On today's episode of Collector Nation, Ryan and I dive into the latest on the LUTX app. Collection Management 2.0, yes, it's coming. And it's on the LUTX app, coming over the next 30 days. We dove in to talk about all the newest features. Plus, we talked about Kevin O'Leary making a big splash again in the hobby. Wearing the card as the necklace, 19.5 mil, folks. Fun discussion around that. We dove into the card show that we went to this weekend at Haywood Mall. All the highlights from that show. And again, all the latest, the greatest, the newest here on Collector Nation. In business, you have competition, especially within the tech world, because tech has got diluted so much with these AI agents. So what you have to do is separate yourself other ways. And this is one way is that if you could get the best inventory management system and you have people's collections, you're going to win. There's always something physical about the cars themselves, but it's maximizing the digital tools that we have. It's really trading enablement. That's what this is. Trading and collecting enablement. The new term of the day for the hobby. It's collection enablement. Every other news outlet has a headline that says Kevin O'Leary turns heads by having that necklace. And it's about the necklace, but it's not. It's about playing brand. Playing attention game. Welcome to the Collector Nation podcast here on the Collector Nation Network. Whether you're chasing grails or calling bluffs, we take you inside the hobby. Here are your hosts, Ryan Alford and Brian Lutton. What's up, guys? Welcome to Collector Nation. It's Friday, March 6, 2026 here in the studios of lovely Easley, South Carolina and Chicago, Illinois. You got Brian Ludden, Ryan Offord, always here, your humble servants in the hobby, here to bring you the latest news, the latest gossip, and you never know what else we might get into other than being sunny and 78 here. Brian, what's the forecast in Chicago? It's cloudy at 38 here, Ryan. We got a little north wind. So, yeah, so it's beautiful, beautiful. Oh, man, I can't wait to get outside after this, but not there. No, rubbing it in a little, but you know, that's why you live in South Carolina. You get this weather. You know, we don't have to hustle bustle of Chicago. There's some commerce going on, big business. Brian's running a big CEO company. I can't do that here, you know, but we do get the weather. That's the one thing we get here at Easley. That's the beautiful part of it. I know. I'm in your lovely collector station studio. We'd love to have you in at some point. Our store is hustling and bustling. We welcome you. If you ever hit the South Carolina area and you're listening, hey, it's a flagship store. You've got to stop in. It's like a, I've said this many times, but it's a man cave meets a card shop meets a studio. Many times we're sitting here and talking to the celebrity Ludden and my customers walk in and they go, ah, Ludden X, Lion Ludden. nah but in all seriousness they it's fun because it's right in the center of the store so we'd love for you to stop in and if we were to be recording you can say hello to brian and of course our lovely producer bella who is with us today hey everyone hi bella bella should have your camera on for like that you know like she we actually got bella you know we we unbanished her from non-camera land but uh no longer the basement girl yeah yeah she's a she's an ai robot so we don't want i've trained her pretty good right brian wouldn't you admit i mean she sounds like human like she responds to anything you ask yeah she seems great i'll just take over the world real quick yeah exactly i've been using some ai this week this kind of scary it's good yeah your shop is looking awesome dude thank you brother it's uh coming together is fun um and it's been i mean it's been great meeting people maybe we've had we got regulars already brian let me just say that like the true junkies we know i'm one of them so i mean you know i'm sitting here and dudes coming back and seeing you know we've been over like three weeks and some guys have been here about five times united in the chase baby i mean that's that's what this industry is about though you know like it's cool it is cool in all seriousness we'd welcome you here uh in south carolina if you get through there stop in you'll see us and uh we'll save some cards baby we got a good selection actually good stuff actually brought to that end i'm just because I'll bring it right up. The show was this weekend. We did a show at Haywood Mall and bought a lot of cards and I've been buying a lot of stuff this week. Got some cool stuff here. The Shohei Itani Aces card. You seen those? Ace of Diamond. All Aces. Tops. Yeah, those are great. Fun card. Pricing in that one for grading. Got this FLIR Net Effect Kobe. It's like a die cut. That's cool. Yep. what year was that 1990 1994 maybe i don't know cole what year is this fleer kobe 90 something mid 90s yeah yeah say hello to cole if you come into the store too cole manages the store here keeps me sane and does a great job and one of the nicest guys in the hobby um julia serving kaboom that is a cool card i like it i like it brian and his son i think pulled a bird in this kaboom and we got the irving i bought the irving i we're not so i'm not as lucky as them so i had to buy my singles uh but that was a good pickup and then randy moss the greatest receivers all time on the kaboom so had a good card show brian i mean we sold some stuff man but i was I was buying. That was buying, baby. Always be buying. ABB. Well, yeah, I mean, that's how you make your money, right? It's like you got to buy. You know where you're going to sell it. You got to sell it at comps or right around there. So every buy matters. It's interesting. The card showed lots of deals being had. We're going to have some footage from that. We had Callan, our main guy, filming everything, setting things up, doing deals. We're going to have some good footage from that, so check out the socials. I mean, you know, we probably don't plug that enough. Look, if you're not already, go follow L-U-D-E-X, LUDX, on the App Store, and, of course, in social media. If you just search LUDX, LUDX will come up in Instagram, Facebook, et cetera. Go follow Collector Nation, Collector Station, either one of those. So give us some love there. And we'll have all of the footage there, and we'll have some cool videos for some of the products and other things for LUDX. and lots of cross-pollination here as we, you know, we're living and breathing this thing, baby. I got a card that was so interesting. So some guy, you know, whoever, he came in to my house because he's my dad's friend, and he has his Tiger Woods card that I have no idea. I've never seen it. Mike Baker's like, I don't think I've ever seen it. and it's a promo card from a Toronto show. So I'll show this like really quickly, but we'll get a better picture. Yes. Huh. Okay. Who is that? Tiger. Oh, yeah. Okay. Never seen that. Okay. And then the back is like, it's out of 20. Who makes it? Some dude in his basement probably, but I paid $40 for it, And there was a letter that was like, listen, this is a promo from the 2000 Expo, Toronto Expo card show. It's called the Year of the Tiger. There were 500 printed, like their 500 base. And then this is a platinum of 20. And if you bought a base, you got a chance to open up a pack to see if you got this card in there. And this is a promo card called the Year of the Tiger. It's 2000. and I have no idea what it's worth. I paid $40 for it. I'll give you $50. Done. That's immediate 25% profit. If it's not worth $40, then we both need to go get out of this game. Okay, but then I thought to myself, my buddy at work is like, oh, that's fake. It's promo. I'm like, if you're doing a fake card, don't number them to 20. Yeah. Or you number 20 and print but you know it could be fake It could be But even if it is good story Yeah What's new? Give us the LUTX CEO update, the things you can share. Like what's happening on the LUTX front from a company standpoint? I think the biggest thing is rolling out this collection inventory management part of the app. It should be in the app within the month. Way more robust searching, filtering, sorting. And really, the industry needs an inventory management, collection management platform. And that's really what we're doing. We've been working on that for like a year. I mean, the utility that Ludox has is like scan a card. But we want it to be all-encompassing. because in business, you have competition, especially in the tech world because tech has got diluted so much with these AI agents. So what you have to do is separate yourself other ways. And this is one way is that if you could get the best inventory management system and you have people's collections, you're going to win. And that's what we've been working on. We've been rolling that out on the web version. But within the month, we'll have it, you'll start to see it migrate towards the app. So that's super exciting. Our tech team's been working really hard at it. I love it. I've seen it. You've seen it. Yeah, it's slick, really slick. I mean, we need, the hobby needs one or at least two really good ones. Let's start with one really good one because I don't know that one great one exists yet. You know, this is going to be the first one, I think. that's truly like really exceptional yeah i mean car lighter does a really good job i do i love their uh indexes and stuff yeah i mean i like that i like the indexes it's just the ui of the collection management is not like wonderful let's be honest i like the substance of what they have there but i kind of want like either me or someone creative to get a hold of the UI. Like they got the data, you know, they got the indexes. I like that, but I need art to meet science. Yeah. And I mean, it's a smaller ecosystem, so they could, you know, they price things well, but it's hard to get cards onto that platform and it's not like super scalable. Yeah. But that's what I love about what I'm seeing and what I've witnessed with the LUTX is it was already good, but now with the updates, it feels exceptional. It's like, you know, everything's going to have, get better over time, but it feels like a real leap forward. I mean, in tech, it's like every three years, four years, you have to like redesign it. Like you have to put money into it and back into tech and you got to make it more relevant and you got to skin it better and you got to market it better and it's got to look better because if not, you're stuck with, you know, a Com C or eBay or, you know, card ladder. It's just not, it doesn't migrate to like the modern day. So, but it's very expensive to do that. It's really expensive. So put your CEO hat on for the audience, like not that you didn't already have it on, put it on a little tighter. And give the audience like, okay, what they can expect with this new app. Like what does, it's collection management, but like give me the elevator pitch, the 30 second on the new features, what people could expect from it. Well, the thing that I like the best about it is that it's stackable search, right? So if I wanted to check out my Jordan collection, I could say Michael Jordan, cards equal or greater than $1,000 from 1990 to 1995. And then all that search stacks on each other and you'll get that component. You'll just get those cards that meet that criteria. then I could take those cards and if you want to look at them I could send them to you I could start sharing the collection so you and I even that tiger card I could be like hey I'll scan it in there I'll send it to you but it's the stackable search that's really cool for me and then taking that on the social aspect of it and then sharing that with other people yeah so So the collector station app, that's about one, one millionth of the capability of LUTX, but we'll eventually probably migrate to what the LUTX is once this gets commercially available and I can, you know, beg Brian for it to allow me to use it. No, he's letting me use it. But I could actually roll it out with my whole store. uh the basically what i think is cool right now i'd share like a feature that's on our really stupid app that's not as pretty as yours is i allow people to build a collection and then they can share what they want with the store so that i can make offers on their cards so that way they get the collection management for free but i can see what their cards are if they agree to share them yep yep public that's all yeah and then like think about that how it what you're thinking about is what the capabilities that we'll have so if if a shop has their cards on there i could go to the kiosk like you guys have a kiosk yeah and i could go to that kiosk to get the cards that i want exactly and then those cards that i want might be on the floor or they might be in a storage unit behind the store. And so that's what I think would be really cool is that when people come in, they can find what they want and that gives them time to then buy some wax or break something or whatever. And then it's a card show. It honestly could turn into a 365 24-7 virtual card show. It never has to stop. But yeah, hey, man, lots of cool features. And look, I'll say this. I go to an e-commerce website. Like you said, stacking the search capabilities. That's what makes or break a really good site is how much you can sort of slice and dice the inventory or what's there. And the same thing with your own collection when you're trying to put a deal together or you're trying to know what you have or like, especially if you've got thousands of cards in your collection. all right how many you know baseball cards do i have that are over 50 because maybe you're doing a deal to move some baseball cards because you're more of a basketball guy but you aren't necessarily looking for a player you just want to know what your high value baseball cards are being able to slice and dice that data the way you need to that's next level and that that's true empowerment to the collector with managing the collection. That is the, I think it just hit me, Brian, what you guys are doing. It's really what digital unlocked, right? Because in the analog world, it's finally coming to this industry. Like, because all these things, all these cars belong in, they're in binders and they're in top load or sitting in closets or they're in a beautiful case in your house. But what collection, digital collection management was supposed to unlock was this ability to have knowledge and data and to slice and parse and know what you have at the most intricate level, which is what digital sort of unlocked for every other industry, you know, the last 15 years. Yeah. And think about this, like, like the power, it's really our database, right? It's like we have 400 million cards in our database and those cards belong to people yeah those that that's the searchable function of it every card that's probably been printed we probably have you know 95 of them 98 of them so all we're doing is going through our own database with that not that all that uh data and we're sharing it and that that's it if you want to find a card go find a card and you know what i could put in exactly the card i want and we could say hey ryan alford has that card we'll be like cool i'm gonna go go on discord and i'm gonna reach out to ryan and see if he'll sell i'm gonna go to his house you know when he's eating kids but he's having dinner with his kids hey man i saw you had that that michael jordan card on that bo jackson card on luddx Lodex Yeah man I see you at the show on Saturday No. You're right about that. Like it's all it's getting a massive database and then making it into this like searchable virtual world. Exactly. there's always something physical about the cars themselves but it's maximizing the digital tools that we have to innate it's it's really trading enablement that's what this is trading and collecting enablement the new term of the day for the hobby it's collection enablement i'm an enabler and you are brian that's a you are the chief enablement officer that's the ceo that's all you are is your enabler you enable these wonderful things to happen with our digital collection management oh man we have we have fun even while we're working the uh so big things coming with collection management and ludax should be out this month brian is that for the masses yeah i would say that it's you know we are trying to release like two different features a week um and so it's going to migrate towards the finished product it is software so it's never truly finished but the functionality of it uh will be that we've talked about here today will be 30 days um our big reveal is going to be the national that's what really what we're shooting for. And, uh, so, you know, we kind of have, have those bookends today is one bookend and the national is the other to make it really functional and really cool. Keep your eyes peeled. Stay in touch with the LudX social Instagram, all that. You'll see the updates, you'll see the releases and all that. LudX.com, uh, we'll always have the most up-to-date information of course uh and of course come see me and brian at the national we'll be there what we're gonna do who knows what we'll be up to by then like we're gonna we'll have uh collector nation on display brian's gonna have all the goodies i mean the the booth you guys did it right i mean you guys had a nice booth last year i mean it felt swanky a little you know walk around it's like whoa i'm at ces suddenly yeah it's gotten pretty big it has i mean but it's but everything kind of still felt like a big, okay, a table with a bunch of cards on it. Or, you know, I mean, I thought the digital pack opening guys, you know, I won't name names. There were several of them. They did pretty good because they're selling the tech of that. But you definitely guys had the white and the blue, the branding that I love. It felt elevated, the Ledex booth. And I'm sure that will only, the surprises and delights will only increase this year. That's what we hope for. so come see us at the national that will be in late july first week of august it's like the 31st first second somewhere in all in that neighborhood i don't have my calendar in front of me but uh hey i got the i got the the rv wagon coming hard more news on that uh i'll share more that's just a teaser for now folks uh let's just say it's coming along very nice uh kevin o'leary turned heads at the 2026 SAG Awards by wearing that Michael Jordan Kobe Bryant card that he paid him and a couple of investors paid 13.5 and I guess it's already up to 19.5 I don't know if that was because what was around the necklace was worth that or if the card had actually jumped you know 40 percent uh since they bought it probably who knows um I part of me rolls my eyes but part of me goes yeah it's kind of a baller to wear that card around your neck you know like i don't even if logan paul did it first uh i'm okay with it yeah i mean i i think like i think that's cool like i don't know if i would do it yeah i would i'm also buying a 13 but yeah you would i'm not buying a 13 and a half million dollar card either like i would know like yeah like a thousand bucks or something. So, but I think when you have it, like that just shows like it is art, right? It is art. It is collecting. It's unique. Um, you just hope you don't get like mugged. Yeah. You, you, you think that you had to add like extra protection insurance for that day? Had to, right? Lloyd's in London. Yeah. Total had a side policy, probably 10 grand or more. I mean, maybe more than that. I don't know, bro. If it was, if I had partner and I was, I was like, he's like, this is what I want to do. Yeah. And I heard of that or half of that. I'd be like, Whoa, no, no, no, no. Like get insurance. Even that insurance is like, but, but here's the thing. And look, everybody bear with me. I know you're here for the cards and the hobby, but you're always going to get a little slice of business from me, at least marketing. And if you don't know right about now, it's the number one business and marketing show on Apple. It's been for three years. That's my other show. I don't ever plug it, but I'm going to plug it right now. Kevin O'Leary knows something that very few business people get. He understands brand. He's playing the brand game. He understands the attention game, the media game. He knows how to make headlines. Look, our little show here, you know, maybe we're top five sports and Apple, but it's our little show, our little slice. But we're talking about it. And so is CNN and so is Drudge Report. And so is every other news outlet has a headline that says Kevin O'Leary turns heads by having that necklace. And it's about the necklace, but it's not. It's about playing brand, playing attention game. And Kevin makes his own brand, his own assets and his own businesses more valuable because he generates headlines. So you can hate the game all you want, but don't hate the player. That's some sage advice. That's awesome. uh kyler murray got released from the cardinals this does this feel like a story that's been coming for six years i like it's like i don't know what to make kyler murray like badass in college had moments in the pros i like him i like his game but it's like it's never i feel like you're always like one you're always waiting for one more dial turn that just doesn't seem to ever come yeah i mean it really sets your franchise back you know like they get they paid him a lot of money and he just didn't deliver and that's that hurts you know the vikings i i can see the vikings picking him up as a veteran to go against jj i think if kyler murray matures and gets and really commits to the craft i think he has crazy potential but it's kind of happens like this year right it's so weird too because he's never been the guy that's in the headlines like he's not manzel you know it's not like and i like johnny i'm not blessing on you johnny i'm just saying but let's be honest and you even said it yourself totally immature like in trouble all the time that's not kyler he seems like put together but all you hear is this same thing this maturity this discipline like it's like it's hard to put get your head around it he had to put a clause in his contract to not play like playstation or xbox or something like like that was in his contract you could only play x amount of hours of xbox a week like like a child yeah never heard of such in a professional contract right and there's been some dudes there's been some dudes that like if they were going to have that clause or have the no stupid goofing off clause, it would have been before Kyler. Cause you don't, again, you know, Kyler's just under the, he's just behind the scenes. I guess he's like, you know, what's the kid that never grew up? It's like Webster or something like, you know, talk about Peter Pan, maybe, but remember Webster? Like wasn't he like kid that like always was a kid. I don't know. Webster just physically didn't grow. I don't know. I thought he was always kind of acting like a kid too. Yeah. I think. And same guy from different strokes, Arnold. Yeah, exactly. They just start growing. I don't know. I didn't mean like, I was talking about more maturity, like then they're like physical side, but Kyler, I mean, he's not the biggest guy, but he's, he bigger than those guys I mean he an NFL quarterback I thought I been more like like they always a kid I guess kind of like Michael Jackson Like Michael Jackson they say never really grew up because he just never got a chance to live. He was on the road all the time. Then when he finally had a little bit of time and money, he was like, I'm going to stay a kid, you know? Anyway, I digress. Bella's right. Peter Pan's complex. Yeah, Peter Pan complex. That's what it is. Not Webster. You know, I am showing my knowledge of the 80s. silver spoons remember that movie that silver spoons silver spoon the kid had the train in the you know they drove through whole house secret passages great house it was a great house always i forever wanted secret passages in my house because of that show way different than where my house i grew up in was it all open no doors or something it's like lived in the train oh okay box no in fact that my mary frances ludden turns 80 she turned 80 yesterday so happy day mom um uh thank you for raising four boys um so yeah so shout out to mary frances ludden hey i'm thankful for mary frances ludden for having brian you know i don't even know her but I love her because she had Brian. So we do give her a shout out. 8-0. It's a good one. Yeah. Is she good? Health's good? Yeah, she's doing okay. They're down in Marco Island, Florida doing their thing. Okay. Tired. That's cool. Retired. Doing their thing. I talked to my mom this morning for about 30 minutes, and she just told me how happy she was. Like 30 minutes. She's living her best life. That's great. You know, I'm like, if I'm 74 and as happy as she is, I'm good. You know? I will say that. I have, my parents, I have happy parents. You know, like, I think that's a big deal, like, as far as how you grow up and stuff. Like, I don't know. Like, it makes a difference. Mom was always happy. Yeah, it does. You know, like, mom was always happy. My dad was in the military, so he had that in him, but he was generally always happy. We were blessed tonight because, you know, a lot of times you have mental health issues, things that are just natural or just out of control, not having to go around that. It's like, I like being around happy people. Not because we're like, I don't know, Cinderella, like we think everything, oh, you know, like Pollyanna. I think that's the right analogy there. I'm like Webster. the not Pollyanna-ish, but you know, like, it's just not a time like this. Let's just be happy, you know, trying to figure this out. Anyway. I'm happy that Brian Ludden is my friend and that we get to do this show. Any final... Go ahead, brother. Same exact thing to you, man. What, uh... Any final thoughts, Bella, did we leave anything out here on the March 6th, 2026 edition of Collector Nation? Only thing is that today the U.S. plays Brazil in the World Baseball Classic, which is super exciting. And we lost last time to Japan in 2023. So hopefully this year we can have a comeback moment. Yay! Yeah, that'd be awesome. That's exciting stuff. Exactly. We're right around the corner from opening day. we talk about that more as it comes i i did open a box i you know as we finish here i don't want to i'll talk about how happy the i opened the tops uh 2026 series one hobby box and i haven't and i'm a baseball i'm a football excuse me basketball more of like me personally pc stuff i got baseball stuff we got tonic baseball in the store it's freaking card shop and baseball still rules but I just, all I did was make me want to open a football box. I don't know. I know people love baseball. And I like, I've gotten more into watching baseball again. But the baseball cards, there's so many players. I'm like, I got dizzy trying to like keep up with it. I mean, I felt old. I mean, how many players are on every baseball team? 24. Okay. So it's not my imagination. Well, I know there's a lot of football players, but they don't make football cards for every football player, I don't think. Dude, they got Rookie League. They got Low A. They got Double A. They got Triple A. So many players. And how many teams? Is it the same number? 30? Yeah. That's about the same as football and basketball, but that's pretty easy. Like 720 people are in the major leagues, but in the minor leagues there's like 7,000. I'm just so behind on my names. I got to get better at that. Football guys, I know the offensive linemen for the Chiefs, you know, but it's getting rough. I'm really trying to get back up to speed, but I'll tell you what, like football cards are way more expensive, but I feel like you get bigger hits. I was just kind of like dying for like a $10 card opening that hobby box. Yeah. I got like $130 card, and that's cool. But I'm like, I don't know. Take your feedback. Anybody out there that wants to learn me on baseball, get me back up to speed on baseball, that's what we say in the South, if you want to learn me. Learn me. Grew up in Easley, man. I got a college degree, but, I mean, let's be honest. I grew up right here. I got to get learned on more baseball. You want to talk basketball? You want to talk Cooper Flagg? You want to talk Wimby? You want to talk Shea Gildress? You want to talk whoever you can go. We can go as deep as you want on basketball and football. but I got to get my, my baseball thing going. Cause I was just like opening these baseball cards. I believe you could do it. I believe in you. I got a memory for it. I just got to get into it. I needed to open like a banger box. I mean, I'm going to go like jumbo next time. Triple jumbo or something. I don't know. Whatever, whatever, like the, the banging box. I need some, like I needed some, you know what it was, Brian? I needed some dopamine and I wasn't getting it with the, uh, the ace of base I was getting out of that hobby box. Too much base. I mean, the base card stack, I thought they were high when you were in prison football. That baseball card base stack was this high out of that hobby box. Yeah. Now I'm not going to sell a simple box out of the store. But, no. I'm saving the good ones for everyone else. Yeah, it's enough Tinder for a day. Oh, God. It's kindling in the South Carolina fire for three years. light one of those cards up and go. No, I'm trying to learn the names, man. Lots of names. So bear with me as I get my baseball names from this year. In three or four weeks, I'm going to be quoting the dudes for baseball. I'm committed to it. I mean, I've got to put my reps in. I've got to open some more and get the boys into baseball more. We've been a football basketball family. Even though we own the card store, I've got my guys. they're into baseball but man we gotta I gotta get some reps in I gotta rip like I gotta rip through like a hundred grand in baseball to get where I was in football you get three grand yeah three grand at least Brian final thoughts today my friend I'm all good my man it's always a pleasure to be with you I enjoy it thank you for everything Bella thank you for everything you do so yeah just have a great weekend everybody and thanks for watching. Yeah, we appreciate everyone. Like Brian said, we know you got options and we thank you for making us one of them. If there's something, you got feedback, leave in the comments. I respond to every one of those. Bill and I jump in on those comments on social or on Spotify or YouTube. Keep dropping them. Anything we could talk about. Guests we could bring ideas. Hey, you know, Brian's got access. So we could, you know, what do you want? But, you know, let us bring you access to what you want when you want it. And we thank you. Don't forget about LudX in the App Store, L-U-D-E-X. Go download that app. We talked a lot about it today. Go check it out. For Brian Ludden in Chicago, I'm Ryan Offord. We'll see you next time. Pleasure 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 Ryan Alford. Now get out there and collect yours.
