💪Finkel's Fast Five 140 - October 2, 2020

Welcome to Finkel's Fast Five #140. Thanks for reading and subscribing!

ONE
INVESTING - Hey, so how's your portfolio? Strong to quite strong?*** No, I'm not talking about stocks or bonds or ETFs or mutual funds. Boring. I'm talking about your basketball card assets. Yeah, that's right. This isn't the Motley Fool. It's the Motley Finkel and we've got thoughts.

If you haven't been paying attention to basketball cards, you better start. The price of rare cards for big-time performers in this years' playoffs have gone through the roof as "The Hobby" (as collectors like to call the industry) has roared to its greatest season in decades. Certain rookie cards of young guys like Giannis and Luka and Jayson Tatum are selling for six figures or more. Basic variations of these cards are selling for thousands. A LeBron James rookie card just sold for $1.8 million. DeMarco Williams just wrote a great piece on the card explosion for Bleacher Report if you're interested. I, myself, have gotten back into the hobby and it's awesome. These aren't the cards you grew up with. The quality and bells and whistles are very cool (uniform pieces, autographs, etc.).

TWO

FITNESS - I have a variety of playlists that I listen to in my garage gym, AKA, the Flex Factory, that I rotate between when I toss around the iron. They are, appropriately called: Flex Factory Vol. 1, Vol. 2, etc... Lately, I've been tinkering with my old school rap mix.

And no matter how I cut it, there's really no better leadoff song than LL Cool J's 'Mama Said Knock You Out'. Maybe it's the hard-hitting beat or the 'knocking out' part or the leadoff "Don't call it a comeback!!!"... But it is truly workout music perfection. I realized I hadn't seen the video in a decade at least and it's so good. LL spitting into the mic. The hoodie. The boxing ring. The bench pressing. It's memory lane meathead nirvana. Enjoy it right here.

THREE

HIKING - If there's one thing that being stuck inside during parts of the pandemic taught us, it's this: being outside > being inside. With everything closed, my kids and I took up hiking and trails like never before, from the lakes of Texas and now to the Everglades of Florida.

As I posted pictures on Instagram I started following people who posted hiking pictures from places I'd likely not be for a while, and one of my favorites is a woman whose handle is BackpackerMittens. I know, goofy name. And it's also not a very big account so you've never heard of it. But she takes absolutely stunning pictures of her hikes and kayak trips in the Pacific Northwest. Crisp. Clean. Amazing shots of mountain ranges and ridges and lakes. If you like nature photography, you'll enjoy her work. Like this very cool photo from Washington State.

FOUR

KIDS - We have a new favorite family show on Disney+. Thankfully, it's not another show where the snarky kids are all smart and the parents are dumb and the teenagers are all "seriously? really? literally?" Yeah, you know those shows.

This show is actually a behind-the-scenes look at the doctors and staff and animals of Disney's Animal Kingdom and it's surprisingly fascinating for both kids and adults. In the first episode they did a massive procedure on a chicken whose eggs were stuck that took like 5 people and blood from a rooster and weird anesthesia and it was...mesmerizing. They fixed a giraffe's bum ankle and gave an elephant a throat exam with an iPad and like I said, it's a smart, educational show that we ate up.

FIVE

A favorite quote about being outside:

"It's been proven by quite a few studies that plants are good for our psychological development. If you green an area, the rate of crime goes down. So we need them, in some deep psychological sense, which I don't suppose anybody really understands yet."

- Jane Goodall

BONUS:

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