Brandon Steiner built a sports memorabilia empire through hard work and passion. The famous sports marketer, author and media personality was the founder and former CEO of Steiner Sports, now owned by Fanatics. He's even more excited about his latest venture. Steiner, a Brooklyn native, is the founder and CEO of CollectibleXchange and The Steiner Agency.
Steiner joined SportsJam with Doug Doyle to talk about his new company and shared stories about some of the greatest athletes of all-time, including Jim Brown, Mariano Rivera and Lawrence Taylor.
Steiner has not only changed the way people look at sports memorabilia, but he also invented adding "an inscription" to an autograph.
"I was the first guy to say 'You got this moment, you got this photo, you can't just sign it, you got to write MVP, World Series, Stanley Cup Champs.' I was really the first guy to put that in play and charge a premium for it."
Steiner has always been somewhat of an entrepreneur. That business sense began when he was a paper boy in Brooklyn.
"I figured out how to deliver a whole bunch of stuff with the newspapers and that's how I kind of got off to the races. I would deliver milk, bagels and anything else anybody needed in the neighborhood to kind of build up a pretty good route and making some good money."
He credits his time at Syracuse University too.
"When I went to college and I was fortunate enough to got to Syracuse. Going there was a dream and a lived with a college football player during those years and that really kind of a gave me the taste of the sports business and kind of how it worked. I was fortunate to have that experience with Ken Mandeville at the time who played with Joe Morris, former Giant running back."
Fast forward, Steiner built a sports collectible empire that lasted more than three decades. Brandon’s unprecedented partnership with the New York Yankees, announced in 2004, provided a way to offer fans authentic Yankees memorabilia and one-of-a-kind fantasy experiences at Yankee Stadium. Steiner says he enjoyed working with Hall of Famers Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter during their amazing careers in the Bronx.
"Mariano would always come into my office. I had a relationship with him since 1995 and he would call me 'Einstein' because of I was always dreaming up these crazy ideas."
He stresses his new company, CollectibleXchange, is truly geared toward fans.
"It's not only a place to go buy stuff, which I probably have three times as many on CollectibleXchange as I ever did on Steiner (Sports), but it's also a place to sell. There's so many people that are sitting with so many items, they're downsizing and don't know what they're worth, so we help you authenticate, evaluate and help you sell and package up your stuff. I probably get three or four calls a day from people with crazy collections."
Steiner has authored three books, including You Gotta Have Balls: How a Kid from Brooklyn Started from Scratch, Bought Yankee Stadium, and Created a Sports Empire, which chronicles his long career and the life and business lessons he learned.
You can SEE the entire SportsJam interview with Brandon Steiner here.
