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CollectibleXchange's Brandon Steiner on the booming sports memorabilia market

CollectibleXchange's Brandon Steiner joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the growing interest in sports memorabilia and why he warns 'buyers to beware' when it comes to overpaying.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: Want to talk to you about alternative investments, especially when it comes to sports memorabilia. That business, nobody knows it better than Brandon Steiner. He is the founder of CollectibleXchange.com. And he's also the founder of Steiner Sports. I want to ask you a quick question because I know you've got your winter auction coming up.

And this is going to sound macabre and polite. But people are thinking it. When we get tragic news like what happened yesterday with Tiger Woods, and thank god he's going to recover from this, do you get a spike in the memorabilia tied to a star when there is an auto accident, that kind of thing?

BRANDON STEINER: You do sometimes. We didn't get that with Tiger because he still hasn't recovered from some of the other stuff that he's been through over the past, you know, bunch of years. So from a collectibility standpoint, even though he has come back and played competitively and done well, he's not somebody that people are quickly putting on their wall and collecting like they were previous, when he had all these problems with drugs, drinking, the accident, the wife, and all the other stuff, the problems that occurred.

So yeah. Listen, when athletes and celebrities die, you know, like when Kobe passed away, that tragic situation, his autograph spiked dramatically. And then sometimes with somebody like Tiger, there was no spike frankly at all because his situation from a licensing collectibility is flat, period.

SEANA SMITH: And then, Brandon, so then who are the top athletes right now just in terms of memorabilia? Because I think that that would be interesting. Because from my understanding, it's not always who is currently involved and who is currently still playing.

BRANDON STEINER: Well, it's interesting. Like, a collectible exchange, you know, my new platform has 50,000 items that people are buying and selling. What I wanted to say was "The Last Dance" definitely pushed the NBA and those athletes that played in the '90s. It definitely pushed it up a notch.

So you're seeing a lot of Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman, all those guys that have played with him or against him, Karl Malone, are a lot hotter. You know, and obviously Michael Jordan is leading the way. And it's a very unusual circumstance. What I'm concerned with, and I see people coming on my site looking for all these great trading cards and all these collectibles, I don't want people to get too caught up with the bubble.

Because I think the market is a little bit ahead of itself or a lot of it ahead of itself. Doesn't have any regulation. I want buyers to beware. Like, on our auction right now, we have incredible stuff. But you see stuff that's just going through the roof. We have a lot of game-used. And to answer your question, the game-used stuff is really getting a premium right now. People are loving it.

Game-used jerseys, game-used footballs in the game that a player may have gotten at the end of a game, now selling it. You see the Derek Jeter glove, that's a 30, $35,000 glove. He only gave away maybe four or five his entire career. We happen to do all his collectibles in my old company. My new company, I'm happy to go resell some of the stuff that I sold to begin with.

So the Jordan stuff is really hot. We're seeing a lot of NFL quarterbacks are hot. But maybe the bubble like a Tom Brady, who people are paying a super premium because he's hot, cool to buy it, but don't-- be prepared maybe not to get all your money back when you want to sell it. Because it's way, way overinflated. And he has signed tens of thousands of autographs.

You buy a Joe Montana helmet, he's signed over a million autographs. It's a great item, he's Joe Montana, but you're probably not going to get your money back. We see people coming here bringing to CollectibleXchange their collections, which we do buy and sell. And they're not getting their money back on a bunch of items because they overpaid.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Brandon, I'm going to have my brother call you because he's got a Dan Marino football. But I'm worried he signed a million of them. Let me ask you, though, it's not just the sports stuff because you've got, like, Beatles icons in the current auction. I think there's a baseball signed by Sir Paul McCartney and then a drumstick, you know, signed by Ringo Starr. You know, how much will these go for?

BRANDON STEINER: A Bill Clinton baseball. If you look on there, I mean, there is a pristine Bill Clinton. I mean, you could see Bill Clinton stuff out there. But this is a perfect autograph. I mean, it's unbelievable.

And you don't see a lot of Beatles stuff out there. Those guys did not sign a lot of autographs, very hard to find. So we're really grateful to have that in the auction. This is a crazy auction. There's just a wide variety of things. Even if you're not a bidder, go to Bidcx and just take a walk through memory lane. It's a really entertaining couple hours or hour of your time. It's that kind of auction.

Also, I'm a Syracuse grad. So I put in a collection of a whole bunch of Syracuse-- you know, Syracuse stuff from all the great Syracuse players. So if you're part of Syracuse Nation out there, you'll love the auction on CollectibleXchange. It's pretty cool.

You know, the business is really booming now because people are home. And what's great is you see a lot of people parting with their collections. And what's gratifying is you see a lot of younger people now interested in buying this stuff, which is always a concern of mine having been in the business 35 years. Are the young kids going to be into it?

Like, I know my son, he's like, dad, I've had enough of collectibles. But I'm glad I'm not gauging the business after him because a lot of the young kids are now doing what their parents, collecting cards and collecting all kinds of products. I'll tell you one thing, by the way.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Yeah?

BRANDON STEINER: I haven't mentioned this to anyone. So this is the first time I'm mentioning it. I'm selling my collection. You'll be able to go on the site and see the preview in about a week. And I'm talking collecting for 40 years of stuff, you know, since I'm 20. And it's a pretty big collection. It's extremely very rare, rogue stuff.

So if you're really a collectible, you've collected Steiner in the past, you may want to go take a look at this collection. It goes all the way back to Mickey Mantle and everything else.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Brandon-- yeah, Mickey Mantle would get a lot of cash. I got to tell you, Syracuse, '83 to '87, and I remember being in the dome back when the Orange would take on Georgetown and Patrick Ewing. I don't know if I was there when you were there, but--

BRANDON STEINER: I was there. I graduated in '81. But Georgetown, we don't really-- that's not really an actual school that actually exists. But by the way, I took the dome off of the roof. They have to have a roof there. I took the dome. And if you go on my website, you'll see all these cool products that we made out of the dome.

Right now, we're actually printing people's diplomas on the dome if you graduated with the dome. My graduating class was the first year of the dome. And Coach Boeheim has been very generous in signing a lot of products. We've sold-- there's probably about 80 or 100 different skews we've made with the dome, pictures of the dome, that we've printed on the dome.

So if you're a big huge fan, you'll love this auction. Or you can pick up a piece of the dome.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Sure. And useless trivia, the sound in "Star Wars" with the lasers was stamping your foot in between the columns on the outside of the Carrier Dome in Syracuse. I got to let you go, fellow Orangeman there, Brandon Steiner.

BRANDON STEINER: Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And I hope you [INAUDIBLE]

ADAM SHAPIRO: We can't wait till the day we go inside the dome when we would play Georgetown, the team that we won't mention. We'll be right back after this.

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