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[IMG width="4000px" height="3000px" alt="Joe Hollywood (left) will help raise money for the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans with a livestream on Nov. 11. (Susan Lulgjuraj)
"]https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2025-11/f99088c0-bb42-11f0-bbf8-75043c0a3af8[/IMG]
Joe Hollywood (left) will help raise money for the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans with a livestream on Nov. 11. (Susan Lulgjuraj)
He goes by the name Joe Hollywood.
With a name like that, you get exactly what you would expect.
A larger-than-life personality. A man who is loud, wears sunglasses at night and rocks velour jumpsuits.
In front of the camera, the gregarious 48-year-old puts on a show for his hundreds of thousands of followers on WhatNot.
And he never thought he would be here.
“It was by accident. Accident and desperation,” Joe said. “My wife finally saw the scope of my collection and it was so … oh my God, it was so bad.”
WhatNot is a live-streaming marketplace where collectors buy, sell, and interact in real time — part shopping app, part entertainment show.
Those first livestreams on the app were a mess. Joe streamed from wherever he could find room, starting with a small space in his basement while standing next to a furnace.
He then upgraded to his son’s toy train table, crushing his calves against the sides.
“There was no plug, no extension cord. The show would end when my phone battery died,” Joe said of those early days.
Eventually, he found a place more suitable, but Joe realized he had something good going. He was often selling his old collection — sometimes at discounted prices for cards like Michael Jordan ’90s inserts — and found people coming back to his streams.
While selling was fun, it was the joy of ripping packs, looking through old cards and chatting with other collectors that kept him coming back.
“I love this. There’s something about opening packs that brings back my childhood. It’s like a time machine,” he said in a recent interview. “You’re opening up rare cards from the Jordan era and it brings back the kid in all of us.”
By the middle of 2024, Joe had 52,000 followers and WhatNot invited him to the National Sports Collectors Convention.
The WhatNot channel saw another huge surge after that, growing to over 300,000 followers.
“In March of ’24 we had 25,000 followers. It was a big deal. We had balloons. I was like, ‘Oh my God, 25,000,’” Joe said. “I thought I was going to set a land speed record and then a year later we were celebrating a quarter of a million and now we’re at 300,000. It’s been unbelievable.”
The growth continues because Joe keeps putting back into his channels. He now has more than one, where other streamers, including his son Joe Jr., also go live.
He finds like-minded partners and charities to support.
In October, he spent a night streaming from Brandon Steiner’s CollectibleXchange warehouse. Joe turned on his persona of the loud, braggadocious seller while Steiner told stories from his years of working with players like Frank Robinson, who helped his son become a ball boy for a day.
Later that night, Doc Gooden arrived at the warehouse to appear on the stream, sell autographed memorabilia and give Joe Hollywood’s viewers a unique experience.
“I’ve always been a big giveaway guy, a contest guy. I like to blow people away,” said Steiner, who is best known as the man who bought old Yankee Stadium. “It’s a fun part if you’ve got stuff that can wow somebody. I think when I met him, we started getting into who gave away more stuff and who wows people more.”
On Nov. 11, Joe plans to wow more people with a charity livestream supporting the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.
Along with other WhatNot sellers — @LisaSalLuxuryExp, @MarysHouseofStyle, and @GoldPawnership — they plan a four-hour stream to raise money and offer support to veterans on the app.
This will be Joe’s fifth charity collaboration. He has helped raise more than $250,000 for causes such as Toys for Tots, Gilda’s Club for families battling cancer, the North Texas Food Bank, and most recently Boston Children’s Hospital.
“We have the most generous community on the app,” Joe said. “We raised nearly $80,000 in four hours for the North Texas Food Bank. We did Toys for Tots and bought every toy on the shelf. Not me, my community did that. People buy 50 or 100 items just to give them away for free. It opens the gates for more people to join the hobby.”
While Joe continues to work on his show, streaming 24 hours straight every weekend, there’s more that could be done.
So he isn’t finished yet.
“I think we want to bring even more of the rare, unique items to the main stage where we’re able to give people accessibility to things that are customized,” Joe said. “The future of this is bringing that together because it’s never been done in that fashion before. Yes, you can go to a card show and have that done, but you’ve never been able to do that from your living room.”
Continue reading...
"]https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2025-11/f99088c0-bb42-11f0-bbf8-75043c0a3af8[/IMG]
Joe Hollywood (left) will help raise money for the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans with a livestream on Nov. 11. (Susan Lulgjuraj)
He goes by the name Joe Hollywood.
With a name like that, you get exactly what you would expect.
A larger-than-life personality. A man who is loud, wears sunglasses at night and rocks velour jumpsuits.
In front of the camera, the gregarious 48-year-old puts on a show for his hundreds of thousands of followers on WhatNot.
And he never thought he would be here.
“It was by accident. Accident and desperation,” Joe said. “My wife finally saw the scope of my collection and it was so … oh my God, it was so bad.”
WhatNot is a live-streaming marketplace where collectors buy, sell, and interact in real time — part shopping app, part entertainment show.
Those first livestreams on the app were a mess. Joe streamed from wherever he could find room, starting with a small space in his basement while standing next to a furnace.
He then upgraded to his son’s toy train table, crushing his calves against the sides.
“There was no plug, no extension cord. The show would end when my phone battery died,” Joe said of those early days.
Eventually, he found a place more suitable, but Joe realized he had something good going. He was often selling his old collection — sometimes at discounted prices for cards like Michael Jordan ’90s inserts — and found people coming back to his streams.
While selling was fun, it was the joy of ripping packs, looking through old cards and chatting with other collectors that kept him coming back.
“I love this. There’s something about opening packs that brings back my childhood. It’s like a time machine,” he said in a recent interview. “You’re opening up rare cards from the Jordan era and it brings back the kid in all of us.”
By the middle of 2024, Joe had 52,000 followers and WhatNot invited him to the National Sports Collectors Convention.
The WhatNot channel saw another huge surge after that, growing to over 300,000 followers.
“In March of ’24 we had 25,000 followers. It was a big deal. We had balloons. I was like, ‘Oh my God, 25,000,’” Joe said. “I thought I was going to set a land speed record and then a year later we were celebrating a quarter of a million and now we’re at 300,000. It’s been unbelievable.”
The growth continues because Joe keeps putting back into his channels. He now has more than one, where other streamers, including his son Joe Jr., also go live.
He finds like-minded partners and charities to support.
In October, he spent a night streaming from Brandon Steiner’s CollectibleXchange warehouse. Joe turned on his persona of the loud, braggadocious seller while Steiner told stories from his years of working with players like Frank Robinson, who helped his son become a ball boy for a day.
Later that night, Doc Gooden arrived at the warehouse to appear on the stream, sell autographed memorabilia and give Joe Hollywood’s viewers a unique experience.
“I’ve always been a big giveaway guy, a contest guy. I like to blow people away,” said Steiner, who is best known as the man who bought old Yankee Stadium. “It’s a fun part if you’ve got stuff that can wow somebody. I think when I met him, we started getting into who gave away more stuff and who wows people more.”
On Nov. 11, Joe plans to wow more people with a charity livestream supporting the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.
Along with other WhatNot sellers — @LisaSalLuxuryExp, @MarysHouseofStyle, and @GoldPawnership — they plan a four-hour stream to raise money and offer support to veterans on the app.
This will be Joe’s fifth charity collaboration. He has helped raise more than $250,000 for causes such as Toys for Tots, Gilda’s Club for families battling cancer, the North Texas Food Bank, and most recently Boston Children’s Hospital.
“We have the most generous community on the app,” Joe said. “We raised nearly $80,000 in four hours for the North Texas Food Bank. We did Toys for Tots and bought every toy on the shelf. Not me, my community did that. People buy 50 or 100 items just to give them away for free. It opens the gates for more people to join the hobby.”
While Joe continues to work on his show, streaming 24 hours straight every weekend, there’s more that could be done.
So he isn’t finished yet.
“I think we want to bring even more of the rare, unique items to the main stage where we’re able to give people accessibility to things that are customized,” Joe said. “The future of this is bringing that together because it’s never been done in that fashion before. Yes, you can go to a card show and have that done, but you’ve never been able to do that from your living room.”
Continue reading...
