First things first… 

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If you're reading this, you're among the first thousand people receiving the inaugural issue of Material Non Public: the weekly “partner letter” dedicated to finding alpha in the collectibles and alt asset markets. 

The reason I wanted this weekly letter to exist: investment grade collectibles are the single most compelling market today: approaching a trillion-dollar TAM, filled with nostalgia, and still wildly inefficient in every imaginable way… and thats why we're getting in early, together.

For quick background on Me - I created the first platform that let people invest in collectibles, which is used by half a million people today. With that platform, we’ve broken a bunch of world records for “most expensive object ever sold” in multiple categories. I know everything thats going on in this space and where the money is moving, and above all, a lot of information that people would typically pay for kinda falls into my lap.

So here we are.

You can get general news from anywhere, so I’m instead going to focus on one big story each week with an opportunity attached to it. You’ll also get specific information about where that market is headed and the conversations happening behind the scenes to get positioned before they become headlines. 

A decent amount of this experiment is going to be about money…

but the truth is, there is no integrity left in finance. None.

I can’t change that, and don’t intend to wage a war against what my friend Howard Lindzon correctly coined as “The Degenerate Economy.” But I can help you see this new market clearly - and there is still a moral due-north here so it will feel a bit better when you make money (driven by history, and culture, and some of the most extraordinary objects on earth).

This week it’s about dinosaur skeletons. Next week, something just as interesting with just as much alpha. And so on…

Let's get into it.

PS: This inaugural issue is a bit lengthier than normal - but it’s worth the read and every issue after is like a third of this size.

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Monday, July 27th 2026
* ISSUE 001 *

This week’s installment of MNP is about dinosaur money, of which there is a LOT sitting at the bid right now. 

Just over a week ago, a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton named “Gus” sold for $50.1M at Sotheby's, setting the new world record for any dinosaur ever sold at auction, passing Ken Griffin's $44.6M purchase of “Apex” the Stegosaurus convincingly. This basically happens every July now…

For context, $50.1M is a TON of money.

Generational “my grandkids grandkids” type of money. Very few people on Earth can even participate in a market like that, and this result was NUTS.

That said, I’m of the opinion that this sale revealed some structural limitations with this specific type of asset, and thats why it didn’t approach $100M like I assumed it would and believe it should have. (spoiler alert: there will be a $100M dinosaur sale within 2 years).

Here’s why it stopped at $50M, and where I believe that sweet dino-cash will be made in the medium term. 

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Whenever I look at a marquee auction result, one of the first things I look at is the gap between the auction estimate and the final realized price. Many of these markets are ruled by momentum, and this, imo, serves as a momentum velocity indicator.

The published estimate for Gus was $20M-$30M. 

That range does *not* represent fair market value - it’s a marketing tool. If the house sets the estimate too high, it pushes bidders away. Too low and you put an unintended ceiling on the price (and the market for that asset in the future). 

It’s a really complicated game that relies heavily on “feel,” but optically it always looks good to crush an estimate. I think the collectibles market overall is approaching a moment of realization and will need to start predicting the future value of an asset (and the mechanics of the estimates) a bit more accurately. 

Comparing the most recent record dinosaur sales (all via Sotheby's and all in the past 24 months) Gus stands out immediately. Both its estimate and its estimate-to-hammer multiple make it a clear outlier.

By the numbers:

If Apex could sell for more than 7x its estimate and a Ceratosaurus could sell for more than 5x its estimate, then the single most culturally important dinosaur on Earth probably shouldn't have stopped at less than 2x. 

With this result, “logic” will argue that Apex and the Ceratosaurus proved dinosaur demand was massively underpriced, while Gus is the proof point that estimates have finally caught up to reality.

I disagree. 

The dinosaur market is still insanely underpriced (*not financial advice, yet*), but its my belief that the estimate should not have even been published publicly, and the T. rex market is what actually caught up (partly as a result of that published estimate) - and possibly found it’s the near term top. I don’t think auction houses or most collectors will think that way, but I can see 3 clear reasons this didn’t crush the way many thought it would, and what it means for this type of investment. 

Here’s what capped (what should have been) a $70M+ result for Gus the T Rex...

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I was in the room for the live auction on the morning of July 14th, with a paddle in hand (which, for 50 million reasons, never left the holster).

Gus was Lot #20, meaning the audience sat through the auction of nineteen objects before the main event. The first thing that stood out immediately was that we moved through those first nineteen lots really quickly. There was very little ceremony or pause. We turbo’d to the main event.

The room itself also felt different, in both the literal and figurative sense. This was Sotheby's first major Natural History sale in its new Upper East Side headquarters inside the Breuer Building, which was the former home of the Whitney Museum. It's an absolutely incredible space - but it's definitely a museum first and an auction venue second.

Several insiders at Sotheby's told me the logistics of simply getting he Gus skeleton into the room and mounted was an unexpected challenge. For display purposes prior to the auction, the setup was perfect. For the actual live auction, however, the dinosaur occupied so much of the gallery that the entire center block of bidder seating had to be removed.

The general audience was pushed to the back-perimeter and the stage became partially obscured from the right side with Gus’s tail section sitting in the center (see diagram below). The room was full of objects and auction lots in close proximity, so you were kinda navigating around museum exhibits as opposed to sitting in a purpose-built auction theater like the one Sotheby’s had in their previous York Ave location.  

None of this is a criticism of Sotheby's by the way - they're the absolute best in the business for this type of item in my opinion. But auctions are theater as much as they are transactions, and this room dictated the flow of the performance.

Below is a simplified render of the room, the positioning of the players, and how the auction unfolded:

The Players - 7/14/26, 10:32AM @ 945 Madison Ave:
Ⓐ :: Gus Rex, the Tyrannosaurus
Ⓑ :: Gus’s skull (iso’d from skeleton for weight purposes)
Ⓒ :: Phyllis Kao, Sotheby’s Auctioneer
Ⓓ :: Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s Head Nat. History
Ⓔ :: Mystery bidder in the room / bidder seating
Ⓕ :: Frank Everett, Sotheby’s Vice Chairman, Luxury

and, surprisingly, the room barely reacted…

One misplaced "WOO!" echoed through the gallery which felt a bit synthetic - I have no other way to describe it. An absolutely incredible result, but I walked out of the room thinking “I just watched a dinosaur auction” instead of “HOLY SHIT SOMEONE JUST PAID 50 MILLION DOLLARS FOR A T REX” like I thought I would.

It felt like a blackjack dealer busting on a 16 rather than witnessing one of the most important auction sales in history. It was expected, but reassuring once it was over. Then you go to the next hand.

I feel like if not for Cassandra’s work behind the scenes leading up to the live auction, this would not have surpassed the previous Apex record.

But there are a couple other more tangible “reasons” this didn’t blow the doors off that have nothing to do with the venue…

Sometimes I find that the answers to problems, particularly around pricing, are more obvious than the smartest people in the room want them to be.

I have a theory on price ceilings that I can associate with this sale that has very little to do with pure data and a lot to do with human behavior.

Gus was ENORMOUS. I've stood next to a T. rex before, but always in covernous spaces with 100 foot ceilings built to make them feel proportional. In terms of sheer size, Gus Rex was neck-strainingly enormous and the lower ceilings and tighter room made the scale impossible to discount. It felt architecturally overwhelming - that’s the only way I can describe it.

This is concept is one my friend and collectible expert Darren Rovell has preached for a long time, but I didn’t really believe until I started paying more attention to dinosaurs:

The best trophy assets still need to fit inside the trophy room.

This sounds reductive (especially when discussing a 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus), but at the very top of the market, “usability” matters more than people admit.

Gus is almost 40 feet long and on it’s platform fully mounted was probably close to 20 feet off the ground. To own this privately, you are making an architectural decision. It requires a museum, a corporate headquarters, an aircraft hangar, or a home designed around the fact that a Tyrannosaurus rex is going to live inside. That dramatically reduces the pool of real buyers - many of whom have already bought every toy, and truly do want this IN the house. I’ve seen it first hand…

There are thousands of people who can afford a multimillion-dollar collectible. A smaller pool who wade into the $50M water. And even fewer who can take a piece this enormous and house it, insure it, transport it, maintain it, and then still get to experience it privately. That last part matters, and that I think thats where the outside (albeit very possible) chance of Gus being a $100M dinosaur died.

A painting hangs over the sofa and a jersey goes on the wall and a watch goes on the wrist… its easy, and the owner can humble-brag in realtime. Billionaires may want their names on museum walls next to their donations for sure, and they definitely love the tax benefits of that museum loan, but they also want to walk past the thing they bought and show it off. A Gus-sized object isn’t really that.

We saw an example of this value-to-size ceiling in sports memorabilia this past week. Ten 10’ x 4’ sections of the Chicago Bulls’ 1996, 1997 and 1998 NBA Finals court signed by Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen sold at Sotheby’s for $1.792M.

It was historically one of the most important floors of all time. Its also nearly impossible for a normal collector (even an extremely wealthy one) to display.

When you compare that with the objects carrying the strongest prices in sports, you can see a correlation between size, price, and liquidity along with the effort of care and management needed to maintain the object over time.

Michael Jordan’s 1998 Finals jersey sold for $10.1M. His six championship-clinching sneakers sold for $8M. Babe Ruth’s “called shot” jersey sold for $24.12M. A 1952 Mickey Mantle card sold for $12.6M. All four are culturally enormous, but they are also physically manageable.

A collector in New York, London, Dubai or Hong Kong can buy the same card or jersey or pair of sneakers without first determining whether the object can pass through the front door. Storage, shipping and display are completely straightforward, plus the added bonus is that resale does not require locating another buyer with a purpose-built facility.

This will continue to matter.

But there’s one last Tyrannosaurus-specific reason that I’m starting to pay attention to…

Jurassic Park was a great part of my childhood and probably made an entire generation care deeply about dinosaurs, but it also destroyed perception.

The T. rex isn't the most expensive dinosaur in the world because it's the “rarest” dinosaur. It's expensive because it's the most famous. I would argue that notoriety plays a part in the valuation of all “collectibles,” but not at the point-of-premium Gus and dinosaurs like it will often get.

For thirty years, Hollywood has worked to create the universal trophy. It convinced millennials, Gen X, and the boomers on the younger end of the scale (who are the one driving these prices) that the Tyrannosaurus rex was the undisputed king of all things (the same writers also convinced us that velociraptors were six-foot-tall killing machines, when in reality it was a 30 pound bird, btw).

But, as more sales hit the wire and more money enters a market, it matures. The information improves and the data becomes findable, and inevitably buyers ultimately become more sophisticated.

I believe we are now at that point with dinosaurs.

Sports cards followed almost exactly the same path. In the early years after the junk wax era, almost all of the attention centered on the obvious trophy cards, with the best example being the Michael Jordan's 1986 Fleer Rookie Card. It became the icon of the hobby, and still is, despite more than 300 PSA 10 examples existing today.

As collectors became more educated, capital spread into scarcer issues, the 1986 Fleer Sticker, regional releases like the Entenmann's card, and a bunch of genuinely difficult one-of-few Jordan issues from the 90’s like his PMGs and certain patch cards are the ones at all time highs. The 86 Fleer is still the benchmark, but the multiple on the rarer examples surpassed it during the run up (and even today in some cases).

The main “rookie card” simply stopped being the only story. Dinosaurs are now in that transitional period, with T. rex being the benchmark “rookie card.”

Independent of completeness / originality / presentation / scientific significance, the number of “full skeletons” mounted worldwide for the “Big 3” dinosaurs are as follows:

— Tyrannosaurus Rex: → Approx. 35
— Triceratops: → Approx. 25
— Stegosaurus: → Approx. 12

There are surprisingly few truly elite dinosaurs that reach the market, but there are materially fewer world-class Stegosaurus specimens than Tyrannosaurus rex specimens. Pricing still reflects cultural awareness more than absolute rarity.

On top of all of this, buyers are also going further upstream on all species. They're funding expeditions and partnering direct with paleontologists to secure discoveries years before they ever have the chance to become auction lots. We did this at Rally a few years back, and it led to a Stegosaurus investment that we believe to be one of the most important specimens to ever come to market. I didn’t even want to give an auction house a chance, so we funded the dig when it was only halfway complete.

Funding a dig doesn't guarantee a great dinosaur, and thats even moreso the case when it comes to a T. rex. The areas rich with carnivore bones are typically a little further north than the “available” land, so I’m of the opinion that most scientifically important discoveries in the formations most known for producing the best specimens are going to be herbivores in the future - Stegs and Trikes being the dinos that also tend to fit snugly in your home (per point 02 above).

That dig-funding is where the real competition has moved and will continue to move. Finding the right people and the right team (the real good paleontologists and geologists who care WAY more about science than money) is an art and requires a lot of relationship building. Outsiders with tons of money and little patience will continue to come in looking for T. rexes and make mistakes.

That's where I think this market is headed - not away from Tyrannosaurus rex entirely, but toward the best examples of everything else.

I don't think we've seen the end of record prices for T. rex. Individual skulls will benefit (the hardest portion of any dino to find in close-to-complete form and the true trophy piece that can live on its own), exceptional specimens, and once-in-a-generation examples will always command extraordinary prices.

But I do think we're near a short-term peak for complete mounted Tyrannosaurus Rex skeletons. What’s coming now is that the market will reward the rarest, the best preserved, and the most complete, and it will look for value outside of the previous King.

All of that said, the result at Sotheby’s last week was absolutely incredible and extremely bullish, and their team did an amazing job as they always do. The market has changed though - if you want to print a record and get the fanfare, it has to smash the previous record and the news cycle has to take on a life of its own.

And with all of it will come the never ending (and necessary) fight between finance and science. I lived through it, and I too hope ALL of these animals find their way into the public domain eventually.

This is still “early,” as overused as that term has become in the last 5 years. New markets begin with stories, then they mature and get anchored to real data. That’s where we’re headed. That’s what next with dinosaurs.

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FIN.
* ISSUE 001 *

So, that's a wrap on Issue #001.

And these will get really good REALLY soon... this first one was a bit longer and a bit less entertaining than I intended. I'm still figuring out exactly what this becomes, but I'm hoping something came out of this for everyone who read it.

Also… A REMINDER: One subscriber is going to win a genuine Theranos centrifuge machine - still one of the greatest conversation pieces I've ever owned, and somehow one of my best-performing investments on paper. It’s served its purpose for me, and now it will be yours. I’ll announce on August 15th.

If you want more in between issues, follow along on X, plus there will be some good video content launching soon.

If you've got any material non public info that you wanna share anonymously, have a question, or just want to argue with one of my takes, reply to this email or text me direct anytime: 203-442-6083.

And finally, a reminder from my lawyer:

Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice. I know nothing - I’ve just been cruising on creative curiosity and dumb luck for 4 decades 😉

Until next week… a tweet to tweet I ran into this weekend after losing $6,800 convincing myself there was no possible destination for LeBron James other than Cleveland:

A reminder that markets don’t reward conviction. They reward being right. Unfortunately, those two usually live thousands of miles away from each other.

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