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Rory Tait - Building A Stock Market For Collectors
878 Plays10 months ago
Today’s guest is Rory Tait, one of the earliest employees at the company Rally. Rally is revolutionizing the way people invest in collectible assets, offering a platform where investors can buy and sell equity shares in items ranging from classic cars, rare books, and even dinosaur skulls. While all of those items seem terribly expensive to collect, that’s where Rally takes the wheel. Everyday investors like you and I are able to go onto Rally’s platform and buy and sell shares of all of these collectible items that they acquire. For example, in August of 2020, Rally IPO’ed a 1985 sealed copy of Super Mario Bros for Nintendo for $150k at $50/share. Just a year later the asset was acquired for $2m dollars giving their investors a more than 1200% return on their investment. So even if you just bought one share at $50, your investment would have gone to just under $667. Now, that’s only one side to the collecting journey, but what I love that Rally is doing is that they are preserving the nostalgia of these items through stories and their in person museum in New York where you can visit these items to see them for yourself and I urge you all to do so. Alright, without further adieu, this is Rory Tait, for Collectors Gene Radio.
Rory's Website - https://roryctait.com/
Rally - https://rallyrd.com/
24 Heures du Montauk - https://www.24heuresdumontauk.com/
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Transcript
The Investment Boom in Sealed Video Games
00:00:00
Speaker
I don't know if you saw the 85 Super Mario Brothers that we had on the platform. I sure did. When we offered that in August 2020, we offered it for $150,000 and that was kind of infancy or beginning of the real kind of sealed video game spike. $150,000 in August 2020, you know, 11 and a half months later, a collector came through and offered $2 million for it, right? So that was a 1200% return for investors in 11 and a half months. So you bought a $50 share in the IPO.
00:00:30
Speaker
and you held it, it paid out, I think, just over $660.
Welcome to Collector's Gene Radio
00:00:34
Speaker
What's going on, everybody, and welcome to Collector's Gene Radio. This is all about diving into the nuances of collecting and ultimately finding out whether or not our guests have what we like to call the collector's gene. If you have the time, please subscribe and leave a review. It truly helps. Thanks a bunch for listening, and please enjoy today's guest on Collector's Gene Radio.
Meeting Rory Tate from Rally
00:00:59
Speaker
Today's guest is Rory Tate, one of the earliest employees at the company, Rally. Rally is revolutionizing the way people invest in collectible assets, offering a platform where investors can buy and sell equity shares in items ranging from classic cars, rare books, and even dinosaur skulls. While all of those items seem terribly expensive to collect, that's where Rally takes the wheel.
00:01:23
Speaker
Everyday investors like you and I are able to go onto Rally's platform and buy and sell shares of all of these collectible items that they acquire.
The Super Mario Bros IPO Success Story
00:01:31
Speaker
For example, in August of 2020, Rally IPOed a 1985 sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. for Nintendo for $150,000 at $50 a share.
00:01:43
Speaker
Just a year later, the asset was acquired for $2 million, giving their investors a more than 1200% return on their investment. So even if you bought just one share at $50, your investment would have gone to just under $667.
00:01:58
Speaker
Now, that's only one side to the collecting journey, but what I really love that Raleigh is doing is that they are preserving the nostalgia of these items through stories and their in-person museum in New York where you can visit these items to see them for yourself. And I urge you all to do so. The content on today's episode is for informational purposes only, and you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
00:02:27
Speaker
Without further ado, this is Rory Tate for Collectors Gene Radio.
Rally's Evolution and Diverse Asset Classes
00:02:32
Speaker
Rory, welcome to Collectors Gene Radio. Thanks for having me here, man. Really excited to be here. My pleasure. I think the last time we spoke, you were fist bumping Richard Branson on his way to his space launch and I messaged you and I was like, what are you doing there? Yeah, that was a couple of years back, but a crazy, crazy day and it was really fun to watch. Pretty historical moment.
00:02:57
Speaker
No doubt. All right, so you were an early employee at Rally, which is a platform for everyday people like me to invest in collectible assets. Tell me how Rally got started and how you got involved and where you guys are at today.
00:03:12
Speaker
Yeah, so for people that don't know about reality, the idea is essentially we can take any collectible, run it through an SEC process, a reggae plus process, and turn that individual collectible into a company that can accept investments from accredited and non-accredited investors. So we kind of pioneered this standardized consumer-facing process.
00:03:32
Speaker
that removed a lot of the confusion, I guess an intimidation associated with traditional financial transactions. So anything from a vintage car to a Rolex or one of the original copies of the Declaration of Independence, people can invest in the same way they invest in stocks.
00:03:49
Speaker
Love
Acquiring and Curating Collectibles at Rally
00:03:50
Speaker
it. The idea started. There were three co-founders, Chris, Rob, and Max. Kind of came from different backgrounds. Chris was in venture capital. Rob did a bunch of different creative jobs. He worked at Good Music in the music industry and had done a couple different startups. And Max, who's German, born guy, lives in Switzerland now, went to college with Chris and was working in banking in New York.
00:04:14
Speaker
All of them had interest in buying really collectible cars but couldn't necessarily afford it, thought about going in together on them. The story that's always told is Chris.
00:04:27
Speaker
who's our CEO and founder, or co-founder, wanted to buy a slant-nose Porsche that was coming up at auction that his parents said, don't do that. You live in Manhattan, you're not gonna drive it. It's not a good investment. You should buy real estate instead. I think that was right around 2008. Chris took his parents' advice, bought a house out in Long Highland, and the 2008 crash came. The house didn't do as well as an investment. Meanwhile, that Porsche came back to auction a couple years later for significantly more money.
00:04:58
Speaker
So he started talking with his buddies from high school and college and they came together to launch rally. We started with collectible cars kind of following the story of the slant knows and we've expanded to I think over 23 asset classes since that. Amazing. How are you guys acquiring these assets? I mean auctions, private collections.
00:05:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's really interesting how the acquisitions process has changed since we launched. I think with each different asset class, it starts the same way where we go into a new asset class, let's say, sports cards. When you first enter a new market, there's new auction houses, there's new
00:05:38
Speaker
people involved and personalities involved. So when we first come into a new space, it's always bringing on strategic advisors, having the communications with the introductions with the leaders in the space. And typically at the beginning, it's going to auctions or cars like big dealerships and acquiring those assets from them based on what we're looking for. I think as we build a name for ourselves in this space and have done a bunch of IPOs for that asset class,
00:06:06
Speaker
and onboard people that are coming to the platform because that's the asset class they're interested in. The acquisition process shifts somewhat where we're still going to those dealers and auctions and finding assets that are on our list, but also suddenly you start having people come to us. So whether it's a user who has a collection of their own or a user knows somebody that has a special asset,
00:06:31
Speaker
Those start coming to us as, hey, I'd love to see this on the platform, or hey, I know about this asset that might be on your list. Are you guys interested in that? Once an asset class is in motion, we acquire things various different ways, whether it's going out and purchasing it, or it's coming to us organically through the user base.
00:06:51
Speaker
There's always a list of things that we're really, really looking for and a list of things that we're actively hunting. But a lot of interesting assets have come to us organically that we've then done the research on and found a history of appreciation and an incredible story behind it that really fits what we're looking for and ends up being an IPO asset on the platform.
00:07:11
Speaker
Do you notice that collectors on the platform are spreading their portfolios across all types of collectible assets or are the car folks sticking to cars and the art folks are sticking to art?
00:07:24
Speaker
You end up seeing a lot of cross-pollination between different asset classes. I think the reason being is, as a company, we're acquiring these assets, presenting them, telling the story, and showing this history of appreciation. We, in a way, have become these curators. We're curating what's going on the platform.
00:07:43
Speaker
And it's assumed and believed and trusted that we're not going to put anything on there to the best of our ability that is not a good investment. So when we bring something new, for instance, we launch books. When we went out and started doing books, it was, here are the three books that you guys should really start with.
00:08:07
Speaker
integrated titles that are really great investments. But for us, the first book we launched with in the book category was a first edition Harry Potter in the Philosopher's Stone. Something relatable to everybody. Exactly. Within the age group of our investors. If someone's investing in a sports card from the 80s or 90s, they're growing up at a time where they know Harry Potter and they've seen the growth of that franchise.
00:08:36
Speaker
When we present something new, you end up seeing people, oh, Rally has it on the platform. I know this title. I know how big this is. This is one of 200 copies that were printed with the mistaken title on the rear cover, which led to the birth of this huge franchise. That makes a lot of sense as an investment. Yeah, I'll test it out. And someone will test out that new asset class. And as we add more assets in that vertical, if they relate to it, they make sense.
00:09:06
Speaker
I would have to imagine as a collector myself and chatting with people like you on the podcast it's got me into so many different areas of collecting just being exposed to all this stuff right so i would have to imagine that people on the platform are getting excited about books when they were strictly car collector and they're getting excited about art and wine and all that sort of stuff.
00:09:28
Speaker
100%. It's working at the company to where I'm, you know, have been exposed to a lot of this stuff over the years. That's got to be tough. It's almost a disease, right? Because yeah, you know, we'll go Oh, you know, let's do Birken bags. I know, or I knew nothing about Birken bags.
00:09:44
Speaker
but as soon as you start kind of researching the space and learning about it, suddenly like I love Birkin. I think they're a fantastic investment. I'm never going to carry a purse or especially $100,000 purse around Manhattan, but I want one like badly. It's like sticking under your bed.
00:10:02
Speaker
Yeah, there's a pretty cool Birkin bag that they did that was, I think targeted maybe a little bit more towards the male market, but it was like this rugged Birkin that had, it was more like a travel style bag that had like pockets on the outside and a spot for like a canteen and all this stuff. It was pretty cool. You'll have to check it out.
00:10:20
Speaker
There's some crazy ones and each one has a wild story. The story of the Birkenbeg in general is an awesome story, but it's such a wild space where it's unlike any other asset class. The way you get access to them, the way you purchase them, the way that they're
00:10:39
Speaker
used or not used in most cases. It's fascinating and you come to kind of love and respect the story and the space even if it's not something that you ever thought you would. Yeah, there's very few brands where every single item that they produce and have produced over time is collectible, right? You get that with Hermes and there's very few brands that are like that. I mean, Tiffany doesn't even fall into that category because you can walk into a store and buy
00:11:09
Speaker
rare Tiffany items that aren't necessarily cheap, but you can buy them. And there's so much stuff that Hermes has done from past to present that is so collectible across so many different categories that very few people have done. It's definitely a great collecting market.
00:11:27
Speaker
There's a different level too that exists with it. I think Tiffany's is a perfect example. But Tiffany's has that you can go in, walk in and buy something and it's going to retain its value. It's a beautiful item. But then similar to Hermes, there's a different level where you can't just go into Tiffany's and get a Tiffany stamp.
00:11:46
Speaker
or a Tiffany's stamp Rolex, it's like the Birkin bag where you have to kind of go in and buy a bunch of stuff over years and build a relationship to get access to these things. And that's where the really special, really crazy stuff comes in. It truly breeds this disease of, I gotta get all of this stuff and collect it to get access to the thing I want. But it's an incredible system they've built, but it works and it makes these items incredibly special and rare.
00:12:14
Speaker
How are you guys tracking the market to determine how these assets go up or down? Especially right since the shares are traded on your platform and not necessarily a general stock market.
00:12:25
Speaker
Yeah. In the acquisition stage of things, we're tracking prices in public sales. It's analysis on comps or comparable assets as long back as we can find them and tracking the market that way. Similarly, on the exit side, when someone makes an offer on something, we have to do the same thing with public market comps.
00:12:47
Speaker
the platform itself, the price or the market cap of that asset is set by the trader. So if you purchase shares at $10 and people are selling shares at $12, the market cap multiplies by that $12 and is set by what those shares are trading on the platform for. So I think the ultimate goal in some asset classes we've gotten there are some, we need to build up the volume and bring more assets to it. But the ultimate goal of Rally is to have
00:13:17
Speaker
our market cap and the market cap on the platform be more accurate than what an auction expectation is. An asset might come to auction, especially rare assets, might come to auction every year, every couple years, and that price is set.
00:13:32
Speaker
by the result, but our prices and the prices for these assets on our platform are reset five days a week by the investors. It's a fascinating way to see where investor sentiment is, where interest is, how people are reacting to different comps.
00:13:50
Speaker
Very rare card trades incredibly above kind of what the expected was does that affect other cards in the you know in that similar sport And that's what we get to watch five days a week with trading on the platform. I Would have to imagine that most of the team at rally are collectors of sort Does this make it easier? Would you say when sourcing items for the platform to have that kind of mindset as a collector? I
00:14:17
Speaker
I think everyone at the company comes in with their background of, I'm a collector in this asset class and you see different people get drawn into different asset classes once they join the company that they become obsessed with or they want to collect.
00:14:35
Speaker
Personally, it's difficult because there's some items that I'd love to show great comps and a great history of appreciation because I've always loved those items. I'd love to get them on the platform. I'd love to own them myself someday. But when you dig into the numbers, sometimes it's like, oh, this doesn't fit our investment criteria or kind of underwriting standards.
00:14:57
Speaker
And then you start considering, should that not be on my personal list one day? Is this something I shouldn't invest in? Yeah, the mental rabbit hole. It's a ripple effect through your dreams if it doesn't fit the platform, should it fit my list?
00:15:12
Speaker
yeah you also have the opposite effect right there's some assets that you maybe didn't know about or you hadn't done the research on a known the story about or seen kind of the history of the transactions around it. That's suddenly once you learn more about it and see it it's if you become obsessed over something you never thought you would be and and i think the.
00:15:32
Speaker
There's a looking for something for the platform and there's something that's on your personal bucket list. And I think if, at least personally when I've found something that is on my bucket list that has
00:15:44
Speaker
the background to be a fit for the platform and kind of the history or appreciation, then it's like it is underlined on my bucket list. So Rally has over 450 assets on the platform. Are there certain trends where you see people hold in certain categories and sell and trade and others, right? Like are the Porsche guys holding onto shares of their vintage Porsche through Rally?
00:16:13
Speaker
versus we're obviously seeing some fluctuation in the modern watch world, right? So are you seeing more people sell and trade in those areas? The thing is with each of these assets, they're their own company, right? So each one has its own market cap, its own number of shares, its own number of investors. And it's not necessarily the same across a category for cars, right? So on an individual basis, you'll see things like our Declaration of Independence, right?
00:16:41
Speaker
one of about 20 privately owned examples from July 1776. It's a broadside copy. Ours was printed for Exeter in New Hampshire to get word out about the Declaration of Independence. Pre-email, we post this up on a government building, you read it, what's going on. That asset shares trade and the float turns over
00:17:04
Speaker
I think close to fully once a year. I don't know the exact number right now, but that float is changing hands a lot. You're not seeing the same amount of transactions around something like Yoko Ono's first edition grapefruit book from 1960s. It's an incredible asset. It has this insane story, but there's less comps or there's less excitement around that asset. So people who really know about those assets are holding it long-term.
00:17:32
Speaker
And then you get some assets that are exciting or have a lot of cops coming up where people are kind of flipping shares quickly to make money when they can on it. Cars for us have been on the platform the longest period of time. And I think it's typically our larger investors are in cars, our longer hold times are in cars. But recently we've been doing a lot of exits in cars on the platform. So you see a lot more transactions on other cars kind of in this space. So it varies both.
00:18:01
Speaker
based on what's going on in the broader category on the platform and also what the asset is. There's no overarching answer that is true for everything. Yeah, that makes sense. Every situation is obviously going to be different and timing of certain markets are different and auction seasons help or don't help. Exactly.
00:18:25
Speaker
Do you guys sit on the assets until you find there's a good opportunity to sell or do you strictly hold them? Everything on the platform is always for sale. Once it IPOs, there's always a button at the bottom of the main page for the asset that says, if you're interested in buying it, reach out to us here and we get a lot of offers that way. If an offer comes in on an asset,
00:18:50
Speaker
There's a couple ways it happens, right? Sometimes we get an offer that comes in through the app that's at or above fair market value, represents good returns for the investors, and that's great. So what we do is we take that number. First, we make sure that it's a real offer. We check that the money's there, get kind of proof of funds, but then we'll pull the investors. And if the majority of investors say, yeah, I want to take this offer at this price, the assets sold to that person, and everyone's paid out on a share-weighted basis,
00:19:19
Speaker
There's also cases which we've run maybe about a dozen in the past two months where there's been some comps that have come out around an asset and the asset's not trading where those comps have been, where we'll pull the investors and say, hey, there's this auction coming up, which fits this asset for these criteria. Do you want to send the asset to auction? And if the majority of investors vote in favor of that, we'll send it that way.
00:19:49
Speaker
We're always actively speaking with auction houses and private collectors and people in network to find exit opportunities for these assets, but it also comes organically through the app sometimes, which is awesome. That's pretty cool. It just has to be the majority of the investors to say yay or nay to potentially move an item. Exactly. It's the majority of
00:20:14
Speaker
individual investors and majority of shares. So if both are in favor, it is sold or sent to auction to be sold.
00:20:24
Speaker
How do you balance the emotional attachment a lot of these collectors have to the items, right? With the financial aspect of investing, you reach out to them and say, hey, we have an offer on this. We think it's a great offer. Does majority want to sell? And then you probably have some pushback from the guys that are like, no, I want to hold. Like I really feel like I own a piece of this thing and I'm not ready to sell, but sometimes they don't have an option.
00:20:47
Speaker
I think one of the considerations that we have when we're deciding whether we pull on something is if the offer is, let's say, at fair market value, one of the pieces we measure is, is this something that we could replace at or around this price in the future?
00:21:06
Speaker
court, three pieces of the court from Kobe Bryant's final game at the Staples Center. He dropped 60 points. They had both of his numbers on the court. He signed the court on his number. We had that number with his signature. When an offer came in for that asset, if the offer was right about where we bought it or it was around fair market value, we could never replace that asset.
00:21:30
Speaker
Basically, we wait for those things to get really strong offers that give investors really great returns. At the end of the day, it's a financial platform where you're making investments based off of things that you know and collect in a whole deer that you might not be able to buy yourself. But it's a platform to diversify your investments and make money. So some of the exits we have hurt because I love seeing them in our museum or I love having them on display at a show.
00:22:00
Speaker
At the end of the day, if the returns are strong and they're at or above fair market value for that asset at the time, it's our responsibility to present it to investors. If the majority are in favor, the majority are in favor. Do you have to present all offers that come in?
00:22:16
Speaker
Yes, we feel responsible to present all offers that are at or above the fair market value. We'll have offers come in for $100,000 card at $60,000. That's not an offer that's going to get passed. That's not an offer that reflects the value. We won't run an offer like that, but if it's within that fair market value and the person has the proof of funds to do it, we'll present those offers, yes.
00:22:43
Speaker
In general, what intrinsic value do you believe that collectibles hold beyond their monetary worth? And how does Raleigh strive to preserve and celebrate this aspect of collecting beyond the financials? Have you been to our museum in Manhattan or no? I haven't. It's on my list of things to do next time I come in.
00:23:03
Speaker
we've got to get you into the museum. But the idea of the museum, right, the kind of catchphrase for it is the only museum where you can own everything inside. And it's built around nostalgia, right? So I grew up in a family where my uncle and my grandfather were huge collectors, right? And my uncle at a very young age kind of told me,
00:23:25
Speaker
about this thing called poster theory. So if you have a poster on your wall when you're a kid, when you kind of get to your peak income level or peak wealth point, which is call it your 40s, 50s, 60s, and you have that disposable income, you want to buy the best possible example of that thing you dreamt of as a child. So if you were born in the 80s and you had a kuntash on your wall, when you're in your 40s, 50s, 60s, that's the car you want and you want the best possible one.
00:23:54
Speaker
I think a lot of the assets on the platform have incredible, either historical or artistic history to them. The Declaration of Independence is one of our assets that is obviously extremely important to US history. That asset is something that's been sold privately before. It's something that could ultimately end up in a private collection or in someone's house.
00:24:18
Speaker
But bringing it on the platform, presenting it to hundreds of thousands of people that have suddenly this opportunity to own a share of it or own a share and come see it in person in the museum and really be connected to it and own it. Having those assets available to the masses and making sure that they're celebrated and
00:24:40
Speaker
Shown is extremely important. We have a dinosaur in the museum right now that's, I think, between 55 and 60 million years old. Unbelievable. It's a crazy, crazy piece.
00:24:54
Speaker
When we were going through the acquisition process, the seller was kind of deciding, do I want, funny enough, do I want to sell this to Jeff Bezos or do we want to put it on rally? And ultimately you chose rally because, you know, you get a billionaire buying something like that. It disappears. It sits on their yacht or in their living room. But there's something important about
00:25:18
Speaker
letting anybody see it and being able to tell them the story and let them become owners in it. That kind of gives these assets or allows them to have a continued life beyond just sitting in a storage facility or a private collection somewhere and never seeing the light of day.
00:25:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the benefit that Rally offers the customers, right? It's like this is intangible value that people get, right? Even if you're not a user on the Rally platform, you can go to the museum and you can look at all these items. You can really study them and enjoy them as if you were going to a museum. And I feel like that's like the biggest benefit that Rally can offer to everybody who's interested in any sort of collectible item is
00:26:05
Speaker
Go on the website go to the museum you can see these items you can learn about them you know exactly where they are right. Exactly and the goal has always been to have something or a bunch of things for everyone right so as we continue to expand asset classes we continue to kind of go into more spaces.
00:26:26
Speaker
continues to grow this community of people who have always wanted to collect or wanted to buy these super rare and expensive assets, but don't necessarily have the means to. Not many have the ability to buy a $300,000 Birkenbag and hide it away, but suddenly you can and you can come see it. And there's something special about
00:26:47
Speaker
owning it, right? Like I own a piece of that. And it makes the connection real and seeing it in person or in the museum, you really connect deeply with the story of that asset in a way that you wouldn't if you saw it sitting in a store window, for instance.
00:27:01
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, you can fill that void of nostalgia that people have earlier than maybe they're expecting, right? If a 25-year-old doesn't necessarily have the means to buy his Countach that was on his wall or his Lamborghini Diablo that was on his wall growing up, right?
00:27:17
Speaker
He can have a piece of that now and then eventually still aspire to own one in full one day. But you know, maybe if maybe the values go up enough and you guys sell, he could he could potentially own one on a nice swing. But that's the point, right? And I think.
00:27:32
Speaker
The company was built by those types of people. We all want to own those assets one day. We all dream of owning those assets or dream of owning those assets. It's not something that's feasible at certain ages. I personally might know more about various Porsche 911 models than a guy who has a collection of 50 of them, let's say.
00:27:56
Speaker
I can't go buy 50 of them. But I know that buying these cars in specific versions offer incredible returns. So not only will it be harder for me to buy it in 10 years or 20 years from now, I can't participate in the upside or the appreciation of the things that I know will appreciate and truly care about, let's say more than Apple's P&E ratio. So it was built for that group of people by that group of people in a way.
00:28:26
Speaker
Let's just hope that Bezos comes and offers rally something ridiculous for that dinosaur. You could pass that off to the investors, right? Yeah, Jeff, if you're listening, it's always for sale.
00:28:40
Speaker
There's always a price, right? There's always a price. And you know, there's crazy stuff that happened. We had a, I don't know if you saw the 85 Super Mario Brothers that we had on the platform. I sure did. When we offered that in August 2020, we offered it for $150,000 and it was kind of infancy or beginning of the real kind of sealed video game spike.
00:29:01
Speaker
$150,000 in August 2020, 11 and a half months later, a collector came through and offered $2 million for it. That was a 1200% return for investors in 11 and a half months. You bought a $50 share in the IPO and you held it. It paid out, I think, just over $660. It's a great move. You get a couple of those and suddenly take that money and go buy a
00:29:27
Speaker
a slightly lower grade version of it. You can start to turn it into owning it outright. Any fun stories you can share in regards to the acquisition of a specific item you guys have IPO'd? Actually, yeah, I have a fun one. One of the assets we have actually in the museum right now is all six of the Chicago Bulls Championship Prize. Oh, wow. Which one, there were not many players who were there for all six years and got all six rings.
00:29:57
Speaker
But there's also a difference between player rings and staff rings, right? Like every one of the organization who works for the Bulls would get a ring. But only certain owners or GMs or high ranking people in the organization would get the actual kind of diamond set ring aside from the players.
00:30:14
Speaker
We have all six rings from a guy named John Kaps, who was a security guard for the Bulls, but also Jordan. I don't know if you watched The Last Dance, but he covered kind of his relationship with the different security guards on the team. And I think after Jordan's father died, you know, Kaps kind of fulfilled a father figure role for Jordan. And Jordan, I believe, paid his salary through his death. Unbelievable. But after he died,
00:30:42
Speaker
John Caps's rings came up to auction at a relatively small auction house. We got word of that through one of our strategic advisors in the space, and we wanted to buy them. But the difficult part of it was all six of them, each one was a separate lot.
00:30:58
Speaker
Oh, that's interesting. Which was fascinating. And I don't know if it was beneficial to them in any way. I don't know if it made sense, I think, as a lot, having all six. And John Caps's rings are diamond set player issue, diamond set rings. They're not the typical employee rings. But they sold them as six different lots. So we went into that auction. We're prepping for that auction.
00:31:23
Speaker
terrified that if someone noticed that the winning bidder on five of the rings had been the same person, they'd just run up the price of the sixth. Not only that, but if you only win two or three of the six, it kind of changes the value in an odd way because you guys are going for the whole set.
00:31:44
Speaker
100%. If we'd only gotten two or three of them, I don't know if we would have offered it. We would have had to probably exit those three in some way, shape or form. Prepping and going into the auction, we had different people in our advisory board and group and network prep to bid on different rings from different locations and different accounts.
00:32:08
Speaker
We ended up getting all six of them. It's one of my favorite assets on the platform. It's incredible. I don't know if you've ever seen the picture, I think it was a Nike ad, of Jordan posing
00:32:23
Speaker
with all six of his rings on, kind of holding his face with them. But having all six of them sitting next to each other is like this crazy thing. There's so few people that were there all six years. So it worked in the end ultimately, but that was a terrifying and I think very sweaty handed bidding process as we went through all six lots.
00:32:48
Speaker
I'm sure. I mean, you guys went about it the right way, though, of creating separate bidding accounts and all that sort of stuff, because there is a lot of psychology behind that and people watching. Exactly. If I had noticed, I would have been tempted to kind of run up the sixth myself. A hundred percent. Why not? Why not? Speaking of rally, let's talk about the rally that you put on every year during the weekend of the bridge.
00:33:12
Speaker
Yeah, myself and the rally team plus Hootie. Hootie is a good friend of mine and the companies and we would go to the bridge every year. And for, I guess, people that aren't familiar with the bridge, it's this incredible show put on by Jeff Einhorn and Shamin Abbas at the bridge, which is a golf course in Bridge Hampton that used to be the Bridge Hampton racetrack.
00:33:37
Speaker
So they fill the course with kind of the most incredible cars in the world. And it's made for photography almost. It's perfect. It's beautiful. We go every year and kind of chat about the fact that there's so many owners of these incredible cars that don't even necessarily show them themselves. They have a collection manager or they have a group that manages the cars, who brings it, puts it on the course, puts it back in the truck and drives it back to a storage facility.
00:34:07
Speaker
And I think Hootie and I both felt that it's kind of this sad thing, right? Both of us dream of owning these incredible cars one day. I couldn't imagine saying, I'm not going to go and show this car. I'm not going to go bring this car to this event and see all these incredible things. I'm just going to send my collection manager to do it.
00:34:30
Speaker
In 2021, we decided to get a group of people who were showing their cars at the bridge that we knew together the day beforehand. The bridge is always a Saturday. Everyone kind of goes out on Friday. So we decided, you know, Friday morning, we want to get a group of people with
00:34:47
Speaker
you know, incredible cars and incredibly interesting people together. And we want to get those cars out on the road and drive them. So we called it the 24 Hours du Montage, kind of a play on 24 Hours du Mont. And that first year, I think we had 11 cars. And it was awesome. It rained, but, you know, people came out and drove these cars that they were just planning on showing for the weekend and had a great time.
00:35:14
Speaker
We kind of grew it for the second year, and I think we had around 20, 25 cars. And then for the third year, this past year, we had about 50 cars and just over 100 attendees, right? So one or two people per car. And some really, really spectacular people and collectors showed up. Jazz Dylan, who's from Tennessee,
00:35:37
Speaker
Kind of incredible collector of lemon raised Porsches showed up in his you know somewhat I don't know the
00:35:47
Speaker
The truth behind it, but he has this road legal Le Mans car. Unheard of. You don't see those cars on the streets, right? Getting jazz out with his crazy noise canceling headphones on in a Le Mans car and driving it through the Hamptons in regular traffic and going through stop signs with a group of 50 other incredible cars is this
00:36:14
Speaker
really awesome thing for people who are driving by and see it. But it's also, I think, incredibly impactful for the people who own it and don't necessarily think of these cars as something they can drive on the streets or enjoy like that. You know, it's so scared. You're scared to do it as an investment or to damage it or just don't want to do it. So the 24 hour Devontag has continued to grow and we'll keep doing another one next year and hopefully get some continued interesting and fascinating vehicles and people out on the road.
00:36:44
Speaker
Try to get people who are showing their spectacular things to come enjoy the event and experience those things and force them to enjoy these assets.
00:36:54
Speaker
can't beat it. And what I love about it is that it's not the most strenuous drive to go from Manhattan or Long Island to the other side of Long Island. And it's a digestible thing for people that are collectors of these rare cars that don't get driven often to hop in them and go for a quick drive. Exactly. It's not a scary drive. It's not a dangerous drive. It's really easy. We started this year at the Parrish Art Museum
00:37:22
Speaker
and drove to the tip of Montauk to dive bar pizza. It's a short drive. It's a beautiful drive. In the Hamptons, you get everything from vineyards to beaches to golf courses and beautiful homes. So you get a bunch of different backdrops you're driving in and a pretty
00:37:39
Speaker
short period of time and then you end with a lunch and chatting with like-minded people. It's a lot of fun. We're excited to continue to grow it and hone it and make it more interesting in years to come. We'll have to get you out there this year. Hey, I am 100% down to come in and do that. I'm hopping in your car. Done. Consider your official invite.
00:38:06
Speaker
Rory, let's wrap it up here with the collectors gene rundown. You can answer these questions based on the things that you love to collect. You could base it off of the things that you guys are acquiring for rally, however you see fit. Perfect. All right. What's the one that got away? Personally, I had a perfect Porsche 944 that I bought in college that I loved. It was the best example I'd found. And I got a little bored during COVID.
00:38:34
Speaker
and tried to build it into a safari car kind of before 944s were being built into safari cars and unfortunately wrapped it around a telephone pole. Oh, geez. So I'm yearning to get one of those back. I had it in my hands, but that's the one that hurts the most still. It'll come back. It'll come back. The on deck circle. So what's next for you in collecting maybe something you're hunting besides the safari car?
00:39:04
Speaker
On deck right now, I'm going through a really deep obsessive watch phase. I'd really, really love to get kind of a pre Daytona Rolex. I'm really into kind of the early Rolexes right now. How about the unobtainable? So this is something that is just too expensive. Maybe it's in a private collection or it's in the Raleigh Museum and it's just complete unobtainable.
00:39:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's an easy one for me. We have on the platform, it's not in the museum right now, but it was in the museum for a period of time. We have one of the two twin turbo prototype Lamborghini Countachas built into the 1980s.
00:39:52
Speaker
Ours is this kind of candy apple red with candy apple red wheels and full white interior, period correct, you know, Escort radar system. And it was built essentially to compete with, I believe F40 at the time was faster than the Countach, so they tried to twin turbo it. It was driven through the Swiss Alps and tested and then disappeared for a couple of decades. It was discovered by John Tamarian and I believe Reno or Vegas in about 2018. And we put it on the platform pretty quickly after that.
00:40:23
Speaker
That's a car that, you know, while I don't love driving kundosh, I'm a little at six five, I'm a little tall to fit comfortable in them. That's not the right cockpit for you.
00:40:35
Speaker
No, but every time I get, you know, the opportunity to drive that car from the truck on to, you know, let's say the bridge golf course at the bridge, it's the dream one day to be would be to own that car. But unfortunately, there's, there's two of them. And that is pure unobtainable. At least you get to look at it from time to time. Good. I'm incredibly blessed to get to see it often.
00:41:01
Speaker
The page one rewrites, so if you could collect anything besides cars and watches, money is no object, what would it be? Through my time at Raleigh, I've become really fascinated by books. We have some really awesome books on the platform, you know, Shakespeare's Forfolio, the first edition Harry Potter, which actually was recently sold, you know, The Great Gatsby with the original dust cover, first edition dust cover.
00:41:29
Speaker
I don't know if I'd be good at collecting books. I don't know how I'd store or display them personally. In the museum, it's really fun and easy, but money is no object. I think I'd get a beautiful library and fill it with some spectacular books.
00:41:47
Speaker
Yeah, there's something special about the rare book collecting side of things, especially very first early editions and early copies of stuff, because you know that that was a touch and feel item for the author to inspect, to make sure that it turned out the correct way. And I think that there's just some sort of, there's something magical about that.
00:42:12
Speaker
Oh, 100%, like, for instance, one of the books on the platform that I, you know, is not a title that's necessarily that collectible is we have JFK's Profiles in Courage, right, which is after I think it was maybe in the run up to the 60s election, right? So 1959, you wrote this book, and the one that we have was inscribed by JFK to Frank Sinatra. Incredible.
00:42:41
Speaker
And to me, the idea that, you know, the president wrote this book and then signed it, you know, to Frank Sinatra is, you know, both of them touched it. It was, it's kind of this, you get to see this letter that they wrote privately, right? Like here's a book for you. I hope you enjoy it type thing. That to me is, is you're touching so many pieces of history, whether it's people or, you know, the book itself that you really can't beat in, in with any other asset class.
00:43:11
Speaker
Yeah, there's something so interesting about that and you just kind of run your mind across all these different scenarios of how it was gifted and what the scenario was and yeah, super interesting.
00:43:25
Speaker
In the final point, I think this might be controversial, but I think we'll see less and less books. Everything's going to be books and iPads and in my mind, it's going to become harder to get your hands on a hard-covered book. There's already very few of the very rare collectible stuff. Exactly. How about the goat? Who do you look up to in the collecting world? Who do you think is a fantastic collector?
00:43:52
Speaker
My grandfather was a big collector, but that's one answer. But my grandfather was super into watches and I got a watch that he wore often before he died when I graduated from high school from my grandmother. And it kind of turned me on to watches and immediately it was an Omega Speedmaster. And my first kind of
00:44:14
Speaker
foray into watches was Hodinky, right? I read and watched every piece of content that they had put out, like, voraciously. And Ben and the team at Hodinky, but Ben in particular, his collection and his ability to kind of curate watch stories or personally for him to curate these incredible watches in his collection, I
00:44:38
Speaker
really enjoy following his collection and, you know, reading about it and reading about why he's choosing certain things or why certain things stand out to him. So he's definitely up there for me. Yeah, for sure. And it's kind of cool that you guys share that same sentiment of receiving a Speedmaster as kind of your first foray into watch collecting. Exactly. That's I think that was among the first couple of pieces. I think he might have heard that story on his podcast. You know, he's been he's been on this podcast, right?
00:45:09
Speaker
He has, yes. Yup. Yeah. But when I heard that story, I'm like, okay, I get it. This is by people like watches. It must be, you must have to get a Speedmaster first. It's definitely an important one. The hunt or the ownership? Which one do you enjoy more? My job or a lot of my job is the hunt and I love the hunt. But ultimately I think my goal is to one day, you know,
00:45:35
Speaker
be the ownership portion. I think right now we get to give the ownership portion to hundreds of thousands of people in a way. But one day I'd like to be able to own some of the incredible things that we hunt down personally. No doubt. Most importantly, Roy, do you feel that you were born with the collectors, Gene? I do. I think my family is all collectors and from a very early age it was
00:46:06
Speaker
kind of in my blood. That said, it's a gene. It sometimes also feels like a disease, I think. There's a direct correlation between the two. Oh, 100%. Obsession, gene, disease. I do think I have had it in my blood.
00:46:25
Speaker
Love it, Rory. Thanks so much for joining me today. Hats off to you and the Rally team for everything that you guys have going on. It will be linked up here for everyone to check out the Rally platform and start investing in some cool collectible assets. Thank you so much for having me. All right, that does it for this episode. Thank you all for listening to Collector's Gene Radio.