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Digital Social Hour

The Ultimate Collectible Revolution: Are You Missing Out? | Josh Luber DSH #891

Fri, 15 Nov 2024

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Are you ready for the ultimate collectible revolution? 🚀 Join us on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly as we dive into the fascinating world of collectibles with Josh Luber, the mastermind behind StockX and now Ghost R! This episode is packed with valuable insights on the evolution of collectible toys, trading cards, and the art of deal-making. Discover how grading and scarcity drive value, and why collectibles are more than just nostalgic treasures. 🤯 Don't miss out on this engaging conversation filled with insider secrets and expert advice. Watch now and subscribe for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more exclusive content. Join the conversation and find out if you're missing out on the next big thing in collectibles! 💥 #sportscards #baseballcards #hockeycards #investinginsportscards #footballcards CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:33 - What is Ghost 01:40 - BetterHelp Sponsorship 04:58 - Prolific Card Breakers 09:12 - StockX Collectibles Expansion 10:36 - Junk Wax Era Explained 12:16 - Most Expensive Purchase 13:37 - Market Bubble Analysis 15:22 - Understanding Cryptopunks 16:44 - NFTs Overview 17:04 - GOAT's Transparency Practices 21:40 - StockX Growth Journey 24:10 - Predicting StockX Growth 27:30 - StockX Founding Story 32:55 - Leaving StockX Experience 34:05 - Launching Fanatics Collectibles 35:40 - FTX Collectibles Surge 37:09 - Fanatics Monopoly in Collectibles 38:00 - Michael Rubin Negotiation Skills 38:54 - Billionaire Aspirations 39:57 - Finding Next Drops APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [email protected] GUEST: Josh Luber https://www.instagram.com/joshluber/ https://www.instagram.com/_ghostwrite_/ https://www.ghostwrite.com/ SPONSORS: BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com/DSH LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Chapter 1: What is Ghost and how does it relate to collectibles?

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All right, guys. Digital Social Hour with Josh Luber here today with a new company. Thanks for coming on, man. It's going to be a fun one. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So explain what's going on here. They look like bear bricks, right?

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This is the best part. Now you have a company where I can actually put it on the table right here. You know, when we started StockX, I can't put the whole marketplace in front of the table.

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if you're familiar with bear bricks bear bricks are the longest running most successful collectible toy franchise uh ghost right is an evolution of bear brick um ghosts like bears um there is no face there is no gender right it's a it's a blank canvas it can be whatever you want it to be we had a release last week that uh it was an nba basketball same three sizes bear brick which is two inches 11 inches kind of the standard and then the big one

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But the new one coming out is a WNBA set. And I actually brought a couple of them, including, since we're in Vegas, Asia Wilson. Let's go. So this will be a big deal. This is the new one coming out. But short version is it's Evolution of Bearbrick. It's a collectible toy company. After running other much larger businesses, now I get to create a brand and create a product.

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Chapter 2: What are the differences between Funko Pops and Ghost collectibles?

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And so that's fun. I love it. Sounds like you're in your creative element. Hell yeah. Let's go. I'm a big Funko Pop collector, so you might have a new addiction for me to look into now.

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Hell yeah, we can level you up from Funko Pop a little bit. Funko is wide and large. There's not a whole lot of super valuable Funkos yet. So it's good. But Funko, every single IP you could ever imagine. They do have a lot of... That's my only qualm with it. So many of them. So is there a specific category that you collect? Because you can't collect them all.

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I started off just broad, but now I just collect the rare ones. So I won't collect the common ones. Because there's just too many. My whole wall in my media room, there's 500 Funkos.

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And so you're keeping them in the box.

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I keep them in the box.

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You have them graded by PSA. You know, PSA grades Funkos.

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I didn't know they graded them, no. I have them in the box, but I don't take them out because they lose value.

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Totally. Totally. Well, so like, this is a really relevant part of this conversation, right? Which is, if you look at, you know, StockX, the company I created after that, which is FinanX Collectibles, which is a trading card business, Collectible Toys, Funko, Ghost, right? These are all the exact same thing, right? They're all products that are supply and demand based.

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They're collectors and resell value and scarcity and condition. And for trading cards, PSA, which is the leading grading company for trading cards, completely changed the way the value that we value trading cards. And they're trying to do that for collectible toys. PSA grades Funko Pops. So if you have one that's really valuable, you can send it to PSA.

Chapter 3: How did StockX evolve into the collectibles market?

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It's a Pele rookie, and it's in PSA 8, which is extremely, the card's from 1962. But yeah, it was a lot more. So you're a soccer fan. Yeah. So I'm not. I just thought that was a really great deal considering all the other stuff that was going crazy in value. If I was going to make a really, really big purchase, I wanted it to be the most solid thing I could think of.

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And it was a PSA 8, and I think there's only three PSA 9s, which means there's only three versions of that car that are better in the whole world. Wow. And I just figured just the scarcity and Pele being who he is and everything else. So that was a unique experience, but I also don't regret it. But yeah, probably not time to sell it.

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Those years were crazy. I remember when Jordan rookies were going for, what, half a million?

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Well, what happened was, like, we can all look back now, the peak of the peak, I forget the exact month, but there was an auction on Golden's Auctions, where two 1986 Fleer Jordan rookies, PSA 10, sold for $720,000 each on the same day. And that everybody just started saying, what the fuck? Like, this is just crazy. And that was like the peak of the whole market. But it wasn't just collectibles.

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A lot of times, and it wasn't, by the way, it wasn't just NFTs. It wasn't just crypto. It was the whole economy that did that. And all of the valuations of all of our companies went up. And so then everybody had more money. And so we were paying more money for things.

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know at stock x the last public round valuation of stock x was 3.9 billion wow but there were private rounds that happened um you know way higher than that during the run-up um and um again that's just a function of the macro economy and so it's it's kind of all relative um but you know we're obviously we're never seeing that again that's almost crazy yeah that bubble was not silicon valley bubble companies were raising money pre-revenue hundreds of millions yeah

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Yeah. I mean, it's probably a good thing in the long run, right? We can only inflate stuff so long. Totally. Yeah.

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I mean, it has to go back to the norm, and so that's fine. We all wish we could have sold more at the time rather than bought, but that's also us.

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Especially me, man. I had a lot of crypto, a lot of good NFTs, a lot of trading cards. Well, right now, Bitcoin's been on a run the last two days, right? Yeah. Bitcoin's been great with the new presidency. I saw that coming, actually. Yeah. I think it would have went the other way if Kamala got elected. Well, right. That was the thing, right?

Chapter 4: What were the effects of the collectibles market bubble?

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It's supply and demand, econ 101 at its most basic, and it's trying to figure out how do we make something really cool and people want it but not make so many that it becomes worthless.

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yeah yeah it's a game and i think the they made the right partnerships with the players and the athletes too exactly right because they drive real demand if you have somebody like we're talking cards pele mickey mantle you know nike's has been with you know kanye and drake and travis scott right there's real demand around travis scott you don't have to artificially create demand by saying something's limited or no like people really do want to buy stuff that travis scott puts out

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And we think of it as two halves of demand. There's real demand that people would buy regardless of how scarce it is. And then we call this sneakerhead demand. You can call it whatever you want, but the other side of it, which is people want something only because it's scarce or only because it's valuable. And it's somewhat cyclical because the more valuable it gets, then the more people want it.

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But it's the idea that, hey, even if this wasn't scarce, what is the true demand that's part of it? And when you have somebody like Kanye or Travis Scott or Nike at the center of it or the NBA, there's just real true demand that exists underneath it. And so that's kind of the intersection and how those brands think about doing it.

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Yeah, what Kanye pulled off with Yeezy was... was awesome to watch, man. It's sad to see how it ended, but how it began and how it grew was incredible.

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You know, at one point between Kanye and Virgil, they probably accounted for 70% of the dollars sold on StockX, some extraordinary number, because they were so prolific. They touched so many products. The value of those were so high. And obviously today, both of those people are no longer making products for different reasons.

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And that was sort of the peak of the hype economy, which didn't necessarily coincide with the peak in 21 and the bubble we've been talking about. But you had this moment that was happening between 2016 to 2019, where sneakers were becoming so mainstream, where I heard you guys talking earlier about where to buy shoes here in Vegas.

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You know, Urban Necessities is kind of maybe the most well-known consignment shop, you know, resale shop for your really high value stuff. But you guys named four other spots that I'm sure are great also. And that just like that mainstreamification of sneakers, that didn't exist in 2014, 2015. And so as it grew, it was on the backs of Kanye and Virgil and the brands doing that.

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Yeah. And now StockX is probably the number one place for sneakers in the world, right? Yeah.

Chapter 5: How does grading influence the value of collectibles?

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That's right. But they've also taught us that over the years. And so now we understand that. We use it. And it was just a different thing.

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Nice. How tough was it walking away four years ago? Was that the toughest decision you've had to make?

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No, it took me about a year to realize that just because I started the company doesn't mean I can't leave. And I left because I had a new business that I wanted to pursue, which was Fanatics Collectibles, which is the trading card business that we created. But it was still super sad leaving. I still broke down in tears on the last all-company Zoom. It was during the pandemic.

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I left in September of 2020. Because that was the first big company to succeed. It was so tied to me personally. And so it was... It was hard to get to that place. It took a long time. When I finally left, it was great. And it felt so good to be on the other side and now starting a company and being that.

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But yeah, it's a unique experience for anyone to go through that. No, I see that because your identity was probably tied to that company. Like you were probably the same. Yeah, exactly. That's how a lot of founders are.

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Yeah, and literally even today, walking through the Encore, someone stopped me. They're like, oh, you're the xStock guy?

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Wow.

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I'm like, StockX, but yeah.

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xStock, I haven't heard that one. I know. I hadn't heard that either. That's funny, man. Talk to me about that transition to Fanatics Collectibles.

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