How Wax Poetics Is Redefining Music Memorabilia Collecting

Magazine Wax Poetics has quietly transformed itself into a cross between Sotheby’s and eBay, with very high-profile auctions for memorabilia like Mariah Carey’s demo tape and Nightmares on Wax’s 808. We spoke with CEO Alex Bruh and original owner of that tape, Arthur Baker, about how collecting memorabilia is a form of storytelling – and a potentially lucrative new revenue stream for artists.

What do a sheet of Tupac’s hand-written lyrics, a brick from the former Paradise Garage, and Louie Vega’s personal UREI 1620 mixer have in common? Aside from being important artifacts from music history, they have all been up for auction on Wax Poetics at one time. The magazine – a highly collectible part of music history itself – has now rebranded as a music memorabilia auction house.

What started as an experiment has turned into a real cultural force, with those Tupac lyrics selling for a cool $8,000. But that’s nothing compared to what Mariah Carey’s 1988 demo tape from producer Arthur Baker’s collection netted. Would you believe $47,000? There’s clearly something shifting in the broader culture. Music memorabilia is catching up with other high-stakes collecting worlds, such as sports memorabilia and comics.

We spoke with Wax Poetics CEO Alex Bruh about the company’s pivot to auctions and how the culture around music and ownership is changing, plus with Arthur Baker about his involvement.

Attack: What’s your story? And how did you get involved with Wax Poetics? 

Alex Bruh: I started my professional career at a music marketing agency. When I moved to Amsterdam, I moved over for work. And then Dave (Holt), who’s my business partner and co-founder, similar background, also moved to Amsterdam around the same time. We’re both big music fans, and we just wanted a project that we could take on in the music space that we could build something really meaningful around.

I knew Wax Poetics, but Dave was the big Wax Poetics collector. We ended up getting in contact with the old founders and taking it over just before Covid.

How did the pivot towards auctions happen? Is that something that you were planning from the beginning? 

It was very much an evolution. Our initial thesis was that we wanted to be the central spot for music journalism. Long story short, it didn’t work. The pivot to the auction side and the collectible side happened quite serendipitously towards the tail end of the NFT era. Everyone was talking about collectibles. The first thing that happened was that Sotheby’s asked us to be part of their hip-hop auction. Well, hold on. We’re already a part of collecting culture. We’ve got a journal that people collect. We’ve got an audience of collectors. We’ve got access to artists who have all these items there. And we’ve got 23, 24 years of trusted history in the space behind us.

When you look at all the other cultural verticals in the space, you’ve got fanatics in sports and sneakers, these big collectible-focused businesses. No one’s doing music. What does Sotheby’s really know about hip-hop? This is exactly where we’ve come from. That was really the moment when the penny dropped.

You had a recent successful round of fundraising. How is that going to help what you do and contribute to the culture? 

On a cultural level, we are opening up this way for artists to open up a new revenue stream and help fans connect deeper with the scenes that they love, and the artists that they love. I think there’s always been a bit of a bit of a tension between culture and commerce when it comes to music.

That’s another question on our list to talk about. 

We can get to that. But this is helping address some of those things and open it up. It’s capturing the stories of these items and capturing the stories of the artists. There’s a new way of getting those stories out there that people haven’t really seen before, thought about before. Telling artists’ stories through these items becomes this other layer. Without getting too wordy, what I find super interesting with the conversations we have with a lot of artists is that these items that they’re sitting with, it’s real deep music history, really important music history. There are people that will look after and cherish this stuff.

Some of it finds its way into museums and some of it finds ways into houses that we pass down for generations and keep and cherish. That side is really important. And then from a business point of view, it helps us build.

[quote align=right text="What do a sheet of Tupac’s hand-written lyrics, a brick from the former Paradise Garage, and Louie Vega’s personal UREI 1620 mixer have in common"]

There are some big name artists who have sold on Wax Poetics like Louis Vega and Arthur Baker, but is this the kind of thing that anybody can do? 

Yes. These top-tier, big-name items and artists are good in terms of driving a lot of attention around what we’re doing. Then the wider market underneath there is where the real scale comes from, like you say, opening up to individual collectors, buyers, sellers, that whole network underneath, like photographers, whoever that might be.

We have a form on the site where anyone can submit their items to consign to us and we review each one on a case-by-case basis.

So it's a little bit more personal than, say, eBay. 

Exactly. We use a lot more personal service. With eBay, you never know really who you’re buying from. You don't know what it is. It’s very difficult to find anything there and to find the right stuff. What we’re doing is changing that experience. We verify the people who are selling the stuff, we verify the stuff that comes in. We make it easy for you to go and find it.

People have always paid high prices for records. What’s changed now?

You mentioned records specifically, but there’s a bigger conversation. When people think music, they have historically just thought records. Our point is that the collecting space around there is much bigger than that. I think we’re the first ones to really talk about that at scale. 

And what’s changed? This comes back to the culture and commerce point that has been a point of tension in music. When you look at sports cards, for example, sports are inherently much more commercial-focused, vertical, and much more competitive by nature. What’s happening now is that people know that artists need new ways of making money. That commerce conversation has become a bit easier.

You mentioned vinyl prices. What’s been interesting now is the return to physical formats. Everyone was like digital, digital, digital. What’s happening now is people are saying, well, actually, the long-term stuff that I want is physical.

Who’s buying the memorabilia? Is it nostalgic Gen Xers who have money to spend, or is it Gen Z who wants tangible physical items? 

Honestly, it’s a mix of everyone, and everyone has their own reasons behind it. Your point around a generation who might now be searching for nostalgia, that is definitely a thing. We got a really beautiful message during the Louis Vega auction from someone who was saying that, as a fan, you’ve been on this journey with artists through the past 20, 30 years, you feel like you’re already part of the story, you’ve been to their sets, you’ve met them a few times, you really feel like you’re in it with them. And then to have this opportunity to now own a piece of their history, with this meaningful story attached to it, it’s pretty priceless.

When you start talking about some of the higher value stuff, the Mariah Carey tape, for example, you are looking at more institutionalized collectors. They will collect for their own reasons. It's not all about investment. For me, the best thing about collecting in the space that we’re in now is that you get to own this incredible piece of history that you actually love.

It’s been interesting seeing where some of the items end up. One of the mixes that we sold from the Louis Vega auction ended up at a new club in London. It’s this whole second life for a lot of these items.

Nightmares on Wax sold their TR-808 on your site. How does music gear sell compared to other kinds of memorabilia? 

It sells very well. What we found is that each auction we put up, you discover a new subset of buyers and collectors. There's a very active subset of studio gear collectors, producers and other artists out there who are looking for equipment. The fact that this has come from an artist and/or part of a pretty seminal album (Smoker’s Delight) makes that a pretty exciting thing.

Our history is all in media and journalism. The thing that we really love about this is that it is a new way of telling these stories. We can get some headlines around Mariah Carey’s demo tape, right? The actual interesting thing about that is the story of where that demo tape came from and what that demo tape represents in terms of a moment in music history. It's just another entry point into an artist's story that isn’t just, hey, here's an article in a magazine about my new record.

Arthur, how did you come to sell on Wax Poetics?

Arthur Baker: I’m a longtime fan of Wax Poetics, so when I was approached by David from the magazine about their concept of featuring artists in connection with collections of their memorabilia for auction, I was immediately interested – being a collector (or hoarder, according to my wife).

Had you ever thought about auctioning your memorabilia before?

I had thought about auctioning off some memorabilia in the past, specifically the Mariah cassette, which I approached a few auction houses about with no success. When the Wax Poetics offer came through, I had also just spent six years financing and producing/directing a documentary on my group Rockers Revenge called Rockers Don’t Stop, and funds were getting low. So I thought the idea of recycling some of my stuff to help finance the film’s completion was a good one.

How does Wax Poetics figure into your legacy?

I’ve always loved the way they’ve covered music’s legacy in an intelligent and in-depth way. Documenting the culture is very important.

We’ve also discussed other ways of working together. They’re now co-producing my Looking for the Perfect Beat podcast.

What’s next for you?

Lots on my plate. I’m about to record my Looking for the Perfect Beat audiobook, I have my weekly Baker’s Revenge radio show on SiriusXM, I still DJ regularly, and I have a series of unreleased albums called Lost In coming this year.

I’m also involved in producing the classic hip-hop film Beat Street for Broadway and helping my daughter with schoolwork and guitar.

Find Wax Poetics online where there is a current auction on Wax Poetics featuring a selection of rare pieces tied to Paradise Garage, Grace Jones and the early days of house and disco. Highlights include a reel-to-reel recording of Grace Jones performing live, a brick from the Paradise Garage demolition site, a Tee Scott Better Days vinyl, along with customised apparel, invites and other memorabilia.

Find Arthur Baker on Instagram.