Card Care, Grading, and the Line Between Preservation and Alteration | Kurts Card Care

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Stuff that's like 100 years old could be just filthy dirty. And you can clean these cards so much. Like this is where I'll get the most like, oh, like thing right in like, well, I'll soak a card and get all the wrinkles and dirt to come out of it. And then teach you how to dry them. And it first blows people away, which goes back to one of your earlier questions. This stuff freaks people out because they never seen somebody soak a 1952 Mickey Manel until they met me. You know? I kind of got a little bit of a twitch you'd say in Nord's soak. Oh, dude. Welcome to the Collector Nation podcast here on the Collector Nation Network. Whether you're chasing trails or calling bluffs. You take you inside the hobby. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. What's up guys? Welcome to Collector Nation here on the Collector Nation Network. You know, there's no doubt there. One knows at this point my affinity for the hobby and getting back into it. And part of what I was talking about with my guest today before the episode got started was, hey, I get to like look at like a product or a card or something one day. And then the next day I'm talking to them. This is one of my favorite products in the hobby. I'm just go ahead and say that. And that's unpaid, unscripted. It just is the truth. And it is. Courts card care. And it is. It smells really good. It's Kurt Cologne. Ryan, what's up man? Thanks for the amazing introduction. And thanks for taking the time to have me on dude. Hey dude, big fan of what you're doing. Look man, these are treasures. Use this word yourself. Treasure. We're treasure hunter. These are treasures. We got to take care of this stuff man. Like, why don't you want it to look better? I mean, it's ain't about like, I love it. I can, you know, I'll raise my hand. I'll raise both my hands for now. Yeah, I started looking around when I got back into the hobby. I started looking around for a few different things because it been, I really put it on the shelf. Like, okay, got into that. I was a basketball player year round in high school and middle school and put the cards up. And they didn't come back out to my kids got into it. So I was like, 25 years on the shelf. And when I came back into it, I was looking for a few things. I was like, number one, okay, it's got to be apps now. It's got to be apps, right? We got to have technology to manage our collections, all that. That's right. Okay. All right, we got new looking cards. We got that. All right, all right. It's got to be a better way to keep up with them, to keep them, to clean them or to, like, it's got to be something. It was like, it took me a year to find you. Like, I didn't really have time. I was doing it passively. And then finally, like, I tripped over it. And I was like, oh, yeah, this is what makes us, we've got to take care of these cards. Like, sometimes you got just small, it's not even a blimish. It's just like a smudge, like your grabby fingerprints. How could we do this and not hurt the card? And here you are. I hear you, man. That's the, see, I feel like I have that same thought ever since I was a kid. You know, I'm like, they are our little pieces of treasure, right? So, like, that was as much as a little treasure as I got. I just knew that I always had to take good care of them. And I always looked for Ryan to be a customer of a company like mine. Because I figured it exists. Yeah. I figured there's got to be a way to get common things off of our little collectibles or little treasures. And I just never found anything that was like satisfactory. And then like being like a person that's always, I come from a family that embraced art, that embraced a lot of hands-on stuff and being creative and stuff like that. And if we didn't have a tool for something, we'd figure it out. You know, and that's really, you know, just, I couldn't find a Kurtz card care that had all the issues that I wanted to work on. So, man, I just sort of pieced it together years and years ago. And, you know, I just, I took a chance of probably about five and a half years ago. And I'm like, I'll make an Instagram page, see what people have to say about it. And the market, you know, really spoke for itself. And that turns out that everybody was waiting for something that was, you know, practical and easy and reliable to like, kind of add a whole new layer of, you know, like collecting. Talk to me and I want to talk some specifics around the process, procedures, what to do, how you, I think there's some fascinating. I think for people that either know your products, but probably haven't heard you talk about them explicitly. Or people that are just hearing this first time, like when I didn't go and, oh my god, oh really? And hitting the order button. But, what was it like? Like, is it the, does Kurt, did Kurt have a laboratory at his house? Like, what was the process for developing this product? Yeah, dude, that's pretty much right. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. So like, I'll give you the, you can unpack it further if you want. But I'll try to trim it down because I forgot. Like, people who watch this would be like, what is this guy do? Like, what is he talking about? So like, even trying to like meet other adults through like kids sports, they'll ask me what I do. But I'm like, well, I make some great products to teach people how to take care. They're Pokemon cards and baseball cards. But it's kind of hard to even explain, right? But where it all started really, Ryan was just me being a particular person and a collector my whole life. And I've always, I get a lot of credit to my mother. My mom is an amazing artist. But my dad was a crazy mechanic. And he was very good with science. And my mom was super artistic. So like, just in the household I grew up in, it was like, you fix up with art or science. And really, sure enough, dude, the things I've loved since I was a little kid, like playing guitars, listening to music, collecting cards. I really think that I just really kind of stayed with professionally through my whole life. But like, when it came to the card care stuff, I started my family owned a dealership. Okay, so like, when you were going to body shop growing up, I was like, oh, this is going. Yes. I'm around really creative, awesome people. My father was a fabricator, great painter, like people that could do amazing stuff, like Detroit mechanics is where I'm from. Okay, so like, guys that were real good at their hands. And then like, so when it came to working in the body shop, and we did not card shows, but card shows, like every weekend, we'd compete and also we would race. So like, I had a really fun kind of weekends growing up. So one of my deep, my jobs was to detail everything, keep everything super tight and super clean. So that didn't really, the amp will didn't fall far from the tree. And so then, you know, being, I always like how stuff is made. I'm always just a big, I could watch like, how it's made the TV show, like on binge watch for the rest of my life, probably, and still want to watch more of them. Like, I'm really, I love how stuff ticks. And like, the essence of how stuff's all put together, like, I was watching people, there were some people that cleaned cards or tried to improve them. I wasn't like the only person I ever thought of this. But it was usually with like other Windex. Yeah. So I wasn't finding the wrong, the wrong blend. Ajax. Yeah. You know, that's also, that's like mild. And then there's salsa that will like put you in the hospital. That's kind of like the same thing, like metaphorically speaking, is like chemicals, you know what I mean? So like, there is some really easy, responsible, great ways to take care of paper and plastic. But it's usually not achieved through stuff that's under your sink or on the shelf and your garage. So that's where I really stepped up and was like, I'm going to make stuff because it doesn't exist. And I'm a stubborn mule, right? And like, I will do something over. I will fail one thousand times in a row just to get it right, dude, I'm just, and that can be a strength and an annoyance for those around me. But when it comes to the building and testing and everything, yes, that's how I started. And fortunately now, now I don't have to like, have a kitchen laboratory anymore. Right out back, we have a beautiful state of the art laboratory and facility where now I have my own professional lab. And this is where we develop and manufacture all of our products. If you work in university maintenance, Granger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Granger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need, all in one place, from HVAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more, and all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-Granger-Visit-Granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. My name's Mackenzie and I started to go find me for the adoptive mother of a nonverbal, autistic child. The mother had lost her job because she wasn't able to find adequate care for this autistic child. So she really needed some help with living expenses, paying some back bills. So I launched a GoFundMe to help support them during this crisis. And we raised about $10,000 within just a couple of months. I think that the surprising thing was by telling a clear story and just like really being very clear about what we needed, we had some really generous donations from people who were really moved by the situation that this family was struggling with. GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform trusted by over 200 million people. Start your GoFundMe today at GoFundMe.com. That's GoFundMe.com. GoFundMe.com. This podcast is supported by GoFundMe. Where's home? We are in Detroit Michigan. Detroit Michigan. Hey, how the automotive hub. They are right there. GoFundMe. And that's where all my family man was all immigrant auto workers. It's so funny. When you brought up the car, look, I don't know. I've done the entrepreneur thing for 10 plus years. I think I keep saying 10 years. And I feel like it was two years ago. And I said, I think it's my ticker is not adding up enough. But when you're asking where you enter the time warp and all of a sudden you're like 30 years old. 12 years now because I left the corporate world. I did kind of venture back in it for like half a second and then got back out again. But then the less. So I can see like Kurt playing in the lab. Like, you know, 10 years ago, seven years ago, whenever you started like that. I'm seeing you in a white coat with beakers or something. Like it's smoke. Like I don't know why my brain goes to the TV version. I know it doesn't all work that way. But I would always be kid that wanted like, you know, an art set for Christmas and a science lab. You know, I mean, I was I always love putting stuff together. I think let me ask you this would. And you do I'll say this, you know, once I finally got the product and was using it about four months ago, I went down the the rabbit hole and watched all the videos. I'm not I mean, not everyone, but like all the ones that mattered for what I was trying to do. Do you think the average person would be surprised or disappointed with how, you know, far gone a card can kind of be versus what a little bit of just restoration and cleanup can bring back the I it seemed to me. Like it was pretty magic. Thanks, man. I think that it's pretty and you're a great person to speak on that, right? Because you don't even know each other until today until you. That's what I mean. Like yeah, this is unscripted and it's unlike for form. I'm just a fan. Right. Thank you, man. Because it's like, you know, it's like my my sister in law is a owns a great bakery. And naturally when she brings me cookies, they're freaking amazing because she made them. You don't even know about my cookies. It's not. You know, so I think that most collectors would be surprised because one of my initial nudges to get into this Ryan and chase it down was I was I'm 44 now. I was 20 probably 24. I put all my 1986 Fleeer stickers and basketball cards together. I feel like I'm an artistic person man. I feel like I got a good I I know what a corner dent. I know I knew in my mind. Dude, I sent all these cards in to get graded it back. I got like five and six of them all these. I was like, I was like, I felt like I felt like we're talking about card grading. Like come on get her get real. But I was so disappointed in myself. I was like, dude, what is this? I'm like, man, at them are I mad at myself. What is going on here? That's what I started really going to card shows on the weekend and going up and talking to guys. I had nine and ten. Am I do you do anything to this? How do you do this? What does it do? You know, and I started collecting data. Yeah. So then anyway, since I was so surprised about how low a card can like score or house condition sensitive they were, I had a lot to learn. So then when back to your question, somebody gets some card care stuff and they have cards that are 20 years old, even if they're kept in their binders. You got 20 years worth of spring, fall, summer, winter. You know, all kinds of different atmospheres and stuff going on. You'd be guys would be surprised. Like I bet Ryan, when you did like, did you do sports cards or Pokemon cards? Like, what were the ones that you did first? Sports cards. I had unfortunately prime junk wax era 87 to 92. Good. Black. Good stuff that has patina on it to clean up. Yes. Right. Yes. So regardless of the player, I bet you even found it was fun to play with these things after a while because it was like, oh, I can get this wax staying off or I can get this corner straight or whatever. I did that with a lot of 87 tops like, you know, base card like crappy. They're all base cards, I guess. Like, that's the problem with some of them. They have no rarity because they're all printed, you know, 800 million times the same card. But yeah, I would play around with that like, I don't know what that powdery, I don't know what that substance is. Like you said, it just gets on there and it comes off though. It is. I think that Ryan was a lot of the plastic stuff that they were kept in. Yeah. Plastic will degrade as the years go by and you'll get like a kind of like a surface degradation on those types of things. So it's, hey, I am, I might be easily amused, but I just always, I always love my card collection and I always thought it was fun to just like make them look good again. You know what I mean? It's like, who does it? Who does it clean up something like your space, your office, whatever, and it looks great and you feel good? I tell you, it's as silly as it sounds, cleaning up your old collection is like a super cool feeling and it's a good skill to have if you're an active collector. You can not. It's so, just so we put this to the bed. Like, what is the debate though? Like, I get that if you're getting like the paint out or getting like you're truly changing the card. You're hungry. Right. Like, yeah, there's boundaries here. Like I'm getting my, I've got a professional like waxing like, you know, like putting a whole new coat of something on it or it, I don't know if that would be good, better, different, making things up because I don't know how to do these things. But pain or something, I'm, you know, retouching it. But what is the heartburn over just purely cleaning up the cards and like restoring them without altering them? Why is there a heartburn about that? I think Ryan, because like a lot of times people don't like something until it's popular, you know, and I think that at first, and then sometimes you can think that like a few squeaky wheels speak for everybody, you know, the stuff you can grab a few bits of data and we think we painted a whole picture out of the trillion bits of data out there, you know, because even like you as a person that's in touch with media and plugged in, you didn't find about me until a few months ago, you know. Yeah. And the last thing I thought was, wow, this is potentially a bad product doing bad, no, the first thing I thought was this makes a ton of sense and is amazing. Right. And thanks for that. And that's yours, but somebody could totally, it's always rooted. Yeah. You know, I know it's like again, I get the re touching thing, but that's what I'll say, right? Because like here's what I would say to anybody. I'm assuming anybody watching this, I'm going to assume that they've never seen anything like this before or they might not know enough. So like the thing is, me personally, I never got into this for a business. It turned into one, but I got into this because I loved cards my whole life. I didn't, I don't, I grew up in a very blue collar family and Detroit. Cards were kind of like my treasure. They seemed way more important to me than anything else. You know what I mean? So like I started with the love of these things. And then 20 years ago when I'm cleaning off the surface of cards and working out, figuring out ways to get wrinkles and dents out of them, never once did I think about like, all of this is, I'm going to like, you know, teach this to the whole world or whatever. Like, I just, I just enjoyed it. So I got good at it and then I sent in these cards to get graded. And I realized, hey, if you're not a clean off stuff off the front or clean off stuff off the back or figure out, you know, shape them up, you can get a higher score. And personally as a competitive person, I like that. You know what I mean? Sure, the money, money is money is part of the picture. But I, I'm, me personally, if anybody wants to know, I don't even sell anything. I'm a, I'm a packer at collector. I am a collector. So the narrative of somebody trying to say like, I just do this for a bunch of money. No, that don't work because I, I don't even sell my cards. They're all, they're all on the hoarder. I am curious to what Kurt's hit rate is now. Like now doing what you do. Like if you, and I don't know that you do it, it's just if you're packing them. But if you, if I gave you 10 cards, you know, that were in, you know, feasibility, but had issues, but feasibility, like what your hit rate is, like on getting, like tens. You, like, you know, like a ten with you. Because you probably know whether to even send it or not. Like I was supporting that, right? Good question, right? And like, and like kind of like what I was saying, like is to improve them, I think every card has a potential for improving one of the best things I can teach anybody that's into card care is how is the right stuff to look for and the race up to buy. That's where it starts. Yeah. Because you can't buy a bunch of cards that are PSA 9s and say put, put this on the front and it's going to come back at 10. What if that's not even the problem? You know, I mean, what if it's off-centered? You know, as a, as a card care person, you got to pretty much develop your eye of what's doable and what's not. So like I do, I create hundreds of videos, hundreds of teaching demonstrations. I go live every week trying to really educate collectors like what's doable and what's not. Because like what we were saying in the past question is, you know, I've knew, I always knew, as a person that treasures and loves these things, I never would want a cut of card or trim a card. I feel like it would hurt my heart. Like I don't want to trim it up. I don't want to add any stupid colors to it. I want to teach people how to remove those colors that people did before, you know? But yeah, I just always knew that that wouldn't be legit. But I always thought to myself, so coming from the automotive world, the huge thing that makes a automobile worth more money when you sell it is numbers matching, which means everything is stock. Everything is stock. Showroom stock. Yeah, original paint. Yeah, original. Original color code, everything. So the thing is, if you, when I look at cards, I always figured, that's like a, it's a total modification if you trim the card, color the card. It's, it's out of bounds and I'm not, I'm not into it. So I always thought, do what you can do with the original materials and improve it to its best self. Again, a 10. Since I always look, went for like the broken, the beaten, the blue are the bruised. I never got 10s. I just always got beat up fast cards and I thought were cool that felt like treasure to me. And it made me feel good just making them look better. You know what I mean? The value is almost in the time spent, honestly, right? So like it was just like something is a person that has, is a creator and is an artist. Like I like making stuff look cool. So you know, lining up 10 cards that are like nine and trying to get them out of 10s. I've never even tried that because I don't even care about that. Hey, you know, there you go. That alone just saw the, any debate that's out there and I didn't personally see it. So, uh, but if somebody else wants to do that, line up nine cards and do them, do it. Yeah, I do. I want to do my store, at least know what I'm buying. I don't know. You know, you got to at least know. And it's hard to meet on us to unpack and teach everybody here on this today. But like the pride, the best thing is learning what's doable versus not. Yeah, that's, I'd love for you to talk about that. Kurt, you know, and I'm talking with Kurt Cologne. He is the founder of Kurt's card care. And this is a business specializing cleaning polish and restoring products for trading cards and collectors. So Kurt, talk to me about, okay, what's fix is the wrong word? I'm going to use it. I don't like that word. You know, what's like, how does it break? You can break it down. We can do modern cards vintage cards. Yeah, my cards like what's talking about modern, let's start at modern cards. What is improvable fixes the wrong word, improvable? So most modern cards and I'll preface that saying even though 90s were a while ago, modern cards pretty much started in the 90s. If you guys collect, you know, like tops chrome and pinniny prism, we'll just stay right there. Those cards as years go by, the plastic like Ryan can tell you on the front of them, they get cloudy, they get dingy. Even if you kept them in a nice place, it just happens, you guys. So like you can, that's one of the most satisfying things if you guys ever watched my before and afters and you see one that's just like, looks like it's this cloudy and then you see one right there. Ryan will even tell you, it only takes 10 seconds. It's not even, it's not a process. It's just seriously wiping it down. But then you'd say like, well, you know, why can't you just use a towel? This doesn't work that way. You got to be able to cut through that crap. So like cleaning up older cards, stuff that's new, Ryan, I make a, this right here, it's called recovery. It's a little light scratch remover and it's great because a lot of the, a lot of the chrome cards and prism cards have a thick plastic cover, but they, they, they're scratch magnets man, you know, they get real scratched up. So like if you get good with recovery, you can do a little light surface buff and eliminate little surface scratches. And then really finally, like the things that you can do on the back of these modern cards is if you ever see dense and stuff on the back, I can even show people how to get dense out. So those would be like the top three things you could do with like a modern era card. Can you get a crimp out from the prep machine? Oh, good. We can try, you know, I should bring you up for that. Like just come to a degree and then we'll fly in and literally, that'd be like a fun thing. I have a JJ McCarthy, which literally autographed that one of my boys pulled is one of those. When we got back into it, we ripped more than I, I've already said this number a million times now, but let's just say 50 K plus over like a year. Hey, it was time with the kids. Yeah, it was. You know, one of the first cards that we got that we were excited about was a JJ McCarthy rookie. This was last year, right? When, you know, all the hype for those guys was high. No, yeah. And beautiful card. And it had a, and I'd never seen this. We'd already ripped a fair amount of factory crimp all like across the bottom. Like I had never seen before. It's all about, like, yeah, and some people tried to play me for the, well, it's one of one. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it is. And then people said, well, you could send it back. And then he would probably replace it, but there was something nostalgic about it. But then I was like, when you were just talking, I was like, that may be a bigger dent than you're talking about though. Might be possible, because you would be blowing away. And the thing is everything that I teach Ryan, like, I'll tell people something about me. Like I made this stuff for me first. So I had to learn how to love using this stuff before I expect anybody else to use it. And I'll tell you guys what, even though I said in this interview that I'm stubborn, I'll do the same thing over and over. When it comes to working on a card, I don't have infinite patience. I want to get something done. I need to see some results or I'm getting a little like itchy. So like most things that I can teach how to do are pretty easy. So like Ryan, when it comes to like the crimps on the bottoms offline, you shoot me a picture. And I could probably give you a little recipe for it because there might be a possibility. And then point out much or it might not be there. So we can get the dense off the modern talking, modern card that took us off a little tangent there with my own personal. Hey, look, if I'm going to have on with people, I get to get my own personal stuff here. You know, we get at least leaning into curse knowledge. But so the modern cards, we can get maybe some dense out that might be on the back. We can get surface level, small micro scratches, potentially. What else with those modern cards? You know, the good thing about modern cards is Ryan, they're rigid and they're strong. So you don't have a, but the, but the, but the blemishes are a lot of times permanent. Because on the front, on the opposite, I like to educate people like what, what you're going to deal with if it's permanent, those dimples on the front. Oh, don't talk to me about dimples. Throw it out. Throw it out. You know, those, it's just, I imagine when they make those cards, there's a heat press involved. There's, you know, there's a manufacturing process. And it's just, there's going to be little dimples on a thin, small piece of plastic at sometimes. You know, so those are unmovable. The word print line, that's a collector word that we'll use a lot. Yeah. Either print lines will be either dug into the card so deep, it's like a river and I ain't going nowhere. Sometimes there are streak of grease and you can wipe them off and you're like magic. And other times it's a little light scuff and you can use like recovery to buff it out a little bit. Those are going to vary, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they proceed with expectations and check. Yeah. The thing is, the most people that love, here's something I can share with you. It has turned into like such a crazy community that doing this. I would have never guessed it. Right. I knew people would like cleaning cards, but you don't know when you come out and make a page and just put yourself out there and say, all right, you know, what do you guys think? You know, good, better and different. I'll, I'll hear it because how, how would you ever going to feel it out, you know? Yeah. Yeah, dude. I, it's such a topic for discussion too. Like, like, what'd you do here? What'd you, I get, I can just see the, I mean, you, your forums or whatever you're in. Like, you got to be tens of thousands of messages. It's, yeah, that's what it is. That's really what I'm really doing right now. I really focus hard to like give people great service, like exceptional service. Because I know that if people start with card care and they can get over the first bump of like learning a few things, they'll love it and they'll do it forever. I also know if people like get into it and like work on their best card with like a couple bits of information and screw something up there out forever. So I just felt like if I'm going to do this right, I got to give like my initial first few years of customers and always, but I mean, like really hands on care because collectors like we, we, uh, we roll together. So once you, once you train 10,000 collectors how to collect or 50,000 collectors how to take care of their cards, they're going to take care of their homies and everything will be cool. You know, but I really just knew that if I didn't support this product and like treat it like a treat everybody like my, they're my brother and they welcome to the studio here every day. I just knew it wouldn't work. So as much as I got to work on these products, you know, it's like I got to teach people how to, how to use them well and you know, it'd be cool to answer in the same question 350 times today, you know. I'm about to say that's if I take patients because it does. You create the videos to an aisle probably, let me go ahead and Kurt forgive me now. I will in our relationship and friendship that is just getting started, but will be best buddies at some point because I'm going to force you. Um, but, uh, but I will probably ask you something that there's a video on, but just be patient with me. That's a loud. You don't put Ryan, you know, right? It's a blessing to be busy with something you created. That's true. Yeah, that's what you, I don't remember. All right, I'll track. I have so many things I like talking with Kurt about here. Vintage. What can we, what can be expected? What are the types of things that Kurt's card care helps with? My favorite. We could talk about paper vintage cards all day like them, but we'll, we'll keep it short. You guys, even if you don't collect vintage paper cards right now, it's a good time to get involved because no, no, your history, man, you know, you can learn so much from vintage athletes, vintage stories, you know, I'm a huge heart. My heart is history. I love history, you know. From my family tree to, you know, the, all the baseball cards. So like with baseball cards, pay, pay, let's say cards, vintage cards are from when they started until 1988. Now it'll be vintage paper. And these are amazing, you guys, because they've been through so many errors. So like stuff that's like a hundred years old could be just filthy dirty. And you can clean these cards so much. Like this is where I'll get the most like, oh, like thing, Ryan, like, we're all soke card and get all the wrinkles and dirt to come out of it. And then teach you how to dry them. And at first it blows people away, which goes back to one of your earlier questions. It's like, where did people, this stuff freaks people out? Because they never seen somebody soak a 1952 Mickey Manel until they met me, you know. I kind of got a little bit of a twitch you say in Nord's soak. You gotta watch it. I haven't watched that video yet. I, wait, if you look at the, you guys, even this is where I'll have watchers, Ryan, they don't even collect because of my vintage stuff. I'll have people that say, hey, when are you going to do one like this coming up? I'll make you work it on one. They're like, oh, we don't even collect cards. We just like to watch the old ones you do. So I do too. And you know what? The vintage ones do. Do you know how many older couples that like, for just an example, I've had, you never know who your customers are until they say hello to you. Really? You know, I assume they're guys. I assume they're probably 30 to 50. But that's a bunch of them. But there's a lot of really cool people that don't fit that demographic. I have couples that are like couples that are in their 70s and 80s that stopped building puzzles because now they go and get their old vintage cards and they work on cards together as a husband and a wife. Like super sweet touching stuff, you know what I mean? That's awesome. So like, and that's where the vintage cards brings them in because they grew up watching these. This is the story of the one. As a procurement manager for a hospital system, she keeps every facility and her network stocked and ready. That's why she counts on Granger to be her single source for thousands of products from disinfectants to lighting, air filters and more. And with fast, dependable delivery, Granger helps her keep every facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRanger-click-ranger.com or just stop by. Granger for the ones who get it done. Dude, you know what I mean? Now, does that soaking process like, does that improve grading or is it just a personal view? Huge improvement. You know what I mean? So you gotta do, you can't use friction on an old piece of paper. So you gotta do what's best for the card, you know? Card care, right? So you gotta, the only way that you're gonna be able to, and like the fluids I use, you know, everything I build is archival grade gold standard. And that's why I couldn't find this type of stuff. I know what it takes to build this stuff, but it just doesn't exist for the types of products we work on, you know? Paint and ink on cards from the 40s and 50s is unique compared to stuff from the 70s and 80s. And if you don't know what you're doing, you're gonna find out. Yeah, card care. Gertz, we're in for you people. You wanna know, guys, it's put 20,000 hours into this? Here you go, you know, you can go and submit the wheel again. Yeah, at least. You know, but yeah, so vintage is amazing. So you guys dig into the vintage, and all of these, all of these lessons, Ryan, are on YouTube on playlists. So if you're just like, if you're with my Instagram channel, you just gotta see what's on my mind today. I have a very healthy amount of ADD, so you'll see randomness all over my daily channels, but all the toolboxes are built on YouTube. I love it, man. What's like the one bit of advice for people or a couple of bits that are getting into sort of restoring both old or new, maybe some universal truths? Yeah, I mean, I would think that for me, like if anybody's watching this and you just find it interesting and you're like, you know what, that seems like something cool. I don't think it takes more than that. I think it's like something that I find that you'll do, but it's just like say the thing like if whatever you, whatever you like to do, say you like to exercise. You like to exercise, probably that's good for you, but you know, maybe you have a lot of good thoughts during it, and like you just kind of brings out the best of you. I've had naturally people share before and after, and they say, hey, I enjoyed, you know, look at the product actually works or whatever. But I really find that people that have are built like this way, and if you don't want to do this, if you look at it and you're like, God, I would never want to deal with it. It just gives me stress and anxiety. Don't ever buy this stuff. Don't ever do it. You know what I mean? Like I know a bunch of people are going golf and I hate going golf and I don't ever want to go. It's like, I'll pass. Thank you. You know what I mean? So same thing with card care, but if you guys watch this and you see some of these before and afters, don't write a story that you're going to screw up and you suck. Write a story that you're like, hey, this is kickass and I'm going to get good at it. And I'm going to learn because this dude like built all this stuff for me and like made a million videos to teach me. You know, that's what I'd say. And I'll add one for you and you put this on there. It seems simple, but use those worthless raw cards that you've darned that are, you know, two cents, one cent and nothing could improve the value test and practice on those. And that's the greatest. And that's the greatest. Because when I see my old man bending out like a fender of a 1970 AAR CUDA, he didn't have a test one to go off your head. No, it was like, you nailed this shit or it's not going to look good. You know, it's like when someone's like, oh, I'm not going to be good at work. Have I poked my hands? I want to be like, practice, dude. If I get into game, man, you got unlimited, you got unlimited base cards over there to practice with. I know, I want to be like this tough guy, you know, like, come on, don't give me that whining. And maybe the most important question, Kurt, is do we have any kind of a wholesale distributor ship so that I can carry this in the store? Dude, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You know, that's really Ryan, like a really special thing that we've had to help grow our company. You know, that's how you kind of check in to make sure you're, you know, you see your returning customers, you see your company grow. But then also like retailers pop up around the world and around the country. And it's, you know, from a guy that's works hard for everything, I couldn't thank anybody more than that. You know, just, you guys are my people and I just, I love you to death, man. So thank you so much. Well, we're going to have a spot here at collector station and I'm going to get bill to get details on that because I want to, I want to have it in the store because, uh, you know, it's, uh, it's one of those things that you can't unsee and or unuse and you want to, hey, if you've got a half a good bone in your body, you want to share it with somebody. That's awesome, man. I can't thank you enough for there, Ryan. Hey, man, we're getting everybody, you know, by direct, learn more, keep up, watch, video. You mentioned the YouTube, but give all the handles. Yeah, man. So like, you guys, I'm pretty much at the seat one day through Monday. You were on a date, days of week, but Instagram is a place where I get a lot of direct messages and I answer them, you know, because I, and I will. They answered this one. Yeah, I did. That's how you get started. So then same with, uh, Facebook and then I'm on YouTube and then people go through my, my emails, but the Kurt Kurt's card care is the website. Pretty much research the word Kurt's card care you'll find me. All right. So that's, but yeah, if you guys want to watch the weekly live show, I do that Wednesday nights 10 p.m. EST on Instagram and I'll always grab a vintage card, a Pokemon card and a new card to show love to all my customers and all the stuff that they love to work on and collect. And I've also, I also take requests, I write them down all week of what people are asking for what they want to learn. So like, I like to be interactive and just like, run a kickass fun company that like, my customer's kind of drive it, you know, like, I just kind of facilitate it and just let them have fun with it, you know, and then that's, that's important to me. And that's how we do it. Well, you got a fan here with me and everything, a collector nation. So I really appreciate you for coming on Kurt. And I love your products. Thank you, Ryan. I am, I am sincerely grateful for that, dude. And I look forward to connecting more. Have me back again, because I want to get on all the projects you guys are working on. And I can't wait to come out and see that wonderful story you're putting together. Exactly. We'd love to have you. It's K U R T S. That's Kirch with the K Kirch card care. We'll have all the links in the show notes. And of course, on the website, the collector nation.com. We're bringing you the best, the brightest, the coolest, the innovative of collectibles and trading cards here on the network. We appreciate Kurt. We appreciate you. We'll see you next time on the collector nation. Thanks for tuning into the show. Be sure to follow us on your go-to podcast platform and catch the full video episode over on YouTube. Visit us at collectornation.com and follow Ryan on Instagram at RyanAlford. Now get out there and collect yours. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Granger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Granger offers millions of products for your own. If you're not in your budget, you can buy your own ones for your own purchase. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Granger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Granger offers millions of products and fast, dependable delivery. So you can keep your facility stocked, safe, and running smoothly. Call 1-800-Granger-Click-Ranger.com or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done.