The Hobby is Big Business - Introducing Vee Friends w/ Gary Vaynerchuk

Could you imagine if you and I told our 22-year-old selves that same fire that you have in your stomach right now, you'll have it at 49?

We would have been ecstatic to know that.

This is right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network Production.

We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month,

taking the BS out of business for over six years in over 400 episodes.

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Right about now.

Hey guys, what's up?

Welcome to Right About Now.

We are in the midst of our trading card hobby business edition.

We are talking a business of trading cards, investments, opportunities.

And look, we're talking opportunities.

I knew no better person to call than my good friend, Gary Vaynerchuk.

He is the creator of VFriends, the hottest, newest, top chrome trading card that is out.

And of course, the CEO of Vayner Media.

Gary, what's What's up, man?

Thanks for joining the hobby series, man.

I, you know, I had to have the king of the hobby.

Yeah, uh, I've been watching you for 20 years talk about trading cards, so appreciate you joining.

Thanks, Ryan.

I really appreciate it, man.

Hope you're well.

Yeah, man.

Life is good.

I uh, it's been exciting watching.

You've been talking about, you know, you've been going to garage sales, going, talking, trading cards.

And I grew up collecting cards.

Part of the, it might have been the first reason, you know, it was between the wine.

It was wine to start, Gary.

I got to admit, I was in New York.

We traded places.

I'm in South Carolina now.

I was in New York.

You were talking wine.

I go, I like this guy.

And then you started talking trading cards.

So now it comes full circle, but you've had your hand, you've had your finger pinged on this for a while.

Yep.

Can we, you know, set this table for our audience a bit?

We'll get into V-Friends.

And congrats, man.

It's a big deal.

I mean, it's not lost on me.

what you're doing here.

So congratulations, number one.

Thank you.

Set the table for our audience that knows you, but with trading cards and what led up to this.

You know, I've just,

I've always thought about intellectual property.

It's always been a fascinating industry

creatively and business-wise, Disney, Marvel, Lucas.

And

I

wanted to have my own world.

And when the NFT thing happened, I saw that as a really smart place to create the provenance because I could mint these characters on the blockchain and I believe in digital collectibles.

I still do.

I know so many people think that NFTs were a fad

or baloney, but if you look today, it's stunning how many NFTs will sell today.

Like I was saying back in the hype in 2021, 99% of NFTs were going to go to zero, just like 99% of trading cards and comic books and watches and toys and sneakers are not worth anything.

Same with NFTs.

So I saw that and I launched this Beefrie's world in that manner.

But I knew that I was going to do comic books, cartoons, trading cards.

And this is actually our third series of trading cards.

We had a series one and series two with a company called Zero Cool that Topps bought.

But this has obviously been a whole different animal because Topps is the iconic brand in the industry and Topps Chrome is such a big platform.

And so,

yeah, this is just kind of, you know, year four of a journey of building this intellectual property that I'm very excited about, Ry.

Yeah, man.

And congrats, it's a big deal, especially the Topps Chrome.

If anyone's into collecting, it is the iconic brand of Tops.

It meets the new and hottest thing that collectors want, the chrome, the inserts, the parallels, all that stuff.

I love how you've sort of embraced the, you know, part of me, I think some people might would ask, well, why Topps Chrome and why this and why the parallels and all that?

Oh, I get it, man.

You've, you've, I feel like you've created something uniquely original while tapping into sort of the hype and interest that already exists with some of these products.

Talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, I think to your point, obviously, you're a little bit deeper and you're knowledgeable.

Like there's a lot of inserts and structure to this checklist that honors the Chrome model, the red refractors to five and 50

gold and the superfractor one of one.

And then there's uniquely new stuff.

We did something really smart.

Our main character, the very, very, very, very lucky black cat,

has yellow eyes, but we did an insert, a variant where you could get him with green eyes or blue eyes or white eyes or red eyes.

And that's a little head nod to Pokemon's original set with the Pikachu.

And so

there's a lot of

really clever things.

There's a one in every nine cases insert called Erupt that I'm very fond of that is a hat tip to the kaboom

inspired by that great insert.

And we found the original artist of that kaboom set,

and he designed the characters.

So it's, you know, I think it's been fun because even people that, let's say, are cynical to this project, or even me in the hobby of trading cards, because it's a very insular, kind of protective community, which I respect and love,

have been giving flowers to how thoughtful the checklist is.

And that has been rewarding.

Yeah, man.

Smart is what I'd call it.

Where does

what gets me, you know, you brought up the NFT thing, but we live in a digital world and you're an attention arbitrage guy.

Yep.

Where does V-Friends fit?

And, you know, two parts for you in attention arbitrage and building your long-term, you know, legacy.

Where do you see V-Friends in that?

And then part two of that, you've got to, we live in this digital world, but physical cards cards are still booming.

Yeah, I mean, it's, I'll do the second part because it's so easy.

Six, seven years ago, eight years ago, people were like, Gary, why do you still write books?

You're so Mr.

Digital.

And my answer always was, because people read them.

Like, I don't know why the world is obsessed with or.

Yeah.

Right?

People love or.

People are like, even in politics, blue or red, right?

Like, you know, digital or physical.

You know, like the life is gray.

Everything is the middle.

So, I,

of course, physical cards and comic books and

I'll do toys, like, because the world is physical, but the world is also digital.

And the world continues to become more digital, not less digital, right?

So, you know, all those hours today that are being played on Roblox 40 years ago were kids that were outside playing physically.

So, you know, things are changing, but not to zero.

We're not in ready player one full-time yet.

So,

true.

Thankfully.

That's why I keep doing those things.

Where do I see V-Friends sitting?

Really at the center.

You know, I think V-Friends is probably going to end up being the biggest business I ever built.

You know, I feel like it's a very substantial intellectual property, collectible business.

I think the characters represent the things I most care about in the world.

So I think these 250 characters are going to allow me to extend all these things I want the world to know about.

And so Patient Panda will take the baton in helping people learn that patience matters, not just Gary Vee's content, the one that you've been consuming for 20 years.

I've done a lot as a human and put myself on the map, but I'm not going to reach all 8 billion people.

Meanwhile, a V Friends cartoon that talks about tenacity and hustle and kindness can be dubbed in Italian.

and be running on Netflix Italy in five years.

And I'll be accomplishing the same ambition, which is my whole life has been about really a framework of selfish and selfless behavior, right?

Selfishly, I'm an entrepreneur.

I want to build things for me and my family.

I think I'm allowed.

I think you're allowed.

I think everyone's allowed.

However, I do like leaving a positive impact.

I want other entrepreneurs.

I get pumped when entrepreneurs come up to me that basically make more money than me, taking my learnings and applying them.

I'm like, good for you.

That makes me happy.

That doesn't make me unhappy.

So I think that's kind of the goal with the framework here.

Yeah.

And when people have asked me, you know, how do you describe Gary Vee?

I say, well, he's got the tenacity of a cougar, but the dude's really empathetic if you go watch his shit, man.

Like,

it is.

Like,

I see it.

You live and breathe it.

You couldn't have spoken any better because it's clear that you are a selfish motherfucker going after your legacy.

However, if you really pay attention, the way you do it is truly empathetic and and the messages that you push are positive.

And

I commend you for that.

Thank you, brother.

I really do.

I do not see a world where you're like,

I believe that all of us as animals, especially us men, we want to protect and provide for our families.

Like, I don't know.

Like, it's, you know, we're animals.

What do you want from me?

I'm sorry.

We're not robots.

Exactly.

But at the same token, I was born and raised in a manner that has a lot of compassion.

I feel feelings.

I do care about my fellow man.

I do not want to win at the expense of someone else, Ryan.

You know, like, I want to be better than the businesses I'm competing with, but I don't want bad for them.

And then there's a billion other people, billions of other people that are in businesses that have nothing to do with mine.

And I cheer for all of them.

I do not understand envy and jealousy.

You shitting on someone else and saying they're not as good as you think they are does not make you better.

And until people figure that out, we will continue to have a lot of people who spend all their energy envying instead of building.

Yeah, man.

Well, guess what's exciting?

I'm holding the cards and I'm going to open some packs.

I got a few more questions, but let's have some fun, man.

It's not fun.

So you can narrate for me as I go through this.

I will.

All right.

Your team sent some packs.

We've got the boxes.

I got a local guy.

My boys hooked me up with some stuff here.

So let's open.

first one we got diamond hands hen yep have conviction believe in what you believe in nice one good character kind kudoo the kind kudoo is an interesting one to talk about for a second because i want beat friends to be a global brand as you know kindness is a huge part of like what i try to push i didn't go with a kangaroo i didn't go with a koala i didn't go with some other easier known character.

I went with an African-based character.

And I,

one of my long-term strategies is to build out certain characters in certain regions

where the kids or the culture might feel more of an association towards it.

So Kain Kadu was a very thoughtful reason because I'm very bullish on Africa in general over the next 30, 40 years and wanted to have one of the more important traits.

represented by an animal that was indigenous to the area.

You right there just showed the thoughtfulness you put into all this.

Like, it's crazy.

Creative Crab.

You can see one of the reasons I love Creative Crab.

I don't know if you felt this, Ryan, but when you look at it, it's very easy to like this character very fast.

There's a level of like instant, one of the things that's been really working for VFriends is it doesn't take a lot to like.

get associated with the universe.

Meaning, I'm getting a lot of emails here in the first couple of weeks of people who are like, wow, I knew nothing about this.

My friend is into you.

We bought a box.

We opened it.

I can't believe I already have a favorite character.

And I reply to them.

I'm like, that's because it's easy to understand.

You either associate with being creative.

So you're like, oh, I'm super creative.

I love the creative crab.

Or you had a crab as a pet when you were a kid and you love crabs.

Or you grew up in Maryland or

out in Boston and you love crabs.

And so, yeah, creative crabs, very popular.

I grew up in South Carolina and I'm a big boy.

And I like eating some crab down in Charleston.

So it made me think, you know, just the association growing up, going down to Charleston.

Sympathetic squid.

Very, very solid character.

Again,

read the back of this card, Ry.

Yep, let's see.

We got it.

Competitive advantage, compassionate and attentive.

Reaches out to support others without judgment.

And then what about the quote from Sympathetic Squid on the bottom there?

With open arms and a caring heart, I'm here for you.

So this, what just happened there has been the other big piece of feedback.

The amount of, first of all, a lot of dads collect trading cards and a lot of conversation about how they love this set because they're going to collect it with their daughter and they've been able to find a hobby with their daughter.

So that's been huge.

Second, a lot of parents just stumbling on the product and they're reading the back of these cards and they're going, wait a minute, I want my kid to care about these characters.

These characters are opening up the dialogue to things that I want to teach them.

I think parenting is hard and I think we should be helping parents more.

And VFriends has that ability.

Yeah, and I've heard you made the connection.

And look, I have four boys under the age of 15.

And let's just say a trading card fever has hit the Offered house.

And V Friends is on the list.

But I love it for that very reason.

Nine's the youngest, 15 is the oldest.

And I love the message.

It's teaching them, okay, the collectibles, the business side, the things that I love teaching them.

But the messages are positive.

And, you know, it's still, I think you struck this really great balance between, I've heard you use the Sesame Street comparison,

but it doesn't feel too kiddy.

It feels, I don't know, it's, it's,

you're hitting exactly.

Open another pack.

You know, this is exactly what I care about.

Like, I, your boys represent my target.

I, I, I want good virtues.

It's kind of like Gary Vee.

Gary Vee is cool to teenage boys, but I'm pushing positivity in a good way on them.

I want B-Friends to do a very similar thing.

I want to basically trick kids into thinking these characters are cool so that they then start to care about being sympathetic, being, you know, being, you know, and then there's other things.

I mean, like, let's go, there's, there's tenacity, there's, there's, it's not just soft skills.

There's plenty of what I would call alpha skills in these characters as well.

555.

5555 fan.

Yep.

And let's look at the back of that one.

Competitive advantage.

It's Pokemon meets Sesame Street.

It just hit me.

I don't know why.

No, that's not probably a unique take, Gary, but it just hit me.

5555 fan shows that support is about quality, not quantity.

Has unwavering loyalty.

Feels like the strength.

of thousands pushing you towards every victory.

You don't need 5555, 5,555 fans.

Just one person who supports you enough.

And I'm blind as a bat, so I can't even read the quote.

My contact is blurry.

This is real life.

Real life here, Gary.

I'm 48, buddy.

buddy i just turned 48 yesterday i'm i'm 49 and i and dustin' filming right now he's laughing i become completely blind too it's devastating thank you

don't turn 50 don't turn 50

all right authentic anaconda there we go oh oh i've got a little parallel after it too the rationale rattlesnake yep that a gold parallel oh man i'm getting excited i'm shaking that's what all the videos say i'm shaking i got a parallel

and then finally pleasant platypus.

Yeah, I think you know, what's going to be fun about this is I recently joined the board of Spin Master, which owns Paw Patrol and all these great, it's the third biggest toy company in the world behind Hasbro Mattel.

And I'm just in this great chapter in my career, kind of making this more broad for a lot of people that are listening.

I've had all these accomplishments, I've done all these things, but you know, I'm invigorated by being in a new chapter and doing new stuff.

And

I just really hope it motivates people to realize you can change your script at any point in the movie.

And I really,

I'm challenged and I'm invigorated and I'm enjoying it.

And I hope it inspires others to try some creative ventures, some different stuff that's been on their mind.

It's like, I don't know, back to us being 49 and 48.

Could you imagine if you and I told our 22-year-old selves that same fire that you have in your stomach right now, you'll have it at 49.

We would have been ecstatic to know that truth to be true.

100%.

I wouldn't have believed it.

Yeah, it would have been hard to, you know, I don't know how I thought about age and all that.

I've always been pretty a wisdom-oriented kid.

I was patient, but it might have been too hard to believe it.

I would have been like, exactly the same.

And yeah, and then I would have said to myself, yeah, exactly the same.

No different.

No, every day.

Gary, talk to, what's your feelings on the overall hobby?

You know, this series is about the hobby, you know, V-Friends fitting right into it.

It's a huge launch.

Everybody, hey, go out there.

We're going to hit all the channels where you can do that.

And if you're in South Carolina, I'm going to send you there.

But talk to me about what your feelings are on the hobby overall.

I think the hype of 2020, COVID, 2019 into 2020, COVID, and then the bubble bursting when we all came back to real life and had other things to spend money on

besides cards on eBay during COVID.

I think that that was really good for the hobby of where it's at now.

Because we're only a couple years removed from a lot of rookie speculation and other speculation losing a lot of value, I think the consumer right now is more educated than ever.

I think that they're being more thoughtful.

I say a lot that people will not buy Jackson Dart rookies the way they bought Mac Jones rookies.

And I use that analogy as not that I think Jackson's better or worse than Mac, it's that people are starting to be more

strategic and thoughtful.

And I think that's really good for the hobby.

And

I think that the hobby's probably in the best place it's been in a very, very long time because there's so much content, podcasts, social media, breaking platforms.

All this stuff really is helping.

Yeah.

Speaking of breaking rad, that's my boys and I are breaking.

We're actually

partnering up with SI collectibles.

It's fun.

I mean, you know, I'm living to live vicariously with my kids and teach them business and everything else.

So it's got a lot of, I don't know, there's sort of the stigma that goes with it, but I think the positive outweigh the negatives.

And I think you can teach your kids.

And the negatives are controllable.

Like, you know, like, this is just good parenting.

Like, the positives in social media outweigh the negatives.

Yet the whole world has decided to spend 100% of its time worrying about the negatives.

You know, like I feel as though the negatives in a hobby is you allow your kids to treat it like gambling, and all they really care about is opening up expensive packs, hoping for a miracle lottery ticket.

But, but, for example, let me give you my favorite thing about the hobby.

If someone was disciplined and educated and put in the work, the amount of money people could make by going to dollar boxes at shows and stores, buying cards for a dollar, and selling them for $4.99, $6.99, $9.99 on eBay.

Somebody with $100 listening right now, in a year, only buying dollar cards for the dollar box.

If they put in the hours of, you know, because you got to be really knowledgeable, you can't look up every card at a show or at a store.

It'll take you too long.

But if you got really good, even with AI, even with image, if you really knew your shit,

the fact that you take $100,

and I'm serious about this, and turn that into $20,000

in a year by only buying $1 cards and flipping them for $5,000 to $10,000 a piece, which is all day long with these dollar boxes at shows and stores.

You teach your sons that, your daughters that.

That is a skill set that they'll take with their whole lives around arbitrage, market dynamics, marketing.

putting in the work ethic on tedious behaviors and things to get to a goal.

So, you know, you're in control.

There's good and bad to everything in life.

You're in control.

What's it been like working with Tops?

It's been, I mean, in many ways, it's been a dream come true because, I mean, it's the company that I most looked up to as a child.

And in other ways, really the only negative was they didn't believe how much demand there would be for the product, so we didn't make enough.

I was trying to tell them the whole year.

I was like, I'm telling you, we're not making enough.

And so I'd be lying if I didn't say I was disappointed that these boxes have gone from $99 a box on pre-sale to now close to $500 a box.

That has been a bummer because I know that that has kept it out of the hands of many people who can't afford a $500 box,

who would and could afford a $99 box.

So that's my one, you know, regret slash Raz at TOPS.

I wish they'd listened to me a little more, but I was empathetic to why they didn't.

They didn't know.

They weren't sure.

They appreciated my conviction um but they had to make their own business decisions but i'm excited for um

for 2026 version of this set yeah anything you can say with what would be changing for the next round you know hopefully they'll make we haven't really like they'll be so there's 250 characters plus in v friends land this set only has 100 so i'm comfortable in saying that we'll have most

if not all of the characters that were not in this set and there's a lot of big ones rare robot resilient red devil um

motivated monster there's some big very popular characters that were not accountable and gary b my personal favorite uh were not in this set so that i can say for sure

and i can also say that um we'll have a bunch of cool inserts like we did in this and uh but we still got a couple more months of building the product how many uh texts do you get a week for people asking you for cards

these first you know, came out two weeks ago.

In the first two weeks, it's dozens a day on text, email, or DM from people in my life

that I'm more acquaintances or random acquaintances with than, let's say, friends and family

or fans on social.

So it's definitely, it's hitting for sure.

Yep.

Now, how many do you keep yourself?

You got to have some stocked away.

Yeah, I do.

I have a couple cases sealed because I want to keep sealed product forever.

And then I'm building a collection.

I'm collecting the erupts, that very rare insert.

I'm going to try to collect a whole set of that.

It's definitely,

I want to wait a little bit because if I'm going to buy it on the open market, I don't want to like impact the market too much, you know?

Yeah.

So I'm kind of, I'll wait a couple more months and let the storm settle, but I'll be collecting for sure.

So if I get some hits with my kids, can I get Gary Gary Vee to sign?

Can I send your team some cards to sign for their collection?

100%.

Make their year.

I told them I'm talking to Gary Vee today.

It's like,

you know, you're V friends.

You're not Gary to them.

Like, you know,

you're Gary to me.

I'm like, you know, you know, V friends.

Like, yeah, I don't know, V friends.

Like, you idiot.

Yeah, I know V friends.

Have they seen the eBay comps yet, right?

Uh-uh.

No.

You got to show them what these things are selling for.

Their heads are going to spin.

Yeah.

I've almost kept them away from it because I wanted them to just kind of

take in the organics a little bit of it.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, of course, because once the commerce part comes up, it eats up the oxygen of the room.

And they're worried about the value, not the message.

I get that.

Yep.

Yep.

Any final thoughts on this product and what it means to you?

Honestly,

I'll flip it and what it could mean to all of you.

I've said it already.

I'm telling you right now, if you're a dad like I was, where you're constantly thinking about shared interests with your children, some come easy, some don't.

My son is my carbon clone and likes every single thing I like, and it's the easiest thing in the world.

My daughter has different interests.

I cannot explain to someone who's lucky enough to have somebody who's four to eight, four to ten in their life right now, this is a hugely awesome collectible.

Having common interests with your children, I think, is one of the great gifts in the world.

So my final thought is if you're looking for an interest with your child,

listen, let's talk about a bunch of bros who get sad when their boys aren't into sports.

I have a couple buddies like this.

Maybe they're not into sports like you are with basketball cards or football cards, but maybe this is something you could be in with.

And then the other final thought is

not about them.

being collectors of V-Friends, but V-Friends inspiring them to do their version of V-Friends.

I've always wanted to do something like this.

Now I'm doing it.

Maybe you've always wanted to open an ice cream store down the shore or at the lake because your grandpappy did, and you've been dragging your feet for seven years talking about it.

How about this interview and me doing V-Friends inspiring you to go, you know, rent some space and opening that ice cream shop?

Like, never, never, ever, ever give up on your dreams and execute on them.

And so whether this leads to you being a collector of BeFriends and the value of that, or if this leads to you creating some version of your own V-Friends in a different form factor, in a different dream that you've had,

I hope that it, I hope one of those two things happens.

I'm going to let that breathe on its own, brother.

Thank you, brother.

Where can we obviously hard to find, but any calls to action for everyone?

Yeah, I mean, you know, if you're VEEFriends.com is definitely the site to go to.

We have free cartoons, free stuff for kids.

You should definitely check that out.

At an eBay, type in VFriends, go to completed sold items.

You'll get a real sense of the market.

If you're a flipper collector like I am and you're curious about getting in, that's the way to do the homework.

You're always gracious with your time, brother.

I appreciate you.

Always happy to support, brother.

Talk soon.

All right, brother.

See ya.

When I started this series, it was all about the business, but Gary brings it back to what this is all about for me.

My four boys, teaching them business, also teaching them great characteristics like Gary talked about, hustling, getting ahead, repetitive tasks learning business through the lens of this it's an incredible hobby for investing and learning and collecting and doing different things and I couldn't be more proud to talk with Gary today about V Friends and everything that he said and he's doing with these characters in a positive way bringing to life these characters that teach our kids and different people traits of accountability responsibility and empathy and again i can't thank gary enough for coming on the show.

You know where to find us, ryanisright.com, all the highlight clips from this incredible series, links to VFriends, Gary's info, and we appreciate you.

We couldn't do it without you.

Thank you for making us number one.

We'll see you next time on Right About Now.

This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production.

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Thanks for listening.