If a collectibles company could partner with any sports team in the world, the Los Angeles Lakers would be near the top of the wish list.
Goldin has put together that enviable deal.
“The Lakers are probably the most recognizable sports team in North America. If you exclude soccer, the most recognizable in the world,” Goldin founder and CEO Ken Golding said. “I am a lifelong Sixers fan and I certainly respect our rivalry versus the Celtics, the Knicks have great history, but I don’t think anyone can argue that the LA Lakers have the deepest history, the most culturally significant history in the NBA. From Kareem and Magic to Shaq and, of course, Kobe and LeBron and everyone else in between. I remember as a kid watching Jack Nicholson in the front row and Showtime, so I just think it’s part of culture.”
Goldin, one of the most innovative auction houses in the sports collectibles hobby, has partnered with the Lakers to become the team’s official Auction House Sponsor. The multiyear deal will give Goldin Auctions access to Lakers memorabilia, including game-worn jerseys, game-used basketballs and historic pieces from the Lakers vault.
Goldin will host eBay Live streaming events featuring Lakers memorabilia from its archive of historic collectibles.
“To me that was the team that I wanted to go get because we are not a company that is going to take a bunch of inventory and dump it on a website, which has been done previously, and have people click a link and see 18 or 40 different items by the same person,” Goldin told SCD at The National. “The fact that we are a big company lets us to do things like … you can be at a game on a Saturday afternoon and have something happen in that game and that night we will be on eBay Live with an exclusive Lakers collectible hour and we will be selling items that just happened and everybody in the stadium is going to have an activation where they can download the eBay app and get pushed to Goldin.com.”
The deal will give Goldin access to memorabilia from two of the top players in the league in Luka Doncic and NBA legend LeBron James, who played eight seasons for the Lakers before recently signing with the Sixers. It may also include some historic Kobe Bryant memorabilia.
“The Lakers have some specific vintage inventory, a variety of things that we are going to help them maximize the value and let the public get an opportunity to own some of that as opposed to sitting in a cold warehouse, not on display and not seen by the public,” Goldin said. “What’s the good of having something like that? If you go to the museum, great. Otherwise, let’s get it into the hands of people who are going to enjoy it.”
Goldin thinks the partnership could set a precedent for his company and a new trend for the hobby.
“We are really looking to elevate the entire sports team business to a higher level where we can make the teams significantly more money,” he said, “and we can give fans access to items that were previously sold … most people don’t know where the hell this stuff goes, right? They don’t know how this person ended up with it. Now they will know.”