← Collector Nation
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- [00:00]
A
I was doing this buying and selling cards before there were written price guides, before the Internet, before ebay was in existence. Most of my competitors said it's not going to get a bid. Yo, tiny ball. $4.4 million. The damn thing went for it.
- [00:16]
B
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's your host, Ryan Al Foreign.
- [00:37]
C
Some people sell cards, some people build platforms, and a very small group of people actually move markets. Today's guest has been at the center of some of the biggest moments this hobby has ever seen. Through Golden Auctions, he's helped redefine what elite collectibles are worth and more importantly, who's paying attention. And with King of collectibles, the golden touch, he didn't just showcase the hobby, he expanded the audience. But what I respect most is this. He understands that value is not accidental. It's timing, his positioning, his psychology, and it's discipline. So today I want to go beyond those headlines and I want to get into how he thinks about leverage, market cycles, ego risk, and where this industry is actually headed. Ken, welcome to Collector Nation.
- [01:27]
A
Glad to be here, Ryan. Thank you for having me.
- [01:29]
C
Hey, man. Respect, dude. Hey, who would have thought collectibles and it would show up on Netflix.
- [01:37]
A
Certainly, certainly not me. When I was a 12 year old nerd sorting out my cards in my basement.
- [01:44]
C
It's brought back a lot of nostalgia for me. I, I got, I have four boys that got back into it two years ago and, and I had everything on the shelf from when I collected. I, you know, had not even brought it out of the closet. The boys had never really shown interest in it, and they did. And two years later, I've got a show in the hobby, I got a store, and I am knee deep in it. But it's been helped and aided by the work you've done in bringing more awareness to the space and knowledge, quite frankly.
- [02:14]
A
Thank you. I'm glad. My, the biggest thing when I started golden, you know, know, is because I've been in the business for years and I looked at the landscape of the industry and I said, everybody who is already a serious collector, they're gonna, they're gonna go to my website. I can't say golden.com at that time it was goldenoptions.com. we didn't have, we didn't have the, we didn't have the, the domain. I said, they're gonna find me. What I really want to do is Go to people who are the sports fans, the casual buyer, somebody who goes into Target and Walmart, buys a box for their kids and. And. And that's it. And doesn't even go to card stores. I say, I want to reach those people. I want to reach mainstream America. And that's really what I tried to do since I started golden in 2012, is bring new people into the hobby and expand, you know, the pie. Hopefully a lot for myself, but as
- [03:12]
C
a result, for everybody, hey, man, it's smart business. I've done marketing for 25 years for some of the largest brands in the world. And you know what I'd call that, Ken? That's called. There's something called BDI and cdi. BDI is brand development. You want to elevate your brand, but your brand only matters when you elevate the category. You've elevated the category, and your brand has come all along with it. So it's been two dual paths is what I would define that as. Yep, you are a category to finder. Here you are. I mean, I. It's. It's been interesting watching kind of the reaction to the show. I want to get into that, but I do want to start with this, Ken. You know, we see the show, we see everything that you're doing. What's one thing maybe serious collectors consistently misunderstand about Ken Golden.
- [04:05]
A
I would say the majority of people who have a big misunderstanding think that I am a. And I, I am a businessman, but they think that I am a businessman first or that I am in this for the money. It's a money grab. It's an opportunity. Because there have been so many people, especially since 2019, that have come into the business. And, you know, as, you know, there's big money. But what people have to realize is I was doing this buying and selling cards before there were written price guides, before the Internet, before ebay was in existence. Okay, before cell phones. So I have been doing this my entire life, and I have never made any money outside of the collectibles industry. And it started for me as a passion, simply as a way, hey, I'm going to be collecting. How do I afford to buy my next item? And I started as a little kid, acquiring collections, keeping what I wanted, and then selling off the rest. So that's really the big thing, is people who do not know saying, oh, so this guy is some rich businessman, you know, some hotshot came into the industry, saw a money pot, and then built a big business. No, that's not how it was. This the business kind of, you know, the world kind of came to me with something I had been doing literally since the 1970s.
- [05:39]
C
True OG is what I'd call that. And look, Ken, I have to be honest. When I only knew you peripherally and didn't start studying a little bit more, I thought that exact thing. I was like, this guy is just a shrewd, badass business dude. And I still think you'd probably be successful in any business with your smarts, intelligence, and sort of business savvy. But I was, hey, raise my hand. You nailed it. That was what I thought. So I'm sure others do. You probably. You have to get that a lot.
- [06:09]
A
I do. I definitely. I definitely get a lot. And, you know, it's fine. And, you know, look, the difference is, you know, my wife's a doctor. Okay. And I'll make a generalization. Sorry for the doctors, but a lot of doctors are really intelligent people at what they do. Medicine. But they may not be good businessmen. Okay. There are a lot of people that have a skill, and they're very good at that skill, but it may not develop to something else. You know, I have always been a marketer. I've always been a great business person. And, you know, the fact, you know, my business happens to be a collectible business, and there's. There are a lot of other auction houses that were around in 2012 that were doing 5 million a year, 10 million a year, 30 million a year. I was probably, when I started, you know, golden. We were probably 250th in sales, and then we gradually climbed up the charts until 2019. We were number two, and then we overtook Heritage as number one. That is. That's business skill. That's marketing. That's hard work, and that's understanding the market and. And your customer. And honestly, a real passion for the business and, you know, a drive to be the best.
- [07:32]
C
Yeah. I mean, and look, you understood the. The most important thing, which is attention matters, and attention is currency. I look at most auction houses, and I'm kind of like. But what you realize is attention, like, mass attention, leveraging media, leveraging personalities, leveraging the people in the space. And I mean, again, I think it shows your marketing chops as much as anything. But what was that light bulb moment for you? Because obviously, there's a lot of things in collectibles that are, I don't know, storytelling moments. And look, you got autographs and stuff that drives attention anyway. But there was something or some moment, I don't know, that clicked for you with mainstream media being an avenue and the friends you've made and kind of putting that out there and leveraging that into awareness.
- [08:32]
A
Sure. I mean, look, prior to forming Golden Auctions, some people may know I was the creator of classic trading cards, the creator of the classic draft picks, four sports, the first Shaquille o' Neal card, first Kobe Bryant card. I also was the same individual who signed all these legends like Joe DiMaggio and Mickey man on Muhammad Ali, Ken Griffey Jr. Wayne Gretzky, Montana, Cal Ripken, Nolan Ryan, everybody, really. And put them on tv. I sat on QVC Network next to Mickey Mantle. I sat on HSN next to Joe Montana. So I, back in, literally in my 20s, had the idea of selling sports cards and sports collectibles to the mainstream. And it's funny, all of what's going on now with, you know, with the ebay lives and the whatnots and all the streamers, it's. To me, it's like reminding me, hey, that's, that's, you know, what, what I did in the 80s and 90s, you know, selling on, you know, GVC and HSN, except there were no. That we weren't breaking back then. But. So I went into the business with a very acute knowledge of not only the trading card industry, but a significant number of athlete relationships and a lot of experience of getting comfortable in front of a camera, being able to talk to a camera, being able to talk to an audience. So when, you know, when that business slowed and I was. I was looking at the landscape and, you know, that's when some of the auction houses were getting in trouble. They were getting in trouble with, you know, bidding. They were getting in trouble with, you know, selling fake items, bad authentication. And I said, if I establish an auction house where, you know, first of all, you know, we guarantee everything we sell, which nobody did. Everybody had in their book, you know, 20 page disclaimer. And, you know, everything is sold as is. No warranties, no represent, no, no, no representation. I'm like, screw that. I'm like, we're gonna give every even autograph, you know, and. And there may still be a catalog like this that they sold a game used item. It said, your receipt is your letter of authenticity. We're the experts. And I'm like, no, I want, you know, I. I want to get. I want to get something from the athlete. I want to get something from the team. I want to get something from Photo Match, you know, so, you know, all of our cards, we said, we're going to Use the major third party graders, all the autographs we wanted to use, you know, authenticate, you know, proper authenticators and same for game used as well as player collections. And I said, here's what I want to do. You know, I obviously been in business for many years. I didn't go into the business broke, starting golden. So I had money, but in actuality I started with $100,000. And I said, I'm really going to take, you know, the Jeff Bezos approach to business. And what I'm going to do is my first couple years, I'm going to know that I'm going to lose money and I'm going to try a bunch of stuff that I don't think had ever been done in the industry and I'm going to throw it against the wall and see what stuck. So we went out and I tried to find the highest media attention items that I can get. And I flew out to Las Vegas, I saw my friend Pete Rose and I said, pete, I'm starting an auction house. I said, what do you got for me? He goes, oh crap, you know, I've sold almost everything. I said. He goes, but there is something I think you can get. You know, I just sold this guy my banishment contract from baseball. So he put me in touch with the guy who bought it and we got it for the first auction. And at the time, Darren Ravel was working for espn. So he came to the office, there was a big, big publicity and you know, real dog and pony show about the auction and making it special. And we got a lot of publicity we generate. It didn't sell because it had a reserve. Didn't sell. That didn't matter because I got a lot of eyeballs. I got a letter of registrations. We did $800,000 in our, you know, first auction. Everything sold tremendously. There was a hurricane in the middle of it. So I stopped the auction. I was hurricane, Hurricane Sandy. And we said, okay, I donated like $50,000 worth of merchandise that I had and we auctioned it off to the Red Cross and just generated a lot of publicity. And I just tried a lot of things. I did a deal with Dupont Registry. You know why they sell really expensive cars. So people of money, I figured go there. I did a deal with the Rob Report. I did a 10 page insert into the ROB report in 2013 with almost no revenue, for almost no revenue to go. But I want people to know about gold. And so I did everything I could in the first two years of business to gather a large Audience. And I think that that user base that I established, whereas everybody else's was stale, mine was, was brand new. They were newly energized people. A lot of it was becoming international because of all the media. And it was a lot of new money that wanted to spend money on collectibles. And that business approach of being willing to spend money, being willing to go out and lose money and say, I don't care how much I lose, I want to build market share until I'm in a position to really compete. That's what set golden up for the future of where it is today.
- [14:15]
C
That's called branding. Building brand over time. And like, sometimes the product isn't the product, sometimes the product is the marketing. And you seem to learn that a lot of people don't know that because it's just, it's hard too, because look, I'm an entrepreneur. I've been in, I've been an entrepreneur for 10 years. You know, you got to pay the bills, you got to do things, you get, you got pressure to want to be successful and make profit. But sometimes in those early stages, you can kind of sabotage that for the long, you know, just playing the short game. Seems like you understood the long game that was involved in building the golden brand.
- [14:54]
A
No, definitely. I mean, well, look, when I started the business, I, I said to my wife, you know, if I can build this up to a, you know, a ten million dollar a year business, you know, again, I didn't know how stressful the business would be. I didn't know everything. I said if I could build up.
- [15:09]
C
We never do. We never do, Ken.
- [15:11]
A
If I can build this up to a $10 million a year business, you know, I can do this comfortably for the rest of my life, stress free, and I'd be happy with the $10 million a year business. I didn't know, you know, I'd be pushing half a billion. But you know that that's, you know that that's how. How good businesses, good marketing and good industries, you know, take hold.
- [15:32]
C
Yeah, Ken, Shifting to like deal making and things like that. So when a million dollar car lands on your desk, what's the first things that you evaluate?
- [15:44]
A
Sure. So is this something we have on consignment or is this something we want to get?
- [15:49]
C
Maybe it just, it lands in your. Look, Ken, I know everything we just talked about builds towards things landing in your lap sometimes, right?
- [15:56]
A
Sure.
- [15:56]
C
You know, a call, someone walks in the door, a friend of a friend, you know, you know, a million dollar item or card lands There, you know, okay, what are you. What are we evaluating?
- [16:08]
A
Sure. So first of all, I'm trying to figure, you know, when I look, I'll look at the card and say, hey, who is this going to appeal to? You know, first of all, is it sports or non sports? Okay. And then let's say it's sports. Is it vintage or is it modern? And then when I determine what it is, and let's say, because there's a. There is obviously a difference in the way that I would market a PSA 10 Charizard or Pikachu illustrator versus a 52 tops mantle versus a T206 Wagner or versus a Cooper flag super factor, for example. Right. You know, they, they all, they're all going to appeal to, to different, different people. So I really need to look at the card, find out why it's worth that much. Who is collecting that?
- [17:00]
C
Is it.
- [17:00]
A
Is it something that is leaning more towards, hey, I need to fill a spot in my collection because this is like a holy piece. Like, like something like a Wagner, or is this something, Hey, I believe that Victor Wembanyama is going to win five MVPs, and this could turn a million dollars into a $5 million card. And then it's therefore my job to explain not only who Wemby is, but more importantly this particular card, why this card is unique. Okay. For example, we've got a card right now in the gold 100. I'll use an example. Victor Wembanyama. It is his Topps Chrome superfractor. It is his first ever NBA licensed autograph superfractor. And to me, that makes it his most important card. It's the first Topps Chrome card that was issued since the 2008, 2009 season. It's autographed. It got a high grade of an 8.5. A lot of these supers or not, or you're even seeing people get him authenticated, you know, just off. So to me, that is a key card. And it's up to me to not only put together a package that explains why this card is important. The on card autograph, the history of top superfractors, the mystery surrounding cards like, like the, like the missing Steph Curry superfractor. And this is the first Wemby. As well as the fact that that. As well as the fact of where are the people that will want to buy this card? How do I reach them? And then on behalf of my consigner, how do I get above expectations? Because comps are one thing. What we want to do at golden is we want to drastically exceed comps on all of the high end cards. You know, right now we've got, well, this will, you know, in our vintage auction we had a 52 mantle SGC 7.5 sold at REA eight months ago for 250,000. At the time of we're recording this, it's $520,000 on Golden. I think that is a result of our videos, our photography, our tremendous user base that is so much bigger than anybody else's. But that's really when people come to us with the big items. That's really what they want us to do is hey, I'm looking to get several octaves above the comp. And this is what you guys are the specialties, you know, specialists at.
- [19:47]
C
You know, you think about like what increases the value of something and it just dawned on me, you got psa, okay, you grade it right and that changes the value. But now golden is a product that you layered on these collectibles. That's a multiplier. Is a lot of what you're describing because of the marketing and cachet that your brand will apply to a high end collectible.
- [20:13]
A
Yeah, it's, I think it's, I think it's the cachet people think, you know, I've seen tweets, bucket list, sell something on golden, bucket list, buy something off Golden. But the ability is, the importance is, you know, like when I'm dealing with a card like that or with let's say it's a jersey, whatever it is, that high figure, you know, I can't tell somebody. I promise you it is going to sell for X price. What I can tell them is on the day the auction closes, what I'm going to guarantee you is there will not be a single human being on the planet who might have possibly been interested in this card and has the money to buy it. That will not know if it's on golden.com right now and it's closing tonight and that's all you can do, that's
- [21:05]
C
all you could do. And that's a bigger problem than people realize because a lot of times it's like just people being aware that something is available. But when you kind of reach the depths and the width that you guys do at the level that you do, I mean you're turning over every coin, you're hitting every target. This is a Facebook ad. You've got every, every eyeball that could be on it that would be interested checked on. And again, it goes back to marketing prowess as Much as anything, Ken. And talking with Ken golden needs no. No introduction. I want to ask you this, Ken, as I've come back into the hobby and you've got mainstream, you know, Main street investors now coming in.
- [21:49]
A
Yep.
- [21:51]
C
Investment versus collecting, you know, even kids now, you know, that are at the shows, they're running around and it's like we're flipping, you know.
- [21:59]
A
Yep. Oh, yeah.
- [22:01]
C
It's always been that way. That's not new. I did some of that when I was young. But where's the line drawn between the collector versus the investor? And are those getting blurred or it just. It seems like, I don't know, there's more investors than there are collectors.
- [22:17]
A
Well, I think that, you know, first of all, the short answer is that there are. There are tons of more collectors than there are investors. I can tell. You know, I can tell you that.
- [22:27]
C
But other collectors turning into investors. Yeah. Like it sounds like.
- [22:31]
A
But the difference is there are very few in terms of percentage pure investors. When I say pure investor, I mean somebody who doesn't give a crap about what they buy. They never take possession of it. It goes right into a vault. It's in a limited holding period. It's for sale at the highest price immediately. Things like that. They don't have any emotional attachment. Whether they buy soccer, whether they buy baseball, whether they buy vintage, whether they buy modern, whether they buy Pokemon or whether they buy a game. Used item does not matter because it's just an asset. There are very few of those people. Most of the people who are investors do have a passion for it, and they prefer to spend their money on something that they like. They know, they feel they have a better understanding of than, say, the stock market, better understanding of than modern art. They feel that their knowledge can make some sort of a difference and an impact. And, you know, also if. Especially if. If it's. If it's. If it's an active athlete, gives them a general rooting interest. You know, like every. Everybody who was a Drake May Holder was certainly praying for the Patriots in the Super Bowl, Right?
- [23:55]
C
Yeah.
- [23:55]
A
You know, we were rooting for the Patriots, too. Only because, you know, we were going to sell more of his card than we are. Sam Darnold.
- [24:02]
C
Yeah, exactly. All those silver prisms.
- [24:06]
A
But I think.
- [24:07]
C
How far has that dropped, by the way, since the Super Bowl?
- [24:11]
A
Look, I think. I think that the. I think the key with Drake May is the whole season was unexpected. Okay. Let's face it. The whole season was unexpected. It gives hope for the future. It is another rising team and rising quarterback in the quarterback rich AFC to, you know, compete with the Mahomes' and the Allens of the world for future dominance. And, you know, he's very young. I mean, it's his second year, so he's very, very, very young. And, you know, the other thing is that you can't discount the fact that collectibles 100% have become an alternative asset. Okay? It is there. There are, there are privately held funds now doing this. There are public funds that are being formed to do this. There are individuals that do it on their own. I know I would not. Look, I will say this, this is not how I would invest, but I know people who have $25 million collections and if they buy something for $15,000 from me, they cannot send a check. They have to consign to cover it because they have a mortgage in their house. They don't have a ton of money in the bank, but everything they have goes in cards because, you know, they don't trust the dollar, they don't trust crypto. You know, I don't, I don't either. Sorry. They don't trust the stock market, they don't trust government bonds, but this is what, this is what they know. So there are people that, you know that do that, and that's their investment as well. And obviously now, you know, unless you've done it very, very foolishly, you know, those, those people have done quite well over the past three, five, 20 years,
- [26:08]
C
I would say, for sure. And I want to talk a little about where you see things going, but the Netflix show, I'm going to ask sort of a question I know the answer to, but I just want the audience to hear it. Did the show increase deal flow or just visibility?
- [26:26]
A
The show increased deal flow tremendously right now, for example. You know, look, a lot of this is, a lot of this is, you know, the acquisition by ebay, the single sign on by ebay, and things like that as well, and access to their 140 million users. But, you know, really, Netflix dropped in April of 2023, and I believe right now probably 80% of everyone who is a registered bidder at golden has joined since the show came into fruition. And we had, I would say, the largest organic user base prior to that by far over anybody, I mean, well into the six figures before that even happened. So. But it definitely does. There are a lot of people, Look, I got the Ohtani ball because of the Netflix show, okay? And there's an example where people said, I'm talking about Comps and talk about outperforming expectations. You know, I started that ball at 500,000. Most of my competitors said, this is a 50, 50 ball. The 50, 50 ball. It's not going to get a bid, you know, And I said, no, this thing's going to go for over a million dollars, trust me. Because I understood the power and importance of Ohtani in the marketing. Of course, $4.4 million the damn thing went for.
- [27:48]
C
But unbelievable.
- [27:50]
A
That came to me because of. Because of Netflix. You look at the Pikachu Illustrator, obviously I would not have sold the Pikachu Illustrator. I would not have gotten the call for the Shields Wagner. I would not have gotten the John Terry collection out of England. He, he. I mean, you'd be surprised. So many people. You know, my Instagram right now, I've got over 400, 400, 400,000 followers
- [28:20]
C
for,
- [28:20]
A
you know, a guy from South Jersey who plays with. Plays with cards on Instagram and everybody from all walks of life. It's not just the individuals who find something. It's not just the hobby people who DM me. But, you know, John Terry, you know, Chelsea legend, multiple, you know, five. Five Premier League championships, the Champion league, Champions League championship, you know, DM'd me on Instagram to introduce himself. I watched a show. I'd like to talk to you about my collection. I've got other athletes do that. I have athletes in the NBA that message me and tell me, hey, are you. I see sometimes you have courtside seats at the. At the Sixers. Are you going to be there this weekend? I'm going to be in town. You know, Tyrese Halliburton is one of those individuals as an example. Giannis is one of those individuals. So it is a great vehicle and it really introduces the world to collectibles. And I have so many people that tell me that they are into buying collectibles cards and everything else because of the show. I walked into Canon Collectibles in Beverly Hills and they said, I can't tell you, Ken, how many people come in the store and say, just walking down Beverly Hills and walking down our street and walk in and say, oh, I got into cards because I saw K and collectibles on Netflix. I was watching this show Patrick Bet David had. I don't know if. I don't know if he's famous world nationwide. He certainly isn't up and down the East Coast. Morgan and Morgan, injury law. Okay, John Morgan. And John Morgan was being interviewed and he just brings up. He goes, I was watching this, you Know Sean on Netflix about collectibles, can collectibles. He goes, I got a lot of that stuff. And Pat. Pat goes. Patrick goes. Ken Golden. And Guy goes, yeah, Ken Gold. And Patrick goes, yeah, I know Ken golden very well, friend of mine, great businessman. And, you know, but like, it's. It's so. It is so many people that watch it. And so it got so many people into it. And really, it's been a big. It's been a big boost to the entire industry, I believe.
- [30:37]
C
Yeah. And, Ken, I have a phrase that I actually have trademarks working on. It pays to be known. That's. I think that's 101 in that. In a lot of ways, especially when you do it right. I mean, sometimes there is such thing as negative publicity. But so what's happening right now? I mean, how do you keep discipline, you know, during, like, peak hype cycles? And it's. How do you hold it all together when, you know, it's. It's. There's a lot of things that sort of impact this space. I mean, you being one of them, being a market mover, influencer. But there's variables outside of your control that can kind of hype things up, hype things down. How do you balance all that?
- [31:29]
A
Sure. So first thing is, is you obviously have to be able to have control over what you can and understand the things you can't control. For example, there are a Covid. Covid. Whole Covid thing that was, you know, to go back to Alan Greenspan, you know, during the stock market in part of the 80s bubble, you know, irrational exuberance. Okay. It was irrational buying during that because we had junk that should not have gone up five or six times. It went up because people jumped into it who did not understand, and they bought indiscriminately. And they were buying stuff like 87 tops, you know, wax boxes for $250, you know, just. Just stuff that just, you know, like base cards for hundreds of dollars that we all knew were going to drop down to, like, 30 bucks. Okay, but now what. The good thing about what's happened now is I think every. I really do think everybody buying is significantly more educated and. And has significantly more knowledge than they did in 2020 and 2021 when they were buying. The things that I see that go for what I say, oh, my God, that is a stupid price. It's not, because I don't think the item itself is a great item. I think it's just an overpay of a great item, which may work out for the person in the long term, I don't know. But that's different than a stupid price freeing an item that sell ever be at a premium. The stuff that's going crazy, prices, maybe people think they're high, but they, there's nobody going to say that these are not the creme de la creme. These are not the premium items. Here's things we can't control, you know, we can't control, you know, we can't control interest rates. We can control if, you know, I'm running an auction and Bitcoin goes from $120,000 down to $60,000 and some percentage, you know, not a lot, but some percentage of the buyers, typically modern, typically more TCG oriented than sports oriented, happen to be, you know, holders of crypto and maybe they feel poorer as a result of that. You know, we also can't, we also can't control, you know, private deals that are not transparent that post really, really, really big numbers that people look at and say, hey, is that real? And you know, my viewpoint is that you can't base an industry off of one comp or one sale. And I think that's very important for people. Like, let me, let me give you an example. I'm going to give you an example. At golden, okay, we sold a first edition Pokemon box, the box break of Logan Paul for about 1 slightly under $1.4 million. So people can't go out there and say that a first edition Pokemon seal box is worth 1.4 million. It was an experience. It was, it's a box break with Logan Paul. They were advertising, basically advertising slots sold to a large YouTube audience. The people buying it were businesses and things like that. So. But somebody looking at that, oh my God, this thing went for 1.4. That is not a true comp. I just want to tell everybody you shouldn't use that. Is it, is it possible in a right break that one of these boxes can break again for a million dollars? Yeah, it's possible in the right break, in the right circumstances with the right type of celebrities and things like that. So that's really the big thing is that I look at the industry and when I look at trends, I try to find patterns. I don't try to if something looks like a complete aberration either. And this could be both ways. It could be a great sale, it could be a shitty sale. Okay. It could be a card that typically comps, you know, how many I'm going to use one that that is, you know, very. I'll give you two examples, a modern and a non modern 52 tops mantle and 96 tops tops chrome cobie refractor. Okay, you can have a PSA 10 Kobe refractor, but and it's going to go for double what the next one will based on the aging of the chrome and based on the coloring of the chrome and is the comb, you know, is the chrome greening and things like that. Because PSA doesn't grade it based on that. So the eye appeal of one, oh God, that's, that's only one for $85,000. But then all of a sudden somebody else can have a sale. It's 160 people wondering what's going on? Is it going up? No, it was a bad example. Same thing with a 52 mantle. You can have a 52 mantle and a 5 that's nice colors and nice centered. Go for double what? One that's also graded a PSA 5, but just doesn't have the eye appeal and maybe is more off center. So people, when they're looking at these apps, whether they're Card Ladder or whether it's money movers or whether it's any other app that's out there, they have to dig behind the surface data and say, hey, before I make my judgment, is there something else I should take into consideration? But basically it's look at what's going on. And really for me a lot of it is don't buy into the hype and the latest hot thing. You know anybody I saw, I saw a friend of mine, Jared Blesnick, post something about all the labubus he had in his warehouse because he thought it was gonna be the next big thing. And I'm like, dude, don't you remember Beanie Babies? I mean, you know, I, I, I could, I could, I could have called that one. But it's really, you know, stuff that seems faddish, something that seems that could be drastically affected by one incident. Those are the things to be, to be wary of. And you know, look in, you know, everything cycles up and down. We are absolutely in, I don't want to call peak market because some people mean peak mark is the top. I don't mean peak market as the toppings. I don't want to call it top, but we are definitely in a hot market. We're in a peak market but the bases continue to expand. It doesn't mean stuff can't go down 30% or 40% in a three or four month period. And if stuff does go down 30 or 40%. It doesn't mean it's over. What it means is it's a business cycle. Baseball's been around since the 1860s. Baseball cards have been around since the 1860s. You know, it's something I think that's going to go on for, you know, as long as, you know, as long as there's people on earth, there's going to be collectibles.
- [38:46]
C
Yeah, I agree. It's built into the human condition, whatever that is. I think we are talking with Ken Golden. Ken, you kind of answered this, but I'm going to let you put a fine point on it.
- [39:03]
A
Sure.
- [39:04]
C
It's kind of two parts. You answered the second part. But I think there's a lot of curiosity out there. You hit. We're kind of in a peak, or not a peak, but a high point right now with everything both awareness, interest and maybe prices. I was going to ask you, like, are we in a long term maturation phase or another setup cycle? And then part two of that was if we did hit a kind of a downturn, which segment holds strongest? Vintage, high end or modern?
- [39:33]
A
Sure. So look, my viewpoint is that we are in an expanding market. Okay. And the reason where I can tell you are an expanding market is, you know, I think that I sit when I look at a keyboard, when I look at a, when I go, when I look at a screen. I think I sit at an access point that is better than any other human being's access point in the entire industry. When I say that, I mean better than Michael Rubin of tops, I mean better than Nat Turner of psa. I, I mean better than everybody. Because at the same time I have the ability to see all the sales, not each individual one, but all the sales and trends for all the collectible categories that are going on on ebay. Because golden is an ebay company. And I'm beside CEO of Golden. I'm a corporate officer, but the admin of Golden. So every day I can see how many new users I am getting, how many new bidders, how many people are applying for credit, how many people are asking to have their bid limit raised, how many bids a day we're getting, how that compared to a week ago, how that compared to a month ago, how that compared to a year ago, what my average asp, all this information that people would kill themselves to get. I see it all the time. And I walk around with my iPad and I'm looking at it all the time. So I can tell people from an educated point that the market is still expanding, that There are people from other countries that are getting into it that there are pockets around the world that never bought, you know, never bought collectibles in general, but certainly never bought cards that are now buying cards. So we are in, we are in a market that is continuing to grow. And I expect, honestly with, I expect with the fanatics impact, you know, and with you know, more money being spent by the leagues and marketing, I, I expect that we will continue to expand the collector base. But expanding the collector base does not necessarily mean a smooth ride for prices. It does not necessarily mean a guarantee of prices going up. Because there is a lot of fluff when we have repacked businesses that can be selling multiple repack companies that are digital repack that can be doing $500 million a year, recycle, recycling the cards, you know, over and over and over again, the same graded cards and the buybacks and this and that and everything else like that. There is certainly a lot of risk built into the market and people should understand that this is a market that is built on a significant amount of risk and they should be engaging business accordingly. At some point certain things will go down. Now my viewpoint always is whatever goes down the least is going to be both the least speculative of everything as well as the longest running. So to me it's an obvious answer. To me I think that the most speculative and the market that has been on fire the most has been the TCG market, okay? Especially Pokemon around the past two years. Look, anybody who's been dealing with this business and now you have one piece and everyone's buying one piece because they want to will one piece into being the next Pokemon and they want to get those. They're doing what they do with friggin NFL draft pick quarterbacks. They're projecting a guy to win three Super Bowls before he's played a game in the NFL and they're pricing that into it. And that's, that's how people get burnt. So that would be to me the riskiest only because it's the newest and it's the most fluffed up over the past few years. To me the safest is going to be vintage, specifically the boring vintage baseball. You know, nobody is, I will tell everybody this, nobody is going to lose money buying Mickey Mantle cards. It's just, it just, it just doesn't happen. It hasn't happened for 70 years.
- [44:21]
C
There you go. My, I had my Harmon Killer brew, Willow E. Maze and Mickey Mantle sitting here.
- [44:27]
A
Stick with that. 68 fence busters.
- [44:30]
C
This is 1968 superstars, tops. And then I brought this because you pulled two of them.
- [44:37]
A
Okay. Oh, God. There you go. Bird magic.
- [44:39]
C
Yes. Another great.
- [44:40]
A
Yeah. And I pulled it. Oh, pulled it right at him. Right.
- [44:44]
C
Oh, my God, look at you. Oh, send me that hin as a thank you. That's awesome, dude. Oh, yeah. But so vintage. Vintage baseball. So not. My basketball's no good look, basketball.
- [44:59]
A
But what basketball has is, you know, outside of soccer, basketball is the most international of all the sport.
- [45:07]
B
Thanks for tuning in to the show. Be sure to follow us on your go to podcast platform and catch the full video episode over on YouTube. Visit us@collectornation.com and follow Ryan on Instagram at Ryan Alford. Now get out there and collect yours.