Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Confession$ of a Memorabilia Collector with Darren Rovell

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

Today, Nicole dives into the world of alternative investing with Darren Rovell (The Action Network, ESPN, CNBC). Trust us: you’re going to geek out over Darren’s collections, and you’ll learn a thing or two about memorabilia investing.

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There is more than one way to invest. If you're not into the stock market, believe it or not, you have other options. Many, many other options. For this episode, I wanted to call up someone who is deep into the alternative investment game. So I called up Darren Revell. You may know Darren from his time at ESPN or from being my work husband at CNBC as the big time business of sports reporter there. But Darren is also a big time memorabilia collector, and that has become a major stream of income for him. So I called him up to geek out about some new additions to his collections and how his side

hustle has become so, so lucrative for him lately. Darren, welcome to Money Rehab. So at CNBC, I did this series on alternative investments. Alternative investments are, for folks who don't know... They are investments that are not necessarily traditional outside your normal banking kind of other way to grow. Wine investors, investing in horses, investing in real estate, shoes, Birkin bags. Then I did the celebrity memorabilia and sports memorabilia and all of that. And then I realized I should have just gone over to your house. You are single guest for this. Because you are like a walking alternative investor. Yes. First of all, I just always loved memorabilia. And so I, it was just out of love. I'm a storyteller. And then I realized that I'm a storyteller.

And now I can create arbitrage. And for folks who don't know, what is arbitrage? It's your advantage. It's what your advantage is. It's what a normal person has, what you have, or what's the delta between what you know and what someone else knows. When you can create arbitrage,

so my arbitrage is I know the story and you don't. I will buy a one-of-a-kind piece that has no comp and I will have the confidence to buy it because I know I'm about to tell you the story or tell the story to the world. Or when I put it up for auction again, I'll make sure the auctioneer knows the story. And there is a crisis in that a lot of people who sell things generally don't know what they have. I recently bought a program from Back Our Brothers, which was a fundraising effort for Dr. Martin Luther King in the East Coast a couple months before the I Have a Dream speech, what became the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.

And I bought the item for what the auctioneer had described it for. It is a autograph program from this Back Our Brothers dinner, $100 plate dinner. And it's signed, it might be the only piece signed by Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King. By the way, it's also signed by Ed Sullivan. So it was $19,000. It's $19,000 based on the fact that how the guys in the auction described it. Now, after I research it and I find out on that night, he announced the March on Washington that became the I Have a Dream speech. Now we're like in another category. So I try to value add. So as a real investor, not only do I enjoy it, but as someone who appreciates

history and someone who deep dives, I use my journalistic skills to create the arbitrage. Arbitrage has also existed other ways. I have, I own letters from a Birmingham jail. The log books from the Birmingham jail from 1963 when Martin Luther King went there for eight days, signed 12 times in and out as mail by Martin Luther King. That arbitrage was, it happened to be in an auction house that was very small in Ork, Pennsylvania. That's arbitrage. I also bought the rudder that Buzz Aldrin used to steer the Apollo 11 command module to the moon. It was in a Hollywood costume auction. Again, nice auction, great piece. You got the wrong database. No one who you're emailing is interested in space.

And so they create real opportunities. I think originally people thought like, oh, he's just a memorabilia hoarder. He loves it so much. But when you realize you have a significant advantage in a market, everything is free money. By the way, that's a conversation. My wife's like, why are you spending all this money on this? And there had to be a conversation. I think this is something for your show. You have to have a conversation by saying, I'm not actually spending money. Just traditionally in your brain, you say you're spending it because this is what would typically be a gift or something you don't need. But what I'm really doing is I'm just moving my money out

of the bank. I'm moving it to the side. And at the very least, it'll be what I paid for it. But 99% of the time, it actually grows. Don't dismiss it because I'm having fun. So what was your first memorabilia investment? My first memorabilia investment, big time, was when I was 10 years old. I bought a Don Mattingly minor league baseball card for $80, all my allowance money. And it turned out to be a fake card. So I learned very, that was a, and I think about that lesson and I think about how cheap that

lesson was for me. And thank God, I mean, I became an immediate skeptic at 10 years old, that everyone went out to get me um and uh i remember i was at a card show and it was just i was like this is garbage it turned out to be garbage couldn't find the guy um so that was that and then i'm sure it was a lot for you a 10 oh my god it was my entire allowance for like a year sucks and then i invested in a hundred john'Rourke rookies because I thought he was going to be the next big thing. So I did kind of a quantity. He wasn't. I mean, listen, I failed a lot on. But, you know, I think that leads to some of the skepticism of the current markets. So I got out of cards when I felt that it was just way too obvious where it was going. Most people find comfort in liquidity, in masses.

I don't. I don't need something to be too liquid. I can always create the story and there will always be one or two people to buy something and that's okay. But it's crazy when you consider there are 25 million card collectors and maybe a thousand ticket collectors. But I feel more comfort in tickets because of the scarcity and it's less obvious. That's been my one business rule. Like when I feel something is obvious, I get nervous and I want to get out.

And the less obvious investment has that paid dividends yet, or you just have a bunch of tickets? Certainly paid, paid, no paid dividends. You know, I mean, so, you know, I'll give you an example. So what's amazing about the ticket is a baseball card doesn't, so I would consider myself a nostalgician. I would consider myself that because I made that word up. So you like it. I think that I know what tugs the heartstrings because I'm an eighties kid. And I think kids from the eighties, I don't know. I think they're, they're more longing for their Astro Pops and their Mike Tyson's Punch Out than any other generation. So I think I got that. And when you think about a baseball card, you don't know

when that picture was taken. There's nothing tied to the event. When you have a ticket, especially a used ticket, that ticket was inside the stadium for an event, for an iconic event. And so I think it gets you closer and it gets you closer to the story. And so PSA is a company that grades baseball cards. And two years ago, when they said they were grading tickets, that's when I said, okay, now they're going to put out a population report where they're going to tell you how many of these tickets they've graded. And they're going to tell you the condition of the tickets. And then now I might not know how many are out there at large, but I at least know how many are out there that they've graded. And that changed the game.

So I can tell you, not only am I one of 10 people who have the first ticket to Disneyland, July 15th, 1955, but I have the highest graded ticket and that gives value. I have tickets from every Michael Jordan moment when he hit the shot at North Carolina, when he won the slam dunk contest in 1988 in Chicago, when he did his shrug, when he – actually, there's one I'm missing, which was the day he got his jersey stolen on Valentine's Day of 1991. And he wore number 12. That was the only game he wore number 12. But what's so cool is there's just little intricacies everywhere. So there's fun things. I have three of four tickets to actually intact from the 1936 Olympics to Jesse Owens becoming the fastest man in the world in front of Hitler. Wow. So some some of the stories are and then and then again, I know some of these things and you don't. So someone on eBay, this poor person, I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound like I take advantage of these people,

but I do. They had like, you know, eight tickets from the 1968 Olympics in Mexico. They had like, you know, eight tickets from the 1968 Olympics in Mexico. And I noticed one of them was from the night that John Carlos and Tommy Smith raised their black fists. And I bought it for $300 and it's probably worth about $20,000. Hold on to your wallets, boys and girls. Money Rehab will be right back. Now for some more Money Rehab will be right back. Now for some more Money Rehab. So in your memorabilia pie chart, how much of it is hobby and passion and how much of it is investing? More investing. I don't ever buy anything that I think will be less when I sell it ever. I think I've put more and more money into kind of the alt asset, which has been easier because as the outside world has accepted more alt assets, it's made me feel better about where I am. I mean, this is probably 15% of my money is

in alt assets. That's part, of course, because of your passion for it. But is there also part of it that's with skepticism for what's happening in the markets and as a hedge in the same reason people buy crypto or gold? Yes, for sure. I know that CNBC would hate this, but I have been more skeptical of the market in the years I've left than before, because I learned being a storyteller for Wall Street or for public companies that it's not just the straight up data. Listen, when someone wins in a sporting event, they won. It's it. It's absolute. When someone reports earnings and they beat the number and then someone goes, well, they didn't beat the whisper. Oh, my God. OK, so what precautions should people take if they are thinking about getting

into alternative investments or memorabilia specifically? Don't just love it. I think you have to back into your reasoning and ask, there's got to be people who either do this or who are tastemakers that you can ask. Even I have three or four guys that I keep asking, what do you think? What do you think? What should I offer? Family members are usually really bad, either yes or no people. So the main problem is, I learned this in my franchise show, people look for the yes. When they're investing in something, I'm sure you've gone over this, they make sure that they get the yes, the affirmative, and they do whatever they can to get that yes. So in these franchise

disclosure documents, which every franchise has to give to new owners, they will put at the end of it, they have to put at the end of it, everyone who's failed. Everyone who has failed this franchise, their phone number, their address, that has to be part of it. And what do you think the people who are considering investing in the franchise go to? They go to the new store, the spanking new store, you know, that's doing all well and everything. They don't ask the people who failed. So I would say just as a general principle, make sure you're asking people who have real opinions, who might know what they're doing. Don't just look for the yes. What about folks on the other side who might have some cool stuff in their house and want to sell it

to people like you? So so it's not like right. So selling it is I mean, the selling process is very democratic. You know, obviously you could post on eBay. You could also find auction houses. Don't you should find some sort of comparable that is sold with some auction house who is good at video games, who is good at cards, who is it? Because I think that people are very lazy and you should realize that if you just put it on eBay or you drag it to the closest auction house to your house, often that is not... By the way, eBay is amazing. It's incredible. But I'm just saying you should know the item is not going to sell just for the item.

It's going to sell based on when it goes up for sale, right? Where it goes up for sale. All these are factors. Who are you putting it in front of? So what would you suggest to novice folks? I often say no more than 1% of your net worth in crypto, maybe the same? Yes, until you prove yourself. Until you prove yourself. And proving yourself means that you are ultimately getting to the point. It's good to get to the point of house money. So I've spent, I decide to put $50,000 in or $20,000 in, and I've made $20,000 and I'm still

in, I'm still going. It's a free roll. It's easier to get things than ever before, right? You can go on eBay and spend a ton of money right away. So I would say, make sure you love it, but you don't love it enough that you're never going to sell it. I look at people and I'm like, God, you should have sold when things were going, I just, I couldn't get rid of it. For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank. If you want to turn collecting into an income stream, you will have to be willing to sell what you buy. If you see a piece that you think is awesome sauce but have an inkling you'll be getting too attached to it to actually sell it, then don't buy it in the first place. Otherwise, what you think could be an income stream could become a spending stream. And on Money Rehab, we're looking for more ways to make money,

not more ways to spend money. Money Rehab is a production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Our producers are Morgan Lavoie and Mike Coscarelli. Executive producers are Nikki Etor and Will Pearson. Our mascots are Penny and Mimsy. Huge thanks to OG Money Rehab team Michelle Lanz for her development work, Catherine Law for her production and writing magic, and Brandon Dickert for his editing, engineering, and sound design.

And as always, thanks to you for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all.