NFL player Cassius Marsh seeing growth in trading card business, challenges of NFTs
Marsh has some big plans days before Super Bowl LVI
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While most of the focus will be on the city of Los Angeles during the days leading up to the Super Bowl, NFL defensive lineman Cassius Marsh is focused on growing the business he started last March.
Marsh is the owner of Cash Cards Unlimited located in Westlake Village, tucked in the Santa Monica Mountains located about 40 miles north of SoFi Stadium in Inglewood – where Super Bowl LVI will be contested between the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals.
The defensive end capitalized on the rebirth of the trading card market. While Marsh told FOX Business in a recent interview he had to deal with some foundational issues earlier on within his shop, he’s still seeing a lot of success.
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Cassius Marsh's shop is located in Westlake Village, Calif. (Cash Cards Unlimited)
"I'm still having a ton of success with the business, sales going really well, growing our brand and everything like that. But it was a lot of work to fix a lot of the issues that came with the negligence, but ended up being a blessing in disguise," he said. "We ended up really setting up the business to have a really strong foundation. And ever since we made that transition, we've been doing nothing but growing in our numbers, growing every month. We've been beating our goals. This last month we did $344,000 in sales."
Marsh said he and his team secured partnerships with Goldin Auctions and have been continuing relationships with Ultra Pro and StockX as well as working with a bunch of different influencers.
With the restrictions loosening for some around the coronavirus pandemic and people not spending as much time going through their trading cards as much as they were, Marsh said he’s still seeing appreciation in the value of Magic: The Gathering cards.
"I actually really do," he told FOX Business when asked whether he still believes there’s interest in collecting trading cards. "From a sports standpoint, it's really a ton of investment. There's a lot of people investing because obviously there's these like huge hit cards that are going for a ton of money. So a lot of people, like large investment groups that have been put together, there's a ton of people who are really investing in the sports side of things. So that's been continuing to grow.
Marsh has also gotten into the NFT game. (Cash Cards Unlimited)
"Our foundation has been Magic and the great thing about Magic: The Gathering is that it really doesn’t dip with the market and … it explodes on its own regardless of what’s going with Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh or sports. Magic: The Gathering has been appreciating at a 15 to 20% rate of the past, like 15 to 20 years. There are some cards that I bought like three years ago at like $50-$80 that are now upwards of $1,000. For us, that’s kind of my foundation. It’s what I love. We’re truly passionate about it so it’s great to have everything here. We don’t live or die by an one trading card game or sport or anything like that. We offer pretty much everything here."
Marsh has dabbled in the non-fungible token (NFT) world as well. But he’s learned some of the ups and downs of dealing with the wild west of crypto.
"I had an unfortunate incident not too long ago, a couple weeks back where I actually got hacked and had about $30,000 in crypto stolen from my wallet … upwards of about $150,000 of NFT stolen from my wallet. So that was truly unfortunate," he said.
"I love the NFT and I love the NFT market and what it's doing for businesses and what it's doing for the collectibles community. I'm a fan of NFTs and what it brings to the table. It's igoing to be really interesting to see as as more and more companies start to get involved. And the trial and error of what works and what's the best way to create utility and what's the best way to create longevity with all of these projects and stuff like that. It’s been a fun addition to add to the Cash Card brand because it’s all collectibles."
While Marsh won’t be playing on Sunday, he still has something interesting planned for the weekend leading up to the Super Bowl. He partnered with DJ Steve Aoki to do a bunch of box breaks on WhatNot on Friday. WhatNot is described as a "a community marketplace where you can safely buy, sell, go live and geek out with collectors and other like-minded people."
The Super Bowl LVI logo stands outside Sofi Stadium. The Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals will meet here on Feb. 13, 2022 in the 56th final game for the Vince Lombardi Trophy. (Maximilian Haupt/picture alliance via Getty Images / Getty Images)
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"We’re going to be breaking about $50,000 worth of football products. 2020 National Treasure, first off the line Spectra, we’re gonna have some ’09 stuff. … We’re gonna have a bunch of stuff like a lot of high end on there. It’ll be a lot of fun and we’ll do some crazy giveaways and stuff like that too."