Collector Nation - From Storage Wars to a $50M Sports Card Business | Rene Nezhoda at The National

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

Storage Wars star Rene Nezhoda joins Ryan Alford live from The National to talk about his journey from reality television to sports cards and building Bargain Hunter Breaks. Rene shares the story of a vintage card-filled storage unit he bought for a few thousand dollars, sold for around $25,000, and now wishes he had kept. He also discusses the rapid growth of his breaking business, the $3 million Ohtani pull, rare sealed packs, collectors vs. investors, TCG, and why he believes the collectibles industry hasn't come close to reaching its potential. Topics Covered Rene's journey from Storage Wars to sports cards The vintage collection he regrets selling Bargain Hunter Breaks The $3 million Ohtani pull Rare graded and sealed packs Live breaking and PYTs Collecting vs. investing TCG and the future of collectibles Links Collector Nation Website: thecollectornation.com Instagram: @thecollectornation TikTok: @thecollectornation YouTube: @thecollectornation Collector Station Website: thecollectorstation.com Instagram: @thecollectorstation Ryan Alford Website: ryanalford.com Instagram: @ryanalford ⭐ If you enjoyed this episode, follow Collector Nation, leave a 5-star review, and share it with another collector.

My company pulled that $3 million o Tani last year. I think solid eight figures was handed off. Maybe the table next to me. This coin was in the pocket of a Roman soldier marching to Germany. They're going to create more luffy cards than football cards together this year. I'm Ryan Alford. And I'm Bella Schaefer. And this is Collector Nation.

We're curating all of the content in the hobby just for you all in one place. All the videos, all the podcasts, all the reels, all the reals, all the. those drops you want right here right now it is collector nation we are sponsored and powered by ludex here in the ludex VIP lounge back there and we appreciate everyone go to the collector nation.com you can see all the content from today and I'm proud to be joined hey I'm I don't want to make it a war though no wars no wars no war we're just here for the hobby to carts and to love it's a star of storage wars rain is What's up, buddy?

Hey, nice. Thank you for having me. Yeah, man, my pleasure. I'm the sea of people here. Everybody's trading. They're making deals. I wonder how many millions of dollars are exchanging right now. I guess last night, someone asked me, how much money was being exchanged?

You know, you're talking about comps. How many cons are there to goff the history from last night? I think solid eight figures was handed off. Maybe the table next to me. Oh, I can imagine. It's some of these young men and young women in here. They just make deals that I'm just like, wow. Like, I didn't trade like that when I was 10, 11, 12, or whatever, you know?

Exactly. 10-year-olds with million-dollar cases, only at the national. Yep. 101-O-Tonis, baby. Renee, we're going to talk. We'll talk to the here and now with what you're doing with breaking. But talk to me about this journey, man. Reality TV.

Is it everything you thought it would be? I mean, look, I tell a lot of people, anything that you do at the end of the day, if you do it for a long time and you want to be successful, You have to treat it like a professional. It's a job. And the fact about reality, television, so I've done it for 15 years with storage wars. I spend most of my time driving on the road from shoot to shoot. Some days I will drive eight hours and shoot for 15 minutes. So those days are pretty tough.

But I mean, it's a job. At the end of day, it's fun. I love being front of the camera. I love talking to people. But it's still a job. Still builds a brand, right? You can't, you know, like, some people complain about the camera. Some people don't.

Who realize it, but got your name out there. For good, bad, or indifferent, right? Yeah, so everybody has an opinion, and they form an opinion about you, but the reality is they don't really know you just by watching a show. But this is the way I look at it, because you said some people complain about the cameras or being recognized or whatever. I'm a man of God, so I see it as a gift from God that I literally, and it happens a lot here at the National, where somebody stops me, asks for picture, wants to shake my hand,

because they're a fan of the show. and I can put a smile in that person's face hard and just kind of make their day. And all I have to do is take a picture. I don't have to do anything special. I don't have to give money. I don't have to move the boxes. All I got to do is say hi and then make their day. Any great stories from storage related to the hobby?

You know, like hobby collectibles of any kind. So this wasn't on the show but probably like three or four years right before the hobby really started exploding again. And before I really got back into it strong again, I bought a 10 by 20 unit that was a famous deal in Southern California, passed away. And he had like almost complete 52 sets, 53 sets, 54 sets. He also was one of the biggest star carts dealers in the nation at a time. So I had literally thousands and thousands of those Boston Celtics,

L.A. Lakers packs, like a lot. They're not as rare as you think you are, right? Not much Jordan stuff, a little bit of Jordan stuff. And the entire unit was just packed with carts. and we got a really, really good deal on it, like a few thousand. We flipped it really fast. I don't remember what we sold it at the time, but it was just so much work,

and back then we didn't have to store yet. I think we flipped it for like $25,000. I'm sure in today's market, if you were to come to like a national, it just prices out one by one, I'm sure that'd be seven figures. So it was just insane. Sometimes I lay in bed, and especially now that I'm super active,

again, in my own collection and journey in the hobby. I think back of that unit, that's probably one of the units I wish I would have just kept. And the sick part is I probably have 30 units worth of storage units of really good stuff that I kept through our time. But that just was a flipping opportunity. It's like, all right, I'll make $25,000 in 24 hours, you know. But yeah, I wish I would have kept that one. You'd take it in the moment, though.

You take it in the moment. You know, you could hold it forever, right? Yeah, I know I have a lot of stuff we're holding forever. My wife makes fun of me all the time. Talk to me, Renee. You mentioned collection. What are some of the prized items in Renee's collection? So I'm like old school, right?

I mean, I know our hobby is very financially driven now. It's about the money and the comms and how much we get and what the upside is. I'm more from the old school, right? Anything that goes in my collection, number one, will never be sold except for two reasons. If I upgrade it or if I die, then my wife will have a dollar sell. You guys all get it cheap, right? But hopefully it goes to a collector. So my journey is also a little different.

It changes all the time. So maybe I'll be called, like my PCs are like the Padres, the Dolphins, the Suns, German national soccer teams, international kit. And I'm really into vintage, modern. But right now, my main thing, especially just national and last national, what I'm really looking for is rare graded sealed packs. So I got some crazy stuff going back to the 20s and a lot of pop ones. And I try to find the highest PSA crate, super low populations. I got a lot of packs that are like one or two known in the world.

so, and luckily a lot of, I probably shouldn't talk about this here because it's going to get more expensive. A lot of people are not chasing that yet, and I think it's way undervalued, but I actually love it for the art. And a lot of these 80s and 90s packs take me back to when I was a child, and then the older ones are even cooler with the colors and the history. I got packs that are like literally been sitting on shelves 100 years ago,

and I just try to take myself back to the kit that was working somewhere, trying to get that pack for a penny or whatever, you know? What's the oldest pack you've ever opened? I hate opening old packs because I like to keep them together. You know that now. You've probably opened them at some point. I'm trying to think probably something in the 60s that's non-sport. Was it worth opening?

No. Yeah, I never. Every time I open, I'm like, what was I thinking? Every time. I have four boys. We rips. It gets expensive. Yeah, ripping is expensive.

but you know what a lot of people I was like they always say oh ripping is no good it's not fun it's like you're missing the hobby ripping packs it's like to me and again IPC singles IPC everything but ripping packs to anticipation you never know what you're hitting my company pulled that three million dollar otani last year so you never know what comes out of the next pack and like there's nothing more fun than ripping packs well i tell people about stores entertainment you're not buying the pack is great but you're buying entertainment yeah the chance for sure the entertainment and you know that's not many people in the country that rip more packs than we do. And you know what I do when I'm not ripping packs? You're smart now. You let us, you sell it doing it your own through streaming and I mean,

live streaming man, the last five years unheard of. I mean, I told people in 2018 in a FedEx conference, it was the next big wave. And it's been more than the next big wave. It's, it's, almost unfathomable, how big it is. If you do your research and you see what's going on and China right now with live streaming and also what's happening in Japan. And you look at the numbers they do and what they do and how the consumers do. I mean, just research Chinese live streaming. You will realize that in the United States, we're just at the baby stage right now. We're just getting started. It's like 7%. People think we're in a bubble or we're like really high in. This is insane. We haven't even started yet compared to China. Yeah, exactly. Talk to me about

bargain hunter breaks then. I mean, good segue. Now you guys are still on. lot. You get a lot of live breaks happening. Talk to me about what made you get into it. So, I mean, like a lot of people, I've been collecting cards literally my entire life off and on, depending on marriage and kids and financial status, right? So when you have a newborn, you cannot justify buying cards for thousands of dollars. At least I couldn't. When COVID came, and I'm still throughout the entire time when I see cool cards or packs, I'll buy them, but I've never really hunted them, right? If I see an opportunity, I'll buy them. Usually not at card shows, so more like at a swap me to a thrift store or a card store so when COVID came same thing our business shut down

I was sitting at home I got back into breaks and I really really love breaking but this sounds bad because I love all breaking companies and everybody has their own style but for me personally I have a very high stress life so when I break I want to relax and most of these channels were just playing really loud music really fast with like super sales tactics and it was like I felt so stressed out watching breaks. And then sometimes we hit some really big cards and it wasn't the best shipping, right? I would get mad because I'll hit a huge 101 and it comes in a bubble envelope. So I told my wife, I think we have an opportunity here. I think there's got to be more middle-aged guys like me that must feel the same way, right? We don't want to be stressed out breaking. So we decided to start

a breaking company. There's no music, no sales tactics. 90% of our breaks are PYT, so you can always know the price what you're paying and pick the team. that you actually want. Like, I could care less of hitting the Dodgers because I don't collect the Dodgers, even though those are money cards. If I break baseball, I only want Padres, and that's it. Unless there's like a really cool PV Reese

with the Yankees, I might be chasing that. So we started doing that, and then everything you buy with us, it comes shipped in a box. It doesn't matter if you hit $4 in cards or $4,000 in cards. If you hit a big card with us, you are going to get it unless the post office steals us,

which we have never had happened. We started doing it, and ever since we got into breaking, We got a lot of support from Tops and Fanatics. They loved us. They thought it would be a really nice crossover between storage wars, breaking, and a card community. We went from $480,000 in the last two quarters

to $4.8 million to $16 million, to this year we're in pace at $50 million, and we're going to double that again next year. So our tactics worked, and the people appreciated it. We got all five-star feedback, and no scandals yet. Yeah, not yet, exactly. I'm going to say some stupid eventually because of a big mouth, but I try not to.

Different surf for folks. I think with live streaming, it really is, there's different channels for everyone. Yeah, definitely. Every team's a different channel, you know, in a way. Well, I tell people, find what makes you happy, find what works for you. But it's not even as much as about the breakers. I mean, the breakers are important. We entertain, we guide, and we provide the service.

But it's also about the community that we create, right? We have so many people that come in every night. They talk to their friends. They root for them. They root against them. and it's a place to go. A lot of our customs are nightly, and they just don't want to sit on the couch

and watch Brain that television. It's kind of funny that I say that since I'm on television, but it's like they want that interaction, a little bit more interactive. Yeah, exactly. And I do think, you know, we're just kind of scraping the surface of what the channel can be.

You're going to have different players coming in, different things, you know, and I think you'll see an evolution of that medium. Is there anything you guys are thinking about from the formula you're doing now, the teams that you have, any expiration in the breaks? Yeah, so we kind of, so in the business side, we're kind of in a tough spot right now, right?

So when we came in with fanatics and tops, like for the last few years, the only license in sports was baseball, right? So we really went to the baseball. The baseball community is really good train, and those guys like PYTs, pick your team, know what you get, right? One of the challenges that we're facing right now, and I've got to make a decision and just see how it goes. We were really trying to push PYTs in the NFL

and NBA community. But man, those guys really love the dollar starts and the spinning wheel. And I hate doing that because the most dissatisfaction on customers is if somebody pays a lot for a spot, but now they don't get the team they wanted and now they're unhappy. But the minute before they said, yeah, I'm good, you know. And we've been trying to push their PYT format, but sometimes it takes a long time to fill a couple hours to fill a break, which is long for us. A lot of times we pre-sell, we're sold out.

So we're slowly started to doing also these dollar space. But the one thing that we do that no breaker does, like that a day, I ran three cases of Inception Basketball. And I tell them, like, look, guys, we had Inception Basketball yesterday. It took two hours to fill. I just did dollar spins. My PYT price in the case was like $4,700 or $4,600. On spins, you guys paid $5,100.

So me as a breaker, you just made me an extra $5,100, but I tell you guys that's all the time. It's not good for you. But they still don't care. So I'm like, okay, well, I mean, it's really tough. I want to give them the best thing that I know is good for them, but as a business, you've got to give what the community wants. So they want a dollar spent. So that's a little tough for us.

It is. Everybody wants the chance in every move. I'm thinking now with everything's a mystery. Mystery this, mystery that. Yeah, we don't do any repacks. We're not even thinking about it. If we ever do repacks, I guarantee you there will be some of the best in the industry. Yeah.

Do you see yourself staying in media? Like, are you know, doing it again or getting out there? as far as being on, you know, trying to do another show or, you know, with your own stuff. I know you're, you know, you know, you're, you know, you do media, but you know what I'm saying. Like, could you see yourself, you know, going down the TV route again? I don't know. I'm getting old. So it's, um, doing like television television, a lot of people don't realize it's a lot of work.

So our show. I was kind of leading the witness there. It's a lot of work. Yeah. So our show is, I think our format is, it used to be 22 minutes, but then they doubled it. And it's just more editing. But for my part. alone, so you see how little I'm at, on one show, maybe three, four, five minutes.

Yeah. I literally will film 40 hours a week of filming. So, I don't know. You never know. I mean, if the right opportunity comes along, I do it, I love being in front of the camera. It's energetic. It's fun. But right now, I'm really, really excited about Bargant's breaks, and I just want to keep on

building that up. I know you play a little poker, don't you? Oh, yeah. I played once or twice before. Yeah, are we a poker shark? or like, is it just pastime? Play professionally? I used to before I got married.

I actually quit poker when my daughter was born because I was like, okay, being a professional poker player, if you do it right, especially in cash games, I lived in Vegas at the time, it's not a good family choice, right? So when my daughter was born, I was like, okay, let's be responsible, let's go to safe route, let's build a business, which honestly is a lot. I was very successful in poker and cash games.

And I built a business. And then probably five years ago, I got back into it. And I have a sponsorship with ACR. We play ACR online. We played the World Series events. But the last couple of years, I barely have time. It's like I'll probably go to one or two tournaments a year and then do the World Series. But even at the World Series, every year I say, okay, everything is running good.

We're running good. I'm going to go for an entire month, play a bunch of tournaments, play the mixed games. And same thing this year again. I played one tournament plus the main event, and that's it. You know, there's a lot of debate, I think, in the hobby with collectors, you know, versus investors. Where do you fall in kind of that pendulum and what you're seeing, you know, happening day to day? Everybody tries to tell everybody what they have to do, how they should do it. That's dumb.

Do what makes you happy. If you want to be invested and you want to speculate and you want to flip and you want to treat it like the stock market, and that's your downtime and that's fun for you, God. bless you go do it right if you want to be a guy like me anything that i spend in the hobby that's not part of my business but my personal spending is a hundred percent loss because i never sell it it's like i bought packs that are really rare that i paid 500 bucks for right you can literally offer me five thousand dollars for that pack and unless i got an upgrade or if it's one it's not for sell it's not i've done it before when i was young and i've done it probably within the last five years i collect coins also

sold one of the best examples known, made a lot of money fast because I got it right. And then I still regret selling that coin and the extra money, luckily God has blessed me enough for like my bills are paid. So the extra money doesn't do anything for me. But having that example in my collection just makes me happy. And honestly, we know how collectors are. We acquire stuff. Then it goes in the save or it goes in one of the boxes. And I'll go back a year later and look at certain boxes and I'm like, oh, I forgot I bought that.

I forgot I owned that. So unless I buy duplicate, which happens, oil upgrade, it's just not for sale. So for me, the hobby is terrible. It's 100% loss. Every money is spent, I never get it back. I have several friends that are trying to talk me into the coin thing. I haven't quite bought onto it yet. Is it the next big thing?

Look, again, we talk about what makes you happy, right? So I'm a blue-blooded American, in my opinion, even though I'm German. I love capitalism. I love business. So I love buying ancient coins. I like buying early American coins. And again, just like baseball cards in the packs we talk about, I own a lot of Roman coins.

I go back in my mind and time. And I'm like, okay, this coin was in the pocket of a Roman soldier marching to Germania, you know? And like just to history, oh, it was an Italian merchant trading with Persia, like, you know, in the first early. So I think about what these coins represented or what might have happened with them. And it's kind of stupid, but it kind of becomes, for me,

little bit of a fantasy world, so I love coins also. But that's what all collecting, I collected for the story and the history, and I don't know, it just makes me feel a certain way. But do you feel like the industry's coming? Like, I could fill the ground moving underneath me with cards. Like, I collected growing up. I did not collect coins. I could feel the ground moving underneath me seven years ago with where this was coming. I can't say this, me personally, I can't, but I have a lot of people that I trust that say that it's kind of picking up steam. You feel that. You feel that or see that? I mean, the coin industry is huge. There's a lot of

money in coins. Two major differences, right? So when we talk about trading cards, if we really want to go early, right, like stuff that we can still attain what like 1910, 1920, there's a few things in the 1800s. Most of us can't afford, right? So what

do we have? Like, let's say reasonably stuff that we can still pick up cheap for under 20 bucks for common, 1940s 1950s, right? So we have less than 100 years to work with of history if we like the oldest stuff. Obviously, we like a lot of the new stuff, right? There's more new trading cards produced than coins. But if you like history and errors, and also we have the United States pretty much, right? There's some Venezuela, there's some Europe, but it's not big in a

hobby. When you look at coins, I was just talking about Roman coins, you have thousands of years of collecting when you want to call vintage or ancient, right? And you have the entire planet. So coins are huge. There's a lot of money there too. I don't think, like obviously our trading card hobbies absolutely exploding. And I just talked to PSA, right? They said the sports community is nothing compared to TCG. And we don't do any TCG. They said like we're a small fraction. They, that character from One Piece, Luffy? Is that the one? Okay. He said they're going to create more Luffy cards than the entire football cards together this year. And the reason they keep on upping the price is not because they want to charge us more and squeeze us more. They can't

keep up. They want to discourage us to grade, right? Make better, make, it's like so expensive to grade. Stop grading so much, right? So everything is exploding. All collectibles are exploding. And I'll tell you another thing. I do a lot of research on AI and what the future will look like. And I'm a strong believer one day within the next 10 years. We're all going to get some sort of universal income, but not the way people think now like it's a poor person's things. I think stuff to produce is going to be so cheap and we're not going to have jobs. We're just going to get that money. And what do you do with your time if you have money in the bank, enough money, right, and nothing to do?

We've just seen it with COVID, right? So either you just start drinking heavily, which is not good, or you start getting fitness, which I'm not doing that, I'm not going for a hike. So my only other option is being collectibles, right? And I think the collectible world over the next 10 years is going to be absolutely going to explode. and we haven't seen anything yet. It doesn't matter if it's coins or trading cards or TCG or action figures. Collectibles are here to stay and it's growing.

And not just our industry is grown. Everything is growing. It's a good time to be in a business. Yeah. I have a store and you don't have to talk to you about TCG. It's like, it's 50-50. I thought it was going to be 80, 20 sports. It's like 50-50.

It's nuts. I know so many store owners from back in the day and they said, I'm never doing TCG Pokemon. I don't get it. I'll be a equal opportunity. I didn't care. I just was a surprise. I mean, it's unbelievable.

I walk in the store, half of the store, and I was TC2. I'm like, what happened? You know, so. And like, look, I'm not big into TCG. We're probably going to start adding it because we just have to provide the service, right? I love things like Disney and Marvel,

new and vintage. If you've seen some of the latest Disney card and Marvel card from tops, they're just absolutely amazing. And again, it goes back to the same thing. Collect what makes you happy. If you buy and collect what makes you happy, you'll never be disappointed.

point in the hobby. If you buy a card for $5,000, hoping that he's as good season, it goes to $8,000, your heart can be broken, you can be broken financially. I don't care about money in the hobby, except on my business side. Renee, talk to us about where we can learn more, about what you're doing with your companies, offline, online, all that stuff, like website, links, give everybody all those details. So we sell on whatnot. We have a basic website. We don't really need it. Our breaks sell out fast. We give you fair pricing, try to push PYT. Anything that tops make we break, doesn't matter if it's football, basketball, baseball, soccer, Marvel, Disney, V-Friends, anything they make we break. We usually do case breaks. Right now we have four channels. Most of

last year, we had three streams going on, usually eight hours a day. Now we have six streamers. After the national, we have three more streamers that we start training. I think by the end of the year. I'm hoping to be around 20 to 30 streamers going 24 hours a day with probably seven or eight channels on whatnot and also on Fanatics Life. So just keep on expanding, breaking more product, providing all the services. Renee, I really appreciate your time for joining us here on the national stage. Yeah, thank you. It's fun. I mean, Nationalist kits, it's Collector's Disneyland. Exactly. Thecollectornation.com will have the whole episode. We will link to the breaks so you can get on there. I love the alternative approach that you're doing,

and can't wait to see where you're going. Congratulations, Renee. Thank you. I really appreciate you. Thanks for tuning in to the show. Be sure to follow us on your go-to podcast platform and catch the full video episode over on YouTube. Visit us at collectornation.com

and follow Ryan on Instagram at Ryan Alford. Now get out there and collect yours.