Building an intellectual property from the ground up at a sports card convention

Executive overview

Gary Vee documents day one of the VeeFriends trading card booth at the National Sports Collectors Convention 2023 in Chicago. The booth setup is scrappy and hands-on — tape, Sharpies, hand-pricing walls of cards — echoing his early days at Wine Library.

The core message: building something real takes time, and enjoying the process matters more than immediate results. Brief moments of fan interaction reinforce his recurring advice — do work you love, and make money in ways you're proud of.

Patience and genuine passion for the work are the only reliable ingredients in building something lasting.

Booth setup and operations

• Space constraints force most team members to a secondary location at Edison Sports Cards
• Pricing system: hand-labeled circle stickers with grade and dollar amount, arranged alphabetically on the wall
• Playmats taped directly to displays to free up table space
• Cards range from common to graded slabs; signed items command significant premiums
• VeeFriends Super Stickers selling on eBay well above initial price — team unaware of secondary market value

VeeFriends as intellectual property

• VeeFriends launched through NFTs; trading cards are the physical extension of the same IP
• Series one and series two cards exist; wizard packs were exclusive to the convention (limited to ~1,000)
• Original character drawings done by hand; converted to cartoon-ready versions for animated films and toys
• "Compete and Collect" is the primary card game format, with a tournament running at the convention
• Positioning: "Pokemon meets Sesame Street"
• NFT market slowdown is pushing the team to sharpen card-side execution

Giving cards away

• Gary and AJ walk the convention floor giving $30–$50 graded slabs to kids
• Signed cards handed to fans throughout the day; VIP-level interactions with no barrier to entry
• Strategy is deliberate: build goodwill and brand recognition early in a long build

Fan interactions and advice

• Superintendent who opened a card shop after Gary's advice two years prior returns to hand him the shop's first graded 10
• Former employee left his family business in May, surpassed his lifetime sales record within months
• Advice given to a fan asking for guidance:
  • How you make money matters more than how much you make
  • Work on things you genuinely like — passion sustains the effort required to succeed
• Podcasting tip offered: clip content for social to build awareness; reach out to bigger guests than feels comfortable

Closing reflection

• Day one is Wednesday; four more show days remain
• Acknowledges external pressure to show immediate results given past successes
• Rejects that framing: "Rome is not built in a day"
• Finds meaning in kids' reactions to the cards; sees this as the early chapter of something significant