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If you happen to be from a certain generation – an elder millennial, say, or slightly older – then you’ll instantly recall the childhood excitement of an unwrapped, brand-new desktop computer or video game console. They weren’t just novelty household luxuries near the end of the 20th Century; they were gateways to a new world of possibility.
Now, nearly half a lifetime later, a glimpse of the same still-packaged items should ignite the same giddy life-emotions — because they could change your financial future and bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That’s according to a man who’s made a mint from memorabilia, the New Jersey-based subject of Netflix’s reality series King of Collectibles – Ken Goldin, founder and CEO of Goldin Auctions.
Goldin spends his days hunting down the most valuable and rare items in existence that can fetch sky-high prices. And some of them just might be in the back of your mom’s attic.
“The big thing that’s becoming popular recently is older technology that’s never been used,” Goldin tells The Independent. “Original Apple computers are very valuable; sealed old iPhones; sealed, original video game systems; sealed old original video games; sealed original VHS – things like that.”
That’s assuming you never took it out the box.
“Because, if you think about, going back to the old Nintendo NES system, and even before that, the early Ataris, if you had a box with all the games, you gave it to somebody and the kids played it, right? So how many of those remain unopened?” he says. “But when you have something like that unopened, it’s become extremely valuable.”
Goldin rattled off the prices: rare video games selling for over $1m, gaming systems going for over $100,000, early computers for $500,000.
“All that type of stuff that was produced to be used … a lot of it, not all of it, but a lot of it is suddenly valuable,” he says.
The key, he says, is the pristine preserved condition of the items.
“Even original toys, like action figures and Barbie dolls from the 1980s and earlier that are still unopened, some of those are valuable,” he says.
Goldin’s career was really kicking off around that very same time. Now 58, he’d fallen in love with collecting as a child – discovering an early, entrepreneurial knack for it.
“I had my first business transaction when I was 12 years old,” he says. “It was a trade where a friend of mine had a large sports card collection, and I traded my electric race car set and all of my cars for his cards. That really got me started.”
He continued “buying and selling” as a teenager and was “making extremely good money” but didn’t consider collecting as a potential real career – until his father stepped in.
Goldin was in college in the late 1980s, when his father noted how many hobby shops had been opening across the country. “He said: ‘I bet I can raise money, and we can go public with a company that services all of these stores’ – and that’s how I … got into it full-time,” says Goldin.
The father-son duo began a business called Score Card securing and brokering autographed cards; it was making millions before 1990. Goldin became a regular on TV, finessing a media savvy as the collectibles world took off into a steamrolling international industry.
As the merits of working in the money-making memorabilia world became apparent, however, mass-production during the same years devalued many items from the period. Untouched technology and toys may fetch great prices, but the same can’t be said for much else.
“The most depressing question I get asked, because I always hate to tell people the answer,” is from people seeking to know the value of sports cards they’ve meticulously saved for decades, he says.
“And I need to explain to them why those 40-year-old cards are junk, which you wouldn’t think,” Goldin says. “But that was an era where … everything in the world was overproduced in the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s.”
In fact, says Goldin, many are worth less today than they were in the 1980s.
That being said, you just don’t know what treasures might be lurking in the bowels of your storage or your relatives’ basements.
“Five years ago, I sold what still is the most expensive vinyl album ever sold: A signed copy by John Lennon of his Double Fantasy Album … the copy he signed for Mark David Chapman, the guy who killed him,” Goldin says. “It went for a million dollars.”
That album had been tagged into police evidence, sold after the trial, changed hands privately and had been in the possession of a private collector since the 1990s who approached Goldin a few years ago, he says.
Items with such close personal connections to history and heroes not only hold high monetary value; they also possess the intangible importance that motivates so many collectors in the first place – like Goldin himself.
“I collect sports items; I collect pop culture; I collect historical; I collect comic books,” he says. “And to me, when I look at something, I think of a collectible, I want to own something that is really capturing a moment in time – a piece of history.
He points to the sale of a Lionel Messi jersey the player ripped off and famously held up to the crowd after a 2017 Clasico win against Real Madrid– “a moment in time that everybody in soccer remembers.”
“I happen to own a baseball bat used by Babe Ruth when he hit 60 home runs in a season,” Goldin says. “I also happen to own a document that was signed by President Abraham Lincoln … those are historical events that take you back to that time, and I think a lot of people collect because, especially if it’s sports or entertainment, it brings them close to their heroes – whether it’s a jersey that Messi wore, whether it’s a pair of sneakers that Michael Jordan wore.
“We just sold a Van Halen drum set that was used in a Van Halen concert. Whether it is something that was used in Star Wars… all of these things make people feel that they own a piece of history – that they are closer to the individual personality that used that item,” he says.
The “great thing about collectibles,” Goldin says, is that “it really brings out the little kid in everybody.”
That includes the myriad celebrities Goldin deals with, including those featured on the Netflix show – from Joe Montana to Drake to Logan Paul.
“I literally have dealt with soccer players … and baseball players who make tens of millions of dollars a year, but they will literally text me because they’re so excited that they opened up something and they pulled out a $10,000 card,” Goldin says, referring to unopened boxes of items from sports to Pokemon cards that can yield mystery amounts.
“So it’s just amazing, because I know this is not going to change their life, but … it brings out the little kid.”
For the average person hoping a re-discovered item could change their life, however, Goldin recommends employing a little common sense and research before getting your hopes up.
Check on eBay or his auction site for similar items to see what prices they fetched, for example – though that can get confusing, too.
“They’ll think they have something [worth] like $50,000; unfortunately, that may be like a first production, rare variation, and what you have is worth $75,” he says.
Discovering items and finding out their values, however, is all part of the fun of the whole enterprise.
“A lot of it is the thrill of the chase,” says Goldin, adding that he feels that’s a huge part of the appeal of his Netflix show — as well as the mind-boggling price tags — now in its second season.
“ I think a lot of people are into it for the competition – for myself, and the people that work at Goldin, and what they do to find these types of items … you’re traveling the world, you’re going into people’s homes, you’re meeting all these people, and it’s just the craziest,” he says.
“It’s a thrill ride; I think it’s a big adrenaline rush.”
