Transcript:
slava (00:02.328)
Welcome to the show, Nat Turner, super excited to have you on. This has been a guest that we've been looking to get for a while, I mean, he covers so many elements of alternatives from entrepreneurship to equity investing to cards to games and more. Thank you, Nat, for joining.
nat_turner (00:19.831)
No, no pleasure. My pleasure.
slava (00:22.028)
Absolutely. So let's just get started where it all began. Can you just tell us how did you get into alts? Obviously you started a company, but just give us a roadmap as to how you got investing into all these different things.
nat_turner (00:32.086)
Yeah, I was probably, you know, I was a little kid and I really enjoyed collecting cards. I think probably when I got into middle school I started realizing if you have cards of good players and they continue to play well, their value will go up. That wasn't why I was collecting, but it became like a nice little fun thing to do. So I was buying, well I made a couple bad decisions, like I invested in Steve France's cards.
you know, guys like that. But I picked LeBron James in 03 as a good example of one that worked. I have many that didn't work, but that one worked really well. Yeah, so cards. And then I never really got into other, my dad's a Bitcoin collector. So I've gotten bitten by that bug a little bit. And then, you know, I've always kind of preferred having cool nostalgic assets around me instead of, you know.
T-bills and things like that.
slava (01:30.736)
So did you start buying cars and things like that or did you build your first company first? What happened first?
nat_turner (01:37.79)
Oh, cards were my first, yeah, so I was a card dealer as a middle schooler and high schooler. I would display at shows, you know, at the hotels, hotel ballrooms, you know, pretty much through high school. And then I started, well, actually, so I needed, I became an engineer in a way, a front end designer and could build websites because I needed to build my own website to show off, you know, cards that were for sale or whatever else I was selling.
slava (01:45.988)
Nice.
nat_turner (02:07.042)
I was selling other things too, like reptiles and all sorts of stuff. But yeah, I got into computers thanks to, you know, car. I actually looked my eBay account the other day and my PayPal account. I set them up when I was in eighth grade, which is a good example. That's when I started getting on eBay and buying and selling. Vince Carter was the first big card I purchased, the SPX Finite Rookie. I was like $180 if I remember.
That was one of the first things I bought on eBay. No, no, in fact I did not really buy graded cards until, well, I submitted my first card to BGS in 2000. It was a Steve Francis upper deck game jersey card. I still have it. And a finest rookie. I didn't really submit much, to be honest. I would buy mostly raw. Most of the cards I collected were raw because I collect 90s cards. Those didn't really, I collect vintage baseball too, but 90s.
slava (02:38.553)
And was that graded?
nat_turner (03:05.494)
basketball didn't really hit grading until like 2000 frankly 2010 or 15
slava (03:11.356)
Wow. And so you then transition that after college. You create some amazing companies. Can you tell us about that?
nat_turner (03:19.454)
Yeah, I started an online advertising company, software company called Invite Media, which was an optimized banner ads online. Wasn't the coolest thing ever, but it was a really fun experience, really cool tech, the technology that we built. We sold that in 2010, and then in 2012, started a cancer software company that does big data research using real world.
real cancer patient data. So think of like everything outside of clinical trials, trying to learn from the experiences of patients in the real world in routine cancer care. And we sold that in 2018.
slava (04:01.82)
So we can obviously have a whole other podcast just with your entrepreneurial knowledge, but then I think you parlayed that into a bunch of angel investing and now a fund. What was the thinking there?
nat_turner (04:12.194)
I've been doing angel investing since 2010, since selling Invite Media. I love being around other entrepreneurs. It certainly is a good investment too. I think if you do it right, we have a good network. My business partner, Isaac, we have a good business relationship, I would say, with a number of entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs. Frankly, folks who worked at Invite are flat iron is where a lot of it comes from.
leave and start their own thing. And we pretty much have a blank check for anyone who worked with us, took the risk to work with us, and then wants to go start their own company. So most of the companies we're involved with, we had a relationship with the founder prior to the investment. And yeah, we've now hired a team, they're sitting over here, that does frankly most of the heavy lifting of kind of diligencing these companies. We still bring our network to the table.
and spend a lot of time with the companies, when they need help, we're a phone call away or a WhatsApp away. But yeah, it's just more scalable. So we can kind of, we do about one or two investments every week actually, in a private company.
slava (05:21.104)
Wow, so with all that experience, what kind of advice would you give to the listeners about thinking about getting into angel investing?
nat_turner (05:28.394)
Ooh, wait until you can afford to incinerate a pile of money on fire, because it takes about 10 or 15 years to see any sort of return. It's a good investment, but you have to have just an incredibly long time horizon. You basically just have to invest it and forget about it. Frankly, for 15.
slava (05:50.892)
it. And then we like to talk about all the various asset classes. So are you into art, like traditional art? And for example, like why not art versus like sports cards? Is there a reason that you stay away from that?
nat_turner (06:05.806)
I have one piece of art. I'm a big golfer. It's a really cool golf piece. You know, I don't know. Frankly, a lot of the really good, so I'm really into scarcity value. That's my thing. So I, I mean, it's not rocket science, but in cards, it drives everything in my collecting. And in art, you know, unless you're buying originals, like lithograph, it's just fake scarcity to me. And the originals are just really, really expensive.
And they never spoke to me. So like whenever I would see a sports card, like I'd rather own a Michael Jordan PMG Green, which was like a 10th the price of, you know, some piece of art that I've never even heard of the guy. So for me, it was like very nostalgic, the card thing. I didn't have any nostalgia or like connections to art, but that's not to say it's not a great investment. I'm sure it's frankly better than cards, but it just wasn't something that I was ever gonna get excited about. Maybe one day, but you know.
slava (07:00.144)
You mentioned scarcity. How do you evaluate scarcity? 101, 10 available, 100, 1000, 10,000. What's scarce?
nat_turner (07:07.938)
Well, it's completely dependent upon the demand for it, but ideally you have high demand and low supply. I'll give you examples. Like PMG Greens, there's 10 of. There's not that many people who collect them, but there's only 10, so you only need at least 10 people to make a party. So that's scarce. You go look at the Michael Jordan 86 Clear Jordan PSA 10, there's 316 of them or whatever it is.
That's actually still scarce because the population of people who go after those specifically is much larger than say, PMG Greens. And so there's a party there too. So it's really just dependent on, on demand. Um, for me in cards, it usually is like sub 50 or a hundred things. Um, like a good example is LeBron James rookie patch autograph. There's 99 of them. There's way more than 99 people who'd like to own that card. So, you know, to me, that's an extremely scarce card.
Even though there's 99 of them, which most people would say is still relatively common in cards.
slava (08:09.436)
And then just for the audience, what's PMG stand for? So that's like a specific type of Michael Jordan card.
nat_turner (08:12.258)
Precious metal gyms.
nat_turner (08:17.034)
Yeah, it's a card from 1997 Metal that there's a red version, there's 90 of those, and a green version. There's 10 of them. Emerald and Ruby.
slava (08:25.496)
I know from your Instagram, you know, you posted that and you have a great following for people that want to check out your Instagram.
nat_turner (08:29.79)
Yeah. Well, for example, like I think I can probably name only like 12 or 13 people that like obsess over that set. I'm sure there's hundreds or thousands that love the set, but don't, aren't collecting it, but that's all you need, you know, and that's scarcity. So.
slava (08:46.768)
And then what do you think of crypto?
nat_turner (08:50.338)
I'm not an investor in it. I have a couple of startups that I'm involved with that are in crypto, which that's kind of the way I'm playing it is let the startups pivot and work their way, work their magic. But as far as owning the currencies, if you call them that, that's not my thing. But I understand it. I have a lot of people who I think are very smart who've gone spending a ton of time and money and energy in that area.
You know, it's again doesn't speak to me. It's not tangible. I like things I can hold and feel, but, um, and I, you know, I know exactly how many of them there are. That is one of the appeals, I guess, of, of things like Bitcoin versus NFTs. It's like you actually, you know, in theory it's more finite. Um, although NFTs also, but it just feels much more, um, Ununique to be honest.
slava (09:44.86)
got it and then real estate. What do you think about real estate investing?
nat_turner (09:49.986)
I just own places that I live in. I'm not, I think it's a great investment, but there's just a lot of overhead to it in my opinion. Like you guys gotta worry about property taxes, tenants, I don't know. It's just too much effort. But yeah, I mean, look, it's so different. It's like, you know, you're basically playing for appreciation and property value. The margin has gotten, in my opinion, has gotten sucked out of, you know,
the arbitrage of rent and tenants and costs, it's a sub 10% business annually, cashflow, if you are doing a good job, and as far as I can tell, maybe I'm wrong, but however, if you buy scarce things like a plot of land in Manhattan or Brooklyn, yeah, I mean, that's the way to do it. Find a town that's Austin, Texas, five years ago, that kind of thing, I'm sure it's great, but it's just too much work.
slava (10:45.5)
It sounds like scarcity is the consistent word across all your various investment thesis.
nat_turner (10:48.449)
Yeah.
Well, I do a lot of equity investing though, so that's not so much scarce as it is picking good companies.
slava (10:58.372)
meaning public markets. Got it. How do you like to think about the diversification of your portfolio across the various alts and then into the public markets or maintaining in like cash, et cetera?
nat_turner (11:12.882)
Um, I've actually never put a ton of thought into it. You know, I make sure I have enough cash on hand, you know, for lifestyle purposes and then the rest I don't mind if I'm fully invested, it doesn't really matter to me liquidity either. I know that's crazy, but at my age as you know, to, to be practical about it, like I can have a really long time horizon. So like startup investing, for example, makes a ton of sense for, for myself, but maybe not to my grandfather, for example, cause you know, he's 82 years old.
And you have to wait 15, 20 years for these investments to mature sometimes before you actually want to sell them for, you know, taxes make it really difficult to sell things these days. And so you want to hold as long as possible. So you know, I would say if I look at it though, maybe half, I mean, it's a lot, it's probably more than most people are comfortable with, but I'd say probably half of my, you know, assets are in illiquid startups, alternatives.
I mean, startups are alternative investments, right? They're not liquid. So I'd say it's probably close to half. My goal is to make it higher. It's hard. I mean, you can't, there's not enough great startups and great sports cards and great things to buy, actually, at the end of the day, that if you're being really, you know, I would say, you know, discerning, you know, you could certainly, like, waste money in startups. You can waste money in anything.
It's really easy to do that if you're just trying to deploy money.
slava (12:41.956)
Yeah, what's the line? Like if you want to become a millionaire in LA, you start like a billionaire and you invest in movies.
nat_turner (12:47.646)
Yeah, or build a golf course or start a restaurant or any of those things.
slava (12:51.864)
Exactly. So it sounds like around 50 percent or maybe a little over on the private, eliquid alternatives, but then there's- you still have your public markets, uh, allocation and then kind of your kind of living life allocation. Very interesting. So in the, um, entrepreneur space, again, I just want to- before we move on to the card, since you're so knowledgeable, we'll get to that in a second. Um,
Any other things of your learnings you've been investing now for well over a decade into these startups, what are the things that you see as now that Nat today knows better than the Nat when you first started angel investing?
nat_turner (13:27.438)
Hmm Should have started a team earlier to do it with me. I was it was too Too many opportunities I missed too many opportunities just because I didn't have Time that day to get on the phone or to hear the pitch, you know, because startups move really fast You know, they can start on a Monday and by Friday their seed rounds done depending on who the team is So you really have to move quickly. So I would have hired a team much sooner
That's easy, that's an obnoxious thing to say, but if you have the means for it and you wanna build a fund, it's competitive. I mean, allocations matter. If they're raising 500 grand and you wanna put 25 grand into it, there's probably 50 other people who are onto that too, and you gotta convince the entrepreneur why you're gonna be more helpful to them, because the money is not created equal anymore in startup land.
very much attached to your value add after the investment. So that's what I would have done to scale angel investing faster. I can think of a bunch of companies that I missed investing in just because of that. Yeah.
slava (14:35.448)
Not everybody gets the benefit of having multiple exits like you and having really large exits. How are the listeners supposed to try to break into angel investing? What's the value add that they can provide? Like how can they get a piece of that 25K you're mentioning that's being competed away with 10 other people?
nat_turner (14:50.59)
Yeah, I mean honestly, it's probably against what you want to hear But like I would actually just go get operating experience and start-ups so that you can add value if you don't already if you don't already Have it Angel investing in startups is really hard Unless you have a unique You know perspective that entrepreneur founder who's gonna take your check
will benefit from. Again, it's easy for me to say having the operating experience, but when I talk to entrepreneurs who are raising seed rounds, again, money's not created equal. You got to bring value to the table. It could be anything. I mean, you could be a crypto expert. For example, my collectibles experience is actually helping my angel investing quite a bit these days because there's so many startups being started in collectibles. I get a lot of those looks.
You know, so stick, and I would say stick to what you know, therefore, isn't good, you know, if you don't go investing in, you know, ad tech, if you don't know ad tech, same with healthcare, I mean, everything sounds good in markets you don't know anything about, and that's the problem, you're gonna get, you know, sold a bill of goods. You know, looking back, I mean, the stuff we were investing in healthcare back then, oh my gosh, like, I can't believe we made some of those investments.
you know, after having done Flatiron, we realized, you know, how stupid that was. So that's, you know, stick to what you know, and then get some experience. That's unique.
slava (16:15.332)
Got it. And let's transition now to the collectibles and card stuff. So, you know, you took CLCT private. Can you just tell us about that?
nat_turner (16:26.314)
Yeah, it was a really fun and stressful period of my life. I know for the board and Joe Orlando, who was the CEO at the time, well, it's a great company. I mean, I've been obsessed with PSA, which is one of their brands, Under Clever Universe, for 10 plus years. My time at Flatiron was winding down, so I was trying to figure out what was next. COVID had just hit, this is, you know, 2020, mid 2020.
And I really wanted to get into cards as a business, just because I wanted to be able to, you know, frankly make a job out of something I love. And at that time, cards and still has always been probably number one. And so it was perfect. And I looked around at all these other companies. Unfortunately, it was a public company that was quite expensive and getting more expensive by the day at the time. This is when like COVID stocks, you know, Peloton, all these others were going crazy, Zoom. And CLCT was no exception. I mean, it had like quadrupled or something.
So put together an investor group, I'm very passionate about this stuff. So I was thankfully able to communicate quite quickly kind of what the opportunity was and I had a vision for it already, had for years, honestly, just trying to help them from the sidelines unsuccessfully just cause they had their own thing going and just decided the only way to make it happen is to buy the whole company. Like I can't just be a board member or an investor in the public market. I had to run the thing.
And so yeah, we put it together. It was a long process. It took And in the closing on February 8th 2021, but it was we probably started in earnest the summer before So it was like a six to nine month process We got it done
slava (18:07.868)
It's amazing, I mean it's been a huge impact in the industry. When you were looking to take them private, I mean did you already have the grand vision as to where you could try to take it?
nat_turner (18:19.87)
I would say like 90% of it for sure because you know it was expensive. I think we had to end up raising like $900 million or $850 million to get it done. I mean it's a lot of money. You know like I wasn't, certainly wasn't able to afford that all on my own I wish. And so I had to go convince you know most of that to come from people that, most of whom I had never worked with before. So yeah I had to have a vision in place.
But I mean, honestly, even before I started pitching it, I knew so much about what their opportunity was. Because I mean, I was, I mean, I am, I was one of the biggest collectors of their product, you know, no question. Not to be braggy about it, but like I knew so much about it. And so, and I knew some of the team and like, I just had a really, I was very confident that, you know, my vision was, was going to work. Now we'll see if that actually.
slava (18:47.152)
Can you?
nat_turner (19:15.858)
is proven out, it may not, but the concepts, I had this big strategy document, like 24 pages it became of just running notes of things that I was just, when I thought of something I would add it and I went through it the other day and we're working on most of those things. A lot of them are stupid, by the way, that we're not gonna ever do, but the four or five big ones are certainly consistent today with what it was back then. So I'm just really excited because it doesn't feel like work, honestly.
slava (19:43.048)
Can you share some of those, those four or five pillars as to where you're trying to head with taking the company?
nat_turner (19:47.21)
Yeah, big one is, it sounds really stupid, but just image capture. So the PSA, for example, was not taking pictures of every card. And so, we're grading 40, 50,000 cards a day, and that's just creating work for the people who submit them. So if you wanna vault those things, if you wanna sell those things, if you just wanna collect them and look at photographs, because you have 10,000 slabs, you're not gonna, even 1,000 slabs, like if you wanna find one, the best way to do it is through Instagram or Flickr or something else.
or Google Photos, whatever. And taking an image of every card is actually really, and I've been doing this for decades, scanning them front and back and combining them in Photoshop. I do it like an hour a day. So I'm like use case number one of trying to save that friction, get rid of it. So that's number one, it's just, we're gonna build the infrastructure. And by the way, it's really hard. You gotta take front and back photos, raw and ungraded, of 40 to 50,000 cards a day. All of a sudden, that's like 150 to 200,000 images every single day. At high resolution that you'd be comfortable using across these platforms.
So that's number one. Number two is category expansion. So the company was really good at coins and cards, but you know they weren't in things. I pulled a couple out to show you like video games. Yep, so that's a good example. Here's a another example. So they were in coins, but now we're doing bank notes. They were doing bank notes right before we bought the company, but we are throwing gas on the fire.
We've got three more categories and this year we're going to launch. So category expansion was a big one. And then third is just technology investment. So we were, the company was I'd say really behind, it was run very frugally. And we're frankly taking a lot of the profit that it was making and reinvesting into software. So things like automating.
slava (21:18.032)
Which ones? Oh.
nat_turner (21:40.59)
parts of the grading process to help the graders be more efficient and consistent. Good example is more tools for collectors, things like card ladder, which we just bought. What's my, what's the value of my collection? You couldn't do that on PSACard.com up until, you know, recently. Set registry, you know, we had a lot of vintage collectors using set registry, but very few modern, ultra modern. So we're building things with, with software to, you know, help ultra modern and modern collectors get more value out of the set registry.
Those are just some things. Top three probably.
slava (22:12.7)
And how much do you want to vertically integrate your company to quote unquote own the industry or where do you want to stay away from?
nat_turner (22:19.798)
Now, yeah, we have no interest in, you know, like owning. There's a value chain in this hobby that we're very respectful of. You know, people print the cards, open the cards, grade the cards, sell the cards. Moving upstream to us is really interesting, but you know, it's not our forte. Like that's, you know, fanatics now and tops and panini. We respect the crap out of them, but that's their job. You know, we want to be the best kind of, you know.
greater, third-party grader of cards. We do though get a lot of feedback from customers that a major part of collecting is helping them find things and so we actually do have a big ambition to help collectors matchmake you know with the cards they need or with the cards they want to offload so that's why we acquired Golden last year. It's our biggest request actually is when you're in the set registry you have 600 cards you're chasing there's 238 you're missing help me find those 238.
Or I just graded a card in the grading room, I graded it to sell it, help me sell it. That's, for example, images. For example, I don't wanna ship that thing five times. For example, I don't wanna throw it on eBay and then someone say they don't want it after 30 days and return it in an empty box. There's just so much friction in the downstream of us process that we do, and we don't wanna be the only one, we think the tide rising will help everybody. So we're trying to get kind of the whole hobby.
a little more elevated, more trusted. That's our vision with PSAs. The little vision is you collect, we protect. So we wanna make sure when you buy a slab, you trust it. That's why we have guarantees no other grading companies do. If you buy a PSA slab and the card is fake, we'll buy back. That's the kind of stuff we'll stand behind in a marketplace as well.
slava (24:07.548)
So yeah, in terms of the market, you mentioned Fanatics. Obviously, they're the big behemoth and came quote unquote out of nowhere. Then the top spec went sideways and now they have tops. In parallel, there's all these startups for our listeners that have come out in the last few years, some of them into fractional ownership. What do you think of all the startups and what do you think needs to happen for this asset class to really get institutionalized like some others?
nat_turner (24:37.522)
Yeah, we need honestly we need way more venture funding and startups like we're seeing to enter the space to legitimize it and build the infrastructure and tools that we all need as you know I'm more of a collector but you know you have the alt investors coming in you know real-time pricing liquidity.
Removal of friction. I think StockX did that and Goat a bit with sneakers. You know, it's different. Those aren't slabs and It's a whole different app. It's a whole different thing. But like with cards like they're so unique I mean the SKUs like you have millions of different SKUs then you have ten three different grading companies they're worth talking about and Ten different grades in our case like 15 or BGS as well. I mean there's
multiply the SKUs by 20 probably, more, 30. And that's how many real SKUs there are, because a PSA9 is different from a PSA8 in value in that card. So there's just, price discovery is just really, really hard. So as an investor, as a potential buyer, seller of a card, that's why eBay is so powerful, is you throw it on eBay and the price is discovered through a second price auction.
That's not the most efficient way most of the times to sell a card, it shouldn't be, but that's because there's some, I would say, lack of infrastructure and tools. Like if you want to insure your collection right now, you have, I mean, nobody knows how much it's worth, um, with any precision. Uh, and so those are the kinds of things that just, and there are a lot of companies that I hope are successful, even if we're not in that space or even if we are, we just need that to happen. Um,
you know, for cards to be taken more seriously by a broader community. You're seeing that with vintage. I mean, I, we're certainly with PSA. I mean, we see go on the 1952 top set registry, for example, and PSA, PSA card.com, like, you know, there's new sets being created almost on a weekly, monthly basis. And these are new to the hobby people. And that's it. You know, that's a real cloud. That's art. I mean, that stuff's in the Smithsonian. It's in, it's in the Met. Um,
nat_turner (26:36.97)
you know, 1952 tops and pre-war tobacco cards. So you're seeing it there, but we need more of it for the, you know, kind of more modern stuff.
slava (26:46.226)
Is your company gonna get into like asset-backed loans off of the cards? Do you already do that or you're gonna get into that?
nat_turner (26:52.258)
We don't do it today. We've considered it. It's not our top priority, but maybe.
slava (26:58.582)
Do you want to share a couple of your top priorities outside the pillars?
nat_turner (27:02.126)
Well, I mentioned it before so our big one right now is kind of internal infrastructure and imaging people are really noticing Number three as I mentioned is tech investment. You know, we're really focused on software for collectors You know another one call it is again the marketplace ambition, which we already have I mean Golden's one of them
slava (27:06.149)
Got it, got it.
nat_turner (27:21.27)
I'd say number two behind eBay, you know, at, you know, high end cards, making that experience better for people, making sure every time you buy a slab, even if it's not ours, you know, Golden stands behind it. And, you know, that's the best place to go for high end.
slava (27:38.588)
What do you think of, sometimes people like to move from one grading company to another, or in the industry I guess it's called cracking this lab. What do you think about that?
nat_turner (27:49.546)
Well, I'm not a fan of it because it hurts the population reports. I wish our companies would collaborate more to share information on, hey, you know, this person sent this lab and we cracked it. Here's the label so you can remove it from your pop report. I think all of our pop reports are dirty because of that. That's number one. You know, number two, you know, people say they do that for good intentions and I think most of the time that's true. But unfortunately, I don't know if it's one or two or 10 percent, but sometimes they crack the card and alter it and then resubmit it.
to get a better grade than it deserves. We're going to be combating that with our fingerprinting technology. You know, it's just, we see it. You know, unfortunately back before PSA was taking images of cards, it's reason number 85 why we're taking images of cards. You know, they'd submit a PSA, get it, someone else would buy it, they'd touch it up and resubmit it, hoping that we gave it a 9 or a 10. And...
It did happen a few times and we've bought many of those back and others we frankly can't tell. Like if that card came back to us raw again, we'd grade it. That's how good these, you know, fraudsters are. So that's the bad side of it.
You know, and PSA will say it's altered and then the person just sends it to BGS or somewhere else hoping they don't see it or vice versa. You know, it's one big, like, who can we get it passed? So I'm very, again, I probably have a pessimistic side to it. You know, why would you do that? But I get it, you know, graded cards at the end of the day carry a premium over rock cards for good reason.
So it's on the grading companies, it's on us, to be as good as possible at catching everything and being as accurate as possible and consistent as possible. That's really hard 50,000 times a day. But I would argue we're very good at it at that scale, but we can always be better. So crackouts are a good example of technology we're building to kind of protect against.
slava (29:47.394)
What do you think of movement of fractional ownership in the collectible space?
nat_turner (29:53.142)
I think it's really important. I mean, you're seeing this in sports teams, as the values of the teams get so large, there's only so many people who can afford it. I mean, we're seeing this now in cards, like some of the high-end vintage, like the Honest Wagoner, Mickey Mantles, there's now like five or six people maybe, I'm sure there's more, but those who actually care, who could also afford to increase the price by purchasing it, Fractional's the only way to kind of keep the liquidity in that asset at that price or higher, and I think it really works for the big ticket items.
I'm a little confused why a lot of people are trying to do it on like modern stuff. That's you know, sub thousand dollars. I see a few startups like that. I mean, you know, fine, but the volatility in that stuff is just so aggressive, fractional. You know, look at Luca, Prism, Silvers. I mean, they were like nine grand now they're like three. I mean, there's like Peloton stock is the same way I suppose. But you know, okay. But you know, so I guess anything can be volatile. But it's just it's it's.
slava (30:43.574)
worse but yes
nat_turner (30:49.518)
Feels like there needs to be more regulation in it, to protect people, because the liquidity is not the same as Peloton stock, in these fractional things. I love it for these high-end assets though. Like if you wanna get a piece, I used to hate it and I'll be the first to admit I would blow these guys up on Twitter, and that was back before I would, to defend myself, before these things were really, really out of reach. I mean, now you have sports cards that are 20 plus million dollars.
Now it's really useful, fractional.
slava (31:21.392)
We haven't seen that price though come public. Which card are you referring to? Is that the 52 mantle or is that?
nat_turner (31:24.602)
Oh, there's, yeah, there's dozens. I mean, there's probably four or five Honus Wagner T206s that would meet that bill. Certainly the mantle, 52 tops, 10, I would say, is in that category. I mean, right there, that's five, because there's three PSA10 mantles right there. And then by the way, there's tons that'll never sell. Like the pop one PSA10 51 Bowman mantle, I would argue, is in that category. There's, you know.
Probably when you total up 10 to 20 cards that are in that category. There's probably even a few modern, like I'd bet you the LeBron, which hasn't been seen yet, the ultimate Logoman from 2003, not the horizontal one, but the vertical one that allegedly has been pulled, but nobody knows where it is. I would bet you that card. Not in our pop report. It may have, I'm not sure about the other, I don't think so.
slava (32:14.332)
because has it been graded or no?
nat_turner (32:22.17)
Most of those cards have been raw, but like that's an example of a card I'd argue is 15 to 20 million. Probably 20.
slava (32:28.188)
So there's the listeners and some of them obviously are sports fans, some are not sports fans but they're hearing about these crazy numbers. COVID has really had the market go up. How do you suggest they get involved or do you suggest they don't get involved? Yeah, in cards.
nat_turner (32:40.594)
In carts or in? Oh, I think it's a great time. I think it's always a good time for vintage and um, There's scarce stuff jordan lebron That you know don't I if you're just dipping your toes in like maybe avoid playing off the speculating of rookies I mean, that's high risk high reward like if you pick john morant last year, you're doing great, you know, but If you picked, uh zion, you know, you're not doing so well. So but it's that's the fun of it I mean, that's like crypto. I mean you can certainly play the casino
But if you want to, you know, pick blue chip investments in cards, I mean, go buy Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle cards from the 50s. And you can buy them PSA 1s, 2s, like those things have just as much upside as the big ones. And those are accessible.
slava (33:23.964)
And what's the entry point? Where should they be finding this stuff?
nat_turner (33:27.534)
I mean, there's a lot of good places. eBay is the best for kind of raw and low end slabs. Golden's the best for high end slabs. For baseball vintage, I'd choose Memory Lane or Heritage. Those auction houses, they're awesome for vintage baseball at any grade.
slava (33:43.94)
And you as the expert, what do you like to read? What do you like to listen to? What do you like to watch? Where are you gathering your information? Where are you learning? So if the listeners wanted to cheat and try to copy you, what can they be looking at?
nat_turner (33:56.29)
So I've, this maybe makes me sound stupid, I have never once listened to a podcast or watched a YouTube video on cards, and I'm gonna keep my streak alive, no offense. But you know, I think you should do that if you find it useful. To me, it's just, you know, I'm on eBay two or three hours a day, I'm on Golden, I'm on all the Heritage, I'm on all the sites. Getting a feel, soaking in the pricing, the what's of reading the descriptions. I'm very active on Instagram and Twitter for cards. I would highly recommend.
former Instagram, you know, poster cards, learning through comments, direct messages. There's no substitute. You know, I'm a big fan of our PSA magazine, Quick Plug, but it actually, I'm the editor, but we put a lot of time into, you know, collector and investor focused articles. Like last month we covered the Game Jersey Autograph Jordan card from 97, there's only 23 of them. It's like the coolest card ever. And we actually, PSA's created like nine or 10 of them and we put, each one's unique, and so we put a picture.
Like that kind of, I'd read, you know, kind of highly edited content. Yeah, that's what I would suggest. Just start, just start getting in the mix though. That's the only way to learn.
slava (35:04.348)
Great, and then our last question is, yeah, the last question is really just, can you give us a couple predictions of cards that you feel three years from now are going to be appreciating?
nat_turner (35:05.87)
I'm still integrated.
nat_turner (35:18.122)
Ooh, vintage for sure. Vintage basketball in particular, and football. Baseball gets all the love, but look at it today. Like, what's the big sport in the US? The top two, it's basketball and football, it's not baseball. And those vintage cards, look at Bill Russell, right? Look at Wilt, look at Larry Bird, look at Magic, look at even the early Jordan stuff. Like, that stuff is really, in my opinion, has upside, football too, look at the old Namath cards, look at any, honestly, anything pre-1980.
In football is big. I actually pulled one out. I truly believe wax so like these this is a pack nothing special, but 82 nothing special, but um, I've got you can't see it, but I've got hacks all over the wall here Just like wine. I mean people open wine collecting wine people open boxes and packs too So the supply will go down while demand in theory will go up because more and more people are getting into the hobby So I would collect wax packs
slava (35:57.04)
What year is that?
nat_turner (36:17.41)
from frankly any year. I'd even go into the 80s, even though that's the junk era, but 60, 50, 60s, and you can buy these things. They're cheaper than the Luka rookies. You can go buy a 1962 Tops pack right now for like three grand, and that's cheaper than a Luka Silver Prism rookie. So I think those have so much upside. Vintage packs, I didn't do modern boxes, 90s, 2000s, like pick LeBron, pick the big rookie years, 96, 2003.
I'd pick 2019 because of Ja, 2018 because of Luca. You know, just stockpile wax, unopened boxes. And again, yeah, keep it sealed.
slava (36:51.684)
and you would buy the box and just hold on to it and then at some point exit with the actual box or actually open it up one day.
nat_turner (36:57.45)
No, never open it. Never open it. Just like wine. It'll be more valuable in the future. People open it. It's the one thing in our hobby where scarcity will go down. You can, or scarcity will go up, supply will go down. I mean, you could argue like, you know, cards do get lost in the mail and there's fire and theft, but you know, by and large, supply stays constant for single cards. But in wax it does not. It goes down. And, because I open it. I'm an idiot, not, you know, I'll have a glass of wine one night and open a box of cards.
But I know a lot of people, I won't say who, but there's a very well-known collector who buys high-end wax with the intent of opening it.
slava (37:32.732)
And what do you think about the more of the fringe sports that are starting to expand, whether it's like Formula One or wrestling or obviously there's women's tennis or other women's cards and soccer cards. Is that a buying opportunity or is that just the moment?
nat_turner (37:50.634)
No, I think it's by an opportunity. I'm investing in soccer cards personally. I thought about doing F1. I don't really know that sport that well, but another one that not many people think of is the non-sports, like the Marvel, the Pop Culture cards. A lot of upside there. I think soccer is the world's largest sport, and I think I put this in our magazine. So at the time we published it, September of last year, it was 0.9% of the total cards that we had graded at PSA.
point nine and that had doubled from the start of the year. So in nine months of 2021 it had went from point four five to point nine percent as a percentage of total of the 40 million cards we've created. Less than one percent were soccer, yet it's the world's largest sport. So I think it's I mean it's not as popular in the US where I argue most of the liquidity is in cards but that trend has to be good for that investment I would say.
slava (38:45.692)
And are you sticking to the goats there, Pele, Ronaldo, Messi, or are you going beyond that because of the market growing?
nat_turner (38:51.394)
I think vintage always is good. So I've, you know, with some friends have been buying some vintage, frankly, anyone, you know, that's, you know, Hall of Famer from pre 1980. Soccer's a little hard modern because they're so sticker driven and stickers are reproduced year after year. Like you could just call Panini up until a certain point. I forget when they stopped this, but like three years later, you could just order stickers from the rookie year. And so it was very unclear when the actual printed rookie was. So soccer carts are a bit unique.
but that's part of the mystique about them. No, I'm sticking, just like everything, you gotta stick to, if you wanna make money at it, you can just, I mean, I'm not a soccer collector so much as I am an investor. It's one of the few things that I think is, I don't really have a huge connection to, but I think is a great investment. So if you want it to be a great investment, you need to stick to the guys in that sport that will have sustained value.
slava (39:45.212)
Well, Nat, thank you so much for your time. From taking Collector's Universe private to dirty pop reports to the legendary hidden LeBron ultimate logo man, this has been a really fun conversation. Thank you so much for joining.
