what's going on everybody welcome back to passion to profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay had fun already chopping it up with today's guest i'm joined by dave ammerman who's the head of revenue and sports consignment at golden you probably know him from his spot in role on king of collectibles the golden touch we're going to have a a phone conversation talking about kinda his career him as a collector his role at golden and just all the cool things that are going on in the collectible space right now but without further ado dave welcome man how are you i'm good just you know busy over here but thanks for having me man glad to take some time to to chat and yeah tell tell little my story and let people know what's going on i feel like it i feel obligated because i've i've followed the life cycle as many of the listeners out there have as well on this illustrator card right like it was introduced to so many of us through the the deal between ken and logan paul on the show i just looked this card will by the time this goes live it will have ended but this card is at five point one million dollars forty eight bids two days left with about seven hours i mean talk to us about from like a company perspective what this card in this moment has been like i mean we're seeing it promoted on mainstream news outlets it's been everywhere i've been following logan's content it's really been unprecedented the promotion behind this card but maybe in your role like talk about what that experience has been like yeah i i mean look i think you hit the nail on the head right the unprecedented promotion this is a deal that everybody knows logan's had this card and every time it comes up it's like hey you're gonna sell that card and you know you always feel like it's like no never but thanks for asking you know kind of conversations look ken is ken and you know i mean him and logan have a great relationship and logan's an entertainer and a promoter you know and a marketer and things like that so we obviously have our netflix show i think everything kinda came together perfectly i don't know or think logan was prepared and ready to sell it i think an opportunity came up and presented itself and with golden and our marketing and with the netflix show and then obviously logan wanted to stand behind it and then actually not just sell the illustrator but we built this entire tcg auction on golden the first time we've ever done a tcg and pokemon auction exclusively of card game products logan obviously got right in he's ultra professional you know i mean obviously this is a big card he spent a lot of money on it but he everything he said he was gonna do he's done and beyond you know he has ways to get into you name it you know certain doors obviously with the professional wrestling and just you know who he is so yeah i would say executed perfectly so to speak all around in terms of the marketing and awareness that we've created for this card it got a lot of early action you know five point one is the bid but we're looking at six point three with the buyer's premium so obviously the realized price right now it's already the most expensive pokemon card and we're looking to see where it will land right in terms of what other big sales will it pass you know baseball cards football cards basketball cards you know and all things like that i mean i think we've already exceeded the football records but you know it's gonna be interesting to see where the stacks of all time is the most expensive card of of all time in all categories you know when it lands and we don't know and that's actually what i was just working on now we have the event live so this is gonna be streamed live on youtube logan's gonna be breaking packs we sold the packs and here's another crazy story right we had a or logan had a first edition pokemon box and the box sells for i mean jeez they were they were nothing back in the day right but these boxes in auction five six seven hundred thousand dollars you know around there it's hard because one hasn't sold in a little while thirty six packs the total combined sales was around one point four million so we've almost got you know two and a half times the value of the box by actually breaking the packs so everyone that got a pack was invited to come to golden's hq and we're having an event where we're gonna watch the auction close for the tcg with all the guys who bought packs we're gonna be opening the packs live hopefully we hit some guys are gonna be it's gonna be a great event and we're gonna be streaming it live on youtube it's right now it's the recommended what to watch on youtube so it'll be the main feature for sunday night february fifteenth so that'll be that'll be exciting i'll be part of that you know both in front and behind the cameras we got a big staff here that's been doing everything they can to make this event work if you saw you know part of our office now you wouldn't recognize it but then again that's what it's like anyway if there's not a film studio or a film set in here from netflix or there's cameras there so much for coming to work and just being able to grind and do what you need to do there's always oh i we need you to film this okay there's this you know interviewer opportunity so you know it's really cool you know what kind of environment we have here and the fact that so many people are interested in what we do as well as opposed to just you know back in the day collecting cards selling cards you know is more of a a thing you do by yourself you know you clip the magazines you you know before there was online you go to that local card show you know now it's entertainment you know people are tuning in all around the world just to watch people open cards so you know it's it's really cool what the the business has become as well the marketing machine at golden is no joke it just you talking through that and touching on those things that helped illuminate that even further in my mind and you mentioned you know just early collecting and i'd love to maybe just jump into that obviously like you've built your career in the space we're gonna talk about some of those stops along the way but let's start with you dave the collector in the early days did you did you think or did you know when you were collecting cards like many of us as a kid that you'd end up doing kind of what you're doing today or is this just like your passion led you to what you're doing today yeah i i was obsessed with cards from a young age nineteen ninety one got my first bag of cards my grandmother took me to the store my older brother's a few years older he had he had a couple packs you know that he'd opened eighty nine tops i remember because he was collecting the eighty nine tops baseball and there's nothing in there really but you know he was making a checklist and you know we're kids i at that time i was seven years old and i bought two of the oldest packs that i could find in the store for my budget which is probably a couple dollars all in and i got an eighty seven and eighty six tops baseball card packs i remember eating the gum now it's crazy to think at that time that i was only like five years old you know when we think in eighty seven eighty six but you know it's just one pack led to the next i started collecting them next thing you know my brother's collection was looking a little weak next to mine so what we would actually do is we would go to the store and it was five for a dollar ninety one flir baseball which again junk complete junk they had the black prohibition cards which were kinda cool which we were like oh it's the first insert you know like that where you could actually hit because you couldn't hit that in the regular tops sets in the eighties and it was these black provision and they were fine for a dollar so you know my mother would take us shopping and that was our treat for going with her was to get those five packs and you know five packs of cards was fun you know we'd always almost always hit a prohibition and yeah you know my brother kinda stopped collecting as time went on i got into many different things but i always collected that was always my thing and i just continued to grow the collection and to be honest when the beckett like forums came out in the mid nineties it was some of the first like online forums where you could start like offering and trading and i remember like mid nineties i was you know brett favre rookies and you know like think mcguire cards things like that and i was i was doing these big trades come like the late nineties randy moss you know row zeros and longevity rookie and stars mcguire's like know really cool cards and i was trading for psa ten farv rookies which farv at the time you know in the mid nineties late nineties was the man and you know i was like wow like i'm a middle school kid and i'm doing like hundred dollar two hundred dollar trades you know like through the mail like you know so i was like hey i'm i'm ahead of myself here you know and and i thought it was just cool to play with the big boys i don't know i don't know if those were kids or not know like i've been just assuming that i'm dealing with adults for the most part you know and do because they're hundred dollar two hundred dollar cards and i would save my money i worked every summer as a lifeguard or a camp counselor so i always had money a little saved up and i'd go to the the local store to buy the cards after when ebay came out in the in the late nineties for me i discovered it in like ninety seven ninety eight i believe and when i discovered ebay i was just buying like magazines five dollar four dollar three dollar two dollar magazines and it it got overwhelmed like it got to the point where like i'm like wait what i just do like study hall at high school and i just bought thirty dollars of maguire magazines i'm like how am gonna pay for this stuff you know so i just you know it was really it was awesome though i just remember going in there going to sports memorabilia category and just watching and like clicking the all and going highest price to low because i was like i just wanna see what's out there you know because i read the beckets when i was a kid i was a subscriber of the magazines you know i was always looking in the back at the shows and the pricing i'm a stack guy i noticed early on i was i was the guy who looked at the card and said two thousand strikeouts two thousand hits like i made my own two thousand club and strikeout club collection because they had the stats like full stats on the back not like now where you have like one line you could actually year by year and i like loved looking at the diamonds and the italics and the records so i learned baseball through the stats on the back of the cards i actually didn't really watch a ton of it i just learned about the players and i learned about the sport through collecting cards completely backwards right i mean i played baseball for fun and i go to a yankee game i'm twenty minutes from yankee stadium i grew up so obviously in the mid nineties you know late nineties it became more serious but i'm talking even before all that that's how i became familiar with professional baseball was literally through collecting the cards which i started doing before even knowing about that so now i'm on ebay i'm trading i'm i'm doing my thing you know i'm in high school when i got to college i was realizing like you know buying and selling trying to flip was tough you know because you make you win some you lose some i couldn't find the formula right and i was looking for an honest formula because obviously in collecting you know a lot of dishonest people where you know they would forge autographs they would counterfeit cards so i was like there's gotta be a to make it like where you're not doing that stuff because like that obviously isn't sustainable you know like those people doing that are gonna all you know end up where they belong eventually so i was trying to find a way to do it and so i would in college what i would do is i was the guy who bought your collection so you know again i had a job in the summers and actually in college i didn't wrestle any further i actually went to coach so i still had a job where i was earning some money i was coaching at the catholic schools where you didn't need your sixty credits so i could do it right away so i was still coaching and i was still buying the card so i was the guy in college that you know you gotta talk to my buddy dave you know you need some cash go go go talk to dave they would they would come to me with their whole childhood collections and i'm like what do you need and they're like eight hundred bucks and i was like i would've offered two thousand sure here's eight hundred dollars and you know i did that i did pretty well you know with a handful of collections that way and i would sell them on ebay literally straight auctions things like that you know so i was an og you know we're talking early two thousands doing this and in two thousand and six i just said you know what i'm seeing all these big auction houses and what they're doing is they're selling historical items babe ruth balls game these jerseys i said one's really focusing on like the high end modern cards and at the time in o six you had the upper deck you know presidential cuts and some of the historical cuts and legendary cuts and things that you know had some pretty cool inserts and some of them were hundred grand maybe you know like the mount rushmore signatures the the baseball hall of fame we had the five signatures of like all the first first hall of fame class some of those cut autographs from like two thousand and one so i was i created an auction house called modern marvels auctions and our idea was to focus on modern high end collectibles our first ever auction we sold the bgs ten joe montana rookie card for sixty five thousand dollars this is in two thousand seven maybe and maybe two thousand eight and it was the third highest selling football card of all time i was like twenty four years old twenty three whatever it was and we actually was was i was on the cover of beckett like a little highlight so that for me as a collector that was really cool you know i ran it for a few years we sold a couple couple other big cards then i graduated college and decided like i'm gonna go work in finance kinda you know get get a real job you know i think that was always my mentality was doctor lawyer you you know like there was only like a handful of professions that made sense like as a young guy going through school i think there would be the options were more limited but remember i grew outside new york i grew up so to me i'm gonna go work in the city right get a get a nine to five and i'm gonna just make the money that those guys make after about a year of that was like man this stinks like know let's be realistic like i'm out here trying to hustle commissions i'm trying to sell insurance and retirement products everybody in new york does it so everyone i call is hanging up on me all day every time i do have an opportunity to work with somebody like i feel like i'm just selling them and i didn't have the opportunity to like be genuine and you know i just i i didn't wanna do it anymore so all along while i was doing that i was still selling and buying collectibles game used jerseys i got into pretty heavily since lebron like started i was always buying that type of stuff or even jordan's game used sneakers all sorts of things like that so i'd be selling them in golden when golden came out i'd be selling them in other houses as well and then i finally said you know what i wanna just do this full time like i don't know what that looks like for me like maybe i'm leaving hundreds of thousand dollars of a good career on the line by just doing what i wanna do my friend at the time was actually working at rock nation as an agent and he was trying to manage different players and he was my partner in the auction house earlier on so i i just yeah quit my job moved back in with my parents with with a kid and i went to go work at steiner sports for pennies on the dollar i won't even say what it is but it barely afforded me to get there and back but they created an opportunity for me and and i just said i'm gonna put my head down and just do what i do and i realized like after a few months there wow like nobody really knows this stuff like i do you know like i was like these guys are coming to me dave you know tell me about jsa again or psa or you know tell me when i send a card for grading like like how do you do this and i was like wow like even though these guys all have jobs and they've been there for maybe years some of them weren't like collectors growing up they maybe had a sports degree management or something and you know just kinda got into it because it was a good job for me it was always a passion and a lifetime and when i started there like i remember my first day at steiner we have a a conference it was right after the national and in the conference room there's twenty sales reps and here's dave the new guy right and he says did everybody watch the auctions this weekend of course like i'm bidding in every like big auction house it was the national so i was literally bidding heavily across all these auctions and i'm like i'm looking around the room and i'm like there's nobody else raising their hand you know and then he's like okay what about this auction did you guys watch that i'm looking around like man like you guys weren't just buried in these auctions all weekend like i was and i realized real quickly that like i really just because of how into it and how passionate i was about it like i had quite a leg up you know pretty much on everyone and within six months they made me the head of auction over there so auction manager over there and i ran that we were doing a few hundred grand a year just pretty much listing inventory i've turned that into about a eight million dollar business for them in a few years and i actually you know it was things were going great but you know i understood that the commute for me in north jersey to to new york every day was was it was long but i would do it i didn't care i'd go to shows on the weekend like i would you know a lot of time away from the children you know when i look back at that that's probably the biggest thing there wasn't the remote working where i could have done that golden was in new jersey golden was the standard you know especially at that time we're talking two thousand eighteen two thousand nineteen and you know i would buy stuff i'd come down here you know i'd talk we'd we'd chat and you know we just figured something out that made sense for me at golden at the time there was probably twelve employees you know when i when i started here at golden doing about twenty five million dollars a year and immediately the opportunities when i started here just got bigger and better right because we were selling bigger items you know like steiner i'm hustling like give me your mano balls give me you know like i got a ruth ball it was killer i come here you know it's like they're actually selling big items you know can can that's another thing like when i started golden i never had to worry about marketing right like you didn't have to promise somebody don't worry everyone's gonna know this auction like i'm like look if if there's somebody that's gonna do the best job it's gonna be us and every time i said ken let's do this let's do that when i started golden funny story i would write our press releases i would like review the emails like i was like hands on and stuff that i don't have to really do as much anymore but you know we're a much smaller company i was entering my own inventory like when i picked it up but i also knew how to grade this where to send that so i stepped in day one ken didn't have to tell me what to do or how to do it i just did what i was used to doing and my first year goal and i brought in like ten million dollars of consignments and i've watched this grow from twenty five million a year to you know close to a half a billion a year with over a hundred employees netflix series tons of opportunities you know and honestly for me i just do what i enjoy doing i mean look there's a lot more responsibility now than you know even running a five million or ten million dollar auction you know right now you know i'm looking at close to a hundred million dollar you know expectations quarterly right so like for me every auction is like hey if we're not doing ten fifteen million this auction it's a bus right so like yeah the the level of expectancy is a lot higher it takes a little bit of the you know like laid back fun of what this is out of it but at the same time like it's it's a kid's game and it's fun but it's also a really really massive business there's a lot of expectation on golden to perform you know for people whose consignments they deliver the awareness globally has just gotten massive right we were selling you know things in asia in the you know two thousand seventeen eighteen nineteen there was plenty of customers out there but now you know i personally last year alone spent three weeks in in china and japan i spent a week in london you know i spent a week twice in germany you know so i i was a week in barcelona you know so i do a lot of traveling especially with the show right now to go out say hi to some people you know meet new customers and just keep growing the business keep keep the expansion and i've seen it now you know what i see now is people that sell items in golden and they sell for crazy amounts some people get it you know some people are like why that's not what it's worth it's worth two hundred dollars i don't think everyone or anyone really understands the true value of something we could put prices on it and why do we do that because that's what the comparable sales are but those comparable sales how do we know that setting was the true setting to get the true value right everyone has their audience but when you open it globally and now things sell for five times the amounts the people who get it say this is what it's really worth and now we're just uncovering the true value because we have so many more eyeballs on these items so many more currencies so many more exchange rates you know and collectors of different you know financial means that the three hundred dollar item might truly be worth five thousand now you know so to see like that and to see us be able to do that like that's what it's all about you know it's i could always say oh this is what the stuff's worth but to be able to create the market and create new prices for things like that's really what our goal is you know here and it's fun you know when we get to do that and and we do it we do it quite a bit what what a what a drive by of your career incredible dave the i asked someone about you before we got on an upset someone who i knew you you had some connection with i asked them like to describe you and they said very enthusiastic and has a deep appreciation and passion for finding collectibles that no one else has seen and unearthing stuff no one else has seen i wanna maybe get your mindset on like you mentioned we've got a a hundred million dollar nut to crack i'm the head of revenue like this like it's my responsibility alongside the team to you know bring in these items but how do you take like those high expectations in that number that big with this desire you have to maybe find some stuff that isn't on other auction houses or isn't in the marketplace like how do you like what's your approach how do you go about finding the stuff that no one else has seen but you know collectors are salivating over know there's a couple ways to do it right my my biggest thing is always you gotta be known you have to you know be known because when it does come about they'll find you right a lot of times because nobody knows it's there so a brand awareness recognition right like right now you know i can walk into the grocery store go to the airport for example hey that's golden boy or you you know so like you've created some awareness for people that aren't even in the collectible space which is key but also for me the big thing for me and the way i've always built my personal business is referral base i want people to go out and be like dave took care of me you gotta call dave you know it's it's nice you can only do so much you're right like no matter how wide i can grow that now i have large team of people so a lot of that i can't even work with them personally on you know i'll send them to one of my guys who specialize in a certain category or you know just it's just not you know i don't have the time of the day to deal with every single deal if if i can i i try to my best but for me the referral business is is huge you know and that that is where these things come about and for me the relationships i have whether it's attorneys that work with professional athletes or estates or you you name it you know we have those relationships and those people think hey if i find something cool or worth a lot and and we've we've branded this right just between the netflix show and everything i think what people say is i just wish i had something cool enough to sell on golden right so like if you have that you know message out there when those things are uncovered whether the people are coming directly to us or they're posting it online right nowadays everybody wants to go post their items whether it's social media or even some of these like groups you know reddits or whatever these things are right where people are all you know gossiping i guess a good way to put it but all of a sudden every time someone hits something it's like talk to dave or talk to golden or you guys should reach out to golden so people are spreading the word too so you know i think the awareness that we've created you know leads to a lot of these fines but i also have a huge team of guys that all have done this as well you know like for me when it comes to hiring i look at myself and i say you know there's no resume you know for sports collectors i mean there might be if you worked at a couple collectibles companies and i'll be honest if you have that resume that's rare like like almost no one i look at resumes all day right like almost no one comes to me and says hey look i i worked at this company then i went over to there and now i'm over to here and like okay i mean we're like okay like come on they're like you know now if you've been bouncing around maybe there's an issue but like if you're in the hobby like that long enough professionally like that's a rarity you know you never see that it's usually the guy like myself right who you know like was a passionate collector his whole life but always thought i had to go get a job and a career and i'll look at a resume and you can't really see you know that you just see what he's done for work so i tell everybody when they're doing that tell me about you as a collector you know i wanna i wanna know more about that so when i bring on guys and just for the record like we're gonna have probably eight new consignment directors added in twenty twenty six you know in a couple other positions as well so if people are watching this and interested in our collectors you know please you know reach out i can promise you ryan krupa perfect example from the show ryan and i we were friends since he was this big and i was the dealer at the shows and you know we kept in touch and when i was at golden he's happened to be up the street and you know for about a year we kept in touch and i finally got him on board over here and ryan's one of my stars you know so a great story of a guy that i had just known that honestly from instagram it just kinda kept in touch and you know he's been here for about six years he's killing it he's you know he's on the the the show and he's a great great fit so you know i'm always looking for for that you know to add but a lot of that is those guys right so we as we add them they have their relationships they have their referral networks they you know have their connections so everybody's connected differently and we're all over you know i have a rep in canada you know there's guys that work with us overseas you know whether it's partnerships or other things as well so you know again just being spread out everywhere and just making yourself known as the place to go will help you find a lot a lot of these things because a lot of times you don't you know you don't you wouldn't know they exist if you didn't know someone who knew someone who knew something you know you've been at this in some capacity for it sounds like your almost your entire life right and i think about when you joined golden you're you're joining the business at this time like right before it all explodes and i think that's a fun part about working in a space with growth right i'm sure the job you started with at golden looks a lot what you're doing now looks a lot different than what it did back then based on not only industry growth but then you know company growth maybe like your own personal growth working at golden just in as as it evolved and as it scaled like how do you think about your experience over that course of the time when we've all been kind of riding this wave of the hobby you've been working inside one of the fastest growing businesses in the hobby like what has that meant for you just on the professional growth side yeah man great great question so i noticed really early on right my passion for cards and having to have the best collection and beat my brother and you know then i wanted to really learn and study baseball so when i was working as a lifeguard you know most of those summers when i was working as quiet know there's really no one around or rainy i had an encyclopedia i had a of the sporting news encyclopedias that had all the baseball history and i would read it cover to cover i just i don't know why i did this i just did it because i wanted to just know more than everybody and i just did it because i enjoyed it and i was bored you know you're you're lifeguarding and there's no one there so i just like got all this knowledge and i just i don't know why i did it i just did it because i liked it i there's people out there in whatever the profession right is who probably do the same thing they study things they're just obsessed with it but they never go to the next level and try to do it professionally so for me i think initially i just wanted to be in the game right like just in the game and the funny funny story i actually reached out to you know a competing auction house that's still in business when i was in college and i actually sent an email and said hey you guys are right up the street from my school i'm a i'm a collector i'll come work for you guys for free literally for free out of two three days a week whatever it is you guys need some help cataloging writing stuff packing bags like shipping whatever i'll come work free for free and the response i got was thank you like they they responded right away you know we're a small operation i think they were running out of house but it was a reputable name you know and we don't don't really need any help right now and i was like man i just couldn't even get it for free you know like mean it's it's true i well you know i won't say the name but yeah like i i couldn't even get into the mom and pop working for free you know so for me to get that opportunity to actually work you know at the company my first objective was like i just wanted to see it right the thing with my prior job at steiner was that we were retail sales so we were selling mano balls and jitter balls for like twice three times what they would like normally trade for like in a straight auction and i was like this is not gonna work like that was my first thought was like how did this can't work like and then all of a sudden like i'm at yankee stadium and i'm meeting people and i'm like they're buying it and they're they don't care like they were just buying it and i'm like they're not even they can go online and look and see they can get it for less but i started learning it wasn't always about you know that it was about authenticity right like if you know it's real you'll pay more a lot of people don't know so that's another reason you come to golden right now you know that the items have been vetted by guys who were in this their whole life and you know you got a backing of a big company you know to stand behind the items you're purchasing so authenticity is a big enhancement of value as well i've noticed but yeah i just wanted to see you know what it's about so so like i said when i was in that building i learned pretty quickly that again i knew a lot you know i knew a lot and to be honest brandon he wasn't a collector he was a marketer you know and he knew athletes and he kinda just like stumbled into the business so i like learned really quickly like he was relying on a lot of my experience and expertise like in a lot of areas great marketer great guy you know knew how to work a deal and you know and he was innovative but he didn't know the the space like i felt like i did and i felt like i kinda outgrew it you know like i kinda got to that point where i was like where do i turn like when i have a question right so i i i need like that guy to turn to that's like the the best in the business and i said ken golden you know is i gotta see what this guy's about you know look you've heard this story right who's gonna go work for ken like he's got a date he's gonna whip you up he's gonna do this like you're gonna be miserable like how are you gonna last over there i heard he's crazy i just like i gotta just see it like you know he he there's something about him he's he's a passionate guy he's been doing his whole life i ken was my consignment director so like when i sold in golden ken would i worked directly with ken anyway so we had that relationship where i'd email and say ken what do you think of this awesome stuff great send it in and i learned a look i learned a lot just with ken as my consignment director moving into the other seat where i'm now the consignor bringing in or i'm the consignment director bringing in the consignment so i use a lot of ken's stuff that worked on me and honestly for me i was like look he's just so boom okay good let's go you know what i mean and i'm like didn't need to say much else i already knew what i wanted to do so you know for me coming here i i just needed to see how ken worked i needed to really understand you know his philosophy on the auction i wanted to be the best there is you know in this business when it came to auctions really that's what i've done in this business my whole life and i just i had to see what made ken tick so here i am seven years in and i think i've i think i've you know i i figured it out i'm not gonna ever say that i could do all of that because i do need sleep you know and things like that which is another reason why ken is who he is in this business because he's got extra hours you know in the day that some of us physically can't take you know so you know he just but he's responsive he's quick you know i mean look i'm not gonna tell everybody you know everything about ken here but just observing the way that ken does the business he's firm but he's fair if he tells you something you're gonna do it but if you try to stray he's gonna hold you to it right like that's the biggest thing for me and just being direct and matter of fact and just don't sugarcoat you know what i mean like i could sit here dave can you start the bidding here is it worth that i'm just like look i'm not gonna here's where i'm gonna start it trust me or not that's what i do we get the prices like and you're either on board or not look there's an auction there's a risk there's a reward there's an upside you know but at the end of the day you don't know all i can do is market and get you in front of as many people as can and and do the best i can for you and i think if i can take that approach with everybody every every day you know then everyone who's getting into the situation on auction will understand right you you see a lot i'm sure out there as everyone might oh this person wasn't satisfied with the result of that like look it you're there's going to be that there's gonna be the you just made my life right i remember when i sold kobe's jersey for three point six million to a guy who said can i have a hundred fifty k and i remember the next day sending the text message and he just sent me a mind blown like emoji i was like yeah yeah you know like i just made you extra three million then you want it you know so like there's plenty of those moments too so there's the rewarding part like which you don't think about right we make kids days now with the show i go to the conventions you're taking photos i never thought of that when i was doing the netflix series i did the netflix series thinking hey i'm on tv this is gonna be cool people are gonna recognize me i didn't think that i'd be helping out the local card shop in montana that suddenly had a wave of people show up to buy packs of cards that never came before because they had been watching this new program on netflix you know or that guy in you know gosh this happens all the time like i was in bangkok this year and there was a line you know at the table that people to come say hello and half of the people that came up said man i started collecting after i watched your show and i thought man like this is what it's about like we're actually now introducing new collectors you know people are looking up to us like it's been a lifetime commitment for me and a lifetime passion but like i feel like i'm giving back you know a lot you know in that regards and i think that's what's really cool about it i don't mind if i floated under the radar forever and just did this you know but it's just become so much more than than a career you know it's really just become everything you know it's it's just a branding and it's a day it's a there's no breaks you know you gotta live this life all day every day when the sun goes down here the sun goes up somewhere else and because we're streaming everywhere you know you're gonna get those messages and when i wake up to a hundred emails and i go to sleep and then i cleared it out like that's my life you know and that's the way it's gonna be but i got a great team behind us over here you know and things are looking good you know it's really they're really great right now the market is great you know we hope that just keeps doing its thing and i i think it should but you know only time will tell you know what happens but at the end of day we're gonna ride it out you know the on the current market front you've got obviously the netflix show we've got kind of a shift in manufacture in the industry you've got tcg exploding like a and there's so many more talking points we could get into but the market is ripping right now and i think with that there's so much more exposure there's probably new people high profile people bidding on golden auctions right now and they've never done it before with with all this growth like how do you think about just like sustainability like making sure that we don't go down as hard as we went down to after kind of the pandemic boom like how do you think about that in in your role i saw that coming you know i didn't see the i didn't see the growth coming during the pandemic i was wondering you know what our next meal was or if food's still gonna be available so i wasn't really thinking i mean obviously we still had to run auctions and and honestly like they were doing really well you know when the pandemic first hit we closed down for couple weeks you know we all went home and i was worried you know like i was like man like i just bought new house you know business was great you know up until that moment and i really was i started selling some stuff early you know just because i was like need cash you know who knows what's gonna happen and yeah the prices just started going crazy but what i knew was and i knew all along because i'd done this and i think if i had to give some advice to anybody you gotta sell you gotta learn to sell because you don't know how to buy until you know how to sell because if you don't know what you're buying or don't know how to sell it like you're making mistakes potentially buying you could be buying stuff that's no good from someone for years that you trust that you think is and then you learn like wow i just wasted everything you could be buying at the high times and then like not understanding that you you know bought right into the the height so what i saw during that time was here's what's gonna happen i you know i knew it the guys that are spending all this money and they're overspending on these cards that they're pop four hundred pop three hundred right they're not pop two or pop three they're the big staple you know blue chip items but there's so many of them right like like just because it's a psa ten there's three hundred fifty others more are gonna come out and more are gonna follow and sooner or later they're going to one is going to sell for less than the one before now fortunately there was like a three four month ride up where it was like everyone you know just talking jordan rookies which i think is that's like a gauge of the the hobby market i honestly believe just talking those rookies and the crazy part is i actually in twenty eighteen or maybe twenty seventeen said oh they're fifteen grand for psa ten i'm gonna buy one i told my friend it's a hundred thousand dollar card he thought it was crazy like go buy a house for your family like you know what i mean like i was like i want one of these cards sure enough two years later it's a hundred k card and then all of a sudden it's a two hundred k card then it's four hundred then it's seven hundred right and we're like woah but i said as soon as one of these guys who's got an endless pool of money sells one or sees one sell light then they're gonna the other guy then he's gonna say oh wait i can lose in this business and then the other guy is gonna jump in and say let me sell mine and now like they're gonna get an influx of items for sale because everyone wants to sell theirs and then you see it slowly come down and then the then the panic strikes in right so i knew this was gonna happen it's happened to me look i bought in a lebron jersey for six grand then it turned out that it didn't photo match and even though i had five letters of providence this is like o four you know and it could have been a million dollar jersey if it was what i thought it was i learned that i did more research he didn't wear that size you know at that year and then you even though i had letters from all these experts you know i had to do my own research i ended up selling it for two three grand you know i lost half my money and i learned at that moment okay i should have known this i should have looked at that forget about what the experts say you gotta educate yourself you know about about that so bill henderson has a game news book guide which is exceptional on baseball jerseys you know study that used i looked at was a member of the mears database i'd be studying size tags and everything just trying to understand you know i forget about what people say like obviously there's mlb search now and things where you know like it comes off the field but even then that's why photo matching is out there look i worked here i've seen jorge posada for example you know switch the jersey before mlb comes in and puts the thing on you know like i've seen that happen you know so so even with the perfect certifications now you can learn so anyway my point is i i saw people they were gonna start selling and losing and then then what was happening is they'd all wanna exit and when they start exiting the products will increase and the value will continue to go the other way so i kinda saw that happening and that was rough you know it was a it was a it was a tough time because you watch people lose millions lose hundreds of thousands you know the guys that really went all in and really went in during the pandemic and at times there were guys that still did well they were buying sharply they were buying low pop and there were stuff at the time in twenty twenty one twenty two that's still worth way more now than then nineties inserts you know like if you shopped smartly you could have done very well but if you went in for the mainstream stuff like you followed it down but if you look that jordan rookie card i've three hundred something k sales four hundred k sales five hundred k sales lately so you know we're but we're holding there it's not like a quick rise so the market looks very strong and i think my biggest advice is before you go all in just buy and sell a little bit learn you know experiment study you you know because i've seen guys spend their life savings thinking oh this is an investment but but they they wouldn't know what to buy you know so you gotta know what you're buying one one more because i know you gotta get running before we let you go dave you are in a position where you're looking at resumes like you mentioned you're hiring there's probably more people than ever before wanting to work inside of the hobby i always try to get before we close these episodes out like what is one piece of feedback you have for anyone listening who wants to kinda leave their corporate job jump into a hobby job full time whether it's weekend warrior dealing at shows or working at a company like golden like what's one piece of feedback you have if you love it you know just do it and if you're not doing it already you gotta really wonder why you know don't be trapped you know don't think of the money side of things you know just for the record this is a multibillion dollar industry there is plenty of money you know in this business i did it because i liked it maybe i did it because i thought the money maybe maybe i like the money flip sides of it more you know and that was just part of it you know but if you love it and you're the best at it and you're really good at what you do like you should be doing it every day because again i'll never forget my first day you know in the business professionally when i was hired and i sat there and i'm like looking at inventory and i'm like this is what i do for fun i'm like looking at auctions i'm like i just did this like yesterday all day and i was off you know like i wasn't even you know here yet so i never like the clock never started for me right like it just was always running and it never turned off because like i would do this like just for example i was i was out till nine thirty last night picking up a collection after work i met a guy at seven thirty at his house picking up a coin collection and you know we're running a big coin auction coming up so but i came home at nine thirty with a smile on my face like oh that was a great collection and you know get to meet some people hang out so my biggest advice is you gotta love it you know don't just do it to do it you know you you have to love what you do but if you do love collecting there's plenty of opportunities you know it's it's a unique talent you know i definitely advise stay in school you know get your education there there's a lot of business elements that will cross over eventually you know in a corporate setting i do believe you know right this business the mom and pops they're still around but like right you got ebay you've got these other big companies that are coming in and getting interest in other collectibles corporations so you know at the end of the day like you gotta have you know business acumen and if you wanna be at a big company you've gotta be educated you know so that is fortunately you know i stuck through all of that and it just happened to be a diehard passionate collector but you know look it doesn't hurt to try and i would say just because you're comfortable where you're at and you can pay the rent and pay the mortgage i hit the reset button i had kids it was a scary time you know it was like you know but honestly i didn't let it get to me and i think that's the biggest thing like if that's really what you wanna do you gotta just just do it and even if you're in it if you're in this business professionally and you're watching this you know maybe you're in a year or two don't worry like let it you're not gonna be a success overnight if that first year or two you're you know you want more money or you're frustrated just ride it out you know i i wrote it out and wrote it out again and again and again and you know you just end up you know ended up as the head of revenue here just because of my time and my commitment and the fact that i you know i challenge anyone to work longer and harder you know than myself but maybe outside of ken you know so i i i just i and i do that because i enjoy it every single day and i enjoy the time so all that time i spend in it it's got me to a great place i couldn't be happier you know and it's you know who would have thought you know netflix series running a big business everyone when i came to golden people were like what's golden you you know and now they're like oh man you work at golden of course i get called golden boy when i'm walking around you know so it's it's been a ride you know and you know if i can do it i think a lot of you guys out there can too hell of a ride ton of great insight and information dave really appreciate the time alright man thanks for having me