u/VendettaKarma

1. $62 on a lot of 15 Kobe and Jordan’s. Advertised as Nm/mt and sharp. All were creased, mangled & destroyed. Returned & left negative.
2. Ordered a $2.03 Jordan. Seller shipped PWE, no tracking, no updates. It’s two weeks. INR claim filed.
3. Purchased a numbered lot with Daniels, Lamar and others from Chrome/Finest. Over a week, no response, no tracking. $24.80.
4. Purchased a lot off the baseball card subReddit for $37 shipped. Good thing I sent it via goods & services because once that payment I heard nothing for nearly two weeks despite asking for tracking 6 days later. PayPal dispute and refunded.
5. Purchased a lot with 1988 SLU Jordan, inserts, base and some other non Jordan autos , football, mixed. Seller advertised the Jordan at $300+ with comps. Except he lied about the extent of the damage. Then EVERY other Jordan in the lot was mangled. Even the junk wax base. He put them in penny sleeved one-touches in team bags. I guess hoping no one would actually open them. $359.99 INAD claim filed and refund requested for that amount and a return.

There are a lot of scum bags and scammers out here in the hobby. Always call out people for their deception and bullshit.

They think they’re smart by trying to rob and trick you to dump their ungradeable trash on you for a premium - be smarter and hold them accountable.

6:30AM. Today. Tried to drive up 707 in Tye to head toward the gas stations on I-20. Traffic is back up for miles for no apparent reason. People were having to do u-turns in fields to go back down 707 toward Caps and Abilene. From a distance, it looks like yet another fucking asphalt truck jackknifed on the road , but couldn’t confirm. These things shouldn’t be driving through neighborhoods.

Next. Get to the Caps 7-11 on the corner to only find the door locked, lights off. It’s almost 7AM and a fucking 7-11 can’t be open to serve coffee? What even is their purpose?

Next. Go to McDonald’s on South 14th because my family wanted it (even though I told them they’re dreadful) and 15 fucking minutes later with two cars in front of me this dumb bitch who looks like she’s wasted, hung over, had her back blown out or a combination of all three, somehow fucked up my order with 4 things in it. Had to go inside. She still didn’t get it. Took another 20 minutes.

Then go to the precious HEB and guess what? Freezers are blown out, there’s water everywhere with electrical wires dangling and the stupid Entenmans cuck delivery driver can somehow fill an entire end cap with pumpkin shit even though it’s 100+ degrees for eternity here but magically forgets to fill his own shelf.

Then I notice more and more shit has increased in price 10-25% in a week. This HEB is dreadful. I don’t care how much you people worship it. It’s TRASH. We need another one or some real competition.

For reference I traveled through bumfuck east Texas for a week prior to coming back to this hellhole last night and had NONE of these problems there with SIMPLE shit that we constantly have here.

What the fuck is wrong with this place that people can’t drive, open stores, fill shelves or fucking read a food order. Do they even teach anything in school here other than how to get to the football stadium on Fridays and drive a truck like an asshole? Are there any district managers that hold anyone in retail accountable anywhere? Literally a fucking hazard in this shit HEB on top of it and no one gives a shit.

All they know how to do, ANY of them, is raise prices while providing below bare-minimum service. Fucking enough already.

And all of that just to get on roads that look like they’re from a third world country. Where is all this tax money going? Where’s that data center benefit? We should have roads of fucking gold and not bombed out pothole craters that can’t find an actual water drain because when it sprinkles, it floods.

I can’t get out of here fast enough.

Edit: I’ve been here since 2008. I remember when there was hope. This?

What sleeves are you guys using for your baseball cards?
I’ve been trying out a few different sleeves lately and paying more attention to how well they actually fit and protect the cards.
I recently tested some DEDC (DEDCCARD) sleeves and was pretty happy with them, especially for cards I want to keep in my collection for a while.
Curious what everyone else is using — penny sleeves, perfect fits, semi-rigids, or something else?

Bought a residential rental at the height of the market in 2022 with our savings and a $1.3m loan because "cheap leverage" and "get on the train" and "real estate always goes up". I didn't even view that many places and just bid the highest out of 15 bidders. It never made enough rent money to cover the interest alone, and I had to shovel cash into it year after year to cover the deficit. Now, the property is down 170k (10%) and I've already burnt 130k over the years on property taxes, maintenance and mortgage.

My family had to cut back a lot and eat McDonald's/cheap carbs on the income left and it was so stressful trying to find money every month. Next year I'm getting rid of it so we'll finally be freeeee.

Edit: Wow, I know McDonald's got expensive but the comment was about fast food becoming our only date night and family outing options. There are plenty of nicer restaurants we were going to before. We still eat at home with mostly carbs and veggies, with less meat in the budget.

That’s right! It’s 2026 and Gary Vee is on Whatnot (lmao) telling people to go to OpenSea and buy his NFTs. AND PEOPLE DID!

Grifters gonna grift.

Oh and he called himself a hero to entrepreneurs.

It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so absurd.

This took place in New York. It’s a hot mess. Di we think this is part of the reason they don’t want people inside? Or in the future, will restaurants that have these situations move to a pick-up, walk-up or drive thru only format?

People are crazy out here.

You know what -if you could talk and optimize it like AI should, to give you the best deal price wise possible in whatever combination of items this might actually be better than those nightmare Kiosks.

Can this even be real ?

Do we believe this? I’m going to watch a show today where I know it’s rampant to see if anything changes.

This is a very real thing. Odds are, the Dodgers will win yet again this year and if they don’t it will simply be a miracle at this point. That will damage the hobby even more than it already is.

But, since everyone seems to be so focused on the next release and valuing mid level pitcher autographs for $50-$100 that will be in dollar bins soon - let me tell you what happened when the World Series and the end of the 1994 season were lost.

Anything modern depreciated rapidly.

Now granted, the true junk wax era had recently ended. So any value that stuff had, well those were just clean losses. You’re talking base Griffey RCs not named Upper Deck in the $5 or less bins. $25 1989 Upper Deck Griffey RCs? How many do you want ? 3/$50? Sold.

Prospects? Alex Rodriguez was the top prospect at the time. Those cards saw easy 30-60% losses almost immediately. 1993 SP Jeters? $20-$30. How many do you want? I remember buying a whole 1993 SP set for $40. And that was mid 1995.

And these were on the high end. The lower end modern RCs and products became .. unsellable.

Grading & Bowman Hype Did Not Exist On the Scale it Does Today.

No one was grading base inserts. There weren’t 100 numbered parallels. No autos really, no game used yet. Bowman Chrome hadn’t even been invented yet. Everything just gathered a lot of dust. Shows were cancelled. No one bitched about PSA turnarounds or we’re making basement grading companies to scam people. Bowman 1sts? Of who? Wait that didn’t exist. Breaks? To get what?

It Took Until the 1998 Home Run Chase to recover.

From 1994-1997, baseball suffered so much that Topps actively cancelled releases and reduced print runs to a fraction of they were at the start of the 1994 season, which had already been pared back from the heights of the late 1980’s early 1990’s junk wax era.

This is why factory sealed Topps from 1995-1997 command premiums even though there’s really no chasers in them or top rookies. That’s how low the production runs were.

In 1998, PSA, BGS, & SGC grading started gaining immense traction as people looked to obtain higher quality cards from the junk wax, namely the McGwire 1985 Topps and to an extent the 1990 Leaf Sosa as well. But before that? It was a very tough sell for mostly anything from 1981 to modern.

But prior to that, basically it took three years to recover. It only recovered due to massive interest in the 1998 Chase.

Where did the money go?

This is the point where people started moving into 1986 and older football, 1987 and older basketball and even 1987 and earlier hockey. Hardcore collectors of baseball spent their time focusing on pre-1974 vintage. This is also around the time grading began to have a much more important place in the hobby. PSA subs were what, $5 a card in bulk?

Those were simpler times, not like this pending nightmare.

Unlike 1994, production runs aren’t decreasing in the years leading up to this potential issue, they are increasing. Excessive and absurd money is being thrown at SSSSSSP inserts of under .200 hitting rookies. Your PSA submissions won’t arrive until the dead of winter, or 2027, just in time for a potential… nothing.

Your fights over fanatics chrome releases are about to look real silly in a few months. Most of the people looking to jump on this hobby train and fuel it with the “stupid money” are new and if there’s no baseball, guess what? That money will be gone.

The losses will be catastrophic compared to 1994-1997 for the simple reason there’s an excessive and quite frankly unsustainable amount of money in the hobby right now. The losses will be in the billions for individual gamblers, graders and breakers.

The money that’s left will fuel next season’s basketball releases and football releases no doubt. Some will probably move to Pokemon, One Piece or whatever. Interest should also revert back to high grade pre-1991 vintage and landmark sets like 1993 Finest refractors in baseball but anything modern? Nope.

And players will lose a season of stats.

That’s not inconsequential for players like Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Aaron Judge and even Shohei Ohtani to a degree. They really need every stat they can get at this point. For players on the edge or players like Jackson Merrill (remember him?) this could be the thing that just destroys what little interest there even is left in their cards. And there’s a shit ton of once-hyped prospects just like him whose markets will just collapse. Those are more big, fat losses.

Maybe none of this will happen.

This all could be avoided of course and fanatics will keep pumping higher print runs of base no one wants already into the market with high end chases that only magically appear to show up on this sub.

I mean it could happen, right?

But are you sure that pumping thousands into modern and new releases is the way to go?

History definitely proves otherwise.

I had an interview today with an app that actually vets their sellers for sportscards and was approved to sell on their platform.

I had someone file 5 claims against me for defects that either the post office or the buyer themselves damaged. Before 5/31 I was hitting 30+ viewers to start every stream and would easily peak at 80-100+.

After I got these defects through last week, my viewer counts were destroyed, the last 2 shows averaged 8, 20 and the last one never even hit 20 viewers at any given time. My sales have absolutely been destroyed by this show suppression. Every time my show would hit 31 viewers, it would kick 1/2 of them out. Consistently, every show since 6/1/26. The last straw was this past weekend when I got blessed with a raid and hit 38. Once that happened, 7 were immediately kicked to hit 31 viewers, and then guess what? Half of those were then promptly kicked - again. It even lags and glitches before it happens, a tell tale sign of something triggering an automatic action.

Make a long story short I asked whatnot about my show suppression. Of course they denied it . They ensured me over and over even trust and safety looked into it. They came back with the same and an explanation of “well it’s slow in the summer and there’s too much competition on our growing platform.”

To their credit they were quick in their replies. I just don’t believe it. That or something is happening that they aren’t even aware of.

I moved my shows out of all of August so that the 90 days between defects and the 100% defect-free rating updates.

Hopefully I can move them off altogether.

I know a lot of you will be happy not seeing me on this sub anymore if that’s the case.. lol

Hope you all have great shows this weekend!

Look. Burger King actually starting to put customer service as a priority. Unlike McDonald’s, who doesn’t even want you in their restaurants any longer, let alone fix mistakes or give a damn about your experience.

Hello. So I continue to see 1989 Fleer Baseball boxes selling for over $100. A lot of them are using the “Ripken FF” in the title. Also, there are breakers on all platforms doing the same with a random 1989 Fleer Box.

The ONLY way to confirm that a box has the actual Billy Ripen FF in it is if the case it was pulled from has case code LOWER than 90171. It has to be, ideally BBCE verified as such. To potentially get some of the lesser known variations pre-black box correction (which are available in factory sets and en masse after) the box had to have come from a verified case with codes between 90171 and 90202. That’s IT.

To get the true Randy Johnson Marlboro error, the case code has to be between 83282 and 83362. For the tint and partial blocked out variations, the only confirmed case code is 83482. Codes 83552 and after contain the corrections, which are plentiful.

If you are hunting or breaking with people claiming they don’t know or can’t confirm you’re probably being scammed on the break or the box sale. Only trust BBCE confirmed packaging on the case itself or the box itself.

These 1989 Fleer Baseball boxes should be closer to the 1989 Donruss price ($60 and under) than $100+. Please don’t buy it if it can’t be confirmed.

Also even if they show you a case with a code and loose boxes that doesn’t mean anything without the confirmation or code or actual fleer seal on it. People for decades have obtained empty cases and filled them with boxes that do not have the error and sell them at a premium.

If they cannot be BBCE verified,do not pay a premium.

Enjoy

Here’s the link to the official announcement today , 7/20/26.

Basically they’re now keeping flat rate priority through 11/1/26 but it will be $12.99 instead of $9.21. Ground advantage between 1-5lb will be cheaper than 0-1 lb and they are raising the first class envelope .04 a tier to .82 - $1.36.

The FCM changes are already on the labels as of last weekend.

If you’re shipping under 5lb and , ground advantage is the way to go. 5+ lbs Flat Rate still works until 11/1/26.

I know it’s a mess but that’s the general message and update.

I’ll just leave this here.

Where are you getting your AI thumbs from? Cmon share !