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It's the nostalgia.

You always look back to, you know, when you're a kid,

when you're eight, nine, 10 years old,

and you're collecting.

In the United States, we are a collector society.

It's a very supportive industry.

People wanna educate each
other about these collectibles.

That's how it started, at its grassroots level.

It's, uh, it's special.

I think it's a fun industry to be in.

We can tell the history of our nation,

and the history of our people

through the objects that...
These collectibles that we sell.

Of course, you always want to say it's about the cards,

because it is about the cards.

But I think, more, it's about the people

that you meet along the way.

Most true collectors, what they care about,

it's the passion.

Yeah, these pieces are starting to...

be seen as alternative investments, and...

more people are joining this market every year.

It's a great thing.

I think there's two types of people that...

That collect. There are people that collect for...

Solely to make a profit, and think there's people

that collect just for the fun and the memory

and the good feelings that they have with it.

Now, the first people I would say,

the people that collect for profit,

they're basically out there to collect autographs,

memorabilia, cards, get it at a low price,

and then in the shops or on eBay

or something like that, turn it into a, uh, profit.

And I mean that... that's cool and all.

Your business owners gotta make money,

but my personal reason for collecting would be

because of the memories that they instill in me.

♪ Oooooh ♪

♪ ooooh ooooooh ♪

♪ Oooooh ooooh ooh ♪

♪ Oooh oooh oooh oooh ♪

♪ Oooh oooh ooh oooh ♪

All right, here we are at PSA at the National.

Got a 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie.

Really, really nice shape. - Beautiful.

Bill Russell rookie,

'57 Topps, another one in great condition.

An '86-'87 Fleer Michael Jordan rookie.

All these headin' off to PSA today.

♪ Ooooh oooh ♪

♪ Ooooh oooh ooh ooh ♪

♪ Oooh oooh ooh ♪

♪ Mountains ♪

♪ towering again ♪

♪ in your mind ♪

♪ Aren't they ♪

♪ the hardest ones to climb ♪

♪ Darlin' ♪

♪ Look how far we've come ♪

♪ Simply by ♪

So I... I'm here lookin' for a lot of stuff for the shop.

Um, so I buy a lot of stuff here to bring home to my store

to sell there. Um, so there's certain PC things

that I look for, too, like some kicker autos

and stuff for my own collection, but for the most part,

it's looking for inventory
for the store to bring back.

♪ Oh because darlin' ♪

♪ I would never ♪

♪ let you go ♪

Yeah. - There's autograph signers,

uh, that come in, so you can... you can go

to the autograph signings, and some of those guys

will talk around after they're done signing, so...

Yeah, yeah, you never know who you're gonna meet.

You rub shoulders with a lot of interesting...

Yup.

You... you go right in, you hit the ground runnin'.

I mean, get a lay of the land, and then

it's tables... - Yup, diggin' for stuff.

Yup. - Through boxes,

lookin' at showcases, buying sealed product,

running to different promos and giveaways,

all that kind of stuff, so... - Yeah.

That's always a big part of it, too.

It's a lot of fun.

♪ Aren't they ♪

♪ fleeting anyway ♪

♪ I am more fortunate ♪

♪ than I have been told ♪

♪ Now that ♪

♪ I found your heart of gold ♪

♪ Oh honey ♪

♪ Well I'd never guarantee ♪

♪ We'll be fine ♪

♪ Aren't we given ♪

♪ one day at a time ♪

♪ Love of mine ♪

♪ I know everything can change ♪

♪ Let it change ♪

♪ But I'll still ♪

♪ fall for you every day ♪

I'm Luke Kooy.

I'm 19 years old.

I think for me, it's really, really fun

to kind of look back on some of the memories you have,

especially on cards. I love keeping stuff

that I've pulled and opened,
that me and my dad have opened.

Um, it just kind of takes you back

to being 12, 13 years old, and I can tell you

right where I opened that card, and how we got the box,

and what happened before that day,

just because that memory's, like, so vivid.

So I grew up in remote Northern New Hampshire

for most of my, like, really, really young years,

from, like, two, to, like, probably 12.

With two little sisters, my mom and dad.

Had a lot of fun, uh, stories in our, uh, yard,

out in this remote area of New Hampshire.

We lived in a small town of about a thousand people.

Had a two-acre lot,

and so Luke was able to play sports in the backyard

and the front yard. In the wintertime,

slide down the hill. Um, and he set up

some, uh, a field goal... kinda set up in the backyard,

where that's where he was practicing

to be the next, uh, New England Patriots kicker.

Uh, so that's kind of where he started, and...

Eventually in high school, he became a kicker,

so part of his dream came true.

A lot of fun memories there,

and that's where we started collecting, too,

in New Hampshire. - Then we moved here,

to Manistee, Michigan, and had to make all-new friends,

which was kinda tough, but met a lot of new people,

and, uh, really thrived here through high school.

Manistee is probably one of
the few Lakeshore Communities

on Lake Michigan that hasn't really

become overdeveloped, that has a huge potential

from a tourist standpoint,

and just from an aesthetics standpoint.

My dad's a pastor, so he's been a pastor forever.

Since I was born, he's been a pastor.

Did lawn care before that, then turned into a pastor.

Then my mom is a nurse. So she was an ICU nurse,

uh, worked the night shift when I was growing up,

and then turned into a day shift nurse

when we moved here, so, uh,

both super, super supportive parents,

very, very involved.

Couldn't really ask for better parents.

I'm Christian Protestant.

It obviously is a huge, huge part of our lives.

Definitely very important, and kind of plays into

the practices that I-I try to have here, where it's...

you know, treating people like God would want you

to treat them type of thing, so.

Jefferson Burdick was, I mean, just one of

the founding fathers of the hobby.

He actually wrote "The Card Catalog,"

which is still in use today for collectors,

how they refer to different sets, um, out there.

Trading cards.

Mr. Burdick had an enormous collection,

but it wasn't just baseball cards

and sports cards in general.

It was a collection of... you name it.

Postcards and photographs and cigar bands.

He... later in his life, he wanted to actually

show off this collection, wanted a way to... to...

For the collection to outlive himself.

So he actually donated his collection to the MET

in New York, and that collection,

portions of that collection are on display, um,

you know, for the public to go see and learn from.

And every collector always to make that pilgrimage

to the MET to see Mr. Burdick's collection.

Collectors today are still
benefiting from that collection.

He was one of the guys who would correspond

with written letters back and forth

to other collectors of his generation,

'cause the internet wasn't around.

We didn't have that, so there were new discoveries

all the time from these people
who would go to these shows,

and these shows weren't as public

as The National is today.

These were kind of small little shows,

regional shows, and they...
The collectors would travel

amongst the regional shows,
and they would find a new card

that was unknown for their region,

and they would bring it back,

and Mr. Burdick would then include that

in, you know, he wanted to make this journal

of "The American Card
Catalog," which is still in use today.

150 miles from Cooperstown, New York,

on a pleasant tree-lined
street in suburban New Jersey,

sits the home of businessman Barry Halper,

possessor of the largest private collection

of baseball memorabilia in existence.

A collection that is said to rival that of

the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

Here, Barry Halper lives out the fantasy of every man.

Here, Barry Halper fulfills the dream of a lifetime.

Barry Halper was very notable because

of his-his very small ownership interest

in the New York Yankees itself.

So not only did Barry Halper
have a fair amount of money,

he was an individual who had access to players.

And Barry Halper didn't just collect cards.

Barry Halper was one of the first people to

collect game-used jerseys, and the memorabilia

tied to particular athletes.

So he amassed a huge collection that eventually

was sold off through very notable auction houses.

But he has access to the players, so would actually

talk to the players and have them sign.

This is my... Mickey Mantle would sign.

This is my game-used jersey, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.

Same thing with all the other players.

So the Halper pedigree on a piece of memorabilia

would really add a lot of provenance

to a collection once it was sold out there

on the secondary market.

That hat. Heh, I love that hat.

Looks like a Keystone Kop hat. - This is...

This is Heinie Groh's hat. And this is a Giant hat.

New York Giants. That was their old symbol.

But, uh... - Heinie Groh.

Heinie Groh. "The Bottle Bat."

And here we have, uh... this bat is, uh...

Always curious when some
of the ball players come over.

Babe Ruth autographed bat.

A real piece of lumber.

Oh, it's heavy. - Hank Aaron picked it up,

he's like, "I wouldn't have hit 755 with this bat."

Hank woulda hit anything.

Talk about a home run king. There's a man.

I played with Hank. - But also,

Barry Halper was susceptible to people,

unscrupulous people who saw that he was

a wealthy individual, and
the game-used jersey market,

at that time, was not a well-known market,

so there was... Mr. Halper was approached

by a lot of people, offering him a lot of

questionable merchandise at that time.

But he amassed this wonderful collection.

It was... it was brilliant, and again, sold,

and you can still see items originating

from the Barry Halper collection.

There's a shot to Kirby Puckett,

and straightaway center, he's under it.

Runner tagging, it could be the game.

Remember, Puckett's got a rifle for an arm.

Look at this throw!

There's gonna be a play at the plate!

He got 'em! - You're out!

A strike from Kirby Puckett.

My kind of wheelhouse was the junk wax era.

You know, like a lot of kids back, basically,

1986 to... '92.

I grew up a Twins fan, so that was...

fun times then with the Twins
winning two World Series

in five years, and...

I was a big Kirby Puckett fan.

Um, I know I got a couple hundred different Pucketts

from back in the day,

and that was a big project for me.

Back when you're eight, nine years old, it's just for fun.

You know, you're collecting all that stuff.

Late '80s, early '90s, which was really a period

of great growth in the industry itself.

A number of different
manufacturers of trading cards

were brought in... into the marketplace,

and that brought more collectors in.

You would see the more brick
and mortar stores opening up,

there was pretty much a sports card store

on every corner when I was growing up.

What happened at that point in time was,

there was probably an oversaturation of the market

as far as product.

The product was pretty much the same.

There was no way to differentiate in between,

and some of the collectors that

didn't have that true passion for it,

you know, they kind of left the industry,

and with that, those brick and mortar shops,

they began to close.

The trading card industry itself

kind of reinvented itself with the introduction

of chase cards, which are
cards that may have an autograph

on them, or a piece of memorabilia

on the card itself, whether it be a piece

of a game-used jersey, or a bat, or a ball.

And that kind of re-inspired
the collector in the late '90s.

And then the advent that, with the internet,

the boom of the internet, a way where you didn't have to

just go to a show, or go to a card shop.

You could actually go online and find a collection

that was up for sale, whether it be on eBay,

or some auction house. A lot of sports memorabilia

auction houses came into being

in that late '90s early 2000s era.

And that really jump started the industry itself,

all the way into, let's say, 2007-2008.

There was a little downturn
in the industry, as there was

with a downturn in the economy itself.

But that was short lived, because then the industry

just began shooting back up again,

all throughout the early 2010s,

all the way through up until, I think,

our next big moment that we all unexpectedly saw

was during COVID, the COVID boom.

Now the growing concerns
about the deadly coronavirus

officially hitting the U.S.

I think COVID really helped boost the popularity of...

Of trading cards. Think about it.

You're at home, you have nothin' to do.

You can't go outside. Why not just go on eBay?

Or go to a local shop online and pick out cards,

uh, everything you've been thinking about.

It really took off during the pandemic.

People were home, uh, looking for things to do,

digging through their old cards,

boxes in their houses and basements.

The hobby exploded during that time.

Everybody was kind of shut in.

I mean, that's why people were watching Joe Exotic,

for cripe's sake.

And this is what I truly love.

I-I love to meet collectors who were reintroduced

to the hobby from that COVID time.

They found the passion,
the enjoyment from looking at

their old trading cards.

I got into...

specializing more on-on team sets.

I remember a team set I wanted to put together

was a 1967 Topps Tigers team set.

And during COVID, I worked on going online

and finding those particular cards

to help build that team set,

and it was kind of like puttin' together a puzzle.

And so I would say my... my collection...

probably a third... doubled in size,

I would say, during the pandemic.

Yeah.

My baby!

This is my baby, oh! That's my baby.

Kiss... that's a good kiss.

Good kiss, mwah!

Christmas 1987, so he was two.

He was only two here.

Wow, look at that face. He's so cute.

Oh, I'm never angry at Cliff.

I... we never... oh, yes, it's Cliff's fault

that this happened, but never angry at him,

because it didn't need to happen this way.

If they had gone after Cliff, that was one thing.

They came after me to get to Cliff.

At the time when he first got sentenced,

I, um...

my life kind of really just stopped,

'cause I didn't think I'd live long enough

to see him again.

The last I saw him was droppin' him off

at the airport,

for him to go home to sentencing,

which we had hoped for one or two years.

We thought maybe three, and she gave him six.

You know, my... my only concern,

you know, the day I get out of here,

I wanna go home and...

and see my mother. Like, that's...

the basically the last family I have, you know?

So that really is my only concern.

Um, right now, she's... she's out in Nevada by herself.

And that's...

in my mind, it's not right.

At first it wasn't...

I'm just gonna completely shift sides, it wasn't...

I'm not doin' this anymore, I'm only sellin' forgeries.

Uh, once it started, it was hard to not

be involved in it one way or another,

but I still... I still traveled

for multiple years after that.

In 2010, I went to the Super Bowl in Miami.

But that's kind of where

the dynamic of the trips changed.

So now, I'm in Miami, chasin' these players,

gettin' autographs to sell,

but more than being concerned
with getting autographs,

I'm concerned with taking what the industry calls...

Is a proof picture. You know, if I hand a player

a ball and he's signin' it, I have someone else

snapping a picture of him signing that ball.

So now, when it comes time to sell the ball,

I'm gonna use the picture of the ball,

I'm gonna use a picture of the ball being signed,

but when I go to ship the item,

I'm shipping one that I signed.

And that's kind of where the business evolved to.

And then from there, it evolved to...

where it was kinda just...

There was none of it, there was no more traveling,

it was just me sitting in a room

with-with pen and ball and-and paper.

We met at a country bar called Mr. D's,

back in 1983. I went there after work.

I was workin' at the steel mill at the time,

and he was there. Came over and asked me to dance

when I went in. And we danced all night.

And I always teased him after we were married

that I married him because he was the one I found

that would dance more than I wanted to.

And so I always said when I asked him

to go out to dance, and I said,

"Remember, I married you 'cause you wanted to"

"dance a lot, and what's that tell you?"

And he'd go get dressed, and we'd go out.

Cliff was born in a small hospital

in Youngstown. On Christmas Day in 1985,

he was born. He was in six days,

'cause he was born with jaundice,

so he didn't come home right away.

But he was fine afterwards,

but, yeah, it was pretty exciting Christmas morning.

Goin' into labor, and goin' to the hospital,

and... Frank callin' everybody, my parents comin' up

to the hospital, then go back home

in a snowstorm. "Oh, you've got time."

"You can go back home." "Okay, doctor said 'Nope,

"'it's comin', better come back.'"

So, it was pretty fun.

Come on, come on, come on, come on!

Shoot! Shoot!

Okay.

Cut me off, I'm gonna take him dunkin'!

He was a fun kid. Funny, and fun.

He was real athletic from-from day one.

He would do tricks on his bicycle

when he was three years old out in the front yard, and...

then got into baseball really at about four.

Little pitching machine we... Frank had bought him,

and then got into Little League at five.

And it just snowballed from there.

Never wanted out of it after that.

Frank was hard on him about baseball, though,

'cause Frank would... shoulda went in professionally,

but went into the Vietnam War in 1965,

so that never happened for him.

My earliest memories of baseball was...

I guess I started when I was five years old.

At that time, I really had no interest in it.

I mean, my earliest memories
were standing out in right field

picking dandelions while the game's goin' on.

What else is he gonna do?

What little kid was hitting
any balls out into the outfield?

Nobody. So he was standin' out there

just doin' nothin' and pullin' the weeds.

And tryin' to...

my parents tryin' to get my attention

to get me involved. By one year later,

you know, the script's completely flipped.

By that time, I'd... you know,

that's the only thing goin' on in life.

The only thing I care about.

You know, I... it's kind of...

I'm knowin' I'm supposed to be an athlete.

I'm supposed to be a baseball player.

And from there it's just...

just progresses from there.
My dad's always in the picture,

always coachin' the team, goin' to the field,

batting practice, you know, he...

was really, uh... never said no, I guess.

When it came to baseball, it was never a no.

There was never too many ground balls,

or play catch, or batting cages, whatever.

I don't know that there was ever a point

where I didn't wanna play professional baseball

from probably that age, six, when I-I...

Decided I had a love for it.

A kid's dream,

to get paid to play a sport.

For a long time, Cliff didn't realize

that that's what really made him what he was,

that if Frank had just been easy on him,

he wouldn't have tried as hard.

Like, Mom was always like, "Oh, that was good!"

"You did good!" Even when he would strike out.

But, uh, Frank always concentrated on...

Even if he had three home runs and one strikeout,

he dealt with the strike out.

And... kind of pushing him to do better...

practice more. It was never good enough.

"Shake it off!" He was always...

He was always down by the fence,

yelling at him.

Stereotypical story of a successful player,

you know, Little League
Championships, All-Star Games,

this, that.

Into high school, that was where I transitioned

from shortstop to catcher. I became a catcher.

Started three years varsity,

was recruited to a lot of small schools,

went through the whole showcase route, and-and...

Workouts for teams.

I played on the Allegheny Pirates,

which was the Pittsburgh Pirates' showcase team.

Actually, I split time at catcher, with Neal Walker,

who ended up playin' for the Pirates, Mets.

From there, I actually went to Hiram College

on an academic scholarship.

I dropped out after two weeks.

I don't know. School wasn't about baseball.

I didn't... as bad as it sounds, I wasn't goin' to college

for an education. I was goin' to college

to play baseball. I had a full ride,

$120,000 scholarship to Hiram, and dropped out

after two weeks. - He went to college

to play baseball. He didn't go to college

for a college degree. He went to college

to play baseball. - She really...

she-she fully supported me. This was, uh,

you know, all through my childhood,

as long as I got good grades,

baseball was allowed to come before school.

Fast-forward, I end up goin' to Martin Methodist,

an NAIA school in Tennessee.

I was always... scout called it, a catch and throw guy.

I was a catcher, catch and throw, block,

throw runners out. I couldn't hit.

I was an average hitter, no-no home runs.

Uh, hit around .300.

And just... my senior year kind of back against the wall,

like, you know, is this it?

Am I gonna keep playin'?

I got in shape, I thought...

I always thought I was in shape,

but I got in... in real shape.

I met my hitting instructor, Jim Devine.

I changed some swing mechanics, and...

and he rest was really... really history,

as they would say. Just kinda...

kinda took off. I went from two home runs

my junior season to 21 my senior.

We would go to workouts.

He ended up... he went to one of the more prestigious, uh,

pro workouts in the country. It was over in Detroit.

It was about 300 guys. He walked in, lit it up,

and he was the first guy signed out of about...

We had 13 guys out of our stable

go to that workout, and he was the first one signed.

From there, it was straight into... independent ball.

He ended up playin' the World Independent,

which is a big deal.

He played with about 10 or 12 ex-big leaguers,

and he was barely 21.

If he'd have... like I said, his problem was patience.

If he'd have just stayed a little more patient,

uh, he played for Hal Lanier,

who was the manager of the Astros.

They played in the NLCS against the Mets in '86.

And Hal loved him.

But Cliff just... he didn't... he-he's not made that way.

He-he wanted it... he wanted to be in the lineup right now.

He had a great year, I think he hit .300,

big power numbers, and Hal loved him, and...

It was kind of like, "Hey, just stay on."

"You're young, you haven't gone to affiliated ball yet."

Cliff's patience level back then was a little

"Ahh, you know I can do it."

But, you know. - Now... now I wasn't

a catch and throw guy. Now I was the hitter.

Coincidentally at that time, I became just a hitter,

because that's when I got injured.

I believe because of so much with the...

He was always a catcher. Doubleheaders, and he would

have to play the whole thing through college.

Never wanted anybody else to be in there.

It always had to be him. Well, the catcher,

that's hard on your arm. That year after playing

up in Sussex Skyhawks, up in New Jersey,

that was in '08, and he went to Cleveland Clinic

to get... see about his injury, and his arm was...

They were like, "No, you need rotator cuff surgery."

I played through my senior season,

played through my rookie season

on Cortisone shots.

By the end of the season, I pretty much knew it was...

knew it was over with. - Big depression.

I-I'm not even sure how he worked it out himself,

through his mind. He's strong-willed,

he got through it, but, I don't think he wanted to show it

to us as much as he felt it.

You know, it takes a lot to realize, you know,

I guess deep down, I probably knew that was...

This was the start of the end for...

For my career. But I didn't want to accept it.

So I'm still... you know, I'm two days out of surgery,

and I'm in the gym on... on the stationary bike,

and the treadmill, thinkin' the more...

The more I work out, the quicker my recovery will be.

I'm tryin' to play the next season.

So there's really no, like,

feel bad for myself time.

It was just push forward, what can I do to get back?

He walked around like a big leaguer.

You know, I mean, like he did the things

you'd see a guy on TV do, and that's what he wanted to do.

That was his business.

It was the end of what he had worked 20 years for.

You know, and he started at five years old

thinkin' he would go. It's all it was to him,

was baseball.

There was really no other option

other... other than baseball. But it just never...

Never came to fruition. The injury just...

never... I don't wanna say it never healed, 'cause I...

I live normal. My shoulder doesn't hurt.

But I lost velocity, and got older, and...

that's-that's the nature of the business. I was...

That was... that was it.

People could say a lot of things,

but if somebody wants to
question his baseball career,

all they had to... go down to Martin Methodist

and ask 'em. Call Hal Lanier and ask him.

Call them guys in the independent and...

The Can-Am League, which
is basically Triple-A Baseball.

It's the guys that get released out of baseball,

and they go, you know... Darryl Strawberry,

Jose Canseco, that's where they went to.

Here's a 21-year-old kid that was goin' up there

and gettin' playing time and starrin'.

He hadn't played affiliated ball yet.

He went from college to Triple-A.

Right now. And he was the backup catcher

to a guy that caught in the big leagues

for 15 years. Good athlete,

knew the game, leader, and like, in my case,

couldn't ask for a better client.

Couldn't ask for a better kid.

Hi, my name's Cliff Panezich.

"I'm a 6'1" 175-pound catcher

at Youngstown Ursuline High School.

Thank you for taking the time to view my video.

The original thinking

was to remain anonymous.

So at that point, you had to give it a name.

Defiance is in the Black Swamp.

So it's a region of the northwest corner of Ohio

that was the Great Black Swamp.

So we just kind of went, "Okay, we're gonna play on..."

we didn't wanna say Defiance.
That told us where we were.

If we were anonymous, we wanted to be anonymous.

So the Black Swamp covered a huge area.

The Black Swamp find.

Black Swamp find.

The Black Swamp find.

So as a regional definition,

the Black Swamp. So therefore,

the Black Swamp Find.

Defiance was established by general Anthony Wayne

as a fort, a summer fort,

and he defied all the devils

and Indians to take the fort.

Therefore the name, Defiance.

So Fort Defiance, what is now Defiance.

This is a small town. Lot of family.

Obviously my business is 95 years old,

so it's not uncommon for things to stay in a family.

My grandfather immigrated from Germany,

came in through the Great Lakes,

through Wisconsin, worked his way through Chicago

to New Bavaria, New Bavaria to Defiance,

where he opened up a meat market,

Hench's Sausage Works.

Now, he courted my grandmother.

My great grandfather, Mr... it'd be Schlegel,

at the time, told him to come back in a year

if he was still interested. By god, one year later,

he appeared on the porch.

He was allowed to court my grandmother,

and six months later, they were married.

In the interim of that, my grandfather had bought

the home house on Perry Street.

He bought it in 1908. They married in 1909.

He was convinced he was gonna marry that woman,

and carry her across the threshold

to a five-bedroom home

that they never moved from.

My grandfather, my grandmother,

several of my aunts died in that home.

And it was not uncommon for that to happen.

So the house...

was in the family from 1908.

My grandparents never moved.

All of my... my mother, my aunts and uncles

were all born in that house.

Some of my aunts and uncles moved back into the house

when they were in transition between houses.

My grandfather passed away, I believe it's 1944.

My grandmother passed away in 1975.

Two of my aunts never married,

so the house merely stayed in the family.

It moved to my aunts' possession.

And then when the elder of the two sisters died,

the house moved to Jean.

She was the final owner of the home,

final inhabitant. She never married,

and she was quite the collector,

so over the years, nothing left the house.

Now we're polite when we say "collector."

We all know what that means.

There was a path through the house,

and... as sweet as the lady was,

she could not get rid of anything.

And her passion...

her disease...

her curse...

became our blessing.

It's... you know, how else can you say it?

She couldn't throw it out, left it for us to clean it up.

What a blessing.

The reason for cleaning out the house

was because, unfortunately, but mother nature wins...

My Aunt Jean passed away at the wonderful age of 85.

Now Jean never married, never had any children,

and her will was actually quite specific.

She had 20 nieces and nephews.

The contents of the house

were to be distributed equally.

When my grandmother passed away,

nothing left the house.

When my aunt Katherine passed away,

nothing left the house.

Jean would not allow it.

So you had generations of stuff

that had never been distributed to family members.

I was in charge of the estate,

so we made the decision that this would kind of be...

a treasure hunt.

Five bedrooms, a living room,

dining room, kitchen, full basement,

which is unheard of for a house of that...

Of that era.

So how do you clean this out?

Well, you do it in zones.

You assign two people to this bedroom,

two people to the dining
room, two people to the kitchen.

And we had scheduled clean-out days.

We did a weekend once a month.

Everybody knew about it.

Everybody planned it.

Some people drove or flew, from Florida.

Drove or flew from St. Louis to be here

to participate in it, because they knew

it would be fun.

It would be a challenge.

And it would... again, like stated earlier,

it was that opportunity

to share in our parents' home,

and those memories.

As we worked it, we decided that we had

to clean out the bedrooms

and the main part of the house first

before we ever touched the attic,

'cause we didn't have any room.

And as we cleaned things out,

some things obviously went to the dump,

some things went to a small warehouse

that I had rented from a friend,

where they were then catalogued and stored.

We finally get to that point where the second floor

of the house is pretty much empty.

Karla and I are teamed up as work buddies,

and we're gonna breach the attic door.

So Karla and I start on what would be

the right-hand side of the attic,

and we start working our way down through it.

And we're getting into my
great grandmother's clothes,

which were stored in the boxes.

And we work our way down through,

we're finding the old gas lamps that used to

light the home before it
was converted to electricity.

They're back here in the rafters.

We work our way all the way down to the end,

and we're takin' a break, 'cause buddy, we're grungy.

We have drug out my grandfather's steamer chest.

What he brought from Germany.

And when you opened it,

his top hat,

his shoes that he wore for his wedding,

were still in the trunk.

But also in there was the smell of spices.

He was a sausage maker.

You could still smell those spices.

There were still bags of old spices

still in that trunk.

And we had drug that out.

So we're finally at the end of it.

On the right-hand side, we're turnin' the corner,

and we're getting into...

toys...

that our parents played with.

A little remake of a refrigerator.

An icebox, but it's a refrigerator.

We get through that... so I'd hand Karla a box.

Karla would hand me a box.

We're into the back corner now,

on the left-hand side. We've made the turn,

we're comin' back up.

And we get into the boxes that my grandfather

had stuffed in there.

So we're goin' through these boxes.

I'd hand one to Karla, Karla... back and forth.

I'd open one, she'd open one.

I hand her a box, she opens it up and says,

"Karl!"

"Look at this!"

I look over. "What you got?"

"Well, they look like baseball cards."

"Aw, damn, too bad they're not Topps."

We both said the same thing.

We closed the box up.

We take it out the hallway and set it on a dresser,

and we keep going.

We have no clue... what we have just found.

We continue on through.

We finally get all done, we're covered in soot.

A couple more cousins have shown up,

and they're gonna start haulin' things

down the stairway and out to the dumpster.

As we're doing this,

one of my cousins, Eric, grabs the box that has

the cards in it, opens it up, looks at it,

puts the lid back down and says,

"Does this go to the dump?"

Karla tells him, "No, stick it back."

"Karl wants to look into it."

I'm busy in another part of the house.

Little bit later on, we've cleaned out a bunch more.

Eric's got ahold of the box again,

and he's headed for the dump again.

Karla says "Nope, stop. Put it back away."

That happened three times

that that box almost went to the dumpster.

Finally, I take the box, dust it off,

and I take it out and put it in my truck.

Just toss it on the seat, I'll look into it later.

And we go back to cleaning out the attic.

We spend the rest of the day,

and the next day, cleaning out the attic.

That box has been forgotten about.

Nobody cares.

It's oblivious.

We're onto other things.

We got... what are we gonna do with this stuff?

I took the box here to work,

tossed it on a chair in my office.

There it sat.

And I started lookin' on the computer.

And I'm lookin', and I'm findin' nothin'.

And I'm lookin', and I'm findin' nothin'.

Finally I wind up on eBay.

Old baseball cards.

I'm scannin' down through,

and I'm seein' Cracker Jack.

Oh, okay.

Not Topps.

We're older now, Cracker Jack.

And then...

what the hell's a tobacco card?

I had no clue.

Caramel card. What's that?

I dunno, I'm still scrollin'.

Then I get down to... wait a minute.

That looks like our cards.

That looks like what's in that box.

And I click on it, then...

Blow it up. And here's Ty Cobb.

Looks exactly like what's in that box over there.

And... 'cause I walk over to the box,

I open up the lid, I grab a stack of Ty Cobb.

And I look at it, and here's Ty Cobb,

bright red, bright white,

and I look at the screen.

It's a PSA 3.

The guy wants two grand for it,

"Buy It Now."

And I'm lookin' at this, and I'm lookin' at that,

goin', "Oh, shit."

These might be real.

I... again, I'm thinkin' Topps!

Not Cracker Jack.

Not Old Put.

Not caramel.

Okay!

I put it back, I cover up the box.

Now, we had to figure out what to do.

When I was a little girl,

my dad used to take me to air shows all the time.

Loved them.

And I was listening to an interview,

and I was hearing how the aerodynamics

of a Formula One car are very similar to aircrafts.

So I took a deep dive into figuring out

what the aerodynamics would
be like in a Formula One car

versus planes, and that's when
I fell in love with motorsport.

And not to also mention that...

I was a part of the era of playing video games,

so I played all the Grand Turismos,

the Mario Karts, and I've always

had an affinity for video games,

so, I guess they all just kinda came together.

People from all over the world

helped me collect and finish and complete my set.

They're beautiful.

Sebastien's auto cards, to me,

are just some of the most underrated cards.

Pierre Gasly, Daniel Ricciardo...

He fortunately was able to come back to Formula One.

So I am a very passionate, loving collector.

I love every single card that I collect,

and I have a personal connection with them.

I like cards that are very nostalgic

in taking me back to, like, a place.

For example, the Pierre Gasly, and his win in Monza.

I mean, I think that that was such a poignant race.

People my age and above, especially on the older end

of the spectrum, you don't see
many women that are collecting.

Unfortunately, I do not see many women,

at least from around, getting autographs,

going to card shows, going to local shops.

I don't see as many women around in the hobby.

Do I see a lot of women in this hobby?

No, I don't.

I don't. But...

the women that are a part of this hobby,

they are... they're true gems.

I love the way that they champion for each other.

I think that with time, I feel that there will be

more women coming into the hobby,

at least, I hope so.

A few of them that I follow,

definitely would be Lauren Taylor.

I think that she's, like, one of the best artists ever.

And I have her Derek Jeter card.

So I think in the next 10 years or so,

you could see a lot more women in the hobby,

which is awesome. You know?

It's really what we need, uh, is to have more...

Kind of, diversity with everything.

It's not just a guys' thing to do.

Break these stereotypes.

There are women out here that collect,

and I'd like to see more. More outspoken.

Bringing more women together to show that this isn't

just a male-dominated field.

And it would be nice to see that grow here

in the years to come.

So this is the infamous.

The reason why I so love the hobby.

Back in 2020, when...

Topps officially got the license of...

Of Formula One cards...

I asked my sister to buy me a box.

Just one box, because they're very expensive.

And as I opened the box,

I found that I had an autograph.

And...

As I peeled back the-the...

The leaflet of the packaging,

it was a Lewis Hamilton. It was a 30/58 Auto.

But when you look at the card,

I flipped it over on the other side,

I saw that Lewis Hamilton
was wearing a black uniform.

Now when you look at the history of Mercedes,

it goes all the way back to the 1930s.

They were known as the Silver Arrows.

In the wake of what was going on with George Floyd,

and of course, the world was shut down during COVID,

including Formula One,

Lewis Hamilton saw what was happening.

Now, he doesn't live in the United States.

He's based in the UK.

But Formula One was one of the first sports

to come back to television for us to watch.

So I do remember distinctively sitting there,

waiting for the race to start,
do... watching what they were

doing as far as all the processions

that they do before the race.

And I see this man,

and he has this "End Racism" shirt on,

and he kneels down in front of a banner

that says "End Racism."

And then you see these other drivers

that kneel down next to him,

and none of them are American.

So refreshing to see, wow, there is a whole sport

that is willing to stand behind this Black man.

It only added to the fact

that Mercedes,

after being the Silver Arrows for decades,

turned their car livery to black,

turned their uniforms to black.

So the significance of...

the card being signed is one thing.

But to have a card...

where this man has stood up for racial inequality,

by simply changing a uniform,

would be something that I will cherish forever.

And I think that that's probably the main reason

why I'd never get rid of it.

Pop collectibles, of all... I mean, they're...

There are a lot on my list that I would like to see.

There are some that are... might not even exist.

Some of them are rumored. Me as a golfer,

one of the first ones that comes to mind, uh...

The two golf balls hit on the moon.

Alan Shepard's two shots on the moon,

number one would probably be the most valuable

sports collectible out there, 'cause...

It's gonna cost you a lot of money to get there

to retrieve both of those golf balls,

but when they came back,

probably be worth a lot of money.

Maybe Tiger Woods' first green jacket,

being the first African-American

to win a Major. That would be an iconic find.

Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point ball.

There was... many years ago,

there was a rumor that it was out there,

and that is was quickly pulled down,

because something like this, you gotta remember,

people didn't collect these things.

It was more, kind of, like,

collectors weren't out in the open as much.

It was if you collected the stuff, especially

like game-used type items, that was more like, you know...

Card collecting, almost acceptable.

Game-used? Ooh, I can't believe you're doing that.

A 1955 Topps Roberto Clemente rookie,

I think, is up there.

Uh, 1916 Sporting News Babe Ruth card.

Now, I've seen these, and there have been

blank backs on them,

and I've seen them with advertisements.

I really like the one that has the Herpolsheimer's

on the back of it, because it's a mix

of baseball, and then it's a
mix of Grand Rapids collecting,

so it'd be a nice little, uh...

Uh, dual collection for me.

Can't afford it, but it's a...

It's definitely a, uh, card that tops my list,

I think, of... of valuable, uh, cards.

And then obviously if you're looking outside

the sport of baseball, the 19, uh... 80...

I believe '87 Fleer Michael Jordan rookie card.

That's right up there, too.

I have a good collection of memorabilia.

I bought a lot of items when I was single,

and able to.

Now as there's a ring on my finger,

that's not always...

I'm not always able to do that.

Uh, but... I'm a... I'm a big Lebron fan.

And I want a Lebron autographed picture

or Jersey or something to hang on my wall.

Definitely Ayrton Senna and Niki Lauda for sure.

Those are the two cards that I'm...

That I'm on the hunt for now.

I always like things with history attached to 'em.

Maybe something from, um... from the Black Sox scandal.

Shoeless Joe's confession? Okay, doesn't even exist.

There's talk that it does, a signed confession.

First off, Shoeless Joe, who was, many say, illiterate,

couldn't sign his own name.
Was there a signed confession?

There's talk about that, but it's never surfaced,

so someday a signed confession

going to a documented event in history.

I think Calvin Johnson is really the guy that I...

I've gone after.

Um, a lot of his rookie cards,

um, his Topps Chrome Superfractor, um...

I actually know the guy who owns the Superfractor

and the Superfractor Auto.

Um, I don't think he'll ever sell 'em,

but, like, that would be like a grail card for me.

2000 Tom Brady, uh, Contenders Rookie Ticket Auto.

That is one that has to happen at some point.

I have to own one, so...

as a Patriots fan, gotta get it.

You can bring a baseball with ya and get me to sign it,

and it becomes twice as valuable.

It's not like they're just...

They're just payin' to get an autograph, you know?

It's-It's a pretty big business.

The top Mickey Mantle card, obviously,

is the 1952 Topps Mantle, just a beautiful card.

It was in the high series, so it's card 311.

So it's in the high series, which means it would have

came out a little later than the first series.

So, tougher to... to kind of get at that point.

There was less made. - And what it means to...

To the hobby is, I think it...

It basically...

helped the overall value of the hobby.

We also set the record for the most expensive

sports collectible ever sold,

which was a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card,

graded mint, 9.5, mint plus. That sold for $12.6 million,

and that was part... that card was originally

part of the Al Rosen... the Mr. Mint 1952 Topps Find,

which happened in the mid-1980s.

Mickey takes a terrific
cut at a first pitch fastball,

and there it goes!

It sails over the 380-foot marker.

Mickey Mantle was a...

one of the greatest outfielders of all time.

Played for the New York Yankees,

20-time All-Star, over 500 home runs,

seven-time World Series champion.

A lot of people living today,

older collectors, actually grew up

and they saw Mickey Mantle play.

Or, even after Mickey Mantle was on that circuit

of individuals who would actually go to shows

and sign autographs. So he was somebody

that you could have interacted with.

A lot of people living today
actually saw Mickey Mantle play.

Nobody really knew much about him,

you know, back in '51.

And... there was a... international news photographer.

Nobody knows if he was a freelancer,

if he actually worked for an international news,

but he was sent to Yankees Spring Training

in March of 1951. You know, it was...

to get shots of Joe DiMaggio.

To get shots of Yogi Berra.

And this young 19-year-old kid steps up.

"Hey, it's my turn to get a shot."

Holds the bat on his shoulder,

you know, kinda looks out.

And, boom.

The most iconic shot, probably ever.

There's not a lot of knowledge on who this guy was

who took the photograph. You know, if he, like,

posed Mantle to do this, or Mantle decided to do this,

but Topps must have saw the image, and was like,

"Okay, we're gonna put th..."

This is gonna be our first Mickey Mantle card.

And the next year, that was the image

that was used on the '52 Topps card.

You're in the Atlantic Ocean. - And?

You pull the... - Yeah, there's a...

There's a... rusty lever,

in the heart and then, it had like a...

A space where a guy goes...

and they all go... whoop!

And there it was.

Sy Berger was immensely important to the hobby

because he was known as the father

for the modern trading cards.
He and Woody Gelman are both

from the Topps company. Sy Berger in the late '40s,

he revolutionized sports cards

with the 1952 Topps production.

My favorite, baseball cards.

These machines can even count the number

of cards going into each pack.

The wrappers come in large rolls.

The machines cut them to just the right size,

and wrap and seal each package.

Prior to 1952 Topps cards,

they had a picture of the athlete,

didn't say much on the back.

Again, it was more for advertising purposes.

To advertise a particular product.

With Topps, and Mr. Berger in particular,

these were, at first, when Mr. Berger came on board,

the trading cards were
produced with a piece of taffy.

He noticed the taffy was kind of taking the taste

of the cards themselves.

So Topps began producing the cards

with the bubblegum inside.

I believe his first day was when Bazooka

was acquired by Topps. So Mr. Berger redesigned...

With Woody Gelman, redesigned the 1952 set

to include a color photograph of the player,

a facsimile autograph,

the actual logo from the individual teams.

Revolutionary! You flip it
over, you have stats on the back

that talk about the prior year's stats.

The career for that player,
and a story about that player.

I mean, it is today,

what the modern baseball card is today

wouldn't be there if not for
Sy Berger and Woody Gelman

being, you know, the pioneers of that whole art

of baseball card making.

The background of it, Topps had so many cases,

and extra stuff, and they held 'em

for a couple years, then...

didn't know what to do with 'em, and...

Sy Berger, who founded Topps, you know, decided to just

dump it in the ocean.

So how many millions and millions and millions

of dollars got dumped into the ocean because

they didn't know what to do with these cards?

You know, that makes it...

a smaller number of Mickey Mantles out there.

My dad always would tell me the story.

He grew up a Brooklyn Dodgers fan

in Minnesota, because the Twins weren't around yet.

And... so he'd collect Brooklyn Dodgers,

and he'd hear all the people put 'em in the bike spokes,

you know, stuff like that.

He didn't like the Yankees at all.

It was the Dodgers, it was the Dodgers.

He's like, I don't know how many Mantles

I probably would have had that I would have

stuck in those bike spokes, you know?

So every time... my dad's 77 now.

Every time a Mickey Mantle
sells for how many millions

of dollars, call up my dad, say...

Kinda joke with him

and be like, "We could have been millionaires!"

So...

It's interesting that card
has just taken a life of its own.

The Honus Wagner T206 card

is probably the most iconic sports card ever.

The Honus Wagner. - Yeah.

Yeah, the T206 card, uh, interesting card.

Uh, from 1909, it was... one of the tobacco cards.

It's a holy grail.

There's very, very limited amounts of copies of it.

♪ Hallelujah ♪

♪ Hallelujah ♪

♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah ♪

♪ Hallelujah ♪

Honus Wagner was probably one of the greatest

baseball players to ever play the game.

One of the great shortstops of all time

for the Pittsburgh Pirates. - The Flying Dutchman,

known for his speed, known for his hitting ability.

Retired in 1919.

He was one of the original five

inducted into the Hall of Fame,

with Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson,

and Honus Wagner.

Like, that's the pedigree in and of itself.

Honestly, I'd have an insurance policy on it,

and I'd probably keep it in a safety deposit box.

I'd probably visit the safety deposit box

pretty regularly to take a peek at it.

There's two legends as to why that card

was limited in production.

He either did not want children buying packs

of cigarettes just to try and get his baseball card,

or he wanted to be compensated more

from the tobacco company for using his likeness

on this card.

And that photo is, you know, really iconic as well.

And that's from 1905.

That photo was actually
taken four years before the card.

This call is originating from
an Ohio Correctional Facility,

and may be recorded and monitored.

Just kinda shot my shot and tried it on my own,

and-and in the beginning, it was... I mean, it was...

I wouldn't say difficult,

but a lot more tedious, you know?

Lot of... lot of practice, lot
of sheets of notebook paper

with-with tons of... tons of practice, uh,

signatures. You know, just a full...

One signature on one football,

or one signature on one photo.

But as it progressed, you know, by the end,

I even, to this day, I probably know

300-400 signatures off the top of my head.

Don't have to look at any examples, nothin'.

And-and... towards the end of, you know, of the whole

activity and everything, there was never looking up

any signatures. It was sit there

with my pack of 200, 300, 400, 500 photos

and... sit there and sign 'em one after another.

Never looked at a signature. Nothin'.

Kinda like a... a... a dubious achievement, I guess,

but I don't wanna say I was cocky about it,

but it was, you know, it was...

there was some entertainment
value there that people...

I-I found it very easy to do,

but other people found, uh, you know, it was more

in-in amazement of-of... that I could just recall

the signatures off the top of my head, so,

you know, a lot of times it became like a...

Big-big party joke, or... you know,

out at the bar and sign someone's name on a napkin,

or-or whatever.

I do mostly federal work in New York.

I represented John Gotti. I represented at trial

and got an acquittal and a hung jury.

I've represented El Chapo,

I've represented some of
the biggest criminal defendants

in the history of the country,

and yet here I am, representing people in the hobby

because of the love of the hobby for me.

These are not the kind of cases I would normally take,

but I have such a passion for it,

I can't really turn it down.

And that's why, you know, I'm here.

There's no other explanation
why a lawyer, doing the kind

of stuff I do, would ever be at...

this ridiculous baseball
card national for three days

in the middle of the summer in Chicago.

I'm not gonna mention the auction house, um...

I had an elderly woman who, uh, gave a consignment,

uh, to an auction house, and the auction house...

The representative stole most of her collection.

So I had to, uh, wrangle some money

out of the auction house,
and we're settling it privately.

Um, I had the... other auction houses

that I've had to sue, um, that I've had to fight

to get money back for people that they defrauded.

I've also represented many people that have

been accused of crimes. I saw a client here

who spent three months in
jail, that I represented on, um...

He was, uh... convicted of selling game-use...

Fake game-used jerseys.

Um, but this is what the hobby is.

It's all about money.

Whenever there's a lot of money involved,

there's a lot of fraud involved.

And if there's a lot of money and fraud involved,

it should be regulated. There's no regulation here,

so criminals are running absolutely rampant.

And the people that'll tell ya, "Oh, you know",

"you're acting like chicken little,

"the sky is falling." The only people that say

that the fraud is not rife in this hobby

are the ones that are
committing the fraud themselves,

or are co-conspirators to the fraudsters.

Anybody with a brain knows how bad it is.

Unfortunately in this hobby,
not everybody has a brain.

What is goin' on, everybody?

Hope you guys are doing well out there.

That is right, we are back...

here, on the Sportscard Radio Program.

This kind of reminds me of our old podcasting days,

Ryan, where we'd sit down

and really have a nice discussion about...

maybe a card show, maybe stuff going on

in the hobby.

The girls...

at the Pokemon booths...

are always a lot prettier than the guys...

at the card booths.

There's a lot of hot-button issues,

and there's a lot of topics inside a industry

like sports trading cards that nobody else is

going to talk about, or very few people

are gonna be talking about,

and I like to talk about those types of subjects,

and over the years have started talking about

more of the shady things going on in the industry,

talking about more of the scandals, and more of

those types of things in the industry,

because less people talk about that,

and it is something that I think people

should be aware of if they're going to be

starting out in the hobby, or
they're already in the hobby.

A lot of people have come to me.

"I-I wanna make money. I wanna do this.

"I wanna do this." But they don't get it.

They don't have the business...

They have a lot of excuses, that's...

Did the self-proclaimed hobby
watchdog known as CardPorn

try to pull off one of the biggest scams of all time?

CardPorn, AKA Juan Garcia, deleted his Instagram

and Twitter accounts this morning.

So hard...

to expose these guys,

from day one.

I understand, you know, uh...

Jurisdiction, if you will, over card-breaking.

That's why us as a community, we need to stick together.

We need to have high standards.

So, Sportscard Radio started, at this point,

15 years ago, back in 2008.

And I would say over the
years, our-our show has evolved.

It started out as very informative,

and maybe G-rated.

And over the years, The Sportscard Show

and Sportscard Radio has gotten a little more edgy,

and maybe a little bit more vulgar, um...

but it's been, uh... it's been a fun journey.

And it's led us to a lot of interesting places.

It's gotten us in confrontations.

It's gotten us lawsuit threats.

It's gotten us, um... a lot of different things.

We've done a lot of different things

because of the podcast.

And I don't anticipate...

slowing down anytime soon.

I thought it was the dumbest idea ever.

I remember, he came to me, he said, "Hey, I'm gonna"

"put up this podcast about sports cards,"

and I just thought it was the dumbest idea.

He had about two or three other ideas at the time

that I thought were way better.

Of course, those ideas never came to fruition.

So he starts doing this podcast.

I thought it was the stupidest thing ever,

and then sure enough, about three or four episodes in,

he starts getting emails about people listening

to this freakin' podcast. So at that point,

I was way more interested. And it just grew from there.

We started a website.

We began focusing more on YouTube in 2022,

and began putting up short-form videos,

and that's kind of how the channel has evolved.

During 2019,

there was some trimmed cards
and some fraudulent activity

that was going on inside the hobby.

And so Ryan started putting these people's faces

actually on the website.

Basically created the front page of our website

to recreate the FBI Most Wanted List,

and we just went down the list.

Trimmer, trimmer, trimmer, trimmer.

Gary "Scissorhands" Moser, for example.

We would give these guys nicknames,

so they became more familiar with card collectors.

And these are guys that not a lot of people knew.

But the fact that our website
was getting thousands of people

a day in traffic, we were creating new content

around these... these guys, these scammers.

You start putting scammers' faces on your website,

you start getting lawsuit threats,

you're gonna get traffic to your website.

Brent Huigens of PWCC Auction House.

So his auction house essentially takes in

consignment, he takes in
cards, he takes in people's items.

He has a vault in...

I believe it's Lake Oswego, Oregon,

where he stores a lot of these items.

He's categorizing them, he's listing them.

In the past, he actually was able to list them on eBay.

And so you would send him your cards,

and he would list them on the PWCC Marketplace site.

But they would also get listed on eBay.

The most terrible thing an auction can do on eBay,

and that was... they were shilling the own items.

So essentially, somebody would maybe

send in a card, or a piece of memorabilia

for PWCC to sell. It would get listed on eBay,

and Brent Huigens would instruct people

to bid on these items. He would instruct you.

Go ahead and bid $150, $200, a thousand dollars,

on different types of items
to artificially raise the price.

And so when finally the final bidder,

or the final collector came in there and finally

won the auction, it would
sell for more than potentially

it would have without the shill bidding,

or the artificial bugging underneath that.

Not only that,

several of the PWCC employees,

and even Brent Huigens himself,

were also involved in card trimming.

What do we have to say to the people that...

say Sportscard Radio's too negative?

Say that we call out...

too many people? We shed too much light

on the negative in the hobby?

What do I have to say to those people?

Suck my fuckin' dick.

Like...

we're here for a reason.

There are plenty of people in this hobby

that spend every waking hour talking

only about the positive aspects
of a hobby, only shedding light

on the positive things.

There's plenty of people that do that.

There are far less people

that are talking about the scams,

talking about the fraud,

and talking about the ways you can get ripped off

in this hobby. We're gonna continue to do it.

We're gonna continue to go after the scams,

scandals, and shadiness in this hobby,

and try to clean it up,

because that is what we think that...

the hobby needs, every once in a while.

Uh, I-I felt almost an obligation to where

I had to provide them with items, because had I not,

they were gonna do it on their own.

And that was a... a worse scenario

than me just giving them the items.

You know? So it's... it's funny to think about it,

you know, I was, in a way...

bound, like, to obligations to these other guys.

'Cause had I not provided
them with-with what they wanted,

they would do it on their own,

and that was...

just a ter... terrible scenario.

Calling all units,

A21 at 6759. Back-up needed.

Canfield police made a traffic stop.

Jon and April Blosser, they were known drug addicts

in the area, and they were creating havoc

doing theft from autos, meaning they would go in

residential neighborhoods,
pull on unlocked car doors,

enter these cars, and steal credit cards.

People's credit cards.

I was contacted about 2:00 in the morning.

We went and interviewed them. We did a search warrant

on the vehicle, and their apartment complex.

What we located was...

a huge amount of stolen items.

Credit cards, cell phones,
things that you would normally

keep in a car.

The large amount of evidence that we took,

I contacted the prosecutor's office,

and I said "Listen",

"there's more involved here.
There's a lot of stolen items."

And the amount of gift cards that we were...

That we obtained through the search warrant.

This case came along, and I was approached by

a fellow prosecutor.

Uh, and she had indicated that, uh, Detective McGivern

had had an incident where... uh, two individuals

were caught with several stolen credit cards,

and he was looking to see, given this was a...

There was a pattern here, if that was something

that would fit into this, engaging in a pattern

of corrupt activity statute.

Told my colleague to, uh, let, uh, Detective McGivern

know that, you know, I'd be interested.

I'd walk him through the investigation and...

And see what we had.

Uh, shortly after that, I met with him.

And he had indicated that there were two people,

the April and Jon Blosser who had been caught

with stolen credit cards. And so I... I gave, uh,

Detective... Detective McGivern, uh, a list of things

that I wanted to see done. For instance, I wanted

all of those credit cards tracked down. You know,

when they were stolen, where they were stolen from,

if they were used. If they were used,

where were they used? What was purchased with them?

He came back to me, and he had discovered that

these credit cards were being
used to purchase gift cards.

And so, these gift cards are then being sold on eBay

and things like that, so, you know, $500 worth

of gift cards for $250.

So I told 'em, if you can, try to track down and see

where those gift cards are being used.

There's more to the story,

and I really need to know...

what's going on, and how they're makin' money.

One of my co-defendants, Jason Lenzi, got me involved

in it, he was a big autograph collector.

Took me with a couple times,
I saw how successful it was.

He was a collector. I was more...

More of a businessman. So I'm... we're goin'...

he's collecting, I'm re-selling on eBay.

It continues all throughout college.

And we're goin' to Huntsville Stars games,

graphing players like Matt LaPorta

and Michael Brantley.

It just continued all the way, um...

Playin' professional baseball,
playing independent ball.

In the off season, traveling all over the country.

I started helping Cliff, um, back in Ohio,

mainly because I had retired early to take...

Stay home and take care of my mom.

So after that, Cliff was like, "Well, you have spare time."

"You wanna help me out?" You know, I'll bring you stuff

to bring to the post office, you come down to my house

and help me, so it kinda started like that.

This was absolutely my sole... my sole income.

It was Monday through Friday,

I trained. Saturday/Sunday, I'd travel the country,

obtain autographs, come back home,

sell 'em on eBay.

Different players, different schools.

Like, week one of the football season was...

USC was playin' at Columbus,

only Columbus drove from there straight to

Stillwater, Oklahoma, for Oklahoma State Cowboys,

when Dez Bryant was there.

Straight from there to Norman, Oklahoma,

for Sam Bradford. Back home,

list everything on Monday. Do it again next weekend.

I knew for an absolute fact
that he traveled everywhere

across the country to get autographs,

because I would go take care of his house.

He lived about 10 miles from us,

and we'd go down and cut his grass,

or clean up the house, or whatever while he was gone.

Check on the house, 'cause it was empty.

He was out of state, gettin' autographs.

Autograph hunts.

He'd call, "Hey, I gotta go to Texas"

"for three days," or "I gotta go to Miami

"and... "or "I gotta go to the Super Bowl."

And it was a legitimate business.

I did have players...

so to speak, on... on the payroll, that...

I was paying, over the course of the season,

for... not just autographs, but game-used memorabilia

in some cases. The Johnny Manziel incident,

where he got suspended for one half a football,

because they couldn't prove he got paid

for an autograph signing.

It happened in Miami, Florida.

I... part of my money was part of it,

I know the guys that ran it.

I had pictures from an autograph signing.

I know that part of the deal was...

Johnny wanted bottles of Ciroc Red Berry there

while he was signing the autographs,

along with $2,000.

I really ran the business from 2006 through...

basically, 2010, as straightforward,

legitimate as... as possible.

I really despised the other side of...

Of the line, I guess. You know, I was out there

bustin' my hump, travelin' the country.

In Alabama, I traveled there with...

His name was Adam Bollinger,
who went uncharged in this case.

We were down there for about 10 days,

uh, over Christmas break.

At that point, it was... the whole trip was such a...

A wear and tear, and, you know,

10, 12, 14 hours a day, just lookin' for players,

payin' players.

It's over Christmas, but it's like,

a couple days before Christmas,
we both wanna get back.

And it's actually him that picks up the pen

and is like...

"I'll just finish these footballs."

"We're outta here."

And that's how it started. He picked up the pen,

finished the team balls, and we left.

Funny aspect of it is, he had paid Terrelle Pryor

multiple times for a bunch of autographs,

that I purchased off of him.

And kind of coincidentally, I'm pretty sure the ones

he sold me were forgeries that he did.

So, funny... funny aspect of the whole story is

I believe I got taken first,

before the whole scam started.

But it was really on the trip back

that the whole plan devised, and, you know, he was gonna

sign the items. We... we took all our memorabilia

we had leftover from the season.

Mini-helmets, footballs that
might not have got signed,

he signed 'em and I sold 'em.

And that's... that's how it started.

I started an account called ChampionGraphs on eBay.

That's all it was, was all forgeries

at that point.

20, 30-minute process.

I'm-I'm gonna practice and practice probably...

30, 40 attempts on a piece of paper

before it gets moved over to a photo,

or a baseball, or a football.

So anytime I was gonna duplicate a signature,

I'm going to eBay and looking up, theoretically,

a known legitimate example.

Which I would look up a JSA,
or a PSA-authenticated example.

Bryce Harper, for instance.

Want to duplicate a Bryce Harper autograph?

I'm gonna go eBay search Bryce Harper JSA,

pull up a known example, and-and go off that.

And I'll look at that signature, copy it...

It's that simple. A lot of the autographs

in industry of today's current players...

are so many broken-up pen strokes,

that the signatures are... it's-it's just simple.

It's easy.

By the peak and the end of it, there was no...

There was no more practice. I signed each name

so many times, that I don't have to look it up.

I can just do it off memory.

To-to this day,

I could probably do 300-400 different autographs

off the top of my head.

That to a normal... collector, normal person,

they would think it's authentic.

I'm gonna tell you this now, in case you wanna

segue into it at some point.

Okay. - Um, I'm a magician.

Okay. - I do close-up magic.

And that's what got me through prison.

Here's the four aces.

We have the diamond, the club, the hearts.

I met CJ at a home poker game.

We played poker a lot. Instant friendship.

We had a... we had a chemistry, and we became roommates.

I actually met Cliff through a poker game as well.

It was a home game.

I was living with CJ, and I could remember

he would send out mass text messages

to all the players of the game,

but it was interesting that
whenever Cliff was coming,

Cliff's name was brought up in these text messages,

as if he was a huge draw to the game,

because of the way he played poker,

and the action he brought to the game.

There's a skill to it. There's a skill,

and I have, you know, documented successes.

He liked to make others make the tough decision,

as far as the game goes.

At times where it was kind of like teetering,

one way or another, he would just put

all the chips in, and then make you decide

for him. He knew what he was doing

at the poker table.

Cliff loved... loves to have fun.

Cliff also likes to be the life of the party.

He likes to have the spotlight on him.

He-he seeks attention.

Probably would have started 2012, where it was...

kind of progressed to the point where

it was more forgeries than authentic memorabilia.

More people got involved.

As my friends became aware of what was goin' on,

I kinda let them be involved.

For instance, Jason Lenzi was kinda...

he was never really part of the business,

but he'd always...

be asking me for items.

Late on a house payment, late on a rent payment,

can you sign his bucket of baseballs?

That's really how the whole criminal enterprise,

as they called it, went.

It really wasn't a criminal enterprise,

like, I was at the top, with all these people under me,

working for me. They weren't working for me,

they were just asking me for
items that I provided for 'em.

I just happened to be the one that could do it.

We start identifying different people

throughout the area, and they were purchasing

large amounts of sports items.

Buckets of baseballs, two or three shopping carts

of footballs, um...

It just didn't make sense.

If you're stealing credit cards,

and you're purchasing gift cards,

and then you're going and taking these gift cards

and buying large sports items...

there's more to this story.

So I put an email out, through the investigators

throughout Mahoning County, and I said, "Hey",

"we're investigating a potential sports crime."

"I really don't know what I have yet."

But... we're identifying these people, and we put

the pictures out and the names
of who we were identifying.

So that's when the FBI called me.

The first time I met Tony was,
uh, at the police department.

This guy comes walkin' in in a... a suit.

And I look at him, and I'm thinkin',

"Oh man, this guy's just typical FBI."

He-he is crisp, dressed to the T,

came in, shook my hand, was a larger-than-life

kind of figure. A guy like this

comin' into the police department,

to see exactly what we have,

we're hittin' the tip of the iceberg here.

And I explained to Tony...

when I met him, I said, "I don't know what we're getting"

"ourselves involved in here,"

"but I just wanna put bad guys in jail."

"And whether or not you help us do that,"

"I just wanna be able to work together."

Because historically, the FBI never really

worked well with local law enforcement,

because they know information, um,

that we're really not supposed to know.

And I told Tony, I said, "Listen",

"put all that aside."

"I just wanna lock bad guys up."

"So if you have something going on,"

"I'd be more than happy to work with you."

Oh it is... it's a big deal.

Those guys are... well, they're goin' number one overall.

That's... they're... they're insane.

Right? They're crazy, crazy good.

This is a rookie. - Jake Berger.

There he is. That's not bad.

Not terrible, yeah.

Orange autograph, numbered to 25.

So our online breaks started probably in,

like, 2013.

We started doing them,

and watching online breakers.

And we always kind of thought, I think, that we could

do the same thing, just as a fun form, moreso.

Not quite as much as a, uh, business.

2017, we decided in our basement

that to try to shoot a video,

and, uh, just give it a try.

Just go on YouTube and... try it out.

And we maybe had what...

Five people watch our first video?

I have no idea, but it was very few.

Yeah, it just went from
there. It was probably terrible.

I'm sure it's still up there, but...

Yeah. - We decided we wanted

to keep making 'em. I don't even know

why we stuck with it, but we decided it was fun,

I guess. - Yeah, it was fun.

Yeah, the interaction with the community.

Uh, and just opening... we were gonna open up

the product anyway, so why not open it up,

uh, and have people watch.

Just, like... this isn't a bad-looking card,

but it's not a great one. - Yeah,

it's not a bad-looking card. You're not buying 'em

necessarily for the... the face cards.

Next card is definitely a hit, so I'm just gonna

take it off-camera. I'm not looking,

I'll flip it over this way.

Ooh! - You know what?

I saw ink. - Oh! Sweet!

Bam! We pulled, in 2018, at the National,

pulled a Shohei Ohtani, which is his rookie year.

Yeah. - Patch out of one of one,

and that was like, the big... the big-time hit.

Yeah. - Um, and we went from

having probably like 400 subscribers to having,

like, over a thousand almost overnight.

Yeah. - And, uh, that was our big...

Our big hit, and that kinda
propelled everything from there,

I think, with YouTube.

You are timed out on our screen,

but we do appreciate your comments,

so don't feel like that was a slight,

that was me.

Okay, so we're gonna start with 2021 Bowman Heritage.

Um, I'm gonna do 12 packs, and Matt's gonna do 12 packs.

Nice. - And then we're gonna

do some trivia, some giveaways.

The real motivation came from my... my uncle and cousin.

Uh, they had been doing it for one or two years prior,

to us. Great Lakes Breaks was kind of, uh,

born out of just, like, brainstorm between Matt and I.

I had started doing some, uh,

YouTube online breaking.

Opening boxes online, and then, sort of,

uh, just filming it on YouTube, and trying

to build an audience there.

And because Matt and I had collected together

for so long, we were...

we're like, well, why don't we just

do this together? Why don't we try

to build something that's a little bit more

than just us collecting.

And a Luis Medina chrome card.

We'll see, though.

Doesn't matter. All right, the next one...

In the hobby, there are people

who will regularly break with us.

Kind of like brand loyalty.

You do get to know the kind of person

that you're breaking with,
because there are regulars

that break with you. And so some of those regulars

are, like, you know, I'm buying a spot

just to kind of gamble tonight.
Like, I like baseball cards,

but I don't need anything particular.

I'm just trying to hit big. You get those people.

And so when you do hit big for them,

it is fun in that regard, too.

It's like, I hit something nice for you.

When you've been buying into all this stuff,

finally you... you struck gold.

Luke, I mean, he's got a pretty good pre...

Bigger presence than we do at this point,

but he had people askin' him for autographs.

Yeah. - Like kids come up

askin' him to sign stuff, like he's a celebrity.

Yeah, exactly! - Which is wild.

Like, that's super cool to see for him.

It's just a fun way for us to do something together.

Open up cards we would
anyway, but share it with people,

and try to maybe help. We've done this for a while,

so maybe help guide people into buying something

that would be a little bit better value for 'em,

or... that's kind of what we've geared ourselves more to,

especially as a ton of new people got into it

during COVID. Like, hey, you probably shouldn't

buy these boxes at $60, but these ones at $30

are a lot better product. Try to provide some of that

helpful insight at times, too, I think. It's been...

Yeah. - It's been kind of fun,

over the past couple of years.

So I was a Jordan Love card collector

before anybody else out here.
I know Jordan Love's probably

a very hot commodity right now.

I mean, I had this collection when we first got here.

And... my rookie year, and didn't have anything.

Didn't even have furniture in our apartment.

I was like, hey, sign this for me.

Uh, 'cause we be signing cards like this,

where we're both on it.

Or, what... whatever would send us, uh,

a bunch of stuff. And we... we'd have these.

I'm like, I'm signin' this, and I bring it downstairs.

He signs the other one, I'm like, you know what?

Like, I'mma collect some of these.

I'm gonna bring 'em back.

I even do a scavenger hunt every now and again

throughout time. I post it on Twitter,

I'll hide like a bobblehead,
or a jersey, and first person

to find it, uh, you know, you get to keep it.

And so sometimes... looked like the last one

I just did, number 8, I hid it at that shop.

And I was like, you gotta go in there and ask

before they close, but I didn't tell people

where they were. But, obviously, they, uh...

They found it. Scavenger hunts, man,

I just been... I had a couple extra jerseys one day.

I was like, you know, I'm gonna hide this.

And I posted on Twitter, and, I mean, people find it.

The longest it's been since
somebody found something

is, like, seven minutes.

And I... it's in... it's in Green Bay.

I've done it up in Dorr County,

I've done it and hid stuff, and people will...

They see that, they get that notification,

they're on the run.

I don't know, I think there's a lot of different ways

that I could take this hobby of mine,

um, whether it's just, you know, keep collectin',

whether I do dabble more into the buying and selling,

or open up my own card shop.

That's... honestly, I feel like that's a part that

makes some... some athletes or some celebrities,

what have you, kind of shy away

from the autographs, because you go have

a parent send up their little kid,

like, "Oh, you're my favorite player ever!"

And you go sign it, and then later on

you see it on eBay for however much money.

It's like, well, you know,

everybody's gonna make money off my name,

it's one of those things where you... you wish everybody

was so genuine, because for the vast majority of fans,

they are all just putting it up on their wall,

and keepin' it, and they're gonna show everybody

when they go home. And so, that's just like anything.

It's-it's tough, though.

And I... I don't fault the people who kind of

shy away from it, 'cause I do see...

I do see both sides, but,

I'm also a collector too, so I want those autographs

on my cards. - A lot of athletes

where their signatures are very hard to come by,

either because they're not signing,

or because their signatures are super expensive.

Athletes off the top of my head I can think of

is, uh, Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan.

That's because they're... they're so expensive.

Plus, I believe Michael Jordan
has an exclusive agreement

just with Upper Deck to sign,

so he's not goin' out to the shows,

or doing anything like that. He's only doing events

through Upper Deck, where he can probably get...

Charge a butt load of money to get...

Same thing with Tiger Woods, I believe.

I think Jordan Spieth, also, one that's hard to get.

Ric Flair is another one that's very, very difficult

to get as well. - I've had so many run-ins

with so many... positive players,
and so many negative players.

Aaron Rogers, being one on the negative side.

On the flip side, someone like Payton Manning,

kind of took the autograph industry

as... as part of his job. He would show up

outside the stadium, with his own sharpie in hand,

and made sure everyone got an autograph.

Didn't care what it was for, what you do with it,

whether you were sellin' it.

Just kinda came with the territory.

So what I think makes a good autograph,

is I think it comes down to legibility.

I wanna be able to, after I get the signature,

and I put the ball up or something in my display,

I wanna be able to read who the person actually is,

instead of just some scribble marks there.

And where years down the line,

you say, "Well, who signed this?"

It seems to be the older generation

really took the time to be able to sign an autograph.

Al Kaline, Mickey Lolich,

you can tell I collect a lot of Tigers.

They have really good autographs,

usually the older players.

Now you get into the newer players,

a lot of their autographs are very rushed.

And a lot of the reason why it's rushed,

because there's 50 people around them,

they're trying to sign as fast as they can.

But Mike Trout, yeah, you can't even tell

what the heck that is. Xavier Tillman,

I think he just signs an X.

I can see how... how players could get

annoyed, you know, a lot of graphers,

a lot of cruises, as they call 'em,

from each town can be overwhelming.

Chasin' players in locations they shouldn't

be bothered. While they're eating,

restaurants. But there's certain times

where, as a player, you should be open to it.

At the stadium is one of 'em.

In my mind, that's... that's part of your duty.

Robert Fick, though, I think has been...

He's been, like, the biggest pain in the butt

when it comes to signatures.

Most-known, notably, uh... was known for hitting

the last home run at Tiger Stadium.

He hit a grand slam against the Royals.

Hit it off the roof there in the bottom

of the eighth inning.

I was gonna have him sign, uh,

my 1999 Final Game at Tiger Stadium score book.

I've been accumulating signatures on the front

from various players that were a part

of that '99 team. And I get to the front,

and it's-it's... it's his turn.

You know, my turn to get my signature,

and I slide by book up there. I was like, "Oh this is great."

"Thank you so much." And he's like,

"Silver sharpie work?" I was like,

"Yeah, sounds great. It'll really look great

"on the program there." So he starts to sign,

and the ink dies on the pen.

And so he's like, shakin' it, tryin'.

And he basically just is like,

"Ah, well, that's it!"

and slides the book back to me. I'm like...

so I get, like, a faded half-an-autograph,

and that's what... that's what I get

from this guy?!

And that was my encounter with Robert Fick.

The spring of 2012.

One of my consignment directors, Peter Calderon,

received a call from a gentleman in Ohio

that was pretty cryptic to begin with.

He didn't tell him a lot of information,

but he said he's come across some... what he believes

are original and authentic baseball cards from the...

Early 1900s.

Somebody asked me why we picked Heritage.

The simplest answer is 'cause
they answered the phone.

The other two auction houses went to voicemail.

Pete asked for some images, and, uh,

some images were emailed over to him, and...

I remember Pete calling me into his office

to have a look at 'em.

And we were both pretty astonished

at the quality and the condition

of the cards.

And we were trying to
determine if they were counterfeit.

Because we get a lot of inquiries on a daily basis.

How do we verify 'em?

So Pete tells us, "Look, I can't verify from a photograph"

"on a phone. We need to see 'em."

So we agree...

to box some cards up, and send 'em to Heritage.

At that point, we had to assign a name to it,

so we assigned here's who we are,

here's where we're at, and that's all we told him.

And then the gentleman on the other line said,

"Well, I have a few, let me send you some examples."

"I'm gonna overnight 'em."

"Uh, and so, uh, they're gonna go out on Friday"

"for delivery on Saturday."

We insure it.

We weren't sure what it was worth,

but we insure it, you know?

We had a, uh... we had a Ty Cobb in there.

We had a couple of Honus Wagners in there.

"When you get the box, please call me

"before you open it up."

So Pete and I were both here, on that Saturday.

Uh, the FedEx box comes in. I go into Pete's office,

where we call... call back,

and we have him on speaker phone.

As we open the box... Pete opened the box,

and we looked at the cards.

There were eight cards in it.

And we just looked at each other,

and we said...

Oh, fuck!

These are real.

We're on the other end of the phone.

We hear this.

We know.

At that point, we know.

We started talking to Karl about the condition

of the cards, and the value of the cards.

It would have been a significant find

if those were the only eight
cards that he came across.

And Karl kind of laughed, and he said,

"I've got a lot more where that came from."

Now, there's that moment of silence

on a phone that... almost might be

only two or three seconds, but it's also forever.

That's that moment of silence

that we got from Pete and from Chris.

Our jaws hit the ground. - So now there's an element

of... excitement, and an element of fear.

What do I do?

We got on a plane up to Defiance, Ohio

as quickly as we could.

They met here, at the restaurant.

And we went through the cards.

We'd never seen anything like this.

These cards are from 1910.

They are notoriously in very poor condition,

because they were made for children.

They were handed out as promotional pieces

for different stores.

They're known as the E98, caramel cards,

and they're the E98 series,

and that's their catalogue designation

for sports collectors.

They had contracts in hand,

and we had a very, very long conversation

about family.

And that there were 20 people involved in this.

And the look on Chris Ivy's face was...

"Oh shit!" again, because anytime you deal

with 20 people, ehhh... This cannot be good.

But, understand...

this is family.

While he was handling the estate for his family,

there were 20 other family members.

Cousins, and siblings that were all part of, uh...

Of the inheritance.

All the cards were boxed up.

Little black case.

And, I mean, just like you see in the movies,

handcuff on the wrist. Here's the black case,

walkin' out the door.

You know, it doesn't get any better than that,

I mean, you just... you just feel good.

They flew 'em back to Texas.

They brought in PSA to grade them.

And just to give you an idea,

at the time, PSA,

which is Professional Sports Authenticators.

They're the number one authentication firm

and grader for sports cards.

They had graded 600 examples at the time.

And this find, we came to find out,

had over 600 cards in it. So just by itself,

it doubled the entire known population of E98s

that have ever been graded.

Not only that, but the condition

of these cards was perfect.

I mean, it was just as they were printed in 1910.

'Cause as I said, most of those 600 examples

that were graded, I think the highest-graded example

was a near-mint 7, and most of 'em

were graded between 2 and 4 on the 10-point scale.

So just the size of this collection,

and the quality of these cards was, um,

was incredible.

They were getting grades of 9.5,

8.5,

10s.

One Honus Wagner graded a mint gem, 10.

Again, it's unheard of. These cards are 100 years old.

And here you are, they're brand new.

This estate has just went from a bunch of...

really old stuff, and neat stuff,

to a multi-million dollar estate.

So obviously, we have to bring the attorney in on this.

He has to have a full grasp of it.

And I have to tell the rest of the family.

So we put together a weekend where

we are going to go through

and distribute the contents of the house.

So here you're dealing with my
grandmother's dining room set

that's 100 years old. A grandfather clock that's a...

A 1918 grandfather clock.

Numerous other Hummels and silver, and china,

and bedroom sets, and you name it.

It's 100 years worth of stuff.

So, who gets 'em?

So, big family meeting.

And I invited Heritage to the family meeting.

Chris and Peter flew up,

brought a stack of cards with 'em that had been graded,

and were in their sleeves.

Brought a poster, that showed all the cards.

And they waited in another room

while I started the family meeting.

Again, the family knew nothing about it.

And then the great introduction of...

Mr. Chris Ivy,

and Mr. Peter Calderon,

who are here to explain something to you

that was found in the house.

That's always a difficult situation,

because we were going up and going to explain

what we were going to do as an auction company,

and how we were gonna help
them to maximize their return,

make sure we get mainstream publicity

for this significant find, and ultimately get them

the most money in their pocket.

And they started to explain to the family

what was found in that attic,

and then I came back in to explain to them

how it was found in the process

of getting them to Heritage,

and getting them graded,

and the estimated value being $2.8 million.

Which, needless to say,

the closed audience of my family...

was kinda holding their breath, going...

And a few verbs in there, you know, little,

"Oh shit! Can't be!" You know?

My brother Bill, I had told him when

we were first planning the cleanouts,

that I viewed it as a treasure hunt.

And his only comment was, "Ya son of a bitch",

"ya did find treasure!" You know, I mean?

And what they ended up doing,
since there were so many cards,

and so many, um, family members,

is we split up the cards evenly

into different sets

for each member of the family.

And the family could either decide to consign

their share of the cards into a consortium,

where they would sell them all together,

over time, and split the money evenly,

or they could keep one of the sets for themselves.

Heritage worked with us as a family.

Couple of the family members decided to keep theirs,

but a lion's share decided that they wanted

to join the consortium, and maximize their value

at auction.

Our annual Platinum Night Auction

is the most anticipated event of the year

within the sports collectibles community.

We scheduled to sell at our summer Platinum Night

sports auction in August of 2012, in conjunction

with the National Sports Collectors Convention,

which I believe was in Baltimore that year.

We ended up moving to Texas because

Cliff was trying to get his foot back in the door

as far as professional baseball.

And there was a workout down there that he was

invited to that he was trying out for,

to see if he could continue in his baseball career.

Then they offered me a position with them,

letting me know that it was a financially lucrative

business they had going, and I didn't ask

a lot of questions at that point. I should've.

I-I decided to go with them

based on a lack of other opportunity here.

And it was...

go-time at that point.

I began selling hundreds of items

on a daily basis, if not thousands.

We-we had eBay accounts set up,

we had PayPal accounts set up,

we had burner phones,

we had email addresses.

We had third party listing websites.

So for every account we had,

we had to have all of those things.

For an imaginary person that we would just create up

and name. We would find an address,

and we would create an account.

I would... I would go to the store.

I would get the items, I would bring them to Cliff,

he would sign them. I would take the items back.

I would photo them, list them, sell them,

ship them, transfer the money into a bank account.

And then Cliff would receive 40%,

and I would keep 60%.

Now, Cliff did everything I said as well,

for his own accounts.

So he was getting items for us himself,

and you know, obviously, keepin' 100% of what

he had going on.

We had to have our customer service skills on point.

We had to talk to people.

We had to change addresses if they wanted something

shipped somewhere else.

We had to be in constant communication

with the people that were buying these items.

We had to ship the items in a timely manner.

We had to package the items

so that they would not get damaged.

We had to make sure that the certificate

of authenticities were... were there with the items.

It wasn't as if we were sittin' back

collecting a paycheck. We had quite a bit of work

that we had to do to make this thing work.

So, I took him into our briefing room,

and there we had a bunch of pictures already lined up,

with the guys that we've identified,

some of the guys that we didn't identify.

And we had it... um, taped up on a board,

and the picture of Cliff Panezich we had...

kind of down at the bottom,

just because we didn't have him identified yet.

So we explained. I said, okay,

we have on this date these... this individual

buying baseballs. On this date,

this individual's buyin' a basketful of footballs.

On this date, we know that, you know, this credit card

was used to purchase a gift card.

He really was impressed with the job

that we had done already, and he said, "Okay."

He said, "Well, let me give you my spin on it."

He goes, "Does the name Cliff Panezich ring a bell"

"to you?" And I said...

"Never heard of the guy."

And he indicated to us that he had information

that Cliff was selling sport memorabilia,

and that the items might be forged.

And so from there, the-the investigation

really took off.

So we immediately took his picture

from the bottom, and taped it all the way

up to the top of the flowchart, if you will.

He was the key guy that Tony had information on.

Cliff would attend these
underground-type card games

throughout the area, the Youngstown area.

Well, apparently he lost...

a substantial amount of money at a card game,

and he stood up and said, well, I need to go home

and start makin' some signatures,

and I need to make my money back.

So through the card games, he was givin' people $50,

$100, and people that he was meeting

to use their name,

so he could open up an eBay account.

So Tony was getting information from these

underground card games that this guy by the name

of Cliff was... using different names

to open up eBay accounts,

and he was also involved in doing potentially

fake sports memorabilia signatures.

And so from there, we followed the eBay account

to the PayPal account, and again, it was different

individuals who were getting the money

sent to their PayPal accounts.

But then from there, it was all going to Cliff.

From what I could tell,

they liked to go to high-end restaurants,

blow $300, $400, $500 on meals.

They liked to gamble, high... high-stakes.

Go to these casinos in limousines.

They liked living the professional

athlete-type lifestyle, and they found a way

to do it without being a professional athlete.

I was at constant odds with myself.

It was an addiction to a... to a certain extent as well.

It was... it was easy money.

I could be broke on Monday

and have thousands of dollars by Wednesday.

There came a point in time when CJ and Cliff

had a falling out. All the details of it,

uh, I know that there was an argument one night.

And CJ ended up moving back to Ohio.

I remained in Texas with Cliff.

We left February 28th, 2012,

I believe,

and we were down there for about four months.

And then after Cliff's tenure

with a few different baseball teams,

we ended up moving back, and, you know,

and became roommates.

The operations were going just as strong

as they were in Texas.

We would hit the local Wal-Mart, Dicks,

Sports Authority, whatever sporting goods stores,

and we would clean the shelves,
buy every baseball, basketball,

football, tennis ball. It didn't matter,

we would go to Home Depot and Lowe's

and buy wooden floor boards
and put basketball players

as if they were tiles off the court.

Pylons for end zones. We sold anything

and everything. It got kinda crazy.

I don't want... it got... it got really crazy.

And I ended up meeting...

a girl, and her and I moved in together.

Cliff and I had a little falling out at that point,

mainly because it's yet another person involved.

Cliff, Cliff knew it was getting too vague.

He knew it was getting

outrageous in size.

Obviously, this is something that I'm not gonna keep

from a person I'm dating, or seeing.

And so, yeah, she knew what I was involved in.

She, uh, she started helping
me with certain aspects of it.

She would do some of my shipping,

and when I moved in with her, I had a certain amount

of items from Cliff, and he said, "Hey",

"don't worry about giving me a cut"

"on those items. We're just done."

"Whatever you get from those, you can keep."

"But we're just gonna cut this off here."

"I don't want it getting any bigger."

Catch, catch!

Good, yeah!

Moving to Nevada all came about because

Cliff, while he was out in New Mexico,

playing baseball in the Pecos League,

he came out to Las Vegas with a friend of his

to attend a wedding. And he fell in love with Vegas.

He had never been here before that,

other than as a young adult, probably 12 or 13.

He had come up, and, um...

he came home, and asked me

if we would move out here. And I sa... I was like,

well, sure, I was willing, but I said, you better ask

your dad and your grandma, 'cause I thought for sure

they would say no.

So then he went across the street

and asked my 93-year-old mother if...

He said, "Grandma, how about we move to Las Vegas?"

And she said, "Sure, when?"

Ohio is gloomy, dreary, snowy, rainy, cloudy,

all the bad stuff. And Henderson and Las Vegas

is sunny and dry. I'd never go anywhere else.

And it's all thanks to Cliff,

him comin' up with the idea.

After we identified Cliff,

we were able to identify different associates,

and kind of who they were, and
some background information.

CJ McCormick was someone that was involved early on

with Cliff, uh, working with Cliff to...

To get things signed, uh, sending 'em out.

Uh, CJ eventually...

thought he could go out on his own.

And so he kind of broke off from Cliff,

and started signing his own things,

and kind of was a one-man show.

He would do his own signing, his own, uh, marketing,

if you will. His own packaging,

and things like that. So he was...

basically a junior Cliff.

He-he wasn't quite on the scale of-of Cliff Panezich.

Jason Lenzi. He was pretty instrumental in getting

the bank accounts for Cliff. How to get him set up,

and shut down as too much money
would come into these accounts.

Okay, it's time to shut that one down

and open a new one.

Similar to CJ McCormick,

who learned from Cliff

how to do the-the scheme,

and he, after a while of being under Cliff's wing,

went off on his own as well, and-and started, uh...

Forging and doing his own sales.

He stayed in Nevada with Cliff.

They became friends up here.

They... Cliff moved him out there,

kinda helped him out, and he was the kinda...

The go-to guy if you will.

I would say he was like the butler of the house.

He kinda went to stores, bought the shirts,

the jerseys, and then he would help take pictures,

set 'em up for eBay, uh, stores, that type of thing.

He actually moved out to Las Vegas and lived

with Cliff for a while. That's when he learned

what Cliff actually was doing.

And he saw how much money, and how easy it was,

for these guys to sign a football,

throw it on a social media site,

sell it, and they'd make a quick buck at it.

So after he learned the craft, he actually ended up

movin' back to Ohio, and where he continued

to communicate with Cliff on different ways,

and how the best way is to sign different items.

James Serenko, he specialized, if you will,

in movie memorabilia. So he might have a lightsaber,

you know? He might have a movie poster.

Something like that, that he would sign,

and then sell.

Shawn Pelo, again, met the guy through

the underground card games

that these guys were involved in.

And again, he just kinda tagged along with Cliff,

and Cliff showed these guys how easy it was.

He was identified as a bar owner

in Youngstown, Ohio.

His name came up through financial reports.

He came in, he cooperated,

he gave a statement saying
exactly what had transpired,

and what he did. He even confessed to his own,

if you would, theft of money

that should have rightfully been Cliff's.

Rose Panezich, we kind of identified her

through the investigation. She was kind of in charge

of shipping and receiving, if you will.

Um, she shipped out a lot of the, uh...

Well, most of Cliff's signatures

on the sports memorabilia items.

We identified that there were bank accounts

being shared between her and Cliff.

We had ample witnesses, especially in...

In that... that residence in Nevada, uh,

who told us, uh...

events or stories of... of... there was one time

in particular where Cliff, he gambled.

He was a gambler. He had gone out,

and they would say he'd gone for a, uh,

two, three-day benders where he would go and gamble

for 48, 64 straight hours, whatever it was.

And he had gone out for several days,

and had lost a boatload of
money gambling at the casinos.

And he had come back, and he's sleeping,

trying to recoup from... from the... you know,

being awake for so long.

And there's a back order of... backlog of orders

that had to go out, and this particular witness

told us that, you know, he saw her go into the room,

and was yelling at him, "Get up!"

"We need these things signed! You need to get to work!"

You know, "You need to do this!"

And-and so, Cliff would say "Fine," and next thing

you know, he'd shut the door, and, you know,

several hours later, he'd come out with

10, 20, 30, 40, 50 baseballs, whatever.

They'd be signed, and Rose said,

"Okay, thanks." And then she'd package 'em up.

She knew damn well he didn't go out

and get those signatures in that two hours

he was locked in that... his-his bedroom.

So we had ample evidence that she was involved,

that she knew what was going on.

And I kinda caught on

that it seemed a little fishy that he had more than

I thought he was getting, but him and I never actually

ever talked about it.

He would get mad at some of these guys,

because the signatures were so poor.

He would call or text message 'em

and say, "Listen, take that baseball bat off."

"It looks terrible. Why would you even"

"put something like that on there?"

"That signature's horrible. Get it off there."

And they would come back and go,

"Well, hey, I just made $150 off this bat,"

"I'm keepin' it on."

And they would get in arguments like that.

I guess in the back of my mind, I always

thought that...

that he... and-and...

The law was gonna catch up.

I know that we did four search warrants

in Ohio, and two in Nevada.

I can remember the first time I knew that

this was coming to an end.

It was December 1st, 2014.

It was... it was a really cold day,

and I could remember just getting home.

I was getting ready to open my front door,

and a car pulled in my driveway.

A car I had never seen before. And, uh,

they kinda flashed their headlights, as...

as if to let me know that they were some type

of law enforcement. It was at that moment

that I knew everything was gonna come crashing down.

The first I knew of anything...

actually any investigation or anything going on

was when they came storming in my door

on December 1st of 2014,

when they had search warrants,

for our house and Cliff's house.

He wasn't living with us out here.

He was renting a house about two miles from us.

And they came at 8:00 AM, both houses at the same time.

So we couldn't warn each other.

And I'd been chasin' this guy for a couple years now,

and finally, everything was brought down.

We had successful raids. I guess you could say

I was kind of on Cloud Nine.

But the exhaustion just set in.

When you're not doing anything wrong,

you really don't expect somebody to come

breaking down your door to... take all your belongings.

We had two huge trailers, boxed-up evidence

that we had to get it shipped to
the Henderson Police Department.

We could have hit these houses

and got zero evidence, and still been able to

make a case on these guys,
just based on the paper trail

that they had to leave behind.

Being that there was so much evidence

that we had to go through, we did not make arrests

the day of the raids.

There-there were over

10,000 transactions.

And so you figure each one of those is a...

Is a victim. We-we... quite frankly, I think,

stopped counting after 10,0000-11,0000.

So when we added up the amounts, approximately,

we're lookin' at about $2.5 million Cliff defrauded.

Numerous victims, not just in the United States,

but Mexico and Canada as well.

When you're building a case, you look for individuals

who might be lower-level

without as much criminal exposure,

if you will, who might be
willing to cooperate with you.

The arrest portion of it was a lot of these guys

pled to a bill of information,
meaning we didn't have to

fill out arrest forms.

They came into court, and they just actually

pled right out of the gate, instead of trying to

go through a trial or anything like that.

That was over a period of five years in a fraud case.

Now local police, the FBI,
Mahoning County prosecutors

have broken what they say

was a fake sports memorabilia racket,

with thousands of victims all across the country.

My sentencing was April 3, 2017.

And so, when we began this,

we first went to these different individuals,

now cooperating. Cliff himself actually

had come in, and discussed cooperating with us.

That ultimately did not happen.

They put a $999 billion hold on every one

of our four accounts.

Billion.

They did that to try and get to Cliff.

If we had no money, then he would have to surrender

and, you know, save us.

Well, the first time...

was really hard,

because... we knew they were trying to

indict us, but we were waiting and watching

for an arrest warrant to come through an indictment.

Actually, it was Brian McGivern,
the detective out of Canfield,

that went to the Austintown judge,

and his statement,

under penalty of perjury,

was that we fled the state of Ohio

to avoid arrest.

That could not be possible,
because he knew we lived here.

He was here, and he said
that to the judge to get a warrant

for our arrests. So then they
called the Henderson police

and said, "Arrest them, they're fugitives."

So I never got to speak the three months

I was in Henderson jail.

Until February 18, when I got a different judge.

And so I told them I'd been arrested as a fugitive,

and I wasn't. I've been a resident here for two years.

And he was like, "Well, how long have you been here?"

I said, "Three months." He said "ROR."

Released On your own Recognizance,

and that night I got out.

After I took the deal of taking probation,

then a month later, they told me to go back

to Ohio so I could testify at the Grand Jury

to indict Cliff. - Before she goes on the stand,

Marty Desmond, again, the prosecutor,

tells her that he thinks she's gonna lie,

and that he's violating her probation.

So she never sets foot on the stand at the Grand Jury.

The next day she has her probation violated,

and gets put in Mahoning County Jail.

The next morning, I was arrested

and jailed in Youngstown on a probation violation.

Four days later, I get indicted.

I go in front of the judge,

my bail gets raised to half a million.

So now I can't get out.

My mother's in jail, I'm in jail,

my father's in Nevada.

This was done deliberate.

There was no one to take care of my father.

He's 2,000 miles away.

Neither one of us is gettin' out.

I can't post half a million, obviously.

When we met with him, uh, I remember I asked him...

You know, I've heard, you know,

you're really good at this. Let me see.

Let me... let me see how good you are.

I said, "Let me see you do Lebron James."

He said, "Well, six or 23?"

"Lemme see both."

Didn't-didn't have to think,
didn't have to look at anything.

Didn't have to do anything.

Just signed it, and slid it over.

Inside my computer, I pull up, you know,

I-I Google search, you know, Lebron James autograph.

And I'm looking at the two, and this is unreal.

I mean, this is... this is almost exact.

And I remember when we're lookin' at

one in particular, it had a blue background.

And he said, "Yeah, you can't trust the blue ones."

And he said, "Yeah, that's my signature."

He goes, "That organization uses my signature as"

"an authentication signature."

And-and... and so I... I was kinda taken aback

by that, that, you know, you have these organizations

that are in place to prevent this,

but yet they're using the bad guy's signature

as their authentication signature.

My concern with this case...

was... the tactics used

to get a guilty plea from him.

That was my concern with this case.

I didn't want to...

come in this case, and...

force it into trial, when I knew we already had

all these witnesses who had confessed.

So it was not going to be a case

where the facts were favorable to him.

Fast-forward, that's... that's the final blow.

My father goes into the hospital in Nevada,

we're both locked up in Ohio,

and I'm told that my mother's not getting out

unless I plead guilty.

And that's... that's the end of the case.

That's where... I really have no choice.

Panezich is charged with fraud, forgery,

and money laundering in a
scheme were prosecutors say

he sold fake autographs. Yesterday we told you

Panezich agreed to a plea deal,

on the condition that his mother be released

from jail. Well, today we can tell you,

she is out of jail. Panezich himself

is still behind bars. He'll be back in court

for sentencing in about six weeks.

Let's have some more.

At the time, anyway but...

I think he just was more heartbroken.

He wasn't sure what would happen to Cliff,

and he didn't live to see the fate of Cliff either.

Frank's sicknesses, I believe,
all came from Agent Orange,

from Vietnam. He had a lot of... lot of diseases.

A lot of things wrong.

Of course, the VA'll never say it was Agent Orange

in Vietnam, but that's what it was.

Basically, my father was incoherent

for the last 70 days of his life.

Tubes in and out of his body.

A breathing tube, life support,

kidney dialysis. There really
was no communication with him,

it was just... being there with him.

Um, that's how I... how I spent...

my-my last moments of freedom before I was sentenced.

You know, we filed a request

to have my sentencing continued, it was denied.

A lot of people...

you know, don't see death as closely as I had to

right before this happened. You know, death is a...

a funeral, a coffin, a memorial service.

I mean, I... I watched my father die, slowly,

over 75 days.

And then had to have my fate determined

20 days later.

The mothers were down on ya.

There was talk about bringing a pitcher

up from the minors. If ya throw some home run balls.

What do you have to say? - I know I had a bad game.

I always aspired to...

you know, follow in his footsteps.

It gets better.

The passing of my father haunts me to this day.

Kind of what my parents kind of installed in me too,

is you have to go get it, you go earn it, you know?

It's almost kind of an addicting feeling

once you get a business going.

I think it's one of those things that,

if you have it, you have it.

And so, once I kind of got it, it's like, yup,

I got the itch. I gotta keep goin'.

You could tell when he walked into a hobby shop,

that was kind of his, you know, he would kinda

look around and, you know, see what's going on,

and, you know, how to actually

even formulate in his mind
what something would look like

for his own shop.

I saw a hole in the market,

where there was no Pokemon card subscription boxes.

So I started a Pokemon box subscription company.

I built a website, did all kinds of stuff.

It ended up taking off really, really quickly.

Just under 200 subscribers kind of at the peak, uh,

for it, which was a $65 box a month.

So it was a pretty big... pretty big monthly company.

So it was doing over six figures

while I was still in high school.

I was a junior.

And that kind of got me into, "Man, I can make some money"

"off cards and selling cards." So from that,

the Pokemon stuff transitioned
into selling sports cards again.

And that's really when I got into it.

I guess over... throughout the school year,

towards the end, it's like,
all right, you gotta figure out

what you wanna do, so I'd applied to all these schools,

got accepted into most of the schools I wanted

to go to, so then it comes to, kind of, decision time.

Like, okay, do I wanna... do I wanna pay to go

to one of these bigger schools, um, and, you know,

kind of chase this investment banking,

finance dream, or do I chase the sportscard dream

and try to make it a reality? So, uh,

ended up making the decision
to try and open up a store.

Kind of the town that we're in

is sort of an undiscovered beach town that I think

has some potential to become, like,

one of those main staple beach towns.

Um, so that was part of the reason I thought

there was just general opportunity here.

That's the card! - Whoa!

Got it!

It's very important to, uh, to support local...

I mean, everything, but especially in the hobby.

Do you remember that?

God!

Are you kidding me? - Nope.

My parents instilled in me as a kid that local retail...

Especially my dad instilled this in me,

that local retail is the heartbeat of a community.

It's not what it used to be when I was a kid

goin' into my local shops. It's more of a...

Like a celebration, a party atmosphere.

They're... they could have events, collector's events,

and trade nights, and giveaways.

These-these local shops, they all tell a story.

They need to be here to help
keep the community growing

and help keep it going stronger.

The National Collector's Convention

was in Baltimore that year.

The cards were put on full display that year.

That's basically... the announcement of the find

came out at the All-Star Break that year.

And it just went nuts.

Unlike his grandfather, Karl Kissner says

he never collected baseball cards,

but he has a newfound appreciation for them.

It was important to get mainstream press,

and to publicize this find, so
that people would understand

what this set was, why it was significant.

The day the story broke,

somebody said, "You're on the front page."

And I said, "Oh, we made the front page, huh?"

And they went, "No, you are the front page!"

Since they designated me as the spokesperson

for the family, everybody else stayed out of it.

So all questions were fielded to me.

Okay, you know, I'm in front of the public every day

in my restaurant. I'm used to a certain amount of that.

This was kinda up a notch. You know, when you got

Fox News callin' you, when you got ABC,

NBC, CBS, all callin' ya up wantin' to do interviews.

And we got to go on the... "The Today Show,"

with, uh, with Matt Lauer, which was a lot of fun

for everybody. Never thought I'd be, uh, I'd be doing that.

And that was one of the interviews,

when they got done, they said, "Well",

"every attic in America is gonna get cleaned out

"this weekend." And it kinda sorta did.

This Sacramento man found them in a tin

while cleaning out his father's home

after his father passed away.

For generations, a treasure was kept

inside the attic of this northern New Jersey home.

It's what people dream of every day, right?

Going up into the attic of a relative,

or into your own attic, and coming across something

that is a hidden treasure. - Just like he went back

to 1910, and you were takin' a look in there,

and it was like you were back
in that day finding these cards.

Just an unbelievable, unbelievable find.

In pristine condition.

Nobody thought it could happen,

and now people always think,

will this be the next Black Swamp Find?

You're talking about players that set the standard

by which baseball is still played today.

The initial records, the masters of the triple play.

Tinkers to Evers to Chance. Here they all are.

You know, Honus Wagner.

The Cy Young.

And they're all here.

So to baseball, I mean these are the...

You know, these are the golden boys.

We actually gave a card...

to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

As a find goes in baseball, this was huge.

I didn't know that.

We didn't know that.

We actually just kinda had fun with it.

Then all of a sudden, the Black Swamp cards came out,

they were all anywhere from 7 to 9s,

and they immediately
devalued all of the previously

high-grade cards. - During the...

The live auction in Baltimore that year,

uh, they were broken up into three different lots.

We sold, uh, one of the finest-known set

which sold for $240,000.

We sold a Honus Wagner example,

which graded a PSA Gem Mint 10.

It's the only Wagner card that's ever graded

a Gem Mint 10 at the time.

And, uh, that sold for $240,000 on its own.

And then we sold some of... a lot of duplicate cards

that sold for right around $40,000-$50,000.

So, uh, the three lots together

brought $566,000 total,

and those were just the first three lots

from the collection.

As I said, the collection consisted of over 600 cards

in total, so we didn't want to sell them all

right off the bat. You know, the family

was on the same page with us, you know?

This type of collection entering the marketplace,

we certainly didn't want to flood it.

So we offered additional parts of the collection

through our auctions over the next three years,

and in total, we ended up selling

approximately 600 cards for the family.

And they brought just under $3 million.

Our family's kinda weird in one sense.

We all appreciate money,

and what it can do.

But we also understand...

that... it's just money.

It's just stuff.

My-my family is far more important,

and their families.

And the extended families are far more important.

I have to say,

it was a complete pleasure
working with their family.

Karl was great, his cousin Karla,

and they introduced me to all their brothers

and sisters and cousins.

They're just a great family.

The Black Swamp Find is... I would consider

one of the two greatest finds of...

In the sports collecting industry.

You know, this was something they literally almost

threw in the trash, and they knew it.

And they just considered themselves very blessed

and lucky to have... to have come across it,

and then to have... ultimately to have

contacted us, and they had a lot of fun with it,

as did we.

We had more fun...

goin' through that...

pile... than you would ever think imaginable.

Can you imagine finding a toy that you played with

60 years ago?

So as we started cleaning out this house,

as a family... so all memories

that we created...

and all the memories we shared...

are just, to this day,

wonderful!

♪ What are you waiting for ♪

♪ Better pray ♪

♪ Pray ♪

♪ Better pray ♪

♪ It's better to pray ♪

♪ Pray ♪

You think about family, and you think about America,

and you think about... in today's world,

all these immigrants coming to America.

I don't blame any of 'em for wantin' to come here.

They came here for a better life,

and the American story.

You know, and here, this card find is

part of that American story now.

You know, we're... we're in a small town.

My business has been here 95 years.

It's considered part of the community now.

But we all become part of it,

and this story, the Black Swamp Find,

is now part of baseball lore.

And part of card-finding, card-collecting lore.

And the little kid goin' "I wish."

Yeah. I am that little kid.

Yeah, who found the "I wish," you know?

And to be able to share that with so many people,

to be able to share that with so many family members,

it-it doesn't get any better than that.

It really doesn't.

He's on his way. Oh...

Oh, Cliff.

Come on.

Oh god, five years.

Oh god.

Five years and three months.

Oh...

1,912 days.

You weren't comin' from Houston, were you?

No. - No.

Thanks.

You weren't comin' from Houston, were you?

I was not. - Thank you.

Nope, not Houston.

, would he be able to see you?

Oh!

All right, it's over. It's over.

It's over, all right?

'Cause you know, I can't ever beat you

at anything.

I was wrong. You didn't have the Queen of Clubs,

obviously.

Well, there will be no point in time

where my... my mother's alone again, and I'm just...

Blessed and grateful to be home.

There's still some bumps in the road,

and some residual effects of what went on.

Um, we're just finally starting to get into

some normalcy.

There's no way to... to beat around it.

My father knew bits and pieces of what

was goin' on. Um, he had no involvement.

None whatsoever.

Interestingly about Frank, the father,

he actually called me without Cliff or Rose,

uh, knowing, and he said, you know, "Detective",

"listen, I told these guys to stop doing this"

"a long time ago. I didn't like what they were doing."

He goes "I'm... I'm really sick",

"and I just wanna get my family back together."

And I said, "I understand that."

And I appreciate you calling me,

and-and saying those words.

Um, but it is what it is,

and they're gonna have to pay for what they did.

We eventually came to a plea agreement

in December. It was...

Completely dictated by the fact that...

my father's health was deteriorating,

he was in the hospital, out here in Nevada.

Um...

and I needed to get home.

And Marty played off that.

And, uh, part of getting me to plead guilty...

was an agreement that I got to leave,

awaiting sentencing.

And, uh, I had...

roughly 90 days of freedom left,

from when I plead guilty

to when I got sentenced

on April 17, 2017.

And 70 of those days were spent in the ICU Unit...

watching my father die.

His last days, I had a conversation

with him to...

Really it was just me, me talking to him,

'cause he was already...

already kinda gone.

But, uh...

Letting him know that my mom was never gonna

be alone again.

That I'd take care of it.

And then I left for six years.

Hey, what's up? Cliff Panezich here.

Mastermind of Operation Stolen Base.

Make sure you guys follow me

across all my social media accounts.

Lifeafterprison on TikTok,

@CPanezich on Instagram.

You know, seeing the ins and outs of the prison system,

I've definitely become a prison reform advocate.

My way of goin' about that is, you know,

I created this brand, the Iconic brand,

to which we operate under the slogan

"Turning cons into icons."

You know, it benefits society
if we can be functioning

members of, you know, a successful society.

I feel horrible for what I did to...

To any children that may
have gotten a phony autograph,

to any adults that...

to the people who trusted us,

we basically just took advantage of...

people wanting... wanting something

to, uh, hang onto, and... or to show off,

or just share a story around it,

I'm-I'm so sorry for everybody I...

I affected, during the course
of, um, Operation Stolen Base.

You know, I can only speak for my time in Ohio,

and I can only speak from my personal experience,

but my time was very smooth.

My in with everybody in prison was I played sports,

and I gambled, so...

Uh, the truth of it is, um, inside, I ran most of

the gambling that went on at every prison I was at.

I ran, you know, casino games, blackjack games,

I ran all the sports betting.

The prison I just left from, I had a 16-man operation

where 15 people worked under me.

We ran all of the sports betting,

the entire season long. Baseball, football,

basketball.

There were a couple hiccups along the way,

which is also why I ended up at max security prison

for 18 months. Um, because of the gambling.

Am I remorseful for my crime

is a multi-faceted question. Multi... multi layers...

to what that means.

Am I remorseful for the crime itself?

Of course. You know, um...

I'm not proud of my crime.

The way I went about handling my business

was not proper, um... I could have chose to do so

in different ways.

But man, there were... there were so many people

relying upon it...

for mortgage payments, car payments,

uh, just... just to eat and survive.

You know, I... I remember multiple times

while I was living in Henderson,

out here in Las Vegas, where I dreaded to

wake up in the morning and look at my phone,

'cause I just knew there were gonna be text messages

saying... "I need X amount of baseballs",

"I need X amount of photos,"

"I need this signed, I need that signed."

The operation got to the extreme that it did

because I never told anybody no.

No... in no... in no small way...

was the crime...

proliferated because of my own playing career.

You know, there were points at time

where... you know, playing low-level

minor league baseball...

does not pay much.

Does not pay in the off season.

My rookie season, I made $1,000 a month,

for the duration of the season.

Season ends in September.

I don't make any money October through Spring.

You know, but, uh, advancing my career, you know,

I have to train five days a week.

I have to pay a hitting instructor,

a baseball facility, a personal trainer,

a gym. You know, so where does that money come from?

And that's how the original operation started

is on the weekends,

you know, traveling, paying college players.

I mean, this is before NIL deals.

And obviously it transitioned into the forgeries,

and there's a point in time, you know,

comical now, but twice,

to where I was playing in minor league, you know,

independent baseball leagues...

playing in front of fans,

selling forgeries out of my hotel room

to cover my expenses.

So again, that's not to justify what happened.

But it's part of an explanation of how it started.

If I wasn't selling forgeries out of my hotel room

to cover my expenses, where does the money come from?

As my career ended,

you know, you can look at...

you know, I was just lost, searching for a replacement

for baseball.

Nice one, Cliff.

The one common personality trait that I see amongst

people that I would investigate,

you know, it's ultimately about greed.

Yeah, I've seen... I've seen my fair share

of fake autographs, or people claiming that

something's game-worn, or some... something made,

and it's like mine, and it's like,

that's not me. Or people will try to come up with

AJ Dillon signature shirt, and I'm just like,

I never... that's not me. You made that yourself.

With the con men in the industry,

it-it's a tough thing. It's a tough thing to deal with

in general as a collector, not knowing...

And it brings a lot of uncertainty, too,

to collectors, not knowing if what you're getting

is legit or not.

To me, the industry is so... so far gone...

from what I remember in my childhood,

that...

it doesn't even matter to me...

what authentication or what sticker,

or what certification is on
any piece of memorabilia.

I'm gonna look at it and hang it on someone's wall

and just assume it's counterfeit.

So Whatnot streamer got caught stealing

a Kaboom card.

On a stream, live.

See what we got here. We got an orange.

Ooh.

Is there somebody at the door?

Hold on, guys.

Those darn kids.

All right, let's get it, boys.

Oh, Kirk Cousins.

And even these days,

what we're seeing is the sports manufacturer,

they will send cards to the athletes to be signed.

But oftentimes what we're seeing is

very different signatures
coming back from the athletes,

so many people assume maybe an agent,

or maybe a girlfriend, or maybe a friend

of that athlete actually signs these cards.

And so I don't trust autographs

that I don't see the athlete sit in front of me and sign.

From a grading perspective, it's all subjective.

It... one mint 9 might not look like

another mint 9 card, and that's just...

how the industry's always been,

and when it's done by humans, there is some human error.

I think some of the bigger companies

try to keep it a little more private.

PSA, JSA, SGC, all of these grading and authentication

companies all are in a way, the same.

Um, it all is subjective.

That's the bottom line with this stuff.

It all is extremely subjective.

It's not objective by any means.

You could get... I've... I've had... personally

had cases where I've had a card come back a 6,

sent it back to the same company,

and gotten an 8.5.

One'll be graded a 7,

and it looks exactly like the one that's a 9.

'Cause you have different graders.

Different times of the day,

different times of the week.

My biggest concern with it is, is that there's

no real regulation to it.

A third party, so to speak,

to oversee what they're doing,

so that they can't just basically

do what they want.

You know, these organizations that are in place to...

authenticate the signatures,

as Cliff told us, one of those organizations,

the authentication that they use

are his signatures.

And so when you think of what that means,

that's just... absolutely devastating

to the industry.

But grading's an interesting thing,

that, you know, some people are all in on it.

But then you get collectors from, you know,

the vintage guys who...

Grew up collecting in the '60s, '70s, '80s,

they're like, why do I need a company?

Why do I need to pay a company to tell me

that this card is worth what it is?

Fraud is so successful in this hobby

because people don't mind being defrauded,

and they're so happy just to get the cards.

They just look past all the red flags.

The kids out there that are oblivious

to what the industry still is,

they're better off left being oblivious,

and believing that they can actually

get pieces of these players, you know?

The-the game is so much about money...

and about these companies, card companies,

sportscard companies, authentication companies,

that they've made it to where... you know,

pieces of the game, an autograph,

are unattainable for a lot of people.

Also the kids that are oblivious...

to what the industry is,

I say, let them be oblivious.

It brings me back to my childhood,

when life was happy and easy, and it was a...

A pure love.

I can only see it growing.

Manufacturers, they're trying to

please the collector.

Trying to engage the collector

with the collector experience. Making it better.

Bringing them closer to the athletes.

Making better product.

I see it more evolving.

I do see more of a... a digital aspect to it.

But I think it does still come down to

having a tangible thing to hold onto,

and something that you can display in your house.

I know there's like, vaults and things

now for cards and memorabilia.

So I could see in, like, 20 years, a lot of people

have a net worth, if you will,

of cards, but they're... you know, locked away

somewhere where they can just, oh,

send it to this guy, and somebody else

will do the shipping.

But the tangible aspect of having a card,

I don't think that that will ever go away.

I just think, if anything, the hobby will be able

to add some sort of tokenization to it.

I mean, come on, let's think about it.

You can put your card in a vault now.

You can go ahead and sell
your... give your card to somebody

and they can introduce it for fractional sharing.

So, I think that it'll be incorporated in

many other ways, as far as a form

of digital currency.

The hobby, like many markets,

kind of goes through, like, a boom and bust cycle.

You'll have Fanatics, which is a very wealthy

and well-known brand inside
the sports licensing game,

but in terms of leadership,
and in terms of an industry

and a business standpoint,
I actually think the hobby's

gonna be in a very good place

in the next coming years.

It's gonna be better-funded,

and it's gonna have far better leadership

than it's had over the past couple of years.

I think 10, 20 years, I think vintage...

is still gonna be king.

I hope we're not in a second junk wax era,

at this point, because you see
how much product's going out,

you see how much product's sitting at Wal-Mart,

how much retail sitting at...

Target.

I see it being a lot bigger than it is now.

I think you're gonna see a lot more collectible cards

given out at games, maybe.

And sporting events where you can go to

a sporting event and get your team's

pack of cards or whatever at that event,

as a giveaway, or whatever it might be.

I grew up as a collector,

as you can see around my office here,

uh, I still collect.

And-and I love this stuff, and I've always felt that

it was undervalued, so the fact that

these pieces are starting to be seen

as alternative investments,

and more people are joining this market

every year, uh, it's a great thing.

We can tell the history of our nation,

and the history of our people

through the objects, these
collectibles that we sell.

I mean, do you think you've still got the skill?

Oh, shit, do I still got the skill?

300 autographs off the top of my head right now.

Try me.

I'm... I'm a...

I would never call it a talent.

In the Sports Illustrated
article I called it a curse.

But I'm one of the best, flat out.