybe it does. But, like, you know, you going to a collection like that, you getting an understanding and seeing these cards, and you instantly have this product knowledge and knowing what you're buying, and you feel comfortable paying 6 figures because it just makes sense based on your knowledge. Like, how do you take that, or how do you think about taking that insight and knowledge you have on just, like, evaluating a collection like that onto your live shows. Like, making sure that, like, you are sharing as much information as possible with your audience of people so that while they're in a com, live commerce situation, like, you're...
They at least feel educated on the products that you're showing and what you're buying. Like, how do you how do you, get that injected into kind of the DNA of your live streams? Yeah. I... I'd like to tell people this.
My... I'm not saying my eBay live auctions are better than anybody's. I am saying they're different, because, you know, we may have, Brett, at any given time, a 180, 200 people in the room. Right? On Mondays, we do Michael Jordan only.
100% Michael Jordan cards. You're gonna see a 150 different Michael Jordan cards raw and graded sell on a Monday night for for my eBay live auctions. And then we do nineties on other nights in football, baseball, and then sometimes all eras. But Mondays is Jordan. So in that room, we may have a 180 people, Brett.
70 are bidding. 110 are just there to have fun and to learn about cards because it literally is like when I go to start a YouTube video, I hit the record button and I go into trading card database. I'll start talking about cards, what set it came from, what the pack odds are. You know, we talk about the condition of the card. We talk about whether it's got, you know, a parallel to this card.
Where does this card fit in the grand scheme of things? Is it a hierarchy card? If it is, what tier is it in? You know, a lot of people are in those, Monday, Jordan eBay live auctions just because they wanna learn more about the cards, and it's free. And you just sit there for sometimes four hours, right, while I talk.
And, sometimes I'll go from the first card to the hundred and seventieth card and not take a sip of water. Like, I will literally... As you can see, I sometimes can run on, But I will talk about those cards too much. I've had people say, too much talking. Next card.
I'm like, okay. Sorry. I'm sorry. Sometimes I get carried away. But, I'm having a blast.
I feel like I'm in a very unique position because there's not that many people in the hobby who have looked through safely, safely 5,000,000 Michael Jordan cards. Right? And and I'm not just talking about the stuff that everybody knows, the fancy, sexy ones. I'm talking about, like, collector's choice '19 96 base cards and subset cards. Like, I look through those cards every single day to the point where I may pop a card up there, and I might say it's the skylights, and tell people what the number is on the back of the card before we turn the card over just because I've done it a
billion times.
It's not that I'm smart at everybody. It's just I freaking put in the time. You know? And so I think a lot of people appreciate that. They're learning about the cards at the same time.
Maybe they swipe and buy one every once in a while. Maybe they never buy one. I have people that tell me, hey, I'm never buying your eBay live, but I'm always in there. I hope that's okay. And I'm like, you're damn right it's okay, because you're bringing something to it.
And I tell other people, that eBay live chat on Monday nights is the most educated live chat of any live selling auction platform in the world because there's people in there that know way more than I do about certain Michael Jordan segments, and I'll bounce questions off them. I'll say, isn't this a series two jumbo pack that this card came out of? And they'll be like, yes. And and they know. I mean, they know their stuff.
And so it's an awesome setting. It's an awesome atmosphere. It's three hours of learning about cards, and we're just having a blast. And my son's sitting next to me, so he's actually learning the same time and getting paid and learning the same time. No.
That's not it's not bad sitting next to me, man, making some money talking cards. I, as we kinda round the corner on this conversation, I wanna know, Brian, like, would you be able to do what you're doing without putting in the work on the front end, with your YouTube channel and educating the audience around Michael Jordan cards? No. Because that that platform is... That's how I put people in the room.
Right? So I've got 40,000 subscribers. You know, that's... That half of the people that come into the room are people that have been watching me for six, seven years. Right?
Because they know I'm gonna tell the truth. They know I'm gonna tell you if there's a white corner or a crease or what. So I don't think I could have just said, I'm gonna sell Jordan cards. Maybe I'm naive. Maybe the cards would sell themselves, Brett.
Maybe they would. Because Jordan cards are pretty damn popular and in demand. So maybe I'm just... Maybe I'm being naive, and maybe it's not me. But I do feel like there is a different vibe, in my, certainly, Monday night eBay live auctions than most other live auction platforms out there.
Because sometimes I talk too much about what the card is instead of just popping it on a pedestal and setting the timer. Right? But I think people like it. The feedback's been great, man. Brian, one thing I've learned about you, which is a very important quality alongside you being consistent, you're very self aware.
So, like, that is that is as somebody knows, like, hey. Yeah. Some people tell me I talk too long, so I talk too long. I... Which I think self awareness is, like, a really important trait.
Listen. God makes all sorts. I definitely... I think the measure of a man is can you look in the mirror and say, I am... And this is not...
Nobody... Most people can't do this. I am great at this. Mhmm. But, damn, I am bad at this, and I can't get better.
I'm just... I can't get better at it. You know? But recognizing your faults and just bringing them out in the open and and, you know, it's... That's what becoming a man is.
Right? It's it's recognizing your faults, accepting your faults, working on them, trying to get better at them, but, you know, being honest with yourself. Like, these guys that work with me, they're like, what can we take off of your plate so you can do the things that you're good at? The things that I'm good at is negotiating and purchasing and bringing in collections and talking when we hit record on that thing about Michael Jordan cards. Those are the two things I'm good at.
I am not good at 95% of the rest of the stuff that happens to coincide with eBay Live auctions. And so that's why I've got a great team around me doing those things. And so if each person can kinda work on those things that they're great at, you know, it's it's been a good team. It's been a good learning experience, and we're getting better at it, man. So as we close this out, final question here, Brian.
Since going full time, building out the Cajun Cardboard brand, leaving your former, career, what is what is one thing that you have learned about building in this space, something valuable, something that you potentially could share with the audience of other individuals who are thinking about kind of working in sports cards more than just a side gig or a weekend warrior setting up at shows, but maybe pursuing this full time like you? I'm trying to think of the easiest way to say this. You know, life is about perspective. And, and, again, I'm gonna sound like your dad here. I'm not I'm not anybody's dad here.
I'm not giving dad advice. But the one thing I've learned as an old dude, is that life's about perspective, man. And when you pop out of bed in the morning, you can't control your environment a 100%, but you can control how you react to your environment. And so if you've got a passion for a profession, and you're you're gonna ask the what if question. Half the world, or really, like, 80% of the world is gonna say, what if x happens bad?
And I'm thinking, what if x happens and it's good? You know, what if this happens? What if I can get to this? What do I need to do to get to this? I'm not worried about failing.
It never, in a million years, entered my mind that this might not succeed. It didn't. And I don't mean to sound arrogant. I just know that I'm gonna outwork it. Like whatever obstacle there is, I know for sure I can outwork it.
I mean, I know I can. Right? And I've got incredible people around me that I trust implicitly. Man, I just think perspective is everything. And anybody that's kinda teetering on the brink, obviously, you need some financial frugality.
Like, don't just be reckless about it. But if you believe in yourself, and you've got the knowledge, and you put the time in and the hobby, man, take the jump. I've had
five people, 10 people message me since I went full time saying, man, I'm so jealous. I'm close. You know, I'm really close.
This is what I do for a living. I'm a financial advisor. This, that, whatever. Like, I'm thinking about doing it, and I'm like, do it. Do it.
You have my support. I'll help you any way I can. I post crap on my story and Instagram page and YouTube all the time. New businesses come in. I mean, you're doing it with me right now, Brett, and and I would happily reciprocate with you or any of your friends that reached out and say, hey.
I've created this new product and the hobby. And I'm like, I don't know anything more about it. Let's hit record, and I'm just gonna ask dumb questions and let you talk about it. Right? I don't know anything about it.
I don't wanna know anymore. I did it the other day with a guy named Peter. He's got something called Beacon. And I was like, oh, that's what you do? Okay.
You make sure people find the cards they're looking for and they get notifications? Fine. I don't wanna know anymore. Come on the channel. You got an hour.
Let's go. Let's talk. And so I asked him questions, and he was like, damn, dude. You're you're really smart. That's great.
So, yep, that's me, man. So if I if I didn't know anything about you, Brian, before this and you said you were starting a business and then the second sentence you said, and I have seven kids. I'd say, oh, he's got seven kids, and he survived it. Like, this guy could do anything. So I'm not surprised by the hustle, and I'm...
You're probably already used to the sleepless nights and everything in between, but the... It's undeniable every time I see you online, man. I I just see excitement, and I see passion for, the industry and not in a way that's like, I'm excited to make money off of you. It's like, I love cards and, like, let's build something cool. And I need you, the audience member, to help support this, and I'm gonna reciprocate on the back end, which I I love seeing that.
And then I just, love what you're building, man. I appreciate you coming on and sharing. I'm having a blast, man. And, again, I wanna reiterate. Every single dollar every single dollar goes right back into building this.
I'm pointing over here because I've got my Jordan collection on this other screen and my fanatics fault. Every dollar goes back into building that damn Jordan collection and and a little bit of soccer on the side, Brett. I I know you got you got a lot of interest there. And next time next time we have you on, we can do a deep dive on the current state of the collection. But Love it.
Let let people know where, you said six days a week, eBay live? Yeah. Six days a week, eBay live, eBay live auctions. We're, you know, usually... It's always all Jordan on Mondays.
That's me. I'm the pilot on that one. I'm the the auctioneer, if you wanna call it that. Tuesday night, my son, they call him Cajun Junior, even though he's my second son. His name's Cameron.
He does, nineties basketball only on Tuesdays. So Kobe, Jordan, Shaq, Rodman, Iverson, all your guys that we all love. Wednesdays is either football or baseball. And then Thursdays, it's back to me, and I'm doing all eras basketball. So you might see Victor Wemyon, Yaman, Cooper Flagg.
You might see, Larry Bird's star card or, you know, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, tall boy. You don't know what you're gonna get, and those are really fun. And then Sundays recently have been ultra modern football, which I stay out of that because I don't know what the hell they're talking about. But I do like the look of some of the cards, and, that's what, what Aaron does on Sunday nights. That's our eBay live auction.
It's easy to find. It's Cajun Cardboard. Search it, and you'll see us. We should be at the top of the page. And then the YouTube channel is Cajun Cardboard.
The Instagram is Cajun Cardboard. Facebook is Cajun Cardboard. And what did I leave out? Oh, the website is cajuncardboard.com. Is that enough?
Yes. Get the plugs in. Everyone go check out a stream from Brian and the Cajun Cardboard team. Brian, always appreciate the time, man. Thanks, Brett.
Appreciate it, man. I'm always, at your service and definitely gotta get you on the show. I wanna talk about cards with you. Right? I wanna talk about your cards.
Yes. Net... Next time for sure. Deal cards. Deal.
All cards.