Pod Insights The Pomp Podcast #834 NFTs Taking Over Professional Sports w/ Andy Spellman & Jerod Mayo About this episode Andy Spellman is the Founder and Managing Partner at Fifth Down Capital. Jerod Mayo is a former NFL Linebacker and Super Bowl champion with the New England Patriots and is now a top coach within the Patriots organization. In this conversation we discuss technology investing, financial management for athletes, and the sports card and NFT boom. ======================= Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp ======================= Imagine coinmarketcap - decentralized. 3X in valuation is 15 billion dollars from the current price. Cryptotoday.com starts at zero, at fair launch on 7th of March. No VC. No pre-sale. Team tokens locked. For the people, by the people. For decentralized crypto. Visit cryptotoday.com and read the whitepaper for the details.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Anthony Pompliano? What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Andy Spellman is the founder and managing partner at Fifth Down Capital. Gerard Mayo is a well-known NFL player who spent years with the New England Patriots and now is one of the top coaches within the organization. In this conversation, we talk about everything from technology investing to professional athletes, financial management, also sports trading cards, and much, much more. I really enjoyed this conversation with Andy and Gerard, and I hope that you enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by BlockFi. BlockFi
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3:50 Speaker 01 Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.
4:13 Speaker 02 What's going on, guys? Bang, bang, I'm here with Andy and Gerard. Let's introduce ourselves.
4:19 Speaker 03 Andy Spellman, Fifth Down Capital.
4:22 Speaker 04 Gerard Mayo, linebacker coach for the New England Patriots.
4:27 Speaker 02 When are the Patriots gonna win another Super Bowl?
4:28 Speaker 04 We'll be back. We'll be back soon. I mean, look, we have a pretty solid team. We have a good team. You know, we've got a bunch of new free agents. Year one to year two will be good for them, so.
4:38 Speaker 02 Alright.
4:38 Speaker 04 And we've got a solid quarterback, too, don't forget. Everyone's on the Rams. Eventually, the Rams are gonna have to pay the bills, man.
4:45 Speaker 02 I didn't want to talk about football, but I do have one question.
4:46 Speaker 04 Yeah, ask it. Ask it.
4:48 Speaker 02 Being recorded. When Tom Brady retired, people were happy, not happy?
4:53 Speaker 04 Nah, people were happy because he wasn't playing in New England.
4:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:56 Speaker 04 You know, but Tom-
4:58 Speaker 02 I appreciated the New York Giants when they tweeted out and just threw in the jab there.
5:02 Speaker 04 Yeah, there's always gonna be jabs.
5:03 Speaker 02 A little jab, like 0-2 against me in the Super Bowl.
5:05 Speaker 04 Yeah.
5:06 Speaker 02 I thought that was pretty good.
5:07 Speaker 04 When you win a lot, as you know, you're always gonna have haters.
5:10 Speaker 02 How many Super Bowl rings do you have?
5:12 Speaker 04 I only have one. I was the bridge between the next generation of three.
5:16 Speaker 02 That's what you would say if I ever had six or seven.
5:19 Speaker 04 No, because my brother-
5:20 Speaker 03 Well, I've watched six.
5:21 Speaker 04 Yeah, my brother ended up getting a ring. I got him a job, but I went and worked in corporate. Yeah, so now he's an assistant strength and conditioning coach.
5:28 Speaker 02 That makes sense.
5:29 Speaker 04 Yeah, keep it in the family.
5:30 Speaker 02 Alright. You own a bunch of sports cards.
5:32 Speaker 03 I do.
5:32 Speaker 02 Why? And here's my question for you. Is, NFTs, everyone's always like, I could just right-click and save it. This is like crazy. There's images on the internet. But a sports card is like a piece of cardboard. Why do they have value? What's the thought process?
5:48 Speaker 03 Well, we can go into a lot of things that have less tangibility, that have a lot of value that I don't think I live. But sports cards represent a culmination of like art. So for me, cards are like art. When I look at them, I get inspired, I get excited. They come with a lot of passion, and there's a lot of connectivity with, for me, my children. There's a community around that, so you have the community side of it. And in the last 20 years, just the innovation that's come with creating the rare cards,
6:24 Speaker 03 the piece of jerseys, autographs. I just look at cards and I get very excited. Some people look at a Rothko or Monet and feel like $100 million is, you know, worthy. And I look at a card and I'm like, I just want that card and I don't care what it is.
6:37 Speaker 02 What's the craziest one that you own?
6:40 Speaker 03 So the craziest one I own, probably the most valuable and the craziest is a different answer because
6:46 Speaker 02 Let's do both.
6:48 Speaker 03 Some of the LeBron rookie cards are, you know, they're known as the most valuable. The craziest one I believe that I own is, it's a dual logo man of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Kobe Bryant. It's a one of one, both of them autographed it. I believe it is the best Lakers card in existence.
7:06 Speaker 02 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Kobe Bryant, both on the same card and they both signed it.
7:13 Speaker 03 And it's a logo man, it's a one of one. So it's, it's a very unique card and because of being, sitting here in LA also, it's, there's so many people that are so passionate around the world about the Lakers and to think that like, if it's not the best card.
7:29 Speaker 02 How much is it worth, do you think? Over, under $5 million?
7:33 Speaker 03 I wouldn't sell it for $5 million.
7:35 Speaker 02 That's actually a pretty good indication.
7:38 Speaker 03 Yeah, I know that. Yeah, I wouldn't consider it.
7:41 Speaker 02 All right. And then how much are the LeBrons considered to be worth?
7:45 Speaker 03 So, you know, they're transacting north of that. There was, there was one that I, that I did own and I moved to a friend and he crossed it over. There's different grading companies and he crossed it over to a PSA 10-10. I think that's around $15 million card now.
8:03 Speaker 02 And those are like the most expensive trading cards available or the basketball, like kind of one of one, super rare type cards and they're 10 plus million dollars for those cards?
8:16 Speaker 03 Yeah. I mean, there's some old vintage cards where they're, they were mass produced and the rarity is really the grade. So a PSA 10 is the most iconic grade. For example, Mickey Mantle has a few PSA 10 rookies. One hasn't traded in a long time. People speculate it would be 30 million or so dollars now if it were.
8:34 Speaker 02 How, and this for both of you, like sports memorabilia in general, right? So like cards are, they're cards. I think that's become much more popular recently from like a financialization standpoint. But I think my dad, growing up, he had a baseball and I'm pretty sure it's a legit signature of a Mickey Mantle baseball card. You just made me think about, or a Mickey Mantle baseball. And like, for some reason, it feels like a lot of the memorabilia hasn't necessarily continued on like the financialization track as much as the card. So like, one, is that true? Or how do you guys think about like? Assigned football, assigned baseball, assigned basketball versus just the trading cards themselves.
9:11 Speaker 03 I think your dad should send it to me and all.
9:17 Speaker 03 And there is a reason why for the last 10 years I've been asking Dr. for different autographs of different guys.
9:21 Speaker 04 Yeah.
9:22 Speaker 03 Maybe you speak.
9:22 Speaker 04 I'm not big into the memorabilia thing. I would say the one thing I enjoy about the card industry is just opening a pack of cards with my son.
9:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's cool.
9:32 Speaker 04 It's cool. You know, my son's 10 years old and he loves doing, he loves pulling out the cards and that brings me back to my childhood.
9:39 Speaker 02 Yep.
9:39 Speaker 04 You know, and I didn't only collect, you know, baseball, basketball cards, also Pokemon cards.
9:44 Speaker 02 Yep.
9:45 Speaker 04 You pull that holographic, you know, Charizard out and you're like, you're kind of pumped. And my kids, they get excited. My son especially, he gets excited when he pulls out, you know, LeBron James or, you know, Red Prism, whatever it is, you know, they have a bunch of different products, but just that excitement in his face.
10:01 Speaker 02 Yeah. It almost feels like in some way we can do all these stuff on the digital technology. Sure, you can have TikTok, you can have Twitter, you can have all these things and there's dopamine hits that come with it.
10:11 Speaker 04 That's right.
10:11 Speaker 02 But there's still something really special about the physical world, right? And I think a lot about, everyone's all excited about the metaverse now versus this metaverse. It's like, yeah, sure, like that's probably going to become a thing to some degree. But I don't think that people are going to be like, I don't want to go to a physical dinner with the person down the street instead of just meeting the metaverse. Like I still think there's something special about being in person or pulling a physical card, like all of that as well.
10:35 Speaker 03 You know, years ago, there was a lot of discussion as e-commerce was booming, like what would happen to stores and retail? And the reality is there is some impact, but the values of retail chains across the country, whether it's Costco, Target, you know, these types of companies continue to rise. And so to me, they kind of feed each other. Companies that, you know, there's going to be companies that stand alone in retail and e-commerce. And for me, I believe that there's a marketplace for both and there's going to be a lot of people that develop passion around NFTs. We're involved, all three of us are involved in a company called Collectible, which fractionalizes sports cards. And I was like, I'm never going to be interested in. That if I don't have the card, I won't do it. I love it. I'm a junkie. I'm on there every day.
11:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, it it feels like we're seeing this in a lot of these assets as well. So NFTs recently, they're now allowing you to securitize them or borrow against them. And there's questions because a sports card, I think, has probably got less volatility. It's not like you're going to wake up one day and that LeBron James card was worth, you know, $10 million. Now it's worth zero or it's worth, you know, 100K. Some of the NFTs, though, it's early. And so something that was hot and that there's a lot of interest around, maybe there won't be as much interest in it, you know, five days from now, a month, two months from now. So it'll be interesting to see how they manage the risk, right? And there's a lot of, I think, comparisons to Bitcoin and lending against Bitcoin.
12:02 Speaker 02 Super volatile, but you have an asset that you can sell in a fractionalized way.
12:06 Speaker 04 That's right.
12:06 Speaker 02 So I guess so, you know, a tenth of a Bitcoin, a fifth of a Bitcoin, whatever. With the NFTs, to your point, you can't sell a piece of it, right?
12:14 Speaker 04 But can you make a non-fungible token fungible? Does that make sense?
12:18 Speaker 02 You can't make it fungible. What I think a lot of people want to do is think of almost like a SPV, right? Like a special purpose vehicle where, let's say I had some shares in a company and I put it into an LLC. Now that SPV, I could sell fractional shares in.
12:33 Speaker 04 Gotcha.
12:34 Speaker 02 And technically, I'm not breaking up the equity of the original business. I'm just breaking up the entity that holds the shares.
12:41 Speaker 04 Yeah.
12:42 Speaker 02 So like, could you basically take a non-fungible token, put it into a structure that then has, you know, kind of fractionalized ownership or fungible tokens? Probably.
12:51 Speaker 04 Yeah.
12:53 Speaker 02 But then you get in a weird world of like, you know, are you just building assets on top of assets on top of assets? Like, there's some value to that. Obviously, to see that traditional financial world, but it's also where a lot of the complexity and issues come from.
13:04 Speaker 04 That's right.
13:04 Speaker 03 Well, I'll distill it down to a simple word called scarcity, and you'd appreciate this from the Bitcoin world is there. There's a lot of volatility in Bitcoin. Yet the value continues to rise. You wouldn't sell yours at 65,000. You're also not selling it at 30,000 or 40,000. But there's more people available to sell. So you see it jump around a lot. So where I play is in the most scarce market. So one of one cards out of 10, because those people are not selling it and it takes someone to buy it from you.
13:32 Speaker 02 Yep. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Let's finish up with Bitcoin. What's your thoughts on Bitcoin?
13:38 Speaker 04 I love Bitcoin. I love, I look at Bitcoin as digital gold. I look at Ethereum as digital gas. You know, so I definitely think there's a place for, you know, decentralized assets like that. So.
13:50 Speaker 02 Uh, do you own any regular gold?
13:53 Speaker 04 Uh, through an ETF, which is stupid though. I'll tell you straight up, like, you know, as an athlete, we all get financial advisors and sometimes they put you in some crazy things. And then the more you get educated or hang around guys like this, the smarter you, you know, the more, you know, the more you learn about it.
14:07 Speaker 02 They're trying not to get fired.
14:08 Speaker 04 That's right. That's right. And so they end up becoming glorified yes men. Or they'll put you into what they call, you know, inflation protect, yeah, safe things like a, like a gold ETF. I don't own gold bars, but this guy owns gold bars.
14:20 Speaker 02 You got gold bars?
14:21 Speaker 04 Cards.
14:23 Speaker 02 What do you think about Bitcoin?
14:25 Speaker 03 I think as long as you're transacting on River BlockFi.
14:28 Speaker 04 That's right. That's right.
14:30 Speaker 03 That's just my opinion.
14:31 Speaker 02 I mean, I don't disagree with you.
14:32 Speaker 04 No doubt. No doubt.
14:34 Speaker 02 Awesome. All right. Thank you guys so much for doing this.
14:35 Speaker 04 I appreciate you having me.
14:37 Anthony Pompliano? Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more, and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.
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