The Business of Scarcity: Nightclubs, Trading Cards and Collectible Drops 📉 E171

23:58Dan Fleyshman:they're almost you know they're celebrated for that thousand dollar beef case yeah yeah you know all the all the different all the different presentations are so well done and they're done at the right times and you know we've been trying you know we've been doing this sort of thing in the nightclub for many years with the bottle presentations and all these you know these things that happened and he took that he took that into a restaurant space right and and you know is rewarding people for this thousand dollar steak you know and branding and it becomes this whole experience that you know this is somebody's whole night experience sometimes now instead of going to the club you know they'd rather spend their money on a full experience i'm kind of the same way now i'm kind of the same way now a great dinner and the things that are kind of happening it feels like you're in a almost like in a club and they're open till midnight so exactly you know and people are dancing in there on the tables and they're having a great time.

24:50So he's changed really what the traditional, uh, dining experience is into a nightlife experience, you know? And so I think that's where he's really won, you know, uh, nurse set. I went to a couple of those, you know, I actually had some great meal, a great meal at both of them. Um, but you know, you're not going to get him doing that every time, you know, the people that are, that are trying to redo it whenever they do it,

25:12Dan Fleyshman:you're like, ah, bro, you know, And so like they, they, they just, you know, also, you know, he, he did some public things that put him in a bad light, you know, which I think, yeah. And I think that really hurt him, um, from that aspect. But I think, I think, um, Poppy's really built a great, uh, a great brand for himself. I do believe that he will go to a bunch of different cities. Um, I think he, it brings fun, you know, it brings fun in dining, you know, and when you're thinking about like, where are we going to go? we want to have a good time for dinner right you know a couple places pop right into your mind and poppy's is one of those yes okay let's talk about the charity side why do you think it's important for nightclubs or restaurants to get their staff to go do charity work in their city whether it's feeding the homeless going to children's hospitals not about writing checks right it's easy for town group or household names to just write here's 10 grand or 100 grand whatever it's a charity talk about getting the staff the the bottle service girls the bartenders the the busters etc why why get them involved in the local community?

26:16You know, the most valuable asset we have is time, you know, so getting the staff's time to go and, you know, work at one of these charities, you know, help raise funds, you know, they're giving back to the city in a way that I think every corporation really should, you know, and find some kind of philanthropy within their company. You know, obviously they're doing very well, you know, Tao Groups and some of these ones that are doing very well, but even the ones that aren't and are still finding time to do these type things. I mean, it's, it's a really, it's a real way to connect with your community and help people for me.

26:52You know, it's a, it's a big cause I've, I like helping people. And so it's always been something I've looked at within the companies I work with because it's also a team bonding experience, you know, and get them, getting them, getting them outside their, their comfort zone, maybe at times, but giving back is an important thing that I think all of us, you know, should,

27:11Dan Fleyshman:should take note of. The companies that do do it, I really appreciate it. You know, when I see Tao Cares or, you know, these other type initiatives, I think it's important for the culture of those companies, you know, to give back to people, you know, I mean, especially in a lot of these ones where, you know, people are making a lot of money and they're doing really well, you know, giving back is important. I see, what's that bottle of the little red can over there? Oh, that's my nice. My nice, you want one? Can you explain what nice is? so nice is a new product i'm gonna go ahead and show you nice is a new product that we just launched uh nicotine brand you know we just uh we had just engage you when the uh the the biggest house the the biggest fight ever at the white house yeah you know which was i haven't been that um i haven't been that nervous for a fight in a long time you know he's like a five to one underdog even though he's such a great fighter he's up against someone that was generation fighter he put him down it was insane you know and he was the only american to win a title you know at the white house which was you know a big deal and so you know we we brought on we brought on a lot of fighter ambassadors um you know back to the attention economy it's really you know we're starting there as a niche you know and we've we've started online as our soft you know opening and and getting moving you know but uh products It's, you know, always been in my mind.

28:34And, you know, we have a non-nicotine product that we're also launching alongside this, you know, for energy nootropics. And so, you know, with this product, you know, we're in a space where there's a lot of competition. And, you know, doing all the things that we can to stand out, you know, as you know, some of these things, like with the chain and the merch. And, you know, looking at all the different ways that, you know, we can stand out, we can bring fun to what we're doing. and the ambassadors also you know have a good time you know working with the brand itself

29:07Dan Fleyshman:there's so many companies or products that you could choose to work with why nice why this one what made it stand out for you to say you know what i'm going to put my roll my sleeves up and work on this well honestly you know mio um the ceo um we've been we've been partners in in multiple companies um and he had this vision you know he's most of the team is from sweden and and this product has been very popular yeah very popular in Sweden for like 20 years you know we're seeing this crazy kind of influx of it right now and for me you know I had actually you know I was working with ignite for a little bit and the vapes and I started getting stuck on those things and when I moved over to a pouch you know and I first started you know was in you know it was just such a good changeover and to get rid of that nicotine vape the vapes are the worst thing and I couldn't stand the fact that I was doing them.

30:00And so when I switched over and I started trying the product at the same time, you know, Mio was like, we need to build this. We need to do, you know, we need to build our own company. You know, like I have all the right guys from Sweden. And he was able to bring in a team of people who helped build Zen and Swedish Match and some of like the very popular brands that you see now. And so, you know, with that, it was, you know, let's just, we got to build a strategic plan and a marketing plan that, you know, I have a lot of experience in this space, you know, specifically. So it was really the team that kind of came together that made me feel very confident about jumping into it.

30:41Dan Fleyshman:So if you notice the running theme of all these questions I keep asking or we keep discussing is the people. When I invest into companies, I'm betting on the team. I'm betting on the founders. when he's deciding if he's going to join a company or product. What did he say three or four times? It's the team. It's the people. It's the CEO. You have to bet on those people. Kind of like when I mentioned the restaurant nightclub thing, like it's ride or die. Starting a business is hard. Running a business is hard. Keeping a brand going four years later as a restaurant or a nightclub is hard. A lot of restaurants and nightclubs fade away after a couple of years.

31:14Why do these brands stick around for 5, 10, 20 years?

31:18Dan Fleyshman:like the names we've been mentioning, Dave Grutman, Jason Strauss, Andrew Sassoon. These are all icons and legends in the restaurant nightclub space. They are ride or die. You still see Dave Grutman at the nightclubs that live at two in the morning. He's still there. He doesn't have to be there. He's very, very wealthy. He's literally there at two in the morning. You still see Jason Strauss flying to his properties all over the world and you see him with black coffee. I don't know how he does it sometimes. Sometimes he'll do New Year's in two cities and celebrate New Year's twice in the same day.

31:46Dan Fleyshman:Yeah. Sydney, Australia. Yeah. And so. Four birthday parties. Right. Ride or die is the point of this. And we keep talking about the people. And so when people pitch you, restaurants, nightclubs, clothing brands, whatever the thing is that people are pitching you, do you believe this person is ride or die? Do you believe that when things get hard two and a half years from now, they're going to fight through it? Because they're always going to get hard. No matter what stage, zero to one million, super, super hard. One million to five million, you've got to roll your sleeves up and get to work. 5 million, 10 million, systems and processes.

32:19Dan Fleyshman:20 million, 30 million, 40 million, 50 million, things break. You got to fire a lot of staff because the same person that got you to 1 million is not getting you to 50 million. It's just not the same person. They don't have the experience. Same person that's doing 50 million, not going to help you do it at 300 million. They don't have that experience. And so things break, things get hard. You're always constantly firing and hiring. There's so much that goes on. You need to find people that you believe two and a half years from now are still going to be ride or die. And also, if you're raising money, do you love the thing?

32:49Dan Fleyshman:You've got to love the restaurant space. You've got to love the nightclub space. You've got to love music, clothing, sneakers, whatever that thing is that you care about. You've got to know that you love it because things get hard no matter how good things are going. Things still get hard. J-Rock, walk us through where can they find you on social, the brands, all things that are going on. Tell them everything. I am J-Rock on social. You can see me there. Nice.com. you'll see that if you follow Justin Gagey you know he's been rocking the brand Trustfall technology group you know I don't want to I don't want to get the the email wrong and then Nevada production partners you know getting into film and and trying to make some movies and shows and whatnot you know like tens of thousands square feet you've been working over there yeah tell us about that real quick yeah so you know opened a a film studio and a production company, you know, again, trying to see where there's, there's, there's white space, um, you know, in the market specifically in Hollywood's had a tough time and, you know, we've had this possible Hollywood 2.0 and, you know, uh, I was looking in gaming and understanding, you know, better the internet culture.

33:58And, you know, it kind of came about from a dream I've had a long time ago and saw an opportunity and found some good people and I'm running towards it, you know? So right now we're in the phase of rentals inside the studio space, but our whole goal there is really to fill it all with our own IP and our own shows. But right now we are launching out and taking in different rentals from podcasts to full production commercials and others. So got that moving, and that hasn't been easy. It's a new category for me. but taking you know the the business practices and the entertainment side of things that i've learned and applying it you know so it's a it's it's a mountain that i'm climbing yeah you know i'm i'm addicted to climbing those mountains the game is fun so as you guys know i've been

34:49Dan Fleyshman:running this commercial free for over three and a half years now hundreds and hundreds of episodes i do work with high level because i'm actually part of the company like i've been part of the brand for the last year and a half i speak at the high level events i use it it's running my entire backend high level operates it but i don't give out like affiliate codes or discount codes just research high level if you're a course creator etc and fanbases.com fanbases has obviously been something that's powering so much for like 9 000 creators or something crazy like that it was like 4 000 just last year they processed over a billion dollars so if you need merchant account processing check out fanbases also there's no affiliate code i'm just talking about brands that actually are part of my ecosystem because it would help you with your backend and just like i'm saying that Now, if it doesn't apply to you, it might be to a friend or family member or someone later that you're like, oh, yeah, I heard Dan talk about a high level or a fan basis.

35:37Dan Fleyshman:You could refer them. You might be hearing something that J-Rock's talking about, restaurant, nightclubs, the nice products, something in the entertainment space or personal brand space. You're like, wait a minute. I need to refer this to a friend. Forwarding this podcast episode, posting these clips is what helps us stay top 100 podcasts in the world. It's what helps us stay on the top of the charts when it comes to the business and entrepreneur space. Is you guys liking, commenting, and subscribing? I appreciate you guys. Check out J-Rock across social media. We'll see you guys next Monday here at TheMoneyMondays.com.

36:10Dan Fleyshman:Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of The Money Mondays podcast. We cover three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. This gentleman has lived multiple lives in some of the most fascinating companies in pop culture and in human history. I have been involved in them. I've bought from them. I'm a fan of them, et cetera. So we're going to dive deep into that. But first, let me explain a couple of things. One, the average workout is 45 minutes. The average commute to work is 45 minutes. This episode will be between 32 and 37 minutes for your listening pleasure.

36:43Dan Fleyshman:Next, these podcasts are not just for you. It might be for a friend, family, follower, staff, et cetera. Also, it might be for someone from your past, present, or future. So when you listen to these episodes, don't just think about it for yourself. it might be three months from now you're like wait a minute josh said this thing dan said this thing and you forward this episode to them that's called the butterfly effect you might literally change their life by them learning something that helps them save money do something in the industry that they love maybe not do something in industry they don't know about because of things that you heard today so sharing these episodes is truly important to help people in their daily lives now without further ado josh luber give us the quick two minute bio so we get straight to the money thank you very much for having me.

37:28I love dropping into people's business who know exactly what they're doing and how they're doing it. Like just listening to your intro is like, hell yeah. You've done, I mean, how many of these have you done? I've got hundreds. Yeah, that's the best. That's the best. Two minute intro. I was a co-founder of StockX. I left StockX to start Fanatics Collectibles with Michael Rubin, which is the trading card business at Fanatics. I left Fanatics in 2022 to start GhostRite, which is a collectible toy brand that is almost exactly like trading cards. And in the last year, uh, for the first time ever, I'm now running multiple businesses at once.

38:03I've started a, uh, a new company called alligator blood, which is a poker related company that we'll talk about. And, uh, go straight is about to split into two different companies. And, um, and we can talk about that as well. But, um, by the end of the summer, I think there'll be four companies and I've never, I've never not been running one company like the cardinal entrepreneurial rule you know focus focus focus but i think we're now finally at the point where uh yeah we're gonna we're gonna start expanding so

38:30Dan Fleyshman:that's it so i have a rule when it comes to multiple companies i hire what's called a quarterback a ceo to run that company or that division because it's really hard as josh is going to get into and you listen to the next 35 minutes you're going to hear putting on a lot of different hats there's accounting and finance and deliverables and shipping and distribution warehouse, three POs, finance, taxes. I got to hire this person. I got to fire that person. Oh my God. Now times that by four, which is he's talking about right now. So what I do is you hear me talking about restaurants and sports card stores and investments and live events.

39:03Dan Fleyshman:Everyone has its own CEO for cards and coffee, Everwell restaurants, et cetera. Each one has its own CEO running that operation. So we're going to dive into this because Josh has built some major companies. And for the first time in his career, he's decided, you know what, I'm going to juggle four different brands. So let's walk through each brand one by one. Let's go with Ghostright first. Yep. And by the way, the only reason I'm doing that is because I've now identified that quarterback at each of those companies and have worked with those people long enough and trust them and be in the place.

39:31And so I will continue to be the day-to-day CEO of Ghostright for sure. Ghostright is, I mean, God, we've been doing it for four years now. But, you know, you and I sat together in an RV outside of my hotel. And thank you very much for bringing it up and making it easy. I literally walked out my hotel room into an RV. That was All-Star Weekend 2025 in Los Angeles, February. We had been building Ghost Rite as a collectible toy brand at the time, kind of in the image of Bearbrick as a collectible toy brand. And we had just done one blind box at that time, which was the WNBA. And this is just basic startup operations, getting factories in the line.

40:15So we hadn't done any others. And then that summer, August of 2025, we did our first Major League Baseball blind box. And then September was NBA. And not that WNBA isn't great and Caitlin crushed, but baseball and basketball on another level. And overnight, those two blind boxes, and we said, oh, this is a completely different business. And so the ghosts that you see that are 11 inches tall and taller are art, collectible toys, bare brick, cause. This is trading cards. And the first baseball set, the Otani one of one from the first MLB set, sold for$44 ,000 on the resale market. And this is a two-inch plastic.

40:58The irony is that the two-inch ghosts sell for more than the three-foot ghosts. and this represents trading cards in every single way and after years of building the trading card market and being a trading card collector i still buy and sell cards personally every single day

41:12Dan Fleyshman:every day every day i'm on ebay every day you know looking at stuff yeah uh so um now i can recreate it and i actually think now more than i'm more bullish now than ever because now we have licenses with the nba wnba major league baseball nfl wwe ufc u.s world cup team magic the gathering, uh, you know, and there, there's more in the works is that I think that, that ghost right can be on par with trading cards, art watches, you know, any like true collectible alternative asset. And that's the, that's the business that we're building. And it looks like we're, we're, we're playing with toys and we are, but man, like we've copied how trading cards work and it's simple.

41:53They've been doing the same thing for a hundred years and, uh, and it's a pretty fun place to be and in making this product so i i did bring one box that we can open in a minute yeah but um but yeah so that's the basics on ghost right got it and where people check that out ghostwrite.com and and on on instagram um we sell most of our product through trading card breakers so our customers are sports card collectors period full stop and we do sell some wholesale DTC on GhostRite, but most of it goes through big breakers like BLEZ and Backyard and Cards and Coffee. And it's great because we didn't intentionally design it as a breaker product, but man, it is a good breaker product.

42:35It works really well. And so that's where most of it is.

42:38Dan Fleyshman:Got it. Okay. Well, I got more friends to introduce you to then because there's a lot of breakers that we've been working with for the last half a decade that would love to sell this then. I didn't realize it's... I mean, we sell it obviously, but I didn't realize that's one of primary focuses yep yep okay next business walk us through next business so um we'll do this short version of a business that we'll talk about a whole lot more later so ghost right most of the products that we sell on ghost right are sold uh by what's called a blind dutch auction and i'm not going to turn this into economics class although i think it partly is an economics class uh but the short version is a blind dutch auction is a means of pricing a product that allows the market to set a price for the product rather than us setting arbitrary retail price.

43:21And we didn't make this up. It's been used for decades in different areas of finance. The first time we ever did this was back at StockX where we did a couple releases with different people. We did this at Fanatics Collectibles where we did a set with Gary, a vFriends trading card set at Zero Cool. So like this mechanism of pricing products using a blind-debt auction and letting the market set the price.

43:45Dan Fleyshman:Can we do a real-life example real quick? what does that look like sure okay this is like this is the fun part all right so let's say that there's 10 widgets we're selling whatever it is okay uh we market it fully the same way you would market anything so all the pictures and whatever information you would need to know about any product okay now for some set period of time we usually say three days for three days everyone can come and place a bid on that product okay that bid is blind meaning you can't see what anyone else is bidding so i bid 800 bucks you might bid 900 or 200 but i don't know that's right And everyone comes and everyone has the same fair shot to bid.

44:19There's no FOMO. There's no bots. You have plenty of time. You have three days to come and bid whenever you want. Now, your bid is tied to your PayPal, your credit card. So that is true demand. You are saying that I'm bidding$800, and if I'm selected, I will pay$800. We put a hold on your credit card, the whole thing. At the end of that period of time, let's say, again, there's 10 widgets we're selling. We stack rank all the bids. And if there's 10 products, 10 units, they're all the same. the 10 highest bids win they're the ones who are allowed to buy the product but the price is set by what's called the clearing price and the clearing price is the lowest winning bid so in that case would be the 10th highest bid oh interesting and everybody pays the clearing price even the highest so if the highest bid is 1200 for you know 1200 11 87 yep the 20 000 guys pays 900 and it's nine and it's like 900 is the 10th highest bid everybody pays 900 right and And those people all get it for that product and the other people don't get the product.

45:18There's only 10. Now, what that does is it does three things. Super powerful. So first of all, just in the interest of like equitable distribution, everyone's buying the same product at the exact same moment in time. So it would be inequitable for people to pay different amounts. So, okay, we all pay the same amount. No one can argue that's not a fair market price. Everyone is willing to pay at least$900 in that example. But here's the thing is in that case, 9 out of 10 people get the product for less than what they were willing to pay. And obviously if we do a release and there's thousands of products, that ends up being like 99%.

45:48The other person just pays exactly what they pay. And what's really powerful is after the release happens, so everyone pays$900, they take possession of the product. Well, now they can do whatever they want with it. And some people are going to choose to resell the products. So once you go to resell your product and you now put it out on the market in the full market, well, there's some percentage of the population that was willing to pay more than$900, right? So think of those bids as your distribution curve, your sample set. So what happens is, and every time, the resale price will be greater than the clearing price but less than the highest bid.

46:30And so it ensures that people can flip the product and make a little bit of money if they want. Now, they can all say they got a deal. Maybe the clearing price was$900 and the resale price is$1 ,300. So you can keep it. You can make a couple bucks, right? And so the brand ends up getting more money than they would normally get because you have this mechanism to price it fair to market. But the customer gets it for less than what they're willing to pay and less than what the market says. And so we built GhostRite. The entire business was built to show that we could run a brand using this theory.

47:05And we did. And every single Ghost that we've released, the resale price in the period of time directly after release is greater than the clearing price to a T. Now, over time, demand changes, time changes. And the whole purpose of Ghostwrite was that. And then last summer when we created baseball and basketball blind boxes, we were like, oh man, this is a really big business and I don't want to disturb this. But the whole purpose of Ghostwrite was blind edge auction, market-based pricing. And so we are going to evolve Ghostwrite and we're going to split the two companies and there's going to be a marketplace.

47:41It's the retail half of StockX's resale business. This is what I've been trying to build for a decade. We try to do this at StockX, we try to do this at Fanatics Collectibles. And along the way, we build a product that I think is going to be extraordinarily interesting and valuable and go strike the core toy brand. And so we're going to split the two businesses. And this is, uh, I guess this is breaking news because we're literally in the process of doing it right now, legally and financially. And so there'll be a company that'll call chase and chase will be a retail marketplace for brands to release products using a blind attention and blind boxes and everything else.

48:14And then go strike the collectible toy brand will be a separate company. So right now they're, they're the same they'll split apart and i now know who the quarterback is for chase right and i'll still oversee everything but i'll be day-to-day go straight there'll be a quarterback at chase but these two businesses are sort of like spun out of one wow that was fun and then this week

48:33Dan Fleyshman:i saw in the poker world when the main event was going on this article go viral and a lot of people start talking about it you got michael the grinder mizraki main event champion and four-time champion of the hardest tournament on the planet to win sometime somehow he won it four times phil hum youth has the most poker bracelets in history. Both of them, both of them are on my$25 ,000 fantasy team. You can go to 25kfantasy.com. I saw you in that room. I was like, oh, good pick. It's a running joke. I booked Hellmuth every single time. I draft Hellmuth in the 25k fantasy draft every single year.

49:04Dan Fleyshman:He always stops by for like three minutes to film a video just to make sure I did it. And Michael Mizraki, I've booked, I've drafted every single time for 14 years, except for last year when he won the main event and the 50k tournament. Okay. what is alligator blood walk us through it what i mean just to give you a quick context alligator blood came from a movie called rounders rounders is far and away the biggest poker movie of all time hopefully they're making rounders too they keep saying that they are and it feels like it's going to happen but rounders is if you haven't seen it go watch it it is the movie in the poker space it's fun it's interesting it has matt damon some great characters that are in there but alligator blood is a line from the film from matt damon winning a poker hand All right.

49:47Dan Fleyshman:Dive in. What is alligatorblood.com? So before I do that, what year did you start your first poker business? So we launched in 2009. 2009. 2009. Yes. Antonio Sfundari, Dan Bilzerian, DJ Steve Aoki. I mean, social media was just kind of getting started. We had like MySpace and YouTube back then and some tweets. And that's about it. That's right. Yeah. So you've been in the in the poker business world for for a very long time. We both played poker all our lives. I played poker since 1999. Yep, same year. I was 18. Yeah. At the Indian Casinos. I was 21. I lived in Philly. We'd go down to the Trop, Atlantic City.

50:27I lived in Atlanta. We used to drive to Biloxi to play. But I'm like the definition of a rec player. I would go sit down at one, two with 200 bucks and see if we could make it last all night. And then in 21, when I moved to Austin, I found my way to the lodge and met Doug Polk and met a bunch of people and sort of got involved in that group. And about two years ago when Gigi bought the World Series and I was sort of watching Doug Polk has a number of different businesses, one of which was Upswing Poker, which is a training site. And WPT bought Upswing. And man, for the first time ever, after all these years of sitting at a poker table.

51:04By the way, the only reason that I can play poker is because it can be on my phone at the table and basically crush email. Everyone on my team knows when I'm at a poker table because I get a barrage of emails and texts. But it really is a perfect side hobby for an entrepreneur. And so for the first time ever, I started thinking, I was like, man, what business would I create if I was going to create a business in poker? Because I've always sort of like shied away from that. And it just so happens that I have a lot of connections to the poker industry for trading cards, for GhostRite. Jared Blesnick is probably our largest wholesale breaker of Ghost.

51:42Super good poker player. Right. And Phil Helmuth and Jeff Gross have been investors in numerous companies, including GhostRite and including some previous companies. So I've known a lot of these guys and, you know, just looking at the poker, it was like, man, the poker industry is so incredibly fragmented. And but everyone is some form of small business, even like your average player. And everything is geared towards the tournaments. Everything is geared towards the vocal minority of, you know, the people that we see. Yeah. But it's so small. There's so few of them. Right. So the idea was I think that the poker industry is right for essentially a social network.

52:22And it's kind of an antiquated concept because this is what we were building in 2010 and 2011, these like niche social networks. But I think that poker is this like Goldilocks industry with like the nature of the people. And by the way, the growth that's happening again in poker. I mean, main events back on ESPN, like, you know, we're sort of like riding the coattails of prediction markets and fantasy sports and legal sports gambling that I think the poker is about to go through another boom. And so it's like, man, it's so fragmented. There's so much value in being able to bring this together.

52:54And it's so inherently social in real life, but it is so disconnected externally. So we're building Facebook for poker. it's the most basic business that you can think of but it only works if you get everybody you literally this is you're either facebook or your friendster you either you can you build up and so it's feast or famine and so i was like all right i think this is the the big idea i think that in the poker industry this is real but we're only going to do it if we can get everybody how can we how can we get over that like chicken the egg like internet 101 you know it's hard to get people until you have a lot of value.

53:32It's hard to create value.

53:35Dan Fleyshman:So I was like, well, we know these guys. And so we put together, for lack of maybe a less cool word, a steering committee. And it's a group of like 10 or 15 of the most important poker players in the world who all said, hey, we will support you from day one. And it's Phil, it's Doug Polk, it's Alan Keating, it's Grindr, Blez, Schwan Liu, Ryan Feldman, Ben Roll, Corey Eyring, Kevin Martin. and sort of have this group of people to like help us jumpstart this thing. And so we just opened the waiting list two days ago. It's kind of cool, like gaming mechanic or giving away some money as part of it.

54:14But, you know, maybe like two to three months from now, we'll open it up. And like it's building social network from scratch, man. And like it's a it's so much fun to be building poker business with all these guys and friends. And I just love playing poker. So very cool.

54:27Dan Fleyshman:all right since you have a lot of options obviously people bombard you with different things to work on projects how did you decide on these projects when you have access to the world you know so many athletes celebrities investors billionaires zillionaires people fans every sports cards you know so many people in different worlds and ecosystems how do you decide what you're going to put your time and energy and money into yeah you know the um there was a time where i intentionally i intentionally avoided working on product projects that i had personal interest in i used to think that you know like pre-stock x i i created a number of startups none of which had any of the success of stock x but i almost thought like i didn't want to create a sneaker business because it felt like just an excuse to play with sneakers.

55:18I felt like I had to like be in, you know, like the business world and outside of it. And I think there's probably some irony here, but the first business that I ever built in like a true personal passion of mine was the first one that ever became successful. And then from there, it's been a very organic evolution of all things that are connected. All these products are the same sneakers, streetwear, collectibles trading cards right they're all supply and demand they're all you know resale and authentication and tie into the intersection of culture and commerce and so for me it's just been an evolution of really the the same um the same theory and honestly the the blind auction pricing mechanism have kind of become like a accidental economist through this like that's the fun like part of that's like the nerd of me that like just really wants to just build this thing i mean we they did a a case study in harvard business review about this concept back in 2019 the first time that we ever did a blind edge auction for a release and so like it was so exciting for someone i have a grad school and law school and business like have this like this this sort of like uh you know economics nerd to have this validation by these harvard professors that were on something like and so this is the stuff that that gets me excited and It happens to be this intersection with, you know, the most interesting products in the world today with the way the trading card industry is going and everything else.

56:41And so, yeah, this is like this is me through and through. I'm just like happen to be that every man of like I'm 48 years old. This is all the stuff we collected as kids. And I just get to be the guy who creates business on it. And like it's a pretty fun place to be.

56:54Dan Fleyshman:So on the investing side of the space, why is it that people should consider investing into sports cards, Pokemon collectibles? Why is that an interesting category since we've been seeing a lot of memes, stories, news articles about family offices are investing now. Funds are coming together to invest now. Sovereign wealth is thinking about buying big collections and investing into the space. But also your everyday person that lives in Montana is buying and investing in cards. And we're also seeing the comparison to S &P 500 versus Pokemon, et cetera. Talk to us about the investing side of the collectibles industry.

57:27You know, we wrote a white paper called The Blind Boxification of Everything that we published in February. It was 140 pages and it was kind of a deep dive into the current state of the trading card market and just blind boxes everywhere, you know, a little boo-boo. And, um, but you know, the, the, the interesting, um, thing that's going on with, with repacks, right. With a repack for, for anyone doesn't know is if you think of a trading card, um, product where a company like tops makes trading cards and then they, they sell it. Um, this would be any random person can buy their own a hundred cards and put it in a box and sell it to you.

58:08And so this idea of the market continuing to evolve how trading cards are bought and sold, which is, well, I don't want to go down that far too far. Let's just back this up. Trading cards became standardized assets on grading. And once that happens, if you look at the macro size of the trading card market, and it's so accessible, it's so easy for anyone at any price point at any level to be able to buy and engage in that. As a starting point, it makes it so much more interesting to come into this industry. Like we've been comparing this to like these collectibles that have come and gone stamps and coins and trains and like all this thing that come and went, that were fads around just the demand part of it.

59:04But the supply of trading cards is so solid. It's so big. It's liquid. It's finite. You know, I'm rambling a little bit. But if you like strip away the like if you strip away the the the idea that the trading card is like a kid's product and you look at the economics of it, of how it stacks up to actual financial assets and stocks in terms of its liquidity and how it's bought and sold and everything else. Like it's almost identical. Like it is it is identical. And so but it's also then more accessible and you have brands that actually create it and push it and market it. No one is marketing stocks.

59:46No one's marketing financial assets to the public and creating this. And so it's this really like, I don't know, I'm rambling a little bit, but it is an extraordinary time where I think we've crossed a threshold. And I think the trading cards are the only true collectible. They're the only, everyone else has like art, watches, handbags. You know, they all have little problems that will prevent it from being this big long-term value. But trading cards don't. Trading cards are this like egalitarian, like massive. Anyway, I'm realing. But I'm so excited about where we're at. And there's going to be ups and downs.

1:00:33And by the way, and so we've tried to create GhostRate in the image of trading cards in every way. and people still have to want to own it and buy it and we still have a long way to go we've been making ghost blind boxes for a year trading cards has been 150 years but um trading cards are not going away trading cards are not going away can we open it can we see it yeah so uh it's a somewhat uh interesting day to do this as uh we're filming this the day after the u.s got knocked out by belgium but it was a good run it was a good run and it's fun um so most uh ghost right blind boxes are 12 ghosts and this happens to be a six pack because it's just for the US men's team and most are based on the season so the NBA set that we released earlier this year was this past season so it had Cooper Flagg and Dylan Harper and Vijay Edgecombe rookies in addition to all your stars so you're trying to find the stars that you want Christian Pulisic is probably your best hit but then you also want the rare variants the same way you would in trading cards so the fire crown the red shiny one at stature one of one chrome is number to five gold is number to ten um so we'll let you uh open it there's uh there's six boxes i'll open one or two with you but you can get it started and um they're guaranteed to have one hit per box uh the hits will range from numbered from uh there's a little pull tab there from from uh numbered to 100, 50, 25, 10, 5, and 1.

1:02:01And then there's also one short print, which is the mascot, which is Banner. So we want Polisic, we want Balogun, and we want one of the rare ones.

1:02:16All right.

1:02:18Dan Fleyshman:Talk us through it. All right, so I wish I could say that we intentionally made it this way, but it's such a good breaker product, And this is why so much of our product gets sold through Breakers is we open it up. Inside, there's going to be a little foil bag. And, Dan, there's a little notch on one of the sides right there. And so when Breakers open this and they create all the excitement, they're way better than me at it. And so they'll pull it up and there'll be a little, let's see what crown. So this looks like it's a base. And we got Tim Weah. and um you know they're uh they're wearing their their black unis here man who we got and uh back is uh tyler adams okay so here's our first two so far neither of which is the hip uh tim weah tyler adams and um every ghost on the bottom of the foot has the um production quantity so why so why is numbering production quantity why is it important why is limited runs important Well, it's even less so than limited than just transparency into supply.

1:03:24Again, all of this is supply and demand, and collectors need to understand how many of something that exists to create value and to build your basic market liquidity around it.

1:03:35Dan Fleyshman:There's 334 PSA 10 Michael Jordan rookie cards. Exactly. The number's burning my brain. There may be one or two that pop up in the future, but it's unlikely. That's right. That's right. Why does that matter? Why does 334 PSA 10 Michael Jordans matter for a market? Because if you want to own one, right, there's a finite number, and there's way more than 334 people that want to own the greatest. It's a legend. Right? And some people own more than one. In fact, we know people that own many of them. Yeah. And, like, that's the foundation of any financial asset is understanding supply. So, boom. So here we have our parallel and an interesting story.

1:04:13Okay, so this is Diego Luna, who has been on the U.S. national team for many years and was not on the World Cup roster. I think he got injured. And so he's actually in our set. And this is our first what's called a ghost crown. So this is numbered to 100. And so on the bottom, you can see it. It's got production date and then.100. and um so actually this this means that this box is not our greatest box that's that's our uh i'll say our least valuable parallel because they're numbered 100 bucks like this retail for uh 200 bucks um that's fun yeah and uh you know if you hit a implicit goal that's going to be you know a couple grand and then here's uh here's matt turner who maybe some people wish had been and goal yesterday rather than Matt Freeze.

1:05:06And so Matt Turner obviously is a different outfit, also numbered to 1 ,500. So your base are numbered to 1 ,500. Your parallels are 150, 25, 10, and 1. Look, we'll see how Ghost Ride evolves, and we have a long way to go. But the first baseball set, the base were numbered to 1 ,000. Like there are parallels in trading cards that are numbered to 1 ,000, right? So it'll be interesting to see over time how we evolved this number of parallels and continue to grow but so for someone that's

1:05:38Dan Fleyshman:creating a brand and they want to go get a licensing deal or a partnership how did they go talk to and this is the olympics and you've got nba and wwe and household name like the undertaker like how are you getting these brands like let's say how you how would someone go out and try to talk to these huge corporations if they want to do it with their clothing brand like there's a brand called Young LA, like the t-shirt brand that, you don't realize they actually did like$100,$200 million in sales and just did a big deal with like Looney Tunes or some brand. How do you go get a brand partnership type deal?

1:06:11Dan Fleyshman:Who do we have here? Sorry, before we go. Yeah, yeah. And there we go. And so we have the man himself, Balogun, and I don't know if maybe the reversal of his red card amped up Belgium a little too much and maybe that's what happened. But anyway, so there's number 20 uh, Bell Gun also base. So, uh, number to 1500 bang. That's what you gotta say. Yeah. So, uh, so we didn't hit a Pulisic and, uh, and we didn't hit one of the, um, the rare ones or the rarest one. Um, but it's still a fun product. And, and for us to be able to create a product for the U.S. men's national team has been, has been awesome.

1:06:46Um, we actually at Fanatics Fest, we'll have a, an alternate U.S. Men's National Team product. That'll be the first time that we have a new parallel system. So our one-of-one is called FIRE. It's Red Shiny Crown. And so at Fanatics Fest, we're introducing ICE, which would be an alternate one-on-one. Well, you guys are hearing this.

1:07:06Dan Fleyshman:Fanatics Fest is actually happening this week. So Fanatics Fest, if you're in New York City, over 100 ,000 people will be in attendance. Michael Rubin at Fanatics has built this humongous event. Josh mentioned earlier he went there in the beginning to start Fanatics Collectibles with Ruben. And now Fanatics Fest has Tom Brady, Kevin Hart, Logan Paul, all these amazing characters, athletes, influencers, et cetera, that are all there for the fans, for the games, et cetera. And so this brand, GhostRite, is going to actually have a booth set up there. So if you're in New York City or you have friends out there, it's definitely a fun event to go to.

1:07:40Dan Fleyshman:It's a four-day experience happening next week. Quickly, to go back to your question, because I think it's a great one about licenses. You know, we're extremely fortunate to have licenses with the NBA, Major League Baseball, NFL, etc. But all of these organizations have licensing departments that their whole job is to find interesting, valuable brands to partner with and to license with. And so they will take your call. They have people there that are more than happy. If you have a brand, if you have, you know, a product to be able to do that and like for young LA to have a Looney Tunes license, they want to license their products.

1:08:16They get money back from it. We pay a royalty of every product to each of the leagues that we license with. Now, obviously, they're going to then do their diligence and decide if they want to work with you and if it's a brand match. And I'm fortunate that because of creating Fanatics Collectibles with Ruben and that we had the relationship with all the sports leagues to be able to create this product. And so we're in a good place. But they are still always looking for great companies to work with. And so just reach out. You can literally look up their licensing departments online and reach out.

1:08:45That's awesome.

1:08:46Dan Fleyshman:okay let's go to the charity side of things let's talk on the brand side why do you think it's important for brands companies to have some sort of charitable element whether it's for their employees inside internally or out liking for the outlook for the brand with investors customers employees etc look i mean at this point it's it's absolutely the the ante to play and you know the number of we've been we've been hiring a lot of people are doing a lot of interviews lately because between all the different companies, the number of, of young employees or young applicants that ask questions around that is at an all time high, right?

1:09:23Like way more than ever was at StockX back in when we were hiring in 2016, 2017, 2018. And, um, you know, that's good. Like, you know, we're, we're happy to have those conversations and happy to do that. And so, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, you know, basically the Andy to play and, and it's an interesting place to be where we're starting companies and we're small, you know, across all of it. And so you have to figure out how you, you fit in. We're fortunate that because we work with these large brands that we usually tie in with the things that they're doing because in particular the MBA, because they're such an important partner for us.

1:09:55Um, but you know, there's, there's, there's a wide range of, um, yeah, there's a wide range of being able to do that.

1:10:02Dan Fleyshman:So, so there's one question I ask on every single episode and I probably asked you last time that I've never gotten the same answer before. So you build up all these companies. You got four companies this year. And who knows, you might have 40 more in the future or you invest into a bunch of other companies. And you make billions of dollars over the years. But unfortunately, at some point, Josh passes away. What percentage of that net worth do you leave to your children? Yeah, you know, it's a really interesting question. So my daughter is 13. My son is 11. And my son is super into all the stuff.

1:10:35He collects Pokemon cards. And he's so into Ghost Rite. Literally every day, every day he comes home and goes, what can we open? Can we open a box? And we have all these boxes in the house, and they're not meant to be opened. I'm like, these things cost money. About a month ago, he asked me, and he said, when you die, can I run Ghost Rite? Wow, interesting. And I was like, well, there's probably some stuff we can do between now and then to do that.

1:11:00Dan Fleyshman:I'm only 48. Yeah, it was it was very it was awesome that he's so into it and he's so he's so interested in the business aspect of it, understand the the the value and how it works and all that. And so I think I would love it to be like the inverse. I would love to be able to be in a place where, you know, I can actually bring my children into the business and for them to understand it and get that education that maybe it's not me leaving them the money as much as it is, you know, me literally passing down the torch. I would love to give the value because he is the CEO of the company and he knows how to run it and get, you know, like that's and give him whatever percentage the company CEO would get and be like, that would be so much more meaningful than any of, you know, than any of, you know, bequeath or stuff like that.

1:11:54And so it's fun. And like, I'm not going to push them, but on his own, it's pretty awesome. Yeah. Yeah.

1:12:01Dan Fleyshman:So if someone's out there and they're considering diving in, there's sports cards, collectibles, Pokemon. You can do sealed video games now. There's just so many things that they could be learning about. How do they research and figure out what they might like or do they have to go back to their childhood to try to remember? Yeah. Look, this was a problem in 2020 when we were starting Finax Collectibles. It's still a problem now in the trading card industry. It is still extraordinarily difficult to really get a handle on everything that's going on. I cannot recommend enough to find a Sherpa, to find a human being that can help you bring it.

1:12:42There's just no, and for me, it was Jason Coons. When I was in Detroit and I met him in 2018, he was my Sherpa back into the industry. And I'm forever grateful for him to do that. But, you know, outside of that, you know, I do think that the materials that Fanatics and Tops are continuing to create are getting better. And I think that they will only get better. They don't have any choice but to get better. And Fanatics being the leading player in the space will do that. So I would say is, you know. But, like, there's so many people that understand what's going on now that it's not like it was five years ago where you're like, oh, you collect cards?

1:13:19Like, you know, we see what's going on. Yeah, Tom Brady's doing it every day. Every day.

1:13:24Dan Fleyshman:Logan Paul posted this morning about it. Guys are, I mean, at the draft, they were signing their cards at the draft live on the, right? It's like AJ DeBonce. Dana White's breaking cards and the guy's a multibillionaire. Exactly. It's just so fun. Exactly. Exactly. All right. Tell us, walk us through real quick, each of the companies, website, social, yourself, et cetera. Yep. Josh Luber at Instagram and Twitter. Ghostrite is underscore ghostrite underscore everywhere. uh alligator blood is uh is gator blood uh on all socials um chase doesn't exist yet but it will um chase is going to be interesting man yeah it's going to be the market-based pricing is the like the economic nerd stuff but like the business is going to be blind box as a service how do we let all brands sell blind boxes even if they're not in that business it's it's yeah so chase is coming soon and by the way i really appreciate you mentioning alligator blood the name because uh a lot of people the first reaction is like wow that's the worst company name i've ever heard that's great uh but like nobody forgets it yeah and obviously it's a deep cut to to rounders and and everything else and as a brand guy i've always been like you either create a brand or you don't but like don't try to cut through the noise when we created the name for stock x the one we fought forever over the name but the one rule everyone agreed on is it's not going to have the word sneaker or kick or soul in it it's like you either you know And same thing for Alligator Blood.

1:14:50It was not going to have the word poker in it anyway. So anyway, Alligator Blood, Ghost Rite, those are the two main businesses. Very cool. Yeah.

1:14:58Dan Fleyshman:So as you guys know, I run these shows commercial-free for many, many years. Now, hundreds and hundreds of episodes. There are two partners that are people that I actually use. There's no affiliate codes or promos. I don't do commercials or, like, read you a 60-second thing. But fanbasis.com is who's been my ecosystem. They have almost 7 ,000, 8 ,000, 9 ,000 creators on their back end. Processed over a billion dollars in the back end for companies. So when products sell, that's what they help with. So if you need a merchant, I use FanBasis. And then GoHighLevel. HighLevel is also a multi-billion dollar company that powers my entire ecosystem.

1:15:30Dan Fleyshman:So whenever you get emails from me, texts from me, you sign up for MoneyMondays, themoneymondays.com or anything, everything's powered by HighLevel in the back end or background. What you heard today, keep in mind, might pop up four months from now at dinner. You literally might be sitting with a friend who's like, oh, I want to invest into this, or I just bought some Pokemon, or I want to look at this Ghost Rider thing I just got, or hey, I want to buy a Michael Jordan card, et cetera. And you forward them this episode. Because Josh is one of those true people that have lived and breathed this category as a buyer 20, 30, 40 years ago as a child to actually still doing these things that are childlike in experience and energy now, pioneering some of these categories in such a huge, huge, huge way.

1:16:12Dan Fleyshman:and so check out these things check out these products and brands it's fascinating and fun you might get your children involved that want to buy a ghost right but also your older brother might want to do it it might be your best friend that might want to do it when you start to talk about these things it is one of the true things that make people happy and enjoy and so the spirit of this thing is what i love is the projects that josh is working on are fun for people to be involved in you can make money in between but also truly it's something that you can build bonds with your children, your friends, family, etc.

1:16:39I appreciate you guys. Check out Josh and all these companies across social media. We'll see you guys next week here at themoneymondays.com.