BUSINESS NEWS: Consumer Sentiment Tanking & It's Time for a Plan - Ecomm Coming for more Retail - Your Next Investment Opportunity

This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month.
Taking the BS out of business for over 6 years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.
What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now.

It's our weekly business news here on March 28th, 2025.

Joined, as always, by Chris Hansen down in Miami.

What's up, Chris?

What's up, Brian? How are you, bro?

I'm good. I'm good.

Here in Greenville, South Carolina, our studio is here on the Swamp Rabbit Trail at Social House.

Chris is down in Miami. We're always here to bring you the news.
We take the Swamp Rabbit Trail at Social House. Chris is down in

Miami. We're always here to bring you the news.
We take the BS out of the news, Chris. And we're

going to be taking the BS today. If you listen to and watch our show, if you're not watching,

you need to get on YouTube. Go check that out.
YouTube or Spotify. You can watch,

see how pretty Chris is. You never know what he's going to be wearing.
Always fashionable.

I'm trying to keep up with him. But in all seriousness, you know, we lean certain directions.
I think we try to keep out the politics and more of the policies of what we believe in. And I think when things are going good, we talk about how it's good.
And I think when things are not feeling good, I think we've been talking about that. In today's episode, we're going to dive deep into some studies and surveys that go on.
Some are yearly, some are quarterly, some are monthly. But it's really about consumer sentiment and about how people feel.
And, you know, I think the numbers probably won't surprise you. They didn't surprise Chris and I as we were looking at them.
And we're going to dive deep into that because I think this administration has been guns a blazing in things that they're doing. And many of the policies I think we tend to agree with directionally, but at the same time, a word of caution has kind of been coming from us with things lately, how we've felt like, at least in our circles, things have felt.
And the studies have come out on the overall consumer sentiment, how people are feeling, what they're, you know, how for both currently and future thinking, because it's also built into that, like, you know, what's your prognosis? Like, how do you feel about the future? And some of these numbers are staggering. And I think we're at a real pivotal point where the policymakers and the Central Reserve and a lot of people really need to take a look at this because people think with their head and they buy with their heart.
And literally, people are not buying. You've got money staying on the shelf if there is some.
You've got tightening of the wallet overall. You've got interest rates that have been stagnant and real estate market that's stagnant in a lot of markets.
And I think we're coming to a head with where if we don't get ahead of getting consumers feeling positive about the changes, feeling positive about the economy, feeling positive about the potential of real estate opportunities, we're in for a tough road. And the sentiment of the country drives the economic behavior of the country.
And we're going to dive deep into that today. But I think it's time that we really point out, hey, let's talk the good, the bad, and the other.
We take the BS out of stuff. We're going to take it out today.
And so we're going to dive deep into some of these stats. I think some might be surprising, some might not be.
And talk about a few other business updates of the day here on the Business News of the Week. Chris, I know, I mean, let's just jump right into it, man.
We've been kind of talking about this, like, I think more our own sentiment, right? The last few episodes, like, eh, I feel like we need some good news. Feels a little gloomy, a little flat, a little stagnant.
And one of these, which is a survey of consumers from the University of Michigan, the preliminary results for March, looking at the index of consumer sentiment, how do they feel about the country? And it slid another 11 points. We're at 57.9 is the consumer sentiment, which is hovering right around half feel good, half feel bad.
And that's a 27% negative change year over year. In March of 2024,

we were at 79.4. It's a big drop, dude.
It's a massive drop. And you can feel it.
Yeah. And, you know, take the who is president out of it.
It's just whoever's in charge needs to be paying attention. We can't just heads down a blazing, you know, getting all these policies, you know, all these campaign promises done without recognizing what is the sentiment of.
And this is this is covering Republicans, Democrats, everyone else. Everyone's just kind of meh about the overall economy.
A lot of money staying put in the wallet, in the savings account. And it's a lot tighter for everyone else because inflation is still an issue.
It's not good, man. No, I feel like we're in a heavy contraction.
And when I look at the numbers, right down 22% from December 24, when I read that, I'm like, that feels right. Or it feels like it's higher than 22%.
Yeah. And I don't know if it was the Christmas spirit that people were living in fantasy land, even though I do know a lot of people remember saying this deer felt weird at Christmas because even then things were still tight.
But I had a conversation with a friend of mine last week, two different friends, actually, one launching a company, one her company that she was working with is shutting down. And it's kind of just seems to be be that's the rhythm right now is people are contracting even entrepreneurs i know are contracting right i know we've pulled in on some things we do it's like everyone's kind of huddling up a little bit and obviously i always say this i feel like the new administration like the coach has made the calls on the play but there's no action on the field jay yeah like or maybe there's some action on the field but there's no points on the board and i mean we all understand you can't turn a ship around overnight but i think the administration could do a better job and maybe some messaging and just informing people of what's going on.
Right. It's great.
We know these executive orders and whatnot, but I mean, I think back, like put someone, I think back at Kayleigh McEnany, like doing daily updates, you know, and the, when she was press secretary, like bring back that, you know, people just some more up-to-date stuff. And I would say, because there's so much information, overload, false information, misleading information, all of the above, like get out there and tell us what's going on.
Right. Because like you said, I got another buddy just got out of the mortgage business.
Right. Can't deal with the pressure.
I got a family commission only can, can't do it, switch to a W-2 job. So, and I don't necessarily want to see people doing that either, right? I want to see people trying to build themselves and work for themselves, but same with the job market.
Another friend went to college with her. She told me last week, I ran into her, trying to put in resumes.
No one's calling, getting no callbacks, smart girl, well-educated. So it's, we're in an odd time.
Yeah. I mean, I like data and facts and right.
You know, so we've, we've been talking sentiment, talking things like perceptive. And then, you know, you look at this data and, you know, back to the White House, like, I think there's got to be some balance here.
Like, we can want to do the tariff war and it can have positive long-term effects, but it's got to be balanced out with the realities of today and the sentiment today, the inflation of today. And again, I'm not going to see her as an economic specialist to tell you whether that long-term benefit outweighs the short-term pressure that we're feeling.
I'm not, I don't know. That's past my pay grade.
But I will say, you can't ignore how the majority of America is feeling. It's just reality.
And this was the biggest thing. I mean, look at this.
Despite their greater confidence following the election, Republicans posted a sizable 10% decline in their expectations index in March. So this isn't partisan.
This is everybody.

Yeah. Well, especially when the market takes a hit, right? I think of the retirement generation.

I don't, it doesn't matter what political class you are. If the market goes down and you look

at that retirement account is down, you're not going to feel good, right? Especially if you're

on, you know, what do they call it? Like set payments. Right.
You're on a lot of money. Fixed income.
Right. Market goes down.
Then you look at the grocery store. Right.
And that's still hasn't really eased up much pressure as far as inflation goes there. I have an example, but I can't remember it now.
It'll come back. I'm going to go through a couple of these other things.
While current economic conditions were little changed, expectations for the future deteriorated across multiple facets of the economy, including personal finances, labor markets, inflation, business conditions, and stock markets. Many consumers cited the high level of uncertainty around policy and other economic factors.
Frequent gyrations in economic policies make it very difficult for consumers to plan. There it is right there.
That's kind of what you were saying. Fixed income, you got this stuff going on.
You want the plan. You can't plan when you don't know what the impact of these things are going to do.
So there needs to be more discussion about short term, long term. And hey, I mean, and this ain't cutting it.
There'll be a little pain in the short term. Define what that means, please what is short term yeah an example today i did see and i was digging right because we do the show i saw that india basically was kind of lighting up on the tariff for and they had said they would drop a lot of the the tax on imported american goods so it looks like positive news there right yeah but we haven't seen that on any headlines right no one's talking about that and that's where hey if you're the administration be shouting these wins from the rooftop because you know that everyone else is hating on you for the tariffs and now when you've got everyone in america right even like you said the republicans

with their expectations it that should be a signal like all right guys we need to do a little pr right like you're a marketing guy we do marketing it's like do some damage control let's get this sentiment up let's let's make people feel good again yeah because i'm looking for the silver lining like you know like going, okay, I agree fundamentally with the policy, but I need to see a little silver lining short-term, long-term plan because it could come off like this article, the summary says, as a little bit of gyratingating like i it's kind of pew pew but you know we're shooting bullets and it's like it's great but it's kind of like fire aim ready and i feel like we've just been getting the trump elon show since the election the inauguration and the doge stuff and it's like that's all great and that is definitely part of you know balancing the budget is definitely an important part and cutting waste but even when i go on twitter i'm like all i see is elon arguing with people about government policy and yeah there's no game plan yeah like or not clear. Right.
And even if it's just, hey, we're doing the tariff war and we're holding firm and we're going to hold our hand. I mean, we need to bring jobs back to the US.
We need higher paging. Yeah, we need all of that.
But what's the balance of the long term and the short term? And a little bit of pain is not a balancing plan. Sell me on why I should keep tolerating this pain, right? Convince me.
Soften it. Yeah.
Or get the damn inflation down and get, you know, the interest rates cut. Almost like in the election speeches, right? When you're campaigning, we're bringing jobs.
Keep reiterating that. Where are the jobs going? Where are we doing mining? Where's the plans? I know personally that

there's plans for these things. And I know guys working in those industries that tell me, yeah,

red tape's being cut, projects are being opened. But I don't think the general population knows

that. And I think whether that's the mainstream media obviously hates this administration as part

of the problem. But I think the administration can play some offense a little better on just communications 101.
Yeah, exactly. And because I'm not sitting here telling you that I know that the enactment and the things that are happening are going to cause necessary short-term pain.
But what I am telling you is in my wheelhouse, which is marketing, and back to the buy with their heart, if you want this economy to keep moving, you need this consumer to have an uplifted spirit and a belief in what is happening. And you got to get them to buy into that and understand what's happening in the short term to assist them in sustaining either through that short pain or to get them off.
I think we got a lot of money that's kind of getting a little shrunk back up like, Oh, Oh, I'm putting, you know, getting tight, all this, buying gold because, you know, even in my own mind, I didn't think my crypto would double in a month, but I sure as hell didn't think it'd be down 33% in three months. I bet you didn't,

Chris. Oh, no.
I don't think anyone planned for anything that's going on, even in the stock market

guys with NVIDIA, for example, you know, that big debacle. It's like...
Because tell me what's

good right now, Chris. Stock market's down.
Crypto's down. Playing cards, apparently.

Yeah, yeah. That's why we're talking trading cards.
That's the only thing that's up. I'm sitting here realizing today I've been in wrong investments the whole time, you know? Yeah.
And I don't, and I'm not sitting here blaming the administration for all of that. It's really regardless of the administration, but it is what it is.
Whatever caused it, caused it. Maybe it was already built in.
These next six months were going to happen no matter who's in office or what's happening, but the sentiment sucks right now. And so this administration job is to make it not suck.
You have to- Give us a narrative. Give us the roadmap.
It's like a run. If you're going running, it sucks a lot less when I got one mile left as opposed to, hey, Chris, just keep running.
I'll let you know when we're done. Right? Yeah, because my concern is less as an entrepreneur, I'm going to figure mine out.
I don't need the administration to figure it out for me. But here's the thing.
Anything I sell is going to be bought by consumers or businesses that are impacted by this sentiment. So I need the sentiment to be higher, not because any administration or policy is in my personal way as an entrepreneur, but I just know things move, the money moves, the sales moves, everything moves better when this is where it needs to be.
And that's the point of this rant, if you call it, is somebody's got to take accountability responsibility for driving this up because it's a slippery damn slope. Let's just say that.
With where things can go, because people start tightening up on everything and your interest rates don't go down just be careful in the short term while you play the long term i mean that you need that morale up you know yeah exactly we uh kind of like uh the old team you know you got a team of players out on I mean, everybody like, if you can't make them believe no matter how good,

bad or different it is,

they're never going to play well.

And we need to get some,

uh,

cheerleaders.

And I,

you know,

I,

again,

I,

I like the theory of what I'm hearing.

Elon's doing.

I,

it,

it sounds great, but I don't know that he's the cheerleader. He's a pioneer and an innovator, but I don't know if he's going to lead the rally of the sentiment.
You're going to have to have somebody else doing that, and I think it's going to have to be driven by, okay, the enactment of certain things, both telling the plan, but we need those interest rates to go down. Yeah.
And if you still have inflation hovering, they're not going to want to do that, but that loosens up money in the market. We talk about that a lot.
And, you know, refis and sales.

Because that's the biggest transaction most people have. And so it's the moment in time when their most amount of money in one direction or the other goes in and out of hands.
And the residual leftover of money made on a sale, refinance, is when you get that injected into the overall economy.

And it feels stalled right now as much as anything.

It's like, I don't personally feel like I see the doom and gloom.'s more of this really hard pause that's happening right now. It just feels like we're at a, like if you were walking, we're stuck in mud.
And when you're stuck in mud, you take one step forward, you think you're out of the mud, you're kind of still in it. It's kind of like the crypto, you know, up 10% one day, down 11 the next.
It's like, all right, can we get unstuck here a little bit? Can we get a little ride of good news? We'll see what happens. I'm going to jump ahead here.
a couple of retail things I don't think are necessarily related to this economy. I think this is more trends overall, Chris.
But Forever 21 and GameStop, both closing retail stores. Forever 21 expected to close all U.S.
stores. That damn Sheen and Timu, the cheap e-com came and got them.
I do see Sheen everywhere. It's all over the place.
The ads are everywhere and it's so cheap. Yeah.
I mean, I've never purchased from it, but I know it's very popular with the ladies. I've bought a couple things like two years ago, maybe.
at the time, I thought it was pretty decent. I mean, it's like a $10 t-shirt or something, and it was like more of a fashionable type t-shirt.
I was like, this is kind of cool. But I'm a double XL slim fit.
So I'm a weird size fitting, and it did okay. Not perfect.
I had to buy from certain companies to get the fit I want. But I was impressed with the overall quality for like $10.
It was better than I would have thought. So, I mean, it's hard.
Like, we joked about the mall is closing. It's like, but, you know, this generation, my kids still love to go to the mall, the mall rats.
But the thing is, I don't know if anybody's buying at the mall anymore. When you and I went

to the mall, maybe like 30,

20, me 30 years ago, you 20

years ago,

the parents

were at least buying.

And the kids may have just been walking around

being mall rats, but someone was buying

because e-com wasn't what it is today.

It's like,

can the malls, can they survive? I mean, even now when I'm in the mall now, I'm like, can I find the same thing online for less money? You know? Yeah. Well, they become the window shopping for online buying, right? Yeah.
A little bit, especially if it's the same brand. Because if you go look at something,

you go at like, I don't know,

like an Express or some store like that

where maybe they don't have your size, but you can go

look at the actual quality, like the exact item

or something, then you buy it online.

And

I mean, Express is still getting the sale

maybe, but that brick

and mortar is not.

So,

I don't think we've seen the end of this bloodbath of stores. I don't think all stores will go away.
I just think you're going to see this centralization of, okay, Walmart super stores, which is the equivalent of, you know, gigantic Amazon store. But like, you know, discount stores like that, I can see doing well.

Large stores where you can get lots of different things, convenience, still a factor.

And, but then these kind of niche things, you can get it online.

And the tools for buying online have gotten so much easier and the shipping's gotten better.

And really the overall expectation, people have just gotten used to what to expect buying online. And price-wise.
Yeah. I know for these, T-Moon, Sheen, Shine, whatever you call it, it's definitely super cheap.
so and you

it's not even like

nowadays

most people

I don't even think

are necessarily

always buying

it It's definitely super cheap. And it's not even like nowadays.
Most people I don't even think are necessarily always buying because they're looking. There's just ads going constantly as well.
Yeah. Here's what it said.
Forever 21's brand name and international business will come under Authentic Brands Group. Our U.S.
licensee's decision to restructure presents an opportunity to modernize the brand, possible revival if a new U.S. operator takes over.
We've lost over $400 million in the last three years, including $150 million in 2024 alone. Jumping ahead here.
The GameStop closing a significant number of stores in Willvest heavily in Bitcoin. It's an interesting headline for a company, right? It's like, well, how is one related to the other? Massive store closures.
1,000 stores shut down globally in the past year. 590 in the U.S.
320 in Europe. It's now at 3,200 stores, Chris, down from 6,000 a decade ago.
So cut in half. Probably cut in half again.
Yep. Says consumers moving to digital game purchases and streaming.
Part of a broader retail decline with brands like Joanne, Forever 21, Kohl's, and Macy's also closing stores. GameStop to invest a portion of its cash reserves in Bitcoin.
Probably a smart move. Yeah.
The pivot to Bitcoin is really a defense against irrelevance. it says an odd thing is it's basically

saying Pivot to Bitcoin is really a defense against irrelevance. It says an odd thing is it's basically saying the strategy isn't retail, but to act as some kind of cryptocurrency investment vehicle.
That's where they're smart because gaming is combining with blockchain and all that. So they might be extremely forward thinking with this and pivoting.
It is interesting because then it becomes, if you're buying the GameStop stock, it's hard to say. Two words, GameStop stock.
Why not just buy crypto then? If the whole company, if they're putting reserves in, their value will be driven by whether Bitcoin grows. It's like, you're kind of, what are you buying into? They have such a cult following, you know? Yeah.
From the Robinhood debacle. Kind of like a reseller of this, you know? You can buy direct.
You buy it through GameStop who's investing. I guess you still have the side of the business that is retail.
So I'm hoping that it pivots to something different. I guess as far as knowing that they won't go bankrupt would keep your interest in the stock, I guess.
But at a certain point, you know, you can't spend half your money on Bitcoin and then why not just buy Bitcoin versus buying GameStop? Yeah. However, if you were holding GameStop when this news came out, you could have made 16% that day if you're a day trader.
Which I think a lot of the GameStop guys really that follow that are like the swing traders. Oh, yeah.
Because you had that whole stock jump on this thing. Yeah, there's a stock jump on it.
It's crazy. Talk about sentiment driving behavior.
You know? Like that's a whole case study in itself. Emotional.
pulling it. Yeah, GameStop shares soared 16% in pre-market trading.
So, hey, close some stores and your stock goes up. I mean, I guess it's all about profitability.
I get it. It's just, do you get happy about the stock going up or you get sad about the stores closing? I, you can't fight it.
I'll answer my own question. You can't fight the reality of online and especially this, like digital games, like you can download them.
Like you don't need the physical. I, I hate the, like I was the first guy to get rid of every CD and DVD I owned before there was Netflix.
It was like the moment that I could do digital, hard drive driven, all my stuff, I was there. It was like, get rid of those racks.
You remember those racks? The racks. Everybody had them in their house.
Racks of CDs, racks of DVDs. It was almost like a, I don't know, a trophy of, all right, look at all those DVDs.
Yeah, man. You got that whole collection.
All right. Yeah, it's just collecting dust.
One more thing you have to dust off. Yeah.
Or not dust off. You're a college kid like I was.
And, oh, look at all that CD collection, man. Let me go through your collection.
Think of how foreign things become. I guess technology changes.
It's like, you know, like, oh, let me see your CD collection. Go through it, man.
Oh, the Cranberries. You know, they got that one song.
That's a good one. That lingers.
Dave Matthews. I had like 50 bootleg Dave Matthews CDs.
Like every concert. That's how I used the internet when it first started.
It was just in college trading live Dave Matthews shows. I was a pioneer.
Oh, I had tapes. Oh, I had a tape collection.
Like 100 tapes. According to the feds, you're a pirate.
Oh, yeah, I was pirating there. But Dave didn't care because he was smart.
That's why he got so big because they didn't police that. They let it happen naturally.
The story there, that's an economic story right there, how to get big. Don't get in the way of spreading the news.
Because we still went to all the concerts, bought the T-shirts, did all the stuff. they made all the money by not getting in the way of like spreading the news because we still went to all the concerts bought the t-shirts did all the stuff they made all the money by not getting in the way of the spread of people getting to hear their music anyway i digressed oh man that brings back some memories dude oh the toy the work involved man with tapes and cds burning and failing oh god how bad was it when you'd be burning a cd and how many times i'd like it fail on the burn like the fact that the fact that there's a laser in your computer burning a cd i guess it's not my different in the hard drive now like saving shit but it's just the wild times man i've looked at analog digital man i'm on all sides of it.
Like this analog digital conversion. Crazy.
And that's really what we're talking about with the stores and retail and e-com and all that. Is this movement from physical to digital.
But we do still have to wear the clothes. You know? So whether it's Sheen or it's done an order in e-commerce until we're living, the day will come Chris, where it's just a digital clothes.
Cause you never leave your house except digitally. That's the shit that gets scary, right? Yeah.
I don't want to live in that world. I don't either, but you could, can you not, I used to be a time where i couldn't see that coming i could i'm not saying that i'm gonna embrace wanting to do that but can't you see that i can totally see that now i mean it's here to a degree with all the metaverse stuff you have people that don't leave their house they just live online gaming you know yeah and it will matter what your skin is and all that i I mean, my kids already care.
You can, like, I will watch my kids playing, uh, Fortnite and they'll spend as much time playing the game as they do picking out their skin before they go and who they're going to be like literally sitting there going through it, like toiling over it.. I'm like, that really matters to them.

That's how they show off.

You know, me growing up, it was wearing Meyer Jordans like for the first time.

I mean, they care about that stuff too, which, you know, it's more money.

But it's that skin on Fortnite.

Dressing up as, you know, Wimby or something.

Like playing Fortnite as Wimby.

Like,

or one of the NBA players or LeBron James or a banana care,

a banana character,

which my oldest son does,

which kind of trolls everybody.

He likes to just kind of do the stupidest shit.

And cause he,

he wants people to think that,

that he thinks that that's cool when he doesn't,

he's actually, it's reverse psychology.. He wants to do the stupidest thing.
He's smart. This is what you have to look forward to, Chris.
You have kids, if you have kids. To be determined.
Yeah. You never know.
What else we got in the news today? Any other big news? Boston Celtics was sold for a record-breaking $6 billion. Boston Celtics have been sold for $6.1 billion big ones, setting a North American sports franchise record.
Led by William Chrisholm,

a billionaire from private equity.

Of course he is.

Includes Robert Hale, current Celtics

investor, and Bruce Beal.

Beal is a terrific person, a true Celtics fan.

Born and raised here in Boston.

Grossbeck bought the team in 2002 for $360 million.

That's a nice investment there, Chris.

You bought it for $360 million in 2002.

By my math, what, 23 years later, you sell it for $6 billion.

It's a nice return on investment.

Heck, yeah. What was that, 30X? That's nice, man.
Nice return on. 600% increase.
Yeah. $6,000.
Is it 30X? Isn't that like, I don't even do that math. That's a lot of numbers, man.
I mean, $6 billion is a lot of damn money. Especially for the sports team.
It is, but I mean, they make a lot of money, man. All the rights, all the stuff.
It is huge business. Especially those sports cards.
That's they got to look at the sports cards. Yeah.

1,600% increase in value over 23 years.

All right, there's the math.

Not bad.

Not bad.

That's what I need a crypto to do, Chris.

What's the XRP?

I'm going to look it up right now while we're doing it.

I'm going to see it because I put, you know what?

I got so tired of looking at like seven things that I only had like a little bit in.

I moved it all to XRP just so I had one thing to look at. Consolidated it.
I just consolidated it. Let's see where we're at today.
Bear with us here. Up, down yet again on the week, we're down 4.74%.
We're sitting at, yeah, we're down 7 cents today, 1%. Chris, I mean, it's just like, this chart's like my EKG.
You know, it's like up now, like, you know, like, oh, I'm yelling at me. You know? it's uh that's why i mean like you i just i don't pay attention to much of the market stuff right now no i look at it like that's the first time i've looked at it like once a week i take a peek i'm like all right whatever it's but i would it's not fun when it's not moving you know and that an indicator of everything.
Like you said, you feel like it's just on pause.

You're like, all right. Everything.

I guess I'll just go to the gym.

I'm not going to have any entertainment from this today.

Yes.

It's these three words that I ask.

And everyone should ask themselves, to what end?

Everything we do, every dollar we spend, you know,

not psychoanalyzing everything, but like to what end, like to what purpose? And that's what we're asking. You know, we've been doing all sports cards lately and I, you know, I want to be equal opportunity because the kids are into everything.
And we've been doing the whole thing on trading cards. We're starting a series on the trading card business with our guests.

So we're going to be having some big guests in on the show in the trading card business.

Got some good names lined up.

We'll be announcing that shortly.

We're starting recording next week with some of those.

Talk about the business of trading cards.

It is like the stock market in a lot of ways for another potential investment

avenue, but also fun. And we've been doing sports cards, but today, hey, I'll go tell you this much,

Chris. If you want to know the one thing sold out at every store, it'd be this guy right here.

Pokemon. Oh my God.
I thought this was like a thing like 10 years ago. Like that.
Now you go to a store, every freaking Pokemon rack is empty. I know because my kids are into it and I'm looking to it and maybe I'm into it too, but I like the sports cards better.
But the kids, my kids like sports cards, but their eyes line up light up for the freaking pokemon yep were you ever into pokemon chris i was not but i do have a memory being on a school bus in fifth grade with a kid who had a charizard card and i remember those were like that was the one big money card back now there's like a hundred thousand different characters but you get these tens they get two packs and look man they got all these series prismatic series is the hot ones right now that is 151 just trust me if you see any prismatic or 151s and you want a good investment if you see them for sale buy them if it's retail. Because, Chris, if you find them retail,

the certain ones, I mean, they're 4 or 5x.

This particular one goes up a couple bucks.

You can buy them retail. You're going to have to send me a

scouting list so I can go scour Miami

for Pokemon cards. Oh, yeah.

Because, dude,

these Prismatic cards, they're like $5

for a retail pack if you find them.

You can immediately sell them for $15. It's 3X your money immediately.
It's crazy. I've even got a dealer that will buy them for me double.
Usually, you can't make any money selling anything to a sports card. This guy will pay.
If I buy him for a two-pack thing and I find him for $10, he will immediately give me $20 for every one I can find. Tell me this, though.
Is there a problem? Like if I were doing eBay like a, like a two pack thing and I find him for like 10 bucks, he will immediately give me 20 for everyone I can find. Tell me this though.
Is there a problem? Like if I were doing eBay, is there a lot of fakes? Uh, there's some, but there's, it's police. eBay's pretty good.
Like we've been selling some of our stuff and you can see everything that we have at breakingrad.com. Yeah, that's creative.
You like it. Uh, breakingrad.com and our eBay stores, breakingrad.com uh they have an authenticity guarantee so that like if this card is a certain value it gets sent to the to the authenticity person first authenticator or whatever and so i feel like they've got some stuff to where you could pull that trick like once you know i'm saying you might get away with one sale and it's like okay is that worth it

so To where you can pull that trick like once. You know what I'm saying? You might get away with one sale.
And it's like, okay, is that worth it? So, anyway, we're opening. This is the Scarlet and Violet series.
I tell you what, you got to be watching YouTube if you're doing this. You got to see the pack opening.
Pouty on Fates. My kids were here.
They'd tell you everything about this particular series and everything like that. You're hoping for these one special cards one thing i don't like about pokemon chris and i hope i'm not like jinxing myself maybe i'll get the greatest card ever but the hit rate is pretty low they're only the back cards are good they're kind of get this shiny you'll see the the difference in the cards you'll probably see this if you're watching youtube.
And, oh, there's a little EX. That guy's pretty good, actually.
I think that's at least a $2 card might be higher. It might be pretty decent one there, Chris.
I'm sitting here knocking them and then... So funny, though.
You can see the shine on the card. Can you see that? Are you seeing that, Chris? Yeah.
Oh, fancy, right? Nice holographics. Put that here on our play button.
YouTube play button's got to be good for something. Then these energy...
This whole thing is a playing game. You can play these cards.
If there's a card game... I mean, for the cards and the investment.
My kids don't even play the game either. I don't know what percent actually play the game, but you can go to some of these stores, and there's kids literally just playing that game.
The problem is if you play the game with the cards, the cards get beat up and they're not worth as much. So I don't know what you're in it for, right?

So, I mean, there's all these characters.

They're cool looking.

But none of these cards are worth anything until you get to the back.

This guy.

That looks cool, but there's a single gold star.

That might be worth something.

You see these stars at the bottom?

That's what it'll tell you, like, whether not it's anything good. This trainer, I don't know who that is, but this might actually be something.
My kids are going to have to like, you know, some of these things I can look through and know if I'm seeing something good. My kids have to tell me some of these Pokemons are any good, but anyway, crazy.
It's a whole thing. If you get on Facebook Marketplace, they're freaking everywhere.
And like for sale because people are just rating the freaking Walmarts and Targets and everything else. So the word is out.
The word is out. There's our hits.
I think both of those are pretty decent. That might be, I could be anywhere from,

funny thing about these Pokemons is these could be like $1 cards or these can

be like 50 to a hundred dollars cards.

You never know.

It's hard to tell.

You got to get your boys to come verify for you.

I know we're going to get them on Clayton,

Hudson,

Hogan,

or Nash.

Check us out at breakingrad.com or breakingrad underscore on Instagram. See everything we're doing.
Having fun. Teaching my kids business through sports cards.
Oh, they're teaching me business. I don't know which one it is, Chris.
Teaching me the business. Hey, no doom and gloom here.
Getting into sports cards. We're giving you alternate investment.
This is all about alternate investment avenues here.

You know?

Like, I will say the sentiment meter on sports cards is up.

Like, everything else is kind of stagnant.

Everything else, trading cards is kind of up a little bit.

Especially in Pokemon.

It's like, the craze is out there, dude.

We'll see what happens.

Any final words today, my friend?

Hey, get you some Pokemon cards. Get those prisms.
Yes. Hey, and hey, let's get the sentiment up.
But we, hey, let's, let's get some, let's get the interest rates down. Let's get some plans in place, talked about, and we're going to do nothing but keep the bullshit out of the business news.

That's what we do.

That's what we're here for.

Go to RyanIsRight.com.

You'll find the highlight clips, the full episode, links to YouTube,

links to trading cards, other alternative investment routes,

and links to Chris on Instagram.

Even if you came here just for that, it'll be there.

We promise.

Chris, I appreciate you, brother.

We'll see you guys next time on Right About Now.

This has been Right About Now

with Ryan Alford,

a Radcast Network production.

Visit ryanisright.com

for full audio

and video versions of the show

or to inquire about

sponsorship opportunities.

Thanks for listening.