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