How Ken Goldin Built a $500M Market: Attention, Hype & the Business of Collectibles

0:00A father's absence can have a serious effect on a child. Fatherless children are twice as likely to drop out of school and 11 times more likely to exhibit violent behavior. I'm attorney Jeffrey Leving, and I've been protecting the rights of fathers for more than 30 years. Dads, don't lose your important relationship with your children. Call 312-356-DADS. That's 312-356-DADS for help and a free father's rights information kit. For more information, visit dadsrights.com. We are in an expanding market. The reason where I can tell you we're an expanding market is when I look at a keyboard, when I look at a screen, I sit at an access point that is better than any other human being's access point in the entire industry.

0:46better than Michael Rubin of Topps, better than Nat Turner of PSA, better than everybody because at the same time, I have the ability to see all the sales and trends for all the collectible categories that are going on eBay because Golden is an eBay company and I'm CEO of Golden and corporate officer, the admin of Golden. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over 6 years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cashing checks?

1:27Well, it starts right about now. Some people sell cards. Some people build platforms. And a very small group of people actually move markets. Today's guest has been at the center of some of the biggest moments this hobby has ever seen. Through golden auctions, he's helped redefine what elite collectibles are worth, and more importantly, who's paying attention. And with King of Collectibles, the golden touch, he didn't just showcase the hobby, he expanded the audience. But what I respect most is this. He understands that value is not accidental. It's timing, it's positioning, it's psychology, and it's discipline.

2:02So today, I want to go beyond those headlines, and I want to get into how he thinks about leverage, market cycles, ego risk, and where this industry is actually headed. Glad to be here, Ryan. Thank you for having me. Hey, man. Respect, dude. Who would have thought collectibles, it would show up on Netflix? Certainly not me when I was a 12-year-old nerd sorting out my cards in my basement. I'd been in the business for years. I looked at the landscape of the industry and I said, everybody who is already a serious collector, they're going to go to my website. They're going to find me. What I really want to do is go to people who are the sports fans, the casual buyer, somebody who goes into Target and Walmart, buys a box for their kids, and that's it, and doesn't even go to card stores.

2:44I want to reach those people. I want to reach mainstream America. What I've tried to do since I started Golden in 2012 is bring new people into the hobby and expand the pie, hopefully a lot for myself, but as a result for everybody. I've done marketing for 25 years for some of the largest brands in the world, and you know what I'd call that, Ken? That's called BDI and CDI. BDI is brand development. You want to elevate your brand, but your brand only matters when you elevate the category. You've elevated the category and your brand has come along with it. So it's been dual paths is what I would define that as.

3:19You are a category definer here. What's one thing maybe serious collectors consistently misunderstand about Ken Golden? I am a businessman, but they think that I am a businessman first or that I am in this for the money. It's a money grab. It's an opportunity because there have been so many people, especially since 2019, that have come into the business. I was doing this, buying and selling cards before there were written price guides, before the Internet, before eBay was in existence, before cell phones. I have been doing this my entire life, and I have never made any money outside of the collectibles industry.

3:59It started for me as a passion, simply as a way, hey, I'm going to be collecting. how do I afford to buy my next item? I started as a little kid acquiring collections, keeping what I wanted, and then selling off the rest. People who do not know saying, oh, this guy is some rich businessman, some hotshot came into the industry, saw a money pot, and then built a big business. No, that's not how it was. The world kind of came to me with something I had been doing literally since the 1970s. When I only knew you peripherally and didn't start studying a little more. I thought that exact thing. This guy is just a shrewd, badass business dude.

4:34And I still think you'd probably be successful in any business. You're smart, intelligence, and sort of business savvy. Raise my hand. You nailed it. That was what I thought. I'm sure others do. Probably you get that a lot. I definitely get it a lot. It's fine. I have always been a marketer. I've always been a great business person. And my business happens to be a collectible business. And there are a lot of other auction houses that were around in 2012 that were due in$5 million a year,$10 million a year, $30 million a year. I was probably, when I started Golden, we were probably 250th in sales.

5:07And then we gradually climbed up the charts until 2019, we were number two. And then we overtook Heritage as number one. That's business skill. That's marketing. That's hard work. And that's understanding the market and your customer. And honestly, a real passion for the business and a drive to be the best. You understood the most important thing, which is attention matters. And attention is currency. I look at most auction houses and I'm kind of like, but what you realize is mass attention, leveraging media, leveraging personalities, leveraging the people in the space. And I think it shows your marketing chops as much as a father's absence can have a serious effect on a child.

5:46Fatherless children are twice as likely to drop out of school and 11 times more likely to exhibit violent behavior. I'm attorney Jeffrey Leving, and I've been protecting the rights of fathers for more than 30 years. Dads, don't lose your important relationship with your children. Call 312-356-DADS. That's 312-356-DADS for help and a free father's rights information kit. For more information, visit dadsrights.com. From Geico Subconscious News, I'm Tammy Racing Thoughts broadcasting from your brain. You think you live in a pretty safe place, but you just heard about a break in four miles away, which isn't close, but it isn't far either.

6:23You know, our palpitations is on the scene. I sure am Tammy. And I don't even know why I drove out here because as you know, you got customized renter's insurance through Geico. So your stuff is covered. Oh, well, that's great. Any sign of crime there art? Just some light littering Tammy, but like they say, a little litter can lead to a lot. Wise words. It feels good to worry less. It feels good to Geico. Dang. What was that light bulb moment for you? There's a lot of things in collectibles that are storytelling moments and you got autographs and stuff that drives attention anyway. But there was something or some moment that clicked for you with mainstream media being an avenue and the friends you've made and putting that out there and leveraging that into awareness.

7:02I went into the business with a very acute, not only the trading card industry, but a significant number of athlete relationships and a lot of experience of getting comfortable in front of a camera, being able to talk to a camera, being able to talk to an audience. When that business slowed, I was looking at the landscape. That's when some of the auction houses were getting in trouble with bidding. They were getting in trouble with selling fake items, bad authentication. I established an auction house where we guarantee everything we sell, which nobody did. Everybody had in their book, 20 page disclaimer, everything is sold as is, no warranties, no representation.

7:43And I'm like, screw that. We're going to give every, we have an autograph and there may still be a catalog like this, that they sold a game used item. It said, your receipt is your letter of authenticity. We're the experts. And I'm like, no, I want to get something from the athlete. I want to get something from the team. I want to get some photo match. All of our cards, we said, we're going to use the major third party graders, all the autographs. We wanted to use proper authenticators and same for game used as well as player collections. And I said, here's what I want to do. I obviously been in business for many years.

8:11I didn't go into the business broke, starting golden. So I had money. I started with $100 ,000. And I said, I'm really going to take the Jeff Bezos approach to business. My first couple of years, I'm going to know that I'm going to lose money. And I'm going to try a bunch of stuff that I don't think had ever been done in the industry. And I'm going to throw it against the wall and see what stuck. We went out and I tried to find the highest media attention items that I can get. And I flew out to Las Vegas. I saw my friend Pete Rose and I said, Pete, I'm starting an auction house. I said, what do you got for me?

8:42He goes, oh crap. You know, I've sold almost everything. He goes, but there is something I think you can get. I just sold this guy my banishment contract from baseball. He put me in touch with the guy who bought it. And then we got it for the first auction. At the time, Darren Revell was working for ESPN. He came to the office. There was a big publicity and real dog and pony show about the auction and making it special. We got a lot of publicity. It didn't sell because I had a reserve. It didn't sell. That didn't matter because I got a lot of eyeballs. I got a lot of registrations. We did $800 ,000 in our first auction.

9:14Everything sold tremendously. There was a hurricane in the middle of it. I stopped the auction. That was Hurricane Sandy. And we said, okay, I donated$50 ,000 worth of merchandise that I had. We auctioned it off to the Red Cross and just generated a lot of publicity. I just tried a lot of things. I did a deal with DuPont registry. You know why they sell really expensive cars, people with money. I figured go there. I did a deal with the Rob report. I did a 10 page insert into the Rob report in 2013 with almost no revenue. I want people to know about I did everything I could in the first two years of business to gather a large audience.

9:51And I think that that user base that I established, whereas everybody else's was stale. Mine was brand new. They were newly energized people. A lot of it was becoming international because of all the media. It was a lot of new money that wanted to spend money on collectibles. That business approach of being willing to spend money, being willing to go out and lose money and say, I don't care how much I lose. I want to build market share until I'm in a position to really compete. That's what set Golden up for the future of where it is today. That's called branding, building brand over time. Sometimes the product isn't the product.

10:23Sometimes the product is the marketing. A lot of people don't know that. I've been an entrepreneur for 10 years. You got to pay the bills. You got to do things. You got pressure to want to be successful and make profit. But sometimes in those early stages, you can kind of sabotage that for the long, you know, just playing the short game. You understood the long game that was involved in building the golden brand. When I started the business, I said to my wife, if I can build this up to a$10 million a year business, I can do this comfortably for the rest of my life, stress-free. And I'd be happy with the$10 million a year business.

10:52I didn't know I'd be pushing half a billion. That's how good businesses, good marketing and good industry take hold. Ken, a million dollar car lands on your desk. What's the first things that you evaluate? Is this something we have on consignment or is this something we want to get? We just talked about builds towards things landing in your lap sometimes. Someone walks in the door, a friend of a friend, a million dollar item or card lands there. What are we evaluating? When I look at the card and say, hey, who is this going to appeal to? Is it sports or non-sports? And then let's say it's sports.

11:21Is it vintage or is it modern? When I determine what it is, and let's say there is obviously a difference in the way that I would market a PSA 10 Shars or Pikachu Illustrator versus a 52 tops mantle versus a T206 Wagner or versus a Cooper Flag Superfactor, for example. They're all going to appeal to different people. I really need to look at the card, find out why it's worth that much. Who is collecting that? Is it something that is leaning more towards, hey, I need to fill a spot in my collection because this is a holy piece like a Wagner? Or is this something, hey, I believe that Victor Webinyama is going to win five MVPs and this could turn a million dollars into a five million dollar card.

12:07And then it's therefore my job to explain not only who Wemby is, but more importantly, this particular card, why this card is unique. For example, we've got a card right now in the Golden 100. I'll use an example. Victor Webanyama, it is his Topps Chrome Super Fractor. It is his first ever NBA licensed autographed Super Fractor. And to me, that makes it his most important card. It's the first Topps Chrome card that was issued since the 2008-2009 season. It's autographed. It got a high grade of an 8.5. A lot of these supers, you're even seeing people get them authenticated. To me, that is a key card, and it's up to me to not only put together a package that explains why this card is important, the on-card autograph, the history of top super fractures, the mystery surrounding cards like the missing Steph Curry super fracture.

13:02This is the first Wemby. Where are the people that want to buy this card? How do I reach them? And then on behalf of my consigner, how do I get above expectations? Because comps are one thing. What we want to do at Golden is we want to drastically exceed comps on all of the high-end cards. Right now, in our vintage auction, we had a 52-man SGC 7.5, sold at REA eight months ago for$250 ,000. At the time of we're recording this, it's$520 ,000 on Golden. I think that is a result of our videos, our photography, our tremendous user base that is so much bigger than anybody else's. But that's really when people come to us with the big items, that's really what they want us to do is, hey, I'm looking to get several octaves above the comp.

13:52And this is what you guys are the specialties, you know, specialists at. You think about like what increases the value of something and it just dawned on me. You've got PSA. OK, you grade it and that changes the value. But now Golden is a product that you layer on these collectibles that's a multiplier. A lot of what you're describing because of the marketing and cachet that your brand will apply to a high-end collectible. I think it's the cachet. People think I've seen tweets, bucket list, sell something on Golden. Bucket list, buy something off Golden. But the ability is, the importance is, when I'm dealing with a card like that, let's say it's a jersey, whatever it is, that high figure.

14:29I can't tell somebody, I promise you it is going to sell for X price. What I can tell them is on the day the auction closes, what I'm going to guarantee you is there will not be a single human being on the planet who might have possibly been interested in this card and has the money to buy it that will not know it's on golden.com right now and it's closing tonight. That's all you can do. That's all you can do. And that's a bigger problem. People realize that because a lot of times it's like just people being aware that something is available. but when you kind of reach the depths and the width that you guys do at the level that you do you're turning over every coin you're hitting every target that this is a facebook ad you've got every eyeball that could be on it that would be interested checked on it goes back to marketing prowess as much as anything talk with ken golden ken you kind of answered this but i'm going to let you put a fine point on it there's a lot of curiosity out there you hit we're kind of in a peak or not a peak but a high point right now with both awareness interest and maybe prices Are we in a long-term maturation phase or another setup cycle?

15:30If we did hit a kind of a downturn, which segment holds strongest, vintage, high-end, or modern? We are in an expanding market. The reason where I can tell you we're an expanding market is when I look at a keyboard, when I look at a screen, I sit at an access point that is better than any other human being's access point in the entire industry, better than Michael Rubin of Topps, better than Nat Turner of PSA embedded in everybody because at the same time, I have the ability to see all the sales and trends for all the collectible categories that are going on eBay because Golden is an eBay company and I'm CEO of Golden and corporate officer.

16:11The admin of Golden. Every day I can see how many new users I'm getting, how many new bidders, how many people are applying for credit, how many people are asking to have their bid limit raised, how many bids a day we're getting, how that compared to a week ago, how that compared to a month ago, how that compared to a year ago, what my average ASP, all this information that people would kill themselves to get. I see it all the time. And I walk around with my iPad and I'm looking at all the time. I can tell people from an educated point that the market is still expanding, that there are people from other countries that are getting into it, that there are pockets around the world that never bought collectibles in general, but certainly never bought cards that are now buying cards.

16:54We are in a market that is continuing to grow. I expect with the Fanatics impact and with more money being spent by the leagues in marketing, I expect that we will continue to expand the collector base. But expanding the collector base does not necessarily mean a smooth ride for prices. It does not necessarily mean a guarantee of prices going up because there is a lot of fluff. When we have repack businesses that can be selling multiple repack companies that are digital repack that can be doing$500 million a year, recycling the cards over and over and over again, the same graded cards and the buybacks and this and that and everything else like that, there is certainly a lot of risk built into the market.

17:40And people should understand that this This is a market that is built on a significant amount of risk and they should be engaging business accordingly. At some point, certain things will go down. My viewpoint always is whatever goes down the least is going to be both the least speculative of everything as well as the longest running. To me, it's an obvious answer. To me, I think that the most speculative and the market that has been on fire the most has been the TCG market, especially Pokemon around the past two years. Anybody who's been dealing with this business and now you have one piece and everyone's buying one piece because they want to will one piece into being the next Pokemon.

18:25And they want to get those. They're doing what they do with frigging NFL draft pick quarterbacks. They're projecting a guy to win three Super Bowls before he's played a game in the NFL, and they're pricing that into it. That's how people get burnt. That would be, to me, the riskiest, only because it's the newest and it's the most fluffed up over the past few years. The safest is going to be vintage, specifically the boring vintage baseball. Nobody is going to lose money buying Mickey Mantle card. It hasn't happened for 70 years. I had my Harmon Killebrew, Willowee Mays, and Mickey Mantle sitting here.

19:01Yeah, it's the way that's 68 Fence Busters. This is 1968 Superstars tops. And then I brought this because you pulled two of them. Okay. Oh, God. There you go. Bird Magic. Yeah. Another great. Yeah, and I pulled it. Oh. Pulled it right at him. Right out of the box. Oh, my God. Look at you. Oh, send me that, Ken, as a thank you. That's awesome, dude. Vintage baseball. Oh, my basketball's no good? What basketball has is outside of soccer. basketball is the most international of all the sports. Vintage baseball has the oldest, the most boring, the longest running, and the stodgiest collectors. Those are the people who will literally keep their collection and sell their house.

19:43These are people who have been doing it for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. Vintage baseball to me is the safety net of the hobby. It is the backbone of the hobby that everything has been built upon over all the years. We're going to underline and circle that for everyone as a key takeaway. Let's talk about the future. And I am going to hold up my four sport. This guy. I did not know that was you. This is four sport. Ninety four. Ninety three was a better year. Ninety four of the year. You got big dog. Glenn Robinson's rookie card in there. He's probably on the box cover. You probably have a ride inserts in there.

20:18You might have Derek Jeter inserts in there. It's not racing yet. We didn't do racing. I'm trying to remember Jason kid on the Jason kid. Yeah. Rookie year. Yep. That Peyton Manning. No, great. No, Peyton Manning was not. He got Grand Hill's rookie in there. Yep. Grand Hill. Oh yeah. Hockey. I don't recognize the baseball players. That Marshall Falk on the side. Yeah. Marshall Falk. Yep. Yep. That was his rookie. Yep. I've opened, I've ripped a few of these. I enjoy this. The problem is back in the day we used a UV coating. The cards were done with something UV coating. Now, unless they were kept like really cold, when you open them, It's going to be like opening up the old Topps Chrome where you got to almost sometimes may have to peel some of the cards apart.

20:56Ken, would you do a 20-minute rip with me sometime where I hope... Listen up. I need your attention for a moment. Chevy Drive Chicago has a massive opportunity for you. They're giving you the chance to win the Chevy you actually want. There's no mystery here and no luck of the draw. Surprise, prize. You choose the Chevy. You pick it, you win it, and you drive it. Chevy's lineup is built for whatever the road throws at you. If you need a truck that's as dependable as they come, the Silverado is ready to work hard and play even harder. If you've been thinking about making the switch to electric, the Equinox EV makes it a seamless transition.

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22:04I've got the old 4 Sport, and the funny thing is, I saw Topps inserting a Mickey Mantle, 52 Topps Mickey Mantle. I had a license with Mickey Mantle in 90s, and with Mickey Mantle State. And we put out a set after he passed called the Mickey Mantle Shoe Box Collection. It was, I believe, 100 original Mickey Mantle cards. And in every box was a vintage Mickey Mantle card produced between 57 and 69. Every box had a vintage. Now, obviously, some of them could be leader cards. Some of them could have been checklist cards. But there was a 52 Mantle Redemption. It was crazy. But yeah, that was called, that's one of my favorite products of all time.

22:42If anybody ever has any of those boxes they want to sell me, do it. I'll do a live open on my IJ. We had a false start with fractional ownership. Do you think that ever comes back in a smarter form? Fractional ownership is legitimate. It's kind of like stocks. There are a lot of people that want to own their collectibles, but there are a lot of people right now that want to own a piece. Fractionalized has to be done probably by people who may not be in the industry now that do it as a, that are true investment funds and do it as really SEC. seen. Oh, and Rally did it the right way. They did it with SEC filing.

23:15But the problem is that the trading was an issue. There was too small and they got into it during the COVID and then everything just went down and spoiled everybody. A lot of their problem was timing because conceptually they did it right. But I think a very large fund that is very well equipped goes out and buys key assets. I don't think they do it into 5 ,000 pieces. I think that you create a fund and say, hey, we're going to do the vintage card fund. And our goal is we want to own these 20 pillars. I can give somebody a list. These are the 20 cards I would buy. Boom. They go out and get these cards in the best affordable grade.

23:51And I say affordable because again, I'm going to go 52 tops. It's going to be tough to buy a nine. And no matter what the price is, you can't get one from somebody. It's going to be like 12 million, but you can get a nice eight and then you can get like a classic Gaudi Ruth and things like that. Clemente rookie. And basically let Maybe 100 people own the fund and that's their version of fractalizing. And then they could do a modern card fund and they can get exquisite LeBron and they can get a different super and things like that, you know, where it is different type of funds where, OK, fine, I'm not going to put in 50 bucks and own a small piece.

24:25Maybe I put in 10 ,000 or maybe I put in a thousand, but some higher threshold level and more sophistication. But there's no reason that that should not be able to work. and you don't have the trading though. What I think you do is that you say the purpose of the fund is we're going to do it and we're going to hold it for five years and then we're going to sell it unless we get an outrageous offer. People look, people can say the fund owns this at 2 million. I'm going to go in and offer 3.5 % and see if 51 % of the people will take a buyout. I feel like I had a positioning and marketing problem.

24:54It needed to be marketed non-collectors. Marketing and collectors, again, it gets into that whole I'm emotionally tied to it. But in infractional ownership, I'm not saying you can't have a group of guys that all go in on something that all love mantle. But it needs to be more true investment and lacking that. All right. Rapid fire. Here's we close out. Ken, most underrated sport to collect right now. It's gaining WWE. I'm in shock by some of the prices that stuff is going for. I'm just blown away. One athlete whose market is mispriced up or down. Willie Mays. Willie Mays has always been undervalued compared to his peers.