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Sports Card Investor Geoff Wilson uses love for collecting to launch growing hobby business
Geoff Wilson has started 14 companies during his successful entrepreneurial career.
His most recent is his most successful, and it’s certainly the most fun venture for Wilson.
In summer 2019, Wilson created a YouTube show called Sports Card Investor (SCI) revolving around the exploding trading card market.
“It was literally me with an iPad and a couple lights I bought off Amazon for $100,” Wilson said at his company’s booth at the 2022 National Sports Collectors Convention in Atlantic City. “I was doing my own editing. It was super low budget. And the shows, if you go back and watch them, they were boring. They weren’t great, but it was a start.
“And at that time, because there was so little content out there, it got popular really fast. So that to me proved that this is a thing. That to me, I was like, OK, this shows people have a thirst for this. This validates my thesis that this is a big industry and if business people supply great content and great technology, people are going to embrace it, the hobby will embrace it.”
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In just a few short years, Wilson has transformed his small startup into a giant in the industry.
By August 2022, the SCI website was collecting more than one million page views per month. SCI’s YouTube channel had 246,000 subscribers (as of May 1), Instagram had 113,000 subscribers and its TikTok page is growing quickly. Wilson said there are a bunch of SCI videos across the company’s social media outlets that have received millions of views.
The Sports Card Investor app — which is free — has an install base of more than 300,000 users.
Collectively over all its platforms, Wilson figures there have been 50-100 million views of content.
“It’s crazy how it’s grown,” said the 44-year-old Wilson. “It’s been exactly three years, because one of the very first shows that I did was at The National in 2019. Literally with my iPhone, just me with my iPhone on a tripod.”
AN INNOCENT BEGINNING
Growing up in Sarasota, Fla., Wilson was a huge collector.
His prime in the hobby was the heyday like so many kids his age — the junk wax era of the late 1980s and early ’90s.
At that time, 14-year-olds in Florida could legally work. So when Wilson’s 14th birthday came around, he had a request to his mom: “‘I want to go around and apply to sports card shops,’” he recalled. “My dream was to work at a sports card shop.”
Wilson landed his first job at a card shop in Sarasota.
As he got into high school, Wilson — like so many others his age — lost touch with the hobby. Collecting also cooled down in the early 1990s.
While at the University of Florida, Wilson founded a digital agency: Three Five Two (the area code of the business in Gainesville). The company celebrated its 25-year anniversary in 2022.
“We do software development and digital marketing for companies — a technology consultant,” Wilson said. “I’ve run that the whole way through and I’m a serial entrepreneur. I’ve done a number of tech start-ups on the side while I’ve been running Three Five Two, and have invested in several tech start-ups as well. I do a lot of angel investing in Atlanta.
“Thankfully, some of those have gone on to be really successful and have had some big exits and that type of thing, which has then helped fuel being able to do more of that kind of stuff over the years. I’ve always kind of had the thread of, I run my agency, but I’m doing a lot of different tech start-up investing and founding on the side.”
Wilson — who with his wife, Kim, have three kids — got back into the hobby in 2019 through one of his sons. Reeves, who was 7 at the time, was visiting his grandma, Geoff’s mom, in Sarasota. They were at Target, and Grandma saw some Donruss football blasters in the checkout aisle. She bought her grandson a box.
“She says, ‘Your dad used to be really into this when he was a kid,’” Wilson said.
Reeves came home with the blaster and opened it with his dad.
“I was like, ‘Oh, this is really neat,’” Wilson recalled. “So that starts me telling him how I used to be a big collector when I was a kid. I still had all of my cards in the attic and pulled them all out.”
Wilson figured he amassed about 20,000 cards growing up. Collecting mostly baseball cards, Wilson has Topps sets ranging from 1986 to ’92. He joked he probably has six sets of 1990 Score from all the packs he opened.
“So I brought all that out and I’m going through that with him,” Wilson said. “I hadn’t opened that in 25 years, it was totally dusty. This leads to me saying, ‘Let’s go out and get more cards.’ I didn’t even really know where to go for cards, so we ended up just going back to Target.”
As a guy in his early 40s, Wilson was looking at the hobby from a business perspective. He realized the full scope of the card industry in the 21st century.
“I say to myself, ‘This industry is a sleeping giant,’” Wilson said. “It’s actually a big industry. There’s tons of business being done, but the technology tools are completely unsophisticated. There’s no data, there’s no analytics, there’s no good apps, there’s a total lack of technology.
“Then, also, there’s a total lack of good content. There’s nothing out there on YouTube other than a few breakers opening packs. There’s no actual shows. There’s nothing quality out there on YouTube at the time. And I said, ‘There’s so much opportunity here for great content and for great technology.’ I said, ‘You know what? This is going to be my next start-up venture. I want to do this. I’m in love with the hobby. The hobby needs content, the hobby needs technology and I want to bring it to the hobby.’”
And so Wilson started his next project. Startups are what he knows; it’s what he’s good at. Wilson took his vision from the ground level and turned it into an absolute monster.
In late 2020 after he’d been running SCI for one year, Wilson became too busy with SCI and had to put a managing director in charge of Three Five Two.
“Almost 25 years of doing it, first time I ever stepped back,” Wilson said. “I said, ‘I’m going to have a managing director run Three Five Two. I’m going to concentrate on this full-time.’ It’s the best decision I’ve ever made, because I just absolutely love being in the hobby.
“There’s a lot of great business people that say, ‘Do what you love. And if you do what you love every day, it doesn’t feel like work.’ And I can truly say, that is what I’m experiencing here. I’m getting to wake up every morning and do what I love in the hobby that I love, and it’s just amazing. It’s such an honor.”
Having started up 14 companies, Wilson has been around the entrepreneurial block. But he cut his teeth in sports cards as a teenager.
“My entrepreneurship, I learned through the buying and selling of sports cards when I was in elementary school and middle school,” Wilson said. “So to give that experience to kids today, I believe that if we can get kids into this sports card hobby and they can come to events like The National and they can have the experience of buying and selling and trading at a card show, that they become stronger thinkers, they learn finance, they learn negotiation, they learn the seeds of entrepreneurship through the sports card industry. That’s something I really want to encourage is having an impact on kids.
“This country was founded by entrepreneurs, this country was founded by people who thought differently and saw a better future. This country’s growth has always been fueled by entrepreneurs. If we can have sports cards be the medium to get the next generation of kids interested in entrepreneurship, that is to me the ultimate goal and the ultimate driving factor. And I think it’s happening, it’s alive and well.”
BUILDING SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS
When Wilson got back into collecting cards decades after his teen years, he quickly realized how drastically things had changed with the hobby.
Gone were the days of pulling strictly base cards out of 50-cent packs. Now there are numbered chase cards with refractors, parallels, 1/1s, the list goes on and on. Boxes sell for hundreds and even thousands of dollars. It’s big business.
The complexities of what the hobby has become can definitely overwhelm anyone trying to get reacquainted after years away or are putting their feet into the industry for the first time. That can cause issues.
“That is one thing that’s got to be fixed. I think it’s something that Fanatics is focused on,” Wilson said. “I think it’s something you’re going to see improvement on in the years ahead. It has got to be easier for a new person to come into the hobby and understand all the different sets, all the different parallels, what is investible, what is not investible, what they should concentrate their collection on, what they should probably stay away from. It’s impossibly difficult.”
One big aspect SCI has zeroed in on is providing its audience with educational videos and content. Wilson and his staff want everyone from the casual collector to hardcore investor to understand the industry.
“We’ve done a whole series of sports card investing 101 videos and sports card collecting,” Wilson said. “It’s not all about investing. We do a lot of collecting-orientated content and we’ve really tried to ramp up the collecting-orientated content over the last year. So, we try to demystify it for people. We try to say, ‘If you’re new in the hobby, we’re going to give you the resources you need to help you get started and understand.’
“A lot of it is about cutting out the noise. A lot of it is, yeah, there’s 30 different sets of basketball cards that are made every year, but if you’re starting and you’re new, there’s really only a few that you want to start with and you want to concentrate on first.”
From the company’s Atlanta office, Wilson and his staff produce unique content for interested hobbyists.
Anyone can sign up for the company’s free email blasts and receive content-filled messages into their inbox twice a week. The emails generally feature videos of Wilson having roundtable discussions with a couple of his employees; “Cards on the Table,” a talk show discussing the latest happenings and trends in the industry; and the “Top 5 Hottest Cards” in the market.
Wilson loves attending card shows around the country, and he documents those experiences on video. He’ll record his big purchases — at the 2022 National, he bought a 1984 Star Michael Jordan for $100,000 — and show how he made some trades with fellow show attendees.
Wilson continues to build on the content that has gotten more and more popular from viewers. The number of people soaking up the SCI materials is staggering.
When the company started, SCI was only available on YouTube. Then its website was developed, social media channels were created and the company started building its first technology tool, Market Movers, in late 2019.
When Market Movers launched in February 2020, it was the first product of its type — nothing like that existed, noted Wilson. Market Movers, a comprehensive sports card price guide, collecting tracking system and market analysis tool, is subscription-based and has several thousand subscribers.
When Wilson had the idea to start SCI and provide content to the masses, he didn’t think it would ever get this popular — especially in just three years.
“It surprised me,” Wilson said. “I had expectations that we would grow and become popular, but it surprised me. And when we first launched Market Movers, I told my friends, I said, ‘Alright, my goal is I want to try and get 100 paid subscribers up by the end of my first week.’ We had a few hundred the first day. I was like, ‘Wow.’ Every kind of step along the way has surprised me.”
Wilson hired his first two SCI employees in April 2020. Just two and a half years later, he had 27 full-time staffers.
People’s thirst for content from SCI remains high despite the downturn in the industry of late. Card prices have dipped sharply over the last 24 months or so.
“Interest in what we’re doing, viewership, audience and users of our products have remained very, very strong and in many areas have grown significantly,” Wilson said. “That gives me great encouragement about the future of the hobby.
“Some people are worried right now. Some people are saying, ‘Prices have fallen a lot. The hobby’s drying up and dying out.’ I say that’s total nonsense. The interest levels today are as high as they have ever been, and you can see it at the number of new people at [The National]. You can see it in the number of people consuming our content every single day. Interest is as high as it’s ever been. Prices have come back down to Earth. And, you know what, that’s actually healthy for the growth of this.”
With SCI doing so well, this could be the last business Wilson ever starts up.
However, he will continue to invest in companies — especially within the sports card industry. A couple he has gone in on are Stand Up Displays, which creates display stands for cards, as well as Slab Strong, which creates protective rubber bumper sleeves that go around graded cards to protect them.
As for SCI, Wilson has plenty of ideas to keep his company innovative and fresh. He has two areas he wants to remain great at: content and technology products.
“We are going to continue to create innovative technology for the collecting space, and that may go beyond sports cards,” Wilson said. “We’re looking at how we can build technology products that serve collectors that aren’t just collecting sports card, but may be collecting other things as well. … We’re always going to be creating incredible content that documents the collecting experience.”
This is what Wilson loves, and his passion shines through in his work.
“It’s not a job,” Wilson said. “This has been so much fun.”
