Ep.277 w/ Evan Parker of Mantel

SPEAKER 1: What is up everybody? Welcome to episode 277 of Sports Card Nation. Fun time of year. Baseball. About to start. I know they played in Korea. But on, on the state side, they're about to start. We got the NFL football draft coming up. You know, like I've always said there is no off season, especially in football and, and hockey's ongoing. My rangers look really great.

SPEAKER 1: So far anyway, so really NBA, I'm not a big NBA guy, but as I know that's going on as well too. So kind of a fun sports time of year. And sports is how I got into this crazy hobby in the first place and love talking sports with coworkers and people love talking hobby obviously with everybody out there as well.

SPEAKER 1: So, the guest today, Mr Evan Parker, CEO of on Mantle, a new platform which I mistakenly thought would be selling card. That's not what it is. I don't want to give it all away in the intro. You'll have to look, I'Ll tease you a little bit with listening to the interview to learn about the platform.

SPEAKER 1: Mantel MA Ntel and, I'm starting to be a little more active on there and, and trying to, definitely is interesting and, and I kinda like the different sort of concept, with that. So I'Ll, I'Ll just again tease you there. We're gonna talk about it during the interview portion of the show. We're gonna take a quick break, for, for a word from our sponsor and then we'll get talking with Evan Parker.

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SPEAKER 1: All right. Real excited to talk to the next gentleman on the sports card shop guest line. He is the CEO of Mantle. We're gonna talk about that community space, fairly new to the hobby. But I checked it out. Looks very interesting where I was gonna talk about all the, the details of that but CEO of, of said entity Evan Parker. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER 3: Thanks for having me, John. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER 1: Well, before we get into, to Mano and, and what that entails how it came about all that, fun stuff, you know, you're a collector as well. I read your bio kind of talk about, you know, you're starting the hobby, what you collect and, and how your collection may have changed, you know, from, initial when you first got started.

SPEAKER 3: Yeah. A, a absolutely. I, I am sort of like the quintessential quintessential DNA collector where I just have to collect whatever I'm into. So it's not just sports cards. If, if I get into something, there's a pretty good chance I'm gonna get into it in a, in a, in a deeper way than maybe I should.

SPEAKER 3: So, for me it's been sports cars since I was a kid. And memorabilia is part of that. I got into watches when I was relatively early, on and, and, you know, didn't have any money but would buy a g shock or something like that. And watch the Watch World has sort of followed me.

SPEAKER 3: It's been something that I, that I continue to be really passionate about. I've got memorabilia. I've got art. I, I'm not like, I don't have the ability to buy classic cars, but, but that's something that I spent a lot of time looking into and researching and wishing I had.

SPEAKER 3: And so I'm just that kind of guy who, if I'm interested in it, I'm probably deep down a rabbit hole and if you're trying to figure out, hey, where's Evan today? I'm probably in some, like, dark recess of the, of the internet looking up something and wasting my time and potentially eventually wasting my money.

SPEAKER 1: Well, it's not, listen, there's worse things you could, you could be doing right. And so, it's, it's all in, in, in good fun. I, I, you can correct me if I'm wrong. You, you come from the Athletic, you have sort of a sports background to talk a little bit about that. And does that give you an advantage a built in sort of advantage to when it comes to what you're doing? Now, would you say?

SPEAKER 3: Yes, I, I, my whole career in and around sports, or entertainment when I got out of school I worked for, for an agency for a few years and Xbox is my client. So I got to help launch the Xbox 360 go through all that if I had been able to, to see the future.

SPEAKER 3: And, and if I could have told you that eventually people would be grading video games in, in their, you know, sealed video games, I probably would have held on to more and not open to all of them that I got back in, you know, 2005, 2006.

SPEAKER 3: You know, I, I was there for, for a number of years before I worked for NASCAR, I was at NASCAR was part of the, the that league for eight years.

SPEAKER 3: My, my last job at NASCAR was, was overseeing content for the sport and left NASCAR in 2019 to join the Athletic and the Athletic was a, a website that I was a subscriber of and it was a business that I, you know, as somebody who went to school for sports media and sports journalism, it was something that I really believed in. And I thought that there was a better way to deliver great high quality sports to people.

SPEAKER 3: And then if you made it really good, people would be willing to pay for it. And so I joined the Athletic in 2019 and worked there up until about a year ago when, when I left to help start Mantle. And so, you know, to your question, I think having a background in sports helps having a media background and, and knowing, you know, through partnerships and how to build communities and Social Media and stuff like that.

SPEAKER 3: Obviously all help. I haven't worked in, in, in the hobby before. And I know that that's something that a lot of people, you know, pay close attention to. I'm new to this base from a, from a job standpoint, not, not new from a collecting standpoint, but this is my first time in and around this world and kind of dedicating my career to it versus, this is just being a passion. Something I, I do on the side.

SPEAKER 3: But I think that my background in sports is making it easier than if I was somebody who worked in a different industry and jumped into the hobby. Now, it would be a much, much, I think more difficult road to hope.

SPEAKER 1: One thing I want to piggy back off there. What you said of it? You, but you're in, you, you know, you're in a hobby, you collect it at a young age. Like you said, you, like, even now you'll pivot to things you, you enjoy.

SPEAKER 1: I think that's important. Right. And a, again without mentioning names, we've seen sort of other companies try to bring someone from out of the hobby that maybe doesn't even collect and I think that's, that terrain and landscape can get tricky to someone who's completely unfamiliar with it.

SPEAKER 1: We've seen mistakes happen and some of those folks no longer in those positions, they were, you know, already kind of, tab for. So, I think, you know, whether, you know, whether it's your first hobby, the hobby is not new to you.

SPEAKER 3: Maybe the hobby is not new. And I, yeah, totally. And, and to be clear I wouldn't be doing this if I wasn't a collector beforehand. I mean, that, that's part of why this makes the most sense for me as a job and something I'm willing to dedicate my time and effort to, I didn't see some stat and some business book that said that people are paying more for sports cards.

SPEAKER 3: There's an opportunity to go in there and take all these people's money. This was something that I was doing.

SPEAKER 3: And, and I think a lot of the reason why Mantle exists and, and for the, for the listeners who haven't been on the site yet, we're trying to build a Social Media network, a community platform for collectors, not just sports cards collectors overall, but sports cards being sort of our jumping off point, what I'm most focused on now.

SPEAKER 3: And the reason why this exists in large part is because myself, my partners felt like this was something that was lacking in our own lives and our own sort of interactions. And so we thought that there was an opportunity for us to come out there and create something that hopefully would help a lot of people and hopefully a lot of people would love, but we knew at a minimum we were building something that we wish that existed.

SPEAKER 3: And I think you can't do that if you're not from the hobby, if you haven't been investing time and energy into it to see that there was something that, that we at least thought was missing full transparency.

SPEAKER 1: Like I told you, even before we, we started recording and I, I did check out the site probably for around an hour. A little over an hour. It's very clean. It's not, you know, it's, sometimes you go to a website, it's just too busy almost. You don't know. You know, it's like everything's pulling you in different directions.

SPEAKER 1: This is pretty crisp and clean. I, I mentioned to you it had sort of a, a Twitter X feel without all that, you know, new stuff and, and it would really focus, like you said on the collector, collector centric without all the other stuff that, you know, like II I mentioned to you, right, when you're in the hobby, right?

SPEAKER 1: The hobby is the outlet for sort of the getaways from the mundane stuff of, of, of life. Now again, not that, that stuff isn't crucial or important, but there's sometimes we just sort of wanna decompress or de disconnect from it and enjoy, the hobby in this case.

SPEAKER 1: And so that's, that was my take, on the site, I'm gonna, you know, kick it over to you kind of talk about, you know, the birth of it, right? Where, where did the idea come from? It's obviously exist now, but kind of before it, you know, taking it from just an idea, maybe on a, on a, on a piece of paper to existing. How did it all kind of came about? Absolutely.

SPEAKER 3: So, you know, the idea was in a lot of ways to build Reddit for collectors.

SPEAKER 3: And there are a lot of places that, that collectors go to interact with each other, including Reddit, there's Discord, there are the forms, there's Facebook, there's Twitter, there's Instagram. So people don't have a shortage of places they can go to learn more about their hobbies or to share things that they love.

SPEAKER 3: We just didn't think any of those were great for people in the hobby because they weren't built for it. And so you go to these different platforms, you're bombarded with a lot of things that you may not want to go see at that given point, the algorithm kind of dictating.

SPEAKER 3: Here's the thing John that we, we think that you're gonna want to see because we want you to see it versus the thing that you actually want to see.

SPEAKER 3: And so we felt like that was something that, that was, was kind of hurting people who just wanted to get in there and, and delve into their hobbies, their passions, the things that they love the most and none of the existing platforms have really built tools for, for somebody in the hobby to get deeper into their passion.

SPEAKER 3: So pricing tools or ways to display the things that you own and, and show off your collection, interact with people in different ways. And so it just felt like there was an opportunity for us to create something that didn't exist.

SPEAKER 3: We're not trying to replace Twitter or Facebook or any of those other sites, those are things that I go to multiple times a day. Mantle has accounts on all those platforms.

SPEAKER 3: This is not a replacement of it, but what we thought and I, and I hope will end up being the case is that people who believe in collecting as part of their, their DNA, something that they love are gonna be looking for a place that they can go and really focus on that versus having to kind of battle.

SPEAKER 3: Here's a great post about a card next to something about or, or next to something about a current event or something like that. Like just I'm here.

SPEAKER 3: All I wanna do right now is talk to people about the thing I love the most and, and focus on that and let me find a a platform where I'm able to do that, that's easy to navigate, that has tools built for, for me to be a better collector to get more educated or entertained about it. And then the hardest thing to do. But the thing that I'm most passionate about is trying to make it positive.

SPEAKER 3: And I, and I know that that's a dirty word in, in, in collecting. Sometimes I don't mean that you can't say that somebody did something wrong that you can't call people on things.

SPEAKER 3: But I mean that coming into the, the experience and like not trying to make it toxic, not trying to, to pick fights have debate rather than, than shouting matches. That's what we're hoping to build somewhere that people can feel comfortable asking a question if they don't know.

SPEAKER 3: And people aren't gonna make fun of them because they don't know that thing comfortable showing off something that they have that somebody else might think is not valuable or not cool. You know, we talked about the way that, you know, my, my collecting, I collect a lot of stuff that has very little monetary value and probably a lot of people who are listening would be like, well, that's stupid.

SPEAKER 3: Why do you collect that? I, I grew up, I'm, I'm from L A. I'm a big Dodger fan. Ii, I collect things from Tommy Lasorda who is the manager of the Dodgers.

SPEAKER 3: I collect Vin Scully, the broadcaster of the Dodgers. These aren't like, I'm not talking about some Connor Bedard. You know, young guns card that you go sell for $10,000. I'm talking about, I spend $25 here, $50 here. Some places that I go and I post about that.

SPEAKER 3: People think that it's stupid that I'm wasting my money or the things I like are not cool. I, I, for me it was important to build a place. It doesn't matter what you're interested in. If you love it, then there's a place for it.

SPEAKER 3: If you love it, you should collect it and anybody tells me what they, what they collect, what they love. I don't have to go buy it myself. But I, I love the thing about that we're building with Mantle is that people are able to showcase the things that they love and tell me why, or tell us why they love those things.

SPEAKER 3: And I walk away from it, always having an appreciation for something I didn't know existed or I didn't know why somebody else would be into that. And I think that's what makes this, this hobby fun.

SPEAKER 3: I mean, you say the hobby is the people and when the people are nice and fun and excited and, and funny and all those other things, it's a lot better than when they're jumping down your throat and telling you that that what you're into is not cool.

SPEAKER 1: Well, I said, and, and I'Ll reite, I'Ll reiterate that Evan. You know, you should be proud of your collection, whatever is in it. You, if, if you enjoy it, right. That's what it's, that's what it's about.

SPEAKER 1: And, you know, a lot of times some of these comments that other people like to make comes from, I, like, you know, I'Ll say it, you know, generally they're unhappy and whatever they happen to be doing in the moment, it's just easier to, to cut someone else down rather than just, you know, turn the page and, and ignore it.

SPEAKER 1: If, even if, like you said, even if it's something that doesn't move their meter, it moves yours, it might move mine and and, and, and respect that. Right. Hobby. Hobby your way as, as another, term I like, I like to say if, if someone was to be on the platform was to be out of hand or unruly.

SPEAKER 1: I mean, are there things in place to, to monitor, monitor that and to assure, like, maybe someone like that, you know, maybe gets a warning first and then eventually if they don't, you know, shape up, you know, they have to be shipped out, so to speak.

SPEAKER 3: Yeah. You know, so one, we only launched four weeks ago and the website right now, if you go to it, it, it's very early on. You can tell like, this is not the fully baked product. You're walking into somebody's house when they've got drop cloths and paint buckets and, you know, loose nails on the floor.

SPEAKER 3: But that was part of the, the, the plan that what we really wanted to do was let people come in early and help us shape it. Tell us the things that they wish that they had on, on these other platforms, tell us what they like and what they don't like. So we could build something that actually was gonna be loved by the hobby versus just force fed and said, here, take it. This is what you get, take it or leave it.

SPEAKER 3: I think that we, we would have failed if we had done that and people wouldn't be nearly as happy about it, none of us had an ability to go to any social network that we use and tell Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or any of those people.

SPEAKER 3: And I'm not comparing myself to them by the way, but none of us had the ability to go shape what those platforms look like. And we thought with Mantle, let's make sure that we build this with the people of the hobby versus just build it for them. So that's the first thing.

SPEAKER 3: And so if you go on today and you feel like, oh, there's not a lot here. Well, that's because it's early, we built in some features that, that are, you know, meant to help protect our users. So we can, you know, you can report flag if somebody says something that's out of, out of hand and, and you can flag that a moderator is able to come in and they can remove a post or block a user.

SPEAKER 3: You can also block a user if somebody's like, consistently saying the wrong thing, but they aren't saying something that they should be banned permanently from the site, you can at least block them. So you don't have to see them.

SPEAKER 3: And then we have the ability as admins to remove somebody from the site. If they're doing something that's, that's really above the line. We haven't had those issues yet again. It's early, we don't have that many users and it's new.

SPEAKER 3: But the thing I'm really hoping for is that our, our current users are so friendly and they're so respected, respectful of each other. And they're, they're, you know, they like cheer each other on. We have people who have not been collecting very much and are just exploring it for the first time and we've got people who have had dedicated their lives to this businesses, to this, been doing it for, you know, 30 40 50 years.

SPEAKER 3: And, and that, what I'm hoping happens and what's sort of happening now is that the, the discourse is positive and if somebody comes on and they see that everybody seems to be having a good time, you're just less likely to want to ruin the party and say something that's jerky.

SPEAKER 3: And so that, that's the hope, but we, we of course, need to make sure that we're protecting our users and, and building some things on the back end to, to be able to block somebody or remove somebody. And so we have those productions in place.

SPEAKER 1: That's nice. It's also nice to hear that you, you're sort of interactive, right? You wanna know, hey, what do you wanna see? What do you don't wanna see? And sort of let a little bit of the power to the people. If you well, and, and even opening the door, opening the doors early to achieve that, right?

SPEAKER 1: Rather than say, here's what, here's the final product, here's what you get like it or, or not, or, or not, right. And so I think it shows you kind of care, you, you wanna build a, a product an entity that people enjoy that can involve evolve too, right?

SPEAKER 1: What it might look like today, next week it might look way better or, or kind of, you know, pivot and, and look a little bit li different based on user feedback, which is always, that's always important and it's nice, you know, a lot of places, you know, don't do that.

SPEAKER 1: Let's just say it like that. And the fact that, you've left that door open, I think, says a lot about, you know, your, your thoughts about the hobby community and, and, and making the site, you know, the, the best it can be.

SPEAKER 3: Look, II, I don't know everything about every single way to collect. I can't pretend that I know what you're gonna want versus what your friends are gonna want or somebody, you know, down the street's gonna want.

SPEAKER 3: And the only way to do that is to talk to people. So every single day I have zooms with our users and say, you know, hey, what are the features that you're using all the time? What do you think needs to be there? What doesn't work?

SPEAKER 3: What works, what would it, what would it take for you to go tell your friends because this is all gonna be more fun if there are more people there. So how do, how do I get people to, to feel like they want to have a little bit of, of ownership over the way that this looks and feels. And I know some people say, you know what, it's not my job to make your site good.

SPEAKER 3: I'm gonna come when it's ready and, and that's totally good. And there are other people who like that early adopter opportunity and they, they want to be in there early and help shape it. Both ways are totally fine for me. It's really helpful that we have users right now who are giving me feedback.

SPEAKER 3: And I've gotten really positive feedback and I've gotten people who told me things that hurt to hear and like, oh, well, ok, this isn't as good as it needs to be or people will say, oh, I don't want to use it because Xy and Z and all that's totally fine. Right.

SPEAKER 3: We're not going to create something that everybody loves, but none of us all love Facebook or Discord or X or Instagram, you know, but we can help make something that hopefully will be as good if not better for the hobby.

SPEAKER 3: And, and that's just gonna mean that people need to come on and use it and give feedback and, and help make it better and, and hopefully we can create something that will be really good the other thing I've mentioned, you know, I've got my partners in this, so Alexis O'Hannon who built Reddit and Brett Montgomery, who's a TV, producer, he was the guy who created Pawn Stars and he produces the Golden Auction show on Netflix.

SPEAKER 3: And we have investors who have big names that people know about like Gary Boehner, Chuck and Steve Aoki. I know when people hear that they expect that we've got some big, you know, penthouse glass filled office with 1000 people running around and it's just not the case.

SPEAKER 3: You know, it's right now, I'm the only full time employee of this company. We're adding people, we're hoping to add people. But if, if you respond and there's something, you know, the ad Mantle account responds to you. It's me. If you send a note to the to at support, it goes to me.

SPEAKER 3: And, and obviously that's not what I hope is going to be the case for very long. I want people to be using this and I want this thing to grow. But, but I can tell you with, with, with every part of my being that I am completely in on this.

SPEAKER 3: And I want to make sure that I'm talking to our users because I'm the one that they're interacting with and anybody who says anything good or bad, they're saying it to me and I, I, you know, it's hard to not take a lot of this stuff personally.

SPEAKER 3: But I want to make sure that I'm getting the feedback even if it's not positive because if it, if it isn't positive and I can't figure out a way to make it better, this isn't gonna work.

SPEAKER 1: Yeah, there is no metal man. You're, you're the guy. So you, you, you get it no filter. You know, I think most people, I don't want, you know, I think most people use tech or at least I hope they do when making suggestions or especially if they're gonna be on the more critical side, right?

SPEAKER 1: You, you know, it's, well, hey, you gotta do this but, but you know, say, you know, there's the old saying, right? You can just mention problems or you can mention problems and offer sort of a solution, right? Hey, I like this. I'm not a fan of this, I'd like to see that, right? That way you, it gives you something to go on.

SPEAKER 1: It's real easy just to say this sucks, you know, two words and you gotta be a little more descriptive than that. What is it? Why does it suck to you if that's, if that's your take and you know, so you, like you said, while you may take it, but taking it personal means you care, right?

SPEAKER 1: If you didn't care, you wouldn't take it personally. So you wanna, you wanna put the best product in, in the best platform out there? And so I just hope, you know, and I think, you know, even from a podcast perspective, you know, I get, feedback as well.

SPEAKER 1: Thankfully mostly positive but not all, not all the time. And I always respond, you know, you can't really, I can't respond to, you know, you suck. But if I get, hey, I don't like when you did this or I don't like when you did that or do you ever that think about doing it this way, then I can respond because number one, I can, I can kind of what, here's what I was thinking or here's where I was going with that.

SPEAKER 1: But I like the fact that you, you gave me your feedback. We can, sometimes you, you need that from outside to maybe see something that you don't internally.

SPEAKER 1: And, so I think, I think that's a great thing as long as people use some tact and, you know, if, if someone doesn't, they don't, and you just really focus on the people who are a little more detailed and, and telling you, you know, more like, hey, if you, do you ever think about doing this or doing that?

SPEAKER 3: Totally e every day I hear from somebody with an idea that I couldn't have come up with on my own or they use things differently than I use. So the way that I had planned or was thinking about it might be different than the way that they would do it. So we need to, you know, consider. Ok. Well, not everybody is gonna go down this path.

SPEAKER 3: O often times like nobody's on the site more than I am. I know a lot of what's missing, right? I can tell you right now that there's a lot of stuff that you can't do on our platform that you can do on X or you can do on Instagram or places like that. I also know we don't have as many users as those platforms do.

SPEAKER 3: And so you don't, if you post, you may not hear from as many people as, as what you'd expect if you've got a big account. You know, our, our, our general idea though is that if you post on, on Instagram, if you have a really big account, you can't have community because you can't respond to everybody.

SPEAKER 3: It's really difficult if you don't have anybody who's following you or not many and you post nobody pays attention and, and it kind of falls on deaf ears. The algorithm dictates so much of what people see. And the same thing on X.

SPEAKER 3: If you go on some of the of the forums, if you go on Discord, they can be a little bit gatekeeping, it could be difficult to, to feel comfortable posting something, asking a question. Those communities have been there for so long and they are not always the most flexible.

SPEAKER 3: So how do we build something that can be a little bit more welcoming, I guess you could say, but also really allow for that, that back and forth that, that communication. And then can we build features that only make sense for a collector?

SPEAKER 3: And so, you know, we're using the card hedge database and you can go in right now and you can say, all right, I've got, you know what's sitting at my desk right now, I've got this upper deck 2001 Tiger Woods, like I can go on the card, he database with a Mantle and look up to see what the pricing trends are and see if I want to do something about, you know, sell it, buy, buy another one, whatever.

SPEAKER 3: We've got what we call the Mantle piece, which is essentially your display. So I can add things to my mantelpiece to show other collectors. These are the things that I care about. So if you go to my mantelpiece, I've got a Tommy Lasorda card up there and I've got, you know, again, as an L A guy, I've got Kobe cards or things like that that are on my mantelpiece.

SPEAKER 3: And so you can see all right now, I know John a lot better because I can see the things that matter the most to him, whether or not they're expensive, they could be a bunch of $3 cards or $300 cards or $3000 cards. It doesn't matter. I just get a window into who you are through your collection.

SPEAKER 3: And then, you know, we're building this, not just as I said earlier, not just for sports cards. The idea is to build this for collectors. I can see in your background you don't only collect sports cards. I've talked to a lot of people in my own life. A lot of people through, through this, this, this business who are collectors through and through.

SPEAKER 3: And, and because of that, they may be into memorabilia or tickets or they've got, you know, some Pokemon that, that's different and they've got cars or, or wine or watches or whatever. And right now, most of the, the businesses that have been built for collecting have been built solely for one type of collector.

SPEAKER 3: And so what we're trying to do is create tools and create an atmosphere that collectors can go to. And if they're into comic books and they're into stamps and they're into sports cards. They can meet people with, in all those categories, they can get information from all those categories.

SPEAKER 3: They can show off things from all those categories that, you know, listen to the podcast or video or read articles from all those different categories. And so we're really hoping to build this something for collectors, not for card collectors or not for stamp collectors or watch collectors because I think there are a lot of sites out there that are really good for one type of collector.

SPEAKER 3: But if you, if you're somebody like me who collects multiple things, it means you're going to a lot of different places every day to kind of scratch that itch. And we think that there's a better and more efficient way to do it time for a quick break but will be right fine for nearly 50 years.

SPEAKER 5: Sports collectors digest has been the voice of the hobby. Bringing you comprehensive coverage of the sports collectible industry from industry news, auction results, market analysis and in depth stories about collectors and their collections. Sports collectors digest has everything you need to know about the hobby.

SPEAKER 5: S CD is also your leading source for listings of sports collectible dealers, card shops, card shows and the latest from the industry's top companies to check out all the latest news or to subscribe to the hobby's oldest magazine. Visit sports collectors, digest.com or call 1 808 29, 5561.

SPEAKER 6: We, batch.

SPEAKER 1: Yeah. And the other nice thing too is, and, and I'Ll, I'Ll use myself as an example here, Evan. Sometimes, you know, I use a lot of my Social Media full disclosure to promote the show. Hey, this episode's coming up with this guest or this episode's gonna tackle this topic.

SPEAKER 1: And sometimes, and, and I, I love that you say, you know, it could be an expensive car but it could be a $3 card I have all that and, and in between and some of those lesser value if you want, I wanna call them lesser value.

SPEAKER 1: You know, have the best stories behind them.

SPEAKER 1: And I like, sometimes I'm really, I'm conscious when I post like pictures of my inventory on my Social Media cause it's gonna sound silly to some listening cause I and I have post, I don't make it sound like an old postcard, but I'm always self-conscious of the fact that if I post one of my expensive cards, it's, it's sort of coming across as, as braggadocious or look what I have and maybe you don't, that's not my intent, but 100% not my intent.

SPEAKER 1: But I'm cognizant of how that looks. Maybe, you know, everyone has different budgets. I've done this for 40 years. So it's taken me, you know, this wasn't like I just, you know, did it over the course of two years. I've, I've built up that inventory over you know, a decent amount of time but it's something I'm conscious about.

SPEAKER 1: So without Mantle, it sounds like that the, the Mantle piece, you know, where you can kinda showcase, hey, this is cards that mean something to me whether they're, you know, a dollar or $10,000 or whatever or, or anywhere in between. I like that because it's sort of, it's i it's be, it's built in there to, hey, I wanna show off some of my country. You know, it, it takes that pretentious stuff out of the equation.

SPEAKER 1: It's, that's what it's built for and you don't have to feel, not that you had to feel any anywhere else yet. I still do. Right. But this is, probably something you'll see. You'll see me very soon on there posting some of that stuff because that's really what it's, it's geared for. Does that make any sense to you when, when, when comparison to certain other platforms even?

SPEAKER 3: Totally? And so if you went on today and I know, you know, we're, we're working on an update that may hit before the podcast post may, may be a little after. But an update that will allow you to put a sort of like a caption against anything you put on your mantelpiece today. You just put the card up and it's, here's the card and somebody can click on it and see the value and things like that.

SPEAKER 3: But what we really wanted to do was allow you to, to put your explanation for why this is on your mantelpiece. It, this is the mantelpiece right now. Doesn't allow you to put thousands of cards like this is an inventory management.

SPEAKER 3: I wouldn't say that this is like, you know, mascot where you could put everything that you ever have and, and sell from it like that. That's not the way that we, that we built this with the functionality. This is you put things that are special to you. And so I have things on my Mantel piece that if you looked at you might be like, all right, why is that thing on there?

SPEAKER 3: And I can explain it to you. This is why I've got this card. It made me laugh, it made me II I pulled it out of the pack. It was something that connected me with somebody in, you know, my, my friend group or my family. And, and so you can explain it and you could have something that says I went out and I spent $10,000 on this wem be, and that's totally fine.

SPEAKER 3: Or you could say I have this $5 card that I pulled from a pack when I was seven years old. And it's, it means something to me because it's just always been in my collection and I'Ll never sell it. And I, and I think that that is the beauty of, of how people collect that. There's not one right way to do it.

SPEAKER 3: And let's be clear if there was this, this hobby would be a lot more expensive and tough for all of us because we'd all be chasing after the same stuff. It's beautiful that I can go out there and try to buy things that mean something to me that not everybody else wants because that means I can go out there and afford it. I can go get it.

SPEAKER 3: I happen, I'm a premier league fan.

SPEAKER 3: Crystal Palace is my team. Crystal Palace is never very good. I think they're 15th in the premier league right now. There's not a whole lot of fans in the US that root for Crystal Palace. They've got one guy on the team, Chris Richards who plays for the, he's, he's an American, he's from, from Texas and he plays on, on the US men's National team and I collect Chris Richards cards for Palace.

SPEAKER 3: I'm able to go, I, I just, this past week I got, you know, like this is AAA sign, you know, one of, of 75 card that I got for like 20 bucks. If everybody wanted to go get this, if this was messy, I'd be spending thousands. Right? So it's beautiful that I can go get somebody who's really good that I have an association with that connection with that. Not everybody else cares about.

SPEAKER 3: And I think that that's the thing that we want to highlight that everybody's got their own way of doing it. Everybody likes different things. Everybody's got their own motivations if you're in it because you want to invest, if you're in it as a flipper, if you're in it because you've got a connection to your, it connects you with a family member because it's a passion.

SPEAKER 3: You just go out and rip cards and, and, and rip packs, go to breaks and you just, whatever you get, you get, like, it doesn't matter the fact is that you're in it, that you love it, that you've got a connection to it and, and you need a space to kind of flex those muscles and talk to other people, learn information, you know, talk to people who know more or different than you show off the things that you have and that you love.

SPEAKER 3: Yeah.

SPEAKER 1: That's really, what should, the hobby should all, should be about. And I think for most people, it is, it's why, you know, it's the, the greatest hobby, at least in my opinion, in, in the world. And, and I, I like that.

SPEAKER 1: That's really sort of what's at the crux of, of man on you want it straight and, and highlight, that fact, I was mistaken, I found this out talking to your presh show.

SPEAKER 1: It's, it's not a selling platform. So, right now you're not gonna see people post, you know, hey, 40 bucks takes this 1st 40 bucks, takes this card. What, what have you, I guess, a two prong question. Evan, if I may, you know, may that change down the line sometime or, and, and right now, why is that not the case?

SPEAKER 1: I kind of, I think it's sort of refreshing. I kind of like I said, I, I made, you know, well, you know, what happens when you assume I made the assumption that's, that, that was gonna be part of it. But kind of speak to that, that piece of, of Mantle.

SPEAKER 3: You know, the reality is I can't compete. We don't have the staff, we don't have the budget to go out there and try to beat ebay and PWCC and, and you know, all of those guys, we're just not gonna be able to do it and I don't think that collectors are looking for another place to go buy.

SPEAKER 3: There's anything that you want, if it, if it exists to be sold, it's on somebody's platform somewhere.

SPEAKER 3: And it's really difficult to build a S A sales platform and, you know, yes, everybody would love if ebay took lower fees and could I go out and build some of the lower fees maybe. But, you know, it's just if, if it was that easy to do somebody else would have done it already. And so our, our thought was let's give people a place that doesn't really exist in the same way.

SPEAKER 3: And when that's the ability to go and talk to other people about the things that you love, show off the things that you have or, or ask questions or whatever. I look at Mantle as what I hope it will become is where you kind of start and end your collecting journey. You wake up in the morning, you check it, see what people are talking about.

SPEAKER 3: If any news broke, if anything cool is happening. Hey, I got a question. This thing just came out. I want to talk to people about it. You might leave and go buy it. But then I want you to come back and put it on your mantelpiece or show it off and say, hey, look at this thing.

SPEAKER 3: You know, I was just on it right before we hopped on and somebody just, you know, Ebay mail day and, and the package came and the guy wanted to show off what he got like. That's what I hope Mantle is now down the line. I would love it if there was a way that we could let people find things to buy and sell, but you're not buying and selling them through us. And so I don't know what the tech solution to that is.

SPEAKER 3: But it would be great if you didn't have to leave to go find something on ebay or PWC. See, you could kind of do a lot of that stuff from within our platform.

SPEAKER 3: But you know who I can't predict the future, but I don't have an interest in going out and trying to build my own version of that or our own version of that because I just don't think we can do it better and, and I don't think that people are looking for another place to buy and sell. Now, you know, you and I talked a little bit John about like trading and stuff like that.

SPEAKER 3: It would be great if, if there was an ability, if you met somebody on Mantle who had something that you loved and you want to do a trade, if we could figure out a way to help facilitate that without again, us building a lot of tech for it or being responsible.

SPEAKER 3: I did a trade last week with somebody on Mantle. We did it on arena club because that's where both of us had the cards. And so we just were like, hey, check out my, my arena club profile and he went on, he looked, saw some things, he offered a trade and we got the trade done.

SPEAKER 3: It'd be great if we could build something like that into Mantle. But again, you know, we just don't know that we can do it better than everybody else. There's a lot of places to do it and we wanna make sure that we do what we can do the best. That's what we'll focus on. And that I think is the community aspect.

SPEAKER 1: Yeah. And, and, and when you did correct me, you know, and said you weren't a selling platform. I, I kinda, I was, I in a way I was glad cause I, I think you touched on something, right? There's just so many, now there's new ones popping up every day that let's be honest, aren't gonna survive.

SPEAKER 1: They're, they're going into an arena with some heavy weights, and it's gonna be tough to, to tr blows and elbows and, and come out, you know, still, still existing. And so, II, I like, your approach and then, you know, you mentioned a couple of places and, and maybe again, you know, the, the hobby and this is not just the, the hobby, but just, just the market and the industries in general.

SPEAKER 1: Right. We're seeing a lot of co collabs. So maybe there's a collab in, you know, ma Mantle's future with someone you might have mentioned or someone you didn't mentioned where that can be, you know, integrated in.

SPEAKER 1: Like you said, you're four weeks in at the time of this conversation, you're four weeks into the, the launch of the site, what, what it looks like today in, in a couple of weeks, it's gonna look different and in, in subsequent times after that, even even more. So with that being said, go ahead, go ahead.

SPEAKER 3: I know you're, you're exactly right. I think to, you know, not be a broken record, but that's why it's so important for us to get feedback from our users and tell us what they like and what they don't like. Because if everybody says, you know what, we really wish that we could, we could trade on this platform. And enough people are saying that then we'll figure out a way to get it done.

SPEAKER 3: Maybe it's us partnering with somebody, maybe it's us building it ourselves. But if, if enough people are asking for it, then we'll put time and attention to it. But if nobody's asking for it and everybody says it would be really great. If you could post live video on the platform, it would be really great. If you could, you know, do XY and Z, then, then we'll think about going in that direction too.

SPEAKER 3: I've got a long list of ideas of things that we hope to one day have as part of Mantle reality is that some of them will take a lot of time and a lot of money and maybe we never get to them. But the prioritization on the list, it really depends on what our, our users are telling us that care about versus what I want out of my own life.

SPEAKER 3: Or what, you know, the team wants out of their own life. And so that's a lot of what we have to think about every day. Like, what are people asking for that? We can actually go out and build and build well.

SPEAKER 3: And is there, is there something that we can carve out and make Mantle that much better because we added this thing versus that thing versus that other thing? It's that sort of debate every single day.

SPEAKER 1: Yeah. And I, like, you know, you, like you said, you got a list of things you like to see some of them. You may some of them, you may not. That's, that's the beauty of building something, right?

SPEAKER 1: You, you, but it's, but it's also nice to have some sort of plan or direction you wanna go. I'Ll put probably the, the, the most I'Ll put you on the spot. Is there something you can share that, that you, you, you, you know, is coming or you're pretty sure it's coming or, or not necessarily again, for, in all due respect, you're, you, you're pretty new.

SPEAKER 1: So if you said, hey, I, you know, I don't wanna say it cause I, I don't wanna say and then it doesn't happen. And I look, you know, like, hey, he didn't deli but is there anything of that that you, you do want talk about or not?

SPEAKER 3: Yeah, I mean, I can tell you some of the things are all, they're, they're on the smaller side but that's kind of where we are this early on. We're building polling in, into the platform so people, users can put up polls and different questions and things like that. Is that earth shattering. No, it exists on other platforms but we think it could be really cool on our platform.

SPEAKER 1: No, but III I don't mean to interrupt you, but that's another way to be interactive, right? Where people can give their opinion and feel like they're their participants, a democracy see in the hobby, right? Hey, I weighed in on this question or this topic.

SPEAKER 3: And it's easier than having to post, right? You know, not everybody, I'm not somebody who posts a lot on my own social platforms. I understand that. Ok, this is another platform that in order to kind of use, I've got a post. Well, I don't know that I want to go do that.

SPEAKER 3: So something like a poll where the mantelpiece where you put things on there and you can put captions and they, they'll hit the feed so people can see it and then engage with you. But you don't have to wake up up in the morning and think, what am I gonna talk about today? I think that's something that, that will be, will be easy and, and, and fun for, for people to use.

SPEAKER 3: You know, we built into the platform badges and, and points, Mantle points that we call them.

SPEAKER 3: If you play Xbox, it's like Xbox achievements. If you're on, on Reddit, it's like Karma right now. They, they don't really amount to anything. We've got leader boards.

SPEAKER 3: It's supposed to be fun, but it's not like there's anything that, that you get for having points, but that's something that we're always looking at ways that we can incentivize people to participate, make things more fun, have some challenges. So we'll do some giveaways.

SPEAKER 3: We're building a referral program now. So if you tell your friends about it and you use a link that, that we provide you, then there's ways for you to use that to get perks and prizes. All that needs to be figured out what that looks like.

SPEAKER 3: But we wanna make sure that we're building things that people feel like they're not just doing us a favor by coming on and, and participating, but they get something out of it too. And so that's really important for us.

SPEAKER 3: But every day we're having conversations with a lot of different companies in this space and trying to figure out what are they not doing that we can help them with? What are we not doing that, that they can help us with?

SPEAKER 3: You know, I think you said John, there's a lot of companies, a lot of innovation that's come in over the last few years. Some of it could be a really good product or a really good feature, but it's tougher as a big business.

SPEAKER 3: Some of it would be a really good opportunity if they had another way of reaching people and another place to talk to people. And so, you know, we want to be Switzerland, you know, that that's our goal. We're not trying to compete with anybody that already exists.

SPEAKER 3: So that was another reason why we didn't want to go out and build ebay. I don't know that I could beat ebay, but I also want us to be somebody who can partner with ebay or partner with Golden Auctions or partner with PS A or, or anybody else. Out there.

SPEAKER 3: And so, you know, that's something every single day we're having conversations to see who are the people who are working on cool innovative things that can make Mantle better and who are the people that could benefit if Mantle was part of their world too?

SPEAKER 1: Yeah. And again, you know, or remind you, you're in the first inning of a, of a nine inning game, right? So a AAA lot, a lot can happen. A lot of game, left to play.

SPEAKER 1: You know, we got the National coming up. We're, we're about four plus months away. That's the, you know, the hobby. I call it the Super Bowl of the hobby, I think where it's where you get the most people from the hobby in one place at one time and then you get to do it for literally six days, any, you know, obviously that's the, the, the best captive audience.

SPEAKER 1: You can have any plans, to kind of showcase the site, at the National coming up in, in Cleveland here at the end of July. We'll be there.

SPEAKER 3: Absolutely. We'll be there. I haven't figured out, we haven't figured out exactly what we'll do and how we'll do it.

SPEAKER 3: You know, I've been at the man, the National in the passage, a very overwhelming experience. You can easily get lost. It's expensive to do things.

SPEAKER 3: And, and, and I think that it's only getting kind of more towards that, you know, whereas a few years ago, if you had a table with some cool stuff, people might flock to it. Now when you see what, tops and fanatics and golden and all these bigger companies are doing it, it's starting to feel like it's a little bit more difficult if you're someone, some of the small guys to really carve out some space.

SPEAKER 3: But we know we, we have to be there. I think what we'll end up doing things that will try to bring our community together and get people who are on Mantle to come and hang out and meet in real life because people were only four weeks in and people are developing what I think is a real relationships and kind of friendships.

SPEAKER 3: We want to make sure that we foster that with those people who are gonna be at the, at the National and then to your point, it's a great way to get in front of people who don't know that we exist, how we do that. I don't know. I'm hoping that somebody who's got a big booth has a little corner of it that they don't need to use and we can take it over.

SPEAKER 3: We don't have the budget to go get something ourselves, but, but we, we'll be there. Absolutely.

SPEAKER 3: And you know, if I've learned anything from going there just as, as an attendee is that it's the best place on earth to talk to people in the hobby. It's also probably the hardest place to get them to focus on anything.

SPEAKER 3: But if you're able to do something cool, everybody that you want, everybody who should be on Mantel is gonna be walking around that convention center. And if we can get them to, to see what we're up to, I think it will be great for us to, to start meeting new people and growing what we're, what we're trying to build.

SPEAKER 1: Yeah, no doubt. This is not lip service. I am going to, start an account and, and be more active.

SPEAKER 1: It's nice, for those that haven't been there yet. Right. It's really collector centric.

SPEAKER 1: Like, like Evan said, you not, that the other stuff's not important but you're not gonna get that sort of mixed in there and deluded, with your hobby, your hobby is gonna be, you know, the focus and, and the only content, you know, you have to, you have to wait through some other collector stuff but you, it's all gonna be a collector orientated and, where you, where a lot of other platforms don't offer that.

SPEAKER 1: Right. And, and you do. So, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you know, not lip service is gonna start, doing some stuff there. You, you'll see maybe at Nauseam you'll be, like, get out of here.

SPEAKER 1: But, but, Evan, I always give the guest. First off, thanks for, for coming on and I know you're a busy guy making some time.

SPEAKER 1: I always give the guest the the final word and you know, put out there where people can, can check the site out the platform out. Get active. So any social medias you wanna share as well? No rush. Take it, take what time you need to get that stuff out there?

SPEAKER 3: Well, I appreciate you giving me the platform to talk about it and, and, and put me in front of your audience. One thing I, I would call out because I've seen people ask this question. It's been on, on Reddit and other places. Iii I saw them blow out forms is the name, it's spelled Ma Ntel. And people say, well, that's not how you spell Mantle and we know it's not how you spell Mickey's name one.

SPEAKER 3: I don't want to get sued by, by his estate by copying him. So that's part of it. But we also wanted this to not just be about sports cards. This is about collecting in general. And so we, we named it after the mantelpiece. We named it after that spot spot on your house above your fireplace where you put things that mean the most to you.

SPEAKER 3: It could be photographs of your family, it could be cards, be trinkets, it could be whatever. And so that's where where the name came from. So it's Ma Ntel. The website is www dot on Ma Ntel.com. So on Mantle.com, all of our social channels are at on Mantle. So we're on TikTok and X And Instagram and Facebook.

SPEAKER 3: We, we're, we're launching our, our YouTube channel as well so you can find us there. But you know the, the the the request is to come on, check it out before you poo poo it, before you say it's not for you. Give it a shot. Come on and see what if it's cool. If it does what you're looking for, if it's not doing what you're looking for, then shoot me a note and tell me what you wish that it had.

SPEAKER 3: You know, if, if, if you hit the provide feedback on the site, it goes directly to my inbox. I read every single message I respond to every single message.

SPEAKER 3: And so, you know, the hope is that people take a little bit of time all out and, and, and try it, give it, give it a go tell their friends about it and, and help me, help us make something that you're really gonna love and want to use. It might not be there today. And I understand that.

SPEAKER 3: But the hope is that with the help of people who, who are in this hobby, who are looking for other places to go and meet other collectors, you know, get deeper into the things that they love, share the things that they own and just have more fun in and around collecting that this can become a great resource and, and so I, I appreciate you bringing me on and I appreciate you guys hearing me out and I'm hopeful that, that we see some more people from from the sports card nation, world o on Mantle and hanging out because that's gonna be more fun for all of us.

SPEAKER 1: I think you will not to be, you know, too over you know, I don't wanna be egocentric but I think, I think you will and at least me. So at the very least. But again, II, I like where you're going. I like that. You're, you know, collector centric, what do you guys want to see?

SPEAKER 1: What can we do better? What do you like? And we can just even make it even better even though it might be good, we can make it great, right? You know, sometimes you don't hear that enough with certain things and the fact that your, your doors open like that when a lot of other people's doors are shut, not only shut, but maybe locked on top of that as well, right?

SPEAKER 1: And you're not and you, you wanna, you wanna the best platform that people can enjoy. Again, you're in early stages. So by all means people check it out but know that this thing is gonna get better and better. As the time does go on, more people use it. That's where you get more feedback and, just, just gather some momentum and, it gets bigger and better and that's what it's.

SPEAKER 3: Every week or two, we add something. So, you know, it's whatever it looks like today, it won't look like in a week.

SPEAKER 3: You know, we just added an edit button last week that we talked about the protections, you know, being able to, to, to block a user or flag something that wasn't there three weeks ago. So it's something every week we're adding more stuff in. And so you come on now and it's mediocre, hopefully next week it's a little bit better and eventually it becomes great and that's what we're, that's what we're aiming to do.

SPEAKER 1: Yeah, work in progress and it gives you something to look forward to right. Each time you, you log in, you don't know what might be new. And so you can, you know, a new bell and a new whistle to play with. So that's always, that's always fun.

SPEAKER 1: Well, having continued success be you, I'Ll be checking it out for sure and, and seeing all those new things as, as they get implemented. So, look forward to meeting you, hopefully in person too, as well in Cleveland. And again, thanks for coming on.

SPEAKER 3: Thanks so much for having me, John.

SPEAKER 1: All right. Thanks to Evan for making some time for the show. He's very busy. Like he said, he's kind of a one man band right now with Odd Man. All he's, you know, no middle man. Any, any feedback goes right to him.

SPEAKER 1: And he's trying to make the best platform he can. And like I said, that's not lip service. I've been actually using it.

SPEAKER 1: So, and I plan to kind of ramp up my usage. It's, it's pretty cool. It's free.

SPEAKER 1: It's a nice little community and I think, you know, I think it's gonna get better. I mean, it's already kind of cool. I think it's, as it matures and, Evan's sort of the right guy to like, implement and his doors open as he said, during the show. So, check out, on Manel and, maybe I'Ll, maybe I'Ll see you there.

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