Brian Ludden
Appearances
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
I could explain it to you, but I think you'll be just as confused. I mean, there's so many levels of this thing. It's like if the mafia was working with the KGB, with the FBI, it's like a card is produced, right? We know they get printed. They get printed, they go directly into a box. That box goes to a distributor, to a wholesaler. The wholesaler sells it to the local card shops or breakers.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
And then no one else knows, no one knows where those cards go after that. But we get to follow it. So when there's a new release, we'll see the scans and we know who has what cards and where they live and how many were bought. Did you buy and sell any? But the layers to get product is insane. It's inefficient.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Yeah.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
I mean, you know, Fanatics controls the the baseball, the tops. And then you have Panini for another year or so with basketball and football.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Yeah, I mean, and those cards, people just don't love non-licensed stuff.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Yeah, I mean, you get a Caleb Williams unlicensed and you're like, it looks like he's in street clothes and he signed it. And it's like, whatever, it's worth like a fifth of what Panini would be. But I think this industry, I think Panini and Fanatics, I think they should have done the deal. And the stories I heard, they couldn't figure it out. And I think that's hurt the industry.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
I think if they would have partnered earlier, this industry would be even bigger. The two behemoths are in the ring fighting. And honestly, if I was Panini, if you really want to screw Fanatics, you run these printers 24-7 and just put as many cards in the history of the world out there. And be like, here you go, Fanatics. Yeah.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
And then fanatics needs to have like a war chest to just buy that stuff off the shelf and burn it. Yeah.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
It's insane. I mean, our parallel database is our most valuable piece of data that we have. And it's in the hundreds of thousands of different variations. And every set they come out with four or five more or different insert, you know, we just have to keep training and training. But yeah, I mean, there might be 30 Caleb Williams, you know, variations on prism, maybe 40. I don't even know.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
It's crazy.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
That's what I'm hoping, my man.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
No. I mean, Topps tries to do it. but yeah i'm not envious of their position fanatics they have to they're trying to do so much and it's so big and they wanted it so fast to get an ipo and like but it's not working right it's it's it's much larger than that i think reuben's understanding that as he gets into it this industry is much larger than one player
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
But I think the important thing about that is that when you get to a point with these cards and tops and going to direct to consumer, they don't have enough product because they got to stop the supply chain at some point. So once they fulfill like their distributor, wholesaler, local card shops, they don't have that much inventory to sell on their own site.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
So they would have to reel that all back in, which I think they will, and then go direct to consumer. And then that's where it gets, I think that's what they need to do. We could sell that on Ludox and get it out to our people, but they just don't have a lot of product at the end of the day after they fulfill stuff.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Yeah, I mean, there's options. The biggest market that people don't know about are these Facebook groups. Those groups that have 50,000 baseball guys will have their own community that they trade amongst themselves. A lot of people don't want to pay the fees at eBay. So they create these little cohorts all over the place.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
I think singles are the way it's going to go because the cards, they call it wax. The boxes of cards are getting so expensive, and the return on investment is like... It's not great. So what you're seeing now is a lot of these live streamers are just saying, hey, we're doing singles. 20 seconds. Boom. 20 seconds. Boom. And you just turn over inventory.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Usually graded cards, but the singles will never die. I mean, there's legacy. There's, I think, 1.5 billion cards that have been printed in the... whatever, since baseball started in 1880.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
And most are worth just the cardboard they're printed on.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
My whole collection was that. I'm like, oh, man, look at all this stuff. It's worth like three bucks.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Yeah, no, it was terrible.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Yeah. I mean, if you look at it, that's a really tough thing to figure out if you're, especially if you're not direct to consumer. So you don't know who's buying them or where they go. Like, yeah, it's really hard to like a fanatics raised at like a call 10 billion, somewhere around there. And yeah, The 3X to 4X industry.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
But you can't 3 and 4X industry by producing three or four times more inventory and supply because you can also crush that. So they have to figure out a way. Fanatics has to figure out a way and partner with a company like BloodX is where you can get more people onto it. make it more accessible, make more buyers, make more eyeballs.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Like that's where they need to start at ground zero and say, where do these collectors at? Let's find them and let's grow them. And then we'll be able to start producing more product or monetize them otherwise.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Yeah, so right now, Ludox, we're making most of our money on subscription revenue. Subscription revenue is a tough business. It's not going to be our main way that we add value to our investors. That's going to be this B2B platform we got coming out, which I can show you. You put... 300 cards on eBay in an hour through LuddX web version. That should be out in a month. We have some data.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
We have some interesting points. So Fanatics was doing a Kobe Bryant night singles. So one of their live streamers on Fanatics Live was Kobe Bryant. And I called him. I said, do you know I can get you every single person in LuddX that has over 100 Kobe Bryant cards? And you can market to them about your show tonight.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
they're like really and it was like 28 610 something like that and so we did an email campaign for fanatics to send out to our people and say listen you we know you we know you like kobe and check this out so there's there's a lot of ways to make money on that data play uh user insights and then you know Who knows if we're gonna get into e-commerce, live breaks.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Here's the thing I know about business. When companies try to do too much and they go horizontal, it's much harder to lift something horizontally than stick to your core, go like this, make sure the root's good and then grow it out. And so we're right here at this stage of just about to start branching out this way. but it took us a while.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
We wanted to be patient with it, but I think it's putting us in a good position, strong position, you know, into the future. Yeah.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
It's insane. There's technology that we built that's super impressive, but people don't know it's impressive because it looks easy, like identification. We talked about pulling pricing is difficult, but this piece of technology is going to revolutionize the industry. And when I did my study on this to figure out what people needed in this industry, it was ways to monetize.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Yeah, well, it was like any journey. It's a winding road. I was a derivatives trader for 25 years down at the exchanges in Chicago. My company got acquired in 2017. I had a three-year, I had to work with that company. I was not a great employee. I did not win employee of the month, that's for sure.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
I mean, if you think about it, eBay, the average card on eBay is about $20 to $25, right? No one's putting a $4 card on eBay because it takes four minutes, right? But if you could put $34 cards on or $100 or $200 an hour, you mail it, you can make yourself a dollar. So what Luddix is going to be able to do is just massively dump volume on marketplaces.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
And it's going to bring down what cards are valuable.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
You look at this, you're like, oh my gosh, this is insane that it's that big and it's so hard, man.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Well, thank you, brother. I appreciate it. Yeah. We could talk forever and this won't be our last conversation. So I definitely want Lodex involved in you and your boys. So stuff we give, we can give out some memberships. We can figure something out, but you stay in touch for sure.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
It's just on the App Store, Google Play Store. Just download it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
register we have a really robust free version uh you can scan up to like 250 cards a month uh for free um so kick the tires on it and you know enjoy it but uh you know we're a high touch company and and we're we want to be out there with people so if anyone in the in your ethos system comes to any shows uh come by linux and say hi yeah please do and let me tell you
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
But during that time, during COVID, kind of like similar to your stuff, I had cards sitting here and we have a place in the city and my son and I were here, my 14-year-old son now. And I'm like, hey, let's check out these cards. They're getting more valuable and blah, blah, blah.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Absolutely, my man. Good luck with Rad Breaks.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
And I was looking at it and I couldn't figure out what these cards were, what they were worth, like any comps, anything. And then I bought a new pack of cards and the new ones with all the variations and shiny and shimmer. So I'm like, this is ridiculous. This industry, there's got to be something out there. And I look for like 30 days.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
I'm like, holy crap, this industry is massive and it has not had a tech revolution yet. And so I said, I'm going to go out and do it. And I raised $5.3 million in 45 days from all the traders on the floor. And we are on our way.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
You're younger. Younger.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
You're right, dude. That's what I did. I had a Beckett magazine I bought. I was like, this is ridiculous. Yeah.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Trading shows every day and no comps. And, you know, also, Ryan, I'm new to this industry. It's mind blowing how difficult this industry is to learn, to transact, to trade, to buy. Like it is it's really hard. There's friction on every single level. And it's still a 30 billion dollar industry and growing, you know, cager of eight. You know, so it's I mean, it's massive.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
So think about when technology comes into this worldwide, globally, how big this can get.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
It was harder. It was it was much harder. It took us like 12. It took us a year to get base cards. and Pokemon and magic above 90% accuracy. We're like, we got this thing, we're crushing it. And it took us two and a half years and probably $8 million to be able to get parallels in the upper eighties, low nineties, because of all the variations and how people take pictures and you have to train out
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
like blurs and light. And so it was insanely difficult, but there was a time when, when I was like, good, I'm glad this hurts. I'm glad this is difficult because there's our moat. Right. And we, we grinded, we grinded and grinded and just stayed afloat for long enough to, you know, to de-risk it and really get to where we needed to, to, to make this a scalable business.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
But, you know, you asked another part of that question. The most difficult thing that we've had is pricing. There's a change in these big corporations. You could go and get their data. You could scrape around the world and get whatever you wanted.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
But after these, like the chat GPTs of the world, which become the greatest scrapers of all time of information, these companies are now starting to be like, hey, we're going to put this data behind a wall. And if you want it, you either have to pay us or tell us why you want your value prop. So the comps are really hard because if you think about it, there's a comp happening at the card show.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
There's one happening with your boys at school. There's one happening on eBay. There's no central clearinghouse that says this card has worked $1.50. So that pricing has been really difficult. But we are working on our own pricing algorithm coming from the options world where I priced all the options. It's going to be cool, but it's probably about six to nine months from now.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
But it's going to be at least consistent is what we're looking for.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
No, it hurts, man. You sell a $100 card and you're like, you walk away like $78. You're like, what the, you know? Yeah, I know. And eBay's a great partner to work with. But I mean, they do control it. I mean, I'm ballparking that they're three, $3 billion companies. GMV on trading cards and no one's even close second. Yeah, they've done a great job.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Yeah. I mean, you hit it. Like if a marketplace is going to work, you need three pillars. You need trust, you need volume, you need velocity. Right. And so if you have those things, you have a chance to succeed.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
But most people don't think about that. The other thing that's super important is a funnel. Like, how are you getting people into your marketplace? Are you going to have to steal them from eBay, which is a high CAC and expensive and difficult? Or like a lot of X, we have the tool that gets people in. And when you're in the ecosystem, do you want to go grade a card?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Do you want to go look at a live stream? Do you want to sell your card on eBay? That's what we want to be. We want to be the nucleus, the hub and scope model, and just get brokered, get a dime per listing, get referrals from PSA, and just really help our users experience the industry in a broader sense.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Yeah, it's knowing what you have and knowing what it's worth. Those are the two pillars that we kind of go off of. And it's technology, so it's never done. It's never completed. But I mean, really, that's what we want to be. We don't want to be an authority in anything. What we want to be is we want to be an information tool to help people enjoy this industry and this hobby.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
And you're a great story about this because you have four boys. They're active. I'm sure they're in sports. But you guys can bond over this. And there's a business to be made. And you guys can buy and sell. And you can go to shows. You come to National in Chicago at the end of July. You can be our guest there with your boys. We run the VIP lounge. Oh, that's awesome. It's awesome.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
But anyways, this industry is about that. And that's what Ludox wants to be. Information tool, help people out, and enjoy the industry.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Yeah, you're right. I mean, the industry, like I said, even eBay, how big eBay got. I don't know if you list cars on eBay, I'm sure. But how painful that process is. And they still do $3 billion in GMV. Imagine when Lodex puts a card on eBay, we could put it on in 30 seconds. it takes me three minutes to put it on eBay's way. So what that does is that's gonna increase people's enjoyment, right?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Like you have information, you can make money on it, go do it. And there's a lot of different people coming in this industry. I mean, the way I look at this industry, is it was on pause since the mid-90s. Everyone was good in their spot. Then people started to get into it. Cards started going up. And then you start seeing celebrities get into it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Brian, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to launch off the Collectibles trading card podcast with you guys. And thanks for downloading the app and using it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
It's not the corner store anymore. It's grown up. Every collector's a sports fan, but not every sports fan's a collector.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Then you start seeing big companies, multinational companies like Fanatics buying and acquiring. And then you have massive, massive shows on massive levels. And now you're seeing... venture capitalists get in. You're seeing sports teams. We have a sports team that invested in us recently and you'll get the press release coming out in like 30 days.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
But like those guys, like everyone's interested in this because sports fans love to collect. Every collector is a sports fan, but not every sports fan is a collector. So if you get them where they're at, you have all these sports fans.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
I mean, yeah, and you look at that and you're investing in someone you like, right? Yes. Yeah. Even if you're collecting, you still like the guy, but then there's opportunities to make money on that also. So my son, every sport, he'll be like, okay, I'm buying these signed rookie cards for these five players, undervalued. Maybe if they pop out, they go. And when they go, Ryan, you've seen prices.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
I mean, Jaden Daniels' card was trading for $100, like a Prism whatever.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Well, I guess we could back into it. There's no number out there, really. But if you can back into it a little bit. So LuddX has been basically 18 months to 24 months we've been out there. And we have 2.5 million downloads, which by itself is a big number. But when you're talking about the penetration of how many people know about Luddox in the industry, it's small. It's like nothing.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
So I think there's... 100 million Americans that collect. I think half of them men. When I say collect, I mean understand that there's an industry and you can buy and sell converts. You did it at some point in your life. When you go global and you start talking about Pokemon, Pokemon by itself is going to produce 15 billion cards this year. Billion. Oh, my God.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
And they're up 100% in the last 12 months.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
Yeah. No, there's fights. A grown man will tackle your sons to get to a Pokemon.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Unlocking Value: Ludex Transforms Trading Card Valuation with Brian Ludden
But no, it's huge. I mean, I would speculate that it easily is in the 200 million range globally. Yeah.