FULL TRANSCRIPT
slava (00:02.184)
Hello and welcome to, interesting, give me one second. Okay, hello and welcome to another episode of Smart Humans. I'm very excited about today's guest. We have Josh Luber, who is the founder of both StockX and Fanatics Collectibles. He is well known in the collectible space and has been really pioneering the entire movement. Josh, welcome to the show.
jl (00:28.386)
Thank you for having me.
slava (00:30.36)
Absolutely. So we always start in the beginning, which is how did you even get into what you're doing and how did you start getting into alternatives?
jl (00:41.334)
Well, I'll say before we go there, start at the top of the list, Smart Humans is a pretty strong name for a show, I gotta say, and I don't know, somewhat. I mean, you get anybody you want in the world to come on, it's Smart Humans, right? Who's not gonna be like, yeah, I'm long for it for that. So, that's good work, I was excited about that. So, you know, in talking about investing in alternative asset investing, it's interesting to even
slava (01:01.533)
Thank you.
jl (01:11.114)
you know, you talk about it in the context of investing because we all started as collectors and many of us still are collectors and we've seen in the last, I mean the last five years, significantly but slowly over time, of more people coming in on just the investment side. But there was always this question, right? And it used to be a negative divide. It used to be
the investing versus collecting or, you know, in the sneaker world, it was like the sneakerheads versus flippers, what they used to call it. But the reality is, is that like everybody is on some part of that spectrum, because you can't make any reasonable purchase decision for products that are supply and demand driven, products that have market value and have market values that change without thinking about that as an investment, even if you're just a quote collective. So for me, like the real...
start was, I don't know, 1983, the first time I got, you know, Milt Wilcox 1983 tops, which is the first, you know, first card that I ever got. Then I got swindled in that deal because I didn't have any cards. So I had to trade 12 bags of Doritos to this kid at camp for the Milt Wilcox 83 tops, who I thought was like a speedy outfielder. Turns out he was a pitcher. So you know.
This is the dichotomy in a shell and it grows in there, but I will say, and we can expand more on either side as you want, I reached a point in my life after a couple of years at StockX and StockX had reached a certain size and level of success where you start to have enough money to make investments that...
can be a little bit risky, right? The first couple dollars that you make go all into super conservative things, into 401ks and IRAs and so it's that second hit of money that you can then say, oh, you know what, I can put this somewhere else. And so for me, that happens at a higher clip, a couple of years in the stock X. And the first things that I started buying at that time were, was,
jl (03:22.434)
coincided with me getting back in the trading card. So it was very much driven by trading.
slava (03:26.917)
What year is that? A couple of years into StockX.
jl (03:28.534)
So for me, it was like end of 2018. End of 2018 is when I got back into trading cards on the collecting side and then very quickly started to see what was going to happen in the industry from an investment side. And then basically the growth of the market that happened over the last five years. And so, I'll tell you what, and because we all love cards.
this single investment decision, and we'll call it investment decision, because the first time that I ever decided to go really long on a card on a player was the summer of 2019. And over the last, over the previous eight months, I've been buying a little bit here and there, buying some sort of, call it a blue chip cards, Jordans and LeBrons and Cobies and stuff like that. And the summer of 2019.
It was the fourth week of the NFL season. Mahomes had run off four straight games and was looking like he'd gone from star to Hall of Famer. And Mahomes' cards were going through the roof. Like apps, and I remember exactly where I was. I was actually in a cab in Las Vegas, in an Uber in Las Vegas on the way to the Beckett Industry Summit, talking to people about Mahomes' market and how much it was, I mean, it was like five, six, seven X.
you know, just in those four weeks as he just blew up. And so I had this conversation with the people in the Uber and I said, well, who could do that in the NBA? Who's got a shot at possibly going from star to superstar or superstar to hall of famer? And this was the summer after Luca's rookie year. And Luca was overpriced at the time, or at least we thought Luca was overpriced at the time. Prison PSA 10s were $70.
compared to like, you know, Trey Young was like 20 bucks. And so it felt like, you know, the gain were built in. And I decided that I was gonna go long on Luca. I decided that he had a shot to do what Mahomes was doing. And I bought a ton of Luca Prism color for the last month of the summer. And there was a card show in Chantilly, Virginia, which is a regular card show that people are familiar with. And it was a lot, it was...
jl (05:47.758)
right at the end of the summer before the NBA season started. And I bought every single Luka prism color in the entire building. And I was buying them on eBay and I was just going, I was like, this was like taking a shot at it. And then, holy crap, right? Luka comes out his sophomore year and in 10 games goes from rookie of the year to, oh my God, this guy's a hall of famer. And I'm still making money off of that investment. I'm still selling off those cards. And
That has basically funded my entire collection over the past three years of how much money I made on that investment because look, I got super lucky. I got unbelievably lucky. It wasn't meant to be a short-term investment. It wasn't meant to be any of that, but it just absolutely blew up. And so if you look at it just as a pure investment, like that's the, you know, investing in whatever Uber or, you know, Apple or something and having an absolute, you know, huge come up. So anyway.
slava (06:45.088)
That's an awesome story, but let's just back up to connect the dots more between Milt Wilcox and the Luca. So what year do you start at StockX?
jl (06:48.334)
Mm.
That's right.
jl (06:57.163)
We launched StockX in February of 2016. Started working on it the year before in 2015.
slava (07:03.272)
So that's a sneaker marketplace and becomes other things as well. What's the origin of why you start that?
jl (07:11.818)
Yeah, I mean, look, when I was 10, the only two things I cared about in the world were sneakers and baseball cards. And, you know, I wish that I had collected cards throughout, but, you know, you go, same story as everybody, right? I left all my cards in my parents' basement for the last 20 years, but I collected sneakers, you know, through that whole time. And so I'm a startup guy. I've started and run three or four other companies before StockX. And none of them had anything to do with sneakers. None of them had.
were in any way in a collectibles or passion industry. But sort of one thing leads to another and I have the opportunity to basically work on a project that was a sneaker price guide. And that was on the side while I was working a day job at IBM and that became StockX. And so it was very much a...
natural evolution of personal passions with different business. I was doing a lot of data work at IBM. So it's one of these things where if you're a startup guy and you are working corporate jobs, you're always doing side projects, you're always doing side households, you're always messing around, and it's all iterative. There's never anything that's like, this is exactly what I'm going to do and go do it. It's I'm going to work on this and it becomes that and becomes that. And StockX was no different. It started as a sneaker price guide, kind of like the
the old Beckett magazines or similar to CarLadder today, and it evolved into a marketplace.
slava (08:43.388)
What were some of the other entrepreneurial hustles before StockX hit?
jl (08:47.638)
Well, the first job for all of us was selling candy and blow pops in elementary school and middle school. I had a great hustle in fifth and sixth grade because I lived right behind from a grocery store. So I used to hop over the fence behind my backyard and go to the grocery store and you could buy four packs of Bubblicious for a dollar. And in sixth grade, they went for a quarter a piece.
or a dollar for a pack of five. So I could turn one dollar into five dollars very easily. So it was a great little side hustle. But the first real business that I ever started was a company that was called, well, it was called Tech Experts. And this was Geek Squad before Geek Squad, where we would go into people's homes.
fix their computers, set up virus networks. This was 2001. So I went to Emory. I was in Atlanta for 15 years. And we would hire Georgia Tech grad students to be the technicians and my business was to go out and get the customers and manage the scheduling of the technicians to go to people's houses. So it was a consulting business. It was run out of my bedroom. I probably worked more than I ever worked and made basically nothing. But that was the like, oh, I get it.
what being an entrepreneur is about. I get what running a business is about and this is what I want to do. And I ended up selling that business to my partner in the business when I went back to grad school. It was nothing major, it was a couple bucks, but it was the experience that I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So yeah, so tech experts.
slava (10:33.764)
And along the time with tech experts or you're at IBM, are you investing only into the public markets or you're not really investing at all or?
jl (10:40.998)
Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, barely investing at all. Right. This is the like, you know, when I had, well, you know, when I had corporate jobs in between, you know, it's like what money can you put into 401k? You know, you have my father, you know, saying, you know, pull aside, you know, two grand to put into an IRA or what? I mean, like, you know, very, very nominal, you know, probably, probably more than a lot of people in their first couple of jobs, but still, you know, basically almost nothing.
slava (11:10.484)
Right, and fast forward now, you know, you have success. How do you think about your personal investing? How do you think about diversifying what you invest into? How much of it is, you know, people talk about the 60-40 traditional old school mix, right, 60 public markets, 40% bonds. I imagine that's not you, that's not me. So what's kind of like your mix?
jl (11:31.934)
Yeah. Well, look, I'm in a very unique situation in that the overall majority of my net worth is in StockX equity and Finanix collectibles equity, neither of which are liquid. Neither of those companies are public. StockX had talked about going public and maybe when the markets change, maybe it will and who knows how Finanix collectibles will evolve. So because of that, outside of
um, you know, cards and, you know, a couple of small art pieces and a couple of other things. Most of my investment is into is very, you know, traditional safe longterm. Um, you know, I had built a small portfolio with my financial advisor that was like, Hey, if StockX and financials go away, what happens? How do you, you know, survive? And then, you know, I probably over indexed into cards just because I've
you know, love it so much. And, and I had this great kickstart with the, with the Luca deal to be able to do that. So, uh, you know, mine is probably an example of what not to do of having, you know, probably more money in cards than maybe than anything. And then a whole lot of, you know, bonds and super long-term stuff and, and then, uh, and then all the, you know, very illiquid that. And I've also, and I'll say as well, I've also put after I left StockX,
I started to invest in startups as well. I haven't been putting money into other people's funds, but there's about a half a dozen of different entrepreneurs who I know and either first time entrepreneurs that I really like and wanted to help and sort of came in on that tip or other people that I kind of just wanted to support. And that's just more of a function of who I am and the people, those people.
So we'll see, but I think at some point in the future, I'll have to answer that question in a more traditional way as we figure out what to do and to move percentages out of StockX and Finite's collectibles into other stuff.
slava (13:36.648)
So for example, the wall behind you, is that to you just fun or are those investments behind you?
jl (13:42.066)
No, I mean, you can't see most of it. So it goes, and this is all just toys in this room. There's a whole nother room with sneakers. There's a whole nother room with trading cards. Trading cards are all investments. Sneakers are none, sneakers are investments. Sneakers are not good long-term investments. No matter how well you keep them in condition, they're still just rubber and leather and they will deteriorate. So those are not investments. Most of the stuff on the wall, I would say is all just fun. There's definitely stuff that's valuable and the nature of toys is that they're.
And you know, some of these are art toys down here. There's some Daniel Archam pieces and Murakami pieces that are more valuable. But I don't have any plans to flip them. There's a couple art pieces in the house. I have an original Murakami, a couple others. Again, I don't look at them today as investments because they're all, you know, I'm enjoying them in the house. But I guess at some point, I start buying more art and get to the point that maybe, you know, maybe they get sold.
slava (14:40.404)
It's interesting that you say sneakers are not investments. Obviously with your StockX background, I'm actually a personal early investor into Go. And then we actually had one of the people who sold the most expensive sneaker, I believe, the 1.8 Yeezys. So why do you say that they're not investments? Are you saying that most of the market, like 98% of the market's not investment? Or are you literally saying 100%?
jl (15:06.462)
Well, look, I would take even any sneaker that you would pay that much money for and that you would hold as a potential to invest and sell later is a memorabilia. It's, you know, Michael Jordan's game worn shoe from, you know, the NBA finals, right? That is memorabilia. That's an investment. So are you getting the background there? Can you hear? Okay.
slava (15:28.34)
Sure.
slava (15:33.552)
Yeah, a little bit. We could continue on. It's okay.
jl (15:36.03)
No, hold on, they're done, they're leaving, sorry. So I'll say that again. So any sneaker that's not, any sneaker that is memorabilia, any sneaker like Jordan's finals game-worn shoe, that's memorabilia, that's not a sneaker, right? Anything that's a sneaker that has value because of some historical significance, you kind of move it out of that.
But sneakers are still just rubber and leather and glue. So no matter how well you preserve it, it will deteriorate. So it's just, it's not a great long-term investment, right? If you want to hold it for a couple years. Yeah, because of the deterioration, right? So you have to figure out a way, and there are people working on, there's a company right now that's trying to create like a grading company for sneakers. And, you know, I've told them, look, if you can figure out how that case that you put it in also preserves the sneakers.
slava (16:14.068)
because of the deterioration.
jl (16:33.106)
Well, there may be something there, but the flip side of that is we like to wear our sneakers. Even like my most valuable sneakers, I wanna be able to wear them, even if I maybe don't wear them or whatever. So I don't know, there's this weird thing. There's no sneakers that I have that I'm holding specifically as an investment, but I have Nike Yeezys if somebody someday is like, hey, I'd give you 5X what you paid for. I don't know, sure.
slava (17:01.5)
Yeah, as part of, so at Vincent, the company that I'm with, we also have a closed end fund where we bring in a lot of collectibles investments amongst other alternatives and we actually did invest in some memorabilia sneakers, which are some of the original Michael Jordan, TYPS sneakers that were ever made and they are dual sig. So you get me a little nervous about the deterioration, but we did have to think about that and they were beautiful when we bought them, even though it's already almost 40 years later. But that's super interesting.
jl (17:23.948)
Yeah.
slava (17:31.434)
So.
jl (17:33.162)
Well, obviously, we're in an interesting time right now, having had the last year and a half that we had in it. I'm definitely still wrong. I definitely still think because the underlying evolution of how we use crypto as a society and Web3 and everything else, it's inevitable. It's happening like anybody that denies it is just wrong. Obviously, you know.
massively volatile and trying to pick winners is not the easiest thing. So yeah, so I'm long. I do have a fair amount of crypto investments between some coins and some NFTs. So I guess from a percentage standpoint, it's outside of StockX and Infinix collectibles. It's relatively decent. But I think that...
Anyone investing there just needs to understand one, the long-term nature of it, and two, the extremely volatile. I mean, look what happened. Anyone who's investing in Bitcoin at $55,000, $60,000.
slava (18:44.944)
And then you have a really unique perspective for this next question. What's your point of view on NFTs?
jl (18:51.422)
Yeah. So let's just like, we'll take trading cards for a second. So there are digital trading cards. Some of those digital trading cards do take the form of NFTs. But as an industry, we haven't scratched the surface on how to truly create NFT trading cards or even digital trading cards that integrate with the physical that, you know, have a,
like an integrated, standardized, and completist view of how they should interact with the rest of that industry. I'm gonna assume, and I don't have the same expertise in other industries, that the same thing is happening as NFTs start to permeate those other industries as well, where they may become useful, art, photography, and then the functional aspects of it as well. So I am long on NFTs. I am...
very bullish that there will be very valuable NFTs. But I think we all saw towards the end, right before the crash, that a lot of the, I guess, consciousness was moving towards understanding the difference between utility and just pure, or just pure digital asset. And so for that reason, I think we'll see values reflect that.
slava (20:09.364)
Thank you for your time and good luck with your calculations.
jl (20:21.426)
I don't know, like if you get to Ready Player One and you get to a real metaverse that we're all there and you have actual digital goods that become so important to somebody, then maybe. And obviously, Ready Player One is amazing and we all can't wait for that future. But yeah, I think we'll just see an evolution of utility as companies figure out the best way to integrate it in. But there's no company that makes any commercial goods today.
that isn't thinking about how they use NFTs and how they use digital goods moving forward. And so, um, yeah, that's a good thing.
slava (20:58.292)
Today, are you seeking out any NFT investments?
jl (21:03.694)
I have been watching the market carefully since the crash and to try to figure out, there's a couple things I've doubled down on a little bit as prices have fallen down, but not dissimilar to sort of my startup investing. The NFT projects that I've invested in outside of like, you know, I have some Bitcoin, have some Ethereum, are primarily people that I know and people that I believe in them and their brand and their, you know, and they're like, you
like be friends, right? Like that's a that's an easy one. Like, I'm more than happy to bet on Gary and what he's gonna do with that. So so yeah, you know, and I'm still watching it. But you're in general, again, back to sort of the overall premise of my state of investing, because so much of my wealth is tied up in illiquid. You know, stock X, max collectibles, it's all relatively small compared to what
I might be doing if it was a slightly different situation.
slava (22:03.624)
And how about some of the more yield oriented things like real estate or private credit? Do you get into that stuff?
jl (22:08.422)
No. I mean, no, you know, I own my house. That's about it.
slava (22:13.404)
Yeah. And then what do you think of today's market? You know, you've mentioned, you know, the crypto crash, obviously, the Luka prices have come down for some of the cards, cards in general for contemporaries come down, you know, the stock markets has some pain. What's Josh Luber's point of view today on the economy, the market and take it wherever you like?
jl (22:37.194)
Yeah, I mean, for me, the thing that is most relevant, the thing that's most pertinent, is when I look at the startup valuations and the companies and the relevant companies for that, we can just talk about, you know, StockX as being obviously because of me, but you know, some of the companies in this space have already gone public, like Farfetch'd and the RealReal.
And some haven't, there's been private transactions. And so I listened to a couple different podcasts and the people that I talked to in the space. I'm really, like I said, the thing that I focus most is, where we think startup valuations are going and access to capital, particularly now that I left Fanatics Collectibles, so I'm trying to figure out what I'm gonna do next. I have a couple ideas, although I haven't locked in for sure. But...
At some point, I'll probably need to raise money again. You know, how that impacts, again, you know, valuations and access to capital and, you know, all of that. Um, how it impacts when StockX might go public, how it impacts when Finanix might go public. I mean, those are the things that are most relevant, you know, to me personally. And then, you know, for better or for worse, I, you know, I think I've outsourced a lot of looking at the rest of the market to my financial advisor who I've been with for a long time now and who I really like.
And so yeah, that's from a personal standpoint. It's kind of my point of view
slava (24:06.888)
So yes, you just mentioned that you left Fanatics collectibles. I mean, I think that's pretty fresh news, right? In the last little while. So can you share, like, why did you leave? How did that evolve? And obviously, the next question will be, what are you thinking about next? But first, let's focus on, because it's so interesting that you joined Fanatics, helped to bring forward Zero Cool, which is the idea of moving cards beyond just sports cards. And yeah, take it away.
jl (24:12.043)
Yeah.
jl (24:36.574)
Yeah. Well, you know, look, um, fanatics collectibles, uh, was only formed, uh, towards the end of last year. Um, but I've been working on trading cards and I've been working on a trading card brand for culture since, uh, early 2019, um, at StockX, where I had the first idea for this. I left StockX in September of 20 to specifically do what we did to both create a trading card brand for culture and to go after the licenses.
to try to figure out if we could take control of the primary market and evolve the primary market. I sat down with Rubin for the first time in November of 20 and really laid out the plan for what I thought could be done. And as much as it was sort of my idea and my vision for how to do it and why, he's maybe the only person in the world that could have actually pulled that off from the acquisition of the licenses. And so, I'll take...
uh, 0.1% credit, give him 99.9% for fanatics and the relationships and everything else to actually acquire the licenses. But we spent all of 21 very quietly working on all of this, working to acquire the licenses, to build Zero Cool, to build the team, um, and to, uh, build the company, it would become fanatics collectibles such that when January 1 of 22 came around, we could acquire tops and continue on. So for a lot of people, it feels like, you know,
We've only been doing this for a minute, but I've actually been working on this business in some form since January of 19. And as most entrepreneurs and most startups, it looks like overnight success, 10 years in the making. It looks like all you see is this, but you don't see all the stuff below the fold. And so we've been doing it for a while. And I'm a startup guy and this company had a $10 billion valuation on the day that we started. It'll probably...
have a bigger number at some point soon as well. And so it's just the evolution of big companies. We took five companies here and smashed them together between Fanatics, Fanatics Collectibles, Zero Cool, Tops, and Candy Digital. And I'm a startup guy. Like I need to go back to that side of it. So I've been talking to Rubin for a while to figure out the right way to manage that transition because I'm also still a big shareholder of Fanatics Collectibles and still a big collector.
jl (27:02.866)
And I still very much believe in the future of this industry. So we worked out a deal. I'm staying on the board. I'll still be an advisor to him and to Mike Mahan, who's the CEO, if they ever, if they ever need to talk and be part of that. But, you know, I get to leave all the day-to-day stuff and that that's fine. And I, frankly, it's been a pretty great, you know, week and a half since then. I've watched a lot of TV. I've seen the boys on Amazon, but I'm just finished season one. So it's good stuff.
slava (27:32.872)
Nice. And maybe not everybody understands what trading cards for culture means. So can you just explain that a little bit more and give like a case study of kind of what you brought to market with Zerocool?
jl (27:44.062)
Yeah. So look, I mean, trading cards have primarily been sports focused for, well, since, you know, the late 1800s. And there have been trading cards for non-sports over the years, whether it's been traditional IP like TV and movies in the 60s and 70s, there was a whole bunch of different rock star and movie star cards, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley. And, you know, there's some interesting stuff there. But
there's never really been a consistent brand that is focused just on the non-sport and culture market because it's not just the traditional IP and it's not just the big names like the biggest musicians and movie stars in the world. But if you think of the evolution of sports trading cards and to the fact that we now have F1 and you have UEFA and you have the Japanese Baseball League and it goes to...
into minor leagues and college and everything else. The point is, and very much like the promise of the internet and the long tail of the internet, is that there's cards for everybody. And every sport you could possibly wanna collect, every sport that you're possibly a fan of, there's trading cards there. So we should be able to do the same thing for non-sports. So whether we have trading cards for musicians and actors or entrepreneurs or business people or politicians or artists or fashion designers or dentists, well, like...
The wrapper card's gonna be way more valuable than the Dennis card, but who knows? There's actually a famous trading card set of rabbis from, and I should really note that my Jewish heritage will be questioned here. I forget the year of it, but anyway, again, trading cards are historical records, usually of people or IP.
And so there's no reason there shouldn't be trading cards of all these other people that matter on our side because those people, whether it's, you know, Kanye or George Clooney or Leonardo DiCaprio, whomever, they're as important and as iconic as any athlete ever. And so that was the idea to create a real brand specifically focused on that. We launched Zero Cool in March of, wait, where are we? March of this year.
jl (30:06.422)
Right, yeah, March of 22. And the first set was with V-Friends, with Gary Vaynerchuk's NFT project. Again, brand, right? We took the characters that were on V-Friends NFTs and put them on trading cards. The second set was more traditional. It was with the movie franchise Jackass. So Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, that entire franchise has a ton of high profile.
celebrity cameos over the years that have been in those sets, Tony Hawk and Jay-Lan Ramsay and Machine Gun Kelly and Tyler the Creator, et cetera. And then at the National, we announced the next couple of sets that are coming, which are Stranger Things, Dune and Clerks III. More traditional IP, but again, Stranger Things as important as relevant of brand and content as baseball, basketball, football, or anything else.
And so that's the idea is that Zero Pool can help to grow the market as a whole by making trading cards for people who maybe don't care as much about sports.
slava (31:09.98)
So you mentioned, thank you for those examples, you mentioned that this is not overnight, this is like three years in the making, if not closer to four. So now that you've had this much time behind you and seeing how the market's receiving is seeing like the pros and cons of navigating all this, are you equally, is your point of view equal to the way it was when you first had the idea? Are you more bullish today than you were in the beginning of 19? Or are you less bullish than the beginning of 19?
jl (31:15.874)
Oh yeah.
jl (31:36.778)
Oh, I'm way more bullish. So in 19, we tried to create a trading card set at StockX with Upper Deck. And it was a hundred high profile people in the sneakers, street wear, fashion world. Most of the people were people that we knew or had access to. And it was really just a one-off project. It was what spawned the actual brand. But now to have Zero Cool as one of the flagship brands as part of the nice collectibles, next to Tops.
And eventually, Fanatic's collectibles will make basketball and football cards as well. And so we kind of look at it as for sports, baseball, basketball, football culture. And, you know, I think it's hard to deny the impact of all the non-athletes have on the world. I mean, I mean, just look at Ruben's white party, the people that show up there. So, yeah, I'm more bullish on it. The feedback that we've got, the anecdotal feedback from
the people that collected the V Friends, the Jackass set, let alone the numbers and the fact that some of the V Friends boxes, you know, were selling for five, six X, you know, what they sold for when we released them. The anecdotal feedback has been phenomenal, right? Because if you hit those people over the head with the thing that they actually care about, it's, you know, you can maybe convince Drake to be a basketball card collecting fan, but if I make trading cards of rappers and...
have him in it and all his friends, it's way more likely that he cares about trading cards if you have trading cards. And so that's really the key. It's both on the consumer side to make products that are directly in line with what the consumers want, but also to truly make trading cards part of culture, you make trading cards and involve those people in the process. When Nike first started having non-athletes do collaborations with them and having...
I mean, Travis Scott is probably the most high profile Nike collaborator today. Right. There was a time where Nike never had non-athletes do collaborations with them at all, but at some point, you know, they realized how much value there is in tapping into the culture that Travis Scott drives.
slava (33:45.776)
You mentioned that you're looking for your next chapter for something more entrepreneurial, probably smaller. You haven't figured it out yet. What are some of the ideas or what are some of the, let's call it, areas that you're looking at?
jl (34:03.134)
Um, so, you know, the two things that I think I've become the, the two, two skills that, that I think I've developed the best, um, that I want to explore. Um, one is really understanding, um, how supply and demand impacts, um, consumer goods. And so there's a lot of different ways that can go. Um, but.
you know, if you just think about a lot of the products that are sold on StockX or trading cards, they're products that aren't, products that there is no retail price for. They're all products that have a market price. And that market price is a function of supply and demand. Supply, we know demand is an amorphous number. And so cracking that code, I mean, that's the holy grail of all of this. And so I think there's some...
work to still be done in terms of creating products and or businesses that go down that path become more efficient and in the way that you bring buyers and sellers together for that. So there's a whole path down that side. The other part is really team building. I think that I've gotten a lot better at creating a culture.
that is fun to work at, that we have a place. I mean.
jl (35:37.378)
There's so much, we all grew up in a time where work was, it was just different, right? And I don't wanna go too far down this path, but I wanna be able to build a team and create the culture that I wanna run. And that only works at a relatively small scale. And I don't know what that number is, it doesn't mean that it couldn't be a couple hundred, it doesn't even mean it could be a couple thousand. But I know for sure that
when you reach a certain size and scale, just the nature of how businesses need to be run, it becomes less personal, it becomes less ability to do it. So I do want to find something that we can still control the culture and control the team that we put together to be able to do that. So I don't know how much that helps, but that's the sort of two things that are guiding a lot of my decisions right now. But man, it's fun to be on this side of it. It's fun to be to look and I do a lot of research, what you can't see in this room.
There's a whole lot of different mood boards up here as I'll have like an idea and I'll print out like 50 pictures about like a topic or a business or an industry and put them up and start to just like wander around my room.
slava (36:47.216)
What's the last topic that you did that about?
jl (36:50.919)
I think we'll share, we'll keep all the topics secret for now.
slava (36:55.324)
Sounds good. Given your view at Fanatics Collectibles and StockX, what are the things that need to happen in the next two, three years, in your opinion? What needs to be built out? What are the trends? Where are still some pains? I'm not saying that Fanatics themselves need to build. I'm just saying the industry. What does the industry need to take it to the next level?
jl (37:22.474)
Yeah. You know, the last three, four years, um, has been about everyone in the industry, um, getting themselves together, um, standing companies up, acquiring companies, building teams, building the infrastructure. Um, you know, you, you see this as, you know, PSA has gone from having to shut down to be able to, you know, uh, they just announced another, you know, low end, uh, $22, you know, grading service, right?
They've created the internal processes and efficiencies to scale their business. And we're seeing this across the board. The national this year was amazing to see how big the corporate section was and how many businesses are involved and how people have evolved their own businesses. It's time for all of us now to start talking out, to market outside of our own walls and bring new customers in. The way it has to work. You have to...
get your own house in place first before you can start the outward demand creation, bring people in. But that's what has to happen next. We all have to be able to grow the hobby by bringing in more people, by making it more accessible. And it means not only outward demand creation and marketing, but also it means how we work together because it's a delicate ecosystem that has to work together between the next collectibles making cards.
the distributors, the hobby shops, the people that are grading, the marketplaces, the vaulting, everything about it, it has to work together. It doesn't mean that one company has to do it all. It doesn't even mean that there needs to be business relationships between them. But take something as simple as what do we call cards? Today, there's so many parallels, there's so many different cards that are made. SGC, BGS, and PSA might actually name a Prism
color parallel three different things, because there's no standard metadata, because Panini doesn't put out a metadata list that says, hey, this is exactly what everything is called, right? By the way, that should be on a chip in the card that every grading company can hit and every vaulting company can hit, and everybody knows exactly what that card is called and where it's printed and everything else. Not pointing fingers at anyone, right? Maybe Finax Collectible solves it, maybe Uppertect solves it, maybe Leaf solves it, who knows, right?
slava (39:44.84)
That's a great idea.
jl (39:46.946)
But it's these things that will, one, as we bring more people in, reduce the friction for people to stay in and for people to be able to continue to be hobbyists. They can't just come in, look for a quick flip and leave. We need to create long-term hobbyists. So yeah, that's how we evolve.
slava (40:06.436)
Any other ideas of, you know, this is a major pain in the industry that somebody needs to solve?
jl (40:14.066)
I mean, there's a ton of pain points that everyone is still working on. But, you know, I think one of the big ones right now is fragmentation of marketplaces and vaults. That'll contract the other way. But right now, I mean, I haven't dug deep into it, so I'm making no judgment. Right. But the arena, what's it called? Arena something, the Derek Jeter. Yeah.
slava (40:39.952)
Yeah, Jeter's new business. Yeah, just.
jl (40:42.474)
Right. That's a marketplace and grading company. Do we need another marketplace and grading company? I don't know. Maybe, maybe they become the winner in both. Right. But, you know, fragmentation is the enemy of, um, of growth in a lot of ways because you don't have, you know, the more liquidity you have in one place, the easier it is to figure out, uh, what's a fair price for it. The easier it is, um, you know, to make sure that everybody is, is paying a fair price. And that was the whole premise of StockX having one single product page.
where you have bids and ask all at the same page, which by the way, we just copied from the stock market, we didn't make that up, right? But that's what creates the efficiency by having everyone in one place, every bid and ask in one place. The trading card right now, industry is going the exact opposite way by all these marketplaces. By the way, it's great for buyers looking for deals. If you're trying to pick up something, there's five different auction houses that are going off, there's all the different marketplaces that are coming up. So that's great, but...
It's not good for growth. It's not good for efficiency. It's not great for liquidity. So we will see a contraction at some point, no idea how and when, whether people consolidate and people buy others or whether people just fade out. But marketplaces, auction houses and vaults, those three areas need to be standardized and more liquidity.
slava (42:10.14)
That makes a lot of sense. What predictions do you have for what two to three years out looks like for the industry? And when I say the industry, I mean collectibles as a whole. So take it wherever you want.
jl (42:17.532)
Um, I.
jl (42:22.89)
Well, I think we're going to see really, really different trajectories for different industries, for sure. Trading cards, I think in two or three years, we're on the precipice of the next major growth, the next major spike. We'll have a couple years of now, people continue to build their infrastructure, creating that demand, creating ways to work together.
But none of that stuff will really be in full bloom yet. That just can't be for that long. So again, but I do think that we'll be moving in the right direction and we already are, such that we'll be on the precipice of the next really great big boom. Outside of that, I mean, there's a million places to go with that. I'll bring up one topic we haven't talked about, which is comic books. I am not a...
comic book collector, I was not a comic book reader as a kid. Through some friends, I've started to look at the industry a little bit more and pay attention. But comic books seem to be undervalued. Same thing with, I'm a big fan of Nintendo and Wada and I have, I don't know if you can see here, I have five, what do I have, I have five games. None of them are super expensive or they're not high grades and just...
You know, Super Mario 3, Punch-Out, Zelda, Kung Fu, right? They're just games I love. But I think that's a super interesting thing.
slava (43:53.252)
Yeah, I played that original Kung Fu as well.
jl (43:57.77)
Right, right, well, how old are you? I'm 44. Yeah, right, so Kung Fu is massive. When you look at that, everybody knows the other four games, not a lot of people know that Kung Fu. Yeah, that was amazing. So I think both comic books and video games, neither of which do I have big positions and neither of which am I planning to put real money into it just because I have so much money in other places. I think both of those are really interesting. I think they're undervalued. I think that...
slava (44:01.416)
43.
jl (44:28.462)
because of their place in our culture growing up, I mean, even just the conversation we just had around Kung Fu, both of them and their place as it relates to big IP that still continues to grow. The fact that they're both gradable, standardized, all the things that create an actual asset, which maybe sneakers don't as we talked about earlier. I think both of those two are ones to watch.
slava (44:56.752)
And then to the listener who's trying to decide, do I get into collectibles, do I not get into collectibles? How would you advise them today about potentially investing into collectibles outside of just their passions?
jl (45:08.522)
Yeah, I mean, you got to really do a lot of research first to figure out what's going on, which is obvious, maybe stating the obvious, but trading cards are really hard for people to get in. By the way, adding to our list of things that trading card industry needs to do better, it's creating pathways of education for new consumers to come in and understand, even just to understand all the different parallels of a set or whatever it is. So
Yeah, but you know, I'll say the best thing you can possibly do, no matter what part, whether collectibles you're interested in, is find a Sherpa. Find an expert of somebody that you can lean on and call for questions and go down that path. You know, I had that person as I was getting back into trading cards, who was, you know, enormously valuable. And look, a lot of this stuff is about the relationships anyway. Because
all these industries are relatively small in terms of the number of people that are in them that drive the business that are in different places. So it's super helpful to be able to know those people and network through it, which will also help you as you want to start making bigger purchases or finding certain rare items in different, in different parts of it. If you're going down from an investment standpoint, all roads lead to, you know, the, the scarce, the valuable, you know, the rare, it doesn't mean that, you know, everybody has to buy the most expensive things, but
That's where value is. And so the more people that you can know and network through industry, the better chance you're gonna have of feeling when they either find it, sell it, if you get it, right? If you pull a massive card today, what are your options? Like you just, you have to give it to Golden or PWCC or something like that because you don't have a network to be able to sell a high value card. So stuff like that.
slava (46:58.792)
Who was your Sherpa?
jl (47:01.198)
Jason Kuntz who runs OTA Sports and now runs ISA Grading. And so he was actually, so he lived in Detroit. When I lived in Detroit, I now live in Austin. I moved a year ago, but when I was running StockX, I was in Detroit for the past six years. We started looking at trading cards at StockX because we were always just looking for what other products might make sense to put on the site. And as I was networking my way through the trading card industry, it was actually...
Steve Sloan at PSA, who, you know, it was obvious to go talk to people at PSA. And he's like, oh, well, if you're in Detroit, you should know Coons, he's in your backyard. He's one of our biggest submitters. And so I met Jason in probably early 20 or mid 2018. And then he helped me along the way as I got back into it and to understand it and all that. And then we've done a ton of deals together and it's become one of my closest friends.
slava (47:58.817)
Nice. Not everybody has the same information that you do, but everybody would like to try to get exposure to that knowledge. So what is it that you like to watch, read, or listen to? Just an example of anything that can get more into the head of Josh.
jl (48:12.434)
Yeah, I mean, you know, there's, there's like a half a dozen decent podcasts in the card industry. You know, I think if you like the long form and personal interview style, Jeremy Lee's podcast is good for that to hear long stories and he has people on there who will sit and talk for two or three hours and give you know, everything about it. The sports card nonsense show on the
Um, is, you know, has its flaws for the structure of it and the fact that it's on the ringer, but also, um, I think they do a really good job of bringing on a good guests and hitting the top points. Um, Jeff Wilson's podcast is good. Um, the Lucas tigers, uh, I forget what they call that thing. Um, but, uh, but cage and those guys are good. So there's some of the ones that, um, that I listened to. Um, yeah.
slava (49:08.308)
Great. And then the last question is we ask everybody is what's an investment you would make today that three years from now that you think would be a solid investment? So obviously you had that Luca hit, what's gonna be that next Luca hit that you wanna tell the audience today and we put you on the spot?
jl (49:25.27)
Well, um.
The last time, so I'll give you two, right? And one is, I still think it's a good investment, but I've been talking about it for a while. So a lot of people know that I've been buying the Kim Kardashian 2009 Upperdack Autograph Rookie card. And I have a lot of, I don't know what I'm up to, maybe 16, 18, something like that, 20. But what's happened because of that,
slava (49:34.216)
Great.
jl (49:57.91)
because the cards like a I don't know it's maybe about a Thousand twelve hundred fifteen hundred our card right now raw is now if you go on eBay there's all these people that are listing it for like $60,000 or $50,000 and so I messaged somebody and was and said I was like hey I was like, you know last comps on this were like two grand. I was like I'll pay over I'll give you like 2,500 for it and the person writes me back and says totally, I know that where the comps are at but
someone really important in the industry said, this is gonna be a really big card, so I can't sell it. And I'm like, yeah, mother, me, I'm like, I'm the only one buying this card. Nobody else cares about this card except for me. And now I've like brought myself up, so I can't buy it. So I still think the first time that Kim Kardashian picks up a card and was like, oh, look, how cool my rookie card and like puts on our Instagram. Like, it just pure supply and demand, right? Like who drives more demand than Kim? So I think I still think Kim's a buy. And then I...
slava (50:31.987)
Hahaha
jl (50:55.146)
I have the new rookies. I'm really long on Evan Mobley. I, you know, I haven't, I didn't buy any rookies seriously the last two years. I bought a couple of Anthony Edwards. I think everybody's been on the Anthony Edwards bandwagon for the last month. But, but I like Mobley and I've been buying a lot of Mobley for the last like two months. And so we'll see how that plays out.
slava (51:17.252)
Amazing.
Thank you so much Josh. This has been an awesome discussion. We covered a lot of topics. We started out with Milt Wilcox and how that led you to having your Luka run and how that's still paying dividends today. You started with some hustles from $1 or $5 Bubblicious and being able to do tech experts. You told us a surprising thing, which sneakers are not a great investment, yet you did build out StockX and obviously pushed forward on Fanatic collectibles. And trading cards for culture. I mean, I think that's an easy tagline for you, period.
that you've been pushing that forward for years. You even mentioned the trading card set for Rabbis. I'm gonna have to hunt that one down. You predicted some trends for the future that need to happen, whether it's metadata standardization, better education for the consumer, or also needing more consolidation. So it's simpler for us to access all these things. You mentioned that you think there's gonna be another spike in trading cards in a couple of few years, and that right now we've had video games and comic books that are undervalued, which I actually totally agree with as well. And you gave us a very, very unique
bid on what will be the surprise three years from now, which is the Kim Kardashian auto and of course, the Evan Mobley as well. Thank you so much, Josh.
jl (52:23.733)
Thanks for having me, this was fun.
