The Pokémon Expert: THIS Makes More Money Than Stocks, Crypto, & Real Estate - Combined!

#Ad Big thanks to Bizee for sponsoring today’s video – they make starting an LLC super simple: https://bizee.com/ich RocketMoney: Cancel unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster at https://rocketmoney.com/iced Wayfair: Get your last minute holiday shopping done at https://wayfair.com Helium Mobile: Sign up (even for the FREE plan) & get $10 in Cloud Points with code COFFEE: https://app.heliummobile.com/o6WA/4jq Follow Jeremy Padawer Here: On Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jeremypadawer/ His Website - https://jeremy.com/ Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan Apply for The Index Membership: https://entertheindex.com/ Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [email protected] For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 00:02:53 - Most valuable item he owns 00:07:56 - Collectibles lost in the Palisades fire 00:10:01 - How he first made money 00:15:26 - Domain names he bought early 00:17:10 - Sponsor - Bizee 00:18:31 - Domains he owns today 00:19:59 - Domains he couldn’t buy 00:29:19 - Career after Mattel 00:33:21 - Best business advice he received 00:34:23 - Sponsor - Rocket Money 00:35:57 - Discovering Squishmallows 00:44:39 - Meeting Warren Buffett 00:48:55 - Lessons from Warren Buffett 00:49:53 - What he does for work 00:50:56 - Thoughts on Labubus 01:02:19 - Sponsor - Wayfair 01:03:55 - Sponsor - Helium 01:05:16 - Portfolio allocation for collectibles 01:20:39 - Scalpers 01:21:38 - Why some sports cards are more valuable 01:26:42 - Thoughts on criminal memorabilia 01:33:41 - NFTs 01:36:42 - Thoughts on the art market 01:40:45 - Favorite items in his collection 01:41:42 - PSA 10 vs multiple PSA 9s 01:43:34 - Different grading companies 01:44:40 - Does money make you happy? 01:48:16 - Other investments 01:51:39 - Collectibles vs traditional ROI 01:54:08 - What will be valuable in 10 years 01:58:58 - Collectibles show and tell 02:17:40 - One historical item he’d want to own 02:21:10 - Graham’s Feastables collectibles *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:26Speaker 01

  I am on a lifelong scavenger hunt looking for the next big toy.

• 0:29Jack Selby?

  I think this will be the biggest transaction in pop culture history.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  There's been several in the 5 million range. Nothing like this. Yeah. So what determines value of a collectible? Scarcity is everything in collectibles. If you do not have scarcity, that is the death of a collectible. When I was a kid, there were baseball cards that were $15,000 that are now $50 million. And you start seeing these things happen in other categories. Collectibles can be a great way to diversify your portfolio. Why do so many collectors lose money? Don't chase something just because other people are doing it. It's just like a stock in that regard. If you know more about the companies that you're investing in, you tend to do better. What is the rarest and most valuable item you own today?

• 1:11Speaker 01

  This case is holding the most valuable modern work of publishing. This book was the most ever paid for modern work.

• 1:27Graham Stephan?

  Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on the Ice Coffee Hour. You've predicted and made millions on major collectible trends from Pokemon, WWE, Squishmallows, NFTs, and so on. I'm curious, what is your biggest miss?

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Oh, man. I've had a lot of misses. Okay, and I think that's the spirit of being an entrepreneur. And most of my misses have been in businesses, not collectibles. Because when you focus on your collectible interests, you tend to do okay over time. You learn a lot. You become passionate about something. Businesses, if you're investing in someone else's business, it's out of your control. So I invested in a Groupon clone back in the day, and I lost $60,000, I think, in three weeks. And to me, it was the amount and the time. And at the time that I invested, the little amount of money that I actually had, those three things together made it for me one of my biggest misses.

• 2:17Jack Selby?

  How is it so fast? Where's $60,000 going in three weeks?

• 2:21Speaker 01

  That's right. It goes nowhere. Exactly. Who knows why they needed it in the first place? Right? Like, it's hard to gauge. The more information you have, the deeper you are in somebody else's organization, the more sense you have into its investability. But yeah.

• 2:37Jack Selby?

  See, I would have thought that it would be something like I didn't buy this one collectible that I was super close to buying, or I bought it, but I sold it too early. But it just seems like the impact of the $60,000 for you at that time period of your life was more impactful.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  It was. It was. And it's, you know, it's those types of things. It's not the misses where you don't invest in something because you could think of a thousand things that you haven't invested in it over time, whether it was crypto early, or whether it is a stock like Apple, which I've had my moments. But the truth of the matter is, like, it's the things that you actually take in action towards, those are the things that, in my mind, are more impactful in terms of your misses.

• 3:18Jack Selby?

  What is the rarest and most valuable item you own today?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  I would say the rarest and most valuable item that I own right now is an Ishihara Pokemon card that was issued at his 60th birthday. It's a PSA 10. There are only maybe 100 in existence. This is the only perfect one, and I think it's a seven-figure item.

• 3:38Jack Selby?

  A seven? And what'd you pay for it?

• 3:40Speaker 01

  I paid around $100,000.

• 3:42Jack Selby?

  When did you buy it?

• 3:43Speaker 01

  About two months after the 60th birthday. Now, I want to be clear. I was invited. I was supposed to be there. I left early because I had young kids, and I decided to buy this item later because I felt like I missed out. But yeah, not one of my best moments, but turned out to be a great moment.

• 4:03Jack Selby?

  So it appreciated from $100,000 to seven figures.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 4:06Jack Selby?

  In how long?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Roughly five years because I get, I get offers, unsolicited offers for roughly four or $500,000. So I believe when you have those types of offers and it's not in an auction where really the second highest bidder pushes the first highest bidder, that's when you finally find out what something's truly worth.

• 4:26Jack Selby?

  Has Logan Paul tried to buy it from you?

• 4:28Speaker 01

  No, no, but you know, Logan and I have spent some time together on Pokemon and Logan's interest was in the PSA 10 Illustrator card.

• 4:36Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Which by the way is probably the GOAT of Pokemon cards because it also is a one of one PSA 10. But it is so well known and so well embraced. It was a 1997 or 1998 Koro Koro card that was put out in a promotional fashion. And the fact that any of them were perfect really blew our minds. Logan reached out to me because he knew that I was a collector. This was just before COVID or right during COVID. And he asked me, he's like, you know, will you, uh, will you tell me, you know, what is the, what is the greatest Pokemon card of all time? And I said, well, the, the most valuable Pokemon card of all time is this PSA 10 Koro Koro Illustrator card.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  And he said, okay. And we started talking back and forth and he said, you know, where is it? And I just happened to know the guy that owned it in Dubai. So I reached out to him and over a series of events, he put together over $5 million to buy the card.

• 5:33Jack Selby?

  What do you mean put together?

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Well, it was interesting. Okay. Because the offer that I had received from my friend in Dubai was $6 million. Or a $4 million in cash and a trade for a PSA 9 Illustrator card. So it was either or. So Logan reaches out to me one day on video. He's get on FaceTime, get on FaceTime, get on FaceTime. And he's holding up the PSA 9 and I'm looking at it and I'm like, oh my God, he actually did it. And he goes, now I want the 10. Now I want the 10. And I was like, bro, that means you're gonna have to throw $4 million at this. And he was like, I know what it means. So he was very generous. He invited me to to come out with him. We flew to Dubai and and did the deal. And everything about

• 6:18Speaker 01

  it is legitimate. Like, I know that there's always questions, what's real, what's not real in this world of AI and reality and fantasy blurring. That was 100% real.

• 6:28Jack Selby?

  What do you think the card's worth now?

• 6:30Speaker 01

  It's it's interesting. I don't know. Because it is such rare air. I will say this, though. The GOAT cards in other categories are 10x that. So, you know, Pokemon is a critical part of trading cards and of the TCG or or sports cards universe, however way you look at it. And I will tell you that the GOAT cards in other areas are $50 million. The T206 Honus Wagner PSA 8 is a $50 million card. The 1952 PSA 10 Tops Mickey Mantle Rookie Card, there's only three of them. It's a $50 million card. So, you know, to think that the highest valued card in Pokemon is five, there may be some upside there.

• 7:15Jack Selby?

  What's an item you lost out the most amount of money because you sold too early? You owned it, you improperly timed the sale, and you lost money?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  You know, it's interesting. I haven't done a lot of selling, you know. I will say this, that where I lost money was in my desire to hold things that I because I like to collect and I wanted a life story of collectibles. You know, for me, the idea was collect over a lifetime that involves both my professional life and my personal life. Okay, because a lot of those lines are blurred. And then one day, when I'm like 70 years old, have this grand auction where my kids would be there and they'd be very proud of this massive result. Now, of course, the world throws you curveballs. So, of course, the biggest loss for me was that I'm not going to be able to do that due to the Pacific Palisades fire. Now, that's okay. I'm okay with it. I've had plenty of time. Plus, I had very good insurance. And that could be a topic that I would love to hit

• 8:08Speaker 01

  on. Because I'm telling you, people need to insure and take care of their stuff. I did. I had 1000 items individually insured. And as a result, you know, here I am feeling relatively resilient about all of it.

• 8:21Graham Stephan?

  So you were affected by the Palisades fire and you had all of your collectibles there?

• 8:25Speaker 01

  I had 99.9%. I had a couple vaults where I had collectibles that were not in the home because some of them were so valuable that I just decided that it, for whatever reason, would be best not to have them local.

• 8:40Graham Stephan?

  So what was the value of your collectibles that you had lost?

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh. Many, many millions. I would say roughly $7, $8 million.

• 8:50Graham Stephan?

  And how much did it cost to insure them?

• 8:52Speaker 01

  You know, it's, insurance is one of the best things that you can do and it's one of the least expensive things that you can do. And I'll tell you, it's around $5,000 per million, per year to have a complete insurance on your items. Now, for me, I will say I had complete insurance, but the value had escalated. So with the value escalation, I didn't do a good job keeping up with the latest values. And I don't, I cut myself some slack on that. Like, who does that? Who goes to their insurance company every year? I'm telling you, do it.

• 9:24Graham Stephan?

  I do.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  You do it?

• 9:26Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  I'm very impressed.

• 9:27Graham Stephan?

  Every year? Because I get the renewal letter and I look through and I say, okay, that's gone up a million, that's gone up a value. And it's stated value, so you can just say what you want to insure it for.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's smart. And by the way, the insurer was so incredibly, you know, realistic with the valuations. They understood collectibles. So, but yeah, I mean, look, I left millions of dollars on the table. I'm okay with it, but I want to be, I want to influence other people to never let that happen to themselves. So what I tell people is, the day that's the most important to your loved ones is like Valentine's Day, right? Every Valentine's Day, do the right thing for your loved one and go look at all of your collectible items, all of your insurance, and make sure that you have prepared them correctly, whether it's life insurance, personal insurance, collectibles, jewelry, art, all of that. Make sure you take care of the people that you love. And I can tell

• 10:20Speaker 01

  you that I mostly did. I'll give myself a B+.

• 10:23Graham Stephan?

  Now, one of the things I really enjoyed about your story is that you're good at spotting things before they become mainstream and before everyone else catches on to them. How did you first start making money?

• 10:35Speaker 01

  So I first started making money with student loans. It's almost embarrassing to say, I feel like a way, a rush of like humility come over my body. I didn't, I didn't come from wealth. My, my dad is a really hardworking person. My mom was a great mom and, and together they did what they did and they, but by the time it was time for me to go to college, um, my dad had started a new business and you know, new businesses are, are, can be really rough. And this was not the perfect time to go. So I went to college and it was very clear to me that I needed to cover as much as humanly possible. So, so I did, uh, through working externally and, and going to school. But somewhere towards the end of college, the, the mid nineties domain names came around.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Okay. And domain names essentially kicked my career off. The problem is my capital was student loans. Now I have to tell you, I do not recommend that to anybody. Okay. Capital can come from various places. Everyone has access to money. You know, somebody that trusts you that has some money. Okay. Leverage them. Don't leverage your student loans like me. My timing was good though. Okay. The timing was good. So one of the biggest names early on that I picked up was act.com. And act.com, I found it on a message boards. It was a Yahoo message boards. Okay. And, and this name was being sold for a thousand dollars. And I reached out and I said, sold basically.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  I mean, who, who would think to look at a Yahoo message boards under the domain name category? I said, sold. They were going bankrupt as an organization, the small company that used ACT as their name. And I bought it right away. And again, you know, so you take one last class, thousand dollars goes out the window. And, uh, that turned out to be an incredible return on investment. How much did you sell it for? Ultimately, we sold Act.com for $500,000 and that was a couple of years later. And it was to Symantec. Symantec Act Scheduling Software. Now, before they bought it, I will say, they did have their moments. Like, I received a phone call. I was around 23 years old and, you know, in my little apartment.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  And I get a phone call. And it's, it's never good when they start calling you Mr. Anything when you're a kid. You know, they're like, Mr. Padawar, we have reason to believe that you're holding something of ours that has trademark value. I'm like, okay. They're like, you, do you have Act.com? I said, yes. They said, okay, listen, that's ours. I was like, oh, I was like, that's gonna be a real surprise to the ACT board and to ACT toothpaste. I was like, that, that to me is ridiculous. I said, what you own is one category, one name in the entire trademark registry of all the different categories you could register for. You do not own my domain name. And they said, let's call you back. So about 30 minutes later, I received another call.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Mr. Padawar, we're prepared to offer you $300,000 for your domain name. And I said, no. And then the third call was Jeremy. So I finally graduated to Jeremy. Jeremy would like to offer you a half a million dollars. And I guess there's a difference between when someone says 300,000 and half a million. But my brain just kicked right in and I was like, yes. So that was a big game changer for me. I mean, it really changed my whole universe.

• 14:02Jack Selby?

  That's funny. That reminds me of like, people ask, how much money do you make? And the guy's like, millions. And they're like, how many millions? He's like, .1 million. It's like, it sounds like so much more than $100,000. You know, half a million is much more than 500,000.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Half a million. And especially when you're 23, you don't have any money. You know, I was making some money because I, I had gamed Yahoo. Okay, so Yahoo at the time, so the search functions back in the day, the algorithm was trash. Okay. The algorithm back in the day was essentially. Do you have two letter As in front of your name because you show up first in a categorical search? It was very much like a phone book. Like, I know that most young people have never even seen a phone book at this point. But phone books used to be these big bricks that they would deliver to your home. And then everybody was listed A to Z. And then there was a Yellow Pages where each company or each category was also listed.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  So if you wanted to go to get your electrician, AA would show up first before ZZ, which would show up last. That's exactly how Yahoo worked. That's exactly how all search engines worked. So I decided to game it. And I decided to focus on categories that I really knew something about, which was toys and collectibles. And I created absolute, basically, everything with two As. Absolute Beanie Babies, absolute Furby, absolute everything. And all of these absolute names were individually under each category of Yahoo and listed first. So that was enormous for me. It was that that gave me the idea that domain names may have a lot of direct navigation traffic and value. And so putting those two things together was spectacular for me.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Within six months, I went from being broke to being someone that was making more money than my professors, which, by the way, I had no idea how much money they were making, but it was just, it felt good to think that.

• 15:52Graham Stephan?

  What other domains did you buy?

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Gosh, I had names like uninsured.com. I had names like, well, I still have jeremy.com. I had names like marshmallows. And the first domain name that I ever bought, okay, it's all embarrassing, but I feel like, I feel like partially you're my psychologist today, okay? But yeah, I bought schmuck.com. That was the first domain name I ever bought. And the reason why is because I was just typing in generic words and they were making me laugh. And I typed in schmuck.com. And interestingly enough, the reason why schmuck.com is worth a lot of money, and I didn't know this, is that it means jewels in German. So when you hear schmuck and people kind of joke about, you know what it means, family

• 16:39Speaker 01

  jewels or jewels? That's the, that's the rough interpretation or translation.

• 16:45Graham Stephan?

  I had no idea.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I sold it to a German jewelry company back in the day.

• 16:49Graham Stephan?

  How much?

• 16:50Speaker 01

  I think it was like 30 grand, but again, for me, it was a lot of money.

• 16:54Graham Stephan?

  That's a lot of money.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  It's a lot of money.

• 16:55Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, and how much did you buy it for?

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Uh, $30, right off the registry.

• 17:00Graham Stephan?

  Unbelievable. How many domains have you bought?

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Oh, hundreds, hundreds of generic terms. And like, one of the names that I still own is pacificpalisades.com, my city name. It gives you so much power because not only can you reach a very specific group of people, but in a, in a time like this, when a city burns down, if you can write, and I, one of, one of my talents, there's very few, is I am a decent writer and I love to advocate for people who have lost something. And so it's not hard for me to advocate for my neighbors who have lost so much during this fire, especially when a city was so inept.

• 17:36Graham Stephan?

  Now, I just gotta say that with the new year coming up, a lot of people start thinking about the business they've always wanted to start, but it's usually the legal side that stops them. Everyone says, oh, just start an LLC, but what does that actually mean? What forms do you actually need? How do you make sure it's done correctly?

• 17:52Jack Selby?

  And that's exactly why we've partnered with Bizzy to sponsor this podcast. I've personally used them myself and I gotta say, the process could not have been any easier. Setting up my LLC took less than 10 minutes and I just knew everything was getting filed properly and professionally, which just made getting started way less intimidating.

• 18:08Graham Stephan?

  Bizzy's helped over a million people start their businesses and they make the entire process super simple. There's no confusing paperwork, no legal jargon, you just fill out a short form and they handle the rest. Honestly, using Bizzy from the start just makes sense. They handle all the distractions that usually pull you away from growing your business.

• 18:25Jack Selby?

  And don't worry, because they don't just set you up and then disappear. Bizzy offers you the tools and services you need to actually run your business throughout the year, so you're supported long after that initial filing. So if your plan for 2026 is to finally start that business idea you've been sitting on, I highly, highly, highly recommend you do it at bizee.com/ICH. Seriously, guys, I've used them myself. I absolutely love the service. They are incredible. B-I-Z-Z-E-E dot com slash I-C-H. There's also a link down below in the description. You could just click it right there. bizee.com/ICH. Thank you so much to Bizzy for sponsoring this episode. What other domains do you currently own? You said jeremy.com.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, jeremy.com.

• 19:02Jack Selby?

  When did you buy that?

• 19:03Speaker 01

  I bought that in 1990. No, maybe 2000, around 2000.

• 19:08Jack Selby?

  How much did you pay for it?

• 19:09Speaker 01

  I paid $7,000.

• 19:10Jack Selby?

  That's gotta be worth like a lot of money. I feel like it could be worth like a million bucks.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  It's worth a lot.

• 19:15Jack Selby?

  To the right person.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  I get offers all the time. In fact, this week I got an unsolicited offer. It was around $100,000. And, and by the way, that's, that's not me reaching out. That's not me marketing it. But I have zero interest in selling that. I mean, I'm so tied to it and I love having [email protected] as an email address. I love having access to people because they want to reach out to me. And also I like making other Jeremys jealous. It's kind of fun. One other concept of domain names is that I also, you know, I would be engaged with what's the world around me. So in 2000, I went to my first Comic Con with Mattel, who was my first employer in the toy business. And I was like, Comic Con? I was like, such an interesting name. I wonder what other cons have ever been bought.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  So I basically bought like a hundred names with con after it against everything. And like one was, I think one was like Women Con, which I sold to Arnold Schwarzenegger's ex-wife. Uh, I don't remember her name. I, I, Kennedy, something Kennedy. But anyways, I, yeah, I had all of these names based on the experiences that I would have every day. And every year I get offers and I just sell names off.

• 20:24Jack Selby?

  Was there any domain name that you wanted to buy that you couldn't?

• 20:27Speaker 01

  So yes, there is one. X.com. So there's only been three one-letter .com domain names ever released. Okay. One was X.com. One was Q.com, which turned into Quest Communications. They're a big consulting firm. And one was Z.com. Z.com was owned by a guy named Eric Ziegast, just a dude who sold it. I don't know how much he sold it for. I had reached out to him before. I didn't have the money. The other X.com was held by a guy with a last name Walker. And when I reached out to him, it was just before I had done the deal on act.com. So I didn't really have money and he asked, I asked him, I said, would you sell X.com?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  And he said, yeah, I will sell it for $10,000. I'll give you 48 hours to get me the money. And I said, interesting. And then I did what you do when you're in your twenties, 24, 25. I did nothing. I just goofed off. I hung out, I played video games. I went to school, got back to him 47th and a half hour. And he was like, he's like, look, I'll give you 30 more minutes. That's it. I've got another buyer. And I said, okay, uh, I'm going to get back to you. I didn't believe him, you know, people say that all the time. And I got back to him and he said, yeah, I've sold it. And I said, look, tomorrow I'm going to come back to you and I'm going to come with more than $10,000.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  And then I reached out to my dad and I reached out to other people who, by the way, had a little bit more money now, and I figured 10 grand wouldn't put anybody out. And he was like, look, I'll, I'll help sponsor you on this. I don't know what it means. I reached back out and I said, look, I said, I will offer you, Rob, $1,000. And I'm going to offer the person that bought it 20% more than they paid for it in one day. It's a hell of a return. And he said, okay. He goes, look, if, if you, you know, if you make the deal happen, let me give you the person's name. It's Elon Musk. And he gave me the guy's email address. Of course, I didn't know who he was. He was 28 years old.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  And I reached out to Elon Musk and I said, how would you like to make $2,000 in one day? Selling X.com. And he wrote back one word, answer, no, capital letters. And that was it. That was the end of my X.com story.

• 22:50Graham Stephan?

  Did you ever try to email him back and offer more?

• 22:53Speaker 01

  No, because I think once someone tells you that they're not open to making, you know, 20% on their investment in one day, you do a little bit of research. And I, and I did my research after that. I was like, who is Elon Musk? And I looked it up and he had just sold a company. And I realized that he, first of all, we were not in the same. We were not in the same peer group. This guy had made a ton of money and I was a law student. But secondly, um, he was pretty definitive. And, and you know, look, when someone tells you no with all capital letters, it's especially no, you know? So I was just like, I will accept no for an answer this time. And I was on to the next, but please keep in mind it was the Wild West. So in the Wild West, there's always the next opportunity. So it was, I was on to the next one. It was the entire world.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  It was an entire dictionary that was wide open for people to buy stuff and then redirect traffic because each of them had enormous amounts of eyeballs. I would just like to tell you one-off story about the value of these names and why these names had so much value. So I don't know if you've ever heard of the concept of, or the term mesothelioma.

• 23:58Graham Stephan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Okay. It's a terrible thing. Like if you get mesothelioma, you're, you're not in good shape. It's a cancer. It's related to asbestos. And it used to be that they would put a lot of asbestos in people's homes and other things, workspaces, et cetera. So mesothelioma.com, which I can barely even pronounce. It's got so many syllables, was available for sale. And I passed on it. What do you think that domain name might be worth? Just thinking out loud. Well, I'll tell you. Okay. In the late nineties, early 2000s, lawyers were paying $50 per individual that they could come to their site, which is a crazy amount of money. It's unheard of today, but they were collecting a class of defendants

• 24:41Speaker 01

  to, or plaintiffs for, for the mesothelioma deals. And so at $50 a hit, mesothelioma.com was getting roughly, I don't know, 150, 200 people a day typing it in, direct traffic navigation. So let's just take the lower number of 100. 100 times 50 is $5,000 a day. If you could get 100% of your people to go through. But if you just put a banner up, it says, click here to go to the law firm.

• 25:08Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  And you get half of that. You're literally dealing with $2,500 a day. $2,500 a day times 365 days a year is approaching a million dollars. Okay, a million dollars times whatever multiple you want to apply to it is the value of the name. So messwiththeleoma.com, at least in the late 90s, early 2000s, was a five to seven million dollar domain name. This was widely available at the time. All of these names, it was fair game, you could pick them up for pennies on the dollar.

• 25:40Jack Selby?

  How did you go from that then to building a career in collectibles and toys?

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I, I didn't think that the internet was sustainable. Okay, because I didn't necessarily have the vision. Okay, I, I knew that I had had a lot of fun and I had made some money. But then in the back of my mind, I was like, okay, I have to go get a real job now. And let me go get a real job so I can understand what it's like to work with other people. Because what I had done to that point was work by myself and I didn't know how to manage anybody. I didn't know how to necessarily relate to other people professionally and I wanted to. I wanted to make an impact on other people too, not just do creative individual endeavors. And so I, at that point in time, I had gone to, I went to Vanderbilt for business school.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  And when I was at Vanderbilt, one of the companies that came through was Mattel Recruiting. And, you know, when they came through to recruit, I, I went and, and basically said, look, not only do I love toys and collectibles, but I've been in this whole internet space for the last three or four years. And let me show you what I've done. And we, I got a job, which was amazing. And that's been 25 years in the toy business as a result.

• 26:55Jack Selby?

  How old were you when you got the job at Mattel?

• 26:58Speaker 01

  I was 26.

• 26:59Jack Selby?

  How could you justify working a W2 when you've probably already made hundreds of thousands of dollars? By, you know, an earlier age, just flipping domain names? Wouldn't you see the entrepreneurial spirit in yourself to question whether or not a nine to five is worth it?

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Yes, but not in 2000, not in 2000, 2001. It was a different era. I mean, really, keep in mind, nothing disruptive had ever occurred before. I mean, I guess the Industrial Revolution. I guess there were periods of time where there were seismic changes in business, but there was nothing quite as life-changing as this. At the same time, when I was entering into Mattel, there was also a bubble that had recently popped. And so I watched the internet and all these jobs go away. I watched all these giant billion-dollar companies become, you know, $10 million companies. And it just was a little discouraging to me. So I thought, you know what? I'm going to follow a life of passion. And I love collectibles. I love toys.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Why not give it a shot? And you're right. The first year at Mattel, I made roughly 1/10th of the money that I had made my last year as an entrepreneur. But I thought that gravy train might be ending. And the important thing for life is not to treat it as this linear progression, where every year has to be better than the year prior. Because when you do that, you will be sorely disappointed. You've got to give yourself an opportunity to grow. You've got to give yourself an opportunity to step back to go forward. And that was that moment for me. That was one of those moments for me. Were there signs that there was a bubble?

• 28:35Speaker 00

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• 29:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think calling 23-year-olds and offering them a half a million dollars for a domain name that they paid $1,000 for was a sign of a bubble. But the bigger signs of the bubble was the fact that... These businesses were not based on any historical valuations that had been established. You know, when you have Amazon trading at thousands and thousands of times earnings, and often based on no earnings whatsoever, it was a sea change. And keep in mind, Amazon worked and turned out to this monster of a company. But for every Amazon, there were 50 other companies that didn't work, that didn't make it, that didn't pass the muster.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  So when you base so much of the of the trading volume on these things that you're taking along on, things blow up after a while, you know? It just wasn't ready yet. Now, of course, looking back, all we see are the success stories. We see Facebook and we see the fact that Amazon and Yahoo and all, well, Yahoo was a minute and gone. But you see all of these that worked, but you don't remember all the ones that did not. So how did your career progress after Mattel? Yeah, so I was at Mattel for a few years, about three years. And I got a call from another toy company called Jax Pacific. And Jax just happened to have the WWE license.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  And I was such a big fan of action figures and the adult collector. And I was doing a lot at Mattel with Hot Wheels and SpongeBob and all these other brands. But I had the opportunity to lead a division at 29 years old, which I thought sounded really cool. And I thought, man, it's WWE. I love wrestling. I grew up in the South, man. Regional wrestling was the king of the South. Like, you'd go see Jerry Lawler and all these guys come to town, and it would blow your mind. They were the celebrities, the only ones that were there. If you're in Columbus, Mississippi, or, you know, if you're in Memphis, Tennessee, you know, that that is the top of the top. The others are not coming to town. So when I had that opportunity to work on WWE, for me, it was an absolute yes.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  And I had the opportunity to build out that division. So we went from being a fairly small group to about eight or nine X after about seven years that I had on that action figure business. We brought in Poki. In 2005, 2006 from Hasbro, we grew the WWE business from being almost off the shelf after the Attitude Era, like the late 90s was really good for wrestling, the early 2000s was really not, and Dragon Ball Z and all these other brands. And it just allowed me to also like learn what it was like to lead a bunch of people early in my life. It turned out to be spectacular. I will tell you one WWE story that changed everything for me. And that was an interaction

• 31:54Speaker 01

  that I had with Vince McMahon when I was 29 years old, who by the way is a fascinating character in real life, especially when you're 29. WWE was almost off the shelf, okay? WWE was literally being taken off the shelf because the Attitude Era, everything was treated like it was kids' toys, okay? Everything today we see in the world with collectibles, at the time it was kids' toys. But there was a sea change. And Walmart had told us like, if you don't do more business soon, you're gonna be off the shelf. So I sat down and I thought, what do I want? What would I like to buy? Like, let's stop making product just for kids. What do I want? And I thought, I know what I want. I want to celebrate the entire history of wrestling. So one of the things that I did early was create something called Classic Superstars,

• 32:39Speaker 01

  which celebrated 30 years of pro wrestling and all the characters that Vince McMahon no longer had on TV, because his mindset was if it's not on TV, they're a competitor. So I sat down with Mr. McMahon, and I said, hey Vince, you know, we have an opportunity, you know, to to bring back this world of wrestling, but not for kids, for collectors. And he said, okay, you know, okay, tell me more, tell me more. And I told him, I was like, I think that we can turn this into a serious toy brand. If we reach out to collectors through the best of 70s, 80s, and 90s, celebrating all of your alumni, the way they do in the NFL, Major League Baseball, and other major sports. And he was cool with it. He was actually like, okay, his biggest issue

• 33:24Speaker 01

  was, what do we do with these contracts? Because if I sign all these pro wrestlers and like Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan and all of these luminaries, what happens if WWE later wants to establish an alumni group? And I said, we can solve that. By as soon as you sign them, we lose the rights to the deal entirely. You get the rights, and but we get the rights to the toys. He was like, okay, so the first assortment we put out had Ultimate Warrior, Bret Hart, guys that he was actively in a lawsuit with. But he was still okay because it was the right thing for the business. So wrestling is an interesting genre and it is its own universe, I can tell you. It's huge. We turn it into the largest action figure

• 34:09Speaker 01

  brand in the world, bigger than Star Wars or anything else at that time.

• 34:13Graham Stephan?

  What was the best business advice you've been told?

• 34:16Speaker 01

  The best business advice I've been told, okay, I remember. It was by a guy that we had just acquired their pet business. And at that time, I didn't know anything about pets. I just knew it was kind of like, kind of like making products for kids or collectors because dogs and cats are parts of families, but humans make the purchase decision. So I was like, okay, I think I can understand how to do this. And I said to him, I said, you know, I don't know anything about this category. And he goes, mate, he goes, it doesn't matter what you know. He goes, all that matters is that you know, people that know stuff. He goes, know how to leverage them, know how to leverage what they do best. He said, and you'll always be fine. And I was like, oh my God, because especially coming from that entrepreneurial background,

• 35:00Speaker 01

  like my mindset was like, if you can't do it yourself, how are you going to get this done? And he was telling me, no, no, leverage the strength of the room. And that was a game changer for me and I really embraced that after that. I heard him loud and clear.

• 35:14Graham Stephan?

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• 35:36Jack Selby?

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• 35:56Graham Stephan?

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• 36:09Jack Selby?

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• 36:21Graham Stephan?

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• 36:30Jack Selby?

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• 36:49Graham Stephan?

  And how did you discover Squishmallows?

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Well, that was a group decision, but I'll tell you. So in 2012, we started a new company called Wicked Cool Toys. Okay, this was after me being an executive in companies for 12, 13 years, after Mattel and after Jax. And Wicked Cool Toys was a really fun, Wild West, purely entrepreneurial opportunity. Every single year, we would barely make it. We'd have one thing that would get us to the next year, but we would grow. So one year, we brought back Cabbage Patch Kids. One year, we brought back Teddy Ruxpin. One year, we brought out the very first Girl Scout Activity Oven, where you could make your own Girl Scout cookies at home. So every single year, we had something that would get us to the next year, allow us to really hype it up and get retail excited.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  And then, in around 2016, I get a phone call from Pokemon. And they were like, hey, Jeremy, we really appreciated the way you managed our business at Jax. They had gone to another toy company in the interim. And they said, do you want to pitch for the global rights to Pokemon? And I said, yeah, because I knew that we were not big. We were surviving year to year. And by the way, it's not fun to have so much on the line. At the time, my partners, Thomas and Michael, we all had it out. We all had it all on the line. And anyways, net result is, I said, yes, but we're too small.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  I was like, we will lose if you're gauging us in our size because we were going up against nothing but billion dollar companies. So it was us versus three other billion dollar companies. We were 30, 40 million dollars and not profitable. So we pitched it and everybody went into that room and told Pokemon all the wonderful things they could do for Pokemon. And I went in the room and basically understood this is the most strategic brand and the most well-managed brand that I've ever seen. How can I truly add value when all of these people here add so much value already? So I told them all the things that we wouldn't do. We would never ask of them. That's part of reading the room. That's part of leveraging other people's strengths and recognizing that they exist.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  So after saying that, I knew the room felt like it melted. It felt like people were like, oh, interesting. You know what? That is a difference between this little company and these big companies. So the net result is I get a phone call three weeks later. My buddy Colin, Jeremy, you didn't, you guys didn't get it. You, you had the best pitch. You won the pitch. You're too small. And I said, listen, I was like, we need this. I was like, before we get off the phone, I was like, tell the powers that be that we will, we will give 3% of the company and I will give up my personal board seat to Pokemon in order to make this deal happen. And he listened and he was like, let me get back to you. And he calls me back a few minutes later. He goes, look, come meet our CFO, our chief legal officer, do the pitch again.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  And I did. And they were like, you know what? This is good. We'll take the 3%. We'll take a board seat. You save your own board seat. We don't want you off the board. We don't want you to leave. What are you doing? But we need to buy a share, a partnership share so that we can capitalize you to launch Pokemon globally. That was right before Pokemon Go. They had made one other acquisition. It was Niantic. And then we were the second partnership and I can tell you it was a game changer. When I tell you game changer, I mean, it was the difference of us potentially going bankrupt or every year trying to get the next one and immediately being one of the most important toy companies in the world.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  And it was such a shocking moment for me. And of course we agreed and it was signed off. And about three or four years later, so 2019, we sold to private equity called Allegheny Capital. They were an insurance company with a big capital arm and they had already acquired several years before a company called Jazzwears, which was a incredibly well-run company. And we were like, oh, that's interesting. They had a really smart CEO, Judd and Laura, brilliant people. And I was like, interesting, you know what? I think we could make this work. So we retained a share. So I retained a partnership, sold some, put cash in the bank. And about two months later, we're looking at opportunities and very smart team, we're

• 41:13Speaker 01

  all sitting together and we're looking at Squishmallows and we're like, you know what? Let's go for it. I realize it's a very long answer, but the truth of the matter is, life is not so simple anyway.

• 41:24Graham Stephan?

  Did Squishmallows want to sell? Like, how did you go about that?

• 41:28Speaker 01

  I will have to give credit to Judd and also, there's two Judds, Karowski and Zaberski. These two guys are quite genius and they came across it and we all, you know, we all had the opportunity to sit down and discuss it, but it was just blowing up. The brand was blowing up. It was still small. It was still a 30th of what it is today. But it was interesting because it was owned by a company that does amusement plush. Now, when you think about amusement plush, you probably think about going to an amusement park and these kind of cheap, thin, really thin, you know, fabric, not the highest quality. But these guys were trying some new things and they had created a brand called Squishmallows.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  And they, they had it in amusement and they also had it at Walgreens and it was blowing up at Walgreens. Squishmallows was killing it at Walgreens. And I think that when you're in the amusement business, your mindset is more like, okay, what's the hot thing this year? Let's keep going. Whereas when you're in the more traditional brand building business, your mindset is how can we turn this into an Evergreen brand that lasts for decades? So we were looking at it under different lenses and therefore there was a value creation opportunity. Okay. When two people are looking at the same thing, they could both be exactly right. But their mindset and their lens that they're looking at it through changes the entire dynamic of the situation. So for us, we were like, interesting.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  It's killing it at Walgreens. Why wouldn't it kill it everywhere? Let's buy it and then study it. We had to move quickly, right? Whenever you identify value creation, you've got to move fast. So we moved quickly. We bought it. I wrote a check. Everyone wrote a check, which by the way, absolutely tore me in half. To get a check and to write a check within that two month period, that's hard.

• 43:19Graham Stephan?

  How much was it?

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know if I can disclose the amount that Squishmallows was bought for, but I can tell you that we grew it literally 20, 30 times. And today it's a multi-billion dollar global franchise. And we sold last year, three units per second, every second of the year. A hundred million units last year. Since the deal, we've sold over 500 million units. And by the way, everyone did well. This is not a situation where the person that originally owned Squishmallows, you know, stepped away hurting. He was part of the team and he also did an excellent job. This is really a great story where everyone won. My favorite kind of business story.

• 43:58Graham Stephan?

  Macy loves Squishmallows.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 44:00Graham Stephan?

  Loves them. Unfortunately, every time we go to Costco, she wants to buy one. And I say, we already have like six of them. And she's, but this one's cute. We don't have this one. We, she even set up a Squishmallow Christmas tree.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:14Graham Stephan?

  It's a whole, it dedicated to Squishmallows instead of ornaments, like the little tiny ones. She loves them.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  That's amazing. Thank you for that. No, I, I, it's, I feel like I'm living a bit of an out of body experience. Because I hope what you guys have recognized so far is this was not a silver spoon situation. This was a, this was a scratch and claw and take risks and try things. This was a. Forget the linear nature of life and do things completely off the rail like, for instance, you know, paying for school or going to law school and then going to business school and paying for it, or doing things on student loans for domain names, or starting a business after you're already a successful executive and putting everything on the line.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Like, every step of the way was risk. There's no doubt. But I was lucky because I loved it. I was passionate about it. I loved the subject matter. And that's the reason why I tell people it's so important to have a passion for the things that they do. You go to work every day. It makes you smarter. It makes you more insightful. And so for me, being 29 years old and sitting with Vince McMahon, it felt much more comfortable for me. And it allowed me to communicate to him in a way that was rational, because I loved it and he got it. He understood I did.

• 45:30Jack Selby?

  When did you meet Warren Buffett?

• 45:32Speaker 01

  Okay, this is, this is a whole nother story. So in 2022, 2022, I'm in my bed, it's early, and I get a text. Of course, you know, I'm a fun-loving person. I get a lot of silly texts. And I get a text, "Hey, congratulations, your new boss is Warren Buffett." I was like, "It's 6 a.m. Just leave me alone. Let me sleep another 30 minutes, for God's sakes." Yeah. And I get another text from another person, who's not very funny. "Yo, I heard about Warren Buffett." I'm like, "What is going on?" Okay. Now, keep in mind, when you sell a company, but you retain a part of something new, your control is not

• 46:14Speaker 01

  necessarily at the highest level. I mean, that's one of the reasons why entrepreneurs decide to bail on companies that they're part of. They just, they bail because they, they used to be in extreme control, and now they lack control. That's never good. Well, in this case, it turned out to be great, because I found out later that day, that Allegheny, the, the company, the, the private equity firm that bought us 100% of its assets to Berkshire Hathaway, after a dinner between Warren Buffett and their CEO. And a napkin was passed across the table with a number that the guy accepted, which is awesome. It's like so awesome. Like Warren Buffett is the greatest business person of all time because he's so real. Like, again, passion, right?

• 46:58Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  This is a guy that would study stuff when he was a kid in the back room, like looking at these books that nobody else would make any sense of, but he did. So yeah, it's, it was wild. I had no control over that. I had no awareness of it. And once Allegheny was purchased, I will say that the team at Jazzwares did a great job at communicating to Berkshire Hathaway how important we were a part of the Allegheny family and how critical it would be for us to be part of the Berkshire Hathaway family.

• 47:27Jack Selby?

  Have you ever spoken to Warren Buffett?

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Yes, every year at the shareholders meeting. There's an annual shareholders meeting. There's like 40, 50,000 people that come in. Now granted, these are not long conversations. And there's a group of us, there's about five or six people on the leadership team and we all gather around and Warren Buffett goes from group to group. Now, keep in mind, if you've never been to the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting, it is, part of it is like this giant warehouse, okay, that is like Comic Con, but for only Berkshire Hathaway owned companies because they own 60 companies. And each stall is a different group of entrepreneurs or, or organizations like Fruit of the Loom or Seize Candy or Jazzwares, where we're communicating

• 48:11Speaker 01

  with, with consumers and also selling things. Like it's a for-profit thing. We're selling like Squishmallows or limited edition Warren Buffett Squishmallows. And each year Warren comes around and talks to each one of us. And so, yes, pictures of Warren, I, but like emails are kind of like this. And every time it's really exciting. Like, yes, this is it. Like, we're going to be pros. And it's like from the desk of Warren Buffett, you're like, oh, let's open this baby. Let's go. And you open it up and it's like, hi, can you please send Squishmallows to Becky quick? And you're like, oh, that's not the strategic email that I was looking, that's okay. I'll take it. This is good enough. Cause you, you are, you're, you're there. You're with the oracle. You're with the greatest of all time.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Oh, Becky Quicks, an MSNBC anchor. And every year she covers the Berkshire Hathaway event. So, yeah.

• 49:04Graham Stephan?

  Gosh, you'll get emails from me, hey, send off from the desk of Graham Stephan. Send these squishmallows to Macy.

• 49:09Jack Selby?

  Yeah, squishmallows.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Well, you know what's interesting? My, my wife gave you what I would say is probably the greatest compliment, Graham.

• 49:16Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  She said to me after, because we had the opportunity to spend some time together. And she said to me after you left the house, she goes, he reminds me of a young Warren Buffett.

• 49:24Graham Stephan?

  Hmm.

• 49:24Jack Selby?

  Oh, God, don't say that.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  I'm telling you.

• 49:26Jack Selby?

  Let's do earmuffs back. That's just the worst possible thing you could have said.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  It was true.

• 49:31Graham Stephan?

  Earmuffs.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  I'm not, I'm not making up. She said that. Now, keep in mind, she's a physician, so it's not like she knows one business person from the next. But she got that vibe. And I was like, yeah. I was like, he's a, he's a visionary guy. He's a visionary guy.

• 49:43Graham Stephan?

  Wouldn't you say so?

• 49:44Speaker 01

  No.

• 49:44Graham Stephan?

  I would, I would tend to agree.

• 49:46Jack Selby?

  What's the most valuable lesson you've learned from Warren Buffett?

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Oh, the most valuable lesson from Warren Buffett is just to be in the moment. I mean, again, the way he acquired that particular company, clearly they did incredible amount of homework. But he's also always in the moment. Like, if you watch his annual speech, it's like a six hour Q and A. He's folksy, he's humble, he's brilliant. But that brilliance is delivered within all of the reality of what else makes him so great and so accessible. And so, yeah, for me, it was like, here is one of the three richest people in the world. And he could be like your uncle or cousin or just like this other guy that you meet at when you're getting your haircut.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Like, I love that. I love it when people don't stand on all of their accomplishments and try to tower over you. And he is the opposite of that. He is truly the GOAT.

• 50:45Jack Selby?

  So in the simplest of ways, explain to me what it is now that you do for work.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah, so today I'm the Chief Brand Officer at Jazzwears. And basically Chief Brand Officer means that I'm focused primarily on things like building new business, bringing new business in, licensing, marketing, brand, work deeply in the sales organization, work deeply in the legal organization, all the stuff that I would say is not the nuts and bolts of accounting, finance, operations. That would be roughly what I do. And today, we are the global partner for Pokemon still, Hello Kitty, Fortnite, Roblox. We're the, we're still the makers of Squishmello because we, we own it and we create new brands every single year. We do deals with all the major studios, Disney, Warner Brothers, Universal, et cetera. And it's always a hunt.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  I'm on a constant scavenger hunt, whether it's meeting with inventors, whether it's meeting with licensing partners, whether it's meeting with the, my own team that may come up with something cool. I am on a lifelong scavenger hunt, looking for the next big toy. What do you think of Labubus? I mean, it's amazing. It's amazing, okay? I'm going to step back and say, it is an indicator of where the market is right now. Okay? 25 years ago, when I started at Mattel, the adult collector was the fourth or fifth largest category of consumer. The largest would have been like six to 11 year olds and then preschoolers and then zero to two. And then once you go all the way down the path, you would find these adults, which

• 52:16Speaker 01

  everyone considered nerds and I was the king of the nerds. And I was communicating on, on he-man.org and all the other websites that were out there to communicate with the consumer. And today, the adult collector is the number one consumer group, number one. They leapt every other person and it's due to, you could call it COVID or anything else. It doesn't matter. Adults are much more in tune with their imagination, they're much more in tune with their fandom, and they're in tune with the, with the secondary market value of collectibles in a way that they used to not be because collectibles have had a really amazing return on investment year after year. And so.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Labubu, I would say, is a great indicator that adult collectors, men, women, etc., are all engaged in both the primary and secondary market for toys and collectibles.

• 53:08Jack Selby?

  How much of that, though, is just wanting something to show off? Because that seems to me that nobody actually likes Labubus, but they just buy them to be able to show off that they own one and that they're a part of a group that owns Labubus.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Well, in defense of Labubu.

• 53:23Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  Okay, what I would say is, there's a community. There's, every one of these collectible categories has a community. And these communities tend to be pretty big. The interesting thing about Labubu is that they're also kind of a fashion accessory. So people are not only using it to say, hey, look, I'm part of this community, or hey, look, I've got something rare and valuable. It's also to say, hey, look, I'm fashionable. Now, that's an interesting twist, and that's really cool. And that, to me, is a great indicator of what you can do next, which is the idea of a toy person entering into every category imaginable, where we add limited edition nature, where we add rarity and scarcity and apply the economics that we understand works for collectibility

• 54:06Speaker 01

  and the currency of collectibility, in every category you can think of, from drinking ware to iPhone cases to everything else, because that's where we are today.

• 54:14Jack Selby?

  You know what's interesting is I honestly have always hated Labubus. I think that they're so dumb. I don't think they look cool. I think that, like, the idea of having that as a fashion accessory is... It's weird.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  It's weird, it's lame.

• 54:27Jack Selby?

  I don't know, I don't get it.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  When I say it's weird, it's lame, that's my personal opinion. That, I'm not saying that in an objective way, that's just not my taste.

• 54:34Jack Selby?

  It's fair.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  So, that's a better way of putting it. It's not my taste. But I will say.

• 54:38Jack Selby?

  Yes.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Now that I'm thinking about it, if Pokemon came out with blind boxes, where you opened one up and then you could just, like, get away.

• 54:45Jack Selby?

  Well, that's a pack. That's a pack of Pokemon cards.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I'm talking about like a stuffed animal. That's easier to display in your room if I wanted to put it up on a shelf than would be a Pokemon card. And I think that would actually be kind of cool. Like, if you could, if you could try to get, like, the shiny Charizard, or like, the shiny Pikachu. I would actually, honestly, I would...

• 55:05Jack Selby?

  I would probably go out and buy some.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  All right. So see, that's interesting, right? So he turned himself in literally 30 seconds into someone that understands why this category exists. Now, I'm going to tell you something that may or may not make sense. But the hat you're wearing right now, the Ice Coffee Hour hat, there are collectible caps, there are collectible caps that are worth thousands and thousands of dollars, right? It's a fashion accessory, okay? They used to be purely for utility. When my dad's dad was a child, the only reason why you would wear that hat is to protect yourself from the sun. So every single generation comes with it all new cultural norms. And this is a new norm. This is just a new norm. Wearable fashion accessories is a new norm. They used to look like toys, but now they're collectibles.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  It's fascinating. Humans are interesting. We're amazing creatures, but we're always evolving.

• 55:57Graham Stephan?

  Do you think LeBubus are going to be going down in value?

• 56:00Speaker 01

  I don't want to predict another company because I would say that they're a competitor and I don't want to predict that they're going to go down in value.

• 56:07Graham Stephan?

  You're supposed to say yes, they're going to crash in value.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  I can't, I can't say it. I mean, I will say, I will say this. It all comes down to how well they're managing the, the system of collectability. Because scarcity is everything in collectibles. If you do not have scarcity and you'd manage your scarcity wrong, your collectability and your secondary market value goes down. And that is the death of a collectible.

• 56:30Jack Selby?

  So what determines value of a collectible? Is it literally scarcity? Is it anything else? Like, I feel like it's hype.

• 56:37Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 56:37Jack Selby?

  That's the main thing. For example, Graham was telling me, how did LeBubus even come about?

• 56:41Graham Stephan?

  It was a Korean pop star, right? A K-pop star who did a series where she said, these are the things I can't live without. She's like, and this LeBubu. And what's so cool about the LeBubu is that there are these blind boxes and you have no idea what's inside. Maybe you get the rare one. And then she talked about it and I believe Kim Kardashian then got one. And then it just blew up in the United States and then everybody started getting LeBubus. And then you started getting all the press, the people were waiting in line at Popmart. And I remember even here in Vegas, there was like a Popmart that opened. It was a big deal. Like a really big deal that this store opened up and people were lining up the day before just to get the chance to get a Labubu.

• 57:25Graham Stephan?

  And I'm thinking that can't be sustained like that. That usually from what I see goes away after a few months when everyone purchased it. It's hard to sustain that sort of momentum.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Well, these things tend to evolve. Okay. So what happens is all that momentum tends to evolve into something else, which isn't necessarily makes it the hottest thing in the world, but hopefully you build a consumer base that's large enough to where there's a long-term community that's created and every single year you're selling to a group of people who are diehards. And it doesn't, it doesn't make up for that biggest pop, but I will tell you this, Pokemon in 1999, it was that moment. Pokemon was, did it like, like billions of dollars right out of the gate in, in North America. And by the time I got it, and the time we, I was the mastermind partner at my old company, it was small. We couldn't, you know, there were years where we weren't doing a lot of volume.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  And so, and over time, it's the best managed brand in the world and they have developed what has turned out to be the most valuable piece of IP ever created by humans. So like, it is normal to have that initial burst, followed by a period of time where people are like, yeah, I told you it's over, followed by a long period of time where either you're managing it well or you're not. And so the story of Labubu and everything like it is told only in time. So I, I really believe it comes down to how well managed it is.

• 58:52Graham Stephan?

  How do you verify authenticity and making sure you're not getting a fake?

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Oof. It just depends on the category. Okay. And, and the good news about these archival services is it does help if you buy something that's already been pre-archived and has been, you know, has been, has been put in a case and has been added to a database. At the very least, it helps you mentally go, okay, this was real enough for an expert.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  But that's tough because the more valuable something is, the more people are going to be seeking to steal that that value for themselves. So the good news is, especially today, when there's only, you know, the, we talked about the the upper deck exquisite cards that had come out. There's only one of those Jordan Kobe cards of that era. You know where it is. If a second one pops up, it's not real. Right? So like, that's super high end collecting. At least you have that. But yeah, wherever you have something of value, there's going to be somebody that's going to try to fake it.

• 1:00:00Graham Stephan?

  What's to stop somebody though, from taking a PSA slab, replicating it perfectly, putting the same number at the top and saying, well, this is a first edition Charizard.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:11Graham Stephan?

  And it's a PSA 10, and you just copy the number of another card and you seal it. And it looks visually the same.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:00:19Graham Stephan?

  How would you know?

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  There's a registry.

• 1:00:21Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, but it would copy the same thing on the registry.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  Yes, but the good news about that registry is that individuals who buy these cards have accounts on the registry. They go in and they say, uh, this is my card. This is my card. This is my card. And, and you have hundreds of cards in your own, in your own collection in the world. And if somebody else were to say, hey, I have that particular card, you as a collector should go to the registry and see if it matches that particular person who says that they're selling it. And if it doesn't.

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• 1:01:24Speaker 04

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• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  They should not be selling that card until they've put it under their own name, under their own name in the registry. I'm just, look, it's not perfect.

• 1:01:57Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  By any stretch of the imagination, but it is a layer of protection.

• 1:02:01Graham Stephan?

  Why do so many collectors lose money on things that they gamble or speculate on? You know, my dad got a Teddy Rexpin. And it never went up in value.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  What is that?

• 1:02:10Graham Stephan?

  It's an old like toy and he kept it sealed. And it was like a talking toy and you put batteries in the back of it. And he bought one from me and I remember playing with it. And then he bought one that he never opened and it's still unopened and we still have it. But you could go on eBay and you find these things for dirt sheep also just unopened. They never went up in value. Or Beanie Babies, another one that just spiked and people were putting their retirement in Beanie Babies and then lost all of their money.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  Well, look, it comes down to this, and this is what I tell people. Study and follow your passions so that you learn so much about a category that you can protect yourself from yourself. I mean, really.

• 1:02:54Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  So, so how do you enter a new category? To me, when I enter a new category, I want to learn what the most valuable items in that category are, the most anything's ever sold for. So for instance, in cards, I want to know about the 52 Mantle or the Honus Wagner. I want to know about the Pikachu Illustrator card. I want to know about all that stuff. And then I want to work my way down a path of something that I know a lot about. So if I'm a big basketball fan, I want to focus on basketball. And if I'm a big Jordan fan, I want to focus on Jordan. And continue to narrow my base of what I can collect from down to something that I feel like I can learn and know more than most people that are buying and selling. It's just like a stock in that regard. If you know more about the companies that you're investing in, you tend to do better.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  If you have more insight, you tend to do better. So what I recommend is don't chase something just because other people are doing it. Don't go after and say, oh, this is hot. I'm going after it. Learn, study. Focus on your passions. It's very much like managing a career. And frankly speaking, collectibles can be a great way to diversify your portfolio.

• 1:03:58Jack Selby?

  Realistically, what percentage of someone's portfolio should be in collectibles?

• 1:04:02Graham Stephan?

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• 1:04:55Graham Stephan?

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• 1:05:51Jack Selby?

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• 1:06:01Graham Stephan?

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• 1:06:59Jack Selby?

  Realistically, what percentage of someone's portfolio should be in collectibles? If they're interested in it?

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, like, look, if it is your life's passion, 10 to 15%, put it in collectibles. Put money into the stock market, put money into real estate, put money into bonds and put money into other things. 10 to 15%.

• 1:07:23Jack Selby?

  Is that where you're at about?

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Um, I'd say more like 5.

• 1:07:26Jack Selby?

  Oh, okay. So it's a relatively small portion for you.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:30Jack Selby?

  I saw this tweet, this was kind of going viral. Says four years of ownership, he paid $320,000, took it from 1,200 to 17,000 miles and he sold it for 315,000. So to own this car here, it cost him $5,000 over the course of a few years.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  That's, that's amazing.

• 1:07:49Jack Selby?

  And then everyone started responding to this tweet with their exact, their, with their similar, you know, that's how I, I saw you respond to it. I was like, I know.

• 1:07:57Graham Stephan?

  I was the first one, dude. I.

• 1:07:59Jack Selby?

  I think you were the second one. I think you were the second one.

• 1:08:01Graham Stephan?

  I saw that when it had a few thousand views on it. And I'm like, I'm going to share my story and it got a million views.

• 1:08:07Jack Selby?

  And so Graham shared his story with his Ford GT.

• 1:08:10Graham Stephan?

  Chimed in. So I want to say that was, uh, this guy here.

• 1:08:13Jack Selby?

  And so everyone was showing their examples of buying a really expensive car, 300, 400, 500,000 dollars, driving it, adding miles to it. And then all of a sudden, just a couple of years later, it's worth the exact same amount. So effectively. It could be cheaper to be driving a Bugatti or a Lamborghini Eventador than a Honda Civic.

• 1:08:35Graham Stephan?

  Technically, I lost more money on my Tesla Model 3 than my Ford GT.

• 1:08:40Jack Selby?

  That's interesting. Wow.

• 1:08:42Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:43Jack Selby?

  Ford GT.

• 1:08:43Graham Stephan?

  So the Ford GT made me money, the Tesla lost me money.

• 1:08:47Jack Selby?

  So that's, Graham and I were having this discussion recently where I was saying that if you live in abundance and you spend more money, you go to more events, you buy more luxury things, that it oddly enough, through some weird way that life takes you, will end up making more money for you. And I kind of think that if you buy a Ford GT, maybe you go to a Ford GT meetup and you meet somebody, you do a deal with them, or you just hold on to a very exclusive asset. And then these exclusive assets, they get destroyed as long as you maintain them, they go up in value over time. Whereas like the more expensive, if you live very frugally, then I do think that what you put out, it kind of comes back to you.

• 1:09:27Graham Stephan?

  I want to give you an example.

• 1:09:28Jack Selby?

  Go ahead.

• 1:09:28Graham Stephan?

  That's very interesting. I bought the 2010 Tesla Roadster in yellow with Carl. We had Carl on the podcast. I lost money on the Tesla Roadster. I paid $130 for it. And it's worth less because Elon did his thing and the desire for Tesla just went down. But it was through that Tesla that we met. Cause I put up a thing like, hey, any buyers here, just reach out. You reached out. We kept in touch. Now we have you on the podcast. It was through you that you put us in touch with Rick Caruso.

• 1:10:00Jack Selby?

  Yes.

• 1:10:00Graham Stephan?

  I really want to help Rick get elected with whatever he decides to run for. I want to fully back and help his campaign. Like it's just, that one purchase, even though on paper it might have lost me money, probably ended up as a net benefit overall when you account for all these little ancillary things that have come from that Tesla.

• 1:10:18Jack Selby?

  Yeah. And you've also, you spoke about it. You've made videos about it. People bring it up. You get to show it off. Like there, I think that when you live like a wealthy person, then wealth and abundance and opportunity kind of starts coming to you.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  There's also risks associated with that.

• 1:10:35Jack Selby?

  For sure, like he lost money, like objectively, if you just isolate it on his Roadster. But also, it's that same behavior that led to him buying the Ford GT, which is another luxury good, which he ended up making money.

• 1:10:44Graham Stephan?

  Jack's looking for an excuse to spend a little more money right now.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  I would say do it, but I would also say do it on something you know a lot about. And here's the truth, okay? You don't have to be stinking rich to take some of those risks, okay? But you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. So let's just say you have a 401k and you've got $150,000. And with that $150,000, you could theoretically cash it out and go get this car that you're planning on potentially breaking even on and making great relationships over. There's also a chance that that won't happen. The problem with it not happening is it is the only chance. It is the only opportunity. And so that's where it starts to get a little bit hazy. Now, I say that and I was buying domain names on student loans.

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  So like, okay, you know, I just felt like I knew something that other people didn't know. So I think it really comes down to what's the asymmetry of information? How much more do you know than everybody else about something? If you feel like you've got incredible insights, you're not following the crowd, you're ahead of the crowd, then yeah, go for it, try it. If you feel like you're behind, don't. Don't, don't follow your way into taking the singular risk that could ruin you.

• 1:11:58Graham Stephan?

  How, but how do you spot something that other people don't see? It just seems like you have an eye and you say, this is going to be valuable. Like, we were talking the other day and you gave me these great ideas of things that I never really thought about. You're like, oh yeah, you know, 10x in 10 years would be a good return. And you could do like with these little things here. Like, I was even looking at sealed PlayStation Ones. Like, the original PlayStation and everything is on eBay. And just like all these weird things from my childhood, like, how do you know it's going to be worth money and what's not?

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  Analogies, okay? They're always good to use. So when I was a kid, there were baseball cards that you can, that are now $50 million, that were $15,000, okay? But I watched that go from $15,000 to $100,000 to $1 million to $10 million to $50 million. And you start seeing these things happen in other categories, emerging categories of collectability. And you go, oh, I can kind of connect the dots here. So what's the most valuable thing that's ever, what's the most valuable magazine that's ever come out? What's the most valuable record album that's ever come out? And there are other indicators I look for, like, are they being graded? Is there someone that's archiving grading and then, and then publishing the population reports of these graded assets?

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  Like, there are ways to get ahead of these categories. And to me, I love being ahead. I love it. It's my favorite thing. But again, remember, I'm on a treasure hunt, on a lifelong treasure hunt, because that's my job.

• 1:13:27Graham Stephan?

  That's so interesting. It just got me thinking of like, like, the first, what do you call it, Discover magazine, or whatever, First Time magazine?

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34Graham Stephan?

  What about the first ever McDonald's menu?

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  Fine.

• 1:13:37Graham Stephan?

  Buying back, you could probably find that pretty cheaply. I've been trying to find the original Playboy, with Marilyn Monroe on the cover.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:43Graham Stephan?

  I found a good one on, on Facebook. I'm just saying.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  How much is it?

• 1:13:47Graham Stephan?

  I think it was like two, three thousand dollars.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  That actually honestly is not that expensive.

• 1:13:51Graham Stephan?

  Not, not graded, but it doesn't seem like they come up in perfect condition. It's very unusual to find a graded above like a five or a six.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  And by the way, he sold so many copies of that first edition. But, you can imagine, these magazines are not in great condition.

• 1:14:08Graham Stephan?

  They're used, Jack. You would know all about that.

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  Ew, dude. So, these mint magazines are pretty spectacularly rare. Now, of course, if you have the collector mentality, today, it makes more sense, but in 1960, who was thinking about that?

• 1:14:26Graham Stephan?

  It just, yeah. It, to me, it seems like it goes on a curve of, it's really popular, and then it dies down. And you've got to get it when it, when it's died down. But how do you tell when it's going to be going back up? Like, the Beanie Baby example, it, you would think that it should be going back up, and that people would now look back at like the Princess Diana Beanie Baby and buy that one. It still seems like there's not any demand for that.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, interesting, interesting. There is a community. There is a community of collectors for Beanie Babies. And if you look on eBay and you list by sold auctions and you go from high to low, you'll find there's Beanie Babies that are still selling today in the tens of thousands of dollars range. The community is just not as big as you might have remembered in the 1990s because the late 90s, where it was just such a huge rush. But actually, Ty does a great business even today. They just don't position it as much as a collectible as a toy. Today, they're more positioned towards toys, but some of those older Beanie Babies, there's still a community that actively buys and sells. And interestingly enough, maybe that is an opportunity to find what is the most valuable, what is the rarest,

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  like Funko Pop or any of these categories. You might find that the most valuable one is 30 grand. And if you find that, it's an interesting opportunity if you draw the analogy to other collectible items that have sold for 50 million dollars.

• 1:15:50Graham Stephan?

  I just think we're talking original Disney props. And I think anything Nightmare Before Christmas, Haunted Mansion, Old Disney, I think is going to do incredibly well. It's hard to find. Movie props. I was looking at, I think it was Heritage Auctions, where they were doing a lot of the old movie props. And it's hard to find something like an original lightsaber. You know, something like this would be incredible.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  Be amazing. And actually, one just sold in the millions of dollars. There was these ruby red slippers, right, from The Wizard of Oz. And something that we were talking about earlier. And I was covering that, like, because on my own Instagram, I'm just a big collector nerd and I love it. But I was covering it and I was like, this is a million five with three days left. It's kind of amazing that a pair of shoes were a million five. I think they sold ultimately for over 25 million dollars. 25 million dollars for ruby red slippers.

• 1:16:43Graham Stephan?

  It was 32 million.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Was it 32?

• 1:16:45Graham Stephan?

  It was 32 million, 500,000 dollars plus. There are probably buyer's fees on top of that.

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  That's what it was. It was 32 with the buyer's fees. So 32 million dollars. That's serious money. But what's the analogy? The analogy is, oh, there's plenty of movie props over time that are, maybe that's the grail, but aren't there other things that are just right under that? Or maybe close to the same level that have sold for hundreds of thousands or thousands of dollars? And people don't necessarily know what they're holding? Or they go to an auction house that's not very well trafficked? There's all kinds of opportunities out there right now when it comes to movie props and number a billion. Do we know who bought that? I don't. Very curious.

• 1:17:28Jack Selby?

  How much money do you think you have to have to spend $30 million on red shoes from The Wizard of Oz?

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  A billion.

• 1:17:35Jack Selby?

  I would say you have to be at least like you gotta be multi billionaire.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you know, there is. There's another thing that's happening right now. There are syndicates of investors that are working together.

• 1:17:45Jack Selby?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  To establish a large pool like like they do when it comes to like, um, you know, these funds that you can invest in.

• 1:17:53Jack Selby?

  Like a fractional ownership.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  Yes, but like fractional ownership, like there are really great fractional companies like Rally out there that buy an asset. But I'm talking about funds that are owned much the way you would invest in a fund where there's like three or 400 people that have put money in to own companies fractionally where the objective is to buy this and to sell it in a very specific window of time. And those exist right now. In fact, one of my my buddies Shine and Mr. Wonderful from um, Shark Tank. Shark Tank has recently created one of those funds and it's a it's a closed fund. There's only like several people in it, but they've already put like $50 million into buying high end trading cards. Didn't what did he just buy? He just spent $12 million on a card.

• 1:18:38Jack Selby?

  It was a basketball card. Was it Zion Williamson or something?

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  That's right. He bought. They bought a Jordan Kobe Upper Deck exquisite card. Signed. Signed by both and and those exquisite cards were very unusual because it was it was a time where the card market wasn't at its very top. It it really kind of bottomed out. And this was a very new concept to card collecting. If you remember, you know, well, you don't remember, but I remember back in the 1980s, there was a huge boom in cards. But everything was oversupplied and there was no rarity. So you couldn't get like a one of 10 or a one of one, but Upper Deck and some of these other companies in the in the mid to late 90s started really utilizing that.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  And in utilizing that, they created a monster. Okay. But and that's the entire basis of card collecting today is this Chase, this Lotto, this collectible system. And yeah, Upper Deck exquisite, they they've really done a lot of investing in that category.

• 1:19:35Jack Selby?

  What is working in collectibles, been a collector yourself, taught you about the way that the human psychology works?

• 1:19:45Speaker 01

  I think that we want to be parts of communities. I think that we want to show off our fandom. I think it's it's only so fun to make money with a home or a stock. How much more fun is it to do it in something that you love, that you can have a part of, that you can hold in your hands, it's tangible, that you can put in a frame, or you can show off to your kids? Like, it's a whole thing. It's such a buzz to have that feeling. And yeah, I think that that's what's driving a lot of it. Both on one hand, community and fandom. On the other hand, just be able to have a tangible piece of something that means so much to you.

• 1:20:19Jack Selby?

  Do you think everyone is a collector of something? Or do you think that like true minimalism also exists?

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  It definitely exists. I think there are people that think all of this is quite silly, but they're fewer and further than they used to be. Like, again, 25 years ago, my first Comic Con, we sold this He-Man statue at Mattel, okay? It was one of the, it was the, may have been the first limited edition Comic Con item. Maybe I'm wrong, but I believe it was. And we opened up at 9:00 AM, and I heard in the background like this fighting and people stomping. And I was like, oh, that's so weird. We were in this small little 20 by 20 booth. There was like six of us from Mattel. And then I heard it getting closer and closer and closer. And everybody's running towards it. I see these people running towards us. I'm like, where are they going? They're running to us because it was a limited edition He-Man statue.

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  He-Man hadn't been out since 1983. And it was this autographed statue by the Four Horsemen. It was really cool. And then I heard this lady go, "My knee." And I was like, oh, my God. My career is over before it starts. And so they saw this lady laying down. These other collectors are literally running her over. I'm like, I'm dead. It's over. I was like, this was a great, this was a great shot. I'm gonna go back and buy more domain names. And I ran over to her, and she's laying down, "Oh, my knee, my knee, ow, ow, ow." And I said, "Hey, um..." I was like, I don't know, I can't help your knee, but I can get you a free statue if you want it. And she goes, oh, free statue. She stood right up. She was immediately healed. It was amazing. I felt like I had the gift of like spirituality.

• 1:21:55Jack Selby?

  Wow.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  And, and she walked over and she grabbed a statue for free. She walked off. I was like, I was like, she's a genius. It's like, that woman is way smarter than me. But yeah, no, but there was a great sign that collectors and this concept of creating value is massively valuable. By the way, not everybody that's collecting is collecting because they love the subject matter. Some people are collecting because it just makes money, you know, and that is, that's to me a legitimate reason to collect.

• 1:22:22Jack Selby?

  What do you think about scalpers in the industry?

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  If you have real demand, you don't need scalpers. But that's the only time they come around. Scalpers don't want to show up unless there's real demand. So unfortunately you get this like compounding effect. Where you've got this real demand and then you've got scalpers on top of it. And so sometimes it's hard to gauge what the real value would be if they didn't exist. But yeah, no, scalpers make an enormous impact. Like I remember a few years ago, Pokemon was selling this Pikachu that they had done with an artist. It was very, very cool. It was a couple thousand dollars. And the amount of scalping bids, it must have outweighed everything else so tremendously because the next time they had a drop like that, there were like three different mechanisms you had to jump through.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  I think that you have to control for it. You don't want scalpers to make up too much of a percentage of the consumer pool. But it's, you know, they help the demand, that's for sure.

• 1:23:21Jack Selby?

  How come some things just naturally do really well, like baseball cards and other things? For example, soccer is a much larger sport globally, but soccer cards aren't very popular. The same thing goes, I feel like for football. Football's very popular here in America. Basketball, basketball's massive here, but I feel like people don't care as much about football. Definitely soccer, definitely. And basketball cards maybe less than baseball when baseball seems like such like a unique and like not very. Popular sport relative to the others.

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  I think that that's a controversial take. I think it's

• 1:23:53Jack Selby?

  Really?

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I think basketball, I think basketball

• 1:23:56Jack Selby?

  Basketball cards, yeah, basketball cards I could see. But football and soccer.

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  Football's, football's a good product. Okay. Soccer recently has been one of those value creation tools that I'm talking about. So a 2004 Mega Kracks Lionel Messi, okay? You could get a PSA 10 for like $30,000 six years ago. Today, that card sells for over a million dollars, maybe a million, two, a million, three.

• 1:24:21Jack Selby?

  So you think it could be on the come up soccer?

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  100% on the come up. And, and what's happened right now, a few cards have kind of run away from the pack and Pele's always tend to do really well. But no, now soccer cards are on fire.

• 1:24:36Jack Selby?

  Interesting.

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:37Graham Stephan?

  That's what Jason Oppenheimer said.

• 1:24:39Speaker 01

  I could actually look into that.

• 1:24:40Graham Stephan?

  He bought the Messi card and then he said he lost money. Because had he just held on to it, he would have made even more.

• 1:24:47Speaker 01

  No doubt. Oh, absolutely. That card has gone up six, seven times in the last couple of years. And even WNBA, okay? So I will tell you this, the last thing in the last three months that I dropped some money on was Asia Wilson 2018 Rittenhouse Rookie Cards PSA 10. She is the GOAT. She is the GOAT. Okay? Four MVPs, three Defensive Players of the Year, three championships. All of that is going in her favor. That card's gonna go way up in value.

• 1:25:16Jack Selby?

  Caitlin Clark, that'd be a good one.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  It's interesting though, because Caitlin Clark is a mover of eyeballs. People want to see her. She's also incredible. She doesn't have an MVP. She doesn't have a Defensive Player of the Year. She doesn't have a championship.

• 1:25:31Jack Selby?

  She will. She will. She will. That's why I think that it could be cheap right now, the card.

• 1:25:37Graham Stephan?

  Now.

• 1:25:37Speaker 01

  Yes, I hear you.

• 1:25:38Graham Stephan?

  What, what happens if, if someone like Messi?

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:41Graham Stephan?

  Has a public scandal? Does, does a no-no? What happens to the value of the cards?

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  It, it depends. Okay. So OJ Simpson had a

• 1:25:50Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  Public scandal and his rookie card in top condition is very valuable. Okay. And, and frankly speaking, he's kind of gauged for what he did on the field when it comes to collectibles. With that said, it's not nearly the value that it could have been. I really do think that OJ would have been celebrated differently. More people would have celebrated him if he had not had a double. Allegedly. Uh, thank you. So Messi, here's the thing. When you're at the end of your career and you do something naughty, your statistical career is already spoken for. You've already won your championships. There's a time, a period of time where it depends on how long that naughtiness sticks with you.

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  If you've said something mean and people's feelings are hurt, it sticks with you less time than if you somebody.

• 1:26:40Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  So, but it also depends on when it happens. Like people that get in big trouble their third year. Oh my God, it's such a huge risk.

• 1:26:46Jack Selby?

  See, another thing is when I was a kid, the only real thing I collected was baseball cards. I had tons of them.

• 1:26:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:26:52Jack Selby?

  The one person I decided the first card I ever got was an Alex Rodriguez card. And then I was like, I'm gonna only collect Alex Rodriguez cards. And so now I have like, sure, I have like thousands of baseball cards now, but the one card that I have like over 50 of is just a bunch of A-Rod. And then he did steroids or it came out that he had done steroids.

• 1:27:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:27:12Jack Selby?

  And then I think that it really negatively affected the Alex Rodriguez card value.

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  It did.

• 1:27:16Jack Selby?

  Because A-Rod now you can get his rookie card and it's not that expensive for how elite of a player he was throughout his entire career.

• 1:27:23Speaker 01

  That's an opportunity.

• 1:27:24Jack Selby?

  It is an opportunity, but I, that's true, but I also feel like it would have probably happened by now. He's been retired for quite a long time.

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  Well, I'll tell you this. I just bought one of Barry Bonds, like key cards. It was like a Topps traded card if I'm remembering our Tiffany card or something like that. PSA 10, not too many of them. That card's rocketing in value right now.

• 1:27:46Jack Selby?

  But he's also like cemented in history because he has, he's the home run leader.

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:49Jack Selby?

  And A-Rod doesn't, like he of his time was elite. Like as a, as a fielder, as a hitter, just as like, performance wise, incredible. But I feel like he doesn't have one thing that makes him stand out like Barry does with the home runs.

• 1:28:02Speaker 01

  I think that that is so well said, and I think that that's going to be a challenge for him to establish the kind of valuations that he would have had otherwise.

• 1:28:09Jack Selby?

  But he does have a diehard fan base. People are like, you know, rabid for A-Rod.

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  Like, for instance, like Jeter and Griffey, who never got caught up in anything. Their their valuations are soaring. So to what you're saying.

• 1:28:23Jack Selby?

  Jeter's rookie card's worth way more than A-Rod's. Way more. Yeah.

• 1:28:26Graham Stephan?

  What do you think of serial killer memorabilia? Because I've seen some John Wayne Gacy art.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:28:33Graham Stephan?

  And they're selling for pretty decent prices. And I remember when the Jeffrey Dahmer show came on Netflix. People were buying Jeffrey Dahmer memorabilia. And those seem to be quite collectible. What are your thoughts on some dark history collectibles?

• 1:28:52Speaker 01

  There's value. Absolutely. It's not my genre. Okay, I will just say that. But it does have all the elements that make someone interested. Okay, horror genre is big. Okay, and frankly, speaking like we're the global partner for Five Nights at Freddy's at Jazzwares. And and that product line is blowing up. Okay. And it's horror genre. What you're talking about is real. Okay, that's very different. But it hits the same chords in your brain. You're scared. You're like, I can't believe that happened. The person is known. Interestingly, whenever you find someone that's known, there's always a community of people that not necessarily celebrate, but are aware of what they did and think about it. And yes, there's value.

• 1:29:37Graham Stephan?

  I remember even seeing that someone was sneaking up to a house that Jeffrey Dahmer either lived at or, you know, M-worded someone at. And they were stealing dirt. And they were stealing dirt to pack and sell it. It was like, this was the dirt at his house.

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:57Graham Stephan?

  Or this was his fork. This was his spoon. This was his lamp. And people were going and like stealing these items or trying to keep them to be able to resell them. And they're selling. But it but it's quite interesting to have, feel like you have a piece of history

• 1:30:16Graham Stephan?

  behind that story.

• 1:30:18Speaker 01

  I think that that's exactly it. I think that that in time, look, as a as someone who doesn't have the urge to harm another person.

• 1:30:27Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:28Speaker 01

  You still want to watch Breaking Bad. You still want to watch these things occur. It doesn't mean that you have it in you. And I think the further you get away from a bad act and it becomes more tolerable because it feels like content versus reality. And so I do think that these things require time for people to kind of reprocess before they have value. So if someone goes and does something terrible, I don't think there's any value to it. I think it becomes later. And, and, and even for me, it's so dark. Like I stay away from it, but it doesn't mean that it's not a collectible category. Because I, I, I know how humans, like, we're talking about Breaking Bad, right?

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  Breaking Bad is, is not the celebration of heroic acts. But the, the items on Breaking Bad, some of those items could sell for a ton of money because it is maybe potentially the greatest show in the history of television.

• 1:31:26Jack Selby?

  So I was thinking of, I had heard of Kurt Cobain's house.

• 1:31:30Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:31:31Jack Selby?

  The Seattle house.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:31:33Jack Selby?

  Was sold in 1997 by his widow Courtney Love for $3 million.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:31:39Jack Selby?

  To a Seattle businessman. I think that his property or famous people's properties as well could go up in value. And we were actually talking to RJ Mini from Breaking Bad about the Breaking Bad house that's in Arizona or New Mexico.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:31:53Jack Selby?

  It's in New Mexico. And imagine if you buy that house and then list it on Airbnb. And then huge fans of Breaking Bad could pay a premium price to stay in the Breaking Bad house. Same thing goes for other celebrity houses like Kurt Cobain.

• 1:32:07Speaker 01

  His guitar recently went for sale.

• 1:32:09Jack Selby?

  Famous, famous houses, you have a few artifacts in there or something, if they're like very secured. And then you list it on Airbnb, you could probably make a pretty good return.

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  Oh, I have no doubt.

• 1:32:18Jack Selby?

  Especially.

• 1:32:18Speaker 01

  If you market it well. Well, especially today because content drives so much and there are so many people that make money on content. I mean, think about just the, the folks alone. Someone who is a, a rock and roll genre influencer goes and stays at one of these places and then covers it. And then they have an entire community that's interested and wants to have a similar experience. And. You know, humans were pack animals in some ways. And so therefore, yeah, it's a huge business opportunity. Absolutely. I fully endorse it as an opportunity.

• 1:32:51Graham Stephan?

  I think the same thing goes for heroic CEOs like Elon Musk's early work. Or something that he printed out and signed, like an application to something. The Steve Jobs, they keep, they keep auctioning off random papers that were signed. One of them, I think, went to auction and I think it sold for millions of dollars. And it was someone mailed in asking for his autograph. And then he sent a paperback, "Sorry, I don't give autographs." Signed, and then he signed his name there.

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  One of my favorite collectibles of all time because it's so dry. The wit is so dry. "Sorry, I don't sign autographs," and then he signs it. Brilliant. And by the way, right away, it's context matters. So if he had just signed a blank piece of paper and sent it, it would probably have been worth one fiftieth of "Sorry, I don't sign autographs." That's genius.

• 1:33:43Graham Stephan?

  Jason Oppenheimer also recently bought "Math Done on a Piece of Paper" by Albert Einstein.

• 1:33:49Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:33:50Graham Stephan?

  He said it was $50,000. And I thought, that's actually a pretty good price. It was a whole math equation. And then what he did is he scanned it and then blew it up as art in his office. But he has the original.

• 1:34:02Speaker 01

  That's wild. And you don't think of that. Like, you don't, like, you think of an artist or you think of lyrics, like for someone who's making an album, but you don't think of a mathematician's equation on a piece of paper. That's rad because in the toy business, we talk about play patterns and those play patterns driving consumer purchase. In this world, it's like, is it in context exactly the thing that they're known for? And being that it's what they're known for, hugely interesting.

• 1:34:34Graham Stephan?

  He's always early, I've noticed, to picking up these things. And then every time he does, give it a few years and it's 10x denvalue. So I think something like that will be worth $500,000 in 10 years from now.

• 1:34:45Speaker 01

  And that's always been my collecting philosophy. Okay, when I'm collecting something that I absolutely love because I'm a big fan, I don't think necessarily in this manner. But if I'm collecting into categories that I think are emerging, and I'm in it to learn all about the category and benefit, my objective is a 10x return in 10 years. I think that that is a, that's a very high level objective to try to accomplish something like that. Doing that in business would be incredible. But in collectibles, when you're taking risks on new categories and you're drawing these analogous thoughts and you're saying, oh, well, you know what? PSA just started grading magazines, for instance. You go, oh, okay, maybe there's something there. Maybe there's an opportunity. What's the grail? So let me go find out.

• 1:35:25Graham Stephan?

  What about NFTs? It seems like they had such a come up with like bored apes and crypto punks, and then they just crashed.

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  I have a theory. But first, let me, let me demonstrate something to you. Okay, let me demonstrate something to you. I'm gonna grab, well, okay, I'll start.

• 1:35:42Graham Stephan?

  I'm excited to see what you brought.

• 1:35:43Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't want to grab something there because that actually has value. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna demonstrate something to you by, do you have, do you have an inanimate object for me?

• 1:35:51Graham Stephan?

  Glasses.

• 1:35:52Speaker 01

  Glasses. Thank you. Okay, here we go. Let's just say these are the most valuable glasses in the world because they were owned by Benjamin Franklin. Okay, these were Benjamin Franklin's glasses. They're not. But because of that, they're incredibly rare, they're scarce and everything else. Okay? And over in this hand, I have something invisible. It's an NFT. It's a digital asset. There's no specific value with the digital asset. It's invisible. Now, the only reason why this has value is because it was owned by Benjamin Franklin. These glasses otherwise would cost in materials several dollars. Okay? The only difference between this invisible thing and these glasses

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  is $2 in terms of the actual cost of goods. Maybe $10 in the cost of making it. So when you think of an invisible asset like a domain name, Okay, the domain name has utility because people go see, see what's there and then you can, but the domain name like a digital asset, if it's got utility, if it has the right utility, and that was the theory of NFTs, that has the right utility, it could have real value. If it unlocks something, an experience, or a club, or a community. The problem with NFTs, the real problem with NFTs, is that the first couple ones that came out, like, you know, punks, or bored apes,

• 1:37:15Graham Stephan?

  Crypto kitties.

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  Crypto kitties, like, the, those came out, and there were not many communities. So they were one of 10,000, or one of 5,000, and people, yeah, I'm gonna, I wanna be a part of this community, and went up in value. The problem was, within six months, there were 10,000 communities, and six months later, there were millions of communities. And it's all about scarcity. And so everything just crashed, because the world of consumers could not keep up with the available product. And so the interesting thing is, and I have a belief, that 25 years from now, bored ape, punks, they'll have value.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  The other zillion of them, they'll be very far and few between on the ones that actually have any value. It just, they were first, they started the craze, there was something about them that really created this insanity that occurred after. So, yeah, I'm not so caught up in the idea of an invisible asset, having no value because you can't see it, when I think Franklin's glasses could be worth millions of dollars, and inherently, they're worth five.

• 1:38:24Graham Stephan?

  What are your thoughts on the art market? It just seems like artwork in general is less desirable now for certain buy, for younger buyers, because they can't relate to it.

• 1:38:35Speaker 01

  I think the art market is, is fascinating, because they're kingmakers in that market, okay? There are people that are so talented, they make you cry, their product is so good. And you can go on TikTok, and you can scroll.

• 1:38:50Graham Stephan?

  Oh my gosh, some of those have gotten close to buying, because they're so incredible. And I follow some artists on Instagram, I love their work.

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's this guy Dylan Ekin, he's a, he's an ultra-realistic creator of pencil art, I bought several of his originals, unfortunately, they burned in the fire as well, that's okay. He is interesting, because he's created a community of millions of people. That are following him because of his talents. And there are many artists like that that are being followed because of their talents. With that said, the kingmaker community of the traditional art community is different. You have gallery owners and you have a system of people that say, let's make this one popular next. And they market the heck out of it and they, and they often accomplish exactly what they're setting out to accomplish. I don't know art as well as I know traditional collectibles, but I don't trust it the same way.

• 1:39:44Speaker 01

  Because I do see that king making stuff, at least in sports. Hey, listen, A-Rod took some stuff allegedly, but he was also one of the greatest of all time. I see that statistically. I love the TikTok art community because these people are establishing very organically a following. That's the art that I would want to invest in. I would want to invest in that art. That's the art of the future. It's a democratization of art and that's, that's why I like it.

• 1:40:11Jack Selby?

  So you mentioned you lost 99.9% of your collectibles in the Palisades fire. I'm curious, what are some of your favorite collectibles that you still retain?

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  Oh, well, I had, I had two safety deposit boxes and in one I had some incredibly valuable cards. And in the other, I had a Harry Potter book, which I'll show you guys. But I also, before I left, the day of the fire, I did take a few things. I took a stack of letters that I wrote as a kid. I took a bunch of LeBron rookie cards that I had sitting on my desk and I just happened to be looking at.

• 1:40:44Jack Selby?

  A bunch of LeBron rookie cards?

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  I do have a bunch of LeBron rookie cards.

• 1:40:48Jack Selby?

  Just a bunch of them.

• 1:40:48Graham Stephan?

  It's sitting on your desk.

• 1:40:49Jack Selby?

  Just a handful of them.

• 1:40:50Speaker 01

  That's correct. Yeah, actually that does sound a little out of touch.

• 1:40:53Jack Selby?

  No, no, no, it's hilarious. Did you leave a bunch of other?

• 1:40:57Speaker 01

  Well, yes.

• 1:41:00Jack Selby?

  Baseball cards?

• 1:41:00Speaker 01

  So I'll tell you what I left. So not only did I leave some amazing things, but I left things that are currently skyrocketing in value. Like I had an uncut base set.

• 1:41:12Speaker 01

  Giant sheet on my wall that recently sold for $250,000. I had five sheets.

• 1:41:19Graham Stephan?

  Oh.

• 1:41:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:41:20Graham Stephan?

  Wow.

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  Uh, I had, um, the entire first edition PSA 10 Pokemon set from 1999. That set I paid less than $120,000 for in 2020. Today, that set just passed a million dollars in value. The only card that I had in my safety deposit box was the Charizard PSA 10, which is the most valuable card in the set, which is the reason why it was in the box. But darn, I wish I'd had the rest of those hollows in that box, too. Um, I, I lost a lot of stuff in that fire. And like I said, I, I tracked a lot of it in terms of insurance value, but unfortunately, a lot of it also went way up and I couldn't catch it. So it's okay.

• 1:42:03Speaker 01

  By the way, honestly, it fits perfectly with my concept of life is not linear. So I have no problem having a lot less stuff now than I did before. Um, and I feel like I did my job. I know what I, I know my responsibilities towards my family. I fulfilled them. I, I just didn't get it a hundred percent right. So I step back, I say, I'll take my B plus. I don't need an A plus in everything in life. Let's go get an A plus next time.

• 1:42:29Graham Stephan?

  And so what do you still have? Some of your favorite items?

• 1:42:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have a 1981 Poppy Hulk Hogan PSA 10 rookie card. There's only two of them in the world that are in perfect condition. I think that is one day a million dollar item. I have Andre the Giant's rookie card PSA 10. I have seven of, uh, LeBron James 2003 first edition PSA 10. So there's only 130. I have a BGS 10. There's only three. Um, let's see, I have the Ishihara card. I have Jack Nicklaus rookie card from 1973. It's a PSA 10 as well. It's in perfect condition. Uh, I have my Harry Potter book, which is a remarkable story in and of itself. Um, and, uh, I have all my letters that I wrote as a kid.

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  So yeah, I lost 99.9% if I were looking at it in terms of units of the stuff that I had.

• 1:43:19Graham Stephan?

  But value.

• 1:43:20Speaker 01

  But value, you know, I lost most of the value, but I still had some serious value in those boxes.

• 1:43:26Graham Stephan?

  What are your thoughts on collecting a PSA 10?

• 1:43:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:29Graham Stephan?

  Or a whole bunch of PSA 9s? Just from what I've seen, that 10 sells for significantly more. You might have a PSA 10 that sells for a hundred thousand dollars, but the 9 is 20.

• 1:43:41Speaker 01

  First of all, I love that question because people rarely think of it that way. But here's the way collecting tends to work, okay? The higher the grade, the more rare it tends to be. It's just unusual, especially with older product. Newer product may work a little bit differently because it's about scarcity. But older product, where it was like organic collectibles. When the 10 runs away, the 9s, it's like a rubber band. The 9s tend to follow, okay? For a moment, you could have a 20x differential. That doesn't usually stick, but the 10 usually runs first. Then the 9 tends to run. And then the 8 tends to follow it like a rubber band. And that's so interesting about collectibles in that way. And that's the aspiration of it all.

• 1:44:25Speaker 01

  Because the person that's buying the 10 is often someone that can afford it. But the person buying the 9, maybe they can't afford the 10 or they're taking measured risks. But that's aspirational to them. They buy the 9. And that's the way collecting works. So yes, if you can find an enormous delta between the 9 and the 10, the 9 is not necessarily a bad position to take. It also depends on the population report. So if there's three 10s and there's 4,000 9s,

• 1:44:57Speaker 01

  and there's a big delta, there's a reason for that delta. If there's three 10s and there's 10 9s? Interesting. And that's like the, that's like the idea behind the 2004 Mega Cracks Lionel Messi rookie card. There's only a few 10s, there's only a few 9s, and then there's some 8s. I bought an 8 recently. Yeah.

• 1:45:17Jack Selby?

  And what about the different grading companies? Because I've heard that there is a pretty large variance between like, is it like BGS?

• 1:45:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:23Jack Selby?

  And PSA? And then other ones? Like, how as a collector should you navigate the different grading companies?

• 1:45:29Speaker 01

  So if you don't know any, if you don't know any better, if you're getting started, stick with the granddaddy of them all. For me, it's PSA, okay? But the more you know, the more playing with all the grading companies makes sense, right? Because the truth of the matter is getting a high graded PSA card is very, very difficult. And so- Here's the way I play it. I collect almost only PSAs. I will buy a BGS if it's a nine and a half or a 10, especially if there's very few and I see there's a value opportunity because I see that the PSA is significantly more valuable than the BGS. Sorry, yeah. And then, then there's other companies like CGC and CGC has been incredible in comic books and they're entering into other

• 1:46:11Speaker 01

  categories now like, like print magazines. And CGC is a, is a fine company. And if you've got bulk cards, you know, it sometimes makes sense to, to, to go through CGC as, as an opportunity as well.

• 1:46:24Jack Selby?

  Would you say money makes you happy?

• 1:46:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:46:27Jack Selby?

  And to what extent? Like, when do you felt, when do you feel like money made you happy first?

• 1:46:32Speaker 01

  Money makes me happy because it's a tool that allows me to explore the things that I'm passionate about. And the more money that I have, the more I can explore those passions. And it's not necessarily experiences, because remember, I'm very driven by, by stuff, collectibles and, and things like that. And, and every one of those categories is another community that opens up other people I get to talk to. So money for me is a tool makes me very happy. The concept of money for money's sake is less interesting.

• 1:47:01Jack Selby?

  Would you say, quality of life for you, if you're reporting money and happiness on their own axis, would you say it's like linear growth? Or would you say, how, how does that chart look?

• 1:47:13Speaker 01

  Well, I, I will say, and I've heard people say that, that money doesn't make you happier. Okay. And I, I think that that's true for some people, but it depends on the utility. If they're just piling money, and that's what they're doing with that money, I don't, I personally wouldn't take a great deal of enjoyment out of that. Like, okay, so what? You're gonna die, let's just like me, we're all gonna die. You know, so the pile of money that you have is, as a marker is only of some import. The utility of that money, that's what's interesting to me. So if you're a philanthropist, wow, it allows you to do incredible things. If you're someone who loves different communities of people and you, you're a Ferrari enthusiast and you want to spend time in Italy and it can give

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  you access to amazing people. Yeah, do it. But I can see that it really depends on how you spend it. I think that the way you spend money is the function on how much you enjoy it.

• 1:48:08Jack Selby?

  But is there an amount of money that, once you continue to acquire money past that amount, it doesn't have that same, it doesn't bring the same amount of happiness? Is there an amount, or have you not hit that yet? Or do you think that doesn't exist?

• 1:48:21Speaker 01

  I think, I think it depends what your interests are. So if you've got $10 million, you shouldn't go buy a private jet. Okay, if your desire is to fly around in a private jet all the time, don't do it with $10 million. It will suck away too much of your money and potentially all of your money and time. If you've got $100 million, don't buy a spec building in New York City, because it could go bankrupt, it could knock you completely out, you know? So yeah, it just depends on what your utility is. And that's just the truth. Like, for me, my interests are much lower level than that. Like, I want to help change the culture of collecting. I want people to connect with one another over collectability.

• 1:49:06Speaker 01

  There's so much division in this world right now. Okay, we divide over everything, divide over race and, and, and culture and religion and gender and all these other things. But you can bring them together when you're talking about fandom and when you're talking about a collectible asset or a car, stuff like that. I realize that doesn't hit with everybody. But I'm telling you, that collector mentality, you forget every other divide. Republican, Democrat, all that, you forget it all. Oh, you love that? I love that. Let's talk about it. That's, that's my goal in this world. That's where I bring the most value. So yeah, I really, look, there is an amount of money that was probably demotivating. Probably, like, what happens if you have all the money in the world? What's the point of collecting anything?

• 1:49:51Speaker 01

  Right? Unless it's just community stuff, the 10x return shouldn't mean anything to you anymore. So I get it, like, I just have not reached that mental level myself.

• 1:50:00Jack Selby?

  So you mentioned you have about 5% of your portfolio in collectibles. You said some people can go up to 10, 15% and that wouldn't be too irresponsible. I'm curious, the other money that you have, where are you investing?

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• 1:51:05Speaker 01

  Um, real estate, stocks, mutual funds. I have a financial advisor. I let them do a lot of the stuff themselves because, you know, how much time does one have in the day?

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  What else? Companies? So I've invested in about 17 companies in the last six years. The challenge with seed round funding is that most of the time you lose. But like, I've got a couple of big winners. Like, one of the ones that I'm an A-round investor, early-round investor is Whatnot. And Whatnot is a, essentially, it's like live selling, and they're the leader in live selling. And when I told people about that six years ago, they were like, eh. But now it's like a household name amongst at least younger people. Like, if I talk to people my age, they're like, I have no idea what we're talking about. But, but yeah, I think, I think Whatnot could be a $100 billion company one day.

• 1:52:01Speaker 01

  And if that's the case, then, you know, that's a pretty good asset to have.

• 1:52:05Jack Selby?

  So I've always wondered, people that are like financially savvy, like I imagine you are, when they have a good amount of money and they have a financial advisor, do you like check in on your quarterly reports? Like, do you ask, hey, what percent return am I getting per year on what you're investing?

• 1:52:20Speaker 01

  It's funny, I, I'm... I'm pretty trusting. I, we've been working together for a long time and we started working together, I think when he was early in his career too. And so when I say having a financial advisor, I mean, he's probably got 25 other clients. But for me, that's totally acceptable. In fact, I really love working with people over time because I can call anytime and say, look, this is concerning to me. And immediately, you know, Michael replies to me and we have an open dialogue. I, I have been the one that's made the big mistakes over time. There's a giant pullback and I'm like, take it out, let's get out, let's get out. And he's like, look,

• 1:53:01Speaker 01

  are you sure you want to do this? I'm like, yes. I lose. Every single time I lose. So I just go like, you're not as good at that, Jeremy. Let's, let this other person who's better at that than you. The other thing that I have now is, is age and experience. And I'm not just, I'm not, I'm not as afraid as I used to be. Okay. The stock market can be scary. Okay. It can pull back, it can pull back 30%, it can pull back 20%. But then you look all the way back 100 years, and you've got a seven and eight percent return, annualized return. And it's much more comforting. And trust me, as long as we live in a society that does embrace capitalism, which there's been

• 1:53:44Speaker 01

  moments where I've been scared about that in, in recently, because there can be very good humanistic capitalism. It's not just all bad sharks running around biting each other. But as long as we embrace capitalism, companies will continue to grow at a very large rapid rate. And, and the stock market and 401k are things not to be afraid of over time. But don't be like me and pull stuff out when you're scared. That's the reason why relying on somebody else, it's just way more important than what exactly the return that they're getting every year.

• 1:54:15Jack Selby?

  Do you think you've gotten a better return from buying collectibles than your financial advisor has gotten you from investing your money?

• 1:54:22Speaker 01

  Yes. Because that category was so much less explored. Okay, so collectibles as an asset have exploded in value in the last 25 years. But, but mostly because the stock market's been around. Like, people kind of know there's a system to it, you know? Warren Buffett was early and he kind of figured out the system. And, and of course, he was like, early, like, collectibles are today, you know? Yeah, so, yes, because it was an emerging market.

• 1:54:52Jack Selby?

  Then do you think that it would make sense for you, if you have like a competitive advantage, to increase your portfolio percentage from 5% up to 15, maybe 20%, if this is something that you're skilled in?

• 1:55:01Speaker 01

  Yes, it would, but I never did. I never did. I guess, I'd say, early on, when I was younger, I probably had more of my percentage in a portfolio. But I feel like as a responsible adult, who's trying to teach other people to make long-term, good decisions, that I kind of have to walk and talk similarly. I don't, I don't like to, I don't like to say things that I don't believe. And I, and I feel like there's a lot of that in this world. So, yeah, no, that's, that's about it. That's all I will do. I do believe I have insight and I do believe, but remember, if I'm talking about emerging categories, you don't have to invest a lot in emerging categories. Those are the ones that are explosive growth.

• 1:55:46Speaker 01

  So, you know, like, one of the thoughts that I constantly have is, when is it the right time to invest in a new category, a new brand? Okay, so, I love brands that are like 15 to 20 years old, where the consumer group were younger. So, like, Harry Potter's a great example of that. So, when the book series was launched 25 years ago, those kids were between seven and 15 years old. Today, those kids are 32 to 40. When do you think they have access to capital to start investing? In the last 10 years? What do you think's happened to the value of the book? Blown up in terms of the rarity? So, how do you extend that?

• 1:56:30Speaker 01

  Twilight, Hunger Games, all the other stuff that came 10 years later. I promise you, in my mind, those are the types of things that chase it. Those, those, that's where the next set of values come from.

• 1:56:42Graham Stephan?

  So give us a prediction of what you think is going to be the most valuable 10 years from now. Could be different categories, could be maybe just five things that you have your eye on.

• 1:56:51Speaker 01

  So one thing that I absolutely have my eye on is the original Apple One computer. Okay, there's only about 50 in existence and they sell right now for 500 to 700,000 dollars. I believe one day those are 100 million dollar asset. And, and what will drive that is the masses of people that will go into buying sealed electronic equipment. Like what you're seeing is you're seeing the early iPhones blow up in value now, the Ford.

• 1:57:22Graham Stephan?

  Those are 50 to 100,000 dollars now.

• 1:57:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely had one of those. I had paid like three grand for it. It went up to like 60, 70 grand. Like, but like, I'll give you one. Here's, here's one. The original Oculus, okay, so glasses. Like right now, we're at the very early stages of putting on things that change your ability to communicate with the world through what you can see. Okay, Oculus was first. You can buy a sealed Oculus first edition for hundreds of dollars right now. I promise you, most of those were opened. Yeah, one day that's going to be incredibly valuable, in my opinion. So that's an example of something that I look at, early electronics. And then once the masses jump in, what does that do to the grails? And the grail of that category is the Apple One.

• 1:58:09Speaker 01

  And that thing should be worth 100 million dollars in my lifetime. So that means that right now it's 600,000 and I'd say 30 year time horizon, 100 million dollars easily.

• 1:58:20Graham Stephan?

  So why don't you buy one?

• 1:58:21Speaker 01

  I've thought a lot about it. I really have. And I might. Yeah, it's, it's, it's an asset that I would like to own. I have cash. It's something that would very, I'm very much.

• 1:58:32Graham Stephan?

  Would you, would you buy it with somebody? Like a 50 50 or would you rather just not partner with anybody?

• 1:58:39Speaker 01

  It depends on the dynamics of what the agreement is. So I personally, I'd like to own it outright. Because then I have complete control and if my horizon is 30 years, then I don't think anybody wants to be in that game with me. Now, no one wants to tie up their capital for 30 years with me. I mean, come on. However, if on another scenario, someone came to me and said, hey, there's 10 of us, we're interested in buying this. It's 10 years, we're going to lock this up. We're going to have an agreement, just like you'd have with any company. There's an operating agreement and there's an agreement, exactly what happens. It's placed in a vault, a third party place. None of us can touch it. There's going to be an intermediary that is engaged with it.

• 1:59:21Speaker 01

  It's interesting. The end of 10 years, is it going to be 100 million? No, but is it going to be five, six million? I think so, in my opinion, yeah.

• 1:59:29Graham Stephan?

  So speaking of the iPhone, what I found interesting is that I was looking on eBay and the original iPhones, 50 to 100 grand. And I was looking and I said, well, the 3G.

• 1:59:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:59:39Graham Stephan?

  The second one is only a few thousand dollars.

• 1:59:42Speaker 01

  So smart.

• 1:59:43Graham Stephan?

  So it's a better deal just to get that, right?

• 1:59:47Speaker 01

  Dude, you're making me emotional because that's exactly the way to think. That's exactly right. Yes, 100%. And by the way, that's what's, that's what happened to Mickey Mantle's rookie card. So that, that PSA 10, 1952 rookie card blows up in value. And now you look all the way down the chain, 1952 to all the way to 1969. If you can find a PSA 10, those things are very valuable.

• 2:00:08Graham Stephan?

  And how do you know they're not resealed? That was my biggest concern because I saw quite a few. And sometimes the seals look a little different. And sometimes the seals were perfect on like the really nice ones that came with the bag and the receipt and all that stuff. But then there was another one without the bag and the receipt where it just looks a little fraild on the edges. You don't know if people just go and open it up, take the phone out, whatever, and then reseal the thing.

• 2:00:34Speaker 01

  You can't know for certain, however, there's a registration. You can see if the phone has ever been registered. So Apple, all the way back to their very initial phone, they still keep a database, a registration database. So you type in that, that code before you buy it. And if it shows that nobody ever registered the phone, then you have a real possibility that that is a never opened package. At least it puts you in a better position. The condition of the box, you know, the knowing something about the way the wrap is supposed to fit. There's, the good news is we're in the internet era. Uh, and, and today, especially with the AI, you can immediately access all the data that you need to see what the wrap is supposed to look like.

• 2:01:18Speaker 01

  So that to me is the combination. Serial number, does it work? What does the packaging look like?

• 2:01:25Jack Selby?

  All right, I think I'm gonna buy it.

• 2:01:28Jack Selby?

  Do it. I think that's a good, uh, good purchase. That'd be a cool thing to display. Yeah, I think so too. I noticed you brought some collectibles here. Yes. What did you bring?

• 2:01:38Speaker 01

  I brought a bag of goodies.

• 2:01:39Jack Selby?

  Okay, let's, let's see what you got.

• 2:01:41Speaker 01

  So we're gonna start with,

• 2:01:46Speaker 01

  we're gonna start with a Grail item. Okay, now this is a case, all right? And this case is holding the most valuable, modern work of publishing. And I know that because when I purchased it for $200,000 in 2020, this book was the most ever paid for modern work. Okay, and I'm gonna open it up

• 2:02:12Speaker 01

  on this side, I think.

• 2:02:17Speaker 01

  On this side, I think.

• 2:02:22Speaker 01

  And what it is, is that this is a pristine Harry Potter first print, first edition book.

• 2:02:29Speaker 01

  This book today is at least a half a million dollars, in my opinion. Maybe a lot more. One sold, there's only, keep in mind, there were 500 first edition, first print Harry Potter books because the author was unknown and she was also not wealthy. She had to publish this on, you know, nickels and dimes that she put together. So there were only 500, 300 of these were sent to libraries and they were used and read and smashed and printed and stamped. And another 200 ended up in private hands, but most of those were read.

• 2:03:09Speaker 01

  This is a very unusual case of a book that is in pristine condition. And this book, I believe, one day is going to have exponential value. Interestingly, Warner Brothers is about to release a 10-year storyline, reintroducing Harry Potter to this generation. I think that this is a masterpiece and I think that one day, I believe, I believe one day I'll sell this for 10-plus million dollars.

• 2:03:38Graham Stephan?

  Would this be more valuable if J.K. Rowling signs it? Or would that make it less valuable that now it's like defamed almost? It's like she's drawn on it.

• 2:03:48Speaker 01

  Well, here's the thing. It's possible that it would be more valuable, but at some point in time, when you hit a certain level of rarity and condition, when there's like nothing out there that matches it, you kind of hit the maximum potential value. And so even handling it might actually reduce the condition of the book. But you know what? If she wants to sign this book, I would say yes. Even though I think the book right now would sell for, you know, potentially north of 500,000 and maybe even closer to the million dollar level. There just hasn't been anything of this condition sell since that 2021 book sold for 475.

• 2:04:31Speaker 01

  So yes, this is an incredible piece. And in my mind, another thing that makes this piece so amazing is the fact that it survived time when nobody would have ever seen this being a collectible of any kind. And, uh, and then it came the most published book, uh, outside of the Bible.

• 2:04:50Graham Stephan?

  How did you get this?

• 2:04:51Speaker 01

  Uh, so I watched, so I watched it. Remember aspiration. So I haven't always had money, and I think I've demonstrated that today very well. Uh, but I watch auctions and I get become a PhD in things. And one of the things I became a PhD in was my interest in Harry Potter specifically. And I watched this book come for sale like eight years ago, nine years ago on Heritage Auctions. It had an opening, uh, expected price of $20,000. It ended up selling for $85,000. And I thought, man, that would be amazing to own. I know it's gonna go up. And a couple of years later, I bought it for 200,000 from, from the owner that had picked it up.

• 2:05:29Graham Stephan?

  Wow.

• 2:05:30Speaker 01

  Yep. That is the Potter book. Now, one last note about this Potter book. The reason why this has value is because the community is enormous. The book made an enormous indelible mark on hundreds of millions of people, sold untold number of books. Um, and it's just so rare and scarce, and the condition is so high. With that said, I will also tell you that there are plenty of other examples of books that are 10 to 15 years old that have also made indelible marks on children, that when they're 30 to five to 40 years old, they'll see it as something that is has grail worthy value.

• 2:06:09Graham Stephan?

  Percy Jackson.

• 2:06:10Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 2:06:10Graham Stephan?

  I was thinking an, an original Dr. Seuss, Lord of the Rings. I know those books are pretty valuable.

• 2:06:17Speaker 01

  Well, and by the way, that's the other thing, too. When you do have a runner like this, it can lead to other books, even more historical books, increasing in value as well. So the one thing that this doesn't have is a grade. And I do believe that that's a business opportunity. There's nobody that's grading books. I think this is a 10. I think there's only one 10 in the world. And, uh, some, when someone starts grading books, give me a call, because I'll bring this in.

• 2:06:43Graham Stephan?

  Why don't they grade books? Is that because there's too many pages? They'd have to open up every page to find like, oh, on page 94, there's like a pencil mark?

• 2:06:51Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it's interesting because they don't necessarily do that with comic books, right? They, it's more about the cover and the color of the pages. But like, Yes, the bigger issue is that there's no standard size. So comic books tend to have a standard size, trading cards have a standard size, so books come in all all sizes. And so it does make it a little bit less efficient from a business standpoint. See, this is the beauty of being a business person and being a collector. Because I understand why this doesn't exist, but I see the business opportunity.

• 2:07:20Graham Stephan?

  You know what I think is gonna happen with collectible cards is that we're gonna start to use AI? And within a PSA 10, you're gonna have a rank of who has the best PSA 10. And of the PSA 10s, you're gonna say, this guy has the number one PSA 10 of all the PSA 10s. And that card is truly one of one.

• 2:07:42Speaker 01

  That is so smart. I've actually had a similar, I had a similar conversation with Logan about that concept. Because there are AI grading companies. And when I said Logan, I said, no, Logan, don't bust a card out of a PSA 10. But there could be a ranking based on third-party AI. The only challenge with that is that sometimes the cases get dinged. And so just because a case isn't perfect shouldn't cause the card inside to have less value.

• 2:08:11Graham Stephan?

  They'd have to crack the case, but recase it and video the entire thing to show you proof that it was taken out and recased as the exact same card.

• 2:08:21Speaker 01

  Then it would need to be the grading company that originally graded it that had the AI technology.

• 2:08:26Graham Stephan?

  Yes.

• 2:08:26Speaker 01

  And that is very interesting. I think that that could be a differentiator of one of the large grading companies. Very, very interesting. Love the business idea. Great.

• 2:08:36Graham Stephan?

  What else did you bring?

• 2:08:39Speaker 01

  The next thing I brought is, so

• 2:08:45Speaker 01

  I told you that when I was a kid, I wrote a thousand, well, I didn't say it this way. So I told you when I was a kid, I wrote a bunch of letters. And in fact, I wrote a thousand letters. And I wrote a thousand letters to the most important people of the 20th century. And I had lived in the middle of nowhere. I mean, I, I lived in eight different states growing up and you know, we'd go from state to state, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, uh, I could keep going, North Carolina. And I just felt disconnected and I, and I wanted to be successful and I wanted to have this very interesting, colorful life. And I just knew that there were people that had had very colorful lives and, and what did they do?

• 2:09:25Speaker 01

  So I, I sent a thousand letters out and I asked, uh, these people, I said, what, what's your, what's your greatest accomplishment? And I received over a hundred and fifty responses. Luckily, all the binders, I grabbed those before the fire. And so like, if I open this up, what you'll see is often the date is 1992, cause that's when I was a senior or a junior in high school. And I would write, so Lee Iacocca, that's Billy Joel, actually that was the year he was getting divorced. Wow. From Christie Brinkley, Desi Arnaz, which is the son of, uh, Lucy and Desi Arnaz.

• 2:10:06Speaker 01

  This is Mother Teresa. So Mother Teresa wrote me from Calcutta, India, a kid writing from Memphis, Tennessee. How did you even find her, like messaging address? Well, I found it because in the library at the time, you could actually look up addresses of known people. And so I spent some time putting together these addresses and I put together a thousand addresses. You know, keep in mind, there may be a little OCD stuff going on here. I, I fully admit it and embrace it. But I just want you to know that having a little OCD can actually be a very good thing in life. Um, so yeah, I reached out to her. And Billy Joel just like wrote back? Yeah, he did. I think she was using ChatGPT. Yeah, I see the hyphen there, I see.

• 2:10:51Speaker 01

  Do you see the hyphen? Yeah, you gotta stay away from hyphens. What, who other people? Uh, let's see. So Steve Allen was the first host of The Tonight Show?

• 2:11:01Speaker 01

  These are like really thoughtful messages. Colin Powell, look at that. Yeah. In fact, I'll read one to you guys. Colin Powell, let's see, that's Clarence Thomas, it was his first year. Uh, this is Jim Baker. Jim Baker was an evangelist who was super famous and he was in jail for doing some pretty naughty stuff. And he wrote me this long letter from jail. Wow. This is an interesting one. This guy's name's Max Schmeling. Max Schmeling was a Nazi, okay? Max Schmeling was also the heavyweight champion of the world that beat Joe Louis in the 1930s for the heavyweight championship when Adolf Hitler was trying to prove that they were by far the number one race. Then there was a second fight.

• 2:11:44Speaker 01

  Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling in one round, just knocked him off his feet. And Hitler sent this man off to Siberia essentially for the rest of his life. So I wrote to him because not because he was a Nazi, I have no interest in that, but because he was left after achieving this miraculous thing and he was never really part of the party. So as a kid, I found that fascinating. And Max Schmeling actually wrote me back. So all in German, "This is Jerry Lewis. This..." I can't see from up here, "Jimmy Stewart." So Jimmy Stewart was in the 1940s, one of the most famous people in the world.

• 2:12:29Speaker 01

  He was in many, many movies and he was also a World War II hero. Elizabeth Taylor and her letter was all about her work with AIDS. This is Mr. Rogers. Wow. So Mr. Rogers sent me a handwritten note and in his handwritten note to a kid, he explained what his greatest accomplishments were. So it keeps going. Casey Kasem, who was a very famous talk radio host at the time. This is Roy Disney. This, so Walt Disney gets all the credit for Disney, but also there was Roy. And Roy Disney talked about how much it was important that he was involved with American

• 2:13:14Speaker 01

  history and art and bringing animation as a form of art. Pretty remarkable that again, he took the time to write me back.

• 2:13:25Speaker 01

  I liked business. Vidal Sassoon.

• 2:13:30Speaker 01

  Art Buckwald, who at the time was one of the greatest humorists of the era. And he was, uh, he was a remarkable writer.

• 2:13:42Speaker 01

  Um, I can't see what that one is upside down. Uh, oh, Edward James Olmos. Edward James Olmos was a incredible actor.

• 2:13:56Speaker 01

  Uh, let's see, this is, uh, Mike Wallace, who was one of the original 60 Minutes cast members and an incredible news person. Dan Quayle, the Vice President of the United States to, um, Bush.

• 2:14:11Speaker 01

  Um, this was Jerry West, who is the logo on, in the NBA. And it kept going and going. Bob Mathias was one of our very first Olympic decathlete, gold medalists. And so on and so forth, binder after binder. And so I'll read one to you.

• 2:14:34Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:35Speaker 01

  That, that, you know, particularly touched me. And then I'll turn it around and show you who it is.

• 2:14:44Speaker 01

  I don't have to put my glasses on because I am 52 years old. It's kind of a shocking thing to say. Okay.

• 2:14:52Speaker 01

  Aspire and hard work to achieve your aspirations. Appreciate that in your open, in our open society, no doors are closed to people willing to spend the hours of effort needed to make dreams come true and leave tracks, just as others have been wave, waypavers for your good fortune. So you should aid those who will follow in your way. Think of your children and grandchildren to come and do your part to make society as good as you would want it to be for them.

• 2:15:23Speaker 01

  Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

• 2:15:24Graham Stephan?

  Wow.

• 2:15:25Speaker 01

  And this was her first year on the bench. And she took time to write something that eloquent to a young person who was trying to figure his life out. Pretty powerful. So you can see how attached I am to this stuff. And I'm so glad I grabbed this because I had, you know, minutes to grab stuff. And it's a fascinating thing, you know, you probably have been, people have probably said to you like, well, if you had 15 minutes to grab stuff, what would you grab? I didn't know that I had 15 minutes. That's a whole nother story, but I knew everybody else was leaving. The city of Los Angeles has a lot to answer to. Uh, let's just say that.

• 2:16:03Graham Stephan?

  What's, what's the status right now on the fire? Rebuilding the Palisades?

• 2:16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well.

• 2:16:09Graham Stephan?

  I started an ADU project earlier in the year and I'm still, uh, with the city. It's awful.

• 2:16:15Speaker 01

  It's awful.

• 2:16:16Graham Stephan?

  It's horrible.

• 2:16:17Speaker 01

  I know. I think what people need to understand about local leadership is that your party identification is irrelevant. The most important thing about local leadership is are you able to operate? And are you honest? Are you an honest broker who can operate and know how to lead people? That is the critical element of local leadership. Whether you believe certain lofty things about what happens in different parts of the world is all games person ship. It's all BS. It doesn't mean anything when you're talking about hiring police and fire people and public libraries and places to study and affordable housing and all of those other things. It means nothing.

• 2:17:01Speaker 01

  It is, it's, it's so disturbing to me that everyone is so focused on national politics when local communities are falling apart. And so Los Angeles is a great example of that. Los Angeles is a disaster when it comes to operational leadership. And you saw that because they let cities burn down during a fire that was relatively routine and could have been put out six days before because it was left smoldering.

• 2:17:32Speaker 01

  This only happens because the state of California and the city of Los Angeles at 30-year lows for their fire and police department, number of human beings that are actually staffed and hired. This is a state that believes in climate change. Okay? I'm not offering a position on my belief, but guess what? Whether I believed in it or not, I sure the heck would have a much larger percentage of my team focused on it. Okay? The lowest percentage, the lowest numbers in 30 years, and you say you believe in climate change? It's not what you say, it's what you do. And that's true in leadership, that's true in managing businesses, it's true in communicating to people about buying collectibles.

• 2:18:17Speaker 01

  It's what you do. It's the reason why when I say 5% of my portfolio, I lock it down. Because I don't want to be a false communicator, I want it to be real. And God, I feel like we're surrounded by people who are just, they just really want to show you how good they are, but then they act exactly the opposite.

• 2:18:35Graham Stephan?

  Why are you choosing to stay and rebuild other than leave?

• 2:18:40Speaker 01

  Um, I moved so much as a child, and I've never felt so connected to a community like I've felt in the Palisades. I also feel a great deal of responsibility towards Altadena, because that was an affordable area of living, where people who were teachers and people who were preschool teachers and people who had good jobs, but they lived in proximity to Los Angeles, they could afford a place to live. Like, it's a shame, and it's amazing that one of the most affluent, and then one of the most, like, really great examples of a working community that's really turned an area into a beautiful area, they both burned down. So it just goes to show you, the ineptitude runs deep.

• 2:19:22Speaker 01

  There is no favoritism when you're operating something poorly. The last thing that drives me nuts is you've got Gavin Newsom that keeps touting the fact that California is the fourth-largest economic force in the world.

• 2:19:36Speaker 01

  But we also have the largest deficit of any state in the history of the United States, after he originally inherited the largest surplus of any state in the history of the United States. We've got to stop measuring things on their size. We have to start measuring things on whether they are actually operating well. Okay? And again, remember, I'm keeping it local because I, why, why would I give commentary on what's happening at the national level or the global level when I believe we need people to operate locally, who really want to be there and make it better? So that's my mindset there.

• 2:20:10Jack Selby?

  If you could own one item.

• 2:20:13Speaker 01

  That's a hard transition, yes.

• 2:20:15Jack Selby?

  If you could own one item throughout the course of history, no price involved, what would it be?

• 2:20:20Speaker 01

  That's, that's, that's really good. If I could own one item in the course of history.

• 2:20:24Jack Selby?

  Mm hmm. No selling it, just having it.

• 2:20:27Speaker 01

  I think because I have been so conditioned to love cards and trading cards, I would want to have the PSA 8 Honus Wagner T206 card. Um, I, I know it's, it's already $50 million. So I'd know by owning it, I've just had an incredible boon to my own personal net worth. I also have a ticket to go anywhere I want and have a conversation with anybody I want because I can just put that card there and be like, let's talk. Uh, and it's, it's part of baseball history. It's part of lore. Um, do you know who originally, not originally, but like, do you really push the valuation of that card up?

• 2:21:07Jack Selby?

  No.

• 2:21:08Speaker 01

  Wayne Gretzky.

• 2:21:09Jack Selby?

  Oh, I actually did hear about that.

• 2:21:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:14Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:15Speaker 01

  Wayne Gretzky bought that card for a couple hundred thousand dollars. It's always interesting, but I'll tell you another analogous time to that. But yeah, Wayne Gretzky bought that card for a couple hundred thousand, sold it for 800,000 and brought so much attention to the entire thing. Actually, interestingly enough, in comic books, uh, I would love to own an Action Comics one in the highest grade. Nick Cage bought one for $150,000 in 1997. It was stolen from his home. He got a insurance payout from his insurer, Chubb.

• 2:21:49Speaker 01

  In 2011, it was recovered. Chubb now owned it, sold it for over $2 million. Cage already got his payout, so he didn't get a dime of it. And he was actually okay with that. I mean, it is what it is. He got his payout. He didn't stick to it. Today, it's 10-plus million. In my lifetime, it's 100 million. So the only reason why I would choose the Wagner is that it's incrementally more valuable. But the Action Comics one is awesome, awesome, in the highest condition.

• 2:22:21Graham Stephan?

  What would you have?

• 2:22:23Jack Selby?

  I mean, like, if we're talking collectibles, it would be the same card. Yeah, the T206.

• 2:22:28Speaker 01

  It's awesome.

• 2:22:29Jack Selby?

  Yeah, because just growing up as a kid, like, that was, that was actually, so my house burned down as well in the Ventura fires.

• 2:22:34Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 2:22:35Jack Selby?

  It's all, yeah, I mean, that was back in 2017, the Thomas fire. And the only thing that I saved were my baseball cards. So they were very important to me at the time. So I still have them, which is sick.

• 2:22:45Graham Stephan?

  Those are the A-Rod cards?

• 2:22:46Jack Selby?

  A-Rod cards. I mean, I have more than just Alex Rodriguez. Like, I have thousands and thousands of baseball cards. He was just the one where, like, I would go to a card shop and I'd be like, all right, show me all of your A-Rods. And I'm like, oh, I don't have this one. Yeah, I'll get this one.

• 2:22:57Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 2:22:57Jack Selby?

  But I still have my baseball cards, so I would probably say, like, the Honus Wagner, yeah.

• 2:23:01Speaker 01

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 2:23:02Jack Selby?

  That'd be cool.

• 2:23:03Speaker 01

  That's awesome. What about you?

• 2:23:03Graham Stephan?

  I'd probably do an old car, probably a Ferrari 250, GTO, McLaren F1. I'd pick one of those.

• 2:23:11Speaker 01

  The, uh...

• 2:23:12Graham Stephan?

  Or a Ferrari F40.

• 2:23:13Speaker 01

  What was an SLS Mercedes set the record for the highest price ever paid for a vehicle? Sold for $150 million about three years ago. And, uh, yeah, like, think about it. Again, in your lifetime, you go back 30 years, and the highest price paid ever for a car was maybe 1/20 of that. I don't know exactly, but I'm guessing it was barely $1 million. So it is incredible what happens with these collectible values and a store of value. They're an amazing store of value. Um, so...

• 2:23:44Graham Stephan?

  I want to show you something that I think is really unique, because you got me thinking of collectibles. Something I've been unknowingly collecting for the last few years. Every time one gets sent, I keep it. Every single, I'm gonna bring it.

• 2:23:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:23:57Graham Stephan?

  You've seen it. You've seen it.

• 2:23:58Jack Selby?

  I think I know what you're talking about. Interesting. It got, you know, back to normal.

• 2:24:04Speaker 01

  I see, I see.

• 2:24:07Speaker 01

  Well, I'm glad, I'm glad, I'm glad that it feels that way. Yeah. Cause I'm looking forward to that. How much longer do you think, I mean, it's About two and a half years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At least.

• 2:24:16Graham Stephan?

  So I think, I think Jimmy is gonna be the next Walt Disney.

• 2:24:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:24:21Graham Stephan?

  And this he sent to, I believe it was 50 or 75 influencers for the launch of Feastables.

• 2:24:28Speaker 01

  Brilliant.

• 2:24:29Graham Stephan?

  And

• 2:24:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:24:30Graham Stephan?

  This was the original one that he sent that started all the Feastables. Actually, I haven't opened it since then, but I took the chocolates out.

• 2:24:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:24:39Graham Stephan?

  Uh, so there's still no chocolates, but there's some stuff underneath here. But besides the chocolate, uh, everything is still in here.

• 2:24:47Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:24:48Graham Stephan?

  And I just thought initially, these are such high quality that there's no way I could throw it away. So I kept it.

• 2:24:55Speaker 01

  That is so smart.

• 2:24:56Graham Stephan?

  And so.

• 2:24:57Speaker 01

  If 50 went out, I guarantee you 40 of them are, are now in a dumpster. Probably 45, 46.

• 2:25:05Graham Stephan?

  Maybe, but every time he sends me a Feastables box, I keep them. Here is another one.

• 2:25:11Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. And that just, that means that the scarcity is very high.

• 2:25:15Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:15Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 2:25:16Graham Stephan?

  Look at this, it's just, oh, oh, this one still has the, this one still has the chocolate inside. With, you know, a little letter.

• 2:25:26Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 2:25:26Graham Stephan?

  This is interesting.

• 2:25:29Graham Stephan?

  Uh, yeah, there was also one, one I don't have unfortunately. It was his, which would be the most valuable. It's when he launched Dee's Nuts.

• 2:25:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:25:38Graham Stephan?

  And he had to take that back because he didn't own the trademark or something. That one, I remember not being in such a crazy package and me not keeping that. But I think in hindsight, uh, because this one is the peanut butter version. So this is probably after Dee's Nuts.

• 2:25:55Speaker 01

  Is that expired?

• 2:25:55Graham Stephan?

  This one.

• 2:25:57Speaker 01

  June 30th, 2025. I would still eat it, though.

• 2:26:03Graham Stephan?

  I don't.

• 2:26:05Speaker 01

  You know, you know, originally, the packaged goods, foods.

• 2:26:08Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:09Speaker 01

  Don't worry about the the spoil by date. It's actually a category of collectibles. So like you can find people that will have older. By the way, some people have enormous repositories. And you know what happens to some of that stuff? It's used in movies and film. Because it it's like this fascinating take on the time. That's awesome. I I completely agree with you. That that maybe nobody defines this era more than Mr. Beast. So to have something that he sent 50 of that may only have 10 or 20 in the world still remaining.

• 2:26:47Graham Stephan?

  It's.

• 2:26:48Speaker 01

  Spectacular.

• 2:26:48Graham Stephan?

  It's really heavy to the point where I feel like I missed stuff that was in the. I feel it. Just just pick it up, Jack. It's like, oh, my God.

• 2:26:56Speaker 01

  There's something in there.

• 2:26:57Graham Stephan?

  Yes.

• 2:26:59Speaker 01

  There's something in there. Why don't you look? That would be.

• 2:27:03Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, I actually I don't know what's in here. I must have just grabbed the chocolates from the top. Let's see what's in here. Oh, oh, it's a smores kit.

• 2:27:19Speaker 01

  That is really well done. That's what you put the marshmallows on.

• 2:27:22Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, this this was completely unopened. I didn't even know it's in here.

• 2:27:27Speaker 01

  It may be like graham crackers, probably.

• 2:27:28Graham Stephan?

  Oh, yeah, probably that and marshmallows.

• 2:27:30Speaker 01

  Brilliant.

• 2:27:31Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:33Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, great. Wow, it's it's feastables. Graham crackers.

• 2:27:41Graham Stephan?

  Look at that, and this one's not even broken. Oh, my God.

• 2:27:44Speaker 01

  See, those don't exist.

• 2:27:47Graham Stephan?

  Wow, smores fuel feastable. He labeled everything.

• 2:27:50Speaker 01

  Brilliant.

• 2:27:51Graham Stephan?

  I'm gonna be very gentle. Oh, yeah. And then there's marshmallows down there. Oh, gosh, I'm just gonna put this down here so it doesn't crack.

• 2:27:58Speaker 01

  That's incredible.

• 2:27:59Graham Stephan?

  Oh, man, yeah, that's why it's so heavy. Okay.

• 2:28:03Speaker 01

  It's the it's the canister that you put the fuel in to to create your. Yeah, that's amazing.

• 2:28:09Graham Stephan?

  And then this is the.

• 2:28:12Speaker 01

  The little announcement.

• 2:28:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:17Graham Stephan?

  So. Would this be more valuable if he signed it?

• 2:28:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:28:22Graham Stephan?

  It would.

• 2:28:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:28:24Graham Stephan?

  Okay.

• 2:28:24Speaker 01

  Yes, it would be more valuable if he signed it because if there are 20 of them still, and three of them are signed, and you keep this one in extraordinary condition, I have no doubt that it will be of great value creation. Also, you know what? I don't think I've... Maybe I've just never researched it, but I don't know how prolific of a signer he is.

• 2:28:46Graham Stephan?

  He, uh, he, yeah, he signed a lot of shirts.

• 2:28:48Speaker 01

  Oh, he did, yeah.

• 2:28:49Graham Stephan?

  For live streams. Quite a lot of shirts.

• 2:28:51Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 2:28:53Graham Stephan?

  He signed, I think it was a dollar bill for me.

• 2:28:56Speaker 01

  I see. Oh, I like that. That's great.

• 2:28:59Graham Stephan?

  But I have, probably of those, I have six or seven boxes every time he does a launch. I've kept them. I have a Hal- I have a Halloween box. I have two other boxes in there.

• 2:29:12Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, I keep them all. I even have a briefcase, one of, one of the Mr. Beast briefcases.

• 2:29:18Speaker 01

  Unbelievable. Keep all your own stuff, too.

• 2:29:22Graham Stephan?

  I don't really have much, yeah.

• 2:29:23Speaker 01

  Okay. I was gonna say.

• 2:29:24Graham Stephan?

  I mean, it's the Warren Buffett of our time.

• 2:29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, right?

• 2:29:27Graham Stephan?

  You're gonna wanna keep his stuff.

• 2:29:29Speaker 01

  You know what's interesting? I'll never get to know that. The only time you'll become Warren Buffett is when you're the 95-year-old guy that's spouting off incredibly valuable pieces of information still. So you, you gotta plan on longevity, but there's not gonna be any 115-year-olds sitting in the audience. That's the interesting thing about life. And that's a beautiful thing that I think older people have a responsibility to younger people to remind them, that everybody that right now is an icon, you're the next icon. Like, you're the next icon. Like, of course, it's very clear when you're in your 50s that that's the case. It's much harder to see that in your 30s, because you're working so hard to make it, to make it happen. In your 20s, it's really hard, you know? I think, I think it's just the reality, but there's some, it's a really special decade.

• 2:30:13Speaker 01

  Your 50s is a very special decade.

• 2:30:16Graham Stephan?

  You also brought some other stuff. Let's see what you got there.

• 2:30:18Speaker 01

  All right. So the, the last two things that I brought are really to talk about emerging markets of collectibles. Okay? So this...

• 2:30:26Graham Stephan?

  Whoa.

• 2:30:27Speaker 01

  Is the highest graded ever, and I think it's CGC, uh, first magazine that Hulk Hogan ever appears in. Okay, so this is a wrestling magazine from the late 70s, I believe. And I think it was, he was at Madison Square Garden. And this was the first magazine that he had ever appeared in. Now, the fact that it's his first appearance, but he doesn't show up on the cover is consequential. It reduces value, but I thought it was so awesome that this was representative of that. Now, magazines, there are zillions of magazines, just like trading cards. Yeah. But unlike trading cards, nobody thought of them in a collectible manner.

• 2:31:12Speaker 01

  Correct. So to find them in high condition is very unusual. And so what I would say is like the Time magazine that you were talking about earlier. Look for important sports figures, look for important political figures. High grade, almost a slam dunk. Important figures of actors, actresses, scientists that are known, Albert Einstein. Unbelievable opportunity. PSA has also started grading these while comic books has been, have had a 30 year history of grading and trading cards. Magazines are new. How much is that worth? Um, a couple thousand dollars, maybe more.

• 2:31:53Speaker 01

  I paid $7,000 for an Andre the Giant highest graded one because he is the cover.

• 2:32:00Speaker 01

  I think if this were Hulk Hogan's first cover, it probably would be worth a little bit more. But I just, you know, I like, I liked it a lot, so I had to, I had to buy it. Wow. So this is a, this is a new area of grading. This is an area where there's been tens and tens of millions, hundreds of millions, actually billions of units sold. There's a standard size and that works in collectibles very well. And it's, it's records, LPs. Hmm. So people are now grading LPs and cassettes. Okay, this is VMG, they're one of the graders. But also Steve Aoki has also launched one as well, AMG.

• 2:32:37Speaker 01

  These are two really good grading services that are out there. They're small still. And, and high-grade albums and records could have enormous value. No LP has ever sold for a million dollars. There has been an LP, I believe it was a, some sort of Beatles LP. I don't remember which one it was. But it sold for six, $700,000. It was signed. It may have been super limited edition. But there hasn't been the watershed moment yet here. I do believe that now there are people like AMG and, and this particular grading service. That there's going to be some real serious opportunities in, in LPs. And, and so this one's cool because it's Mickey Mantle and Mickey Mantle's a great collectible.

• 2:33:20Speaker 01

  In trading cards. So why wouldn't he also make a great collectible? In period pieces that are related to this particular category. And then of course, because of all.

• 2:33:32Speaker 01

  And then of course, because of all my years in wrestling. I had to get the Hulk Hogan album as well.

• 2:33:41Speaker 01

  But yeah, no, these, this is a, a all new area of collectibility. Now what happens in this area? Okay. Much like these other areas of collectibles. A grail will run. It will sell for a certain price. That price will escalate significantly over time. And then other things will follow. People will be interested in various fandoms. They'll be interested in various things. And valuations increase in time. And that's generally the way it works. So for me. So for me, looking at, at brands that are 15 to 20 years old that were meaningful to younger people. Or looking at new areas where they're certainly cataloging and, and slabbing and grading.

• 2:34:21Speaker 01

  Those are two fantastic areas to participate without putting as much money in with a much larger upside opportunity. It's like investing in an A round company versus investing in something that's already traded for 30 years.

• 2:34:34Graham Stephan?

  That's so cool. I think it's gonna be some YouTube stuff. Fifteen years from now, like that's where you could get in early.

• 2:34:41Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:41Graham Stephan?

  I think is when with YouTube memorabilia.

• 2:34:43Jack Selby?

  I think you're exactly right.

• 2:34:44Graham Stephan?

  Like a PewDiePie, ten million subscriber, uh, diamond play button. I think someone put that on eBay a while ago. They found it in the trash.

• 2:34:53Jack Selby?

  No.

• 2:34:53Graham Stephan?

  They threw it away. They found it on eBay, they bought it, and someone has it.

• 2:34:58Jack Selby?

  That's outrageous.

• 2:34:59Graham Stephan?

  I think it might be Jack Sucks at Life. This is YouTube channel name. I think he might own it.

• 2:35:04Jack Selby?

  He bought it?

• 2:35:05Graham Stephan?

  I believe so.

• 2:35:05Jack Selby?

  Brilliant.

• 2:35:06Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:07Jack Selby?

  It's, that's valuable, right now. And, and I think PewDiePie was the first to ten million.

• 2:35:11Graham Stephan?

  I don't know if he's the first to ten.

• 2:35:12Jack Selby?

  He was the first to a hundred.

• 2:35:13Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:13Jack Selby?

  The first to a hundred. Okay. Well, maybe it was Ray William Johnson.

• 2:35:17Graham Stephan?

  Ray William Johnson, first to ten.

• 2:35:18Jack Selby?

  Yeah. I believe, maybe.

• 2:35:19Graham Stephan?

  Or Smosh.

• 2:35:20Jack Selby?

  Or Smosh.

• 2:35:20Graham Stephan?

  It's one of them.

• 2:35:21Jack Selby?

  That's probably it.

• 2:35:22Graham Stephan?

  But if you could get one of those, ugh.

• 2:35:25Jack Selby?

  Do the play buttons go all the way back to the origin of YouTube? Do they, do they always do that? Or did that come about at a certain time?

• 2:35:31Graham Stephan?

  I think that they came up at a certain time.

• 2:35:33Jack Selby?

  Interesting.

• 2:35:34Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:34Jack Selby?

  I think, I could be wrong.

• 2:35:35Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, you get the original play buttons. But I don't know, with channels, it's tougher. But I think like a Mr. Beast or a PewDiePie.

• 2:35:42Jack Selby?

  No doubt.

• 2:35:42Graham Stephan?

  Stands out above all the rest.

• 2:35:44Jack Selby?

  Absolute grail.

• 2:35:45Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:45Jack Selby?

  Items. Absolute grail items.

• 2:35:47Graham Stephan?

  Cool. Well, thank you. Is there anything else you?

• 2:35:50Jack Selby?

  I think that's it. Thank you so much, Jeremy, for coming on the podcast. Guys, I'm really curious. If you're going to try to convince us to buy something 'cause you think it's gonna go up in value, please just comment it down below. If there's some item that you think is undervalued, some collectible thing, it's got me thinking. Makes me wanna buy something like Beatles memorabilia. That sounds good. Or like artists that are blowing up right now. Could be opportunity there.

• 2:36:12Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, I agree. And also, I wanna invite you, so I have a group. It's called The Index. It's a lot of high-level entrepreneurs and business owners. We're having a meetup here in Las Vegas pretty soon.

• 2:36:21Jack Selby?

  Oh, cool.

• 2:36:21Graham Stephan?

  So if you wanna join that, you're more than welcome to come as a guest. And if you wanna apply, by the way, we have a link down below in the description. Uh, you could put in your info and, uh, we usually just pick like one or two people at a time.

• 2:36:33Jack Selby?

  Cool, I'm in.

• 2:36:34Graham Stephan?

  Cool. Sounds good.

• 2:36:35Jack Selby?

  Awesome. Thank you guys so much for watching. Thanks for coming on the show.

• 2:36:38Graham Stephan?

  Well, till next time.

• 2:36:39Jack Selby?

  Till next time. It's freaking amazing. Thank you.

• 2:36:42Graham Stephan?

  Thanks.

• 2:36:42Jack Selby?

  Cool.

• 2:36:53Speaker 05

  What's the secret to being a great host this season? Keeping things deliciously simple. Like mixing Simply Cranberry into a festive drink as guests arrive. Or serving up a warm mug of Simply Apple on a chilly night. That means less time behind the scenes and more time in the moment with everyone. Crafted with real fruit, Simply juices and fruit drinks make any holiday drink effortless, inviting, and completely delicious. Simply. Say yes to Simple.