Every championship workforce nowadays appears to have a tie to Drake. He’s both the workforce’s most vocal movie star fan or a combative supporter of their opponents. The Los Angeles Dodgers have been the newest member of the latter group. Drake took photographs at Shohei Ohtani throughout the 2025 World Series, the place the Dodgers confronted the rapper’s hometown Toronto Blue Jays. But Ohtani’s teammate, Kiké Hernandez, received the final phrase in throughout his championship celebration speech. Hernández used that second to speak about his “really big team that has a lot of big rings.”
It was a reference to the track “Big Rings” by Drake and Future, and it was a second that impressed the creation of a unique collectible: An album cowl (full with vinyl document inside) depicting Hernandez within the fashion of Drake’s “Nothing Was The Same” album artwork, with “Los Angeles Owns October” printed within the type of a parental advisory sticker on it. The creative collectible sells for $50, with copies signed by Hernandez priced at $200 and inscribed with “October’s very own” for $300.
The Hernandez album cowl is part of a series produced by modern collectibles firm The Realest, and contains others that includes gamers equivalent to Ohtani and Aaron Judge. The idea comes from The Realest’s founder, Scott Keeney, higher often known as DJ Skee. But the collection is only one providing from a firm now attracting main investment from a few of sports’ greatest gamers’ associations.
The Realest just lately closed $12 million in Series A funding to increase its authentication expertise and relationships throughout sports, music and movie. This round of funding is led by EnOne Ventures, a partnership fund between main various asset administration agency EnTrust Global and OneTeam Partners, which is a collaboration between the MLB Players Association, NFL PA, WNBPA, USWNT PA and MLS PA. This round additionally contains investments from Elysian Park Ventures, the PGA of America and Interlock Capital, with extra funding from seed traders KB Partners, Alumni Ventures and BAM Ventures.
“The Realest is a culturally resonant platform and exactly the kind of authentic, athlete- and creator-led IP we believe in,” stated OneTeam Partners CEO Sean Sansiveri.
Evan Kaplan, president of MLB Players Inc., collaborated with The Realest on the album collection after witnessing the tradition throughout Major League Baseball’s opening collection in Tokyo final season.
“The way fans there treat baseball like a cultural event instead of just a game. The circus left and people wanted more, so what could we do?” Kaplan stated.
The albums aren’t playable — they’re artwork items in vinyl kind. They’re formally licensed by means of the MLB PA, giving The Realest full rights to make use of names, likenesses and all of the personality-driven components that make the designs pop.
“Japan has this wild passion for collectibles, especially physical art pieces with personality behind them. We wanted to build something that captured that same spark,” Keeney stated.
The Realest needed to create one thing for a youthful, extra numerous crowd than baseball is historically related to.
“That’s where the vinyl idea came in. I’ve been toying with a collectible vinyl concept ever since my card series with Topps, where I mashed up album covers with athletes,” Keeney stated. The subsequent logical step to Keeney was, “What if we treated players like music artists and built an actual rollout around them?”
Baseball playing cards for music followers is what Keeney calls it. “Vinyl has this massive comeback right now, and half the people buying records don’t even own a record player. They buy vinyl for the same reason collectors chase parallels or rare inserts. It’s art. Its identity. It’s displayable. It’s a flex. So instead of making more trading cards, we flipped the format and turned them into albums.”
Collectors care about shortage. Keeney emphasizes the similarities to playing cards by highlighting that this primary urgent is their first (print) run. “First pressings are the holy grail in vinyl culture. So our first run is exactly that: the first pressing,” he stated.
The Japan-only Ohtani urgent was numbered out of 100. Everything else in that run was unnumbered, however nonetheless a part of the restricted first providing. Future drops will add parallel-style components: alternate vinyl colours, particular etching, restricted variants, signature parts, extra experimental packaging. This first wave is the muse of storytelling by means of vinyl.
The Shohei Ohtani x DJ Skee “Greatest Hits” collectible album. (The Realest)
Keeney, now 42 years outdated, left highschool early, started promoting combine tapes and received into the radio enterprise. He’s credited with “discovering” the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga, and has routinely sat within the intersection of music and sports. He was the primary to DJ at an NFL sport, a NASCAR race, an MLB Playoff sport and an NBA sport.
“My career has been about shaping how people discover what’s next in culture, with storytelling at the center,” Keeney stated in a press launch asserting the round of investment. “The Realest brings that into physical products, turning cultural moments into authenticated collectibles fans can own and engage with.”
“A lot of the things we sell are worthless to 99.9 percent of the people, but it’s the hardcore fans, it’s priceless to them because of what it represents and the authentication that says it is real,” he instructed The Athletic.
Another key element of The Realest’s operation is one that has grow to be a main level of concern for collectors, as instances of fraud appear to be on the rise: authenticity.
“Our foundation is on-site authentication at the world’s biggest events, whether it’s the Super Bowl, the Ryder Cup, Coachella or a (Philadelphia) Eagles game,” DJ Skee stated.
Tony Gwynn’s 1990 Gold Glove award, just lately offered by the Gwynn household in partnership with The Realest. (The Realest)
The Realest tackles this with a two-layer system. Its gold sticker is the highest tier, reserved for gadgets they personally witnessed and tracked on-site in actual time, equivalent to Lamar’s Super Bowl outfit moments earlier than he took the stage on the halftime present. (The Realest authenticated and picked up that outfit nevertheless it has but to be positioned for public sale.) The silver sticker widens the web for reputable items not witnessed firsthand by The Realest, however verified by means of trusted sources equivalent to estates and supported by specialists and affidavits, together with the corporate’s work with Tony Gwynn’s household. Gwynn’s 1990 Rawlings Gold Glove award was offered for $102,100 and his 1994 Silver Slugger award was offered for $60,500, each new information for these awards.
Making this the muse of a firm aptly named The Realest has enabled a huge number of moments in sports to grow to be enjoyable and unique collectibles. For instance, the snow in Philly.
“We were inspired by Rita’s Water Ice, and we wanted a design that reflected Philly in a community,” Keeney stated.
Working with the Philadelphia Eagles is setting the tone for a new kind of viewer and fan. Anything you see throughout a sport can grow to be a collectible by means of The Realest. The backlit Eagles emblem LED signal hanging within the gamers’ tunnel on Nov. 28, 2025, at Lincoln Financial Field? It was authenticated by The Realest and auctioned off for $1,406 to a fan to deliver into their den.
It is not simply packages or a bobblehead that may be sports collectibles; it’s each merchandise tied to a sport or athlete. Everyone walks into a sport with an attraction to one thing completely different. It brings every thing to an equal degree for followers to seize a slice of their favourite sport — even an finish zone pylon.
The newest examples within the Eagles Holiday Collection included “E” ornaments reduce from an genuine team-issued jersey from the 2023-24 NFL season ($30) and tote bags reduce from the Super Bowl banner that hung outdoors the Linc ($160).
These are gadgets that could have been stashed away in a storage room and even trashed after an occasion such because the Ryder Cup, the place The Realest offered every thing from course-used yardage signs to team-used celebratory champagne bottles ($99) and captain’s golf carts ($33,500).
The Professional Women’s Hockey League has additionally partnered with The Realest, creating a first-of-its-kind authentication program for the league. These entities see worth in creating new income streams for charitable arms and creating dialog items for followers.
“Everything that’s there, you have more of an affinity if you’re looking at something, if it’s like confetti from the Super Bowl, we productize it into a clear (beer) can.”
The Athletic maintains full editorial independence in all our protection. When you click on or make purchases by means of our hyperlinks, we could earn a fee.