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

We are in an expanding market. The reason where I can tell you we're an expanding market is when I look at a keyboard, when I look at a screen, I sit at an access point that is better than any other human being's access point in the entire industry. Better than Michael Rubin of Topps, better than Nat Turner of PSA, and better than everybody. Because at the same time, I have the ability to see all the sales and trends for all the collectible categories that are going on eBay, because Golden is Bay company, and I'm CEO of Golden and corporate officer, the admin of Golden. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month, taking the BS out of business for over 6 years in over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.

Some people sell cards, some people build platforms. And a very small group of people actually move markets. Today's guest has been at the center of some of the biggest moments this hobby has ever seen. Through Golden Auctions, he's helped redefine what elite collectibles are worth and more importantly, who's paying attention. And with King of Collectibles: The Golden Touch, he didn't just showcase the hobby, he expanded the audience. But what I respect most is this: he understands that value is not accidental. It's timing, it's positioning, it's psychology, and it's discipline. So today I want to go on beyond those headlines and I want to get into how he thinks about leverage, market cycles, ego, risk, and where this industry is actually headed.

Glad to be here, Ryan. Thank you for having me.

Hey, man, respect, dude. Who would have thought collectibles, it would show up on Netflix?

Certainly not me when I was a 12-year-old nerd sorting out my cards in my basement. I'd been in the business for years. I looked at the landscape of the industry and I said, everybody who is already a serious collector, they're going to go to my website, they're going to find me. What I really want to do is go to people who are the sports fans, the casual buyer, somebody who goes into Target and Walmart, buys a box for their kids, and that's it, and doesn't even go to card stores. I want to reach those people. I want to reach mainstream America. What I've tried to do since I started Golden in 2012 is bring new people into the hobby and expand the pie, hopefully a lot for myself, but as a result for everybody.

I've done marketing for 25 years for some of the largest brands in the world, and you know what I'd call that, Ken? That's called BDI and CDI. BDI brand development. You want to elevate your brand, but your brand only matters when you elevate the category. You've elevated the category and your brand has come along with it. So it's been two dual paths is what I would define that as. You are a category definer here. What's one thing maybe serious collectors consistently misunderstand about Ken Golden?

I am a businessman, but they think that I am a businessman first, or that I am in this for the money. It's a money grab, it's an opportunity, because there have been so many people, especially since 2019, that have come into the business. I was doing this, buying and selling cards, before there were written price guides, before the internet, before eBay was in existence, before cell phones. I have been doing this my entire life, and I have never made any money outside of the collectibles industry. It started for me as a passion, simply as a way— hey, I'm going to be collecting, how do I afford to buy my next item? I started as a little kid acquiring collections options, keeping what I wanted and then selling off the rest. People who do not know, saying, oh, this guy is some rich businessman, some hotshot came into the industry, saw a money pot, and then built a big business. No, that's not how it was. The world kind of came to me with something I had been doing literally since the 1970s.

When I only knew you peripherally and didn't start studying a little bit more, I thought that exact thing. This guy is just a shrewd badass business dude, and I still think you'd probably be successful in any business. Your smarts, intelligence, and sort of business savvy— raise my hand, you nailed it— that was what I I'm sure others do. Probably you get that a lot.

I definitely get it a lot. It's fine. I have always been a marketer. I've always been a great business person, and my business happens to be a collectible business. And there's— there are a lot of other auction houses that were around in 2012 that were doing $5 million a year, $10 million a year, $30 million a year. I was probably— when I started Golden, we were probably 250th in sales, and then we gradually climbed up the charts until 2019 we were number 2, and then we overtook Heritage as number 1. That's business skill, that's marketing, that's hard work, and that's understanding the market and your customer, and honestly, a real passion for the business and a drive to be the best.

You understood the most important thing, which is attention matters, and attention is currency. I look at most auction houses and I'm kind of like— but what you realize is mass attention, leveraging media, leveraging personalities, leveraging the people in the space, and I think it shows your marketing chops as much as What's up guys? One of the fastest ways to grow a business isn't some big marketing play. It's tightening up your communication across your team. Missed calls, scattered text threads, team members not seeing the same conversation. That stuff quietly costs you time and revenue. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the smarter way to run your business communications. We realized that at my new card shop, Collector Station. Between customers calling about card inventory, grading submissions, trade offers, and even trade nights, things were moving fast. And when communication wasn't centralized, things got messy quick. I also like that it works wherever I am— phone, laptop, doesn't matter. And it even logs calls and creates summaries automatically, which saves us time and keeps everyone aligned. Make this the season where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try QWO for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to qwo.com/ryan. That's qwo.com/ryan. QWO.

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What was that light bulb moment for you? There's a lot of things in collectibles that are storytelling moments, and you got autographs and stuff that drives attention anyway, but there was something or moment that clicked for you with mainstream media being an avenue and the friends you've made and putting that out there and leveraging that into awareness?

I went into the business with a very acute— not only the trading card industry, but a significant number of athlete relationships and a lot of experience of getting comfortable in front of a camera, being able to talk to a camera, being able to talk to an audience. When that business slowed, I was looking at the landscape. That's when some of the auction houses were getting getting in trouble with bidding. They were getting in trouble with selling fake items, bad authentication. I established an auction house where we guarantee everything we sell, which nobody did. Everybody had in their book 20-page disclaimer, everything is sold as is, no warranties, no representation. I'm like, screw that. We're gonna give every— we have an autograph. And there may still be a catalog like this if they sold a game-used item. It said your receipt is your letter of authenticity. We're the experts. And I'm like, no, I'm gonna get something from the athlete. I want to get something from the team. I'm gonna get something photo matched. All of our cards, we said we're gonna use the major third-party graders. All the autographs, we wanted to use proper authenticators.

And same for game used as well as player collections. And I said, here's what I wanna do. I obviously been in business for many years. I didn't go into the business broke. I was starting Golden, so I had money. I started with $100,000. And I said, I'm really gonna take the Jeff Bezos approach to business. In my first couple years, I'm going to know that I'm going to lose money and I'm going to try a bunch of stuff that I don't think had ever been done in the industry, and I'm going to throw it against the wall and see what stuck. We went out and I tried to find the highest media attention items that I can get, and I flew out to Las Vegas. I saw my friend Pete Rose and I said, Pete, I'm starting an auction house. I said, what do you got for me? He goes, oh crap, you know, I've sold almost everything. He goes, but there is something I think you can get. I just sold this guy my banishment contract from baseball. He put me in touch with the guy who bought it, and we got it for the first auction.

At the time, Darren Rovell was working for ESPN. He came to the office. There was a big publicity. And real dog and pony show about the auction and making it special. We got a lot of publicity. It didn't sell because it had a reserve. Didn't sell, that didn't matter because I got a lot of eyeballs. I got a lot of registrations. We did $800,000 in our first auction. Everything sold tremendously. There was a hurricane in the middle of it. I stopped the auction. That was Hurricane Sandy, and we said, okay, I donated $50,000 worth of merchandise that I had. We auctioned it off to to the Red Cross and just generated a lot of publicity. I just tried a lot of things. I did a deal with Dupont Registry. You know why? They sell really expensive cars. People with money, I figured, go there. I did a deal with the Robb Report. I did a 10-page insert into the Robb Report in 2013 with almost no revenue. I want people to know about gold. I did everything I could in the first 2 years of business to gather a large audience, and I think that that user base that I established, whereas everybody else's was stale, mine was brand new.

They were newly energized people. A lot of it was becoming international because of all the media. It was a lot of new money that wanted to spend money on collectibles. That business approach of being willing to spend money, being willing to go out and lose money and say, I don't care how much I lose, I want to build market share until I'm in a position to really compete— that's what set Golden up for the future where it is today.

That's called branding, building brand over time. Sometimes the product isn't the product. Sometimes the is the marketing. A lot of people don't know that. I've been an entrepreneur for 10 years. You got to pay the bills. You got to do things. You got pressure to want to be successful and make profit. But sometimes in those early stages, you can kind of sabotage that for the long— you know, just playing the short game. So if you understood the long game that was involved in building the Golden Brand.

When I started the business, I said to my wife, if I can build this up to a $10 million a year business, I can do this comfortably for the rest of my life, stress-free. And I'd be happy with the $10 million a year business. I didn't know I'd be pushing half a billion. That's how good businesses, good marketing, and good industry take hold.

Ken, a million-dollar car lands on your desk. What's the first things that you evaluate?

Is this something we have on consignment, or is this something we want to get?

We just talked about builds towards things landing in your lap. Sometimes someone walks in the door, a friend of a friend, a million-dollar item or card lands there. What are we evaluating?

When I look at the card and say, hey, who is this going to appeal to? Is it sports or non-sports? And then let's say it's sports. Is it vintage or is it modern? When I determine what it is, and let's say there Obviously a difference in the way that I would market a PSA 10 Charizard or Pikachu Illustrator versus a '52 Topps Mantle versus a T206 Wagner or versus a Cooper Flag Superfractor, for example. They're all going to appeal to different people. I really need to look at the card, find out why it's worth that much, who is collecting that. Is it something that is leaning more towards, hey, I need to fill a spot in my collection because this is a holy Michael Wagner, or is this something, hey, I believe that Victor Wembanyama is going to win 5 MVPs and this could turn $1 million into a $5 million card, and then it's therefore my job to explain not only who Wemby is but more importantly this particular card, why this card is unique. For example, we've got a card right now in the Golden 100. I'll use an example. Victor Wembanyama, it is his tops Chrome Superfractor.

It is his first ever NBA-licensed autograph Superfractor, and to me, that makes it his most important card. It's the first Topps Chrome card that was issued since the 2008-2009 season. It's autographed. It got a high grade of an 8.5. A lot of these Supers, you're even seeing people get them authenticated. To me, that is a key card, and it's up to me to not only put together a package that explains why this card is important. The on-card autograph, the history of Top Superfractors, the mystery surrounding cards like the missing Steph Curry Superfractor. This is the first Wemby. Where are the people that want to buy this card? How do I reach them? And then, on behalf of my consigner, how do I get above expectations? Because comps are one thing. What we want to do at Golden is we want to drastically exceed comps on all of the high-end cards. Right now in our vintage auction, we had a '52 Mantle SGC 7.5 sold at REA 8 months ago for $250,000. At the time of we're recording this, it's $520,000 on Goldin. I think that is a result of our videos, our photography, our tremendous user base that is so much bigger than anybody else's.

But that's really when people come us with the big items. That's really what they want us to do is, hey, I'm looking to get several octaves above the comp, and this is what you guys are the specialties, you know, specialists at.

You think about like what increases the value of something, and it just dawned on me, you got PSA, okay, you grade it and that changes the value. But now Golden is a product that you layer on these collectibles that's a multiplier. A lot of what you're describing, because of the marketing and cachet that your brand will apply to a high-end collectible?

I think it's the cachet. People think— I've seen tweets, bucket list, sell something on Goldin, bucket list, buy something off Goldin. But the ability is— the importance is, when I'm dealing with a card like that, let's say it's a jersey, whatever it is, that high figure, I can't tell somebody, I promise you it is going to sell for X price. What I can tell them is, on the day the auction closes, what I'm going to guarantee you is there will not be a single human being on the planet who might have possibly been interested in this card and has the money to buy it that will not know it's on Golden.com right now and it's closing tonight. That's all you can do.

That's all you could do. And that's a bigger problem people realize that because a lot of times it's like just people being aware that something is available. But when you kind of reach the depths and the width that you guys do at the level that you do, you're turning over every coin, you're hitting every target. That this is a Facebook ad, you've got every eyeball that could be on it that would be interested checked on. It goes back to marketing prowess as much as anything. Thing. Talking with Ken Golden. Ken, you kind of answered this, but I'm going to let you put a fine point on it. There's a lot of curiosity out there. You hit— we're kind of in a peak, or not a peak, but a high point right now with both awareness, interest, and maybe prices. Are we in a long-term maturation phase or another setup cycle? If we did hit a kind of a downturn, which segment holds strongest? Vintage, high-end, or modern?

We are in an expanding market. The reason where I can tell you we're in an expanding market is when I look at a keyboard, when I look at a screen, I sit at an access point that is better than any other human being's access point in the entire industry. Better than Michael Rubin of Topps, better than Nat Turner of PSA, and better than everybody. Because at the same time, I have the ability to see all the sales and trends for all the collectible categories that are going on eBay, because Golden is an eBay company and I'm CEO of Golden and corporate officer. The admin of Golden. Every day I can see how many new users I am getting, how many new bidders, how many people are applying for credit, how many people are asking to have their bid limit raised, how many bids a day we're getting, how that compared to a week ago, how that compared to a month ago, how that compared to a year ago, what my average ASP— all this information that people would kill themselves to get, I see it all the time. And I walk around with my iPad and I'm looking it all the time.

I can tell people from an educated point that the market is still expanding, that there are people from other countries that are getting into it, that there are pockets around the world that never bought collectibles in general but certainly never bought cards that are now buying cards. We are in a market that is continuing to grow. I expect with the Fanatics impact and with more money being spent by the leagues in marketing, I expect that we will continue to expand the collector base. But expanding the collector base does not necessarily mean a smooth ride for prices. It does not necessarily mean a guarantee of prices going up because there is a lot of fluff. When we have repack businesses that can be selling— multiple repack companies that are digital repack that can be doing $500 million a year recycling the cards over and over and over again, the same graded card and the buybacks and this and that and everything else like that, there is certainly a lot of risk built into the market. And people should understand that this is a market that is built on a significant amount of risk and they should be engaging business accordingly.

At some point, certain things will go down. My viewpoint always is whatever goes down the least is going to be both the least speculative of everything as well as the longest running. To me, it's an obvious answer. To me, I think that the most speculative and the market that has been on fire the most has been the TCG market, especially Pokémon around the past 2 years. Anybody who's been dealing in this business— and now you have One Piece, and everyone's buying One Piece because they want to will One Piece into being the next Pokémon, and they want to get those— they're doing what they do with freaking NFL draft pick quarterbacks. They're projecting a guy to win 3 Super Bowls when he— before he's played a game in the NFL, and pricing that into it. That's how people get burnt. That would be, to me, the riskiest, only because it's the newest and it's the most fluffed up over the past few years. The safest is going to be vintage, specifically the boring vintage baseball. Nobody is going to lose money buying Mickey Mantle cards. It hasn't happened for 70 years.

I had my Harmon Killebrew, Willie Mays, and Mickey Mantle sitting here.

68 Fencebusters.

This is 1968 Superstars, Topps. And then I brought this because you pulled two of them.

Okay. Oh God, there you go. Bird Magic. Yes, another great— yeah, and I pulled it. Oh, pulled it right at him, right out.

Oh my God, look at you. No, send me that, Ken, as a thank you. That's awesome, dude. Vintage baseball. My basketball's no good.

What basketball has is, outside of soccer, basketball is the most international of all the sports. Vintage baseball has the oldest, the most boring, the longest-running, and the stodgiest collectors. Those are the people who will literally keep their collection and sell their house. These are people who have been doing it for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. Vintage baseball to me is the safety net of the hobby. It is the backbone of the hobby that everything has been built upon over all the years.

We're going to underline and circle that for everyone as a key takeaway. Let's talk about the future, and I am going to hold up my Sport. This guy, I did not know that was you. This is Four Sport '94.

'93 was the better year. '94, the year you got the big dog, Glenn Robinson's rookie card in there. He's probably on the box cover. You probably have A-Rod inserts in there. You might have Derek Jeter inserts in there. It's not racing yet. We didn't do racing. I'm trying to remember.

Jason Kidd on the Jason Kidd.

Yeah, Jason Kidd rookie year.

Yep. That Peyton Manning, though.

Peyton Manning was 98. You got Grant Hill's rookie in there.

There. Yep, Grant Hill. Oh yeah, hockey. I don't recognize the baseball players. That Marshall Falk on the side?

Yeah, Marshall Falk. Yep, yep, that was his rookie.

Yep.

So you've got Randy— I've opened—

I've ripped a few of these. I enjoy this.

The problem is, back in the day, we used a UV coating. The cards were done with something UV coating. Now, unless they were kept like really cold, when you open them, it's gonna be like opening up the old Topps Chrome where you gotta almost sometimes may have to—

So guys, you've probably seen this already, but if you haven't, haven't, live selling on Whatnot is kind of blowing up right now. Instead of just listing something online and hoping someone finds it, you go live and sell directly to people in real time. They can see the product, ask questions, interact with you. It's way more like shopping in person than posting a listing, and the audience is there. Buyers are spending over an hour a day in the app. They're not just scrolling, they're actually buying and coming back. That's why sellers on Whatnot are moving way more product than on traditional marketplaces. You're not just selling, you're building relationships with people who keep showing up to your streams. And we've seen it in collectibles especially, people turning this into full-time businesses. And for a limited time, Whatnot will match your first $150 sold in the first month. Visit whatnot.com/sell to start selling.

Selling.

That's whatnot.com/sell. Whatnot.com/sell.

Kill some of the cards apart.

Ken, would you do a 20-minute rip with me sometime where I open this with you on?

Sure, we can open up some old classic. I've got a lot of old classic product here. I've got the old Four Sport. And the funny thing is, which I saw Topps is inserting a Mickey Mantle— '52 Topps Mickey Mantle. I had a license Mickey Mantle in '96 with Mickey Mantle Estate, and we put out a set after he passed called the Mickey Mantle Shoebox Collection. It was, I believe, 100 original Mickey Mantle cards, and in every box was a vintage Mickey Mantle card produced between '57 and '69. Every box had a vintage— now obviously some of them could be leader cards, some of them could have been checklist cards, but there was a '52 Mantle redemption. It was crazy. But yeah, that was called That's one of my favorite products of all time. If anybody ever has any of those boxes they want to sell me, do it. I'll do a live open on my IG.

We had a false start with fractional ownership. Do you think that ever comes back in a smarter form?

Fractional ownership is legitimate. It's kind of like stocks. There are a lot of people that want to own their collectibles, but there are a lot of people right now that want to own a piece. Fractionalized has to be done probably by people who may not be in the industry now that do it as a— that are true investors. Funds and do it as really SEC— oh, and Rally did it the right way. They did it with SEC filing, but the problem is that the trading was an issue. There was too small, and they got into it during the COVID and then everything just went down and spoiled everybody. A lot of their problem was timing because conceptually they did it right. But I think a very large fund that is very well equipped goes out and buys key assets. I don't think they do it into 5,000 pieces. I think that you create a fund and say, hey, we're gonna do the vintage card fund, and our goal is we want to own these 20 pillars. I can give somebody a list. These are the 20 cards I would buy. Boom, they go out and get these cards in the best affordable grade.

And I say affordable because, again, I'm gonna go '52 Tops. It's gonna be tough to buy a 9, and no matter what the price is, you can't get one from somebody. It's gonna be like $12 million. But you can get a nice 8, and then you can get like a classic Goudy Ruth and things like that, Clemente rookie, and basically let maybe 100 people own the fund, and that's their version of fractionalizing. And then they could do a Modern Card fund, and they can get Exquisite LeBron, and they can get a different Super and things like that, you know, where it is different type of funds where, okay, fine, I'm not gonna put in $50 and own a small piece. Maybe I put in $10,000, or maybe I put in $1,000, but some higher threshold level and more sophistication. But there's no reason that that should not be able to work. And you don't have the trading though. What I think you do is that you say the purpose of the fund is we're going to do it and we're going to hold it for 5 years and then we're going to sell it unless we get an outrageous offer.

People look, people can say the fund owns this at $2 million, I'm going to go in and offer $3.5 million and see if 51% of the people will take a buyout.

I feel like it had a positioning and marketing problem. It needed to be marketed non-collectors. Marketing collectors, again, it gets into that hole. I'm emotionally tied to it. And in fractional ownership, I'm not saying you can't have a group of guys that all go in on something that all love Mantle, but it needs to be more true investment. And lacking that. All right, rapid fire here as we close out, Ken. Most underrated sport to collect right now?

It's gaining, uh, WWE. I'm in shock by some of the prices that stuff is going for. I'm just blown away.

One athlete whose market is mispriced, up or down?

Willie Mays. Willie Mays has always been undervalued compared to his peers.

One card you wish you personally owned?

T206 Honus Wagner. I do not own one. I own a complete T206 set minus the Wagner.

Toughest negotiation you've ever handled?

I would say people probably saw it dealing with Jim Tobinfield in Puerto Rico with the basketball collection. Very difficult to deal.

One behavior collectors should stop immediately?

I would say FOMO. Here's the most important behavior: buying something without bankroll management. Bankroll management is so critical to this. People need to understand and need to have budgets in place before they start buying.

What would you tell a new card shop owner?

Go to other card shops and find out what's successful for them. Make sure you get supply connections. Make sure you're in a great spot. Make sure you've got a great community with community support. Build your social media. You absolutely have to build your social media because if you're a card shop and you have great social media, you never have to spend money advertising or marketing.

He is Ken Golden. He is a market mover. He's an innovator. I really appreciate it, Ken. It's been fun.

Thank you. Been great, great talking to you.

Can you drop where people can keep up with you, people that might be listening that haven't seen your— the show or something?

Sure.

All the details.

The company is golden.com, G-O-L-D-I-N.com. Is the website. And I am @kengolden everywhere. So I'm @kengolden on X, @kengolden on Instagram, on Facebook, @kengolden on TikTok. And hey, everybody out there on YouTube, follow my YouTube. We just set up a new YouTube for me, @kengolden, and you get a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff. And Netflix, go to Netflix, watch King of Collectibles: The Golden Touch from episode 1, season 1, up through the end of season break and wait for season 4.

Yeah, season 4 coming, we hope so. Ken, it's been a pleasure. I really appreciate you for coming on and hope to stay connected and hope to rip some more Sport with you.

We'll do it. We'll rip some old classic product. Thanks, Ryan.

Hey guys, you know where to find us. Look, we're bringing you the best, the brightest, the movers, the shakers, the people that are moving this industry forward. We appreciate Ken for coming on, so gracious with his time. You can see the passion, man. He's not just a businessman, he is a collector at heart, and so are all of us. We'll see you next time.

This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.