The Future of Collectibles: Sports Cards, Non-Sports & the Hobby in 2025

0:00Alright, well this one doesn't need any introduction. I normally have some big, long introduction about who they are and what they're doing. But I sat here 10 years ago. We've got a post up. This is almost 10 years ago. It was before that I started watching your content. March 20th, 2017. Wow. I sat at a computer screen. I had two screens up. One was data entry and one was Gary V's content. So to sit here now, eight years late, almost eight years, you know, eight years and two months to the day and to have you on the pod. This is this is cool. So I'm humbled, brother. Thank you. I'm very, very honored that you are here in town for a cool event, a partner with us on this.

0:44You know, there's tons of great shops and I know you're going to visit many of them. But to have you here and in the chat for this, this is this is special. So first and foremost, thank you for for being here. but obviously a lot to get into, a lot to talk about. VFriends dropped this week and I'm just going to start right off the rip with that. You started this four years ago. What have you learned in four years about building a product that has gotten us to? You know, it's funny. To your point, I started it four years ago. I'm 45 years old and I've been doing business for 40 years at that point and really, really genuinely doing it in a meaningful way for 25 years.

1:28So you're always learning stuff, but I don't like bullshitting. Everything's, not that everything's going according to plan, but I'm like trying to dig right now because I want to bring value to the audience. I've learned that the things I most believe in are true. Like good people around you, positivity, work ethic, these things matter. experience. You know, what I can definitely tell you I learned, and this is good for a lot of the hustler kids that are watching who are destined to be you and I, and in between and above and to the left and to the right, I definitely, definitely believe in the fact that when I was a whiz kid in my business, I was a 24-year-old kid running my dad's store for him and it just completely exploded his business by betting the farm on something called the internet.

2:25And I have full page ads, full page articles being written about me in New Jersey's premier newspaper, The Star Ledger, and then the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times. This is like, it's happening fast. And I'm 23, 24, 25. But I've been thinking about it since I was 14 and I was studying the entire wine business. I went from Beckett to the Wine Spectator in high school. But it happened fast. and in the articles they're like, whiz kid, son of the owner, whiz kid, whiz kid. And I really enjoyed being like this kid and what I can tell that kid, which is what I can tell you, even you're a kid and definitely knowing there's so many 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 year olds that look up to you, that are listening, that look up to me and others, is I've learned through this four year process that experience and wisdom and gray hairs matter.

3:20Like if I told you I've always navigated through business confidently, you know how they talk about in sports, like if you think you're too slow and you can't be at the height, like when the coach is yelling, you're thinking, you gotta go fast, right? I've always been that in business because I have intuition and I do have a lot of experience even at 25 because I've been doing cards and selling and stuff since I was 10. Again, the ease that I am navigating through building this IP is bananas. It is so easy and natural for me to think about what am I going to do on Roblox? What am I going to do on animation?

3:57What am I going to do in comic book? This is my life. This is my life. You know, I've been studying eBay sold comps since 1997. You know what I mean? Like, what year were you born? 92. You were five when I was literally, actually, meaningfully spending hours every night looking at eBay sold comps to understand what Spice Girl dolls were worth so I could go to Toys R Us and buy them and flip them. This is my life. VFriends is the culmination of my life journey. Who I am as an entrepreneur, who I am as a human being and what I want to put into the world, and who I am as a collector and flipper and fuck, man.

4:36You catch me at a really interesting time, Rye. you can maybe even see the emotions starting to kick in like I'm gonna do this like actually and so like back to the hobby of it all like Chrome's a fucking monster Chrome's Chrome right? like Chrome's Chrome and so like this is forever Chrome 1 and like you know it's been crazy like I pushed to Topps credit we both really wanted to price it well so like the$99 SRP that's well right? What I didn't what I didn't fully grasp because I haven't I'm not paying I like knowing what I know but in the macro I know everything. Quote unquote, obviously not, but I feel good.

5:12In the micro I don't know everything. I don't think I knew that secondary could move this. Like I was worried about secondary getting to these prices by the national. Now I'm petrified of the prices at the national while I'm calm because we signed such a long-term deal. And like for everyone who's listening who's gonna jump on board, if it's price prohibitive already, like 26 is coming. It's like I'm already fully deep in the 26 checklist. Like it's not, you know, it seems like a year is a long time but you know, like especially as you get older, it's like tomorrow. The other thing I am excited about is this might be a little in parallel to this audience.

5:54In 93, I felt the junk wax era hitting. I could feel it. And I was at a card show in Highbridge, New Jersey with Brandon Warnicke and I literally decided to sell all my cards. I'm like, I think something bad's, like I'm like, this is not good. This isn't what I felt from 87 to 93. I could feel it in the show, literally. And I decided to sell all my cards on 60 to 80 cents on the dollar and go fully into comics and cards and toys. Okay. And I crushed. And in that 93 to 99 era, I was really deep into Migos and Secret Wars and Superpowers by Kenner and Star Wars figures. I went deep. And it's like, you know what you feel like life might be destiny?

6:42Like, there was nothing indicating before that show that I was going to go into the Comic Con kind of toy nerd culture. Nothing. Other than I liked it when I was a kid. I liked Transformers. I liked wrestling. Maybe everything showed that I would, but nothing up to that point showed and then eBay comes out and I can study. In 96 I can study wait, He-Man toys are worth this much? There's a rare Skeletor? There's a Cobra Commander Mickey Mouse variant? I know shit in a way that none of you fucking understand that I know shit. And so that is coming in handy because I'll tell you right now, I tell my inner circle right now, I'm like, man, everyone's, this is this week, everyone's all on Chrome and the secret thing that's actually happening is I'm building out this direct-to-consumer comic book thing that I'm doing right now, which is actually gonna make people fucking care about these characters because the stories, right?

7:34So I know that was a long-winded answer to your question. What did I learn? Nothing and everything. I wouldn't expect any different of an answer. Three days in. Yeah. Sit here before this event. Yes. How you feeling three days in about the product so far? So happy. So happy. Like, you know, So my greatest strength is I don't care what anyone thinks, but I value what everyone thinks. So, you know, I spend as much time reading the comments of people that are like, this is incredible. I underestimated Gary Vee. This is a great product. As I am the people that are like, this is like bootleg$1, MetaZoo garbage.

8:16Gary, fuck Gary Vee. Like I read it all. And I would say that three days in, it's better than I'd hoped for. and so that gives me motivation. Like it's exciting. I love this hobby. Like I watch so much more of the content, the vlogs, the podcasts, the social media posts than people realize. As you know, I have talked about it less because I didn't like what was happening when I was talking about it because people were making up things. For sure. And you were doing, you really knew the truth because you were hanging with Lou and Tyler. The number one commitment I made when I got in in 18, 19 was like don't sell anything so it doesn't create any weirdness.

8:54But then people, for example, I was most proud in my inner circles that I said, don't buy Zion. Remember that? I was very hot on not buying. I loved, by the way, on the record, I thought Zion was going to be a beast. But I thought the production of that prism was going to be so high, which it was, and I thought there was a chance that he would be injured that I was like, I'm not going to go Zion. Right? And then I was at some show and some kid came up to me and was like, yo, what the fuck are you buying and flipping all the Zion? I'm like what? Like just like rumors started to like really bother me.

9:25I'm like listen, I'm willing to like lose on the truth and I'll be accountable for my mistakes and I'm a human, I'll make plenty of them but fucking people fading you on fucking rumors is not fun and I have a reputation that I care about so I was like cool, you don't want me posting about it then I won't post about it. That's one thing I have definitely seen with you in time especially knowing Tyler, Lou, and Jay, it's like, you know, early on, like 2018, like, I think it was the Rich Eisen show. You were on there, you're talking a lot about it, the sports car thing, and you were really voiceless about it.

10:01And then, again, like, I think you deserve a lot of credit for the attention that got brought to the market. It was the perfect timing. There was, you talked about it then, but there was like the storm brewing, we had some big classes, some big names. And then you kind of like fizzled out on it in time as it was like, you were also, you know, the online, it was also like well Gary V's pumping and dumping and but I had known early that like you weren't selling anything that was you know Tyler and Lou had talked a lot about that that like you were buying stuff but actually there was no selling on it involved and you know I think that's you made another point in there where it's like you know you talk about a lot about the the content and how much you're in the hobby I think that's one of the other things that you know I would speak a lot to the audience about is like I think there's a lot of cynicism around you know again there's people that love this, love you, love what you're doing.

10:49And then there's people like, again, that say those things online. Which is fine. And I'm empathetic to it. I don't think those people really understand like, you know, you're really in the hobby. You're really a part of it. It's a big piece of who you are now. Yeah. And by the way, I don't have the audacity to think they should. Ryan, the most important thing in a man's life is humility. I don't have the audacity that Ricky Thompson, who flips vintage baseball cards and thinks I'm a dickface, should spend an hour looking into me. That part. I also know that Ricky's wrong. So you can imagine how easy it is to sleep when you don't have the audacity to have expectations of others and you know the truth.

11:41It makes it easy. So look, a lot of people here, they've seen me grind at the National. They see my face light up. They've seen me in card stores in the tri-state area with my son. They, like, do you understand how many hours me and Rips, my beloved Adam Rips, have spent building my non, my fictional character, like rookie card collection the last two years? If I told, we've spent thousands of hours in the last three years trying to buy Scooby-Doo rookie cards and fucking Yogi Bear and fucking Betty Boop and Popeye. And that's because that became a thing, that's like the thing I think I'm most fascinated by right now.

12:18Like I think the hobby is in an incredible place. I really do. Like I actually think it's in a better place than people realize. That's what I was going to ask you. Better. You know, you got it. You were big on it in 2018. You get into it. You made a brief appearance at the Cleveland National in 2018. Yes. I was going to go incognito. I knew this. Rips like texted his dad. He's like, find this man. Yeah, we had Ned at that point. and I was like, people would say, Gary's here. And I'm like, oh, that sucks. 2019, it sucks because I missed. No, no, it sucks because he wasn't there. Yeah, it sucks because I missed.

12:49T-Rock didn't have the context. It sucks Gary was there. 2019, you go to Chicago. By the way, at that Cleveland show, I bought a bunch of poor Zyngas rookies. I'm going to burn those fuckers. Today's game three as we record this, I'm very, very nervous about today. I'm very, very nervous about this next Celtics season. Like the Knicks fans are way over the top. I literally called AJ two days ago. I'm like, we're gonna lose in six, aren't we? Like, I'm like fucking nervous. But go ahead, sorry. That was like a PSA for the game. But you got into it. You were bullish on it then. How do you feel today?

13:22I've been bullish on it the whole way. Obviously, there was a needed price correction. But because the COVID, like obviously I feel very good about what I did for the hobby and contributed to the hobby. The math is the math. Like the math is very clear. Everyone can go do max data analysis of Card Ladder very easily and see from the day I showed up to the day before COVID what happened in the market. And then obviously COVID created another event. And obviously that created some really speculative pricing. When we all went back to real life and had other things to do besides being stuck in our home and being fully 100 % digital, the demand curve changed.

14:02The supply curve went up. The speculation energy went through the roof during that time. I've been saying this this week and I think it really captures how I feel. Jackson Dart is not gonna be speculated in his upcoming product the way that Mac Jones was and I think that's why I'm so confident in the hobby. Jackson Dart one of ones are still gonna be expensive. Definitely by my standards of when like an$8 Greg Jeffries was a billion dollars in the 80s but it's not gonna be the prices and I think what has happened is this has never happened in the hobby where it exploded then had a real heavy price correction and then got hot again all in such a small window that every person listening has learned so much that they know how to navigate tomorrow that is amazing that's one two content on content on content this all the breakers content creators it will be in the lexicon forever in the 80s when this was exploding and the 90s one news program might do a three minute segment on cards are getting hot around the country and that was it the reason this won't ever be like the junk wax era and go to zero is the baseball i don't know if the ogs tell you this the baseball strike coinciding with the junk era was insanely bad for the hobby really yeah let me explain something most of you kids don't know but the ogs definitely know this is stuff i talked to with the 50 year old plus crowd at the National.

15:35Baseball cart, you might have noticed this, Tyler, you might have noticed, I still call them baseball cards a lot, I slip up, right? I'll talk about, I'll be like, I'll talk about a basketball card or something, I'll be like baseball card. Baseball was the entire market. I was buying 86, 87 Fleer rookies because I loved basketball for nothing. That was like the premium thing, like everybody even then knew 86, 87 Fleer was legit. and it was all pre-grading so it was raw but it was like$40 for an Elijah one. I was like, you know. Baseball was the whole market. Baseball cards, even though 91, 2, 3 you started to see basketball and football come, you have no idea.

16:15It was 90 % of the market. So now it's 90 % of the market. We have an influx of junk wax era. There's no media to support the momentum. It just happened organically and now the baseball strike comes and everyone's like, fuck baseball. People were dead. I especially because I was a Yankees fan and we were good that year. I hadn't won a World Series yet. The Expos got fucked. It was terrible. Anyway, that was it. So, that can't be replicated. The COVID thing, the momentum, the flippers, the sneaker flipper, but you have more collectors. This is why I actually think the non-sports thing is huge for the hobby.

16:51Let me paint you a story of a kid that's in line in your store right now waiting for us. he's nine years old he collects Pokemon but his family are Browns fans and he hasn't started collecting sports cards maybe a little bit he's gonna be 13 and he's gonna be all in Pokemon and then that's gonna lead him to start collecting sports cards because he's a Browns fan or the Cavs are gonna have the number one pick and it's gonna be the next guy I don't think people in the sports collecting realm understand that the non-sports thing is gateway drugging for them it's very big and I actually see another phenomenon which is why I've gone so deep into vintage fictional character cards I've done Comic Con twice now for VFriends the price difference between Amazing Stories 15 Spider-Man's first appearance and the 66 Marvel first Spider-Man rookie card the price values are like right but I'm seeing something every Comic Con I also search the bulletin boards the social media content and then the Chrome stuff with Marvel and Disney I can feel the Comic Con crew getting seduced into our world and when they show up this is going to get real good I believe there's a huge influx of people that collect toys and comic books and Funko Pops that are about to get into cards that are non-sports and then that will be huge and then that will get them into sports and that will be super huge.

18:35And so I'm always fascinated when people fade. They're like, we don't do Pokemon or fuck that shit, that's garbage. This thing is doing good for you. If you're speculating prism football rookie quarterbacks or now obviously Topps has all the like, Like if you're gonna be all about chrome, you know, super fractures of future NBA and NFL rookies, like you should be thrilled what Pokemon's doing. You should be rooting for me to pull off this miracle I'm trying to pull off and everything else that's happening, Magic the Gathering in one piece. And I don't get how people think life is or. This is all and.

19:13You know, I'm obviously doing my tour. I'm in some breaker stuff popping in. Some of the hardest core Pokemon people are like, fuck this shit. I'm like, you don't get it. I'm like, I get it. Why are they like that? But I'm like, you don't get it. You want me to pull this off because that's good for your Pokemon collection because I'm going to onboard a million people in the next decade to be friends and they're going to leave and go. And that's what happened in NFTs. I onboarded everyone. They went to BoardApe. They went to Pudgy Penguins. They went to Doodles. That makes me happy because I'm going to get mine.

19:43No matter what anybody thinks, if they think I'm the best or I'm the worst, neither party is going to stop me. I'm not gonna get too high on my supply and I'm gonna stay humble on the people that say I'm the goat and the people that say I fucking suck, I'm gonna stick it to their fucking face regardless. Sure.

20:02No, I get it. That's what's gonna happen. Yeah. I could die and that would suck. I won't know the difference, but that would be bad. But other than that, if God willing, that doesn't happen, don't let me stick around for another 50 years and get to 99 because I am going to build this. This and by the Jets. Yeah, I mean, look, this is probably my clearest path to the Jets. Do you know how much Pokemon's worth? Bowload. How much? Look, guess. I know you don't know. Guess.

20:35Five billion. A hundred. Oh, my gosh. Pokemon is worth$100 billion. Wow. It's an incredibly valuable IP. And intellectual property in an AI world is going to go up in value even more because most things will be commoditized except the intellectual property, the copyrights, the trademarks. So, you know, people can underestimate, but I really hope you have a box of Chrome in your house right now. We definitely have to rip some today at the event later. But - ChatGPT it. ChatGPT, there we go. ChatGPT is a game changer, man. It's a game changer. Yeah, as a side note, as a complete side note, Every one of you needs to understand everything about AI because you're all probably very young in the scheme of life, under 70, and you've got a lot to do with it.

21:25Yeah, ChatGPT is crazy, crazy. We're all right, looking it up now. Yeah. I think it would be brand versus market, but nonetheless. Go ahead. What is, you hinted at a little bit. 150. Yeah, it's going up by the nanosecond. 150 billion, according to ChatGPT. so you're light by 50 billion. That might be the market though. Yes, market. Insane. Anytime revenue. Yeah, so I mean it's worth 100 billion. You talked a little bit about it earlier but as we sit here today like one year, five year, 10 year what's coming for you and your friends? Yeah, I mean I think what's coming for me is I'm gonna segue out of being I've been putting 15 hours a day into VaynerX the last two years.

22:09My marketing company. You know that's the other thing that's funny about me. People are like he's a motivational speaker. I'm like, I'm the CEO of a 2 ,800 person global advertising agency that has completely rocked Madison Avenue in the ad world that's doing$350 million a year in revenue. A year. That's what I do. While I'm building VFriends, while I'm building the most aggressive, fastest growing sports agency in the world called VaynerSports with my brother, Sauce Garden, Aiden Hutchinson, Beau Bichette. Braxton Miller was there. We have a post about this. Yes, yes, yes. We have a post about this from 2016.

22:42Yes, Brax was one of our first baguettes. I love Brax, such a good dude. And so, you know, look, the reality is that what's next is the following. 2026 Chrome's gonna be a, 2026 Topps, Be Friends, is gonna be interesting. I'm trying to give you some scoops. I'm trying to think what I can give you that it's allowed. Here's what I can give you. Rips and I have meaningful meetings coming up with Topps to talk about 26. What do I mean by that? I mean like a broad Sapphire release. I'd be shocked if we don't have that. I'd be shocked if we don't have multi-packs. Like I already have the mega box insert that I want to create for the mega boxes.

23:25So I'd like to see that in 26. I'd like to see a bigger production run tops. Can someone clip this and send it to Mahan and Ruben? I'd like to see a bigger production run because I don't want the run up on the price. I'm not trying to oversupply. oversupply can only be oversupply when it's way over the demand. The demand is real, real. Like, people don't, like, I can't wait for people to understand how many people collect. Actually, I think three days in, the hobby is starting to realize how many people collect VFriends. The eBay comps are bananas and I think people think, it's like, Rip said something to me about, I asked him about one of the Facebook groups.

24:05He's like, oh, the hobby's moved on and I laughed. I'm like, we're not gonna allow them to move on. You know, I said that to myself, this is the first time Rips is hearing it. Anyway, so what's gonna happen? I think we're gonna make an incredible 26 product. That's where some of these other characters are gonna be. Yeah, we have about 150 characters that are not in this set. A lot of the biggest ones have learned a lot about the inserts and what I wanna do. I'd like to see if we expand into other tops, you know, places. I take note, right? I walk into a hobby store and I see X-Men and Finest, right?

24:40And I'm like, hmm. You know, like I'm thinking, right? I grew up obsessed with Stadium Club. I know that Stadium Club has not been a, you know. Pokemon Stadium. Yeah, and ironically, VFriends has in the cartoons, if you have a kid under nine, please go to vfriends.com slash cartoons. The whole premise of that cartoon on YouTube Kids is VFriends battle each other in the V-Dome. Yeah, it's how they were saying that. They got rivalries, they got stories. Yeah, if you look at the back, if you're listening right now while you have some VFriends cards in front of you from Chrome, turn the back around.

25:15The back's very important. It has my original art, but it also says, and pay attention, we do nothing by accident. Competitive advantage. End quote. So that's exciting. We have a super stickers product, Ryan, that we carved out of our top steel that we make that is very big in our world. Like again, if somebody's listening right now with a computer or phone, which I assume they have, if you go to eBay right now and type in VFriends super stickers, they're a head nod. At the National? We did. In fact, brother. Crazy. In fact, thank you, bro. I always love when you do this, bro. This is my favorite part of what you do.

25:55Like go to completed items. So, and sold. The ones at the National become very sought after. Ooh, somebody snagged the PSA mag rips. Why don't people do buy it now with new stuff? Just list it at a dollar and let the market cook for you. Anyway, this is new. We're on the cover of PSA Magazine. It's hitting home. With the PSA Magazine, did you get this in there? Literally, as we're sitting here right now, as you can see, they're all new listings. PSA Magazine is hitting homes in the last 24 hours. The fictional one. And V Friends is the feature brand this month, which is huge for us. We wanted to hook those people up, so we put a pack of super stickers in there as you're seeing on the screen right now.

26:36That is a very big deal in BeFriends world so I think a bunch of people that have randomly got this PSA magazine are getting stunned with what they're selling it for. But we do that and so we're thinking a lot about holding people over to 26 Chrome. We've always sold those direct-to-consumer on Fanatics Live and PSA, excuse me, and whatnot. I am actually thinking about bringing it a little more broad to the market. You may hear from us in a couple weeks, couple months. so super stickers is going to be a big part but then comics if you want to put up that like comics this is something I'm really excited I think by the time 26 Chrome comes out you're going to see a real real universe of real demand for VFriends cards because I think people are going to fall in love with these characters through the comic book storytelling in fact on the image you were just looking now, if you go back to it real quick, the top right, only 555 comics.

27:37That was given to our NFT holders that hold Gift Goat. That was J. Scott Campbell cover, if you know that world, huge get for us. That comic's red hot. Number two, which came in a blind bag that you're seeing on the screen to the left there, that's the origin story of the Fearless Ferry, which is one of our big characters. We've literally had people collecting VFriends for four years who have their favorite character locked in, have literally spent four years collecting, spending money, caring, maxing, and literally after reading the comic number two that just came out are like, I like Fearless Ferry more now.

28:10That's called storytelling. That's called using your imagination. That's a big fucking deal and we're gonna do a lot of that. I love it. Well, obviously, I would love to sit here and chat with you forever, but we do have a trade day to get to. How much time do we have? One more minute. How much time do we have left? Because I want to talk about one thing. Six. Six minutes? Let's talk about, like, thank you for that, but let's talk about general card hobby. Okay. What, I'm gonna reverse it, almost like you're on my podcast. What is most interesting for you right now? Like, a trend that is, like, on the cutting edge.