Netflix’s ‘King of Collectibles’ star Ken Goldin on working with Logan Paul, Cheetos art and Season 3’s big twist

The third season of Netflix’s collectibles-based reality show, The King of Collectibles: The Goldin Touch, was released on Tuesday.

Ahead of the launch, the show’s star Ken Goldin joined Awful Announcing for a Q&A regarding what it’s like working with Logan Paul, the state of the collectibles industry and Season 3’s big twist.

Some quotes in the Q&A have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Awful Announcing: Watching the trailer, it seems eBay’s purchase of Goldin plays a key role in the season. What was it like to have that happen while you were filming and how has it changed the way you guys approach business?

Ken Goldin: The important thing you need to know about Goldin is even after the eBay acquisition, I run the business. Obviously, we’ve got employees all over. I’m the CEO. None of the employees changed.

For the business, the single biggest thing that happened with us we just announced last week — and this is a game changer — anybody who can be on eBay, let’s say they type in ‘Ohtani card,’ they’re gonna find in their search every card on Goldin. They get taken through to Goldin and they can immediately use their eBay login to bid. So these are the things that I dreamed about when we did the deal.

We let the, you know, within the first minutes of the show, ‘hey, during last season and this season, Golden was acquired by eBay’ … this is not an eBay show. This is a Goldin show who just happens to be a subsidiary of eBay now. We were all all very concerned, including eBay, that, hey, this did not become an overriding theme in the show. This didn’t displace anything that people love about about the show.”

Awful Announcing: Another thing that stands out is how much travel there is this season. Was that intentional in terms of bringing a new element to the series?

Ken Goldin: There are collectors all over the world, right? Maybe there are slightly different things, but Asia has always been No. 2 to the USA in sports cards, and they’re No. 1 in [trading card games]. So we went to Asia to really treasure hunt and see what we can see what we can dig up and and and bring back to the U.S. and make new contacts and obviously, we sold a pretty big item in between the seasons. Possibly the biggest item we’ve ever sold in the Shohei Ohtani [50/50] ball, which sold for $4.4 million and had a very interesting backstory. That scenario is addressed in the show as well.

Awful Announcing: How did Giannis Antetokounmpo wind up on this season?

Ken Goldin: Giannis blind contacted me in 2020 after I sold his car for $1.84 million and he DM’ed me and said thank you — like just blind messaged me thanking me because it beat LeBron. It’s the first time I got to meet him in person, but we’ve been communicating really for about 4.5 years.

Awful Announcing: Logan Paul is also this season. He seems especially passionate about collecting. Can you tell which celebrities are in it because they love it and which are only in it from a business perspective?

Ken Goldin: I can tell you which athletes are in it because they love it and they’re collectors, which athletes are doing it as an investment, and which athletes are doing it because somebody told them to do it, if they have an endorsement contract or anything else like that.

I did a break with Logan, in January of 2021 during still pretty much the height of COVID. And I went to his house that I think he’s since sold in LA because I know he’s in Puerto Rico. And the freaking place was in Pokémon decorations. He had Pokémon pillows and he had Charizard pillows and he had Pikachu pillows on the on the couch, and he had real life things. And then before the break, one of his friends came in a Charizard suit.

I mean, he grew up playing the game. He loves this stuff and then he’s gotten into sports cards and memorabilia. He has no problem texting me at 1 o’clock in the morning on a Saturday night, about an item. ‘Hey, what do you think? What do you think this is worth?’

The funniest thing is that the other guy who’s very, very into it still is Drake. He’s not into cards. He just wanted that LeBron, but he’s very into memorabilia and collectibles, He bought a high-end, Bob Ross painting from us this past year, and we never talk about celebrities what they buy unless they post it. So we kept it quiet and he posted it, so then we went crazy.

Awful Announcing: Obviously the collectibles market has seen its up and downs over the last few years. How would you assess the state of the industry?

Ken Goldin: I’m gonna give you a comparison to 2021, OK? 2021 I said this is a freaking bubble, OK? People are buying indiscriminately.

Stuff is going up that’s crap. Stuff that should be selling for $25 is selling for $95 and it just shouldn’t be happening. So people were spending without knowledge, without research, and as I said, spending indiscriminately.

As much as Golden did in 2021 in sales, which was like a crazy year for everybody, we will do more in 2025 than we did at the peak of COVID in business, and this year, the stuff that’s going up are the true rarities, the stuff that’s very desirable. The stuff that there’s nothing — the only item that we have sold this year that I have said ‘WTF, why is somebody paying that?’ was the Cheetos art. For someone to lay out $87,000 for a flaming hot Cheetos that was pulled out of a bag, it’s like mind-boggling. You’ll see the whole story behind that, and you’ll see my pessimism.

I think the market is very healthy. I think there are more people in it right now that are really in it; not people who are like, ‘what is this new business that somebody talked about?’… I have great confidence in the industry and while just like the stock market, there may be peaks and valleys and something may get overpriced a little bit and then come down, I think it’s a very rational market right now. And if you asked me in 2020 or 2021, I would not have said that.

Awful Announcing: What specifically stands out to you about Season 3 compared to the rest of the seasons?

Ken Goldin: I happened to have gotten a phone call during the filming, like literally during filming, like while I was on camera, and somebody claimed to have something very rare and very valuable, and I thought that they were full of it. And it turned out to be real. It became authenticated. Nobody knows about it. It is worth millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars, and I think it is going to cause a tremendous treasure hunt throughout the country for people going through their grandparents, great grandparents’ things, trying to find something similar.

This all evolved live on camera, and the first time I saw the item and the owners were filmed on camera the entire session. What everybody sees, they may see like 10 minutes of it, but it was literally an edited two-hour version of it. I could do the show for another five years, this will be the most breathtaking thing that I ever did.

The hobby is gonna freaking love it. We’ve never had this happen before. And people did not know this existed. So it is really, really, really, really big.