“Most young people today know me more for my shoe collection than my music,” the DJ tells Boardroom Breakers.
You can’t fault Scott Keeney for being surprised at the level of attention collecting has brought him. When you become a professional DJ as a teenager and produce one of hip hop’s greatest diss tracks — The Game’s “300 Bars,” a masterful verbal assault against 50 Cent, G-Unit, and a host of others — it’s not exactly foreseeable that your calling card would eventually become sneakers and sports cards.
But such is the case for the man known as DJ Skee.
He’s a 20-year veteran of the music game and responsible for helping to introduce the world to groundbreaking artists such as Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott, and Post Malone in addition to serving as the Minnesota Vikings’ gameday DJ at US Bank Stadium. But his videos about his insane shoe collection and his journey through the world of trading cards are what routinely pull in millions of views across social media these days, introducing a whole new generation of collectors to DJ Skee that may not even know much of anything about his music at all.
However, it’s not the recent hype that drove Keeney to explore the worlds of high-end shoes and trading cards. Far from it — he’s been in the game for as long as he can remember. As the child of teachers and artists, he hustled as a teenager in order to make his earliest sneaker purchases: buying three pairs of the hottest kicks gave him the opportunity to flip the first two, keep the third, and identify his next targets.
A humble way to begin a shoe collection that was once valued at more than $400,000.
Similarly, Keeney’s love for the hobby stems from a childhood spent collecting baseball cards. Recently, this passion blossomed into a partnership with iconic card company Topps for the release of a limited-edition set dubbed “Project70” that mashes up MLB stars of past and present with pop culture mainstays, including a reimagining of Nas’ Illmatic featuring Satchel Paige.
And just this week, he gave Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani the anime treatment.
And if there was ever any doubt about his passion for sports themselves, the world-renowned producer continues to spend his NFL Sundays DJing every single home game for his beloved Minnesota Vikings.
“It’s probably been one of my favorite projects I’ve ever done in my life.”
DJ Skee on collaborating with Topps on Project 70
While the sports card market may be experiencing a bit of a dip right now (at least when it comes to low-price, high-population cards), Keeney’s rising popularity and millions of social media followers are a testament to the increasing enthusiasm for sports collectibles as both entertainment vehicles and legitimate asset classes with store-of-value upside.
Quite a journey for a sports fan who started selling cards on his porch as an eight-year-old kid.
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