the principal owner of otia has been working tirelessly in the sports card and memorabilia industry for more than 20 years traveling all over the world for shows and events helped to create the relationships with dealers athletes and agents we have today so joining us now is CEO and founder of otia Welcome Jason Koontz so first off my dad always tells me a story that that that's similar to yours but did not end like yours so you got to tell me about how you got into the sports memorabilia world
yeah so honestly just like everybody else as a kid you know buying and selling it 10 years old um you know the only difference is is you know at age 14 when everybody else kind of started to jump into other stuff and girls and party and everything I saw this as a business and just stuck with it and you know started off buying and selling 50 Cent dollar cards and uh went all the way up to you know multi-million dollar collections where we're at today that is insane so my dad always tells the stor
y he had a collection of baseball cards and his family went to they went somewhere they stayed in a hotel and he left them at the hotel and my dad's quite a bit older than you so he had Mickey Mantle cards he had Babe Ruth cards and his mom wouldn't go back for the cards and they left them there oh wow yeah you gotta you've got a very fancy one there all right so before we get into your collection because it is impressive what is otia what do you guys do yes so we do a lot of stuff um so we buy
and sell high-end sports memorabilia and cards that we we sell the private clients celebrities at you know everybody um and then we also set up private signings and events uh social media for talent athletes celebrities appearances and all that stuff so those are basically both my businesses combined into one unit and they all kind of interchange together Street and and you you have a big Community right I mean I'm sure you get thousands and thousands of people that come to your shows yes yeah I
mean especially after covet I mean during the covet boom it was it was just nuts I've never in a million years thought I would see where we're at where we're at today the the audience is probably a hundred acts of where we were at before but yeah it's it's been an insane ride in in being able to meet some of the the people that I deal with on a daily basis okay you gave us a little uh sneak peek of what is the the most expensive card that you've ever had so right now so this is so on a grading
scale like this is a Jackie Robinson rookie now this one's only a grade of a five but I have that card in a nine which is the is the quality of the card and that card in a nine is almost 10 million dollars of course that's yeah that's sitting in my ball right now this one right here is about 35 000. that is so crazy how how do you okay when you're first starting out and you're looking for sports memorabilia where do you go how do you find it um you know local shows online auctions at this point
I don't even remember because it's like everything kind of comes to me now you know you know we advertise and stuff but um yeah in the beginning it just it's just a lot of grinding and and hitting flea markets and shows and making contacts and at the point now I mean 25 years later it's it's have relationships and people reach out and they say Hey you know I I want to get a Babe Ruth game news bat well I I know where four or five of those are at in personal Collections and basically I'm just con
necting the buyer and the seller together and putting something together it definitely is all about relationships in this industry I have a close family friend who has a very impressive sports memorabilia collection and he used to use his kids when they were growing up to write letters to athletes to get side cards and side memorabilia so it is all about connecting and talking to people if people are interested they want to come to one of your shows or they want to use your services how do we ge
t in touch with with your company yeah so online otia.com otia.com and then social media at otia sports um if you're you know looking to buy sell or set up an event or an appearance with an athlete or celebrity reach out and we'd love to help you out okay perfect I I love to see it it's such a a fun thing to do to say that your hobby is now your job thanks so much for being here I appreciate it appreciate it thank you so much all right so to come after the break we get you ready for your next su
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