Ken Goldin Joins Advisory Board at Scaramucci's Treasure Trove
A New York collectibles holding company led by AJ Scaramucci has named four industry figures, including auctioneer Ken Goldin, to an advisory board as it pitches collectibles as an investable asset class.
Treasure Trove, the New York collectibles holding company founded by AJ Scaramucci to build what it calls a "Cultural Store of Value," named a four-person advisory board that includes auction executive Ken Goldin.
Treasure Trove, a New York-based collectibles holding company founded by AJ Scaramucci, has named an advisory board of four figures drawn from the upper tier of the collectibles trade, with auction executive Ken Goldin among them. The company describes its purpose as building a "Cultural Store of Value" — a portfolio of scarce, culturally resonant physical objects intended to hold purchasing power in the way gold or property is supposed to.
The announcement, carried by Financial Post, frames the board as an attempt to bring institutional discipline to a market the company characterises as multi-trillion-dollar in scale. That framing is the whole pitch, and it is worth taking apart.
What a collectibles holding company actually is
A holding company in this context does not run an auction house or a marketplace. It owns things. The model borrows from the structure used by insurance-backed conglomerates and by commodity vehicles: raise capital, acquire assets that the manager believes are mispriced or structurally scarce, and let the balance sheet appreciate rather than chasing transaction fees.
Applied to trading cards, comic art, game-worn memorabilia, rare coins and similar goods, that is a meaningfully different proposition from the fractional-ownership platforms that proliferated in the last cycle. Those sold slices of individual items to retail buyers. A holding company concentrates the ownership and the risk in one entity, which means the quality of acquisition judgment — what to buy, at what price, and from whom — is essentially the entire business.
That is why an advisory board is not a cosmetic detail here. In a market with no consolidated tape, no central clearing and wide dispersion between what an object fetches in a live auction room versus a private sale, information about where the real bids are is the scarce input. People with decades in the trade have that information. Ken Goldin is one of the most recognisable names in that world, having built a public profile around high-value card and memorabilia auctions.
The 'multi-trillion-dollar' label deserves scrutiny
Treasure Trove describes collectibles as a multi-trillion-dollar asset class. Investors should treat that kind of number the way they treat any total-addressable-market claim: as an estimate of everything that exists, not of what trades.
The collectibles universe is enormous if you count every card in every shoebox, every coin in every drawer and every piece of art on every wall. The liquid, price-discovered portion — the objects that change hands at published prices with third-party grading and authentication attached — is far smaller. Nobody publishes an authoritative figure for either, which is precisely the problem. Unlike equities, where the S&P 500's constituents are marked to market every second the exchange is open, collectibles have no continuous quote. Valuation depends on the last comparable sale, and comparables can be months or years stale.
The practical consequence is that reported asset values in this business are judgments, not prints. Any vehicle holding collectibles is carrying marks that cannot be independently verified in the way a listed portfolio can. That is a structural feature, not a criticism of any particular firm — but it is the reason institutional allocators have historically kept the category in the alternatives bucket, sized small.
Why the timing sits where it does
Collectibles have run through a full boom-and-bust since the pandemic. Prices for graded cards and memorabilia spiked when stimulus money and lockdown attention collided, then retraced hard as rates rose and discretionary spending tightened. Several fractional platforms that launched into the peak did not survive the reversal.
Several fractional platforms that launched into the peak did not survive the reversal.
What is left is a market with cleaner infrastructure than it had a decade ago — professional grading, established auction calendars, deeper private-sale networks — and considerably less speculative froth. That is the environment in which a patient, balance-sheet buyer plausibly has an advantage over a retail flipper. It is also an environment in which capital is not cheap, which raises the bar for any vehicle that needs outside funding to acquire inventory.
The broader market backdrop at the time of the announcement was constructive rather than defensive. At the last close on Friday, 11 September 2026, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA: SPY) finished at $764.29, up 0.85% from a prior close of $757.83. The Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ: QQQ), tracking the Nasdaq 100, ended at $714.88, up 0.87%. The SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (NYSEARCA: DIA) closed at $525.79, a gain of 0.97%. Risk appetite across mainstream equities was firm, which historically correlates with willingness to fund alternative-asset ventures.
The questions the announcement leaves open
An advisory board tells you who is lending credibility. It does not tell you how the business is capitalised, what it has bought, or how investors participate. Several things are worth watching from here:
- Capital structure. Whether Treasure Trove is funded by private equity, by a strategic backer, or by an eventual public listing determines who bears the mark-to-market risk on an illiquid book.
- Valuation policy. How the company marks its holdings — last comparable sale, independent appraisal, cost — will decide how much of any reported gain is real.
- Advisor economics. Whether advisors are compensated in equity, and whether any of them also sell into the company, raises conflict questions common across the collectibles trade.
- Acquisition pace. Announcements of individual purchases, and the prices paid, will be the first genuine read on whether the buying discipline matches the rhetoric.
None of that is disclosed in the announcement, and the firm has not published figures for assets under management or capital raised. Until it does, the advisory board is the story — a signal that experienced operators think the institutionalisation of collectibles has enough runway to be worth attaching their names to.
Where this fits in the wider alternatives push
The attempt to turn culturally significant objects into a financial asset class is not new, and it is not confined to cards and comics. Wine, watches, classic cars and fine art have all been packaged into funds at various points, with mixed results. The persistent obstacles are the same every time: storage and insurance costs, authentication risk, thin secondary markets and the fact that an object's value rests partly on taste, which is not a stable input.
What has changed is the plumbing. Third-party grading gave trading cards something close to a fungible unit. Auction houses publish results. Buyers can check a serial number. That does not make a 1950s rookie card a bond, but it narrows the gap between a hobby and a market — and it is that narrowing that firms like Treasure Trove are betting will continue.
Key facts
- Company: Treasure Trove, collectibles holding company, New York
- Founder: AJ Scaramucci
- Advisory board: Four industry figures, including Ken Goldin
- Market backdrop: S&P 500 ETF (SPY) closed $764.29, +0.85%, 11 Sep 2026
Frequently asked questions
What is Treasure Trove?
Treasure Trove is a New York-based collectibles holding company founded by AJ Scaramucci. Rather than operating as an auction house or marketplace, it describes itself as building a "Cultural Store of Value" — acquiring and holding scarce, culturally significant physical objects on its own balance sheet with the aim of preserving and growing purchasing power over time.
Who is on the advisory board?
The company announced an advisory board of four figures it describes as among the most influential in the collectibles industry. Ken Goldin, a prominent auction executive known for high-value trading card and memorabilia sales, was named among them. The company has not made the full roster and each member's role public in the summary released.
Is the collectibles market really worth trillions of dollars?
Treasure Trove describes collectibles as a multi-trillion-dollar asset class. That figure reflects the estimated value of everything in existence rather than what actively trades. There is no authoritative published tally for either the total stock or the liquid portion, because collectibles have no central exchange, no consolidated price tape and no continuous quotation.
How is a holding company different from fractional ownership platforms?
Fractional platforms sell retail investors slices of individual items, with each asset priced and traded separately. A holding company concentrates ownership of many assets inside a single entity, so investors are exposed to the whole book and to management's acquisition judgment. The success of the model rests almost entirely on what the firm buys and at what price.
What are the main risks in collectibles as an investment?
Illiquidity is the largest. Objects can take months to sell and prices depend on the last comparable transaction, which may be stale. Other risks include authentication and forgery, storage and insurance costs, grading disputes, and the fact that value rests partly on shifting cultural taste. Valuation marks are judgments rather than verifiable market prints.
How were markets trading when the announcement was made?
Equity benchmarks closed higher on Friday, 11 September 2026. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF ended at $764.29, up 0.85%. The Invesco QQQ Trust, tracking the Nasdaq 100, closed at $714.88, up 0.87%. The SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF finished at $525.79, a gain of 0.97% on the session.
Sources
Photo: Jovan Vasiljević · Pexels Licence — source
