EMORY MAGAZINE | SPRING 2025

LEADING THE COLLECTIBLES REVOLUTION

Alumnus Josh Luber’s lifelong passions for sneakers, sports cards and toys — plus his love of data — led him to co-found successful businesses StockX, Fanatics Collectibles and ghostwrite while placing him at the forefront of the “hype economy.”

BY ROGER SLAVENS

At the same time that a young Kobe Bryant was hooping it up for Lower Merion High School in the mid-1990s, Josh Luber 99BB 06MBA 06L ran point guard for Harriton High — located just down the road in the Main Line suburbs west of Philadelphia. “All the really good athletes got recruited to play for Lower Merion,” Luber says. “I was 5’9” and slow, but skilled enough that I had the chance to start at Harriton. Lower Merion won a state championship. We won something like three games in two years. I never fooled myself into thinking I was going to be a star like Kobe.”

Still, Luber absolutely loved everything about basketball. “I wanted to play 24/7,” he says. He relished joining the streetball-style pickup games at Narberth Playground, marveled at Michael Jordan’s dominance in the NBA and fully embraced the sport’s culture — especially the music and fashion. Like so many kids of that era he obsessed over basketball sneakers and desperately wanted to own a pair of Air Jordans. “But there was no way my mom was ever going to pay $100 or more for shoes back then,” he says.

Now, some 30 years later, Luber boasts a closet full of some of the rarest and most expensive sneakers in the world (including a $310,000 pair of Air Jordans). He refers to this collection as his “sneaker portfolio,” because he firmly believes these shoes are no different than other valuable commodities — like sports cars and rare art or even stocks and gold — that are in high demand and can easily be bought, sold or traded.

Josh Luber's home in Austin, Texas, is filled with collectibles, including many toys from his new company, ghostwrite.

Josh Luber's home in Austin, Texas, is filled with collectibles, including many toys from his new company, ghostwrite.

Sneakers became part of the new “hype economy” that formed over the past couple of decades. As Luber describes it, the hype economy is where culturally relevant goods have gained real value based on scarcity and buzz, often selling for much higher than original retail prices. In this market, limited-edition drops, celebrity endorsements and social media hype can send shoe prices skyrocketing, turning everyday consumers into investors and serious collectors into market speculators.

Luber recognized this trend early on and helped build not just one, but three successful businesses that capitalize on this dynamic. He’s become a leading force in the industry by proving that sneakers — and collectibles like sports cards and toys — aren’t just symbols of wealth or fashion statements, but legitimate financial assets.

CREATING A NEW KIND OF MARKETPLACE

This realization led Luber in 2016 to launch StockX, the stock market of things — mainly sneakers, streetwear and collectibles — with business mogul Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers and co-founder of Rocket Mortgage.

“I was working at IBM but was doing a side project looking to create a buying guide for sneakers,” Luber says. “This startup was originally called Campless, and I spent months and months pulling shoe auction sales prices from eBay and cleaning massive amounts of Excel data.”

The culture-savvy Gilbert heard about Luber’s work and met with him to see if together they could take this idea of a sneaker price guide to another level.

How? By building an online platform for not only selling basketball shoes, but also other high-demand, limited-edition products.

Luber remembers a pivotal meeting in the early days of setting up StockX when he and Gilbert met with several industry leaders, including the founder of Under Armour, Kevin Plank. He felt nervous to have a literal seat at this exclusive table, but Luber was confident in his data.

Luber returned to Emory's campus in February 2025 to discuss his new company and the hype economy at a TEDx Emory event. He is currently writing a book, titled “Building The Hype Economy,” to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux later this year.

Luber returned to Emory's campus in February 2025 to discuss his new company and the hype economy at a TEDx Emory event. He is currently writing a book, titled “Building The Hype Economy,” to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux later this year.

Under Armour had recently released their first limited-market sneaker, the UA Curry 1 MVP — the signature shoe of basketball star Stephen Curry— which retailed in stores for $120 but in less than two months was reselling for more than $500 a pair on eBay. “It was Under Armour’s first cool shoe,” Luber says. “When I showed him this data, Plank was upset. He said that he knew they should have made more of the shoe.”

But that’s when Luber gathered up the guts to tell Plank he was absolutely incorrect. “If you make too many, then the shoe won’t be cool anymore,” he explained to Plank.

History proved Luber right. In subsequent iterations of the Curry MVP shoes, the company produced so many that they lost their luster with sneakerheads and wound up on clearance racks at discount stores across the country, he says.

“Everything is priced wrong” is something of a mantra Luber frequently uses to explain his approach to business.

He believes too many goods and services come with fixed retail prices and that, instead, their real cost should be based on supply and demand. “Think Uber surge pricing or the way airlines charge for plane tickets,” he says. “These are efficient markets and the same concept could be applied to virtually any hype economy good or service, like sneakers.”

The goal for StockX was to set up a marketplace for collectible sneakers and other goods at the heart of the hype economy — streetwear, designer bags, watches, trading cards and toys — that was both transparent and efficient, using a live bid/ask system that emulates a stock exchange. Buyers place bids (the highest price they’re willing to pay) and sellers set asks (the lowest price they’ll accept). When a bid and an ask match, the transaction happens automatically, ensuring fair, real-time pricing based on supply and demand.

In fairly short order, Luber’s business philosophy was validated. The StockX buying and platform took off, reaching a peak market valuation of $8 billion in just five years — an achievement that brought him both industry recognition and personal financial success.

EMBRACING ENTREPRENEURSHIP

A serial entrepreneur and self-proclaimed hustler nearly all his life, Luber first got caught up in the thrill of making deals when he was a young kid. “I collected sports cards and was always on the hustle with my friends, negotiating and trading for the cards I really wanted,” he says. “I also used to sell candy at school. I hopped the fence behind my house to go to the store to buy Blow Pops and Bubbalicious and then sell them for a profit to my classmates. Trading cards and candy were the only two hustles available to a 10-year-old back in 1988, before the internet.”

It's no surprise that when Luber chose to go to college at Emory — he saw it as a top school and he had family living in the Atlanta area — he decided to study business. He did well in his classes, enjoyed collegiate life and made tons of friends. After earning his undergraduate degree from Goizueta Business School in 1999, he progressed through a number of jobs. “The first was working for my uncle’s furniture store business, literally selling couches and working on commission,” he says. “I worked my way up from sales to being a buyer and learned a lot about retail.”

Luber worked in a lot of different roles, including leading several startups, before he ultimately found success merging his childhood passions with his market acumen.

Luber worked in a lot of different roles, including leading several startups, before he ultimately found success merging his childhood passions with his market acumen.

Unfortunately, his uncle’s business went into bankruptcy after a couple years and Luber was left collecting unemployment checks for six months. But it proved to be the perfect timing. He joined forces with a friend from Emory and in 2002 they launched an IT service, called Tech Experts. “It was like Best Buy’s Geek Squad before Geek Squad existed,” he says. “We’d go to people’s homes and fix their computers. We built it up, hired some employees and ran the entire thing from our shared apartment. It was a small business but it paid the rent and gave me my first taste of being a real entrepreneur.”

At the same time, however, Luber was considering going to graduate school and wound up selling his share of the business for $18,000. He returned to Emory in 2003 to pursue a joint JD/MBA degree from Emory Law School and Goizueta and thrived in the challenging environment. “I loved law school and soaked up a lot from faculty and classmates,” he says. “I thought my destiny was to be an attorney.”

After graduating, he landed a role as an associate at Alston & Bird, a prestigious Atlanta law firm. “I made good money and enjoyed it, but realized after eight months that I actually didn’t want to be a lawyer,” he says.

Luber simply could not shake the call of entrepreneurship.

He left and co-founded a restaurant staff-scheduling app called Servinity in 2007. “We found some investors and raised some money, but the economic crash of 2008 ultimately sealed our fate,” Luber says. “It was historically bad timing. But another one of my friends from business school reached out and recruited me to work as a management consultant at IBM in New York City. So I moved away from Atlanta after having lived there for 15 years and entered a new phase of my career, the one where everything finally clicked together.”

NEXT UP: TRADING CARDS AND TOYS

After Luber’s incredible success at StockX, he started to look for the next opportunity, the next challenge, the next hustle. As fate would have it, that opportunity came through another of his childhood passions — sports cards.

In 2021, Luber joined another industry mover and shaker, Fanatics founder and CEO Michael Rubin, to start up a sports trading card and memorabilia business called Fanatics Collectibles. Serving as co-founder and chief vision officer, Luber helped negotiate exclusive-rights licensing deals with major sports leagues like the NBA, NFL and MLB and oversaw the acquisition of legendary trading card company Topps.

“Trading cards, while they are cardboard and plastic, can be better protected over time than sneakers and can hold their value long term,” Luber says. For example, he notes that a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card can be worth millions of dollars, depending on its condition. “It’s mainly because people didn’t protect them back then and they are rare in that state,” he says. “Today, modern cards are much better taken care of by collectors.”

And while they are mass produced at greater numbers than ever, Luber notes, the companies have built in limited-edition variations, as well as cards that contain autographs or pieces of game-used memorabilia that make them more unique and valuable. “In addition, they can be graded and put in protective slabs that are tamperproof and element-proof,” he adds.

In the span of a year, Fanatics Collectibles became the industry market leader and was worth $10 billion.

However, Luber realized he wanted a different experience. He wanted to build up his own company from scratch. So he left Fanatics in 2022 and founded ghostwrite, a toy company that makes collectible figures called “ghosts” — think Funko Pops but far more exclusive. Each limited-edition ghost has the same shape, a kind of “blank canvas” that can be customized with different skins. These skins range from the iconic anime character Astro Boy to the WNBA’s revolutionary star Caitlin Clark, who was featured in the company’s first collaboration with the league in December 2024.

What’s different — and perhaps most satisfying — at ghostwrite is that Luber designed the product himself. It took the company several months to design the toy and come up with a shape that was appealing. “And then, before we officially launched, we tried a number of different skins and customizations,” says Luber, who serves as the company’s CEO. “We made dozens of ghosts, including ones for Tiffany, for Adidas, for the NBA and MLB.”

When it comes to deciding what to collect, Luber says that the most important thing is to collect what you love rather than get hung up on how much money your collection might be worth some day.

When it comes to deciding what to collect, Luber says that the most important thing is to collect what you love rather than get hung up on how much money your collection might be worth some day.

In addition to producing the toy figures, ghostwrite operates its own selling platform that uses a blind Dutch auction system. It’s a market-driven pricing model where buyers submit blind bids, indicating the highest amount they’re willing to pay for a limited-edition product. Once bidding closes, the platform ranks all bids from highest to lowest and determines the clearing price — the lowest successful bid that sells out the available supply, Luber explains.

“All winning buyers pay this same final price, even if they originally bid higher, ensuring fairness and preventing overpayment while allowing true market demand to dictate value,” he says.

For Luber, ghostwrite isn’t just another business venture — it’s a sort of homecoming, a chance to build something special with the people who’ve shaped his entrepreneurial journey.

“When I left StockX, there were over 1,400 people working there,” Luber says. “Here it’s just 10 of us, most of them people like my brother whom I have worked with across different stages of my career. These are people I love and trust — these are people I want to work with and they are all superstars. To have a company where we can do this together is really a dream come true. I couldn’t do it without them.”

Photos by Ashelee Huff/Courtesy of Josh Luber. Illustrations from Getty Images.