#512: Ken Goldin and Ross Hoffman on Collectibles

Ken Goldin is the founder and chairman of Goldin Auctions. Ross Hoffman is the new CEO of Goldin Auctions, which has grown into the industry leader in collectible and memorabilia auctions. Goldin Auctions recently received a large investment from The Chernin Group and Ross joined Ken and the Goldin Auction team as part of that transaction. I’m joined by my brother, Joe Pompliano, for the conversation. In this conversation, we discuss the Goldin Auctions story, the trading card market, auction dynamics, what investors should avoid, how Ross and the team plan to improve the technology, and Ken shares some of his favorite sports stories. ======================= Remote makes it easy for companies of all sizes to employ global full-time employees and contractors. We take care of international payroll, benefits, taxes and local compliance, so you can focus on growing your business. Learn more about Remote and their new Remote for Startups program at http://www.remote.com. ======================= Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Ken Golden is the founder and chairman of Golden Auctions, and Ross Hoffman is the new CEO of Golden Auctions, which has grown into the industry leader in collectible and memorabilia auctions. Golden Auctions recently received a large investment from the Churning Group, and Ross joined Ken and the Golden Auction team as part of that transaction. I'm joined by my brother, Joe Pompliano, for the conversation. In this conversation, we discuss the Golden Auctions story, the trading card market, auction dynamics, what investors should avoid, how Ross and the team plan to improve the technology, and Ken

• 0:42Anthony Pompliano?

  shares some of his favorite sports stories. I really enjoyed this conversation with Ken, Ross, and Joe, and I hope you do as well. But before we get into this episode, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Remote. In 2021, every business is a global business, but how do you pay your global team and comply with international labor laws? Remote handles payroll, benefits, taxes, and compliance to help companies of all sizes pay and manage full-time and contract workers all over the world. No matter where your team lives and works, Remote's global employment solutions keep your team, your finances, and your intellectual property secure. Remote never charges percentages or fees, just best-in-class global employment solutions for a low, flat rate. The world's top global

• 1:25Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:53Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:33Anthony Pompliano?

  their BS. Choice has tools for them, too. You can take back control today and visit retirewithchoice.com/pomp. Again, retirewithchoice.com/pomp. All right, let's get into this episode with Ken, Ross, and Joe. I hope you enjoy it.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 4:15Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got a full house here with me today. I've got my brother, I've got Ken Golden, I've got Ross Hoffman. All of us are here. We're going to do four people. So thanks so much for tuning in. Let's start maybe with Joe. Why don't you explain why you're here, and then we'll get to our guests.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I've been on, I've been on the podcast one or two times now, I think. So maybe some of you guys know kind of what I do and what I'm up to. But I talk sports business, so part of that obviously covers the sports memorabilia and kind of collectibles industry. So I'm excited to kind of talk to not only Ken, but Ross and hear more about kind of what the future plans are for Golden and all that kind of stuff.

• 4:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you just come on the podcast and flex right off the bat with I've already been on the podcast before?

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wanted to let everyone know that I'm not a first timer here.

• 5:05Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, well, let's get to our first timers. Ken, maybe we'll go with you, then Ross, just tell a little bit about your background and kind of what you're doing today.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  Sure, so I am founder and chairman of Goldin Auctions, which I started in 2012. I'm really a lifelong collector and dealer. I started collecting as an eight-year-old. I started buying and selling as a 12-year-old. You know, I'm one of these kids who grew up in the late 1970s, early 80s, before the internet, before there were price guides. So I pretty much bought and sold cards, bought my first car, paid my way through college, and really have been doing this my entire life. In the late 1980s, I started the company with my father called Scoreboard. And we, you know, we ended up manufacturing our own trading cards, as well as starting putting athletes on TV.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  In 1998, I started Golden Sports and for 20 years, put athletes on television, sold product through the networks. And as the TV shopping business slowed, I came up with the idea to open up my best and likely my last business, which is Goldin Auctions, which is really the first business that has been incredibly scalable and that everything I envisioned that we can accomplish, we're actually able to do, as opposed to having some restriction where people can't handle the work we throw at them. So Goldin Auctions is the world's largest sports auction house.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  And every record you heard about being broken in 2020, where there was a Mike Trout card for 4 million, a LeBron James card for 1.8 million, a Giannis card for 1.9 million, all those record sales that seem to boggle the mind and happen every week, came from us.

• 6:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome, Ross.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I've been a consumer operator most of my career, the last 16 years. Started out on YouTube, was an early employee there, convincing people, believe it or not, to put content on YouTube, telling them one day they'd make money, sending boxes to people's houses to get their VHS tapes that we could then upload to the platform. Saw Twitter happening and thought it was a really interesting platform. Initially, it was like a search engine for me in San Francisco, mostly bear usage. Joined there as an early employee, stayed seven years, helped scale the business around a bunch of different teams. Then wanted to go outside of ad-based consumer business, wanted to learn about subscriptions. So I was recruited to join Headspace as Chief Business Officer. And I stayed there two years, helped build up the business, diversify the revenue, and then actually went on the venture side, at different ends of the spectrum.

• 7:44Speaker 04

  One was on the seed side with Howard Linz and the team at Social Leverage, and the other was with the TCG team on the growth equity side. I spent about a year and a half working with TCG, identifying interesting companies. And we met Ken, we've been going really deep in the space, and we're excited to partner. I'd say through line in my career has been picking the right market and the right asset in the right market. I don't think I deserve most of the success I've had in terms of the credit. I think I've been able to pick the right market and pick the right asset. We certainly think we did that with Golden.

• 8:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely, and so you've stepped in as a CEO.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  That's right, yeah. Ken and I met for the first time in Q2, Q3 last year, spent a lot of time together in person, on Zoom, FaceTime, various text apps. Working to get him on Slack, we'll see if we can make that happen. And yeah, I was excited about the opportunity. When Ken had offered it, I jumped at the chance.

• 8:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Joe, kick it off for us. What questions you got for these guys?

• 8:41Speaker 02

  I don't know, I mean, I think it'd be helpful. A lot of people, I don't think, understand kind of the scale of where Golden is now, right? Like, I know the business has grown a lot over the past couple of years, and specifically in 2020. So Ken, maybe it's helpful if you just give us kind of an overview of where Golden's at now, as opposed to kind of where you guys started in 2012, I think it was, right?

• 9:00Speaker 03

  Sure, so in 2012, I'll start with the story. When I came up with the business, you know, we did $800,000 in our first year, 2012. And I said to my wife, if I can grow this business to $10 million a year, you know, I'll have a nice business for myself and I can retire when I want to. So we did eight hundred thousand in two thousand twelve. We grew that steadily up to twenty seven million in two thousand nineteen. Did about a hundred and three million in two thousand and twenty. And close year is Ross. We will do about eighty million dollars for the year through the end of this weekend.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  And I said that on a broadcast because I just tell it like it is. We we are running at an amazing pace. You know, Ross calls me Pac-Man because he says, you know, I just gobble up the J M V. And my joke with him is I make the money and he spends it because I'm used to running a tight ship. You know, I ended I ended last year with twenty one employees. I think I've got thirty five now. And I might have a hundred by the end of July. So we're really scaling up the business to, as opposed to being something where the millionaires, ultra wealthy and billionaires can shop and and get

• 10:20Speaker 03

  the best authenticated memorabilia, trading cards and collectibles. And it's not just sports. I mean, people don't even know. Do you know the record for the highest priced album, music album ever, what that is?

• 10:32Speaker 02

  No.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  It's nine hundred thousand dollars. It's for a John Lennon album and we sold it in December. So it's really any type of collectibles. So realistically, we did an auction in January that did thirty three million. We've got one ending on March sixth and seventh that will break that. I won't say by how much, but I will say it will break it. And we've scaled up from four auctions a year in two thousand eighteen to seven in two thousand twenty to a minimum of twenty four this year. And I say minimum because as soon as I get the new platform that I was promised three months ago,

• 11:14Speaker 03

  we will be able to run multiple, multiple departments. So I can run a trading card auction on one side, an autograph auction on another, a comic book auction on another, and all of it seamlessly going at the same time.

• 11:30Anthony Pompliano?

  So Ross, talk a little bit maybe about the platform, right? It's very obvious that Ken built this amazing business, really has been the face of kind of collectible auctions for a while now, and I think people know Goldin Auctions, they trust it, and there's this amazing marketplace. You come from kind of much more of an investing and a technology background. What do you see as the low hanging fruit? And kind of what are you guys going to do to the business to kind of augment and push this business forward?

• 11:57Speaker 04

  Sure. Before I do, I want to correct Ken, I'm not spending the money, I'm investing the money.

• 12:01Anthony Pompliano?

  There you go.

• 12:03Speaker 04

  There's a fine line there. Yeah, look, we want to build a very stable platform that is for those that have been in the hobby for a long time who trust Golden, whether they're selling and they can trust Golden, that they're going to get the best price possible, whether they trust Golden, that the buyers are going to be accredited and they're not going to default on that purchase, or on the buy side, that you're going to get what you pay for. And I think the auction technology that needs to sit in the middle of buyers and sellers needs to function very smoothly, needs to be a clean UI, and really needs to be, at the end of the day, I think we need to be a data company, where we're going to be aggregating a lot of data and being able to leverage that in ways that benefit the consumer. So only one person wins each auction, right? There's one winner, but there's a lot of people that don't win.

• 12:48Speaker 04

  How are we able to show them other things that they might want to, that they might want to own? How do we make it easier for sellers to find more buyers? And how do we make it easier for buyers to find the things that they love? At the highest level, that's what we want to focus on. Over time, it'll evolve. The backend of that product that I just described is actually fairly technically complex, so it's going to take some time to do. But we have a first version that we're excited about. I actually saw a demo of it earlier today that's getting there, and we're going to iterate with it very quickly. We don't believe in, I think there's two different methodologies of shipping product. You can wait till it's perfect and ship it, or you could kind of ship it and iterate as you go. We're definitely going to be the latter. And I think, given Ken being the face of the hobby, we get great feedback from the community.

• 13:31Speaker 04

  So we want to, you know, many of our features will likely be built from our community, just as like the hashtag and the ad sign were built by the Twitter community. We intend on evolving as we go. But you could imagine it's a very social experience, a very graphically easy and intuitive experience that's very photo and video forward, and it's very community based. Those are kind of three themes that we're focusing on as we develop the product.

• 13:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And so when you guys think about kind of how big this market is, I know Ken, you talked a lot about the growth of gold and maybe Ross explain like you guys not only did a financial transaction here, but you've stepped in kind of on the operational side like how big is this thing and how big do you think it can get? I think that's the big question everyone has, right? Is are we just in the early innings and this thing's gonna, you know, 50x over the next couple of years? Or is this something where no, maybe we've seen how big the market's gonna get? It's what we have now. And now it's just who can get the most market share?

• 14:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I think, um, I think the market's going to continue to grow. What people don't realize is the market's been growing since around 2015, 2016. So while this may be things that people suddenly are aware of, they've been happening for a long time. And Ken and I talk about this a lot, as well as with the team at TCG, that there's a few, what we view as macro level tailwinds that are happening. And that's what I talk about when you want to find a finding market that is, that is growing organically and is growing at a high clip and then find the best asset in that market. We think this market's growing organically. There's quant and there's qual. I'd say the qual is a combination of passion and pop culture. So passion, you know, insert athlete is my favorite athlete and I want to follow them and I want to feel connected to

• 15:05Speaker 04

  them. Pop culture is, this is becoming a modern day flex where athletes or celebrities are posting about their cars on Instagram. Or two of our investors that we're fortunate to have, Timbaland and Shawn Watson posting, having lunch with The Rock and they have a PSA 10, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, University of Miami, Miami, uh, bubblebee tuna card. Um, so I think that's partially driving it. The second two things I'd say more on the quant side are one, just an inflationary hedge. So I don't want to invest like the previous generation. I don't want to set it and forget it and retire when I'm 70. I'm looking for more of an edge. I want to, uh, you know, inflationary hedge, the US is printing more money since COVID than they ever have. So people know that their money sitting in cash is not the best use of their money. They're actually losing money. So I

• 15:47Speaker 04

  think that's one lens. The other I would say is gambling and fantasy sports, which is a huge, huge business that's only going to get bigger. You know, gambling in the US is not yet legal in Texas and California. That's a massive amount of people that at some point that's most likely going to happen. Um, if you want to be a fantasy GM and you want to go along a player, you know, maybe you're in a keeper league and you could keep that player over time, but most people aren't. You could buy it, you could buy their cards. You could go along a player and have a thesis that LaMelo Ball is going to be an all time best player in the NBA and you're really long on him and you think he's undervalued. Uh, so there's a lot of, I think there's a lot of fantasy and gambling elements as well. And if you add the three of them up, we think that's going to continue to drive the market forward. Every market has ups and downs and I'm sure that when there's some sort of slow slowdown in the market, there's going to be tons of headlines that, you know, this was a bubble

• 16:32Speaker 04

  and it's not, just like you've seen with technology companies, I joke that like, we used to say, when is the first trillion dollar company going to be here? And, you know, then Apple went to two trillion a couple of months later, now there's like a five trillion dollar company. So I think, uh, people don't, people don't adequately appreciate the scale of the internet. And when you can take that and you can layer on good technology, good operations and good content, which I definitely want to talk about the content side of things later, we think we can further accelerate that market and that's what our plan is.

• 16:58Speaker 03

  And then, and to add on to that, talk about the size of the market, we estimated that it was a 10 billion dollar market. In that 10 billion dollar market, the following still goes on. You know, a friend of mine distributes to every Walmart in North America to, uh, for all the trading card product. He has people who follow his trucks around and as soon as they go there, they, you know, they follow the trucks, see where they're making a delivery and then they run in and clean out the shelves. It's a 10 billion dollar market with stuff disappearing the second it hits the shelves. It's a 10 billion dollar marketplace with me receiving, I receive, and I'm still at the phase where I do it myself, you know, you know, you may not, you may maybe pass that, but I'm still at

• 17:42Speaker 03

  the phase where I actually read and reply to every single direct message I get at Ken Golden on Instagram. You know, I wake up in the morning, I get two, 300, you know, some people just being cheerleaders, we love what you're doing. Other people's asking questions, other people say they want to consign stuff, other people are asking my opinion, but I respond and I see all these people that are emailing me overnight from the Philippines, from Macau, from Hong Kong, from Australia. Their biggest thing is they cannot get product. So they, they, there is no, no good way that exists right now to distribute your product overseas. When I started the business in 2012, less than 1% of my business was international. In 2014, I had one Asian customer that's a company

• 18:26Speaker 03

  that, you know, was about 2% of my business because they bought a lot. Now, if I sell a basketball item, about 30 to 40% of my bids are coming Internationally, if I sell a soccer item, sixty percent, and you know how much soccer I sold in even two thousand and seventeen? Zero. I I looked at my catalog. I don't think I had a single soccer card. Now soccer is fourth, and if you take out Brady and Mahomes from football, soccer is actually third behind basketball and baseball. So I look right now for ten and all and there the supply, the demand is a hundred times supply, and you can't even feed any place except North America. I think there, I think that we are in the early innings and there is a long way to go

• 19:09Speaker 03

  before all those marketplaces are satisfied and more people are getting into it every single day. That's what I'm seeing on my database with users is just, it's all over the world. Every day these people register for Golden, and I gotta tell you something. Registering for Goldens, a pain in the butt. There's a lot of questions you gotta fill out. You have to put in a credit card information. We have to verify you. So people are taking the time to do it. They are really serious about spending money.

• 19:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, what else you got?

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, Ken, that leads me to a good point, right? Like, I think everyone, uh, kind of from the outside looking in, has noticed that there's been a shift, uh, not only sentiment around the industry, but kind of like they see the record sales, whether it's the four million for the trout or the LeBron or whatever it might be. I'm curious if there's like a time in the past, call it like twelve or eighteen months even, that you're like, wow, things are really escalating, right? Like whether it's the the the Walmart trucks people are following, whether it's, uh, you know, more messages you wake up in the morning. Uh, but like, when did you realize that things are really changing?

• 20:10Speaker 03

  Well, for me, it started in two thousand and sixteen. We had an auction called the Great American Card Auction. And and I came up with the idea because I got a consignment of the T two oh six Wagner, the famous Jumbo Wagner of the five. So I said, I have to build, you know, with my background dealing with, you know, dealing with companies like QBC, you can't have one item. You need, you need, you need a program, you know, you, I gotta build an hour. So to me, I look at a catalog. I don't look, and that's the other thing we do differently. I don't look at as an auction as an auction. I look at every every time we do an auction as an event. So, okay, how do I make this a big event? How do I build an event around this card that hopefully sells for a record at the time, which was 2.8 million? So that was my goal, to sell this card for more than 2.8 million and to have an event.

• 20:54Speaker 03

  So I started, I started accumulating items and advertising for this auction. Someone came to me with a 2003 LeBron James card, and I'm sitting here with a 52 Mickey Mantle that's gonna sell for half a million dollars, a Hank Aaron rookie in a nine that's gonna sell for 400,000, a Honus Wagner, I hope it's gonna sell for 3 million dollars, a Ty Cobb that's gonna sell for 400. I'm saying, why are you giving me this card produced in 2003? You know, I was still at the time that, you know, that was garbage. It's modern cards. He goes, Ken, you gotta trust me. I know you may not understand this yet, but I think this card might actually sell for 100,000 dollars. I said, okay, you're a good consignor. You're a good customer. I will put this LeBron James card in there. The LeBron James card I put in there was called

• 21:38Speaker 03

  the 2003 Ultimate Logo Man. It sold for 312,000 dollars. We did set the record that day for the most valuable card of all time, 3.1 million dollars for the Wagner. But all the reporters wanted to talk about is how this card that was printed only 13 years ago of LeBron James sold for over 300,000. So that's when I said, okay, forget everything else I'm doing. The rest of the staff, you guys do everything else. I'm diving into the modern cards. I've got to learn everything about this business. And that's when I noticed a really big change. The other big change happened in 2000, the end of 2019. I got in this collection from overseas called the Exquisite Collection. And none of these cards are very rare cards.

• 22:20Speaker 03

  They're limited. Every single card is numbered. They're like one of one, one of 15, one of 99. It just did enormous numbers, sold for three, four, five times, whatever those cards were selling for. And I said, okay, this is it. And then finally, people say, well, did COVID kickstart this? People forget what happened in January of 2019.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  In January of 2019, we sold a basketball card featuring LeBron James and Michael Jordan called the Logo Man for $900,000. It was an exquisite logo. So, and that's what really set the whole market. That's when, that's when everything started going crazy. And yes, COVID hit, and yes, the last dance hit, but in January of 2020 was when people really were clubbed over head. To put that in perspective, the prior record for a basketball card was 451,000, and that was Al Stindman's rookie. And that ultimate Logo Man we sold in 2003 for 312,000 has a value today probably of $10 million.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 23:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Ross, how do you take somebody like Ken, who is such a great founder, built a great business, has this massive online platform, and basically just build the tools around him to kind of double and triple down on the content business? And obviously, in 2012, content was very different than it is today. I know it's a huge focus for you guys, and I'm assuming Ken's not going to kind of build the company on the strategy of like, let's go on QVC every day. So how do you just think about where you guys go from here on the content side?

• 23:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, one of the first questions I ask him, which I ask, I ask anyone that I'm going to work with is, what do you love doing, think you're best in class, best in the world at? And what do you hate doing, think you're really bad at? And it's, it's an interesting question to hear how objective people can be about themselves. Ken was, Ken was very direct. He was just like, look, I have the relationships, I've built up the trust, and I'm the face of the hobby. I want to continue to drive that forward. I want to work with our consignors, I want to work with our buyers, I want to be out there and be a platform for the hobby to lift everyone up. From the day to day operations, you know, he built up a great business, and they were, they were good. But he said, look, I think I'm higher leverage to work on that. And it was a great compliment for me. I don't do a ton of media stuff. I don't have deep knowledge in the hobby. I'm a big sports fan. I collected

• 24:35Speaker 04

  as a kid. I collected throughout my adult life, but not nearly to the degree of Ken. And I joke with him, he's a weighted average, I'm going to say this on, on the recording now, of, I think he's 50% Warren Buffett of cards and 50% Don King of cards. Like, he knows every stat about every card and is also An amazing, amazing promoter for the hobby, not just for Golden, but for the hobby. Like he, he bleeds the hobby. He's been in the hobby longer than a lot of people in the hobby are alive. So it was, it was a conversation around that. And then, okay, like, let's, let's actually take that and look at that framework across the organization. See where pieces sit and let's just try to play to everyone's strengths. I think you go into a new opportunity, assuming that everyone's great and giving them the opportunity to disprove that or prove that. But leading to that assumption that everyone is great in the process or, and then you listen, you decide and then you communicate.

• 25:19Speaker 04

  Right now I'm still in the listening phase. So talking with the teams, understanding how they work, really learning the process. You know, uh, working, I ask Ken a lot of questions every day and he's very patient. I'm trying to learn as much as I can, as fast as I can, but um, I think really just playing to people's strengths, understanding what they enjoy spending time doing, what they don't. Then, once you understand that and you can really take the vision, I think the founding story, and you hear this a lot, that the founders of companies, um, you know, they've, they have their vision they've obsessed over for a long time. I think for Ken, it very much predates the founding of Golden, like him as an 11 or 12 year old, starting in the hobby, uh, buying his first amount of cards and selling them for profit. Like he, he's been thinking about this for a long time. So really trying to squeeze that out of him, something that he doesn't have to think about, but just second nature for him.

• 26:03Speaker 04

  But really trying to understand then as to what does he value? Why does he think the business is the way it is? Where does he think the industry is going? And try to ensure that you're using that as the guardrails to, to build a good company. And when it comes to developing software and uh, you know, supply chain and operations and content, like we could rush and do all that right away. What we want to do is, is really be thoughtful and build that around this vision. And um, you know, so far it's been a really good partnership.

• 26:30Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And in terms of uh, the content itself, like, is it just more Ken all the time? Or do you have to eventually kind of supplement Ken with all kinds of other, um, you know, uh, names and brands and, and different distribution?

• 26:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's the latter. I think like, look, Ken's always going to be at the core. He's always going to be the global expert in the space. When people call in, they want to talk to Ken. And Ken's going to be doing things like this and on television and on Instagram and other social media platforms. I do think, we do think we need to build a platform around Ken. Whether that's through full-time in-house talent, whether that's through partnerships with, you know, very affable, good-looking brothers that happen to have their own podcasts, it really depends. But we want to build a large content set to play to different audiences. I view there as two macro-level audiences. One is those that are in the hobby already, and you need to come to them with an authentic standpoint. Stop smiling. Come on, you're gonna make.

• 27:27Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm laughing because I could literally smell how bad my brother's breath is through the computer.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're just pissed he called me good-looking.

• 27:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the one audience is those that are in the hobby. And the other is those that want to come into the hobby. And I think you do, you talk to the former from an authentic expertise standpoint, and I think you talk to the latter from an expertise, but also from an education and entertainment standpoint, to have them understand and feel safe. There's a lot of people that invest out there. There's a lot of people that want to make profit out there or connect with their passions out there. There's a lot of diehard sports fans who invest, but if you brought them into the hobby right now, they wouldn't know what to do. And that's a big problem, but it's a really big opportunity. If we can build the right technology and the right tools, and you can pricing guides and on-ramps for them to come in by really bringing the right data and putting it in front of them, we think that's a big opportunity.

• 28:15Speaker 03

  And one thing I want to mention while we talk about technology, so people understand what Golden has accomplished. We are literally using software from 2002. So everything we've accomplished is, no joke, is from a 2002 platform that has been band-aided over the years. So you can see how I am like waiting very impatiently to have this remarkable new product that's designed in 2021.

• 28:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Joe, what else other questions you got?

• 28:46Speaker 02

  No, I think on my side, like I think Ross brings up a good point and I'm kind of curious how Golden as a platform is going to change, right? Because I think with everything, all the numbers and the headlines and everything, I personally get a lot of questions of like, okay, I've never been involved in the hobby. I want to get started. Where do I start? Where do, how do I learn? What cards should I buy? Should I be buying cards? What sites should I use? And I'm curious, kind of like, one, I think Golden is at least seen in the past as kind of like a premier and exclusive site for more high-end items that people are bidding at an auction and stuff. So I'm curious, I know and I've heard that that's going to change to some degree, but I'm curious on like the education front, right? Like, how is Golden going to help people get involved in the hobby? One, and then two, like educate them on an ongoing basis to buy the right things and

• 29:31Speaker 02

  invest?

• 29:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'd say it would be three buckets. One is from a product standpoint, there'll be features that we built out to make it very easy to either upload your current collection or look at, you know, list out things that you want and basically build a want list that you can track in one place. I'd love to be people's hub for their overall hobby, including cards that they have not bought on Golden, but they want to have stored in one place. Second would be from a content perspective. So actually just creating educational content, whether that's newsletters, podcasts, videos, glossaries, indices, just things that can make them feel more informed about what's the difference between an RPA and a Prism and what's the difference between a base Prism

• 30:16Speaker 04

  and an orange Prism or a pink Prism. I'd say third would be on top of the first two is data. So if we can aggregate data around pricing, people always say like, well, how much should I pay? I don't know. And who should, why are there 50 different rookie cards or 1,000 different types of cards for this one person? So if you can combine those three things with a better, easier UI, you can also have better content that tells the story and then better pricing data where they feel safe making that decision. Just like you have analyst reports in the public markets, you should have technology, product and content that tells that story in Golden with the right data that's very easy to consume. So you can come in from day one, make informed decisions, whether you're a collector, an investor or both, and feel safe about what you're doing.

• 31:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Ken, we gotta hear the wildest story you got, man. I feel like you got some crazy, crazy life experiences doing all this. What's the craziest thing that you've experienced and no one else has ever heard?

• 31:14Speaker 03

  Oh, I've

• 31:15Anthony Pompliano?

  That story, the one, the story you just thought of is the one that we want to hear.

• 31:21Speaker 03

  I've had some, I've had some really, really, really unusual experiences, really great experiences. I mean, I've met, you know, I've met a number of ball players, um, you know, I can go back from, you know, when I was a little kid and somebody came into me with about 1,500 tobacco cards, including like 16 Ty Cobb's and I paid him a dollar a card, um, which I don't know how many millions of dollars that would be worth. Um, a lot of, you know, you know, from, from the, you know, from the auction stories, a real good one is somebody came to me literally last week. They bought a, um, a pack when they were, you know, when they were younger and it was a 2000 playoff contenders football pack. And they went to

• 32:05Speaker 03

  a card shop, paid eight dollars, bought a pack, pulled a Tom Brady card. And the guy said, Timo, that's probably worth a few hundred dollars. You can protect that. So they put it into a sleeve and they put it in a holder and it stayed there for 21 years. They, um, somehow saw me on TV or some, somewhere and they contacted me. They drove down from Massachusetts last week to my office, pulled the card out. It's card number 95 out of 100 playoff contenders, Tom Brady rookie card. Uh, we got it graded, came back an 8.5 with a 10 autograph, which means that their eight dollar purchase in 2000 is going to sell for close to $2 million.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  So, um, that is, um, that's a good one.

• 32:54Anthony Pompliano?

  What, what's the most unusual thing? These are all stories of people making money. What's the cra- like the craziest, most unusual thing?

• 33:01Speaker 03

  Craziest, well, I think possibly selling, uh, when we sold Brady's underwear, we sold, uh, Joe Frazier's, uh, jockstrap from the fight of the century, number one. Um, we, it's unbelievable stuff that, uh, that, that, that people keep. I actually heard a story from the opposite end of a deal that I negotiated in my twenties with Shaquille O'Neal. You know, I remember pounding up against his agent, trying to get him exclusive. And I've got a picture in my office of me and Shaq at his first game. And I got a picture I, I posted on Instagram that I happened to find luckily, because my ex-wife threw away a lot of my pictures.

• 33:42Speaker 03

  Uh, not, not that we have a bad relationship, but she was making a collage and she was cutting out, cutting out these collages. And this one was spared and it was me with Shaquille O'Neal, um, at Madison Square Garden. Him giving me a hug right after he was drafted number one, wearing the Orlando cap. And me holding up his card that I produced for him with, um, produced of him with, uh, you know, with his likeness. That was exclusive. But what I heard was years later, him giving an interview with Panini. And it's a Panini interview and he's talking about his first ever deal, his first ever million dollars. And he goes, uh, this guy Ken Goldin sent my agent a deal and he was going to pay me a million dollars upfront. And, uh, my agent was telling me, you know, Leonard was saying, we want to ask for more.

• 34:26Speaker 03

  And then, and I said, no, give the man the deal. Sign the contract. This is a million dollars for a trading card. You call that young man right now on the phone and you tell him that, that he's got a deal. And, um, it was, it was, it was great to hear from that perspective that I actually could have been jacked for another 500 grand. But, uh, Shaq said, no, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's good. We're good. But, um, you know, the, the athlete stories are always, um, you know, always for me, the, uh, you know, the best. I mean, I think back and, you know, I sat with, you know, Hank Aaron in 1980s and, you know, you know, for hours and hours and hours. And he's gone now, but I think, no, I was with this guy literally only 10 years after he retired.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  So it's kind of like, you know, I was so young in this industry that so much happened around me that, you know, now I appreciate it. I wish I did, I wish I took a lot more pictures of it and I wish I saved a lot more, um, a lot more stuff. But, um, there is. There is a crazy, I mean, I'd have to, I'd have to think and I'd have to think if I'm even allowed to tell some of the, some of the

• 35:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Thinking of some crazy stories you're not saying.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  I was gonna add the, the one I saw Ken tweeted about like a few weeks ago or a few months ago was Wayne Gretzky in like 91 when he has jerseys stolen. That's a good one.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, so we had a contract with Gretzky and, um, he had his jersey stolen from the Spectrum and we ordered jerseys that were specific to, um, specific to the player, to his size and specifications. So we got a call from his agent, Michael Barnett and said, how far away you got to the Spectrum? We said, well, we're in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. We're like 15 minutes. He goes, you need to bring, can you bring one of Wayne's jerseys? And, um, you know, we, luckily he didn't sign it first because we had him ready for him to sign. He didn't sign it. So he wore one of the jerseys and then he gave it back to us after the game. So, you know, I got to keep a, um,

• 36:30Speaker 03

  you know, I got to keep a Gretzky, uh, game worn, um, I got to keep a Gretzky game worn jersey. But, you know, some of the stuff is, um, you made me, the Gretzky now, I was thinking about, um, thinking about another ridiculous one with, um,

• 36:48Speaker 03

  you should have prepped me for that one. I, I'll, I'll have it for next time, but.

• 36:53Anthony Pompliano?

  The problem. Joe, you got any more questions?

• 36:56Speaker 02

  No, I'm all, I'm all set.

• 36:58Anthony Pompliano?

  You, are you gonna write a thread about, uh, Goldin Auctions now? Can we get a time for a thread?

• 37:03Speaker 02

  I should, I should. Uh, Ken's a legend, obviously. So I'm sure he could help me out with some good stories.

• 37:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Ross, I want to finish with you. Uh, as you kind of think about this, you know, just zoom out and kind of look forward five, 10 years. What's kind of the vision for where you guys end up? You know, kind of in the medium term. So not necessarily 25 years from now, not next year, but just somewhere in that medium term. What's kind of the goal?

• 37:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think we want to continue to cement ourselves as the easiest place to buy and sell online, where if you've got an item that you're ready to list, you know that you're going to get the best price, you're going to get it in the easiest way possible. And if you're going to buy, you know that you're going to get what you're actually paying for. I think I could see in a world in five years where we're outside of what we're known for, which is sports, and we've diversified more into other verticals, and it's a mobile-first experience that's very consumer and social-driven, and a very large community layer on top of that. So I think we can accomplish that in four or five years from now, but that's where we'd like to be.

• 38:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Makes sense. Ken, where can we find you on the internet if somebody listening to this set doesn't know where you are?

• 38:09Speaker 03

  @KenGolden, @KenGolden on Twitter, @KenGolden on Instagram, and of course, @GoldenAuctions everywhere. And I, wait, wait, I've got a TikTok. Oh, this, my, I made a TikTok. I recorded something about the Honus Wagner, and all of a sudden, my daughter contacts me, who's 21 years old, and like, tries to live on TikTok, and she goes, "How the hell do you have 500,000 views, and you've been on TikTok for four days? I've posted 60 videos, and I haven't broken 1,000 yet." So that shows you how trading card crazy the world is. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm not, I'm not doing a dance, I'm not, you know, "Social media guy said we're making your TikTok." I said,

• 38:51Speaker 03

  "I'm not dancing." He goes, "No, you're going to talk about cards." And I said, "Okay, how's that going to be interesting?" So I did three, four things. I talked about cards, and all of a sudden, I've got, maybe by now, 600,000 views. So, but yeah, just @KenGolden everywhere, and hopefully you find me.

• 39:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Love it. Ross, where can we find you?

• 39:10Speaker 04

  @Hoff on Twitter.

• 39:13Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Joe, I know you came on here, you flexed already, you've been on the podcast. Go ahead and pitch your newsletter.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, readhuddleup.com. You guys can check it out there. You've tweeted about it a couple of times, so thank you. And, uh, yeah, Joe Pompliano on Twitter.

• 39:29Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, I'm gonna send you a little invoice for some Bitcoin after you get a pitch into free advertising. All right, guys, listen, thank you guys so much for doing this. I think that the business obviously speaks for itself, and the world is definitely sporting card drunk right now, which is, which is funny, because I kind of agree with you guys that it's only going to continue to grow, and wish you guys the best. We're big fans, and can't wait to see what you guys do next.

• 39:52Speaker 03

  Thanks for having us.