Desert Island Slabs #1 with Fav (ticketsandslabs)

Welcome to the first episode. Here we speak to Fav (ticketsandslabs) who speaks through 8 piece in his collection that have a special resonance.

00:00:00 – Desert Island Slabs Format and Introduction
00:01:38 – Item 1: 1968 Olympics Black Power Salute PSA 1.5 (Ticket)
00:10:33 – Item 2: 1992 Track & Field WATA 9.2 (Game Boy Game)
00:19:38 – Item 3: David Rudisha 2012 Panini London 2012. Adrenalyn XL PSA 10 (Card)
00:37:12 – Item 4: Portugal ‘Royal Finish For New Kings of Europe’ 2016 Panini Instant UEFA Euro 2016 BGS 9.5 (Card)
00:43:54 – Item 5: 2017 Topps Bojack Horseman ‘Horsin’ Around’ Print On Demand Set PSA Graded (Card)
00:51:13 – Item 6: 2018 Usain Bolt Signed Central Mariner’s Professional Soccer Debut PSA 2/AUTO 8 (Ticket)
01:03:12 – Item 7: 2019 Manchester City 1-0 Leicester City PSA 2 Vincent Kompany Goal of the Season PSA 2 (Ticket)
01:14:14 – Item 8: 2019 Panini Premier League Prizm Jordon Ibe Black Prizm 1/1 PSA 10 (Card)
01:26:39 – Concluding Remarks

Welcome to Desert Island Slabs. This is a new hobby podcast where we take a collector each week or each month and we focus on them. They choose eight objects within their collection that mean something to them and where they sit in the overall context of their life.

My first guest is Favad Iqbal, otherwise known as Tickets and Slabs on Instagram and also Discord. He is a father of two, living in the south of England with his wife. And he has been collecting for some years now. He formally started a role at PSA as a ticket authentication consultant in early

January, 2023. And I’m honored to have him on as my first guest, as he has become quite a good friend over the last few years. So hello, Fav. Hi, James. I’m honored too, I might add, because we’ve been talking about this for a while.

And to kind of be the first guest is a bit of an honor. So yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I think, I think when I sort of thought I wanted to do Desert Island slabs, I basically knew that you were going to be the first guest regardless of whether you

Agreed to it or not. So I was glad that you did. So, yeah, I’m sure more things about your life will come out and things over the course of the chat, but what do you want to talk about first?

So I guess, you know, I’ve, you know, I was posited the idea of picking the space eight slabs for this kind of like mythical idea. What would I take to a desert island with me? And I’ve kind of gone through bits of my collection and these items really like

Me, they strike a chord and they’re not necessarily, I don’t think what people would kind of expect. I think, you know, I’ve got a lot of items that are probably more valuable and I’ve got a lot of items that are probably more culturally important than the ones that I’ve selected.

But the ones that I think we’ll talk through today kind of resonate with me in certain ways that kind of make them totally irreplaceable. and take me in a lot of these instances to perhaps different parts of my life where they evoke something that’s abstract.

And for me, that’s kind of important when you’re sort of collecting. It’s sort of a large part of the reason why I have collected these items. And I think the best way of doing it is probably to go through them chronologically from the sort of, you know, the oldest item through to the

Latest. And some of them are quite recent, you know, they’re relatively modern items. So I’ve got eight in particular. So shall I get on and introduce the first one? it is an eclectic, it’s an eccentric list. And, um, yeah, like you say, I guess when you’re tasked with something like this, it

Becomes quite difficult because the temptation is to maybe go for the more obvious items in a way, but then when you do a bit of deep dive, almost introspective analysis, then you actually realize, wait, this actually has more of an impact on me than this objectively. Wow. Item.

Um, and yeah, I’m, I’m just really looking forward to. chatting through some of these, to be honest. I guess having talked up how abstract some of these items are, the first one actually, it probably isn’t as abstract as a lot of the others. So this is this is my first pick.

So this is this is kind of an Olympics 1968 ticket from the session in which the Black Power salute took place. And yeah, I mean, the story behind it is that I’ve of had it for the best part of two or three years now.

The way that I picked it up at the time was there’d been a couple that had been graded but it was quite difficult to kind of work out whether I had the right session at the time and so kind of started with doing a load of research because that

Sort of stuff wasn’t really in the public domain and what I’m kind of like referring to there is that this kind of two clocks here and one is sort of, I think 10am and the other one’s 3pm. So instantly when you look at this, you would initially think, okay, well, that’s

A that’s a ticket for 10am, three to 3pm. That’s a morning session. And if you do your research, you can find out that actually the Black Power Salute would have taken place on the evening. And so for a good while, I was kind of searching for a ticket that

That had a 3 PM start date or start time and a 10 PM finish. And I just kept drawing a blank. I couldn’t work out why I couldn’t find this ticket. And it was only when you started to compare it to some of the other sessions

At that games, you realized that they’re not start and end times. They’re just start times. So on this particular date, on the 16th of October, you had a ticket that allowed you entry to both sessions. And those seem to be the only ones available for October the 16th.

And so the way that I got that particular ticket was, I just found a Mexican seller of Olympic tickets. And I think I just asked him, did he on the off chance have this ticket? And he did. He was very frank about what it…

Stood for it was the day of the Black Power Salute. And I kind of, you know, said, that’s exactly why I want it. And we agreed a price that was, you know, it was less than $100 at the time. And, you know, it’s been in my collection ever since.

But what I kind of love about it is several fold, really. So firstly, yeah, it is it’s, you know, just, I mean, if you just look at it, like, I think that the kind of contrast of the blue and yellow is just sort of, it’s like a really striking combination.

So you do have kind of other variants of this. So where the band in the middle is kind of a different color that’s largely because they will have represented a different price point. But yeah, typographically, you know, the Mexico games were iconic in the sense that sort of

You know, this lettering was kind of widely readapted for the 1970 World Cup, which also took place in Mexico. So there’s that. I mean, it’s just a visually stunning ticket. And you know, there were a few moments that kind of when you when you talk about

Them with people, they kind of like they get it, they suddenly get why you collect tickets. And this is one of them. you know, the Black Power salute itself, it’s something that transcends sport. It’s not just a thing that happened at a game.

I mean, it is that, but at the same time, it’s a symbol of defiance. It’s, you know, it’s something that I think people know from the image. Even if they might not be able to place why it took place, they’ll be familiar with the image itself.

And so, yeah, I suppose this ticket for me, I mean, it’s the pinnacle of my collection. It probably represents one of the early tickets that I picked up that wasn’t soccer related, sort of consider myself to be like a soccer aficionado first and foremost.

But then kind of eventually was sort of thinking about other sports and the Olympics is kind of something that I feel like I knew quite well. And this was probably one of the first Olympic tickets that I sought and then found.

So it’s a real kind of, for me, it’s a big sort of cradle to grave piece. It’s something that I managed to source, something that I then went and graded and still kind of slightly upset about the grade on this one. So. Yeah, it’s a 1.5, isn’t it? Is that correct?

So I think that’s because kind of it’s got it’s got a few staple holes on kind of white slip. And it does also have a bit of a light sort of fold along there. And that’s kind of it’s a slight sort of marring on the on in the grand scheme of

Things, you know, that has only been ordered 1.5. But I mean, I don’t really care. You know, it’s just one of those things that, but every now and again, I float with the idea of like getting it regraded. But to be honest, it’s not something that I’m ever gonna sell.

So actually it’s more for aesthetic kind of, you know, the idea of having fair 1.5 actually to me kind of mars it slightly. And that’s why I’d rather have it sort of just saying authentic or, you know, just a reappraisal of kind of the grade.

Um, overall, it’s not something that I’m massively bothered by. Um, although I’m kind of making it sound like I am slightly. Yeah. So that’s our number one. That’s item number one. And I feel like I’ve laid the point on, on that one, but, um, shall we move on to the next one?

Yeah, cause you’re, when we started with athletics and we’re continuing with an athletic type theme. Is that correct for the next choice? Yeah, so this is a bit of an interesting one because the mainstay of my collection is tickets and then the second mainstay is probably cards and then after that it’s

Random stuff and this probably falls within the random stuff category. So this is Track and Field on the Game Boy which is… banger of a game And I think, I think the, you know, when I was kind of trying to pick out, well, why, why have I selected this game firstly?

Um, I grew up in, in kind of a bit of a sort of, uh, probably a similar family to you, James, you know, I mean, it was an Asian upbringing. My parents were both sort of first generation immigrants to the, the UK.

Um, and both quite, I would say disapproving when it came to consoles and things like that. You know, there was, you know, there were bad influence. That was the idea. It was a bad influence to play computer games. They were distracting me from kind of the things that I should have been doing,

Which was being good at school and being good at maths and, you know, working hard on your studies, they were a distraction. They were a bad influence. Um, and, you know, I think in, in a way in adult life, I think that’s probably

Exacerbated kind of quite how addicted I’ve become to video games in general. Yeah. I think, I think, you know, It’s one of those where I think I just play computer games all the time as a result of kind of having this sort of almost preclusion, I suppose, from sort of playing them.

How did that work then in terms of you were, you were as in not allowed to for a bit or what happened? so I mean, you know, eventually I kind of wore my mum down, I remember, I think, I think my dad was always slightly disapproving, like, so we didn’t have a

Desktop computer until kind of quite deep into when I had just joined secondary school, which comparatively probably doesn’t sound that late on. But compared to a lot of my contemporaries at primary school, they kind of have the desktop computer. And that was a tool as much as kind of, you know, something to

Play games on. Whereas for me, I think I just wore my mum down. I kind of really wanted a Game Boy. And eventually, I think in the winter of, it must have been 1997, I got one for my birthday. It was a Game Boy Pocket.

And it was just a really kind of, it was like a smaller version of the Game Boy. And it came with a couple of like preloaded kind of things because I think my mum was like, if I’m getting you a Game

Boy, I’m not going to get you a bunch of games to go with it. Like kind of, you know, this is a lot of money. This is a special present. So it kind of had these like crap arcade games like Joust and Asteroids or something on it.

Things that were ill designed really for the Game Boy. And I just loved playing it. I remember kind of, you know, some of the games that I got for it were from friends. So know, school friends sort of lent me Paperboy, which still absolutely kills me that game.

Then there was Worms, which was kind of, you know, much more known on kind of PC, but there was a Game Boy iteration of it. And then kind of the week that I passed my 12+, and it was a 12 plus in

Buckinghamshire, it kind of, you know, had this selective grammar school type you passed it, you went to a grammar school, you failed it, you’d go to a local comprehensive. And I guess I was fortunate to pass it, I guess, or, you know, lucky.

But as a reward, actually, yeah, it was like, this is how you do a verbal reasoning type. But you know, so my parents were kind of like, well, in fact, I mean, my dad was still quite draconian at this time, but my mum was a lot more,

Yeah, you deserve a reward for having passed your 12 plus. Um, when you get a game, boy game and I went to Dixon’s and there was this copy of kind of track and field and I bought it and I just would play it like nonstop and

I think at the time I didn’t realize that you were meant to press A and B the buttons kind of alternately. So it was just like pressing them all. I was like, why, why isn’t this guy going quicker? Yeah. am I not breaking the world record?

It was only years later that I realized that you were meant to kind of press them alternately. And I kind of, I have to be honest with you, I didn’t really think about the graded game at all for a number of, well, even when the surge of excitement and

Graded games kind of came a couple of years ago, it wasn’t something that I was particularly interested in. But when I went out to sort of California last year to visit the PSA offices, I was kind of lucky enough to sort of do a tour of kind of everything on site.

And, you know, they do, they do everything on site. So it’s kind of coin grading, game grading, everything. And I just saw like this track and field kind of Game Boy game on someone sort of almost like mantelpiece. I just thought it was the coolest thing I’d seen in years.

And it just like, honestly, it just took me back to kind of, you know, being, being a child and playing it on my Game Boy and. And I was like, I’ve got to have that.

And so I found a seller who had it on eBay for about, I think it was about a grand or something like that. And I was like, this is way too much money, but I’ll reach out to him.

And he got back to me probably about a month after, because I don’t think he’d seen that I’d sent him a message. And I said, well, look, I’d really love it, but I think it’s a bit out of my price range, but I just want to say it’s an amazing piece.

And then kind of said, well, know, how much would it cost? What is the best that you could do on it? And he turned around and said $350. And I was like, right, sold like, you know, instantly, I was like, that is not as much as I thought it would be.

I want it. I think it’s, you know, visually, it’s just like, everything about this kind of, you know, but I mean, for me, it’s just the Game Boy symbol, almost, you know, the side is, it’s just like such a primal kind of uh, nostal nostalgic memory for me.

This is, and, um, you know, yeah, yeah. So, so funny enough, I mean, over, over the, the Christmas break, I kind of bought myself and I don’t know if you’ve kind of come across one of these, but these are sort of like, these are called analog pockets, which are sort of, you know,

Emulator style kind of, um, things for, um, the Game Boy and a bunch of other things. But you know, I’m not doing this just as a prop, but I literally have been playing this like non-stop recently, you know.

So it’s just like, it’s just, you know, for me, it just evokes so much of that kind of childhood and, you know, the bad influence thing and, you know, just loving playing it all the time. It’s not the most famous Game Boy game. It’s not, you know, a game that’s necessarily

Uh, it was the first, like the first platform that it was on. It’s just for me, it just, you know, hits that spot. That’s what I want from a collectible. That’s why I wanted it. Um, yeah. No, exactly. It’s not that this isn’t going to be about retreading my sports compendium videos,

But in the Middlesbrough video, I mentioned about the Proustian effect that scene in Ratatouille where, for instance, you know, the critic tries Ratatouille, which is quite a mundane dish in some ways, but he has transported, Anthony goes transported back to that rural province in France and his mom’s home cooking and what

Was a peasant’s dish. It’s incredible. when you see something and it’s the same with me in the foil stickers. Um, to be honest with you, when I see them and you sort of, you know, the tearing and then you see that little like prismatic effect or something and it just, it

Really, it’s incredible. And, um, yeah, I didn’t, I didn’t really have that so much with, uh, video games, but I think the best proxy would be a dog. As in I basically had the exact feelings you had. but it was with a dog.

So I was granted a dog when I was 14, it was the best thing that ever happened to me, but we’ll continue on. And we’re gonna go again, athletics, but we’re gonna go a little bit further on.

I suppose it came to light years later that we were at the same sort of event that has kind of triggered this to kind of be picked. But we’ll come on to that in a bit. But, you know, as I suppose I’ve kind of already alluded to with the two picks,

Athletics and kind of the Olympics have sort of become two things, I suppose, that a lot of my collection is based around now. I suppose for me, a big part of that interest stems from being in London during the 2012 Olympics. I say I remember it. I mean,

In 2005, when we were bidding for it, I didn’t even know we were bidding for it. It was a bit of a surprise to me. Yeah. And then kind of, you know, there was the shock announcement that we’d, we’d be

Hosting the games in 2012, um, kind of, you know, there’s these scenes in, um, Sure, for Alga square, where you have like the sportsman, so was it Tessa Jowell at the time, um, kind of celebrating with, you know, Kenny Livingston and all of

These other people being like, kind of, yeah, we’ve won the Olympics. It’s like. And at the time, I just thought to myself, okay, well, I’m kind of in between my first and second year at university. But a longer term hope for me is, yeah, I’d love to be living in London when the

Olympics kind of goes on. And we all kind of know, sort of the following day that, you know, you had this kind of period of almost going from this sort of feeling of amazement we’ve won the Olympics through to kind of, you know,

What happened the following day, which is kind of like the 77 bombings and everyone just kind of shell shocked that this was sort of taking place in London. Yeah, and I suppose for me, there was that period of kind of, it was the summer between my first and second year at university and

I’d gone to a university in the north of England, Durham, and I remember there being quite a lot of anti-terrorist sentiment. And actually, that was becoming more anti-Islamic. And although I don’t consider myself to be particularly religious, that was

Particularly hard when you live in a family full of people that do identify as Muslims and actually probably just began and continue to perpetuate that feeling of anti sort of Asianness, I guess that kind of sometimes comes about with an event like that.

And I don’t know, I found I found the whole kind of thing pretty, pretty difficult at the time. It was, you know, I remember when I was in kind of a student that sort of Durham, I think it was still kind of beginning to form my sort of ideas as a as

As an adult, I think, I think up until that it still probably felt like a child didn’t really realize what was going on. And I suppose that’s the funny thing about sport really, it’s kind of, you know, you

Don’t you don’t really need to be political to kind of get it or enjoy it. Certainly, with and you know, beginning to kind of wonder where I’m going with all of this. But kind of come sort of 2008, I was lucky enough to kind of be a student in London.

And I was working in a lab, doing kind of organic chemistry. It’s weird because people are like, oh, you’re not a chemist anymore and I’m not. And at the time it was kind of like, it wasn’t something that I wanted to be doing forever, but…

Yeah, it actually meant a lot of my friends are moving down to London, I get to move to London as well. And this is a convenient way of being able to continue that journey. And I suppose so I had funding for three years, and that lapsed in September of 2011.

And that was really annoying timing, because that was the summer before the Olympics itself. And, you know, like, The tickets weren’t exactly cheap. The cheapest level tickets were kind of what? 150 quid for some of these medal sessions.

And they went up really quickly to kind of being 750, or was it 2012, I think, was the most expensive level of ticket. And I kind of applied in the ballot and didn’t get anywhere. And I just kind of wrote it off and thought, okay, well, this is… This is a shame.

I’d really like to attend this particular session because I know Usain Bolt will probably be running in the 200 meters and is the triple jump final. So Philippe Sidoux will be there. And I think it was the culmination of the Decathlon, which I thought was pretty cool.

And I thought that looks like a really cool day to go. I hadn’t really thought at the time about any of the other events. And… eventually, kind of, you know, I’d sort of written up my kind of doctorate early in that summer and, you know, have had the rest of the summer off.

And it was amazing because, you know, the summer of 2012 was basically probably the best time to kind of from a sport enthusiast time to kind of be off, you know, you’ve got all of the Olympics. But before that, you had man, Man City winning the league, unfortunately, James, in very dramatic circumstances.

You had Chelsea winning the Champions League, you know, in this kind of almost, I mean, you know, how they managed to win that Champions League with kind of, you know, the games against Barcelona and then Bayern Munich. I think we were in Yulu together, weren’t we?

We said we were in the Yulu Union. We were in the AO, we were there. you know, I was a student at UCL, you know, a stone’s throw from Ulu. And Ulu, you know, the University of London Union was a fantastic venue for

Watching football, because you had probably students from all sorts of backgrounds. So, you know, when Barcelona scored, it would be a lot of Spanish people would be cheering for Barcelona, you know, rather than just kind of everyone in London must support Chelsea. You know, it’s some great, great Chelsea champions.

I mean, a hilarious one was in Yester’s late goal. Um, that was, that was, that was a brilliant one. I was in a pub in, I think it was at Finsbury Park when watching that game. And it turns out that, you know, that was a bad decision.

I think, you know, the Arsenal fans just went absolutely crazy, which was basically the entire club. Yeah. It was, I mean, it was just a brilliant summer to kind of have off from the perspective of sport. You had like the Tour de France, which.

Kind of caught everyone’s imagination with Froome and Wiggins kind of fighting it out. No comment. But yeah, the Olympics rolled around and the best that I was able to muster was a ticket for the beach volleyball, which was lended to me by a friend.

And at this point I was pretty much penniless because I’d kind of been living at home for the best part of a year. And I was just kind of idling before beginning my kind of graduate job in September of that year.

So it’s pretty penniless, still living at home, age kind of 26, wanting to be a part of the action that I thought I would be part of in 2005, but not really experiencing them in the way that I wanted to.

And then kind of, you know, I was beginning to hear on Twitter, which was quite early on back in, sort of continuing to be released. And I, a lot of people were relying on a trigger kind of type system, like a plugin

On kind of Chrome or Mozilla Firefox or whatever it was that was in fashion back then. But I created my own. I was like, you know, I was so bored that I didn’t want to wait for the kind of one minute trigger that you’d get on this particular plugin.

So I kind of engineered my own. Oh. It was still this session that I wanted, you know, the one with the 200 meters, Phillips Odoi. And exactly a week before the event, the trigger went and I borrowed my sister’s credit card.

And she basically paid for me to go to the Olympics, you know, a 150 pounds level ticket. And I have to say, I think I still think it’s the best 150 pounds I’ve ever spent. And I say I’ve ever spent. my sister’s ever spent on my behalf. She did get paid back.

But, you know, it, you know, you have these pre-expectations of what’s, what’s going to be the thing that takes your breath away. And actually it wasn’t any of the events that we planned to see. It was the men’s 800 meter final, which is, you know, years later continues to be

Called by, I think commentators, the greatest 800 meter race of all time. Because what happened is that every athlete posted a national record, a personal best, and even the person that placed last would have won gold at every one of the last three Olympics, I think, before that, which is just incredible.

And as it turns out, years later, I found out that you were there on the same night. And yeah, so for me, I think this third choice is basically a card from quite a well-known set and

But it was one that I had three copies of one looked a bit crap, I graded the other two, one came back a turn and that’s this card here. So this is David Radisha. He’s still a world record holder for the 800 meters.

He ran what’s considered to be, you know, greatest 800 meter race of all time. And we both happened to be at the stadium. And for me, it’s just. He is the single greatest thing I think I’ve ever seen, you know, seeing a world

Record set at the Olympics when you’re in the stadium, but also kind of, you know, he was almost someone that hadn’t heard of before I went, went to the games. It was just absolutely stunning. You go there thinking you’re there for Bolt versus Blake, and it turns out that

You’re there for something else. You’ve witnessed history, but it’s totally, totally different to what you thought you were there for. So yeah, double Olympic champion actually thinking about it. So he retained it in 2016. Yeah. And it’s, it’s interesting. I mean, I mean, adrenaline London, people, if we’re saying this is a hobby.

Podcast people talk about unique individual sets in the hobby. Um, but adrenaline London is, I mean, we don’t talk about value really on this, but it’s just an incredible set. I love that set as well. And I don’t think we’d ever spoken about it, but it’s, it’s such a unique set.

Yeah, I think it’s that the you tend not to I think, since then, well, so I suppose you’ve got you’ve got two things you’ve got you’ve got the fact that it’s a home Olympics. And for me, that’s you know, it’s a huge kind of thing that there’s kind of, I

Guess, able to experience all of that, and all of the buzz around it. And, you know, whether it was kind of the cycling or the tennis or whatever. Then you’ve got this kind of like multi-sport set that has so many of the

People that became household names during those two weeks kind of within it. And you know, a lot of these people are just ordinary people. You know, they’re not, they’re not kind of, you know, they’re probably working in businesses or whatever now. This might well be one of their only cards.

In the case of David Roudhousha, the only other card or the only other thing that I’m aware of is the sticker from the corresponding set. which is also a cool album as well, to be honest. I quite like that as well.

And I kind of find that like, absolutely mindbending in a way that kind of, you know, this is a this is a world record holder. This is a person who, you know, ran one of the greatest races of all time.

And the best card that you can go out there and find of his is still a base card in a, you know, I mean, it’s not a tops chrome type set. It’s a It’s a pretty basic set. I mean, it’s probably one peg above a match attacks.

You know, how I managed to get PSA 10 on it, God knows, but, you know, the gem weight on this particular set is incredibly low, but yeah. yeah, the bass ones are very hard to gem on Adrenaline 2012. And, uh, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s also got Anthony Joshua’s rookie card.

Um, Laura Trott, Laura Trott, I’m thinking of bass wise, Laura Trott. There’s a, there’s a Beckham bass. There’s a Gareth Bale bass. There’s a Kobe Bryant bass. Um, and then in the glitter foils. Yeah. know. Bolt’s got one of the glitter foils, which is a great looking card.

I’ll probably, I’ll pull it up after. I meant to get, I’m not gonna ruin the flow by getting the binder. And Alexander Usyk’s rookie card, Michael Phelps, Nadal, it’s just, it’s such a good set. it’s an incredible set.

And I, you know, whenever I go to one of these sort of card shows, it’s almost the set that I’m looking for. And no one ever has it. I think, you know, the print, the print runs probably kind of at this world.

I mean, you know, it’s not, it’s not, it wasn’t a low printed run type thing. But the foils and the kind of because there’s like super foils and glitter foils, which this card isn’t one of, you know, this is simply a base card.

There’s probably 10 lying on eBay if you look at it. The super files and glitter files, in my experience seem to be a lot, lot harder to find. And, you know, it’s fantastic. It’s always interesting with these ones because you don’t know if they’re just not

There because I think there’s a, there’s quite a famous Russian gymnast called Kanyava as well. That’s also quite a significant card for her. Um, but then the super foils tend to be British elite stars and those are re those appear really infrequently. Um, people like Nathan, Nathan Robertson, Andy Murray has one. Um,

And yeah, I love that. They’re quite thin, aren’t they? They’re quite like thin cards. yeah, I mean, you know, then they’re not they’re not kind of, you know, intended to be kind of sent to PSA and graded, you know, that their playground sort of cards.

It’s, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s crazy for me, you know, someone has distinguished actually, as David Rudisha doesn’t even have like an, to my knowledge, and you know, a sports Illustrated for kids type card either. you know, that that’s usually the other outlet or top trumps or anything like that.

I mean, there seems to be nothing out there. The only option you’ve got is, is actually something that is a proper card, which is quite nice. Yeah, there’s so many reasons that kind of I can go to that are about the athlete with this particular object.

But the thing is, it’s one of those that takes me back to 2012. I was there in the stadium, we saw that happen. It was incredible. This is this is an athlete that followed ever since it, you know, it’s, it’s just a personal, personal choice for me, I would

Take it to a desert island. You know, I’m not selling it under any circumstances. That’s the that’s the crux of it. The radisha pump begins now. Well, I’ll tell you what, one of the things I am looking for actually is a

Ticket from that session and it’s actually relatively difficult to get because so many people want it for the bulk subset that they’ve got on the set registry. So it’s quite a difficult ticket to find in unused condition, but I’d love to, I

Mean, you know, for me, I mean, that’s a dream, you know, get the ticket signed by someone like Rudisha. I don’t even know how you go about doing that because… Yeah, you’re talking about an athlete that resides in Kenya. So I don’t think it’s going to be easy to, you know, TTM it.

Yeah. And then, so we’re, so we’re moving then some Radisha who is a world record holder, he is, I wouldn’t describe as under the radar, but compared to the focus or that the, the star player of the next item. who’s not really under the radar.

I think that’s what I was going to say. not. And so the next item is this. It’s Panini Instant Euro 2016. It’s Portugal kind of winning the Euro 2016 trophy. And it is numbered to 229. So it’s an awesome image. Like kind of, you know, you’ve got Ronaldo kind of.

Lifting aloft this trophy that no one really expected, I think, at the start of the tournament for Portugal to win. No, no, exactly, exactly. And why have I picked it? Because I was in Portugal for the final. So me, my then girlfriend, now wife, had booked to go to a music festival in

Lisbon. You can look up the dates. They kind of coincided. It was the same weekend. The Sunday was the final, but the Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I think, were the, were the, uh, festival date. So, you know, we’d, we’d found this really cheap festival on kind of like the continent.

It was, it was insane. Uh, we, we were looking for a bargain. So it was kind of, you know, we weren’t going to pay 240 quid to go to like Clastonbury or whatever, but, you know, but, but the lineup was amazing. It was kind of like, so you had.

The Pixies, the Chemical Brothers, you have Radiohead, you had Arcadefire. are headlining this year actually, I was deliberating. I think so, yeah. You know, the other thing is that, I mean, I don’t know if you have how, how much you go to festivals, but I just, you know, I can’t do tents.

So, you know, the fact that there was basically the city festival taking place just outside Lisbon, you can get public transport there. Book an Airbnb. It’s kind of perfect because it just sort of meant that, you know, you’d have a good

Night’s sleep, you’d have a siesta in the afternoon, then you get to a festival. did a bit of sightseeing in and about. And yeah, so we used kind of our like British Airways, air miles or whatever to fly out there because tickets were understandably quite expensive.

Because you go at the weekend that the festival’s on, loads of other people are going to have exactly the same idea. And in the end, we were in the air for when Portugal were playing Wales. in the semi-final. So, you know, there was this sort of tanoy announcement and vast majority of the

Players were kind of, you know, kind of thrilled to hear that Portugal had gone 2-0 up in this game. We never saw any of it because we arrived at in Lisbon about, I think, midnight that night. But it ultimately meant that we’d be in Portugal for the final.

And so we descended on kind of, Lisbon and I had went and bought a kind of was it was a Portuguese away shirt you know one of these um I don’t know if you remember it it’s kind of from this

Tournament it was kind of like the mint green one um it’s what it’s actually such a nice shirt um and you know you’d have kind of gone into like the Lisbon night store and they’d be like oh which player do you want on the back

Can I have Ricardo Carvalho, actually, please, who is somewhere in this picture, but I don’t think he played very, very many minutes. So there I am, like kind of in the middle of the crowd. And I mean, it’s a pretty terrible game, actually, you know, I mean, nil until the

EDA scores in extra time. And, you know, the whole place just sort of erupted. And I kind of, you know, said to people that it’s probably the closest I’ll ever be to being in a country when that country win something because I’m not sure it will ever happen with England. Um, who knows.

Yeah, that final, as you say, it wasn’t the best game. I watched it in a flat in Manchester at the time. And there were so many moths around as well. There is like the game of the moths, that’s the thing. Ronaldo getting them in his mouth and all that stuff. It’s just, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, no. So that item really, I mean, I’d seen it on eBay, shortly after I’d kind of like begun collecting cards in the thick of the pandemic. And I just thought, do you know what I’m trying to buy things that mean something

To me, I’m not necessarily buying them because they are for their investments or you know, they’re going to be worth something in a long time. That said empirically, you know, you’re looking at Portugal’s greatest star lifting aloft probably the greatest accolade at international level.

So, you know, for me, it’s a one of a kind piece anyway. Yeah. I, I really like it’s weird because obviously my collecting habits tend to be more towards. Premier league. So Panini instance had never really tried to have never really scratched that, but tops now premier league between 2016 to 2019.

I love those years. Um, there are some absolutely fantastic moments just there. I know we always say that. Tickets are. great portal into the event, which obviously they are. We like tickets, believe it or not. But the Tops now, like say like Wayne Rooney breaking the Man United goal

Scoring record against Stoke, there’s a card for that printed to 225, which I absolutely love those together, just to pair even though at the mundane events, obviously the Euro 2016 wins not mundane, but I love Panini instant and I love Tops now Premier League. as well for those three years. So yeah.

We’ve got a partial example of that coming up later on. So we’ll keep that on Tentahooks for the moment. and we are going a bit off piste with the next one. We’re going away from sport. we are. So I’m kind of quite a big fan of kind of animated comedy.

Not The Simpsons, funnily enough, as probably again, you know, it goes harks back to that sort of Asian upbringing of The Simpsons are bad influence, you know, you’re not going to watch it. But kind of when it became kind of

I suppose, independent enough to choose what I could watch, which is probably, you know, early teens. I’d imagine, you know, the things that were really taking off were things like Futurama, which I loved and still love, South Park, which I watched because kind

Of, you know, if you didn’t watch it, and, you know, everyone else in school would be like, Oh, I can’t believe you’re not watching it, you know. So true. Yeah. I mean, like, I mean, I’m a few years, I’m a few years younger than you, obviously.

So I think I was, I was nine when the whole South Park, Channel 4, 9.30, Friday night, craze was there. And I was allowed to watch it much for what you say, probably the same reasons, but I like South Park. I rewatched it reasonably recently or quite a few episodes.

And there’s no way I understood any of those jokes at the time. exactly. Exactly. Even at the age of like 12, 13, I would have been, you know, kind of it, it was those early seasons, really, a South Park, a kind of like scout humor, really. I mean, it’s pretty lowbrow stuff.

And then it kind of, you know, when it hits probably that season five, it gets, it gets a lot better. Actually, I think I think the first sort of four or five seasons or four seasons of South Park are a bit kind of

Doesn’t really know where it’s going, then there’s a sort of purple patch sort of between season five and maybe, you know, 12, 13. But yeah, so I’ve kind of always been a fan of animated comedy in general. So, and I think that largely stems from the fact that kind of, you know, animated

Comedy make me laugh out loud, you know, situation comedy wouldn’t always do that. So, you know, just the… Just the ways in which, you know, something like King of the Hill, for example, you’ve got so many laugh out loud moments that arise from this ultra

Conservative kind of Hank Hill not understanding his son, Bobby Hill, who’s, you know, for all intents and purposes, the complete antithesis of Hank Hill, you know, he’s not this kind of ex American football player. fat, charming little kid who makes jokes and wants to be a comedian.

And I suppose the funny thing about the training card world is actually if you look for avenues in which you can pick up items that relate to those shows, they don’t really exist. So aside from probably the Simpsons, and you’ve got those kind of early mid 90s

Sort of cards, there’s not really anything for South Park, there’s not anything for… Futurama. There’s not anything for King of the Hill to my knowledge. And I’ve always found that quite interesting actually. And so a few years ago, I started watching Bojack Horseman on Netflix, and at first I just didn’t get it.

So I kind of shelved it for a few years and didn’t really watch it. And then I kind of picked it up again. And especially after like a few friends have said, you’d really like it, you just have to kind of stick with it for a bit.

And I did, they were right, you know, is exactly what he kind of said earlier, sort of imitates life better than some sitcoms managed to do it. And, you know, then started to do a bit of kind of research, oh, has there ever been a card set of this?

And what popped up was that there had been this like really strange on demand set with really low print run. And I thought nothing really of it. I just set up a saved search and thought, do you know what, if that comes up within

Reason, if it’s not extortionately priced, I’d kind of quite like that because every piece of commentary that I read about Bojack Horseman is it’s one of the greatest kind of comedies of all time. So, you know, if you’re thinking 20, 30 years sort of down the line, you know,

What will the Simpsons be or what will the version of the Simpsons be to this generation Z? Maybe it’ll be something like that. And eventually that saved search sort of triggered. And I managed to kind of pick up a complete set of 20 of this on-demand set

Called, I think, Tops Bojack Horseman on-demand, Horsing Around. And Horsing Around is kind of like this show within a show. It’s a bit like Itchy and Scratchy is kind of in The Simpsons. So it’s this show within a show starring.

Bojack Horseman as this sort of eponymous sort of figure within this show within a show. And so kind of about 18 months ago, I submitted all 20 cards to PSA as part of one of their like promos and just got the entire set graded.

It remains like the only set that has been graded but I just think it’s a really cool kind of like non-sports card there. So you’ve got… Yeah. You’ve got these fictional kind of individuals. There’s quite a lot of detail on the back for something that didn’t have a massive print run.

And what I’ve heard about this set is that it was basically developed as a favor to the producers of the show. And they just printed it out and that was it. It’s also a 2017 set, so the show ran beyond 2017.

I don’t believe there’s any other kind of cards related to the show. And yeah, so I mean, you know, pick this because I’m a big fan of animated comedy. It’s something that’s relatively unique within kind of my collection.

And yeah, I figure that actually this is something that kind of takes me back to kind of, you know, watching animated comedy, which is something I still do. I do it now as kind of like a way of getting to sleep, which is a terrible habit.

Yeah, you know, I’m gonna continue to do that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. um, yeah, no, it’s interesting. I, you’re taking it to a desert Island as well. So you need something maybe a bit different there. And yeah, maybe this is this is the closest I’ll get to kind of having something that

Will help me to get to sleep. I’ll have a slam. That’s just that. Yeah. And, and then we’re, you know, I knew you’re an athletics fan, but I, maybe you didn’t know how much an athletics fan you were when you were asked to choose all of

Your items because we’re going back to athletics. And again, probably the, the most famous athlete of all time, or one of the most famous athletes of all time, that’s, that’s your next item, let’s chat about that. so Usain Bolt, you know, mentioned him briefly kind of earlier in the, in, in the show.

And, you know, on this night in 2012, I’ve been lucky enough to kind of see him win his, I think what would end up being his fourth gold medal, but at the time was his fifth until the disqualification in the third one that he won in Beijing.

And yeah, I mean, you know, if you have, I mean, there’s never been an athlete in my lifetime that’s been quite like him. I think, and what I mean by that is kind of, you know, ever since I really started

Understanding kind of athletics, all of the focus was on, you know, whether the 100 meter world record would be kind of broken. So you kind of started off with like Linford for me, and then it became Donovan Bailey, and then it was Morris Green.

And then it was, you know, is Aso Bolden going to be kind of one of the people that’s going to break this record? Um, and then kind of out of nowhere, you start hearing about this guy Usain Bolt. Oh, he’s, um, you know, he’s, he’s crazy quick.

And I remember kind of, um, the summer of kind of 2008, I was, um, I just graduated from, from university and it was in between the period. when I had graduated and began my doctorate. And I’d been doing this kind of like youth radio thing for every summer for about

Four or five years up until that point. So it started off as kind of like this youth enterprise type thing where I was like trying to add something to my UCAS statement. And it just becomes something that I’d gotten very attached to and did every summer. It was like this temporary license.

We had it for a month. And you know, it was an excuse to play your songs. But in 2008, I’d gotten to the requisite amount of seniority that they entrusted me to look after and coordinate parts of the station.

And what that basically meant was that you basically sat in a parallel room to the studio and made sure that there was no swearing on there, basically. That was it. And we took the job not very seriously, to be honest, because I think.

For me, it was just an excuse to watch the Beijing Olympics, which was taking place during this time, this terribly small screen. So for the month of August, we were basically glued to what was going on in Beijing.

The buildup to the 100 meters, I think even at that point, I hadn’t even seen him run before. But you know what the 100 meters is like. You kind of have the heats on day one. kind of within the athletics stadium, which is kind of week two usually.

And then on day two, you have the semi final and final. And, you know, he’d, he’d obviously saunter to victory and basically all of those heats up until that point. And then you kind of like you’re all there, probably what was about one or two o’clock in the afternoon watching this race.

And man, but the distance by which kind of he won that 100 meters is and you know, the fact that he was showboating kind of halfway down. just the most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen in my life. This is a guy that basically shattered the world record from a position of…

He basically gave up after like 80 meters. He was just like showboating from that point on. And this is a record that had been incrementally going down by hundredths of a second up until that point. through all of the kind of aforementioned athletes, whether it was kind of Carl

Lewis or Donovan Bailey or Maurice Green or whoever it had been. I mean, you know, Bolt just came in and just absolutely obliterated this record. And then he did it again in the 200 meters. Then he did it again the following year, kind of, you know, at Berlin for the world.

So, you know, he set the… 100 and 200 meter record there, both of which still stand. Quite simply, I think, I said this on a different podcast before, but I think he’s the greatest thing to happen to athletics because he was just so far ahead of the field.

But he’s also the worst thing because the field just could not keep up. Even an athlete who’s as dominant as Saynoa Lyles is just, to my mind, he’s just nowhere near what Usain Bolt would have been. was and that’s quite amazing given how close like the 100 metres was for such a

Long period of time. So yeah, I suppose for me he’s become that athlete that I am slightly obsessed with, I would say, unhealthily obsessed with and I’ve just tried to pick up every ticket of note of his over time, whether that’s you know from

His Olympics debut through to kind of his very last races. But a few years ago, a ticket popped up on the discord that we both belong to this ticket discord. And it was a signed ticket from Usain Bolt on his Central Coast Mariners debut.

So if you’ve ever followed Usain Bolt’s career, he’s never, you know, shied away from his passion for football. And for me, the moment I saw that, I was like, I need to have that ticket. Now there’s, there was just a compulsion. Like I needed to have that ticket.

Um, and so I offered it, offered up kind of a spare professional debut for Cristiano Ronaldo that I had in my collection as a direct exchange for it. The guy happily obliged. Um, and yeah, I mean, this is it. I mean, it’s just for me, this, this is just. An incredible ticket.

I mean… This is the greatest athlete I think I’ve ever had in my lifetime that has existed, I think. I don’t know, I might have said that about Rudisha. But Bolt is… I’m so fickle. But yeah, this ticket. I suppose it’s a bit like Michael Jordan playing baseball or Peter Czech.

Becoming like an ice hockey kind of player in 2023, it’s strange because it’s almost something that you kind of have to kind of be like, did that really happen? And yes, it did really happen. And he was offered a contract by the Central Case Mariners, which he never took up.

And there is an object that happens to be from that day that he fulfilled a lifelong dream of becoming a soccer player and he signed the ticket. And for me, you know, I’ve got all of the normal tickets that you would want associated with the Usain Bolt.

I’ve got all of his world records, got the debuts, got all of the golds, got his last races, but that is the one that I think is like the cherry on top of that, that collection. And for me, it’s just, yeah, it’s, it’s an awesome piece. I just love it. I completely agree.

And it’s almost like, you know, you see quite a few things like, oh, what to collect, how to collect and all these things, which I don’t really enjoy to be honest with you. And I think, but for instance, that the way I approach collecting, if you identify

A subject piece is, you know, you have your, and I’m not gonna assign relative preference to them, but you have the. pro, you know, the, the pro debuts and stuff or the first appearances, the last appearances, milestone moments. Then, you know, the, the big moments that particular person has and then you have

Those like, I guess this is a big one, but you have those like quirky bits as well that add a bit of, you know, body to it. Like say like Beckham, you know, you’ve got, you know, day of the flying boot and

Things like that, which is all the metatarsal injury, which just add that little bit onto those sorts of more. Um, bigger moments and things. And I think that’s how you build up a body of a collection. And with Bolt, you’ve clearly done that. You’ve got the gold medal run.

You’ve got his Olympics debut and his football career is, is quite interesting. I don’t know how much you know about it. We won’t speak about it, but there’s a, it’s an interesting career and his central coast, I think he was, he was offered 150,000 net per year, but he wanted 3

Million or something like that. And they were like, we cannot. We cannot afford that as an A-League club. Yeah, I think, you know, it’s one of those where I think, you know, it’s a bit like, was it Dwayne Chambers became like an American football player or, you know, you

Hear about the odd sprinter that becomes a bobslayer and it’s like kind of, they’re not that similar actually. But I mean, it’s exactly as you say, it’s that sort of slight left field choice, but it’s one that… I think enhances the rest of the bulk collection that I have.

And, you know, if, if you had to push me to keep one of everything that I have, it wouldn’t be the run of the mill things that I have for bulk. It would be the one thing that is really unique in that collection.

And that assigned ticket from, from his football debut is, yeah, as unique as they come. It’s like, I love, I love things together as sets. There’s so much of what I try to target is things that’s like invincible, things like

This, but that, you know, it’s ultimately it’s those things, like you say, like the non reproducible things, the things that you cannot get back. So Olympics debut bolt, that’s a key. That’s a cool ticket, but you can get it back. You can, you know, you can get it back.

Um, whereas, you know, central coast, Marliners debut signed by him. There are so many barriers to one. The ticket is. pretty obscure, I imagine. And then it’s signed, but it’s crazy. But I was happy, I was very happy you included it. I thought you probably would include it, to be honest. Yeah.

I think for me it’s, you know, I wouldn’t say that it’s, it’s perhaps on, on the cultural impact level of say something like the black power salute that we had earlier. I mean, nowhere near, but at the same time in, in terms of athletes that have been

Resonant with me, um, over the course of my lifetime, Usain Bolt is for me, head and shoulders above any other kind of pure athlete. And you know, it has everything, you know, the flair, the charisma, the talent, the record, actually, to go with it.

And, you know, it’s, yeah, I’m just such a fanboy, it’s really, that I can not pick an item of relevance. And that’s what I’ve opted for. Yeah, he is a very unique individual and another unique individual, your daughter. So let’s, let’s have a chat about your next item.

Yeah, so, um, I suppose it’s, it’s probably worth kind of just, just talking through, um, becoming a father, I suppose, for the first time. And I think I was. probably like most men, not very ready for it. And, you know, my wife became pregnant in kind of autumn of 2018. And in…

The first 20 weeks, we kind of hadn’t really, to be honest, I was just enjoying not having a kid. I was just playing FIFA all the time on PlayStation. I was just like, this is gonna be my last winter where I can get away with doing this.

And at our 20 week scan, which is kind of the time in the UK where you sort of discover the sex of your child, we opted to find out, we found out that it was a daughter. And we were then told that they just needed to run a few extra checks.

Uh, so could we come back in like 10, 15 minutes or whatever, when we’re, when we’re doing this ultrasound scan and, um, you know, there, there was this brief period of kind of like, Oh, I’m so happy that I’m having a, having a daughter

Because I really wanted a daughter actually, like not, not to piss on, piss on my son, who’s lovely as well did, did say earlier about how he could do with being a better sleeper. But. You know, I’m… a lot of baby of boys and girls and let’s just say girls are better.

Yeah, I can attest to that from being a parent of one of each now. No, I love them both. I feel the need to say that. But you know, we very much kind of, you know, I was thrilled like it was a daughter.

We got asked to come back in kind of after and during this time I’ve kind of like, you know, texted my sister and said it’s a girl. performed the rest of the ultrasound scan. And at that point, they kind of came clean and said that, look, we’re seeing

Something that we don’t expect to see on this scan. And it hit us both like a ton of bricks actually. And basically what they’d seen was that I think the heart was on the same side as the stomach.

And often I think if you take a lateral view, it should be on the other side or something funny like that. Um, and so we were referred to kind of fetal medicine and this was kind of, you know, a few days before Christmas.

Um, and they, uh, ushered us back in the following day. They said, you know, we, we need to carry out for further tests. Had to undergo this procedure called like an amniocentesis, which you’re probably very familiar with, but it basically involves kind of, you know, um, extracting a bit of amniotic fluid.

It’s, you know, highly traumatic kind of procedure for my wife to kind of have gone through. And there is a chance of course of fatal loss with it. It’s not insignificant. it’s not, it’s not a, you know, and we were basically told, you know, there is a

Chance that this will result in a miscarriage. I think at the time we would, you know, we were just struggling to kind of take in all of the information and, you know, from that sort of 20 week scan onwards for the

Next, I think, five months of the pregnancy, we were in and out of, you know, hospitals, so and Great Ormond Street in London as well, just for checkups on how the development of the heart was going through to what we would be faced with when our daughter would be born.

And actually, from big questions as well, did we want to terminate this pregnancy through to things like, your daughter will probably have a laterality disorder, which means that she might have kind of, you know, her heart on the wrong side.

She may not have a spleen, which is exactly what she does have actually. She doesn’t have a spleen, which means that she takes penicillin kind of twice daily and has done kind of, you know, for pretty much all of her life and probably will do.

And, you know, I think this all kind of with the benefit of hindsight took its toll, I think on us. We didn’t quite realize quite how… affected by it we all were. And it would probably become apparent many months later when I was feeling burnt out

At work and needed to take some time off to cope with becoming a father and all of this sort of trauma that we had to sort of unpick. And the birth itself was kind of an emergency C-section, not what we had planned.

And we were in kind of post-natal ward for a number of kind of days afterwards. This is, I mean, it seems kind of like abstract, but one of the things that was sort of keeping me sane during these times was, was kind of, you know, playing

Computer games, because it was, it was escapism for me. It was, it was, you know, I have a habit of kind of burying my head into other activities when something big or traumatic is happening. And so I suppose we, you know, just got really into kind of playing computer games again,

And I suppose, you know, also watching the football and, you know, the football was actually, um, quite compelling watching that season. Um, so you had this title race where Man City and Liverpool went all the way to the wire, basically. I think that was probably the season.

I think that Liverpool finished second, but ended up winning the Champions League, if I remember correctly. I might be wrong. It was that season, wasn’t it? In fact, one of the funny things is that I remember my daughter was actually only a

Few days old when Spurs, I think, overturned the 2-0 deficit that they were at in Ajax. And, you know, it was kind of an insane sort of achievement to turn that around. This particular event had been scheduled for the day that my daughter was born, the

Fourth of May, or May the fourth, you know, so Star Wars day, and we continue to get all of the quips like, you know, is your daughter’s name layer, to which I always respond to them in the lines of no, we actually called her Jar or C3PO, which

I find humorous, but you know, maybe that’s maybe that’s the level of dad joke that I’m getting to. So this game eventually would be rescheduled to take place two days after. But the ticket that I have actually still has my daughter’s birthday on it. So if you can see there, it says 04-04-2019.

That’s the exact day that she was born. It was rescheduled for the 6th of May. And this is the game in which basically it was Vincent Company’s last home game. And he scores this absolute screamer basically from a good 30 yards out, it ends up being voted goal of the season.

And it all but really seals the title for Man City. For me, yeah, incredible goal from an incredible player for Man City, really. Yeah. And a game that was basically gridlocked at that point. And I was watching on my phone in the post-NATO awards. Even I.

Kind of had this moment of thinking, it’s all going to be OK. You know, watching it and thinking, you know, life is continuing around us. I’ve gone on and kind of, you know, ended up getting, not a lot of people kind of

Know this, but there’s, you know, we mentioned earlier, there’s a kind of tops now Premier League set, but there’s a card that actually goes along with the ticket. Now, this one actually has the corrected day of 6th of May on it. Hmm

Uh, as does the program also six of May, but yeah, that’s a little set that we’ve kind of got, um, which just sort of reminds me of that time, you know, difficult time really, um, in the grand scheme of things.

Um, but it’s also, you know, it’s my daughter’s birthday and it’s on the ticket and, you know, like Vincent company is one of these people that actually does a few signings and I have mold over whether I kind of crack it open to get it signed, but.

I’m not sure I actually would, to tell you the truth. I think that… Yeah, maybe I’ll do that. Maybe I’ll do that. Yeah, yeah, that’s probably what I should do. Yeah, it takes me back to a time in my life that was actually pretty difficult,

But also kind of reminds me that sort of, life’s going on around you. Yeah, it was a difficult time. strange to sort of pick something that reminds you of a difficult time in your life, but yeah, it absolutely had to be picked.

It’s kind of one of those that, you know, I was like, if I’m going to pick a few tickets for this show that I would take to Desert Island, I would absolutely take this one with me. And yeah, you know, that’s exactly why it’s picked. Yeah.

For me, this was, this was the, the one that I knew you’d pick. And, um, it’s also the one I was looking forward to, probably too many rom-coms in my formative years, uh, you know, too much smoltsy stuff. It was the one I was looking forward to talking about the most because it’s

Incredible and the fact that you have, you know, you probably have an affinity maybe for Vincent company, or, you know, maybe because of that as well. And it shows you. these sorts of parasocial, most relationships can develop from these moments and how we use them as an anchor. Yeah, absolutely.

I would say, you know, my wife and much of her family are Manchester City supporters. And I think by proxy, they’ve probably become the Premier League team that I most closely follow. That kind of, I suppose, abstractly will segue into the final item, because I don’t

Know if we should, maybe we should just go straight into it. I guess, I think it’s the grand finale, a real power piece. And let’s see what it is. So look, it’s this item here, which is Jordan Ibe. It’s a one of one. It’s from the inaugural Panini prism set.

On the back here, you might not be able to read but I’ll read it out to you. It says at the age of 15. I made his first senior appearance when he suited up for Wicom Wanderers. That got the attention of plenty of big club names and led to his signing with

Liverpool, where he made his Premier League debut. Now 23, I’ve continued to turn heads with this play on the wing with Bournemouth. So I grew up in Wicom, Highwicom, which is kind of where Jordan Ibe rose to prominence, I suppose, you know, as this young 15 year old player alongside

The likes of player manager, I think, or the person who would go on to be player manager, Gareth Hainsworth. Um, so, you know, really young kid, um, became Wickham’s all time kind of youngest player, but also all time youngest goal scorer, uh, and both the records I believe, which still stand.

Um, and it sort of coincided with a time where I was getting increasingly sort of disillusioned with top flight football. I think that’s the case because I think there was probably post, I think I’d probably been like Chelsea follower up until about 2013, 2014.

I think there was this kind of feeling for me that players weren’t really playing for the shirt anymore. They were sort of beginning to play for kind of, you know, money really. And it’s… be honest, it just began to wear down on me a little bit.

I was just getting more and more annoyed with the petulance of it all. At that time, Wycombe were going through an incredibly difficult time in the league, so they almost dropped out of the league altogether. They stayed up on the final day of the season, I think in the 2014-15 season,

Through basically, I think Bristol Rovers opponent sent them down rather than Wickham and they’d only I think been out of the relegation zone on that final day. And around that sort of time it was strange, I was beginning to follow Wickham a lot closer than I had ever done so as a child.

I’d always been aware of Wickham Wanderers, it would be hard not to if you were in a town where you’d grown up, the hometown had a team Were they a big deal? Are they a big deal in Wickham? Is it like a big thing?

The thing about Wickham is that it’s predominantly a rugby town. Um, and it’s always been that way. You know, it’s got a lot of, um, grammar schools that basically would, would not play, like, you know, the grammar school that I went to didn’t have a football team

Because it was, you know, not a men’s game sort of thing, you know, rugby was. And, you know, it’s no coincidence that you had the likes of, so Matt Dawson went to the same school that I did. Um, but you had lots of kind of players that lived around Bucks.

And eventually, Wiccan Wanderers would have a ground share with London Wasps when they moved out of London and before they moved to the Ricoh Arena. And the funny thing about that is that, you know, you’d have games that would alternate weekends, so, you know, to be Wiccan on a Saturday, the following

Sunday, Wasps would be playing at home and Wasps would always sell out. Hmm. Wickel on the other hand, you’d be lucky if you were half full. Um, and even to this day, they, they don’t sell out. Um, you know, it’s out of town, but Wickel, Wickel has always been like a rugby town.

It’s really strange kind of, uh, mix, um, of things. Um, and yeah, I suppose in, in around 2014, 15, it began to follow them a little bit more closely. Um, and you had this kind of strange guy with kind of flowing locks, Gareth Ainsworth becoming manager.

And it was kind of fan owned at the time. So Wickham had been owned by the same guy that owned London Wasps, who didn’t actually want Wickham at all. So in the end, exactly, in the end, no one was willing to put forward an offer.

So the supporters built a trust and got Wickham. And basically… mean, they had made loads of really tough decisions like culling the youth academy because it was too expensive to run. And, you know, it was, it was basically on the cusp of bankruptcy until Jordan I moved to Bournemouth.

And the reason is that, you know, Wickham had, I don’t know, been advised or cleverly had inserted a sell on clause of, I think, was it 25%? And that basically meant that Wickham had a windfall of nearly 4 million pounds, which for a kind of league one, league two club is just insane.

And, you know, basically kept them kept them afloat. And yeah, I suppose, you know, on from that, you know, Wickham just got a really interesting club to follow. You had the big sort of personality of Adebayo, Akinfemwa. at the end of his time at AFC with a more than joining.

But you also had these incredible players in the lower leagues. You had Eberre Eze who was on loan. But you had loads of players who would go and play at higher levels eventually. Starting off at Wickham, you had players like Alfie Mawson who became nearly an England international.

Yeah, he came back to the. He came back to Wickham, I think, a couple of seasons ago, maybe even last season, and, you know, then said, my body can’t do this anymore. It was really sad. You know what, one of the sad things about Jordan I is that his career has kind of

Gone to shit. Basically, you know, he wouldn’t even get into the Wickham team now, which is just such a sad. language warning for desert island slavs. It’s such a sad tale of kind of like, you know, I mean, you read the back of this

Card and you think this guy’s going places and obviously the place where he’s going is the cafe that he crashed his Rolls Royce into near London. And, you know, I think. Exactly. And, you know, I think he’s sort of bounced between sort of like after leaving

Bournemouth went to Derby played like a few minutes of the game there. then was released and that’s when he made his big statement on mental health. He moved to Turkey for a bit. I don’t think that worked out for him. And now I think he’s in the lower leagues.

I think he was at Ebb’s Fleet, I want to say. And I’m not even sure he’s making appearances there. So I mean, it’s a really sad tale actually. But in terms of kind of, you know, it just sort of reminds me of Wickham. really the card.

It’s almost a bit of a meme card because it’s like, you know, the moment I spent money on this, like no one’s ever going to actually want to buy that off me. But for me, it still represents kind of a team that’s incredibly fun, that I’m

Incredibly fond of and is close to my heart. And, you know, speaks volumes about the fact that I think, you know, it’s a shame that we don’t have more cards of… of clubs that we kind of follow, like in the lower leagues, I think, you know, a

Club like Wiccan Wanderers have actually had a hell of a lot of players go through it that have never had a card and will never probably have a card. So, you know, someone like Adebayo Akanpemba never had a card. Kind of can’t do anything about that.

It’s very sad that Akinfema doesn’t have a card as an example. And there are probably quite a few players. I know I’ve heard of suggestions about a Bowman type thing and things. I mean, licensing, I think will be difficult, but I don’t know. It’s a…

Yeah, you kind of, you kind of wonder whether, um, you know, it’s an appetite thing, but I think, um, slightly, you know, the, the proxy for me has become, you know, if it’s, if it’s a player that started off at Wickham or played at some

Point at Wickham, I tend to try and pick up a few of their cards. So, you know, you end up with strange things like, you know, I’m looking out for a short print Sam Vokes card cause he plays there and

I mean, you know, the market that is just like non-existent, you know, but they, it turns out that he’s in the Euro 2020 select set. So, you know, there’s, there’s the odd gold prison out there and you’re like, can I really justify spending 60 quid on this?

It’s like, probably not, but, um, you know, I mean, the Jordan I’ve cost a little bit more than that. Um, you know, um, I’m not sure I’ll ever get that back, but yeah, it’s, it’s a desert Island, um, slab for me. Yeah. the card is from 2019 Premier League Prism. Is that correct?

That’s right. Unfortunately, the labeling has this as the breakaway prism. It’s not. It’s the base. see that, but it doesn’t, I was about to say, it doesn’t look like a breakaway, but yeah. So I’m three cards off of having the complete rainbow, which isn’t something I really would bother doing for many players.

So I need the gold power. And then I need the breakaway black, which you know, if you look at the PSA pop report, it’s already been graded only it hasn’t. And I think I need like a green breakaway or something funny at 10.

I don’t know if I’ll ever complete it, but I have a few saved searches set up and, you know, if it pops up, I’ll, I’ll snipe it. And it’s to be honest, I quite like, I’m trying to think of if I own any, I do own

Some, I’ve got some, I basically wanted to collect all like Vardy color match blue cards from the Premier League years. So I’ve obviously got 2019 Prism as part of that. And I like it. It’s a, I actually quite like the slightly more zoomed out look to that set. Yeah, I like this set.

I think it’s… One of the things I will say about a lot of cards that I collect more generally in my collection is the ones that have a solid frame around the outside tend to be visually nicer to look at.

And the design of Prism Premier League over the years has not always had a defined border around the outside. So… Topps Museum, which is something that I’ve collected for a number of years now, 2019, 20, and 2020, 21, both have a frame around the outside.

The most recent one doesn’t, and I like it a lot less. So yeah, I don’t know, I think it’s similar with a lot of other things that I can think of off the top of my head, you know, Bundesliga, Chrome, the one with kind of Jude Bellingham’s rookie.

I think that’s a really nice looking card. Again, a thick border around the outside. Yeah, it’s kind of, it is a really, really nice set, I think. That particular one. it’s a 2019 Premier League Prism is a good set.

And then, I mean, I think they, you know, I’m not gonna bash Premier League Prism. It’s just, it’s not a set I tend to put on my calendar every year when it comes out. But yeah, and so that’s all the items we’ve spoken about, all eight items we’ve spoken about.

And yeah, there’s such a diverse… range that we’ve discussed. I like to think that kind of people would be not necessarily surprised by the choices that are made. I think on face value, if you tell people, oh, you’re selecting a Jordan Eye one of

One and a random ticket from a Man City game, they wouldn’t necessarily understand it. So hopefully the stories around kind of why the selections have been made have kind of added a little bit of color to why these items are important to me.

And that’s that to be honest, that’s exactly I think I, when did I speech about desert island slabs about nearly two years ago now, probably. And this is exactly why I wanted to do this because we, we hear a lot of, you

Know, we see a lot of very similar cards and they’re, they’re amazing. And this isn’t me talking bad about them. I love seeing the really lovely gold parallels. They look beautiful. And. amazing, iconic tickets, like the equivalent of Black Power. I love seeing those tickets, it’s incredible.

But for me, the being it’s actually the individual. And each time I’d like to see the individual’s choices and if they want to choose, you know, the seven equivalents of Black Powers, that’s great. That’s part, that’s their episode, it’s their choice.

But for me, hearing the company story, hearing the Lisbon stories as well is incredible. And yeah. You know, it’s deeply personal, all of these choices and kind of, you know, hopefully as you do more of these, you will hear more and more interesting stories.

It’s kind of, you know, I don’t want to be like sniffy about it, but actually, I mean, I could have, I could have chosen, you know, or I can imagine someone choosing, you know, eight 2014 gold prisms. It’s like

Doesn’t do anything for me, these items that have kind of presented, they all do something for me. And that’s kind of, you know, hopefully the essence of what others will pick to Yeah, and yeah, are there any other things, words you want to say or anything before we…

No, just, you know, I feel like I’ve done loads of talking. So I feel like, you know, hopefully, it’s not been a chore for people to listen to. That’s all. No, yeah, I was definitely incredibly entertained and the way you told the stories, like I’ve already said, incredible.

And thank you so much for coming on and being the first guest. It’s a pleasure, an honor. Right, thank you very much, Fav.