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[calm music]
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.
[calm music]
♪ 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 ♪
[calm music]
♪ Mountains ♪
♪ towering again ♪
♪ in your mind ♪
♪ Aren't they ♪
♪ the hardest ones to climb ♪
[calm music]
♪ 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 ♪
[upbeat music]
♪ I am more fortunate ♪
♪ than I have been told ♪
♪ Now that ♪
♪ I found your heart of gold ♪
[bright music]
♪ 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 ♪
[music fades]
[distant crowd chatter]
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.
[calm music]
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.
[upbeat music]
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. [chuckling]
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.
[crowd cheering]
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.
[electric guitar] [metal clanging]
My kind of wheelhouse was the junk wax era.
You know, like a lot of kids back, basically,
1986 to... '92.
[calm music]
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.
[chuckling]
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.
[pensive music]
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.
[chuckling]
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.
[giggling]
Come on, come on, come on, come on!
Shoot! Shoot!
[giggling]
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.
[crickets chirping]
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.
[calm music]
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'.
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.
[calm music]
Now, we had to figure out what to do.
[calm music]
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.
[calm music]
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. [chuckling]
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... [chuckling]
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... [chuckling]
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.
[bright music]
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. [chuckling]
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... [sighing]
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... [making lever pulling sound]
and they all go... whoop!
And there it was.
[upbeat music]
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...
[laughing]
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...
[laughing] 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 ♪
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.
[music fades]
- 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.
[calm music]
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.
[upbeat music]
The girls...
at the Pokemon booths...
are always a lot prettier than the guys...
at the card booths.
[calm music]
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.
[ethereal music]
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.
[calm music]
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.
[siren blaring] - 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.
[calm music]
- 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.
[calm music]
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...
[calm music]
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.
[techno music]
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."
[upbeat music]
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.
[upbeat music]
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.
[upbeat music]
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.
[laughing]
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. [chuckling]
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."
[laughing]
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.
[calm music]
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.
[collective chatter]
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...
[sharply inhales]
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?
[upbeat music]
- 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.
[music fades]
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."
[pensive music]
Catch, catch!
Good, yeah!
[indistinct]
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.
[rythmic string music]
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.
[ominous music]
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." [chuckling]
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.
[somber music]
[indistinct child chatter]
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.
[pensive music]
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.
[pensive music]
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.
[pensive music]
[calm music]
Kind of what my parents kind of installed in me too,
is you have to go get it, you go earn it, you know?
[calm music]
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.
[upbeat music]
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.
[calm music]
[collective chatter]
[calm music]
- That's the card! - Whoa!
Got it!
[laughing]
[collective chatter]
[calm music]
It's very important to, uh, to support local...
I mean, everything, but especially in the hobby.
[laughing] - Do you remember that?
God!
Are you kidding me? - Nope.
[calm music]
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.
[calm music]
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.
[upbeat music]
Unlike his grandfather, Karl Kissner says
he never collected baseball cards,
but he has a newfound appreciation for them.
[upbeat music]
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 ♪
[calm music]
♪ Better pray ♪
[calm music]
♪ 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.
[calm music]
[indistinct]
[chuckling]
He's on his way. Oh...
[sighing]
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.
[indistinct], would he be able to see you?
Oh!
[sobbing]
[calm music]
All right, it's over. It's over.
It's over, all right?
[calm music]
[music fades]
'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.
[calm music]
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.
[calm music]
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...
[sniffling]
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.
[calm music]
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.
[calm music]
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.
[calm music]
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?
[calm music]
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.
[indistinct chatter]
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.
[bright music]
Is there somebody at the door?
Hold on, guys.
[bright music]
Those darn kids.
All right, let's get it, boys.
[bright music]
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.
[calm music]
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.
[pensive music]
I see it more evolving.
I do see more of a... a digital aspect to it.
[pensive music]
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.
[pensive music]
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.
[calm music]
[upbeat music]