Latest / The Major Wrestling Figure Podcast / Interview w/ Master Collector Darren Rovell
Transcript
- 0:00Yeah podcast on the show Food March Job. Hey, everybody, welcome to
- 0:25a special bonus edition of the Major Wrestling Figure Podcast. I am the producer,
- 0:31Mark Sterling. Here, I'm, of course, joined by the illustrious
- 0:34host of the Major Wrestling Figure Podcast. Right, guys, well, I'm
- 0:37here always ready. Matt Cardona, Brian the most professional wrestler, Brian Myers.
- 0:43What's up everybody? But we got a big very guest today, big
- 0:46guest, A big get my guest. I got return the return mister Darren
- 0:52Ravel, the very controversial in our uh, in our collecting world. I
- 0:58love you so, I don't know what the controversy is about. And you
- 1:00want fifty per as wrestlers, you want more than fifty percent of people to
- 1:04hate you. Right, there's my guy, a little heat, which I'm
- 1:11not. I am not. Listen, the worst thing you can have is
- 1:15for you to be right down the middle these days. That means you're irrelevant,
- 1:19you're not making money, and no one cares about you. Well,
- 1:22I'll tell you that. That's the name of my game. Pat you're your
- 1:25name and my Hey, you know, the first return guest on the show.
- 1:32I here. Yeah, we're not We're not that typically a guest podcast
- 1:37R and we're a definitive interview podcast because that's because that's because I bring it
- 1:42and will I will prove it again tonight. Yes, I mean we had
- 1:45to have you on. We're going to talk about the Tom Brady controversy.
- 1:49You know, we brought it up. We we we mentioned you last week.
- 1:52I figured we got to have you onstead of trying to put words into
- 1:55your mouth paraphrace what you said, let's just let's just talk about it.
- 1:59Maybe if you can give it one who hasn't listened, maybe they don't know,
- 2:01kind of catch up then catch up up to speed in your in your
- 2:05view and your terms. So everyone is at fault here, okay, because
- 2:12what happened is Fanatics. Obviously. I think Tom Brady will make about five
- 2:15million dollars this year from Fanatics, which is the most any athlete has made
- 2:21in a single year from from a signing from signing exclusive deals. Now Fanatics
- 2:28has an exclusive but you know, every once in a while, Tom,
- 2:30we don't want to bother you. We're going to look the other way.
- 2:34Now, why would they do this, Well, because Tom's got other business
- 2:37and we're not going to stop him. From doing other business. And in
- 2:39October of twenty twenty three when he went to Mexico, he did this deal
- 2:44where he was speaking and then they said, all right, let's throw in
- 2:46one hundred autographs in one hundred pictures now in Mexico. The autographs, as
- 2:53I found out, we're autographs on hats and useless things and little trinkets in
- 2:59this and that they were not worried about it. But then what happened was
- 3:02when he does to do this, he does this motivational speech in Miami,
- 3:07half the tickets were sold or half the VIP tickets were sold to or this
- 3:15guy was a partner of the main guy. And he goes out to the
- 3:20memorabilia hounds, and he goes out to the Boston guys who have all the
- 3:24great Brady stuff and says, hey, Fanatics is going to charge a ten
- 3:28thousand dollars to put it on a game news item that Brady sign a game
- 3:31news item. For thirty six hundred, you get the speech, a photo
- 3:36in an auro. Now, so that's the opportunist part here, where these
- 3:42guys know that it's not exactly closure. Okay, let let's call a spade
- 3:47a spade here. It's not exactly kosher what's going on. And so Tom
- 3:54does his speech and he takes the photo, and then he goes and he
- 3:59does the whole autograph thing. He walks in the room, no one is
- 4:01in there, and he'd hey, settle down. So he's he's he's just
- 4:12like, he sees these items, and to be honest with you, he
- 4:16definitely wasn't expecting it right, Like these items, I don't I think he
- 4:20knows what they are, the way that they're labeled. You guys know when
- 4:25you sign stuff, you know what is yours, what you use, what's
- 4:29special, it's not special, Come on, come on, Okay. So
- 4:32he sees this stuff and I think immediately it's like, well, I got
- 4:35a contract to sign on hundred autos, I should just do it. So
- 4:41part of me is not. I don't think Tom is like, Oh,
- 4:44let's f these guys, let's scribble, let's be Tornado Tom and go through
- 4:48all these things and destroy game used stuff. I don't think that was his
- 4:54intention. He probably should have taken a breath and said, I'm not going
- 5:00to sign this. This is not the spirit of the contract that I signed.
- 5:04I was supposed to sign a couple things, and now these guys from
- 5:09Boston have come and so I think you know, so that he ruined some
- 5:13items. These guys are angry, and you know Tom's getting blitzed on which
- 5:18you know, there's definitely some fault there. There's a lot of fault to
- 5:23the conference and there's some fault to the collectors. They they knew they were
- 5:28taking a chance. So let's not act like you weren't taking a chance.
- 5:31Yeah, I think we said at the bat, he either signs them all
- 5:35correctly or doesn't sign them at all. Yes, you know, but also
- 5:40these fans, they're innocent in the sense that their items are ruined, but
- 5:44they knew, they knew they were getting involved in this. A little too
- 5:46good to be true here, yes, But right on the flip side,
- 5:50you just said Tom knew the value of these items. I think Tom did
- 5:54know the value. So for him to not take his time and give a
- 5:57nice signature on something that he knows is oh borderline. The replaceable is the
- 6:00conscious decision that he made. Yeah, yeah again again, I do think
- 6:05you guys know, people come to you, people come to stars, and
- 6:11a lot of what you do is situational. The fan complains that you are
- 6:16a jerk off. Well guess what, you just came from somewhere else.
- 6:20And it's like, you know, they're analyzing its like this is their one
- 6:25time meeting you. It can't be one hundred percent every time. And so,
- 6:30you know, I think he was coming off a speech. I think
- 6:33he really believed this the speech was the main act. That's what I said.
- 6:38Yeah, yeah, And so he's in the moment and I think he's
- 6:41quickly surprised and then he makes a bad decision and I'm not you know,
- 6:46collectors are like you're supposed to protect us, you cover collecting and that I'm
- 6:50trying to just call it as it is. Like they spoke to fanatics and
- 6:56they said game use items are ten thousand, this is thirty six hundred.
- 6:59So and then you know, there's never a guarantee that things are going to
- 7:02work out. Everyone wants to autograph everything. Alan Iverson took an Allen Iverson
- 7:06ray Allen debut that I had which ticket which is not easy to get,
- 7:11and he like tested the pen on it. She's about and then they call
- 7:16and it's literally the only NBA debut where two Hall of Famers debuted in the
- 7:23same school, and they called me. They're like, hey, what do
- 7:26you pay for the ticket? I'm like, but I waited it two years,
- 7:30like and I got it a long time ago. Well would you pay
- 7:32three hundred? But yeah, but what is it? What was it worth?
- 7:35Right? Like you know, and now it's destroyed and we have to
- 7:39take it out of the population. So yeah, So so when you autograph,
- 7:44it's always a it's always a crapshoot. So how much is a Tom
- 7:48Brady autograph? Like if he was just putting it on an eight by ten?
- 7:51Like, let let's say if you bought three thirty six this for the
- 7:56thing and it was now through fanatticts and eight by ten might be eight eight
- 8:00ninety nine and that's with no decimal point. Okay, Okay, So that
- 8:05is that is definitely cheaper than thirty six hundred dollars if you want to get
- 8:09him to sign it on it. Yeah, But then if you want to
- 8:11get him to sign it on a ticket, now it's five thousand Holy spell
- 8:16game game used ten thousand. Wow, So there was some tickets here,
- 8:22there was gaming used items, but weren't there also some things that he flat
- 8:24out did not sign, like some cards. He didn't sign cards because that
- 8:28expressly says he had in his fanatics deal he can never sign cards. And
- 8:33I'm sure fanatics said don't sign cards. I'm sure you said that. What's
- 8:37and those guys not lucky, those guys lucked out? Yeah, right,
- 8:41imaginely to face the rookie or something. Yeah, exactly. Man, it's
- 8:46such an interesting topic because there's so many opinions and none of us are right.
- 8:50Right. It's all our opinions, you know, And I could you
- 8:52know at the airport. We were telling this story last week. If I'm
- 8:56at the airport and some quote unquote fan is shoving something to my face,
- 9:00they're getting a Tornado Matt autograph. You know what I'm saying. They are.
- 9:03But if they're coming at a signing and they're pain they're looking at the
- 9:07eye to eye, of course I'm taking my time. But let me let
- 9:11me show you the one autograph I didn't ask for. Man, that's great,
- 9:18those listen, says Johnnie Johnny Manzell. Uh, because I was I
- 9:26was trying. I almost got it. I only got him ineligible for a
- 9:28half a quarter after his Heisman season. For him, he is perpetually Uh,
- 9:35angry at me. So that's that's one. That's the one I didn't
- 9:39ask for. So, but that's probably worth more than at right. Well,
- 9:43this is a this is a one of one day, That's what I'm
- 9:46saying. And I feel like this Brady situation has a similar you know what
- 9:48if to it, Like autograph autographs are tough, uh I That's why I
- 9:54enjoy, you know, collecting the autographs of dead people. You know it
- 10:00it helps you know nothing's ever gonna happen to them, you know they're dead.
- 10:05You talk about all the time the importance of a historical situation, historical
- 10:09night. Could these Tornado Tom items be worth money? Now? You don't
- 10:15think so. I don't think that this will turn into some kind of like
- 10:16oh remember the Tornado Tom saying oh you have something from that. Let's you
- 10:22know, you don't think it's gonna know, no way, no way.
- 10:24I do feel like it's already lost some steam, you know. I kind
- 10:30of wonder what's what's next. Like people are like, is Tom gonna like
- 10:33have a make good? Are these guys gonna sue? Who were they suing?
- 10:39Like suing the conference I who was selling them was kind of like an
- 10:43offshoot was an official like, I don't know if they have messages or something
- 10:50with that guy saying, hey, come to this and pay thirty six hundred
- 10:52you can get whatever you want signed. I'll guarantee you. And they definitely
- 10:54have messages. I'm not there. I'm not justifying this one bit. If
- 11:00you look at the ad, right, this is in Miami, Florida,
- 11:03correct, Like the number is like a Mexico phone number. It doesn't that
- 11:05like scream like red flag right like comes he as Tom Brady price too good
- 11:11to be true. Oh by the way, the number is a zero six
- 11:15five four five four three. It has too many numbers, right, Yeah,
- 11:18there's not a little red flag like these These customers, these fans knew
- 11:22they were kind of walking that fine tightrope, you know, like it was
- 11:26a risk. Yes, it was paid thirty six hundred bucks. What do
- 11:31you think he should have done in this situation? Walked away? Walked away
- 11:35and not This is not this is not the spirit of what I signed.
- 11:41I was. I was going to do one hundred autographs and this is not
- 11:46a separate signing. This is not a paid signing. Yeah, this was
- 11:52a speech plus a couple extras. On some hats and pennants and trinkets,
- 11:58not anything from a Super Bowl. I feel like it should have been like
- 12:03a head shot eight by ten, not even like an NFL but you know,
- 12:07like motivational speech licensed. Yeah, and you think those guys would have
- 12:13got their money? You think that it's fair for those guys thirty six hundred
- 12:16bucks, you get an eight x ten the photo, And no, they
- 12:18wouldn't have. They wouldn't have participate, would have done because that's the whole
- 12:22gig. They were getting the deal. They were just getting a deal.
- 12:26Got it here, so they would have been pissed off either way. What
- 12:30do we got here? Dan? That is the best George Washington in the
- 12:33world. God put that on. It's from seventeen ninety nine, two months
- 12:41before he died. So what is it on. It's on an envelope now
- 12:46from seventeen seventy three to I think eighteen seventy three. If you got a
- 12:54dignitary to sign your envelope, you did not have to pay postage. So
- 12:58some guy was like, hey, George, George, sign the envelope,
- 13:03so I don't have to pay one cent postage to mail this to Captain Abraham
- 13:07Shepherd. All that handwriting is unbelievable. On that you want you want,
- 13:13you want to see all that, Henry. So this is this is uh,
- 13:16this is actually look at this handwriting. This handwriting is stupid. You
- 13:22can you can cut this if you want. But this is great stuff,
- 13:26all right. So this is so. In in seventeen ninety, this guy
- 13:30named William Bell got bad salt in the harbor and he was like, I'm
- 13:35not paying taxes on this shit? Are you kidding me? I can't even
- 13:41sell it. So they're like, you must go to Hamilton, and here
- 13:45comes Alexander Hamilton. Sure, I have received your letters of the twentieth instant
- 13:50in closing one to you from mister William Bell of the same date. The
- 13:54certificates mentioned in the letters was not found in your enclosure. I am always
- 14:00disposed to exercise the discretion that may be vested in me by the laws for
- 14:03the reasonable benefit of the fair traders in cases and under circumstances that admit a
- 14:09relief from me. Considerable difficulty occurs in the present instance, wherein I am
- 14:15called to authorize an allowance without any precise fact to direct me if the salt
- 14:20were on board or if the proportion of foreign matter had been ascertained at the
- 14:24time of landing. I now have something to govern my opinion, But at
- 14:30this late day everything rests on mere conjecture. No, I lost my place.
- 14:37This appears to me to create impediment, and the more so because the
- 14:41legislature has been very particular in directing the mode to be persuaded with allowances for
- 14:46damages, drawbacks, or any abatement of duty is permitted. Like can you
- 14:50imagine, by the way, there's not any white out. I know they
- 14:52didn't have that at the time. There's literally not a mistake here and up
- 14:56and and he's writing with a a feather, a freaking feather. Could this
- 15:03difficulty be surmounted? The case would still remain embarrassed by questions of this kind.
- 15:07Whether the salts could be considered as damaged during the voyage, Which circumstances
- 15:11requisite to obtaining an allowance. Upon consideration of all circumstances attending this case,
- 15:16I am not satisfied that it is in my power to authorize an allowance to
- 15:20mister Bell. Hold on, ye, hold on, I can't even okay
- 15:28with respect your obedient servant, Alexander Hamilton and this is slabbed right. That
- 15:35sounded like a broken bat hearty promo too. Where do you get something like
- 15:41that? So pretty much what happens is someone makes a mistake, like their
- 15:48great grandfather had it and they kept it in perfect condition, and then they're
- 15:54like, yeah, no, I hear you by and I'm like, yeah,
- 15:56how much are you charging me? And they're like sixty five hundred bucks
- 16:00and I'm like, yeah, let's go. Like all they think they don't
- 16:03know it's where it's seventy five grand, but like Jesus, you know,
- 16:08or or the the best Thomas Edison in the world right there, look at
- 16:12that umbrella. Wow, that's really cool. Actually, now, so do
- 16:18you have this stuff? Like I know, this stuff display what are you
- 16:21really just gonna ask? No, I do not have I do Everyone asked
- 16:23this, They're like, do you have like you know, like where do
- 16:29you display this stuff? The really really valuable stuff is like you know,
- 16:33I pulled this for you guys, right, I'm not do you have a
- 16:37man cave with this stuff? No? I don't have ten million dollars worth
- 16:41of stuff in a man cave, you know. But uh, and these
- 16:47are like investments, right, investments. Everything is in. Yes, I
- 16:51have twenty percent of my money and collectibles. I love that. And and
- 16:55the reason that you did that is because we were talking to I have a
- 17:00so so, so I have an advantage. I have a I have an
- 17:03arbitrage game, which is that there's way too many collectibles being auctioned. Most
- 17:10of these people don't know what they are. The descriptions are bad, they're
- 17:15in the wrong auction houses, they go off at the wrong times, and
- 17:19and so unlike the stock market where they're like, oh, you you you
- 17:26invested in a company and they beat earnings, but it didn't beat the whisper
- 17:29numbers, so the stock is down. It's like what that's the It's like
- 17:33you you won, but you didn't really win. Like so, I don't
- 17:36think that game is fair. I mean this game I can I can just
- 17:38torch. I can torch people and it's fair. There there is, right,
- 17:45there is an issue, which is that if I'm in person, it's
- 17:49it's much like being a wrestling character. If I'm in person and I'm Darren
- 17:55Ravel and people see my face, I have to give you a fair offer.
- 17:59Because I am a spokesman for the hobby. You know, I got
- 18:03people into collecting, and so it's technically I can't like rip you off.
- 18:08But if I'm and you Wildcat ninety nine on eBay, right, you know,
- 18:14then then all the game is off. Yeah. I feel like in
- 18:18my case, I call myself the Michael Jordan of wrestling. For your collecting,
- 18:22I have like the best high D stuff. So it's a double edged
- 18:23sword because people come to me right because they seek me out with the stuff,
- 18:29but also nine times out of ten they're trying to jack the price upon
- 18:33me. And of course, right, so like I don't feel bad if
- 18:36we get to steal every once in a while. And the game name of
- 18:40the game like I'm never gonna oh no, that's too low, let me
- 18:42give you more money, pals. What I will tell you what does happen,
- 18:47which is unfortunate, which is that once you have to send it to
- 18:51me, I don't have a fake name to send it to. So like
- 18:55three percent of the time people see Darren Ravel and they're like, oh shit,
- 18:59I made a mistake. The item is not coming to you like an
- 19:03all, or they'll relist it, like they'll relist it and be like okay,
- 19:07I figured it out now, I figured it out, you know,
- 19:10like, you know, come on, even I have a fake name on
- 19:14eve name too. Yeah, you got it. We still we still got
- 19:18a lot of good pieces. You want to see a couple of wrestling pieces,
- 19:22absolutely, real question about the historical piece before you move on? Now,
- 19:26these would change hands ideally among a community of people that that collect historical
- 19:33pieces. You right, And then do they always like end up in a
- 19:37museum or is there just too many of these letters? And you could it
- 19:41depends there's less and less ending up in museums because people are willing to pay
- 19:47more. And when you so, I own I own a document that has
- 19:53twelve Martin Luther King's signatures on it, and I offered it to this Smithsonian
- 20:00and the Smithsonian said, we will only put it on display if you donate
- 20:04it to us. And I'm like, what I thought we were supposed to
- 20:10be educating children, like like I thought I thought there was like some like
- 20:15aspirational educational Like no, no, it's all I'm going to give it to
- 20:19you so that you yeah, okay, that's why. So what if you've
- 20:23gotten out of it, would you would have got like a rental deal where
- 20:26they pay you like monthly rent. They won't want to. I have to.
- 20:30I have to sell it for zero dollars to them. But you were
- 20:32seeking a rental deal. I want it. I didn't want to have to
- 20:37pay for the insurance, I didn't want to have to pay for the storage,
- 20:41and I thought it would be nice to display it, right and and
- 20:45that deal really doesn't exist at the high end of museums. So everyone who
- 20:49says like, oh, you have this great stuff, it should be in
- 20:52a museum f museums like no, no, So, you know, but
- 21:00it's sometimes it's just like, so I have a John Hancock signed lottery ticket
- 21:06that that they uh to rebuild Fenuel Hall in Boston, and I know I'm
- 21:10the sixth owner because I have the whole tracing of it came from Charles Hancock,
- 21:17his cousin, and then his cousin Charles Hancock gave it to this woman
- 21:22named Winthrop g Ray, who in eighteen sixty one was collecting autographs. You
- 21:26know, I mean, this goes way back ahead of the game. This
- 21:30goes way back, and people are always like, wow, there aren't any
- 21:33fake Lincoln autographs. They were faking Lincoln's in eighteen ninety you know, like
- 21:37you know, like there, you know you got to you know, you
- 21:41got to be careful. But it's it's uh, it's a it's a it's
- 21:45a really fun game. And every once in a while when I get sick
- 21:48of a piece like I had, I had Shack's college, I d his
- 21:52LSU college. I d for three years, and you know, then then
- 21:55I owned it. I will not. I will not. I don't know
- 21:57if I showed this last time. I will I will not be selling this
- 22:02unless I get some Really, I can't even read. What on earth what's
- 22:11the first name? I can't I can't think. I can say. It's
- 22:14a little blurry on our end. Okay, Hefner, komma you oh god?
- 22:19Those are pills. Yeah, fifty milligrams take one tablet one hour prior
- 22:32sex an increase to two tablets daily maximum. But it's not slab. Dun't.
- 22:38It's not slab. It's not the sign I was gonna blue jelly bellies
- 22:44in it. But like that's like an example of like an auction. Now
- 22:47screwing up Crystal Afner his ex wife is having this auction, and all that
- 22:52is like stupid jewelry and furniture and at the end it's this one it says
- 22:56estimate one thousand dollars and I'm like, excuse me, one thousand dollars for
- 23:03the greatest conversation piece of old times? What am I missing here? Right?
- 23:11You know? So so? But it's it's it's always like you know,
- 23:15it's you always have to try to find the next thing, Like,
- 23:18what's the next what's the next thing? Have you ever seen the blax?
- 23:22Thing? Is gonna be Brosky selling blue Choo packets on what He's already done
- 23:26that? No he has, That's that's good blue chew. It's like the
- 23:30h you never heard of blue Choo? No, we gotta get it hooked
- 23:34up down he code major to set a chewable viagra. The last time we
- 23:42had you on the show, you like, if we go back, if
- 23:45we could roll the footage. You literally blew my mind on the show because
- 23:48we were talking about the l j N wrestlers and you were telling me to
- 23:51invest in guys like whole Cog and I'm like, no, everyone has Hogan.
- 23:55We got to get the guys like Haku and Warlad. You're like,
- 23:57no, you gotta get the guys. People grew up on their favorites,
- 24:00and it totally it was like an epithy because you're you're thinking about in your
- 24:06mind, you're one of one. You you know, you you got to
- 24:08get the ones that no one had, and but there there there is a
- 24:12there's a balance there, right there, there's a balance between like no one
- 24:17opened Kamala already like whatever it is, like there's definitely a balance between you
- 24:22know, there's still only one hundred and fifty unopen open Hogan's right, you
- 24:27know when Hogan passes like, that's that's the item. That's item, that's
- 24:33the item we all played with. And you know now you're you know they
- 24:37did. They haven't gone up as much as I thought, But I think
- 24:40that's because you know, they're kind of holding at twenty five hundred. They're
- 24:44really good ones. But I think that's if I still have five, So
- 24:47I'm still holding. Wow, I'm still looking for I've been looking for one
- 24:51since that conversation. I'm very picky because I want to high grade and I
- 24:55want this. Do you have the stand in any of yours? The gray
- 24:56stand? They were in the very first run and it didn't last long.
- 25:03This is this is the best one. I have it's a eighty five and
- 25:07that's five guys on the back of five back. This is actually an eight
- 25:11back. Okay, I do have a five. I do have a five
- 25:14back too. And then I have a I have a sign snucka which is
- 25:18pretty yeah but but pretty much all. And then I have a I have
- 25:23a chic back here this is I don't know what this one is. This
- 25:26is, but this one, this is a seventy five. I mean the
- 25:32stickers are just the toys are the toys backwards? Are us? Yes?
- 25:36It's just so good the case I thought what I thought about. I want
- 25:41to do an article ranking the stickers. Oh yeah, out of which one
- 25:47like KB target, like the old Like what's the what's the stickers that you
- 25:52that you want? If you could if you want the stickers? You know.
- 25:55I recently bought the entire Hasbro collection, that's the set after the Elgie.
- 26:00I got them all in the package, not graded or anything. But
- 26:03I had a rule if it had a Toys r Us or a KB sticker,
- 26:06I would count it. But if it had like a Kmart or or
- 26:08you know, Mama Pop Store, I'm like, now I got to replace
- 26:11this, right, I don't want this my collection, right because it was
- 26:14it came on sale or something like that, right right, right, like
- 26:17that that toys r us is I count that orange sticker? Oh man?
- 26:21Yeah, I just think when it's over, like the talent's face or something
- 26:23like that. Yeah, that's rough. So I think I think one of
- 26:26the next big things is rookie magazines. So the first time someone appeared on
- 26:33a cover, So I wanted to share a couple with you so that you
- 26:37could and then I'll bring in the wrestling stuff. Sure, sure, So
- 26:41so this is the first time Kurt Russell appeared on a cover. Kurt Russell.
- 26:47Wow wow. Okay, we got the first time Rod Stewart appeared on
- 26:53a cover. So these are rookie magazine covers. That what you call it.
- 26:57It's basically it's basically I mean this kind of kind of feels creepy.
- 27:02But Mick Jagger, wow wow. So all right, so we got a
- 27:07couple of these, you know, uh little little goldie hawn action here.
- 27:12Oh wow? Now are you going to get these graded? Eventually? I'll
- 27:18get them graded. I'm waiting for for how about how about Robert de Niro
- 27:22look at this thing? Crap? Uh? So and then I'm gonna get
- 27:26I'm gonna show you a couple of good ones. Uh. All right,
- 27:30so this is the first time The Rock appeared on a national non wrestling cover.
- 27:40Yeah, I remember that. It's a great one, great one,
- 27:45although I will tell you I do, by the way, for people listening
- 27:48a TV guide, Oh yeah, I was literally going to ask you what
- 27:52about TV guys? Yeah, and then and then and then this is pretty
- 27:56much his greatest photograph of all time, the Student of the Month, the
- 28:03great work, The Rock. When I saw this, I was like,
- 28:07oh my god, this is amazing. It doesn't sound like all these days.
- 28:11No, it's very art is coming more and more sought after. Because
- 28:17so we got that, we have the we have the Rock debut ticket right
- 28:22here. So we got a couple of rock things. The Rock sacks Charlie
- 28:26Ward, his most substantive college moment, very difficult. I love how they
- 28:33put that on this Labs and Sacks Charlie Ward, and you know it's always
- 28:38great on the back free Blockbuster video rentel. Okay, So now now I'm
- 28:47going to get you to the magazines. Uh, the the the there's two
- 28:51that I want to show you. The Honald debut. Now you're speak my
- 28:57language. Look at that Tomorrow's man is that like a no, no,
- 29:04no it is? It is a straight magazine, okay, all right,
- 29:08it's the international magazine for bodybuilding, all right? Okay. And then this
- 29:15took a long time to find. I had to find Hulk's first cover.
- 29:19This, This was a tough one. It is hilarious. Oh my god.
- 29:27So so the best part about it is, so my favorite cover of
- 29:32all time is this local Chicago cover in nineteen eighty four that says will Michael
- 29:38Jordan make it in Chicago? And I'm like, that's so good. That's
- 29:45so good. Okay, So this one is is Fred Blossy ruining Hulk Hogan's
- 29:52career? Oh for sure? Oh that's cool. That was eighty three.
- 29:56What's on that October nineteen eighty eighty before? It's like before Japan? Yeah,
- 30:04damn. So in the corner it has like these these it's like the
- 30:11Weird Apartment Wrestling, Violent, violent Beauties Wild. How did like, so,
- 30:18how did you just do research and figure that out? Like? How
- 30:21did you come by it? Basically, what I'm doing on all of these
- 30:23is I look at like Wikipedia and timelines and I'm like, what could be
- 30:30the earliest, and then I just keep searching back and back. So I
- 30:33will on eBay or whatever, so I'll do nineteen seventy nine, nineteen eighty
- 30:37to see when I could find something right, and most of the time I'll
- 30:42buy it. And then sometimes I'll see something where it's earlier, and I'll
- 30:47body, guess what I mean? That one costs one hundred bucks, but
- 30:49most of these things are twenty bucks. The market, the market hasn't matured
- 30:53on it, so I can I could take flyers on all these things,
- 30:57right for sure. So last time, last time we talked, we talked
- 31:03extensively about ticket stubs and stuff, which I think at the time we're very
- 31:07undervalued. They've since exploded since what was that three years ago that we talked
- 31:11about it. Yes, but then also especially you know post COVID, it
- 31:15doesn't exist anymore, So like what are your thoughts on that? Like?
- 31:18Is that just is that something where what you have is going to I feel
- 31:22bad because I wish we could continue doing this. Yeah, trying to work
- 31:26with teams and this is like me as kind of like an ambassador and trying
- 31:30to like save things. I'm trying to work with teams to tell them,
- 31:33hey, why don't you're the Chicago Cubs, why don't you just say it
- 31:38costs three hundred and fifty dollars to print out tickets. Give us three hundred
- 31:42and fifty dollars, we'll print you a sheet before the season, and if
- 31:48it's the first time you're going to the game with your nephew or kid,
- 31:51rip it out. You have one, right, you know, because the
- 31:55issue is the issue is that if the ticket it is not printed at the
- 32:01time of like, you can't print it after like yesa will be like no,
- 32:07no, no, it's garbage. In fact, you can see sometimes
- 32:08on the ticket Master it will give you like the true date and the date
- 32:13they printed it is later than the date of the game. You can't do
- 32:15that. So so it's yeah, I mean, I'm hoping that more and
- 32:22more teams do it because there's so many reasons, Like it's it's almost like
- 32:27the the the the free food on airlines. You're like, I hate the
- 32:30free food. I hate the free food. And then the food's not free
- 32:32anymore, and you're like it was so good, I want it. You
- 32:37don't know, right, why aren't I entitled to get a free ticket like
- 32:42I want them. I want them, Momento, I do have a since
- 32:45we have movie the modern day ticket, the only chance you have is maybe
- 32:50a comp right, so I think people still print out comps. So this
- 32:52is this is this is uh, this is Peter McAllister's ticket from home alone.
- 32:58Get the fuck out of here. So yeah, and then inside we
- 33:04have Kevin's boarding pass and that that's screed us. Like for the movie,
- 33:08this one is not screen Hold on, hold on, we'll get it.
- 33:13We'll get a screen, we'll get a you want to screen use something,
- 33:15sure, let's see here. Okay, I'm gonna get you a spring used
- 33:20something. Uh all right, never know what darn revel is going to show.
- 33:29Yeah, we got we got Dennis Quade's helmet from any given. We
- 33:38got that sign. Uh, it is unsigned. It does say inside Dennis
- 33:44Quaid movie warn and he given something to have a letter that came with it.
- 33:47Now, if you had Dennis Quid sign that, would you have him
- 33:50signed as the character or Dennis Quaid, probably Dennis Quaid and then the character's
- 33:53name. And this is one of the greatest of all time. The kids
- 34:00Glasses from Jerry McGwire. Oh, oh that is really cool. Oh my
- 34:06god, and you did you? Who put that together like that? He
- 34:13went to Michaels, I got a customer. Yeah, you know, it's
- 34:16it's not like I have a wife and three kids. Let's go back to
- 34:22the ticket stubs for a second. I just purchased this. It's uh stone
- 34:25cold Steve Austin, he's a six time w w f W champion. All
- 34:30ticket stubs from the night he won the title, all signed by Steve Austin,
- 34:35all p s A graded. Oh is that like a six slot thing?
- 34:37That was this? It was just that I want it so well,
- 34:43investment piece now, also to show how much of a new bim to stuff
- 34:47like this. I've never been on Golden before, so I had no idea
- 34:52about all those well, the buyer's fees afterwards, Holy ship, it was
- 34:58like two thousand dollars extra. It's twenty it's twenty percent plus the insurance plus
- 35:02the Holy fuck god, I didn't know that either. I've never messed with
- 35:07Golden When you uh, when yeah that then you uh, then you buy
- 35:13an item for one hundred and forty three thousand, it becomes one hundred and
- 35:15sixty one thousand. Yeah, yeah, oh my god. Yeah, I
- 35:21feel like Golden is too popular now because of that show. And yeah yeah
- 35:24yeah yeah to get like a real steal on there. Yeah, I'm still
- 35:29I'm still all over tickets. I just acquired this one the premiere of Tommy
- 35:34Boy. No. So yeah, you just caught you know, you gotta
- 35:40keep looking around and you know seeing, Uh, hold on, we got
- 35:45we got one. We've got a good one here. This is this one,
- 35:49all right. This is the best highest graded Cinderella Man ticket from a
- 35:58bear just core these boxing tickets of the thirties or just that's cool. Man.
- 36:04Yeah, I still I still greatly love tickets, you know, I
- 36:07really do. Yeah, it's of art, their pieces. Oh, I
- 36:10got to show you my just said it's a momento too, which is such
- 36:14a shame that. Yeah, you can't have it anymore. I got to
- 36:17show you my latest, uh my latest pick up. It's the it's the
- 36:22rooming list from the Dream Team in Barcelona, the Rules not be left And
- 36:29thank god Christian Latner ran out of money and had to sell it to me.
- 36:32Jesus, that's really cool. Jordan and Pippin are rooming next to each
- 36:37other. Malone and Stockton are next to each other. It's like really,
- 36:42it's like really cute. You know what if they had joining door, you
- 36:44know, joining rooms. I love that Jesus. So last time that we
- 36:49talked, you also talked a lot about physical media being something on the on
- 36:53the horizon, and I think you were buying video games or something maybe at
- 36:58the time as a buying I was buying VHS's. That's a market that didn't
- 37:01turn out. I think there were more hoarders and more sealed VHS's that you
- 37:08could imagine. But you know, I mean you still you know, to
- 37:12get the to get the originals. I still think they're so cool. I
- 37:16think so as well. So the vhs is still are really cheap. So
- 37:22even if you now they now they got cheap. I mean, I don't
- 37:25know. It's funny. Pete Davidson went on and he goes and I bought
- 37:30them all up, And I'm like, am I the original character that you're
- 37:34playing right now? Because I was the one who did that, not you.
- 37:39I don't think there's a lot of popular movies that are still going for
- 37:44a lot of money, maybe not as much as they were, but you
- 37:45can't get like an original Rocky or Ghostbusters like the first edition. I bought
- 37:52so many Rockies and there there were still too many of them. I just
- 37:58you know, I see there there were there were too many of them.
- 38:00I just but steal video and stuff exploded. Your video games are going crazy,
- 38:06They're going crazy. I actually bought, uh, I bought the nicest
- 38:12NBA jam in the world for for five thousand, and I actually sold it
- 38:17for seventy seven thousand. What yeah, Oh it was a good turn.
- 38:22It was a good show. Do you think that that is worth more than
- 38:27seventy seven now? Or is the reason? But you I mean, listen,
- 38:30you you have to know when to take money off the table. And
- 38:34normally when you're when you're in fifteen X land, you're in you know,
- 38:37that's right. I think last time we talked to use the term piggish.
- 38:43Yeah, yeah, I keep that in the back of my mind about yeah,
- 38:45you got it, you got it. You gotta really, you know,
- 38:47you gotta, you gotta figure it out. I see, So you're
- 38:52you're kind of looking at that fifteen time uh return And no matter even if
- 38:58you think, what if you think that, man, this could really keep
- 39:00going. Most of the time I've won, you know, like I had
- 39:05that with the rock Bumblebee card. I don't know if you guys remember that.
- 39:07That was like that was the card and I bought it for seven hundred
- 39:14and fifty bucks and I sold it for seventeen thousand, and it turned out
- 39:16to be pretty much the height you know, like but but it it hurt
- 39:22to get rid of it. Now I have I have bought something and then
- 39:24a day later brought it back. Uh oh god, yeah, I saw
- 39:31I bought I sold a Yeah that's what I meant. I sold a Jeff
- 39:36Bezos copy of Time magazine and like maybe like four or five days later,
- 39:43he stepped down a ceo of Amazon, and I was like, oh god,
- 39:47he's gonna go from private plane to private island. He never has to
- 39:52show up at a meeting, like his auto is going to be impossible.
- 39:58Yeah, I'm like, I gotta buy that back. That happened that that,
- 40:02you know, uh, probably another three it was a three grand mistake,
- 40:08not something crazy, but the wife didn't know about it. But anyway,
- 40:14Yeah, have you ever now what's your strategy? You see something that
- 40:19you have it's going down or it's not as valuable, do you try to
- 40:22get up. I will, I will, I will unload it. I
- 40:24mean that's something that people are really bad at doing in this industry. You
- 40:29got to remember if something's going down or it doesn't turn out like you can
- 40:32make money on the next opportunity, but if it goes to zero, you're
- 40:37not doing anything. So you have to figure out like, okay, what's
- 40:39next. I got to eat it. You have to eat it. You
- 40:43can't just go down with the ship. So so I've I've done that before.
- 40:49Uh, it's just it's part of you're not going to hit everything.
- 40:52And if you make a lot of money because you've made great bets, you're
- 40:55gonna lose. You know. You step into the DHS game and put twenty
- 41:00five grand in to be ahead and then you lose. You got to be
- 41:02willing to lose like a man. That's what I right. I agree with
- 41:06that. Yeah, I mean that's the name of the game. Like you
- 41:08gotta invest in yourself. Right. Well, I did get into the VHS
- 41:12game, but I think I'm only in seventy bucks, okay, and I
- 41:15think you're more like I just bought my favorite movies and displayed them. So
- 41:21yeah, and then also Dad you're trying to figure out and we're all guessing
- 41:24here like what could possibly be the next thing? And like it's a gamble,
- 41:29right, so you win, send me lose. I'm like I'm always
- 41:30trying to figure out with the wrestling figures, like what could possibly be next?
- 41:34Right? Like you know what I do, Matt? Do you know
- 41:36what I do? I ask I buy one or two things in a category
- 41:42and ask people what do you think? And I look for someone to say
- 41:45who isn't even into collecting? Wow, Like that's how I got into historical
- 41:51because like once I bought like the Alexander Hamilton, people were like, holy
- 41:55crap, that's on real and it's like this person is not a collecting person.
- 42:00So it's like, if that person is saying something, I should just
- 42:04go deep in. And then you have to and then you have to hone
- 42:07your strategy. Okay, if I'm gonna collect more historical people, what is
- 42:12the impetus for someone to buy historical Okay, let's figure this out. And
- 42:15you really have to figure it out. And I figured it out. Twenty
- 42:19twenty six is the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of America. There's gonna be
- 42:22a lot of talk because I'm gonna put myself on the Today Show conductible,
- 42:29and as I walk off the set, I'm gonna sell it all. Yeah,
- 42:32I mean, really think about it. That's also the beauty of what
- 42:38you're doing because you have no sentimental attachment to this stuff. You're in it
- 42:42for the pure Oh, I'm that's not that's not true, that's not true.
- 42:45I'm willing in certain cases, I will. I'm willing. I'm willing
- 42:49to part from it. But I think I do have things that I enjoy
- 42:53and I've sucked the life out of it, and it's time to move on
- 42:58right, for sure. A lot of like ways, and in a lot
- 43:01of ways, I'm renting stories because I buy something. It's good for my
- 43:07brand, you know. And then and then oh oh this is the thing
- 43:12Darren had. Yeah, I've sucked it all out, I said, been
- 43:15associated. I'm amortizing the cost to my brand. It becomes part of me,
- 43:21part of my story, part of my legend. And then I move
- 43:23on right And it might be worth more money than you had it. It
- 43:28could be if we can get P. S. A to slab the ro
- 43:30velk, it could be worth less that as mind then I guess, right,
- 43:35yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, But it's all. It's it's
- 43:37all, it's it's all. It's so fun. It's so fun, and
- 43:40it's and it's uh and it's great when you have a steal and you you
- 43:45know, remember when I bought the largest Warren Buffet signature in the world and
- 43:49I stole it, and I just I went downstairs and poured a scotch and
- 43:52turned on the fireplace and god, like, I just I just stole that
- 43:59thing and got bought it for seventy two hundred got an offer for one point
- 44:04seventy five million. Said no, how much time? Like do you devote
- 44:08to this like a day? Are just cruising the eBay app like a psychopath?
- 44:12Or like, well, I do it as my job, so you
- 44:15know we have to h I'm it's probably an hour and a half a day.
- 44:20I'm looking at things that's not that at all. The good the good
- 44:23part about it is I'm not doing like modern NBA, where like something goes
- 44:29wrong. I'm not doing modern baseball where Mike Trout tears his body off.
- 44:35Well and our last stupid talk. My first investment was a slab Mike Trout
- 44:40debut ps A ten ticket ticket stub and he has not been healthy since I
- 44:45bought this thing, just waiting to get rid of it. But he hasn't.
- 44:51He hasn't been Mike Trout since that talk. I'm sorry, yeah,
- 44:57yeah, I doubt I mean, thank you for giving us his time.
- 45:00I mean, I think we're gonna bring you in every once in a while
- 45:01when someone fucks something up and we're gonna need some your expertise because I think
- 45:06you think like us, you know, we're always looking for the next thing
- 45:07like that. There's one thing that I'm I shouldn't even be saying it,
- 45:10but I'll say it anywhere. Like I still think there's gonna be eventually,
- 45:15like rookie wrestling figures, Like there's nothing right now, there's why has not
- 45:20been done. I just think people don't care about it. And right now,
- 45:23like let's say, for in right not looking you're saying in original in
- 45:30original outfits in I'm just saying, like like the first release of a rock
- 45:35figure ever, right, got it? Like you get that on eBay right
- 45:38now, twenty five, Like this would be the time to stock up on
- 45:43them, and like, well and you never know, but it's it's like
- 45:45it's all a gamble or just keep buying that rock figure. It's pretty hard
- 45:50to find in like a mint. So I think I have that. Did
- 45:52that come with a ladder? A yellow ladder? No? No, that's
- 45:57it's one of the early ones. That's not. Yeah, it's not the
- 46:00first one to bring that. I gotta bring that because I have I have
- 46:02that signed by him. So changed that I that I that I bought for
- 46:08three hundred bucks? Ye? Yeah, yeah, before you go, uh,
- 46:15you know last time you gave us the two tips there there was,
- 46:17there was VHS's and video games, video games worked. What what's the what
- 46:22should we look we be looking at now? Man? Well, the the
- 46:29one thing that people are really excited about now I can at least tell you
- 46:34is these type one photos. I don't know if you've heard about them.
- 46:37So type type one photos are published from the original negative within two years of
- 46:46of that picture being taken. So that's a type one. Well, there's
- 46:52guys at p s A who look at the color of the paper. Often
- 46:54it's written on the back if it was in a newspaper. These have not
- 46:59hit wrestling yet. I have not seen a whole lot of wrestling type one
- 47:04photos now there's a couple issues. One, they don't have population reports,
- 47:08so people in general are uncomfortable with it because it's like, okay, here's
- 47:13a type one. You know the first time they played the whole Cogan intro
- 47:16or whatever, right, but we don't know whether if there's five or twenty
- 47:21of them, and we don't you know, we don't know they who knows,
- 47:25And so a lot of these things are going for big money when they
- 47:30were at like fifty dollars one hundred dollars slabbed by PSA. So that's actually
- 47:36just something to look for, just to see these like age old photos seventies,
- 47:43eighties pretty much to eighty five eighty nine. Maybe we're just like newspaper
- 47:49photos. And on the back it has like all the writings, God,
- 47:52let me see if I can, let me see, if I can show
- 47:55if we have if we have one here, let's see. So that would
- 48:00be like if somebody took a picture, like a photographer took a picture at
- 48:04the match and then printed it out like within that that two year Yeah yeah,
- 48:07yeah, yeah, I have to I have to find I have to.
- 48:09So the rarity there is like obviously he didn't print out a million right,
- 48:14so so so like this one the Latner shot right, like, this
- 48:17is not one. It's just printed on like Kodak paper at the time.
- 48:22But on the if this was one, it would on the back have all
- 48:25these newspaper markings and what the caption of it is. And it's as much
- 48:30what's on the front as is on the back. I see. And so
- 48:36a Jordan rookie one sold for one hundred and seventy five thousand. There's been
- 48:40there was a really cool one that sold this weekend for fifteen thousand of Jordans
- 48:45stretching the first time he was with the Bulls. But yes, so type
- 48:51one, Oh, I think this might be a nice one here. So
- 48:54on the back you see like all these like notations of like what it is.
- 49:00It has a stamp, you know, there's all these like cool little
- 49:04things that that on the back. You know it. It kind of makes
- 49:07it interesting. Now the question becomes, as this gets more and more valuable,
- 49:13are people going to start faking this stuff? Sure like anything else?
- 49:17Yeah, of course, where they take it, where they try to get
- 49:20period paper, where they try to stamp it. Yeah, I mean that
- 49:22the challenge will be there. So I think I think type one photos are
- 49:25at least interesting. Well, Meltzer's got all the wrestling once, right,
- 49:30like the magazine guys, and anybody who's running the magazines in the eighties where
- 49:34the guy's taking the pictures at ringside as well, would yeah. And then
- 49:39I still I still think Beatles are undervalued. I you know, I mean,
- 49:45I hate to say this, but two of them are alive if you
- 49:46didn't know, and I just I just think there's a ton of autos.
- 49:52Uh. And and for me, if it's not on anything special, I
- 49:55don't think I should be paying. You know, the rate for Beatles auto
- 50:00is maybe seven thousand right now for all of them, and I think that's
- 50:04a lot of money for but if you can get unique things beatles, I
- 50:08still think there's a way to run there. Damn well, Darren, thank
- 50:14you for coming on the show. Hopefully it won't be another three years before
- 50:17you have you on. Hopefully someone else sucks up. But we can talk
- 50:20about the tornado. Tomas just too up. It doesn't it is a great
- 50:27man. We need to bringing an expert. So we appreciate you man.
- 50:30Thank you, guys, Thank you all. Right. Join the community at
- 50:43majormarks dot com. And get access to exclusive content behind the scenes footage.
- 50:47I become a member of the Major family, you get bonus episodes on our
- 50:52careers, wrestling figure history, and exclusive interviews with our friends and legends in
- 50:58the business. Each month, you also get early access to YouTube videos and
- 51:00of course, the weekly podcast, ad free and breaking news updates, brand
- 51:07news shows featuring Come, Oh, Baby and You. Each month you could
- 51:12interview someone in the wrestling business with the Captain's log. Also by selling trade
- 51:16in our exclusive Facebook community where people have become friends in real life. Certain
- 51:21memberships include merch like monthly trading cards and quarterly mystery gifts. Become a major
- 51:27mark at joinmajormarks dot com today