PBD Podcast | EP 140 | Ken Goldin 'The King Of Cards'
FaceTime or Ask Patrick any questions on https://minnect.com/
PBD Podcast Episode 140. Patrick Bet-David is joined by sports collectibles guru Ken Goldin.
Ken Goldin is the Executive Chairman and Founder of Goldin Auctions, the leading marketplace for trading cards, collectibles and memorabilia. Ken is one of the most widely recognized leaders in the collectibles industry and over the course of his career has sold more than $1.3 billion in memorabilia from many of the biggest names in sports, history, and pop culture.
Visit Ken's website https://bit.ly/3LCzS9F
To reach the Valuetainment team you can email: booking@valuetainment.com
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About:
Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
0:00 - Start
1:14 - Elon Musk buys 9% stake in Twitter
13:50 - Ken Goldin opens cards with Drake
28:29 - Most expensive cards ever sold
49:45 - Logan Paul purchased the most expensive Pokemon card ever
53:55 - What cards are undervalued vs. overvalued
1:05:42 - How trading cards became cool again
1:10:50 - Are there Indexes for trading cards
1:20:15 - Opening a trading card box worth $25,000
Episode number 140 with the one and only king of cards, Ken Golden, from Golden Auctions.
Ken, how you doing?
I'm doing great, Patrick.
We hear you typing Tyler we, I like you typing fast.
We can turn that off.
For some of you guys that don't know who Ken Golden is, here's what I will tell you.
If you've been following uh bitcoin NFT stocks, real estate, whatever you're following and you're not looking at the collectible market, you're gonna want to stick around today for a couple different reasons Ken, I think in 2012, Golden Auctions did eight hundred thousand dollars.
I want to say, in 2020 or 2021, give or take, you did a hundred million dollars.
2020 2020, you did a hundred million dollars and last month alone, you did a little over forty million dollars correct, which is insanity.
This isn't cards.
We're talking about right, collectible cards and comics and some of the other stuff, but we'll get into that.
Folks stick around.
Meanwhile, before we get into everything, I want to make an announcement to you.
We just got word this morning.
It's all over the place.
If you want to put it up Tyler, so we can just get right into it.
We'll comment into this.
Before we get into uh, Ken Golden and others and I think Matt Sapolla's on his way, but his flight's been delayed four or five times.
He's going to join us right in the middle of it.
So breaking news, Twitter shares soars more than 20 after Elon Musk takes nine percent stake in social media company.
So let me get this straight.
So he's been teasing that he's going to buy or if he should start a company.
We talked about this, whether he should team up with and Peter Thiel.
He buys 73.486 million shares, which is 9.2 percent.
Bought it for 2.89 billion.
Within the first few hours, I think, the stock went up 25 percent.
Now it's 20, which means on his three billion, he's already made six hundred million dollars himself.
And here's a kicker.
Some people are like, well, I got a text right now from a CEO of a major social media company.
He says, why is he saying passive, which is a great question.
He's asking me, why is he saying passive?
Because I'm just a passive investor.
I'm just a passive investor in Twitter.
Right, Elon Musk is saying to a passive investor, if you can look at who the biggest shareholders or Twitter are, look at this here, why it's so interesting.
Zoom in a little bit, Morgan Stanley, DEAN Witter owns how much?
9.2 percent.
What did Elon Musk buy?
9.2 percent, 9.2.
Now why didn't he buy 9 percent?
Why not 9.1?
Why 8.8?
Who buys 9.2 percent of shares?
You only buy 9.2 percent of shares.
To say, i'm the largest shareholder, tying Morgan Stanley ahead of Vanguard Group, who's third, by the way, if you can go a little lower, Blackrockers third, State Street Corpus fourth.
LOAN PINE Capital is fifth.
Now he's the same as Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter.
So if you're listening to this, I kind of want to see your commentary below what you think his motives are.
I'm going to give you mine.
But Ken, what are your thoughts about this announcement here?
I mean, obviously he's had some uh issues with uh, Twitter and um, when you have that type of money, you can wield your influence, and i'm, he's saying passive, because basically he's saying he's not going to be an An activist investor, you know, not going to demand a change, but I think he's probably doing it and say, okay, guys, try and delete me, try and ban me, try and take me down now.
And, you know, realistically, when you have that type of money, you may want to live your life quietly and peacefully, or you may want to let people know that there is a gorilla in the room and you're going to impose your will.
I like hearing that, Ken, can you check your phone?
Is your phone Verizon or AT ⁇ T?
It's Verizon.
Okay, can you turn it off?
Because I don't know if you need to or not.
If you can turn off the airplane mode, it'd be great.
Sometimes it picks it up.
And if you need to turn it on afterwards, you can.
Sure.
Go ahead.
So, is this, because this is breaking news.
We're all just finding this out this morning.
Is this an economic play?
Is this some sort of political play?
Is this a social media play we've been talking about?
Try to cancel Rogan.
See what happens if you try to cancel Rogan and pull him off of Spotify.
Who's the first call that he makes?
You did a clip where he's the first call he makes is Elon Musk.
And you bring in Peter Thiel, and who knows what they can create.
So it's kind of like he's stepping in here to say, all right, I've heard the rumors out there of what I should be doing, what I should not be doing.
So where do you think his mindset is doing this on a random Monday morning?
This isn't April Fools.
We're April 14th.
First of all, Ken knows this.
When you're an operator building equity, you don't see anything helping increase your net worth or value than building up a company, right?
I mean, you just look at that and you're like, what do I care about buying Twitter?
Do I need my $3 billion to triple?
No.
Do I need my $3 to become $12 billion?
I promise you, that's the last thing he's thinking of.
This is not an economic plan.
If he wants to do that, he'll just put $3 billion and start another company.
Instead of calling it boring, he'll call it lame, you know, and just go build that into a multi-billion dollar company, make his money back.
No, there is a motive behind this.
You better believe it.
This reminds me of the scene from Bugsy.
You ever seen the movie Bugsy?
Yes.
With Ben Siegel, you seen the movie Bugsy.
You know that one scene when he's driving in Beverly Hills in his nice Cadillac.
I don't know what car it was.
And he pulls up to this house and he's like, I like this house.
He gets out of the car, goes knocks on the door, and he says, yes, what can I help you with?
I'm buying your house.
It's not for sale.
Yeah, I know, but I'm buying your house.
You need to move out.
No, no, you don't understand.
We're not selling this house.
Yes, you are.
What's the value?
I'll pay you 50% more than it's worth.
You need to move out.
He buys the house, right?
Elon has the kind of money to just go in and say, hey, guys, you need to move out.
This is my little thing here.
Get out.
I'm buying this.
Now, here's the thing.
So there is no, he's not making a move just because he's just making a move just to make a move.
Guys like him don't do things like that.
That sounds like that's an active investor if you ask me.
Yeah, he's passive.
He broke it down, which is very important to know.
He doesn't want the responsibilities of an active investor.
But what would be crazy is the following.
Okay.
There's only one guy crazier that many people on mainstream media may not want to buy Twitter.
And that guy's a different guy.
This is the one guy nobody wants buying Twitter because now if he takes control and people were bashing Jack Dorsey a lot when he resigned and they're like, well, so glad he's gone and all this other stuff.
Now a lot of people are starting to realize maybe Jack didn't have as much power as he once did with the voting rights.
So imagine if Elon calls Jack, then there's a comeback like Brady coming back or Michael coming back or one.
Great analogy right there for our card game.
And then all of a sudden, you know, Jack Dorsey teams up with his PayPal Mafia buddy, Elon Musk, to take, you know, Twitter to the next level.
What percentage do you think Dorsey still owns?
I don't know what it is.
I don't know if it's a big number.
Do you think that's less than 9%?
There's no question.
There's no question.
No.
There's no question.
I may be wrong.
There may be a 12% number, but 13% number is what it is.
2%.
2%.
There you go.
Okay, 2%.
2%.
Yeah, 2%.
So Elon Musk is now sitting there.
So who knows what's going to happen?
Now, there's a few other things.
I mean, if he's really wanting to fulfill his move, if Elon really wants to fulfill his move, he needs to buy a WAPO and he needs to buy a CNN.
Meaning, not WAPO, because WAPO's owned by Bezos.
There's no way he's buying WAPO.
But he needs to buy a WAPO.
Like Mark Bennyhoff bought Time Magazine.
Bezos bought WAPO.
Peter June bought LA Times for like 551 or some number like that.
He needs to buy something like that, and then he needs to buy a media company.
A CNN he can afford to buy.
If he made a move to buy CNN, people would lose their minds if this guy made some of those passions.
Let me ask you, because up until now, correct me if I'm wrong, he doesn't own anything in the media or social media space, does he?
I don't know if he does or not.
Okay, so obviously Tesla, obviously SpaceX, the boring company, the Neuralink.
Up until this point, it's all been electric or moon or space or something next level.
Go to his deepest, darkest desires that nobody even thinks about.
What is Elon doing with this?
This is his first foray into media or social media or as you call virtual governments.
Go there.
Where do you think he's thinking?
I don't know.
I think Elon Musk is about freedom of voice and expression, and he just wants to give that back to himself and others.
And he's probably worried that he's pushing the envelope too much, that he may be the next guy to be silenced.
So why not buy an insurance policy?
Like you and I buy life insurance policy.
I'm sure you own a key man insurance policy.
This is his way of buying his own keyman insurance policy.
Try to cancel me.
I think it's a brilliant, brilliant move.
Hats off to this guy.
But yeah, very, very good move.
So it's a defensive move, if anything, at the very least, you're saying.
Yeah, I mean, when you see Buffett buys silver, what are you doing buying silver?
You know, what are you doing buying certain things that you buy?
It's purely defensive.
You do it in collectible industry as well, but you were going to say something.
Go ahead.
I was going to say something about Elon is the guy can wake up on the side of the bed and decide I'm going to do that today.
I mean, I'm wondering who he told before he was doing this.
Did he clear it with his general counsel?
Did he talk to financial advisors?
Did he just one day go out and tell somebody buying 9.2% of the Twitter biggest?
I mean, it's crazy.
It is Elon Musk.
I mean, he is capable of spending $5 billion.
Do you think he did?
If you had to put your like 50-50, 80-20, do you think he did or you think he just made a move?
I would think it's 50-50.
Okay, so wow.
So are you saying you think he called anybody?
Do you think he called to talk to anybody?
He didn't call his baby mama ex-girlfriend.
I'm sure.
What's her face?
My Grimes.
I know he's a bad person.
I think he called anybody.
Do you think he called anybody?
I think if there's anyone that strikes me as someone who's like, what do you think, guys?
Here's what I'm thinking.
I think Elon would seek some counsel.
He seems very reasonable.
And even if someone said, don't do it, I think he's to Ken's point of view.
So you're more 70-30?
Yeah, I think he.
What about you, Pat?
He made me think about it.
I wasn't even thinking about that until Ken said that.
I don't know, to be honest with you, because I would say he asked because he's got the next three, four, five moves in place.
I'm probably 70-30.
How long do you think he's been thinking about this?
Oh, a few months.
Ever since Spotify tried to take Rogan down, ever since a bunch of people have been silenced on Twitter, ever since Jack Dorsey resigned.
I think this has been on his mind for a couple of years.
Now, you're not shocked that this is his first play into media.
Meaning, it's not Facebook, it's not Google, not YouTube, it's specifically Twitter.
I'm not at all, and I don't think it's going to be the last one.
But what is kind of shocking is that it's Elon Musk, that Elon Musk is becoming this bastion of freedom and free speech.
I mean, it's not like he's a conservative dude, right?
He's supposedly red-pilled, but he left.
Remember when he left the Trump administration because of all the backlash he was getting?
Very early in 2016, he was counseling the administration and he left.
You know, this is one of the big knocks of the people on the right is that they're people with tons of money on the right, but they throw it all at these think tanks that can't do anything, that don't do anything, they just waste it.
But, you know, Peter Thiel just left Facebook.
He was on the board of Facebook for what, 15 years?
He just left.
And now Elon Musk is the guy that's stepping up.
I mean, I think he's going to cause a wave of people to step up behind him and say, listen, we have to put our foot down and get on these boards, spend our money the right way, do it correctly, and put up a fight because the fact that they can silence, I mean, Twitter and Facebook have more power than most government organizations around the world, right?
They can literally silence anybody they choose.
It's about time that people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and all those step up and why this, you know what I'm looking forward to seeing?
Here's what I'm looking forward to seeing.
I can't wait to hear the commentary of people who hate Elon Musk.
I can't wait to hear Elizabeth Warren's thoughts on this.
I can't wait to hear what they're going to say about a capitalist that's creating jobs, making the economy a better place.
They're talking about EV, let's make it green or whatever.
Ain't nobody's been trying to do that more than this guy.
He started the revolution.
He started the EV.
He gets the least amount of credit for it.
So anyways, we'll see what's going to happen.
And just wait until the government goes after it, man.
I would not be surprised at all if the SEC tried to go after it.
Why are you putting that in their ears right now?
If SEC is listening to the little loud right now in general, now he's getting a little impressive.
How many shots at Tiki Lev did you have this year?
Let's be honest.
Did you start with your regular two or I only had the three?
Let's turn Tyler down, Georgie.
Are you able to?
How do I turn my headset down a little bit?
Can we get Ken down 10%?
Get Ken down 10%.
Ken, on behalf of Valutaman and PBD, I'm sorry for Tyler.
That was aggressive.
I apologize.
We got Mickey Mantle on that.
Let's all be friends.
That was a little bit more than 10%, George, if you can bring it back up slightly.
Okay.
So today, you have a surprise for us.
You said you brought a box.
Do you want to show them what you brought?
I don't know if you have it with you or something.
It's in the green room.
Is it in the green room?
Can I have one of the guys grab it and bring it so we can maybe break it up?
Yeah, but just bring the whole bag because I've got supplies in there too.
Bring the bag, baby.
Can you, whoever is in there, send somebody to go to the green room.
He's got a box to open up.
But while they're doing that, tell us what you just did with some famous guy some people may know last week on the day that Will Smith, that whole story.
Tell us what just happened.
So I flew to Toronto with a box of 1986 FLIR basketball cards.
Can you put that up there so people can't see what it is?
Which originally came out at probably 25, 50 cents a pack, went down in 88 to like $4.99 on closeout, and now is about a $300,000 box of cards.
So we opened up that box and then we opened up 10 cases.
Thank you.
10 cases of a product called 2020 Panini Flawless Basketball, which is obviously a modern product, but people are looking for this very special LeBron James card that has the logo off his jersey from all three teams he played for, Cleveland, Miami, and the Lakers.
So we were there.
I was up in Toronto at a private gathering and spent about six hours with Drake, about four of it opening up cards and two hours of it watching the Oscars and eating.
So this whole thing with Oscars is going on.
You're watching it live while you guys are opening up cards.
What happened there when he's, you know, so we did a promo shot, showed what we're going to do.
You and Drake, you're saying, yeah, Drake and I, Drake, and I'm going to.
Let's not gloss over the fact that you're spending six hours at Drake opening up cards.
By the way, can you just show that real quick?
You give us permission to show that or no, sure.
Yeah, absolutely.
If you want to show Clip out of that, you can go on.
You can go on at Ken Golden.
It's probably all the best videos.
Yeah, go to at Ken Golden.
Is that at Ken Golden or who is at Golden?
Yeah, that's me right there.
Okay.
So which one do you want to show?
So show the one with me holding six cards right there.
Okay, go to the left.
Oh, that one right there.
Put the audio.
So there's Ken and Drizzy.
Oh, here we go.
So right off the bat, you can see that is a on the back of the cards a sticker.
Yeah.
So we've got a Kareem sticker on the back.
Let's see.
Drake.
Now, is Drake a collector or no?
Drake actually, in about a minute, opens up his first ever pack of cards.
Ever in his life.
Ever, he said, ever in his life.
So his cards turn off the audio.
And how did you guys get hooked up?
What happened was he was, and I'll tell you when to click it back live as soon as you see him go to do it.
And, you know, he's got some of his friends there.
We're drinking.
He actually said, you know, the first thing he goes, okay, we're going to do whoever gets the better packs, you know, the next guy has to take a shot.
And I'm like, I will not be here if I hit 20 shots.
I don't know what you're like, but that's not going to be me.
Great game he just starts.
But Drake was looking for this card and he was doing it by using breakers.
And breakers are people who actually open boxes of cards for you.
So they do it on YouTube.
They do it on Instagram Live.
They do it on the other social media apps.
And you buy into a break and they'll open the cards and hope you pull a big card.
So Drake was doing that with a breaker and then hopped on to my Instagram Live about two weeks ago.
And I went in with somebody and we had a bunch of cases and we started opening up cases.
And what I did was I did what's called a case war with Drake, where we each opened up a box and whoever got the better cards out of the box got the other person's box.
And these are 20,000 boxes, two, three, four, five, six at a time.
So, you know, it got a lot of publicity, a lot of attention.
But I felt that it doesn't give the same effect as if you're there with him because all you see is champagne popping.
And people can be pessimists and they can say, I bet that's a social media guy typing in.
I bet it's not really Drake because he wasn't showing his face.
So we arranged for cases to be brought to him in Toronto.
And, you know, I didn't tell anybody because it's Drake.
I mean, he can say no at the last minute.
And, you know, he had originally contacted a gentleman who runs a publicity site for trading card card called Cardporn.
And he looped me in.
And we put it together and we flew up there and made it happen.
And instead of just the flawless, I also, during my live, I, behind my shelf, I have this box of 86 Flare.
And I held it and Drake said, oh, wow, 86 Flear, Michael Jordan rookie.
That's really cool.
So I surprised him and I brought that box with me to Toronto.
So I said, before we do the flawless, we're going to open up this FLIR box.
And that's really where all of the excitement happens.
And I believe he is about in a moment to open up his first pack of cards.
If we want to go back, we'll check it out in a second.
So he's looking and he didn't want to touch the cards.
He, you know, they're fragile.
You know, these packs as an individual pack can sell for $7,500 to $10,000 per pack.
One pack.
And there's 36 packs in every box.
So I said, no, I'm not going to come out here and have you not do it.
People want to people want to see you open the cards.
Let's open the cards.
So let's see what happens.
Oh, we missed it.
Okay.
Here we go.
Let's take a peek.
Is this the one?
This is his first pack.
This is my pack.
Let's see what he does back.
What an amazing name.
Oh, that's here we go.
World be free.
World be free.
Almost as good as Meta World Peace.
No, that's World Be Free.
Wait, Mana.
Jerry Sitching, Eric Floyd, Pervis Short.
This, I think, is his fourth pack because Scott, Vern Fleming, and a Magic Johnson.
Did you ever open up cards or no?
Did you ever open up?
When I was a kid, yeah, I loved it.
When I was 10, 12 years old, basically, so he pulled the first pack he opened.
He pulled a Michael Jordan rookie.
First.
The first.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I don't know.
You want to go, you know, it's got to be up there somewhere.
But basically, so, yeah, so he, like, he was hooked, and people, like a lot of NBA players, were joining in.
Logan Paul joined in.
You know, other rappers were joining in.
People were just going crazy.
Everybody loved it.
But before we broke, and there's a picture of the Jordan, one of the Jordan rookies.
That Jordan right there is how much?
If you can, a PSA 10 off that goes for what?
A PSA 10 goes for about $275,000 to $325,000 per card.
We pulled three of that exact card, and we pulled three of the Jordan rookie stickers.
But also in there, you know, the reason it's so iconic is it was the first major basketball product in years.
So it had the rookie cards of Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Akeem Elijah, and Clyde Drexler, Chris Mullen, Isaiah Thomas, so many others.
So there are so many cards in there that if they grade properly, it could be $5,000 to $15,000 a card.
There's one oddity, a known name player named Johnny Moore, but his card is scarce in a 10.
One of them graded a 10 recently sold for $90,000.
And he's like a common otherwise.
But if you can get the card in a 10, because there's only about 60 of them and everybody wants to get a complete set with all the cards in a 10, it's very valuable.
Wow.
It's kind of crazy.
It's a common, but there's only 60 of them to have a complete set of PSA 10s.
You need this guy to get a 10, and it's a 90K.
Nobody could even tell you who Johnny Moore is right now.
No, absolutely not.
You just made him famous.
This, again, it's been since 84.
Let me ask you.
We have all sorts of guests on.
We just had Jank Wieger on the other day.
We've got a laundry list of amazing names that are coming on this week.
What is it about Ken, and what is it about cards that appeals to you that you're like, we got to talk to Ken?
Because you've been quite unabashedly, unashamingly, been a card collector for years.
So what's your story with all this?
Listen, for me, look, he started, I think you started collecting cards in 78 is the story I read.
I was born in 78, but the first time I got a card was in 89 in Germany when Germany was in the World Cup.
I went to a local liquor store and they were selling these packs for like nothing, 50 Fennec, or, you know, and I and I bought a pack I opened.
I'm like, oh my gosh, look at this guy's.
And then I was addicted.
I was hooked.
Yeah.
And then I came to LA.
The first time I got a big card was, remember the one where you would pull up the upper deck card of Shaq and you have to mail it in and they would mail him.
Which card was it?
It was 1992.
And then here's the story.
The reason that you had to mail it in was because in 1992, I ran a company.
I owned a company called Classic.
And I signed Shaq exclusively to a contract.
And I'll tell the story.
And what happened was I met Jaquil O'Neal, signed him to a contract, and I put in his contract that he is not allowed to appear on anybody else's trading cards until January 1st, 1993.
I knew the significance of what doing that meant because I knew that the NBA has licensees.
I was not one of them.
I knew they had licensees that start putting out cards in September prior to the season.
Good move.
So when I sent a letter, a legal letter to the NBA, Topps, Upper Deck, and Fleer after I signed them saying, we have this contract.
You better not violate it.
I was summoned by David Stern to the NBA office and shook my hand, met me, and then put me in a room with, at the time, the deputy commissioner of the NBA, a gentleman by the name of Gary Bettman, who, of course, for many people know him now for many years as commissioner of the National Hockey League.
And he went on a profanity-laced tirade to Shaquille O'Neal's agent and then basically said to me, you know, I should hold Shaq out from appearing in any game until he's allowed to appear on our licensees cards.
And this is October.
Bettman's berating you or Bettman.
Oh, Bettman.
Bettman.
Stern was very nice.
Stern said, hi, nice to meet you, blah, blah, blah.
Let's, you know, hope you guys can work this out.
But Bettman was berating Shaq's lawyers and like trying to get me upset.
And I was a young kid in my 20s.
I wasn't going to be, I just wasn't going to be phased by any of this stuff.
So finally he said, we can, you know, we can hold Shaq out from playing in the NBA until he's allowed to appear on a card.
And my response was, that's fine for me because I'll already be sold out of my trading card product.
But I don't think the Orlando Magic, who just selected him number one and signed him to that big contract, would appreciate that.
And his face turned red.
And we ended up working out a deal.
And the deal was that I said, hey, I'm a publicly held company.
We issued a press release that said no other card company can do this.
We are not going to let any other card company do it.
However, they can put in a coupon.
And if somebody pulls that coupon out of a pack on January 1st, they can be sent a card of Shaquille O'Neal.
And that invented the redemption card.
That was the very first redemption card in history.
And they had what Upper Deck did was they put a silhouette of Shaq's in black and white.
And it was called a trade trade-in for Shaq.
And what's funny is if you did not send in that redemption card, it's worth more than the actual card you redeemed for because everybody, of course, sent it in, and so few of them exist, not redeemed.
Yeah, yeah, that would have been 1992, 93.
Upper Deck Series 1 basketball.
So I got that card.
Then I got another stadium club.
You know, the stadium club, he's rebounding it, coming down with it.
Beam team.
Yeah, and then during that time, Upper Deck had a 91 or 92 Sergei Fedoroff and Yarmir Yager rookie card that was coming out during that era.
So I would go to Albertson's.
No joke.
My mom would go to Sleepout 11 at a shopping cart in the back of the apartment in Glendale off of Broadway and Verduga right by the post office.
I'd go leave the house, get on the shopping cart, go to all the trash cans locally, collect two liter bottles and cans, go to Albertson's by two o'clock.
I would recycle this with my friend Adrian.
Then we would come back just to be able to buy a box of Upper Dick to get a Sergey Fedoroff and Yarmi or Yagar.
That's how much I loved cards.
This was your thing.
Oh, man, this was like, I'd go to all the shows, the Eagle Rock show, any of the shows that were local, I'd go to it.
And did it ever stop?
Meaning, like you did this as a teenager and then when you were in your 20s, you were focusing on business break from, you know, military, probably 97 to 04, I took a break and then I got back into it.
And then I deployed a few million in the last few years.
But that's a whole different story.
So coming back to you today, some of the guys that are looking at cards.
By the way, if you want to put that box out so we can see what box you have, I'm curious to know what you brought with you.
Ken's brought a box.
It's a surprise.
I didn't know about this box.
Okay, so this is a what?
Can you tell us what's special about this box?
It is 2003 Topps Chrome NBA basketball.
And the key with it is you've got the rookie class that features LeBron James as the number one draft pick.
The what they call the base card of LeBron.
And I'll just go over PSA 10 values because it's easy.
That's like a top grade.
The base card of LeBron is probably in the $8,000 range, but they have a card that is called Refractor, which is randomly inserted of LeBron.
That's about $100,000 a card.
And then if you're really lucky, they have an X Fractor and a gold refractor.
The gold refractor in a PSA 10 is about a $1.5 million card.
That's sad.
And not the key is not, they're all numbered.
Those are numbered to 50.
Not all of them have been pulled, which means somewhere out there in some of these unopened boxes exists this potential million dollar plus trading card.
So for somebody that doesn't know, a box like this goes for what, 20 bucks, 40 bucks, 80 bucks?
That box is in the vicinity of $25,000 a box.
This is a $25,000 box here today.
So should we open this box or no on live?
Yeah, I think we should.
We'll split the profits and I'll just go live our best lives.
We'll put that over here.
By the way, if you want to see us open this box, let us know through Super Chat.
We'll pay attention to it.
I mean, obviously, we're not going to raise $25K, but if you want us to open that up, let us know.
We may do it on this pot.
What I do want to do before I go to you is the follow-up.
Okay.
Ken, for some people that are like, come on, man, baseball cards.
I mean, why the hell would a trading card sell for as much as it does?
An article came out recently talking about the top 10 most expensive cards ever sold.
Now, you're going to correct this article.
I'm certain of it.
It's on page three.
It says number 10 is Hannes Wagner T206206 PSA 5, sold for 3.1 million.
A PSA 3 Hans Wagner sold for 3.7 million.
A Wayne Gretzky 79 OPG, the one I sold for 2.1 million, sold for 3.75 million.
Hannes Wagner PSA 2 sold for 3.75.
Can you see it or no?
Here, let me give it to you.
Here you go.
Right here.
You got to write it.
Oh, okay.
You're looking at the wrong one.
I don't know why they put the wrong one.
Yeah, I was going to say.
Mike Trout, 2009 Super Fractor autograph sold for 3.9 million.
Pat Mahomes sold for 4.3 million.
Luca on his birthday is sold for 4.6 million.
LeBron James, RPA, rookie patch autograph, sold for 5.2.
Mickey Mano, 52 tops, sold for 5.2 million.
That's a PSA 9, by the way.
That's not a 10.
That's a 9 that sold for 5.2 million.
And then Hannes Wagner, T206 SGC3, sold for $6.6 million.
Are these people crazy for spending this kind of money on cards?
No.
Not only are they crazy, and a lot of people talk about cards and they don't understand.
Trading cards realistically are a serious collectible.
People who buy ultra high-end trading cards are the same type of people and the same mindset of people who buy Van Gogh's, Renoirs, Warhols, and things of that nature.
What you have to realize, and I'm going to give one example, T206 Honus Wagner.
Now, T206 means tobacco, and it's just a designation.
206 was the serial number they gave back in the 1930s and 40s when they were coming up with a catalog system of cards.
But the set was issued in 1909, and they put the cards in packs of tobacco.
Either pipe tobacco, one brand was chewing tobacco, but basically cigarette tobacco.
And they would stick the card in a pack.
Those cards became very, very popular.
It was a turn of the century, had Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, everybody.
But Honus Wagner, the legend goes, did not, even though he was a big, big cure of tobacco, did not want to promote tobacco to kids.
So he demanded his card was removed from circulation.
Interesting.
And it became very, very scarce and very desirable.
If you go in history and you look at every single time that card is sold, there's probably in the vicinity of 50 known in various conditions graded by the various companies.
But if you go in history and look at all of the sales of a T T R 6 Honus Wagner, and what I'm about to tell you, I don't think you can look at and compare to any piece of art, any precious metal or any stock.
Every single time an individual Honus Wagner has sold and changed hands, it was for a higher price than that exact same card sold previously.
So if you look at all approximate 50 cards and you look at all the hundreds of transactions every one of them has had since 1909, there is no documented case of anybody who bought a Honus Wagner, whether they bought it in a horrible condition or they bought the best one possible, has ever bought the card and resold it and lost money.
In fact, this chart is already outdated because a graded three PSA 3 Honus Wagner sold about a month and a half ago privately for $8 million.
So, and I know, you know, look, there are other cards on here that if they sold would shatter.
If Ken Kendrick ever sold his T Tro 6 Wagner 8, he would get $40 million plus.
The first person to sell a 52 TOPS Mickey Mantle in a PSA 10, there were three of them, is going to get over $25 million if any of them ever let it go.
And I've tried aggressively with all the owners.
We tried together one time together.
Yes, we made an offer to you.
Yes, you did.
Yes, you did.
It was a pretty aggressive offer.
It was a fair offer.
However, these individuals, you know, there's only one that's a potential target.
What number did I give you the day you and I spoke?
I'm comfortable if you say publicly.
What number did I give?
It began with a two.
I don't know the exact number here.
So there you go.
So I made an offer to buy that.
I really wanted this card, but it is what it is at this point.
Yep.
And basically, the mass-produced cards, you know, that you buy in a store today out of a pack that are not random, that are, you know, that are just, you know, they produce tons of, that's not what we're calling talking about the investable assets.
We're talking about the investable assets or the truly rare cards of the all-time great players, whether it's a Hornet Wagner, whether it's a Michael Jordan, whether it is Will Chamberlain, whether it is Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, you know, Wayne Gretzky, for example, as you've learned.
And, you know, to give an example, you set a record for the highest price hockey card ever sold, and then the card was resold after that for $3.5 million.
Yeah, for $3.5 million.
I sold it.
Everyone's calling me, oh my gosh, Pat, $2.1 million for the two cards because I did the tops and the OPG.
Six months later, it sells for $3.5 million.
The one card.
Yeah, the one card.
And by the way, the guys that bought it from me, the tops people that bought it from me were the rally guys that bought it.
Correct.
They sold shares of the rally.
And believe it or not, on the OPG 10, one of the guys that was bidding for it is Wayne Gretzky.
He was bidding for it.
I got a call.
I was on a call with Bruce McNull, and I'm sure you know who Bruce McNull is.
And they call me.
They said, hey, let's see if we can do something here with this card.
I'm like, look, it's between you or it's between Heritage.
Heritage was coming to me.
I don't think you and I had done any kind of dealings at the time.
Yeah.
And so they came through and then we're like, okay, let's try this out.
I think it's going to sell for this much.
Okay.
And they said, we guarantee the guard's going to sell for a million dollars.
We think, or else we can take the, what do you call it, the reserve off.
I said, okay, sounds good.
Next thing you know, it's 11 o'clock at night and I'm sitting there getting text messages.
Here's what it sold for.
So in other words, what you're saying right now is these folks that are buying all these cards, they're not making any, they're not dummies.
They're not naive.
Who was not in the market that's now in it?
Meaning, like, you know, at first Bitcoin, it was all, you know, oh my gosh, it's because fiat currency.
And the next thing you know, all right, I'll buy a hundred thousand dollars.
Okay, I'll put a million dollars.
And the next thing you know, Michael Saylors of the world, I'll buy, you know, this many, I'll buy this, and then Elon Musk, and then hedge fund, and then mutual funds.
And then, okay, now it's legit, right?
What have you seen yourself?
Having been in it from 78 today, what were some of the events that completely changed the card business?
And who's entering in a market today that maybe 10, 20 years ago would have never even looked at it?
Well, the biggest thing that changed the card business was really the creation of PSA, the authentication and grading company in the early 90s.
You know, prior to that, you know, and it's always funny when people pull out these mail-in publications when like 1979, I'm 13 years old, and it says, you know, Ken Golden, Garwood Drive, Cherry Hill, New Jersey, which was my address at the time.
And, you know, I would say Mickey Mantle, VG-EX, very good through excellent.
So it was me, my non-professional, but you know, somewhat trained eye, calling the card very good, excellent.
The person buying it, they didn't see a picture of the card.
They didn't know if the card was authentic or not.
They had no independent grading authority.
What PSA did when they came into the marketplace is they did two things.
The first thing they look for is: is this a real card?
That is the most important thing.
Is it not a reprint?
Is it not a counterfeit?
Is it not a forgery?
That is always going to be the most important thing.
The second thing they did was they established a grading scale between one and 10, with 10 being Gem Mint and one being poor.
And what that allowed people to do as they gained trust and as they gained market share and acceptance was people were able to buy a card site unseen.
And you were able to buy and sell the card at a commodity.
So for example, if somebody ran a hedge fund, they can say, okay, fine, I want to buy five LeBron James rookie refractors in a PSA 10.
They never had to see the card.
They never had to look at the card.
They can put it in an asset portfolio.
They can line list it as in 2003 Tops Chrome LeBron James Refractor PSA 10.
And it had a value.
So that between that and establishing the price guide, what that allowed to happen is it went from when I used to go to card shows and people would just go to card shows as a kid to now being able to buy and sell over the internet and buy and sell, you know, at first early in the late 90s, it was eBay.
And then obviously companies such as Golden, you know, where we sell tens of millions of dollars of this stuff virtually every week.
But now the people that are in there are not just collectors.
You have individual investors, you have serious collectors, you have the entire foreign market.
In 2012, literally, I would say less than a tenth of 1% of Golden's business was probably overseas buyers.
Now, I would say 25% of all the weekly new registers are from outside the United States.
No, not 25% of our volume yet, but 25% of the new people coming in.
In addition, you have these fractionalized share companies.
You mentioned Rally.
So you've got Rally, you've got Collectible.
Can you tell people what these are?
How it works?
So what happens is basically it's crowdsourcing.
What they do is just like a stock, you know, you talk about Tesla.
Tesla has probably hundreds of thousands or millions of people that own a tiny, tiny, tiny fractional piece of the company.
That's what a share of stock represents.
So what they came up with said, okay, let's take a collectible.
Let's say the collectible is worth $100,000 and the customers can't buy it.
You know, because an individual can't buy it, it's too much.
But what if they want to own a small piece?
So let's say you can take a $100,000 item and sell 10,000 units of $10 each to represent.
Now somebody can own a tenth of a percent, a hundredth of a percent.
That's right.
They can own 5%.
And that is what happened with Rally and your Wayne Gretzky Tops rookie card.
That's even what happened with Rally and a copy of the Declaration of Independence.
I sold Rally a couple years ago a T206 Honus Wagner that was a PSA, excuse me, it was, I think, an SGC Authentic.
It went out at an issue price of $500,000, which people thought was high at the time.
Right now it's trading on their platform at $2 million.
So it is.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
And by the way, Rally, correct me if I'm wrong, Rally also helped collectors who owned the cards increase the value of the cards because now they're buying, now there's more people that are participating.
So the card that I sold to Rally for whatever number they paid for the tops, I think they paid 800 grand for it, immediately that card went up to 1.2, 1.3 million because they were selling the shares.
So Rally kind of helped increase the price of cards.
I just sent you the link with Declaration of Independence if you want to pull that up.
But please continue.
So that is a big part of it.
Also, now there are mutual funds that are buying cards.
There are dedicated trading card funds where, you know, I know one company is already, I think, on their third different fund to buy trading cards that are buying cards.
That started with a company called Blowout when they did the Blowout Wax Fund.
Talk about a fund you wanted to get into because they did it really before the boom.
They started it, I think, in 2019, before the whole COVID boom with collectibles.
But they took sealed wax product like this and they just said, okay, fine, we're going to put a $2 million of sealed wax into a fund.
And now the fund has a value of about $11.3 million.
But you've got hedge funds out there that are allocating a percent of resources to it.
So it really has become an alternate asset.
And you've got people like Tiger Investment Group that, you know, they go out and they say, can you speak at our conference?
And can you do this?
And people want me to go all over there.
And somebody will be talking about art.
Somebody will be talking about real estate.
And I'll be talking about trading cards.
Is that what's going on tonight?
Is that kind of what's going on?
That's exactly what's going on tonight.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, Adam, did you have a question?
I think you wanted to ask something.
I'm learning over here.
I do have some questions, but we'll get to that.
So what do you own that you'd never sell?
So one of them, and we did, I guess we did a watch down with Drake where he showed off his new watch.
And I said, I never wear, I'm not a big jewelry wearer.
I don't wear watches.
However, this was a special occasion.
So I wore my 1956 New York Yankees World Series watch that was George Weiss's, who was the president of the Yankees and in the Hall of Fame.
So I wore that watch, and it was most all the players and the team, they all selected rings.
You can get, do you want a ring or you want a watch?
And the Yankees had, you know, players want rings.
But, you know, the manager, Casey Stengel and the president said, I've got so many rings already.
I'm going to take a watch.
So I own his watch from 1956.
Is that kind of what it looks like?
The one, the Rolex, where it says on the left.
There you go, right there.
Something like that.
Yep.
So except my guy, because he was president, he got his studded out with diamonds.
So that's cool.
Is that Yogi Berra?
That's Yogi Berra.
Yeah, that's Yogi Berra.
That's a sick Rolex.
That's a sick Rolex.
I can't imagine that.
So you own one of those.
I own one of those.
You'd never sell that.
No, no, no.
And I own a, you know, because I'm a big member.
I'm a card guy, but I'm a big memorability guy too.
Card, look, cards to me are more of an investment and less personal.
I don't necessarily have an emotional attachment to a trading card.
You know, I do have a complete T206 set.
I do not have a Wagner, but I have a Plank, which is about a $250,000 card as part of the set.
You have a complete T206 set.
I have a complete T06 set.
Really?
Yes.
Someone's got to gift you, Hannes Wagner.
Yeah, Ken.
You got to give it a shot.
If we go public and I sell some shares, and then maybe I'll use some of that money to complete my set with the Wagner.
But the other thing is, I own Babe Ruth's bat from 1927, the year he hit 60 home runs.
It's a PSA 10 and it has provenance directly to Claire Ruth when she gifted it to the Babe Ruth Museum back in the early 1970s.
That's going to be very, very hard to get.
Yeah, that's in the millions, yes.
Okay.
You said that the one thing you would not sell is the Yankees Rolex watch, right?
Yes.
Is there, because you've been buying and trading and selling, is there something that you're like, I would not sell this card?
You sold your Gretzky, you got a couple million bucks.
Boom.
Is there anything you would not sell?
I don't have the card that I wouldn't sell.
That's the problem.
If that makes any sense.
The card I want that I would never sell, I don't have yet.
Got it.
But I'm a patient guy.
And this said card, we won't name names.
If you did somehow acquire it, it's yours for life.
I don't think I would sell it.
I don't think I think it'd be in some kind of a museum that I would keep.
Are you going to tell us what it is?
He knows what it is.
He knows what it is.
He knows what card it is.
There's a handful of them.
There's a couple options, and two of them we've discussed already.
Pat, you, you.
Some wheels are turning over here.
I remember when I first started coming to the Dallas office, PHP Value Tainment, and I saw that there were boxes of cards of your top guys, your employees, your contracts.
Sales guys, your sales guys.
So was that sort of the motivation?
I got the idea of the baseball cards for our sales guys from Ray Dalio because he talks about it in his book in Principles.
He says they have cards for all their guys.
Yeah, it's a very good idea, by the way.
We have it for all our guys.
Every year we give it away.
Are those worth anything?
To our guys, it is.
We're giving it away next year.
If I got my hand somehow on a Ricardo Aguilar card, I would hold on to that for the rest of my life.
I would sleep with that under my body.
I don't know if he would sign it.
I don't know if he would sign the problem.
Some of Ray's Bridgewater, right?
Some of his smartest, best, and brightest are extremely high-end trading card collectors and investors, if that tells you anything about the mindset of people.
That makes sense to me to be able to do something like that.
Okay.
So the box.
Do we want to open the box or not?
Do we want to kind of start opening the box or do we want to wait till the second half for Matt to be here and we'll wait?
How far is Matt away from here, by the way?
Tell me.
By the way, we have what number do we have?
We have two super channels.
The moment we get to 20, whatever the amount is, the moment we get to 20 super chatters, we'll open a box.
We've got 18 more to go.
But I got a couple questions here for people that ask.
One guy said, rejoining the hobby over a year ago, this is Goker.
I noticed a horrible drop in the quality control and customer service.
Ken, do you believe Panini has intentionally reckless due to losing contract on sole manufacture?
It's an integral question.
That's a good question.
So here's the thing.
I think that the trading card companies over the past couple of years have been dramatically overwhelmed.
And My viewpoint as a collector is I would think that if I open up a new pack of cards, nobody's ever touched it, right?
Every card should be a 10.
If it's not a 10, at least it should be a nine.
Now, a 10 is gem mint.
That means perfect.
A nine means mint, which means they can have a tiny imperfection, like maybe off-center, left to right, top to bottom, or on the back.
But that's my viewpoint as a collector.
Every time I open up a pack of card, if I handle it properly, every card should be a nine or a 10.
That is not happening.
And that's what he's referring to.
What has happened is the increase in demand has forced them to go to other places to print cards that may not be used to printing cards to handle the overflow production.
The other issue is, is as companies like Panini produce these ultra high-end cards like Flawless, like Eminence, which was horrible to get graded.
It came out to pay.
I think they canceled it because it was so difficult to keep the quality.
But the cards are so thick.
They're making such a big surface area that they're giving so much area on the corners to get touched up and to notice that there's a tiny ding on it.
So yeah, look, people have been opening up cards of some of those products and literally be getting a five or a six right out of the pack because the card was mishandled.
The other issue and the problem that companies like Panini and TOPS have is when you have an athlete autograph a card, they're handling the card.
So the athlete's going to sign a card and he might drop it on a table.
All of a sudden, it's got a ding corner.
And that's, you know, it's a signed card of that athlete, but it's got a ding corner.
So all these things play.
But yeah, 100%, I would say if you look at trading card product produced in 2012 through 2016, the ratio of cards that are perfect out of the pack were higher than they are now.
But no, there's zero chance that Panini is mad that they lost their licensing to Fanatics and is intentionally producing poor quality.
There's no way.
Poor quality cards.
No, Panini wants to sell as much product as possible while they have their license.
They want to make as much money as possible.
And possibly they want to look good as possible so they can be a takeover target by Fanatics, just like Tops was a takeover target.
You know, look, it only makes sense for Fanatics to want to start making trading cards earlier than 2026 in basketball and football and that Panini and Fanatics will work out a deal for the licensing.
I hope so because it was a brand that everybody was swearing by and talking about for many, many years.
Silly white boys got a question here.
So let's get that box.
That's his name, by the way.
Let's get that box open.
Ken, have you gotten into TCG like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh?
If so, what's your opinion on them?
Sure.
So first of all, as a personal collector, I do not personally collect TCG.
However, my eight-year-old son, Paul, is a big Pokemon collector.
I also, for those of you who follow me, know that I have broken Pokemon cards with Logan Paul.
And, you know, I'm friendly with him.
And Logan is actually an investor in Golden.
So I recognize, and he's the biggest Pokemon guy out there.
He wore it at WrestleMania two nights ago.
He wore this card to answer.
In fact, that's why that card is not on here.
That's a list is also outdated because he paid $5.275 million for that Pokemon card right there.
You see a PSA 10, and he paid $5.27 million.
Now, what makes that card so special?
So what it is, it was a special promotional card of Pikachu, one of the most loved characters.
He's designing the Pokemon cards.
It's called the Illustrator.
There are only, I think there are less than 40 that are known, making it in theory rarer than a T26 Honus Wagner, although it was made 100 years after.
So it is a modern card, but it is basically the honus wagner of all Pokemon cards.
And this is my viewpoint on Pokemon and TCG.
And it's also my viewpoint on comic books, which I think is really a blossoming investment for collectibles.
Baseball is really a U.S. sport.
You can say, you know, Asian sport as well.
But, you know, go to the street and ask a kid, do they know who Roberto Clemente is?
Do they know who Willie Mays is?
A lot of them won't.
Ask a kid if they know who Joe Montana is.
They're not going to.
Ask a kid if they know who Charizard is, Pikachu is, Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Wolverine.
They're going to know, and it's all bought a point.
So you have a worldwide population.
I don't know how many people in the world right now.
Is it 5 billion?
8 billion.
8 billion?
Jesus, escapes.
So 8 billion, you have access to the entire world where they know these characters, whether it's the TCG characters like the Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh!, you know, or especially the Marvel and the DC characters.
I mean, Marvel is part of Disney now.
So years from now, people are going to say, oh, my God, Wolverine actually had a comic book?
Spider-Man had a comic book, and I can own the creation of that, or I can own Action Comics number one, the first ever Superman, or Detective 27, first Batman, or Batman number one.
So I think that I really like all of those areas long term based on the fact that it has a constant replenishing of the potential people who might be interested in buy that product.
Very cool.
Alan Carput just asked a question.
My son, who was 13, purchased a rare 2016 Bowman Chrome Tatis.
Fernando Tatis, autographed a rookie Twitter number 23 right before the COVID card boom.
What do you think that card is worth now?
Oh my God.
Okay.
So the two, let me put it, Tatisse, let me put this in perspective for you.
So that's a variation.
It is, I believe, a retail variation, not out of the hobby box.
So if you compare that to a red refractor of Tatisse, which is limited to five autographed, that's going to be in the range of $250,000 to $350,000 for the card.
So this card, I'm not great with the retail versions, but it could potentially be $50,000 plus on that card that he pulled in 2016.
So a 13-year-old kid got a $50,000 card.
There you go.
Good for him.
Got to love it.
By the way, this is a $25,000 box that will open up here in the second half shortly.
So another question for you.
When it comes down to, I saw you the other day, you talked about a player that I also feel is undervalued, a card, an investment that's undervalued.
Who do you think is overvalued today?
Who do you think is undervalued today?
So one, I'll kick it off for you, and then you can go from there.
You said Willie Mays.
I agree with you.
I think Willie Mays is fully undervalued.
I also think the guy's jersey I'm wearing right now, I'm wearing a Ruth jersey.
It's not a mantle.
It says Ruth in the back.
I think Ruth is undervalued.
I don't think Ruth is actually getting the value the card deserves.
I may be wrong.
I want to hear your thoughts, but what would you say?
It's overvalued?
What's undervalued?
I don't want to get too much into the overvalued because people will like, you know, people who hold that card will get mad at me.
I would say that I think that there is a lot of speculation on basketball players who have less than three or four years of experience in the league and whose career could potentially end before they accomplish anything in the NBA.
And on those type of players, you need to be careful.
I think on some of the younger baseball players who have not made the major leagues and people are buying what they hope is future value on those cards.
Again, you know, you look at Steven Strasburg of the Washington Nationals, could have been the greatest pitcher of all time, but constant arm surgeries and injuries.
Look at Jacob DeGrom.
I mean, he is the best pitcher in baseball right now, and he might not play again this season.
Crazy.
Because, you know, my man Steve Cohen, unfortunately, he gets Mac gets Scherzer and now, you know, DeGrom is out.
I mean, he's trying really hard to win a World Series.
You know, the Mets, yeah, yeah.
So Steve Cohen owns the Mets.
He is also one of the, you know, on my board of directors and one of my larger shareholders.
So I root for the Phillies, but for him, I also root for the Mets.
So it's disappointing to see DeGrom get injured.
But I think players who are a little bit less established without the track record, that would be the area I put into overvalued.
I also think cards like people, it's what base cards.
And, you know, this is a pattern you always see.
This is going to happen 100% of the time.
You open up a brand new product.
The product first comes out.
People pull the base cards of the hot new rookies.
They get them graded.
Those highly graded cards sell for a lot of money.
They always go down.
They're going to go down because there's a small number of supply at the beginning and people who rush out.
People buy them when the population report is maybe 500.
At some point, that population report may be 50,000.
So don't rush in.
I'm not talking about a card like a one of five.
The cards that are numbered individually in the card, that's in a different stratosphere.
The cards that are not numbered in the newer product, don't rush out and overpay them at the beginning of the product cycle because they'll go down.
Product, I think, is undervalued.
I think, first of all, I do think that Willie Mays as a baseball player is drastically undervalued.
I think that most of Babe Ruth's cards are undervalued.
I really like the Baltimore News Ruth.
I really like a card, what is called his true rookie card called his 1916 sporting news card.
To me, that is one of the five most iconic cards of all time because it is the first professional rookie card of Babe Ruth.
And the highest grade of that card sells for a fraction of what the highest grade of Mickey Manel's card sells for, for example.
I think the older guys in football and basketball compared to the modern guys are dramatically undervalued, whether it's a Chamberlain, whether it's a Russell, whether it's a Johnny Onidis, whether it's a Jim Brown, whether it's a Joe Namath.
Those guys do not get the attention.
I think that I'd like to say that soccer is undervalued, but you've seen such a big boom in the past couple of years that it's really caught up.
Like I have, you want to see something crazy?
So this is something we're going to hand out tonight.
Look at the numbers on Messi and Ronaldo and during the time period.
I mean, that.
2016, this card, very important.
2016, this card sold for $8,600.
That's a messy card.
Four years later, it sold for $116,000.
This year, it sold for $304,000.
That's a $19,884 increase rate of return.
Holland sold for $33,000, then $148,0 Ronaldo sold for $1,300 in 2014.
$4,000 in 2010.
is this accurate these are the four thousand dollars in 2017 and 320 just the exact same card So those numbers were based on the exact card, the exact sale of that card.
Insane.
24,000% return.
$24,000.
In a span of four and a half years.
Yes.
That's insane.
So you're saying soccer's one as well to look into.
Zion Williamson, is it too risky at this point?
Is it buy, sell, hold?
Zion's a hold.
Okay, you can't, I don't think you can buy it.
Okay.
But if you have it, I think you have to wait until he comes back and performs.
There's a lot of hype built into Zion.
I would say it's definitely a hold.
I personally would, you know, unless it's like dirt cheap.
I think Zion is such an amazing player.
He's such a potential dominating, you know, dominating athlete.
But is he, you know, how often is he going to play?
How often is he actually going to be on the court is the problem?
Yeah, they showed an image the other day.
I think NBA did or ESP or Sports Center did, saying the first three seasons, Zion only played three more games than Odin did in his first three seasons.
And you know what happened to Greg Odin, Portland and Trailblazers, you know, and he's done.
Yeah, and the other, as a category, I think that overall, sealed vintage wax product, and I mean, I'm talking about vintage, you know, in this case, I'm saying anything that's like not in current production because every all these cards, you know, as they get graded, what's called the population report, how many exist, go up.
But every time a box is opened of one of these classic products, there's one less in existence.
For example, 86 FLIR.
I'm an idiot.
I'm crazy.
I opened up a $300,000 box of cards with Drake.
There's one less of those boxes in existence right now.
Okay.
So yes, we pulled all the Jordan rookies, but it's kind of like they say keep it sealed in the original box.
And I think that that is a real safe bet because you go out, let's say you buy a 1996 box of basketball cards, keep it sealed.
You've got Kobe Bryant rookies in there.
You've got Allen Iverson rookies in there.
You've got Steve Nash.
You've got Ray Allen.
You've got Marbury.
You've got all these guys.
It's a bet.
To me, it's like a basket like the S ⁇ P where if you see it, and I think it's a safer bet than speculating on one individual player.
Like I like 2011 baseball because you've got Mike Trout and Bryce Harper inside the box.
So it's just a really cool thing.
And that's one of the things I've collected over the past few years.
I totally agree with you about keeping in the box, except for this one, right?
Okay, that's fine.
We're over 20.
So if we want to open it up, if you want to take the lead with that, we're over.
I got a quick question.
We're talking about these older cards, right?
86 FLERs, the older Honus Wagner's, da-da-da-da.
People that are watching today that decide they want to go buy some cards, right?
Is it still relevant today?
And where can you buy cards that would eventually be worth value?
Like Walmart or a trading card store or a hobby store?
First of all, I'm talking about the vintage product, but realistically, the majority of the market is modern.
And we've sold probably 20 different LeBron James cards for a million dollars or more.
Tom Brady, there exists hundreds of Tom Brady cards that are a million dollar plus.
People with the modern product, because the way they produce it, back in the day, they only made one version.
So the 86 FLIR, there's no Michael Jordan card that there's only 10 of or five of.
Every single box of 86 FLIR has the exact same Michael Jordan card in it.
But today, you know, you can open up a box of cards and say, okay, Lamello Ball.
There's going to be different variations of him.
There's going to be some that you don't know how many are printed, but many others that may say one of one, which means it's the only one of that particular rookie in existence.
One of five, one of 50, one of 99.
So there are people that are getting really rich by either being incredibly smart or being incredibly lucky.
There's going to be somebody who opens up a box of flawless and has a $4 million LeBron James card once that triple logo man is pulled.
And that's what Drake is looking for.
There's people that open up something called Bowman Chrome and Bowman Draft, which is where Topps puts all its rookies and young players.
There are people who are going to open up and find what's called a super fractor.
It's a one-of-one card.
It is like, you know, the ultimate card to own of that player.
And that's going to be super valuable almost no matter who it is.
But if you have the next young hot prospect, like we sold Jason Dominguez for half a million dollars.
He has never played a game in the majors.
He's probably two years away.
He probably will not see the major leagues at the earliest until 2023.
We sold his rookie card because it was a one-of-one for $500,000 because they're projecting the future value and saying, hey, when Derek Jeter was a rookie, he did not have a one-of-one card.
So what's Jeter?
Of course, it is.
It's high stakes, high-risk, high reward.
The modern cards have a higher beta associated with them than the vintage cards.
The vintage cards, if you want to put money into vintage cards and then just have them slowly appreciate, that's fine.
The modern cards, you can spend $100 and literally have a card that two years later is $5,000.
Just so people want to know, the PSA grading service, how backed up are they today?
Check this out, by the way, Adam.
How backed up are they?
Okay, so a year ago, PSA was 12 million cards behind.
I believe that they have reduced that backlog down to about 4 million cards.
And, you know, what that means is they're probably, you know, they used to have this service called Bulk.
And people would be able to send in 100, 500, 5,000 cards at a really discounted price.
And what that did was it log jammed the entire system for everybody.
So you could have a $25,000 card and your card was stuck because somebody with a $50 card sent it in for $8 grading service and they're in front of the line.
So what PSA has done is they've opened up a way where people, if you've got a card basically that's $500 or more, you can cut the line.
You can pay, they've got a $50 service and $100 service all the way up to $10,000.
You send a million dollar card, you're going to pay $10,000 to get it graded.
But to get a graded reel and you like the grade, it's easily worth the $10,000.
But yeah, if all they did was concentrate on the other service, they are probably six months, I'm going to guess, to get rid of that backlog.
All right.
I got to ask.
I got to ask, Kendra.
Seems like this is like the hottest thing on the planet right now.
Clearly.
So here's my, you're not going to get offended by this.
I hope not.
But I remember a time when I was a kid and I was collecting, you know, 86 Mets and I was like, it was like a big deal.
I was a kid.
And then I grew up and I was more interested in hanging out, partying, chicks, the whole thing.
Now this is kind of cool again.
I mean, let's just use what you're saying.
You're hanging out with Drake.
You're doing things with Logan Paul.
I saw you on your Instagram.
You're throwing touchdowns with Tom Brady.
Steve A. Okey's open up a card shop with our boy Dan Fleischman.
Like, it seems like the cool kids are in this market.
I remember a time, my buddy Josh, you might be listening, maybe five, 10 years ago, he told me he was collecting cards.
I'm like, you're a straight-up nerd, bro.
Straight up.
Yep.
Nerd alert.
Why is this a cool thing now?
It basically seems like you and the card game has gone from geek to chic.
Please explain.
Is it all about the money?
That's my question.
Is it just simply, it's an asset class, there's money there.
You know, follow the money.
The cool kids are in it now.
Drake's in it.
What's going on?
Well, it's definitely part because if it's an asset class, but it also gives you, honestly, first of all, there are people who just love the cards.
They love the look.
They love the design.
They get excited opening up packs.
But do you bet on sports?
Not anymore.
I've been to GA.
It's a problem.
Okay.
So people bet sports, right?
Yes.
They like sports, don't they?
Correct.
I'm a big sports fan.
Don't get it to me.
Okay, fine.
So if you bet a game of sports, do you feel that you have any control over whether or not you're going to win that bet?
No, I'm not doing it.
Unless I know Tim Donnegan.
Yeah, if you said you did, you're lying or you're delusional, okay?
Because if you bet sports, you know, the theory is it's 50-50, but less than 50 because the house takes money.
The difference between sports and cards are is trading cards, especially modern cards, could be a little bit like sports betting.
However, you actually have some control of your outcome.
You can go out and decide, okay, fine, I am a baseball expert, and baseball is the best one because a lot of people don't know the young players.
I can go out.
I read the scouting reports.
I know information about this guy.
I can put money into him.
If you know a basketball player, let's say you went to University of Kentucky, okay?
And let's say you saw Tyrese Maxi, and you know Tyrese Maxi went way lower than he should have in the draft when the Sixers got him in the 20s.
And you put money on Tyrese Maxie when he was, you know, some of his cards were $50 or $20 or $500.
Those cards have about 10 to 30 X'd since he was drafted.
So when you do something in trading cards, also it lets you root.
So all of a sudden, guess what?
It doesn't matter if you're a Knicks fan.
You own a bunch of Tyrese Maxi cards.
You're a 76er fan and you want Tyrese Maxi to do well.
So it's like sports betting.
However, it lets you have more direction.
It lets you have more control and it lets you use your expertise a lot more than betting a single game.
That's a very good way of explaining it.
And having a fluke tip tip ball run back for a touchdown, something like that.
So that is part of the reason.
Part of the reason is an alternative asset class.
The other part of the reason is that breaking cards has become entertainment.
I was breaking a box of cards with Drake and I had hundreds of thousands of people watching.
I broke a box of Pokemon cards with Logan Paul.
Over 10 million people have seen that video on YouTube.
So all of those things have transformed.
And when you look at a company like Fnatics, I mean, here you take a company that had no sales, no history of sales, no employees.
And when they initially went out to take investments, I think they got a $4 billion valuation.
So that shows you what the market thinks.
And they have so much money invested.
And they have tentacles everywhere.
So they're going to have the players promoting the cards.
The leagues now own a piece of the company.
So you're going to have the leagues promoting it.
And you're going to have commercials.
You're going to have all these things, which is why I like everything that's out of print.
Because the theory is if you 5X the market or 10x the market, guess what they have to do?
They have to print more product, right?
They've got to make more product in 2023, 24, 25, 26.
So I'm going back 2019 and earlier, and that's the type of stuff I'm buying, because if they are going to bring all these new people into the marketplace, they're going to want to buy something that was pre-2024, right?
There you go.
Did that answer your question?
Yeah, no, I feel a little bit more comfortable about that.
Essentially, the answer is it's all about the money.
And if you want to diversify, rather than picking a sports betting a random game, you get a player.
Can I ask a follow-up?
So it says here that, you know, because I'm a big just invest in the SP index fund.
I don't do individual stocks.
You know, who knows what's happening with the market?
Who knows what's happening with Tesla?
But I'm very confident the SP is going to go 10% year over year over year, as it says.
So let me just read you some numbers here.
If you invest $10,000 in the SP index in 2007, you'd be sitting on $71,000 right now.
So it's 7x your money.
If you invested that 10K into an index cards for trading, it'd be worth $165,000.
Not so bad.
So over double that.
So to your point, picking out cards, individual individuals, is there an actual index for cards?
Like if I said, look, I don't know if I want a Trey Young or a Zion or a Brady.
I don't want the responsibility of picking this one card, whether it goes up or down.
Who knows?
Is there an index that people can invest in, just like the SP 500?
There are funds out there.
There are a couple card funds out there.
I know that a company called Alt has a fund.
I know that Blowout has the wax fund, which I like as well.
And I know that there are other entities that I think they're doing it more for private clients.
There are indexes.
Like if you go get an app called Card Ladder, it is a pricing tool.
And they have like an app of you, you can check sports by basically typing baseball, basketball, and they have a basket of the most highly collected cards.
And they show you what the trend is on that individual card.
But no, as it gets bigger, it would be great if there were readily accessible funds.
The closest thing to it now that you can buy without being an incredible investor is probably the fractional share companies, you know, whereby you can buy an individual.
Like, hey, you want to go out and get Mickey Manel cards?
You know, buy shares of Mickey Mano cards or buy shares of Michael Jordan or LeBron James.
There's a new one coming out with some ultra-high-end items called Liquid Marketplace.
I think they're launching in the next month or two.
But those are four groups that would be, you know, if you're looking to do that type of thing.
Cool.
Very helpful.
Thank you.
I'm good.
Go for it.
Lead the way.
Okay.
So let me just get these ready.
Lead the way.
Lead the way.
Okay.
So, Adam, what are you learning so far?
Tyler, are you a card guy at all or no?
After this episode, possibly.
I used to when I was younger.
I used to have a ton of cards.
If you're watching this right now, I'm curious.
What has this done to you?
Because you know the one thing about investment, a lot of people are like, why do you interview?
You know, there was an era I was interviewing a lot of bodybuilders.
I'd get so many complaints.
Why are you interviewing bodybuilders?
I don't care about bodybuilders.
Your business channel.
Why are you interviewing mafia people?
I don't care about mafia.
It's a business channel.
Why do you interview card people?
These are the things I'm interested in.
I'm interested in collectible cards.
But if the audience is listening and you put a little bit of time into it, there could be a pretty good return for you with cards.
How are you processing today's conversation?
Well, at the end of the day, just to circle back to what you said, whether it's bodybuilding, whether it's mafiosos, whether it's even the Ken Goldens of the world, everyone's an entrepreneur and they're doubling down on their specific skill set.
So I'm learning that Ken is an expert in this.
And you know how they say that the riches are in the niches?
Ken's getting rich doing this.
And he's following the most beautiful thing in life.
But is it making you?
Are you sitting there saying 10% of my money goes into cards?
If there was an index fund, yes.
Because you used to keep 200 cards on your desk.
If the maid got, you know, feeling some type of way, she stole five of the cards, you wouldn't even notice.
Boom, you're down 50 grand.
for me I wouldn't want like a card tied up in my here you go my house so that there's been a solve for that like for example if you go to golden auctions yeah or if you go to you know now we shorten the name just to golden golden.co not com but golden.co and you click on vault what you can do is you can vault your cards you can have them digitized so that you know,
you can see the cards and you, you know, there's a price guide analytical tool as well for it.
So people buy like literally right now we've got about $125 million worth of product of individuals product in this secure vault.
It's fully insured.
You never have to worry about it.
You can log into your account.
You have a portfolio of all your cards.
If you sell a card, you can give us instructions to ship the card to somebody.
If you want to put it, you can click and you can list it on Golden to be sold or for auction.
And there are several other vaults out there.
Obviously, I'm Golden, so I'm going to promote mine.
And it's actually a completely free service.
There's zero cost.
We insure it for free.
The other thing it does is if you buy something, let's say from an auction house elsewhere and you are in a state that collects sales tax, the vault is located in Delaware.
Therefore, you ship it to the vault and there's no, you know, you deduct sales tax off your invoice.
The old Delaware approach.
Yep.
So there you go.
So you're saying that you don't necessarily have to hold the tangible card.
Correct.
But Pat, you have all your cards.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Almost all of it, not all of them.
Okay, so why do you hold on to all your cards rather than using this service?
It's going more in this direction.
But, you know, if you, some people have places where they put it in the safe because guests are coming over.
You open up the car and you kind of look at them.
There's something about looking at your cards.
If you're an old, that's how I am.
I like to take my cards out once a month and take a look at it.
What percentage, like, I feel like there's three different classes of people.
I mean, if you're struggling and you're poor, you know, and you're not making a lot of money, just save up, save your money.
Like, save that money.
Like have cash.
Yes.
Like, don't just try to get a Mickey Mantle rookie card and then you're broke.
Okay, cool.
Then there's the person who goes from just, all right, I'm trying to be a saver to try to become an investor.
Now the first thing maybe you should do is have a 401k, IRA, like get just the basics.
And then the third class of person is maybe someone like a Pat is like, dude, I'm good.
I got the cash.
I got the investments.
Now let me look to diversify my asset class.
So rather than just stocks, businesses, real estate, now you're getting into crypto, NFTs, cards, you know, certain sort of rare collectibles, coins, what have you, gold even.
Is that essentially the basis for investing?
Or what do you recommend?
Like who should definitely not spend all their money on cards and who should step up to the plate and actually diversify?
People who need the cash in the bank to cover food, rent, and insurance should not be not be spending it on cards.
I think that level number two, I know a lot of kids that are in college that literally have a, you know, come from middle class families, have seven figure bank accounts and seven figure card collections from buying and selling and investing over the years.
I know some 21 year old who goes to school in Philadelphia, who I've been trying to hire for two years.
I can't because I literally can't, you know, can't pay the kid $150,000 a year because he's making 5x that with cards on the market.
As we have Golden up here, that's obviously another place you can buy.
We're more high-end.
We have an auction running right now.
We have items that may range from $1,000 to over a million.
But virtually every name we spoke about except the Honus Wagner, whether it be Mickey Mano, whether it be LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, all of those items are available in some variation at Golden right now.
But getting back to the box, and look, there are people I deal with, I think they're a little nuts.
There are people that have 90% of their investable assets in cards, and they feel that they want to invest in what they know.
They feel the stock market is manipulated.
They feel that people are crooked.
They don't believe in, you know, they feel there's not free trade.
And they feel with trading cards, you know, they have a competitive advantage and that they can hold the assets and they can control what they buy and what they sell and not be up there where, you know, some, I don't want to pick on any publicly held company, but, you know, where they own, I will pick on one because I was stuck with some of this stock.
You know, where they got Peloton, they thought they got a great deal buying it at 80 bucks because it was down.
And then they, you know, it goes down to 30 because they announce when they put out their earnings that, oh, by the way, we've been really sucking for the past couple months and we didn't give anybody advance warning.
So, but, you know, they don't want that to happen to them.
You know, they don't want that to happen to them.
And they don't, or they, or they look at the financial crisis, you know, you can pick one.
But in 2020, when they said some people, you know, the COVID came out and everybody forced the market down and then all the billionaires bought it all up cheap and now it's higher than it ever was.
So they want to have some control.
And typically the younger you are, the less likely you are to buy stocks.
Thank you.
Let's open it up.
Sure.
Let's lead the way.
So this is what's called the hot pack.
So we're going to do this last.
Okay.
Okay, now the key with this card is...
Tell me why is it called a hot pack?
Because this is a hobby exclusive and it has a guaranteed called an X Fractor in here, which is one of those rare cards.
Guaranteed.
Guaranteed.
There's one guaranteed X-Fractor in this box.
So what we're looking at, and with these cards, they are, let me move this over here.
There you go.
I should have brought a Matt.
Notice how he carefully opens the pack.
Yes.
In fact, I'm not sure.
His hands are not dirty.
Here we go.
I'm going to want to see who I got.
Okay, so we have, and these you got to be careful not to touch.
You got Corey Magetti.
Are we able to see this, by the way?
If you can, yeah, if you can put the camera.
Can you guys zoom in one of the cameras?
John, if you want to come in here or George, so we can zoom it in.
Corey McGetty.
Duke, I remember him.
Steve Francis.
Stevie franchise, yeah.
Kurt Thomas.
My Mahat.
Checklist.
We don't want that.
What is that card you say?
It's a checklist.
Okay.
And Mike Sweetney.
Okay.
Sweetney.
No.
Georgetown Buff.
What I will tell you is people are going to say, oh, my God, you got fingerprints.
Some people open up cards with gloves.
You can damage the card.
I find you can damage the card that way because you don't have the real feel.
And what people do is they can take a microfiber and just clean a fingerprint off it.
And anytime you send a card out to get grading, if you're not taking a microfiber and touching the card to make sure you're removing your fingerprints, you're downgrading your grade.
Now, Ken, there's only five cards per pack?
There's only five cards per pack.
Excuse me, four cards, 24 packs per box.
Four cards per pack.
I got to tell you, the cards are cooler than I remember.
They're like almost risen up.
I don't know who we got here.
Matt Harpering, Jalen Rose, Jalen Rose.
81.
You know what's 81?
Pavlovic.
What's 81 in?
Toby scored 81 on.
Toby scored 81.
Travis Hansen.
Okay.
Travis Hansen.
I don't remember that guy at all.
Here we go.
This box.
So some of these cards are just whatever.
Some dude who never made it whatsoever.
And then you got guys like Steve Francis, who's arguably a Hall of Famer.
Yes.
You got a lot of rookies.
Also, these guys all made it.
They're all in the NBA.
Okay.
So we got this able to show it all.
If you can't zoom in.
Yeah.
We got Jorge on the case.
If Jorge's mind, we're going to be okay.
Brent Barry, who was one of the greatest fantasy players of all time because he had amazing percentages.
Wow.
He won the dunk contest.
Yeah.
Bobby Jackson.
Great point guard.
Minnesota.
Marcus Banks.
Marcus Banks.
Come on.
UNLV.
We need a LeBron out of this box.
Yeah, we do, Ken.
Okay, well, we just pulled a good rookie because I saw the back.
Okay.
Okay, so we have a better rookie.
It'll be the last card.
Let's hope there's more in this pack.
Mano.
Definitely a future Hall of Famer in the back of this pack.
Genobly?
No, no, no.
What do we got there?
No.
That is Genobi.
He's definitely, I mean, I think he's just got his elected to the Hall of Fame.
Eddie Curry.
Bust.
Richard Hamilton.
Rip Hamilton.
Hall of Famer.
He lives right across the street from us.
Oh, you know what's serious?
Ken just busted out of that plastic covering.
What do you got there, Ken?
A chrome Carmelo Anthony.
Wow.
Carmel Anthony rookie card.
You put that right in the plastic.
Yep, absolutely.
Mellow.
Absolutely.
Shout out to you, buddy.
This way, you guys won't get your fingerprints on it.
What's some like this go for?
It's not a thousand dollar card, but at least it's a few hundred dollars.
So a rookie mellow.
Nuggets.
We got a rookie in the back of this one, not the rookie I want to see.
Okay, we got Latrell Spreewell.
Spreewell.
Choke his coach out if you're the one.
First thing I thought about.
Karan Butler.
Karan.
Assistant coach of the year.
Murphy.
And I got to look at these carefully just to make sure I'm not skipping over a refractor.
I probably have already.
Because the refractors, they're the same front, but they're just shiny.
So, and all these cards are kind of shiny.
So, again, is this basically what you did with Drake?
This is exactly what I did with Drake, yes.
Now, the difference with the 86 FLIR box is because they were all well-known players mostly, you had a lot of cards that everybody wants to get.
Andre Miller.
And they also only had 132 cards in the set.
This is a much larger set.
Andre Miller, very underrated point guard.
Jason Chase.
Yeah, he was actually pretty good.
Terry the Jet.
Jarvis Hayes.
Okay.
Pat's just looking for a Dennis Rodman rookie card.
But that would be 1988.
See, he knows.
88.
Same year as Pippen, I believe, right?
That FLIR.
Yep, exactly.
One set.
Wally Zerbiak.
Wally's Kwame Brown.
Talk about Drake.
Holy Great Podcaster.
Toner, this one's for you, Tyler.
We got to get Kwame on the scene.
He's blown up, by the way.
He has blown up.
Two years ago, his card would have been irrelevant.
Who is he fighting with?
Was it into it with a commentator like Matt Barnes and all the smoke podcasts?
Is it Stephen A. Smith?
Was that the one who was?
Oh, it was Stephen A. Smith.
Stephen A. Smith.
Yes, it was Stephen A. Smith.
You're right.
You're right.
Well, who doesn't have beef with Stephen A. Smith?
Okay, so we have right here.
We have a refractor.
You can see a difference?
Yep.
Yep.
Okay.
So let's hope it's somebody who's good because if it is, that'll pay for the box.
Eric Snow?
Nope.
Penny Hardaway.
Second best player.
Penny?
Penny?
No, no.
Penny Hartley.
No, he just said a penny.
Oh, we have a good card.
What do we got?
What do we got?
Oh, we have a really good card.
We have a Tracy McGrady game-worn sick T-Mac.
Okay, so let's get that.
Tracy McGrady game-worn jersey.
Yes, you have to 25 refractor.
Okay, so we pulled.
The first one is I've actually pulled a 20003 Chrome.
Can you zoom it in?
See if you're on it or not.
Did I got tilted?
Tracy McGrady.
That's the angle right there.
If you got it, that's the camera.
Okay, you see it or no?
Okay, good.
Yeah, they can see it.
Let me see the back.
Let me show the back.
You can see where it's got the congratulations, and you got the number 25.
It's one out of 25?
Yes.
So what's something like that go for?
I couldn't even quote this off the top of my head.
So I've never, I know the reason.
A million dollars.
No, no, I wish.
I wish.
I wish.
But it's one in 25.
Yeah, it's one of 25.
Okay.
So that's good.
Let me put this in here, too.
T-Mac.
Could have been going down as one of the best players ever if he avoided those.
Five out of 25.
That's a good one.
And then we got the last one is Josh Moore.
Okay.
Never even heard of him.
All right.
We got T-Mac here.
Oh, wow.
It's a little piece of his jersey in the card.
It's actually pretty dope.
Yep.
Game-worn shorts.
So they cut off a little piece of his shorts.
What do you put in the card?
Put it in the card.
That's the card they started doing.
Ken, I remember back in the day when I was growing up in the 1920s, it came with gum.
Please, God, be good.
Here you go, PBD.
All right, let's see what we got here.
Oh, crap.
Okay, we got a really, really, really good card, but not of a really good player.
Gary Payton.
Gary Payton, what do you mean?
no no no no no no we got Peyton rookie would be 1990 or no 92 i believe right uh Peyton i think we're probably i think Peyton is i think 90 91 yeah uh Eric Coleman, same year as Coleman, I believe.
Cerunus Ogascus.
So this is what's known as a black refractor.
It is one of the holy grail cards.
If this were LeBron, we'd have a half a million dollar card right here.
Whose card is that?
This is Mike Miller, three-point specialist.
For the heat, yeah, Memphis Chris.
Now, if you can sell it like that, is that in the few thousands or no?
Only if it's a 10, yes.
So this is limited to 500.
But the black refractors are very, very tough because of the border to get, you know, really high grade.
So this one is definitely, this one's perfect.
That's why I was so.
Mike Miller.
Mike Miller was...
He won it for the Heat.
Yeah.
Game 7.
Now, Ken, if you could somehow pull an Arvita Sabonis, the best passing big man of all time, I would love that.
Who was a four?
Who would that go to?
Was that you and I?
Yes.
So when you open these cards with Drake and every first card had the stick of gum on it, how many cards are actually high-value cards that you can't get the gum off of?
Luckily with Drake, there was none on a Jordan and none on any of the key rookie cards.
They don't do the gum anymore, right?
No, they don't do gum anymore, luckily.
But they used to.
Why did they put the gum in there?
Because Top started as a gum company.
It was Bazooka.
You know, Bazooka Joe.
Bazooka, great gum.
Yao Ming, that would be a good card if it was a refractor.
Nene?
Nene.
Just like Elvis, one name only.
That's right.
And Maurice Williams.
Nuggets.
Okay.
You remember Nene?
Mo Williams, yeah.
I'll do one here.
Adam, you want to?
Do you want or not?
Yeah, let's do it.
All right.
Tyler, do you want to do one?
I'm interested in that one.
All right, let's see what we got here.
PBD.
Okay.
So the way you're doing it is so I go like this.
I take it up top.
I hold the edges and I just pull it out so that it can go like that.
And then once I get a seam, I just carefully peel it out.
Take it at the top.
Could you grab a scissor?
I'll just screw this thing up.
So you're just pulling it off?
Do you want me to start the packs for you guys?
I would love for you to do that.
I could see myself pulling this apart and butchering it.
PBD, would you send that to Ken?
If that has my Arvita Sabonis card in there, I'm running out the studio, Ken.
Nick Van Axel.
Wow.
Oh, yeah.
Wow.
Six point guard.
He plays so much with the Lakers.
Before Kobe, it was Nick Van Brown.
Nick Van Axel, yes.
Yep.
I got a Duan Wagner.
Do you remember Duan Wagner?
Yeah, of course.
Came out of high school, I believe.
Keith Van Horn.
His son is the number one high school player in the country.
Really?
Point guard?
Yep.
Wow.
Travis Oslo.
Travis Ostlaw.
He played for Adam.
Let's see your luck at him.
Here we go.
I know this guy.
Duncan's rookie is what year?
Huh?
What year is Duncan Rookie?
99.
Duncan is 1997.
97 or 8?
97.
He won with David Robinson.
In 99.
That's something that's a good thing.
I got Draco.
Hold on.
Hold on.
I don't know what just happened here, but I got a Kobe.
Okay.
I got a Kobe, Pat.
There we go.
This is for you, PBD.
I like it.
So let's get this.
What do we do with there?
I just pulled a Kobe Bryant.
Is that a Draco worth anything or no?
No, that's so cool.
Put it in here.
Put the Kobe in here, too.
You're going in?
You see this?
I just got a Kobe.
Pat, because I love you so much, I'm giving you my Kobe card.
Unbelievable.
Here you go, sir.
Thank you.
I got Jamal Mashburn, who I just saw at the heat game the other day.
Good for you, Mashburn.
Jamal Mashburn.
Yeah.
What story do you know about Jamal Mashburn?
I don't know.
He was doing some shady stuff in Kentucky.
What do you got?
Jamal Mashburn.
Remember the three J's?
Jason Kidd, Jamal Mashburn.
Jimmy Jackson.
Jimmy Jackson.
That's right.
Jimmy Jackson.
I got Brian Grant and a very underrated big man, Zaza Potulia.
Remember Zaza?
Did Brian Grant play with, is that his brother or no?
No, right?
You're thinking of Harvey Grant and Harvey Grant.
No, Brian Grant was a heat guy with dreads.
I think he said run into some health issues recently.
But he got traded with Lamar Odom to the Lakers.
I got a Ricky Davis, Carl Malone, Carl Malone.
Matt Harping, Harp Ring, and then I got a rookie.
No, I don't think that is.
John Steffenson.
Here you go.
What do we got here?
That Kobe card.
Jamal Mash for Brian Grant.
Ken, I appreciate you opening up the card.
By the way, the only time, this is a little graphic.
The only time I open up plastic stuff, I guess, if I'm opening up a condom.
So this is back to my old days.
Sorry, guys.
Use protection.
That's all I'm saying, kids.
Reggie Miller.
Oh, I got a refractor.
Not a great guy, but his refractor.
And I'll show you guys how you can tell the difference.
Sean Marion, I mean, you got it.
The Matrix.
Lamar.
By the way, I will say this.
I'm feeling very childlike right now.
This is like a cool feeling.
Like, I haven't done this stuff.
Let me see how you can tell it.
So you can see the refractor.
You have to notice that this chrome is a little bit.
The chrome's a little dull here, and it's a little bright here.
And you look at the back and you see the bottom left.
If you see 160, it's a refractor.
If you see what color?
Like these?
Or it's not the color.
It's got to say number 160.
No, It's got to be shiny.
So you really have to be able to see it.
So I probably should look at your guys' cards when you're done to see if you passed over any, see if you passed over any refractors.
I think this one might be a refractor.
This is Mike Dunleavey Jr.
Shout-out to the Dunleavy family.
This one seems a little nice.
And what's the big deal with refractors?
Somebody's trying to collect a set and they need the total refractors, right?
Getting refractor sets are highly expensive and virtually impossible.
Now, what are these checklists for?
So you know who's in the set?
Oh, wow.
No, this is not a refractor.
Okay.
So these are all 03-04?
These are all 03-04.
Not rookies, though, just they played in the league.
Yes, they were in the league in 03-04.
Some of these guys.
Antonio McDice.
Damn, David West.
Come on, where are you, LeBron?
I'm going to put that here.
Here you go.
Brichard Lewis.
I think I just pulled a Dirk refractor.
Yes, I did.
Okay.
So if there's, Ken, if there's one player in the league, not like a Hall of Famer, not like an MJ LeBron, but like a young up-and-comer who's maybe been in the league for the last two, three years, and you can get your hands on his rookie card, who would it be?
You're talking like a Luca, is it a Trey Young, a John Morant?
Look, look, obviously, John Morant is doing amazing.
His cards have gone up.
Luca is doing amazing.
His cards are already up there.
I mean, Luca has a lot of expectations built into his card prices, but he certainly can dominate the league.
I think Trey has come off a little bit this year.
I think Tatum is really might be undervalued.
I'm going to mention somebody.
It's going to be a home buddy, but I think is really undervalued, and that is Joel Embiid.
Giannis, certainly, look, what if Giannis wins four championships and five MVPs?
So he's got one championship.
He's got two MVPs.
It looked like Embiid was going to win the MVP this year.
Now it's probably a toss-up between Embiid and Giannis.
Jokic.
You know, well, yeah, Jokic as well.
Jokic is.
He's an interesting guy.
Yeah, he does not have the type of game that inspires collectors.
Jokic?
Yeah.
He's the reigning MVP.
He is the reigning MVT, but there are some players who are amazing players, but are underpriced.
Like, for example, James Harden.
People don't love buying James Harden cards.
I think James Harden is drastically undervalued for what he accomplishes.
Well, he's got to win a championship to get that respect.
Yeah, exactly.
I don't know.
Do you think Giannis can win a championship?
According to Tom Zinner, he'll never win one.
I think.
Yeah.
Tom, by the way.
I think Giannis, is that anything?
It's nothing over there.
No, nothing over there.
So we got, what, three more packs left?
Yeah, we got three more, and then we got three more, and then we've got the money pack.
Thanks, John.
Let's see what we got here.
Let's see what we got here.
Ken, thanks for making me feel like a child again.
I appreciate it.
Okay, I got a pretty good rookie in the back.
Let's hope it's a refractor.
It's not.
Now, Ken, how old is your son?
My son is eight.
So is there anything more in life that you love just opening up cards with your son?
Oh, really?
It's great.
Do you do this with Dylan or Tico?
PPD?
Yeah, I would do it.
They like Pokemon cards.
See, that's like what Ken was saying.
Another refractor.
But Paul is really into baseball.
That's your son?
Baseball and basketball.
Yeah, yeah.
So, I'm remarried, so I have a 25-year-old daughter and a 22-year-old daughter who, until.
Okay, so tell me what this is.
You may want to look at this.
Okay, let's see what we do.
I don't want to look at this.
What this is.
Oh, there you go.
We got it.
What do we got?
I pulled a LeBron channel.
We got the LeBron.
Finally, okay.
Congratulations.
This is it.
This is what we wanted.
Nicely done, PBD.
So, and right behind it, look what's right behind it, though, Ken.
That's what you got to see.
What's behind it?
Whoa.
Oh, wow.
Oh, he reaches for the glasses.
You know, it's legit.
He's got the Carmilla rookie refractor.
This is sick.
This was the hot pack.
So, Pat pulled out the hot pack.
Yes.
Pat, congratulations.
Okay.
So there's that.
So this is a Carmelo Refractor Rookie.
Yes.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I just pulled a Boers Diao, guys.
I don't know.
Okay.
French connection.
Pretty decent defender, though.
This is really good.
Very versatile.
I'm very coverless.
We got these two cards.
Way to go.
So is it fair to say that that LeBron card just paid for the pack?
Yeah.
Way to go, PBD.
Yes.
There's a Carmilla.
Let's see what we got.
We got Desmond Mason.
Oh, I got something good coming up.
Scotty Pippen.
I got a Chris Bosch rookie.
Chris Bosch is also a rookie that year.
Yeah, that was, by the way, 03.
03.
They call it one of the best, if not the best, right?
Yep, correct.
03 right there.
And G. Wade.
Here we go.
Darko Milichic.
Oh, oh, I just pulled maybe the best-looking guy in NBA history.
You guys know who Sam Cassell is?
Of course.
Absolute stud.
Doesn't look like an alien at all.
You are too funny.
Tim Thomas.
Oh, damn.
Okay, so we have it: Jason Richardson X Fractor.
Jay Rich.
What a dunker.
How many dunk contests did he win to?
So this is what's called an X Fractor.
You look at it, you can see.
I'll pass it down.
Let me 220.
But they put it in the holders back in the day so that you would not get the card damaged.
When he came out, I mean, people thought he was going to be a bigger star than this guy had.
This guy had an interesting game.
Yeah.
Well, he could jump through the roof.
He just couldn't.
You want to see if any of these other private care before we set them aside?
Yep.
Okay.
Take a peek.
$25,000 box, huh?
Interesting.
So now, to get these cards graded, it's going to take us how long?
I can get them graded pretty quickly.
Okay.
I know somebody.
I know somebody.
So I do just give them to you to get them graded.
We can take care of that for you.
All right, perfect.
We have phone calls if you want.
Do we?
Let's get them.
But it's got to be about cards.
It's got to be about cards.
Okay.
They're all cards.
Well, let's do them.
Let's get some of these callers in.
We've got Drake on the line.
Drake, how are you feeling, buddy?
Hey, man.
We have Kyle.
Kyle.
Let's give Kyle.
Kyle, what's going on?
What you got?
Hey, good morning, guys.
I'm just watching the pack getting open and watching you guys talk.
And just had a question on what you guys thought the Fanatics deal would have on the industry going forward.
I have an answer.
Either one of you want to answer.
No, you're not.
You can characterize it.
You're the expert.
Okay.
So let me give you the negative.
The downside is that, you know, you never really love Monopoly, right?
You never want one company controlling all the licenses.
Setting that aside, I think that this is potentially an unbelievable historic moment.
Here's what's happening right now in cards.
You know, these flawless cases I was talking about that went going for $40,000 plus.
Fanatics got under $10,000 for those cases.
So what happened is that the middlemen are the ones that are making all the money.
Fanatics is what their goal is to try and put more cards directly into the hands of consumer.
So they will get more money for the product, but at the same time, they're going to eliminate a lot of the distribution people who, if I own a card store, why wouldn't I just want to call Fnatics and buy myself?
Why do I want to go through a broker?
So what that's going to allow them to do is charge more for the product, which in this case is not a bad thing because they're not charging more for the product.
They're actually getting it to the customer less.
So let's say Panini, instead of getting $8,000 a case, got $20,000 for those cases that are selling for $40,000.
And the consumer was able to buy them at $20,000 a case directly from Panini.
So the consumer would be buying them at a cheaper price.
Panini would be getting more money.
If you get more money per product, you can make a better product.
You can put more money into the product.
You can buy more autographs.
You can buy more jersey cards.
You can spend more money on advertising.
Fnatics is a 27, per their last valuation, $27 billion company.
That's insane.
So they are, and they have, and this is what I love.
They have a 20-year license agreement with everybody.
So I've competed against Michael Rubin in a former life when I was selling on TV back in the 90s.
He's the owner of the 76ers?
Michael Rubin, one of the owners of the 76ers, but the owner of Fnatics, the principal.
Oh, is that how he made his money?
That's how he made his money.
So Fnatics.
So he's the principal shareholder of Fnatics.
And, you know, he's a very smart guy.
He's very strategic.
So they have a 20-year license.
So you know what they don't have to do?
They don't have to flood the market in year one, two, and three.
If you want to make money in the card industry, this may be my best tip for everybody today.
Whatever, whenever Fnatic starts putting out new product, okay, under their licenses, buy the first two editions, the first two key editions of baseball, basketball, and football.
You got to wait until their product filters.
And the reason is, is if they are smart, they got 20 years.
They got to pay these fees for 20 years.
They got to make sure that their first few releases blow up in value to support giving them a track record.
So I think what they're going to do is they're going to really create great product the first few.
I hope they do it for 20 years, but certainly the first few years, they're going to create great product.
They're going to underproduce to make sure they get people excited, that the customers make money on the cards, the customers enjoy the cards.
It's a great experience for everybody and set them on a great track record.
I am excited for the industry with the Fanatics deal because I think it's going to drastically expand.
I think it's going to give consumers a chance to get product at a better, cheaper price and enjoy the appreciation as opposed to somebody that, you know, somebody who has just taking possession of the product for a week and selling it, making the money.
Plus, I think it's going to get a lot more players involved.
They've got player relationships.
They've got all these athletes signed to contract.
Getting really in the weeds.
It used to be back in the day, like this jersey card that we pulled of Tracy McGrady, guess what?
It was worn in a game by Tracy McGrady.
The past couple years, the jerseys have been so hard to come by.
They're like literally, they're like shelf jerseys, like right off.
They go to dick sporting goods and do it.
So Fnatics is going to make sure they're actually game used and buy the game used stuff and put it on the cards.
So I think that they are going to make a better product for consumers.
And I think that the initial purchase price by consumers are going to be at a more affordable and more realistic price.
Ken, what is the, maybe it's a black swan event?
I don't know.
But is there something out there that's that maybe would be a worst case scenario for the cards?
Like, yeah, get involved in the cards, different asset class, but oh, we didn't see this coming and all of a sudden the market goes down 20%, 50%.
What would that be in this marketplace?
Well, for me, for out-of-production product, I don't see that event, okay, because the product's already out there.
Obviously, with any athlete, you can have an event.
Deshaun Watson recently signed.
Obviously, he had all the charges last year, two years ago, and his cards went all the way down.
So, with any current living athlete, should they do anything to put themselves in disfavor with the public, that can hurt.
You're saying more individuals than the actual market.
More individuals in the market.
The only thing that can hurt the market is the card manufacturers putting out a dud of a product or overproducing.
Those are the two major risk factors.
What do you think I should do with all my OJ Simpson rookie cards?
Those have gone down quite a bit.
I don't think they're going to come back.
I think the novelty, you know, the novelty of him being a murderer has gradually faded.
Yeah, alleged.
Well, they did win the civil case.
But it has weakened over time.
I was around during that, during when it was actually happening.
People are going crazy for his stuff and for his autographs during the chase.
But, you know, the interest has slowly waned over time.
Right.
Okay, let's get to the next caller.
John, if we got another one, let's go to the next one.
Yeah, we have Chris on the line.
Chris, how are you doing?
What's on your mind?
Doing fantastic, gentlemen.
Nice to see you guys kicking off a Monday open up back cards with the boys.
Down to business.
So I have just a question for Ken.
Currently, we have an entire base set, first edition Pokemon cards.
Majority of the Shinies are graded 8.5 and above.
Now, looking at the market, it's very difficult to read because I'm in kind of a unique position where not a lot of people have an entire set.
So my question to you would be, how would you approach that?
Would you go through an auction?
Would you go through, or what would your approach be to go ahead and sell those if I was interested to do that?
Sure.
Every time somebody tries to sell on their own, what you've got to realize, I'll use Golden as an example.
I can touch a button and I can send out an email that 500,000 people can get at any one point in time.
So if you look at Pokemon, for example, we did the break with Logan Paul and we sold those packs on Golden.
So we have all the high-end Pokemon collectors that are at Golden.
If you try to sell it yourself, let's say you try to sell it yourself on eBay, you don't know who's going to be watching.
You don't know what type of following you have.
You don't know if the bidders are actually bidding because there's no controls over who places a bid and you don't know if you're actually going to get paid.
With the larger, more established auction houses and marketplaces, they approve their bidders.
They watch the bidding.
They make sure you collect.
They're going to highlight it.
They're going to advertise it.
You're not going to be one of 75 million products listed.
So you really want to try and find the right place to sell it and really the right auction.
For example, going in, you know, if we have like next month at Golden, we have a Jackie Robinson auction.
Okay, that probably is not the ideal place to sell Pokemon.
However, after that, we have a non-sports comic book video game and TCG auction.
That is certainly more likely to attract people who are interested in Pokemon than something that's generic.
Wonderful.
Thanks so much for the time, guys.
I appreciate it.
Great feedback, by the way.
Great feedback.
Thank you, Chris.
Next person, John.
We don't have anyone else.
Zach hung up, but he did want to know about UFC trading cards and are you interested?
Yeah, UFC has really been taken off.
I can imagine.
We're lucky that Conor McGregor follows us and he's retweeted some of our tweets every time we've sold a record of his card.
But UFC, again, it's worldwide.
It's relatively new, the trading cards.
They are rapidly gaining an audience, not only for the fights, but rapidly gaining an audience for the trading card collectors.
And it's a hotly contested license.
So, yeah, I like UFC cards going forward.
You got to get your hands on one of these Patty the Batty cards.
That's my guy.
That kid's going to blow up.
Patty the Batty.
You know that guy?
Yeah, of course I know.
That's great.
I bought Connor's best card, which was the autograph.
And I think it's like one out of 25.
If you know which one I'm talking about, Connor has $30,000.
It wasn't a lot of money, $25,000 or $30,000.
And with things like Aaron Rodgers, would you say Aaron Rodgers is underpriced right now, undervalued right now?
Ooh, that's a good one.
I would say I would rather buy, I'd rather invest in Aaron Rodgers cards than, say, Patrick Mahomes cards.
Really?
And I'll tell you why.
I'll tell you why.
I think that, you know, first of all, he's a Packer.
You know, second of all, he's got so many MVP awards, is going to go down as one of the all-time legends.
And I think that his cards lost a bit of a shine last year during the whole, you know, I'm vaccinated, I'm not vaccinated thing.
And I think his cards went down.
The further we get from that, people are going to care less.
Yep.
And he won the MVP again.
And he won the MVP again.
Okay.
And he signed the largest contract in NFL.
Mahomes, on the other hand, I think that his cards went up rapidly when people looked at the rookie class and looked at the NFL and said, wow, this guy's in the Chiefs.
He's just going to rush through the NFL for the next five, 10 years and rack up five, six Super Bowls.
What they didn't see coming was Justin Herbert, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow.
They did not realize it.
Oh, man, look, there's an argument to be made that Josh Allen is the best pure quarterback in the NFL.
I mean, the guy.
He's a beast.
Yeah, the guy.
Yeah, the guy is absolutely amazing.
So I think it's tougher.
I love Patrick Mahomes' cards.
I love him as a player, but I think it's going to be tougher for him to rack up all those Super Bowls that people expect.
I totally agree with you.
Rogers is Rodgers really, you know, they talk about basketball.
They talk about Jordan, LeBron, and Kobe.
Rodgers would be part of those three, whether it's Joe Montana, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers.
I would say those would be my three.
Can we talk about Tom Brady real quick?
Sure.
I mean, he's the GOAT.
He's the GOAT.
Nobody's better than Tom.
I don't care what you say.
Absolutely.
What happened where he retired?
Some guy bought his last football, his last touchdown pass for a half a million bucks.
Boom, the next day, hey, I'm coming back.
Like, how much money did that guy lose?
Talk about downside about buying the memorabilia.
In theory, had the guy bought it and paid for it, he would have lost probably 90% of the value.
In actuality, the football has not been paid for.
If that was done, if that transaction happened at Golden, I just simply would have reversed the transaction because I don't want, you know, the ball was advertised as his last ever touchdown.
And literally the day after it voided.
There should have been a disclaimer in there.
They could have put something in there that said, hey, Tom Brady is retired.
As of today, it's his last football, provided he never plays another NFL game, then they'd be covered.
Right now, they're probably, if the auction house Lelands wants to press it, there probably will be a lawsuit, and it'll be interesting to see who wins.
But obviously, it's going to cost him a lot of money.
But no, that ball was worth, for a second, $500,000 plus, and then it becomes worth what a Tom Brady touchdown during the playoffs is worth, which is really nice, but certainly between $25,000 and $50,000.
Well, assuming he actually does come back and throws another touchdown.
Correct, yes.
Tyler, how are we looking?
All right, real quick.
We opened a $25,000 box, right?
Can you ballpark?
I mean, you had seven or eight good cards, right?
Maybe ten.
Can you throw a ballpark number on what it was worth?
A lot of it depends on what that McGrady's worth.
I don't know off the top of my head.
I know the Carmelo is a few thousand.
LeBron, interestingly, the LeBron during the height of COVID was probably a $28,000 card.
Now it's probably closer to $10,000.
So I'm going to say in the teens, how high in the teens, you know, we'd have to go card for card and see what the grades come out.
Cool.
Well, Ken, I really think that's...
It's all on grading.
It's really cool that you agreed before the show to split this three ways.
That's really nice.
You're a gentleman, Kim.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Anyways, tomorrow we have who?
We have Dave Rubin Thursday, Joe Jorgensen Friday.
And, you know, it is Bitcoin week in Miami.
There's some big speakers at Bitcoin.
Special guests show up.
Aaron Rodgers is speaking as well.
I believe.
There's a few big names that we're talking about.
Stay tuned this week.
It's a big week that kicked off with the card king himself.
